poopularity contest

Pomp hides a multitude of flaws; circumstance garners lots of sympathy. So with trumpet flourishes and sad, mangled-but-fluffy cute puppehs, I announce that I'm in the running for a Baker Artist Artist Award, code name: dogfaceboy.

Before I realized that this was more a popularity contest, I spent a ridiculous number of hours yesterday uploading photos and mosaics. So please, if you find yourself with a spare fifteen minutes, vote for me. The registration process is daunting (of course). Don't check the box that says you're from Baltimore; you don't have to be a Baltimore resident to vote (only to be a nominee).

Thank you very much, my excellent friend.

yippie! hissssssss! hooray!

*note: this blog is messed up in Safari—don't know why!

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. ~Gertrude Stein

I navigated to my blog from a site about whether shaving makes hair grow back heavier. I had to prove to my husband that it doesn't, that it's merely an illusion because the hair becomes blunted at the ends and because it softens as it lengthens.

I spend a lot of time at the computer. Sometimes I'm looking up stupid stuff like that to tell my husband, who, without it, would probably still believe that hair grows faster after you cut it, or I look up lyrics, a news headline, the source of a quote. Other times, I'm writing or processing photos or chatting with friends, as if they are right in the next cubicle. Only I'm not exactly "working."

I am an artist. Saying that gives me the creeps; it scares me. Because artists, as you know, are unemployable, and it's sort of why I'm sitting here at the computer at 8:07 a.m. on a Thursday instead of getting ready for work.

In between sending out résumés and CVs for jobs like art director and English professor, which are sparse (which means the space between is long), I make stuff. I flit from the camera to the guitar to the manuscript like a butterfly, lingering a time over each thing until I'm satisfied I've sucked it dry, mined it for everything worth taking.

Because my employment frustration could easily occupy my day, I decided to give myself something to do, some artistic diversion to participate in when the laundry was done and the kitchen floor was swept. And that's how I came to win a photo challenge—Survivor: Flickr Island—with five very different photos. I made the best shots of my life. And when that was over last week, I joined a photo class with weekly assignments. Every day, I work a little more on the chapter for my book proposal. I send queries and write poems and songs. I flit.

Last week, I tapped into my home equity line of credit so that I could buy groceries. Because I am an artist.

Right now, I have nothing to do but write and look for work, yet I feel an overwhelming guilt when I try to fill the day with things other than vacuuming and laundry. I rarely pull out my guitar anymore, even for that quick few minutes in the early morning with my coffee. And when I forget my situation and buy a six-dollar t-shirt at Target, I have a panic attack. But when I use the computer for my avocations, it's free. And it's productive. And sometimes it turns into a gig—a photo publication credit in a real magazine (this shot, for the California version of Family), a book review, a portrait job for a friend.

And it feels good. Yesterday, at about 4:30, the wind kicked up outside and began to twirl the rusty pink garden ornament hanging from my Douglas fir. I took 32 stills of it as it swung in the breeze. I stitched them together to make an animated gif and liked it so much that I turned it into a movie. It took two hours, and my husband complained, even though he was gone most of the time, even though I'd stopped while he was walking the dogs to make his dinner salad, cut up veggies for Hendrix the Creature (my daughter's bearded dragon), and would pick up my daughter from soccer. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, he says. I'm always on the computer.

And I'm sure it's not good for me. It cuts down on my attention span and makes me agitated when I'm away from it, like an addiction. It makes me sit far too much. It keeps my house dirty. But it's also just about the only thing I do right now that feels good. I have a sense of accomplishment when I see something through from concept to construct. So even without pay, there's a reward.

While I was making my video, I added some music. And when it was finished, I decided it needed something else—the sound of wind, some whoooosh to run through it as it faded to black. And that's when it hit me that I needed some applause. I tacked it on the second half of the video so that it would linger through the fade to black. The applause made me giddy. Every time I hear the audience clapping, I feel as though they are clapping for this thing blowing in the breeze, this thing I made, and, by extension, for me.

My friend Jennifer asked: what if we had this in our heads all the time? Every time we did something right, the applause would start. Every time we did something we shouldn't—like eat a cookie—the audience would boo. Would it make us think more about the things we do every day?

And what if I'm sitting here on the computer, doing nothing, waiting for the stroke of genius to come? Would they cheer or jeer?

Would they cheer for proving my husband wrong about the hair? Or would they boo, because they thought he was right? Would they clap for me as I sit here this morning, writing an essay in my blog, practicing a craft for which I am sometimes handsomely paid? Or would they blow raspberries at the waste of time?

Would they applaud the laundry and the pile of dog hair swept out the door and the made beds and the chili dinner and the washed dishes but hiss when I pulled out the guitar?

Is it an audience of disappointed, overworked spouses or an audience of artists?

Does the audience have its priorities straight?

happy, challah daze

Before spirituality became contagious, like a yuppie sickness, I considered myself spiritual; that is, I worshipped nature and “frolicked in the autumn mist” and babbled about the sunsets and the sounds birds make. But maybe that’s not because of spirit.

I am religious in my habits: the way I make morning coffee, the way I postpone playtime until my work is finished, how I worship the four-o’clock beer. I adore tradition. Just before Easter break, I pick my Jewish daughter up from her Catholic school early enough that she misses mass, and we have a girls’ lunch—at the same place every year.

It’s Rosh Hashanah, and since I first learned in 2006 how to make homemade challah from my friend, Maya Sprague, I have made it my new holiday—challahday—tradition. I spend the day of our celebration—which is nothing more than a loud dinner with my loud family—baking. I listen to music (today, The Records** and Jim Carroll, which go together perfectly because I have loved them long and well). I take pictures of the dough and marvel at the yeast’s magic and curse the sticky strands that never braid the way I want them the first time.

I love the Jewish New Year because it’s exactly when a new year should be: the kids have settled back to school, I have settled back to writing, and the air has settled—both cool enough to be renewing and warm enough to coax a little red into the last tomatoes. I love that this holiday makes no pretenses, that it’s about sweetness and life. I love the tired joke about blowing the chauffer. I even love the whole phrase, l’shana tova tikatevu: may you be inscribed for a good year. That’s the loose translation. The longer version is, “May God write you down in his book for a good year.” Even though I don’t believe in a supreme being (unless you count Bob Schneider), I do believe in the righteousness of the Golden Rule, which, more than God, is the foundation of every religion on earth. The earliest version is the most beautiful and the most simple: “Do for one who may do for you, that you may cause him thus to do.”*

I don’t make resolutions on the Jewish New Year. This is about sloughing off the old skin and returning to the things that make me glow. And it all starts with the baking of the bread.



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Maya Sprague’s Challa, I Love You


ingredients

2 t sugar
2 pkg. yeast
2 C warm water (105-115°)


6 eggs, lightly beaten
2/3 C oil
4 t salt
4T sugar

8+ C flour

1 egg yolk mixed with a little water
2 T sesame or poppy seeds (opt.)

Note: I divide this recipe in half and make it in two separate bowls for two loaves. To one of the bowls of wet ingredients, I add ½ C raisins, 1/8 C cinnamon, and ¼ C honey. Braid the rolls separately.

instructions

1. Add sugar to warm water; sprinkle yeast on top; mix with fork. When mixture foams (about five minutes), it’s good to go.

2. Mix the eggs, oil, salt, and sugar. Add foaming yeast.

3. Add flour to wet mixture, one cup at a time, then turn out on a kneading surface dusted with flour.

4. Knead until dough can be handled without sticking, adding flour as needed. (I have never been patient enough to get to that point, so if you find yourself adding more and more flour, just stop and continue with step 5.)

5. Cover dough ball with a dish towel and set in a warm, draft-free place for two hours.

6. Punch dough. Braid. (See Maya's cool video, or braid in three strands.)

7. Put braids on an oiled stone or baking pan; cover, and leave to rise one hour.

8. Brush bread with egg yolk/water mixture. Moisten finger with egg, and press seeds into the challah for decoration (opt.).

8. Bake at 350° until a rap on the bread sounds hollow (about ½ hour to 45 minutes).


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*from "The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, 109 - 110 Translated by R.B. Parkinson. The original dates to 1970 to 1640 BCE and may be the earliest version ever written."

**Singer John Wicks has been doing fabulous things since he's been away from the Records. Check out Rotate; it's superb.

saving all the dates

We were welcomed to our new neighborhood sixteen years ago with cookies and cards and dog licks and sweet children's hugs. Within a year, we were married, and just about everyone on our block came to the wedding. I remember the little Roesner girls playing limbo and dancing under the tent on the lawn at the Waverly Historic Mansion. I have a photo of Abbey, barely ten, her body bent backward like a yogi.

Lindsay, her sister, was seven or eight then and loved children. She was born to babysit and was always taking care of the neighborhood kids. I will never forget the day I found out I was pregnant. I told her I'd be needing a babysitter soon, and she said OK. About half an hour later, there was a knock at my front door. It was Lindsay. "Miss Leslie," she asked shyly, "Do you mean you're having a baby?" She was overjoyed and checked on my pregnancy often. When I miscarried, she cried. And when I got pregnant again, I waited until I was showing to tell her. She became our best babysitter.

We have shared birthdays and graduations and summer vacations with the Roesner girls. We've been to their ballgames and their recitals and their many graduation parties. I taught them to make mosaics (they're good at it, too!) and bought them books and tools. Once, my husband brought out our black rat snake, and Abbey asked to hold it. The exact moment her father snapped the picture, the snake bit her chin. Abbey was so cool that she barely flinched. We don't have a copy of that photo, but it's on the bookcase at the Roesners' house. The girls are in our wedding album; their graduation pictures are on our refrigerator. Lindsay graduated from Towson University last year and is now a nurse. Abbey graduated from School for the Arts, then Juilliard, then danced with Baryshnikov; she has danced in Canada and New York and all over the world. I wrote about their parents in my book.

These girls are the products not of a village (or a country or a world) but of parents who loved and nurtured them. I stood by and did my job as a neighbor, which was to let them in when it was cold and they'd forgotten their keys; to share cake and steamed crabs and potato salad; to lend books and borrow onions; to approve bedroom colors and ogle artwork, to cheer and rejoice and weep with them. Even so, I can't help but think of them as my girls, as if I did anything more than love them.

Today, I got the Save the Date for Lindsay's wedding, and I am verklempt for her all over again.

where are those angels when you need them? at ladies rock camp.

I’ve been raising up my hands—drive another nail in
Just what God needs
one more victim.
~Tori Amos, “Crucify”

Many of us have this thing I call the Suck Voice. It doesn’t deserve capital letters, but it demands them. Sometimes you comply because you don’t have so much power. It has you by the gonads, so what can you do but cry uncle.

The Suck Voice is usually not the voice of reason. It’s the voice of fear. And fear is never right, but it’s always loud. Sometimes you think fear makes good sense; doesn’t it keep you away from spiders, deserted streets, fire? Not exactly. You stay away from spiders because they bite (and they are hideous). You stay away from deserted streets because someone could get away with a crime against you more easily there. And you stay away from fire because it burns, and burns are painful.

The Suck Voice has a specific goal. It comes out when you are afraid of failure. It keeps you from doing the things you really want to do by reminding you how fat you’ve gotten, how stupid you’ll look, how old you are, how hard people will laugh at you. It tells you, “Don’t bother. You SUCK.” So stop posting your shit photos to Flickr. Stop writing your crappy blog that no one reads anyway. Stop plunking the strings of your guitar and thinking you are playing it. And, damn it, don’t you dare go to Ladies Rock Camp.

On a day that I had my brain to myself—and, it would seem, an extra five hundred bucks—I enrolled for a three-day weekend in August. It's a grownup, abbreviated version of the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls, held in two sessions every summer. On Friday, wannabe rockers can pick an instrument they know or have never played, get in a band, and write a song; on Sunday, they play it in a club.

All sorts of frantic guitarring began at that moment, as I sought out loud, rocking rhythms from bands like The Runaways, who I was always told had learned their instruments yesterday.* So when my husband told me the song I’d picked was too hard to learn quickly, I felt a little defeated. I signed up for some quickie lessons, but neither the teacher nor I knew what would help me. So I plugged the Strat into the basement amp and wailed on it a few days, touching the neck and the strings as if I were an alien encountering some fascinating, shiny object of mystery and allure.

And then I got on the bus.

Ladies Rock Camp was mostly what anyone would expect— some instrument lessons; some workshops like songwriting and, perhaps less expected, self-defense; some band practice; some guest musicians. The days began with affirmations that director Karla Schickele calls, “Rock Formations”; we gather in the cafeteria to remind ourselves, with powerful voices and arms, that “We Rock!” Until this very moment, I didn't get its importance. For lunch the first day, the 39 campers, several volunteers, and the few paid coordinators were serenaded by Felice Rosser, a tall, dark, bass-playing woman with braids and a voice as smooth and rich as hot cocoa.

After her performance, we all asked questions, including the excellent, "How do you play bass and sing at the same time?" My question was about the Suck Voice. Felice calls hers the Shadow, after the Jungian concept. Her answer was thoughtful, and I had the feeling she could have gone on about it, that it was something she wrestled to the ground regularly. On this day, she’d won. She was my angel.

On Saturday morning, my group of ten advanced guitarring ladies (advanced! yes, I was in the advanced group!) had an extended lesson, but the first half was spent on individual questions. I just wanted to jam, so I unplugged myself and took a walk. Felice was in the hallway. “It’s my Suck Voice friend," she said. "I’ve been thinking about you all night.”

We talked in the hallway for twenty minutes—about being too dark, too fat, too old, too lousy to do the things that make us feel good and how it is that we get our power back. To some extent, it involves being less judgmental of others. But it certainly involves being kinder to ourselves. We found ourselves remembering a poignant scene from a movie.

In What the Bleep do We Know?, some photos by Dr. Masaru Emoto are on exhibit in the subway. Emoto studied the messages from water by photographing water crystals under various spells. For instance, some drops were prayed for by priests; some were serenaded by Vivaldi and Mozart; others were given labels such as “love and gratitude.” The crystals are beautiful, like snowflakes. But one sample of water, labeled, “you make me sick,” is brown and murky—a water you wouldn’t want to even think exists, much less drink. You’re sad for that water, even though you know all this is impossible.

At that moment in the movie, the moment Felice and I are discussing, a stranger walks up to star Marlee Matlin and says, “If a thought could do that to water, imagine what a thought could do to you.” New-age hooey or not, I cried hard. Our negative thoughts rule us! They condition our responses. They set us up for every failure!

Felice told me that part of grappling with the suck voice means believing that you have something important to say. Whatever way we are compelled to speak—with words, with music, with art, with science, with stillness—is valid and important.

Because what happens to us when we don't suffocate those jealous, rude, bitter voices? We muddy our souls. We become jealous, rude, and bitter. We regret. We resent.

“Every day, I crucify myself.
And my heart is sick of being in chains.”

Yeah, that’s right. Hand me my wings. I rock.






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*For the record, I never believed that. Lita Ford should have placed in the top twenty of the best guitarists of all time; she's that good. The Runaways' songs only sound effortless. That's their magic.

"Suck Voice" illustration/photo by Jennifer König, who also rocks.

who's a little bit country?

I’m a big fan of the shuffle feature of MP3 players. I imagine I’m listening to a mix tape made just for me by some hot wannabe lover of my dreams—a guy (or Brandi Carlile) who has exciting, eclectic taste and tries to woo me this way: with Tom Petty’s “Even the Losers” one minute, Peggy Lee’s “Bewitched” the next.* To puff up a well-known movie line, Shuffle is like a giant box of chocolates filled with gooey centers, some of which you might spit out immediately one day but chew rapaciously the next.

In a bar with friends, someone asked what song she’d find on my iPod that would embarrass me. I probably have a bunch that might make you laugh, but these songs were hand-picked for a reason (I can’t really blame the imaginary wannabe loverboy). So I’m just not going to be embarrassed by Miley Cyrus’s “7 Things I Hate About You.” It’s a girly song that rocks out. No matter what you think about Cyrus or Hannah Montana, this is a delicious little piece of formulaic pop songwriting—with clever, albeit teenage, lyrics and a catchy melody.

I won’t blush at “Radar Love” or any of my Bon Jovi and am rather proud of a collection that embraces both the Seedy Seeds and the Prodigy. When my handyman was here yesterday, Kid Rock's "Bawitdaba" came on, and I was a little surprised, as it followed a tasty little Jonatha Brooke number. "You have quite the eclectic collection on your iPod," Matt noticed. I almost hit the skip button, but then I remembered why I put it on there: it rawks!

In the mornings, when I walk, any one of 2,119 songs could pop up—I could listen for six and a half days straight without repeating (though the count might include hours of Vietnamese language lessons). But what surprises me about my iPod is that a few dozen of my two thousand songs might be considered country music.

Wha'? Me? A little bit country?

Last week, “Glory Days” came on the radio the other day while I was driving my daughter to Rock School, and she asked why we were listening to country music. I was appalled. “Country?!?!?!?!?! This is Bruce,” I told her in all caps, boldface, and italics. “Bruce!” I said, as if were in some house of worship and she’d blasphemed my lord. “Bruce,” I repeated, with the echo that accompanies Dana Carvey’s Church Lady's shout of “Satan?!?!?!”

We’ve been writing a lot of songs in my house lately, so we’re examining the structures of the ones we like. I heard Lori McKenna’s “How To Survive” one morning and thought it was a wicked cool example. But what am I doing liking this country-ass song? A few minutes later, I found another to like. “There goes my old girlfriend / There’s another diamond ring / And all those late-night promises / I guess they don’t mean a thing.” Whoa, I thought. Another country song I like!

A few seconds later, I sighed, relieved. It’s only Aerosmith, not country. Wait, how could I have made that mistake? Was my daughter right? Are Bruce, Aerosmith, Tom Petty, and Bon Jovi—all those classic rockers—really just playing country music?

And why do I feel possessive about my Lucinda Williams, my Lori McKenna, my North Mississippi Allstars, but hold Faith Hill, Sugarland, and Little Feat in disregard?

That’s easy. It’s because we don’t love everything in a genre. Rock fans don’t listen to all rock. Country fans don’t like all country. And you can surely like the White Stripes without digging the Decemberists, maybe.

Having the courage to admit you were wrong, especially about your own prejudices, is a sign of maturity. And being hard to pigeonhole is a sign of sophistication. So there cain’t be nothin’ wrong with havin’ a couple countryass songs on yer iPod.

Just so long as you ain't got any of them thar show tunes. Or opera, which is just show tunes in a foreign language.



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*My wannabe lover knows I named my daughter, Serena, after Elizabeth Montgomery’s character, Serena, cousin of Samantha Stevens.‡

‡Said lover also knows that Montgomery’s screen credit for that role went to the imaginary Pandora Spocks.

guardian angels

I have quit writing.

In the past three weeks, I have given it up about seven times. The first time was when my new book contract was rejected by my favorite editor. It was only the second rejection—not the end of the world or the topic by any means. But in this economy, the only books getting bought are by celebrities, fad diet gurus, and reluctant heroes. Those books are rarely good.

Then again, one of my closest friends, Sheri Booker, finally sold her book about the black funeral parlor industry. Nine Years Under will be published by Gotham/Penguin.

Sheri sends me chat messages every few days asking me how my writing is coming. “I quit writing,” I tell her every time.

The first time was right after talking to my agent and promising I would take her advice. She suggested I sell some stories related to the project, and I have dozens in my head, but I am wrestling with the futility of endeavors like these and anguish and fear and all those things that plague writers in the sophomore slump.

After the second time I quit writing, I got a message on Facebook from someone I don’t know and didn’t pay: she “loved, loved, loved” my book, “and so did the 3 friends [she] bought copies for.” Maybe I’d come back, I thought. Nah, I rethought.

Sheri has become my guardian writing angel these days. I think she’s trying to repay me for being hers last year. She had just received constructive criticism from my agent regarding her book proposal, and she wasn’t sure she would bother to pursue the project further. I became her nagging Jewish mother, asking her nearly every time I saw her what progress she’d made, even while I was stuck in the red leather recliner trying to survive.

I am sure she thinks I am the reason she has a book contract now—that I pushed her when she was ready to give up. So when she asks me every other day, she sounds a little desperate to rescue me.

The other day, when Sheri asked me, I told her I was going to spend some time working on large mosaic projects and maybe some photography. I made it sound like I really did have alternate career plans and that I was fine with that. “maybe you do need a small break from writing / but you and i both know that you haven't quit / you are a true writer.”

Last night, I got another Facebook email from someone saying she got my book as a gift and was prepared to dislike it; who wants to read about cake when you can bake one? she asked.

Well, I would sure rather read than bake. I’d rather write than bake.

Oh, yeah. Except that I quit.