A Date with Destiny....

October 21, 2010 Rota

When your world turns upside down and you find that you are no longer doing what you had planned to do with the rest of your life, it is easy to sink into a kind of depression.  We humans like goals and looking forward to the future.  And so I took a look at my life and discovered that I didn't really have any goals anymore.  That will never do!

I looked around in my world to see what I wanted to do next and the only thing that I could find was to expand my career as a flamenco artist.  I've been fooling around with this for 50 years and now I'm in Spain.  Duhhhhh.  So I decided that I would get serious about it.  Now every morning, I get up and go to work.  I play guitar, sing, work on my recording studio, study and listen to new material I want to learn.  All of a sudden I'm so busy that the laundry is starting to pile up.  But I'm having fun.
 
And the funny thing is that, this thing wants to happen whether or not I get better.  If I did nothing, it would still happen - but if I'm going to be a celebrity (and I am!), then I should get really good so that I can be proud of myself.  I can't rush this because the thing I am most lacking is real fluency with the language.  I get better every day, but fluency is a ways off yet.  I don't want to be in the public eye making grammatical errors or misunderstanding questions.  So part of my job is to practice my Spanish.

Sometimes it is hard to get any work done, because flamenco keeps getting in the way.  Manuel Agujetas continues to have me over almost daily to play for the singing lessons he is giving to Miguel's brother, Eduardo and to Negro Agujetas.  Eduardo is a great cook of Andalucian country cuisine and I've been eating there more often than not.  (Picked up some good receipes, too)  I've taken Manuel to medical appointments several times and am getting to hear a lot of stories.  Fascinating.  They are talking about a fiesta with the neighbors in which a pig will go to meet his maker - and then play a key role in a feast.  I'm looking forward to that.  I'll take some pictures.

I've been invited to go back to La Unión in Murcia for a flamenco weekend with friends of my consuegro (and now mine).  They have an ambitious weekend planned out with a number of other singers.  And tomorrow there is a really good show in Jerez.  I rarely go to shows because most of them are so disappointing compared to what I experience live.  But tomorrow is all artists that I like and respect.

I've put up a recording studio in my living room and am learning how to do multi-track recordings.  Part of my new job....