The Ramblings of an Independent Artist

FEBRUARY 2000

Whirlwinds, Blurs.....Balance?
© 2000, Christina Fasano. All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission.

This past month has been a huge blur. I've just come through an incredibly hard time of feeling overwhelmed and frozen. At times when there is so much to get done, I feel frozen and don't quite know what to actually do. A hundred things staring at me to be done and me a blubbering idiot spinning around in circles. However, all of this madness has brought me to an important mantra - a meditation if you will, of 'I need a manager,' 'I need a manager,' 'I need a manager.....' And so the search has begun. BUT I do not go about these searches in a 'balls to the wall' manner. I sort of mentally put it out there...and I ask around a little. Only people I know. I do not believe in 'cold calling.' In the music business, from my own experience, I have found that this does not work. Again, noise works. Noise they can hear from the street. Or 'referrals' to noise. Big noise, small noise, any kind of noise will work. Not unsolicited noise over their telephone lines or in their emails. Unless......a company is soliciting for acts...and still at that point, I only send an inquiry with an invite to hear online samples and visit my Website. If they come back to me after that, I send a package. And so, indeed, someone heard a little noise about me and referred someone they knew to me. This is the way I like it. They called me. They have interest. Now...do I have interest in them? It??™s a two way street this management thing. In any type of relationship - BUT especially when it comes to business partnerships - they interview me AND I INTERVIEW THEM!!! So we will see what develops. I still haven??™t stopped my inner call out for a manager and I won??™t until the right person appears.

Most of this month's BLUR came from my whirlwind trip into LA to attend the Namm conference. I worked the conference part time for an attendance badge so I could hopefully make connections, etc. Namm is like the airport - it's a definite people watching event! I never got bored. I stood around for hours at the booth I worked and was entertained the entire time! I made all of my connections just standing there at the booth having people come up and chat with me. I actually only walked around two time and they were brief trips. The most fun time was when my friend, who was working the booth with me, and I, sang Karaoke to 'Do the Macarana' and changed the words to 'Do the Macaroni!' All and all it was good. I still have not had time to email all the people I hooked with. (sigh). I worked the conference Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And the whirlwind continued......

I had my first live streaming audio/video webcast interview on that Monday with Billie Joe and Femme Fatal at NWEZ.net! It was fun, but I was a nervous wreck! But it was cool. Nobody knew I was sweating buckets and that??™s one of the keys to a good performance. Turn the nerves into energy for the performance. It was a very very good experience as it now has prepared me for future interviews on camera and in general. This was my first set of interviews ever so it was a momentous occasion for me and I??™m sure these little video tapes will come back to haunt me on the VH1 show ???Before They Were Stars!??™ AND the whirlwind went on..........

Tuesday was the yearly ASCAP meeting with two pre-meetings starting in the afternoon - one being about the opportunities on the Internet which I am sad to say I missed, but is now posted on the ASCAP Website. I had a meeting with the agent who took my material to the Midem 2000 conference in France and the meeting ran way over and so I missed the afternoon ASCAP workshops, but made it in time to eat a grilled veggie salad (yumm), at the Beverly Hilton pool bar (well Darling!), and then attend the main meeting which was extremely informative and filled with excitement from all the panel and audience members about the upcoming changes in the music business and what ASCAP is doing in regards to these changes for their membership. ASCAP has a wonderful buffet with TONS of food afterwards and people schmooze like crazy - and so I did. I met some wonderful excited and hungry people - the best people to be around for motivation in this biz. Hungry people get things done if they??™s hungry enough...and people with dreams, who are hungry, and going for their dreams, are definitely the people to get to know. The energy among several people like this can really cause things to happen and locked doors to open. It was a good meeting, but at this stage in the games, I was beginning to get pooped....but the whirlwind was not finished.......

Wednesday I had yet another interview with NWEZ.net. This time with Claudia on her Singles Chat show. We had a long 2 hour interview getting into ALL kinds of fun issues on spirituality, sex, relationship, and lots of other stuff, and of course playing my music in between here and there. By the time I left there, I was a walking zombie, and still I had one more meeting to attend before I could go home. (Whirlwind, please whirl me home to my bed....was my prayer at this point).

At 3PM, I met once again with my Midem agent and by the time we were done it was WAAAAY past the time anyone TRIES to get out of LA. Ha...Yes it's true. UNLESS you like to sit in traffic - stop and go, go and stop, wear out your ankle between the gas pedal and the breaks, chew gum, sing with the radio, run up huge cell phone bills, etc., it's BORING and way way tiring. NO thanks. So being as tired as I was, drop dead tired 'cause I don??™t sleep well when I ???m not in my own bed, I walked out of his office, out to my car, changed my clothes right there in my car (ha), laid my seat back and passed out in the Kinko??™s parking lot. Ahhhhh did I ever need that. Then it was a Denny??™s salad, coffee, and onto the somewhat cleared out freeways.

At home, finally, the whirlwind ends, but the blur takes days to wear off.

I see all of this as excellent training for my upcoming touring and flopping around from interviews to performances, to hotel beds, to late night neon lit Denny??™s and bloodshot puffy eyes and an appreciation for the life I have now, but am bucking at every moment so??™s I can get on stage where I belong.

The progress this month has been mostly in learning that we all have highs and lows and in the lows, it doesn't mean that the career is ending because one is having a down time or a seemingly ???unproductive??™ time. I was reading tonight at the gym in Rockergrrl magazines December issue (yes attempting to catch up my reading while burning FAT! ha..), a wonderful interview on Mary Gauthier entitled ???The Darker Side of Dixie??™ that I fully related to where she says "I have two very powerful forces inside me - self-destruction and ambition- and they??™re at war a lot." She goes on to say, "When I set my mind on a goal, I really tear into it, which is why I owned my first restaurant when I was so young. But the tension from all the accomplishment leads me to darkness. There??™s a disappointment after you accomplish great things. It??™s never what you think it??™s going to be, and then darkness sets in. I??™ve finally settled into a life that??™s not so full of extremes."

I go through this very thing continually. To have her describe it was an enlightenment for me. Big high, deep low. When I'm working and 'accomplishing' it's the bomb! But when I hit that low, that darkness she speaks of so well...I fall right into the self-destructiveness she mentions. The problem is I work too hard and don??™t know when to stop. That??™s when the crash comes. Subconscious need to take a break, shut down, chill out. But since it is a CRASH, it becomes self-destructive. At least for me.

There is a life outside of my music career, right? Somebody tell me there is cause right now, I don't see one. I'm completely disinterested in anything but getting this thing off the ground. I only see that as a problem if I don't take the time for self-care. Self-care, balance, evening out the 'extremes.'

Whirlwinds.....Blurs....somewhere in there is a place to stand that's peaceful, that??™s balanced. I'm gonna find it cause if I don't, I won't survive in this career I've chosen.

Well, we was a little heavy this month, but hey - gotta go there sometimes!