I want to roll around the darkness, til the darkness goes away
February 10, 2019 ::
3:56 PM
matt nathanson :: the beacham, orlando :: 09.02.2019
Since moving to Florida, I’ve been missing out on one of my favourite things - music therapy.
It was so much easier to get in the car and drive the four hours to Albany every couple of weeks when I needed my fix. I definitely don’t have that here… not even working at the arena could cure my need for live music. Mostly, because I couldn’t connect to the music. I saw three concerts the entire time I worked at the arena… and bands that can fill an arena generally aren’t my thing any more.
Give me the bands no one’s ever heard of. Give me the bands that aren’t on the radio twenty-four-seven-three-sixty-five.
Enter Matt. We’ve seen him twice in the past year, once in Pompano and yesterday in Orlando. He’s definitely a one-hit wonder, but his live shows are something else. When he’s allowed to truly be himself on stage, it’s amazing. Last night was definitely no exception.
We paid for the meet and greet, which is something I normally don’t do, but it was worth it for the three extra songs we got from the soundcheck.
He also brought his song wheel. Motherfucker, did that make the night even better. Spinning and hoping that it landed on something he actually wanted to play - it was the best mix of drama and comedy. (“The wheel is like democracy - you get what you don’t want”). The wheel fucked him so bad at one point, that he moved the wheel to the song he actually wanted to play. (“You drink the beer, the beer doesn’t drink you.”
Other bits that I made note of:
Nobody can fuck up a song like Matt Nathanson.
We’re hear to see Mike Nickerson.
No one wants to hear an angry folk guy do metal.
And I can’t forget his story about the hippie chick that LICKED HIS ELBOW. (I suppose, in her defence, she DID ask him to bed, and she DID ask him if he wanted to try something…) The best part of that entire story was when he looked at the fourteen year old girl standing at the barrier and told her to close her fucking ears. He loves making a big deal out of kids in the audience, and then he forgets they’re there and it can get pretty raunchy.
He also told the story about how his daughter has an entire pintrest board dedicated to him, and also how she busts out bits from “Run”. I cannot imagine hearing an eight year old sing “I wanna watch you undress”...
I’m still kind of reeling from the events of late November / December / early January and waiting for the other shoe to drop and last night was EXACTLY what I needed. Plus, we squeezed in a couple of hours at Universal, and we all know how much I love hanging out in Diagon Alley.
Gavin DeGraw is at Universal next weekend as part of Mardi Gras and I am so very very tempted to go back for for the day. Even though I’m not a huge fan, I like him enough to attend a free concert. I can’t afford another overnight, but the concerts get out early enough that the drive home shouldn’t kill me.
this fucking anime owns my heart :: seriously, these two :: victuuri
I saw Hamilton earlier this week.
I hadn’t listened to the soundtrack, knew very little about the plot of the musical (other than it was about Hamilton), and thought the rabid Hamilton fans needed to have their heads examined.
Well.
I’m glad I saw it, but I still believe that the rabid fans need to have their heads examined.
I’ve been listening to the soundtrack because people keep telling me I’ll appreciate the musical more if I have a handle on the “dialogue”. It’s damn catchy, that’s for sure, but I felt that way in the theatre, too. The bits King George sings have been earworms since Tuesday night. BUT the dude in Fort Lauderdale was MUCH more amusing than the guy on the OBC recording.
It was a good musical, but I don’t think it met the high expectations I went in with.
But seriously—this song—the last line? BOOM!
——-
Life begins again on Monday. After two months of adjusting to some major life changes, it feels good to be falling back into normalcy. (Not that I’ve ever been normal, but…)
I’ve been spending a lot of time working on my Ukrainian. I feel like I’m spinning my wheels without having a tutor to guide me, but oddly enough, I’m also making some serious progress. Who knows.
Remember when I named fight one of my three words? If I win part of that fight, we’re going to celebrate by going back to Lviv. This time, I want to really be more than functional when we go.
I’m mixing it up with flashcards, a textbook, and Harry Potter. The various input methods seem to make the material stick better and it’s fun to see the number of words I don’t know get reduced with every new exercise or sentence. (Even if my reading level is below what the ‘experts’ say it needs to be.)
Життя починається знов
——-
As always, I disappear into the world of fan fiction when I have trouble processing the real world. Those life changes? Yeah. I’ve needed to disappear into a fantasy world and Yuri!!! On Ice fit the bill perfectly.
I love when an OTP is canon and these two… they kill me. They are the definition of beautiful cinnamon rolls too good for this world. There aren’t enough love stories like this in the world and this one is so… yeah.
And the best part is, once you hit the big twist in episode ten, you can go back to the beginning and watch it all over again with a different point of view. Plus, that second watch-through? So much better than if that had been the original plot.
And, and, and…. it’s all fucking canon. The creators said as much.
Watching that stupid anime has been the highlight of the past two months. I’ve watched it several times and it gets better every. single. time.
Their relationship is so beautiful and so well developed. Perfect little scenes like this drive the point home without beating you over the head with it.
And I can’t get enough of it…. even if it means I have to learn fucking RUSSIAN to write in-universe, canon-compliant fiction. Which is something new since I’d rather play on the outskirts of JKR’s sandbox than have to deal with her continuous ret-conning and ridiculous ‘additions’ to canon.
Then again, there’s no messing with perfection, is there?
My obligatory blog post outlining my three (five?) words is here. I bet you’ve been waiting for it.
1) FIGHT - there’s a lot of stuff going on because of an unexpected, rather large, change to our lives.
The resolution of these items is going to take time. I know this, but I also know me. I’m not patient enough to see these things through.
I’m at that point right now where I want to get this stuff over with NOW and move on with my life. I thought about walking away from having to deal with these things, but fighting is the right thing to do.
This is the first time I’ve ever needed to fight so hard, so… yeah.
2) COMFORT ZONE - I’m still working on the baby blanket from hell. I’m still sewing like a mad woman. I’m still writing HP fan fiction.
But. All of those things are comfortable.
I need to work on harder craft projects.
Knit projects with cables, for example. I can do them, but I prefer not to… so. KNIT ALL THE CABLES!
Sewing is a bit different. I love the Summit Peak Hoodie pattern. I’ve made 6 shirts out of that pattern. There are other shirt patterns I want to sew - an oxford for example because ready-to-wear doesn’t fit me right. AND! I’ve started buying dress patterns because of the way they look. I DON’T WEAR DRESSES. (Do you see where this is headed? Yup. Two different comfort zones. One sewing machine sized stone.)
I need to get out of the Harry Potter sandbox and visit my other fandoms… or at least write about different characters in my fan fic. There’s so many over done tropes and so many fics for the main several ships that I’m just tired of it all. I don’t even want to read HP fan fic anymore.
3) SELF-CARE - 2018 was a doozy of a year. Like, it fucking sucked HARD.
I was struggling and it, it was bad. Very bad.
The bipolar flared to a level I haven’t experienced since my father died and I was… unprepared.
There wasn’t one clear trigger. I have a feeling that it was a bunch of little things adding up, which of course, made everything worse because I couldn’t see the whole picture.
After fighting being told to go to therapy for YEARS - because, honestly, I never saw a benefit from talking about my “underlying issues” to a complete stranger - I’ve finally sucked it up and will try it again.
I have an appointment on Jan 7th. Wish me luck. I have a feeling I’m going to need it.
1) 5K - let’s see… this year, I’ve done three IRL 5Ks. I’ve logged a ton of miles since joining the HRC (79.64 to be exact). That doesn’t count the hundreds of miles I’ve walked around Universal. (Yes. HUNDREDS.)
Between the Hogwarts Running Club and the Whovian Running Club, I’ve earned 7 medals. I’m impressed with myself - that’s a total of 35 miles. Which means, if you’re doing the math, that I logged 44 miles more than I gave myself credit for. My rule is that I have to walk the miles in consecutive days (if it’s a longer race) to earn the medal and unfortunately, the dog’s walking route is only 2 miles, so there’s a lot of days that don’t count because I can’t always take him for a walk on consecutive days no matter how much I want to.
Doesn’t matter because 80 miles is 80 miles more than I would have done without the HRC.
Crushed it.
2) Fandom - hmmm… well. That photo up there? Those are the Ravenclaws. From the Hogwarts Running Club. (Harry Potter fans until the very end.) I didn’t meet many of them in person - damn anxiety- but I recognise the faces from their FB profile pics. I also friended one of them on FB, which is huge for me. I don’t friend just anyone, but I completely love Alexander. He’s good people. Too bad he’s in Belgium because I would totally adopt him.
I’m still writing fan fiction. Still mostly Harry Potter because Drarry is my thing, but I branched out to Teen Wolf again and I’ll be starting a Yuri!!! on Ice one soon. (Holy shit, dude. WHY was it only 12 episodes?!?! I am obsessed with that damn anime. Do you hear me? OBSESSED.) Plus, I’m hanging out more in a FB Harry Potter fan fiction group. No friends there, yet, but there’s potential.
I cosplayed several times as a Ravenclaw student… And, and, and I’m learning how to sew for more cosplay options. Not to mention, I have a whole crap ton of Harry Potter themed fabric that is making its way into my closet in one form or another.
Crushed it.
3) Language - this one was hard. I didn’t meet my goals, because reasons. BUT in the last two months, I’ve picked up my Ukrainian studies with a vengeance. I’m currently addicted to learning cursive which is a nice way to mix things up. I’ve gotten in this terrible habit of writing down vocab words in cursive and then looking them up later. Hoo-boy, is it a struggle some times to read what I wrote. Cyrillic cursive looks like a drunk 5 year old writing prescriptions, but my handwriting is getting better because I have to focus so hard on the letter forms.
I’m also fighting my way through the first chapter of Harry Potter for the third (fourth?) time. I’m remembering more words and am getting better at deciphering entire sentences without constantly looking up vocab. I will say this much - character names look very different in Cyrillic than they do in English.
I’m thinking about skipping forward to see how “I am Lord Voldemort / Tom Marvolo Riddle” works out. The French translation is different (Tom Elvis Jedusor) and there’s a lot of people out there who say it should have been “Mr. Tom, a dildo lover”. So, yeah. Curious as to how the Ukrainian translation handles it.
Late to the game, but I’m giving myself the win because lately, I’m kicking some serious ass.
Crushed it.
(HA HA HA!!!!! I spelt “drive” wrong - it’s прівіт-драйв, not прівіт-дdайв (because that is decidedly not a Ukrainian letter!)
