More meta-blogging (UPDATED)

I think I might have forgotten how to blog.

I have been moping around wondering whether I have come to the end of my blogging road, questioning my every thought to test how blog-worthy it might be.

I know that everyone who is cool, hip and trendy enough to have one of these things experiences similar crises from time to time. I sort of imagined that there would come a time when the real world would crowd out this little piece of virtual reality I so depended on for a while. I thought that one day I would pause in my busy, singing-based life and think, oh! I remember. Once I wrote stuff. People sometimes read it. Then my life picked up and became this perfect, wonderful, ideal existence and I didn't need it any more.

Now, before you reach any conclusions, let me just tell you that no, my life hasn't suddenly intertwined with all my hopes and dreams. I have no such perfect existence. The reason I am beginning to wonder whether to carry on is, in fact, the polar opposite. I am STILL struggling, I am STILL going from one project to the next, wondering what I'm doing. I still have exactly the same questions and worries as I did when I started this, and I am beginning to wonder whether or not it might have become a little boring.

I am a little bored, to be honest. Yes, I know, I have just been on holiday. I should be all rejuvenated and ready to spring into action like a ready-to-spring spring. The thing is, though, that I do feel ready, but suddenly I've realised that I'm not entirely sure where I'm meant to be springing to. I thought I knew. Before I went away I thought I had a plan, and now I feel like maybe I don't so much. It's like coming back to an essay you'd been working on, only to discover that you've only written four and a half words instead of the 1,500 you had been imagining.

It's such an uphill journey, particularly when I am not even massively sure a) what I'll find at the summit or b) whether there will even be a summit to find.

What I am trying to express in my simile-ridden prose is that I am bored of being scared, of being unsure about what I am aiming for. I wish it were clearer cut, and that I could just say, well, I want to be a pop-star. Then I could just go to the gym twelve million times, have a quick personality-ectomy and get on with selling out. I don't want to be a pop-star, though. I want to perform and record my own songs. With people who are as keen as I am. With people who want to make music and who want to be on stage to entertain and touch people in some way. Not in a dirty way, necessarily, but who knows? That may be one of the perks.

Actually I know exactly what it is that is standing in my way. I need those people to work with. Or person. I value my autonomy in every aspect of my life (sometimes to rather a destructive extent) but I am not so stubborn as to not acknowledge that I need another musician (or more) to make things happen.

I can identify the problem, then. A hurdle that is not insurmountable, but that is tricky and difficult to negociate.

I have put ads up, but I don't have a clue how to audition people. I suppose I could get them in a room, sing one of my songs to/at them and just instruct them to improvise, but that seems a bit harsh.

Although actually, when I write it down it doesn't so much, because that's what I'm looking for. I could give them a standard beforehand and ask them to prepare something, as well.

I could just test people out and see what sort of sound I like best, see which people seem easiest to work with, see which people have the best balance of musicality and personality. I would have to, for a whole day, pretend to be someone who knows something about music, but that's not so difficult.

(When I was at school I was quite shy, and I disliked doing presentations, French oral exams, saying things in class and the like. There was this girl in my class called Harriet who was so confident, always courteous and articulate with teachers, never blistered with blushes when called upon to answer a question. She took her time when responding, didn't stammer out the first thing that came into her head, just coolly smiled and gave the best she could. One day it occurred to me that if I could just pretend I was Harriet, mimic her and adopt her poised aura of calm, then I could carry things off as well as she could. In my A-level French oral, in my Spanish and French orals at University, I pretended I was Harriet. In interviews, in situations that made me want to run and find a book to shut myself away with, I pushed aside my shyness and forced my inner-Harriet to shine through. It might sound strange, but it actually works. I no longer pretend to be her, but sometimes, when faced with a situation that scares me, I find the person I think would deal with the situation the best and just 'be' them. Not in a schizophrenic way, nor in a wearing-their-underwear one, but just in a borrowing the best bits sort of a way.)

I am scared of auditioning people as myself. The 'what-ifs' span from 'what if they think I know nothing about music, that my songs are rubbish, that I am a jumped-up, know-nothing loser who will never make it anywhere', to 'what if they think my hair's rubbish'. Actually for the latter they would get points for having even the most rudimentary of senses of perception. Anyway, I am my own Harriet now. I will have to ignore my sense of inadequacy and pile up the confidence and self-motivational speeches before I enter in on such an experience, but somewhere, deep down I know I can do it.

I started off today wondering whether I should continue to blog. Wondering whether there was still a point. I started off over a year ago wanting to make people laugh, to be entertaining and share anecdotal, sit-com-like humour with people on the Internet. Somewhere along the line it has become something I use to order my thoughts, to rearrange all the crap that builds up in my brain and try to understand it. I would like it to be more "you'll never guess what happened on the bus"-based, but I think I have lost the knack for that, if I ever really had it. The sharing thing still applies, though. On some subjects, I truly listen to myself way more than I do to anyone else, simply because I am the only one that has a chance of knowing exactly what I am looking for. The only subject, in fact, where this applies, is my singing. Everywhere else I can take advice. Just about. Here is the only place I can sort my thoughts out sufficiently to be able to identify what I actually want/need to do.

So, having started off wondering whether I had it in me to continue blogging, I think I have reached the conclusion that I don't have it in me to stop. I still need this outlet for the questions only I can really answer.

I'm just hoping something funny happens to me on a bus soon, so that it still remains at least vaguely entertaining for everyone else.

UPDATE: A couple of weeks ago I did some vocals for a friend's track and it's up on his myspace. My vocals are on 'Luckiest Man', but the whole lot is great, I reckon.
http://www.myspace.com/electrarock