Songs for the Struggling Artist

The podcast I was listening to was about the crisis in journalism – about how so many news sites were disappearing, how so many journalists are losing their jobs and about how the landscape was changing so dramatically and not for the better. (This country has lost one third of its newspapers and two thirds of its journalists since 2005 and it is accelerating.) I was only half listening – truth be told. I was still pretty wiped out...

On Monday, March 4th, I tested positive for COVID. I tested negative on March 1st when I woke up with a swollen throat and subsequently slept for the later part of the weekend. By Monday, the fever had gone and I was feeling a bit better. But I tested anyway because I had a rehearsal to go to and I wanted to be able to go in clear. Surprise!

The thing is – I have been very careful. I’ve rarely eaten indoors at a restaurant. I don’t...

Close observers of my work might notice some commonalities between my most recent audio drama, The Defense, and my previous audio drama, The Dragoning. They both feature nice women who develop magical defensive and destructive abilities. They both hinge on fear and power. They are structured very differently and the contexts are not the same, but at the center of both are nice and dangerous women. You might say I’m trying to work s...

A while back, I wrote about how they started locking up the toothpaste at my chain pharmacy/drugstore. Since then the drugstore has only expanded their lock-up program. Now, they lock up soap and deodorant and vitamins and eye drops and much more. There were a lot of news stories about this; These big drug stores (CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, etc) were claiming that there was a massive theft problem at their stores and they needed hel...

There’s not nearly as much criticism as I expected in this artist’s life. When I got started, I really thought people would be lining up to tell me what was wrong with my work all the time. I think it’s what a lot of people are afraid of when it comes to sharing their creations. What are people going to say? I know now that the thing people are most likely going to say is nothing.

I want to be clear that I’m not asking for criticis...

We decided to watch the second season of The Wheel of Time (A fantasy adventure show on Amazon) and by the middle of the show, we were laughing our faces off. This was not because the show is funny. It is not. It takes itself very seriously. But we were cracking ourselves up due to the near universal use of Whisper Acting. The Wheel of Time is hardly the first show to go all in on Whisper Acting but they go hard and it happened to ...

In the past few years, when I’ve made theatre or audio drama, I’ve mostly drawn on people who were already in my circle or in the circle of my circle. This is generally my preferred way of doing things, as it allows me to avoid the more businessy side of the business. (I know it’s show business but for me, it’s art.)

But this time, neither my circle nor my circles’ circles were big enough to do the job of casting my show. I had to ...

This surprise re-broadcast is brought to you by COVID 19! Almost four years after COVID came into our lives, I have, for the first time, tested positive. I have literally no idea where I could have picked it up but here we are. So, in honor of my positive test and the upcoming four year anniversary of this business, I give to you this encore episode. It was 195.

If you'd like to read it instead, visit the Songs for the Struggl...

You might think I’d be the target audience for Six. I am, after all, obsessed with reframing old stories so as to give women some power they otherwise might not have in their narratives.

But while Six seems to think it’s doing that, it almost feels like the opposite.

The premise is paper thin. The six wives of Henry VIII gather together to put on a show and have a contest to see who had it worse. (Spoiler alert?) That’s really all ...

This is a taste of my new audio drama. You can help us out by subscribing to The Defense, giving it five stars and writing a review!

If you've listened to The Dragoning, you'll hear some familiar names and some new ones!

A live recording of an audio drama podcast about a group of women grappling with their defense, a seemingly magical power that protects them from harm.  Get a glimpse behind the curtain of live podcast dr...

It’s December. I’m back to putting on a show. I’m doing all the things you have to do to make a show happen. I’m getting a team together. I’m casting actors. I’m writing a press release. I’m crafting a marketing strategy. And at a every inflection point, I think, “Golly this is hard.” I think, “Why did I get myself into this?” And at every turn in the road, I think, “Wouldn’t it be easier to just not?” At every mile marker I feel s...

I'm recovering from recording some episodes of my new Audio Drama series, The Defense - so I'm rebroadcasting the inspiration for the previous Audio Drama series (The Dragoning).

You'll probably also hear some carryover into The Defense.

And I forgot to say during the intro that this post was provoked by the Kavanaugh hearings.

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An excerpt: I am nice. I am so nice. My whole life I have been told I am nice. When I re...

I am without much voice today so I'm rebroadcasting an early episode. Believe me, none of us want to hear my "Easy like Sunday morning" today.

And because it was the Grammys yesterday and a lot of people are talking about them, I thought I'd reshare this one.

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In the old times, the fairies roamed the green hills. They were powerful and mischievous. There were many varieties of fairy – with different specialties...

For years I’d been seeing discussions of “SEO” all over my websites. Every company seemed to want to help me improve this SEO business so I eventually looked it up to try and understand it. In case you don’t have six websites the way I do, (I am a maniac. They’re here, here, here, here, here and right here) or maybe you’ve never encountered SEO before or maybe SEO stands for “Sexy Elephant Opera” for you – allow me to explain. In t...

On my way to go see a dance piece, I stopped off at the Drama Bookshop and noticed that they had a collection of plays written by my old friend. I figured I should buy it, since I have a goal to dedicate a shelf, nay, a bookcase, to the work of my friends. Also, I wanted to read the plays. Over the years, we’ve been less in touch so I haven’t managed to see everything or read everything.

In our twenties, we were very close. We talk...

The scene is a flashback. It’s looking like the 60s because the teen is in a silky turtleneck mini dress and the mom’s hair is up, cocktail hour style. But the song is Jim Croce’s “I Got a Name” which came out in 1973, so probably it’s supposed to be 1973 and this group is just rocking their clothes from eight years ago. I mean, that’s how humans are, sometimes. They wear their clothes from the previous decade. Not everyone is in s...

When I heard (in an Audio Drama group), about the AI descriptions taking over podcasts on Goodpods (a podcast platform), I headed straight over to see if my audio drama (The Dragoning) had been subjected to this treatment. It was not, so I moved on with my week, not thinking much of it. Then another audio drama group began to talk about how outrageous and wrong these descriptions were and how they were pulling their shows from the ...

There are about thirty artists in the classroom that is not designed for a lecture but is being used for one anyway. We are required to attend this information session in order to be eligible for our local arts funding. It is a two hour Power Point presentation about how to fill out the grant form. About an hour into it, the facilitator asked “Are we having fun?” and the silence was deafening. The facilitator is very personable and...

This week I found out I had reached the #4 spot on the Singer Songwriter charts in Queens. This kind of success doesn’t come around very often in my life so I thought I’d share what I did to make it happen.

You know what I did?

Absolutely nothing.

Not one single thing.

Last week, I got a notice that, since I hadn’t logged on in so long, Reverb Nation was going to suspend my account. So I logged in. That’s all I did. I didn’t upload...