{"id":109,"date":"2010-01-24T00:00:46","date_gmt":"2010-01-24T04:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.martinadowney.com\/blog\/?p=4"},"modified":"2011-10-09T09:16:52","modified_gmt":"2011-10-09T14:16:52","slug":"the-balancing-act-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.martinadowney.com\/tinyvoice\/?p=109","title":{"rendered":"The Balancing Act: Part One"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

With Robert Urban<\/p><\/div>\n

What can I say? It’s something that can never escape me. No matter how many distractions, stress inducing moments and work-life balancing acts I endure, I can’t escape the desire, the passion to write music. I’ve come to the understanding that if I don’t release it, it will haunt me forever like a living hell. Scary, isn’t it?<\/p>\n

The older I get, the more busy life gets. I am referring to the rat race of urban living. A few years ago, I found myself at a point of being haunted by the thoughts of wanting to create but not finding the space to do so. The more I moved away from the gift, the emptier I felt. And then the painful reminders sink in: aching bones and joints, weight gain and stress.<\/p>\n

I realized that I could never totally disconnect because my dreams still presented me with creative pearls of musical ideas; little nuggets that I could store on my hard drive and I did just that. It could be 3am in the morning. It could be a melody, a lyric but usually some kind of melody that I felt compelled to jot down in my groggy, early morning state. And so I did just that over and over again. The closer I was to dream state, the easier it was to truly capture the essence of the gift that was bestowed to me at the waking point. I have a good sense of memory for dream details: smells, places, colors, people (living and dead) and sounds.<\/p>\n

For example, I can recall being in a dream listening to a song on the radio, but realizing in the wake state that I never heard of it before. The same thing happened when I was watching a concert on the TV in my dream or the glowing lady in white who taught me an old song in a foreign language. There’s more on that next time.<\/p>\n

I still struggle with the work-life balancing act, but realize I’m not alone in that process and that there are other artists doing the same thing in different ways. In that work-life balance is the guilt associated with not having moved forward and feeling helpless in the Matrix of life. Even as a clumsy kid in gym class, I always hated the balancing beam. Remember that?<\/p>\n

I think I like creating music more than performing it. It’s always a good feeling when I can accurately share the soundtrack of my mind and when I can capture the moment. It’s a beautiful feeling. I do like performing, but I stress out from all the little details. However, when I am on stage it all pulls together and I am totally in the moment. It’s the before stuff that drives me crazy.<\/p>\n

About a year ago, I felt the need to record again. It’s been nearly 10 years and thus began the search. I am very happy to be working with the very talented Robert Urban<\/a> of Urban Productions. He is my George Martin<\/a>, the genius that he is. We’ve been working together for a few months and here’s a taste of what’s to come from our hard work. It’s called Sign Post. I hope you enjoy it.<\/p>\n[audio:http:\/\/www.martinadowney.com\/tinyvoice\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/SignPost8-mix1.mp3|titles=Sign Post]\n

SIGN POST
\nlyrics & music by Martina Downey
\n(c) 2010<\/p>\n

Martina Downey – vocal
\nRobert Urban – guitars, percussion, piano, orchestral sounds
\nSteven Sullivan – bass<\/p>\n

arranged, produced, recorded & mixed by R. Urban
\nat URBAN PRODUCTIONS, NYC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What can I say? It’s something that can never escape me. No matter how many distractions, stress inducing moments and work-life balancing acts I endure, I can’t escape the desire, the passion to write music. I’ve come to the understanding that if I don’t release it, it will haunt me forever like a living hell. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1QwR6-1L","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martinadowney.com\/tinyvoice\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martinadowney.com\/tinyvoice\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martinadowney.com\/tinyvoice\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martinadowney.com\/tinyvoice\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martinadowney.com\/tinyvoice\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.martinadowney.com\/tinyvoice\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284,"href":"http:\/\/www.martinadowney.com\/tinyvoice\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.martinadowney.com\/tinyvoice\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martinadowney.com\/tinyvoice\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.martinadowney.com\/tinyvoice\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}