Shields, Playgrounds, Art and Hope

I've decided to resurrect this old bit of bloggery after reading the Dexter inspired bloggerised thoughts of a certain someone whose writing often gives me reason to stop and ponder my navel lint. What she wrote resonated with me and reminded me of some of the things I wrote down here.

Thanks for the reminder Saz.

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I live a lot of my life inside my head and I'm not especially proud of that fact.

Its not necessarily that it's a bad place to be - well, most of the time its not - its just living upstairs of my shoulders is horrendously insulating. And dangerously seductive. This is because the inside of my mind is largely unassailable. It's not subject to the whims and vagaries of the day-to-day grind of eking out a living on this madly spinning ball of rock. Reality, like Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses need not come knocking, 'coz I don't have to be home to answer. Its safe, inside your head.

I'm pretty sure too that I'm not alone in this.

I don't think that is how most of us start out, or are intended to be. Somewhere along the line in that whole socialisation and education part of our lives, we learn the art of mental camouflage. We blend, we bend, we meld, merge and adapt. And we take on board the most infuriatingly disagreeable pap as the lynchpins of our being.

"Good people don't do that," or

"Don't you think that's a bit risky?" or

"Oh, you'll never make it through life as..." or

"You're so stupid/fat/slow/silly/ugly/weak (add your own descriptor here)."

And then there are all the messages that don't need words. The absences or the abuses or the rejections.

We take these on board and clutch them to ourselves as though they were reinforced titanium shielding against the horror and uncertainty of the world. And we never stop to see that they keep us from the world more than they keep the world from us. Even when we start realising this, its so very damn hard to throw that shield away because, dammit, that fucking thing is titanium! Its heavy!

And yet there are so many ways out of that personal cul-de-sac.

Listening to positive ideas and people. Learning to accept the good things without feeling the need to think "Oh shit. Something bad has to happen now." Daring to step beyond what is comfortable.

Of course bad things will happen. Unwelcome things. Unforeseen things. Unexpected things. Often though, those bad things come from using that partly obscured vision we have from behind those shields and we walk headlong into traps and pitfalls of our own devising, wailing as we fall, "Why did this happen to me? I didn't see that coming!"

But the good things happen too. And here's the thing. They don't have to be connected. Its not a cause and effect relationship between good and bad. Good things have just as much chance of happening to us as bad. And vice versa.

And, as with the bad things, most of those good things are things we have laid the ground work for. Promotion at work? You worked hard for it. A joy filled love affair that fills your memories for the rest of your life? You chose that person. Something you read set you back on your feet again? You chose that book at the time you needed it. A friend helps you out of a hard place? You chose that friend, and your behaviour was the reason they chose you as well.

Life's like that; the good and the bad.

So why is it then that I spend my time cowering behind the titanium shield inside my skull? I could say force of habit. I could say its from a lifetime of finding that as my one last safe bastion of me-ness. I could say its because I enjoy thinking and contemplating and analysing. And all those things would be true.

To a point.

The big reason, of course is fear.

Today, I spent part of my day being absolutely amazed and astonished and transported and bewildered and angered and back to amazed again (this may seem like a digression, but you'll understand why I say this now, later on). I had the pleasure of helping escort some forty of my son's cohort to the nearby high-school to see a performing arts presentation. I will freely admit, I was somewhat dreading the experience. Memories of my own years at high-school and the preponderance of Neanderthal thought that abounded there did not exactly inspire confidence in what I was about to be subjected to.

What I saw there though totally stunned me. In one and a half hours, these kids sang, danced, made music, acted and made art with the most incredible confidence, enthusiasm and one hell of a lot of talent. There were a few hiccoughs, that detracted, and I was infuriated that these gaffs weren't due to the kids, but the adults who fucked up the sound engineering or music selection. That the people teaching them didn't seem able to actually grasp the abilities of their charges annoyed me immensely.

But the kids on stage made that irrelevant in the end. I delighted in it and came away on a minor high.

I'm always impressed when I have the opportunity to see someone with skills I either have yet to, or will never ever have the ability to achieve. And I saw that level of skill and competence in some of these kids. And more than that, I saw that here, in this time, this space, this dinky little conservative, rural, suburban town, these young people were brave enough to take that leap and express themselves and live their art.

Now, some might argue that that is also partly due to the fact that they haven't had to live in "the real world" yet. They don't have mortgages and bills, and kids to feed and cars to take to the mechanics because there's a strange knocking noise somewhere back there. They might further argue that this is due to the fact that at that age, these kids are still primarily ego driven and can't see beyond themselves to have the fear that something they do might not work out right.

But I can't say those things. While there's some truth to that, its a long way from the whole truth. Those kids still live in our world. they live with their own fears, made more complex because they see so much of the world revolving around them. For them, the snapping of a parent who is stressing over the prospect of having no car is something personal. For them who is and isn't their friend is hellishly important because to be rejected is to have the totality of themselves spurned.

And in spite of that, these kids got up on that stage and gave us ART.

And I was humbled, because it was something I never dared.

I was once more brought to the realisation that I had lived my life hiding inside my head. That so many of my hard-won beliefs and ideas come from books I've read, and conversations with people about other people's lives. I had stood on the outside looking in, trying to tell myself it was because I was above such things when in truth I didn't want the risk of not knowing where I fit. I made my niche outside the world.

I hunkered down in my head as I went about the task of raising my siblings while my father drank and my mother survived his drinking. I hid inside my books and comics through move after move as we went from one air-force base to another, as I struggled and failed to make friends. I retreated into my music and guitar when I was told time and again I was "too nice" to go out with. I escaped to my work and my books to survive the mental castration of choosing to stay with someone who wanted a carer and not a partner, and whom I was too afraid to compromise my much cherished "values" for.

I was the good boy, you see. The nice boy. The responsible boy. It was my task in life to make everything O.K for everyone and to make everyone happy. I wasn't necessarily told these things directly, but it was the message I took on and held to my heart. It was the message I chose to listen to and the message that I lived. No matter that it just made me downright miserable.

I sat in my head and thought and dreamed and thought and planned and thought and thought some more.

None of that is an excuse. I can honestly say now, looking back, that I made most of those choices. It was me, and me alone who was too scared to step up and dare life to happen.

And one day, that is exactly what I did.

I started living as though I meant it. And what do you know? I found I DID mean it. I could choose to express myself as myself. To state my thoughts and beliefs and feelings. I could "put myself out there" (to use a trite turn of phrase) in the knowledge that if I didn't, no-one was going to come bundling up to my door and say, "By the way, want a happily ever after with me? Or maybe we'll just fuck?" And I could know that if that didn't work, I would know, that it would never come from not being completely myself.

But I'm still in the early stages of that and starting your whole adult life over from scratch at thirty-seven means I've still got a fair bit of ground to cover before I catch up.

Which, in an extremely roundabout way, brings me here. Another area of expression of the "me that is me." It isn't by any stretch of the imagination the totality of me, but it I have come to realise it is inescapably a part of me, and has been since before I even knew there were more things you can do with girls than just pull their pigtails.

There were dreams of girls and ropes and chains and coercion (at that stage, I was just after kisses, the more fun things joined in the dreams later). As I grew there were books I ferreted out, scenes in films I'd grow almost hungry for. I grew to be passionate, sensual, sexual. Wanting to savour everything my senses could devour. But when I came up against the wall of "That's just not the right thing," - from friends, family, books, films - I packed it away.

In the aftermath of that long dead relationship though, a lot of the other messages and lessons began to surface, and possibility opened up. I allowed myself to see the totality of who I am. To appreciate the wonderful and good aspect of myself and rather than hating myself for the negative, appreciating that they too are part of me and if I so choose, I can change them. A whole damn world of potential.

So I squared myself up and set out to meet it.

Its brought me here. Its brought me the care of my son nearly full time. Its brought me a partner I can share the totality of me with, who wants to explore and grow with me. Its brought me here to a place I can connect with others who will accept and understand the different facets of me as they come to light, and know I won't be judged as an aberration.

But there's still that little demon fear lurking. The awareness that this is new territory for me. That I am walking tentatively in a playground where others have been boldly striding and running around for most of their lives. That in this playground, I have yet to learn the names of all the games, let alone the rules and whys and how-tos.

The temptation to stay in my head is phenomenal.

Each day though, I am learning. I'm reading, watching, listening. And yes, though I'm often still in my head, the horizons of possibility are expanding.

I'm still painfully aware of my lack of practical knowledge and understanding in the playground, and hesitate to join in and voice my thoughts among those I see as being, if not wiser at least more experienced. Now though, I'm listening to myself and hearing the positives. I'm seeing a commonality I share with others and my confidence in my ability to make the leap into the fray is growing stronger day by day.

I think, most of all, what I felt watching those kids performing today, was hope.

Hope for them. That from a town like this such talent can spring. Hope that they will have the courage to hold onto their fearless confidence and not become less than what they are.

And hope that I can do the same in my own life.