April Newsletter: Grit > Fancy Tricks
Hi there! It's April, and that means it's time for another secret demo!
The following story (as usual!!!) is kind of a bummer, but I’ll start with the happy ending: the song I got out of it! “After the Ball” is one of my favorite songs to perform, and I’m excited to record it for SPARKBIRD. You can hear the direction I’m taking it in this demo, but of course it’s a work in progress.
Now for the background on this song.
In my years of creative block and weekly therapy for trauma, I often had surprisingly little to say about the more obviously traumatic events I’ve experienced. And the nightmares that left me drenched in sweat every night for three years were also rarely, if ever, about those events.
Instead, they were about a housing situation I found myself in after a difficult breakup.
It’s a complicated story, and one that I won’t go into completely. I can only tell my side of it, and they’re welcome to tell their side, wherever they are. (If they do, I hope they won’t name names, because I’m not naming names.)
It’s confusing to look back on it, because I see that I made a lot of mistakes. I wish I had done many things differently. At the same time, I feel compassion for this younger version of myself. I know they were trying as hard as they could.
Following my difficult breakup, two of my closest friends offered to let me live with them while I got back on my feet. I had recently been diagnosed with PTSD, and I wasn’t able to pay rent, but we agreed that I could contribute in other ways (helping out around the house, etc.).
At first, it was nice to live with friends. (Calling it “a ball” might be a stretch, but it was better than living with my ex.)
But the breakup was just the first in a series of unfortunate events. Soon after, a close family member attempted suicide. My mental health declined. I was continually grateful to have the support of my friends through this difficult time, and when I checked in about where we stood over the finances, they said things like, “We’re so glad to have you here, and you do so much for us. It’s such a relief to have all these chores done when we come home from work.”
A few months later, things were looking up. I was playing more shows. I met someone really great and started writing a song I felt excited about (I finished it many years later — “Grey & Green”). I found a counselor who was helping me get back on track at the University of Oregon. And I was finally able to get a bunch of work done for the professor I was working for.
And then everything fell apart. On a single day, I lost my job as a research assistant, the person I’d been dating broke up with me, and I found out my grandpa was in the hospital and didn’t have long to live.
When my friends came home, I told them the things that had happened. And in response, as I sat there crying about my dying grandpa, they gave me a lecture about how I needed to pull myself up by my bootstraps and stop being so irresponsible. I needed to stop working on music and focus on real work.
My jaw dropped. If there had been any hope of my pulling myself up by my bootstraps, it was dashed in that moment. I felt overwhelmed by the most gut-wrenching sense of betrayal, and a sort of cognitive dissonance set in. I thought I knew these people — how could they respond so cruelly? Did they think I wanted to have all these awful things happen?
And music — that was the one thing that always brought me joy.
Where compassion might have bolstered me and helped me be more the person they wanted me to be, their chastising crushed me. I stopped allowing myself to work on music, like they wanted, and as a result I lost hope.
And I became extremely resentful of these people and the cushy middle class lives I saw them living every day. They complained about money problems while going on fancy vacations and spending frivolously. Meanwhile I was on food stamps and skipping meals.
I don’t envy the position they were in. If I were them, I never would have let me live with them. I was never going to be what they wanted me to be — that is, someone who would succeed in the particular way they were succeeding. After I moved out, I still couldn’t manage the bootstrap thing and ended up on disability.
My advice to you, if you’re ever feeling charitable, is to ask yourself a lot of questions: what expectations do you have of the person you want to help? Does your compassion depend on a certain timeline? Does it have an expiration date?
I wish my friends had asked themselves these questions before they invited me to live with them. Maybe then we’d still be friends.
All of that was in 2011. In the years that followed, whenever I tried to work on music, a nagging voice would hiss: “Stop it. Stop being so irresponsible.” It wasn’t until 2016 that I was able to finally shake it out of my system.
And I wrote this song to finally wrap that whole experience up, once and for all. Ta-da!
With love and grit,
Stephan
www.stephannance.com
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