I think I’m getting closer to understanding what I really need and might want in my life. Doing all this music stuff lately is like sleepwalking through life. Everything is fuzzy and faint and soon forgotten. Life inside a cloud. It’s hard to spend so much time and energy on a subject I find I no longer really care that much about. I don’t really feel compelled to sing anymore. I sing now because I have to in chorus and because part of me thinks I can still sing well enough that people might actually want to her it. But the drive to thrive is gone. I just don’t care like I used to. Makes everything connected to it feel like I’m living a lie. I’d like to be doing something I feel a connection to. And, while this is odd for me to say and/or admit to myself, I’m just not as connected to music as I used to be. At least not in the way I was before. I don’t want to hear a piece of music and think, “Oh that’s a fifth” or “Listen to those crazy dissonances.” I want to just listen. I want to think “That was moving” or “that was beautiful” or “that is the most disjointed piece I’ve heard in a long while.” That’s it… simple. I don’t need or want to dissect it. Someone went through a lot of trouble to put it together just so that others could listen to it and have a holistic experience. I don’t enjoy being force to listen like a surgeon.
I’d like to sit and stare at a blue body of water for an afternoon and wait for the voice of God to lead me towards my next vocation or avocation. Because singing/music just isn’t it anymore. Except I am pretty sure God decided to stop talking to me roughly around the time I moved out of my parents’ house when I was 19. I could feel him leaving me. I thought I heard a voice say, “You’re on your own now, kiddo.” And it wasn’t my parents. In fact, my mom didn’t say much and my sweet dad who’d never said a mean thing to me ever said, “Let her go. She’s been nothing but trouble.”
I used to love to write. As a matter of fact, you could say that I still love to write. I used to write every chance I got. And, as a child, when I wasn’t considering music as a lifestyle, I considered writing. Do you know who practically beat that idea right out of my head? My psychotic mother. I used to keep a journal. I used to write poetry almost nonstop too. My mother hated that I would steal off to my room to write. I think she felt I was being antisocial and therefore not keeping her company (but that’s another issue entirely). Anyway, one day she read my diary and discovered that I was headed towards being a slut. I mean, I wasn’t really. I was doing what many healthy young girls do. I was experimenting. A kiss with a boy, maybe a little grope with another… nothing that other girls weren’t doing. Except that I probably was a little more risqué and was keeping a list of all the boys I liked and/or had made out with. This made my mom flip out. After that, every time she saw me scribbling away I guess she associated my scribbling with what she’d read and she’d start yelling at me. But it wasn’t coherent. Now that I’m older I realize these are the rants of a person who had some serious problems. She was lonely and depressed and possibly certifiably nuts, but how was I supposed to know that at age 12? Her rants almost always hinged on the fact that she felt ignored and whatever I was doing, whether I was writing, or practicing my singing or anything else, I wasn’t talking to her or playing a board game with her. Or else, I wasn’t doing something useful like the dishes or cleaning the bathroom or dusting furniture. There were two things I was supposed to do to keep her happy. Be a “good” girl, which seemed to mean I was to go nowhere, have no friends and always help keep the house clean. The other thing was to keep her company because dad seemed to always be out doing something or other and it had somehow become my responsibility to babysit her. Of course, all of this is clear now that I’m older. At the time it was just a huge and insurmountable burden. I realize now that the times when I was out with my friends and suddenly became super depressed for apparently no reason, it was probably the great amount of stress I was feeling at having to deal with mom at home.
Anyway, so she basically made me feel that writing was a bad thing. I started to unconsciously write less. Music and singing took place of writing. Until she attempted to kill that too. When I was 18 and had gotten into Mannes College of Music and Manhattan School of Music, I was thrilled. I chose to go to Mannes and all she could do when I’d come home and tried to practice was to sit there and grit her teeth till I stopped and then she’d interrupt with, “are you going to do the dishes?” That’s why I left home. I just couldn’t take her anymore. I was trying desperately to find myself and find my talents and work with them and she just wanted me to stop whatever I was doing and help her with chores. WTF?
So, now, many years later, I find myself still getting depressed and crazed for almost no reason at all. I find I don’t know what I want anymore and I think maybe I’m trying to kill myself slowly. Lately my heart feels like it’s breaking inside my chest. Literally. I’ve had a couple of crying jags where I thought I could feel what it feels like to have your heart begin to tear itself apart inside your chest. It’s not like a break at all. It’s like a slow, excruciating pulling apart. Wrenching. I walk around some days feeling like if only I could throw up my heart I could feel okay finally. I know that sounds bizarre and disgusting, but I’m trying to describe something that isn’t pleasant or simple to describe.
So, yeah… I guess you could say I’m walking around pretty broken. But I’m sticking out this semester. I’m sticking to my guns and finishing this degree. Cuz even if I don’t care about music anymore and don’t know where I’m headed with my life, I do know one thing. Even decent secretarial jobs require that you have a fucking B.A. They almost don’t care what the major is so long as you can prove you made it through college without blowing up the building, going on a killing spree or flunking out. That’s really what they need that piece of paper for. It’s just evidence that you can work day in and day out under pressure, deadlines and bureaucratic nonsense without freaking flipping out. Your B.A. doesn’t really certify that you are ready to be a great composer or an accomplished writer or a brilliant archeologist. Your B.A. is a sign that you can handle loads of bullshit. It’s a certificate that shows you’re ready to handle huge amounts of very specific nonsense except now you’re asking to be paid for the privilege. And that is my real reason for putting myself through college at this late date in my life. Because I suspect that piece of paper will come in handy if I’m no longer committed to being a singer.
