Living in the world…with people…

“And every waking moment, we’re starting over.”  That’s what the song on my Pandora station is attempting to soothe me with tonight.  And, because I am in one of those cheesy, happy, reflective moods, it is working.  Good job Pandora, I am one of those people now.

See that? That attitude right there is why I need this cheesy, happy, reflective moment.  I need to regain perspective.  Sometimes it is easy to loose track of the good in the world and the good in the people rotating around the sun on this giant rock with us.  I spent much time this evening looking at pictures and videos of my friends and I from about this time last year, and I wondered – where has all my joy and contentedness gone?  Not that I am unhappy, I just seem to lack the love of people I had.  There are many terrible things happening in the world and it is important to be aware of those problems and fight to solve them, but this must be balanced.  I need to see the good in people, even in people with whom I disagree.  “Take the good, leave the bad” (from the mouth of Alex Johnson) – for my sanity’s sake. Many actions and words are backed by good intentions.  When you zoom out the general idea can be positive – it just gets muddied with words and turns into something hard to swallow.  It’s not easy, but if we can try to see each other in this big picture perspective there would probably be a lot more respect, love, and friendship between people of different backgrounds, beliefs, and lifestyles.  Instead of thinking I cannot believe that a person would do/say this, I should ask Why would a person do/say this?  What’s the reasoning?  Do they mean well?  Generally, the answer is yes.  It does not mean I agree with the person;  It does not mean I sanction their actions;  It just means I am human and they are human, and we can surely find some common ground with that starting point in mind.

So this moment, I choose to restart and readjust the way I look at people. . . . though, this may be more of a process than a moment-long adjustment.

1950’s Saturday

This past weekend, I spent my Saturday night roller-skating and eating in a diner.  It was a 1950’s kind of night.  Except for the following:

1. The roller rink was not built in the 1950’s; it was built in the 70’s.  It still had the original carpet….and I think the original rink attendant.  She was probably around 80 years old, and very serious about her job.

2. We were the worst skaters there.  Children between the ages of four and fourteen were whizzing past us, spinning and skating backwards and moving in ways I can’t even move when I’m not on skates.  A couple of eight-year old girls befriended Talley and taught both of us how to spin.  [It wasn’t a very successful lesson.]

3.  Taylor, one of our friends, nearly won a game of roller-skating dodgeball.  His success stems from his strategic genius: he spent most of the game in the corner of the rink away from everyone else.  But that all ended pretty quickly when he happened to get ahold of a ball.  A ten-year old girl went whizzing past him and chucked it at her as hard as he could. So hard, in fact, that he fell down.  And yet he did not hit the girl.  Five minutes later, the same girl gets ahold of a ball.  She is on the other end of the rink, away from Taylor, surrounded by people she could hit.  But no, she extend the arm with which she is holding the ball and points at Taylor.  Taylor sees this and attempts to get away before she can make it across the rink.  The problem is Taylor is not that great of a skater so when he tried to accelerate too fast, it just kind of looked like he was running in place clumsily with a panicked expression on his face.  The girl makes it all the way across the rink and gets so close to Taylor that she does not even have to throw the ball; she simply reaches out and touches him with it.  It was fantastic to watch.

4. Lastly, we ate a combination of fried foods and banana pancakes at a 24-hour service diner.  This was also fantastic.

Organizing Romance (Control Freak? Maybe)

So I have this system that I use to name the people who wander into my life (in a romantic fashion).  For instance, I have had a boyfriend, a fling, and a counterpart (There are more, but these are the simpler names to understand).  I have found that many people find this system strange/silly/foreign.  I am going to attempt to explain myself in a practical, well thought out manner.  My verbal explanations never seem to work out.  They usually begin with me tripping over my thoughts as they pile onto each other in a nonsensical heap of reasons and end with the person which I am speaking to looking utterly confused. So here goes my logical (I think) written explanation:

The standard word for a male-type person with whom you have a romantic relationship is boyfriend.  Right? Right.  Okay, so I did that for a while.  I had a boyfriend.  That came and went and when it ended, it just didn’t feel right for me to use that term for anyone else.  I had associated that particular person and the role he played in my life with that word.  I felt that if I used boyfriend for someone else, that it wouldn’t be fair to the person who originally held that title.  I would just be pushing a new person into a spot that someone else used to fill.  I don’t like the idea that every person that I have a relationship is called by the same name.  That person is not replaceable.  I can’t just erase past loves (or “likes”) from my personal history by bringing in someone new.  So I call them different names.  I use a system that makes sense to me and that I feel is fair to everyone who was part of my life.

Did I just make sense?  I hope so.

Just Keep Eating

“Oh! You’re the wedding singer.”  Yup, that’s me.  This is what I hear all throughout the rehearsal dinner.  The rehearsal dinner is always the most interesting/awkward part of singing/playing piano in a wedding – something I am doing more and more these days.  I have to attend the rehearsal to run through the wedding, which usually leads to an invitation to the rehearsal dinner.  I always accept because I don’t want to seem rude and then I always feel awkward.  Wedged somewhere between family and friends, I sit, quietly folding and refolding my napkin and hoping to find an opportunity to join a conversation.  This time, I sat down across from an elderly lady whose connection to the bride and groom I was not able to discover.

This woman constantly had an expression on her face that said “something smells like rotting vegetables.”  Her obvious distaste for the world was accented by bad eyesight that always left her squinting.  Her personality did nothing to improve my first impression of her.  She really did find the world distasteful.  She attempted a conversation with me, which, at first, I graciously dove into.

“So do you go to school anywhere?”

“Yes, I attend Ball State University.”

“And what are you studying?”

“Vocal Performance; I usually sing classical music, but I enjoy doing contemporary and jazz on the side.”

“Oh, my nephew was in a classical orchestra.  They played all this stuff from like the 16th and 17th century. (She means 1600’s and 1700’s.) It was so boring.  Frankly, I am surprised none of them fell asleep during a performance.  I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to study that stuff.”

“….”

What am I supposed to say to that? Now that I was plenty uncomfortable, it was time for her son to swoop in with vengeance for his neglected daughter.

“You’re quite a singer. My daughter here likes to sing, too.  She’s pretty good.  Why don’t you sing something, honey?  (Girl shakes head, embarrassed.) Oh, come on! No? Alright.  Well, she is pretty talented.  Always singing along to the radio. We thought that maybe they would ask her to sing at the wedding.  But, they found you.”

“…”

What the hell do I say?!  But I wasn’t going to just run away.  No way! That’s what they want – to run me off.  So instead I stayed there, sitting at their table, eating food I didn’t have to pay for, and participating in conversations that I most likely wasn’t welcome in.  And you know what? The desert I waited an hour and a half for was delicious!

Summer

I made it! I toughed out the last few weeks of school: reading, reading, writing, reading, studying, singing, practicing, reading, piano, reading, reading, writing, reading….done!  Then came the field study to Rome and London with the humanities class: flying, walking, walking, “ooh”ing, “ah”ing, writing, walking, walking, eating, drinking wine, walking, flying, walking, moseying, museum-ing, walking, pubbing, walking, writing, getting sick, walking, flying, living in an airport, flying…home!  Time to relax now, right (not that I am complaining – Rome and London were amazing.)?  Well, sort of.  Time for Oral Surgery.  Ugh.  They took out my wisdom teeth, drugged me up, and sent me home to sit on my couch and eat pudding for a few days.  Here’s the kicker: the pain killers made me so dizzy that I couldn’t even use my computer or read.  I can’t count how many movies I watched (and honestly, I can’t recall what happened in some of the movies I watched – all that laughing gas and anesthesia).  I thought that I would love some time to just relax – nowhere to go, nothing I have to do – wonderful, right?  But after the first day, all I felt was bored.  I miss the travel, the adventures, and the people from both college and my trip.  I spend my days wandering around my house, wondering what I can do.  I was unable to get a steady summer job due to my trip and to the oral surgery.  So here is a list of things I have brainstormed to do to keep myself busy this summer:

1.  Teach voice lessons. (I think this idea may have already tanked, as none of the students that I spoke to at the school have contacted me. )

2.  Sing at a wedding. (I WILL be doing this – got it all lined up.)

3. Learn basic mechanics from my Grandpa.  (I might also buy a book on mechanics, see below)

4. Read, Read, Read.  I sorted all of my books by year and made a list of the ones I have yet to read.  I will start making my way down that list.

5.  Dress up as a Disney princess for a little girl’s birthday party. (Yup, I really got asked to do this.)

6. Work on my grasp of politics.  Maybe I will buy a book to help with this, too.  Watch some news.  Read some newspapers.  Research presidential candidates for the next election.

7. Visit the Institute for Therapy through the Arts in Chicago and talk with some Music therapists to getter a better grip on how music therapy works.

8. Keep working on Italian using Rosetta Stone and the magazines and books I bought in Italy.

9.  Visit Chicago – traveler style.  I miss having a city to explore.  So I am going to buy a travel guide and a map and spend a few days exploring Chicago, with darling Liz.

10. Write a whole lot on this blog. (Hey, look! I have already started this one.)

11. Take up running, very, very gradually. And if it fails, at least walk a whole bunch.

12.  Get back into meditation and yoga.

13. Cut all my hair off. (The only reason I include this as something to do, is because I know I will spend at least two days playing with the new haircut if I muster up the courage to actually cut it all off.)

Okay, so that’s 13 things.  That should keep me busy.  I hope.  Next problem: how to keep from getting lonely while I am stuck here in Remington without a job.  I do not have 13 ideas to help solve this one.

Am I a Hippie for Thinking…

‘What on earth is wrong with all of us’?

I really commit myself to giving this question its fair shake every time it starts nagging at the corner of my mind.  I feel that, for most people, there are not enough of these moments. This may be my biggest motivation for attending plays, though I am not a theater major. (I go to so many shows with Talley that I think a lot of the theater majors are starting to give me that look that says “Who is that girl? I see her everywhere.”)  Watching life acted out forces me to notice all of the assumptions, pressures, and unspoken agreements that we simply overlook in everyday life.  I feel personally responsible for examining these generally unnoticed social currents for their value and necessity.  Are they logical?  Are they beneficial?  Are they good? (I know that that just opened a whole new avenue for argument, but lets just assume that most people have a basic standard of morality.) Do they conflict with my world views? Should I reject them or is it worth the trouble?

I recently attended the play Greek, highly explosive and wonderfully in your face.  The play explored many themes and challenged many social currents that quietly tug us this way and that, but one concept has so firmly rooted itself into the walls of my brain that I cannot push it away with other thoughts.  Sex and Violence, essentially.

The play criticized our treatment of the two subjects.  Depictions of violence and sex are often treated very differently.  How many shows can you name right now whose entire context is murder? or maybe war? or any sort of fighting?  I can form a list of nearly fifteen in under a minute.  This is an approved topic for representation.  Murder, war, and fighting seem to be acceptable material for television, plays, movies, and books.  Sex is a bit more uncomfortable, a bit more taboo.  Why?

Physical manifestations of love and affection versus physical manifestations of hate and anger. Ding! Ding! Round 1!  (Obviously the violent one will win since for some reason I, quite ironically, put this into the context of a fight.)  Our society gives the stamp of approval to depictions of physical hate and anger, but not physical love.  What does this say about us?  And I repeat: What is wrong with all of us?  I never even given a second thought to this.  I am highly disturbed that I can sit and comfortably watch men and women being shot, stabbed, beaten, hung, or even dismembered, but as soon as the sex scenes begin we all get a little bit uncomfortable and start shifting in our seats or issuing grunts of disapproval.  The context of the sex scene does not even seem to matter – it could be between characters committed to one another who are shown to love each other, as a husband and wife (which in even the most conservative of mindsets is not considered wrong).  It is still inappropriate.  It is dirty. Why?

And for the final showdown: A sex scene appears on the screen and nearly all of the people in the room (except for your occasional free spirit) feel uncomfortable and begin drumming their fingers, whining, “Come on.  Move on to the rest of it.  Bring back the fighting, the killing – the action.”  Forget the love, bring on the violence. We have our winner.

Selective Seeing

I am as guilty as any other middle class, “comfortable” American of putting the sensibly protective blinders on.  We see what we choose to see and find a way to block out or dismiss what causes those tingles of discomfort to run around in our stomachs.  It is these moments of guilty uneasiness that make my yearly trip to Florida so ironic.

For a majority of the spring breaks in the last decade of my life I have come to Ft. Meyers, Florida to stay with my grandparents in their winter get-a-way home.  It is quite a nice deal for my family.  We pay for plane tickets and the occasional meal (if my dad wins the battle against my grandpa to pay the bill) with no housing cost.  These trips, while providing time to spend with my family and time to relax and recoup from busy daily life, tend leave a heavy feeling in the pit of my stomach.  This has become even more pronounced as I have gotten older and have gained a better understanding of the world and the people in it.

Here is what I am talking about:  My grandparents live in a large gated community built around a golf course.  The pastel houses are all surrounded by palm trees and flowers and perfectly tended lawns.  Webbed lanais poke out from the backs of the houses forming a dotted border of comfort and relaxation around the fairways of the golf course.  It is a pretty, if slightly stiff place.  There are dozens of these gated off neighborhoods within my grandparents’ chunk of Ft. Meyers.  These gated golf courses and flower-embroidered lawns float in a sea of dirt patched yards, run-down homes, and bail bond offices.

As you leave the golf course community (which really truly has a gate with a bar code reader on its entrance) you enter an entirely different place.  Perhaps a more authentic view of Lee High, Ft. Meyers, Florida.  Rundown copies of the fashionable pastel houses sport broken windows patched with painter’s tape and yards cluttered with cast-off junk rather than trees and flowers.  The yards wear patches of sharp, hard grass amidst the brown, red dirt.  Men of races notably different than those that reside in the gated communities stand in their driveways or yards with cigarettes or bottles in their hands.   Children run around their shins in cut-off shorts.  Their mothers sweep the walkways or chat with neighbors.  Some of the older children can be seen hanging around the occasional food mart or dollar store.  And I ride along in a mini-van to the nearest outlet mall with my family.

We never discuss the things outside the window on our way there.  We talk about golf scores and suntans and crab legs.  I count five neon-glowing bail bond offices within three miles. Here I am in Paradise. It’s only paradise for a middle class vacationer. The tingles multiply in my stomach.

 

Micromanaged Moments

I am a scheduler.  It is in my blood.  My mother lords over a little desk in her kitchen that is neatly and systematically stacked with lists upon calendars upon itineraries.  I have inherited this obsession with plotting time on a mental graph.  Whereas most people only plan out their days chunk by chunk, I halve these chunks continually into micromanaged slices of duty and activity.

I can tell you everything that I will do for the next ten minutes, moment-by-moment.  Once, I finish typing this post I will put my computer back in its assigned place on my desk, plug it in (even though it has 83% power), and pull my hair back into a ponytail.  Then I will gather up the dishes on our counter, swing the towel over my arm just to be sure I have it and proceed to the kitchenette to clean our dishes in my systematic way (order of washing:  fill all cups and mugs with hot water and soap, submerge cutlery in cups to soak, wash bowls, rinse out cups, dry all).  I will return to the room, put the dishes in their respective places, and then take my hair down.  Next comes my bathroom “get-ready-for-bed” routine in which I will brush my teeth while I use the bathroom and let the faucet water get warm (I also multi-task.  C’mon, it’s not that gross.) and then I will wash my hands and my face and then stare in the mirror and ask “Why do you do this to yourself?”

Why do I do this?  It really is not all that helpful.  Even if I didn’t plan it all out, I am sure that most of it would get done.  College seems to exacerbate my need to plan each moment.  Between finishing my homework, ensuring the cleanliness of my room, fielding emails, and remembering to fulfill all my humanly needs (eating, drinking, showering, using the bathroom), there is so much to be done.  So, I micromanage moments.  This has proven problematic in the past.

My plan for a slice of one particular evening:  to leave the study lounge to take a break.  I planned to return to my room, drop my bag, call my mom and then use the bathroom while on the phone (Why waste any time?  She is used to hearing toilets flush, right?), get my bag from my room, and return to the lounge.  When I align that many quick tasks successively and include so many overlaps, I sometimes lose the details.

When I tried to execute this plan, I left the study lounge, dropping my bag in my room, and then dialing my mom’s phone number.  But while I was dialing I was so focused on the next part of the plan, going to the bathroom, that I unbuttoned and unzipped my pants while walking down the hall to the bathroom (I realized this far too late.  Luckily, no one was roaming the halls).  With this minor opportunity for embarrassment past, I continued my routine.  I finished my phone call with my mom, retrieved my bag from my room, and proceeded to hike back up to the study lounge.  It was not until I arrived in the study lounge that I noticed that my phone was still pressed to my ear.

 

I walked around the dorm for about two minutes with my phone on my face

and no conversation taking place.

(It rhymed so I thought I would separate it into its own little stanza.  Another organizational twitch.)

 

Why do I do this to myself?

Childlike Wisdom

We are all born with an understanding of music.  I can understand skepticism at that statement, but it is, in fact quite true.  When you were born, you had an innate understanding of rhythm and pitch – you just didn’t know it by those terms.  This interests me a great deal as I can focus on two qualities of humanity at once: music and childhood.

My friends and I, being the childlike creatures that we are, decided to spend our Martin Luther King Jr. day at the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis. (I am positive that there will be photographic proof of this expedition posted by Grace.)  While there we read time on water clocks, pondered sculptures of blown glass, designed our own Barbies, and walked through a magical maze of mirrors.  Perhaps we were the only people there over the age of 11 that were not escorting anyone under the age of 11.  But, we didn’t mind.  We climbed through the tunnels and slides all the same.  (We all consider it very important to hold onto some of our childlike qualities, if I may be so bold as to speak for the group.)  My favorite part of the museum was the Egyptian section.  A large part of the second floor was devoted to educating students about the Egyptian culture.  A live performance was underway in which two people played traditional Egyptian music on a violin and an assortment of drums.  The few songs I stayed and listened to were entrancing and varied from the very lively to the very sanguine.  My interest, however, was not on the performers.

Gathered around these players were many children. (The museum was positively packed.)  As I sat, I watched some of these children (in a very non-creepy way, of course).   Two young girls in particular proved very entertaining.

The first, a spritely toddler of probably around one year old sat on a bench, legs plopped and bouncing outwards from where she was seated on a bench, cheerfully expressed her happiness at being entertained by the musicians.  She clapped her hands and beat her feet against the bench to the beat trickling from the drums.  Her rhythmic accuracy was remarkable. She was even able to adapt her dancing to variations in the rhythm.  Over the course of a few minutes, she seemed to understand the changing patterns of rhythm and could anticipate them and adapt.  She seemed very pleased with herself, head bobbing and dimples displayed for the occasion.  The song completed itself and the little girl’s mother praised her little dance and picked her up to move on to other amusements.

Another five minutes passed and I allowed myself to indulge specifically in the beauty and the mysteriousness of the Middle-Eastern music.

But then another young girl caught my attention across the way.  Probably around the defiant age of two, she stood next to her parents who were seated on a bench and entreating her to join them.  Instead, she stood gazing at the musicians in what could only be described as a wide-eyed trance of childhood wonder.  After a short way into the song she began to move.  She kept her hands grasped behind her back as she flexed her little knees to the music, pulsing her body up down with the undulations of the tune.  This continued for a few minutes during which she became quite pleased with herself.  In her excitement she stretched her arms out and swung them high and low.  The pattern of her arm movement was very particular.  She seemed to sway them upwards as the tune rang out high melodies and then swoop them down when it dipped into a lower register.  I was amazed at her apparently unintentional understanding.  Had I not been so observant this particular day, I probably would never have noticed this pattern.  And it might have really been coincidence and meant nothing at all (though I am convinced that this is not the case).

Tenderly, I reflect on these passing moments in the Children’s Museum.  Children are so unassumingly knowledgeable.  These girls did not worry that people might see them and think them fools and they did not mind that the music was unfamiliar to them, being from a place halfway across the world from their home. (Frankly, at that young of an age almost everything must seem unfamiliar.)  They simply expressed how the music made them feel.  And through doing so, expressed to me how very equal their music theory knowledge was to mine, whether they could even pronounce the words “rhythm” and “melody” or not.

The F-Word

Men cross their arms and look incredulous upon hearing it uttered.  Girls flutter their lashes and roll their eyes in its presence. And children…well they just look really confused and ask whether or not they can catch.  That’s right. I’m talking about the F-word: Feminism.  For some reason or another this term has fallen out of the realm of social justice and into that of the laughable.  Honestly, it seems as if the F-word of profanity has become more acceptable in everyday conversation.  When confessing that I do, in fact, label myself as a feminist and sympathize with the cause, I often receive this response:  “That’s silly.  Men and women are equal now.  What’s there left to protest?”  Here is my response:

While you may think that women have reached equality with men, the numbers still show that women earn only sixty-seven cents for every dollar earned by a man.  There has been no improvement in the pay gap between women and men in over two decades.  Sexual harassment of women also continually surfaces as a common issue in the workplace.  The view of women as sexual objects is certainly not exclusive to this context.

Women, worldwide and in our own country, are turned into sexual commodities through the social acceptance of strip clubs and pornography.  Both of these are pretty well a part of our culture and face very little opposition, except by religious organizations.  Think about it – what do you think of when you picture your everyday American bachelor party?  And what does almost every teenage boy have hiding in his room?  That’s my point.

Now I admit, both of these commodities are open to male and female alike.  But if we are going to be honest with ourselves, men are the target customers.  Furthermore, much of the pornography that exists is demeaning or violent towards women.  Extreme examples: the tying down, beating, or killing of the women involved in the film (i.e. slasher movies).  This fuels not only a view of women as sexual commodities (as something that should be readily available) but also as targets of violence.  Enter molestation and rape.

The perspective of men towards women is not the only thing affected – but also of women towards themselves.   Women strive to be desirable and live up to the expectations placed on them as sexual objects.  Enter issues of self-esteem, plastic surgery, eating disorders (in some cases), and ridiculously overpriced lingerie (What is up with that?  The less cloth = the higher price.)

To sum it up: No, equality has not been achieved – the method of repression has simply changed.  And yes, I have a lot to protest.  So much so, that I must end this post and continue this examination of the F-word in another post at a later date.