Songs For The Struggling Artist

This wasn't everyone's college experience but I'm pretty grateful it was mine.  You can read the blog here: https://artiststruggle.wordpress.com/2017/10/20/there-was-so-much-less-sexism-then/  Recommended Podcast: In the Dark  Song: Don't Stand So Close to Me by The Police --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/songs-for-the-struggling-artist/support

Is it true that Generation X is in a "blood feud" with Millennials? #IdoubtIt  You can read the post here: https://artiststruggle.wordpress.com/2017/10/07/generation-x-part-7-born-at-the-right-time/  Recommended Podcast: 2 Dope Queens  Song: Born at the Right Time by Paul Simon --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/songs-for-the-struggling-artist/support

Sunday evening, after an intensive weekend of teaching – a weekend of showing up in one of my professional guises and remembering – “Oh yeah! I’m pretty accomplished actually. It is gratifying to be able to pass on my expertise!” – I came home, opened up my social media and fell into a river of “Me, too.” My sense of professional accomplishment faded away and suddenly, again, I was in the midst of a conversation about sexual harassment and assault. And I saw women I love who had just opened shows, or just had babies, or just gotten married or were celebrating their honeymoons and in the midst of their celebration, they found themselves, too, in that river. Wedding photos and “Me, too” sit side by side in their profile. That’s going to be forever. And that sucks forever. And I’m of so many minds about all this. On one hand, I felt a little glimmer of hope. I thought, maybe THIS TIME, maybe this wave will finally topple the patriarchy! Maybe all we needed was for thousands upon thousands of women to come forwar

Never do I feel more American than when I travel abroad. At home, my identity tends to be more specific – the city I was born in, the state I’m from, the city I live in or the borough in that city or even the neighborhood in that borough. I don’t feel American in America – partly because I have always felt so countercultural. Americans are like THIS and I am like THAT. I have tended to identify more with other cultures. I have even (unsuccessfully) tried to emigrate in order to be in places that align more closely with my interests and values. If European countries had looser immigration policies, I would have moved there long ago. But…I am American. And going abroad always helps me appreciate the good side of that, in times I’m mostly seeing the bad. I have enjoyed those moments when my Americanism becomes obvious – when my friends abroad tease me for my optimism or my accent. To read more of Feeling American visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 65. Song: American Tune by Paul Simo

Because one of my beloved collaborators loves the work of Monica Bill Barnes, I sought out a performance. As soon as I saw Happy Hour, I, too, was in artistic love. I laughed and cried. I laugh-cried and cry-laughed. It was one of those shows that made me feel as if there might be a reason to go on. I’ve seen it multiple times. I’m not going to lie; there are some days in this artist’s life in which I get a bad case of What’s-the-Point-itis. When the labor and heartbreak of making theatre just doesn’t seem equal to the reward. For me, seeing Monica Bill Barnes and Company perform is a great cure for that feeling of wondering what the point is. Good art is the point. Monica Bill Barnes’ latest show (One Night Only) was no exception in this way – but it also brought to the surface a new “-itis” that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with at first. I learned in this show that Monica Bill Barnes and I are the same age. I learned that we share a lifelong commitment to our respective art forms. And in learning about t

She told me her voice wasn’t what it once was. She’d taken time off from singing to raise her kids and was now coming back to it – distressed that she was not as perfect as she once was. There was a sense that her lived-in life had diminished her instrument. I, too, had left aside my singing for a bit. Not entirely, of course, but aside from the occasional song for a friend, I hadn’t really kept at the technical practice of vocal performance. But ever since the election, I have leaned back into music and find myself singing again – because it is the only thing that makes me feel better. Raising my voice in song is how I express my fury, my fear, my determination to fight for the things I believe in. And I’ve been around the block a few times so my voice is not as technically proficient as it was, once upon a time. And I find that I really don’t care. I don’t care if I don’t hit a note with the exact tone I was imagining. I don’t care if a sound comes out strangled that I meant to sound clear. When I listen ba

Perhaps this isn’t news to you. Probably especially not this year. Not in 2017 when we’ve seen one of the biggest sexist jerks around continue to profit on his sexist jerkholery. But… this isn’t about that. This is about a smaller corner of the sexist landscape. One of my feminist heroes is Anita Sarkeesian who has been making videos at Feminist Frequency since 2009. My personal favorites were her looks at Legos and her explanation of the Bechdel test. (This was before the Bechdel test was common knowledge – an evolution that I suspect that Sarkessian had a hand in.) You may have started to hear about her after her Kickstarter campaign to make videos about women in videogames triggered a terrible hate campaign against her. Then the parade of horrors known as Gamergate began to target her as well. I recently read an article about her experience of speaking on a panel at a video conference and being harassed in person. There’s a lot to take in in this article – but the thing that shook me rather badly was the f

Listen you guys. I hate going to protests. They’re loud and shouty and there are crowds there – usually big ones – and that’s sort of the point. But sometimes I make myself go despite my natural inertia – you know, that thing that makes it easier not to go than go. And given that there are protests nearly every day now, it can be hard to figure out whether it’s a time to hit the streets or a time take care of myself. My barometer has become: Will I Wish I’d Been There? To keep reading Will You Wish You'd Been There? visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 61 Song: Waiting for the Great Leap Forward by Billy Bragg Image via Pixabay To support the podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review!  Join my mailing list: www.emilyrainbowdavis.com/  Like the blog/show on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SongsfortheStrugglingArtist/ Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/emilyrdavis  Or buy me a coffee on Kofi: http://ko-fi.com/emilyrainbowdavis Follow me on T

Do you remember, before we were Generation X, when we were the Pepsi Generation? Right about that time that Michael Jackson’s hair caught on fire? We were told that Pepsi was the choice of a new generation and there were videos and apparently our generation bought into it hardcore. We were also Peppers. Wouldn’t you like to be a Pepper, too? But that Pepsi Generation technique was actually a marketing campaign for Baby Boomers first and it worked so well for Pepsi when Baby Boomers were kids that they thought they’d try it out on us, too. And all the generations after. How you like Pepsi, Generation Next? Feel like joining the conversation since you “are the movement, this generation“? A lot of the conversation about generations is actually driven by advertising. To read more of Generation X - Part 6 - Selling the Drama visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.  This is Episode 60 Song: Selling the Drama by Live Image via Pixabay To support the podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a ni

On the Stuff You Should Know podcast about Baby Boomers, the hosts (both Gen X-ers) pointed out that generations are often characterized by events that shake their collective innocence (e.g. 9-11, JFK, Challenger) They then suggested generations might as well be characterized by the technology that unites them. Boomers were the first generation to grow up with TV. Gen X was the first generation to grow up with video and videogames. Computers, too. And Millennials grew up with more ubiquitous computers and the spread of the internet. Generation Z is growing up with smartphones. So…we somehow define our humanity by the technology at hand. Probably cavemen were like, “Yeah, our young ones are the Fire Generation. They’ll never what it was like for us before we got that life changing Fire stuff.” Probably the Fire Generation and the House Building Generation got together and sang songs at each other right over the head of the lone representative of the farming generation, who declared that all this generational t

As a child, I wanted to be an actor but I lived in a small city wherein my opportunities were mostly school plays and community theatre. This did not stop me hoping that some director or producer would stumble upon me and whisk me away to Broadway or the movies. I imagined someone like the Hollywood guy in Cold Comfort Farm seeing me somewhere and a light would shine on me the way it does on Rufus Sewell and he’d know I was gonna be a star! To keep reading (Still) Waiting to Be Discovered visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 58 Song: The Angel in the House by The Story Image via Pixabay To support the podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review!  Join my mailing list: www.emilyrainbowdavis.com/  Like the blog/show on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SongsfortheStrugglingArtist/ Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/emilyrdavis  Or buy me a coffee on Kofi: http://ko-fi.com/emilyrainbowdavis Follow me on Twitter @erainbowd  Instagram and Pint

At the end of the evening, the young actors were hanging on his arms, pleading for an audition for whatever he did next. He had just joined a company four months before and directed his first show in the months previous. The last time I’d seen him, a year before, he’d asked me for advice about beginning. Now he was asking if I wanted to be his assistant. I have had a company for 16 years and a Master’s Degree in Directing. But no young actors hang on my arms or tell me they will stalk me until I let them audition. My friend is a white man with an authoritative air. To read more of The Beginning of Authority in Theatre (and Beyond) visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 57 Song: Authority Song by John Cougar Mellencamp Image via New York Public Library's Digital collection To support the podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review!  Join my mailing list: www.emilyrainbowdavis.com/  Like the blog/show on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SongsfortheStruggl

I’m not from here. New York City is where I live and where I feel at home but where I’m from is a small city in the hills of Virginia. It’s the kind of city that sometimes gets called cosmopolitan – not because it’s a bustling metropolis but because it has a vibrant arts culture and an intellectual fire. This place is as much a part of me as my leg is. My hometown feels like part of my body. Where I’m from is green, green hills, green lawns, trees and trees and trees. It is people gathering under fairy lights on a red brick road. It is a place where you can see the stars in a backyard. It is a place in which sometimes you feel like you know everyone and a day later feel as though you know no one anymore. People will smile at you and say hello when you walk past. To read more of Where I'm From visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 56 #Charlottesville #Virginia #hometown Song: The Streets of Where I'm From by Old 97s Image via Pixabay To support the podcast: Tell a friend. Give it 5 st

There was never a real Gen X feminist movement. We were told our mother’s had taken care of that for us. And surely our mothers hoped they had. Some of our mothers (and fathers! There were some feminist fathers then, too!) bought us Free to Be You and Me and from that we learned that mommies were people and daddies were people and William had a doll and that it was alright for all of us to cry. Lego was for all of us and girls were told we could be anything we wanted. To read more of Gen X Part 4, I'm the Only One, visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is an eight part series on Gen X. This is Episode 55 Song: I'm the Only One by Melissa Etheridge Image via Pixabay To support the podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review!  Join my mailing list: www.emilyrainbowdavis.com/  Like the blog/show on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SongsfortheStrugglingArtist/ Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/emilyrdavis  Or buy me a coffee on Kofi: http://ko-fi.com/emilyr

When magazines used to write about Generation X, they were pretty darn concerned about how much time we spent on our own, unsupervised. The Latch Key Generation may not have really stuck to us as a name (I imagine this was partly because, what’s a LATCH key? When does anyone use the word “LATCH KEY”? It’s clearly an old fashioned word. It’s a key, guys.) but, yes, a lot of Gen X kids went home from school by ourselves because our parents were at work. You could see this as a problem. (Oh, those poor lonely unsupervised children!) Or, you could see it as a gift. (What independence! What self-reliance!) Leave us alone for long enough, we tend to solve our problems on our own. To keep reading Generation X Part 3 - Islands in the Stream visit the Songs for the Struggling blog. This is Episode 53 Song: Islands in the Stream by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton To support the podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review!  Join my mailing list: www.emilyrainbowdavis.com/  Like the blog/show

One of the weird things about sharing my writing on Facebook (which is where I collect the bulk of my views on the blog) is that, when it’s shared by others, I can sometimes see how people respond to my work without responding to me directly. On my own page, my friends are generally respectful and look at my work in the context of the person that wrote it, since they (most of them) know me. On other people’s posts of my work, I have seen some rather startling assumptions pop up. The most vivid example of this was a response to my Single Gender on a Train post. While most of my post was about being a woman in public, there was a bit about the distinction between that experience in NYC and in smaller places. The comment about the blog on my friend’s page seemed to be mostly in response to a single line in the piece, the one my friend pulled as a headline – a line about HRC and the urban/rural divide. A thing, by the way, that there have been endless think pieces about. To keep reading Social Media and Discussio

Generation X has tended to resist being labeled and we also tend to resent being identified with a group. We like to think ourselves as individuals. I have a Gen X friend who finds the concept of a “hive mind” deeply troubling. It strikes him as dangerous conformity to ask the hive mind what it thinks. I get it. I identify as a non-conformist, too. But I also grew up listening to a lot of Steve Martin records. And from an early age, I understood the irony of identifying as a non-conformist along with a group through this part of his routine: STEVE MARTIN: And now let’s repeat the non-conformist oath! I promise to be different! AUDIENCE: I promise to be different! STEVE MARTIN: I promise to be unique! AUDIENCE: I promise to be unique! STEVEN MARTIN: I promise not to repeat things other people say! AUDIENCE: (laughter) To read more of Gen X Part 2 - We Belong visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 52 and part two of an 8 part series. Song: We Belong by Pat Benatar Image via Pixabay To s

Previously, I wrote about a show that inspired me to make a list of stories I never want to see onstage again. I have now seen another show and discovered another story I have had my definitive fill of. Can we please call a moratorium on the fallen woman plot? You get a pass if your name is Jane Austen or Charles Dickens and you were writing social commentary about this shit in the 1800s but if you are a writer in 2017, do us all a favor and leave this tired old horse alone. To read more of Another Kind of Story I Never Want to See Again visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 51 Song: Both Hands by ani difranco Image via Pixabay To support the podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review!  Join my mailing list: www.emilyrainbowdavis.com/  Like the blog/show on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SongsfortheStrugglingArtist/ Support me on Patreon: www.patreon.com/emilyrdavis  Or buy me a coffee on Kofi: http://ko-fi.com/emilyrainbowdavis Follow me on Tw

The actors stood up and I started crying. The house lights went down to start the show and moments later I was moved. It took a moment to shake me out of my familiar world. But it wasn’t just the moment, of course. There was a world of history behind the moment. It was the skill and finesse of a lifetime of theatrical practice that knew how to bring that world into a moment. It took extraordinary expertise and sensitivity to make something so simple so powerful. It took mastery. After giving me such a powerful moment right out of the gate, I thought, “There might be nothing else as good as this in the rest of this show but if this is all it has to offer, it would be enough.” But it was definitely NOT all it had to offer. I saw a play that exquisitely resurrected the past while shining light on our present. It made me weep so often I wished I’d brought a box of tissues with me. And I almost never cry in the theatre. All around me, I heard the quiet sound of other people taken over by their emotions. To keep re

While visiting a small town, I found myself at a local restaurant, where a band was playing their Saturday night gig. The band’s leader sang about being a kid in 1992 which helped me place him as a member of the Millennial generation. The audience was mostly represented by the Baby Boomer Generation, with a handful of the band’s Millennial friends in the mix. When the band played a cover of a hit song from the Baby Boomer’s youth, they filled the room with exuberant dance. And the Millennial men in the audience turned red from containing their laughter. There was an atmosphere of these two generations trying to communicate with one another and find some kind of balance between them. There were pleading songs of a young man to an older one. A white haired man came up onstage while the band played to adjust their levels. These two generations were simultaneously at odds and in cahoots. And, as far as I know, I was the lone representative of my generation, Generation X. In fact, I realized then that I had spent