sxsw 2011 and why my grandma is awesome sauce

Uh yeah. I haven't blogged in months. This isn't because I haven't been writing. I've got several standing documents on my computer where I chronicle my thoughts in blog-fashion. But when I come to blog online I come because I'm sharing information I think would be useful/enjoyable to other people. I guess this means I've had nothing useful/enjoyable to share since January. Until now.

SXSWSXSWSXSW! South by Southwest, or South by, or SX always takes over my life. Every March, on some mid-month Wednesday to Saturday time block I board public transport and head downtown like some kind of music zombie. This year was no different. Here's what tickled my tickler.

Darwin Deez from NYC:

Do you like Pavement? Ben Folds? The Incredible Moses Leroy? You'll like this band. I did. Here's a piece-

Bodega Girls from Boston:

Do you like to dance? Do you like to jam some LCD Soundsystem or Prince when you're feeling funky? Maybe some Black Keys? Here's a piece of one of the best live shows I saw (no live element in the video...just music)-

Okay. That's all I've got for now. I saw dozens of bands, but I want to move on to more important matters. Why my grandma is awesome sauce:

If you know me really, really well you know I adore my Grandma Weiner. She and my Grandpa moved to STL when I was little and my dad was sick. She proved to be an inspirational figure for me very early on. She's one of those adults that treated me with respect from day one. She's also the hippest lady over 70 that you'll ever meet. She regularly watches The Daily Show and MSNBC. She will proudly talk about her socialist father. Her hero is Margaret Sanger. When I was a pre-teen and playing Duke Nukem and Heretic on my computer so was she. Before her hands started shaking too bad she used to be president of the local "older residents" computer club in her neighborhood (over 50 members!). She made a dvd for me of photos when I graduated college set to Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World." She never went to college but has done more to independently further her education than anyone I have ever known. She is funny and friendly and brilliant. When I'm feeling any of these traits I feel certain that they are stemming from her influence. So a few days ago I emailed her this sentiment. Let her know that I'm happy, that I have more good people in my life right now than I could have ever hoped for, and that I think much of my success has come from her mentoring. This is her response:

That is probably the loveliest thing ANYONE has ever said to me. I'm going to save it close to me (possibly in my bra) forever.

You were so easy to converse with even as a toddler. I can't wait to see you. I wish you lived in my pocket!

Seriously, right? Awesome. Sauce.

what's mine

See the left half of that little pink house? That's mine. Well sort of. I pay rent to live in it. Being an adult seems to be a lot about owning things...or sort of owning them. It's those "sort of" situations that make me feel like I'll never really feel grown-up. I have a car "sort of." I mean it's mine, but it was my parents first and they gave it to me (it's a 99 ford escort, i'm spoiled, but not THAT much). I have a masters degree "sort of." I mean it's mine, but I'm still paying off the loans and I'm pretty sure if you don't pay they take those things back. Right? Right?! Why else would anybody pay them?!

My job is mine. That's one thing I feel pretty proud about. For years, pretty much from 2004 on, I've felt like I've been perpetually searching for something salaried, with benefits, that I liked doing. And I have it now. It's fantastic. As stressful as it can be sometimes (thank you 11-hour work day yesterday), I am so grateful for it. So it's hard not to define myself by it. If I took it away, tried to wipe it from my head for a minute, and think how I would identify myself it begins to get tricky. This is being an adult. People always seem to take what they do as an adjective about who they are. When you're 13 it's all about what you like. At 13, if some other 13 year old asked me to describe myself (probably in a chatroom), I would have said, "I like R.E.M., thrift store clothes, thinking I'm funny, talking on the phone, and trying to keep things from my parents. Oh and pretending I'm older than 13 whenever possible."

So now these type of things have been replaced by "hobbies." Because for adults owning things also now means owning things about themselves and what they're passionate about. And you have to decide those things in a way that sometimes feels similar to deciding to like R.E.M.

I always feel like I'm scrambling for hobbies. Because of this I've learned how to knit, to cook, to rock climb, and to exercise. There are a lot of young adults I know that do social sports like kick ball or take yoga. I wonder if any of this really works for them, because I feel like it only "sort of" works for me. I do the things, I like them, but I don't feel like I can own them. I never became a knitter or a rock climber; I learned how to do those things and thought, "okay, what next?"

From age 4-17 I took dance classes and loved them. Once a week I would put on tap shoes and/or ballet shoes and think, "I like dance. It is a thing I like to do. It is part of me." I've thought about taking dance classes again, sad adult dance classes with other people trying to find a hobby, but I feel like I'd only be trying to recapture that certainty that I had when I was younger.

I'm pretty sure everybody *needs* to have something that they can latch on to when they try to adjectivize (deal with it) themselves. It makes me think of those acrostic poems everybody wrote with their names when they were kids. What would mine be now?

R- sort of rock climber

A- sort of artistic

C- sort of cook

H- sort of hot (couldn't resist that)

E- sort of educated

L- sort of literate

I guess maybe it's about just hopping that sort-of hurdle and totally owning things whether you really 100% do or not. I'm 60% sure of that.