Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Temper, Temper...

Well, I've just thrown a tantrum. 

Tomorrow is my audition for the opportunity to embarrass myself in public as never before, by appearing in a local production of 'The Full Monty'.  I've been in a swivet (I think?  It's different from a doily, that I know) about the singing part of the process -- I picked a ballad from 'Carousel', 'If I Loved You', and for an upbeat number, a much-rearranged version of Marvin Gaye's 'Dancing in the Street'.  I've been singing these songs everywhere possible, with the exception of the wonderfully resonant shower room at the Summit YMCA -- I just thought that, if I started bellowing 'If I loved you...' to a room with other naked, wet, soapy men, these men might feel uncomfortable.

So mostly I've been taking my computer with me on my longer commutes, opening it up, strapping it into place on the front passenger seat, and playing an endless loop of the piano accompaniment for the two songs.  Over and over and over again.  Which, of course, doesn't mean that I'll remember the lyrics when the time comes, or how I've changed things to allow for the very brief audition time I'll be allowed, but still...

Last night, at the end of our rehearsal for Canticum Novum, one of the choirs John conducts at Christ Church in New Brunswick, I asked if I could sing these two song scraps for my fellow choir members -- assuring them that, at most, it would take about three minutes.  Well of course they said yes, and I started singing.  Taking full advantage of the wonderful acoustics of the sanctuary, and the nave or whatever it is, where the choir sits. 

But I wasn't using my computer to play the accompaniment.  I had a CD of the music, and a little boom box, which John said would be more audible than the computer, so I brought the boom box along, in a plastic bag to make it easier to carry, and with the CD in place.  I set them up where I could hear them while I sang.  And, even though I was nervous, everyone seemed enthusiastic about my singing, and laughed when I told them the play for which I was going to try out. 

Rehearsal over, I helped John clean up, and we drove home, the boom box back in its plastic bag, and the CD still in place.  No problem there.  And when we got home, I brought everything into the house and put the boom box in the den, safely sitting on an old ottoman.

A few minutes ago, I thought I'd run through the songs for about the seven thousandth time (I got a haircut today; was it possible that this would impact my vocal technique?  Singers are so superstitious...), and I used the computer again, with the loop on I tunes, over and over.

Then I thought I'd practice with the boom box, as the timing between the two pieces is slightly different on the CD, and I wanted to know how much chatter I would have to insert, to cover dead air and not bore the director.  So I started to get the boom box out of the plastic bag.

This is a simple operation, right?  A seven year old could do it with ease.  I managed to tangle things, and mix things up -- there was a note pad and a bottle of soda in the bag too, but how much confusion could these create?  In the end, the boom box fell out of the bag, onto the carpeted floor, and the wire allowing the box to operate on electricity rather than batteries had popped out.  No biggie, I was so sure.

So, into the kitchen -- in spite of the acoustic tile ceiling -- and I was ready to give the songs one more go 'round.  Try holding my head up, as I was advised after last night's run through.  Not rush the ballad, as I was warned.  I was ready.  Press power on and...

Nothing. 

Press CD. 

Nothing.

Check the wires, change the plugs in the kitchen, press all the buttons I could find on the stupid thing.  Nothing. 

So I walked around the house for a few minutes, bellowing in rage.  And returned to the kitchen, picked up the boom box over my head, and smashed it on the kitchen's nice rigid white ceramic tile floor. 

Batteries scattered.  Bits of plastic skittered across the floor.  The CD popped out.  And of course, it still wouldn't work.

I went on a little hunting expedition, as I'm certain there is at least one other operable boom box in the house, but I was unsuccessful.  I came back into the kitchen, to see what actual damage I'd done.  I think the boom box may just be salvageable, as I think only the case has been cracked and broken in a few places.  It doesn't actually have many moving parts, after all.

The CD, however, was cracked, from the little center hole, all the way to the edge.  I broke it some more, because I was so pissed off.

And here's why.

I don't think that the struggle I had, with the plastic bag and the soda bottle and the pad of paper and the stupid little tape recorder was accidental.  I firmly believe that, at some demonic level, my unconscious is unfailingly poised to sabotage me, at every possible opportunity.  And it fills me with unbelievable rage.  Who the fuck's side am I on, anyway?

I know I've written about this before -- my penchant for creating an impassable barrier, right in front of the place I tell myself I want to work.  Creating a lurid mess wherever I go.  Slumping about, when I'm working on a little project in the den, while the TV is on, and repeatedly losing the same critical tool, over and over and over and over and over again, and getting angry, but not changing a thing about the environment in which this struggle takes place.

It makes me want to kill myself. 

Because, at the risk of sinking into blaming behavior, I swallowed, whole, the vile litany of how worthless I was, how stupid I was, how ugly I was, how useless and expensive and...  I heard it from my mother, from the cruel headmistresses at the orphanage, and then for seven years, in my father's home, where every day, I was informed that I was only barely being tolerated. 

And I swallowed it, whole.  And it's inside me, whispering or shouting, depending on the circumstance.  It's inside me, waiting for the next opportunity to tie my shoelaces together, or block my memory, or any number of seemingly 'coincidental' 'accidental' events -- and I can't for the life of me get... it... out... 

Well, the audition is tomorrow.  There is no time or opportunity to replace the CD.  I am so furious that I would like to disembowel myself.  Or so I think.  It's exhausting and shaming, this self-loathing. And I'm so sorry to say that, no matter what accolades I might accumulate (surely they're accidental), whatever minor successes I blunder upon (certainly these were really meant for someone else), whatever talents I seem to have (of course, these aren't really important, and are at any rate, second-class...), at the core is that bottomless, insatiable pit of knowing that I'm not deserving of much of anything at all.  It's awful.  I wish there were an antidote.

I'll audition anyway, of course.  Any opportunity, after all, to humiliate myself.



©    2013           Walter 'Fucked Up' Zimmerman  


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