Manifesto update!

I was thinking it would be a good idea to check in on my manifest declarations and see if they still hold. Because I’ve noticed that often when I passionately declare my opinions, I’m talking out of my ass.

For instance – my last manifesto was all about doing it yourself and not fetishizing teachers into gurus and just getting on with it and learning stuff. DARE TO BE A PIECE OF CRAP, I believe I said.

And the example I used was how I was going to learn how to play piano on the old keyboard I found in my basement.

Yeah. Well here’s the thing: as it turns out it’s really HARD to learn piano that way. And I’ve been plunking away every morning for 5-10 minutes and then I go do something else. Which is fine. But it’s become clear to me that I’m never really going to learn piano that way.

So daring to be a piece of crap isn’t the best mantra for me to use if I want to dare to learn piano. Maybe DARE TO GET YOUR ASS IN MOTION AND FIND A TEACHER would be a better one.

Anyway. As for the items in my first manifesto:

- Still don’t want to work for anyone, but my unemployment runs out in a month or so and with it my noble intentions. I’m hoping I can hold out for a boss who isn’t insane.

- Still think we shouldn’t make excuses for Roman Polanski just because he’s a great artist. Though I have to admit I’ve moved a little into Michael Jackson territory with Roman: I’m not making excuses for his appalling behavior, but I can’t help feeling sorry for him. I don’t know if this makes me a good empathetic humanist or a bad feminist. Or both?

- Still love beets with every fiber of my being. In fact: I have developed a variation on my beloved Beet Blast: so you’re boiling the beets along with some carrots, celery and onion in a big pot of water, right? Well after 45 minutes you can remove the beets, chop them up and eat them with the broth! Or by themselves! I always thought they were too mushy after that much boiling but I suddenly realized – hey wait a minute, beets take a long time to cook. So 45 minutes of simmering and you’ve got a beautiful bright red broth, AND beautiful tender beets!

Also speaking of beets (I should have a weekly post devoted solely to beets), I just remembered this opening passage from Jitterbug Perfume which I have always loved, even before I had tasted a beet:

The beet is the most intense of vegetables.

The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

- Back to the manifesti: still a cryer. That is never going to change. In fact I’ve been thinking more and more about how useful & cathartic crying can be. Case in point: back in October we were rehearsing Everyone Who Looks Like You two weeks before opening, which is to say we were madly swooping and careening and wheeling in circles. I was trying to write a song based on screaming (oh, I see I’ve mentioned this before) and I’d gone through at least three distinct versions and every time people didn’t quite like it and I was getting more and more frustrated and in the middle of rehearsal I just burst into tears, cried out I’M SORRY THAT’S THE BEST I CAN DO and ran into the bathroom. It was so embarrassing. I stayed in the bathroom for a while, not sure what to do, and then walked back out expecting horrified silence. But instead everyone came up to me one by one and gave me a hug and apologized! And they hadn’t even done anything! Somehow by letting people see I was overwhelmed, we were able to let go of the tension that had built up around that stupid song, and I was able to see that in fact the pressure wasn’t coming from anyone except me (and after that we figured out how to fix the song, so it was a win win all around).

Of course, if I cried every rehearsal, that would be a problem. But once in a while, it’s a good idea to let your feelings roll over you, come what may.

So that’s where I stand. Looks like half of my convictions still hold water, and the rest have run out of steam (to mix my metaphors). Stay tuned for NEW random passionate declarations, coming soon.

On Being Inspired by Bad Art

Most of the time people talk about being inspired by good art, and being bored and turned off by bad art. But what about bad art that inspires you to make good art?

Maybe it sounds facetious but I’m serious. I’ve been thinking about this a lot. It’s true of any genre. Some of my best ideas have come to me when I was sitting through an endless monotonous play, or listening to a one note, cheesy singer-songwriter, or walking through a lame gallery with timid paintings and no guts on display.

In fact, one of the breakthroughs that allowed me to have more confidence as a songwriter was when I suddenly realized how many bad, boring, tuneless songs exist. I mean if you listen to hot country on the radio (which I love by the way) -- most songs aren’t even complete sentences or an actual melody. It’s a dude in a low voice speak-singing phrases that are shorthand for American country pride.

Like this:



Oh, and you have to listen to International Harvester. Actually I think this song is kind of good:



Oh god or this one. Trace Adkins is such a douche. They won’t let me embed the video but I highly suggest you go watch it so you can enjoy a totally racist and sexist video. Oh man I’m watching it now. The Asian dude strikes out, the pitcher does a karate kid move to make fun of him, then Trace gets up to bat and hits a home run and beckons to the slutty lady they’ve all been trying to impress. Then she tries to hit a few balls and can’t even hold up the bat. Wow. CLASSY, Trace.

Okay I’m getting off track. Point is, does that even count as a song? The answer is YES IT DOES. And once I realized that I didn’t feel like such a fake trying to write my own.

But since my field is theater and performance, I have to say that the bulk of my bad art inspirations come when I’m watching a horrifically boring play. Usually one that’s three hours and I can’t leave at intermission so I know I’m stuck there. Something about this distressing state of lockdown makes my mind go to a different plane. Solutions that had previously eluded me appear before me whole, something that wasn’t quite a song gels, an image of how whatever I’m working on could begin is suddenly clear. And little dancing chipmunks bring me cocoa and pie.

Now, this also happens when I’m on a long hike (the inspirations, not the dancing chipmunks). And I’d rather be on a long hike than sitting through bad art. But it is useful when I find myself trapped there with no escape.

How to Rock at Karaoke

Since I'm on a "how to" kick. And since singing is occupying too much brain space. I present to you: my SEVEN STEPS TO ROCKING AT KARAOKE.

Actually - I don't know that following these steps will guarantee that you become a karaoke star. They're really just my arbitrary, iron-clad rules for how one should approach karaoke. Are there other metals you can be clad in, if you're not absolutely certain? If so, I'd rather call these rules copper-clad.

COPPER-CLAD! If I ever form a clog-dancing a cappella women's celtic singing group, this is what we'll call ourselves. Not, as my dad suggested, LOVIN' COVEN.

Now, I should say before I go into the SEVEN STEPS: I am assuming that you are going out to sing karaoke with a group of good friends who will stand up and applaud you no matter what you do. God help you if you go by yourself. That is madness (though, scroll down to read the craziest karaoke story of my life, to find out what happens when you go karaoke-ing by yourself). It is much easier to be crazy and stupid if you have good friends around you cheering you on. AND BY GOD, I WANT YOU TO BE CRAZY AND STUPID. It is your inalienable right.

Step 1: Do not give a fuck. Attitude is the most important thing. If you have a crazy hat or scarf or some other costume element, wear it. The crazier the better. People will love it. Seriously, this trumps singing ability any day. You can be a great singer and bomb at karaoke by having no presence. You can be a terrible singer but rock out by being flamboyant. Presence is way more important than hitting the right notes.

Step 2: Pick a song you know backwards and forwards and love with all your heart. Say, “A Little Less Conversation, A Lot More Action.” There is a reason someone always sings a Neil Diamond song at a karaoke bar, and it’s because his songs are very easy. Same goes for anything by Phil Collins, Nancy Sinatra and Jimmy Buffett (bless his heart). But you’ll be fine if you pick something you sing along to on the radio or in the shower. Don’t think about it too much, just pick something. And word to the wise: be careful of Pink Floyd, Tina Turner and Janis Joplin. They are harder than you think.

Step 3: Sing it with gusto – but not so much gusto that your voice cracks. Keep a tiny bit of yourself pulled back so you can hear your voice and how it sounds.

Step 4: If you can do it without looking at the words, work in some basic moves – turning your back on the audience then whipping back around, laying down on the floor with arms outstretched. Again, it’s not precision that counts here, it’s guts and enthusiasm. Which is why people get drunk.

Step 5: Read the crowd. If you’re in a country bar, this might not be the time to bust out your favorite Mary J. Blige song. Are there a lot of old drunks at the bar? They might appreciate some Hank Williams. Do you find yourself surrounded by drunk frat boys? Dear god, this is not the time to sing Tori Amos (or maybe it is… I am a fan of the “sing a ‘fuck you’ song and walk out the door” technique, myself).

Step 6: Don’t repeat a song that you already rocked the shit out of the last time you were out. You will likely have a diminished effect. It’s better to move on to new terrain, and come back to that one when you’re in a new situation – a new crowd, a new town, after a 6 month absence. If you do the same song every time… I don’t know, it just feels like cheating. I recommend this formula: one new song, one core song.

Step 7: What to do if you bomb. Well, you know what? It happens to everyone. You don’t have any control, so you’re likely to bomb once in a while no matter how good a singer and performer you are. So bomb big. If you realize in the first 3 notes that you don’t actually know this song, sing it loud and sing it proud. Ask the crowd to help you out. Stop singing altogether and launch into a ridiculous dance routine. Go into the crowd and give the mic to the person who is singing along the loudest. Sing horribly, gleefully off-tune. Or you can always try speak-shouting with passion, that works sometimes.

Things to remember: some of the worst karaoke experiences I have had involved songs I thought I knew backwards and forwards. Some of the best I’ve had are with songs I was totally unsure about going in (or didn’t know at all). Of course, some of the worst were also songs I realized with a sinking heart upon hearing the first chords that I didn’t know after all. But whatever, the point is, either way it’s done after three minutes and the crowd doesn’t care that much.

And a story to bring this all together, entitled My Craziest Karaoke Experience:

Once I was at my favorite karaoke bar – Chopsticks III, the How Can Be lounge – and someone was celebrating a birthday with a huge party of friends, with a huge birthday cake sitting untouched on the table. A man walked in, and when his name was called he put a chair on the dance floor and proceeded to do a seriously bizarre version of “A Little Less Conversation, A Lot More Action.” He started out sitting in the chair and ended flailing around the room, screaming the song at the top of his lungs. When he was done, he put down the mic, grabbed the cake and walked out the door. Five minutes later the bartender asked if anyone knew who that guy was, because he’d smashed the cake on someone’s car and driven off. That has nothing to do with rocking it, it’s just a weird story. But man, even though that guy was genuinely crazy and he ruined that poor girl’s cake, it is the best karaoke story I have.

How to Write Songs

I didn’t write my first song until about a year and a half ago. I had thought of myself as someone who had no talent for songwriting for so long that I didn’t even realize that I had written a song until two months after the fact. People kept asking me, “who wrote that song?” and I would say, “oh, this friend of mine helped put the music together, and then I put some words over that.” And then they’d say, “so, you wrote it,” and I’d say, “oh no no no, I just took the words from this old fairy tale and rewrote them a bit.” Finally a musician friend of mine told me that this COUNTS AS SONG WRITING.

And so it started to dawn on me that I could write songs.

Like every other person my age, I can play 3 chords on the guitar and had tried my hand at writing songs before. They always sounded clumsy and too rhyme-y and embarrassingly sappy so I decided I didn’t have a talent for putting words to music.

But this was different. I’d set out to cover songs and make a weird performance piece – and somehow because I wasn’t trying to write a song, a song emerged.

Once I’d done that I realized that it was in fact quite easy to write a song. My favorite method – since it’s what got me started – is to take a line from a poem or song you love. Let it worm its way in your brain out of context, like a mantra. In my case it was this line, from the German fairy tale I was basing my performance on: where did you come from, enchanted girl?

So, I wrote a whole song called, “Enchanted Girl” with that line as its chorus. I stole all the words from the crazy fairy tale. I took the trippiest phrases and mashed them up out of context and changed things around to make it rhyme and work rhythmically with the music. Voila! A song. Turns out that’s totally legitimate!

Here's a picture from the book, by Heinrich de la Motte Fouque, illustrated by Arthur Rackham:



And here's a picture from my show. I'm just giving you some visuals here so you don't get too bored by all the blathering on about songs.



In general, I find copying a song you love to be a great place to start. Here is the great paradox: if you set out to make something original, it’s going to sound like a copy of someone who did it better anyway. But if you SET OUT to copy someone, people will notice your originality. Or compare you to someone you didn’t even know you were copying.

In my case, people keep talking about the influence of Bjork and PJ Harvey on my songs when here I thought I was ripping off Stevie Nicks. And to be perfectly honest PJ Harvey wasn’t really on my radar before people started comparing me to her. Then I had to find out so I wouldn’t sound like an idiot who didn’t even know which album I was ripping off.

Another thing I’ve learned: the less words, the better. Words in songs are a blunt force. They just need to grab you. For years I thought a song had to be all complicated but if you start with the most basic, simple point – say, I AM FEELING SAD TODAY – or maybe WE WILL ROCK YOU – it will get more complicated and nuanced the more you work on it. Usually. Or if it doesn’t you can keep it to yourself. I wrote a song, "Black Valley," which I thought was blunt and powerful but finally realized was only powerful to me. To everyone else it was just repetitive and boring. So I stopped performing it.

Anyway. Point is: I wish song writing weren’t so shrouded in mystery and that more people talked about how to do it.

Though it’s ironic that I’m writing about how easy song writing is today because at the moment I am struggling mightily with a song I’m trying to write for the new Hand2Mouth show, Everyone Who Looks Like You. It’s an attempt to capture the kind of frustrated yelling that comes out of a family fight. In, you know, song form. We’re calling it the Yelling song or the Screaming song but unfortunately right now it sounds more like the Groaning Zombie song or the Polish Funeral song. And all I can think about is how impossible it is and how little skill and experience I have as a songwriter. So… yeah.