This guy that I used to spend time with would consistently pick the same fight with me. The last time it happened, it went like this:
“You have to separate the art from the artist. Just because Woody Allen is a shitty dude doesn’t make his art not art.”
We are standing on Newbury Street and I am finally realizing that I am not being listened to. I will probably never be listened to in the way that I need to be. I am here to punctuate his soliloquy. I punctuate:
“I don’t think men who hurt women are capable of creating authentic art.”
And yes, women can hurt men. Yes women can be abusers. Yes we should boycott female artists who are. But the systematic way in which women are left out of art—made into the muse, at whatever cost—is unforgivable. He retorts with the most telling thing he has ever said to me, the reason I am here writing about this conversation instead of continuing to have it with him:
“What does that mean though? Hurting women?”
Because if you have to ask, you are probably complicit in it happening. If you have to validate the art of men who hurt women—instead of validating the lived experiences of the women they have hurt—you are part of the problem. If you just haveto watch Annie Hall again, you are letting all survivors of sexual assault know that in the face of a good flick, anything can be forgiven.
Mostly, I’m jealous. I would love to watch Manhattan again and not feel nauseous. I wish I could pay $12 to see Café Society and not be a rape apologist. But whether we like it or not, art does not exist without the spectator. When the spectator chooses to look, they validate the work—and by proxy—its creator. Its really very simple: don’t look. When the spectator makes a conscious choice to disavow the abusers within the scene, space is created in the artistic communities for survivors to heal, for survivors to create art and be listened to. Validating the experiences of survivors of abuse and praising the work of the abusers are mutually exclusive acts. You cannot do one while claiming to do the other.This is not to say that it’s easy. To live by this creed honestly would invalidate about a quarter of the Boston music scene. It would erase prominent male slam poets from the map. It would definitely mean calling out male friends. It could mean ending close friendships. But you must ask yourself: do I support women? Do I support survivors? Is my support conditional?
I will never be someone’s favorite band because I am a woman. I am only one. I try not to let this break my heart.
Two months ago, I played an excellent show. In an ideal world, this would be the last sentence to this post. In an ideal world, I would walk away from an excellent show feeling satisfied, good enough, accomplished, but I don’t—not always.
I have been the opener for almost every show I’ve ever played, since I first started playing shows in 2007. I never used to question this, I was mostly just grateful to be playing at all. But as I got older and more experienced, I started asking myself: Why? The answer: Because somebody somewhere decided that “standard show protocol” means having the solo singer-songwriter open every show. Because most of the time, the other acts on the bill consist of louder acts. Louder acts, at least in the Boston area, consist of, more often than not, men. Because somebody somewhere decided that it makes sense to have women open for men, to have women be the “primers”. Because showgoers care more about seeing bands than they do about seeing solo female singer-songwriters. Because we are naturally seen as less talented than our male counterparts. Because we are below the big names on the show posters, we are at the bottom of the totem pole, we are the part of the show that isn’t a part of the show. Somebody somewhere decided this.
A friend I love very much was in charge of booking the aforementioned show, so when he asked me to play a few months prior, I was overjoyed. I specifically asked him if I could not open the show, because I knew I was the only female solo act on the bill, and because I knew that most of the crowd wouldn’t show up until a bit later in the evening, and I wanted to have a decent audience because it was my first show in quite a while—I had been on a bit of a performing hiatus. My friend agreed. He said I wouldn’t be the opener, but I would play second. I was, again, overjoyed.
Fast forward to one week before the show, and my friend posts the set times. All of a sudden I am the opener, and I felt the agreement between my friend and I get swiftly and quietly flushed down the toilet. I cried. I had given up. I wanted to return to the scene strong with this show, really make an impression, but once again, I felt pushed down and ignored, amongst a bill full of mostly male-dominated bands. It had happened again.
For the first time in my life, I called my friend on the phone and I put up a fight. When I called him out, he told me, “I understand. You’re definitely more right than I am,” and I wondered: Why can’t I just be right? Why does my rightness have to be in comparison to yours, why does it have to be lesser than yours? He asked, “Would you put up this kind of fight with another promoter? Probably not, because I am scared, and because you are my friend, because you are a man that I trust. I trust you to help me navigate this unfair space. Use what you have that I do not have, to help me. He said, “Whoever is most active in the scene plays last.” But even when I was active in the scene, I was playing first. I’ve always played first. How am I supposed to be active if no one will let me?
He listened to me when all was said and done, and I played second, but I had to fight for it, and that hurt me more than anything, more than the initial let down.
The show ended up being great. I felt well-received and appreciated by the audience, who genuinely paid attention and seemed to enjoy my set. I heard sniffles during quiet moments. I knew I was doing my job, and that gave me an intense and joyous feeling I hadn’t felt in such a long time. But right beside that pride and happiness was the anxiety from the effort I had to put in in order to get what I wanted, how I felt like a “bitch” for having done that—for finally voicing my opinion and attempting to justify to my friend the unfair dynamic of booking shows. It was my first time fighting for a spot other than the opener, an argument I know my male counterparts probably never have to have.
As anxious as I felt about the altercation with my friend, I felt as though fighting for my spot made the turnout even better. It made my performance one of power and ferocity. I wasn’t afraid to be angry. I wasn’t afraid to sound ugly—to not sound like an angel. I wasn’t afraid to let the songs speak for themselves. I just wasn’t afraid anymore.
It took me a very long time to realize that there is a special kind of vulnerability you must be willing to offer an audience if you’re a woman on stage with a guitar, playing by herself. I know this now, and I recognize the strength in it.
I am still living inside this narrative. I know there will be other arguments. I know there will be times when I am too afraid to fight for what I want. I know my absence of fear is not permanent, I know that it may be fleeting.
So, to male musicians, bookers, promoters, audiences:
Pay attention to women who play music, whether we are in bands or not. Pay attention to what we have to say. Don’t lump us into a “basic” category; stop pretending that we’re all the same, that we all sound the same, that we’re all Taylor Swift. Just stop. Pay attention. Pay attention. Look a little closer. I dare you.
When I write, I usually write about death or sadness or the depth of that sadness, and it always makes me feel more alive. I guess this is why I write when your absence is thick and irrefutable. We all know it’s there. The elephant in the room. Love will never not destroy me. Love is a place you are taken— a place in between life and death. A soft place. There is always music. Sometimes I am screaming along, and other times I am begging for someone to turn it off, to take the sound away.
*
When you leave, I wish for the strength to do the same, but I always end up staying even harder. My desire for leaving is the most pungent when you’re trying to keep me. I wish we could just shut up and keep each other all the time, but I don’t know if that is possible. Sometimes I imagine you leaving me, for good. Sometimes I imagine us leaving, for good, at the same time. I’ve already been stained. Branded. Drowned. Saved. All of my body has been had by you. I have swallowed you whole. We’ve gone too far to turn back. You can’t just reverse that shit.
*
When you inevitably go away again, when my heart breaks a little bit more for what feels like the thousandth time, I will lean on this: He’ll always come back to me. He’ll always come back for me. One day he’ll take me with him. I don’t know if this is a strong enough philosophy to lean against. The things I carry make such a mess of me. I am so heavy. Your absence is so loud. My house is burning down. The snow is just white rain, just another heaviness keeping me here.
This is Stephen King tweeting that Dylan Farrow’s New York Times essay about the sexual abuse she suffered at age seven by her adopted father Woody Allen had “an element of palpable bitchery.”
Just in case you never want to read anything by the fucker again.
