12.29.2009 i love this date.
almost a year to the date that eben and I first started working on the demos sitting on his couch with our gibson guitars, i have finished most of my vocal work on my second album...which has been the most mentally challenging process for me. my voice is a blessing and a curse.i wish i could say it's been a breeze.that this journey has been enjoyable. i wish i could say that i nailed these songs on the first take. i wish i could say i was born to do this but i can't. it's been quite the journey: me and this album. i have felt like quitting this a hundred times. i had to walk away from the songs for a couple months when i had a melt down in the studio when my throat really closed shut trying to sing...when i couldn't even remember how to sing a simple line. i had to put my guitar down and just walk away...but i came back with a new approach and i found my place in these songs. if i had any confidence going into the making of this album- it quickly evaporated. that girl who lives in my head the one who says those shitty things like: you're band's really good, you're lucky to have them but you'll never live up to them- you'll make them regret laying down their tracks- you'll make them sorry they agreed to play on this. Yes- she's a charmer- and it's only been in the last 3 weeks that I have started winning the never ending battle with her. i started hearing my album for the first time. i could hear the easiness in my voice. i started connecting to the way i live in my songs - i lived in the movie of the song that plays in my mind as i sang them. tonight- i recorded my last final vocal for a really old song- a song i recorded on my first album- called anita pallenberg- a song that aound this time last year came to take on a new relevance ... i wrote the song about a rock star i was infatuated with in 2002 and somehow i found another one to sing about...funny how i travel like that. as i sang the song tonight i tasted his lips again,i smelled his hair, i lived the dream i had for him ...again.
i could be the you in all your songs
and you could sing to me when everything goes wrong
i like the way eben and i work together. there are no warm ups- no practice runs. no lights . no official points like 'OK ! GO!' the song starts playing and i start singing... tonight the opening lines from our final take was taken from my first take. The rest of the song weaves in and out of takes IV and V- but i am so proud that our favorite opening verse came from my first take.
this album has made me doubt my self a million times. if the thoughts of worthlessness could kill me i probably would have died from the making of this in august...but i didn't. with white knuckles i've held on.
i have gotten away from listening(read: torturing myself) to the takes over and over and over. today i listened to the final vocal we recorded last week for the first time as i walked my dogs in the snowy field and ended up listening to the album in its entirety...i was,for the first time, really proud of it and of me. i could hear a cohesiveness- i could hear my album. i could hear the girl who sat with her guitar and wrote those songs on couches, back porches, in stores after hours and while driving down the road. we made the songs come to life...me, eben, schey, todd, ian, jack and macy ...there are still some surprises to come but for now- there's a calm in the knowing that we're getting really close now.
i remember the exact date this album was born- that summer day in july '07 with my new band and my new life. i wondered, can i really make a rock album? i've always wanted to but certain voices over the years said 'you're not good enough, jami' and I believed them. but it was jefferson, todd, ian, willy and craigy- who first gave me the encouragement to make this album. and while i've taken some detours and the scenic route at night, i am getting close to it being done. trust me, i have no idea what i am doing or where i am going but i do know i made a promise to myself, my band and my executive producer that i would finish this- and twenty ten is the year...
i could stand on the side of the stage
and smile all the while you're giving yourself away
with out the breakdowns there are no break throughs
jami lunde
lyons colorado
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Soup Can and a String 11.09.09
An old post that should be here...
7pm Monday 11.09.09
Oh the dark this early just doesn’t feel quite right yet but I am not fighting it. I am in for the night eating my dinner…peanut butter toast and this morning’s coffee warmed back up. I just wrapped up my daily conversation via soup can and a string with, Craig, who always reminds me ‘that I got this,’ just how loved I am and how not crazy I am in his eyes. I see the pink cowgirl pillow on the couch still where he left it- it's almost like he’s coming back soon...maybe just out to get coffee or a trip to the store. I'll leave it there. Funny how fast I got used to having him here- fell right into place. The 'alones' well they're a little harder to shake... but with the soup can and a string- I'm not that gone at all. My dogs, my other constant companions are in for the night as well, curled up sleeping face to butt. It’s cold here in my garage room apartment. I feel the tip of my nose with out even touching it.
I just finished with my Monday practice with Jack. We practice my songs as well as practice new ways of being in the world, to ourselves and to each other. I like our conversations,the tangents,the friendship & the accountability. Lather rinse and repeat. Monday landings keep me sane but the take offs are pretty shaky.
I’ve learned in the last year that it’s an ‘and’ world not ‘or’. Gibson and Martin, The Stones and The Beatles and Black Birds and Cherry Blossoms It still surprises me how much life can change in the blink of an eye and how in one moment you can think you know what the fuck you’re doing only in the next to be floored by your poor choices. Just when I think I have the wings to soar higher than I’ve ever soared I look down and feel the cement shoes and know I'm not going nowhere. Still, my hands reach out trying to touch the silver twinkling stars…they always will. I feel the next year will be like running in sand but in the end I’m sure I will be stronger from it. It’s a good thing I happen to like the feeling of sand between my toes. I am choosing to stay awake. To keep my eyes open. Even if I have to stay in the unknowing. Even if I have to leave the wounds open. With out a crack there is no opening.
I met with an intuitive for the first time this week. I figured it couldn’t hurt. It was interesting the things she told me. She wanted to know if I was already working on my next album. I said ‘well, I am writing new songs’ and she said ‘well, get this album done because you have many more to do.’ I see it that way too… even if it feels like sometimes that it will almost kill me, makes me question myself every step of the way and embarrass myself constantly. I am not sure what else I’d rather be doing. It feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day, days in the week, weeks in the year and years in this lifetime to do and be everything I want to do and be. And when I think of how far my friends are my heart aches. I can count the ones I love the most on one hand and still have a few fingers left over. I wish we all lived closer. I want to send a hundred postcards every day…the ever so typical message written at the end ‘wish you were here’.
I can see my bed from here where I write this and I am so thankful for the heavy blankets that hold me tight all through the night, that keep me anchored down to my life and the bed that raises me off the floor. I feel such a sense of relief when I know that my old ways of being are behind me. That I have broken up with my old destructive ways.I have deleted their numbers from my phone; I won't be calling them anymore. The year is dying a little more every day and it is also my time now to synch with the season: to also die a little more with each passing day. There’s an apple tree right outside my window whose leaves have fallen all around-whose braches are bare. I know that come spring there will be millions of blossoms all around me and beauty in the air. But for now- I must see the beauty and freedom in the dying and see it’s all part of the circles I am traveling in.
7pm Monday 11.09.09
Oh the dark this early just doesn’t feel quite right yet but I am not fighting it. I am in for the night eating my dinner…peanut butter toast and this morning’s coffee warmed back up. I just wrapped up my daily conversation via soup can and a string with, Craig, who always reminds me ‘that I got this,’ just how loved I am and how not crazy I am in his eyes. I see the pink cowgirl pillow on the couch still where he left it- it's almost like he’s coming back soon...maybe just out to get coffee or a trip to the store. I'll leave it there. Funny how fast I got used to having him here- fell right into place. The 'alones' well they're a little harder to shake... but with the soup can and a string- I'm not that gone at all. My dogs, my other constant companions are in for the night as well, curled up sleeping face to butt. It’s cold here in my garage room apartment. I feel the tip of my nose with out even touching it.
I just finished with my Monday practice with Jack. We practice my songs as well as practice new ways of being in the world, to ourselves and to each other. I like our conversations,the tangents,the friendship & the accountability. Lather rinse and repeat. Monday landings keep me sane but the take offs are pretty shaky.
I’ve learned in the last year that it’s an ‘and’ world not ‘or’. Gibson and Martin, The Stones and The Beatles and Black Birds and Cherry Blossoms It still surprises me how much life can change in the blink of an eye and how in one moment you can think you know what the fuck you’re doing only in the next to be floored by your poor choices. Just when I think I have the wings to soar higher than I’ve ever soared I look down and feel the cement shoes and know I'm not going nowhere. Still, my hands reach out trying to touch the silver twinkling stars…they always will. I feel the next year will be like running in sand but in the end I’m sure I will be stronger from it. It’s a good thing I happen to like the feeling of sand between my toes. I am choosing to stay awake. To keep my eyes open. Even if I have to stay in the unknowing. Even if I have to leave the wounds open. With out a crack there is no opening.
I met with an intuitive for the first time this week. I figured it couldn’t hurt. It was interesting the things she told me. She wanted to know if I was already working on my next album. I said ‘well, I am writing new songs’ and she said ‘well, get this album done because you have many more to do.’ I see it that way too… even if it feels like sometimes that it will almost kill me, makes me question myself every step of the way and embarrass myself constantly. I am not sure what else I’d rather be doing. It feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day, days in the week, weeks in the year and years in this lifetime to do and be everything I want to do and be. And when I think of how far my friends are my heart aches. I can count the ones I love the most on one hand and still have a few fingers left over. I wish we all lived closer. I want to send a hundred postcards every day…the ever so typical message written at the end ‘wish you were here’.
I can see my bed from here where I write this and I am so thankful for the heavy blankets that hold me tight all through the night, that keep me anchored down to my life and the bed that raises me off the floor. I feel such a sense of relief when I know that my old ways of being are behind me. That I have broken up with my old destructive ways.I have deleted their numbers from my phone; I won't be calling them anymore. The year is dying a little more every day and it is also my time now to synch with the season: to also die a little more with each passing day. There’s an apple tree right outside my window whose leaves have fallen all around-whose braches are bare. I know that come spring there will be millions of blossoms all around me and beauty in the air. But for now- I must see the beauty and freedom in the dying and see it’s all part of the circles I am traveling in.
Soup Can and a String (written from this blog)
A life time isn’t enough time to spend with you
Just knowing that you’re out there somewhere
That’ll have to do
Keep connected by a soup can and a string
In the listening In the spaces in between
We are part of everything
We are part of everything
We don’t live on a shelf we don’t fit in a box
I can draw a circle around us in this very spot
We keep connected by a soup can and a string
In the silence in the suffering
It’s in the circles we are traveling
It’s in the circles we are traveling
I wish that we
I wish that we
I wish that we
were closer
When I loose the straight way
You find me when I’m lost
You give me the sun and a place to belong
We keep connected by a soup can and a string
You are unwavering
If there’s a crack there’s an opening
There’s an opening
I wish that we
I wish that we
I wish that we
were closer
Jami Lunde 11.09
Title By Clifford Novey
Friday, December 11, 2009
If There's a Crack There's an Opening
I woke up this morning to the sunrise screaming in at me through a crack in the curtains and my phone ringing. By the time I took out my ear plugs and shifted gears from one of those dreams that takes awhile to come to terms with ,I missed the call. The dream was so vivid and real it seemed like it was the real life and that the view from the ends of my eyelashes: a messy garage apartment, me under 5 down comforters, guitars, chords,broken strings, albums all over the floor, CDs with out cases and my sliver spun Christmas Tree was the dream.But the dream was of my ex-husband and me at my great grand mother's house...it seems so real.
This time of the year has all the potential of the world. But for me it just shines the mirror back in my face. That I am really alone. Since leaving my marriage back in '07, I have packed away and stored about ninety percent of the person I used to be. I was once a person who cooked 2-3 meals a day, baked cookies for every occasion under the sun in perfect shades of nostaligic colors and piped borders, canned summer harvests of heirloom tomatoes, drove to the midwest in prime corn season to bring back a bushel to freeze for the cold winter months and sent my husband off to work with leftovers that made his co-workers drool. Since leaving my marriage, I think I have cooked 2 meals, Baked 3 birthday cakes and a batch of cherry blossom cupcakes.Now I just make rice in a rice cooker and steam a bag of edamame in the basket above. That's hardly cooking. I translate cooking with love. If there is no one to love, there is no one to cook for.
Christmas is the same way. While I am not religious in a Christian way, The Holiday Season that revolves around the Winter Solstice which is a week beyond my birthday and goes through the new year is a time for celebrations big and small. Mostly small. So the holidays are creeping in and I have been trying to avoid them. I don't believe they are for me anymore. Some how I have made up the story that I do not deserve a Christmas.
From the time when I was a little girl living on welfare with my single mom and not having enough money for presents, to the night on the 28th of December when my house burned down when I was 14,to the 22nd of December when we put our beloved black lab, Tupelo, down, to the years spent working Christmas in a ski town and now to Christmas alone...This time of the year has always been the darkest for me inside and out. I always tired to make it look perfect though. The lights around the windows of our old cabin in Fraser with a snow man in the yard and hand cut pine bows twined together around the door were perfectly unperfect- I made most everything look like the photographer was coming and I was staging the scene. Now the view from here ...is narrow and tunneled. But I do see through a crack, a new tradition...My new tradition.
The other night I was out for a walk with my dogs in the below zero bitter air in the little park by my house noticing all of the giant pine trees with lights swung from branch to branch. I always loved the way Christmas lights looked in the snow. I remembered that I used to love decorating for Christmas. My last Christmas in my married house was no exception. My husband and I went go out with our dogs, with a hand saw and our big snowshoes and trapsed across the hillside looking for the prefect trees to be chosen. We found the perfect ones and drug them back to our car. The trees were too big and we had to cut the one down to fit the size of the room. He handed me each ornament and I placed them perfectly on the tree that was strung with little white lights. By the time we had all the ornaments on the tree we had relived all of our years together through the ornaments. Friends of his parents made these beautiful Norweigan Rose Mauled ornaments with our names painted on the back and the year. His mom would send us ornaments every year too, often hand made. Every year we got more and in the 14 years or so we accumulated a beautiful assortment.
As I walked though the park the other night it was so quiet except for the squeaking of snow under my boots. I found my self really liking the bright lights in the trees covered in snow. I remembered the Christmases of my past. I got a little sad. I came back to my little garage apartment and got out my sliver spun Christmas Tree and my big box of ornaments. I put on an old Christmas album on vinyl and unwrapped the layers of our past. I found all the Christmas letters we sent every year. Oh, it was almost too much reading of the happier times. Here I was alone hanging just a fraction of the ornaments on the little tree. My little tree.
I figured that I need to make my own traditions now. So I picked my favorite ornaments: a few jumbo body guitars, a little kid holing a chocolate lab that looked just like my Chocolate Dog that died, a spun wool snow man with a sea foam green hat and scarf and vintage pink glass balls. I packed up the ornaments that my ex husband's family sent us over the years along with a stocking made by his ex girlfriend and wrote a note saying...Not sure what to do with these, but I figured since they were from your family you should decide.
Part of me wanted to include a copy of each one of our old Christmas letters- but after thinking about it, it'd just be something shitty to do. I was the one who left- it wasn't a mutual decision- so for me to send them to him it would have just been a slap to his face.
So I read the old letters and remembered our life together- the good times, the traditions, the meals, the excursions, the ranch we lived on and the house we bought- the life we made together. And it seems like a million years ago. I dont even remember that girl. Maybe it's becasue she's so hard to uncover today.
I have no regrets , he has now found love again and is remarried. And I genuinly want nothing but a love for him in his life- one that I was never able to give.There are so many people you break up with and say you want to be friends with- and it just never works. When we ended the marraige- I really thought he was gonna be the Larry Klien to my Joni Mitchell, the Brian Ahearn to my Emmy Lou Harris...and he wanted that for a while too but apparently it wasn't meant to be.
So I will celebrate in small ways-the quiet of this season, listen to the falling snow and I will try and quiet the voices in my head...the ones that say I don't deserve a Christmas.
Now don't go feeling all sorry for me...that's not what I am asking for. I made my bed. I made the choice. I can't honestly say I want some one in my life again. I can't honestly say I miss sharing my bed with some one.
What I can say is that I can give myself a new way to celebrate. I can give myself something small. I can make a deal with that girl with that heinous voice that lives in my head-the one who says the shitties things- to just pipe down for a few hours, that we can go back to the endless 4 in the morning talks later. That if she can just stay quiet now- I will give in to her demands to be heard later. That if she can just give me a little piece of time to allow a new way to enjoy and embrace this life I have, I will let her run her whole adgenda some time in the very near future.
So I am staying quiet and staying put. I am telling my story. I am starting over.
Jami Lunde
12.11.09
Lyons Colorado
This time of the year has all the potential of the world. But for me it just shines the mirror back in my face. That I am really alone. Since leaving my marriage back in '07, I have packed away and stored about ninety percent of the person I used to be. I was once a person who cooked 2-3 meals a day, baked cookies for every occasion under the sun in perfect shades of nostaligic colors and piped borders, canned summer harvests of heirloom tomatoes, drove to the midwest in prime corn season to bring back a bushel to freeze for the cold winter months and sent my husband off to work with leftovers that made his co-workers drool. Since leaving my marriage, I think I have cooked 2 meals, Baked 3 birthday cakes and a batch of cherry blossom cupcakes.Now I just make rice in a rice cooker and steam a bag of edamame in the basket above. That's hardly cooking. I translate cooking with love. If there is no one to love, there is no one to cook for.
Christmas is the same way. While I am not religious in a Christian way, The Holiday Season that revolves around the Winter Solstice which is a week beyond my birthday and goes through the new year is a time for celebrations big and small. Mostly small. So the holidays are creeping in and I have been trying to avoid them. I don't believe they are for me anymore. Some how I have made up the story that I do not deserve a Christmas.
From the time when I was a little girl living on welfare with my single mom and not having enough money for presents, to the night on the 28th of December when my house burned down when I was 14,to the 22nd of December when we put our beloved black lab, Tupelo, down, to the years spent working Christmas in a ski town and now to Christmas alone...This time of the year has always been the darkest for me inside and out. I always tired to make it look perfect though. The lights around the windows of our old cabin in Fraser with a snow man in the yard and hand cut pine bows twined together around the door were perfectly unperfect- I made most everything look like the photographer was coming and I was staging the scene. Now the view from here ...is narrow and tunneled. But I do see through a crack, a new tradition...My new tradition.
The other night I was out for a walk with my dogs in the below zero bitter air in the little park by my house noticing all of the giant pine trees with lights swung from branch to branch. I always loved the way Christmas lights looked in the snow. I remembered that I used to love decorating for Christmas. My last Christmas in my married house was no exception. My husband and I went go out with our dogs, with a hand saw and our big snowshoes and trapsed across the hillside looking for the prefect trees to be chosen. We found the perfect ones and drug them back to our car. The trees were too big and we had to cut the one down to fit the size of the room. He handed me each ornament and I placed them perfectly on the tree that was strung with little white lights. By the time we had all the ornaments on the tree we had relived all of our years together through the ornaments. Friends of his parents made these beautiful Norweigan Rose Mauled ornaments with our names painted on the back and the year. His mom would send us ornaments every year too, often hand made. Every year we got more and in the 14 years or so we accumulated a beautiful assortment.
As I walked though the park the other night it was so quiet except for the squeaking of snow under my boots. I found my self really liking the bright lights in the trees covered in snow. I remembered the Christmases of my past. I got a little sad. I came back to my little garage apartment and got out my sliver spun Christmas Tree and my big box of ornaments. I put on an old Christmas album on vinyl and unwrapped the layers of our past. I found all the Christmas letters we sent every year. Oh, it was almost too much reading of the happier times. Here I was alone hanging just a fraction of the ornaments on the little tree. My little tree.
I figured that I need to make my own traditions now. So I picked my favorite ornaments: a few jumbo body guitars, a little kid holing a chocolate lab that looked just like my Chocolate Dog that died, a spun wool snow man with a sea foam green hat and scarf and vintage pink glass balls. I packed up the ornaments that my ex husband's family sent us over the years along with a stocking made by his ex girlfriend and wrote a note saying...Not sure what to do with these, but I figured since they were from your family you should decide.
Part of me wanted to include a copy of each one of our old Christmas letters- but after thinking about it, it'd just be something shitty to do. I was the one who left- it wasn't a mutual decision- so for me to send them to him it would have just been a slap to his face.
So I read the old letters and remembered our life together- the good times, the traditions, the meals, the excursions, the ranch we lived on and the house we bought- the life we made together. And it seems like a million years ago. I dont even remember that girl. Maybe it's becasue she's so hard to uncover today.
I have no regrets , he has now found love again and is remarried. And I genuinly want nothing but a love for him in his life- one that I was never able to give.There are so many people you break up with and say you want to be friends with- and it just never works. When we ended the marraige- I really thought he was gonna be the Larry Klien to my Joni Mitchell, the Brian Ahearn to my Emmy Lou Harris...and he wanted that for a while too but apparently it wasn't meant to be.
So I will celebrate in small ways-the quiet of this season, listen to the falling snow and I will try and quiet the voices in my head...the ones that say I don't deserve a Christmas.
Now don't go feeling all sorry for me...that's not what I am asking for. I made my bed. I made the choice. I can't honestly say I want some one in my life again. I can't honestly say I miss sharing my bed with some one.
What I can say is that I can give myself a new way to celebrate. I can give myself something small. I can make a deal with that girl with that heinous voice that lives in my head-the one who says the shitties things- to just pipe down for a few hours, that we can go back to the endless 4 in the morning talks later. That if she can just stay quiet now- I will give in to her demands to be heard later. That if she can just give me a little piece of time to allow a new way to enjoy and embrace this life I have, I will let her run her whole adgenda some time in the very near future.
So I am staying quiet and staying put. I am telling my story. I am starting over.
Jami Lunde
12.11.09
Lyons Colorado
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