The Ups and Downs of Life as a Performing Artist

For every spectacular live stage performance you watch that seems like it was seamlessly evoked from thin air, you can bet that there were hours and hours of time spent in dark, crowded practice spaces going over those same songs again and again and again.

The performing life is odd. I don’t even know how to describe it. Especially for a person like me who is a library assistant (pretty much a librarian without librarian pay because I don’t have my MS degree) by day, musician by night. Most days I spend sitting in a quiet, old, dusty building in the middle of a semi-rural neighborhood in the Bay Area, helping old people find books about how to not die and kids find books about farts and diaper superheros. I have to make rent somehow.

My sister drew this for me, to describe my life.

At night, I am in a practice space with other musicians (the members of my band Kyrsten Bean, and the members of Nicky Garratt’s band Hedersleben), working on either songs I wrote or songs my band mates have written and we have all collaborated on. There is a lot of drilling of the same parts over and over again, debating about what works and what doesn’t. We record our practices and then I listen to them while I’m driving to the library the next day, to work so I can buy food and gas to fuel my life.

On Thursday night, Hedersleben had our first little sampler show at the Oakland Metro. It was a blast. I met a lot of awesome musicians in the bands that played after we opened, and in the audience of people who had come to check out this krautrock thing we are doing. It felt very good. I didn’t sleep much that night. The next day was the slowest day ever at the library. I sat at the reference desk or in the back room staring at the walls or ceiling, catching up on library projects, helping patrons, but mostly sitting. Staring. Wondering if the night before had really happened.

***

That night after work, I went over to see the launch of my friend Joe’s book, Junkie Love. I helped with the trailer for that one by playing a junkie. My friend Joel was the star. It was filmed in my bedroom.

I was nervous to finally watch it for the first time in a room with 81 people, but when I finally saw it I was impressed. It’s a little love story. About what a junkie thinks love is–about dope being love and love being dope.

Here it is, anyhow:

***

It was the same thing that night. I went to the book launch, it was exciting to see my friends kill it with their readings and to watch the trailer I had been a part of.
After the reading, I bumped into Alan Kaufman, who had come to support Joe. We ended up having a conversation about performing life. I don’t know why I felt compelled to vent to him about it, he merely asked me how it had been filming the trailer in my bedroom. I told him that it had been heavy, and I’d felt like crap for a week afterwards. He totally got it. Alan is a beat poet, wrote the book Drunken Angel (which I am just now cracking open and is amazing). He’s been there.

I told him about how I’d just had a performance the night before, how exciting it was. We had a guy from a record label come out to see us, everyone loved it, I was on cloud nine. There are tours being booked, details being finalized. We are recording an album at the end of the month. I have a show with my own band being worked on for May 30 as we speak. So much of what I love. So much awesomeness. Then I spent the next day sitting at the library.

“That’s awful!” said Alan. I looked at him, and I knew he meant that exactly how it feels to me. That it’s not working at a library or being around books that is awful, it’s the contrast between being in the middle of a cosmic synergistic excitement hub of splendor and then having to drive to work the next day and sit and stare at books.

I’m not complaining, don’t get me wrong! I love libraries. It’s just a strange, deflating transition. I find myself sitting there asking myself if any of the excitement actually happened. Which of these scenarios is my real life? The one where I am on stage in my element, doing what I love, carting gear in and out, talking music language with fellow musicians, or the one where I am sitting still at a reference desk at a library in the middle of nowhere, a city most people don’t even know exists in the Bay Area as it’s unincorporated.

It’s enough to make me feel stark raving mad sometimes, the ups and downs. I love my life. I love doing music. I love that I took my dreams of childhood and am finally bringing them to fruition. But there are things I got to talk about with Kaufman that he just got immediately. Doing performances and then sitting in your room for days trying to decompress. Having your ego fed, having it inflate, and then having the pin stuck in the balloon as the air fizzles out over the next couple of days. Our conversation blew my mind, was just what I needed. Joel, who had rode with me to the event, didn’t need a ride home, so then I went home to my diet coke and gluten-free cookie and stared at Facebook. Then I went to sleep, and got up to go work at the library.

Oaklandia

“Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?” -Alex/A Clockwork Orange

There are so many topics to write about here. Collaboration. Anxiety. Taking on a plethora of music projects. Learning to work with other artists on a daily basis. I’m sure I will cover all of these topics in the upcoming weeks. I took a hiatus from the last posted entry on April 8, due to suddenly being consumed with activities music and writing related.

My life isn’t much different from the other musicians I am surrounded by in Oakland. Most of us are in two or more bands. Most of us have a calendar clogged with work and shows and practices. Most of us spend a significant portion of our time crammed into tiny practice spaces.

Yesterday, I was chilling in the sun out on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland with a bunch of peers, all of who are musicians. Our conversation was like an episode of Portlandia.

“Soft Cell only has one good song. Tainted Love.”
“What? Soft Cell has the best lyrics ever! Tainted Love is their worst song!”

“Have you heard of The Monks?”
“Yea, I introduced them to you, remember?”
“I thought that was your roommate who introduced them to me.”
“No! He’s always stealing my musical taste and pawning it off as his own.”

“There’s a point where you just get oversaturated with Depeche Mode.”
“What? There’s no such thing as too much Depeche Mode!”

“All I listen to is Krautrock.”
“Krautrock! I love Can!”
“I like Ammon Duul and Neu!”
“I’m into proto-kraut. Haha, just kidding, does such a thing exist?”

***
It’s ironic that a few years ago I was begging to be surrounded by artists and musicians, back in an urban hub. Now that I am, I’m grateful, but also kind of inured to the over abundance of artists I am surrounded by. Add to that the fact that most of us are sensitive and neurotic and slightly psycho and you’ve got a basket full of booby traps at times.

I wouldn’t go back to where I was a year ago for the world. Sometimes, I get down. Focusing so much on music and art and work makes me feel like I might be missing out on something, like family or relationships or love. But…I don’t know. It’s good to be free.

I’ve been practicing with one of my bands, the Krautrock-influenced experimental band, for an upcoming show at the Oakland Metro. Sometimes, our practices feel like Real World: Band Practice, especially when we were trying to determine who the core players in the band were, and had different musicians at every practice. But…I’m sure that’s true of most band practices. Most bands never get off the ground due to not having enough players or personality conflicts. Artistic people tend to be a bit odd. It’s not just a cliche. Sometimes the most creative and interesting people are just…weird. OK, most of the time. Myself included. I know I’m totally sensitive and psychotic and weird and over intelligent and every other thing you can pin on a musician/writer nutcase who came from a musician/artist nutcase family.

So there you go. Busy. Still trying to find the meaning of life, balance frugal living with working on art, doing music constantly and working a day job to fund it. Balking at the dynamics of single people in my age group–ugh. Insanity anyone? Modern life is just wack.

So what is the meaning of life? What you make of it, I suppose. And the only thing I’ve found to assuage my existential angst and anxiety so far is music. The more projects I’m involved in, the more projects I get asked to be involved in. The more I play out, the more musicians I meet and more I am asked to play out. So. All is well. Pretty much.

Kosmische Music

I’ve even spending an exorbitant amount of time when I’m not at work or at one of my many band practices sitting on the mattress in my cheap rented room geeking out on space rock music from the late 60s, early 70s, and newer. Bands like Midday Veil and Ash Ra Tempel.

It helps that I’m in a Krautrock band. What the hell is Krautrock, you ask? I explained it a while back, here: You’re Never Too Old To Play Music.

On Friday, I found out about a show playing at the Gem and Bolt in Oakland, a beautiful live-in exposed-brick warehouse converted to show space at times, one of the coolest spaces I’ve ever been in. I decided to go for research and enjoyment. The opening bands were impressive, especially the drummer, who helped the first band, Brain Fruit, from Seattle, out on this night, but belonged to the second band, Midday Veil. Both bands had a strong Krautrock vibe, and it felt synchronicitous, just like this whole endeavor I’ve stumbled into. I feel like ever since I was turned onto Krautrock music last year, it’s taken me on a ride that is just beginning to pick up steam. Who knows where it will go. It’s like all the musicians who channeled their energy into this psychedelic, soulful, spacey music put out enough energy to reach decades into the future and fire up musicians that hadn’t even existed at the time, like me and most of my bandmates, for their own tripped out journeys.

The band I’m in, Hedersleben, is full-on Krautrock influenced. We’ve been meeting up to three times a week to work on music, and I’ve been listening to hours of our wacky and amazing jams practicing riffs and pulling out ideas to run by my bandmates, because apparently we are playing a show in Oakland in May. To go to a show where at least one band was doing what we intend to do, but in an amazing, realized fashion full of heart and feeling, was really cool. Lights and projections and amazing aural soundscapes.

The night at Gem and Bolt ended for me somewhere around 2am. Nommo Ogo, a band I also really dig, was played trippy dark music, costumed people were dancing around, the lead singer, a tiny mustached guy with his shirt off, was gyrating and embodying his freaky self while chanting behind a glowing purple orb as a guy with a sophisticated projector etch-a-sketch type thing and a sheet over his body drew light pictures on everyone. At this point, I was exhausted, and I was wondering how many people around me were on psychedelics. Not that I mind, I just don’t do them. And I needed to ride my bike home before I collapsed. So I fled. But I had a blast, and learned a lot. It’s so important to go to shows if you’re a musician, to see what other people are doing.

I’ve been sick on and off for about four months, no joke, from flu to bronchitis to spring cold and maybe bronchitis again. I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve been attempting to keep up at three bands, a county job and writing performances in the middle of what is still a kind of stressful bohemian time for me, but it’s frustrating. Maybe this is just what doing music full-time in your thirties while working a part-time day job to make ends meet feels like. It’s inspiring me to take better care of my self so I can have the energy to continue schlepping around amps and keyboards and guitars and singing into a microphone for a long time hence. Nik Turner of Hawkwind, a quintessential krautrock band, is in his 70′s and still going strong. I want to be that person too when I’m older, playing music as a life path, not for a fleeting minute of fame. It’s who I am, not a flash in the bucket.

A lot of synergy happening lately. It’s a good time, albeit stressful and busy. I’m fulfilled doing music projects most of the time. Scheduling around a county job is hard, but often things work out, regardless. And I’ve had the best luck with music equipment lately. I got rear-ended, but it didn’t cause much damage, so instead of replacing the bumper on my 2006 Honda, I was able to find a keyboard amp and a guitar amp for insanely reasonable deals. Gear is one of the hardest parts of being a musician.

So this is a meandering post. I’m exhausted, but wanted to throw out an update. I’m enjoying the odd moments when I get the practice space I pay in on to myself or when my roommates are not home and I have peace, quiet and space, because in Oakland, there is not a lot of those things. It’s a lot of social, busy, hubbub and I can’t hear myself think or contemplate without going to the woods. And being sick so much has inhibited my woods adventures.

So…here’s to maybe a future where I can carve out more peace and quiet. Or maybe someday afford my own quiet space. Ha. Not in the Bay Area, right? Gotta accept what is. Roommates, noise and cheap rent. It is what it is. I chose the life of a musician. Or it chose me. Less money, more time on music. Hard work in the dark for years without any monetary rewards, but happiness at doing what I love and knowing if I died tomorrow, I did my best, maybe more, to live my dreams, regardless of what people told me about what I should be doing instead.

The Week of Astounding Music Synchronicity

Last September, I sublet my friend’s practice space while he was on tour in Europe. Having just gotten back into an urban area, and never having used a practice space before, I was stoked. There was a PA system, I could hook up my guitar to my little 4-watt Vox and blast my vocals through the microphone, scream if I wanted to. I went in there whenever I could. My schedule was basically work, eat, practice space, write, sleep. I was able to get a lot of my songs into more useful shape, and the work I did in there led to me recording a little demo in November, which has led to more projects and nice feedback.

I wrote a while back about how I was getting into this whole Krautrock music thing. I’ve been reading Krautrocksampler. I also got a really cool book from the San Francisco Public Library called Cosmic Krautrock and Its Legacy, which has pictures of all of these compelling experimental bands that came out of West Germany during the late ’60s, early ’70s. Some of the bands, like Neu! and Faust have been credited with being proto-punk: precursers to punk music.

Youtube and blogspot are the greatest things ever for finding entire ripped LPs of music that is out of print or hard to find. I’ve been taking naps with Harmonia and Cluster and Tangerine Dream and Neu! playing in the background, getting dressed while listening to Can and Amon Duul. Right now, as I write this, I’m listening to Faust.

After months of discovering obscure post-punk and metal music, this trippy experimental psychedelic ambient music made of organic instruments and sampled sounds and strange undulations of instruments meeting in a rise and fall together and separately is totally awesome.

And it feels likes it’s sucked me into some strange alternate universe.

About a week ago, a friend posted that one of his bands needed a keyboardist who was drama free and available to tour and record. I saw it and wrote in my journal that I wanted to do something like that. About five minutes later, he called me up, asking if I could play prog keyboards. I told him that I was more of a keyboard-light person, but he insisted I get the name of the guy in charge of this signed Krautrock project. After a number of very positive emails in which I sent clips of my work and some background about myself, confessing I was mainly a singer/lyricist/guitarist, the guy in charge of the project sent me about 14 Krautrock songs I’d never heard before that he said he is influenced by for the project, some sheet music of songs he is working on, and invited me to come to one of their practices. I felt like I was in a really cool Krautrock school for about three days, as I listened to the songs and practiced ideas based on the music he had sent from the project.

Then, I was hauling my two 88-key keyboards and electric guitar down to my friend’s practice space a few blocks from my house, along with a Fender Twin Reverb amp my neighbor had let me borrow.

There were other people trying out that night, a violinist and a Krautrock influenced concert pianist. I took over the microphone, free styled some spacey spoken word poetry, sung some on-the-spot melodies, played some piano and guitars and basically kicked ass, while everyone else kicked ass on bass, keys, drums, guitar and violin. We all made some lovely music that night, and it fit, it was fun and felt good.

The next night, I had my own band practice, and the following night, I was invited to West Oakland to jam out with some old-school punks who have a recording control room in their practice space and wanted a female musician to round out their songs. I made up words and a melody to one of their songs, they played some of mine. The light was dark, the amps were big, and we did the best cover of Fascination Street by The Cure I’ve ever heard. We played my songs, Iggy Pop, Joy Division, and PJ Harvey. I basically screamed into the microphone for four hours, dream come true.

I came home Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night and face planted on my mattress. It took me a good half hour to hour to get my shit together enough to get into my pajamas. I’ve been trying to kick this nasty bout of bronchitis for a few weeks now, so after the excitement I had this week I spent the majority of three days in the house, on my bed, totally sick again. A friend had a show down the street, another was spinning some of my favorite music at a bar down the street, but I went to neither, just sat in my pajamas, and time crept by like nothing had happened. Until the guys I’d jammed with Friday sent me samples of the covers we’d done and I was happy all over again.

It’s been hard to let it sink in, how rad last week was. On Sunday, I got to sit in on a practice for the new Hawkwind lineup, another project the gatekeeper in charge of the Krautrock band is in charge of, and I wrote a few pages of writing in my notebook and at one point, my friend was trying to drum and sing at the same time and they all three looked at me sitting there and before I knew it I was singing vocals to Lemmy’s song “Silver Machine,” the one that hit the charts back in the ’70s, as a placeholder while they recorded their run through for the keyboardist.

You would think at this point I would be like, my life is freaking weird, but I wrote something in my notebook while I sat in on that practice for three hours: “If you’re tapped in, all the synchronicity doesn’t seem so weird. If you have a master plan, always, once you focus, the players come out and then everything makes sense, but it’s because from the beginning, from the get-go, you believed that something would come through. You made it happen.”

I posted on my Facebook music page that the best compliments I received last week were, “She’s got some pipes,” and “You’ve got a great scream.” A friend of mine added, “You also joined a Krautrock band with a couple of legendary bastards.”

Anyhow, it’s been busy. I’ve also been working on a piece of writing for an upcoming reading, a profile of a new favorite coffee shop for Oakland magazine, and a crapola of other writing, in addition to trying to get my own songs polished up. I never realized what hard work it is to be in charge of writing all of the songs for a band. The bass player and drummer I’ve been working with on my songs since November are great at helping me add transitions and space into my songs, but we are moving at a pretty glacial pace, and my amp is a piece of crap unless split into a bigger speaker, which I don’t have. So my new goal is to save up for a good amp, which means I need to not be sick anymore, and have some free time when I’m not working on writing or music or at the library. But I can’t really see that happening any time soon, so I’m going to come up with a Plan B, which is to stumble onto some funds or a side project.

Friends have been texting and calling, “Let’s hang out,” and I’m always off to practice or doing some writing. But this was the life I’d wanted and planned for years. I’m not complaining. I’m happy as pie immersed in music all of the time, constantly digging up new music to listen to, reading about it in books I get at the library, writing about it, creating it. No matter what my sicknesses I catch or how sad I am over missing my ex-husband or whatever, I can find a home in music. Like my friend Kirsten said to me last night, ” You’ve always been a musician, you’ve always done music, so whatever project comes along, it’s what you were born to do. It won’t go away.”

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What’s Next?

A writing group serendipitously sprung up on Facebook the other day. It includes a few of my writer friends, each from a different strata of a past or current life. A friend from childhood whom I met when I was 11 years old in the church parking lot when we both were ditching church. A friend I met at age 19 when I was obsessed, in a musician envy sort of way, with the band her boyfriend was creator of. A writer dude who used to be in a cult-popular local punk band and lived on my street briefly before moving away. A dude who reads in the same literary circles I read in and is friends with a number of mutual friends: writers and punks and musicians. A Russian friend who is a total female rock star writer blowing up the literary scene in the Bay Area. A friend who I met when we read at Lip Service West together, and who I often bump into while loitering at an Oakland coffee shop seemingly everyone we know either hangs out at or works at.

The group started when one of these friends tagged me in one of those posts where you tag a number of people, you know, those posts you usually ignore. The game was that you had to look on page 7 of your manuscript and transcribe 7 sentences to post on Facebook, and then tag 7 other writers.

I was bored, and sick, so I pored through a bunch of my crappy writing to find a story that was actually seven pages long. I had to go back to my early twenties, when I was going to San Francisco State and studying Creative Writing. I tagged some of my writer friends, and the thread became super entertaining as they all posted excerpts of random stories that were either tragic or hilarious in a disturbing way. Then one of my friends said the thread, which got to over 90 comments long, was making her want to start a writing group.

So we did.

I went off about the ebils of Facebook a few weeks ago. I had decided to disconnect from it for a while, went all crazy on it in my rants. It helped. A couple of guy friends asked me if I had deleted it because of some dude. Wouldn’t they like to know.

Anyhow, I got a necessary pause and when I came back to it, I learned to let go of the outcome, to use it like a tool. I now observe everyone’s awesomeness without getting caught up so much in comparison and envy. I have given up (mostly) on expectations of any specific result from others, instead focusing on what is cool about it for me. If I share things with people without making it too personal, writer and musician discussions abound. Connecting to friends of friends, learning more about family, finding awesome music and bands…the pros outweigh the cons for me right now. Who gives a who who thinks what about who.

My whole philosophy on this upcoming year is, instead of trying to find out the purpose of MY WHOLE LIFE, to ask myself, “What’s next?”

I was talking to a musician who had just gotten back from tour. She was floundering a bit, because the tour had been her goal forever and now it was over. “I don’t know what to do with my life!” She said.

“What’s next?” I asked her. Baby steps.

Instead of comparing myself to others seemingly further along the path than me, the myriad of friends I have who are currently touring or have multiple books published, instead of letting the green-eyed monster consume me…just bloody DO something already. Take action. Don’t stew. Move along. There’s no time to be jealous unless it propels me along on my path, spurs me to action. If I want something I feel I can’t have, what can I do to obtain that thing, if it’s possible for me to obtain? Can I at least try?

There is no room anymore for being grouchy or sulking, playing a victim or blaming anyone else for my success or failure. There is only room for growth.

So…

What’s next?

Subversion

Lately, I’ve been immersed in music. I am surrounded by a gazillion bands it seems, and friends who know of a million bands. Ten dollar shows abound. There is usually something to do or see on any given night here in Oakland.

Last night was a huge punk show called Subversion at the Metro. It was a three-day fest. I did my part and went to day 2 with some super hot punky girlfriends and was blissfully surprised to find I actually enjoyed a couple of the bands (I didn’t know any of the bands playing that day except one, Scarlet Crimson, who I had seen a number of times before headliners at recent shows including The Mob and Belgrado/Bellicose Minds).

One band, Spectres, reminded me a bit of my exes band, it was that goth punk Joy Divisionesque vibe running rampant in the scene as of late and I really dig it. The drums and bass were amazing, and I totally danced. There’s a good article about the goth gloom vibe in recent punk music here: What is G-Beat?

It mentions a few bands that friends of mine are in or have introduced me to recently that I really dig such as Alaric, Cross Stitched Eyes, Bellicose Minds, Atriarch and basically most of the bands who have been passing through Oakland as of late.

It seems like a good time to be on the West Coast. DIY culture in the form of music is alive and well. I can’t even list all the demos, tape and vinyl rips I’ve been able to access recently, some available here on this awesome site: Terminal Escape

A lot of the bands playing over the three day Subversion fest are up there, today I was able to nab Spectres, Permanent Ruin, Male Nurses, White Wards and Hoax. I bought the new Spectres album. Another song I was listening to all day had nothing to do with those songs. Actually, I would say my two songs of the day are as follows:

***

It was adorable to see downtown Oakland filled with punks in full regalia. Studs, back clothing, bullet belts, leather, jean jackets, patches, colored hawks, dreads…

The festival itself was cool. Vinyl and cassette tapes are also still alive and well, which makes this ’80s girl happy, if only for sentimental reasons. Not to mention that they both sound better to me than CDs.

As I’m broke as hell due to my dedication to working part-time in order to focus on music, music, writing and music, I’m not able to buy a lot of paraphernalia, and I don’t profess to own any band t-shirts except one I got at crossroads because it looked cool, but I liked walking around handling all the records, and seeing so many bands all in one place. These bands all don’t get paid much of anything to do what they’re doing. It’s also rad to see so many artists completely dedicated to taking their music on the road, continuing to make their music in spite of the current landscape, saying, essentially: Screw the system! We will make music!! Foreva!!

At one point during Spectres show there were a buncha fully decked out fashion punk dudes (studs, colored hawks, face tattoos, eyeliner) standing near my friend and I, glaring intermittently at us and everyone else out of the corner of their eyes. There had been a few kinda normal looking guys walking around the venue through out the night, late 30s, early 40s. OK, maybe two. I was curious about them. Who were they? Did they listen to hardcore death punk and thrash punk music at home while reading literature in between teaching classes at the University? Had they once dressed up to the nines in punk attire as well? And what did the fact that I noticed them out of the entire audience say about the current punk scene’s fashion requirements?

(Did I mention Spectres lead singer also looks uncannily like my ex-boyfriend who fronted a ’90s industrial rock band? That was really weird. Took me back)

While the hardcore fashion punks started sniffing an unknown substance out of a plastic bag my friend and I looked at them and then at each other and started cracking up. “What would we even talk to them about?” she asked me later as we both decided that we weren’t feeling like any potential future dates were lurking in our vicinity, though it did feel good to be surrounded by so much punk DIY energy in one place. Felt kind of like home. I made a motion with my hands as if I were sniffing something illicit out of a plastic bag and she cracked up, “We could go nab those normal looking guys and talk about li-ter-at-toor,” I said.

It’s fun to be able to go to shows right down the street from my house, have friends who live around the corner and also have the liberty to simply sit in my room all day writing songs, listening to music and doing a kickass yoga workout,as I did today. I mean, yes, I still have that day job, but it’s the best job I’ve had out of any jobs so far (if you read back far enough in this blog, mostly circa 2008, you will find a litany of rants about terrible jobs I held that kept me from doing much music) and people always think it’s SO cool to work at the library even though I know the truth…it’s cool, but it’s also a library.

I don’t have much to complain about except my normal general neurosis which seems much more manageable now that I’m not trying to do so many different things. Realizing I’m only one human being, if I died today I would rest happy knowing I spent as much time as I could with my favorite people, working on music and writing every single day, listening to a lot of ass kicking local music and roaming the hills whenever possible.

Not to sound like the antichrist or anything, but not having a relationship also seems to be pretty effective for making a crap load of art. I’m not sure how I’ll someday work that equation back in, but after being married nine years I think I’m OK with not looking right now. My ex-husband said to me recently, “You didn’t have time for a relationship.” That’s either real sad, real modern, or means I’m simply real focused and would someday benefit from finding someone who was also real focused, and we could meet sometimes in the middle somewhere. When not touring or recording or working. Yea, modern life. There you go.

Punk is an Attitude

People often use the word “punk” to describe me. Something about the fact that I mostly wear black clothing, have tattoos, live in Oakland and play sparse, simple yet melodic music…

It’s not an insult. Punk is more than appearance, though. This is something I was talking to my friend about the other day. “You’re so punk,” someone said to her. She did a mental inventory and thought, “I don’t listen to all the punk music, I don’t dress like a punk, what’s the deal?”

It’s her attitude. Live with less. Fuck money. Do what you love and spend less time working. Eat what you buy. Take society with a grain of salt. Don’t let the man push you down. Fight for what you believe in. Don’t blindly cave in to ideals and traditions, in fact, fuck traditions.

Looking back, I realize my parents had punk attitudes, even though they were liberal artist Mormons. How different can you be, right? But they taught me to question authority, to never feel forced to celebrate consumer holidays, not to blindly take no for an answer, turn off the television, to use my brain when it came to propaganda and subversive advertising and politics, and to follow my dreams, putting my life’s work before money.

They taught me to trust my intuition, something that has helped me navigate religious groups, behavior modification programs and self-help groups without ever completely drinking the kool-aid.

As far as being called punk, usually older punks assume I grew up liking the same bands they did. Many of the old-school punks I associate with are grown up with kids, houses, have settled down from their show-going days, yet still hold a lot of those old punk values and listen to the same music they did back when punk was actually a functioning scene and hadn’t (d)evolved into the current thrash/metal scene. They have some awesome stories…because I was sober and born in the wrong decade, I didn’t experience a lot of those things.

I grew up in the valley, pretty far from any indie record store, so my music consumption was limited mainly to what I could find on the radio and get from BMG music. That meant I listened to a lot of mainstream metal, Black Sabbath, Ozzy, Metallica, a shit ton of grunge, Nirvana, Green Day (okay, punk-pop), Hole, Alice in Chains, and industrial that was also more mainstream but just as good, i.e. Nine Inch Nails, 80′s English post-punk such as The Cure and The Smiths. I found the Sex Pistols and David Bowie through BMG Music, I heard of the Circle Jerks and Black Flag through friends, but it wasn’t until I was much older that friends helped me fill in the gaps with the stuff I would’ve died to hear when I was younger: Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Operation Ivy, The Replacements, The Chameleons, The Sound (UK), Slayer, Cortex, etc. etc. etc.

I spent some of my teens singing Social Distortion and the Misfits with groups of gutter punk kids on the streets of California, subscribing to the eat, drink and be merry, screw the system I’m going to live on the fringes lifestyle I thought meant I was truly punk. But I threw that away as soon as I learned I could live in society, earn an OK paycheck and not have to drink in order to pursue the freedom I spoke of.

Meanwhile, some of my friends escaped permanently to Berkeley/Oakland and were immersed in the punk scene for years and years.

So no, in the traditional sense, I didn’t spend my twenties in a punk house going to shows and living a low-impact life in some urban city. I never dressed the part, mostly I wore a uniform of jeans and a black or white wife beater. I spent my twenties in San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and then El Cerrito living a married life, trying on different hats, trying to be a good worker bee and fit into the mold by medicating myself and working 9 – 5′s.

Something snapped in my mid-twenties and I realized that I would never fit the mold of 9-5′er or suburbanite (never wanted to be a surburbanite, but the economy kept pushing me further out into the Bay Area ‘burbs). I just didn’t know how to let it go, so I struggled for another couple of years. Mostly, I find that even though I think my music sounds pretty grunge/blues, people tend to hear a lot of punk influence in it, and that actually makes me pretty happy. I feel I’ve successfully amalgamated all of the genres I grew up with, and all of the genres my genres grew up with, to create something that resonates with me. Lately, with the use of my friend’s practice space while he’s on tour, I’ve finally been able to work on the heavier, louder songs I love so dearly.

So, for now, I’ve embraced my roots. Call me punk, say I have an anarchist punk attitude. Though I’ve never been much of a joiner, I’ll take it if it helps you put me in a category. Punk, to me, means being your own fucking person, and not letting anyone else define you.

Music Show at Vitus Tomorrow, July 18

I booked a show a while back, and it has arrived, $5 tickets are available here: Vitus Oakland

Come, hang out. The two other musicians playing with me are Dustin Thomas and Shannon Harney, both of whom are on their game, with websites, music to purchase and everything else a musician needs these days. I’m a little intimidated! But hey, I’ll be there, at the beginning of the night, playing my soulful, bluesy tunes for whoever decides to get out of the house on a Wednesday night to hear them. I believe the other two musicians will be playing with full bands. Hard to live up to that with me and my little guitar, but I’m doing this sucker. Like my friend Bucky says, it’s not like something will happen like my guitar suddenly breaks and maims a small child and everyone goes, “And that was the last night she ever played guitar…”

God, the life of a musician. I’m currently looking for a music practice space to go in on, in Oakland, so if you hear anything, let me know. Need some private space to practice all these new tunes! I moved into a room, with roommates. Adjusting to that. Yikes!

Better to Give Than to Receive

Friday’s show at Actual Cafe in Oakland was great; It was amazing how it all came together.

I played with two new musician friends of mine who came through for me at the last minute and was blown away: They were both stellar performers. A lot of people I have recently met and think are neat showed up at the cafe; we had a good audience that ebbed and flowed throughout the night.

***

In other news, my sister drew a picture of the Jinxes I was talking about the other day.

Like I said in my last post, jinxes are mystical weasel cat creatures who love to trip you up when you decide to invest in any particular plan. I rue the day the jinxes pop up…they’ve been all over the place recently. But they have an upside. When they arrive, I have to check in with my gut. They make me pay attention to what’s going on, consider if I’m on the right path.

***

It’s all speeding up right now, the shift from old life to new, the change in living circumstances.

Somehow, even though everything is up in the air, I feel pretty steady. I truly believe everything is going to come together just right. My old life that wasn’t working, by some grace I can’t even fathom, is completely falling apart while a new life where I have friends who blow my mind, am in the center of a hub and can work on my art and be understood and not forced to change my very nature are coming together at the exact same time. It’s hard to straddle these two worlds: One that wasn’t working for me and was causing me duress, and one that seems so perfect I doubt it can even be real because I feel I don’t deserve it. And it still feels terrible, on a visceral level, to be leaving the familiarity of my previous life.

I lost about 15 pounds in a month from stress and lack of appetite, but at the same time, in spite of the anxieties and fears of not being taken care of I’ve felt peace beyond peace. I can’t wait to find a good healing space where I can get settled and start to process all of this upheaval.

***

Another update: A reading I did for Lip Service West in January is now viewable online. I think it turned out well…it’s better to make a story about relapsing on Nyquil funny. Because it is funny. You’ll see. (Raaawr). I hate watching myself on video…it reminds me at 31, I look like I’m still 18. I guess that’s not a bad thing…

I’ll also be reading for Lip Service West again (a story about my life as a teenage gutter punk and the importance of my crusty hoodie) at Beast Crawl in two weeks. You won’t be disappointed.

***

It’s all a waiting game at this point. Where I’ll live, where I’ll put all my stuff, how I’ll get my stuff at the apartment cleaned and moved (one day at a time).

I’m working hard today on letting go and trusting the universe.

I’ve been very sad and twisted (it’s only natural), but also very happy and feeling tapped into the slipstream again, which is great. If I trust that calm centered feeling inside that says I am doing all the right things and meeting all the right people, I feel OK. It’s those late night hours when my stomach’s all screwy and I’m facing my transitional reality that’s physically and mentally hard…those night hours when I question how everything is going to play out and start losing my faith.

Truth is, I just don’t know how things are going to turn out, but I believe the best possible outcome for me will transpire. Life is for learning, you stop learning when you’re dead and for so many months there I just couldn’t get out of my head. I’ve been reaching out to people struggling with issues I’ve faced in the past (i.e., trying to find support for their art, or trying to get clean and sober) and that seems to be helping a lot. The universe is suddenly sending them to me because I’m taking the steps to make myself available. Even simple stuff like saying the St. Francis prayer, which talks about making myself a person seeking to comfort rather than be comforted, give rather than to receive, is helpful to do every morning.

This blog is one thing I do for other people, and it’s paid back in spades, so I am going to pay more attention to it this week, and please, if you have any topics or struggles as an artist, writer or musician and you want me to approach those topics from my point of view, do share in the comments and I will use that for a blog subject.

Life Goes On

Whatever you are going through, even if it’s threatening to rip out the foundation you stand on, life continues to move.

People keep working and talking and eating and sleeping. The only thing that matters in a bubble is you, and what you think of your own situation. Other people can be road maps or beacons along the way, they can point you in the right (or wrong) direction, but when it comes down to it, we have ourselves and maybe something outside of ourselves, too, call it nature or god or the universe. Or maybe you don’t believe in that, you think we were formed for no reason and are hurtling towards nothing. I’ve felt that at times. But when shit gets rough, I need to believe in something.

As creative people, we need space. We need time to breathe, think and be alone. Yesterday was rough. I’m still trying to figure out where/how to live on my own once our lease is up in this apartment in July. I am totally going to miss having space. In this situation, I will find perhaps that I am in the opposite situation—crammed into a space with other roommates I don’t know, trying to navigate being around more than one person every day and night for the first time in ten years.

There’s a part of me that just wants to pack up all of my stuff and hit the road. There’s a wanderlust I’ve had since I was little, the feeling of already having lost it all or let it go—every time I left home, my parents would throw away all of my things. When I hit the road, I had only what was on my back. I often lost that when getting shipped back, too. I learned to lose things.

In the last ten years, I’ve become anchored to my stuff. When I lived in my grandparents house, I realized that all the stuff they’d collected during their 80+ years of life now meant nothing to anyone. It was just taking up space in the house we were trying to live in. As I packed it all up, I came to the conclusion that too much stuff is a burden. I got rid of a lot of my stuff after I moved, mostly because it had been rotted with mold, but also because I was just tired of shlepping stuff around everywhere.

The biggest anxiety I’m having right now is where I’m going to keep my musical instruments and computer. In order to save enough money to find a place of my own, I’m going to have to sublet, sleep on couches and pack light. It’s probably going to suck. I’m not going to have space like I want it, for a while. I said I would talk about autonomy, and whether or not it’s something we can all have at once in this society. Maybe this ties into that.

I had a thought the other day, about how so many people come into the library starved of resources. No place to live or sleep, no food to eat, no family resources or friends. They are horrified often when they find they can only use the computers for an hour. And I wondered the other day if it would be possible–as I was driving through West Oakland, taking in the graffiti and disheveled people leaning against houses and buildings, aimlessly wandering–for all of us to have a space of our own, health care, a job in society that made us feel we were included.

Is it possible for us all to have a space? Or in order for society to function, do we need to continue splitting things between the rich and throwing scraps to the poor here and there while the middle class shrivels up altogether, barely getting by until they just can’t anymore.

I tell you what. I don’t see a huge difference between me and the people wandering on the streets. The biggest difference I find it that I am holding on to this part-time library job and the freelance assignments I cobble together. But soon, I will be drifting, too.

When I was 21, I had a real job in San Francisco. I had lived in the tenderloin in a piss in the sink hotel where you paid by the week. I had lost my $800 a month space in the sober living house (crammed in a room with five other girls) out near San Francisco State due to having some beers at a party. I found a room in between Hayes and Fell, a big spacious room with a hardwood floor, for $800 a month. Since I earned about $1800, I didn’t think that was a big deal. I had no car, I had no expenses, really—I lived on crackers and TV dinners and sardines in a can. I had no insurance, no instruments that worked. I had a tiny little computer and some furniture I’d had since I was a child stored away in my parents rented house out in the ‘burbs.

I was excited to have my own room. I shared a bathroom at the end of a long hall with three other people. I filled my room with movies and bought my first TV with a VCR.

The excitement of having my own room wore off rather quick…

I was lonely.

My ex popped back into my life. I remembered how much I loved him, how he was my best friend. He found me a place, and the landlady said she would only rent it to use if we moved in together. So we did. We married a year later and lived together until now…

He put down a deposit on his own place yesterday. I hiked to the top of a giant hill and smoked a cigarette. It tasted like shit. I called a friend who used to sponsor me in AA about 9 years ago and told her I was sitting on top of a hill smoking a cigarette for the first time in two years. You aren’t smoking if you don’t smoke another one after this and you leave that pack where it is, she said. Don’t you sing, she said? And aren’t cigarettes a million bucks now? Imagine how much you can buy instead if you don’t continue smoking. Remember how hard it was to quit? You could buy a pair of boots with all the money you’d save from not smoking.

She made me laugh. I left the pack on the bench and dragged my dog the rest of the way through the hike. The view of San Francisco and the entire Bay Area was to die for. It felt good to hike.

I don’t know how things will work out. It’s hard to just get through each day as it comes. I feel like all my happy endorphins have been wiped away. I just want a room of my own where I can write like a motherfucker and get it all out.

I pray I get it.

Thestifledartist's Blog

Pep talks for writers, musicians and artists (myself included)

Category Archives: Oakland