Karaoke Ninjas and Radioheads

I am a karaoke ninja. Well, maybe the ninja who knocks off several roof tiles as she jumps Crouching Tiger style from doll house to doll house. Karaoke is hard, and I love it. What makes it most difficult are my years of vocal training. You’d think this would be a plus, but it is a completely different genre of singing, almost a different category altogether. Think of Mariah Carey (damn fine voice-forget the terrible material) trying to act. Guh.

So yes, sometimes I have Glitter moments on the tiny stage with the ten cent mic and a crowd full of talkers. So what if I chose a weepy ballad! Song choice is half the battle though. I like songs with string sections, piano, and introspective lyrics like some awesome love child between Samuel Barber, Tori Amos, and Ani Difranco. These don’t tend to go over well in a bar. Case of You. Silent All These Years. Breathe Me.

I need to study the karaoke stylings of my best friend. She has no training, and a Big Gulp heart. She always picks crowd pleasers like 4NonBlondes’ What’s Going On? or Jet’s Are You Gonna Be My Girl? Her voice cracks ever so perfectly on the latter. Everyone wants to go home with her. She owns the stage.

The best friend and Gordita singing a crowd pleaser.

But no, I keep choosing my obscure little ditties, wondering what key I’m going to get, hoping I forget anyone is watching. Even though I always have my birthday party at a karaoke bar, it is almost too performative for me. Singing for me is in many respects a solitary pursuit. This made my old stage and professional gigs a bit problematic. I still remember people lining up to thank me for my brief run as Annie in my high school musical. Although I would have never said this out loud, my interior monologue was: You’re welcome, but I didn’t do it for you.

One exception to this was my brief stint as a strolling opera singer and hostess at a Tampa Macaroni Grill. I sang arias for tips in a white button down shirt, black apron that was too long for me, and a pink tie I borrowed from my dad (and never gave back). I also had trouble carrying all the silverware and menus to the table. Aside from the Puccini, it was one big mess. I needed the money. I digress.

I inhabit songs, and they inhabit me. Occasionally I surface from this special communion to acknowledge the crowd, get them involved. This might seem theatrical, and it is, but it is also selfless. I’d rather be alone, but I enjoy watching other people so much, it seems unfair to hide completely. My favorite song at karaoke as of late oddly speaks to this strange tension–the tension between adoring, wanting to be adored, and being alone. It’s Radiohead’s Creep. Now those of you who know me are probably already laughing because I look like a cute leprechaun–creepy in a horror movie, but not when you are a petite ginger. The juxtaposition of my physical appearance with the lyrics is comedic at first. But, like the use of a girls’ choir on the same song to promote The Social Network (the trailer is genius, and better than the movie), once you get past the oddity, a strange empathy emerges–at least, that’s my hope when I sing the song, for you and for me.  Here’s the chorus:

But I’m a creep
I’m a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here

With apologies to Tom Robbins, “even cowgirls get the blues.” Clearly, I need more therapy. But I hope that when someone experiences my version of this song, they think, well, if she feels that way, then maybe I’m not alone.

The first verse of the song sums up the near universal feeling of not measuring up to someone you’ve placed on a pedestal. (This lyric would be the micro-blogging leitmotif of my love life with one exception, not to be discussed.)

When you were here before
Couldn’t look you in the eye
You’re just like an angel
Your skin makes me cry
You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You’re so fucking special

I like to really stick the word “fucking” when I sing it–again for the jarring juxtaposition (nice girls don’t say “fuck”), and because the near repeat of the line immediately before is not lazy lyricism. The subtlety is important. I read the line as a 1 part jealousy, 2 parts fatigue and 1 part kernel of motivation to move the fuck on. I try to capture this interpretation in song–not easy to do. I am almost to the best part of the song though, the bridge and the climax:

She’s running out the door
She’s running out
She runs runs runs

This is heartache in three lines. The first time I sang it (on acoustic night at the best karaoke bar in the universe, Baby Grand in SoHo), I achieved near transcendence. Playing with a live guitarist gave me the freedom to stretch it out even more than Thom Yorke does. The audience felt my anguish, knew I was somewhere else, and went nuts. Their cheering brought me back to earth, and for once, I was grateful to them.

Lyrics: Radiohead, Creep (1992)

Bonus: the girls’ choir version without the trailer.

Deconstructing in a Breakdown

I realized tonight that I am technically not a great writer. This would not chafe much were I a chemist, but since I have fancied myself a writer since my first head swelling feedback on a 7^th grade creative writing assignment, wherein a anthropomorphized refrigerator wreaks havoc on an unsuspecting household, this is a let down. (Diagram that sentence, nerds!)

I’ve been unwittingly making excuses for my faults. “Oh, professors tell me I write in a more French, lyrical way. I don’t need your American sense of order <spit>.” Until today, I did not connect other feedback, including my need to “summarize the literature more, critique less,” or “get closer to the texts” with my actual deficiency. No, the cartoon coyote in my brain dropped the TNT tonight while working on a research proposal—a dangerous space for me since without the original research, I have few props with which to embellish my own exciting ideas. No, I have to review the literature that came before–a vital step, but one that requires, much to my horror, topic sentences and transitions.

I shant transition here; you see I wonder if my shortcomings are similar to the brilliant mathematicians who struggle to calculate the tip at dinner. There are such Einsteins, yes? I’m not saying I am Margaret Atwood, or even J.K. Rowling. Hubris is not my issue; it’s crankiness. I used to know this stuff because, much like sentence diagramming, I had to number the parts of a paragraph within the context of an essay. Like James Brown, I used to break it down. THEN, I brought back the fridge funk. I had game.

Maybe I should give myself a grammar and structure camp over the summer. Get back to my roots. Oh, but that sounds tedious, like picking up the socks strewn about my apartment right now, only much worse. I don’t have this lazy tendency elsewhere. (By the way, I added that last transition after I finished the post. Doh.) Whenever I get the notion to take up tennis again, a biannual event since age eight, I start with the mechanics of my swing. I now hear the voice of my last instructor (my first being my dear dad): “Swing UP Mount Hood, UP Mount Hood, UP Mount Hood.” My swing secured, I then pay attention to my footwork, trying hard not to overrun the ball (good God, that is a metaphor for my life!). Finally, I get to my favorite part: crushing the ball. THWACK! That felt good.

Now if only I could muster the same patience and dedication to fixing my writing issues. At least I can finally be honest with myself about my GRE writing scores. Turns out, I wasn’t misunderstood. No Van Gough here. For now, I will crack open another Red Bull, and ponder it no more. In the immortal words of Margaret Mitchell and Scarlett O’Hara, “After all, tomorrow is another day.” Today, and until about 5:00 p.m. tomorrow, I must finish this paper with a stylish thwump.

Portland, Oregon skyline and the swinging Mt. Hood

My (first) Brush with Occupy Wall Street

I woke up early this morning with my head on a pillow located in the East Village of Manhattan. I had made the short trek from Jersey the night before to assure an early start, not for a protest of the state of affairs in this country, but rather a celebration.

I was to witness the marriage of two friends at city hall. The experience was wonderful, and when the officiant emphasized the power given him by the great state of New York, we truly felt proud, proud of the system of governance that recognizes the responsibilities and benefits of a beautiful union. My civic pride would take a turn in the afternoon, however.

My participation in the Occupy Wall Street day of action was severely limited due to the wedding, a business meeting and most of all, the fact that I was heavy laden with luggage for my trip back to Jersey. Undaunted, I decided to attempt to join the Student-Faculty centered protest in Union Square as this meshed best with my location and one of my specific interests in the movement. As a first-time union member (Rutgers- AAUP), I was also pumped to represent the power of Labor.  However, my meeting at NYU ran late. My phone was acting up. I wasn’t sure if the protest was still in progress. I began to cut through Washington Square Park when my question was answered from above. Four helicopters were hovering around what I reasoned must be the Union Square protest.

The sound and look of the choppers was eerie. Strange how one technology can save lives, kill in combat, and engage in a softer kind of menace: watching. I began to play an easy game in my head I call, “Guess the media coverage.” With several blocks ahead of me, I’d won my game with a blandly partisan-spiced narrative that essentially said the protests were disruptive of commerce, and therefore bad. Never mind that the most famous protest in our history involved the literal dumping of commodities into a bay, a moment itself now twisted and co-opted by a corrupt cause. (My proof of hollow victory would come later after watching news reports, but this is for another post.)

About three blocks away, walking up 5^th Avenue, I could feel the mood shift. This kind of “feeling the city” has always been one of my favorite, if bewildering, facets of New York City in particular. The electricity of the place is the stuff of cliché, however the urbanity here achieves a kind of language. I sensed the tension from the people coming toward me. I felt the excitement of fellow travelers uptown. I could see police cars in the distance blocking the street. The old stone buildings had a different presence this day.

And that hum, the sound of the totalizing media eye hovering above, whispered that I might be heading into trouble.

As I got a block away, a kind woman, likely concerned about me and all my literal baggage, shouted to me, “Be careful going up there.” “Maybe I should rethink this,” I thought to myself. In addition to logistical issues, I am a novice when it comes to civil disobedience. I have participated in protests in Portland and Salem, Oregon, but not without a blanket permit. The injustices of the police raid on Zuccotti park three days prior however, spurred me forward. I wanted solidarity. I wanted a collective voice.

I met a wall of onlookers (or participants? The line between the two was blurry-another groovy aspect of NYC) at 5^th and 13^th. I could not physically move forward, nor could I turn my gaze any other direction, but to my right. There behind a construction zone, facing uptown, was a formation of maybe 100 police officers in riot gear. I immediately began to take pictures, as did many around me. I felt compelled to capture this omen. I was afraid.  Keep in mind they were just standing there waiting for orders, but they had their shields on and batons ready. I had never seen anything like it without mediation. There, unfiltered and without any action on their part, I was spooked by the police. People like to remind us that the police are part of the 99%, yet watching them was a nauseating feeling of “us versus them.”  The picture shown here is terrible in terms of composition—I was too short to capture the breadth of the assembled force and my camera phone was not up to the task. Yet, this is not my point. Taking pictures allowed me some sense of control, and strength in numbers pushed back what might have been a greater fear of calling attention to myself.

Concern for my wellbeing was momentarily interrupted by the recollection of a friend who was almost certainly in the thick of the protest. I texted her a picture of the ominous force, the location and a nudge to take care. In hindsight, the text was a bit naïve, as she has no doubt seen much worse in person, and again, they weren’t doing anything. But I was genuinely freaked out. Were the police scared? How did they feel lined up there with hundreds of people photographing them in a sea of palpable fear?

I stood at the edge of the protest, still unable to move to the Square, and began to look around. There were students in an academic building above W 14^th street holding signs in the windows, one urging all students to occupy their classrooms. A small band of protesters, disconnected from the main body I suppose, began to chant below the windows.  A passer-by said to a friend, “Good for them. Bloomberg made it worse by kicking them out of the park.” This was indeed a delicious truth.

I felt like I was observing one suction cup on one tentacle of a giant 1%, mainstream media,Corporate-State eating squid, one of hundreds unleashed across the country. Fear began to yield to excitement and hope.

Sadly (or maybe fortunately based on my luggage-laden state), I had to make my way West to honor commitments in Jersey (and avoid a nasty parking ticket). I still feel energized though, sitting here in my cozy college town apartment, and determined to fully participate next time when I am better prepared for the risks.