Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story (20 page)

Looking back now, I recognize that the disconnect between the negativity and fear in my writing and my happier day-to-day appearance to other people was sheer compartmentalization. I didn’t learn that word until recently, but it was a survival skill that worked for me, almost too well. Compartmentalization is what kept me from experiencing real fear when I did dangerous things like hitchhiking, whether to see my mom or busk through Mexico. I had become so used to stressful, high-risk situations that they felt normal to me.

If you are not present, you are unable to have an effect on that unique, fleeting moment called now that truly determines what happens next. Now is the only creative moment we have. Fear was causing me to project my past into my future, never allowing me to engage in the now. Worry and fear are thieves that rob us of our ability to change. I was simply surviving each day, running scared, sure that yesterday’s hurt would be tomorrow’s pain. Change was not possible like this. I vowed to try to stop the cycle I had fallen into.

I invented a new exercise to tackle my agoraphobia. I focused on what
my biggest obstacle seemed to be: fear. I shut my eyes and tried to sit in my body and just feel the terror. To really feel it. Study it. When it overtook me, I shook and cried, gripped by paralysis. It crashed over me like a wave and I was at its mercy, swallowed in its infinite yawn, until I found myself on the other side, exhausted and spent. I had to find a way to interrupt this cycle. Next time I tried to move toward the oncoming wave with awareness. By choice. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath, using some of the meditation techniques I’d learned as a child. I tried to visualize what terror looked like. It looked like a knot, real and concrete and impossibly tight. I felt the knot in my body. In my stomach. I felt nervous. Edgy. Jittery. Hmm, jittery. When I got nervous just before going onstage as a kid, I would get butterflies in my stomach—it was a jittery feeling, but exciting. Maybe I could work with this. Maybe I could pretend my fear was actually nerves, the kind you get right before doing something hard but exciting. I decided every time I had an overwhelming feeling of terror, I would consciously force myself to flip a switch and pretend it was excitement. I liked the idea of a switch to flip. I painted one in my mind’s eye—a giant white light switch. I practiced looking at the knot of terror and then seeing a light switch, and when I flipped it, I imagined the knot turning into a thousand butterflies that fluttered away. I felt my body relax. It felt odd and strange to play this game, like pretending—and it was. But the terror was imagined as well. This was a conscious choice to choose a different experience. To be in the moment and to use that moment to influence the next one.

At first I had to flip my imaginary light switch about a thousand times a day. Before I knew it the knot would be back. Flip. Butterflies. Knot. Flip. Butterflies. Knot. But after some weeks of practice and mindfulness I was able to see the butterflies more and more, even follow them and watch where they went. What was I excited about, anyway? If I wasn’t using my energy to imagine and plan for bad things happening, what
could I redirect my energy toward? What good things might be possible? As creative as I was at that age, I was so hampered by fear that I could not imagine one good thing happening. Not one! After all, what good could happen to a homeless kid? People walked away from me on the street. People looked at me like I was subhuman. I looked dirty and lost, and frankly I was. Flip the light switch. Follow the butterflies. Imagine them outside going into blue sky. Where did they go? What did they want to do? Maybe I could follow them outside. Maybe I could street sing for some food money. Maybe I’d make someone smile. Maybe they would smile at me. Slowly I expanded my comfort zone, and after that made my way to a street corner, where I sang a song that I’d written. Some skater kids came by, three young guys about seventeen or so. They stopped and listened and I looked them in the eyes as I sang. They gave me five bucks and one kid said, “You sing good. Thanks for making my day a little better.” I was floored. I had manifested something good in my life! It was almost magical. How quickly I had forgotten that I was capable. Here I had focused on something in my mind and I had made it happen! And it was something positive and not destructive. I continued to work hard at flipping my light switch, at forcing myself to see things as opportunities and putting my nerves to work for me.

At first it seemed impossible to notice my thoughts—they came and went too quickly and I was not attentive enough to slow them down and assess them while they were happening. Instead I watched my hands. My hands were the servants of my thoughts. They carried out the physical impulses going on unseen in my mind. I spent several days trying to be present and just witness what my hands had been doing. They had been stealing. They had been writing about all the bad things that had happened to me and that would surely happen again. They were hypervigilant in predicting the next bad thing that might happen, so that I might somehow avoid it. They obsessed over when I would become sick again.
They dwelled on all the belongings I did not have. They were not engaging in the opportunity that lies in the present moment. If I couldn’t change my thoughts, perhaps I could reverse engineer the process. If I changed what my hands did, perhaps that would force me to change my thoughts. I began to notice and write down how many doors I had opened for others in a day. Then I tried to open more doors than I had the previous day. I found myself holding a door open for strangers even when I wasn’t going into the building. I began to notice and look for others who needed help. Helping others helps you get over yourself and your own problems. Instead of staring down at my feet I would look someone in the eye. This would force myself to remember we were all connected and help me let go of the illusion that I was alone. These were all practices in being present.

Whether it’s a trick or not, I managed to gain some power over my sense of perception—I could experience myself feeling in control of my life, feeling capable, not being a victim. And the more empowered I felt, the more empowered I allowed myself to be. And the more my confidence bubble grew—from a street corner, to maybe a couple blocks away, to maybe surfing during the day, to allowing myself to look at the blue water and say, I’m okay, right now this very second, I don’t know what will happen an hour from now, but in this moment I’m okay and have all I need. I learned that if I could get through second by second, if I could allow myself to experience that right here, right now, and then just to sink into that moment and expand it, and let myself
feel
that, let the energy of that move through my body, let my tension and my tightness melt away, I actually felt some joy. Real joy.

I began to document what I was learning in a song. Worry was wasteful. My hands being my own, no matter what life was throwing at me. Neither God nor anyone else owes us. I owed myself. And in the end, only kindness matters. I called it “Hands,” and it would become a hit for
me on my second album. This song was a gift for me, not only in the moment I wrote it but years later. In 2001, my husband, Ty, and I were camping for a week in the mountains of Northern California. We came back to civilization on September 14 to see the flag at half-mast on the ranch where we were staying. The flag at the next ranch was at half-mast. We saw handwritten notes along the side of the remote dirt road that said, “God Save Us,” “God Bless Our Country.” When we finally had radio reception and learned that a few days earlier the country had been attacked by terrorists and that the towers had fallen, we sat in complete disbelief. Then the DJ dedicated this song I had written at such a dark and pivotal time in my own life to everyone in America experiencing the same. It was a genuinely surreal and humbling moment.

sixteen

safety in vulnerability

I
couldn’t hold down a normal job because I kept getting sick and then getting fired for taking too many sick days. Medicaid was difficult—the appointments I had to keep were too far for me to walk to, and I had learned that hitchhiking in Southern California was just not an option. Having no address and no money and fielding all the suspicious questions was so demoralizing that it was more trouble than it was worth. I decided to try to get a gig in town—maybe I could do cover songs in a coffee shop or a local bar. I walked into several coffee shops in Pacific Beach where I had seen musicians play. After speaking with one manager, I found out that musicians generally played for free or for tips. That seemed absurd to me; I had been raised with the notion that bringing in patrons or entertaining them deserved pay.

One day a friend named Gregory Page invited me to play a solo acoustic gig with him. I was excited because he was the bass player in the Rugburns with Steve Poltz, and I knew that the band got paid. I got to the coffee shop—I forget the name now—and it was packed. A man
stood at the door taking a cover fee just to get in and listen. We both sat onstage and swapped turns singing original tunes. I was an unknown with no following, but Gregory had quite a few fans from his Rugburn shows, and the night went well. I saw that the tip jar at the foot of the stage was fairly full of ones and fives by the time we got off. I was excited to finally get paid and get some warm food, and headed toward the owner to see how the split with the door money went. I was stunned when she informed me that she kept it all. “But they came in to see the music. How about we split the door money in thirds?” She said no, flat out. “Okay,” I said. “You keep the door money. Gregory and I will split all the food and coffee sales.” She looked at me with an incredulous smile on her face. Gregory seemed like he wasn’t too worried about the money. I turned back to the proprietor, and she said, “You and Gregory split the tip jar. I keep the coffee sales, and the food sales, and the door money.” I was dumbfounded. “The reason all those people came tonight was to see music. And I need the money. I don’t have another job.” She looked at me, unmoved. An anger rose in me and suddenly I found myself at no loss for words. I put my small finger in her face and said, “You are stealing from the people who are helping your business thrive. You’re not a nice person. Your business will fail. Mark my words. I’m going to tell every musician I know to boycott this place because you are willing to cheat the very folks who are putting food on your table. Your greed will end up starving you, not me.” Then I added, “I’m going to find a place to sing that lets me keep all the door money. You can keep the tips from tonight. You’re going to need them.” She didn’t seem too worried as she said, “Good luck. This is how every coffee shop operates.”

While I enjoyed the drama of giving her the tip money, it didn’t take me long to regret it. She was right: every coffee shop charged door money and expected to have musicians play for free. For the privilege of the
“exposure.” Where was everyone’s pride? I couldn’t understand being onstage for hours and not being paid something. I wasn’t looking to get discovered, I didn’t think an A&R agent was going to give me a break onstage at a tiny coffee shop in a beach town. I just wanted to earn enough money to get an apartment and get off the street.

One day I was walking to Turquoise Beach, a local surf spot with nice waves for longboarding. I would often hang at the beach and befriend a surfer and borrow a board for a few waves. I also showered in the public rest area there. This particular day I took a less frequented street and noticed a coffee shop quietly tucked away. It piqued my interest so I walked inside. No customers. Funky mural art on the walls. There was an older woman behind the counter who told me after we’d talked awhile that the business was struggling because there was no foot traffic in the area and that she would have to close the doors soon. I asked if anyone ever sang there. Not really, she said. Confidently, I told her I was a singer (even though I had never played a solo gig of my own material before) and said maybe we could help each other. If I brought folks in to see me sing, I could keep the door money and she could keep all the coffee and food sales. We shook hands on it and I left with my own gig. Now all I had to do was get people to actually show up. Considering I had no following, that was a tall order.

I asked Steve Poltz, who had a large local following, how he did it. Singing in town for years, developing a reputation, he told me. I didn’t have that kind of time. Steve suggested that, for starters, I sing the same night every week, so folks would know where to find me consistently. It was hard to compete with Friday and Saturday nights in town, as everyone went to bars to drink and see bigger bands, so I made flyers inviting people to come see me sing at the Inner Change Coffeehouse every Thursday night. I wore a cute velvet jumpsuit I had gotten at a thrift store
when I had a job and walked the boardwalk handing out my flyers, mostly to surfers who said they would come see me play. Sure enough, that first week three of them showed up. It was a start.

I assumed I had to play five-hour sets, like we had when I was a kid. I had set about writing five hours of material in a panic. I still had no ear for teaching myself cover songs on guitar, plus writing my own was so much more fulfilling that I never really tried to learn. I wrote about everything I was learning about myself. About my fear. My longing. My need to be strong in a true way, and not in a pumped-up false one that was simply hiding a fragile ego. I wrote poems and put them to music. I wrote short stories and put them to music. No more secrets. I gave voice to my deepest fears, insecurities, and dreams. I stepped onstage that first night and with all the courage I could muster, opened my heart, and let it bleed out for all the world to see. Or three people. But still, it was scary. I wasn’t sure whether people would walk out or tell me I was weird. But the opposite happened. I felt seen for the first time, because I had let myself be seen. And unexpectedly, the folks in the audience felt seen and understood too. My own fears were not so unique. Talking about my shame and fear actually caused others to accept me. True safety was not in having armor. It was in vulnerability. I was also a ham and chatted up the folks who watched, creating a very personal connection.