My Idea Factory is on Fire Plus There Might Be a Familiar Hole in My Heart (Things Are Going Great, Thanks)

If I was in a relationship with blog platforms, I would be a flighty serial monogamist, faithful until I am suddenly not and walking away without ever looking back. I have likely abandoned more blogs that I even remember. I frankly forgot this whole thing was here.

But, I am at a crossroads in my professional life.

And, during such times, I like to go back to see what former-me might offer for current, frazzled and more than slightly brittle me. Former-me also seems so shockingly eloquent in comparison to whatever is my harried current-state might be. Someone this week told me “You are always so calm” and I was very thankful that they cannot see inside my thoughts and idea factory — seven conveyer belts, two closed for maintenance and one slightly on fire at any given time, frantically churning away already obsolete items into a final chaotic pile. All items are also currently on a deep discount or final sale. Maintenance has been furloughed. Plus, someone has recently started selling cheap knock-offs so general counsel is very busy and using most of the resources for this fight. It’s not going well.

This factory used to be a well-oiled and planned-out machine with carefully stacked and sorted components at the ready for development, but a global pandemic, a wonderful new baby and navigating motherhood in a frankly sexism realm of academia, and circumstances that make me question how my values inform my decision making every single day have, well, frayed the system a bit. (And, then…we got a puppy.)

I have been thinking a lot recently about values and how they inform innovation and change.

And, how when we lose sight of our core values, how it is so easy to get lost or justify or be afraid to draw strong boundaries especially when the ego is involved. I keep coming back to the question of “how much evil would you do if you thought you were on the course for what you considered to be good?” and “what kind of evil would you be okay by you and how do you rationalize these decisions?” I teach courses on this topic and it is still shockingly difficult to balance out values, function, and priorities in this wild year.

So, I am going to borrow from myself as a reminder — Where I was, where I am now, how feeling lost is not the end, and how much I want to be curious again. I’m rebuilding my idea factory on a different set of values.

So, here’s something I wrote three years ago as I was thinking about my positionality as a researcher and my research project around perceived failures and creativity.

“I study creativity, risk, and failure. And, even knowing what I do about these constructs and concepts, my own work still sometimes makes me feel like an abject failure, a catastrophe at the corner of the emotional response and careful analysis for measured improvement.

My story of how I arrived here sometimes feels like a hole in my heart. It is a story about risk, fear, and failure, perseverance, grit, and resiliency. And, how studying the things I fear the most made me realize how I have become so lost, so hesitant, and so fearful along the way in my creative life.

When I was eleven, I started taking voice lessons from our church’s organist, Beth, a former Ms. California winner who sat in the front of the congregation like a queen upon her pipe organ throne. Betraying her perfectly coiffed hair and smart, curated ensembles, Beth was extremely eccentric and would cheerfully remind me “tits up!’ in the midst of learning an art song or aria, much to the amusement of my pre-teen self. She taught me to breathe, to be present, to take complex music and break it down into small, fathomable pieces. She taught me how to dress for recitals and bow with grace. She taught me that being a singer was just as important as anything else.

Twice a year, we would hold studio recitals in Beth’s large basement, wedged in between the shuffle board, two pianos, a small pipe organ, all the families perched on folding chairs while waiting to hear their fledging star perform a bit of rudimentary Bach. Beth would usually wear some flamboyant ensemble with a sparkly pin on her shoulder. My parents always attended, my dad in his best sports coat with his trousers sharply creased from his time as a colonel in the military and my mom is some vaguely powerful outfit with an odd piece of jewelry from a far-off land. My dad always sat in the third row, in the middle aisle, and he would nervously twist his paper recital program into a tight tube of anxiety as he waited for me to take the slightly cleared out space in the center of the room only a few feet away. Without fail, he would always cry when I sang.

Years later, after singing the world over, numerous recitals, tears, ball gowns, a degree in voice performance from a respected east coast conservatory, I would always look to the third row, center aisle, for my parents, my dad consistently wringing the increasingly nice program between his hands. I asked him one time why he did it, if he was nervous for me, if he feared for what I was about to do on stage. And, he said no, he was just so proud he could not stand it just sitting there. He was just so proud. And, when I was in my late twenties, two days after his birthday upon which I had called to sing to him, he did not wake up.

And, I stopped singing.

Studying opera is a long conversation about breath, about the resonance of your body, your very bones, the music vibrating your whole being as you attempt to cut through an entire orchestra of sound. You can feel the emotion well up inside as you breathe, the pain of love, the sorrow of song, written by mostly long dead men with a penchant for powdered wigs. The moment of stepping on stage is a second of vulnerability, of promise, and of hope. There is so much fear of missing a note, a beat, a queue, but at the same time it forces the performer to truly be present. To sing with abandon is to delve into exhilarating risk, to make daring choices, and to work with others in the intention of greatness.

After my father’s death, I decided to attend graduate school, first for a master’s degree and then a doctorate, not for voice or opera, but for education. To reframe myself with an understanding of how to help others, to shepherd along students the same way Beth had once done so for me (though perhaps with generally fewer references to tits). I stumbled upon a chamber group for singers, and I happily, safely, sang along with them for several years as I worked on reinventing myself from musician to researcher. As time passed and jobs changed, the question changed from “When are you singing next?” to “Do you still sing?” And, I began to realize the hole in my heart would never repair itself until I learned to keep going even when afraid, until I harnessed my stubbornness and grit back into the thing that hurt the most, until I truly sang.

My research mind drives me to understand why certain people persevere, why they have so much grit, how they learn to move through what they then perceive as an epic failure. My musician’s heart still feels the pings of disappointment in my own journey, but is still driven to fully realize how hard work, practice, and study play a role in how artists approach their creative lives. To think about failure is to inherently think about the future, a changed outcome, a new unexpected opportunity, a different path, a calculated risk, a novel collaboration. In this realm, I also contemplate how the realities of education prepares students for their complex lives full of evolving challenges, how collaboration can be nurtured and cultivated in unexpected, exciting ways, and how the boundaries of the arts fields ebb and flow through a cycle of constant reinvention.

And, when I think about the future, I think about what I would tell my own future children. I think about how I want to be sitting in the third row, center aisle, nervously rolling my paper program into a tube, my husband attempting to calm my nervous anxiety for that moment of performance. How I want not only my own children but all creators to risk, to create, to be bold, to question everything, to forge new, electrifying connections, to break the rules, to bring people together. How I want them to look at their fears directly and know they will make it through even if their perceptions of the future might change. And, I think about how mostly I want them to really, truly sing, whatever their craft may be.

So, really, my research, my life, my creative pursuits, are both failures and new beginnings all at once. It’s about a perception of loss and the dogged reinvention of the future. It is about disappointment and hope both living in the same place. It is the beginning of a long perseverance, the memory of dreams, and knowing that fear is just that temporary moment before you step on stage.”

And, I’m ready to make that step.