The Doing and Being of Fame

Yesterday an author told me that when he interviews family members of a famous individual, they are considered “sources” and it is not “kosher” to pay sources for interviews and access to all of the tapes, letters, records and photos. I countered that family members are the people responsible for preserving the memory and name of the renowned individual. Is it “kosher” to feed off of another individual's fame? Ethics always trumps technicalities, no matter the field. Family members know that person intimately and would be happy to "collaborate." Any other information from a distant source is hearsay. If the family has limited resources – or even if they don’t – it is honorable and customary to compensate them for collaboration on a project that creates history. On the other hand, as a writer, I know that authors don't devote years to a project unless they have a sincere interest in a story. And if they want to make big bucks, they probably wouldn't have chosen writing as a career.

My stepfather, Phil Hill, was famous. I remember acting as his “protector” (hardly a body guard) at an event at Laguna Seca where he was signing autographs. He had not yet been diagnosed with MSA (Multisystem Atrophy), but likely was ill because he tired easily and needed breaks. My job was to cut off the line when he needed an extended break. I let one guy cut in line because he was an enthusiastic and educated fan who was about to cry. Good Lord, man, pull it together! Another man asked if I would be so kind as to sign his program instead. He was thrilled and left me at the back of the line scratching my head in wonder. Another man became belligerent and refused to leave. He glared at me and pushed out his chest. He was joined by the vulture I witnessed at every event who collected as many signatures as possible and made his living feeding off the fame of others. Someday he would cash in on the posters and photos. Repeat visitors were welcomed if they had a sincere interest in Phil’s history, but objectification is disgusting no matter what form it takes. But who am I to judge? Maybe the guy waits in long lines for signatures because he enjoys the others around him. Maybe he educates fans about the history of the racers he doggedly pursues.

What does this have to do Doing and Being? Fame is a burden, but the passion that made Phil famous was not. Emotionally, he supported my bliss (dance) 100% because he could see that it lit me up and gave me meaning and a reason for being. Regrettably, Phil never wrote an autobiography – to tell his story as close to the truth as possible, but to him what mattered was the intensity of the moment: telling a great story and telling it well. He knew how to masterfully dole out details that led to a climax that had everyone in awe or stitches (depending) by the end. He loved music and Christmas and the smell of a garage. He loved Planet Earth, Animal Planet, his cats and Formula 1 at 3 a.m. He loved caviar, Italian proscuitto (anything Italian or English) and George Latour’s private reserve cabernet. The reason people enjoyed basking in Phil's presence is because he knew not only how to DO but how to BE. He lived moments fully and deeply as if they were his last. He was one of the most authentic people you would ever have met. Whereas many famous folk master a “Scheiss Freundlich” attitude, Phil had no interest in wearing a persona. What you saw was what you got.

Why is it that someone who knew how to tell a great story never told his own? I think he trusted the visually gripping and aesthetically appealing photos he took and later published in collections, which includes a book he was in the midst of finishing when he died. He trusted his friends from Road and Track to recount memories. He trusted his son, Derek, who is making a documentary, and his daughter, Vanessa, who has a far broader involvement in the car world than I do. He knows that they will tell the truth because they understood the private, classy while INTENSE man he was. I knew Phil not as a racer or car collector, but as a father figure. He was deeply kind, tender, generous, intelligent and terribly, wonderfully funny. While he understood the underbelly of humankind, he chose to focus on the light – especially in his last years. It will be interesting to see what is written about him, but based on how he lived, I think he decided that the only real truth we will ever have is in the moment. The rest is a result of confabulation, imagination and longing.

Double Bambi

I was running with my daughter’s dog when I heard “click, click, clippity-click” behind me. Could it be a woman in spikes? A jogging tap dancer? I turned to see a deer trotting behind us. Where did it come from? Although near the foothills, I was in a neighborhood where the homes are built close to one another. I stopped and she stopped. (For purposes of the tale, I am going to call the deer female, although – being that it is springtime, it could have been a male who had shed his antlers.) I had never been so close to a deer. Her ears were huge and oblong, and her eyes exceptionally large, round and doleful.

“Oh sweetie,” I said, thinking I was talking to Bambi. “You must have lost your pack! Follow us and we’ll take you to a park.” This was so city-chick meets wildlife. What can I say? I grew up in Phoenix and L.A. and watched way too many cartoons. I began to walk and the deer suddenly snorted and pawed the ground with her front hooves, which sounded like swords hitting the pavement. Suddenly lambykins didn’t seem so docile. Actually deer expressions don’t change like they do in the Disney films. She pretty much looked the same, except that she was staring directly at my daughter’s dog, Oliver, who was looking up at me for direction.

“Get her!” I said to the dog and the dog barked at the deer, but the deer stood her ground, snorting harder. This could escalate matters, so I stood between deer and Oliver and indicated for the dog to stay behind me, which he did like a good pooch. If I let my daughter’s dog get hurt, she would do a lot worse to me than any deer. But what was I going to do?

I thought of our horses and whipped a grocery baggie that I carried for poop from my fanny pack and waved it wildly at the deer who only snorted and pawed again. Evidently, deer are more closely related to bulls than horses. I unbuckled my fanny pack and began to swing it just close enough to watch the deer’s fur whooshing up slightly as the buckled passed by. I tried backing away, but the deer followed, so the speed of the fanny pack increased and now I added a savage dance that included sounds made by martial artists. I was worried that someone would look out from their window and call to their partner, “Honey, come look at this idiot mauling a deer.”

Finally the deer let us back up and when it was out of sight, Oliver and I bolted. I think Oliver’s compliance was a mix of good training and serious intimidation by my primitive dance. Thanks to Facebook, I learned that deer can do serious damage to dogs. Friends had spent $400 - $1000 in vet bills on dogs who had been attacked by deer, so it’s a good thing we got away unscathed.

But the story doesn’t stop here. I have been using the Medicine Cards by Jamie Sams and David Carson with illustrations by Angela Werneke for 15 years, pulling a card when I was dealing with a particularly challenging situation, which usually averaged a couple of times a month. I am deeply connected to animals and they have been messengers throughout my life. But I didn’t think to pick up the deer card and read what it said when I encountered the real deer. However, the day following the incident, I decided to pull a card related to one of my daughters and a difficult situation she was enduring. It had been a couple of weeks since I consulted the cards. And, yes, I pulled DEER! There are no accidents.

In summary, the story of deer goes like this: she meets a disgusting and frightening demon who blocks the way to Great Spirit’s lodge. Demon wants all others to feel like Great Spirit does not want to be disturbed, but fawn is not afraid. Her fearless love and compassion astound the demon and “her love…penetrated his hardened, ugly heart”(53). He shrinks, like the Wicked Witch of the West and deer passes unharmed. The moral of the story is that deer proves the “power of gentleness to touch the hearts and minds of wounded beings.” But the personal key for me in this reading was: “Stop pushing so hard to get others to change and love them as they are. Apply gentleness to your present situation and become like the summer breeze: warm and caring”(54).

As a mother, I often think I’m supposed to DO something to HELP my children or I will be a failure as a mother. But sometimes they have to go through the given experience for a reason. All I could do was BE! So I released all judgment, expectation and worry, and instead offered love, acceptance and support when necessary. How simple was that? Next time when an animal appears out of nowhere I will realize she’s probably a messenger.

The Gravity of Regret

Sometimes emotions sneak up when I least expect them, and when they do they throw me off balance. I stumble inside, and inevitably the emotions show up on my face. My kids tell me I’m a terrible liar.

Daniel Charon, former dancer with Doug Varone dancers, is in town teaching master classes at University of Colorado for two weeks. Modern dance has a group of early founders, all of whom developed their own movement language. Each artist informed and shaped the art form. I did the “Jose Limon thing,” and so did Daniel, so his movement phrases were gratifying for my body to learn and execute.

Daniel lives in New York City and is planning on getting his MFA in dance. I brought up names from the past – to see if he knew teachers/artists with whom I studied and whose work I performed there back in the ‘80’s – Clay Taliaferro, Ruth Currier… But, suddenly, time stood still. I was having a “sliding doors” moment. Why hadn’t I gotten my MFA in dance? I could be teaching at a university! I was good at choreography – I could have bodies to work with and be paid for doing it. What had prevented me from making a career of it? Why had I given up modern dance to pursue musical theater? Who was I kidding? I can’t even sing! I did it because I thought going commercial would make me more money, which would justify to my parents that it had been worth paying for me to get a dance degree. I was under society’s spell: money = value.

I always tell myself I have no regrets, but while I was standing there talking to this wonderful artist, I felt like throwing myself on the ground and having a tantrum. I don’t spend a lot of time in the land of regret, so as I moved into the first set of dance exercises (which, thankfully and ironically, were on the floor), I let regret eat at me for a while. After all, our shadow feelings will reemerge if we don’t give them some attention. Regret feels icky like jealousy, but not nearly as intense. (The last time I was jealous I turned into a fire-breathing dragon and nearly seared all the trees in my backyard!) If jealousy had a visual it would be the Biblical gnashing of teeth or eating wild animals raw, blood dripping through teeth. In light of that, I could handle regret.

Gravity is part of the dynamic that creates what movement will follow next. If the arm is swinging down, we see how far it will swing back up… we use the weight to create the next “organic” move. Modern dancers were using that term way before the farmers! So, choreography grows not out of a defined vocabulary but out of momentum and conflict between forces, such as coming into contact with another body. Regret feels like too much gravity sucking at my heart. I had to come up for air.

There was a reason I didn’t follow that path. It’s easy to forget the how and why we chose a particular road, because memory is fickle and reality is an illusion. Back then I was tired of dancing, and I quit altogether. I focused, instead, on raising two beautiful daughters I wanted more than anything in the world, and during what little free time I found, I wrote. When I returned to dance in 2005, it was like meeting an old lover and realizing that we were meant to meet again. I have been head over heels ever since. Had Terpsichore and I married all those years ago it may have ended badly.

Sometimes we do things because it makes sense, and sometimes we follow our gut and it makes sense later. Our ego voice (if you haven’t met mine, I’ll tell you now her name is Nasty) tends to want to judge… all the time, as if she has nothing better to do. Nasty judges the way I talk to my children, the food I eat, the way I wash the dishes and the choices I’ve made. The key is to ask her to go back to her dark corner and then step right back into the moment, into the blessing of BEING, because this is where joy is living without illusion and complication of too much thinking.

A Tail Between my Legs; A Rose Between my Teeth

What do you think when I mention: “Oneness,” “The Unknown,” or “The Other.” Spirituality? Heidegger? Perhaps, but no: Argentinean tango. There is no more sensual way to learn about how you engage with the Other than to tango. The leader indicates – with his or her heart – and the follower listens with her heart, trusting implicitly; both hearts open and willing to connect.

Yesterday I found myself telling a partner: “Why don’t you lead me straight back a while so I can feel my heart.” But he didn’t. He kept taking me again and again into the front cross step and several moments of puzzlement, I realized I liked it. I surrendered. He is not all that experienced – this is a beginner’s class after all – but he knew what he wanted, which makes him a good leader.

“Sorry,” he said at one point when he gave me a physical double message and I stumbled.

“It’s okay,” I replied. “You have the harder job.”

“What’s that?” he asked, “Making a woman happy?”

I laughed. “Yes. Good luck.” The adorable, young guy was one step ahead of me.

To the untrained eye, it might look like I go to tango just to be held in the firm arms of young and old men alike. Well, okay that’s not such a bad side benefit, but what I’m learning is it’s not about sex. I take that back. It can be about sex if you and a committed partner are seeking another way to tap the sacred, but ultimately it’s about discovering the heart of the Other in a safe environment. Yes, Heidegger, it’s about a “way of being in the world.”

Brian Dunn and Deb Sclar, our fearless leaders, explain that in Argentina, in general, people are more comfortable being physically close. When they hug it is a bear hug, a warm and solid embrace. In America people – especially relative strangers – don’t hug or, if they do, often they hug tentatively. Brian and Deb demonstrate their American version of the hug and it looks clinical, like perhaps they should be wearing turtlenecks and scrubs. They explain that each dance is an opportunity to fall in love with the stranger across from you, no matter if they are the same sex as you or not. The emphasis is on connecting – physically and emotionally – with the Other, and on taking responsibility to step into the assigned role of leader or follower. I look forward to the day when I’m not thinking as much and can flow with the process.

The first lesson, I attended with my friend, Seth. I was looking straight into his playful hazel eyes.

“I think you’re supposed to be looking at my heart,” he remarked.

Being that following comes so naturally to me, I replied: “No, I think I can look anywhere I want to.”

Within seconds Deb announced that followers are supposed to “look at the leader’s heart, no matter his height. That way the women’s neck remains unbroken and long.” It definitely improved my concentration. Then, we were asked to switch roles. Seth looked down. “Oh wow,” he teased, “You know I am not looking at your breasts.”

“Yes, I know. They happen to be close to my heart.”

Every five minutes or so, followers rotate counterclockwise, moving to a new leader and a new experience.

Yesterday was my third lesson. Dancing with a more experienced partner is wonderful. Robert’s cues are gentle but clear and we glided easily between the parallel step and cross step system. I knew exactly where to step and it was powerful. There are no words exchanged, but strong intention and connection. On my next rotation I met Saunder. It was his first time possibly doing any form of dance whatsoever, and when the music began it was as though his computer had crashed; he was frozen. My eyes drifted up to his face and I thought perhaps I would be forced to shout: “Get this man an oil can, quick!” But then, he leaned and slowly his left foot moved to replace my left foot. Creak. The instructor noticed our immobility. I was thinking, “Yes, please help the poor guy.”

But Brian, the instructor, addressed me. “Do you do other forms of ballroom?” It didn't sound like this was a compliment.

“No.” I replied.

“So you always stand like that?” There must be some mistake, I am thinking. Saunder’s the tin man.

I didn't know whether to fold my arms or put my hands on my hips. “Stand like how?”

“Upright. Like if I were to cast you in a movie, you’d be Superwoman ready to take off.” I looked at him blankly. Didn’t he know? I had to be prepared. You never knew when I might have to don my cape and kill evil villains with my spikes. “Relax!” he translated.

“Okay,” I replied with my tail between my legs. Let me tell you, it’s not easy dancing with a tail between your legs!

So Saunder and I started again. We were moving, slowly, but we were moving. Brian was watching. I relaxed.

“Wait,” he interrupted us again. “Why are you leaning back?” I leaned forward. “No. Don’t do it with your head. Lean in with your heart. It’s not about your back. You’re protecting your heart.”

How in the heck was I supposed to unravel the tightly wound fist that had been living for years inside my chest? Didn’t he know how scary strangers could be? He hadn’t gone on some of my dates! But, that’s another story. I want to remain vulnerable no matter who is standing before me. I’d spent too many years as a chameleon. It was time to unveil my soul, but how? I could sort of feel the subtle shift to which he was referring. I wanted someone to take me by the feet and shake me out over a balcony like a rug. But that seemed like asking too much. Where is Superman when you need him?

I have studied ballet, jazz, modern, African, and tap, but this has been a whole new venture. All forms of dance have taught me something valuable, and now, tango was offering me a direct reflection of how I engage with the Other.

I thought about my first lesson, when I was asked to dance "hands off,” guided only by the leader’s heart without actually being in contact. I remember my partner’s chest hairs and the top button of his shirt, and the way my heart was pounding like a lost puppy’s. “Concentrate!” I told her, when I should have been whispering: “Feel it.”