Heroes

I am not sure why it is innate in each one of us to idolize, or at our most mature state, to admire someone. Perhaps it is misplaced worship of our Creator: we were created to worship Him, and since we are fallen and have a difficult time worshipping Someone unseen, we turn our attention to those visible to us who portray to us the character of God we crave and admire.

When I was a child, I idolized Wonder Woman (actually, I still do, just in a more tongue-and-cheek fashion). I watched Lynda Carter every day. I pretended I was her in my room, spinning around till I was dizzy, hoping if I did it long enough that cool "pow" would happen and Id miraculously change into someone with superpowers and a cool lasso. My idol worship was immature and fanciful, yet there was something that attracted me to Wonder Woman her strength, her beauty, the fact that she always kicked the bad guys butts and had great comeback lines while doing so. She had it all, and I wanted that sort of confidence.

In Jr. High, Wonder Woman got relegated to the attic, and my idols were the girls I couldn't be: the girls who got to wear makeup in fifth grade, who had all the boyfriends, who were popular. I wanted to be them. They had it all confidence, poise, top position on the food chain, and everyone liked them. I wanted to be liked. Instead, I was the geek who got pinned down and fed baby food at parties. It was as if everyone around me got the joke but me.

When my dad died my thirteenth year, I didn't care about those girls anymore. I went inward, turned to God, found my confidence, and began to sing about it. And my idolization changed then, because I had learned to worship the only One who deserved to be worshiped. But I still had a few who I admired, mainly musicians who were doing what I felt I was called to do, and I modeled myself after them. They were the benchmark for me they represented the goal.

In college, after the typical disillusionment and honing and shaping and refining that typically happens when you are coming of age one thousand miles from home, I was flailing about wondering what the heck had happened to my dreams. The music I had always made wasn't doing it for me anymore; I knew there had to be something else. I was going through a lot of self-discovery, actually coming out of the roughest part of it all, and a friend of mine called one day to tell me about his recent jaunt on tour with Don Williams:

"Sarah, wow, you have to hear this amazing CD that I heard while I was on the road. It's an artist named Mary Black, and the CD is called 'Babes in the Wood,' and wow. It's incredible. The sound guy played it every night as the pre-show music. You have to come over and hear it!!!"

So one day while I was at my friends house, I gave Mary Black a listen. My world was instantly turned upside down. It was one of those CDs that comes at just the right time in your life, like you've been prepared for it your entire life, and it hits you right where you are. I was blown away. I "got" it. I was spellbound. It touched me to the core her voice, her delivery, the songs -- it was everything I'd ever wanted to be as a singer and a songwriter. It all came together in that moment, and the next day I went out and bought a guitar and started to write. I was re-inspired.

I had the opportunity to see Mary Black live a year or so later, and it was amazing. I felt like I had been to church. It was the most beautiful, stirring show I'd ever experienced. Yes! my spirit cried. I want to be her! I must do that. I have to. It's what I was made for, and now I know it!

So I began to fumble towards my dream, and in the process, got married, and began to share the gift with my husband. What a privilege. And our little hobby that began as baby steps, banging out songs on the back deck of our house in the middle of nowhere, grew into a CD, and then soon we started planning for a second CD.

We happened onto a producer who was the brother of the studio owner. He had the credentials, and when we talked on the phone, he mentioned Mary Black and a few other artists I loved. "This guy obviously gets it," I told David. "He actually knows who Mary Black is. He must be the right guy for the job!"

So we went ahead with our plans to record, and picked our songs for the album. We decided to record one of Mary's songs from that first CD that had changed my life as a nod to her for essentially mentoring me. We recorded the vocals for the song late one night after the rest of the band had gone home, and when I was finished with my take, I came into the control room to have a listen.

When the song finished, the producer sighed and said, "Wow, that song just blows me away. That whole Mary Black CD is one of my all-time favorites. In fact, 10 years ago, when I was running sound on the Don Williams tour, I used to play that CD as pre-show music."

I literally almost fell out of my chair. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. My head began to spin.

I think I actually pointed at him and yelled, "YOU!" It was all I could say. I think I frightened him. "You?" I cried. "You were the sound guy that played the Mary Black CD on the Don Williams tour? That was freaking YOU?!"

I explained to him that because he played that CD on that tour, my friend got me hooked on Mary Black, which changed the course of my entire life. We sat in silence for several minutes soaking that in what are the odds that that very sound guy would just happen to end up producing our record? I couldn't have tracked down that sound guy if I tried, and here he was, sitting next to me, producing our record.

I knew in that moment that we were doing exactly what we were meant to be doing, recording the album that we were meant to record. It was such a beautiful moment of being able to see directly into Gods plan, to see that all this time, when I thought I had gotten so off track, He was guiding me.

A friend of mine from Wales recently went to a Mary Black concert in England and handed her our CD. Having met Mary a few times, I know her to be down-to-earth and interested in her fans, and so theres a decent chance that shell actually give it a listen. Besides, her guitar player played on the record, so there's some added interest there. It's a strange and amazingly cool thing to be able to give your hero the person who has been the single greatest influence on you as an artist your art. Its one of those privileges unique to musicians, I think, to be able to give as tangible evidence of someone's influence a piece of music that will now become part of their lives like their art became a part of yours. It's a cosmic giving-back, and it's such an amazing blessing to have the honor of being able to hand them your art and say, "Thank you. You are why I did this." I don't really know how to explain it, but it is one of the most fulfilling experiences in life. I am a huge believer in thanking one's mentors, giving credit where credit is due. Of course, ALL glory goes to the Creator, the author of all creativity, but there is something necessary in also "paying it backwards" to those He uses in our lives to spur us on.

So Mary has our CD, and I have it on good authority that she really likes the cover. She may hate the music, and use the CD as a coaster, and if so, that's okay. At least it's out there, the karmic "thank you" whispered to my hero. Mission accomplished.

Bored

I am merely showing up at the page tonight. I have no subject matter.

I am happy for Anne Lamott, who takes the mystery out of writing, who makes me realize that I am normal. I may be a freak, but I am normal as a writer. Every writer goes through this.

I’d love to grasp onto some beautiful idea and expound poetically, but I’m really tired. Maybe fatigue is good… it makes my inner censor go away because she’s too lazy and sleep-deprived to care.

But I’ve just sat here for the past two minutes in a daze, biting my nails, wasting precious writing time. Maybe I’ll spend the next hour writing about nothing. Or maybe at the very end of my work session (see how I called it “work,” as if I’m some fancy writer who actually does this for a living?) I’ll stumble onto something brilliant and go to bed terribly satisfied and feeling prolific and profound.

Probably not.

It would help if I had a proper desk. I’ve been dreaming about getting my writing office all set up for two weeks now, but somehow it never works out. The desk is at least in the room now. That’s a start.

Then I have to carefully place my most treasured books all around me on the shelves, which makes me feel profound and prolific and well read. Because, after all, profound and prolific writers are well read.

Then I really must get the laundry out of here. Right now it’s a good stopping place, being the room adjacent to the laundry room. Usually I dump it with the intention of folding it, and then the shiny bluish glow of my computer distracts me. My laundry pile is quite substantial today.

Someday I’ll have an organized office. Someday all my laundry will be done. Someday I’ll have all my books out of boxes, sitting prettily on my bookcases. And then I will write. I will be a brilliant and prolific writer and will write the great American novel, and everyone will love me. Someday.

I realized today that I am a visionary… a big-picture person. Not detail-oriented. I get all these big, fine ideas, and then get really excited, and then get bored trying to hammer out the details and give up. This was a revelation to me, blessedly dropped on my head as I was taking trash out to the dumpster at the bookstore. It’s my management style there: figure out what the place should look like, and then delegate everyone else to do it. That works well in a team setting, such as at the bookstore.

When you are a writer and don’t have eight brains to which you can delegate the piddly details of hammering out a book, it makes for a rough time. No wonder I never finish a project! I get sick of hoeing the same row for days at a time, trying to break up the fallow ground so that I can eventually get the dang thing to grow something (hopefully something good), and so I quit and move on to the next project or idea. That’s why I don’t write fiction. I’m trying to quit that mentality; trying even now as I sit here and write about not writing. Maybe someday I’ll recover enough that I will actually sit down and write something with a plot that tracks all the way through a book. Just a thought.

In the meantime, I’m just going to keep at it, sitting on the floor of my office with my keyboard in my lap, piles of clothing around me, thinking about what my books would look like along the walls, and hope that something good happens eventually. I think it’s worth it. At the very least, in the end, I’ll have a killer journal.

Lost

I know, I haven't been around here for awhile.

I have had the most hellacious of weeks the past few weeks. Work has been awful. It was so bad last week that I broke down and got a massage Monday night. Now I need another one. The stress has been terrible; I haven't ever been tempted to walk out of any job, ever. I am about there now... I won't follow through with that action, of course, but I think last week my "fight or flight" was set a little more to "flight."

But of course there is always comic relief in the midst of the crap. Monday morning I walked onto the sales floor from the back office to hear a youngish woman in tattered clothing pulling a black suitcase on wheels. She was literally yelling on her cell phone... and she was yelling every obscenity I've ever heard. She walked all over the store with her cell phone, having some sort of fight with whomever she was speaking, dropping "F-bombs" all over my Christian bookstore. Loudly. After about five minutes of this, an older gentleman from down the shopping center came in and said, "She was in my store doing the same thing. I've already called the police." She continued to yell and scream and finally walked behind a man at the counter who was standing there with a "what in the world is happening right now" look on his face. After the 56th F-word, he got fed up and turned around and took the cell phone out of her hand and hung it up. She went ballistic. I found out later that it was his phone -- she had borrowed it under the pretense that there was some kind of emergency. I told her she needed to leave the store, and she called me a f-ing Christian and how dare I throw her out and if I only knew what she was going through, etc. She walked out the door, and as soon as she got outside, she let out a bloodcurdling scream. I guess she must have gone into the Sprint store next door and used their phones, because an hour later the Sprint guys came in to buy drinks from us and told us about the crazy woman who was talking on all their demo phones and cussing out their customers. They escorted her out of their store, too.

What's amazingly creepy is that yesterday one of the Sprint people came in to buy a drink, and said that after she left the store last week, he checked the call logs on the phones she had been using. There were no calls made during that time. She wasn't talking to anyone.

This is our, like, 5th paranoid schizophrenic to frequent the store. Four days after baggage lady, another woman walked in and asked to talk to our "staff minister." She stayed in the store till close, and then walked out talking to herself.

Did someone leave the doors open at the funny farm?

In other news, I PASSED MY TEACHING EXAM!!!!!! I can be a teacher! Yaaay!

In other bad news, we are supposed to be moving tomorrow, and now we're not. I should be at home packing up my house, and I'm not. I should be using my brand-new dishwasher in my brand-new kitchen tomorrow night, but I'm not. Why, you ask? Because KBHome SUCKS.

We've spent the past, oh, nine months planning to move into our new home. We've gone over to the site every day to check the progress. Everything was great until yesterday, when our landlords went to close on the house. They showed up ready to sign papers and get the keys, and KB told them, "Oh, well, see, here's the thing. The Boerne building inspector won't allow the house to pass inspection because the house was built in the wrong place on the lot." Apparently there is supposed to be five feet between houses in the neighborhood, and some bonehead didn't use a measuring tape when they laid the foundation for our house, so there is only three feet between houses. How stupid do you have to be? Hello! So because of KB's mistake, we can't move in. Maybe not for another month, maybe not ever. If Boerne decides to play hardball, they may actually have to tear down the house and rebuild it in the proper place, two feet over.

Can you believe it? Yeah. Oh well. If it's not God's will for us to be in that house, I have to believe that there's something better for us out there, and I'll surrender to that.

But I really was looking forward to having space, and a dishwasher, and a garage, and closets, and a fenced-in backyard.

That's the news from Lake Woebegone. I'm going to go home and crash.

Deal or no deal

I can't believe it's April. I feel like these days my life is spent running from one appointment to the next, and I am constantly breathless and exhausted. I'm spinning so many plates right now, trying to keep them all going, and while I'm okay with the frenetic pace of it all, I keep thinking that a slowing-down is just around the corner. Problem is, that never seems to be the case.

We are set to move into our new house in a couple of weeks, and I haven't even thought of packing. Well, actually, I have thought about packing, but not enough to actually follow through with the action of doing so. That's pretty much the story of my life: I think about doing a lot of things (writing a letter to Grandma, exercising my increasingly flabby body, not missing friends' birthdays, writing, cleaning, sleeping) but when it comes down to putting action behind thought, I fail miserably. If I just didn't have to sleep; well, that would be fabulous.

I am in the process of working on my teacher certification. I took my big, scary ExCET exam last Saturday, and will get the results May 5. I haven't taken a test in 12 years, and this one was a doozy. The 90 multiple choice questions were hellish; they don't test you on your knowledge of English, grammar, literature, etc.; they want to know about your teaching methods. However, if you have never taught in public school before, you wouldn't know about said teaching methods, because the answers they are looking for are not common sense, real-world answers, but instead these lofty, idealistic, P.C., "let's-include-everyone-so-that-none-feels-out" answers. God was smiling on me that day, though: half of my score is an essay I had to write comparing and contrasting two texts of the state's choice. The brilliant part of it all was that the two texts selected for me that day were "To Kill a Mockingbird," which I've read and studied a thousand times, and "House of Mirth," a Victorian text, which was my specialized area of study in college. No problem. We'll see exactly how brilliant I am on May 5... I very well might have failed the whole dang thing. My brain was literally mush when I walked out of there 5 hours later.

So if I pass the beast, I will be on the road to teaching high school English. That will give me an opportunity to do something I love, invest in some lives, and have summers and holidays free and on the same schedule as my family.

Or, God could pull the rug out from under the whole thing, and that would be okay, too. I'm all about going with what He wants for me, and I'm trying very hard to listen to what He has to say about all of this. I've made so many choices that I've ended up really regretting because I impulsively chose to do what was right in my own eyes rather than listening for His cues, and I really want to be done wasting time with that.

In other news, I think I have truly found musical nirvana. David took me to our new HearMusic store last night, where you can listen to over a million songs at one of the many listening stations, compile all of your favorites, and burn a CD right there in the store. It's fabulous. David made a compilation of his essential metalhead music, and I found many CDs that I wanted, but ended up with Frances Black's "How High the Moon." I haven't been able to find her music around here, and they actually had it in their catalog. I was pleased, to say the least. It's a beautiful CD. What I found ironic, though, was that HearMusic, which boasts a fairly comprehensive catalog, didn't include any of Frances' sister's (Mary) CDs. Go figure.

It was a great experience, though... you can listen to full CDs, not 30-second snippets, and we listened for about 2 hours. I left full of music and inspiration (and excitement over my newly-burned treasure), but was also mad at myself for not discovering some true gems earlier than last night. I listened to Peter Gabriel's latest CD, and was blown away. I delved into Neko Case's latest and was drooling. I browsed through Joseph Arthur's first CD and fell in love all over again. I have a very long list of CDs that I must possess, and it feels good to be hungry for music again.

HearMusic is going to be very, very dangerous for me.

Well, I have probably wasted enough of my day off sitting here on the computer, so I must fly. Time to do more thinking about packing and such.

Fog

It is cold today, and quiet; the boys are taking a nap, having had a late night last night. I, unable to nap, am enjoying the stillness and a cup of Earl Grey, which smells like England.

I wonder why God built me with such an intense desire to travel when I so rarely am able to do so? I have a friend who would be content to stay home, cocooned in her house in Pipe Creek forever. For her, anything north of the Red River is considered "yankee," and anyone who lives in "yankee territory" is a freak of nature. We have joked often about her having a prejudice for non-Texans, and she has no desire to visit anyplace that isn't small-town Texas. Every so often I ask her, "But don't you want to see Europe? Australia? Ecuador? Oklahoma?" "No thanks," she says. It freaks me out. I am sure she is not well emotionally. She probably needs hypnotherapy. She must have some blocked childhood alien abduction issues or something. She would rather just stay home. The tragedy of it all to me is that she has the financial means and the opportunity to see the world many times over, literally. It simply does not interest her. I cannot fathom such an insular existence. To each his own, right?

I have an intense need to go, to see new things, to breathe in new places and people and flavors and sounds. I crave the British Isles. I must see Australia before I die. I need to go to Belize just once. And oh, how I miss Wyoming! At times I ache so badly for the mountains that I feel that my heart will burst. Last year, when we went to Colorado, I cried at first sight of the Sangre de Christo range. It had been ten years since I had seen real mountains. I don't know how I made it so long without them.

All it takes is a tiny thing, like the smell of Earl Grey tea, to set me off. As I sit at my desk on this cold, damp, cloudy day sipping my tea, I am pining away for Oxford. When I was in college, I took a two-week course over Christmas break with some classmates and my favorite Lit professor, Dr. Smith. On one of our free days, Dr. Smith took some of us on a day trip to Oxford. Dr. Smith and three of us broke off from the group to go exploring. It was Sunday and the town was mostly closed, but we walked around Magdalen College, wandering through courtyards and peeking in windows and talking about C.S. Lewis, in awe that we were walking the very grounds he walked, amazed at the history of it all. Through one of the courtyards, we found a hidden gate, rusty and ancient and wise, and behind it a walking path along the perfectly emerald-green river. It was magical and secret, and utterly peaceful. I remember being impressed with how green the grass was for December, and we watched the mallards idle by in the river and Dr. Smith recited Shelley and Wordsworth and we sighed at the beauty of it all. It was marvelous. I was so full of England and poetry and history and life that it was almost too much. We remained there as long as we could, knowing that this was one of those "moments," and we soaked it in.

Around 3:30, we decided to head back to the city centre for tea. It was getting dark and we had an hour or so before we had to catch the train, so we ducked into a little cafe and ordered our cream tea. It was close to closing time, so the four of us were the only people in the place. We doctored up our tea, laughed at Dr. Smith, who always put exactly two drops of half-and-half in her tea, and thoroughly enjoyed our scones with clotted cream and jam. We were still high from our walk, and as we talked about how amazing and wonderful the day had been, the Eagles came on the radio. We sang "Take It Easy" over scones and tea, laughed at the fact that our Victorian Lit professor who regularly wore Laura Ashley knew every word to an Eagles song, and we were having this classic rock "moment" together in Oxford. It was surreal and yet somehow fitting, and the four of us savored it, knowing that our perfect day was quickly coming to an end.

I grew and learned so much about the world those two weeks in England, developing a fondness for other cultures, an appreciation for history, and a passion for knowledge (not to mention a voracious appetite for books). I discovered how to navigate a huge, foreign city without getting lost, and how not to be the "stupid American." Invaluable life lessons came packaged neatly in a two-week course. My eyes were opened a little more to the world and my life changed dramatically after that.

(Incidentally, it was also on that trip that a painting hanging quietly in the National Gallery rocked my world and became inspiration for a huge part of my life as a musician. That story will be told another time.)

This year I don't have big fine travel plans (except for camp in Colorado with 30 teenagers, but that's more like work than play), and it makes me feel trapped and claustrophobic. I haven't decided yet if this need to always explore is a character flaw or a gift; perhaps a little of both. But I am learning that the landlocked, provincial life in which I currently find myself is okay, it is just a season, and it's not forever. I am learning to be content with where God has me (which is no small task for the Teacher or the student), and in the midst of this, learning to appreciate the little things: that my 40-hour-a-week job involves being surrounded by books (not to mention comic relief due to the occasional freakishness of the public); that despite the craziness of my schedule, the gigs are coming in again and we are once again playing music; that I have rediscovered writing, though I've had to fight for time to do it, but I've never been more inspired.

So when that incredible ache comes over me on a day like today, and I feel that I simply must hop on a plane or I shall surely die, I allow myself to pine a little, and then I whisper in my spirit, "...but not my will, but Yours...." I am learning the art of surrender. I am thankful for the lesson. And I hope "the urge for going" stays prominent in my heart as a reminder to me of where I've been, of where I am, and of what's in store.

Just words

Valentines Day has always been the stalest of holidays for me. I've never really liked it much. Maybe it's all the pink. I've never been a pink person; I've rather always been more of a brown person or an olive drab person or, perhaps, a burnt umber person, but pink makes me feel funny. Uncomfortable. Itchy. Nauseous. I associate it with candy conversation hearts, which I never liked, except for the yellow ones, but ate anyway and went home from school feeling queasy and lonely. I never had boyfriends, and thus never got "good" valentines like all the popular girls like Nikki Burke and Michelle Palmer did: teddy bears and roses and chocolates and all sorts of other lavish items from their football boyfriends. The conversation hearts were never really special, always very standard -- everyone gave and got conversation hearts stuffed inside the little tiny envelopes that held the generic valentines. We only ate them because they were candy and Valentine's Day was the only day past Christmas you could have candy in school. But you knew they were given in an almost obligatory way, given to you by random people who really weren't even your friends, and that added to the pointlessness of it all.

And so the candy hearts were eaten in the same obligatory manner in which they were given, and I would go home with my queasy stomach and dump out all my generic valentines on my bed and read them all.

"To: Sarah
From: Diana"

"To: Sarah
From: Amy"

"To: Shara
From: Chad"

"To: Sahara
From: Jason W."
(the boys always spelled my name wrong)

I had about fifty-seven valentines stuffed in my little bag, none of them expressing any sentiment at all, and I only actually knew about four of the people that gave them to me. And only two of those people were in my clique, but I knew they didn't really like me much. After aimlessly shuffling through the little cards, I would stuff them in a drawer in my desk in my room and forget about them -- I would feel guilty if I threw them away.

When I got to college, I decided that I wouldn't be a victim of Valentine's Day, that I would overcome the staleness with rebellion. I went to a small Southern Baptist school where there was a fair share of girls who wore bows in their hair and had boyfriends that they were going to marry and have a thousand kids with, and the bowheads spent Valentine's Day carrying gigantic balloon bouquets with teddy bears in them from class to class and squealing to their friends about how he must be "The One," and I just couldn't take it. Therefore, "Black Day" was instituted: my friends and I made it tradition to wear all black on Valentine's Day.

My second year in Nashville, Valentine's Day struck back. I had driven out to my friends' Lang and Renee's house for the evening, and on the way back home, it started to snow. It was about 11:30 pm, and as I was coming off the freeway in the worst part of Nashville (read: racial tension and reverse discrimination towards white people like me), my Chevy Celebrity decided to break down. It was freezing. I was dressed up in my black with a thin black overcoat on, and had to walk to the nearest gas station from the freeway. Within seconds of the commencement of my journey, a loud, dented, creepy pickup truck stopped alongside me, and the passenger window rolled down to reveal two men of African-American descent, reeking of booze and Pall Malls, gold teeth glinting in the half-light. The driver, who looked like Flava Flav on crack, said, "Awwww, you need a ride? Hop in, we'll carry you to the gas station!" I muttered, "Umm, nothanksthatsokayI'llbefine" and kept walking. But Flav insisted: "C'mon, it's cool! We're cool! You can't walk all by yourself!" and so I reluctantly agreed to hop into the bed of the truck, reasoning that it was only 3 blocks and I could always jump if things got scary. They "carried" me to the gas station safe and sound and drove off. The attendant at the gas station, a 45-year-old video gamer who probably still lived with his mom, refused to let me in to use the phone (it was after midnight now and the doors were locked, leaving me to communicate my plight through the little mechanical drawer under the window), citing safety concerns (my black poet's shirt must have appeared threatening). I was then forced to walk another four blocks in the snow to another gas station, this time wishing Flav and his gold-toothed friend would come back and fetch me. I finally reached the gas station and called two guy friends back at school for help, and they came and pushed my car all the way back to Belmont in the snow.

In spite of my determination to stay away from the male species that night, I thanked God for Flav, Gold-tooth, and my two friends who ended up becoming my Valentine's dates that night.

At least they didn't give me any conversation hearts.

Even now, as a married woman, having found the love of my life and soulmate, Valentines falls flat. David feels the same way I do, and he's a romantic (far beyond me, in fact). It's the empty sense of mindless obligation that comes with the day that we both despise: because it's Valentine's day, we all have to make reservations, have a "romantic" dinner at an overcrowded restaurant, buy flowers, give a goofy card, etc. It's all so unoriginal. It's a Hallmark holiday. It's stale. So we usually end up playing somewhere (because the cello is so romantic, apparently, and in high demand on such a day), enjoying a nice meal after we've worked, and choose another night that isn't so programmed to go out and enjoy each other. This year is no exception. We are playing at our favorite restaurant in Fredericksburg, so we'll be working. We even decided we wouldn't do any gift-giving because we're trying to save for furniture for our new house. We are merely observers today, which is always fun and interesting.

Maybe I'll wear black for old-times' sake.

What the....?