Songs For The Struggling Artist

As winter approached, I freaked out a little. The idea that we were looking down the barrel of a third pandemic winter just zorked my feelings up. (Yes, I know that’s not a real word. I had to make one up; That’s how zorked up my feelings were.) I wanted to run but there was nowhere to run to. The pandemic is freaking everywhere. You can’t escape it. It’s better in some places (a lot better!) but those places sure as hell don’t want my New York ass in their uncovidy environs. I had a couple of panic attacks. I freaked out. A friend who called to check on me got an unexpected sobber on the phone. It was a rough couple of weeks. But somehow I turned some kind of corner. Despite everything being very bad and some things even worse than I could have imagined, I’m in a state of what I can only call Thrashing Acceptance. That is, I have accepted that this is my reality and with that acceptance is a kind of peace. Simultaneously, I hate it. It makes me furious and I occasionally have to flail my limbs around. That’s

When I walked up to check out the booths at Open Streets (the program that closes down/opens up a couple of blocks to give the neighborhood more public space) I wasn’t prepared for a show. When I approached the second block, I saw a crowd and a truck and then I saw some clowns getting the crowd fired for their circus. Their performance style was so familiar, I almost just walked away – feeling an habitual “I know what this is. I don’t need to watch it.” But then I found myself not walking away. And then I found myself not walking away for quite some time – and halfway through their opening sketch, I started weeping and did not stop until I finally pulled myself away half an hour later. To read more of Waterworks at the Street Circus visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.  This is Episode 290 Song: Damn Everything but the Circus 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

Ladies and Gentlemen, Whales and Snails, Lobsters and Crabs, Crayfish and Crawlers: I have something of a reputation for keeping going in the face of difficulty. I am a self-proclaimed shark and I swim ever forward. I hold space for people who once stood where I stand and need me to keep going as a sort of beacon. That is a responsibility I take very seriously and I hold that beacon high, my squids and octopi. But I have to confess to you that my arm has gotten very tired of holding that beacon up and I’ve been falling down on the job a lot this last year. To keep reading Inspiration Obstacles visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.  This is Episode 289 Song: Walk on the Ocean Image by JerzyGorecki 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.facebook.com/SongsfortheStrugglingAr

In the year or so of going to this café, I have only ever seen the owner in mask – until yesterday. Yesterday, he was outside working on his shed and he was without his mask. For the first time, I saw the lower half of his face and if he hadn’t greeted me warmly and started chatting, I would never have recognized him. I am fascinated by this trick of my brain. Put a piece of fabric over this guy’s face, I could easily pick him out of a crowd. Without it, I think I’ve never seen him before. It’s clear that my brain made up a face for this guy, one that has nothing to do with his actual face. The face I made up doesn’t exist and I can’t really describe it but if I saw someone with it or something like it, I could have pointed to it and said, “That one.” It’s not just that I didn’t know what this guy looked like, it’s that I thought I knew and I was super super wrong. To keep reading The Face I Made Up visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.  This is Episode 288  Song: I've Just Seen a Face Ima

My favorite café closed and it was really the only choice in this particular neighborhood, which I pass through with some frequency. In the interim, someone has opened a chain café that has some decent outdoor seating on a spacious sidewalk so I’ve ended up there a few times when I’m in the area. The place is called Joe and the Juice and it’s important that you know its name as I tell you about it because its name is the key to this story. To keep reading I'm Sorry But the Temptation to Say This Will Be Great visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.  This is Episode 287 Song: Devil in Disguise  Image of Joe and Juice cup by me, Emily Rainbow Davis 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

I just remembered this absolutely genius idea for a book I had about 25 years ago. When you hear it, you’re going to be like, “Yeah! What a brilliant idea! What a shame you didn’t put that together! You’d be a millionaire already!” Here it is: A guide book of cafes around the country, with reviews and photos and maybe little drawings and scraps of writing I’d done in them. Can you believe I missed out on this golden opportunity? To keep reading My Genius Idea for a Book visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.  This is Episode 286 Song: Everyday I Write the Book  Image from A Deplorable Affair via the British Library 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 buy me a coffee on Kofi: http:/

The one I can’t stop thinking about is the person who called 911, the person who witnessed the accident that killed my youngest brother. I feel enormous tenderness for that person, even though I know nothing about them. The only thing I know is that they saw the accident and called 911. They will likely have the image of it in their brain forever. I have an imaginary version of it in my brain that will likely be with me for as long but the caller has the actual event there in their brain. I’m sure it is not a nice thing to have there and yet I am grateful that that person was present, that they called the emergency line and did something. It was too late for my brother, but they tried and I think of them, this person I know nothing of, with so much warmth. They were there for the last moments of Will’s life. They were witness to his exit. I’m not sure why it moves me but it does. To keep reading The One Who Called 911, visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.  This is Episode 285 Song: Save Me (Ar

The temperature has dropped. I pulled my winter coat out of the closet. Our third pandemic winter has begun. Last year, I sat writing under the heat lamps outside at the Toast and Roast, grateful not to have to be at my kitchen table to write but dreaming of the day we’d get the vaccine and I could safely sit inside a café again. And here I am. Back outside at the Toast and Roast (the only coffee place with heat lamps in my neighborhood) despite the fact that I have been vaccinated and have been so since I last sat here in the spring. Could I go inside somewhere? Sure. Despite the fact that sitting indoors to eat or drink is one of the riskiest things we can do, I’m sure I will at some point. But despite the fact that proof of vaccination is required to sit inside cafes here in NYC, very few places here have been diligent about asking, which does not give me great confidence about the vaccination status of those indoors. Especially given the signs on some windows proclaiming they “don’t discriminate” against

Because I’d read some interesting criticism/praise of the TV show, Younger, I decided to check it out, despite it NOT being a Spanish TV show. (Truthfully, I have expanded into TV from France, Colombia, Italy, Germany, Brazil and Turkey at this point, so it’s more like: despite it not being an international period drama.) The premise is that a 40-ish year old woman pretends to be 26 so she can get a job in publishing. She’s played by Sutton Foster who is, according to Wikipedia, currently 46 and was not quite 40 when the show started. In other words, Sutton Foster and her character are definitely Gen X. The show’s premise is basically one big set up for “She’s so old and doesn’t get it!” jokes – with the occasional “These crazy kids today do WHAT crazy stuff?” I know for sure that this show was not made for me. Or any Gen X women, really. It’s a show called Younger for younger people and that’s probably why I didn’t have much interest in it when it came out. But the stuff I read said that it had an interestin

Creativity is incredibly important to me. That’s why I read Jonah Lehrer’s book, Imagine: How Creativity Works, even though he’s been disgraced for being a little too “creative” with his Bob Dylan quotes. Before he got himself disgraced, he made all the podcast rounds so not much of the book was a particular surprise to me. I’ve heard the story of the invention of the Swiffer. I know all about Pixar’s architecture. I am familiar with 3M’s post-it note development. However, the cumulative effect of reading the whole book made me feel like the people who really care about creativity are in business, not the arts. Businesses like 3M, Pixar and Wieden+Kennedy are in the business of innovating, so they do the studies. They run the experiments. They actually value creativity, it would seem. To read more of Maybe I Should Go into Business visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.  This is Episode 282 Song: Takin Care of Business Image by Jarmoluk via Pixabay To support this podcast: Give it 5 stars in App

The application form asked my age, so I answered the question and submitted my application. But after I did, I started to worry. Should I have skipped that question? Should I have submitted it to Honor Roll, the group of women playwrights over 40 that works to combat ageism and sexism in American theatre? Had I just set myself up for being rejected by revealing that I am 48? The form asked. I answered. I’m not yet used to being vigilant on this topic. I tried to be attentive to ageism before it was relevant to me but I wasn’t prepared for it to come for me so soon – or at least before I had anything impressive under my belt. It was one of the first things I’ve submitted to in a long while and the whole exercise sent me into a bit of a funk. In the year and a half that theatre was been shut down, I’ve aged into ageism and now all the doors that have been closed to me are extra closed. I read a book on creativity that suggested that the science says we are most creative in our first few years with our art and a

The cheerful scarecrow dolls and corn cob clusters don’t thrill me but I will celebrate any nod toward decoration this month. I embrace your paper pumpkin, your hay bale, your autumnal faux leaf display. But I am delighted by your circle of witches, your zombie doll babies, your floating spectres, your plastic bag ghosts, your homemade headless magician, your skeletons engaged in activities, your dagger wielding clown child on a swing, your smoke machine, your sound effects, your back-lit and up-lit cloaked figures, your spiders, your crows, your ravens, your bats. To keep reading Give Me Your Witches, Your Ghouls, Your Severed Limbs Hanging in Trees visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 280 Song: Spooky Image of a house in my neighborhood 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

Someone in the Gen X subreddit proposed a “dating” app for making Gen X friends. I expressed my enthusiasm for it, saying it appealed to me because most of my Gen X friends have moved out of NYC. Someone replied that they still had a lot of Gen X friends in NYC and I did not respond to that person with a hearty sarcastic, “Well good for you! Aren’t you a lucky one?” Though I wanted to. I did not say, “I guess most of your friends didn’t move to NYC to chase their theatre dreams or their art dreams or their music dreams or their poetry dreams or their film dreams or their dance dreams and I guess everything worked out for your people, huh? To keep reading Circles of Gen X Friends visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.  This is Episode 279 Song: Circle in the Sand Image by BarbeeAnne 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

Back in 1993, I got my first passport and moved to Italy for my junior year abroad. One of the things I was most excited about was getting to see the culture and art of an entirely different country. The internet was in its infancy then, so going places was really the only way to see what other nations were making. I was hungry for Italian pop, Italian TV, Italian cinema, Italian theatre, whatever I could get my eyes and ears on. I understood, too, that watching and listening to these things would help me improve my language skills. I listened to the radio but the pop music was pretty lousy. I watched TV and the shows all seemed to be tacky variety shows full of show girls. I went to Italian theatre and mostly found translations of works in English. Only the cinema managed to deliver high quality contemporary art. To read more of Lessons from Italian Media visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.  This is Episode 278 Song: Come Mai - 883 Image via Pixabay To support this podcast: Give it 5 stars i

In the throes of my grief, I thought I’d just go along as normal, just get on the internet, see what’s what. You will be stunned to learn that the internet did not make me feel any better! Over and over, I turned to the internet and over and over, it did not help. Not Facebook, not Twitter, not Reddit, not Instagram. Shocking, I know. To keep reading The Internet Is Not a Friend visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 277 Song: Somebody Pick Up My Pieces Image via Old Book Illustrations by Narcisse Virgilio Díaz 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 buy me a coffee on Kofi: http://ko-fi.com/emilyrainbowdavis or PayPal me: https://www.paypal.me/strugglingartist Follow me on Twitt

You may not be shocked to learn that the City did not give me one of its 5k City Artist Corps Grants. I did end up applying for it, after all that sturm und drang – and two days after my birthday – I got a rejection email from them. Happy Birthday to me! Well, I guess I got 99 problems but a grant ain’t one. You may be saying to yourself – “Well, Emily, perhaps if you hadn’t publicly complained about this grant in two previous blog posts, maybe they would have given it to you! Maybe badmouthing grantmakers is not a great strategy for receiving their bounty.” And you would be absolutely right about that. I know I’m saying stuff that does not endear me to people who give those things out. This is why most artists don’t say anything. This is why they can be pathologically POSITIVE! OPTIMISTIC! Because, yes, it’s true, talking about our challenges with these things is probably not a great way to get these grants. To keep reading A Grant Ain't One visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 276

A day or two after the news, my partner asked me what I needed. I said, “a time machine.” I’m pretty sure he knew what I wanted to do with it. I’ve watched and read enough time travel fiction to know that this is usually the one thing you’re not allowed to do with a time machine if you get your hands on one. You’re not supposed to use time travel to prevent someone’s death. I know. But grief can make a person reckless and I might not worry too much about the butterfly effect if I could save my brother’s life. I imagined showing up at the side of the road that night and delaying him long enough for that fatal motorcycle to speed by and then he could go on about his life, none the wiser. Or I could just walk him companionably further down the road to a safer intersection, maybe cross with him, after thoroughly vetting the streets. To read more of Non-Regulation Time Machine Dream visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog. This is Episode 275 Song: David Bowie's "Let's Dance" Image via Wikicommons Normally

Y’all know me. I love to reflect. Reflecting on stuff is my favorite thing and I do it on the regular. But I’m having some trouble reflecting on this 20th anniversary of 9-11. I want to. It seems important to, especially as this is also the 20th anniversary of the birth of my theatre company, but –  like, my brain just sort of dances around it and will not settle. I’m much more interested in the three young women next to me at this outdoor patio of this café. They were recently college students so they are unlikely to have any real memory of 9-11. Today is more or less meaningless to them. That’s how long it’s been. It’s been long enough for these young women to grow up. To read more of In Which I Attempt to Reflect on the 20th Anniversary of the Things visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.  This is Episode 274 Song: I Need, I Want, I Crave by Bright Red Boots Image of Steak Fries by StockSnap via Pixabay. To support this podcast: Give it 5 stars in Apple Podcasts. Write a nice review! Rat

Music can be a time machine. Play Duran Duran’s “Rio” and I am instantly transported to a carpeted spot in front of the Barbie doll mansion I’d created in my closet in the mid 80s. Put on Primus’ “Nature Boy” and I’m in a cargo van in 1997 with several Shakespeare dudes who are wildly flinging themselves around, while the Shakespeare dude driver nods his head in time. I did not like this song at the time but now I do, not just because I’m angrier these days, but because of how quickly it can return me to the past. Music can evoke a time and place more directly and precisely than just about anything. (Smell can be a direct line to the past. It’s maybe more immediate but, it’s also often less specific about time.) Music is an incredibly powerful tool – which is why I’m entirely flabbergasted at a trend I’m noticing on television. Why would you use music from a different era than the one you’re trying to evoke? To read more of The Time Machine of Music visit the Songs for the Struggling Artist blog.  This i

After the death of an old friend, I went on an excavation of old writings in my computer. I went back 24 years to find a poem I’d written about this friend and waded through so much writing I hadn’t thought about in decades. The thing that stood out to me about this process and encountering the self that made it all was how much I used to believe that what I made would eventually be read or seen. I didn’t necessarily think all those poems would be published – certainly I didn’t feel that poetry was my best medium – but I did think, oh, one day I’ll have a partner who’ll want to read everything I ever wrote or some writerly soul friend who’ll comb through my entire oeuvre and help me bring things to light. I used to imagine that everyone would want to hear every detail of my trip abroad, as well. People used to give slideshows of their journeys overseas! Now I can’t imagine burdening anyone with all of that. There is no one who wants to read every word I ever wrote. It’s too much reading! To read more of Every