Etiquette: One Definition?

She sat five or six rows behind me. She may have had a little too much to drink or she may have been in a complete state of unawareness. I'm not certain of which or either. She was screaming out the words to the songs she knew, yelling out her responses to the lyrics being sung on stage....as if it were a conversation demanding answers, rather than a song sung by one person.

"Tell the truth, no lies..."

"BECAUSE NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR THE TRUTH!"

You get the gist...

I found myself bordering maximum annoyance with the girl and her verbal fists of affirmation, arising with each new feist-provoking lyric. The words were bursting inside of her chest and they refused to remain indoors. They were ripping open the locks, shattering her windows and blasting full force from her lungs. As far as this girl was concerned, no one was inhabiting this room, save herself and Sara Bareilles. I felt myself peering into the private, poster-lined walls of an angsty teenage hurricane.  

I am a concert etiquette snob, I cannot deny it. Born and raised in a classical/quietly-churched world, I learned to keep my hands in my lap and my mouth shut until the correct time to acknowledge. I learned the ins and outs of watching performers and knowing certain pieces well enough to clap at all of the appropriate times. If you happen to be the performer, there's a whole new set of rules to learn and follow. I learned them and, for the most part, followed. Initially, I resented the stuffiness of sitting still, denying oneself commentary and waiting to applaud. Over time, I grew to love the practice of allowing the stillness of a place envelope the listener into all that was being given, without interruption. I learned to fully embrace every last millisecond of a bow across a string or the faintly disappearing final note of a classical sonata, fading from auditory view under a 16-foot grand piano. What I initially viewed as stuffy, upturned-nose discipline became my fullest idea of the listener/performer intimacy.

Tonight, I am jamming one finger in my left ear and trying desperately to pull all of my focus's weight into the performer on stage and not the screaming behind me. I feel that I am not getting the experience of what the performer is trying to convey, simply because ONE person is yelling out her responses to an artist that has no intentions of responding back in such a manner. My brain begs the question, "Where are the ushers? Can they not just throw this woman into a Lilith Fair event? Or a PETA presentation? She'd be far more comfortable dressed in a meat suit and weeping over Sarah McLachlan, I am certain of it." 

Do you know the 'ole devil-on-one-shoulder-and-an-angel-on-the-other metaphor? That is an accurate description of my brain - twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Immediately following this thought (and in keeping with the trend of my overly-analytic brain), I could not let this situation stand with only one opinion in tow. A new thought began to form in my mind: "Wait...shouldn't music be calling out for this sort of response in us? Is this not also an intimate form of responding to what moves in us as we hear certain words or hear certain melodies?" Maybe we don't have to yell out in the middle of a crowded room (preferable for those seated nearby), but..then again, maybe we DO. Maybe everything within us is just BURSTING at the seams and the faces around us don't matter enough to keep it in any longer. Maybe?

I'm currently debating this in my mind.

I took a lot of mental notes at tonight's performance. The strongest (perhaps, the darkest ink) impression I left with is that THIS is exactly the response I want to be digging for when I create. To write and sing and play, honestly and brutally enough, that it evokes emotion and response in the listener. I am teaching myself to grasp with a different form of listener/performer intimacy. Though, at times, it seems more of a wrestle-to-the-ground than a simple grasp, I am trying to love and appreciate all of the different colors and shapes we take on as we are moved to respond. To sit quietly and shake our heads. Or, on occasion, shout from the rafters.

And for the record? Honey, I've learned you've gotta learn the rules so you'll know how to break 'em.

I needed a vacation.

I could have gone on one if I had also wanted to lose my job, but I've decided against that option tonight.

Instead, I have driven my car to the nearest park, put on my tennis shoes and I am walking as far away from this parking lot as I possibly can.

Well, I'm walking.

And walking.

And walking.




Still walking.

The air is perfect, the earth alive with growth and fragrance. I'm taking long, quick strides - a girl on a serious mission to an unknown destination.

My life has felt blurry for months. If one were to ask, I would say that I had been working a lot, sleeping a little. Head buried in piano keys, song arrangements, ukulele strings. Counseling my way through a past of hard self-criticism, discontentment, failed relationships. A head full of grey, mostly. Makes it a bigger exhalation when I catch glimpses of color.

It all brings me here - fast paces along paved paths, suburban neighborhoods, patches of early spring growth.

I've spotted some large, flat rocks lining the creek to my right. I am releasing control - my feet carry me over. Drawing close, I can smell the rich mixture of water and earth. I am, once again, a small child standing in a creekbed, turning over submerged rocks in hopes of finding an orange newt or a brown "crawdad." A wave of peace surges through me in this moment of nostagia. I am young and free.

Muscles release tension, head slowly falls forward. Eyes shut and the scent of my memory is exemplified. The breeze blows through a patch of reeds to my left. I open my eyes and the sun births a dance of shadows through late winter branches.

All feels well here.

There is a therapy in stillness. In quiet. In just not thinking. In being. A discipline worth worth the practice for the preservation of sanity.

I return to my feet and begin the walk back.

I am ready to return.

Travels: Fall 2012.

One Week Ago: Bare Trees, Clay Jars.

Saturday, Dec. 24. Christmas Eve.

My brothers were out kayaking, my parents out singing carols for a candlelight service. Presents wrapped and, refusing to stay in the house alone any longer, I got into my car and headed for the mountains.

The higher I climbed, the more mountains came into view. I could see them clearly through the bare branches of winter trees. Higher and higher.

I parked right on the NC/TN border, got out and hiked up to the top of my favorite bald. It was cold...breathtakingly cold. The sun was on its way to setting and the world just seemed to open up all possessed beauty before me. And trees - winter trees. Their branches bare...mere skeletons of what they once were. But beauty - so much sky and green and vast stretches of mountain that I could see through their bare branches.

And it hit me.

2 Cor. 4:7 is the biblical verse that compares us to clay jars. "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us..." -- broken, cracked, fragile jars. Put a light inside of a jar. The greater the crack, the greater the light that is shone. The more broken, the more the treasure inside is exposed.

I had only heard this spoken of (in this specific way) only a few weeks before.

(Check that out here.)

And on this day, I could see it in the bareness of winter trees.

Fall is beautiful, but speaks of things dying. Passing away. The colors fade to brown and join the earth. All that is left are these bare branches, these colorless limbs. The attention is no longer on the shape of the leaves, the size of the fruit it bears, the fullness of its' leafy growth.

Now it is bare. But now it is free to reveal beauty greater than itself. Through its' branches, there are endless skies, the poetry of the sea, grandeur of the mountains.

And so we see - brokenness reveals beauty. Hallelujah.

New Years' Eve's Eve: Old Woolen Mill, Cleveland, TN.

I shot my first wedding yesterday inside of this building:

It's an old cotton mill built in 1890.

I don't know much about wedding photography, but I have a feeling this is what most of the photographers look like when they don't have a camera in their hands.

Whew, it's done. Yay for Ashlee and Brandon!! The loveliest of friends....

All Photos 2011, y'all.

Happy 2011!

Lessons in EP-making. But, of course...not just that.

I met up with a friend today to chat. He asked, as many other friends have asked, how my music making was coming along. I sighed that usual sigh that typically precedes my launch into an explanation of the many thoughts, doubts, fears, insecurities, highs and lows of my most recent musical endeavor.

I have studied music from the time I was five years of age, wrote my first song when I was ten, entered competitions, prepared for recitals, earned my degree and have taught music for several years now.

But I waited until I was nearly twenty-five to take on an actual recording project.

I could spend a long time discussing the forever hours of arranging strings, communicating ideas about instruments I know nothing of, the near impossibility of coordinating schedules. I could, but I will not. The deepest lesson I have and am continuing to learn about is the lesson of overcoming insecurities. The reason it has taken me this long to actually work publicly on my own songs has everything to do with fear. Fear of vulnerability. Fear of taking years of internal ache for the outpouring of creativity to finally begin its' molding, its' shape. The fear of birth.

Entering into what we feel, with every ounce of being, that we were created for is beautiful. Beautiful and terrifying. Out of the endless questions that invade my thoughts, this one continues to pull the most weight: What if it isn't perfect?

I can see the eye rolls now. Trust me, I know. Of course it's not "perfect." At least, in the sense that I'm seeking. But this is my fear: the lack of perfection.

The truth is, this endeavor has been mostly for the sake of experience. I pulled some songs written over the course of a few years and began to build around them. As lengthy and tiring as it could be at times, the process was the real beauty. The purity in creating. The "imperfections" becoming the whispers of something coming alive.

And so. Friends. Within the next couple of months, I will be working through this endeavor. It's coming in close and I am becoming less and less afraid of showing you the process that has very much so become the past year of my life.

Love,

erin

photo: Kate Gazaway