i made this.

blog of artist and musician Melanie Ida Chopko hello[at]melanieidachopko.com

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Portrait notes while sitting in Bruce Molsky's class on singing while fiddling. Fantastic soulful playing, fantastic glasses. #portrait #musiccamp #fiddle #cba

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We’ve moved!

I moved my several times a week writing over to a new blog arm of my website - a bit snazzier in style, and easier to follow by email. Come on over!

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Prepping with Lena for Artist's Pictionary this Sunday, 6-9pm @thecompoundgallery. Preview from the Really Hard Championship Round. Come one, come all! #pictionary #drawing (em The Compound Gallery)

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Two by Two

Pretty excited to be starting a 30-Day Tech Set with Jody Richardson. After a great check in with my pre-production producer Rachel Efron, I’m hunkering down for the next few months to get my hands studio ready for recording my songs on guitar and piano later this year. Knowing that I can be a bit ‘bouncy ball’ - especially when it comes to slow moving, invisible, long term processes, I reached out to Jody to see if she would be buddies with me. The deal: We’ll each log a minimum of 10 minutes on musical technique for the next 30 days, and if we miss a day, we start over. 

I learned this from a fantastic class on money I took last year, after we were given the assignment to read 4 chapters from a spiritual book every day for 90 days (3 months!) - if I missed a day, I was to start over. I did NOT want to do this, but I was willing to have a different relationship with money, so I said yes.  I stopped and started by myself a few times, but I joined two friends in a text message support group, we all made it through the 90 days without a blip (along with a few 2am speed reading nights)!  “If you want to go far, go together!”

On the other side of those 3 months, I also see how if I ‘follow the principle precisely,’ I’ll get the changes I’d like to see. I’m ready to make a recording I’m really proud of, and I’m more willing than ever to “wax on, wax off” with my metronome, scales, and chord exercises.

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Why, Brasil does! On my trip I was consistently delighted at how any huge bronze sculptures existed for composers and writers, and how any airports had their names! #Brasil

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On my way to making a visual glossary of communal house sponges/cleaning tools #watercolor #illustration

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Back on the Click Track Train

I spent some time today sorting through the click track demos I recorded in December, to see what was useable and what compostable. About half and half. And in the same spirit, spent some time shoehorning my new song, How Do We Call It Home, into a good tempo. Here is an in progress peak!

https://soundcloud.com/melanieidachopko/how-do-we-call-it-home-in-progress?in=melanieidachopko/sets/morning-notebooks

After all of that  After cardamom and crushed tomatoes We drew like children on the kitchen tile You taught me how to paint your skin Yellow, blue, alizarin Sometimes I’d make you crack a smile

Do you call it home In a city with no seasons And do you call this home As my country for no reason Clutches yours, with endless wars How do you call this home?

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Network Connectivity

I've been thinking and writing a lot post-Brasil on the nature of paradox, the co-habitation of beauty and suffering, joy and violence on this planet. And I laughed this morning when I realized that everyday I'm reading Karen Armstrong's fantastic book on the history of the idea of God, and am simultaneously watching a whoooole lot of Parks and Recreation. Both so pitch-perfect. Ah, humanity. (I can only imagine the delight in having that as an advanced, best-of-English class!) "Leslie, I typed your symptoms into the Internet and it says you may have network connectivity problems." - Andy

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One week after returning from Brasil, I did a contract at a multi million dollar estate, orchids, palm trees and pillows. My mind is still chewing on on the nature of paradox and wealth distribution. #travelsketches #drawing

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A couple of vegetable eating, hard-but-good-for-me hours later, I’ve pretty much got a chart for the gorgeous chord progression in Chico César’s À Primeira Vista. The song has peaked my curiosity since I heard it in January, and it feels like a great starting for the melody I’m writing with John. I think it’s a flat V diminished 7th that’s the secret spice! Still trying to decide what that spells.

[update: Ahem, it's a plain old B7b5. Whew, insights after a break!] You can here it here! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lNuvtSqj8Bc#

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John and Me!

I'm freakin excited to be working on a melody this week that will eventually make it's way over to Nashville where the luminous John Mailandar will add a B part and then ship it back, and I'll add something, and who knows!

I think what's being called for is a nice blues about the 4 hours I spent this week on the phone with my phone company, trying to get my original phone back from some weird phone purgatory. The only thing left to do with that frustration is turn it into jet fuel for writing something funny. 

I'm reminded of this great older song by Ruth Ungar, Cold Feet Blues. Love it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk61C6OpDPc

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Such fun recording at TEDxBerkeley for a second year in a row. These humans! Such a contribution. I cried. #TEDxBerkeley #graphicrecording #drawing

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Though not my first choice, it's actually been nice to have a little break from all this English by having my first week from Brasil be a full tech wipeout. Now everything is fixed, shipped and delivered, and I officially punch back into America. I can call you now, you can call me! Cheesecake all around! (This collage is from 2006, found while searching through my closet for my checkbook.)

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Raggedy Love Army

I've been feeling extra grateful lately for the circle of people I've come back to in the US, people that, miraculously enough, speak the same English language and the same ridiculously fine, grey, anxious-yet-humorous language of being a human being on this planet. And today it make sense to me again, why I make art about this greyness, this obvious but very uncomfortable truth that I want to find and fix reality into ponies and rainbows, and that simply is not what is. And, alongside me are alot of people, and together we wring our hands, write our poems, sing our songs, and somehow do this one more day, accompanied by grace.

I found this today, my beloved Anne Lamott on Robin Williams, and me.

"If you have a genetic predisposition towards mental problems and addiction, as Robin [Williams] and I did, life here feels like you were just left off here one day, with no instruction manual, and no idea of what you were supposed to do; how to fit in; how to find a day's relief from the anxiety, how to keep your beloved alive; how to stay one step ahead of abyss....I would much prefer that God have a magic wand, and not just a raggedy love army of helpers." Anne Lamott

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Yesterday I was so happy to be back in the arms of my Sunday songwriting salon, tucked into Rachel Efron's apartment. I didn't realized how much I missed these people, how hard I would hug them, and how much it bouys me to sit down and hear Joe or Bekah or Shana pull out a piece they have been writing and rewriting, and ask, does this work?  And I didn't realize how much they would miss me. 

I shared the song on Afganistan I wrapped up on the plane in December, After All (haven't played that in a while!) and have a new gust of wind in my wings to patch up the rhyme in the 2nd verse and finish it for good. I've also been even more interested lately in writing a more upbeat songs, particularly a nice celebration song to face/in the face of questions I had in Brasil and see even more clearly in my own country. My latest favorite example of this is Chico Buarque's Apesar de Voce - In Spite of You. (This is a pretty good translation, though missing the great quippy cadence of his rhymes in Portuguese.)

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[catching up still!] Draft of Waterpost No. 21, for Laurie - Carnaval in Pelourinho, Salvador. I think I can confidently say I was the only person doing drawn journalism in Salvador during the 2nd day of Carnaval. This was my absolute favorite bloco, drum corps, Bizoro Avoador - a strong, tight, clear and joyous organism of 30 people playing maracatu. The women at the front danced while they played, skirts and feet cutting left and right, sometimes kneeling to the ground. What do you call beauty so insistent that it is power, or rhythms so strong in their wordlessness that they tell the story of every thing?

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[still catching up] Waterpost No. 20 - for Avery - Praia do Forte, Bahia. Avery was very first person to buy a Waterpost from me! And this is another favorite - the most popular boat in the bay, kids climbing up the sides and throwing themselves back into the water.