Post by Female Guitar Players on Jun 11, 2012 2:52:09 GMT -5
Blog - Nov 06-2009 What was the most profound ?
« Thread Started on Jul 17, 2010, 1:01pm »
From MySpace
Friday, November 06, 2009
Q. & A. From Fans - What was the most profound influence on your music?
What was the most profound influence on your music?
Question: What was the most profound influence on your music?
Answer: I'm not sure if you mean for positive or negative here, and there are so many answers that one could give to a question like this. So after giving this question some thought, I've decided to share something that happened to me right after I dismembered my band in 1987 and I was going through extreme drug withdrawal and recovery.
This happened to me in the Autumn season and I was at this time, as I said, dismembering my band and going through a really challenging time on just about every level of my life. My brother had just accidentally over dosed in June of 1986 and died in my arms, and he was my only known real family member. I utterly devastated and a total mess. We were extremely close to each other and losing him was one of the most difficult things that happened in my life. So I was very much alone, dumped a lot of people off my path, rented a piano for $50 a month from Long and McQuades, became a Hermit, shut out the world, and went back to teaching Piano and Guitar Lessons.
One day I went upstairs and paid my rent. It was a just another boring and uneventful day really. I had stopped drugs and booze in the previous year of 1986 and I didn't even smoke cigarettes anymore. I was completely into health food and getting my well being back, totally driven on the piano and I was two weeks away from my ARCT Exam with The Royal Conservatory of Music. I paid my rent, said "Good day" to my landlady, walked down the steps at the back of the house, proceeded to walk off the last step, and completely crash landed on the cement patio, ass over tea kettle!
Apparently I was not on the last step when I proceeded to walk! I was on the second last step! Jeeze or what! I ended up in the hospital screaming in agony getting x-rays and the whole nine yards. I sprained my right ankle so bad that it was swollen up four times its natural size. I walked on crutches for the next six months. My left wrist was fractured right through the centre on a side-ways angle. And it was a hair line fracture surrounded by a total sprain. It took months for the swelling to go down. If it hadn't been for my landlady upstairs helping me I wouldn't have survived this experience at all. I was basically laid up on my sofa for months and couldn't move. Everything in my life became remote from the sofa. Going to the washroom took over an hour. Because of all the pain I also developed an addiction to the pain killers, which is why now you can barely get me to take an aspirin for even a headache.
As the months went by, the swelling went down, and I kept going to see my doctor every few weeks. Then the worst thing happened. A horrible lump of bone regrowth began to manifest on my wrist. At that time, the "medicine people" didn't have the technology to treat an injury like this. They put me on Disability and told me that I would never have the use of my left hand ever again. That meant no more piano, no more guitar, no more nothing. I can not even begin to describe that devastation.
I sunk into a massive depression and literally gave up the fight. I mean, what could I do? What the hell was the point? But there were some people who would not give up on me, and surprisingly enough, those people were my Music Students and their parents. I had two Students, a brother and a sister, living two houses down the street from me, and they took piano and guitar lessons. When they found out what happened they were at my place all the time, bringing me food, visiting me, feeding my cats, etc. They're Dad used to come over all the time to see me too and just talk. I mean, I got this beautiful piano rental (the LeSage) in the Autum of 1986 and at that time I hadn't had a piano in five years. Now a year later, I'm ready to finally go for my final exam and had just finished writing some very profound music, this accident happens to me right out of the blue, and now I'm a cripple. What the hell?
Well, Frank also did not let me give up. I think actually that my Students and Frank were all plotting together! lol My Students would not let me stop teaching them. They just absolutely refused to leave me. They made me teach them they're lessons from the sofa! Can you believe it! Here I was crying and sobbing in the most agonizing pain for months and months, and giving them the instruction verbally, only having my great friend, "the sound" to guide me into teaching them anything from the couch!
Frank dragged my ass out of the apartment every Friday with or without my crutches for months, and he took me to China Town. We went to every Chinese Herbal place on the map. But no one would help me. Finally I told Frank to stick it up his arse and refused to go out anymore. I was so depressed and just ready to die. By this point in time, I wasn't just crippled physically, but once again I was crippled on the inside where people just can't see what's going on and don't understand. Well, good ole' Frank showed up the next Friday, despite the horrible tongue lashing he got the week before, and begged me to go out one last time. We had been on the last street where these little shops were, and there was one little shop left right at the very end that we didn't go to the week before.
Well, I ended up going, and thank god I did. But this time I brought a tape recorder and a tape of my music to prove my story. Not being believed was a really big killer to my ego and I was really angry about it. So this was our solution. If we had been any smarter we would have done this long before. Anyways, we went into this last little shop and the owner was in China, but his son was there. He listened to everything we said and he listened to my tape cassette too. Then he just burst into tears and we were really baffled but waited it out.
To completely blow our minds, this young Chinese man brought out his wife who had been hiding in the back listening to everything. After he stopped crying he told us that they had just recently lost their little girl who had been hit by a car, and she was a little piano player. This man was so moved by my story of struggle, that he begged us to come back on Monday and see his father. So we did.
My visit with that old man was five minutes tops, and he didn't charge me any money, and he didn't speak English either. He gave me a tiny little jar of ointment that stunk to high heaven. I mean, I would rather be sprayed by a skunk than smell this stuff. His son told me that his Dad had just brought this from China, and that no body else had the stuff. He told me to rub this ointment on my wrist every time I thought about it, just a little dab. And for the next two years that's exactly what I did. Within a few months, two inches of bone regrowth literally disappeared and I was able to start playing the piano again.
When I did start playing the piano again, I had to do my own physio therapy; which meant starting all over again, just like I was six years old. I got out my books for the kids and started teaching myself and it took months to do this work. Just playing c-b-a-, c-b-a, c-b-a-b-c-c-c, was excruitiating. I can't even begin to tell you how many tears, both physical and emotional, were cried on the keyboard just trying to play those notes.
Within a year and half, everything had changed, but I would never again play as I once had. I was and am just not physically able. The handicap is permanent and my wrist was tender and vunerable for many years after this accident. But something wonderful happened out of all of this. Because of my musical training throughout childhood, I was a very "technical" player, and only my own compositions were played with any Soul. Now, because of what I had to go through, and basically relearning an entire childhood of musical instruction in about a year and a half, I learned how to play music with my heart, my soul, my spirit, and my mind. I learned how to play with great feeling and pretty much threw all the useless rules right out into the garbage heap.
No longer was I the little 'Mozart' hopelessly trying to please a crazed father obsessed mother syndrome. No longer was I a technical copy cat of the way music was 'supposed' to be. No longer did I have to play to gain approval. No longer did I have to play to win something. No longer did I have to play to be the best, to do it right, to fit in, to belong, to be accepted, or to prove anything to my Self or to anybody else. No longer did I wear a false face regarding music that I otherwise would never have even known was there in the first place. And no longer did I care about any of those things. This experience allowed me to remove all of the implanted conditioning that controlled my musical experience and restricted my true musical soul. I broke through all of these invisible barriers and begin to truly compose and write real music: my music!
This accident that I had is another reason why I don't play the guitar standing up anymore. I can't bend my wrist and play like I used to. I taught myself Classical as far as I could go, and back in the day I played a lot of covers. At the time of the accident, I had only been a Rhythm or Back Up Guitarist, but I had always wanted to learn how to play lead. Because I could never find a female lead Guitarist who play my originals, I compensated by writing the vocals in a different way. Thankfully at the time Sue could do it. She was one hell of a singer. After the accident I didn't play guitar for quite some time, and it was even harder to get the guitar skills back and it was really alot to deal with at the time. So I chose the piano over the guitar because as I have said, the piano is my first instrument.
I think that this is why some people cry when they hear me play. My music is an extraordinarily expression of what goes on inside of a human being. And in the end, despite all of the horrific crap I went through, I received a wonderful, wonderful gift that I will have for the rest of my life. This, I do believe, was the most profound influence upon my music.
Love and hugs...
BlackieSteele...xoxox
(Fan question from 2007-2008)
« Thread Started on Jul 17, 2010, 1:01pm »
From MySpace
Friday, November 06, 2009
Q. & A. From Fans - What was the most profound influence on your music?
What was the most profound influence on your music?
Question: What was the most profound influence on your music?
Answer: I'm not sure if you mean for positive or negative here, and there are so many answers that one could give to a question like this. So after giving this question some thought, I've decided to share something that happened to me right after I dismembered my band in 1987 and I was going through extreme drug withdrawal and recovery.
This happened to me in the Autumn season and I was at this time, as I said, dismembering my band and going through a really challenging time on just about every level of my life. My brother had just accidentally over dosed in June of 1986 and died in my arms, and he was my only known real family member. I utterly devastated and a total mess. We were extremely close to each other and losing him was one of the most difficult things that happened in my life. So I was very much alone, dumped a lot of people off my path, rented a piano for $50 a month from Long and McQuades, became a Hermit, shut out the world, and went back to teaching Piano and Guitar Lessons.
One day I went upstairs and paid my rent. It was a just another boring and uneventful day really. I had stopped drugs and booze in the previous year of 1986 and I didn't even smoke cigarettes anymore. I was completely into health food and getting my well being back, totally driven on the piano and I was two weeks away from my ARCT Exam with The Royal Conservatory of Music. I paid my rent, said "Good day" to my landlady, walked down the steps at the back of the house, proceeded to walk off the last step, and completely crash landed on the cement patio, ass over tea kettle!
Apparently I was not on the last step when I proceeded to walk! I was on the second last step! Jeeze or what! I ended up in the hospital screaming in agony getting x-rays and the whole nine yards. I sprained my right ankle so bad that it was swollen up four times its natural size. I walked on crutches for the next six months. My left wrist was fractured right through the centre on a side-ways angle. And it was a hair line fracture surrounded by a total sprain. It took months for the swelling to go down. If it hadn't been for my landlady upstairs helping me I wouldn't have survived this experience at all. I was basically laid up on my sofa for months and couldn't move. Everything in my life became remote from the sofa. Going to the washroom took over an hour. Because of all the pain I also developed an addiction to the pain killers, which is why now you can barely get me to take an aspirin for even a headache.
As the months went by, the swelling went down, and I kept going to see my doctor every few weeks. Then the worst thing happened. A horrible lump of bone regrowth began to manifest on my wrist. At that time, the "medicine people" didn't have the technology to treat an injury like this. They put me on Disability and told me that I would never have the use of my left hand ever again. That meant no more piano, no more guitar, no more nothing. I can not even begin to describe that devastation.
I sunk into a massive depression and literally gave up the fight. I mean, what could I do? What the hell was the point? But there were some people who would not give up on me, and surprisingly enough, those people were my Music Students and their parents. I had two Students, a brother and a sister, living two houses down the street from me, and they took piano and guitar lessons. When they found out what happened they were at my place all the time, bringing me food, visiting me, feeding my cats, etc. They're Dad used to come over all the time to see me too and just talk. I mean, I got this beautiful piano rental (the LeSage) in the Autum of 1986 and at that time I hadn't had a piano in five years. Now a year later, I'm ready to finally go for my final exam and had just finished writing some very profound music, this accident happens to me right out of the blue, and now I'm a cripple. What the hell?
1987 LeSage Piano and Mozart, my white cat
Well, Frank also did not let me give up. I think actually that my Students and Frank were all plotting together! lol My Students would not let me stop teaching them. They just absolutely refused to leave me. They made me teach them they're lessons from the sofa! Can you believe it! Here I was crying and sobbing in the most agonizing pain for months and months, and giving them the instruction verbally, only having my great friend, "the sound" to guide me into teaching them anything from the couch!
Frank dragged my ass out of the apartment every Friday with or without my crutches for months, and he took me to China Town. We went to every Chinese Herbal place on the map. But no one would help me. Finally I told Frank to stick it up his arse and refused to go out anymore. I was so depressed and just ready to die. By this point in time, I wasn't just crippled physically, but once again I was crippled on the inside where people just can't see what's going on and don't understand. Well, good ole' Frank showed up the next Friday, despite the horrible tongue lashing he got the week before, and begged me to go out one last time. We had been on the last street where these little shops were, and there was one little shop left right at the very end that we didn't go to the week before.
Well, I ended up going, and thank god I did. But this time I brought a tape recorder and a tape of my music to prove my story. Not being believed was a really big killer to my ego and I was really angry about it. So this was our solution. If we had been any smarter we would have done this long before. Anyways, we went into this last little shop and the owner was in China, but his son was there. He listened to everything we said and he listened to my tape cassette too. Then he just burst into tears and we were really baffled but waited it out.
To completely blow our minds, this young Chinese man brought out his wife who had been hiding in the back listening to everything. After he stopped crying he told us that they had just recently lost their little girl who had been hit by a car, and she was a little piano player. This man was so moved by my story of struggle, that he begged us to come back on Monday and see his father. So we did.
My visit with that old man was five minutes tops, and he didn't charge me any money, and he didn't speak English either. He gave me a tiny little jar of ointment that stunk to high heaven. I mean, I would rather be sprayed by a skunk than smell this stuff. His son told me that his Dad had just brought this from China, and that no body else had the stuff. He told me to rub this ointment on my wrist every time I thought about it, just a little dab. And for the next two years that's exactly what I did. Within a few months, two inches of bone regrowth literally disappeared and I was able to start playing the piano again.
When I did start playing the piano again, I had to do my own physio therapy; which meant starting all over again, just like I was six years old. I got out my books for the kids and started teaching myself and it took months to do this work. Just playing c-b-a-, c-b-a, c-b-a-b-c-c-c, was excruitiating. I can't even begin to tell you how many tears, both physical and emotional, were cried on the keyboard just trying to play those notes.
Within a year and half, everything had changed, but I would never again play as I once had. I was and am just not physically able. The handicap is permanent and my wrist was tender and vunerable for many years after this accident. But something wonderful happened out of all of this. Because of my musical training throughout childhood, I was a very "technical" player, and only my own compositions were played with any Soul. Now, because of what I had to go through, and basically relearning an entire childhood of musical instruction in about a year and a half, I learned how to play music with my heart, my soul, my spirit, and my mind. I learned how to play with great feeling and pretty much threw all the useless rules right out into the garbage heap.
No longer was I the little 'Mozart' hopelessly trying to please a crazed father obsessed mother syndrome. No longer was I a technical copy cat of the way music was 'supposed' to be. No longer did I have to play to gain approval. No longer did I have to play to win something. No longer did I have to play to be the best, to do it right, to fit in, to belong, to be accepted, or to prove anything to my Self or to anybody else. No longer did I wear a false face regarding music that I otherwise would never have even known was there in the first place. And no longer did I care about any of those things. This experience allowed me to remove all of the implanted conditioning that controlled my musical experience and restricted my true musical soul. I broke through all of these invisible barriers and begin to truly compose and write real music: my music!
This accident that I had is another reason why I don't play the guitar standing up anymore. I can't bend my wrist and play like I used to. I taught myself Classical as far as I could go, and back in the day I played a lot of covers. At the time of the accident, I had only been a Rhythm or Back Up Guitarist, but I had always wanted to learn how to play lead. Because I could never find a female lead Guitarist who play my originals, I compensated by writing the vocals in a different way. Thankfully at the time Sue could do it. She was one hell of a singer. After the accident I didn't play guitar for quite some time, and it was even harder to get the guitar skills back and it was really alot to deal with at the time. So I chose the piano over the guitar because as I have said, the piano is my first instrument.
I think that this is why some people cry when they hear me play. My music is an extraordinarily expression of what goes on inside of a human being. And in the end, despite all of the horrific crap I went through, I received a wonderful, wonderful gift that I will have for the rest of my life. This, I do believe, was the most profound influence upon my music.
Love and hugs...
BlackieSteele...xoxox
(Fan question from 2007-2008)