An Introduction

An Introduction

I'm starting this website during an interesting time in my life. I will be 28 years old in exactly two weeks (this began October 29, 2013).

During the last year, I fell in love with a charismatic British music video director while living in Los Angeles. After day one, he moved me into his massive vibrant kitsch-stocked apartment in the hip neighborhood of Los Feliz. Ours was one hell of an 'how we met' tale. A palpable connection enchanted anyone within a mile of our duo. Our eyes unleashed twinkling golden hearts when telling friends and family that I’d been with women, and he’d been in a bathrobe and a pink cheetah-print scarf on that fateful Sunday. Our smiles tried outstretching our jaws. We were proud.

We went to live shows, heard DJs, and had a chemically-enhanced weekend in Rancho Mirage and Indio at the perfect house for Coachella weekend. We spent not a single night apart for six months until we flew to England in late June (he is from London). We couldn’t book the same flight for a reasonable price so he had to leave a day before me. When I landed, he was there to greet me at London Heathrow. After a few days at his old house in Kensal Green, we set out to Worthy Farm for Glastonbury Music Festival. I got smashed out of my mind after sneaking into the biggest music festival in the world via a suitcase in the back of a cargo van (this story to come). A month later, my love and I began building our own shelter over six weeks and drove to Burning Man in Black Rock City, Nevada.

Coinciding with the magic, I lost my job and struggled to find permanent employment outside of freelance. This took a serious toll on my confidence. I developed an infection that went undetected for three months, and subsequently my hormones and emotions were completely out of balance. I literally lost my mind and both my love and I truly could not recognize the lost, insecure woman I had become.

My once-sublime relationship was in tatters and the final cord between he and I gave way a few months ago.

It was over.

All of this dripped down over me as a wax coating; initially searing my senses. I suffered. I was lost and without my best friend. My fight diminished. Like cooling taffy, the wax was hardening and ready to cast me into a permanent model of failure. 

I took the very last minutes before I was frozen in time and decided to change everything.

This is not the first time I’ve started over. Fuck. I've gone from place to place since the age of fourteen. I've been to several schools, I've tried on different religions, including Mormonism, only to find that less than a year after that practice, I couldn't go a day without thinking of having sex with women.

I've contradicted myself and lived versions of what I imagined my life should or could be, only to find that I was digging and searching after the community or situation no longer suited me. I don't walk around telling myself I'm bad or wrong for this. In fact, there are times when I show these histories like stamps on a passport.

Yes. I am indebted to the varying hats and hairstyles I’ve donned. It is unbeatable experience.

To add, I studied English in college. I have always been a strong and unpolished writer. With this skill, I’ve regaled others and documented the lakes and rivers and oceans into which I’ve dipped my toes. But with true nomadic fervor, I had yet to seek a career in writing.

On a Wednesday night in October, I rushed out of work and I sped east down Franklin, hopped out of my car, and walked briskly to the The Hollywood Bowl Box Office. An earlier history helps explain my gesture, but the bottom line is that I was going to try my hand at one last-stitch gamble on us. As I paid for two center garden box tickets for Atoms For Peace, I wondered if he might soften. I sent my ex a text asking if he had plans. He responded by telling me he was taking a friend’s unused ticket to the same show. I asked him if he would come with me just to see if we could have a nice time together.

Well, it all turned to shit in a second. My ex was upset. He didn’t want to stay at the show knowing I’d done that. And he didn’t want to be on a date with me. And it was all too much.

After trying to convince him to go with his friends anyway, he declined. I left.

I shot a text to a friend whose birthday would be at midnight. I asked her to accompany me as a birthday present. She was elated. Next to that lovely warm bath of rejection and fucking up another night for my poor ex, honestly, what more could I ask for? 

No no no, truthfully, it was lovely and special to see her face light up and gift her that ticket. I'm thrilled the night took its turn with her.

In sauntering down to our seats, with yes-nods at each ticket checkpoint, we let go of the day and the electrified nuance whisked us into the present: the smack-dab center of The Hollywood Bowl. Exchanging 'holy fuck these are our seats?!' eyes, we beamed.

The music started. People began dancing apprehensively. I drank some wine. We befriended the other two girls in our box and I made a decision to have a great time. A few songs in, a white-haired man was making a scene down the aisle from us. Old dude was dancing, sure, but he had some flamboyant moves, the likes of which I’d never seen. He was an original.

I had only one thought: join him.

Here’s why: there’s an amateur video of a young shirtless buck dancing to his heart’s content on YouTube. He was a Sasquatch Festival-goer in Washington State and many people decided to record him with their phones. He was up on a hill during Santi(o)gold’s set. During her song “Unstoppable,” others joined in. I won’t tell you what happens next, because if you haven’t seen the video, you’re in luck. It’s easily one of my favorite things to watch and share.

So, I darted down to our version of Sasquatch Dance Sensation; truth be told, not to start a revolution or to be a YouTube subject, but because… well, why the fuck wouldn’t I? It got me a little closer to the stage, and he was on fire! I didn't emulate him perfectly, but I let myself be wild and free. A few minutes into the sweaty, silly, messy mix, I thought to check on my friend and jaunted back up to our box.

A tall man in a wide-brimmed hat leaned into me before I reached our seats. He and his friends were in the box across the aisle. They beckoned me over and said they go to shows all over the world, and the man I’d been dancing with is famous. Well, famous to them. They whipped out their iPhones and began showing me photos and clips of the white-haired disheveled menace grooving at various venues. I’d been dancing with a legend! Again, a legend to them.

We all shook hands, engaged, and laughed. They shared some water with me, and I asked the question that’d been burning in my mind since the tall man’s initial lunge in my direction.

"So why do you all get to travel around the world to shows?"

They work for Atlantic Records.

I responded with “That’s amazing!” and kept dancing.

The tall man introduced himself to me as Warren.

He was warm and funny. I had initial reservations about talking to anyone else that night, but relaxed. Maybe this was due to the wine and other substances, or because his friends vouched for what a great guy he was, but there’s also no freedom like being at a great gig. Artists can start riots. Live music physically and emotionally brings people together. Bands create movements. Shows can bond you to a place and time and as my brother Alex so eloquently put it, it’s like religious worship. 

This was part of the service where people emit "Peace be with you," somewhere between a whisper and one's inside-voice, and shake hands. Though our church requires us to belt out our names two or three times before anyone can hear us.

And, if I am honest, it’s completely against my nature to not make friends.

So, I spouted out a few things to him about myself, my activities that night (including that I'd ingested mushrooms), and I mentioned (more than once) that I had been insufferable, a  heinous version of myself, for the last few months during my recently-ended relationship.

We genuinely took a liking to one another. I live out loud. I think he appreciates that. I admitted I played Hall & Oates on repeat that entire day. He wanted to make me playlists. I bragged that my Instagram name is KatewoodMac. Somehow, I stepped out of my character enough to give him my number (I make friends, yes, but I’ll leave it there or relegate them to Facebook acquaintance). It was benign. And we were already friends, ready to share music.

We have since spent days sharing songs, playlists, artists, and remixes. We’ve gone to see music and he’s met some of my friends in bands.

As Warren and I discussed music more, I realized that my core love, my lifelong counterpart, is music. I love it with an unmatched passion and my knowledge is vast.

I will never be a perfect catalogue. I consider myself an aficionada but no savant. There are genres and artists of which I've never heard and I'm far from ashamed of this. I embrace it.

Nothing in this world brings me more pleasure than to introduce a new piece of music to a friend or stranger and see his or her face light up; I’m giddy to volunteer myself for the receiving end of that gesture. 

I feel for music the way one might feel about fresh love. I dote on it. I spend hours of my day thinking about it. I relish in its beauty and strength and it speaks to my heart in dynamic ways.  I am a blessed woman. I fall in love and feel euphoric connection by pressing ‘Play.’

This new endeavor, this blog or form of self-expression, is about everything. It’s about life and love and my experience and my adventures, but it will always come back to the music. It’s titled “Womanly Lessons I Never Learned” because, for the first time in my life I feel like a woman, and I’ve been missing out on that. I revel in the fact that I’m out of my early-mid twenties, though I’ll take these posts back and forth because there’s pure gold in some of those embarrassing mishaps, ‘best nights ever,’ and shitshow stories. Stay tuned… I just turned twenty-eight and I couldn’t be revved.