Tag Archives: self-discovery

The Magical Land of Twenty : Tales From the Renaissance (& the Ledge)

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Our Twenties

 

“When I was in my twenties, it felt like I was riding wild horses,
and hoping I didn’t go over a cliff.”
― Chaka Khan

 

Our twenties are supposed to be for wayward, rude, selfish, irresistible sex.  A bit precarious to do when your twenties take place in the decade of the 1980’s, with said decade bearing the contrails of the brand new AIDS crisis and understandable hysteria. My roommate and I lived in spitting distance of West Hollywood and its thriving bar scene, yet even though AIDS seemed to be all around us, we weren’t stopped one bit from trying hard to be reckless and wanton and fulfilled, because it was a solid directive of our generation. We just had to be cleverer about how to navigate the waters, and the bars.

I’ve often heard, from a sociological context, how awful and awkward and messy our twenties are supposed to be. And sure, the growing pains. I was constantly broke, and breaking someone’s heart nearly as often as someone was breaking mine, yet I was voracious in my various appetites; the sexual, the creative, the partying, the being-out-of-my-mother’s-house euphoria, the enticement of being considered an adult for the first time in my life, and the scary responsibility that entailed. I was unstoppable. And clumsy.  And, frankly, I find myself often yearning for that deeply flawed but fearless energy again.

I had left my mother’s home for the first and only time. I had left my very first relationship. My first love. He and I had been so Raging Bull with each other. So full of youthful Sturm and Drung.  We wore each other out equally, to be honest; I was just the first to act on it, needing desperately to have lightness back in my life. And off I went to my new adventures as a grown-up. I was instantly wild, as if I’d been cooped up and bound my entire life prior to that moment.

On more than one occasion, I dated two guys at once who were friends with each other. And it really was only ever just a matter of time before they’d talk, end up discovering the mutually shared component in the landscape of their conversation, and decide (rightfully so) that I was a pretty nervy bitch, and be done with me. I always knew it meant that I’d been found out whenever they would both stop taking my calls at the same time. My rationale was always, “Awwww, too bad, I was having so much fun. But hey, I’m single. I’m playing the field. We never made a commitment to each other. What exactly have I done wrong?”  In hindsight, and in the slightly calmer edge of my older self, I can see how remarkably self-absorbed that is.

Self-absorption may just go with the territory of being in one’s twenties. Is that insulting to twenty-somethings? Because I don’t actually mean it as an insult. I think it’s necessary for the decade of finding oneself to be a little self-absorbed. It requires all of one’s focus just to get the proper sea legs as a newbie adult. Lots of falling down. Plenty of injuries. Copious discoveries. Getting our way. Not getting our way. Brutal tears. And infectious laughter. We are babies.  At the same time, while our twenties are meant for discovering the world and ourselves, and is, as a decade, inherently, even acceptably, self-serving, should we be let off the hook for it?  Because while selfish may be sort of OK in our twenties, it still usually involves others’ hearts.

Take what happened with my next door neighbor.  I made the mistake of dating him.  Mistake only in that we literally shared a wall. Again, I’m thinking casual dating. And so, on an evening’s social excursion that did not include him, I found myself with the interesting prospect of a one-night-stand.  And as I giddily shared the details of that exploit with my roommate the next morning, guess who heard my boisterous story through the thin walls?  I found out later, as he was confessing his eavesdropping to me (although, confession isn’t really the right word when you’re the one backed into a guilt-targeted corner) that he’d actually placed a water glass to the wall like you’d see in movies.

“That trick really works?”

He was not in the mood for chatter.

From that moment on, living next door to him while trying to continue conducting my wild twenties was proving to be pretty excruciating. Let’s just say there were lots of slammed doors meant for my ears. Years later, when he and I ran into each other, both older, hopefully more mature, calmer, wiser, he actually apologized for being “a little crazy” back in the old days. And while I gratefully accepted his apology, somehow I felt like my incredibly selfish nature had been given an undeserved reprieve.

I’ve been rather lucky that no one ever murdered me out of some kind of crime of passion because of my impetuous immaturity. Like what nearly happened with yet another neighbor (same apartment complex on Detroit Street in the Fairfax District―many wild nights and crazy memories there). Let’s call this neighbor Ron. I honestly don’t remember his name. For all I can recall, it might’ve actually been Ron, making my efforts to protect his privacy moot. But oh well, Ron it is. My roommate and I were sitting at the kitchen table eating crispy, drippy melon on a hot summer evening, when a brusque knock came at our door. Those kinds of knocks always shoot my stomach right up into my throat. There stood Ron, a meek individual both in stature and voice, who very calmly offered that he’d been stabbed and could we please call 911 for him. What?!  No one who’s been stabbed is standing there talking to you calmly. Haven’t you ever seen Starsky and Hutch? But he proceeded to turn around and show us his bloody back. Freaking out as only two twenty-year-old girls can, we yanked him into our apartment, and rushed to call an ambulance. He told us we might want to close the door as his boyfriend was still storming around outside and brandishing the knife. Holy shit!  Now we were officially harboring a crime victim from his perp (I’ve always been a sucker for 1970’s cop show lingo).  As we locked the door and closed all the curtains, we could finally hear Agamemnon (not his real name either. Hey, no John Doe’s in this story) outside in a drunken rage, and we were scared shitless. We called for a paramedic and the police.  I then called my stepfather, who was a retired paramedic, to ask him to advise us on what to do until an ambulance arrived, as Ron Doe might’ve been slowly bleeding to death, for all we knew. What could we do to stop the bleeding? My dad advised, imploring us to “be careful!”  The authorities showed up, an ambulance carried Ron Doe away (he survived), while the police carried Agamemnon away to County, and we two pretty naive, sheltered, middle-class girls shivered in our boots once everyone left, and promptly graduated from melon slices to tequila shots, as we stared at our blood-stained sofa, and squealed in delighted horror that this kind of heart-thumping thing would never have happened living under our mothers’ roofs.

And while that one is always a you-won’t-believe-this! story to tell, with no other needed context, I relay it now to say that at least the callous heartbreaking I tended to do in my twenties never resulted in someone trying to kill me. I don’t think I had a clue just how lucky I was back then; not even after Ron showed up at our door with his domestic violence in the palms of his hand (or the fold of his back).  As far as I was concerned, I was indestructible.

My twenties were not just filled with me being the one breaking hearts. I was on the receiving end of that one plenty. Which is only fair. Take Frederic. Also not his real name, though I am awfully tempted to out this magnificent prick. Frederic was from Argentina, and we both worked as waiters at a pizza joint. He was very cute, and the accent was thick and alluring. We slept together the first day we met. It was cold and impersonal from the start, but I barely noticed, so fulfilled was I by someone’s attention and approval. It was always about that, if I’m being brutally honest. Things were going fairly normally until a young pretty thing started working at the pizza joint, and Frederic’s eye turned completely toward her. Well, not completely; he was still sleeping with me, which is where normal gradually moved into dysfunctional.

It blows me away to think that I looked at this little beauty as a “young thing” as compared with my old ass, which was twenty-five!  I would trade a lung for twenty-five again. The point is, it doesn’t matter where we are in life; someone will always come along to make us feel not as young, not as pretty, not as smart, not as desired, not as something.

But on to the pretty young thing ― or PYT, in Michael Jackson parlance. Frederic, magnificent prick that he was, would be in my bed and be talking about her. And I allowed it!  If he was a prick, I was a stooge, and I’m not honestly sure which is worse.  Yes, he and I were just casual.  I was still happily in playing-the-field mode myself, but for god’s sake at least I’d had the decency not to share whatever other exploits or interests I had with the guy I was presently with (thin neighboring walls notwithstanding).

The reason Frederic was still sleeping with me is because PYT was still a virgin, and was not about to have anything to do with Frederic. I was his convenience, until he could get what he really wanted.  He had no qualms about telling me so, and I would say things like “fuck you, asshole” in response to those kinds of comments, in my desperate attempts to counter stoogedom, I think.  Of course, not sleeping with him would’ve done the trick, but that’s way too self-respecting.

Here’s the thing: Frederic really got into the name-calling. The first time I realized it, I was taken aback, as I’d been looking for an actual argument. I could really get with a good screaming match. But he liked it. And then he thought I might like it.  And eventually I realized without ever consciously deciding on this, that we were actually mutually agreeing to have an abusive relationship.  Never physically, other than the sex (which didn’t even get particularly wild); just verbally and emotionally, which is damaging enough.

Eventually our interests both turned away from each other. Probably because, truth be told, that kind of relationship is boring, in addition to the more obvious spirit-decimating. But when I think back on it today, wasn’t it really only a matter of time before verbal would become corporal? And couldn’t I have ended up being the one to knock on a neighbor’s door with a knife wound in my back?  I am amazed I got out of my twenties alive. 

It also wasn’t just about a sexual revolution either. There was a creative explosion happening, as well. One I honestly wish I could recapture. Because while I love the artist I have become today, so much more than the one I began with in my twenties, a present level of unadulterated lust, gumption and nerve has just never quite matched that of my beginnings.

I was in the midst of writing my first novel. I’d started it the day I graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I’d loved acting, and thought I could’ve actually been gifted at it, but it never tugged at me the way writing did. Nor has music, to be frank, which might surprise those are are aware of my nearly 40 years in the business. I love being a musician, but it was always the writing. I was still living under my parents’ roof at that point. My stepdad had made our basement his office, and down there, in the cold cellar walls atmosphere, on his old (now vintage) Underwood typewriter, circa … around … 300 BC? … I started writing my first novel. The story takes place in London between the world wars. I didn’t have a single identification or connection with England or its culture, and I was the last thing from a history buff to even have much of a clue what was going on politically or socially there and then. I was a girl from Compton circa the 1960’s and 70’s. My sole inspiration for choosing 1936 England as the backdrop for a story I didn’t even have in my head yet was that it would be the absolute last thing anyone would ever expect of me. I was always the girl who hungered for a life no one could peg.  I hated cliches. I hated people who were cliches. I hated being able to read upon the lips of anyone talking to me, within seconds of meeting them, just exactly who they were down to their taste in fetishes. Mainly what I feared was the reflection back to me of myself. I did not want to be one. So, whenever I encountered someone who blew my mind for surprising me with an angle in their lives I could never have guessed, I would always say, “That’s what I want to be.  Unpeggable.”

That became the engine that has driven practically every decision, every life choice, every path I’ve ever traversed. It’s also exactly how I would describe all of my artistic idols: Coltrane, Tom Waits, Nina Simone, Joni, Jimi, Basquiat, Bukowsky, Van Gogh, Bartok . . .

So I took this story on, one that took eight years, practically my entire twenties, to write merely its first draft. I took it on and was determined to learn what I didn’t know, which was everything, about this time and this place I had randomly chosen. Long before the internet existed, I spent hours daily for years in the public library reading books and locating archived newsreels, to help create this world I was attempting to create. The directive many in the writing world consider to be the absolute sacred cow of credos is, “write what you know.”  It’s practically biblical. And I broke that rule straight out of the gate. I had nerve, if not common sense.

My main character was a kind of contemporary (for 1936) philosopher known for radical ideas about politics and religion, so I spent the bulk of my twenties with my head buried in Plato, Mao, Nietzche, Kierkegaard, Sartre, and on and on, as well as any books on the rising Fascist movement of that era. That is, when I wasn’t raving in the gay bars with my best friend and hooking up with boys who hadn’t found themselves yet. My sister, the intellectual, was quite instrumental in pointing me in the direction of whom I should read.

By the time I had finished my first draft, I truly believed I’d written a masterpiece. And typing “the end” to a 400-page novel held a power I cannot describe. It was the very first of such moments. I was twenty-eight years old, and I had written a book. And not a romance novel, or “young adult fiction” or stories of boyfriends and partying. No. A hefty-themed story of politics, war, and identity. I thought I was a badass. I still think I was a badass.

I also began singing in the gay bars. The cabaret scene was thriving. I entered a contest put on by the now defunct but forever legendary (and deeply fond to my heart) Rose Tattoo in West Hollywood, called Stardom Pursuit. I won. The winning was a good chunk of money and a residency there. I started learning a bizarre mix of songs, when most of the other singers around me were amassing their Broadway repertoires.  I remember pulling Pirate Jenny, by Brecht and Weill, out of some warped hat (I’d done The Threepenny Opera while at the Academy, and found I had a taste for the salty and the nasty). And so, while everyone around me was slaying Sondheim and Bernstein and Webber, and these were some of the best singing voices I’ve still ever come across, I was trying to take everyone to Hell with this enigmatic song of hurt and revenge and nastiness. It was my very first, ever, standing ovation. Message received … the dark crevices approach was working. Or at least the different was working. I decided right there and then that I wasn’t interested in the same repertoire everyone else around me was choosing. Even though, like I said, these singers I grew up with in the bar scene (most of whom are tragically no longer with us) could break my heart on a cold day.

First off, full confession, I didn’t have the kind of voice most of those singers did. Frankly, I couldn’t handle Sondheim. I had a different instrument altogether, with its limitations, and if I knew better I’d employ what I learned in acting school to make a song come alive. The high notes and virtuosic stuff were always going to be elusive to this slightly raspy, small-ranged alto. But my gift, it turns out, was in my ability to use that texture to interpret a lyric with genuine intimacy, and connect to a song the way an actor connects to a character she is hired to play. So, mom and dad’s money for school wasn’t a complete waste.

The very first of my songwriting also came out of this era. And also came from a most cracked and introspective place. I wasn’t creating infectious hooks and house beats. I was calling on other realms, the ancestors, archetypal hauntings, to fuel the stories inside my songs. For better or for worse, it remains the way I compose. I personally think it’s for better, because I’ve established a unique voice, even though not following trend has largely cost me opportunity over the course of my life.

If only I’d had the stubborn standards no one could shake from me with regards to my personal life. As a budding artist, I was fairly peerless and fearless. But as a budding woman, I was so full of insecurities as to wear the bloat of it on my very desperate soul.

It’s been a long time since I was a twenty-something, but one thing I know for sure is that it’s a very different world today for people in their twenties than it was in my day. I believe it’s much harder today. Most of my peers were out of the house as soon as they were legal. Today, kids largely stay under their parents’ roofs as long as they can, because a living wage seems to be so much more elusive to come by today. The economy is tougher. When we left home, I was a waitress, and my roommate was a file clerk. We managed to keep a pretty nice 2-bedroom apartment with hardwood floors and crown moulding, in the Fairfax District, with no significant struggles, and also no financial help from our parents. We were pursuing our careers (me in the arts and performance, her in psychology), even though our present jobs weren’t yet reflecting them.  And it was do-able!  And, at least from my vantage point as a performer, we didn’t live in a culture where if you weren’t “made” by twenty (or younger!), you were already over-the-hill and close to extinction.

The twenty-year-olds I know today are beating their asses to a pulp to hustle their careers and meet benchmarks, and are working round the clock, and maybe even juggling several jobs at once (while still trying to be in school), and are exhausted in the way we think of our elders as being exhausted, because the window from being a child to being a superstar is smaller and smaller, and panic seems the overriding emotion. Today what’s most important, what’s most revered, are ambition and relentless drive. There are even television shows right now that pit twelve-year-olds against each other in competition in order to inspire the shark in them. I am incredibly bothered by that. Unless you come from money, the world at your feet to explore and discover at your own pace seems to be a lost gem.

I spent my twenties doing some of the stupidest things imaginable. I’m not advocating for stupid. But I deeply appreciate the leisure I had of growing up by way of the mistakes I was allowed to make, and the lessons learned from them, which builds a certain muscle, and which doesn’t seem to be a luxury afforded the twenty-somethings of today. For one, we’re a more protective culture with our children than we were in my youth, living with more fear of predators, especially as social media has become THE major character in the play. It seems that rather than being allowed the gradual process of growing up, and finding themselves, and floundering, and grabbing hold, and tossing away, twenty-somethings are pressured to grow up instantly, and to produce! produce! produce! And the ones who are celebrated are the ones who’ve “made their millions by twenty-five,” or “gone viral by sixteen.” Today, the people that kids are programmed to view as their heroes are the ones who write code not books.

It seemed an easier time to be twenty when I was twenty. Of course every generation says that.  Is every generation right?  Is it literally becoming a harder and harder world to live in?

Like I said, I did some stupendously idiotic things in my twenties. Things I would shudder to think of my own twenty-year-old daughter doing, were I a parent. But not only did I survive it, I was shaped by it. I learned some lessons there, and had an unforgettable decade. I became an artist there, in the Magical Land of Twenty. You’ve heard of The Unsinkable Molly Brown?  I had firmly and irrevocably established myself as The Unpeggable Angie Brown. My twenties were equal parts cringe-worthy and rhapsodic. And I can honestly say that no other decade for me has been nearly as extreme, or as fertile, on both ends.

I truly hope the twenty-somethings of today aren’t being so protected within the bosom of their frightened parents that they aren’t allowed to breathe a little, and find themselves. Yeah, spoken like a true childless woman. I get that. I don’t know what it feels like to let go of a child who is growing up. But I’m still rooting and cheering for some freedom and wiggle-room and memorable odysseys for those who are coming along.

There are some pretty extraordinary twenty-somethings in my life right now, and whether I’m right or wrong about it being harder today to be in your twenties, what I see in these young folk is backbone likely formed because of the tougher times the present seems to hold. And they are taking the world by storm, on their terms, and tearing it up. Are they enjoying their lives? I pray so. I don’t want them burning out by thirty because we’re a more ambition-centric society than ever before.

We’re going to need them to be our hope for a future that presently has rights being retracted and constricted and snatched from our grip. And with the heavy burden that will eventually be theirs, I pray they are loving their time in this decade now. Loving it with a ridiculous ecstasy, because there truly will be no other decade like it. I adore being a witness to their personal renaissance. Because what I know is that when they reach my age, they’ll have a tale or two of their own to ramble on about their Magical Land of Twenty, how it built them into who they are today. And there’ll be a twinkle in their eye as they tell it.

 

Your Package Has Been Delivered

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The Rockies were even more majestic than I had imagined. The Kansas Prairie, as stark as I’d expected but I hadn’t made room in my brain for the smell of cow patties for miles. The storms of Utah scared me so profoundly I knew I’d never make this trip back by car, ever again.

Of course, the first stop was Vegas, where I’d been a thousand times, and the 118 degree temps that did something weird to my car engine didn’t surprise me in the least. Thankfully, it was temporary, as I continued east and gradually north, making this move I never remotely had in my plans for my life.

I’d managed to amass 60 years on this planet without ever living anywhere other than Los Angeles, and now I was moving to Kansas City, Missouri, the heartland, the prairie, the home of tornadoes and Charlie Parker, a red state but a blue town, artful and socially progressive, even though it was here that I was called the N word for the first time ever … at least that I’ve known about. Seriously, I may just be the most sheltered Black person on the planet.

I am trying to find my identity in this new place that doesn’t require me to let go of what LA built in me, while wanting to flow with this KC charm and warmth. Trying to be both, trying to have both. In LA, I was regarded in my town’s music scene. Here, I’m barely a smudge on a wall, largely unnoticed, but not in a rude way, just the experience of a new birth and my own penchant for cocooning. I don’t even go out for auditions for the many plays that are being cast at the very theater where I work. My instinct, as I’ve said, is just to stay a little bit cocooned, and I’m not even certain why. The fight-or-flight pace of LA kind of did me in a little, so I guess I just want to breathe slower, talk slower, decide things slower, get involved slower, emerge slower. I guess. Just looking for simple.

Two years here now, and no I have not done the drive back west again (though I’ve flown home a few times now). I meant it when I said I had sworn off those torrential rains. I feel very settled here, and happy. Still not completely out of my performance shell yet, but that’s okay. I’ve done some singing. I chased fame and travel and record deals and pizzazz for so long in LA, and it beat me to a pulp, frankly. Just looking for simple. And yet even with the agenda to simplify, I still manage to over-commit myself. Total co-dependency thing. I definitely need more than just my once-a-week Al-Anon meeting. Winters blow here. I know, weird segue. I will never embrace the snow. It just isn’t in the bones of this Cali Girl. I know, I know, be open-minded.

I love the friends I’ve made in my new town. Few, which means fewer choices of who to call for a hang, or whose invitation to accept for a hang. I miss my LA friends like nobody’s business (thank God for Zoom!). That circle was and is VAST, and I am so much luckier and more blessed than I ever truly appreciated when I was actually there. But here, I sort of like it that my circle is small. Fewer decisions to make. Have I said yet that I’m looking for simple?

Here, I can embrace being 62. There, it’s the thing you’re supposed to hide. Artistic pursuits are blowing up for me here. In LA, I did the gig beat for nearly 40 years, and it was every experience from dazzling to grueling. No regrets at all. It was an extraordinary time in my life, but there wasn’t really any other avenue of my pursuits that ever went anywhere for me. Here, I’ve had firsts. Of course, everything I did in LA began as firsts, it being where I began life. But the firsts that have happened since I’ve been here are kind of dizzying. Amazing, humble, grand, small, precious firsts. My first-ever poetry reading where I was invited to be the featured poet (and I’ve had a few now) in a town known for its vibrant and weighty poetry community. First time having a hand in getting a jazz series started (at the theater where I work). First time I’ve gotten to be a participant in a wall mural (up at the iconic Unity Village). First time making a little documentary short about a Kansas City community event (the citywide Black Lives Matter street murals), and having it be my first ever Official Selection in a film festival. My first time ever having art of mine juried into a gallery exhibit, which is opening in a few days. My alcohol inks ‘bout to make their li’l splash! Pun intended! (If you know the medium, you’ll know it’s a lot of splashes of ink…never mind…)

I know that my children’s videobook winning multiple film festival awards (whaaaat???) has nothing to do with Kansas City, nor an alcohol ink of mine making the cover of a literary journal, nor having an entire concert of music (by the LA Metropolitan Master Chorale) created and performed around several of my short stories (all firsts), but I’m giving KC the credit anyway, because all these things happened while living here, and somehow here, more than in LA, I’ve managed to cultivate better focus in order to carve the space for these blessings to be made possible. Too much the blitzkrieg of Los Angeles, I guess, and all that that allegorically means, and which kept me just running, bouncing, collapsing, recovering, then running and bouncing again. Ad nauseam.

I’m exhausted. Still, two years later. Walking along the Missouri River humming “Shenandoah,” and the hiking trail that gives me genuine serenity, and strolling the halls of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art weekly — are all great balms that are slowly recovering me.

Did I mention I moved here 2 months into global lock down? Talk about throwing my own roadblocks in my way. I trip and fall a lot. Like…physically. I’m a klutz. But I’m starting to think that has whole other metaphorical layers of meaning for me and my life. And yet I persevere like a cockroach.

I like Kansas City. I might actually love it. No, yes, I definitely love it. I love Kansas City. I am mesmerized by how much art and theatre and music is embraced here. And then there are the city fountains (more than in Rome!), and the recent citywide installation of giant heart sculptures, 154 of them, all painted by different local artists, and which demanded my obsessed attention for 3 months, finding and photographing as many as I could. And the West Bottoms, and the River Market. And the 18th & Vine Jazz District, and the First Fridays Art Walks. And the stupefying amount of live theatre I’ve loved seeing, and not just at the one where I work. And my favorite building on the entire planet, the downtown KC Public Library, whose design is that of a GIANT bookshelf of classics. Crazy cool!

And even if none of that was going on, this move also means I now will not die having never left home. That’s huge for me. A dream I’ve had forever, though in my imaginings it was more along the lines of somewhere in Europe. But that’s okay, since KC is actually known as the “Paris of the Plains.” 🙂 No kidding.

I wouldn’t have chosen it on my own, but Kansas City came my way, and I happily said yes. Leapt. In a way I am not prone to do. I’m still saying yes. No looking back. Well, maybe some looking back. After all, I would take California earthquakes any day over the “Severe Thunder Storm” alerts that routinely pop up on my phone, and do indeed freaking deliver!

Poetry Is

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Often thought of as the genteel art form.

But I’ve known poets who were fierce.

And feral. Whose words cut.

Like a blade. Whose words smelled.

Of gasoline. Pumped

Freon. Into veins.

Poetry at its most punch-packed

is all our stories. The ones we bury.

The ones that try to bury us.  

A feisty turn of phrase. A graceful cadence.

A rhythmic pulse that sings. That brings

music to the proceedings. This army of love.

Carving the space that can hold all the trauma.

We can no longer hold.

The more creviced and stuck in greasy corners.

The more light is shed. And thus.

This magnificent beast that is

poetry operates

as the doorway into gratitude.

The genteel is power also. Hath caused many a heart

to crack open with its beauty.  It’s simply not

The IT and the ALL

of what poetry is.  Not by a

—shall I compare thee to a summer’s day—

long shot.

Happy New Year 2022

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May this New Year bring you peace, surrender, serenity, and a few breathtaking insights.  May you want for nothing, because you already have everything.  May the intentions you set this day be felt against the sides of mountains, ring into the ether with an ear-warming reverberation, and settle in the bones of those not as fortunate as you.  And may those intentions keep us all connected like a mighty woven net of love that always catches us when we fall. Happy New Year, one and all! 

As a working musician, the very last thing I do in the very last moments of every year is sing.

“… as it has been since forever ago and auld lang syne.  I am a New Year baby; it is in my DNA to usher out an old, usher in a new. To ritualize the idea of rebirth, renewal, and restoration; to chant, to pray, to dance, to give auspiciousness to new beginnings and rites of passage, to participate in burning bowl rituals and labyrinth walks, to summon the rains and the gods, to howl at the moon, to burn sage, to close my eyes, shut off the valve and listen. Listen to the wind in the trees tell me what I need to know next, what I need to do next, how I need to sing next. And then I sing.” ——— (Excerpt from my poem “Lost & Found” from the collection BONES)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Grace Note from the Santa Fe Mexican Grill

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Facebook just reminded me of this date from 3 years ago today. We had just finished our extravaganza tree lighting show at a high-end destination mall in Seattle, where I MC’d the show as Mrs. Santa. Ask anyone who knows me; I’m a sucker for a costume gig. My boss, event creator Karla Ross, with whom I was sharing an AirBnB house, had gotten on a plane for home early the next morning, but I was scheduled for much later in the day.  I’d never been to Seattle before, and had very much looked forward to meeting the city that had, for years, been romanticized for me by my favorite TV show at the time, Grey’s Anatomy. The truth is, I knew nothing about Seattle. And, honestly, it looked nothing like I’d seen on TV.

I had flown into Sea-Tac the morning after Karla, and had taken a city bus from the airport to the job site, where I’d met up with her to go over preliminary details for the show the following day (I was not only a performer in the show; I was also her assistant). And on the bus to the job site, something turned my head to the right and landed my gaze on that magnificent behemoth of God’s creation, Mount Rainier, in the very far distance but towering over the entire city like a grown man looming over his miniature train-set town. I’d heard you can’t always see it, that depending on the level of cloud cover, even as monstrously sized as it is, it can be invisible to the eye. So, this moment was a moment. It stole my glance for so many seconds (minutes?) that my eyes actually began to sting, until I blinked rapidly to get the juices flowing again. THE most special bus ride ever.

Fun show, great success, fast forward to the morning after our big show, with Mrs. Claus’ wig packed away for the season, and I was alone in the AirBnB room, with a day ahead of me that had nothing to do with the job we’d come there for. I was being picked up by Kerry, who had moved up there from L.A. in her new state-of-the-art RV and had never looked back. I hadn’t seen her since she’d taken off for these climes a few years before. I told her to meet me at this Mexican Restaurant a block down the hill and around the corner from the AirBnB. I had to check out a good hour before she could come get me, so I figured I’d get some breakfast while waiting. I was in a fairly unattractive part of town that dashed all my fantasies about Seattle. It was the suburb of Renton, literally walking distance of the mall where the show had happened. I’d heard Renton was beautiful, but this part of town looked like one giant truck stop; the restaurant shared its parking lot with a gas station, a mini-mart, and a coffee kiosk.  It was also first thing in the morning, so as I hiked down the hill, bundled in the fleece coat I’d bought just for the trip and my duffel bag over my shoulder, with a light quilt of morning dew on my shaven head, I wondered if the restaurant would even be open.

I hadn’t experienced an ounce of rain in the two days I’d been in the city known for its rain, and I felt lucky, as rain depresses me. Yes, I know rain is good for the earth, blah, blah, blah. I recognize and appreciate any we can get, and still I say a quiet thank you whenever the sun is out and my head is dry, because the depression is real, and I’ve felt a little lost lately, and the rain never helps. I hiked down the hill and walked into the restaurant—yes, open!—a small place barely peopled at this hour, and was instantly lifted by the Christmas playlist on the speakers. Not ranchero or mariachi music bouncing the room with its infectious buoyancy, the staple of all American-soil Mexican restaurants, but Perry Como, and Nat King Cole, and lush string sections, and jingle bells peppering every song. 

I could not resist spinning the rainless-yet-serenely-overcast morning and the Bing Crosby into the crystal prism of serendipity I always believe is my little grace note from God. In the same way that rain takes me down, Christmas music, the schmaltzier the better, floods my brain with serotonin.

It was a quiet morning. Also a plus. Multi-colored string lights draped every window and threshold, the music was medicine, and I had huevos rancheros and a Mexican coffee, and I sat with a good book (essential to the grace note), while I waited for Kerry. We would shortly be on our way, just a few miles down the road, to visit the grave of Jimi Hendrix. I have a thing for cemeteries, and for visiting the burial sites of folks in history. I’ve hit a few in my life: MLK in Atlanta. Arlington Cemetery and the eternal flame of JFK. Richard and Pat Nixon at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California. The tragic victims of the Challenger explosion in Houston. Many, many movie stars at both Hollywood Forever Cemetery and Forest Lawn in Los Angeles. And the mother lode of famous cemeteries, Père Lachaise in Paris, where I’ve placed my hand on the graves of Chopin, Edith Piaf, Sarah Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Richard Wright, Modigliani, Jim Morrison, Gertrude Stein, Isadora Duncan, Maria Callas, Rossini, Moliere. And finally, I would get to see the grave of one of my musical, cultural, and spiritual idols. We would end up not only standing where Jimi lay, and ogling all the lipsticked kisses covering his black marble headstone, we would traverse the entire grounds, get grounded, enjoy each other’s company, and be reflective about mortality. But until then, in this instant, at a truck stop in Renton, I was in a state of peace I didn’t want to let go of any time soon.

The following year we did the same job, stayed in the same AirBnB house, and I tried my damnedest to recreate that moment. I wouldn’t be seeing Kerry on that trip. My only window of opportunity for Santa Fe Mexican Grill was my first night there, the night before the big show. Karla was the one who had made plans with a friend this time, so I strolled down the hill again, and ordered an enchilada plate and a margarita. Though it was the same time of year, there were no Christmas lights up, and even sadder, no Christmas music playing overhead. I ended up feeling horrible after my meal and nearly crawled back to my room and into bed, where I ended up being actually quite flu-y for the remainder of the trip. Only a couple of months later would we all be shockingly introduced to the novel coronavirus and rumblings that Seattle had gotten hit before a lot of other cities, and so I would wonder looking back.

I was doing the thing I always do; having had such a perfect moment the year before, I had to orchestrate everything I possibly could to recreate it. To cling to it. To hold on tight, as if there will never be such a moment again, therefore I need to pin it like a wrestler and force it to re-conjure. It never fails to disappoint, of COURSE, and honestly I believe that’s its brilliant design. The signal to stay present, to cherish a moment IN the moment. And then… to be able to let it go (Buddhist teachings I’ve had in my arsenal for years, yet I seem to still, stubbornly, require the lesson), to allow that moment from last year, last week, five minutes ago, to plant itself in me and bloom beautifully. Then let the petals fall, allowing the space to make way for new. Because there is always new. THAT we can count on.

And for that tiny bit of grace, I am eternally thankful.

My Myriad Miracles of Mankind

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I love my friends who are fierce kings and queens.
I love my friends who struggle with their self-worth.

 

I love my friends who are artistic lions.
I love my friends who are proud tech-heads and science gurus.
I love my friends who are still searching for their mantle,
or are wrestling with creative malaise.

 

I love my friends who are kicking ass and taking names.
I love my friends who choose a quieter, unassuming, humbled life,
or whose lives have chosen that for them.

 

I love my friends who are deeply spiritual vessels of love and light and warriorship in the name of peace, and are meditative badasses.
I love my friends who claim no spiritual path but believe in self-will, intellectual reason, and empirical evidence.

 

I love my friends who are as keen as whips.
I love my friends who haven’t been exposed to much in the world, and have innocence.

 

I love my friends who can rock some serious fashion.

I love my friends who could give two shits about fashion.

 

I love my friends who are blissful in their romantic relationships.

I love my friends who are struggling in theirs.

I love my friends who are happy in their solitude, singlehood, and autonomy.

I love my friends who are lonely and desirous of finding love.

 

I love my friends who see and seek only light and positivity.

I love my friends who see value in the caves and the darker recesses.

 

I love my friends who find life in traveling the world.

I love my friends who find life in digging deep in the earth and taking root.

 

I love my friends to whom I have insights to impart.

I love my friends who have a thing or two to teach me.

 

I love my friends who don’t even know the brilliant power of their youth.

I love my friends who brilliantly embrace their wrinkles and their road.

 

I love my friends who have taken robes.

I love my friends who have cast robes aside.
Making way for revolution.

Making room for new growth.

Making mountains from molehills, and molehills from mist.

Making magic from mystery, and manna from the myriad miracles of mankind.

 

I love my friends, my myriad miracles of mankind.

 

 

 

 

Photo by Tyler Nix

Courting the Caves: Honest Self-examination Isn’t Afraid of the Dark

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“Pain, instead of being something to avoid,
can actually bring us closer to the truth.”
― Pema Chodron

Courting the caves.   I first coined that term, and reference it repeatedly now in my life, when I was writing my grief memoir about the days surrounding my mother’s death. The first of my referring to the term is in Chapter One of this book that I have yet to publish:

I write and chronicle and document and work out knots, and have done this for as long as I can remember, tapping the unconscious well, going to that place where cave spiders dwell, taking darkness on. Even as a child I was the one who befriended monsters and made them my allies. In adulthood it’s been a little trickier to spot the shadowy demons, but once spotted I am never afraid of foraging through the tangled, weedy backwoods, of courting the caves, of sticking a finger in their horrific faces and starting a fight. I’m afraid of everything else in the world, but not that. I’m a true believer that the way out of the hole and into a peace of spirit is with a good, bloody brawl.

It seems I’ve spent my life soul-searching and self-examining. I’m an overly-analytical person anyway. I’ve been told that before, and I do know it to be true. Just the other day I ran across a note I’d written to myself  (rather than the traditional journal volumes many keep and amass over years’ time, I just amass little post-its all over the place with thoughts I don’t want to lose). This one read:

“You don’t need to know why. Stop needing to define this feeling. Stop talking it to death. Stop thinking it to death. Stop decoding. Just have the feeling, without needing to intellectualize it, or understand it. It doesn’t need to be shushed away. Allow it. You don’t need to be talked down from it. Go through it. It exists for a reason. Listen. Your body is a pristine barometer for what’s happening in your world. Honor that knot in the gut. That racing heart of foreboding. It has something to tell you. Don’t quarantine it is some kind of bubble that can’t allow you to feel unless that feeling is a happy one. That is a dangerous aspect of the Positive Principle movement, a movement that is an inherently good concept while having its kinks, such as the practice of a denial of feelings that are actually valid and whole, in order to wear an inauthentic mask of  IT’S ALL GOOD. Sometimes it’s not all good. That’s OK.”

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t a post-it. But do you see what I did here? I was trying to talk myself out of overthinking something, only to evolve the thought into something quite overthinking. I can’t help my brain. And the truth is, while that trait can sometimes burden me and others, it has also been a gift, and I couldn’t be more grateful for the person I am because of that self-understanding seeker’s road.

I’ve read all the books. Everyone from Deepak Chopra to Elizabeth Gilbert. I’ve jumped on that bandwagon of trying to be a more evolved version of myself, of trying to reach some kind of higher consciousness, of trying to heal old “pain bodies, ” as my good friend Eckhart says.  Yeah, no, Eckhart Tolle isn’t actually my friend. But you had to know that he would be one of the many I’ve read on this trek, and he feels like an old friend. I have a dear sister-girl who shares this path with me, more or less, and we’re both constantly asking each other, “what would Eckhart do?”  We say it with tongue in cheek, and are usually following it up with laughter over some crazy thing one or the other of us has done. But it actually does help ground us. Just to be able to step back for a minute and re-frame. It always manages to bring us back from the crazy brink.

I wrote a little credo years ago, and it has been my email sign-off ever since:

  1. Create  ― even if you’re not an artist
  2. Support artists ― especially the independents
  3. Live well ― doesn’t take money to do it
  4. And be whole

This is my most heart-centered request of mankind, beyond the obvious one of do no harm, and it has everything to do with self-nurture, which means it’s really a request of myself. Lately, I’ve had to really think about what #3 means.  What does it mean to live well? I don’t mean to live affluently. Pretend money and status don’t exist.  Then ask yourself if you are living well.

Without giving it too much thought (yeah, nice try Angela), my instinctive answer to what living well means is the ability to be as whole, centered, and conscious as we have the potential for. Living a life in that higher agreement state. If we can make ourselves whole, we can (and do) minister more authentically and more willingly to the global family and to the planet. And that ministers to us. It all rounds back in often inexplicable ways.  Likewise, if we take the steps toward ministering, it can’t help but foster wholeness. But what does wholeness mean? Everyone has a story, a history. Some call it baggage. It shapes us. And it is most beneficial to us (yes, baggage can be beneficial) when we are able to face it, identify it, HEAR what it has to tell us, and then take the steps toward transcending it. Then we stand a chance of getting whole, and getting happy. That’s what it means to live well.

The “hear what it has to tell us” part is where I do my best to live when it comes to my spiritual journey. And one of my self-discovery practices (of the many I have) is one I find too scrumptious not to share here.  It’s called SoulCollage®, and it’s the brainchild of the late artist and psychologist Seena B. Frost, who developed this incredible practice as a way for the artistic and therapeutic layman to participate hands-on in his/her own self-discovery, and to create beautiful works of art in the process.

SoulCollage is, quite simply, the making of collage art. Beyond that basic modality of creating something artful, however, is a therapeutic process that taps into the subconscious with its vivid mood and collision of imagery, and cultivates the powers of the intuitive.  Through the seemingly unrelated images of a collage work, much can be revealed about the deepest parts of who we authentically are.  You need not be an artist of any experience.  You need only be hungry for an extraordinary journey of self-excavation and growth.

I became a student of SoulCollage through one of its facilitators in Los Angeles, folk artist and radiant spirit MARGO GRAVELLE. For many years now I have met with a group of like-minded seekers to make collages toward the purpose of the ongoing creation of a “deck” that might be likened to a Tarot deck, the result of which reflects and represents the varied and many aspects of each person’s emotional and psychological pantheon of characters (called “the committee”), as well as a discovery and identification of archetypes, which dips a bit into the work of Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Carolyn Myss, etc.

My own experience with SoulCollage has been a deeply sacred and life-changing one for me. I have sought many healing modalities, including cognitive therapy and grief counseling, and have never felt more clear about who I am (the good, the bad, the ugly, the brilliant) through any means more potent than through this extraordinary, and completely non-judgmental practice. And often, it is the shadow images in the collages that give us our greatest dawning and light.

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”
― Joseph Campbell

This post isn’t about selling SoulCollage on you (I’ve got no investment other than the personal healing in it), but if you’re interested in finding out more, please visit Seena’s site: SOUL COLLAGE.   If nothing more, it’s absolutely fascinating exploration, and may even help you to find a class in your area, which I recommend for anyone on a self-seeking path for transformation.

Why I adore this particular practice so much is because it seems to me that the self-examination movement has taken an odd and, I feel, uncourageous turn. I have spoken of this in past blog posts, but here is where I’ll try to elaborate. There is a trend, a force, a movement, within the self-help world that abhors conflict, that does everything in its power to manifest a rosier view of life, without the planting of the groundwork first, without a visit to the caves, and to encourage the practice of denial in its followers. Conflict is an interesting word to me, because I want nothing more in my life than to live with some measure of peace of spirit, and it’s what I strive for every day, yet as a writer what I know for sure is that conflict is everything. There is no story without conflict. A story without conflict is just an ad. Exploration of the human condition, and that means conflict, is what any story should be.  Sometimes that conflict is resolved in the story, but the more interesting ones really just pose questions that make us think, that give us varying perspectives, and that expand the palate of our understanding of the human race.  That’s what the best writers do.

So, here’s the thing.  Because I am a writer, and have a pretty specific opinion of what a writer should do, I tend to approach my own personal journey in the same way as I do my writing.  By courting conflict.  Not as a way to wallow, which brings to mind the Native American parable:

A grandfather says, “I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one.” When asked which wolf will win the fight in his heart, the old man replies, “The one I feed.”   

It’s a wise parable. There is a danger to the spirit that wallows, because it is kept broken, and then we find ourselves just perpetually running with stuff, and letting it be the loop we’re in.

What I’m referring to is the wisdom in courting conflict as a means of transcending it, not denying it, but of being willing to face it, challenge it, figure out what it’s feeding to make it stick around. That one lodged in my head, like a mighty slap, from the Tony Robbins retreat I attended a couple of years ago.

Carl Jung from The Philosophical Tree says: “Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

And so I go back to the idea of our baggage being beneficial. It will always teach us something we need to learn. But only if we are willing to identify and face it.  That’s where we stand the chance of transcending it.  There isn’t a breakthrough in existence that wasn’t accompanied by some pain, but what comes out on the other side, always, is freedom. A freedom worth cultivating and renewing and re-strengthening every single day (I just quoted myself, again, this time from an earlier blog post).

Lately, I see a lot of seminars and courses on “healing yourself with….” fill in the blank with your preferred motif. And I’ll always look into them, because I’m always on a path.  What I find in far too many, however, is a process of uncovering all the ills in your past that anyone else has ever inflicted on you, so that the blame can begin. The last part of that phrase is mine, and IS being judgmental, admittedly, because I do believe that’s what the bottom line of these modalities tends to be. Looking under everyone else’s hood except your own to find the culprit of your suffering and damage.

I’m not saying it’s illegitimate to identify an external source of harm to you. It’s important to do so. But it is only a part of the process. The pretty crucial other part is the courage it takes to identify our own complicity in our internal disrepair.  Not to mention the harm we cause others.  And we have all caused someone harm.

I have a friend, Frank Ferrante, who was recently the subject of a documentary called May I Be Frank. And there is a moment in the film, during his own battles with self, and ultimate transformation, when he recalls punching his younger brother badly in the ribs as a young boy.  And he never even put it together that a constant and chronic pain in his own rib area, that he had been living with for years, might’ve actually been a manifestation of his guilt over that act.  I do believe we carry our transgressions against others in our bodies as pain, sometimes even literal and physical.  So when that moment of revelation happens for Frank in the movie, the first time I saw it I almost crumbled, myself, because I fundamentally understand and believe in the power of that kind of purgation. Going through the process is so ultimately purifying, even if painful, that it can’t help but begin to lift burdens, lighten our existence, and allow the door to be opened to a genuine peace of spirit and to happiness.

Frank was so brave to have walked the path illustrated in the documentary.  And because of his bravery, he has experienced a jaw-dropping transformation of body and soul.  It ain’t for sissies, this self-exploration stuff.  But I believe in its absolute cruciality, toward the purpose of delivering oneself out of suffering and into a place of compassion, empathy, and peace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2017, I…

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In 2017, I…

Lost my father.

Lost my brother, too, in a manner of speaking.

Found my voice as a poet.

Found my brother.

Endured whiplash, of both the physical and the emotional brand.

Found a spiritual home for myself, for the first time ever.

Got spooked by the nature trail that had given me life.

Fostered anxiety.

Thought about my father.

Read some of the most amazing books of fiction, memoir, and poetry that I’ve ever read.

Lost my feline girl (though technically it was at the end of 2016, but it was THE moment that launched this longest year).

Blocked out the White Noise of the White House.

Watched my city burn, and a few others nearly drown, while feeling the haunting wail of a planet in trouble.

Witnessed the unfettered power of #metoo, and the spiritual vacuum cleaner that got unleashed.

Lost my brother again.

Bonded with family in an unprecedented and crucial way.

Found baby bro yet again.

Learned to love and let go in equal measure.

Re-learned it every single day.

Experienced pain and beauty in fairly even amounts.

Thought about my father.

Wrote about my father.

Conquered my fear of the nature trail (had to do with a bobcat sighting), and drew her into my bosom again, after nearly a year without her.

Lost more and more people, in too heartbreaking a number.

Had a talk with Death.  It was a come-to-Jesus moment, with a few side-eyes between us.

Got back to yoga (how I missed you, old friend).

Did Goat yoga!  (seriously, Google it)

Wrote my 1st short story.

Wrote my 118th short story…and 30 poems.

Deemed myself officially (if it’s not obvious by now) addicted, fixated, obsessed with words; an addiction from which I hope to never recover.

Submitted pieces like a mo-fo.

Got rejected.

Got rejected.

Got rejected.

Never wavered.  I am a poet.  A wordsmith.  Begone now, before someone drops a house on you!

Had/did/received loads of healing, of both the spiritual and the biological kind.

Grew more thankful, and more in love with the random nature of life (that helps in the forgiveness department).

Felt my age.

Killed a plant.

Went vegan.

….ish.

Made a movie with my orchestra (a very sick day, but too much irreverent fun).

Had the exhilarating honor to interview some amazing wellness-seeking human beings for a tiny documentary I made.

Had the exhilarating honor to be interviewed by a couple of amazing young women for a grand and extraordinary documentary that they made, with 2017 being the launching year for screenings all over the world.  #thegoddessproject

Lived up to my hype.

Didn’t live up to my hype.

Failed my hype miserably.

Decided that hype was not a word worthy of my time.

Talked to my father, my mother, my stepfather, the ancestors, all those who have left this earth but are never far, and who give me living tips daily (sorry, Daddy, that you had to join the League of Gentle Council. Really thought you’d be the one to make it to 100).

Wrote these thoughts to usher out an old, and to usher in a new. To ritualize the idea of rebirth, renewal, and restoration, because I am a New Year’s baby, and so it is in my DNA to ritualize, to chant, to pray, to dance, to give auspiciousness to the concept of new beginnings and rites of passage, to participate in burning bowl rituals, to summon the rains and the gods, to burn sage, to close my eyes, shut off the valve and listen. Listen to the wind in the trees tell me what I need to know next, what I need to do next, how I need to sing next.   And then I sing.

The very last thing I did in 2017 was sing.  As it has been, since forever ago and auld lang syne.  I sang, and sang.

And baby brother is home.  Nestled in all the love his family has to give.  We get to remember my father together.

All of us. Together.

Welcome 2018. Be nice now.

 

 

 

Happy Birthday Phone Message 1/1/92.   Hilarious chaos ensues.   But best of all, my father’s voice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Belligerent Romance : song. heart. bravery.

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“…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.

An Elm & Houston Revelation

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Elm & Houston Epiphany copy

 

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.