maiden brain still singing

Illustration by Debbie Fong.

It just hit me yesterday and I thought of it again today (which usually means it’s a great idea to start talking about it) that I mentioned to a friend earlier this week that this upcoming showcase on the 13th would be the last one. He asked me about the showcase at a benefit concert for One Fund Boston at the LilyPad last Thursday night. I haven’t felt like myself, and it completely slipped my mind that to be completely truthful it is not a closed book but just a book on the bookshelf, one of my favorite books, after May 13th, and I wanted to clarify that. Right now I am not booking for a showcase, so, it is the “last one” while I work on my record but it is not 100% the last, necessarily. The option for me to do them is still on the table. The reason the showcases are being put on hold though is because, happily, I am beginning tracking for my new record on May 15th!! I’m planning on having a mailing-list-esque paper on the table at the Upstairs for anyone to write their email down so I can notify them when it is finished.

Did I mention I haven’t been feeling like myself? I did mention at the last showcase in January that the new record is titled “Leaving Boston”, the title of one of the tracks on it. I am a few days away from signing a new lease in Boston - I’m not leaving any time soon. I was excited to talk about this more when the time was right but, after last week this seems like the right time. I have always been a free spirit, never really felt myself attached to any specific area, always wanting to be on the move. Last week made me realize how much I consider Boston my home, geographically, similar to when I have prefaced a ton of times on stage before playing “Leaving Boston”, I am not leaving any time soon, and sometimes I even go into detail about how I wrote Leaving Boston right before I was scheduled to get on a train to Worcester, to visit my sister and a friend, and was scheduled to return a few days later (the reason I am stressing “scheduled” is because I ultimately became so distracted with this song and not packing that I ended up missing the train and never left, at all). 

Before anything that happened last week and with the knowledge of my impending lease-sign to stay, I was thinking about why “Leaving Boston” as the title has always been so perfect to me for this record, and I realized: it’s because Boston is comfortable to me, and this record is in so many ways me moving away from anything comfortable and into unknown territory, having just graduated and have immediately been throwing myself into this project, holing myself in my room to create the songs’ first demos, then going out into the real world, meeting new people, making new connections, writing new songs, interviewing, scheduling new meetings, dealing with the fine print, finding a new place to live; everything has just been me diving into the unknown, and I haven’t even started tracking a note yet. Maybe the title will change, maybe not. Another lesson I learn over and over and honestly now, I embrace, is that change is constant (trite and true!) and highly, highly possible.

I think that is every detail, for now, that has been pressing at my mind. I am very excited to see everyone on the 13th. And until then, I am on a short break to see family, trying to collect my thoughts, trying to feel like myself again. 

Love,

Christa

One of my favorites, forsythia.

Kind of the perfect pair, huh? … :)