I was reading my dear friend Alison Luterman's blog. Alison is a wonderful poet and a radiant soul. She had some kind things to say about my show and expressed her sadness that the night she came the audience was microscopic. Sadly, this was not a first. Worse, it's probably not a last. My producers are from Superman's Bizarro world ( remember - where everything is the opposite of what you expect?) so they are supportive and seem more concerned with the show getting seen than with the bottom line. I'm really lucky to have a lot of great human beings in my life. Even so I've been running around like crazy lately with despair nipping at my heels until I realized that I'm going about this whole show biz thing wrong... It's so easy to get hung up on results and then what?.. If your best case scenario works out just as planned you're famous which means you're pretty much fucked, eh?.. Does anyone remember Joni Mitchell's tune, For the Roses?.. She writes:

In some office sits a poet
And he trembles as he sings
And he asks some guy
To circulate his soul around

I love that passage... (That's me saying that, not Joni).

It's a fine gossamer line between chasing a dream and chasing success - whatever that is... Frankly, I'm starting to wonder if I'm even supposed to chase a dream... It doesn't feel right, does it?.. Maybe a dream needs to be invited to come to you - like a deer or a bird - approached softly with stillness and humility and an offering like..a piece of bread or a sunflower seed... Like my homegirl Joni says:


Remember the days when you used to sit
And make up your tunes for love
And pour your simple sorrow
To the soundhole and your knee
And now you're seen
On giant screens
And at parties for the press
And for people who have slices of you
From the company
They toss around your latest golden egg
Speculation-well, who's to know
If the next one in the nest
Will glitter for them so


I'm addicted to the idea of arriving somewhere, as if making it is a destination... "Oh, here we are - we've made it.".. So easy, right?..


By now you might have figured out that it's been a trying couple of weeks in Wedding Singer Blues Land... I have been driving back and forth between the Bay Area and Los Angeles so much that somewhere along Interstate 5, I lost my perspective... It's probably in some rest stop bathroom named for a dead CHP cop.


You see, I get attached to these possible future opportunities as if they are a done deal, then when they don't happen, I forget that weeks earlier, I was perfectly happy just doing what I was doing... Delirious to be down in LA, doing the show, making people laugh and cry... Then someone dangles a glittery possibility at eye level and I lose all perspective...


This is the point where someone needs to slap me and say "Carla, no one is interested in a self-pitying dialectic on the vagaries of fame and the importance of being in the present moment.


Sorry.


Here's Joni again:

I guess I seem..ungrateful
With my teeth sunk in the hand
That brings me things
I really can't give up just yet
Now I sit up here
The critic!
And they introduce some band
But they seem so much confetti
Looking at them on my TV set
Oh the power and the glory
Just when you're getting a taste for worship
They start bringing out the hammers
And the boards
And the nails


Now that's a gloomy chick...


That's all for now.