Anxiety and a broken bass string: my spring break
I’ve got senioritis. Usually the symptoms are an uncontrollable
urge to be at the farthest point on the earth from your alma mater
and to be in the most anti-academic mental state possible.
It’s a condition brought on by extended periods of non-school
activity, for example, spring break. So right about now I should be
feeling restless because I have only 10 weeks of school left until
graduation and feverish because I can see the finish line. But I’m
not. I think I’ve developed a new resistant strain of
senioritis.
Rather than feel restless to go, I feel restless about what’s
out there. Real Life. One week of spring break is just enough free
time for me to get worked up over the fact that I don’t know what
the fuck I’m going to do when I get out of here. Life is a tough
question to get stuck on, because there are so many variables. So
I’ve had my feet up and my 40-ouncer at hand and for spring break,
I’ve been thrashing around the possibilities of my future, trying
to answer questions like: What will make me happy? What do I do for
a job? Do I look fat in these jeans? What do I do for rent? And,
what is life anyway? I need a plan. I need a sound bite I can drop
at parties or to my parents. The only problem is that sound bites
never make the whole point.
For instance, how come there are so many of those catch phrases
that begin with "Life is…"? It seems like everybody’s got one.
And if their particular phrase is so true, why do I always feel
like nothing that person could possibly say is relevant to my life?
It’s always the guy on the bus who talks too loud or the weird
people next to you at a small Italian restaurant. "Life is a bowl
of cherries." Is this something good? Does that mean if I eat too
much life I’ll have to run to the bathroom? Or that sweet things
always have pits? Or, "Life is a bed of roses." It sure looks
comfortable, but whatever you do, don’t lie down. You’ll cut
yourself really badly.
These are the kinds of things I get stuck on. I could wax
moronic indefinitely, but last week I was strangely interrupted in
the midst of my high anxiety. I had a moment of epiphany. Maybe it
was life kicking me in the nards. Maybe it was a wake-up call from
the Almighty. Or maybe I just had to learn something the hard way.
So let me fill you in on the dope …
People were going nuts. The last chord of our first song rang
out over the crowd. My bass buzzed a low rumble. My gold lamè
jumpsuit was slipping in sweat. My sixth sense told me we were
rocking! Randy, the drummer, counted off the next song and we
ripped into it. I was singing and, looking out over the audience, I
saw lips moving in the same motions as mine. People were getting
down!
Then it happened, not with the fanfare of an amazing solo
pushing my bass guitar beyond its limits, but with the simple down
stroke of a singular E flat. My second string broke off! It was
gone and I was in trouble. My stress level jumped from normal stage
fright to def-con one. I was singing the words, thinking "fuck,
fuck, fuck!" and trying to transpose my bassline.
Luckily, Bryan was ham enough to cover me. He was singing along
acting extra goofy while I struggled through the song, an
expression on my face akin to the kind you get passing a
watermelon. We finished the song and as the last chord rung out, I
don’t remember what the crowd was doing  I was numb. My
second string hung off the neck like a hangman’s noose,
appropriately enough, because that was about how I was feeling
about my own neck.
This was my moment of realization, like when Siddhartha uttered
the sacred "Om" under the bodhi tree. All my tension and
nervousness was transmuted into a single resolution: go on. And at
that moment, I realized that it’s not what you’re dealt, but how
you deal with it, so I stepped to the microphone and asked if there
were any basses in the house.
A blond drag queen bolted for the stage door and did some
yelling and in a minute, the bass player from the first band handed
me his guitar. I flung the strap over my shoulder and the bass felt
like it was around my ankles. The neck of the guitar was too wide,
the strings too close together. Everything was awkward. By the time
I was up and running, we were already halfway through the next
song. I got back to the mike for the last chorus and the crowd
yelled out what to me felt like a sigh of relief. I struggled with
the bass, but managed to make it work. The last chord of the third
song rang out and the crowd went nuts. The show always goes on.
It was in that moment that I realized that life wasn’t about
figuring it out or having the absolute plan. Life is about dealing
with it. Viktor Frankl said it like this: "Life ultimately means
taking the responsibility to find the answer to its problems, and
to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each
individual."
The whole bass fiasco brings me back to my plans (read: worries)
for the future. Part of the plan, I realized that night, is
planning for the unexpected. Part of getting what I want from life
is leaving room for what I don’t know yet.
So I’m dealing with my problems one at a time, deciding how I’m
going to pay rent before I worry about which job will be the career
path to glory. I’m worrying not about graduating but about how I
can accomplish what I want to get done. And I’m figuring out that
living my life is not about reaching a point where everything will
become easy, just because I’m so fucking wise.
Life is an ongoing process. It’s the ability to learn on the
fly, to integrate while in flux that enables us to succeed. Riding
the waves. Understanding the moments and snatching joy from the
jaws of despair. There is no return to innocence, only a grasping
of reality. So now, I’m realizing that life, like the show, must go
on, with or without a bass string.
Kaizen, a senior ethnomusicology student, can be reached at
LSMFT0 (that’s a zero) @AOL.Com. His column appears on alternate
Mondays.