Inspiring me today:

“All of the arts, poetry, music, ritual, the visible arts, the theater, must singly and together create the most comprehensive art of all, a humanized society, and its masterpiece, free man.” –Bernard Berenson, American art critic

“Theater is, of course, a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater.” –William Inge, American playwright

“You’re always making a difference, every day & in every moment. For all the people you touch every day, you make an indelible difference in their world. With every door you hold open, car you allow to merge, smile you flash, encouragement you offer, you are making a deposit into someone’s life. The best part of this form of giving is that your ability to give is LIMITLESS! How many blessings did you dispense today?” –Darren Hardy, American “industrialist of human potential”

…off doing my part to improve life, create a humanized society, promote the human spirit – in the audition room and out of it, onstage and off…

It’s only January 9th, so chances are you’re still going strong on those New Years resolutions, hitting the treadmill after the straggler holiday parties, passing the candy dish at work without even glancing down. I mean, I know I am. Last night they even had to kick me out of the gym (ok, ok, I just didn’t know they closed early on Sundays).

Except that going to the gym wasn’t a New Years resolution but a habit I started on my last gig. And the drinking less, eating as many vegetables as I can cram into each meal (that tray of Christmas cookies was a special case) aren’t because I read them in a book but because… well… I feel better.

Sure, I made my resolutions, as people do, only this year they seem less like goals and more like choices; less a list of things to coerce and bribe and batter myself into doing (or not doing) and more just a handful of descriptives about the way I’d like life to be. There are still goals among them, to be sure (Broadway! I am coming for you) but at the same time an ease, a moment to remember the sun is shining, you know, I live two blocks from Broadway and it will be there tomorrow and it will be there next year and there are so many interesting stories to tell and waiting, eager audiences.

And I’ve been thinking about this very human desire to re-invent ourselves, to create the next new improved version, Katie 2012.0. We get a new hairstyle, trendier clothes, we change our name and move to a new town, we outrun and outfox and outdo our old selves and then we tell the stories of how fleeting is popularity, how transitory is success, how we can never escape our past until we turn and face it head-on.

And I’ve been there, too, which is why I’m taking paragraphs to say: this is different. This is new, in that taste-them-again-for-the-first-time kind of way. This year it’s less a re-invention, revision, fixer-upper self-help session and more… okay, I’ll leave it to the poets:

“A New Story of Your Life”
by Michael Blumenthal

Say you finally invented a new story
of your life. It is not the story of your defeat
or of your impotence and powerlessness
before the large forces of wind and accident.

It is not the sad story of your mother’s death
or of your abandoned childhood. It is not,
even, a story that will win you the deep
initial sympathies of the benevolent goddesses
or the care of the generous, but it is a story
that requires of you a large thrust
into the difficult life, a sense of plenitude
entirely your own. Whatever the story is,
it goes as it goes, and there are vicissitudes
in it, gardens that need to be planted,
skills sown, the long hard labors
of prose and enduring love. Deep down
in some long-encumbered self,
it is the story you have been writing
all of your life, where no Calypso holds you
against your own willfulness,
where you can rise
from the bleak island of your old story
and tread your way home.

h/t: The Exceptional Man

A few months ago I was turned onto this “new” or rather… more accurate translation of the word meek in the Bible. I’ve always had the impression that “meek” is associated with shyness and submission, with not speaking up. Merriam-Webster defines it as “deficient in spirit and courage,” and so it’s no wonder that scholars and churchgoers have grappled for hundreds of years with how this “deficiency of spirit” could be called a virtue. Most seem to turn it into gentleness or politeness, or the exhortation to turn the other cheek.

But the word “meek” – as in Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth –comes from the Greek word praus, which actually refers to great power under rigorous control. Think of a holy warrior who fights only when necessary, only in service of his ideals — or even the slow, strong energy of the nonviolent masses rising up in resistance, biding their time until their moment has come. The poet Mary Karr has a beautiful take:

Who The Meek Are Not / by Mary Karr

Not the bristle-bearded Igors bent
under burlap sacks, not peasants knee-deep
in the rice-paddy muck,
nor the serfs whose quarter-moon sickles
make the wheat fall in waves
they don’t get to eat. My friend the Franciscan
nun says we misread
that word meek in the Bible verse that blesses them.
To understand the meek
(she says) picture a great stallion at full gallop
in a meadow, who—
at his master’s voice—seizes up to a stunned
but instant halt.
So with the strain of holding that great power
in check, the muscles
along the arched neck keep eddying,
and only the velvet ears
prick forward, awaiting the next order.

A lot of artists talk about resistance, about cutting through the negative voices in their minds, and I have done so a number of times in this space as well. This idea of praus, of using this discipline and power in service of a noble cause… I find it inspiring. I can hear the voice already asking “noble cause? you’re not marching on Washington today, sister, you’re just singing songs.” But these songs are my noble cause, and that of thousands of other artists on this planet. And being too “polite” and submissive to the voices of resistance and of lies and fears, bearing their injury without speaking up, isn’t serving anyone (least of all myself).

Science teachers in Texas (and other places, I hear) are starting to give “equal time” to the Creationism propaganda rather than teach only the facts of evolution — facts which have gained volumes upon volumes of evidence over the past decades and continue to do so**. Even the media today allow for “two sides” of an issue to have their say, when one side is fact and the other the opinion of someone who doesn’t like it. I’m all for equal, honest debate. But pretending that Fact vs. Opinion is such is nonsense. And so is giving equal credence to the insidious negativity of the thoughts in our heads.

A deficiency of spirit and courage is no virtue to me. But the rigorous control of the great power of the mind certainly is. Here’s to developing your meekness.

(with h/t to Rob Breszny’s Free Will Astrology for introducing me to praus in the first place.)

**for an incredible exploration of this evidence, check out Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth.

“When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

–unknown (commonly attributed to leonardo da vinci)

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.

Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.

—Tao Te Ching, verse 9. translated by Stephen Mitchell

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the fact that, in the not-too-distant future, this EP will be released and will begin to take on a life of its own. People will be able to hear it and perhaps for the first time in my life, meet me through my work without really meeting me. Not everyone will like it (I have a feeling that musical theater listeners are what one might call a niche audience). But I’m getting to be okay with that.

To be sure, there are plenty of artists I respect and even like, that I have not liked in every single thing they’ve done. Does it matter? Not a bit. Do they care? I’m sure they have no idea, and even if they did, what does my opinion have to do with their work? I admire artists like amanda fucking palmer, even though her music isn’t exactly my thing, but because she has the balls to put the word “fucking” in the middle of her name and create her art-to-the-masses site and blog and label and just, you know, do it. Not about to call myself “katie fucking zaffrann,” but you get the idea.

At my day job, I work in Customer Service for a major television network. We air a lot of different kinds of programming, and if I have learned one thing in my time there it’s that you can’t please everybody all the time. It’s an impossibility. (And dear me, but there are a lot of different perspectives and points of view in this world.) We even have a crafted response saying something along the lines of “with thousands of programs aired for a wide variety of viewers with different tastes, it is impossible for every program to please every viewer.” In other words: if you don’t like it, change the channel, and come back when you do.

Last fall I was walking through Central Park on a Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful, warm day and the benches just below the Bethesda Fountain were packed with artists and spectators alike. A seedy, possibly odorous guy with a harmonica sat near an old gent in a beret with an easel and oil paints. A young violinist played away, well within earshot of the rollerblader with the hip-hop-blasting boombox. People chatted and strolled by and stopped to watch and listen; it was one of those tiny utopian moments with everyone coexisting, doing their thing and letting everyone else do theirs. New York Moments of this ilk are part of what makes the city great, and a big part of what has brought me out of my shell. Like I told my mom once when she was fretting over what to pack for her visit — you could wear a plastic bag, and no one would say anything.

I’m hoping that soon, the little girl that just wants everyone to like her will have been in New York too long to care. For one thing, it’s out of my control. For another, there are plenty of people in this world that I’m not sure I want to like me anyway. But really the point is that when it comes down to it, it makes me happy to follow this bliss and express the things in me that need expressing, and that’s what matters. If it makes you happy too, I’ll be thrilled! But for the moment, I’m not going to worry about that.

“I never let myself be afraid. I just focus on the dials and concentrate on flying.” –Chuck Yeager, USAF Major General, famed test pilot and the first pilot to fly faster than the speed of sound (with thanks to my teacher for passing this gem on)

Heading into the studio in just over a week! I’m ready. Just gonna focus on the music and concentrate on flying.

wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.

from black boy, by richard wright

As swimmers dare
to lie face to the sky
and water bears them,
as hawks rest upon air
and air sustains them,
so would I learn to attain
freefall, and float
into Creator Spirit’s deep embrace,
knowing no effort earns
that all-surrounding grace.

(denise levertov)

“I tell my students… see what direction everyone is headed, so you can go in the opposite direction. Don’t polish the brass on the bandwagon.”

–V.S. Ramachandran, neurologist / neuroplastician

as read in The Brain That Changes Itself