I had a wonderful opportunity this week to attend the Women's Media Awards-event organized by the Women's Media Center (WMC) founded by my close friend and mentor Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda. This is what their website has to say about the event: "The Women’s Media Awards recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to advancing women’s and girls’ visibility and power in media."

It wouldn't have occurred to me how important organizations like this are for women, until I saw the statistics, which are staggering. And there is a enormous array of statistics to choose from, that make the same point. Here is one: "We live in a racially and ethnically diverse nation that is 51% female, but the news media itself remains staggeringly limited to a single demographic. According to the Global Media Monitoring Project 2010, 24% of the people interviewed, heard, seen, or read about in mainstream broadcast and print news were female.  Only 13% of stories focused specifically on women and 6% on issues of gender equality or inequality."
 
I didn't expect to be moved the way I was by the event. What affected me most was being in a room full of powerful women. When does that ever happen? Women are bred to be submissive, to please men, to be more concerned with the latest trends than, for example, who's going to lead this country for the next four years. Women are 51% of the electorate, which means we have some serious power in this world. But...we are bred not to seize it.

Like I said, it was inspiring to see a room full of strong women, most of whom had indeed harnessed their power. From Anne Hathaway, who hosted the event, to Barbara Walters, who gave out the lifetime-award to Pat Mitchell, to Laura and Lisa Ling, two hosts and journalists who've been through hell and back doing what they love...I was just drinking it all in, feeling a real sense of belonging among these people. I still have a ways to go to unlearn my programming, but being a part of events like this makes me as motivated as ever to go after my dreams and become who I want to be.

These last two weeks have been challenging, I have to admit it now. When hurricane Sandy hit New York, I thought I dealt with the whole thing really well--I felt like a trooper. I kept living my life as normally as possible, and fulfilling my duties as much as I could. Yet now as the dust settles, I find that the ordeal affected me much more deeply than I realized at first.

I think that for a lot of New Yorkers, Sandy was reminiscent of 9/11/2001. Even if we aren't aware of it on the surface, there is an unconscious film-roll that started running with the shocking nature of what the city went through last week. It's an entirely different circumstance of course, but the halting, traumatized feeling of the past is renewed. I would have disagreed with this assessment last week in the midst of my "brush-it-aside-and-keep-going"-attitude, but now as I relax a bit and let my body work through and finally heal itself from what is possibly my third cold in two weeks (!), I have to say, it's true.

I'm sure I've said this before, and I know I've even said it in a lyric of mine, but often the body knows better than the mind what is really going on within us. Right now, I'm telling myself that it's ok to be unsettled, that it's ok to feel the plethora of emotions that a huge event like this brings about. The rest of the world is already moving on, but this destruction has left a mark on all of us in this city, whether we realize it or not. Just like 9/11 did.

Yes, we can choose to brush these things aside and pretend like they don't touch us, but what's the point in that? They manifest themselves in other ways if we refuse to feel them. Either way, we can't run away from ourselves. Whatever you leave behind now, you will have to face in the future. I have learned that through my own experience many times. I am learning that I can't skip over feelings that seem inconvenient, I must feel them. Only in doing so can I heal myself and be whole.

"Stop masking your pain for it will bleed through somewhere else in your life.”
― Sherna Benjamin

What a week here in New York. What a fucking week.
I'm overwhelmed with emotions, some of which I don't even recognize. It's quite a tangle... One thing is for sure: it's hard to be thrown off most if not all of one's routines. In the midst of making my record in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, it is inconvenient to not be able to get there via subway as usual. Secondly, even if I was to get all the way there from my home in Brooklyn, I would be met with the fact that there is no power in the studio. Yup, that's life in New York right now. Thus, I wait.

Don't get me wrong, I know how good I have it. I know that hurricane Sandy destroyed the lives and properties of so many people in the city. To not have lost anything of value or anyone close to me, I am extremely lucky. I just have a feeling that this is not the last we've seen of storms of Sandy's ilk. I have a feeling that this is merely the beginning, and this alternately saddens and angers me. We the people are not innocent in all of this. Sandy is a symptom of climate change. 

This, unfortunately, is fact.

I went for a walk in Prospect Park on Thursday (illegal right now, in storm's aftermath....) and what was supposed to be a refreshing outing turned into a saddening, maddening, horrifying one. I saw hundreds of trees uprooted or sliced in half; beautiful, magnificent trees lying helplessly on the ground, dying. For me, nature has always provided solace--especially when it seemed like I wasn't able to get love and consolation from people around me. To then see these broken trees in what seemed like a skeletal Prospect Park...well, it was heart-breaking.

I know that I am anthropomorphizing trees somewhat, in that I see them as fallen friends. But I doubt that I'm truly out of line in thinking this way. We are dependent on trees and plants for our oxygen and they also soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. We need them desperately, and yet everywhere in the world trees are being destroyed by deforestation, fires and storms, among other calamities. 

Storm coverage is currently concentrating on more pressing issues like flooding and power outages. I hope these will finally create an urgency to do what we can do to preserve our atmosphere and our environment. It will take a while before fallen trees will create such a reaction in the powers that be, but in the meantime I leave you with a couple of photographs of my beautiful, leafy friends. Rest in peace. 

 

I've been thinking a lot about publicity this week. With the release of my album next year, publicizing it is naturally a key component in the process. Plus, I've done a couple of interviews recently, and thus the issue is relevant to me right now.

In the last couple of years I have come to express myself quite freely in the context of my blog, and I've come to trust that saying how I feel publicly is safe. I'm doing it on my own terms and can stand by every line. I have also been very open on stage about who I am and what I think, and that has felt empowering. Yet I am noticing that the situation is quite different in an interview, which is always written through the point of view of the journalist (unless it's via email). Many more things come into play, not the least of which being my personal shit and the journalist's personal shit when it comes to people and social situations. There's something quite unnatural about it, come to think of it: speaking about personal stuff with a complete stranger, who then writes about it into a magazine. In hindsight, it makes one want to take the word "personal" out of the earlier sentence. 

My point is this: doing an interview is not the same thing as me writing a blog or speaking to an audience. I enjoy interviews, I enjoy speaking to people in that capacity, but it's also daunting as hell, because you give up all control after the fact. It leaves you very vulnerable. I also find it challenging to draw the line about what is healthy to share and what is not--what feels good to talk about and what is excessive. But I trust that it is a matter of getting back in the groove of things and learning in the process, through trial and error. Despite having done a lot of publicity in my life, I am still trying to find a healthy balance with it.

What I really want is for my work to speak for itself. Being that publicity is part of my work too, I have to have a vision for it as well. That, among other things, is what I've learned this week.

“Just a reminder, what other people think of you is none of your business.” 
- Ze Frank

This is the eighth and last week of me studying a university course on Sustainability, that I found online on an ingenious website called Coursera. It's been a wonderful opportunity for me to learn more about an issue that interests me a great deal, and what's best of all--it's for free! I've also been taking a course in Modern and Contemporary American Poetry, which has also expanded my horizons quite a bit.

These courses are a first step for me as I'm planning on going back to school to finally get my GED. Back when I was 16 going on 17, I moved to New York, dropping out of high school to do so. At the time I didn't fully comprehend what was happening to my life, and it seemed like the right choice to pursue an international career in music then. At least I was made to believe so. In hindsight, my opinion is that I was too young and too insecure, and that the choice of discontinuing my education was not a wise choice. I don't know that it was even My choice to begin with. A lot of the things in my life at that time seemed to be happening to me, with me not being a conscious participant.

It was only a few years back when a friend of mine acknowledged my intelligence for what to me seemed like the first time. Up until then, I suppose it was in the best interest of people around me to encourage me to think I wasn't all that bright. Since then though, I have used up much of my time learning about a plethora of different subjects and I find myself already to be a different woman because of it. But this is not the end, this is merely the beginning of it. See what a little bit of encouragement can do to a human being..?!

Education and knowledge is empowering, and I've been delighted to see that a lot of information is available for free for anyone who wants it. As is the case of my GED. It is not an investment of money for me, instead it is an investment of time. I am now ready to claim what in some ways was taken from me a long time ago: my sense of being educated, knowledgeable...an adult! And for those of you who would also like to learn more and expand your minds, no hassle and for free, here is a link to the aforementioned ingenious website: https://www.coursera.org/
Enjoy!

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire."
- William Butler Yeats

I've always thought of myself as a warm person... Especially because for most of my life I was feeling insecure and inferior to most everyone else. I was eager to please and submissive, and I suppose I mistook that as warmth. Turns out that warmth is something utterly different. In my opinion true warmth can only come from being comfortable in one's own skin and being open, not scared of others.

Even though in the last few years I've learned to trust on a level that I never did before, I've discovered recently that I'm still very suspicious of others. Especially if they say something nice to me... It's connected to a feeling that I've always had, that if anything good happens to me, a bus is soon a-coming to run me over. A mechanism that is in place in one area of one's life, often extends to other areas as well...

I've been working on being more trusting, more warm and more open in the last couple of weeks, and I'm already reaping the benefits: people are being way nicer to me in return! I never realized that I (mostly) hadn't looked people in the eye before, that I often neglected to thank people when they complimented me, that I drifted away in conversations... I have not been welcoming, for fear that I let others get too close and they try to hurt me.

I'm not so scared anymore. I think it comes from the knowledge that I can be assertive when I need to be, that I know how to say no. Without that, people do sometimes take advantage. But I am a warm person, and I'm not scared to let people see that now. No one can take from me what I don't give.

There are no shortcuts--not really. At least every short cut I've taken, I've had to pay for dearly later on. In some ways I feel like the way my career began was one such "short cut." At 13 when I started, I had not had a chance to really consider what kind of music I would like to sing, in what language, how I would want to look, what I would like to say... All these things were imposed on me by other people, and I was ok with it, as I was too young to know any better. Yes, I had huge success immediately, but it wasn't on my own terms. And for that, indeed, I have paid a price.

The reason why I think about this right now is that two nights ago, my current record company ECR Music Group had a very successful event celebrating its relaunch, rebranding and expansion. Just as for me personally, there have been no shortcuts for this company. It has been hard work and dedication over 10 years that has brought the label and us artists here, where we have the foundation to reach for ever bigger and better things and more success.

I just had a candid moment with Blake Morgan (the CEO of the company) last week about our collective experiences in the music business. He told me that at every point in his life and career as he's advanced, time after time he has found himself to be in the "before"-picture rather than the"after"-picture. This can be a frustrating realization and I've felt this way many times in my life as well. But the truth is, in a healthy way we might always feel that way. Certainly I have mistakenly thought at certain times in my career, that I've been in the "after"-picture, but life does throw us quite a few curve-balls... What I told him in response was this: "I have never felt this good about being in the 'before'-picture." I find myself to be in a wonderful place with my label, on the verge of some sort of greatness.. I'm ready to put the work in, ready to take every step needed to get there, wherever I and we are going. I don't need any short cuts and I'm quite peaceful right here where I am.

"A shortcut is the longest distance between two points. "  
-Anonymous