Songs for the Struggling Artist

The nurse turned pale when she read the glucometer. The whole office kicked into emergency mode and when the doc came in, he let me know I was going to be there a while. My blood sugar was super high and had been super high every time I’d been tested over the last five months but now that I was in this endocrinology office, it was suddenly an emergency. A young man came in to give me an insulin sh...

The little black velvet notebook reappeared and I thumbed through it. I had called it The Adventure Book and at the top of each page, there was an idea I’d written there at some point. I don’t remember why I decided to do that or why I stopped but I assume it was meant to encourage the development of each idea. In re-reading these ideas from I don’t know how long ago, I was struck by how many of t...

A patron of mine sent me a message about receiving my zine, explaining that her husband found it easier to read the paper version because he didn’t really read so much on the computer. I said I understood and felt similarly – that I much preferred paper to reading on-line. Which is funny, really, because I publish most of my stuff on the internet. This exchange made me think of a moment of transit...

Folks over on the Period Drama subreddit recommended the Russian series,  Detective Anna , and as  previously established , I am a particular fan of period workplace dramas about women, so this seemed right up my street. Anna is not really a detective, though. She has visions of dead people who then help her solve their murders. It’s a ghost detective show, I guess. Like a  Pulling Daisies  or  Th...

Because I get my Feldenkrais liability insurance through a massage therapy umbrella, they send me  Massage Therapy Journal , which I read, even though I am not a massage therapist. I figure I might learn something. What the heck? In the issue I just finished, they talked a lot about how to avoid burnout and take care of one’s self at work. Much of the content involved identifying one’s top strengt...

The other night, I found myself watching  an interview  with a theatre practitioner I admire a great deal. He’s an amazing performer, director, teacher and thoughtful  analyst of his craft . I found myself taking notes – adding them to previous documents I’d created, filled with his tips and tricks. But as I was taking notes, full of enthusiasm and excitement, I felt an undercurrent of “Why?” Why...

Despite my appreciation for Yorgos Lanthimos’ earlier work, I was not planning on seeing  Poor Things . A lot of my feminist friends were not fans and I figured I could skip it. But then I learned that Kathryn Hunter was in it, playing a madam, and I got curious. (I worked with Kathryn on  a show  in London a while ago so she’s very dear to me.) So I watched it. Apparently there was a whole conver...

The other day, I was feeling so much despair about how things are and where we were headed as a culture. I thought, “If someone showed up with a time machine and asked me if I wanted to go back to the 70s or 80s to live, I’d absolutely say yes.” I told my friend about this feeling and she said, “I’m coming with you.” We figured we should bring her kids and her husband (she was pretty sure they’d w...

Despite my swearing off  Wrongfully Convicted  podcasts, I found myself watching a similarly themed docu-series recently. I was maybe halfway into the first episode before I realized it was a doozy of a wrongful conviction case. Were it not for the theatre element, I might have quit watching right then. I’m glad I stuck around. Mind Over Murder  is about the impact a murder had on a small town in...

The venue told us to tag them on social media so they could share our posts. I said, “We’ve tagged you multiple times on Twitter, TikTok and Facebook. Are you not seeing them?” “Oh,” they said, “We’re not active there. I guess it’s really just Instagram.” For some people (mostly Millennials, I guess), “Social media” just means Instagram. I happen to loathe Instagram the most. So for me, I lean tow...

A friend of mine has developed  a show  to be performed on Zoom. It’s an innovative concept and she’s doing that innovating in a form where people don’t necessarily expect to see innovation. She asked someone to attend this show and they said, “I don’t do Zoom,” which understandably got under my friend’s skin a little bit. It’s a little like someone saying they don’t go to the theatre when you giv...

There are probably some artists that aren’t utterly flummoxed by the question “What’s next?” but I am not one of them. It’s usually an inner cascade of “Oh dear god, I don’t know! How will I go on with no real plan! This person just wants a simple answer. I have nothing. No plans. Nothing is next! I’m doomed!” This is not because I don’t have any possibilities on the horizon. I’m just not ready to...

Since I have several podcasts that are now hosted by Spotify, I receive their newsletter (four copies, one for each podcast) which offers podcasting tips. I mostly ignore them, as I have read MANY tips previously and there’s rarely anything new. I clicked on the most recent one though, since it was about how to grow your audience. I’m in the middle of putting out a new  podcast  so I figured I cou...

The podcast I was  listening to  was about the crisis in journalism – about how so many news sites were disappearing, how so many journalists are losing their jobs and about how the landscape was changing so dramatically and not for the better. (This country has lost one third of its newspapers and two thirds of its journalists since 2005 and  it is accelerating .) I was only half listening – trut...

On Monday, March 4th, I tested positive for COVID. I tested negative on March 1st when I woke up with a swollen throat and subsequently slept for the later part of the weekend. By Monday, the fever had gone and I was feeling a bit better. But I tested anyway because I had a rehearsal to go to and I wanted to be able to go in clear. Surprise! The thing is – I have been very careful. I’ve rarely eat...

Close observers of my work might notice some commonalities between my most recent audio drama,  The Defense , and my previous audio drama,  The Dragoning . They both feature nice women who develop magical defensive and destructive abilities. They both hinge on fear and power. They are structured very differently and the contexts are not the same, but at the center of both are nice and dangerous wo...

A while back,  I wrote  about how they started locking up the toothpaste at my chain pharmacy/drugstore. Since then the drugstore has only expanded their lock-up program. Now, they lock up soap and deodorant and vitamins and eye drops and much more. There were a lot of news stories about this; These big drug stores (CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, etc) were claiming that there was a massive theft proble...

There’s not nearly as much criticism as I expected in this artist’s life. When I got started, I really thought people would be lining up to tell me what was wrong with my work all the time. I think it’s what a lot of people are afraid of when it comes to sharing their creations. What are people going to say? I know now that the thing people are most likely going to say is nothing. I want to be cle...

We decided to watch the second season of  The Wheel of Time  (A fantasy adventure show on Amazon) and by the middle of the show, we were laughing our faces off. This was not because the show is funny. It is not. It takes itself very seriously. But we were cracking ourselves up due to the near universal use of Whisper Acting.  The Wheel of Time  is hardly the first show to go all in on Whisper Acti...

In the past few years, when I’ve made theatre or audio drama, I’ve mostly drawn on people who were already in my circle or in the circle of my circle. This is generally my preferred way of doing things, as it allows me to avoid the more businessy side of the business. (I know it’s show business but for me, it’s art.) But this time, neither my circle nor my circles’ circles were big enough to do th...

This surprise re-broadcast is brought to you by COVID 19! Almost four years after COVID came into our lives, I have, for the first time, tested positive. I have literally no idea where I could have picked it up but here we are. So, in honor of my positive test and the upcoming four year anniversary of this business, I give to you this encore episode. It was 195. If you'd like to read it instea...

You might think I’d be the target audience for  Six . I am, after all, obsessed with reframing old stories so as to give women some power they otherwise might not have in their narratives. But while  Six  seems to think it’s doing that, it almost feels like the opposite. The premise is paper thin. The six wives of Henry VIII gather together to put on a show and have a contest to see who had it wor...

This is a taste of my new audio drama. You can help us out by subscribing to The Defense, giving it five stars and writing a review! If you've listened to The Dragoning, you'll hear some familiar names and some new ones! A live recording of an audio drama podcast about a group of women grappling with their defense, a seemingly magical power that protects them from harm.  Get a glimpse behi...

It’s December. I’m back to putting on a show. I’m doing all the things you have to do to make a show happen. I’m getting a team together. I’m casting actors. I’m writing a press release. I’m crafting a marketing strategy. And at a every inflection point, I think, “Golly this is hard.” I think, “Why did I get myself into this?” And at every turn in the road, I think, “Wouldn’t it be easier to just...

I'm recovering from recording some episodes of my new Audio Drama series, The Defense - so I'm rebroadcasting the inspiration for the previous Audio Drama series (The Dragoning). You'll probably also hear some carryover into The Defense. And I forgot to say during the intro that this post was provoked by the Kavanaugh hearings. * An excerpt: I am nice. I am so nice. My whole life I hav...