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.

End of Part One

Every time I start to think that life makes any kind of sense, I'm reminded of that time I saw that Hobbit movie...two?...years ago. I was arguing with my dad before seeing it about whether or not it was going to be one movie or three movies. "There's no way that book fits three really long movies," I laughed at my dad's obvious naiveté. I mean, it's the smallest book in the series.

I graduated from the conservatory at Second City a little over a week ago, and holy hell has this year been a year. I moved to Chicago the day of new student orientation on June 23, 2013, and I finished my last show in the conservatory on July 21, 2014.

The year was long (I'm still suffering from PTSD because of the polar vortex), but not nearly as long as the years leading up to this exact moment. My road to my...life...has taken more twists and turns than I ever thought possible...when I graduated from college. That's a good thing, you know, because I've really been striving for a while to live the life of an autobiographer.

I used to tell my college boyfriend how I dreamed of going to Second City. The mere notion that people like Gilda Radner (who taught me that I wasn't the only weirdo), Mike Myers (who basically wrote my 90s experience), and the Ghostbusters (the Ghostbusters!) had studied at this institution in Chicago, made it essential on my list of places to be, if only for a moment, before I die.

He bought me a coffee table book about Second City from the bargain book table at Barnes and Noble. My first teacher at the conservatory is in that book.

Skip ahead to another chapter. I was a few weeks away from defending my Master's thesis and moving to England indefinitely (and what a fun turn that was), when my mom asked me, "what would you do if you weren't moving to England?" "I guess I would go to Second City and audition for the conservatory."

That was 2007.

Those seven years between then and now were just as earth shattering. In fact, every minute of my life I spend moving forward tends to crush it. How weird is that?

I don't know when I decided that I wanted to stop waiting to arrive, but it was in between all these places and spaces.

My favorite book as a kid was The Monster at the End of this Book, starring Grover. If you're familiar, you know that the fun is in the title. As a kid, you can't wait to turn the page because every turn gets you one hilarious page closer to seeing the monster. Even though Grover is so cute and does such a silly fun job of trying to keep you from doing so, you eventually get to the end. Don't worry. I don't do spoilers.

GUYS! We know that there is a monster at the end of our book, and it's a scary monster. Nobody wants to die, but most of us turn the pages so damn fast, it seems like we have a death wish.

Who the hell invented "settling down?" It's a crock. Settling down is something I want to do when I'm six feet under.

As scary as it is to know that we are all moving as one towards a similar fate, the thought of stopping, or slowing down, is more terrifying than any inevitable outcome.

So I checked off a bucket on my list..or something, but I'm not anywhere near done, and coming to that realization is terrifying and wonderful.

My only problem now, is making my opening metaphor match my final message. You see, I was NOT happy when I came to the end of the first Hobbit movie to find that there were TWO more movies that were just as long to be released over the next two years. There's a monster at the end of that book too, but I know what it looks like, and I know how it all goes down. Maybe it's the fact that this installment in the Peter Jackson wheelhouse feels less like art and more like watching a bunch of nerds masturbate (and, friends, masturbation is a sin) that makes it tiresome, or, perhaps I just don't like having to wait to pee for that long multiple times in a series.

I'm excited about the end of this chapter of my life, however, because I know that it only means the beginning of another chapter, and I can only speculate about the outcome of this one. I've read the Hobbit and the other books. They're old news. The books are better, anyway...as is this guy's version of the book in question.

In my case, however, as a future autobiographer, my actual book will just make the (billions of) readers jealous. Take that little bit of advice for what it's worth. *wink

Totally unrelated side-note: If you are a fan of Sesame Street literature, may I also suggest this book:

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. 

Acid-ity

There comes a time in every child's life that she must experience the world through her own eyes rather than the eyes of those that came before.

No. I'm not talking about history, or adulthood, or just the broader sense of life experience. I'm talking about something much more/less significant. I'm talking about psychedelic drugs, more specifically, ACID.

It might help if you read this post whilst listening to this song:

I am listening to it while I write this post. 

Let me preface this (in the middle) by saying that I do not advocate the irresponsible use of drugs. I don't. Drugs are a HUGE responsibility. NEVER take drugs for shits and giggles. NEVER. 

I decided I wanted to try Acid after seeing a fantastic episode of Mad Men wherein Roger Sterling (my FAVORITE character) takes Acid with his soon to be estranged young wife along with a bunch of other wealthy adults during a time when the medical industry was testing the effects of LSD. I'd been toying with the idea for a while, and I was living close to some similarly toying friends that I considered and still consider to be my intellectual equals. We MADE PLANS that required us to wait a good few months before actually taking the drug. We talked to professional drug takers (or whatever you want to call them) who gave us excellent advice on how to spend the day without crashing into a pile of misery at the end of it (because that's what happens when you take drugs....you feel fantastic and then you crash into a pile of painful misery). 

If the music has ended, you can always restart it. ;)

The day we had planned was upon us. It was in June in Atlanta, and the weather forecasters were calling for an incredibly hot day, over 100 in the shade. Everyone was advised to stay inside. But we didn't want to. We went to a park on a creek, brought water, juice, fruit and trail mix, and spread out. 

From the time one "drops" acid, it takes about an hour or so to feel any of the effects. We were coming out of a hike through the dense woods when I started to "come up" as they say. I found a rock in the shade where I could soak my feet in the water of the creek and allowed the waves of my gradual loss of control to crash over me. 

It mostly just felt like my breathing had slowed down along with my mind. I remember looking up and seeing my friend Matt, who had mentioned putting on some sunblock before anything happened, standing in the creek up to his knees, and confusedly rubbing thick, cakey circles of old sunblock around in his chest hair. 

"There's something wrong with this lotion."

I just laughed. 

I won't go into all the details. I will say that I found myself at one point, sitting on a rock in the middle of the creek, the current rushing over my shoulders as I tossed my head back and laughed at the sky. I laughed and laughed until I wept, and then I wept until I laughed again. I was experiencing the stereotypical Acid trip. I also spent a long time with one of these guys:

thinking, "this guy totally gets it." What? Oh, you know, the basic stuff: Life is fleeting. We're all plummeting towards death, and the more we fear it, the faster it comes. Thus, there's no good place for fear in our lives. There's a place for careful consideration, but life altering fear, NO. 

The truth is, I didn't need to take acid to figure that out. I knew it. What's the one reason you aren't doing exactly what you want to do RIGHT NOW? And you can't say "money," because you know how to make money. The answer is fear. You might be afraid that you won't succeed, afraid that you will succeed, afraid you'll be alone forever, afraid you'll end up on the streets, crazy and homeless (that's not how you become homeless. look at homeless people. most of them need a good doctor and some kind of medication for mental disorders OR help with addiction [BE CAREFUL WITH DRUGS]). 

Every reason that you might be able to give for not living the life you always imagined you could live can be traced back to FEAR. 

I was a trusting kid. My parent's didn't have to scare me into submission too often (I don't think). When a lot of my friends were sneaking out because their parents were strict, I was hanging out at home with my parents watching Star Trek TNG or listening to music and writing in my angst-y teen journal. My parents weren't strict. I got to go out when I made plans, and I didn't go out when I didn't. I trusted their authority and guidance, some might say innocently, because they didn't try to scare me into obeying them. I didn't try to rush into adulthood. I let it come upon me organically. So, for that, I think they knocked it out of the park, even if they don't agree with me. I mean...I am writing a blog about dropping acid. 

So do this: return to freaking innocence. Just laugh if you want. Cry if you want. And don't care what other people say. You're the only one that knows EXACTLY what you need. And if you aren't sure...FIGURE IT OUT, and then give it to yourself. 

The only difference between figuring that out with or without acid is the pure moods style music in your head...and the visuals. CRAZY VISUALS. 

OH. AND THIS:

I Fought the Law and the.......Please Don't Tow My Car

Look. I don't want you to get the wrong idea. I don't want you to think I'm some tough macho gal that goes running in the direction of her fears like a damn Matador. I'm pretty terrified of a lot of possible scenarios.

Let's take getting caught in a park with Linus off his leash, for instance. I don't know why this terrifies me, but it does. It didn't always terrify me. When I lived in Georgia, Linus and I were a stone's throw from a ton of great outdoor activities. We went up to the Appalachian trail almost weekly, and I'd keep him on his leash until we'd get a little ways in, and then I'd let him loose. Why? Because I'm reckless? No. Because I trained him, and he stays with me. I know the damn dog. So when I let him run around me at a trail head once, without his leash, and a (fat) park ranger drove up and got out of his truck to sidle up to me and announce, "you gotta have your dog on a leash," I pretty much had it coming.

However, this guy had a north Georgia accent, and he said it like I was some kind of idiot that didn't know what I was doing (sometimes I'm irrationally angry at people when I think they think I'm dumb. I just don't like condescension. It's upsetting). So I responded, not by saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I didn't realize," because who cares what this guy actually thought of me. Oh no. I said, "Oh really? It doesn't say it anywhere on this information board. How am I supposed to know that?"

SO, he pointed at a line on the list of "hikers guidelines" that read, "keep your dog restrained at all times," and he said, "Right there. It says you gotta have your dog on a leash."

"No. It says, 'keep  your dog restrained.'"

"Well, yeah. That means on a leash."

"My dog is trained. He's under my control, and is, therefore, restrained. He will never go too far away from me, and he always comes when I call him."

"But the woods are different," (like I'd never been in the woods before. GAH), "he could look up 'n see a squerrl' n' the next thang yew know he's off into the woods, n' you're callin' me on the phone cryin' 'bout how you can't find yer dog cuz he done run off into the woods."

It's a good thing I'm not violent...

Usually.

I took a breath, a beat, a pause, and finally bent down to put the leash on Linus and said, "I understand. Just...the wording is not as direct as it could be. I can easily argue with the wording."

I took the leash off about five minutes from the trail head. Never lost him.

Today, on the other hand, I drove Linus north of the city to find the Des Plaines River Trail. Funny thing, Google Maps. Whenever I use it to find driving directions to a trail, it just takes me to a random spot close to the trail and says, "you have arrived."

I love that: "You have arrived." Who doesn't dream of hearing that every day of her life? When Google Maps tells me, it usually just means that I'm on a two lane road in the middle of nowhere and there is PROBABLY a trail...into the woods...close by.

Well, I was right next to the trail, but I had no idea where to put my car so that I could get out to walk on the trail. I drove up and down the road avoiding "no parking" areas, the lawns of homeowners, and anything that looked like it was there to keep up the charade of picturesque country living. I literally got stressed about this. About PARKING. I kept thinking, "I can't park in front of this person's house because it will upset them," as if upsetting a midwesterner is the worst thing one can do.

I mean, it kind of is. They're so damn agreeable.

I pulled my car around behind a house that was falling apart, but still on sale, and I left a note. I sat in my car worrying about the realtor possibly showing the house, coming to the back, seeing my car, and flying into a rage of cop calling/fine charging. I WORRIED about this. So I wrote a note that simply asked of anyone that might discover the car, "please don't tow my car. I'm new to the area, and I just want to hike on the trail. I am so sorry. I will be back before sunset."

I don't know where it comes from. Maybe staying in Georgia, as much as I loved, dearly, my friends, was inching me towards the edge. I was like that kid that grows up in a small town, who never fits in, and just wants to leave it all to become a dancer. Because nobody in this one Starbucks town understands that I have DREAMS. So I bucked the law. When the law said, "please restrain your dog," I responded with, "You restrain YOUR dog. Cuz I'ma....kick your....mom. You! Bah! Yeah!" And then I cut all my hair off and joined the circus.

And since then, I've found that circus life is something I want to maintain...so I don't want to upset anyone....or, I would prefer to upset as few people as possible. I plan on sticking around for a minute. Please don't tow my car.

P.S. I let Linus run off-leash on the trail. It was pretty freaking cold and, therefore, pretty empty.
P.P.S. I didn't actually cut all my hair off.