I spent the second half of the day making videos for TikTok since apparently there are publishers looking for books, stories. As I’m finishing the book why wouldn’t I use these channels if they can help me? I might as well. Making videos is fun, too, sure. Christmas in Naples is hilarious.
Also Once Upon a Time on Miracle Mile—crazy. That’s the start of my life. I don’t know where an opportunity might come my way so I’m just trying to share my stories and organize this channel so you can follow the logic. I mean, Dr. J.
It’s like a TV channel, basically, though it’s short-form. I saw something come up that people are watching longer videos now, at least a minute, but I don’t know what to say about that on my end. It makes some sense though, perhaps TikTok might evolve, which it sort of already is right, into TV channels for slightly longer form. I could make a video up to 10 minutes, I understand, and eventually I might do that. Or try one.
I figured I would start there and figure out the rest. There are so many channels.
I’m starting to figure out a system that lets me plan this in advance. Fine, it’s the world as it stands, and in my case, I might as well put stuff out there that way, too. But it’s taken me a sec. I don’t like spending that much time on my phone. There’s been a little bit of a learning curve.
I just like Christmas in Naples is Sport. So, there’s a part of me that just wants to post photos of that. I’m thinking less and just figuring it out organically. I’ll start pitching stuff, working on essays, but I just want to finish this book and I’m so close, at least, to getting it to the next step.
The book is going really well. I had a roadblock I had to get through. Barbara Harris got in. Clarity was reached. I just put her in as me. She would have been amazing. I saw her in the car, on her way to the first feast—My Way. I think that’s a better place to start. I got out of these big blocks of scenes and Bukowski’s structure in Post Office began to flow so it’s better. Barbara Harris, I see her dancing through this backwards.
It’s the Sound of Music, too, the Neapolitan way. They just bathed me in music the second I returned as a chorus, translating these songs together, all at once, in Italian, and they have so much fun doing it…like I don’t have to ask them anymore, it’s just so sweet, funny, because they are protagonists. And I love Carmine and the conflict with his band. He can’t do it, you can’t not do it. Music is like food there, and it’s so moving just how musical it is, remembering that they trace their origins to the siren that lured Odysseus. Truly. I love that music. It’s cinematic and gripping, classical, even. So beautiful. The dialect is challenging so I would have to work on that a little bit.
This is Carmine and my song, if you will, or it’s his. Anema e core. Since we’re a little duo who can speak without words, basically, and he has to deal with leaving his band of almost a decade, his girlfriend, his whole life. I’m holding secret meetings with Giampiero, the lead singer, going to their band rehearsals. They play at the Good Volcano AKA the mall.
I have to go to bed and do a lesson tomorrow morning in the park with the dogs, facing the Bosphorus, as I’ve been doing. I found a studio around the corner where I can go once a week and really listen to myself and work on my sound. Even to work on letting out sound, belting, not like I have to sing like that, but I have more power than that. I just started singing again. I’m so happy that I rediscovered it; I was like eight, nine when I started.
And in Christmas in Naples is a Sport, I walked through the door and my cousins couldn’t even believe that I had stopped singing. They looked at me as if another human being walked into their house. You? Why? That’s all you did. That’s what I wanted to do. I have to spend some time with that version of myself; it was such a closed subject. Once I got all that past out of the way, it was like the first thing that came to mind. Why, what?
There’s some jazz club nearby apparently, so I might go check it out, to see if I can sing. I just wanted to find a place where I could go sing, to practice, to have some fun.
It still gives me butterflies and I’m getting used to my instrument so I’m tuning into singers to learn from them. It’s just like anything else, you practice, I’m still not back into shape, you work on songs. I’m singing a bunch of stuff right now to figure out, oh, what can I do? What do I want to do? What do I feel people might like…that too. I like what Barbara Harris said, that it’s acting. Which it is.
It’s hilarious to me that…out of all the things I’m sharing right now…that makes me the most shaky, just because I have ten minutes where I can sing these songs in my room so I don’t disturb the others, and no one has complained yet, but I have to warm up outside. The other day, I warmed up on a median in the middle of the street.
I have a long warm up album and a ten minute one. I’ve just been having fun for the moment and letting myself explore, singing on the Bosphorus, really. I’ll incorporate the rehearsal space soon. Luckily, it costs like 10 dollars an hour. Truly. It’s so inexpensive to live here so at this moment in time, I still haven’t found remote work, but I can easily rent a space. Plus, I downloaded a bunch of karaoke tracks. It’s not the best, at times, but I can start. I downloaded instrumentalists too.
I’ll start working on songs…I downloaded a bunch of stuff, Dolly Parton, jazz, soul, so I’m listening, playing around. That’s it. I’m so thrilled that I’m putting myself out there in that way which has really been the great experiment of TikTok, at least. So I’ll keep sharing clips and things, and eventually, I’ll post whole songs. One step at a time.
Dionne Warwick this evening….who can I turn to…
Night.