I’ve been getting into jazz.
I never used to like it, the meandering melodies and changing rhythms, the unpredictability of it all. But lately, life–like jazz–has been all over the place. And so have I. And maybe I’ve needed music that reflects that. So, every day before dinner, I pour a glass of wine, cue up my jazz station, and sit outside with no aim other than to sit still and watch…and listen.
I’ve also been reading. And that’s been all over the place as well: Anna Karenina, in preparation for the ballet that got cancelled; The Crucifixion, because I’m fun at parties; and Ben Folds’ memoir, A Dream about Lightning Bugs. In that one, Folds mentions a quote attributed to one of my new icons, Miles Davis, in regards to screwing up: “Once is a mistake, twice is jazz.” This is prior to a brilliant chapter about finding your voice.
Stay with me.
Remember how The Kid didn’t talk until he was four? And how now, he never shuts up? Yeah, he’s found his voice. He wakes well before the sun with words aplenty, spilling out of him, questions and answers, and continues his talk throughout the day, providing monologues on natural disasters and weather patterns, narrating catastrophes that befall the city he’s created out of blocks. Lately, he’s engaged in a fun new activity, wherein he–when told something is going to happen that he doesn’t like, ie brushing teeth or eating a vegetable (though let’s be honest, not much of the latter has been happening lately, #survivalmode), he lays down the law, always opening with an exasperated “SO.”
“SO. From now on we’re only going to do that once a day.” “SO. From now on, we’re not going to do that at all.” “SO. From now on I say what we do.” In his eight-year-old world, there is one way, and it’s his. And it would be funny, if it weren’t so annoying.
One way. One thing. I’m not a fan.
And in this time of quarantine, I’m being reminded why. We all want some predictability, a linear narrative that is defined by our own rules–control injected whenever possible–a narrative that ends right where we want it to. Discrete, definable patterns; reliable outcomes. We can’t control coronavirus, but we’ll be damned if we can’t control our personal narrative around it. Cue the social media blitz, photos and flowery memes.
A friend of mine, who has the audacity to always have an opinion (we’re alike in that way), went to a birthday party recently that–surprise–turned out to be a beach cleanup! The honouree enlisted everyone, once they arrived, to grab a provided bag and collect trash to fill it. How could anyone argue, as this was a good and selfless deed? Towards the end of the cleanup, the participants were enlisted again: for a group photo, to be shared on social media.
My friend said no. “But why?” she was questioned. “Come on, just take one photo!” they wheedled. And the kicker: “It’s for a good cause!”
She was having none of it. At the risk of being contrary and seen as difficult, but in seeking to preserve her sense of self, she reiterated her refusal. She didn’t want to be a pawn in this publicised good deed.
And there are so many people–the majority, I’d say–who would echo what her fellow trash collectors said: “Just do it! It’s only for a second! It’ll make everyone happy!” Which, I would argue, sounds a lot like the arguments heard prior to an assault.
I’ve been on the end of that form of compelling before–the social-pressure kind and the assault kind–and I’ve regrettably capitulated in both scenarios, donning a prop or participating in a photo-op or just doing whatever it was that would make someone else happy. Sometimes, this needs to be done. Sometimes, it’s a worthy sacrifice. (I am thinking, of course, of all the games of hide and seek I’ve played with my children, which manage to be both fun and tedious as hell. I am also talking about all the times I’ve had to wipe their asses.)
Sometimes, though, it’s manipulation and coercion. And oftentimes, lately, I’ve said no.
One of my favourite things about therapy has been finding out, as I sit on that couch, how often my reactions to situations are completely normal; it’s the situations themselves that are fucked up. And so often, those situations were engineered by someone with an agenda: a narrative to control. And so often, I was a pawn in that agenda.
Oh, trust me, I’m aware of how much of this I’ve perpetrated myself: narratives I determined to control, and people I’ve attempted to control in the process–in the process of trying to feel an iota of agency in the seeming absence of it. But lately, I’ve been finding my voice. And often, it is contained in one simple word: no.
NO to reducing this pandemic to one thing: one positive, or one negative, or one meme (although I’ll take the funny ones all day). NO to figuring out the meaning of it one month through and posting that meaning to social media in a pithy statement. NO to putting my chin up and being positive when doing so will not only be a lie compared to how depressed I’m feeling, but will threaten my mental health further. NO to interpretations of Easter that make it only a pastel parade of victory when we are so embedded in the “not yet” part of the story that we are in the middle of a global pandemic. NO to making it all just one thing when it’s so damn many of them.
In a thread recently, a friend wrote, “maybe all of our church holidays need to ache a little bit. We need to feel the tension of redeemed and waiting for all redemption.” At which point I applauded even as I realised what an unpopular, unsellable message this multifaceted, impossible-to-nail-down-with-one-label this kind of living is.
But it’s the only place where I come to life.
I have a friend–the kind who sticks closer than a brother–who, when I said to him via a video call the other day that “I guess I’m just a cynic,” shook his head. “You’re not a cynic,” he said. “There’s just no word yet for what you are.”
I know plenty of people who could think of a word. Contrary. Uncooperative. Unaccommodating. And those are the nice ones. But I’ve lived through the foolishness of trying to control my own narrative, and my life only really began when those efforts, and that narrative, fell apart to make way for the great mess of beauty that was waiting. So I’m not interested in being a bit player in someone else’s attempts.
Last weekend Andrea Bocelli exited the Duomo di Milano and sang “Amazing Grace,” repeating at the end the line, “I once was blind but now I see.” How about that! A blind man saying he can see? And there was a guy (I’m told he came back to life recently) who referred to himself as both peace and a sword. All over the place. Contradictions aplenty. Unpredictable and unwieldy and out of control. Like jazz.
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice –
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations –
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do –
determined to save
the only life you could save.
–Mary Oliver, “The Journey”