Wednesday 15th November, 2023
Finally back to rehearsals! (musically speaking)
Happy Wednesday to you m’dear. :) Hope you’ve had a good week so far. For me? I’ve been kinda sick since last Friday. Not that I’ve come down with anything… mostly because I’ve been malnourished. Too much exercise for too little food, to be specific… protein, magnesium, & zinc apparently. These are the big three that are draining out of my circus flipping body. So I went out, spent too much money on pea protein & vitamin supplements, & now I’m getting back to normal… or whatever normal is to me these days.
As a quick update on the December 10th circus show I’m performing in… I’ve gotten most of it choreographed, & I fully ran through the moves while singing the other day. So we’re in a good place with it. Going forward I need to focus on the quality of motion in my performance, & make sure that the rhythm of the moves is working well. Today I got back into the rehearsal studio with the wonderful Grim on drums. As a part of the agility award I’m able to spring for a proper amount of money to pay him for these rehearsals & performances. It’s ALWAYS a good feeling to pay the talented people around you. With any luck, I’ll be supporting any & every artist I get to work with!
The song we rehearsed today is called Moonlight Fantasy, a darker take on ‘Nathan Mac’… with heavy bass, distortion, & soaring guitars! With some definite sexual overtones. :) The next album is looking a lot like this. A more extreme kind of ‘Nathan’, with more drama in the vocals, lyrics, & music. The rehearsal was littered with physical exercise. As tired as my body is today, I need to sing while moving. Push ups, sit ups, jogging in place, etc… whatever it takes to tire me out & get my blood pumping. Beyonce, Pink, Justin Timberlake… & so many more artists over time have had to meet the same kind of challenge in their singing careers. It’s now my turn to tackle this kind of work… & I’m loving it! I may need to take up running however, which does not sound like fun to me.
On Monday, as I was running through the choreo on the corde lisse, I was able to show it to a friend & once circus co-conspirator: Seve Feathers! She’s teaching in the course that I’m training in which is so nice to have an excuse to hang out with another friend… As we spoke about life, we drifted towards a particular decision that I made, a long time ago. ‘My music is non-political’*. I give this statement a star because I’m usually referring to an active kind of politics. Inherent in my music is non-traditional love, philosophical takes on what is valuable, etc… So there’s of course, SOME politics in my music somewhere, but it’s rarely targeted or articulated. This extends into my ‘branding’ too I guess. I’m a considerably ‘left presenting’ character for sure. You could hardly look at the piercings, tattoos, nail varnish, & clothes, & think that I’m a hardcore conservative right-winger… but I don’t engage with politics through my social media presence.
Considering what the world can be like, what it is like right now, a few people have had questions for me about this decision. Is it ethical, is it fair, is it normal… but, for me, I try to keep my intensely political self to my personal life. Going to marches, buying conscious, refusing to drive, etc…
What made me decide to sever any politics from my page was mostly down to what I want ‘Nathan Mac’ to be for people. A non-judgemental, escapist fantasy world. In my own life, it’s the fantasy of sappy musicals like Moulin Rouge, or the fantasy of Ghibli that really kept me going in the worst moments. Sure, there’s politics in these films, a lot of environmentalism & conservative idealism in Ghibli films for example… but they usually aren’t the point of the story, just a background for them to live in. Heck, even Moulin Rouge is a childish rebellion against the optimisation of pragmatic capitalism.
I won’t talk about it much longer, my political life is not the point here. The point of all this is the weird struggle, the triumhps of finally getting my big tricks on the corde lisse, of finally working with the genius collaborators, of making the dream a tad more tangible… of perpetually NOT drowning, despite the (metaphorical) rising tides around us. :P
Okay, I’ll leave you with this for this week,
It’s off to a protest. ;)
Nathan
