Stand and Deliver

It’s crunch time here. Time to step up, to kick it into the next gear. The time when I become a man. The time when I leave cliché behind and, you know, do it right.

Except that the anxiety is crippling me and I am FREAKING OUT. It seems that when the pressure gets really bad I am not rising to the challenge but just folding like a cheap card table. I knew this time was coming and unfortunately there was nothing much I could do but try and be ready for it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I got here, with this year and everything. It’s ten years since I started university for the first time and since I first made plans to do Honours in history. Back then I was planning to do double Honours – a thesis year for history, and another one in Italian. I thought that I would probably do post-grad law, probably not at the institution I was attending, and that when I did that my life would get better. Because university was letting me down.

I was the most miserable fuck at school you ever met. I know everyone says that, and it’s probably true more often than not, but I really was. I cried so easily and so often, I was that student in class that everybody hates because they know all the answers and never shut up, and the only people I was friendly with were in other years and I came to know through music. And that last bit only happened my last four years after I moved schools. The situation at the house (I never called it home) was untenable and often violent. Work was another ball game – for the first time I had friends, a couple of whom were close in age to me, but it was also the scene for some of the worst stuff that has ever happened to me.

I tell the school story only to illustrate that university, in my mind, was going to solve all my problems. I was told teachers who cared about me that university was where I was meant to be, that intellectually and emotionally it would satisfy me.  I came to see uni as a field of dreams, where I would be happy, where my classes would all be incredible, where I would have friends, where I would do well and be a success.

And of course it wasn’t like that. My subjects were either very difficult or not demanding at all. The grading scale at university was a shock to the system, I struggled with having to type all my work (I didn’t have my own computer) and I was working far too much for far too little. The trauma that happened to me two years earlier was coming back to haunt me and I was on the fence about my singing – I knew I had to make a decision about whether to continue or not. To top it off I ended up coming down with glandular fever (that’s mono to you Yanks). And I didn’t realise until after.

Uni did eventually get better. I found out in third year that it was possible to have great classes and make wonderful friends. But then my life came apart at the seams and I dropped out, never even officially deferring properly. The darkness consumed my life so completely that everything before seemed better by comparison, which of course was ridiculous. It was just that I couldn’t cope anymore at all.

And now I’m back (from outer space). And this year I am having the best classes I have ever had, mostly full of incredible people. I am making new friends and keeping old ones, I have a mentor who is making it clear that he is in my life for the long haul*, my relationship with my sister is mostly as I have always wanted it and I am getting the help I need for my illness.

So I’m trying to remember these good things even while I try to breathe again after a panic attack that I had to run out of class to give in to. I try to remember how content this work makes me even while the anxiety keeps me up for days at a time and yet prevents me from concentrating. I try to remember what my mentor is teaching me by example: that being soft and compassionate is a strength, not a weakness, and one that makes me better at what I do. 

So I’m going to do my best with what I have, in the time I have. This year is a privilege and I know how lucky I am. So as much as I hate these deadlines, I am working on things that are important and that have meaning. For the first time in a long time I have more to be grateful for than not.  I’m hoping that knowledge, and that gratitude, keeps my head above water.

*more on that another time.

This was going to be a bitchy post but I hope it became something better than that. Sorry for all the sad stories. 

Dangling Conversation

This is one of those blog posts where I apologise but don’t apologise for not posting. Like every one who writes one of these posts, I have really good reasons.

I haven’t actually spelled this out, but one of the things I promised myself when I started my blog was that I wouldn’t post when I am in the throes of my illness. I’ve explained before that I really only experience the lows with my illness, that I don’t get the manic highs people with other types of bipolar experience. When things get bad I tend to hide myself away. And things haven’t been good. My illness can be a bitch, in addition to certain really bad things in my past that haunt me from time to time.

In addition, the class I was initially worried about turned out to be a problem again. I just never felt like I got my teeth into it and was very unclear about what was required of me. There has fortunately been a really good solution, in that I have joined my mentor’s seminar at his offering. Yes, he’s bending the rules a little bit by having me in it (it’s a long story) but once again he came through for me. It does mean, however, that I have to play catch up in a way that is not ideal when it comes to planning the seminar paper due in about 9 weeks. There are two seminar papers due at the end of June, both about 5000-5500 words each. I’m less worried about writing them and more worried about picking the right thing to write about and it’s getting down to the wire now.

I’ve also actually started to write the thesis. This has been terrifying, tortuous and…some other word beginning with ‘t’. This is one of those times when I am trying to trust what the mentor tells me: that if I listen to the sources and follow what they are telling me, then I will end up where I am meant to. There are times when I panic about this approach and that I am missing something here. But I know this is one of the shallow parts of the pool I have to wade through; the depths are waiting for me, just a little further on. And yes, I have that analogy the right way around – at least where I’m concerned.

It’s just been a rough time and as a rather private person who writes a blog (who knew we were out there?) that is a conflict of interest if there ever was one.

In any case, a friendly hello to all five of you reading. We’ve all kind of been quiet lately and I look forward to hearing all the news as everyone blogs a little more regularly again. 

So Wrong...

....and happy to be.


The morning (almost) all girls class was great and will be challenging in just the right way, I think. And the afternoon class was even better. There are four of us taking both classes and I have thematic overlap in my project with a couple of them and stuff to learn from the others.


Something that took me by surprise was how excited I got listening to what everyone else is working on this year. Totally thrilling! Everyone really wants to be there (this isn't really a year you sign up for unless you want to be doing this, at least on some level) and that shows in the class participation. I am guessing it will show in the quality of the various presentations that take place throughout first semester.


But lots of work! I was right about that. Some pretty scary deadlines looming ahead and the main challenge for now is to pick the right thing to write about for the big research papers due at the end of June. 


I'm ready for this though. This is why I used my summer effectively and why I did so much preparatory reading. I'm ready.


It also helped that the mentor loves what I have so far. My Honours excitement level is through the roof.


First day = major win. 

Boyz

I’ve never been a girls’ girl. I have 3 brothers, a father who is a much more forceful personality than my mother, and guys have been my friends basically since I was old enough to select my own company. I didn’t become close friends with a girl until I was in my twenties and even then it took a while. (This is one of the reasons that school was so miserable for me, it was all girls and, almost always, female teachers.*) I am, quite happily, one of the guys in most group settings.

I was in our nation’s fair capital a few weeks back to attend a couple of amazing exhibitions that were well worth the trip and one of the perks was meeting up with several very close friends (all male but one) who live and work there.  It was great, we all went out to dinner and caught up. And I was comfortable. For some reason I feel safe when it’s like this. It’s the same when I am with my country gang (who are all currently evacuated thanks to NSW flooding) – I am safe and loved and understood.  When I’m at a party, I always gravitate to the guys, who can often be found outside while the girls talk in the kitchen, a phenomenon Lyn has talked about before.

There are exceptions to this rule. On the same trip to Canberra I went to a party where I only knew the couple taking me and ended up having the two most interesting conversations of the night with women. Progress! Of course the main exception to this rule is all of you; I’m fairly confident any one of you who is a regular reader is a woman and I couldn’t feel more a part of this wonderful online community. But the fact remains that in person I still pick the guys. It’s a comfort thing.

Except tomorrow morning one of my seminar classes starts and it is an all girls class with a female teacher. This seriously makes me want to throw up. It’s a small class, it will probably hold steady at about seven of us, plus the teacher who is an unknown quantity. It is a threatening scenario, in my eyes, and I am deeply uncomfortable at just the thought of it.

The catch up dinner in Canberra? The one other female at the table is a good friend and I was excited to see her. But I was thick enough to express to her my concerns about this class and why. The response I got was hardly reassuring: ‘That’s really stupid, Moz.’

This friend is not usually unkind. In fact she is a really nice person who gets on well with everyone and about whom no-one has a bad word to say. Especially other girls. I doubt she has ever sat in a room full of people and felt out of place on a regular basis. So perhaps she wasn’t the best person to express my concerns to. But the fact remains that I am worried sick about this situation and what it means for two hours every week. Just today Emma talked about being back in class and being a good student, something I have never mastered. I am always surprised when anyone from class becomes my friend, because I think I can be a little difficult in the classroom, mostly because of how out of place I felt growing up. Did people dislike me because I had all the answers and wasn’t always delicate? Or did I become like that because no-one at school liked me? Cause and effect? Post hoc ergo propter hoc? Who knows, but it remains that this class has me by the balls and it hasn’t even started yet.

Maybe this is really stupid. Maybe if I was in a class room full of all of you guys it would be different. But for now I won’t be sleeping tonight - damn anxiety.

In other news I am banning myself from making a porn related joke for a week. They’re just too easy.

*Single sex schools are much more the norm here, at least at high school level. I went to all girls’ schools for 12 of my 13 years of schooling. 

Kids

Three of my best and oldest friends, all guys, live in a regional town about six and a half hours on a train ride outside of Sydney.* One of them is originally from Sydney and it was through him that I met the other two, and we’ve kind of been a gang ever since. Or rather, they’re a gang five and a half weeks out of six and I join them as an honorary country girl** the other few days, mostly when I am in town to do a wedding or just manage to get stuff sorted out so that I can be there a little. All three of them are married and, as of late last December, they all now have young children.

The boys all married very well to incredible women I am so glad to call my friends. And, I hope I can say this without sounding overly condescending, I am so proud of how they live their lives and treat their partners and now raise their children. They work and play with integrity and passion and they always want to be better.

More than two thirds of my best friends are married and most of them have been for at least two years or more. But only the guy friends have children so far. It has been a joy to meet their children and see what fully formed personalities the children have even as infants.

This most recent baby was born to the original friend of the group, the one who came from Sydney. He and I are only a few weeks apart in age and, despite having many female siblings (he also comes from a very orthodox Catholic family), it is me that he turns to when he needs sisterly advice. I was able to spare a whole week to visit in mid January and I stayed with him and his wife and their newborn for the duration of my stay.

My insomnia was being especially bitchy the week I was there and I was also on the edge of cracking something special with my thesis research, I could feel it. So I ended up offering to stay up with the baby about five of the seven nights I was in town. This tiny little girl was only a few weeks old and her parents were stupid/desperate enough to entrust her to me for a while. (More fool them, I somehow ended up singing songs with dirty words in them the first night. I was tired, give me a break.)

What was astonishing to me was how quickly I became attached to her, in a very real way. Other friends have tiny children too, but I am not tied to them like this. Part of it is the delirious time of little rest that you spend with them that leaves you in that bizarre, blurry world that only comes from chronic lack of sleep. But it’s also just that she was just so tiny and I held her so close and just didn’t want anything bad to happen to her, not ever. And that smell! That smell at the top of her head that that is just so intoxicating! What the hell is that about? Is it so one still loves her and doesn’t throw her out the window even though one might be going completely batty from lack of proper rest? And now one should stop talking about ‘one’, but it’s OK because one hasn’t slept in several days and one is CLEARLY MAD.

I spent more than my fair share of growing up caring for children younger than me. I am the second of five kids myself and have (literally dozens of) cousins so I am good with children, I kind of had to be. I have never doubted that. But oddly enough I was always indifferent to having them myself. Maybe it was partly that I saw clearly the sacrifices my parents made to have all of us and educate us the way they saw fit, sacrifices that I don’t think were worth it a lot of the time. It’s also that my relationship with my parents has always been difficult and different from my siblings. I have been a complete failure as a daughter, and that feeling as a daughter has made me cautious about having my own family. I was not the daughter my parents should have had. Lyn wrote recently that one of her biggest fears as a possible prospective mother was that her kid/kids might be truly shitty – my perspective is obviously skewed because I’m the reverse of this fear. I am the truly shitty kid, at least in their eyes. I know that when they held me as a child the life I am living is not the one they wanted for me, not even a little bit.

When you throw my illness into the mix there’s a whole new host of problems. Will I pass it on? What if childbirth does something terrifying to me and I have psychotic episodes? How can I be a good mother when I have so much trouble looking after myself?

The truth is probably a mixed bag. I would probably be about the same as a lot of you who have kids already or who are thinking about it, in that I would probably be really good at it and probably really bad at it, and probably both at the same time. Lots of probably-s.

What I do know is this: I would need to be with someone who really wanted kids. Someone who was prepared to help with the everything. The cooking, the cleaning, the driving, the disciplining, the reading, the homework, the tears, the laughter, the everything. Because I could never, NEVER, do this myself.

And I could never handle more than two. NEVER.

Quite a few of you have posted about kids lately, most of you uncertain as to whether you want them at all. My talking about children probably seems laughingly hypothetical, given I am about twenty or so steps away from being ready to have kids. But one of the things I want to know when I do eventually start dating again is whether or not I want my own little Mozettes (yeah I just cringed too, but I’m keeping it). Given I’ll be a little older, it’s probably something  I should know. Plus, having kids is usually one of the big deal breakers in relationships, I think. If one of you wants kids and one of you doesn’t, then it’s probably not a good idea to keep going.

At the moment I’m still not sure what I want, I barely just figured out that I maybe want to start dating again one day. But I do know that it will be hard and good all at the same time, and in my experience everything worthwhile is like that.

So that’s a start. And it wouldn’t be all bad, they could have my awesome music collection to play with. WHO WOULDN’T WANT THAT?

In the meantime, babysitting is kind of great. And that smell just knocks me dead.

*I’ve already threatened to write a post at some point about long train rides and I’m kind of pissed that Meg over on APW stole my thunder. I’ve known about the magic of a long train ride for years.

** You can call yourself an honorary country girl if you’ve been visiting a regional town as much as I have, if you’ve worked there for at least a certain amount of time and if you can ride a motorbike and kill a snake. At least, these are the entry requirements for this particular town and my group of friends. Labels and accessories for other country towns are each sold separately. 

Lisztomania (Take 2)

I thought it might be worth posting the mix CD playlists from the years I've been making them. This also serves as an electronic reminder of what I used and when. For the record, the 2009 mix CD is my favourite and the one I would leave completely as it is. 


The annoying thing is when you pick a track from an artist or band and then the next year they put out an even better album and you can't use them because of the stupid rules (please see Gotye, Sia, Sarah Blasko and Glasvegas, just for starters). Admittedly they're my stupid rules, but even so. (Refresher: I can't use artists or bands I have used previously. But solo and side projects are OK.)

2005 - Welcome to the Programme

Midnight Oil - Read About It

Clouds - SoulEater

George Harrison - What Is Life?

Kings of Leon - Wasted Time

The Cops - Cop City Music

Eskimo Joe - Girl

Mercury Rev - Funnybird

Blind Joe Johnson - Long Gone Train

Patti Smith - Free Money

Ryan Adams - To Be The One

PJ Harvey - Send His Love To Me

Neil Young - Old Man

Sarah Blasko - At Your Best

Beck - Lost Cause

Garbage - Silence is Golden

Radiohead - sulk

Modest Mouse - Float On

Ed Kuepper - Everything I've Got Belongs To You

2008 - This Page Has Been Intentionally Left Blank

Glasvegas - Flowers and Football Tops

David Bowie - Rebel, Rebel

Interpol - No 'I' In Threesome

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Today's Lesson

The Smiths - The Boy With The Thorn In His Side 

Ladyhawke - Magic

TV on the Radio - Golden Age

Augie March - One Crowded Hour

Elbow - Grounds for Divorce

The Cranberries - Linger

Edith Piaf - Milord

Elton John - Funeral for a Friend (love lies bleeding)

Sam Cooke - Wonderful World

2009 - Attic Language

Glen Hansard and Marketa Iglova - Falling Slowly

Sia - Day Too Soon

Björk - Big Time Sensuality

Hilltop Hoods - Chase That Feeling

The Pretenders - Kid

M.I.A. - Boyz

Arcade Fire - Intervention

Gillian Welch - Everything Is Free

Florence + The Machine - Cosmic Love

The Presets - Yippyo-Ay

The Clash - Should I Stay Or Should I Go

Whitley - Head, First, Down

Phoenix - Lisztomania

The Polyphonic Spree - Light & Day/Reach for the Sun

2010 - You Rule (So Hard)

INXS - Just Keep Walking

La Roux - Bulletproof

Iggy Pop - The Passenger

Washington - Navy Blues

Kanye West - All of the Lights

Gotye - The Only Way

Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks

Daniel Johnston - True Love Will Find You In The End

Laura Marling - I Speak Because I Can

The Walkmen - Juveniles

Paul Dempsey - Bird In A Basement

Grinderman - Palaces of Montezuma

LCD Soundsystem - Home

Nina Simone - I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free

2011 - something something madness

Sweet - Blockbuster

Wilco - I Might

Herman Düne - Tell Me Something I Don't Know

Sparkadia - China

Psycho Killer (live) - Talking Heads

College feat. Electric Youth - A Real Hero

Emma Louise - Jungle

The National - Runaway

Avi Buffalo - Where's Your Dirty Mind

Foster the People - Call It What You Want

Yolanda Be Cool and Dcup - We No Speak Americano

Tame Impala - I Don't Really Mind

Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way

Austra - Spellwork

Eddie Perfect feat. Iain Grandage - Back To Life

and it continues....

P.S. - When the internet dropped out while the mentor and I were chatting on Skype he sent a message on it saying 'your voice sounds very peculiar'. 

I think this is what the kids refer to as an 'epic fail'. 

My Heart At Thy Sweet Voice

Back in the days when I actually studied singing (all the way through high school and my first year of university), my singing teachers used to record pieces and exercises on cassette tapes for me to practice with. Occasionally they would also record me practicing with them, sometimes as a harsh lesson in making me practice more often, and sometimes just because they left the tape running. I’ve also heard my singing voice on other recordings over the years – more professional ones, that is. Some of them with really, really good singers. And hearing them at the time and afterwards always makes me feel like a schmuck.

I’ve had a couple of people ask me about my singing lately. The truth is I don’t think about it anymore – I made the decision not to pursue singing professionally so long ago it’s not something that’s at the top of my brain very often. Now I just try and earn back some of the money I spent on my training by singing at weddings.

The truth is I’m pretty good and used to be better. At a certain point in your training (and mine was as a classical singer) you have to decide whether or not to do it professionally. For me that time came at 19, at the beginning of my second year of university. I probably could have done it, gone professional, either with Opera Australia or other organisations. But I just didn’t love performing enough, it really was as simple as that. It’s a decision I have never regretted and particularly given my illness and anxiety problems, it was absolutely the right one.  Every now and again I’ll sing with really good people and think ‘what if?’ but that’s just my competitive edge talking. I’m really glad I don’t have to hear myself sing though, most of the time. It’s torture.

Of course, there is something worse than this. It’s hearing yourself talk.

The mentor likes to communicate via Skype while we’re on holidays. He actually lives in another city, even during semester (he flies back and forth between Melbourne and Sydney every week), and Skype is his preferred mode of communication. So I got an account last week.

Anyone who uses Skype (you know, anyone under 50 and breathing with a friend or relative who lives anywhere other than their own house) has probably used the Echo/Sound Test Service, whereby you speak and make sure that you can hear yourself played back to you via message.

Now I’ve heard my speaking voice before. I’ve recorded voice mail messages and the odd oral presentation I was required to submit at school. And I worked in market research with a very reputable company for two years and was often told how well-spoken I was. I even occasionally have people ask me if I’m English, which is code for ‘you speak really posh’*. But I swear my voice on Skype sounds truly, absolutely appalling. It’s partly a pitch thing – my voice either seems too high or too low – and partly that it just grates.

I am not a terribly vain person. Actually I am not vain at all, as evidenced by the fact that I haven’t been putting on a bra to go outside and meet the delivery guy of late. (And I really have to wear a bra, it’s kind of compulsory for girls like me. They probably go back and tell the guys in the kitchen about the girl with the saggy boobs.) But ‘A Reading of my Voice according to Skype’ sounds so terrible I want to never speak again. Not ever. And I talk a lot.

This is a problem. I cringe at the sound of my own voice. Now I understand why my friends don’t like me. Especially people I had classes with over the years. This can’t be how I sound! If I had to listen to me speak I would want to claw my ears out! Now I understand all those people who said they were eating dinner and really just didn’t want to listen to me ask them questions! Or the judges who didn’t give me first place in debating or public speaking competitions! It’s my not so dulcet tones.

 It’s a good thing that I am not having to defend myself in a court of law they would condemn me based on my voice alone. Even if that’s illegal.

Are politicians and actors and people who work in TV and radio just people who don’t care that they sound terrible? Is this what separates them from us, a lack of vanity?

I’ve had two Skype calls, one with someone who doesn’t speak English as a first language and thinks I sound awesome, and one with an American friend who is beautifully spoken and likes my accent. I don’t think they’re the best people to ask, somehow.

I also don’t know what to do about this, as I think I am too old for elocution lessons. It probably is a good thing that I am talking less but I have enough crippling anxiety without this too. Or is this just the return of vanity now that I am getting better?

Does anyone else feel this way too? Please tell me I am not alone in having this very first world, very selfish sounding problem?**

Spill it. But type it, don’t tell me. You probably speak really badly too.

P.S. – The song from which the blog title is derived is probably one of the most famous arias ever written for a mezzo. Problem is I can’t find a good recording on youtube for you all.
P.P.S. - I was offered two law school places last night. So even if I crash and burn this year I have some options come February 2013.

*It’s no coincidence that the British have more words to abuse people based on how they speak than any other culture I have ever encountered.

**Other very first world, selfish sounding problem: the third book in the Hunger Games Trilogy that I bought online has a massive misprinting problem and essentially is a second copy of the first book. Majorly pissed. I want to know how it ends!