Been rockin’ a 101.4 fever, not sure for how long. When you are adhd, you have a little gremlin who is always looking for chances to steal minutes or hours of your time. When you are in the sickness twilight zone, he’ll steal full days, that cheeky bastard. The fact that my last post was 3 days ago and not yesterday? Terrifying. So if any of this sounds delirious, don’t , wa- don’t read. Don’t read, this. That said –
I said I wasn’t doing videos, and I don’t intend to. x_x My only excuse is – this one is just 16 mins or so, and it was easier to have my procreate whiteboard.
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As a little kid, I was allowed to listen to my boombox while going to bed. This is probably where I cultivated the terrible habit of needing no less than an hour to get to sleep. My favorite thing to do was to choreograph dances to my CDs, in particular these greatest hits Disney CDs. I’d set up concerts for my parents when I memorized the dances- after 2 or 3 full songs they would very politely say, “let’s save some of this wonderful dancing for later!”
I’m afraid mom was once again a negative influence, this time when it came to me pursuing dancing/performing. To be fair though, in the early 2000s, the whole world was telling me none but the lithest female bodies deserved to be in the spotlight. The internalized misogyny was working overtime as well — “I can’t waste time on this girly crap, I gotta be a scientist, or an engineer, something in STEM, so I can prove girls can be good at that stuff too!” That…didn’t exactly happen, but the fatphobia was enough to keep me from the performing side of the arts. That, and one other childhood experience.
One of my dad’s favorite folk musicians is John Stewart – he passed away some years ago, but I had the absolute blessing of meeting him on a number of occasions. Being the stupidly well behaved kid I was, I got special dispensation to be at the bar shows he did when I was… maybe 7 or 8. He was taken by me, and how utterly unphased I was by his fame (as one of his bandmates said to my dad). Dad and I got to go upstairs to the green room and meet the band, and he showed me all the beautiful sketches and drawings he did while on the road. (There’s a risk of this sounding like the start of something untoward, but he was nothing but utterly respectful, and I was ofc with my dad at every moment.)
A few years later Stewart started what he called the “fantasy camp”, where boomer white guys could live out their folk singing dream, and perform with his old band – The Kingston Trio. Because I was impressionable and curious, I decided I was going to learn the banjo, and participate! I did decent at the banjo playing, though I was never hyperfixated enough to soar with it. The performance itself was the real challenge.
I remember getting ready in the bathroom at home, the day before, and a midnight indigo chill pressed down on my whole world. My stomach felt like an icy cavern. I didn’t even recognize it as performance anxiety at first, because it was not anxiety – it was pure terror. I went through with the show, but I have 0 memory of it. If you told me the tape of me playing was doctored and I actually chickened out, I’d probably believe you. That was the moment I decided, some people are meant for the stage, and some people aren’t. “There’s only two types of people in the world, the ones who entertain, and the ones who serve.” As Britney so eloquently put it.
That memory was brought back to me as I’ve been indulging in the same cathartic choreographing and dancing-on-my-own. The difference today is I have the self awareness not to inundate anyone with the results. (Though YouTube has been tempting me by recommending a guy intuitively dancing to the Terraria soundtrack….don’t let me do it. It’s a trap!)
I’ve been so retraumatized with the old mother wounds resurfacing, I think my mind makes little castle-on-a-cloud fantasies for me. As I was dancing to Kelly Clarkson’s “Catch My Breath”, I had a moment where I was completely teleported to another dimension – I was on stage, pointing at a little girl in the crowd as she reached back, sharing a moment of blistering euphoria and validation.
I stopped and did a cartoonish head shake. What the fuck? I mean thank you, I guess, for that vicarious experience I’ll never have in my lifetime. Why tease me with that, though? Hello? I guess I get why performers do drugs, cus what an insane high that was.
I suppose because that felt so real, my brain has decided to continue to develop this fantasy, lumping it in with that vision of danny as a kids’ entertainer. It’s weird to say my mind is holding me hostage in this, because it’s a beautiful lie. It just also reminds me of my deepest inadequacies. It’s not shooting for the moon, it’s shooting for Narnia. Still, as with the Fox Szn comic, I allow it with the assumption that its true purpose will emerge at some point. “Stop putting energy into the fixation! You can’t trust your intuition yet!” If creative, spiritual bliss like this is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
>>robyns_ramblings 