Fuck the Lilliputians.

I’ve had this quote from Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs taped to the Magic Bus’ dashboard for almost a year:

 “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

 I gave my boss notice of my intent to depart my notjob by the end of this year, which is more than two months’ warning. I claim squatters’ rights on the moral high ground for allowing the company this much prep time. However, it took me nearly a week to actually quit after making my decision to do so. I’ve always had an ingrained and misplaced sense of responsibility to my employers. Never once have I inconvenienced any of them by walking off a job; I can’t say the same for them.

I reasoned I couldn’t quit on a Monday, that would be too cruel to start a week that way.  This is also an awkward situation with only two of us in this office, and it could become considerably more strained and awkward with my declaration of independence.  Tuesday I had Zumba in the evening which allowed little opportunity to announce my news to Mike. My list of excuses grew like Pinocchio’s nose. My chest tightened and I became inert for several days. I was disappointed and frustrated with myself at each day’s end. I began solidifying into inaction.

I happened upon this TED video about “power positions”.  I chose my day and shot the rattlesnake in my brain. I rehearsed my short speech, eliminating all pauses, excuses, and extraneous words, and arranged my body into a position that backed up my message – standing, no hands in pockets, no crossed arms. I remembered my Zumba instructor’s words – “keep your chest up.” I walked into my boss’s office and told him I was leaving, in the same tone I would have told him I had a doctor’s appointment. I did not ask for approval, I did not leave the door open to a counter offer. I gave no reason, and when, after recovering from his initial shock, my boss told me that I had to be honest with him about the reason for my departure, I looked at him levelly, laughed, and said no, I didn’t have to be honest with him and that I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to. No bridges were burned and no words were wasted justifying my decision. 

 I am now as a prison inmate whose release date is in sight. I should be happy, very happy that I am claiming my decision.

 Guess what.

 My stint here in solitary has given me, if nothing else, unlimited thinking time. As someone whose mind enters screensaver mode when deprived of a wide variety of stimulation and information, I’ve still managed to do quite a bit of deep thinking. I’ve watched TED talks, read blogs and blogs and books , and I’ve talked to friends, family, coworkers in other locations, former coworkers, and acquaintances. I probably talked to myself.

 I’m nowhere near happy, and I’m quite far from very happy. Right now, I am borderline furious. During my time at this notjob I have thrashed embarrasingly through the muck of frustration, anger, depression, resistance, resignation. There are long periods of time about which I can remember almost nothing. The fax machines and Outlook 2000 of this place have put me years behind technologically. The people skills and compassion and humility and sense of helping others in some very tiny, but very meaningful and soul-affirming way earned while working at M.D. Anderson have been locked into an excruciatingly dear and painful memory that rests on the road kill skunk reality of embroidered Yves St. Laurent towels, private jets, and Cartier Christmas cards bearing a modestly clothed baby Jesus that this job has been.

 I am angry because I am smart, funny, imaginative, strong, independent, and resourceful. Despite being all of those things, I have allowed myself to be tied down by Lilliputians, and I have been as much Lilliputian as Gulliver. I helped knot the ropes that have held me in various mindless jobs. I have been wailing and gnashing my teeth ad nauseum about the inanity of going day after day, year after year, to jobs that Winnie the Pooh, that bear of very little brain, could have dispatched with his little eyes closed. I have bitched and moaned and complained to anyone and everyone from friends to family to acquaintances to coworkers.  And I’ve done nothing to help myself. Nothing.

I thought if I’d gone to college I could have learned to think critically; three years stuck to an office chair in virtual solitary confinement with nothing to do have given me plenty of time to think clearly and strip off my oh-woe-is-me-cloak. The only work challenge I’ve ever accepted was having my own quirky little wind chime business where I was responsible for everything from gathering raw materials (frequently by climbing into trash bins) to making the chimes to building my displays to selling my products. I loved the process but burned out on the selling and prostituted myself back into office jobs that paid far more than they should have. I’ve told more than one employer that they paid me too much money but that didn’t stop me from taking the cash. I heeded well-meaning advice from near and far, from intelligent people who have actual careers and letters after their names, to take the money and just be glad I had a job. I bought into the line of bullshit the local employment agency fed me on my arrival here about the dismal prospects for employment in a town dominated by a single educational behemoth. I took on Mike’s fear that we will run out of money before our golden years. I have squandered years of my life that I can never recover doing mainstream paper-pushing that has virtually destroyed my self-respect and pretty much eliminated any reason to get out of bed in the morning.

Fuck the Lilliputians. I’m done.

I’m at the middle of my life, I hope. My mother, my very best friend ever, dropped dead at age 68, so I might already be closing in on old age.  I have a stupidphone and a hand-me-down computer. My clothes are second hand. I’ve never had or wanted a manicure or a massage. I have no kids or pets. If I’ve climbed into trash bins, obviously pride is not an issue. In other words, I am a very cheap date. What I’m going to do is to shed my inherited, unfounded fears of the future and my current boundaries of suffocating conformity. I am going to act on a primal need to become independent, responsible to and for myself. It’s way past time to set the bar at the level I choose. I am going to be at the right intersection with my thumb out when the party bus goes by, not watching from behind the safety of a steady paycheck. What I need, and what I will find,  is “the courage to follow my heart and intuition.” I’ll let you know how that goes.

We cared, together.

Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir 3.0, “Water Night,” streamed live last night online from Lincoln Center. My aging, temperamental laptop and equally frustrating internet connection miraculously made peace with each other, allowing me to watch all 3700+ of us, with a celebratory glass of wine in my hand. The video is now here.

My post, “Virtually Awesome,” talked a bit about how I found Virtual Choir 2.0, ”Sleep.”  That video was a tiny virtual shrub poking from the side of the sheer mountain face of despair I was then falling down, and I held onto that shrub fiercely while I found a toehold. I regretted publishing “Virtually Awesome” so quickly after recording my tenor part for “Water Night,” though, because my writing focus wasn’t right. The focus shouldn’t have been me, it should have been Eric Whitacre and those people from all over the world who gave themselves into that gentle, calming, reassuring gift of “Sleep.”

After last night’s “Water Night” premiere, Lincoln Center hosted a three-person discussion among composer John Corigliano, “Water Night” composer and conductor, Eric Whitacre, and Chris Anderson, conference curator from TED. These three talented and insightful individuals clearly realized that the Virtual Choirs were ground-breaking and universe-denting, and they seemed just as awed and humbled by them as the participants themselves have been. Notes I scribbled while watching them include, “The singers cared about one thing, and they cared together; there was a profound oneness; the singers are a part of a larger family; no singer was left behind; music changes how we respond to things — it opens us up; the singers are part of something bigger than themselves, which is a key to happiness.”

 

Corigliano, Whitacre & Anderson

 

I’ll probably never find my little square among all those other videos comprising the whole “Water Night,” (though, based on a static group photo, I am 4th row from the bottom and 27 places from the left edge), but that’s okay. I know I’m there and  care about that one bigger thing, and I’m surrounded by literally thousands of virtual singing family members who also care about that one bigger thing that took on a life of its own, and who support and improve my performance a thousandfold. I took part in this because of them, not because I wanted visual recognition, or to stand out from everyone else. I wanted to inhale the breath of our community, and release it into the same magical sound with my family from Brazil, El Salvador, Namibia, Hungary. Our breath, our determination, our triumph, are now a part of this universe, as the rising moon in “Water Night” watches over all of us.

Virtually awesome.

I have a persistent furball in my throat. My mornings are spent hacking and “aheming” until I can settle it into an acceptable place. This mucous meatball significantly crimps any singing I might want to do.

During a Very Low & Lonely Time last year, I discovered Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir performing ”Sleep.” http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/eric_whitacre_a_virtual_choir_2_000_voices_strong.html. Here was this cool composer guy talking about souls on virtual desert islands, going to any length to find and connect with each other. The individual singers, connected in the video by nebulous bands, showed me that distance and isolation could be overcome. The music itself was painfully gentle, and healing. Through my ocean of tears, Scarlett O’Hara-like I vowed to take part if another virtual choir assembled. I wanted desperately to be part of something that mattered. 

“Water Night” came out over the 2011 holidays, and I did participate. And I am unashamedly freaking proud.

Even in my long-ago, pre-furball days, I never sang solo. I was an alto who could sing well within my section. The alto line of “Water Night” is too difficult for my current voice, so I chose the tenor line. Then I procrastinated ordering print music. We went out of town over the holidays. I waited weeks for practice videos that turned out to not meet my hand-holding neediness. My voice could support only a limited amount of practice before disintegrating. I had to relocate my aging laptop with its very noisy fan closer to the router so the conductor video wouldn’t hang. My laptop had no webcam. Mike’s newer laptop did but wouldn’t play the official recording video without downloading a new browser.  The submission deadline was galloping toward me.

Virtual Choir 3.0 (VC), as the “Water Night” project is named, had an active Facebook page with people posting their accomplishments, encouragement, and tips. I saw a suggestion there to use a camera and upload to YouTube rather than record at the VC website. I had never used a web cam, filmed a video on a camera, or uploaded to YouTube. I didn’t know if the camera microphone would capture my voice or the noisy computer fan, or record the entire song. But I figured if all those people all over the world were doing it, I could too.

The music studio.

On the day before the deadline, I set up shop in our recording studio (Mike’s office), beside the wireless for best reception. Lights meant to illuminate my face gave me a Blair Witch Project appearance. I ditched them and turned on the recessed ceiling lights with their broken dimmer switch, leaving me with an orb on my head in the video. I stacked jewelry boxes beside the laptop to raise the camera so the video would not be solely of the inside of my nose. After falling off a couple times, the camera found its own niche and stayed in place. I then discovered it had developed a lingering lens motor noise after being turned on. But I was now a train not to be stopped. I clasped a wedding-gift necklace from Mike around my throat, donned headphones,  and started singing.

I recorded four videos. They were all equally bad, or rather, I’m equally bad in all of them. One filmed me walking into the room in my underwear. I’m rolling my eyes at being out of tune on another. All of them have a beer bottle and antique insecticide containers in the background, as well as drywall patches and bursting book cases. Every one has off-tune notes, and I’ve discovered that, like Homer Simpson, my upper lip is far too long for my face. After the third attempt, my voice began rasping significantly. There was no way I was going to improve my performance, despite alternately sipping water and swallowing honey. In the final video, I am literally gasping at times and lip-syncing at others. But I’m smiling at the end.

The YouTube upload took a relatively unattended hour while I watched “Being Human.” The audio portion came out surprisingly clear at the website — and the visual was flipped on its side. No amount of button pushing could get me upright. I posed my dilemma to the Facebook support page, and had the instant answer that the VC techies could get me to sit up straight at their end.

I surrendered control.  I let go, and my video went into the Virtual Choir cue.

My pinpoint on the VC map.

And the hammer on my happiness meter came down so hard it nearly blew out the top.

I don’t care if they don’t use my video. If they sent it back with a form letter that says it doesn’t meet the lowest available standard, I would understand and accept that. I climbed over my self-consciousness hurdle and ignored the embarrassment trap. I had done the best I was capable of; I hadn’t given up because of or been intimidated by the thousands of much better singers. And I was now a part of something that had lifted my spirit in the past, something that mattered. My breath, my determination, my triumph are now a tiny bit of the universe.

I am awesome.