Angela Carole Brown is an award-winning author, poet, multi-media artist, and singer/ songwriter, and is involved in the wellness arts. This is her space for telling stories, exploring the creative process, and courting the marvelous caves of self-discovery.
“…the only answer is to recklessly discard more armor.”
― Eric Maisel
I re-post this every year. An anniversary of sorts. So, if you’ve been down this road, please bear with me. If not, enjoy.
On this morning 8 years ago, I was awakened rudely by construction in the neighborhood. I fought it for a time, but eventually gave in and hastened my exercise gear on. I got myself outside for a good walking meditation, and couldn’t get Hans’ song out of my head.
Angela.
There are actually lots of songs with my name in the title. The music from the television show Taxi is actually called Angela’s Theme. There’s Helen Reddy’s Angie Baby. Of course, the Stones’ iconic Angie. The Bee Gees have a song. Even Motley Crue, stealing lines from Hendrix’s The Wind Cries Mary with their own “when the winds cry Angela” lyric.
It can be heady, this idea of your name inspiring song after song, but then again none of them were written for me. So, how heady can I really get?
Until Hans. I was to be giving him a kidney in just two more days. This anticipated event had dragged out for nine excruciating bureaucratic months. My best friend pointed out the symbolic time frame as indicative of a kind of birth. But now it was finally arriving, and both of us (Hans and I) were bouncing off the walls in our own way. Me, I’d been doing these walking meditations every day for a month solid in preparation. It was equal parts exercise (I really hoofed it) and opportunity to live with my own thoughts before my day officially began with and in the world; to level myself and clear out my brain for the big day. I chanted, I did mantras, I worked out problems, I talked myself down from ledges, I rationalized behavior, I asked for forgiveness, I defended myself in imaginary arguments, and I thanked the Forces That Be for everything.
But on the walk 8 years ago today, all that activity got shoved to the various corners and crannies of my obsessive brain to make room for memories of the night before, going to see Hans play his guitar in a coffee house, and open his set with Angela . . . written for me.
Interestingly enough, almost all of the romantic relationships I’ve ever had have been with musicians and composers, and yet none of them has ever written a song for me. It is either a great poetic juxtaposition, or a really unsettling indication of the impact I have on the people I’m involved with. Of course, I’m also a songwriter, and I’ve never written a song for any one of them either. So, okay, maybe all it indicates is that every one of us is jaded and crusty and we’ve lost all sense of romance and inspiration.
Picasso painted every woman he ever fell for. What has happened to that kind of belligerent romance? The terrible compulsion to celebrate another human being?
So, hearing this song, sung by teenager Hans and his girlfriend and the drummer in his band, was a moment that had left me speechless and tearful. A moment that had made me realize that inspiration and romance do still exist…. they’re just hiding among the young. And if we still want to be touched by it, then the young are who we need to surround ourselves with.
So there I was, walking my regular route in the neighborhood, and trying to chant my daily mantra, which usually began with “Love, reign over me…” (I have tended to find much more prayerful intention in rock songs than I’ve ever found from anything biblical.) “ . . . make me mindful . . . give me grace . . . deliver me from need . . . fill me with wonder . . . ” etc. Sometimes I chanted for winning the lottery, but I do get that that’s not really how it works, and so those requests always came with tongue firmly planted in cheek. But on that morning I didn’t care about money or enlightenment.
On that morning, I was intoxicated by having had a song written for me, for the first time in my life. I felt like Marie-Thérèse, or Anaïs Nin, or Beethoven’s “immortal beloved”; women who have been painted, written about, composed for, dedicated symphonies. I highly recommend it. Being someone’s muse. It’s a high like no other.
As I walked, I completely tuned out the music that was blasting through the iPod buds wedged in my ear. Explanation: It’s easier for me to do my mantras against music; it’s a deliberate sensory overload; somehow things just stick themselves deeper in the subconscious when they’re too overloaded to have surface impact. It didn’t matter that day anyway; I had abandoned my Pete Townsend-inspired mantra and my downloaded pop tunes, to be flooded with Hans’ song. Or rather, the idea of Hans’ song.
A complete stranger who was walking my way held her palm up, and shouted “high five” as we passed each other. I obliged. First time I’d ever been accosted in that way. And I thought of this woman’s completely loopy bravery. Just to infiltrate a perfect stranger’s sphere, for a split second, and engage. What if I had refused her? Treated her the way we treat the bag ladies who pass us by? I wouldn’t be brave enough to throw my loopiness out there in that way; too afraid of rejection, of having someone look at me like I was nuts. And then I thought of the oddly shaped angle that I was practically on the eve of having surgeons cut me open and pull a kidney out of my body, yet here I was assured that I would’ve been too afraid to be silly on the street with a passing stranger. Which one really takes more bravery?
It takes a special kind of bravery to write a song for somebody. It takes letting down one’s cool guard and daring to show a little vulnerability. Letting the world peek into your opened and exposed heart. And most especially, letting the person for whom the song is written peek into your heart, daring to let them know that you feel, and that they have impacted your life enough to inspire public song.
I once had a boyfriend, a brilliant composer, who, with me, was one day listening to a song written by a friend of ours with a woman’s name in the title. He said, “I don’t think I could write a song with some woman’s name in the title.” He said this with a kind of pride in the claim. I felt sad for him. And sad for myself, as well, because I think that claim was my truth too. We’re all just too cool. Vulnerability is not attractive.
Leonard Bernstein’s Maria, from “Westside Story”, a song of truly loopy and delirious love.
Tom Waits’ Martha, an invocation of sweet, melancholy reminiscence.
The Beatles’ Michelle.
Elton John’s Daniel.
Brian’s Song.
Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.
The list goes on, and on, and encouragingly on. Who knows which of these is based on an actual person, or is merely the playground of fiction? And who cares? Either one still requires a level of unadulterated celebration, and a willingness to abandon cool, which makes someone ultra-cool in my book.
Hans is brave. He is brave to be a musician, going out there in the world for the scrutiny of the jaded. He is brave to have withstood years of debilitating dialysis, countless surgeries, stem cell experiments, catheters and fistulas implanted beneath his skin, and finally a transplant. But perhaps the bravest act of all was his daring to expose his great heart in so many ways, only one tiny example of which was the writing of a song entitled Angela.
(Two days later, on July 22, 2008, I successfully donated my kidney to Hans San Juan, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, in Los Angeles, and Hans has been healthy ever since.)
Angela Carole Brown is a published author, a recipient of the Heritage Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums as a singer/songwriter, and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on INSTAGRAM & YOUTUBE.
Last week, for me, saw four intensive days in seminar with the iconic Tony Robbins and his “Unleash the Power Within” doctrine. If you’re not familiar, look him up on YouTube. There are hundreds of lectures, TED Talks, etc, on the man. If you ARE familiar, I’ve found, you’re either behind him with a sense of devotion that just about any other motivational speaker out there would be hard pressed to rival, or you’ve concluded that he’s a modern day Jim Jones. I find almost no one who has a tepid reaction to him.
Yes, I did the firewalk. No, I was not injured. Yes, it gave me a high like nothing else, for what it was designed to symbolize; the power to accomplish anything, even the seemingly impossible, a subject-matter I am painfully intimate with. I had a personal stake in doing this. And it delivered.
And finally, yes, we’re talking about the same UPWDallas2016 that blitzkrieged the news on the firewalk night. “Hundreds burned in failed Tony Robbins Firewalk!” As someone who was there, I can vouch for the real thing being nowhere near as dramatic or perilous as the coverage made it out to be, because, of course, “if it bleeds it leads.”
Dallas is a city I’ve barely been to, in all of my many trips to Texas. It’s usually been a case of flying in or out of DFW and picking up connections to other destinations. So in preparing to come to this city for the Robbins conference, on my menu of intentions was to visit Dealey Plaza, the site of the assassination of JFK. I really have a thing for visiting these kinds of historical landmarks, and this one especially has been on my list to visit, because our nation changed radically after (perhaps even as a result of) the assassination that day in 1963.
We only had the last day in town, after the seminar was over, to check it out thoroughly, though we did actually run across it by accident on the first night of the seminar. The friend I was traveling with, and I, had decided to walk a few blocks away from the Convention Center to get our Uber, since eight thousand other people were all trying to get back to their hotels too. And at a certain point, a few blocks into our midnight walk (the night of the firewalk, so we were already on a kind of high), my friend suddenly stopped in his tracks, looked around, as if he was lost, and then said “I think this is it.” “What?” “Yeah,” he continued, ignoring me. He then proceeded to stroll across a grassy knoll (I’m still not catching on), and pointed to an X in the street. “This is where Kennedy was shot.”
It was a quiet night. Clear sky. Bright moon. I was already open-veined and euphoric, because I’d walked on hot coals tonight, baby! And I had not burned my feet, because I had applied the fierce focus and intention taught us earlier that evening. And it was not a parlor trick; the coals were freaking hot. And so, when everything finally came into dawning for me, and I saw the corner street signs of Houston and Elm, and the picket fence where the fourth bullet had allegedly come from, and the building formerly known as the Texas Book Depository, I stood there, having just experienced something rather larger-than-life, and cried a little, just to myself, at this other larger-than-life historical ground zero. It was an eerie and haunting thing to stumble upon by accident at midnight. We spent a bit of time there, as one does, then called for our Uber. And then proceeded to end every night of the conference with the same agenda.
So, by the time we got to our last day in town, and had the seminar firmly behind us, and had a cousin of mine who lives in town escorting us for the day, to go experience this thing in the daylight, do the museum, and be official tourists, we had already experienced it the way everyone should, I’ve now concluded. The midnight visit had been a sacred, internal moment that had allowed me to feel that bit of history in an intimate and private way, and to have an emotional reaction to it. In the light of day, it was an entirely different experience. All the opportunists were out in droves, selling their bogus copies of “the actual newspaper headline from The Dallas Morning News!” and their angle on what really happened that day. Every wild theory was flying out of the mouths of the carnival barkers, creating a cacophony of chatter that was almost musical.
And then a most interesting thing happened. One such barker that I was standing near, and trying to listen to, as he explained to a huddle of tourists about the fatal shot, couldn’t’ve been more than 50 years old, and yet was saying things like, “and that’s when we all hit the deck, and then ran across here behind the picket fence…” He then pointed to a blurred figure, in a crowd of other blurred figures, in an old, dog-eared photograph he was holding, with the doomed presidential motorcade in the foreground, and said, “that’s me.” Even though blurred, the figure he was pointing to was clearly an adult, someone who was not an infant, which, at a stretch, is the only way this guy could’ve potentially been present at this 53-year-old moment in history. So yeah, we were dealing with crazy, I concluded, and he officially lost my interest in listening any longer.
From a distance, however, I continued to stare at him do his thing. I sort of couldn’t take my eyes away, because I was suddenly reminded of the most profound thing that I had learned from Tony Robbins during his game-changing seminar intensive. That all of our problems, struggles, dysfunctions, etc., exist and linger because they serve a need. And as long as they continue to provide a benefit, they will not be repaired. There is something that they fulfill. I remembered that one stopping me dead in my tracks on, I want to say, Day 2 of this thing. And so, as I stared at this man, who was more likely mentally ill than a simple con man, I was suddenly softened from the earlier eye-rolling, head-shaking, dismissive stance I’d taken against him, and wondered what need his story was fulfilling for him. A sense of significance in a world that had rendered him insignificant? Combating a crippling loneliness by surrounding himself with people who could potentially find awe in his story, and him? Whatever the benefit was, it certainly wasn’t a financial one, since everyone around him had him nailed, and no one was buying his story, or his wares. Yet they were continuing to hang on his every word, because crazy is entertaining. And it was at that moment that I realized I would probably never look at any other situation again, neither another’s nor my own, without asking that question: What need does this serve?
That changes the whole playing field, doesn’t it?
There is a plethora, a right worthy grocery list, to be honest, of struggles and hiccups that my own personal growth seems to be bombarded with these days. Much of which I’ve chalked up to a case of what I do, or don’t, deserve. Or I chalk up a certain behavior, which is nonetheless frustrating for me, to being a hardwiring.
For example, one sentence I’ve claimed for years as part of my story: I’ve spent my life not being picked. Or at least believing, always, in that outcome (which pretty much means it’s guaranteed). Case in point: My boyfriend in 8th grade literally moved on from me to someone else without a word my way. How I found out was when his “new thing” and I were racing against each other in a track meet. The girl had actually been my friend, and the boyfriend and I had not had a single conflict, so while I get kids just moving on from each other thoughtlessly, I never understood the venal nature of the moment. He stood at the starting line where she and I were poised to run the 50-yard dash, and he muttered, but for everyone to hear, “Beat her, Albertine! Beat her good!” Albertine didn’t win that race that day. I did. But it gave me no pleasure in the victory, because I was also the one beaten. I didn’t understand my breed, and I didn’t get what I had done so heinous to have deserved such malevolence. Today I can see clearly how that one incident has been so indelibly stamped on me that I have always tended to enter into an agreement with isolation and outsidership.
I’ve just thought of it as a hardwiring, a simple case of, “This is who I am. I don’t fit into circles and clubs.” But here’s the danger in that; chalking anything up to a hardwiring presupposes that there’s nothing that can be done about it. It takes the power (if it’s a plight we’re actually interested in fixing) right out of our hands.
And if I have taken nothing else away from this seminar, I have taken with me a new understanding that any emotional baggage we have only sticks around, and is given momentum, because there is a need it serves. That one just blew my head right open. Done. Brains on the dashboard. Blood and guts everywhere. Absolutely nothing I’ve ever learned in my years’ long pursuit of self-examination has made more sense than that.
And so, rather than tossing off my penchants for outsidership, for example, as a hardwiring I can do nothing about, I need to figure out what the role of outsider in my life has been serving all this time.
One thing I know for sure is that it’s been a bit of a badge of honor. I do love my solitude, and marching to my own drummer, and I have a natural penchant toward inward-turning and contemplation. So, what it’s feeding is pretty obvious. But it’s also a dubious badge, as there is always an overtone of loneliness and missed opportunity that is a part of the outsider landscape. So, maybe it also feeds a kind of “poor me” comfort? I’m not sure yet, but there is so much to play with here. So much to discover, to answer for myself, so many lids to pry open, so that maybe I actually stand a chance of delivering myself from some of these frustrations, and finally give myself the permission to pursue just exactly what I want in this life.
As for Crazy Grassy Knoll Man, he will likely remain who he is, though we never know who or what comes along to change our state, and our stake. But my attitude toward him (once I got past the stun of him cursing me out for not buying any of his wares) became more compassionate and empathetic to the battles that must be his, the battles we all experience to varying degrees of crazy. And to know that there is an answer, somewhere, somehow, for every one of us. I just want to be that little sprite whispering into Crazy Grassy Knoll Man’s ear, “I see you. You are seen.”
This was merely one of fifty hours worth of ideas that were drilled into our heads by Tony Robbins during his four days of exhaustive saturation. I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface on what this seminar did for me. And honestly, I’m not sure I’m meant to share any more of the experience than this one example, because it was such a deeply intimate odyssey for me, one of identifying belief systems, and transforming them. It was so intimate, in fact, that when my friend and I couldn’t get a seat together on Day One, we ended up not doing any part of the seminar together, as it was nice not having to be self-conscious around each other. And that was easy enough to accomplish, in a sea of eight thousand people. We just met up on dinner breaks and when it was over each day. We didn’t even witness each others’ firewalk. Instead, upon completion of the walk, I cheered for my triumph with the people around me, who were all doing the same, a communal pep rally. New bonds got formed. In fact, my firewalk partner and I decided to remain friends. The experience was intimate and expansive at the same time.
I’ve been changed by this four-day event, that’s for sure. To what degree will be discovered in the days to come, as I venture forth to apply these tools and get out of my own way. But I don’t think I truly got hit with that feeling of difference until my revelatory moment on the corner of Elm Street and Houston, the same corner that was John F. Kennedy’s last. A setting ripe with ghosts and guile. And maybe even a little grace.
Dedicated to my dear friend Ross Wright,
who gave me the gift of this experience,
went through it with me,
and who roots for me always.
Angela Carole Brown is a published author, a recipient of the Heritage Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums as a singer/songwriter, and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on INSTAGRAM & YOUTUBE.
Ahhhh, Facebook. It’s an odd and fascinating communications platform, when you consider that the very best of it has sometimes generated important grassroots movements, and that the very worst of it, because of the safety of our own home sitting at a computer, and that we aren’t obligated to put a human face to a name and profile avatar, has bred some of the most loathsome social behavior I’ve ever witnessed. For me personally, the gold in Facebook has been the numerous long-lost friendships that, without social media, may never have been possible. On the other end, of course, is the odd stranger that we wonder why we’re Facebook friends with in the first place, and the crazy rantings that have required the socially devastating “unfriend”ing. But every once in a great while, believe it or not, an actual life lesson can be found on Facebook. Something unexpected and valuable lurking amid the sea of cute cat videos and vomit-mouth etiquette.
Here was mine, from a few weeks ago. A friend posted a most disturbing video of a woman encouraging her child to savagely beat on another child at a playground. It was shattering to watch. And of the myriad feelings I had regarding the witness, the primary one was that we lose jobs when we’re terrible at them, and parenthood should fall within those same parameters, and I just prayed Social Services got a hold of that woman.
Many people weighed in on this post, expressing their outrage, as well. One man was so outraged that he used epithets that clearly betrayed his ignorance of his audience. The N-word was bandied about pretty freely. Gee, can you guess what race the woman in the video was? I can genuinely say that what the woman’s racial or social demographic was didn’t even enter my mind for it being so overfilled with the horror of her act (which, by the way, Put-Upon White Man, happens in every race).
Before even weighing in on the contents of the video itself, my response to the post, which included the original poster’s own words “This is so shocking!” was, “Well, it looks like there’s equally shocking right here on this thread.”
I had to wonder, too, what kind of friends my friend had that this kind of blatantly racist response was even possible, until I reminded myself that I have said yes to friend requests countless times of people I don’t personally know, because as a working artist I’m always trying to expand an audience base, and, to be frank, I have “virtually” met some pretty amazing people on Facebook over the years. And so, the reality is that with such a practice also comes the risk of inviting the periodic troll to infiltrate.
Another friend, Melanie, weighed in immediately after me. Someone I actually do know personally. Someone I regard as a pretty sage woman. She’s also African-American, like me, and had clearly also seen Put-Upon White Man’s rant too, because her comment right after mine was, “I know, Angela, right???? Lord have mercy!”
A few others made similar comments. What fascinates me still, even as I reflect on this thing that happened a few weeks ago, is that most of the comments were reactions to PUWM’s rant, not the video. His own ire at the video (we all shared that!), which just HAD to go to a very nasty place, had completely overshadowed the horror on the video. Because this nastiness was right in our backyards. Who is this friend of my friend, who would rather spit in my face than shake my hand? is the shuddering subtext. That two-degrees of separation is too damned close!
I kept tuning in to see how this thread would grow, because frankly I was waiting for my friend (the original poster of the post) to get on here and condemn this man. She never did, nor ever weighed in again beyond the original posting of the video. But I’m very glad that I did keep tuning in, because of what unfolded next.
First off, after a fashion I noticed that PUWM’s original rant had been deleted. And then somewhere down the line of this thread, maybe 10 or 12 comments in, he weighed in a second time. His comment this time was an apology. And not one of those defensive apologies we’ve all had to roll our eyes at from time to time. He owned his racial outburst, iterated that he’d been so blinded by his rage over this video, which had broken his heart, but copping to it being absolutely no excuse, and ended with “Please forgive me, ladies….” addressing the myriad women who had commented on his rant, and lastly, “Lord forgive me.” And before I could even react to it, directly afterwards was my friend Melanie’s response to that: “Thank you, Mark. That is appreciated. We need to pray for that woman and her children.”
Okay, so at this point I’ll stop calling him PUWM. He has a name. It’s Mark. And yes, even Mark deserves to be called out by his Christian name, and not Put-Upon White Man, which, admittedly, has been my way of showing him zero respect, because it’s become such a cliché, and I felt like reducing him to the cliché, because, guess what? . . . I’m goddamned mad too.
I have to admit, I was stunned by Melanie’s ready acceptance of Mark’s apology. She and I share a very similar spiritual path of compassion & empathy, and consciousness-based cultivation, and we are both huge believers in forgiveness. I just hadn’t determined whether I was ready yet. But Melanie didn’t need to decide if she was ready. Melanie leapt. Melanie forgave. Melanie chose the higher road, without question, without needing to be ready.
It really did take me a minute to adjust this thinking, to wonder how she could do this so effortlessly, to have to face that my ball of fury had just had a pin pricked into it, and was deflating rapidly into a flat, self-righteous platitude. My own initial gut feeling was that Mark was only offering this apology because he got nailed on his abhorrent behavior, and that anyone who is capable of that language, and the intent and belief behind the language, will be absolutely capable of it again. Just give him another circumstance, a fresh audience, and sumpn’ else for him to be raging about. But did I know this for certain? That his apology wasn’t genuine? That he hadn’t really thought about his irresponsible and hurtful words?
What if Mark had had his heart truly opened by this exchange, had offered his amends, and then been shunned and dismissed? What, then, would that say about the sacred principle of forgiveness? Something pretty shameful, I’d say. Melanie wasn’t about to try and second-guess Mark’s intentions; her ONLY option was to put noble principle into healing practice. If Mark’s apology really wasn’t the real thing, if there was just a whole lotta bullshit goin’ on, that’s for Mark’s soul to wrestle with.
And so, while that was murky at best for me to wade through, it was as clear as a fresh spring to Melanie, my beautiful guru-mama sister-friend.
I carefully decided to say something myself. My instinctive thought was yeah, whatever, and not to respond at all. But in the spirit of my dear compassionate friend Melanie, and my own spiritual practice of forgiveness, I also offered a “thank you” to Mark, followed by, “The video broke my heart too.”
In those simple words – Melanie’s: “We need to pray for that woman and her children,” and mine: “The video broke my heart too,” – we let Mark know that the feelings about this heinous video were shared by us all, Black and White, male and female, Democrat and Republican, Christian and Atheist. Us, them. Whatever and Whatever. That there is actually more that connects us than there is that separates us, if we’re willing to see it. What an opportunity to offer healing, when my own instinct would’ve been to let the opportunity slip right through my fingers, and remain in the huff that someone else’s hate had engendered. Mark walked away changed too; that was evident in his further comments. He probably hadn’t ever thought, for a minute, that his apology would be welcomed and accepted. And if it had just been me alone out there reacting to his rant, it wouldn’t’ve been. So, thank you, Melanie, for reminding me. Yep, folks, a true spiritual practice requires rigorous renewal every single day, and unexpected angels and bodhisattvas to show us how.
In illustrating how much more connected we are than separate, a wall was torn down. It humanized everything. And that could ONLY have happened by a willingness for forgiveness. Melanie had thrown down the healing gauntlet. In a landscape of nothing but enraged hearts, how brave to be the one.
Forgiveness is a funny thing. It shouldn’t be. It should be startlingly clear. When Dylann Roof committed one of the most heinous single crimes in our recent history, the people least likely to, the families of the shooting victims, forgave. I personally was floored. It restored my lately-waning faith in humanity. But who on earth would ever think that instead of being absolutely lifted by this example, as I was, that there would be a backlash to it? Of course, there’s always going to be a militant response to such compassionate practice, people who are natural warriors, who believe morally in an eye for an eye. And I would even venture to say that most of us who aren’t militant would look at such compassion, and admire it even as we are admitting we’d never be able to do that. But the overwhelming backlash seems to be coming from the mainstream community, and not just asserting that we can’t do it but that we shouldn’t. The angle being that it finds these forgivers to be suckers, for lack of a kinder word. The charge is weakness, gullibility, and allowance of further racist behavior.
One article I found interesting and quite intelligent, in spite of the fact that I disagree with its fundamental creed, is by Stacey Patton for the Washington Post. The prevailing thought in this article is that Black America is the only culture expected to forgive its racist perpetrators. No one expects forgiveness toward al-Qaeda or ISIS. No one expects the Jews to forgive the Nazis. But Black America is pressured to forgive when the conflict is race. And when forgiveness is given, all Black America is doing is allowing more and more offenses to be made.
“Black people are not allowed to express unbridled grief or rage, even under the most horrific circumstances.”
Allowed? At least in this country, we all have the complete free will to choose how we feel, and how we will heal. And the trap to fall in is to assume that because there is a choice made to forgive, that grief or rage are not present. Even by framing the phrase “politics of forgiveness” Ms. Patton politicizes a basic tenet of grace and love. There is no politics to this. You either practice it or you don’t. It advances no agenda other than grace and love itself.
The most poignant thing Ms. Patton says is:
“. . . offering absolution to Roof is about relieving the burden of anger and pain of being victimized. In this regard, forgiveness functions as a kind of protest, a refusal to be reduced to victims. It sends the message to the killer that he may have hurt them, but they are the true victors because they have not been destroyed.”
This I passionately agree with. But she then counters it with the pronouncement that there is a demand by White America for this forgiveness. Demand? You can bet that White America was as stunned as anyone when these families chose the higher ground. Besides, how insulting to the intelligence of these compassionate soldiers Ms. Patton’s insinuation that White America is somehow their puppet-master, pulling strings.
I also challenge Ms. Patton’s claim that when Black America, especially of the Christian ilk, subscribes to the philosophy of forgiveness, it is being done out of some investment in the hereafter, a kind of E-ticket to Glory. Heaven or not, the only true salvation for this fractured present-day culture will be in cultivating that tenet for the life we are living right here, right now.
What seems not to be a part of the argument, at least in this article, is that to refuse to forgive is to keep oneself spiritually enslaved.
It’s important to know what forgiveness is. It may be even more important to know what it isn’t.
Forgiveness isn’t permission. Forgiveness isn’t forgetting. Forgiveness isn’t remotely weak. Forgiveness IS rising above. Refusing to fuel. Bringing to the table a different kind of challenge. And just possibly, changing that landscape.
There are many valid and insightful points that this article makes, and so I do urge you to read it. But while we are cautioned by Ms. Patton not to give forgiveness quite so quickly, from my own micro-example of that very dynamic, I can personally attest that when my friend Melanie gave it quickly, the entire landscape shifted from people divided to people communicating passionately together about the original problem (that horrendous video of mother and child). Healing was right in front of us. A coming together and acknowledgement of what connects us more than what divides us that would NEVER have happened had rage been met with more rage, and heads banged. Me, I was ready to put up some dukes and be a part of the fray. But it wouldn’t have been the right choice. And a golden opportunity would’ve been tragically missed.
Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, is a recipient of the Heritage/Soulword Magazine Award in poetry, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.
Hope and Crosby never made a road picture like this!
I wholeheartedly salute two extraordinary young women whom I had the honor to encounter nearly two years ago. They are Holli Rae and Sara Landas, and they have been in the midst of filming their documentary The Goddess Project for some three years now. Their credo: “To set our fears aside, and film other women who are doing the same.”
The film’s premise is simple, yet their journey to make it was a life-changing one for them. It is an intimate look, through interviews, into the lives and inspiration of over 100 women across America, each speaking and baring their souls in a very personal way about their struggles, their inspirations, their contributions, on everything from sisterhood, family, and overcoming fears, to spirituality, aging, body image and sexuality, and speaking in such an honest and disclosing way, toward the purpose of demonstrating real and diverse role models for women of all ages to see and to experience, and to bridge the gaps that have sometimes separated us.
THE STORY
In 2012 Holli and Sara left all of their comforts behind, acquired a vegetable oil-powered school bus (decking it out as only goddesses can!) and took a leap of faith, embarking on a remarkable journey across the US in search of women from every walk of life – artists, activists, mothers, sisters, academics, businesswomen, scholars – all eager to share their stories.
I came across these two lights, or they came across me, because Sara’s dad is a friend and colleague of mine. They came to my home bearing a bouquet of beautiful blooms, and carrying on them their cameras and their great big hearts, and we had a ball talking about life as women, and even shedding a few tears. I believe L.A. was the first wing of their journey, so little did they know at that moment what amazing adventures and encounters were awaiting them.
“Everywhere we stopped, whether it was at a coffee shop or rest stop,
we were amazed by the number of people who wanted us to meet
an inspiring woman in their life . . . This film presents an intimate look at the
universal concerns that we face as women through groundbreaking dialogue . . .”
– Holli & Sara
10,000 miles later, they had amassed hundreds of hours of footage, and had experienced the time of their lives. After the honor of being one of their interviewees, I caught up with them recently, in the midst of their post-production tasks, and asked if they wouldn’t mind being on the other end for a moment.
* * *
ACB:
How did you two meet? And did the idea for this film come out of your blossoming friendship, or did one of you have the idea first, and through or because of the idea met the other?
H&S:
We met in the summer of 2008 on a mountain top! Through sharing stories and making art together, our connection quickly developed into the most co-creative friendship we had ever experienced. As our bond became stronger and our dreams became bolder, we started meeting so many other inspiring women who were also on a path to pursuing their dreams. Meeting these ladies and hearing about their unique journeys of self-discovery inspired us to create The Goddess Project. We saw a need for more empowering stories like theirs in the media and instantly started envisioning how we could share them with the world. We decided to sell everything that we owned, and launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise enough money to fund the production of the project. We promised each other that even if the campaign wasn’t successful, we would still hit the road and find a way to make it work. Our minds were blown away by the incredible people who showed up to help make this film possible. Over 100 people from around the world donated to help us start the project.
Then something even more magical happened! We met a man named Chirp at a music festival, told him about our project, and he offered to give us his vegetable oil-powered bus! Neither of us had ever been given a gift like this from a total stranger, so this act of kindness absolutely blew our minds. This incredibly generous gift was a huge game changer. Then we serendipitously connected with an incredible artist named Michelle Robinson through Tumblr who donated her time to help us transform a little brown school bus into a beautiful, inspiring art car. So we packed our lives into The Goddess Bus and hit the road with two suitcases, our camera equipment, and no idea what we would find!
ACB: Well, we love Chirp! Our angels do come to us in the most unexpected ways, don’t they? And Michelle’s bus art is just so breathtaking in that powerful Sacred Feminine tradition.
As an artist, myself, I find that the ideas I come up with for a book, or a song, or a painting, are usually coming from a place in my soul of lack or need, a hole to be filled, in a sense. Where do you think this idea of interviewing inspiring women came from?
H&S:
We felt frustrated by the constant bombardment of the same stereotypical roles of women in the media. We wanted to see a broader spectrum of female role models, so we decided to put our heads together and come up with a solution!
Movies play a huge role in shaping culture and we need to see more films that empower women rather than perpetuating negative stereotypes and limiting beliefs. We don’t need any more distorted versions of reality telling us that we are not good enough. We are perfect as we are, and more films need to encourage that! We are creating The Goddess Project to remind women of all ages that they are strong, beautiful, and capable of achieving anything they set their minds to!
ACB:
What were you hoping to discover in talking to women across the country, and were your hopes and expectations answered? Or did you find that conversations went in completely different directions than you had planned?
H&S:
We wanted to see what women across America are passionate about, and to discover how similar we all are in our differences. We wanted to know what it’s like to be who they are, and hear about what they have overcome to get there. We wanted to know what their fears are, what they love about themselves, and what they hope to see and become in the future.
We hoped that we would be able to find women who were willing to be open, honest, and real . . . and we ended up finding over a hundred of them! We sat with women from all walks of life; at dinner tables, coffee shops, on horseback, and in parks; to talk about what they felt most called to share. We interviewed artists, mothers, healers, business women, and scholars about the life-changing experiences that shaped them to become who they are today. We talked about everything under the sun, and almost every interview ended in tears.
We learned that many of our fears and obstacles are the same. We learned that women across America want to feel connected and understood. We learned that every story is profound, and that women are ready for more representation. We learned that women across the country are dedicated to bettering themselves and the world around them.
ACB:
As young women, yourselves, looking for positive role models from just such women as you describe, how important was the older demographic among the ones you encountered? And what gold did you get from the younger women? And what ended up being the age range of everyone you interviewed?
H&S: Well, so much gold! We ended up interviewing women from the ages of 18-90! The older women we spoke with absolutely blew our minds because they have come so far and have so much insightful wisdom to share. The younger women inspired us as well because they were so dedicated to pursuing the life of the dreams. Each woman taught us something new about ourselves and the world that we had never seen before. It was an amazing experience to be able to travel from city to city, hearing the collective voices of women and seeing the amazing things that they are doing in their homes and communities!
ACB:
I’ve been following this journey, and it’s been very exciting! In seeing the clips, the beautiful teasers, in the trailers that you’ve made over the past year, I’ve been especially moved by how you left no social demographic out of the loop. As an African-American woman, myself, in this society, it isn’t uncommon for me to feel, at times, a bit left out of the cultural conversation. And, of course, I had the honor of being one of your interviewees! And I have to say, I was completely struck, as I followed your journey, by how much you were so all-inclusive of the radiant array of women of every heritage, station, vocation, age, and every other social orientation. Can you please speak a bit on that? Was it conscious on your part, or were you just walking this path with hearts so open that . . . well, let me let you finish the thought.
H&S: We embarked on this journey with open hearts and planned to interview as many of the most diverse women as we could find. We definitely made a conscious effort to be all-inclusive when it came to our interviewees because we know that all women out there are seeking inspiration and in most of the media, women, especially those of color, are lacking representation.
As we made our way across the country, we ended up finding women in the most serendipitous and magical ways. Initially we reached out to them through the internet and by word of mouth, but as we traveled from city to city our brightly painted bus became a magnet that attracted amazing women everywhere we went! At each destination we were approached by women from all walks of life who felt called to share their stories. Having the opportunity to connect with all of these unique women opened our minds to so many different perspectives, and as we got to know each of them we also realized just how similar so many of our fears and obstacles are. We learned that although each of our individual journeys looks so different from the outside, there are similar threads that connect us all. We are so excited to weave this beautiful web of women’s stories together, so that we can bridge the gaps that separate us from one another and inspire people everywhere to create positive change in their own lives!
ACB:
Please talk a little, if you don’t mind, about some of the more unexpected things that occurred on your journey. Any interesting hurdles? Especially considering that you were living on the most menial of resources.
H&S:
We both love camping and road trips, so going into the journey we weren’t too worried about life on the road! That said, the reality of living for 6 months in an amenity-free bus (sometimes in 100 degree heat) ended up being a lot more challenging at times than we had anticipated! Most of our showers consisted of baby wipes and Dr. Bronner’s, and we spent a lot of time peeing in cups if there wasn’t a bathroom nearby. We quickly learned how to live off just the bare necessities, but also discovered how many amazing people there are out there ready and willing to help you out in a time of need! One night, we found ourselves trying to get some sleep in our bus in New Orleans when it was still blazing hot outside and we were in a bad part of town, so we had to keep the windows shut. We lay there pouring water on ourselves, wondering if we could survive the night in that kind of heat. Suddenly there was a knock at our door. It was a woman we had met earlier that day who insisted we come stay with her. We followed her back to her place just down the street and had a beautiful night’s sleep in her air-conditioned den. Everyday we faced new hurdles as we stepped into the unknown, but we stayed open and our intuitions always led us right where we needed to be!
ACB: Was there anything that scared you about taking on a vision as monumental as this? Doubts, at any point, about the leaps of faith you were taking, not only to go on this journey, but the leaps of faith in each other?
H&S:
From the very moment we made the decision that this is what we were going to do, we committed wholeheartedly to it! We did have our fears about taking on something this big, but we made the choice that no matter how things unfolded, whether we rallied the support or not, we were going to make this film happen! Three years into the journey and we can definitely say we had no idea how much work was going to go into bringing this film to life, but everyday we work together to keep our vision strong. When one of us is feeling doubtful or overwhelmed, the other one is always there reminding us of the importance of this project and why we have to keep pushing forward! Taking on something this big is a lot more manageable when you’re sharing the weight with your best friend!
ACB:
SERIOUSLY amen! Who have been your personal heroes, who have helped to build you into the strong young women you are today? Either personal, or in history? And why?
H&S:
One of our personal heroes is Eve Ensler. From her playwriting to her global activism, she is a force of nature! She is a woman who has devoted her life to being a voice of change, and an example of how instrumental just one person can be in changing the lives of so many! We were lucky enough to have her reach out to us when we were about half way through the journey, and her organization One Billion Rising became a producer of the film! We are so honored to have her on board, she is such an inspiration to us!
ACB:
Eve Ensler is truly a special being on the planet. You’re definitely speaking my language. So, what is ultimately the legacy you’d like to leave?
H&S:
There is this great quote by Albert Pine: ” What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world is immortal.” We want to use what little time we have in this life to use the talents we have to create art that helps raise the consciousness on the planet and empowers others to overcome their fears and live the lives of their dreams!
ACB:
You two are an inspiration, and the world needs to know about The Goddess Project. I have felt incredibly humbled to have had some small part in this, and to have been able to watch it grow beyond all expectation, as your journey unfolded. I raise my proverbial glass to you two bright beacons for change and liberation, Holli Rae and Sara Landas. Thank you so much for chatting with me.
* * *
THE GOAL
The larger goal, of course, is the film itself, and everything that it stands to shift in our consciousness. But the immediate goal is one that can use our help. Holli and Sara have a Kickstarter campaign in the works, to help raise enough money to complete the post-production on a film that is truly important and needs to be out there. If you’re feeling even the slightest bit philanthropic ($1 even!), I urge you to consider being a part of this game-changing, transformational project. You honestly couldn’t choose a nobler investment. The deadline to raise their pledge is Friday, Aug 22, 2014, 3:33 PM PDT.
If NOTHING ELSE, please take 4 minutes to watch this newest trailer, and I defy you to not be inspired.
Congratulations to Sara and Holli for successfully reaching their funding goal! It was all because of you, the supporters. That means there will be an extraordinary film coming our way in 2015. Brava, ladies! And bravo to all the philanthropists who made it possible.
Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.
So, as I was on my way out the door this morning for my daily walk, I decided to do a different route, for interest’s sake, and walked past a kidney care center that I’ve seen many times, but haven’t paid much attention to, ever since I moved into the neighborhood. Today I decided to stop in and inquire about their services, since as a kidney donor I need to do annual blood and urine tests to make sure all is in working order. I have a primary care physician, but he’s quite a drive away, and I thought how cool it might be to have at least this part of my life be right around the corner.
When I walked in the front door, which is merely feet from the sidewalk on the very busy major thoroughfare of Devonshire Boulevard, I was instantly hit with a room filled with very sick people all hooked up to dialysis machines. Feet from the street. It so startled me to be that un-buffered, to not, instead, walk into an office or lobby or receptionist’s desk first, before entering the League of Great Sickness. Because of my experience with the transplant, I’ve grown accustomed to that environment, so I wasn’t made uncomfortable; it merely startled me. And it was at that moment that I pondered the strangeness of my reaction. And the buffered culture we live in.
Everything is buffered for us. From waiting rooms and front desks that – ordinarily – shield us from discomfort until we’re ready and geared to walk through certain doors, to signs at amusement parks that warn about possible vomiting or nausea if we get on that roller coaster.
And it instantly took me back to a poetry and prose reading I attended years ago at this wonderfully bohemian coffee house in Glendale, and the eye-opening lesson I’d learned that night. I had signed up to read, had been in the midst of writing the book that incidentally has just come out (but this isn’t a plug, no way, I wouldn’t do that here … The Assassination of Gabriel Champion on Amazon … ), and had decided to read a passage I’d just finished working on, which included a rather graphic bit of violence.
After I read, I got some really great feedback which assured me I was on the right path with my writing. And then this couple came up to me, a husband and wife, and proceeded, as delicately as they could, to inform me that the both of them, at an earlier point in their lives, had been the victims of violence similar to the one in my passage, and that while they appreciated my writing, and the earnestness of its content, they really wished I had been sensitive enough to warn the audience ahead of time that this reading would contain some graphic scenes, because they were unprepared to listen to something like that, and would’ve elected to step outside.
“We didn’t want to walk out on you in the middle of your reading. We actually do believe in being courteous and respectful. We just kind of wish you had been as courteous and respectful.”
I had no defense or comeback. They were right. I didn’t know who was in my audience, or what someone’s background might’ve held. This couple certainly wasn’t asking me to censor anything, or to refrain from reading, or anything resembling a challenge to my freedom of speech and expression. They’d simply requested a warning, so that they could elect whether or not to listen. Perfectly reasonable.
I’ve never forgotten that, and because of that experience, so many years ago now, it is my absolute practice any time I’ve ever included a passage from one of my books on my website, or on any other public forum, and which may contain violence, sex, or strong language, to always include a disclaimer at the beginning of the passage. Of course, no such disclaimer is ever necessary for the books themselves. You’re a free agent. If you elect to pick up my/anyone’s book, then it’s your responsibility to read what the book’s about on the back cover, and decide for yourself if you want to dive in. But as for excerpts that appear anywhere publicly, if the passage contains strong content, I let people know. I’ve subscribed to that practice ever since that night of the kind, respectful, fragile couple who schooled me.
Today, as I ruminate on our buffering society, and our need to be cocooned from difficulty and discomfort, I question if that’s what’s best for us. Merely question. This thought is all of an hour old, and I’m still processing it even as I’m typing this. No judgments have been handed down yet.
But is it better that we be “protected” from reality; sickness and death, the scariness of roller coasters, or the contents of a book? Or might it actually serve us better to be thrust headlong into that great jolt of life in all of its layers of beauty and ugliness and bliss and pain?
We live in a more frightened society today than we did years ago. I don’t know, for example, a single parent who would allow their small children out alone on Halloween today, yet when I was a kid our parents almost never accompanied us. We were free to roam the neighborhood, and everyone knew and trusted the neighborhood. That’s not our reality today. I realize it, and I respect it. But I can’t honestly say whether I believe we’re a more violent culture today than a generation ago (I seriously doubt it), or if we’ve merely become pampered by a society whose principle commercial agenda is the selling of ease, convenience, instant gratification, and comfort. And the fierce protection of our rights to never let our precious feet touch the dirty ground. And fear. Our society sells fear.
Dare I extend that idea to include the insidious sway of the self-help culture, which insists that we “fake it till we make it”? And I actually feel a bit traitorous for even saying that, because I’m the biggest digester of self-help lit of anyone out there. You should see what books are in my purse right now. But that’s exactly why I know this to be true. Even memoirs are almost never about brave self-reveals any longer, being able to lay your own self-discovered flaws on the table, and merely from doing so, transforming them, for yourself and your reader. Which is incredibly powerful.
The self-help dictum says NO. We must never admit fear, jealousy, rage, pettiness. We must always be about self-promotion. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been “corrected” and reprimanded because I’ve dared to share my flaws in my insight-writing. The intention is always well-meaning; the person is clearly in my corner. But it makes me crazy nonetheless, because I can assure anyone out there that the sharing of those flaws has an intention, and is usually accompanied by an epiphany that makes it obvious I’m aware of its injury to me; that I am, just by writing about it, already in the throes of moving away from it, and toward something more evolved. There are those who just can’t allow you to be flawed in public. Because it might make them have to look at themselves.
The self-help movement was never supposed to be about anesthetization. It grew out of Eastern thought: Buddhism, the Yoga Sutras, the Tao, etc. But it has become something very pop/pulp indeed. The above-mentioned spiritual disciplines (my beloved gang!) never advocated denial. We don’t transform from our weakness and flaw and condition just by magically denying it, despite what The Secret promises. It takes hard work. And the hardest part of the work is FACING. Not being buffered by the warm-fuzzies.
And on that thought, as my dear friend Chokae Kalekoa likes to playfully say (with a rolled neck of course): “Namaste, Bitches!”
Did I really need protection from witnessing the patients hooked up to dialysis as I walked through that door this morning because Blanche DuBois couldn’t hold a candle to my delicate sensibilities? Should we be cultivating a world of Blanches? Or would we be better served by throwing ourselves into the water, as we do children when we’re teaching them to swim, because there’s nothing that steels our spine like feeling that great jolt of life? To remind us that we ARE alive?
I guess I clearly HAVE taken a position, after all. And me! I’m a coward! A cautious, hesitant, worrisome coward, who cries easily, and can NOT watch those Sarah-McLachlan-underscored commercials about animal cruelty. I’m almost always afraid of leaping, of being yanked out of my comfort zone. But I also recognize the incredible power and radiant beauty and ridiculous boundlessness of those who DO know how, and are brazen. I am envious of them.
One of my favorite quotes (you all know it), by Jack Kerouac, speaks to that very kind of human:
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”
They’re the only ones for me too, Mr. Kerouac.
Namaste, Bitches!
Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.
“…the only answer is to recklessly discard more armor.”
––– Eric Maisel
I am awakened rudely by construction in the neighborhood. I fight it for a time, but eventually give in and hasten my exercise gear on. I get myself outside for a good walking meditation (my thing these days), and can’t get Hans’ song out of my head.
Angela.
There are actually lots of songs with my name in the title. The music from the television show Taxi is actually called Angela’s Theme. There’s Helen Reddy’s Angie Baby. Of course, the Stones’ iconic Angie. The Bee Gees have a song. Even Motley Crue, stealing lines from Hendrix’s The Wind Cries Mary with their own “when the winds cry Angela” lyric.
It can be heady, this idea of your name inspiring song after song, but then again none of them were written for me. So, how heady can I really get?
Until Hans. I’m giving him a kidney in just three more days. This anticipated event has dragged out for nine excruciating bureaucratic months. My best friend pointed out the symbolic time frame as indicative of a kind of birth. But now it’s here, and both of us (Hans and I) have to be bouncing off the walls in our own way. Me, I’m doing these walking meditations every day now for a month solid. It’s equal parts exercise (I really hoof it) and opportunity to live with my own thoughts before my day officially begins with and in the world; to level myself and clear out my brain for the big day. I chant, I do mantras, I work out problems, I talk myself down from ledges, I rationalize behavior, I ask for forgiveness, I defend myself in imaginary arguments, and I thank the Forces That Be for everything.
But on today’s walk, all that activity got shoved to the various corners and crannies of my obsessive brain to make room for memories of last night, going to see Hans play his guitar in a coffee house, and open his set with Angela….written for me.
Interestingly enough, I’ve been involved with countless boyfriends, almost all of whom have been musician/composers, and yet none of them has ever written a song for me. It is either a great poetic juxtaposition, or a really unsettling indication of the impact I have on the people I’m involved with. Of course, I’m also a songwriter, and I’ve never written a song for any one of them either. So, okay, maybe all it indicates is that every one of us is jaded and crusty and we’ve lost all sense of romance and inspiration.
Picasso painted every woman he ever fell for. What has happened to that kind of belligerent romance? The terrible compulsion to celebrate another human being?
So, hearing this song, sung by teenager Hans and his girlfriend and the drummer in his band, was a moment that left me speechless and tearful. A moment that made me realize that inspiration and romance do still exist…. they’re just hiding amongst the young. And if we still want to be touched by it, then the young are who we need to surround ourselves with.
I walked my regular route in the neighborhood, and tried to chant my daily mantra, which usually begins with “Love, reign over me…” (I have tended to find much more prayerful intention in rock songs than I’ve ever found from anything biblical.) “….make me mindful….give me grace…. deliver me from need….fill me with wonder….” etc. Sometimes I chant for winning the lottery, but I sort of get that that’s not really how it works, and so those requests always come with tongue firmly planted in cheek. Today I didn’t care about money or enlightenment. Today I was intoxicated by having had a song written for me, for the first time in my life. I felt like Marie-Thérèse, or Anaïs Nin, or Beethoven’s “immortal beloved”; women who have been painted, written about, composed for, dedicated symphonies. I highly recommend it. Being someone’s muse. It’s a high like no other.
As I walked, I completely tuned out the music that was blasting through the iPod buds wedged in my ear. Explanation: It’s easier for me to do my mantras against music; it’s a deliberate sensory overload; somehow things just stick themselves deeper in the subconscious when they’re too overloaded to have surface impact. It didn’t matter today anyway; I had abandoned my Pete Townsend-inspired mantra and my downloaded pop tunes, to be flooded with Hans’ song. Or rather, the idea of Hans’ song.
A complete stranger who was walking my way held her palm up, and shouted “high five” as we passed each other. I obliged. First time I’ve ever been accosted in that way. And I thought of this woman’s completely loopy bravery. Just to infiltrate a perfect stranger’s sphere, for a split second, and engage. What if I had refused her? Treated her the way we treat the bag ladies who pass us by? I wouldn’t be brave enough to throw my loopiness out there in that way; too afraid of rejection, of having someone look at me like I was nuts. And then I thought of the oddly shaped angle that I was practically on the eve of having surgeons cut me open and pull a kidney out of my body, yet here I was assured that I would’ve been too afraid to be silly on the street with a passing stranger. Which one really takes more bravery?
It takes a special kind of bravery to write a song for somebody. It takes letting down one’s cool guard and daring to show a little vulnerability. Letting the world peek into your opened and exposed heart. And most especially, letting the person for whom the song is written peek into your heart, daring to let them know that you feel, and that they have impacted your life enough to inspire public song.
I once had a boyfriend, a brilliant composer, who, with me, was one day listening to a song written by a friend of ours with a woman’s name in the title. He said, “I don’t think I could write a song with some woman’s name in the title.” He said this with a kind of pride in the claim. I felt sad for him. And sad for myself, as well, because I think that claim was my truth too. We’re all just too cool. Vulnerability is not attractive.
Leonard Bernstein’s Maria, from “Westside Story”, a song of truly loopy and delirious love.
Tom Waits’ Martha, an invocation of sweet, melancholy reminiscence.
The Beatles’ Michelle.
Elton John’s Daniel.
Brian’s Song.
Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.
The list goes on, and on, and encouragingly on. Who knows which of these is based on an actual person, or is merely the playground of fiction? And who cares? Either one still requires a level of unadulterated celebration, and a willingness to abandon cool, which makes someone ultra-cool in my book.
Hans is brave. He is brave to be a musician, going out there in the world for the scrutiny of the jaded. He is brave to have withstood two years of debilitating dialysis, countless surgeries, stem cell experiments, and catheters and fistulas implanted beneath his skin. And perhaps the bravest act of all is his daring to expose his great heart in so many ways, only one tiny example of which is the writing of a song entitled Angela.
(c) 2013 angela carole brown
(3 days later, on July 22, 2008, the transplant successfully took place at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. )
Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD. Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.
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