I Rock(ed)

Apparently last weekend was the Weekend of the Rock Show. Somehow I missed it and no one bothered to tell me. But, in the interest of honesty, my weekend wouldn’t have looked any different had I been in the know, so it doesn’t really matter. Friday night rolled around and all I wanted to do was go to bed early. As I sat on the couch, too tired to drag myself to bed, I scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed. An astonishing number of people were at Key Arena seeing Journey, Foreigner and Night Ranger; some were enjoying Ryan Adams at Benaroya Hall and still others were gearing up for Death Cab for Cutie on Saturday. Heck, someone’s ten year old daughter was rocking out at a Taylor Swift show. Me? I really wanted to stay up and watch the premiere of Pearl Jam Twenty, Cameron Crowe’s new documentary with never-before-seen archival footage on PBS. Sadly, I didn’t want to stay up and watch it nearly as much as I wanted to go to bed. I know. I rock.

     

I wasn’t always so lame when it comes to rock shows. In fact, I’ve spent far more than my fair share of time experiencing live music . . . in dark clubs with sticky floors, in stadiums with terrible acoustics and at festivals with Honey Buckets and lemon-fights. (Does anyone else remember the Frankfurter lemonade lemon-fights that were de rigueur at Seattle area outdoor rock festivals in the mid-nineties?) I moved to Seattle at a great time in the storied Seattle music scene. I arrived two and a half months after the death of Kurt Cobain, so I was a little late for the grunge explosion, but there were still plenty of fantastic things happening, especially for a girl who had spent the previous four years in sleepy Corvallis, Oregon. During my early and mid-twenties, I practically lived at Seattle’s best music venues of the era: the Crocodile Café, RCKCNDY, The Off Ramp, Moe’s Mo’ Rockin’ Cafe and the OK Hotel.

It used to be that I wouldn’t miss a great rock show. (Well, except for that time I foolishly decided to stay in my dorm room and study for a midterm instead of seeing Nirvana at a small venue right after the release of Nevermind. That was some fantastic decision-making right there.) I drove ten hours, round-trip, through the night to see Morrissey. I stood in line for three hours in the snow (no kidding) to get tickets for Smashing Pumpkins at the Moore Theater in the days when they could have sold out the Key Arena. I devoted hours to studying the Bumbershoot line-up each year and spent all day, every day at Seattle’s famous music festival. (Keep in mind that this was back when Bumbershoot lasted a full four days, not the measly, wimpy three days that it currently spans.) I never missed a Lollapalooza or an Endfest, and I made regular trips to the Gorge, fighting horrendous traffic and exerting super-human effort to stay awake on the drive home.

Ah, those were the days. Time has passed (as it does) and things have changed (as they do). These days, I can’t even get motivated to give up a couple of hours of sleep to watch a rock documentary while seated comfortably on my own couch. What has happened to rocker Ronda? I attribute my descent into live music apathy to three factors: 1) I am old, 2) I got burned out, and 3) I give at the office.

Number one: I am old

“I am old” put more accurately is “I am in a phase of life where I have significant responsibilities that do not happily coexist with a rock and roll life style.” Among my responsibilities are a demanding job that requires me to work late nights regularly (see number three below) and a demanding young child who requires me to wake up early in the morning. Are you seeing the pattern that makes staying out late at a rock show, stumbling home in the wee hours and waking up with a hangover and ringing ears a problem? It works when you’re in your 20’s and don’t have a kid or a job where the buck stops with you; not so much when you’re in your late 30’s and have both. Like I said, I’m old.

Number two: I got burned out

As my equally live-show-apathetic husband said recently, “I’ve been there and done that, and not just a little bit – I’ve done a lot of it. In fact, I did so much of it, for so long, I was beginning to lose my dignity.” I don’t know if he was losing his dignity, but he has seen quite a few rock concerts. He set the bar high with his first – The Rolling Stones, “Some Girls” tour at Chicago’s Soldier Field in 1978 when he was barely 15. That’s a tough one to beat. (I sent him a text asking what year it was and which tour. Two simple questions and I got an instantaneous, enthusiastic and lengthy reply claiming it was, and I quote, “the best day of my teenage life,” citing the exact day – July 8 – and providing me with the set list. In case you’re wondering: Let It Rock, Honky Tonk Women, Lies, All Down the Line, Starfucker, When the Whip Comes Down, Tumbling Dice, Beast of Burden, Just My Imagination, Shattered, Respectable, Far Away Eyes, Love in Vain, Happy, Sweet Little Sixteen, Brown Sugar and Jumping Jack Flash.) As if his first concert wasn’t enough to be jealous of, he was in attendance at Pearl Jam’s famed 1992 concert at the Moore Theater - the one in the Even Flow video. The list goes on like that for many years and many concerts.

While my rock show resume is nothing like Matt’s, I’ve also been there and done that quite a bit. My first show was INXS on the “X” tour in 1991. Not the Rolling Stones, but certainly a solid first concert. At a particularly amazing Violent Femmes concert in 1992, I didn’t notice or bother to care that I was getting squished against the barrier at the front of the stage so hard that I woke up the next morning in excruciating pain with a giant black bruise across my hips and belly. I’ve seen great shows and bad shows. I cherished every time (and there were many) that I watched Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley sing from his precarious perch atop a monitor – each time thinking it would be the last. I saw Sonic Youth at their worst – Thurston Moore so wasted he couldn’t stand up, much less play – and at their best – the extended noise jams for which they are so well known. I saw Jane’s Addiction play a small venue in Salem, Oregon, where the show lasted maybe 20 minutes because Perry Farrell kept yelling insults at the audience before storming off stage. I’ve seen Pearl Jam and Peter Gabriel more times than I can count. I’ve seen unbelievably amazing shows like David Byrne and unbelievably awful shows like Bush opening for No Doubt at the Tacoma Dome (the ticket was free, in my defense). Anyway, the point is, after many years of rock concert-going, I realized I could only crowd surf and mosh and have bloody tampons flung at me from stage (yes, it actually happened at an L7 concert) so many times before it all started to blend together and lose its luster.

Number three: I give at the office

I’m a performing arts presenter. Putting on shows is what I do, day in and day out. Now granted, the shows I’m doing aren’t Alice in Chains at the Off Ramp or REM at the Gorge, but I do see and hear a lot of music. I’m accustomed to listening to demos for about two minutes tops or watching live showcases at conferences that last twelve minutes, so it’s no surprise that when I’m an hour into a show as an audience member my mind starts wandering. All I can think about is whether the band is easy to work with or if they are a pain-in-the-ass. I find myself wondering what their hospitality rider entailed. Did they request all raw, organic, local foods or did they insist on fried chicken? Did they demand one hundred pre-cut orange slices or did they want their fruit whole, uncut and unpeeled? Did they need obscure British throat lozenges? Were they adamant that they needed access to the venue from 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. the night before the show? Did they accuse the presenter of being racist because he or she foolishly forgot to provide properly sized dinner plates? Yes, each and every one of these scenarios has, in fact, happened to me. As a result of my experience as a presenter, I have both a short live music attention span and a lot of show-related baggage.

Now, lest I come across as completely jaded and lame, I’m happy to report that I do still occasionally get out to concerts for leisure, and sometimes I even surprise myself by having a great time. It was just two years ago in Boise, Idaho (of all places) where I saw a Gogol Bordello show that completely blew my mind. I danced and drank (PBRs no less) excessively. I left sweat-drenched, with my ears ringing and a smile on my face, thinking “Now THAT’S a rock concert!” I see Neko Case any chance I get. Her poetic lyrics and gorgeous voice (I read a great review somewhere that said she sounds like the tortured ghost of Patsy Cline) never fail to leave me practically weeping over the beauty of it all. While I do go out and see shows for fun, these days most of my amazing music moments happen at the shows I present – seeing Suzanne Vega perform “Tom’s Diner” for a group of high school students so transfixed you could have heard a pin drop, watching Al Stewart sing “Year of the Cat” or Arlo Guthrie do “This Land is Your Land” in my tiny little venue, witnessing the Blind Boys of Alabama bring an audience to their feet in joyful dancing – these moments fill my heart with hope and happiness that live music still speaks to my soul.

More often than not though, even at a show that’s really great, when I get past the twelve minutes of a typical showcase, my feeling is “Yep, I’ve got it. I came, I saw, I rocked. Can I go home and go to bed now?”

Did you hear the one about the mermaid and the whale?

Autumn is, without a doubt, my favorite season and it was a beautiful fall morning in Seattle – gray, slightly misty and chilly enough for a cozy sweater and boots.  My morning was great.  Pandora treated me well during my trip to the gym. (I’ve long suspected that a great Led Zeppelin song has near magical capabilities and now I know that it can specifically take a treadmill run from “meh” to amazing.) I got lots of hugs and kisses from my sweet son, and there is really nothing better than that, and my commute was “easy, peasy, lemon squeezy” as Chester would say.

I parked my car and had a brief “driveway moment” as I finished listening to the ever-fabulous Dolly Parton beg Jolene not to steal her man, even though she can. After obtaining my beloved morning chai latte, I contentedly settled in at my desk. When I logged in for my routine pre-work Facebook check-in, I saw something that bothered me – the Mermaid versus Whale story – on several friends’ pages. I’ve seen it, in various iterations and settings, a number of times over the past year or so.  In case you haven’t read it, or need a reminder, here it is: 

Recently, in a large city, a poster featuring a young, thin and tanned woman appeared in the window of a gym. It said: THIS SUMMER DO YOU WANT TO BE A MERMAID OR A WHALE? A middle aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.

To Whom It May Concern:

Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious
humans). They have active sex lives, get pregnant and have adorable baby whales that they raise with great tenderness. They have a wonderful time with dolphins, stuffing themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Barren Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia. Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and have virtually no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world. Mermaids don’t exist. If they did, they would be lining up outside the offices of psychoanalysts due to identity crisis: Fish or human? They don’t have sex lives because they kill men who get close to them, not to mention how could they have sex? They cannot bear children. And who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store? Yes, they would be lovely, but lonely and sad. The choice is perfectly clear to me; I want to be a whale.

P.S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that only
skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my
kids, a good dinner with my husband and a coffee with my friends. With time we gain weight because we accumulate so much information and wisdom in our heads that when there is no more room it distributes out to the rest of our bodies.  So we aren’t fat, we are enormously cultured, educated and happy.

So there you have it, Mermaid versus Whale.  Every time I see this piece, it is inevitably followed by innumerable comments agreeing that it would be far better to be a whale than a mermaid, proclaiming what a beautiful sentiment it is and thanking whoever posted it for sharing. And every time I see this piece, it irritates me.  Here’s why:

“Whale” is the wrong answer.  So is “mermaid.”  The right answer to the question “Who would you rather be?” is “Me.”  I don’t want to be a whale, I don’t want to be a mermaid, and I’m tired of the false dichotomy that this story and others like it creates.  Yes, we are in an age where our brutally pervasive media heavily influences standards of beauty.  People come in all shapes and colors and sizes, and there are many variations of beauty.  We should celebrate that without putting down any of those shapes and sizes of people, including the skinny ones.

I’m thin.  It’s partially my genes, but it’s also because I am thoughtful about what I eat and I exercise regularly.  I do those things not because I’m obsessed with obtaining a mass-media-defined ideal of beauty, but because I want to feel good and be healthy.  And guess what?  I enjoy every second of all of it.  I love eating reasonable quantities of healthy foods because they taste good and make me feel energetic and well.  Exercise is at the very heart of my existence – physical activity is where I clear my mind, release stress, give thanks for everything good in my life, refocus and have a plain, old good, entertaining time.

Why do pieces like Mermaid versus Whale imply that being thin means being miserable? Mermaids may not exist, but happy, healthy, thin women do. I’m not lonely and sad. I don’t have identity issues. I have wonderful dinners with my husband and coffee with great friends. I have a beautiful son and I eat ice cream with him plenty. We also do lots of other fun things together like take walks, ride bikes and play tag. Eating ice cream isn’t the only way to have fun for heaven’s sake. I don’t eat ice cream every night and I don’t eat a gallon of it at a time, because I don’t need to do that to have fun and it wouldn’t be healthy.  Sure, eating ice cream is enjoyable. The same could be said of smoking. I don’t smoke because it isn’t healthy for my body and I don’t eat ice cream in great quantities because it isn’t healthy either.

I’m all for broader definitions of beauty, especially since so much of what makes someone beautiful is who they are and not what they look like. It’s a cliché, but it’s true. Haven’t we all had the experience of thinking someone was gorgeous and then, after having gotten to know them, found ourselves wondering why we ever thought they were attractive? Or, conversely, meeting someone who didn’t catch our eye at first, but who became absolutely breathtaking after getting to know them?

Some years ago I attended a conference where performer/inspirational humorist David Roche spoke during a plenary luncheon. Because I served on the board of the organization at the time, I sat at the board table with our speaker throughout lunch. Mr. Roche was born with a severe facial disfigurement – the kind of disfigurement that is difficult to handle because you don’t quite know how to look at him without noticing it and being afraid that you are obviously noticing it and either over or under-compensating for noticing it. Lunch felt somewhat awkward as a result. As the meal wrapped up, Mr. Roche took to the stage and began telling his story – and what an amazing and touching story it was. A half-hour later, several hundred people were on their feet, with tears in their eyes, giving Mr. Roche a standing ovation. When he returned to our table, I noticed something strange – it wasn’t awkward to look at him anymore. After discovering how beautiful he is on the inside, it was almost impossible to pay any attention at all to his external disfigurement. Mr. Roche’s message was that we all have elements of darkness or ugliness to deal with. That ugliness can be hidden when it’s on the inside. He considers his disfigured face a gift, because his challenge is on the outside where he is forced to deal with it.

So no, you don’t have to be skinny to be beautiful, or tall or tan or without deformities for that matter. Beauty isn’t narrow; it’s broad and it should be defined more broadly by society, but we shouldn’t use that as an excuse to be unhealthy. Let’s not kid ourselves. The fact is that many people in our modern society eat terribly unhealthy foods in ridiculously large quantities and exercise very little.  Obesity is a health issue of epidemic proportions in our country. So while it’s great to embrace diversity in our definition of beauty, let’s not confuse that with celebrating and perpetuating unhealthy habits. Women don’t “gain weight because they accumulate so much information and wisdom in their heads that it distributes to the rest of their bodies.” Please. We all know perfectly well that isn’t the way it works, and while a fat person can certainly be cultured, educated, happy, and even beautiful, sometimes we need to call a spade a spade.

A lot of people seem to think the Mermaid versus Whale piece is about celebrating beauty in all its forms. I don’t think so. If you have to put one form down to elevate another, you’re not celebrating beauty at all. In fact, putting others down to make yourself feel or appear better is actually pretty ugly.

When I returned to my job after three and a half months of maternity leave, I weighed less than I did before I was pregnant. I didn’t do anything unusual to make that happen – I ate and exercised sensibly both during and after my pregnancy. On my first day back at the office, a woman who had begun working for my organization while I was gone saw me for the first time. Before even introducing herself, she loudly proclaimed, “Oh, you must be Ronda. I HATE you!” and walked away. I had no clue who she was or what she was talking about. Some other co-workers witnessed the scene and explained that she knew I had recently had a baby and was referring to the fact that I was so thin after just a few months. Something similar happened at a friend’s wedding when my son was five weeks old, and it continues to happen in dressing rooms, grocery stores and coffee shops. I think these people have the strange notion that they are paying me some sort of bizarre compliment. Note to all of them: proclaiming you “hate” someone with a tone of disgust and an eye roll does not make them feel good. The same goes for insinuating that someone is obsessed with being thin over having a healthy, happy life and taking care of their children with “great tenderness.” I’m pretty sure I’d be thought of as an awful person if I approached an acquaintance or a stranger and announced, “Oh my God, you’re SO fat. You must eat everything in sight. I HATE you!” So why is it okay for someone I barely know to say to me, “Oh my God, you’re SO skinny. I HATE you!”?         

We shouldn’t buy into the very narrow definitions of beauty that the media perpetuates.  We also shouldn’t combat those definitions by attacking and putting down the body types that the media seems to hold up as the standard of beauty.  By doing that, we’re being just as judgmental as the media we’re complaining about. So please, stop setting up dichotomies between fat and thin, tall and short, pale and dark, young and old, mermaid and whale.  We should all just choose to be ourselves – our best, healthiest, happiest selves.  That would be truly beautiful.