Having it all

 Author. Singer. Actor. Artist.

We've all heard the response when we said we wanted a career in the arts. "That's great, but you should have a backup plan."

Accountant. Teacher. Nurse. Tech. The Backup Plan.

Not making a living as an artist, needing a day job while you pursue your dreams, sounds like failure. You're supposed to reach for the stars, pour your heart and soul into your desires, knock on every door, chase every opportunity until your book is a bestseller, or your song hits Number One, or your movie is a blockbuster. Anything less than that is a big fat ZERO, and so are you.

BUT...what if the day job isn't the Backup Plan? What if you can be an accountant with a weekly singing gig and be happy?

A podcast I listened to recently made the case for the Parallel Job. As long as artists are creating art, we are not failures. Our day job is not what we've HAD to do to put food on the table--it's a parallel role, an additional plan we put into motion to enhance our lives.

And I might argue, that parallel job is necessary to artists. Even the creative brain needs to take a break now and then. Rest enables the creative ideas to bubble to the top, keeps the heart and mind from burning out. Working with numbers, with people, with objects allows our creativity to wander. And when it wanders, it sometimes picks up pretty rocks, interesting leaves, and a new idea or two.

The podcast also made a case for creating art for art's sake. So many authors are locked into a series or a genre because that's where their readers are so that's what they sell. Singers stay in their country/rock/jazz lane because every song has to reach for the top of the chart. Artists who find a niche (geometric cows, luminescent landscapes, splatter patterns) are encouraged to "paint more of that."

But maybe you don't always need to monetize your creativity. Maybe sometimes write something just for you. Sing a song for your baby. Put on a show for free. Do something that allows you to let go, feel the wind through your soul as you reach inside yourself and hitch it to the breeze. 

Keep the day job and do your art. Your success comes from juggling multiple tasks, from doing things to the best of your abilities, and from feeling the freedom that comes with self-expression.

Art, and life, are to be enjoyed. Get out there and enjoy them!

I have no regrets

Y'all know one thing about me, and that is I'm a lady of a certain age...that age being older.

What you may not know is that I went to Las Vegas last weekend with three of my friends. We were having a farewell to one of the gals, who is moving out of the area. I'm not much of a Vegas baby. I'm too pale to enjoy the pools, and I don't gamble. The only things I like to do there are eat and go to shows. But I was happy and willing to spend a weekend with friends.

Vegas' motto is "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas." Not when I come to town. I will confess all and feel no regrets.

NoMad Library Restaurant

Our weekend included shopping at fabulous stores, eating delish food, touring the Princess Diana Exhibit, ziplining down Fremont Street, and seeing the show, "Thunder From Down Under," where I ended up on stage with half-undressed young men. 

I'm pretty sure I know which one of those activities you want me to tell you
about.

I wasn't excited about seeing Thunder, but I've never seen the show and I didn't want to complain. We were tucked into a lovely booth in the back of the theater where I figured the dancers would be far away.

Apparently, I was wrong. They like to include the whole room.

The show was as I expected--dancing, ripping off shirts, ripping off pants, etc. The audience was overwhelmingly filled with bachelorette parties and each lead dancer picked a young woman from the audience and did suggestive dance moves with her. Rinse and repeat.

I think I had just checked my watch when I saw the emcee come off the stage toward an older, white-haired woman. Her name was Judy and he asked her to accompany him. She declined. We tried to encourage her ("Ju-DEE! JU-DEE!) but she wasn't having it. So he smiled and said, "That's okay, Judy. I think I see someone else in the crowd who might accompany me this evening."

Then he wandered all the way to the back, all the way to our booth, and held his hand out to me. I could have said no, but my motto has always been, "Sure, I'm not doing anything else."

He ushered me to a tall-backed red velvet chair in the middle of the stage, wrapped a boa around my neck, and asked me if I wanted "an experience." My first thought was, "Thanks, I've had some." I mean, I'm not a nun, right? Then he asked, "Would you like the boys to dance for you?"

Oooohhhh. THAT'S what he meant.

The boys came out in shirts and pants, dancing to 70s disco music. It's so cute they think that was my era. At some point the shirts came off and they kept dancing. Every once in awhile they'd come over to me and smile and I'd smile back and it was just a very smiley kind of thing. 

At some point I noticed they weren't on the stage anymore but the emcee was. He faced me and put my hands on his tush. I didn't squeeze but I did hold. Then he turned away from me and stood in front of me with his hands away from his sides.

I'm such a dork. I didn't know what he wanted me to do. At last, I held my arms out between his waist and his arms, my palms extended in an "I'm clueless" pose. I guess that was the right thing to do because he took my right hand and ran it down his chest, into his pants. Not too far, though. There are laws about that.

At various times he would lean in and let his cheek touch mine (faces, people!) so that it looked as if he was kissing me, but his lips never touched me. That's when I realized it was all "smoke and mirrors," even the suggestive dancing. Each time he leaned in, he asked if I was doing okay. I assured him I was fine.

It was a little like having the young guy at the grocery store ask me if I needed help getting my bags to the car.

He took my hands and lifted me from the chair, saying, "Now we're going to bow."

Bow? I thought. What's a bow? I remembered just in time, we bowed, and he escorted me to the edge of the stage. 

The crowd all cheered and gave me high-fives, told me how entertaining I was. I took that with a grain of salt, since they'd all been drinking. But it was fun.

And now I have a boa.

The memories I wasn't looking for

 Like Barbra says:

This is what happens when you go through your old photographs looking for an old photo. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I found others that made me think and laugh and reminisce and even broke my heart just a little bit.

Naturally, I needed to share.

This is Samirah.

She and her family took care of Marcus while Dale and I worked, all the way up until we had to tear ourselves from her loving hug and send Marcus to elementary school. Her family is from Lebanon and Marcus was their little prince. They doted on him and included us in their orthodox Christian traditions, sharing their food, inviting us to their son's wedding, etc. While he was with them, Marcus could at least understand Arabic because they spoke it in the home, and one of my favorite things to do with him was say, "busa" so he would kiss me.

This is my cousin Max. 

He lived in Missouri with his mother, Aunt Dovey (her real name was Little Dove) and he'd come visit my grandmother in Illinois every once in a bit. We loved it when Max visited and Grandma was always ready to receive traveling guests--her skill as a hostess still awes and evades me! The thing is, I'm reasonably certain Max was gay. At one point he had a friend, also named Max, who would accompany him on these trips and Grandma was always grateful that they never complained about sharing a double bed when they visited. He had The. Best. Sense. of Humor. Ever.

This is Alyssa Barnes.

This picture both makes me extremely happy and devastatingly sad. We lost Alyssa to that damned demon Cancer at much too young an age. I see this picture and see immediately what a goddess she was, and I'm gutted that she didn't live long enough to show us what wonders she could perform. Here's a link to what I wrote about her loss: https://gaylecarline.blogspot.com/2016/04/you-do-not-write-away-heartache.html

This is my family.

These are photos of my hubby, looking joyful, and my nieces and nephew with Marcus, all surprisingly sitting together, mostly smiling and looking at the camera. For kids, that's a win!

If time permits, why don't you leaf through some of your old photos? Memories are good things, whether happy or sad. They show the path we have taken to get where we are.

A quick short note

 Hey there, Peeps!

Just a quick note to tell you I'll be in Anaheim this Sunday, July 2nd, with my Big Booth o' Books. Look for me from 11-3 at the Ebell Club!

I hope to see you there!

Happy (and contemplative) Juneteenth!

These blog posts are usually done commando-style, as in I don't spend a lot of time crafting my words, so I'm hoping this turns into something coherent.

It's Juneteenth today and I'm thinking about it. Or maybe it's more like noodling (a step up from thinking) or even contemplating (exponentially increased thinking).

First of all, I'm looking forward to the day when the holiday has an official song and specific decorations and activities--I know these things are superficial and yet they give a holiday a "yes, this is an official established holiday" feel. Apparently, red food is featured for Juneteenth, so I'd love to see red velvet cakes and strawberry soda at the front display of my local grocery store. It's past time for national traditions and observances.

(As a complete side note, I used to enjoy strawberry soda and vanilla ice cream floats with my grandfather and now I want one.)

Second of all, I'm thinking about the meaning of "systemic" racism and why so many people bristle at the term and insist that America is no longer racist and everyone is born with the same chance at success and if anything, black people get more advantages because of Equal Opportunity laws and quotas and so forth.

I don't consider myself a scholar on the subject, I'm only an observer of what happens around me, and I see it (like everyone else) through the lens of my own experiences. Here's what I have experienced:

My parents were racially biased. They weren't white supremacists, they just discounted the abilities of black people. My mother was fond of saying, "It's not their fault, they can't help the way they are." So when I married Dale, they had opinions about my mixed-race marriage. But I know these people and know that they would not have had the same opinions if I had married an Asian man, or Hispanic, or Indigenous. That would have been seen as exotic and exotic is always welcomed.

At the time, I brushed it off as being hypocritical and didn't give it much more thought. We already had a contentious relationship and I had stopped looking for their approval. But lately I'm asking why? Why was a Japanese spouse okay and a black spouse not? If it was about race, why wasn't it about all races?

I think I know the answer: because historically black people were slaves and even though they were freed, it didn't alter the fact that they had been treated as less than human. Even though my parents were not alive during the Civil War, even though slavery was no more than words in history books, the idea persisted. Black people were property and property does not think or dream or feel, and "they can't help it."

Once I start going down this path, I begin thinking in bigger and broader terms about our various societal systems. Systemic means "fundamental to a predominant social, economic, or political system." The most important thing about it is that it's so ingrained in a society that no one recognizes it. My parents would never have seen the historical footprint in their biases. 

Think about Wall Street. The people who started businesses and built corporations and took them to the stock market originally were white European men, speaking English, playing golf, wearing structured suits and ties. Women breaking into that world had to wear structured skirt suits to be taken seriously (and forget golf--even when they could get into the country club, they have to hit from the women's tee). Men (and women) of color had to abandon the formal wear of their countries and put on suits, play our games, speak our language. We don't even think about this, we just accept that this is the uniform for doing business.

What else did we inherit from the patriarchy that we don't need anymore?

All because Juneteenth made me think and noodle and contemplate. I guess that's how I observed the holiday today.