8:15 a.m. - 2007-02-07
Squint Your Eyes and Look Closer
I have often said that, if you listen to enough Ani DiFranco, you will find one that you swear was ripped out of your diary (it helps if you start listening to her between the ages of 14 and 21). However, I will say that excess of anything is a bad thing, and if you find yourself thinking "Wow, this entire album is my LIFE right now!" it is time to change your circumstances. Or possibly to seek professional help.
I had that thought this semester in Berkeley. The album in question was Out of Range, the one which many consider the beginning of what many an Ani fan would consider the Golden Age, which would follow with Not a Pretty Girl, Dilate, and her first live album, Living in Clip, to my mind an essential part of any record collection. Out of Range is far from her most depressing album (I think any concerted effort to discern which album is truly the most depressing would result in a plague of alcoholism). It does, however, deal with, among other things, a tremendous sense of disatisfaction with current circumstances (the title track, Face Up and Sing) and falling in love with someone whom you are not totally sure doesn't love you back (Hell Yeah, Falling is Like This, Overlap). It also has one of her songs that is always guaranteed to make me cry, a song called You Had Time.
You Had Time is about coming home, about returning to the ones who raised you, and confronting their questions: "What did you learn out there? What did you decide? You said you needed time; well, you had time." The song is very gentle, and it is clear that whoever is welcoming Ani home loves her deeply, and that this love is mutual. Also, considering that this album was written during the time that Ani was going from minor indie folksinger to major indie rockstar, it is also about her coming home successful, having accomplished great things, having, hopefully, allayed her parents fears about whether she made the right decision to leave home, strike out on her own, and live the never certain life of a struggling young musician. Even with all this, Ani sings "How can I go home with nothing to say, and know you'e going to look at me that way? Saying, 'What did you learn out there? What did you decide? You said you needed time; well, you had time.'"
I myself have come home, kinda, in that I have declared Austin home whether San Antonio likes it or not, but I can only say kinda because this isn't where I grew up, and The Notorious MOM no longer lives where I grew up, either. My mother is frequently in Austin, though, because of her job, and so she's seen me a few times since I've been back. I was scared about this, at first. You see, for the past two and a half years I have had everything she's always wanted for me. I was accepted, with full-funding, to one of the premier graduate schools on the planet. I was in the one city where I never had to worry about being gay-bashed, a city where I had thousands of men to choose from if I wanted to find love. I was surrounded by some of the most intelligent scholars on the planet. And I was so miserable that I felt, at one point, like a piece of paper that had been erased so many times that it is about to rip in half.
I don't know why. I really, really don't. If I knew why, I could fix it. Now that I'm here, I am reading literary theory and criticism and enjoying it. I loved teaching at Berkeley, and I loved some of the classes I took (like, two of them). I had friends there whom I cared about. I don't know why I was unhappy, why when I got back there this past August I lay on my bed feeling crushed, feeling like all I wanted to do was get right back in my car and go back to Austin. I feel like it isn't enough to just list the things that pissed me off. A lot of things piss me off every day, and they don't make me feel like I felt there, even on days when nothing went wrong.
And it wasn't the fact that I was in love with someone whom I was almost totally sure didn't love me in return. I have loved that way before, and have shrugged my shoulders and gone back to work. I have thrived even with my heart breaking.
I was talking about some of this to The Notorious MOM yesterday, when we had lunch, and she said "You've always had this capacity to be offended, and when you're offended, you stop giving." As with many things that our parents say to us, this felt absolutely correct and I wasn't sure what it meant. She tried to explain further and talked about my brief experience at a DC school in 4th grade, a school I hated so much that I left. It was by far the ritziest school in DC, where most of the children of the heavy duty politicos went. She said that, at the age of 10, I said to her, "Mom, this place is like a peacock: its plumage is beautiful, but its voice is shrill."
I nearly said, "And how did you not figure out I was going to be gay as a picnic basket? Just asking."
I tried to probe more, because I have often thought of myself as someone who is very forgiving to a point, and when that point is crossed I get vicious. She said it wasn't quite like that. She said the way I took offense was about something more essential than someone's behavior. I was offended by people and institutions because of what they were.
Her phrase haunted me all day, and in case you couldn't tell, it still is.
Although she did say that she felt lik I needed to learn to forgive those offenses, she also repeated to me what she had said the last time we'd had a meal together: "You are so much happier." She talked about how morose and angry I'd been for the past two years, how she was worried that I hated her. She said I had been a monster. For some reason, that hurt worse than if she had said I had been a bastard, or an asshole, both because monster is a common phrase for a spoiled child, and because I definitely feel like a part of me was becoming monstrous, something I didn't recognize anymore. Except, of course, that monsters are strong, and I was getting weaker. I felt like all the magic that I once had at my fingertips was gone, and I was terrified that it would never come back.
I don't know why people fall in love, and I will never know, but lately I've been telling myself a story that, no matter how love begins, my heart, being stronger and smarter than most of the rest of me, decided to use the love I felt to rescue me. I would listen to the song Overlap off Out of Range and the lines that struck me most about the way I felt was "I build each one of my days out of hope, and I give that hope your name" (I conveniently edited out the rhyming lines: "I don't know you that well, but it don't take much to tell either you don't have the balls, or you don't feel the same"). I am telling myself a story about my heart building my love into some massive edifice, something so tall that I would come to believe that if I could jump off it, I could fly. In other words, my heart knew that my ridiculously romantic mind would not be able to resist risking everything for love, and hoped that, in the process, the fall would teach me some more about what is worth the risk.
Last night, I had the first rehearsal of my Emma Goldman show. Three classy actresses, two of whom are friends of mine, a table full of Mediterranean food and shiraz, and scripts read by candlelight. We were all excited, and the two who knew me told me stories. One talked about the piece I created with her about her sexual abuse at the hands of a babysitter, and how, when we performed it, she and her mother were in the audience (she dropped out of performing due to pregnancy), and how afterwards they were finally able to talk about what had happened openly. Another talked about how she didn't do that same show because she was busy, and now she refused to miss the opporntunity to work with me again, because it had been so long between shows. And I remembered that, the night before, I had been at that same house, and a woman who's daughter I worked with, in this challenging, difficult show, was bitten by the theatre bug after working with me. I gave her The Love, The Love that every theatre person knows deserves its capital letters, and since then she's had the lead in numerous children's plays (for the record, this girl was not in the scene involving sexual abuse; she wrote her own scene about a princess who rescues a prince, and she taught me more about what a young woman is able to understand than I could ever have guessed). After the rehearsal, the one actress I didn't know went out for drinks with me, and we sang Phantom of the Opera and talked about plays we'd loved and plays we'd love to do in the future. I got an email from her this morning saying, "Were your parents terrorists? Because you are da bomb."
My hands and arms tremble as the veins open again, letting the magic flow through. I'm still scared. I'm still afraid that I am going to make the wrong move and lose it all again. But I have learned something over the past few months.
In addition to thinking about my mother's comment and my upcoming show last night, I thought about the man I left behind in Berkeley, and how even though I was so much happier, and didn't NEED him anymore, I still wanted him, and would love to have him by my side. After rehearsal, I felt so amazing that I texted him, just to tell him that things were beautiful and I missed him. He texted me back, and in that text message I came to believe, perhaps incorrectly, that he never cared about me the way I cared about him, and never would. That it was time to let him go.
I got this message while talking with my new actress, and at one point I said to her, after wine, Bailey's, and cider, "Theatre is the only thing, no, it's not, there are two things. Doing theatre and falling in love are, for me, the two things worth doing even if they fail." That was worth a clink of our glasses.
This morning, I realized that it would be a while before I would listen ot Out of Range again (at least, I REALLY REALLY hope so). Nevertheless, I still had a bit of a craving for Ani, and I tried to think of a song she wrote that would be about realizing, with contentment, without resentment, that you are letting go of someone, or something, that you cared deeply about, in favor of a life that is more your own. It took a few minutes; a lot of her songs are big on the resentment. Then it came to me, a song so popular that I quite frequently forget about it.
The lines came over me: "Both my parents taught me about goodwill, and I have done well by their names. Just the kindness I've lavished on strangers is more than I can explain." The thing that I want to do most in my life is create art that makes the world a better place, and I am starting to discover that I have already been doing that, and I am so grateful that it is all I can do to keep from sobbing publically, on the ground.
"Still there's many who turned out their porch lights, just so I would think they were not home, and hid in the dark of their windows 'til I passed and left them alone." There will always be people who object to my art; if no one does, I'm not doing it right. There will be people who dismiss me, and people who can't handle my demands, because I am a demanding motherfucker. I can live without them, but my own porchlight will always be on for them.
"God help you if you are an ugly girl" I don't know if I will ever exorcise the demon that convinces me that I am not beautiful, but I will try. And last night, as I ranted to myself about the time I spent in love with someone who could never love me back, I cried out loud that I was beautiful, that no one ain't seen nothing yet about how beautiful I could be, and THAT was the voice of The Notorious RRZ. For some reason, he kinda reminded me of Al Swearengen from Deadwood. Kinda scary. Kinda fun.
"And God help you if you are a phoenix, and you dare to rise up from the ash; a thousand eyes will smoulder with jealousy while you are just flying past." I've already met people who refuse to believe that the path I am choosing is the right one, and I may never measure of by their standards. If they love me, we can both learn to adjust our standards.
"And I'll never try to give my life meaning by demeaning you, and I would like to state, for the record, I did everything that I could do." I tried Berkeley, I promise I tried. I promise I did everything I could to make myself what I thought you said I should be, and I may not have understood. But I couldn't. I don't know that I can, or ever will be able to, but I promise I will not try to make you worse than you are, and that I will not speak of your flaws without also speaking of your graces. I thank everyone who was there for me while I was there. And Chris, how you feel about me will not change how I felt about you. I am not closing the door, but I am starting to walk away.
"Now, I'm not saying that I am a saint; I just don't want to live that way. No, I will never be a saint, but I will always say Squint your eyes and look closer. I'm not between you and your ambition. I am a poster girl with no poster. I am 32 Flavors and then some." I told a friend of mine that one of my favorite lines in a comic book was when a second-rate superhero named Elongated Man (like I said, second rate) talked about meeting his wife, how The Flash was there at the same time and yet she only had eyes for the stretchy guy in purple (she may have wondered to herself if he could stretch EVERYTHING about himself). He said, "That's why ice cream stores have more than just chocolate and vanilla. Every once in a while, someone comes in and orders butter pecan."
Austin, Texas features the best ice cream store in the universe: Amy's, one of those places that mixes in whatever toppings you want. In addition to chocolate and vanilla, they offer a rotating array that includes Shiner Bock beer ice cream and ancho chile ice cream, which I ate recently with peanut butter cups (chocolate, peanut butter, and chilis go well together, trust me, I'm Mexican). Best of all, Amy's is a chain, with multiple locations for your pleasure and convenience. I think it makes sense, on some level or another, that I have found home in a place where weird ice cream is relatively available. I still hope that a chance mix up of white lightening and butterfingers with mexican vanilla and gummi worms might lead to an encounter with someone who is as many flavors of ice cream as I am. Until then, though, I've been given time, and I need to use it. Whether I have someone with me or not, I want to be able to come home one day, or at least to wherever my mother is living, hopefully not too long from now, and have her say, like Ani's mom, "Boy, you kicked some butt" and I'll say, "I don't really remember, but my fingers are sore and my head is, too."
