I did my first show in my new hometown, the other day. Everything about it was scaryânamely because I know, having done this for many years, that I am damned if I do, and damned if I donât. If I do a bad job, Iâm ashamed and no one takes me seriously. If I do a good job, it will piss off any number of people.
I have never, ever, once, in my entire life, done something good that did not come with some people having hurt feelings about it. When you are singing songs about feeling suicidal or experiencing deep heartbreak, itâs difficult to come off stage only to have people give you the, âOh, you think youâre so great,â bit.
When you couple, âOh, you think youâre so greatâŠâ with the fact that I work alone, Iâm well aware that I come off to many as a snob. Iâve been lectured by many people already this week, âI know you âdonât want to work with other peopleâ, but you should open up and share..â
That I work alone has nothing to do with not wanting to work with other people, or not wanting to share. It has everything to do with the attitude âOh, you think youâre so great.â To my mind, the attitude should be, âOh, great. Iâm glad youâre great. I want more of that.â And if you donât think Iâm great, Iâm suspicious of why youâre so very eager to work with me. Iâm a grown woman. That you ache for a protege is fine, but you arenât going to get one by breaking me down.
The reason I donât work with others is the same reason I do not date with an aim for marriage (or at all, really) anymore: Because the people interested in me would like to see me smaller, and would like to erase everything about me, except for the qualities they would like to control. They do not want to help me tell my stories. They donât even want to trade offâfirst we tell your story the best we can together, and next we tell mine. 100% of the time, the attitude coming to work with me is, âI would like to take your technical skills and whip them into the shape of the story I am telling.â
And that is perfectly fine. If Iâm a gun for hire. Or have auditioned for your project because I want to be a part of it. But however much someone appreciates my voice, Iâve honed it for a specific purpose: To tell my stories with it. Writing is the heart of it. The performance is the vehicle for getting it out there. Whatâs more, because women are ALWAYS relegated to the support role unless they are either entirely independent, or have the pull to boss people around without it ruining their reputation too much, I feel thereâs a special obligation to try to leave my point of view untouched by how others want to tone it down.
Or else we will never get an accurate representation of real women.
When I try to express this, people are quick to say things like, âYou canât shut out other people.â But no one is ever quick to say this to the man who wants to use my body and voice, and shut out the rest of me.
What I like are jam sessions. Because there is no erasing in a jam session. Everyone is just trying to see what they can contribute. Everything is âYes, and.â Whereas whenever you try and form a band, everything is âNo, but.â In a jam session, people have to deal with me, and I have to deal with them. We are both here in this moment, and what happens has to be accepted and contended with to keep everything afloat. And really magic things happen when people pull that off. Whereas in a band, people come in with agendas. âHow do we have a little less you and a lot more me?â
Again, Iâm for it if itâs your project. But Iâm not turning my project into your project. I am not your project.
I have also never once in my life worked with anyone who wasnât trying to take credit for the whole of me. The attitude is, âYou wonât be someone until I make you into someone.â But I am already someone, with a particular point of view. Iâve taken pains to make that apparent. If taking those pains gets me labeled a bitch, self-important, someone who âthinks theyâre so greatâ? So be it. But you will not mistake me for a newborn babe who doesnât know what they want.
Itâs my insistence on putting out my own point of view has made people view me as a cold bitch, no matter how reasonably I defend, no matter how much I support or champion their endeavors, and no matter how many concessions I make along the way. There is not a way to assert yourself as a woman and not be labeled a bitch. Itâs a cliche for a reason. Because it is absolutely true. I spent a couple of decades trying to make it not true, but at a certain point, you have to shrug and say, âSo, okay, Iâm a bitch. But that doesnât change my mission. So I guess Iâm just a bitch on a mission.â
Of all of the things Iâm trying to do with my life, proving that I can be really nice to people who would see me entirely erased is not one of them. At the same time, I donât actually want to fight all of the time. And I donât want to defend all of the time. And I actually do NOT want to hurt your feelings, which seems to happen the moment I say, âBut I had an ideaâŠâ Or, âI made this choice for a real reasonâŠâ
And so, I am an individual who works alone. Iâm happy to come onto your project, if it is beneficial to me. I will play the support role if weâre clear that itâs your project and Iâm there to play the supportâand so long as it my own projects are still going.
But as a forty year old woman, I have absolutely no interest in people who want to come into my project and reshape it for their own ends. And yes, there is a little bit of snobbishness here: I am especially not interested in people who have a lot less experience, but only a fantasy of what could be, coming in to tell me how to redefine my work to fit their fantasy. For free.
And the people most interested in making me bring their ideas to fruition are the ones who can play about 3 chords, and who, when I ask them to follow me, cannot do itâand pretend itâs because I have made such a mess of things they couldnât possibly do that, in order to cover and pretend they are the ones who should lead.
Iâll say this for the 8 millionth time: My goal is not to âshow offâ or âbe famous.â My goal is to take the little things Iâve discovered about being alive and try to connect with the audience over them. My goal is to create good work, and try to make it a sustainable vehicle for me, so that other independent artists can find a way to keep their independence, too. Would fame and fortune be nice? Oh, sure. But only as reward for my honest efforts. Not for being great at conforming to what is marketable or to what some rich man would like to see more of in the culture. Blech.
When youâre taking credit for my songs, trying to change the songs, trying to change the way I sing, and trying to take the profit, all of my goals are impossible. So no, I canât work with you.
I donât sing loud because Iâm unaware that men want a girl with a soft voice. I sing loud because I want to convey that big, brawny siren that goes off inside of us. I didnât pick banjo because Iâm unaware that most singer songwriters play guitar or piano. I picked it for itâs troubadour sound, and the symbolism of such a cheap, resilient instrument that is its own drum, and for how naturally amplified it is. I picked it because it is perfect for me and my circumstances.
A musician friend of mine has said to me multiple times since they met me, âBut donât you just find that either you can sing or you canât? That it doesnât take much work?â No. I have not found that to be even slightly true. It is every bit as challenging as learning any instrumentâthe only difference is that you are born with a voice and can start playing with it early, if you choose to. But at 40, I still have to practice my songs, work them out, make choices, maintain my instrumentâit is still a challenge. Because music is hard. Even when singers do it.
âDonât you just find that women naturally sing well and men donât?â No. Again, I have not found that to be true. How does this account forâŠJesus, any of the male singers that sing beautifully or do interesting things with their voices? Otis Redding, Freddy Mercury, Harry Nilsson, DâAngeloâIâm stopping at the first few who came to mind, because there are too many to name. How does that account for Taylor Swift, who, sorry, is not a voice you are confident can GET THERE? (But, who, is a far better vocalist than when she startedâbecause it IS an instrument you can learn).
I have found that a lot of men do not take singing seriously, though, and so donât work at it, and then say to themselves, âSinging is for girls. It takes no work. It is intrinsic in them. But they do not know what to do with it.â I find that attitude to be utterly pervasive.
And thatâs an attitude I cannot work with. I CANNOT work with it. Because it erases me from the outset.
Iâm happy for my audience to find me a mystical creature with no past, who emerged fully formed as the music I put out there. But not bandmates. No fucking way. Thatâs the death of me.
It imagines that I stumbled into everything I have achieved, rather than acknowledging the education, training, trial-by-fire, painstaking practice, and deliberate choices Iâve made.
After all of these years, many of them brimming with optimism and hope for collaborators, Iâve learned the cliche the hard way: They need to make you, a woman, stupid. If you refuse to be stupid, and insist on having confidence in your ideas, you are a bitch.
So Iâm a bitch. And I work alone.
I am extremely wary of people who tell me theyâre interested in playing with or highlighting my âsoftness.â As though no one has ever given me the opportunity to be soft. In fact, that is what the world constantly demands from me. But itâs not what I want to hear. Itâs not what I want to portray. Where is Janis Joplin? Where is Alanis Morissette? It is nothing but soft baby voices for the past two decades. And itâs not an accurate representation of anything Iâve experiencedânothing has been soft. No one needs me to portray soft. There is not a lack of soft voices from women in music today. But a lot of men who want to fuck me wish I were softer. So, there you go.
And Iâm not interested in perpetuating lies that all women, deep down, are actually soft baby kittens, and that strength is a put on. I have no interest in comforting men in that way. Some of us have been batted this way and that, and are still here. We are here to tell the tale, and the tale isnât soft. Itâs hard. The pain is hard, the struggle is hard, and my voice goes hard accordingly. Iâm not here to be a comfort to men. Iâm here to be a comfort to the audience: To tell them that your hard pain is real. The scream inside is loud. But that when you go hard up against your pain, there is beauty and insight there.
An opportunity to comfort and support men is almost always what an opportunity coming from a man is. And music is overwhelmingly male.
So yeah, Iâd love a strings section. Iâd love bitchinâ equipment. Iâd love people who know just what to add to fill out my songs to come along for the ride.
I donât know, it all seems pretty reasonable to me. Need my help? Ask me. I may be into it. Or maybe Iâm busy. Weâll see. Want to be a part of what I got going on? Great. ButâŠobviously Iâm the leader of my own project, and if you think thatâs mean, itâs possible you just donât like women leaders. Want to jam? Cool! Letâs create something great in a moment.
Want to enact your Pygmalion fantasy on me, and build me into a REAL woman?
Not. On. Your. Life.
Get it straight: Iâm a bitch. Iâm not your bitch.
youtu.be/aQbk4jtxDeY?si=zkHbtpâŠ
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