Show #1

And the updates keep on coming...
2 Fridays ago, I had the Kalos coffee house. I brought my tree wall-hanging and a few embroidery hoop fabric collages (a name which I made up and am quite proud of because that's exactly what they are). Here is a picture of the hoops:
You'll probably recognize the big one as the crazy quilt square I made a few weeks back. I'm planning to sell this set and more like it at the upcoming Cranberry Fest in Chatsworth, NJ.

For the most part, my little creations were well received, especially my tree wall-hanging. I don't know if people really understood my fabric collages because they're meant to be wall art, but they were placed on a table...which kind of made them look a little silly, as if they weren't really finished.The event itself was really fun. We got to hear some really good music and some...other music. :o) There were some really amazing pieces on display (my favorites belonged to Jen and Chris Anderson, who displayed prints from linoleum and copper etchings, respectively). The Kalos journal turned out beautifully. And there was an excellent turn out, probably about 300 people. By the time I got to play during the open mic portion, that number had dwindled quite a bit. For those of you who are familiar with my music, I played "Ebony" and "Don't Mess with Me." My guitar playing was a little sloppy, but it had probably been about a year since I'd done that sort of thing, so on the whole, I was sufficiently satisfied with the performance, and I'm glad I did it. You can hear "Don't Mess with Me" here. For some reason, my myspace page looks all funky, but the music player still works.

The show was a little bitter sweet for me. I had a bit of a "fan base" from my friends from the seminary--you guys rock! thanks for your support!!--but for the most part, the people who got the best reactions during the "open mic" section of music were the people who were...on the other side of awesome, and I think it's a shame that people find it so necessary to rave over the courage of minimally talented people and end up encouraging mediocre performances. Maybe that makes me a bad person. It probably makes me selfish. I just want people to listen to my music, to really hear it and appreciate it. But the truth is that for the most part, people don't really listen unless they already have an invested interest in me. And that's hard to come to grips with because I never know if my stuff is any good or if people are just complimenting my music because they're my friends and that's why they like it.

Oh well. I saw the remake of Fame a few weeks back with a friend of mine. It basically comes down to this depressing moral: you can have either fame or a meaningful personal life. You have to throw away all your relationships in order to be successful in performing arts. You can't have both.

A part of me still wonders what would have happened if I would have been brave enough to pursue music and songwriting. My life would have been drastically different, and it's easy to fantasize that I would have been so much happier to be living my dream, even unsuccessfully. But I know I would have had to sacrifice in other areas...big areas that are really important to me. So even though the movie made me all sad and nostalgic for my days being part of a lively and challenging artistic community, it was comforting to see other people (albeit fictional people) fail because they chose relationships over success, rather than some big romanticizing, fairy tale portrayal of the performing arts (which is what I expected it to be).

Wow...this post got all depressing. I just wanted to show you all my fabric collages and give you an update on the coffee house. Sorry for the existential despair. :o/ More lively and chipper crafting posts coming soon, documenting the results of the nothing-to-sell-at-upcoming-craft-shows panic. :o)