Make it Work: as seen in the video above, it's the mantra of hit reality competition show Project Runway, but it's also my mantra. And it is presumably the mantra of all aspiring artists, no matter what medium they use.
Being an aspiring artist, whether you're broke and unemployed or working a comfortable but non-fulfilling job, or somewhere in between, means taking limited means and turning them into something you can use. It means stealing away a few minutes here and there to do something you love, and letting those few minutes sustain you through subsequent hours of drudgery. It means creating opportunities out of what consistently feels like nothing. It means doing a lot of really hard work so you can do that one thing that makes you happy.
This is how it is whether you're male or female, but let's face it: in reality, this is different, and generally much more difficult for women. I'm still not entirely sure why it's harder for women. Women seem to do a lot more work than men, and women, in general, are saddled with a lot of responsibilities we didn't necessarily ask for. We are expected to take care of everyone around us without complaint, and make one sacrifice after another. And this isn't the case only with married women or mothers. None of my girlfriends are married, and none of them have kids, but they all feel pressured to be good, giving daughters, granddaughters, sisters, and girlfriends.
Also, women typically have less money than men, because we're still paid less in almost every single field. So we have the trifecta of disadvantages: less time, less money, and less energy to devote to creating. It's no wonder that there seem to be fewer recognized women artists -- there are fewer women's works in the literary cannon, fewer women in music, fewer works by women hung in the halls of museums, right? It's not just me?
I've been thinking about this lately because I haven't had the time or energy to so much as look at my guitar for the past couple weeks, forget practicing or writing music. Right now I'm a graduate student, and I'm working on my dissertation and teaching as well. As a teacher, I of course make very little money; the work has become 'feminized' and therefore undervalued, as is all work that can be construed as carework, or work that is done mostly by women. And like my friends, I also have responsibilities to my family. I have very little time for anything personal, whether it's hanging out with friends or listening to new music. It is horribly frustrating. And I feel even further frustrated by the fact that I'm not alone -- right now things are scary, most of us are worried about money, and my artist friends are on the verge of panic. It's not great times for artistic creation.
But we have to get through these un-great times. Here are some tips and tricks for getting through the day-to-day that work for me.
1. Maintain a space of one's own. In her book A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf argued that women artists need just that: their own room where they can work. Some of us have to share rooms though, and we face other space limitations. But find a way to make a little bit of space for your work, even if it's portable and has to be dismantled and reassembled. The physical work of preparing space, an kind of artistic nesting, if you will, helps get you grounded. I know it calms me down and helps me to think.
2. Try to stay healthy. In these hard times, it's easy to make sacrifices, especially if you're responsible for other people. But it's so important to get the rest, food, and self-grooming we need. We need to be strong for the people who depend on us and, and we need to be strong if we're going to be creative, so try not to cut corners when it comes to eating and sleeping. No matter what medium you work in, your body is ultimately your instrument. So take care of it.
3. Work in bits and pieces. A viola teacher once told me of a great violinist who only practiced during the five and ten-minute breaks he had between giving lessons. "It adds up," she explained. I didn't try this until I was absolutely forced to, and found that she was right. It's not ideal to work in little bits in pieces here and there; it is definitely preferable, for me at least, to have a lot of time to concentrate on what I'm doing when I write or practice an instrument. But I've found that a few minutes a day is a lot better than not playing at all. It's difficult, but if you can learn to work this way, the daily boost of doing at least a little creative work can make all the difference in how you feel.
4. Stay in touch with other artists. I find that when feeling drained and demoralized, as so many of us probably are at this time, it's easy to withdraw. Don't let this happen to you! We all human contact, and we all need some kind of support, no matter what we do. A short phone or AIM conversation with a friend, especially one who is also struggling to create, can make you feel so much better. It can make you feel less alone, it can make you laugh, and it can be an opportunity to talk about the work you're trying to do. And being able to talk about your work and how you feel about it is indispensable for an artist, especially if you're still developing your skills and ideas.
5. Readjust your expectations. This is another one that's hard for me. I have a tendency to berate myself for not squeezing enough school work, personal time, and music or writing into my days. Beating yourself up like this is absolutely counterproductive; instead, we women in all professions need to be realistic with our expectations for ourselves. We need to accept that things are going to be more difficult, and that our work is going to come more slowly. And then we need to learn to be good to ourselves, and to appreciate the progress, however small, we make with each day. It's not about how quickly you get something done, or how much you can produce in one day -- it's about the experience of making something, of being an artist. That feeling is something you can't quantify. Why quantify your work?
6. Finally: Enjoy! With all these adjustments, and with how frightful things are these days, it might be hard, but at the very least, try to enjoy the time you do get for yourself and for your work! Making the time for art typically requires you to do a lot of other hard work. So make the most of that time that you've worked for, and let it make you feel better about life, about the economy, about whatever other catastrophes might come our way, about everything.
Got any other tips for starving aspiring artists? Hit me up: soundoftheatlantic@gmail.com
I don't know about you, reader, but I feel the mid-day slump that much more on Wednesdays. Something about being at your mid point of the week makes you look back, take stock, and truly feel the amount of energy it's taken to get you to where you are right now. Sometimes just thinking about it is exhausting.
So for everyone else out there who's at the office, watching the clock and trying to get their second wind, for everyone who's sick of office politics, for everyone who just wants to go home, I present: "Listen Up", by the Gossip. It's almost quittin' time here in the states, so check to make sure your boss isn't coming, plug your headphones into your computer, and bop your head to the disco punk sound of the future being created by one of the finest bands in the business!
Something major happened to me yesterday, readers. Brace yourselves. Are you ready? Okay, yesterday, I read an entry on Monitor Mix, the NPR blog written by Carrie Brownstein, and wound up hating it. This has absolutely never happened before. Carrie Brownstein is one of my idols, and my favorite guitarist of all time. She's one of my favorite musicians, but she's so much more than that: I would go so far as to say that Carrie Brownstein is a philosopher of music and pop culture. Her observations about how we listen to and relate to music are always sharp and funny, and I love them not so much because they're her observations, but because she always asks questions about people and music that I've thought about at some point.
Not this time. In this blog, Carrie asked us to consider who we think are 'quintessential' singers in various genres; she focused on rock and punk, nominating John Lennon and Pete Shelley, respectively. Honorable mentions went to Mick Jagger, Robert Plant, Joey Ramone, and Paul Weller.
I have never once considered who might be the quintessential rock or punk singer of all time. And I certainly have never considered bestowing such an honor on Mick Jagger, a man I can hardly tolerate, or on Robert Plant, whom I used to enjoy before I found singers I simply liked better. Joey Ramone and Paul Weller are cool in my book, but quintessential? I've never thought of any of these people that way.
There is, of course, a pattern: all of these singers are men. I couldn't help but find this devastating, and I felt a knee-jerk reactionary rage towards Carrie Brownstein after reading this blog. Why is it always men? Why are men always the standard bearers, the typical examples, the perfect embodiment of everything? Perhaps my rage was related to the fact that yes, the majority of known rock and punk musicians are men, and that masculinity seems to be an integral and inescapable aspect of both genres.
Upon re-reading Carrie's blog today, I feel that I overreacted yesterday. My anger has since abated but I still find myself disagreeing with Carrie, and that in itself feels strange. If Carrie Brownstein jumped off a bridge I wouldn't automatically follow her. But when it comes to music, I take her opinions seriously, and consider her ideas and what their implications might be. (Note: this is what happens when you admire a person.) In this case, I actually didn't want to think about quintessential singers; the very notion seems to go against what rock and punk stand for. If these genres are supposed to be populist, individualist, and revolutionary, if they promise some kind of social liberation, and encourage all of us to DIY and to participate, why choose one voice out of so many as the embodiment of rock/punk practices and ideas?
Maybe I'm taking this too seriously. (Friends have told me on more than one occasion that I make too much of music debates, and that I judge fans of Interpol, Phish, Dave Matthews, and many others much too harshly.) Carrie herself clearly has a great sense of humor (um, have you seen "The Perfect Song"?), and she acknowledges in her blog that arguments over essentialness are "reductive". I would add that they're kind of pointless. I know I've never been swayed during one of these arguments, and I've never been able to convince anyone else that their musical opinion is wrong or off.
But these arguments can definitely be a lot of fun. I would like to think that we all have our High Fidelity type moments, where we hash out top fives and tens of record names and opening tracks and greatest concerts. I would like to think that we watch Vh1's top 100 programs, and read Rolling Stone's top 100 and 500 lists, and that we laugh at them, get annoyed at them, bitch about them to other people, and have amazing conversations with each other about music because of them. Carrie rightly points out that these sorts of conversations indicate more about ourselves than the music being discussed. She writes: "Whoever is at the nexus of our musical tastes becomes a litmus test; he or she helps categorize and map our own relationship to music." She goes on to say that the people we recognize as heavyweights in a genre help us form our conceptions of each genre, and helps us to figure out our own preferences. Talking about our favorites is a useful way to try to understand our tastes, and it's enjoyable, too. (Well, unless it's the Beatles v. Stones debate. That one is always serious.)
While I'm no longer opposed to choosing 'quintessentials', I do think I would have to go about it differently. Carrie ends her article by saying, "This notion of essence isn't meant to leave anyone out; it's more about who opened the door to let everyone else in." This doesn't make sense to me. If quintessential indicates the perfect embodiment of some thing, doesn't that mean the best of that thing? The first or earliest isn't usually the best, so why choose pioneers, even if they are pioneers like John Lennon, who are more than deserving of our respect? No, for me the perfect embodiment of punk and rock voices would have to be someone who embodies the revolutionary, sensual, antagonistic, aggressive, transgressive development of punk up until this time, someone different, someone provocative, someone whose entire being is a challenge to the entire genre.
And for me, that person would have to be Carrie Brownstein's old bandmate, the inimitable Corin Tucker.
No argument necessary. Just listen to any Sleater-Kinney album.
This blog is dedicated to my bff, Ashleigh, who is always willing to talk shit about music with me: to five years of bitching and bickering about music, and many more!
On this lovely Wednesday, we have Merrill Nisker, better known as electroclash revolutionary Peaches, and her video for "Boys Wanna Be Her"!
I think my favorite part of the video is the band. A veritable supergroup, The Herms (apparently short for hermaphrodite) are comprised of JD Samson of Le Tigre (who is so rockin' that keytar better than I thought anyone ever could), Samantha Maloney (who has played with Courtney Love and a ton of other bands), and Radio Sloan (known for her work with The Need, Courtney Love, and general Pacific Northwestern/queercore scene awesomeness).
Peaches' consistent questioning of gender roles and norms, and her fearless sonic and physical experimenting with both sound and gender, are why I really enjoy her work, though. She is out there challenging the hypersexualized, hypergendered music industry, and for that I will always be cheering her on, and singing along. So grab a brush, get in front of the mirror, give a little shimmy and start singing to yourself about how boys and girls want to be you, on this fine hump day!
During my President's Week break, I started watching dvds of the final season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which might be my favorite television program of all time. The last season, which aired during the 2002-2003 season, is an overtly feminist exploration of what series creator Joss Whedon claimed to be the show's original theme: "It's not about right or wrong -- it's about power."
In the first episode of this season, The First Evil, as in, the first, undiluted evil that came out of Pandora's box, closes the show with this quote, telling the character Spike that it's about power. It's a chilling scene that was made even more chilling for me because this time, it reminded me of something I'd seen a few months ago. Back in October, on a particularly lazy Sunday, I watched the Frosted Pink with a Twist! benefit: a musical extravaganza that combined today's pop stars and gymnasts with the goal of raising awareness of cancers that affect women. The show was quite the cheese fest, even for a cancer survivor support event, and perhaps its corniest moment was when Carole King performed this gem:
(This is a situation where I'm kind of sorry that there isn't a video of the actual performance of this song at the benefit, but at the same time, part of me is glad that I didn't have to see it again. It was fairly horrifying.)
Perhaps Carole King, who is of course one of the original women pioneers who fearlessly went forth into the vast male-dominated musical hinterlands back in the 1960s, deserves credit for her foray into rap. But even if you don't find her emcee skills cringe-inducing, what about the use of the expression "girl power"?
I'm one of those radical feminists who hates this 'girl power'. It's unacceptable to me for a few reasons: 1) it implies that 'girl power' is inherently different from 'actual' power; 2) it implies that girls cannot or should not have access to 'real power', but that it's okay for them to have 'girl power'; and 3) it's a blatant co-optation of some actual female empowerment that started to happen in the 1990s.
What is 'actual female empowerment'? How is it different from 'girl power'? Well for starters, female empowerment isn't a marketing slogan, and it isn't linked to say, the Spice Girls, five middle to upper class white women who made a brief career of performing songs of questionable quality in generally skimpy outfits. Also, it's not "a self-reliant attitude among girls and young women manifested in ambition, assertiveness, and individualism." (That's the Oxford English Dictionary's definition of 'girl power'.) No, legitimate female empowerment isn't just about individuals, and it isn't just about 'ambition' or 'assertiveness': for me, female empowerment is about something much broader, something bigger than individual women. Empowerment is about fixing (or, more often beating) a system that works against you.
Which is not to say that individual empowerment of girls is bad. Nor is it bad for girls to have the aforementioned self-reliant attitude, assertiveness, or ambition. It's just the expression, 'girl power' that grates on me.
You might be thinking that this is an issue of mere semantics. You'd be half-right. It is about semantics, but semantics are never 'mere' -- semantics shape the way we think. Language isn't just words and spelling and grammatical rules; language is concepts. Languages are systems of meaning, and words determine the way we conceive of everything around us. Words tell us what is possible. And this is why 'nit-picky' feminists still argue about how to spell 'woman', and insist on naming things: because we know that power -- the real kind, not the 'girl' kind -- is expressed through language. As I see it, 'girl power' tells us that it's okay for us girls and women to be bold or forceful or purposeful or desirous, so long as it's on an individual basis or small scale, and as long as it's related to sexuality or one's career. So long as it doesn't turn into actual sisterhood or community, or a larger movement to improve conditions. So long as you never start to think "what, really, is Girl Power?", and so long as you never start to think about what we as women could accomplish if we worked together.
Because if we did start to think about what it could be, we would realize that Girl Power is the potential for women to collectively create serious, positive change in all aspects of life and society. And the people with the 'real' power -- governments, religious groups, financial institutions, etc -- don't want us to think about this.
This is why Carole King's use of the expression bothers me so much. As far as I can tell, Carole King did what I just described: before beginning her solo career in the 1970s, she worked as a songwriter. She worked with male songwriting partners, but she wrote songs for female performers. She wrote songs like "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow", which was groundbreaking at the time (along with other songs that were less groundbreaking), and she helped to make female singing groups and solo artists commercially viable. You could argue that those women worked together to change the music industry in the 1960s, and they didn't do it with 'girl power' -- they did it with talent and hard work. Talent, skills, the time, energy and resources to commit oneself to hard work -- this is the social capital held by people who have 'real' power. Women like Carole King who have this social capital, who changed things, have to be clear about how they did it. How else will we learn from their example, how to make things better? In the music industry, or anywhere else?
Here at Rock and the Single Girl, we find that Wednesday can often be the hardest day of the long school-slash-work week. You're not as tired as you are at the end of the week, but you're getting there, and at this point, you still have the energy to wish for the week to be over already and feel bad about yourself, but you're not close enough to the weekend to start relaxing.
Well, here at Rock and the Single Girl, we also say, to hell with all that! Sometimes a little music is all we need to turn our day or even our whole week around. So from now on, you can come on down to R&tSG and get a little Hump Day Treat -- a video with an upbeat, empowering song, sometimes old, sometimes new -- to help brighten your day!
I often feel like this performance is the one decent thing Carson Daly ever did on his stupid show. The quality is not so great, but that's okay because you can still see how much Le Tigre is having here. And serious points for the jump rope at the end!
Brought to us by the fine folks at Punktravesty, here we have a live performance of "TKO", Le Tigre's first single off their their major label debut, This Island. It's unfortunate that the official video is not available for embedding purposes, because that video is a lot of fun, but a live video might be better -- watching people get up onstage and play a song for an audience is always inspiring to me, anyways.
Were you one of those people who was utterly devastated when Bikini Kill broke up? I can't lie, I wasn't. It took me years to realize BK's deceptively simple genius. When Kathleen Hanna announced new projects Julie Ruin and Le Tigre in the late '90s, making old school fans and riot grrrl salivate at the thought, I was too busy having my face melted by early Sleater-Kinney and Team Dresch and trying to get through my first year of high school.
But even though I didn't like Bikini Kill when I first heard them, I was always, always, always intrigued by their lead singer. I still am, because Kathleen Hanna is more than a frontwoman, and more than a musician. Hanna is an ideologue. I'd go so far as to call her a successful feminist ideologue. She's a talented and charismatic artist, and she's used these skills to make feminism and feminist thought relevant to a new generation of women and music fans. Perhaps more shockingly, she and her bandmates JD Samson and Johanna Fateman have made feminism both relevant and danceable.
So listen to Le Tigre on this fine Hump Day -- listen, dance, and be proud to be a feminist!
This Hump Day Treat Double Header is dedicated to my dear friend Leigh Phillips, who is suffering an unbearable winter in upstate NY. Shake that groove thang baby, just like we did at The Shondes last June!!!
p.s. Got any good ideas for a future Hump Day treat? E-mail me and let me know: soundoftheatlantic@gmail.com
In the interest of taking my own advice from my last blog, and starting off the new year right, I went to see some of my favorite local bands last month: I saw Cheeky play with P.S. Elliot and Little Lungs on January 1st, and then saw Mortals on January 10th.
On that first day of the new year I ventured into the labyrinthine heart of Brooklyn in single-digit temperatures, determined to have a better year than the last, and convinced that seeing Cheeky was the way to make this happen. I eventually arrived at a rickety little apartment building where all the tenants seem to be friends, and the kind of kids who consider an apartment-wide houseparty/show a regular weekday night, rather than some sort of special event. The radiators were hissing, the floors were creaky, the stairs were narrow, uneven, and seemingly on the verge of collapse. By the time I went up to the top floor where the bands were playing, every hallway and room seemed to be filled to capacity.
Just after I got there, Cheeky launched into their first song with the combative and irreverent energy they bring to all of their performances. In the live setting Cheeky is fast, dirty and vicious. They are the sonic equivalent of a skinny hockey player -- light, fast, and more than capable of slamming you into the boards and taking some of your teeth. Cheeky's fun, off-kilter, intentionally sloppy style of playing always reminds me of the Lunachicks, and always seems to put everyone in the room in a good mood. By the end of their set, their were shouts from the audience of "You fucking twinkie!" This wasn't an insult or homophobic slur, but lyrics from, and requests for their song "GROW FINS TURKEY." While I wasn't exactly shouting for it, I have to admit that I was happy when they decided to close the set with GFT, and I definitely was not the only one. By the end of Cheeky's set, the entire room was singing along.
Just over a week later, I went back to Brooklyn, to see Mortals at the Charleston. Located conveniently near the Bedford Avenue stop on the L, the Charleston is a dim, cozy bar with a very much unfinished basement and some pool tables in the back. That night there were two bartenders with Neil Young-Crazy Horse era hair cuts and beards working, and their decision to play a Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band album informed my decision to wait outside for the bands to get set up.
Mortals has only been performing together since August, but you wouldn't know it from watching them. The band faced considerable obstacles that night: there was terrible weather, the venue was cold, the sound was questionable at best, and the openers were frankly terrible. (I could name names, but I won't.) And then their set was disrupted by the smell of a dead mouse and a girl dramatically collapsing to the floor, her drink falling to the ground and her glass shattering into a thousand pieces like a scene from a movie, or something. Despite all of this the band performed valiantly. They produced a sound much grander than the tiny, dirty basement setting, and as soon as they started their set, I forgot about the low temperature and the dead mouse. Mortals already have a distinctly dark and sophisticated sound, and richly layered, inventively structured songs. Even with the fuzzy sound at the Charleston, they recreated their complex pieces with force and intensity. When their half hour set ended, the only critique I could come up with is that it was too short. I was ready to hear more of their new songs, and I was ready right then, damn it.
And that, friends and readers, is the power of the live show. It inspires you, amuses you, forces you to get out of your house and out of your head, and gets you thinking about the possibilities. Will my year actually be better because I went to see Cheeky and Mortals in January? Maybe not. But for those two nights, I felt like maybe this year would be a good one. For those two nights, I thought "this is the new year, but I feel completely different. And when I think about those shows, even now, over a month later, I start to feel that way all over again.
