Not Quite Silence: Finding My Voice, Nurturing Others’ Loudness

Today, in response to a request to write a piece about Speak Up (applications for the April 9-11 training are due next Wednesday, February 17th – nudge nudge plug plug), I wrote back that actually, I’d prefer it if one of the 2009 alumna or the soon-to-be minted 2010 alumni wrote about it – to quote myself (which I realize is a total jackass move, but whatevs): I’m trying to encourage other folks to step up and take leadership roles on stuff like this – I don’t have to/want to be the only person taking a public stance on this issue and the potential for media advocacy.

One of my major missions for this year is to step back, kill the ego and actively make space for other people to shine and become leaders. It’s important – but also, I’ll admit, a little painful and difficult sometimes. I’m not getting the same kind of attention and requests for my brilliant presence (cough) as I once did. I’m more than a little relieved about this and it does my introvert heart good – but I won’t pretend that I’m 100% celebrating it. I admit that it bummed me out to not get an invite to be a speaker at Yale’s Sex Week – and I know this is silly, as I probably would’ve said no anyway, like I said no to Harvard last fall… but there it is.

As I do this work of advocacy and training and getting behind other people, I often feel like I have to do the work of rediscovering my voice. As I dig deeper I find that in a weird way I miss the reckless writing (and living? probably more so the writing) of my blog’s youth, the tits-out insanity of it all. But still, I love this, and do really feel that big pieces of it are my calling, and its something that makes me feel – well, in poly relationship speak… it’s compersion (the opposite of jealousy – celebrating loved ones’ successes and loves).

I don’t truly fear that I myself am getting lost in all this – actually, I think I have a lot more clarity and am a lot more centered. As a friend said to me recently: “You’re more like a person these days.” And I am – I am feeling well rounded and complex and like I’m not just obsessing over work and sex and identity (though let’s be clear, that stuff is always and ever a bubbling presence).

But I miss my voice, I miss the flow of writing and exploring for the sake of it, writing in that bleeding-on-the-keyboard I-don’t-care-who’s-reading way I used to do in the Waking Vixen of yore. I still occasionally hit my stride with that writing, and when I do – oh, it gives me chills. I can pretend I don’t like the spotlight, I can pretend that I’m not the exhibitionist I once was… these things are true, in a way. But also, one of my truths is that I am also all that. And I’m not really afraid of it, because I do dive in deep (I have two essays I’m writing now for anthologies that will be raw like whoa) when I get the chance… but the space doesn’t just exist automatically anymore.

It’s a jumble – balancing these things. Or: fuck balance. Just living. When this writing and thinking burbles up, it feels weird and uncomfortable. The thrust of my work now is so much toward this hyper-professional, polished work. Which is good and compelling and I just want to sink my teeth into it. But I also want to write the ugliness and the insecurities… the creative stuff. I want that stuff to bleed out, I don’t want this totally together and sanitized life (am I asking for disaster?).

So maybe all that is some kind of introduction to the video I’m about to post – though I didn’t intend for this writing to be that. For the past year I’ve been tinkering with writing a one-woman show called “Media Whore.” It’s on the backburner now, though I’ve written a first draft, because I’m not quite ready to connect with it and perform it. And frankly I’m just not really sure what my creative likfe looks like anymore. It’s still really just an emotive piece of writing, not a performance piece. Back in November at the Sex Worker Literati that ushered in the weekend of the NYC Sex Blogger Calendar, I read an excerpt of the piece. I describe it in the video as the story of why I do what I do. And that’s kind of true, in a meta sense (oh meta, my friend!).

I hope you enjoy the video – and I hope I can write more like this. Because it might have value to you and the world at large, but it sure means a lot to me.

P.S. – RSS readers, Waking Vixen has a new look. Just a little bit new, not massively. I dropped a lot of the pages because I’m terrible at updating them. The blog is the homepage again – old school. There are videos front and center (well, on the right hand side, technically), and more stuff in the sidebars.