Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

betterment

Why I #blamedrewscancer, pt. 4

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(This is the last part of my story. You should read Parts 1, 2, and 3.)

It is a Saturday afternoon, and I am staring out into pure blue, 14,000 feet above the ground, through the open hatch in the side of our tiny plane.

On the ground my partner ran through it with me. Twice. Duckwalk to door. Head leaned back on shouder. One two three go. Or is it one two go-on-three? Tip back and forward, arch your body. Arms out. Keep your mouth closed if you feel like you can’t breathe.

Fly.

Staring out the open side of the plane, his instructions dissolve. Did it matter how I arched my back? Niceties, to placate a nervous jumper.

No matter what, we would fall – flying downward, into the embrace of gravity.

“One.”

“Two.”

…

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Here is #blamedrewscancer, as it’s root: we are talking about cancer.

Yes, it is inane. Yes, it is about Drew – for now. The point is, Drew gave us that – he gave us his struggle to make as silly or as serious as we need it to be.

Drew doesn’t really care if we say his name or what we blame. He just cares that we are talking about cancer. He wants to harness that conversation to raise awareness, hope, and donations. He wants to bring cancer into our daily dialog so we can work together to erase it rather than willfully ignore it until it touches our lives.

His plan is working. People are talking to Drew about his chemo treatments. I am talking to my friends about my grandmother. My co-workers are talking to each other about someone we lost, and how we can honor the fight that she won.

Blaming Drew’s cancer is inspiring us to live stronger, to be frank and hopeful about fighting cancer, and to show the love and support we may be feeling but afraid to say.

Inspiring us to win our battles.

Inspiring us to leap out of planes.

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I have dreamt for years that I can fly, so much that I halfway believe it. It’s not an occasional foray – I can fly in every one. The rush of air past my ears and my body, weightless and free. The feeling is familiar, tucked safely under my skin.

I’ve tried to capture it outside of my dreams on playground swings and amusement park rides. I’ve looked down from trade centers, massive arches, and wrought-iron towers. I’ve ridden on airplanes and have been towed behind a boat, limbs caught up in the wind.

The closest I’ve ever come was riding my bike. It was October 12, 1998, and I was three blocks north of here in Jefferson Square park. Biking home from Anastasia’s house, I sped up until the pedals offered no more resistance. Closed my eyes and held out my arms. It only lasted for a second, but that was my first waking flight – a feeling I already knew intimately.

On my list of five things to do before I die, “fly” was first. Fly for more than those fleeting seconds of eleven years ago. Fly like my dreams.

When Drew and Chris asked if I wanted to skydive with the team, it seemed insane. I met these people online. On Twitter. Was I really going to live my dream with a bunch of strangers from the internet?

It was not insane. It was kismet. It was Drew’s whole point. Live Strong. You want to fly? What’s stopping you? Jump out of a damned plane. You want to be a singer? Don’t make an excuse. Use your voice with confidence.

You want to beat cancer? Blame it and battle it and beat the hell out of it every day with all of the power and positive energy you can muster from yourself and from everyone you’ve ever met until you defeat it.

You have cancer, but cancer does not have you.

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…

“Three.”

FreefallingWe lean back and pitch forward, falling from plane. I arch. For a second it feels like nothing – the velocity of our bodies moving at the speed of the plane and the pull of gravity countermanding each other

Then, acceleration. Real flight, but towards the ground instead of up, up, and away like Superman or Neo.

In my mind I shrug off the man strapped to my back and the photographer waving in my face – unconsciously throwing him rock signs as he gestures towards his camera.

It is what I know beneath my skin, and more. There is no plane above or ground below. There is the rush of air past my ears and my body, weightless and free. There is limitless blue in every direction – I can’t see the ground. Gravity is for the weak-willed and falling is flying, hurtling, easy like love.

Wind blasts my limbs, buffeting my torso like a cascade of water. I feel strangely supported by the air, as if I could stand delicately on it, like snow.

That lasts for about a minute, or for the eternity of every dream I’ve ever had, depending on how I measure.

A whisper in my ear isn’t the wind, it’s my partner, long-since forgotten. I cross my arms, clenching my harness in my fists, and he pulls the cord. The parachute rides up above us, catching the wind. The harness bucks hard, and gravity is countermanded again. My stomach suspends itself.

This is a different kind of flying. Floating, perfectly controlled. Now I see the ground, and it is minuscule below us. Philadelphia rises in the distance, and i feel like we could just tip forward and head that way.

BDC Skydiving I break the silence.

“I should tell you something.”

“Hmm?”

We are having a conversation, circa 7,000 feet.

“I dream that I can fly. Not just some of the time. Like, every dream. It’s just something I can do.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And it’s just like this.”

We hang in the restored silence, falling slowly. As the ground becomes nearer I scream my trademark soprano wail and listen as it fades away with nothing to reflect against.

Eventually there is a field and a landing strip, and we have a shadow, and it grows larger and larger until our bodies meet it, wrapped once again in gravity’s close embrace and a puddle of mud.

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Tonight at midnight Drew’s Blame-a-Thon begins – the reason I wound up sitting across the table from him at an Applebee’s two months ago.

In two months I have seen people and businesses do amazing things to encourage Drew and to support LiveStrong, all culminating in tomorrow’s event.

It’s about awareness and fundraising, but to me it feels halfway like faith-healing. Like, maybe if we all focus we can blame the cancer away.

Probably not. Not in one day, at least. But blaming cancer can change lives. It’s a chance to reassign the pain and bullshit in your life to something that really deserves it so you can stop making excuses and just live strong.

Blame cancer and change your life. Blame cancer and change someone else’s.

I blame Drew’s cancer for any second that I’m not living my ideal life as a stronger, faster, fiercer me.

And I am thankful for every moment that I am.

Escaping Mediocrity

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I am not a major reader of mommy-blogs.

Sure, I have my certain mommy favorites, as well as several long-time reads who happened to be or become moms, but I don’t typically seek out new moms to read. They’re just in a different part of their lives than I am, at the moment.

All that said, Maverick Mom is a blog worth reading. It’s not just about motherhood. Or, maybe as of a month or two ago it was. Right now it’s about motherhood (and the rest of life) as an adventure that is helping blogger and entrepreneur Sarah Robinson “escape mediocrity.”

Escaping mediocrity. Does it mean anything to you? If not, you should read her gripping post about nearly losing her son to a riptide. At the end she has the wherewithal (and good humor) to compare the riptide to the tug of mediocrity.

Sarah’s post poses a challenging question: are we accepting the average because it’s easy, eventually to discover that we’re lost with no sign of what’s good, right, or successful?

I know the first impulse is to say, “Nope!” Our lives are awesome, right? We totally love them.

Okay, sure. But, loving life doesn’t exclude the chance that you’re settling for something. Can you honestly say you don’t have anything in your life that is disappointingly average – not as challenging or fulfilling as it could be? We all know I aim to kick ass at all times, but even I can cop to pieces of my life that aren’t living up to their potential. I wage a constant war on some of them, but in all honesty I let others slip by. Easy can be nice. Status quo is even keel.

If your answer about anything is “maybe” or “yes” or “omg, definitely,” then you should start reading Sarah’s blog, perhaps beginning with the escape plan she’s hatched to push past the mediocre elements of our lives.

Sarah, you are anything but mediocre.

Streaming live at 12 midnight for 12for12k

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If you’re awake at midnight EST on the Monday-to-Tuesday divide you can catch the first ever live, streaming concert of my music – in support of an awesome, international charity drive called 12 for 12k.

I think I’ll call it at12for12for12k. Cool?

Founded by social media marketer Danny Brown, 12 for 12k throws down a bold challenge to social media users – can you use your social networks for good in concert with people all around the world to raise $12k for a new charity every month for a year?

This month’s charity is Unicef’s “Believe in Zero” – the belief that we can stop children from dying from preventable causes. And so far there is less than $1,200 pledged for the month.

It shouldn’t be that daunting. 1,200 people could do it for a reasonable $10 a month – three less trips to Starbucks. 12,000 people can do it with no issue – $1 a month, each! Easy pickings. If more than 10,000 Twitter users turned their icons green for Iran, surely just as many can muster $1 a month in donations to a good cause?

If you know me you know that projects like this are very close to my heart. I used Blogathon as a platform for my music to raise money and awareness for my favorite charities. I have cancelled Christmas in favor of giving charitable gifts. I volunteer with Lyndzapalooza – a musical non-profit dedicated to giving a voice to more of Philly’s independent artists. And starting tomorrow I am helping to plan a major non-profit project for this September.

12 for 12k is at once easier and harder than those projects. Easy, because it’s simple to support with a small donation. Hard, because it’s about making your giving a year-round trend – not just a once a year event.

I’ll be playing at midnight, and at the very least I will donate $1 for every song I play … and my songs are short, so that could get pretty expensive! In fact, I think I could play 12 songs in an hour… 12at12for12for12k!

If you’re awake at midnight – or even if you aren’t – will you do the same? Just ten of us donating $12 each is 1% of this month’s goal. We might not make it to $12k this month, but we can make giving a regular part of our lives, and save lives while doing it.

The power of social media compels you!

(PS: I promise at least Madonna & David Bowie covers, and almost can promise MJ as well. Dunno if the Lady Gaga is ready yet… you’d all have to donate a lot of money to hear that.)

Good blogs and the opinions I spouted at them.

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This post could easily be about how I spent the last two weekends sweating my physical and intellectual butt off to completely reorganize my home office and upgrade CK to WordPress 2.8, but you would be like, “Whatever, it looks the same to me,” or “Um, I’m reading you on my RSS feed, so I don’t really care,” or possibly, “Dude, I haven’t read blogs for two years. Send me a tweet about it.”

Which is fine. I mean, should I also tell you about how I swept the floor? Backstage is backstage for a reason. Props people work hard to keep actors focused on their performance, not for the applause.

(Plus, at CK I’m the prop person and the actor. And the box office manager, the technical director, and the old lady ushering you to your seat. You get the idea. Excelsior…)

In my increasingly uncluttered life I’ve been trying to make some more time not only to read other blogs I admire, but to interact with them. That means reading carefully and responding, which sometimes yields thoughtful comments.

I’m sometimes hesitant to leave my thoughts lying around in other people’s homes when they could possibly lead to interesting content back here at my own homestead, but I’ve arrived at a happy medium – I’ll link to all of said intriguing posts as well as giving you a snippet of my reasoned replies.

Here’s a glimpse at some of the discussions I’ve weighed in on in this past week.

(If you find yourself wanting to do the same, try subscribing to Backtype, a simple monitoring service which will doing all of the the keeping-track for you.) [Read more…] about Good blogs and the opinions I spouted at them.

whiling away the hours

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(1) A few years ago I saw Malcolm Gladwell deliver a speech at the New Yorker Festival that is largely recapitulated in the second chapter of Outliers, called “The 10,000 Hour Rule.”

In it, Gladwell draws our attention to a data point converged upon by countless studies of experts in a variety of fields. He says, “In fact, researchers have settled on what they believe is the magic number for true expertise: ten thousand hours.” He goes on to quote neurologist Daniel Levitin:

In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. … It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.

Gladwell supports the rule using Mozart, Bill Gates, Bill Joy, and the Beatles as his examples. Not to say that their genius and success is purely a result of 10,000 hours of practice – the book as a whole explains other facets – just that it was an essential component of their expertise.

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(2a) 10,000 hours is a long time.

If as a child starting at age five you had piano lessons two times a week (an hour each) and also practiced an hour a day, you would clock nine hours a week. 468 hours a year. 4,680 hours a decade.

If you kept that up until age 26 you’d finally have served your time.

(2b) 10,000 hours can go by before you know it.

Maybe you got into video games at age 11. You played them every night after homework and dinner, let’s say from 7:30 to 11:00 p.m. on most nights, plus extra on the weekend. That’s more than 25 hours a week. 1,300 plus a year.

You’d be a master by the time you started college. Most kids are.

(2c) Time is relative.

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(3) In the car today Gina and I were singing in harmony to the amazing Hezekiah Jones album Hezekiah Says You’re A-OK, on the way to see his band split a bill with the equally fantastic Up the Chain.

“You know, Gina,” I said, breaking from my lead vocal, “I’ve been thinking about this 10,000 hour thing. Not everyone’s an expert at something. I mean, what do most people spend 10,000 hours doing by the time they’re 25? Watching teevee, I suppose.”

“More than likely,” she replied.

“But, think about me. I watched a lot of television, sure. Mostly, though, I read until I was old enough to write, and then I wrote and read. That’s what I spent my 10k on.”

(Perhaps she interjected, “Oh, I remember.”)

“And, you know, is it any surprise that I’m good at communications? I’m not an expert, but no wonder it’s my calling. I spent my whole life practicing for it.”

We sat and sang for a moment, contemplating that.

“What about you?”

Gina paused in her harmony. “Hmm, me?”

“Yeah. What did you spend 10,000 hours doing?”

“This. Listening to music. Singing harmony.”

“Really your whole life, right? Your mother singing, your father playing guitar…”

“Yeah, since I can remember.”

“Right. So, no matter how much I rehearse, you’ll always have the edge. It’ll always come easier to you, until I reach that threshold.”

“I suppose.”

We paused as the song wound down.

“What do you think Hezekiah spent 10,000 hours doing?”

We thought on that for a few moments, and then sang together to “Albert Hash.”

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(4) We’re not all Mozart. I might not ever be Hezekiah Jones. But, we’ve all spent 10,000 hours doing something other than sleeping, and hopefully other than watching television. Maybe something incidental that we do out of necessity or habit. Driving? Social-networking? Cleaning? Taking care of children?

I’ve put in more than my share on communications – reading cereal boxes and trashy fantasy novels, writing stories at eight on my manual typewriter and almost nine years of blogs.

I got an early start on 10,000 hours of being Gina’s best friend, which I keep padding. I’m really good at that. More recently I’ve attained well-in-excess of 10,000 hours of being in love with Elise.

I hope eventually I’ll reach my 10,000th hour of serious focus on music. It’s a large piggy-bank of time to fill.

What about you? What have you spent your life mastering, intentionally or unintentionally?