Heckling........

I played at the 8th Annual Shore Made Festival yesterday. Scott and Clark were my back-up band. We practiced a lot before the Festival, especially Scott and I, as playing folk music on a banjo is not always easy! Scott's a great banjo player, and I knew he'd get it all! And he did! We were all excited about the day and being there and performing as a trio. We did pretty good. We had a couple of glitches here and there but, all in all, we were pleased with our performance. They called us to the stage 15 minutes early, so it was kind of a mad dash there in the last few minutes before we started. I enjoy playing with Scott and Clark so much. It's so much more fun than playing by myself!! And they add so much to my music.

I got heckled for the first time - ever. Even when I played at fourteen and fifteen and I pretty much sucked and I played in front of other teenagers - I never got heckled. And then, at nineteen and twenty and twenty-one, when I played with my friend Patti O'Conner all those times in bars, singing folks songs to drunks - I never got heckled. So yesterday's heckler was a big shock to me. He came down to the front of the stage and yelled at me, raising his arms up over his head and shaking his fists. He had a little boy with him, maybe three years old, his nephew, who copied him and shook his fists, too. I wondered if he even thought about what he was teaching that little boy.

It wasn't about the music. It was a personal thing. It was an act of anger. It was an act of spite, meant to degrade me and make me feel bad. It was meant to do nothing else but make me feel bad. And it worked. I think I could have played anything and he would have done the same thing. The son-in-law of an ex-boyfriend, he was just looking for a reason. Why? Hell, I don't know!! To listen to him, he was yelling at me because of the choice of my last song. But someone else sang it earlier in the day, and I didn't see him heckle that man. And if it was because it was a song that his wife sang - because it was "her song"- if she had been performing, I wouldn't have sung it. Hell! Around here you have to ask permission to sing anything else except your own songs. Like somebody owns the music or something. I don't get it. I don't get it at all. Scott and I just played that song in church last week. We didn't play it to hurt anybody or slight anybody. We played it because we love the song and the three of us play it well together. Period. That's the reason. What is wrong with that? I don't get it. I don't get it at all.

At first, I was mad as hell. It happened during the last song. And I came off the stage and I was so angry, had he gotten close to me, I would have slammed him with my guitar. I wanted to slap him across the face as hard as I could. Or punch him in the stomach. I was so angry. He came back behind the stage and threw out a couple more remarks, but Scott and Clark stood on either side of me and told him, without saying much, to back off. I think a part of me is still mad but not as mad as I was yesterday.

Mostly, it was just a huge disappointment. I've had several experiences now, here on the Eastern Shore, where my music has been invaded - by anger, by hate, by spite, by sadness, by jealousy, by pride. My music has always been a place that I could crawl into and feel a sense of myself unbroken, a sense of my spirit protected - and that sense of un-brokenness and protection has given me the ability to share my music, and therefore a part of myself and my spirit, with other people. Even when the songs I sing are immensely sorrowful, there has always been that part of my spirit that felt wrapped up by the music. These experiences here make me want to not do it anymore.

But, singing is as much a part of me as breathing. Like my sister Emily, music is one of my earliest memories. Music is my oldest friend. I cannot imagine a life apart from singing. I don't know what I'd do without that solace in my life.

So I'll just go on. And in time, the intensity of the experience will mellow. And the memory of it will become separated from the meaning of it and the history behind it. And it will become simply: the memory of the first time I got heckled. For now, though............

Let go. Let God. Get on with life. Get good. Grab the world by the tail and hang on for the ride. It's a rough and rocky place and there are people who come at you sometimes with a mean spirit. But, in the end, this world is what we got. And the next bit of beauty is just right around the bend.

Peace.