April Playlist + Update

Hello patrons, time for the April Spotify playlist + update!

In the last week I repainted the large room of our house and injured a nerve in my  spine doing the ceiling.  It has been very painful and I couldn't do much but lay on my back and listen to music or watch tv.  This has led to my first ever trip to a chiropractor which is bewildering in itself, being put in traction and having another machine pour electricity through my spine.  Oh, it's allergy season in Phoenix and I'm on those fucking depressant pills as well.

I've also had a pile of freelance stuff come and go and a strange day where I was offered another TED X shooting job by a local gallery owner I've known and worked for on and off for years, told a pile of money would come and then... nothing.  

I usually don't stress about anything but needless to say this week has been unusually stressful and I will admit to being burned out constantly planning shoots that don't seem to have immediate benefits and in one sense feel like the opposite of what I should be doing.  

On and off over the last 24 hours I envisioned selling off all my photographic gear and still being an artist but just using my phone and laptop and physical drawing media to refocus on animation, comics and music.  It may still happen but the part of me that was a rehab counselor for 10 years remembers that it may be the allergy pills talking, that spinal pain is temporary and just because I can't do a particular activity this day or week doesn't mean that I can't do it in 2 weeks or a month, that for every job that falls through another one has appeared over the years.  

Despair is often a result of temporary circumstances that can change any minute- I should have that tattooed to my hand because as an artist I often disregard the logical reality and indulge in pure emotion, which works well when you're feeling positive and creating in a mania, but works against you when there's pain points being hit.  

As of 10:14AM on Wednesday morning as I type this, I'm flying like a kite because I'm in my favorite spot at my favorite coffee shop drinking 6 shots of caffeine in my favorite drink and a good local model just wrote me and offered shooting in her living room.  Suddenly my neck nerve/ left arm aren't as agonizing as they have been.  And I just got the email about the 50% deposit for the big job.  WTF.

Anyways!  The April Spotify playlist as always reflects this mania.  Particular emphasis is on a band I discovered in March called Delays- a UK combo of 2 sets of brothers who did 4 albums between 2004-2010, then the singer got Stage 4 bowel cancer on his daughter's second birthday.  His fiancee (now wife) set up a GoFundMe so he could get overseas treatment and it saved his life.  Their music is so "up", and unfortunately their best album isn't on Spotify, but it absolutely has gotten me through these last 4 weeks of turmoil.  The best song that I couldn't include in this playlist has a chorus of

 
"We'll get through this broken movie, I can prove there's more than light in your eyes
Earth it's true it gave me you so try"

...anyways, that's been the thing all month, trying as hard as possible.  In retrospect there hasn't been more than a few days pass between someone offering a job or opportunity or buying stuff from Etsy or Ebay but in the crazy high-speed internet age something great can happen in the morning and by the afternoon it feels like ages ago.  Weird times!