hi, i’m nuri. this is where i’ll post things i’m working on (when i remember to) — whether its music, or musings, or fiction, or video, or live events, or whatever comes next. if you want to follow along, it’s free, or you can choose to pay. you don’t get anything extra if you pay, but you help support me to keep doing the things, and i appreciate it. 💕
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Recent posts
best laid plans... (just do and thrive)
I mentioned in my last post that i'd been working on expanding some of my recent writing efforts, including the piece posted there, as suggested.
however — i've also been playing around with another concept that was none of the things i suggested previously 😅 (because i am nothing if not inconsistent!)
leaning in to being scatterbrained
there's been a lot more activity here lately than i had been creating before. partly, i suppose, because i feel like i need an outlet for all of the various things i'm doing, and i really am committed to staying clear of (most forms of) social media.
i think the entire nature of social media, and digital interactions in general, is dehumanizing. what i've come to call the "people-in-cars" phenomena.
oh, apparently I can post video now?
So...I got covid finally. Made it through four years of pandemic only to get it now. I'm miserable, but i'm sure i'll be fine.
I was basically incapacitated on Saturday.
Aside from that, i find myself occasionally googling symptoms i hadn't expected like…
i hit publish (again)
this is one of those cases where, "if money was no object" things might go very differently. i could keep on tweaking "watch it!" and i might be happier with it eventually, i might not.
starting on marai (part 1)
I was going to share another stream-of-consciousness journal kind of piece here today, but i'm a little tired of it. The point i was going to make anyway is that i should just do the art i want to do, and i suppose part of the reason why i want to share unfinished works / works in progress here, is to drive me to finish them.
processing some shit
What if i’m the problem?
I keep seeing all these red flags around me.
I’m not good at just saying shit straight. It’s had bad consequences for me in the past.
Listening back
I'm in this stage, again, of producing a song where it's nearly done. I'm listening back, over and over again — on my computer, on speakers, in my car, in earbuds — on every device I can get my hands on to see if it holds up.
This is where my production playlist comes in, too — I listen to the song against other tracks, the beginning and the end, the middle — in one order, than another.
i'm trying to post without listening
if i actually listened back to these before putting them up — i might now share them at all 🤣
consider that my voucher on quality 🫠
i'm literally going through, in the order i drafted these songs. we're almost to the "most complete" one (that's number 5) — but even that one needs a lot of work still.
Reorganizing
I don't know if you've noticed yet, but I spent a bit of time yesterday trying to reorganize things here to make it (theoretically) easier to find certain kinds of content.
I went back through every post i made and tried to clean up tags and add most of the posts to different collections.
this cheese had nothing to do with you
in the interest of journaling my process, honestly, i thought i should share something that literally just happened.
i was craving a snack, for...reasons...and my partner's super codependent dog (he's so cute, but so needy) followed me into the kitchen, so me — being a cruel bitch — I taunted him by singing at him, "no — i'm gonna eat this cheese and it's got nothing to do with you."
a new release
ok, so i guess i finally am putting out a new track. i've been alternately struggling with / ignoring this one because (in part) i was having trouble with the vocal line. Prior to my transition, I was always pretty proud of my bass voice. I can comfortably sing a low C, and even touch a B, even a B-flat (though it's not a terribly useful / pleasant sound). My tessitura was always low E to like the G or A below middle C — and I feel weird about trying to alter my voice for transition.
posting every day?
i just realized i hadn't posted yet today — and i had been posting every day the past few days — so i came here to ask if posting every day is desired / too much.
i had an idea, but i forgot it 🤣
i was going to post about something else completely today, but i guess i'll keep sharing works-in-progress (WIPs). here's the second draft rough mix from october's abortive effort to write, record and produce an entire album in one month. i know i could probably make *something* out of any of these, but i'm not really sure what.
music discoveries
unless and until i completely give up on spotify / find a suitable replacement, i'm continuing my personal tradition of creating a new "discovery" playlist for each new year. the (vague) criteria are that the artist should be unknown to me (although i've broken this on occasion for an exceptional track by an artist known to me), and the track needs to have — in some way — grabbed my attention.
dunno if i could bear to listen to this
but i suppose i did say i would start sharing these WIPs. without listening — because i'm really not sure i could bear it, i'm pretty sure i was not happy with the lyrics to this one, possibly the harmony and form (i.e. the whole damn song). and this was just the first one i started laying down.
next share
ok, so maybe going through some of my WIPs will actually inspire me to get working again... so what do you want to see next?
The Misery of Aphok
Little bit of intro... this piece is old. Very old. I wrote it originally in like 2005–2007 or thereabouts as part of a sci-fi novel i was working on that i called "The Passenger." This story was supposed to be a folktale from one of the unaligned (as in, not directly associated with one of the major powers) planets in that story's universe. I keep thinking I'd like to expand on the idea, by writing a bunch of different folktales set in a sci-fi universe.
Shouting into the wind
So, in the spirit of what I posted yesterday, here’s a bit of an update on this past season, before I start sharing all kinds of random crap in the hopes of jollying myself out of this depression / actually getting back to the things i want to do.
sharing other things?
so — i've been debating whether folks (I guess as of time of writing, that's still just you, Becca) would be interested in me sharing random other things here that are non-music.
Processing >>productivity<<
I have not been very >>productive<< these past few months. Why write >>productive<< like that? Because I feel like I shouldn’t have to be. But I also feel a great pressure to be. To produce. To create. To “do my job.” Whether it’s my actual job, the thing that keeps a roof over my head, keeps me and my kids fed, keeps the power on, etc., or it’s my art — that I have to resist putting in quotes as “art” because I feel like it’s not legitimate. Without audience. Without money. Without cred. Without working for it.