Crazytown

POPULISM YEA YEA

"And we’re gonna take this country back for people like us, who don’t just think about things."
- Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson
By Alisha Giampola (writer/performer)

"Take a stand against the elite...

They don't care anything for us

And we will eat sweet democracy

And let them eat our dust."

Reality television has a simple and deeply watchable formula. You get a handful of very different people into a house, or on an island, or on opposite teams, and then you gently poke at their insecurities and fears. You manipulate footage to make it seem like people are instigating fights, and then you let those inevitable fights play out. You ask leading questions and then sit back and watch as the building burns. Donald Trump looked at the America we live in today and he saw a brilliant opportunity. He saw immigrants, Muslims, an LGBTQ community with recently acquired human rights, women tired of a system that punishes both ambition and procreation, black Americans scared of corrupt police officers, non-corrupt members of the police tired of being blamed for the actions of others, genuinely down on their luck white people tired of feeling like all the assistance and attention goes to people of color, people of color confused but yet utterly resigned by the fact that white people can't see how racism is still so deeply ingrained in the system, liberal elitists alarmed at the dangers we pose to the environment we all live in, religious conservatives tired of being blamed for the extremist behavior of a few, and veterans who feel underappreciated by their government all while struggling under the constant wars our country has been engaged in since the Bush administration. Ideal reality show fodder. Toss in two political parties falling apart at the seams, and stir! 

Make no mistake, Donald Trump is deeply uninterested in actual governing. He has no interest in doing the boring stuff Presidents do in the not-remotely-guilded-enough oval shaped office he will now have to occupy, as little as he wants to be there. And that, more than anything else, is what I am worried about. He's a self-interested, thin-skinned, businessman who is wildly unqualified for public service. He simply saw an opportunity to premiere the ultimate reality show, complete with the edge of your seat promise that he may or may not accept the results of the election. Last Wednesday he accepted America's metaphorical rose, and immediately started handing off responsibility to the DC insiders and usual suspects he vowed to remove, backed way off of the dramatic and TV-worthy promises he made but knows he won't fulfill, and is clearly ready for the next 4 years to go by as fast as possible. He has gone from having nothing good to say about President Obama to recognizing the need to utilize his help learning what his job is, as he apparently has been surprised by the scope of it. He and his team weren't even aware that they would need to entirely restaff the White House. His civic knowledge seems lower than that of your average viewer of The West Wing. 

And is it really a surprise? Trump will be the only person ever elected to the presidency with absolutely no prior elected office or military experience. Donald Trump didn't invent the hateful feelings he has encouraged, and it's giving him far too much credit to suggest that he did. It's very possible he doesn't even really hold those hateful opinions himself, deep down, but encouraging something is exactly the same as subscribing to it. My wise Momma used to tell me when I was little that by not making a decision, you're making a decision. You don't get to instigate racism, xenophobia, misogyny, and other assorted hate that bubbles just below the surface of our society through tweets, vaguely threatening comments, evasive answers, and refusal to state your position. You don't get to toss matches like that into a building and then run away. He knows his followers were yelling racial and homophobic slurs at his rallies and he refused to speak against it before the election. My alarm at Trump’s winning is not equivalent to a conservative voter's alarm at Obama’s win 8 years ago. Obama, regardless of whether you agree with him about policy or not, never encouraged hate speech, radical ideology, or conspiracies. Obama felt the need to address the nation the day after the election and remind us that our democracy promises a peaceful transfer of power, a statement only necessary because the new president-elect frequently suggested that he may not accept the results of the election if he had lost.

A lot of Trump voters are confused about these liberal fears because they have received the exact reverse of the confirmation bias we all got. We saw the racism and xenophobia of his supporters, and what they saw was angry liberals whining about dumb, uneducated white people with guns. A really interesting perspective that can be gained from all this was written about very intelligently in this article, a relevant sound bite of which is: "I say 'racism' and mean 'a system, built up over centuries of American history, that privileges white people over everybody else.' Many rural whites hear 'racism' and think it means, 'You’re a bad person who hates black people,' when they believe they’re not actively discriminating against anyone because of race. And that goes for plenty of other terms as well — 'privilege' or 'rape culture' or even 'feminism.' There’s a communication gap, and there has to be a way to bridge it."

Now that he has won, Trump was asked on 60 Minutes if he would speak against the offensive rhetoric of many of his followers and, after insisting such a thing surprised him, he looked into the camera and said: "Stop it". But that's not how reality television works, and Donald Trump knows it. He has riled up a group of people who are afraid of a diversifying nation. He has poised a political party that before Tuesday was splintering and has just spent an entire presidental administration doing practically nothing other than obstructing policy, to now represent every branch of our government. We are deeply in need of checks and balances. Those who tell you this is politics as usual and "you win some you lose some" are misinformed. I mean, Glenn Beck and I are starting to have weirdly similar opinions on things, which is surely a sign of some sort of apocalypse. One of Trump's very first acts has been to nominate Steve Bannon (vocal anti-Semite, white nationalist, anti-woman founder of alt-right "news" source Breitbart...look up literally anything about this douchebag) as his chief strategist and senior counsel. When approached by journalists, neo-Nazi and former KKK leader David Duke (who, like his choice for president, enjoys ranting about things on Twitter) praised Trump's choice of Bannon, which is pretty much all you need to know about Bannon. And, in a twist of hypocrisy so ridiculously ironic that you would consider it a case of sloppy writing if it was a plot point in a legal drama, Mike Pence is now in the middle of his own withholding-email scandal. 

At this point, here is what I would most appreciate: those who voted for Trump and only paid attention to the news sources that supported their opinions, who possibly think all this white nationalist support of Trump is being overblown by the media, I would beg of these people to actually look into these white nationalists and their views. Read and listen to the actual words of Donald Trump and the responses he encourages. Decide what it means to you and your idea of democracy that the world leader most excited about a Trump administration is Vladamir Putin, and that his state-controlled news channels all favored Trump winning. Decide how you feel about a state-controlled news channel (this is a Fox News article that confusingly seems to praise Putin's imaginary approval ratings, while reporting on the fact that he has those approval ratings simply because he controls the media). After actually looking into these things, I would beg of those people to be appalled at the viewpoints of those who they must now align themselves with. That they, as supporters, demand that Trump take responsibility for what he has instigated (including the acts of violence against minorities perpetrated in the days following his election) and to distance himself from these people. Because so far he hasn't. So far he's only embraced the divisiveness that got him elected by choosing divisive people to advise and surround him.

I personally have overlooked the violations of my fellow American's human rights for long enough. Many friends of mine who are people of color, Muslim, and other vulnerable minorities, were not particularly surprised on Tuesday night. That I am surprised at all by the outcome of this election reveals the insane amount of privilege I have in my life. That the Democratic party is surprised by this outcome is an indication at how unaware they were that running an unpopular, if immensely more qualified, candidate from a Washington political dynasty was exactly the opposite of how to play the game of politics against an unpredictable antiestablishment "maverick", as Sarah Palin might say. I'm also deeply sad for the people who saw a Trump presidency as their only option. I'm sad for those who are uneducated and uninformed, who are disappointed in lack of consistent access to quality healthcare, lacking basic resources like safe drinking water, and struggling to even sustain themselves in our incredibly wealthy country. I am saddened that they were desperate enough to believe that a vulgar billionaire obsessed with ratings would actually have their interests at heart, or even have an interest in governing at all. For me, comedian John Oliver voiced it best when he pointed out on Sunday: "While some are arguing that Trump may not have meant all those things, that leaves us with two devastating options, either we just elected a president who didn't mean a single word he said, or we elected one who did."

Peaceful acts of protest in cases like this are not only appropriate, but necessary. I have personally become inspired to get involved beyond simply voting. It's been easy to be comfortable, even apathetic, for a long time- but now we must take our share of responsibility for the governing of our country and those in the electorate who saw no other options for their future. Donate to the ACLU, to Planned Parenthood, and organizations like KIND whch offer pro bono legal aid to immigrant and refugee children. Learn about the members of our Supreme Court and why the decisions they make are so important, write to your representatives, call your senators and congressperson and tell them your concerns, vote with your dollars (find out what businesses do or do not support homophobic/anti-refugee/anti-environmentalist groups); donate to charities that directly affect at risk and LGBTQ youth, the refugee crisis, the homeless in your community. Volunteer at a soup kitchen, a VA hospital, a women's health center, or with a fantastic local organization like The Uprising, which was started by a wonderful friend of mine and supports youth education and quality of life here in NYC.

Also, if you haven't already been vetting your news sources to make sure they are actual journalism- well, now's the time to start vetting. Work on a local level to support a third party you care about. So many people disliked both candidates, but ultimately only one of the two major nominees was going to win. Bernie Sanders, an independent, understood he would make a bigger difference running as a democrat. If you want a third party, work to strengthen it year round and not only once every 4 years. Remember that ultimately 947,584 (and counting) more people voted for Hillary than for Trump, and thousands more voted against him via a 3rd party candidate...and yes, in our government, the popular vote is not how U.S. elections are decided. Only half of those eligible to do so even voted at all, which is such a shame because that means those people forfeited having a choice on our congress, the senate, and many ballot initiatives. I am well aware that writing this on an artist's blog means I am mostly howling into that echo chamber I spoke of earlier, but it's specifically to ask that you take stock of what you can do that is active and meaningful, and to pledge that I will do the same. Here's a simple list of more suggestions to get you started and to give you some inspiration. Most importantly, educate yourself about history and do what you can to help educate the young people of our nation as well. As George Santayana wrote (although it is oft misattributed to Churchill, in an instance of truly meta-level irony): "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It's up to the American people to make sure that this is a Trump reality show that runs no longer than 4 years. 

ALISHA GIAMPOLA is an NYC based actor/teacher/writer who thinks the supermoon was pretty amazing, actually.
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UNDERSTANDING THE TRUMP VOTER (IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK)

In trying to empathize and understand their plight we're missing the pink elephant in the room that is causing the real problem
By Natalie Lovejoy, composer/lyricist

“I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. “

– Dalai Lama XIV

“If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders.”
― George Carlin

There is a rhetoric that has cropped up in social media, the news, and even from the mouths of politicians. “We need to understand the Trump voter. We need to hear his/her cries of pain; pain from job-loss, a shrinking middle class, poverty.” Michael Moore said it in his documentary. Bernie Sanders just said it in his first official post-election statement. I’ve had many big-hearted Democrat friends posting about it in the last 48 hours on Facebook.

I would like to offer a different perspective on the Trump voter that, while maybe not as pretty or safe, is ultimately more helpful. I believe people voted for Trump not out of a desperate cry for help but out of ignorance, which is something they are choosing to be and therefore should not be defended as if it’s a race, religion, or way of life.

 

WINNING IS EASY...GOVERNING IS HARDER.

By Alisha Giampola (writer/performer/all around nasty woman)

You, reading this on Wednesday, know something that I, writing this on Tuesday night, do not. 

Who the president is going to be starting next year.

As I go to bed with this all too close to call, after waking up at 6am excited perform a civic duty that I as a women have only had the right to do for less then a century, I must reflect on why I'm saddened right now. And it's not JUST because as I go to bed, a horrible satire of a person, whom I did not vote for, is winning. 

No matter what happens, this election is the most embarrassed I have ever been for our nation in my entire life. There are a lot of people so afraid of people who are different than they are that they were clearly willing to vote against their own economic interests, and against their friends who are female, minorities, Muslim, LGBTQ, disabled, or vulnerable in any way. I'm incredibly disappointed in them but hold out hope for our democracy even in the face of this completely unpredictable and existential domestic threat. The Supreme Court is at risk, our constitution is at risk, our position globally and economically is at risk. People who wish harm on anyone just because of the color of their skin, the religion they choose to follow, or the sexuality they happen to be will be in danger from those who will see this as a validation that their hate is supported by others. A man with no interest in anything other than just winning, a man with no policies, who surrounds himself with dubious humans at best and dangerous ones at worst is shockingly close to representing who this country is. Is that really what we are?

As a people, what we can do is to preach love instead of hate. As a teacher, I'm sad to see a person so close to being the leader of the free world who is quite literally everything we tell our children not to be: a bully, impulsively self-serving, racist, entitled, offensive, reckless, hateful. As a resident of NYC, I have to remember what a spectacular echo chamber of my own beliefs that I live in. What privilege to live in an open minded, accepting community.

Malcom Gladwell, one of my favorite students of history, gave an interview this summer that I've frequently reminded myself of in the past few days. During times of the most momentous change, there is always a quick and dramatic push backwards- the birth of progress and positive transformation comes with a painful afterbirth. Many who have never had to check or question their privilege before- people for whom privilege is so instinctive it's never even occured to them that most other people go through this world in a very different way from them -are discomforted and uprooted to make room for new growth. 

I might be very conflicted about my faith in our country at this very specific moment of time, but I have to remember that Martin Luther King Jr. once wisely observed that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." 

 

ALISHA GIAMPOLA is an NYC based actor/teacher/writer who is trying to be hopeful.
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THERE AND BACK AGAIN

Encountering the Amazon without taking off my headphones.
By Alisha Giampola (writer/performer)

Last week I had the opportunity to see the opening night of the first play to open the 2016/17 season on Broadway, Simon McBurney's one-man immersive audio-experience, The Encounter. 

The circumstances that led me to be sitting in the very first row (in front of Kevin Kline, no less!) of this production were related to my husbands' work, so I actually had not prepared myself in any way for the show I was about to see until the lights were dimming. Well, unless you consider preparing yourself to include spending an inordinate amount of time deciding what to wear because I really wanted to feel fabulous at the party afterwards. "What's this called again?" I whispered to Daniel as we were instructed to put our headphones on and check that they were working. 

Opening night curtain call of The Encounter.
You can actually see Daniel's head just under the "T" of the "Exit" sign there in the front row, clapping. 
I was there too, but I'm about a foot shorter and standing to his left, so. 

The best way I can describe the experience of seeing The Encounter is.... well, have you ever done any drugs? Haha, I kid. But seriously, have you? Simon McBurney, alone, on a stage full of microphone and audio equipment and a whole lot of water bottles creates an aural experience that can only be described as a live psychedelic podcast. Both wildly broad and incredibly intimate, he is able to recreate the sounds, colors, and damp heat of the Amazon rainforest using only his ability to speak directly into your ears through an anthropomorphic microphone that sits in the center of the stage for the entire production. Silent, almost talismanic, his solitary high-tech scene partner is the only other humanoid on stage with him. And yet, you feel surrounded by an entire tribe of people, an entire jungle of creatures, and occasionally if feels as if the stage has transformed into the interior of a mind grappling with it's own consciousness.

So, trippy. It's very trippy. As in the literal meaning of that word: "trip". I have never felt so transported by so little while surrounded by so many people. At one point, I disengaged from the production happening before me to check in with my real-life surroundings. There I was, sitting in a huge Broadway theatre full of people wearing headphones. None of us could hear anything other than what was being piped directly into our ears. Someone arriving late, into the back of the theatre, would hear nothing but a faint distant whispering coming from the stage, perhaps. See an entire crowd, enraptured, but silent, fixated on a man presumably audio-mixing something from the stage using little else but his voice, water bottles and occasionally rolls of undeveloped film for sound. 

Perhaps the best suggestion for how to encounter The Encounter is to do so as I did. Knowing absolutely nothing about what you're getting into. (And also, pee first. There is no intermission and it's a solid 2 hours long). (If you can't handle the suspense, feel free to give yourself a few spoilers via all the rave reviews it's getting.) I will say that, for myself, I enjoyed it a lot, and we all know how much I love a good podcast and McBurney tells a hell of a story. The perfection (or was it irony?) of learning through this highly sophisticated aural technology about a little-known indigenous culture while simultaneously being confronted with how technology is destroying indigenous cultures was not lost on me.

But is a really good podcast, watching someone essentially produce a radio performance piece in front of you, a legitimate immersive theatre experience? More importantly, is it a play? These are the kinds of technological conundrums surrounding art that begin dividing the olds from the youngs as they do every twenty or fifty or a hundred years or so. Are selfies legitimate portraiture? And if it is, is Kim Kardashian a legitimate artist? Bach and the Beatles are both composers of great music, and even though McBurney's play can only be experienced via headphones, who is to say that it's not just natural artistic evolution: the theatrical medium simply adapting to encompass the way we currently consume media? 

No matter what, The Encounter is a limited engagement, and unlike other forms of theatre, there will be no way to enjoy it except for seeing it live. No script book, cast recording, or YouTube clip could even begin to do this one justice. And maybe that is exactly what makes it theatre at its most theatrical. 

image via. 

ALISHA GIAMPOLA is an NYC based actor/teacher/writer whose favorite Kevin Kline movie is A Fish Called Wanda. Thanks for asking.
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THE THING ABOUT HUMANS

By Eric Grunin

Humans are weird.

When a cat sees a bird in flight, it may think "I wish I could eat that," but it probably doesn't think "I wish I could fly."

But humans? Every child has a moment where they want to fly, or dive like a fish, or travel into space, or go backwards in time. We want to play in the snow and not die of exposure. We want to cross deserts without dying of thirst.

Humans, it appears, are everywhere and always chafing at the limits placed on them by nature.

Some of us go so far as to realize these impossible dreams. We invent clothing for warmth, hollow out gourds to hold water. We invent airplanes for flying and scuba tanks for diving, and rockets to take us to the moon. But also: we discover X-rays and inadvertently give ourselves cancer. We invent antibiotics and find ourselves facing superbugs a mere century later.

Now dig a little deeper.

Animals can be unhappy, can even get depressed, but short of excruciating pain only humans will actually do themselves in. Only people can want change with such intensity that they would rather die than to go without it.

This is kind of amazing. How could this be?

Think about infants. When a baby cries, it's generally expressing one of a very few needs: food, warmth, cuddle, new diaper. There is no difference, in the baby's experience, between physical pain and these needs. And this is how the bleakest, blackest depression works: it's a feeling as intense and constant and demanding of relief as a kidney stone. A baby will cry for hours until its needs are addressed; imagine an adult in that kind of torment, but unable to find relief. And yet animals seem immune. What's up with that?

That's the most extreme case, but isn't the general condition of humanity, as Thoreau suggested, that most "lead lives of quiet desperation?" Is the problem the subjugation of the many by the few? That's a very tempting reading, but looking into history it seems unsupportable. Unhappiness with one's lot is rampant at all levels of all societies as far back as any such subjective feelings can be traced.

Is desire itself the problem? Are we too much at war with our natural selves?

DEAD RIGHT

The SCOTUS with the Mostest.
By Alisha Giampola (Writer/Performer)

The Notorious RBG gave a speech in New York City last week at the Temple Emanu-El Skirball Center, and I had the extreme honor of attending with my friend Ilana (of Argument Sessions fame). We stood in line to get our tickets checked with the obnoxiously giddy excitement of two teenagers circa 2002 at a Britney concert. Behold:

It's tempting to say that this is the nerdiest picture I've ever been a part of, but I'm sure I'm underestimating myself.

Justice Ginsburg was asked if she thought women still faced bias in the workplace as they did years ago when she founded the Women's Rights Project in the seventies. She conceded that while things have gotten better for women over the years, particularly from a strictly legal perspective, that unconscious bias towards both women and minorities continues to persist in workplaces and society in general. "People are comfortable with people who are like them, and white men are comfortable with other white men," she pointed out, a tiresomely familiar sentiment to any female who has ever tried to make an impression at a job or have a conversation in a public space or make a point at a political debate without being incessantly interrupted. Cough cough, Hillary. 

Literally don't know how you kept it together, girl. High fives.

When asked about the climate of discussion within the Supreme Court and whether or not things get tense during argument, RBG smiled and pointed out, "You can disagree without being disagreeable." Preach, girl. Justice Ginsburg famously had a personal friendship with a man who couldn't have been more her ideological opposite on the bench, late Justice Antonin Scalia. When talking about their friendship, RBG said that although they frequently did not agree, she valued their friendship, shared love of opera, and then visibly teared up as she added "He just made me laugh." That's the kind of classy, across-aisles working friendship I can barely imagine happening anywhere else in politics today. While I personally think Scalia was a horrible human with horrible ideas, I am happy to wrap my head around the idea that he and another person who I admire were able to put aside what made them different in order to seek out the things that brought them together.

It's blurry, but this is an actual picture I took of Ruth Bader Ginsburg being interviewed by Dan Abrams, live, and for that, you're welcome future little girls of America. 

The Supreme Court is the closest thing America has to some kind of panel of ancients. They're sworn in for life, the threat of losing their job never influencing the decisions they make, they look at change with a macro, rather than microscope. Decisions take time, the constitution requires study and interpretation, and ultimately dissents are as valuable as decisions. The queen of the eloquent dissent, RBG pointed out that "great dissenters are looking to a future age." This forest-rather-than-trees view of history is something I find comforting, particularly during an election season such as this. She discussed major heavy hitting cases including Citizens United and the recent striking down of the restrictive Texas abortion laws with equal gravity, and in the case of decisions she disagreed with, the hope that the dissents of her court could provide historical support for future generations who may be more amenable to change. It's so easy to look back on Brown v. Board of Education now and marvel at how ridiculous it was that racism used to be ingrained in law to such an extent, but then we unfortunately have almost daily reminders of the systemic and institutionalized racism that still permeates our lives. Active desegregation of schools basically stopped short in the 80s, and currently schools in the US are as segregated as they were in the 60s, despite the fact that bussing to desegregate student communities has been more successful than any other measures in raising educational fortunes of minority students.

NO CALLBACK? NO GIG? NO PROBLEM

Live your Golden Life.
by Kathleen Choe (actor/singer/writer)

Wake up. Check email. The project you were in final callbacks for has released you. That’s the second one this month. There’s still no word on that audition you felt really good about. You breathe, you sigh, you care and you don’t care. Well, you care. If you didn’t you’d be an android.

Ok. Fine. Let it go.

You see another email about your student loan payment being debited from your account and another email from the credit card company informing you payment is due. You see two other emails from jobs you applied for thanking you for your interest, but turning you down. You hop on Facebook. Someone booked this. Someone booked that. That part you were called back for was cast with a tall blonde…not you. Someone else is taking a fabulous vacation somewhere you’ve always wanted to go.

You catch yourself from falling down the rabbit hole of what’s it going to take so tired so frustrated so sick and tired of feast or famine this life is so damn hard is any of this worth it? 

You make breakfast. You look out the window. You’d rather go back to bed, but you put the dishes in the sink and then job hunt online. You see ones that you’re qualified for but make you want to pull out your hair. You apply to them anyway because that’s what part of being an adult is.

You make yourself put on your workout clothes and go to the gym and chuckle at the irony of keeping your gym membership in moments like this. You take the class you signed up for. The instructor tells you to challenge and push yourself and you do. You feel good, pat yourself on the back after class, then realize that you’ve lost all sensation in your arms.

Right. Hydrate. 

You shower and put on a dress, put on makeup, because why not, you’ve decided to treat yourself to a solo artist date at a museum where it's pay what you can.

Food for the soul today: The Met Breuer.

On the way there, a cute man checks you out in the street and you smile back. You don’t go after him though, but hey…you look good today.

The exhibit there is called Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible. You see this:

Arrow of Time (Unfinished Life), by Tatsuo Miyajima

…and this:

The Hand of God, by Auguste Rodin

and are inspired by these unfinished works by Monet, Manet, Klimt, Rodin, and Twombly along with others. You discover an artist new to you, Berthe Morisot. Their unfinished art speaks to you because finished or not, they’re still beautiful.

You end your visit by walking through an exhibit of photographs by Diane Arbus. This photograph makes you smlle:

Five Members of the Monster Fan Club, NYC
by Diane Arbus

You take the bus uptown instead of a subway to visit a friend, because why not. It’s a slow day. Your stomach is growling but you don’t want to buy food because there’s food at home that will cost you nothing. It’ll be awhile until you get back home though, so you buy a $2 protein bar, because you can afford that, so why not.

You meet your friend and the two of you realize last time you saw each other in person was 6 months ago. You’ve both had big disappointments, but also great joy. You talk. You vent. You groan. You laugh. You help them with an audition that they’re working on and for a 10 glorious minutes you get to be an actor with someone who you love, and it’s utter happiness.

Remembering what's important.

You look at each other’s lives and realize that even though it might not feel like it, you’re both ok. You’re still in this game. You have no plans to quit acting anytime soon, because you love it that much.

You get on the train to go home. That class you took this morning at the gym is starting to hit you. You were planning on going to the gym again today in an effort to lose those four pounds you’ve put on, but your stiff arms and swimmy head laugh at you and say that’s a bad idea.

You scan the seats, waiting for one to open up. One does, but there’s an elderly man who needs it more. You gesture to him for him to sit, even though he makes the sign that he’s fine. Another seat opens and you sit down, but another man walks on with a cane and so you stand and give it to him. You’re tired but you’re healthy. He smiles in gratitude and your heart opens up a little more.

You’ll sit when you get home.

You get home. There’s food in the fridge. You make yourself a snack. There’s also the milk stout that your sister and brother-in-law brought over and so you take a little nip of that, because you look at the clock and it’s 5pm and why not.

You sit, and breathe, and think.

It’s hard. It’s so hard right now. You choose to live in hope and have faith that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, because there has to be.

You have food. You have shelter. You have health. You have a set of skills that people need and will pay for as your day job.

You have something you love to do down to the marrow of your bones. You have people who love you and believe in you.

So endeth this day. No callback, no gig, no problem. It hurts. It sucks. You sigh. You cry.

But no problem.

Live your Golden Life.

(And remember to hydrate).

KATHLEEN CHOE is a NYC based actor, singer, and writer. www.www.kathleen-choe.com
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CONTROL YOUR OWN NARRITIVE

Offering constructive criticism to the voices in your head.
By Tom Rizzuto 

I recently reconnected with this friend I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. The reason I hadn’t seen her in so long is because she’s been living in another country. In fact, she’s been living in a bunch of other countries.

My friend, let’s call her Sophia, has spent the last few years “teaching English,” aka standing in front of a classroom demonstrating how actual Americans speak, all across the world. In fact, the majority of her time was spent in some of the most picturesque parts of Europe and Africa. The job didn’t pay a whole lot, but she got to experience things that most people only read about in Hemingway novels.
Exciting right? I mean, who knew this job existed? I myself was so intrigued by Sophia’s whirlwind lifestyle that when I ran into her at a wedding a few weeks ago, I straight up assaulted her with questions:

PHONE NOIR

Can you cure your cellphone addiction by changing your settings?
By Tom Rizzuto

Imagine if you had access to the entirety of human knowledge. Imagine you could see any image, hear any sound, and communicate with anyone at anytime, anywhere in the world. Now imagine what you would give up for this power.

Do you see where I’m going here?

You can stop imagining, because as you may have figured out by now, we already live in this world. It’s 2016 and odds are the vast majority of people you know have a smartphone. That means that for the cost of a monthly data plan, everybody has access to the kind of wisdom that would have been nothing less than a superpower just twenty years ago. However, like most power, this one comes with a price.

We’re paying, with our lives.

WHO RUN THE WORLD?

Beyoncé, most likely. 
By Alisha Giampola (Writer/Performer)

I had the pleasure yesterday to participate in a documentary project conceived by an old pal from college/early days of restaurant work here in the city, Samantha Walsh. Her project, titled Womanish, "addresses what it means to be a strong woman". Sam clarifies that what most interests her in the idea of the "strong woman" is this: "why we even have to preface woman with that adjective in order to make that statement clear for the people around us, the society at large. But most importantly, for ourselves." 

Sam had reached out to me about this art project and mentioned that pondering those things had gotten her thinking about what made her feel most powerful, and in turn, what made other women feel most powerful. It's an interesting question, and one I was surprised to have some trouble answering. I feel all different kinds of powerful. I feel powerful when I'm done with a tough yoga class, or after mastering something difficult that I was scared to try. I also feel powerful when I've nailed a slightly complicated social interaction or when I'm wearing a particularly flattering shade of lipstick. I don't think that these kinds of disparate ideas about power are unique to women, but I definitely think women are frequently made to feel most guilty if they aren't able to simultaneously encompass all of them. I am reminded of the now much-worn quote from Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, where she lays out in a fantastic rant a desire to render the "cool girl" obsolete: the Cool Girl of course being the girl who spends her energy creating a persona that is what she thinks men want her to be instead of who she actually, really is. 

During a summer when the world has watched Simone Biles become one of the most powerful Olympic athletes not just of the current games, but of all time, during a summer when women in general powerfully dominated their fields during the games, we can't forget that these most obviously "powerful" of women are still presented in comparative terminology and reduced to commentary on their marital or parental status, or if they were wearing enough make up. Women have finally been given a place a the table, but have not yet been allowed to forget who is still sitting firmly at the head of it. 

So yesterday, Sam was photographing and interviewing me for the Womanish project and as we were walking in my neighborhood, carrying camera equipment and chatting as we headed back towards my apartment, a smiling middle-aged man stopped us in our tracks. "Well look at these two beautiful girls!" He shouted at us. Sam and I exchanged a slightly weary glance at each other and moved on. Then, just a few minutes later, Sam was taking one or two last photos near my building and was in the middle of readjusting her camera as a man walking by hopped right into her shot, posed with me, and said "We're ready! Go ahead and take it!" He walked away as quickly as he had arrived and Sam and I were left in a combination of exasperated and bewildered amusement. "You should write about how middle-aged white guys think they're so funny." Sam joked. And she's right. I bet, with a quick show of hands, we can easily have an entire internet full of ladies who will vouch that Middle Aged White Guys Just Think They're So Funny. 

What was so preposterously apt about those interactions was that they occurred one right after the other during a brief time that Sam was literally in the middle of attempting to work on a piece of art that explores the frustrations (and joys, and struggles, and meaning) of being a woman in the world today. And being a woman in the world today is very much about cheerfully and frequently brushing off the blatantly unnecessary interruptions and condescensions of all manner of Middle Aged White Guys Who Think They're So Funny.  

I'm so interested to see this piece unfold, because Sam's pursuit to document all sorts of different women, of different ages, from different backgrounds and fields, should provide an interesting window into what women think about themselves and how being a woman shapes that self-examination. You should check it out too (and not just because I'm going to be a part of it, although that's clearly a great reason and you obviously have excellent priorities, carry on).

Most importantly: if you are womanish yourself and would like to participate, you should contact Sam at [email protected]. 

The Womanish project is on Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. 

  (Above outtake photo of me definitely not being a yoga model via: Samantha Fairfield Walsh.) 

ALISHA GIAMPOLA is an NYC based actor/teacher/writer who has actually given it some more thought and probably has never felt more powerful than when she was 16 years old and was driving her 1998 Pontiac Sunfire with the windows down and Alanis Morissette cranked up. 
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