"I'm telling you stories. Trust me."

If you know my family, particularly specific members of my family, you know that we're storytellers. In order to explain how three voodoo dolls showed up unexpectedly on a nippy Colorado night in the early 2000s, we like to go all the way back to the 1950s in Baltimore and thoroughly lay the groundwork.

My conversational style in high school and college could reasonably be described as story on top of story on top of story. When I wasn't telling stories, the well was dry and I was listening attentively instead. That's why people think of me as a good listener. I think I am too, and I'll take the compliment, but I think the reason for it is slightly different from what people suppose: I do genuinely want to solve your problems, but I also want slice of life stories from other perspectives, and there's nothing like a particularly fraught or tearful rant to deliver those stories.

My conversations still run like that, although to a lesser extent now. These days, I like to have deep, introspective debates with those who know me best. Just last weekend, my friends P and M were staying with me in Chicago and we delved deep until two in the morning two nights running. I was in heaven...until I had to get up at seven to go to work on Monday.

The point is, I love telling to stories, and I love listening to other people's well-told stories as well. There's a reason I listened (and wept along with a good percentage of) StoryCorps segments in the mornings before I headed off to high school. In college, I made one unsuccessful attempt to sign up for an interview slot at the StoryCorps office in New York. Those slots go fast. I had wanted to get my parents to sit down and tell the story of how they met. I love it, and I've heard it a million times, and a corner of my brain is convinced that the whole world (or at least the NPR-listening public) needs to hear it too.

A year and a half later, and here I am in Chicago, still a fan of StoryCorps on Facebook and an occasional dabbler in their podcast. I'm heading out to work one morning when I notice that not only is the mobile recording booth coming to Chicago, but signups will be the following day at 10:00AM. I file it away and rush out the door. The next day I arrive at work at 8:50 as usual, turn on my computer, and wait. This, I thought, is one of the reasons why this job is better than my last job. Here I sit, with all of the modern world a few key strokes away (barring the eccentric web filter).

As ten o'clock approaches, I start to get anxious. My supervisor mentioned that she might push my weekly meeting with her forward a bit to accommodate another meeting. It's only my third week; I couldn't very well say, "Sorry: StoryCorps," and gesture at the screen with supreme confidence. I shouldn't have worried, though. At the stroke of ten, I log in, see the rapidly disappearing times, an nab an available slot in the first weekend of September. I feed them my information, agonize for a while over whether I should put a specific interviewee (name and phone number) to accompany me, and ultimately mark that I'll be coming alone. I click submit and, miracle of miracles, the next page tells me that my attendance is confirmed!

I do a little dance at my desk surreptitiously take out my phone to make a Facebook status. This is modern life, and I like it.

The question remains: out of a lifetime of my own and other people's stories, which one do I pick? These can be multi-part stories, of course, as all good stories told by members of my family are. I have some ideas, a couple two short and one probably too bloated. I have an hour slot all to myself, so it should take time, but not too much time. Or (always assuming I can change my reservation) should I grab someone from Chicago or Champaign and interview them? At first I assumed that's what I would do, but the more I think about it, the more I think I want the freedom to tell the story I want.

Suggestions are welcome, either here or via e-mail, with the caveat that I may not listen to any of them. Which of my stories (or the stories you know I know) do you think are particularly deserving of a spot in the Library of Congress? Do I tell my own story, or another's? It goes without saying that part of it will be funny, and part of it will be heartfelt. What do you think?

The mind churns / the heart yearns

There was a time in my life when I listened to nothing but musicals. This was before I discovered Oldies and would tune the car radio to 92.5, Champaign, Illinois’s last real oldies station. That in turn was before I discovered top 40 radio, some time between my first high school dance and my second.

           

The point is, for years it was Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera and Man of La Mancha and Cats and Crazy for You. When, in second grade, I met the girl who would be one of my very closest friends, she was wearing a Damn Yankees shirt. (I knew it was a show, but I was still shocked.) Later I went to see her perform in Sunday in the Park With George, in Gypsy, in Fiddler on the Roof, in A Chorus Line. In high school I saw her in Bye Bye Birdie and The Pajama Game. We didn’t share any lines, but we acted alongside in Anything Goes. I don’t remember if she was in South Pacific, but I saw that too. She invited me over to her house and played me Cabaret for the first time (we were twelve). I invited her family to join mine at a performance of Sweeney Todd. At intermission she pointed out that I had neglected to mention the undercurrent of cannibalism.

           

Then, for years, nothing. The theater bug bit me, and by theater bug I mean the straight play bug. I could never sing or dance or compose music and so I thought if I were going to act, if I were going to write, it better be without music. I stopped attending musicals if I had the chance to see a play instead. Plays were weightier, I felt. They would help me with my writing. They would help me understand the world.

           

Sure, a couple musicals slipped in under the radar. With my aunt and cousin I went to see Spring Awakening (awesome). With Roommate J I went to see Wicked (less than awesome, but more on that later). In London, I took time out of researching and checked out Billy Elliot (really, really great). I saw Hair (revelatory) with my parents twice. It provided a soundtrack to my junior year of college, but it didn’t change my life.

I hadn’t sworn off musicals entirely, obviously, but I was treating them like I treated romantic comedies (and I used to watch a lot of those too): every once and a while, one was fine, but there wasn’t enough substance there to engage me.

           

Through it all, there was one musical I would only touch with two ten foot poles. Sure, I watched the movie like everyone else did. I even downloaded a few of the more famous melancholy songs (original cast, bien sur) to my iPod, but if there was one thing I was not, it was a Rent head. Rent fans, I knew from my many theater festival experiences, were unspeakably annoying. They were prone to bursting into “Seasons of Love” or “La Vie Boheme” in public, talking as loudly as possible, and bad dye jobs. They thought they were incurably edgy; they were as edgy as you can be when your mom drives you to Theaterfest in her minivan and picks you up early for youth group. They had never been to New York, but if they did, I assumed, they would never find their way out of Midtown. They were very open-minded, which was great, but I couldn’t help but wish they’d be less open-mouthed. I couldn’t see Rent without also seeing its legion of awkward and loud middle and high school fans.

           

(In case it’s not abundantly clear already, I will pause here and say that, on occasion, I can be a raging snob.)

           

When I started work three weeks ago, I set up several stations on Pandora. For those of you unfamiliar with how Pandora works, all you have to know is that you pick an album, or a song, or an artist, and the website will then create a stream of songs for you that resemble that album, or song, or artist, in some way. On a whim, I picked the new cast recording of Hair, hoping that it would turn into some Hair/Spring Awakening/audacious oldies songs hybrid.

           

Instead, after playing a few Hair songs to get me started, it switched right over to Rent. Now, I wasn’t about to waste one of my precious thumbs-down-switch-the-song-now chances (they cut you off after a while) on a song I actually kind of liked, so I let “One Song Glory” play on while I typed away. I hadn’t heard it for a while and I had forgotten how much I liked it, so after I finished a sentence I actually paused to give it the thumbs up.

           

After a while I got sick of listening to Berger’s out of school songs while I was chained to my desk, so I started listening to my hip hop station instead. Then I switched to Vaughan Williams. I didn’t switch back to my Hair station again until yesterday, and then it was to find a million Rent songs laying in wait for me.

           

I loved it. It was great. They didn’t play “Seasons of Love.” They didn’t play “La Vie Boheme.” Even if they had, I don’t think I would have objected. Instead, I found myself, mouth open, gaping at my computer, listening to “Santa Fe” and “Without You,” getting all verklempt because those beautiful voices were singing those songs just for me. I almost broke my mouse hitting the thumbs up button. I typed with my fingers figuratively crossed for the rest of the day hoping those two songs would come back and when they did, I silently sang along, stopping only when the President and CEO walked by on her way home.

           

I haven’t known struggle, not really, although I’ve struggled plenty. Nor am I overly fond of hipsters, which those people in Rent most certainly are. I have actively chosen not to starve for my art. I really enjoy taking showers. And I still can’t quite shake the image of a busload of over-privileged, white, Central Illinois teenagers, who would die if they got upwind of a real junkie, butchering the emotion required to sing those songs. So I’m not exactly thrilled with my transformation, at age 23, from a self-assured young professional-ish woman who not two months ago was over identifying with “Do You Hear the People Sing?” (first, overlooked hint that the musical thing was back) into someone who is playing Rent songs on repeat and feeling it in the depths of their soul.

           

Yes, reader, I went right home last night and purchased “Santa Fe” and “Without You” (original cast, bien sur) and carried my computer around my apartment while I performed mundane tasks so that the music and I would not be separated.

           

Maybe the thing about musicals is that you can’t force the connection and that, if you let things happen naturally, one day a particular song or turn of phrase will sneak up and attack you from behind. I certainly believe that to be true of movies and books, and regular, non-plot-driven songs, so why not musicals as well? I think I have to give myself permission to find inspiration in unlikely, sometimes unwanted places.

I may have started already. After all, I wrote something like five pages of my current fiction project while listening to “For Good” from Wicked on repeat. I didn’t like the show, but that song just gets at something. The same could be said for “Santa Fe” and “Without You.” If I can forget all my preconceived notions, maybe I’ll become the ideal listener, or the ideal viewer, and I’ll be able to find something new and unique in a show everyone has done to death.

So am I a musical person again? Not yet. But my Hair station got a lot of play today, so we’ll see. I already bought tickets to The Book of Mormon in December (War Horse too, but that was to be expected). I don’t expect it to change my life, but when it comes to theater I should know by now to expect the unexpected.

I'll Be What I Am

You know that scene in (500) Days of Summer (or maybe you don't in which case, what are you doing?) where expectations and reality don't quite align? This happens all the time--it's practically the human condition in a nutshell--and usually it's cause neither for commotion nor comment. Nonetheless, I feel moved to tell you of an instance recently where expectations and reality did not align for me, and what I did about it.

Before my parents and I went to Colorado, I stopped by one of the several awesome independent bookstores in their new Kansas town and purchased Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. Now, I rarely read nonfiction (although I seem to be dabbling more and more), but the subject is near and dear to my heart, in particular after a year spent in a very loud, boisterous workplace. An added bonus was the fact that the author, Susan Cain, went to Princeton as well.

I should pause and say that I've been thinking about what I'm about to say for about a week now, and that I only really started gathering my thoughts while on the phone with my friend M about three hours ago. This foray into articulation may spawn more blog posts or it may not. It's still a relatively recent thought although--and this might help me to express it--I've been trying to understand the questions surrounding this topic for my entire life.

I should also say that I'm not done with the book yet. Hence the already deep imperfection of this post. I started reading it, and then my mom stole it, read it, and returned it. By then I was already deep in something else. On the bright side: no spoilers! One possible problem: I will be making some pretty obvious snap judgements.

With all that being said, let me lay things out for the more visually inclined.

This is the book I started reading:

This is what it has been like so far:

This is what I wanted it to be like:

That last image is from the Inspector Lewis episode "The Indelible Stain." I love Lewis, not just because it's on the artist formerly known as Masterpiece Theater but because it's smart, well-written for the most part, and, well, quiet.

Most of the quiet is due to the fact the Inspector Lewis' sergeant and sidekick is James Hathaway (played by Laurence Fox, pictured above). Hathaway used to be an Episcopalian seminary student. He left for reasons unraveled (or not) over the course of the show's long run. Hathaway was also a student at Cambridge of some academic repute. Hathaway likes chamber music, walking around Oxford, having pints with friends, and good literature. The screenshot I've selected above came from the beginning of last week's episode. While Lewis stood in a crowded pub and watched a match, Hathaway sat in his flat, had a drink, and contemplated a stack of books. I'm sure many people watching found it a somewhat depressing juxtaposition. I thought it was the most calming image I'd seen all week.

By the end of the episode, Hathaway had gently declined Lewis' offer to join him at the pub for another game in favor of returning home and finishing his book. It's not that Lewis and Hathaway don't socialize, it's just that Hathaway doesn't want to this one time. Lewis, to his credit, accepts this, one of the many reasons their friendship is one of my favorites on television.

I wish Quiet had some of the meditative qualities Hathaway brings to Inspector Lewis. That's what I wanted, even though I'm not sure I had the right to expect it. Quiet is very upfront about what kind of book it is. It is concerned with the cultural impact of the extrovert/introvert divide and the ways both introverts and extroverts can use their innate skills in every professional realm. Introverts, Cain says, may be swimming against the current of the Extrovert Ideal, but they don't have to be. It's time for a paradigm shift, she says. All that is fine, and I knew to expect it, but I think by the time I settled down with the book at the cabin in Colorado (a place, by the way, designed, intentionally or unintentionally, as a paradise for both introverts and extroverts) the book I needed and wanted and the book I had were no longer the same.

Cain and I agree on at least one thing: people learn by example. Her use of specific anecdotes is the best thing I've encountered in the book so far, and not just because this entire topic is grounded in such personal things as genetics (more on the science in a second), identity, and, vaguest and most important, how people feel (more on that now).

I am on page thirty one of Quiet, and already Cain has told me that I'm all right something like five times. Yes, Ms. Cain, I know I'm all right. In fact, I'm pretty damn fabulous. The day they print a pamphlet for my general brand of introversion, I'm going to be on the cover. I think everyone has moments of doubt and moments where they compare themselves to others, but I have never thought of the way I charge and recharge my batteries as anything less than a blessing. So I'm good, thanks.

I don't want to learn by being told; I want to learn by seeing. What I want now, in my hands, is a book of essays. These essays would be written by introverts, but that wouldn't necessarily come up. These essays would be meditations on quiet and noise and the intersections of the two. Maybe one piece would be written by a Hathaway type, who has friends and a job and who doesn't have everything figured out but who nonetheless does pretty well for himself. Maybe this person values those things, but occasionally just wants to retreat to his flat (calm, IKEA interiors, soft chairs, cool air, tea kettle) and read. I want to read quiet people's observations on a range of things, not just the workplace, the ivory tower, and the public sphere. I want to see these people carving out their niches in, on, around, and outside of the swim; wherever they want to be, that's where I want to see them succeeding.

My mom occasionally talks about the life of the mind. She mentioned it once--I don't remember the context--to our neighbor, a meditative guy, and he was very struck by the image. It wasn't until then that I realized there was a word for the way I felt on the playground in elementary school: I'll play with you if you want, but there's going to have to be at least one day a week where I play alone, thank you very much.

Not everyone has had this revelation. Not everyone has stopped beating themselves up when they can't hop from social event to social event to social event to social event without pausing in between to take stock. To those people I would say, check out Quiet. It seems like a pretty good book, all told. It's got a lot of people talking; even The Atlantic has started telling people to hire more introverts. I'll definitely pick it up again and finish it. I'll probably like it, even though I might start tearing out my hair when she tries to buck me up yet again.

And oh, right, I was going to talk about science. This one goes out to Roommate J, who was always the first (well, second or third if certain other roommates were there) to question the logic of things. I want to know more about this. I think it's awesome that Cain is basing her definitions of introvert and extrovert in Jung, because I kind of like the guy, but I would also like some scientific grounding (if applicable, but you don't even say if it is or not) right off the bat. I don't want to live in suspense and wonder whether Rosa Parks called herself an introvert, whether someone developed some Kinsey-esque scale and placed her on it, or whether Cain is making her own assumptions. If there is no mind-blowing science, I would rather just read Jung. I would rather contemplate identity, not read about what I can do to shine in board meetings, because that kind of thing stresses me out. (And, yes, I know that's because I'm an introvert, but I also know how to humorously rock the house right off the board meeting, so that's taken care of.)

Susan Cain may be a role model. Her book may be full of good ideas. There may be a person out there who needs repeated reassurance and that's fine. For my part, even though I hope to live a life as full as Cain's, for now I look to Hathaway and his tea-drinking, book-reading peace.