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Look, Ma, I’m a Socialist!

I’ve decided to take this incredibly politically-charged moment in American history to make a politically-charged statement!

In short, I’m a Socialist. Like, not an Obama Socialist, or even a Bernie Sanders socialist, but an actual, far-left Socialist, who challenges the fundamental principles on which our government and economy are built.

But I still think you should vote for Hillary Clinton.

In long, see below. 

WHAT I REALLY THINK ABOUT AMERICAN POLITICS:

I voted early in Louisiana, and I voted for Hillary Clinton. I prefer Hillary’s policies to Donald’s, but more urgently, it’s clear to me that Donald is using rhetoric that has been used many times throughout history, rhetoric which can be neatly categorized by any linguist or PoliSci major as “fascist”. History tells us that rhetoric like this often precedes fascist policies, such as voter suppression, abolishing or de-legitimizing elections, enacting martial law or a “police state”, and/or locking minorities up in concentration camps. I don’t think we are exempt from these dangers, as all of them have happened in our own recent history.

Thus I believe that a Donald presidency could be dangerous, PHYSICALLY and IMMEDIATELY, to a number of people whose lives are not currently in danger.

Hillary, on the other hand, is a dedicated, supremely competent, moderate politician, whose presidency will probably not put new lives in danger.

HOWEVER: a Hillary presidency will, almost certainly, maintain the American status quo of endangering and degrading the quality of millions of human lives, including but not limited to: the 2.5 million Americans in prison (at least 30% of them nonviolent offenders); the 15 million American children living in poverty; the tens of millions of political, religious, and economic refugees threatened by American-backed regimes; the hundreds of millions of workers (including children) employed by American companies under internationally-condemned conditions; and notably, every other human on earth, whose lives are threatened by the effects of global climate change.

Her presidency will not fundamentally change these problems, just like the Obama presidency hasn’t, and neither did the Bushes, or the other Clinton, or any of the others, alllll the way back to the very beginning of American presidencies.

In other words, by electing Hillary, we will be Continuing to Keep America Roughly as Fucked Up As It Usually Has Been. Which in this case, is definitely the better choice.

But I want to go ahead and say, while everyone is all fired up about American politics: I think we are stuck with these problems to a very large extent, regardless of who we elect, because they do not belong to one political party or another. These problems and many others are, in my estimation, the natural, predictable, unavoidable results of our ideological and economic dedication to CAPITALISM.

I think capitalism is hazardous to humans and other living creatures, and that socialism, despite its obstacles, may be our only chance at survival.

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WHAT I MEAN BY THAT:

First of all, CAPITALISM is an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners, for profit.

SOCIALISM is an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are owned or regulated collectively by the citizens of that country.

Both of these systems can and do exist alongside Democracy, as independent-but-related operating principles. Socialism is not anti-democratic, although there have been socialist societies that have repressed democracy.

(I’d argue, though, that our capitalist society has, historically, also gone to impressive lengths to repress democracy. A few choice examples: women, African Americans, Native Americans, Jews, Quakers and Catholics have all been legally barred from voting in this country at various points; felons still have voting rights permanently revoked; then there’s voter suppression & corporate influence on elections (notably the Citizens United ruling).)

The Big Unsolvable Problem of capitalism though, according to me (and many others, notably Karl Marx), is that it creates exploitation of people and the environment with an efficiency that cannot be effectively controlled by regulation. Capitalism operates almost like a natural force, and exploitation seems to be a powerful, self-organizing, emergent property of capitalist societies.

The best metaphor I’ve found is this one: capitalism flows around obstacles naturally and efficiently, like water around a stone. New regulations are circumvented, either by rebranding (see “slavery” versus “sharecropping”), political propaganda (see “The War on Drugs”), or exporting (see child labor, which was outlawed in the US in 1938; but which is still rampant around the globe (recent statistics estimate that there are over 200 million child laborers around the world) and employed, legally and widely, by American companies).

Socialism is imperfect, and there are historical examples of its imperfect implementation. Before you drag out those dead horses to beat, though, consider the atrocities that have been committed by our capitalist society. I’m not going to trot them all out here, but hey, you probably remember. 

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WHAT THE HECK TO DO ABOUT IT:

First of all, definitely do vote for HIllary. Voting third-party at this point is akin to farting in a windstorm. It’s just. Not. Going. To. Help.

So… I don’t know!!!

But.

I am interested in a future where private profit does not dictate our laws, our national political discussion, our children’s ability to survive on earth, or our imaginations. This future does not, by my estimation, exist within our current system of economics and government. Even Bernie Sanders, although “getting warmer”, was not openly willing to question the fundamental soundness of capitalism as an organizing principal of society.

But me? I’m an artist, not a politician. I consider it part of my job to think outside of the boxes I’m born into; to be radical, to be compassionate, and to give my imagination plenty of exercise.

So, I’ve been reading Marx, and David Harvey, and Jacobin Magazine. I joined the Party for Socialism and Liberation - PSL. And I’ve begun going to events organized by Black Lives Matter, which appears to be one of the only movements currently willing to acknowledge the systemic nature of the problems we face as a society.

This thought-project has shifted my perspective dramatically, so that the whole world looks a little off-kilter, which I find exhilarating. I now see the profit motive lurking behind every single injustice in the world, like Satan, or Sauron, or the Dark Side. It’s so big, and so pervasive, it’s as invisible as the air we breathe.

And all I’m saying is, it’s NOT the air we breathe.

So, can’t we at least consider the possibility of just… stopping?

As Ursula K. Le Guin​ reminds us, “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable – but then, so did the divine right of kings.”

I don’t know how to do it. I don’t have the answers. But I’m not willing to stop asking the questions. Like,

Are we really facing a million different problems, like police brutality and Climate Change and poverty and gun control and the Dakota Access Pipeline? Or is it possible that we’re ALL facing One Very Big Problem?

If it wasn’t all about profit, what would it be about?

Are humans really fundamentally greedy, prejudiced, and cruel?

Is this the best we can do for our children?

What about the children of the rest of the world?

Can you imagine a different future?



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Sex, Shame, and Your Ferocious Inner Pleasure Goddess

Since I was a kid, I’ve been interested in sex. I’ve been fascinated by it, titillated by it, amused and inspired by it. I was the kid who pretended her Barbies were prostitutes. I was the kid for whom “playing house” included the Mommy and the Daddy having sex (i.e. making out with my friends under the bed). I was the kid who found the stack of Playboys in my dad’s office, and distributed them.

And as long as I’ve been interested in sex, I’ve understood that my interest was something to be ashamed of. I was the kid who got blamed when J’s brother got suspended for bringing Playboys to school. And when M’s mom caught us making out under the bed - and subsequently activated the Rural Virginia Concerned Moms phone tree - I was the kid whose friends stopped answering my calls; who got disinvited from parties; who got shunned, publicly, in gymnastics class.

Apart from the occasional public shaming, though, I didn’t catch much of the usual anti-sex propaganda. I was raised in a sort of new age Group Therapy Commune, by an atheist and an agnostic/Christian mystic Jew. Nobody ever told me outright that sex was bad, or that I was bad for being interested in it. Of course, this is how shame prefers to operate: covertly, behind-the-scenes, under the cover of night. Nobody had to feed me shame; I breathed it in and absorbed it.

Sex is hip, desire is square.

As a teenager, very little changed. I wanted to try everything, to feel everything, to make out with everyone. I remember the first time my boyfriend went down on me - I was stoned, and the room was dimly lit, and it was like I was seeing the stars for the first time. Pleasure, sweet and bright and fluid, filled my whole body.

But I also remember being called a slut, and “nasty”, and being told repeatedly to “change into something appropriate”. I remember my boyfriend telling me he didn’t want to have sex with me because “sex ruins everything”. I remember a series of drunken hookups, all of them fun at the time, all of them followed by ugly words and dark, shame-infested high school dramas.

And I remember the slow realization that, despite the cultural imperative for every woman to be a recently-shaven, fresh-smelling “down there”, Kegel-squeezing sex bomb for 100% of her life (waking or sleeping), it was not actually cool to want sex, or to enjoy it.

I’m thirty now, and my little perverted heart remains unchanged. Sex is still the central fascination of my life. It is one of my primary sources for joy, inspiration, and connection. Sexual energy, for me, is the same stuff as creative energy; my songs come to me by way of my libido.

But the shame also hasn’t changed. When I’m feeling insecure, sex is the hammer I use to bludgeon myself with. Every hot-cheeked, sweaty-palmed moment comes rushing back, from that humiliating gymnastics class to the other day, when I tried and failed to initiate sex with my husband. “Why do you have to ruin everything?” I think. “Why are you so obsessed? “ “Why can’t you just be cool, like a regular gal?”

And then, in my funk of self-loathing, I’ll turn on the TV. And that is almost always a mistake. Because there, I find an alternate universe where every man is always turned on, and pursuing sex with a goofy, dogged-but-endearing determination. And every woman is the hot and flighty babe-next-door, for whom sex is a sort of side-hustle; the game she plays to win the stuff she really wants: romance, marriage, nail polish. If she does deign to have sex with him, it’s because he said something mushy; in which case she will grab him by the head and suck face like a CPR instructor, then remove exactly one item of clothing, and be primed for penetration in four seconds flat.

Or, maybe she is “troubled”, and thus uses sex to get other stuff she wants: attention, social status, the jealousy of other women. Rarely, if ever, does she want sex because sex is fun - because it inspires her, and fills her with bright and fluid pleasure.

How to Feed Your Pleasure Goddess

So, I am making my own media. I wrote ‘Vim and Vigor’ from the perspective of my righteous, unabashed Id – the Pleasure Goddess who lives deep inside me. She is full of desire and delight, she is ferocious and unashamed.

“I know I got a dirty mind
It’s in the gutter all the time
I don’t believe that it’s a crime
I consider it a service!”

In the video, we find her in her desire mansion, surrounded by men who turn her on, get her off, and feed her cake, according to her whims. She eats burgers by the pool. She has a pair of tap-dancing butlers, and a thousand pairs of pink shoes.

This creature lives in me, and I believe she lives in you, too. Maybe your Pleasure Goddess loves pie, or snowboarding, or women, or fennec foxes. Maybe she lives on a boat, or in a cave. But I’d wager she is down there now, making mischief and getting perma-laid. I’d wager she comes out to play sometimes, when you are truly in your party place.

And the great irony is this: the people who shame us, the so-called Good and Decent People? The gym teachers, and the pastors, and the moms who activate the phone tree? The Pleasure Goddess lives in them, too. She is in there somewhere, on her velvet throne, drinking Sake and watching Patrick Swayze (circa Dirty Dancing) shine her shoes.

But eventually, because they never let her out to play, she becomes a Goddess of Destruction, and starts to eat them up from the inside. So they lash out - they try to beat down their own desires by beating you up for yours. 

And before long, these people are not good and decent, tempered by their love of God and country. These people are bullies.

And bullies do not respond to reason, nor do they back down from intimidation. You can’t fight bullies with bullying. You can only fight them by being good to your own Pleasure Goddess: by living, delightedly and ferociously, right in front of their ugly, stupid faces.    


The ‘Vim & Vigor’ music video comes out next week, on my birthday: July 22nd. 

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(Photo by Ben Berry of Mountain Craft.)



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How to DO Creativity - Part II.

The truth is, friends, I’ve got a top-secret project brewing, and it involves me interviewing some of my favorite creators about how creativity works. It’s been inspiring and informative, and has only thrown fuel on my obsession with the creative process.

I’ll be sharing some of what I learn on this blog - then, one day, I’ll share the top-secret project itself!

1)   Get into an altered state.

Inspiration is impractical, and it is not often drawn to practical-minded individuals. When you are in a practical state - primarily concerned with money, housekeeping, or keeping your job - chances are not good that the muse will pay you a visit.

Inspiration is itself an altered state. Being inspired feels a little like being in love, or sleep-deprived, or high. The creators I’ve been talking to agree that to kick oneself into that altered state, it helps to be in another one first: falling in love is a common catalyst - so is heartbreak, and loneliness, and anger, and lust. Our brains are full of chemicals, and their combinations cause all kinds of interesting responses; creativity is one of the best.

But in case you’re not in love or heartbroken or angry, many creators find ways to alter their mental states using external stimulus. Common methods include travel, sleep deprivation, naps, alcohol and marijuana (just reporting - not recommending… necessarily).

I believe in muses and song-angels, but I also believe in science. If I’m speaking in sciencey terms, I think it’s fair to say that what we call ‘inspiration’ is probably what happens when the innovative, associative, emotional part of our brain is fired up, and the inhibiting, analytical, self-conscious part is temporarily switched off. Inspiration feels like riding a wonderful right-brain wave – the art of it is learning how to keep your nervous nellie of a left-brain from pushing you off (more on that later).

2) Allow your mind to wander.

Creativity requires idle time. I don’t mean staring-at-your-phone time, or watching-Netflix time, but an actual empty expanse of time, when your mind is free of distractions and can alight on whatever is at hand.

It helps to put your mind in a comfortable physical space: creativity especially seems to like beauty and silence. It thrives in quiet rooms, empty houses, and the outdoors. It doesn’t like phones, or anything else that can interrupt it abruptly.

It also helps to give your body something to do while your mind wanders. Some common mind-wandering activities include: moving through space (walking, driving, skateboarding, rocking chairs and hammocks), drawing, washing dishes, sweeping, cooking, gardening, kicking or throwing a ball. For best results: do these things alone, in silence, and without fear of interruption (ie: turn off your phone).


 3) Have a deadline.

I am working on songs all the time. Like, for 100% of my life, since I was thirteen, I have been working on a song. I am not always working actively - sitting in a chair with guitar in hand - but I always have journals and iPhone memos and the back half of my brain full of little scribbled song snippets: lyrics, melodies, chords, titles and themes. Mostly, I scribble these ideas down and then forget them, at least consciously.

When I say “I wrote a new song”, I usually mean “I finished a song I’ve been working on for a while”. Only about 10% of the time do I start with a brand-new idea and complete it in one sitting.

Two things can shove these half-finished songlets into full-fledged songs. One is inspiration (usually brought on by one of the altered states listed above). The other is a deadline.

One of the things I love about making albums is that, without fail, the prospect of being in the studio shakes loose a whole cascade of songs. They wriggle out of my subconscious and wake me up at night, as if to say, “Wait! Don’t forget me! I’m coming too!”

The artists I’m talking to, and interviews I’ve read with songwriters who worked in the Brill Building, or on Tin Pan Alley, say similar things: you might think that a deadline would scare inspiration off – and sometimes it does. But just as often, inspiration shows up at the last-minute and sprinkles a little fairy dust before you turn in your work.

4) Practice.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the point of practice is not just improving at your craft. The point is making your ego so mind-numbingly bored that it wanders off and bothers someone else.

Creativity means doing something new, and your ego hates it when you do new things. Your ego wants you to be successful at things, and nobody is successful at anything new. If you try writing a new song, for example, and ask your ego what he thinks about it, he will say that it is stupid and lame and contrived of six other songs, and that all of your songs are in fact stupid, and that if the world needed more songs it would ask Patty Griffin to write them, and that Patty Griffin by the way would agree that this is a stupid song.

It’s hard to get your ego to shut up. No amount of begging or bribery seems to do it. I recommend boring it into a stupor. Meditation helps with this, so do long drives and plane rides, and so does practice.

You want to start training your mind that when there’s a guitar in your hand, and you’re sitting in a quiet room, your ego might as well go do something else because nothing interesting is about to happen. After the 600th time you sit down to practice, your ego will wander off unbidden, and you can write a song in peace.

5) Be carried away by pleasure.

Songwriting, at it’s core, is about the pleasure of making sounds. Painting is about the pleasure of form and color. Dance is about the pleasure of moving your body. Science, as Richard Feynman famously said, is about the pleasure of finding things out. All creative acts are driven by a single motivator: the deep, personal, sensual pleasure of creating.

If you can connect to the pleasure of the things you make, and stay connected to it – if you can reconnect to that pleasure when your ego comes crashing through your mind – you will have a long and happy relationship with your muse. 

The muse is a hedonist. Everything she does, she does because it feels good; and just like any good lover, the best way to please her is to please yourself.




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