Punk rock girl

I just got back from punk rock bowling in Vegas. It was an epic experience. I'd been before, last year for the first time. 

Before I attended last year, I'd always thought it was something it wasn't. The bowling is secondary. It's really just a music festival. We saw the Gang of Four, which was my favorite performance by far, as well as other old school punk bands like Cock Sparrer. I saw new bands like ATL's Upchuck, who I had never heard of. I learned about Laura Jane Grace, a singer I'm now obsessed with. 

I saw bands I'd seen previously at other concert venues such as The Adicts, the Damned and Social Distortion. I was able to watch Peter Hook do a full set of Joy Division songs. It was mesmerizing. 

There's also the small shows and we saw Bob Mould from Husker Du perform at Container Park as well as Johnny Two Bags perform solo stuff (he's the guitarist from Social Distortion). 

We went to the punk rock bowling museum. I got another lightning bolt tattoo. This one black with greyscale and black stars, another ode to Bowie. I met Monkey from the Adicts who was just hanging out in the museum bar with his Adicts makeup on.

It was just such a cool experience and it reminded me how much I love music and punk and post punk culture. As I've said and even written before, I am and will always be, a punk rock girl. 

Pasadena baby

This Saturday, I'm attending the Cruel World festival in Pasadena. I'm excited to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds,  Blancmange, Garbage, and Madness, who I've never seen live, along with OMD, Allison Moyet, and New Order, who I have seen live, amongst others. There's so much music. I dig the vibe, the goth aesthetic is my jam. 

Don't ask me what I'm wearing, because I don't know, yet. 

A few years back, we saw Siouxsie Sioux at Cruel World. It was phenomenal. I've written about it. Siouxsie was my idol in high school. And we saw punk rock icon Iggy Pop. There was a lightning storm so we actually had to go back Sunday night to see Siouxsie play. I danced hands in the air the entire time she sang. I felt 16 again. 

There's something about a festival. I adore the hours of music. I love the people watching. The fashion. The stall food. The beer. I am gonna try to keep it mellow though, because I have to make it all day and night.

I truly do believe that music keeps me young. It keeps me feeling. And alive. So alive. Lately, I've been feeling my age. I think the stress of being a public defender is getting to me again body wise. My neck, my back, and my stomach. Oh vey.

Most days, I dream of writing full-time and perhaps teaching on the side. Last weekend, I spoke at a senior center in Pasadena via zoom. It was so much fun. They had great questions. They were into it. And this Thursday night, I'm speaking to a writing class at PCC in Pasadena. 

Pasadena has been in my life recently. Is that a sign that this weekend will be epic? I hope so. 

The overthinking

I had an epiphany this weekend. I just need to write. I need to stop overthinking it.

Some of my first stories are my favorite ones. That's because they're written without craft in mind. I went with my gut, my heart, my subconscious, and the voice of my ancestors streaming in my head. I wrote in first person, present tense, child voice and sometimes, the writing was almost automatic. I became the words. 

Yet now, I've gotten to the point where all I can think about when I'm writing is about the act itself and that is not a good thing. It's harmful. Because writing is about the act of letting go. The craft can come in later in the editing and revision stage and even that can be too much overworking of the prose. 

For example, in my memoir, there were early stories that I went back to my original of after a decade of revisions because I preferred the earlier, less edited versions. 

As a writer, it's too easy to get in your head. You start to think that all of this can be tied together. You forget that writing, at least the good writing, is magic. It's about the heart. 

So I vow to let my pen or fingers slide effortlessly over the page and keys. Like a pianist, I just need to play. It needs to be fun, and it needs to be real. It needs to capture something that nothing else can capture, humanity. Because that in the end is what I'm here for. To somehow and someway, put my life into prose. 

5 am again and again and again

It's 5 am again. I am up with the shih tzus. This is my favorite time of day. I play my music, albeit on low. I hang with the puppies and write. I lay on a too small couch. I'm five foot three and I can barely stretch out. But it suffices. 

The dogs are eating my husband's new flip flops. I'm loath to stop them because they're distracted and I'm writing. Cognizant that he just bought the shoes, I hand them my ragged slipper to bite on. 

The Shins stream on volume one in the background. I tend toward mellow music in the morning. The Shins, the Beatles and Joni Mitchell. Nothing too hard. Maybe some Queen. 

I'm wearing my Bowie lightning bolt earrings that my best friend Melinda gifted me. Ohhh I think, that's how my brain works as I write this, put on some Bowie. So I do. I sing along. Humming. 

I think of everything that's going on. Despite the chaos in the world, some things remain constant, and that I appreciate. I was able to see a couple of good friends yesterday. One friend, a fellow deputy public defender who's moved to Ventura, stopped by to see me and the puppies yesterday. We talked about mental health court and caught up. And I saw another good friend virtually for my podcast, one who is a writer and professor. We talked about everything that's going on and commiserated. 

It is soul sustaining in these times to be able to connect with people who are just as dismayed by the current times as I am. 

Where do we go from here? This is the greatest rollback of civil rights since Reconstruction. The people in power have effectively created, or helped create, a dictator who rules by decree, and who disappears people. 

I guess I don't know what to do or where to go. Maybe nowhere is safe. But for now, I'm just going to keep on writing. And voicing my opinions, and performing and talking about the issues and stories I care about. So there's that. Happy Friday friends.