Ridiculous Passion and Interference

Wednesday had finally come; that was the day that I was supposed to see my friends, Casper and the Cookies. We had just gotten back from gleaning and my plan was to nap and shower before heading out around dinner time. I told Pastor Herb my plans and he told that was fine but I needed to okay it with the Harvest of Hope director, Sarah. For some reason I didn’t want to do this which was surprising because it’s never like me to shy away from talking about my concert plans. In fact, I had known about the concert a month or so in advance of the trip and told everyone involved. I even began to use the language they used; the fact that my friends and I would be in the same place at the same time was “a sign from God”. And I don’t get signs from God so this was pretty darn special in my mind. I’m pretty sure they all saw it as a sign meaning that because my friends were playing a show down there that meant God was telling me that I was meant to be gleaning the fields and feeding the hungry. I was already signed up for that, though; if God was trying to tell me anything at all, it was this: “Hey, thanks for donating your time and effort to the cause but let’s not kid ourselves – I know where your heart is. Go be around music.”

I found Sarah and……didn’t really know what to say to her. For some reason there was no easy way to say, “I’m skipping dinner and programs to go see my friends play a show.”

I looked at the ground and cowardly stated my business. I thought I would just get “tsk, tsk’d” coupled with a look of disappointment and then I’d be on my way. Oh, no. It was worse than that. She told me I wasn’t allowed to go.

Wasn’t allowed?! What? Are you kidding me? All of the hard work I’d done……all of the things I’d forced myself to believe were my passion…..all those things were quickly reduced to what they had been at the start of my time at Mason when I was crying to Matt Bruno about how I could no longer go to shows and how I hated to do service work because it wasn’t my calling. Volunteer, volunteer, volunteer, volunteer, volunteer. It’s crammed down my throat every day at New Century College. I went from being interested in business and marketing to being into nonprofits and fund-raising. Holy shit; who am I now?! I’m this caring person with a heart for social justice. No, wait. I’m just this loner asshole that likes chasing bands and playing the part at conferences then openly going off on adventures which make my peers say, “Wow. You’re so brave. I could never go off and do that by myself.”

Everything shattered in that moment. My George Mason self was a successful lie that people liked better than the aloof girl with the car. And do you know how I know it’s a lie? Because I was presented with two choices. Guess which one I made.

After Sarah told me I couldn’t go, there was an awkward silence. I told her that my friends were from Athens and I hadn’t seen them in over a year but that didn’t work. She brought up the covenant I had signed – the Damned Covenant which would hang over my head for the remainder of the trip – and she spoke to me like people had often spoke to me when I was younger. I tried to walk off but she took me aside to the steps of the church between the buildings. We sat down and she began to talk to me. The more she talked, the tinier I felt. I don’t recall exactly what she said but it was definitely more for her than me. Think camp counselor and middle schooler; I was upset about something trivial which seemed massive to me and it was her job to be the grown-up by making me aware of how trivial that thing is by telling me to forget it and come join the merriment of camp activities. This enraged me at age 12. This enraged me at age 24.

“It’s not the end of the world. There will be other concerts. Now why don’t you go blah blah blah…”

My mom has been telling me this for my whole life. Remember that time I was in the mental hospital and Edna’s Goldfish played Phantasmagoria and I couldn’t go because I was trapped? I was told there’d be other times. Yeah, well they broke up before I got to see them. And just a few years ago the first thing I said after waking up from surgery was, “Somebody take me to see Akron/Family.”

It can’t be explained. And it REALLY can’t be explained to some people. Like my mom. Sarah also happened to be one of those people.

I tried to explain to her that there was one thing in my life that made me feel like myself and that was musical adventure. There’s really not any good name for it because it’s not just about going to a concert. It’s about the journey, meeting people, learning new things, being in different places, and observing or experiencing a sense of community through music. The greatest things I’ve ever done and the best moments of my life were part of that. I would never have met some of my best friends, I would never have lived where I have lived, I would never have had the jobs I have had….and so on and so forth. Everything I love about my life comes from a pull to live music. Each year I go to a ridiculous amount of shows which peaked at 150 in 2007. I write, I take photographs, and I tell stories. I keep a budget log. I plan solo trips, I sleep in my car (RIP Piecar), I rely on the kindness of strangers sometimes. I drove, took buses, rode with bands. All this stuff……this is what I loved. This is what felt right.

Then my car died and I transferred to Mason. The initial misery faded after a semester and I stopped caring about shows because I couldn’t physically get to them thanks to lack of public transportation. I also made friends and became involved in things. I was also too busy to leave Fairfax. Excuses. If I had a car, where do you think I would be?

I tried to tell her all of this. I told her that this was my passion; this is what I would somehow be doing for the rest of my life in some form. I was crying at her.

To my surprise, she cried back.

This girl begged me not to go because she could lose her job. She told me the exact amount of money she makes (which is not much) and told me that her and her husband weren’t doing very well.

Awkward.

I ran back into the big room where everyone was staying, dove into my sleeping bag, and cried hard. If there are rules about passions (and happiness for that matter) I am fairly sure that one of them is that you probably shouldn’t follow through if for some reason they interfere with someone else’s livelihood. I didn’t quite understand the logic of Sarah’s argument but I knew she was fighting from the heart. How could I go when she clearly thought her job was on the line?

Pastor Herb sat down next to me and asked what happened. I told him I was guilted into not going. I explained the particulars. He said he talked to Sarah and explained to her that she probably wouldn’t lose her job if I left for the evening and that I signed a waver before I was even allowed to go on the trip. Of course! The waver! Even if something did happen to me, Society of St. Andrew would not be responsible! O, happy day!

There was still a fair amount of guilt, though. Herb told me he couldn’t tell me what to do but he kind of secretly urged me to go. I almost didn’t but something inside told me I needed to go.

I showered, got my stuff together, and took off early.

The walk downtown included a mile or two of river walk which was a blessing. I felt free and adventuresome; like myself which was somehow much different than the person picking leftover crops for the hungry. I thought about what had just happened and I knew that I was the bad guy because my purpose was not as noble as the girl I was arguing with. I was greedy and selfish and wanted to do what I wanted to do. What I immediately wanted to do had nothing to do with feeding the hungry or church or nonprofits. That didn’t mean it wouldn’t in the future, though. I had just been flipping through one of Jacksonville’s alt-weeklies and saw an article about a Harvest of Hope (different organization with the same name) concert that had taken place a week earlier where a bunch of hip-hop and indie bands came to raise money and awareness for the treatment of migrant workers. Why couldn’t I be involved with something like that? I mean, who says the process of show-going isn’t practice for something greater?

The one big thing that stuck in my mind was what the girl said about money. I thought back to Monday when I rode to the field in Barbara’s car. Barbara was the director of the Florida region and she told me that the program coordinator makes $29,000 with an undergraduate degree or $32,000 with a masters degree. The Nonprofit Paycut. Could I even live on that? How could I ever save anything up or own a house? I instinctively felt like I would insulted by that kind of money and that I would never be able to do my job because I would just be thinking of all the things I’d be missing out on.

It’s a lot of hard work, too. It’s more than a 40 hour per week job; it fluxuates at certain times of the year. Barbara told me they’d been through 2 or 3 people in the past year because some folks just weren’t cut out for the work or they viewed it as a short-term stepping stone to something bigger and better. She made me envision religious idealists with “lots of heart” but no sense of the real world. I thought about the current program coordinator and I hoped she wasn’t like that. She was my favorite person I met on the trip.

I thought about the things I would be willing to take the Paycut for; things that have more value to me than money. As long as I was actually able to survive, I would love to create a music/art festival that would bring people together or maybe something that would inspire children. I would love to travel with musicians and write a book; while that’s not five-oh-one-cee-three nonprofitism it’s got the same sense of heart embedded in it. I would be taking the Paycut to do what I love. If you want to get all social capital up in here, I could also talk about the (weighted) benefits to society. It means more to me than money because yeah, I get to do what I love but also there’s the fact that I am sharing a very important culture and I have the possibility of impacting lives. Live music has saved my life more times than a doctor has so why wouldn’t I want to share that with others?

I still worry about how much I can take, though. I moved to Philly because music pulled me there. I worked two jobs making eight bucks an hour and then I interned for a blog and a music venue and did whatever I could do to be around the things I loved. I got used to where I lived but it was a scary neighborhood that nobody wanted to visit. More often than not, I wasn’t comfortable. Later, I broke my arm and amassed a pile of debt without health insurance. I also lived in my car for a month while trying to find a place to live and a job. I ended up crying for a few weeks in my friend’s basement in Silver Spring then taking more classes at community college because I didn’t know what else to do. Chasing dreams is hard, you know? I think of how comfortable I am in my nice fancy clean townhouse in Fairfax and though I loathe the suburbs I’m just not sure if I could deal with the ghetto again.

I also thought long and hard about the fact that Sarah was married. I think about Rings often; I notice them and I make judgments about people. You know how they say that woman make less money than men? I feel like that’s only because woman are more okay with making less money than men. Woman are historically and probably biologically nurturers. They care; they’re more about the warm fuzzies than men. As a single female, I don’t have the means to fully exercise my warm fuzzies. I’m a student; I’ve got loans. Though my program allows (forces) me to volunteer, I am not out doing the things I place value on. I’m not volunteering at distant festivals, working with some hip nonprofit in the city, or traveling around writing a book. Hell, I can’t even afford a car right now because my rent is so high. There’s just one of me and one income (in this case, my income is loans). Now if there were two of us…

Our resources would be pooled and I could take a heartsy nonprofit job that pays peanuts. My $800 master bedroom rent would become $400. Between the two of us, we could also probably afford a car to share. I want to make clear that this is not about handouts; it’s just about pooled resources.

Ring = pooled resources = ability to take shitty-paying job

I look at my aunt; she’s this single woman in her 50’s and she makes a ton of money working with terminally ill patients as a nurse. She’s uber successful; owns a home, two cars, supports herself. I was always encouraged to be like her when I was a kid. Yeah, well this woman also hates her job. She tells me it’s the most depressing job on Earth but she does it because she’s hell-bent on not only being self-sufficient but also being comfortable. That’s the difference between renting and owning, public transportation and having a car, technology or none, etc. She’s got no one to pool resources with so she’s making a ton of money in misery. Hell if I want to do that! I’d much rather find the beardy boy of my dreams, shack up, and make under $30,000. Remember: it’s not mooching. It’s pooling resources. (And love if you’re lucky.)

The nonprofit American dream: Girl with heart making <$30,000, boy with heart making <$30,000, a shared one bedroom rental in Columbia Heights or Mount Pleasant, two bicycles, two Smarttrip cards, two iPhones, and two cats. I’m kind of rolling my eyes because I know people in Philly that do this and they’re total superficial assholes but like, they can only look so superficial because they don’t make much money.

Sarah probably never thought about all of that. That kind of thinking makes me look shallow.

…is it so wrong to want to live with a boy and two cats so I can work a hip job that pays shit?!

I wandered around downtown Jacksonville for a while before the show. What a dead town. Comfortably dead, though. I watched some kids play in a fountain, I browsed a local bookshop that had a phenomenal etching of Jesus on the wall, I talked to my gay fake boyfriend on the phone (there’s really no better way to describe him), and I marveled at how empty the city truly was. Everyone had acted like walking around alone in the city was insane; that crime was almost certain to happen. It didn’t necessarily look safe but it didn’t look like Philly, Baltimore, or DC if you know what I mean. If I could walk alone in those places then I would survive in Jacksonville. And if something happened, then it happened.

I met up with the Cookies as soon as they arrived and helped them load their gear into the club. I sat down in the back of the room and watched things happen slowly. I was happy; I felt at home.

Being around for the entire show process is a beautiful thing; particularly this show, this venue, and this band. Everyone was just so nice and willing to share a part of him/herself. I’ve seen the Cookies in a number of different places over the past few years and we’ve come to know each other well so sentimental words are almost expected from them. When I emailed Kay she told me that it would feel more like a real tour because they would get to see me. Kind words and hugs from my friends were quite obviously exchanged but new friends would also be made.

Jason introduced me to the sound guy who was this completely pleasant fellow a few years older than me. Sound aside, he was completely joyous in the fact that he was happy to be doing what he was doing. We talked a bit and he told me that he was beyond excited because his girlfriend was pregnant and he’d be a father soon. He said he also worked a day job and was a college student. I probably spoke of my own college transportation woes and he revealed that he didn’t have a car but took the bus everywhere also. I thought long and hard about that guy’s place in life. I didn’t really know much about him but I liked him a lot. To my knowledge he wasn’t feeding the hungry, curing cancer, or solving any other huge world problems but who’s to say his purpose is not just as noble?

I also met Jason’s cousin and her husband; they were a very cool couple that looked younger than they actually were. We had an in-depth conversation about the military; this girl’s husband was about to be shipped off overseas and the both of them just saw it was the reality of things. I of course started to talk about jobs and The Paycut and noble purposes and placing weight on things other than money and all the various other things on my mind. This guy told me about how he had been in the military for many years and for the most part enjoyed it. To him, it was certainty and stability. He knew he had a job and he knew he had income. He made a point to tell me that it wasn’t about politics in the least. He told me that there was often the stereotype of ignorant young men blindly going to serve their county because of patriotism. No – he did this for himself and no one else. He said it was just like any other job to him. He didn’t particularly like the idea of going overseas potentially into a war but to him it was his job; it was a business trip. He wouldn’t dream of quitting because he liked his job; he liked what he did, he liked his co-workers, and he liked the benefits. He also said he was happy that Americans had come to the point where they could disagree with the war but still support the troops. Some of these things I am more or less guessing at remembering correctly but that last thing he hammered home so I didn’t forget. I did a lot of thinking about his place in the broad scheme of things and much like the sound guy I decided that I liked him and he too was excused from feeding the hungry.

The show was absolutely wonderful; bands played and conversations were had. When the bands stopped playing, someone turned on some dance music and we all started dancing. Joy. Joy. Joy.

There weren’t many of us so by that time we had all gotten to know each other. We stood on the sidewalk after loading everything up and we talked about the most ridiculous things. I took a photograph of Jason’s moustache. Someone noted that many of us were wearing cool sneakers and had our keys dangling on a carabineer from our belt loops in true hipster fashion. Jason, myself, sound guy, and a boy from the open band all stood in a circle with one foot in the middle and shook our bottoms which made our keys jingle. Jason’s cousin and I exchanged emails and she invited me to visit her sometime. The boy in the opening band told me about a show at the beach that weekend and told me he had guestlist spots. Jason and Kay (who by the way are probably the coolest married people I know) offered me a ride back to the church/school I was staying at.

I got back around 2:30AM. Everyone was asleep except for two guys around my age that were sitting and talking on the floor in front of the bathrooms. They had clearly had a night on the town.

These guys were leaders of a group of college kids from Penn State that were building houses with Habitat For Humanity. They slept on the same floor as us but kept a different schedule and never interacted with us. They asked if I was with the religious group and when I said yes they asked, “Do you guys hate us or something?”

I wanted to say yes because I was jealous of their freedom; they did their service work and then they went out to the beach or for drinks. They sometimes came in and woke us up in the wee hours of the morning. I would wake up and be pissed as hell because of the merriment in their voices. We went to sleep at 11 each night and woke up at 5:15 in the morning. They were never awake by the time we left for the fields. Fuck them, right?

I told them no; we were just cranky because we didn’t get much sleep and we had little free time.

We talked long enough to humanize and appreciate each other and then I realized that I had to be awake in two hours. I crawled into my sleeping bag and died. The next day I sleepily picked broccoli and to my knowledge no hungry person receiving the food ever registered a complaint about the fact that I went to see Casper and the Cookies.

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Why would I bother to tell that long-ass story? Because a) a lot of the other things I did were mundane and b) that’s where the learning took place; these are the events that touched my heart and made me think. I know this sounds odd but the more unconventional interactions I have, the better off I am. That 4-H camp-like setting that Society of St. Andrew created for me wasn’t realistic. I was supposed to go glean fields, come back and walk around my immediate surroundings in the 5 Points neighborhood or hitch a ride to the beach for an hour, sit in a room and talk about poverty, eat dinner in that building, then have church in that building. You know what? Fuck that.