The Court Jester Sings

Top O’ the Morning to you! We’re happy to report that we’ve just concluded a term’s worth of jewelry classes and even happier to mention that we attended every single one. Can’t say the same when we were enrolled at the University the first time around…

The other cool thing to tell you is that we finally finished the basement project! Ho boy, anybody who has clutter, whether it is locked away from sight in the attic, stuffed into a closet, or banished to the basement, knows how thrilling it is to get it all organized.

The problem for us is that we do our best to keep our house, where we also make jewelry for a living, relatively chaos-free (remember last week when my mom said my control issues “revolve around maintaining control of my personal space and not people?”). Well, not only do I come from a long line of Drama Queens, but part of my inheritance also includes pack-ratting.

I fight it tooth and nail. So while the main part of the house reflects that victory, the basement reveals the ugly truth. It has been a repository for all the minutiae we didn’t know what to with in the first place. I mean, how smart is that? By the time circumstances required us to dig ourselves out of the pile of overwhelming clutter, we must face the mountain of stuff all at once. If we didn’t know what to do with each item as an individual piece, how are we expected to excavate en masse?

Long story short, we pushed up our shirt sleeves and have been very motivated to set up our studio. So I guess the trick is to have a compelling enough reason to overcome the inertia and quit wasting valuable energy resisting the mess and just dive in. It didn’t take as long as we feared and the extraordinary thing was, even as we expended a ton of physical energy hefting and toting and sorting, with each thing we discarded or gave away, our energy returned to us many fold. My mother highly recommends a website called http://www.flylady.com/ for the clutter-whelmed.

On Monday, Brother-In-Law, who is a professional contractor, came over and helped Groom install a ventilation system, so we are now ready to rock and roll our new designs.

Eeek, and that’s where I’m having a little melt down. I have spent the last three months inspired and totally wired to get my hands into some different materials and practice my new metalsmithing skills. I’ve attended classes, researched and ordered new supplies and equipment, faced my mountain of mierde, lost many nights sleep to inspired ideas, and yet…

And yet, now that I have everything I need (I think, although there is always one more tool, one more required item) to get started, I am immobilized, paralyzed, staring at our new studio set up and not knowing what to do.

As the Art Fair results are starting to come in, we have stock to make! I would feel pressured if we were simply doing what we’ve always done, but to throw in the unknown, gulp, I’m feeling suddenly blank. There were endless ideas taunting me when I didn’t have the means to try them, and now that I do, they have disappeared and I’m feeling a little panicky.

Speaking of feeling a little panicky, I had an opportunity to channel a bit of that angst Friday night. Last week, I wrote about going to karaoke to support a friend doing a stretch goal. I love stretch goals. Of course, they are more fun for me when they are someone else’s, but I recognize their value and so I also do new things to keep my comfort zone pliable. It’s shockingly easy to become rigid in our beliefs. We hold mental images of ourselves as to the kind of people we are, what we are capable of. And for most of us, the images are far too small and limiting. “Being shy keeps you from your destiny.”

When our friend called us, asking for our support to sing, the first thing I said was, “Don’t expect me to get up there, I don’t sing, much less in public.” End of story. Or was it?

Watching all the other people grab the mike and underwhelm us, I began to consider, why were they more courageous than me? Many lacked stage presence, others could barely hold a tune, yet they managed their fears enough to get up and make an effort to entertain.

All last week I pondered. Could I ever do it? Could I get up in front of people and sing, knowing full well that I was not blessed with a pleasing voice? Could I stand up in front of a crowd and squeak out a tone-deaf rendition? The queer thing is, I am not tone-deaf, but my voice is and the worst insult the American Idol judges can bestow a contestant is to say, “That was like a karaoke performance.”

Okay, let me just tell you, that would be high praise indeed pour moi. Mine was like a very bad karaoke performance. I completely blew the first line, missing it entirely. So I jumped in on the second line and the crowd, who had been laughing and drinking seconds before, came to a screeching halt. Well, I might have been the one screeching, but they were definitely the ones doing the halt. It got silent.

No no no no no!! They were supposed to continue ignoring the singers, talking amongst themselves, laughing overmuch and creating a soothing din. They were NOT supposed to stop and listen. I was facing them and they were looking at me, well, there’s no other way to say it, rather shellshocked.

The people at the front table were actually giggling, okay, laughing. At me, not with me. Oh golly, I was so thankful I had worn my deodorant, because I was making man-sweat. When I’m by myself, say, in the shower, I might have fun belting out some tune or another, but even in my least self-conscious moment, my voice is not strong, kinda wobbly. Put me in front of a packed house, and here’s the kicker, SOBER, it comes out downright shaky. Eeeee gads.

When I finished, the room gave me a hearty round of applause, but me thinks that was because my performance was over, and not a reward for a job well done. One friend, said, “Ooooooh,” kind of in the same tone one might say upon seeing a badly scraped wound.

Groom just looked at me, smiled and shrugged, then gave me a hug. An enthusiastic friend did her best to point out all the things I did right. She told me that many people would have been permanently thrown if they’d missed the first line, but I recovered quickly and jumped right in. She said I smiled, gave the crowd eye-contact and moved my body in rhythm to the music. Her best compliment was that I did not look “D.D.” er, um “developmentally disabled.”

Really? That’s my best review? “She did not look developmentally disabled.” I’m sitting here by myself at the computer and I cannot type because I’m laughing so hard through the tears.

So to answer the question, can I get up in front of a crowd and make a fool out of myself? Why yes I can, and quite effortlessly, it would seem. I told you last week, part Queen, part court jester.

And as if that wasn’t enough, tonight I’m supposed to recite Irish-themed poetry in Cabbage Groove. In a green wig. And maybe a tiara?

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!