Stage fright's a bastard

Stage fright really is a sneaky little bastard.

In a couple of days, my band Beyond Violet is supposed to go on stage for the first time. There's just on little problem: my vocal chords decided they weren't up for it and quit working.

I've had almost no voice for over a week now, and it's starting to get on my nerves pretty bad.
It seems stress can impact your body in many ways, and in my case, this time it felt like messing things up for me.

Having no voice sucks for a couple of reasons.
1. I can't sing. It isn't until you can't sing that you realize how much you do sing all day long.
2. I can't talk. I'm a journalist for cryin' out loud.
3. Freaking out over not being able to sing with an important gig coming up, makes my throat tense up even more. Which can't be good...
4. People can't seem to leave me alone. I tell them I can't talk, but almost every single person that calls is like "Oh right, well could you just tell me about this one thing blablabla"

Which is why stage fright is such a sneaky bastard. It's the deadliest link in this vicious cycle I'm trapped in. Being nervous is bad for the voice, it can make you loose your voice, and when you've gone hoarse, you get even more nervous, which doesn't help getting better.

The advice I get from fellow musicians is to not sing, talk or even whisper, eat loads of honey, drink tea and most of all to chill out. It just so happens that I can do all of the above, but the chilling out part... well, let's just say this is a real test of character for me.

Picture: Beyond Violet by Fabio Valiante

The Art of doing absolutely Nothing

As a teenager, I had perfected it to a form of art: doing absolutely nothing but watching tv or reading a book for hours and hours and hours on end.

The last couple of years, however, my hours of just 'being there' and nothing else, have drastically diminished. Jobs, a house that needs cleaning, groceries that need to be bought and things like that obviously need to be done when living in 'grown up land' are partially to blame. But there's more.

Friendships, for instance, were a lot easier to maintain when I was still in school. There's no better way to see your friends every day when they're taking the same classes at the same school or university.

Nowadays, trying to get together with a friend involves a lot of emails, texts or phonecalls before a date, time and place can be determined. Those who become parents almost always slowly fade, until only heard from by means of christmas cards.

When in a relationship, like me, there's one more complication to your social life. Having a significant other also means that you get an extra family. For free!

You'll have to pay dearly for it, though. Not in euro's or dollars, but in time. Because all of a sudden, there's more birthdays, wedding aniversaries and other family events to attend. On average, about twice as many, I reckon.

And ofcourse, being an adult simply cannot mean becoming a drag. At least, not in my book. So I go to concerts and parties, making a huge fuss about the right dress, hair and make up. Invite friends over for home made dinners. Demand romantic evenings with my boyfriend. And let's not forget, every thursday evening I live my rockstar dream, rehearsing with my band.

You can imagine that sometimes I long for the days when I could lie on my parent's couch, watching Oprah or some cartoon, perfectly happy doing absolutely nothing useful.

I guess the thing is, that I could always rest easy, knowing that my future would be filled with a great job, great friends, great parties and great music. The problem is that the future my 16 year old self saw is now my present. The future is hard work!

Giving my heels the boot

For the last ten years - minimum - my feet have been subject to severe torture on account of my refusal to not wear heels.

Given the fact that I'm a Dutch girl, I'm not very tall: 1.68 meters, or about5.5 feet. Sadly, most of that length consists of torso, not leg. Ergo: since I was 18, I've been wearing heels. Mostly high heeled boots, but also pumps, peeptoes and all of the other gorgeous but painful footware out there.

Recently, we went to the zoo with some friends. Because I didn't want to uncomfortably try to rest my feet every 5 minutes by sitting on the small walls enclosing the animals' habitats, I bravely decided to go stumpy legged for a day. So I put on the sneakers I normally only wear in the gym.

What a fine day it was! I felt like I could keep on walking all day. While driving back I even sort of missed the burning sensation I normally would have had after a day in the zoo. Or mall. Or at work. Or wherever. I would even wear heels to the beach. For real.

The zoo was about a week ago now. The sneakers have barely been off my feet. It's a shame I'll have to get back to wearing high heeled shoes again.

Because in the end, pretending not to have short legs beats comfort's ass everytime.

(Picture by tcindustry.com)

It's in the little things

Sometimes it doesn't take much to remember why life can be pretty sweet. It's the little moments of uncomplicated happiness that make it worthwhile.

The last couple of days, I've had quite a few of these happy little things happen to me. Here's my top three:

3. Driving up to my house after work, where I see my boyfriend rolling the emptied trash bin back to the house. Without me asking him to.

2. Opening the back door to throw away an empty muesli box in that same bin in the backyard, to find myself part of a true Disney-moment: ridiculously colorful flowers, a lovely spring scent in the air and tons of bird singing their little hears out.

3. Taking the freshly washed towels out of the dryer, and holding each and every warm and clean smelling towel to my face before folding it.

Simple, but very very effective.

Hallelujah, Lisa!

Lisa Hordijk is a 21-year old Dutch girl blessed with a powerful and beautiful voice, full of character. She just won the Dutch talent show X-Factor. A minor miracle indeed. I think it is the first time someone who can really, truly sing won a show like that. Yay! Go Lisa!

Now Lisa is not stick thin. On the contrary, she's a big girl.

One of the X-Factor judges, record label owner Stacey Rookhuizen, managed to make my skin crawl with just one incredibly stupid remark. I'm sure the little twig didn't mean to, and I'm curious whether I'm the only one who picked it up.

Here goes. Here's what she said: "Lisa, you're an example to so many ... girls." She literally paused before the word 'girls'. She did!

Maybe it's my personal agression towards the ridiculously thin, but I can't help to think that what she really wanted to say was "You show other fat girls that they cán be popular."

Lisa only flinched for a nanosecond. In that nanosecond she still gave the twig a killer look of death though. Or maybe that was my imagination.

The thing is: who cares. It's so great that such an impressive voice will now be heard. I actually bought the mp3 of Lisa's first single, a cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. It's one youtube already, ofcourse:

Thin people: listen up

Thin people like to tell me what I should do to loose weight. As if I don't know.

Just yesterday, I told someone that I needed to loose about 10 pounds if I ever want to fit in a beautiful pair of black pants I once bought in a moment of overconfidence. This someone has the figure of a supermodel. "Well", she replied happily, "you just need to eat right. Have a good breakfast and...."

As if I don't know, haha. I'm not huge or anything, but definitaly NOT shaped like a supermodel. More like a woman Rubens would paint, the only difference being that my boobs do match my butt. And ofcourse, I have tried to get the body of a supermodel. I can tell you exactly what to do to loose weight.

I have lost weight. Pounds and pounds and pounds. And always gained them back. This has two reasons:

1. 'Bad' genes. My grandmothers are both blessed with a stout figure, most of the women in my father's family have huuuuuuge derrières.
2. I looooove food. I love eating it, I love being in the kitchen.

Actually, my eating habits are not at all bad, I'd like to believe. Plenty of fruit, vegetables, grains and loads of variation. Allright, and an extra spoonful of mayonaise with my french fries, on occasion. But my diet looks so much more healthy than some of my skinny friends'. One of them just doesn't eat for a couple of days if she gains half a kilo.

So please, you lovely looking skinny ladies, don't judge. There's no skinny person inside of me trying to get out, there's a Rubenesque woman feeling trapped inside when I'm going through a skinnier phase. Believe you me.

What the hell are those soccer hooligans thinking? It seems to me that calling the rival camp of idiots on their cell phones to meet in some pour guy's bar or in some town where people are trying to sleep is nothing short of the poorest excuse to have a war éver.

No, I don't understand sports. Yes, I am a woman. If men enjoy watching other men (in shorts!) running around on a field while chasing a little black and white ball: fine with me. It keeps you fit. I like my men to be in shape. No problems so far.

But when it comes to men using a soccer team as a replacement of their own identity, as I have witnessed them do, I just get sad and discouraged about the fate of mankind. Grown men with tattoos of 'their' soccer team, who are nervous about the next game days in advance and heartbroken when their team loses. I don't get it. I just really, really don't.

To me, it is the most unattractive thing in the whole world if a man lacks an identity of his own in such a way that he just adopts the identity of a sports team. Or that of a political party, corporation or band.

But the epitomy of sad is when he combines this lack of self with an overdose of testosterone, and invents a little war between 'his' team and the other. All in order to feel like a man for once.

It just makes me sad.

Spongebobbing

There's a Spongebob-episode in which Spongebob has to study for an exam. All he does, however, is think of reasons not to study. All of a sudden, his kitchen needs immediate cleaning. Or his pet snail Gary needs a new bowl of food. Stat!

This has led to a new verb we use at home: 'Spongebobbing'. If it were in the dictionary, it would say something like 'to procrastinate doing what truly needs to be done urgently by imagening other stuff that needs to be done even more urgently.'

I'll give you one lucky guess as to what I'm doing right now... Bingo! Although, in the office, there's no pet snail, no kitchen or such things, there's enough I can think of that is easier and more fun than doing what I'm supposed to be doing right now.

Like writing a new blog. Checking my hotmail, gmail, myspace, facebook and any other email or networkingwebsite I can think of. By calling my boyfriend to whine about how I'm spongebobbing my day away. Etcetera ad infinitum.

*Sigh* OK fine, I'll get to work!

The horror of buying pants

A horrible experience every single time: buying a new pair of pants or jeans. Especially with a butt like mine.

About a year and a half ago, I went into a local store to buy something very basic, let's say a t-shirt or something. While skimming through the racks of clothing, I came across a pair of jeans that looked kinda nice. Wearily, I went to try them on. Miraculously, it fit!

The girl behind the counter must have been happy with me, because not only did I buy a t-shirt, I left the store with 2 identical pairs of jeans.

Normally, for me, buying jeans means trying on about 20 pairs, a lot of cursing, swearing not to eat a single scrap of food ever again and occasionally even some tears.

So you can imagine why, when finally finding a pair that fits, I bought 2.

Here comes the bad part: both pairs are now in jeans heaven. They were totally worn down, and I can't possibly get away with wearing them anymore. Where's the 1990's when you need them?!

If grunge were still 'happening', I wouldn't have to go through the horror of realizing that the time has come to go out, keep my head up high and walk into a store to ask the size 0 girl for a jeans in my size.

Who am I kidding? Chances are that I'm going to order a stack of denim online, choose the one that looks the least bad, and send the rest back. Thank goodness for online H&M!

Sakura, baby!

Although I had been planning to get a tattoo since I was about 12 years old, it was still quite the shocker when the tattoo-artist I had 'chosen' texted me last monday. He'd had a cancellation, and was therefor able to do my tattoo the next day!

My tuesday was one of total terror. My stomach hurt all day long, because I was soooooo nervous. Was I ready for this? Was I making a huge mistake?

The thing is: all the tattoo-designs I drew for myself in the past decade or so, I kept in a drawer for about three months. My deal with myself was, that if I still liked it three months later, I'd get tattood.

Ofcourse, I never did still like what I saw when I opened the drawer again.

But the cherry blossom always struck me as beautiful, mainly because of it's double symbolism. In China, the cherry blossom is a symbol of female beauty. In Japan, it symbolizes how sweet but short life is. A very pretty alternative to the European memento mori-pictures.

So for the last year or so, I've been thinking about getting these pretty flowers. Not the toughest tattoo, but it suits me. Since I was a little girl, I could not understand why some people throw their lives away, seemingly without realizing that you only have one - mortal - life.

So I took my sketches to the tattoo shop. Before I realized it, three sakura flowers were on my back. I love them!

Henhouse

Sometimes I truly wonder if I really do qualify as a woman. The habits of my fellow women often make my skin crawl with horror and amazement.

I went to the gym last night. Hadn't been for a week and a half, on account of my parents moving. Hauling big cupboards and about a million boxes counts as exercise in my book.

So I honestly had to drag my but to the gym. After about an hour of cardio, I actually felt quite good about myself.

Standing under the shower, I heard that a lot of women were coming into the locker room. It sounded like they were just pleasantly chatting.

Boy, was I wrong. Coming out of the shower, trying to dry my feet whilst skipping over to my bag, I suddenly got overwhelmed by the sound of at least ten grown women talking loudly about their mothers in law, stomach cramps, kids, itching big toes, husbands and other topics. All of this intertwined with the latest gossip.

I felt like a big, fat juicy caterpillar with a headache, trying to get out of the henhouse unnoticed as soon as possible.

No such luck. Mistakingly taking me to be one of them, the women tried to engage me in their clucking. 'What did you do? Did ya take a body combat class? Or did ya just finish the spinning class? Oh, you don't like spinning? You really should try! It's so great for your thighs. I used to be a big girl but...'

Smiling as sweetly as I possibly could, I got dressed as fast as I could. My head was throbbing because of all the high, loud shrieking voices in the small room. 'Well, have a nice evening. Bye now', I mumbled, slowly backing away. 'Bye!' the women exclaimed in one single, terrifying voice.

Call me Bob from now on...

Image (c) Dreamworks