"If there's music inside of you, you've got to let it out." (From my song, Music Inside of Me)

Hi! I'm Trudy Rushin, and this is my blog, created in June 2009. I am a singer-songwriter-composer who plays guitar. Born and bred in Cape Town, South Africa, I blog about whatever captures my imagination or moves me. Sometimes I even come up with what I like to call 'the Rushin Solution'. Enjoy my random rantings. Comment, if you like,
or find me on Facebook: Trudy Rushin, Singer-Songwriter.

I also do gigs - solo, duo or trio - so if you're looking for vocal-guitar jazz music to add a sprinkle of magic to your event, send me an e-mail to guitartrudy@gmail.com.

To listen to me singing one or two of my original songs, type my name on www.soundcloud.com or www.youtube.com


















Friday, 14 April 2017

Six more sleeps

22nd of Feb, a day on which I had two back-to-back meetings, an offer was extended to me which changed my idea of what 2017 was going to be like for me. You know how it is when you feel ready for some kind of freshness, a change from your everyday routine (or lack thereof!), and something new finds you? That.

That day, I rushed from one meeting with two interesting and empowered women, to another meeting, also with two interesting and empowered women. This one involved a project I had recently become part of - the World's Children's Prize for the Rights of the Child.  

I arrived late (always rushin') and envisaged myself creeping into the room, apologising for my lateness, and quietly getting a sense of what had been discussed so far. Instead, before I could even settle down, I was asked, “Would you like to go to Sweden?” I felt like I do when I walk past those people in the supermarkets with trays of my favourite Lindt chocolate, the ones wrapped in red paper, and they ask me, “Would you like a chocolate?” I basically want to relieve them of the tray, but politely take one, smile, and say, “Thank you.”


Well, that was seven weeks ago. Today is exactly one week till I board a plane and fly to Sweden, via Dubai. Reading that sentence, I feel like it couldn’t possibly be about me, and yet it is. If I told you I’ve been too busy to feel excited, you’d think I was being fake-cool, but that’s actually the truth. How I squeezed all the arrangements for going abroad into my crazily busy schedule, I can’t tell you. Thanks to the cool people involved, and others in the company who regularly process paperwork for staff travelling abroad, I managed to do what needed to be done.  

But there’s another side to this, and it’s about my personality – I tend to worry a lot. (That is such an understatement, that my family and friends reading this are probably laughing.) So, instead of easing my way through the next couple of days, I'm feeling the pressure of all the things I haven’t done yet and how few days I have in which to achieve everything.  Going to a country that far north, with a climate so different to ours, has all kinds of implications for what to pack. The truth is, I have to buy some important items, to cope with the temperatures there. I will be in a town called Mariefred (close to Stockholm), from the 22nd to the 29th of April, so I basically need appropriate clothing for a week. Okay, I already feel better. It’s only one week, Trudy!

Two other areas have been causing me to worry, and they are my children/young adults (we’ve sorted that out now) and the technology side of things. Part of my role in Sweden entails taking pictures and videos, and writing reports of the proceedings. I wasn’t worried about the writing part, but I needed to upgrade my phone, which I finally achieved yesterday. 

Ok, so what’s left to worry about?

I suppose I’ve sort of put my anxiety into perspective while writing this blog post. And you know what? I should know by now how the story goes: I worry, worry, worry, I write list after list, I tick off the items on the lists, I try to think of every little detail I may have overlooked, and I obsess like a person who’s never done anything requiring attention to detail before, and, in the end, it all works out just fine! In fact, it usually works out more than just fine!

So, having said all of that, I now need to tell you about the project that is the reason for my going to Sweden: the World’s Children’s Prize for the Rights of the Child. Because this post has been so personal, I’ll talk exclusively about the WCP in a separate post, later today.


Watch this space!

Saturday, 8 April 2017

Alone again – unnaturally

Written 13 March 2017

I used to live alone. Feels like a lifetime ago. I was in my 20s. I was teaching full-time and studying part-time, and I still had time to be involved in regular exercise. Besides that, I was also gigging.  Most of the time, I had a boyfriend. I have no idea how I managed to find time for everything. I do know that quite a few boyfriends became ex-boyfriends because of my need for space. Somehow, the type of partners I had weren’t able to see it as anything other than highly irregular and suspicious. As patient as I am with most things, I hate having to explain repeatedly that I mean what I say and that there is no hidden agenda. It was only after I’d been exposed to many more people, and encountered duplicity in various forms, that I understood their suspiciousness.

I’m alone this evening - rare, these days.  Twelve hours after leaving for work, I arrived home, exhausted. I imagined I’d do most of my favourite hobbies – write, dance, play my guitar, read – but right now, at 9pm, I can hardly keep my eyes open. It looks like I’ll actually achieve that elusive goal of getting to bed by 10. A miracle.


I always smile when people talk about their relaxing weekends. Relaxing weekend. What’s that? 

It’s been a while!

Written 5 March 2017

Life has been very busy, which is why I haven’t blogged for so long. Tonight I want to just do a simple blog, to say how grateful I am for so many things in my life.

I’ve recently been experiencing hoarseness, which persisted for so long that I started to suspect that something was seriously wrong. I cancelled a few gigs, losing quite a bit of the income I derive from my music life, which helps me support my family.

I suspect that a particular set of circumstances gave rise to this. On two consecutive nights, I put my vocal cords under strain, which, on top of a busy schedule that was tiring me physically, pushed me towards this crisis.

On Valentine’s Day, I did a duo gig with guitarist Keith Tabisher at a delightful spot in Worcester. Some people were seated inside the restaurant, and others were picnicking on the beautiful (and vast) lawn. The owners wanted us to sit on the verandah, to be visible to the people on the lawn, but to put one of our speakers inside the restaurant, for those people to hear us as well. That was not the challenging part, but singing in the wind was! Oh my word, what a recipe for disaster! Singing outside, in the cold night air, is not good for me personally. But singing with the wind blowing into your mouth……. that is asking for trouble!  Doing so for two hours, is really asking for trouble!




The next night, while I was still reeling from the onslaught to my voice of the previous night, I went to a venue in town where my daughter did a solo set of her original material. Unfortunately, this was a smoking venue, and I ended up inhaling that shit for about four hours!! As a rule, I avoid situations where people are smoking, and this particular situation was extreme immersion in constant cigarette fumes. Disgusting! I could feel my system saying WTF?!  

At the Valentine’s gig already, I could feel my voice was different, almost leaning towards a lower register. Sometimes an odd sound (that I hadn’t planned) would emerge. At subsequent gigs, the hoarseness that I’d been feeling all the time bothered me. I felt my voice had lost some of its strength, and I was struggling to sing with my full voice, because something was definitely wrong. I felt cautious, like I didn’t want to sing out completely, in case I hurt myself. When I put all the symptoms together, the picture didn’t look very good.

At this stage, I have an appointment with a specialist on Wednesday, after which I should know whether this was just a case of vocal strain, necessitating some rest, or whether there’s something more serious going on. I have to know – I can’t default to my usual procrastinating mode and hope it goes away. This is way too important, with far too many consequences, for me to be in denial.

Last Saturday, I gave up the outdoor market gig, as well as my regular Saturday evening gig, because my throat was very sore, and singing was painful. During the week, I continued taking the nasal spray the GP had given me (for post-nasal drip), as well as the antihistamine, and could tell they were making a difference.  

I also decided, while doing my Mind Power exercises, that I needed to stop dwelling on all the worst-case scenarios, and to focus on being well and in excellent health. The Law of attraction says that thoughts that are emotionalised become magnetised, and that they then attract similar thoughts. In other words, whatever you spend a lot of time thinking about intensely, you end up attracting into your life. I wanted to attract a state of excellent health, so I spent time every day visualising myself being well and singing with ease, doing affirmations about excellent health, and thanking the universe for sending me what I had asked for.

Yesterday, not only did I feel very well, but I had absolutely no discomfort in my throat region, and was able to honour my two gigs for the day! At both, I kept myself relaxed, and focussed on making music that was free and floaty, melodious and pleasant.
Today I am feeling fine again.

But this is what I really wanted to write: the thought of having to give up singing, even temporarily (a situation many vocalists have faced), made me feel depressed. I realised that my identity was very wrapped up in my singing, and that not being able to sing would be extremely tough for me. Going about my daily life with this on my heart was heavy. I don’t think anyone really knew what I was going through.

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On 8 March, I went to an ENT specialist to have my vocal cords checked. This was the first time I’d had this done, and it was a strange experience, but not as traumatic as I’d expected. The good news is that there is nothing wrong with my vocal cords. The doctor said it might have been strain of one kind or another. He encouraged me to trust my instincts and to rest when I needed to.


Phew! 

Where do the feelings go?

Written 13 Feb 2017

About ten years ago, I had an eighteen-month teaching stint at a high school about 3km from where I lived. This was my first experience of teaching at a high school, so I was fairly clueless as to the dynamics, especially of a school in an area rife with gangsterism. Further lulling me into a false sense of security, I had just come from seven years in the TEFL industry, where the maximum class size is 10, and you teach adults from all over the world, many of whom are professionals, well-travelled, with broad frames of reference.

I’m embarrassed when I think about it now, but I remember, when asked how I’d deal with discipline issues, I said something about knowing how to keep my lessons interesting enough not to have those kinds of issues. Ew! How smug. How ignorant. I can only imagine what my more experienced colleagues were thinking.

Needless to say, I had a rude awakening. It soon became clear that the silence in all the classes, on my first day, was about their curiosity. From Day 2, the more boisterous kids let their true colours show, and I found myself at a complete loss for how to handle what seemed like irrational behaviour. No-one listened to my appeals to settle down so that we could enjoy the lesson, and no-one cared, because once they’d established that I did not use corporal punishment, they took it as a green light to test me in every possible way. They were also quite happy naming my colleagues who continued to use corporal punishment, despite it being illegal in South Arica. It angered me that the continued use of corporal punishment compromised the ability of the rest of us to achieve order in our classrooms.

One day stands out in my memory. A stupid fight broke out in my classroom. This kind of thing happened many times a day, and I became a bit of a meme (that word did not exist then), for once again dashing to the classroom door and shouting, “Security!!!”’, while every learner in the classroom was either involved in the fight, actively encouraging the fight, or standing by quietly, preparing to watch the fight. Occasionally there’d be a small group trying to stop the fight, but this was rare. When a fight broke out, it gave others with pent-up anger and frustration a chance to live vicariously through their more openly-aggressive classmates.

Like most of the other classroom fights I’d witnessed, this one started with a simple misunderstanding, followed by a violent outburst, an exchange of expletive-ridden insults, and then violence. The fact that one of the fighters was a boy and the other a girl made no difference. They were swearing, screaming, pulling, smacking, punching and kicking. My biggest fear was that one of them would take out a sharp instrument and take the fight to the next level.

Eventually the security staff came in, and one of the learners was taken to a separate room, to cool down away from the class. The period ended, and the classroom emptied as the kids left for their next lesson. My next class was actually a sweet group of Grade 8s, and I breathed a sigh of relief that I could start to put the unpleasantness behind me. I was still shaken, though, and wondered how it was possible for the learners themselves to continue with their school day after seeing something like that.

Somewhere during that next period, there was a commotion outside, and people were shouting, “Lock the doors!” I reacted too late; by the time I realised there was real danger, the gangster was inside my classroom. He was bare-chested, had a wild look in his eyes, and was holding a cleaver in one of his hands. He held it at about the height of his head, gripping it fiercely, like he was ready to slam it down into someone. The combination of his bare upper body, his eyes that showed no sign of being present in the moment, and that gleaming silver knife, was frightening, to say the least. We all froze. He paced up and down, taking big, directionless steps, scanning the room with his wild eyes. I had no idea what would happen next.  When he didn’t find the person he’d been looking for, he walked out in that same maniacal way. 

We locked the door and all started talking at once. It seemed as though the gangster had been informed about the earlier fight in my classroom and had come to kill one of the kids involved. Yes. That’s what people mean when they say that teaching in gang-ridden areas is dangerous. They come into your classroom! What surprised me then was the number of children who found it humorous that I had been so scared. They told me my eyes had been “so wide!”.  To some of them, it was old hat, I realised, and to others it was genuinely frightening. They’d felt as fearful as I had. I reported it to the principal, and requested counselling for the class (and the previous class, who’d witnessed the fight). Months later, when I left the school, not wanting to renew my contract and having been headhunted for my next job in the TEFL industry, no counselling had been arranged yet. That kind of thing was just not taken seriously.

This incident came to mind when I saw the fracas in our South African parliament, on the 9th of February.  After all the verbal unpleasantness, followed by the violence inside parliament, when the EFF had been removed and the DA (and other parties) had walked out in protest, how did those who stayed behind feel? Surely people were traumatised? Surely it was one of the hardest things to do, to remain seated in that venue after all of that? And then our country’s president, Jacob Zuma,  demonstrating that things could actually get more bizarre, giggled – the most inappropriate response possible. After which he proceeded to give his State of the Nation (SONA) address. How could anyone take him seriously?   

It was like in any other part of my life – if you’ve shown, by your actions, that you’re without integrity, nothing that you say could ever convince me otherwise.  I switched off the television set, disappointed and disgusted. A former ANC supporter, I longed for the current smugly corrupt leaders to fall flat on their faces, voted out by an equally disappointed and disgusted electorate.

In the post SONA fallout, the following day, a caller on talk radio said that we should not be surprised that young people today seem to be so out of hand, because the political leaders of our country behaved like wild animals, themselves.  For the record, I know many young people who are not out of hand, and who actually inspire me and give me great hope for our country’s future.
If I’m not mistaken, this is at least the third time we’ve seen the same sequence of events at the annual opening of parliament.

Come to think of it, why do they make such a fuss about no corporal punishment in schools when strong-arm tactics are used so liberally in parliament, supposedly the bastion of all that is good and law-abiding?


Lol. Or, to quote ‘Number One’: “Hehehehe”.