Longhair

“I really don’t like most of that longhair music.  But I like that one.”

I was in the 8th grade or so when I got my first proper stereo.  Finally, I could move off of the tiny, tinny record player where I had first begun to nurture my love of music, checking out albums from the library before I decided whether to buy them.  And in those junior high days, what I checked out was almost exclusively classical music, growing out of the violin lessons I had been taking since the 4^th grade.

Mom didn’t quite get that kind of music.  The kind of records we owned were, apart from the Glenn Miller (which I always enjoyed), about as bland as Wonder Bread and as cheezy as Velveeta. Mom really liked Boots Randolph, of “Yakety Sax” fame (yes, that music from Benny Hill). The radio was usually tuned to one of Columbus’ “Beautiful Music” stations, a format that played what was essentially Muzak—“quiet, unobtrusive instrumental music.” 

I had no family background in classical music at all, something that in retrospect I really wish we had had. My parents tried their best, but they really did not have ties into the community that could have gotten me started early on private music lessons.  We didn’t go to concerts (of any kind).  My appreciation for classical music, like my appreciation for most of my other obsessions, was sparked first at school where I started my violin studies and through ballet lessons, and then became the focus of intense independent study. The first violin I owned (rather than rented) was a scratched-up ¾ size instrument that was found in a garage sale. When it came time to upgrade to a full-sized violin, we didn’t even go to the violin shop that all of the other kids went to—we went to a little, dusty hole in the wall owned by an elderly gentleman who had once, perhaps, been considered an expert.  But my parents did encourage me. We joined WOSU, the local classical music public radio station, mainly so I could get the schedule of what was going to be played when, and I would often wrench control of the downstairs radio away from the “Beautiful Music” station.  My mom put up with it, although if it was opera or anything from after about 1850, we’d find ourselves back listening to Mantovani.

When I got my stereo—actually, my parents’ old console stereo, tuner and record player (and 8 track tape player) all in one unit—I quickly developed a tendency to play my music loudly (a tendency I retain to this day, although I usually use headphones now).  I’d shut the door to my room, crank up the Beethoven or Mozart (or if I were feeling really radical, the Berlioz), and sometimes even dance around the room to it.   

My parents rarely commented.  Even later in my teens, when I began to intersperse the classical music with Rush or just listening to Q-FM (the local album-oriented rock station), they rarely took notice, despite the volume at which I played things.  Except for one particular piece.

One afternoon, I was up in my bedroom reading.  I’d put on the Beethoven 5^th piano concerto—the “Emperor.”  Part of the way through the second movement, I opened my bedroom door for some reason long forgotten—and realized my mom, in her room across the hall, was listening, intently.

She asked me what it was, and I told her.  I went back in my room but kept the door open so she could hear the rest.   At the end, she said the words at the top of this page.

It was that vespertine, serene second movement that had reeled her in.  The second movement of the “Emperor”, for those of you who have not been initiated into its mysteries, is a shimmering, evocative thing, one that has cast a long shadow of quiet perfection over just about every subsequent piano concerto’s slow movement.  It follows a first movement that is classic Beethoven “heroic period” in its maturity (the concerto falls between the Sixth and Seventh symphonies on the Beethoven timeline) and leads into one of the most joyful finales within any of Beethoven’s works.  It is in a completely different (and distant) key (B major—five sharps) than the first movement (which is in E flat major—three flats)   I call it “vespertine” not only because I love that word and have always wanted to use it, but also because the second movement to me evokes images of moonlight sparkling on water as the sky darkens through shades of pink and purple, of the calm and solitude of a pine forest at twilight.  It starts out with the muted orchestra suggesting the landscape, and then the piano enters with descending notes that lead into a simple melodic line in the middle-high registers of the keyboard, suggesting perhaps a lone figure in this beautiful setting, quiet, contemplative but filled with joy. At a certain point, it is as if that figure has decided to stand up, to walk towards some goal that only he or she can see in the distance, with wind instruments accompanying like trees being passed in the forest.  And at a certain point, a clearing is reached, and tentatively, the lone figure reaches out, as if to say….”I think this is how it should go?  Maybe like this?”  And then it IS how things should go, and we are into the jubilant third movement, in dancelike 6/8 time.

Beethoven likely originally intended to perform the work himself, but the deafness he had been struggling with for years prevented this.  As the liner notes for my CD of the work say, “the power of the work is formidable and the range of emotions encompassed the widest of any Beethoven concerto. This was the work that inspired the romantic virtuoso concerto of the nineteenth century because of the way the soloist is set up in opposition to the orchestra, rather than being a partner in a complementary relationship.”  Importance aside, it is by far my favourite piano concerto, not least because it was one of the few classical pieces I felt like my mom really loved as well.

In the last decade of my mom’s life, when I was living far from her in Canada, she asked me about "that music" (she never did really learn what it was called), and I gave her a CD so she could enjoy it herself.  That was one of only a handful of times I bought her music.  By that time, I think she already sensed her memory was not what it should be, and she was grasping to retain a connection to things which brought her pleasure.  I know she associated the piece with me, and I hope that when she played it, it awakened good memories of her geeky young classical music-loving daughter and how she liked to blast Beethoven in the same way most teens blasted heavy metal or Madonna.   

I put so much of my classical music past aside over the past couple of decades, occasionally returning to a Beethoven symphony, Handel’s Messiah (and attending the singalong), or the Berlioz Requiem. Last month, seeing a performance of the Shostakovich 5^th symphony, I remembered, and when I saw a chance to see the Emperor performed by soloist Yefim Bronfman and the TSO, I jumped.  Tonight, I look forward to finding myself in that forest by the side of the water at twilight, the stars twinkling in the sky reminding me of my mom and what we shared.

Chastising the Third Reich: The Dambusters Raid

Today is the 75^th anniversary of the Dambusters raid, where a squadron of 19 Lancasters flew a dangerous and daring mission to destroy hydroelectric dams in the Ruhr Valley.  They successfully breached one of the main targets, the Möhne dam, as well as a secondary target, the Eder dam. They also damaged (but did not breach) the Sorpe dam.  Operation Chastise, as it was known, was deemed a success—although the damage only disrupted German industry in the Ruhr for a few months until the dams were repaired, the morale boost to England from what the raid was able to accomplish was significant.

The raid happened in the pivotal year of 1943.  Going into that year, Allied victory was by no means assured, although there were certainly promising signs in Europe. Germany ended 1942 encircled and starving at Stalingrad; within a little over a month they would be defeated in a battle that in the final accounting resulted in nearly 2 million casualties, 1.1 million of them on the Soviet side.  Henceforth, the Axis in Europe would slowly be pushed back.   In May of that year, just a few days before the Dambusters raid, the Allies achieved victory in North Africa. Italy was pushed out of the war by the end of the year.

Some of the most horrific events of the war took place in 1943.  This was the year of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  Today is also the 75^th anniversary of its tragic end, in which the ghetto was utterly destroyed and all its inhabitants either killed or sent to the camps.

So the morale victory of the raid came at a key point in the war.  However, the casualties from the raid were high—8 of the 19 Lancasters were lost, with 53 of 130 crew killed and 3 taken prisoner—which may account for why a followup raid was not attempted.

To me, what stands out about the raid is how quickly the technology was developed and tested. The initial paper proposing a “bouncing bomb” was published by civilian Wallis Barnes in April, 1942.  The idea was to skip the bomb over the water, much as one skips a stone, to avoid torpedo nets and other barriers.  When the bomb hit the dam structure, it would sink and then explode, much like a depth charge.  By July of that year, it was successfully proven that a dam could be breached with a depth charge, when a disused dam in Wales was successfully destroyed as a test. This left significant details to be worked out, such as the shape of the bomb, its size, its shape, and how it would be delivered.  

By November 1942, it was decided to develop a larger and smaller version of the bomb for various purposes. A cylindrical shape was selected rather than the initial round shape.  Another addition made was backspin, which helped the bomb to bounce and stabilized its flight.  Finally, the weight and physical size of the bomb was dictated by the size of the Lancaster bomber itself, the largest bomber then available. 

The planners realized that there was a tight timeline to adhere to.  The raid could take place no later than about mid-May, as the dam reservoirs were at their peak after winter meltoff at that point and the destruction of the dam would result in the biggest impact. Testing of unfilled versions of the Upkeep bomb began in December and lasted through April; engineers continued to tweak the design and to work to determine how it would be dropped. They finally determined that the Lancaster had to be precisely 60 feet above the water and at a speed of 232 mph.  To do this, a pair of spotlights were mounted on the Lancaster, and the point at which the two beams converged marked 60 feet. 

Both the backspin and the size and shape of the bomb would also dictate changes on the Lancasters.  The bomb bay doors had to be removed and a bracket installed to hold the massive bomb sideways underneath the plane. The upper gun turret was removed so that the hydraulic system could be used to drive a belt to start the bomb spinning about ten minutes before it was due to be dropped. 

The main other issue was aiming.  A handmade y-shaped device that allowed the bomb aimer to line up the prongs with the towers of the dam was the “official” solution, but other solutions involving marks on windows and string would also be used.

The Lancasters themselves were supplied in March, and the squadron assembled under Guy Gibson in the same month to begin practicing. Gibson, who would win the Victoria Cross for his actions after his bombing run to distract flak away from the planes following him, was at 24 was a veteran of over 170 bombing runs, a stat that nearly boggles the mind today—we often forget how young soldiers were during WWII.  They had about six weeks to train, without a clear indication of what their precise mission would be, using untried technology. To reach Germany, the squadron had to fly as low as possible (so low that more than one plane was lost to electrical wires and towers) before their bombing runs.

It’s pretty astounding what was accomplished.

Of course, it’s me, so there have to be ruins.  Here is a link to a photo of the Möhne dam after the bombing:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chastise#/media/File:Mohne_Dam_Breached.jpg Here is a similar photo of the Eder dam:   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edersee_Dam#/media/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-C0212-0043-012,_Edertalsperre,_Zerst%C3%B6rung.jpg

I was of course curious as to whether there were any lasting traces to be seen at the dams, where emergency repairs were completed by September of 1943.   For the most part, if the photos are to be trusted, the answer is no.   I did find a really interesting article from the Guardian about 15 years ago describing a visit to the dams as they are today. https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2003/may/06/artsfeatures

Finally, as some may know, the 1955 film Dambusters was a huge influence on the original Star Wars movie’s climactic Death Star destruction sequence, from the special effects photography and cinematography (Gilbert Taylor performed the former for Dambusters and the latter for A New Hope).   Here’s an article and a video to check out:   https://www.starwars.com/news/the-cinema-behind-star-wars-the-dam-busters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNdb03Hw18M

****

--As I am finishing up and posting this article, I’m following the Telegraph’s real-time account of the raid.  The last update was at 11 pm local time, when the first planes were lost.  

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/16/dambusters-raid-famous-world-war-two-attack-unfolded/

The First Saturday in May

In the early days of May, a young girl's thoughts turn to thoughts of horses.  In my own case, these were no dreams of prancing pretty ponies, but thoroughbreds, thundering down the homestretch at Churchill Downs. 

Only two of my grandparents lived into my own lifetime, and one of them died when I was only four or five, so to me, Granny--my mother's mother--was special.  I only had her in my life until I was 11 years old.  I remember her for two things:  The first was passing on to me her love for crafts, as she taught me how to embroider and crochet. The second was an annual ritual. We'd gather at her trailer the first Saturday in May and watch the Kentucky Derby with her. It was in 1977 that I particularly started to pay attention--the year Seattle Slew won.  I began to learn about the Triple Crown races as Seattle Slew went on to win the Preakness and the Belmont, becoming the second Triple Crown winner of the decade.  The first had, of course, been the great Secretariat, who I had the vaguest of memories of from when he had won the Derby.

The next year, 1978, was special.  That year, two horses, Affirmed and Alydar, battled in all three Triple Crown races.  Alydar had been the favourite going into each series, but Affirmed had won the Derby.  I was definitely Team Affirmed.  He was a beautiful chestnut horse, less obviously powerful than Alydar, and was ridden by the young superstar jockey Steve Cauthen.  It was perhaps the single time I routed for anything involving the colour pink, the colour of the racing silks of Harbor View Farm.

But I did not watch the Derby at Granny's trailer. We had lost her on April 5, just about a month before, after a visit to the hospital for gallbladder surgery had turned into something more.  I don't really remember quite what it was--some sort of fistula.  I only vaguely remember the funeral. It didn't quite seem real. I'm not sure whether that played into an obsession that would last two years in its most intense phase, but looking back, I am sure it did.

Affirmed and Alydar continued their legendary battle in the Preakness and the Belmont. In the Preakness, Affirmed beat Alydar by a neck.  In the Belmont, the grueling mile and a half race that had broken all but the best Triple Crown contenders, Affirmed and Alydar raced neck and neck for half the race, with their final mile the fastest in Belmont history.  I could barely stand to watch, but I was glued to the TV as they battled down the home stretch.  Alydar at one point nosed ahead, but Cauthen switched his whip hand and Affirmed surged back, winning the race by a nose. 

There would not be another Triple Crown winner until 2015.

I carried a good luck charm of a photo of Affirmed from Sports Illustrated mounted on a square of wood for years afterward.  It's here in front of me on the desk as I type this.  I had a stuffed horse that looked like him.  He was my celebrity crush, and I eagerly followed the rest of his racing career. I plastered the walls and doors of my bedroom with covers and stories from Sports Illustrated about his races.  But he was joined by the great Secretariat, after reading William Nack's book Big Red of Meadow Stable: Secretariat, the Making of a Champion.  Many girls go through a horsey phase, but mine was, I think, odd--because I identified so strongly with the horses, to the point of thinking of myself as one.  It was probably no great coincidence that the year of my greatest obsession was in the seventh grade, where I had extensive problems with relating to actual people.  I was certainly a weird kid;  this was not the age of My Little Pony, where cartoon horses are clearly meant to stand in for girls. 

The following year summer, my family vacationed in Kentucky.  We visited Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Horse Park. And somehow--I am still not sure how he did this--my Dad arranged a visit to Calumet Farms, where Secretariat was standing at stud. He was--and still is--the biggest celebrity I ever met, and I got to see him have a shoe changed and to feed him a carrot.  Other greats of racing--particularly the storied Northern Dancer--were also at the farm.  My dad could schmooze anyone, but I am still astounded that he just managed to phone them up and arrange a visit.

Even as my obsession gradually subsided, I still watched the Derby every year, and each time a horse also won the Preakness, I followed eagerly to see if we would see another Triple Crown winner.  (This happened thirteen times until American Pharoah finally won in 2015.)  Yesterday, far away from a TV, I watched my iPhone and refreshed it for updates until I saw that Justified--the horse I had picked--had won the race.  (I only found out later that he wore a red saddle cloth and a star on his jockey's racing silks).  It's a hard habit to break, and I have no intention of doing so.

But horse racing itself is a vastly different landscape than it was during the '70s.  Pimlico the track where the Preakness is held, has been barely able to stay open.  Horses and jockeys are no longer celebrities in the United States to the extent they once were--so much of the serious money has gone abroad to the Arab world, where horse racing is still the sport of kings.  In recent years, movies about Seabiscuit and Secretariat have captured a little of the flavour of that earlier era, where racetracks were one of the few places where ordinary people could legally gamble. These days, casinos are everywhere, and tracks often have to add slots or gaming tables to remain afloat.  And the issues with horse racing that have always been present in its lower ranks, of horses being mistreated, or sold to slaughterhouses when they fail to perform, have not gotten any better.

But I still cannot resist the lure of Derby Day, of seeing such delicate power, such strong beauty, in motion, coming around that final turn.  There is nothing quite like it, and the memories it arouses are strong for me, as I picture myself sprawled in front of that black-and-white TV at my grandmother's place.  And each year, on this day, the day after the Derby, I revel in the possibilities ahead--another Triple Crown, perhaps?  

We shall see.   

The Paradox of May 4

May the 4th be with you!

It is, but in a different way than I suspect it is for most people my age.  I was ten years old when Star Wars was released, and it was, without a doubt, the iconic movie of my childhood. I had the action figures, played "Death Star" behind the couch, wore a Star Wars t-shirt in my fifth grade class photo.  But the whole "May the 4th" thing is fairly recent, and the date still means something very different to me.

It was around the same time, maybe a little earlier, that I learned that the words "Kent State" were a bad thing.  Always attuned to current events, I remember reading about a controversy, reported in the Columbus Dispatch, about building a new gym at the college on land scarred by gunfire less than a decade before. Photos were produced of trees and sculptures still pockmarked from being hit, and a story told of students cut down in a riot.  And in my household, it was definitely a riot, with thousands of students said to be involved, and Gov. Rhodes definitely in the right for calling out the National Guard to stop it.  The Democrat John Gilligan, who was elected in the fall of 1970 (after Rhodes did not run after a failed bid to win the Republican nomination for US Senate) was reviled in no uncertain words, and it was only right that Rhodes had returned to his erstwhile throne, where he would serve two more terms.

Those hippies and longhairs had deserved it. They had rioted, and the Guardsmen had defended themselves, from bricks and bags of sh*t and maybe even a sniper.  Certainly, it was an incident marked with deep shame for Kent State, which clearly wanted to erase all memory of the event.

In Ohio, when you said "Kent State", you were met with a knowing look that said "that's something we don't talk about here."

By the time I was in my teens, the tumultuous times of the 60s were history.  Looking around, I saw preppies and then, later, the Dynasty look, with its huge shoulder pads and big hair.  I didn't seen hippies or Communists or Black Panthers--I saw what were beginning to be called yuppies.  Reagan was President, and students didn't demonstrate anymore, at least not in white suburbs like mine. We might join hands and sing "We are the world," and the more progressive among us might write letters for Amnesty International about political prisoners in faraway countries.  We worried about the Soviets nuking us. Really worried about that--I remember viewing a TV movie, "The Day After", which was about the aftermath of a nuclear attack.  I even took a course at Ohio State on nuclear ethics--discussing the principles of Mutual Assured Destruction.  Vietnam was over, but just beginning to be scrutinized in movies such as "Platoon."  Rambo--the angry or scarred Vietnam veteran who was now spoiling for revenge--was now iconic, and the Vietnam war memorial in Washington was new--a deep gash in the earth filled with black granite. The scars had not really healed, as much as we tried to think they had.  It had really only been a decade or less since the fall of Saigon, but it felt to me like ancient history--like WWII, or Korea, or the other wars I couldn't really remember.

I read James Michener's book, Kent State: What Happened and Why, during this period.  I had picked it up in a church garage sale, wanting to know more about this event I knew about mostly from the secretive murmurs and the CSN&Y song.  Like that song, the book was written in the immediate aftermath of the shootings and released in early 1971.  It was later criticized for its willingness to buy into theories of conspiracies by radical activists to provoke the violence, but in retrospect, for its day, it was remarkably even-handed and detailed.  It's also an interesting snapshot of the world as it was in 1970, in the waning days of the massive upheavals that had marked the 60s, before, as Howard Means, author of a more recent work on the shootings, 67 Shots, America lost her innocence and learned that guns might contain live rounds. (White America, Means is clear to state.  Black Americans already knew their government might shoot them, and apparently avoided the demonstrations at Kent State "like the plague.")

Forty-eight years on, what I was struck most by, in re-reading these books and some of the other articles available on the shootings, was two things.  First, the polarization:  The United States was a deeply divided nation in 1970--over Vietnam, civil rights, and its role in the world.  For someone who came of age after this period, our more recent polarization can feel like a new thing.  It is not.  Other problems distracted US society for awhile--fuel shortages, hostages, Russians--but those wounds never healed, and the fundamental questions were never answered. Nixon resigned before he could be impeached, and too quickly the Watergate years were swept under the rug as an ugly aberration, with Nixon the boogeyman for what was clearly a deep culture of corruption.

The second observation is that the spread of disinformation in the wake of these kinds of events is often cast as a new thing, with every conspiracy theory getting its own blog on the Internet, victims being blamed, and trolls and bots looking to sow dissension.  It is not.  The rumours that spread in the wake of Kent State were lacking only the rapid means of distribution we have now.   With a state of emergency declared,  Kent had been more or less occupied during the crisis by over 1500 Guardsmen, most of whom were not on campus, but in the surrounding town. Gov. Rhodes never declared martial law, but there seems to have been a widespread assumption that he had.  The town already had a contentious relationship with the university, and suddenly having such a large force occupying such a small town convinced many that the situation on campus was far worse than it was.

   As a result, the students were vilified with a large brush.  "They should have shot more," was a common reaction.  Kent was actually a fairly conservative  rural commuter school, and it's thought that fewer than 100 students were part of the core group involved in the demonstration that led to the shooting. There were probably 2000-3000 students in the area, but many were bystanders and others seem to have gotten swept up in the demonstration as "something fun to do."  None have ever been shown to have been armed. No one was expecting to be shot-- tear gas and maybe blanks, yes, but there was a widespread belief that the guns the National Guardsmen carried were not loaded.

Of the dead, two of the students killed had been involved in the demonstration, one had been an observer, and one was killed from 130 yards away as she walked to class.  All four were equally vilified.  Stories circulated that the victims were unwashed and riddled with venereal diseases, and the grief-stricken families received hate mail accusing their children of being Communists and stating that it was a good thing that they had been killed.  At the same time, in an accusation that will sound very familiar,  "outside agitators" who were said to have been "bused in" were claimed to have provoked the confrontation.

This reaction was by no means confined to the rumour mill.  One of the earliest stories on the shooting claimed that two Guardsmen had been killed in "a violent campus battle" involving 3000 students. Local radio had inflamed the situation during the crisis and was no better in the days following.  There was little compassion to be seen in the aftermath of the tragedy as students tried to evacuate their shattered college--townspeople refused to serve them or sell them gasoline (in the belief it might be used to make a bomb).  Initial reports, as we know, are key to defining beliefs about news narratives, and can override more nuanced accounts that appear later.  My own parents believed that Kent State had been a massive, violent armed riot.

And the lack of action to hold anyone accountable in the wake of the shootings will also sound familiar. The Scranton Commission, called to investigate the shootings, did not assign guilt or innocence, but condemned both protesters and the Guard. Twenty-four students and one faculty member were rounded up after the shootings and charged with a variety of offenses, but charges were dropped against most with four being convicted of minor offenses, primarily on technicalities. Eight Guardsmen were indicted on civil rights charges for their role, but claimed self-defense and the case was dropped  A civil suit brought by the families of the victims was eventually settled out of court.  but As Means states, "When it comes to official culpability for the shootings themselves, not a single person involved has ever been convicted of so much as a misdemeanor or even tried solely on the merits of the case as opposed to its technicalities. The dead, their survivors, the wounded, the shooters, their commanding officers, a host of peripheral players--they all hover still in a kind of legal limbo.  That's what makes Kent State so hard to let go."

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

 -----Neil Young, 1970

An Essay in 5 Movements: 3, 4, and 5 (played without interruption)

3. Allegro non troppo.

When I was a young girl, I began swimming lessons. I was not good, as much as I tried to convince myself that I was.  I did not pass my first test to transition out of “polliwog” status to “guppy”, but for weeks afterwards, I was convinced they would send me my patch in the mail. I loved the water. I just didn’t quite understand it.  I learned to respect it the following summer, when I nearly drowned. 

Suddenly, not long after, I figured it out.  I went from being frightened to put my face in the water to looking forward every week to the feeling of being beneath the water, pulling myself down with deep strokes. I progressed.  Within a couple of years I was spending all my time exploring the bottom of the 7’ section at the local pool, swimming down to sweep along the black lane markers.  I bought goggles to see better underwater. I learned to dive, and moved over to the dive pool, where the depth was 12’, and soon, I was challenging myself to go all the way down, submerging deep, deep, to touch the bottom, and to look up at the light far above my head. I wanted to be part of the water, one with it.  My friends wanted to lay out on the deck and work on their suntans while they flirted with boys.  I wanted to be in the water the entire time, every day. It was my passion, my obsession, and it consumed me.

This is the way I am. When I light upon a topic that intrigues me, I will first cautiously approach, to understand, to look for the spark.  If that spark is there, and ignites, the flames burn hot and fast and then steady but fierce as I feed the fire. New books to read, leading to more. Images, or music, and then more and more, branching out to specifics, or deeper and deeper, because I can literally not stop until satiated, and so long as there is another book, or song, or image, I am not satiated.  It is on my mind somewhere in every waking moment.   It is ever the same.

My one saving grace is that while in the grip of a research obsession, I can put it aside to concentrate on other pressing matters.  This was a lesson learned in the depths of my doctoral thesis research.  I had come into graduate school filled with research passion, but passion does not always equate with discipline, and it did not for me. Faced with a difficult thesis advisor and discovering that my obsession with the Ostrogoths did not necessarily lead to good scholarship, I moved to another historical field, one where I rightly saw more opportunities.  I did much better scholarship in my new field.  At the same time, I indulged my flights of passion in topics that were related to my thesis field, but only distantly—and experienced what I now know was my first minor bout of depression.  My main research field was not leading to that total immersion and obsession that had powered me into graduate school in the first place.  I was enjoying the teaching I was doing, but it was if a fire had gone out on my research work.

Was this where I came to know my future?  I did not at the time. At a certain point, I looked at the work I had done and resolved to finish my thesis. And I did. 

Once I had completed it, we moved to Columbus, ostensibly to be closer to my bedridden mother, whose dementia meant she no longer recognized me. In all honesty, it was to take advantage of the safety net of living with my parents while I struggled with a sense of dissatisfaction about myself.  I had finished my doctorate, yes, but I did not feel worthy of the title.  The work I had done felt mechanical. If I were going to invest the rest of my life in a profession where I would be expected to produce and write, how could I even expect to get interviews when I lacked confidence in myself?

 I also felt a profound need for a “real job.”  I loathed being reliant on my parents, as I had been through my graduate studies.  I felt that switching away from the sciences to history had been disappointing to them, although they never said anything of that sort. 

And so, I abandoned academia.  Not immediately—but I didn’t even make it to the first AHA conference where I might have interviewed.  I was already in a “temp to hire” position at Bank One at that point, with managers vying to see who would “get” me.

And sometime around that point, I found a spark and followed it.  I read an article on the work of Camilo José Vergara, and bought his book American Ruins.  I found the Fabulous Ruins of Detroit website and spent hours upon hours wandering virtually through the abandoned mansions of Brush Park, the empty skyscraper hulks in what Vergara called the American Acropolis of ruins, touring crumbling hotels that now played host to birds, rats, and the occasional squatter.  And deeper and deeper I went. Photos of the Brush Park mansions began to adorn my cubicle at work.  I followed leads on the individual buildings, read everything I could, found other photos, and even, in the very early years of video content being available online, watched footage of the implosion of Hudson’s and the collapse of ‘Old Slumpy’.  I bought books on the buildings of Detroit.  And finally, I went to see for myself.

It's never stopped.  This is what I research now.   I keep diving down, and sometimes I come up with a new treasure from the depths, pointing me in another direction, something slightly different, but always, in some way, connected with ruins.  The Berlin Wall?  Now a ruin; I have my own piece of it. Mt. St. Helens?  What was “the most perfect cone in the Pacific Northwest” still stands, its side blown out by the 1980 eruption. The architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright?  The Darwin Martin House was abandoned in the 30s, left unlocked, the roof caving in from the snow, part of the house demolished once it was reclaimed.  The Westcott House?  Subdivided into apartments, a major retaining beam removed, it had started to slump dangerously before it was restored.  The Larkin Building?  Gone, a sad retaining wall all that’s left.   I’ve gone on to visit glorious buildings that were never ruins, being so affected by Fallingwater that I wear its mark on my body, but those that were ruined and revived are special to me. 

I can now count three times where I have been drowning, my self-confidence weakened, and each time, this obsession has revitalized me, changed me, taught me to invite the deluge, to find myself in the depths again.   But what I am discovering this time is deeper than that.

4. Largo

Been searching for all these years
From the highest heights to the deepest seas
But everything is out of reach
And it still hurts me to fail
I scream as loud as I can
So, can you give me a sign, if you hear me now?
I know it´s a foolish try, but it still hurts me to fail

Komm, komm, reiss mir doch einfach mein Herz heraus
Denn es schlägt so schwer
Tief, tief, tief unterm Eis suchst du auch wie ich
Doch du traust dich nicht
Komm, komm, reiss mir doch einfach mein Herz heraus
Denn es schlägt so schwer
Komm, komm, komm
Because it still hurts me to fail

(Kyau and Albert, Mein Herz)

But the hurt becomes the norm. the pain endures, the numbness sets in. My heart still beats, but it is buried deep.

Fear is irrational. Fear is utterly rational. It is both things at one time, a balance of heart and mind, just like all things. Confronted by the prospect of future harm or pain, do I back away or do I confront?

Fear of many things has shaped my life.  I would like to say I have triumphed over these fears. I have not. I have learned to live with them, become accustomed to their presence.

I may be numb, but it still hurts me to fail. And I fear it, more than I fear anything in this world. I fear failing to live up to my own ideals, my own dreams, what I believe I am capable of if I only had the courage to try.  I fear the confrontation.  I fear what others will think. I fear that others will find me wanting, and that that will shatter me. And sometimes, it paralyzes me. 

As a child, when confronted by bullies, and lacking the tools to deal with them, I learned to back away, to turn deep inside myself. I put up a wall.  There, I could be myself, the person I knew myself to be. I could imagine, create, dream without fear of scorn, or exclusion.  I learned that my real feelings, my passions, my obsessions were too weird for this world.  The walls were weak at first, and I was vulnerable to attack, but once they were stable, I carefully decorated them with those qualities, those skills from inside that I deemed suitable for the world. And I built walls within walls, so my heart and soul were protected even when I cautiously opened the gate, learned to trust a little.

 The outer walls fell into ruin, but the inner ones persist.

(Dammit, leave me to this.  I’ve been ready for this for a day now, and each time, each time….stop it.  I want to lock that door. I want to not be startled out of the music. I want to not let the flush of sudden discovery colour my face. I want to not feel ashamed for this. 

I am twitching again. Unbidden, my foot is bouncing. I don’t even notice it until I notice it. I let it go. Do people see this? )

I fear I will not be remembered.  No one will carry my name, for good or ill. The things I have surrounded myself with, the things that bring me a modicum of joy, or a memory, will be meaningless to others. And it hurts to know that I still care how others see me.

I have settled for good enough by telling myself I can never be good enough.

Sometimes when you dive, when you see the treasure waiting at the bottom of the deep, you know that it will take work, life, perhaps even blood, to bring it to the surface. You know it’s there. But if you try to pull it free, it may escape your grasp, slip through your hands, and you will know in that moment what you have lost.  But you’ve spotted another gem, less precious, at a shallower depth; you know you can attain, be acclaimed for doing so, so you reach, and it is yours.  And that brings you joy for awhile, but the sparkle dulls, and you can’t stop diving down to see the thing you left behind.

And this repeats itself again and again and again. 

And yet.

When I look up, and around, when I listen, when I see fear and grief and despair written clearly on the faces of friends, I look at my heart, and what I have learned by diving so deep.  I have protected my heart, but somehow, it still beats.  I still feel it. It is strong. Stronger, perhaps, than my fear. If I dare.

 And somehow, somewhere…
.

I feel a flutter, a glimmer of something.

Listen.

I am not nervous now. There is no shame.  The treasure I seek is in my hand already.

It is all there in the music of my voice, my words, what I do, what I put into my life…Others will attribute what they will. Let them.  

It resolves.

5. Allegretto.

This is what Brene Brown terms “the wilderness”—that place where you must dare to stand alone for what matters most for you.  She says “Belonging so fully to yourself that you’re willing to stand alone is a wilderness—an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching.  It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. The wilderness can often feel unholy because we can’t control it, or what people think about our choice of whether to venture into that vastness or not. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging, and it’s the bravest and most sacred space you will ever stand.”

“True belonging is not passive. It’s not the belonging that comes with just joining a group…. It’s a practice that requires us to be vulnerable, get uncomfortable, and learn how to be present with people without sacrificing who we are. We want true belonging, but it takes tremendous courage to knowingly walk into hard moments.”

Being able to do this fully is a privilege.  It is possible but takes even more courage when your very safety is threatened, or when you lack the means or the freedom to even stand up in the first place.  My first lesson to myself is this: You fear failure most of all. But do you fear for where your next meal will come from?  Do you fear that you will be assaulted, even killed for who you are attracted to?  Do you fear that, because of the colour of your skin, the police will be called to stop a burglary when you are trying to move into your new apartment?

Do you spend your nights sleeping in the hallway, your bags packed, in case the secret police come to take you away in their black automobiles, and you do not want to wake your family?

History is full of people who could not be who they might have been because of fear made reality.  History is full of people who mistook hatred of a common enemy as community, who turned their pain and suffering into inhumanity.  And history is also full of those who relaxed in their privilege, safe and secure that the evil would never touch them—until it did.   

The time is now. That is what history has shown me. I believe this passionately, deeply.  I have my voice, and can raise it, but I can also listen, and believe, and enjoin others to do so as well.

So what do I fear?  I do not discount that I do. It is real. But I am not without tools to understand what it is I fear.   

Brown mentions braving skills as essential to being able to enter the wilderness, skills that are all about trust.  And—this was a revelation to me—that despite my fears that I am not enough, that I lack courage to act…that maybe, just maybe, I have a decent foundation.  The skills are:  Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault (the ability to keep confidences), Integrity, Nonjudgement, and Generosity.

There are seven there. Seven virtues, as it were. Every single one of them is something I consciously strive for.  I can say that without hesitation. Every. Single. One. Not that I do not struggle—but the struggle is not with wholeheartedly embracing and contemplating these virtues, it is in the active practice of them beyond the walls.   It is the battle of Fortitude against Sloth, going beyond contemplation into action.  It is the battle of Hope, which looks to a better future, against the vice of Wrath, which only focuses on the immediate pain.

It is easy within my walls, with those people who I trust.  It is harder to open up and be vulnerable outside them.  That is the wilderness. 

But what have I to fear in the wilderness?  The unknown?  But this is my wilderness, the open garden gate in the crumbling wall showing the way. I know this place, know what I believe. I have never compromised this part of myself, the most important part, but I have kept it quiet, secret, known only to a few friends, and then, even then, never completely.  What I didn’t realize is that the wilderness truly is found outside the walls.  I know there is much more to be realized in being who I am. 

Others will attribute what they will. Let them.

Brown states: “True belonging is the spiritual practice of believing in and belonging to yourself so deeply that you can share your most authentic self with the world and find sacredness in both being a part of something and standing alone in the wilderness.  True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are, it requires you to be who you are.”  

But here are my words. “I have not yet been forgotten. I may yet be again. There is a choice still.”

I need to be who I am. 

I will be who I am.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtI9003nzro