10:10 p.m. - 12/04/02
she didn't play marianne. she played marybrave.
I guess after desperation comes clarity, the coolness of thought that allows one to continue. My thoughts seem so straight-forward lately: Choose water over cider, as your thirst and the tightness of your eyes suggests dehydration. Calm your tastebuds with the snack your head is craving, rather than your beverage. You struggle to eat without taking off the wrapper: how long has it been since you held food clearly, skin to skin? And already, the water is poured, the snack retrieved, the wrapper discarded so the hand may hold it clearly, nothing in between. Now, tell yourself the food is sustenance, and convince your fingers they do not grow dirty holding it. Relax the body as you are not far from sleep tonight, and another rest as fabulous as yesterday would really serve you well. It's warrior-thinking. It's survivalist, but it anchors me to the present moment...and it's survivalist in a way that's far more practical than I am used to. It's survival learned and practiced for a year perhaps, something not so simple as the natural reflexes that distort impulse into addiction. Conscious of my desires, maybe I keep them from being warped into disorder. Not wholly, never wholly. Some.
Where am I?
Six years ago, I discovered a layer of my voice, by the grace of Little Earthquakes. It taught me how to communicate with myself, about places darker than I'd been able to tread before. Now, I felt myself drowning in them, and the escape I was offered was training. The ability to enter those dark places willingly, through triggers calmly placed and never painful, triggers that seemed more like understanding than attack, to understand how I could live within a world so dark as this. And I learned how to sing to her syntax; I carved my lyrics to fit her notes. In time, I could speak the language, the language that seemed as coded from the outside as my small handwriting. The code was a plus, yes- the images that others, overly trapped by logical analysis, could rarely interpret kept me safe in a time where my ability to identify attackers remained weak. But the code did not justify this language or our need for each other. Coding would explain why I spoke this way with others, not why I chose it with myself. I came to understand then, that this was my native tongue, this was a gift of my soul from a different time, a curse maybe, but all the same something I could use. And I kept it. Five years later, someone began new training. Taught me how to speak.
And during the interval in between I learned things about the woman behind the language. I learned the way she cocked her head inside red hair that made whole audiences mad on adrenaline, that she was Aphrodite fierty, an odd god in my sexless world. I learned that when an interviewer prompted her, "you make love to a piano" she replied, "of course. what else would I do with it? it's nine feet long." Laughter at such jokes haunted me because I knew that somewhere in myself this would become a violation, that I was asexual, and this would bring me pain.
Gods are gods, and I found the women with the language had power over me I wasn't willing to retract. I discovered that if I could decide who my worship fueled, I didn't want to withdraw it at this point. Devotion then became a force of its own.
Dave threatened me occasionally at Rogers, claiming that I would choose the language, and the darkness that bled into my creativity over life. I refused to believe it, knowing that in depression nothing lived, knowing that writing couldn't hold a candle to the body of fire I knew then to be home. I wanted nothing that would compromise this, and so I would surrender even writing if it were necessary. The way I tell myself continuously I will surrender my family to have the need for family fulfilled. The way I say when I get so desperate- that I have to live. Thinking, still, in scarcity mentality. Thinking that I have to discard in order to gain. I don't. But there are those whom the codes do not confuse so desperately. There are those, such as the Superdoc, who understand the frantic discarding as an expression of need. Who listen to "I need to be rid of them" and hear "I need the opportunity for more."
I realized it, too. My own code becomes simpler to me, with focus. And I applaud its complexity. I appreciate the intricacy of my own mind, thinking always, that I must be connected to something more than myself. That only in time can I even understand who I am and how I serve myself. Yet that understanding allows me to use my own identity as a door into the something greater. Choosing my own voice, when I first did, and over and again each day as I do, promises me that portal into a greater voice. I lost the ability to make myself an empty vessel capable of full possession, but I gained the understanding that more I am specifically myself the more universal my life's words will be. I chose a path that made sense on small and larger scales. I choose...
Lately, I've been thinking about body. Holding onto the wisdom of my Shannon (official member of my family, that girl) that says the most I can do is prepare myself not to be afraid of the answer when it comes. To understand that it is out there somewhere, in here somewhere, and my job is openness and preparation, the understanding that disarms fear through healing it. My fears are Rumplestilstken: you call them what they are, their power drains.
I've been holding onto my own wisdom also. To the straight-forward thoughts that say, "The body has a language, too. And to accept the body is more than honoring the needs expressed in this language. To accept the body is to accept more than the reflection of it in the mirror, which you observe as an outsider, the way you observe a gurgling of stomach that tells you to find food. To accept it is more even than to feel at home living in it, as the idea of living *in* it suggests that it is not you. No, the body needs to be inseparable from you, a ship so tied to the soul that it moves with the compassion of instinct and the practicality of training. You need to be able to speak with your body, the way you can speak with your words, your images. You need have the identity before you can find the orientation. When you know who you are, how you relate will flow into place with ease."
Wisdom buckled in a pouch under my skin, alpraz/propran stirring my demons into sedation, into sleep- I went last night to a place like a Russian palace, where Tori would grace a stage. I went with the understanding that my hair was limp, and my shoulders tense with the barometic pressure of my parent's pain. In a foyer filled with conservatives shivering beneath their winter coats, I felt oddly disappointed with my companions. The freaks of Ani-appearances were few and far between, and I- in green&white knee socks, a jean skirt, and a handdrawn mermaid t-shirt, looked remarkably extreme. I calmed myself with the alliances of spirithood and the fact that I did not feel out of place. Rather, I felt the intrusiveness from the majority of this non-freakish crowd. How dare they impose themselves upon my encounter with She-Who-Moved-Mountains-When-They-Were-Volcanoes...(Later, I would talk of this affinity for freaks with the Doc, and he would say I might find myself developing a taste for the "extreme" side. I told him I already had the taste; now I learn to act on it. Mwa.)
The concert, anyway, began with this boy who literally fascinated me. For a good three songs, I couldn't quit watching him. I realized that the extension of self that is an acoustic guitar played by a real musician was something that I crave. I don't see much beauty in acoustic guitars. They seem bulky and strange to me, but wrap a being around one, have them create the smallest symphony, and I melt. Oddly, by the end, I found myself equally entranced by a woman signing the lyric to the right of the stage- engaging in a dance that explained to me how the mute can sing, and leaving me utterly speechless. Much greatness ensued within the first forty minutes, even if the darkness, and lack of pure fanatic affection to drive me, had me yawning now and then.
In the midst of this, my dad kept talking about Perry Como. The first time he saw Perry. The second time he saw Perry. I was much disturbed by how ancient he sounded. Much disturbed by the deep-seated loathing I have for Perry Como, personally. Much disturbed that anyone could possibly speak, and in doing so, articulate anything other than, "do you realize she's going to walk through those curtains, onto the stage, and sit at a piano, and play? do you realize she'll be right there???"
The doctor says, a little obsession like this, over something that can make you smile just in thinking of it, is healthy, and- just for the record- is also marvelous...
The concert...augh. I came home smelling like the city and lit with the speechlessness that reigns supreme in those moments. Those moments, when a deeply important message is brought to me in my native tongue, I need time to encounter it before attempting to translate. So I soaked it in, soaked in the woman diagonally from me- who was the only person clapping as long as me, and shouting so early in the introduction to a favorite son...and her sister, who a quarter of the way into the show, wheeled herself down to the front to watch from the most expensive seats. Soaked in the man two seats away who smiled at me like a peer when he asked if I could watch his coat during the intermission. But mostly soaked in Tori. Tori. Tori. Later, Dad would say, "did you see the way the graphic of the woman's face would change simply from the angle of the lights?" and I would have to confess I hadn't seen. Hadn't seen much except the smile in Matt Chamberlain's eyes as he followed her flawlessly. Except Tori herself, who curled between pianos, limber as a cat, and knew just what expression would evoke the pure mixture of joy and epinephrine in her fans.
Inside myself I called to seventh grade. Anytime you want this night, it's yours. Anytime, you want to feel her here, feel the fact that you have come this far, to the point where you can sit and watch her play. Anytime you want to scream back, sing along, thank her, challenge what she taught you, go ahead. The night is yours, as she was yours back then.
Slowly, it came. Occasionally. My manic maintanence of rhythm with my feet and head would slow, and I'd fall back into the almost-trance of total awe. Watching as silently as the conservatives, who even- standing through the encores, didn't move. And oddly, toward the end of the night, after the succession of The B-side Soundtrack of Mary's Experience (Putting the Damage On, Cooling, Take to the Sky, Spring Haze, on and on and on...) I realized that I was sitting in awe as my feet resumed their dancing. I realized that I was experiencing an integration that would take far more to complete. An integration that was kind and comfortable and very, very real.
I watched her body, too, the way she moved inside her skin. I felt myself sitting on the piano keys, watched the audience...not so much disappear as cease to matter, as she played around, on top of, through me...and I found lines stumbling into my head; in the entire concert I gained a couplet, but it was more than enough to assure Dave he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to creation. That life is far more inspiring than stagnation or survival. And when one learns a new language, there are new ideas to express.
Tori was teaching me the language of the body, the way she taught me once the language of the voice. I followed her inside, and started to feel it happening, started to find scenes in my head written without words. Written, not even through movement, but through the way my body would feel inside the moves. It was the language I imagined must exist when I watched Sarah watching dance. Realizing, she doesn't need to translate it because she knows how each move would feel inside her skin. Because she's been trained in rules of grammar, semantics and syntax. She's been taught what I must train myself.
And then a teacher comes, when I don't expect her, when I've nearly forgotten I am waiting to learn this. A teacher comes and shows me that the body can be shyly brave, can be strong and acquiescent, can be all the contradictions my personality maintains. Teaches me the way I will feel as I move, the way I feel watching others move. A glimpse into this world, no- a joining of muscle that explains without the observation, and I understand that even though I may not have it in an hour, in the morning- I will want it enough to drive myself in the direction she knows as fluidly as I know words.
At times, I felt I'd entered sacred space, more at home with the idea than I ever was inside church walls. I listened to her (Bliss, Mrs. Jesus, Wampum Prayer) and knew she felt it, too. And I didn't waste the energy consciously to see what worked below the surface, didn't attempt to control the answer to spiritual questions that of course would show themselves here, through the source of lost days, in a place of absolute majesty, in a moment of reverence.
She sang literally half of Scarlet's walk. In an introduction to "Your Cloud" (one of my three favorite songs, and two favorite ballads from the album) she used words that literally had me ready to sprint for paper, in case I could not burn them in my mind. She said things that can only be known as the answer to a question when you've asked it so genuinely for so long. She sang, "She is where you are. She knows the map and the veins of your city. She goes through your heart." She sang to me, She is still with you. She can still find you. She can travel to this world through your love for her, very literally, and she can continue to grow outside of your experience. She isn't confined to your heart, but it is a portal to her. She is where you are...
And I felt so safe and shocked and grateful.
Driving home afterward, I expected not to sleep, as post-Ani-bounciness rarely allows me into REM. But no. For the first time in nearly a week, I slept through the night. I slept deeply, in a way that left me revitalized in the morning. A way that left me comfortable and cutely lazy at daybreak. And outside on the trees and ground, first snow magic was making brilliance from elements, and I knew I couldn't take back what I interpreted as a message. I knew I had more than a couplet to my name.
Brave is, also, the title of the warrior. The survivor who knows how to listen, to wait, to reach, to ask, to stop, to move, to glean. The woman who finds her allies and her avatars.
Tomorrow: how it went with the...man...who is currently my number one ally. Tonight: sleep, as it chooses to come.
chord
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