PeopleKeeper 2-A Follow Up

Hey all,

I finally got a half-day off and thought it was time to write down some of the thoughts bouncing around in my mind. The technical term for this is idea saltation. It’s a term that I’ve just made up. ::Eddie Izzard voice:: And I’m backing it up with…this geology license I hope to get.

So here is my view for writing today:

This is actually my reality, I can't believe it sometimes.

 It’s cool and windy and mostly clear out, I’ve got a box of Girl Scout cookies and a lot of sunlight left so buckle up because I’m sure this will be a wild ride.

 

A recent photo of me, ready made for a by-line

In the past seven months (whoosh, that went by right quick) I have been working at a job I love with fascinating people whom I am happy to hang out with for a drink after work. My office works with other offices all over the country so I get to meet folks with very different backgrounds and skill sets than my own. My current work priorities for personal development on the job are:

• ·      Consistent demeanor-keeping the same quality and frequency of communication regardless of what’s happening in my personal or personal-professional life (eg. deadlines).
• ·      Learning how to actually talk to anyone- a misnomer that a lot of my friends have is that I can strike up a conversation with anyone. While this has proved true for most of the circles I have waltzed between in my life, it’s not the case across the board. Specifically: I have been learning how to interact with military personnel better. I have a lot of inherited trauma around military folks, through no fault of the people who passed it on, yet it still remains. It so happens that the branch of military my grandfather (who was an abusive ass) served is the same branch that I work with regularly for my job.
• ·     Communication!- Deadlines, expectations, duration of work, intensity of work, boundaries around topics that I feel OK talking about, boundaries when topics I don’t feel OK talking about.
• ·      Programming-I’m finally learning how to code in Python. Because it just seems like a better idea than doing everything manually. I’ve also become significantly more proficient in Microsoft Excel, which has eased some of my pain. And I mean literal pain, my ergo situation is ever-evolving and not close to being pain-free. Despite being an A+ couch potato, it seems being sedentary is not easy for me.

So that’s what I’m working on. It’s hard. I won’t pretend or assume it’s anything but hard.

In the past 7 months I’ve thought a lot about my relationships and how they are interwoven into my mental health. I work A Lot™, my availability in general has decreased, possibly a hundredfold from my availability when I was unemployed. During my unemployment I focused a lot on building relationships; strengthening, deepening, evaluating, asking a lot, giving back a lot, building my friends up, letting my friends support me.

Between personality and circumstance, I’ve always been in touch with A Lot™ of people. Once my therapist asked me to make a map so she could keep up with all the people I talked about. I got to several hundred people in visual format similar to a force directed diagram before I gave up. This was at least 3 years before Facebook. I remember people’s names, their faces, their stories, their joys, and their pain. Especially when I’m rested and focused like I was during my unemployment. Now that I’m fully employed, I don’t have the bandwidth that I used to and I’m noticing that I’m not as capable of managing all the relationships.

On top of my proving period (about 5 months of nearly back to back travel) being physically and emotionally challenging, I took on another challenge: get the first part of my geology licensure. The department of Professional Geologists in the Golden State are trying to mimic the process the Engineers have laid out. I’m certain it also behooves the geologists because it gets them more money. What this means for me, the SaraBe, is that I can take a $500 test now (3 years out of school) and then take another $500 test in 3 more years so that I can sign legal documents. The only study material available is not only boring: it’s badly written, incorrect more times than is acceptable, out of touch and really poor at explaining how to pivot one’s background in academia into industry. I am going to write a competing study guide and publish it when I have my license in 3-5 years. Testing for competence shouldn’t be an endurance test in masochism.

In order to achieve this goal of studying and taking my exam (which I took this morning) I have shifted around my life a lot. This shifting, as with all my shifts, has led me to evaluate my relationships, and check in with where I was a year(ish) ago when I wrote my PeopleKeeper post. I’m going to break out the types of relationships I’ve seen evolve in the past year, moving from negative to positive. Unsurprisingly, there will be a playlist for these categories so be sure to click on links for music. (In addition to my regular play list for the blog at large.)

Brief content warning: mention of rape and stalking. Click this if you want to skip that.

Contact Severed

Only a couple people from my original list (or people who weren’t on the list but existed regularly in my life) were people who I actively severed contact with.

One of them was accused of being a serial rapist. I was not close with this person, I had no direct involvement in these allegations and I did not follow what/if the resolution on this series of events was. I know this person was an active organizer whose parties I occasionally attended but it wasn’t difficult for me to fade from that scene when I was on the road 70% of the time. The whole affair was triggering for me as I was much more intimately involved in something similar when I was 13 so I noped out pretty hard pretty quick.

The other person was someone whose friendship had always been exhausting for me but over the past couple years it built up to the point where they were stalking me. This is someone who I cannot avoid completely because they attend my synagogue but the leadership of the shul took care of the situation in as much as they could. This was extremely difficult for me because there were weeks where I couldn’t attend services because I just had panic attacks. PartnerPenguin was amazing in taking care of me and making sure I left when I needed to leave and breathed as much as I could. Mega props to the current leadership body for listening to me, taking me seriously and treating the situation with gravity.

The Somebodies I Used To Know

This category is a little less cut and dry from my previous category and it’s probably the category I struggle the most with. These are not people who have acutely wronged me, just more…death by a thousand paper cuts. A lot of my biological relatives are in this category. People who have occasionally made my swear allegiance or loyalty but who have never actually been interested in me as a person.

An illustration of this kind of person was someone whom I hadn’t seen in months and we finally spend much of an evening together. They asked me how I was doing and I spent care and energy into responding how was drowning in work but they were important to me so I carved out an evening to spend with them. Throughout the evening they then asked me three more times how I was doing, closing out the evening with “we should catch up some time.” This was painful, but ultimately it made me realize that listening to me was not a priority for this person and there was nothing I could do about it.

Standard Partiers

I like to grow my friendships in predominately 1:1 settings, often revolving around food, often at my house. My relationship bonds strengthen best during long-ish periods of unstructured or semi-structured time together, so I try to create such spaces. Some people like to maintain their relationships through parties (usually >10 people), touching base periodically and superficially. I am happy to attend these parties but I’ve learned that I’m not going to bank on the friendships I cultivate in these spaces to be deep enough for strong emotional support unless I supplement them with other types of interactions.

Don't get me wrong. I love partying. I just don't expect to do most of my heavy lifting in my friendships in this context. 

Neutral

Several people who I had on my PeopleKeeper list interact with their relationships in a way that I had not understood previous to trying this experiment: their partner performs most of the friendship maintenance. I have seen several pairings of people who do this. The level of emotional labor expected by society, usually on women, to maintain relationships, plan free time and keep house to have friends over shines through when I have tried to maintain friendships with people whose partner does a lot of their emotional labor. I have trouble getting in touch with some of these people. One person appeared randomly back in my life after 3 years of no contact because they were in a relationship and just…didn’t keep in touch with any of their friends. Even with my best friends, I have sometimes given up on being friends with their spouses because they just don’t put any work into being my friend in return and assume their partner will maintain that bond. But usually when I show up in person they listen to me so they are neutral to me.

Everything’s Easy/The Simcha (Joy) Bringers

I have several communities right now that I participate in regularly given the locational availability and energy level.

The first is my weekly gaming group who meet the host’s home, and usually have 10 people or less per event. We have dinner together and there is always SaraSafe food (no nightshades) even if means the host makes a separate meal just for me. Sometimes it’s tacos (we gather on Tuesday, after all) and sometimes it’s sous-vide pork cheek or <three-stroke meat engine> that have cooked for at least 12 hours. Sometimes I participate in games like <Colors, Fucking Colors>, sometimes I don’t. And it’s always OK. Everyone sees each other weekly so we generally know what’s going on in each others lives. It’s friendship on easy mode.

One thing that’s great about this group is that the two people who host recently got married and I got to see for the first time a wedding that reflected something much closer to what I want in a wedding ceremony (we’ll have one someday, I swear). The bridal party was not split by bride and groom because everyone was everyone’s friend. The women wore dresses and the men wore suits and everyone was color matched and lovely in that formality. The vows were said in a “yes, and” fashion: the bridge said one line and the groom responded “I’ll do that and this additional thing”. The officient was a friend and he made no presumption of having God involved (which worked, for this crowd). After the bride and groom exchanged vows, the audience was invited to vow to support the couple. I really liked that.

I was so full of joy and love that I cried the whole night. In fact I cried so much that salt crystals formed on my eyes:

I cried myself some minerals!

Other communities I have in this category are my shul, my other regular gaming groups, and the friends I see rarely but spend time with intensely throughout the year. And of course, my travel buddies. In the past couple years I’ve brought my “states visited” count up to 23. Here are some photos from some of the more recent trips:

The great and powerful Mississippi River

....yes....

American Victoria Falls

Buddy, your soul is supposed to stay inside your body. So's your skeleton.

Crappy quality but I did see the Northern Lights

Just a pup in -10°F being OK with life.

With the national political situation, my job being as intense as it is and interfacing with my own and my friends mental illnesses it feels extraordinarily good to have good friends and celebrate happy events. It reminds me that there is balance and that this past year has been net good.

Found Family

The best thing about being a queer adult is that the concept of Found Family is understood and, while not ubiquitous, is prevalent. My little group of new family are the people whom I can be around, no matter how we’re feeling and it’s OK that we’re not entertaining or happy. We can just be. It’s extremely freeing to have multiple people with whom I can just be my complete self.

I had a lot of negative experiences growing up where I was told that we were having family time and that would mean we would “have fun, damnit.” I think sometimes when I reflect on the nuclear family I had growing up that none of us understood how to be there for each other in the ways we needed to be supported. Instead there was a lot of shame and at time coercion to “act like we liked each other” instead of genuinely liking each other.

The intentionality I’ve brought to my new family folks is that when you’re in my found family you’re in as your whole self. That’s hard and takes a lot of work on all parties involved, so there are only a few people who hold this place in my life. I think one of the most important conversations I ever had was with someone who holds me in found family status and they explained that I had committed a transgression serious enough to cut ties unless I made swift and lasting change to my behavior. Having this conversation allowed me to see that just because this category exists, it doesn’t mean that abuse or bad behavior has to be tolerated.

A surprise for me in this past year is how big of a difference having a found family has made on my spiritual life. I am regularly celebrating smaller Jewish holidays that I’ve never celebrated before because I have the support to do so. We have more conversation around Judaism than I’ve ever had voluntarily in my life. I like the amount of Judaism I’ve worked in and I feel supported to include more if it seems right to do so.

PartnerPenguin

I am happy to announce that PartnerPenguin and I have celebrated our first decade together! 10 whole years of being awesome! The best part about renewing for an 11^th season of this show is that we jumped the shark somewhere in…like…season 2? So there’s nowhere more ridiculous for us to go. We’re still two goofballs with odd senses of humor who make each other laugh every day. We’ve learned to have arguments without putting the foundation of our relationship at stake. We have established that we’re not going anywhere so it’s OK to try new things and get out of our comfort zone. I am proud of us. I was trying to only do two comparison photos but then I did 4. GIANT, PHOTO LADEL BLOG POST FOR ALL!

Casual then-shirts read Feztival (2002) and Vader was Framed

Even our casual now looks like we're about to drop an emo album

Fancy then-Rockin' that Moulin Rouge themed Prom

Yeah, basically still rockin' the same theme with no prompts

I do hope to have some sort of wedding, probably about 3 years from now on the 10^th anniversary of us being married. That seems like enough time to ease into the idea, save, plan and decide what we want the event to be. In the meantime I’ve started wearing a ring that I feel suits me on an everyday basis. I think it looks like it fell out of a mountain and happens to fit my finger. You can decide for youself:

I am really really excited about this

In closing today, I’ll just leave you with Janelle Monae’s “Make Me Feel” or: “I am exactly as bisexual as I thought I was.

(Un)Para-socializing Myself

I have been using this blog wrong. I am not sure how to use it right, but I am now pretty convinced I am using it wrong right now. In fact, I feel that I am using most social media wrong. I have become a character, a persona through this medium. I am amusing to follow, I can evoke laughter and tears but I am alone. After two weeks living on my own, I am beginning to feel very very alone.

If you are not familiar with the term parasocial relationship please click the link for an in-depth explanation. Simply, it’s the type of relationship we form with celebrities where the masses feel like they “know” a person well but the celebrity has no direct contact with their constituents.

I hung out with one of my co-workers all day yesterday. She commented that if you are in TLoTH by yourself and you’re in your early twenties, it’s actually a horrible place if you don’t have a good friend or roommate (as she does). The restaurants close at 8 if you’re lucky, and the two bars close at 11 and midnight, respectively. There is a lot of outdoor activities like hiking, camping, backpacking and climbing but she observed that those activities are only fun if you’re with people. “It becomes kinda terrifying” if you go alone, she said.

I am really harsh on myself because I cannot hike a 20 mile day alone. I have no upper body strength and my wrist injury is not healed enough to even do plank for a whole minute (aside from the fact that my core isn’t strong enough for that either). That puts climbing out and I don’t have enough motivation to lift weights by myself at a gym. My body issues become my self-esteem and self-worth issues because it appears the only thing there is to do here is be outside. I have met some more “indoor” type people here but they are difficult to co-ordinate with. Or they have LAN parties late at night and I fall asleep on their couch, making an ass of myself.

I would like to point out that some people have been calling/emailing/responding and I cannot express enough gratitude. You have been helping me work through some of the problems I brought up last week and offered introductions and advice. I do not wish to diminish the impact of your actions, nor act like an emo teen. It is just very lonely here.

I also came to a really rough realization yesterday. I place my self-assessment of productivity on whether I have had successful social interactions in a day. I cleaned my entire house, including mopping the floors, all dishes, vacuum and laundry and I felt that my day was a complete waste and I did nothing.  I then went to a game night and had a good conversation with a wise man and all of a sudden it was a beautifully productive day in my mind.

While talking to PartnerPenguin I also ran into an insecurity that may be contributing to my auto-isolation. He asked why I don’t just pick up the damn phone and call people. I tearfully responded that I don’t want to interrupt people’s lives. I always feel like I am calling at the wrong time and people in my life have better things to be doing than talk to me. It wears on me that many people do not initiate communication with me. I understand. But it’s also hard to be the only one who reaches out. I learned from experience that you always loose 80% of the people you once hung out with when you move to a new place. But it hurts every time. And this time, I don’t have PartnerPenguing to keep me company so the loneliness just hits harder. It doesn’t help that everyone I know lives in a different time zone than me.

I am working actively on these issues. I am trying to acquire at least two hobbies, one soul enriching and one active. I am doing makeup for a play for the next couple weeks. The community theatre folks here are pretty cool so far. A good amount of them don’t take the play too seriously because after all it is “community fucking theatre” as one actress said. After I’m done makeup, I’ll be in two little shows that open in November. I have already met most of the other actors and they seem chill.

For the second activity, I’m looking into Roller Derby but am proceeding with caution since I have history of injuries with contact sports. I’m also working on the paperwork (WHY IS THERE SO MUCH PAPERWORK?) to sign up for the gym at work. I plan to do a yoga class there but I my concern with yoga is that it works on you as a person, not as a member of a team. I really want something that teaches me how to work with or alongside other people in an encouraging environment. One of my friends today mentioned Tai Kwon Do and I said I’d give it a shot if they joined me.

I am trying.

But the blog. I do not know what to do about the blog. I see a couple options but in all honesty, I am yearning for some audience participation on this one. Please tell me what you want; I do not know and I don’t feel like I’m doing a good job predicting.

1. Continue as is with my weekly postings. Try to make them shorter, easier to read.
2. Post multiple times a week. Less complete content but higher volume.
3. Take requests from my readers and talk about one topic. I’m thinking this could either go AMA style or questions could be related to being a Lady Scientist, being in my 20s, being fabulous, whatever. I don’t think I’m any good at advice so it wouldn’t be an advice column, just more directed blatherings.
4. Continue posting little essays each week.
5. Ask people on the mailing list how they are doing. Pick up the damn phone. Take more care to cultivate more interpersonal relationships instead of parasocial.

Additionally, I will be working to write on my own and use it as cognitive tool for processing information and emotions off-line. I feel somewhat bad that I have used this space inappropriately for that and I will try to work through my own things on my own more in the future.

To close, I wanted to highlight a video that is completely opposite to Taylor Swift’s Wildest Dreams racist fiasco. This artist shows us that it is not “a deal” to have people of different colors and abilities in one place. She shows in this video that dance has the power to heal and that art can help overcome really really difficult situations. I am glad to have found this particular video this week and I’m glad I’m allowing myself to do crafts and art to relieve the pain of loneliness.

Depression: Episode 1

As I may or may not have told you, PartnerPenguin is still in the Key Route City trying to pick up a new gig since his last job found a Thai kid who does about the same quality of work for $8/hr. Yay, the joys of being 13 hours behind your client! 

I’ve been doing a pretty OK job living on my own, in general. I haven’t tried since I was 19 so there are aspects that are rusty. Like putting my clothing in my room after it’s been worn; particularly in the dirty clothes bin. But getting in the room is enough of a win in my book.

I’ve been doing really well with food, only eating out twice or so because I didn’t plan enough food. I’ve mostly stuck to my cooking all my meals in one day and eating them the rest of the week. I’ve been pretty good about one western, one eastern dish. I’ve even had enough excess food that I’ve fed others. I’ve been consistent about exercising twice a week in Crossfit. I’ve tried to live up to my goal of socializing 5x/week outside of work, even if it’s been with co-workers.

But spending this much time with myself has created some somewhat unexpected issues.

I depend on PartnerPenguin a LOT to keep me mentally balanced. I have quite a volatile personality and without a good grounding stone, my emotions resemble a roller coaster train wreck. I did something this week that made me ecstatic. In the same evening, I had a conversation that brought up so many sad tokens; I wished I could exchange them in for a stuffed animal. Yesterday I had a conversation that I literally could not recover from for the rest of the day. I cried for more hours than I did not cry. Yet I also washed every piece of dirty laundry, line dried it (saving money), did two loads of hand wash and vacuumed all the carpet in my apartment.

I also am discovering that I’m rubbish at asking for help. In some ways, I am paralyzed from the fear of not being able to trust anyone. I have had someone in my life almost every day for the past seven years whom I trust with my life. I am in a new place with new people who I have only known for two months. I have never understood how little trust I feel comfortable putting into new relationships. I know I was not always like this. And I’ve gotten hurt. Permanently. But I never knew it, or was able to acknowledge it in the same way as I am now when I have nothing else to do except introspect.

To some extent, it is easy to feel like you know me really well because I never filter what’s going on with me at that EXACT moment. But in all honesty, I can count the number of people who actually know what’s going on in my life on one hand. And I sometimes disappear from their lives because I can’t bring myself to tell them I’m in pain and I need them.

I am going to submit my next banner to an art show in September. It is going to say “Subtle like a LANDMINE.” I hope it sells, because that is the best description I’ve ever heard of my personality.

I don’t really have a point that I’m trying to make with this post. Sometimes I ramble. Today is one of those times.

Not everything this week has been bad. It’s just been amplified.

Oh yeah, I thought of something I’d like to speak my mind on. The topic of professors.

Three weeks ago, I reached out to a couple professors who I researched with at Big American University. At the encouragement of literally every scientist I’ve met at TLoTH, I am trying to publish my research from Big American Uni. Nothing big, just a poster. The grad student I researched with help me put together a jammin’ abstract and I sent it to the professors three weeks ago. I assigned them a deadline of July 10 so I would have plenty of time to pass through internal approval before I submitted it for a conference. In all of my emails, I offered the opportunity to MEET IN PERSON because I know they both respond better in person. I do not live in the same state as these professors, I was planning on taking time out of my holiday weekend to spend with them.

In the time between the first email and July 10 I received a total of three emails. One email (Prof 1) said, “Good abstract, add more of your work even though I don’t think it has a story to tell.” Second email (Prof 1) said, “Good abstract. I’m in a different country.” Third email, sent at 10 am on July 10 said, “Good abstract. ::asks question directly answered in my thesis::”

At least they both said it was OK to publish.

There were a lot of problematic things about this entire interaction. I set a clear deadline. I communicated my intentions. The professor out of the country had some excuse due to spotty Internet. But over the course of three weeks, the excuse wears thin. I have been quasi-homeless and made sure to check my email every day. The domestic professor, who might have been out of town, did not communicate that and therefore was just absent. Big American Uni has cut their phone lines to professors’ offices due to budget cuts so I was unable to call. I resorted to asking the secretaries to remind him if they saw him in person. I felt like I was stalking but I honestly had NO alternative for this communication.

By far the biggest disappointment of the whole experience was the grad student’s response. She was amazingly supportive through the whole thing and I give her tons of credit for being awesome. But she said something that disturbed me deeply. She said that professors are often like this and there is nothing to be done about it because they are, in essence, more important than us.

I replied thusly:

“I am sorry that you have had to become normalized to such shitty communication and disrespect for your time throughout your graduate experience. You deserve better. Not everyone treats their students in this manner.” They are adults. I am an adult. I deserve to be treated like one.

It hurt and made me so so sad that not only was this behavior accepted and normal, it’s what to expect in some fields of research. It takes a person who actively works through their own ancestral abuse to change the cycle but no one talks about cycles of abuse publicly when it comes to PhDships. Add in active discrimination or even microaggressions at any stage of the game and it’s not really surprising that diversity isn’t great in the ivory tower of academia.

I found this song a little while back; I feel it’s oddly appropriate. Warning: song does contain some harsh language, including the n word.

Update: I went over a friend’s house and actually told her what’s wrong and she listened completely and compassionately. NEVER underestimate the power of compassionate listening. 

And now for something completely different:

Come With Me Now

Damn, living on my own is awesome and busy. I did it; I made it a week without my PartnerPenguin!Among my personal goals I wrote out when I started out this week was the following:

Do only what serves my highest potential.

I feel like I did a pretty great job doing that this week. I am finally taking a night to catch up and food shop and blog and wash my stinky clothes. Oh the stinky-ness!

Well, the week went pretty well. I don’t actually remember what I did last Monday but I’m sure it was cool. I did make all my food last Sunday. I figured out a pretty good strategy, for now. I make 2 dishes, one Western, one Eastern. Alternate those for lunch and dinner. Get something different for breakfast. This past week Partner Penguin left me 4 lbs of boneless skinless chicken boobies so I had boobies for days. The Western dish was one of my own concocting involving butter, dark red wine, onions and mushrooms. The Eastern dish was a Trader Joe’s premade curry simmer sauce with obscene amounts of coconut oil and milk. In addition to chicken, it had red onions and tomatoes. I get really bored of my food really easily so I found a good way to combat this is to pick up a different fresh vegetable each day. So I have my entrée and a new veg dish and it’s <$3 per day after initial chicken/meat/protein investment.

Tuesday and Thursday nights I did CrossFit. I decided it was more worth it than a gym/YMCA membership for me right now because there is a built in community to support you and it a designated time commitment. I lifted a 25lb barbell this past workout and I rowed about 2000 meters in all. I am very proud of myself, and I hope to continue in a productive manner.

Wednesday brought girls’ night and we had a pretty good crowd this week. My next-door neighbor came out with us. I’m not really sure if she spoke to anyone besides me but she seemed like she enjoyed herself. Wine+estrogen is always a good idea, especially when you have ChromeCast available to watch the trailer for “Movie, The Movie”.

Cool, I went a bit out of order but anyway my week was swell. Then I had a badass weekend.

In case I haven’t mentioned, I am on a pretty cool work schedule that allows me to take every other Friday off. So Friday being my day off, I got to do a bunch of housework and pack. I laminated the first geology map I made in school; I’m super stoked to put it up in my office.

In the afternoon, I met up with some friends and we went camping for two days. It turns out that when you’re not camping for research or classes it’s actually an incredibly relaxing and peaceful experience! I really liked it and was super glad I had some good friends organizing. I did two important firsts this weekend too.

1.   I pooped in a hole. Including research trips, field camps and educational camping trips, I have certainly been camping for a total of more than 3 months of my life. I just evaded that particular issue forever. Whatever, I know you don’t care but this isn’t your blog.
2. I shot a gun. This was a little more profound for me than pooping in a hole. I am scared of guns and the noise hurts my ears a lot. This was a 45 caliber dude. PartnerPenguin asked me the brand and I told him “black” and he said that wasn’t a brand. The one thing that I was impressed with myself about was that I aimed at the target and hit exactly where I aimed. I then gave the gun back to its owner and ran away. 

 Other than that, I’m still working through the book The Bees; a mini-epic of a dystopian feminist world solely populated by bees. It’s pretty violent and incredibly compelling. I appreciate any author who successful writes about smell and pheromone communication between animals. Plus, it had Margaret Atwood's stamp of approval.

Sunday morning I left hella early and braved the treacherous dirt road back to the main road. When I got home, I showered the most delicious, cleansing shower of my life. Then I hit the road again and headed up to a local ski village for a music festival.

Now I’ve been to a couple folk festivals and a couple large venue multi-band gigs but I had no idea what to expect. The headliners were international with an average of one top 40 charting song. The event didn’t publish the set list so I got there when it opened at noon only to find out the first act wasn’t until 3:30. Haha. They had filler music groups until the event. Among the artists, I was not surprised to see Mariacha or Flamenco group. The group that did surprise me was the Native group who sang traditional prayers around a drum. Something about their presence and performance was so piercing. Maybe it was because many other areas do not have enough of a Native American population to offer such a group. Maybe it was the timbre of their singing that just saw through everything mortal and spoke to spirits directly. I was glad they were present.

I passed the time exploring this wonderful new place and basking in its artsy-fartsy-ness. I found a jeweler who I really liked as well as an all women artist collective. I ran into my boss’s-boss’s-boss’s boss which was…interesting. I guess she was the one who suggested the ski village in the first place so it wasn’t that surprising.

Back to the concert. I have to give kudos to the opening header act, Rixton. They had fabulous stage presence and encouraged a really energetic crowd. The one audience participation act they did was they encouraged everyone in the audience to put their arm around the people they cared about the most. The lead singer then asked everyone to say

“I appreciate you.”

He then encouraged everyone to turn to a stranger and say

“I don’t know you, but I appreciate you.”

I would really like to point this out because such a simple act of gratitude should NEVER go unacknowledged or underappreciated. I hope the band will become more technically proficient and enjoy their already successful career. I also hope the lead singer and the guitarist are boyfriends because the former kissed the latter a whole bunch and I hope it was consensual. Anyway, this is the song you’d know if you know them at all.

The act that I went to see was KONGOS. Damn they rock. And HOT DAMN is their bass player one fine specimen of man. They certainly had different personalities than Rixton but they worked the crowd well in their own way. Most of the music was extremely heavy in bass drum and bass guitar but there were some pretty fabulous accordion and guitar solos. I was convinced the solo in “Come With Me Now” was an electified dulcimer but the guitarist played it on his guitar. Slight disappointment. Now I need to learn how to play the dulcimer and do heavy metal covers with it. Obviously. The set ended with rain and excellent head-banging and some really really rad covers of the Beatles and New Order. I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard such a successful cover of Elenor Rigby but it works really well with a heavy-metal-accordion band.

The rest of the fest was unremarkable except three things.

1. A woman asked me “Is this what people are normally like?” She was very intoxicated but I think there was some horrible truth in her question. She looked so lost and terrified that people were so horrible.
2.  A lesbian couple (it was relevant to my shirt) told me they lived in an earth ship. Apparently that’s a particular kind of zero waste house.
3. A woman extended her hand after talking for a while, presumably to shake and exchange names. I extended my hand and touched hers. Instead of shaking it, she pet her face with the back of my hand. I’m fairly sure this isn’t normal, but as long as bodily fluids aren’t involved, I don’t judge.

Then I drove off into the sunset and so ends my story today.