The Girl I Once Knew

This week, I stepped into my house in Nashville for the first time in over a year. It was like stepping into an art installation made by someone I used to know – me, two or three years ago.

I came here to check on the house, to get a few sewing supplies and clothes to take back to England, and to do a little business in Nashville. But, instead, I am staring into a mirror at a person I might not have seen in a while. This person began collecting little treasures from the time she was a girl for “one day” when she would set up house. She has a set of pink tin children’s kitchen furniture, an array of china tea cups on her mantel, vintage cameras lined up like soldiers ready to shoot, and vintage soda pop bottles pulled out of old houses and flea markets keeping watch over the kitchen. She has a Hoosier cabinet, an Arts and Crafts desk, a pink ceramic water pitcher for her hairbrushes, and a pink melamine sugar bowl for her dental floss. She has a tiny green TV from Hershey Park and, when she looks in the peephole on the back and pushes the button on the bottom of it, she is transported to when she was ten years old, holding the hand of her grandmother and smelling chocolate.

I like this girl. I think we could be best friends. 

This house was built in 1912 and has had only three owners, including me. The single sisters whose father built the house lived here until they died and hardly changed a thing as far as a can tell. The wood work has never been painted. The mantlepieces are in tact. The floors have never been stripped and “re-done.” The kitchen looks to have had an update in 1960. The almond appliances date from circa 1985. No dishwasher, just an electric range and boxy fridge. This house is the perfect setting for my teal plastic sugar and flour bins, for my tasseled lamp shades, for my super 8 film projectors. The house and my things are merry together.

I walked into this house with an aim to figure out which things I was going to take over to England at some point. But, honestly, the idea of dismantling this walk-in sculpture fills me with dread. My traveling companion once told me about an artist who took over an empty store front in London and made an art of dismantling and destroying all of his possessions. This is the image that buzzes through my mind as I look at my Elvis-whisky-decanter-music-box. I feel faintly sick.

My traveling companion says I should open my house to the public and charge admission. This idea, I like. Because, actually, not many people have been to the house or seen the installation. I remember when some friends visited from England a few years ago. They said they felt they’d walked into a home magazine, but a very quirky one that didn’t exist, and they started taking pictures.

Maybe, I’ll enter the Christmas home tour in 2018. Maybe, I will turn my house into a very quirky Air B&B or furnished rental. Maybe, I will wait and think about it all another time. I have learned in this last year of tumult, that the picture becomes clearer in time, and the path forward sometimes opens like a ten cent child’s fan with a picture of the thing that means the most in the world to you.

The house is rented until sometime next year. The ceramic elephants and bakelite napkin rings will stand sentinel until I return. And the girl I once knew? She’s still around, and, I must admit, she has a little collection of thirty pence, tiny ceramic ladies on my mantlepiece in London. 

Bowie

When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time staring at the cover of Aladdin Sane. I loved looking at these time capsules left behind by the world my parents called "before you were born." The time I spent with David Bowie was time very well spent. My "Never Let Me Down" tape won't play anymore which is evidence of a friendship well worn.

My poetry mentor always said let other artists be your teachers. David Bowie showed up to school in a plastic suit and platform shoes. Thank you for staring back at me, Ziggy Stardust, for scaring the bejeesus out of me as Jareth in Labyrinth, for letting me back you up in my pajamas with my hairbrush microphone on "Day-In, Day-Out," and for being one of those supreme teachers of theatrical musical arts and glitter. 

Healthcare within the reach of artists, too

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act,
I finally have health insurance that I can afford.
Until today, health insurance was the single greatest expense in my monthly budget after food. Sometimes, I worried that I might be forced to go without healthcare to keep making art, or give up my dream and get a more traditional job in order to pay for healthcare.
Today, when I signed up, I discovered that I no longer have to face that choice.
I can still pursue my dreams
AND have healthcare, too. I am so happy I could cry!
Thank you, Mr President, and
all of those whose votes will change my life for the better.
Go sign up by December 15 if you want your coverage to begin on January 1. You may be just as surprised as I was that affordable health care is within your reach!!!
https://www.healthcare.gov

To be an artist, you have to fill your own shoes

Report on the occasion of leaving Los Angeles, California: When your cup runneth over with joy, sometimes you need to go stare at big old rocks. As our friend, Joseph, says, it's time for us to "be light and be salt." So, that's where we are headed today and for Thanksgiving -- to the land of big old rocks, Joshua Tree National Park. 

In some ways, we'll be coming full circle by driving back into that particular desert, because we were coming out of it two Mays ago when Dillon O'Brian called and invited us to the Malibu Inn to hear Moonalice. The terrible waitress at the Malibu Inn meant that Dave Way and Billy had to go find our drinks (even our austere water) and then they hatched the plan to have a recording session on my birthday. Billy doesn't generally remember about presents and holidays, but when he does, I get something like a whole recording session! Maybe I should send that waitress a thank you card.

I have always been a Jill of all trades. I have been a poet, beekeeper, painter, singer, sewist, booking agent, tour manager, journalist, graphic designer, travel agent, and accountant. When I was a kid, I was on math team, but also a ballerina. I went to a brainiac summer school for astronomy and sold my own book of poetry in the mall when I was 13. When I grew up, I was unwilling to give up any of these things. And with the encouragement of my parents, I found the one job that allowed me to combine all of the things I love. And shortly after I decided to be a performing songwriter, Billy appeared in my life. 

In the last year, and especially in the course of this Way Out West tour, I have, for the first time in my life, felt like a true working artist. Because there isn't really such a thing as singer-songwriter and storytelling school, I have always felt a bit unsure if I was qualified for my job. If I had wanted to be a nurse, gone to nursing school, and was now an RN, I wouldn't hesitate to think of myself as a Nurse. My schools were not only colleges and universities, but also children's theaters, football fields, symphonic halls, ballet bars, church choirs, and hard pews. But no one ever handed me a piece of paper that said I was officially a performing artist. So, I have been trying to grow into my own vision of what that calling would look like.

After hundreds of shows and 250,000 miles, five records and five quilt backdrops, something began to shift in me. I began to own my vocation right down to my red dancing shoes. 

And all of you have helped because you believe I am an artist and talk to me just as if I am. So thank you! Your friendship is one of the great joys of my life and so very nourishing.

Billy and I will be in the desert a few hours from now until Saturday, so we wish you a beautiful Thanksgiving and we send our friends in Canada and Britain love and warmth as well. 

Thank you to each and every one of our friends for being our light and salt. We love you. 

Photo by the wonderful, Amber Cross.