RED MOON WISDOM

Now with hindsight I understand Nature’s plan better, biologically speaking, to make youth a more fertile time. If we obey the patterns our body dictates raising teens will not coincide with the trials, tribulations and perils of perimenopause. It makes more sense to have kids in your twenties; by the time they are just raised and out the door a woman can fully focus on herself and deal with the symptoms of perimenopause and menopause – which is a full-time job in and of itself. Then again a lot of things make sense with hindsight. Also if you have kids younger you get to enjoy the Granny and Great-Granny years more too!

The way I did things (first child at 30 and second at 34) meant I hit a perimenopause which started innocently enough at 42 but turned into a full-scale category red storm by 45 when my daughter turned 15 and my son 11. Just when my children needed me to be stronger I was at my weakest physically - which also effects one emotionally and psychologically. Hence I see why Nature in her infinite wisdom ideally prefers a woman to have children younger. It is very challenging raising teenagers at the best of times but a monumental task of epic proportions with the perimenopause thrown into the mix aswell. It is hard to be fully available to your kids’ needs and to help them navigate the world when your body is betraying you with flooding, exhaustion, hormonal changes, burn-out and endless fatigue.

However I also know that it is hard to contemplate the reality of children when you want to focus on study, work and career or adventure, experiences and parties or all of the above in your twenties! As we all know we can aim to have it all but we may have to pay the price somewhere along the line – perhaps our body does! What we gain in emotional and psychological maturity we lose in biological reality in the later years though. I had thought that 30 was the crossroads where these two paths converged but I see now that it meant I would hit perimenopause while my kids were in secondary school.

In saying all this, even with hindsight, I would not do anything different as I just cannot even imagine or contemplate my life without the two unique and very particular humans I brought into this world; my daughter and my son. I am just passing on the bigger picture I have seen. Besides if I had kids in my twenties it would have been an even rockier ride in many ways as I was a late bloomer! My early thirties was the perfect time for me but it was not without huge challenges and complications as I was told in my twenties it was unlikely I would even be able to have children! I proved them all wrong there!!

Many women will get through the perimenopausal and menopausal years with minimal support, others may need more but many women will need high levels of support. In her book The Wisdom of Menopause Dr Christiane Northrup writes about claiming our anger – a powerful signal from our inner wisdom – which often arises from:

Losing power, status or respect
Being insulted, undermined or diminished
Being threatened with physical or emotional pain
Not obtaining something we feel should legitimately be ours
Being unable to count on promises or commitments made to us
Having an important or pleasurable event postponed or cancelled to suit someone else’s convenience

CUBASE PSYCHOSIS

When it comes to the search for meaning by expressing oneself via art, creativity, whatever you want to call that curse, there are two things that I love doing; writing (prose, poems, essays, stories) and song-writing (lyrics, melodies and sometimes singing).

Writing is pretty easy to execute; all you need is a laptop or a notebook and a biro. Being the solitary sort - happy in my own company for the most part - this side comes easily to me. The worst side of it is I can’t type properly with my two hands (it’s more like two fingers!) and after some intense months long frenzies of writing I developed RSI in my right hand. Once it was so bad I had no use of my right hand or arm for 2 weeks and had to put it in a sling with a wrist support on and regularly apply something to ease the pain. The whole arm was in spasm.

It was around about this time, actually, that I decided to return to song-writing and singing, simply because it was shorter, faster, more visceral, emotional and produces an immediate result (like painting a wall) whereas writing a novel can be a bit like being sucked into a word tsunami soup for months on end with no discernible way out – other than writing your way out! Having two young kids made this endeavour even more difficult. Also I didn’t need my arm as I could record a short melody into my computer. I needed some mode of self-expression as the floodgates were open and suppressing it again may result in some other form of madness or restless discontent. I had buried my creativity out back for over 15 years as it was!

So I hit song-writing and singing again. I had intended to just do it as something to pass the time while my arm recovered but then got quickly hooked. At first it great; me banging away on the keys (arm and hand healed), writing the same song in slightly different versions over and over and over again in a somewhat primitive fashion. It served as an emotional release for me and I greatly enjoyed the chase of hunting the lyrical content aswell. I also loved the construction, like building with parts and words and sounds. I would just follow my intuition without really having a clue what I was doing technically but somehow knowing in another sense. Nailing a song gives me an intense sense of joy and fulfilment. I enjoy the process as much as the final result. And then I move on to the next one.

And then the honeymoon is suddenly over…

One of my many weaknesses is impatience. That coupled with an explosive (colourful) personality is a bad mix. To counteract these elements I shut down which also shuts down the creativity. I become nonchalant and vacant, not really there. This is apparently a feature of what is known in Vedic astrology as Ketu. Ketu is a destructive element that goes hand in hand with the creative element. I am frozen and all meaning is lost. I can literally sit motionless in the void for whole weeks – years previously, in my breakdown, after the initial hyperactive terror wore off (granted this lasted over a year) I sat in the void for the best part of 2 years just staring into it. Mute. Nothing. This is when the self-sabotaging starts – what’s the point anyway, I’m shit etc etc. Actually the self-sabotaging goes beyond that: I am invisible and I don’t actually exist. That is the real Ketu right there.

Now when this happens I can park Ketu, put on the mask and appear to all and sundry like a regular human. But don’t be fooled, I am just going through the motions. Inside me is the void and I sit in it, all you can see is my eyes shining out of a cave. My only company is a giant serpent. I am sitting in the unconscious blasted out of my head on meaninglessness. Fun stuff. By now I am used to the void and besides I know it’s part and parcel in the life of any artist.

The shut-down happened due to frustration. Once the initial novelty of writing songs wore off I was faced with no way to execute the songs, to produce them. When I was young I had spent some time in studios and recalled the experiences as exciting and overwhelming but ultimately fruitful. I also remembered a lot of sitting around and waiting. I knew my part and played my part (or should I say sang my part) but never did I pretend to understand what the hell was going on technologically speaking. Engineers and producers did that. I was just the lyricist and singer. Wasn’t that enough?

There are some things I prefer from the old days – like a singer was a singer and a soundman was a soundman - oh and yes there can be soundwomen too or sound people.

Years later and to cut a long story short I am attempting to work with Cubase as a total novice. Slowly I have started to face the cold, hard facts; Cubase gives me psychosis. Perhaps in it’s next edition the DSM can include “Cubase Psychosis: when patient exhibits an overwhelming desire to smash technology with a hammer and may actually do so if left untreated. Treat with Valium and anger management classes. In severe cases use a Clopixol depot shot to render the patient unconscious in case of danger to self and others (not to mention Cubase).”

It’s a great pity because having a home studio is ideal for introverted artists like me. But the truth is I need actual real life people to explain to me what the hell is going on, ideally explain nothing to me and just do it so I can get on with writing lyrics, melodies and singing (if I’m not crippled with asthma on that day – but that’s another post, another story). The problem is I have no fire for technology, no desire to learn how it’s done. I never wanted to be a producer or an engineer. That part of my brain is missing. I have a huge block there (possibly a disorder). I feel the same way about Cubase as I did about maths in school, I just don’t really get it.

It was the same when I tried to play electric guitar. I have zero aptitude for it and no fire to learn much as I admire the cool girls who do. But I am a different sort of creature. I am a primitive beast. I am Dionysus not Apollo. My fire is for distilling chaos into writing lyrics, melodies and sometimes singing and/ or performing. I pluck the ether instead of strings. I have other talents, other gifts – mainly tenuous but there you have it. Better to play to my strengths rather than my weaknesses. Isn’t it better I feel in my element rather than deeply inadequate out of it? I have a pretty good ear, OK pitch and can find the groove in a song lyrically and structurally speaking. This is pretty innate. I know my place. Shouldn't I just get on with what I do best? Again I can’t help feel this is a pity and not enough because if I had the technical know-how it would both liberate and empower me. Instead all it does is deeply confuse, frustrate and enrage me.

If I had loads of cash and success I would be the Johnny Depp of Cubase firing all manner of laptops and speakers out of studio windows the world over. Except if I had loads of cash I would probably hire a producer.

And this brings me onto the long-suffering Robert, long-suffering because he has had to work with me in the studio and Lord knows has this poor man tried to help me in the studio! His patience in this area with me is remarkable. He deserves a medal for putting up with me in the studio. He is self-taught on Cubase and possibly nothing prepared him for trying to teach me.

If I haven’t got asthma or am not threatening to smash up the studio he helped me set up I am planning my exit strategy from music. Talk about self-sabotaging dramas but here’s the thing, I can’t help it! I am 16 years old again and I’m in maths class. I am boggled by the whole thing with a mental block the size of a large continent. I want to cry or scream or both. I want to smash things I just don’t understand. I am out of my element just like I was attempting play electric guitar. I don’t do technology or electric guitars, I do lyrics and melodies. I love listening to electric guitars just like it gives me a sense of joy to watch someone who actually knows what they are doing in the studio, me in their capable hands rather than pretending I know how to perform open heart surgery or pilot a plane. Because that’s what Cubase feels like to me. It is a language I cannot fathom, a language I have no interest in other than getting my part of the job done.

I spend time trying to unlock the secrets of Cubase, each part more perplexing than the next. In Robert’s studio I intently watch what he does trying to take it all in, absorbing some of it. I watch videos on YouTube only to realise at the end of one that I have been thinking about lyrics or what to cook for dinner throughout the whole thing because the video is so mind crushingly boring and makes no sense to me whatsoever. Again like maths. Again a pity. I have no desire or fire to learn just like I have no desire to be a carpenter or a physicist. I have no desire to turn my songs into some head-wrecking DIY nightmare despite the fact that I was once in a punk-rock band! 

But nowadays that’s how it is in music. And everyone’s like isn’t it great we can do it ourselves? But I’m thinking no it’s just not great from where I’m sitting, it’s like saying I have to be a nurse and a doctor at the same time. I don’t know how the technology of sound works anymore than I know how to fix a car engine. I just seem unable to apply myself to something I basically do not understand. It makes my head hurt and eventually I see red, like a wounded wild boar or something.

I’m not even a musician never mind a producer. I am just not a technical person. All I do is write scraps of songs on scraps of paper, have ideas and concepts that are valid. But here I am expected to be the architect, draw the plans and build the house too. It’s too much. All I can say is screw that! Which is a pity I know.

What to do if the very thing that can liberate your creativity by taking it to the next level is the very thing that is killing your creativity? I used to like studios god damn it. Now I view them with dread and suspicion like I am in the queue for maths class.

However I can just about record a vocal track and that’s a huge achievement for me (and maybe enough), like I managed to just pass my lower level maths exams with extra tuition for theorems.

But, hey, why focus on scraping through lower level maths when I can get a grade A in honours English and art without even studying much. Isn’t it just a waste of time, like trying to get a lion to be vegetarian or a bear to use a public toilet?
 

RANT OVER AND OUT.