OMG the Kissing Oscar Wilde cover is awesome!

Derrick Brown sent me the cover to Kissing Oscar Wilde the other day. I'm giddily in love with it. They got the blazer and the boots right and everything.

The book won't be out till October, but you can read an excerpt here. Also, I made a Facebook page for it. Please like it if you like.

More news coming soon, including a very exciting save-the-date for the AMAZING RELEASE PARTY happening in Cambridge in October. 

Whew. Lots to do, but all good stuff. 

Thank goodness it's spring. Tallyho.

Yes, the Marathon Bombers ARE "One of Us"

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

Today, I am in lockdown in my apartment in Cambridge, just a few blocks from where the suspects lived. There are helicopters circling overhead, and a constant stream of sirens in the streets. My Facebook feed is open and awash with news. They found the two who did it, allegedly. One is dead, and one is on the run.

I spent most of this week nauseous and emotionally exhausted thinking about the Marathon bombing. Everyone I know wanted to know who did it and why, as though putting a face, a name, and some sort of manifesto to the act would make this tragedy make any more sense.

I hoped they would be Americans. They were not. They were a pair of Islamic Chechen brothers who'd gone to Cambridge Rindge and Latin, a local high school. One was twenty-six. One was only nineteen.

I'm listening to interviews with Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's friends, family, classmates, coaches, and teachers. Of course, they are all shocked. They were such normal boys, they say. One was "a sweetheart," according to a former teacher. Their uncle, in heartbreakingly broken English, says he can't believe his nephews could be involved in "such terrible thing." This is to be expected. When someone you know turns out to be a murderer, the usual response is, "But they were so normal."

When a murderer is someone you don't know, on the other hand, the usual response is to point out how different they are from you. One of my Facebook friends posted a link to Tamerlan Tsarnaev's (probably fake--but it doesn't matter) twitter feed, laughing about how suddenly silent it was, with hashtags that were something like #freak #seewhereyourfilthymoralsleadyou. Another one posted a long status about how the "terrorists"** were "NOT one of us. They are NOT our neighbors. They are NOT our friends. They do NOT share our memories, our celebrations of Life, our cohesiveness in the face of unspeakable tragedy, nor any other of our ups or downs. They are NOT you, they are NOT me."

The thing is, they are. The reason this is so unsettling is because we know that really, these men were not so different from us. Any one of us could have made a bomb (there are instructions online, for godsake), carried it to the finish line in a backpack, and set it off. Any one of us could chose to channel our negative emotions into violence. We have all been hurt. We have all felt lonely and scared and desperate. Many of us have probably fantasized about hurting others, emotionally or physically. I know I have. When I was in middle school a couple years before Columbine, I wrote a long poem about coming back to my class reunion and shooting everyone. It was satirical, sure, but satire is just an exaggeration of what's really there.

Almost everyone I know has joked, at one point or another, about bombing the building of a job that fired them, shooting a person who cheated them or disagrees with their ideology, or setting fire to an old school. Yes, these are jokes, but they are funny because we all have a part inside of us that wants to react to our own hurt by hurting others.

The bombers made a terrible choice. It was a choice that killed innocent people, hurt many more, and caused fear and sadness in the lives of countless others. However, just as the bombers had the choice in how to channel their own pain and suffering, we now have the choice in how we will react.

I could have done this. You could have done this. The only thing that makes us "different" from the bombers is that we have chosen not to react to our anger with violence. I make that choice every second of every day, and so do you.

Now our choices are how we're going to move forward. Are we going to let this incident increase racism and fear in our country, or are we going rise above it? We get to choose, starting now.







**I wish we could not use the word "terrorism" around the bombing, especially until we know more. No matter what the dictionary definition says, because of how it's been used for the past twelve years, the word suggests that the bombers were acting in accordance with a larger group, and, since the suspects happen to be Islamic, it encourages the othering of all Muslims, and the idea of an evil, global, Islamic conspiracy. Please, chose your words carefully.

TEN Novel Progress: the Halfway Mark

I've been a bit of a hermit since getting back from the TEN movie shoot in December. Aside from performing and teaching the odd yoga class (and my yoga classes are odd), I feel like I've barely left my house. (Sophia actually gave me some crap about never going out when I'm not performing. This is a fair accusation. The amount of time sitting alone in a room it takes me to write anything of value is staggering. This is especially true for large prose projects.)

One of the biggest projects I'm working on is the novel version of TEN. It's not quite a "novelization." Rather, it's intended to be a companion piece for the film, expanding and deepening the themes.

Writing a novel is a ton of work, even if the plot and most of the dialogue is already written. However, after working on writing the script for the film with Sophia and Michael, I felt like there was a lot of [vegan] meat [substitute] leftover that I wanted to explore, and there simply wasn't time within the structure of a film.

In one of those great mind-meld moments that happens with my favorite collaborators, S&M emailed me on Thanksgiving Day and asked me if I'd be interested in writing the novel version of the film. They know I'm a full-time artist, and offered to give me a small advance to help me not starve while I undertook this project. Money for art that I want to create anyway is, honestly, awesome, and I was super-excited to continue my involvement in this project, and to continue to collaborate with Mike and Sophia. Plus, writing novels is fun and challenging, and it's something I used to do a lot. In fact, when I first moved to Boston, I called myself a novelist.

The form I'm using (multiple first-person) is an especially challenging one to do well, but I feel it's the best way to deliver the themes of the work. As I start to write each chapter, I hate everything, myself, and writing in general for about three days, then I have an epiphany moment when I figure out what I'm doing, then I write joyfully, crazily, and feverishly for another three days, then I feel smug and brilliant and self-satisfied, take a day off, and start on the next chapter.

I'm about at the halfway mark right now. The insane, unreasonable deadline I set for myself was March 1st. It looks like it'll be more like March 15th (a murderously auspicious date), or even April 1st (a hilariously auspicious date), but the reason I always give myself insane, unreasonable deadlines is because stuff always, always takes longer than I plan for, so if I tell myself I'll finish a whole novel in two months, I might do it in three, and that's still pretty fucking good.

Okay, back to noveling.

How do I beat writer's block? I imagine dying.

I received this in a Facebook message, and I asked the writer if I could answer it on my blog. She kindly said yes (thanks, Amanda!), so here it is.

"Jade--I am taking a class on creative nonfiction, my first creative writing class ever, and reading your writing has made me want to capture the kind of fragmented humanness that comes out, though I still have no idea what to write about, and the worst writers' block. I never write as consistently or as deeply as I plan to--always just spurts of stream-of-conscious narrative, dates, intersections, meals, addresses, recordings of snippets of my life. I'm sure you get this question all the time...but what do you do when you have writers' block? How do you write when you're depressed or scared or lazy or unmotivated? I guess that's a pretty big question. But I am curious." - Amanda H.

Hi Amanda.

I think everyone who writes can relate to the feeling of sitting at their computer and feeling depressed, scared, lazy, unmotivated, or scattered. I know I feel at least one of those for at least a little while every time I sit down at the computer. The key words, I guess, are, "for at least a little while." 

I practice a lot of yoga and meditation, and it reminds me that the experience of "me" is constantly in motion. I may feel like the most pathetic failure on a planet hurtling lamely toward its own annihilation, but sure enough, wait twenty minutes, and I'll feel like I control the movement of stars. 

Being kind to yourself when you can't write, or when it's appropriate to do something else for your mental well-being, is a good thing. I need a good amount of quality time with my friends and family, as well as exercise, theatre, good food, live music, schmoozy parties, microbrews, oceans, and performance art in order to feel okay. It's not always procrastination. Sometimes it's just living, and you need to live to have something to write about.

Then there's procrastination. I procrastinate all the time. Sometimes I stand in the kitchen and eat half the loaf of challah bread my roommate brought home from the good bakery in Brookline. Sometimes I sweep the whole apartment, or reorganize furniture, or go to a yoga class, or go grocery shopping to replace the loaf of challah bread I ate (SORRY, EMILY). Sometimes I spend hours article-jumping on Wikipedia, or engaging in witty banter on Facebook with other witty artists and writers. Sometimes I answer questions about writer's block on my blog. Sometimes I stand in my pajamas and stare at the floorboards and do absolutely nothing for like, twenty minutes. 

In meditation practice, I've learned to watch the way my mind travels away from the focus (i.e. breath) without assigning value to these travels. It doesn't make me a bad person or a failure because my mind wanders away from focusing on my breath, but noticing it does mean I can remind myself to bring the attention back. This can be more difficult than it sounds, but if you just sit with the discomfort for long enough, eventually, it changes. Some of the same techniques work with writer's block. If you just sit with your blank screen long enough, something will change. 

But sometimes, just the act of sitting, of carving out so much of my precious life to sit alone in a room arranging words (for what??? for whom???) seems tortuous. I think of what else I could be doing. Going to the movies? Getting a real job? Shopping for clothes? Taking up a new addiction? Quitting an old addiction? All of these seem like valid choices with a lot more immediate payoff than writing.

In the type of Buddhism I like, you're supposed to think about your own death a lot. That sounds morbid to a lot of Americans, who try to avoid thinking about death at all costs, but it only means you're supposed to live your life with the goal of a peaceful death. That is, you want to make choices you can feel good about on your deathbed. 

At these moments of wishing I were doing anything else, of wishing I weren't even born a fucking writer, I think of myself on my deathbed. It's an outwardly peaceful one. There are loved ones, family, and friends. There's not a great deal of pain or anger or grasping. Everyone, including me, has pretty much accepted that it's timely, even if sad, for me to go.

The only difference is, in one version, I've written. In another, I haven't. 

To a certain extent, we all get to choose our deaths. I choose a death having written over a death not having written every time.  

I Don't Really Hate Polyamory

Saturday night, I performed as my hip-hop side project, Madame Psychosis at a well-attended, well-recieved show at Johnny D's in Somerville. The other acts were What Time Is It Mr. Fox, Sarah RabDAU and Self-Employed Assassins, and Johnny Blazes and the Pretty Boys. 

Yesterday I received a thoughtful email from someone who was at the show who was offended by a lyric of mine. The song in question is "Better Than You," which is the third song I ever wrote for Madame Psychosis, all the way back in 2009. The lyric in question is:

And polyamory looks like a scam to me. 

An adolescent chauvinistic fantasy. 

You do what you want with your man but I ain't sharing mine 

just cause polygamy's cousin's read some Gloria Steinem. 

The short answer is, I don't hate polyamory. I've been poly myself, and mono myself, and an awkwardly bisexual bachelor monk for much of my life. Madame Psychosis is a character I play sometimes who is supposed to be an over-the-top hypocritical hipster. I dress in femme drag. I wear a wig, a sequined Union Jack dress, Christian Louboutin shoes, fur, and speak in a fake English accent. 

The longer answer is more complicated. I wrote that lyric four years ago in reaction to a very specific thing I saw happening among some of my friends. Basically, I saw a lot of people being pressured into a poly lifestyle for whom it wasn't healthy. Within a certain community, it seemed like it was becoming a proselytizing-type of thing. A thing a person wasn't allowed to question. When I see something a bunch of people seem to accept without question, be it in religion, politics, or love, I want to offer a devil's advocate position. 

I also wrote that lyric before I really knew what I was doing with Madame Psychosis. At first, I was envisioning her as pure hyperbole, a hypocritical gadfly of hipster culture. Over the past three years, I've refined the character and made her (I think) more subtle, nuanced, and interesting. However, that means that the earlier songs I wrote don't always land the way I'd like. I wasn't sure about performing "Better Than You" for that audience, but I thought I'd try to make the rest of the show so ridiculous (selling kisses for whiskey and calling it "acts of small prostitution," offering to go down on a married friend of mine from stage, etc.) that it would make the lyric be taken with a grain of salt, and give the audience something to think about. I'm not sure if it worked (and the fact that it requires a lengthy blog post in order for me to sleep tonight suggests it didn't), but artists make decisions and go with them, and sometimes they don't hit the way we'd like.

When I originally wrote the song, I was only performing it to friends who already understood its context. Now that I'm performing it in rooms full of 200 strangers, who don't necessarily know me, or my politics or history or even my other projects, it means something different. It's a constant process of learning, growing, and readjusting. I'm also a very sensitive person. I get hurt easily, and while I like to challenge people and stir things up, I never want to make anyone feel hurt or ashamed of who they are. If you happened to be at that show and felt I crossed a line, I am really sorry.

Peace.

Jade

My Involvement in TEN the Movie: a Love Story

While I was at Kripalu Yoga Center this August, my friends Michael J. Epstein and Sophia Cacciola sent me an email telling me they were considering launching a Kickstarter (their first, though they've recorded and released tons of albums of music). Michael had mentioned before that he was a big fan of B movies, and he had always dreamed of one day trying his hand at writing and directing a feature film. "I wouldn't want to do it unless I could do it right though," he'd said. "I'd want to pay everyone at least a little bit, and I'd only want to work with brilliant people." 

Before they launched their Kickstarter, they asked a handful of artists they'd worked with before if we would be involved. The email I received at Kripalu asked, basically, if I would be interested and available to act in their film in December if they made their Kickstarter goal. Michael, Sophia, Karin Webb, Rachel Leah Blumenthal, Susannah Plaster and I all blocked out a nine-day period in December when we could be available. The pay promised was a modest $500. Enough to help us pay our rent during that time, but definitely not much for the amount of time or work involved. Of course, money was not the reason any of us said yes. The payment was simply practical. It made it possible for us, full-time artists and/or freelancers, to do the work necessary to make the film.

I was on top of a mountain lost in yogaland about twelve hours a day at that point, but I always loved making art with Michael and Sophia, so I said "Sure. If you raise the money, I'll be there." I wasn't sure they'd make their goal, and didn't give it all that much thought until I returned to Boston in September. Two weeks after I settled back in, they passed their goal. We were making a feature film, and we had less than three months to come up with a full cast, crew, location, props, and a script. 

I knew they were working with Sarah Wait Zarenek already to write the script, but since I am, by trade and profession, a writer, I let them know that I'd be happy to offer any assistance I could in the writing process. "I'm especially good at character and dialogue," I told them, which is true. I'm not much on plots, but for whatever reason, character and dialogue have always come easy to me.

At first, they were a bit cagey. "Mike's got the last word," said Sophia. MJE said he would "accept input at some point," but warned me himself that he was a "control freak." I told them that control freaks are my favorite type of people to work with.

A couple of days later Sophia asked if I'd like to come over and go through what they had of the script. I came over on a Tuesday night after a friend's book release party at about 8:30PM. We started going through the dialogue, and what was at first somewhat cautious proffering soon became all of us laughing hysterically as we argued over synonyms and alliteration and followed wild tangents about identity and the Self. The next thing I knew, it was 7AM, and we'd gotten through about 2/3rds of the script. "I'm adding your name as a co-writer," said Michael. "Can you come back on Friday?"

I would come over three more times over the next two months, and we would eat pumpkin noodles, vegan chocolate chip cookies, and write until the wee hours. It was one of the most fun writing experiences of my life, and a perfect collaboration. They had already mapped out the plot and the themes, so I could come in and do what I love the most -- give the characters voices. 

Simultaneously, Michael and Sophia were busy casting the film and securing the location, an old Gatsby-esque beach mansion in Rhode Island which we began referring to as the TEN Mansion. 

It didn't hit me that it was actually happening until I arrived in a car with Karin Webb, Leah Principe, and Porcelain Dalya on Thursday, December 6th at the TEN Mansion. As I walked through the 15+ bedroom home and realized I was going to be living there for the next eight days creating a movie I helped to write with artists I loved and respected, I couldn't stop muttering, "I can't believe this is my life." 

This is not the place for me to go into details about TEN Mansion anecdotes. That will come after the movie's released -- then the memories will have some context for other people. (For now, you can see a ton of interviews, recipes, memories, and lip-synching videos from our experience at the official TEN the Movie website.) Suffice it to say, it was literally the hardest thing I've ever done. The whole cast and crew was on their feet and working between 20-22 hours a day. We took catnaps. We ate standing up in the kitchen. We unwound at 7AM with hot toddies and exhausted laughter. As I write this from my parents' house in Indianapolis where I'm visiting for Christmas, I have a nasty cold that I came down with a couple days after I got back. But it was more than worth it. We filmed a movie I'm proud of in ten days (there was an extra day on each end not filmed at the mansion). It was the hardest thing I've ever done, but also one of the most deeply rewarding experiences of my life. 

Here's a blog MJE wrote about the cost breakdown of the film's production. While the final cost of the movie is nothing compared to what studios spend, I think the finished product will look and feel like a much higher budget endeavor. That's because this project was funded more by love than by money. Every single person believed in the dream, and worked absurdly long and hard hours for very little compensation to make it happen. People exhibited superhuman stamina and abilities -- talents and skills came out of nowhere when they were needed. It was the artistic version of those moms who lift Subarus off their infants. 

We all wanted to make this happen. When people would inevitably break down in tears because of sheer physical exhaustion, the community gathered around to support them and help them through. No one lashed out at others in their moments of break down. The attitude was always, "How do I get through this rough part to make this project happen as best I can?" It was the most inspiring thing I've ever seen. It was what can happen when a group of brilliant people believe in something enough to put its realization before their individual egos. A testament to the creative spirit and to The Boston Collectivist Movement.

I fell in love with the cast, crew and the process of creating TEN. It's a part of me, and I'm a part of it. I will always be connected to it, and I couldn't be happier. And this is just the beginning. Now that MJE is editing the film and Catherine Capozzi is working on the score, I'm beginning work on the novel version of the film. Yes, you read that right. I'm spending the rest of my winter writing TEN, the novel! It's going to be released alongside the film as a supplement, but also as a stand-alone work. The story will be the same, but it will go into the themes, characters, background, and plot in more depth. I'm so excited to be able to write this and offer it along with the film. I am one lucky human being.

TEN is going to have a life of its own, and I can't wait to watch it grow. I feel like it's a child our entire Collectivist community had and is raising together.

I'll be blogging here about the novel-writing process and other TEN-related happenings. You can also check the official website (http://tenthemovie.com/) for other updates. We will never stop.

Thank you, beautiful community. Thank you. 

The Boston Collectivist Movement

I'm an artist living in Boston, Massachusetts. For the past four years, I've been lucky enough to work with some of this city's most brilliant creators. I've written books, performed poetry, recorded albums of folk and hip-hop, done Vaudeville, drag, and improv, modeled for photographers and painters, organized and/or performed in countless variety shows, and am now starring in a feature film I helped to write.

All of these projects fall under the misleading blanket term, "independent art." The irony is that so-called "independent art" is more dependent on (and integral to) its community than any mainstream media. Mainstream media is funded by independently wealthy institutions such as record labels or publishing houses. Independent art, or as we're calling it, Collectivist art, is sustained by its value within its community.

If you'd asked me fifteen years ago if I thought any of these projects would be possible without some serious mainstream financial backing, I would have answered with a gloomy laugh of resignation. But over the past fifteen years, the internet happened and the stock market crashed, and suddenly we're not so sure we need or want any big institutions telling us how we should and can make art. 

So we started making it any way we could. We connected with other people who were passionate and brilliant and crazy enough to stay up all night memorizing The Ballad of Reading Gaol or gluing glitter onto pig-masks or driving back from a show two states away when they had work the next morning. Everyone had day-jobs or were in grad school or were freelance web-developers or graphic designers or were on unemployment. We were all tired all the time, but we were making the art that we wanted to make, and slowly but surely, we were finding people who wanted to read/listen to/look at that art. 

Somewhere in our mid-twenties, or late-twenties, or early-thirties, we all realized that we needed to redefine what we meant by the word "success." When we thought success meant a million-dollar record deal and an episode of Cribs, we were miserable. When we decided success meant, "I create work I care about with people I love and respect, and it's routinely received by an audience that appreciates it," we realized we were the happiest people in the world. 

So we made. And we realized as we continued to connect with other crazy, brilliant creators that so much more was possible through working with one another than locking ourselves in our rooms watching Cribs and pounding out yet another solipsistic manifesto. I know nothing about photoshop, but Caleb does. Jojo plays the ukulele and draws Mucha-esque portraits. Michael and Sophia can write a theme song to anything, and they have a recording studio in their house. Eric can whip up a Mayan Doomsday mask on a moment's notice out of dental floss and old tires. Karin can play any character. Any. Character. If someone needs a snappy bit of dialogue or a pantoum based on Elton John's Rocketman, they call me.

Most of our work for each other is done for free, or for very little money. If we were making more money off our art, we would pay more, and on the rare, unpredictable occasions when one of our projects does turn out to be financially lucrative, we share the wealth as best we can.

But money is simply a useful cultural metaphor for value, and the value we derive from working with one another is not primarily financial. Again, it's the experience of creating work that moves us with people who share the same vision, and the luxury of being able to put that work into the world and watch it move others. 

Cooperative collaboration between artists is not a new phenomenon, but during the mid-to-late twentieth century, when hyper-consumerist capitalism was slapping its dick over everything in America, artists suddenly got the idea that in order to call themselves Artists, they needed to make a shit-ton of money off their art, like The Beatles or Andy Warhol. Making art without serious (and ultimately spurious) financial backing was considered futile at best and amateurish at worst, and this served to isolate and disempower unfunded artists. But the model of one-to-many wealth came crashing down with the one-to-many model of the media. The type of wealth and fame amassed by The Beatles and Andy Warhol was an anomalous symptom of the way media and money worked at that particular moment in history.

Kickstarter is a concomitant financial manifestation of community-driven Collectivist art. The modern Collectivist artist is not a gallon of homogenized, hormoned milk shipped from some distant factory farm. She is a juicy Heirloom tomato nestled in a CSA box. She takes on the flavor of the soil she grows in, and nourishes the community that planted and sustained her. 

The most interesting thing about the current highlighting of collaborative, community-supported art is it aligns with a shift away from faith in the notion of the individual author in a larger cultural context. With Wikipedia, blog sharing, Tumblr, and Facebook, the old belief that an individual could own their ideas is dissolving. We're seeing how interrelated, and interdependent, and derivative we really are. Unbound by of the shackles of "originality," we're free to simply create. 

I've been invited into this weird, wonderful world of Collectivist art where we don't focus on who wrote which part of what song or whose fishnets those are. We step in where we can contribute, and are happy to step back and watch when it serves the art. Our very identities are fluid and intentionally donned to fulfill certain roles within our artistic community. Sometimes it feels like we've all melted together and are each merely embodied aspects of the work. 

That's okay. Better, even. I started making art at six because I felt lonely and isolated in my skin. I would rather be a part of something bigger than me than be myself alone.