“A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear;
Although I love you, you will have to leap; Our dream of safety has to disappear.”
– W.H. Auden

A friend posted this on facebook recently, and although it’s not exactly the story I’m telling these days, it’s the leap – and really, the last line – that got me. Our dream of safety has to disappear.

That old “leap, and the net will appear” adage has been running through my mind lately as I walk the rumbling fault lines of my life. Changes are a-comin’, some more obviously than others, and I can’t quite see the shape they all will take or how they will come about or what I’m supposed to be doing in the meantime to a) make them happen or b) help them happen or c) let them happen.

To be honest, I’m not that worried about it. I’m joyously grateful for all the support I’ve gotten on my Kickstarter campaign, and I’m having a great time watching it all unfold, living it day by day, getting ready for the Old Fashioned Piano Party on November 7th and my EP mastering session the next week and all the next steps to come after that. But there are moments where it’s a little more scary than exciting, and it was in one of those that I started thinking about leaping, and nets appearing.

Facebook also told me recently (perhaps I need to diversify my news sources) of another friend’s skydiving adventure… which inspired meditations on that part of the jump, before the parachute opens, that’s just freefall. There’s a Radiolab episode all about falling, in which they actually play a tape of someone skydiving. The amount of time before the parachute opens is huge. Life-altering. And (from what I hear) exactly what makes you go back and do it again.

Anyway, all of this is leading up to the point of the story, which is this: here I am, rumbling fault lines, meditating on leaping and falling and nets and— and then it hit me. Just what have I been singing about all these months?

Who needs a net? Just leap… and find your wings.

“When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

–unknown (commonly attributed to leonardo da vinci)

Ask and you shall receive… but you have to ask.

So I have good news and good news. The good news is, fly woman genius sounds fantastic! and is well on its way to being a real live released EP.

The other good news is, now YOU get to be a part of it! Here I am, “stuck” in the middle with a… budgetary imbalance… And while recording and production were fabulous, it has become clear that additional capital is needed to cover the post-production process: mastering, releasing & distributing, songwriter royalties, my graphic designer for the cover art… and, of course, the release party!

fly woman genius is now a featured project on Kickstarter, a new way to fund and follow creative projects. All pledges are secure through Amazon Payments — and all projects are funded on an ALL OR NOTHING basis. I either get all $1500, or nothing! Check it out here (or click through the widget at right) to see reward levels — at least one includes my famous homemade blondies — and to pledge. The minimum reward is an advance copy of the EP for $10 — and the minimum pledge is only $1. Every little bit helps!

I’ll be honest, asking for money has never been easy for me. (I can still remember being terrified as a child to call relatives and ask if they wanted to order Girl Scout Cookies.) Generally I’m better at doing so under another guise — support for charitable causes, like when I raised nearly $2500 for the 2001 AIDS Ride from Minneapolis to Chicago; or asking for tax-deductible donations to start Choral Chameleon, the chamber choir I helped found in 2008. But asking friends, Romans, countrymen for money so that I can make my own dream come true — well, that’s something this humble Midwestern girl hasn’t quite gotten used to.

But I believe in this project, these songs, this time; and I know there are a lot of music lovers out there. I know I’ve had a lot of support already and I am so grateful for the backers that have gotten me to this point (Abner, I’m talking to you). I also know that “ask and ye shall receive” is literally true — but you do have to ask.

There is no music without an ear to hear it — I can’t do it without you! I’m already almost 20% of the way there. Can you help?

Someday / everything is gonna be smooth like a rhapsody / when I paint my masterpiece…
– Bob Dylan

My dad reminded me the other day of an adage? Jesuit teaching? truism? that the closer one gets to one’s heart’s desires, the stronger the voices of resistance and negativity that rise up against it. This, I can attest, is true.

The last few miles of the race seem the longest. The swimmer hops onto the boat a matter of yards from the other side of the Channel. Cate Blanchett thinks “I guess I could go back to being a shopgirl” after watching the dailies on the set of Elizabeth. Et cetera, et cetera. “My parents’ basement in Milwaukee sure is cozy” may not have crossed my mind (yet) but it might as well have.

And I guess it would be “easier” to stay put and throw it in, call the EP a giant learning experience that no one will ever hear, and thereby no one can say it wasn’t good enough. But dying a slow death by cubicle doesn’t sound like much of a life to me. And it certainly wouldn’t feel much like flying.

As one of my college professors put it: You can’t win until you say you want it… but once you say you want it, you risk losing it. For my money, you can say you want it all you want… and talk about having it, Someday… but the real risk comes in actually DOING something about it.

Even Bob Dylan sang of the Someday when it would all roll smoothly along. And then he put out the album a long time before Someday.

Because there is no Someday. And I was doing my best to make it through this post without a RENT reference, but it’s true… there is no day but today, and there is no masterpiece other than the one we ACTUALLY create, in this world, today. It may not be smooth, it may not be different, it may not be Botticelli, but it’s all we’ve got, and it’s enough.

Yesterday we finished tracking fly woman genius.

Do I feel relieved? inquiring minds want to know, and the answer is I’m not quite sure yet just how I feel. I know I had a blast in the studio (see accompanying photo) and I know I love the songs and can’t wait to perform them live at the release party and I know I’m learning a whole lot every step of the way. Mostly I know that this is uncharted territory, and I am enjoying the discoveries and loving the adventure, and I’m glad I’ve got such great support around me.

So now we mix! And listen. And take the next little step of the many that are comprising this big one.

New York is in the middle of its umpteenth heat wave this summer (though to me it feels like just one giant heat plateau), and I couldn’t feel less like working. Not to mention the bulk of the recording for fly woman genius is done with, and most all the energy (and, let’s face it, angst) I’d built up before going into the studio has been spent. In theory I want to practice, I want to sing and prep for the final session and gear up to get back in the audition game. But really all I want is to lie immobile with a beer and a book, directly in front of my air conditioner.

I’ve already burned through one novel in the space of about 48 hours (The Help, by Kathryn Stockett) and I’m keeping up with my iPhone Scrabble games as never before. In general, I’m not such a fan of down times. I feel lethargic and unproductive, and I have a perpetual sense that I just can’t figure out what’s wrong with me. It’s that damn leftover Midwestern work ethic.

But I’m also familiar enough with the artistic process by now to know that they are inevitable, like the ebb and flow of the tides or the blessed cool darkness after a bright hot day (did you hear that, weather? I said COOL darkness). And they are also useful. Like Rilke, I have faith in nights.

“Did you remember to be compassionate when you listened last night?” my engineer asked me on the second day of vocal tracking. He gave me the raw tracks to take home at the end of each day, so I could hear what I was doing and what I might want to change. Not being a studio singer (til now!), I’m used to hearing raw recordings of my voice: it’s called my voice lesson every week, or any recorded live performance. But being the recovering perfectionist I am (a topic I’ve never discussed in this blog before, I know) it did take a special kind of compassion to listen back. The mic(s) are only three inches away, you know. And being the recovering perfectionist I am, it’s taking a special kind of Zen mindgame to not want to get back in there and re-do every phrase I’m not perfectly (get it? get it?) happy with. But I’m getting there. I know there are things in there that I will always hear and you probably never will. And I also know that a snapshot of one moment only has to represent one time, not all time. And, I also know – and probably should focus a little more on – the fact that a) I am making this project a reality and b) it’s a pretty darn fantastic reality.

Can’t wait for you to hear it.

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

—Tao Te Ching, verse 9. translated by Stephen Mitchell

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the fact that, in the not-too-distant future, this EP will be released and will begin to take on a life of its own. People will be able to hear it and perhaps for the first time in my life, meet me through my work without really meeting me. Not everyone will like it (I have a feeling that musical theater listeners are what one might call a niche audience). But I’m getting to be okay with that.

To be sure, there are plenty of artists I respect and even like, that I have not liked in every single thing they’ve done. Does it matter? Not a bit. Do they care? I’m sure they have no idea, and even if they did, what does my opinion have to do with their work? I admire artists like amanda fucking palmer, even though her music isn’t exactly my thing, but because she has the balls to put the word “fucking” in the middle of her name and create her art-to-the-masses site and blog and label and just, you know, do it. Not about to call myself “katie fucking zaffrann,” but you get the idea.

At my day job, I work in Customer Service for a major television network. We air a lot of different kinds of programming, and if I have learned one thing in my time there it’s that you can’t please everybody all the time. It’s an impossibility. (And dear me, but there are a lot of different perspectives and points of view in this world.) We even have a crafted response saying something along the lines of “with thousands of programs aired for a wide variety of viewers with different tastes, it is impossible for every program to please every viewer.” In other words: if you don’t like it, change the channel, and come back when you do.

Last fall I was walking through Central Park on a Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful, warm day and the benches just below the Bethesda Fountain were packed with artists and spectators alike. A seedy, possibly odorous guy with a harmonica sat near an old gent in a beret with an easel and oil paints. A young violinist played away, well within earshot of the rollerblader with the hip-hop-blasting boombox. People chatted and strolled by and stopped to watch and listen; it was one of those tiny utopian moments with everyone coexisting, doing their thing and letting everyone else do theirs. New York Moments of this ilk are part of what makes the city great, and a big part of what has brought me out of my shell. Like I told my mom once when she was fretting over what to pack for her visit — you could wear a plastic bag, and no one would say anything.

I’m hoping that soon, the little girl that just wants everyone to like her will have been in New York too long to care. For one thing, it’s out of my control. For another, there are plenty of people in this world that I’m not sure I want to like me anyway. But really the point is that when it comes down to it, it makes me happy to follow this bliss and express the things in me that need expressing, and that’s what matters. If it makes you happy too, I’ll be thrilled! But for the moment, I’m not going to worry about that.

“I never let myself be afraid. I just focus on the dials and concentrate on flying.” –Chuck Yeager, USAF Major General, famed test pilot and the first pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound (with thanks to my teacher for passing this gem on)

Heading into the studio in just over a week! I’m ready. Just gonna focus on the music and concentrate on flying.

A few weeks ago I went up to the Berkshires for a summer weekend in the country (one of many this summer! lucky girl me). I stopped by Shakespeare & Company to sing in their informal Friday night cabaret series; did some hiking, swimming, kayaking (the hotel proprietress informed us that we were “one of those adventurous athletic couples”); and spent a gorgeous evening at Tanglewood listening to the fabulous Audra McDonald sing her heart out.

She sang a beautiful concert, with Ted Sperling at the piano — except, that is, for when she sat down and accompanied herself on Adam Guettel’s “Migratory V” (a favorite of mine. and not easy to play). She sang Jason Robert Brown’s “Stars and the Moon,” and the pile of high school-aged Tanglewood Institute students next to us swooned. She introduced us to some new Michael John LaChiusa material from his upcoming show based on Marlene Dietrich’s ABC (love, love, loved). She sang some standards and told some stories and at some point she informed us about the new album she’s working on.

About flight.

Great minds, my friends. How wonderful, as my teacher said, to be tapped into whatever Audra is tapped into…

I’ve added a page with info about all the fabulous songwriters who are contributing to fly woman genius… Tony Asaro, Bill Barclay, Carner & Gregor, Matt & Matte, Vince Peterson, and Mike Pettry.

check it out, here! (or navigate your way above… Watch and Listen –> Album)