I don’t have a lot to write about this week. Truthfully, despite the fact that I get a bunch of days off this month and the weather has been beautiful and I’m very nearly done with the sweater I’ve been working on, I’ve been feeling a little down. This week, though, we’re planning to go to three shows to hear some of our favorite musicians perform, which seems like just the pick-me-up I’ve been needing.
Since music is sort of the theme of the week for me, rather than write a regular blog post, I thought I’d share a song I wrote back in June and just finally got around to recording the other day. Enjoy!
Yesterday was my birthday, and while there are many things I’m reflecting on as I look back at another trip around the sun, I’m not quite ready to write about them yet. So instead of a typical post, here’s a song I wrote a couple of months ago that I just recorded this week. Enjoy!
On the one hand, I feel like I’ve been running around like a headless chicken all week; on the other, I feel like I have nothing to write about. Neither of those are entirely accurate assessments of how my week has gone, though. Things are pretty great. Here are a few reasons why:
My tattoo turned out even better than I was hoping. Seriously, the cards look beautiful. (Well, okay, at the moment they look like a flaky mess, but under that, they’re beautiful.) I’m so pleased with how they turned out! And the appointment itself was enjoyable – a couple of friends sat with me through the bulk of the process (thanks, E & B!), and even came back when it was over to drive me home (which was super kind…I probably would’ve gotten on the wrong train or something, because after 2 hours and 20 minutes I was pretty out of it). The artist was wonderful, the space was phenomenal (if you’re in Chicago and in the market for a tattoo, totally check them out), and it was not as painful as I was afraid it would be. (Turns out pain is relative…compared to 5 weeks of constant back pain with no idea when or if it would end, a couple of hours of pain that I knew had a finish line? Not bad at all.)
I actually liked what I wrote for my songwriting class this week, and my classmates all had suggestions to make it even better. It’s rare that I feel this good about something I’ve written, so that’s been fun. The next step in the writing process for this one: trying to figure out a harmonica solo.
I bought some yarn at Stitches Midwest last summer with the intention of making a sweater. After I got home and took a closer look at other projects made with this particular yarn, I realized it wasn’t truly ideal for the project I’d bought it for. It’s been sitting in my stash and at the forefront of my awareness since then, and (even though I should have finished something else first) I finally settled on a pattern, made a swatch, did some math, and started knitting a different sweater with it over the weekend. I did the first sleeve in three days, and I’m still excited about it – I feel like I actually have a chance of finishing this in a reasonable amount of time. Granted, that might happen right when it warms up, but hey. I’ll have a cozy, beautiful sweater for next fall.
I’ve been feeling under the weather with yet another cold this week, so to keep this week’s post easy, it’s coming to you in a list. Despite not feeling the greatest, I’ve been finding reasons to smile. Here are a few of them.
I’ve been getting back into writing outside of this blog. After a four-month hiatus, I’m going back to songwriting classes starting in March, and I’m trying to generate some new material on my own before that, in an effort to ease my way back into things. I’ve actually written a couple of songs I don’t hate!
I’m also picking the guitar back up, which has been an adventure. I played a bit in high school and college, but was never very good, and was convinced that I just couldn’t do it. Turns out that learning good form when playing mandolin actually can be applied back to guitar, and now I’m finding it’s a lot easier for me than it used to be. (I’m taking a guitar class next session at the Old Town School in addition to the songwriting class. Clearly, I have lost my mind.)
We’re seeing Mouths of Babes, a lovely new musical venture by a couple of our favorite musicians from other bands, in concert on Sunday. I have no doubt that it’ll be a wonderful show, and I’m hoping to walk away feeling inspired to keep writing and practicing like I have been in the last couple of weeks.
A friend of mine nominated me on Saturday via Facebook to come up with three moments of gratitude a day for five days. Well, that was about five days ago, and I haven’t done it yet, but that seemed like a good direction for the blog this week. So Amanda, here’s my list; thanks for the inspiration.
A partner who will join me on silly, spontaneous adventures. Last Thursday, I had the wild idea that we should rent a car over the weekend and drive to Cedar Falls, IA to catch Joe Stevens in concert. The conversation went something like this:
A: We should go on a road trip and see Joe Stevens!
E: But it’s Iowa.
A: But concert!
E: But IOWA.
I acknowledged it was a pretty ridiculous idea, but I was a little sad…until I got off work and was greeted by a text to the effect of, “So, about that concert…”
Friends with whom I can escape reality for a while. Saturday was Dungeons & Dragons & Knitting, which is the monthly Pathfinder game with some folks in our knitting circle (the original idea was to play D&D, but Pathfinder ended up happening instead…we just never changed the name). Four of us have an adventure in group storytelling while our partners hang out in the other room and knit and make fun of us. It’s consistently one of the highlights of every month.
Open spaces. We did end up renting a car this weekend and going on a road trip into Iowa, taking a detour on our way to Cedar Falls so that I could show Ethan some of the northeast corner of the state, which is not entirely flat and very, very pretty. The farther we got from Chicago, the more I relaxed. Don’t get me wrong: I love living in Chicago. But wide open spaces do wonders for my soul.
People who choose to love me because of who I am, not in spite of it. The reason I know that there is a pretty part of Iowa (the aforementioned northeast corner) is that my grandparents live there, on a farm in a valley surrounded by trees and bluffs and wildlife and gardens. I remain convinced at age 26 that their farm is one of the most beautiful places on the planet. We were close enough on Sunday that, had I so chosen, we could have stopped by for a surprise visit. But I didn’t. I love my grandparents very much. They love their grandchildren very much. But when I came out to them as Alyx in a letter two years ago, their response (also in a letter) was that they would never call me Alyx, because Alyx was “an imaginary person.” I am almost entirely certain that they don’t know that I started any sort of physical transition. I haven’t seen them in over two years, and I haven’t been on their farm in at least three, and I don’t know when (or if) either of those things will happen again, which is heart-wrenching whenever I think of it. But it also reminds me that I have a whole bunch of people in my life who not only accept that I am Alyx but actually celebrate my life with me, and that is a great comfort.
Those moments of recognition by others in our communities. Visibility is such a huge thing, both for those of us who are still frequently misgendered, and those in our community who pass so well that no one believes they’re trans. There were a handful of those moments this weekend.
Approachable heroes. Meeting Joe Stevens was great: he’s one of our songwriting idols, and is just a fantastic person. But even better than meeting Joe was the fact that we got to actually talk with him. By the end of the night, we were giving each other hugs goodbye. We’re now friends on Facebook. This is still blowing my mind.
Adventures that lead to more adventures. When we got to Cedar Falls and started talking with Joe (and River Glen, who’s touring the Midwest with him), we mentioned we’d road tripped it from Chicago, at which point they told us they were actually going to be playing a house concert in Chicago on Monday night. Throughout the night they told us several times that we should come. We got in touch on Facebook and got the details, and despite the fact that my partner had only slept about 45 minutes and had worked a full day, and the fact that we’d returned the rental car and weren’t entire sure how we were going to get home after transit stopped running, Monday night we found ourselves in the very humid basement of a hippie couple we’d never met, sweating with strangers (and new friends, and someone we met at a karaoke bar three-and-a-half years ago), enjoying more music.
Music that inspires me to create more music. I felt two things in regard to the music at both shows: first, that my songwriting is totally inadequate, and second, that I want to write more songs. There are times when I get the first feeling but not the second one; this was one of the beautiful moments where my feelings of inadequacy were outweighed by inspiration.
New friends. We met some awesome people on Sunday and Monday.
Thinking about the future. My partner and I have been doing a lot of talking about our future together, and it’s really wonderful not only to have a partner I want to have a future with, but to be able to think about the future at all. There was a long time when I could barely see past tomorrow. I’m learning to dream again.
Air conditioning. This is a silly one, but it’s been ridiculously humid in Chicago this week. We don’t have AC at home, but I have it at the office, and I’m grateful for the times I can spend in places where everything does not feel soggy.
Comfort in my skin. This isn’t a constant, but I’ve been feeling fairly centered and okay within myself this week. I was able to go to both concerts without feeling more than momentary social anxiety, and a lot of that had to do with being comfortable being myself. I spent a lot of years stuck in self-loathing, and while I’m not my biggest fan, I’ve at least reached the point where I feel a sort of benevolent indifference toward myself, which is unbelievably better for my mental health.
Fresh perspective. I’m not sure exactly how to explain this one, because it’s been a largely internal thing. Mostly, there have been tiny things happening in the past few weeks that have helped me to look at the world in new (or old but forgotten) ways, and it’s been refreshing.
A (mostly) calm brain. There have been a lot of storms here in the past week. My brain tends to get really uncomfortable when the weather is shifting back and forth rapidly. I’ve felt surprisingly stable in the midst of all of it.
Concrete future plans. I alluded to this in last week’s post, and now that I’ve told my family, I can announce it to all of you: at the end of September I will be filing the requisite paperwork for a court date to legally change my name. By the end of the year I will legally be Alyxander James! There aren’t enough exclamation points in the world to express how excited I am.
The world is still a dark and scary place, and the part of me that wants to fix everything is really struggling right now, because I feel so utterly powerless to do anything meaningful.
Despite the darkness, though, there have been some small glimmers of light this week. Here are three of them.
I’ve been knitting more. Not every day, but more days that I’ve been knitting all summer. Knitting is one of those things that, particularly in the summer, I tend to forget how much I enjoy it and how relaxing it can be until I sit down to actually do it. I bought some really lovely yarn from The Verdant Gryphon at Stitches Midwest a couple of weekends ago, which helped to kick-start my knitting mojo just a little bit. It’s nice to be excited about creating things with my hands. (On a knitting-related note: knitters should go to Ravelry and check out the pattern my partner published this week!)
I’m getting more excited about music again. I’ve been seriously slacking off for the past couple of months, in part because I was dealing with DepressedBrain, and while DepressedBrain is greatly helped by music, sometimes the thought of taking the instrument out of the case (or even taking it off the stand) is too overwhelming. I decided to swap out the strings on my tenor guitar and play around with a new, lower tuning, and that’s gotten me to play more this past week. I even set up a SoundCloud page for myself. It doesn’t have anything on it yet, but I’m sifting through the songs I’ve written for class and hoping to start recording some of them and throwing them online sometime in the next week or so.
The third thing is going to be super vague for the moment (I’m hoping to post more next week), but in the past week I’ve nailed down some details and made some actual plans for moving forward on something I’ve been wanting to do for a while. There’s still a lot of waiting and there will need to be some challenging conversations before it happens, but it’s finally starting to feel real.
Between the 24ish hours I drove while we were on vacation and the fact that I may have picked up a cold in the process, I’m feeling pretty muddled. I can’t even come up with the usual complement of five things for a blog. So here’s a three-item list of what happened on our trip to Minnesota:
The most vacation-y part of vacation was probably our day in Duluth on Friday. It was really wonderful to not be in a big city for a day. Neither of us was feeling particularly great when we woke up, and we almost didn’t go. It wasn’t the best day ever, but I think my soul really needed that time by the lake. We didn’t really do much; mostly, we sat on a bench by the boardwalk overlooking the lake, and my partner knit and I sketched some things and we talked and got a little sunburned. It was a nice day.
I got to see my nephew, who is now five months old and increasingly fun to interact with. It’s been really cool to see him more and more aware of his surroundings each time I’ve visited. This time around, he smiled at me a lot, and let me tell you: there’s something incredibly wonderful about having a cute baby smile at you. It gives you the feeling that really, you can’t be all that bad if this kid thinks you’re worth smiling at that hugely. Before that, we had breakfast with my best friend (who is wonderful and who we don’t see nearly often enough), and I had a massage, which was much-needed. (My massage therapist pointed out that I kind of did things backwards in getting the massage before spending time with my family. Thankfully, cute babies are good buffers for potentially uncomfortable situations.)
We saw Paul McCartney live. It was incredible. The man played for nearly three hours and never once took a drink of water. May we all be so full of life at 72. I wasn’t raised on the Beatles, and to be honest the most exposure I’ve had to their music has come from the movie Across the Universe and the Beatles Ensemble at the Old Town School of Folk Music that meets across the hall from the school’s Resource Center where I volunteer each week. But I enjoyed the concert immensely, both because Sir Paul is incredibly good at what he does and because my partner’s family (who we were with) were enjoying themselves so much. It was great, and I’m so grateful to have had that experience.
This is a rough recording of the song I wrote for my songwriting class this past week. I’ve made a couple of minor changes since class on Tuesday, but it’s mostly here.
I am inordinately proud of this song. First of all, I did some cool things with chords, and I feel like I exercised a lot of what I’ve been learning in my songwriting classes. But aside from that…I love how my voice sounds. I have never, in all my life, been so pleased with a recording of my singing voice. My voice in this recording sounds like I want my voice to sound in my head. While I have dreams of being a baritone, I’m quite pleased with this solidly tenor sweet spot I’ve settled into for the moment. And so I’m sharing this sound clip with you, because while I’m not really using this blog to document my transition process anymore, this is a pretty big personal milestone.
(A funny story about this song: on Sunday, our neighbor’s cat escaped and wound up darting into our apartment as we were headed out the door. Since I hadn’t yet written my assignment for my Tuesday class, my partner jokingly suggested I write a song about the cat. So this song may sound like it has some depth, but really, it’s a pretty song about a cat who got loose.)
I’ve been trying for days to come up with something to write about for this week’s blog, and I keep coming up empty. It hasn’t been a particularly eventful week.
So I’m backtracking a bit. A couple of weeks ago in my songwriting class, we were given the assignment to write a song that included two things: dialogue, and a road we’d been on many times. I found my mind wandering back to my third year of Bible college, the year that I took my first tentative steps out of the closet, a year when everything I thought I knew slipped from under my feet. It was a year of growing pains, and anticipation of major change on the horizon, a year of yearning for freedom and utter terror facing that much unknown. And I thought of my best friend at the time (who’s still one of my best friends, even if we don’t talk a whole lot these days), and the long, looping drives we would take around the lake behind campus, singing along to mediocre pop music that we weren’t supposed to enjoy, let alone know all the words to.
I don’t ever have any desire to be back in that place. But distance has tinted those drives, in particular, with a bittersweet nostalgia, and that nostalgia came out in this song. It’s a rough recording, but I hope you enjoy it.
So remember last week how I said I was going to perform in a songwriting showcase over the weekend, and I was terrified?
Well, I did the terrifying thing. Not only that, but I had fun doing it!
Those of us who performed had the option of doing two songs, so I actually performed more than one thing, and it went much better than I was afraid it would. Many thanks to my instructor,Steve Dawson, for organizing the showcase.
I had my partner record a video of the performance so I could share it with you. The camera died about ten seconds short of the end of my second song, but it’s close enough. Unfortunately, if I compress the video down to a size that I can upload, you can’t really see what’s going on. So I’m just going to post the audio here. Enjoy!
Accidental Fudge 