Words and Music

So yesterday I briefly mentioned how my reality is submerged in verbiage. Let's put this into a little more perspective.

Since around the time I was seven, books have been a way to escape an unhappy life. God, that sounds self pitying. I suppose it is. Anyway, in the summer of 1980, my father moved our family from South Bend, Indiana, to Carrollton, Texas, to work at his company's headquarters outside Dallas. In South Bend, I had a great time. Almost all my friends were girls (perhaps more on that in a future post), and playing with them, having imaginary tea parties and picnics, etc., was perfectly acceptable. At least no one interfered.

In Carrollton, all that changed. Suddenly, I had no friends. I made new ones slowly. It was socially unacceptable to befriend girls, and it was clearly expected of me that I would participate in the boys' competitive games, mainly soccer, at recess. Well, this did not agree with me at all. In fact, I became an object of ridicule, bullied almost daily. The only validation I got was from my teachers. They seemed to adore me. I was their perfect pupil - polite, on task, always first to complete any assignment. It was the speed at which I worked that ultimately started it all, I think. When I had finished some classroom exercise, I often had a half hour or more to wait until my classmates were done. The teachers would allow me to pull out a book and read if I wanted. Some of them began sending me to the school library for an hour or two every day on my own. I consumed books. I read voraciously. I loved these other worlds, usually fantastic, filled with tales of magic and odd children. I began to want to live in these worlds. I often pretended that I did.

As I got older, the reading continued and the bullying became worse, much more physical. In the seventh grade, things reached their worst. I was openly punched, kicked, spat upon, several times a day. I also began to awaken sexually and was frightened no end when I realized the objects of my desires were other boys. All this pushed me into my escapist worlds all the more. If I didn't have a place to go in my mind, I'm not sure what I would have done, perhaps struck back. But I was too afraid to do that. The only validation I seemed to be getting, still, was from my teachers. I didn't want to disappoint them or lose their affection.

All this is to say that I had a childhood and adolescence perfectly aligned to make me into the voracious reader I am today. Music, too, starting around the age of 12, was a way to escape and also provided a space for me to feel those deep feelings of sadness, grief, loneliness. I started listening to cheap classical music tapes on my parents' stereo system, hooked up with headphones so no one else would hear. After a brief flirtation with Mozart, I dove into Beethoven with my entire soul. My favorite pieces were the funeral march from the Eroica Symphony and the Grosse Fugue (well, really all the late quartets were fascinating to me, but the Fugue most especially). I would weep listening to the Eroica as soon as the march returned after it's brief happy interlude and began its development in which, for me at least, the constraints of the grief imposed at the start of the movement were removed. The music suddenly moves from reserved to extremely emotional. God, how I would cry listening to that exquisite sadness. It perfectly encapsulated my own feelings and gave me a safe way to express them, such as it was. In our family, to express such things openly was not something that was done. However, it was all excused if the music was seen as the cause, and how could my parents fault me for listening to such edifying stuff?

I wonder at a few things. Today, I still carry a novel everywhere I go. I don't understand how people can stand the world without one in their pockets. Also, I find myself apparently not nearly interested in the visual as others seem to be. Yes, I can appreciate a good painting at a museum, but I'm not drawn into it. When I watch a film, the sound is at least as important as what's on the screen. Perhaps if I really allowed myself to see my surroundings, the world I inhabit, it would be too painful. Perhaps.

Well, I feel myself winding down. Time to get on with my day. I think I should examine those episodes in my life when I didn't need the escape. In fact, didn't particularly want it. I'm thinking mainly of the few years after I came out. Another time.