The Patron Saint of Not Giving a Shit[/caption]I. Conversations With My Husbands
I guess I just must be a daredevil / I don't feel anything until I smash it up / I'm caught on the cold, caught on the hot / Not so with the warmer lot / And all I want is a confidant / To help me laugh it off / And don't let me ruin me / I may need a chaperone
I write amazing blog posts in my head, but this last month has been brutal enough to have my hands go still over the keyboard. I keep writing in my head though. Writing and forgetting. Writing and forgetting. Jow and I go around and around about How to Prepare for The Future like the least sexy most neurotic version of Ouroboros possible. Not how I planned to spend our first month of marriage but when has that ever mattered? In the background: a new schedule, older children, exhaustion, less free time, worries about [family member x], fretting about [social circle member z], a complete inability to feel like I'm getting anywhere with anything, tiny progresses amounting to nothing.
I spill this all out to Gordon in a fit of anxiety and exhaustion. What do I do? I don't know what to do. I . . .I don't know what to do anymore. I can't take this.
Gordon listens impassively as he does and then says, Just keep doing everything.
He pauses a polite amount of time for me to unsuccessfully try to strangle him through my monitor using my heretoforth undeveloped Jedi mind powers and then says, I'm sorry, darling. It's all you can do.
II. Falling
I certainly haven't been shopping for any new shoes/-And-/ I certainly haven't been spreading myself around/ I still only travel by foot and by foot, it's a slow climb,/But I'm good at being uncomfortable, so/I can't stop changing all the time/ If there was a better way to go then it would find me/ I can't help it, the road just rolls out behind me/ Be kind to me, or treat me mean/ I'll make the most of it, I'm an extraordinary machine
In the car, I impulsively ask Ms. K if she ever misses performing. It had been another long meeting about the start up we're trying to start up because I clearly don't have enough to do already and she kindly offered Hurry Chutney which I can never say no to. My brain is mostly fried and I've asked her to explain The Ring Cycle in as few words as possible ("Don't fuck with a real estate agreement once it's been made, nothing good comes of it."). Ms. K is the most bombastic red head you'll ever meet, she makes me look like Melanie from Gone With the Wind to her Scarlett. She towers over you apologetically in her Manolos in a little black dress on a Sunday afternoon while she delivers her opinions in no uncertain terms on everything from our business model to why Louboutins are a waste of money to why Honey Boo Boo represents what good can come from our country in unexpected places. An ex-opera singer, she had been described as the Amy Winehouse of the opera world because girl knew how to smoke and drink though she's now (mostly) reformed. Ms. K was uncharacteristically silent for a moment and then she said in a shy tone I had never heard from her, "Sometimes." Not the travel to states that don't matter as she would say, or the exhaustion of working a straight job and flying everywhere on the weekends to perform, but the singing, putting your heart, your guts, your soul wholly into something for two hours for an appreciative audience and losing yourself in the beauty of tragedy. . .sometimes. It was draining and exhausting, she preferred to playing Musetta to Mimi in La Boheme ("The only one who lives! A real diva."), she was sometimes unpopular with baritones because she believed in stabbing people realistically ("Always with a downward motion.") which the baritones liked until inevitably the knife didn't retract and they were bruised and angry from her murderous attempts until she could charm them back.
Dying every night was difficult because you knew that was what you were racing for through feats of operatic auras, heavy dresses and large sets. From the moment you hit the stage, you knew it was just a matter of time before Mario really dies, the cops are after you and you're flinging yourself off a tower. "So you're singing, 'O Mario! O Mario'," she sings softly for me for the first time and continues, "and you're racing up the stairs to the tower and there are always a lot of fucking stairs. You're singing and climbing, singing and climbing and you finish the song and fling yourself off the tower and pray someone catches you. Well, there's a trampoline thing there too but still. I never fell forward. Who jumps off a tower and falls forward? No one. But most opera singers fall forward because it's significantly safer, you can't snap your neck falling forward into the trampoline. But it doesn't look right, and it's not as pretty. So every night I fell backwards and I prayed I wouldn't snap my neck and that the guy with the trampoline was there. No one falls forward."
So be it, I'm your crowbar / If that's what I am so far / Until you get out of this mess And I will pretend / That I don't know of your sins / Until you are ready to confess But all the time, all the time / I'll know, I'll know / And you can use my skin / To bury secrets in /And I will settle you down. . .
III. An Open Letter of Malice to my Muse
But my big secret /Gonna hover over your life/ Gonna keep you reaching / When I'm gone like yesterday / When I'm high like heaven / When I'm strong like music /'cause I'm slow like honey, and /Heavy with mood. . .
IV. The Patron Saint of Not Giving a Shit Gives a Concert
Wouldn't it be weird if we were living the life we wanted to be living? How weird would that be . . .
We started out sipping the water/ And now we try to swallow the wave/ And we try not to let those bastards get us down/ We don't worry anymore cause we know when the guff comes we get brave/ After all, look around/ It's happening, it's happening, it's happening now
V. Nothing Scares Me Anymore