Fear Of Karaoke

I'll watch others get up and belt out a song with abandon, joyously making an ass out of themselves or killing it. Doesn't matter. They march up with intent of purpose in hand and let it rip. I've seen people who still spell "S.E.X." let their freak flag fly to the tune of a Sinatra song. They bond with all of the other karaokers because each stepped up and took it on, all members of a Song Singers That Could Club. I look on with envy but cannot. Bring. Myself. To do it. I will fail. Microphones are my friends but not this time. This time I want to run away from its potential evilness. Something inside says karaoke will eat my soul.

Fear is usually rooted in something that is driven into us via nature or nurture. Snakes, bears, even little bitty spiders can actually harm you.  A needle is something puncturing your protective skin. A dentist may have caused you pain when you were too young to understand the intrinsic reasoning. Too many horror movies at a young age? Those clowns will get you.

It seems from the list of phobias that I just read that given enough time, people can be afraid of just about anything.  Fear of dolls, peanut butter being stuck to the roof of your mouth and FLUTES all have real phobia names. So far I see no phobia word for the fear of karaoke, though. I feel illegitimate.

Stage fright, public speaking, being stared at when you are in danger of being publicly humiliated is a huge issue with many many people who are raised to not draw attention to themselves,the opposite of safety. Which is why, as a comic and a performer who puts herself in often emotionally (and occasionally physically) precarious situations, my fear of doing karaoke makes no sense and pisses me off.

Can I sing? Yes. Have I sung in awkward situations in public? Yes. Have I made an idiot out of myself in front of hundreds of people? Hell yes with a capital H. What is it about this particular situation that is so daunting? What was done to me in the past that dictates this irrational behavior? I suspect church choir but can't prove it.

I will over come it, though. I have friends that share my plight and have made strides to conquer this. It is not something that will effect my life if I don't act on it directly but I will know that it is there. It controls me on a small level and this is not acceptable.

So there's a new sheriff in Fear Town, Karaoke, you clown under my bed. You creepy elf on a shelf. You peanut butter on my rooftop. I won't accept you. You won't scare me no more.

Pictures to prove it to follow. Please play the theme song to "Rocky" in your head when you see them.


Update 7/23/15 : Nope. Not yet. But I'm not dead yet.

Other Roadside Distractions

Back when we were little, my sister Chrissy and I had a special relationship with vending machines in hotels, particularly cheese and cracker combos, the unnatural orange kind that came in a six pack of little sandwiches. Getting money to put in the vending machines was clarification that we were not in our house and chances are wherever we were had an indoor pool. The whole place smelled faintly of chlorine and if we played our cards right, one of us might be walking with a little bar of soap. Our older sisters were off in big girl land and the two of us were angling for tv in bed with a remote control and a can of Coca Cola, baby!

The United States back in the day had a plethera of Howard Johnson's and I think that if eating chicken in a basket and playing logic puzzles in a restaurant slash adjoining motel was a career,sign me up. There will always be the thrill of seeing the first signs of Spanish Moss on the trees and pecan bars being pimped in rest stops insinuating escape from the cold of the north and the nearness of the round accents of my relatives in my heart.

My grandfather's house was in Siesta Key which is part of Sarasota Florida. He was a blind retired southern colonel which I equated with being just like the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy only my grandpa was a quarter Spanish and the other colonel struck me as pretty anglo. My grandfather was like a sleeping lion. I knew he could be fierce and frightening because I had heard the stories but he was always in bed. His house smelled like bay leaves and the Gulf Of Mexico outside of the window. We would walk down to the beach wearing flip flops so the coral wouldn't cut us and spend the day playing with sea urchins and little shrimp, Even the air felt alien compared to  our home in the Catskills by the woods. It was different and different was important.

In New Hampshire in the summertime, we would visit the House Of Colors and marvel at all of the different rocks and minerals they sold. Later we would go look for pretty rocks in the mountains and find some in the wild ourselves. We saw the movie "Cabaret" from the back of our station wagon before we drove back to our little cabin on what could be any number of picturesque lakes, hoping in my heart that another bat would get loose in it and give us a that extra thrill of ducking under furniture while Daddy chased it with a broom, forever tying Liza Minelli and bat infestation in the same memories.

Whether it was by monetary necessity or the joy with which my parents embraced natural America, our vacations were simple. We went to some amusement parks but it takes concentration to remember them unlike the roiling pots of quicksand in Homosasa Springs that impressed me permanently. Every time we drove away from our home it was with a wave of excitement that we were going on a somewhat thrifty conquest, embarking on a low budget adventure.

Years later while I was in high school, I had an audition in New York City  so my mom and dad decided to make a big stink out of it. We stayed at the Plaza Hotel, ate at Trader Vics downstairs and had lunch in the Edwardian room just outside of the lobby. I remember that the bathtub being regal. Someone brought me a grand drink with the alcohol removed in a tub of a drinking vessel with a half peach skewered down the middle of it that was delicious. It was a truly wonderful experience but in the scheme of memory things, it still wasn't better than the orange crackers in the vending machine at Howard Johnsons.

The Muse Club

I never could understand how the Charles Bukowski barfly type of writer ever got anything done. The image of the drunk tortured soul writing brilliance from the booth of a bar made no sense. O Henry at Pete's Tavern in NYC. Dylan Thomas at The White Horse. Have you ever spoken to someone in a bar on a bender? The repetition, the inability to complete full sentences, the irrational emotions driving the whole cart, none conducive to concepts that I would find worth reading. It is hard enough for them to walk out of the bathroom without toilet paper on the shoe , let alone complete a 5000 word short story that somehow made it to the publisher without beer being spilled on it. It's times like that that makes me believe in the power of a muse, a very specific voice in their head helping them to tie the strings together and complete the story.

Writing creatively is a heady, lonely thing sometimes. It is not easy to expose a part of yourself in order to make a creative impact. Sometimes you avoid it in order to not have to finish because it is a long arduous process, especially the types that are long form like a 3-act play or a novel. The critical voice in your head can derail the whole works. Procrastination is a creative thief if you give it enough time to dig its heels in. No matter how brilliant you are if you can't finish your works or even get a decent start to it, you ain't nothing but a person staring at a sheet of paper or a blank screen.

The reference to a muse normally makes me think of either a hot woman that a musician keeps around to write songs about or the hooker of legend whom Van Gogh cut off his ear to give to her. She is a person who is lusted after in a most unrealistic way, on a pedestal that usually is very unsteady. Tragic or romantic or both.

I suspect that for some writers a muse is something more basic. They complete the need for a person to be heard, give a place for ideas to be processed and feedback to be given and, sometimes, to be written about if they fit the bill at the time. Maybe they are a literary agent or a wife or the support buddy from a writers group (sort of  a prose driven AA sponsor if you will). Or a  friend who understands the need to do this thing, at times not even aware of their position. Maybe even a child, forcing the inner voice to produce or else fail as a role model.  There is something about that person that inspires safety and/or makes the writer feel like they will be accountable to them.  Romantic inspiration lasts only so long. Utilitarian muses are stable, even if they may be temporary.

I always wondered if I have been someone's muse. I think I have. I think most of us have been. No one has sung a song just for me that I know of and I've never known me to inspire a line in love poem. I've read a lot of other people's writing, though. Listened to many jokes. I have  heard words fall out of the person, form something beautiful for the first time, witnessing creation that was talking to me first, have had ideas given over to me because I made them feel safe. I'm not sure if I've even given them a need to create but I have inspired trust, made them feel like they could be great when they completed something. And if I am very very lucky because I can say I was the first to this beautiful thing come to life and go on to become a success.

Thank you for being there all these years, my friends who have read for me, helped me form my ideas and kept me going with encouragement. "Muse" is an uncomfortable title but that is what you have been to me along with "friend."

Scar

Just before my right elbow on the forearm, there is a round mark. It is from throwing myself across the stage face first. The specifics of what exactly I was catapulting myself into vary a little depending on the day....golden grahams, a giant exercise ball, one especially memorable container of yogurt. It wasn't in the script. It evolved from a moment of "where can I go with this stoned lunatic" that I was portraying, into taking the skin off of my arm every performance until it stayed with me forever.

I live in a world of envelop pushing. In the Neo/Alt Burlesque part of my universe, it is an imperative part of the stew. Do something new and unique and see how far you can go with it. It is exciting and stimulates the imagination. It also very often takes brass balls to execute and can be scary ride. It is emotionally dangerous because, among other things, you literally expose yourself and maybe put yourself in a situation that you never dreamed you would be. It is about committing to an idea so completely that you are willing to go outside of your comfort zone to make it great.

Sometimes its just a matter of taking a chance and risk having something fail publicly, humiliating yourself by choice, leaving yourself open to the harsh judgment that some other members of humanity feel entitled to inflict on others. Even if it is just a kiss in an uncomfortable place. If those things don't work, the scars go on the inside and the scab gets picked every time you see something that reminds you of that moment until they fade into a flinch and grimace and then later, if you are lucky, just a flashing "oh" resonating in the pit of your stomach. 

Dancers usually try to deter damage so that their bodies will last but, really, have you seen their feet? Circus performers put  themselves constantly into precarious situations, abusing their bodies to be super human.  It is like a badge of honor to see how far an actor can mess with their physicality for a role (or just to get work) gaining and losing unhealthy amounts of weight, injecting botulism into their faces,subjecting themselves to awful elements to make their work look authentic. Artists, if they are worth their ilk, are often a pigheaded lot ignoring upbringing, pain and common sense to bring their innards out for closer examination. 

I am proud of my scars and the residual pain that I live with today. They are not the choice that one would make to keep and I would prefer not to have them. They are, after all, the results of error. But they are also my story of how I was brave that day and did something difficult in my life, how I gave the audience my all and then some. Win some lose some but the story is still out there. Or embedded in your forearm to remind you forever.

Graveyards Are Nice

The other day I was walking through Prospect Hill Cemetery in Brattleboro VT and I noticed how a couple of tombstones where knocked over. They looked like a giant came through and gave them a good smack, tumbling them forward onto their faces with their backsides showing. The lawn was mowed around them but those headstones probably didn't have anyone around to bitch about their condition so they were left to be as is.

On the edge of the property, one or two headstones be had been enveloped by the outlying forestry. They seemed to be single lone people, pushed out from the edge of the acceptable cemetery area. I wondered if the lady who was crushed behind two trees did something to deserve being hidden in the woods for eternity.

Years ago in the midst my youthful indignant eco-friendly phase, I raged against the waste that cemeteries are, all of that land that could be used for something else smack in the middle of city blocks.  My aunt, a historian, pointed out that now we may have a way of leaving a trace of our existence with the internet but,unless someone happened to pass their name in a census records or obituary, without headstones many people without recent direct descendants would have faded into the past. A headstone is an instant record of existence and sometimes all that is left to tell you a person walked the earth.

My dad died and we cremated him per his request but a plaque for him remains in the cemetery where his parents are buried.  It says "Valleau Edward Curtis Korean War Aviator" capturing precisely who he was.  None of his physical remains are there but it is still a place to say hello, a tin can at the end of a string to the hereafter where you hope he can hear you.

A cemetery has never been a creepy place to me.  Unless you were very fortunate, many times it is the last vestiges of personal history.....who you were, where you died and sometimes who you loved, if you were alone, possibly your social standing and, in one case that I know, how much you liked NASCAR.

When I die, I hope that I have left enough of my mark on the world that I don't end up in the hedge with my headstone knocked over, at least for the first couple of hundred years. But just in case I will write something clever on the tombstone to make sure that it is interesting enough to get a little extra attention like, "Don't touch this" or "World's Best Toomler" or "Hated Zucchini." Maybe  get one of those benches so people can sit there and get a little peace in the hectic world that I no longer have to deal with.

 I don't care what you do with my body but it would be lovely to have  nice place that maybe they will remember me for a second like I do for other people now. I pray I am not buried in the hedge but if I am, make it a nice hedge of something that maybe the bees enjoy. Make it nice for the people because it is really for them. Because really, really? I will be dead.