Today’s deck is the Chou Kawaii Tarot or “Ultra Kawaii Tarot”.
And uh… yeah, the name ain’t lying. This is one of those I got in a bookstore and I’m noticing that they tend to be very curated quality-wise. I wonder who curates them, though.
Today’s reading was actually towards a question that I’ll… keep to myself, but the answer was “Don’t despair, you’ll get what’s due to you and things will move along”.
I sure hope so, deck. I sure hope so.
So I’ve come to realize that the reason I’ve taken to Karaoke so hard the past couple of days is because my sleep schedule is dogshit and it gives me something to do at like 11PM until 1AM if I wanted.
Make no mistake, I LOVE night walks, but it’s winter and the only thing stronger than my love for night walks is my hate for the cold.
“And yet you’ve gone to snowy places lately” that’s different, that’s in the mindset of adventure, not of daily life.
I went to the one that’s kinda closer to my place but also has no mic plugs, but that’s fine since I wanted to kill time more than I wanted to fully practice… ironically, however, I made quite the breakthrough practice-wise.
The most basic breakthrough.
The silliest breakthrough.
Did you know that if you go with the flow you’ll sing better? Shocking! I know.
Ok so, here’s the thing. I love things like “go with the flow”, this blog opens every entry with a fuckin Tarot reading, of course I believe in moody feely vibe-y things. But creature of contradictions that I am, I only learn stuff properly when I make it make sense for me, which usually involves rational reasons for things to be.
Let me take it from the top so you’ll understand both what the breakthrough is and how… basic it is in hindsight.
Something I’ve done lately in Karaoke is pick songs that I know so that I can sing with my eyes closed. For those that didn’t read that entry a while ago, having my eyes closed is just the most… comfortable way I sing for some reason, shutting off anything but sound.
Another thing I’ve tried to do… honestly in my daily life instead of just for singing, is grow less… stiff in my body language.
Basically I’ve managed to go from Stiff White Guy Syndrome (moving your shoulders is too spicy) to moving more down to shifting my feet around some. At first this was part of my own mental exercise of like… being aware how stiff I am in general and wanting to solve that, but today, something fun happened.
After warming up with a couple of songs (couple of attempts at Brain Powerd’s In My Dream testing out different pitch changes), I decided to go for Sekai Ga Owaru Made Wa. Slam Dunk’s second ending and something I sang in my first recital two years ago.
So we’ve got a song that I can sing literally with my eyes closed, I’m warmed up with the singing, and then… so I don’t know if any of you has ever seen the actual music video but it’s Some Shit.
So we have this video, I already have all the Mitsui arc in my brain whenever I hear the song, AND I’ve been kinda emotional the past few days.
I killed it with that song, I was moving my arms and legs, I was bending forwards and backwards, I was FEELING the song coursing through me like never before.
Letting go is fine, it’s fun even! It was liberating in a way I didn’t realize it could get to.
But like I said, my brain is a practical bitch, it’s not happy with fun and liberating, it wants something useful, tangible that it can get out of it.
You see, when I say I’m moving around it’s not random franctic swinging, it was all to the beat and rhythm of the music.
Turns out, instead of small motions that can tire (or hell, get out of sync) easily like tapping your foot or snapping your fingers, moving your whole body, your arms, swinging them higher and higher as the guitar riff goes up is a more precise body metronome.
I’m not bad at pacing, but I tend to jump too early or too late here and there, and this time around I was on the beat like never before.
And you see, saying “go with the flow” is fine and I get that, but saying “it makes keeping up with the pace of the song easier and also helps you visualize how the notes shift”… now THAT’S the sort of thing that makes my brain go “who cares if you look silly you have a practical reason to”.
Next recital is going to be interesting.
Though I woke up in a Sunday, I treated it like a Monday, so I replied to some emails. I tend to feel bad when I can only reply “No progress, paperwork still in progress”, but I’ve learned that that’s better than keeping quiet for weeks, so…
A task was done at the very least.