I’ve been dancing again. It’s weird. I never danced in Boston. OK That’s not true.

I USED to dance in Boston. A lot. Twice a week, sometimes three. Ceremony on Monday nights, ManRay whenever I could get in. And then later, Axis. Goth, Fetish/Industrial, Gay Disco. Assorted other clubs and basically any excuse to get out of Allston and away from the pressure of Berklee. And to be myself – whatever “myself” was 9, 10 years ago. It was mostly dancing alone, wearing black in corners. Hoping to hear Depeche Mode and Kate Bush and trying to look as morose as possible. I loved being goth because it meant there was no social pressure to touch another human being, and that meant little to no risk of rejection. I was such a regular at ManRay at one point that the go-go dancers would let me stash my stuff in the dressing room and then give me rides after the club closed.

It was nice. It made me forget the trauma of junior high school dances which always made me feel like an even bigger outcast than I generally was in class. In high school all of my female friends took dance classes. I did too for a while, but I could never keep up. I was always far too self aware in the sort of way that prevents grace and being light on one’s feet. Not being a dancer was such a huge part of my identity. To be a Dancer meant being desired by boys and… well. I guess that’s when I became “one of the guys”. Not in the sense that I played sports or DRESSED like a boy… but in the sense that I became extremely uncomfortable around girls and started to favor the company of boys. They were easier to talk to. Were awkward in the same ways I was. Wanted desperately to start bands. To this day I have one close female friend who lives far away, and spend my social time exclusively with men. Which SOUNDS sexy, but mostly involves a lot of debate over what makes something punk, and which girls are the cutest.

Which brings me to my current dance-related situation. Portland, as you are likely aware, is pretty small. There are however a surprising number of dancing establishments and for some reason my male friends are pretty gung-ho about GOING dancing. A lot of it has to do with the fact that the Asylum has $2.50 well drinks on Thursday nights and the DJ is guaranteed to play the following. “Running Up That Hill”, “Let’s Dance”, “Personal Jesus”, “Love Is a Battlefield”, “Take On Me” and “Kiss”. And there are girls. A lot of girls who dance pretty much like they assume that there will in fact be no tomorrow and, in that case, why not keep drinking PBRs, because since the world is ending, there probably won’t be class tomorrow morning, right?

There is something infectious about drunk college girls dancing their hearts out to songs they are not even remotely old enough to have heard when they were new. So I got sucked in. I started dancing and remembering what it was like when I was 18 to feel FREE of all of the pressure in the world. Except… now there’s this new and frightening element in the mix. It’s the clock. I kind of picture it hanging like some kind of garish Flava Flav-inspired albatross around my neck. It is a weird position to be in given that I have yet to find a job, that the number of Doctor Who-themed t-shirts I own far outweighs the number of digits in my bank account, and the fact that I still consider Spaghetti-O’s to be a nutritional lunch. No one on that dance floor would ever peg me for someone who is pushing 30. OK, maybe not “pushing” so much as kind of awkwardly nudging… but still. When I was a kid dancing was a release… and now I kind of see it for what it actually is: A means to an end.

Which… OF COURSE. DUH. NO ONE DANCES TO DANCE. It’s a fucking mating ritual. But traditional dating has always been so far off my radar that I never saw dancing as a tool. Actually, I’ve never HAD tools. I just kind of… found myself in relationships. But, now I’m in a new city that socializes differently, and I find it fascinating. The ritual of buying drinks for people and then kind of dancing near them to prove… what? I’m young and free and… I guess also… marriageable? I’ve never thought of marriage in a serious way, not even when I was in long term relationships. Not even when my friends started marrying off and having kids and mortgages. But there’s something about being in Maine… or maybe Portland that brings it up. I’ve started looking at my future and settling down as a realistic thing. I’ve been restless my whole life and I still definitely am. The concept of tradition is suddenly appealing and I HATE it.

I never wanted to be THAT girl. Or I guess I never thought I would be. I never wanted to be the kind of girl who dances and maybe goes on dates and thinks about getting married and… Jesus. Kids. I don’t want kids! Or, I do. Shit. Stupid dance clubs.

Stupid Maine! What is it? The smaller population? The cold, hard winters? It’s far lonelier up here. I’m spending a disgusting amount of time alone with my thoughts and really having to face parts of me that I never wanted to. I’ve had to start accepting that I’m a female and I have female feelings. Gross. Then there’s the allusive “Adult” thing. We’ve been over that a million times.

So I guess that brings me to… Do I keep dancing? Do I continue to acknowledge the clock/albatross? OR do I find a way to go back to how I was before I noticed my condition? Can I go back? How much does the desire to settle down change me fundamentally as a person? As an artist?

Ack!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,200 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 37 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

I want to talk specifically about my history with New Year’s Eve. I love New Year’s Eve. It is my favorite holiday. It is about dressing up and drinking too much and kissing and basically just letting go. And I like that. Last night was the first New Year’s I’ve spent in Portland since 2004. It was a surprisingly appropriate way to finish off my first decade of adulthood.

(What follows is an account of my past decade of New Yearsing. Some details have been left out because this is the internet and that isn’t your business. Last names have been left out to protect the innocent except in cases where there are Famous People. In that case I left last names intact in order to look cool)

I don’t remember a whole lot about New Year’s 2002 simply because it was so long ago. I didn’t drink back then because I was 18 and on top of that, I didn’t do ANYTHING back then. I went to a small party with my date, who I had met at art school. I’m pretty sure there was pizza. And video games. I remember midnight coming and going and not much being made of it. My date drove me to my parent’s house which was about an hour away and kissed me goodnight at around 2AM. He  was so sweet, and I wasn’t  I’m still sorry.

2003 was the EXACT opposite. I went to this huge magical party at the Cloud Club in Boston. It was a masquerade theme and I got there embarrassingly early. I was at my gothest. There was a veil and a lot of white pancake make-up and a floor-length black ballgown and very high heels. It was the first time I’d ever gone to a party alone, specifically one where everyone was a total stranger and most assuredly quite a bit older. Bands played in the basement. People drank champagne in the garden. My mind was blown. At midnight I found myself sitting on the floor watching the Dresden Dolls cover “New Year’s Day” by U2 (this will be a theme). Someone passed me a bottle of champagne. Brian, the drummer, kissed me full on the mouth and I’m pretty sure I died. I took a cab back to Allston at around dawn and experienced my first real hangover.

I spent 2004 with friends at this dive bar in Portland called Amigo’s. I used the fake ID (well, it had been SOMEONE’S real ID, just not mine) I’d acquired in Boston so I could get into shows and gay bars. There had been a plan to kiss my friend J. at midnight, but when the ball dropped he was either in the bathroom or getting a beer and so my friend M. did the honors. I’d had a giant crush on him when I was 14, so I thought this was rather poetic. I think we watched Family Guy after that.

2005 was the first year I’d ever had a real boyfriend on New Year’s and I remember that being pretty exciting. I wore a silk Chinese dress and red lipstick and a sullen expression.  We went to a house Party in Rockland, ME and my boyfriend, T., kissed me. This will also be a theme… 2006 was pretty much the same. Different outfit, same everything else.

2007 was kind of great. A bunch of my mime friends from all over the country converged on Richmond, VA. We’d been on tour together that October, so this was kind of a reunion. We all played a show the night before. There was a lot of baking and chopping of vegetables and a house full of wonderful, beautiful people. I kissed my friend D. at midnight because he’d never had a midnight kiss and had recently learned that it was in fact a tradition. We drove back to New England after sleeping on the floor with twenty of our friends.

2008 was weird. I went to New York with my by then on-again/off again (and very soon to be permanently OFF) boyfriend. We got into a massive fight in Strawberry Fields which is a very strange place to have a fight. We did some kind of weird performance art for the Dresden Dolls show at The Hammerstein. We kissed in a flurry of confetti and black and white stripes at midnight. I went on stage for the encore and thought a lot about how strange it was to be where I was and how far I’d come in five years. I woke up in Brooklyn on my friend Cullen’s couch. We had eggs at a diner.

I spent 2009 at a small house party in Cambridge. We drank champagne and watched Dick Clark. I kissed D. (different D.), my boyfriend at midnight.

2010 was a mixture of bad and good. I was in the process of moving out of the apartment I had shared with D.. We had broken up before the holidays and I’d been spending a lot of time in Maine or on Cape Cod. A friend had somehow gotten me a ticket to the symphony where Amanda Palmer was performing. I was mostly jazzed about seeing Sxip Shirey play in such an amazing venue and seriously, if you ever get the chance, SEE SXIP SHIREY. Anyway, there was a lot of wine and fancy seats and dinner. And more wine. At midnight I kissed this young conductor guy called Walt. I think he’s internet famous for doing an orchestral arrangement of “Poker Face” I witnessed this live. It was kind of awe-inspiring. After the show we walked a few blocks to the after party at the Cloud Club and I played piano and climbed the tree they have in the attic (I KNOW) in heels which was a giant mistake because I fell and had serious bruises for months. We stayed late. I had a discussion with Neil Gaiman about the weather at around 4AM (which I had a panic attack about the next day because – Seriously? I meet the guy who wrote probably the greatest comic series of all time and all I can think to talk about is the WEATHER?). Eventually my best friend Liz and I took a cab to The Distillery in Southie and slept in our new home for the first time.

Last year I had a sprained ankle. My housemates and I party hopped around the building and then went to a party in Chinatown. The party was up a very steep flight of stairs which were in no way pleasant. There was a huge punk party on the first floor and we crashed. There were easily a hundred people crammed together. I got stuck to a girl’s studded wrist cuff. I felt old and kind of out of place in my cloche hat and Link boots. I kissed my roommate at midnight while waiting in line for the bathroom. One of my housemates was being a bit over-festive and we volunteered to get him back to Southie. I half-carried him to the corner so we could hail a cab and cursed my swollen foot. We sat in a snow bank and I tried not to think too hard about it. We went home and my roommate and I watched Queer As Folk and drank champagne.

This year I spent an unnecessary amount of time getting ready. I reinforced the seams on this vintage dress I got from Oona’s a year ago but which never fit right on my beer swilling, eight-hours-a-day computer job, T-taking Boston body but which fits great on my walk-a-mile uphill to get anywhere form. My lifelong friend B. shot down my four-inch-heel dreams with his weather report while we waited on the arrival of the rest of our crew. We made our slip-sliding way deep into the West End and dropped in on a fancy-dress cocktail party where my Miller High Life promptly fizzed over on to my beloved and much fretted-over blue satin dress. We stayed for 45 minutes. I talked a lot about Doctor Who because that is what I do now. We went to another party where the lights seemed too bright and I didn’t know a soul. B. and I hid in the kitchen where someone gave me a glass of wine. The ball dropped. I think I may have nudged B. or something. We left at 12:01. I got home at about 12:10. I drank champagne in my bathrobe and listened to records on my floor. I thought about how far I’ve come in a decade, what it is to be an adult. What I’m doing with my life. How awesome I hope 2012 is. My resolution and whether or not being resolved is always the best idea. I thought about how much I love my tiny apartment and my friends and my new, quiet, mostly solitary life. I thought a lot about the choices I made in 2011 and how, for better or worse, they led me back to Maine and what it means to live here. What it will mean. How happy I am to finally close various chapters and to actually, for real this time, start anew. The first hours of 2012 have been bittersweet . I have no idea what the future holds but for once I feel… pretty optimistic. There will be things that will devastate me, surely – stiff upper lip and all. But the rest will be so, so good. It has to be.

December art walk, corner of Congress and High, Portland, Maine

The Christmas tree is up and lit in monument square which means that it is coming and there’s really no stopping it at all. So this year I’ve decided to just embrace it. Or at the very least whine less about it. Maine looks like Narnia for at least a third of the year as it is, so being anti-holiday is a losing battle. I’m not going to decorate, I am simply going to attempt cheer.

Really.

It’s the least I can do… and honestly, I can’t help it. Portland is doing all of this weird juju on me that I don’t fully understand yet – and I’m not sure I want to. It’s nice. And Unsettling. And nice. I’m still fascinated by the number of people who actually go to the monthly art walk. It was maybe 35 degrees last night and the sidewalks were jammed. The nice girl I met at the Victoria Mansion told us that they’d had something like 750 people in three hours. 750. There are entire towns near here that have half as many residents.

I have this theory that maybe people are more enthusiastic about things like art walks and shows up here because, well… it’s not an everyday thing. It’s a privilege. I’m starting to appreciate things more than I did a few months ago. Daylight. Conversations. Friendships.

Basically… Portland, what have you DONE to me? I was talking to a friend in Boston today and he said that I’d like someone because we “hate(ed) the same things” and I told him that I was making friends with people who LIKED the same things I like. Seriously? Basing entire friendships on shared interests rather than mutual loathing?

I think I’m sort of getting the whole “meaning of Christmas” thing. Well, minus all of the Jesus-y this-n-that. Christmas is about sincerity and kindness and giving and… I dunno… probably drinking at some point.

"gruel" was actually Dickensian slang for "Colt 45".

Essentially, this whole anti-cynicism thing I’ve been working on since I started SHC almost three (holy shit) years ago has proven to be a bit tougher than I thought it would. It is happening though.

Good timing, too.

I’ve been here a month now. The boxes, save for maybe two or three, are unpacked and gone. It looks like I live here. My portrait of Cary Grant is hung over the toilet. There are sketchbooks strewn about with half-finished drawings and ideas.

I still don’t have a job. I knew it would be hard… I’m not giving up. I’m dealing OK with the rejection. At least most places tell you when they’ve gone with someone else. That’s nice. I’m still having trouble understanding what they want. It’s been weeks since my last interview. There weren’t even any decent postings this week.
It’s getting cold, too. There’s never any warning in Maine, either. I forgot that part. It turns out I forgot a lot about here – mostly good things. Like what good company people are. I’ve had more actual meaty conversations here in the last month than I have in months. A year. Two years. That’s how it is. People talk to each other for entertainment. There’s an awful lot of walking as well. Typically it’s aimless. I expect this will change when the snow comes. I remember going to people’s houses in college. Sitting around. Cooking things. Yankee swaps like something out of a book. I think people get a lot wrong about here, but there are certain things that are just plain true. It’s really honest-to-goodness QUAINT. And peaceful and gorgeous. I can see the stars when I look up, even in the middle of the city. At first that part felt wrong, but now I don’t know how I was ever fine with the sky being that weird city orange. I’ve started using the Time and Temperature building as a landmark the way I used to use the Pru. I’m adjusting. Or, maybe I’ve adjusted.

It’s a slower life. I kind of miss the ambient noise of the T. I miss train stations. I miss Copley Square – God, I miss Copley Square. I miss the smell of the Adams books. Watching the planes taking at Logan from my kitchen window. All of the colonial shit. I’m surrounded by the civil war here. Portland burned down in the late 19th century so that’s why everything is so…Victorian. I’ve been volunteering at the historical society because I missed the dust too much. The finding things. The feeling useful.

I guess that’s where I am right now: Quasi-nocturnal. A little cold. Happy. Bored. Actually VERY cold. And yeah, I’ll post a drawing or something soon.

The Funeral Party Fall 2011 | seeherechicken | 8tracks.

We all knew it was coming.
Steve Jobs died today and I know everyone will have something to say about it. Plenty of those people will actually know what they’re talking about when it comes to tech and hardware and advertising – the whole Apple package. I’m just a girl with an iMac.
The first computer I ever used was a Mac. It was beige and clunky. It smelled like old books because it came from my mom’s library. I played Sim City and Dungeons and Dragons. That was over twenty years ago, which in and of itself is insane to think about.
You should watch this:

Apple and I are nearly the same age. Well, OK. I’ve had boyfriends the same age as Apple. Sure, I may have been born at just the right time to really feel the burst of the housing bubble, but I got lucky when it came to technology. As consumerist and spoiled as this might come off, I honestly don’t know how I would have gotten through the past five years without an iPod. Sure, there’s something to be said about how we waste too much time in front of the computer, or about how we have sold our souls to Google and Apple. So what?

This man, Steve Jobs in a very major way made what I am doing right this second possible. I am writing something that I will very shortly be sharing, for better, or worse with the world. When I finish this I will probably record some harmonies in GarageBand or work on my novel. Maybe I’ll use iChat to talk to my friend in Brooklyn or turn on Genius to see how long it takes before a Pavement song comes up after I select “Heartbeats”. Steve Jobs wanted to expand the horizons of human creativity and I think he went above and beyond what he set out to do. We revere people like Archimedes and Ben Franklin with very good reason, and all kidding aside, we should do the same for Steve Jobs. Look, I know that he didn’t invent all of these things, but would they be sitting on my desk in my tiny studio apartment in Maine without him?

Here I am.

This is the first time I have been unemployed in five years. The thought is terrifying. Mildly liberating, but terrifying. I am taking note of how much things cost in a much more obsessive way than I did last week, and that is saying something. I have been applying for work for over a month – basically since five minutes after I decided to move here.

Here is Portland, Maine and it is awesome. I live near an excellent bar that caters to the mid-to-late 20′s set. You know, my demographic. I’m a few blocks from three concert venues, some great coffee shops, and the cryptozoology museum. If ever there was a place that was “Me: The City” it would be Portland. Everything is old and weird and quirky.

The style here is mainly leather jackets and skinny jeans. Lots of love for classic metal and nerd-centric things. Granted, I’m probably in the nice safe bubble of my friends right now, but I’ll take it.

I am still living out of boxes. I’ve yet to acquire useful furniture like shelves and a couch. My place is a studio with a full-sized kitchen and a bath with a claw foot tub. I have always, always wanted a claw foot tub. I love it, but it is something to get used to. The ceilings are quite high here, enough to accommodate a sleep loft which I find deeply comforting. The walls are blue – not quite TARDIS blue because I know you were wondering – and the floors are worn. It honestly hasn’t been a huge adjustment from life in Studio 11 – though it is almost too quiet here. It is odd knowing that all of the food in the kitchen is mine. I can play music and watch movies without headphones. There isn’t a cat to wake me up in the middle of the night. I’ve been remembering to water my plants.

But yeah… this whole not having a job thing. It doesn’t seem real yet. Like this is a sort of vacation I’m on. Like I haven’t fully left Boston yet. Like I’m going back on Monday and my scribe will be waiting with a pile of corrections and some notes from John Adams and a whole back-log of podcasts.

I guess this means that, at least in the mean time, there will be more time for blogging and drawing.

You’ve been warned.

I’m finishing up my last week in the employ of the Internet Archive. Over the last three years I’ve had the opportunity to touch some pretty wild ephemera – including death masks and cremains. I’ve touched illuminated manuscripts from the 1300s inlaid with real gold and jewels. I held the actual typeset used to print the Thirteenth Amendment in The Liberator, a page from a Gutenberg bible, and even John Brown’s pike. The wildest thing though is the fact that, basically on a daily basis, I have been working with John Adams’ personal library. Many of the books, though they are exceedingly rare, are fairly uninteresting. Sermons, law books, stuff like that. Every now and then I’ll come across a gem. Like the time I worked with his copy of the published notes from the first continental congress. He had corrected spelling mistakes and made note of every time George Washington was mentioned. I got chills reading the entry from July 4th, 1776, but that’s because I am both a history nerd and a patriot. A few weeks ago I found a book signed by both John Adams and John Quincy Adams – so, two presidents.

This afternoon I worked with the Adams collection for perhaps the last time, and I found THIS:

John Adams thinks you're a jerk.

I’m fairly certain that this book graffiti was written by the man himself given the similarity in the “y” in “flattery” to the way he wrote his “j”s. I am also basing this on other such Adams Book Asides. I guess I just really WANT it to be him, because for the most part he’s kind of a dull guy. Deeply important as a founding father, but most certainly a man of the law before he was a man of great humor. Yes, the quality of the comment is a bit scolding – but I think that might be a smiley face. Though, then again, who KNOWS who’s been touching these books since they were donated to the Boston Public Library 200 years ago? Well, actually… they’ve been behind glass… so… John Adams: Early emoticon adopter. social commentator.

I was 18 years old on September 11th, 2001. It was the second week of my freshman year of college. I was attending a tiny art school in one of the most typically New England towns of all. I was painting a still life with eggs using black and white oil paint. I had never used oil paint before. My instructor left the room briefly, and then returned. “There has been an explosion at the World Trade Center” she told us in her broken English. We shrugged and continued painting because we remembered 1993. I had never been to New York, had only seen it from an airplane or a bus window. It made me think of good things like Broadway and John Lennon and Friends. But then my instructor left the room again. When she returned she was visibly shaken “New York has been attacked. We must go upstairs…”

Upstairs was the student lounge which was barely bigger than most living rooms. There were easily 50 or 60 students crammed inside. Sitting on the floor, craning necks, staring at the tiny television set. There were plumes of smoke. And a slow-motion replay and then… Then live on television, the first tower fell. And I cried. A lot. Someone from New Jersey was frantically trying to call someone on their cell phone. A student started taking pictures. Someone said “Fuck you, George Bush” and someone told them to calm down. Later, there was pizza, and we were told that classes were canceled for the rest of the week. To go home. It was Tuesday. I called my parents. I laid in bed, terrified, and listened to “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” on repeat for hours.

I’m at the right age to remember Columbine, too. We had drills in high school What to do if one of our classmates brought a gun. So I suppose that was like training wheels for how to be afraid constantly. But I’m lucky enough that I remember life before 9/11 and before Columbine. I’m old enough that I took both quite seriously. I have friends perhaps 3 to 5 years younger who just accept it as a given. 9/11 happened. It is part of life.

No, no it isn’t. There was life before and we WEREN’T AFRAID. Or at the very least, slightly less afraid. I’m not old enough to remember nukes. I remember the Berlin wall falling, but probably about as well as my parents remember JFK’s assassination. It is crazy to think that there are people who were eight years old on September 11th, 2001 who are in their second week of art school. Who are watching this coverage and who are just USED TO IT. It is PART OF LIFE. Like JFK. Martin Luther King. Curt Cobain. John Lennon. The Berlin Wall.

There was an episode of This American Life that aired a week after Osama Bin Laden was killed. There was a segment where one of the producers who lives in a college town ventured out into one of the student-filled riots with her recording equipment. A kid, maybe 19, maybe 20 said in jubilant seriousness “9/11 happened to US, not YOU”. This has been playing in my head for months now, and I think he’s right. 9/11 didn’t just “happen to” the thousands of people who died that day, to their families, to the first responders who now have cancer, to the economy – it happened to those kids who have grown up with a televised and pointless war, who don’t know any different. I’m lucky because I remember when things were OK. I remember when things were safer, when the biggest danger was the president lying to us about his sex life and the hole in the ozone.

Eventually this coverage will go the way of yearly coverage of the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. First the anniversary will be remembered in five year increments. Ten. Then fifty. We will all be old with these vivid memories of That Day but generation by generation the impact will weaken. Like the Hindenburg. WWI. Gettysburg. The images will flicker and fade in better times when this is not part of daily life. Fifty, 100 years from now, tourists will visit the memorial at Ground Zero in Manhattan. But it won’t be called Ground Zero anymore. They will eat lunch. Take pictures. Go on a tour, maybe. Like we do at Bunker Hill or Gettysburg. I am not saying this to cheapen what happened ten years ago this Sunday. I am saying this because I have hope for future generations. I hope that they know a world without 9/11′s or any of the other atrocious things human beings do to one another because their beliefs differ by tiny increments, or because someone is living on the soil they wish to live on, or because there is oil beneath that land, or for any foolish reason. I hope and believe that we are capable of compassion, love and friendship for the other folks who share this tiny blue ball.