The Fine Art of Being Unprepared

I’m joking in the title.  I doubt there is any real art to knowing how or when to show up to things unprepared.  I generally am a fan of a good plan.  Often when unpreparedness happens it pretty much sucks, but I try my best to pull things together.  Once in a while, though, being unprepared leads to something profound.

For someone who was about ready to throw in the proverbial towel when it comes to music, I’ve wound up with quite a few good gigs this year.  There is something to be said for not worrying too much.  Ohio continues to have some kind of cosmic pull – I have connected with great, loving yoga and kirtan community there, which balances well with getting to perform with The Mutant Mountain Boys there for SubGenius and Devo happenings.  I’ve been to Ohio twice this summer and wouldn’t be sad at all if I managed to schedule my way back once more this year.

I didn’t feel terribly prepared for any of my gigs this last time out.  At Kundalini Yoga & Wellness in New Cumberland, PA, I played music for yoga, followed by a short kirtan with my old friend JD Stillwater.  That is supposed to be freeform and intuitive, so a lack of set list is fine, if not ideal.  JD and I worked well together.  I appreciated the practice with spontaneity and listening.

I’ve been working with a lot of changes this summer – focusing on health, having internal consciousness and intention exploration stuff – and it has been leaving me in a state of busy-brain.  So much was going on in my mind that the long drive to Cleveland didn’t seem to help me solidify the house concert set for that next night.  I mean, I knew essentially which tunes I would do, but I didn’t feel particularly balanced and rehearsed when I arrived and had to quickly set up the sound system (while making friends with the host’s four awesome dogs).  The show turned out just fine.  The people and the energy were better than fine.  I was even surer about this Cleveland-area vortex that has seemed to open up in my life.  Still, I’d like to find a more easeful pattern when it comes to travel and gigging.  It continues to be a work in progress.

The main reason for this last trip was to make my way out to A Not … TOTALLY Dev-o Tribute Night at The Summit in Columbus.  I absolutely love playing with The Mutant Mountain Boys, and when we were asked to do this show, I started working on booking gigs right away to make the unexpected travel reasonable. Well, we made it there, and we played the gig.  We weren’t terribly prepared.  Samantha was jet-lagged after flying in from Tucson and was running on almost no sleep.  I was pretty exhausted, too, so how could Jim exactly get on a wavelength with that?  We all could have played better, so… we were just ok.  We had an amazing, energetic show at 16X-Day.  Perfectionist that I am, I am (almost) ok with not having been 100% for this one.  We talked about it later and hope to plan future shows so we have at least 24 hours in the same place together to rest, regroup, and rehearse before we hit the stage.  We all had a good time anyway, Lieutenant Dance was fabulous, there are some great pics posted, and the impetus for a late August Devo fan event with friends was started again.

At one point relatively early in the evening, Thomme Chiki, the organizer of the event, asked people if they had any stories or pivotal life moments to share about Devo.  There were two disco ball piñatas in the house and I stepped up to tell the story of how I’d been in the audience during the New York portion of filming for the “Disco Dancer” video and how that was an exciting time for me.  I’m not sure why I didn’t think at that time to tell more of the story:

It was at a club called The World.  The band played a few tunes, then prepared to record for the video.  They did several takes of “Disco Dancer” and the audience gave their enthusiasm.  I didn’t quite “get” this particular song or why it was the single, but I was of course ecstatic to be present for anything Devo.  Afterward, the crowd started to disperse and the club turned into a regular dance space.  After a while, I was dancing and turned to see Mark Mothersbaugh who had come out of the dressing room/green room area and was crossing the dance floor.  I went into instant groupie mode, beelined toward him and asked, “Mark, can I have your autograph?”  He said yes.  I looked blankly for a split second, then said “I don’t have any paper.”  Duh.  I asked him to please wait, and I told him I’d find some.  So there is one of my major heroes standing on the side of the dance floor kind of aimlessly while I scurry around looking for paper.  Bizarrely (though maybe not so strange for 1988), the first piece of paper I found was a tri-fold AIDS info pamphlet that had fallen to the floor.  It said “AIDS, Sex, and You.”  I handed it to Mark and he gave me the most bemused look.  I apologized and told him it was just the first thing I could find.  He wrote “No sex is safe and also good.”  I didn’t think that was very sound information, but hey, I had just prompted Mark Mothersbaugh to write something about sex, which I found to be pretty awesome.  He wrote an “xo” and signed his name.  I thanked him.  Then I got even more bold and asked him if he would like to dance.  He said, “No, I have to get back to Jerry.”  Then he paused, looked at me, and said “You’re very beautiful,” before he disappeared back through the door.  I was pretty much in heaven.

~~~

At The Summit last Friday night, the MMB were getting ready to leave and something gave me the idea to seek another autograph.  I picked up a black and white flyer for the event from one of the tables and thought it would be cool to have Thomme Chiki sign it, since he’d done so much to put the night together.  I didn’t know him so well, but always thought of him as a cool and dedicated spud with encyclopedic knowledge of Devo and probably lots of other things.  I asked him half seriously if he’d sign the flyer, and when he said yes, I thought that would be a really great souvenir. The next question was, “Do you have a pen?”  I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t think I did.  I started to dig through my bag.  The first thing I came up with was a tube of red lipstick.  I said, “You could sign it in lipstick.” He made a funny kissy face, but then took the lipstick for real and went to the other side of the club where there was either a mirror or a mirrored section of the wall.  I could see he was putting on the lipstick.  When it started to take kind of a long time, I realized he was doing this quite seriously.  I had assumed that if he did it at all, it would be taken as a big, goofy joke (interesting bit of gender stereotyping I did there).

I was stunned by the image I saw walking back toward me.  It was a simple, sweet and graceful androgynous beauty.  I was basically rendered momentarily speechless.  He returned the lipstick and said quietly, “Thanks for sharing.” He kissed the flyer.  I rather awkwardly vied for a lip print on the cheek.  I had not at all been prepared for this aspect, this physical manifestation of the beautiful in-between to show up in that moment.  I was engrossed – It was moving and exciting to be so taken off-guard.  Reflecting on it now, I see a gorgeous, encouraging reminder that this place/non-place where I live and love and write is absolutely real – and here is another soul, perhaps gliding through a similar journey.

I suppose I would do well to try my best to be prepared for most things.  Virgos prefer order, they say.  But at least when it comes to autograph-seeking in Devo-related contexts, being a bit out of sync has so far worked quite well.

~~~

I am booking concerts and events in Ohio and worldwide!  Inquire at bookings@robinrenee.com and visit me at www.robinrenee.com.

Take It Back

Meditation is a practice of remembering.  It is taking the time to sit still and get quiet enough to have the memory of peace.  We all have it.  True peace rests waiting in the center of our beings.  I picture the quiet, expressive eyes of a gentle child watching all the bustling and working and posturing and passion that whizzes constantly in circles.  Peace just watches and waits.  Waiting, tranquil enough for the world to stop spinning is good practice, but sometimes more is necessary.  Sometimes taking it back—active reclaiming—is the essential next step.

On Monday, November 29^th I took my annual silent retreat.  It is a midnight to midnight time for no speaking, no music, no news, no flashing screens.  Entering into the cone of silence is walking full aware into the echoing voices. When you get quiet, which voices echo for you?  Mine tell me about how I ought to be so much more efficient.  They worry about the winter heat bill.  They ask me if I’m crazy.  They wonder if I’ll ever be worthy of love.  They show me pictures and sing me snippets from the vast and ridiculous catalog of rock, folk, new wave, and punk that lives in my head.  Then they quiet down.  Gratitude and meditation happen.  I notice the warmth in my room created by altar candles.  The touch of the air on my arms and chest feels so much more physical than in the chattering times.   

The only word I’ve been able to come up with to adequately describe the silence, once it really settles in, is delicious.  It gets easier each time to enter into silence, and if it weren’t for outside demands clamoring to get in, I could let it go for days.  There may have been moments of delicious this time, but that was not mostly the case.  This was a difficult silence.  I did not have the usual tools to stuff down what had been circling in — nervous tears and caged-animal uncertainty.

My friend Elisa once said “Whenever I come to your house, I feel like I did yoga.”  I loved that observation.  That was the problem.  My home had lost its yoga and it needs it back.  In the midst of the erratic every day, I was forgetting the essential yoga in my being.  Showing up again on the zafu to sit still more and more often is a first step.  I have discovered that the Universe is fond of placing obstacles in the way of those who ought not to forget to meditate. 

I have other more physical actions in motion:  changing the current living situation, managing and releasing old family items, honoring my need to be free of disarray.  Depression had its hooks in deep this summer, and I am letting go of punishing myself by lack of exercise and stupid food.  It’s back to Ballys for me, and I love it.  I will chant and play guitar and boogie oogie oogie openly in the living room again.  It doesn’t always take a seismic shift to take back what you need.  Sometimes we dwell just a half step to one side of our essentials.        

At the Integral Yoga Institute holiday party in Princeton this Saturday, Jayadeva told the crowd that we are never alone.  If we are all One and all Love, how can we ever be abandoned?  I wonder if I made my cameo at their Holiday Hoopla just to hear that message.   It was another moment of returning focus. 

There has been chaos in my household over these past few months, but that will be changing.  I am taking back the yoga.  The Christmas cactus by the kitchen door is blooming right on schedule.