REPLAY: Crissi Cochrane on Facebook Live, April 25, 2020

It’s 11:05pm as I begin typing this post. Oh lord, this font looks so tiny. I’ve got a half a glass of wine aerating on the dining room table, and by “aerating,” I mean I am neglecting it, on account of having had enough wine tonight already. I’m wondering if it’s sacrilege to pour it back into the bottle. We are sort of rationing things around here.

I had a lovely time on stream tonight! I think I finally got into the space that I wanted to get into with these streams, where everything is relaxed and easy and laid-back, and kind of channels some of the friendly vibe I get from watching my brother’s streams on Twitch (which I’m listening to in the background right now - he streams three times a week for 4-6 hours a time, which is WILD because he also has a full-time job). I’ve been treating my live-streams very carefully and professionally, and I’m really glad that I was just… myself tonight.

I was really struggling with imposter syndrome a lot today. There’s a collaboration going around through some of our musician friends in the co-op, and it was in my hands to write the top line. I came up with something last night, and Mike and I worked on it and made it better, but I felt like… extremely vulnerable about the entire process, and I think I took some of Mike’s (constructive) criticisms under my skin into places where they suddenly seemed to have barbs. I haven’t really written anything for myself since before Adeila was born. And I’ve never done any top-line writing before, where you start with a finished track and have to eke out your place vocally within it. So I felt a bit less-than today. Especially because it seems like I am growing new wrinkles overnight, and I think adding aging to the mix of unworthy feelings makes the concoction especially potent.

And then I opened Twitter because I wanted to find news about a recent shooting (which, in retrospect, is not a thing I needed to really spend any more time thinking about in the first place) and instead, I happened to see headlines that people in their 30s and 40s are dying of sudden strokes from mild coronavirus infections even though they are otherwise perfectly healthy, and then I was visited by such a cloud of dread and angst that I felt like I just couldn’t catch my breath for a while, and I wondered how long I could possibly stay inside for - years? Like, how long would the world allow me to keep the roof over my head if I won’t leave the house to pay for it? Nothing like struggling with your mortality to make your imposter syndrome seem like a f*&^ing joke.

So, I went into this live-stream determined to not think about the above paragraph and decided to bolster my mood with some comfort and novelty in the form of my brand new glasses, my ripped jeans, and a glass of wine, to just pretend that we’re all hanging out and having a drink together. It made me feel so much better, I didn’t want the stream to end. I think that was also the perfect kick in the pants to my imposter syndrome, because how can I feel like an imposter if I am being 100% myself, and enjoying it?

TRACK LISTING:

11:22 Be Around
16:08 Melt Away
21:11 Brother She’s Gone
26:57 Love Is Blind
34:22 Sweet & Fine
41:40 Something We Did
50:02 Sleep In The Wild
57:38 Like A Lady
1:05:33 That Girl Is Still Here 
1:14:13 And Still We Move 

Still deciding how I feel about these glasses but had a great time wearing them on tonight’s stream ❤️ Thank you to all who liked, commented, and shared, and extra special thanks to Marcel, Jennifer, Michelle, Jacquie, and my daddy for the donations! 🥰 pic.twitter.com/mlFWrkc8n8

— Crissi Cochrane (@CrissiCochrane) April 26, 2020

The last thing I want to mention, before I painstakingly remove my false eyelashes and store them in a little Tupperware for the next live-stream in the hopes that I can reuse them (how nonsensical I must look when I check out at the drug store with strictly household essentials and also fake eyelashes, like, the most quintessential frippery), is that I had originally, pre-COVID-19, had a gig scheduled for this very evening, where I was going to make background music in a restaurant for FOUR hours and be paid $100, from which I was also going to have to pay at least one, if not two, cab fares of $20 each. Dear lord. Of all the gigs I had to miss, I am not feeling too sorry about that one, though I would absolutely play all the drudgery gigs in the world if it meant that this reality was not reality.

Okay, time for me to go do the eyelash thing, and then foolishly stay up way too late reading ("Me Before You” by Jojo Moyes) on my iPhone in bed! Bye! Love you!

PS - my next live-stream is Thursday, April 30, 9-10PM ET on Soul City TV!