i'm still here
in which I get my butt in the chair and a newsletter in your inbox, plus: PORCH STOMP next Saturday!
Hey Hartlist,
Remember that time I blithely announced that I’d be making paid subscriptions a thing… and then TOTALLY STOPPED WRITING for THREE WEEKS?
(I thought it was two. It’s three. Omg.)
JUST THE GIGS
Two solo appearances…
SAT JUNE 17 @ *1:00PM* - ‘Porch Stomp’ on Governor’s Island
on the Irish Arts Center Stage - Susie Greenebaum sits in on fiddle!
SAT JULY 1 8:00PM - SoFar Sounds Concert Series
Visit SoFar Website for tickets and to find out the secret (midtown) location…
FROM THE CHRYSALIS
Good afternoon from The End Times just a regular old afternoon in NYC where the sky is dark orange and my building’s lobby reeks of the burning forests of Canada The End Times.
So… yeah. It’s been a minute since I wrote! Let me go over what I think is the pertinent sequence of events:
- a Chrysalis reader offered to make a subscription pledge
-I thought, oh, great idea, I’ll make paid subscriptions an option
-I announced that option in the newsletter
-I never wrote a newsletter again stopped writing for three weeks.
I didn’t forget to write. I couldn’t, or wouldn’t. I said to myself several times, hey, you need to write your newsletter, and my self mumbled back something like I’ll get to it and then eventually well, I don’t, like, have anything going on, so…
‘From the Chrysalis’, the newsletter/blog/substack/whatarewecallingthis you are reading, was born in the quarantine of 2020. A time when the question of whether or not I had “anything going on” did not bother my pretty little head for one moment, precisely because I HAD NOTHING GOING ON. My life as a performer was limited to one weekly livestream concert and one daily experimental-performance effort called Leaning Out of the Window Banging On a Pot Until Everyone Else Stops Banging On Pots. I compensated for the absolute Void of Acting Work by sneaking bits of text into my weekly livestream shows. (And I’d like to thank you all for listening to Dr. Seuss’ Sleep Book, Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, and The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes recited in their entirety, sometimes more than once.)
And yet I wrote stuff. Weekly.
There is always stuff to tell you about. There is right now. How I made a killer banana bread this week that was definitely cake and you can have the recipe. How I coped with ‘Ted Lasso’ ending (I made banana bread). How we played an 11AM house concert at our bassist’s house for an audience of babies and toddlers (and parents) and Chris was so determined to present the whole band in his living room that he bought a drum kit so, I guess, stay tuned for further house concerts, maybe even at night! How I decided to take the summer off music completely and then didn’t tell anyone that and then booked myself two solo shows. How I really, really want to record new songs and I have massive block about fundraising or starting or who’s going to produce it. And I probably didn’t even go into my recent bout of back pain in the kind of detail I’m sure you’ve all been craving.
So I had to call BS on the whole Oh I don’t have anything to tell them about thing as the reason for my block, because that is not why I suddenly (thank you Ted Lasso) got a case of the Yips.
I’m pretty sure - and this is so embarrassing and also probably something you should not say to your audience- it was because of the money.
As in, I suddenly was like Oh wow I have subscribers! So now I’m ‘getting paid’ to do this so NOW I better REALLY do it, like, I better write something REALLY IMPORTANT! And, actually, maybe until I come up with that it’d be better if I just don’t write anything at all.
And I’m sure you all know where that goes, fast.
Banana bread. I mean, Perfectionism.
I think I’m not just saying “beware perfectionism”. I’m also saying beware the way it sometimes dresses up as other things. Things like virtue and concern for others and just wanting to make sure it’s ‘worth it’.
There’s something so charmingly, ‘missing-the-point-again’ human about thinking that if someone pays you to do something, that your next move should be to do not that, but something else. To make it different. You know, “better”.
A long time ago I was making an album with a producer who was in many ways a nightmare (RIP, sorry) but from whom I learned a couple of key things that have stayed with me. One day in the studio I sang a chorus that he loved, and afterwards he said “OK, that was great, now do that again.” (We were doubling vocals I think? I can’t remember.) He cued up the track, and I - excited by his praise and anxious to please - sang that chorus again, completely differently.
You know, “better”.
I remember he said “No!” and started laughing, and I asked him why, and he said with (uncharacteristic) gentleness, “Because you just did the exact same thing everybody does.”
He had asked me to do what I was already doing well and I thought he meant do something better.
I’m not saying “Never change, grow, evolve, or try new things as an artist”. I hope and am pretty sure you know that.
I also hope you know I’m not saying “for the love of god nobody ever pledge a subscription to the Chrysalis! My sensitive Muse can’t take it!”
I’m saying I got over myself and started typing.
Which is always, always, always the solution.
Just Starting and Not Stopping is actually our only workable or effective response to the demon Perfectionism. We can’t reason with it, argue with it, or beat it in a debate. It LOVES when we try that. When we argue with it, it has us right where it wants us: in its drab, unforgiving, poorly lit office, struggling to use its own weapons against it, mixing metaphors1, and - most importantly - being too distracted to do anything else.
If we Just Start (typing, for example) against all resistance, all inclination, all odds, it becomes unsettled. It doesn’t know what to do with that, except maybe try to debate louder. If we keep going, over the noise, despite at first an urge to jump back into the conversation…. it’s lost.
And we win.
Look, a whole newsletter.
May you have a week of Continuing No Matter What.
(Unless it’s walking and breathing outdoors, at least today. Ugh. Remember when getting together INSIDE was the problem?)
Love
Rebecca
are we at war? or in an office? why not both