Songs for the Struggling Artist

This residency opportunity popped up in my feed. It sounded amazing. A week in a castle with artists from many disciplines on an island off the coast of England? A collaborative exploration in conversation with international artists and the tidal patterns? Yes, please. I could use the magic of a castle and a group process by the water. How do I apply? I was all ready to hit the application button...

I confess that when the news started to come out about Neil Gaiman’s terrible behavior, I did not dig deep on it. I really did not want to know. As a fan of his work, and maybe even a student of it, this particular dark turn was one I did not want to be true. I assumed it was true and I assumed it was bad and yet I sort of sang to myself, with my hands over my ears, hoping it would go away. But at...

While talking with a friend about the ups and downs of making money from writing on the internet, it occurred to me that almost all the support I receive is from people who know me in real life. There are exceptions, of course, but the vast majority of support comes from friends, family and friends of friends and family. As I told my friend, I have found that my only successful marketing strategy...

The dance piece was genuinely terrible. The dancer couldn’t really dance. The choreographer seemed to have a four movement/gesture vocabulary and the “concept” was cringe-inducing. I could tell you more about it, and I’m tempted to, because talking about terrible art can be very fun, but I think any further details would start to be hurtful and maybe mean. These artists have no real power yet. The...

When I spent my junior year of college in Italy, I found myself not particularly bothered by the catcalling there. While there was a lot more of it, it always seemed kind of good natured. When I walked down the street, men shouted, “ Bella! Ti amo! ” (“Beautiful, I love you!”) And you know, I didn’t mind because I felt no implied threat behind it. It just felt like a kind of sweet spontaneous expr...

My jaw hit the floor when Catherine O’Hara, comedic genius, said she used to tell her ideas to Dave Thomas so he could pitch them to their SCTV group instead of her. Catherine O’Hara?! One of the most innovative performers we have, had as much trouble getting ideas out in a meeting as a lot women have?! She was on a podcast , telling this to Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a similarly remarkable comedic mind...

It’s the day after election day. It was a rough night and I’m here at a café on the Upper East Side to write through this difficult moment. It’s 75 degrees in New York City in November (Nothing to worry about! No global warming to see here! Good thing no one’s declared a climate  emergency  yet!) so the patio is more full than usual. The man at the table next to me turns his body to directly face...

My library finally re-opened post-pandemic and I went in for a celebratory look around. Though it supposedly had been re-modeled, it seemed to look exactly the same. (Except now there seemed to be no way to access the card catalogue? WTF?) I took a look at the theatre section because, you know, Theatre Nerd, and was struck by how much the selection of plays resembled the selection of plays that we...

Trigger Warning: I don’t think this piece is any more triggering than just living in the world at the moment but if you’re not feeling like reading the words r*pe and r*pist a bunch, just skip this one, my friends. * It’s Election Day in New York City. Astoria, particularly. I see a guy in a Trump baseball hat. We don’t see a lot of those around here and I hope we never will again but watching him...

A video I saw on BlueSky of a guy playing a cigar box guitar, while wearing a tin can helmet/mask, made me think of a teacher I had many years ago. That teacher told us to call him Professor Bobo (his name was Bobby Hansson) and he wore loud Hawaiian shirts with even louder wide neck ties. He had a big white and grey beard and his straight gray hair was cut a bit below his ears. He had the look of...

A few days after the election, I received a piece of writing in my email inbox about art and fascism. It was a thoughtful piece and good advice but I also thought, “Yeah, I wrote almost  the same piece  in 2016. This lady’s is a newsletter, mine was a blog but the content is almost exactly the same.” Did this lady copy me from 8 years ago? No. Not a chance. She’s a big shot. I’m sure she’s never s...

It had been a long time since I’d seen a play, so I was kind of excited when the lights went down. When they came up, one of the three women on stage said, “Where should we begin?” and my head just sank into my hand in disappointment. I instantly knew the play I was going to spend the next couple of hours with, would not be great. To keep reading ⁠ Please Don't Start Your Play Like This visit the...

As I rounded the block of my polling place, I saw a couple bent over one of the VOTE HERE arrows on the sidewalk, filming a video. They were wrapping up, saying something about saving our country. Then they noticed me.  I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the look they gave me when they looked up and saw me approaching. It was a kind of chagrin, I think – but also a lot like the look a chil...

My doctor had a trainee with him so he kept telling her things about my treatment and the way he viewed what has happened to me. He heaped praise on me, saying how he wished all his patients were so compliant, how I did everything he told me to do, what a good patient I have been. I wanted to puke. To keep reading I Am Not Compliant visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 4...

My guitar tuner ran out of battery recently so I ordered a new one, popped out the old one and replaced it. It took no time at all and cost me a couple of bucks.  The battery in my laptop started to fail so I took it to the Apple store, as  recommended , and had them look at it. Yep, needs a new battery, they said. $249. But Apple devices are not designed for us to pop out the batteries and replac...

My laptop’s battery has been behaving badly so I made an appointment to have it looked at. The confirmation message said I should update my software before my appointment so I set about making that happen. Unfortunately, I did not have enough storage space to update my operating system, so I had to set about clearing some stuff out. To keep reading What We Store, What We Delete visit the Songs for...

When Chase bank charged me $15 for not having enough money in my account, I switched to USAA bank. I felt very strongly that people (and especially me) should not be penalized for being insolvent. I went with USAA because when my friends would put down their cards after a meal and discovered they all had USAA, they would all commence to talk about how much they loved their bank. I had literally ne...

An artist friend of mine is about to meet a lot of new people and is dreading the conversations that will include the inevitable question, “So, what do you do?”. She knows when she tells them she’s an artist, they’re going to ask, “Can you make a living doing that?” and it’s going to make her feel bad. I don’t know why people feel like this is a socially acceptable question to ask artists but I, t...

The loss of Sinéad O’Connor hit me harder than I would have expected. I hadn’t been much of a fan in her glory days and while I respected her, I hadn’t paid her much mind in the intervening years. I suppose I’d imagined she’d always be here and I looked forward to seeing what an old lady version of Sinéad might get up to and then suddenly she was gone. In the outpouring of press in the wake of her...

One of the things about maintaining a pretty regular practice over the years, is that one really does start to depend on it. In recent years, I’ve hardly ever missed a day of writing. I fight like hell for it and mostly I succeed. It is the anchor in my day, wherever I am and whatever else I’m doing. This is largely possible because I don’t tend to have a lot of other people around me. Other peopl...

When I pulled out my goggles for the first time in a while, I started laughing, remembering when a friend of mine asked me if I’d pulled them out of the pool’s lost and found. I said, “No, these are mine.” He thought they were a child’s goggles because they are a colorful green with a bubblegum pink strap. “Nope,” I explained, “I bought them.” “By accident?” “Nope. Entirely on purpose.” “Why?” To...

When  Purple Rain  came out, I was approaching my eleventh birthday. I wasn’t allowed to go see it but I did have the album. I also saw the videos, though I’m not sure how, as I don’t think we had a TV yet. Forty years have somehow gone by since I didn’t see  Purple Rain  so I went to an anniversary screening in Brooklyn Bridge Park. I found myself both moved and troubled by the experience. The cr...

A friend of mine was recently rejected for a job and it stung a bit. They’re someone who hadn’t often had the experience of rejection, having mostly done their own thing where they needed no one’s approval but their own. Honestly, I think this person is better off without this job they were applying for but I sympathize with the pain of rejection, particularly when it’s for the first time, really....

Now that I have an expensive piece of medical tech installed in my arm, I can no longer go through the body scan when I go through airport security. I flew out of JFK, which, as usual, was an absolute zoo, and when I finally got to the scanning portion of the proceedings, I tried to explain the issue. When they understood, the man shouted “Opt out” and called for “female agent.” The pat down I the...

I’m currently seated on a deck that looks out over the Pacific Ocean, on Bowen Island in British Columbia. I can smell the saltwater from here and hear the lap of the waves. When I look up, I see the mountains and little islands across the bay. Wildflowers dot the hillside. I have an iced coffee and pen and paper. I’m not sure how this scenario could be more idyllic. To read more of Writing in a B...