Music Day - Secret To Love

Possibly one of the funnest and catchiest songs on my iPod (even counting Crumbächer's incredible contribution to the 'fun and catchy' section of my collection).

This thing starts out with bombastic drums, a head-bobbing rhythm, and a high-spirited keyboard melody before taking it down exactly enough notches for the verse to contrast with the big soaring celebratory (and above all singable) chorus. This is exactly the song you blast in your car with the windows down on a sweltering August day in the city. It's dated in all the right ways (the slightly raspy vocal, the existence of both a keyboard and band harmonies, the big drum production), and timeless in its energy and fun.

Title: Secret To Love

Artist: Halo

Album: Heaven Calling

Year: 1991

Official remastered CD available here. YouTube here.

Listen 2-3 times daily until you feel happier.

Music Day - Ashes Of Eden

I know the new ABBA songs dropped today, but I'm currently traveling due to my grandfather's funeral and haven't got time to properly do those songs justice this week. I already had this post 95% written so this is today's offering. Enjoy!

I'd heard of Breaking Benjamin before. My best friend has gone on about them for years. I always planned to look them up, but never remembered to do so.

Then, on a late night trip down a lonely highway last year, this song came up on my husband's phone. We had been making light conversation, but this song happened to pierce a lull and pique my interest. I listened in silence, hanging onto every word. The man was singing everything I had been feeling since 2015 when my entire world fell apart. I had never heard my feelings put into words so succinctly (even Terry Scott Taylor had to make a whole career out of encapsulating my feelings). The comfort that came from the intimate familiarity quite literally made me cry. My bewildered husband tried to comfort me, but the tears were tears of joy -- the sort of joy that comes when after YEARS of wasted effort and futile attempts, somebody finally understands you and your pain. They were tears of joy in the camaraderie. The man in the song was finally putting into words the questions and the longing and the prayer that my deeply wounded soul had never been able to articulate...

Will the faithful be rewarded

When we come to the end?

Will I miss the final warning

From the life that I have lived?

Is there anybody calling?

I can see the soul within

And I am not worthy

I am not worthy of this

Are You with me after all?

Why can't I hear You?

Are You with me through it all?

Then why can't I feel You?

Stay with me; don't let me go

Because there's nothing left at all

Stay with me; don't let me go

Until the ashes of Eden fall...

The song is MUCH slower than my usual pace, and I would have completely missed it in literally any other context. That song was meant for that exact moment in time, otherwise I would never have heard it.

At the same time, the release date of this album is not lost on me. 2015. The year that everything fell apart. The year that everyone and everything I ever loved died, at least in a spiritual sense. The year that broke my heart into so many pieces that I will never be able to repair it. The year that caused my permanent mental and emotional limp. This album was right there, existing in the world at the same time as my shattered shell, and I missed it when I needed it the most. In a way, that makes me angry. I wonder what kind of person I would have been had I heard that album the year it was first released. Yes, it provided a healing balm for me in 2020, but how much more effective would it have been in 2015, when the wound was still raw and pouring blood?

There's no way to know. If we're being perfectly honest, I probably would have snubbed it at the time, as I generally do with 99% of new music. Heck, I hated even some of my favourite albums that year. I had been a massive ABBA fangirl for well over five years and I found myself literally skipping past my favourite ABBA songs in 2015 because it was too much to process music over the immense amount of pain. I could only manage to listen to three albums (Crumbächer's Escape From The Fallen Planet, Terry Scott Taylor's A Briefing For The Ascent, and Russ Taff's self-titled 1987 album), and it stayed that way for nearly a year.

I just have to accept the little bit of healing this song can offer me now. I suppose it's better than nothing. And it is a beautiful arrangement. Sparse strings and light drums add to the big loneliness of the song and keep the lyrics -- the true star -- front and centre.

Song: Ashes Of Eden

Artist: Breaking Benjamin

Album: The Dark Before The Dawn

Year: 2015

iTunes here; YouTube here.

Music Day - Celebrate This Heartbeat

Now that college isn't eating my life and soul and the very blood from my veins, I can attempt to re-instate this once-proud feature of the blog. Since I'm not paying for college and by some miracle managed to find a job, I can actually kind of afford music again, so now I've also got actual material for these posts again.

I actually had a different post all written and lined up for today, but then this afternoon I finally decided to check out Randy Stonehill's gold mine I mean Bandcamp store. I've been eyeing up this album since they first opened the store (last month). It's so rare you can't even find a 'fair' version on Discogs. All I had was a TERRIBLE crackly noisy vinyl rip I bootlegged from somewhere years ago. I'm no audio snob (as you can probably tell from the average production values of my genre of choice), but even I cringed at the audio quality of that bootleg. I knew I wanted to replace that copy with a clean copy the first chance I got. It's a beautifully orchestrated and written album, and it deserved better than to be drowned out by surface noise.

This song was always my favourite, even marred as it was by the cracks and pops. I can't think of any other artist in this genre that does a legitimate overture to their album, and if they all could be as beautifully done as this one, I would say that more people should do this on their albums.

I can't think of any other time I have reacted this viscerally to an instrumental piece of music. Lyrics, sure, but never raw music. I cried. I had never heard this song other than on that atrocious bootleg, and to hear the orchestra (and it is an orchestra) in all its purity gave me chills.

Woodwinds feature heavily in this overture, and I think that's very apropos. Randy is a lighthearted soul (and voice), but can fit right in with the likes of Terry Scott Taylor or Mark Heard, lyrically, just as the flute is playful and light but still is a crucial part of any 'serious' orchestra. The lighter woodwinds also embody the idea that life is fleeting -- an idea that's also found in the title song and recurs throughout the album. Celebrate This Heartbeat -- as the next one is not promised to us.

Maybe it's more poignant just today. My grandfather's heart beat its last very early this morning. This brings up conflicting emotions, as he was not a good man by almost any standard. I think that in itself is sadder than anything else about his death -- any chance he may have had to redeem himself is well and truly gone now. He was a bitter man, deeply shaped and wounded by Nazi ideologies that he never did truly shake in all his ninety-two years -- even after spending more than seventy of those years on the other side of the world, both physically and culturally. When I think of celebrating this heartbeat, he is probably one of the last people I would think of. That itself is what saddens me most, I think. He had a long life and could have done so much... but he left behind a legacy of brokenness and pain because he was never healed from his own brokenness and pain eighty years ago. And now it's too late.

Don't be like this (I preach this to myself as well). It's so quietly, deeply tragic. I suggest using this song to kick off your own celebration of your own heartbeat.

Title: Overture - Celebrate This Heartbeat

Artist: Randy Stonehill

Album: Celebrate This Heartbeat

Year: 1984

Listen and purchase on Bandcamp here.

(Keep in mind today is Bandcamp Friday, which is when the Bandcamp site waives their own fees so ALL the money from purchases made on Fridays goes directly to the artist.)

(Also, if you're in the market for more Randy Stonehill, there are other older gems on his Bandcamp store that have been out of print since before The Simpsons was on the air -- plus you can check out his brand-new album The Lost Art Of Listening, which should be arriving in my mailbox next week.)

Why I Make Art, Part II

Written 2 July 2021, 12.26am.

This past month, I took Andrew Nemr's online course, 'The Encounter,' and while some of it went over my head (as I suspected it might; this was a course marketed to professional dancers and I'm at best an intermediate-level tap dancer), the last two lessons opened up a window into my own soul that I never knew existed.

He talked about establishing trust with the audience -- how one must start with the common knowledge that the audience has (in terms of music, rhythm, body language... anything) and said that from here, you lead them across the bridge to the meaning that you want to convey. He went on to explain that you know you've succeeded if the comments you get afterwards are less along the lines of 'wow, I could never do that,' 'how many years have you been dancing?' 'I used to dance when I was younger,' and more along the lines of 'what were you thinking about while you were dancing that? it was so intense.' He gave several examples of the former and I related to every single one of them -- so intimately that I heard them in the voices of the people closest to me as he spoke them. Those are the exact phrases that annoy me so, so much and make me angry that they're clearly just trying to make conversation and weren't impressed at all with me or my work. They're just stock phrases, and if there is one thing on this planet that I hate (besides Hillsong music), it's stock sympathy/caring phrases. It would be almost better if they would just come out and say they hated my performance.

And in a flash, I understood what I had really been after.

It wasn't love -- as I thought it had been in Part I -- or at least not exclusively. It was understanding.

That's what I've been chasing after all these years. All I wanted was to be understood. Not just brushed aside or given a flippant 'yeah, I hear ya' -- understood.

That's what I've been missing this whole time.

That's why I always feel so unfulfilled whenever I leave the theatre after a show with the stock phrases of my friends and family ringing in my ears. This is why I've been suicidal for most of my life. This is why, when Brittney and my cousin died, I repeated the story and rehashed how I was feeling over and over and over, probably literally millions of times, like a stuck record, for YEARS until I was mentally abused into silence and a deeper self-hatred for 'not getting over it' immediately. This is why I wasted my entire life bending over backwards, allowing myself to be manipulated by directors and churches in hopes that if I could just be subservient enough then they would love me and I would finally have what I wanted... except I wouldn't have.

I had love, at least in an imperfect and patchy way. I look back on my life and I can see moments where my parents and maybe even a couple of friends really did care about me. But I cannot think of even one single moment where I felt understood. Not by my parents. Not by my friends. Not by my husband. Not. Anybody.

This would have been a crushing blow -- maybe nobody will ever understand me -- except that Nemr had already paved the way by saying that you start with the common knowledge that everybody has before you lead them across the bridge to what you actually want to say. It's the exact opposite of what I usually do -- I usually just jump right into the deep end because I honestly prefer other people to do that as well. I hate small talk and pre-amble (big words for somebody who's spent a full eleven years posting rambly drivel on this very blog). But Nemr not only showed me what was wrong, he gave me a solution to try. It may be very much against my entire personality, but clearly the personality I have wasn't working anyway. I can handle being something I'm not if it's only temporary. If I have to fake something for ten minutes onstage before becoming my true self in order to make people understand, that's something I'm willing to try. At least there's hope of being understood. That's something that I've never had before.

(TW: suicide.)

I always had this daydream that if I killed myself, those who truly loved me would sift through every one of my documents and papers -- a huge undertaking to say the least -- and finally, finally know and understand me and what I needed. That daydream has actually fueled some suicidal episodes -- being understood only after death was better than never being understood at all. Hastening my death would hasten understanding. I was literally willing to kill for it.

I kept saying I don't feel love; I must be broken because I literally can't feel it. Maybe that's at least partly true. Maybe it's not true at all. Maybe I just mistook love for understanding and it was almost a fatal misunderstanding. Maybe there is a way out and maybe I can learn it. I don't really know where to start, but at least there is an option.

Thank you, Andrew Nemr. Maybe this isn't what you intended for your course to do, but I'm glad this is what it did.

Sources: Nemr, Andrew. 'Lesson 16 - Communicating Meaning.' In The Encounter (online video course). 2021. https://andrewnemr.teachable.com/p/the-encounter

Why I Make Art

Originally written 9 June 2021, 11.40am.

(Part I)

This is a sobering post to write, but I think in the back of my mind, I've known this for a while.

I'm realising with greater clarity that the reason I dance is for attention.

   

There. I said it.

And I've been doing it for attention for so long that I don't know anything else. I told myself I want to make people feel, but I could never clarify what exactly I wanted them to feel.

This also explains why, whenever my future in dance is threatened, I react SO strongly. I have literally attempted suicide after rough practice days, just because all I could see was my 'dream,' the thing I had built my life upon, slipping away from me.

As a child in a German Baptist community, dance was certainly a way to get attention... literally nobody else was doing it. And I guess that early attention stuck with me. I've been chasing that high ever since. As someone whose love language is words of affirmation, dance was the only way I found that could get me the words of affirmation I so desperately craved. I certainly wasn't getting it at home. The only time I got complimented was if someone saw me dance and happened to make an offhand comment in earshot -- which was not often.

These breadcrumbs fueled my love-starved spirit, and I threw myself deeper and deeper into dance, trying to top myself every single day in spectacular ways. Posting dance videos to Instagram only kicked open Pandora's box for good -- now whenever my family couldn't be bothered to toss a crumb of kindness my way, I always had the hope of a stranger on the internet happening by and filling in the gap. Of course, this isn't consistent either, but like a rat in a lab who knows that pushing a button might dispense food, I began going at it as if with a jackhammer. Even the tiniest hope of a compliment or recognition was enough to keep the wheel turning.

I've spent over twenty years of my life wholeheartedly devoting myself to this pursuit, this way of life...all just to get attention. Maybe even a spot of love. I built my entire identity around dance because that was the only thing people even noticed about me. I have sunk hundreds of thousands of my parents' dollars and my own into training and development for a passion that I don't know if I actually loved for itself in the first place. I spent over twenty years as the bad guy in a 'friends with benefits' relationship with the thing I swore I was created for and called to.

And now I don't know what to do. This is my entire identity. Every single decision I have ever made in my life has served dance in some way or another. A life built around dance is quite literally all I have ever known. And it's entirely on me. My parents weren't the kind to push us kids into their own secret dreams whether we liked them or not. I chose dance out of my own free will and allowed it to become my entire life. All because I wanted to be seen. Noticed. Loved. And even after nearly thirty years of life, I have found no other way to get the love and/or attention that I crave.

COVID Losses Of The Future

The worst thing about this pandemic is knowing that when it's all over and when we can go visit each other again, there will be less people who will want to spend time with me.

I've taken a fairly hardline 'pro-mask' stance. I'm quite private on most all of my 'political' leanings, but I have watched too many young people die of lung failure to be quiet about this one. Wear. A. Mask. It's not that hard, and no, it will not kill you.

Of course, this apparently does not sit well with what's left of my extended family. I've had several relatives unfriend me already, and no doubt the rest won't be speaking to me after this. My husband and I were planning to have a reception next year and inviting all those who we had wanted to invite to our wedding before COVID regulations destroyed our guest list. But now, looking at the list, I wonder if any of them will even come. I would still love to invite them, but there's also the knowledge that they would rather put their conspiracy-theory-worship above their love for their immunocompromised friends and family (read: me). And there's also the knowledge that I've clashed with some of them on social media and the way people are these days, they probably won't want anything to do with me.

I've lost over half of my extended family already to death, divorce, and petty disputes. I'm so used to loss by now that you'd think I wouldn't feel anything, but I would very much be lying if I said it didn't still hurt to be excommunicated by the people who once said they would do anything for me.

COVID will fade, but I know from experience that the pain of loss never does.

An Ode To OG Girlpop

Yesterday my husband and I got talking about the first-ever cassettes we bought, and it unlocked a memory that I hadn't even thought to recall in probably ten years.

I was seven years old and it was ZOEgirl's self-titled album. I was such a music nerd even then that I remember my sister purchasing Raze's Power on the same day (she always had cooler taste than me at that age -- I definitely listen to Raze far more than ZOEgirl today). Young as I was, I already owned several cassettes -- mixtapes that my dad and I had collaborated on in front of his big stereo system that occupied a more central place in our living room than the television. To own my own real, honest-to-goodness cassette album was a special thing indeed. I remember sitting in the parking lot of the hardware store (my parents had wisely taken us to buy music first and then gone to spend 45 minutes at the hardware store after we had a distraction in our hands -- and yes, music was a sufficient distraction for both my sister and me), and reading the liner notes -- all the lyrics, the credits, everything. I read the copyright year on the spine, the way my dad had showed me on his own albums at home. I was only just beginning to understand the concept of years (as in, we are currently living in the year 2021), but I knew the year 2000 meant it was a new album (I did not yet know that this would be one of maybe a dozen albums that I would actually buy new over the course of my life -- the overwhelming majority of the music I've bought since then has had copyright years beginning with the number '19').

Naturally, I played that ZOEgirl album a lot. When I ventured into that dusty section of my iTunes this morning following my husband's question, I found that not one word escaped my memory despite the 'last played' date being May 2017 (exactly four years and one day earlier, in fact).

Was ZOEgirl great? No. If you don't have memories attached to them, they're probably pretty forgettable. But to us Christian girls of the early 2000s, they expressed the faith we were being raised in in a way we could relate to (and, most importantly for some of us, dance to). Even listening to them today was a breath of fresh air in the current collective spritual climate of doubt, anger, and cynicism. The songs, especially on this debut album, describe life as a Christian with a simplicity and joy that I have not seen or felt in Christiandom in a very long time. Every song points to Christ alone -- not works, not 'goodness,' not pedigree, not strength. Every. Song. And every song speaks of God with joy, adoration, and complete trust. There were mainstream CCM bands at the time with far worse theology than this flash-in-the-pan girl-pop band aimed at teenyboppers (back when 'teenybopper' was a serious designation for a specific subculture). Perhaps I should have been less surprised to see singer/songwriter Alisa Childers on the front lines of contemporary Biblically-sound theology twenty years after the release of this album.

Is the music dated? Definitely. In terms of production and instrumentation, this fits in squarely with acts like Aqua or Jump5. Is this a bad thing? Not to me. It takes me right back to the simplicity and joy of my childhood before my mom's depression got bad -- back in the very early days when she was able to be properly present with us. The light, sparkling music also accentuates the purity of the message ZOEgirl was presenting. It's also still very definitely danceable (which, along with 'do the lyrics assume I actually own a brain?' is my personal litmus test).

ZOEgirl is a product of their time, for certain, but it's hard to find an act so pure, even in that era. For that, they deserve a second look. They're still not even in my top 100 favourite artists of all time (although they might have a chance at number 100 if Terry Scott Taylor didn't have so many bands loading up the top of the list). But they will remain firmly entrenched in my memory and in my iPod for what they were able to give a mature-for-her-age girly-girl music-nerd seven-year-old.

Lost The Plot

Today would have been M's 25th birthday.

I've talked at length about how my writing and choreographic output just simply dried up after her death and I'm not sure either will ever come back.

I lost myself after she and Brittney died. I was such a highly creative person then, and without them to spur me on, I have zero motivation for anything. I made a half-hearted 'goals for 2021' list back in late January, and I have accomplished exactly none of them. In past years I would post huge goals on this very blog, and while I never accomplished all of them, I always managed a good chunk of them. But today I looked at that 2021 list and I realised I have no real reason to do any of that. I know the process of choreographing all those dances used to bring me joy, but now it feels pointless. Why create it? No-one will see it, no-one will like it, no-one will even care that it exists. Without M and Brittney to make the process exciting and crazy, even the journey isn't fun anymore. Maybe that was why I loved it back then -- the journey used to be fun and exciting, and it's not fun to do creative things alone and unsupported.

I feel adrift, numb, and so, so weary. I feel like there's nothing left for me to do, although the very fact that I'm still alive despite three (serious) attempts to not be should be proof alone that there is in fact something left for me to do. But right now I can't think what the world might need that somebody else couldn't do much better.

M was a breath of fresh air, bright, exuberant, energetic, passionate. Even on her bad days her drive and determination were inspiring, and she created so many opportunities for herself and for others. She was singlehandedly responsible for a lot of performances of my early choreography. I always wished I could be as driven and determined and successful as she was. And now I'm just too worn out from life to even try anymore. I want to follow her to where she is, where expectations don't strangle people, where souls don't silently die while their shells shuffle on. Why bother with anything here?

But if I'm meant to still do something, them what? And why? I don't know if I even have the energy to find the answer.

Happy birthday, M. I miss you so much.

Enough

I'm just so tired of not being enough for anyone.
I'm not quick enough, smart enough, flexible enough, spending enough, saving enough, talking enough, thinking enough, smiling enough, cheerful enough, nice enough, considerate enough, tall enough, friendly enough, and the general consensus is I'm sure as heck not trying hard enough to be any of these things.

Listen to me. I developed an eating disorder at age 25 because I was spending every last single second of my existence in the dance studio trying desperately to prove once and for all, that I actually WAS trying hard enough. I had no time to eat because every SECOND that I didn't spend in the studio practicing was proof that I was nothing but a third-string deadbeat delusional failure and a total waste of skin. I was being told every. single. day that I wasn't trying hard enough and how DARE I call myself a performer. I literally almost killed myself trying to prove that I actually WAS trying.

And honestly, I'm still there. In every single aspect of my life, not just dance.

I'm still bleeding myself dry, hoping against hope that maybe the next gallon will be enough. Or the next. Or the next. And I am stubborn enough to literally bleed myself dry if that will convince someone, anyone that I'M ACTUALLY F*CKING TRYING.

I'm so tired. I'm so, so tired.

100

Today I officially finished my 100th piece of choreography.

I actually thought this would happen much sooner. The early years of choreography were so prolific -- right up until college, I would literally choreograph for hours at a time, every single day. I think after the first year, I was up to 60-some completed projects. This obviously slowed down when college got into the mix, but I never truly stopped.

Until M died.

After that, I hit a wall, both in writing and in dance. M was my creative partner for both, and without her, life felt completely void of -- well, life. She died in September 2018, and in the next two years I choreographed maybe five pieces. All of them were like pulling teeth. She had been my only real source of choreographic inspiration and encouragement, and without that, there was no reason to push myself to keep creating these hack jobs, these robotic simulations of feeling that really meant nothing. All my work felt boring and repetitive.

I keep track of my completed choreography by putting the songs in an iTunes playlist and by entering the titles into a Pages document, along with the dates of completion. When I added that song to the playlist today and saw the little words '100 songs' at the bottom of the iTunes window, I felt immediately driven to message M and tell her about my milestone, like I did with most all my choreography/writing-related accomplishments.

But I couldn't. And there was no-one else still alive who would get how truly, fantastically exciting this was. M would have freaked out -- enthusiastic run-on sentences in all caps, loudly proclaiming my achievement, even though her output far outpaced mine. I never realised how much her zany excitement motivated me until it wasn't there anymore.

Don't get me wrong, I am proud of myself. It took nine years to get here, and for this chronic procrastinator to actually finish 100 pieces is a huge milestone. (Plus there's the saying that you have to do a thing a hundred times to be good at it... so I guess I've leveled up now?) I started seriously choreographing in earnest in an attempt to prove my mother wrong when she said I didn't want it enough. A hundred pieces -- some 1,100 hand-notated pages -- later, I'd like to think I've made my point. But my excitement is tempered by not being able to share it with the one person in my life who really cared about me choreographing stuff.

Here's to the next 100 pieces. Hopefully there's less loss to dance about.