Spooky Spooky Spooooky

Last night, my dude surprised me with tickets that he somehow acquired (probs with his special powers) to the Book of Mormon, a musical we've been obsessing over since Christmas break, when we listened to the entire soundtrack while driving to Missouri. If you haven't heard of it, it's an irreverent and sometimes crass musical that parodies/explains/mocks/garners sympathy for two Mormon missionaries stationed in Uganda. Beneath the frequent profanity and artfully choreographed dance numbers, however, are some really interesting and deep themes- the "hero" of the story, the most prepared missionary who adheres to the rules, basically has nothing to show for it at the end. The fibs that one missionary pathologically tells end up painting a really interesting picture of the formation of syncretic religion, where the culture rejects the parts of the book that aren't useful to them, and holds on to the parts that make sense.

Basically, it's a really interesting work on a lot of levels, and I laughed until I cried. The dancing Starbucks cups in the Spooky Mormon Hell Dream were a stroke of genius.

But this whole musical had the potential to be ridiculously offensive and horrifying to audiences. We were talking on the walk home about the guts it takes to put out something like this for audiences, not knowing if you were going to be embraced or egged. Granted, this is something that the creators of South Park have a lot of experience with, but it's still a risky venture. It had to have been, on some level, scary.

This wasn't the first time that being scared has been on my mind in the last few months. Most of the time when something is new, either to me or to society, it's scary because it's unknown. The more I look around and see great things (works of art, pieces of music, performers, writers) the more I think that everything great comes with an element of fear, maybe of being misunderstood, or hurt for your actions, or shunned by people whom you love, or rejected in general. Failure is a big one for me. I'm afraid of putting myself out there and failing. I'm afraid of playing flute from my heart and playing badly with all my metaphorical guts exposed. I'm afraid of practicing yoga for seven million days in a row and still not being able to just pop into a headstand, or achieve a good savasana, or be a compassionate teacher. And, obviously, it's safer to play with an air of practiced detachment (and not in the good way, where you do cool stuff and stay detached from the results), and have a yoga practice that is not terribly consistent. Cuz then, failure is not as scary. It's even almost expected.

But one can usually be okay, or even good, safely. It's just greatness that requires fear. So that's the catch.

Here's some stuff I'm scared of!
- going to the bakery alone in France. I'm worried that I might say the wrong word, or pronounce the right word so wrong that it sounds like I'm swearing. Obvy if some French person was trying to talk to me in English and seemed nice but dropped forty f-bombs, I would think it was super cute. I try to keep this in mind just in case I actually do make some linguistic errors.
- getting super into road biking. What if I get run over by a car? Isn't it better for me to sit at home eating ice cream and watching Biggest Loser?
- being mediocre. Ha! Irony.
- failing at the flute.
- succeeding at the flute.
- calling people back, especially when "people" is a composer whose last flute concerto was premiered by James Galway. (I sucked it up and called him. Go me.)
- going to the gym for more than one hour. What if I become one of those crazy gym people who spend all their time at the gym and only talk about going to the gym? I would clearly rather spend my time complaining about how I never get off the couch and my diet on a given day was high in cheese with flurries of pretzels and mustard and chances of chocolate downpours later on in the evening.
- dancing Starbucks cups. I wasn't afraid of them yesterday, but now I am.
- writing this post. It would be weird if I was afraid of all that stuff and not afraid to write a post about being afraid of all that stuff.

I'm sure there's more, but that seems like plenty for now.

So are there people out there who are scared of everything? How do you make it stop, or do you just push through the scared?