Tags: Published On: Friday, May 24th, 2019 Comments: 1
On Thursday, May 16, Ben and I attended the ASCAP Pop Music Awards.
Ben performed with Jeff Lynne, who was awarded the ASCAP Founders Award, and so we got to spend a beautiful night with Jeff and his wife, Camelia, and with our friends Marjorie and Joe.
Like at every award ceremony, we got to walk the red carpet, and what sparked the writing of this essay was how much I loved doing it.
Now, if you are thinking:
“How superficial, a stupid red carpet!”
allow yourself the time to read these 1,600 words, and allow me the time to explain why it isn’t as superficial as it may seem, at a first glance. By the end of this story, in fact, you may realize, just like I did, that superficial doesn’t necessarily carry a negative connotation. Superficial means ‘on or near a surface’, and most surfaces are actually the cover, the protection of something deeper, fragile, precious.
Our skin, for example, is a superficial organ, and we don’t consider it trivial, or depthless; we actually go to great lengths to take care of it. Or think about the pretty paper that wraps a gift; how many of you have ever loved it so much that you carefully folded it and set it aside, for either wrapping another gift, or simply for the sake of keeping something beautiful? So I like to use the word glitter instead of superficial.
I love glitter, and I love the red carpet.
I love wearing a beautiful dress (even though I don’t have a stylist, and for this occasion I chose an old black James Perse that I had only worn once in the past, at a Nick Cave concert). The shoes weren’t new either; they were my old Christian Dior bought for another red carpet, the second of my life, in 2017, when Tom Petty was nominated MusicCares Person of the Year. I have mixed feelings about that night: the evening had been beautiful, I had gotten to meet Dave Grohl, and also to see Ben play Southern Accents with Lucinda Williams. But I had also just found out that I wasn’t pregnant. I didn’t tell Ben until after the show, and when I look at my smile on the red carpet I know that with the ‘superficial’ I was protecting how I felt inside: disappointed, scared, lost.
I love the red carpet. And I say this twice because until last week I was ashamed of even whispering it in my head.
The ASCAP show was on a Thursday night. By Sunday evening, the emotional tingling I had been experiencing since we had left the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where the ceremony had taken place, had become an urge I couldn’t wait to share.
“Babe, can you come here for a second?”
Ben and I had just finished dinner, and he was in the kitchen washing the last few dishes. I had stayed on the couch, and I was reading an article on the Italian fashion businesswoman (and former fashion blogger) Chiara Ferragni.
Ben walked to the living room and sat on the couch next to me. I felt alive and excited; I felt butterflies in my stomach, and it was as if I had woken up from a long sleep, as if I was falling in love with myself. After a long time of black and white I could see colors. A veil had been lifted — I had actually lifted it.
“I was reading about Chiara Ferragni, the Italian blogger, do you remember I told you about her?”
He motioned his head yes.
“I am in a different field and I don’t do what she does, but her story is actually inspiring. I want that. And I realized that what’s been happening in the past few days is not a coincidence.”
In the days that preceded the red carpet, in fact, I had asked a friend for help with the verification of my Instagram account. I am always weary of asking help to friends of Ben’s who are in the business, but this time I knew something was different; I trusted my instincts and I was candid.
I emailed him and wrote:
Hey, how are you? I have a favor to ask you.
I write and curate a blog of essays called Making Sense of Reality, I have been for a while, and I am currently investing some money and time into branding the blog. I am working with a SEO specialist and web designer to add content and transform the blog into a platform for future public/TV speaking, to ultimately reach more readers, and monetize the writing. I am really just trying to build my career.
Our friend had not only said yes to my request, but he had also offered to help me a step forward with something related to it.
By reaching out to him, I had been vulnerable and I had put myself out there like I used to do when I was younger, when my dreams seemed possible. By doing so, a door opened and I had a realization: when I married Ben, I stopped following my dreams for fear people would think I had married him for being a famous musician, for having connections. At a certain point, I bought into the idea that wanting to have a career of my own was wrong; so I carved myself a hidden place behind his. I began to doubt myself and I grew increasingly silent; I increasingly lost weight to find something familiar in the new life I was living, and nothing has been more familiar to me over the years than the bones — my eating disorder.
“I haven’t felt this way since Leonard,”
I told Ben with a smile on my face.
For those of you who don’t know, the reason why I stayed in the United States and finished my novel, was that Leonard Cohen read my manuscript and loved it. With Robert Kory, his manager, who later became mine as well for a while, he helped me get an O-1 Artist Visa and sponsored me, so that I could write. Leonard thought I was talented and special.
I know it all sounds like a gift from heaven, but I have worked hard for it; when nobody stood behind me, I bravely submitted my review of Old Ideas with zero expectations and plenty of hope.
In the end, things didn’t go as I wanted at the time. The book that Leonard loved ended up being published by the wrong publisher, and despite my big dreams, it never became a bestseller. Today, however, I wouldn’t want it any other way; this story is my prize, this story was worth every effort, every tear, every heartbeat, and every second I got to spend with Leonard.
Something similar happened with my podcast, Coffee with Alice.
I was so brave, Ben!
I said.
“Can you believe I asked all those artists to come to my apartment to be interviewed?”
Every rejection hurt, but every ‘yes’ I got along the way contributed to building my career, my character, my story. The show was never a monetary success and it didn’t make me famous, but without it, I would have never married the man of my dreams. And how richer I am within, because of my conversations with Moby, Douglas Rushkoff, Jackson Browne, Phil Hendrie, Janet Fitch, and Bill Pullman (just to name a few) is priceless.
“That’s what’s been wrong all this time, babe; I’m starting to understand.” I told him as the night came to an end. “I knew that you guys were never into ‘the glitter’, so I became ashamed of actually loving it, and wanting it for myself.”
In order to fit with what the band had seemed to stand for, like and not like, and with what Ben’s ideas and opinions had seemed to be, I neglected my dreams. I began to think that what I wanted and liked was wrong.
“It was wrong of me to weigh those old ideas on you,”
he said.
“I want you to be happy and I want you to follow your dreams. You deserve all that you aspire to, my love. You are special, talented, and there is nothing wrong with the glitter.”
After we finished talking, Ben got ready for bed; I stayed on the couch a little longer and scrolled through my Instagram feed. The first post that appeared, from chef Lorraine Pascal, read:
Your mantra for the day:
“It’s okay for me to go for what I want. It’s okay for me to be grateful for what I have and still want more. Today I will take action towards going for what I really want. Today I will have the courage to be shamelessly me”
How many times have you heard me talk about signs? How many times have I shared with you that miracle within the mundane that lets us know we are on the right path, that we are doing the right thing? I see these signs every time I open myself to seeing them. And every time I open myself to receiving, doors open as well.
Asking our friend for help with my Instagram account opened a new door. Seeing the sign led me to the next one, and with every little miracle my confidence and my enthusiasm grew.
***
When I was a child, and then a teenager, I hated when my mom would ruin my moments of happiness and excitement to remind me that I always crashed deep and hard shortly after.
“You scare me when you are so happy,” she would always say.
She did it to protect me, but her loving warning hurt, and it angered me.
With time, however, I stopped holding a resentment against her and I understood that expectation was the cause of that swift shift from light to dark, from manic to depressed. I was never bipolar as I feared at some point, I simply based everything on expectations.
So today, as I enjoy and find comfort in my newly-found passion and willingness to dream, I also know the difference between aspiration and expectation. For every time I aspired without expecting I received more than I could have ever imagined.
I can’t wait to see what comes next!
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I am 64. I love this age because I’m not afraid to be me. I have had a wonderful grounded childhood, an angsty teenage period, young woman wondering if I would find a partner/career moment, and then marriage, the demands of 3 children spaced 2 years apart, a huge blur of time, and now retirement.
Time goes by so fast. Enjoy what you enjoy. It’s about connection and vulnerability. I’m not afraid of that anymore.