EVERY DAY IS LEG DAY

This is not a normal newsletter. If you are sensitive to reading about medical trauma, consider skipping it. I won’t be mad. I promise :)

I no longer use the phrase “break a leg.” After the events of the last couple of months, it hardly seems appropriate. Or maybe, it seems too appropriate: ironic in the wrong way, drawing too much attention to a reality that I have not quite known how to adequately deal with. I’ve gone through the motions and done all the medical things I need to do, and yet part of me still doesn’t quite believe that it actually happened. I suppose that it’s the brain’s way of sectioning itself off to protect our psyches from Very Bad Things, but I don’t find it all that helpful when I rocket out of bed to pee at 3AM and land too hard, sending shooting pains from my toe to my hip. We all have our crosses to bear, and right now mine is this.

This past June, I was traveling down a dark road when a truck driver swerved out of the oncoming traffic lane and hit the van I was in head-on, resulting in a complete fracture in my right femur. After a tangle with the Tanzanian and Kenyan medical systems, a “splint” made from a cardboard box and a jug of wiper fluid strapped to my ankle, a brief airplane ride, and a lot of drugs, I went into surgery where they stuck a titanium rod through the bone, and anchored it with two screws each in my knee and hip. I recovered over the course of seven days in Kenya, two weeks in Chicago, a month in New York, ten days in Edinburgh, and into the now. Apparently something like this takes a year to fully heal properly. But I don’t mean for this to be a pity party—in fact, in many ways I was extremely lucky. Although it will take a long time to heal, I will heal. The injury, though traumatic, had a relatively simple fix. I was up and walking less than twelve hours after the surgery and won’t suffer any permanent physical damage. I had friends and an amazing boyfriend on call for absolutely anything in the world. I was surrounded by a legion of family members who took on all sorts of tasks (such as: securing a Medevac helicopter to take me across the Tanzanian/Kenyan border, applying for new visas on my behalf, booking and rebooking flights and hotels, squabbling with insurance, and asking every question under the sun so I wouldn’t have to) without whom I have no idea how I would still be alive. My life, though I move around a little slower, is full of a lot of really wonderful things.

I have felt that there’s no real reason to be writing this. It feels self-indulgent to assume that my leg is important enough to foist its story on to three or so dozen people, demanding that you feel some obligation to read it and feel something about it. I have also felt a tremendous need to be in control of how I am perceived in relation to this injury. When something like this happens, your body and the way you move becomes abnormal, therefore inviting a public attention that you didn’t sign up for and have no framework for how to experience. You go from someone who could slip into a crowded room undetected to someone that everyone has to make way for. You become a canvas for other people’s emotions (mostly, pity) to seep into. It eats up every aspect of your life, until every day is leg day.

I have had the strangest conversations I have ever had since this injury. More than one person has asked if I’ll be writing a “Leg Album” or “Leg Opera” (“Not yet, but that’s a great title!” I say to them). A possibly-well-meaning elderly man in my mother’s apartment building said, “You should consider yourself lucky that God allowed you to survive.” I have been asked more than once what “model” of screws and rod I have (I don’t know), and have had more than one extremely uncomfortable email interaction where someone realizes that the reason I didn’t do something is because I was in a hospital halfway across the world.

More than the physical aspects of my injury, I was particularly bogged down by the fact that I was simply not able to do all the things I wanted to do. I had spent weeks planning a very creatively-active summer, with multiple shows and an artist residency—all of which had to be cancelled or pushed indefinitely. I, of course, had nothing but time to sit around and think about how disappointed I was, and about what it means for me to be a creative person. Can I call myself a composer/songwriter/whatever else I call myself without actually making anything? The short answer is honestly, no. We are in an industry that judges us based on our products—how many commissions you got, how many premieres you had, how many shows you played, how much you wrote, how many people came to your party, blah, blah, blah—and I have produced next to nothing. Where does that leave me?

I have a funny position in the music world now. I work next to and with some absolute giants who have been inspiring me since I was a teenager and have achieved a level of professional success as an administrator that is very rare for someone my age, but my creativity has stalled. To be clear, I’m extremely grateful to be where I am (hello to my bosses reading this if you got this far!) but it’s shocking how rarely I think about music. I think about my email, my hours, my rent, my dog, but not music. What scares me is that most of the time, I’m pretty comfortable not creating anything. This is not to say that I’m done making music—far from it!—it’s just seeming to take much longer for me than for others. And right now I think that’s fine. If there is anything I’ve learned from all of my leg days, it’s that I’m doing my best and that my best works.

So this is less “news,” more “letter.” I’d like to send more news when I have both the time and the news. For now, just letters. And many of them.

Thanks for reading.

—Nicki