So, now I need to find another piece. I have one in mind that also calls for a pitch alteration on two lines. But I seem to be more enamored of it than my audience has ever been, despite my efforts. I think it's got good worplay. It's about my struggles with my religion and the people in it. The Mormons are very gossipy, judgey people. And they are very into "shunning" outsiders, which I definitely was. But when you are young, and they are all you have, you develop a complicated relationship with them. Kind of like Stockholm Syndrome.
The next day . . .
I'm going to call a lawyer about my welfare hearing. I don't know if I need one, but the welfare office gave me the number to the Clark County Advocate Lawyers, so I'm going to call them and see what they have to say. I may have to go inpatient if I get a lawyer to represent me at the hearing. It's not so far a drive. I feel like I'm halfway there. I've been silently going through my clothes to see which ones are hospital safe. No metal. No ties or drawstrings. No tank tops. Socks. No bare feet and no ties on my tennis shoes. No Doc Martens (a weapon unto themselves). No shampoo/conditioner/soap/lotion/razors. No flat iron. No Kindle. No laptop. No phone. No wire bound notebooks. No pens. Crayons. Coloring books.
Yes this whole thing really upsets me. Last night, upon further inspection with Doc, I discovered they used my gross SSI income, which I didn't even know until 2 days ago. And not a number that I gave them. Something they had to look up in the SSI system, further proof they KNEW I had SSI. Which makes the denial that much more of a punch in the gut. Marginalized. Did they think I was too crazy to pursue my own rights? Is that how the system works? Whom do I tweet about this?
I ended up working on that second piece last night. And I have a systemic problem. The more I clean these things up, the more I clean up the "noise", echoes, pops, various sounds I don't know the origins of. And all of the clean-up I do just makes it worse. The recordings are too bad to fix. So do I post what I have, as I have it, on Clammr and Soundcloud and work on better recordings from here? Or put off my "debut" to try to get better recordings, which, who knows when that will be. I'm scared to tap into the rage to perform the pieces properly. There is so much, right below the surface. If you cut me, I wouldn't bleed, rage would seep out. I wonder what color it is?
And it isn't this ball of something in my chest. It is this radiating heat starting in my chest/belly, spreading out to my arms and legs. I don't know that my back got better as much as the rage pushed the pain of it out. I got sick of being useless pretty quickly. I get twinges when I sit in a certain way, but I don't care about it.
I care about getting a fair hearing. I've done the math and I still think I will be denied, after a hearing, but I don't care. I just want to be heard and fairly judged by the full criteria set down. Not this aborted process where I'm cut off halfway through and told I would be denied before I had a full and fair interview. All I want is a fair hearing.
I should contact the press after I talk to the lawyer. Get the ACLU involved. No, that will mean press interviews. No teeth on local news, no, that won't do at all. I could get a burka. Or a surgical mask. But wait, if I got "8 on Your Side" on my side, maybe they could hook me up with a pro bono lawyer. Many thoughts to be had. I'll call the Advocate Lawyers first and find out what they charge, likely on a sliding scale that will still be too much for me. We'll see.
What really gets me is when Psycho Bitch was staying here, she went down to the office, lied on her application, didn't have any corroborating paperwork, and walked out with full Medicaid coverage and $200/month in SNAP benefits an hour later. That burns my ass. If I had just not said Doc and I were married, this wouldn't have happened, I would be guilty of welfare fraud, but I would be covered.
Okay, I don't want to talk about this anymore.
I want to go outside, but the wind is gusting up to 50 or something. That's a wee bit blustery for me. Even the cats are in, they want no part of it.
"Despicable Me" is another movie I've seen recently. Fucking adorable. I loved every minute of it. And the minions did not annoy me as much as I thought they would. But then, I like Jar Jar Binx. Another tale of a misunderstood villain. Seems to be a theme running through my movie watching this month. Doc watched "Gravity" and sent it back before I got to screen it. His reason: It just would have pissed me off. I'll buy that. People floating around being grim would have either scared me into nightmares or, as he said, just pissed me off. I prefer Doctor Who for my space adventures. Suspension of Disbelief, baby. That's where it's at.
My play list is being odd today. I had it unplugged yesterday. Today it is playing stuff it hasn't played in a long time. I think it missed the laptop.
I assigned a new thumb drive to the Clammr, Soundcloud business. Of course I picked an empty one that looks just like the one with the play list on it. So I can't tell just by looking at them plugged in, which is which, the labels are on the bottoms of them. And my box of thumb drives is getting full. Doc has a box in his room that I'm going to ask if I can have for communal thumb drive storage. They are decorative boxes, one hand-painted in Belareuse, or somewhere, and the other, hand carved in Kurdistan or some such place. The garage sale we got them from was a little vague on the origins. They were in a box with other, general touristy stuff from the 50's-90's from all over the world.
Okay, Doc gets up in an hour. I have a couple of things to do before that happens. I may write more tonight, but it's NCIS night, so no promises.