I Gotta Be Me! I Just Gotta Be Me!

A long time ago in Guitar Center (yes, I shopped there, wipe that horrified expression off your face) I heard on the overheads what sounded like a Paul Simon tune. It was so far back in my consciousness as I plinked keyboards and examined cables and hefted mic stands that by the time it had picked its way to the front row of my brain the song was nearly over. “Hey,” I thought aloud to the bored cashier.  “Is this Paul Simon?”  

I liked it too. It’s not exactly what he brought to the table with his Simon and Garfunkel stuff, and certainly not what he brought with Graceland or Rhythm of the Saints, but there was something, some flavor, some clearness that caught me.

Lately my struggle has been with understanding my place in the musical universe.  What am I really saying? Does it matter? Is anyone listening? I’d started thinking that real music was wrung out of bearded young guitar players pouring out their spirits into tin cups on dirty sidewalks. Struggle equals depth. Starving equals raw beauty.

As I listened to Mr. Simon explain the differences in the way a life is lived, based on choices--so beautiful, or so what--I began to understand what this life of music has made of me. There have been times when music has held the place of honor at the table, and others when it’s been relegated to the junk drawer, tarnishing slowly until unearthed once more in a random spring clean. Always present though. Always percolating somewhere, doing something, growing perhaps sideways, in dimensions I couldn’t see or feel until I actually pulled a song out and sang it, cold after so many years, yet possessing a new layer that I didn’t remember adding.

Those young musical creatures. Geniuses, and something like pasta primavera. They sing with a pop and a sizzle that comes from the very young. It isn’t something you hold onto forever. You don’t really want or need to. It’s just a thing that comes with youth, like the ability to get drunk and pop up out of bed next day, fully refreshed, after only two hours of sleep. It’s fine while it’s there, it adds a flavor, and then something else comes along to replace it.  

Me, I sing from years of just plain singing. From feeling the river of sound travel through my body. From the feel of my hands moving across the keys while floating my voice over it.  From getting my ass kicked musically by life. From forcing myself to be brave enough to sing in front of people who weren’t listening, and, sometimes worse, those who were.  Going from that hot flushed feeling when you hit a bad note to more of a “huh. sour note. now it’s gone” feeling. From raising a child while simultaneously trying to keep all my other channels open. I try to write the stories that come from what I have learned, from the other side of each decade as it comes, unbidden and unwanted, but now at least not feared. They have a different flavor than the songs of my spring chicken fevered youthiness. They’re just ... different. Not better. Not worse. Trying to tell the truth, rather than be cute. So many more things to think about than broken hearts.  Trying to see what really is there. It parallels what is happening in my life. An acceptance of myself, of the world, of music. Less self rebuke.  

In energy class there were three ways of running energy: pull, push, and allow. That’s self explanatory, right? Allowing seemed to be the most used, and perhaps the most important. Just standing there. Allowing. Breathing. Not reaching or forcing, but just being.    

Perhaps that’s the biggest lesson I have learned, and somehow have to re-learn on nearly a daily basis. Just stand. Just be. Open your mouth and let the song fall out. There’s no other you, and no matter how hard you try you can’t be someone else. It just doesn’t work.

Martha Graham said it so beautifully: “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.”

And so I keep learning the lesson. Be me. Be me. Just inhabit my skin, and be me. It’s how we all came in, as babies, until we learn manners and social acceptance and how to conform. That’s fine, until the day we reach the point where we just can’t do it anymore and our true fiery selves come bursting out of the protective covering we’ve so carefully constructed. Yeah. That day. That’s a really good day.

The Maryland Metamorphosis

Growing up in Maryland, we were plagued by big black water bugs. Shiny and slow, they ambled away from sudden light and scurried under refrigerators and stoves. They were so gross. One year they got so bad that all the neighbors were taking extreme measures to eliminate them. This including spraying, wrangling, roping, and of course the cheapest but crunchiest method, foot stamping. This sometimes happened inadvertently at night while stumbling, barefoot and blind, to the bathroom. The resulting skid and accompanying scream successfully woke the community for blocks around and led my father to join the fight and buy a bug bomb.

We all went to Hechinger where my sister and I were delighted to receive a chunk of 2x4 each. This is before home improvement stores got smart and installed candy aisles. (I'm not kidding. We got chunks of wood and nails and we were ECSTATIC.) While my father set the bomb, guaranteed to kill any insect within hailing distance, we industriously hammered the nails to our bits of lumber. Once the fogger was going full blast we were all herded out of the house. But when we returned home after the prescribed four hours the smell still loitered, and seemed worse in the bedrooms. It was so strong that we couldn’t sleep, so my father dragged our mattresses out into the living room, opened all the windows and set up a fan.

This seemed like an adventure to us. (Before you judge our pathetic joy, remember, this is before God invented the internet, cell phones, and cable. All he’d given us at this point was electricity and the wheel. A lucky few also received scraps of wood and nails.) We excitedly climbed under the covers, the scent of bug fog still drifting lightly around like some Arabian Nights dream. Gentle sleep descended.

The summer sun woke us, as usual, at the crack of daybreak. I rubbed my eyes and yawned as my sister threw off her covers. There was a short, electric pause and then her screams yanked me out of my sleepy bliss. Her entire small body was outlined in bugs, who’d crawled into the warmth of her bed to die. I pulled off my sheet to discover my own fan club, cuddled right up next to me. Lying on their backs, legs in the air, some still feebly kicking. I added a high soprano harmony part to my sister’s screeches. 

My dad was, of course, the first responder. He came blasting into the room (my mother a close second), assessed the situation and grabbed us each by the front of the shirts then airlifted us straight up out of the beds. I can’t even remember what happened next. My memory, clearly so good at recounting the hideous details, somehow stops short of recalling the extra ice cream, chocolate bars and perhaps even trip to the toy store with which we were most likely comforted. At least that’s how I’m going to remember it.

Full Moon and Yoga Grump

It’s five ten. I scan the yoga schedule at the local studio and realize I can make the new five-thirty class. Ahh. I envision my body gracefully flowing from pose to pose, exuding serenity and compassion. Good plan.

Thirty five hot sweaty minutes later:  I am in down dog, searching for my inner smile but only finding my inner snarl. “Why?” I ask the air, lifting my right leg as requested and feeling sweat slide from my upper lip into my left nostril. The instructor floats around the room, lilting instructions. My arms and standing leg trembling, I attempt to ease my breathing as suggested, inhaling slowly and exhaling even more slowly. My lungs, fearing deprivation, decide of their own accord to take approximately seven breaths to every one of the instructor’s. “If you are too identified with the discomfort in your body, try to be something else,” the instructor says soothingly. “Be the floor.  Be the ceiling.  Be the air.” I try to be the air, but the image of a giant Toblerone bar rushes into my head and makes short work of that. 

Desperately I force my mind back into the sauna of a room. Serenity now, goddammit, I yell internally. Now we are holding horse, thighs screaming, butts quaking. The instructor drifts through the room, high on yoga. Has she forgotten us? I wonder as she gently adjusts another student, spending at least twenty seven minutes or so speaking softly as she lifts an elbow, runs a finger down a spine to illustrate proper posture. My body suddenly and incomprehensibly chooses this moment to activate every single sweat gland it owns. A furtive glance around the room reveals glowing yogic faces, nary a drop of dew on any. My body, embarrassed, heroically sweats even more and then threatens to fart. Good lord.  

Now we are in frog, now pigeon. Holding each pose, my mind begins to relax its grip on societal norm. It takes nearly the whole class, but I finally feel my thoughts unclench and my body evolve from a fist to an open palmed flower. By the time we get to sivasana I’m all wrung out, peaceful, and ready for pizza. Ya. Got my yoga on.