by tashmcgill | Oct 12, 2018 | thedaily500
I remember talking out loud when I was young, in imaginary and practice conversations. I still do that, practice talking to the people who matter or the stories that are important to tell. I remember talking to God at five years old and I distinctly remember not talking to God for a while when I was eleven.
The first onstage performance I can remember, I was about 6 or 7 and all I had to do was deliver three simple lines. But I walked onto the stage and the microphone set up for me to speak them into was about a foot over my head. That was my first break into comedy.
I remember singing, no – I can’t remember ever not singing. And talking. I remember debating politics age eleven on the phone to my friend Sarah. We were both planning to be journalists; she wanted to write about sport and I wanted to write about politics and how to change the world. Sometimes I got confused as to whether I wanted to write about changing the country or just change the country.
I remember the warm hum of a microphone and the precise, obnoxious sibilance they bring to every word. I remember my voice in that microphone through a headset on my first radio show and then my second. I remember the sound of my voice on cassette tape as I listened to air check tapes. It requires stoicism to learn to appreciate your own voice instead of hearing everything that falters.
I remember the first time I read an advertisement and nailed it in two read-throughs and when the audio engineer said ‘can you give me something a little sexier?’, and I realised, listening back to the take, that I could. I could read it sexy or funny or smart. I remember the first time and the last time I walked onstage to a crowd of 5000 people and caught their attention with my words and how to still a room using timbre and tone.
It’s not the notes alone but the silences between the notes that make the music. I remember the first time I felt silenced and unheard. I can picture the look on his face when I saw my words fly past his ears. I remember the feeling of words flying but mine being powerless. How it felt as my voice shrank inside me. For a while, I didn’t have words for conversations between friends or even a phone call. I couldn’t read it sexy or smart or even half-alive for a while there.
It felt like a tearing and stretching burn when I started to use it again. It was like my trachea was still recovering from how searing my words had been the last time I spoke up. My tongue was heavy and soft, it had lost all it’s sharpness and dexterity. Like learning to walk again, it hurt at first.
Eventually someone asked and I walked up to the microphone again. I said yes out of muscle memory but I wasn’t sure muscle memory was going to be enough to get me through. But they liked it, the sound I made and the words I gave were hopeful, they said. Sharp but bright and hopeful. It sounded good to them. So I did it again, then one more time and another time after that. Until I was back to myself and perhaps better than that.
It’s my voice, you see. The sound I’ve been listening to my whole life. It doesn’t make sense when it goes away or if I shut it down. It can be sexy and sad and smart and funny and brave. And that’s the soundtrack of my life, the one I’m getting ready to turn up.
by tashmcgill | Aug 18, 2016 | Bodies, Culture & Ideas
I’ll say it sometimes, dropped into the lull of a conversation about somebody’s graceful movement.
Or somebody might ask, ‘You know, what do you call it, that step?’ and I will answer without thinking, ‘that is the pas de basque’ or I will say, ‘that was a ballonné’ and keep to myself how the hands may have been more precise.
Then to quizzical and bemused faces, I will explain it quietly, ‘I was a dancer, once.‘
When I was a young girl I loved the feeling of my hip flexor stretched to pointed toe in a fluid, long movement. The smell of a new leather ballet shoe and the extension of my torso while my legs shifted into fifth position with hands at two; ready to leap into that old and elegant language of bone and body.
I craved the forward propulsion of movement that came from the pirouette and the barre exercises that dominated my classes. The discipline of dance taught me to prize technique in every aspect of my life. Everything I learn now starts the same way – the movement in completion, then breaking down the steps until I have mastered each technique before bringing it all together. Ballet taught me the strategy of moving artfully from one place to another, step by carefully selected step. Technique will take you places talent alone cannot, so now my fingers move over the keyboard as fast as my thoughts move and my knife can dance across a chopping board. In learning to dance, I learned how to learn and learned how to execute.
Then I learned at 5’2” with curved, wide hips and too busty for my height, I would never be a ballerina. So I turned my attention elsewhere, put my ballet shoes away and took two buses to music lessons instead. For a long time, if left to my own devices on an empty stage, the dance would erupt from within me, my body didn’t know I wasn’t a dancer anymore. I would shut myself in the living room at any chance, turning up the stereo to dance freely. I would commandeer the empty school assembly hall in the brief moments of early morning to practice the steps that were not yet faded from memory.
Last week, I found myself alone in the gym, looking at the open space and remembering I was a dancer, once. I did not resist the urge to cartwheel, leap, lift and spin my extended right leg into a twist and finish in a plié. No one saw or questioned, laughed or scoffed. I just danced, as I am prone to do.
As it turns out, I can still pirouette, precise and straight from east to west across the room, and land a leap with leg extended and toe arched into submission. I can still feel the fibre of muscle and definition that lies underneath the soft curves of my body that will bend when asked, into concave and convex shapes or spread into a split with ease. The difference is that now my body dances alone in the dark, unwatched.
In all my dancing, I danced alone. To dance together requires a shared language, an assented understanding between two parties. Regardless of whether you dance for an audience, if you dance with another, you must dance for them too. That is what I have wanted to learn.
The first time I was taken to the dance floor with a partner – my hips froze and my body found resolution. Resolution to not move, to not engage. I needed language that I had no words for and nothing to take the place of words. Words couldn’t tumble out of my lips to make sense of what I didn’t understand or the questions I couldn’t ask.
Alone in the room, with an empty floor and only my own rhythm to follow, I can effortlessly freestyle and push my body beyond imagined limits. I am unhindered by the thought of who is watching or with me. I can make my own steps and choose the most interesting ways to move across the floor.
When I am not alone in the room, each of my steps is a response and will be responded too. My breath must change to accommodate new rhythms. Patience and bravery is required in new ways. All of a sudden I am aware of my dance space and the space of another. My body is less willing to leap and spin so freely; for the first time I lose confidence in my technique. Technique that has never failed me before.
By now, you should know this is both a true story about dance and a metaphor. I am a paradox of confidence and innocence, sometimes imagining more quickly than I can learn and sometimes learning more than I can practice. But there are a few things I know to be true.
I am changed. Still insecure, wary of misstep, but also brave I step into rhythm; willing to try without the security of technique to guide me. I am intrepidly exploring trust that makes me brave.
In this moment of exploration and discovery, I realise how much I have missed being taught. I have missed instruction and the security of being guided to perfect technique. And my desire is perfection that bears creation, experimentation and re-creation. I want to move more than I ever have, but a new way of dancing.
These old moves have been my safety net, the trusted and known. Suddenly I am inspired to new rhythms. I want new language for my tongue to stumble over and finesse until I speak this language with ease. I find myself wanting to dance for another, to move beyond technique to intuition.
I want to practice as I have never practiced before, bending flesh to my will and making beauty from my sweat, strain and gasping breath.
A long time ago, I wrote a poem about learning to dance. I find myself here, nearly twenty years later still learning and wanting to learn.
there’s a peace coming for a time
we will listen to the air for a while
competing and combining in breath and gasp
from two sets of crimson lips
tarnished hips and bruises
from this dance you teach
teach me how to breathe
and move again
I will not run or hide
I will try a little harder
keep slightly closer,
follow you and watch myself
imitate and learn this rhythm
you already know
and i have yet to learn
but there is peace coming
neither will care who
knew what when we began
this will be our dance for a time
circling, entwined
i will learn the things you speak
and never speak
that from limb and soul
peace does grow
what is new to me
can be new again for you
i will make it so
a gift to another, my other
your gift to me new language
for one who knows a thousand words
a thousand more will rise and descend
in sweet and heavy songs
and the ghosts will go
leaving us to dance
speaking to only each other
by tashmcgill | Jun 2, 2016 | Monologues, Poems
If you want to build resilience into your character, visit a bar. Put on your favourite clothes, wear your best scent. Promise yourself to be exactly who you are in every moment, because there are things that sometimes happen in a bar that can make you strong. They won’t feel good but they will stretch you, assure you, reaffirm you. You will feel your heart swell and your spine grow tall like an oak tree. Visit a bar and listen, learn the difference between what people say and what they mean. Hold nothing tightly but yourself and remember always to rise.
This story has happened more than once so I have had to learn to let it empower me but it sits in memory. Last night, two phenomenal women in their 50’s sat alongside me and asked if I was fine drinking alone. It was joy to tell them yes, I am happy to sit alone and listen, or not alone and still listen. Then I thought of a night with two other phenomenal friends, women of great beauty and I remembered why sometimes it is not so easy.
Amazing.
‘Hello,’ and you swagger into the midst
of a conversation you were not invited to,
but discretion is powerful and so
I am not rude. I give you leave to
make a case or entertain and then you say it –
‘You two are amazing girls.’
So then I had to look you in the eye and
consider what happens sometimes in a bar
and what a woman does.
I’m certain your mother loves you
but I am equally certain she did not raise you
to be defined by the weight of your purse
or the length of your stride.
Nor did mine raise me to be defined or dictated
by the weight of where your gaze rests
Or how the word beautiful drops off your tongue
I taught myself to raise my head and
keep my words inside my lips; fool, jerk, dick.
Tonight, you looked at the woman to my left
and the woman on my right and said
‘You two are amazing girls.’
Your pronunciation pointed
in any direction but mine.
So I raised my head
and brought up my pride
looked you right in the eye.
I watched you until I saw you,
and you saw me but didn’t see a thing.
You are right, these are amazing women.
Talented, compassionate and smart
You would have come to know that eventually
but it’s not what you meant when you said
Amazing.
You meant beautiful in such a way you
wanted to touch them, possess them
as you looked left and right
and over me, through me
around me as if I were nothing
and thought instead of having
power over beauty.
Did you have a mother who loved you
but couldn’t or maybe wouldn’t
teach you that where two women are amazing
the third is most likely a Queen
so that is why you didn’t know, when you met me
how you were in the presence of royalty?
I raised my head and brought up my pride
from within me; looked you right in the eye.
I watched you until I saw you, and you saw me.
And still you did not bow to me.
So let me tell you again, because it should be known,
where there are three women
sitting at a bar or on a step or anywhere
it is statistical impossibility, a scientific anomaly
if only two of three women could be called amazing
because amazing women stick together
out of necessity because there are some who
caress our skin uninvited
or interrupt with awkward conversation
when we were just now solving significant problems
and we didn’t care what you had for dinner
or to tell you of ours when
We had other amazing things to talk about
and no desire to give you power over our beauty.
But this is just a bar and
you didn’t come for serious talk
you came for a drink and a laugh
and to drink in the sights
possessing us for a moment
despite being momentarily blind
seeing two not three
women in your company; sigh
it’s not likely you will ever see,
not enough for Woman One, Two
or Three
but I’ll give you this; perhaps
with my head raised I can
offer you a new definition of amazing
(though I am certain you were raised
from the warm womb of kindness
by a woman who was also thus)
if you could somehow
raise yourself up and learn to see
then Three is the prize you seek
Three knows more than the world
and has the colour and power of a Queen
knows how grit can polish and
rolls her hips because it pleases her
and takes pleasure gladly in it
the feeding, clothing and making of love
gives out grace because she knows
she can afford the price and pays it
from a deep, old treasure chest
meets you mark for mark
in the heat of an argument
in the depth of her heart.
Your blindness is heavier than your hands
which do not, will not and can not touch me,
but I rise
shake it off and walk unburdened
by the weight of all that is amazing in me
what you could not see between my breasts
or in the sway of my warm, wide hips.
I was glad of the beauty either side of me
beauty of mind and glow of skin
I was gladly not beholden to profanity
the offence of blasphemy that you
could ignore the wonder of me.
the presence of amazing me,
so I rise
I feel delicately the absence
of perfection under your eyes
but I rise
and decide your eyes are not the seeing kind
I entertain the words I might use in response and sigh,
instead onto the higher ground,
I rise
seen or unseen,
beauty to the left and right
but mostly in the midst of me.
by tashmcgill | May 12, 2016 | Monologue, Prose & Poetry
It begins with the shoes. The red shoes. They hardly come out of the closet these days, but when they do – her walk is lifted, the tilt of her hips just ever so much more swung from left to right. Everything else is for her or for them, but the shoes – the shoes are for you.
Layer by layer she dressed this morning, knowing whichever direction the day thrust her, she would need to be ready and prepared to stand her ground. Calendars matter, to this woman. The schedule of roles she will play that day; friend, colleague, sage and unclaimed lover. The precise number of minutes given to eyeliner, perfume and mascara are counted out in the rush towards beginning the day. Every task their due and nothing other.
Layer by layer, her costume slides on dictated by what others need to see in her, or of her. She catalogues the demands inside her head.
Be soft, be warm, be strong, be open, be commanding, be wise.
Jeans and a casual shirt, because nobody wants to appear unapproachable. Business shirt and pencil skirt, or hip grazing, cleavage revealing black dresses with variations of red, navy and lace for days when she walks with people as powerful as she. Black when she needs to hide and red when she is feeling most alive.
Jackets and scarves chosen by necessity. She dresses first with perfume; in a sanctuary of scent she feels herself and then clothes rush on at the beginning of the day. Layer after layer dictated in the morning rush by how she will undress at the end of day. Not what you need to see but what she wants to show you.
After dark, things slow down.
Last on in the morning, at night first her jewels come off – pendants unwound from ivory neck while her fingers follow the slight curve where the artery rests. Hair pulled back exposing neck, an invitation offered gently in the night, only ever in the night. Cool night air whispers ‘welcome home’. Rings of heavy gold slide from fingers except the one band that never leaves her hand. That band that carries precious stories in its rubies. And now you know that ring is a symbol, you will want to ask.
Then those shoes, her arches sighing in relief but they give her calves a certain elevation and as her hips find their gravity again, she feels warm. The shoes were for you, but maybe also for her. There is no part of her body that does not come to life as she unclothes it.
The rest comes off even slower, the layers for them – demanding crowd. Off comes cotton, denim, polyester and ponte. Cuffs, collars and shirts unbuttoned one by one. Skirt unzipped and allowed to drop, kicked by painted dark red toe up into the grasp of hand and cast aside to laundry pile or hung up.
In this, she is most graceful and more so than in other parts of day. Dressed, she is more clumsy than most. More likely to stumble than to dance, but as layers slide off the dancer re-emerges. Back arched and ribs held high as joints flex and bend to undo all that is held together during the day. The collarbone emerges and the shape of her hits the light, curve and strength and softness. There are symbols and stories painted on her body in scars and ink; some of them you know but others you have not listened to yet.
Then silk, satin and lace. A dozen shades. Under the plainest of wardrobes, she is always silk, satin and lace. Stockings unclipped and eased down past bended knee; balanced in warm lamplight. Garter undone but she is not yet undone, there is still more to see, even more to know below bustier and corset and teddy barely containing soft breast. Still she is not undressed.
Here she is, left perfumed in the sweet musk and salt of the day, still layers of vanilla, sandalwood and orchid. High notes of orange, jasmine and patchouli. And this is her, both earthy and sweet. Vanilla, bergamot, florals and earthiness the essence of whisky, which is the other name by which you know her.
Still, layered in perfume she is not yet naked before you. She undresses but she does not leave herself unclothed.
It is beyond silk and lace, beyond what the skin wears and beyond costume of the day. Even removing silk and lace, undoing self entirely to the response of air against skin; all sharp pucker and caress. In undressing there are all elements of ache and relief, until she meets you, skin to skin and eye to eye. A dozen stolen, fleeting touches and then the eyes meet.
There is the wall you could not see til now, where every brick is a shout that said ‘Too much’, ‘too loud’, ‘too smart’, ‘too physical’, ‘too sensual’, ‘too strong’, ‘too intense’, ‘too present’ and the wall is hidden there, beneath blue eyes seeking out yours. Just one word is all she needs to hear – Leap!
Now, eyes upon eyes – back in a room full of strangers but where a glance and a look was true. There in a moment, her eyes slide from blue-gray flecked maybe to truest blue; she undressed for you.
A woman undresses from her eyes; as the shadow lifts and grey-blue hue turns to summer light – she is naked for you now. She leaps over the wall of misread doubt from voices past, while still clothed and disrobes for you.
It might happen in a room full of strangers; deep in the night while she pushes all noise and interruption to the side. Perhaps it happens while you’re not watching but she is thinking and assessing to one side. It is most likely to happen while you also, are watching her – the slow, steady and soon-to-be reliable slide of public to private sight. But whether she is still clothed in silk and lace, or wearing denim or corporate suiting for the day – she undresses from her eyes.
There is one story that is not told upon her skin, or in the ache of body that is expressed between the light and dark of night. She tells you only one story in the light of eyes unveiling into sacred, private sight. There is only one story that remains under cautious and wary eyes. The story of the Phoenix and the girl who rises.
‘I am the Phoenix, bold and wise. I am the Phoenix flying high and true and firm, but I will acquiesce for you. I will let you touch and hold my burning wing, hold my sharpened voice and sing, I will burn and rise again for you.. and let you see me, see me shining through. I am the Phoenix, I will rise again and rise and rise and rise again.’
And there she is, exposed at last – she is a creature of the myth. She undresses and you find her in between the grey and blue, the Phoenix, who rises and looks for you.
by tashmcgill | May 8, 2016 | Family, Monologues
Here’s the deal, Kid. I thought you’d be here by now but the truth is, you may never arrive at all. But I’m still your mama – fiercely, entirely and utterly yours. So I wanted to tell you a few things so you’d always know. Like how I want to love you so well and walk with you through all your failures. How I want to teach you everything I’ve learned while waiting for you and how I’m trying to be the best I can be for your sake. This is for you, kid – love from your Mama.
Dear Kid,
I’ve been waiting for a while to write these things down. Hoping I’d have the chance to tell you face to face one of these days. But ‘one of these days’ seems to be getting further away. There was a time I hoped you’d be five or even ten years old by now, though in hindsight, I’d be a better Mama now than then.
I say ‘I would’ because there’s no guarantee that we’ll get the chance to meet, kid.
Yeah, let that sink in a minute. It’s not how I wanted it to turn out either. I’m sorry, my darling. If you make it – if the universe conspires our way and I play my part and do my best, if love sends me a chance that I don’t fuck up and that man who is kind, strong and true loves me and wants you…then, maybe.
Kid, there are so many ifs in this world. So I’ll tell you now, so you’ll always know.
I will love you fiercely and as well as I can. I won’t make promises I can’t keep about nappies or organic food, how design perfect your nursery will be or how well-accessorized your buggy may be. But you’ll be fed, clothed, bathed and loved. It’s how I love you that will make the difference.
I will learn how to love you and give you the chance to learn to love me. I’ll help you love and understand your Dad and he’ll probably help me out a lot too. I do want to promise you, that I’ll do my best to model partnership with your Dad and to love him deeply. I want you to grow up knowing what real love looks like, feels like, sounds like and that you came from it.
I can’t wait to see who you’ll be and I’ll do everything I can to celebrate that. I will never ask you to be less of yourself. I will do my best to help you navigate the world as you are.
I want to be that Mama that you can laugh with all the time, a trusted place for your secrets, the Queen of spontaneous adventures. I want us to be late home because we had to stop to watch the sunset. For our backyard to always be ready for a sleep out under the stars. I want to share my love of traveling and adventure with you – teach you how to travel light through life and how to find your way home always.
Oh, I hope you get to see the world with big wide eyes and to embrace the wonder I have at the stars and the moon. I want all those things for you and then, I want to walk you through every crisis and every failure. I want to help you learn how to pick yourself back up and what it really means to be resilient (because that was the toughest and loneliest lesson for me). I know you’ll have times of loneliness that I can’t fix, but I want to walk through it with you. And I will try, with shaking hands and tears and self-control, to embrace your rebellion when you need to find your independence.
I guess what I’m saying is, I’ll try to give you just enough but not so much that being your Mama is more about me than it is about you. I want to be good but I’m not perfect. You’ll learn that but the point is I’ll try. I’ll try not to control you, shape you too much to my liking, I’ll try to engage with you as a person and teach you what discipline you need but to always explain ‘why’.
I dream of the day you will explain parts of the world to me that I don’t know, because you see it differently. And my joy will be that I taught you to see, not what to see. You will be so different from me, kid – but I hope you get the parts of me I like most.
Like dinner parties, books and lazy Saturdays, pyjama days, eggs-in-a-basket, beaches, day-dreaming in the clouds, stopping to drink in all the senses. I hope you love to snuggle and hug your whole life long. Otherwise know I will always be chasing you for kisses and cuddles. Of course, the parts of me I like best are my love of physical touch, the storytelling, the music and creativity, the deep well of laughter and wild abandon and the empathy and compassion. I hope you get some of that – it’s the stuff I’ve learned how to navigate best. But then, your Dad will have a lot to teach you too. I promise to make space for him. In fact, I hope there are times when he is your whole world.
Of course, I want our house to be that house where all your friends come after school and to have parties for the sake of parties. I want you to grow up knowing the love and strength of family that is both blood and choice. You’ll have a dozen aunties and uncles who will love you as their own, I’m sure. And my darling, some of them will be weird. That’s important, because the weird ones are the good ones. I won’t be everything you need in life, neither will your Dad. You’ll need your weird aunties and uncles, your friends too, to help you learn how to be, how to live and how to navigate the world. You’ll need them to talk to when you’re mad with us – which is bound to happen.
It’s hard to talk you and not think about your Dad, so I’ll say this. No matter what happens to he and I, in the long road of life – I’ll have the best relationship with him that’s possible at any time. You’ll see us fight, no doubt, but I plan for you to see us make up too. To know what healthy communication looks like. I hope you’ll see us love more than anything else, to team up for you and beside you and for each other. I really want for you to see that grittiness is okay. It’s real and achievable. That real is the very best thing because you get to define it yourself. Of course – these are lessons that I’m still learning, kid, so I’m letting you know in advance.
It takes a lifetime to learn to be yourself and I won’t get to see it all, kid but I will do my best to set you up on the right path. Not a path that leads to a particular destination of being a ‘this’ or a ‘that’, but the path of learning. Learning how to learn, learning how to be, learning how to love well. Before I go, I plan to see you a long way towards being yourself.
I hope you’ll benefit from the lessons I’ve learned while waiting for you. You see, that’s what I’ve been doing. I know that I’ll only do my best by you, if I’m the best version of me there is. The truest version of me there is.
So I wake up each day and focus on being as healthy and strong as I can be physically. I want to climb mountains with you and throw you in the air and make love to your Dad for my whole life. Oh wait… you probably didn’t want to hear that last part. But it’s true. I want you to grow up in a world of positive, life-giving beautiful touch – a house that thrives on the vital energy of life.
I wake up each day and look to strengthen my mind. I’m still becoming myself and learning to have my own voice after all these years. I’m taking down decades of barricades at the moment and it’s for you as much as myself…. I want to love you in my full voice, kid. I’ll keep working on it, whether you arrive or not. When you get here, you’ll bring a bunch more lessons with you, I’m sure. I will try to prepare myself in advance.
So I wake up on Mother’s Day, kid – and I’m thinking of you. If you don’t ever make it, it’s okay. I promise. Everything I’ve learned waiting for you, I needed to know anyway. But I wanted you to know, kid, that I’m your Mama through and through. Even the idea of you is a gift I’m glad of, a point in the compass that guides my way. I’ve been your mother my whole life.
Rest easy, kid. Maybe soon. Keep an eye on the stars and the moon – I watch them too, and I believe in magic.
Love,
Mama.
