"Annndddd....I only have eyes...I only have eyes...yes, I only have eyes...forrrororrr youuuuuu....." I've always loved jazz and the blues, and luckily my beatnik city parents did, too. In addition to rock n' roll and my dad's occasional country album, they had tons of vinyl from the greats, like Dizzy Gillespie and John Coltrane. They met at a dance club, and they often visited jazz clubs in "The Village" when they first dated, seeing legendary artists like Bob Dylan when he was just another broke Jewish kid tryin' to make it in "The Big Apple". It was something they could understand, being second-generation immigrant kids themselves. Everyone's ethnic in the 'hood, knowwhatimean?
I took to the big rock acts of the 60s, 70s, and 80s first, but after that pop cultural introduction, I found myself hungry to know more about the American roots of our music, as yet another example of a cultural heritage that'd been co-opted from us (without paying fees for creative copying, and without permission) by white Europeans, no offense. Thanks for all the money! In a big classroom in upstate New York, I took a class so fucking hard that I still have anxiety dreams about it (http://www.oneonta.edu/academics/music/biographies.asp#).
They had this blind cat in class who was an idiot savant with tunes, even DJ'ing overnight at our infamous college radio station (held in very high acclaim), to come into class with an escort on one arm, like any true rock star would, sitting in the front row, or, even better, he pulled a chair right before the instructor's podium on the auditorium floor. And he was vicious. If the prof pulled just the horn section from a track, his hand always shot up first. Man! How does he know it from just a small two-second sample? It did nothing to dispel our notions about handicapped people and their "Spidey" senses that went tingling in the absence of sight (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Spidey-sense).
After that, I always worked in design studios that had music playing (or Howard Stern, haha, Carol!) in the background while we worked (or much louder after hours, when the 9-5 staff ran out the door ahead of us, always ahead of us and the end of our real work), to the amazement of the office cows wandering through our studio spaces, aghast at this break from a typically uptight protocol that they mistook for a laxity in our disciplines, but such was not the case. Almost all of my art degreed friends are also professional or semi-professional working musicians, given credence to our supposition that the arts blend together in both the practicing and well-practiced artist alike.
And so it went. I allowed the people in my life to think that they had a big "one-up" on me when they strummed their guitars slightly, or tapped a silly tambourine for attention like a trained seal at the circus, while I declined to explore yet another avenue for my already prolific output that often scared the amateurs around me. Then I scored a recording studio gig. Of course, I didn't have the time to devote to audio sessions, though my man Randy pulled me into the studio for a few vocals on commercials and promo pieces for our business clients who needed a smooth, silky, pleasantly female voice.
But, it hadn't started there. When I worked at a pizza joint in Providence, Rhode Island, my friend Greg used to encourage me to call the guys working at the liquor store down the hill for a trade. "Do the voice!", he'd say to me. "You know, that sexy one you use when you talk on the phone." So I would, and, lo and behold, with a little bit of giggling, we'd happily traded a pie with the works for a six-pack of beer, to make both of our work gigs go a little easier. That's how it went for me. My physical presence coupled with my artistic and intellectual prowess was already way more than the average Joe or Jane. I'm half-harassed to death as it is!
It wasn't until I was laid off from my last long-term office gig that I finally let the tiger out of its cage. They had requisite "art fag" kids who wrote shitty plays and bland music that I stayed very fucking far from. Pretentiousness freaks me out, besides, if this mama don't earn, ain't none of you playin' jack shit, right? So, I did the trade I was apprenticed to, and I did it famously well. End scene. Or so I thought. After I began working from home in earnest, transitioning to being a publisher with my own voice, I realized I didn't have to hide anymore.
This stupid white dude living beneath me in Park Slope felt "bad" enough for me (yeah, right) to let me piggyback off his WiFi for awhile—until he blew that up, like a typically arrogant WASPy douche with an overblown ego and sense of entitlement to go along with his easy life and generically "exotic" Asian girlfriend built like a prepubescent girl. He told me he was a "Sound Designer" like he was proud of it, which means he holds the fuzzy boom mic on set, and then goes home to fiddle around with his ProTools all night long like a raging manic-depressive, on a pricey computer that you and I can't afford without going into debt. I know: its a "dick" title to go with his bad attitude. He hated me, but he also wanted me, too, and ain't that like every otha boy on tha block? So, I let my music play loud enough to be heard (rare as that was back then) because he earned his money from sound, so what could a bitch like him really do about it?
To go with his flabby life, I dubbed him "BitchTits" behind his tall, pompous back. He also drove a suburban SUV in fucking Brooklyn, and then complained like a whiny out-of-towner about a lack of parking on some of the most difficult streets to do so in the city. No shit, white boy! But, in the heat of my anger simmered another tiger in the tank. I finally let myself sing, after never really trying to do so in front of average folks, and it worked. I let myself find the right pitch and tone for my classic mezzo soprano (http://www.harmonyangels.com/Verse-Voice.html), a key I had avoided like the colored plague it was marked for my life, and do you know what I found out? I fucking sang in the key of Ella fucking Fitzgerald.
That was it. That was all it ever was. I just needed to find the right notes to go with my voice, much like my beautiful grandmother's pitch, who was so modest about the strength of all of her gifts from G-d that shone like a brightly-filled chalice of light, that she only allowed herself free reign to pour it out while she was in church, where it was safe from the kind of scrutiny that sought to rip away gifts as freely as they'd been given to us. We knew that the disordered and dysfunctional swirling around our smaller healthier group circled us like hyenas, eager for the leftovers of our greater gifts that dropped from us like leftover crumbs, smacking and licking their lips in hideous gluttony.
And just like that, the evil spell surrounding and suppressing me was finally broken. The hangers-on and wanna-be's dropped away as I fell down hard financially because I had nothing left to give, in a shedding process that marks the life of any real acolyte who seeks to walk with G-d and be in the presence of His Almighty Grace. I was finally free, free to be me, free to be you and me. Ain't life grand?
