Leverage

Road Dog IV

In my song about cum there’s a line about Jesus and at a couple of these shows some girls have been really into the Jesus line and less into the cum stuff. I have half an hour each night to sing to you, which is about six songs (and some chatter in between, plenty of tuning to asinine open tunings that make no sense), and I sing about cum usually twice which makes for a significant percentage of the total words I get to say in front of you. I think I sing about Jesus roughly an equal amount though. In my head my singing about cum is a subversion of expectations: it’s blue and visceral and dirty, both in its blueness and in its grime. Singing about cum isn’t singing about sex; it’s singing about fluid. Then I’m reminded when the bartender is whistling at me during my murder ballad one night that it’s not exactly a subversion of expectations because sometimes men look at me and think “whore”. Do whores sing about fluid? Probably.

The bartender was whistling at me during my murder ballad because he didn’t like what I had to say on stage. I’m donating 10% of my merch revenue to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Foundation. I’m proud to be doing this. I’m not saying this so you clap for me; I’m saying it to provide context and because it’s true. After I play my song Dollface which is about my experiences of violent rape, being groomed by old guys on the Internet as a child, and the removal of agency from young women until we are pliable enough to take any shape we are asked to, I say to a crowd of attentive (mostly) teens something I think we all already know, which is that the greatest acts of violence against women are currently being carried out in occupied Palestine.

The bartender went so far as to threaten the guitarist in the headline band if they were to do the same. “Don’t go to the bar,” Michael told me when I came off stage. “There’s a guy over there who really doesn’t like you.” As he recounted the story I bit the inside of my cheek until it bled. I wanted to reach over the bar and grab him by the collar and dare him to say it to my face. “Or what, big man?” the Hana in my head said. “What are you gonna do if we say something you don’t like?” I didn’t do it for a number of reasons. 1.) It wasn’t my show to make a scene at 2.) The venue handled it swiftly and the band had my back 3.) I didn’t really want to know the answer to that question.

It is not a crime to disagree with me. It is a violation of international law to slaughter civilians, children, journalists, to intentionally starve a population, to ethnically cleanse a region, but this guy was slinging whiskeys at a bar. He’s not going to be tried at the Hague. If he disagrees with me, fine. I don’t care. But when he started whistling at me, I was reminded of the intersectional principle I was referencing in the first place: all struggles are interconnected. He whistled at me because he disagreed with me but also because I’m a woman, because I have opinions, because he wanted to sexualize, degrade, trivialize me. Would he have done the same if I were a man? I don’t think so.

I work very hard for your attention. Musicians are in the pleasure business and in order to provide pleasure I must first crawl up your nasal passages into your brain to spray paint the inside of your skull. While I am in there I am going to tell you what I think, because that’s what I’m getting paid to do. I am not now nor ever going to shut up and sing. I am not just some girl with a guitar.

Just two more shows to go. If you’re around in Cambridge or Brooklyn today and tomorrow you should come. It’s going to be so weird to go home and attempt to reassimilate into my normal life. Thank you if you’ve been to a show already, if you listen to what I have to say, even and especially if you disagree with me. Thank you if you have bought merch or donated to the PCRF. I think anything we can do to make the world even ten cents safer, it’s our responsibility to do.

Below (can’t figure out how to add captions on my phone fml) are some friends with signs, Monkey, NO PAGING IN THEATER! See you soon I hope