Then she went on tour with Mykola for a while, and I slowly lost interest in it. It was just too hard, knowing how she was judging me the whole time, making hurtful comments like, “God in Heaven, are you trying to kill me?” or “Hey, you know if you reach a little higher on the scale, you’ll hit the Brown Note. That’s the one that makes people shit their pants.”
So I set it aside, sadly.
Then one summer we were at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, and I had a chance to see this incredible man named Xavier Rudd. I’m telling you, talk about magic. This golden-haired Aussie played some kind of guitar that he would actually play on his lap, and he sang like an angel, and he played the didgeridoo. Simultaneously. Often, he would layer his sound using this amazing pedal at his feet. Honestly, I still to this day don’t know how he did it. And he sang the most beautiful songs about the beauty of the Earth, and about the treasure of Australian aboriginal culture and wisdom. The crowd was understandably enraptured, and I was among them. This may sound unbelievable, but, honestly, those of us who were ready to feel his message? Were transported thousands of years, to the time of the Dreaming.
I dragged DD to hear another of his performances at the same festival, but she was too blocked to get him at all. “Isn’t he amazing?” I asked her. But I sensed some jealousy coming off her. She just said, “Yeah, that’s a neat trick he’s pulling off there.”
I pointed out to her the incredible way he had completely mastered the circular breathing technique that allows aboriginal holy men to play these hollowed gourd logs perpetually, without stopping to inhale. “Yeah, I bet he can use that for lots of things,” was her only response. But I was literally enraptured. I felt a special connection to the didgeridoo in particular, partly because of my unusually spiritual nature and my understanding of aboriginal spirituality all over the world, having studied it intensively over the years.
But I should have expected that when I brought one home, her only comment would be, “Oh, my fucking God.”
I was telling some friends at a gathering that I’d begun studying it, and she ducked into the room with a beer in her hand just to say, “I like to think of it as a didgeri-don’t. Ha ha,” then she let out one of her huge, disgusting Kokanee beer belches.
I was determined not to let her judgment get in the way of my personal development. So I practised and practised. It was genuinely, extremely rewarding on a lot of levels. But one thing preyed on me, and it was really a hard thing — I was unable to quite make the kind of sound I really wanted with it.
I would play and play, but the most I could get out of it was a kind of woof sound. Or sometimes I’d use my own technique and simply call down into it, calling down my deepest and most honest feelings into the ancient wood. But it never quite felt satisfying, and a lot of the time I wound up having to lie down for an hour after practising, because it makes you really light-headed.
I persevered, and she persevered in undermining me. “Don’t tell me you’re still blowing on that log,” or “You know that women aren’t allowed to play those things?” or “Why don’t you come to bed. I’ll give you something you can put your mouth on and blow.” She could be so crude.
But the caustic remarks weren’t what eventually stopped me. It was something she did, late in our relationship.
One day, I had been practising in the practice room in our little house. She had initially thought of it as her practice room, but now that I was playing, I was booking time to practice there, too. I had been there for about an hour. I was blowing as hard as I could, and still, not really approaching the sound I was trying for.
That’s when she did it. She stormed in. I’m telling you, her face was like a contorted mask. “I can’t stand it. Gimme that thing!” she shouted, and literally snatched my instrument, this sacred object, right out of my hand. I tried to take it back, but she shouted, “Back off! Right. Watch this, dammit!”
She put her mouth on it. She blew. She made a perfect sound. She modulated the sound. She turned it into that classic “ah-wa-wa-wa-oh” reverberation, making it rhythmic. It sounded exactly like Xavier Rudd. She did it for nearly two full minutes as I watched.
Then she dropped it. “There. See? Not so hard. Do it like that. Okay?” Then she stormed out.
I didn’t speak to her for four days. She knew she had done wrong, and she tried to make amends, but I knew then that this phase of our lives together was over. I never played again.
Name Withheld
Belfast, 2013
WHAT I recognized about her right away was that she had been raped. In her life, she had been raped. I don’t know if everybody who’s been raped has this ability, but when I’ve talked it over with others who are living through the aftermath, the aftermath which is your whole life, it’s been something we felt we could notice. Obviously I don’t spot every single person and sometimes I’m wrong. So I never walk up and announce it to the person. I just wait and am not surprised if they tell me about it after a while.
You might doubt yourself when you think you see it, but deep down you know when you see somebody else who’s living through it. Call it rapedar. Ha. I know I shouldn’t laugh but you’ve caught me on a difficult day … should I go on? You seem a bit uncomfortable.
Right, so, my rapedar spotted her. ’Cause here’s how it is, like, when someone is doing that to you. Your mind is shrieking, “no, no, no,” and you’re looking for some kind of escape, and you realize that there is no escape. You are in a nightmare. And the man who is raping you, or the men who are raping you, as in my case, are laughing at your pathetic search for an escape, because you are seen as an amusement toy, and you are thinking, “Why doesn’t somebody help me? Why is there nobody here to help me?” But there is no one to help you. You have been selected to have this experience of complete and utter powerlessness, of men laughing in your face while you are powerless.
Perhaps if it happens when you’re a small child, then it’s a different matter. Perhaps then, the world of rape is the only world you’ve ever known. I don’t say that I speak for anyone except myself, but I suppose I must have been raised with some expectation of safety, or perhaps not safety but autonomy, because afterward, well, I began to see the world very differently than before. You begin to see the people around you very differently.
Because you’re looking around yourself, and you’re thinking, That person didn’t help me. That person didn’t help me. In particular, you see people in authority, people like teachers and headmasters and headmistresses and police and priests and nuns and parents and you think to yourself, She couldn’t protect me. He couldn’t (or wouldn’t) protect me, as you look at all these people who are in your world who are supposed to have your best interests in mind, to keep you safe, to do things for your own good and you think, What an unbelievable load of shite that is.
And you find yourself surprised, caught off guard, by how very, very angry you are indeed.
Because while the rape is happening, it’s like the world has been turned on its head. You’ve entered a new world of betrayal where people are getting real enjoyment out of doing you harm. You think, This can’t be happening. It’s like the world has been turned upside down.
But then you look around you, and you start to see the world, and you begin to think, no, the world didn’t just turn upside down. This is the world. The people who are supposedly there to protect you and others, they don’t, in reality, do that. Many of them are part of it, part of the people who think it’s funny when they can make others feel as if there’s nothing they can do but have harm done to them.
And so when I say that I spotted DD, when I connected with her that afternoon at the pub, that’s what I mean, what I saw. I saw the anger. My sort of anger. Not boiling beneath the surface, but right there in plain view.