#No.Filter: Vulnerability vs The Wall
This blog series is an accompaniment to the performance of #No.Filter: an exercise in vulnerability for clarinet, electronics, and film which will premier original works at Resonance Cafe, March 25 at 9pm.
Vulnerability.
It's a weird thing.
I don't have it, not really. I don't live my life publicly.... vulnerably like many people of my generation typically do.
This is in no way a criticism of those who choose to be open, especially on the playground of social media, it is just not me.
I have no religion except for the religion that my issues are my own, my battles are my battles and they are for no one else to know. I wage war in silence.
I have long believed that vulnerability is a synonym for weakness, and nothing makes me want to crawl out of my skin quite like being perceived as weak.
How much of this has to do with my own twisted sense of self? How much of this has to do with my upbringing? How much has to do with societal stereotypes of women being "weak" or the necessity of being a "strong woman"? I suspect it is a combination.
And what does that even mean to be a strong woman? I have my own personal idea of what this ideal "strong woman" is. Perhaps we shall save my ludicrous image of this woman for tomorrow.....
I digress.... I honestly don't know why I hold these beliefs and I haven't given much thought to it. I am how I am and I am fairly comfortable with it. And while I am open to finding a way to change in the future I am not interested in dissecting my past looking for the WHY. I don't think it matters. I have no insight to offer, through all my redeeming qualities, the bad habits, the quirks... like absolute music, I just am.
I spent countless years on and off in therapy with more therapists than I can remember.. (There you go, my first admission, my first step in vulnerability... I've been head shrunk.) I have no answers, no insight.... they didn't either... I just have experiences which have shaped me, I believe, for the better.
I recognize the dissonance in myself, the contradiction... being simultaneously strong yet terrified, desperately "wanting" to never need anything which is actually a searing need itself, bold and timid, loud and silenced, stormy but afraid to make waves.
I watch from the sidelines with admiration and curiosity as others live their lives openly, truthfully, exposed. In protecting myself at all costs I find myself now disconnected, I can say that I have lived in this wonderful city of Montreal for six years and no one here really knows me. I made it that way.
There is no better time like the present to fix it.
A demain.
