Evanston, My Launching Pad

by Margaretta Swigert-Gacheru

EVANSTON--August 15, 2017 :: I’m an ETHS graduate, but one who spent half my high school years hanging out with a New Trier boy from Kenilworth who was a huge distraction.

Somehow I made it to DePauw University where I got seriously radicalized. 

ETHS had primed me for ‘enlightenment’. ETHS’ multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-class community provided me with more than adequate preparation for my making a graceful move eventually into the global community.

After winning a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Fellowship to study in at the University of Nairobi, in Kenya, I stuck around and got another degree. (I’d already gotten one at DePauw and another at National Louis University.)

That third degree would cost more money, so when the fellowship funds finally ran out, I got a great job as a journalist writing locally about the Kenyan (read African) arts scene. Of course, that would include my writing stories about former colonials and other Europeans as well as about Asians, and other visiting tourists (like Mike Jagger, Jesse Jackson and even British royalty like Sarah Ferguson, former wife of Prince Andrew, the Queen’s youngest son, to name-drop just a few of the ‘celebs’ that came to Kenya who I interviewed). My focus was and continues to be on writing about Kenyan Africans, both visual artists and performers, particularly theater people.

Early on I fell for an African classmate of mine at Nairobi University who I thought would be my Samora Machel--the handsome freedom-fighter from Mozambique who was assassinated by South African pro-Apartheid forces a while back--but not quite. In any case, Gacheru is a great man and he gave me (or I gave him) a beautiful son who is now a Major in the US Army based in Vicenza Italy.

This ETHS grad might look like a globe trotter since she flies back and forth from Nairobi to Chicago twice a year, but really I’m slightly schizophrenic since I seriously have two homes.

Evanston will always be the ‘home in my heart’ and the one that I may return to eventually. The town has gotten so very cool, I must say! Some will contend it always was super cool, but I was always keen to escape…which I clearly did.

I am here now for only a few more days and I have fallen ‘head over heels’ for Evanston. I have a wonderful brother Tom who’s here and I also have many incredible friends in the neighborhood. Evanston may have to welcome me back home sometime soon. That’d mean I’d finally get to attend one of those crazy high school reunions. ;-)

Until then, I’ll simply say ‘bon voyage’ while I get set to fly back to a country that unfortunately is in a bit of turmoil, having just had a contentious national election in which the loser refuses to concede defeat. People have died as a consequence. Hopefully we will see peace happening there soon. We pray there will be forgiveness on all sides and concern to see that beautiful country move forward.

For those of you who may have had plans to one day realize your planned safari to Africa: Do not fear coming to Kenya. Irrespective of momentary turbulence, it is a breathtaking country that you can easily fall in love with…possibly just as I did several decades ago.

Margaretta Swigert-Gacheru eventually got a fourth degree, her Ph.D in Sociology from Loyola University Chicago. Her dissertation Globalizing Kenyan Culture: Jua Kali & theTransformation of Contemporary Kenyan Art:1960-2010 is up on Loyola’s eCommons. Known in Kenya as Margaretta wa Gacheru, and as mentioned she has been writing about the visual and performing arts in Kenya for decades. Currently, she works as an Arts Correspondent for The Nation Media Group (Kenya). MSG contributes to This is Africa. She blogs at Margaretta's Jua Kali Diary and at Kenyan Arts Review. She also lectures at Kenya Methodist University. Margaretta is the author of Creating Contemporary African Art Art Networks in Urban Kenya. She's listed in Feminists Who Changed America 1963-1975.

Confounding Fear

by Marta Lettofsky

Recently I was with a friend when a red-winged blackbird swooped down and started attacking her head. A bird is attacking my friend! Flapping and scratching and screeching, in the middle of a highly populated park with kids running around.

The same thing happened to me several years ago while jogging. Twice. In the same location. After the second time I gave wide berth to that area to avoid the mad bird. I no longer live in the area, so that’s another way to avoid that mad bird.

Logically I knew I was safe. Nothing bad happened in the ‘attacks’, but still it freaked me out. I felt slightly nervous, jumpy, watchful every time I jogged by that same bush.

Our brains and bodies are hardwired for safety. A small bird is no real threat to my survival, and yet, those moments of red-winged blackbird close encounters left a little mark.

It’s all about survival.

The primitive parts of our brains are not great differentiating between real life threats and just mini-threats to our egos. That part of brain’s entire job is to be on constant lookout for danger. So if you have a negative experience around your creative or performing endeavors, that too might leave a mark.

As a professional pianist, people tell me all the time about a desire to learn play the piano. Or sing. Or learn another instrument. Often people I meet will remember fondly when they could do those things and wishing they could do it again, but...

SOMETHING. GETS. IN. THE. WAY.

Sometimes that thing getting in the way is fear or the effects of old creativity and performing wounds.

If this is you, be kind to yourself. Your brain and body are doing their jobs of looking for danger, remembering potential threats and doing their best to keep you safe.

It is challenging to tolerate these unpleasant emotions and to remember that they are normal, part of being human. Remembering this is normal makes healing possible. By tending to those hurt and sticky places, relief happens. New courage is found. Compassion is uncovered. Creativity becomes unfettered.

If you’d like more information about relating to fear, consider signing up for my newsletter. You’ll receive a link for two videos on Dealing With Fear, and a page of Quick Hits for Fear. They can be used for anything in life that triggers fear, not just performance. My clients and I have used these tools to quit jobs, deal with conflict, create better boundaries for time and family, not to mention for performing music on stage in front of hundreds or thousands of people.

Marta Lettofsky wears many hats in life: pianist, performer, collaborator, vocal coach, teacher, inner artist coach, wife, mother, yogi, avid cook, lover of beauty, striver-to-do-all-things-well.

She’s made music with Chicago’s finest arts organizations, including Lyric Opera, Grant Park Festival Chorus, Music of the Baroque and Light Opera Works (now called Music Theater Works). Marta performs as a soloist and regularly with some of Chicago’s most talented singers. She teaches through Chicago Opera Theatre for Teens and in private vocal studio.

Blindsided by a serious bout of performance anxiety several years ago, Marta nearly quit being a musician. Instead she sought ways to tackle this problem. She studied with Dr. Noa Kageyama and enrolled in improv acting classes at IO Chicago. She dug into the underlying causes of her performance anxiety, acquired new tools and coping strategies, and experimented through the improv classes (which caused absolute terror on a weekly basis). She overcame her performance anxiety and gained greater life skills by connecting to the inner work of being an artist.

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Photo credits: Red-winged blackbird by Alan Murphy. Marta Lettofsky by Tina Smothers.