Intentional Public Failure

(I wrote this post at the beginning of January and somehow never hit publish until now. Whoops!)

This past Sunday I went to a meetup of musicians who get together twice a month and sight-read classical music together. They meet in a café–where there are already people–and play music they’ve never seen before. Once I got there I realized that literally everyone else there had gone to college for music, and many of them made their livings as musicians. I was way out of my league. So, stepping outside my comfort zone, I picked a duet, and I and another clarinetist played it. We had to stop I think 5 times, and there was a brief passage we just had to skip because I couldn’t play it.

When we were done, everyone there clapped, quite sincerely. I didn’t look or really listen; I did not want to let the applause “in”. I did not want to own it, because I’d failed to perform the way I want to be seen performing. “How well,” I asked myself, “would you have to have played it before you’d let the applause in?” I started naming conditions, and interrupted–“And do you get that if you were so good that you could come in here and sight-read all this music perfectly, that the applause would be meaningless?”

Where the F*@& did this thought come from?!

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You can’t blah blah blah

“Stop telling people that no one will love them until they love themselves; stop planting the idea in people’s brain that they are unworthy of love because of their own struggle.”
Jack Barakat

Yeah, it’s been over a year since a public blog post. I’ve written other stuff but I will probably never share it. Very personal, some very ugly. My posting might get more regular. Probably. There’s been one really big impediment to blogging publicly, which is now being resolved. So there’s that.

I often hear that “you can’t love anyone else until you love yourself.” But I can take loving actions toward another while I’m not taking them for myself, and I can feel affinity for another person while I’m not feeling affinity for myself. In fact, I would say I know a lot of people–you probably do too–who are in that exact position. (In particular, people who love “The Church” (whichever church it happens to be) without loving themselves. I wonder how unique that pattern is to religion?) So I’m calling BS. I would certainly prefer to love myself and others, but one doesn’t depend on the other.

Best Pride Ever, So Far

I have only ever attended a Gay Pride celebration with the performing group I do sound for, the Righteously Outrageous Twirling Corps. So I see it with a slightly skewed viewpoint: My objective has been to gradually transform the festivities from scantily-clad go-go boys and drag queens on club floats to performing groups doing things that really require group skill, like color guard, choir, swim team, marching band, etc. It’s gone well; we’ve added (by my count) 4 more performing groups and the character of the parade is very different.

At my first pride, I expected to see the club floats, drag queens and go-go boys, and I did. But there was something else I saw (or rather felt) that I didn’t expect: a profound sense of belonging; family. These people knew who I was and loved me anyway. (The “anyway” represents a thinking error, but that’s another post.)

This year something happened, something big. To men, one gay and one straight, in Utah county, decided to do something to show support from the people not covered by the acronym. They created T-shirts saying “I’m [straight/bi/gay/married/Mormon/human] and I support = rights” and distributed them far and wide. They weren’t planning to march in the parade until the Pride center asked them to, so they did.

There were hundreds of them. Hundreds. The largest group in the parade by at least a factor of 3. They stretched out for a block. It was amazing.

My sister, her husband, their two sons, and my mom marched with them. Our mutual friends marched with them. Their friends who I don’t know, marched with them. It just went on and on…

…and this year, the Pride parade is expected to be bigger than the Days of ’47 parade. That’s a huge milestone. More than a milestone. It represents a shift in the culture that would have been unimaginable not many years ago.

I am moved beyond words, with gratitude and awe, for the showing of support from this new family of mine. I don’t have to apologize for who I am.