I think about what I would like my Wikipedia page to say once I’m more well-known. Thinking about my Wikipedia page is a good exercise for thinking about what goals I would like to set for myself in life.
My page would say something like:
Michelle Terese Folk Johnson (born November 1, 1979) is an American Bandleader and Feminist Revolutionary.
******
That’s it, that’s all I’ve got for now. I have plenty ideas of what might follow, but also it’s late and I need to go to bed and this counts as today’s blog post for the current daily challenge I set for myself. Good night!
This evening I was talking with my martial arts training partner on the subject of teaching internal arts to external stylists.
“I believe there are shortcuts,” I said to him.
“I don’t believe in shortcuts,” he ultimately said. “You have to put in the work.”
I thought for a while.
“But I still think shortcuts exist,” I said. “Like if you’re attempting to get great at one thing in your life, maybe you can use seemingly completely unrelated info from another part of your life where you’re already great, and apply those abilities to the understanding of your newer skill.”
He thought about that. He agreed that what I was talking about could be a thing.
That satisfied me.
I think the thing I’m thinking of is called a wormhole, or time travel, or getting older, or rewiring our neural network. Anyway, I believe that shortcuts to getting great at stuff exist.
They just aren’t actually shortcuts. They’re more like tunnels through and among different (seemingly unrelated) abilities.
Today I taught a short martial arts class to my six-year-old daughter’s stuffed animals.
She had set up a school for five of her favorite stuffies, who were seated dutifully in a line on the couch. “OK, mommy, it’s your turn to teach,” she said.
“Ok, students!” I walked over to the carpet by the couch where my students were seated. “I’m the martial arts teacher, welcome to my class. To begin, we must learn that an important part about martial arts class is showing respect for each other. We do that by bowing. We bow to each other at the beginning and ending of each class. Today we will learn how to bow.”
The students, voiced by my daughter, twittered amongst themselves.
“Arf arf, I’m the first student!” a blonde puppy stuffy jumped down onto the floor to learn to bow.
“Ok doggy, to bow you bend your head like this,” I said, showing the doggy a traditional karate-style bow.
“Like this?” asked the doggy, as she tried to bow. Doggy bowed, but her head kept flipping. “This is how I bow,” said the doggy, “it’s more like a flip.”
“Uhhhhh…” I said as the circuits in my head all scrambled. You see, in a traditional martial arts class, you try your hardest to do exactly what the teacher is doing. This doggy, a first-time student, was already going a little rogue.
“Can you do it like this, doggy?” I asked, as I showed her the standard bow.
“Oh, like this? Oh, ooooh, no, I always flip when I try! Flipping is just how I bow,” said the doggy, as she flipped through the air.
“Ok, I guess that’s all right,” I said to the doggy, sensing that I might lose control of this class. I figured there was a slight chance my next student could practice a more proper bow.
My next student was a large, blue octopus with a big, squishy head and legs the size and shape of hamburger buns.
“Here’s how you bow, Octopus,” I said as I showed Octi a seated bow.
“Like this?” said Octi, her head lifting in the air.
Now, that was all wrong. I feel like to show respect in a bow, one must lower their head. I told Octi that raising her head just wouldn’t work for a bow. “Or, Octi,” I said, “some styles of martial arts salute with their hands instead of bowing. You could try a salute.”
Octi tried a salute, and I let that pass.
As each of my next three students tried to bow, I learned that my class was full of independent thinkers. The unicorn, the Unspeakable frog, and the tiger each had their own way of bowing. Later in the class when we moved on to horse stance, the unicorn turned out to be a bit of a know-it-all, citing the fact that she practically was a horse, so she knew better than I, the teacher, how to do a horse stance.
Today’s Students
From there I just let all of the animals do things their own way. They were obviously not interested in my teaching, and I wondered why I was even hired to teach in the first place. This happens in martial arts classes, sometimes, the students get real full of themselves and just want to do their own thing. I’d seen it happen with five-year-olds, with teenagers, and today I learned that even stuffed animals sometimes lack respect for martial arts decorum.
I consider myself not an extrovert, but a super-hyper extrovert. During Covid I went a little Cuckoo. I couldn’t hang out with real friends, so I started talking to my imaginary celebrity friends. Some of my imaginary celebrity friends are in my Personal Pantheon. Within this Pantheon, Beyoncé is Queen.
People in olden times used to pray to royalty, right? Does this have something to do with why we separate Church and State?
Anyway, I am not beyond praying to pop stars. In fact, I am very PRO praying to pop stars. I’m very pro praying in general. When it comes to praying to pop stars, we must do so knowing that we are praying to our own imagined image of the pop star, not to the actual person, and we must realize they are not God, they are simply a musical manifestation of God’s glory. Then praying to pops stars seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Anyway, I got a Beyoncé devotional candle during Covid.
I lit the flame and asked the candle,
“Beyoncé, my Queen, what would you have me do?”
“Start a marching band and save the world,” said Beyoncé.
“Wow. That’s a very clear answer. And very quick.Thanks, Beyoncé candle,” I said in my imagination.
“You’re welcome,” she replied, her voice dripping like honey on velvet.
Yes, Beyoncé would suggest I start a marching band, that’s certainly what my inner Beyoncé wants me to do. Start a super sexy, powerful, woman-led marching band with lots of really over-the-top costumes and magnificent musicians brimming with derring-do who fight the evils of repression and sexism and solve global warming when they’re not knocking people’s socks off at their incredible live shows.
Ummm, so yeah. I burned through that candle sometime in 2020, and now I use it as a holder for really long dangly earrings.
ANYWAY ANYWAY
Fast forward to 2021. It is September, and I haven’t started my marching band yet, but I am at my college homecoming football game to be in the alumni marching band. You see, I love marching band– I marched for four years in college. I graduated in 2001, so playing at homecoming 2021 was the 20th anniversary of the year I graduated. I made the trip across the country to my alma mater to feel a sense of belonging that I had been missing since the pandemic began.
Beyoncé and I share a love of marching band, as is evidenced by that one movie I saw of hers where she’s forming then practicing with a back-up marching band for a big show of hers. That show they all put on was fucking amazing, and I’m sure this is why the candle gave me marching band advice.
So I’m in Revelli Hall, the band hall for the Michigan Marching Band, or the MMB. It is the first time I have been here in at least 18 years. I am FILLED TO THE BRIM with nostalgia. I’m looking into the room where they keep the stuffed wolverine, I’m greeting other alumni with nods and smiles, I’m walking down the hall with photos highlighting the greatest MMB moments over the years.
There’s the time in 2018 they made a dragon on the field for the Game of Thrones Show:
There’s the time in 2017 when they joined with the rival Michigan State Spartan marching band to form the shape of Michigan on the field:
There’s the time in 2014 when they did a light-up show:
And then, there she is. There is the time in 2013 when the MMB did a Beyoncé show and The Queen herself, though not present, gave an introduction:
In case you can’t read the photo, the text on the plaque says:
“Good evening, Michigan Stadium, the largest football crowd in the world! I’m sorry I can’t be there tonight, but the Michigan Marching Band has my back and is gonna give you a fantastic show. Go Blue!”
I saw the picture, I read the plaque.
She said “Go Blue!”
I thought to myself:
Wow. The Queen is already familiar with my favorite marching organization.
Starting my marching band and saving the world is going to be WAY easier than I thought.
Michelle Folk Johnson 