After the 2005 Federal Flood, handmade signs started appearing on telephone and electrical poles around New Orleans that said: Think That You Might Be Wrong. There was a randomness to their placement, which added to the mystery. The signs were around long enough the word wrong was scratched out on one placed prominently on a telephone pole by the Dumaine Street bridge over Bayou St. John and now read: Think That You Might Be A Robot, which…
“Don’t let your passion project bankrupt you.” These were the words spoken to me by Malcolm White, head of the Mississippi Arts Commission when I first bought the 100 Men Hall. I tried to heed the warning during the first year of resurrecting the nonprofit but found myself caught up in the momentum of potential. Then a pandemic halted my momentum. The Hall’s St Joseph’s Altar was cancelled, Chapel Hart was cancelled, Alvin Youngblood Hart…
Yesterday, the casinos opened back up in Hancock County. Half the information I hear is that we are moving too fast into more trouble ahead. Half the messages I read is that we are returning to normal. I keep my guard up for normal’s arrival. It’s only now in the long morning walks and evening bikes rides that I have come to realize why normal is elusive. I grew up out of step, out of…
When the quarantine began, I was at a crossroads with work. Not the 100 Men Hall, which I had managed to get on a monthly music schedule and had been pushing towards self sufficiency, but rather work that pays my bills. On March 15, everyone and everything stopped and it’s as if the world stepped back to where I had been standing all along. I’m not going to lie, it felt good to not be…
Around Bay Saint Louis, there are signs everywhere of people and businesses returning to normal. I walked into Claiborne Hills yesterday and didn’t see anyone wearing a mask. As much as grocery shopping used to be meditative to me, I have only gone a handful of times in the past two months and each time was stressful. I’m on a Facebook thread of merchants here and over the past two weeks, each post about reopening…
For a few decades, I was convinced that my life was an interminable cliché. Any breakthrough, epiphany and light that went on would immediately be mirrored in a book, film, or someone else’s (read: more famous than me) reality. Then it seemed my life more closely resembled the myth of Sisyphus, condemned for eternity to roll a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down. Sisyphus was punished for self-aggrandizing, and I,…
A friend gave me a 5-year mom’s journal five years ago. I have kept up with it because you can only write a sentence or two a day. It’s a gem I will hold onto if only as a reminder that some things change, and some things do not. I took down the breakfast cup I bought in an antique store in San Francisco many moons ago. It’s precious and my fear that it will…
Step 1 – Don’t panic. Step 2 – Morning walks in nature. Step 3 – Meditate. Step 4 – Have a close cadre of friends at the other end of a text, call, email. Step 5 – Bike rides along the water with people you love at a distance. Step 6 – Enjoy the respite.
I try not to be a harsh critic of myself. I know too easily how it’s a slippery slope into outright condemnation. The voice that speaks to me when I look in the mirror is an awful judge. After I’ve crossed over into 60 last year, I’ve noticed every possible flaw my body holds – my once beautiful skin is now wrinkled, thin, marked. My once thick arms and thighs are dappled with curdled fat.…
Not your plans. This was told to me one time in a community meeting – Follow your spirit, not your plans. How many reinventions have I had? Joan Didion said, “I can’t remember half the people I used to be.” Reinvention is reinforcement against a world that is forever crumbling. Everyone is rushing back to their lives, I don’t want to go. I want less cars on the road, less scheduled time, less pollution, less…