3/21/2007 - Stepping In Your Sleep

okay. It's 4:30 in the morning and I can't sleep for how excited I am about dubstep.

Nick gave me my first lesson today and I loved it... I went to sleep replaying what he was teaching me in my head and getting excited about what little more I understand. The bass that was playing won't stop resonating in my memory; it's playing nonstop relentlessly in my head as I type this (trying quietly.. Nick sleeping in the other room)

And usually I find this annoying but here's the part: I fucking love it. It kind of makes me crazy. I can't stop thinking about practicing and getting closer-closer, and more and more en pointe. It makes me wish it wasn't four in the morning and I could do something about it.

It's a little frightening because it's like a new itch that has to be scratched up there with 'hungry', 'thirsty', 'need cigarette' and other such things. I was sitting here earlier debating whether or not I should go to Maui or buy a set of turntables since I do not think I can afford to do both. That's how much I'm excited about the dubstep.

I was worried I would get sick of my favorite tunes, but I don't think I will (of course I don't know this yet). All night the two I was working with have been playing in my brain and making my soul dance, and it's tough because it's really fucking hot music and it doesn't necessarily make me horny per se, but it does make me feel hot and bothered, if that makes any sense. Agitated, but in a good way. The kind of good feeling that makes guys get boners on the massage table... it's not because the massage makes them feel horny, it's just because it feels good... and then you just kind of open into it.

It feels good to play music this way because I get to interact with sound in a whole different way than just listening to it. I get to listen for things I heard before, but that I can change now with slight finger pressures. I love that you move the sound back and forth in time with the flick of a wrist in order to synchronize it with another set of sounds. I think that's beautiful, moving time like that.

I get to hear something I already love to hear, and then play with it and make other things with it. I get to take these things that I have chosen and like, and then contribute my character to it. I can't think of a more perfect medium for me, actually... and it just slays me that I get to work with SOUND.

It's not like guitar, where I'll always hit a wall because I'll never get around to learning all the chords. My hands will probably never do the 'thing' and my guitar won't just play awesome things if I let it play by itself. I don't know if I felt this way about guitar, because with this, I feel like I just discovered something enormous like sex.

I remember Gabriel watching us dance in Maui and at Burning Man... and watching him gauge the crowd. When he saw we were slowing down from fatigue, he would slow it down and we would catch our breaths without even knowing it. Then he would build it up until you couldn't stand it anymore and then drop it when all you could do was explode and outpour full-blown onto the dancefloor, or junglefloor, or playafloor.

His subtle observations and reactions were so undetectable you'd find yourself dancing for hours without stopping, and even when your body couldn't dance anymore you would be possessed and seduced by the music until your exhausted body became enraptured by something unreal,

and that was something like witchcraft, or something like a medicine to me. It occurred to me, watching everyone, that Gabriel was a mover of souls- that he loved to watch and take part when these people moved their souls and were healed by whatever it is that heals us when we move, when we dance.

I love that. I want to make people move because we need it and we want it. I want every tension and stress to shake out of the soles of their feet for no other reason except that they feel empassioned, and compelled to. That is a beautiful thing.

But I have been rambling for half an hour now and should probably go back to bed. My point was I'm so happy to work with music, and to feel like I will probably be good at it.

I don't mean 'good' in the sense of being talented, but good in the sense of it suiting me- like neuroscience suited me, and photography and painting. Like writing. Like the other things I could do forever without care of whether or not I were 'good' in the traditional sense, but because I just love it, and it fascinates me endlessly.

It's the best kind of 'good'. Because it's as effortless as finding joy in something.

I hope I can slip a few minutes of practice in before work tomorrow morning. *yawn*. Go to sleeeep, Josephine.