Just Act Your Age

 16:61

My mother said once that she didn't feel like she was sixty. She looked in the mirror and thought, "Who's that old lady?"  "Oh, it's me. I still think I'm 16."  She didn't see herself.  Many, if not all of us, don't know what we look like or sound like.  The mirror is an opposite reflection of how people see you and unless you look in the mirror consistently or have a profession that requires you to know what you look like or what your body is doing, you don't really know.  I don't.  I'll be 61 my next birthday and I have no clue what that means.  When I was twenty, sixty was old.  When I was forty, sixty was not all that old.  The sixteen year old me would look at the sixty your old me and think, "She's like, a grandma!'  Better that sixteen year old doesn't know that I'm her.  Or she's me.  "Oh my God, what happened?  What stomped across your life to make you look like that?"  (Think Freaky Friday, "Oh, I'm like the Crypt Keeper")

Ten things when I was 16//61

1. I have great hair//I still have great hair [Grey hair acts weird, though]
2. My mom wants to control what I do and she's too old to know what I'm feeling like//My mom was only 49 when I was 16.  I wish I could talk to her, hug her and say "I love you".
3. Nobody lets me do anything//I don't want to do anything, I'm too tired, too afraid or don't do dumb-ass stuff any more.
4. My boyfriend is sexy and I want to be with him all the time//I wish I wanted to make love with my husband more. Do I think I'm too old and fat to deserve it?
5. I'll be glad when I'm an adult and can do what I want//I have too much to do and I never have time to do what I want.
6. Why doesn't my mom chill out about stuff?//Why doesn't my daughter chill out about stuff?
7. I'm depressed//I'm depressed.
8. I want to travel around singing and playing my songs for a living.  I want to be a famous writer//

Sub List Interlude: Why I'm Not a Rock Star

* I don't have a steel string guitar.

*I don't know how to play with a pick.

*I don't like being in big crowds of people.

*I have enough of an ego to either become a self-inflated dick with too many compliments or be crushed with criticism of my music and quit.

*I get motion sick.  So touring 18 months to 2 years traveling on buses and airplanes would be a puke fest.  And doing that head banging, flip your hair move?  I have the hair, but throwing up on stage is probably not a good performance piece.

 //I'm glad I'm not famous.  I like to stay home, in the quiet and only talk to people I want to.

                9. I wonder what it would be like to marry my boyfriend//I'm sure glad I married my husband                     and not all the boyfriends I had before him.   

             10. When will I be old enough?//How much time to I have left?

      Enough with the lists.  If you ignore the mirror, like I do, you can be any age you want.  Or any age you feel like.  Which can be a bad thing if you are  30 and you feel 60.  Or you feel like 20 and take your 60 year old body mountain climbing.  Not the Jack Lalanne 60.    The "I've ignored my weight hoping it would go away" and "sat on my ass" 60.  

I was riding in the car with my mom, sister and grandma, my mom's mom when from the backseat grandma started talking about when she was a nurse in 1916 or so.  When the male patients got frisky [i.e. got an erection] she'd just throw a wet, cold washcloth over the offending member.  My mom, who was driving, was visibly shocked.  "Mom!" she said, "You never said anything like that!".  My grandmother answered, "I'm 80 years old and I can say anything I want."  You go, girl!  I can understand that.  After being less than decorous with my language as a teenager, I went to the stage of having kids [be a good example] and working [over the decades from watch your mouth to don't let your mouth say anything that might possibly offend someone] I am to the "fuck it" stage of my decorum continuum.

Not that I disagree with the idea of treating people respectfully at work.  Harassment is bullying no matter how you dress it up.  If we need laws to keep bosses and coworkers from acting like assholes, which we do, the rest of us need to support that.  Over 100 years ago, the girls [and I do mean teenage girls] and women working in shops such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, would end up with bladder infections and UTIs rather than ask permission of the male supervisor to go to the bathroom.  The same supervisors that required "favors" for consideration.  The same shop that locked the doors to the stairs to prevent those women and girls from stealing materials and caused the deaths of over 100 people.  From the Wiki page: "Most of the victims were recent Italian and Jewish immigrant women and girls aged 14 to 23; of the victims whose ages are known, the oldest victim was 43-year-old Providenza Panno, and the youngest were 14-year-olds Kate Leone and Rosaria "Sara" Maltese."  [Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on March 25, 1911].  

Women and men have fought over the years to get to this stage at work that it is a fire-able offense to demand sexual favors for promotion, be allowed to constantly harass coworkers about their race, age, sex, sexual orientation and make them uncomfortable with jokes and comments that they find offensive.  If you find this blog offensive, you can just stop reading.  If I find someone on the radio offensive, I can use my finger, middle or otherwise, to switch channels.  But if I have to choose between putting up with a predator or bully at work or quit and starve, that is different.  That is not freedom of speech or expression.  That said, I have been extremely fortunate to have just worked with ladies and gentlemen over the years.  At least they kept it to themselves at work, if they weren't.

So I turned 60 and this year I've been questioning everything.  Do I want to be here?  Do I want to do this.  Is this me?  Yes, I did say 60, not 16.  I forgot something in my 16:61 list.  At 16, I could easily sleep 10 hours a night.  This year I suddenly started waking up at 3:15 a.m. and not being able to get back to sleep.  Or I don't give up until midnight and I wake up before 6 wondering what I'm missing.  Hasn't improved my punctuality at work to be up 3 hours before I have to be there, but what the hell.  I find something I want to do and suddenly I have 5 minutes to dress, pack a lunch and eat breakfast in the car.  I never make it in 5 minutes.  Do you know you're suppose to brush your teeth for 2 minutes?  That's almost half the time right there!   

So, I will be 61 my next birthday whether I'm o.k. with it or not.  Do I have a clue yet what that means?  No, I fucking don't.  Ask me when I turn 80.  Have I got some stories for you!

EM               

 

Putting Your Pants on One Leg at a Time - in which celebrities also have to find a bathroom

 I was once on an airplane trip that was notable for problems with the first class bathroom which was not working.  First class passengers were obliged to seek relief in other sections including an actor which I recognized [I think] going past.  I'm never quite sure if I've seen a celebrity.  It takes me a minute to go through the "He looks familiar, he looks like, no couldn't be, yes I'm pretty sure" stages.  By that time it's too late.  Not that I would have said anything anyway.  I can be a fan geek as much as the next person, but I'm rather shy meeting new people and my mouth sort of gets disconnected from my brain and I end up saying stupid shit.  And quite honestly, I don't think the celebrity needs yet another person telling him or her who they are.  They know.  They especially don't need to know this when they are trying to find a bathroom.  Have a heart, people.

Besides, actors, musicians and the many celebrity variations don't necessarily look like they do on screen.  They are on TV or on a movie screen working.  It's like seeing a picture of a moose.  The moose looks a lot different in person.  Who knew they were that big?  Some people, who are not well-know, wish they were.  But what they are defining as "well-know" is "rich, beautiful and well-loved".  Well, eventually, for some, that comes with doing their job.  I very much doubt that's the point.  They would have to have a burning desire to do what they love to keep going through the demands of their chosen profession.  Let's take actors and musicians.  What I've learned from watching interviews and behind the scenes.

Actors.  I started watching Supernatural [at season 10 because, remember, I'm usually late to the party on these things] and the accompanying behind the scenes, recordings of interviews and conventions and posts on the Internet.  So they wake up really early and go to work.  They are made up, dressed up and spend the day sitting and waiting for the crew to setup and re-setup between periods when they have to act convincingly like someone else while remembering scads of dialog, move and stand in the right places, put their emotions, or their characters emotions on display.  And they have to repeat this until the scene is right.  And they have long work days.  Really long.  So, they work 10-12 hours a day or more, days that have a lot of "hurry up and wait", have to memorize lots of words and act in scenes not only convincingly but with intensity and excellence.  Their profession also makes demands on their personal lives.  They can be away from family and friends for long periods.  They have to keep physically fit and watch what they eat.  If I have a bad day I can work at my computer under the radar and have a low-key day.  What can they say?  Oh, I'm feeling a little crappy today so I think I'll just do all my scenes sitting down in a bathrobe?  Would they choose this profession if they didn't feel compelled to do it?  If they are successful enough, they may be paid enough to be able to buy fun stuff.  Do they have time to enjoy it?  Hopefully sometimes, but if they don't really love what they do, it's just not worth it.  

Musicians.  Being a Seether fan, I have likewise followed the music and gone past into interviews and other recordings.   So, they are definitely doing what they love.  But, long hours in the studio recording.  On a tour bus away from family for 18 months to two years.  Playing for 90 minutes, getting back on the bus and traveling to the next city and doing it again.  And again.  And again.  There is an interview with Shaun Morgan from the band Seether in which he describes coming home after that and his family has, of course, established routines without him being there and  he says it's like being an outsider in your own family.  This sounds a hell of a lot like what people in the military say when they come home from deployment.  At least the band isn't being shot at.  Hopefully.  

O.K. I'm painting a rather grim picture of being an actor or musician.  I also see that they love what they do.  They enjoy sharing that love with other actors and musicians.  They have made lifetime friends.  Hopefully they enjoy meeting and talking to people about what they do, because that looks like it's part of the job expectation as well.  They can have life experiences that are unprecedented. They can meet celebrities and have a "fan geek" moment of their own.  Sometimes a mutual "fan geek moment".  

On the other hand, the intrusion into their personal lives from some fans and members of the press that forget celebrities are human beings can be phenomenal.  Interruptions to family outings, dinners, private meetings without any consideration.  Questions of a personal nature and questions that are just plain inappropriate.  Embarrasses the rest of us.  There is definitely another disadvantage of being a celebrity today than being one in the mid-twentieth century.  

Imagine you are Betty Davis.  There is a record of your work in film and some photographs and articles from magazines and newspapers.  A good percentage is controlled by the studio, by what she chooses to say with some hearsay thrown in which may or may not be accurate.  If you want to find these sources now, you will have to do some digging.

Imagine you are Brad Pitt.  There is a record of your work in film and numerous photographs and articles from news sources.  And almost every person can whip out a cell phone and take a picture or record what you are saying whether you want them to or not.  If you are dressed up and looking great. If you just got over the flu and you are going out to get Saltines and Sprite for your kids who now have the flu and you have been up with them all night.  O.K., if  you are Brad Pitt, it's likely you have employees that can go out for the Sprite because you are higher on the celebrity scale.  

The Celebrity Scale.  (according to me from what I see from the outside)

1. You are just starting out as a musician.  You are out of the garage but go from venue to venue playing to small crowds of dedicated fans.  Your fan base is small, but loyal.  You are happy to talk with them, with anyone from the media, to grow your career.  The percentage of people of that small fan base who will say something negative because it's genuinely their opinion, because they are jealous, or trying to get their own 15 minutes of fame on your back by saying anything whether it's true or not or is just mentally ill is a lot lower.
2. You are fairly or very well known.  You have a record label, staff support, someone booking your venues.  You have a nice tour bus with a bathroom, somewhere to sleep and someone to drive you while you sleep.  You have a larger fan base with a larger percentage of those who love you or love to hate you or just go to your concerts because you are the new thing and don't really care about the music and spend the time talking and taking selfies, taking up tickets for those of use who really love you.  All right, I'll stop.  Where was I?  Oh, larger fan base for good or ill.  There may be some stalking behavior from the press, who are trying to do their jobs, most with some finesse, others, not so much.  Even loyal fans can be intrusive.  They want to know how tall you are, who you are going with or married to, what you've had for breakfast.  This obsession to know everything is part of the fan package.  Most of us remember our manners and try to remember it's NOFB [Not Our Fucking Business].  Some of us propose marriage in front of your spouse and children because we, of course, are the only perfect person in the world for you that can make you happy.
3. Really famous.  Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Angelina Jolie famous.  Beatles famous.  You have to send someone out for the Sprite and Saltines because you don't have a choice.  You can't go out for a walk without being recognized.  The fan base is very big and somehow you have become less of a human being and more of an icon.  Even fans who really love you forget that you need to eat, get tired and grumpy and have to go to the bathroom.  You have parents, brothers and sisters, children.  You may, perhaps, have a distant cousin who will bad mouth you to get into the news.  You may have a significant other who is a real person with their own strengths, interests and job and not just an interchangeable appendage.  You may have children that you have to protect because the scary side of being famous is that some "fans" will try to get to you through them.  This is true for levels 1 and 2, but the percentages of these "fans" are lower.

Let's think about the phrase "fans who really love you" for a moment.  I am a fan.  I have access to all the You Tube recordings, posts, what have you from when you were 20 years old and just becoming know to now.  I can dip in at any point of your life.  I know what you look or looked like, sound like, move like.  I think I know you like a member of your own family.  I meet you and somehow you think I'm a stranger that you've never met. One of thousands.  What a surprise for both of us.

The really strange part is that the you singing at 24 and the you singing at 42 are both equally current to  me.  A You Tube space-time continuum that means you exist all places and all times at once.  So fans ask questions like, you cut your hair off, why did you do that?  You think, well, that was twenty years ago and I really don't remember.  And then they see you now and are surprised you aren't that 24 year old.  Where did the gray hairs come from.  Where indeed!   

It reminds me of questions at a Star Trek or Supernatural conventions.  "In episode 3, season 7 you said..." or "In the second season someone did something and it didn't match what they said in the first season."  You know when you learn a new job and your brain has to offload something cause you only have so much storage?  Television actors have to memorize a script a week and then a new one the next week.  And the actors don't write the scripts.  At least a songwriter has a long term investment in a song he or she plays thousands of times.  But if you can't remember what you had for dinner last week, the likelihood of them remembering what they did at a concert 10 years ago is very small.

So, my advice for fans, which I am going to do my best to follow: treat your celebrity [and their family] like human beings, ask before you interrupt private moments, or just wait for a better time, don't make shit up about them and if they have to go to the bathroom, leave them alone.  Unless they are out of toilet paper and then share!  [Don't ask them to autograph the toilet paper roll.  That's just tacky!]

EM

My World, As I Know It

 I can only remember from my point of view.  If you have been reading my current obsession, know that I have a long life of obsessions.  Like I said, I am a researcher by inclination and my inclination is to find out as much as I can, including related information, no matter how far afield.  My family tends to be on the slightly Autistic/Asperger side with a little ADHD thrown in and intense concentration on things of interest runs through our lives.  You could say fixated, but I'm not going to.  We love and are loved, but we can't read what you're feeling very well and don't always realize we've annoyed someone by our actions or what we say. I've put myself in shit so often in the past with what I say, people now comment on how quiet I am because I don't say much unless you know me.  And still I can annoy family, friends and coworkers with my remarks. This lack of ability to read people can be good and bad.  In school I had a classmate comment on my hairstyle and I answered, "Oh, my mom wore it this way in college.  I do it when I don't have time to wash my hair."  It was later, much later, that I thought, "Gee, maybe she was trying to insult me?"  I still really don't know.  So I'm initially gullible and will believe what people tell me at face value.  Not so good.  But then, it's also really hard to hurt my feelings by sarcastic, insulting remarks because, well, I just don't get that you are trying to insult me.  Yeah, and to go with that, I don't know I've said something that hurts or insults you.  I never try to do this, but am very surprised when someone takes it that way.  "I know you didn't mean to be insubordinate."  Yeah, no idea.  "People are strange, when you're a stranger."  There's more than one way to be a stranger.

My "interests" in chronological order,  As best I can remember.  Dark Shadows, the tv show.  Hurried home from school to watch it and pretended to be sick so I could stay home to watch the very last episode.  I have priorities.  The aforementioned Masterpiece Theatre.  Cut out TV listings from the TV guide and put them in a scrapbook.  Collected Mad Magazines, records, books.  The first time I moved out of my parent's house and had to move all that shit sort of cured me of the collecting part.  Do you remember the tragedy of being in love with your first music star?  For my sister it was one of the Beach Boys.  I was younger so I loved singing to the music but certainly didn't think these old guys were that special.  I went with my mom to visit her mom and my two cousins were there.  They seemed really grown up men!  I figured out their true ages when I grew up and realized they were in their late teens.  

So my first real musical crush was Pete Townsend of the Who.  At that point, having permanently borrowed my dad's classical guitar, I began writing songs.  One of the first sounded suspiciously like the theme from a tv show, at least the music, but I got better.  Carried the guitar to High School and played the intro to Stairway to Heaven in the girls' bathroom for a small audience that rapidly dispersed when another girl came in to pee.  Although I loved the idea of being in a rock band, my music turned out to be way more folksy-angsty-protesty because I also listened to Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, Carly Simon, Melanie, John Denver and Steeleye Span [a folk music group, not the rock group Steely Dan].  But visions of The Who and the Rolling Stones danced in my head.  I did learn to play Wild Horses and I Got the Blues, but my string plucking didn't lend itself to Brown Sugar.  Or the faster part to Behind Blue Eyes.

In my wander down the garden path, after I watched an episode of Ernie Ball string theory with Shaun Morgan and learning that the reason I couldn't play rock was that I needed steel strings on my guitar [yeah, right] I Googled the question, "Can I put steel strings on my classical guitar?" the answer being, "No, don't ever do that, the tension will snap the neck!" I found out that there are gauges of strings.  Who knew? Not me, evidently.  And I enjoyed the gross pictures of dead skin cells and dirt in between the wires on the strings.  [Answering the question of why Dale Stewart boiled his bass strings as well.]

After The Who went their separate ways I followed Pete Townsend's music for a while and inadvertently lucked out to discover the song Annie by Ronnie Lane.  I love that song.  After that I listened to Sting.  After the Police, pretty much, because, again, I got to the party way late.  There's a storyteller in song.  Musical and Television crushes of course lead to a barrage of  magazine article research.  It's even worse now, with links everywhere to articles, videos, videos of reactions to other videos.   Hey, are there any reaction videos to Seether songs?  Why, yes, yes there are.  Why am I not surprised.  You Tube is very interesting.  My You Tube currently comes up with:

1. Cover Your Bath in Dish Soap Tonight.

2. Kerrang! Podcast: Seether [from 12 years ago]

3. Bus driver, passenger help reunite toddler with family.

4.The best "My House, Not my cat" moments.

5. "When Doves Cry"(Prince) Acoustic Version by Adam Gontier of Saint Astonia & Shaun Morgan of Seether.

6. Mix - Seether - My Disaster.

Now, my husband's You Tube is like a totally different website.  His includes the Hydraulic Press Channel featuring a couple from Finland who crush stuff with a 150-ton hydraulic press, guys shooting with different home made projectiles sent to them from around the world, a mechanic rescuing people stuck in off-road locations, reaction videos of old songs [which I like as long as they don't stop the song too often] and Irish people eating potentially disgusting foods.  He did find The Dead South which are a band from Saskatchewan who are neither dead or from the South and The Hu which is a heavy metal band from Mongolia. Both are fabulous in their own right.  Oh, and I think he got the "Cover Your Bath in Dish Soap Tonight" clip too.

This crush and research obsession was fine with musicians and actors that were fairly abstract.  This does not work well with people in your real life, who you really know.  It can really hurt.  I was a rather focused, determined younger person that did what she thought best.  I didn't push back all that much, just went my own way and when there was something I didn't want to do or thought was a stupid thing to do, I just quietly didn't do it.  Some trouble with depression.  All the women in my family hit puberty and it's a rollercoaster of fun.  It tells you something that when I was  pregnant was when I was the most stable emotionally and not depressed.  I wasn't one to think of suicide, much.  I'm more the one to run away or disappear inside myself.  Somehow, over the years, I started behaving like people expected.  I stuffed down anger, desire, empathy. Left behind writing, playing music, going anywhere that wasn't familiar.  Afraid to do anything, start anything.  Waiting for the next request for my time, my help, my work.  Waiting to get old enough to die a natural death like waiting at the bus stop occupying myself with busywork until the bus comes.  No more obsessions.  You have to commit to feel to do that.

My guitar, that  I played daily and carried with me, gathered dust.  I asked for a new set of strings and it took me a year to put them on.  I look at the guitar, sitting on it's stand, just waiting for me to pick it up and play and I feel afraid when I look at it.  I lost my dad in 2007.  My mom in 2019.  I got through 2020, a year filled with things that were unfamiliar.  People died.  People always die.  One of the reasons I kept going to church was to try to find a way to deal with the certainty that every time someone I loved left for school or work they were going to die.  I hugged them and said I love you every time because I knew they wouldn't be coming back.  I played out scenarios in my mind of what life would be without this person in it or that person.  Knowing we are here a short time and, to God, our place here is temporary between With Him and With Him again.  This helped for a long time.  I stayed not angry, not unhappy, not real.  I avoided being too attached.  I missed going to visit my Dad his last weekend because I was too busy, too tired, I'd see him next weekend instead.  I missed going to visit my Mom her last weekend.  I could have talked with her and hugged her but instead ended up praying for her to take her last breath two days later because it was so hard for her to breath, it was painful for her. She couldn't talk.  She couldn't wake up. 

This new year a person who I worked with for decades and had retired due to illness finally died.  He was about the kindest and gentlest person I have known.  I understood, listening to the songs Seether played that I was angry underneath, I was sad underneath, I felt underneath.  I accepted my parents deaths and never really grieved for them.  And I understood that I had stopped being me for a long time. This new death of my friend who was just nine years older than me.  What had I been doing?  How long do I have left now that I've used up so much time waiting for time to pass.  Do I even know what I want to do anymore?  Now it's hard to stop crying.  Cry me a river, it's my own damn fault.

Memory is an interesting thing. When my sister and I share memories, we hear amazing things.  Some memories conflict with each other.  With some she has some added aspect or scene that I never knew about.  Some are the same story but experienced by two different people in two different ways.  Hence the start of this essay, I can only remember from my point of view.  And the problem is my view became so narrow, I could hardly remember the memories.