my friend, to me, on dating and (I think) life:
do you hide your light, or cast pearls before swine?
My answer:
always.
the answer in note(card) form
4 people have
lovesexymoney
1.
touch me. touch my heart. poetry, baby cheeks, curls, smooth bald heads, ideals, principles, tears, pixie dust, deep women of experience, flowers, icy apple juice, smooching, John Cusack and a radio in the front garden. These things might me move. To the shepherd: this nymph would have said yes. I have said yes.
Books and babies and broads and boomboxes. Be still my butterfly heart. But you know what is melting my beeswax these days?
Numbers.
2.
My Gentleman Caller - oh, we go back and forth about the romance thing, but the friendly, loverly calls continue, always, every night, because they’re just so good - suggested something that he thought would rock my business. I was silent. He backpedalled and apologized as if he had stepped over some invisible boundary. You know, by talking about money. My money.
I said, actually that turned me on.
3.
Betty Dodson knows about sex and women and desire and the liberating thereof. She’s the author of “Sex for One” and famous for leading clit-finding group expeditions. I mean workshops. She’s not just a revolutionary, she’s the fucking revolution. Viva la Betty.
Betty Dodson systematically scraped away social, sexual expectations of women and even some feminist conventions to embrace her own desire and stroke her own fire. She talks about sex. She talks about porn. She talks about vibrators. She believe that she deserves pleasure and so do you.
Viva la Betty.
And until recently, Betty Dodson – sexual revolutionary and midwife of female masturbation – was all uptight about money.
4.
She worried. She scraped by. She stayed broke.
She tackled sexual repression and left financial repression right the fuck alone.
5.
So that’s what I’m thinking about this week, because I’m right there with Betty.
Sex: I walk that dog unleashed. Money: errrrrr, how awkward.
6.
This is interesting, because we’re pretty brazen in the blogosphere about why we’re here. To share, to love, to learn, to make some money. Uh huh.
So, good. Excellent. Let’s talk about it. We are and we do. Over and over and over again.
Kinda like sex, yes? Porn is everywhere, our pop stars skirt the porn thing, and sex sex sex sex sex. It is everywhere except in reasonable discussions. No wonder our kids are learning about sex from porn.
We should be really worried that our kids are learning about sex from porn.
It is, Alan Moore put it in his long and gratifying essay about the history of porn and art, titillate and condemn, titillate and condemn, titillate and condemn. Getcha all aroused and then make you feel ashamed. Again and again.
We do that, culturally speaking, with sex, and with money.
Money is everywhere. Money is status. Money gets you laid. You should get some more of that so you can get some more of that.
We’re soaked to the skin with messages about money, and challenges to get more of it. It is okay to talk about getting more of it, because that’s just industrious.
What’s a little less acceptable: to talk about the actual sums involved.
Even less acceptable, it seems: to talk about giving it away. We’re supposed to do our charity work under the cover of dark and never mention it in polite company. Never mind online.
Just like something else.
7.
There is no reason to be shamefaced about giving.
Charity: do it however you need to do it. In private. In public. With the lights on or off and with as many people as necessary. Or not. Solo is okay, too.
8.
Because it is a joy to give.
Sometimes there is clarity in generosity. Sometimes, when I don’t know what to do, when my own inner sanctum is a whirring hamster wheel - and that little rodent can run, I assure you – I take a breath and get out of myself. I give. I offer. I support. I compliment. I love.
9.
I am not going to be shamefaced and shuffling about my joy. any of it.
10.
And so, back to women and money and power and pleasure and Betty Dodson and the lovesexymoney revolution.
Sex and money can be avenues to empowerment. Own your liberation, then share it.
dowhatchalike.
do what feels right.
get hot ‘n bothered – about giving and receiving, money and sex. the numbers. the love. the self. the share.
Love in the Time of Las Vegas
On the flight to Las Vegas, Heather, my sassalicious/salacious friend who likes to front like she’s tough, cracked and cried and gushed about how much she loves her husband. To be fair, she’s terrified of flying and was flying (high!) under the influence of two Ativans and three vodka cranberries.
Please note: very very bad combination. Do not try this at home, or anywhere. It gets messy. Heather knocked my laptop off the seat tray and then knocked her drink into my purse and later knocked boots with her camera in the airport bathroom. To summarize: inadvisable.
I digress. This is part three of my Las Vegas trilogy. Las Vegas is all about money and sex and I’ve mused about the meaning of those things already. So now let’s talk about the place – other than Las Vegas – where money and sex unite and ignite: marriage.
Kelly: Do you get butterflies about Tyler? Or is he like an old shoe?
Heather: What kind of shoe are we talking about? Be specific.
Kelly: I don’t know. He’s your shoe.
Heather: Yeah, I do. Last time he went away…when he came back, I got the butterflies.
Kelly: Like your stomach flipped over?
Heather: I had been alone with the kids for three and half days/years. I was REALLY happy to see him.
Kelly: If Tyler wasn’t your husband, would he be one of your best friends?
Heather: If he talked more, or at all, sure…you know, we did the long distance thing before we got together. So I guess we were friends first.
Kelly: How did you talk on the phone if he doesn’t talk?
Heather: He talked then. He worked hard. We talked for hours and hours on the phone. That’s why we had sex on the first date. It was all that talking.
Kelly: Can I write that you had sex on the first date in my blog? Does your mother read my blog?
Heather: Is it in Canadian Living? My mother only reads Canadian Living.
Kelly: We should be fine.
I asked Heather this because she’s my sister from another mother except she’s a reformed tramp. (Reformed in the sense that she only slings it in one direction now because she’s happily married and them’s the rules, usually.) I ask Heather because she’s like me and she’s got what I want. But I ask other people these questions because I wonder – eternally, constantly, with every breath – if passion is a sprint, a marathon, or a long slow walk that keeps rockin’ fifty years later in twin rockers on the porch.
And because love and marriage are everywhere in Las Vegas.
The couple in the row behind us kissed all the way from Bellingham to Las Vegas. In Vegas, there were sex cards galore…and brides. I saw a bride kick a cowboy straight in the shins.
In my head, I cheered on the shin-kicking bride. (I’m a terrible pacifist.) Earlier, that same cowboy was insistently and persistently friendly with me while I tried to have a drink with my colleague and his wife. Cowboy desperately wanted me to meet his friend. He told me his friend had “mustache rights”. This meant nothing to me, but it meant something to my co-worker who got very, very upset.
After Cowboy left, I was brought up to speed on the meaning of mustache rights.
It is not a good pick up line.
Sometimes this human mating game is perplexing and other times just plain unfathomable. Thirty-sex years into it, I’m still figuring out the rules and I like them less and less the more I learn. And one thing that I have learned for sure is that love doesn’t play by the rules – hence our need to make them. We think codes and lines and boundaries and laws will keep us safe. But love is an outlaw.
And oh, how I love love.
Cowboy’s attempt to play drunken wingman for his mustachioed friend interrupted a great love story. My coworker and his wife were telling me how they met and married.
They were high school sweethearts who broke up when he went off to college. He graduated, got married and stayed married for twenty-four years. He got divorced and got married again for twenty-four months.
In the wake of his second divorce, he signed up at Classmates.com. A week later, he had a message from his former sweetheart, saying “I don’t know if you remember me…I’m married and living in Florida.”
He wrote back and told her about his life, his divorce, and his pending trip to Florida, asking “Can I take you and your husband to dinner? I’d love to catch up.”
She wrote back “Funny you should mention your divorce…I’m in the middle of a divorce, myself.”
He called her, and when she picked up the phone and it was like they had never stopped talking.
He went to Florida to see her. He started going to Florida every six weeks. Then every four. Then every two. Then he was out of airmiles and free trips and told her that it was time for them to live in the same place. She quit her job and moved to Washington, DC with him.
And then they got married – in Vegas – on January 1, 2003. Every year since then they end and start the year in Las Vegas, the place where they ended their days apart and started their life together.
My big, burly friend – who, a few days earlier at a company dinner introduced me to filet mignon and the Manhattan (steak and bourbon. I like ‘em. Who knew?) and explained to me in abrupt, gruff detail the meaning of Cowboy’s mustache rights – then leaned over to me and said, “I bet you didn ‘t know I was so sensitive, did you?
No I didn’t . But now I do. And I’m so glad I do.
This story – this long, interrupted, lost and found love story – ran honey through my veins.
It could be straight from the pages of Lost and Found Lovers. In a study of 1001 participants, Dr. Nancy Kalish found that lovers who reunite later in life end up staying together (78%) and have an astonishingly low divorce rate of 1.5% compared to the national average of 51%.
That seems to me to be good odds for a gamble, and better odds than most. When it comes to my heart, I like to know my numbers.
Months ago, I wrote that there is research correlating the length, success and happiness of marriages to length of courtship – but not in the way you might expect. The longer the courtship, the shorter the marriage. A courtship longer than thirty-one months predicts divorce within one to four years. Couples who marry in haste - nine to eighteen months after starting a relationship - make it past the seven year mark and report very high levels of marital happiness.
So – don’t trust me, trust Ted Huston, PhD. I’m just wondering about butterflies and new relationship energy and the recipe for happily ever after. So I ask around. I look around. I get around. I poke around in books and libraries and make queries with my bff, Google. And what I’ve noticed is that the happily loved-up people I know seem to have a couple of things in common: it was passion, right away and they liked each other. Like, really really like each other, like spending time together, enjoy each other’s company, and laugh a lot. They hang out. They would be friends even if they weren’t lovers. But they have to be lovers because of all that passion.
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Day 3. The scary, sad side of sex and Las Vegas. And people. Because it is made by us, for us.
I’m all about The Sex but Las Vegas is making me feel like a prude. And confused.
Sure, sex is a great recreational activity. It can have bows and tassels and feathers and giggles. It can also be a spiritual experience and a source of reverence. It is also an industry. I know this is not news. I knew it. But now I really, really know it.
On the strip there are people in bright coloured hoodies that say “Girls Direct” handing out business cards for escorts. The cards have naked women on them. These cards are everywhere, on every corner and scattered on the sidewalks. These cards freak me out. The whole thing freaks me out. I’m not even talking about the sex work. I’m thinking about the people handling and handing out the cards. There are women, who probably don’t have work papers, and who probably work all day at some low-paying job, who stand on corners at night – cold nights – and hand out sex cards advertising women for sale. This makes me sad.
I’m not sure if sex work, per se, makes me sad. It kind of does, because I exhalt sex. I wish it could be like that for everyone. I wonder about strippers and sex workers and porn stars – male and female – and wonder if all sex becomes a job for them. Off duty, do they still have loving, incandescent, transcendant sex? Or does it become boring and a chore and the thing you do for work? In other words, work.
So the sex cards and the newspaper boxes filled with catalogs of naked women have made the usually invisible sex work visible to me. And the money. The Las Vegas strip is all about the naked hustle. I liked it yesterday but today I’m overwhelmed.
Today has been weird. Today I was by myself which might have made me look like a stray or possibly prey. It brought out the predators. Some were just harmless, awkward, embarassing pick ups. Some were deeply unflattering drunken approaches. The worst was when I was walking just off the strip. A guy slowed down, pulled over, turned on the interior light and rolled down the passenger window. I thought he was going to ask me for directions. But then I realized that he had pulled up his shirt and was twirling his nipple.
What is that? Is that about sex? Is that really a pick up and does he really think that has a chance of success? Or is the thrill in the scary?
contemplating luxury and essentials and the space where they overlap
this is my second vacation this year. my second in four months. my second in five years.
when I go on vacation - vacate my usual routine – the truths about my life emerge. They stand up. They streak down the street and shimmy naked across the stage.
this is appropriate. I am in Las Vegas, which might be the official world capital of shimmying. (My people!) Our plane rejoined the earth in the evening and the city lit up the Nevada sky. It shimmered. It knocked me out. Long ago, my visit to the Vatican made me angry. The accretion of wealth in the hands of the few and the selfless selfish made me seethe through the Sistine chapel. My visit to Las Vegas – with its worship of the quick buck and its fake Venice and copied ceiling murals and faux Paris and wannabe New York – has me dazzled. There is something pure about pure money love. It is primal and visceral and naked when it is naked. I respect naked. That’s the truth.
and as I sit on the balcony of my gorgeous suite surveying the incandescent strip, I’m thinking about money and vacations and luxury.
vacations teach me about luxury. they teach me about essentials and sometimes the two are one.
once I had two babies less than two. when I gave myself permission to fantasize, my fantasy was this: to check into a hotel with a great bed and soft sheets and cable – oh cable – and sleep for eight hours, uninterrupted. mmmmmmmmmm.
and this vacation echoes and underlines that the reality of that fantasy. the most essential luxury in my life - besides love – is to sleep until I wake. unprompted. rested.
Years That Ask and Years That Answer. Stories, Ends, Beginnings, Fire, Moon.
Some of us hover
while we weep for the other
who was dying
since the day they were born
For ten days, a phrase has followed me around like a hungry kitten, mewing plaintively, quietly roaring, threading itself around my ankles, feinting, shadowing me. It wants to be fed.
Two Saturdays ago Lianne Raymond talked to me about women and community and creativity and art-hunger. She said, something is dying to be born.
Something is dying to be born.
It seems such a female thing to say: the flesh poetry of experience. A secret language traded between intimates of the violence of birth and glory of delivery. The wrenching of asunder and the joy of embrace. A story beaten in the pulse of mundane responsibility and cosmic love. Goddesses and bitches and sisters and women. We know this story. It is the story of generation.
It is the story of Kali, goddess of destruction, eater of time, protectress and creatrix.
It is the story of Eve. Of Lilith. Of my feminist friend, Ronna Detrick, who walked away from a church and a marriage but knows with her body, her mind and her faith that all of her leavings have led to profound findings.
It is the story of money. Of power. Of God. He who giveth, taketh away.
It is the story of sex and passion and love, all of which can destroy lives and create them. Women throw themselves on the pyre of love and of loss and say burn me up.
It is the story of Bertha, the mad wife in Jane Eyre who burns down Thornfield, and of the haiku necessity of ember, flame, and ash:
It is the story of cold, clear winter moons and of truths washed clean by icy, white light. It is the story of Foucault and forgiveness, of brooms and brushed floors, and revolution.
Revolution: 360 degees: all the way around. Return. Circles. Cycles. Seasons.
It is the story of winter and of spring, too. Of years, because there are years that ask questions and years that answer.
What – or who – is dying to be born in you?
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dec 1. full gorgeous moon. lift off.
Today is December 1, the moon is fat and white, and I’m dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight. Moondance. Moonshine. Star. The lull is bye.
I’ve heard it said that the moment you most feel like giving up is five seconds before you make it. Seth Godin calls it The Dip. Everyone tells you to be patient. Be still. Wait.
Patience is my struggle. It is always my struggle. I’m a passionista* and I feed on new and juju and vision and go! go! go!.
And yet I knew. This is my thick, constrained, chrysalis moment.
That winged knowledge helped me to ask, to express, to name:
I’m at a decision point career-wise and the right thing to do is just wait. I’m almost there. Persevere. Faith. patience. etc.
Yet I’m finding it tough to wait, and be patient, and trust. There are no sexy progress reports to file on that…I am an action-gal. I find patience and stillness a challenge. I crave the zoom.
waiting. and patience. the courageous thing is not always sexy.
And Randi Buckley, “bringer of hope and compassionate revolution” (in other words, “coach”) asked me:
What would make the stillness easier to bear?
What would make the stillness easier to bear?
It is not the first time I’ve been asked to contemplate and make my peace with quiet. Astarte, my goddess warrior friend, once asked me: How about being still?
Bah. Still. I run from you and all your zen-alicious zombie friends. I kick you straight in the shins and sing can’t touch this. (Hammer-style.)
Yet, everywhere I run, there you are.
And so I tried to answer Randi Buckley’s question with my body instead of language.
I did this because I needed to get out of my head. I needed to not parse and filter and sort and story-tell and make it all mean Something when Something just wasn’t ready to be meaningful yet.
Because that is the space that makes me crazy. The uncertain. My need for certainty leads me to make things certain, now. It makes me abandon projects and people and loves that ought to be sustained. I am more intimate with no than I am with maybe.
And so my mind was a trap. My body was the answer.
I learned this from Nathan Hangen, who writes:
When our times are desperate, our minds will do us more harm than good. So first…stop beating yourself up. Recognize the pain for what it is and know that it will pass. This isn’t the truth.
I knew this from reading World’s Strongest Librarian, where Josh Hanagarne beats up his body to free his mind:
During a squat session, my body is not happy. The next morning, my body is not very happy with me. But my mind is singing because I did something real. I wake up two days later and I know I am stronger. This gives a feeling of confidence and satisfaction that I have a hard time putting into words…
Our minds are busy places. How often do you really get to slow down and clear your head? In my own case, my mind is usually preocuppied with whatever shenanigans my body is getting up to on the Tourette’s front.
But just about everyone I know has a freaking fire drill going off in their head most days. They never get a chance to clear their head, they just add to the clutter. Always reacting, with little time for big picture thinking.
Training can bring clarity because it puts you in the moment. It roots you in the present reality and if your head is anywhere else you’re not working hard enough.
I knew this from my conversations with Lindsey from A Design So Vast. She finds moments of freedom from her “monkey mind” in running and yoga. I get it from sex.
And people. I needed to be with people, to listen to their out-loud words instead of my own frantic, silent chatter.
My friends came over. They brought their own martini glasses, made pretty, approving noises about my house and gave good gossip. About sex. I talked a lot.
I gave myself my friends and I gave myself three days off from writing. I gave myself lunch with women who’ve walked this road a little further than I. And I heard that I’m doing just fine.
And Friday gave me two guest posts on big bad beautiful blogs. The gods of traffic favoured me and so did the ones who make it rain, rain, rain, rain.
And the stillness passed. The moon rose. The New Year looms and shines and shakes her hips.
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passionista: AbiolaTV is a “goddess passionista”. She owns the word but I borrow/steal/appropriate it with abandon and enthusiasm.
Art, Money, Courage. Let’s Get Some. Meet Bryce Widom.
Reunion by Bryce Widom
Penelope Trunk writes that it is childish to expect that you can change careers without changing salaries.
She’s right. I know she’s right.
Which is why I love to hear stories of people who think “what the hell” and do it, anyways.
The Bigger Life Beckons. It Calls. It Won’t Be Quiet.
Bryce Widom is that story, and he tells it well.
I connected with Bryce – where else? – on Twitter. Gwen Bell tweeted his blog post celebrating the two month anniversary of his new painting-for-a-living gig.
(I LOVE Twitter. When Twitter and I first met and started flirting, I was a skeptic. I wrote a skeptical piece about it. Not lifechanging, methinks, I thought. The revolution will not be twitterized.
I was wrong. Maybe not about the revolution, but Twitter makes it possible to talk, right here, right now, to people and connect through our ideas.)
And Bryce’s blog, and his online gallery of romantic, edgy, soulful, playful pulpy paintings connected with me. I wanted to know more.
I asked him for a thirty minute interview and we doubled that, and then some. We talked and we talked and we talked, about beautiful, high-level, heart-centered, soul-searing stuff.
In other words, we talked about his work. His process. His paintings.
We talked about the things generated by contractions. (I’m being fancy. We talked about The Recession.) In a weird way, Bryce might be grateful for the recession. It makes him appreciate, profoundly, the money that people are willing to part with to buy a painting. Because for many, it is a sacrifice. Really and truly.
He also thinks that constraints are generative. For example, the Boulder, Colorado housing market is shaky. Brand-new condos are sitting empty in lonely buildings so an enterprising, community savvy real estate agent fills them with paintings and holds open houses/art shows. Bryce just participated in his second space-for-sale/gallery night. The gallery nights fill these hollow unsold spaces with people, life, art and aspiration. Maybe it helps potential buyers feel the life in the space, and buy. Or maybe they’ll buy a painting. In any case, people are coming together and vibing on community in a contracted economy.
Speaking of contractions, and contracting, vanishing paycheques, did you have fear around that? you know, like about eating?
Bryce: Heck yeah!
Oh thank goodness you said that. Now I can like you, not just because your paintings are good and they speak to me (they are and they do) but because you’re real and you’re truthful.
On Mouths to Feed – Or Being One, In The Name of Your Art
Here’s the thing:
Self-help gurus and now-commercially successful artists counsel us to do what we love and the money will follow, jump and the net will appear, quit your job and let the chips fall where they may, face the fear and do it anyway…
And, I suppose, they’re right. It seems like a lot of them have done just that, so they’re speaking from experience. They’ve propped their TVs up on cardboard boxes or lived in unheated squats in Berlin or had the roof cave in and couch-surfed.
But you know what else I’ve noticed? Very few – if any – did it on their own. Lots of them were married, or had partners or lovers who were bringing home paycheques and, presumably, groceries. Hopefully these artiste-lovin’ lovers and partners and spouses also ponied up moral support.
That’s not to say: lookit you, you had help – because not only is that NOT a bad thing, it’s a mofo great thing. It may even be beside the point entirely - probably all of them could have done it without a partner. They would have found a way, because they had to. That’s the thing about art, or a calling. You do it no matter what, because it owns you.
But – wonders the single mama - doesn’t having another salaried adult make the jumping and hoping-net-will-appear more possible?
It is a bit paradoxical that I’m ruing my lack of a husband as an obstacle to achieving my artistic dreams. There was a time where what a woman writer needed to create was a room of her own. And – probably – she needed to be single.
I have a whole house of my own and I’m kinda thinking that in order to keep it, I need a breadwinner. I’m willing to put out.
Of course, there is a danger in comparing your journey to the cruises and mountaineering of others. There is a danger in wanting someone else to carve out your path, ahead of you. That’s your job.
But there is also truth here, too. I want to know, for real, how it was done. I like high-altitude exhortations that arose from hard-lived, hard-won experience. I want to know the nitty-gritty of that hard-won experience. I want to know how gritty it got. I want to know if I’ve got enough grip.
I want specifics.
Money. Specifically. It Always Comes Back to Erin Brockovich.
The truth is tiny.
Artists know this. That’s why a painter can anguish over a detail, a brush stroke, a smudge, and paint over a character five times until it becomes the bear it was maybe meant to be and allow the demon Perfectionism overwork a painting until it is painful. (Bryce says so.)
Writers know this. That’s why we eavesdrop. The smallest details are the whole story.
The writer of Erin Brockovich, the movie, knew this too. Erin Brockovich is a great story and a great example of how tiny truths tell the entire tale.
George: Can I have your number?
Erin Brockovich: You want my number? Which number do you want?
George: How many numbers you got?
Erin Brockovich: Oh, I got numbers comin’ outta my ears. For instance: ten.
George: Ten?
Erin Brockovich: Yeah. That’s how many months old my baby girl is.
George: You got a little girl?
Erin Brockovich: Yeah. Yeah, sexy, huh? How ’bout this for a number? Six. That’s how old my other daughter is, eight is the age of my son, two is how many times I’ve been married – and divorced; sixteen is the number of dollars I have in my bank account. 850-3943. That’s my phone number, and with all the numbers I gave you, I’m guessing zero is the number of times you’re gonna call it.
That’s specific. Specifics are the story. Danielle LaPorte writes about Erin Brockovich, too, and gets similarly real about wanting specifics:
If only we were so real at business conferences. Venture capital, ROI, cash flow, cost of goods – there’s always lot’s of strategy talk, but rarely a drill down into specific dollars. So did you raise a million bucks or did you put $10k on your credit card? What does “turn a profit” really mean? How close is a ‘close call’? Facts give perspective.
Bryce Widom. Artist. Real. Specific.
So. I like Bryce Widom for being real. For being specific.
For saying he is worried. For talking about asking for loan from a loved one and feeling gratified rather than shamefaced about receiving it. For feeling like it was a testimonial.
For feeling that the message inscribed in money is this: I believe in you.
For stepping into his larger life, because he had to, and for being honest that things are tight, and hard, and he’s worried, and he got a loan, and that’s wonderful – and you know why? Because that means he has support. Social support. Someone – and, I think, a LOT of someones – believes in him.
And that is everything.
Because we’re all in it together, really.
The Walls Come Tumbling Down, 2.0
Bryce and I talked about this wild and wide-ranging togetherness and support for essentially solo pursuits. It is unprecedented for artists and writers to have such a wide, real-time audience.
Let’s admit it. We’re creators, which means we’re praise-whores (I may be speaking for him, here. At no point did he say he is a praise-whore. That’s all me). We create because that’s who we are and what we do and the urge is tyrannical and will not unseize our throats. But for whom do we create?
For an audience.
For you.
And, it used to be, that we laboured alone, in garrets and attics and basements and cellars, emerging, pale and starving, for gallery shows or book signings. Then we got filled up on fat words and cheap wine and retreated the cave and hoped we’d ate enough praise berries to survive the winter. To sustain.
Now, we can get fed every day. We can connect with our people.
The proliferation of awesomeness will be fed. I hereby eat my skeptical words - because some day you might find you are hungry/and eating most of the words you just said – and the revolution will be twitterized.
The Art of Commerce, and Vice Versa
Bryce’s idea for 1,000 views of God is commercially genius. These paintings are priced at $150 and are affordable, accessible, and steady source of revenue.
They’re selling. He’s at #20 and only six of those are still available (‘course, there’s more coming…). He’s recently added a gallery of $30 prints from his chalk originals. This is intelligent marketing. He’s got his big fancy schmancy works that cost $1,900 but he’s still covering off all the price points. He’s making his art accessible and making sure he can connect with as many people who like his work as possible.
Because here’s the truth about being an artist: you need to be an entrepreneur. It might be a more personal and enmeshed business than most, because you’re not selling widgets, and more inflamed as well, because you’re not selling widgets.
(no slur on widgets or widget makers. we need widgets! my car runs on widgets! please keep manufacturing widgets!)
I wrote about this. Penelope Trunk wrote about this. Amanda Fucking Palmer wrote about this. Chris Guillebeau wrote an entire guide about this. (If you make a living as an artist or a creative, or want to, it is a really useful primer and is chock-a-block full of real-life case studies. People really do this.)
You, and Us. The Case Studies.
People really do this. And you can do it, too.
To start: get yourself a social media goddess.
I did. So did Bryce Widom. We were encouraged by two wise women to use the force of social media for good. They’re both part Yoda, only prettier. Obviously.
Sometimes it only takes one person to open your eyes to another world and affirm your choice and confirm your talent and even introduce you to a slew of people who will do the same thing and so on and so on…
So a social media goddess is a great thing. A tribe is even better. The first can show you that the second exists.
But that one person who can change your life?
You.
Together. We’re all in it together.
The End, or More Likely, The Beginning
To recap: There are lots of talented, beautiful artists (like Bryce Widom) and writers and creatives making healthy, happy livings for themselves and their families. It doesn’t have to be a choice between the garret and the double garage*.
I hope. I really do.
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* I don’t mean ‘living in a garage’. I’m using the house-with-double garage as symbol of regular life with regular salaries. I am, however, totally open to deconstructing everything a double garage represents.
And, for the record: single garage. I’m so noble.
Prostituting My Cleavage. Unpaid. (Apparently I’m Very Bad At This.)
It’s been two weeks. My newer, hotter, more authentically me’er blog is suddenly making me uncomfortable. It’s all sex sex sex sensual massage cleavage lookit me I’m so trampy I HEART THE PATRIARCHY blah blah blah.
Ewwwwww. Who chose this brand? Who’s brilliant idea was this? I’m going to fire my people. That agency sucks. ass.
I have no people. I have a genius graphic designer, but I don’t really “have” her because we’re both pretty clear that arrangements like that aren’t legal OR ethical.
So it is me. This brand is alllllllll me.
And I’m getting lots of feedback on my approach.
For example, when I posted a picture of my actual – not existential – cleavage, some weird gorgeous degenerate with great cleavage and a wardrobe full of skimpy shirts (I know because I may or may not see them daily because she may or may not live downstairs) emailed me (instead of coming upstairs?) to lovingly, gently, stridently encourage/command me to stop “prostituting your cleavage”.
(Definitional problem. I am not getting PAID. Does that make it better or worse? And hello, pot.)About the site redesign and sexy new brand, though, mostly I get a belly laugh and “YES! It is so you!”
Yeah, it is. No word of a lie.
I’m all about The Cleavage and The Sex and The Money and The Thinking (usually about The Cleavage and The Sex and The Money…hence the accusation of virtual prostitution?).
My brand is therefore authentic, and authentically problematic.
I want to tell you why, complete with case studies, but I’m getting irritated cautioned by an inner dialogue with my imaginary Gretchen Rubin.
In case you missed it, the real Gretchen Rubin reminded me not to be snarky critical of other writers and bloggers (but not Chris Brown, it is totally okay to criticize him because he’s not even a real person and I might be putting words in her mouth) because one day I’m going to go to Blogher and be wildly snubbed by all my imaginary friends (again, words in mouth, maybe). Also it is just wrong.
Gretchen Rubin is my Jiminy Cricket.
Hold on while I put Gretchen/Jiminy in the bell jar. I mean s/he’s right, I know s/he’s right, but there is a point here that needs to be made.
The Bloggess (Jenny Agita) and Dooce (Heather Armstrong) and the (former) Childless Whore (Heather Havrilesky) and all of us pretty solidly* middle class white women bloggers use our hot-stuffishness as window dressing. It gives us an edge. You think I’m so surburban soccer mom-ish but really I’m a whore! I can call myself a whore because no one else would dare, ever! Because I’m fucking respectable, y’all!
See, that’s it.
If I wasn’t a good girl, I couldn’t be an unrepentant bad girl.
Like, if I was an actual sex worker – or just less privileged – this blog would be getting a different kind of feedback.
- Which means I’m appropriating scandal to give myself ‘edge’ while insulating myself from the real consequences and criticism that would be directed at me if I were anything other than who I am: white, white collared, and middle class.
- Which also means, quite possibly, that I am rhetorically reinforcing the “middle class white mothers, good” and “sex workers and/or non-middle class un-white mothers, bad” thing.
(Imaginary) Gretchen Rubin/Jiminy Cricket has a few pressingly urgent things to say:
GR/JC: You might want to make it clear that you don’t think Dooce and the Bloggess and (former) Childless Whore are willfully contributing to the marginalization of sex workers and that they just run around calling themselves offensive, sexist names and that’s the extent of their contribution to the world. For one thing, you fucking love them. Also there’s a whole school of thought/action about reclaiming slurs to reduce their power. And these women are ridiculously funny and imaginative, creative writers. And, if you’re not going to say so on principle, be pragmatic. They have cult followings. Someone will HURT you. And please please please leave Naomi Dunford out of this discussion. She has a shaved head.
GR/JC: You should also mention that Heather Armstrong writes about post-partum depression (up yours, Mr. Cruise!) and brushes with cancer. She is a (anti?) cancer ambassador. She writes about real, messy life and all the scary points and makes it amusing. In short, she’s an uberbitchy public service announcement.
GR/JC: Heather Havrilesky -
[Kelly interjects: my formerly slutty married friend Heather is frank and bitchy and pro-alcohol and in shock that she has two kids too! It’s a trend. Raw, funny, sexy, begrudgingly domestic women are always called Heather! Did you guys go to Catholic school, too? OMG there was a MOVIE about the three of them when they were teenagers! Except in the movie they were bitches. OMG IT WAS ABOUT THEM!]
GR/JC: (Sighs) - Heather Havrilesky makes TV intelligent. If that’s not a PSA, I don’t know what is.
GR/JC: Jenny Agita wrote about attending a Planned Parenthood press conference which implicitly means she is a gender rights revolutionary, worships Joan Walsh, makes fun of republicans/her husband, all while living in Texas. She’s bravery incarnate. She’s a fucking hero.
(The mouth on my imaginary Gretchen Rubin! She’s such a bad ass!)
(After just typing JC repeatedly, I realized that Jiminy Cricket, an official conscience – the blue fairy dubbed him so! – has the same initials as Jesus Christ.
As does John Chow.
I digress.)
To recap: I’m not entirely comfortable about copping a little cachet and fleshing out my online identity based on a sexist, pandering-to-the-patriarchy, lady in the street/freak in the bed formulation.
And, sometimes, I think this is what the mommy/drinking/blogging/whoring thing is about. We use alcohol and sex as short hand for youth and freedom. We use it to indicate that suburban, middle-class mommydom hasn’t paved over our multifaceted identities. We use it to say, I’m still a person, dammit.
I worry about this.
I even worry about being unapologetically, publicly sexual herein (how unapologetic is that, really?) because maybe one day there will be a child custody battle and my blog will be used as evidence as to my unrepentant sluttery and my very bad children will be taken from me. Unlikely, because who would want them?** but you know, I worry.
Also: I’m not married so my adventures don’t have “acceptable” stamped all over them. Like, it is okay to be pretend to be trampy within the context of a heterosexual, legally-binding union, but not okay to ACTUALLY be trampy (ie unmarried, or even worse, DIVORCED, aka me).
Take, for example, The Bloggess and heroin. She can write about heroin pantsuits (and I’m sooooo glad she did) but I’m a little more careful about this sort of thing because I’m not married. Seriously. It is not a huge leap, in our cultural imagination, from selfish-don’t-need-a-man-manhating single mama to unrestrained intravenous drug user and probable cleavage-prostituter. So I’m careful about the pharmaceutical thing.
To recap: I am off the meds. Entirely.
To recap, again: I’m worried that my blog/brand has strayed a little from my noble intentions. I was kind of aiming for Mae West with a graduate degree, if she had kids, remorselessly gained a lot of weight and lived in the suburbs. Sexxxxxy.
Instead, I’m wondering: is mommy blogging – and my brand? – about acceptable, respectable, middle-class, grown up girls gone wild?
Gawd, I hope not.
But if it is, I hope it makes money.
It probably will. I’ve heard there is a successful franchise dedicated to this very idea. Less the ‘grown up’ bit.
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* I’m tenuously, nail-breakingly, clutching-at-branches-whilst-falling-off-the-socioeconomic-cliff middle class.
** I didn’t really mean that. I’m sure lots of people would want them. Their father, for example, feels quite strongly about them. I do too. I even want another one, to replace the bad one. There is an exchange policy, yes?
Existential Cleavage: How much do you love me? And who’s in charge?
I wrote many a word about what Cleavage is all about but I think two people captured it even better than I did.
Aidan Donnelly Rowley gushed a little about Lindsey’s piece on Meaning (well-warranted gushing. Beautiful, thinky piece) and contemplated our ”existential cleavage“.
Gawd, I love a smart, overeducated woman with ivy league insecurities.
And the lines Jenny cited this week from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love captured it, concisely, briefly, simply:
There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history.
How much do you love me? And who’s in charge?
That’s it, exactly.
Sex, money, meaning. The lines that shape us.
Sex: how much do you love me?
Money: Who’s in charge?
Meaning: What does love mean? What is power? Who’s got it? Why? Why not?
Elizabeth Gilbert made that point, all entertaining-like, in two lines. I wrote an entire essay and only barely sorta got in the neighbourhood near it.
This is why Elizabeth Gilbert is a bestseller and I am not. Well that, and I haven’t written a book. (Mmmm, sure, that’s EXACTLY the problem…)
Existential Cleavage, The Wannabe Narrative
Speaking of books, and authors, (nice segue, yes?) Gretchen Rubin told me (in an interview for forthcoming piece that is absolutely kicking my ass and refusing to be corralled into a tidy essay) that despite all the blog-to-book hoopla, publishers are a bit wary of bloggers and narrative. In the context of a book deal, and in publishing circles, she thinks that
there is some skepticism about bloggers. Books and blogs are very different mediums. Can a blogger write a book that hangs together as a narrative?
The narrative. The journey. The frame. It is something I’ve been turning over in my mind, without the frame of framing up a book. I’ve been thinking about writing, and blogging, and storytelling and narrative.
It is the occasion for this post (a check-in: where are we in the story?) and related to my teeth-gnashing about being called a blogger.
Gretchen and I talked about this, too. Or maybe I did. I told her that my inner-print snob had to go lie down on the sofa with a damp cloth pressed to my brow every time someone calls me a blogger. Which I am, of course, but…
I’m a writer, dammit. (The blog is just a medium!)
I think, possibly, that I’m having a social media-induced identity crisis.
I love blogging, I frickin’ adore my readers, blogging has been really, REALLY good to me – even life saving – but I might not believe that I’m a Writer (even though people pay me to write for them) until I have a book published.
In short: I probably wouldn’t mind if someone referred to me as a ‘novelist’ or a ‘memoirist’ or a ‘feminist’.
I digress.
In addition to her official, seriously useful advice to All Future Authors (I promise, I WILL finish this bastard piece soon), Gretchen also told me to avoid being snarky.
This was good advice, and tricky advice because I fancy myself a social critic. It forced me to think about people I might criticize even though I love them madly. These are people I really respect. They’re part of the grand social project and when I think through those social outlines it is inevitable that I’ll question them, and their actions.
And then that led to my shortlist of people who are just too easy to criticize. It was also the occasion for my second Tyler Perry piece. I’m sorry, Tyler.
Some of you thought I was waffling and liked my snarky razor sharp critique better. I’m sorry, dearest readers.
Do You Love My Cleavage? How Much?
And did you read Josh Hanagarne’s piece, I Don’t Need You, A Love Story?
This piece hooked me, or gutted me, if I’m going to use fishing metaphors (why am I using fishing metaphors???), because in the past I have, maybe, possibly, perhaps, very definitely railed against exactly this idea:
(Did I just quote myself, at length? Note to Self of a few paragraphs ago: A person with enough ego to do that is clearly NOT having an identity crisis.)I’m amazed at how tentatively mid-life adults approach relationships; at how we compulsively risk-manage and look for red flags (and invent them); how we’re supposed to be finished products who’ve worked on themselves and are ready for a relationship (that would be the most boring person on earth, and I’m totally not sleeping with him)….[and]how we’re supposed to be so self-contained that we want a relationship but don’t need one…
But that – meeting as finished products and being the most boring man alive -wasn’t what Josh was talking about.
Josh wrote that when he got married he was a fixer-upper and he’s only gotten his shit together in the last year and now that he has started the renovations the house is a sexy, sexy place to be (I’m paraphrasing wildly). So there is a space where Josh and I are talking about the same thing, I think. That space might be called maturity. Maybe a Venn diagram would help.
I really do learn things from my guest post authors. Jenny, for example, also makes killer bell curves. You should check them out.
And oh yes, the Hundredaire shirt was a raging success. This week my imaginary t-shirt business with Jenny sold TWO tshirts, one to me (I really, really do not understand business) and one to our Twitter buddy, Charles, who said the shirt has magical powers and as soon as he put it on, he could feel the hundreds.
Dearest Readers, are you listening? This shirt will attract hundred dollar bills to you and they will stick to it like it is covered in invisible velcro! In fact it IS covered in invisible money velcro! Charles said so! It is basic Law of Attraction theory! The Law of Attraction is bullshit! FYI!
Charles, getting richer by the wear...
So that’s our gratuitous shot of cutie millionaire (or will be, now that he has the right attire) of the week, Charles.
Next week I’ll show you a photo of Mr. Stephen Kelly of London, UK, who bought a Porn t-shirt and will be sending me a photo to document the extent of my fashion influence on homosexual residents of Britain.
So, basically, to paraphrase Stephen’s words in the most offensive, fun way possible, I’m now Queen of the Gays, UK.
I’m so excited! I hope Cher won’t be mad.
More Cleavage(s)…
And so, in related developments, as I mull on sex, money and meaning and essential, universal (hahahahaha) life conundrums, here’s what’s coming next week:
- Faith, feminism and cleavage. Obviously.
- Toggling as a theory and practice in blogging and possibly life.
- Blogging and sex.
- My thoughts on some essential conundrums of North American, middle class family life (ie mine so therefore essential but probably not universal. Universal is like objective. Be wary.).
- My faux midlife crisis.
- And an interview with Bryce Widom on money, art, courage and all-around wonderfulness (that’s him. I can’t gush enough).
This last is really urgently interesting to me (and hopefully to you), because ’tis the pending season of my discontent.
That’s a fancy way of saying I’m contemplating new career ventures, prone to seasonal depression, and I’m Queen of the gays/non-sequiturs.
My place in the world (aka ‘my blog’) just feels different right now. Although my statistics thingy was broken/unplugged this month, which means I can’t tell for sure if my new brand
- and of COURSE I’ve already got ISSUES with my brand, and I’ll tell you more, later, in approximately 2000 quick words -
and brilliant site redesign (by Amanda Farough) are capturing more traffic, my intuitive sense is that my blog has – to borrow inimitably weird language from the loopy Havi Brooks whom I absolutely need as my business mentor – biggified.
(And this sense is augmented by very important empirical evidence. The Bloggess commented on my blog! Twice! And John Chow turned down/ignored my implied marriage proposal because he’s got moral issues with bigamy, apparently, which means I’m FAMOUS!)
All of this is FANTASTIC.
In the last several weeks, I’ve received more offers to do interesting work with more interesting people than I have the capacity to accept. It isn’t stopping me from saying yes yes yes RIGHT THERE YES, but it means I probably (definitely) have to redesign my life to make space for all this juicy opportunity.
That’s exciting. It is almost scary, but not really, because I have an unwavering faith that it will all be okay and that even if it is not okay it will still be okay.
Given this weird zone I’m walking through right now, walking with and talking to people who’ve meandered purposively down this path a little further than me is necessary, and revealing. And inspiring. I have questions. Hence, interviews. And more questions.
Cleavage, Cracks, The Cosmos, and Questions
On questions, big and little, mundane and cosmic: A twitter friend told me something that I think is true.
The answer to every question is yes.
Do you want coffee? Do you want fries with that? Are you ready to go? Have you seen my car keys? Did you bring your backpack? Did you make your bed? Is the project on schedule? Does this look okay? Shall we have a baby? Want to have sex? How ’bout a sensual massage? Was I speeding? Will you let me off, anyway? Can I have a raise? Do you love me?
Yes.
That’s the answer to pretty much any question and that’s why we ask questions. Affirmation. Social lubricant. We need it.
That’s why I’m talking to (and writing about) artists and creatives about making leaps into innerpreneurship. I want to know that it is possible. That I will be able to pay for my kids’ swimming lessons (and food, and shelter) if I scrap the salaried thing.
Yes?