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rustbeltjessie · 4 years

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Five years ago, I began putting a book together—a collection of my writings themed around punk music/punk subculture. They were all written between ‘99 and 2014, and had previously appeared in my own zines that had since gone out of print, or other zines or online magazines that had gone out of print/gone dark; style-wise, they ran the gamut from CNF to lyric essay to music criticism. I decided to crowdfund and self-publish the book, but at that point I didn’t really know what I was doing in regards to either crowdfunding or publishing full books. The book was almost ready to go but the artist I’d commissioned never finished the cover art, and my crowdfunding campaign hadn’t been entirely successful, and I wound up not having enough money to publish it.

About a year after I realized I couldn’t do it the way I’d initially planned, the book was picked up by a small press. My plan was to buy enough author copies to fulfill the initial crowdfunded preorders, and hopefully sell even more than that. With the help of an editor, I partially rewrote some older pieces and wrote some new ones to flesh it out a bit more. They found someone to do the cover and interior art, and put up a preorder page; I got blurbs from some of my favorite writers. It was all basically ready to go. But shit happened, and the press folded, and the book was once again dead in the water. (I’m not naming the press here, because my intention here is not to call anyone out. The people involved in all that are friends of mine, and as a small press owner myself I understand that shit happens. The saddest part about that whole thing is that I don’t get to use the cover and interior art we had, because it was amazing.)

I’ve recently realized that I need to get the book out in some way, because I need to put it behind me. For one thing, I feel badly that the people who crowdfunded or preordered never received anything. For another, I just need to move on, and I can’t fully move on until I get it out into the world. So I’ve decided to self-release it. For right now, I’m only making a digital version. I know, I know, print is way better, but I don’t have the funds to print it right now, and I’m certainly not going to ask people to pre-pay for it a third time. I’ve redone it somewhat—took out some of the weaker pieces, added in some others I’ve written in the past three years—and I’ve used my own artwork for the interior and done the cover in a zine-y/Xerox art style. I’ve uploaded it to Payhip, for a sliding-scale, pay-what-you-want price. This way, people who already paid for it (or just can’t afford it otherwise) can download it for free, and other people who can/want to throw a few $$ my way can do that. Most importantly: finally, finally, five years later, What We Talk About When We Talk About Punk will be released unto the world. — Here’s what some rad people had to say about WWTAWWTAP in its original incarnation: Love letters to way-too-late whiskey-drunk nights, stolen hearts and stolen kisses, small- town parking lots and bad decisions and even badder girls, WWTAWWTAP is a gritty and gorgeous series of riffs on living and loving punk. Like your very first show all over again, it'll set your blood on fire. —Sarah McCarry, author of the Metamorphoses trilogy and editor/publisher of the Guillotine series What We Talk About When We Talk about Punk distills wild nights of loud music, cheap whisky, and fugitive romance into a pure tonic. Jessie Lynn McMains’s voice is as indelible as a stick-and-poke tattoo and her autobiographical stories vividly capture the highs and lows of punk-rock youth. Pull on your leather jacket, grab a bottle of something, climb up onto the roof, and read this book. —Jeff Miller, author of Ghost Pine: All Stories True Wearing music like a jacket, that’s one of the things Jessie says about herself in these pages. I find that very admirable and inspiring. It gives a wonderful perspective to not only observe oneself in the moment, and in the past, but to feel the effect of that topic of study and passion on you, pressed against your skin. Jessie’s very subjective approach succeeds, and doesn’t fall into, impenetrable in-crowd self absorption, because she is smart enough to allow an adequate amount of objectivity and analysis to let her audience vibrantly see and feel her own experiences as if we are there with her. Music is a good reference point because lyrics, rhythm, and melody hit deep beyond the intellect into the emotions. You can always put on a CD, or vinyl record, or cassette and be transported to other places and times. These personal essays did this very thing to me, like listening to music. She becomes the jacket that we put on as we hear the lyricism of her stories. We are always with Jessie in her writings. The hyper-awareness that she uses to capture her memories to be pondered again and again, as we read on, immersing ourselves in her writing, is crucial. We are reading something that is alive and learning it’s own lessons. We can picture her being transformed by her own documenting of her experiences, becoming a complex being, a well informed member of humankind. She is infused with the playfulness and philosophy found in music and she demonstrates the frightening willingness to view oneself through a microscope. I find this fascinating. Therefore, because of this heart-on-her-sleeve writing style, when we allow ourselves to engage with her words on the page, to be as vulnerable as she has allowed herself to be, we too are transformed. Her words have gone from jacket to skin. We are there feeling her sexually charged reaction to Rock and Roll. We experience the sensual allure of the human body. With her we dive head first into decadence, decay, nostalgia, and hope. Her bouts of loneliness and need for community are palpable. We are bruised by the violence, the drugs, the suffering. We are stifled and also warmed by the dying and the regenerating of a constantly changing musical style. We witness the passing of friends and idols. We share in her understanding of what it means to be an outcast, and more specifically, how it feels to be a female outcast, to be a mother and a rebel. Through the willingness to wear this book like a jacket, like a skin, we not only see who Jessie is but we learn about the daily life behind the music, of people, inspired by their own creativity and the creativity of others, trying to simply be, to live a life worth living. This isn’t just a collection of diary entries, a memoir, it is an opportunity to look at oneself. Why are you a punk? Or perhaps even more importantly, why aren’t you a punk? —John “Jughead” Pierson, podcaster (“Jughead’s Basement”), musician (Even in Blackouts, founding member of Screeching Weasel), author Jessie Lynn McMains weaves the threads of her own life with a typewriter ribbon on a loom fashioned from melted records and empty 40's. The end result is fascinating, an ultrapersonal look at a life shaped by punk, forged by punk, fired by punk. What We Talk About When We Talk About Punk has music at its core and surrounding it on all sides, but its main muscle is the reaction to that, the response. Thoughts thought while listening to a perfect mixtape that takes you far away from the blah street you've found yourself living on (and a secret peek at the science behind that perfect tape), the thrill when a cute girl comes into your crappy job and gets why the 1" button on your jacket is so important. Notes scrawled on diner napkins and on the back of show flyers, now compiled into book form! —Ocean Capewell, author of The Most Beautiful Rot and High On Burning Photographs zine At 16 I cut my hair with a razor and dyed it black, looking at my reflection in the mirror that night I was convinced I was the spit of Richard Hell. When I think back through my own punk history, the bands, the friendships and the crushes; the obsessions that took over my life, led me to zines and the community I was desperately searching for, I can see with perfect clarity how I arrived at this point. As an adult woman these things are intrinsic parts of me. And that’s what Jessie’s writing does, it kicks you in the gut then hands you a cold beer. She knows. Jessie is the real deal; she is the girl Cometbus, one of the great zinesters of our time. If you want me, I’ll be in my room listening to my tapes. —Cherry Styles, writer, editor/publisher of The Chapess — You can download it here. Then listen to the official soundtrack here. (Pretend it’s on a tape, okay?) xoxo, the writer formerly known as Jessica Disobedience

#what we talk about when we talk about punk #jessie lynn mcmains #ebooks #punk #indie lit #writers on tumblr

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elle-stevens · 5 years

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The Break Up Blog - Day Twenty Five

My sinuses were especially crappy today.

They woke me up at 3am and with a sore throat to boot, which I battled with for two hours. Then I dozed off for a magical hour before I forced myself out of bed at 06:30 and into a shower. I think there’s dust lingering in my apartment, even after I got a cleaner in there a few days ago. My colleague, JI, suggested that I get an air purifier for my apartment, which is a good idea. I’ve been putting it off for a good year and it’s finally time to get some money together and save what’s left of my nasal passages.

Work was busy and ‘blah’ simultaneously with me introducing the new journals that C made for all the students. The goal was to only spend 10-15 minutes on the journal writing before moving onto other class activities. But either I’m just a shitty teacher or my students are exceptionally slow, but the journal basically took up an entire class period of 40 minutes for each group of students. My weak time management skills have always been the bane of my teaching career and it showed today. At least SB was less of a gremlin in class today. I took the card he made me last semester to apologise for his rude behaviour off my desk and hid it amongst my textbooks like I did with X’s old photo. I’m not going to rip SB’s card into shreds since he’s just a child, but that doesn’t mean I want to look at the blasted thing all day every day either. I only managed to check and correct half of my students’ journal entries. When it got to 16:30, I gave it up and took the remaining journals home with me to check and correct over the weekend. I’m sure I can bang that out in a good hour tomorrow.

I went home and ate an early dinner, feeling blue and strangely detached. Then I decided to rid my fan of dust so I could spare my sinuses tonight while sleeping. I cleaned it perfectly, but couldn’t reattach the cover with that infernal tube of rubber connected with a screw and nut. Whose bright idea was it to make a fan that you can’t actually put together after you’ve taken it apart?

I officially lost my shit at that point because it had been close to 30 minutes with no progress of putting the fan back together. So I yelled, cursed, kicked the fan, threw it on the ground and then kicked it some more till I severed several integral parts holding the wires together. Then I grabbed a garbage bag and chucked all the ruined pieces into it in a haphazard manner. While the fire of rage and indignation was still alight in me, I stormed into my study and grabbed X’s gifts that she’d given me once upon a time: the shirt she had made for me, our couple rings, the rock I painted for her with a picture of her country’s flag, the giant card she made when I first visited her hometown and of course, the colourful origami butterflies she made me once upon a time.

I ripped up the card and the cardboard box holding the origami. I ripped up the T-shirt with a pair of scissors and my hands into unruly ribbons. Then I threw the butterflies all over my bedroom floor and jumped on them over and over again till my heels hurt. I’m sure my neighbours below must think I’m certifiable by now with the racket I made for a good hour. But after that spectacle, I threw X’s trinkets into another garbage and marched both that and my broken fan downstairs to the big green bin outside my building. I forgot to add the passport cover she’d had made for me a year ago, but that will end up on the rubbish heap soon enough. All that’s left now are X’s clothes, her old boom-box, her grandmother’s ring and her plushies like Christie that I’ll send back to her at some point. I would never keep a family heirloom of an ex and everything else has been marred by the hateful things that X did in the last year of our relationship. So it all has to go or get tossed away.

I was high on adrenaline after that meltdown and I went to the gym and exercised half-heartedly, wishing I was home and resting instead. Towards the end of it, my righteous euphoria died and now I’m left with a gnawing, aching sadness and sense of loneliness. Everything feels pretty pointless in my life these days, even mourning the loss of X in my life. Sometimes I wish I didn’t care so much about things or people. I talked to my siblings and A and the three of them assured me that I just need time to work through my emotions and that the stuff that happened with X wasn’t my fault. Even though I know all of that, it’s difficult not to view this heartache as some form of punishment for some unknown slight that I’m responsible for. All of this heartache and depression while X gets to sleep soundly at night.

G keeps reminding me to focus more on the good things that I still have in my life, so I’m going to try and do that. I might go to a cafe somewhere in the city tomorrow with my students’ journals and bang out the rest of their corrections. Then I have another gym session in the evening which I hope won’t break my body or my mind. It’s my dad’s birthday tomorrow, so I want to call him and wish him properly. The money I sent myself finally went through to my bank account. So I sent the money I owed my siblings back to them along with some extra cash for my dad’s presents and his cake. At least replenishing my savings won’t be too much of an issue even with the stupid business with ordering a new bank card.

My sinuses are starting to calm down; I hope it stays that way for the rest of the night. I’m getting sleepy and my body and mind feel so numb these days. It’s almost like I expect to never feel anything akin to happiness or even desire ever again. Both concepts seem so foreign to me, like the words from a foreign language that I can never hope to understand. I hope I’ll start to feel more like myself and less like this poorly crafted zombie caricature that I’m portraying lately.

Maybe if I can distract myself for long enough, I can pretend that nothing’s that bleak or insufferable these days.

#breakupblog

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theatredirectors · 5 years

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Rebecca Wear

Hometown?

Altadena, CA.

Where are you now?

I predominantly split my time between Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. I’m also heading to Taiwan for a few months this fall to study Chinese, see work, and eat dumplings so I’d love any and all recommendations!

What's your current project?

I’m directing Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady at Greenway Court Theatre in Los Angeles, which opens September 7th. It’s a luminous, meditative look at the first Chinese woman (on record) to set foot on U.S. soil, Afong Moy, as well as her translator, Atung, chopsticks, and the history of race/Other-ing in the U.S.

Why and how did you get into theatre?

I wasn’t allowed to watch TV as a child so I did a lot of reading and backyard potion-making/spy pretending. High school theatre was a way to do the same things but with friends, college theatre classes were “just for fun,” and then once I arrived in New York after school, I realized that nothing is better than making new plays with friends.

What is your directing dream project?

A retelling of the Chinese legend of the White Snake with Yo-Yo Ma/The Silk Road Ensemble; a hallucinogenic, a queer Sufjan Stevens musical looking at Paul Bunyan and America’s history of ecocide; a performance parade in LA’s Chinatown that has site-specific work on sweatshops, the Chinese massacre of 1871, and gentrification…

What kind of theatre excites you?

Work that grapples with moments I’m afraid to discuss, work that un-ironically incorporates tambourines, ribbon dancing, and the like, and work that uses form, in addition to narrative, to prove its point or to make me complicit.

What do you want to change about theatre today?

Most things that connect theatre and money… how much (how little) the U.S. funds theatres, how much (how little) theatre artists are underpaid, and how uncomfortable we are openly discussing money.

Also, how precious we can be with our work! Sometimes, you gotta get up and grab another beer/go to the bathroom/clap along, you know? Of course, I want audiences to take in the gorgeous mise en scene blah blah blah, but if I can get up to go pee in the middle of a church service, why can’t I in the theatre?

What is your opinion on getting a directing MFA?

If it’s right for you, fantastic!

I decided to go to a MA/PhD program because I wanted time to think really deeply, expose myself to international creators and thinkers, and set myself up for future teaching possibilities (ah, how little I understood of academia!).

Email me at [email protected] if you’re choosing between the two and want to discuss more.

Who are your theatrical heroes?

Ralph Lemon, Mimi Lien, María Irene Fornés, Adrienne Kennedy, Ariane Mnouchkine, Bruce Gladwin, Pina Bausch, Anna May Wong, Crystal Pite, Kara Walker, Split Britches, Hallie Flanagan, Young Jean Lee, Wu Tsang, Katherine Dunham, Sarah Benson, Emma Rice, Ping Chong, etc.

Plus an endless list of glorious, brave playwrights like Jackie Sibblies Drury, Chris Chen, Casey Llewellyn, Lisa Sanaye Dring, Claire Kiechel, etc.; thinkers like Jill Dolan, Combahee River Collective, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Miranda Joseph, Elin Diamond, Silvia Federici, etc.; and fantastic producer/administrative artists like Patricia Garza of Center Theatre Group, Alison Carey at Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Melanie Joseph of the Foundry, Miranda Wright of Los Angeles Performance Practice, etc.

Any advice for directors just starting out?

Here’s some advice I was given that was very helpful for me…

1. See as much theatre as you can, for as little as you can – I got a part-time literary internship, which was unbelievably helpful in developing my taste

2. Don’t be a dick – you never know who is going to be your next boss

3. It’s perfectly reasonable to include financial concerns in decision-making – anybody who judges your decision to get a degree in another field to support your freelance career or to teach high school theatre is likely to have some kind of outside monetary support

4. Though scarcity thinking is shaped and haunted by systemic systems of oppression, it’s also ours to shift

5. Remember that it’s always easier to criticize than it is to create

Also, I was recently asked the question, “How do you deal with the loneliness of being a director?” and I gave some long-winded response about how our job as directors is actually to manage the insane imagination of our minds, which I actually believe (i.e. find what works for you in terms of mental health!) BUT anyways, afterwards, of course, I realized what I should have said in brief… beauty can be its own antidote to loneliness.

Plugs!

Come see The Chinese Lady. Tickets available here: https://greenwayartsalliance.secure.force.com/ticket

Please send me your play! Let’s hang out!

#Rebecca Wear #ask a director #theatre director

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