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

Little Grey Girlfriend has a new album out and we’re having a party to celebrate! Join us on Friday night at Arlene’s Grocery (95 Stanton St, NYC) — 7:30 PM — $10 cover to hear the whole album and some old favorites.

Don’t miss it! When else will you get to see my hair in a mohawk?

[See post to listen to audio]

Monday morning, I got up earrrrrrrly to celebrate the longest day of the year with some yoga in Times Square. As much as I loathe Times Square (with the fire of 1000 suns) and do my best to avoid it in my day to day life, I must admit that the sensation of lying in Savasana with the subway rumbling below me and the skyscrapers soaring above me (and the jackhammer rattling behind me) was, well, pretty cool.

Balancing and reaching up to the ceiling is one thing, but when that ceiling is the infinite sky, perspective goes out the window. Suddenly it seemed a precarious balance, all five feet five inches of me on two skinny legs. I felt myself wobble.

You are supported, the teacher reminded us. The ground is beneath you, supporting you. Trust that. We can extend because we are established.

I deepened my breath, planted my feet more firmly into the ground, and felt my stance solidify. We can extend because we are established. We can reach higher if we are grounded; we can stretch ourselves when we have built a solid foundation out of which to grow. The sun started to peek over the buildings and light up our faces.

All the days I sing my scales, vocalize and build that myelin around my healthy singing habits, I am laying the groundwork for the stretch, release, and LEAP that lies ahead.

All the days on the ground are what enable me to fly.

I’m not one to give up or run away from a challenge. But I do try to re-assess situations as I live through them and see the new lay of the land. And while I love sharing my process and my musings and my points of view on the artistic life, there are days when (gasp) even I don’t have something brilliant to say. The last thing the internet needs is more arbitrary content.

So, I’m not going anywhere. I’m still singing my face off and auditioning and reading and pulling this album together, and there’s a lot of exciting stuff ahead in that regard… I just can’t tell you about it yet!

You’ll be hearing from me, when I have something to say.

P.S. Got something you’d like to hear (more [or less] of)? Leave a comment!

And yes, that includes you, heartbreak and dark times.

xoxo,
katie*

from black boy, by richard wright

And I’m not alone. It was surprising to me how many of the composers I asked onto this project already had a song in their proverbial trunk about flying, or at least wanting to. Nor did I really need to go out and have new songs written at all; the musical theater canon is full of them. Now that it’s on my mind I seem to hear them in every class or audition I go to.

But that’s really no surprise, is it? Humankind has been enthralled by flight for thousands of years. Pick a culture, extant or not; it probably has a bird myth or five. Or just ask the Wright brothers, or Amelia Earhart. It’s not just me; it’s all of us.

We feel stuck in unhealthy relationships, going nowhere at our dead-end jobs, hemmed in and caged and put in a box. We daydream with our heads in the clouds. We get pushed out of the nest. We want to break free, we want to spread our wings, we want to fly far far away from here. And what do we imagine happens when we die (if we are very, very good)? …we get to go live in the clouds and sprout wings and fly around all day! (and play the harp, although that’s another story.)

My sense in all of this is that we all know, somewhere deep in our subconscious perhaps, what we are really made of and who we are meant to be. It’s what (I imagine) Denise Levertov was writing about in the poem from yesterday. Freefall. Resting upon air. We may not know how to get there, and it may not be possible to leap off the cliff, quit our jobs and change our lives and fly, tomorrow. But the icky feelings and the teenage rebellion and the pervasive human intuition that I gotta get out and fly away are all there for a reason. The question is, what are we going to do about them?

(denise levertov)

For my part I tried out some new material, including finding a cut of one of my album songs (thanks, Mike Pettry). I have some vocal growth ahead of me before I can show that song who’s boss (me? a challenge? no!), and so to stand in a room – in front of people! – and sing the whole thing, through, without stopping or giving up or commenting on it – was a minor feat.

It sounds so elementary. And I consider class a safe space (I wasn’t trying it for the first time in the audition room, for pete’s sake). And yet, and yet. It still amazes me how nervous I can get before certain situations that theoretically have no stakes and no consequences.

But I wasn’t. I still have all the little stories I tell to deflect things; all the excuses I make and extraneous gestures and running commentary that is so apparent when I see it in other performers and yet it pours out of me from I know not where as soon as I get up in the hot spot. But I’ve come a long way.

And the most amazing thing, to me, was how un-amazing it was. There were no trumpets and I didn’t have a major breakthrough and I didn’t cry, or make my audience cry, either. I just sang a song, and I didn’t make it mean any more than that. In fact, I barely noticed how easy and unremarkable it had all been until later – because I guess sometimes the best kind of growth and change happens a bit at a time, when you’re not looking.