hazel

We all want to talk to dead people, and we all try to do it in our own special and screwed up ways. If I ever had a daughter, I think I'd like to name her Hazel after my great grandmother, who I never met. There's no real reason for me to do something like this. My Dad tells me that she had a low, raspy voice and made lots of pies, and his eyes tear up when he tells me how much he wishes I could have met her. He tells me about his mother, Mildred, who died of stomach cancer when she was just fourty something. She worked at a women's clothing shop. My great grandfather once saved a bus full of people from getting hit by a train. These are the people I come from on my Dad's side, and this is all I know. I want these details to help explain who I am, my motivations, my body, and my fears. They probably never will, but that wish is all that keeps these people.... well... less dead. And why do I want them to be less dead? Because death is terrible, I think.

Touch a quilt. Write a Reqiem. Host a seance. You can talk to the dead, even if they don't listen.

I loved, I think

A few weeks ago, I tracked down a friend from my childhood. I haven't completely stopped thinking about him since I was eight, which is when my family moved away from West Virginia. I was really young, maybe six, when I felt that I had fallen in love with him. He went to the same babysitter (check out my post about JEAN) It started off like this: all the kids would be sitting around watching cartoons. I would whisper in his ear "let's do the secret thing" and we would disappear into the other room. Then he would kiss me on my cheek and I would kiss him back. But of course, real love isn't just physical-- I remember feeling like I had a special secret that nobody in the world could possibly understand. When we weren't together, he was always in the back of my mind. When my parents told me we were moving to Tennessee, I immediately thought about him and realized that I might never see him again.

People think children are not capable of forming complex or romantic relationships, but they're wrong. I think I was in love, and I think I had a pretty complex understanding of what he meant to me and what would be gone when I left town. I told Zoe about him a few weeks ago and she insisted that I track him down again. I didn't know how to spell his name (a very unusual name) and I didn't know his last name or where he currently lived, but after a few google searches and some creative respellings, I found him on facebook. I immediately recognized his face. The story is kind of anticlimactic from there, but I was relieved to know that he remembered me. When I mentioned the fact that he was pretty much my childhood boyfriend, he didn't reply. He probably doesn't remember it the way I do (he probably doesn't remember it at all), but this has been real in my head for such a long time that even if my recollection is hazy, I can remember exactly how it felt to be loved by someone who wasn't required by law to love me. I can remember having my cheek kissed in that cramped little room while the other kids our age were fixated on Tom and Jerry.

There's a chance he will read this, and another chance that it will make him so uncomfortable that he will never talk to me again. But it doesn't matter, because this memory, even if filled with half-truths and hyperboles, is real to me and the person he is now is not a character in my story. When we remember a story, we also create it. I'm happy with what I've come up with.

Here I was, daydreaming about him....

to move like a child

The Tennessee Cello Workshop is happening all weekend. Hundreds of cellists have gathered at the Alumni Memorial Building to participate in masterclasses, lectures, ensembles, and recitals. I and most of the UT cello students are required to run errands, show people where to go, arrange chairs, clean....

I helped out with a suzuki class today. Many of the kids were just 5 or 6 years old, and it was fascinating to watch them with their tiny hands holding tiny instruments. They are too young to feel self conscious about making music, so they squirm in their seats and jerk the bow quickly and look around the room as they play. I wish I could recapture the ability to move my body without thinking about how attractive I am to men in the room or how professional I am behaving or how tall I am or how I just want to get out of these tight jeans and wear something more comfortable. I want to move like a child again.... unaware of what I am or am not capable of doing with my body.

My arm is not getting better. I played last night with all my heart. Now I'm suffering.

I ran into a violinist friend today at the workshop. "I had tendonitis and I stopped playing for a year. It was hard, but it seemed to work," she told me. Someone piped in "Go to Europe for a year!" Suddenly, I realized that I could actually drop out of school for a year and do something completely out of the ordinary. So now this fantasy is growing inside of me. I'll run away from Knoxville, find some exotic place to live, learn a foreign language, eat strange food..... The problem is, I would be forever haunted by the sounds of cello reminding me of what I left behind. My mom told me that when she was pregnant with me and playing in the West Virginia Symphony, I would kick hard and fast in the middle of the most intense music. When I was very young, I remember looking up at my mother while she played cello. I stared at her as she played, and she just stared into space as she wrestled with this huge instrument to create sounds that filled up the entire house, and probably the entire neighborhood. I don't think those sounds will ever escape me, and I don't think my desire to create those sounds will ever escape me.

look at them

These are my fashion icons. and friends.

Yasameen Hoffman

Zoe Ruth Erwin

Aunt Karen and Uncle Andy

 

Grandad

Sarah Jordan Stout

Florian Garnier

prairie dogs

Grandad bought a couple huskies a long time ago. Those huskies fell in love and pretty soon, those two dogs turned into an entire dog sled team. They weren't so happy about being stuck in the middle of Kansas and at night, they dreamed of living somewhere colder and whiter. A few years ago, my cousins and I went fishing around in the garage and found the dog sled my grandfather had made about twenty years earlier. This was no ordinary dog sled. He had replaced the runners  with wheels. Although the huskies were all gone, we decided to try running with the sled, hopping on, and rolling down the hill (the only damn hill anywhere near Salina, Kansas). As we rolled down the steep, gravel driveway overlooking the wheat fields, I tried to imagine Grandad getting pulled along the prairie by a pack of huskies. He was probably wearing his red jumpsuit and looking out at what a lot of people would call absolutely nothing, but he would call endless sky and exactly the place he wanted to be forever. He sang "Home on the Range" nearly every morning and told us again and again, "You know, nobody would even know that song if it weren't for my father. Did I tell you that he fought to make it the state song?" Of course, he had told us. A million times. I didn't really see what the big deal was, but he looked so proud. He would always go back to singing, then we'd roll our eyes but I was secretly jealous. I wanted to be that kind of matchmaker, matching up a state with a song or a dog with a sled or a story with a meaning.

Jean

Jean was terrible. My parents took us there every time they had a gig or wanted to go on a date, which seemed to be all the time. Max and I would fight over the middle seat and ride in the Volvo up a windy hill though the woods. The houses seemed to get smaller and uglier the further up we went. Her house seemed so so small and so so ugly, and as a six year old, I wondered why she wouldn't want to live in a big, brick house on the river just like my family. She would answer the door and yell, "Hi CeeCee and Max!" Jean always wore cutoff sweatpants and a sweatshirt with the arms cut off, which exposed her wrinkly bony arms. I couldn't understand why she wouldn't want to wear dresses and nice jeans like my mom. I could never figure out how old she was, but I imagined she wasn't nearly as old as she looked. There were usually a few other kids there. We would wander to the back room and play with them (or get bullied by them) while Jean stayed on her couch smoking one cigarette after another with her eyes glued to the television, mostly watching shows like Jerry Springer and Maury. Eventually, I would wander into the living room either to see what Jean was doing or to tattle on somebody. I would catch a quick glimpse of flying fists on the TV and a enjoy a quick inhalation of secondhand cigarette smoke before she quickly sent me away. At some point she would yell from the couch "SUPPPPPPERRRR." Each of us would carry a little plastic yellow chair into the living room and set them around the coffee table. Jean would bring us paper plates with raw sliced hotdog, little squares of cheese (the kind that comes in plastic), a puddle of catchup, and green beans from the can. We loved it. Max and I would go home and beg our parents, "Make us dinner like Jean does!"
One Christmas, Jean bought me a Barbie that came with a little motorcycle. She got the same thing for Allison, a girl my age who went to Jean's house every day and who somehow scared the crap out of me. Jean got the impression that I wasn't very excited about my Barbie and said, "What's wrong? Why don't you like your Barbie? Allison loves hers. She plays with it all the time." I felt guilty and I wasn't sure why. I couldn't exactly put my finger on it, but I had a feeling she was really sad and lonely all the time. I mean, the woman yelled at babies when they cried. By the time my parents picked us up, we were like little walking ashtrays. Then we went back to our nice riverfront house and gradually the smell of tobacco and american cheese would fade away.
I don't even know if Jean is alive now. I can hardly picture her face but I can vividly picture her bony fingers clutching her remote in one hand and a cigarette in the other with "Achy Breaky Heart" blasting from the record player. I think I want her to stay that way.

more than a pile of atoms

Warm weather comes and I turn into a mess. I become nostalgic and my heart beats a little faster and I start remembering everything and everyone that has ever happened to me. It's been 56 degrees 307 times in my life and I remember each one.

All the characters of my life live in a cozy, little corner in the back of my brain. My third grade teacher, my grandmother, the guy I kissed in middle school, this other guy, that one guy who was a jerk, and my cross country buddy, and this other guy... they're all in there and will never leave. I revisit them every now and then and fantasize about the dialogue that might unfold. Many of these people have spent much more time existing in my imagination than in the flesh, and I have carefully crafted and re-crafted them in a way that makes more sense in a larger narrative. I'm sad when I remember that my concept of a person is not a person but it all makes sense this way and the gaps get filled in beautifully when I do a little mental housekeeping.

I feel and I hurt and I feel and I hurt over and over again. My close friend and I talked about relationships a few days ago. She told me that for now, she just doesn't see a point. She believes that it's impossible to really get inside somebody's head, and it results in pain 100% of the time. I've experienced that pain, but I continually chase after something that I can't even define. The feelings rising up in me make me feel so alive and overwhelmed and happy and terrified at the same time. Maybe I'm simply addicted to the physiological response of being around someone I'm interested in and attracted to. But I can't allow myself to think only in biological terms though because despite being pretty comfortable with the lack of god in my life and the lack of belief that I have some sort of destiny, I need that magic that I feel when I look into someone's eyes and feel like we have a secret that nobody else will ever know and that we will never know ourselves. Maybe one day I'll look back on this sentiment and laugh at how naive I was at 20.

I agree with my friend: we are basically alone. I don't have many beliefs with easy labels, but I do believe that he process of trying to affect somebody and allowing them to affect you matters a whole lot. I am chasing after a person and an idea and a feeling. I don't know exactly when to stop running towards it, maybe when I finally get there, I will feel more than just the wind in my hair.

ARM

I went to physical therapy for the first time today. After asking me questions about my habits and pain, the woman hooked me up to a bunch of little patches that were attached to a machine. I was told to just lay there with the little hot patches on my arm, neck, and back. I felt waves of warmth shoot up and down my arm and neck, and my muscles went back and forth between spasms and relaxation. Kind of an arm orgasm. She left me there for twenty minutes and I began to think about all the work my arm has done for me in twenty years of being alive. I've climbed trees, written stories, made friendship bracelets, hung Christmas lights, learned to play musical instruments, and given hugs. It's been pretty good to me, but after ten years of playing cello it's letting me down. As soon as I was feeling confident and finally getting some compliments as a musician, my body said "fuck you." I said "fuck you" back but it won.

All I've done for the past ten years is try to overcome the physical difficulties of playing my instrument so that I can... inspire crowds of people. That's what you're supposed to do, right? Tonight at the KSO concert, I watched Midori fly around the violin as if she had motors in her fingers and for a second, the sounds coming out of the instrument weren't nearly as beautiful as the muscles bulging from her neck and the way she took deep, intense breaths after difficult passages or the way her feet seemed to be bolted to the floor.  Every cell in her body cooperated. Mastering an instrument is the wrong way to describe it. She has mastered her body and the instrument is just there. As I always do when I see musicians perform, I thought about the hours spent practicing... which requires a pot of coffee, ibuprofen, and maybe ignoring the crying baby for a little while longer. We often work hard to ignore our bodies so that we can concentrate on.... on.... something more magical and meaningful? I've had dreams in which I'm sitting down playing Rachmaninoff painlessly and beautifully. Then I wake up and I decide that the beauty can wait- for now I just want to feel the strings digging into my fingertips and the weight of the instrument on my chest  and I want to make loud, offensive, powerful sounds. Would Midori approve?

Single(ish)

As I was biking down Western this afternoon, I found a way to completely enjoy the feeling of vulnerability within the traffic and the cold wind and the solitude. My alone time is saving me. I read and watch TV and write music and cook and study, and most of what I do just comes and goes without me ever reporting the details to anyone. Maybe that's the most significant part of being single- at the end of the day, nobody really cares that I read three chapters of my musicology text book or that I got lost on the way to feed my friend's cat or that I dropped a glass container of juice at the store and it made a huge embarrassing sound and mess. And as single life rolls on, I'm starting to love keeping my mundane secrets to myself. But then sometimes I try to convince the people that surround me that my boring shit is important. It's not.

I can't even look at your face
without wanting to shove my tongue down your throat
or rip your eyes right out of their sockets.
I can't decide which one, so I'll sit here.
But anyway, how is your day going?
Mine is fine too, but I forgot how you feel
Our fucking vacation photos are slowly replacing
the smell of your armpits and sound of your breath
You look so warm and alive
but how can I be sure when you're five feet away?
I want to call you terrible names
I want to shove you into the wall
I want to taste you and spit you out.
You need to go?
It was nice running into you here.
Let's catch up sometime soon.
Great.