Is New York Still the Best Place for Authors, Playwrights, Actors and Artists?

 

She was thirty something, smallish, brunette. Her hair was chin-length, and her eyes were almost too dark to be real. When she came out of the kitchen, I had no idea how or when she materialized — all I knew was she was standing before us, waiting. The overall feeling I picked up from her was boredom, only it was boredom elevated to an art form.

"What do you want?” she asked. She had no pad or pen, just a little white apron that would have looked ridiculous on anyone else, but that she managed to wear while still looking cool. We were the only people in the diner, probably because it was a few days after Christmas and stormy outside.

My friend replied, “Watcha got?”

“Nothin’,” the waitress responded. It seemed like a preview of what you might find in the city itself; a profound indifference to politeness, small talk and nearly everything else.

I had met the two men sitting with me a few hours before, when they decided we should all go out to eat. Their names were Rafael and Henry, and my college teacher had recommended Rafael highly as a person who could “introduce me to New York” when I moved there.

I couldn’t tell them how nervous I was about moving to the city. Born in Brooklyn, I had grown up mostly in suburban New Jersey. I visited New York many times with my family to see relatives or plays/movies and eat at restaurants. But the idea of living there and trying to make a career of acting seemed like a whole other animal, one I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to ride.

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Photo by Hannah Busing on Unsplash

Suppressing the Artist's Immune

 

"To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.”

Poet E. E. Cummings

Listening to Tarama Levitt quote E. E. Cummings this morning in relation to Halloween was a fun surprise. After flying home yesterday from a trip to the East Coast and wearing a mask for seven hours, it was a little bit of heaven to take it off. Granted, most of my co-travelers weren't masking, but I'm assuming most don't have immune suppressant drugs in their systems.

In any case - I love the quote - and now have a question. If you don't use your own name and only your initials, is that a sort of mask?

Can success be a mask? 

I'm thinking of another writer of Cummings' generation who wrote about climbing in and out of a sarcophagus he himself had created.

Artists want to create "reputations" and "brands" and be "known" and all that.

Isn't masking a part of the job?

Don't we all need immune suppressants when we're trying to create something that makes people stop and listen?

Don't we all have to strip away something of ourselves to get people to recognize themselves?

But when you go to market, your coat has to grow very thick.

So aren't artists almost constantly at cross purposes?

If it is a fight, then too often, marketing is the winner. 

And I guess that's what this quote is telling me this morning.

And this evening. On Halloween.

Photo by lilartsy on Unsplash

Ultra Violet Holly Viva

They were gorgeous and wild, like lions and fire. They seemed to be doing what they wanted to do, though now I think they had a puppet master and likely would have been better off without him, as female artists in charge of their own careers.

But hey, you say, what about freedom of choice, right? Free agency? And hey, I say, all right. These women told us they were where they wanted to be.

Growing up, I wanted their lives, or at least, the glamorous parts. I'm talking about the Andy Warhol actors like Viva and Ultra Violet, Holly Woodlawn and others.

I go back and forth with my feelings about Warhol--he seems brilliant and brilliantly manipulative at once--but am less equivocal about the women who worked with him (though he might say they worked "for" him). 

These were not the icons he built his reputation on, like Marilyn Monroe. But while Viva (Janet Susan Mary Hoffmann) and Ultra Violet (Isabelle Collin Dufresne) appeared in Warhol's films and (supposedly)? had enormous amounts of sexual encounters while being part of Warhol's entourage, they were artists, writers and the original influencers of taste and fashion way before social media. (Dufresne passed away in 2014, but Hoffmann is still writing and creating.)

Were they happy being part of Warhol Land? I prefer to quote Holly Woodlawn, who said, "What difference does it make? As long as you look fabulous." She was actually answering a question about whether or not she was transsexual--but the answer could have been about working with Andy Warhol as well.

There were numerous others in this orbit--Lou Reed and Velvet Underground, Candy Darling, Nico, Edie Sedgewick and more--and however well or badly they fared, their lives always seemed to have a freedom mine has been lacking. There is something about being able to throw all caution to the winds and live adventurously, without thought of consequences or what people think of you.

Maybe it's a "young" thing? I remember reading something by Viva where she said she wouldn't do this or that anymore because of her daughter. She also referred to Warhol as Satan and says a lot of what we read about her is fiction. 

Maybe such lives are best lived as fiction, and like Proust, we do our best work when imagining them. Warhol's women superstars will always hold a special place in my heart, though. Living bravely as an artist sometimes means you take the chances nobody else will.

Arthouse photo:  gax8627

Plumber Dilemmas: a Beat Street Giveaway & Fool's Errand 99 cent sale

In the early years of my marriage, I found a how-to book for do-it-yourself plumbing and excitedly gave it to my newlywed husband. My hope was that he'd open it and read voraciously about plumbing.

I have no idea why I was thinking this, except I'm the kind of person who believes wholeheartedly in magical thinking. Maybe that's because I write fiction, but it rarely (if ever) works in real life.

Nonetheless, I wish my wish had happened when I look at the bathroom sink these days. It's now at the point where you have to wiggle it to one side or another to shut off. If you don't, it will drip, drip, drip forever. Husband has told me in no uncertain terms he does not know how to fix it, though he assumes it needs a washer.

That means inviting a plumber to our house, in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of a surge of said pandemic, in the middle of winter. It means trying to open the window while the plumber is working in the bathroom, which probably won't be much fun for the plumber. Or me, if he/she leaves.

While I'm thinking of this, I start thinking about my Ruby character in The Beat on Ruby's Street, who describes drip, drip, drip of her bathroom faucet when a social worker is visiting her home. I started writing about Ruby, an 11-year-old growing up in 1958 as the child of Beat Generation artists, because her life was the one I wanted to live--drippy faucet and all. 

I was the child of suburban parents in 1970s New Jersey who had very little interest in artists or bohemia. I think my choice to become first an actor and then a writer was not what they wanted for me, they did learn to tolerate it. But for me, trips to Greenwich Village were the equivalent of my heaven--and meeting a real, live artist and his wife at the same age Ruby did sealed the deal.

I even remember the artists' names--Peter and Carol. He painted and she danced and I was in love with both of them, or at least their lives (which were also in suburban New Jersey, by the way). I think that was the start of Ruby's journey, or at least, of my journey in writing about Ruby.

This week, I'm offering you the chance to read The Beat on Ruby's Street for free, and to get Fool's Errand (part two of the Beat Street series) on sale for 99 cents. Quick summaries are below - but you have only a week to take advantage of these offers, which start Saturday January 16 and end Saturday January 23. Click on the pheading link below for the giveaway:

The Beat on Ruby's Street Giveaway:

Gold Category Winner for the Wishing Shelf Award and Finalist in the 2019 Minnesota Author Project! The last thing eleven-year-old Ruby Tabeata expected to happen on her way to a Jack Kerouac reading was to be hauled to the police station. It’s 1958 and Ruby is the opposite of a 1950s stereotype: fierce, funny and strong willed, she is only just starting to chart her course in a family of Beat Generation artists in Greenwich Village, New York. Ruby dreams of meeting famous poets while becoming one herself; instead, she’s accused of trying to steal fruit from a local vendor and is forced to live in a children’s home. Join Ruby on her journey as she finds unexpected friendships, the courage to rebel against unjust authority and the healing power of art in this unique historical middle grade novel. Fool's Errand picks up where book one leaves off -- when Ruby’s best friend Sophie and her mom Annie flee so Annie won’t be forced to testify in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. The Committee persecuted countless artists for decades due to misplaced fear and hysteria. Fool's Errand 99 cent-sale may be found at the following seller links: Amazon Barnes & Noble Apple Kobo

If you do read one or both books, I'd love to hear your thoughts on them. 

And if you know any plumbers who don't mind working next to open windows in the dead of winter, can you let me know that too?

Cover art: Gwen Gades

Artists Work

"Artists work, Franz, I believe they work very hard."

"Work is what you do for others, Liebchen. Art is what you do for yourself."
--Stephen Sondheim, Sundays in the Park with George

I first heard these words at the New York theater where Sundays in the Park debuted, and they have always stayed with me. Not long after I saw the show, I went to a job interview and tried to wheedle the interviewer into changing the full time hours into part time. 

I tried to explain I was an artist and could do the job in shorter hours, but she was having none of it. She laughed, called me an "artiste," and sent me on my way.

Over the years I found that some people understand that artists can also do other work for hire - quite well in fact - while still doing their own work. Others don't understand it, and as a friend once said, some people can be very jealous of artists, who are seen as spoiled children wanting only to work for themselves.

Yet, we'd never say a small business owner was spoiled. Right? So why do we say that about artists? And what do parents say when their kids tell them they want to be artists? My own weren't happy about it, but I wasn't about to let go of my dream. I'm glad I didn't, because the successes I've had have made me happier than almost anything else (except family and friends).

Still, there's always a strange moment when you tell someone what you do.

What I'm not sure most people know is that many artists have to work day jobs and still can have careers as artists. The poet Theodore Roethke taught at various colleges and universities and didn't put out a ton of work--but what he did write was beautiful and memorable and highly praised by people who read his work.

Poet and author Walt Whitman spent at least a decade in Washington D. C. working as a clerk and bureaucrat while writing a significant body of work that made him immortal. Author Herman Melville worked as cabin boy and harpooner on a whaling ship, and spent his last decades as a custom inspector. Of course, he also wrote Moby Dick.

I could go on and on, but I think you know what I'm saying here. Artists are all different, and succeed at different levels, but the one thing they have in common is being driven to do what they do. If you ask yourself, as poet Rainer Maria Rilke does, "Must I write?" (or paint or sing or whatever) - and the answer is yes, and you keep working and polishing and honing and trying - then chances are very, very good you are an artist.

Are you working for yourself? Yes, just as a small business owner does.

Artists work very hard, Franz. I promise you.

Face of the artist: nowhere Zen New Jersey

The Ultimate Scientist

As a joke one year, my late mother-in-law bought my father-in-law a T-shirt that said, "I am a rocket scientist." It was funny because it was true, and one of the most interesting things my father-in-law taught me was that science and God are perfectly compatible. There is no need to separate them.

I had a very hard time with science in junior high and decided I would never be any good at it. I was sure that being an artist meant I would never need it or care about it.

I wish now I'd had better teachers, because the two times I did, in high school, I did pretty well and liked what I was doing. My freshman science class teacher was funny, lively and engaging; and my junior year chemistry teacher was so good at explaining concepts I actually understood what he was saying. 

Unfortunately, other teachers were a whole lot less competent -- and I missed out on what could have been a very interesting journey, at the very least. No, I wouldn't have turned into a scientist. But my understanding of the real, physical world would have been so much better--and that would have been better for me.

I've spent too much time in doctors' offices this year, though I have to marvel at the clinical, brightly-lit world they live in, day after day. The approach they use to verify, test, heal and study is something I wish I knew more about. It is a strategic approach versus an instinctual one, while I lived my whole life using the instinctual.

When I look at climate science, though, and how research is proving over and over and over that the environment is endangered; how vaccines prevent disease; how physics and planetary studies show us the universe and how the physicality of our world comes from matter and energy, I can't help but be in awe of it.

My father in law was, too. He talked to me once about the Big Bang theory, and then asked, "How could that not make you believe in God?" As soon as he said it, I knew I agreed. So when I hear people refuting scientific evidence because it "goes against God" I just have to SMH. I can't understand how anyone can not see the design of the universe without seeing how science fits into it and explains it. 

I chose a life that's the opposite of clinical, dealing in stories and storytelling; plays, music, songs and shadows; a world of artfulness and artifice. I know this world is a complement to the clinical, scientific world and that the energy in both feed off each other. And I can't help but wonder some days if God, who I often think of as the Ultimate Playwright, is the Ultimate Scientist too.

Maybe on different days? As they say on TV somewhere, it could happen.

Eye photo: Jessica Mullen

Long Game Summer

I was born in August, two days more than halfway through the month on the 17th. If I was in charge, I'd have picked June, but it doesn't matter. I will always be summer's child.

People who know me laugh sometimes that I choose to live in the Upper Midwest, where summers are short and quickly over. They don't know how I start counting summer in mid May and go straight through the start of October, no matter what the weather may be doing.  But they are right about summers being short.

Still, Midwestern summers are truly glorious because the rain makes the ground bloom with every sort of northern flower and the greens are as lush as anything Hawaii can offer. Houses too, look better in the dusk and porch light in June, when the lengthening day is almost over--but not quite.

Summer is a writer's season, because it knows the long game. Summer will wait as patiently as a cat for its shining moment and then shine as if it's going to forever.  It sings of lakes and swims and overpowering heat that promises to sweep you off your feet into a hammock.

Summer also brings pool parties and sandals, long grass, running rivers, secret talks and rekindled friendships you might think were gone but are not. It brings you time to walk at night and think of what you want to say, twice, again, a dozen times. It lets you play, and writers need to play more than anything.

The long game extends to baseball and golf, barbecues and sleeveless dresses. Cupcakes at birthday parties and ice cream cones after long, meandering walks.

Summer in the city. Summer in the country. I'll take it anywhere, and I will always remember it. As the longest day of the year approaches, I hold out my arms to catch it, smell and taste it, drink it in. Summer will never disappoint, no matter how long you have to wait for it.

Summer knows it's coming. And it knows, somehow, I'm here. When it does come, it will have my childhood memories wrapped inside it, unraveling them around  my shoulders and ears. Nights when I didn't want to go to bed and told myself stories. Mornings when the sun seemed like a new friend and brought me outside to dance.

Summer knows I'm waiting for it. Freckles, lawn mowers, iced coffee and waterfalls. It knows how the first summer of my engagement, neighbors complained that my fiance and I were kissing on the beach. It knows we still go out there periodically to kiss, neighbors or no.

The longest game will never stop playing. All we have to do is say yes to it, like Molly Bloom.

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Why Presidential Museums #Fail

Before I start ranting away here, I need to tell you about a special Memorial Day sale here for The Beat on Ruby's Street, which just won the Gold Award from Wishing Shelf Awards last month. The e-book version is on sale for just 99 cents at the following sites between Saturday May 27 and Tuesday May 30.


You can find the 99 cent sale price at the following sites:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

iTunes

Kobo

Now back to my "regular real" post (as Ruby would say) about presidential museums. I started thinking about them because of Memorial Day weekend and remembering all the people we lost in wars. 

I also started thinking about presidential museums after reading about John F. Kennedy's. It's not that I begrudge a president the right to memorialize or remember. 

And yet... and yet.

Do we really need an ever-increasing number of presidential museums, full of all the tiring paperwork and boring memorabilia we already know about? What do people find at a presidential museum anyway? Picture albums, trinkets, wedding rings, recordings, letters... STUFF, right? 

Do we really need more stuff, presidential or otherwise?

I have never once ached to see what's inside a president's museum. I did go to one of Lincoln's "summer" houses in Washington D.C. once, because my cousin (a native Washingtonian) recommended it; and my husband and I heard some interesting stories and had a good time.

But that was back in the day when presidents really were, um, interesting. And aside from seeing one for Lincoln and a few founding fathers, I'm really good, thank you, and in fact, more than fine if I never see any of museums for presidents. What I really wish they'd do instead is create museums (or maybe just websites?) for people who really built something or sacrificed their lives  for the rest of us, like our troops.

It would also be great to see people who create and created great architecture or art like the Brooklyn Bridge or the people who created all the theaters all over the country. Or a hundred other buildings, books, recipes, businesses and inventions that Americans bring into the world every day. Or a foundation to help people when their money runs out, for whatever reason. 

What if we took all the money we're putting into presidential museums right now and started foundations that offered grants and funding to medical research, libraries, hospitals, children's crisis centers, theaters? 

What if, instead of building a museum in his or her honor, a president said instead, "It's not about me. It's about them."

Meaning the people all over this country that he/she is supposed to be working for.

That would  be something, wouldn't it? Something we really need.


Graphic: Pamela Labbe
Mount Rushmore photo: loomingy1

Children and Art

In the early years of my first marriage, I was introduced to a friend of the Rabbi's wife where my (first) husband worked. The friend was apparently an artist, or at least, that's how the Rabbi's wife introduced her. She asked me what I did and I started talking about writing plays and acting. I got a few sentences in when she interrupted me.

"Wow," she said, "it sounds like you're doing a lot! You must not have children."

Huh?

I stopped talking and tried not to let my mouth hang open. I literally couldn't even believe what I was hearing. 

Set aside the obvious snarkiness of the phrase. Why does having children preclude being creative or having time to create? Yes, it takes time to care for young children. But so does a full time job or multiple jobs) which many artists need to have.

This woman was obviously feeling upset that her children were holding her back from whatever she wanted to do as an artist. So much so, that she needed to tell me that the only reason I was accomplishing anything was because I was not a mom.

It was an ugly moment, and I think ultimately I decided not to answer her and walked away from the conversation. But I remembered this woman recently when I saw a post on Instagram. The writer was lamenting the fact that people were always asking him when he was going to have kids.

Why do people feel it's any of their business? Whether you have one, two, seven kids or none should have no bearing on anything (except for you and your family, of course). But people somehow feel they have the right to share their pronouncements on this subject all the time. When I was pregnant another family friend had to tell me that being a mom of a very young child means you can't do anything else but be a mom. Ever.

Again. Huh?

Yes, I was tired (OK, exhausted), by caring for an infant and during much of my son's first year. But I was still able to do a little writing and more importantly, find a good support system of paid help so I could carve out more time as my son got older. 

Somehow no one blinks if a mom has to return to work three months after her child is born (let alone the dad having to go to work the very next day). But if an artist is trying to figure out how to find work time with a newborn, everyone thinks she can't/shouldn't?

I don't get it. But if I met the woman I mentioned again, and she said I was only an artist because I didn't have kids, I'd tell her that I know a ton of artists with children and are even inspired by them, artistically and otherwise. I'd also want to tell her I don't think parents should judge nonparents and vice versa.

And then I might ask her to get a life. Politely. 

Or not. :)

Child sign: Todd Huffman

Child: Pedro Ribiero Simões

New Year Wishes (for Me & You)

Wishing you courage...

... love...

...the ability to forgive & move on & try new things...

...especially the things you've been scared to try as an artist and just personally...

Wishing you find the will to change when you need to. 

Hoping hope reaches you, even when it's dark out there...

...hoping that you let go of whatever's destroying you and find the confidence to begin again... 

...that you give yourself credit when you deserve it and trust yourself...

Maybe what I really mean is believe in yourself.

And finally, finally...that you find the people you are meant to meet, because, I think, that makes all the difference.

 #HappyNewYear

The Opposite of Cute

When people ask me to describe the main character of my book, Ruby Tabeata, the first thing that comes to mind is “not cute.” I wanted to write for middle-grade students because it seemed less likely they'd want a book centered on “romance”—and more likely they'd want something reflecting their tastes, interests and abilities.

I wanted to create a story about a young girl who was strong-willed, adventurous, courageous and rebellious. I also wanted someone my own 11-year-old self would have liked and enjoyed meeting (and being). So I created someone who could be dark and fierce, but also kind and loving—and passionate about living life the way she thought an artist should live it.

Beat Generation artists seemed like the best setting for this sort of character because they didn’t believe in “cute” either. The culture was based around rebelling against all society’s conventions—and in 1958 there were quite a few, for women, especially. They included wearing bows and crinolines and hiding one’s ambition to do anything other than making a guy the center of your universe.

I couldn’t see my heroine dotting her “I’s” with circles or drawing purple hearts with magic marker on her poetry or letters. She wouldn’t want cute clothes and wouldn’t wear big skirts and party dresses. She does have a bit of a crush (on Jack Kerouac) but she is not revolving her life around any one guy.

Of course, she is a little young for that by design, but I like to think as she gets older she will continue to be unconventional and strong. (And since I’m writing her, no worries).

I hope my 11-year-old self would have approved. After changing schools from a very orthodox Jewish day school to a junior high in New Jersey where classmates cared mostly about clothes and boys, I wanted to be anywhere but where I was.

While I didn’t grow up in the middle of the Beat Generation, reading about Beat poets gave me hope that somewhere, I could find an artistic community where the emphasis was more on what you could do and say and paint and write instead of what you wore and who wanted to go out with you.

That’s where Ruby came from and it will continue to be where she is going. It doesn’t mean if you draw purple hearts on your notes you won’t like her. But it may mean she can offer you a different point of view.

For more information on the Beat Generation and cultural changes in the 1950s, take a look at the articles below:

·         A “Beat” Generation: Influence and Knowledge from the Masters

·         Bob Dylan, the Beat Generation and Allen Ginsberg’s America: Sean Wilentz

·         The Beat Generation

Claustrophobia: Who Gets It?

I first met claustrophobia through a bunkmate at camp in my early teens. Somehow the door got stuck shut in our cabin and three of us crawled out the window, but just as the fourth was getting ready to climb out too, the window slammed down and could not be easily opened.

Our bunkmate began to cry and then told us she had claustrophobia. I asked one of my friends what that meant, and she explained it was an extreme fear of being stuck inside a small space. I later learned many people with this phobia fear the walls may actually closing in on them.

With the help of camp maintenance workers, our bunkie was freed from the cabin and life went on as before. But some years later, I got a job in New York and had to take the elevator every day to my 11^th floor office. The elevator got stuck on two occasions and I got a little taste of claustrophobia. The feeling stayed with me and even now, I don’t much like going into elevators alone, especially old elevators (which still exist in a lot of older buildings).

When I started writing The Beat on Ruby’s Street and got my main character Ruby stuck in a closet, I wanted to ratchet up the tension a bit—so Ruby got claustrophobia too. Although a lot of people have this phobia who aren’t artists, I thought it was a great problem for a kid who is artistically inclined. Artists of all stripes need space to create, and when they can’t get it, I think it can feel almost like you’re being suffocated.

When I say space, I mean not only literal space where no one is bugging you and you can be alone with your thoughts—but the time to create that space around you as well. What I found in writing Ruby’s story was that even though she was stuck and scared, she was able to use poetry to get rid of the fear she was feeling. I’m not sure if that would help everyone with claustrophobia (me included)—but it’s as good a way as any to calm down.

Does that mean claustrophobia is an artists’ disease? No, but if you are an artist, it may be easier to understand it. And if that’s true, maybe artists can avoid it by making sure they find the time and space to do their work.

Or… stay out of elevators. And closets.

Does your child have a phobia? Learn more here:

Phobias: KidsHealth

Fears, Phobias and Anxiety: The Child Anxiety Network

When Fear Takes Over: Children’s Phobias by Lisa Bendall

Littlescreamer: Greg westfall

Girl: Alvaro