It's been a long, long time since I posted. Almost a month! I'm still alive and kicking here in Berlin. I had a birthday in Amsterdam. I'm in German A2 and I have a few private clients I'm tutoring in English. That's the short of it and now, here are some photos!
Welcome to Amsterdam. Come on in to the Coffeeshop as long as you are over 18
Just wanted everyone to know that I have a new item up in my Etsy store and I also created this page on Word Press. If you know anyone who is trying to improve their English, please direct them this way. I give lessons in Berlin and also via Skype.
Disclaimer: This is a mega-downer post. It is such a downer post I probably shouldn't even post it. But I am. If you want to see a "Woo! Berlin!" post, try sometime last year.
Okay, you've been warned.
It's December 7th, 2012. Supposedly the world will come to an end in 14 days. Right now, life is happening, and I keep falling apart. Every year, no matter where I am, what continent I happen to be on, it's like this. November is a painful, treacherous backslide where I try to dig my heels in, keep my chin up, because I know it's coming: the blackness, the weakening of the soul, the time of year where I become a ball of need, a walking dead. But no matter how hard I try in cold, gray November, no matter how hard I struggle and fight, December comes. I am out of money, still with no job, no work permit, no creative partner, no glimpse of a steady future. Don't get me wrong. I'm thankful for what I have. A wonderful mom, a medium-sized room in a flat in Berlin, caring flatmates, Robert, food to eat, my first sale in my Etsy store. I have a lot more than a lot of people, and I am grateful.
But every year, this is the hard part. My money from the summer has run out and I need to renew my domain or my website will go black, there's always a gig or a project that I was working on with someone and then that someone drops out, or never shows up, and then there's the music. In Berlin, like in San Francisco, Christmas is everywhere. I cannot escape it. It makes me miss my dad. I get sent back to the nightmare that for some reason I can't write about. Oh December, you make me tiny and weak. You make me want to give up, throw in the towel, hibernate, or just stop all together. Your snow is beautiful but unfeeling. Will the world really end, me still broke and unwed? Will I actually get my act together to create something for my gig on the 21st, or will I just curl up behind my sewing machine and make things out of stockpiled fabric, pretending I don't exist until Spring?
As those of you who are familiar with my blog know, I have had a campaign on Startnext for my PJ's Pussies exhibition for the past 30-something days. In order to launch my campaign, I had to record a video of myself explaining my project and asking for money. I used the resources I had available, a tripod, camera and Final Cut. Robert helped me subtitle it. The video is below, and it is HORRIBLE! (If the youtube video doesn't play here and you want to watch it, follow this link)
I know it's bad, okay? I'm aware that all of the vivaciousness that I have as a performing just does not come through. My speech is halting and awkward, my movements mechanical. I'm like some horrific broken robot. The outfit? I guess on the day I dressed that way, I thought it was cute, but I admit, I do look a little like a member of the airline stewardess rejects club. The composition of the video is ok, I like the way the cats are arranged, but if one is just stumbling around youtube watching random things and sees this video out of context, I can see how it would seem extremely strange.
Evidently, my work IS strange, strange enough to get featured on Regretsy. Regretsy is a flame site that features weird and somewhat regretable arts and crafts for sale on the interwebs. They are, of course, based in America. Even though Regretsy is a flame site, I welcome publicity and internet presence of my work.
Since getting listed on Regretsy a few days ago, the video posted above has gotten almost 6,000 hits. This is good, right? Well, maybe not. The first string of comments on Regretsy is about the scar on my face. Maybe I don't want those 6,000 hits after all.
It's a cheapshot, picking on someone's physical appearance, but the internet (and the world) is full of people who do just that. This comment about my appearance hurt me so much that I removed the video from my youtube channel for a few days. Unfortunately, I could not remove it from the Regretsy site. As of today, I have made the video public again.
I've been dealing with people's rude behavior about my scar my whole life. First I thought that the rude behavior and ridicule would end when I left high school. Then I thought that maybe after college, folks would have something more important to focus on. Eventually, when I left the US, I imagined that there might be more interesting questions to ask me, more immediate qualities to judge my character by, than the scar on my forehead. Boy, was I wrong!
People have flat out told my that they could not cast "my scar." I have had directors and performance coaches tell me I should cover my scar or somehow obscure it because it is distracting, that it detracted from other parts of my clown or another character that I was playing. This was largely in my own work that I was devising! Excuse me, but if I can't perform past my scar, I should really find a new career. Audience members have said a lot of things to me over the years when I've walked off the stage, but not once has someone dared to rudely ask, "What happened to your face?" Evidently, the otherwise qualified directors and coaches I've worked with don't have the same poise.
In October, I flew from Berlin to Amsterdam to work with a modelling agency. I was surprised when they booked me. Though I'm active in front of a camera and quite photogenic, a lot of photographers won't work with me because of my scar. And that's fine. Modelling is a shallow business, based only on visual imagery. Most people who like to shoot pretty girls are looking for plastic conformity of some nature. If someone doesn't like the way I look, they don't book me. It's as simple as that. But this agency did book me, and I thought, "Alright! A modeling agency that thinks outside the box!"
When I got to their office in Amsterdam, their modeling coordinator took one look at me and told me, "Sorry, but the photos you sent us looked much different. We can't shoot your scar." And this after I had traveled to another country to work with them.
It was a financial (as well as an emotional) knife in the gut. But you know, I should be used to it. I've had doctors latch onto questions and assumptions about my scars and how I might feel about them when I've gone to get a PAP smear, employers constantly "admiring" my ability to "work past my appearance," (talk about insulting!) and strangers on the S-Bahn come right out and ask me, "What's wrong with your forehead?" They usually ask in German, so I pretend I don't understand. I'm thinking that my new response might be to punch them in the forehead and say, "Nothing. What happened to yours?"
If you're reading this and you want to ask how I got it, don't. It's none of your business. I don't owe you any sort of medical validation. It's just there. Deal with it.
It is amazing how much we care about a uniformity of appearance, how if you don't have two legs or all of your fingers or have some visible scars, something is "wrong" with you. The slightest variation makes one an easy target, a subject of ridicule.
I'm trying to work hard, deal with my life, not hide. I'm trying to put myself out there, to open myself up to what might be small or large success. I am willing to fail, to fall down and get back up again. But what I am not willing to do is explain my appearance to people. And I'm not willing to keep taking shit for my appearance either. I've had 35 years of people judging me on my physical differences and I am sick of it. People need to learn to behave themselves. The next time someone over the age of 12 says something inappropriate to me, they better be appeared to deal with my wrath, which I'm capable of in English and German.
As far as this whole youtube thing goes, I'm upset that I've been putting actual quality videos online for quite a few years, but the only thing that seems to get hits and comments is my horrible crowdfunding video, and the focus it seems to draw is because of my scar. It is really disheartening. I lose faith in humanity jut a little bit more with every view that it receives. I'm tired of dealing with discrimination, but that doesn't mean it goes away.
If you are reading this, the next time you feel like asking someone about their physical difference, don't. Pick something else to focus on. Remember that even if someone looks different then you, it doesn't mean they are any less human. And it might save you from getting punched in the face.
I have been low lately. Really, really low. The days grow increasingly shorter and it is COLD in Berlin. Before last year, I had lived ever winter of my life in California. Last winter, I was floating on the wings of falling in love. This year I the encroaching winter and lack of sunlight has hit me like a brick in the face. I have started going to the Sonnenstudio when I can afford it, not because I want to get tan, but because I NEED LIGHT! Seasonal depression combined with stressful financial situations ( I need a job, badly) means I don't manage to go out a lot, but I am trying to change that.
On Friday night I went to a dance/music collaboration that made me roll my eyes a little bit. Their were two separate collaborations. The music was emo and than electonica, and in both cases the dancers where contemporary/improv. I tried really hard to be engaged with the performance, but I felt like I was back in graduate school, trying to come up with something positive to say about "art."
Let me be clear. It was not bad performance, I just didn't like it. It didn't relate to me at all, and I couldn't relate to it. Try as I might (for years now) I just do not like contemporary dance. Or at least, I haven't yet. But it felt good to get out and see something.
Last night I went to Trash Deluxe, a night of queer and drag performance at a venue called AHA in Schöneberg. I arrived about 10 minutes early and the place was packed! Usually when I enter a crowded venue, I get a little anxious. (Okay, lately I suffer from crushing social anxiety, but I'm trying to keep it light!) Here, even as I was squeezing past people, I knew I was home. Queers, trans folk, modern primitives, this was the throng of folks I was enveloped in. And I liked it. No one was going to treat me like a girl. No one was going to assume anything about me, judge me on my scars, my clothes, my body. I found myself in conversation with a pierced up, leather-fairy looking man (?) named Michael who was as sweet as pie. He told me about an event his ensemble "Lick Me Happy" is doing next Saturday, describing it as "Queer Monster Performance." All I can say is, I'm there!
The performances starting with a rather ritualistic drag act to "Carmina Burana" of all things. There were stilettos, neutral masks, and lots of glitter.
The performance was about 3 hours long, with a 20 minute break in the middle. Most of the acts were traditional drag, lip syncing with a focus on dance and gender illusion, although there were two poets, 2 singer/songwriters, and one vocalist who blew me away with his version of Bill Withers's "Grandma's Hands". (If you click the link, be warned that Bill Withers has some rather dated and hetero-normative sentiments about homosexuality which I don't support, but I don't find his banter intolerant.)
Some of the acts were skilled, some were well-rehearsed, some were rather thrown together, but all followed the same thru-line. Gender is nothing more than a performance. All gender is drag. It doesn't matter if you are a man acting how you think a man should act, a trans-woman doing male drag, what we think of as the traditional drag queen, or something totally ambiguous right in between. When you subscribe to gender behaviors, gender behaviors that traditionally go with your biological sex, gender behaviors that are believed to be opposite the parts in between your legs, whether these behaviors are small and subtle or overblown to the size of camp, what are you doing but performing conformance or non-conformance to another person's idea of what you should be?
One of the few English-language phrases uttered onstage last night (after a fabulous "belly dance") was "Fuck lookism." Lookism is not just about fat or thin, pretty or ugly. It is about viewing someone based on their appearance instead of what is inside of them.
Hi everyone. As you all know, I have been running a crowdfunding campaign on the German website Startnext.de to help me cover the costs of my recent exhibition at Other Nature. I have 16 days left in my Startnext campaign and only 18€ left to raise. Please help if you can! http://www.startnext.de/www-harveyrabbit-net
In other news, I am entering a 10-minute play competition and think I may have found an editor to work with for future writing projects. More on that later. Tonight I'm going out to see some radical queer performance in Berlin. I'll report back soon!
