Sheet Music Collages

I’ve been keeping myself distracted lately making these. No idea what I’ll do with them, except give them away.  All of them feature sheet music from the very early 1900s (possibly earlier in a couple instances).  What do you think?

My Body

7/23/03

Cute toes, when the nails are painted well,
Ticklish feet that sometimes smell,
Swollen ankles that cause some hell,
Calves larger than they should be,
Thighs a little jiggly,
Hips from here to there,
Tummy to spare,
Breasts a little too small,
And getting ready to fall,
Back with a little meat,
A butt that’s neat.

Finally aware that there
Is gorgeous red hair
Sparkling blue eyes
And a smile,
Oh that smile!

Pink glossy lips
Along with a sway of the hips
Make you swoon
Till the light of the moon
Goes away
Bringing with it the light of day.

***

Oh, to be back in 2003, when I actually liked my body a little bit.

Where’s Christmas?

12/22/02

Lights dance all down the street,
But in my house there’s no tree.
No bright Christmas cheer
Doesn’t seem the right time of year.

If Santa were to come see me
He might wonder where he
Went wrong with this Brown,
Not full of joy, all covered in frowns.

Sugar plums don’t dance in
My head this year. Again
No stockings are hung for each other,
Mom, dad, and brother.

Christmas isn’t really about
Presents anyhow.
Jesus was born this day
For this we celebrate.

Smiles again fill my face
For Christmas is in this place
I call home. Just takes
A little faith to enjoy the holiday.

I Don’t Belong Here

1/20/2003

I don’t belong here.

I am standing in the lobby of some austere corporate edifice, and there is a pretty girl next to me; she loves me, but my attention is drawn to the woman walking into the lobby; Laura Green, a champion of obsolete technology. Today, she will broadcast a radio show with antiquated equipment, and play vinyl records on an old turntable. She is broadcasting from the park outside this building, where the corporate herds eat hasty lunches and strain to hear their cell phones.

I go to help Laura, my unknown lady friend annoyed and jealous; this amuses me, because I know that no one is jealous of me. As I help Laura set up the antiquated equipment, we hear it, borne on a wind that was not there a second ago. A siren, low and urgent, at whose keen we all turn our heads, even the cell-phone drones. A girl screams, a second before we see the cloud; small, white, and, in any other context, harmless. I know this is what I have dreaded all my life, yet I have no idea what it is.

The cloud hovers, oblivious to our fear. As the siren winds down, I hear a voice, as if in my head, confirming my dread: There is no cure, evacuate immediately, there is no cure. Laura and the girl are gone, and cell phones are crashing to the ground; I am alone, and the cloud is growing. I look back at the building, and people are boiling out; executives, secretaries, tourists in mismatched clothes. They are all running away, over rails, climbing stairs that I hadn’t known were there. I start running for the stairs, jumping benches on the way, when I stumble to the ground. Ahead of me, the girl is still screaming, and I know what is behind me…

I awake on the plane with a start, my head whipping back and forth as it takes a few seconds to realize I was dreaming. My breath returns, and I am surprised to be alive. My disorientation alarms the woman next to me; she is elderly, and smells of licorice. She asks if I’m well. I murmur something vague, and get up to use the restroom. In the restroom, I splash water on my face, and as I reach for a paper towel, I notice the wall panel is out of place behind the toilet. I reach down, out of curiosity, and the panel falls away at my touch. Behind the wall is a space just large enough for a man to crawl into, and it extends downward. I crawl into the space and follow it downwards. I only go about 12 feet or so when the space opens up and I land on a half-filled luggage rack. I am in the baggage compartment, and I can see ahead a canvas partition, in which a long slit has been cut.

I walk over to the partition, and peek through the slit. I see a man crouched behind some boxes, he has his head turned away from me, but he will turn it this way soon. I back away from the slit and look for something to hide behind. Before I can go a step he is through the slit and pulls a gun on me. I laugh at him, because I know he will not harm me. I trust him, and although I have never met him before, I know him for a close friend. I smile and ask why he has the gun, since we know he will not shoot. He points the gun to my belly, and his eyes lock onto mine. He has no pupils, and I can sense eternity in the blackness of his eyes as he fires the gun. I never feel the bullet, and the world closes in on itself, shrinking to a pinprick of white light, like when you would turn off an old television set. I know I am dreaming, and that now I am dead, because I know that if you die in your dream…

 

Continue to Share Your Heart…

I love Amy Poehler.  Even more now.  Keep sharing your hearts with the universe, even when it hurts, even when it’s scary, even if it’s broken. <3

Take it All

7/23/03

You say that life doesn’t
Revolve around me, but me is
All I’ve got, so please don’t go taking
That away too.

Privacy No More

1/7/02

I feel violated, my privacy intruded upon.
Never had I imagined our relationship
would come to this point.
How did you become so jealous,
so worried about my faithfulness?
It feels like you watch my every move
your breath on my neck and your
eyes peering over my shoulder as I
go through the motions of life.
I can’t even express my feelings to
my best friend without worrying
you might find out.
You don’t need to know everything
that happens in my brain,
so don’t check up on me, looking
through my personal belongings
exploring my personal thoughts
coming to your own conclusions
about my actions without consulting me
first. You don’t have the right to
Make me feel this way about you
I don’t want to feel this way about
you, but I’ve been left no other choice.

***

I wish I could say this was about guy troubles back in 2002, but like most of my writing, it’s about her. It really brings to light how dysfunctional our relationship was – she was a jealous bitch and thought I was betraying her at every turn. I was well behaved, smart, did well in school, did everything asked of me (more than any daughter ever should have been asked to do) and yet I still had no measure of privacy. It makes me sick to think about now.

I’m fairly certain it was around this time that I was finally realizing how bad things were at home; how powerless I was. But let’s be honest, I had been powerless my entire life. I just started connecting the dots at this point. Unfortunately, it took another decade and a psychotic break for the facade I had created in my young survival mode to come crashing down around me.

Beethoven’s Clef Heart

I have always loved old texts (one of my prized possessions is an old Differential Calculus book with the owner’s doodles in it) and  I ran across some really great collage work at an art festival a couple of weekends ago.  I was inspired.

As an homage to my Gram and my love for music, I decided to pick up some old sheet music and take a stab at making a fun collage myself.   You know, exercise my creative muscles a bit. Here’s how it turned out!

The sheet music I used is circa the very early 1900s (maybe earlier) that gives instruction for how to play and vividly describes the inspiration, mood, and tone of several of Beethoven’s sonatas.   One of my favorites,

Its mood is at first somewhat depressed, yet it grows more cheerful particularly in the melodic parts.

Sounds like me.

I’ll say it, it’s not bad for someone who considers themselves anything but creative.  And it’s been a great distraction from everything else that’s going on in my life these days.  I’ve got another collage using old sheet music in the works. It’s going to be even better and I can’t wait to share it!

The Negative Thought Reels

My negative thought reels are on overdrive today. Here’s what they have to say:

On Love and Relationships

You’ll never be loved. You don’t deserve love.  Your own parents didn’t love you enough to treat you with kindness and respect. Even as a child, you were unworthy.  How could anyone else manage to love you, when the people who were supposed to care about you most didn’t think you were good enough for their care?  You’ll never be good enough for love from anyone.

Don’t forget that you’re damaged goods, missy.  All that child abuse baggage, that asthma, your fun mental illnesses, the obesity, the debt you’re in, the lack of employment.  What respectable man could ever begin to love a woman like that?  That’s right, there isn’t one.

Remember when she told you that you’ll be alone for the rest of your life?  She was right.  You’re alone and you will always be alone.

She was right about everything.  You’ll never be good enough for anything. Ever.

On Life

If you were to die tonight,  do you really think anyone would care?  They wouldn’t. It would be weeks, maybe months, before anyone really noticed that something was amiss.

Your own family wouldn’t come to check to see if you were okay.  They don’t call or text you anyways.  Your “friends” wouldn’t check on you either, even though you hadn’t responded to their messages.

Let’s face it.  It would probably be a bank representative who came to inspect the house after foreclosure who finds you.  By then you’d merely be a decomposing corpse, bloated and partially eaten by your pets, who ran out of food weeks before.

On Success

You’ll never amount to anything. You’re nothing. You came from nothing. You’ll never be successful.  You’ll always struggle, because you’re nothing.

You couldn’t cut it in the big leagues.  What makes you think you can cut it out on your own?  What makes you think you were ever good enough to try something like self employment?  You’re an idiot and your business is going to fail, no matter how much effort you put into it.  Why would clients ever pay for nothingness like you?

You’ll never be smart enough, savvy enough, pretty enough, or enough of anything to make it in this world.  Why keep trying?

***

I try so hard not to think these things, because I want to believe they’re not true.  But some days, when you’re sick and tired of going at life all by yourself, with no one by your side, with no one that really gets what you’re going through, these thoughts creep in and find ways to contradict any positive/logical messages you throw at them.  Some days, the night comes rushing at you and you’re left sitting wondering what the hell the point of it all is.  What the hell is the point?

Taking a Break from Pfizer

Some days I go from feeling extraordinary to disappointed within hours.  Some times it’s one great day followed by a bad one.  Some days I wish that things would just level out.  But the alternative right now is continuing on medication that makes me feel nothing.  Or does the medication just make me feel less of something? I can’t be sure anymore.

I decided to go off of my mental health medications recently.  I know that coming off of the drugs is making me feel overly emotional right now, but I had to do it.  The withdrawals – this weird electrical sensation that makes my lips and face tingle – suck.  A lot.  It’s worth it at the moment if it means that I don’t have to take these damn pills.

I’ve always been on something.  Growing up I was on a myriad of different, latest and greatest, asthma medications.  I’m still on those and I will be forever. As I got older, I had to add birth control.  I’ve accepted the fact that these are just part of life for me.  But for the last three years, I added antidepressants, antianxiety drugs, and a pill to help me sleep.

Why? The asthma medication I need to breathe, and I have made my peace with having to take them. But until three years ago, I never needed mental health medications to function.  I lived my entire life, save for the year between 19 and 20 when I got put on Prozac, without mental medications. For a while there I was convinced that the mental health drugs were working and making me feel better; I really do think they were working.  But mental health drugs sure as hell didn’t stop me from having a psychotic break. What good are they really?

In the last six months or so, it hasn’t been worth the work to maintain my medicated state. If you read A Letter to My Mental Health Provider aka Oops I Did it Anyways, you’ll remember that the process to get my mental health medications taken care of has been a pain in the ass.  Between a mental health provider with zero actual concern for its patients and navigating the U.S.’s version of healthcare reform, it’s been a challenge. So I decided to take a break from Pfizer’s hold on me and try living my life without pumping myself full of a bunch of extra drugs again.

As the withdrawals subside, I have to admit that I may need to still be on something.  I’m a little too all over the place for my liking.  However, it is actually kind of nice to feel real feelings again instead of the dull medicated feelings I had been feeling,  It’s not easy to feel. The combination I was on was a bit too much, though.