Yer Doin' It Wrong

I played the flute for a good ten years of my life. I chose the flute in seventh grade, partly because I was having trouble deciding between it and the oboe, but there had been a kick ass flute solo (probably done on a synthesizer) in a Guns 'N Roses song that summer (maybe you've heard it, November Rain), and my friend Shanda had grabbed my hand and thrust it into the air when Mr. Lumpkin asked if anyone wanted to play the flute. I joined, that day, a small mix of petite girls with pale faces and quiet dispositions. SSSOOOOO me, right?

I took to it very quickly, fell madly in love with the time it gave me, alone in my room, away from my thoughts. I used to subconsciously "dance" while I played. My instructor told me she thought I would fly away flapping my elbows around. I never noticed it. I never noticed anything while I was playing the flute, for a short while.

I played a Yamaha with a silver head, silver plated body, open holes, and a "b flat foot" (mad street cred).

Oh, and I was good.

I won first chair in the second band at all region when I was in eighth grade, which was exciting, but not as good as my predecessors had done. I knew that because people told me, my teachers, my parents, other band members, the older boys in band that used to flirt with me, the mouthy flautist.

Look at my PANTS?!?!?!?!!?

The next year I made first chair first band, and I didn't think I had a chance. I had flubbed the hell out of my scales audition, had a huge tantrum with my instrument while rehearsing that very scale (A major, bastard) earlier in the week, and spent an hour in the corner of the bathroom crying, NAY, weeping about my sub par audition. I hugged my knees to my chest, hiccuped--it was that awful hiccuping cry--and tried to calm myself from the terror of facing the world as a failure.

I convinced myself that I probably just got first chair because the girl who was supposed to "beat" me had mono, and while she did audition, she hadn't been able to devote all of her love to her instrument. She was devoting most of it to her boyfriend...CLEARLY.

But I did score a 111.54 out of 115.

The next summer, my dad and I were perusing the used piccolos at this warehouse collective somewhere in midtown Memphis. It was right before I started driving, so I can't remember exactly where it was, nor do I remember if it's still there. I hated the piccolo. I got it, I understood the impact of that particular register of woodwind on the depth of the music, but I just...didn't GET it, ya know?

There was a lady standing by, listening to me switch back and forth between the piccolo and some of the more expensive flutes. She had leathery tanned skin and frizzy blonde curly hair. She asked me if I was taking lessons with anyone...from where she stood...at a distance. She was wearing one of those broom stick skirts (of course, I probably was too...at that time in my life). My dad stepped in as I answered her. She smiled and rolled her eyes at my answer.

"I know her. She's good...but she can't teach you everything."

She approached my dad with her hand outstretched, a card in it.

"If you want her to learn the whole instrument and its purpose, I can teach her jazz."

"She's happy where she is I think, but thank you," my dad replied to her.

We laughed about it later. JAZZ. HA! What good was THAT going to do me at all-state auditions? I watched her as she drove out of the parking lot in her beat up 86 Honda, struggled to roll the manual window down on the passenger side, and lit a cigarette.

The next few years led me further and further from the flute. I still held onto the idea, went to master classes, went to see the amazing artists that my private flute instructor was able to bring to Memphis. She organized a flute festival and sent me to North Texas to study alongside a dozen other mouthy floutists with one of the most intense and effective flute instructors I have ever met (she made me cry once, in front of everyone). And, yes, I went to "flute camp."

When I came back from camp, my instructor told me I had my sound back, but I knew that I hadn't gotten that thing back, that part of me that was able to completely let go while I played. I couldn't relax, and I couldn't win. I couldn't audition. I became impossibly mortified of being in a room full of judges behind a screen. I told an instructor at a master class once that I might be able to play the song better if the entire audience weren't looking at me, so she made them get up and turn around. I played, and she told me it was all in my head.

My instructor recommended anxiety medication, my parents: therapy. My church recommended prayer.

There was this movement of thought that happened a while ago (if you really wanna know, you can always look things up) called structuralism. It saw (sees) everything as a structure built by society through language to define reality...which means that what we think is reality isn't really because we created the language that defines our reality...so it's our perception of reality...and....also......There was this psychoanalyst that came out of this movement named Lacan who philosophized that the moment we, as humans, learn language, we become separated from reality, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get back to that place where nothing was defined and everything was me and my mom, and I was my mom and my mom was me and the bed and my food and everything. Nothing existed outside of me until I defined it as such.

Except I let other people define it for me...most of us do the same.

That other place, where nothing exists, that's the place I lost. That's the place to which I've spent the rest of my life trying to return.

When I think about it, I sometimes wonder if perhaps taking that woman up on her offer to teach me jazz would have made a difference. I wonder if escaping from all the exercises and metronomes and contests would have led me back to the quiet existence of just me...and the music.

I think about it when I hear jazz, and it sounds so free. I know that anything can be killed, that there are aspiring jazz musicians who struggle to live up to the standards the world has set for them. I know what happens when you forget why you came into the room in the first place, what happens when you let go of what matters for what you THINK matters.

There is nothing so difficult as life in a box. There is nothing so soul sucking as drowning in comparisons.

I was too scared to go to school for music because I didn't want anyone to tell me that I was doing it wrong.

I still have that trepidation with all of my art. My art is my soul, even the most ridiculous parts of my art...s. I take medication and go to therapy all to find and free that part of me I lost when I started to let the world define my terms. I'm trying to define my own terms now. Finally. Please don't tell me I'm doing it wrong.

Through the Mountain

I'm not looking back at 2015. I refuse. I lived 2015 in a dizzy, present, terrified state. I let the winter, incidents of perceived failure, and regret lure me into a tunnel of depression I hope never to see again. It's a tall order. I know. But that is my resolution for 2016. Let me explain.

We can probably all agree that caves are really cool. I remember properly learning of the existence of caves in Coach Dixon's Earth Science class in 8th grade; although, I was always aware of their existence. We watched a National Geographic video in class (a pretty typical occurrence) that presented not only the scientific information but also the historical information on caves in America.

Long after I passed Coach Dixon's class with flying colors, I went caving in Cumberland Caverns with some friends. We ate pot brownies and made shadow puppets on the stone walls after crawling through the cave's hidden tunnels and rooms. For one minute as I lay on my back looking up at the rocks above me, I was seized with the terror that the rocks might come crashing down upon us at any slight movement of the earth we rested upon (paranoia, a pesky side effect of brownies). My brain jumped in quickly and reminded me that, "no, these thoughts are useless," and I let the terror float off into the cavernous darkness. I slept on the floor of the cave that night, dreaming of pink clouds and snoring like a rhinoceros...or an adorable pug.

A few years later, I stumbled upon a cave in the woods in Dahlonega, Georgia (over by the old distillery, you know the one if you live there). I want to know how many terrifying stories one needs to hear about the dangers of going into a cave alone to remove the inherent desire to do just that when one finds a cave in real life. This cave wasn't exactly uncharted or anything, but I did not have the right shoes for the kind of wading an exploration would have required. I still thought about it for a moment.

Floyd Collins

The National Geographic video we watched in Coach Dixon's class featured a brief summary of the story of Floyd Collins through narration, old newspapers, photographs, and sketches of the drama of his imprisonment and death at the hands of our cavernous earth. I hate sketches of past events. Sketch artists are always given license to intensify the drama of situations...especially in National Geographic movies. I saw the terrified face of Floyd Collins intricately sketched every night when I closed my eyes. That's all I knew of Collins, that he explored the darkest corners of earth and that he died, terrified, at the hands of his own lust for a full and glorious life.

While living in Dahlonega and teaching at the university, I tried to convince my theatre students to do the musical version of Floyd Collins' story because it would be an easy set and gorgeous music. It wasn't exactly a known show, however, and putting together a straight play seemed a lot easier and less horrifying than trying to throw together a musically complicated show with myself as the only paid member of the ensemble. Plus, there's a lot of really weird yodeling pieces in that musical.

The tragic outcome

I suppose I wanted to do the show because I was obsessed with the idea that this blank faced historic figure who died so tragically inspired someone else to write such beautiful songs of redemption. With the commemoration of his life in musical form, the image I had of Floyd Collins' contorted and frightened face could relax into peace and beauty.

When I walked into the darkness of depression, I knew I shouldn't have, but I wanted to see where it would lead...at least a very small part of me did, like that flicker of intense curiosity that I always feel at the mouth of a cave. Floyd Collins worked alone. I worked alone, but for far too long. Floyd Collins was trying to find a new entrance to the cave, and I too have been searching for another path...through my life (ooooooooh sparkles of dreamy realization).

I walked through the mountain of my life, surrounded by the demons of my own darkness and searched the images of my past for clues as to which tunnel to climb through to find the way out all while the terror that the earth above me could come crashing down and bury me alive continued to grow to the point at which I could barely stand on my own.

Then, with a lantern, my mother and my father came after me, found me, and began the task of helping me find a way out. They always do that because that's what parents do. They showed me the light at the end.

The nation watched the story of Floyd Collins, as best they could at the time, and an army of locals dug furiously to try to get him out. So too did my chosen family, my friends, notice my drowning and reach out to remind me that I'm not alone, that I'm never alone.

Thus, for 2016, I'm going to focus on that light, and I'm not going to look back without a rope around my waste and someone to talk me and walk me through the darkness. It's not because I'm not afraid any more. I'm terrified. But I don't want to be afraid any more.

I'll never forget crawling through a tunnel in the cave back in Tennessee with my head lamp scraping the rocky floor, and coming to a small opening large enough for one person to stand up at a time. I cast my light along the shimmering walls around me. Rock formations, dripping from the ceiling of the opening shone like diamonds.

I want to see further. I want to see what's in the light, and I want to share it.

Hi, Anxiety

It seems people are speaking more openly about mental health these days, and I am, of course, a devoted proponent of that, but sometimes I don't fully connect with everyone's talking. I know. It's because I am a unique individual with a life that is all my own, full of riDICulous baggage that is all my own.

I've said before, via this forum, that I have been diagnosed with moderate major depressive disorder...which I think is hiLARious (I'm experimenting with using caps lock as a grammatical tool to help you read my work as it sounds in my head, let me know what you think). However, it has recently, yes...only very recently, come to my attention that I may be just another ol' anxiety disorder sufferer. I had a doctor once tell me that he thought I was borderline personality disorder. YEAH. ME?

The truth is, everyone has anxiety about anything and everything. Life is anxiety. The difference with me is, and don't misunderstand me, I AM THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE.

How do I know? Well, my dad told me, and my mom told me, and they didn't tell that to anyone else...especially not each other (loveyouguys!). Then my teachers told me, and other people told me, and one day I realized: everyone is paying attention to me all the time and everyone will be mad at me if I fail.

I feel like that's normal for everyone...right?

And then I failed. And I failed again, and again, and again, and again, until suddenly everyone in the entire world hated me, and I lived like that, for a long time.

There are things I like to do a certain way, the exact same way all the time. It gives me a sense of calm, ok? I wouldn't call myself OCD, but my anxiety levels do require a bit of coping. I like having a schedule that's fairly similar from day to day. I like making plans to have fun, rather than flying by the seat of my pants, and I need a good balance of alone AND social time.

Sound familiar? Yeah. I basically just described a grown up. 

And there it is friends, the plight of every human: we grow up sometimes, and it's usually, forgive me, a mind fuck. 

One day you realize that everything you've been told has been...kind of...basically....a little bit...bullshit. Some people catch on really quick, and settle into being an adult a little bit more easily. I was not such an easy case. 

I was weird in high school. I was weird in junior high school. I was weird in every school, but at some point I got a glimpse of what life could be like if I were "normal," and for some reason, I wanted it...so bad. 

I wanted it all. I wanted marriage, family, church, babies, puppies, back yard, SUV (yep). The only thing I didn't want was a job I hated and a republican in the white house. That's pretty much all from my real brain that I held onto. 

I can tell you now, as someone that craved the "good life," for a good chunk of her own life, I am so happy that I failed at that. In fact, I might even go so far as to call that the biggest failure of my life. I failed at escaping my true nature. I failed to break the bonds of being the sole inhabitant of my own incredible planet. 

When I'm not on my planet, I'm traveling through space and time with this guy. 

You can't escape who you are (and with The Doctor's help, you realize you don't want to). You can't escape what you want in life. You can't make it something else. The only real way to move forward is to move forward...

...and seek out the truth.

My truth is that I'm afraid people hate me most of the time, but I've recently learned that I am not the center of the universe, so that truth is changing. Why? Because I'm free now.

Do I still fail? OH YES. I just failed in a big way recently. And it sucks. But I have friends, and arms, and legs, and eyes, and a nose, and the ability to taste and enjoy the flavor of ice cream. I also have wine. So, if anyone wants to come over...and watch Doctor Who. The new season just started.

Easy Like Sunday Morning

I didn't buy the most expensive cherries. I didn't buy the second ones down from that. I bought the cheapest cherries at the cheapest market. Still, every time I take a bite of one of them--stopping at the pit, nibbling the rest away, and slurping the last of the sweet flesh--I am suddenly on a patch of grass, on the yard of a weathered cottage no bigger than a front porch, eating warm cherries that I had just picked with a Czech student, from the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Czech Republic, who was currently learning English while I was teaching it.

Ask any Czech, at least from Bohemia (Moravians might think differently, but I haven't tested that hypothesis), what he or she did over the weekend, and you will receive, "I went to my cottage and I picked berries," as an earnest and matter of fact response.

At the time, I was in a transition, twenty-six years old, making steps that I invented rather than those that had been invented for me...ages ago...before I had any choice in the matter. Here's another fun metaphor: I was writing my own recipes for success after tossing aside the recipes that had been handed down to me. Wasn't that nice?

I lived in an apartment, waited tables, studied literature in graduate school at the University of Memphis, drank a lot of cheap beer, drank a lot of rum (because I am a pirate), tried cocaine a few times (I get it, but also, no. No, thank you), made out with a writer who thought he had fleas, waited up an extra hour to get McGriddles, shopped at Target, Best Buy, Wal-mart on the frequent, and my favorite shot (as I joyously announced to all who would listen at the bar) was a Red-Headed Slut. I also dyed my hair red. I was a (fuckin') American (girl), and, despite not always being great, life was still...not actually that bad.

Then, mere months later, I was sitting on this patch of grass, listening to this student talk about his passion for public transportation, and it was fascinating. I met a lot of men in Europe, actually, that were enamored with public transportation systems.

He invited me to his garden to pick berries, and everyone giggled when I told them what I was doing after class that afternoon.

He had two cats that lived at the cottage and roamed the rows of raspberry and blueberry bushes, currants, and strawberries. They mastered the branches of the cherry tree and kept a close watch as we climbed ladders to reach and pluck the lovely fruits from the organism that built them.

Oh, and his mom had baked a blueberry pie with blueberries from the garden. And we ate it. All of it.

He didn't ask me a lot about me, and if he did, I usually found an awkward way to spin it back around to effective ways to learn English.

We ate, and we lounged, and we spoke, and we enjoyed the company of two curious kittens.

He took me back to the tram-stop I needed and kissed me in a way that was awkwardly confident...or confidently awkward...if that makes more sense. And that was it.

I knew there had to be something more, and I was seeking it, in desperation. There had to be something better than the monotony of consumption. I cried a lot that second semester of grad school. I was a confused gal (mostly because of Derrida).

If you look for anything, confident that it is possible for you to find it, you will (I'm usually basically just writing euphemisms for all the things Emerson said).

I don't always remember what's important. I get caught up in an excessive amount of what simply boils down to insecurity...aching and sweating, terrified, insecurity.

Then I drop a couple of bucks on a bag of "sold as is" cherries, take a bite of one, and there I am again, at that cottage, full of blueberry pie. And I remember.

My Attempt at a Thank You

I'm trying something new these days. I don't know how to explain it, or why it suddenly makes perfect sense to me to live this way when it seems that only a few weeks ago, I couldn't imagine the world I'm living in right now. A few weeks ago, I had no idea it was possible to let go of worry.

Don't immediately get jealous, ok. It is exactly as good as it sounds, but it is also just as impossibly difficult as it seems. I STILL worry that I'll forget how to do it one day and go back to my previous way of living: in constant knots of terror.

Doing a search for "crying babies" is the saddest thing one could do.

I don't remember the exact catalyst that clued me in to the fact that I was in trouble, but it had something to do with my ever so complicated relationship with my parents. The parent in the limelight for this one: pops.

He was telling me how I needed to wait before putting a deposit down on a new place to make sure my promised room mate was actually going to move to Chicago. It was sound advice, that I had already put a good deal of thought into because my dad taught me to live like that. He had been telling me for forty-eight hours at this point. And I was already stressed out.

Nothing is more terrifying than looking forward to time with a parent, and knowing, just KNOWING, the criticisms that inevitably come along with it. My room will never be clean enough. Nor will my car. 
And surely I could snag a partner if I would just stop doing a list of things that I do...including...sometimes being mean. 

Chock it up to the fact that it often seems that men have a propensity to want to "fix" things. Chock it up to the fact that I still complain about being single, so I'm basically just asking for advice. Chock it up to the fact that I'm a woman and he's a man. Or call it what it is, an attempt to right some wrong he feels he's done me in raising me to this point. 

I have always been cautious, skeptical, and having my heart broken by my best friend when I was a wee young lad of just twenty-four didn't make it any easier for me to ease up on the caution. 

But I remember my dad saying to me once when I was contemplating trying out for the Tennis team in junior high, "Do you really want to try out? What if you don't make it?"

I probably just wanted to wear the cute outfits. 

That was the moment. I think about that breath of time a lot when I look back at how tiny my steps have been in putting myself out there. I think about all the auditions I didn't go to, and the jobs I didn't apply for, and the guys I allowed to be mean to me because I was afraid of being mean to them. And I was angry. For a while. 

But staying angry only hurts me, and I've been doing that for much too long. 

So, when my dad said, just one more time, "please don't put a deposit down on an apartment until you know for sure...," I lost it. I exploded in rage, punched my fist into the palm of my hand like one of those kids in Newsies getting ready to fight the fucked up child labor paper route system through song and dance, and I yelled, "don't you think I know that?! Don't you think I'm competent enough to know that?!? You don't even CARE!!! Leave me ALONE!!??"

To which he replied, "Okay."

If he said anything else, I didn't hear it, I immediately began to gracefully power walk a decent cushion between the two of us. We were on our way to a Cubs game. 

I have no idea how long I walked or how gloriously ridiculous I looked with my fists clenched and my hips jaunting about, this way and that. I was lost in a fog of my own rage. I felt like a two year old again, burning with fury and unable to express exactly why, and with no clue as to how to dry the tears. 

My mind raced over the other men in my life, pictures of moments like I was falling and seeing everything again. And I remembered conversations with my father about how I needed to hold on and be patient with them, try to be less frightening (try to hold back my true feelings). The only trouble is, the only true feelings I was having were the ones that were revealing themselves in my rage, the ones I was denying. 

In that moment I wished more than anything, that instead of cautioning me to stay safe when I wanted to take new steps and try to test my limits, my father had pushed me to step out into the abyss. Instead of counseling me to ignore the feelings that told me to run from different men, I wished my father had coached me to accept nothing less than the utmost respect from any man that would ever deign to love me. 

The truth is, he DID those things, in ways that anyone would attempt in his total lack of knowledge of what it's like to be a girl. For some reason, my brain only noticed that for which I have had the hardest time forgiving myself. 

My dad is, more than anything else, human. My dad has seen me as a tiny baby and, terrified, vowed to protect me at all costs to whomever would listen. My dad promised he would die for me, and I never doubted him. My dad's love for me is no less than super human, but his instinct to avoid pain is the humanity in him. Nothing hurts my dad more than seeing me hurt, and he prays for nothing less than a life without suffering for his daughter every night, in part because he loves me, and in part because he too has no desire to suffer. 

How could I fault my father, who loves me so, for being the very thing that he is: human? 

That is the plight of the parent, the terror of the task. Our humanity will never allow us to live a life without pain, without fear, without fault. For every responsibility we assume, we also adopt the myriad of mistakes we will make while trying to stay the course. 

Yes, both of my parents made mistakes, surely. But they made a lot of good choices too, don't ya think? I mean, I'm kind of amazing. At least, that's how I feel now. 

My dad called me to see if I wanted him to pick me up somewhere, and I yelled, "NO! I want you to apologize!! I want you to say you're sorry for all the things you did to fuck up my brain!!" It seems pretty intense, I know, but don't picture me saying it. Picture her:  

And so, my dad apologized. He didn't go on and on or try to defend his position. He just said he was sorry. He said that he loved me, and he asked if I still wanted to go to the Cubs game. I did. So we met there, hugged, scarfed down some hot dogs and beers and the WORST nachos I've ever eaten, and we watched the Cubs actually win a game. 

And since then. I don't care any more. I just want to be me. I don't want to worry about making me change to fit different spaces. I don't want to keep shredding my heart apart with self doubt and self hatred. I'm no longer interested in the voice that questions the validity and purity of every choice I make. I don't care about being pure. I want my hands in the dirt. I only care about being grateful for the love that I have in my life. I have people that worry about me constantly. I can't imagine what it takes to care about someone as much my parents care about me. I only hope that I can share some of the love I have been given with whomever may need it. I only care about turning some of that love in on my self, and admiring the core of my existence, the chance beauty of my tiny blip of a presence on the timeline of time. 

In other words, I am in awe. 

My Self-Summary

Before I had mastered the art of training my dog, he used to get out and go for these long runs about the neighborhood. I would, naturally, run after him, calling his name, taking it personally, waving off the angry looks of the neighbors around me that made up our small little town square in Dahlonega, GA where I was teaching theatre at the military college.

He always seemed to set off a pair of dogs who spent most of the daylight hours on the porch of their owner's home. They would bark furiously at us as we passed, Linus either on the leash or off, gleefully running in front of me. I often stuck my tongue out at them. I may have flipped them off once or twice.

I did so on one particular day when Linus had brushed past me and set off running as fast as he could away from the house. The dogs were barking in their little dog voices that sounded like screaming children, so I stuck my tongue out at them.

Once I had gotten Linus under control and headed back home, I heard the screen door screech open and slam closed as I passed the porch. Then, I heard a voice grunt, "I saw what you did."

Bewildered, I turned around. "You stuck your tongue out at my dogs."

I had no idea how to respond. I just apologized, ironically, and headed back towards my home. She tagged it with, "if you would keep that mangey mutt on a leash..."

At that point, the fire started burning a little hotter. I got home and watched Linus, his tail forever wagging, and his eyes forever loving. I thought, "nobody talks about MY dog like that and gets away with it."

So I went back to her house, and I stood in her yard. When she came out to meet me, I implored her to keep her dogs from yelling at me. Implore might be a bit too polite. In any case, she stuck her tongue out at me, and I began screaming nonsense at her to give her a taste of her dogs' medicine.

"You're a retard!" she gasped with a look of pure astonishment.

"Oh sure. that's right. I'M a RETARD. Nice one! That's real p.c."

"I don't care nothin bout no p.c., YOU'RE A RETARD!" She repeated.

And then I realized, this is one of those times you just walk away.  So...I walked away, laughing quietly under my breath, my heart racing with excitement.


**This is what I have written on a dating site, who's name I will not mention, as my actual self-summary. If this doesn't hook 'em, they may not be able to handle all this jelly.