i spent the better part of the afternoon sipping white sangria with randy and my permanent boyfriend in a sun drenched peri i cafe near trump towers in riverside park, near the 72nd street entrance, where eleanor roosevelt perches herself carefully, forever lost in thought. although it is a somewhat crowded and busy cafe, replete with wide umbrellas and fresh flowers and condiments, it is nevertheless a hidden one, tucked underneath the west side highway next to a set of basketball courts and a small field of green, suitable for soccer. so i feel pretty crummy about telling anyone anything about it. when i find something this good, the last thing i want to do is share the wealth with strangers. but there's just way too many people that i know who live in the area that don't know it's there.
case in point: randy lives on the upper west side and he' d never been there. mpb and i make it a regular pit stop, of sorts. i can't remember when i first discovered it. probably when i decided to ride my bike everywhere, for the sake of burning a calorie whenever i could. when i zip by on my bike, trying to make time to get to midtown without missing a step, i can smell the fine-tuned residue of char-grilled meat still lingering in the morning air. i can stop for an espresso on the way to work. and on the way back, i have to flit through an innocuous cloud of mesquite smoke and chatter to get home. in the evening, i can have a three course dinner if i want. with a view! it's like a good time that's always waiting for me. people are out there like it's their living room. and why not? babies are all over the place, little kids and dogs and grandma and everybody. you can even bring your own food, if that's your pleasure. no one will stop you.
but trust me, you really don't want to bring your own food. the menu is spot on and tasty.
so there we were, in the sun and sun drenched and drenched in white sangria, and i thought many things. i thought, this is beautiful. i thought, my life is beautiful. i thought, i am full of joy. i thought, thank God for this. i thought, this is the start of the summer, i hope the whole summer stays like this. i thought, everything starts right now. everyday that last thought churns through me like a sonic boom. somehow in moments like this, it's more real than any other. everything beginning and ending and being all the time, all at once. everything starts right now.
and that's when i began to hear more songs inside myself. i had to hurry up and get home, so i could catch them in a jelly jar before they flew away.
Saturday, June 05, 2010
Friday, June 04, 2010
hair apparent
guess what, sports fans. i got a callback for a capital one commercial. yeah, that's right - the series with the visigoths tromping around wrecking stuff. maybe it's me, but i think they all look like bears. imagine that! (heh.)
frankly, i was totally shocked that they wanted to see me again because i didn't wear a wig. i was totally going to wear a wig. i was planning on it. i had it all picked out and everything. even my agent told me to wear one. (think about that.) should i wear a wig or not, i asked her assistant innocuously and i could hear her yell out in the background, wear a wig! like she was a little kid in class and she had the right answer and she had to just let it out.
wear a wig! that little phrase reverberated all the way through the rest of my afternoon like an echo. i made every effort to make it happen. and therein lies the rub. doing my hair is an all day event. the longer it gets, the more upper body strength i need. they called me in the middle of the afternoon to let me in on the audition that was happeing the next day. no bueno. i wore myself out with a 14+ mile bike ride and a thorough gym workout that's still kicking my butt. i had the strength to ride home after class, to make a spectacular dinner, to houseclean. but i simply didn't have the strength to do my hair. again, no bueno.
and you know what? this is impossible to explain to anyone except other black women out there with a head full of healthy natural hair. if you're not in that particular group, i honestly don't expect you to "get" what i'm saying. it's just hair, some idiot said to me last week. no, it's not. in certain situations, it's a fairly bold political statement. and here's why.
my hair was (um, i mean is) a freshly undone and filthy, tangled, glorious mess of raw heavyness. it is a mystery and a wonder. it is indignant. it is unapologetic. it is relentless. it is unforgivable. indeed, it is the epitome of what i like to describe as unforgivable blackness. my hair is a highly visible societal indicator, the one thing i've got that shows my compliance to the powers that be. to walk into a situation with this african face and hair so raw and full that african cab drivers give me the dap as i traipse up the block means that when i show up, i will be considered suspect, no matter how shiny my penny loafers are.
you have to think about this stuff when you audition for commercials. you have to think about everything. they will type you out in a flash, solely based on what you look like. and exactly where are they getting the idea of what they think i should look like, as a black woman? you tell me.
good thing they caught me at a weak moment -- too weak to wash my hair. oy! and oh yeah. i thought i did a super crappy read.
frankly, i was totally shocked that they wanted to see me again because i didn't wear a wig. i was totally going to wear a wig. i was planning on it. i had it all picked out and everything. even my agent told me to wear one. (think about that.) should i wear a wig or not, i asked her assistant innocuously and i could hear her yell out in the background, wear a wig! like she was a little kid in class and she had the right answer and she had to just let it out.
wear a wig! that little phrase reverberated all the way through the rest of my afternoon like an echo. i made every effort to make it happen. and therein lies the rub. doing my hair is an all day event. the longer it gets, the more upper body strength i need. they called me in the middle of the afternoon to let me in on the audition that was happeing the next day. no bueno. i wore myself out with a 14+ mile bike ride and a thorough gym workout that's still kicking my butt. i had the strength to ride home after class, to make a spectacular dinner, to houseclean. but i simply didn't have the strength to do my hair. again, no bueno.
and you know what? this is impossible to explain to anyone except other black women out there with a head full of healthy natural hair. if you're not in that particular group, i honestly don't expect you to "get" what i'm saying. it's just hair, some idiot said to me last week. no, it's not. in certain situations, it's a fairly bold political statement. and here's why.
my hair was (um, i mean is) a freshly undone and filthy, tangled, glorious mess of raw heavyness. it is a mystery and a wonder. it is indignant. it is unapologetic. it is relentless. it is unforgivable. indeed, it is the epitome of what i like to describe as unforgivable blackness. my hair is a highly visible societal indicator, the one thing i've got that shows my compliance to the powers that be. to walk into a situation with this african face and hair so raw and full that african cab drivers give me the dap as i traipse up the block means that when i show up, i will be considered suspect, no matter how shiny my penny loafers are.
you have to think about this stuff when you audition for commercials. you have to think about everything. they will type you out in a flash, solely based on what you look like. and exactly where are they getting the idea of what they think i should look like, as a black woman? you tell me.
good thing they caught me at a weak moment -- too weak to wash my hair. oy! and oh yeah. i thought i did a super crappy read.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
bring the pain
in an effort to burn a calorie in the most mundane moments of my life -- like when i'm in transit -- i rode my 15 speed mountain bike from my place in west harlem to a new york sports club on 14th street. and because i had to take it there physically, i took a boxing conditioning class that worked me so hardcore, it made my arms and legs tremble involuntarily whenever i stood still.
the beauty of it all is that i was never allowed to stand still, really. i had to stick and move and run and shift and go go go every nanosecond that i was in that room. because there was this jumbo sized freakshow of a trainer that was screaming over the music constantly, a most excellent trainer who decided that he liked me (how do i know he liked me? because he came up to me as he was telling everyone what the routine would be around the room and he said, i like you, love. you spar with me first...) and that meant that he had his eye on me for the whole hour. so when i wasn't moving, he made a point of calling me out in front of the whole class. he'd say stuff like, what are YOU doing, love? are you trying to HIDE behind that bag? give it to me! keep that front leg steady! put your body into it! all this directed at me as a bag worked me across the room, while he was sparring with someone else. now that's love.
what was worse? maybe it was the sweat that poured off of me so steadily, it looked like my whole body was crying. maybe it was the bad disco/house music. and when i say bad, i mean God-awful. don't get me wrong. i don't mind a big beat. but that thud-thud-thud eurotrash sucks. more fatboy slim, please. less haddaway. and no, they don't know who fatboy slim is. if it stays this bad, i may be wearing headphones during the next class...right about now/funk soul brother/check it out now/funk soul brother...
by the way, i zipped down the cherry walk along the west side highway to get downtown. the bike path is complete and it is pristine. shockingly so. maybe it was the sun and the heat or whatever but that 12 + mile bike ride was punishing, way harder than i thought it would be. so hard on the way there, in fact, i seriously considered taking the train home. but then i thought about all the cool vintage clothes and whatnot in my closet that i can't fit my larger than usual midsection into these days and i powered my way through it. when i got home, i downed my second quart of water, had a naked protein shake and sat still on my sofa, listening to my body hum.
yeah, i know. tomorrow i'm really going to feel this. it will be that low dull steady ache that makes me feel muscles i didn't know i had, in places on and in my body that i completely forgot about. if i keep this up, i'm going to need a banya. every week. a lot of banyas, actually. and when i say need, i mean require.
yeah, i intend to keep it up. God help me.
here's a little taste of fatboy slim for you, the uninitiated. long live the 90s! whoo-hoo!
the beauty of it all is that i was never allowed to stand still, really. i had to stick and move and run and shift and go go go every nanosecond that i was in that room. because there was this jumbo sized freakshow of a trainer that was screaming over the music constantly, a most excellent trainer who decided that he liked me (how do i know he liked me? because he came up to me as he was telling everyone what the routine would be around the room and he said, i like you, love. you spar with me first...) and that meant that he had his eye on me for the whole hour. so when i wasn't moving, he made a point of calling me out in front of the whole class. he'd say stuff like, what are YOU doing, love? are you trying to HIDE behind that bag? give it to me! keep that front leg steady! put your body into it! all this directed at me as a bag worked me across the room, while he was sparring with someone else. now that's love.
what was worse? maybe it was the sweat that poured off of me so steadily, it looked like my whole body was crying. maybe it was the bad disco/house music. and when i say bad, i mean God-awful. don't get me wrong. i don't mind a big beat. but that thud-thud-thud eurotrash sucks. more fatboy slim, please. less haddaway. and no, they don't know who fatboy slim is. if it stays this bad, i may be wearing headphones during the next class...right about now/funk soul brother/check it out now/funk soul brother...
by the way, i zipped down the cherry walk along the west side highway to get downtown. the bike path is complete and it is pristine. shockingly so. maybe it was the sun and the heat or whatever but that 12 + mile bike ride was punishing, way harder than i thought it would be. so hard on the way there, in fact, i seriously considered taking the train home. but then i thought about all the cool vintage clothes and whatnot in my closet that i can't fit my larger than usual midsection into these days and i powered my way through it. when i got home, i downed my second quart of water, had a naked protein shake and sat still on my sofa, listening to my body hum.
yeah, i know. tomorrow i'm really going to feel this. it will be that low dull steady ache that makes me feel muscles i didn't know i had, in places on and in my body that i completely forgot about. if i keep this up, i'm going to need a banya. every week. a lot of banyas, actually. and when i say need, i mean require.
yeah, i intend to keep it up. God help me.
here's a little taste of fatboy slim for you, the uninitiated. long live the 90s! whoo-hoo!
Wednesday, June 02, 2010
i got nothin'!
i'd like to blog something interesting, but i'm overwhelmed at the moment. working by day, working on more songs, working out -- work, work, work. and yeah, i've got a commercial audition tomorrow. still and all, it was nice to take a long walk in the sun this afternoon and get a taste of summer.
my biggest question at the moment is whether i should wear a wig for this audition or not.
my biggest question at the moment is whether i should wear a wig for this audition or not.
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
...unbelievable...
have i really not written anything on this blog since the middle of april? that's just nuts -- so nuts in fact that i will do my usual extremist stance and join nablopomo's writing efforts for the month of june. an entry every day for the next 30 days? piece of cake.
this month's theme is NOW. whatever that means. and yes, it could mean anything. i'll have days on end to explore it.
this month's theme is NOW. whatever that means. and yes, it could mean anything. i'll have days on end to explore it.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
guess what i found?
i’ve been wanting the perfect high-waisted pencil skirt for awhile now. as it stands, i’m probably going to have to make it myself. doing it myself makes a lot of sense to me. i’m already DIY with my art. why not the rest of my life?
obviously, making my own clothes and/or reinforcing what i find is a lot cheaper than buying anything off the rack. when i was little, my mother/grandmother/aunts made all my clothes, unless there was a massive end of the season sale happening at dillards or kesslers or montgomery ward. i can remember going into the singer store and watching my mother looking in a book for a number and pulling those long shelf drawers of patterns to find that just right one. and the endless bolts of fabric and all the things that went with it – hooks, buttons, you name it. if she needed curtains, she made them. that was our way, the southern way – make what you need, whenever possible.
eventually, my cousin leslie and i were sent to a singer store in the mall in charleston, sc to take sewing classes. in time, i got good at it. why did i ever stop? hm. college, probably…
well, lo and behold – whilst traipsing through online searches, i found sewing classes in the garment district. they’re called sew fast, sew easy. and you know what? they are. and affordable, too. wow!
this doesn’t mean that i won’t be raiding those sales bins or on the lookout for beautiful samples. after all, this is new york city. and i’m not giving up my russian tailor, either. but this will make things much more interesting visually.
here’s a question for the ages: why is it so hard to find outfits in primary colors for women? it’s almost as though the entire garment industry has these seasons upon occasion where they would like for all adult females of a certain age to disappear – or at least fade into the background, in camouflage colors like beige or ecru or eggshell. or black.
the longer i live, the more i realize that i’m right to where i was all along when i was about nine or ten: cooking and baking everything from scratch for the entire household; sewing and knitting and crocheting; wandering off into the woods and disappearing into a good book; writing all the time and wallowing in good ideas; growing my very own garden, and surrounding myself with plants indoors. i’m the same as i ever was.
i’m totally going to give this to myself as a birthday present. this should take up a significant chunk of my summer but it’ll be worth it if you see me wearing that pencil skirt before the end of the year.
See more progress on: Learn to sew my own clothes!
Thursday, March 04, 2010
busy, busy, busy
looking forward to an action-packed weekend full of rehearsals for monday's gig, sorting through last year's reciepts, putting in some real mileage on a treadmill, piano practice, Korean food, rewrites and my presence as a (surprise!) present at someone's birthday gathering.
somewhere in there, i'm going to sit in and sing, tune in and speak up, and tune up and maybe even turn it up for a change.
until then, tonight is blackgrrl's night out. yay.
somewhere in there, i'm going to sit in and sing, tune in and speak up, and tune up and maybe even turn it up for a change.
until then, tonight is blackgrrl's night out. yay.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
thinking of a master plan
in keeping up with my inner svengali as i transition to on camera work, i thought it would be a good idea to challenge myself physically by running 100 miles this month. it seemed innocuous enough - only 25 miles a week! - and therein lies the rub, because apparently i can't stay on a treadmill for longer than 30 minutes without hitting a wall and i can't run a mile in less than 10 minutes. at least, that's where i am now.
so i've decided to start right where i am now, basically. i'm walking/running/crawling my way to 3 to 4 miles a day. if there's time and energy, i may do this in the morning and again in the evening, so i can effectively double my mileage.
i don't like running, by the way. there is no runner's high for me, no personal best, no thrill, none of it. i don't have the patience or the coordination skillset for classes that have me bouncing around like an exhausted cheerleader. at this point, running is simply the cheapest most efficient way to burn calories. and according to this article, my body is built for it. to quote the boss, we were born to run.
with boxing, my endurance is virtually nil. i can feel myself getting stronger, but at this point, i can barely keep my arms up throughout the entire class - probably because of all of those push ups that my trainer spontaneously demands.
...and yes, you can track my daily progress on twitter.
so i've decided to start right where i am now, basically. i'm walking/running/crawling my way to 3 to 4 miles a day. if there's time and energy, i may do this in the morning and again in the evening, so i can effectively double my mileage.
i don't like running, by the way. there is no runner's high for me, no personal best, no thrill, none of it. i don't have the patience or the coordination skillset for classes that have me bouncing around like an exhausted cheerleader. at this point, running is simply the cheapest most efficient way to burn calories. and according to this article, my body is built for it. to quote the boss, we were born to run.
with boxing, my endurance is virtually nil. i can feel myself getting stronger, but at this point, i can barely keep my arms up throughout the entire class - probably because of all of those push ups that my trainer spontaneously demands.
...and yes, you can track my daily progress on twitter.
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Monday, March 01, 2010
The QE Top 10
here's what's floating my boat these days - in no particular order, of course.
- a family friend sent an amaryllis as a christmas present and it's exploding on my kitchen table in the most vivid shade of red i've ever seen. such brilliance in such an ordinary place. the paperwhites did well this winter, too. from now on, i want something blooming around me whenever it gets cold.
- bleinheim ginger ale is well over 100 years old, straight outta hamer, south carolina and simply the absolute best ginger ale on the planet, bar none - and nobody knows it.
- boxing, boxing, boxing, boxing, boxing - and all the things that i have to do to get better at it. like jumping rope.
- army/navy snowpants really saved my rump this winter. mine are waterproof, fake fur lined, zip up the sides and velcro at the ankles and waist. all that for $20. i'm not the most glamorous one on the block when i wear these - but i am the toastiest!
- mexican hot chocolate, with ancho and chipotle chiles. i make it better than anyone but if i had to run out and get a cup, vosges in soho does an excellent version.
- afternoon high tea at duane park. *sigh*
- the saxophone summit - and yes, i just missed it at the schomburg a few weeks ago...
- i know, i know - kiehl's argan dry oil sounds oxymoronic. the truth is, it's incredible. and addictive. and expensive. and totally worth it.
- dim sum at red egg - that peruvian-chinese spot on centre street. happy hour there is very happy! maybe not the happiest place on earth - that's disneyland, right? - but definitely the happiest place below 14th street.
- ...and last but not least, bon appetit magazine - because basically, it's my porn. and so is this.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
steady at it
after two days of principal work on the set of hbo's boardwalk empire, i'm back at it - hard at work learning material for a program at the schomburg on march 8 called four women: a tribute to odetta, miriam makeba, eartha kitt and abbey lincoln. it's for their women's music month series that's happening each monday in march. i'll be playing with my jazz group on the last week. should be a lot of fun.
i'm also auditioning, practicing the guitar and writing new songs, and digging into rewrites for a 10 page submission to naked angels theater company's tuesdays at 9 series. the jazz cd what is love? is getting picked up on radio stations all over the place. everybody thinks it's crazy tasty. in my head, i'm already in preproduction for the next cd - and it's country music.
what's got me buzzing at the moment is that i'm a finalist in the 2009 international songwriting competition. (go figure.)
what with all this snow that won't stop falling, i may not leave the house all weekend - unless of course, i'm heading for nysc on 125 and that glorious steam room. i really want to be a better pugilist. running helps.
waving this japanese flag around for days on end is exhausting. i need multivitamins, a good hard sweat and a three day fast.
i'm also auditioning, practicing the guitar and writing new songs, and digging into rewrites for a 10 page submission to naked angels theater company's tuesdays at 9 series. the jazz cd what is love? is getting picked up on radio stations all over the place. everybody thinks it's crazy tasty. in my head, i'm already in preproduction for the next cd - and it's country music.
what's got me buzzing at the moment is that i'm a finalist in the 2009 international songwriting competition. (go figure.)
what with all this snow that won't stop falling, i may not leave the house all weekend - unless of course, i'm heading for nysc on 125 and that glorious steam room. i really want to be a better pugilist. running helps.
waving this japanese flag around for days on end is exhausting. i need multivitamins, a good hard sweat and a three day fast.
Friday, February 19, 2010
i could have danced all day...
we rehearsed for a few hours today for next week's broadway empire shoot. after we filled out some paperwork, we were coupled off and we danced in rounds and then in sequence, one after the other, all together, all around the room - laughing and chatting and carrying on as we acted out way through it. it was so much fun!
the thing that i love about these movements is that there are no rules, no "proper" way to do them, per se. you do what you feel. it's so perfect for me - someone who really loves to dance but who gets flummoxed by the "right" way to do these things. and really, this was the point in time in social dances when the formality was stripped away and people just made stuff up and did what they wanted to do. you didn't go to class to learn how to do a dance like the shim sham shimmy. you just did it. and when we do it, it's really funky and sexy and beautiful - everybody got all free with it and then it felt like a house party, out of time.
my partner is brian, an alumna of the color purple national tour with a fairly serious dance background. he's a little taller than me, which worked perfectly with certain dances. he led so effortlessly, it was almost as though we'd been dancing together forever.
pat the choreographer and her two assistants were more than focused, drifting around the room and giving direction and suggestions and notes and encouragement as necessary. the next thing i knew, it was over.
here's a cool video that explains a few of the dances we're doing. i love the grizzly bear, as you know. the castle walk is a favorite, too. we're not doing any waltzes - too 19th century and way too white, especially for a black folk's juke joint/roadhouse scene.
wouldn't it be great if i could keep dancing like this?
the thing that i love about these movements is that there are no rules, no "proper" way to do them, per se. you do what you feel. it's so perfect for me - someone who really loves to dance but who gets flummoxed by the "right" way to do these things. and really, this was the point in time in social dances when the formality was stripped away and people just made stuff up and did what they wanted to do. you didn't go to class to learn how to do a dance like the shim sham shimmy. you just did it. and when we do it, it's really funky and sexy and beautiful - everybody got all free with it and then it felt like a house party, out of time.
my partner is brian, an alumna of the color purple national tour with a fairly serious dance background. he's a little taller than me, which worked perfectly with certain dances. he led so effortlessly, it was almost as though we'd been dancing together forever.
pat the choreographer and her two assistants were more than focused, drifting around the room and giving direction and suggestions and notes and encouragement as necessary. the next thing i knew, it was over.
here's a cool video that explains a few of the dances we're doing. i love the grizzly bear, as you know. the castle walk is a favorite, too. we're not doing any waltzes - too 19th century and way too white, especially for a black folk's juke joint/roadhouse scene.
wouldn't it be great if i could keep dancing like this?
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
another day, another (dance!) audition: boardwwalk empire
i got called in to be seen yesterday for the hbo series boardwalk empire. maybe you've heard about it: it's all about big time gangsters and city corruption on the jersey shore - based on actual people and events, no less - and set in the 1920s. martin scorsese is producing it. hbo has already committed to 12 episodes. mr. scorsese has already shot the first one.
what they wanted me to do was dance. i almost laughed out loud when i read the breakdown. me, dance? i'm the one that everyone would make fun of when i walked across the room, much less danced at parties or family gatherings or whatever. i'm the one that never knew how to properly execute the latest dance that was sweeping the black nation - i just moved with feeling, and that was never enough. i'm the one with the older brother who, when he was a dancer and hard at work in that world briefly, reassured me time and again that i couldn't dance. all of that criticism and ridicule made me feel awkward and stunted whatever natural grace i had. eventually, i didn't move at all. why bother, when i would only end up humiliating myself. the party would be on fire in the other room while i was the one in the kitchen, sitting at the table in relative darkness, chugging ice water and having long winding conversations into the night with fascinating people about books and ideas and life.
i danced when i had to and only when i had to, which is usually when someone paid me to do it, i.e. some grand musical theater production or a play that required movement. i wanted to take class formally - i even interned at broadway dance center - but i just couldn't afford the classes. actually, i didn't know of very many dancers who could afford the classes. what was especially annoying is when i would work hard and get lean and strong and people would look at me and assume that i was a dancer.
and then something clicked: swing music exploded all over creation and all of a sudden, dancing was fun, fun, fun. here's the kicker: i was good at it! as it turns out, i could dance all along. who knew?
i was going to call my agent and tell them to get me out of this one, but then i realized that they probably wouldn't choreograph anything because it was a scene in a jook/juke joint (i thought those were only in my part of the south!). yankees call them roadhouses, i guess. though those are something totally different in other parts of the south, too. i actually liked the tea dances of the 1920s, and had been going to see michael arenella and his dreamland orchestra long enough to practice them. as i dug out my character shoes and dusted them off, i thought that if there was no structured "...five, six, seven, eight!" situation, i would get through it with my dignity intact. heck. it might even be a good time.
the day before this particular dance call, they wanted me to lip-synch a mamie smith song called crazy blues - in full vintage regalia, no less. i know i nailed that one - i like all the smiths, not just bessie - but they wanted a medium sized black woman and i don't think that's me, because i'm a size 6. a few weeks before that, i read for an under 5 role of the babysitter, which was interesting. so here i was, in my long black gym shorts and a t-shirt, black socks and character shoes, back for a third try and ready to rip it up.
once we were all signed in, given numbers, photographed and led out of holding, the casting folk took us to a room and tried to make themselves as invisible as possible. we sort of paired ourselves up in this effortless way, the way you look over at someone and both of you point at each other at the same time. the choreographer, an older pixie-ish lady whose one syllabled name escapes me, was a real pip. she explained the dances, showed us how they should be executed with a few small deft moves, told us what she was looking for specifically and pretty much pushed play on the cd player across the room and left us to our own devices, watching all of us carefully. my partner was a tall lean beautiful lightskinned brother named kyle who looked like he just breezed in from classes at ailey. i smiled at him, relieved and grateful - how exciting, i thought. i get to move around the room with a real dancer! when i told him that, he smiled broadly and waved me off.
we did the black bottom, the shim sham shimmy, and a few others that i liked. we just danced and pretended like we were at a party and whatnot. at one point, kyle went into a six count swing out and i blurted, that's the lindy hop, that's the 30s! and he said, i'm sorry, i couldn't help it! and we just laughed and kept going.
my favorite one was the grizzly bear. here's a fairly good example of the way it looks:
it's so fun!
interestingly, there was strictly no charleston. she was really pointed about that. the year in this scene was 1920. the charleston - straight out of a small island off the coast of south carolina, no less! - hadn't been invented yet.
when we were done, the little lady made a small apologetic statement. something like, i'm sorry, you're all wonderful but we have to let a few of you go - and boy, haven't i heard that a million times! - and then she starts cutting people. by the time she gets to me, i'm mentally out the door and on with the rest of my day, but instead of dismissing me, she says, you can stay. and then she turns to my partner and thanks him for his time but no, he's not right for this part.
you could have knocked me over with a breath of fresh air.
after digging for white rhinestones in chinatown (don't ask), i skip over to the coffee pot in midtown to catch up with renee and stacy (who should have been at this audition, really) and before we separate, i get a call from the casting agent letting me know that i got the part. yeesh - they beat the talent agent to the punch?!
costume fitting tomorrow afternoon, deep in the heart of brooklyn. huzzah!
what they wanted me to do was dance. i almost laughed out loud when i read the breakdown. me, dance? i'm the one that everyone would make fun of when i walked across the room, much less danced at parties or family gatherings or whatever. i'm the one that never knew how to properly execute the latest dance that was sweeping the black nation - i just moved with feeling, and that was never enough. i'm the one with the older brother who, when he was a dancer and hard at work in that world briefly, reassured me time and again that i couldn't dance. all of that criticism and ridicule made me feel awkward and stunted whatever natural grace i had. eventually, i didn't move at all. why bother, when i would only end up humiliating myself. the party would be on fire in the other room while i was the one in the kitchen, sitting at the table in relative darkness, chugging ice water and having long winding conversations into the night with fascinating people about books and ideas and life.
i danced when i had to and only when i had to, which is usually when someone paid me to do it, i.e. some grand musical theater production or a play that required movement. i wanted to take class formally - i even interned at broadway dance center - but i just couldn't afford the classes. actually, i didn't know of very many dancers who could afford the classes. what was especially annoying is when i would work hard and get lean and strong and people would look at me and assume that i was a dancer.
and then something clicked: swing music exploded all over creation and all of a sudden, dancing was fun, fun, fun. here's the kicker: i was good at it! as it turns out, i could dance all along. who knew?
i was going to call my agent and tell them to get me out of this one, but then i realized that they probably wouldn't choreograph anything because it was a scene in a jook/juke joint (i thought those were only in my part of the south!). yankees call them roadhouses, i guess. though those are something totally different in other parts of the south, too. i actually liked the tea dances of the 1920s, and had been going to see michael arenella and his dreamland orchestra long enough to practice them. as i dug out my character shoes and dusted them off, i thought that if there was no structured "...five, six, seven, eight!" situation, i would get through it with my dignity intact. heck. it might even be a good time.
the day before this particular dance call, they wanted me to lip-synch a mamie smith song called crazy blues - in full vintage regalia, no less. i know i nailed that one - i like all the smiths, not just bessie - but they wanted a medium sized black woman and i don't think that's me, because i'm a size 6. a few weeks before that, i read for an under 5 role of the babysitter, which was interesting. so here i was, in my long black gym shorts and a t-shirt, black socks and character shoes, back for a third try and ready to rip it up.
once we were all signed in, given numbers, photographed and led out of holding, the casting folk took us to a room and tried to make themselves as invisible as possible. we sort of paired ourselves up in this effortless way, the way you look over at someone and both of you point at each other at the same time. the choreographer, an older pixie-ish lady whose one syllabled name escapes me, was a real pip. she explained the dances, showed us how they should be executed with a few small deft moves, told us what she was looking for specifically and pretty much pushed play on the cd player across the room and left us to our own devices, watching all of us carefully. my partner was a tall lean beautiful lightskinned brother named kyle who looked like he just breezed in from classes at ailey. i smiled at him, relieved and grateful - how exciting, i thought. i get to move around the room with a real dancer! when i told him that, he smiled broadly and waved me off.
we did the black bottom, the shim sham shimmy, and a few others that i liked. we just danced and pretended like we were at a party and whatnot. at one point, kyle went into a six count swing out and i blurted, that's the lindy hop, that's the 30s! and he said, i'm sorry, i couldn't help it! and we just laughed and kept going.
my favorite one was the grizzly bear. here's a fairly good example of the way it looks:
it's so fun!
interestingly, there was strictly no charleston. she was really pointed about that. the year in this scene was 1920. the charleston - straight out of a small island off the coast of south carolina, no less! - hadn't been invented yet.
when we were done, the little lady made a small apologetic statement. something like, i'm sorry, you're all wonderful but we have to let a few of you go - and boy, haven't i heard that a million times! - and then she starts cutting people. by the time she gets to me, i'm mentally out the door and on with the rest of my day, but instead of dismissing me, she says, you can stay. and then she turns to my partner and thanks him for his time but no, he's not right for this part.
you could have knocked me over with a breath of fresh air.
after digging for white rhinestones in chinatown (don't ask), i skip over to the coffee pot in midtown to catch up with renee and stacy (who should have been at this audition, really) and before we separate, i get a call from the casting agent letting me know that i got the part. yeesh - they beat the talent agent to the punch?!
costume fitting tomorrow afternoon, deep in the heart of brooklyn. huzzah!
Friday, February 12, 2010
great news
guess what? i got a callback for that commercial i auditioned for earlier this week. (yay!)
i don't think anything is going to happen with that progressive spot until april, maybe. i was probably too black for them, anyway. (and isn't that always the risk?) we'll see. maybe they'll totally surprise me.
like i said before, commercials are a complete crap shoot. it's freaky-deeky that i got this far - and yeah, that's the way it goes with any kind of on-camera work. but you probably already know how i feel about that.
i'm not sure which part they want for me, so i'm learning the lines for both characters. i'm not taking anything for granted. of course, the script will probably be on display somewhere near the camera while we're doing it, but i don't care.
needless to say, i'm wearing the same outfit, too. funny tidbit, that - the casting agent let me wear my snowpants on camera. why not? he got a medium shot of us, so who would know. besides, it would have been such a hassle to take them off. heh. i was all styled out from the waist up.
and yes, my hair was natural. (sort of.)
i don't think anything is going to happen with that progressive spot until april, maybe. i was probably too black for them, anyway. (and isn't that always the risk?) we'll see. maybe they'll totally surprise me.
like i said before, commercials are a complete crap shoot. it's freaky-deeky that i got this far - and yeah, that's the way it goes with any kind of on-camera work. but you probably already know how i feel about that.
i'm not sure which part they want for me, so i'm learning the lines for both characters. i'm not taking anything for granted. of course, the script will probably be on display somewhere near the camera while we're doing it, but i don't care.
needless to say, i'm wearing the same outfit, too. funny tidbit, that - the casting agent let me wear my snowpants on camera. why not? he got a medium shot of us, so who would know. besides, it would have been such a hassle to take them off. heh. i was all styled out from the waist up.
and yes, my hair was natural. (sort of.)
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
long day, long night
i've got an audition today late in the afternoon for a regional musical, and i'm just not ready, on so many levels - so i'm spending the better part of my day absorbing this material and prepping my voice, which is kind of crunchy. i found the song in question on iTunes and downloaded it onto my iSwitch, which is what i'll be listening to while i do my usual everyday runaround.
after the audition, i'll go for a nice hard run to burn off whatever nervous energy will still be chewing away at me and then i'll pick up my dan electro guitar from gotham guitar works and then i'll go home and get lost in my junk room, plug that guitar into my pignose amp and practice, practice, practice.
tonight, i'm submitting material to naked angels theater company's tuesday @9, their weekly workshop that lets you put your ideas up - plays, screenplays, even fiction - in this really impromptu way, once its accepted. i can't mail it in, i have to go there to give them what i have, and i have to stay to see their process and get a feel for how everything works.
because basically, i realized i have all these unfinished undeveloped ideas and the only way they're going to jump off the page is if i get with a theater company and grow them. what's cool is that everyone seems to have a literary component for fiction and experimental work, so i can throw everything i've got against the wall and see what sticks.
oh, yeah. and i have to find a horn player for my gig next week.
i've got something cool jumping every day and every night of this week. it feels good and right and true, to rip through a crossword puzzle straightaway, and then read and write and think every morning. if i can find it in me to work out before i do anything else, i'll be batting a thousand.
after the audition, i'll go for a nice hard run to burn off whatever nervous energy will still be chewing away at me and then i'll pick up my dan electro guitar from gotham guitar works and then i'll go home and get lost in my junk room, plug that guitar into my pignose amp and practice, practice, practice.
tonight, i'm submitting material to naked angels theater company's tuesday @9, their weekly workshop that lets you put your ideas up - plays, screenplays, even fiction - in this really impromptu way, once its accepted. i can't mail it in, i have to go there to give them what i have, and i have to stay to see their process and get a feel for how everything works.
because basically, i realized i have all these unfinished undeveloped ideas and the only way they're going to jump off the page is if i get with a theater company and grow them. what's cool is that everyone seems to have a literary component for fiction and experimental work, so i can throw everything i've got against the wall and see what sticks.
oh, yeah. and i have to find a horn player for my gig next week.
i've got something cool jumping every day and every night of this week. it feels good and right and true, to rip through a crossword puzzle straightaway, and then read and write and think every morning. if i can find it in me to work out before i do anything else, i'll be batting a thousand.
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Yay! Another Commercial Audition! Out of Nowhere! On the Street! Yay!
i jumped off of the 1 train at 18th street the other day in the early afternoon and headed west, on my way to the nyc discmakers offices near 5th avenue for an impromptu meeting about my newly released cd. my mind was flush with a long list of questions and suggestions and situations that i kept reconfiguring as i neared my destination, like a jigsaw puzzle that wouldn't leave me alone. it was cold and sunny, which always aggravates me. the heat of the sun never seems to penetrate the iciness of the day -- and in the end, its all just one big miserable tease that leaves me yearning for the unyielding warmth of the south and a home i would never see again, a home that is alive and well, inside me.
what was i wearing? a hat with ears on it. snow pants, of course. and underneath it all, my gym clothes. as a fledgling pugilist, i have very little upper body strength and even less endurance. so i run and lift weights to boost my staying power. the truth is, most days in boxing class find me leaning against a wall like a cripple and gasping for breath, my heart pounding in my chest like thunder, every beat a sonic boom that reverberates so heavily through the rest of my body, it rattles my teeth. i am pushing myself to my limit. in these moments, my instructor george never looks at me sideways - much to his credit. because he's pushing me, too.
the other day he said to me, "there's no such thing as fighting like a girl. either you can fight or you can't." then he turned waved his arm towards the rest of the class and continued nonchalantly. "hitting isn't gender specific. you think all these guys came in here knowing how to hit?" and with that, he snorted and made a face. "no," he said flatly. "they came in here hitting like you." and with that, i twisted at my hips, pushed my foot forward and gave him a solid left hook that made his face light up with pleasure. now, that was a good day.
when it's all over, i congratulate myself for making it all the way through yet another round. my arms are so weak, i can hardly lift them. it hurts my ribs to take a deep breath. i can hear the blood rushing through my veins as i ask myself, when am i going to get better at this? and then i realize i'm getting stronger. and leaner. i just have to stick with it. that's usually the hard part.
so there i was, thinking about discmakers and what i was going to tell these people and what they were going to tell me, thinking about my left hook and my right cross, thinking about running a mile in less than 10 minutes. thinking about a hot shower afterwards and exfoliating and sitting in the steam room until my muscles melted and my beloved moroccan oil. thinking about finding a piano tuner. thinking about how i couldn't afford the mezcal i really wanted and thinking maybe ralph would split it with me so i could at least have some in my leather-bound flask that lives in my purse, for an emergency cocktail now and then. thinking about my chinese acupuncturist. thinking about kwanzaa presents i have to finish. thinking about the boxing gloves i'd get from modell's the following week. thinking and thinking and thinking. and listening to music. t-connection, i believe it was. don't let nobody tell ya what to do, gotta be your judge and the jury too...
i didn't get far.
i was passing this velvet roped off situation on 18th street between 6th avenue and 7th avenue in some wide open space that's usually got some shin-dig going on. there were two or three people out there, waving me down like they were hitchhikers on some deserted stretch of highway. what fresh hell is this, i wondered. i yanked out my earphones and got an earful.
they were talking over each other, they were babbling and they were saying it in different ways, but they were basically saying the same thing: come inside and audition for this commercial! one of them looked like edith bunker, which made me smile faintly. and that probably made me look agreeable but nothing could have been further from the truth. the truth is, something in me recoiled instinctively at the very idea of auditioning for a commercial in the visual state that i was in. because getting cast in a commercial has everything to do with what you look like. in most cases, the prettier you are, the better - but you can get away with not being pretty if you're actually funny. and yeah, being funny is usually what gets me the gig. and it was the only thing that had me seriously thinking about going past those velvet ropes. i had to be funny because i had absolutely not one shred of makeup on my person. not even cover stick. i didn't have bags under my eyes. i had luggage. (who wears makeup to the gym? wait - don't answer that...)
on the other hand, i wasn't going to blow off any opportunity to get seen for anything. so with all that in mind, and all that other stuff flying through my head like rainbow-colored confetti, i went inside.
it was an auditon for a progressive commercial. they were looking for an assistant for flo. yeah, that's right. that's the dark-haired, wise-cracking, wide-eyed, wiggy looking white chick that's so excited to sell you car/home/pet insurance. everyone, and i mean everyone was dressed like flo, from the coat check girl to the magnetic name tag girl to the girl on headset who gave me a goody bag and a card with instructions on it, and answered all of my stupid questions. white button down short sleeved shirt, white oversized overalls, white sneakers. white, white, white. actually, the whole set was white, white, white - like i'd just stepped onto the set of the commercial itself. everything was roped off just so, so you'd move through the room like a hamster in a habitrail.
it was a space odyssey 2000 meets a boy and his dog. yeah, something like that. at this point, i didn't know if i was the boy or the dog. probably both.
as it turns out, they were holding auditions at hotspots all over the country. i had 30 seconds to tell them why i should be flo's assistant. i had to end with the phrase, "now that's progressive." hm. the more i thought about it, the more i didn't want to come off like my man friday to her robinson crusoe - or any number of variations therein. at this point in the habitrail, there was a perfect replica of the progressive commercial's set, with three white director's chairs all in a row - complete with a white director, who looked very el lay and the right kind of frumpy and bored and annoyed (can you frump in armani?), set in front of a long white table and then there were a small set of stairs that led to three white booths in a row with cameras and recording equipment that boomed your audition all over the room, so whenever anyone started, everyone stopped scurrying and kind of went on pause for a sec, to hear what you were throwing down. especially the other actors and stand up comedians and whatnots who were trailing in, trying hard to look like ordinary street people, smelling of desperation.
i took all of 17 seconds. i didn't plan what i said, i just blurted out whatever rose to the surface first. i do remember that i made the director laugh. and clap his hands. and when i left, i told that hipster looking black guy at the door what i said - an actor that i instantly recognized from way too many national commercials as "that hipster looking black guy," the one who wears those squared off black glasses and is ALWAYS the only black friend in a group of hipster white people and who always looks bored and kind of over it - and he laughed and gave me this massive high five. and then i strolled down the street like miss black america, laughing and waving at him. good times.
as it turns out, that impromptu audition was just the boost i needed to get through that meeting with discmakers. and that workout. and boxing conditioning class.
if you want to see and hear what i threw down, click here. and if you want to kill some time at your desk job, check out the other auditions. they're kind of a hoot.
what was i wearing? a hat with ears on it. snow pants, of course. and underneath it all, my gym clothes. as a fledgling pugilist, i have very little upper body strength and even less endurance. so i run and lift weights to boost my staying power. the truth is, most days in boxing class find me leaning against a wall like a cripple and gasping for breath, my heart pounding in my chest like thunder, every beat a sonic boom that reverberates so heavily through the rest of my body, it rattles my teeth. i am pushing myself to my limit. in these moments, my instructor george never looks at me sideways - much to his credit. because he's pushing me, too.
the other day he said to me, "there's no such thing as fighting like a girl. either you can fight or you can't." then he turned waved his arm towards the rest of the class and continued nonchalantly. "hitting isn't gender specific. you think all these guys came in here knowing how to hit?" and with that, he snorted and made a face. "no," he said flatly. "they came in here hitting like you." and with that, i twisted at my hips, pushed my foot forward and gave him a solid left hook that made his face light up with pleasure. now, that was a good day.
when it's all over, i congratulate myself for making it all the way through yet another round. my arms are so weak, i can hardly lift them. it hurts my ribs to take a deep breath. i can hear the blood rushing through my veins as i ask myself, when am i going to get better at this? and then i realize i'm getting stronger. and leaner. i just have to stick with it. that's usually the hard part.
so there i was, thinking about discmakers and what i was going to tell these people and what they were going to tell me, thinking about my left hook and my right cross, thinking about running a mile in less than 10 minutes. thinking about a hot shower afterwards and exfoliating and sitting in the steam room until my muscles melted and my beloved moroccan oil. thinking about finding a piano tuner. thinking about how i couldn't afford the mezcal i really wanted and thinking maybe ralph would split it with me so i could at least have some in my leather-bound flask that lives in my purse, for an emergency cocktail now and then. thinking about my chinese acupuncturist. thinking about kwanzaa presents i have to finish. thinking about the boxing gloves i'd get from modell's the following week. thinking and thinking and thinking. and listening to music. t-connection, i believe it was. don't let nobody tell ya what to do, gotta be your judge and the jury too...
i didn't get far.
i was passing this velvet roped off situation on 18th street between 6th avenue and 7th avenue in some wide open space that's usually got some shin-dig going on. there were two or three people out there, waving me down like they were hitchhikers on some deserted stretch of highway. what fresh hell is this, i wondered. i yanked out my earphones and got an earful.
they were talking over each other, they were babbling and they were saying it in different ways, but they were basically saying the same thing: come inside and audition for this commercial! one of them looked like edith bunker, which made me smile faintly. and that probably made me look agreeable but nothing could have been further from the truth. the truth is, something in me recoiled instinctively at the very idea of auditioning for a commercial in the visual state that i was in. because getting cast in a commercial has everything to do with what you look like. in most cases, the prettier you are, the better - but you can get away with not being pretty if you're actually funny. and yeah, being funny is usually what gets me the gig. and it was the only thing that had me seriously thinking about going past those velvet ropes. i had to be funny because i had absolutely not one shred of makeup on my person. not even cover stick. i didn't have bags under my eyes. i had luggage. (who wears makeup to the gym? wait - don't answer that...)
on the other hand, i wasn't going to blow off any opportunity to get seen for anything. so with all that in mind, and all that other stuff flying through my head like rainbow-colored confetti, i went inside.
it was an auditon for a progressive commercial. they were looking for an assistant for flo. yeah, that's right. that's the dark-haired, wise-cracking, wide-eyed, wiggy looking white chick that's so excited to sell you car/home/pet insurance. everyone, and i mean everyone was dressed like flo, from the coat check girl to the magnetic name tag girl to the girl on headset who gave me a goody bag and a card with instructions on it, and answered all of my stupid questions. white button down short sleeved shirt, white oversized overalls, white sneakers. white, white, white. actually, the whole set was white, white, white - like i'd just stepped onto the set of the commercial itself. everything was roped off just so, so you'd move through the room like a hamster in a habitrail.
it was a space odyssey 2000 meets a boy and his dog. yeah, something like that. at this point, i didn't know if i was the boy or the dog. probably both.
as it turns out, they were holding auditions at hotspots all over the country. i had 30 seconds to tell them why i should be flo's assistant. i had to end with the phrase, "now that's progressive." hm. the more i thought about it, the more i didn't want to come off like my man friday to her robinson crusoe - or any number of variations therein. at this point in the habitrail, there was a perfect replica of the progressive commercial's set, with three white director's chairs all in a row - complete with a white director, who looked very el lay and the right kind of frumpy and bored and annoyed (can you frump in armani?), set in front of a long white table and then there were a small set of stairs that led to three white booths in a row with cameras and recording equipment that boomed your audition all over the room, so whenever anyone started, everyone stopped scurrying and kind of went on pause for a sec, to hear what you were throwing down. especially the other actors and stand up comedians and whatnots who were trailing in, trying hard to look like ordinary street people, smelling of desperation.
i took all of 17 seconds. i didn't plan what i said, i just blurted out whatever rose to the surface first. i do remember that i made the director laugh. and clap his hands. and when i left, i told that hipster looking black guy at the door what i said - an actor that i instantly recognized from way too many national commercials as "that hipster looking black guy," the one who wears those squared off black glasses and is ALWAYS the only black friend in a group of hipster white people and who always looks bored and kind of over it - and he laughed and gave me this massive high five. and then i strolled down the street like miss black america, laughing and waving at him. good times.
as it turns out, that impromptu audition was just the boost i needed to get through that meeting with discmakers. and that workout. and boxing conditioning class.
if you want to see and hear what i threw down, click here. and if you want to kill some time at your desk job, check out the other auditions. they're kind of a hoot.
Friday, January 29, 2010
...busy signal...
working on clearing out my junk room and decluttering the apartment, organizing my things, editing my closets and having my piano tuned before the end of january. that means i've got until sunday to get it together. unbelievable - i tossed out four bags of shredded paperwork yesterday. trust me, i'm making progress but it feels like i just threw a handful of sand into the mojavi desert.
the biggest snag so far today is that the shredder is totally clogged, and since i'm not willing to toss out any of my personal information without turning into confetti, i've reached an impasse until my better half gets home.
i think what really motivated me to do this is watching an episode of that tv show hoarders. riveting. here's a preview:
the biggest snag so far today is that the shredder is totally clogged, and since i'm not willing to toss out any of my personal information without turning into confetti, i've reached an impasse until my better half gets home.
i think what really motivated me to do this is watching an episode of that tv show hoarders. riveting. here's a preview:
Monday, January 18, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
...okay, here goes...
this goal is a little nutty for me, in part because i am an artist and i live in new york city and i’m genuinely afraid of becoming one of those new york people that falls into a rut and never leaves the five block radius around their apartment. probably because when i’m working on stuff, i become that new york person for as long as it takes me to finish whatever’s bothering me creatively. so a part of me is always looking for something new and fulfilling to do, if only to snap me out of it.
the month is hardly halfway done and as ever, i’m up to my usual hijinks.
i was hanging out with a friend the other day when all of a sudden out of nowhere we bobbed into a shop that i’d been looking at from afar for years, but for some reason never explored – apt 48 in the flatiron district. i’d read about this place and i knew all kinds of things about it. like the fact that a black man owns it. but i digress.
we wandered around amongst the beautiful items for what felt like an eternity, then i spied a beautiful girly-sized leatherbound flask. on sheer impulse, i bought it.
the truth is, i had to buy it because it was the last one that they had and i knew that i would think about it for a long time afterward, if i didn’t. it would haunt me in the strangest ways. it was like that for lots of things i found and didn’t get. i have all too fresh memories from a jillion years ago of a beautiful pencil skirt i left on a rack because i couldn’t afford it. i was being sensible. i was thinking about my budget. i was being good. what i should have thought was oh, bother – buy it already. i can’t afford anything anyway, ever. i can barely afford groceries. i should have gotten that fracking skirt.
i’ve tried on many a pencil skirt since that one. i know that something in me is still looking for the one that got away and i know i won’t find it. but seeing a pencil skirt in a window or on another woman or even on myself makes me sigh. (deeply.) at this point, the fantasy that’s locked inside my memory is much more alluring than the thing itself, probably. so i let it go. and yeah, you can apply that to just about anything else. including men. especially men. something to think about, the next time you see me in a pencil skirt.
so yeah, i was thinking about that skirt when i held that flask. it didn’t help matters that it was on sale, either. (30% off!)
this purchase, from me – The Girl That Doesn’t Drink. or at least, didn’t touch the stuff (except for that rare celebratory shot of mescal) until last summer. that’s when i lost my daddy – four days before my birthday. that’s also when i started singing in speakeasies, and drinking cocktails in them. (i never have more than two, by the way. has something to do with only having two breasts and yeah, an embarassingly low tolerance for alcohol. but that quip is associated with martinis. and i hate martinis. so there you have it.) those cocktails didn’t turn me into a raging alcoholic but they did get me out of my five block radius once a week. (thank Jesus.)
wow. what a dark strange summer that was.
it looks like my minature thermos and will fit perfectly into just about all my vintage purses. too bad i can’t show it to you. hm. tell you what. if you run into me at a gig or something, i’ll whip that bad boy out. it will be filled with – what else? – mescal. and fortunately, i will not.
yee-hah.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
How to join AFTRA
"They strong armed me - so I HAD to join!"
How I did it: When I came to New York City, I was basically a theater performer, so AFTRA was kind of low on the totem pole for me. I was obsessed with getting my Equity card. Obsessed, I tell you! I didn't want to be on television. I wanted to be on Broadway. I really didn't understand why every actor wouldn't want that, too - but that's another conversation.
I was told that I was a "must join" because of an under five that I got on the soap opera As The World Turns last fall. I thought I could get around it because I was in SAG, but no such luck. The rep actually told me that they could keep me from doing the part and make things very difficult for the soap if I didn't join, which was perfectly true. What's good is that they gave me a pass. But I can't say my arm wasn't sore from the sudden strong arming he gave me, even if it was over the phone.
Hm. Now that I think about it, SAG happened because I did B-roll on a musical (RENT), so that was a must join situation, too. I wasn't thinking about movies then, either. And whaddya know - film and tv and commercials are most of what I'm auditioning for these days. I love theater, but it doesn't pay enough to live on. Not in this city. Not anymore.
After I did the soap, I remember thinking, wow - I'm a working professional in every genre. I'm an active member in all three unions. For a moment, I felt like I accomplished something wonderful - but really, all I did was work.
Lessons & tips:
- learn how to act and know what you're doing before you start working on camera or you'll never stop figure it out - mainly because there's an avalanche of money in film/tv.
- don't join AFTRA until you have to, so you can build a solid reel.
- keep your goals and priorities before you at all times and don't lose focus, and it will only be a matter of time until you're in all 3 unions - if that's what you want.
Resources: Get a really good consiglieri - and this is a priceless thing, really - that smart industry person that knows you and cares about you, knows your work and can give you strong, insightful, pithy advice that you can actually use.
It took me 5 years.
It made me gleeful
See more progress on: Join AFTRA
Thursday, January 07, 2010
derailed!
i wish i could write something pithy but i got derailed last night preparing for today's audition. it was for a musical that's heading to broadway this spring. the songs were familiar enough for me to not really know them at all. so i basically crammed for the exam.
when i find out how i did, i'll let you know.
when i find out how i did, i'll let you know.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
kwanzaa is STILL here!
at least, it is for me.
yeah, that's right. believe it or not, i'm still working on a few special kwanzaa presents. the truth is, i decided to get craftsy this year, instead of cooking or baking - although i did promise jane a platter of thick cut smothered pork chops. (i swear, i think she'd do just about anything for pigmeat. and that probably includes chitlins. or should i say chitterlings?) and of course, i have to make a pound cake for my girl at barrio chino.
what i'm making is kind of top secret and it has to be assembled just so, with digital photos and photoshop and rhinestones. and chemicals! seriously scary chemicals, actually. the kind you combine to make a hard plastic coating.
more later as things develop.
yeah, that's right. believe it or not, i'm still working on a few special kwanzaa presents. the truth is, i decided to get craftsy this year, instead of cooking or baking - although i did promise jane a platter of thick cut smothered pork chops. (i swear, i think she'd do just about anything for pigmeat. and that probably includes chitlins. or should i say chitterlings?) and of course, i have to make a pound cake for my girl at barrio chino.
what i'm making is kind of top secret and it has to be assembled just so, with digital photos and photoshop and rhinestones. and chemicals! seriously scary chemicals, actually. the kind you combine to make a hard plastic coating.
more later as things develop.
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
the waiting is the hardest part
like the rest of the world, i'm on the verge of getting through the first week of the year and although there's a lot of flurry and activity that's just out of reach, nothing seems to be happening. maybe it's the inevitable letdown from having finally finished the jazz cd. maybe i'm not practicing the piano enough. or what i'm doing is just enough to frustrate me, because my ideas far outweigh my ability to play. maybe it's because my goals and priorities have tipped forward so drastically that everything inside me is running ahead of whatever seems to be going on. maybe i'm just bored. or impatient. yeah, i'm definitely impatient.
i feel like a lady in waiting. and in the immortal words of tom petty, the waiting is the hardest part.
so i'm occupying myself with busy work. i'm organizing my apartment. i'm gathering and itemizing receipts. i'm chipping away at fragments of songs. i'm salivating over recipes in bon apetit magazine, wondering which one i'll make next. i'm practicing the guitar - and trying to practice the piano. i'm daydreaming. i'm working out everyday like some kind of a highbrow lowgrade triathlete, because i really want to be as lean and strong as i can, with energy to spare. i'm auditioning and auditioning and auditioning. i'm oversleeping.
am i really all that productive? i can't tell. i'm probably running in place. at this point, i'm so out of it, i don't care if i'm getting anywhere or not. i'm just grateful that i'm burning a few calories.
who knows - maybe i'll snap out of this strange malaise when the cd gets here. estimated time of arrival is january 15.
boy howdy. am i going to do the buck and wing all over harlem when they get here or what.
i feel like a lady in waiting. and in the immortal words of tom petty, the waiting is the hardest part.
so i'm occupying myself with busy work. i'm organizing my apartment. i'm gathering and itemizing receipts. i'm chipping away at fragments of songs. i'm salivating over recipes in bon apetit magazine, wondering which one i'll make next. i'm practicing the guitar - and trying to practice the piano. i'm daydreaming. i'm working out everyday like some kind of a highbrow lowgrade triathlete, because i really want to be as lean and strong as i can, with energy to spare. i'm auditioning and auditioning and auditioning. i'm oversleeping.
am i really all that productive? i can't tell. i'm probably running in place. at this point, i'm so out of it, i don't care if i'm getting anywhere or not. i'm just grateful that i'm burning a few calories.
who knows - maybe i'll snap out of this strange malaise when the cd gets here. estimated time of arrival is january 15.
boy howdy. am i going to do the buck and wing all over harlem when they get here or what.
Monday, January 04, 2010
Vocalist Monday - Florence Quivar
someone recently asked me who my favorite vocalist is. it's a surprisingly short list, filled with names that don't get bandied about very often in the media. this opera singer is one of them.
i love florence quivar for so many reasons - mostly for this: i have yet to hear another opera diva sing classical music with so much soul. listen to ride on king jesus, the album she did with the harlem boys choir, in its entirety. i dare you. clearly those songs mean a lot to her personally. she is singing with what can only be described as pure raw emotion, and with a voice that is as refined and developed and sure as any of her generation. what you are hearing within those spirituals is the sound of her very soul, the absolute essence of who she is, praising God.
and isn't that the point - to be a conduit for the divine when you open up creatively? to praise God with whatever you do, however you can, with whatever you've got? in hearing ms. quivar's voice and her performance on that album and in considering what's floating around out there in the miasma, you don't have to listen for long before you click into so much narcissistic, self-serving dreck that consistently continues to miss the fracking mark.
she's the reason why i still love opera, why i'm so glad that i studied it formally at such an early age, why i continue to take lessons privately.
why this woman isn't a household name is beyond me.
i wish i could find some selection from that album to post here. instead, here's a duet that she did with pavarotti. not the tenor that i'm in love with, by any far stretch of the imagination. but maybe i'll let you in on that one next week.
Sunday, January 03, 2010
The Latest Top Five
these are the top five entries on my blog that have been getting the most pings in the past few months. (i have no idea why.) enjoy.
Saturday, January 02, 2010
new year, new me
heh. not really.
nothing has changed, but something has been altered. everything is illuminated. and fortified. this is where the rubber hits the road - as long as i have breath in me, i'm not ever giving up, no matter what it is. period.
i slid into the new year sideways, in slow motion - like i was stealing bases. i felt like i was running on empty when i finally got home in the wee hours of new year's day so i went to bed and stayed there until sleep left me alone. i hit the ground running late the next day but i'm still not sure i've snapped out of it.
what's more luxurious than oversleep? nothing.
of course, those black eyed peas were the first thing to hit my stomach in the new year. it's a black southern thing, evidently, because i know a whole slew of (white) yankees that didn't know anything about it. here's something hardly anyone knows: the black eyed pea originated in china and was brought to the south by africans. we've been eating them down there for well over 300 years. i can't ever remember a new year's eve without them.
i made some for my band at the salon soiree, too. i'm hardly superstitious but a bowlful of a little bit of good luck and prosperity never hurt anyone.
nothing has changed, but something has been altered. everything is illuminated. and fortified. this is where the rubber hits the road - as long as i have breath in me, i'm not ever giving up, no matter what it is. period.
i slid into the new year sideways, in slow motion - like i was stealing bases. i felt like i was running on empty when i finally got home in the wee hours of new year's day so i went to bed and stayed there until sleep left me alone. i hit the ground running late the next day but i'm still not sure i've snapped out of it.
what's more luxurious than oversleep? nothing.
of course, those black eyed peas were the first thing to hit my stomach in the new year. it's a black southern thing, evidently, because i know a whole slew of (white) yankees that didn't know anything about it. here's something hardly anyone knows: the black eyed pea originated in china and was brought to the south by africans. we've been eating them down there for well over 300 years. i can't ever remember a new year's eve without them.
i made some for my band at the salon soiree, too. i'm hardly superstitious but a bowlful of a little bit of good luck and prosperity never hurt anyone.
Friday, January 01, 2010
Happy New Year, World!
this is j. walter hawkes and i performing i cover the waterfront at the player's club, new year's eve 2009.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
the bad and the good and the good
the bad news is that due to unforeseen delays that had absolutely nothing to do with me, my jazz cd what is love? will not be available for purchase at the new year's eve eve gig with the salon at the player's club on december 30.
the good news is that it will be ready for pick up from the manufacturer by (or perhaps even before) january 13, 2010.
more good news: you can hear selections from the album (does anyone say "album" anymore?) on myspace - http://www.myspace.com/queenestherandthehotfive - and reverbnation - http://www.reverbnation.com/queenesther5
if you do happen to give any of the songs a listen, feel free to leave me a note. i'd love to know what you think.
the good news is that it will be ready for pick up from the manufacturer by (or perhaps even before) january 13, 2010.
more good news: you can hear selections from the album (does anyone say "album" anymore?) on myspace - http://www.myspace.com/queenestherandthehotfive - and reverbnation - http://www.reverbnation.com/queenesther5
if you do happen to give any of the songs a listen, feel free to leave me a note. i'd love to know what you think.
Friday, December 11, 2009
"...he said the sheriff is near!"
i've been way too busy finishing up the liner notes, artwork and mastering for my jazz cd "what is love?" -- which, shockingly, should be hot off the manufacturing rack and ready to sell at my new year's eve eve gig at the player's club with my quintet -- to blog anything of interest here. it's almost done, though. yay! i even found a publicist/radio promoter who believes in the album, believe it or not. God only knows how long it's going to take to get it on iTunes. please bear with me.
i've been working on a few more country songs, freelancing during the day, singing with swing bands and auditioning for minstrel shows. clearly, blogworthy things are happening to me every day. i've got to get on the stick!
in the meantime - the great news is *drumroll, please!* i'm going to sign with my talent agent next week. now that's a nice way to end the year.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Precious, my Precious: Black Female Citizenship, Complexity, and the Politics of Unrelenting Survival
I saw the film Precious some weeks ago and afterwards, I had every intention of writing strong words to explain exactly why it moved me the way that it did. Because for whatever reason -- with the exception of Armand White's review Pride & Precious, of course -- no one was touching on certain things about the movie that were glaringly obvious to me. After reading this note that was passed to me on facebook (thanks Tanya), I realized that someone else -- a black woman! -- had already said it for me.
This reblog is with the author's permission. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Precious, my Precious: Black Female Citizenship, Complexity, and the Politics of Unrelenting Survival by Malkia A. Cyril
Share/Yesterday at 2:53pm
As I sit against the florescence of the television screen, watching the conservative Fox News pundit Glen Beck drive political nails into progressive leaders using the fear of U.S. blacks and immigrants of color as his hammer, my memory harkens back to the year in which the book Push was set, 1987. During that time, eugenics theories about the inherent laziness and criminality of black teenagers was rampantly resurgent in the news. Conservative research was cementing stereotypes of the black welfare queen, the crack baby, the HIV infected black woman as the truth that justified the destruction of the safety net as we knew it. Since then, health care has become increasingly privatized. Welfare has turned horrifically to an indentured servitude of workfare. The numbers of black women with HIV have skyrocketed. And the movie Precious, based on the book Push by Sapphire, was released.
Caricatures or Complex Characters?
Clarice “Precious” Jones is an extreme character, meant to shock the senses and unveil the underbelly of the brutality of racism and capitalism in the patriarchal land of the free. In the film and in the book, Precious is a dark-skinned teenaged girl who experiences multiple forms of oppression and violence at the hands of multiple perpetrators. In the movie, her sexually brutal father is an invisible or blurry character at best, while her mother, whose victimization as a woman was only alluded to, is cast as the primary perpetrator. It is only through the extreme telling of an extreme story that this dichotomy of inequity is revealed. There are no men in the story as told in the movie, and the welfare and education systems which oppress black womanhood and subvert black female resistance are cast as saviors. Questions have been necessarily raised by black audiences –is this story the best way to reveal these contradictions? Is the mother the real villain? Does the story reflect reality or is it more of a caricature? And if a caricature how does that shape the impact of the film on the representations of black women in media and in the public psyche?
I have known many black girls afflicted by multiple forms of abuse, compounded by addiction and illness. I have watched black women beat their children to bloody pulps in the street, cursing them the whole time. I have heard black mothers threaten to cut their daughter’s pussy out to prevent them from having sex. I have witnessed black women trade their daughters for crack. I have heard and seen so many things. And I have also seen those same exact women place themselves in front of a fist to save their daughters. I have watched those black mothers walk the hoe stroll for hours to make enough money to feed and house and clothe their babies, as they struggled to overcome addiction. I have watched, in my own home, my own beautiful black mother struggle with the decision to keep her man and have an adult life or protect her daughters and live for her children. Eventually, she chose the latter, though not soon enough. My mother was alone from the time I was about 14 to her death in 2005. That’s almost 20 years of intimate solitude in an effort to stand between her black daughters and the world of violence that waited for us in and beyond our home because she did not know how to manage both the safety of her children and her needs as a woman. These characters, Precious and her mother, are not simple caricatures, and yet the film chose some truths over others, and must be interrogated. This is by no means an exhaustive review, or a review of any kind. It’s what came for me after watching the film.
Black Womanhood and Complexity
Can you imagine that patriarchal colonialism and a generational experience of slavery can result in an experience of powerlessness and shame that can twist the mind and give rise to the belief that your three-year-old child has stolen your man? Can you imagine that there are black and brown girls, and boys, all over this world, that have HIV, have been raped by their father, sexually and physically abused by their mother, failed by the school system and exploited by the welfare system. And that these girls are brilliant and beautiful and full of unrealized promise- as are their mothers. These women are two sides of one coin, mother and daughter. Both trapped in different ways, both villainized by “culture of poverty” research, and exploited by the economic system and the civil institutions that touch and shape the daily texture of their lives.
The Narrative of Black Female Citizenship
This set of contradictions, this opening of an unhealed national and international wound, is not a mere regurgitation of racist and sexist images. There is a real untold story here, and the voice of that child and the voice of her mother need to be heard. They need to be heard because it is our silence on issues of sexual abuse and systemic violence that allows the space for the empire’s story about us to be the only one told. We do not control our media and cultural systems or the institutions of civil society, and therefore the narrative of black female citizenship has been used in so many ways as the lynchpin to justify the most brutal democracy in the world. The lies that our citizenship is somehow a gift and not a right, that our mothers are responsible for the socialization of black children and therefore the cause of their incarceration, and that our daughters have drained and massacred the economy, have justified mass incarceration, war, the privatization of social services and health care, and the defunding of public education. The same has been done to black men, using different stereotypes. But this, right here, is about black women.
Let’s talk about education. It was a strong thread that bound this plot together through the realization of the unrelenting power of words. In the book Push, the transformation of Precious occurs over the course of more than a year. Her increasing sense of pride and self-worth is tied directly to her increasing ability to read. Literacy is a powerful thing. It increases one’s ability to navigate and transform the physical, political, and economic conditions we find ourselves subject to. The ability to express one’s story, to know that it will be witnessed, is as powerful a motivation for transformation as any. Why did the leaders of the Cuban revolution begin by increasing the literacy of the poor? For the same reason that Venezuela has placed so much import on democratizing their media system. Because the power of literacy, media or otherwise, is foundational for social change. The fact that the conductor of the orchestra in this case was a black lesbian added depth and complexity to the story of black women being told in the film. the depiction of black lesbians as allies to heterosexual black women was a blessing that brought tears to my eyes.
Hollywood vs. Our Stories
All this being said, the Hollywood version of the book absolutely invisibilized patriarchy, cast the system as a hero and not an actor responsible for the conditions of oppression in which precious lived and survived, and over-simplified Precious’ mother as an animal who fed her child to the wolves. The movie’s flaws are real, and knowing that the film was being viewed by white middle class audiences whose ability to discern the notes in this song was minimal, was painful to experience.
It doesn’t make the story less powerful, less revealing, or less necessary. But it does leave room for the next telling to make these contradictions less nuanced, the complexity more stark. For U.S. born blacks mitigated by a history of slavery and colonial violence, complexity is the name of the game. And though I am tired of our black mothers, whose internalized shame and experience of powerlessness sometimes results in extraordinary brutality, being cast in roles that are either victim or villain, and never as the complex intersection of both, never as victor- I was stunned to joyful silence by the numbers of young black girls and boys I saw in the theatre. This is a complicated conversation that is rarely had in our families or classrooms, and even more rarely had in public. And it needs to be had.
Unrelenting Survival
In 1987, I was 13, and the book Push changed my life. I identified in some ways with the experience of Precious. I remember the tenements, the crack houses, the emergence of AIDS and the way both devastated family connection. I recall the news, the myth of the teenaged super-predator, the labels of crack baby, welfare mother, the images of addiction and violence that shaped so many black children’s understanding of themselves. and then there are things I won’t talk about, that make me proud to watch Precious survive, and her mother repent, on the screen. Because I understand the untenable choices black girls and women feel, and are, forced to make.
Today I am 35, and I am grateful for those precious black and brown children, those daughters of this nation’s dust, those human queens subjected to -and the perpetrators of-inhuman cruelty. Because with each individual survival there is a greater chance of our collective survival and transformation. And that is a story, a historical legacy that is the journey in my feet, the ancestor at my back, and the bitter at the bottom of capitalism’s cup. We are our mothers’ daughters, more than the sum of empire’s history, and our mothers are no worse than human. That is the story that needs to be told. Sapphire is one of hundreds of writers who pull back the veil on black female citizenship to reveal the abject bullshit of this democracy’s contract, place humanity back into the narrative, and open the door for complexity. Tell the truth, in all its complexity, regardless of the dominant group’s watchful gaze. And even when Hollywood distorts the tale, we will, by our own honest hands, set ourselves free.
Cause we are watching too. And this, precious, is for you.
This reblog is with the author's permission. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Precious, my Precious: Black Female Citizenship, Complexity, and the Politics of Unrelenting Survival by Malkia A. Cyril
Share/Yesterday at 2:53pm
As I sit against the florescence of the television screen, watching the conservative Fox News pundit Glen Beck drive political nails into progressive leaders using the fear of U.S. blacks and immigrants of color as his hammer, my memory harkens back to the year in which the book Push was set, 1987. During that time, eugenics theories about the inherent laziness and criminality of black teenagers was rampantly resurgent in the news. Conservative research was cementing stereotypes of the black welfare queen, the crack baby, the HIV infected black woman as the truth that justified the destruction of the safety net as we knew it. Since then, health care has become increasingly privatized. Welfare has turned horrifically to an indentured servitude of workfare. The numbers of black women with HIV have skyrocketed. And the movie Precious, based on the book Push by Sapphire, was released.
Caricatures or Complex Characters?
Clarice “Precious” Jones is an extreme character, meant to shock the senses and unveil the underbelly of the brutality of racism and capitalism in the patriarchal land of the free. In the film and in the book, Precious is a dark-skinned teenaged girl who experiences multiple forms of oppression and violence at the hands of multiple perpetrators. In the movie, her sexually brutal father is an invisible or blurry character at best, while her mother, whose victimization as a woman was only alluded to, is cast as the primary perpetrator. It is only through the extreme telling of an extreme story that this dichotomy of inequity is revealed. There are no men in the story as told in the movie, and the welfare and education systems which oppress black womanhood and subvert black female resistance are cast as saviors. Questions have been necessarily raised by black audiences –is this story the best way to reveal these contradictions? Is the mother the real villain? Does the story reflect reality or is it more of a caricature? And if a caricature how does that shape the impact of the film on the representations of black women in media and in the public psyche?
I have known many black girls afflicted by multiple forms of abuse, compounded by addiction and illness. I have watched black women beat their children to bloody pulps in the street, cursing them the whole time. I have heard black mothers threaten to cut their daughter’s pussy out to prevent them from having sex. I have witnessed black women trade their daughters for crack. I have heard and seen so many things. And I have also seen those same exact women place themselves in front of a fist to save their daughters. I have watched those black mothers walk the hoe stroll for hours to make enough money to feed and house and clothe their babies, as they struggled to overcome addiction. I have watched, in my own home, my own beautiful black mother struggle with the decision to keep her man and have an adult life or protect her daughters and live for her children. Eventually, she chose the latter, though not soon enough. My mother was alone from the time I was about 14 to her death in 2005. That’s almost 20 years of intimate solitude in an effort to stand between her black daughters and the world of violence that waited for us in and beyond our home because she did not know how to manage both the safety of her children and her needs as a woman. These characters, Precious and her mother, are not simple caricatures, and yet the film chose some truths over others, and must be interrogated. This is by no means an exhaustive review, or a review of any kind. It’s what came for me after watching the film.
Black Womanhood and Complexity
Can you imagine that patriarchal colonialism and a generational experience of slavery can result in an experience of powerlessness and shame that can twist the mind and give rise to the belief that your three-year-old child has stolen your man? Can you imagine that there are black and brown girls, and boys, all over this world, that have HIV, have been raped by their father, sexually and physically abused by their mother, failed by the school system and exploited by the welfare system. And that these girls are brilliant and beautiful and full of unrealized promise- as are their mothers. These women are two sides of one coin, mother and daughter. Both trapped in different ways, both villainized by “culture of poverty” research, and exploited by the economic system and the civil institutions that touch and shape the daily texture of their lives.
The Narrative of Black Female Citizenship
This set of contradictions, this opening of an unhealed national and international wound, is not a mere regurgitation of racist and sexist images. There is a real untold story here, and the voice of that child and the voice of her mother need to be heard. They need to be heard because it is our silence on issues of sexual abuse and systemic violence that allows the space for the empire’s story about us to be the only one told. We do not control our media and cultural systems or the institutions of civil society, and therefore the narrative of black female citizenship has been used in so many ways as the lynchpin to justify the most brutal democracy in the world. The lies that our citizenship is somehow a gift and not a right, that our mothers are responsible for the socialization of black children and therefore the cause of their incarceration, and that our daughters have drained and massacred the economy, have justified mass incarceration, war, the privatization of social services and health care, and the defunding of public education. The same has been done to black men, using different stereotypes. But this, right here, is about black women.
Let’s talk about education. It was a strong thread that bound this plot together through the realization of the unrelenting power of words. In the book Push, the transformation of Precious occurs over the course of more than a year. Her increasing sense of pride and self-worth is tied directly to her increasing ability to read. Literacy is a powerful thing. It increases one’s ability to navigate and transform the physical, political, and economic conditions we find ourselves subject to. The ability to express one’s story, to know that it will be witnessed, is as powerful a motivation for transformation as any. Why did the leaders of the Cuban revolution begin by increasing the literacy of the poor? For the same reason that Venezuela has placed so much import on democratizing their media system. Because the power of literacy, media or otherwise, is foundational for social change. The fact that the conductor of the orchestra in this case was a black lesbian added depth and complexity to the story of black women being told in the film. the depiction of black lesbians as allies to heterosexual black women was a blessing that brought tears to my eyes.
Hollywood vs. Our Stories
All this being said, the Hollywood version of the book absolutely invisibilized patriarchy, cast the system as a hero and not an actor responsible for the conditions of oppression in which precious lived and survived, and over-simplified Precious’ mother as an animal who fed her child to the wolves. The movie’s flaws are real, and knowing that the film was being viewed by white middle class audiences whose ability to discern the notes in this song was minimal, was painful to experience.
It doesn’t make the story less powerful, less revealing, or less necessary. But it does leave room for the next telling to make these contradictions less nuanced, the complexity more stark. For U.S. born blacks mitigated by a history of slavery and colonial violence, complexity is the name of the game. And though I am tired of our black mothers, whose internalized shame and experience of powerlessness sometimes results in extraordinary brutality, being cast in roles that are either victim or villain, and never as the complex intersection of both, never as victor- I was stunned to joyful silence by the numbers of young black girls and boys I saw in the theatre. This is a complicated conversation that is rarely had in our families or classrooms, and even more rarely had in public. And it needs to be had.
Unrelenting Survival
In 1987, I was 13, and the book Push changed my life. I identified in some ways with the experience of Precious. I remember the tenements, the crack houses, the emergence of AIDS and the way both devastated family connection. I recall the news, the myth of the teenaged super-predator, the labels of crack baby, welfare mother, the images of addiction and violence that shaped so many black children’s understanding of themselves. and then there are things I won’t talk about, that make me proud to watch Precious survive, and her mother repent, on the screen. Because I understand the untenable choices black girls and women feel, and are, forced to make.
Today I am 35, and I am grateful for those precious black and brown children, those daughters of this nation’s dust, those human queens subjected to -and the perpetrators of-inhuman cruelty. Because with each individual survival there is a greater chance of our collective survival and transformation. And that is a story, a historical legacy that is the journey in my feet, the ancestor at my back, and the bitter at the bottom of capitalism’s cup. We are our mothers’ daughters, more than the sum of empire’s history, and our mothers are no worse than human. That is the story that needs to be told. Sapphire is one of hundreds of writers who pull back the veil on black female citizenship to reveal the abject bullshit of this democracy’s contract, place humanity back into the narrative, and open the door for complexity. Tell the truth, in all its complexity, regardless of the dominant group’s watchful gaze. And even when Hollywood distorts the tale, we will, by our own honest hands, set ourselves free.
Cause we are watching too. And this, precious, is for you.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Queen Esther and the Hot Five at Joe's Pub
If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words would a video inspire?
This one comes to you courtesy of videographer Chris Carlone, who shot the show at Joe's Pub earlier this month. We did a short set of songs for aboriginal Aussie artist Richard Bell's party from the upcoming jazz CD, tentatively titled What Is Love? that should be available for purchase before the end of the year. Aussie artist Tracey Moffatt had a lot of fun hosting the event. (Yay!) This is song is called Stardust.
Oh, I almost forgot -- ultra super secret listening party at the speakeasy Dutch Kills coming up very, very soon. Like, right after I master the CD and get it manufactured. Gimmie a few weeks, I'll get right back to you. Especially if you sign my mailing list.
Until then, enjoy.
This one comes to you courtesy of videographer Chris Carlone, who shot the show at Joe's Pub earlier this month. We did a short set of songs for aboriginal Aussie artist Richard Bell's party from the upcoming jazz CD, tentatively titled What Is Love? that should be available for purchase before the end of the year. Aussie artist Tracey Moffatt had a lot of fun hosting the event. (Yay!) This is song is called Stardust.
Oh, I almost forgot -- ultra super secret listening party at the speakeasy Dutch Kills coming up very, very soon. Like, right after I master the CD and get it manufactured. Gimmie a few weeks, I'll get right back to you. Especially if you sign my mailing list.
Until then, enjoy.
Friday, November 13, 2009
guess what?
friday the 13th is working for me, apparently. or maybe it was that natural afro wig. who knows. all i know is, i got a callback for that PSA commercial. i go in again on monday afternoon. go figure.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
a thousand words
this photo is an outtake of me in the backroom at dutch kills last week, casually getting my picture taken for album cover art by the one and only cybel martin. i am framed by songwriter/band leader jc hopkins on the left and musician/composer j walter hawkes on the right. the shoot went very well. we did it on the fly and everything. there's only a few pictures that i'm deeply love with -- but thankfully, that's all i need.
and in other news: i've got a new year's eve eve gig and a new year's eve gig, both in the same place -- the player's club.
good times.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Another day, another (commercial) audition - PSA
i went in for this spot later in the afternoon, which meant that i was rested, relaxed and already thinking about stuff like guitar practice and what i'd make for dinner. it was in midtown, so it was easy and quick to access. i breezed in right on time. no tension, no nervousness. no packed room, either. there was a monitor, a sign in sheet, a comfortable brightly lit couchy space and only a few of us there. i dressed casually (in a t-shirt and boyfriend jeans that i purchased for such auditions) in very little makeup and i wore a wig -- a natural wig no less -- because my hair was literally in knots and i didn't feel like wrestling it into submission. (yeah, blackgirls -- it was one of those days...)
the audition was quite simple, really: the government wants to let everyone know that there's an earned income tax rebate if you make a certain amount a year. this public service announcement is especially nifty because it's paying sag rates. so it's two black women chatting on a bus. they've known each other for a million years so it's very casual and spontaneous and open. i went in with this lovely woman whose name escapes me. we were both wearing the same color - baby blue - which cracked us up, for some reason. we were so chatty and friendly, we left the audition together and rode the train all the way up the west side, fully immersed in conversation. she was really sweet.
i guess it was like we kept the audition going. weird, right?
what's cooler than cool is that ever since that on camera acting class i took, the camera doesn't freak me out the way it used to. i can trust my inner life and my intent and let myself feel things, knowing that those feelings will magically resurface on my face. because of this, i have a whole new level of confidence that is stronger than any amount of swagger i've ever brought to a situation like this. so there's no need for nervousness. or fear. i go in, i do my thing, and i leave.
tra-la-la!
the audition was quite simple, really: the government wants to let everyone know that there's an earned income tax rebate if you make a certain amount a year. this public service announcement is especially nifty because it's paying sag rates. so it's two black women chatting on a bus. they've known each other for a million years so it's very casual and spontaneous and open. i went in with this lovely woman whose name escapes me. we were both wearing the same color - baby blue - which cracked us up, for some reason. we were so chatty and friendly, we left the audition together and rode the train all the way up the west side, fully immersed in conversation. she was really sweet.
i guess it was like we kept the audition going. weird, right?
what's cooler than cool is that ever since that on camera acting class i took, the camera doesn't freak me out the way it used to. i can trust my inner life and my intent and let myself feel things, knowing that those feelings will magically resurface on my face. because of this, i have a whole new level of confidence that is stronger than any amount of swagger i've ever brought to a situation like this. so there's no need for nervousness. or fear. i go in, i do my thing, and i leave.
tra-la-la!
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Love from Poland
I did a really cool interview some months ago for an online Polish jazz magazine called Diapazon and then I totally spaced it. Just tripped over this link on last.fm and I'm really quite taken with it. So much love from so far away is a beautiful thing.
I'm going to find a nice Polish person to tell me exactly what this article says and then I'll wallpaper my world with the results. In the meantime, you can read the whole thing in Polish here and if you aren't that kind of bilingual, you can have a very rough translation from Polish to English here.
I'm going to find a nice Polish person to tell me exactly what this article says and then I'll wallpaper my world with the results. In the meantime, you can read the whole thing in Polish here and if you aren't that kind of bilingual, you can have a very rough translation from Polish to English here.
Monday, November 02, 2009
I did it!
i worked on the 20 pages of my submission for nyfa until noon and then i caved and ran out of the house to run errands in midtown. after that, i was too wound up about what i had written to go home so i went to the nysc on 14th street and made sure that somewhere in all the working out and whatnot that i ran a mile in less than 10 minutes -- which always makes me feel like i really accomplished something. i don't know why. probably because it feels like i'm half killing myself everytime i try to pull it off.
a hot shower with all my products was in order and then that steam room, that glorious steam room. and then there were more products that moisturize me all the way down to my soul. and then i hit the street, as fresh as a frackin' daisy. i delivered the jazz CD to cybel so she could prep for our shoot and we wandered into a french bistro on 9th avenue and noshed grandly. i left there feeling so good, i practically cakewalked all the way back uptown.
in a flash, i was wrestling with the nyfa application all over again and getting stuck over the printer and wondering if i was going to make it by midnight. but i kept going anyway, like i was nanook of the north, struggling through some blizzard. i bounced all over the place before i finally crash landed in the post office on 8th avenue. and then after i sent it, i wasn't sure i'd assembled everything properly, and i rode a slow train home in a wide open panic, and couldn't remember any of what i did.
except of course, that glorious steam room. in a perfect world, my day would always begin that way.
notification happens in april, i think. we'll see what happens. at least i got the application in.
a hot shower with all my products was in order and then that steam room, that glorious steam room. and then there were more products that moisturize me all the way down to my soul. and then i hit the street, as fresh as a frackin' daisy. i delivered the jazz CD to cybel so she could prep for our shoot and we wandered into a french bistro on 9th avenue and noshed grandly. i left there feeling so good, i practically cakewalked all the way back uptown.
in a flash, i was wrestling with the nyfa application all over again and getting stuck over the printer and wondering if i was going to make it by midnight. but i kept going anyway, like i was nanook of the north, struggling through some blizzard. i bounced all over the place before i finally crash landed in the post office on 8th avenue. and then after i sent it, i wasn't sure i'd assembled everything properly, and i rode a slow train home in a wide open panic, and couldn't remember any of what i did.
except of course, that glorious steam room. in a perfect world, my day would always begin that way.
notification happens in april, i think. we'll see what happens. at least i got the application in.
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Day One
No time to blog. I'm working my way through rewrites for a New York Foundation for the Arts 2010 Artist Fellowship submission in playwriting/screenwriting.
It's so easy to get lost in it. Time spills out in front of me in this really endless way when I am alone with my thoughts. The people on the page come alive and tell me things and the action starts to happen so fast, I can hardly write it down. I can only submit 20 pages. Let's hope they're good ones.
The postmark deadline is tomorrow at midnight. Let the games begin.
It's so easy to get lost in it. Time spills out in front of me in this really endless way when I am alone with my thoughts. The people on the page come alive and tell me things and the action starts to happen so fast, I can hardly write it down. I can only submit 20 pages. Let's hope they're good ones.
The postmark deadline is tomorrow at midnight. Let the games begin.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Help!
if anyone knows where i can get some white lightning this far up north in yankeelandia, please contact me via this blog. that's right. i'm steady on the look out for real, honest-to-goodness moonshine, and i'm really not all that interested in making it myself -- even though technically, that's what i'm supposed to do for kwanzaa.
yep. it's time to start thinking seriously about those special presents and i'm not crafts-y enough to throw it all together at the last minute like everybody else. to tell you the truth, i came up with this idea in july but i didn't do anything about it because i didn't think i could. before i discard it completely, i thought i'd ask.
there's got to be someone out there who knows where there's homemade hooch up here. can't you get anything in new york city?
yep. it's time to start thinking seriously about those special presents and i'm not crafts-y enough to throw it all together at the last minute like everybody else. to tell you the truth, i came up with this idea in july but i didn't do anything about it because i didn't think i could. before i discard it completely, i thought i'd ask.
there's got to be someone out there who knows where there's homemade hooch up here. can't you get anything in new york city?
Monday, October 05, 2009
ah, the best laid plans...
Yeah, so -- I honestly meant to glide through this weekend and blog all about it but I was having way too much fun to bother. Such is life in the big titty.
It ended on Sunday with an impromptu cocktail party at Dutch Kills with Abraham of course – he’s the one all my friends like – and a slew of my beautiful pals showing up on the early side, just because. And why not? Do I really need a reason to throw a shin-dig? Making it through the week should be enough, these days. There was Sara Jane and then Brian whom we saw at Governor’s Island for the Jazz Age Lawn Party, then Rosa C. who bumped into us on the train on the way there and Susan who was already there when we showed up, and out of nowhere Rosa A. and James appeared, then another James showed up to see Sara Jane. Ralph showed up, so fresh and so clean-clean! And Ryan and Desiree came at the very end, after everyone folded. I had to leave them there, in good hands of course. Randy had a class. Sinclair had tech rehearsal, but he called. We’re going to have ginger tea and a long chat sometime this week. He and I have a severe amount of catching up to do. And once I got home, of course I thought of all these other black folk that I should have invited. Oh, well. We’ll have to do it again on another Sunday evening, when I know that Abraham will be there. We really can’t throw an impromptu cocktail party without him.
Renee was MIA, for real. I think the birthday party/makeshift speakeasy at Grounded after The Bootlegger’s Ball on Saturday night did her in.
Why do I prefer Dutch Kills on a Sunday night? Because if I tip through there at the just right hour with my friends, it’s relatively empty and shockingly devoid of hipsters – and eventually, it ends up turning itself into our little party, of sorts. So fun. That feels way more like a speakeasy than most of what’s going around in the city these days. The last time I tried to get in there on a Saturday night, I had to give someone at the door my cell number, so they could call me when there was space available. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but the crowd looked like something out of The Hills, or at least a frat house mixer. And yeah, that creeped me out.
There are so many friends and loved ones to catch up with, and they’re all over the place, doing everything – because that’s what you do when you live in New York City. And yes, we always say that we want to see each other and hang out and catch up – and yet, we hardly ever do. I learned a long time ago that nothing happens in this town unless you plan it out and make it so. So I’m going to do it, as often as the mood strikes me. Which will probably be a lot, especially when it gets cold.
Besides, it’s all Abraham’s fault, really. He has completely ruined me with an excellent soundtrack to our goings on, libations that I didn’t know I liked until he served them up, and what can only be described as good, kind treatment – something I needed a great deal of this summer.
It all started on Thursday when my paramour came from the airport straight to my gig with JC at Rodeo Bar. Here’s a few pictures to make up for my latent absence.
This is JC Hopkins and me. Nice portrait, I think. (All photos below by the ever-brilliant Tanya Braganti.)
This is Vito, brazenly toying with a bison's affections. (Or something...)
This is Hilliard on bass, JC on keys and me, singing and singing and singing. Yep, this was a fun gig...
It ended on Sunday with an impromptu cocktail party at Dutch Kills with Abraham of course – he’s the one all my friends like – and a slew of my beautiful pals showing up on the early side, just because. And why not? Do I really need a reason to throw a shin-dig? Making it through the week should be enough, these days. There was Sara Jane and then Brian whom we saw at Governor’s Island for the Jazz Age Lawn Party, then Rosa C. who bumped into us on the train on the way there and Susan who was already there when we showed up, and out of nowhere Rosa A. and James appeared, then another James showed up to see Sara Jane. Ralph showed up, so fresh and so clean-clean! And Ryan and Desiree came at the very end, after everyone folded. I had to leave them there, in good hands of course. Randy had a class. Sinclair had tech rehearsal, but he called. We’re going to have ginger tea and a long chat sometime this week. He and I have a severe amount of catching up to do. And once I got home, of course I thought of all these other black folk that I should have invited. Oh, well. We’ll have to do it again on another Sunday evening, when I know that Abraham will be there. We really can’t throw an impromptu cocktail party without him.
Renee was MIA, for real. I think the birthday party/makeshift speakeasy at Grounded after The Bootlegger’s Ball on Saturday night did her in.
Why do I prefer Dutch Kills on a Sunday night? Because if I tip through there at the just right hour with my friends, it’s relatively empty and shockingly devoid of hipsters – and eventually, it ends up turning itself into our little party, of sorts. So fun. That feels way more like a speakeasy than most of what’s going around in the city these days. The last time I tried to get in there on a Saturday night, I had to give someone at the door my cell number, so they could call me when there was space available. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but the crowd looked like something out of The Hills, or at least a frat house mixer. And yeah, that creeped me out.
There are so many friends and loved ones to catch up with, and they’re all over the place, doing everything – because that’s what you do when you live in New York City. And yes, we always say that we want to see each other and hang out and catch up – and yet, we hardly ever do. I learned a long time ago that nothing happens in this town unless you plan it out and make it so. So I’m going to do it, as often as the mood strikes me. Which will probably be a lot, especially when it gets cold.
Besides, it’s all Abraham’s fault, really. He has completely ruined me with an excellent soundtrack to our goings on, libations that I didn’t know I liked until he served them up, and what can only be described as good, kind treatment – something I needed a great deal of this summer.
It all started on Thursday when my paramour came from the airport straight to my gig with JC at Rodeo Bar. Here’s a few pictures to make up for my latent absence.
This is JC Hopkins and me. Nice portrait, I think. (All photos below by the ever-brilliant Tanya Braganti.)
This is Vito, brazenly toying with a bison's affections. (Or something...)
This is Hilliard on bass, JC on keys and me, singing and singing and singing. Yep, this was a fun gig...
Friday, October 02, 2009
...and what are YOU doing this weekend?
yeah, i got big plans.
i'm singing at the bootlegger's ball at the infamous burden mansion on e. 91st street in manhattan. it's some real turn-of-the-century, robberbaron type stuff -- which i totally love, architecturally. i'm dressing all the way up, because jc says he'll take my picture if i get there early enough. nothing like looking like i stepped out of another place and time to make me feel so absolutely unswervingly in touch with the now.
it's a black tie event, so i'm pulling out all the stops -- first of all, with excellent arm candy in the form of my friend renee monique brown, who can really work the look of this particular decade especially well. maybe it's because she did the first national tour of thoroughly modern millie. she's got a 1920's body, though -- she looks great in those clothes. i, on the other hand, look a little on the lumpy side. (heh.) i don't think a body like mine should feature clothes that happened before 1935, but that's just me. i'm starting to sing more stuff from the 1920s, though, so i really have to make every effort to dress that way.
nothing trumps everything in the room and shocks the show like showing up with someone that looks way more amazing than you do -- especially when you totally look amazing your bad self. i have complete and utter confidence that renee is going to work that skirt.
after this shindig, we're going to a 1920s themed birthday party some friend of hers is throwing. (yay!)
on sunday, there's the jazz age lawn party on governor's island that always features michael arenella and his dreamland orchestra. here's a snapshot of a happy couple from a few summers back, having a dance lesson.
the dance lesson is key because it sets the tone for your entire visit. you must take the dance lesson, you just have to. you can practice your new moves for the rest of the afternoon and meet a ton of people that way.
i really feel the need to put in an appearance -- in period dress, of course. not sure how i'll pull it off yet. and of course, renee is down. here's a picture below of me on that lovely boatride over to the island, looking an awful lot like miss celie (that's the infamous sara jane on the left and janet nash on the right). the dress is circa mid 30s, i think. unbelievable but true: the hat is now, baby. it is so right now.
think about it: catering
by cercle rouge, cocktails by st. germain, charleston dance lessons by roddy caravella, 1920's motorcar exhibition, rumble seat rides all over the island, pie contests, tug of war contests, a parade of hats, vintage clothing dealers and milliners galore -- and that's just the tip of the iceberg. frankly, i've never attended one of these events and NOT had a ball. we'll go early and leave early and unwind somewhere, and then probably end the weekend by eventually making it over to my (favorite!) speakeasy, dutch kills.
...and a good time will be had by all. lots more pictures -- coming soon.
i'm singing at the bootlegger's ball at the infamous burden mansion on e. 91st street in manhattan. it's some real turn-of-the-century, robberbaron type stuff -- which i totally love, architecturally. i'm dressing all the way up, because jc says he'll take my picture if i get there early enough. nothing like looking like i stepped out of another place and time to make me feel so absolutely unswervingly in touch with the now.
it's a black tie event, so i'm pulling out all the stops -- first of all, with excellent arm candy in the form of my friend renee monique brown, who can really work the look of this particular decade especially well. maybe it's because she did the first national tour of thoroughly modern millie. she's got a 1920's body, though -- she looks great in those clothes. i, on the other hand, look a little on the lumpy side. (heh.) i don't think a body like mine should feature clothes that happened before 1935, but that's just me. i'm starting to sing more stuff from the 1920s, though, so i really have to make every effort to dress that way.
nothing trumps everything in the room and shocks the show like showing up with someone that looks way more amazing than you do -- especially when you totally look amazing your bad self. i have complete and utter confidence that renee is going to work that skirt.
after this shindig, we're going to a 1920s themed birthday party some friend of hers is throwing. (yay!)
on sunday, there's the jazz age lawn party on governor's island that always features michael arenella and his dreamland orchestra. here's a snapshot of a happy couple from a few summers back, having a dance lesson.
the dance lesson is key because it sets the tone for your entire visit. you must take the dance lesson, you just have to. you can practice your new moves for the rest of the afternoon and meet a ton of people that way.
i really feel the need to put in an appearance -- in period dress, of course. not sure how i'll pull it off yet. and of course, renee is down. here's a picture below of me on that lovely boatride over to the island, looking an awful lot like miss celie (that's the infamous sara jane on the left and janet nash on the right). the dress is circa mid 30s, i think. unbelievable but true: the hat is now, baby. it is so right now.
think about it: catering
by cercle rouge, cocktails by st. germain, charleston dance lessons by roddy caravella, 1920's motorcar exhibition, rumble seat rides all over the island, pie contests, tug of war contests, a parade of hats, vintage clothing dealers and milliners galore -- and that's just the tip of the iceberg. frankly, i've never attended one of these events and NOT had a ball. we'll go early and leave early and unwind somewhere, and then probably end the weekend by eventually making it over to my (favorite!) speakeasy, dutch kills....and a good time will be had by all. lots more pictures -- coming soon.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
yes
i'm going to do nablopomo this month. the theme is HAUNTED. to kick things off the right way, here's a creepy home video some stooge made of what happened at his cousin's house in florida after playing with a ouija board one night -- amongst other things. i suppose anything can be faked, but this stuff looks pretty real to me.
i have an extremely difficult time believing that there's absolutely nothing out there except us, on this planet, flying through the cosmos, when there is so much proof to the contrary. and no, i don't mean aliens.
enjoy.
i have an extremely difficult time believing that there's absolutely nothing out there except us, on this planet, flying through the cosmos, when there is so much proof to the contrary. and no, i don't mean aliens.
enjoy.
Monday, September 28, 2009
auditions and callbacks and go-sees, oh my!
sorry i haven't written anything in a minute. things have been a bit hectic, in a good way.
i got a call on friday for a commercial audition on saturday, and then i got a call on sunday that i got a callback for this morning. so it's been a weekend of blowing my hair out, basically. that's the good news: i didn't wear a wig. i was totally naturally all afroed out -- and i got a callback. still shaking my head and going wow over that one. maybe things are changing.
as far as i can tell -- and yes, of course there are exceptions to this all the way across the board, but this seems to be the invisible rule that gets reinforced with most casting choices -- the black women that get cast in commercials are usually natural, with unprocessed "ethnic" hair and a minimal amount of makeup -- whether they lean toward that neutered mammy stereotype or not. they represent the wife, the young mom, even grandma: women of color who populate your everyday world. the black woman that gets cast in movies are usually the fantasy, so they've got the perms, the weaves, the make-up, they're usually a size 4/6 and all that rot. i know that when my agent leaves me a message that says, they want everyday people, that means a minimal amount of makeup and no wig -- or if it is a wig, it should look as natural as possible.
unbelievable, how little acting ability has to do with getting considered for something like this. you could get the once over and get typed out just like that, on looks alone. or height. or whatever else someone is seeing that they don't like. i think that getting callbacks is terrific. it means that i'm close.
bizarrely enough, the commercial -- a christmas spot for wal-mart -- shoots all day tomorrow. can you say fast turnaround?
in the meantime, i got called in to audition for another commercial tomorrow morning -- for applebees. thank God i'm losing weight -- can get back into my audition clothes. for this, i'm probably going to buy a bright red baby t on the way home, so i can look like i'm wide awake when i'm on camera tomorrow.
let the games begin.
i got a call on friday for a commercial audition on saturday, and then i got a call on sunday that i got a callback for this morning. so it's been a weekend of blowing my hair out, basically. that's the good news: i didn't wear a wig. i was totally naturally all afroed out -- and i got a callback. still shaking my head and going wow over that one. maybe things are changing.
as far as i can tell -- and yes, of course there are exceptions to this all the way across the board, but this seems to be the invisible rule that gets reinforced with most casting choices -- the black women that get cast in commercials are usually natural, with unprocessed "ethnic" hair and a minimal amount of makeup -- whether they lean toward that neutered mammy stereotype or not. they represent the wife, the young mom, even grandma: women of color who populate your everyday world. the black woman that gets cast in movies are usually the fantasy, so they've got the perms, the weaves, the make-up, they're usually a size 4/6 and all that rot. i know that when my agent leaves me a message that says, they want everyday people, that means a minimal amount of makeup and no wig -- or if it is a wig, it should look as natural as possible.
unbelievable, how little acting ability has to do with getting considered for something like this. you could get the once over and get typed out just like that, on looks alone. or height. or whatever else someone is seeing that they don't like. i think that getting callbacks is terrific. it means that i'm close.
bizarrely enough, the commercial -- a christmas spot for wal-mart -- shoots all day tomorrow. can you say fast turnaround?
in the meantime, i got called in to audition for another commercial tomorrow morning -- for applebees. thank God i'm losing weight -- can get back into my audition clothes. for this, i'm probably going to buy a bright red baby t on the way home, so i can look like i'm wide awake when i'm on camera tomorrow.
let the games begin.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
my box has red roses in it
shockingly, i have nothing to report.
oh, wait a minute. yes i do!
i haven't paid the mechanical license fee for the standards to harry fox agency, i haven't even thought about the artwork, i've got quite a few pounds to go before i'll feel ready to stand in front of any camera but thankfully i think i've found a publicist and a radio promoter.
i have a commercial audition tomorrow morning. it's a national commercial. and no, i'm not going to straighten my hair. i just don't fracking feel like it. why? because i'm tired. because i'm cranky. because i worked all day today and i'm going to work all day for the foreseeable future, and so when i get home, there's no time to play in my hair. there's time to eat dinner, inhale a klondike bar and hit the sack so i can do it again the next day. because aunt flo just fell off the roof. because i'm not in the fracking mood. yeah, so -- anybody and everybody that doesn't like the way my hair looks tomorrow can suck it.
i'm gigging my butt off, to pay for the jazz album's mastering session that must happen within the next two weeks, to stay on track for the release date in march - daddy's birthday.
there's that little show i'm doing at joe's pub for the aussie artist richard bell on 11/3
and duane park
and rodeo bar
maybe dutch kills
and that wedding reception at grand central station this weekend.
(yee-haw.)
jc hopkins and i play the newly mixed unmastered jazz album for garry velletri at our publishing company bug music next week. i just love garry's ears. i think he's one of the only people that "gets" me and my sound and he always makes really great suggestions with whatever i throw up in the air, so this should be a fun meeting and very very interesting. i know he's more than curious about this little project and it seriously doesn't sound like anything that's out there. (thank Jesus.)
here's the kicker, for real: i've lost more weight. i mean, raggedy ann is sitting on the sofa right next to me reading this as i type, she knows i'm 15 pounds lighter in spite of the water weight gain. you know what? to hell with the water weight gain. (miss ann told me to say that.)
yes, that's right.
i'm in the red sea.
i'm dropping an egg.
i'm entertaining the general.
i've got red sails in the sunset.
i'm chasing the cotton mouse.
i'm riding the cotton pony.
i'm surfing the crimson tide.
my hammock is swinging.
i have a visitor from redbank.
the tide is high.
the infantry has landed.
my granny's here.
i'm percolating.
looks like a wet weekend.
no gym this week.
i'm off duty.
i'm indisposed.
i've been hit.
the cherry is in the sherry.
i'm observing the holy week.
my box has red roses in it.
there, i said it.
oh, wait a minute. yes i do!
i haven't paid the mechanical license fee for the standards to harry fox agency, i haven't even thought about the artwork, i've got quite a few pounds to go before i'll feel ready to stand in front of any camera but thankfully i think i've found a publicist and a radio promoter.
i have a commercial audition tomorrow morning. it's a national commercial. and no, i'm not going to straighten my hair. i just don't fracking feel like it. why? because i'm tired. because i'm cranky. because i worked all day today and i'm going to work all day for the foreseeable future, and so when i get home, there's no time to play in my hair. there's time to eat dinner, inhale a klondike bar and hit the sack so i can do it again the next day. because aunt flo just fell off the roof. because i'm not in the fracking mood. yeah, so -- anybody and everybody that doesn't like the way my hair looks tomorrow can suck it.
i'm gigging my butt off, to pay for the jazz album's mastering session that must happen within the next two weeks, to stay on track for the release date in march - daddy's birthday.
there's that little show i'm doing at joe's pub for the aussie artist richard bell on 11/3
and duane park
and rodeo bar
maybe dutch kills
and that wedding reception at grand central station this weekend.
(yee-haw.)
jc hopkins and i play the newly mixed unmastered jazz album for garry velletri at our publishing company bug music next week. i just love garry's ears. i think he's one of the only people that "gets" me and my sound and he always makes really great suggestions with whatever i throw up in the air, so this should be a fun meeting and very very interesting. i know he's more than curious about this little project and it seriously doesn't sound like anything that's out there. (thank Jesus.)
here's the kicker, for real: i've lost more weight. i mean, raggedy ann is sitting on the sofa right next to me reading this as i type, she knows i'm 15 pounds lighter in spite of the water weight gain. you know what? to hell with the water weight gain. (miss ann told me to say that.)
yes, that's right.
i'm in the red sea.
i'm dropping an egg.
i'm entertaining the general.
i've got red sails in the sunset.
i'm chasing the cotton mouse.
i'm riding the cotton pony.
i'm surfing the crimson tide.
my hammock is swinging.
i have a visitor from redbank.
the tide is high.
the infantry has landed.
my granny's here.
i'm percolating.
looks like a wet weekend.
no gym this week.
i'm off duty.
i'm indisposed.
i've been hit.
the cherry is in the sherry.
i'm observing the holy week.
my box has red roses in it.
there, i said it.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
so...
now that the jazz cd is almost finished, i'm already hard at work on the next album in my head. i honestly can't help myself. maybe that's why i'm usually steady at it, making lists and drawing things and jotting down ideas. there are about three different projects popping off in me all the time, at least. there's music, always music - and all the stuff that goes with it, like guitar/piano/theory/voice lessons. there's a really good book in me, somewhere. i think i started looking for it sometime last year. and yep, i'm still working on the book and lyrics to the jazz burlesque musical that i mentioned awhile back. the treatment/synopsis is done and i'm just about finished with the polishing and the spit shining of the first act. yikes. if i ever get any real money to produce the things i'm dreaming of, i'm going to be in big trouble.
for awhile, i thought about not doing a country record, and then one day i thought why not? and i seriously couldn't think of a good reason. and then ideas came at me like schrapnel and everything started happening. and then i ran out of money.
maybe the black country record is a love letter to the south. i do so miss austin, texas. or at least the austin i knew when i was an undergrad there. i miss breakfast tacos! and i miss charleston, sc too. but that's going to be a different country album. that one is brighter, it's country gospel, that one happens later.
i can hear the songs in their fullness - what they sound like all finished, who's playing on them, what i want my voice to do. it's like my head is a radio and the sounds are happening all the time. it's really fresh and uncomplicated. and thankfully, it's halfway there - the black country sessions. i suppose it's the kind of stuff you're most likely to hear on boot liquor radio. i'm still trying to find the right way to phrase the title but thankfully, the songs are wandering towards me slowly, slowly - belligerent, unrepentant, melancholic. it hasn't been a struggle to remember how miserable i was when i was living through these lyrics - though now that i'm this happy and there's this much joy in my life, it honestly feels like it happened to someone else.
i"ve recorded half of it already. whenever the spirit moves me, i'm sifting through lyrics and melodies with my bare hands. every so often, i wallow in it, but since that's the kind of thing that's apt to make me weepy in all the wrong ways, i tend to avoid long jagged songwriting sessions with this stuff, especially when the place is quiet and i'm alone in bed.
mostly it's songs about me getting my heart ripped to shreds by what was ostensibly the very epitome of what could only be described as a really nice guy. it's really super catchy happy sounding sing along stuff. i can't wait for you to hear it.
i"ve recorded half of it already. whenever the spirit moves me, i'm sifting through lyrics and melodies with my bare hands. every so often, i wallow in it, but since that's the kind of thing that's apt to make me weepy in all the wrong ways, i tend to avoid long jagged songwriting sessions with this stuff, especially when the place is quiet and i'm alone in bed.
mostly it's songs about me getting my heart ripped to shreds by what was ostensibly the very epitome of what could only be described as a really nice guy. it's really super catchy happy sounding sing along stuff. i can't wait for you to hear it.
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