Making March My Month!

And other things...like rambling updates and late Grammy responses...

Photo by Alfonso Scarpa on Unsplash

I can’t believe March is finally here. I also can’t believe it’s already March!! So far, March is going well! It started off with a bang(er) when I won tickets through a radio contest to see Primus in July!! I’m so incredibly excited!! They have been giving away tickets to see The Flaming Lips or Primus all week. I wanted both of course hahaha! But, I’m so beyond thrilled to have won any at all!! I usually don’t listen to the radio, but for the first time ever have been out of high-speed data on my cell phone for the remainder of the month. That’s a whole story. Not happy. And I’ll do better about getting on WiFi while I’m out and about this month. But, had I not been forced to listen to the radio, I would not be going to see Primus!!! Heeeee he hee hee hee!!!! I will be singing the intro all month to cheer myself on!

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Tuesday, as I was punching the code into my mom’s door, as I have done a bazillion times previously, I went to open the door, but slammed right into the still locked door. I shook my head, punched in the code again, and same thing. The door didn’t budge. I was about to text her to tell her there was something wrong with her door, when I saw her on the other side. Just as she opened the door, I realized that I was putting in the code completely wrong! How had I gotten the code so wrong, but was so sure I was entering the correct code? It was the right numbers, just in the wrong order. I had transposed and jumbled the last three. But, when I was entering it, in my mind, it was exactly the code I had entered every other time. How does this even happen? Apparently, there was something wrong with my autopilot!

I’m not sure why that surprises me.

I have been so scattered and unable to focus lately. So many things are demanding my attention, and it doesn’t help that I am now subscribed to at least like 165 Substack newsletters! Hahaha! Which is kind of funny because I keep saying "I wish I had the time to read more. I need to get back to the habit of reading.” Hello! You ARE reading a TON!!! There are so many good writers on Substack. And, over the past few months, I have subscribed to a bunch of them centered on music. This is all great and not so great. The great thing is that I am no longer spending idle time between waking kids up in the morning by playing time-wasting games. But, it’s harder to take my focus away from a great newsletter I’m reading every few minutes to go shake four kids awake over and over again every few minutes to get them up. I don’t actually shake any of them. I probably should. I just go open their room doors and tell them to get up at least twenty times each morning.

I did clear my schedule one day a couple of weeks ago because I was given an advance copy of a book called The Right Kind of White by Garrett Bucks, who writes the The White Pages newsletter here on Substack. I’ve been reading his newsletter for a year or two now, and it’s fantastic. His book is AMAZING! I read all but the last 40 pages in one day! I’m not going to say a whole lot about it now because I am planning on writing a whole book review to post here once I get my shit together (whenever I use this phrase, imagine cackling laughter just after). Do yourself a solid and go pre-order this book! It made me have a whole lot of big thoughts. Which is likely part of everything that has been overwhelmingly on my mind these days. Anyway, I participated in a book talk on the book through a Zoom meeting with the author, editor, and maybe 20 other advance readers, which was super cool! It was such an amazing experience to be able to talk to the author and a bunch of other people about the book.

Another one of my favorite Substack writers, lyz , who writes Men Yell at Me had a new book come out this week on Tuesday! I read the first chapter immediately, and can’t wait to finish! Her new book is This American Ex-Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life. Incredible!!! Seriously, stop everything and buy every friend you have a copy now (men should read it too!)! She also has a podcast in conjunction with the book. I can’t wait for season 2 of the podcast!

I hope Lyz doesn’t mind that I took her book with me to a seedy bar downtown to treat myself to breakfast with a Bloody Mary twice this week. My coat still smells like fryer grease, and I don’t mind.

I spent all of last Saturday, and a few hours that Friday (OK and some time between 1:30-2:30am in between sleeps) writing an essay for a yearly competition I enter called the Iron Pen contest, put on through the Midwest Writing Center. It’s a 24-hour writing contest. The prompt comes out at 5pm on Friday, and you have until 5pm on Saturday to submit your entry. I don’t know why I put this kind of pressure on myself every year. I always think it’s going to be fun! Hahahaha!! I mean, really it is, but I also like to challenge myself. Every year I tell myself that it’s not a big deal, and if I can’t figure out what to write about when I get the prompt, I don’t have to write anything! I can consider it a $10 donation to an organization I LOVE. But, then, I HAVE TO WRITE SOMETHING!! Last year my piece was awful and all over the place. This year, there was something that I have really been wanting desperately to write about, and I was hoping I could slant the prompt in some way to allow me to write about it. That didn’t happen, hahaha. But, for the first time ever, I started writing immediately after I got the prompt! I had some awesome people give me some great feedback, and that was sooooo helpful! Whether I place or get an honorable mention or not, I’m happy with how the piece turned out. I pushed myself a bit. And the topic I wanted to write about, at least one part of it, makes the most sense in this post because I want to talk about the Grammys! (The other part of it is related, but would go too far off-topic here (hahahahahahaha), so I will save that part for when I can really sit down and figure out what to say about it, and how to frame it).

Yes, an entire almost month delay in getting together my feelings about the 2024 Grammy Awards and having the opportunity to write about them. Is it even relevant at this point? I don’t care. I’m still watching the performance of Tracy Chapman on repeat.

I knew the Grammy Awards was on that night, and I wanted to watch, but I hadn’t prepped for that at all. I had no clue what channel it was on. I also had final papers to grade and final grades to input… and it was also a Sunday, so that meant I came home after my Sunday hang with friends (Sunday Bloody Mary Sunday) after drinking a bloody mary and four brews (I usually limit myself to three out, but was feeling the need for an exception that night… and I brought home a four-pack)… and had somewhat abandoned the idea of watching the Grammys. I was just going to follow internet updates while grading. While I usually make a point to watch the Oscars, I don’t typically with the Grammys.

Then, my youngest sister texted me a crying emoji saying that Tracy Chapman was on, doing a duet with Luke Combs.

Funny story because just a day or two before, a local radio station was doing a bit about how the younger kids think they know more about our (GenX) music than we do. One of the stories was about how someone’s child tried to tell them that Luke Combs had just gotten the lyrics wrong when he sang, “And I work in a market as a checkout girl.” The parent explained that it was a cover of a song by Tracy Chapman that was originally released in 1988 (kid’s mind blown, I’m sure!). The radio announcer explained that it was a very intentional thing that Combs did, keeping the original lyrics. I had possibly never listened to Combs’ cover in it’s entirety, or glossed over the fact that he didn’t change the gender of the lyrics. I am not a fan of country music at all. I only knew about the cover because of my middle sister (she listens to country music sometimes now because her man does. gag. LOL). I honestly didn’t even remember his name before the bit on the radio. So, when my little sister texted me, I knew exactly who and what she was talking about.

I don’t have cable. I have a smart TV and basically stream everything. I probably haven’t watched regular TV in forever. I did set it up and scan channels with the digital antenna at some point, just after the summer. But, there has always been one channel that never shows up. When I changed the input to TV that night, yep, it was CBS, the channel the Grammys were on.

I teared up just thinking about Tracy Chapman and “Fast Car.” So, I frantically tried to find where I could watch the Grammys. I tried the voice thing on my remote, and no luck. I Googled, and that’s where I discovered that I could watch with Paramount+, and I have that one!! WooHoo!!

What I watched of the Grammys is somewhat of a blur aside from my personal highlights (which I’m going to tell you ALL about!). I just know that I spent the time between the Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs duet and the tributes trying to get my daughter to come to watch the show with me. She used to be a HUGE Billie Eilish fan (she still loves her, but is into a lot of other music these days), which is why I so adore Eilish’s music (I believe I would have loved her music even if my daughter hadn’t become obsessed). And now, my daughter is super into Olivia Rodrigo. I was yelling down the hall, “But BILLIE EILISH and OLIVIA RODRIGO YOU LOVE THEM!!!!”

“I KNOW, MOM!” she yelled back. I went to her room and knocked on her door, and when I opened it, she scrunched her face, pursed her lips, glared at me, and then slammed her fists into her lap. Awards shows and watching her favorite artists perform on SNL are just not her things. They are too much for her, and it’s easy for me to forget that as neither one happens very often.

My daughter’s relationship with music is a complex entity.

I discovered several years ago now the term for what it is. Misaphonia.

Misophonia is a disorder in which certain sounds trigger emotional or physiological responses that some might perceive as unreasonable given the circumstance. Those who have misophonia might describe it as when a sound “drives you crazy.” Their reactions can range from anger and annoyance to panic and the need to flee. The disorder is sometimes called selective sound sensitivity syndrome. (WebMD).

Because of the “selective” nature of it, for a long time, I failed to understand her severe reactions to some music, but not to other music. To me, because it was “selective,” I thought it was something that was within her control. I spent many years testing those boundaries before stumbling upon the fact that it was an actual legit thing. Once I read a few articles about it (I think the initial one I discovered was a Harvard study), I started to understand better why the selective nature. Certain sounds just trigger her. So, it’s not that she selects which sounds aggravate her, just certain sounds do - she can’t help which sounds she’s triggered by.

I just discovered an excellent website that offers a very thorough explanation and discusses different types of management/treatment options. So, I’m going to have to sit down and read more because the website talks about management and treatment.

For quite a few years, I took her music aversions personally. Seriously, how is it that I can have a child who cries and sobs the second she hears a Bob Marley song? Or Missy Elliot??? I mean, come on!

I will admit, that I have used Missy Elliot, turned on her music, and sang and danced to it to be able to do dishes in the kitchen by myself. In my defense, that was before I knew what she had was an actual thing with a name and a list of symptoms.

She also cannot stand to hear me sing or see me dance in front of her. The Misophonia Institute website describes that in some rare cases, the misophonia trigger can also be a “visual image (body movement),” Once I read that, even though I already knew beyond a doubt, this explained so much about her aversion to music, this cemented it for me. This also makes sense as to why she would have issues watching shows like the Grammys or SNL performances.

I gave up trying to get her to watch the Grammys with me, and instead yelled to her room when Billie Eilish won while watching with my youngest son. He wasn’t really watching with me, but he was in the room with my playing games on his laptop.

The part of the Grammys that affected me most?

Annie Lennox!!!! Singing “Nothing Compares 2 u!”

As the first song in the tribute to artists lost in 2023 came to a close, I said “I didn’t see Sinead’s name yet.”

I was so not prepared. The second Annie Lennox came out and started singing… my whole body broke out in gooseflesh. And I let out a sob.

My son, who has probably so very rarely seen me cry looked up from his game, “Are you good mom?”

“No!” I sobbed.

“It’s Annie Lennox singing Sinead O’Connor!!!!!” This all came out broken through ugly sobbing. I try hard not to cry ever because there is nothing cute about my crying. It’s completely and totally ugly. I don’t have a cute Claire Danes lip quiver. My mouth does horrible things, and I can’t talk like people do in the movies while sobbing. My eyes were so full of tears that I completely missed the fact that Wendy and Lisa were behind her!!

“Are you good mom?” my youngest asked again, genuinely worried.

“No!” Was still my response after the performance was over. “It was Annie Lennox singing a Sinead O’Connor song!!”

I’m still having huge emotional responses watching it today.

And wondering why it wasn’t more largely covered among all of the highlights of the show. So many “highlight” articles failed to give this attention.

Of course I was already emotionally primed to receive Joni Mitchell’s performance. There was no way I was going to be able to get back to grading any papers.

I got up early the next morning and finished my grading and posting of final grades.

It took a full two days before I finally found a link to watch the Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs performance. It was just glorious! I found the link through another Substack.

I was on the brink of graduating high school back in 1988 when Tracy Chapman’s first, self-titled, album was released. I quickly became obsessed. It was a solid album from start to finish. It was still in my heavy rotation in July, when after having to take classes in summer school, I talked to my dad about spending a couple of weeks with him in Indianapolis, IN. I had just gone through a breakup, and had just walked out of my job. One of the things my mom would tell people just before my graduation was, “At least she has a job.” So, walking out on my job the day before my graduation party was a thing. I felt like I needed a breather, and thought maybe taking a trip out of state with my father, who I had rarely seen in many years, might be just the thing I needed. And maybe the song “Fast Car” had something to do with that idea?? Hahaha.

On the road, traveling towards Indianapolis, I asked my dad if I could play a cassette tape. He wanted to see it first. It was Tracy Chapman. As he looked down to the cassette insert, reading the lyrics then looked back up to the road, I realized that he was going to read all of the lyrics before popping the cassette into the player.

The last time I had seen my father prior to my graduation in 1988, was somewhere in 1984 or 1985. He had picked me, my brother, and sister up and taken us somewhere. I don’t remember where, and don’t remember what we did that day. One of those short visit things. But, what I clearly remember from that day is that I had my Depeche Mode Some Great Reward cassette cued up to “Blasphemous Rumors.”

My father had recently become a Pentecostal minister. The last check my mother had received for child support had the prefix of Rev.

I don’t know if I thought I was being rebellious or what. But, of course I popped that cassette into his car. My siblings and I looked at each other.

I’m not sure it lasted past the one minute mark before my dad took it out and handed it back to me without saying a word.

So, of course, he’s going to read every lyric before letting me play another cassette in his car! Hahahaha. It just sucked that he had to do it while also trying to drive on the interstate! I had specifically chosen Tracy Chapman because I felt like it was pretty much innocent, and talked about real world problems.

Anyway, Tracy Chapman met my father’s approval, and he let me play the cassette. We listened to it quite a few times because I was not about to present him with a new cassette to read the insert of while driving.

That’s my favorite personal Tracy Chapman story. That album still holds up, and is still in my rotation. It is still solid from track 1 to track 11.