You are the most beautiful thing
Welcome to Biddy Sounds Off, a place for episodic writing and music I love. I'm Biddy. I'm glad to be with you, gentle listener. I had a pretty awful nightmare night before last, actually, and it even bothered me again today. Waking up, my whole body was just still tense and a lot of adrenaline running through it.
Biddy:Nowadays, the most effective jolting kind of nightmare trope I have is losing, as in not being able to find one of my beloved pets. And these pets are my family, and in thinking about chosen family, these babies fit the bill. And together, we have our own little peaceful bubble and we enjoy our vibe. We can communicate with just a look, right, a lot of intimacy and eye contact. And so in the dream, I'm losing actual sight of these children, you know, and the dream is just one terrible thing after another and my heart is aching.
Biddy:And I know it may sound trite, but wherever or however you find family that sustains its own loving and peaceful vibe, it is a beautiful social system. Humans need that interconnectedness to survive and thrive. Having been the family caretaker beginning at far too young an age, my biggest concern in life had been keeping my family happy and safe, so my subconscious would send me dreams that they were in danger and I couldn't help them. After becoming a school teacher, I dreamed about the children I couldn't save. Rather predictably, that savior complex dream fills in the blanks with my beloved pets now when I become overstressed and my subconscious begins to play dirty, tries to gain traction with booby traps to hook me into these fears.
Biddy:For many years, my closest and healthiest relationships successful human relationships have the least amount of pressure surrounding them. Having internalized some pretty toxic relationship dynamics, it is new learning for me to parse out where the healthy boundaries are and how to continue advocating for my own needs despite an overwhelming urge to please others. In 2018, I made some huge strides demonstrating self advocacy. In 2018, I made some huge strides demonstrating self advocacy. I had successfully achieved my divorce and moved my mother who lived with me for the vast majority of my lifetime, including during that doomed marriage, into her own lodgings.
Biddy:I was just beginning to feel the benefits of living on my own and having my own space where I could exist unselfconsciously and relax. Everyone immediately began asking me about finding someone new. Of course, all the traditional story lines and music and songs and movies and commercials dictate this is the next move for me. I was uncomfortable with that and I did feel that pressure. Now, I simply reject that pressure, but back then, I wasn't practiced enough in trusting myself and exerting my own choices in the world.
Biddy:One of those choices was to engage with my desire to learn guitar and write songs And I had actually known some musicians and bands in a previous life, so I was super hopeful. Whenever I'd be consumed by panic, I reminded myself of what I had just accomplished. It had been a difficult process to achieve that divorce, but I persevered and it took a long fucking time, but I felt triumphant. It had been a frightening process the whole way through, but making it out of there alive was big data to my whole system of being. My brain, body, and mind were and fear of learning the guitar, which overlapped with the fear of inviting new people into my life.
Biddy:Let's take a break. Started off with Haxel Princess by the great Cherry Glazer, and that song, also titled Haxel Princess, Princess, and following that 2018, I think, release with Helium and an album that came out in 1995, The Dirt of Luck, classic tune, pets trick. I always been afraid to pick up the guitar or try anything and when I'd asked my musician boyfriend at the time to teach me, he couldn't be bothered. Plus, I was sabotaging myself as a learner anyway. I didn't have the confidence to really try, I kept waiting for him to say, hey, you'd be really good at this or let's try something, but he was onto his own thing, you know.
Biddy:That doesn't always happen, there isn't someone who sees something in you and believes in you and encourages you. Like everything else, it's down to us, and I've started to do things for myself already in a big way, and so finally I was ready to try, and I texted one of those musician friends of my ex. He was very Portland nineties, so I'm calling him flannel shirt guy. I remember he never gave off any weird vibes back then and he seemed really nice. We were friends I thought.
Biddy:For example, whenever it came time to choose the next CD we both had similar go to's. I knew he already played guitar and we probably still liked the same stuff. I messaged him, I asked him if he might like to get together and try playing guitars in his studio. I began practicing during the last year of my marriage in a dark basement with massive headphones on and a bottle of wine beside me and only pets allowed nearby, strict policy. He didn't hesitate to agree to meet up but he wanted to meet at a bar instead of his studio.
Biddy:I was really nervous to be out socially again and soon it became clear that he wanted this meeting to be a date, which cranked up the anxiety a bit more. I thought the most nerve wracking part with this guy was going to be playing a song in front of him. Meanwhile, he began professing his truth and he called it that, his truth to me about how gorgeous I am. That was his truth apparently. And I mean, how brave, right?
Biddy:Professing his truth. Who's I to stand in the way? And, you know, maybe it was soon but this could be an unexpected love story, right? I was still drinking then and I didn't know my own mind. I wasn't mentally or emotionally equipped to handle dating anyone and sadly, my first inclination was to immediately defer to that same old predictable script.
Biddy:It was hurtful for me to realize he hadn't been willing to meet because he thought I might be a person of creative interest, it was just the boring, hetero typical story line. I was meant to act pretty and demure and play along. I was immediately uncomfortable because I haven't dressed for a date and in fact, I recently chopped off all my hair and I was dressing more to suit myself and not satisfy the male gaze necessarily. I didn't know how to perform pretty anymore, Plus, I'm old as shit out here thinking we could just be friends like an idiot. This wasn't a guy I would have chosen to date but because he expressed regard for me, my pathological people pleasing machinery clicked into gear.
Biddy:My feelings of self doubt up and said, I was talentless to begin with, but maybe he'd see something in me and teach me to play and help me with my songs. There's always this pressure to date and partner up and why can't I just chill by myself with pets? Turns out I can by the way. Of course, he dumped me after like 2 weeks. I was mortified by the whole thing.
Biddy:Look at this stupid bitch out here trying to fuck this old musician guy. Of course, he dumped her. My self esteem took a hit. Motherfucker hit it and quit it. I beat myself up about it for months longer than I should have because this is back when I still drink and I've been drinking since the Sydney Lauper episode.
Biddy:So back then, I was new to the self care. But even I knew that this couldn't be the thing to crush me. I had made it this far, plus I still had that big data from before showing that I was capable of self advocacy. Once my bruised ego recovered, I began to relax. Anytime my ego releases, I feel it in my body, to breathe and simply take up space peacefully and however I wanted, controlling my own environment.
Biddy:It was just a flannel shirted stumble, a slight regression with a lesson. No harm done in the long run. Let's take a music break. Started with pale hound, with that slow burning head banger of a song, If You Met Her, brilliant tune. After that was J song, and the song Pirouette.
Biddy:A fucking bop, and then she just breaks it down and takes her time with it and rebuilds the song. Beautiful. I wanted to share, you know, that flannel face. He used to come over to my place and pick up my guitar, tuning it and making faces to show off how bad my tuning skills were, and I got to listen to his hot takes on the bands that I liked, all of which were substandard to his personal collection. He rolled his eyes when I asked if we could play together and expressed how pressed he was for time.
Biddy:He already had too many commitments, okay? Basically, he only had time to come over for a couple hours of sex before his schedule just filled right up again. Poor guy. Soon he didn't even have time for that. 1 of the bands he hated is L7.
Biddy:Not that I asked him. He just sort of blurted it out one day in an accusatory, scoffing tone. I do like L7, and asked him if he thought maybe he just wasn't used to women sounding that way, but you would have thought that I threw a bloody tampon in his face. And he launched into a low key misogynistic rant in which he dictated to me a predictable and boring canon of all male bands, and I just saw the word mansplain rise up in sharp knife edged letters encircling his head. I tuned it out the way I'd been accustomed to doing when I worked at an independent record store, one of the few even back then.
Biddy:We sold LPs, CDs, videotapes and smoking accessories, rolling papers, water pipes. I started at one store. I was 18 and was moved to another when the sexual harassment I received became so obvious that someone besides myself intervened on my behalf. I hadn't complained, but was grateful for the move. Move.
Biddy:Not that it was much different, actually, at the new store. My favorite job was organizing inventory. If you caught me in a good mood, I liked to chat about the music, the newer stuff coming in, in particular. The staff was mostly men, older than me, who enjoyed looking down their hairy nostrils at me and making that face that said, this poor girl can't know. The sexism was rife and depressing.
Biddy:And maybe it's just my dumb girl brain, but who says we all hear music the same way anyway? Right? Any one of those hairy nostril guys worship pavement. I love the way Stephen Malkmus played around with alternative tunings. There are bands coming up now whose work features interesting tunings and unique minor chord progressions that are not the derivative bullshit that got flannel face to rhapsodize that afternoon.
Biddy:It had been many years since those albums of his were deemed musical canon, and there is a lot more diverse atonality emerging into our shared musical landscape. What if we listen to music and just wondered about the beauty being expressed in the way it affects us instead of whether it was right or wrong. I'd like to end our time together with something beautiful. The Chicago based artist La la, a track from her incredible album from 2018. Lamb, this is the song Destroyer.
Biddy:This has been Biddy Sounds Off. Thank you for listening.
