Category: blog

Like a Song: Breathe

This essay is published today at @U2, the (yep, she’s going to say it again) best damn U2 fan website on the planet. The essay is part of our “Like a Song” series, in which @U2 staffers reflect on the personal meaning that specific songs have for us. It’s one of our most popular regular features. If you enjoy this one, I invite you to also read “Like a Song: Surrender” and “Like a Song: Elevation”, as well as the many other great essays from members of the @U2 writing team.

I’m posting the essay here in its entirety because I want to include the song itself, for those who don’t know it, as well as the lyrics (since the song moves rather fast). You’ll find both after the essay.

I really do love this song. I find it structurally fascinating. I love Bono’s voice, the urgency and precision of the rhythm section, the guitar… wow, listen to the guitar become positively ecstatic at about 3:40 as Bono proclaims We are people born of sound. I believe it. I cannot wait to see this song live.

Enjoy.

 
Like a Song: Breathe
 

It’s been hard to breathe.

As is true for many people, much of my life is suddenly at risk: my income, my mortgage, my career, my art, the life I love so much and have worked so hard to build. In what seemed like only a moment, only a breath, the world’s markets went down in flames and took my money with them: the business I started has not yet found its feet, and may never become sustainable in this shaky economy; and the writing project that has consumed me for three years was given to someone else.

Most of us have taken a punch in the gut sometime in our lives. Most of us know what it’s like when we suddenly can’t breathe.

Man at the door says if I want to stay alive a bit longer
There’s three things I need you to know.

I knew what those things were: squeeze down our budget, get a real job, and don’t whine. Millions of people are having a hard time. So I sent out a truckload of resumes and tailored cover letters. I had a hundred “coffee meetings” to network with strangers, both of us smiling hard and hoping desperately each other would have the answer. I went to one unbelievably surreal job fair where the tightly packed room smelled so strongly of fear — like something burning — that I had to leave.

The forest fire that is fear

All those hours at my desk, working on those letters and resumes, I listened constantly to No Line on the Horizon. It was clear to me right away that this album is Bono’s line in the sand: he is a musician first and a world-saver second. Maybe I heard it that way because I was missing my screenplay badly, and trying to come to terms with the idea of someone else doing the writing that I thought of as mine. This is standard practice in Hollywood, it happens to every writer, but it was the first time it had happened to me. I wanted to start another project, to keep working, to stay sane. But I’m not Bono; art doesn’t pay my mortgage right now, and so I told myself that art was not the priority.

But I went on listening to Bono throwing down, being so clear: Sing your heart out.

And then I had the chance to apply for a job that would involve working around writers. A tough job for not enough pay, but maybe I could still do some writing of my own, or at least be near people who were. I fought like a bear for it. So did the more than 100 other people who applied. And sometimes there are miracles, but not this time. I was their number three pick; they talked about bringing all three of us in to interview with the entire staff, but the staff fell stone in love with number one, and that was it.

And there I was, no job, no screenplay, and I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was run in mental circles inside my own head, like a frightened animal in a forest fire.

The forest fire that is fear

And then… I don’t know. Maybe I ran myself out and was finally exhausted enough that the only thing I could do was turn and face my fears. Really look at them. Losing my home, my security, my writing, my confidence, failing, being ashamed, wrecking my partner’s life.

Here is what I saw. I saw that breath is life. Oxygen keeps our hearts beating and gives our muscles strength, and feeds our brains so we can think. And fear is like fire: it takes the air away. It burns our hope and our will and leaves us only the ashes of grief that will choke us if we let them. No wonder I was feeling helpless and afraid: I had stopped breathing.

And I’m not the only one. Millions of us every day are frightened and grieving. Right this second, someone is losing their job, their home, their relationship. Their child is sick. Their beloved cat is dying in their arms. They are blinking at the “Closed” sign on their favorite coffee shop where the barista always knew exactly how they liked their latte.

And right this second, someone is finding their courage to start again. Right now, someone is trying to breathe.

So here it is: writing is my breath. It may not pay my mortgage, but it will save me so that I can save myself. Writing this will save me. I got my screenplay back, and in a 78-hour period last week I spent 42 hours working on it, and that will save me. I am going to start offering my services as an editor and looking for more freelance gigs, and even if I can’t get enough work, even if I end up again as some company’s director of whatever, what I am doing right now will save me. Because I feel like myself again. I can breathe.

So this song has become for me the roar on the other side of that horrible silence. Every day I will walk out into the street and sing my heart out for as long as I can.

We all have someone or something we love so much that it defines us. We all have things that make us who we are. When you’re frightened, when it feels too hard, that’s when you need your clear brain and your strength the most –€“ so run, run to the things that make you breathe. Whether you find them in art, family, religion, helping others, reading books, gardening, hiking, counting stars, no matter — stand in the space of those things and breathe the pure oxygen they give you. Breathe deep. I promise it will help.

Walk out into a sunburst street
Sing your heart out
Sing my heart out.
I’ve found grace inside a sound
I found grace, it’s all that I found.
And I can breathe.

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“Breathe” – U2

16th of June, nine-oh-five, doorbell rings
Man at the door says if I want to stay alive a bit longer
There’€™s three things I need you to know
Three.

Coming from a long line of traveling sales people on my mother’€™s side
I wasn’€™t gonna buy just anyone’€™s cockatoo
So why would I invite a complete stranger into my home?
Would you?

These days are better than that
These days are better than that

Every day I die again, and again I’€™m reborn
Every day I have to find the courage
To walk out into the street
With arms out
Got a love you can’t defeat
Neither down nor out
There’€™s nothing you have that I need
I can breathe
Breathe now

16th of June, Chinese stocks are going up
And I’€™m coming down with some new Asian virus
Juju man, juju man
Doc says you’re fine, or dying
Please
Nine-oh-nine, St. John Divine on the line, my pulse is fine
But I’€™m running down the road like loose electricity
While the band in my head plays a striptease.

The roar that lies on the other side of silence
The forest fire that is fear so deny it.

Walk out into the street
Sing your heart out
The people we meet will not be drowned out
There’€™s nothing you have that I need
I can breathe
Breathe now

We are people born of sound
The songs are in our eyes
Gonna wear them like a crown

Walk out into a sunburst street
Sing your heart out
Sing my heart out
I’€™ve found grace inside a sound
I found grace, it’s all that I found
And I can breathe
Breathe now.

Now you see it

Here’s something fun for a Sunday — the winners of The Year’s Best Illusion contest.

From that post, you have to follow additional links to see the examples of the illusions (or you can follow the links below, although the brief article is useful for setting context). Either way, the links are definitely worth checking out. The curve ball animation is just the sort of thing I love — very simple, very clear, and a wonderful reminder to me of the complexity of the brain, which I sometimes find marvelous, and sometimes seems exactly like the tangle of cables and electric cords under my computer/printer/monitor (as in, you call this organization?!).

And I’m fascinated by the biosex/contrast demonstration. I wonder if traditional gendering of women includes deliberate enhancement of contrast through cosmetics because our brains are all wired this way, or our brains respond this way now because women have spent so much time enhancing the contrast — thus demonstrating the power of socialization to influence the way the brain perceives the world. Chicken or egg?

Coming tomorrow, a new essay for @U2 that I will post in its entirety here, so I can include music with it. And besides, I’m sending you all away to other websites today, but really I like having you here. So tomorrow, no revolving door…

It is a remarkably beautiful day in Seattle. I hope that all is well wherever you are.

Cost

I’m busy lately, mostly in ways that I enjoy, with so many more things I want to do. And I’m finding it ironic that I’m better at doing things now — more skills, more focus, way more discipline — but the doing takes much more out of me.

The benefit of age for me so far has been expertise and confidence and a stronger sense of myself. And now I need to learn how to gracefully pay the price for all these gifts of age: the fact that I literally cannot read without glasses anymore; that if I get up early and throw myself into work and forget to eat, I will feel bad for hours; that intense work fuels my soul but makes my body tired and shaky for days; and that I can no longer sleep as deeply as I used to, no matter how tired I am. I’m not repairing myself back to my twenty-something baseline anymore. I am, to my surprise, destructible. I’m not talking about death now: I am doing pretty well with accepting that I’ll die. I just hadn’t spent much time thinking about the slowing down that has to be managed before the stopping.

I live with someone whose body has changed in some accelerated ways, whereas I’m pretty much on schedule, and I am not complaining. But my awareness of my own body has increased exponentially because Nicola is so in tune with hers, and because we have had to learn to pay attention to nuances; to learn to distinguish MS from whatever else might be going on. And so I’m noticing, and feeling… not angry, only occasionally sad (although I suspect there’s more of that to come), but mostly just really annoyed right now. There is so much I want to do.

HAW: More on ground rules

A long post at Humans At Work about ground rules for teams and managers. Yes, this is what I think about sometimes when I’m not thinking about writing (grin).

This may be it from me today… long conversation yesterday with Executive Producer regarding Screenplay Notes, and so I will be working this afternoon on revisions. Which is fun for me. So I’m here, I’m good, and I’m looking forward to resuming the conversation tomorrow.

Enjoy your day.

In which the President makes people laugh

President Obama attended the White House Correspondents Dinner recently and spoke for 16 minutes, poking fun at pretty much everyone including himself.

If you only have the time or patience to watch a little, go for the second clip, in which he summarizes his goals for the next 100 days of the administration. But the whole thing is worth watching, including the brief exchange about Michelle Obama’s awesome arms.

I cannot tell you how much it means to me to have a President who is capable of laughing at himself, his colleagues, his rivals and his detractors with equal ease, in the politest way possible and yet with no pretense or softpedaling. This was Obama’s chance to serve up a few choice trips to the woodshed with a big dollop of humor sauce, and he did.

And then he ended it with a graceful acknowledgment of his debt, and our debt, to journalism in all its forms, despite its compromises and struggles and the ease with which it can be turned to bad use. I admire that he did that. For me, it was another example of his commitment to bringing everyone to the table, which is an aspect of his leadership style that I admire enormously.

And most of all, I do like a sense of humor in people. In serious times, we can all use a good laugh that much more; and for the most part, this was a speech about connecting people through laughter, rather than dividing them. Good for him.
 

Strong opinions, weakly held

I have the same knee-jerk instinct to avoid extensive conversations about spirituality that I do for endless talking about politics: 90+ percent of the time they end up being an exchange of position statements which may even escalate into a full-out debate (oh goody, one of my favorite ways to spend time). In other words, people are so busy defending their own beliefs (as if disagreement constituted attack) that they stop listening. The first thing that often goes out the window is acceptance that other people really can be different. They’re not just stupid or ignorant or evil or trying to wind you up: they can actually think and feel and behave differently about important things.

I’m a big fan of the concept (which I first saw expressed in this post by Bob Sutton) of “strong opinions, weakly held” — the idea (see Sutton’s sidebar) that I should fight as if I am right and listen as if I am wrong.

I am still working on this. I find help from Nicola (which doesn’t surprise me at all) and from my screenwriting experiences (which has surprised me extremely).

Until fairly recently — probably until into my 40’s — I was invested in being Right About Things. Not because I needed to win arguments, but because I preferred to avoid them. And so my “rightness” was not about strong opinions, it was about weak ones. My strategy was to keep my opinions weak because it meant that I was flexible; that there was room for other ideas in my world. I didn’t get that real flexibility happens only when I have boundaries, beliefs, a firm center from which I am then willing to really question and really listen to the answers.

Which is why I find so much joy and hope and value in this post by Roger Ebert about death and what may, or may not, happen afterward. I love his curiosity, his acceptance, and his willingness to just let people be who they are. And to let himself be who he is, too, without apology or justification. There’s a great sense in his writing of This is who I am right now. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be a little different. Wouldn’t that be interesting?

And then there’s this part of Ebert’s post that particularly speaks to me:

I drank for many years in a tavern that had a photograph of Brendan Behan on the wall, and under it this quotation, which I memorized:
 
I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don’t respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.
 
For 57 words, that does a pretty good job of summing it up. “Kindness” covers all of my political beliefs. No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.
 
— Roger Ebert

Part of what I’m learning right now is that I can’t make myself happier if I don’t have my own strong ideas about what that means, and if I’m not clear about it to other people. I can’t make others happier if I don’t listen to what would make them happy.

But for me the tricky part is to have strong ideas, weakly held, without sacrificing the strength of the things I know are truly right for me. To accept that I’m different from you, and that I can be right for myself even if I’m not “right” for you. Or maybe the better word is true — to be true to myself without having to be “right” about it in some greater sense. To accept that this is who I am today, and maybe tomorrow I’ll be different.

Hmm, I’m not so sure how to say all the things I mean yet. And yes, I’d love to hear what you think. But even more than that, I’d love for you to do something today that makes you happy. Of that I am certain.

Jukebox

“Sarah Victoria” — Acoustic Alchemy
“Black Water” — Doobie Brothers
“The Cloud Room” — Laura Veirs

The theme today is dreaming.

I have all kinds of dreams about what I want to do with my work or with myself. And I also, particularly when I’m in need of rest, have dreams about places I’d like to be. I don’t see travel as excitement and froth and doing seven museums before breakfast; for me, the best travel is to go to a beautiful place and find rest, find stillness in myself, be taken care of so that I may step back and simply be in the world. Be free of care and responsibility so that I have the bandwidth to see the world through fresh eyes and remember that it’s bigger than me. To find particular small joys of food and wine and conversation with strangers. To stand in spaces that I may only see once in my life but can carry inside me always. That kind of travel gives me a particular sense of freedom and safety combined.

“Sarah Victoria” is for The Inn of the Five Graces in Santa Fe. Wow. So much color and texture, and yet it looks so peaceful to me. I’m not a minimalist by any means: the appeal of a white room with a single black chair eludes me. But it’s not easy to mix color and comfort; and yet, I see these photos, the small table in the shade of a private courtyard, the sun on stone, tile and textile from markets a half a world away, and I want to be there.

I’ve talked before about “Black Water” and my South. It’s here today because it’s always been a touchstone for me. It doesn’t take me back to the Tampa of my childhood, but rather to the idealized South that I took with me when I left the real one behind. This song is for floating on slow rivers through places where I belong down to my DNA, watching clouds and drinking iced tea. I miss Spanish moss and Florida sunsets and men in gimme caps with grease-stained overalls who will open up their auto repair shops on a Sunday morning to repair the radiator of a stranger and her teenage daughter for free because they are 500 miles from home with only $16 in their pockets.

And then there is “The Cloud Room,” which speaks to one of my oldest dreams of escape. I had some bad years in grammar school and was always escaping through books, and later through music. And when I was still small enough, 9 or 10, I would escape from class to the women’s bathroom — not the busy bathroom in the long hall where we had most of our classes, but the one down a flight of stairs in a quiet nook of the administrative section. It had a small window with a broad tile sill set high in the wall. I would climb up the radiator and wedge myself into the sill, so I could sit with my knees up and look up into the sky. I would imagine that I was a seagull flying over sea cliffs in Spain. Why Spain? I have no idea. I doubt I’d even seen pictures of it. But it was always Spain, and the cliffs were golden and beautiful, the sky was forever big and blue over a deserted white beach and a calm sea, the wind just right. And I could really feel it. For those moments, I soared.

Enjoy.

Edited to add: I’m sorry to say that I don’t have enough server space for all my audio, so most jukebox playlists become inactive after a few months. This is one. Very sorry. But the music is worth seeking out, it’s great!

To use the E-Phonic MP3 Player you will need Adobe Flash Player 9 or better and a Javascript enabled browser.

Gone fishing

The first draft of the screenplay revision is turned in to the Important Producer and Director Peeps, after 42 hours of writing in a 78-hour time period during which I revised a 114 page script into 102 pages, including restructuring sequences, writing new scenes, polishing dialogue, and ironing out inconsistencies. I am fucking tired. And I had an absolute blast. And I think it’s pretty good work, although of course some of it is first draft and so needs to be tightened up.

It’s actually been a pretty interesting process lately with the screenplay, and I will talk about it at some point soon when my brain does not feel like a scrambled egg.

But not today. Today, I am going to read Stephen King; eat butternut squash soup and ham sandwiches and spaghetti marinara; drink tea, then beer, then tea again; sleep beyond 4 AM (very exciting!); and then tomorrow accompany my sweetie to a matinee of Star Trek, possibly followed by (wait for it….) more beer.

In other words, I’ve gone fishing. Hope to have a post tomorrow morning, but actual comment/conversations probably won’t resume until later tomorrow or Saturday. You are all very patient and I appreciate it. I hug you through the internets (but watch out for the fishing pole, those hooks can be wicked….)

Enjoy your Thursday.

Work/bliss

I’ve been up and working since before 5 AM. It’s raining outside my office window, cold heavy rain from a gray heavy sky, more like fall than spring, except that under the rain the garden glows brilliant green and pink and orange and purple. The lilac against the gray sky is amazing….

Seattle doesn’t know it’s May and is still playing the April weather game, but it’s okay. It makes my office feel cocooned and safe. All I did yesterday, from 4:30 AM until nearly 6 PM, was eat meals with Nicola and work on the latest screenplay revision. And that’s all I plan to do today. It’s been months since I’ve had the chance to do this work, and it’s a particular bliss for me: today I am a screenwriter. Whatever happens next, I am happy for these days.

And this is where I’ll be, in my safe rain-shrouded place with the people of my movie, until their story is done for this round and I come back, blinking, into light.