When I go for a long walk without headphones, and instead recall full songs with the unfettered power of my own mind, that’s me going Nyad mode. I’ve been going from Cuba to Florida (to the library, Subway, and back home) and working my way through my brain’s radio station, which to my surprise, features a lot of Billy Joel. Over the summer, I couldn’t divide 160 to split the cost of 2 ferry tickets without a calculator, but trust, I’m not missing a single syllable or piano stroke from “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” upstairs. You can take the girl out of Long Island, but she’s always a woman to me.
Nyad was the perfect movie to passively watch while swiping through all the non-monog and partnered people on Tinder in Brooklyn still in town for Christmas. I hope that sentence gets dragged up and offered for internet slaughter when I am inevitably attached to an Untitled Jodie Foster Project in 6 years. And then I’ll have to be like, “I ran to Jodie’s trailer with tears in my eyes and said, “Jodie, I actually owe you my whole life, and when I said I was watching Nyad passively, it had not a thing to do with your tour de force performance, but completely reflected my own bitterness. God, I’m such a wicked woman, stupid, stupid, stupid,” and then threw myself down the short flight of stairs onto the blacktop” in order to be successfully punished. Unrelated, obviously, but people should probably lay off, Ayo Edebiri. We worked at the same ice cream shop, but at slightly different times, which may eventually be studied as being a hotbed for talent. Me and my friends wrote our initials under a patch of the fake grass on the wall (you read that correctly) in the customer seating area after we quit. I haven’t been back in a while, but last time I checked, we’re still there. It feels good to be immortal.
I don’t know why I’m taking on this ridiculous and potentially off-putting tone, but it’s possibly because I’m overcompensating for my long-term inability to write a damn Substack that no one even asked me to. You are so welcome, by the way. I’m always setting untenable personal goals and then walking around absolutely defeated, kicking rocks from CTF (Cuba to Florida, but the route I described before). I remember being in college and so disillusioned by the constant, writerly process advice being something like “Every morning I rise at 4:30, jolted awake by the divine, fingertips channeled by Montaigne himself, and pour 70,000 perfect and inspired words into my MacBook Pro before my spin class at 6.” The impossibility of attaining, let alone maintaining, this mythical routine makes me feel undisciplined. The beautiful thing to remember is no one even cares.
I came back into your inboxes (and hearts, hopefully) to say things about panic, which I know, is extremely cool and exactly the email you were lacking in this little life. I have had enough panic attacks in my life that MissMojo could rank them. Some have happened in public (two trailers into a viewing of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, at a regional theater production of My Fair Lady, and more recently, in a church pew at a community choir’s spring concert), others more privately (in my dorm room while randomly watching an episode of a sitcom I had never really watched before, in the front seat of my mother’s car driving over the Tappan Zee bridge, at my friend Jake’s apartment as the credits of My Gay Policeman1 began to roll).
In high school, the tiny flutter of an unreasonable, elevated heart rate would send sweat down the back of my neck, every day, from the second row 4th desk of my economics class. It was the last class period before our lunch break, and as I stared down the ever-slowing seconds-hand on the wall clock, a tiny hype man in my mind would confidently promise that if I could just make it to the bell ringing, the panic would evaporate. Almost always, it would. I had trapped myself in the loop – in anticipating the panic, I was overtaken by it, but struggled to unknot the idea that it would happen again, same time, same place, forever amen.
Panic left my daily life rather suddenly a year or so into college. Maybe she moved to Paris!2 Maybe she got married! I was too busy to keep in touch, though on occasion she’d visit for a weekend or the holidays. That crazy girl loves Christmas. Then she got divorced, lost her job, and found her way back into my life last year, squatting in my apartment. She tagged along no matter where I went, despite my protesting. The grocery store, the shower, any plan with a friend. To counter her rudeness with my own, I did my best to ignore her. Which, I cannot stress enough, is only possible short term. I will learn the same lessons 1000 times or more, it seems.
The community choir church panic attack felt so painfully dumb that I got back on an SSRI (which I had weaned myself off of for no reason at a deeply stressful time), which has made a significant difference in my ability to cross the street, take the bus, and basically anything else as equally advanced and necessary to live. And that, my friends? Is the true power of song.
Unfortunately, I had been yammering my big mouth at anyone who would listen for several months that I was going to join this choir. I’d emailed its leaders about vocal ranges (proud Tenor 1) and rehearsal schedules. They were struck by my enthusiasm. I wanted to sing in a group again because it is “so rare that regular adults sing together.” This is what I would tell my friends to sell the vision. I was going full Nicole Kidman AMC “that indescribable feeling we get when the lights begin to dim” but about harmonies and Eric Whitacre arrangements. If I could move in silence, I promise you, I would.
Somehow, I strong-armed Annie into coming to the concert with me, so 1) she could be dazzled and 2) I could preview the group ahead of their summer session, like I was rushing a fraternity, but for mostly retired people (rehearsals are at the senior center, of course). As far as I could tell the evening’s theme was “end of the world” – they only sang in Latin and vaguely about god. Nothing triggered me to freak out, but as I am wont to do, I did. What’s more, with over 20 years of practice, I have perfected the art of presenting as if not a single thought is in my head, let alone a debilitating one like “I don’t think I will ever be able to breathe non-manually again.”
I referenced the program obsessively (but cool vibes only, couldn’t possibly let my friend know I was distressed) to gauge how long it would be until we were permitted to leave (because yes, the way my beautiful mind works, you can never leave a situation without explicit or heavily implied via the social context permission!!). How fun, then, when the last song was 8 tiny songs, deceptively divided by dramatic pauses so long, that they each elicited awkward applause. Every false ending was excruciating because I nearly tricked myself into calming down, to only realize we were still stuck. Again and again. Hotel California. It was relief edging… which I suppose is just what regular, unmodified edging is, too.
In case you were wondering, I am still on the choir’s email list, and last week they had to cancel their Zoom rehearsal because a storm knocked out the pianist’s Wi-Fi. After my panic attack (which was an awesome way to make their hard-won concert about me), and in a twisted act of mental gymnastics, I signed up for a weekly stand up comedy class that just so happened to meet at the same time as their rehearsals. Incredible how to me that made it lawfully impossible to join the choir. Incredible to me that I think and live like this. I may not be disciplined about writing or committing to strange and unnecessary extracurriculars, but I am pretty good at inventing logic and posting pictures of Sarah Jessica Parker reading books in public on Instagram.
I’ve run out of steam, but I hope you’re staying afloat, and if you have a panic attack any time soon, just stick your arms and/or legs into the fridge and/or freezer. Alternatively, sing out loud (Nyad mode remix). In singing “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant” to yourself, you will distract your feral mind, and eventually, your stunted breathing will correct. Brenda and Eddie. Works like a charm.
Big love,
kaylasomething
When I was fact-checking this, I found the movie is just My Policeman. But I’m leaving it as is because it’s my silly email.
Could not fact-check this because it’s a metaphor. Hope you understand xo