Are You A Feminist?

 

This is a brief irreverent post for anyone out there who has ever said anything like, ‘I’m not a feminist but…’ or ‘Equality, yes; feminism, no!’ (saw that one on a forum, read it in my head in a whiny, pouty voice). Here are a few pointers that may help you work out whether or not you are a feminist.

Basically, if you believe that people should be treated equally, and judged on their character, actions and abilities rather than their sex, then you are a feminist. I realise that’s a bit simplistic, so here are some example scenarios that can cause confusion.

Scenario one.
Q.  I shave my head, wear dungarees, and hate all men. Am I a feminist?
A. No. You are someone who shaves their head, wears dungarees and hates men.
Q. Ok, how about if I shave my head, wear dungarees, and believe in sex equality?
A. Yes, you are a feminist who shaves their head and wears dungarees.

Scenario two.
Q. I wear make-up, high heels, and pretty dresses. I can’t possibly be a feminist, can I?
A. Do you wear make-up, high heels, and pretty dresses because someone forced you to?
Q. No, I wear them because I like them. So am I a feminist or not?
A. Do you believe that women are inherently inferior to men?
Q. Of course I don’t! I believe in equal pay, equal rights, and all that. So am I a feminist?
A. Yes, you are a feminist who wears make-up, high heels, and pretty dresses.

Scenario three.
Q. I march around in jack boots and PVC hot-pants, force my husband to stay at home, wear dresses and answer to the name of Hilda, while I go out to work for an all-female government committed to subjugating men for all eternity. Am I a feminist?
A. No, you are living in an episode of ‘The Worm That Turned’ by The Two Ronnies. This scenario is the bizarre fantasy/nightmare vision of what the unenlightened 1970s thought would happen if feminism was allowed to exist. Chill out and have a Pa’s Bar.
If, however, you and your partner both consent to and enjoy acting out this scenario in the privacy of your own home, that is your prerogative. And if you both believe in sex equality, then you are indeed feminists.

So, in a nutshell, feminism is about sex equality; no more, no less. All kinds of people are feminists; most have additional views which may be good or bad, and which are largely irrelevant to whether or not they are a feminist.

Hope this helps to clear things up.

The Weight of Words

“With freedom comes responsibility”
Eleanor Roosevelt

I wrote about this subject before, when a nurse took her own life after being pranked by two Australian DJs, http://suzannebarbieri.wordpress.com/2012/12/14/road-to-hell/

Today, I am writing about it again after the suicide of primary school teacher Lucy Meadows following her harassment by the press. http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/mar/22/lucy-meadows-press-harassment

In these circumstances, we have to say that there is not necessarily any link between what foolish/careless/cruel people may have said, done, or written and another person’s suicide.

We have to say that, whether or not it is true. The reason we have to say it is as follows.

Freedom of expression should be a right, but with all rights and freedoms come responsibilities. Words have weight. While the sticks and stones of thoughtless remarks may not break bones, they do break spirits, hearts, lives.

If you want to attack vulnerable members of society, and as a result of your hounding they kill themselves, you must own your part in that. Similarly, if I were to accuse a journalist of hounding someone to death and that journalist then took his or her own life, I would have to accept culpability.

This is what free will is: you make your own choices and you live with the consequences. Ignorance of this Universal Law is no excuse.

No one knows what is going on in another’s life. People who kill themselves are not weak-willed or fragile. They have just reached their limit. Don’t be the straw that breaks them.

Think before you exercise your freedom of expression. Is it really such a hardship to refrain from verbal assaults? Opinion isn’t fact, the private lives of ordinary people isn’t news.

Only a poor journalist has to resort to sensationalism, only a weak writer has to rely on demonising vulnerable members of society, and only a fool then bleats that they were ‘just saying’ when challenged on their vitriol.

What it boils down to, yet again, is bullying.

A bully is someone so acutely aware of their own failings that they have to point out the perceived failings of others in the vain hope that theirs are not noticed. Yet the very act of bullying marks out its perpetrator as an inadequate loser, and so the vicious cycle continues.

And sadly many of these bullies are allowed to spit their venom across the pages and websites of national newspapers, thus giving their views the appearance of credibility, when they are really only self-hatred directed outwards at those less able to fight back.

The time for change is well overdue, but the changes needed are at an individual level. All the while bigots posing as journalists are given free reign to express opinions, but are not held responsible for the consequences, the objects of their hatred will continue to be crushed beneath the weight of their ill-considered words.

Road To Hell

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

 

Many things piss me off in life, but probably none more so than bullies, especially those who won’t take responsibility for their actions and, when confronted with their behaviour, hide behind the pathetic plea of ‘it was just a joke.’

Comedy is of course subjective, but when someone or their misfortune is the butt of it, to them at least, it’s far from funny.

Recently, in the news has been the story of two Australian radio presenters whose prank telephone call to a hospital may have led to the suicide of nurse Jacintha Saldanha. Until the full facts of the case are known, it will not be certain why Jacintha chose to end her life.

Many have said that even though the prank call and its subsequent broadcast may have been ill-conceived and in poor taste, no one could have foreseen that it would cause one of its victims to kill herself.

Really? No one could have considered that publicly humiliating someone and possibly causing them to fear for their job might result in their suicide? What no one at all?

Maybe I have a warped way of thinking, but I do try to consider the consequences of my actions before I act in any kind of extreme way.

Maybe this has something to do with writing fiction: the tendency to extrapolate all possible outcomes of a particular situation; maybe it has something to do with having been bullied myself and understanding how wretched, how close to the edge, it makes you feel.

It is important to understand that it is not always the case that someone who commits suicide has many things go wrong in their life, or that they are ‘fragile’. Sometimes one inciting incident can be to blame. Of course there could be a downward spiral of subsequent events that ultimately leads to the suicide, but even if there are, the person would still be alive were it not for that one thing that tipped them over the edge.

When someone kills him or herself, they believe that is their only option, that it is the ‘right’ thing to do. It is not a selfish act, as some think. Selfish people rarely kill themselves, as they generally manage to make sure their lives work out exactly how they want them to.

Someone who takes their own life usually feels, how ever misguidedly, that the world, and the lives of their loved ones will be better without them.

For some, the end comes via a swift method, for others it is a slow decline perhaps from alcohol or drug addiction. Still suicide, but drawn out over years or decades, because although their life is unbearable, somewhere in the back of their mind they realise that their death will hurt others, so they end their lives indirectly, not realising that their destructive lifestyle has been hurting those they love all along.

But what of jokers, pranksters, whose actions lead to someone’s death. Are they culpable? Or should their claims that they didn’t mean for it to happen absolve them of all blame?

Sometimes not intending for something to happen doesn’t make you blameless. No one gets behind the wheel of a car intending to kill someone, but if you drive drunk, or recklessly and then unintentionally kill or injure someone, then of course it’s your fault.

There is a world of difference between an accident and an unintended consequence. An accident is something you could not have foreseen or prevented. An unintended consequence of a reckless act is both foreseeable and preventable, and when there’s a tragic outcome it’s because the perpetrator couldn’t be bothered to think things through, and just assumed that everything would be ok because they considered their immediate need to be greater than anyone else’s potential injury.

Everyone acts recklessly from time to time. In future try a little ‘what if’ before doing so. Put yourself in the position of the person on the receiving end of your actions. Think like the Dr Pepper advert and ask yourself ‘what’s the worst that could happen?’ Take the idea to its absolute extreme and imagine what might be the worst possible outcome of your actions.

Some have said that if you have to think so hard before ‘playing a joke’ on someone, then you won’t be able to do anything. That’s only half right. You just won’t be able to do anything cruel or mean-spirited.

 

A Day In The Life

So, I was in this singles bar wearing my skimpiest outfit sitting beneath a flashing neon sign that read ‘I am available, please approach me’, and this man just wouldn’t leave me alone. Eventually I had to shout at him to go away, and he appeared quite shocked that I should have done that, seeing as how I was so obviously just waiting for him.

Except it didn’t happen like that at all. It actually happened like this:

I was walking home from the supermarket wearing jeans and a puffer jacket. It was after 5pm and already dark. As I crossed the road, I heard a man making kissy noises and saying ‘Sweetheart, sweetheart.’ I assumed he was calling to his dog, reassuring it that it was now safe to cross the road.

I was wrong. He was talking to me. I did what I always do in these situations and completely blanked him.

So he followed me, actually walking at my side, all the time saying, ‘Sweetheart, sweetheart, why won’t you speak?’

There are a few reasons why I won’t speak. Firstly, I spend a lot time lost in my own head, often planning something I’m working on, and I don’t like to be interrupted; secondly, I’m not in the market for being chatted up in the street, so I don’t want to be perceived as giving even the slightest encouragement by entering into any kind of conversation, and thirdly, well, why the hell should I? If someone needs help or directions, then I’ll do what I can, but the usual opening gambit in that situation would be ‘Excuse me, do you know the time/way to the bank/gross national product of Brazil?’ and not ‘kissy kissy sweetheart.’

Another reason is that I’m very good at keeping control of my temper, but incidents such as this have a cumulative effect, and, like a volcano that’s been simmering away resentfully for decades, eventually I am going to explode. And then I’m in a bad mood for the rest of the day, which means I can’t work effectively on the things I was working out in my head before I was interrupted.

Anyway, explode I did. Not in an extreme way. I simply said, ‘leave me alone, ok?’ but in a far sterner and louder voice that he was probably expecting a ‘sweetheart’ to have. But then he had followed me half the way home. He seemed shocked, contrite even, and sloped off.

I didn’t feel scared or threatened in this case, though sometimes I have, I just felt irritated and annoyed. And once more I was reminded that being a woman is in some ways similar to being famous.

If you are famous people stare at you in the street, maybe take photos. They strike up conversations while you’re trying to catch up with friends over a drink. Sometimes they follow you.

All those things have happened to me, and I’m not famous. But some people feel the same sense of entitlement towards women as they do towards celebrities.

By which I mean the same mentality that says to the famous, ‘you’re in the public eye, therefore you’re available to me 24/7’ says to women, ‘you’re out in public, therefore available.’

Some of my friends are famous in their field and are often recognised when we’re out. They’re always gracious about it, but it makes me uncomfortable to think that private or business conversations might have been eavesdropped on, or that I might be the subject of gossip, the ‘mystery blonde’ spotted with someone I’m merely having coffee with or discussing a project we’re working on.

Sometimes what women wear is blamed for attracting unwanted attention, though most of my unwanted attention has been received when I’m dressed casually and usually laden with shopping, so I can’t put it down to dress, even though in an ideal world one should be able to dress how ever one chooses without fear of being accosted.

A well-meaning former work colleague (male) once suggested that perhaps my hair sends out the wrong signals.

Of course! That must be it. All the time I’m going about my day, minding my own business, behind my back (literally), my hair has been rising up like Medusa’s snakes and spelling out messages like ‘come and get me, big boy’ and other such 1970s sitcom-style chat-up lines.

Whilst it seems a ridiculous idea that someone might perceive a hairstyle as a come-on, it gave me a valuable insight into the way some people think. If anyone considers hair, eye or lip colour as being some kind of signal of availability, then they have to be pretty messed-up.

I don’t believe a woman’s appearance has anything to do with whether or not she gets hassled, although it may be used as an excuse: ‘she was so attractive I couldn’t resist’, or ‘she was a bit plain so I thought it would cheer her up’, maybe ‘she was wearing red lipstick’, or worst of all ‘her hair led me on’.

Why is this still happening in the 21 Century? I have no idea. Will things ever change? I doubt it.

I don’t personally know any men like that. Whether they’re friends or colleagues, none of the men I know behave in a predatory or disrespectful manner towards me or other women.

The only ones who do are strangers; which leads me to consider that as strangers they don’t consider me to be a ‘real’ person, but rather a representation of the idea that women are objects, just there for amusement.

Maybe those strangers act differently towards woman they know, maybe they don’t. Maybe there are just some elements of society that will always disrespect others.

X Marks The Spot

I have spread my dreams under your feet,

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

W.B.Yeats

*

Where the gold is hidden, where the bodies are buried; wherever an X marks the spot, you can be sure there is plenty hidden beneath it.

Last night on the X-Factor Zoe Alexander, a Pink tribute artist, was rejected for, well, being a Pink tribute artist, because, they said, they’re looking for stars, not tribute acts. No surprises there, but her face told a different story. She looked stunned, uncomprehending of her rejection.

My first thought was, bit arrogant to expect an automatic acceptance onto the next round. Then she uttered the now immortal words,

‘But you told me to sing a Pink song’

Swift denials from the judges followed. Zoe stormed off, threw her mic, hit a camera and pushed a producer.

The article about her experience http://channelhopping.onthebox.com/2012/08/18/you-told-me-to-sing-pink-how-x-factor-producers-set-zoe-alexander-up/ (link via @derrenbrown) describes her reaction as ‘outrageous’ and ‘unacceptable’, probably to protect themselves legally more than anything else.

I think her behaviour was completely justified, because it transpired that she had been manipulated by the show’s producers for the past six weeks, told what song to sing, and set up for a fall.

This is despicable, yet hardly a unique story about ‘reality’ TV shows. This kind of thing is one of the main reasons these types of shows make contestants sign such stringent confidentiality agreements.

Most people realise that many TV talent shows are fixed in some way, allegedly (see what I did there?), but the contestants do not. They might shout ‘fix’ when they get passed over for someone less talented, but when they enter such a competition they truly believe they’re being given an opportunity to escape their humdrum lives and follow their dreams.

They are also told, time after time, how an appearance on such a show is a once in a lifetime opportunity and great care must be taken not to blow it.

So imagine how you’d feel to discover you’d been set up to fail; shaped into a laughing stock; tricked into sabotaging your ‘only’, chance.

There is a chapter in Jon Ronson’s book ‘The Psychopath Test’ that describes how TV producers are instructed to pick people who are just ‘mad enough’ to provide great TV by being a figure of fun to be poked with sticks, but not so mad that the experience leads to their going on a rampage with a shotgun. Sometimes they mess up spectacularly… read Jon’s book. Highly recommended. And follow him on Twitter @jonronson.

Some years ago I was at drama school with someone who got through a few rounds of a Certain Unmentionable National Talent Show (acronym will give a clue as to who the main judge was at that time, based on popular opinion of him). My friend became friends with another contestant who made it through to the final ten. Oh, the stories I can’t tell you.

I’ve had similar ‘set-up’ experiences in music. Not on TV, fortunately. People in the business side of things like to pretend they have money and power, and when the one who really holds the purse strings gets wind of things and pulls the plug, you’re the one left flailing and trying to piece your life back together in the midst of a complete loss of face, while they go on to pull the same stunt on some other young hopeful.

I hate the music business, I really do. Musicians by and large are wonderful people but the business really sucks. As a youngster I regularly had my carefully laid dreams stomped on for others’ amusement. People who pretend to be on your side, pretend to be your friend, will betray you at the first opportunity and they get away with it because of the Golden Rule: ‘Them that’s got the gold make the rules.’

I know I’m deeply scarred by much of this, and some may see my distrust of the music business as bitterness, and in many ways, it is. I’m bitter about having been lied to, led up numerous paths and ultimately betrayed, but most of all I’m angry at myself for not always listening to my dissenting inner voice and allowing myself to be shaped into something I’m not albeit briefly. And for spending too long trying to write ‘hit songs’ before finally discovering my real niche.

So whilst I hate the music business, I still love music and try to make as much of it as possible while keeping as far outside of the business as I can.

I wish talent show contestants would see this. No one can stop you pursuing your dream, but if you achieve fame it will be because you fit some kind of criteria. And if you don’t ‘make it’, i.e. storm the charts, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re no good, it just means that you’re not what they’re looking for. And fame really isn’t what you think it is, so think very carefully before deciding you want it.

Imagine if the Olympics was like the music business. The ones who got the gold wouldn’t be the ones who won their heats or scored the most over all, but the ones the organisers liked best.

Here he is, the 685^th fastest man in Britain. He can’t really run, but he’s got ‘the look’. Let’s film a real runner bursting through the tape and superimpose our star’s head on the runner’s body for the video. His speaking voice isn’t up to much so he can lipsynch to an actor for his winner’s speech.

Sounds ridiculous, but you see it every day in music.

Whilst there have always been manufactured pop acts performing trite music, things in my lifetime got really bad in the 80s when Stock Aitken and Waterman had a stranglehold on the charts.  Pete Waterman later became a judge on Pop Idol, one of the forerunners of the X-Factor. Which says it all.

At the time I joined my first band there was a kind of consensus that if you got up on stage, played instruments and sang, you were musicians; if you included a dance routine, you were a variety act and were aimed at children and grandparents. TV talent shows are about variety acts, whichever way they try to dress it up.

When I was in my teens and early twenties and still sending demos to record companies, I couldn’t understand why the charts were filled with people who couldn’t sing as well as I can, warbling over songs I would’ve deemed weak had I written them as a five-year-old.

Now I know. The music business is just that – a business. It’s about money, not music, just as reality TV is about ratings not reality.

So, if you watch the show, don’t assume it’s real; if you enter it, don’t assume you’ll be given a fair chance; and if you win it, don’t assume you’ll have a career.

The Art Of The Perfect Brief

I recently sang on a Big Ad.

It was another ‘Sound-alike’ job.  Sound-alike versions are usually employed when the rights to use a piece of music cost more than the budget allows for and are often referred to as a ‘copyright dodge’. This is something of a misnomer, as no copyrights are actually dodged, but in most cases it is cheaper to pay for a cover version of a track to be made than to use the original.

The thing to remember about sound-alike work is that firstly, no one sounds exactly like someone else (and often the job that lands in your inbox is from a someone you could never sound like in a million years and after several surgeries); and secondly if, after the million years and several surgeries you did end up sounding exactly like someone, you’d be inching your way into the hazy world of ‘passing off’ (i.e. giving the impression that you are that someone, and/or that they endorse your product), which you are not allowed to do.

So a better term for these jobs is ‘In The Style Of’, which is how one of my clients labels the product.

But anyway, back to the Big Ad. Most adverts use placement music, which is a piece of music for which they probably don’t have the rights, that is synched to the advert as a guide while it is still a work in progress.

What usually happens is that they get attached to that music, so when they find they can’t get permission, or it’ll cost too much to use, they commission a sound-alike or ‘in the style of’ version.

The problem with this is that it will never have the essential element that captured the heart in the first place, largely because they don’t really know what that element is.

It could be a barely audible breath the singer took before a certain phrase; it could be because the song reminds them of their beloved Nan; or maybe they used to dress up and mime to it as a kid and they want to feel that unrestrained again.

And whatever you do with the track it won’t be right.

This is, of course, their fault for not being able to provide a properly detailed brief (they can’t of course if they don’t know why the song is important to them), but they’ll try to make it seem like your fault, that you’re the one who’s ‘not getting it’, and they’ll give you nebulous instructions such as ‘more competitive’; ‘braver’; ‘lonelier’; ‘older’.

There were many versions sung of the Big Ad sound-alike.

It was to be edited on the Sunday (in a country with a time zone several hours ahead of ours), to be aired Monday.

I told them I’d have my gear set up until 10 p.m. Saturday night in case of any last minute changes. I left it until 11.30 p.m. then packed up and started working on something else, finishing that at about 3.30 a.m.

10.15 on Sunday morning the call came: ‘Can you make the last line more triumphant?’

Bear in mind, all this has to be taken on board while sounding as much like the original as humanly and legally possible. ‘And we need it by 11.30’

I am also in bed still half-asleep when I hear this message go onto the answerphone.

So I get up, set up my recording gear and make a radical decision.

‘If this needs to be different,’ I tell them, ‘I’ll have to ignore the brief.’

Which is what I did, and sang it as if I’d been told to sing this song without reference to the specific version they had used. The upshot? They loved it and went for my off-brief version.

On a different but related note, I still receive casting bulletins dating back to my drama school days, and if anything marks out an amateur film-maker it’s this:

‘Character: Chloe, student. 19 years old, 5ft 8 1/2 inches tall, blonde hair, green eyes…’

On the surface this might seem like the perfect brief. After all they offer concrete descriptions, not vague words like ‘brave’ or ‘competitive’, but think about it.

Here’s a clue. The character of Ripley in the film Alien was originally written as a man, but the character’s sex was irrelevant to the plot so ‘he’ ended up being played by Sigourey Weaver, the best actor for the job.

Look again at my example of a casting brief.

How would the story no longer work if Chloe had dark hair and eyes? Maybe she gets mistaken for another blonde because it’s dark and blonde hair is easier to distinguish in low light than subtler shades of brown. Ok, keep her blonde.

What about her eye colour? Is that an important plot point? No? Then forget it.

How would the story change if she was 5ft 1 instead of 5ft 8 1/2? It wouldn’t? Then leave that out or else you may lose out on the perfect actor for your film if you get hung up on height or eye colour.

So how about this instead for a casting brief:

‘Chloe, 19 year old blonde student. Brave and competitive.’

Here ‘brave’ and ‘competitive’ work as they tell us about her character. You see, creating the perfect brief is not so much about knowing what you want, as knowing why you want it.

Ripley is a strong character whose ingenuity and determination save the day. The made up ‘Chloe’ is a blonde student who gets mistaken for someone else and finds herself in a situation that will require her to be brave and competitive.

The Big Ad character, whom the song was meant to reflect, was a housewife boasting about the stain-removing prowess of her new washing powder. She didn’t need to sound exactly like the singer from the musical whose rights were too expensive to acquire, she just had to sound as if she meant it.

And if I’d been told that in the first place rather than ‘sound like this… but not like this’, I’d have had a Sunday lie-in.

When Is A Joke Not A Joke?

With freedom comes responsibility
Eleanor Roosevelt

Today I saw a ‘joke’ on Twitter that offended me. It had been RT’d by someone I was following. I explained I didn’t want to see things like that on my timeline, so unfollowed, but wished them well. The poster of the original tweet came back with a good natured ‘chill out, it’s just a joke’

And this is where the debate becomes interesting to me.

We have a certain amount of free speech, so anyone can make a joke about anything they want. Humour is subjective; therefore many jokes will offend people, even when offence is not intended. But you have to stand or fall by what you say, and accept any fallout.

People have the right to joke, and people have the right to be offended. People don’t, however, have the right to expect you not to be offended simply because they were ‘joking’.

Anyone who remembers what happened when Ricky Gervais used the word ‘mong’ will know what I mean and where I’m going with this.

The ‘joke’ that got my back up was this:

“@MartyZobel: My new favorite charity is the Tempura House. You might’ve heard about it…it’s a shelter for lightly battered women.”

In posting the tweeter’s name, I’m respecting his copyright, not pointing him out as a target.

Here’s another one of his.

“Q. What do blonds and the Bermuda triangle have in common? A. They’ve both swallowed a lot of seamen.”

To my eye, these jokes are misogynistic, but they may not be meant maliciously. Each falls into a different category, and each offends me for different reasons.

A joke can be extremely dark without being offensive, and the line between darkly funny and offensive can be a fine one. When a joke offends, it has often failed in either pitch, e.g. aimed at wrong audience, wrong style of joke for subject matter; or it has a flawed internal logic.

The first joke is, I feel, wrongly pitched; the second reinforces stereotypes.

On the surface, the battered women joke is a light-hearted play on words, but on a subject that is far from light-hearted. It got a few RT’s from women, who may have been more focussed on the ‘tempura’ reference than the underlying inference, that there is such a thing as being ‘lightly’ battered, i.e. a little bit beaten, somewhat abused.

Women who report abuse, and not all do, often find their experiences trivialised: it was ‘only’ emotional abuse; ‘only’ a slap not a punch.

The second joke relies on the stereotype that women with blonde hair are whores. I have no clue as to how and when this idea first came about, but the thought that anyone might subscribe to it is both laughable and horrifying.

A joke based on stereotypes says nothing about its subject, but speaks volumes about the one who said or repeated it.

But with regard what is or isn’t offensive, it can only be for those who are in or close to the group at which the joke is aimed to decide. And if you have to tell anyone to ‘chill out’ in response to their reaction to a joke, the chances are you’ve overstepped the mark, and it probably wasn’t that funny.

Breaking Butterflies

I woke this morning to the news that the FBI has taken down the filesharing site Megaupload, due to piracy/copyright infringement claims.

Firstly, let me state that as an artist I am vehemently opposed to copyright infringement and piracy. I have found my own work on illegal download sites, and it’s not pleasant.

I don’t agree with the argument that people who steal first will then pay for it later. In this case they can’t anyway: that particular album isn’t available as a download and the CD’s are out of stock.

I also don’t agree with the idea that it’s ‘getting your stuff out there’. It’s up to me who gets to hear my music for nothing. I have no band, so don’t gig, so there is nothing to promote but the recorded work itself, and if someone shares it without my permission, they are literally taking money out of my pocket.

Whilst I agree with copyright laws, they do little, if anything, to help the ‘smaller’ artists, or indeed any artists. As any research into Spotify will show you, it’s the big record companies that end up making all the money.

When I first started making music, demos were copied onto cassette tape and posted out to record labels. This was an expensive business, and there was talk at the time of placing a levy on blank cassette tapes (i.e. price them out of the market) to stop piracy. In effect, the people who would have been most hurt by this were struggling musicians.

A few years ago, the copy protection software on CD albums would take out people’s operating systems if they attempted to play it in a computer. Fair enough if someone is intending to run off illegal copies, but what about musicians who need the music on their computer because they have to learn a song, or record a cover version? They certainly don’t need their computer to be out of action when they’re in the middle of a job.

I use Megaupload for storing and sharing music and sound files that I have created for myself and others. I do session work in my home studio and upload the files so the clients can download them. I also use Megaupload to get my own music to my record label.

The files I have up on Megaupload are confidential, pre-release material intended only for the recipient’s use. Surely the FBI must be breaking the law by accessing, deleting, or blocking these files.

As always, the innocent are punished, and the professional pirates will just find a way around it as they always do. Piracy hurts artists, but so does this heavy-handed approach of penalising legitimate users for sharing their own work.

Many people equate the term ‘artist’ with ‘rich and famous’ when in reality the majority of people working in all areas of the arts barely scrape a living. Stealing their work takes food out of their mouths, but so does destroying their work in the hope of catching a few wrongdoers. Not so much breaking a butterfly upon a wheel as setting off a nuclear bomb to kill a handful of ants.

Painting With Your Feet

I’m writing a self-help book called ‘Painting With Your Feet’ it has the subtitle ‘Using Your Erotic Capital After Losing 3 Kilos A Week On The Diet for Women Who Love Men Who Love Bitches From Mars Who Aren’t That Into Them But Look Good Naked And Are Creatures Unlike Any Other Who Are Too Posh To Wash For Dummies.’*

Of course, I’m not really writing a book like this. Although I’ve been saying I will for years, if only as an antidote to what’s out there. And as a result of this half-hearted plan, I’ve read a truckload of such books, a tiny few of which had some nuggets of wisdom, most of which made me chuckle, and some of which made shake my head in despair.

The title ‘Painting With Your Feet’ has nothing to do with artists who paint with their feet because they don’t have functioning hands, but instead refers to the core attitude of many such books aimed at women. I could have called it ‘Knitting With Your Hair’, because most of these self-improvement books are designed to make women change, not for the better, and certainly not for themselves, but into some strange parody of a human being in order to gain approval and attention from men who don’t even like them, let alone might be willing to spend their lives with them.

I am all for change and self-improvement, I’ve spent much of my adult life doing it, but every change I’ve made has been for myself. Other people have, in general, been opposed to some of my changes, but I did them anyway, because I did them for me, for my approval of myself, not for anyone else’s.

There are very few self-help relationship books aimed at men, and most of the ones that exist are ‘systems’ rather than books. These ‘systems’ are usually only available as e-books, and can be downloaded from a badly designed website at a cost of many hundreds of dollars.

Dating and relationship systems for men are, in many ways, the same as the relationship books for women. Not because they try to make the man change into something that will bring him the female approval he so clearly craves, being willing to shell out so much money for the information, but because they aim to teach him how to control and change women in the same way. If the system doesn’t work on a particular woman, we are told, it is not the fault of the system, but the woman: she is, and I quote, ‘a basket case’.

Similarly, many of the products aimed at women state that if a man won’t commit to you, it’s because he’s a bastard. Maybe he is, maybe he’s just not that into you, and maybe the woman on whom the system doesn’t work isn’t that into you either. So just move on.

On the other hand, if the man/woman who isn’t that into you is leading you on and doing all the things prescribed by Systems, Rules, Games etc., to make you think they really are that into you, just for the hell of it, then they probably are a bit of a bastard, and certainly not worth jumping through hoops for.

My initial reasons for wanting to add to the Babel tower of such books, albeit as a countermeasure, were that firstly I don’t recognise these stereotypical men and women described in them, who play such manipulative games with their partners, secretly despise them, yet want to hang onto them for eternity, or dump them the moment things start going well between them; and secondly, a lot of friends (especially male friends) frequently ask me what I think their partner really wants/means when she does/says something. One even used to ring me while his girlfriend was in the toilet for a translation of something that had puzzled him. You know who you are.

I’m not setting myself up as an expert in anything. I’m just a keen observer of humans, and have spent my whole life around them. I’m a good listener, and sometimes have interesting insights. Although I have to say, I would consider myself a little more knowledgeable than a certain ‘System creator’ who advises that even after you’re married, a man should never tell a woman he loves her more than a handful of times in his entire life. And he wonders why the divorce rate is so high.

So with that in mind, I intend to set up another blog site where I will do this. There’ll hopefully be a facility where people can send in anonymous questions that I will give my take on. Notice I don’t say ‘answers’ because there probably aren’t any in life, but I fully believe that all kinds of human interaction should be undertaken as honestly as possible without resorting to manipulation or game-playing.

I want to aim this primarily at men (though certainly not to the exclusion of women), partly because there’s nothing similar out there for them, and partly because I believe that ‘nice guys’ who end up buying into any of the numerous ‘player systems’ just make everyone unhappy, themselves included.

As soon as I have site in place for this I’ll post details on Twitter and Facebook.

*Special thanks to the following Tweeters for title ideas and additions:

@cbonners1 @CherylMorgan @neuro_skeptic @ksmyth2010 @PoppyCollinson

and various others for RTing

 

From now on, pieces in this vein will be posted here: 
People Are From Earth

http://earthlingsunited.wordpress.com

The Care and Feeding of Fame Monsters

Fame puts you there where things are hollow

David Bowie

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The title of this piece bears no relation to anything Gaga-esque. Although maybe it does, I wouldn’t know, not having paid much attention to her album of the same name. My jury is still out on Lady Gaga. In the 1930s, Elsa Schiaparelli designed a dress with a print to give the illusion of torn animal flesh; she also collaborated with Salvador Dali. And Edge of Glory sounds like something Steps would do. But then Pop music isn’t aimed at me, so that’s neither here nor there. Neither is this intended to be a dig at Ms Germanotta, as I said, the jury’s still out, and regardless of whether the term ‘Fame Monster’ means what I have used it to mean, it is, to my ear, a perfect description of one of the types of person mentioned herein. So I shall begin…

There is a world of difference between someone who is an artist and someone who is famous, although it is possible to be both.

Certain things, such as integrity, skill, and truth, will make me respect an artist whether or not I like their work. Conversely, I can enjoy a work without respecting its creator; so if you catch me whistling Agadoo, don’t read too much into it. Actually, if you do catch me whistling Agadoo please shoot me, or at least have me put into a medically induced coma.

Many of my friends are artists – painters, writers, actors, musicians, – all with varying degrees of success. Most of them are infinitely more talented and skilled than household names in similar spheres. One of the reasons for this is that to be famous, the primary desire must be for fame itself.

How many X-Factor contestants, for example, go on to become TV presenters? Likewise, former Hollywood ‘stars’ doing Panto. What’s wrong with making your own music for a tiny but discerning audience, or appearing in something ground-breaking in a small theatre? Oh yes, that might not grace the pages of Heat magazine.

The pursuit of fame is a very different discipline from the pursuit of artistic excellence; therefore you will see a mixture of the skilled and the not so skilled in the public eye.

The degree of self-promotion involved in chasing fame is something with which many artists are uncomfortable, but for fame monsters, it is second nature. I had a laugh with a writer friend over the holidays at the amount of shameless self-promotion we saw going on even on Christmas Day. That, my friends, is dedication.

Artists like to share their work with other artists for feedback, support, objective criticism; all of which will help hone the work so it will be the best it can be. When you know and trust someone else as an artist, you know you’re going to get the truth, even if it’s not what you want to hear.

When a fame monster asks what you think of their latest effort, they really want to know what you think about them, or more usually, they want to hear how much you like them, how brilliant they are. If you offer constructive comments about the work they’ll invariably glaze over because they think they’re so amazing anything you say is irrelevant. The fact that they’re asking you, as an artist, for your opinion is misleading; what they’re really after is an ‘in’ with your contacts. They know you do something in the same field they aspire to top, so just maybe you know Simon Cowell or Dan Brown and will put in a good word for them.

Even if you’re not approached directly by a fame monster, it’s relatively easy to spot one quite early on. The very young can be forgiven, as they may well grow out of it. As a teenager I had a brief spell of wanting to be famous until I discovered what it entails: being recognised in the street, waking to find fans sleeping in your garden or going through your bins, having to take work that’s embarrassing but high profile. The nightmare list goes on and it’s not for me.

Yes, I do occasionally naff and sometimes embarrassing session work, but that’s a technical job, like a tailor doing his best work on a suit he’d never choose to wear himself, and, most importantly, in many cases no one has to know it’s me. It won’t bring me before the eyes of the world, but it’s on my CV as something I can do but choose not to publicly, like the gentleman with the accordion.

Every fame monster has a touch of desperation that never quite goes away. Ultimately, despite their massive egos, they’re usually deeply insecure and will do anything to be ‘loved’ therefore they will probably change their name and develop a persona early on in their careers.

We all have different faces that we use for different situations, most of which occur spontaneously, such as the various social media personae. My own Twitter persona turned out to be more out-spoken and curmudgeonly than I really am, whereas my blog persona is of someone far more eloquent, opinionated, and, I like to think, wiser than you’d find if you ran into me when I’m propping up the bar at the Groucho. I know I express myself best and my thoughts are more organised when writing. This is why I prefer to have important conversations via email rather than face-to face. So please remember this before dropping a big subject on me in public and getting an inappropriate response, or more likely, no response whatsoever. Think of it like this: my thoughts are a tangled skein of rainbow-coloured 4-ply; my word processor is a new-fangled knitting machine with built-in style and taste parameters. Take your pick.

But I digress.

Yes, I have many facets to my character, or maybe many characters living in my head, but they all came of their own accord as a result of living, learning, and interacting in the real world. I could never develop a character to ‘wear’ in public, and I cringe at those who do.

A friend once said to me, ‘even with your hair extensions and plastic surgery, you’re the least fake person I know.’

I took this as both compliment and insight. True fakery comes from within. No amount of external gloss can hide honesty, and no amount of cod-earnest hand-wringing can disguise a fake.

The first stage of someone having a fake persona is when they start talking about themselves in the third person. The second is when they actually discuss the inception of said fake persona. The third is when they claim to be host to a separate entity with a different name and character who takes them over when they perform. If that’s not the ultimate in fake personae, then they’re demonically possessed and should seek the assistance of a good exorcist.

Another trait of the fame monster is the accent change. It could be ‘up’ or ‘down’ from their roots, maybe a softening or hardening of a regional accent depending where they see themselves. Those looking for commercial success will probably ‘go street’. Pop music is full of middle class bastions pretending to hail from the mean streets of Peckham.

If said fame monster succeeds in Pop but at a later stage wants to ‘reinvent’ themselves as a ‘grown up’ artist they might choose to ‘go posh’ or maybe mid-Atlantic.

Then there’s the name. I have a massive problem with gimmicky names. If you have a boring, ugly, or embarrassing name by all means change it, but let’s keep things in perspective. If you’re plain Ann Brown and fancy something more exotic how about Annabel Browne? Perfect if you intend at some point to ‘go posh’, but if you’re intending to ‘go street’, A to the Bell to the B-R-pwn will not inspire me to take your music seriously.

Your choice of name should be like your choice of tattoo: think about how it’s going to look when your showbiz career’s over and you’re collecting your winter heating allowance from a post office in Chipping Norton with an obscenity scrawled across your knuckles and the name of a teenage rapper on your pension book.

Additionally, fame monsters may also express themselves via their appearance, such as being over, or underdressed for the occasion, having an ‘out there’ haircut, or always wearing a hat in lieu of having a personality.

If in the early part of your career you catch yourself doing anything to make you appear more famous than you are – blue-tacking your poster to the side of a stationary bus so people think it’s a proper advert; Photoshopping your name in lights on a picture of a 20,000 seat arena; sneaking your homemade CD’s into a record store; making a video where people run up to you for an autograph – then stop now. Artistic excellence has flown out the window and you are legging it down the Heat Highway on your way to being photographed drunk in the gutter outside China White or wherever anyone who’s no one hangs out these days.

The reason fame monsters chase fame in the manner they do is because they know deep down they just aren’t very good at what they’re doing. All artists doubt their own talent; it’s part of what makes you strive to get better, but the fame monster knows their talent is minimal at best, but if they get really, really famous no one will be allowed to point them out as a naked emperor, and if you do it’s because you’re jealous.

The clever ones recognise their failings and surround themselves with people who are good at what they do, and so give the fame monster the illusion of having created everything themselves. These are the ones most likely to achieve success. The ones who can’t see their limitations tend to sink into a quagmire of bitterness and rage directed at those who are doing better than them.

Generally speaking the bigger the ego, the deeper the insecurity. I think this applies to all areas of life.

Artists grow, fame monsters change. They are prepared to change themselves into anything the market dictates. Each change of outfit or hairstyle is hailed as a ‘reinvention’, when all they really reinvent is the wheel with their unoriginal offerings.

It’s a wonderful thing for an artist to find their work has an audience, but ideally this should come as a result of doing what they love. Chasing fame is all very well, if that’s what’s important to someone, but be prepared to leave your morals and virtues at the door, and be even more prepared that what you did to succeed will be written all over your face.

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