always the getting grimiest

good morning ~

(click the link / neighbor’s cat departing to listen)

My Big Breakalways the getting grimiest

today’s track bangs surprisingly hard, I’m almost sad to see it go

many shows coming up in May - more on that next week probably - but did want to plug my wife’s opening of a solo show of sculptures in Montreal this saturday. will be sick! check da website for more info (and say what’s up if you’re around, I’m in town this week helping with install).

Coming up on five months of liberation from a steady day job and I find that I'm actually working more and doing more gigs than ever. The labor itself varies, for I have used both my body and my laptop, both my skills and my brawn, in my efforts to squeeze the blood of mortgage money from the stone of unemployment. Sometimes I am compensated for my cultural cache or my emotional insights - one musician's press release I drafted made him cry with the sensation of having been truly seen. Other times I am simply a body capable of comfortably lifting fifty pounds.

I had such a gig this week, one that arrived to me suddenly through the network of music-adjacent people who take on extra work. No one else in the chain of referrals was free to pack up a painter's studio on a Tuesday afternoon with 24-hours notice, but I had an appointment for an oil change in the morning and a job interview in the late afternoon, so indeed my presence on the job site could be purchased for thirty-five dollars an hour (which I noticed, by the way, is more than I made hourly at my last day job). It was pleasant enough work - putting a lifetime's worth of accumulated gesso and assorted pigments into plastic totes and labeling them clearly, banging apartment flatpack furniture with a metal mallet, carrying bags of trash down to the curb, all while half paying attention to the podcasts in my earbuds. The only real challenge was the dust - it powdered my clothes and made my face gritty. But I was called a lifesaver and invited into future work for cash and that suits me fine.

I had maybe an hour between the end of my day's labor and the beginning of my job interview and I wanted to freshen up. I did need a change of clothes - I had sweat through my first t-shirt and I wanted to smell good - but I also felt something more elemental. Why did it feel so incorrect, so disadvantageous to show up in clothes I had done actual work in? Did I not want my potential coworkers to think that I was capable of doing actual corporeal labor for a fair wage? I mulled this over as I approached the extremely bougie cafe I knew had bathrooms ample enough for a quick transformation. I bought a decaf iced americano and a lime mineral water, thinking that I could mix them together for a delightfully refreshing espresso tonic that wouldn't make me too jittery (I was correct, it was delicious). I figured this would allow me unquestioned access to the bathrooms. And I thought about that - I was spending eight dollars (including tip) to seem correct in the social space of that cafe, I was broadcasting my belonging there, my comfort. And I realized that when I crossed the threshold into that job interview, I wanted to appear correct in that space, too. I needed to project a rightness of value, an ease, that I deserved to be there, in consideration to be brought in on the team. And of course what I am describing is class.

Professionally I've always been something of a daywalker - caught between the have-to-wear-a-uniform people and the laptop jockeys of the world. At Lincoln Center I oversaw the people operating the theaters - the ticket sellers and takers, the projectionists - and enacted the designs of the programmers and the development directors. The class difference was stark - they worked upstairs, we worked downstairs, but sometimes I had to go up into the offices. At Rauschenberg I was the one who interfaced with the various blue collar folks - the elevator inspectors and the roofers. And you know that thing they say about artists, how they're class infiltrators, capable of holding space in any level of wealth - I've certainly felt that way at the weddings I've worked, the bride's father slipping a fat cash tip into the breast pocket of my shirt. I'm always somewhere in-between, always the getting grimiest of the people with salaries. The job I was preparing myself for was no different - I would need to appear both capable of actually doing shit and good at sending emails. Not too much of a stretch, fortunately, we'll see if it shakes out. That afternoon it felt like my gears were grinding - the shifter on my code switch transmission was jammed, the afternoon's cash work got too much dust in the clutch. But we got it up the hill okay in the end.

Avalon is old reliable, an actual saver of my life, and I think by some calculations might be the job I've held down the second longest in my adulthood - let's see, started doing sound there in 2022, so coming up on three years, yup, only my eight year stint at Lincoln Center has it beat. I love working there and do not feel that I need to do anything special in order to do the job - no class contortions, I come in as I am and can dress and speak in the ways I am naturally inspired to do those things. On occasion I do need to make a willful effort towards improving my mood, just to make the drive over palatable, but typically by the time I run into the first friendly face in the kitchen or behind the bar I feel like, as Madonna sang, I just got home. I turn on the speakers, I make nice with the bands, I run the cables, I dim the lights and turn on the disco ball when appropriate, I try to make the holy shamanic act of playing music in a darkened room a little more fulfilling for the people on the three inch stage, the people in the folding chairs. If cash money weren't an issue, I could live off of it richly - nourished deeply both in the soul and in the gut, tofu bowls inhaled above the mixing desk.

But what about you? How’s it going job wise? Do you find yourself having to do class drag in order to live? If you had to move suddenly, what would it feel like for someone else to come in and touch all your dust?