Not for the Sinless
Dec. 17th, 2020
Jul. 9th, 2009
10:27 pm - no one owns words
I wrote an amazing entry yesterday about throwing things away, but my blackberry lost it. Perhaps I'll recreate it some day, but not today. Yesterday I was throwing things away to make room for Kayla in my apartment and today the old bank statements and broken picture frames salvaged from the street and ticket stubs and post-it notes have all been hauled away by the trash men.
I am proud of myself, the packrat, who holds on to things after they have stopped being useful (if they were ever useful), for remembering that moving into someone else's established living space is hard. The transition from "mine" to "ours" involves cleaning out the closets and getting rid of piles of papers and finally trading in all those pennies I've been collecting from the street. I am throwing things away and I doubt I will miss any of it.
That was yesterday.
Today I'm thinking of private jokes and the created languages of groups. I'm thinking of how possessive I get of the in-jokes and how when I see something that was MINE that I shared with YOU being shared by all of your other friends, it bothers me. It shouldn't. Language is free, and anyway, I stole the joke or the phrase from HER or HIM, and it was OURS before it was OURS, if you know what I mean. And before that, the person I borrowed it from said, "... really?" and "like you shouldn't know from" and "obvi" to someone else who understood exactly what those phrases meant and lobbed the responses back as fast as lightning.
I'm less possessive of places. I take every person who stays in my house to Tiny Cup, the cafe I first fell in love with with Kim Vermillion last fall. And as much as I will always associate Kim with Tiny Cup, I don't hesitate to take new people there. Sharing the experience doesn't make the original any less OURS.
Language is different for me. A "your mom" joke is less tangible than a cup of tea at a particular table, but I don't mind if you eat cupcakes with someone else as long as you don't use our slang while you're doing it.
But when a relationship ends, I can't take back my inflection the way you took back your favorite sweater.
No one owns words.
Love,
Beth
Jul. 7th, 2009
01:59 am - On Transformations
Someone asked me the other day if I am much different now than I was two or three years ago or if the mid-twenties are a period of relative stagnancy when compared to the teens. I don't know what more I can say than this:
At work, summer 2007:
At work, summer 2009:
Love,
Beth
Jul. 6th, 2009
10:24 pm - On Tattoos
I had an appointment to get a new tattoo today. I thought about it all weekend. I debated getting new art at all--- I hadn't really considered what I would get, assuming the perfect thing would occur to me immediately before, like it often does. But what if inspiration didn't strike?
I think back to my first tattoo, which will, I think, turn ten years old this fall. It's a tiny planet on my chest, chosen from a wall of flash in a shop I wouldn't set foot in now that I know better. I've toyed with the idea of covering it, but am not sure it deserves to die just because I'm not the person I was when I was seventeen. That person was real and she had genuine reasons for choosing that tattoo and it isn't her fault that she didn't think about how it would travel lower as age and gravity affected her breasts.
(The "artist" part was sharpie, but that, too, was a discarded permanent idea.)
I waited more then seven years to get another one. In between I had ideas--- PLENTY of ideas. Tattoos I almost got but didn't include: a rainbow, a naked woman, the masks of comedy and tragedy, a TRIBAL version of the masks of comedy and tragedy, a frog, my ex-girlfriend's name, a tree, a star of David, a penny from 1982, lyrics from First Orgasm by the Dresden Dolls ("i am too busy to have friends, a lover would just complicated my plans"), a chameleon, the starship Enterprise, and the words "lost," "clever," "lucky," "fate," "yes," "secret," "kindness," "remember to breathe," and "mom" (in various languages.)
But none of those tattoos demanded life. Instead, one night I ate Indian food with KT and got the words "aut viam inveniam aut faciam" tattooed around my wrist. It means, "I will either find a way or make one" and I got it right after Amanda hired me. A sign of my new life and a sentiment that has served me well ever since.
The next one was the key, which turned a year old on July 1st. I'd first seen it in a dream, an important one, and impulsively got it three days later. That key changed my life. People ask me about it, what does it mean, and I tell them different stories. Usually I tell them about how an airport security man asked me that question and I told him I have it so I can open any locked door I may encounter. That's part of the story, for sure, but the key... it means all sorts of things. Keys are highly symbolic objects and I challenge anyone who has ever debating giving a set to a lover to say otherwise. 
Exactly six months after that, because I believe in anniversaries, I got another. "nemo perit," graciously translated by a Latin teacher. "no one dies." Not a declaration of immortality or spirituality, as some have thought, but a reassurance that no matter how badly I fuck up, I am not a brain surgeon and no one dies. This one is six months old now and it too is a reminder. It's a post-it note on my forearm. 
The day I got "nemo perit" I had a few options in mind, and chose in the morning before I went to the studio. I was trying out Joy Rumore, an artist I'd found through ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
zaarwin_devolve. She inked the phrase and touched up my key and I knew I had found My Artist.
In mid-June, Joy started my backpiece with a lit match on my shoulder. It will grow when she is back to work in September after she takes a few months off to heal from surgery. It's the first tattoo I do not regularly see and it does not seem entirely real. It's more about aesthetics than deep meaning (although it has that too) and it was, ironically, the tattoo I spent the most time thinking about. 
>
Getting a tattoo is an important thing to me. It's hugely symbolic and while I may do it impulsively, I do not do it lightly. When I woke up this morning I was scattered all over the map emotionally and I doubted I would do it. I would hold Kayla's hand while she did and tell Joy to keep my deposit.
This weekend was hard. Old fears were reawakened. Balances shifted and what had been "okay" became "too much" and I made changes in my life. Sunday night, I felt sad and unstable. I curled up in bed and Kayla laid next to me as I hovered on the edge of tears. She did her best to cheer me up but I was half-checked-out. I suffered strange dreams all night and woke up tired.
This afternoon Kayla and I walked the two miles to Joy's studio. We dropped off cupcakes for her and went to have lunch. I was still in a hundred thousand pieces. We got back to the studio and Joy gave Kayla the most beautiful tarot card tattoo I have ever seen. 
And then it was my turn.
I'd come to Joy's with seven pieces of paper with rough ideas on them. A stopwatch, a Polaroid photo, two characters from my favorite children's book (Max and Maurice). Nothing felt perfect. I was indecisive. I thought about not doing it. I'd been rolling the ideas around in my head and nothing stood out. And yet... I'd had a thought just before we left the house and that piece of paper was the one I handed to Joy.
We debated placement. I said the front of my upper arm, she held it up and shook her head. The side got the same reaction. Then she slid it down to the inside my forearm, where the key lives on my other arm, and it clicked. I hadn't intended to use that real estate just yet but it was right.
I had a hard weekend but the first burn of the needle started to pull the pieces back together. By the time Joy was half-way done, I was starting to feel like myself again. We laughed as she smoothed the lines and something I'd only just imagined this morning became a permanent reality.
By the time I left the shop, life was pretty beautiful again. Kayla and I walked to our favorite cafe and had dinner, then came home.
The endorphins wore off hours ago but I am still feeling like myself. 
Love,
Beth
Jul. 4th, 2009
11:51 pm
There's a lot rolling around in my head tonight. Kayla is curled up beside me, snoring softly, but instead of being tangled in her arms I'm sitting here with my laptop trying to figure out how to articulate what needs to be said.
I spent today with a friend who loves me (not in a hot way), his girlfriend--- who I am just getting to know but who is an absolute delight, and Kayla. It was easy and comfortable. We drank margaritas and went to the Disney store and the Alice statue in Central Park and took photos and adventured. We laughed, a lot.
I needed it. I needed today.
I looked at my friend and his girl on the subway and he had his hand on the small of her back, ready to steady her if the train jerked. It was a simple and lovely thing and I suspect he did it unconsciously.
That's love, I thought, just before I felt the slightest brush of Kayla's hand, low on my back as we pulled into the station.
Skip. My thoughts are all over the place, like a ping-pong ball fired from a handgun.
I have been, in the past year, very wrong about several people. I invested a lot of time and trust in them only to find that I was mistaken. They were not who I thought they were. More and more I am finding I am terribly falliable and perhaps even a bad judge of character.
Or maybe my mistaken was seeking the broken and finding character flaws charming, psychosis intriguing.
No more.
A friend recently called me on it. I'd told her once that I am like a house. The living room is for everyone, and that's where I live 95% of my life. The bedroom, another 4%, reserved for only my intimates. And that last 1% is the attic and it's dark and cobwebbed and only for me.
No, she said, your numbers are all off. She says I am public about intimate things, like sex, so that no one notices I am actually a very private person.
I rolled her words around my mind like a pushcart in a shopping mall for days after I got her email. She's right. As I get older, the living room shrinks and I keep adding closets to the bedroom.
It's because of the people who get invited upstairs and flinch. And the ones who say they love me even though the bedroom wallpaper is peeling and then take photos of it to show their friends while I'm in the bathroom. But especially the ones who beg to come upstairs, who swear they'll love me anyway, who use pressure points and lies to create trust and who then say, "Oh, and when was the last time you changed the sheets up there," pointedly, in the middle of a crowded room.
I am done with all of those people. I am bordering on exhaustion, not just because my workload and stress recently shot up, but also because I've overextended myself emotionally. I am tired and I need to simplify my life in so many ways.
It is not, I think, a shameful thing to be a private person. I have been a closeted private person for years. A little more out now.
Love,
Beth
Jul. 1st, 2009
11:41 pm - Things I've Learned Recently
A hodgepodge blog, the potpourri of blogs, all about the Things I've Learned Recently.
---
1) Happiness does not engender blogging.
My blog flourishes when I am miserable and hibernates when I am happy. I think this is because when I am happy, I tend to just go be quietly happy rather than taking a break from doing the thing that makes me happy for long enough to blog about it.
---
2) You don't have to understand; you just have to be happy for me.
I was always the first person to say, "But why is SHE with HIM? He's a loser." I called out couples who didn't seem to fit, for whatever reason. Differences in body type, age, social status. I was CRITICAL. If love wasn't logical, I declared it a delusion or ridiculous.
I am in love with a girl who is eight years younger than I am. She will not be able to legally drink at my ten-year high school reunion. And it's still love and it is unquestionably the healthiest, most adult relationship I have ever had.
My friends and acquaintances looked at the situation before I started dating her and told me I was an idiot. There's no way to make that age difference work, they said. It's a recipe for disaster.
(Except for Meg, who said "How exciting!" Meg, who was thrilled that I was feeling ANYTHING after watching me feel nothing for so long.)
Luckily for all involved, the people who matter came around. My mother, my best friends, my closest confidantes all met her and saw us together and realized a very simple truth:
I am so much happier with her than I was without her.
Lucky for me, this girl is straightforward and charming and real, and barely flinched while meeting nearly every important person in my life (except for my father and a few dear friends who are still in Pittsburgh. But there's time.) She ran the gauntlet of the absurd, eating sushi for the first time across the table from an award-winning author and a successful musician, recognizing that these people are part of my family.
And god bless them, everyone important has embraced her. I am lucky to be surrounded by so many people who take the attitude of "You love her? Then we love her."
---
3) When it's Right, you just know.
When I met my last girlfriend, I was 215 lbs. I'd been over 200 lbs for almost ten years. While we were together, I got down to 161. I'd always had it in the back of my mind that I needed to meet the person I was going to marry before I lost the weight, or else I'd always wonder if they would have liked me anyway.
I was 175 lbs when I met my current girlfriend and I am 175 lbs now, but I notice I think about food and eating and the way I look and my weight WAY less and instead think about other way more productive things, like how pretty she is when she's asleep and how much I like her ears.
And somehow, even though I have no tangible evidence, I know she would have loved me anyway.
---
4) You can't let other people's complications ruin your simple happiness.
A friend referred to me recently as a whirlwind: creating chaos among those orbiting me, while remaining calm at the center. I'm not sure if it's an accurate description. It might be. There was a lot of drama around Kayla and me when we started dating; both of us were apparently far more popular than we realized and a fair number of (heretofore silent) dejected suitors emerged from the woodwork. Things got complicated fast.
And yet, in the middle, the space between us, life was so simple. "Us" has always been simple. "Everyone else" is the confusing part.
This is the calm in the eye of the storm, I suppose. I should probably alter life so I stop catalyzing other people's existential crisis. To do list.
---
A real update: life is insane. Work changed in a way that caused my workload to quadruple and my stress level to soar and hover at orange, yet I am riding the wave and getting better and better at my job and that brings me such satisfaction. June was chaos, people in and out of my house, shows, travel, major projects. And a healthy dose of falling in love in public.
I noticed that recently I've gotten a lot more private. I don't put the details of my life out on this blog. I used to use it as a free-for-all dumping ground for write-ups of every triumph and failure and every sexual conquest. And now... I keep a little more for me. Especially of the good things.
And things, they're good. I think this is the first relationship I've ever had that did not feature at least one break-up in the first month. We haven't even had a real fight, which is kind of amazing considering we spend a lot of time together. Once I did get very overstimulated and frustrated and ouchy one night and she shrugged and did her own thing for an hour until I cooled down and then it was totally fine.
Plus I'm making art. Lots of art. I took an old view camera and shot THROUGH it with a ghetto cardboard tube and my DSLR and made ART:
That's not a photoshop action. I turned up the contrast, but that's about all the post-processing it has.
And thanks to about a dozen AMAZING people, I have enough Polaroid film to last me until at least my next birthday. I love it. LOVE IT:
I've been falling in love with analog, so click here for Diana Holga Polaroid and more.
Art is good, work is good, love is even better than good.
Love,
Beth
Jun. 26th, 2009
05:48 am
My body says it's 5:49 (just like my computer clock) but I'm three hours off. I am in a lovely guest bed at our tour manager's house, about to sleep like dead for as long as possible.
But first. I merched the Troubadour show tonight, while also doing the assistant thing. Handle guest list problems, make sure AFP makes it to dinner on time, Twitpic photos, sell t-shirts. The underwear weren't ready in time so I couldn't do my saucy merch girl routine, so instead I took a shirt and cut it all to hell so it would slip down one shoulder and showed people a little of my tits when they tipped. Tits for tips. It worked okay, but not as good as flashing the undies.
One of the things I love about my job is that there is family wherever I go. I am sad tonight that my sleep-addled brain cannot remember all of their names, but tonight we had Breanna and Amylia, who brought presents. I didn't have time to eat dinner, so the only thing I had was an amazing rainbow cookie they brought me. I was slumped behind the merch table, body begging for sleep and food, and I remembered that they'd given it to me and it was exactly what I needed.
Tonight we also had Trixie, JessyLou and Lindsey, all of whom helped with merch when I had to run off to do other parts of my job. Leaving a relative stranger in charge of a table of merchandise seems like a foolish move, but they weren't strangers: they are people I've met here and there and whose internet lives make sense to me and besides that they were there and happy to help.
Tonight there was the woman with the pink hair who, when I was trying very hard to get Olga and her friend in to the completely full show, offered me her three spare tickets. I told her to come to the merch table and I would give her anything she wanted. She chose a t-shirt. I asked if she wanted anything else and she said no, just the t-shirt would do. I suspect that when she offered me the tickets she had no idea that I was the merch girl, or in any way connected to Amanda--- she was just doing a nice thing for a stranger.
Amanda's shows are like that. Family. We're all freaks and so we have to watch out for each other. When I was in college, I said I was the queen of the misfit toys. I liked the phrase and what it connotated a lot. But now, I work for the real queen of the misfit toys. I'm the misfit toy lady in waiting. And it's beautiful.
I see familiar faces at the shows now, people I met in May of last year on tour with the Dolls, people I've seen at shows nowhere near LA. I am terrible with names but I can usually eek out the context in which we met. (There is one name I remembered, miraculously, but that is a story for another blog.) I hug, more because I need it than because they want it.
I maintain relationships with people I've met here or there-- or people I haven't met. There is a wonderful girl, a poet, who emails me her work, and the other day she told me she had a new poem and asked if I wanted to read it. I told her that hearing from her makes me very happy and she asked did it really.
It does. Sadly I don't have the time or the emotional energy to maintain friendships with every person I meet, but there are some who, for whatever reason, stick and I keep them. And I need them, to remind me that though my work is sometimes frustrating and frequently exhausting, there are human beings on the other end of it who take joy from what I help make possible. There are good people who are on our side.
Tonight was a night of good people. Tonight was love. I cannot remember the last time I was this tired but tonight was truly worth it.
Love,
Beth
Jun. 18th, 2009
01:27 am - I am a bad psychic
I look at all the times she dusted the edges of my life and I cannot believe there was a time that I looked at her and knew nothing of what was to come. When I think that I hugged her in an empty room nearly a full year before her specific gravity in my life would become clear and had no inkling, I blush at my own lack of forethought.
I am a good reader but a bad psychic, or else I might have figured out sometime in those 365 days that she was not just a bit player.
And yet, if the night we met someone had said to me, "Look, I know it seems crazy, but you'll see that girl another time in a different place and a different headspace and you will absolutely adore her," I probably would have laughed and said they were completely out of their mind.
I suppose the best part of being a bad psychic is that you're frequently surprised.
I owe you a better blog, my friends. There are several floating around in my head these days. One about artist patronage and how a smart rockstar can make more drinking wine in her kitchen than she does playing a show. One about balancing work and life and how much of both one can put on the internet and stay sane. One about love.
And one about the girl from Denver. Although she writes pretty well for herself.
Love
Beth
May. 31st, 2009
May. 30th, 2009
12:30 pm
Today I am 27.
Last year, I turned 26 on stage in Houston, TX. A thousand people sang to me. My boss made a cake appear and then a cake-fight ensued and then my very favorite band played my favorite song. It was epic.
I didn't think anything would ever top that, so I approached 27 with the trepidation that comes with knowing a let-down is on the way.
But I think this is the best birthday present ever. 
Love,
Beth
May. 29th, 2009
03:08 am - Loving Well
There comes a point when life breaks you. Whatever conception of yourself you have in your head--- be it of a warrior or a peasant, a miracle worker or a thief-- will be negated in boldest ways possible.
It happens too, that life reaffirms who we truly are. Shells and facades do no justice to a true, passionate human heart, yet we walk the earth with them in place, held together with duct tape, chicken wire and spit, these straw man selves.
More than two years ago, I met a woman who made me weak. In every way. At the first steps, she made me weak in the knees, weak on my feet, head over heels. But soon (or perhaps it was always there) another kind of weak crept in. My mind was weak because I didn't read the books she wanted me to read. My body was weak because I didn't go to the gym enough. I was weak because I wasn't as zen as she was.
I look back now and can see, clearly, how destructive that situation was. And, in truth, it did destroy me, first as I bent myself to her wants, and then after as she cut me loose after pressing me into her own image. I was water, ready to be frozen in pleasant images for her, ready to parrot back her own philosophies.
I lost myself. I put myself away on some high shelf, in the back of a closet that housed the ice skates I never used and the flared jeans from my high school days.
And then I broke.
I spent the next year putting myself back together. The pieces were shaped differently than I remembered and I still have a few left-over, rattling around in a junk drawer somewhere.
But I still didn't feel like myself.
There were still affirmations to come.
As I write this, there is a girl in bed next to me who is prying her eyes open so she can wait for me to go to sleep. She arrived unexpectedly and quietly, and caused me days of agony before I succombed to the inevitability of it.
I had forgotten what it feels like to fall in love. Unlike most of the gunshy, I still find it in me to leap, but every time I think I've hit the bottom of this something happens to make my chest swell more with a warm, orange light. I feel as though my ribs might crack from the inside out, so palpable is the feeling of fullness.
I feel like myself again. I have always been, at my core, a person who loves. I've been told that my entire life is an obsession on love, and it's not far from the truth.
Loving well is the highest form of art I've ever seen.
I will wake up in the morning, like other mornings, surprised that I haven't created her. We are new, yet she finishes my sentences and makes mental leaps it has taken others years to follow. She is sharp as a tack with a heart as light as a feather and she bends me. My joints are rusty and I haven't used these muscles in a while.
I feel like such a traitor to my artist-self, still deluding myself that suffering is noble and leads to brilliance. Real brilliance is accepting beauty and happiness and knowing that they are deserved. Start to doubt and the songbird flies away.
I cannot say how much or how little I'll be saying here. I debated even saying this much, but I have always shared my struggles with you. It seems only fair to share the blessings as well.
I am happy, well-loved and loving well.
Love,
Beth
May. 25th, 2009
08:21 pm - Immoderate Thoughts On Love (What Else?)
I don't remember the last time I kissed someone, but it was more than six months ago and she kissed me.
Does that surprise you?
The thing that surprises me most is that I don't remember exactly when it happened. I am the master of dates, I believe in anniversaries that most people would forget as meaningless, but I can't recall that last kiss. Was it in my apartment? On the train? At the cafe? Early in December or late? Rushed or lingering?
I remember who it was with, but that kiss, like all the recent kisses, had become immaterial. Kissing itself became obsolete, and anyway, the most beautiful, important kisses I remember were the ones that didn't happen.
I have gotten a reputation as a bit of a baller, a player, a slut. I know where the rumors come from--- my mouth, because I talk big. I make jokes about having hos instead of girlfriends. I make out at parties. I had one week last summer in which I slept with three different people. I'd never done anything like that before, but it was summer and there was wine and life was epic and I partied like a rock star.
I met a girl and slept with her and eventually loved her but it didn't work. I met another girl and slept with her and I think she eventually loved me but it didn't work. That was the last kiss.
She came to the city and we had a romantic weekend and I tried tried tried to fall in love with her. It didn't happen, which was just as well, because the last day she was here she announced that she'd been seeing a boy she met in a coffeeshop. She departed as swiftly as she'd arrived and I decided that women are more trouble than they are worth and embraced late nights of working and falling asleep with the cat.
That has served me pretty well. I still talk like a player. I flirt madly at shows. Put me behind a merch table and you'll see--- I bat my eyes and smirk and flash my panties at people. That girl is a character. She is not a person. She sells tons of t-shirts and has too much fun, but ultimately the girl you meet at that table is way cooler than me. That girl would kiss you until you couldn't breathe.
This girl hesitates. This girl chooses to be lonely rather than to have meaningless sex. This girl got her heart broken last fall by a girl she never even kissed. This girl is baffled when she hears that people she's never met think she's hot. She's unnerved when she hears they want to sleep with her.
Life is strange and hard. I never know if a girl I meet wants me for my connections or my job or my haircut. It doesn't generally matter, because after the pain of last November I closed up the shop. I flirted, innuendos just below the surface of various conversations, but ultimately I was tired and finished with it. I resisted actual connection like I resist yoga and vitamins.
But then, when and where I least expected it, there appeared a crack in the wall. I reached into it and pulled out a crumpled note, my own good advice, dusty and years old.
When given the choice to love or not to love, love. Even when it's senseless, even when it will hurt, even when you probably shouldn't, even when it's complicated, even when it's hard.
I grabbed for a pen, scratched a new line in at the very bottom, and hid the note again for my future self to find.
Especially when it's hard.
Hi.
Love,
Beth
May. 14th, 2009
10:01 pm
The answer is always extreme love and compassion.
You're stressed and projecting, I pick up on it and feel stressed, we get ourselves into a feedback loop of nasty text messages and clipped phone calls and it's all over. The trick is to realize it's happening and proceed with extreme love and compassion.
Extreme love and compassion is very hard. I am, in my core, a passionate, volatile person. I get mean and underhanded. This past year life has handed me so many opportunities to work on that.
I've spent as much time frustrated as I have content. Probably a good deal of the frustration is my own doing. Recently I made a terrible, highly politically incorrect analogy, which I will clean up for inclusion in this blog entry, because it is TRUE:
Life is like getting mugged. The more you fight it, the more it hurts.
I know this, intellectually, that if I relax into destiny and fate and show up every day ready for the POSSIBILITIES that life will be beautiful. And if I snarl and scheme and struggle, I get heavy and worn down and things break and go wrong.
There is something rather large in my life that has been broken for a while. (Well, more than one thing, obviously, dozens of things actually, but one that's been particularly on my mind.) After someone I love very much called me on it, I started working on it.
I always forget that the initial steps are often easy in comparison to the ones that come after. After an initial, "oooh, my life is fixed!" moment, I am now left with the daily grind, the frequent deep breaths and recommitment to extreme love and compassion.
It is easy to love someone who loves you back.
It is harder to love someone who seems not to.
If I can love you when you're dismissive of me, when you're cruel, when you taunt me and scrape my insides and lock me out in the rain and spit in my eye, that's real progress. If I can have compassion for you, if I can understand the indignities you've suffered at the hands of the cruelest of the neighborhood children, then the jabs you inflict on me will hurt less.
But I get angry and defensive and small and this is HARD and could life just, for a little while, stop being about Making Me A Better Person and be about something a bit more mundane like answering emails or cleaning the catbox?
I am here and I am trying, even though my impulse is to get bitter and mean. I am breathing. I am relaxing into this.
I will find extreme love and compassion even though there is so much about you and me and us and the way we relate that I do not understand.
Love,
Beth
ps - My new housemates are playing "Dream a Little Dream" on flute and ukulele downstairs and I feel really lucky.
Apr. 27th, 2009
10:36 pm - Give it a Name
In Boston, walking home from the Mac store and tea with a friend. Three young black men passed me on Mass Ave and I heard one say, "And it doesn't matter if they call you a faggot. Let them. Keep your head down."
I walked a little faster so I could eavesdrop on their conversation. Nothing in their manner of dress screamed "gay," but there were the slightest societal indicators in their mannerisms. Gestures that said, yes, the one with the braids who was speaking was, and the tall, slightly chubby one he was speaking to certainly was, as was the tough, quiet one who walked just behind them as they argued. They were younger than I was, early college. Maybe high school. Kids.
"No, if they call me a faggot I'm gonna walk with my head up and say, 'So what? I AM gay!'"
"Then they'll jump you."
"Let them jump me! I'm gay, I'm not going to apologize for being gay!"
"Lower your voice."
"No! Look, if they called you a nigger, would you keep your head down?"
There was a long pause. The kid with the braids had no response.
"That's right," the tall one said, adjusting his backpack with a slight swagger of triumph. "No way am I gonna keep my head down."
"But they'll jump you---" the one with the braids began to argue, before the quiet one interrupted, speaking for the first time.
"And if they jump you, they jump a proud gay man. Even if they beat you, you win."
The three of them walked in silence for a moment. I thought about speaking to them, to tell them that I understood, but as we reached the corner the quiet one felt my eyes on him and turned and looked at me.
We stared at each other for a moment, then I ducked my head to him. He smiled and nodded back at me. In that moment, we both understood.
Someone asked me recently why I insist on labels. Why not just love, she said, without regard to the gender of the person? Why be so loud about it? I didn't have an answer until yesterday, in the car with Sean, when I was finally able to articulate that the reason it is important to me to use the label is that people have been fighting, sometimes even dying for it since before I was born.
I give it a name because there are still men who keep their heads down when someone calls them a faggot for fear of violence.
I give it a name because women are being raped and murdered in South Africa for being lesbians.
I give it a name because fifty years ago, no one could.
"And if they jump you, they jump a proud gay man."
Yes. This.
Love,
Beth
Apr. 23rd, 2009
05:45 pm - Kittens, kittens and even more kittens...
I am such a bleeding heart.
There is a calico cat in the neighborhood who has always been very friendly. I assumed she was someone's outdoor (ugh) cat, being that she was so socialized.
Yesterday I stopped to pet her and she was very thin and dirty. I noticed that her nipples were swollen--- she'd had kittens recently.
I went to the store, got some food, and fed her. Sat and petted her for a bit and she looked up and me and the following conversation ensued:
Cat: You're mine and you'll be taking me home with you.
Beth: Um, I already have a cat and my roommates will be pissed if I do that.
Cat: Yeah, that's gonna suck for you, but I don't make the rules.
Beth: I've already promised the spot to someone else.
Cat: Uh, huh. Because three is SO MUCH HARDER than two.
Beth: If I bring you home, your kittens will starve.
Cat: Okay, stall if you want to, but this is inevitable, because you're MINE motherfucker.
Beth: Fuck you, cat, I am NOT bringing you home with me.
Cat: ... riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Today when I went to feed her, I found a little orange kitten. His face was dirty and he came right over to me. So, I did what any reasonable person would do.
I put him in my bag and speed-walked home.
I gave him some water and towels and put him in a large box in the bathroom. Then I went back out for mom.
The man living nearby said that he saw four kittens at first, but only the orange one recently. I sat with mom for a while, petting her while she ate. Soon a different man came out of the house and told me I had to leave the property, but that I should take the cat with me.
After all, she was, he said, "just a stray."
I scooped her up and walked as fast as I could. She snarled and tried to bite me. Luckily David was there to open the door and I plunked her into the bathroom with kitten, where the two of them have been for the last half hour.
I am going to go look for the other kittens again, but if they haven't been seen in a week... the streets of Brooklyn are not an easy place for kittens.
For now, here's mom:
And baby (it's a boy):
I need to name them to take them to the vet... any suggestions?
Love,
Beth
04:36 am
I often forget that there are people who read my blog who don't read Amanda's.
This is a photo I took at Coachella:
We were at some fancy house in a fancy gated community near the site doing press. It was surreal.
My life is frequently very surreal.
I remember at some point this weekend, and god knows when it was, I looked at Katrina and I said, "Life is pretty amazing."
She agreed.
It is, actually. I saw Leonard Cohen play. He sang First We Take Manhattan and he got to my favorite verse and I cried a little.
I don't like your fashion business mister
I don't like these drugs that keep you thin
I don't like what happened to my sister
First we take Manhattan... then we take Berlin
Those words were written on a scrap of paper and pinned to my bedroom door all through college. I carefully unpinned the paper, which by that point was yellowing around the edges, when I moved. It's in a book somewhere, pressed between the pages to avoid wrinkles. And I got to see and hear the man SING IT LIVE. I closed my eyes and imagined that he knew that I was standing there and really feeling what he said.
I opened them and I was surrounded by a crush of thousands who were feeling it too. We sang the chorus of Hallelujah together.
The man is 74 years old. He spent five years in seclusion in a Buddist monastery. Leonard Cohen is an honest-to-god MONK. He radiated sheer JOY during his performance, joy and incredible grace. Seeing him play was transcendent.
Life is pretty amazing.
Love,
Beth
Apr. 22nd, 2009
08:39 pm - A Design for Killing Amanda Palmer
So the illustrious Mr. Neil Gaiman, author extraordinaire, mentioned me in his recent blog about the Who Killed Amanda Palmer book.
"Anyway, all the material was handed over to some designers, who it turned out hadn't designed books in a while and did a job so bad and so late that when they handed it back, Beth (Amanda's assistant) wound up taking the book and designing it and doing a terrific job, but having to start pretty much from scratch."
I was keeping this under wraps out of... fear I suppose. Everyone knew I was project manager for the book, but when it came down to my designing it, I was afraid of saying too much. That people would know that the man behind the curtain had no idea what he was doing.
I'd done some design work at my old job at The Food Bank For New York City, even co-designing an event journal that was 78 pages long. But to design a fine art book with text by NEIL FREAKIN' GAIMAN? I figured you needed way more skills than I possessed and way more experience than I had.
Fast forward almost three months and the book I designed is being printed.
I worked on this project for nine months. I organized the photos and assisted at shoots and shot and photoshopped and communicated with printers and I laid out all 128 pages of it. There isn't a single element in that book that I didn't plan, tweak or create.
I am so proud of it and so deeply in love with it. This book is incredible and gorgeous and I am so, so honored that when I said, "Amanda, I can do this, let me do this" she said, "Of course you can. Go for it."
The hundreds of hours I spent on this project, the all-nighters, the coffee dates I canceled and the number of times I wanted to pull my hair out and toss the computer out the window... it is all worth it.
Oh, and you can now buy it if you'd like, by clicking here. It has about a dozen stories from Neil, more than about 110 deaths from Amanda, and photos from kylecassidy, Gregory Nomoora, Lauren Goldberg, Nicholas Vargelis and yours truly, among others.
My artist photo (as seen on the back dustjacket flap), by KYLE FREAKIN' CASSIDY: 
Love,
Beth
Apr. 12th, 2009
12:18 am
So. I borrowed a Diana from Amanda, Katrina gave me a Holga and I stole Sean's Polaroid for a few shots.
Solangel by Holga:
( Analog is fun. )
If only film and processing wasn't so expensiiiiive. But it's so worth it to have the unpredictability, the delayed gratification and the ART.
Also, I would have shoved Sean's Polaroid down my pants and run off with it if I thought I could have gotten away with it. The sound it makes, the film popping out into your hands, watching it develop... that's as close as we get to magic.
Love,
Beth
Apr. 11th, 2009
09:24 pm
Direct message to blakeisinalaska: can't respond to your note because your privacy settings are enabled. Email me instead.
Direct messages to everyone else: hi. I'm not dead! And on Wednesday I go to California.
Love,
Beth
Apr. 6th, 2009
05:23 pm
Epic Art-Out Day #1 was a success. I love analog.
( Read more... )
I will probably do this again, with more advance notice. Next weekend is Easter and the following is Coachella, so it would likely be May before I get around to it. I would probably stick with film... I love the way it looks. Processing is expensive ($7 a roll, $10 for the HOLGA that Katrina gave me) so may have to limit how often I do it, but there is something so rad about analog.
Love,
Beth
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