Heather conversates with Vintage painting curator Rob Delamater, hora motivator Jill Slater, Anthony Marshall, creator of pioneering hip hop showcase and MTV show Lyricist Lounge (Biggie Smalls, Slick Rick, Mos Def + Sean “Puffy†Combs) and the people formerly known as the audience.
Heather conversates with Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, Dave Chappelle opener W. Kamau Bell, celebrated psychologist Dr Lillian Rubin (The Transcendent Child) and the people formerly known as the audience.
Listen to the mp3 of the entire show (90 min)
Watch the show (5 Min)How does one become self-made? Guests: Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, Dave Chappelle opener W. Kamau Bell and celebrated psychologist, activist and painter Dr Lillian Rubin (The Transcendent Child).
Photo credit: Heather Champ
Left to right: Betsy Salkind, Derek Powazek, me (HG) and Michelle Tea.
We moved the show to a bigger room because some folks got turned away last month and then we sold out Gallanter Hall. It was another great show last Friday. There was a great, diverse crowd (it may have been the first show at the JCCSF to draw both Jewish grandparents and a drag queen) and we ate glazed lemon tea cake and brownies made by my sweetie and Lanya from the audience.
Betsy announced that she was there to represent the “con” position (oh it’s hard to convey the irony in a text blog post). She followed up with dozens of hilarious insights about the difficulty of having intimacy and the genuine possibility of one-way intimacy, especially during a sexy dream about an acquaintance who refused to acknowledge in waking life what her body remembered as true.
Michelle Tea read from her new novel Rose of No Man’s Land and had her own anecdotes about the odd one-way intimacy that comes from performing and writing intimate details about ones life. She distinguished between physical intimacy in sex work which is real enough, but that renting that didn’t mean you the person providing it was actually going to be present. She talked about being loved for a day by love artist Kathy Izzo and what a difference it made to her day, knowing she was loved as she worked in a book shop.
Derek observed that human beings are “intimacy machines,” that we “can’t help it” and will use any tool we create to be intimate or “get laid.” This was true with the telephone which has become invisible to us and it is now true with the Net. He noted that the ideas now of a computer not connected to the network was an odd one. Does this mean that we not only end up using all technologies to connect but are somehow driven to create them in order to have intimacy?
The banter was so quick and clever that I really found myself stretching to keep on top of it which was a delightful feeling. It was conversation as jam session, complete with a timely reflective pauses from audience members. Steve shared how intimate death is, having been in the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus during the height of the AIDS epidemic in the city, and how every “dropped their shit” and “got real” with each other because the loss around them. Another audience member advised that she was able to have more intimacy when she started listening to friends without thinking about her own ideas in her own mind when friends were speaking, but giving her entire attention to regarding the friend. I asked her how she noticed that she wasn’t really doing this before and she said ” I has to ask people to repeat themselves a lot.”
I’m wondering now. Is this kind of mutual attention and intimacy the same thing as prayer?
Audio podcast of the whole show 80 minute show and video highlights to come shortly. Do you want to see the whole show streamed in video? Let me know if you can help that happen.
After the show: Caterina, me and my sweetie Stacey sandwiched inbetween. Photo: Deb Schultz
We had a great sold out show last night. Many thanks to my great guests and audience for the conversation. Self-made is a rich topic and there’s so much more to it that we could get into last night. Flickr’s Caterina Fake discussed her self-made path as influenced by a mix of her Phillipino immigrant mother’s ambition for her and an inability to stay committed to things that didn’t interest her. A combination of getting fired and being passionate about new things kept moving her forward in life. It was only when her company hadn’t succeeded financially with their clever, postmodern online endeavor Game Never Ending “just enough fuel in the tank” to get something out, that Flickr was born.
Lillian Rubin observed that timing, luck and the larger social movements are an enormous part of success and being self-mad. For example, the Web came along at a time that made a huge difference for Caterina who had already been through many jobs and careers as a painter, Wall Street numbers cruncher and dive shop clerk in land-locked Arkansas. Caterina laughingly agreed that she hadn’t stayed up nights as a kid dreaming about creating the world’s leading photo-sharing site.
Lillian had so many insights that you’ll have to wait for the podcast to hear it all, but she was able to draw sustainable choices to “living in reality” (which often meant compromise without entirely sacrificing what makes you happy). She also made many astute connections between our opportunities and the social movements that created them (ie. working part-time or 40 hours a week because of the movement to create a 40-hour work week; her own academic possibilities opened because of the women’s movement, Kamau’s opportunities opened because black comedy wasn’t always available to more than a black audience. In fact Eddie Cantor and Al Jolson used to do it in blackface. To which I quipped, “In other words it took Jews to do black comedy? Now that Kamau’s here at the JCC maybe we’ve come full-circle). Lillian warned against the supporting the mythical belief that just anyone in America can make it “from the Bronx ghettoes to Nob Hill” as she had, since that just wasn’t a realistic substitute for social policy or a community committed to a sustainable life for everyone. Everyone does not have the same psychological resources and external resources and opportunities available to them. Her book The Transcendent Child was mentioned, which I highly recommend. It explains why some people come out of traumatic situations and achieve “success” and others “fall by the wayside.” One element of this is often disidentifying with ones own family.
Kamau’s set rocked and he talked about dropping out of the University of Pennsylvia, and making other choices in his life that would let him pursue stand-up. This is what Lillian likes to call “living in reality.” Josh in the audience wanted to know how to reconcile his passion for start-up companies, jazz piano and his solid and good but unstimulating job. Kamau: ” Are you good at jazz piano? I mean seriously?” The audience brought up so many good points that as Caterina observed afterwards at the bar, we should think about doing a series on this topic because it’s so rich. We talked about jobs that paid less but helped people be happier in their life, jobs that make you sick and thanks to Craig in the audience, working because of reponsibility. Craig says that he works 6 days a week and he never gets sick as a response to others in the room who believe that many are worn down by the work they do. Responsibility and duty to others and one’s own passion and internal path. This is a topic I’d like to be able to get into more. There’s financial responsibility to family and others as Craig pointed out and then there’s a deep motional and psychological sense of responsibility to family as Caterina, Deb Schulz, Judith and others pointed out at the bar after.
I’ve always wanted to know : where are all the hero’s journey stories about girls and women? Ok there’s The Wizard of Oz and Phillip Pullman‘s Dark Materials Trilogy. But these heroines are orphaned (my childhood fantasy game, now that’s a show in itself). So often women and girls are afraid to become oursleves if we feel it will hurt our families. So we either close down or try to bring everyone with us.
The podcast is coming soon. Please continue the conversation and comment away.
credit: Scott Beale
I’m Heather Gold a writer, performing artist and speaker who makes connections between ideas and people on stage, page, and screen.
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