Turning Off Radio Station KFKD

As a junior in college, I have been giving some thought to my future. So far, I have not really encountered any answers to the questions, “What should I do with my life?” or “What am I good at?” but in the process, I have realized something important: I must turn off Radio Station KFKD.

What, you might ask, is Radio Station KFKD? To preserve my employability and my parents’ pride in my writing, I will not spell it out, but the upcoming explanation of its function and a simple phonetic reading should illuminate it fairly well.  I first encountered the concept of Radio Station KFKD in Anne Lamott’s insightful and inspiring book Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing And Life, which I have begun to reread in my spare time because, with the encouragement of some friends, I have begun to consider writing fiction. This is something that I have not done since my early teenage years, largely due to Radio Station KFKD, which Lamott describes on page as “the single greatest obstacle” a writer faces in listening to his or her intuition.

“If you are not careful,” Lamott writes, “Station KFKD will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo”. Made up of “self-aggrandizement” and “self-loathing” in equal measure, feeding on each other in a twisted cycle of unrealistic expectations, distraction, and paralyzing negativity, Radio Station KFKD, I realized, has been playing in my mind for years.

Rosy visions of my future as a brilliant, well-liked professor at the center of an English department at a generic, small liberal arts college and giving interviews for major television and radio programs about the insightful novel I have not begun to write contrast with a constant stream of unconstructive self-doubt and criticism: “What sort of graduate program could you ever get into? Well, maybe you might be able to get into a decent program, but you’d certainly be the silliest person there. And even if you weren’t, what contributions could you even make to the field? And don’t even think about a novel! Who would want to read something you wrote?” This is only the professional, academic, and artistic side of KFKD. I won’t even go into the personal programming.

KFKD needs to go. The first voice distracts me from doing what I need to do and simply sets me up for disappointment, and the second voice has the capability to turn me into a complete wreck. When KFKD was at its loudest last year, it was all I could do to drag myself out of bed and go to class at all – it was a miracle I got all of my work done.

Lamott recommends prayer, a small personal ritual, deep breathing – anything to relax and tune out the negative self-talk. Now that I have identified KFKD as a major (and detrimental) influence in my life, I can start using these strategies, and maybe inventing some of my own, to turn it off, or at least to lower the volume enough that I can hear my own thoughts and start to shape them into something worth sharing, in the form of an academic paper, this blog, a simple conversation, or even that book I’d like to start to work on when I’ve finished my essays.

How do you deal with Radio Station KFKD?

(All quotes taken from Anne Lamott's Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994. 116-121.)

Learning from Laryngitis

I have been without the use of my voice for three full days now. In the middle of the fourth day, I can't help but think this is the universe's way of telling me I should rest my voice a bit more. 

Photo Credit: janeitesonthejames.blogspot.com

The universe is clearly about as subtle as Emma Woodhouse on Box Hill.

            

Many of my friends, however, have been far too kind to me while I have been unable to speak. This should not surprise me, as this probably makes me somewhat easier to deal with than when I do not have laryngitis. However, they are making a mistake. I deserve no sympathy. This predicament is all my own fault, and I deserve all the misery and frustration it entails. I can only hope I will learn a valuable lesson from it.

See, I have a problem with singing. Reading this, you may assume that this means I sometimes push my voice a bit too far in the shower or occasionally join in with my friends in a verse or two of something toward the end of a night out. You’re completely wrong. That doesn’t even begin to cover it. My problem is different – namely, that after about three quarters of a vodka tonic, I become absolutely convinced that I am Ethel Merman, Mary Martin, or Frederica von Stade, depending on my mood and what I have been listening to earlier in the day. It isn't even a drinking thing. It's just that now I have an excuse.

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It is Not Attractive Behavior, partly because I am not Ethel, Mary, or Frederica, and partly because I am not on stage. Saturday, for instance, when I strained my voice, I was in a friend’s kitchen. See? Not a stage.

Normally, I am content to pretend I possess a modicum of dignity and self respect, and possibly a basic understanding of good behavior. Sure, I may want to sing, but I realize that it is a bad idea, so instead I sit and make relatively normal, if excruciatingly nerdy, conversation.

However, it is all over the moment some poor dumb soul says, “Sara, why don’t you sing something?” On a conscious level, I know they are probably either drunk, deluded, humoring me, or messing with me. Still, I can’t help but be flattered. I have not only been given permission to do what I know good manners and good sense dictate I should not. I have actually been asked! I may protest, but at this point, I am probably already doing discreet breathing exercises and analyzing repertoire choices.

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I am quietly preparing to embarrass the hell out of myself, with the excuse that it’s harmless fantasy. (“What would I sing if…") In short, I have no shame. This process of preparation is easy to justify as a silent, indulgent game, but it primes me to make a fool of myself and make everyone else uncomfortable the moment someone suggests I sing a second time, a karaoke book is passed around, or something reminds me of a song.

It would be cruel to say no no, I tell myself, just before I launch into an off key Baroque aria, a poorly planned Cole Porter medley, or a Rodgers and Hammerstein classic I once sang in high school. After all, I have been asked to sing! Multiple times! Or it's karaoke. Aren't we supposed to sing at karaoke? And of course it can't go as badly as last time. 

What I should be telling myself at this point is that I am not appeasing an adoring public. I am embarrassing myself.

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I am really embarrassing myself, and everyone who is pretending not to know me. It is not becoming. It is not ladylike. It needs to stop.  The universe, it seems, agrees. I realized this on Sunday morning when I woke up, attempted to speak, and heard only a squeak.

           

In response, I am making a new rule for myself:

            

I will not sing outside of choir, or the privacy of my own shower. It is never a good idea, no matter what “encouragement” I may receive. I will no longer subject myself or anyone else to my unfortunate squawking and the awkwardness it creates.  Not in a friend’s flat, not while walking to or from a social event, not in an echoey stairwell, and certainly not at karaoke.

Should you be present at a social event at which I seem ready to break this rule, please, please stop me. Squirt me with a water gun like a cat that’s gotten onto a kitchen counter. Swat me on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. Do whatever you have to do to get my attention. Duly chastened, I will resume my pretension of normalcy.

You will be spared the discomfort of listening to me sing in an inappropriate situation with no warm up and no rehearsal, and I will certainly thank you later. Possibly with food.

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