June 21-23 24
Last night I had one of the most annoying hotel shifts I’ve ever had. I didn’t feel like adding it to the end of an already long post, especially since I was already pissed off and exhausted from the day. By the end of the day I was sort of just shocked by how many small annoying things were happening. I bought a bottle of water from a deli walking to the train to go home, and the clerk accosted me for not speaking spanish. I guess this was an annoying event, but I mainly felt flabbergasted1 by the whole thing.
I started to write this whole thing that I had a plan for, because I had two really annoying days at work at the hotel. That was three days ago. Since then I got distracted and unmotivated and didn’t find a chance to finish the diary entry. I recall that I was motivated to mention but not describe my annoying day at work, because the reasons its annoying are supremely boring. It was just a shift where all of the things that irritate me about my hotel job happened one after another. I did lose my composure at a photographer. Her bag was moved by another employee because it was in the way and she became a bit furious and said quite emphatically I need this to do my job! And I told her to ‘relax’ because many people were doing their job, including me, and her bag was in the way of me doing my job. Riveting stuff.
The next day was also a wedding and it was an equally frustrating shift, but this time because it was 4 hundred million degrees outside and the groom wanted to keep the ceremony outside as planned, and then afterwards everyone got mad at us because they were very hot. There were other irritating things that happened but they aren’t worth getting into. I’m annoyed at my coworker bc hes stupid. I don’t like many of the clients. There are technical problems I think need to be fixed. Nothing interesting. I’m back at work as I’m writing this. Its a depressing cell phone company event. Its the same presentation every couple hours for different groups of press people. Its all press people whose beat is cell phone tech I guess. These kind of things make me feel depressed about the future.
Over the weekend I spent a day preparing and then played a show. I probably put too much time into prep for it. I’ve been doing a lot of individual work for each show I’ve been playing recently, which is probably unwise. I need to lock down some consistent2 material I can replay. It was just for this thing near my house which I played the very first set for. I went to sleep the night before having prepared all day and not having left the house and felt depressed. The day of was 100,000,000 degrees and I was sweating a lot going to the venue3 and I felt dazed. I got there and it was very DIY backyard and everything I expected. My set was fine. I was first to go on but there were some people there and I think I played reasonably good music. Don’t have much more to say about it. It made me want to make more music and book more shows, though I don’t know how.
Afterwards I hung around a bit but the rest of the event was readings and acoustic guitar/singing music and because it was so hot I didn’t really care to stay. I thought sitting in the heat and listening to people read poetry sounded hellish. Also I think Genevieve didn’t really want to be there because of the whole weird thing where they made her an organizer on the flyer despite not talking to her about it and her not having much to do with it. I think she only came in spite of the strangeness of that because she wanted to support me. Either way me and the people I came with went to a bar nearby and then we ate food and generally had a normal day in our neighborhood.
I want to put more effort into the music thing in the near future. I don’t mind playing in people’s goofy backyard events, but it doesn’t really feel like a very interesting progression for me as a musician. I guess I need to put effort into getting booked at actual venues, but that seems to require being part of a musical community, and I haven’t been doing a good job being a part of that. I’m probably too old and uncool. I don’t really go to shows anymore. I saw that there was an ML Buch and Chanel Beads concert at Nowadays on Saturday, but I had no idea.
I also sort of thought he might be right to challenge me. Why don’t I speak spanish? I certainly wasn’t going to tell him I grew up in Texas. I used to think I spoke a little spanish from working in kitchens in Texas, but whatever experience I had with the various pidgins I was exposed to has no real utility in the hispanosphere, as I learned when I visited [link] mexico city last year.
I keep thinking I’ve done that but then decide its all wrong and start over from scratch each time I’m asked to perform anywhere. I guess we’ll just see about the next one.
backyard of the girl organizing it