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Biddy is a woman of some years: a GenX'er, Riot Grrrl, survivor, traveler, tattoo collector, senior pet owner, music lover, former public school embattled public school retiree and amatuer vegan chef. Biddy Sounds Off is a thinking woman's bildungsroman and pirate radio station some thirty years in the making: featuring episodic writings and eclectic musical selections.
Welcome to Biddy Sounds Off, a place for episodic writing and music I love. I'm Biddy. There was a night this winter. I flipped on the patio light and had just stepped outside. A mug of hot tea in one hand, strong, dark, and sweetened with a splash of almond milk, cigarette and lighter in the other hand, floating in the air above me.
Biddy:She glistened there in the dim light. Deep, ebony, black, shining. Legs in a pirouette, gliding down from the plant overhead. The moon was a spotlight on her bulbous back, from which her single shining thread glistened as she glissade and plied. I spotted the red violin on her underside.
Biddy:The pets and I retreated back indoors, choosing the second patio through the bedroom. What I lack in physical currency, wealth, pesos, dollars, I make up for patios at the moment. Easy come, easy go. I can feel myself compressed within the black widow's cocoon. Chrysalis balloon, it's called.
Biddy:I looked it up. Ballooning just sounds dirty. The resplendent black widow put me in mind of a tune I'd like to share with you now. It isn't winter anymore and I've saved this one because since the artist died years ago, it pains me still to hear his work. Having identified so closely to his voice, his sound, the renderings of beauty he managed to extract somehow from his own dark and lovely depths.
Biddy:Michael said, strumming the itchy parts of my own depression. A commingling of pleasure and pain. His art had been a comfort to me and it hurt to lose this artist. Revisiting his work has seemed daunting, but I know I'm not alone anymore. Gentle listener, you are there with me now.
Biddy:So let's listen to this later master piece. This is black balloon from a distorted reality is now a necessity to be free by Elliot Smith. Following Elliott Smith, we heard sweet sour by band of skulls before the kills with m e x I c o. A wise drag queen, Veronica Green, once said, I'm paraphrasing now, that the best way to beat back depression is to speak your pain out loud to get the words out. Externalize the pain by giving voice to it.
Biddy:And as difficult as can be to even form words, let alone speak them out loud, not doing so means sheltering it, unwittingly protecting it, nurturing it. For me, this allows the pain to take root and spread, growing little calcified nodules which lodge themselves in my joints. I know that stress contributes to my physical pain. Toxic memory juices just seep into my muscles, paralyzing them, infusing them with pain. I ache but become paralyzed.
Biddy:Expressing the pain in words does help. Exercise he responded with this gem, you can't let it get you. He responded with this gem, you can't let it get you, that depression. It stops your life. He went on, You get it and you won't even let yourself exercise.
Biddy:It was just what I needed to hear. I know exercise feels good. I know it helps. I even like it but when the paralysis sets in, I won't let myself. Exercise is great.
Biddy:Everyone knows this is the solution to many ills of the mind and body. But I do need reminding. I tend to be quite literal, a needy learner, as I've already established. I learn through explicit instruction and so I need to see evidence of a counteraction to that toxic memory sludge, the old habits of body and mind, the self hatred underlying all of it, A belief I no longer hold. And so to push back on that constricting, confining cynicism, I need a concrete counter action.
Biddy:For me, a creative expression works best, has the longest lasting effects, playing guitar, painting, sewing, screaming, these are a few of my favorites. Crying, they say works too, but I'm still working on that one. Crying is wonderful at first. The first tears to emerge burn. The intensity is satisfying but then what?
Biddy:Maybe I've held in the pain so long that I get stage fright, performance anxiety because after that initial release, how much longer should I go on? People in movies go on to wail and sob and carry on. Crying can feel so powerfully eruptive that it can be hard to tell when to stop or whether or not I should continue. It can take on a forced and performative quality. Is 30 to 45 seconds long enough?
Biddy:The rupture, the tearful discharge, shoulders curling inward and that mad shaking to disgorge the pain and then the body needs to breathe. Instead of stuttering and choking on the pain as my shoulders roll back and my throat opens again, my chest heaves, sucking in the air around me. This is usually when I'll stop. Is that enough to be effective? Am I a bad crier?
Biddy:Do they teach crying? Let's take a moment now to enjoy some of that brave, creative, exorcism of the demons we all carry. 1st, we heard and Breeding by Priests from their 2014 album called Bodies and Control and Money and Power. Following that, we heard another song released in 2014 by La Butcherette's, Burn the Scab. Welcome back.
Biddy:I thought I was writing all of this out to make sense of it, my story, to share it out loud, to see if it hung together in any way, to see if I could make it make sense. I'm not sure it does, not in any coherent way, not logically, not chronologically or developmentally even. Still, I keep going because it doesn't have to make sense in the traditional way. The soul resonates with a different kind of primal understanding, and so I continue. My spirit emboldened enough to find my voice and then to have the audacity to share it, there must be some reason to do all of this, push myself out of my comfort zone.
Biddy:I know that every time I do, I get stronger, and I've needed that strength to face my own story. The way we make sense of any damn thing is through the prism of our lived experience and not necessarily through a perfectly linear context or by the measurement of any other examples. We may have to feel a thing to truly understand it. Meaning has to be gleaned by not just the intellectual awareness of facts or definitions spelled out on a dry page or a flickering screen, but by the wet, pulsating urgency of honesty, the soul's response to another's perspective, piecing that together to fit within our own lived experience, all of this while peering through a lens of shattered glass. What if the messiness, the pain is all part of the breakthrough?
Biddy:Fearing the uncomfortable process of externalizing our pain can make our bodies hurt, our minds sick, so we numb ourselves within our cocoon of convenience. We practice endurance out of shame, out of fear. Our last song today from Kathleen Hanna, aka Julie Ruin, features these lyrics as a call to action. Every day is inhibition. Don't do it.
Biddy:It's the movie that never gets filmed. It's the story we won't tell. Afraid is much better than a fake forever. Gentle listener, I am forever grateful for you, my friend on the other end. If you'd like to get in touch, email me at biddybiddybops@gmail.com.
Biddy:That's 2 biddyes and bops with an s. I'd love to hear from you. This has been Biddy Sounds Off. Thank you for listening.