A Little Science in my Fiction

I started writing this as just a chronicle of television shows I’ve loved over the course of my nearly 40 years. I realized part way through that what I ought to be writing about was the shows that really changed me. Most of them are science fiction shows, some of them are fantasy, and a small handful are comic book related. They are all classically defined “nerd” shows. I’ve learned the most about myself and life through shows like this starting with shows that I had to watch because they were on in the households I grew up in and later, those I chose for myself.

Sometimes shows you watch mean something to you because of what was going on in your life when you found them. Sometimes shows mean something to you because they were so good. Sometimes shows mean something to you because they meant something to someone else near you. Good, bad, or indifferent, shows make marks on us because of a variety of reasons.

My grandmother introduced me to Wonder Woman at the tender age of probably two or three. Young enough that I was mobile without being overly dexterous. I owe my love of Diana Prince to her. I mentioned before that I thought my mom vaguely resembled Lynda Carter. (In truth I thought my mom looked like the perfect combination of Lynda and Jaclyn Smith.) I hoped so hard that I, too, would grow up to resemble Diana. Strong, beautiful, brave, and able to change clothes with a quick spin. Whether I love Diana because my grandmother introduced me to her, or I love Diana because she’s a badass is irrelevant at this point. But I originally loved her because my grandmother introduced us.

“And since I’m finished here sir, may I point out that everything that I have said would have been listened to if it came from an adult officer.”

The next show I was introduced to was Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was introduced to this show during a not so great living situation. That I enjoyed it as much as I did was a testament to the show’s quality and acting. I’ve already stated that I don’t really remember much of season 1, if I watched it at all. Edit: I just looked up the episode I’m about to refer to and the one that little quote up there references and it was in the back half of season one. So clearly there were some season one episodes that I remember watching.

I’ve already talked about my love for Deanna Troi in Sheroes. I want to talk instead about the Crushers: Wesley and Beverly. At the time in my life that I watched TNG, things were less than ideal. In the intervening years, I’ve learned that for Wil Wheaton, things in his life were also less than ideal. In Wesley, I got to see a kid who was basically smarter than every adult on that ship. The adults seemed to resent him. They talked to him like he was subhuman most times and brushed him off. One of the most important episodes to me was one where Wesley had a moment to shout back at his superiors and call them on their bullshit. (See above quote.) That moment left me feeling so validated. A kid can be as smart or smarter than an adult in their life. There’s no planet on which I would’ve attempted to assert that to the adults in my life. But seeing someone else do it let me live vicariously through the moment.

In Beverly, I could watch a mother fiercely love her kid. She wanted only what was best for Wesley. She wanted to see him succeed and become his best self. She nurtured his creativity and intelligence. She gave him whatever tools he needed to succeed. She supported him when the path he wanted to follow wasn’t the one she thought he ought. Beverly Crusher loved her son AND was excellent at her job AND was independent and self-sufficient AND she managed to care for Picard without losing herself and without letting him just disrespect her son whenever he wanted. Beverly Crusher was an amazing mother. She wasn’t perfect but from what I recall, when she was wrong, she owned it and apologized.

Wesley was frequently disrespected on TNG. It’s an unfortunate truth of the show, much how Beverly and Deanna were often disrespected around their womanhood. I don’t know how to say this without it sounding odd, but every time an adult waived Wesley off, I felt seen. I felt like I wasn’t alone in being dismissed. Then getting to watch Wesley often go on and prove that the adults were fucking jackasses for blowing him off allowed me to live vicariously through him. I didn’t have those moments in my life. So, watching Wesley meant a lot to me. Seeing him succeed in an environment that, at the start especially, seemed to actively want him to fail spectacularly gave me some hope that things wouldn’t always be the way they were. That adults and parental figures could be good and supportive of the children in their lives.

Wesley also got bonus points for the fact that when the other girls in my class went all googly eyed about how cute Wil was, I could say—and mean—that I genuinely liked him. Just not like liked. I didn’t have the language for who I like liked.

“We are starstuff. We are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out.”

Babylon 5 was the first science fiction show I chose entirely on my own. It holds the number three spot on my top three all-time sci-fi shows list. I had a small TV/VHS combo in my bedroom, and I used my money to buy blank VHS tapes to record every episode that aired. I loved it so much that I joined the Fanclub. I read all the tie-in books that I could get my little hands on. It was one of those shows where I legitimately loved nearly every character. Susan Ivanova was my absolute favorite. Her dry wit was a balm on my soul. She was dark and morbid and everyone either loved her for it or in spite of it depending on how you looked at it. She was respected and knew how to command a room (let alone a space station on the occasions it was called of her). What I loved about Ivanova for her strength, I loved Delenn for her gentleness. She was just as fierce and formidable (in some ways more so) yet she did it all with a compassion and kindness that often was missing from Ivanova.

Delenn put herself so forcefully into the shoes of others that she transitioned from Minbari to a human hybrid in order to bridge the gap between the two. She sacrificed so much and yet remained entirely herself and self-possessed. It’s been rare over the course of my life that I have ever actively wanted a heterosexual coupling in media to wind up together. Sheridan and Delenn were one of the first and only (the other major couple I’ll talk about in a bit) that I actively loved. They supported one another fully and bolstered one another and challenged the other to grow and be better. They didn’t cut one another down. They operated from a genuine space of love. Sheridan loved the hell out of Delenn exactly as she was. He was one of the first men I’d ever seen treat his potential partner with respect, dignity, and genuine affection. Nearly all the other couples on shows and movies had one or both partners speak to the other with disdain and disapproval. As if that was the standard bar relationships should meet. It’s the romanticizing of abuse that is 100% bullshit and exceptionally too common in media. If someone treats you shitty, you can’t love them out of it.

I made posters of the Babylon 5 logo with the various opening monologues. One winter when it snowed a lot, rather than make a snowman, I built the space station. I was OBSESSED. I recently found it on Amazon Prime and started rewatching the show. Sometimes when we go back and watch shows we loved over again some of the magic gets lost, or—especially with sci-fi—the whole thing feels outdated. And believe me there are moments that feel outdated and special effects that frankly hurt to watch. The integrity of the show, however, is still there. I’m only a few episodes into season 1 (my second least favorite season) and surprisingly it still works for me.

With the discovery of Babylon 5, came the discovery of The SciFi Channel (well before it became Syfy which I still think is silly). I watched reruns of so many shows I missed out on the first time and new shows I couldn’t get enough of. I fell in love with Sliders, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Highlander and Highlander: Raven, and most importantly Farscape. I haven’t really talked about it, but I loved the Muppets. Puppeteering was super fascinating to me and honestly something I could’ve seen myself doing for a living in a different life. When I heard, Jim Henson and science fiction together in one sentence I knew it was something I had to try.

“Welcome to the Federation Starship SS Buttcrack.”

Farscape is nearly impossible to explain in a way that makes any kind of sense, let alone that makes it sound appealing to watch for four seasons and a movie. And yet, it is the top of my top three sci-fi shows ever list. These misfits formed themselves a family, found themselves in the middle of a war with the most aggressive species in the known universe, made the silliest jokes you could ever possibly make, and supported one another as near unconditionally as was possible for each of them to do (for some it was easier than for others). I could go on a diatribe about every character on the series. Every character (even ones you only met for an episode) evoked intense feelings of some kind. Part of that is due to the writing of the show, another part is due to the excellent actors they hired to play these characters.

Oh gosh, it hurts my brain to think of how on earth I’m going to possibly talk about this show without just listing the main characters and doing a chef’s kiss, muttering incoherently, then moving on to the next. I can’t do it without gushing needlessly and giving away major plot points in my excitement. I just tried. I got three characters in and realized I was giving away the entire series. Sorry folks. You just have to take my word that these characters are amazing. I will say this that each main character of the show fills an archetype or trope role. They can easily be summed up by a stereotype, but what the writers and the actors bring to those characters takes those tropes uses it as a stepstool, then kicks it away and climbs to weird, new places you wouldn’t’ve necessarily expected. That’s the best I can do in telling you about my loves without giving away the whole goose.

The second hetero fictional relationship I ever saw and said, “yes make it so, gimme the thing!” was John Crichton and Aeryn Sun. Like Sheridan and Delenn, they made each other better simply by allowing the other space to be themselves, truly and fully. Aeryn was brainwashed since birth and had a major journey of essentially trauma healing to do (in her own seriously brash way) and John had daddy issues he had to work out amongst other immaturities that made him often a detriment to the group rather than an asset. They gave each other space to grow and develop and, while they often didn’t realize they were doing it, loved one another through their very individual processes. They were both perfectly imperfect and complimented one another beautifully. He was often light and silly to her somber and stern. It was the old opposites attract but without all the icky “here let me change and fix you to what I want you to be” bullshit that most of those tropes fall victim to.

John and Aeryn cared, in their own ways, about each other and everyone living with them. The whole crew helped one another with their hurts and hopes and fears and dreams. They had a common goal, to return to their respective homes, in the beginning, but as they journeyed, they realized that they genuinely wanted good for each other. Found family is my jam. It’s my favorite trope of all the tropes. This show pulls all the best of sci-fi and found family and humor and PUPPETS together to make this bizarre, delicious soup. I’ve done my best to keep this spoiler-free, and I think I’ve succeeded, while still conveying this show’s beauty. It’s not one of those shows that you can just pick up anywhere in the series and follow along. You genuinely have to start with episode one in season one. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, that show was worth every second of my time to watch and I enjoyed it (even the “bad episodes” and there were a few) immensely.

“Pilots call me Starbuck; you may refer to me as God.”

The final of my top three sci-fi shows came a bit later (to me anyway, I didn’t watch it when the reboot aired, I started it a little after). Roger Moore’s reboot of Battlestar Galactica is one of the best, most relevant science fiction television shows ever. Farscape is silly and wonderful and creative, Babylon 5 is seriously dated and felt a lot like it could’ve been a Star Trek series, it had all the hallmarks to fit into that franchise easily. Battlestar Galactica felt like one of those shows that could happen now. It’s science fiction but thematically it could happen now in many ways. I’m not saying there are Cylons living amongst us. But the themes of this show, the politics, the fears, the biases, could all be taken out of the sci-fi construct and applied directly to what happens in our world on a regular basis.

The first three seasons were great. The fourth went a little off the rails, but it wasn’t bad. This show was weird. I can’t really point to a single character or a ship that I loved. I liked most everyone. But the people that I disliked, I HATED. Again, this is a testament to the writing and to the acting. The actors were so good at what they did that several of them, I came away legitimately HATING. Like would happily punch in the face if they existed in reality. But that’s the beauty of a well written show. The characters that I despised were people that I could point to in my life and say “hey you’re just like Colonel frakking asshole Tigh,” or “shut up, Gaius” could be said to any number of dickheads I’ve known in my life.

Now, I say this knowing full well that there are little journeys that both of these characters went on that gave them growth and depth and vulnerabilities that took away some of my initial feelings that they were wholly irredeemable. Again, the acting and writing being beautifully nuanced. I think that was the difference in this show from others. The complexity gave my imagination more to play with than the sci-fi of it all. It prescribed to much of the sci-fi formulaic traditions. It was somehow different though. The way it was shot and acted left you feeling just as exhausted as the crew had to have been after jump after jump trying to stay just ahead of the Cylons and complete annihilation. The despair peppered with hope wherever they could find it kept me engaged.

Laura Roslin being wholly unprepared for leading all that remained of her people while grappling with all her personal drama and traumas. Bill Adama doing his gods damned best to keep the whole thing afloat and keep everyone protected. Space Parents are probably the closest thing I have to a ship from this show but I hesitate to ship them because they fall a little too victim (particularly in the beginning) to the opposites who try and force the other to become who they want rather than accept them as they are trope.

Honestly, though, that’s some of what’s so endearing about BSG. It’s so refreshingly real and honest. Opposites try and change one another. The beauty of Bill and Laura is that they realized that it was stupid to do that and came together as they were naturally. They found a common place to sit together and fell in love after they put their egos aside. It’s similar in most of the relationships in this show. They are all honest and messy. No path is linear. Everything is a mess and there is beauty in that mess. There is hope somewhere in the middle of all the hopelessness. There is life somewhere surrounded by all the death.

I sometimes think I’m still waiting for that next majorly influential science fiction tv show in my life. There are others that I love and characters that I adore, but none that have come close to the four here. Seven of Nine from Star Trek: Voyager is one of my favorite characters to ever come from the Star Trek universe, but the show doesn’t quite get up to influential status. I keep meaning to try The Expanse and I keep forgetting to despite how much I love Shohreh Aghdashloo. The next sci-fi show to leave me fully transformed may not exist yet. It may be the next season of Doctor Who. (Thirteen means an awful lot to me.) I don’t know. What I do know is that science fiction has a profound ability to show us the best and worst about ourselves. It can give us hope where we didn’t see any before. It gives many of us a voice we didn’t have until we saw someone else say things we didn’t dare breathe. I love sci-fi. I probably always will.

So, what are your favorite shows? If you watched any of these, who are your favorite characters? What television helped transform you?

Let's Go to the Movies

The first movies I ever watched were musicals with my grandmother. We would lay on the couch in the living room, I snuggled up next to her while she traced idle shapes on my back. I would often drift to sleep while we watched, but we watched the same sets of movies so often that I still came away knowing them all by heart. I saw all but one Rogers & Hammerstein film. Oklahoma!, Carousel, State Fair, South Pacific, The King & I, Cinderella, and The Sound of Music. Then came the Debbie Reynolds movies, then Julie Andrews. If we weren’t watching musicals, we often watched old black and white films. Katharine Hepburn films remain in my list of favorites. Bringing Up Baby is BY FAR the best, in my opinion, with Desk Set a very close second.

With my grandfather, I watched old, old Westerns. The smell of beer and popcorn makes me miss sitting with him at the small dining table that was next to the large picture window of the kitchen. I don’t much remember those movies. I spent more time watching him draw while they played than I did paying attention to the television. He would sketch in his little art book while the movies played, and I would sit next to him and watch him, and he would teach me between handfuls of popcorn. Those times were so incredibly precious to me.

My first movie obsession was The Wizard of Oz. I watched that movie so many times, I think we had to buy multiple VHS copies just to replace the ones I wore out. I memorized every second of that film. There was a time when I could quote it from start to finish. There’s a reason Somewhere Over the Rainbow was my first piano recital piece. I remember sitting right up in front of the television we had in the house I spent a chunk of my childhood in. As soon as the credits started to roll, I’d stop, rewind, then start it all over again. I watched E.T. and The Neverending Story with about half the fervor I spent on The Wizard of Oz. That was kindergarten and about half of first grade. Everyday after school, I’d come home and plop myself down in front of the television to watch one of those three films. After that came Annie. I watched that movie so much that my mom started calling me Little Orphan Annie. Apparently, I had a predisposition to overidentify with little red-headed orphan girls. Surprisingly, I was not a natural red head.

The first movie I remember watching in the theaters was Oliver and Company. I don’t remember being particularly impressed. When The Little Mermaid came out the next year, I saw that too. Guess what? Little red head who didn’t fit in with her family? Wanted to escape? Yeah. I loved it. I watched it a lot. Not as much as Annie or The Wizard of Oz, but it still received a substantial amount of screen time. I didn’t get the opportunity to see movies in the theater very often when I was growing up. With my Book-It rewards, I would get my little pizza from Little Ceasar’s or Pizza Hut and used my meager allowance to rent a movie from the local video shop once a month. I usually tended toward musicals when given my choice, though I did watch “traditional” kids’ movies too. I was already weird enough; I didn’t need to pile on by not being caught up on the movies the other kids in my class would go see. Even if I was often a year behind (because I usually had to wait for video) most of the time, I made the effort to see the things they talked about.

By the time I got to middle school, my interest in movies finally started to stray from musicals. I remember watching Forrest Gump in the movie theater and hating every single second. I was too young to be watching that movie. I didn’t follow most of it. Partly because I was distracted by the boy next to me with sweaty palms who kept trying to hold my hand. It was my first “real date” with a boy and it was awful. From then on, I veered away from dramas. I kept to comedies and action. I watched Adam Sandler movies, Jim Carrey, and Mortal Kombat. I was really, really into Mortal Kombat. (Read: I had a major crush on Bridgette Wilson since Billy Madison and Mortal Kombat just gave me an excuse to watch her again. Gosh, I’d nearly forgotten about that.) After that, I was introduced to Star Wars. I didn’t watch much else other than the original trilogy for years after. I mean, YEARS. Later in high school, my dad introduced me to the Alien movies and the Terminator movies. Ripley and Sarah Connor left major impressions on my developing self. Then I saw The Matrix. I wanted so badly to be like Trinity.

My senior year of high school, I worked at a Hollywood Video. I got free rentals, so I took full advantage. I watched every single Judy Garland movie I could get my hands on. I watched new releases as well, I’m not trying to make myself sound anymore hipster than I already am by nature. I just struggled a bit with newer movies geared toward my age group. Movie like She’s All That and The Princess Diaries were hard for me. I loved the latter, but it sucked seeing people who looked enough like you that people drew comparisons to you and the actors when they were in their “ugly” phase.

I watched She’s All That a grand total of once because a co-worker at the time (a slimy twenty-something who I think thought he was flirting) told me I looked like Rachael before her makeover, went so far as to ask me to take off my glasses, and then grimaced when I did so. I started to develop weird love/hate relationships with actresses that looked vaguely enough like me to call up weird comparisons. (I never thought for a moment I looked like any of these women, but people made connections anyway.) So I had a difficult time with Rachael Leigh Cook, Anne Hathaway (who I thought looked a lot like another friend of mine), Liv Tyler, and Anna Paquin. Literally the only thing they all had in common was dark hair. People are weird.

During college, I started watching a lot more movies. My friends and I would sit around together playing a game we called The Movie Game. One person would name an actor/actress, then the next in line would name a film they were in, then the next person named another person in that film, then the next had to pick another film. Around we went in a game of HORSE (but if you spelled MOVIE you were out). It usually came down to myself and my best friend. He and I would wind up in the world of obscure character actors until one of us finally ran out of ammunition. I often came up on the losing end of that, but I did win my fair share of bouts when I could steer us in the direction of Jennifer Connelly, Famke Janssen, or Rachel Weisz (they were kind of my specialties, again, I had crushes that I didn’t realize were crushes).

It was the start of my love of soloing at the movie theater. Part was borne of the guys I was friends with, or thought I was, who tried to use our large group trips to the movies to try and trick others into thinking that I was dating one of them. I can’t tell you how many times I argued with my guy friends that, in fact, no I did not owe you anything as we are NOT dating. I decided that in order to avoid that all together, I would just go see things on my own. It served me well for many years and even became something that I enjoyed. I made a day of it. I would usually spend an hour or so at the bookstore before heading over and people watching before the movie started.

The weird “ugly” brunette makeover movie trend thankfully died a fairly quick death. And then the trend of good fantasy movies started. I was more than ready for that particular trend. It gave me a physical representation of my Eowyn in Lord of the Rings. She didn’t make the sheroes list solely because I didn’t read the Lord of the Rings books until college. On the broad list of my favorite fictional characters, however, she is top five. It gave me the Harry Potter movies. Yes, I was one of those rare folks who never touched a book and started instead with the films. In my case, it’s good that I started with the movies because I have struggled mightily to read those early books. The only books I read prior to the film release were The Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows.

Around that time, I was also given the Mummy movies. Though technically probably a horror series, the first two films in that series remain two of my favorites. The 2000s were an excellent decade of fantasy movies. The Underworld series, 300, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Chronicles of Narnia films, the Gaiman films (MirrorMask, Stardust, and Coraline), and the start of all the comic book movies (some decidedly better than others) all kept me incredibly entertained. I spent a lot of time in the movie theater.

The 2010s saw a definite decrease in movie watching. I lived on my own for the first time and worked a job that meant I could barely make ends meet so I had to make very conscious decisions about the films I saw in theaters at the very start of the decade. By 2012, I was moved to California from Kentucky and living with my soon-to-be wife. My movie watching trend of seeing very few things remained mostly unchanged. I did, however, start seeing the Marvel films mostly in theaters. This decade has been an interesting one for my desire to see films. The films I’ve seen, I’ve loved. My wife and I saw every Pitch Perfect movie in the theaters within the first month of release and honestly, that is RARE for us.

In 2017, I was given a live action Wonder Woman film. I was so skeptical. When I heard the casting choices, part of me was so mad. I groused for months about it. The hero above all my heroes was going to finally be a feature film like her male counterparts and I prayed to every deity I could think of that the film wouldn’t suck. Just don’t let it suck, I thought. Don’t be in the bottom tier of comic book films. Please, sweet, merciful Jesus, don’t let this movie suck. I didn’t have a lot of hope that it would be good, but I just needed it not to suck. I was a mess about this movie. When they released the trailer, I was mad. Wonder Woman doesn’t kill. That’s the whole crux of one of her biggest storylines in comics that she felt she had to kill a human, Max Lord, in order to protect Earth. And here she was in the trailer, killing humans all willynilly. Nothing was easing my fears about this movie. Gal was still too skinny and UUUUUUUUGH!

I bought my ticket for either the day it released or the day after. I went with a friend of mine with whom I’ve seen several comic book movies. I was decked in Wonder Woman gear (let’s be honest, I have enough shirts to wear a new one every day of the week) and terrified. I wrung my hands anxiously as I sat in the theater and the lights went down. By the time the previews for other films finished rolling I thought I was going to puke. Here she comes. This is it. Oh shit, please don’t suck. Just don’t suck.

Every. Single. Second of that movie was everything I dreamed of for a Wonder Woman film. It was perfect. I sobbed through half of it. Etta Candy was perfect, Diana was perfect, Steve Trevor was perfect, Queen Hippolyta was perfect. All the characters I loved from the comics were perfect. And then there was Robin Wright as Antiope. Princess Buttercup was a goddamn badass general. I could barely contain myself. Sameer, Charlie, and Chief Napi were perfect. The scene where Diana makes her way across No Man’s Land with her shield and the crescendos and decrescendos in the music and her heels digging into the mud gave me goosebumps over my entire body. I had to keep myself from shrieking. The second the movie ended I wanted to watch it again. I convinced my wife to go with me the next week to see it again. I wondered if this was how guys felt after every superhero movie they saw: like they could do anything and thoroughly mess up anyone who so much as looked at them cross-eyed. I felt powerful in a way that I hadn’t since I was three years old with my Dartballs of Truth, slinging them at targets in my grandparents’ front yard. I wept quietly the second time I watched it as well. I’ve watched it at home a couple times since and I still cry when I watch it.

The preview for the new Wonder Woman 1984 left me shushing my wife while I watched it. I felt that familiar tightness in my throat watching Diana backhand a fucking bullet, and then swing the lasso around GODDAMN LIGHTNING BOLTS. I have feelings. Patty Jenkins earned every ounce of my trust after the first movie and my body is not ready for the sequel.

So, kids, give me your top ten list of favorite movies. They can be any list you want: all-time, fantasy, sci-fi, comic book, comedy, drama, period pieces, horror, thriller. The choice is yours. What movies are you looking forward to? Who are your favorite actors/actresses? Tell me all the things.

Hey, Watch it!

I used to watch an incredible number of movies. I don’t anymore. In part due to how expensive it is to see a film in the theater, in part because I just don’t go sit by myself in a theater anymore and enjoy watching something alone. So, when I do pull the wife along with me to see a movie, it’s something that I feel really strongly about seeing or want to support. And if I actually go alone, then that’s a really special movie. Some of me misses just taking an afternoon and going by myself to see a movie.

I used to love going alone to the movie theater. I used to spend some time people watching. I loved not having to measure my reactions to things that happened in the movies. I could just be free in those couple of hours. I’m not sure when that changed but it’s not the same now. Maybe I’ve become a little too used to doing things with someone. Maybe I’ve just found different ways to spend my time that feel more important to me than movies do now. Or maybe it’s the simple fact that I don’t feel so much like I need to escape my life anymore. I lean toward the last more than the others, but I do think that there are flecks of truth in each supposition.

I watch a lot of television now. Partly because my wife loves television. It’s a way for her to decompress from work and free up brain space for much needed rest. Before meeting her, I watched a fair amount of television, but that has increased exponentially since meeting her and, honestly, since binge watching became as easy as pressing a button. I am very picky (I like to pretend I’m fancy and call it discerning) in what I will spend time watching. Because television is an investment. It’s not a two hour and I’m done and leave you behind commitment. It’s a multiple season investment. Hours of my time and energy will go into this. My wife likes to give most television shows a chance. She loves watching pilot episodes and analyzing the process, the tropes, and the gimmicks used to pull people in. I’ve learned to appreciate some aspects of this, but I’m still far pickier than she. I am also much faster at giving up a show if it doesn’t excite me or if it offends me or if I’m too bored. That last, again, is the biggest culprit that makes me drop shows.

So, get to the point, right? How’s this gonna go? Television shows get a post and movies get a post. I have no clue how I’m gonna keep this brief. (Yes, in fact, I do consider in the vicinity of 3,000 words short.) You can maybe gather some of the shows and movies that’ll wind up on these lists from the first posts about my sheroes. Spoiler alert: don’t be surprised when I tell you that Star Wars is my favorite movie series ever.

About a Piano

I started taking piano lessons when I was 5 years old. It was 1987. I hated parts of it. I loved playing. I loved being able to take the things I listened to and generate them myself. Practicing though, my God, did I hate to practice. Some of it had to do with the environment I lived in at the time, every request felt like a demand that striped away pieces of my soul. Even if it was to do something that I actually liked. I was good at the piano. Not a genius or anything like my grandfather, but I was good. My first recital, at 6 years old, I played Somewhere Over the Rainbow. My piano teacher had what felt like nearly a hundred students. I played toward the beginning of the group. She arranged people according to proficiency. I was young enough that I didn’t feel bad about the fact that I was near the beginning. I was, in fact, a beginner. I didn’t yet have a full year of playing under my belt. I watched with awe as the students got better and better. I knew that I wanted to be placed further in next recital (they were put on every two or three years). I had my task and I would achieve it.

The next recital piece, my teacher picked for me, was Pachelbel’s Canon in D. My tiny fingers struggled to stretch to reach all the notes. We had to modify some of the more difficult chords so that my fingers could hit the keys. At 8 or 9, I had moved from the beginning of the recital group, to the last third to play. I was so proud of myself and so unexpectedly nervous. When it was my turn, I felt the spotlight in the high school auditorium make me sweat. When I sat down at the monstrous baby grand, my hands were shaking. I wished that I had the sheet music in front of me just for something to look at to take my awareness away from the hundreds of people in the audience watching and waiting on me to begin.

My fingers knew exactly what to do. Once I started to play, I disappeared. I let my hands do what they were trained for and trusted them to hit the right notes. When I finished, I stood shakily and looked out at the crowd for the first time. There were so many people clapping that it hurt my ears and the spotlight blinded me. I tripped over myself in my half curtsy, half sprint off stage. My teacher was so proud of me. I got to pick my next recital piece. I chose the theme from Jurassic Park. (Of course, I picked that, if you read one of my last posts you understand why.) My teacher this time, told me I would be one of the last five or ten students to play in the show. She broke her time down with me between coaching me in playing with emotion and in teaching me to curtsy and SLOWLY walk off stage. Apparently, my awkward running off stage was something people continued to talk about for a while.

After that second recital, I started to notice pianists. I wanted to emulate them. I watched the woman in church, how she played. Her back was rigidly upright. Her arms at perfect parallel to the keys, her hands slightly arched in the way that my teacher always tried to get me to hold my hands. It felt sterile and uncomfortable, but I tried to copy during my practice times. On the rare occasions that I was allowed to visit my grandmother, I would watch MTV. One day I was watching videos, my grandmother was doing the lunch dishes in the kitchen. A woman with bright red hair came onto the television. She moved at the piano with the music. Her posture was fluid, her stance was open. Like she was welcoming the music to pour through and over her body. I was enraptured. I wasn’t even paying attention to the words, so I was shocked when my grandmother abruptly turned the channel and said I wasn’t allowed to listen to that. The video was Crucify.

It was too late though. The impression was already made. I knew now, that a piano could be played like an extension of one’s own body. I never worked out how to marry the posture my teacher wanted of me with the emotional expression that the red-haired woman showed me was possible. I was experiencing things in my life that made fracturing of myself necessary. So, I closed off that part of me that opened watching Tori Amos at the piano. I continued taking lessons until after that last recital. I think my last lesson was at 12. I kept playing, because we still had a piano, until we moved to Indiana when I was 14. By that time though, I had joined band and was playing flute, so I didn’t have much time for recreational piano playing anymore

I quit band after 9^th grade and put away my flute. (I assume my parents still have it somewhere, but I’ve not seen it in years.) I traded musical instruments in for journalism. My senior year, I had free credits that I could do anything with, so I decided to take “Piano for Beginners” taught by the high school choir teacher. The first few weeks, I didn’t tell her that I knew how to play. I sat with the class in the little room with twenty or so keyboards set up in rows. I was quietly trying to relearn how to play. It was shockingly easy. I picked it back up almost immediately. Between lessons, I would play around. One day the teacher caught me and called me out in class. I admitted that yes, I knew how to play. She pulled me aside to the piano in the large choir room to test my ability. It wasn’t the only surprise test she would throw at me. Partway through the semester she also realized that I could sing. I must’ve been goofing off or something. She stopped class and threatened not to bring us donuts on Friday if I didn’t go with her and do scales in the keyboard room for her. Feeling adequately compelled, I followed. After running several scales, she huffed at me and asked whether I had been in the school since 10^th grade. When I confirmed, she all but shouted at me for never being in any of her choirs. No one in my entire life had ever told me that I could sing before. Let alone get incensed enough to chastise me for not being involved in their choir. I was equal parts terrified and pleased.

Once satisfied that, in fact, I did know how to play piano, my teacher gave me leave to play the grand piano and anything I wanted so long as I learned one song well enough to play for the “final exam” at the end of the semester. I played The Point of No Return from Phantom of the Opera. She was happy and seemed, against all my sense, to like me. She approved me to audit the class again next semester. For that final, I played some classical piece by Bach or Strauss, I don’t recall which. I spent most of the class helping her put papers together for choir performances (probably as her way of reminding me she was disappointed that I didn’t clear out some of my schedule to join a choir she had promised to make room for me in) or in doing assignments for yearbook.

I picked up guitar in the intervening years. I never quite worked out how to play properly. Being left dominant made learning more difficult than I expected. Strumming was a nightmare. Finger picking came easily enough but strumming, God I struggled. Piano always called me back. Like a friend waiting patiently for the phone to ring. It took rediscovering Tori to bring me back to the piano.

I don’t remember what made me pick up The Beekeeper album. Did someone suggest Tori to me again and I just was ready this time? I wasn’t ready for her when my former bookstore manager suggested her in 2003. I did, however, out of politeness, take the Hello, Mr. Zebra single from him. I never listened to it though.

Whatever perfect storm brewed to send me to the store to purchase The Beekeeper in 2005, I am grateful. That particular album wasn’t especially influential. I loved it, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t until I started digging into her back catalogue that I started to unearth myself in the tapestries she wove through Little Earthquakes, Boys for Pele, and From the Choirgirl Hotel. I sipped them like communion wine. I felt connected again. It had been a while, by that point, since I had felt a kindred kind of connection with an artist. She sang in a language that I understood instinctively. She played piano in a way that I had nearly forgotten about, like water pouring itself over melodies. I was transfixed. I would finish one album then put on the next and the next and the next. I sat in my car for hours just listening to her songs over and over. It felt like someone was singing my whole life.

I went looking for every bit of information about Tori that I could find. I found that and I found a group of people who loved her the way that I did. They quickly became the closest friends to me. Closer than anyone had ever gotten before. I felt, for the first time, entirely known and seen by these people. Partly because, for the first time, I opened myself. I felt like if they loved Tori the way I did and for the reasons I did, that they would accept all of me exactly as I was. Tori’s music, and the friends I made, allowed me to finally start looking at pieces of me that I had been unwilling to accept. For the first time, I let myself actively (and without shame) question my sexuality. It would take another two years of fumbling around with my feelings and an assault to force my hand in owning who I am, but even through that and the traumas, Tori was there for me.

I met Tori twice. Once in 2005. I could barely speak. I was lost in the crowd. I managed to ask for a photo somehow. And then in October 2007. I’ve met a handful of people in my life who are amazing huggers. When I say that Tori Amos is the best hugger ever, I mean it. If you are lucky enough to be hugged by her, you feel seen and held in a way that is hard to explain. She just envelops you. And when she looks at you, she looks as if she sees clear all the way through to the soul of who you are. Maybe I was a frayed nerve at that show and that’s just how it felt in that moment, but I will never forget the care presented to me in that small fragment of time. I managed to be only the slightest smidge more articulate the second time. I asked if she could play a particular song. She was so kind in telling me how it wasn’t possible. I said I understood. By the end of the tour, she played the most amazing version I’ve ever heard of the song I requested. It was beautiful and I felt, again, that I had been somehow seen and known in that brief exchange. She played it in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. I knew someone would record it and I like to pretend that she did to when she played my Talula. (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_s-6WhJF4c4)

I’ve met her twice, but I’ve been privileged to see her live five times. The first in Chicago, the second in my hometown Louisville, the third in Indianapolis, and the fourth and fifth in Los Angeles. I sometimes think about what my perfect Tori concert would be, and I am never able to land on something. How do you narrow such a prolific catalogue to 20 or so songs? Even if you picked one song from every album she’s released, it’s not enough. I’d still miss out on so many songs. I completely understand why people go to multiple of her shows per tour. For other artists, that is a bit unnecessary. They have static setlists and shows are the same one to the next. Tori is something else entirely. Going to one of her shows is magical. Even if you aren’t a fan of her music, her sheer musical ability is impressive. The way she floats between the pianos that surround her, back and forth and sometimes together. She is a force unto herself. No one is quite like her. Her improvisations even add layers and textures to songs you know inside out.

There was a while where I would write song impressions from Tori’s music. I would put a song on repeat, close my eyes, and just see where the music would take me. See what stories her girls would tell me. I still have a handful of them on my computer. The name of this blog page is taken from the song impression for Pandora’s Aquarium. It was a way for me to practice writing. Like practicing an instrument; I learned what worked in my creative process, what phrasings generated the emotional responses I wanted, I played with sentence lengths, word choices, and worldbuilding. It was her music that I started with as the soundtrack to writing. The song impressions that I wrote from her songs were not great. The one this blog is named for is, we’ll say, not awesome.

Tori’s willingness to be used by the muses freed my mind to play in fields I hadn’t dreamed of before. If you were to look at my writings over the years, it’s easy to see the moment Tori’s music came into my life. I stopped trying to fit the mold I thought I ought and just let the stories come as they wished. The way I phrased things even changed. I stopped stifling my imagination. I’m not the best writer, just like I was never the best pianist. But I trust my voice, and the stories that find their way to me. And, as with musical instruments, practice makes you better. I’ve learned now to walk in my creativity rather than the clumsy crawling of before. I owe part of that to the example set by Tori and her willingness to be led by her songs wherever they would have her go.

If you were to ask me who is the single most influential musician of my entire life, I would not hesitate in saying Tori Amos. I came to her music at precisely the right times. Tori didn’t save me—I don’t think she would like that said of her—but her music gave me the tools I needed to save myself. She showed me doors that I had locked away and hidden. I found that I still had the keys I needed to open them. Her bravery in looking at the dark places in herself gave me the confidence that I, too, could look inside and not be destroyed by whatever I found. I will never be able to fully thank Tori for just being bold enough to be thoroughly herself. That’s what it comes down to, she is authentically, entirely herself. Weirdness, melancholy, joy, anger, I-don’t-give-a-fuck, fuckups, and everything in between. Being willing to share as much as she has shared over her life isn’t a gift I take lightly or for granted.

Thank you, Tori. It’s nowhere near enough but thank you. I adore the pieces of you that you’ve let us all see.

Workin' on my Fitness

In 8^th grade, I started developing the habits that would lead to an eating disorder that I would deal with for a large chunk of my adult life. I don’t know how to talk about this. For the last year I’ve been on an exercise journey, I don’t know how to talk about that either. As a recovering anorexic, I don’t want to focus too much on the weight loss, though that is a part of it and part of my celebration is that for the first time in my life I went about it without slipping back to destructive habits.

I don’t know if some of my experiences can help others who have been and are where I’ve been. I guess that’s the impetus behind diverging here and creating this post. Last year, my wife and I joined a gym. We sat down together and laid out the bare bones of our plans to get our bodies to look the way we want them to and the fitness goals we have for ourselves. Our plans are wildly different though the basis is the same. We both want to feel good in our own skin. That looks differently for each of us. My wife was an athlete for most of her childhood (and a gymnast specifically for part of that) so her goals reflected a focus on getting her body back to fighting form in that way.

While she was able to pull from her own history in knowing what her body looks like when she is her fittest, I have only unhealthy body memories to look back on. I’ve had to grapple with numbers in ways that she (blessedly) hasn’t needed to. Because of her far healthier habits, I was able to draw on her experience a bit. We sat down together and created a plan that felt good to me. I was never allowed to eat fewer than 1,000 calories on any given day. We downloaded My Fitness Pal and I faithfully entered every item of food that I ate. I’ve done so for over a year now and will continue to do so for a while yet. We also set exercise boundaries for me. I was not allowed to workout more than four days a week. I kept my fitness goals to things I wanted to accomplish rather than just weight I wanted to lose. I held up as role models, women who were strong: Charity Witt, Maggi Thorne, and Megan Martin became touchstones for me in my body ideals.

These limits may sound a bit harsh, but I’ve needed them more than I thought that I would and than I care to admit. There were weeks and months during the beginning of this where I would work out and feel so good afterward that the disordered eating thoughts screamed in my head to not eat and see results faster. “The weight will just melt away,” my brain shouted, “You don’t need to have anything, look at how good you feel.”

It was so difficult to parse through those thoughts let alone curb them and force myself to eat something small to ensure my body didn’t slip into starvation mode. The urge to go to the gym everyday was massive in those early weeks. The high I get from exercising is addictive. Some weeks I went more than I ought. I pushed my body to the point of blissful exhaustion and wound up regretting it in small ways. I had to force myself to conform to the prescribed days that my wife and I agreed we would work out.

One of the hardest parts of this whole process was the comments on my changing body. I wanted people to notice I was shrinking and yet then when they did, it made me uncomfortable. I craved and squirmed under the attention. I marveled at how my wife was able to deal with a new person everyday telling her how good she looked. The implication clear to me that they thought she looked bad before. I know rationally that that wasn’t necessarily what they were implying.

I was envious that she had so many people praising her weight loss. Because that’s how most people are. Society teaches us from birth to praise thin women and villainize women who dare to break that ideal. And yet, I also strove to remind her that she’s been perfect at every size. The destructive part of my brain hated that she received daily compliments on her progress while I received so few. I am now grateful that I wasn’t put in a position to hear those comments daily. It would’ve made me more prone to return to anorexia. Praise can be addictive too.

Through all of this, I tried to notice my body changing. Dysmorphia is a difficult thing. It’s hard to explain to people who don’t experience it. I look in the mirror and see something entirely different from reality. I see a distortion. The scale and my clothes tell one story and my mind sees an entirely different one. It’s like perpetually looking in a funhouse mirror. I used numbers to try and combat what my brain worked so hard to convince me was the truth. My wife and I keep a log of our progress. Once a month we track our measurements. Being able to see concrete evidence that my body is changing helps at least muffle the dysmorphia that tells me I’m not doing enough, all is for naught, and I should starve myself.

Most of the disordered, dysmorphic thoughts quieted as I made my practices into habits. Tracking my meals to ensure my daily minimum (and not go over my personal maximum), logging all my workouts, meeting my water intake goals, and purposely NOT weighing myself daily relegated the shouting of my destructive thoughts to white noise in the back of my mind. It was like this for months. I had settled into a groove. I felt, dare I say it, good about my habits and goals. I was steadily making progress. I was stronger, leaner, more defined than I had ever been in my life.

Then I hit my weight goal. I saw the number on the scale read something it hadn’t since I was actively anorexic. The parts of my brain that I had forced nearly dormant woke with a fury. I ached to see the number keep falling. I was elated. I knew I could keep pressing and pushing and watch that number drop further until it reached where I had been at the height of my anorexia. My skin itched with the urge to press on. It was wholly unexpected. I emailed my therapist almost immediately. I knew if I didn’t do something to curb those thoughts that I would gladly fall face first back to disordered eating and hate myself for it. I made myself eat the smallest lunch I could stomach that day. I didn’t want to eat anything. It felt so good not to eat anything. When my wife got home that night, I told her about what I was feeling. We sat down together and changed my daily minimum to my maintain goal. She praised my success but reminded me that I must eat to keep meeting my fitness goals. Muscles need nutrients.

Transitioning to maintain mode and an even higher daily caloric intake has been torture in a way that I never expected. It was hard enough meeting the daily 1,000 calorie minimum, but now I have to eat at least 1,300 just to support my muscles. I was wholly unprepared for this. The little disordered eating neurons in my brain keep firing saying it’s okay to just go back to the thousand calories. I don’t really need 300 more a day. Every fiber of my being wants to keep losing weight. My wife and I had to sit down together and have another frank discussion about my weight parameters. I came up with a maximum number that I feel like I absolutely will not be able to handle seeing on the scale and a minimum number that I should not fall below. So long as I keep myself within that window, I need to be okay with it.

It’s so hard. I hope, like when I first started this journey, that my brain will even out as I get used to my new normal. It’s only been a little over a month since I changed my boundaries so it’s still new. I am thankful for social media in a way that I didn’t think I would be. Following the accounts that I follow helps me stay grounded. People like Charity Witt, Lizzo, Jonathan Van Ness, Katee Sackoff, Tracee Ellis Ross, and others who post photos of themselves loving their bodies and cultivating their physiques in ways that feel good to them in all of the variances of self-love remind my disordered brain that beauty comes from loving yourself not forcing yourself to conform to the expectations of others.

I am slowly learning to say that I love my body and mean it. I love the muscles I’m developing. I love the strength that I’m cultivating. I enjoy creating plans of action to meet my personal goals which include relearning to do a front handspring (having gymnasts in the family really helps this goal) and being able to do 10 unassisted pull-ups. I’m sure I’ll be posting videos of those things once I accomplish them.

Celebrating myself and my success is not easy for me. I struggle mightily in drawing attention to myself. I worry that if I praise myself that I’ll just wind up falling, failing immediately, and looking a fool. But I’ve worked hard for this. Today I’m celebrating my accomplishments. I am leaner than I’ve ever been. The numbers shouldn’t mean anything. I don’t want them to have as much power over me as they do but I’d be lying to you if I said they didn’t matter. I will share those numbers with someone if they ask but I’m trying not to make them matter the most to me. I weighted numbers as my worth for a long time. I’m learning to measure myself in my strengths, in the muscles I’m developing. I can deadlift over 130 pounds. I can do two unassisted pull-ups. I can bench press around 70 pounds. I can box jump 30 inches. Those are the numbers that I’m nurturing that matter to me now. I am proud of my body. I’ve never felt that way before.

Alanis, JKnapp, and my 90s Renaissance

I’ve already mentioned that my grandparents often had music happening in their house in some way. My mom was similar. When I was with her, she always had the radio on or MTV (ya know back when they actually played music). So, I was surrounded by music. I have no clue what was the first thing I listened to. There are stories of me and music from right after I learned to talk. I got my mom in trouble with my grandmother by singing Manhunt. I embarrassed my mom on a regular basis in the stores by singing to the top of my lungs. The most memorable to her being my loud solo of Never or These Dreams by Heart in the checkout line of the Piggly Wiggly. I’m sure it was embarrassing having a three-year-old stand in the cart and pretend she was singing for millions of adoring fans.

Everyone has that first album. Not the first one they buy with their own money. Or the first one they ever listen to. I mean that first album that leaves you going, “oh shit, I am seen. I am known. I am not alone.” I don’t remember the first album I bought with my own money. It was probably Tiffany or Paula Abdul or New Kids on the Block. The album for me, the one, was Jagged Little Pill. I was 13 when the it released. It was a precarious point in my life. I don’t think I was supposed to listen to the CD. So, I snuck a copy of my friend’s CD home to listen to. (I did this with a TLC album as well.) The album was catharsis. I listened on repeat. There was something in the anger and the annoyance there that felt like home. I didn’t have a way to express, safely, those feelings so I let Jagged Little Pill do it for me. I didn’t totally get the album. I was 13, of course I didn’t. But whatever Alanis was expressing resonated and echoed all throughout me.

I don’t remember when I bought the album for myself. I do remember though, at 14 I think, I corralled all my “secular” albums in a pile. I broke every last one. The only time my resolve was tested was when I got to Jagged Little Pill. All the other albums, I had cruised through, breaking and collecting the shards, feeling holy in the process. I felt like God was telling me that I needed to only listen to Christian musicians. I hesitated and asked God to exclude this one album. “Please don’t make me do it,” I asked. Thinking myself some modern-day Abraham begging for the life of his son, I pleaded. Silence. Like Abraham, I obeyed, despite my hopes, a heavenly host never descended to stay my hand at the last moment.

I purchased the album again a year later. It was the only album throughout my teens that I obsessively came back to. Had I known I would only repeat the destruction process again in 10^th grade, I’d’ve never wasted the money. I hesitated less the second time. By then, I had Christian “equivalents” to the albums I loved. I convinced myself that Rebecca St. James was just as good as Alanis. Rebecca’s album, God, copied Jagged Little Pill stylistically enough that I was mostly placated. It was never the same. I tried to force my expressions to fit what I thought I was supposed to be, how Christians were supposed to look and act. I did my damnedest to emulate the other girls at church. I held them up on a pedestal. I wanted to listen to what they did, dress the way they dressed, and be their friends. I never managed to get there.

I sang in the choir with them. I hoped that proximity would result in achieving some of their, what I considered, godliness. They mostly weren’t terribly nice people. I don’t know why I held them in such high regard. But I did and it hurt that I could never make myself good enough to be accepted by them. I tried. Oh, but I tried. Where I tried to force Rebecca St. James to fit the hole that Jagged Little Pill left in me, Jennifer Knapp’s album Kansas was an actual balm to all the feelings I felt. It was the second album to imprint on me. There was something there in Jennifer that—like with Alanis—felt like home. The songs still make me cry. The first song I taught myself to play on guitar was Martyrs & Thieves.

I remember not long after the album released, Jennifer Knapp came and played a concert at my church. I was so nervous. I wanted to speak to her so badly. To tell her how Kansas was like Jagged Little Pill for me. That her songs spoke to me in ways that I couldn’t fully articulate. Instead I just sat at the back of the room and watched her talk to others and eventually walk away without ever approaching her. It wasn’t even a large venue. The building held a max of a hundred or so people and there were only maybe thirty of us there. I sang every song quietly with her during the show. And after, prayed to God for the courage to talk to her or for her to see me. Neither happened and I let her walk on past without ever telling her how much her music meant to me.

By the time I got to my senior year, I started to shift again. I reintroduced secular music into my life. I rediscovered a love for Judy Garland and musicals. One of my friends invited me to her house to listen to RENT. I felt something start to crack open inside of me in the ways that, up until that point, only music could cause. I wondered what all I had missed in my self-imposed seclusion. I listened to the radio in the car my grandmother gave me. I was angry so most of it was hard rock. I also listened to the Dixie Chicks. They were the first secular concert I went to. The show was marred by a fight my mother picked with me earlier the day of the show.

College marked more of the same. I listened almost exclusively to Christian music after my freshman year of “debauchery.” I drank alcohol *gasp* the sin and shame of it all. After that first year, I recommitted myself to my faith (yet again?) and doubled down on the holiness track. I didn’t break my CDs this time, but I did return to only Christian bands. Skillet, Jars of Clay, Newsboys, Audio Adrenaline, Chevelle, Plumb, Element 101, Living Sacrifice, Flight 180, and Superchic[k]. The latter became the college obsession. I found an online community for the band and made several friends. I struggled to find people to relate to and this group welcomed me like family. It was my first real experience of finding people like myself online. It would not be the last.

In 2005 I found Tori Amos. I’m not going to talk about Tori here. She will have her own post. Tori led me to a renaissance of music from the 90s that I missed out on (and some I was aware of but didn’t dare listen to) as well as several musicians I still adore and follow religiously. From Tori and a community of her fans, I found Ani DiFranco, Fiona Apple, PJ Harvey, Bjork, Garbage, Radiohead, Muse, Imogen Heap, Jorane, Led Zeppelin, and Metric.

My 90s renaissance lasted a long time. I mourned for myself, all the voices I missed who were there to speak for me in ways that Jagged Little Pill had. In the 90s, I dressed the part of grunge. I was teased for it in my middle school. The kids called me Lifetime Girl and asked regularly when I was going to kill myself. I guess part of me wanted to fight back against them in some way, so I didn’t listen to the music they expected me to. I rebelled against bands I knew (and liked) who fit the label of alternative. I stayed mostly away from Nirvana and Green Day. I loved Garbage’s music, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy their CDs at the time though I could and would sing along with every single they released. Shirley appealed to me the way Alanis did, but it felt too much like a self-fulfilling prophecy to listen to them too. The first of their albums that I bought was Bleed Like Me from, you guessed it, 2005.

I gave myself permission for the first time to fully feel all the anger that boiled inside me. I let music speak for me. I sang out my rage and pain. I stopped trying to pretend it wasn’t there. I stopped piling bandages on wounds that were festering beneath smiles and fakeness. Each album felt like a layer being peeled away. And Tori was the antiseptic that I found to, at last, kill the infection that left me itching and uncomfortable in my own skin.

Whatcha Listenin' To?

I love music. I love music almost as much as I love books. There isn’t a genre of music that I can’t find something to enjoy. The talent it takes to compose, to play, and to sing aren’t things everyone possesses. Now, I believe that with enough practice, people can become proficient enough with an instrument or compose basic melodies. I think some people are just gifted though. I play several instruments, but I wouldn’t say I’m good at any of them anymore. With work, I could regain my proficiency. But I’ve never been and will never be gifted with music.

My grandfather could play piano by ear. He heard most songs through a minor key (which probably explains my preference to those kinds of songs) and so when he played, it was transposed in his brain. He barely needed to hear a song more than once to go to his tiny keyboard and play it back. He was brilliant like that. He taught me so much. Between his playing and my grandmother’s singing and the musicals she and I watched together, it’s no wonder that I nearly constantly have music on.

Every time I sit down to write, whether this or fiction, the first thing I do is put on music. I often create playlists to suit the mood of the fiction I write. I take time going through all my songs deciding whether it fits the tone of the piece or the character I’m inhabiting that day. When I start to write something new, I spend at least a day generating the playlist. There are three such playlists in my music player currently for each of the stories I’ve been working on. When I start the second book in my series, I’ll create a whole new playlist. Some of the songs will reappear, certainly, but different characters mean different vibes, means different songs.

I am absolutely one of those people who associates albums with certain life events or seasons or moods. Or worse: exes. There is more than one band lost due to being too tied up with memories of various exes. Same with periods in my life that I’d rather not spend too much time remembering. Sometimes new memories can be made around those artists, but often, they wind up lost to the sea of things I’d like to leave behind.

It always surprises me when I haven’t heard a song in years, and I can somehow still remember all the words. That’s just how it is with music. My brain stores it. I used to play games with myself when I was bored in class (which happened often, I have the attention span of a fruit fly) where I would write a song lyric, then connect another song to the last word of the lyric. I had pages in my notebooks in college of that where class notes should’ve been. My wife is similar with music. Her friends used to call her “The Jukebox.” It’s one of only a handful of interests we share. And even with that, our tastes in the music is drastically disparate. We are true opposites in most ways.

My wife even has a much more visceral response to music than I do. Where I find music alleviates the things I already feel, she winds up mirroring the mood of the music playing. So, while I may listen to a sad song and feel the sadness slip away, she may listen and feel sadness well up inside her.

Music is like that though. It evokes. It calms. It excites. It stimulates. It depresses. It does things we don’t even notice sometimes because we weren’t paying attention. Music makes you forget. Music makes you remember. And, according to Madonna, music makes the people come together. Yeah.

Poetry Heals

My first poet was Emily Dickinson. I think she’s probably first for a lot of people. Her works are approachable enough and well enough known for any beginner so sit down and recognize.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.

Most of us know this one and can recite the first stanza or at least part of it. I don’t know if it’s the most well-known Dickinson poem, but it’s got to be top three. There is something comforting to me about the poems she wrote. Perhaps it’s my own penchant toward melancholy. I can be a touch dramatic. The thing is, for all the books I’ve read over the course of my life, I never touched poetry until college. Sure, poems were assigned reading in middle and high school. I never sought out books of poetry though. I think part of me always assumed that poetry was a bit above me. It was for fancier people. I wrote poetry because I wanted to be fancy. But I didn’t read it.

That seems like a contradiction, I know. When asked to pick a favorite poet for a report in 9^th grade, I chose a Christian singer and a song she wrote. I justified that songwriting was a kind of poetry. It was a kind of arrogance that I must’ve sold well enough because the report earned me an A. I didn’t understand or appreciate the complexity and nuance poetry offered. It’s always been easy for me to rhyme. I’ve Weird Al’d songs my whole life. I assumed poetry could be distilled down to rhyming. No one took the time to teach me otherwise. And I certainly didn’t seek out the education to teach myself otherwise.

I’ve spoken a bit about the stringent morality that I adhered to through my youth. I was one of “those” Christians. You know the ones. The ones you turn around and run away from because all they do is judge and condemn. The ones who believe fully in their uprightness and that their path is the only true path to salvation. It makes me nauseous to think about who I used to be. I’d love to sweep it under the rug, pretend it’s not there, and let my life as I live it now speak for itself. I can’t talk about poetry without spending a bit of space talking about myself and who I used to be. It sets up the framework for the kinds of poets that I found and who shaped me profoundly once I knew to look for them. As much as novels were an escape, poetry was a journey of introspection and self-reflection. They held up a mirror to show me who I was and who I had the capacity to become. So, indulge me a moment in speaking about who I was.

I was a terrible person. The worst kind, because I was so assured of my virtue. I wrote poetry about my “faith.” I created villains of humans just trying to live their lives to their best ability. I wrote about things I didn’t understand but was told were wrong. I took it all at face value. I attacked mercilessly with my written word. And I was utterly convinced that Jesus approved wholeheartedly of my actions and behaviors.

I could explain it away. I could downplay the damage I probably did to people in my zeal. At the end of the day, I was cruel. I took what I was taught about God and used it as weapons to devastate “nonbelievers.” I was confident I was doing it for their own good. I surrounded myself with people who held the same or similar beliefs and never questioned for even a moment whether I was missing the point of Christianity entirely.

All through this, I wrote. I composed poetry to persuade sinners to repent. Sermons to uplift believers in their faith—so long as it aligned with mine. I acted in plays and sang in choirs at church and in events all working to the same purpose of “bringing others to Christ.” I thought I had it all figured out. My life path. I was going to be a youth minister (because I was taught that women didn’t lead churches) and I would be married to the pastor of a church. We would shepherd our flock to eternal damnation all in a bastardization of Christ’s commands.

At some point, toward the end of undergrad my writing started to shift. I started to question. In part because I started to actively question my sexuality. College introduced me to all kinds of people. Good men to whom I should’ve be attracted. Books I’d never heard of. Musicians that started to open things in me I didn’t know existed. Movies and television shows that would never have been watched had I still lived at home. My poems, plays, and short stories started to be less about “saving” others and more about questioning whether God actually intended for us to essentially hate one another.

I got a job at a Christian bookstore during my undergrad years. My first manager pulled me aside one day and offered me a handful of CDs he thought I would like. He was paring down his collection and there were some musicians he specifically felt like I needed. I wasn’t ready for them. I turned them down, but he offered me Ani DiFranco and Tori Amos. Two women who would later become pivotal along my voyage of self-discovery. In that moment, though, I saw sinners that I wanted no part of.

When I finished undergrad, I didn’t immediately go to grad school. I took three years off. Most of that time, I worked as an assistant manager in another location of the same Christian bookstore chain. When I started grad school, I went back to the original store where I worked, returning to part time. I wrote poetry nearly every day. It was my escape. I smoked clove cigarettes in my car, listened to Tori Amos, and wrote. My poetry was no longer about Jesus and the evil of sin.

These new poems were about the complex beauty of humanity. The faith that I believed Jesus actually called Christians to lead: one of love, hope, and acceptance. They were also my first attempts at exorcising my demons. I remember I shared one poem with co-workers that had a line saying something to the effect of we shouldn’t judge or hate homosexuals. The disgust that one line evoked is something I will never forget. (Granted these were the same people who told me I was going to hell because I voted for Barack Obama. One said, in the middle of the crowded store, “How can you stand before a holy God and justify voting for that man?” The hatred that dripped from her could’ve left scorch marks in the carpet beneath her feet.)

If I could erase all these years of horrible behavior, I would happily do so. I am miles away from this person today. I still judge people on occasion (old habits die hard), but now it’s based on how they treat others. It you act like a dumpster fire like I used to, you get the side eye and probably an earful about how to not be a dickhead. God help you if you come at me with Bible verses about the evils of sins because I can and will quote back at you and put you in your place. One of the positives that came from my upbringing is that I can lay a pretty hefty smackdown on people who want to wield the Bible like a half-loaded weapon.

The things we consume help shape us if we let them. In positive ways or negative ones. I shifted. I changed. I fell in love with poetry. These new voices that whispered about mysteries I didn’t know to even dream about. There is something innately holy about poetry. It’s beautiful. It’s seductive. It’s challenging. The right poets can lead you down a path of discovery so unexpected that you couldn’t possibly return to who you were before you met them. For each person, those poets are different. My poets won’t necessarily be your poets and yours might not be mine.

Each left their marks, little ink spots creating a kaleidoscope on my soul. I mentioned last time that my former creative writing professor introduced me to Audre Lorde. The Black Unicorn was one of the first poetry collections I bought. Every poem in that book taught me something. I still have the receipt—long since faded—tucked in the pages marking my last stop through the book.

I’m not sure I can pick any single poem to say this is the one. This is the piece that sparked the wildfire to burn away the chaff. Audre brought the matches, Emily piled the kindling, Rilke doused it with gasoline, Pablo Neruda was the wind to stoke the flames higher, TS Eliot and Edna St. Vincent Millay danced in the firelight, and WB Yeats said a prayer of benediction over the ceremony.

I am everchanging. The beauty of poetry is that it can shift shape as well. A poem that looked a certain way to you years ago may look different today. A stanza may read a different way now that you’ve lived a few years. A line that once devastated may be the healing balm for which your soul is searching.

What poems changed you? What poets taught you things about life you’d never thought of before? What lines bubble in your brain? When was the last time you wrote a poem?

Lose Yourself (In a Book)

Books! Oh books. My oldest, dearest friends. I used to spend hours reading or being read to. Before I knew how, my grandmother would read to me from a blue hardcover called The World’s Best Fairytales. It was a two volume Reader’s Digest anthology from 1981. She read from them so often that I got to a point where I could move my finger along the words and recite the stories verbatim. I don’t remember which ones we read together. Maybe if I could see the books again, I could recall. I just remember how loved I felt in those moments with my grandmother.

My grandmother and I visited the public library regularly. We were either checking out VHS tapes of old musicals or spending hours looking at and picking out books to read together. I often found myself plopped on the ground in front of the bottom shelf of kid’s biographies. There was a collection called the Childhood of Famous Americans biography series. I read nearly all of them.

When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite times of day was library time. We got to go have stories read to us picked out books to read. I always wound up with armfuls of A Tale from the Care Bears books. I read that series probably twice through before I moved on to other books.

To say that I was a voracious reader was more than a bit of an understatement. I frequently read books well beyond my age group. It added to my weirdness. I found it easier to hold conversations with the adults around me than I did the other kids. I used vocabulary dissimilar to my peers and where the language was the same, I applied the words in—we’ll say—unique ways. I went to elementary school in a town with a population of under a thousand. Around Louisville, where I spent my high school years, I would’ve been able to easily find others like me. As it was, I struggled to make friends. Like a lot of people I know now, I got put into the Gifted and Talented program. When it was explained to me, I thought it would be an advanced class type situation where we would learn things our peers weren’t learning. We spent the hour once a week doing art projects or reading silently to ourselves. It was a throw away class, but I was happy to spend the time reading.

Had I been allowed, I’d’ve spent every recess reading, but I was never permitted to bring a book onto the playground unless I was being punished (I sometimes abused this just so I could sit and read). Instead, I’d make up stories in my head about daring adventures or play pretend with the boys in class. Despite my protests, I was always playing the role of damsel in distress. Though I often fought the villains myself when the boys took to long to “rescue” me. Much to their dismay. Because the boys liked playing with me, most of the girls hated me. Their parents would often try and force them to be friends with me, but I inevitably found out, often the hard way, how little they liked having me around. Typically, by being shouted at for being strange and told I was only invited because their parents made them.

It was a lonely childhood, but I had books. (And movies which we’ll address later.) I was never truly alone because I had the company of the entirety of Wayside School, or Ramona Quimby, or the Babysitter’s Club girls, or mystery solving Mandy, or, of course, my favorite Anne Shirley. I was never far from companionship. I earned Book-It rewards like a damn boss. No one came close to me in number of books read every week. Until 4^th grade when I started reading books for adults. Then my numbers began to dwindle.

After the movie version of Jurassic Park came out, I begged my mother to let me read the real book. I’d read the kid’s movie adaptation multiple times, and it was okay, but I wanted more. She relented and I devoured it. I finished it in just a handful of days. It was the first experience that I recall of falling fully into a book. It began an addiction to Michael Crichton novels. I read Sphere, Andromeda Strain, Congo, and The Lost World as quickly as I could. These books let me disappear completely. They did for me what some movies I’d watch did. They let me find a character and become that person for however long I was reading. And a strange, new phenomena occurred that didn’t happen when I read the kids’ books. When I would read, the words would vanish, and I could see the pictures in my mind. I wasn’t reading about dinosaurs or underwater research stations. I was physically in them. I had to have more.

Did I understand everything I read? Absolutely not, and I’m pretty confident that was the only reason that my mother allowed me to read the books. After I read every Michael Crichton book we had in the house, I moved on to see what else I could find. Next came The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux, then A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickins, then Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. As you can see, my mom kept classics in the house mostly. The little Penguin Classics they sold cheaply at bookstores. I read Wuthering Heights, Gone with the Wind (my mother was OBSESSED but we won’t get into that bag of mess), Frankenstein, and others I can’t recall at the moment.

At some point during middle school, I stopped reading so much. I finally started to make some friends. I guess some part of me thought that I didn’t need books the way I did before. I still read, don’t get that wrong, but not like previously. I think the book I spent the most time reading from middle school to high school (and part of college) was the Bible. I nearly had the beast memorized by the time I gave brain space back to other literature.

Before 9^th grade, my family moved from Southeastern Kentucky to Southern Indiana. I left all my friends and my confidence behind. I rediscovered books a bit. I read Star Wars novels because my stepfather had them. I started watching a TV show called Babylon 5 and so I started reading all the books based on that show. (The first fanfiction I ever wrote was a self-insert for Babylon 5. I created a character called Catherine Dienova who was the secret half-sister of Susan Ivanova. I was 15, leave me alone.)

I hated most of the high school assigned readings. The only readings I really enjoyed were poems by Maya Angelou. I loathed The Great Gatsby. It still makes the list of worst books I’ve ever read. My wife told me about the books that she read her senior year of high school and honestly, I was so jealous. She read some great books that I never even considered or had suggested to read. I didn’t want to take the test to get into the AP English class (I clearly should’ve despite major test anxiety) so I took the college prep class which was supposed to be the equivalent of an honors class. My teacher meant well, and she was nice enough but the class was not challenging. She assigned Animal Farm to us to read at one point, stating that it would be difficult for us to follow. My wife said she read that book in something like 9^th grade. She even signed my senior memories book saying that it was a challenge to “keep me on my toes.” I did not feel prepped for college. Much as I hate to admit it (because we hated each other) my 11^th grade English teacher did more to prepare me for college than the college prep class.

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”—Jane Eyre

I don’t remember why I picked up Jane Eyre my senior year. I don’t know if someone suggested I read it or if I just found it on my own. I carried it with me everywhere while I was reading it. Every second I got to read more; I took. It spoke to me in ways I’m not quite sure I can even articulate. Between the conversational style of writing, acknowledging me as a reader, to majorly identifying with Jane, I was hooked. I took my time with the book, as much as I could. I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to keep reading it forever. It’s a book that I try to reread once a year (I don’t succeed often but around December every year, I pick it back up again and at least start rereading it. While I never really liked Mr. Rochester, I loved my Jane. She was smart, funny, capable, and despite the many tragedies that littered her life, hopeful. She was a bit like Anne, if Anne had never met the Cuthberts. Where Anne was given a home in which to grow and mature into a healthy, functioning adult, Jane had to find whatever kind of healthy functioning worked through her layers of trauma. She was resilient like no character I had ever met before. Her experiences should have broken her, by rights, and yet she thrived in her own way.

Somehow or the other, I managed to miss out on reading Jane Austen books. I’m not quite sure how it happened. I’ve since read Pride and Prejudice and seen several movie adaptations of some of her other works. My mind always connected the two authors and I believed Charlotte Bronte to be the superior author, so I never felt inclined to read Austen. I like Pride and Prejudice, but it never gave me what Jane Eyre gave. There is something more gritty and real about Jane than about Elizabeth Bennet to me. I suppose I’ve always had a soft spot for the orphan. I’ve film and miniseries adaptations of Mansfield Park and honestly that novel is the most likely that I would enjoy (not that Fanny Price is an orphan). It’s been on my to-read list for ages. I just never work my way around to it. Perhaps one holiday season I’ll give Jane Eyre a break and read Mansfield Park. Highly unlikely, but a nice thought.

When I was in college, I had a creative writing professor during my last semester. Her name was Dr. Estella Conwill Majozo. She changed my life. She introduced me to authors I had never heard of, some I had but had never read, and encouraged my writing. From her, I learned about Zora Neale Hurston, was reintroduced to Maya Angelou, and Alice Walker. After the first writing assignment, she pulled me aside and told me that my prose resembled the style of Nikki Giovanni and that I should read her work to expand my horizons. She also told me about Audre Lorde (who immediately became one of my top three favorite poets). Dr. Majozo believed in my writing in a way I’ve never experienced before or since. She told me that I should seek publication for my works. That I could tell stories that mattered. In a way that drew people in. No one ever believed in me before. I will be forever thankful for the seeds of hope that she planted. She made a mark on me and introduced me to the writer who published the book that has made the single biggest imprint on my life.

“If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it.”—Possessing the Secret of Joy

Alice Walker is problematic. I have since learned things about what she believes that I just cannot support. I didn’t know then what I know now about her as a person and her anti-Semitism. I read Possessing the Secret of Joy not long after graduating college. I remember sitting in my car outside a coffeeshop when I finished it. I closed the book and sobbed. I sobbed for so long I wasn’t sure I would be able to stop.

If you would’ve asked me why I was crying, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to answer in a way that justified the level of grief I felt. I cried for the characters in the book, and for the real women who experienced the things Tashi did. I cried for the chords that it struck in me when the secret of joy was finally revealed. It’s not easy to explain when something plucks a string in your heart in just the exact right way to undo you. And not undo as in destroy but undo as in unravel knots that kept you in a chokehold. It was freeing and humbling and overwhelming with its frankness. Up to that point, I hadn’t really read a book that dealt so candidly with trauma and its effects and sexuality and its expressions. It was not a book I was ready for before that exact moment. Any sooner and I’d’ve put the book away a chapter in and not finished it. It was an example of Divine Timing.

It was also the first book that I read that was composed in first person for various characters. From a creative perspective, I was intrigued by how Walker kept everything so easy to follow. The perspective jumps in the hands of someone less capable would’ve left the story jarring and muddled. Somehow the threads wove together, and the voices played off one another in a way that was inviting rather than off-putting. I was fascinated just as much by the construction as I was moved by the content.

I spent the next few years devouring stories written by African American women. My eyes started to really open to the privilege my skin afforded me. I started to realize how so many of the ways I was brought up to believe were bullshit. The lessons that some members of my family tried to teach me finally started to unstick. I’m ashamed the process of undoing racist beliefs didn’t start earlier. I’d love to go back in time and slap around my younger self a bit. It’s a lifelong process to untangle the racism (subtle and overt) that we are inundated with since birth in this country. I fuck up on a regular basis. I like to hope, however, that I can take criticism with grace at this point in my life, and genuinely make change to my behavior. I’ve been blessed with some beautifully patient (and sometimes not so patient but still beautiful) friends who hold me accountable. I digress a bit, but I think it bears mentioning that accountability is always good, and growth only happens when we allow people to call us on our shit and really listen when they say we hurt them. “I’m sorry. Thank you. I’ll do better,” from a genuine attitude, these words can heal small hurts we cause.

“All your questions can be answered, if that is what you want. But once you learn your answers, you can never unlearn them.”—American Gods

If I were to point you to an author who, creatively, was the biggest influence in my life, I’d point you immediately to Neil Gaiman. If you’ve read his work—in either comic form or novel form—you know this man is ridiculously creative. I was introduced to Neil through Tori Amos. I can and probably will talk about Tori AT LENGTH when we come to the music portion of our program. The first Neil I read was Neverwhere. I knew that it was the novelization based on the BBC mini-series and in the version, I read, it felt obvious that it was pulled into novel from script form. I fell into the story immediately, however. The choppiness of the writing itself tried to draw me out several times but the story was so compelling that I couldn’t quit. Then I picked up Stardust.  Stardust read like a comic book to me. It was sparse and again still a bit choppy. The story was so good that I soldiered through.

Finally, I came to American Gods. Compared to Stardust, it was easily triple in size. Part of me worried it would continue the trend of being compelling but choppy and I wasn’t sure I could get through such a large novel like that. I opened the book on a lunch break at work one afternoon. Like Jurassic Park in my youth, I disappeared immediately into the book. I fell headfirst right next to Shadow Moon in this amazing world. I was furious when my break was over and I had to get back to work. I couldn’t stop thinking about the story and wondering what was next. As soon as my shift ended, I drove home. I stuck my nose back in the book and did not remove it until my eyes closed against my brain’s wishes at 5am. I spent every single free second of my day reading this book. I finished it in three days and immediately started it again. I had to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

American Gods was the perfect intersection of my interests. The idea that the gods lived among us, brought to this country by immigrants over the years, tickled every part of my imagination. I was introduced to deities I had never heard of before and happily spent days researching to learn about their stories. After that, I had to own everything Neil had ever written. I sought every comic book, every collection of short stories, all his novels; I needed to read everything. I came close enough to owning the Neil Gaiman collection (I’m a couple books behind in both owning and reading, and a few comics are missing from my collection.) The Sandman series remains one of my favorite comic series of all time. I even accomplished one of my bucket list Halloween costume goals a couple years ago and went as Death of the Endless.

It’s been a long time since I’ve picked up a book that made me lose myself or feel something so deeply it resonated in my bones. My list of books to read is far too long. I find that I get overwhelmed by it sometimes and then wind up not reading anything. It’s frustrating because I miss the feeling I’ve found in books.

What are some of your book recommendations? Why do you love the books you love? Who is your favorite author?