LaurieWrites

Let go, two-three

This has been a really strange week.

First of all, welcome to yesterday, the most humiliating day of my life. No, really. Really, really. I mean, there were some times in college where I did some significantly ridiculous and humiliating things, and some times in the years after, now that you mention it (and why did you have to? Do you hate me that much? What have I ever done to you? HUH?????) but the vast majority of those were related to too much beer. Now that I'm depressingly (wink, wink. Joke.) sober most of the time, my idiocies are totally traceable to my allegedly rational actions, and what a bleepity bleep bummer THAT is. Blah. Who needs it? Accountability BLOWS.

And speaking of that, I so blew my piano recital song today. I choked worse than John Edwards in the Cheney debate. It SUCKED SO HARD. And the thing is, I TOTALLY KNEW THE DAMNED SONG. I knew that song better than I know SO MANY things. I played it and played it all week, and was all, "let EARTH reCEIVE her KING" and whatnot for days. It actually sounded great this morning, and I thought it would go swell. But sitting up on a stage in front of all these staring eyes...I flipped the HELL out. And I've never felt that way before, exactly. I acted (poorly) and sang (less poorly, but still...) my way through TWO ENTIRE plays in my senior year of high school, and two in my junior year. Me. I had bad hair, no fashion sense, and was fairly ungraceful, and I sang on a stage for two hours and made it through. Now, I'm supposed to be a teeny bit more together, and I flipped OUT over one little tiny song. I was so pissed off. I was mad at the situation - not myself, really - because I don't know what else I could have done to prepare. My hands learned it, and my brain knew it, and it quite simply fell apart. Okay, so maybe I was a little bit mad at myself, but it was more frustration that what had worked so well in one venue - and it just sounded LOVELY this morning on the big piano upstairs - could fall apart in fifteen minutes. Of course my purveyor of musical doom teacher told me after that that's why she listens to us ahead of time, because she knew I could play it even though I freaked out, and I guess that's what your final grade is based on.

"I can't tell you beforehand that that's going to happen," she said. "But it happens. Every time. It'll get easier." Right. This is her (bad cell phone shot):

This is her, I should say, at the scene of the crime. See, I'd be mad at her, and make a crack about how "blonde pianists tell dirty lies" or something, but she's also left-handed, and the cachet of being a left-handed person tends to trump my rage at totally competent blonde pianists who tell me shit like "It'll get easier." (She really is very nice, as well as annoyingly talented, and I can't imagine anything worse for a pro musician than dealing with a room full of 16 adult beginners and their attendant control issues and insecurities. So I shouldn't be using her as a device for my (in my own mind, anyway) ironically humourous ramblings. Really.)

Actually, it was kind of scary, because I really had learned the scales and knew the song really, really well. We worked on my inability to take my fingers off of keys after I've played notes, and I actually got kind of adept at lifting them up with a teeny little flourish, even, so I felt all powerful for a minute. But in the last ten minutes before we went downstairs for the performance (in a totally different room where we'd never played before, I might add, which was somewhat nervewracking for some reason) I started f'ing up the song in new ways. I mean, I started making mistakes I'd never dreamed of making. My fingers started banging keys that made no sense whatsoever, like my freaking MUSCLES had melted or something, or I was having a panic-induced seizure. And I thought, "Oh God, I can't leave this room having screwed up my last run-through," because I am a person for whom patterns are very important. If I keep doing it well, I'll keep doing it well. If I messed it up the last time, I'll probably mess it up again. I just have to do it right, so I can move forward with the correct process in mind. I'm sounding like a lunatic at this point, I know. I don't exactly know how to explain it. It's just that I knew, if I left the practice room and the last time I played it was wrong, once I got on stage, I'd do it wrong. I don't pretend to understand the psychology of it, or the neurology, or more appropriately, the bordering-on-pathology-neurosis...but I knew it wouldn't work. And I didn't really have time to nail it one last time before we left the lab, and what I feared would happen when I faced a brand new, big, bad, for-real piano, happened.

I went on second and so I had to sit through another 45 minutes of passable performances before I could get out. I did not cry, which I realized to my horror was a FRIGHTENING possibility. And at the end, I went up to the teacher and asked her if I could stick around and play it right on the stage, so my last memory of this experience wasn't abject failure. She was good with it. She really is a pro - and I know, regardless of the piano thing, that teaching anything is difficult. Dealing with personalities and issues and questions and problems NONSTOP is wearing, and I admire other people who roll with it in a competent way. And she seemed to think it was no big deal. But the thing was, I knew that it should have worked out a different way, even if it didn't, and my frustration with that type of situation is unfortunately hardwired into my DNA, I'm kind of stuck with it, whether I know the reasons why or not.

Today I'm over it, mostly. I went and spent too much money at Whole Foods and went through the dangerous doors of Ulta too, which is a bad idea when retail therapy is in order. I bought some flowers, which always perks me up, and because yes, I did TRY. Used to be that wasn't always a given, and progress is better than inertia in my little corner of the world. I'm still bothered that it happened the way it did, though. It really sucks when you actually DO work at something and still screw it up. The stuff I slack off on and delay and procrastinate about - that stuff I kind of deserve to blow in the last inning, but somehow I usually manage to pull it off. This is way harder, and I haven't blown it off. And I'm really kind of tired of learning lessons about persistence at this point. That sounds petulant but it's just true. It's like, I KNOW. I know that good things don't come easy (I have a master's degree in that topic alone) and that you have to WORK for stuff and blahblahblah. So next time I work at something and want it to go well, it had better. And that is all.

I'm halfway through my 35th year. I realized this very late last night when I was driving home in the torrential rain, a shooting pain went across my back, I realized the date, and said, "Damn, it hurts because you're OLD."

No, really. Some of the so-called "MommyBloggers" write letters to their kids in their blogs each month on their birthdate. In lieu of writing one to my dog on the tenth of each month (he's a Capricorn, just like me and Jesus...) I suppose checking in with myself is an okay option. I'll stop short of writing the letter to myself though, because that would just be kind of weird.

The first part of the year has actually been pretty good, now that I stop and think about it. It's good on a basic level because at no point so far this year have I just wanted to lay down in the road and call it a day. That already makes it hands down better than last year, which was some untaped reality show of hell. In the '06, I'll go so far as to say that I'm in a pretty good spot and I'm excited about a lot of the things I'm doing. This is really, really great, because it means that a wish came true, literally. When I had my tiny birthday cake party in December with just me and my parents and Steven, I was bummed out and a little bit hung over, and I was doing the cake thing because I had to or some stars in my mother's sky would burn out and she'd walk around dragging her chains all freaking year. (I mean that in a loving way, I swear.)

Anyway, when I was blowing out the candles on a cake that didn't turn out to be half bad, I thought, "Please, let me have a good year. Please. Just...Please." Prayers of desperation are always rather general for me, but they're the most effective. Take it down to the basics, I say.

The next day I thought about it some more and I decided that a good year would be one in which I had no emotional trauma, particularly self-inflicted, where I pursued and learned as much cool stuff as I could, and traveled as much as possible. So far, I haven't done so bad.

The traveling has been a blast and a blessing. I went to Atlanta in February, and that was fun. I went to Boston in...March, which was a lovely city and a dream to photograph. Then there was New Orleans, which was amazing and incredible and I can't wait to go back in the fall to take more cemetery pictures and just hang out and experience more of the city. The Bahamas in May was awesome, and now I'm hoping to hit California and South Carolina this summer. I'm also hoping for Austin, Savannah and Montreal in the fall. There's just so much to see and do and I find that getting out there in the midst of it is the only thing that really keeps me sane. I've been writing about travel over at Blogher, and that's just a lot of fun. I'm very happy about that gig, although it was hard to keep up with there for a while. Balance...so important and so hard.

Learning and challenging myself creatively is my other priority, because it keeps me busy and when I'm not bored, I'm so much better off (and so are other people, because when I'm occupied I'm not bothering the crap out of them, too.) I do have a choice over what I do with my energies - whatever they are - and usually now I put them in more productive places. MOST of the time. Plus I have frequent dreams of going...somewhere and doing something chill, so it's good to have some mad ninja skills. ; ) Photography continued in the spring and the class kicked my ass. I got an A but only because I breathed it for weeks. Weeks. I blew so much money on developing and photo paper that I decided to go digital for a bit. I actually have an outdoor photography teaching assignment coming up, which is going to be fun. I'll get back into that in the fall I hope. Piano is also coming along okay. I'm so clueless at it that it's funny to me, and that helps me keep it in perspective. I went and bought the "Rent" music the other day, which is RIDICULOUS. It's so complicated. But I figure...why not? If I leave it at "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" I'll get bored really fast. I also bought a book of "Easy Listening Favorites" because I am a dork so I can do things like pick out the melody of "Careless Whisper" with my right hand, cheat on the chords with the left, and sing emotively when no one's home. Ain't it great?

Best music of the year so far: Neko Case, Girlyman, The Wreckers, Patty Griffin, the Rent Soundtrack, Tift Merritt, Dixie Chicks, Bahamian pop music, Lionel Richie, Ellis Marsalis

Aside from that...hmmm. I still work hard and scored a great new job in the new year also, so that's been good. I have great friends, family who are typically maddening and wonderful by turns, and I'm trying not to be such a nervous wreck about stuff that just doesn't matter anymore. I'm trying to be smart about things and sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail miserably. I'm trying to have fun again without thinking too much about it. I'm doing stuff I should have done a long time ago, but it probably just means it's the right time. I do need to eat better food - as in a dinner that isn't garbanzo beans - and I need to EXERCISE. (Blech. But I need to. That's for the second half of the year.)

And speaking of birthdays, this is me and my gauntly skinny mother on my first one. I was as serious about chocolate then, apparently, as I am now, and had a much more crooked little nose, and have since bagged the fetching rompers. Most of the time.  I still might give you a look like that one if you're on my nerves, and I'll mean it at that moment but I'll get over it.

No, not a Craisin

Stupid thought of the day, or, I've been spending too much time sitting in this DAMNED POST-STORM FLOOD TRAFFIC. GAH!!!!!!!!:

I bought some great cherries at Whole Foods a couple weeks ago, which is one of my favorite things about it turning summer. Cherries. Love cherries. (And those yellow Rainier ones from Washington State that have the slightest shading of red and cost like $3,000 a pound? I love THOSE like it's my job. I could eat pounds of them, so please send them packed in dry ice.) Anyway, I brought the satchel of cherries to work with me in the car one day because I wanted them for breakfast and breakfast these days is in motion. I clearly dropped one in my coffee cup holder, because when I went to get some change out of it today (and my, isn't this telling about how I multi-task my belongings and compartments? Sad but true...) I picked up a dried up, wrinkly little cherry instead. And when I realized what it was, I thought..."I made a CHAISIN."

This was a spontaneous thought that actually came fully formed out of my brain. Please say a little prayer for me while you're combing your hair, now. Thanks.

"Sir, you're scaring the Boy Scouts. And me. But I'm too butch of a city council member to admit it."

My laugh for the day. It may be yours as well, if you're lucky.

Then again it could be just me, because any time the word "rogue" is used as an adjective, it gives me the giggles. But that's because I'm a geek. You may be hipper than that. A geek hipster, even.

oh, baby

My favorite thing I've seen today.

Rain is my least favorite thing I've seen for DAYS. This is some serious rain we're having here. I just got home and it was actually scary to drive in. I was thinking about how if I'm scared in THIS kind of rain, I feel even worse than I did already for the people who were stuck in New Orleans during Katrina. The power of too much water is scary (which of course would bring to mind the tsunami as well, but that's a disaster of such magnitude that you can't really compare it to anything we could imagine.) People are getting trapped around here on roads near creeks and what have you, and one lady said in the news today that the water was up to her car window when the rescue unit came. Freaky. It just happens so quickly that it's really best to not be on the road.

I'm slacking from doing my paper, which of course means I'm finding new, fun stuff on the Web. A TOTALLY RELEVANT writing search (not that I need validation, right? RIGHT?) led to this one. Neil Gaiman is one of maybe three sci-fi writers I read (Ursula LeGuin is excellent as well, and I've mentioned Mary Doria Russell here before, but she's not straight sci-fi so she doesn't really count), since my ex-ex-boyfriend bought me "Neverwhere", determined to prove that I could indeed enjoy a sci-fi/fantasy novel. It obviously did nothing for the relationship, but I kept the crush on Neil, which is very well-deserved, I'll add (scruffily attractive sci-fi geeks are one of my  specialties, apparently, and he's British too. Done. In.) And I'd totally expect the father of any child of mine to do something as of-the-moment as name the baby after a drag queen in a Lou Reed song. (And yes, he's married, so it's a Platonic crush. Back off. ; ) )

I'm writing a paper about young peoples' involvement in politics as encouraged by media like Eminem's "Mosh", "Rock the Vote" and Puffy Diddy's "Vote or die" slogan. This has me thinking that a Ph.d in media and culture is a good idea, which also means someone should put me in a cage until the urge passes.

I have to play "Joy to the World" in a recital hall in front of several people on Thursday. Our teacher, because she is apparently of the humiliation school of beginner piano instruction, believed it would be a swell idea for us to be able to invite family and friends to this exercise in torture, which means that there will be more people there than just my fellow recruits. I really feel weird about this, but only because until three weeks ago, I didn't know how to find middle C on a map. Now I know a little more, but not much...and I'm not feeling quite ready to expose my rudimentary knowledge (even of a CHRISTMAS song. Hello, I get to play a CHRISTMAS song. Heehee) to the unsuspecting masses. Who wants to come to my house for some bloody Marys at 8 a.m.? I think it can only help.

I am kind of jazzed because a friend of mine plays guitar and has been composing some music, but he could use some help with lyrics, so that might be fun. Now that I have some kind of control over the keyboard, and plan to keep on with the same class in the fall, it should make it easier to even conceive of writing, which is something I've wanted to learn how to do for years, but never dreamed I could understand. So far it's been fun, which is my priority.

Two songs of the day: "Get out the Map", Indigo Girls and "All Right Okay" by Last Train Home (okay, LTH's "Lorelei" too...I can't pick.)

And now I have to really write this paper.

For so long

Andy Gibb was the first musician that I ever had a crush on. I was seven years old when "Shadow Dancing" was released, and my mom and I went to one of his concerts. When he died entirely too young in 1988, I was so sad, in that way one can get sad only over a life that ends too young. I'm a not-so-closeted Bee Gee's fan too (Want to hate on the Brothers Gibb? Check out the MILLIONS SOLD, 'kay? AND you want an overwrought vocal solo in my car? "Too Much Heaven", baby. Queue it up. ; ) ) I heard "I Just Want to Be Your Everything" in the car today, and Barry Gibb can write a significantly catchy pop song, as well as a very sweet love song. This one qualifies on both counts.

Midsummer

Shots from this weekend (and a little bit before.)

For his birthday, I played my father his favorite scenes from Sideways, because I'm cool like this. This is the one where Miles (Paul Giamatti...sigh...) says "I'm not drinking any FUCKING Merlot." Kills him everytime.

In a heretical break from tradition, he blew his candles out before the song was over. This didn't go over well with my mother, as could be expected.

  Everyone was extremely happy, for some reason. Have you ever seen such unbridled joy in your life? You have? Good for you! You deserve it.

My father didn't like this shirt and tried to give it to my uncle, who didn't take it. But it's weird how they look like some twisted variety act getting ready when you put these side by side.

My dog tired of all of it and went downstairs to watch Sideways. My dog rocks, by the way. He totally knows when he wants to watch a movie.

Went for crabs on Saturday.  

This does taste like it was made with a clay pipe, and not in a good way (must read the small print).   And finally, caught this sign on my way to my friend's house today. I wish someone in charge would pay attention to this concept, but I don't think that will ever happen.

Mosh

I'd never seen the video for Eminem's "Mosh". I'm analyzing it for my language and politics class. If you haven't checked it out, it's worth a look.

Namaste, Yo

I woke up this morning with my heart in a vise. I had nowhere to be for a change, and could have stood the extra hours of sleep, but realized in three minutes that this was just not happening. I felt the way I feel when my swirling thoughts have overtaken my tiredness, and my brain won't let me relax back into resting mode. It's scary, because I don't have this feeling very often anymore, and I didn't like it at all.

They aren't depressed feelings, exactly. It's anxiety, which I really, really don't appreciate at all. Now, I know that depression sucks, and that it lives next door to anxiety, and they swap recipes, and watch American Idol together, and giggle over the wreck they plan to make of my somewhat commonplace human life. I've had some times in my life where I couldn't handle my stressors very well, and I was so miserable from a cocktail of habitual negativity and external bothers that I wasn't sure I could pull myself out of it. But I did, and through a mix of healing opportunities I've reached a place in my adult life where I know how (mostly. Please, I have my moments) to identify "sad" as "sad" and "happy" as "happy". Both are possible, and absolutely inevitable, with millions of shades of "okay" and "exuberant" and "irritated" and "content" in between. I just had to find a balance and get to a place where "miserable" and "thrilled" weren't the only options and that vacillating between the two with astounding velocity wasn't the wisest way to roll. I am fully aware of the absolute work that it takes to get to this point for people who battle at times with their chemical composition, myself included, and it's a daily job for which no one should feel any shame. I really admire people who are willing to admit this, particularly in the public eye. It's not easy.

That said, there's something about being simply down that I can take easier any day than the edgy jangle of anxiety. When I feel down anymore, there's a weight to those feelings that I can seem to work with better. I can cry it out, maybe, or write it down. I can actually sit still and deal. Anxiety, on the other hand, sets me to spinning. It's more nameless, unidentifiable "stuff" that swirls me around and takes me to bad places in my brain. I feel like I want to DO something, but I can't light on anything, and so instead I babble on needlessly or compound the problem with caffeine or go buy eight cds I don't need.

Now, today of course is the monthly Evil Demon Day. It's one of twelve days during the year where I'm in the hormonal dustbin, and although I know full well what's going on,I still feel compelled to rage, rage against something. This day has, I believe (and this is no exaggeration, when I look back over the trajectory of This American Life) altered the path of relationships, jobs, major purchases, life choices, etc. It takes my generally good-natured if a bit overzealous personality and turns it into that of a hydra on crack and many, many double-shot espressos. It's quite awful. There are often tears, occasionally misplaced, ill-gotten anger, and apparently, this month, a special bonus package of a sleep-wrecking wave of anxiety that shot me out of bed at an ungodly hour on a Saturday morning, searching for raw meat and a spirited debate on some really neutral topic like immigration reform or ecoterrorism.

Now, when I'm smart, I STEP BACK, identify what's happening, and let the good twin take over before anyone gets hurt. The options add up to, "Do I punch myself in the face and hope I'm knocked out until tomorrow, when most of the storm has passed?" or "Do I stay awake and upright and try to make the most of an iffy situation?"

Today I opted for the latter, and yoga seemed like a good option. I've been meaning to go back to it, especially since my piano teacher's been working diligently to help me actually "LET GO OF THE KEYS, LAURIE. THAT'S RIGHT. ONE-two-three. LET GO-two-three." I figured it was time to work on some relaxation, if even my poor fingers were stressed and considering I've been holding myself in a stance for two - maybe 35 - years that suggested a ground assault was due at any moment. (I remembered today that I carry most of my stress in my jaw. Hello, chronic headaches.)

Anyway, yoga was the best possible thing I could have done. It was awesome. I don't know HOW in the hell I talked myself into going, because when I'm feeling anxious, I'm more likely to hop on an underwater roller coaster than sit still. And unlike a kickboxing or step class that would have pumped me full of adrenaline and bad J-Lo remixes with tempos sped up to kingdom come, I got to hear things like "melt towards your heart center" and "roll back and forth like a happy baby". (Happy baby pose = excellent, by the way. I think I'm going to do it on the floor of my office if I want to send the message that it's time to chill out. ; ) These types of sayings distract you from the knowledge that plank pose and sun salutations will whip your ass into shape faster than tae-bo, I'm not kidding.

"With active yoga feet," Mary Jane said, "find the harmony in the grounding, and hopefully the rest of your body will follow suit." Hopefully is right. The rest of my body, at that point, was resisting the fact that I hadn't done a tree pose in years, so falling down was the only thing that was really on its mind. She said to picture "the trees we live among," and all I could picture was the sort of flimsy bush in our front yard, so that didn't really help either. I did go over and use the wall for balance, I practice I usually eschew because it requires me to leave my spot, and to stand in the center of the room amid other yoga people, therefore - gasp - calling attention to myself and my lack of balance. So maybe that's improvement. Maybe that means I'm...something different, anyway.

Afterwards, I made myself go decaf in my morning latte, which is also remarkable considering the speed at which I've been mainlining the most readily available drug on the planet. I'm still feeling a little bit weird, and I'd still advise folks not to come at me with anything challenging today, but after an hour and a half of twisting my body into unusual positions, and holding my own weight up with my own spindly arms (Hello, kitty. I am so not tiny) I'm a little too exhausted and rubber band-like to dredge up much adrenaline. And that, as they say, was the point.

First on the new list of "Dumb things I did today."

When I went into the bathroom at Starbucks today, the light was on. So of course I turned it off. I turned the light off on myself. Next thing you know, I'll be calling people and asking questions like my mom reels off when she calls me:

"Are you there?"

"Is that you?"

"Where are you?"

I'm pretty sure I've used that last one, but the other two are definitely just around the corner for people who walk into public restrooms and turn the light off.