When it Rains, It Pods...

Have you ever wondered why little kids love playing in the rain?  As a child it was excitig.  There’s nothing more thrilling about a summer rainstorm than running outside barefoot and splashing in the puddles that pooled in the driveway or the sidewalk.  I have always found rain to be romantic.  Thunderstorms never scared me.  I love the smell of the air right before a storm hits. 

Last year, I was hit by a whole different kind of storm.  One that involved a constant stream of tears.  I had become by own tempest, and it wasn’t an enjoyable journey.  But a Twiddle song saved my life.  For months, I fought to live.  I was fighting spinal cancer and on almost a daily basis I listened to the Twiddle song “When It Rains, It Pours”. It was my go to when my emotions got the best of me or when I desperately wanted things to just get better. The song is one of inspiration.  The basic synopsis: everything bad seems to happen at once BUT good will find its way to you.  It’s a song of hope.  It’s a song about cleansing. 

Here are the lyrics as I hear them...  Take a second to read them if you don’t know the song.  Trust me, it’s going to be important later.

You wake to greet the brand new day
Look up realize you're late
Rush out to make your plane
Can't find your keys again
The rent's been due for weeks
You need this gig to eat
Your car starts to leak
The engine's really weak
It won't start up in time
You try to find a ride
The bills weren't paid on time
Your cell phone lost the line
The problems won’t go away
They keep piling on your plate
You just want to escape

(Chorus)
You need to re-awake

Now listen to the words

I'm saying in this line that your life will be just fine and
Troubles do not stay they
Get replaced with good times
Now you got a great life
Smile as you walk by
Thinking about the Day

Its late your legs won’t rest today
Your body seems to ache
Your mind will win the race
Burning by your sleep again
The night blooms from the sun
The long dark night un-done
Another day of fun
Waiting for some luck to come
You keep hoping for a day
When things will go your way
When all decisions have been made
And karma's finally found its way
The drinks they pass the time
They help you to unwind
The guilt is killing me inside
Your eyes they need to reawake

(Chorus)

Its grey the rain pours down my face
The tears become erased
A cleansing of my fate
Splashing down into my grin
My eyes become alive
A feeling left behind
A hidden world untied
Creating all you see today
The clouds they went away
Forever did I wait
But karma found my plate
Now I’m smiling in the sun
We'll meet again someday
You smile and then I’ll say
When it rains it pours all day
Until love can find its way

(chorus)

Pretty uplifting stuff, right? And believe me, I needed it. I needed that focus that, at the end of this sickly journey, I would have a moment of cleansing.  I needed to know that my redemption was at the end of a very long and hard road.  Often, as I listened to the song, I secretly suspected that it would be at a Twiddle show where my cleansing of sorts would happen. I would get better and I would have everything I needed.  I secretly dreamt about a moment where I would be surrounded by “frends” and through the music I would realize that my life was exactly where it was meant to be.  My message of redemption would find me just as my message of hope had.  That moment was right there in the very song that had kept me going.  I knew it would happen and it did, but I was only partially right.  It found me, just not through Twiddle.  The messenger – Aquapod. 

I’ve been lamenting over the details.  How do you describe the indescribable? How do you put into words the details of something that you would probably be better suited off to tell someone, “You kind of just had to be there”?  For months, I had spent spreading the grassroots word of Buffalove 2015, a smaller tier third year festival in my hometown.  Buffalove’s line-up packed a punch.  But nothing spoke to me like the Thursday night kick off.  Hometown boys Aqueous, followed by Dopapod, followed by the two teaming up into Aquapod. 

The weather had been toying with us for the first few hours.  The sun hide behind cloudy skies and small patches of cooling rain sprinkled from the sky.  The weather reports had called for showers by nightfall.  But with Aquapod’s set looming, festivals goers didn’t seem to care.   I jumped back and forth between various groups of friends as the two bands exchanged songs.  I was surrounded by Buffalo; the festival, my friends, and the music. 

And I was enveloped in pure joy.  And then something bigger than me reminded me why I was here.  The message came to me in a very simple Aqueous lyric from the song “Skyway”.

Don’t see any reason to get worked up

I already got enough on my plate

And there it was.  I was suddenly stunned with an unsuspecting sense of calm.  There I was, less than a year after finding out I was really sick surrounded by people who get it- who get me.  I was still working.  I was still seeing live music.  I was still dancing.  I was getting ready to embark on an incredible journey of love, music and healing energy that included festivals and concerts all over the country.  I was fortunate to be a part of the Buffalove Music Festival family.  In that simple moment, I realized that I had everything I needed.  I was overwhelmed with gratitude.  I have my life, health and zero reasons to be upset by the small simple things that life throws my way.  My eyes started to tear up as I relaxed into a feeling of bliss.  And then something really wonderful happened.  As if Mother Nature wanted her voice to be heard, in the middle of this epic moment of realization, the sky simply opened up.  Water poured from the heavens. There I was in the middle of a field, crying with joy, my tears mixing with the rain.  It was literally a cleansing moment that I had sung about in “WIRIP” hundreds of times.  I felt renewed. I felt reconnected.  I felt awake.  The ground became mud.  No one cared.  The band continued to play.  We continued to dance.  Everyone involved knew they were part of something special.  After all, that’s why we were all there.

There is no string of syntax that I can fashion together to ever properly give the moment the glory it deserves.  And maybe that is best.  Maybe some moments of personal deliverance are best left as a beautiful memory rather than something that gets watered down with punctuation.  Maybe the moment was simply placed in my path as a reminder that I am on the right course, both spiritually and personally.  Or maybe, if you look hard enough at something, you can just let the markers of coincidence point you to what you are desperate to find the most.  Was I just simply at the right place at the right time?  You bet your sweet Twiddle I was. 

And that’s what I learned.  Sometimes, salvation and redemption come when you least expect it.  You have to be open to the opportunities that present themselves in your lane.  If you allow your heart to be open and love through ways that feel true, like music does for me, you will be rewarded with delicious moments of confirmation.  Now, I am studying the Aqueous catalog like it’s my job.  And I’m hearing a sound that feels redemptive and a lyrical message that seems to remind me that there is a lot of things that I just don’t know yet. And I am so okay with that because my journey is just beginning. So now, I walk into this summer with my eyes wide open.

What I learned from Twiddle but didn’t fully realize until Aquapod is that you can’t always understand the beauty of your life, until you experience the dirt that is at its foundation.  Sometimes that dirt feels grimy and dusty.  It feels like it weighs you down.  And if you let it, the rain will find you when you need it the most because there is cleansing in the water. Even when the two mix, there is freshening beauty in the mud beneath your feet. And when the music speaks to your heart, no amount of dirt will hold back the message from finding you.  I also learned that although I love my Twiddle family and “frends”, the love of Buffalo is what truly kept me going during my worst times.  And I know that one day, that delightful Twiddle moment will happen. But for now, I just relish the fact that I have plenty of friends that will stay right here by my side and encourage me to dance in the mud and the muck.  Aquapod reminded me that, after all, that's what “Buffalove” is all about. 

Pin Pointing the Problem

I know I’m going to get some slack from this, so let me save you the trouble.

“Stop being so sensitive.”

“Maybe you just need to lighten up a little bit.”

“If you don’t want people to say something rude things to you, maybe you shouldn’t post things online.”

I could go on, but I wouldn’t want to be rude and not leave something for others to say, I have always had a problem with monopolizing the conversation.  But something happened in my world last week and I haven’t purged it yet.  And as a writer, sometimes writing is the only way I can make myself feel better.  And I also feel that when people can actually get the full story, they can have a better understanding of how and why their behavior affects others. So at the risk of hearing more of the same thing, here we go.

I run in several online circles, most of them about music.  I am a member of several different communities online.  And for the most part, my interactions with others are always professional, albeit sometimes slightly opinionated. This is me we’re talking about.  I won’t claim complete innocence.  But I am always careful with my words.  As a wordsmith of sorts, I understand the power of the English language.  Online it’s even more powerful.  Tone is absent.  Intentions are always implied by the reader not the writer.  Even on the occasions where I participate in “trolling” behavior, I do so in a pretty benevolent manner.  I’m usually the butt of my own jokes.  I say dumb things to watch how others react.   And what I’ve come to find is that in either situation there is generally a lack of seeking.  Online, it just seems that most people don’t seek to understand. 

Last week, my world was turned upside down when my business and business intentions became the target of some rather unwarranted verbal online hazing.  In retrospect, it really wasn’t that bad.  I probably could have just let it slide.  My form of art, creating pins, is not very high up on the fan art spectrum. Many folks who have never engrossed themselves in the taxing and lengthy process of creating one of these miniature pieces have no idea what the process entails.  Nor do they understand the financial investment or business model that needs to be followed in order to run a successful venture. My tiny one bedroom apartment is overrun with bubble wrap and packing materials.  I spend hours sorting, processing and protecting each little piece to ensure its safe arrival.  Hours are also spent designing artwork and exchanging emails with the production company tweaking small minor details.  We made one pin that included thirty three revisions to the artwork.  But I don’t broadcast these details to the world.  It’s a labor of love.  I do it because it brings me joy.

Long story short, we (my fiancé and I) released a pin that caused a bit of a stir.  Mainly because it included a “lyrical misinterpretation”.  Simply put, we included the lyrics as we heard them, and they were wrong.  We knew when we made the pin that the lyrics might be wrong.  Even the bands fan based website had the lyrics wrong.  But as artists we thought, “this design is how we hear it”.  This design is the image that we see when we hear this song. So hardcore fans of the band lost it and the downward decent began. 

Now this is where things get tricky.  As a writer, dancer, singer and performer I understand critics.  I am, as a music writer, a critic.  I have no problem with people taking issue with my art.  For every one person that is vocally obnoxious about not liking your art, there are probably three silent fans admiring it.  But what happened, as folks are often known to do the internet, was that they made it personal.  Folks that have never spent a second in my presence or know nothing about me personally became vicious.  And this is where I have a problem with the anonymity and whimsy of the internet.

I received personal messages from people calling me a scam artist.  I was accused of not being a big enough fan to produce fan art.  I was belittled and embarrassed in front of an entire community of people that I thought I had a bonding common interest with simply because people with fast fingers and inflated egos didn’t get our art.  Art, like music, isn’t for everyone to get.  That’s the beauty and power of art.  It speaks to different people on different levels.  But when you are willing to personally attack others and their character with slanderous remarks never having made a single attempt to know or understand their intent or vision, you also have no idea the disastrous chain of events that you may set off in someone’s life.

Now, this is the point where I open up my heart, mind and spirit in the hopes that others can better understand how their actions affect others.  Here is what some folks know, but others may not.  When your response to someone is to “lighten up” or “don’t be so sensitive”, you are assuming that their emotional state is the same as yours.  But we all know from our daily interactions with friends, family, and co-workers that this isn’t always the case.  A little over a year ago, I was hit with a bombshell.  I had a large mass inside my spinal column that was compressing my spinal cord and causing a loss of sensation and function on the left side of my body.  Over the course of a year, I would endure 8 MRI’s, 3 visits to the ER, 4 neurological consults, 2 open spinal surgeries, 16 weeks of unemployment while recovering, 6 weeks of daily radiation treatments while working two job, permanent nerve damage causing constant pain in my left leg, and 2 months of living with my fiancé and my mother in a small one bedroom apartment. The emotional and physical stress of mounting debt, physical pain and sheer exhaustion did me in.  But one thing kept me going; the concept of building a unique little business and spending the summer of 2015 following my passion of music. 

So when my neatly designed little fan art world was attacked, I crumbled under the weight of the situation.  I was blindsided by the negativity.  I melted while my fiancé, who has stood by my side through the past year of tears and heartache, tried desperately to keep it from happening.  The simple fact is that through all my writers’ sarcasm and tough chic exterior, I’m pretty mushy right now.  The human brain is an organ, just like the heart or an eye.  And my brain has spent the last year under attack from an exhausting journey.  It too needs to heal.  And I have been making many changes in my life to make that happen.  I’m just not there yet.  And this experience has taught me that the internet, even in the most “frendly” of areas, is stilled filled with trolls or people thinking that they have a right to say whatever to whomever they please.  So for the time, I’m limiting my online activity.  I’m also letting my fiancé handle the company’s online presence.  For all my PR and marketing background, I’m just not equipped to handle the negative just yet.

I’m 100% positive that the people that sent me those horrible messages or posted those not so glowing personal assessments didn’t know any of my back story.  And that’s the problem.  Online, people feel free to make their own assessments with little to no information.  And you don’t who that person is on the other side.  You don’t know their joys, struggles or life journey.  I also learned that for every person that voiced their displeasure with my business, personal or art choices, I am supported by more people that I could have ever imagined.  Many people came to our defense; and to those people that did, “thank you”. I’m not willing to let a few bad apples, spoil the Orchard.  And at least one of the people involved has personally apologized.  I’m not sure what changed their mind or their opinion, but I’m thankful that it did. 

I like to believe that all people are inherently good and kind.  And I would just like to remind everyone that the next time you think that you have the right to put someone else on blast on the internet, you really don’t.  No one has the right to make someone else feel less about themselves.  I have learned that making other feels great about themselves is the best way to raise your own self-image.  Paying a compliment and seeing that smile spread across someone’s face is priceless.  Giving someone a small token pays off in a huge way.  At least it does for me.  It fills my heart with joy and love.  And that feels pretty good.  So in the age of the internet, social media and high tech communication, I’ve decided to just get back to basics.  I’m sure glad I didn’t have to face this kind of viral lifestyle when I was in high school.  As a highly sensitive person, I don’t think I would have made it. The internet is not real life.  It’s a skewed view of the world dictated by people that want us to see things a certain way- their way.  And I had forgotten that.  Thankfully, a wise man wrote a song that reminds me about what’s truly important.  

“Stop staring at the screens; Stop countin' on machines

Start livin' in the world that your eyes were meant to see.”

But don’t quote me on that.  I might have those lyrics wrong, too.