FUNNY HATS
On Dixie Chicks, Artifice and Consensus Agreement
If you want to make a child laugh, put something on your head.
Barristers with wigs. Popes with crowns. Burkas and hijabs. Even Jesus, arguably one of our best humans, did the crown-of-thorns thing. Oops. I’m getting into sacrosanct territory.
There are many reasons to put something on your head, but mostly, it’s for effect, isn’t it? I mean, would it pass the deserted island test?
I know I could look at it another way; I could look at it like What a beautiful ritual! What fun self-expression! Or Thank God you are covering your hot, sexy hair because I can’t control my penis! Or, Geez, doesn’t that headpiece lend the proceedings an air of gravitas? But I like funny.
When I got a call about working for the country/pop crossover band, The Dixie Chicks (now Chicks) I was thrilled. I had been living out in the woods in the Pacific Northwest. I felt so unhappy —playing small in the middle of nowhere. The Dixie Chick’s management had called a Bikram studio by mistake. My friend Margot answered, directing them to me.
“Emily wants Power Yoga. Do you teach Power yoga?” The voice from LA asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“Do you also do bodywork?”
“Absolutely,” I lied.
“Do you have your own massage table and everything?”
“Of course.”
“Do you have a funny hat?” No, they didn’t ask that.
“Alright, can you fly to LA tomorrow for an audition class with the girls?”
“I’ll be there.” I was going back to the city in which I had learned to teach yoga.
Of all the ancient poses that yogis had documented over time, a 20-something Bikram Choudhury had cobbled together a series informed by the gymnastic approach of his 20-something guru. He re-created the climate of India by having people practice in a hot room.
After the Beatles visited India in the ’60s, there was a flurry of respect for all things Indian, and before long, Bikram attracted many celebrities to his studio. He started pimping it like it was the only yoga that mattered.
“Bikram yoga, the only true yoga,” a speedo-clad Bikram would bark from his platform.
I wouldn’t have to lie if the Dixie Chicks asked me if I was certified. I was certified. Just not in Power Yoga.
.
After putting up with so much of Bikram’s bloviation during the 1996 teacher training, I headed toward the ocean, where sexy surfer boy Bryan Kest taught a more mindful but still athletic yoga. It was like I left an abusive husband for a really sweet guy.
I fell in love with Bryan’s system, which he called ‘Power Yoga.’
In yoga, as in martial arts, dance, or even many religions, there are purists and innovators. Kest innovated by throwing new variations into classical Ashtanga yoga.
Then he called it ‘his.’
Then, I called it ‘mine.’
Then the girls auditioned me in a hotel suite, loved me and the yoga, and hired me.
I was confident about the yoga, but not so much about massage. But what was stopping me from certifying myself in my own kind of massage? It's all based on consensus agreement anyway, isn’t it? People put on certain hats and call themselves experts.
I thought about what might be the elements of a massage school curriculum and studied that. In the six weeks I had left before tour, I bought a table, got everything the library had on massage and invited my friends over to be participants in my own personal massage training school. For myself.
As it turns out, the three country music stars were way too busy to get massages much and I was kind of relieved. But we developed a cool ritual. When they were in the chair each night, stylist Troy Zestos would do their ‘hairs’ and I would rub minty oils into their legs and feet. We would also make them laugh, a lot. Troy was a flamboyant funny, funny man. And I’m, well, you know me. It was like we plugged them in to a battery charger every night and put laughter juju through them.
I was just listening to a podcast about a conman/hypnotist named Dr. Danté. He used to be married to Lana Turner. He started his own college. When he realized it wasn’t accredited, he started his own accreditation agency. He gave people diplomas. They got jobs they may or may not have been qualified for.
Who decides if a school is good or not? We get a panel of experts together, right? And who decides who that panel of experts should be? The expert on experts?
We like the rule-breakers, don’t we? I actually found myself routing for him.
A friend said of someone recently ‘they think the rules don't apply to them.’ I knew what he meant, but then I thought Which rules? What we find interesting, popular, edible and/or acceptable is all based on societal agreements. Rules. If you wear some kind of hat or uniform, you're an authority. We don't even know what we've brainwashed ourselves into. It’s all made up. That’s how life works.
Anyway, I made it through 7 months of a tour giving massages I was never certified to give, teaching a form of yoga I had never been certified to teach. Only once on the whole tour did a visitor backstage ask me where I studied massage. Natalie was right there.
“Seattle” I said and left it at that.
But I felt like a phony. Never mind hiding the smoking and drinking I was still doing. So, did it matter that I bamboozled my way into the Dixie Chicks gig? It did, on some fundamental level, on the level of being. I pretended to have a hat I didn’t earn.
