🩷 🌸 🦩P!nk Syllabus🎀🌷🩰

On surprise, presence, joy, healing, and change

Nov 24, 2024

Larger than life. Austin, Texas, November 2024.

This has been my year of live music. Spotify’s “near you” feature targeted me effectively and relentlessly. Fortunately, Spotify seems to know my taste better than I do. I struggle to explain what I like musically without just spouting out a list of seemingly unrelated artists. One of my former teaching partners was a drummer in his earlier life, and I’ve always been intimidated to talk music with him. During one of those insufferable-yet-somehow-deeply-useful community building activities in August, I was finally got closer to articulating to him what I’d figured out about my own musical taste: the center of the many-circled Venn Diagram is folk. Folk rock, country folk, pop-adjacent folk. Celtic dance music and bluegrass.

And then there’s P!nk.

She does not have folk roots that are as immediately evident to my (not super well-trained) ear. But her music has shown up intermittently but somehow consistently for the past two decades. There’s a party anthem for a non-party person (my love of underdogs), a perfect capturing of my feelings about relationships when I was 18 (sorry, husband - I figured it out eventually), and a powerful reminder that, if you can be in this moment, then this one, then this one, you’ll make it through. I’ve listened to all of those songs on repeat at key moments.

Still, I wouldn’t have necessarily considered myself a huge fan. She’s, quite frankly, too cool for me to feel like I can invest in the deep kind of artistic respect and low-key weird parasocial relationship I have with a lot of the other artists I like. I had to look up when those key songs came out because they don’t sound like a specific era (like Jewel sounds like the fall of 2011 or Yellowcard sounds like the summer of 2007), but rather a specific feeling. And that feeling made me impulse purchase fairly expensive tickets when they went on sale in February for an early-November concert. It’s a classic INFJ gut-level decision that felt right even if I couldn’t explain it. I wanted to see her live, but didn’t really know what I’d be seeing. Because of my relative lack of familiarity, and because I only have one solution to problems and that is going back to school, I had the idea to put together P!nk syllabus, a list of things to listen to and read and understand before the concert.

But there’s this period of time called August-November, and it’s hard in public education, and none of that happened.

What did happen, though, was all of this.

After months of waffling on whether to sell the tickets (because I hadn’t been to an arena show since 2012, and because it was on a school night, and because I didn’t have a logical reason that I bought them in the first place), I ran out of energy to make a decision and therefore got dressed in a flowing pink flowery tunic thing and every piece of rose quartz I own and stood in a ridiculously long line to get in and marveled at how arenas are now like airports. I sent a picture of Maren Morris (a surprising pairing to me, but a STELLAR opening act) to one of my coworkers, who introduced me to her this summer, and marveled at the truly remarkable range of clothing and how many millennial moms with girls my students’ ages were there.

And then, predictably if you were a real fan and not me, P!nk descended in a harness and a shiny, spiky leotard from a moving setpiece in the ceiling to “Get This Party Started.” I was MESMERIZED. And terrified - I was not going to be cut out for this concert. Not this hard core, not this energetic, not this ANYTHING that would be required to understand what was going on.

Except.

A friend of mine recently described a favorite artist of hers as “the most embodied performer I’ve ever seen.” I’m still learning the artist she was talking about and have never seen her live, but that description matched the next two hours of my life. I didn’t do any crying (though it wouldn’t have felt out of place), but I did feel like her embodied performance - the vocals, the lyrics, and the spectacle of it all - brought me back into my body in a way I hadn’t inhabited it in a while.

Her genuine joy, whether that was calling the folks in the front row “sparkle ponies” or explaining how she doesn’t get to eat candy except on stage (because her kids steal it) or flying like Peter Pan during the encore - was breathtaking. So was the sweet banter with her guitarist (and her story about sitting on the floor for auditions so she doesn’t freak people out), and the grace with which she moved from spiky leotard to ethereal flowy skirt (flown in from above) to joking about said the skirt as her “fairy princess dress.” And the depth of presence it takes to start a song (as part of a game with her music director) and then say, “Yeah, that song has a chorus, but I do not know what it is”) in front of a full arena and have it be nothing. And the one word shift to “sweet” in this song, which I had not heard about until it caught my ear at the concert. P!nk appeared (though I obviously can’t know for sure) unflinchingly herself throughout a performative tour de force, which feels like a tour de force in and of itself.

The concert was ridiculous and shocking and hilarious and heartfelt and simultaneously the hardest core and gentlest live show I’ve ever seen. How party anthems like “Get This Party Started” and “Raise Your Glass” cohabit a setlist with the grief of “When I Get There” and the sweet reassurance of “Turbulence” is beyond me. I needed to be in the same (albeit very large) room with her to really HEAR her range, her voice, her clarity, her heart; the fact that she can sing like that upside down and moving is a whole other thing.

Every surprise (trampolines, different ways of flying, interaction with the crowd, her sitting down at the piano, expansive high notes I didn’t know were coming) brought me more into the moment. Every moment taught me something - about her pervasive level of fame, about the human scale to which her words and voice have been a balm, about my capacity for loving a wider variety of music than I thought I could. If I walked in curious and appreciative, I walked out something else, something much more connected, a different kind of fan.

In the past three weeks, I’ve listened to little besides P!nk. She didn’t play two of my favorite songs (“Walk Me Home” and “All I Know So Far”) at the concert, but I’ve been listening to their versions (radio, recorded, live) intermingled with the concert setlist, and I’ve been looking for all of the songs that I don’t know (which turned out to be fewer than I thought, because SO MANY of her songs are within the zeitgeist even if I hadn’t connected them before). Songs I’ve known for decades have taken on new meaning and songs I didn’t originally gravitate to from Trustfall are now my favorites.

P!nk has said that she feels like she’s been called towards those who are suffering, to help ease pain. I am still working through how evident this focus has been in her music all along (and how I managed to miss something so elemental) and how many people clearly, judging by reactions of other people at this concert, have found healing in her voice, her lyrics, her presence. She’s not who I think of when I think of healing (that’s Carrie Newcomer and Jewel and The Wailin’ Jennys for me), but this concert was a powerful reminder that there is more than one kind of healing. We don’t all heal the same way, or at the same speed, or even the same way throughout the course of our lives.

While I’m a systems thinker to my core, I’ve been gravitating more toward individual healing work in yoga and teaching and otherwise. I’ve lost faith that systemic change is possible in my lifetime, though I don’t believe we should stop trying. If I can make a student’s hour with me better than the one before it, I’ve done something, and sometimes if not all the time I can do this despite the systemic nonsense. If P!nk’s lyrics get someone through a dark drive home, as they’ve done for me many times, something has happened, though of course it also happens at a huge level when thousands of us are singing about our pain and the way through it together in an arena. None of it fixes everything, but it IS something. As with everything: it’s both/and, not either/or. I never expected a latent pop star crush and my yoga world to intersect, but here we are. P!nk’s command of both party anthems and deep ballads that would sound cheesy if she wasn’t so cool is a powerful reminder:

💗 We contain multitudes.
💗 It can all be true at the same time.
💗 Needs change over time and circumstance.
💗 The balance of fun and poignance, laughter and tears, effort and ease.

I don’t think I would have made any of these connections if I hadn’t seen her live. So maybe it was better that I never made my syllabus and just showed up and let it all wash over me. As we walked back to the car from the concert venue, all I had were sentence fragments - “Her voice! That range! So many kids with their moms! Singing upside down! Sparkle ponies!” I’ve been trying to write about this since the concert, and haven’t gotten much beyond those pieces. There are too many ideas, too many feelings, too many threads that I’m trying to weave together that are different textures, lengths, and sizes. This will simply not be a perfectly edited essay.

What occurred to me this morning, though, was how this experience of coming out of the concert different than I went in was akin to coming back into the space from savasana. Sometimes I’m agitated that the rest was too short; or have taken some kind of epic to-do list journey, forgetting entirely that I was supposed to be resting; mostly, I feel quieter but relatively the same as before. But on a few occasions (sometimes for a Reason I can identify, but often not), I’ve emerged from savasana different than when I laid down. I’ve figured out whole units for class without thinking about them consciously, I’ve forgiven someone for a fairly sizable transgression, I’ve also simply chosen to move slower, more kindly than I thought possible on a specific day.

You cannot plan this stuff. You cannot go into savasana - or a concert, or a meeting, or a therapy session, or anything - asking to be changed and expect it to work (believe me, I’ve tried). All you can do is show up with your whole mind and your whole heart, as often and as openly as you can, and pay attention to what shows up to you.

🧠 The Actual Syllabus 🌺

One of the things I figured out this year (not in savasana, though some of the possible solutions to this problem have emerged from there) that’s been making classroom teaching hard for me is that I started teaching longer-term in higher ed. My brain is very tied to a syllabus mindset in my scope-and-sequence, where there are certain things that we are going to do each day throughout the semester and that’s how it will be.

Let me tell you: in middle school, particularly in my context and post-pandemic, that is NOT how it will be.

This mindset doesn’t account for the realities of my students, or my questionable timing, or the thousands of interruptions, or losing weeks of instructional time to testing, or me being sick, or the kids being sick, or sparkling teaching moments, us all being too exhausted to do the thing I’d planned. Middle school is not made for syllabi (maybe none of us are made for syllabi?), but my teaching brain is just starting to learn and understand that, now that I know what the problem is.

I went back and looked at some old syllabi, as I was thinking about what a P!nk syllabus COULD look like, were I to retroactively construct this for myself. Some observations from THAT process:

They’re just way too long. Does anyone read these things? We harp a lot on reading them, but realistically, it’s like a whole book in and of itself.
Incredibly punitive for someone who doesn’t feel like that harsh of an instructor - how many ways did I have tell people they could fail? (I know there are reasons for this, but…geez.)
Just a reminder there’s a whole handgun policy in there. That part of K12 is at least clearer cut from a rules perspective, daily vigilance not withstanding.

If I was still teaching in higher ed, my syllabi would look different than they did 8 years ago. They would be more lyrical, more forgiving, more based in questions than answers. They would have choices between projects, papers, and exams, and way more unapologetic emojis. They would ask you to read as much of the text by this day as you can, but please come to class even if you didn’t do the reading. They would teach ways to skim effectively so you could do SOME of the reading even if you couldn't do all of it. They would offer audiobooks and songs and podcasts as texts. They would lean toward the “warm” side of “warm demander,” though they would still communicate: you can and will do this hard intellectual work, but you will do it with the support of our community. The word love would be in there at least three times. I am not the teacher that I was then. Maybe (probably) I knew that before this concert, but WOW did it come into clearer focus in the past few weeks.

Here’s some of what I would want to offer and the essential questions we would explore in this magical badass fairy princess dream course I’m making up.

Walk Me Home

What does showing up for people, especially in difficult times? (See also: Maren Morris)
How does the darkness help us see the light?

F***in’ Perfect

(recorded and radio edits and this live version - I’d only heard the middle one before this recent deep dive. All are brilliant, but the shift of two syllables is significant and the way she’s handled it is exquisite.)

How does “bad language” change our experience of meaning? Who gets to define “bad”? (See also: Says Who? By Anne Curzan)
How do “rough around the edges” presentations of tender ideas help audiences engage with topics otherwise too scary to touch? (See also: Ted Lasso).
Where can you be just a little bit easier on yourself this week/semester/year/lifetime?

All I Know So Far

How can we support younger generations in creating a world that will care for them long-term?
What role does surrender to the unknown play in personal healing and solving systemic problems?
What do you want your loved ones to know that you haven’t told them yet?

What About Us?

Who needs the support we are uniquely positioned to give most right now?
How can softening be a form of resistance?

Note: I discovered while writing this post that P!nk performed at the DNC, with her daughter. This was something of a shock and also…not. I didn’t watch the DNC because I couldn’t stand having my hopes elevated then dashed, as I feared (correctly) that they might be (I read the speech transcripts). This song is one I’ve heard but not thought deeply about until seeing them asking these questions together.

This is Not A Post About The Election

True because I can’t imagine what I have to say that is useful and hasn’t already been said. However, I don’t think NOT talking about it does much either, so here’s a list of other people’s words, in addition to P!nk’s, that I’ve found helpful in these past weeks.