8-29-31 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians -- Starter Job #193 (Absence Makes the Parting Pondered)

And now, for a change of pace. Has absence made your reader-hearts grow fonder? Hmmm. Well, please just don’t forget me and this incredibly ambitious effort to reconstruct a life lived in the best possible intentions and with such optimism that the disappointments never linger. . . there’s always a bright new hope, somehow, a bright new hope that God and the fates will again smile and say with a pat on the head, “That’s nice,” like an indulgent Auntie Mame type. 

I’ve been trying to figure out a really smart next move for a survival job. While I believe that my music and writing -- my creativity -- is always going to be my vocation and life quest, living in semi rural Connecticut is not yielding me the kind of half decent white collar survival work I’d come to rely on in NYC. And the education field I’m finding more and more tedious. . . besides, it seems they only want my subbing help. While I’d be happy with a teaching assistant or para job to work days while I kept up with music and writing, I apply along with 50+ other applicants and somehow I’m left swimming in the applicant pool without a prayer.

I just don’t have enough friends in the right places here, either.

I am always striving to balance the practical along with the creative in my life. So. . . . I was absent for almost two weeks trying to figure out my next move. I thought I should go back to school. Another Masters degree, maybe? (I already hold one I’m not using, a Masters of Science in Education, Secondary English concentration.) Southern CT State has a great Information and Library Science program.  . . but no, that would be a dead end for employment and so much stress, so costly, and so many hoops to jump through. Cannot do.

With a little help from my friends, I am looking into a way more practical course of action, now. Will let you know when it’s ready. . . 

7-08-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #141 (The Washington Squares - Apologia)

If I’ve not been consistent with my postings about the Squares it’s because I realize, deep down, that as exciting and productive a time it was, it was also a time that I was torn between making music and writing/being a writer, and feeling anxious and confused about my future as an artist and a human being. It’s my main conflict in life, my insanis modum operatio.

I’ve always had two creative urges -- that, in an ideal world, co-exist peacefully and balance out: as a songwriter/musician and as a prose writer, more along the lines of journalist. I love to get to the heart of a story and talk to people and ask penetrating questions so that everybody (including the interviewee) better understands their driving force(s) and why certain things happen(ed).

When I’d do one thing to the exclusion of the other, it took a weighty toll on me. . . which is how I feel this very day, writing a blog and thinking, “Hey, I really want to go through the songs for next week’s gig and figure out a set list and go over them here, in my basement studio, singing along and playing the guitar (or the bass or the ukulele or the autoharp).” 

Last week -- when this blog was forsaken, and it drove me nearly wild with frustration because I do love writing and making these posts interesting for my eager readers -- I had a few bad days, which made me want to call in (heart) sick to my life, just for a day.

But some of us can’t call in sick even for a day, because our job is to just be ourselves -- and our very best selves, at that! Dang it.

1-12-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #10 (Patti Smith Weighs in on Education; Sweet Jane Friedman)

All right. In my last entry, I mentioned some musician friends on the scene who earned life experience credit at the alma mater of CBGB’s in the late ‘70’s (Chris and Tina of the Talking Heads, RISDEE grads), and Snooky Bellomo (NYU student).

At CBGB’s – the place I could usually be found on weekends away from SUNY Purchase in ’74 – ’76, I met Patti Smith and her manager, Jane Friedman, through James Wolcott, the hugest Patti fan ever (at least, at the time). Patti had the greatest way of being instantly intimate with people. I thought she might have been pulling my leg about a lot of stuff she made up about her past, but I do admire anybody who can make up a good myth.

She dubbed me “Our new Ninja” upon signing a copy of Seventh Heaven. I was taken aback when she told me I shouldn’t be going to school: “Go out with all the smart guys! Learn from them! Who needs college? It’s bullshit.”

While thinking in my heart how I had an unspoken promise with my father to graduate with a college degree and he had just died a month before I started, I blurted to Patti, “But I LIKE school! I LIKE learning!. . . “ and then, like Mother Superior, she absolved me and my sin of caring about something uncool. Fair enough.

Patti was really nice to my sister Carrie too, when I introduced them at My Father’s Place (a club) in Roslyn, Long Island, when the Patti Smith group played on a double bill with Television in ’75. I recall Patti borrowed a little corncob pipe from my sister for, um, you know. . .

People like Patti – and many other smart musicians I know – weren’t gung-ho for school but were still great learners and had a constant thirst for self-gathered knowledge. These autodidacts are definitely on the right path for them, but as for me, I like a little more structure and focus. I’m kind of all over the place, when left to my own devices. . . but of course, we all learn in life what we need to (and if you try sometimes, you get what you want, too?). There’s still some of that ceaseless autodidact in me, too. I just like having validation, a degree (or 2 or 3!).

Jane Friedman (Wartoke Concern, Patti’s manager) was a great person who treated me kindly and with immense respect. Somebody told me she was the girl Lou Reed wrote “Sweet Jane” about. When I visited Jane Friedman at her family’s in the Village that Yuletide (they were Jewish; what the hey), at a holiday open house, Jane took me aside and made a special effort to make me feel welcome by giving me a palm-sized round mirror backed with a myriad of tiny seashells, in a circle. Decades later, I still consider that little tchotchke one of my prized possessions.

1-11-12 Survival Jobs etc. – Starter Job #9 (Liberal Education background– towards a Creative Writing/English BA)

Before indulging in more tales of rock & roll, sex & drugs and all that good stuff back in the day, my Education Career deserves some attention – though, of course, R&R does play into it at times, as does the vagaries of boho slum life (before the lower east side got gentrified!).

First of, many back then asked why I was in school. Like, why bother? All we did was make music, wait on tables, bartend, work lower level clerical jobs, and dream of making it big. What possible use could a sheepskin have for people like us (the REAL new bohemians)??

Okay, here’s a BIG CONFESSION: I am a snob. Not your usual snob, but an intellectual snob. Coming from a highly intelligent, ambitious-achiever family (parents with advanced degrees before it became fashionable, aspiring to highbrow culture), education was key.

As little kids, we went to school with the assumption that we’d be top of the class. I fell short by one or two kids (that Joyce Avellino! That Irene Buatti!), but other than that, almost without effort I got great marks & report cards that were commented on with, “Hmmm, that 92 is pretty good, but why didn’t you get over 95?”

You see, that need to achieve academically was drilled into me, early. Besides, I LOVE learning, and although schools are flawed places to learn, at least there’s structure – and the proof that you’ve accomplished something (a diploma, transcripts) that’s meaningful in the world at large.

I started out at Saint Anastasia’s kindergarten, then went to grades 1 through 8 there, too (only one block away from our house in Douglaston, it was certainly accessible – besides, we got to go home for lunch, as “walkers”). After that, I attended Bishop Reilly High School for less than a year (I hate, hate, HATED it), caught “mono” in April, then was kicked out (I planned it all along) for insubordination – and refusing to participate in religion class, one of the freshman requirements. Oh well. I exulted in my victory to attend public school and not wear a UNIFORM every day, as I had all through school up to then.

Sophomore year of high school, I got to go to Benjamin N. Cardozo High School (“Cardozo”) in neighboring Bayside. I wore what I liked, sure, but I had to walk up to the expressway (about ½ mile) and catch the 17A bus to Springfield Boulevard. We didn’t have a school bus; it was public transportation all the way in NYC. It wouldn’t have been too bad, but I was in a bad place back then (drugs, bad companions, severe dieting). I cried, had severe headaches, couldn’t concentrate. I also lost forty pounds in one year – which made me a mess. And I still didn’t think I was skinny, yet. On my 16^th birthday, my parents took us out for a fancy French dinner that I couldn’t eat, then drove me to the psychiatric hospital and had me committed for six months.

If you have come up with the diagnosis of Anorexia Nervosa (hysterical lack of appetite), BINGO! Long story short, I finished out sophomore year of high school in Hillside Hospital. My junior year was spent at a boarding school for recovering troubled teens, the Lake Grove School (on Long Island). Had a great geometry teacher, Arnie Pederson, who was ancient, very patient, sweet-tempered, and a Swede.

Back home to Douglaston, I spent my senior year of high school back at Cardozo. Classes were large (over 30 per), and the graduating class must have had about 1,000. I don’t recall attending graduation, but I earned my H.S. diploma, no problem. I had an 89 average or so, and applied to several state schools, my preference being for SUNY Purchase because it was artsy and that suited me to a T. (If a school had a reputation as a party school, like SUNY New Paltz, that was too scary to contemplate – partying was bad news for me in my fragile physical and psychic state.)

IF I HAD BEEN really together and put some thought into it – picking a school for me was a very quick and annoying task, not anything I was thinking hard about – I’d have tried to go to Sarah Lawrence. Not only is it more prestigious than a SUNY, my hero, Joseph Campbell, was teaching there and I could have studied with him. . . I coulda been a contender! But, that’s just a small regret . . .

To wrap up this way-long blog, I studied at three different colleges/universities to earn my degree in Creative Writing (minor in English), the only thing that could keep my attention, the only thing I could truly excel at other than music.

The three higher learning (!! Yes, at times, it really was!) institutions were:

1. SUNY Purchase (4 semesters – I moved to NYC in ’76 & transferred);

2. Hunter College (3 semesters – I lived four blocks away, which was handy);

3. CUNY or City University of New York (final semester – did a creative writing senior project, I wrote, edited, rewrote and finished my first novel, Shrinking, originally No Cal Nut or I Wanna Lobotomy);

4. CBGB’s (I’d say this qualifies as a learning experience – valid life experience, at least).

Speaking of life experience, I sought school credit for my thick portfolio of published work (Trixie A. Balm’s rock writing) because I figured it was a pretty valid request. In the end, I was awarded 18 credits. . . from either Hunter or CUNY. How cool! After four years in college, I graduated magna cum laude, with a 3.42 G.P.A. However, a diploma from CUNY doesn’t impress anybody (whereas a degree from Sarah Lawrence, Vassar or Smith? Hell, yeah!)

Of my rockin’ rollin’ friends who attended the CBGB’s alma mater, Chris and Tina of the Talking Heads were college grads (RISDEE), and Snooky Bellomo of Tish & Snooky’s Manic Panic was an English major at NYU. I was in pretty good company – but one night, Patti Smith made a comment about learning that just astonished me . . .

1-7-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #4 (Village Voice freelance Rock Writer) & 1-6-12 (Happy Birthday, daddy!)

Okay, so it’s the summer of 1974. Beloved father dies, eldest daughter goes to her first rock concerts with her beau, Ira, from the hood in Bayside, Queens. They go to hear Mott the Hoople at the Uris Theater on Broadway, and David Bowie at Madison Square Garden. After attending my second rock concert, ever, I felt compelled to write a concert review, using as may “fifty dollar words” as I could muster, inspired no doubt by the effete stylings of Melville or something from the 19^th century. “Cynosure” was one of my favorite words, but I digress.

I mailed off my proud three-page double-spaced review to “Music Editor, Village Voice, NYC 10013.” I had just turned 18 that spring, and in the fall was heading off to college at SUNY Purchase. I was glad to have something to do to get my mind off that terrible loss of my father. I had no idea how to pitch a story or even the name of the editor. But I did it.

In early September, a letter came to my mom’s house, in Queens, from Robert Christgau, the new music editor of the Village Voice, responding to my review and telling me to “think more and write less.” God bless you, Robert Christgau!! It was one of the darkest times in my young life and it felt like a true miracle. He said to give a call, so I phoned Christgau from SUNY Purchase (at a pay phone down the hall in my dorm) and he assigned the new Jefferson Starship album & concert for me to review. With a new sense of purpose I dragged out my electric typewriter and GOT TO WORK.

For the next four years, while attending college (four different locations – a glutton for punishment, I transferred a few times due to changing location and interests), I wrote for hire as rock writer TRIXIE A. BALM.

Trixie A. Balm was a name I dreamed up on the LIE one night driving with the chunk-a chunk-a roar of tires against the buckling asphalt expressway, sitting beside my high school sweetheart, the aforementioned Ira (heck of a piano player and band leader at the time, although the band had a terrible name, “Chords Melody” – really!). “Trixie,” I thought, was a name so unlike me, so very like a peroxide blonde honky tonk angel, and “A. Balm” was a play on words that could mean “A bomb” or “a soothing unguent-type balm.” That, plus the initials T.A.B. were my favorite beverage at the time, Tab soda.

Trixie wrote for the Voice, Creem, Circus, Gig, National Screw, and many other fine publications. . . and earned her way through college on inspiration, perspiration, and a definite talent for a turn of phrase. This was a rockin’ start to a creative writing career.

1-6-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Remembering Dad and his Jobs on the Occasion of his Birthday (he would be 81 years old if still alive)

My father, Bernard F. Agnelli, was the first of three boys in a second-generation northern Italian immigrant family. His grandfather’s name was Bernard; his father’s name was Joseph: both names figure prominently in several generations. When I moved to Chester, CT, I found out that other Agnellis, our “country cousins,” settled there at the turn of the 20^th century. They were farmers who raised very impressive horses, I’m told. But Bernard Agnelli and Mary Corno, his wife, moved to New York City, where their children assimilated into American life and became executive secretaries (Aunt Toots) and Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) of the Bell Newspaper Syndicate (Grandpa Joe).

Grandpa Joe Agnelli married a non-Italian, Muriel Nissen, whose writing and cooking talent and frequent bouts of migraine headache I inherited. Of their three sons – Bernie, Joey, and Artie – our dad was the best and the brightest, purportedly. They dwelt in a nice little house in St. Albans, Queens, where Bernie met Bobbie (Barbara VDL), our mom.

But mostly, the Agnellis – and our dad – were mysterious. . . that’s the best word to express my frustration at how little we know about them, REALLY. The few dimly recalled facts that remain make interesting reading, nonetheless:

B.F. Agnelli attended St. Francis Xavier High School and Fordham University, majoring in Philosophy and Ancient Languages (Greek and Latin). Jesuit-trained, he thought for a while that his vocation was to be a Jesuit priest. For one year dad attended seminary (in Paris, France), but he came home and decided to marry mom instead.

When first married, dad worked as a reporter for the Bergen Evening Record in New Jersey. Then he went into the Army Reserves in Fort Benning, located in Columbus, Georgia. He was a lieutenant and wrote for the Fort Benning paper. Back in New York two years later, dad started working as a “P.R. Man” for Burston Marstellar, Western Union and Diamond International. He then became Publicity Director for the NY Blood Center. From there, he spent two years doing publicity for the Singapore Investment Center, and our family very nearly moved to Singapore in 1968 (mom wouldn’t hear of it – she loved Queens). After directing PR for the tiny but mighty new nation at the tip of the Malay Peninsula (Singapore!), dad went to work for J. Walter Thompson. About this time, he also went to night school for graduate courses in Economics. He became the head of a new business-focused division at J. Walter Thompson, Dialog. Bernard Agnelli, now the father of four, was doing well.

Then, at age 43, he passed away, a massive heart attack. And his daughter, Lauren, published her first piece, “Intimate Yet Objective: An Elegy to Bernard Agnelli.” Published in the local paper, The Little Neck Ledger, this In Memoriam piece was five hundred words typed on a Smith Corona electric machine, and was my first experience of the Red Smith adage: “Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.” It is unlike the below adapted prayer -- one of many fun creative writing exercises I enjoy doing because it’s close to lyric writing, finding the right length/syllables word with the right sound and the right meaning, and maybe getting a chuckle or two.

Our father, who art in heaven, Bernard be thy name; thy kingdom done, thy had some fun on earth, if he is in heaven. Give us this day our daily blog, and forgive us our travesties, as we forgive those who travesty henceforth. Most of all, daddy, lead us not into tarnation, but deliver us from Tivo, Amen.

I love you, dad – Happy Birthday again.

FIT TO BE TIED!! SUCKY SIDE OF FREELANCE WRITING

All right. Freelance writing is a war-torn wasteland where intelligence is deceiving and the smiling bastards are lyin' to ya everywhere. At least, that's how I feel today. I wrote (and re-wrote "9 ways to Sunday" -- actually did about 10 drafts) a 1200-word piece for a local color glossy magazine -- a supplement, actually, to a major newspaper based in New Haven -- because my editor requested it. "Get to me ASAP -- on deadline!" I read her emails. And I rewrote and rewrote. And I went back to the ferrymen (for the piece is on the Chester-Hadlyme ferry in the fall), and I interviewed them. And I transcribed and typed up the interviews. Then I even went back TWICE and took video footage so that I could do a video feature for the website!! (which is done and on YouTube - will try to attach)

I can't count the hours I spent -- happily! -- working away on a quality piece for an editor who has been kind to me. I did favors for her, and for her boss, the General Editor. And on top of that, I begged a friend who's a very high end and in-demand photographer in Chester to do an emergency shoot with the ferrymen, for FREE, as a favor to me and my editor.

This week, I sent several emails to my editor, asking about when the article was coming out. I didn't hear back from her. Well, apparently, no news is bad news: I picked up the publication at the usual place (in the vestibule of the CT River Museum) AND. . . lo and behold, my piece was NOT there.

Now, because my LAST article for them wasn't even mentioned in the table of contents (which I am STILL annoyed about), I had to page through the slippery 41-page publication to be sure. Well, my rage, hurt, disappointment -- so many negative feelings -- welled up in me so fully that I nearly was afraid to get into my car and drive.

But I drove to my favorite (nearby) Canfield Meadow Woods and took a fast, angry walk, fuming, steaming, talking aloud, making a really nasty imaginary phone call to my editor. "THANKS A LOT, BITCH!" was only the start.

And look, even though I am choking-full on vitriol hours later, I STILL can muster up a feeling of compassion for the poor woman who has to work like a dog (bitch, dog -- geddit?), doing the work of many others who were laid off, letting freelancers know they are getting less and less money for their writing (as it happened in August -- my editor had to send an email to all her freelancers -- and there are NO MORE staff writers at her weekly paper). I know she can't be happy, doing that.

And I don't think she was happy, cutting my piece at the last minute. But, hey. She kept asking for rewrites and photos. Why couldn't she just say it didn't make it into the pub at the last minute? And why can't people give KILL FEES any more??

I know at least that my editor is getting a paycheck, and I am not.

Now I am out all that time and getting no money at all for it. Oh well. Live and learn. As Matthew suggests (with his level headedness), I will try to sell it, elsewhere. No reason to cry over unpublished work, and no reason I shouldn't LEARN from this piss-off experience! THANK YOU, UNIVERSE -- help me get those better assignments (for better pay in better places)!! Love, take care, Lauren

Time to Blog? Write On, Baby

I have often wondered who has time to blog? Writing requires time to compose, then edit, then reread, then edit again. . . and I actualy think that's fun! But the time constraint gets to me. However, if I can try to be more efficient (work smarter, not harder) and less of a perfectionist. . . I'll get there! So, if you want to be a part of the ride, thank you! Blogging is a more personal medium than jouralism. . . in the old days, you could get personal and confessional at least somewhat, but for now, it's kind of straight and while a good exercise in conciseness and moderation, kind of tedious all the time.

Anyway. I am still figuring out this thing, so. . . maybe this will be the blog for writing, and the other one, for music? We shall see!

Whatever it takes. . . people who write for a living (or make music for a living) inspire me and so, thank you and let's go. . . check out the other blog, too -- until I work all the kinks out.