Where do we start? Sure, some people have it all figured out and all buttoned up by the time they reach my age, but me? I always seem to be starting over. I think it’s probably best not to talk about reality, about what goes on in one’s actual day and instead just keep it fun, but I never really do that. Perhaps I’m incapable of doing that. So I again, I admit… I am starting over.

When starting over, I think the very most important thing is to make sure we have in sight exactly who we are. And as I write my business website, something that has said “under construction” since 2014, I am thinking about the core of who I am, about my influences, about my dreams, about all things and people I hold dear. And I vow, this time will be different. This time, I will truly do what I want.

I could go on about what I want, but truthfully that itself is a work in process right now. I can only really see broad concepts. But oddly, it’s these times, and this is no different, that I feel the most creative. I have not been playing for a while, what with working for the Man taking a bit of my soul from me every day. But I vow that will change. Two things in those thoughts I’m having stand out. The first is the very beginning.

I was about six or seven when my parents would go on social visits to other family’s houses. We were in Canada, so often, weatherwise, not conducive to being sent outside to play. But it seemed every family had some old upright piano in their basement, or perhaps it was the same family and I just can’t remember. Whichever, I loved pianos, so much I would not have wanted to go outside to play.

At that time, we lived in a really terrible house. There was water on my bedroom floor every morning. I remember having to put on my shoes and tip toe through the water to get to the door to go upstairs for the bacon and egg breakfast my mom made every morning, the family parakeet flying with me to get to the table where my dad would place a spoon in a bowl of water for the bird to play with. Sometimes I would put water in a similar bowl for the parakeet, but in my child imagination, I would make it into a little wishing well where I would throw a penny. My wish was always the same. I wished for a white baby grand piano.

I never had a piano lesson, but every time we would go to my parent’s friend’s house, I would go straight to their basement piano and play. My music, untrained as it was, consistently of chords, played with both hands. I would make a song, and the song would go on until they told me it was time to go home. My song was dark, a lot of minor-chords before I ever knew what that sound was, experimental, like nothing I knew or heard, certainly not the music of a child. Sill to this day, I can’t improvise on the piano without it sounding like that. I just don’t hear anything else in my head. Was it a reflection of sadness? I don’t think so. It was just, for me, … beauty. See beauty, to me, is imperfect. It’s dark, black even, bare down black at that, my favorite color, being the black crayon pressed until there was no white on the paper. My music was bare down black. It was the bearing of the bare down black beauty of my soul. And that bearing of the soul, that outpouring of sound, made me happy, the way happy music makes other people happy.

Fast forward about a million years, I was in Guitar Center putting money on my Flying V. Yes, I have Flying V. It’s a special edition, called History, made in 2014 and still lingering in Guitar Center, one of 180 made, a dark, almost black, wine red. If I had to name the color, I would have called it bare down red. It was costly, and so stayed on layaway for a while. Making the once-in-a-while payments, I became friendly with my sales associate, clingy almost. I think it was the time of my second payment; I was talking to him about the sounds I like, talking inside my own undeniable shyness. He wanted to show me an amp, not to sell it, but to hang out with it, to tell me it was good for what I described. The amp was in the fancy room, and one of those people who hang out at Guitar Center and torture the patrons with sounds was playing a Les Paul off the fancy room wall through the amp. I listened. My Guitar Center friend listened. The amp guy came over and talked at me about the amp, its attributes, its sound. At the urging of my Guitar Center friend, I talked a bit about what I thought I wanted in sound. My friend, in a proud voice regarding my guitar choice, said “she has a Flying V.” The amp guy was trying to sell me something, who knows what it was, even though I said I was just looking and playing around. He brought me to one particular amp, all while I stood practically hiding behind my Guitar Center friend. The amp guy said this particular amp had lesser watts; I can’t remember the details, but what I remember was his statement that he imagined what I play. He asked about my drummer. I said I just play; I’m not that good. I said, “I don’t have a drummer.” He said “you will”, with a particular emphasis on the word will that took me a second to recover from; after all, I used to be terrified of Guitar Center, the place I didn’t belong because I’m not rock enough in anything but influence. Then he elaborated: “your drummer will not be a loud drummer because I can tell what you like; he won’t cover you up.” Right then I wondered if he understood what I liked, that what I hear, what I make is … bare down black music. But I did know he could tell it wasn’t the rock that everyone there plays, and that somehow I still belonged, and even stranger, that I still deserved a drummer.

Right now I’m very influenced by Lana del Rey, something I talk about without my normal apology that it doesn’t rock out. She’s like that thing I like: dark in a way that listening makes me feel less dark. Her music is not rock, not at all, but without knowing, I felt like she was influenced by rock, just as I was. Credit to HS, the one who finds ALL, found at least one interview where Lana credits Van Halen as an influence, and a song where Lana, in Lana’s actual legal name, sings of listening to Van Halen as her influence, of Diamond Dave even. That bit of information was validation, perhaps, even of myself. validation that I know, somehow, someway, my dark music, Lana’s dark music, is rock, something that makes me not have to apologize.

Remember my dream of a white baby grand piano? Well as you would imagine, I never got one. I never got any piano. And after my parent’s attempt to get me the only keyed instrument they could afford – an accordion, presented to me at the same table we ate with our parakeet by a traveling accordion sales person – failed, they got me a guitar. Guitar became what I wanted, what I still want. My current guitar, my Flying V, is very dark in its sound, almost haunting. Its sound truly is perfect for me. But I don’t play it very well, not at all, which brings me back to Lana.

Lana wasn’t always Lana. She was first Elizabeth Grant, and when she was Elizabeth Grant, she could only occasionally sing in key. Even when she became Lana, with differing style all around, she blew her first tv appearance on Saturday Night Live. Still, she kept going. She remade herself, by choice, living her lyrics: at night I fell asleep with visions of myself, dancing and laughing and crying with them. And she improved. It can be done.

Lana as Elizabeth (Lizzy) Grant (Van Halen/Diamond Dave mentioned at 1:30, and credit to HS for this):

Lana, 2015 tour, one of my favorites, a song called Blue Jeans, singing in front of a white grand piano:

So, for the next million or so years of my life, I will fall asleep with my own new … or perhaps old… visions of myself. Humble beginnings. From my attempts to restart my various businesses, this time a necessity; from my self-made wishing well where I hoped to have the white baby grand piano to bring my bare down black music to life… to now, playing chords thought this amazing Flying V, albeit not very technically good, I’m going to make my own vision of myself. Lana did it. It can be done. And who knows? Perhaps one day, I really will have a drummer, indeed … a quiet drummer who likes bare down black music.