afternoon in denial but with great music

With exactly a week left before I leave with Dama for our Perth run of Butterfly Lovers The Musical, I refuse to panic over the packing for one week stay and making space for shopping in my luggage, I spend the whole afternoon sorting my music folders on the PC.

It's a tall order, to get all mess sorted in one sitting.

Apparently I have Anita Baker, Carole King & others in the wrong folder. I made a few new folders, soul & RnB, retro & eletronica. The easy folders I have had for ages are stuff like choral, operas, Chinese oldies, classical (vocal), jazz and musicals.

Eventually I gave it a rest, for today. Though some of them are still in the wrong folder, and more new folders are needed, it's a great feeling knowing I have great music in my disc.

I name you some of the great great people music I got here...

Nina Simone
Herbie Hancock
Quincy Jones
Eva Cassidy
Aimee Mann
Damien Rice
Etta James
Shirley Bassey
Carly Simon
Carole King
Erykah Badu
Anita Baker
Chaka Khan
Jill Scott
Alanis Morisette
Chet Baker
Stan Getz
Bjork

The list goes on and on, really, with the wealth of this music next to me, I feel that we don't ever need to complain about feeling lonely and restless - for great music is the medicine for the soul.

It makes me go crazy just thinking about the possibility of singing just one great song from each of these great musicians, what kind of musical substance and maturity is needed to be able to represent these great array of music...I dare not assume.

Am in planning of two performances (vocal) for the second half of this year. Putting a repertoire together is a great task of having to balance, and settle with what I'm dying to perform and what I could do potentially well.

Truth is, it looks like what I could do well is quite limited (especially the classical repertoire front) and what I love to perform is quite endless, at the moment. I really like the torch songs and the deep deep blues of people like Nina Simone and Billie Holiday, but to do a convincing rendition of say, Stormy Weather...I don't know what it takes, perhaps my not knowing and the lack of confidence is the issue.

Anyway, a note of self-plugging, stay tune to my performance calendar for my performances in July and August.

Just this week, after months of irregular eating hours and very bad diet, I went grocery shopping and prepared meal, my first proper (self) home cook meal in a long time.

Monday
- salad & ABC soup


Tuesday was sandwich day...dark rye bread with looots of butter and strong cheddar. Wednesday I made pasta with pesto mix of chillies & tomato with tons of vegetables...yesterday I made lentil soup.

Oh ya, with all this happening, I still managed to squeeze in an appointment to.....finally, got my eye brows DONE, tattooed!!!

The trade name is now really, eye brow embroidery but the beautician Leslie (he is fantastic, really) explained it's all the same thing, calling it tattoo or embroidery, same technology, different marketing positioning.

Anyway, I endured the pain and now I'm prepared to endure comments should they come my way. So far what I've heard are things like what if I don't like the shape in future, what if the shape goes out of trend...what's next? Facial surgery?

Well, the color of the tatto will fade in time and I don't think any well-shape eye brow will ever go out of fashion if I don't follow trend at the first place.

...pictures of the new brows on the way :)