Belated aspirations

I desperately want to be good at something. I mean VERY good, not just good. It’s a leftover feeling from long ago, I think. Something that was never addressed. There were times in my life when that feeling didn’t matter, when all that mattered was “romance.” I would want to be VERY good for that particular man in 1970, another particular man in 1981. But now it’s too late for that. I can be GOOD for my husband now without giving up anything, because there’s not much to give up. No job, no place. All that’s been gone for a while. I’ll never get back to Massachusetts. It’s too late, and too expensive.

I became pretty good at some things. I suppose I was a pretty good writer, at times. As a grad student in English Literature, I wrote some mean papers. There was a teacher to please, so I was motivated, even though I was in my fifties. Compared to how I feel now, I felt YOUNG back then, as if doing well in class would bode well for my “future.” Why didn’t I feel that when I was younger? Because I was too busy being an adult, trying to handle a middle-management job at a weekly newspaper. I thought I was a big shot, dealing with stuff moment-to-moment, which ruled out the idea of studying anything seriously (although I should have studied management techniques).

Music kept rearing its lovely head when I least expected it. I was no prodigy at the piano when I was a kid taking lessons, but I enjoyed any opportunity to compose. Of course, that was rare, and only one teacher indulged it. No one encouraged me to go to ANY college, let alone music school. I wound up in art school because a friend urged me to join her, and it was cheap. There, at Massachusetts College of Art, a major in filmmaking led to more writing. As an afterthought I improvised some music for one of my films (long since lost to the dustbin).

Now, a veteran of several bands and sporadic guitar and voice lessons over the years, I am trying to be a serious musician? It makes no sense. I laugh at myself, and yet I continue. But how will I know if I have succeeded? These days, there is no way to tell. I currently participate in (don’t laugh) a weekly ukulele open mic online (among a few other open mics online). The first few times I was clearly more “professional” than most of the other players on this particular open mic; but this last time (tonight) I was not perfect. Now I’m feeling like shit. My weakness is not hitting the right vocal note when changing keys. I guess I should work on that. It’s all about working on stuff. Working and working and working. I am supposed to be retired! I’m 71 years old, for crissakes! Good thing we’re in the middle of a COVID resurgence! I have an excuse for always being in my chair, at the computer, with my ukulele in hand.

I keep writing songs, they do keep coming if I pay attention and, again, keep working, working working. But, what happens then? Except for the ones I recently recorded (which might as well be buried in an old mine, since nothing’s happening regarding completing what’s called “production,” and I’m too much of a wuss to nudge the person supposed to be doing that), my efforts are made in a vacuum. I can play them for one or two people, but that doesn’t satisfy me. At the same time, I’m very unsure of my worth in this area, and cannot bring myself to promote myself. It’s against my nature and nurture.

And now I can’t even bring myself to watch any songwriters playing their songs (especially if they are female) on YouTube or wherever. I don’t want to be distracted or influenced. Which tells me it’s really an EGO thing with me, and that I don’t really LOVE music as I should! If I did, I’d want to hear all of it, wouldn’t I? I remember failing an audition to get into a prestigious choral group in junior high. They asked for the Star Spangled Banner, or was it America the Beautiful? I can’t remember. My friend Caroline made it; I didn’t. At the time, I really didn’t care. I didn’t care about the music that group, called the Well-Wishers, was going to do. I liked folk and rock. I was happy playing that kind of song with my other girlfriend, Janice. As is the case (for me) now, we never played in front of anyone except a few friends. I don’t think Janice plays or sings at all now, although I have no evidence. I think she’s still alive, which is good. She’s probably a grandmother, or even a great-grandmother, roles I’ve not even considered for myself, since I don’t have kids.

I traded my first guitar, a classical, for some opium, back in 1967. Now I have three ukuleles, two guitars, a melodica, and eight harmonicas, and I’m about to finish a bottle of white wine. After which I will practice a song I just wrote called “Against Self-Examination.” There’s another open mic online tomorrow.

Emerging from Isolation

I have a suspicion that coming out of the COVID “lockdown” (or what passed for that in the U.S.) is scary for me. I feel raw, vulnerable. I do not want to SEE large groups of people let alone navigate large groups socially. I do not want to be running from one place to another. I am now used to having swaths of time to segue from writing to walking the dog, from singing to cooking. I have had a taste of living in a slow, civilized fashion, and I don’t want to give it up.

 

My luck (or “privilege,” as some would have it) has been good. Our house had been completely paid for a few years before COVID. I’d retired around the same time, so I didn’t have an income to lose, an essential job to endanger me, or obligations I’d have to invent an online process for. I took to “creativity”-related Zoom meetings eagerly. It seemed the perfect format for me. But then, difficulties DID arise with two people (one a family member, the other an acquaintance from decades ago who moved away, but during COVID became an online intimate, almost, without really being a real-life friend, simply because we had some things in common).

 

I do take things too seriously. A few critical comments from either of those people and I’m a ruminating wreck for hours. Even independent of those relationships, though, I often slip into a state where I simply don’t have a grip on who I am, whether I am good or bad, an artist or a hack, a narcissist or an empath. I observe other’s qualities, but I don’t think I judge them the way I judge myself. It’s much easier to imagine that I know who I am if I stay home and don’t have much to do with other people at all. In some cases, it’s also easier if I don’t even communicate with some people even online. I did not used to be this way, really. Maybe I’ve become more blunt, as well as more sensitive, and I’m tired of acting the part of the Nice, Helpful Woman. I can no longer imagine how I did the people-pleasing job I retired from!

 

Because it was necessary, because I couldn’t escape to a job or myriad activities, I think I became a better companion and a kinder partner for my husband during this time. It just happened, and I hope he agrees that it's true. I don’t think I could have done this with more than one other person, or maybe even any other person but him. This is probably a good thing, and I don’t think I twisted myself in knots to do it. 

 

I like to wait for my dreams to tell me things about myself, but my dreams during the past year or so have not been memorable. Only twice since March 2020 have I awoken in the night to write them down. The second time was just the other night. It was a semi-recurring dream about a person I was involved with when I was in my twenties, ending in a situation in which I was left wondering and confused. The specific dream situations change, but the confusion seems eternal. I really wanted more than that from my unconscious, but it goes its own way.

 

I’m now embarked on my seventies. Everything after this is 'lagniappe.' I am making use of it; I am writing songs and having them recorded. I have no idea if it’s worth it. The enterprise is unfamiliar because I have rarely done something like this under my own “steam” (as my mother used to call it). I do have one of those difficult people to thank for the initial impetus, but I continue dutifully, almost, pretending that I am someone else, I suppose, someone who has an obligation to herself and holds herself in some esteem. I have not yet become that person, though. And I am not able to think of it as "fun." I need to lighten up.

Music in the rain...

The emotional position I’m expressing myself from is not good this rainy week as February crawls into March. Sure, I’ve stopped drinking alcohol almost entirely, due to an “incident” last summer (July 2019) involving me falling down some concrete steps while leaving a party, and then slapping and swearing at my husband when he tried to help me up— but finally learning my lesson doesn’t make me a great person at last. But I don’t want to be a great person. I wanted to be a great something-else-specific, such as a writer or musician. No one gets recognition for their achievements in personhood— in fact they’re more likely to get taken for granted. I do realize now that, that night, with five beers in my system, I felt like the same “person” but apparently was not, behavior-wise. Oh, well. Alcohol, no matter the occasion, was no longer making me feel good, just sleepy and mostly silent. My aging animal energy was no longer bubbly enough to bring motivation and excitement to the drunken state (until I was threatened with what I thought was humiliation).

As our house fills up with boxes, papers, and random objects, I scan the domestic landscape and cringe. It is some relief to turn the lights down; even more to focus on the television screen. The best part of the day is the end of it, when I’m getting into bed with a book or something to listen to on my headphones. It’s nice if my husband is there next to me, reading or sleeping, but it’s not required. I’ve always been wary of “pleasure,” especially when deliberately sought, but I do admit to the occasional sensual journey provided by jazz classics. I relate more to piano and guitar, since those are instruments I’ve played, but I don’t object to horns, which surprise me with their aggressive precision sometimes. In this complicated sound world, everyone’s a genius but me.

I used to think of myself as a great appreciator of many things, but now the awareness of being ONLY that fills me with shame, which I manage to hide from myself long enough to enjoy the music. If I eschew the music and listen only to news podcasts, I avoid the shame (except for the slight embarrassment of not actually being a good activist) and embrace the world’s slide into dystopia while slowly realizing that it’s always been that way. These are the gifts of getting old.

My cynicism is not a pose. It’s a treasured inheritance, mostly from my father. Though my mother had faith, it was the kind that posited heaven as the goal and ignored the possibilities of earthly existence, or so it seemed to me. I’m probably wrong, though. She was a lively young woman before marriage and children, and I know she laughed and played and enjoyed exercising her mind, skills and charms. In a few days, if I’m not mistaken, she’ll have been gone six years. I suspect that she was proud to have passed the 90-year mark, mostly because her sisters did not, though they came close. I cried at her funeral after-party, but only because I was angry with my brother Michael for taking over the living room with his sons into the wee hours. (That was the last time I cried at all, about anything.) My mother-in-law may be on a similar trajectory to my mother’s, but no one is sure about that, because who can be? My mother had a stroke during or just after her hip operation. My mother-in-law did not, so my mother-in-law is better off, but she’s not happy about her situation. My mother had religion; my father had his intellect; my mother-in-law is bored and miserable. How can I not be aware of this constantly? How can I not be wondering what will happen to me eventually? My thinking tends toward, “Well, I have maybe five more years to keep going to these open mic events and playing a song or two, but even if I do become more proficient at it, what difference will it make? Because I’ll have to stop at some point, probably for some health reason. I wonder what that reason will be?” (I already have numb feet, to which I pay little attention unless I suddenly do pay attention.)

These open mics and jazz jams, though. They’re fun. I become a bit manic and strangely elated. I usually get to sing at least one song at the jazz jams, although I sometimes mangle it. Watching a video of myself from last week, I realized that for the first go-round of “All of Me,” I was singing in a key that wasn’t exactly the key that the musicians were playing in. How did that happen? If I don’t have the right starting note in mind I apparently can’t intuit the key in the chords played, at least not right away. (This was never a problem with my ol’ good-time band because the chords and keys were very simple.) During the second go-round of “All of Me” I was right on, but too late; I’d probably already established myself once again as a wacko wanna-be. I heard Marcia (who filmed it with her phone) in the background saying to another singer, “She’s got her own style.” Marcia is very kind, one of the people I feel I’ve bonded with at these events, although she isn’t a musician. She’s an appreciator par excellence and proud of it. It’s enough for her.

The open mics are a different story. I’m struggling and learning how to accompany myself on ukulele, and now on my tiny new tenor guitar, so I have some control, but it’s not easy. Every other week at Mad Malts, a local brewery, I try to do three songs I haven’t done before. I use the music stand and have stuff written down that I can refer to—I’m not proud. Lately, at our infrequent and pointless Lonesome Lovers band practices, I’ve been appreciating Huey’s guitar-playing and, most important, his prodigious memory. He may never have been the most subtle of players, but he knows hundreds of songs by heart, including the lyrics. I used to get so irritated and frustrated with him for his lapses and lacks, but now I realize I was probably lucky to be backed up by him when we were going strong in the early 1990s. I’m also realizing that, just very possibly, my loud, forceful, pseudo-Ethel-Merman-style singing and random harmonica playing were suitable only for my band, and almost nothing else.
 
So, now music is back in my life in a big way, but who knows how long it will last? It’s a great world to get lost in when the “real” world seems not to satisfy. But my longing to “achieve” something with music will not ever be fulfilled, and is pretty mockable. I need to chill. Perhaps simply learning a few new things is enough?

Maggie in the Sky with Subpoenas

With American political news podcasts in the mornings, followed by crime dramas on the TV screen in the evenings, pouring into my brain, I think I might be suffering from ongoing deafness/blindness to my own impulses and thoughts. I dream for what seems like ten hours every night, and that’s the world in which I feel most comfortable, despite the aforementioned inputs. It’s a world influenced by my memories and the few real-world happenings that affect me these days, such as my former boss texting me a request to pick her daughter up at school. It turned out (that day, anyway) that the child’s grandmother was available to pick her up after all, but the damage had been done. Lillian had injected herself into my mind. My dreams that night featured a party at her house that I was obliged to co-host. It doesn’t matter that the party might have been dreamily strange and amazing, or that the location was dreamily strange and amazing. This was a scenario I’d lived out before, just a few years ago. I woke up feeling depressingly under her thumb.

And yet, I am wondering if my personality actually seeks being under someone’s thumb, or at least seeks someone to do things for. It’s the rare occasion when I invent my own projects. If I’m in a situation where inventing my own projects is encouraged and expected, then I’ll invent my own projects. Just hanging around my house does not facilitate my creativity, though. Well, OK, I do create new dinner offerings occasionally.

The huge project that whines at me in the face all the time is the crying need to remove all this “stuff” from my house. But it’s mostly Russell’s stuff, so I hesitate. I also hesitate due to lack of (positive) energy. Mostly I look for excuses to go on errands, or to the gym (where I either swim or walk on the treadmill without much enjoyment). My sister (11 years younger) is still doing CrossFit over there in Spain, despite having broken her foot weeks ago and being obliged to do rehab exercises for it. And my nephew Tomas has won a CrossFit competition. These people are trying to set a good example, eh? But I had an athletic era of my own when I was in my 50’s, so wasn’t that enough? A dozen trophies for running far and fast are sitting on a shelf. I’ve had eras of many kinds, from innocence to jadedness, from ambition to dogged pursuit of the mediocre, from laziness to nervous activity, from musical adventures to no-music. Once in a while I’ve tried something new, hoping it will ‘stick,’ but nothing does. Writing always comes back. Music is currently back. But that feeling of having something to say is long gone; now I’m into writing about the past and learning some technical things about music and singing. I know by now that nothing I write or sing will help anyone, and in fact, the wanting to help anyone is very faintly felt. Barely a pulse.

I am not sure this is a result of, or preceded, my going on the wagon. I’m off alcohol and onto kombucha, which has sugar in it. That sugar is augmented by a new craving for spicy gumdrops, even more sugary. I don’t think I’ve gained weight beyond the ten pounds I slowly put on after retiring in 2016, but I’m not svelte. I am still flexible, though. I am attending what’s called Yin Yoga, led by my friend Joy, on Monday nights at the strangely elegant house on Holmes Avenue (near UAH) known as The Center of Light for Applied Metaphysics (formerly the Light of Christ Center). And I do meditation there every Friday, also led by Joy. This provides me with the necessary dose of being in my friend’s presence, although we rarely get together just the two of us. There are things she doesn’t like about me, and of course there are things I don’t like about her. We both persist in not changing for the other (not that we could). My notions of Friendship, and my notions of Love and Marriage have morphed so severely that I couldn’t define either at this point. Nor could I define Family.

I no longer have my parents as a reason to travel north, and of course, there’s the dog, whom I couldn’t bear to leave for more than a long weekend. I’m stuck right now, but I am the only one to blame. I just need some motivation. However, given my age (nearly 70) my idea of motivation will have to morph also. There is no future to be prepared for or personal adventure to hope for. Anything I do will have to be its own reward. And I was never able to take in that sort of reward easily. At least I still enjoy petting Maggie and watching the sky.