On writing and hidden sparks

From before the time I could write or read, I was dictating stories to my mother. I wanted to be a writer. There were worlds in my mind, worlds upon worlds clamouring to get out, just waiting for me to sit with pen to paper or fingers to keys to release them. Other possible career ideas came and went, but that one idea stayed fixed until the point I decided to consciously follow music. Even then, the idea wasn’t discarded. Rather it was placed on the back shelf for a time after other experiences that were to come.

Three degrees in music, four separate state driver’s licenses, many jobs and a few broken hearts later, this little spark is still within me. When things are quiet, when I am alone or still, it returns. It pulls on my heart like God speaking to John in the New Testament saying, “WRITE.” I feel my self pulling away. Is it fear? Is it this great wall that has always separated me from experiencing my life and others fully? This fundamental separation from others that I have always felt, is it the problem or is it a gift that allows me to step back, analyze and write my perceptions?

A number of people from my past have made trenchant and mainly unsolicited observations on this characteristic of mine. One was a conducting teacher who said of my work, that it was as if I was conducting from behind a veil. Early in my teaching career after getting particularly excited about something, one of my students said something to the effect of “now we see who you really are” after almost two years at that school. In graduate studies, my voice teacher was always trying to draw me out through various energy exercises and new age techniques. A therapist asked me once, “what is it that you get out of fence sitting?”

Yet, somehow this kernel inside of me that desires to write feels real when so many other things do not. I don’t know how to go to the next step, or what that next step might be, but it connects me to deep emotion inside myself even on days when I feel that I have no capacity to feel. Is it Corinthians that says that the things that are unseen are the eternal ones?

In some ways I fear that I have lost my creativity. Thirty odd years of life have brought me to a place where I no longer create worlds inside my head. What I create is what I live in and what I’ve created is what I have lived through. These are the stories I now have to tell. But this is where I stop. Be it lack of confidence, fear or simply the belief that my stories would just be an egotistical exhibition, I stop. I don’t write. Or if I do write, I get lost. I try to be too big, too epic so that I loose my way and can’t finish. What I do write feels so personal to me that I can’t detach myself from it and release it into the world and I become lost in worrying about the perceptions of others.

Is any of this related? Where is the way out of this? What is my error? How do I “lift the veil?”

After a colleague is fired

We are "o.k." That is what we say. The looks pass between us. There is a strange openness, an open acknowledgment that any of us could be the next. We make eye contact, but the boss does not. He seems to have gained more of a connection to his preaching, his passion in the midst of his choices, yet he does not really look at us. Do we look at him? Do we dare to try to make that type of connection through the eye?

The disappeared. If it can happen to the woman who ran this place, it can happen to any of us. After the brutality of abruptness, we are left with that truth in the center of our minds.

Yet, this is not about a job ended. This feeling inside of us and between us is not about budget or shortfalls, not about streamlining to focus on the mission of this workplace, not about a difficult choice. It is about trust. We, the staff, trusted our leader to deal with us honestly and forthrightly. We trusted that our jobs were secure as he said they were back in the Fall. We trusted that when tough choices would come, he would treat us with the same dignity and respect that he professes by talking openly with us about problems and potential consequences. Then after such honesty, it would be time for him to assume the responsibility of painful decisions. With this special trust built by hard honesty, we could have been primed to grow stronger.

Inscrutable is the word I currently think of when I see this man. So rarely do we glimpse what he actually feels! All we are left with for our judgments are his words. Words are tricky, ambiguous little things, especially when 90% of human communication is independent of them. Each interprets what they see and hear according to their own filter, so when real action is taken we are all surprised by the result and what we now imagine must be inside of him.

Writing about Alzheimers

This morning I finished a book called "When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection" by Dr. Gabor Mate. I ordered the book through an ILL system to read a chapter on Alzheimer's Disease. Only one page from the end of the book, Dr. Mate wrote of the value of cultivating one's creative self and reports how whenever he actually slowed down his frenetic life, there had been a quiet, tiny voice that encouraged him to write. Today during lunch at work, I met a woman who is a writer. When I made some comment about the drudging discipline of being a writer, she replied that the writers she knows are much more compelled to write than forced.

When I was a child, I wanted to be a writer. Other dreams came and went, but from the age of 3 when I started dictating my first stories to my mother, I wanted to be a writer. By high school, my efforts were leaning towards other areas but somehow this seed lived on, even as the wellspring of earlier worlds and stories became lost.

Now 34 years old and two degrees in music later, I find myself needing to write just to process what is happening to my father. Yet this exploration is only partially about my father and at least 95% about me, my struggle and my fears.

In the past I have written of my frustrations with the research I've read about the causes of Alzheimer's. None of the lifestyle or dietary risk factors have seemed to apply to the four members of my family who have been struck by this. The question behind the 11 page chapter on Alzheimer's that drew me to this book is, "Could early life experience, emotional repression and lifelong stress predispose to Alzheimer's?" (p. 158) Dr. Mate goes on to talk about the few studies that have been done that point to this correlation and then uses a number of case examples to illustrate his suspicion.

And here I finally see something that seems worth investigating. Emotional repression is the one characteristic that all of my relatives who had Alzheimer's clearly shared and the one quality lacking in those of similar age and gene pool who kept their marbles to the very end. I used to tell my friends that in the picture dictionary of adjectives, my dad's face would be next to the word inhibited. He had such a hard time showing affection. He only showed true and unabashed enthusiasm for politics and only showed anger when in a terrifying once-a-decade-type rage.

At first I think of how lucky I am that I am not like my dad. The illusion of safety descends. Soon honesty comes a knocking and I know that I am so much more like my dad that I might ever be able to admit. "Peas in a pod" was a phrase one friend used to describe me and my dad together. I know I have a lot inside me, so much emotion and so many thoughts striving to break through, but does anyone else know this? How much do I actually show this?

During my disastrous first teaching job after some rehearsal where I had gotten particularly excited, a little red headed tenor said to me that he was finally seeing who I really was. Had I been completely hiding myself from them for the miserable past year and a half? My voice teacher during my masters degree studies once called me an "Ice Queen" and commented that bawdy songs could be especially effective coming from me because of my general demeanor. One of my early conducting teachers commented that my problem was not technique, rather it was as if I were conducting from behind a veil.

It seems that in the eyes of others, I have quite a lot in common with my father.

Perhaps my desire to write, that little voice inside me, pushing me to get back in touch with myself, is pushing me to be honest with myself even if I feel unable to do so with anyone else.

When I look at my life and at the pursuits which have drawn me to them, these are always the pursuits that require the most openness, the most expression and the most personal and emotional risk. I do them again and again, falling and failing, round and round. Somehow the pathway was always open for me at the piano, but I didn't want the piano in that way. I wanted the harder option so that I might struggle to become myself and to learn how to let that person out in the ways that my father has never been able to.

Dreams

Last night I dreamed that I was in a take out restaurant in LA and could see the downtown skyline across a body of water. (My dreams rarely make any physical sense.) There were some kids and families from my work there as well. As we were watching, something happened. It might have been a plane but I don't remember the dream clearly enough. After whatever this act of terrorism was, the big cylindrical building downtown collapsed. I thought, here we go again. The people I was with didn't seem to know what to do. I was telling people that if they were staying where we were, they should close the windows to avoid the dust. Otherwise they should go home.

I've had at least one other dream about terrorist attacks recently. I never dreamed this kind of thing when I lived near NYC or when everything happened.

I did, however, have dreams after the destruction of the towers where I would be walking through the mall under one of the towers just like I always did when coming out from the PATH station on my way to work at Trinity. Everything was there but without other people. These were some of the few dreams I have had where things were physically in the right places. It wasn't spooky, but it was just as it had been.

There were visions as well. One was a quick flash of scripture on the Saturday before that infamous destruction. A group I sang with had just finished what had been an important performance for us on the Hudson side of the World Financial Center. I was standing at the entrance to the underground mall that I would pass through on my way to the PATH train home. I was talking to one of my older and closest friends whom I had just sung with as we prepared to part ways. She was telling me about changes in her life and decisions that she was preparing to make that would change things for both of us, including her anticipated departure from our current shared musical venture. I remember looking at the chunk of stone in the sunlight by the entrance behind her and a spot of scripture popped into my head. I thought of Jesus saying, "not one stone will be left on top of another." Three days later than would be literally, not just figuratively, true.

During my time working in lower Manhattan, the night before Easter was also a night of unusual thoughts. Although they were probably induced by the hysteria of the 10 day music marathon at Trinity that surrounded Holy Week, there was a certain theme. The night before my first Easter in 2001, I closed my eyes for the few hours of precious sleep to come. As I relaxed, I saw before my eyes the scroll work on the pillars inside St. Paul's Chapel growing and unfurling like a wondrous plant or a billowing cloud. The next year I had driven or walked around the pit that day before Easter. I saw what looked to me like layers of basement that remained with their edges scrappy and fibrous bits of metal splaying out. When I closed my eyes that night, the landscape of that pit was all around me, expanding and growing through my vision. In 2003 the scene was different. No longer mentally anchored in lower Manhattan, I saw the green shoots of new born plants from my morning's run, stretching and growing out, a young and vital green.

I don't know why I've been dreaming these things, or why I'm dreaming them now, but I've been in a horrible place during the day after these recent visions. This blog that no one reads is a place for me to let it all out, a place to wonder aloud, vent, ask why and try to find some resolution for myself.

Christmas Closet

When I was home this past December, my stepmother assigned me the task of helping my dad go through and get rid of stuff in the closet of his office. When I think back to everything that happened during that vacation, the trips that I took, friends I saw, conversations I had or tried to have, my happiest thoughts are of time spent on that bloody closet.

My father's intellectual capacities seem to be declining quickly. I already knew that he could no longer remember phone conversations the that we have or even that they had happened after the fact. I was unprepared for just how much the present moment escapes him. Maybe it is not that the actual present moment escapes him. Rather, it is that he continues to exist almost solely in the present moment and has trouble remembering the ones just past.

Either way, conversations about anything but the distant past seemed to move at a glacial speed, if at all. Ask him what he was doing when President Roosevelt died and out comes a great story. Ask him what he had for dinner or just ordered at a restaurant and he has no idea.

It is with this in mind, that we ventured into his office. In addition to separating things for goodwill, one of the major jobs was to find and shred old financial documents. Once upon a time in the not too distant past, my father had a fair number of investments. In the process of his decline, he lost a lot of money. We don't know where it all went, but by the time we realized how bad things had gotten and my stepmother finally took over his finances a great deal had been lost to shady brokers, market declines, charities, political causes, vitamin salesmen, mail order smoked salmon and God knows what else. What was left to be gotten rid of were folders, binders and old cardboard boxes full of a paper trail of now lost wealth.

On days that I was home, the scene was set with myself alternately poking about in the closet and sitting on the floor shredding. My dad would sit in a chair slowly reading through a box of old class notes. The shredder served as a rallying cry to my father. He would hear it and then come to the office to make sure that I wasn't destroying something important. Invariably he would ask me if I had brought the machine with me. I would tell him that it belonged to his wife, and he would settle into the chair to continue his slow sifting through notes and newspaper clippings.

There were some exciting finds in the labyrinthine closet. My favorite was a letter that he had written to his Aunt Mildred in 1960 when Kennedy was elected. There was also a great stash of forgotten food stuffs buried throughout the closet. I removed 3 expired tins of fish, 4 cans of soup, an expired jar of peanut butter, a box of instant mashed potatoes and a bag of potato chips, mercifully unopened. There was also a 6" X 12" filled entirely with return address labels and other thank you gifts from charities including six unopened American flags.

In the recycled envelopes with tax returns from the 1980's and canceled checks, I found record of a loan that my mother took on after the divorce. My father had cosigned. I also found a three ring binder detailing his father's slow decline from Alzheimer's. I could only read as far as the first letter from my uncle describing some of his symptoms and the infamous incident when he disappeared into the woods in Wisconsin, which resulted in a massive search with a local team and dogs. This was the end of my grandfather's summers in Wisconsin, one of the few places he remembered.

Amongst the recyclables were incredible stacks of investment and health magazines. At one time organized into labeled binders, all of them had my father's tell tale underlining throughout to show that he had read them and what he had found important or useful. I threw these magazines out with relish just as I shredded the record of the loan, I shredded the history of my father's obsessions: investment and avoiding his father's fate through living a better life. Anyone could see how futile both of those exercises turned out to be.

In the days that I worked and thinned out the closet, I got rid of a box of unused candles, bags of clothing, 4 trash bags of shredded papers and a few carloads of recycling. My dad got through about 1 box of old class notes. I kept asking him if he thought he would use it again. He would say, "Oh, I guess not." Then he would part with a few sheets of paper but decide to keep some others. At one point, I asked him what he was reading. He said is was an article about Nixon, but really it was about Bush II.

Somehow, even with the emotional baggage of so much that I was finding, this was a happy time for me. We were doing something together. We barely spoke, but it was alright. We've always been quiet, except for talking about political things or family gossip. This is just how we both are; sometimes socially inhibited but with a lot of pent up passion that spills forth into the things we really care about. We both like to putter, read and run. We enjoy planting things and looking at trees. Though not easily aroused, we both have volcanic tempers but love very deeply and loyally. These things seem to be the essence of my father, and I am sorry that it has taken his stripping bear, his slow deconstruction for me to realize just who he really is underneath all that he had seemed to be for so long.

Self Censorship and Verbal Constipation

I have been lacking in motivation to write anything for a while, not only blog entries but letters to friends, statements of intent, job inquiries or even a private articulation of my own thoughts on the world. Normally overflowing with words, my mind has been dammed up.

As I was driving down Figueroa the other day away from the library, I found my thoughts returning to the time of my repatriation after two years of study in the U.K. One of the major things I noticed in myself upon my return was a deficit in a certain type self-censorship which would allow me to function more smoothly in this society. It isn't just the containment and non-expression of certain thoughts, it is the cutting off of those thoughts before they are even able to properly form. (Now that I have regained this ability, how hard it is for me to articulate what was then so strikingly present in my daily existence!)

I feel that in many ways the parameters for certain pursuits are so much more highly prescribed in our society than in Britain. Fachs, or categories, for singers are much more flexible in Britain. There is much more individuality in dress. A greater variety of weights, shapes, sizes and ethnicities are presented as beautiful by the popular media in Britain. More lifestyles are considered mainstream. I feel that American society is constructed to convey a continual judgmentalism against almost everyone and almost everything to make them feel inferior or insecure. Whether it is to sell products or to stifle thought, the effect produces a certain numbness, a certain detachment and self-censorship to avoid those negative consequences. "I will be happy/accepted/lovable when I can loose that last 10 pounds/buy that new TV/secure that new post. "

Perhaps it is that my own self-censorship has kicked in and is rapidly out of control. How many times do I wear something dull that I do not enjoy in an attempt to fit in? How many things have I bought recently in an attempt not to look like I don't need those extra jobs I've been applying for? How many times do I stifle the expression of my own opinions about my country that I love so because I am afraid of being put on the no fly list and having my activities inconvenienced? (Would you believe that in London, I was a moderate!)

For New Year's, I made only one resolution: to work to be more honest, and to be more honest with myself if honesty with others is not practical. Behind this wall of verbal constipation lie my true reasons for not writing to my friends overseas. I miss the open, honest and mentally present ways that we shared our lives, and I fear that I have lost the capacity within myself to be that honest and open person. I fear that they will see what a shallow thinking American I've become in an attempt to ease my daily life in this image factory of L.A.

That wall also conceals worries about my country that I was so ready to return to. Forever the armchair political analyst, I see our collective course towards the future as hopeless and insane. Obama is only a nicer face and a slight slackening of the pace of our societal march towards the same doom as before. I read. I think. I collect information. I see that the many of the ways of life of my friends in the midwest are drawing to a close as viable options for survival. I believe that my own way is only a few steps behind theirs because of my currently geographical location. In my mind the only hope for true change is a word that I do not wish to articulate. Here is the self censorship!

I am a pacifist. I don't believe in war. I seek to let go of the violence which exists within myself. I believe in God, and I strive to be a christian in the most elemental form of the word, someone who follows the teaching of Jesus. But I fear our country cannot begin to again serve its people without the most fundamental of changes. Thanks to our Supreme Court, corporations now seem to have more rights than individual human beings, and the madness of society will expand into this new frontier. This march of despotism, of slavery to corporate masters, of the looting of society for the benefit of the few continues, and it will not stop through any of the channels legally open to citizens.

When I was visiting my place of origin in the midwest, I spoke about the problems of our country with the father of one of my oldest friends. He emigrated from Egypt in the mid-1970's as a Coptic Orthodox Christian searching for a better life for himself and his descendants. He once served in the Egyptian Army by removing dead bodies from a battlefield during the Six Days War. He seems to harbor a distrust of muslims, but he does not believe in war. In our conversation he used the word for the only solution as he sees it, the word that I can hardly type even now. Revolution.