Couchella / ToAnnie in Town

I’m writing from my hotel room in Lisbon. It’s 12:22 AM here but really 8:22 PM my time and I am still mostly wide awake.

Had a really fun first day here but I’ll talk about that in a later post. Lemme fill you guys in on the last week.

Couchella

Couchella went great. We met at Will’s place around 8pm. Initially a bit of a sausage fest but that’s alright music does not care about gender.

People slowly came through and we started playing around 10pm.

This was my first time playing a fuller set:

Autumn
Ennui
Weather
Clarity
Timing

The weather during the set was cloudy, rainy and slightly thundery—just the way I like it.

Here’s the set in most of its entirety. Our camera conked out halfway thru so we salvaged this from Rupert’s phone.

Some things I didn’t realize before

It takes physical stamina to do a longer set.
- Every song took something physically out of me and by the end of the set I was pretty tired.
Crowd work is hard
- Maybe one day I can face out into the crowd and make jokes and all that but this time around I was a lil shy/too focused on the music

Will, Kelvin and I plan to do this on a monthly~ basis. Hopefully meeting new artists and rotating out the performers for each show. I’m happy enough with how this show went but def gotta practice more for the next one. Especially the singing.

After the show we went out for some Halloween stuff. Went to (and quickly dipped from) two crowded af parties. Ended the night eating 2 bros pizza after playing some drinking games at Kaagni’s (Will’s friend) apartment.

ToAnnie in Town

ToAnnie came by from the Bay for Tony’s birthday weekend. Squeezed a good amount in.

Brunch at Elephant and Castle
- Eggs benedict is the best brunch item of all time. This one had a twist where they used a potato pancake as the base.

Got dinner at nonono. Japanese skewer restaurant. Got the ramen and it was pretty decent. Big group of people. ToAnnie, Karen, Dan, Will, Bryan and Lilli

Went to Seeyamañana afterwards for drinks. I still have to charge people for that.
- One of the worst parts of doing group stuff. Getting charged with the bill at the end and having to split it amongst the group. I drag stuff like this on for weeks sometimes…
Went to Anytime. Got into a chanting match with another table which ended with at least 75% of the restaurant chanting together.
- When we started singing happy birthday to Tony the other table came up and sang along/drank with us and that felt great
Went to Yoon Korean barbecue. Pretty tasty, expensive meal.

Music Update

My singing seems to have hit a plateau. Heard a busker earlier today in Portugal and DAMN this guy killed it. I aspire to be at that level but truly don’t know if I’ll ever reach it.

Is there a ceiling to singing skill level? The hopeful fool in me thinks not. I hope that it’s all skill based and even those without the greatest starting amounts of talent can eventually reach the top.

But who knows?

In any case I’ll go as far as I can.

It was a pretty good end to this particular NY trip.

The lines are very blurred. Am I a visitor? Am I a resident? Where do I B E L O N G?

As of now writing in my hotel room in Portugal I’m preeeeetty happy with how it’s all going but this past few weeks in NY haven’t been the most comfortable in my life.

I am looking forward to the day when I have my own place again and can start building a life around stability. Up until the point I get restless and do this whole thing all over again.

On a final note Woodside… Didn’t like living all the way out there. Walking through the streets at night in mostly empty streets where even the houses had dark lights felt pretty lonely.

Some pretty good food though. I’l give you that Woodside/Sunnyside.