From Transition into Change

Some years feel like transition years. I turn the page on November and December arrives with all of her twinkling lights and cheer, and suddenly I know that change is at the tip of my toes. I don’t usually put much stock into New Year’s resolutions, or that whole turning over a new leaf for the New Year thing, because I like organic change. But I feel that organic change is happening, unfurling its toes over this holiday period and giving me some much needed perspective for the next few months. Ever since Ludo arrived back in July I have been living in the day to day, and then in the week to week, some days a slow chug, others a rapid high speed train, but with no real regard for more than a week or a month ahead.

However, every day I have let myself be bombarded with the assaults on our civil rights and general intelligence, thinking I need to fight alone on all fronts, this strong instinct to protect what is mine, and also what is yours. I promise to channel this instinct and need more productively from now on. But I also promise to cut myself some slack too, because if I don’t care for my own needs now and again no one else will. And that caring for myself means asking for help when I need it, not an easy feat for me.

Over the past year I have been working on many different fronts, writing for clients, for myself, and for non-profits. One of the projects I have been working on over the past 6 months is an ongoing guide on how to publish and market your own work efficiently, and I have realized that in order to actually sell your own work you need to be brilliant at selling yourself. While I know that my work is worth reading I’m absolutely terrible at promoting myself, and people really don’t care. I don’t mean that in a negative way, but in general people really don’t care much about anything apart from what is going on around them, and what they need. I think this is why I’ve seen a lot of really talented people get so frustrated and upset with social media: we are taught that if we want to build our sphere of influence we need to work on getting more followers, hashtagging everything, commenting on everything, liking things we don’t always care about, following people we really don’t have any interest in. I just have never had the heart for that. I use social media in a way that I use everything else in my life: a way to share with others, make friends and discover new writers/artists/musicians, and just to keep up with my friends and family all over the world. And I’ve just found the instant access to information and the incessant scrolling in no chronological order has heightened my anxiety. So I have removed certain platforms from my phone over the past few weeks and feel a lot more balanced and ready to attack my career as a writer in a different light. Well, actually I am just going to work at marketing my work differently, in a way that works for me. I focus a lot on the mistakes I make, or on things that don’t work as well as they should when I really should look at everything I have accomplished! I wrote a book this year. I’m writing a second and a third and a fourth. I wrote some pretty amazing essays and thought pieces. I had a third child in the space of 4 years and moved to a new home. I’m nursing three children and still functioning somewhat normally. I am working, although not as much as I was before Ludo was born, still enough. I have had articles published in some awesome publications that have been read and shared many, many times. And despite my worries for the future, despite the state of this country, and despite the fact that every morning I wake up knowing that there is another hill to climb up and always more battles to fight, despite all of that, I promise to myself that I will remain positive. I’ve never been one to be complacent and accept my lot.

I have many, many stories and essays that I am writing, as well as few projects in the pipeline, and I’m looking forward to sharing them with you over the next year. If you are interested in keeping up with my ramblings and book release dates please feel free to sign up to my mailing list and/or “like” or follow my Facebook page. 2018 will be a year of words, of resistance, and of play. Drinking used to be my means of decompression, but nowadays in times of high anxiety I have to remind myself to just breathe and laugh, without my beloved Powers. Being seriously serious all of the time weighs heavy on my heart and my brain. 2018 will be the year where I focus only on what matters the most to me, and because a lot of that also matters the most to others, on what matters to you too. Thank you for all for reading, for commenting, and for buying my book this year, I’m really excited to share the next one with you in a few months!

I’ve made a list of some of my favorite pieces from 2017, the rest can be found in my Archive. Read them while listening to my playlist for this year, a playlist I made for Ludo’s birth, one that helped me through the 36 hours of active labor I was in with him, and that I have played for all of my kids over the past 5+ months (hit shuffle though).

You can find my book, With Spring Comes Hope, right HERE and HERE and HERE. If you have time I would be ever so grateful if you could write a little review for me on Amazon too. Thank you!!

Where Is Home?

The Light at the End of the Tunnel and all that…

Music Keeps the Memories Alive

Those Days, Those Weeks…

Oh Those Myths…

This is Not a New Phenomenon

An Unfinished Story of People, Places, and Music

A Lack of Collective Memory

Anxiety is a Well-Cleaned Bone

We Just Get It Done & The Hidden

A Helping Hand

Consolidating the Foundations

Home and the Heart

Firearms and the US: Will Anything Ever Change?

Peace. Love, Unity, One Blood

Mamas, We Need To Talk About Consent

Of Strikes and Personal Battles

11 Common Patterns of Verbal Abuse

Your Safety Is An Illusion

As a child I would curl up in a chair and devour books about WW2, Résistance fighters, Holocaust stories, and think about how lucky I was to be living in a safe country, protected by our freedom and our laws. I would listen to Tracy Chapman and Bob Dylan and feel inspired to become a real activist, always speaking my mind and never letting anyone put me down. As a young teen I delved deep into feminism and activism through people like Marge Piercy, studied the Civil Rights movement, wishing that I had been alive in the 60’s so that I could have been a part of it. I butted heads with my American history teacher during my first year at university in France, chastised for using the word “massacre” in an essay describing the battle of Wichita Village. There were no massacres apparently. It didn’t matter, I knew I was right, and I was stubborn. I sang to Bikini Kill and Hole, shy but ready to fight for equal rights. I still assumed that I was safe: privileged and safe. When I moved to the US I spent the first few years being proud to live in NYC, discovering a city that brought every part of me into a whole. I finally understood why so many people wanted to live in the US, and despite her flaws, she would be the place I felt the safest. Still, I understood how privileged I was, and how lucky: young working class white girl from England and France, running around the streets of the Big Apple, every opportunity available to me should I want to try it. I WAS safe, I really thought I was.

As I was putting the dishes away just now, relishing in the first moments of calm after putting the kids to bed the too frequent realization that we are NOT safe here washed over me. I live in a country where (just to name a few of the most glaring issues:

• You could be gunned down at the movies, in church, on the street, in a bus, at school, or anywhere else for that matter, at any time.
• Racism is institutionalized and constant: we may all have the same “rights” but POC still have to face racism and aggressions every single day of their lives, even from those who are supposed to be allies.
• People are called “illegals” when they don’t have the documentation that allows them to legally live and work in this country, even those who have been here for decades, or most of their lives.
• Women are in constant fear of losing their reproductive rights.
• Women STILL earn less than men, and POC women usually earn less than white women. For the same position and same job.
• Sexual harassment, assault, and abuse are still rampant in all levels of society, and the president has gleefully admitted to harassing and assaulting women on tape.
• When victims are brave enough to report assault and harassment they are usually blamed, their lives dissected and paraded for all to see, and finally made to shut up. Usually white, male perpetrators get a slap on the wrist, or become president.
• Immigration officials have no qualms about shoving 10 year old post-op kids with Cerebral Palsy in detention centers without their parents, or going into schools to check out possible undocumented fourth graders, or trying to deport adults who have an American parent, but whose other parent forgot to do the paperwork when they arrived in the US decades before.
• We are being governed by a disgusting idiot, most likely thanks to the Russians who have been on a massive hacking spree, probably infiltrating everything they can, in cohorts with the extreme far right wingers.
• Anyone can buy an assault rifle and use it.
• The current administration considers a median income of $450,000 a year as “lower middle class”.
• Climate change is apparently a farce, even though we are faced with the reality of it every single day.

So, no, we do not live in a safe country. We are not at war (unless you consider the “war on terrorism” to be a legitimate war), and there is no civil war raging within our borders. People seem to think that this country is still doing pretty OK, and some delusional individuals even think that this president is going to “make America great again”. But we are NOT safe. Our enemies could literally be anyone, even a neighbor who you say hello to every morning. While there HAVE been some isolated attacks by “radicalized” persons who were not born here, we have a lot more to fear from gun-toting homegrown terrorists than we do from ISIS. And we have a LOT to fear from this current administration, because everywhere you turn a liberty is being knocked down, and down every road you go a roadblock is being thrown up. It’s been a year since the elections now, and nearly 11 months of Trump, and it’s a LOT worse than even I imagined it would be. And I was considered a fearmongerer back then. I fear for my partner and for my children. I fear for my friends who don’t fit in your WASP box (which basically means 99% of them). And I fear for this country as a whole, and for this world in general more than ever.

I used to imagine myself working for the Résistance, wondering if I had possibly been alive in France in the 1940’s in a previous life. I used to imagine working underground during the civil rights movement, always on the run, always challenging the system. And now I find myself, at the age of 39, fearful for our lives and our safety, penning letters and articles and stories, writing faxes to Congress every day, calling representatives I don’t even have the right to vote for, planning escape routes to Mexico and Canada, and generally just wondering what else I can do to make us safe again. I can’t vote here, and even then I am beginning to wonder just how much of a difference it would make (that would never stop me from voting though).

And yes, I know we don’t live in a war-torn country, running for our lives while the government rains down biological weapons on our heads or holds us hostage in our homes. I know that I don’t have to worry about my children being trained to become child soldiers before they hit the age of 10. I know that there is no imminent danger of us all dying tomorrow from some kind of chemical warfare… But I will never feel safe here ever again. As much as we fight gun laws never change. As much as we talk about the benefits of immigration, people still hate us, as much as we talk about the decline of racism, it is still a very prominent and ingrained issue in this country, and as much as we talk about women having equal rights, we are still fighting for real equality. Gay marriage may be legal today, but in the mean time people are pushing through idiotic transphobic laws, and camps to “convert” gay teens STILL exist. So yeah, maybe we aren’t so free after all. And we are definitely NOT safe.

Please, for the sake of us all, do your part in the resistance. Because if we don’t all band together, no matter who we are or where we are from, we are going to wake up one day and find ourselves in a reality we never thought possible. And even those privileges we took for granted yesterday will probably be gone. We cannot let this happen.

(Do your part by voting in local elections today PLEASE).

Aftershock Festival: It's More than "Just" Music

So, obviously I’m really excited about this year’s Aftershock line-up, as it was what I had considered to be my dream line-up last year. But that’s a festival for you: the possibility of having more than one of your favorite bands in front of you in the same place on the same day (or over the space of a weekend). I’ve been to hundreds and hundreds of shows in my life, and I have a huge passion for live music (who doesn’t?) – but festivals are a whole different kettle of fish. Festivals are music, but also an entire experience: the food, the people, the atmosphere. Festivals are my idea of a circus, in the best way possible. At Aftershock last year some of my favorite memories are of when we spent time strolling around, checking out the different food options, and the different tents to see what they had to offer. We found ourselves circling back to The Music Experience area time and time again, because it was a real interactive treat.

The Music Experience is a place where brands can interact with the public, in a way that makes the public feel like they are walking away with something. That something may be knowledge, a new skill, a purchase, or just the feeling that they met some cool people and had a fun time. We walked in because we wanted to look at the instruments on display, and ended up learning all about different drum kits. Our then two year old sat down behind a huge drum kit and to her delight was handed a couple of drum sticks and told to play. This child is pretty shy at the best of times, but she just grabbed the sticks and started playing, tapping out her own little beat in her head (she’s somewhere on the @SJCDrums Instagram account too). Through-out the rest of the weekend we kept ending back up there just to hang out, and again, someone came over and gave the kids a little egg-shaped shaker, which they ended up shaking around for the rest of the evening (and still continue to play with today). I just loved how welcoming everyone was, and how passionate they were about communicating their love for music. The Music Experience is an awesome way to get people involved in music in general and in the music industry. Their tent goes up all over the country, at festivals like Chicago Open Air, Louder Than Life, and Aftershock of course, and they also host a ton of band signings. (Seriously so much easier than climbing fences and hanging out around a tour bus… Yes I have done that in my youth, and yes, it did lead to some interesting encounters, like playing football with Impaled Nazarene or nearly falling at the feet of Nick Cave).

Another cool Music Experience activity is The Student Experience, where kids between the ages of 7 and 21 who are interested in music and arts, can actually participate in a festival by experiencing all types of activities. From Q&As with band members and all of the people behind the scenes, without whom the festivals wouldn’t take place (sound engineers, tour managers, roadies…), learning about the ins and outs of the industry, to just really experiencing a festival from the inside. If you know anyone who would be interested in joining the team at Aftershock this year submissions are open until October 10th for Aftershock right HERE. I would have leapt at the chance to do something like this when I was a teenager.

Also represented at Aftershock is Fuck Cancer and their Dyin 2 Live program. Everyone knows at least someone who has battled cancer (most people know several people, sadly), and the disease doesn’t discriminate. Old or young, rich or poor, black, white, orange, or blue, cancer lurks everywhere, Fuck Cancer is a non-profit that aims to raise cancer awareness and education about early detection, and the Dyin 2 Live program helps grant wishes to kids and adults battling cancer. You can read more about Fuck Cancer here (and why you shouldn’t have an issue using the “F” word when it’s associated with cancer), and about Dyin 2 Live here. We will definitely be stocking up on merch too, their tank tops and t-shirts are gorgeous. If you know of someone who could benefit from the program submit their story to [email protected]!

You can also check out Maynard James Keenan’s wine, learn about Heavy Grass, create some art with Juxtapoz Projects, hang out on the Monster viewing deck, and help animals in need through Take Me Home.

I’m already planning my outfit in my head, as well as what the girls will wear (I was thinking of Grit n Glory t-shirts converted into dresses because I have to rep my old friends, and because their new tees are going to be amazing), and can’t wait to experience all the fun again this year! Check out the Aftershock website for tickets and all the info you need.

(PS: Did I already tell you how much I LOVE Nine Inch Nails, Marilyn Manson, and A Perfect Circle?)  

Also – I thought this Sacramento Bee article from last June was a great portrayal of what a great event Aftershock is for the city of Sacramento. I know I only moved here 18 months ago and often complain that I miss NYC, but there are some amazing events that are held here all year round, and they are always super accessible to everyone. And, well, I just love a great music festival.

Hanging out at The Music Experience