SINGING TO THE CHEESES

When I traveled to the UK for the first time, the first thing anyone said to me was—I shit you not— “righty-ho, then!”

I was so charmed I could hardly keep my pants on, and the person who’d said it was a very sweet very old lady showing me the way to my hostel room.

I soon found out— to my dismay— that in my rollicking ecstasy at finally being in the place I’d read and watched about five million man-hours’-worth of film and literary material on, I was completely helpless not to mimic anyone and everyone who spoke to me.

It was kind of like one of those dreams where you show up to school naked.

I did this reflexive parroting, right down to the facial expressions and musicality of the particular speaker, without any relevant degree of control over myself, and I’m sure that it looked very much like a) I was making fun of the person I was talking to, b) I was rapidly coming unhinged, or c) both.

The words tumbled out of my mouth, sloppily embodying whatever was before me in a helpless, joy-driven action, and if I made any attempt to rein any of it in, it just started to look like I was also having a small stroke, so I really had no choice but to let the current take me.

Eventually, it did smooth out a bit; I could dial it back enough to not appear outright mean or idiotic, and people seemed to think I was maybe a weird hybrid, an expat or something, which was a relief. I often have cause to remind myself that there are PLENTY of hybrid accents that very few people would recognize, so there is some plausible legitimacy for most bad, accidental dialect-work.

*

At our recent Harvest Party, one of my friends brought her mother, who has a twangy NC accent. In my delight at hearing this particular sound-seasoning, I immediately fell down the imitation sinkhole, coming close to an ankle-sprain.

I caught myself doing it only by the fourth or fifth word, and so could make no functional recovery, since the interaction was quite brief. But it was long enough for my other friend, a poet, of course, to notice, and take pleasure in my deeply awkward struggle. Because he is an objectively bad person, and his name rhymes with “Can,” he made note of it aloud.

It seems I cannot outrun my joy. It embarrasses me all the time. It’s kind of sweet, actually.

*

A complicating factor in all of this is that I am enchanted by things that are done poorly, but with great enthusiasm. More so than I am by things done just plain well, or even exceptionally beautifully. I guess I really like me some texture. The upshot is I actually get a second high, on top of the first one from having contact with unaccustomed speech patterns, from hearing myself cobble together a deeply amateur imitation of said pattern.

At least, I suppose, I know these things about myself. It makes a more fruitful approach possible. For example, for said Harvest Party, I had chosen as my costume a dirndl from the 1950s that I found in my parents’ attic, and the accent I felt, for no legitimate reason, went with it: “Swiss German” (my version of which accent in English is entirely invented, based mostly I think on the musical cueing of a hapless, happy, glissandoing, flurdy-gurdy, Muppet-Swedish-Chef-style sound).

*

I’m a big fan of costuming in general (indeed, it’s what we do every day, even and especially when we think we’re not, so why not blow the roof off that shit and see what it can do), and I find that I uphold several invisible rules when it comes to choosing a costume for a costume party such as our annual Harvest Party: 1) make it very nearly last-minute; 2) Use only what’s available, and/or shitty secondhand items. I think these rules are to ensure a certain amount of creativity and enjoyment, to put to work the magic of near-desperation.

At first, when I tried the dirndl on, the desperation was mostly sourced from the experience of doing up the bodice, which was a tighter fit on my already very-small ribcage than my goddamn wedding dress. I wasn’t sure I’d ever breathe again. But oh, was it worth it. As soon as I had the whole shebang on, and could imagine the braids I’d put in to go with it, the narrative was veritably sliding out of my mouth already: “I am the one who sings to the cheeses,” I heard myself say. OK, I thought, tell me more.

Which brings me to my third rule for choosing a Halloween party costume: that it should reflect some facet of my life during the previous year. Since my pilot husband has been flying almost exclusively to Heathrow or Gatwick for the past many months, and his assignment every time is to GET ME THE CORNISH CHEDDAR FROM MARKS AND SPENCER, I felt that the nod to cheese, especially as from abroad, would do nicely. Also, there was the added bonus that next to the dirndl in that same attic closet were some lovely lederhosen that would fit said husband

.

*

I am currently in a conversation with a friend about the different versions of ourselves we all possess: where each one comes from, what it’s good at, why we use it, and what it all might mean in aggregate.

Mostly where I land on this issue is in a puddle of golden-retriever-butt-wagging delight: that we can have different modes at all, that we have such a variety of options, if we choose to acknowledge and foster them instead of getting wildly weirded out by our own variousness. It’s like getting to play all the instruments in an orchestra, if you can just manage not to mind the whiplash. (My husband once said, “good morning honey, who are we today?”)

I don’t come by this acceptance, or delight, easily. I’ve had to work pretty hard to enjoy rather than fear my many selves, to feel grateful for all they have to offer rather than stare at them with suspicion and a vague sense of contempt (aren’t we supposed to have “one true self” and “just be honest good people who project that one thing” everywhere we go? Um, nope, not possible— there is always a version of the self best fit for the circumstances; I wouldn’t bring my mom-self to the table to sign mortgage papers, for example, lest I make poop jokes over the legalese— or my professor self to the sandbox with my kids, lest I bore them more than I already do.)

The decision to use a costume for the Harvest Party that specifically called up for me / demanded a (very poor) accent, for example, was a form of exposure therapy, I think: it would give me the opportunity to practice being a weirdo and enjoy it, in a safe and fun context with people I love around me. **Which, by the by, sort of magically makes it suddenly not so much “weird,” as “fun.”**

I’ll repeat: giving expression to things that are inside you but you haven’t quite owned “out loud” (I have always lived in fear that I am “too much”) openly and in the presence of people you love has a transformative effect: what had been somewhat uncomfortable can become a known, a thing no longer requiring protection or concealment, which it probably never really required in the first place. The energy you might have been using to conceal or protect can now go into enjoyment, learning, and a new fullness of presence.

That’s why I asked my friend Ariel, on the fly, to interview me as dirndl-woman: Ariel is a performer (a singer/songwriter and an accomplished actor), a kind human with a big heart, and a fun-and-discovery-seeking missile, among many other things, so I knew she’d be game.

The idea on some level was that if I didn’t give myself this gift, of being actively seen and responded to as this character, it would be too easy to disown this apparent piece of me, to let dirndl-woman slip away after the party as a mere fluke, “just a thing I did that one time,” instead of one possible living facet of who I am.

And that’s kind of all it takes, sometimes, just one possibility at a time, to create an entire fictional career of handmaking Alpine cheese. See? You didn’t even know you had that dream. And you may never have, if you hadn’t put on the dirndl.