big week in eliza-land

This weekend my local S H singing community hosts its annual convention, meaning two or three hundred of my closest friends are coming to town to sing together. Okay, only like thirty of them are actually really close friends, but they feel more like family. In a very real way, the whole unwieldy gang - seriously, the entire community - feels like family. It's intense. So from Friday through Sunday we'll have a houseguest, I'll be getting up at six to cook enormous potluck dishes, I'll be staying out until unreasonable hours singing and socializing well beyond the normal human capacity for either, I'll be hanging out with many of the people I love most in the world but who live far away, AND - the singing that all this centers around, two whole days of it, tends toward a level of musical and spiritual depth and intensity that I can hardly hope to express here. It's big.

As anyone who has read a little of this blog may already suspect, convention weekend has at times been challenging for me. I have had many of my best experiences and many of my very most unbelievably painful ones within this community and around this activity. S H singing with these friends just reaches down into my soul and tears it out into the air, naked and screaming.

For the last couple of years, I have retreated from it all somewhat - sometimes just inwardly, but sometimes by, oh, not showing up for a day. Or avoiding all the peripheral social stuff. Then again, I had been dealing with Grave's disease for the past couple of years, so in addition to my usual sometimes-problematic sensitivity and intensity, I was hyperthyroid. This meant extra anxiety, irritability, and emotional-ness, plus spasitude beyond the pale. (On the plus side, I got to eat like a linebacker.) In this regard at least, I'm all better now.

And I've made so many changes and improvements. All this AW, morning pages, ACIM, yoga, playing and coloring - surely I have turned a corner. Right? Well, ladies and more ladies, this weekend is the test.

This week, more like. A good friend with whom I have had a difficult relationship for some time, a S.H. singer (of course) chose last Sunday to get really , really mad at me just when I thought we were out of the woods and had found a new way to be friends that didn't involve her hating my guts. I have spent the last two days navigating that mine field, trying hard to forget that if things weren't resolved I could be heading into my equivalent of Christmas and the Boston Marathon combined dragging a large sledge loaded with poo. Blessedly, another good friend, another singer, reminded me that I could probably find a way to give more. Even though the friend who was mad at me was being the whack-job, she suggested that I apologize to her. It took me a minute, but I did see that regardless of what "rightness" I wanted to cling to to for the benefit of only my ego, I could give more. I thought she had no grounds to be getting all up in my grill, but I didn't want her to be unhappy. And from her late-night emails, she obviously was. Quite. So I sent her an e-card with a flower on it, and told her I was sorry I upset her. I asked her to please look with me for a new way to be friends. (Nothing says, "It's the thought that counts" like a virtual bouquet e-card.)

I had been planning to blow off the weekly sing tonight because there's just so much enormous stuff going on and I wanted to take it easy. But after I got a little confirmation message that she had retrieved her card, I had the feeling I should just go. And my oh my. Not only was it one of the best singings I've been to in awhile (and we have a lot of good ones), but my friend approached me at the break to give me a little gift. AHHHH.

But wait, there's more! Remember my dream of playing with my musician friend? Well of COURSE he's a singer and will be in town. And let's just say it's a bit of a synchronicity that we are working with creative U-turns this week. When I met him/them and started singing S.H., I pretty much ended up doing a total creative about-face. Back then, before I went completely mental, this friend taught me how to play the banjo and had opportunity to hear some of my non-rock compositions. For many reasons (all fear-based), I was a bit, um, overly engaged with what he thought of me and my creations. He sensed this. He gets that a lot. He was helpful in those early days in the ways he felt comfortable being helpful, and he really was generous with me, but since his style of support did not include falling down rapt and gushing over my staggering talent and/or begging me to be in his band, I took him to be unsupportive or even critical. By the time I figured out that he was actually very interested in what I was up to, I was so twisted up about everything that I had squashed my dream of collaboration down deep into my murky depths. U-turn. Yuh.

Of course, the Artist's Way work dredged it back up for me. Well. Remember how one of the tangible steps I decided I could take toward dipping my toe into the water of this wild dream again was to play banjo with my other friend, the one who plays with the one I want to play with? I did that last night. It was gooood. And, miracle of miracles, I felt comfortable. I had fun with it. So here we go.

And I will leave you with the synchronicity grande of the week. My dream bandmate is not only moving back to this area for a year starting this summer, but he also sent out email on Monday saying, among other things, that he wanted to start an "American Music" (old-time music and ballad-type and S H singing) ensemble. Okay, he's going to be here to teach at the university, and this may be just for his students, but he actually wrote in his mass email update that he wanted the group to be open to anyone, of any ability. No matter how you slice it, that's some juicy synchronicity burger right there. He's also teaching a workshop this Thursday that I can attend. And best of all, I get to hang out and sing with him this weekend. (He even sent me some sweet personal email yesterday to reconnect.) More steps, more openings, more possibility. A chance to one way or another reverse one of the most significant and regret-laden creative U-turns of my life. What a gift. So lets hope I can keep my wits more or less about me this weekend. There's no crying in baseball.