Why Be An Artist Anyway

by Nomy Lamm (more...)
May 9, 2003

I'm in the Providence airport. The alarm is going off. All the security people are walking in one direction. Everyone's trying to act normal. Loud loud loud. Check my fear response, I have no idea what's going on. I distrust the systems.

At the airport I watch people of color get pulled aside for additional searching. Apparently I am not recognized as a threat, because I'm a white girl and a cripple and my boobs are showing. Because I have a friendly smile and dress like yr run of the mill alternateen.

[My ears are ringing.]

On tour with Juha on the eastcoast, in Laurel's kitchen (not the cookbook ­ interpretive baton twirler/motivational speaker Laurel Kirtz). Ghalib explained how rebellion is genetic ­ in packs of wild dogs there will often be a rebel dog who doesn't fit in and leaves the pack to form a new pack with other rebel dogs. This is to help create biological diversity. He told me that his astrologer told him "you have no choice but to be a revolutionary artist. If you try to do anything else you won't succeed."

Driving in the car with Juha to Easthampton, MA, I'm filled with self-doubt. Who do I think I am? What makes me think my work is important or relevant or that other people should invest their time, energy or resources to help me with it? In the context of war, racism, & tightening control, what is the value of pop music made by a fat feminist queer jew girl with a fake leg who likes being at the center of attention?

It's not even that I want so much attention anymore. It's what I have to give. If it's not needed I'll go live alone in the woods and write books. I wanna be a bird. Or a nun. A simple, spiritual life. Rest and tend to the needs of my body.

My body hurts most of the time. I do my stretches and breathe through the channels. I feel muscles I didn't know about, sometimes it triggers shit in me but the trauma of loss and denial isn't at the forefront so much anymore. Breathe. The feeling of inhalation is now more prominent than the words that describe the feeling. I've waited a long time to feel something. Power and exhilaration in the moment. That's what I wanna be on stage. Intimate. I wanna bring all my passion into that interaction.

I don't expect to be a famous person. I don't' wanna feel spectated and idolized. We are all in the room together. We have something to share, a connection to each other. I wanna make something beautiful and heart wrenching.

Destructive storms and floods on tv. 1600 people evacuated from their homes. To quote another well-intentioned white girl, "shit's fucked everyowhere." Duh. I have to create. There is history, everywhere. It's in me, converging in this breath, this heartbeat, I can reach out and touch you and our histories are connected.

How many queers, girls, fat kids, radical jews, disabled people, etc have been looking for something to identify with? Growing up I never got to see a reflection of myself in the world. I felt at the same time both isolated and special. I learned to guard against pity and condescension, harden myself against impossibility so I can keep the deep well inside me open. It is a useful thing. I can be a bridge of experience and perception, an embodiment of complexities that can't be spoken.

When I was 17 bikini kill and heavens to betsy played basement shows and rallies, they showed me a passion I could feel, they showed me I could do it too that I could speak the unspoken and command attention for it. As performers we mend ourselves into the beings we must become. As visionaries we create what we can and dream about the rest.

My art is my expression of love and potential, the reclamation of my mutant freak body for the purpose of my own pleasure and fulfillment, the understanding of my location within a gridwork of colonization and my deep commitment to untangling the threads of hypocracy that keep me there. Every day I'm alive is a miracle. I have to be this. I have no choice but to move forward.

I moved to Chicago to gain a bigger understanding of the world. One with less expectations on me, with room to discover my self in new ways. It's been hard but I knew it would be. How do I keep a positive attitude when I'm surrounded by concrete and indifference, when connections that feel like love can turn out to be superficial and temporary, when the person closest to me lives half her life in a world where businessmen pay thousands of dollars to have their balls stepped on at nine in the morning. It's easy to hate. It's easy to feel pointless. It's easy to listen to pop radio and eat ice cream. But it doesn't feel right.