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For the first time since 2004, I can now genuinely say that I am putting effort and priority into my music.
It started over this last Christmas holiday, when I was playing around with Mariah’s dad’s electric guitars and amps in the basement. Then, when I returned home to Durham, I started picking up my acoustic for more and more hours each day. Weeks went by, months of solidly playing, and then low & behold, I started writing songs again! Nothing special, just a little here and a little there, but things started going well enough to really make me want to keep going.
After a few more months I’m finally getting back to the point where I feel like I am as adept at guitar as I ever was. (It was maddeningly painful to pick up a guitar I once cherished as an extension of my own body, and find that I was worse now than I was at 17.) A few weeks ago I decided to start looking around for potential bandmates, and a little bit like magic, things have really fallen into place. Tall Indian guy to put down beats, hit the low notes, provide the studio… Short indie rockr girl to play the keys & synth and to hit the high notes… mysterious drummer who is “down with playing whatever we come up with”…
Our band lineup hasn’t really solidified yet, and we haven’t even had a first “official” practice, but things are looking pretty swell. Even if *this* band / lineup doesn’t work out; what this experience has driven into me is how much I desperately want and need to be playing music again. And I need to be playing that music not just by myself, and not just to Annabelle as she falls asleep. I need to be back on stage, playing with and for other musicians. Durham’s music community was one of the reasons we moved out here, and it has proven itself to be as inviting and remarkable so far as I had hoped it would be.
Finally, I want and need to be playing electric guitar and putting down the acoustic. The thing is, I want to make music people can dance to. I want to make music people will dance to.
So I’m officially starting a band, and we’re going to make you dance.
One of the members of our band plays the keytar. I can't tell you which one yet.
If you're here, I guess you want to know a bit more about me or my life. I'm a young politico, father, feminist, free-lance writer, academic, and new media aficionado: though not necessarily in that order. I live in Durham, NC, a city which I love. You should really move here, you'd almost certainly like it too. When I get the chance, I blog here, and on my daughter's blog too. 
