thoughts

I am not getting larger – my clothes are shrinking.

This does not sound like an Occam’s Razor sort of solution to the button-busting problem of my too-tiny garments. Logic dictates that I probably gained a few pounds at the wrong places. The systematic shrinking of all of my clothing by a single size is probably not the answer.

This sent me into a paroxysm of obsessive weight-checking. I would catch my sneaky body gaining a pound like catching a kid with his hand in the candy dish. I would also keep my hand out of the candy dish.

Nothing. I actually lost a pound, sans candy dish. So, lesson learned, on that front.

I was stumped, and also barely squeezing into my jeans. So, I went with my gut (oh, the puns) and called the plumber. I’ll mention that our plumber already thinks I am a little crazy – he’s the one that put a new spigot on the side of the house after I crashed the car into the old one.

“I know there is no cold water,” I explained on the phone to his service, “because I cannot fit into any of my clothes. Also, they all steam when they come out of the wash.”

That’s what the plumber and I discussed yesterday while the washer spun empty, bone-dry circles on the cold cycle.

“Looks like it’s not getting any cold,” he said.

“Yup,” I replied.

“But there is cold coming out of the wall.”

“Really?”

“Yup,” he replied.

“So why isn’t the washer using it?”

“Good question.”

I feel relieved and empowered by this revelation. I was not growing, for real for real. My clothes were shrinking – for sure. Now I’m wondering what other unobvious, Occam-defying explanations for problems in my life I have been dismissing in favor of the most likely answer.

However, there’s still the matter of half of my clothes no longer fitting me.

“Hey,” he said, as he reconnected a hose to the port on our wall, “how’s that new spigot working out for you?”

“It’s great.” I paused. “Actually knowing I have a few extra inches on that side of the driveway makes it easier to pull the car. I’m not as worried about hitting it, so I just do the whole thing better.”

See?

I am conducting an experiment in post-Vermont tranquility: no more complaining.

I don’t think it will be very hard, as I’m not really a complainer by nature.

Wait, let me phrase that a little more carefully so it’s not used against me in the future.

I’m not an idle complainer. I don’t see much point in deriding what I don’t have the will or want to change, unless of course I’m doing it under the guise of writing  scathing critique for our collective entertainment. Otherwise, I’m usually much more focused on what I can do and improve on my own than concentrating on what the people around me or doing wrong.

Yet, lately I find I have plenty of idle complaints about the world around me. People not trying hard enough, not working as a team, complaining too much. Complaining about others complaining too much! What if they complain about my complaining too? It’s like an Ouroboros on Scully’s back, swallowing itself again and again.

That’s not me. It makes me unhappy, and I feel unlike myself.

So here is my proposal for myself and all of you. We stop making complaints. Period. I don’t care if its about waiting in line, or that annoying thing your partner does in the kitchen, or the one thing that drives you the craziest in the entire world. Complaining connotes something having power over us, like telling it our true name.

Inside, I’m going to issue improvements. Corrections. Fixes. Every time I want to idly bitch about something that’s wrong, instead I am going to turn it into something that’s right.

Either that, or write a very scathing critique of it.

I don’t know what got into Philadelphia last night, aside from the surprisingly autumnal breeze that followed my car down every block of West Philly to stream through my window at every stop light.

It was the sort of thing that made me want to take side streets with all four windows rolled down. Apparently, for everyone else it made them insane.

I can understand that. No one was thinking about Autumn. The equinox is a month away. The cool air reminded us that time sprints forward with or without us, which apparently precipitates a lot of wrong-way driving and pounding on car windows and generally acting half like an obstacle course and half like an angry mob.

The passage of time was certainly the theme of my errand – to exchange one last goodbye with Jake. When the idea of his moving first emerged last fall it seemed improbably and remote, but tomorrow he’s catching a train to his new home in upstate New York.

On my way home I paused at a stop sign and was faced by a crowd of people standing in a clump across the intersection from me.

“Oh great,” I sighed, “an actual angry mob.”

I’m starting to get the hang of this driving thing, but this was the first human barricade I had encountered. I wasn’t so sure of the procedure. Do I offer a tribute of some kind in exchange for safe passage?

As I hung back trying to decide how to proceed the crowd shuffled slightly and revealed inside of it a human form, lying curled on the street. There was no indication of what happened – a car accident or a sudden seizure? – but the passers by had surrounded the disabled person like cells forming a scab on a wound, protecting the sensitive area from the world at large.

There were enough people that I didn’t think I could contribute any valuable aid. I signaled right and continued my drive, Autumnal air on my trail.

Last month I was not allowed to sing for two entire weeks.

It was terrifying.

I blame Adele. Late last year she was infamously put out of commission due to surgery to remove a polyp on her vocal cord that had hemorrhaged. Symptoms can include a hoarse-sounding voice, vocal fatigue, or a reduction in range.

I don’t sing as well as Adele, but I’m willing to bet I sing just as much, between my three bands and various elevator serenades. After several years of peak vocals that were rangy and in-tune, for the past few months my voice just felt sore. I didn’t know how else to explain it. It didn’t come simply from being loud, or even just from singing. It was tired, and singing around the pain was starting to sound bad. My highs and lows weren’t as strong, and I was not as in-tune on harmonies.

Thus, a trip to my ENT, which resulted in such fun escapades as sticking a camera down my nose to watch my vocal cords while I sang.

(It really was fun! I had a special playlist of songs to sing for my follow-up appointment, but I didn’t have a long enough camera-down-my-nose set to get through them all.)

The camera revealed not nodes or polyps (hooray!), but a massive bruise on my left vocal cord. It honestly looked like someone had punched it! And, well, I had been punching it a lot – at rehearsals, in meetings, and screaming at the Garbage concert. Still, it wasn’t nodes or polyps (hooray!), so I would not need any surgery. Probably. It depended on the nature of the bruise – which was the kind of thing that could lead to nodes (boo!).

What I did need was vocal rest. “Tell me about your bands’ schedules,” my doctor asked me. I thought she wanted to come out to a show, but really she was trying to find a window for me to keep my mouth shut for over a week – ideally two.

Luckily, this was the week prior to the #140Conf, which would preempt some of my standard rehearsals. Simply tacking a few extra days onto my break would get me through two weeks so we could follow-up.

I walked out of the appointment with a smile on my face. No surgery for nodes (hooray!), a set of custom-molded ear-plugs that would let my voice ring through, and two weeks of doctor-prescribed quiet time. It all sounded rather glamorous.

At least, it did up until my first conference call that afternoon. I was shouting across the room at the tiny speaker in the phone on my director’s desk. I caught myself absent-mindedly pressing a hand to my chest – a sure sign that my voice was aching. I quietly stood up and moved several seats closer to the phone. The next day E and I were driving somewhere with Garbage’s “Automatic Systematic Habit” blasting on the speakers. I joined Shirley for her pre-chorus harmony and E shushed me from the driver’s seat.

“No singing,” she said. The irony of the song’s title was not lost on me. I turned away from her to stare out of the window. It wasn’t just a matter of missing rehearsals. I had to intentionally lose my voice – treat it as if I couldn’t project beyond quiet, indoor tone.

My two week rest pressed on. I had to contain myself at author’s club, unable to joust loudly with my peers. I stopped singing people’s names in hello every day at the office. I could not venture inside the VIP event that Nan and I staffed at the #140Conf – it was too loud.

My glamorous two weeks of vocal rest sucked. My life without the full power of my voice sucked, too. Our voice is one of the things that lets us know we’re real and alive – instant feedback that we really exist. At least I could still talk at a normal volume! I thought about Adele and her months of silence, and Julie Andrews and her ruined singing voice. It could be much worse. I caught the problem early.

My return visit to the doctor and her nose-camera was all good news. The bruise was almost gone, and my cords generally looked healthier and springier than before. But there were ramifications. It was clear that my speaking was stressing me out as much (or more?) than my singing. I needed speech therapy, different allergy medication, less of certain foods, and other tweaks to my daily life.

Tonight will be my first time fronting the full, electric version of Arcati Crisis since this whole ordeal began. I’m excited and a more than a little nervous. Will I sound okay? Will the ache return? Will I have all my typical low and high notes – the four octaves of D I need to get through an AC set?

Only time will tell. The answer I do have now is something was wrong with my voice. It could have been much worse, and if I hadn’t intervened it could have grown much worse.

The morals of this story? Listen to your body. Adele was maybe singing a little too much and a little too loudly. And appreciate your health for every day you have it.