thirty threadbare mercies

The outward expression of an inward grace.

Beauty over Bombs April 18, 2013

Filed under: Inspiration,Music,Personal,Prayer — rheabette @ 2:15 pm
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OMFG I needed Sigur Rós this week. Their set last night at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium was like being visited by an angelic presence. Cherubim and seraphim, people! It made me want to have more children, simply so more humans could experience magesty on that level.  After a week like this one, with the tragic occurances in Boston and Texas and Washington D.C., you’d think I’d be feeling the exact opposite.  But beauty is more compelling to me than safety.

I have never experienced sound wedded to light in such an enchanting way as I did at the Sigur Rós show. Seeing them live has always been a desire of mine, since everyone has told me it is breathtaking, so when I got a surprise birthday ticket from a friend, I had to take her up on it.

Photo by Saskia Mauro

Photo by Saskia Mauro

Sitting on the stair of the balcony, I let it all wash over me and felt tremendously grateful, that in a world of makeshift bombs that blow off limbs, the 11 people in that band have committed their lives to art-making. They travelled from Iceland to play music for us in San Francisco, leaving their families to share their gifts with the world.

They’ve chosen beauty over bombs.

The music of Sigur Rós is already contemplative, so I was quickly in a prayerful space. I meditated for a bit on the bombing, sending love and healing to the injured in Boston, and to all the people affected by violence this week, the world over.

The music darkened and deepened, and I was taken to a place of praying for the bombers. It is twisted and sad to even for one minute try to put myself in the place of people so desperate and ruined that they would do such a thing. But I prayed for them anyway. They really, really, really need it. Their hearts are opaque at this point, so hardened by intentional violence.

Did it turn out the way they’d hoped? Would they be chagrined to know that the huge outpouring of love and strength that followed has shown most of us the goodness of our people, rather than the evil? (Don’t get me started on the NY Post. Not everyone’s response to this is going to be kind-hearted or true. I’m no Pollyanna.) They sought to terrify us, but New Englanders don’t scare that easy, and what they’ve done is deeply grieve us, instead.  Do they realize the difference between the two?  So many questions arose in me. But then the sounds lightened, and Jónsi’s voice called out like a siren, holding the same impossible note for two full minutes, and I was brought back to a place of joy.

Photo by Saskia Mauro

Photo by Saskia Mauro

It’s been hard to find joy this week. Even my dance classes have been subdued — all of us struggling to wade through the shit to find our footing again. I realized that I just have to take it when it arises, like a last-minute chance to see a concert, a heartwarming encounter with my child, a deep conversation at a bar. (P.S. Drinking with 25 year olds is no joke, especially when you have to be up at 6am with your toddler. Repent!)

I have been doing so much processing of the attacks this week, as well I should. But when I get really mired down in it, I remember that a moment of joy will come soon. I have to wait for it, and then grab on to it with both hands, allowing it to pull me up, even for a short while.

 

When Fine is Actually Amazing July 18, 2012

Filed under: Art,Artists,Him Downstairs,Inspiration,Music,Personal,San Francisco,Writing — rheabette @ 12:34 pm
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You know how I was all like, “It’s a creativity tidal wave!  Out of control vibes of art-making and joy!  I poop poly-rhythms and eat submissions for breakfast!”  Well, yeah.  I guess I forgot that tidal waves are powerful tsunamis that can also erase everything in their path.  On Saturday my “creativity tidal wave” took out a) our computer and b) my confidence.

Image by Elise Orlowski

We were pretty well rehearsed, feeling good about the show, which was set for 9pm.  However, at 4pm, my so-called creativity tidal wave crashed into our computer, and sent it flying onto the floor, where the screen cracked, and with it, our sense of having our shit together.  We had five hours to figure out how to get to the songs on that computer, so we could play the show.  We despaired.  We laid face down on the bed.  Then we called for backup.  Our friend and frequent partner-in-crime, Joel Tarman, came to the rescue with a monitor and connector cables we could use, and my husband went into turbo mode, in which he doesn’t speak and becomes part machine.  At one point, when we realized we could salvage the show but it wouldn’t sound a whole lot like what we had rehearsed, I said to him, “Well, this is when we find out what kind of artists we are.  Do we give up because it’s not perfect, or do we play the show and keep it real for our friend’s opening, even if it’s a bit off?

Needless to say, we chose the latter, and it was … fine.  But this, like my friend and fellow artist Emily called it, is when “fine is actually amazing”, because it’s pretty much a miracle that we even played the show at all.  My husband Joel is a professional musician, so he was able to roll with the many changes in the set and improvise — he was relaxed and totally himself on stage.  And I sounded good, but I felt incredibly awkward in my body.  I just felt uncomfortable in my own skin up there, unsure of myself and not in the flow of my performance.  I shared this feeling afterwards with several other artists, who helped me see that sometimes performances just go that way, and that moment of feeling totally in your artist self often happens in rehearsal, rather than on stage.

The best part of the night was seeing the incredible artwork that John Felix Arnold III created.  It was powerful, dynamic, hard-hitting, and moving.  The show was centered around a sculpture that had a ritual aspect to it — a sculpture of a vespa sat on a circle of dirt, with bounganvilla branches beside it.  Viewers were invited take a part of the flower, think of someone you loved that you’d lost, hold out your hand, and drop a petal into the circle.  It was particularly poignant knowing that Felix had lost his friend Alex just last week, and Alex’s voice was in the sound piece playing on the airwaves before our performance.  So, all in all, it was an incredible night, even if I felt insecure about my performance, and shook up by the loss of our computer and the expenses incurred with replacing it.

I lamented to friends that I felt I’d lost some of my mojo and momentum, and my recording session for KQED’s Perspectives was that Tuesday morning.  My girls boosted me up, reminding me that reading my own writing is where I feel most myself, and I shouldn’t let a self-perceived failure mess with my ability to show up fully.  So, I went in to the studio yesterday, and it was a really fun experience.  I encourage all Bay Area writers to submit to their show and have the feeling that video may have killed the radio star, but you revived her, at least within yourself, for one day.

Hearing my own voice on the radio this morning was a thrill that few aspiring writers get to experience, and, for me, it was a big deal.  Here’s a link to the piece, if you want to hear my voice  and/or read what I wrote yourself: 
http://www.kqed.org/a/perspectives/R201207180735
  There has been an overwhelmingly positive response by most listeners, and then, a few voices of negativity chimed in as well.  I am trying to swim in both the cold waters and the warm, inviting ones, knowing that just because everyone doesn’t resonate with my story does not mean I should stop telling it.

I continue to ride the tidal wave of creativity that is rolling through my life right now.  It is leading to some feelings that the waves are crashing over me and I might drown, but in the process of that, I might just learn to surf.

Image by Tony Heff

 

Avoiding An Unlived Life — Even In the Toddler Years July 14, 2012

Filed under: Art,Artists,Dance,Inspiration,Music,Parenting,Personal,Prayer,Toddlers,Writing — rheabette @ 8:07 am
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“The greatest burden a child must bear is the unlived life of the parents.”  ~ Carl G. Jung

I was in grad school when I first heard this quote, and it rang so true to me that I vowed I would not place such a load on my own children.  The best thing about the creativity tidal wave I have been experiencing lately is that it is helping me get through a really difficult period in Olive’s development.  She is figuring out where she ends and I begin, and in the process of that, there is a lot of “NO!”, plenty of food-throwing, and an absolutely unacceptable amount of toddler yelling.  Those little lungs can BELLOW!

The other day I said to Joel, “What other group of people have a job is where they get yelled at all day, they can’t yell back, and theydon’t get paid?  Oh yeah, prisoners.”  Well, unlike folks who are incarcerated, I have the power to change things up.  I’ve been praying the Serenity Prayer a lot, to figure out what I do have control over, and letting go of what I don’t.

Quote by Reinhold Niebuhr, graphic by Pat Pitingolo

And that is *sort of* working.  I secretly think the glass of wine at the end of the day works better than all the prayer, but I can’t drink when I’m with her, so prayer will have to do!

In fact, whenever I ask my friends who have survived the toddler years how they did it, their answers often include fermented beverages. When I told Estelle that Olive was entering the so-called “Terrible Twos”, she tweeted me this blessing: “may your journey into hell be swift; your drinks strong & your babysitters always available. Gather your reinforcements, friend.” Rhiana just had one word: “booze”.

If I want to get through the next two years without becoming a total alkie, I’ve got to have more tricks up my sleeve than just my nightly glass of wine, but what should they be? Deep breathing and prayer? Check. Doing fun things with Olive so we have as many positive memories as we do battles of wills? Check. But truly, the number one thing I think I can do right now is live a brilliant life myself, immersing myself in things other than just my parenting, so that when Olive throws a tantrum about the cheese she has begged me to bring her, shredding it up and grinding it into the couch with astonishing speed, I won’t feel like my life is a total failure, because I have meaningful things going on other than just parenting.

Olive cannot appreciate that my writing, dancing, and singing is bringing me joy, meaning, and connections with other humans. She’s pretty self-centered — she just wants me at her disposal at all times. But I think children can feel when you are so invested in whether or not they are behaving well that you are taking it personally, basing your worth on their ability to obey a simple request to stop throwing toys at other kids. I’m not advocating disconnection, I’m asking for even MORE engagement with the world around you, so that one day Olive will say, “My mom was really rad. She kept up with her arts practices, even when I was in my screaming-on-the-streets-of-San-Francisco phase.” She may not understand that it is all that is keeping me sane, but hopefully, her burden will be lighter than if it also held the weight of years of giving up everything in my life as a service to hers. That is too much for a child to bear. So, parents, be brilliant, live your life boldly, even when you’re so exhausted from a day of wriggly diaper changes and copious hand washing. Not only is it keeping me afloat in a time of many frustrations, but it is building a life that one day, both Olive and I will be proud of.

I can’t believe I actually got a picture of both of us smiling! It’s probably because it was the end of the day, and Papa was home…

 

Creativity Tidal Wave July 13, 2012

Filed under: Art,Artists,Body Image,Dance,Fashion,Him Downstairs,Inspiration,Music,Personal,Writing — rheabette @ 7:42 am
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I would not say that my creativity was blocked before I started The Artist’s Way – I have been steadily working at my arts practices, plugging along like a little worker bee.  But I am realizing now that I was slightly stuck in those practices, and consequently being very safe with my art making. Now I’m taking risks, putting myself out there more, and finding myself in a creativity tidal wave. It is simply amazing to me, how much can happen when you create space for it, defend it from internal aggressors, and then just effing go for it. Since I began doing The Artist’s Way, I’ve been confronting head-on the ways that I’ve stemmed the flow of creativity in my life, because of shame, co-dependancy, or fear. Replacing those contracting forces with love, acceptance, and playfulness has wildly affected my life in some very concrete ways.

First of all, my husband (who is also doing The Artist’s Way) and I actually started practicing for the show we are playing this Saturday. When we haven’t played music together in awhile, the first rehearsal is excruciating. We are grumpy, rusty, and full of blame and criticism. It’s pretty much a disaster. The only good thing about it is we have been together so long that we know the pattern and keep telling ourselves “It gets better It gets better It gets better don’t give up!” Then, the following night, we find some kind of groove, letting go of our creative resentments and saying yes to each other’s offers. So now, I am actually excited about our performance, and if you are in the Bay Area this Saturday, July 14th, you should come to Old Crow at 8pm for the incredible art that John Felix Arnold III has created, and stay for our croonings and beats.  I’m doing a lot more singing this time, letting myself be even more vulnerable in my performance, as we are singing about love together.  It scares me, and that is exactly why I know I need to do it.

Of course we have all of our same old tired problems, but we are starting to find creative solutions to some of them.  Now that we have some space and courage to try new things, we are shifting things around, rather than wasting time complaining about what we can’t have. We rearranged two out of the four rooms in the house, and the result is an altered perspective, and a greater investment in our cozy space. Showing the changes to my friend Ellie, I said, “Look! There’s a dance floor in the bedroom now!” “Only you would see that freed-up space and call it a dance floor”, she replied. Sure enough, pretty soon Olive, her friend Caden and I were all stretching on the bedroom floor together — the space was just too inviting to be solely for walking.

Speaking of dance, I’ve been bringing Operation RAD BOD to my dance classes, stretching myself to get even more comfortable with my body as I move it around. The classes I take are greatly cardiovascular, but I often dance in exercise pants, a tank top and a long sleeved dress over that! The teachers usually wear short shorts and tank tops, and no matter what the students don, we are equally drenched in sweat by the time the hour is over. I never really thought I was choosing my outfits based on any kind of body shame, but in the heat of this past Saturday, rather than reaching for my usual somber attire, I pulled from the bottom of my drawer an electric blue “run-skirt” — basically a mini with tiny shorts attached underneath. I topped it with a pink sleeveless top, essentially showing more skin with that outfit than I would anywhere but the beach. I didn’t really think too much of it, I just pulled it on and rushed to class, arriving to the delighted surprise of my friends. They were hilariously inspired by my colorful, tiny attire. Rebecca said, “You have great legs! I’ve never seen them before!” The fact that we have been dancing together for 5 years and she’s never seen my legs made it jarringly clear to me that I’ve been hiding my body in my dance classes.

The class was packed, and there’s a huge mirror in the room, but I did not once find myself obsessing about how all my skin looked as I shook it around. I don’t know what happened, but I was just… free from all that self-consciousness, and I had a blast, actually not overheating for once! On the walk home I realized that what I’d done out of opening my dress choices to more options was actually a big step in Operation RAD BOD. I posted my brave sartorial choice to my Facebook page, and was encouraged by how many people enjoyed that I’d thrown off the fetters of somber fabric and embraced my own skin.

Another great part of the Artist’s Way is you are encouraged to get in touch with your child self, allow yourself to play, and simply have fun. By a series of fortunate events, I found myself in a toy store without my child. I was able to browse the things I was actually interested in, rather than monitoring Olive’s interactions with the wares. I found myself drawn to a fashion coloring book — a huge tome filled with fabuous fashion illustrations that you fill in yourself — high heels to decorate, dresses to pattern, sunglasses that need a face drawn around them, prints that need colors chosen for them. I bought myself every color of Le Pen that they had, and brought it all up to the cash register, my inner artist in a state of glee and ecstacy that I was actually doing this. I then spent the evening coloring fashion illustrations, rather than watching mindless TV.  I felt my world expanding with every swirl I added to the page.

It feels a little like this. (Image by Richard Burbridge)

As I am owning myself as an artist — spending my free time singing, coloring, and writing, instead of comparing, judging and tuning out, I have been amazed at how the creative opportunities have been pouring in. My friend Esther from LTYM SF told me how to submit to KQED’s Perspectives, and I mulled over what I could possibly write about for several weeks.  Finally, an idea came to me, and though I don’t have the kind of life where I can just sit down and write any second I’m so inspired, at my next writer’s group I banged it out, and sent it off.  Much to my surprise, the editor contacted me right away, accepting my piece!  I had such an encouraging talk with him about my writing, and it happened on a day when all I was feeling was “I want to punch today in the throat.”  So, I really needed a win, and now I am greatly looking forward to being on the airwaves next week!  Things are flowing, and I am feeling more alive.

I’m sharing all of this with you because I want to spread the reality that if you let yourself be creative, if you make time and space for it, and you drench yourself in positivity rather than small-mindedness, you will be amazed by how much color and opportunity will come your way.  I’m not much for the New Agey “you create your own reality” stuff that is thrown around a lot in our post-millenial culture, as I have too much of a sociological understanding of the very real effects of classism, racism, sexism and homophobia in our current world.  However,  creativity is within you.  It could be bringing a creative perspective to your feud with your neighbor, a fresh eye to the haircut you are regretting, or just taking a different route on your walk to work.  Whatever you choose, I invite you to let your artist self take control of something today, and report to me what happens!

 

Bell jar dancing June 4, 2012

Filed under: Art,Artists,Christianity,Dance,Inspiration,Mothers,Music,Parenting,Personal,Prayer,Psychotherapy,Writing — rheabette @ 1:03 pm
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The bell jar was lowering, the sweet cloying smell of the air contained within threatening to suffocate, so I danced faster than it could descend.  Not in any manic way, but a deliberate, furious expression, meant to stave off a case of the mean reds so angry that even time with my ridiculously happy child could not abate it.  I already had on my best dress for dancing, with a full skirt for making dramatic turns, and slippery shoes to help me make the most of the tiny kitchen parquet floor.  Jokes are often made about how folks with depression listen to sad music to wallow in it, but that is not the real reason.  We turn to The Smiths, Leonard Cohen and the like to inject some soul into our barren landscape — we need depth, not to candy coat our sadness with smiles.  So, I turned on the soundtrack to Dancer in the Dark, which is arguably the most depressing movie on earth, with some seriously soulful Bjork songs throughout.  Olive’s face filled with delight when I began to spin around the room, but I only saw it for a moment before I closed my eyes, needing to be fully in the movement, working through all the stuck places in my mind, heart, and back muscles.  Some moms need to steal away for a nip from the bottle of Jameson mid-day to get through, but me, I dance.

untitled photo by A/R, 2009

A few of my friends on Facebook recently have been breaking the unspoken taboo against ever saying anything negative about their lives, and starting to really show up. Their status updates, instead of pictures of the mouth-watering food they are about to eat, baby updates galore, or a pithy celebration of how generally happy they are in life, have instead been indicating disappointment, fear, and even depression. Now, this is a dangerous thing to do on Facebook, a place uniquely designed for people to pull out their best Dear Abby impersonations at every turn. So, as I endeavor to write to you about my struggles with mood on this blog, please hear this: I do not want you pull a Coldplay and try to fix me. I like myself a little broken, just as I am. But if you want to know me more, especially in those places of brokenness, it’s totally cool to ask more questions about my experience.
So, here’s a little secret that those posts of brand-new babies rarely say: motherhood will not save you from depression. Sometimes, it will even create it. I was not shocked about this fact, I knew that going in. Right before I got pregnant, I was really going through it. I admitted to my therapist that I wished that having a baby would bring me happiness in my life, but that I knew that it wouldn’t fix any of my current problems. “I know that I will still be myself, prone to melancholy, thinking way too much about my relationships all the time, and taking care of everyone else while neglecting myself. However, now I’ll also have a baby to love. This will add to the difficulty of my life, yes. But it will also increase the love. I need to increase the love.”
I often come across mothers that have thrown themselves so fully into motherhood to stave off ever having to talk about their actual lives, what’s really going on for them. But motherhood does not save you from having to work through your shit. Sylvia Plath still sealed her children into the living room to protect them from the fumes, and stuck her head in the oven, ending her short and brilliant life, and abandoning her kids because she thought they’d be better off without her. In fact, the stress of motherhood often causes things to crack and come apart, revealing wounds you thought you had pasted over for good but were actually only festering under that dirty bandaid you slapped on when you were 14.
Over dinner recently, a friend admitted to me about her bouts of anger that make her fear that she is turning into her rageaholic father, lashing out at her kids and partner in ways that surprise and terrify her. In the course of discussing it further, I said something offhand about how struggling with mental health issues so early in life helped me find the things I need to do to stay sane, and if I stray from those, all hell, literally, breaks loose. She returned to this comment later, asking, “So… what are those things that you do to stay sane?” It was interesting, because I hadn’t really spent a whole lot of time articulating what it is I do to stay relatively balanced, even though it takes up pretty much all of my free time.  So, over a healthy amount of wine, I found myself espousing a bit of a manifesto.

I call it my Threadbare Three:

First is Exercise. Getting my endorphins going and literally working through the feelings in my body, as I did dancing in the kitchen this week, is the best way I know to shake off and work through the accumulated stuff in my body.  I am not always dying to go to dance class — sometimes I would much rather veg, especially after a particularly hard day of running around playing peek-a-boo tag with Olive.  But once I get there, and let myself really go into the movement, I feel a melting in to my body, and, moving through all the stuck places, I start to feel free, and by the end I’m often feeling like I just might take flight.  Not always, mind you, but enough to keep me coming back, several times a week.

Second is a Spiritual Practice. For me, this is being a part of a church, praying, and reading spiritual texts.  I think this is important because depression/anxiety/mood disorders in general are about the specific problems of being YOU.  You need experiences that get you outside the particulars of your own little life, and into the oneness of all life.  We are both the wave and ocean, and if we spend all our time being the wave, we miss out on the vastness and depth of the sea.  I don’t think it matters which spiritual practice you choose, as long as it is one that is based in love and leads you to a place of peace.  Joel and I have really been getting into adding Buddhist practices to our Christianity lately, and it’s really deepening our understanding of the spiritual plane and helping us learn to love others more.  I think Jesus is down with that.

Finally: Expression. This means creating art, and/or going to therapy. You need a way to tell your story.  Often, we need someone to help us sort through our story, especially if it has really painful parts that we still don’t fully understand or know how to integrate within our lives.  A therapist is someone who is trained to guide you through this process, bringing you to a place of freedom from your past, and a present that doesn’t involve denying any parts of you, but rather helps you be a whole person.  I am not currently in therapy, but I just ended after 12 consecutive years of this deep work.  I found it incredibly helpful, and I recommend it for basically anyone looking to grow personally and find some clarity in their lives.  The other way to go with this step is creating art, preferably every single day.  For me this means taking 20 minutes out of my morning to write, and hopefully squeezing in more writing and art-creation time later in the day.  This final step in the Threadbare Three brings all the others together, as I often dance for both exercise and expression, and I find making art to be a sacred experience, as we become co-creators with God.

Enlighten me further, my friends: what makes up your Threadbare Three?

 

 

True Feelings Are Shown From the Way that I Talk: R.I.P. MCA May 5, 2012

Filed under: Art,Artists,Loss,Music,Personal,Pop Culture — rheabette @ 8:03 am
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I had just wrangled my daughter into her stroller when the phone rang. Since my husband rarely calls at 10:30 in the morning, I picked up, happy to hear his voice. But his tone was somber, almost apologetic. “MCA died, Honey.” I felt all the blood drain out of my head and limbs, going straight to my heart, which took off in wild variations, not unlike a beat from Paul’s Boutique. “What?! What?!!!” And then I was crying in the middle of the sidewalk, feeling like I’d lost a close friend, when really it was a man I’d never even met.

That is what good artists do — they give you their art as a gift, which makes you feel like a greater part of the world, close to another human that you have never had a linear conversation with, instead having conversed on a whole other level, allowing yourself to be moved by their creations. Oh, how the Beastie Boys moved me. I think I’ve created illegal dance moves to their songs, things that would make me blush profusely when faced with the evidence in the cold light of day. Something about their ability to be goofy and serious at the same time, set over heavily sampled beats, just made you want to dance in the most wild-out ridiculous ways possible. The dance floor was cleared at my wedding, when Joel’s Haitian relatives and my Connecticut working class guests were shocked by what could have taken over the college boys who were now inexplicably doing push-ups and knocking bodies, while the women were literally jumping on top of each other and screaming along the words to Root Down. And then they joined right in, because, come on, the Beasties are universal.

I once had a crush on a guy who informed me, knowingly smug, that he didn’t care for the Beastie Boys. “The way they come IN all at ONCE is so overRATED. They annoy me.” The crush lasted as long as that car ride. Anyone who can’t get into the joy and groove that the Beastie Boys create was never going to get my bra off.

I first discovered the Beastie Boys when I was 12, which was kind of perfect, as their early stuff was so immature that it fit my tween development to a tee. My best friend Meagan and I videotaped ourselves rapping along to Fight For Your Right, even convincing her mom to come in and “bust us”. Thank God YouTube was not around in 1993.

Everyone has their favorite Beastie Boys album, and though I know others were perhaps more groundbreaking or classic, Check Your Head was just my album. It combined enough punk sensibilities for my little alterna-chick to get behind, and I remember carrying around the cracked CD case to play at every friend’s house I went to.

Adam Yauch was a rare being, a hip-hop celebrity who had a spiritual awakening and was not obnoxious about it, just let it change him radically and then found a way to bring that into his art and life in inspiring ways. I mean, what other celebrities have changed so radically for the better, and created so many opportunities for others to get involved in activism? I hadn’t even heard of the plight of the Tibetan people before MCA took on their cause.

When 9/11 happened, my husband and I bought our tickets to the New Yorkers Against Violence concert, the proceeds of which all went to help victims of the World Trade Center tragedy, and went to the Hammerstein Ballroom to see the Beastie Boys themselves. It was a kick-ass show, and a night of healing, as all of us were there to say, “We are incredibly sad that this happened, and we are desirous of peace in response.” Yoko Ono’s set was particularly strange, and mostly consisted of her howling, but at the end she yelled, “We’ll make it!” with so much surety and pride that I deeply believed her.

Lately I have really been pining for the 90′s, when there was still music that was radical, dangerous, that called the system into question enough to irritate lawmakers, middle-aged parents, and talk radio pundits. When was the last time you heard something on the radio like Sure Shot? Well, probably yesterday, when the whole world was in mourning for Adam Yauch, whose life is an example of someone who stayed true to his community and reached out beyond the boundaries of it at the same time. I am so grateful to him for the joy his work brought to my life, from the audacity of Nathaniel Hornblower’s antics to the way MCA’s rhymes just made me want to get up and embarrass myself on the dance floor. My heart goes out to his wife, daughter, and the brothers Adam and Mike that he shared his life with. But it is also with all the people of my generation, who feel that we are losing our friend.

“Surely, he was all real things to us: our blue-striped unicorn, our double-lensed burning glass, our consultant genius, our portable conscience, our supercargo and our one full poet.”
― J.D. Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction

 

Secret Agent Dancing, Bloggess-book Reading, Toddler Wrangling: Resume Skills 2012 April 27, 2012

Filed under: Art,Artists,Community,Dance,Music,Parenting,Personal,San Francisco,Work at Home Mom — rheabette @ 7:55 am
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Perhaps, at this point, you are assuming that The Year of Enough means “enough with the blog posts!”, because I have been so silent the past 2 weeks, when I usually post twice a week or so. However, I’ve just been so busy living my life that I have no time to write or reflect on it. So, what the heck have I been doing? A lot of rehearsing for various performances, for one. We had our final rehearsal for Listen To Your Mother San Francisco, and it was so affirming that this show is an amazing storytelling adventure. If you have ever had a mother, been a mother, or known a mother, you will like this show. I’m so very excited about it.

I’ve also been in rehearsals for a super-secret flash mob, that we set off without a hitch (okay, a couple people had injuries, since it was such a tight space, but no ambulances were called) at the SF MOMA Modern Ball Wednesday night! It was incredibly exciting to be super stealth, set into the crowd like uncut jewels in a sea of A-listers wearing blood diamonds on their designer dresses and Botoxed skin. The star sightings were all very Bay Area, but fun nonetheless — Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, former Mayor Willie Brown, SF Chronicle writer Leah Garchick, and gazillionaire Ann Getty. As the time for the big reveal approached, I found myself wondering if these people would really appreciate this or not. Their faces were not only frozen from cosmetic surgery, they were lifeless from years of getting everything they want, and being catered to. They had also paid $125-500 to be there that night, and expected to be entertained. Once the flash mob started, with our wonderful teachers in the center, shaking it to a belly dance routine, and then my classmates joined in little by little, dancing to a James Brown number, the crowd around me did react.

“It’s a flash mob,” one tuxedoed man explained to his date. “Are they just doing this spontaneously?!” she asked. “No, they practiced!” he looked at me knowingly. I shared in his wonder that all this was happening right there in the lobby of the museum. And then I leapt into the fray, spinning my way into the mass of dancers as the music changed from James to the Black Eyed Peas. It was a blast, it was close quarters, some people got stepped on, some members of the audience totally got it and danced along with us, others recorded it on their phones, and, sadly, still others gave us a “golf clap” and went back to their elixirs and sure-to-be-riveting conversations about Muffy and Biff’s divorce. If I sound a touch jaded, it’s because this is the crowd that I usually find myself protesting against, rather than trying to delight. However, I wasn’t doing it for them. I was dancing simply for the joy of dancing, and because I am so in love with the actual building of the SF MoMA that any reason to be there gives my heart a bump, and now I have a wonderful memory of a covert dance operation, every time I go there (usually on the free days) to check out the art.

See if you can find me in the video below: I’m wearing a teal dress and I enter on the top left.  I couldn’t extend my arms all the way, in fear of knocking out my fellow dancers, but it was still fabulously thrilling.

So, what else have I been up to?  A lot of reading, as all of a sudden all of my reserved books at the library came in at once.  My favorite, however, has been one I pre-ordered on my NOOK Color, knowing I couldn’t wait the requisite 6 weeks for the library copy to free up.  Jenny Lawson’s memoir, Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, is so hilarious and mildly offensive, that you should perhaps save it for a week that you know is going to be a total shitshow, like the week you do your taxes while your least favorite relative takes over your bed and you sleep on the floor where you have nightmares of rats eating your baby.  But you may be wondering, is it for me?  Well, see if you fit into any of these categories:

People who will enjoy Jenny Lawson aka The Bloggess‘s new book:
1. Taxidermy Enthusiasts
2. City Dwellers who want to feel affirmed in their choice to never, ever live in the country.
3. Psychotherapists or other folks interested in how people with mental health issues battle their disease with a hefty dose of humor (and a lot of drugs).
4. Skanky Unicorn Fetishers.
5. The large quantity of my Facebook friends who for some reason think that Jesus was a zombie. (Zombies are created from a flesh-eating bacteria/virus infected monkey biting a human, which turns said human into the cannibalistic undead. Jesus resurrected, and didn’t try to eat anyone. THAT WE KNOW OF. But somehow I think if the zombie apocalypse happened way back then, the world would look very different these days)
6. Folks who enjoy laughing at others’ misfortune, but, you know, in a good way.
7. Anyone who ever wondered exactly HOW Ms. Lawson got so fabulously bizarre. The context makes reading her blog so much more satisfying.
8. Parents who have ever been concerned about what to do with their children while they are protecting their dead dog’s carcass from a pack of wild vultures.

So, most people, really.  Finally, I’ve been doing my requisite amount of running after Olive, and questioning my life choices. Joel and I went out for a drink and dessert on the night of his birthday, while friends of ours watched Mystic Pizza at our place with Olive snoozing in the next room.  Over delicious drinks and terrible foodie ice cream (sometimes they just overthink it way too much and it comes out tasting like yoghurt with gum sauce), I told Joel how much I was struggling with the toddler years.  Olive is a kid that requires an intense connection and engagement, something I totally love about her and is completely killing me at the same time.  So, here I am, really struggling with being with her 24/7, and here she is, REALLY REALLY HAPPY.  It’s hilarious, actually.  Olive is undeniably happier every day with me than she was when she was with her nanny 3 days a week.  I am not making any kind of statement about anyone else’s childcare situation.  God forbid I get involved in something as ridiculous (and totally media-driven) as the “Mommy Wars”.  But sitting there, Joel and I both agreed that it is a really good deal.  I may be in physical pain, losing my mind on a daily basis, but the results are incredible.  Our kid is insanely happy, and I get to witness her growth, changing second by second, wildly spinning into the person she was meant to be.

There's Olive on the left, creating her first band before my very eyes.

 

On Suffering April 3, 2012

Filed under: Art,Artists,Christianity,Dance,Music,Parenting,Toddlers — rheabette @ 1:05 pm
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Fr. Richard Rohr says that “suffering is any time you are not in control.” As a parent of a toddler, following that definition would mean I am suffering 90% of the time I am with her. This week, Joel and I developed a special handshake for the days that Olive tests our mettle but does not break us. It involves a chest bump. Since he had to work late last night and I parented solo all day, I tried to do it alone once I got the tiny tornado to bed, but it just got awkward.
As you can probably tell from my last three posts, this past week has been one of our family sorting through our grief about Trayvon, the implications for our culture and country, and trying to create art around it to shift our focus from the crazy racist things people are saying on the internet to a positive expression of our longing for a different level of discourse.

In the midst of this, I had the honor to go to see Robert Moses’ Kin dance company perform several pieces at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Robert Moses has been a huge presence in Bay Area dance for the past 17 years, but I had never seen his work in the flesh until now. I sat with a group of dancers from ODC Dance Commons, where we all take classes from the imitable Dudley Flores, who was premiering with Robert Moses’ Kin for the first time. Michele (who you met in my last post) and I treated it like a Bethel AME church service, even though we were up in the balcony, shouting out “PREACH!” and similar exclamations of amazement and encouragement to the dancers below. Nobody seemed to mind our excitement, despite the very cultured atmosphere — everyone was totally rapt with the power and release of the dancers, the quick force of the choreography, and the interesting choices of music and spoken word that the dancers twisted and turned along to. It is hard to explain my relationship to my dance teacher. I’ve been taking classes from him for the past 5 years, and at this point to my friends I just call him “my muse”. He is an incredibly inspiring person, while also still being very human, allowing us to see the otherworldliness of his dancer capabilities alongside his goofy nature. I have seen him perform many times with different companies, but his body came alive with Robert Moses’ choreography, in a way I’d never seen in him before. It is strange to know a man’s body as well as I know Dudley’s, simply from hours of studying its movements to try to imitate them.

But I digress. The piece in the show that had me most in tears was not the shockingly powerful Speaking Ill of the Dead, which is about learning your loved one is not coming home from the war, but rather Biography, in which the dancers moved to excerpts from a 1961 discussion with James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Langston Hughes, Emile Capouya and Alfred Kazni. In the midst of the discussion, James Baldwin states, “To be a negro in this country and to be conscious is to be in a constant state of rage.” My heart caught in my throat, thinking of the rage and helplessness my husband has felt this month, as all of our consciousnesses have been raised to understand just how vicious the racial climate in America is right now. And I thought about the Richard Rohr quote I led with, about suffering being whenever you are not in control, and seeing how apt that idea fit here, way better than it does for parenting overall —  to be a marginalized person in this culture, to not have the power to even protect your family members, leads you to suffering and rage.

Van Vogh's Old Man in Sorrow

Another friend’s blog recently quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer.” Dr. MLK Jr. takes the experience of suffering and makes it meaningful, as an actual way to gain power. He turns the victim into a powerful figure simply through his ability to love and to suffer, to hold both at the same time. As I often remind myself in moments of pain, suffering grows the soul. People try to find reasons for it to exist, but I think we only have to look to Holy Week in the Christian tradition to find some meaning for it. As we entered Holy Week on this past Palm Sunday, I stood in church (for the one second I got to stand, not chasing after my 18-month old), and meditated on how God chose suffering. Jesus chose to go out in a unimaginably painful, humiliating way. I think that can teach me something about my own suffering, my own moments of feeling marginalized and misunderstood.

My husband makes fun of me for going through a “Pop Renaissance”, as I have been choosing a lot of pop music for the twice-daily dance parties Olive and I have in our living room.  A current fave is Rihanna’s song “We Found Love”, whose chorus goes, “We found love in a hopeless place”, a message I can definitely dance joyously to.  I think this is the point of Holy Week, to find love in the suffering, in the rage, in the powerlessness.  The best way I know how to do that is through making art, so I write, my husband creates songs, and, in the words of Pina Bausch, we “dance, dance, otherwise we are lost.”


 

The Love of All Above February 8, 2012

Filed under: Art,Artists,Dance,Him Downstairs,Marriage,Music,Parenting,Personal,San Francisco,Writing — rheabette @ 2:05 pm
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That dream was bollocks.  Things most definitely did not get easier.  In fact based on the events of just yesterday morning, I have decided that either a) mercury is in retrograde or b) God has decided to hate me after all.  There is no c), those are the options.  However, I had another dream, and this one seemed much more accurate.  Olive and I were by the ocean, and she told me she was going to turn back into a whale, and urged me to get her to the water.  I ran, pushing people out of the way at the docks, leaping into the sea with her in my arms.  The moonlight hit her face and illuminated her eyelids, which were shut in anticipation of her transformation.  I felt infinitely sad to be losing her to the ocean, but also knew that I needed to let her go.  Dolphins came and swam all around us, aiding her passage.  So I held my baby girl, letting her know silently and energetically that she could turn back into a whale any moment she needed to… and we waited… and she never did.

image by Victo Ngai

I think this dream has to do with this crazy period of reinvention in my life, in which I have no idea what I am doing, but knowing I need to be present for the changes both in myself and in my daughter.  It also, definitely, had to do with letting go, which is the main thing you are actively doing in parenting, and the focus of this time in my life, which I need an incredible amount of help with.

One thing that recently really helped was performing with my husband in John Felix Arnold’s incredible show, The Love of All Above.  The futuristic artwork on the walls set the scene for our dance and music collaboration, in which I played a kind of goddess figure in a postapocalyptic world, and Joel played  a somewhat digitized monk.  I started out with a processional into the space, while Joel set the sonic landscape with his song, which was filled with floating vocals and glitchy clicks.  I took off into an improvisational dance in front of the altar/stage, which was admittedly very odd but prepared the audience for the kind of experience they were in for.  Then I took my place on stage to catch my breath in order to sing the rest of the songs alongside my husband.

photo by John Felix Arnold III

Singing is not something I do very often, and writing lyrics, working on melodies, and allowing myself the space to really have my literal voice be heard was a stretching experience for me.  Eleanor Roosevelt encouraged, “Do one thing every day that scares you.”  Well, lately, I’ve been doing about 50 scary things per day, and I’m not sure if that’s because I’m particularly brave, or because almost everything is terrifying to me as of late.  However, I was surprisingly calm singing on that stage, perhaps because I felt free to couple the sounds with movement, but most likely because of my co-musician.  My husband and I had not performed music together for 11 years, since we sang a few Cat Power songs at a college coffeehouse in Philly.  My friend Suzanne asked me if I would have been more or less nervous to perform with someone other than Joel, and I said “Definitely more nervous with someone other than Joel, because I trust him so much as both an artist and a person.”

photo by Jesus Beltran

So, the performance was a really validating experience for me.  We only messed up once, and it was on the song that everyone said they liked the most, so I guess it was endearing!  I was psyched that people liked that song so much, as it was the one that I wrote all the lyrics on, and it was a very literal expression of love.  The only thing that makes sense to me these days is art.  It is where I am finding all my pleasure, connection, and life-blood flowing.  I can’t even tell y’all all the irritating, bureaucratic, pedantic nightmares I have in my day-to-day reality right now, but doing art, whether it’s dancing with my daughter, singing with my husband, or writing on this here blog, is literally saving my life.  So, thank you for listening.  Hopefully Joel and I will have an EP of our material from the show available soon, so you’ll be able to listen more!

Decked out in my costume cowl. Photo by John Felix Arnold III

 

Investing in the Infinite January 30, 2012

Filed under: Art,Artists,Dance,Him Downstairs,Marriage,Music,Parenting,Personal,San Francisco,Writing — rheabette @ 2:13 pm
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Those of you following this blog will be relieved to hear that I got some respite this past Saturday, and I’m pretty sure it prevented a complete breakdown. Also, all sorts of weird, awesome, synchronistic things happened, I believe because I made space for them to come forward. I started off the day baking strawberry muffins for the Writers’ Group I formed, which had its first meeting that day. It was lovely — to be at my friend Christine’s house without my child, to be sitting with other writers reading our work and cheering one another on — now I know how the Fempire feels.

Afterwards my dear friend Amanda drove she and I out to Berkeley to participate in the first meeting of an arts-based process group that our friend and colleague Jason formed, with several of our other grad school alumni. On the way there, we discussed the perils and joys of collaborating with our romantic partners on artistic projects. I found myself saying, “I want to collaborate artistically with everyone I’m in love with. I want to write music with my husband, dance with Olive, write books with my sister (Molly, you don’t know this yet but it is a dream of mine!), and so on…” Then I got really excited thinking about what artistic shenanigans I’ll get into with my daughter once she’s older. Amanda also told me that this was the day of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of creativity, music, arts and knowledge. She was planning on attending a party for the goddess that night, celebrating her as only the Bay Area would. I found it incredibly fitting that this was the day that I was setting aside to go to arts groups, and it was a special day blessed for their cultivation. At the group, Amanda led us through an arts process in which I drew 4 reaching hands, and was imagining a goddess with many arms, overloaded with tasks, as that is how I am feeling these days. Later, I researched Saraswati, and, wouldn’t you know it? Homegirl’s got 4 arms!

Another thing that came to me in the arts process was the symbol of infinity as a solution to all my practical problems, which are myriad and seem totally insurmountable to me these days. The message that came to me was, “Invest in the infinite”, and then you’ll have the ability to do all the detailed shit that is clogging you up so much. I had SO much to do this weekend, but I took the time to leave it all behind and go to two arts groups. Wouldn’t you know it, I accomplished 3 errands this morning that have been hanging over my head? I think it’s working!

Also at the group, I had the other participants help me start working on the dance piece I’m doing this coming Saturday as a part of The Love of All Above, an incredible art exhibition and performance art experience by John Felix Arnold III (to us he’s just Big Sheiky but in the art world he’s a pretty big deal). Felix commissioned Joel and I (our band is called Him Downstairs) to write 5 original songs based on his post-apocalyptic art, and we have been practicing every night, fully enjoying entering Felix’s wild world of Unstoppable Tomorrow.  Anyway, we are starting the performances with a processional, and my friends at the group helped me come up with some movements to stride in with. I am so excited about this ritual/performance/dance piece. Joel and I can’t stop laughing, however, as we are finding that working together on music and art totally opens us up to each other, and we keep having to take breaks because making art is a powerful aphrodisiac!  Now I know why so many spouses become artistic partners, and vice versa.

The flier for our show this Saturday - check it. We're on at 6!

I am learning so many powerful lessons from this absurd, frustrating, totally flat-out broke period of my life. I’m not sure if I’m at the point where I’m completely grateful to have to go through it in order to obtain these gems, but I’m paying attention and retaining them along the way. Last night I had a dream that I had another baby, but it was a totally different experience than birthing Olive. This baby came right out in one push, while I was having a check-up from the midwife! No agonizing contractions, no hours of opening, just one push, and there she was, brown and beautiful, with long dark hair. I am taking it to mean that maybe this period of birthing my new self does not have to be so difficult. You hear that, God?! I’m paying attention! Maybe it could all just be a little easier? Please?

 

 
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