I’ve just had a look at a video I posted on Fb this week –
taken by a colleague, at a recent women’s gathering at work. In it, I’m singing
my song, Women on the Move, accompanying myself on guitar. It’s a simple song,
written on a well-known chord sequence called a 12-bar blues. It’s repetitive
and it’s got a cool beat. It’s my song and it makes me happy. It has a message
that goes way beyond the obvious. It has meaning to the women listening to it,
it has political meaning, but it has a much bigger meaning in my life.
I started playing the guitar in 1978, and within a year had
started composing songs. Over the years,
I learnt more from people I met and took lessons with different guitar
teachers. Even before I’d started playing, I loved the guitar. I found myself
particularly attracted to the warm sound of a classical guitar, which became my
instrument of choice.
What I found happening in my romantic relationships was very
strange, though, and it was only as I matured on my journey as a woman and
started understanding more about men in a patriarchal context that a lot of
what had happened acquired a context that did not conclude that I’d been at
fault. That’s extremely liberating, and we should make young people aware of
these things from an early age, teaching them to love themselves and the
difference between healthy and unhealthy interpersonal communication,
especially within intimate relationships.
So what happened in my relationships, related to the guitar
and the patriarchy? Well, in my longer relationships, most of the men who were
attracted to me found the guitar-playing Trudy fascinating. I suspect it was even
part of the attraction. But what then happened was really bizarre, because they
started resenting that part of my life and all kinds of toxicity emerged. Some
of the men desperately wanted to learn to play the guitar, and more than one of
them even said outright, “So that I can play better than you.” Right!
But some of the most toxic stuff around my music emerged in
my marriage – ironically, to a musician. Here are some of the things I had to
deal with:
-
I got asked to sing at a political event shortly
after a previous performance. He asked if it was because Tina Schouw (a Cape
Town musician who often sang at anti-apartheid events) wasn’t available. Now,
while that may well have been true, it wasn’t a nice thing for him to say.
-
He also said that, by asking me, the organisers
were really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
-
When friends invited us to a braai and made a
point of asking me to bring my guitar, he’d complain for days on end, accusing
me of being a conversation stopper and of always wanting to be the centre of
attraction. Because the arguing really distressed me and I’d started believing
his version of how horrible I was, I’d end up leaving the guitar at home.
-
When my first studio recording was played on
radio (by Eric Alan!!), we were tuned in and I was jumping up and down with
excitement. I wanted to say, “I did it! I did it!” But he’d also been in the
band and I knew he’d feel left out, so I said, “WE did it! We did it!” He stood
there, with his arms folded across his chest, a scowl on his face and said,
“Don’t think you’ve arrived.”
-
In 1998, we went to California, to visit my
brother-in-law. I’d done my first studio demo of some of my original sings in
Nov 1997 and took about 20 cassettes (yes!) with me, as gifts and in case I had
a chance to drop one off at a record label. We stopped at the robots right next
to Capitol Records and I said, I’m going to take one of my cassettes upstairs.
He looked at me with disdain and said something like this: “This is not Cape Town,
where everyone knows you. This is a whole different world, where very talented
people drop off their demos here every day and a lot are turned away.“’ I felt
deflated, felt I’d been too full of myself, lost my courage and stayed in the
car.
-
I think the worst thing he said was that I
should never ever consider singing my originals in public, because they were
too personal.
I left my marriage in Nov 2000, after almost 7 years. The first time I
did a half-hour set of my originals in an intimate public setting was in 2004,
at off Moroka, a restaurant in Adderley Street. Chantel Erfort had been
organising regular poetry evenings and invited me to be their featured poet –
with a difference.
I taught Chantel when she was in Sub A, impacting on her life the way a
Sub A teacher does. I don’t think she realises how she impacted on mine, with
that invitation. A whole new world opened up for me. I realised that my songs
were going to bring healing to a lot more people than just me. Yes, my songs
are personal, but that night, women came up to me and said, “You’ve sung my
life story.” “’I could never write like
you, but I’m glad you write, because you say what people like me are feeling.”
And so on.
All of this - and
all the other things that men said and did around my guitar playing and my
songs - is the background to who I am
today: I LOVE playing my guitar. I LOVE singing. I LOVE sharing my originals
with a listening audience.
I love the freedom I have in my life, where I don’t have to
deal with a man’s fragile ego and his bitterness about his own lack of courage
or talent or whatever else it is he sees in me that he’s afraid to access in
his own life. I am attracted to people who are prepared to make themselves
vulnerable, who write, who share, who open themselves to others with what is
inside of them. I love poets, I love writers, I love singer-songwriters and
instrumentalists who play original music, and all other artists who bare their
souls and live their lives with authenticity, wide open to whatever happens
next.
Here is one of my compositions.
“When I sing
my song”
I shared with you my latest song
I closed my eyes – inside I felt so sure
Words flowed from my heart, flowed through my veins
Flowed to my mouth – so strong and pure
You looked at me disapprovingly
Your lack of comprehension
Like a solid door
Slamming in my face
You can’t stop the flow
You will never know
You never did.
When I sing my song
I’m not asking for permission, I’m not looking for applause
When I sing my song
I follow my rules, not yours
I’m swimming in the deepest sea, waves of such intensity
Pounding on my body, pounding on my skin
When I sing.
When I sing my song
I’m not waiting for your ok – I know when I’m right or wrong
When I sing my song
What started as a spark ignites into a flame so strong
A fire burns inside of me
Don’t put it out, just let it be
Warming me, from the inside out
When I sing
When I sing
When I sing
My song”’
