Over Sensitive Artist

I love Sia Furler's work.

I love her voice and I love her writing. If you go back to my straight for the knife blog entry, she had already affected me with saying what I was feeling about a man. It was painful at first but now I can listen to that song and feel the learning that went with that whole experience.

Last night I was over sensitive about some of the comments my friends were making about her performance on the Grammy's. Several people wrote similar statuses of, "What is this mess?"
I don't know it really upset me.

So I wrote a little comeback on facebook:

"So many people are posting about Sia in a negative way. I love her. She is an amazing songwriter and was only going to write and get out of performing for many reasons. How hard the industry can be on people, women in particular. Her problems with addiction. People not accepting her and her faring better as a writer...
I think about stage fright, and insecurities and still being able to find a way to perform because she turns her back on the audience. Performing through our fears. She has an amazing voice.
And I see the dance as the crazy mental chatter in our heads. People who go crazy. People who suffer from depression and paranoia. The thoughts, the crazy thoughts.
You don't have to like her but take a moment and think about what she is doing. She is an artist.
My grammys rant for the year."

A couple of people responded rather kindly. I don't think I was looking for a response per se. And I said, "all I wanted was people to think about it before they dismiss it. She touches me in my deep place where all my fears live and I want people to see that. They can continue on disliking her, of course, but I want them to at least see the validity of her work."

I think what is happening is that I am seeing myself as an artist again.

Recently, at work, the conversation came up about being mortgage poor. One of the managers said she couldn't do something because she was mortgage poor. I said I couldn't do it because I was music poor. I spend all my money on music.
Someone asked me if I downloaded music for free. "Hell no. I pay for other peoples work. I understand how hard it is to do the work. I understand how hard it is to be an artist and survive off the money you make off it. Heck I'm a discouraged artist and working here because I haven't had what it takes to be a paid, thriving artist."

My boss went into a long monologue about buying a whole album for one good song and yadda yadda yadda. I tuned him out.

There's no excuse for that now. You can buy one song.

I talk so much about healing and themes each year. And I'm slowly seeing that it's my artist that I'm starting to look at healing.

It's funny, as I wrote my little Grammys rant on facebook last night I forgot that Sia's album title is 1000 forms of fear. And yet in my facebook response I said, "She touches me in my deep place where all my fears live."

Yes fear and missing out on so many more flavours.
I've been a multi-talented person from when I was very little.
I always danced. I was the little girl who automatically started dancing to music even before I could speak. My mother would get me to dance in front of the grown ups and they would all watch me with big smiles. Dancing then was just moving up and down but I improved once I got older. I wanted to be a solid gold dancer. Dance training was never an option or even an idea of an option.

In grade 2 or 3, I discovered my singing voice. I can remember that singing class (there was such thing when I was a kid)when we sang the same song as a group and everyone turned around in class to look at me because my voice was louder than everyone else. My singing teacher encouraged me but I wasn't at that school long enough for it to move on to any real training or options. I went to three different schools in grade three. By the third school I was a quieter, shy, child. No one knew I could sing.

My mom would get me to sing in front of the company when she had parties. Often she would get me to sing, Firefly, to the record by The Temptations. It was her favourite song. My mother always wanted to be a singer. Her praise and criticisms were unpredictable. They would range from the sing to my friends to stop showing off, you don't even know what you are doing.

I used to draw. If you ever read my old blog entries you would know that both my brother and I would draw. My brother was the Picasso to my Charles Schultz. I could only draw cartoons. My brother could draw wild animals, people, landscapes and cartoons. Where my brother's drawings were put up around the house by my mother for admiration, my cartoons were completely ignored. So I gave up drawing and picked up writing.

I've been writing since I was 10 years old. I have been offered mentorships by professional writers three times in my writing life. I ran away in fear because a couple of people whose opinions I valued told me they were not interested in helping me, they were only interested in stealing my work.

I've been a blocked and creative artist interchangeably for my entire adult life. I am not blaming anyone, please understand. I am simply saying that I needed others to help me to believe enough in myself and my talents.
Those are a brief look into my fears.

Growing up being in love with music I could never understand why it was so hard to have easy access to all the types of music. You know, radio was top 40. My mom did play jazz on a Saturday afternoon or classical on a Sunday. Classical was annoying until it wasn't and so was jazz for that matter. Right?

As an adult as I listen to the music from my childhood I hear so much more because I have so much more experience and music knowledge. When I listen to Blood, Sweat & Tears song, Spinning Wheel, I don't hear it as a classic rock song, I hear it as a jazz piece. And Queen's, Somebody to Love, I hear as a gospel song.

I guess the more we know, the more we appreciate and the more we see.

The main reason I love Sia's performances is because she turns her back on the audience. She's telling me and every over-sensitive artist, in every performance that there are ways to still put our work out there and carry our fears along with us. We can bring the mental chatter and our crazy along with us.

I'm asking people to open your minds to the artists out there, even if you don't like them. And see the bigger picture.

We all say we're tired of the lowest common denominator ass shaking and boob revealing performances but we can't expect to get through that and past that until we start to see what options there can be out there. I only started to love movement theatre because I was exposed to it. It was a beautifully, brilliant piece done at a fringe show that Theatre Rusticle did called the Stronger. I didn't understand it for the first half of the show until I did. And then it was a cannonball through my soul. It blew me wide open.

We need to make a proper space for our artists. They chronicle our experiences. They help us to articulate our humanity. We can't simply dismiss someone's work with what is this mess?
The two friends who did respond to my facebook rant said they just didn't like the song. Mind you, they weren't the ones who said, What is this mess? So they were never the people I was talking to. You don't like the song, you don't like the song. That I can understand. That's specific.

What is this mess? I don't get why she's singing facing the wall and she has this child and woman making these frenetic moves. Then we're open for a dialogue. Open for interpretation. Open to learn.

What is this mess? A brilliant woman who is finding a way to put her work out there through 1000 forms of fear.

EY

15 Songs you never knew were written by Sia

Criticism of Sia using 12 year old dancer Maddie

Straight For the Knife - Romantic Invitation?

It's an energetic invitation. the energetic invitations always get me in trouble. I'm learning that I can no longer entertain an energetic invitation.
You know the ones. He hovers around the vicinity a little longer, past the end of a valid request. I have to ask every single time, "Did you need something else?"
He has a little grin. Shy. He looks up like he's seriously thinking about the answer and then , "No ,no, I think that's it."
I'm a little slow. I never think anyone is interested in me until I think someone is interested in me. He has to hover a long time and consistently before I even start to clue in.

The energetic inviter is really the guy who uses innuendo as his weapon. He never comes right out and says anything specific. His interest hangs in the air waiting for me to meet up with it. My problem is that I believe that if he shows an interest and I have a reciprocating interest, my natural move is to show enough of an interest as acknowledgement that I'm willing to at least start the dance. Nothing is ever that simple.
I have marveled at the amount of people who jump into relationships quickly and have long-term relationships. I have never been that person. It has never been as simple as meeting a guy and it goes from there. Never!

The gift in all of this interaction with the hovering man is having him as a practice person to work my Human Design out on. The importance is in understanding how detrimental it can be plugging into the wrong person. Allowing the wrong person into my personal life.

I swear I was listening to this Sia song one night and I found it to be the perfect metaphor a charming, seemingly shy man who shows up and gets a Projector woman's hopes up ...I've put the lyrics in quotes.

Put on my best dress, I wanted to impress
I put a little make-up on
Put a bow in my hair, wore pretty underwear
hoping you might take it off
Don't know your etiquette but
I'm strapped to my chair, and it ain't 'cos you're pretty
You were charming, until
You saw your chance to kill, your chance to make history.

I've been reading about Projectors. The warning is that we wait so long between invitations that we get excited when we are finally invited. I think that is where the energetic invitations get me in trouble. I know it's an invitation. We both know it's an invitation. But there is a missing ingredient.
I'm so cheerfully willing to get to know this man and it's like the moment I show that willingness he becomes too sure of himself. Like I'm a done deal when I'm so far from it. Buddy I have to get to know you first.
It's funny how I can be the most difficult person to get to know with people in general. With non-romantic options, I can make it next to impossible to get to know me. I understand how people can wear me out so I don't accept too many people into my personal space. I know how much I give emotionally to my people and how trying it can be. I'm always at the ready to be there whenever I'm needed. I can't be that person for just anyone. With a man, if I've asked myself about my level of interest, I can be so willing to believe that what I want is possible, if he'd just...
There have been some great signs from him but they are simply short lived. His follow through is a mess. A chaotic, confusing mess.
And so we approach the beginning of the end. I lose faith in him.

You went straight for the knife, and I prepared to die
your blade it shines
looked me straight in the eye, you turned the gas on high
held the flame alight, you wonder why
I'm scared of fire
you wonder why you make girls cry.

I've listened to Ra Uru Hu's recording about Projectors and some of what I loved was that he said, "You know that you know about the other." There can be a sense that it's not the proper recognition, not the right person but I ignore it. I want to try to make things fit. Ra's comment that I re-wrote in my notes, "I am here to recognize when the right person shows up. I don't go to find him. The other is so important and it's often the wrong other - which puts a projector into bitterness. We do a lousy job in picking partners because we shouldn't look for them, we are here to be found."
I've wondered if he was just trying to see if he could get my interest. And that was all he needed.
I can remember with an ex-boyfriend how I could always tell when he was talking to a woman on the phone. It was that tone of voice.
It's that innuendo. He had a girlfriend, me, why did he need to speak to other women in that tone of voice? Was he setting up the groundwork to have someone at the ready if things didn't work out with us?

This man talks to me in that certain way that's not professional and not that of just a buddy.

When we have contact with each other, everything is so intense. It's a good intense. It makes me feel alive, it makes me feel good. And there is a promise of more to come, like he means it and then there is radio silence. The contact is unpredictable. Never there when I say okay to his promise, always there when I don't seem to care about his promise. It's such a great lesson for me because I've dated this guy repeatedly. The more this man is around me and not around me I see so clearly this timeline of the same boyfriends who I had the inkling weren't for me but I went out with them anyway. I call it George Clooney in the Role of Warren Beatty.

I love the information about Projectors plugging into others. Aside from what I mentioned earlier about how people can wear me out, that part I understand, the scary part is when it feels good and then it's abruptly pulled away. I wrote in my journal, "Maybe it's just an addiction to your energy. We all know about addictions, right? They are not good for us. They deplete us. They shame us."

My Mascara a mess, harsh words for your princess
boy, you and your promises
if your goal was to love, you scored an epic mess
now you'll just have memories

Projectors, we think a person is one thing and they are something else.
It was the day that I called him a nick name that he didn't love. I said I'd decided that he would be my little brother. I wasn't just putting him in the friend zone, I was putting him in the not an option for sexual intimacy zone. Only then did he volunteer that he was in a non serious relationship, aka friends with benefits, more harshly, fuck-buddies. Projectors are not meant to be fuck buddies. I don't think. Anyway it's not my game, not my thing. It certainly doesn't endear me to a man.

Men who have fuck buddies learn how to treat women like they are disposable. That kind of man doesn't know what to do when he gets a good woman. He's so used to picking the low hanging fruit he doesn't know how to make the effort to pick the fruit from the top of the tree and he doesn't feel like he has to bother.

You went straight for the knife, and I prepared to die
your blade it shines
looked me straight in the eye, you turned the gas on high
held the flame alight, you wonder why
I'm scared of fire
you wonder why you make girls cry

Boy, you draw me back in
I'm hungry for your bad loving
but will someone find me swinging from the rafters
from hanging on your every word.

The lesson brings me in so many directions.
How good an energy from another person can feel that can pull me into a dangerous place emotionally. What I know about myself and learned long before Human Design is that my recovery time is long. I've never been the person who went out with a lot of men or jumped from relationship to relationship because I'm not built for it.
An energy can feel so good that I can lead myself to believe that he'll improve, he'll change, if I just wait it out. He just doesn't know what he wants yet, right? Ha!
When I was in my 20's I had the energy to date this guy. That was how I learned what I know now. When I was 22 and he talked to other women with that tone of voice, I just had to be cool, not jealous, he'd realize that I was the catch. He simply needed to sow his wild oats. When I was 25 and he wasn't a person of his word, I thought if I acted cool he would come around more consistently. I knew never to make a big deal about it. I knew that it was up to me, it was my behaviour that would get him to change his.
I was well-versed in all the ways to take my own recognition out of the equation. I forgot about my own power because I was so busy feeling insecure chasing after people who didn't value or recognize me.

I've played a lot with this interaction. I've tested my feelings within his energy. I see how the energy pull is so easy to get swallowed up in. I can easily be pulled back in. The moment I feel that I mention his fuck buddy to him but I call her his girlfriend.
"Oh you went scuba diving this weekend? Did you go with your girlfriend?"
"I don't have a girlfriend."
Girlfriend is my safe word. It's the reality check that helps me to stay in my field of knowing that I have to reject this person. He is just a test.

I firmly believe the quote from Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist, "What you still need to know is this: before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we've learned as we've moved toward that dream."

I feel like this whole interaction falls into that quote. The best part is that the man has become more and more beautiful to look at as the months have passed. He has become more physically attractive. I swear he's grown taller. ha-ha! It wouldn't be a good test, a good lesson otherwise.

You went straight for the knife, and I prepared to die
your blade it shines
looked me straight in the eye, you turned the gas on high
held the flame alight, you wonder why
I'm scared of fire
you wonder why you make girls cry.

In my journal I wrote, Reading Paulo Coehlo's the Alchemist and the boy meets Fatima and ultimately admits that he will have to leave to seek his treasure but he will be back for her. That whole sequence brought me to writing this: I've always known I'd have to wait and the fearful question was, 'What if I have to wait forever? What if he never comes back? (that's the Great Gatsby and Wuthering Heights - He came back but neither woman waited). Now I understand that it's in the recognition of the other that will tell me and how I feel will help me to decide.

With George Clooney (this current man), the Universe is asking me, Have you learned your lesson? Are you willing to love yourself this time around? And when you put it that way, I have to love myself. I have to step forward, then step away and not look back.

With Warren Beatty (the ex), most recently, I have had to keep rejecting him and rejecting him and his invitations have been filled with full out recognition of the type of person I am. But in my heart, I've had to turn him down because he has never given me the one consistent show of action that he meant what he said. I've found that I will have to do the same with George Clooney.

My confession is that I am sad because he is so beautiful and physical and macho. He is such a guy. And boy do I ever want to know what he's like in every possible way... to feel the way he would touch me...AND THAT'S WHERE THE TROUBLE BEGINS!!! All those good feelings go with a man who cherishes me and protects my delicate, sensitive heart. A man who recognizes me and gives me the formal invitation that is just right for me.

EY