My Unbearable TRAUMA by Kathy McCarty……the Great.
Behold the G*R*E*A*T*N*E*S*S
Back when I was In Elementary School I went through this little phase where I signed my name KATHY MCCARTY THE GREAT (inspired, I am sure, by the Russian Royalty figures Catherine the Great and Peter the Great….why didn’t the others call themselves The Great? I guess ALEXANDER THE GREAT did.) It is always fun when I pick up one of my ten billion books, such as HARRIET THE SPY, and I find on the flyleaf “This Book Belongs To KATHY MCCARTY THE G*R*E*A*T!”
It was probably around this time that I began putting stars between letters to signify I really mean it. (Of course this could just mean I haven’t matured very much since then.)
My Fourth Grade Diary
I figured is I was going to title a post “My Unbearable Trauma” I should at the very least sign it “Kathy McCarty The G*R*E*A*T” to, you know, to keep the theme of GRANDIOSITY going.
ANYWAY: So what happened to me the other day was, I helped a friend bake a cake to donate to some worthy cause. I did it to help my friend, I wasn’t really clear on the cause, except I knew it was some Good Cause that deserved a cake. I ended up delivering the cake, because it was on my way home. So there I was, bopping along, feeling really fine, delivering the cake. A Very Fancy Chocolate Cake. The lady that I delivered it to was REALLY NICE, and she kept lookin’ at me….and then she said: “Are you Kathy McCarty?”
Wailing on my AX
I don’t get recognized very often, but it does happen, and I said, “Yes. Anyway here’s the cake…” but instead of escaping, we continued to converse for a while, and it turned out the cake was for the Ann Richard’s School for Girls Leadership (not the right name, but it’s close). And this nice lady said, “You know, we have women come and speak to the girls sometimes, do you think you might like to?”
And I don’t know what happened to me at this point. It was like my entire world, my psyche, underwent a horrifying contraction, a spasm, A VERY PAINFUL SPASM! I almost couldn’t keep my EYEBALLS FOCUSED, seriously, my brain couldn’t even comprehend what she was asking, it was so horribly discordant with my world-view, It HONESTLY was like she was TALKING GIBBERISH.
LIKE SHE WAS TALKING GIBBERISH.
SERIOUSLY. I don’t know how to emphasize this enough, the extent to which this question BROKE MY MIND.
I managed to stammer out, “UHHHHHHHHHH……….Wouldn’t you rather have someone……SUCCESSFUL?”
And I started fighting back my tears. Literally, choking back SOBS that were aching to break forth. I made my face into a mask (I am good in emergencies) and I am afraid to say, sort of argued with her about how incredibly Inappropriate it was to ask Me.
The Lady was rather taken aback (Of course she was!) as I explained to her that, essentially, can’t you see that I, uh, didn’t make it? She said, “Oh but Dead Dog’s Eyeball is a great record, and you won awards for it, and sure, a musician’s life has it’s ups and downs….” and I broke in (and I am NOT proud of this) ”I HAVE NEVER MADE ONE THIN DIME IN MY ENTIRE CAREER DEAD DOG’S EYEBALL BANKRUPTED ME I HAVE ALWAYS WORKED HORRIBLE HORRIBLE JOBS TO PAY TO PLAY ARG ARG ARG EMOTIONAL VOMIT SPEWING FORTH LIKE A GEYSER.” (But calmly and with a frozen face.) And in my mind I was thinking something along the lines of, “What would I have to TELL these little girls? I mean, SURELY you don’t want someone like ME to talk to them, because, you see, I failed, and the only sorts of things I could say are things like, “Follow your dreams and work really hard, and YOU TOO can end up a 50 year old WAITRESS. You know how they tell you you can be anything you want to be if you work really hard at it? Well…that is not always true.”
Even I wouldn’t want to tell little girls depressing shit like that, it just happens, sadly, to be my experience. Which sort of disqualifies me from being any sort in Inspirational Speaker. You know?
I MEAN WOULDN’T YOU RATHER ASK SOMEONE ELSE?
So I beat it out of there, pausing to sob uncontrollably in my car. And while I was driving. And I thought:
“WHERE IN THE FUCK IS THIS COMING FROM?!?!?!?!?” Because I had just been, as I said earlier, bopping along and feeling happy in my life, being positive and accomplishing things and undergoing spiritual growth et cetera. And I really was blissfully aware that I had a HUGE MOTHERFUCKING VOLCANO OF AGONIZING TRAUMA within me. APPARENTLY, right below the surface, if you just happen to have the Magic Key to unlock it from it’s VAULT! That it had been in for like OVER A DECADE or something. Wow!
So I went home and continued to have a massive FREAK-OUT for the rest of the day, talking it through with Dave, by which I mean choking out broken syllables with my sob-wracked vocal cords between my quivering lips in my continually streaming face, with occasional angry yelling and fist pounding for EMPHASIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So.
So I have come to the Conclusion that I need to get a Better Perspective on all this. For starters, even if only to make myself FEEL BETTER, I need to re-evaluate my idea of “Success”. Because according to the definition I currently have, I am not one. Because I never achieved even my most modest dream of eking out a working-class living via my ARTFORM. I think I would have felt pretty successful if you know, I had been able to quit waiting tables; if I could ever have called my time my own, even for a few years. That would have felt good, I would have felt successful. As reasonable as that is, I think I have to lower my standards of success even further, or just change them radically, so that it stops hurting me. A good starting point might be: Did my work ever make anyone ELSE feel better? Because I KNOW it did.
Glass Eye
Just writing that is making me cry again, so I had better end TODAY’S INSTALLMENT of the ONGOING….for lack of a better word……WOUND CLEANING! There, that made me laugh. But the Idea I had is, I should write about this on my website, this process of fixing my insides so that I am not carrying this around anymore. Who knows, if I can manage to work through it and change myself, maybe I will be able to write songs again.I mean, it has only been A DECADE…that is probably long enough to register it with the Universe that I AM ANGRY about BEING INSUFFICIENTLY APPRECIATED.
Ya Think?
(comments that are insufficiently appreciative of my Greatness will be spammed. Also you will not get a present.)
October 8th, 2009 at 9:44 am
it’s really great that you are writing this out for the world to see. I’m only ‘a kid’ (twenty-something but whatever) and even at this point I’m starting to question the idea of what success is. trying to make ourselves congruent with the surrounding world is kind of a hapless exercise in masochism. personally, I think art isn’t about money and I think you have good starting point in measuring success by how you’ve made others feel. sure, this may be a naive philosophy because obviously money does let us have things that we like, and often money follows success, but at the deepest level, ‘greatness’ can’t be bought or sold.
October 9th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Hey, don’t feel too bad. You at least succeeded on an aesthetic level. Henry Thoreau, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, and Franz Kafka never saw a penny for their most important work. Kafka actually had it so bad he fantasized about moving away and becoming a waiter. Thoreau had to work in a pencil factory most of his adult life and Blake earned a living illuminating far lesser poets’ works. Financial success, while heartening, isn’t the sole or even predominant determining factor of personal worth.
Also, you made this list: http://procrast-nation.com/?p=3211
October 10th, 2009 at 9:37 am
I just felt compelled to comment, because your post really got to me.
Success is such a strange, subjective thing. In my eyes, I think that anyone who has managed to play on stage is successful. That’s my small goal in life. I feel like a failure at times (even though I’m still “young” and in my twenties) because others have managed this. But, I suppose even going ahead and attempting to create music is a form of success in itself.
My point is is that you are a success to someone like me. And you have my respect.
October 11th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Hey, that’s harsh on yourself. Making a living from what you love is a great dream, and lots of us don’t achieve it, but we keep doing what we love and trying to get by, because we know we have something to contribute. Seeking validation from society is a no-win situation. I hope you will start writing songs again, because they are teriffic.
October 12th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Wow, I didn’t know you felt so strongly about it. I’ll have you know that Another Day in the Sun is currently playing on my iPod. And my iPod is new, and only fits the equivalent of 18 CDs. I had Every Woman’s Fantasy on there too, until I took only some of the songs off because it was repeating too much. I’m wondering if I’m the only person in the world going around listening to these songs- yourself excluded, maybe.
Listened to your songs 10 million times since I was an impressionable teenager, and still have not gotten sick of them. Your voice is gorgeous, but the lyrics are brilliant.
“No one should have to go where I have gone
to not see what I’ve not seen”
That pretty much sums it up for me. So there.
October 12th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Oh yeah, Hello Young Lovers is partially on there too. And my iPod loves you.
October 12th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Thank You All. Really. I know it must seem like I put this up to garner accolades, but in all seriousness I am seriously trying to work through this and clean up my belief system. It is extraordinarily good for me to hear from you guys though, because it helps me to FOCUS on having made Art that is LIKED and even BELOVED of some people (rather than on my poor employment prospects, empty savings account, et cetera.) And I really want to do that- I really DO want to FOCUS on things that make me feel BETTER.
So, thank you AGAIN. I will be writing MORE (I have two more Installments in my Narrative at present) but I have a stomach bug so it is going to have to wait. Stomach Bug= BAD
February 2nd, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Hey I’m late to the party here but your songs and your band brought joy to me all those years ago. You guys were successful at making some GREAT music, and I noticed and appreciated it all the way over in Southern Illinois. As far as the larger world ever taking appropriate notice … maybe it’s possible? Maybe “Christine” could end up in some movie soundtrack and get appreciated? Anyway even if not, congratulations on doing and being something real.
March 2nd, 2010 at 1:21 pm
You’re an artist… you make art. And I love it.
Sucess is very subjective indeed.
There’s some “successful” people that I really have no admiration for (sometimes quite the opposite). As for Music of course money is better and living of your art is great. I wish I could too. But making bad pop music and having your face on the cover of a tabloid magazine for a couple of months everytime you fart isn’t better either.
I came back here today because myself I felt sick of my job in a Café and creatively sterile. So I thought ” Eh let’s see what Kathy McCarty is up to and it’ll probably give me a little “boost” that I need”. It works.
I actually right now feel like painting on a picture that my husband printed for my this morning to help my creativity (he’s sweet), but I couldn’t start before I wrote my little message here to tell you that you’re G*R*E*A*T.
I wish more people would know it but I’m happy I do.
March 22nd, 2010 at 10:07 am
Chris Clarke turned me on to your blog. I love your writing – I am an underappreciated creative Austinite, too, except I’ve been at it longer than you have and I know that my years of writing, publishing, making art and generally rousing the rabble were not for naught – because I’ve been around long enough to see the seeds I planted grow and to see the magic of just being a part of this wonderful new world we are creating. Why would anyone want “success” in the old, rotten, capitalist, exploitative world of wars and oppression? Not me! Be happy to be a pauper, Kathy – our side is winning!! . . . swan . . .
March 23rd, 2010 at 6:18 am
Pity those who never had the art to make.
April 19th, 2010 at 4:31 pm
Oh yeah, Hello Young Lovers is partially on there too. And my iPod loves you.
April 23rd, 2010 at 2:46 am
I just felt compelled to comment, because your post really got to me.
Success is such a strange, subjective thing. In my eyes, I think that anyone who has managed to play on stage is successful. That’s my small goal in life. I feel like a failure at times (even though I’m still “young” and in my twenties) because others have managed this. But, I suppose even going ahead and attempting to create music is a form of success in itself.
My point is is that you are a success to someone like me. And you have my respect.
April 27th, 2010 at 5:23 pm
Wow, I didn’t know you felt so strongly about it. I’ll have you know that Another Day in the Sun is currently playing on my iPod. And my iPod is new, and only fits the equivalent of 18 CDs. I had Every Woman’s Fantasy on there too, until I took only some of the songs off because it was repeating too much. I’m wondering if I’m the only person in the world going around listening to these songs- yourself excluded, maybe.
Listened to your songs 10 million times since I was an impressionable teenager, and still have not gotten sick of them. Your voice is gorgeous, but the lyrics are brilliant.
“No one should have to go where I have gone
to not see what I’ve not seen”
That pretty much sums it up for me. So there.
May 26th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
The list of musicians I’ve fallen in love with in the past 20 years is pretty small: Vic Chesnutt, Lisa Germano, Barbara Manning, Kathy McCarty. Each of them transported me to another world, where objects looked strange and the physics didn’t quite behave, but where nevertheless I felt oddly welcome, saw familiar things in a new way, and had my sometimes tenuous sense of being human reinforced. Their beautiful music made dark times easier to bear; and their intelligence, intensity, and self-effacing humor helped me avoid total self-absorption. They changed my life.
Like any other insignificant person in an audience, I can’t influence the outcome of an artist’s Success vs. Failure death match, but I do wonder what success means beyond satisfying the obvious quartet of human-dignity negatives (not be homeless/not go to bed hungry/not be afraid to walk in my own neighborhood/not have to work for a shithead). Is the overarching goal simply access to more people who really don’t get it? A bigger rack of antlers? More money to finance a more comfortable level of moping?
As a writer (who has never made a living by writing), I’ve dreamed of having a perfect reader someday–someone who understands my ideas, sympathizes with my intentions, gets my allusions, laughs at appropriate moments, and recognizes interesting overtones that even I don’t realize are there. But no one is a perfect reader; no one can make it all worthwhile. Come to think of it, what claim do I have on a perfect reader anyway?
Instead, the world is full of imperfect listeners and of readers with large and irremediable blind spots; they’re just like you and me. And yet it’s possible to connect with one or another of them occasionally, and when you do–whether you know it or not–it isn’t at all like being seen through by a kindly, paternalistic, all-knowing God. It’s like giving an imperfect stranger a precious but flawed gift. You (Ms. Thornberry) have that generosity, you’ve shared your gifts, you’ve demonstrated your greatness: It’s in the public record.
I call that success.
June 1st, 2010 at 4:12 am
Chris Clarke turned me on to your blog. I love your writing – I am an underappreciated creative Austinite, too, except I’ve been at it longer than you have and I know that my years of writing, publishing, making art and generally rousing the rabble were not for naught – because I’ve been around long enough to see the seeds I planted grow and to see the magic of just being a part of this wonderful new world we are creating. Why would anyone want “success” in the old, rotten, capitalist, exploitative world of wars and oppression? Not me! Be happy to be a pauper, Kathy – our side is winning!! . . . swan . . .