Last year, on a Friday, August 16 to be exact, six months and one week ago, I became the first of us to get kicked off the old site.  Some said it was unfair.  Some said it was a shock.  Some fought it, one enough to get kicked off too.  Perhaps some even rejoiced.  But with the help of our friend jhs’ amazing computer support, just three days later, this place was born.  I intended to do this story on this past Sunday, closer to the actual anniversary of February 20, but I had to work the entire weekend so it didn’t happen.  I had little thoughts though, little specific thank you’s I wanted to give, little things I wanted to say.  I wanted to say something to each of you, but there is just too much about each of you who write here who support me that makes it so hard to make individual thank you’s.  I think the overriding thing about you all is that each of you constantly surprise me.  You surprise me not with things I don’t know, and certainly that happens, but with how consistently good you all are.  It makes no sense to have such a strong level of friendship with people we’ve never heard, never seen, save for a few photos, but it is so strong.  Your personalities come through in so many ways, in your attitudes, in your posts, in your thoughts, in your stories, especially in your stories.

And speaking of stories, lately I’ve been feeling my own strangeness if you will.  I readily acknowledge that I’m not the typical rock ‘n’ roll story, certainly not the typical rock ‘n’ roll board host.  I mean can you imagine me on That Metal Show?  (My favorite is Van Halen II, by the way.)  Sometimes I think to myself why do you talk about things like fashion and hair and other music and … Chanel that none of these people care about, I think about stopping myself and being what people would expect of someone hosting rock ‘n’ roll board, and then I just … can’t.  Because what if… what if someday this is what rock ‘n’ roll becomes?  It might.  If I dream enough, it just might.

Sunday before last, I wrote a story while listening to the radio.  I kept hearing a Guitar Center ad that featured a cheap single drum.  I wrote, all the while wanting that drum.  That story was about fearing Guitar Center, about pretending to be a much better musician than I am, but you guys are so good at understanding me that what you saw was the subtext.  You saw the dreams of a little girl who went another way in life, but who never really let go of her dreams of music of design.  Rev commented, addressing my subtext.  I thanked him, and he replied again.  I didn’t reply to his second comment, violating my usual pattern of replying to every comment.  I didn’t reply because I didn’t know what to say.  Rev’s words hit me so strongly that I – the most talkative person ever – was rendered completely speechless.  Mind you, Rev’s words were “guy” words, but still those words spoke to my inside when I really needed something to make me believe … indeed wake up.  I read every word about walking away, about lack of encouragement, not knowing where it would end (and I usually do with people’s writing).  Then the end came.  One sentence: “[p]lease don’t walk away from your dreams”.  I had to fight the tears.  After all, I was standing at this public computer in a room full of people who don’t care in the least if I cry.  So I took a little walk, not the kind to walk away, but the kind to allow me to absorb, to think.  And then, every thought about taking the Chanel out of me faded.

I brought a fashion magazine to work on Saturday, Marie Claire, a subscription my deceased mother received addressed to my house, a place she never once visited.  I think that’s my mother’s present to me.  In this, my second or third issue that arrives without compensation and that I was perusing while my computer wouldn’t acknowledge the password necessary for me to work, there was a layout of the favorite photos of the fashion editor to commemorate her fifth-year anniversary with the magazine.  In a collage of images was one that stood out – a black acoustic guitar emboldened with the Chanel logo.  When I got home, I looked it up.  It was a limited release, 2009, a classical, nylon string, acoustic guitar, complete with leather case made like Chanel makes handbags, all which sold for a whopping $4,800.  Y’all?  Seriously, the house of Chanel, my absolute favorite inspiration, made a guitar!  And it’s hot too!  So there you have it, Chanel is rock ‘n’ roll.  But I can be a bit hard to convince, some might call it stubborn, but I think I just need more convincing, that’s all.  Chanel.  Music.  Design.  Combination of it all?  Hummm.  I worked Sunday, and at work was a seven-year-old artist, the daughter of one of the women doing what I’m doing in the large room next to mine who brought her artist-daughter to work.  The little girl drew crayon drawings which mostly consisted of portraits of the workers, never losing composure, for eight-plus hours.  That other room was covered in those drawings.  I watched the little girl.  She looked up and asked if I wanted her to draw my picture.  I said yes.  A few minutes later, she found where I sit in the next room, then sat on the floor and started drawing a picture of me.  She was brave.  She pursued her art with wild abandon.  I identified with her, and even perhaps for a minute, wished I had one just like her.  When she was finished, she asked my name to caption my portrait, then as I spelled out each of the letters, wrote it vertically on the drawing.  I asked her to sign my portrait.  So she did.  In crayon printing, red to be exact, she spelled out on the bottom of my portrait her name: C H A N E L.

And with all of that, don’t think for one second I’m going to worry about not being rock ‘n’ roll anymore.  Rev said so.  Chanel said so.  In so many words anyways, you both did.  I’m going to take some classes, free classes I found.  I’m going to make all the things I said I was going to do.  And I know I can because I have y’all for inspiration.  So thank you to each and every one of you who come here every day.  Thank you to the people who come less than every day, but still come.  Thank you to the people who just read.  I couldn’t do this without you.  I love you for your help, for your inspiration, for your sharing and most of all, for you.  Oh and I did get that drum from Guitar Center.  Sure the Guitar Center drum helper was a bit like normal, even asked me what I was going to do with it, with the obvious assumption that the answer wouldn’t be something very meaningful, but so what.  I got it.  And I’m learning it.  Do you have any idea how many cool songs I’m hearing that are vocals with the primary, if not only, instrument being drums?  Well you will….