Pull That Pony

There I am, pulling the horse. Maybe 3 years old, Oma (grandmother) just looking at me like I'm crazy. I don't even know where I am going, but damn it! We are going to go there NOW!

I still feel like I'm pulling the horse, a look of fierce determination on my little face.

Why do I not ride the horse?

No idea.

And no idea what 'the horse' would be in my life at the moment.

But I'm pulling for all I'm worth.



2.7 weeks left in Berlin and lots of work to do still. I can't believe it's almost over. I never want to go. But I also want to get on with things too....just not quite yet.

Today I recorded a song, had a brainstorming session with my mother, and am now poised to launch an email about my album fundraiser/pre-order.

You can find out about it here:

www.theimpossiblegirl.com













And sign up for my email list so I can send you this fancy email and you can then forward it to frienemies.

It's only bad if you think about it.

I am so tired. I hardly did anything today - physically that is. I spent the entire day hunched over my laptop coding something I will tell you all about very soon - tomorrowish.

I also went out a little bit today to hand out fliers for my next Berlin show and I helped build a wall to divide a living city.

What I mean to say is that I took part in an art project in which 33,000 people stood along the line of the wall and blocked streets and sidewalks, many holding candles. I had no idea this was going on, I just stumbled across it with my mother and since we are the type of people who do not need our arms twisted in order to stand around in the middle of the street belligerently blocking traffic, we were all in.

The street was only blocked for a few minutes as people milled about with beers and soggy umbrellas. Then suddenly the "wall" opened and cars started to stream through while we all cheered at the newfound freedom.

It was powerful to see, we were having fun but the statement was clear.

We still build walls. We build walls that keep people in, or out. We restrict movement. We tell people it is for their own safety. We do it without a sense of irony.

I asked my East German roommate what it was like to live behind the wall when he was younger. Was it hard?

"It was not terrible everyday." he said, "It was just life. It was only bad if you thought about doing anything."


So what, dear friends, do we do about this?

My Goat Sized Hole Needs to be Filled

Word of the day: Audacity

*Insolent boldness, especially when imprudent or unconventional
*Fearless, intrepid daring





My mother is here. My hair is pink. Last night I owned my stage for the first time in a long time.

Also last night people kept handing me money for my album pre-order/fundraiser because kickstarter is in bed with amazon payments who do not accept worldwide payment methods. Some people have been able to donate but many have not because they lack a visa or mastercard.

MAJOR FAILURE. Might scrap kickstarter completely and migrate over to a paypal based system. In which case everyone who donated so far would have to re-donate (your cards have not been charged.)

Reasons for migration:

A.) Residents of the UK, EU, and everywhere else in the world would not be LEFT OUT.

2.) Indefinite time line. I'm not a "hard seller" I don't want to send 8 emails, and 65 tweets a day, and go door to door to try to sell my product. I'll do my work, and maybe I should push it more, but I think at this point trying to get another $17,000 in 20 days is perhaps a tad overly optimistic.

Reasons to not migrate:

1.) Kickstarter is a neat idea and the impending end date and threat of receiving no funds may urge people to donate sooner.

b.) If I choose to migrate I could lose some people who change their minds, or just forget or whatnot.

3.) The link to my kickstarter page has already been seeded across the internet and I risk confusing the hell out of people - including myself.


But seriously the non worldwide payments thing....kind of a deal breaker. I am not super famous, but I do have friends and fans all over this lovely planet and leaving them out of the loop seems lame. Lame. Lame. Like a racehorse with a broken leg. You know what happens then?

So weigh in here. What do you think I should do?

And does anyone out there want to intern 4-6 hours a week on this with me?

Love!!!!

K

The Animal of Doubt

My mother is almost here. She is in the air right now, gliding as gracefully as ever, when she lands she will roll over to my house, then we will roll together to my show tonight. I've been practicing so much my voice is raw.

I've been getting a lot done but still feel like I am slacking. Probably because my fundraiser is floundering and no amount of other work is going to fix that, actually I'm not sure what will. Somehow I am still optimistic. Oh yeah......because I am an optimist. Sometimes people think that optimists are happy people. That is sometimes true, but also optimists have their feelings crushed under the cold, hard, spiky, awful wheels of reality. Basically every day.

You think we would learn. We being me. The duality of my singular nature.

This is really rambly,


I love this video!




This video is for the Music of Susie Asado who lives here in Berlin and I have an impending coffee date with. She has a show tomorrow - if you live in Berlin you should go see it - with Kat Frankie. I can't go as I will be singing a duet with Jim Avignon somewhere else.

What is she building in there?

I thought I might write a little blog about what I do with my days in Berlin.

I drink a lot of coffee. I cook soup.

I make postcards to sell at the Sunday market - it helps me to have money to do things like buy coffee and food.

I practice Ukulele alone, and with other people for upcoming shows.

I do graphic design jobs for money (useful for the aforementioned reasons.)

I work on art for Strychnin Gallery in Berlin - they carry one of my pieces already, you can visit it if you are here.

I ride my bicycle four miles out to the recording studio to work on songs. The studio belongs to Elyas Khan of Nervous Cabaret who will be touring with Amanda Palmer this month. Elyas and his wife Melissa took me in and let me live in their house and use their studio. If you see them on the tour give them love. Tell them Kim sent you. They are really nice. Also the band fucking rocks.

I play guitar and sing and work out arrangements for songs.

I write.

I drink a lot of water.

I walk up and down eight flights of stairs.

Sometimes I record with other people, like Jim Avignon, whose new album just came out - I am on it. Track 9!

I play shows.

I meet people and we hang out and talk about life, art, music.

I do interviews and photo shoots.

I tweet.

I see live music.

I have Skype meetings with Sean Slade, my album producer. Sean is really really nice, and excited about my music. He is wonderful.

I do webcasts

I make videos!





Another video is in the works.

There is more. I do a lot. But I wanted you to know what I do since I am asking you to support me and you may be curious about what I do and how I live.



Oh yeah....I dream:


Last night I dreamt I was fighting an evil force that was trying to destroy the world. A truck full of wolves crashed into a group of cyclists on a crazy elevated skyway. I was walking through swamps and working so hard to save everything. In the end the world had to be destroyed so we could all start over again. I was wearing overalls.




Pre-Order my album for as little as $5. Help me make my art!

The vague, yet unmistakable, feeling that I am doing everything wrong.

I can be thrown into a spiral of doubt by just about anything. Looking into the mirror at my tired face spirals into me being ugly, into being ugly on the inside for even worrying about being ugly on the outside, spirals into being untalented as well, into having nothing to offer the world, into I'm doing everything wrong.

And then you may find me all dressed and ready to go -- coat, scarves, hat, boots -- lying prone on the floor, staring at the ceiling and muttering about failure.

"But everything was going so well," you say, "just moments ago you were singing about the snow and all ready to go out for hot chocolate and art."

Yes, it was all going so well, and then I started listening to myself again. I should not listen to my own opinion of myself, it's really terrible.

I am a happy person: singing, clapping, skipping down the street in my bright red wool cape that makes me look like little red riding hood.

I am a brave person: I smile at strangers, ask drug dealers for directions, walk into blind alleys looking for underground concerts in the middle of the night.

I am a sad person: haunted constantly by my inability to affect or even comprehend the atrocities that are perpetrated on this planet.

I am a depressed person: thinking about myself in endless, deepening spirals of doubt and pain. And then nothing.

I am a person: conflicted, afflicted, affected, defected, detected, defeated, seated here on a couch in Berlin, thinking this piece of writing too solipsistic to be of interest to anyone else, and too banal to be of interest to me.

Thinking I may post it on the internet anyway just because I am the type of person that will ask a drug dealer for directions, and skip and sing, and cry on the floor, all at the same time.


*********

This was written after receiving 6 comments and several emails about my blog.

I certainly did not mean to sound whiney or overly sad. While I do often succumb to depression at this time of year I wrote this blog to communicate rather the momentary spirals of doubt which afflict me. My thought was that since most people go through the same doubts someone mind find solace in my words.

I wasn't fishing for compliments or to be told to stop whining and "do" something. I just wanted to get over myself out loud - as it were.

And then I played music.

And now I'm going to the opera.

p.s. Thank you for loving me back!

Signal to Noise

We are information gluttons. All of us, in our own way, pushing information into ourselves as fast as we can. Even the slow people -- not the stupid people -- I mean the people who just move slower than others, even they are guzzling at the info nozzle for all they are worth.

Information is our mental sustenance. And everything is information. Even the tactile, the solid. We don't think of food as information, but it is. For our brains every single interaction with the world is a piece (rather billions of pieces) of delicious information. And regardless of whether we actually "like" something or not. Too hot, too cold, too painful, too fast, too slow? How the brain exalts in laying down the neural pathways that tell us how we feel about the things we dislike, and the things we like, alike. (Like totally.)

Remember that time you got a ride with that guy who drove too fast down that tiny curving road and all you could do was bite your tongue to hold back your screams?

How many times have you been in a car? You can't remember. But that time with that guy, that time you really didn't like: your brain was going "FUCK YEAH! Ima lay down this memory nice and deep cuz this shizzle is whack!"

MmmmmHmmmm. Your brain is a pervert. And so are you.

It doesn't matter what the information is: we want it, we want it now. And we want control over it. Some background noise is inevitable and often yields the juiciest morsels of new experiences, but we all seek to increase our signal to noise ratio.

Some people seek their information in the physical world, things they can touch and interact with, they sneer at people who spend time "blogging" or catching up on a social networking site. Other people are happy to interact with the internet, which in many ways gives us a high degree of control over our signal to noise ratio. It's all personal preference. But it sure is fun to sit up on a high horse (especially if it is a real horse cuz you're one of those physical-world-is-better folks) and toss your lofty morals down onto the masses who find their information fix in another way.

My horse doesn't feel so high at the moment, more of a pony, or a chicken, or maybe a kitten. Yeah, I have a kitten sized pony that just wants to cuddle and we don't care where you get your information (oh wait, is it too late to change my spirit animal? I would rather have a kitten sized whale. On a stick.) - anyway....I don't care where you get your information today. Just get it, enjoy it, maybe think about how you're thinking and try to start a little feedback loop inside your head.

I'm going to ride off into the sunset on my high pony/chicken/kitten/whale now and leave you with the aftermath of this information. On a stick.


Nerd out.

K