Songs For The Struggling Artist

You might be surprised to learn this if you only know me through the blog (or podcast) but once upon a time, I could be counted on to create a bubble of good time around me. It’s one of the reasons it’s not a terrible idea to invite me to your party. (Remember when I asked you to invite me to your party a few years ago? Back in the before times?)  I may tend toward rage, fury and righteous indignation here on the blog but out in the world, I’m generally a reasonably nice and pleasant lady to be around. Having been isolated for so long (even before the pandemic, due to the migraines) I sort of forgot what my own personality could be like. To read more of Emily Is Fun visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 366 Song: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Image by Emily Rainbow Davis from Mudhouse Agios Ioannis Crete To support this podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review! Rate it wherever you listen or via: https://ratethispodcast.com/strugglingartist Join my mailing list: 

There are so many reasons  I’m glad to be alive in JUST this moment. There are abundant stories to read or watch. I can listen to music anywhere I go. Podcasts are a thing. Migraine medicine is really taking giant leaps ahead. It is a richer world in terms of diversity and representation. So much progress has been made. But as my 50th birthday looms ahead, I find I am also in a kind of mourning for the world I grew up in. Sometimes I feel as though I have been dropped in a strange future and expected to thrive, when the truth is, this strange world grew up slowly alongside me. I may feel like a stranger in it, but we must have grown into this together. To support this podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review! Rate it wherever you listen or via: https://ratethispodcast.com/strugglingartist 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 help me

I used to be the kind of person who tried not to take any medication. If I had a headache, I’d try to avoid taking anything for it out of some sense of nobility or stoicism. Maybe I thought it made me strong to suffer? Maybe I thought it somehow made me a better person? Now that I know that some of those headaches were probably migraines, I understand that this was exactly the wrong strategy. Pretty much every migraine medication works better the sooner you take it. This tough guy approach of resisting medication is very common in this country. I think of former Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (remember him? Oof) who recommended aspirin and toughing it out for any kind of pain. It’s odd, because on one hand, sure, we are an overmedicated nation. The story is that we take pills for everything and use medication for things we shouldn’t. There is an opioid crisis, after all. But simultaneously, as a nation, we have a strong skepticism about medicine. We’ll take unregulated supplements, unrestr

At some point in my youth, my school brought in these Kid News Shows that we would watch at the start of the day. Logistically, I don’t know how this was possible as we were still in the AV cart era and there surely weren’t enough TVs for all the classrooms. Maybe it was a weekly experience? I don’t know. But I remember these kid reporters. They always seemed a little absurd to me, like, they were playing reporter and taking it all a little too seriously. It felt a little like dressing up a pet in a costume and then making it read the news. It was kind of cute and also a little off. I was listening to a podcast recently that brought those Kids News Networks to mind. It’s a podcast about internet culture and is very much not made for me. I listen to it because, sometimes, it can explain internet mysteries I am just too out of the loop to understand. Mr. Beast, West Elm Caleb, BYU Virgins, etc – these are all things I have (sort of) learned about. I like knowing things. I’ve listened to this podcast for a coupl

I’m sitting outside the Tip O’ Neil Federal Building in Boston. I’ve got another hour before I can get in line to pick up my passport, which is the reason I’ve come here. Not just to this building but to Boston. I feel very sure that there is someone from Boston sitting outside the New York passport office at this exact moment. They can’t believe they had to travel all the way to New York to renew their passport while I’m still shocked I had to travel all the way to Boston. American government systems can get a little bit silly sometimes and the passport system is especially silly right now. I’m sure there’s some dumb software issue that explains why a person from Boston is compelled to get their passport in New York and I’m compelled to get mine in Boston. It is clearly more efficient (or at least habitual) for the passport office to do it this way – even if it is very silly. To support this podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review! Rate it wherever you listen or via: https://ratet

My friend and I enjoy coming up with more accurate names for performing arts festivals here in NYC. You like the Next Wave Festival at BAM? Me too! We call it the Previous Wave, though, because almost everything in it hit its stride 30 to 40 years ago. Which is not to say it’s not good! Pina Bausch’s company still performs her work with integrity and style. But Pina Bausch died 14 years ago and the last time she was a new up and coming artist was around about 40 or 50 years ago.   Now everyone’s talking about the Under the Radar Festival recently, due to its being canceled, either permanently or temporarily. My friend and I used to call it the Directly in Line with the Radar Festival due to its shows mostly being works and companies already receiving a fair amount of attention, often European. That is, directly in line with the radar if you happen to have a radar that detects weirdo performing arts. Most of NYC’s Indie Arts scene could be standing directly in front of the Public Theater (home of Under the Rad

Before bed, I was reading the third book in V. E. Schwab’s Shades of Magic trilogy. I had a hard time putting it down as our two heroes were in a very tight spot, battling a killer magician creature that could dissipate itself. How were they going to get out of this mess? And, maybe more to the point, how was the writer going to get them out? It took me a while to get to sleep as I was turning over the problem but eventually I began to dream and I woke myself up multiple times in the night, trying to will myself to remember the following sentence: The Answer Is Magnets. I’d discovered that particles of this magician creature could be drawn out of things like bowls of soup, with magnets. This creature was metallic in some way, I guess. I loved the elegance of a simple scientific kind of “magic” being the solution to this giant thorny problem. To read more of The Answer Is Magnets, visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 360 Song: Magnet Image by Andreas_Schur via Pixabay To support thi

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! The fact that I was a shy, quiet, unremarkable looking kid didn’t stop me believing such a thing were possible. I did talent shows and musicals and revues and every play that would let me in. And the people who came would tell me to mention them in my Oscar or Tony speech. Everyone seemed to hold the same dream of my future discovery. Someone, somewhere would recognize my talent and catapult me to the stars. To support this podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review! Rate it wherever you listen or via: https://ratethispodcast.com/strugglingartist Jo

This is a rebroadcast of my second most popular blogcast. From the blog; My friend told me about some friends of hers who came to see her dance performance and were clearly pretty baffled by it. She didn’t take this personally because she understood that these friends of hers had no experience of contemporary dance or art in general. What was ironic about these folks with no art experience was that they were convinced they were dedicated arts supporters. They went to tons of Broadway shows after all; They thought themselves very artistically literate. My friend tried to explain to them that Broadway wasn’t so much art as entertainment but they had no idea what she was talking about. I think most Americans would have no idea what she was talking about. We conflate art and entertainment so dramatically that it is sometimes very hard to distinguish between the two. I have spent my entire life in the arts and am only now starting to work out the distinction. Art can be entertaining and entertainment can be artful

While watching the new Perry Mason show, I heard one character say to another, “You just don’t get it, do you?” and I wanted to ring a bell. Ding, ding, ding! Every screenwriter’s favorite line! There was a bit of a stir around a movie clip video supercut a while back which featured one character after another saying, “You just don’t get it, do you?” As you watch, you can start to feel crazy as one person after another says, in almost exactly the same tone (because there’s really only one line reading for this text), “You just don’t get it, do you?” with occasional text variations. To keep reading You Just Don't Get It, Do You? visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 359 Song: See Thru Image of keyboard by bogitw via Pixabay To support this podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review! Rate it wherever you listen or via: https://ratethispodcast.com/strugglingartist Join my mailing list: www.emilyrainbowdavis.com/ Like the blog/show on Facebook: https://www.faceb

TRIGGER WARNING: This piece will devolve into (imaginary) violence and (imaginary) men will be the victims. Also, some strong language. * A few times in the last few months, I’ve gone to the theatre and found I was seated next to a young man. How young, I’m not sure – maybe 20s or 30s? But every time, I find myself contending with their young man knees pressing into mine. It drives me absolutely bananas but I refuse to be knee pressed out of the space to which I am entitled. I’ve sometimes just stuck my coat over my knee and let the young buck press into that. I’ve tried to suddenly pull away. I’ve tried some quick shifting. Those boys don’t even seem to notice. The one next to me at Into the Woods was audibly crying during the Father/Son song “No More” but that didn’t stop him from manspreading into my space. “Hooray,” I thought, “This generation has learned how to cry and experience emotions!” but “Boo! They have actually gotten worse at manspreading than previous generations.” To keep reading Bring Those K

I'm out of the country so I'm posting one of my least played blogcasts. This is the tenth episode! From all the way back in 2016. It features an original song that I gave NO context for whatsoever. I feel I must have explained it later? Here's the intro of the piece, though: Over the years I’ve been a part of various schemes that are meant to help artists. Most of the schemes in NYC are schemes to improve our business skills, to make us bigger and more solid institutions. These make me nuts for reasons I have discussed many times before but recently, I’ve been involved in schemes that are meant to help give me ideas and inspirations. These make me nuts in a very different way. I have so many ideas, folks. I have ideas for breakfast, ideas for lunch, ideas for afternoon tea, dinner and midnight snack. I am rolling in ideas. And I am grateful for that abundance of ideas. I feel I can never have too many – so I am always happy to be a part of something meant to increase my inspiration. But ideas are

I had to travel to Boston to get my passport renewed last week for this trip to Canada I'm on right now so I couldn't record the podcast in advance as I'd planned so I'm posting a replay/rebroadcast of my most popular blogcast. Next week I'll re-post one of my least popular - just for balance. I'll be back on the regular schedule when I get back to NYC. For the episode: For the podcast version of the blog, I try and find a song to pair it with – a song that speaks to the content of the piece. For my piece about screaming, I searched for songs on the subject. There are a fair amount of songs with the word “scream” or “yell” in the title but almost all of them, I found, were by white guys. I found this phenomenon curious. Why are there so many scream songs by white men? What do white guys have to scream about?EVERYONE LISTENS TO ME WHEN I TALK!PEOPLE CLEAR A PATH FOR ME WHEN I WALK DOWN THE STREET!WHEN WOMEN MAKE 70 CENTS, I MAKE A DOLLAR!I AM AT THE CENTER OF MOST STORIES! To read more

I had an idea. I was thinking about how funny Time can be. How an event can feel like it was just yesterday and ten years ago, all at once.  I wrote to myself, Time Is a Tricky Witch and I liked it. It made me laugh. Then, a whole narrative emerged where Time was a tricky witch who’d enrolled a nice old man with a long beard to represent her – so whenever anyone had a complaint, they went to Father Time instead of her and she was as free to make as much mischief with time as she wanted. To support this podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review! Rate it wherever you listen or via: https://ratethispodcast.com/strugglingartist 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 help me get to Crete on Kofi: http://ko-fi.com/emilyrainbowdavis or PayPal me: https://www.paypal.me/strugglingartist Join my Substack: https://emilyrainbowdavis.substack.com/ F

When I was at the height of my Teaching Artist powers, I kept an extraordinarily erratic schedule. One morning I’d have to be in Jamaica by 8 am, the next day, I didn’t have a meeting in Manhattan until 4. The following day I’d be in the Bronx from 10 and some days, I’d have gigs in all three boroughs. Some days I’d have no gigs. I woke up at a different time every day, ate at a different time every day and was rarely in the same place two days in a row. I loved that no two days were exactly alike. The fact that I once lived and thrived like this is hard for me to reconcile with my current reality. One of the first things I learned about living with migraine is that routine would be my friend. The more predictable I could make my life, the fewer migraines might hit me. I began to try and find the best rhythm and schedule for my body – and while same-ifying my life didn’t stop the migraines entirely, it did make a big difference. I don’t like it. I liked the feeling of never being in the same day twice back wh

This Part Two of a Two Part Series on my viewing of The Power. You can read Part One here. Here’s Part Two: Since I started writing this, I’ve watched more episodes – which hasn’t really improved my opinion of the show, though I am grateful that it has shifted out of exposition and into stuff happening. But as stuff happens, characters keep saying, “This is going to change the world.” And while I understand that people really do say that in the midst of crisis, as I’m sure we all heard a lot of it in 2020 – it is actually really irritating to hear in a show. Don’t tell me this thing is going to change the world; Just show me the world changing or changed, as the book did. Maybe it’s having lived through these last years but hearing that the world is going to be changed by a thing that some writers made up just rings sort of hollow somehow. “Hey everyone – in this universe we just made up, everyone is growing a tentacle out of their chest! It’s going to change the world!” I hope so! That’s why I’m watching th

For years now, I have been hotly anticipating the TV version of the novel, The Power. I would occasionally search for it on IMDB or Google, just to see when we might get a televised version of this book that kept me going in some difficult years. I was advised to read The Power by a friend around about the time dragons came into my life and I feel a kinship with Naomi Alderman and the world she created in her book. In case you haven’t read it, it’s the story of a power that teen girls develop which allows them to generate electricity from their hands. It changes the world and how it changes the world is illuminating. ⚡️ I bought a lot of copies of this book for many of the women in my life. It’s been an important book in recent years and I hoped the TV series would only further electrify me. ⚡️ I’ve only seen two episodes so far and so far it has not electrified me

My friend suggested we both apply to this artist residency in Greece. When I looked at it, I noticed there was a fee to attend and I almost didn’t apply – but then I thought about how much I’d love to be on Crete with my friend so I went ahead and submitted for it, hoping to maybe get one of the few fellowships they offer. About a month or so later, I got an email saying I was accepted to the residency and then another saying I had not received the Fellowship. And the worst part, my friend had not received an acceptance email. I was wondering if maybe I shouldn’t go, even though these acceptances are rare. (Those of you who read this blog regularly probably have a sense of how rare.) Then I looked more closely at the details of the residency and discovered that it included a visit to an archeological site, excavated by a woman I’d done a ton of research about. I also discovered that we’d have an evening of learning Cretan circle dances – something I’d been looking for an opportunity to explore for a few years

For a while, I thought my interest in International Television was coming from a desire to escape, to be so far from my own world that I couldn’t even understand the language or the norms. That may still be a factor, but lately I’ve found that watching these things has revealed things about my own culture, the patterns that were underneath that were previously invisible to me because they were just the air I breathe. Of course a TV program is not the culture itself. A TV show tends to reveal things about a culture that it wants to be seen doing that aligns with its values or pushes them in illuminating ways. American TV is not American culture but it is how we like to imagine ourselves – and there a lot of things we DON’T do in our TV that reveal as much as we do. To keep reading Travel through International TV visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 352 Song: Can't Help But Wonder Where I'm Bound Image of Sheep at a Bus Stop by misterfarmer via Pixabay To support this podcas

Once upon a time in New York City, my friends and I started a theatre company. We’d have readings and rehearsals at our apartments. We made molds for masks in my kitchen. We had snacks and drinks and a generally lovely time. We wrote our first fundraising letter at Yaffa Café in the East Village and rubbed one of their buddha statues’ bellies for luck. The bumps in the road were quickly smoothed and we threw some fun post show parties. We also made some pretty kick-ass magical shows, if I do say so myself. It went like this for a few years but then issues of sustainability started to become more serious. There were the questions of how we could sustain the work as the city got more expensive – and the questions of sustainability in our personal lives, in the things we did for money, or our relationships got very loud. I could see that my career as a teaching artist was not going to be sustainable either so I decided I needed to go to grad school so I could bring myself and my company to the next level. To kee