I'm Full of Surprises

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I'm usually very private. I prefer to keep my deepest ideas to myself until I'm ready to share. Though I do open up quite a bit around my close friends, I don't put a lot of myself out in public very often. I don't have a lot of really big surprises. Instead, I have many, many little ones.

For example, despite having performed more shows than I can count, despite having been in several bands (a few of which actually performed in public), and despite having a degree in music, which required me to take voice lessons, sight singing classes, and two semesters of choir (an insult I put off until my senior semesters), I'm extremely shy about singing in public, where public is "where anyone else could possibly hear me".

I have a decent voice. I have a good range. I have good control. I'm very far out of practice, but if I concentrated on breathing and singing exercises, I could do pretty well in a band again.

I don't particularly have stage fright. I've done enough concerts and shows between bands, my drama group from college, and choir, not to mention a double-handful of public-speaking engagments in the past few years, that being in front of people doesn't bother me. Yet I still feel nervous about singing in public.

What does frighten me though is deep water. The summer before my senior year of college, I went rafting on the Payette river north of Boise. The river there has some very serious rapids and you need an experienced guide. We had one. I'd never liked being on the ocean before, being prone to nausea as a child, but rivers were okay.

There's a spot on the river where it goes around a corner, passes under a bridge, and meets another river. When the water runs high, as it did that day, the water dips and leaps and throws the raft around like a leaf. The right approach is to dig deeply with the paddle and keep moving forward, enjoying the ride but moving out of the hole.

When I saw the rapids start, I leaned down and started paddling as strongly as possible. I remember feeling the bow dip — I was at the front on the right — and then I remember looking up at the raft from underneath. The river had popped the front of the raft up in the air and I flew out, into the water.

I don't remember how I ended up floating ahead of the raft again, but I leaned back as far as I could to keep my head out of the water, pointed my toes straight ahead, losing the right watersock in the process, and hoped I wouldn't drown. After passing through the rapids (more difficult than it sounds) and floating for a couple of very long minutes, the guide threw out a ballasted rope and they dragged me in. I had resigned myself to drowning, cut down at 16 years old, but that was not yet the end.

I haven't been on a raft since then. Coughing up river water is unpleasant, but having nightmares about the event for weeks afterward was worse.

Many people don't know that I enjoy history. I've explored the idea sometimes of writing historical fiction, or at least fiction that pays homage to a real period of history. For example, I have a wonderful idea for a fantasy story set in Arizona in the 1870s. It might even make a good comic book.

In college, I spent a lot of time one semester tracing the development of a particular branch of Roman Catholic theology, specifically the veneration of Mary. (I'm not Roman Catholic.) I found the idea of tracking the progression of an idea very interesting, though, so I chose something that seemed as if it would be dramatic. It was; I had to do primary research from translations of writers from the first through the eleventh centuries. This was endlessly fascinating — I could see how the current arguments developed from ideas to ideas about ideas through the years.

History isn't the only motivator for writing projects. I have an idea for a series of computer role-playing games inspired by the structure of the Divine Commedy, an experimental weblog fiction project, and once wrote most of a book of poetry capped by an extended modern poem written in several computer programming languages. I've written a play, most of a children's book, and hope one day to write an episode of a TV show. No, I don't have one in mind.

Many people also don't know that someday I want to record an entire CD of original music. What will it be? I don't know for sure. I suspect it'll be an industrial rock opera. I really like the idea of letting an entire story develop subtly in bits and pieces, hidden beneath the surface. If I could build a recording studio in my basement (I lack the time, discretionary income, and, well, the basement), I would do this.

One hobby I've always wanted to pursue but haven't yet tried is ballroom dance. I realize that sounds silly. I've seen "Strictly Ballroom" and know it's silly. Still, it seems classy and elegant to know how to do this and, with the right partner, seems that it would be a lot of fun. I have this kind of fantasy that I'll be at a party where it'll be appropriate to know how to dance and I'll be good at it and seem handsome and charming.

Speaking of feeling handsome, I rarely do. I often feel insecure about my appearance. I think I have a big head, a long nose, pale skin, a slightly chipped tooth, misbehaved hair, and ten pounds to gain before I feel really comfortable in my own skin. Do other people see those things when they look at me? Probably not. I know my own flaws too well; they're probably busy magnifying their own.