On The Record

"Miss Fortune" Part 3

My sister told me about a Netflix series based on Anne of Green Gables. It was good, she said. She said it was touching, which perked up my ears — I couldn’t remember one of us using that word in that way before.

So H. and I began watching it. I don’t make a whole lot of time for television, and we mostly try to catch up on things late at night, which means I sometimes have to make time to review the following day — it’s a family trait (on my mama’s side) to fall asleep in front of the television. The other night, however, I somehow stayed awake for episode three of the series, in which Anne with an E, after having been adopted, starts a new school.

I asked my husband at some point if he had graduated high school with any of the same people he started kindergarten with, to which he replied, “Oh yes, definitely.”

I wondered to myself what that must’ve been like.

He asked me about my experience — what it was like to have to start a new school and have to do it in seventh, then eighth, and finally tenth grades.

“I guess it was just about survival,” I said.

I identified with Anne and the way she twisted herself up into knots trying to fit in, trying to make sure everyone liked her, yet always bracing herself against the hurt that was sure to come with someone’s inevitable disapproval of her and ultimately being cast out for what she’d been through that had made her so tough, so experienced in things she shouldn’t have had to know about, much less endure in her few, precious, innocent minutes of childhood.

She was trying to survive it, both before and after. You don’t ever stop trying to survive it, doing whatever you have to do to keep yourself in good standing. “Will this work?” “What about this?” “What if I do this — will this make you not abandon me like everyone else has?”

And that’s what most of us do. Regardless of the subtle details of our respective experiences that make our lives so wildly divergent from each others’, there are only a few resonant themes we all struggle with when it gets down to it. Love or the lack of it, abandonment or the fear of it, failure or its inevitable arrival — for as different as we all are, we are also all the same. We’re all born children who want and need to be loved, and that never really changes. When we can remember that, it helps level the playing field.

When I made Miss Fortune, I was still like Anne. I was just trying to survive. That sounds ridiculous. I was given an opportunity to make my voice heard the world over — that’s not exactly a dire circumstance — I know how many millions would sacrifice

n o t e l l i n g w h a t

for the chance I’d been given. Truth be known, I guess I sacrificed a lot for it too because, even though I was far enough along to know something didn’t feel right, I wouldn’t let go of it in a legitimate way. I stayed in the ring, fighting for something that, at that time, wasn’t even my idea anymore. My voice was my only hope for survival. It was the only ticket I had. Sure, I was smart enough to get by, I had some other skills I could’ve honed — but one of the things we fail to take into account when suggesting a mighty tug of the bootstraps — can we even locate our feet?

I’d never seen anyone successfully leave anything. What I knew about leaving was that trying to do so ended badly, possibly fatally. And I wasn’t even processing that as fallout from what I’d been through in my life — at that time, my self-worth was so low I didn’t allow myself one bit of slack, much less any therapy. I had a hunger for but was still too in the weeds for it to do me much good, reading self-help books. So on some level, I knew I needed to live my life in a different way than I was, but I just couldn’t figure out how yet. So I figured out how to keep on keeping on as I went along,and finally figured out how to leave that part of my life behind while keeping myself securely within the confines of where I thought any kind of safety might be. I had to figure that out as I went along too. Maybe I’m complicating it too much, but that period of my life made deep marks in me.

And that’s what I hear when I listen to Miss Fortune. And I have empathy for the Anne that I recognize in the voice that carried it, that’s fighting so hard to be heard. I have empathy for us all, every one of us who worked on that record. We were just a collection of people trying to do our best for a collection of songs. Everyone has a different agenda for why they want to do that and a different way of approaching the work, but we all heard the same call. And one thing about me that hasn’t changed a bit since the summer of 2001? That. I still hear that call to make music. I know that it is, above probably most other things, true.

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What a gift it is to be here. What a privilege it is to live through it all, whatever it is, and learn. Whatever my experience is from now, I hope I do more than survive it. It’s been a long journey of learning how to get safe enough to embrace the idea that this is a tiny blip. I might finally understand the real significance of what my mama meant when she said, “Grab it and growl.” I used to think it meant to raise your fists and guard against what will hurt you. Now, I think it means to stand fully in your space and welcome it all, twisting into knots for no one and no thing but the wind that is sure to come to try to blow you down. When the wind comes, you must almost always bend.

With that, I bid you adieu for a while. Summer is approaching, John Henry is now twelve and will soon be on his way from school, and I have a new writing project in the works and must direct my attention toward it and what might be the result. I’m finished looking back for now. Maybe I’ll see you in the fall.

Hope to see y’all at a Sissy show.

Onward,

AM

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Personnel:

RS Field: Producer, Percussion

Jay Bennett: Piano, Electric Guitar, mandolin, organ

Steve Conn: accordion

Michael Webb: Fender Rhodes, Piano

Russ Pahl: Pedal Steel, slide guitar

Mike Noble: Acoustic Guitars, dobro, banjo

David Grissom: Electric Guitar

Rob McNelly: Electric Guitar

Mike Brignardello: Bass

Alison Presswood: Bass

Rick Schell: Drums, Background Vocals

Kenneth Blevins: Drums

Yvonne Hodges: Background Vocals

Kim Morrison: Background Vocals

Jared Reynolds: Background Vocals

Allison Moorer: Background Vocals, acoustic guitar

Neil Rosengarten: Trombone, euphonium, french horn

Billy Huber: Trombone, Bass Trombone, Tuba

Jim Hoke: Saxophone

Horns arranged by Jim Hoke

Chris Carmichael: Fiddle

Strings: The Nashville String Machine

Strings arranged & conducted by Chris Carmichael