tag:dreamwidth.org,2017-01-03:2712154Tales From the RoadAdventures of a Hammered Dulcimer Playervinceconaway2017-11-28T16:14:13Ztag:dreamwidth.org,2017-01-03:2712154:173504Catching Folks Up2017-11-28T16:14:13Z2017-11-28T16:14:13Zpublic0Sometimes I turn around and realize it’s been three months since I last posted on my blog. I have a very active social media presence between Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, each of which has its strengths, but I’ve missed the luxury of being able to more fully explore my thoughts.<br /><br />As a traveling performer, I often repeat my schedule from year to year and therefore have a large number of friends I see only when I come to their area. We do keep up with each other via social media, which means that each of us has a grip on the key events of the other’s life, but it does drive home what I’m not posting online when I find myself repeating the same conversation to catch people up.<br /><br />I pushed myself this year. It was a deliberate choice, and one where I weighed the risks fairly accurately, but I was definitely getting crispy in the fall. I didn’t burn out, thankfully, which happened in 2011, but I got closer than I’m comfortable with. <br /><br />At the end of 2011 (which I still call “Black ‘11”) I was tired and questioning a lot about my life. I questioned my career choices, life choices, and even my continued existence in my first suicidal ideation since my twenties. In response, I made a few ground rules for myself that have served me very well in the meantime. <br /><br />Some of them were creative choices that I’ve described elsewhere, a decision to prize artistic vision over potential commercial success, but some were very practical. My European tours that year had been overwhelming, and I decided to cap my busking tours at eight weeks. The intervening years have shown this to be a good rule, but this year I got ambitious. I was turning forty, after all. <br /><br />I figured I had something to prove, and so I booked a three-month tour of Europe. It was fantastic, and I was very careful with my spoons, but it was still very tiring. Around week ten I realized that eight weeks was a good tour limit, but I wrapped up the tour on a high note and was looking forward to returning to Italy even as I left. <br /><br />This is where I got careless. I landed Thursday night and I was at Pennsic Friday morning. Pennsic is a two-week immersively-medieval event in southwestern Pennsylvania, which I’ve been attending for over fifteen years. The quick turnaround hadn’t been my original plan, since I had intended to take a few days off, but someone in our group couldn’t fulfill their commitment to deal with the bureaucracy and I was the only person physically capable of stepping in (for SCAdians: we lost our Land Agent and I was only two hours away). <br /><br />From there things started to cascade. As is my usual habit, I played music at Pennsic for the week before leaving to open the New York Renaissance Faire, returning to play again Monday through Friday and then back to New York for the second weekend. I’ve been doing this for years with little difficulty, but coming immediately on the heels of an already-overlong summer tour was a bit much. Looking at pictures taken of me that second weekend, I’m pretty confident I know what I’ll look like in ten years having seen such ravages of fatigue on my face. <br /><br />I don’t regret any of my choices, and taking long breaks from music during the weeks between New York Faire weekends was deeply restorative, but it’s not a lesson I’m eager to repeat. I’ll try to keep that in mind as future birthday milestones parade toward me.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=vinceconaway&ditemid=173504" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-01-03:2712154:173113Intuition and Rationality2017-08-17T14:37:36Z2017-08-17T14:37:36Zpublic0I am an INFJ on the Myers-Briggs scale, although the I and the P are both very much on the cusps between Introversion and Extraversion and between Perception and Judging. The middle two, however, are very much a part of my personality, so much so that they've become part of my identity.*<br /><br />I am intuitive (the N in INFJ) to an extreme degree, which I find liberating as well as deeply frustrating. It's liberating because I react well in the moment, dancing an improvisation around my obstacles. I'm terrible at long-range planning, however, because I can't set into motion a set of plans that will inexorably lead to fruition. My best bet is to create a favourable environment and then seize opportunities as they arise.**<br /><br />You are now equipped to destroy me at chess.<br /><br />Because I am so intuitive, I have a hard time with the concept of rationality. I'm really good at rationalization, and I have a difficult time distinguishing between the two. I want some things, I wait, I see a means that does not violate my values, I act, and now I have a thing. I've become so practiced at this that I forget it's not how other people see the world, and that it has only been a part of my own worldview for fifteen years.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />*I'm aware of how pseudoscientific such personality tests are, but like Astrology (Pisces, the flighty visionary) I believe they can be a useful launch point for introspection. As I mentioned with the Myers-Briggs, being told often enough that your sun sign indicates a certain personality trait can certainly accentuate it. Just as my friend says that her child is "acting" shy rather than "is" shy in order not to reinforce the trait, I'm fairly certain that Astrology has some merit because of the psychology involved in a culture where it is emphasized.<br /><br />**I was once accused of Machiavelianism by a lover, when my entire strategy was to play "yes, and" improv games with the schemes that she, herself, was hatching. It's my life writ small, where I keep broad goals in mind and then evaluate whether courses of action will bring me closer or not. I'm an opportunist, lying in wait (Aaron Burr is my favourite role in Hamilton) and then charging ahead once I spot an opening. It's for this reason that I feel very close to the Roman goddess Fortuna, patron of luck and fate. I get a lot of credit for the work that I've put into my career and lifestyle, but without the occasion to use that preparation I'd be nowhere.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=vinceconaway&ditemid=173113" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-01-03:2712154:17247520/402017-06-01T11:29:01Z2017-06-01T11:29:01Zpublic01997 was twenty years ago. It's a little hard to believe.<br /><br />In June of that year I had what I still regard as one of the worst days of my life. It had been a joke that I and the woman I was dating were both spending a day with our respective exes, showing both that we were able to stay friends without hard feelings and that we trusted each other.<br /><br />My visit went poorly. There were more hard feelings than I suspected, and I was hit really hard by the situation. Since her visit was also over, I decided to seek support from my lover, only to be told upon arriving that she had gotten back together with her ex.<br /><br />That was a bad day.<br /><br />It also involved a lot of driving. Ninety minutes to my first visit, ninety minutes home, and two hours to my second visit which wrapped up around midnight. Half delirious with grief and fatigue, it occurred to me that no one would ever know if a fatal car accident had been intentional. <br /><br />I chose not to try. And now I've lived half my life since that decision.<br /><br />In moments of stress, facing hard challenges and difficult decisions, I still think back to that night. Part of me wonders if I did actually go through with it and if everything since has been a glorious dream. Another part of me sees that moment as a turning point, the last serious consideration I ever gave to suicide (though it was many years before I firmly discarded the possibility). Either way, I'm in the bonus round of my life, and grateful for every day.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=vinceconaway&ditemid=172475" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-01-03:2712154:172161My dirty little secret2017-05-30T20:45:14Z2017-05-30T20:45:14Zpublic1Honestly, I'm kind of boring. I wake up around 6:30, spend a while puttering around online and reading a lot of news analysis, and hop into the shower around eight. I putter some more, head out, have breakfast at a cafe, and play for a few hours. I grab groceries on my way home, eat a lunch of bread, fruit, and lunch meat and/or cheese. I take a nap, and have an afternoon walk. I play another few hours in the evening before eating the remainder of my bread, fruit, lunch meat and/or cheese for supper, and take an evening stroll before curling up with a book. <br /><br />On my day off, when I'm neither playing nor traveling, replace the music with more walks and museums. I don't do much that's really interesting, but I'm deeply thankful that I get to enjoy my routine in some really, really cool places.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=vinceconaway&ditemid=172161" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-01-03:2712154:171869London2017-05-23T09:36:09Z2017-05-23T09:36:09Zpublic0What an amazing trip. It's been a week and I'm still marvelling. <br /><br />I turned forty a few months ago, and to celebrate midlife I made the decision to double down on my traveling. So I spent the beginning of the year busking my way around Chile before heading to Peru to spend the big day in Machu Picchu. <br /><br />I also scheduled a 3-month European tour for the summer, two months in familiar Italy, a few weeks in too-long-neglected Croatia, and a week breaking new ground in Bosnia. And then I learned that my favourite musician was hosting Lost Evenings, a 4-night concert series in London.<br /><br />Frank Turner writes about life on the road in a way I've never heard from any other artist. From the glories of travel to the challenges of friendship and the disintegration of relationships, he covers it all, and he's an expert because his tour schedule makes me look like a homebody. And I was scheduled to be an $80 EasyJet flight (round trip!) away from one of his performing highlights. <br /><br />Of course I bought it. I ruthlessly budgeted out the costs, and decided to see the final two nights (Sunday and Monday) so I would still have 3/4 of a weekend to busk before heading out. I caught a 5:30am train to Milan after a very short night of anxious sleep, grabbed a shuttle bus from the train station to the Linate airport, flew into London, grabbed a train into the city, wandered around a bit, checked into my hotel (Hotwire found me a 3-star room for just a few dollars more than a hostel bed), and took a nap. <br /><br />And then had my mind blown by the best concert I've ever seen.<br /><br />Sunday was acoustic night, where Frank headlined with a solo show following Beans on Toast (who I'd seen open for Frank in New York in 2015) and Scott Hutchinson of Frightened Rabbit. It was incredible. I'm not a big fan of the acoustic versions Frank has recorded, but live they were breathtaking. His song introductions were intimate and vulnerable and everything I could have wanted from a favourite artist. He truly captured the flavour of an open-mic night in a venue of over 3000 people. <br /><br />Monday found me again wandering London, meeting up with an old friend for drinks before the show. Skinny Lister opened for Frank, a band I fell in love with when they also opened for him in NYC in 2015 then whose Brooklyn concert I had caught the following Thursday, and who I saw headline a small show in New Orleans last fall. It was a fantastic concert and I hugged a stranger at Frank's prompting, but I don't think anything will ever compare to that "Sensible Sunday Revival" lineup the night before. <br /><br />I took a long stroll around the city before flying out early Tuesday afternoon, and I was thrilled to discover my budget had been dead-on. Of course, I splurged on meals and a concert t-shirt (which I never buy but which was too good a commemoration to pass up), but the credit card statement is a problem for August. The entire experience was a case study in how to feel alive.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=vinceconaway&ditemid=171869" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-01-03:2712154:171579Change2017-05-23T09:34:17Z2017-05-23T09:34:17Zpublic0In 2007 my two best pitches in Genoa were on Via San Luca and Via San Vincenzo. Via San Luca stopped being a viable pitch for me two years ago, and Via San Vincenzo has deteriorated to a secondary location on my itinerary. However, Via Degli Orefici and Via San Lorenzo have stepped up to be far better pitches than I ever expected from previous experience, and Genoa has remained a good city for me to play.<br /><br />On a larger scale, cities that were once mainstays of my touring life have passed restrictive regulations; Padua, Bologna, and Ravenna have all taken themselves off of my calendar. However, again it is not one-way. I had previous difficulties in Prato and Pistoia that research indicated was unwarranted, and last year I found success in both cities. Most notably Trieste, which had passed restrictive regulations five or so years ago, just eliminated their registration system. Not only am I finding new cities to replace those that have become restrictive, but some that have been restrictive are loosening!<br /><br />I am a creature of habit and I find change disconcerting. One benefit to the way I travel is that, while my surroundings are in constant flux, my general routines are not. However, one reason I do so much traveling is that it does keep me on my toes, and I feel I'm a better musician, better performer, and better person for it.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=vinceconaway&ditemid=171579" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-01-03:2712154:171384Hope vs Expectation2017-04-28T16:31:07Z2017-04-28T16:31:07Zpublic0I do my best never to take anything for granted. <br /><br />I refer to shows where I don't have contracts, even longstanding parts of my schedule, as "prospective" or "tentative". I'm very careful to label spreadsheet columns as "projections" rather than "expectations". And I'm literally religious about giving thanks when those formal hopes come to fruition. <br /><br />I have a bit of a complex about the whole thing, if I'm honest with myself, and if I'm even more honest it's because I'm both leery of commitment and distrustful of expectation. I am the most optimistic cynic you will ever meet, and a proud Pollyanna. I fear, every day, that my business model will crumble even as I make plans for two years in the future. <br /><br />So when people say, "I'll see you next year!" my response, unless I'm equivocal on the idea, is a firm "you will if I have anything to say about it!" I'm a fan of "see you down the road" as a goodbye. And so far it's served me well. For which I'm thankful, but make no assumptions about what may happen tomorrow.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=vinceconaway&ditemid=171384" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-01-03:2712154:171191Closing Weekend at the Sherwood Forest Faire2017-04-20T16:31:26Z2017-04-20T16:31:26Zpublic0I'm delighted to be closing the show! I was originally booked for four weekends, but my dates were extended to include the final two weekends of the faire. I really love this festival, surrounded by and working with friends, and it's been a joy to be back.<br /><br />It's an interesting phenomenon to be an introvert in the entertainment industry. There are social gatherings going on all around me, but I bow out of most of them. I'm looking forward to seeing a vaudevillian comedy show tonight, Esther's Follies of Austin, but I turned down the invitation to kayaking and dinner beforehand. I husband my emotional bandwidth.<br /><br />My thoughts are starting to drift to the future. I head to Italy in two weeks and I'm starting to get anxiously excited about the trip. As always, my brain is filled both with things that need doing and others that could go wrong. Still, after so many tours this is a familiar place to me, and almost comfortable. <br /><br />I've really been loving the social time I've had here, even though it feels like I avoid most of it, but three months of solitary travel are a chance to really dive into my own head and work on myself. I'm very fortunate that my business model includes both intense community and deep solitude, in a balance I feel works well for me, tempered as always by the interactions with my audience. Wherever you are on that spectrum, I'm deeply grateful for you all.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=vinceconaway&ditemid=171191" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-01-03:2712154:170668Checking In2017-03-29T16:27:32Z2017-03-29T16:27:32Zpublic0I've found a favourite coffee house to hang out in! It's a pity that it's a significant drive, so I only come once or twice a week when I can combine it with other errands, but it's a pleasant morning to sit and write. <br /><br />The Sherwood Forest Faire is going very well for me so far! I'm really enjoying Austin audiences, they're a musician's delight, and it's a real pleasure to be surrounded by friends again after so much time alone on the road. It's one of the great luxuries of my life that I can alternate periods of intense isolation with times of brilliant socializing. Two months alone, two months with friends, three months alone, and another few months with friends: I'm a creature of extremes and this delights me.<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=vinceconaway&ditemid=170668" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> commentstag:dreamwidth.org,2017-01-03:2712154:169885A retrospective on my thirties2017-02-24T16:40:24Z2017-02-24T16:40:24Zpublic0It's a little hard to believe that it's the last week of my thirties, and what an amazing decade it has been. I look back on the things that have happened, and the growth I've had, and it's a little hard to believe.<br /><br />At first glance not much has changed. When I turned thirty I had already been full time as a musician for five years, and I was in the midst of my first foreign busking tour. I've refined things, of course, but a core of Renaissance Festivals augmented by international street performing is still my fundamental business model. <br /><br />It is with a closer look that the differences are revealed. I'm a far more skilled player and performer than I was at that time, for example. My festival performances are still anchored by playing in the lanes, but also include a solid stage show that eluded me throughout my twenties. The music that I'm writing is more complex, and I've taken up a deeply challenging historical repertoire. <br /><br />Similarly, the basics of my inner monologue haven't evolved very far. I'm still buffeted by alternating moods of euphoric confidence and crippling anxiety. I am, however, better able to compensate with a deeper experience of successes to temper my insecurities and failures to moderate my arrogance. More importantly, I've got a much firmer grip on when I need to bring this information to bear, recognizing when I'm in an unhealthy mental space. <br /><br />My body is changing and it's an interesting quest to find the balance between treating symptoms and changing my lifestyle; I miss caffeine but I feel so powerful without it. My face is becoming more and more my own, as smile lines beneath my eyes vie with the concentration wrinkles on my brow. My hairline is thinning and receding even as it greys to match the delightful amount of white in my new beard. The belly fat I've fought for my entire life has subsided only to redistribute to the sides so rapidly there are stretch marks, which is both a big victory and a new struggle. <br /><br />And finally there is my personal life, which I keep strictly offline. I won't go into details, but I've gotten a lot better at asking for what I need in a relationship. I don't want anything different than I wanted ten years ago, but I'm a lot better both at recognizing when I have it and letting go when I don't. And, while I still find myself making the fundamental mistake of promising things I cannot deliver, it's happening a little less often these days.<br /><br />I'm excited for my forties, and eager to see how I further grow and evolve in that time. Aging has been a fascinating experience for me, and I look forward to seeing what further turns it will take!<br /><br /><img src="https://www.dreamwidth.org/tools/commentcount?user=vinceconaway&ditemid=169885" width="30" height="12" alt="comment count unavailable" style="vertical-align: middle;"/> comments