10 songs for my 10 years in the UK

It was the Summer of 2013 and I was lying on the carpet of the floor of my dorm room in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, letting the music wash over me as I watched the clouds go by through the window...

It's always cold, it's always day, you're always here, you always say, I'm all right, I'll be okay, if I can keep myself awake...

My Masters in Creative Writing had come and gone in the blink of an eye, nearly a year of amazing encounters and even more brilliant stories, an experience which I had been yearning for for several years, preparing myself with every tool I knew, and now it was pretty much finished. I had handed in my dissertation plan and with it the seeds of my novel Widawake - and as I listened to Black Lab singing Keep Myself Awake. While lying there on the carpet in front of the window, everything that my novel stood for, everything that the MA had meant to me, washed over my body and soul.

I had first heard the song on Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and had kept it with me ever since. The series was as important to me as therapy while fighting with the demons of schizoaffective disorder and later with my abusive ex, as well as playing a key role in my acceptance of my bisexuality. My excruciating need to stay awake so as to keep safe from the nightmares is something that I might never truly leave behind, but over time I have learned to control it somewhat. That day in Newcastle I was savouring how I had taken it and transformed it into a paranormal retelling of Sleeping Beauty, including aspects of my past trauma in the story to turn it into a crime thriller. It took a worldwide pandemic for me to realise how deep that past trauma really was, but I’m getting ahead of myself!

First, came the Doctor, and then I became the Doctor and I fell in love with the Doctor! Who exactly am I talking about? Come, on, we all know that, let’s not pretend!

You see, after I had finished with my MA, I tried to get a job in London, but that didn’t quite work out. What worked out, instead, is that I met my very good friend and mentor, Mani Navasothy, who became my Wiccan Priest and my director when I joined his group in London and he asked me to be one of his Doctors for a fan video series he was planning. Me, being a Whovian through and through, was thrilled and said yes instantly! I used to experience something very nostalgic with the Doctor Who Theme, by the way, as it took me to the times in my teens when I’d get home in the heavy Mexican heat after being bullied at school and lay down on the cold floor in my dad’s studio in complete darkness and blasted out music from his state-of-the-art stereo – usually U2, Enigma, Pink Floyd, the Buffy soundtrack or Hair Metal hits. Yes, that was also what I had been reminiscing months before in my bedroom in Newcastle. And that the perfect moment for the invitation to arrive, as I felt like London had sent me away like a lover out of love (although that might be a story for another day). The moment I said yes to Mani, it was as if Murray Gold’s arrangement of Delia Derbyshire’s theme tune had enveloped me and taken me through time and space to a fantastic life of magic, creativity and opportunities. And as I was playing the Doctor, the man – and woman – of my dreams was also playing the Doctor and we were taking a cardboard Dalek up Glastonbury Tor and from then onwards it felt like anything could happen! And it did!

But I want to know, have you ever seen the rain? Falling down on the one you love, on the one you wish to create with, on the one you want to kiss forever? Well, I have, and it can be devastating and refreshing all at once, especially when you have to go through as many hurdles as we had to due to the current visa conditions. The first time I woke up in Stephen’s arms to Clearance Clearwater Revival’s sad and refreshing hit, I knew I wanted to wake up like that forever – nearly nine years later and I’m still requested to prove my identity for every single thing we do, well after being legally acknowledged as Stephen’s wife and a permanent resident. We are determined to bring awareness of how immigrants are treated in the UK, and to that effect I have written a piece about my experience. A link will be provided at the end of this entry, along with the link to the playlist.

But first, while I was falling in love, I was also getting to join the Cauldron Born, as the fantastic Damh the Bard refers to them. I was meeting people who followed the same or similar enough spiritual paths that I finally felt like I had found my place in the world, I was happy and sure in my path as a Wiccan. I had been a solitary witch for most of my practicing life, and now I have a tribe and an spiritual home, so when Stephen asked me to marry him, I said yes.

I walked down the garden path to Enya’s Lothlórien at a small wedding ceremony – by Mexican standards – and a big wedding ceremony – by UK’s standards – where a Judge proclaimed us husband and wife, my sister translated most of it and my cousin assisted, Stephen’s family welcomed my family by extending the use of the MacDougall Tartan to my dad, and my Aunt Martha presented us with a Unity candle to join both families. We had a Pagan TARDIS cake which I designed (and which you can see on the cover of the article about my immigration story), and danced to all kinds of things Mexicans are not supposed to dance to. Then we did it all again back home in Glastonbury, in a much smaller scale but Shakespearean and sans the cake in a Handfasting ceremony the field below the Tor where the representatives of the Pagan Federation officiated our ceremony and the Chaired Bard of Ynys Witrin that year, Wes White, performed a beautiful poem for us. I have also linked a poem of his below, as he and his wife also went through major visa struggles and he has done a lot for the cause.

But before we get to the end, let me tell you about the heaven I was taken to by Stevie! We were both creating together, taking part in local productions and singing together at folk clubs and open mic nights. One of the songs that I enjoyed most when Stephen sand to me was If Paradise is Half as Nice, by Amen Corner, and pretty soon I was joining in and singing too. That led Stephen to have the idea that we could sing together at care homes and give the residents and staff an hour of light-hearted musical entertainment. We had created His & Hers Theatre Company to achieve our theatrical bucket lists, and suddenly there was this extra aspect of our creative path that was even more fulfilling than anything I could have foreseen.

But even before we get to that, I need to go back a tiny bit – when we had created His & Hers Theatre Company it was also because my old fire for acting and performing had woken with an unstoppable hunger – I have openly spoken about how so much of the trauma which made me stop in the first place, but the way I felt when I married Stevie was something I had never expected to feel again, and I just had to hold on to that feeling and make it happen! There were many moments in that Journey when I had to tell myself Don’t Stop Believing, and I feel that the first time my effort paid off was when the very lovely and extremely talented Maxine Ridout-Prime asked me to sing Ariel, by October Project, in her Shakespearean showcase Shakespeare: From Light to Dark. I sang Ariel from the balcony as Lydia Stobie-Owen’s Ariel was freed by Stephen’s Prospero. Having that moment of hearing my voice float into the United Reformed Church in Glastonbury at such a poignant moment was such an immense lift, I can hardly describe it more!

From there onwards there was more Shakespeare, more music, more love, and little did I know, more pain coming into my life. Everything was perfect, so why was there anything pulling me down? Well, unresolved trauma and severe biochemical and hormonal disbalances sent me sideways, as I was asking myself Will I lose my dignity? Will someone care? Will I wake tomorrow from this nightmare? Jonathan Larson’s words were resonating in every cell of my being as I finally acknowledged that my body and brain had not actually recovered from all the trauma and I still had so much to work on myself to sort it all out. Being on the stage as part of RENT! was utterly life-changing in so many ways, so much so that I still break down crying as I type all these years later. I had the incredible luck to be part of the ensemble of the beautiful and bittersweet musical, for the most part greatly enjoying my characters (Honest living!) and the rest of the cast, all the while experiencing an attack on my femininity and my race like I had only previously experienced in high school back in Mexico before. All the trauma came rushing out, and I just knew that I would have to cling to everything I loved in order to survive. Little did I know that a world-wide pandemic would follow! Oh, the time was there to work on my trauma!

One of my characters in RENT! was the squeegee man previously portrayed by the astonishing Telly Leung, who I had the immense luck of watching live in London in Allegiance, alongside the ultra-legendary George Takei. They were two of the people who helped me through the pandemic and the trauma, and I feel very blessed that I got to tell Telly as much – he even did the Honest living, honest living, honest living bit for me at the theatre! And he wished me happy birthday! And Marina Sirtis was also there – and she also wished me a happy birthday! At that moment I was very grateful that I had made it through the storm!

Mind you, it had just been my birthday and my parents had got me and Stevie our tickets as a present, it’s not that I was telling random celebrities it was my birthday! Faux Bojo was also there with us, so he can testify for me, if you can trust anything he says, that is…!

Forgive my timey-wimey way of telling the story, but hey, what else could you expect from someone like me who is the Doctor and a Trekkie? Well, one of the things Stevie did for us during lockdown, is that she shared all of Star Trek with me – I already knew enough about it to know that I was a fan, but after binging it all, I’m a certified Trekkie!! One of the things that lifted me up more than ever I could have predicted, like finding coffee in a nebula, was Voyager, with Jerry Goldsmith’s out-of-this-world’s theme tune and a cast that seemed like craft-smitted from gold! Too far? Well, what can you expect, we’ve gone as far as the Delta Quadrant!

I’ll see myself out…

And then there will be an encore! I’m a thespian, after all, and a musical performer, and we all know that after every show there needs be an encore. For this list, I chose ME! Honestly, I have learned that I need to always choose me, and through the pandemic, through my health struggles, my beloved and I have both grown to become our true selves – Stevie coming out as genderfluid during the production of RENT! and myself accepting that my mental health and hormonal struggles wouldn’t let me become my true self unless I looked into them, and so I did. Another one of the people who helped me come out the other side was Ms Taylor Swift, who I was already aware of as a very talented young singer and likely not deserving of the hate that there seemed to be spewing to her from different corners of the media. After watching her documentary Miss Americana, I became a certified Swiftie (except for the bit where I actually don’t have any money to make it to the Eras Tour, but hey ho, a girl can dream and maybe one day I will get a proper contract which will give me the financial freedom I crave!). The thing is, a lot of what I have been going through has been down to the fact that my performing and modelling career became stagnated due to the pandemic, but the ripples affected me beyond that, as after what had happened during RENT! I started to believe that no one would ever want to work with me again and I started having panic attacks before bookings and events, and so much of what I believed about myself went out the window. However, when I heard Taylor speak about what she wanted to portray with ME!, her sparklines, her joy, her pinks and blues and glitter, and good riddance to anyone who didn’t like it, Taylor Swift became my hero! I wanted to be like that again, and for that I needed to search for myself. There is a lot that I have written on this subject already, so I just want to finish on a positive note and say that after all the weirdness of the process I’ve been going through, I’m finally in the correct treatment, and not only have different people come out to reassure me that they indeed want to work with me, but one of them in particular, Mel Broom, who organises the Glastonbury Body Art Festival, painted me last January, as I turned 41, full of flowers and hummingbirds assisted by Debbie Payne (another organiser), and let me sway down the catwalk to ME! as sung by Taylor and Brendon Urie. There have been more bodypaints since, as well as many more bookings in several art groups and also more musical shows for His & Hers to give. Shakespeare is also coming back, with me having reprised Hippolyta after lockdown and now preparing to play Hymen in Wells Theatre Festival, where the director, Ros Johnson has given me the honour of a song, and I feel my voice coming back again.

In short, I think it’s time to start believing in ME! again.

~*~

Thank you so much for reading! I know this was a long one, but I hope it’s been worth your while! A heart, a comment, or a donation would be much appreciated if so.

Here are the links to the YouTube playlist itself and many of the topics and people I mentioned. Feel free to look into them and give them some support as well if you feel so inclined.

10 songs for my 10 years in the UK

An Immigrant’s Journey Through the Pandemic - my Vocal article

Mani Navasothy

Glastonbury Body Art Festival

Bath Bodyart Weekend

Gibraltar Face & Body Paint Association

The Naked Canvas - my Vocal article

Wells Theatre Festival

Maxine Ridout-Prime’s Taking-The-Space

My huswife's Vocal profile Stephen Stevie Cole

My short story inspired by being part of the ensemble of RENT! (Telly Leung's character begins the song on Will I?, as seen on the playlist provided - that was one of my characters, but the story is another one): Christmas Eve at the Life Café