Brain-Picking Becky

BFF’s musings and reflections on this crazy life.

Being Me Fully (Happy Pride!)

For the longest time, I thought that because I married a man and had babies, I couldn’t be bi/pansexual.


When I first met my husband-to-be as a wee 22 year old, I hadn’t yet claimed queerness as a part of my identity. I’d been on dates with other women and had engaged in plenty of fantasies involving women, men, and enbies, but it took decades to work through the shame United Baptism had left inside of me surrounding my sexual identity and expression. Once I let go of that shame and accepted my sexual desires, I still felt like an imposter. How could I be queer if I hadn’t had sex with a woman? How could I truly be pan if I’d married a man?

Turns out I was repressed, oppressed, disconnected from myself, and completely confused about what queer even means.

The past two years have been transformative for me. My sister began her journey with transitioning, inspiring me to more fully embrace my own queer side. I also realized that I don’t need to sleep with anyone to prove my sexuality. And Covidlife made me realize how so very wrong America is in basically every way possible, especially as it relates to sexual identity and gender roles. A white supremacist, heteronormative, capitalist, imperialist, war-mongering, oligarch-worshipping patriarchy? Yeah, not surprised it sucks.

Instead of forcing myself to fit into one of our society’s checkboxes, I’m ready to step outside of the whole thing and live another way, focused on honesty, creativity, collaboration, collective healing, and love – for myself, for you, for all creatures, for the entire planet.

Guess what? It feels awesome to finally accept and explore my full self and to restructure my days around the philosophies I believe in, rather than the ones I was raised in and still felt chained to as an adult.

What’s also awesome is how incredibly supportive my husband has been throughout this journey. Not just supportive, but totally on board. I’m so grateful to have such a co-collaborator/conspirator in life (I think in a few past lives, too). Together, we are raising and homeschooling two kids, creating and maintaining a beautiful home, making loud rock-n-roll music, engaging in local activism. Now we get to explore my queerness together, too? I’m swooning.

Sending big love and good-sex vibes out to everyone. Happy pride, y’all!! 🌈

Is real life just a fiction?

One day when I was angry over the constraints of American society, I created a 20-something, closeted bi girl named Jessie. Her story took place in a yoga studio where she was trying to discover why her artistic inspiration had vanished. Without thinking twice, I threw in my favorite meditation.

The idea of this meditation is to envision yourself lying in a beautiful forest beside a river, surrounded by fallen leaves. As a thought enters your mind, you picture yourself picking up a leaf and dropping it into the flowing water. It drifts onward and away, just like the thought drifts in and out of your mind. But Jessie is a ruminator, and also resistant to change, so her version went like this:​​ 

“She envisions herself lying in the woods by a creek, the warm sun beating down on her skin. Breathe in, hold, release.  For every thought that enters her mind she picks up a leaf from the ground, feels its crinkly, dry edges on her fingertips, and drops it into the water.  Then the leaf plasters itself against a rock, splayed out so she can see every word of the thought shining in the sun.”

Whenever I tried this meditation again, leaf thoughts started splaying out for me, too, and I could no longer let them flow onward. My favorite meditation was ruined. I told myself that day: be more careful about turning real life into fiction. 

As I was drafting my first novel, a futuristic dystopian story about a young musician connecting with her radical side, I found myself analyzing the reverse of this. Just ask any sci-fi writer: fiction can become real as quickly as reality can become fictional. 3D printers. Tablets. The metaverse. All of this was thought up in fiction well before it existed in real life. If you can dream it, you can make it.

I began to wonder what the difference between fiction and reality truly is. Isn’t society itself just one big Paracosm, an incredibly detailed, imaginary world, that we’ve all agreed to believe in? 

I find this thought to be full of hope. The next time I sit down to meditate, I try the river in the woods again. The leaf thoughts drop into the water, flow toward a rock, and, for the first time in years, keep going, the river carrying them away toward a future built on dreams.

My Luck Dragon

 

One winter evening long ago, I was out with Dave and our friend/band member Ben Jaffe when we stopped by “The Thing,” an awesome secondhand shop in Greenpoint filled with extremely strange and wonderful objects. Ben picked up an old dusty piece of art in one of those gaudy brass frames and said, “This one’s from the Willy Wonka art dealer!” We giggled then took turns offering up commentary on other random items.

But the Willy Wonka art dealer stuck with me. I wondered what else he would buy and sell, how he would describe each piece, what his voice would sound like. He was probably creepy. I would probably want to hide from him.

The lyrics to this song started from there then grew into an outlet for my angst and anger over being young in America – how we were left with a recession, a broken society, a dying planet, yet were still expected to work 9-5 and pay the rent. I wanted a luck dragon to fly in and rescue me, leaving nothing but flames behind. 

This anger rings truer today than ever before, but instead of hiding or running, I’ve become more empowered to get organized. Capitalism in America has run amuck. We don’t need a luck dragon to save us; if we come together and fight as a collective, we can save ourselves.

Not sure how to do this? Consider getting involved with the Working Families Party, a movement focused on creating a system that supports all Americans, not just the 1%.

And if you’re into rock-n-roll, check out Ben Jaffe’s latest musical project, Pill.

You, Ruminating

 

Renee Ashley (pictured) is a phenomenal poet, one who breaks rules, challenges conventions, and leaves her readers changed. I discovered the poem “[you]” shortly after my mom left her body; its words rang in my head during those sleepless nights, both comforting and haunting me.

Rumi’s poem, the spoken-word intro to this song, also resonated with me during this time. I found the concept of a thousand barrels of wine to be wonderfully absurd, and I loved the idea of being so genuinely apathetic that nothing mattered beyond those barrels. The whole thing had a playful feel to it, yet I sensed something sinister there. I ended up putting the two poems together, turning “You, Ruminating” into a place to explore and transform my grief, and into one of my favorite songs from my band’s recent album, One Day,

Want to hear more of our songs? Check out The Brooklyn Players Reading Society at:

Website: thebprs.com
Bandcamp: The BPRS
YouTube: The Brooklyn Players Reading Society

Organize, Act Up, Disrupt!

“The Way is Already” – a protest song from One Day, an EP by my band, The Brooklyn Players Reading Society


I am absolutely thrilled over the facts that we have a new president and a more progressive Senate. I loved watching Kamala Harris’s historical inauguration and Amanda Gorman’s powerful performance. I celebrated the win in Georgia and gleefully toasted a glass to Stacey Abrams. And damn, it felt good.

But y’all, as much as we want him to be, Joe Biden is not our savior. He’s obviously an improvement, but if his track record as an Establishment Democrat means anything, he’s not going to end inhumane deportations, secure reproductive rights, protect transpeople, overhaul our justice system, nor begin the long overdue process of dismantling white supremacy – unless we make him.

It’s on us to hold our new president and Congresspeople accountable. Remember, they work for us. It’s also on us, especially those of us who are white, to work on ourselves, on recognizing and undoing our biases and on committing to a life of actively being antiracist.

But guess what? We don’t have to do this work alone. In fact, we can’t do it alone. It’s time to start collaborating, to come together and organize, act up, disrupt. And what a nice thing it is to be able to use our joy as motivation to keep up the work!

Not sure how to get started? Here’s a list of suggestions for you:


Social justice organizations I like (there are so many more):

Resources for antiracism:

 

Photo: Martin Luther King Jr. quote on a Pride Flag, available for sale by hburrell

Coming Home



“One Day,” the song that lent its name to The Brooklyn Players Reading Society’s new EP, was the very first song I ever wrote. I was 23, working in coffee shops, unsure about what I wanted in life and anxious as hell about it. The words to this song had been floating around my brain for weeks, but I hadn’t yet recognized them as lyrics. I was confident in my identity as a writer, but my anxiety disorder had buried the musician in me long ago. The idea of singing my words had never occurred to me.

And then one evening, after a profound conversation with Dave in which he’d convinced me to try making music again, I found myself on the G train, lugging an enormous 88-key Yamaha home from Guitar Center, listening to those words bounce around my head.

At first I only played through scales and a few songs I remembered from talent shows, but over time, I started improvising a little – something I’d never done before. My past life as a musician had been focused on playing sheet music perfectly, and this focus only fed my anxiety. The act of sitting down and playing whatever I wanted felt freeing, empowering even.

I kept returning to a simple bass groove with a syncopated melody over it, but I was never quite satisfied. The words in my head continually protruded themselves into my mouth, daring me to let them out. One day, when I was certain that Dave and our across-the-hall neighbor were both at work and therefore unable to hear me, I finally decided to give it a try. Heart pounding, I opened my lips and sang. It was scary, but it was also amazing, and the more I sang, the better it felt.

It took a couple of weeks to work up enough courage to play my song for Dave – so long as he sat in a separate room of the apartment in silence with the lights out – but that was enough to urge me on. “One Day” grew from there until a few years later, I got up on a stage, sat behind my keyboard and started singing into a mic, Dave on the drums beside me. My fingers shook, my breath came in spurts, and I wanted to puke, but I didn’t. Somehow, I made it through the song, and when the crowd clapped and “woo”-ed for us at the end, a rush of pure glee came over me. I understood for the very first time that performing could actually be fun.

“One Day” has morphed and grown over the years, but still, whenever I play it, I feel a special kind of contentment settle in me, like all the different versions of myself are coming home together, warm and safe inside this song.

My Three Moms and a Dave

This month marks 18 years living in the Northeast, 13 of them in Brooklyn. Before that I spent 18 years in KY. And now, in the same month in which I crossed this personal threshold of an equal number of years here as there, I find myself packing up my apartment and moving back to Middle America because Dave and I can no longer afford the rent. 

Covid did the unthinkable: it shut down New York City’s entertainment and nightlife industry. Dave, like so many others, is out of work indefinitely. It’s a huge loss, not just of income but of a whole community. 

But get this – my sister, Kelly, bought the house next door to my sibling, Max, then invited us to spend the upcoming year in one big Covid family compound. Four adults (aka my three moms and a Dave), four kids, two dogs, and one cat, doing our best to make it through this pandemic, this curse/gift of remote school and virtual offices, this country’s blatant racism, this frightening election season, this even more frightening climate crisis, together.

When I first left for college in Boston, I never would have guessed that I would fall in love with the Northeast, that I would come to identify myself as a New Yorker, as a part of the city, the city a part of me. It is hard to leave; there is sadness to be felt. But I am also very excited. Covid has pushed me into a place I never would have imagined. It’s scary and beautiful and full of magic. I am so grateful to have landed like this.

Will we return to a life in Brooklyn? I hope so. But these days, who knows what the future will bring. I’m still setting goals and dreaming dreams, but I’m not committing myself to any of them. Truth is, we never knew – and will never know – what the future holds for us. We humans built a society and made plans that gave us a false sense of control, of power, of certainty. We trusted it would continue despite how shaky, broken, and inherently oppressive it all is. Covid has changed me. It has changed us all. I would never choose any of this, but now that it’s here, I want to be changed by it.

I might not know where I’ll be living, what I’ll be doing, or what our country will even look like in a year from now, but what I do know is that I will never stop trying to bring a little more peace, justice, and joy into this existence. Too many people, especially people of color and immigrants, are not landing like my family is. Instead they are being murdered by police. They are being beaten and thrown into cages by ICE. They are being told that their lives don’t matter as much as the walls of their neighbors’ houses. They are being harassed by landlords, forcing them to choose between paying for food or paying for rent. There is no going back. And why would we? Our country was founded upon genocide and built upon slavery. All of its systems are rooted in white supremacy and the exploitation of labor. Our entire world is burning, literally and metaphorically.

This is our opportunity to transform.

Do the Work

How many more black people need to be murdered in order for white people to care?

Breonna TaylorBreonna Taylor, murdered in her sleep by police officers who forced their way into
her home in search of a man who had already been arrested.

This is on us. We as white people have to take action, and we have to constantly engage in our own anti-racism work in order to understand how we benefit from white supremacy, how we contribute to it, and how we can undo the hurtful, dangerous, racial biases that exist inside all of us. It doesn’t matter if you’re “one of the good ones.” Are you white in America? That means you have work to do.

Our country is not safe for people of color. Our entire system is built upon genocide, slavery, and white supremacy, and that didn’t just go away when the Civil War ended. BIPOC have been terrorized by white people since the founding of the U.S.A. and they continue to be hunted down, jailed, and murdered by hateful white people who are encouraged and emboldened by a hateful system and a hateful history. It is on all of our white shoulders to stop this.

George FloydGeorge Floyd, pinned to the ground and murdered by a police officer.

I am embarrassed. In my last post, I dove deep into my own pain about Covid and described what it has done to NYC, yet I did not at all examine what it has done to communities of color, what our police force and many healthcare providers and our “justice” system have done – and keep doing – to people of color. I threw in a few sentences about recognizing my white privilege and felt like that was enough. It took someone calling me out on Facebook for me to realize it absolutely isn’t enough at all.

Recognizing privilege is not the same as taking action. White people MUST ACT. Where is our outrage? Are we just so used to seeing black bodies pinned under white peoples’ knees, to seeing them dead in the streets, that we don’t feel anything in response?

I’m going to unplug for a bit and dedicate the time I would be spending on blogging and social media toward engaging in anti-racism work instead, both in myself and in my community. Sharing my personal story doesn’t matter right now. Nothing else matters right now.

Get to work.

Resources for Anti-Racism Work


Organizations to Follow


Instagram Accounts to Follow

There’s an inspiring and educational dialogue happening on Instagram about race relations, art, music, gender identity, American history, and how this all intersects. Do not follow these accounts if you have not already started on your own work. It is not okay to go into their spaces and be disrespectful or to center the discussion around yourself. This is a wonderful opportunity to listen to and learn from others. Don’t waste it.

Also, find out what district you live in and which politicians represent you so that you can start making those calls and sending those tweets.

 

Photo Credits
1. Instagram/@keyanna.guifarro
2. Offices of Ben Crump Law