100 Things You Don’t Know About Me
Your girl during the Opheliac recording sessions so many years ago. I’d been wearing the cheek heart for a couple of years already.
Dearest Inmates,
It’s been quite a (past several) month(s), and I’ve had so many “important” things gavotting in my brain that I couldn’t decide which ought to come out first. And so, I’m choosing the only sensible option and not posting any of them. Instead, let us take refuge in a moment of flippant frivolity with this list of, yes, 100 things you definitely don’t know about me (and one you might).
If you follow along below, you’re going get all sorts of knowledge treats, from bizarre jobs I’ve had to achievements of profound embarrassment (see the piano bar thing). Is this worth your time? No.
Shall we begin?
I’ve been skydiving three times.
My fingers are double jointed (I’ve had to come up with some violin techniques of my own to manage).
My first job was at age 7, refilling the ink in the markers at an art studio. (I could fill hundreds of pens without spilling a drop, so I clearly missed my calling.)
I am chill as ice in a crisis.
However, I am terrified of swimming pools (that’s going to be a problem later this year, wait for it).
I passionately hate sweating.
The very first time I travelled anywhere was to perform in England at age 12. (I vividly remember the painfully shy and friendless me going wild at being away from home for the first time, running up and down the hotel hallway all night long, trickling tea out the 20th floor window to get people to look up at me, and getting into a great deal of trouble for all of it. To which I ask, HOW was I not diagnosed as bipolar until age 27?)
My favorite flowers are gardenias.
I’ve been “asked to leave” an upscale piano bar and was “not welcome back.”
One of my greatest dreams is to go to the tea fields in China and be allowed to help pick the leaves. I don’t know if that’s a thing, but I’m determined.
I’ve never smoked a cigarette or done drugs of any kind, and can confidently state that I never will. (Do people still say “done drugs”?)
I am extremely introverted by nature and still have occasional trouble leaving the house to encounter other humans (though I try not to indulge myself in this).
The Opheliac album was written and recorded before I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and sent to an asylum, not after.
I suffered from chronic, blinding migraines from my early childhood until my early adulthood (which means that I’ve had to do a good many violin competitions without being able to see). The migraines morphed into ulcers by my early 20s because your girl had zero stress/anger management skills at the time (solved).
I love reptiles, and have raised iguanas, chameleons, and frogs.
I was supposed to die of leukemia at age 2 (or so the doctors forewarned). I didn’t. (This is the “thing about me” you might already know.)
I was given my first pair of tweezers at age 11 (but not told what to do with them, which lead to many, many years of questionable eyebrows, and I think I’ve only just now figured them out, she says nervously).
I used to design and program websites for a living (before I could survive from music alone).
I’ve written two screenplays and the pilot for a TV series (you’ll be hearing more about this soon;).
When I was small and my family was losing their home, I offered to make jewelry and sell it in the driveway to help raise funds so we could stay. (My offer was not received kindly, so we’ll never know if I could have single-handedly saved the proverbial farm with my beaded earrings, will we?)
Back to eyebrows, now that I’ve nailed them (she says now oddly arrogant), if I’m having my makeup done on a film set or photo shoot, I’ll let the makeup artists do everything up to the brows, which I’ll then do myself.
I plan to get a PhD in neuroscience in my much wiser age, say perhaps 80-ish.
I’ve had one massage ever and being touched absolutely freaked me out and I’ll never do it again.
I am absolutely obsessed with crosswords (but only the most difficult ones, meaning that, if I can solve it without cheating, I’m not interested).
If you call one of the most prominent corporations in Chicago, the voice you’ll hear on all of the automated prompts is mine (it takes an entire 2 days to record ALL numbers, letters, commonly used words, phrases, etc.)
I once very nearly burnt down a house doing a “magic spell” in bed.
My father was raised in an orphanage in Germany before immigrating to America. (That one wasn’t about me was it, but hey ho.)
I’ve been full-blown punched in the face, bloody nose and all (school bully didn’t appreciate my sticking up for another girl).
I locked myself in the bathroom and cried when Carl Sagan passed. (Also for Jim Henson, also for Steven Hawking. Yes, I am always looking for a father, I’m aware, no need to point it out.)
Oh! How could I forget! Years later, I was punched in the face AGAIN and given a fractured nose, this time in a stage combat class with a less-than-conscientious gentleman student for a fight partner (this is why my snout is a bit crooked).
At 8, I shoplifted a bar of surfboard wax just to see how easy it was (it was very easy, and I turned right around and brought it back).
I was temp working as the receptionist for a major radio station when I received an email from the music programmer and show host, asking if “EA’s album” (my teenage one) could be sent to him at the station so that he could play a song from it on air. The next morning, I handed the CD to him personally as he passed my desk to go to his office. I’ve never seen anyone more baffled.
I’ve never kept track of my periods, preferring, apparently, to be surprised. I always am.
As a child, I rarely wore shoes, and would show up to orchestra rehearsal barefoot. It was only when a conductor said to me in front of everyone, “we really have to find you some shoes” that I even noticed.
I have the math skills of a 5th grader (at best).
I temp worked for two weeks as the head of reception for the Starbucks headquarters. (Pros: I got to go into the testing room on breaks and concoct my own drinks, my signature being an iced soy mint thing. Cons: I had to physically make the coffee for the entire office. Not stressful.)
I’m a maximalist who dreams of being a minimalist but accepts that it’s never going to happen.
I used to make all of my own clothes before time became scarce/non-existent, all because I had it in my head that I could never wear the same thing as anyone else, but must always be utterly unique. (It would take me a few more years to learn that what made me unique had nothing to do with what I wore.)
I used to make my own kombucha (as in three months ago, when I thought I’d have time for one more task - turns out I don’t). All of my cultures were called Jeffrey. The last batch is on the Asylum kitchen counter, and Jeffrey has grown to fill the whole jar. I don’t know what to do with him.
I’ve had apartments I’ve lived in broken into and robbed three times (one of which I was in when the intruders...um...intruded).
I’ve passed an entire night in a booth at a 24-hour Dunkin’ Donuts (following one of the break-ins mentioned above, when the sledgehammer the intruders had used left me without a doorknob and I knew they were going to come back - they did).
All of the costumes I made/wore whilst performing with Courtney Love were sewn by hand using scraps from curtains, bedsheets, and a wedding dress obtained from a Salvation Army shop on Chicago’s South Side where I lived at the time. (The wedding dress creation became the cover of my “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun / Bohemian Rhapsody” EP.)
I once worked as a house painter (interiors).
When I meet a really nice stranger (which is often), I’m buzzing about it the rest of the day. (I feel like it’s my reward for pushing myself out of my introverted comfort zone.)
I’ve bought something off of a 3AM infomercial (it was a makeup airbrush system and it broke).
I once (alright, several times) hid in a small closet for three hours so that people knocking on my room (when I lived with four gentlemen in a basement) would think I was out. Fun fact: They knew I was in there the whole time. They always knew.
My childhood idol was Queen Elizabeth I. I particularly admired that she never married or had children.
My favorite Shakespeare play is Twelfth Night (everything thinks it’s Hamlet for obvious reasons).
My favorite authors are Virginia Woolf, Daphne du Maurier, and Shirley Jackson (that they are all women is nothing more than a joyous coincidence).
I plan to live in Somerset (UK) in the future, which happens to be my ancestral home on my British side.
My first crush was on Felix Mendelssohn, who had been dead since 1847.
I once went to a New Orleans psychic to ask about my sexuality. (And then performed at the House of Blues three hours later.)
I was hanging out in a jazz club with violinist Nigel Kennedy (eons ago, aged 16-ish), and he handed me his kazillion-dollar Stradivarius so that I could have a turn soloing with the house band. And guess what? I couldn’t accept it because I’d just had my hand bitten trying to save an eel’s life and had temporary nerve damage in said hand.
I don’t have a driver’s license because, whilst on my learner’s permit, I was plowed into by an SUV running a red light through an intersection, and I determined not to try again. (With so many other challenges I’d like to rise to, I think it’s fair to pick my battles.)
I still have the hospital gown and the red crayon from my psych ward stay where the Asylum book was written. Also the spiral notebook. Also an IV tube and a teabag wrapper.
I cook for my dog twice a day. Alright, mostly Scorps does, but I do when he’s away, such as right now.
My favorite color is sage green.
I grew up swearing that I would never sing, and only started because I had developed vocal nodes (don’t ask) and, unable to afford the surgery recommended at the time, thought I might try to heal myself by strengthening my throat somehow, i.e. singing my own secret compositions strictly in private (not science based, just had a hunch, I was a teen without internet, and also it worked).
The “dog who found me” was a Weimaraner called Ernie.
Until I was 25, I thought that literally everyone had synesthesia (which I didn’t know had a name) and saw/heard/thought things in exactly the same way I did. (I still don’t believe that the number 8 isn’t green to everybody.)
I am a gold belt in Karate. Be afraid.
The quality I most value in a person is loyalty.
A higher-up at Ford Models once approached me/gave me her card/asked me to call her about pursuing modeling. I thanked her for the compliment, but told her she needed to see something. And then I stood up. “Ohhhhhh,” she said. (I’m 5’4”.)
While on a US tour, I was stopping into a Walgreens when a scout from American Idol approached and tried to get me to join the auditions being held across the street. He never asked what I did for a living.
The first thing I ever won was an art contest at age 6. The prize was a Christian Bible. I read it.
The second thing I ever won was a grade 4 school typing competition.
Which should confirm your suspicion that I have never been popular.
Or had actual friends.
Until my 20s.
I wrote much of the Opheliac album in a tiny notebook whilst working as a greeter in a real estate office. I would show people the building models, write in a corner when they left, then go and record all night.
I still have the tiny notebook. I’m holding it right now. It has “I Know Where You Sleep” in it.
During that time, I supplemented my greeter income to pay my basement apartment rent by making sarcastic collage art and selling it on eBay. I still can’t believe anyone bought them. A massive thank you to those misguided people.
I recorded all of “Marry Me” in my basement bedroom years before I met any of you.
I’m often told I sound South African. I always say “thank you,” then explain that I’m just eccentric.
Annie Lennox is the only singer I have, in my youth, consciously tried to copy.
As a child, I was utterly determined to solve the puzzle in the Kit Williams book Masquerade, and spent countless hours toiling over it. I was devastated when I learned that someone had already dug up the treasure.
I used to have a golden stripper pole in my living room because I was developing an act where I pole danced whilst playing the violin. When I moved house, I couldn’t get the pole down. The landlord charged me for it.
I’ve studied broadsword fighting.
I struggle not to break a dish each time I see something published without an Oxford comma where an Oxford comma NEEDS TO BE FOR THE SENTENCE TO MAKE ANY SENSE!
That said, I no longer actually get annoyed at almost anything because I have come to experience every moment as a flipping miracle that took 4.54 billion years to create, whether I actively “enjoy” what I am experiencing or not.
I have a weird technique to get things done when I am overwhelmed and getting everything done seems/is actually impossible: I add another thing. Learning German for example. That way, the newly added thing will be the thing to go in a pinch, not everything else. Another example: I am more overwhelmed than I have ever been ever, which is why, starting TODAY, I am committing to a daily blog post here at SRS for one week. Can I do it? Probably not. But that will mean that I am most likely getting all the other things done.
I dislike sports or even games where there is a winner because that means someone has to be a loser and that makes me sad.
Which is one of the reasons I really like puzzles.
Having already lived far longer than I ever expected to, I’ve become completely fascinated by the fields of health span and longevity, and have changed so very much about my daily life by putting what I have learned into practice. Focusing on, heaven forbid, sleep is an enormous part of this.
As a child, I performed in retirement homes quite often, to entertain the residents and gain performance experience. It was wonderful.
I also often performed at inner city schools in Los Angeles, where I had the privilege of playing for/learning about/getting to know kids my own age who might not have had the opportunity to see a violin up close or listen to Mozart live before. It was incredible.
My favorite word is “rubbish.”
My favorite biscuit is a McVities Chocolate Digestive. Sadly, I can’t eat them anymore, but if that’s not a first world problem I don’t know what is.
I once took a hip-hop dance class. I don’t want to talk about it.
One night, whilst walking in Russia with my crew (still one of my greatest honors to meet the Russian Plague Rats on tour), two men appeared behind us and grabbed the sweatshirt hood of one of my crew members, then attempted to pull him into a dark alley. Without thinking, I lunged at them and shouted “BACK OFF” in a voice that sent them running. My crew member still believes I saved his life. And I still believe there is a demon inside me.
I was once told I looked like a horse. I was so confused by this that it didn’t even hurt my feelings. Also, I’m a horse person.
Speaking of which, I’ve trained a three-year-old thoroughbred ex-racehorse to jump 5-foot+ Olympic-grade fences and not kill me.
I’ve never been on a vacation.
I once prank-called the operator using a payphone at an ice-skating rink (I very honestly just wanted to know what it would feel like to do something “bad” at age 7). We ended up talking for 20 minutes. I hope she’s doing well.
I also play the viola (which I learned only so that I could play Bach’s Brandenburg 6th), as well as the treble viola de gamba.
I once asked the school librarian for the scariest book she had (I practically lived there). Bless her, she very, very reluctantly handed 8-year-old me Pet Semetary. I loved it.
I’ve been told multiple times that I have a great handshake (it’s apparently “very firm and comforting”).
When I ask people how they are doing, I legitimately mean it, and always feel honored if they entrust me with an honest answer.
I’m terrified of the telephone (traumatic stalker experience as a teen, working on it though because it’s getting quite old), and I don’t do email. If someone needs to find me, they’ll find me. But it won’t be easy.
My nom de plume is Lydia deWinter. And now I can never use it again.
Bonus Fact: I have no regrets.
I now pass the spoon to you, my dear Ratties! What are 100 things people don’t know about you?
For me, the secret value of this exercise has been the recollection of things that I had forgotten, and my little “story of me” seems richer for the remembering.
