Caricatures of Irish immigrants–especially Irish women–have softened, but persist in characters whose Irishness is expressed in subtle cues.
A cartoon illustration of Bridget in Puck, 1883
Welcome to New York City, where the Ghost of Tin Pan Alley still lurks.
This is an NYC tale about an EVIL force that threatens performers along the Mohican Road (The Bowery / Broadway). As the demon makes the author ill, she finds a balm- A SALVATION - in the performances of Fall 2023. One by The Mary Wallopers, one by a dance group doing a musical dance show called Arena. Both groups BATTLE the old cold thing.
The author illuminates histories of Black and Irish stereotypes in American Sheet Music.
8.5in x 11in, staple bound, printed on 80lb un-coated paper with a 100lb glossy cover.
Zine is full color baby, 44 pages
Trust me, you will love it.
This in an elite zine.
Limited Edition First Run of 51 Prints.
Original Working Title: The Mary Wallopers & Arena & Vaudeville Clairsentience in NYC
HYPOTHESIS:
The mind which understands basic things about American Vaudeville geography in New York City will have a haunting, meaning-filled, and evocative experience watching performances, in the present, there. Vaudeville awareness leads to nuanced takes.
PRE-ORDER ZINE 1: The Mary Wallopers and Arena and Vaudeville Clairsentience
This zine will blow your mind, feel good to touch, and rest wonderfully in your hands.
It concerns Irish American and Black American performance in NYC, specifically two shows I saw in fall of 2023.
Show One: The Mary Wallopers and Sam Shackelton at Irving Plaza.
Show Two: “Arena”, by Artist Derek Fordjour, Choreographer Sidra Bell, and Composer Hannah Mayree performed at Petzel Gallery.
Seemed like the Vaudeville was alive in well, but in a way that felt very surprising and releasing. The possibilities for a collective de-colonial explosion seem high. Are the forgotten vaudeville thoroughfares - The Bowery, 14th St./Union Square and Tin Pan Alley - actually still running shit?
FIND OUT!
Telling you is like confession or something. The architecture dream is so deep-seated and quiet in me. I've hinted to it some over the years I've known you. I care about buildings and history. Maybe that's why I always snuck into abandoned ones as a kid. Who am I kidding. I still sneak into them. I care about what went on here before. I care about the conversations that were had and the songs that were sung and how those words may still be echoing about in the present.
Just the other day I got in trouble for trespassing at Chatham Towers, trying to get a good glimpse of the piece of earth that used to be "The Old Brewery". They just put Gangs of New York on HBO, so this nerd has been lurking around the old Five Points looking for ghosts in the walls and sidewalks. ANYWAY.
My purpose came clear during my last sixth months of meditation. Sometimes the directions roared through my deep breathing like a freight train. (If you like freight trains, I recommend this awesome train hopping memoir, Sunset Route by Carrot Quinn.) The messages I received out in the world only served to solidify my new path. I've tried to ignore them.
"That doesn't make sense, I'm but a folk singer!"
But the voice comes from a deep well within me. It's too loud. It doesn't care that I've just become the other half of a new band called The Jersey Sures (available for all gigs!). When I get so quiet I can hear only silence, the message I get is to work my unique brand of Melanie magic into the architectural world.
It's more than preservation I'm interested in. It's creating an entire framework for architecture, building, and construction - one that takes into account cultural context and the specific character of place. One that bites back at white supremacy and capitalism and throw away culture (other great books on these subjects are Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong and Abolish Silicon Valley by Wendy Liu). I'm so into this.
Over summer I went through entrepreneurial training as part of New York State's Self Employment Assistance Program. I got a letter in the mail one day telling me I'd qualified for this program. Sometimes I don't know what to do next. The letter made it clear. I enrolled. By following the SEAP's guidelines all summer and working with mentors and coaches at SCORE and The Women's Business Outreach center, I've started a business called Wall Nectar.
At Wall Nectar, I get to combine the things I love to do and am good at doing into one service. I get to work toward my dream of experimenting and creating a culturally sustainable architecture model. My first experiments with this were, like so many of us, on The Sims. Thank you, The Sims.
So here's what Wall Nectar does:
We create interior murals by conducting living history research and putting on a public musical performance on site. Clients may be restaurants, historical buildings, entire neighborhoods, theatre companies, organizations, shops, public or civic buildings- I am not sure. I am currently searching for my first clients. This entire process- from research to performance to painting- is called a Wall Channeling. Wall Channeling is the signature service of Wall Nectar.
The closest thing I've ever done to a Wall Channeling before is People's Beach Day. So if you liked People's Beach Day, you're going to LOVE Wall Channelings. It's taken me some time to feel confident spelling the word Channeling. And yes, I still have my job at Montclair State teaching College Writing. You can tell, because my writing is PERFECT. It is NOT full of RANDOMLY capitalized WORDS, for example.
So here I am world. I am Melanie Beth Curran, surrealistic Founder and CEO of Wall Nectar in Brooklyn, New York. Wall Nectar was baked here in the apartment where I live, and at the BOC in the Bronx, and in the offices and zoom rooms of architects and experts who guide me.
So please, if you or someone you know has a building, has a special place, has a budget to cover art and performance that celebrates regional identity and history, get in touch with me. Also just here if you want to talk about your feelings.
Thank you for supporting me and my work throughout the years,
-Melanie
Riding the subway with pincurls, because I still religiously adhere to 1940s beauty routines. Thank you to Katie Lomax for the Cloisters photo up top. Please go the The Met Cloisters one day if you haven't (not a real convent).
I couldn’t find the lyrics to this song anywhere online and I thought they were hilarious. So I did my best to figure them out as an act of public service. I guess this song is from 1969 and I can literally smell it. The vivid descriptors and hyper specific references to era-specific objects truly entranced me. I loved how I never knew for sure when the refrain will come around again.
“The Belle of Avenue A” Song Lyrics by The Fugs
This is a song about a man from Junction City, Kansas
A truck driver for the Red Ball Express
who decides he has to go the Lower East Side to get some Hippie Nookie.
It's called "The Belle of Avenue A"
He was just a lonely truck driving man driving all night long
but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?
He drove through the tunnel in his big Mack truck
driving hard from Kansas
He told all his buddies at the Junction City Truckstop
he was gonna get some hippie nooookie
but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?
He saw her standing in a midnight-blue lace gown
He saw her standing in a midnight-blue lace gown
He could see her pretty naked nipples under the mesh
and she had a button, "Love is God", pinned to her sleeve
and he started talking to her in hieroglyphic hitchhikes (??)
and he told her she was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen
waving a wand of incense
burnin on Avenue A
Well his heart was beatin like a bumpy butterfly
his stomach was an empty fire
but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?
Hey they walked together talkin, and she reached out to hold his hand
and he trembled with joy as she scratched his lifeline
with her silver Tibetan fingerstall
and she asked him to come up to her house
and he leaped up her steps like they was on fire
and she had an Indian hemp plant blooming on the windowsill
an electric toothbrush by the bed
and on the stroboscope was a tiny push up bra
made from the eyelids of an elephant.
He was just a lonely truck driving man
driving all night long
but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?
They kissed! And passed between their mouths a silver-tounged marble
and he went out of control.
Fell to his knees
and she touched his zipper
and recited a sex charm from The Book of The Dead
and she caressed him with her feet
and somehow she got his Levi's off with her toes
and then she wriggled out of her lace
covering herself with Reddi-wip in a spiraling flourish
and she stood there and she had a white pebble in her navel
and she said to the lonely truck driver:
"Love me and pray to my body
Love me and pray to my body"
and the lonely truck driver to her in reply did say:
"I don't want no other love
I'll be true to you
you're the prettiest gal I've ever seen
my Belle of Avenue A"
She lay back into the zebra-skin rope harness
and pulled her truck driver lover
down into her entwining arms
and she wrapped herself around with hundred of bright ribbons
and she beamed in on him with a tube torque
and he painted pretty prairie flowers on her stomach
with a suma (i) brush
and later on they lay in a bathtub of Mazola oil
and final he grew exhausted and fell asleep
in her lovin' arms
while she stared onward into the night
drinking from her Aramaic chalice
and thrilling herself with an onyx-handled tapir snout
He told all his buddies at the Junction City Truckstop
he was gonna get some hippie nooookie
but did he know how soon his tears would fall for the Belle of Avenue A?
When he woke up he told her he loved her
and that he wanted to live with her forever and ever
and she looked at him
and she held his hand
and she dealt out the tarot cards
and she studied I-Ching for many minutes
and she asked him what his sign was
and finally, looking deep into his eyes she held his hand and said:
"It's not in the cards
all things say 'Adios'
and the purple flower
s and the green flower
s melt in the void."
Well he reeled in his dick and he headed for the door
filled with an awful love-
sheee - she can suck on a purple donut buddy I'm gonna head for home-
but the misty tears fell down his face.
He drove through the turnpike and he headed South
driving hard for Kansas
But the misty tears fell down his face for the belle of Avenue A
Yes the misty tears fell down his face for the belle of Avenue A.
He never thought the tears would ever stop for his
midnight
lace dress
incense
goddess
The Belle of Avenue A.
I have a spiritual teacher named Nikki Walton. She releases a meditation each morning.
"Say the word I," she asked listeners. "Now say "I" without actually saying "I". Stay feeling the "I" that doesn't pronounce itself."
She says that this is the feeling of god, or the universe, or the goddess, or the creator, inside of a person. It is the radiant feeling of saying "I" when we don't.
I chanced upon the core of my being in Boston earlier in June. My material surroundings so resembled my essence that I thought to write upon the subject here. A series of miracles ensued and I was hard-pressed not to believe that a creative intelligence was masterminding the spectacle of life on earth.
The last memory I have of being part of Boston was not wanting to leave it. I loved being young Melanie there. I lived in Peabody, Massachusetts, with my mother, father, brother, and something else. The something else doesn't have a name, but I associated with a few things: The Boston Common, a certain quality of adult personalities, swan boats on a pond, Make Way For Ducklings, Dunkin Donuts, and the way I pronounced words.
It was the dawn of kindergarten when we moved to Bainbridge Island. I was nearly put into speech class when the teachers figured out that it wasn't a speech impediment I had, but a Boston area accent. The Pacific Northwest of the United States, where we'd moved, is where newscasters with regional inflections turn to seek out an accent-less way of annunciating words for public broadcast.
My way of pronouncing language went away, but something remained. I remember driving away from the house on Jennifer Lane, Peabody, Mass, watching the neighborhood recede from out the back windshield of a Ford Explorer. I saw the neighbors waving us goodbye. I felt an aching in my soul. I loved this place. The love is still with me.
Would I have transformed into such a fantastic hippie had I grown up in Massachusetts? By high school on Bainbridge Island, I favored being stoned and listening to the Grateful Dead over going to class. I would skip to hide and listen to their music alone in dark recesses. Their back catalog is imprinted in my consciousness. Maybe I was trying to manufacture something big enough to replace that old childhood longing, something to soothe the ache of early experiences of impermanence.
It was 2004 or 2007. Could have been both or either. I took the portable radio into the street at night. I set up a chair and looked at the stars, listening to the Red Sox baseball team win The World Series. I loved the Red Sox. I had fond feelings for Fenway Park. I told no one. I loved the Green Monster the way northwestern children love Sasquatch. My love for all of this was secret. It is weird to tell about it now. I held my love cards close to the chest then because I didn't want anything to come between me and these waves of sound expressing Bostonian victory.
Being an American is being suspended between a longing for what one doesn't have yet, and a longing for what one is leaving behind. That's my experience.
My family in Seattle, especially my paternal grandfather and his siblings, stressed a great sense of "being from" in tandem with our family name. Curran. We're Irish. We are from County Donegal, from a small place outside Letterkenny called Glenswilly. And that is that.
Any other ancestries in my life were obscured by this story. It was a tale told and re-told. There was a highway of green leading us back to Ireland. When I asked my father why we went to Mass each Sunday, why I was enrolled in CCD, why - I was told it was for tradition. He wanted us to grow up with that unbroken thread back to Ireland, with a structure for worshiping god.
An identity was formed. I am an Irish-American Dead Head Closeted Red Sox Fan with a Buried Boston Accent.
About a fortnight ago, I traveled to Boston from my home in New York City. Through a series of encounters and intuitive actions, I'd fallen in with a cohort of Irish Studies scholars and was invited to give a presentation at a symposium put on by Boston University and University College Dublin. The symposium was called "New Modalities of Irishness: Race, Identity and Inequality."
I settled into my lodgings and wandered about Back Bay. I met a stream of strangers who offered me questions and commentary.
"Is that a gun?" (It was a fiddle.)
"How much you pay?" (For rent in New York City)
"Are you Catholic?" (By default, I said, by design.)
and,
"God Bless You, You're a Peabody Girl" (pronounced like I used to, guhl.)
When a woman uttered these last words to me, a comfort from my earliest memories engulfed me like honey. My lodgings were, in fact, abutting Fenway Park. An elevator was Red Sox themed. The symposium was a decadence of ideas. We explored notions of an Irishness which can be switched on and off, can be signaled, can be invoked, can be deployed to achieve certain social aims.
I returned from that event with a sweet sense of belonging. It was as though my ancestors were right there with me, partying, especially my Grandpa Pete. It was as though they had gotten together on the other side and woven this sequence of events into being. For once, I'd been open enough to follow their signs and let go of my own will. Things got weirder as the night progressed.
I considered an early retirement to my chambers, but opted for a final spin around the block instead. 'Twas then I met with strange company (see, there, I just deployed a written Irishness). So many dreads on white people. So many drug rugs. It was like a - wait a minute -
A quick google confirmed my suspicions. The Grateful Dead were playing Fenway Park this night.
I stole away, down to the outskirts of the stadium. I, ticketless, perched on a picnic table within earshot of the music as it spilled over what I like to imagine was the Green Monster itself. I felt the presence of my monstah, and I relaxed. There were two young deadhead ladies before me. One was stretching herself like a cat, perched on safety orange plastic road barricade, while the other sister spun. The spinner dancers are a long running Grateful Deadian subgroup. As I watched them, I swore they carried the spirit, the very spirit I had sought while hiding in my family's house, tripping out, listening to this very song.
One More Saturday Night poured out of Fenway Park and into this little side strip of Shakedown Street. The dancing lady sung along in flying harmony to the music, quite like Donna used to do in the old concert recordings.
I've never been to a Grateful Dead show, (I know they are called The Dead and Company now, but like an old neighborhood kid calls the East Village the Lower East Side, I will die on this hill) and I likely never will. This is the band's last and final tour. I have no real means of getting to any of the remaining shows.
But. But I swear that the thing I was seeking in all those stoned high school moments listening to the recordings actually incorporated into me that Saturday Night as I watched the young ladies sing and dance and stretch. As I listened to a song that has been played over and over and over again to audiences who were hungry too, I felt a formless things land, as I sat on that picnic table, stone cold sober.
To soak up sound in the city where I became verbal. To bask in the afterglow of deadhead decades at my favorite baseball stadium - my regrets to the Seattle Kingdom. To have a day spent meditating on what remains of an ancestral Irish homeland in me while eating lobster rolls. I have been an unruly lady and I have been a calm lady. On that night I was not myself, but rather, I was myself experiencing the "I" - unspoken aloud but uttered with all fibers of my flesh.
The gods conspired to show me the core of me, all around me, unfolding like a play dedicated in memory of my deepest childhood and American longings, to be part of something, and to know that something as the water in which I swim.
Friday. March 31st. 5pm. After accidentally eating a few bites of hazelnut, disguised as a harmless crumble crust on a strawberry cheesecake from Clementine Bakery, I accepted my fate. I was now going to have a mild to moderate allergic reaction. I hopped on the B52 bus and got off next to Prospect Drugs, my dear and beloved neighborhood pharmacy. I bought some medicine, sat my butt down in a chair and resolved to wait there until the benadryl kicked in. I figured this was smart. People are around if my throat starts to close up. The people that were around were actually just one person, a teenager working behind the counter named Ailyn. Pronounced. Eileen.
We got to talking. I said I was looking for April Fools Day Pranks to play on you, dear reader.
This following list was a team effort. Ailyn came up with a lot of these prank ideas. If you are Ailyn’s friend or family member, watch out, you are going to get pranked today.
Ailyn informed me that the key to any good prank is Gaslighting. Ailyn then elaborated on the trifold principles central to this practice: “Gaslight, Girlboss, Gatekeep.” It is in that spirit that I offer to you our list:
FOOLPROOF APRIL FOOLS DAY PRANKS
Psyche Out
Inform everyone beforehand to expect a prank from you today. Then do not deliver.
Alien Baby
Go on google images and find a photograph of a scary little creature. Send a letter or email to your friends and family saying something like this, “Hi guys, you know I’ve been off of social media lately. I want to announce the reason! I’ve been nurturing a little bun in the oven and wanted to keep it a secret. This week I gave birth to this little guy, [insert image of a turtle with a mouse face/creepy skeleton/classic green alien]. I don’t know where it came from, but it is my bundle of love. Thank you so much for your support. Please send me money.” Or something like that.
Caged
Send out an email like this:
“Omg i cant believe it I was able to reach out from my cage and grab ahold of this computer. SOS i need help please please listen to me. I am in a cage in the basement of Luigi’s Pizza. I am about to drown in tomato sauce, please, they are slowly pumping tomato sauce into the basement and I am locked in cage down here. I can barely use the keys on this computer to type, they are slowly being consumed by the growing amount of sauce i am up to my ankles in sauce please send help i can’t believe i got a wifi signal down here the wifi name is SAUCE BOSS and I just guessed the password and got lucky its a miracle the password was not today alfredo not today i can’t believe it please come save me I am down here and it is not looking good it’s Luigi’s Pizzzzzzxzziadhlshd;asgba;oduhasidfj on nnnn as shalihfg aowashingtonnnnn avbeeeeenueeeeeaiusaliueeeee eeee in clinnnntoon hillllllll”
Ransom
“Friends and Family of Melanie Curran. We have your girl. We can disclose the location of her if you send us money, blah blah blah, she’s gonna die, give us a million dollars.”
Mafia
“Hi Guys, It’s your girl Melanie. I am writing today with some super exciting news! In May I am moving to the gorgeous Todt Hill neighborhood on Staten Island to join forces with the Gambino family. I think what they do is super important and I just can’t believe I have been given this opportunity to grow my brand with them. I am inspired by their super deep family values. As you know, legacy is extremely important to who I am and how I project myself on social media. The Gambinos embody this lifestyle at a level I find truly manifested and futureforming. I believe that by working in an exclusive brand deal with them, I can inspire other women to be their best selves and live abundantly. I am super excited to join this incredible international organization.”
Elopement
Send out an email telling everyone I have eloped-
“Hey everyone! This winter something amazing happened. I met the man of my dreams. He is heir to the Bon Jovi family fortune and we are soooooooo happy together. We have already been betrothed, but I thought I would let you know so you can send us presents. Our registry is linked below:
(then give link to one of those real wedding websites like “Zola” or the “Knot”. FIll it out with superimposed images of me and some guy who looks like he could be related to Bon Jovi, and then link to registry that is filled with the following item ONLY:
Eggs
Easter egg dying stuff
NYC statue of liberty key chains
Knives)
Bad Gift
This is one Aylin actually did to her cousin. Gave her a present for her birthday that was just a cup of sugar. Nice one.
So. I was going to prank you this April Fools Day. As of this morning, I was still planning on sending one of these hoaxes out to you. I thought long and hard about my options. What would make Aylin proud? Then, it dawned on me.
I have lived many lifetimes. I have had many escapades. I have often reinvented myself. If I told you I was engaged to Robert Dinero’s cousin’s cousin and was moving to a towel factory and devoting my life to giving orphans the opportunity to ride on the yachts of billionaires, I think you would have just believed me. The best prank is no prank, from where I am sitting. I’ve put you all through enough. So. Please feel free to use any of these templates on your people today. Let me know how it goes!
This semester I am teaching my dream course. I’ve it called Writing New Jersey Cultures.
Course Description
New Jersey real, New Jersey imagined. New Jersey is thrown around in speech and popular culture, though it is seldom understood. The effort of our class is to write New Jersey as we understand it. To do this, you will conduct ethnographic research on a New Jersey Culture of your choice - most likely one that you are personally a part of. Through vast amounts of in-class work doing writing, and through the drafting, revision and research processes, you will produce original research projects. Your final drafts will be shining examples of undergraduate fieldwork. The skills you glean here will be transferable to the rest of your college experience, as well as to your careers as writers, thinkers and citizens.
Just as New Jersey is indeterminate, is undefinable, is a place of possibility and marshes and hauntings and sprawl and language and music, so too will our course be a shifting realm of potentialities. Be prepared to write by hand, try out automatic writing, explore multi-modality, and experiment ethnographically.
Welcome to Writing New Jersey Cultures*.
Camilo Jose Vergara
*Inspired by Writing American Cultures, a course by Nancy Koppelman, Chico Herbison and Sam Schrager at The Evergreen State College, 2012.
Readings
Our class will use the free, open source textbook called:
Engaging Communities: Writing Ethnographic Research by Suzanne Blum Malley and Ames Hawkins.
Find it here:
http://www.engagingcommunities.org/
I will assign readings to inspire and inform our work together. I will provide PDFs of any text assigned, via Canvas. Readings may include:
New Jersey Dreaming: Capital, Culture, and the Class of ’58 by Sherry B. Otner Lifeblood of The Parish: Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn by Alyssa Maldonado Estrada
The Body and the City Project: Young Black Women Making Space, Community, and Love in Newark, New Jersey by Aimee Cox
Decolonizing Ethnography: Undocumented Immigrants and New Directions in Social Science by Carolina Alonso Bejarano, Lucia López Juárez, Mirian A. Mijangos García, and Daniel M. Goldstein
Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen
The Autobiography of LeRoi Jones by Amiri Baraka
I Drum, I Sing, I Dance: An Ethnography of a West African Drum and Dance Ensemble by Marissa Silverman
Dr. Smartphones: An Ethnography of Mobile Phone Repair Shops by Nicolas Nova and Anaïs Bloch
Coming of Age in New Jersey: College and American Culture by Michael Moffatt The Destabilization of Italian-American Identity on Jersey Shore by Sara Troyani
The American Diner Waitress: An Autoethnographic Study of The Icon by Heidi Liane Hasbrouck
Gentrification Down The Shore by Mary Gatta and Molly Vollman Makris Class Action Park directed by Seth Porges and Chris Charles Scott
I try not to take it personally when StreetEasy.com asks me to verify my humanity. Apparently the way I use the website, compulsively opening tabs, scrolling through them, closing them and looking at another cluster of ads, alerts the website’s system that I am a bot. After the fourth or fifth time going through the CAPTCHA, checking pictures of crosswalks, I give up and shut the laptop. I mean, that’s pretty sad. When I’m in my street easy flow, the computer thinks I am a computer too.
But that’s kind of the point. Every ounce of life has been Air BnB’d. In my mind I have come to call what I am talking about “the real-estate-i-fication of everything.” This includes other people. People talk about other people like real estate. Good investment, bad investment. Safe, toxic. A diamond in the rough or a fixer-upper. Don’t date someone for their potential, they say. They don’t say that about housing though.
My passion for the ads started early, before the internet. It started with paper real estate magazines on the 35 minutes of ferry boat ride across the Puget Sound in Washington State. I was fascinated by houses. I liked seeing pictures of the insides of them, I liked the different styles. I was a Sims fanatic. The houses provided inspiration for my builds on the computer game. That was one reason.
The other was that I was acutely aware of what my parents had paid for their house in the 90s when they purchased it. I was obsessed about how we could get a better deal if we were willing to move. On the weekends I’d ask my mom to drive me, to please drive me, to open houses, advertised by signs in the ditches with arrows pointing down quiet lanes. I loved walking through the spaces of others in those weird little shoe coverlets.
From the perspective of a child, this obsession makes sense. A lot of space is just taken up by buildings I wasn’t allowed to go into. That’s sort of weird to a kid. So much of everything is private. I don’t think a kid understands private property. I wonder what a New York City kid understands. New York City is all of this privatization on steroids.
I’m going to tell you where I go for my goods. The real goods. Easiest way into it is with the StreetEasy ads. You gotta wait a week to get the Listings Project Newsletter (wholesome colonialism?), but boy is it juicy. I even plunder Craigslist, looking for wacky deals that aren’t scams. When I get real deep, I’ll go to the more obscure listings- like the New York City affordable housing lottery page; or the Zillow listings for the last inexpensive, income-capped, apartments in the city: the HDFC co-ops.
Why do I spend so much time doing this? It feels like important investigative work. But really, the practice is rife with longing for a life that is not my own, right now, today, breathing-in.
from author’s private Pinterest board “Fantasy NYC Apartment”
Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada notes that, in the 2000s, New York City was going through a major re-branding project that doubtless informs my experience of the city as a person who didn’t grow up here. She writes:
“The urban imaginary changed when Michael Bloomberg was elected mayor of New York. In his three terms from 2002 to 2013, Bloomberg effectively led a campaign to rebrand New York as a “magnet for people with dreams.”… Increasingly under Mayor Bloomberg, New York was represented as a “place of arrival,” “a place one comes to, rather than a place where one is born and raised.”” (204-5)
I feel most calm in my heart when I think that maybe, just maybe, the apartment where I live right now is my home. I rest assured knowing I am not planning on leaving. It feels like a sort of sacrilege to write that down. The resting state of an American is never you are where you’re meant to be, right now, and that’s enough. The assumption that makes the whole thing run is this: there is more out there, there is better out there, click here, discover it, keep scrolling.
When I indulge in the ads it is in a state of suspension from reality. Tension floods my body, particularly my jaw. When I decide to look at the ads, it’s with a pleasure similar to that of a child about to consume all her Halloween candy in one sitting. I know it’s going to hurt ultimately, but it will be so sweet going down.
The worst part about it is how if I did move into the dreamiest apartment I could find on the internet, I would still be left with the obsession to scroll. I doubt there is a reality where I won’t ever not be just looking. I have an imagined lives in my head. I hold a vision of myself in almost every neighborhood in this city. I’ve got my building picked out in Brighton Beach and Inwood. I know where I’d live in Sunnyside and the Financial District. Choosing between the West and East Villages would be a challenge, but it’s one I think I could overcome with a place I saw on that sunny strip of 8th Street north of Washington Square.
I know the buildings too well. It’s weird. And I like my actual apartment. I can’t imagine a better place for me actually to live. There are no answers in this piece of writing, just a true account of a person grappling with the strange phenomenon of being able to view and picture herself inside of an infinitude of apartments. Escapist at its core, I don’t think this compulsion will be going away any time soon. But, maybe it will. Everything is fleeting. Like the ads say, this won’t last long.
Works Cited
Maldonado-Estrada, Alyssa. Lifeblood of the Parish: Men and Catholic Devotion in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. New York University Press, 2020.
It has come to our attention, here at The Great Laboratory for The Freedom of Female Expression, that by implementing beauty and care rituals from the 1940s, the control group, Melanie Curran (F, 31), exhibits increased relaxation, self-esteem, and personal fulfillment. Why?
Our records show that on a freezing evening in Brooklyn, near the Winter Solstice of 2022, she encountered a vintage health and beauty tutorial. This was accessed via the ephemeral TV public expression sphere floating in time and space entitled YOUTUBE DOT COM.
Were she not already predisposed to vintage films, music, and literature, it is doubtful that her algorithm would have brought her to this video. But it did happened. As did something more remarkable. Her behaviors toward herself changed. In short, she picked up on what this video was throwing down.
She adopted the following behaviors:
Taking a relaxing bath each night before bed.
Washing her face with soap and cold water, avoiding expensive and frivolous creams and lotions.
Purchasing a big plastic jar of a cold cream type product which has been around since her great grandmother’s time, Jergens Face Cream, and using it as directed.
Gently brushing her hair at a vanity before bed and upon awakening.
Setting her hair in pin curls, or a wet set, at an average of once a week.
Maintaining the set throughout the following days with love, attention, and pomade.
Leaving her apartment fully done-up and delighting those around her.
Practicing good posture and verbal enunciation.
Pairing down her personal wardrobe to suit her fashion predilections, and maybe a Kibbe style for Soft Dramatic.
Sleeping 8-9 hours a night.
What occurred next was not surprising, but is not a typical response in the average youngish-millennial internet user with smart phone. Melanie Curran slunk to the fringes of social media, deleting them from her life, pleased to download a singular social media app, Instagram, in order to, say, write somebody she could not otherwise contact. She would then instantly, delete it.
It stands to reason, our scientists believe, that by devoting so much time to her own care and maintenance, it became at once impossible to tend to social media, to keep scrolling, and risk losing those precious hours she could be using to, say, brush out her locks or bask in the tub.
Cindy Sherman
The irony of course, is that social media’s usage is driven by the willing participation and almost religious devotion of women who hate themselves.
Would they not hate themselves if they were no longer using the social media applications? That’s quite possible. The Control, Miss Melanie, reported feelings of peace and serenity knowing she did not have to engage in that rigamarole digital mall cum popularity contest which demands everything and gives us very little.
“It makes people’s lives into speculative real estate,” she was quoted as muttering to herself whilst applying vintage face cream. “As the real land has already been conquered and viciously divided by a process of brutal colonial rule, the great tech bros have clearly decided that the next “Western Frontier” is the human being herself. Nay, her dreams. Her desires. Her insecurities. It’s terrifying.”
She slept well at night and was able to give love and camaraderie to her friends, family and neighbors. This included two instances of delivering homemade soup to loved ones. It included multiple more instances of just not being an asshole on the subway or at the grocery store.
“It is remarkable,” she muttered to herself again, this time in the tub, “how distance from social media, along with a strong 1940s beauty routine, makes me feel beautiful. From the inside out. It is a beauty feeling I get from within. If more people felt this way, it would spell disaster for the beauty industry. Because what if I can just love myself and give myself care and drink plenty of water and that’s really all I ever needed? Then the beauty industry and all those connected to it would suffer, crumble, and recede.”
What we here at the laboratory have come to understand is that the calm relief Curran felt once freed from the obligation of clicking and scrolling and liking and thinking and self-reflecting and self-disclosing on the internet, is actually a result of losing a job.
The job? Being on the internet. In Hyperemployment, or the Exhausting work of the Technology User, Ian Bogost outlines, in 2013 no less, how simply having to manage an email inbox and a social media presence is a pretty crazy amount of extra work. Even then, Bogost was exhausted and disgruntled. But how would you feel now sir? Now that every single click and eye movement and scroll and tap and word you type are commodities making other people money??????????? Our scientists would like to know.
Melanie Curran felt released from the pressure of having to be both consumer and product. She leaves us with this note:
It was this time last year. I took a job working as a background actor on the TV show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. That was the first time I got insight in to just how much time and attention went into beauty in the past. See, it was this huge scene in the airport. They had to do hair and makeup and wardrobe for hundreds of extras. It was like a small army was forged from hairspray and girdles. So I was put through this process- of being made into a woman from 1963. I loved the way I looked. I noticed things the hair and makeup people did to me reminded me of my Grandma Pat. May she rest in Peace. Pat had a higher standard for herself. Her mom, Doris, an even higher standard. I thought- dang, if I had one to two to three extra hours a day to spend caring for my appearance, I might be able to recreate this kind of look myself. But where would I get those three extra hours? That’s when I realized- from my phone. I’d get them back from my phone. If I really wanted to look at glam and feel as calm as looking that glam makes me feel, I’d have to say goodbye to social media. I took me another year to really do it, but here I am. And I’m not doing it for anyone else. This is simply my preference. Instead of committing hours in adoration of what happens on screen, I adore myself. The self-confidence and peace is worth it. Here is the beauty tutorial which inspired me so:
Vintage 1940’s Beauty Routine for Women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJFYytLKMug
Works Cited:
Bogost, Ian. “Hyperemployment, or the Exhausting Work of the Technology User.” The Atlantic. Nov. 8, 2013. www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/hyperemployment-or-the-exhausting-work-of-the-technology-user/281149/
This look is dedicated to verbs.
I didn’t give verbs much consideration before. They were a part of speech, like any other. This all changed on a sunny autumnal day in the New York New Jersey area. I felt inspired to bring my writing students on an adventure around campus. I entreated them to “find words in the wild”. With pen and paper we traipsed around Montclair State University collecting language.
The most fascinating part of this exercise was what happened when I asked them to collect verbs. Have you ever looked at the world in this way? Observed the processes about you? The things doing things on their way from birth to decay? Or is there a constant flow of energy, that takes the shape of nouns from time to time? What are verbs? What is verbing?
I loved the experience of gathering verbs from the ground, from people, from buildings humming with life. So much is in motion, even in a quiet place. I am fascinated by the way we chop up the material world into smaller parts. The English language is a shoddy representative of what is really going on. That is especially true in The United States of America, where indigenous languages exist to better fit the place they are from. They have been silenced. They are in resurgence.
Indigenous People’s Day is tomorrow. I am grateful for that. In my verbal quest the other day, I remembered my beginning study of Twulshootseed language. I remembered how that language centers around verbs, processes. It’s so much more fun! English declares things dead. Which is so weird. Because everything is verbing.
I was researching Birkin Bags. They are these exclusive handbags that you can’t even buy if you walk into the Hermès Store, the luxury brand which sells them. No. You must get on some kind of waitlist, then fork over $20,000 to $200,000 dollars. What makes these bags special are rare leathers used in their manufacturing. But Birkins are on their way to the grave. They can’t even last that long. Not really. Everything’s decaying. That’s the lesson of fall.
I’ll never forget living in Bulgaria. The cars under communism were called LADAs. When I lived in that country in 2009-2010, these little old cars were ubiquitous. I remember seeing one in a field. My host told me that the LADAs were made of an organic material that sheep love to munch. The sheep were eating the cars. I watched them.
I loved that. There is no permanence. Permanence is a lie. It is a state we like to believe in. It is an essential fantasy that aids in the selling of products. Hermès declares that, unlike other bags, the Birkin will never lose its value. It’s one of those most rare of objects: it gains value as it ages.
Says who? Who decides that the ten-year-old painter is a prodigy? That the apartment worth $1500 a month in May is worth $3500 in September? We do our damndest to put prices and time constraints on process. An apartment is just air doing apartment things. Is just earth doing apartment things. God bless affordable housing. God bless cheap rent. This world of prices is out of control, and we all know it.
I walked down the street the evening after my verb class. There is nothing prettier than my neighborhood at dusk in early October. I saw the lights coming through the windows of an ornate historic apartment building, and I saw the blueing sky, and the mid-century government housing with its windows aglow, and the tree tops shimmering their final green leaves, and I saw this whole scene with new eyes. For I saw verbs before I saw things.
The world vibrated, hummed, shifted, expressed itself in activity. What a pleasant surprise. To catch a glimpse of subtle changes. To focus not so much on the what but the how. I spend more time doing nothing these days. Staring into space. It is work to retain autonomy over my attention. Attention itself has been chopped up and commodified. That most precious of processes, that most sacred of verbs, to be, how can I reclaim you? How can I hold you close?
If you are reading this, please take some time today to stare at the world, just as it is. Nothing to claim, nothing to do, just watch time going on. I’ve feel I’ve stumbled on a pot of gold. To be able to bear witness to the secret flows of time and space, but for an instant, that is a pleasure being extracted from us people every single day.
Pay attention to the verbs. What is happening around you right now? Put attention there. It’s a luscious experience. Happy fall.
Hi, I’m Melanie, and I’m a banjo player.
A white banjo player.
Banjo has given me hope, happiness and human connection. In my darkest times, it’s given me a way back to life and into community. It’s put food on my table. It’s made me a guest at places I arrive a stranger. It’s allowed me to communicate without using words. Banjo has given me everything and asked nothing in return.
But I do hear it asking. Deep down in my gut I know something's not right. My quietest part knows that in the history of this instrument there are horrors and gravest wrongdoings.
Many are surprised to learn that enslaved Black people brought the banjo to America. Banjo music is Black music. Human beings were sold and purchased and their music was appropriated. Black-face minstrel shows, theft, and forgetting rendered the Banjo not a Black instrument in cultural consciousness, but the symbol of white, poor, rural authenticity. This details of this history are beyond my scope of knowledge. Some links are below to more resources.
Banjo music didn’t just wind up at my door. Banjo wasn’t placed on my table by a disembodied gloved hand. My musical life has been made possible by Black artists.
I have never had to pay one penny to Black artists or to descendants of the Black banjoists whose music, techniques and instrumentation I replicate. I want to be part of the end of a cycle of stealing, of taking without recognizing, and of receiving without giving back. For this reason, I am donating half of my performance fees, tips, and record sales to The Black Banjo Reclamation Project.
The Black Banjo Reclamation Project is led by an Oakland-based Black-Banjoist named Hannah Mayree. The focus of their project is “to return instruments of African origin to the descendants of their original makers.” They lead banjo builds and workshops for people of African descent to reclaim this ancestral instrument in the present day. Participants of workshops build and receive banjos. This reception of traditional instrument and knowledge is a form of reparations.
I am trying to raise $2,000 by May to help fund BBRP's 2022 builds:
Sacramento Weekend Banjo Build April 30 - May 1
Port Townsend Banjo Crafter Fellowship, Last week of June
Chicago Banjo Build, mid-July through mid-August
This work is transformational at the root. It heals the past while generating future possibilities. It moves beyond the bounds of time and space. Banjoists are cosmonauts, or banjoists are gardeners- pulling out rotted roots and nourishing the strong ones. Encouraging new life. It is restoration.
Will you please help me raise $2000 for The Black Banjo Reclamation Project? No donation is too small.
WAYS TO DONATE:
Buy an album from me or book me for a performance or livestream show.
Venmo me @MelanieCurran or Paypal me: paypal.me/melaniebethcurran. Put a note that this $ is for BBRP.
Donate directly to Black Banjo Reclamation Project. (Please send me a note that you have! So I can keep track of how effective my fundraising is, and so I don't ask you again after you've already donated.)
Donations to Black Banjo Reclamation Project are tax deductible. I can get you a tax receipt if you need.
I am one in the larger BBRP support team. We are mostly white banjo players and builders. We are working to raise these funds all over the country and change the way we interact with this instrument.
I have faith this fundraising is an action which conforms to will of my spiritual guides and ancestors. Supporting BBRP is a way to live like the world is already a better world for all. Here too is an opportunity for you to support healing, and to direct funds and power back to the Black traditional music community.
Thank you for taking the time to read my newsletters. Also thanks to Bochay Drum for pointing me to this project. I am healthy and living well in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. I have taken a break from performing. Being involved with this project helps me connect to the true purpose of my work as a musician and writer. More will be revealed. Thanks for coming along with me.
Springtime love,
-Melanie Beth Curran
Recommended:
If you want do one-on-one anti-racism work with a counselor, please check out this project:
Holistic Resistance. Facilitator Chelsea Meney is amazing. They help facilitate the BBRP support team meetings.
If you'd like to play the banjo, check out Sule Greg Wilson's banjo instructional books. He is another facilitator at Black Banjo Reclamation Project.
Further reading/listening about Black Banjo History
Black Musicians' Quest to Return Banjo to Its African Roots
How Rhiannon Giddens Reconstructs Black Pain With The Banjo
Black History of The Banjo
Books:
Hoedowns, Reels, and Frolics by Phil Jamison
White Tears by Hari Kunzru
Growing up, there was a kid's show on public TV called Zoom, not be confused with today's popular virtual meeting platform. One episode had a segment I remember to this day. Two children are challenged to look up the definition of a word. One must use a computer and the internet, while the other must use a little book called the dictionary. The race is on. The child using the computer is still dialing up the modem after booting up the machine by the time the child with the dictionary has found the definition. The message? That the old fashioned way is still more efficient. The “Old Fashioned Way” has only just been conceived of as being out-of-date. This is the dawn of the world-wide-web’s presence in homes.
"We're all plugged into one world now" - Zoom theme song
The segment makes clear a divergence. In the coming millennium, there will be two ways. The digital, and the analog. As a child, I understood this segment of Zoom as a rallying cry. Which side are you on? The year 2000 had scarcely hit, and I chose analog.
In late 2021, I’m watching a youtube video of a lecture by a catholic priest explaining the structure of ancient Celtic society in what is now called Ireland. I am curious about the metaphysical beliefs held by my ancient ancestors. Father Seán Ó’Laorie PhD explains the functions performed by three factions of the Celtic world in pre-Christian times. First, there are the Druids. These are the theologians, priests, healers, the keepers of The Now. Then there are the Ovates. These are the seers, the visionaries and prophets. Keepers of The Future. They were prophets whose job was not to foretell the future, but, Father Seán Ó’Laorie says in his soothing Irish lilt, to forestall it. To stop us from making stupid mistakes.
fabulous cape by MaidensPlayground, available on Etsy, should you want to become a druid or prophetess.
“The Prophet,” says he, “is a group that’s frightly needed on our planet right now.” Okay, he seems like a nice guy. His head is in the right place, and he’s received his doctorate in mystical Celtic stuff. I’m doing what I always do these late pandemic days. Lay in bed, soothing myself to sleep by watching sometimes educational youtube videos. I do this in a pretty removed state. But when the Father begins to speak of the third category of Celtic Society, of the Bards, I listen.
“The Bard,” he says, “was the person who made time travelers and mystics of the listeners.”
Excuse me?
“The bards are the keepers of The Past. That was their portfolio. They were historians, and they were genealogists, all in the oral tradition. There were no written records.”
Father Seán Ó’Laorie is an aging thin man with stubble and silvery hair down to his shoulders. It’s been a long time since I willingly listened to a catholic priest, but for him I’ll make this exception.
William Blake's painting he made of his cute little bard poem.
The bards, he continues, “...were also poets, minstrels, storytellers and performing artists. As far as the music was concerned, they had to be able to produce three kinds…”
I let these words seep in. It has been a hard couple of years for us. During a highly contagious pandemic wherein asymptomatic people spread the novel, and ever-mutating coronavirus during periods of breathing the same vapor - in and out, kissing and talking in close proximity - the concert halls, the country dances, the listening rooms, the warm taverns - these have all closed either forever or in awkward chunks of time. To add insult to injury, the category of individuals who could be considered today’s Bards are not recognized in our current society much, pandemic or not. We, The Bards, must scrape by, no matter what, at least in American Society. And in these long years of pestilence we have been backed into periods of forced silence. It doesn’t mean our music has died.
A friend of mine tells me that yes, she may be touring with an illustrious artist one month, but the next, she’s getting cake thrown at her playing a childhood birthday party in a backyard. She’s well into her career but her aging parents still hold out hope that she will no longer be a musician. She tells me, Melanie, someone’s got to do it. Someone’s got to sing the songs. And I feel part of a necessary but scorned populous.
Newspaper clipping from 2015 Topanga Banjo-Fiddle Contest, when I was "of Los Angeles"
But wait- how can I be so sure that I belong to The Bardic Class? Do I even qualify? To find out, I return to the video. The three categories of music a bard must be able make, in the words of Father Seán:
Music that can sooth the savage breast. Also lullabies that can let a child go to sleep.
Nostalgic music. That which would be able to make you weep for the past, or for people who are gone. To create tears for the past.
Music that made you feel happy, and makes you laugh.
On this most random of nights, here in my bed in Brooklyn, New York, watching youtube, tears form in my eyes. It’s not so much that I am seeing how my own songwriting fits into these categories. It is that I can call to mind countless other musicians from my time on this earth who also meet these bardic qualifications.
And I know them. Over my near fifteen years playing old songs I have shared intimate musical spaces with so many of them. And I know how they suffer. Penniless, laughed at, addicted to substances, or famous by stroke of luck and talent, and traveling, lodged into the public eye, a public for whom an artist’s downfall is a source of entertainment -
“The Bard,” repeats Father Seán, “was the keeper of The Past.”
The Past, The Past, why do you seduce me so?
I am not the only one either. My generation, the millennials, were the butt of jokes from the first instance of our making personal lifestyle decisions.
From The Hard Times Article, Folk Punk Band Announces Break-Up...
The complaint from older generations was that the millennials were hopelessly nostalgic. We didn't have our own culture. We recycled that of the past and fetishised it. We did a great job at fueling a resurgence of old time music, folk music, and old American traditional music. The richness of this creative culture can be seen analog at old time fiddle festivals, and virtually on youtube channels such as Gems on VHS and Western AF.
In these bards I see us. A bunch of kids who grew up having to navigate that divide between the old and the new. We were well-suited for the ancient role of bard, those who carry the past into present, who move mountains with melody, who make time travelers of listeners. We were well-suited, having lost childhoods of hard-back books to adulthoods of digital information passing rapidly by in the endless scroll. Do not scorn us, for we can take you back and forth across the river, and set you down easy in your longing and laughter with the gentle pressure of a song.
an selfie, January 3rd, 2022
News From Life in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn:
San Benedito Beach is my second full-length album. It was released on October 23rd at an amazing sidewalk community concert meltdown called People's Beach Day. You can purchase and hear the album on Bandcamp.
I am offering Music Lessons, virtually and in-person. One of my students says this is the first time she's had fun playing music. That means a lot to me, and I'd love to work with you on banjo, guitar, fiddle and / or singing.
I had one of the most wonderful concert experiences of my life on the Maine Island of North Haven. I was accompanied by fiddler and friend from the Pike Place Market busking days, Annie Ford. Check out the Crabtree Sessions Songwriter Series for an amazing living-history documentation of some of the greatest songwriters working today. I feel so honored to have been part of the roster.
Recommendations:
vernon subutex
My tolerance for reading got zapped deep pandemic. It was reawakened by this insane delicious book series about an intertwined cadre of post-compact disc parisian rock and porn stars, degenerates, journalists, etc. The series by Virginie Despentes solidifies hunches I've had about French culture while living there. The books gives a lens on the rise of the alt-right in the country that is also cool-y antifascist radial. She writes, "They [banks/religions/multinationals] have managed to get a citizen with no heritage to give up all their rights in exchange for access to nostalgia for empire." among many other badass sentences.
winter yoga nidra
I love this pracitioner Ally Boothroyd's yoga nidra videos. If you haven't tried it, it's basically conscious sleep and relaxation. I know this time is really stressful, and a half-hour long guided spiritual nap is a gift for the nervous system. I love this particular winter solstice yoga nidra as it reminds me that right now is a time for deep rest. Outside, everybody is resting. Buds, animals, you name it. So should we.
joan didion
Joan Didion passed away. She was a hero to me. A guide. As a writer who writes about culture, about people in groups, her work has been the template for me for many years. I feel grateful to have lived in an overlap of her era. She is very special. I recommend starting with her essay collection The White Album. Rest in Peace Angel. bell hooks also passed. I haven't read enough of her work, so I am recommending her to myself.
maid
This is a TV series on Netflix about poverty and the domestic abuse cycle set in the Pacific Northwest. It is also a magical realism story of a young woman's realistic hope of embracing her dream as a writer. It hit close to home. Close to home. It's takes place in pretend Port Townsend and pretend Whidbey Island. They may be actually using the BC ferries, but I know all those characters from my actual life. The barefoot bandit episode is especially harrowing. But like in a good, beautiful redemptive way? I binged it.
how black women reclaimed country and americana music in 2021
Black Women are the queens of country music. No surprise. But Country Music the entity, the business model, the culture, is just starting to catch up. Check out these marvelous artists.
the mary wallopers
I love love love this band. Just watch n' listen.
ireland beyond colonialism podcast
I've only listened to the first episode of this, but it was pretty an engaging conversation. In episode one, a settler descended permaculture kid from Washington State attempts to return to the land of his indigenous ancestors in Scotland, so as to not cause more colonialism in Skagit Valley. His experiences are... complicated... It's an interesting glimpse into the life of someone who is attempting to belong in a world where people like me, like him, like most Americans, have to learn to live less brutally, and soon.
what's duskin doing?
My partner duskin has a great newsletter. He is an ecological philosopher, a writer, an artist, an activist, a great cook, lots of other things, and his thoughts and ideas are beautifully organized into these missives. They are a treat to receive.
Take care to all of you
may you be healthy and well-rested
sending love and light in these darkest days
-Melanie
PS
This newsletter comes seasonally, four times a year. Feel free to sign up and share it with anyone you think will enjoy it!
It's possible that from a playground song I learned which words to leave out. Here's the song in question:
Miss Susie had a steamboat the steamboat had a bell, Miss Susie went to heaven, the steamboat wen to Hell-O operator, please give me number nine, and if you disconnect me, I’ll chop off your behind the ‘fridgerator there sat a piece of glass, Miss Susie sat upon it and broke her little ask me no more questions, I’ll tell you no more lies, the boys are in the bathroom zipping up their flies are in the meadow, the bees are in the park, Miss Susie and her boyfriend are kissing in the D-A-R-K D-A-R-K Dark, Dark, Dark. The Dark is like a movie the movie’s like a show the show is just like Nick-at-Nite and that is all I know I know my ma, I know I know my pa, I know I know my sister with a 40-acre bra.
Then the memory deteriorates.
Please give me a nickel?
Please give me a dime?
Something about a motorcycle, or a car, or a boyfriend?
Or are these different lyrics, the folksongs of America regurgitating endlessly in my memory? How do I know I know the words? I understand this song is how I learned what not to say. Instead of being spoken the bad words bleed into new sentences. If you pause too long you’ve said Ass, you’ve said Hell, you’ve said flies as in zippers. But there was one on the playground of Ordway Elementary who was not afraid to say swears and that was Aubrey Shepherd Smith and she said fuck.
This was the worst word. I was terrified of the sound. Madison said it too after Aubrey. I couldn’t. I couldn’t form that morsel of language. It didn’t seem right. It was a curse. God would remember. But Aubrey’s family were Gods. Her uncle was in a band called Soundgarden, which, in that year, 1996 or 1997, would have been at an all time career fuck you high.
This was the pacific northwest. There were badasses in the shadows. Cool kids on the back of the bus. Rollin’ down the street smoking Indo, sippin’ on gin and juice, laid back, got my mind on my money and my money on my mind. A boy sang this and others listened and learned, and learned, that this was cool. What was Indo? I knew what juice was. I thought I did. Came in a cardboard box with a straw.
Sometimes I think about all that trash. What if everything I ever threw away showed up in the same house on the same day? What would I recognize? What would agonize me to see again? I think it’d be the simple fact of gross accumulation. This is what disturbed me most as an 18-year-old living in Bulgaria. There were piles of single-use plastic and garbage lining the highways and clogging the intersections going into villages. Ditches were dammed along the fields of shepherds. It was a country so unused to waste that it knew not how to hide it.
Waste. Silences. I’m looking at you. When there is too much there is either an excess or you be quiet. What to do with the overflow. God what an annoying and impossible thing to even talk about.
And that’s the very disturbance that brought me to my mom’s yearbook. The sense that her past on Bainbridge Island was hidden too well, and how could that be? How could she had undergone an existence here and leave so few traces of it? There was the yearbook, and there was the 1984 Bainbridge Island High School Senior Cruise VHS tape.
My grandfather had a home video camera long before this was a normal practice. He was and documentary film-maker disguised as a general contractor and auto-mechanic. In the video, he’s on the senior cruise, interviewing the fresh graduates. I see my mom at 18. I see her friends and their hair, and how they used to move. I compare this with how they move now. I know them as adults. My mom and I grew up in the same down. I know the slanted road leading down to the public dock that’s in the video. I’ve been here many times. Or is it there? The ship pulls away and out into Eagle Harbor, and the graduates burst into a chorus of Help Me Rhonda. Did my grandfather egg them on? Or was this spontaneous?
This song sticks with me as a child. Help Me, Rhonda. Who is Rhonda? How do the graduates know her? Why do they in 1984 all know this piece of music? I have no context. I’ve never heard the original version by The Beach Boys-
but when I’m on the ferry with my girl scout troop, troop 133 in the back of an SUV, we listen to Oldies 97.3 fm and some how, we are all singing the words to songs from the 1950s and 60s which I have no recollection of hitherto hearing. I just know them. American music.
My grandfather sticks me and my 2nd cousin in the backseat of a refurbished Model-T Ford. He is one of the premiere restorers of automobiles alive, in the world, today. Same one who made the home videos.
Is part of my familial lineage an obsession with the refurbishment of the past? Or is that a general American Way? Anyway. I’m in the Ford.
And we are going to a secret place in the farmlands around Kingston, Kitsap County, Washington. On the drive my 2nd cousin asks me, who is your favorite musical artist? I respond, J-Lo. I know I am being slightly disingenuous. I do like J-lo. Especially on the track popular at that time, featuring Ja Rule, I’m Real. But I am also saying J-Lo because I know it will make me sound cooler.
I find great relief when we turn down the private lane, almost hidden in the tall grasses. The road winds until we reach an oasis. It’s a secret drive-in. A metallic diner lodged deep in this field. Brought here but someone else obsessed with maintaining this portion of history as a social club. Yes, my grandparents did literally meet at a drive-in like this in high school. We park in a slot flanked by vintage automobiles, which were so ubiquitous in my early life on account of my grandfather’s profession, that I really just believed they were everywhere.
And we went into the diner, the My Girl Drive-In, and we bought milkshakes and sat in vinyl booths and watched an Elvis impersonator go through the motions. Rock n’ Roll played from the jukebox. I enjoyed the sounds I was hearing. This was different from my relationship to pop radio. There was no forcing the interest. A Marilyn Monroe impersonator also appeared. It was 2002, but part of us was stalled mid-century.
It was even that way, it seemed, for the high school seniors, screaming ’84! and Help Me Rhonda! on the VHS tape I worshipped, watching over and over over childhood, trying to make tangible the stuff of my mother’s past.
There was also her yearbook. These were hallowed pages full of clues. I came to know the high school seniors of 1984 almost like friends or deities. Their pictures, their senior quotes, their hairstyles are etched in my memory. For the most part, the images were glamour shots, stylized in the fashion of the time.
But there was one at the end of the alphabet, who did not conform. He was called Andrew Wood. And the name of his first band, MLFNKSHN, was written in the space where his senior quote should go. His face was painted stark white. His eyes were rounded by dark paint and his mouth with black lipstick. His long blonde hair cascaded to his shoulders and led to a body just out of the frame.
I asked my mother about Andy. Sometimes multiple times a day. She told me he was dead. He had become a rock star. She told me he didn’t say much in class, but every once in while, he’d raise his hand and say the most profound thing.
The music of Mother Love Bone, is not my favorite, exactly, but the personage of Andy Wood, frontman, is. He died of a heroin overdose just before his band got big. But not before the release of a record which is considered the origin place of all Seattle grunge which followed it. Andy Wood is not well known, but his influence is extremely far-reaching.
His blend of of glam and stadium rock - a football fan in lady’s clothing - howling long ballads into the furthest reaches of wet basements - is the stylistic foundation of the grunge genre which bloomed in his wake. And Andy dreamed it up on Bainbridge Island. He dreamed it up while in school with my mom. He’s not on the VHS tape of the senior cruise. He’s not on the boat. But he is somewhere, ephemeral, he lives on in the recordings- a song called called Chelsea Dancer, in the bleach blonde hair of Kurt Cobain, in the bandmates who dispersed after his death becoming Pearl Jam, becoming Temple of the Dog, brushing against Soundgarden whose code of coolness seeped to Aubrey and then into my ears the day she said fuck on the playground.
Transmissions. An unbounded oral history that no one talks about. There is a connecting thread between times. This is what I believe. This why I am so disturbed by the idea that things can just be thrown away. Because it’s not true. Garbage is just buried. There are rusted out cars in the 2nd growth forests. Andy Wood lived here and we sing songs as we jump rope, clap hands. The radio transmits oldies and newbies alike. Shift the dial, mind on my money and money on my mind Rhonda you look so fine.
I am so sure of the constant drone between generations. I am so sure that the chants of the graduates, ’84, ’84, ’84 were echoing still when in 2009 Lady Gaga howled Pokerface on the school bus as we waited to board to boat. This time I was graduating high school. It was my senior cruise. I coaxed the others around me into incantation, ’09 Box of Wine, ’09 Box of Wine.
I chanted as through my grandfather was making a home video of the moment. One that my theoretical daughter would watch to learn how to be, how to speak, what to say, what to omit. I was chanting the way my mom’s generation taught me how. I was chanting as though I was part of something sonic and singular, and the waves crashed underneath the piers of so-called Elliot Bay, where for some generations, some of the population has pretended that when people die their songs die with them.
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Photo of Annie Ford and Melanie Curran by duskin drum
People’s Beach Day, October 23rd 2021, 200 Dekalb Avenue - (Stu Leach)
“Feel free, this is the beach!” Was Miss LPK’s refrain as pedestrians encountered her, majestic, reading treatises and poetry on the sidewalk. For an afternoon in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, a chunk of cement was transformed. “We often hear about midwifery, but what about housewifery?” Miss LPK embodied that ecosexual poetess, pouring truth, an orator in public.
Miss LPK, poet and ideologue. - (Lindiwe Priscilla Kreskin)
The show did not stop and end with her transformational language. Before she took to the proverbial stage, Eli and Eliana graced our ears with folks songs from an old Greece, in the style known as Rebetiko. If a battle is to be won for the hearts and minds let it be with guitar and bouzouki.
Eliana and Eli Hetko, playing rebetiko - (duskin drum)
Onward prowled the occasion in the form of Melanie Beth Curran, who in fact was putting on this whole event. She, with the help of fantastic fellows brought her new album, San Benedito Beach, into living, luscious three dimensions. As a crowd continued to grow, perched on Beach chairs, she serenaded the populous with popular track The Last Corona (On The Diamond Princess). A raucous singalong bringing us out of Pandemic doom and gloom could only be followed by that most soulful of entertainers, Yva Las Vegass.
Yva Las Vegass, Venezuelan-born-Seattle-native present-day-New Yorker changing LIVES. - (Stu Leach)
Yva! Who gracing us with her originals brought to life the struggles and triumphs of a thousand lives absolutely freaking done with white supremacy. She is a storyteller, a poet, a transmuter of time and space. And just right there in the middle of her musical, foot stop, deep and true oration when here comes Bochay with the sandwiches, Stu with the camera, and Scarlett with a PA.
Yva Las Vegass on San Benedito Beach - (duskin drum)
The whole thing occurred on the chunk of sidewalk where each and every Saturday there is a tradition of vending. For upon this entire block where the wares both used and handcrafted and found and repurposed being sold to those who might, at this change of season, be hungry for a brand new leather jacked painted with van Gogh’s face, ear bleeding, and the children are congregating now.
Melanie Beth Curran, serenading the strip. - (Stu Leach)
Can imagine a way through this hurried state, this rushing state, this eager and consumptive stage, can we make time stop? Melanie Beth Curran takes up the fiddle and sings her mournful love lost dirge. She’s wearing a blue suit and between her and Miss LPK its been 1hr spent applying falsies. This is the America we dreamed about or could. Melanie Beth Curran plays Walkin’ The Line as Scarlet Dame, ambient techno artiste sets up her stage which is much more like an altar.
Scarlet Dame, melting hearts with beats - (Stu Leach)
And from this point on, all bets are off. Anything you see here you will never be able to recapture in language. But try I shall. The sun leans slanted over the brownstones and casts a yellow gold through the cast iron rails of this, Edmonds Playground. The beats begin subtlety and the audience is supercharged, immediately. Bochay is shelling black beans with Qiao and Yvonne, longtime vendor of this sidewalk, is marvelous with a smile on her face.
Bochay and Qiao shellin’ beans - (duskin drum)
duskin really feeling it and some kids too. - (Stu Leach)
Scarlet Dame’s synthesizer - (Stu Leach)
Space and time open wide and duskin is dancing. Ricky and Dylan who came all the way from Seattle are joyful in their youth. A kid actually tells Melanie Beth Curran that when she grows up, this is what she wants to do. And that is the point. That is the point people. We make a new future, out of the old. Built from the now. Hearty and falling into fall she comes. And for one enchanted afternoon we were the Shepards of this coming realm. And for one enchanted afternoon, we opened the door.
Melanie Beth Curran celebrating her album release - (Stu Leach)
in the morning, getting set up with Dylan - (duskin drum)
People’s Beach Day was supported by The City Artist Corps Grant, given by the New York Foundation for the Arts to help revive public cultural life after the pandemic (inside of the pandemic). The grant put artists back to work! Items for People’s Beach Day were culled at Materials For the Arts, an insane warehouse in Long Island City full of Art supplies.
Thanks to everyone that came and everyone who bought an album! They are for sale here:
San Benedito is here. Listen to my second album in full here and wherever albums are streamed.
Support my work and purchase an album through Bandcamp:
melaniecurran.bandcamp.com/album/san-benedito-beach
I am selling CD-Shaped original paintings there!
“…You'll get your own unique incarnation of the San Benedito album cover which can be framed and hung in your realm. Comes with a download code, liner notes and a whole lot of CUTENESS! Ink and watercolor on paper by Melanie Beth Curran herself…”
Have a pleasant time at the beach.
Glenswilly by Melanie Curran
fare thee well my honey where ever you may travel
may you never want for money far across the sea
remember to tread gentle don't take more than is owed you
nothin’ comes for nothin in the land of the free
chorus!
when you see the house of the rising sun
or lie your head in the fields of green
remember me as the one who loved you best
back in old glenswilly
take good care of this fine hewn leather satchel
remember say a prayer for your arrival at the shore
lend your hand to the ones who come behind you
never turn your back on the ones who’ve come before
chorus
when you breathe that air well you’re not the first to breathe it
when you take that train well you’re not the first to ride
take your time with the pangs of bereavement
glenswilly’s not a place so easily let behind
chorus
when you’re old and grey and your poor bones grow brittle
and they lay you in the clay and mark you with a stone
I’ll be there to meet you in the middle
and guide you on your way as you take the long way home
chorus
— I wrote this song for my great grandpa Frank Curran, coming from the perspective of his caregiver back in Glenswilly, County Donegal, Ireland. Maybe these words are the words of parting that were never shared but always felt. He left for America when he was about 13.
Melanie Curran Will Present People’s Beach Day on September 25th, 2021 as Part of Award Program
New York, NY – Songwriter Melanie Curran is one of 500 New York City-based artists to receive $5,000 through the City Artist Corps Grants program, presented by The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), with support from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) as well as Queens Theatre.
Melanie Curran was recognized for People’s Beach Day, which will bring a live performance of her upcoming album, San Benedito Beach to the Clinton Hill/Fort Green neighborhood of New York in Brooklyn on September 25th.
People’s Beach Day is a live-music performance experience that channels the power of the people to create paradise no matter where they are.
The beach is a space where people can start anew after dark times. Melanie Curran’s album, San Benedito Beach, which will be released on American Standard Time Records in September of 2021, tells stories of people coming through hardship and finding new reasons to hope.
People’s Beach Day is a celebration for the public to experience a similar transformation. It is an event where visitors come together to collectively feel and dream. Instead of a real beach, the performance takes place in a park, parking lot, community garden or otherwise non-beach location in Brooklyn. This exemplifies that it is us, as people, who create that magical transformational quality the beach offers, through our will to collectively dream.
People’s Beach Day will happen around sunset. There will be a live performance of the album, and screenings of music videos through a projector. There will be a map and diorama making station on site where visitors can create their own visions of paradise. We can create the future as we move through the darkness out of the pandemic era.
Over the course of three award cycles, more than 3,000 artists will receive $5,000 grants to engage the public with artist activities across New York City’s five boroughs this summer and fall. Artists can use the grant to create new work or phase of a work, or restage preexisting creative activities across any discipline.
Members of the public can participate in City Artist Corps Grants programming by following the hashtag #CityArtistCorps on social media.
City Artist Corps Grants was launched in June 2021 by NYFA and DCLA with support from the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME) as well as Queens Theatre. The program is funded by the $25 million New York City Artist Corps recovery initiative announced by Mayor de Blasio and DCLA earlier this year. The grants are intended to support NYC-based working artists who have been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19. It is strongly recommended that a portion of the grant be used to support artist fees, both for the applying artist and any other artist that are engaged to support the project.
The Cycle 2 application will open on Tuesday, July 6 at 10:00 AM EDT and will close on Tuesday, July 20 at 10:00 AM EDT. The Cycle 3 application will open on Tuesday, July 27 at 10:00 AM EDT and close on Tuesday, August 10 at 10:00 AM EDT. Please visit NYFA’s website for full details and eligibility requirements.
The University of New Mexico College of Fine Arts is hosting me for their musicology colloquium series, Spring 2021 - “Ethnography and Creative Process in The Arts”. I am honored to be presenting through a webinar, open to all. March 4th, 2-3:30pm mountain time.
In this talk, I share how learning a Breton song opened me to the ways traditional music can transmit during the digital age. Participants will examine the songs they carry. We’ll be thinking about how regional culture transforms through digital interfaces.
Please register for “Finding Songs on The Air: Lessons From Bretagne, France” here.
