Singing Through the Shadows: Chapter Three: That's Not Your Life

That's not your life at all

Song written by Bella Payne | Bella Payne: Vocals, Acoustic Guitar | Brian Jerin: Electric Guitar, Production | Jude Kahle: Bass, Saxophone, Production | John Boote: Drums, Production | Rebecca Zapen: Violin, Vocals, Production | Betsey Federman: Cello, Production | Chris Estes: Producer

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That’s Not Your Life

We know better

We know what to say

In this chaos, you keep slipping away.

It’s morning before school of my senior year. Two months before graduation. My first time not only being accepted into the school musical but given the lead role, and we have our first performance next week. I am terrified.

I am also shaking from the lack of sleep.

Last night, my father’s booming voice shook the whole house awake. They were fighting. It wasn’t until they finally stopped their tantrums that I was able to fall asleep just a few hours before my alarm would go off.

I hated them.

Several years ago, I made the mistake of going into the living room, asking them to keep their voices down so I could sleep. Indignant, they scoffed and yelled at me to go back to bed. I was shocked and sad, feeling as if no one loved me or cared.

Now, I just hate them.

I stare into the mirror and add some gel to spike up my two inch bleach blonde hair. The theater director almost had a heart attack when she saw how short I had cut it. Never one to pass up an opportunity to explode, she raged at me in front of the whole cast, the next day, calmly reassuring me they had ordered a wig for my role as the Southern Belle in some backwoods musical that took place in Mississippi.

At this point in my life, I was so used to adults like this woman, similar to my parents. These so-called grown-ups who took every opportunity to yell at young people as if it was their oxygen.

The little glimmer in their eyes as they screamed was hard to detect if it was the first time for you. But I had received so many of these verbal lashings for as far back as I could remember, and from so many people in all directions.

School and home were the most prominent.

Once you get to the phase where it doesn’t shock you so much anymore, you can pay close enough attention to catch this very faint smile curl up on one side of the mouth and a little sparkle in the eyes.

But be careful about yelling back. Believe me. I have tried it many times, and it never goes well. You have to be a sadist like them in order to win a shouting match. Because, and it took me a long time to figure this out, for them, shouting is just a tool. It’s not the main event. What they really want is to humiliate you, and they can do that with a shout or a whisper. All they have to do is expose your weak spot.

And so, if you choose to engage in a back and forth shouting match, the way they will win is to lean in close, capture your gaze with their eyes, and calmly tell you how rotten you are, but in a very specific kind of way.

Like this theatre director.

This intimidating high school teacher with a PhD in Theater, who I would soon find out all the kids called “Ursula” when she wasn’t around, was a force that terrified me. She had the presence of a domineering man set in the body of a heavy-set middle-aged woman. Her stare could elicit fear in any of us.

I was five minutes late to rehearsal one Saturday. Car trouble. I was in a panic, knowing exactly what would happen when I arrived. Sure enough, I rushed into the theatre, out of breath, and Ursula stopped her speech to the cast, calmly looked over at me, leaned back a little and raised her chin, and after an agonizing thirty seconds of dramatic silence supported by an intense stare, she began speaking in an indignant tone that I seemed to think I was more special than everyone and how dare I come to rehearsal so late as if I deserve some kind of special treatment and how disrespectful you are and get out of here I don’t even want to look at you!

Shocked, I went into the hallway. I didn’t know how long I was supposed to stay there, but she had just said all the things I feared the most.

That people think I’m entitled. That I am disrespectful. That I make them so angry that they can’t even tolerate looking at me.

My throat became tight.

I was not going to cry at school!

I was not going to break down into sobs!

I would not shake with pent-up fear that had just been poked at, that I am not just unloved, but hated! That my belief in my voice is a total delusion! I will not do that!

My face hot and the muscles around my mouth tight with the pressure of a rushing river against a great dam inside me… I couldn’t stop the tears.

Using all of my willpower. I managed to stop.

Even more than Ursula, I feared the way my castmates would see me now. They must agree with her. But when I was finally invited back in, it was by a student whose main focus at school was in the Theater department ever since she arrived as a freshman, and she was my age. Before we went back in, she hugged me and whispered that now I was in the club.

What?

She looked me in the eye and said, she does that to all of us.

I was shocked.

Ms. Davis was kind of a stuck-up type, but she would never belittle any of us in the way that Ursula had just done. How on earth were these people able to survive four years of that treatment?

The yearly musical drew kids from all four performance departments: Theater, Dance, Vocal, and Instrumental, as well as the Technical Theatre department that built the sets, designed the costumes, manned the lights and sound, and managed the stage. It was a full-on professional operation meant to train us to become theater professionals in the future. Which is why it was such a big deal to me to be in that position, and I felt I was ruining my chances of a career in that very moment.

But sure enough, when I went back into the theatre, I felt the sympathy of several kids, especially the theater majors. And I felt it back for them. I had no idea. It was like they were living in my house, but at school.

You were always on my mind.

You were always on my mind.

The musical rehearsals went on.

Thanks to the training I had received at home, I now understood exactly who I was dealing with. At home, I had mastered the fawn response. I learned how to smile more and appear unbothered by her angry outbursts, so strong and unfazable, easy to continue rehearsing a scene despite the humiliation.

Knowing I was in “the club” gave me a certain kind of strength I didn’t have at home. Because at least at school, in this theater, I knew every time Ursula said something cruel, the other kids were on my side.

We gave four brilliant performances.

My wig stayed on perfectly. My solo performance of the pretty love ballad got the applause I had hoped for. Everybody loved me, and Ursula gave a speech to the cast after closing night about how strong and determined I had been. As she donned that phony mask of the supportive teacher, I looked back and thought, I hate you. And if this is what musical theater is like, then count me out. I will not go into a career where people are allowed to humiliate you in front of others. Fuck you.

I drove home that night, realizing that there would be no other path but that of the independent musician, for me. I tried to imagine myself at a conservatory singing in choirs every day for the next four years, auditioning for musicals and vocal groups, another version of this school, but in another state.

Did I really have it in me to go another four years of this nonsense?

Did I even have to?

We didn’t talk about any other way of life for the musician, so I really had no idea.

How did singer-songwriters get by?

How did anyone make any money to sustain a life of music without a well-funded theater behind them or a pop music contract from a major record label?

I realized I would have to move to L.A. or New York to try and make it as a singer-songwriter. There would be no other way. I couldn’t stand the thought of being around people like Ursula or even Ms. Davis, even though my new experiences taught me that some people are worse than others. But the thought that someone like that could have any kind of power over me filled me with a rage I can’t even describe, but I can remember.

Even today, as I sit writing this chapter in my L.A. studio after 28 years of being an independent musician, I can feel that twitching in my masseter muscles at the memory of trying so hard to not shout back at Ursula, Ms. Davis, or my parents, holding back the urge to lash out that I would defy them. That I would be successful, and I would also never consent to being yelled at or humiliated in order to appease someone with power over me. That if I had to live in a studio apartment and eat beans and rice every day, I would do it. I would preserve my love of music at all costs, and no one would ever be allowed to take my voice.

Of course, I am writing this in hindsight, and I know that things don’t always turn out as you hope they will…

Oh my!

Oh God!

That’s not your life at all!

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