TWENTYTWENTYTWENTYTWO
Pisa, Italy April 22 2022
We played a small show in an old pornography movie theatre in Pisa city center last night. Of course Ben was into that shit in the most obnoxious way possible. The past year of our friendship and collaborative dynamic has been marked by a combative streak directly related to his views on sex and women. His brand of benign “pro sex” chauvinism is losing its charm and I’m not alone in thinking that..when PVT Chat came out Julia Fox refused to discuss the film publicly, Ben kept pestering her and she stuck her management on him and they basically told him, “40k, bitch.” Fair enough. If I were heading towards the A list, I wouldn’t want to promote an autofiction film where the most memorable scene features Peter Vack as an incel cranking the hog. If a rising tide carries all boats, it’s best to be selective about what vessels are in your immediate proximity. Master of Cum? Ms. Fox disagrees.
BODEGA has officially reached the final week of this punishing 8 week long European leg of tour. We’ve had less than 8 days off the whole run. My hands look like meat patties, they are red and swollen and blistered. We haven’t been in one place long enough for my body to be able to rest and replenish itself. I shed 11 pounds since we’ve been on the road despite the excessive boozing. I typically have a ravenous hunger, my mom used to joke that I had a tape worm inside of me, but I’ve lost my appetite. The hypervisibility of being on stage, being looked at and “worshipped” like some wretched idol, a glorified carnie, has made me want to disappear entirely. When I was a kid I read all the great rock n roll memoirs, all the biographies full of debauchery. The one thing they all talk about and actually get right is the euphoria of being on stage and face fucking a huge room full of people – the fascistic, unthinking mass led by the great Dionysian rockstars – but when you walk off stage you are helplessly alone. This disparity can be deadly, and it’s amplified tenfold if you’re a woman.
Tour is lonely, dirty, isolating and necessary if you want to make any money at all but this isn’t the ‘70s anymore. I’m broke despite my success and it seems that everyone gets paid before the band. Managers, bookers, sound guys, TMs, all of them. They get bread before the band gets bread. Streaming changed the game which makes money even more scarce for independent artists and for those of us lucky enough to be talked about, visibility is potent but fragmented and niche. Warhol said in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes but he was wrong here, too. In the present everyone is famous to 15 people (or a few thousand) and these tiny fiefdoms rarely pay substantial dividends. That the fame hungry mediocrities of our epoch claw each other’s eyes out and use each other like dish rags for clout that essentially amounts to breadcrumbs proves one thing and one thing alone: most of these mother fuckers were born filthy rich. They don’t really need the cash. I only have respect for the legit bag chasers. We are the most dignified people on earth.
The show last night was electric but only because I pissed Ben off in the process. After seven weeks on the road, the band has been worked to exhaustion. He kept wanting to add songs to the setlist while we were mid-show without ever considering how anyone else might feel about it. Our set was already 20+ songs long and I thought this was pig-headed, tyrant behavior, so I screamed “kiss my fucking ass, Hozie. I’m not playing that shit” or something like that and the crowd was amused and entertained. This humiliated him and questioned his patriarchal authority, the ungrateful daughter taking daddy down a peg. If he were more clever, he would’ve played up the erotic and quasi-pornographic aspects of my theatrics, but he’s never been a quick draw. He’s not used to being told no, especially not on stage, and he hates when he isn’t in control. His brain goes haywire which is satisfying to witness. It turns me on.
After the show, I told him to chill the fuck out and to think of it as Vanderpump Rules meets avant-pop art rock or whatever. He’s seething in the van today, but he’s smart enough to know that picking a fight with me won’t do him any favors.
All that aside, I’ve done the best work I’ve ever done on this tour. My performances and the corresponding critical/fan responses to what I’ve been putting forward have solidified my status as one of the most interesting artists on this scene. I’m buzzing, I’m aware and I’ve earned it. This has been a difficult dynamic to traverse within the group, if there is anything binding this band together it is our borderline megalomaniacal tendencies and shameless, ego-driven, lust for attention.
Last night after the gig I wandered alone through the streets of Pisa listening to the B-side of Bowie’s Low at 3AM with a bottle of red wine. In front of the leaning tower I snorted a fat line of Ketamine. It’s pretty mid (the tower, not the ket) and they really oversell the lean..it’s more of a minor tilt. I couldn’t remember if it’s one of the seven wonders or what direction the hotel was in…always forward, never straight.
En Route to Bologna, Italy April 23 2022
A review of the Pisa show came out. The critic referred to my onstage power struggle as “the bonus scene in the middle of the performance: the drummer’s smackdown.” Ben is thrilled.
Greenpoint, Brooklyn June 3 2022
I met up with Mike at Broken Land last night, we’ve hung out a couple times since i’ve been back from tour but hadn’t been able to really get into the nitty gritty gossiping that’s been a real life saver for the both of us. Mike has become one of my closest confidants since he moved up here from DC. It’s interesting because on paper he sounds like he was made in a lab specifically to piss me off. White, bourgeois, child of a guy who has “war crimes” written all over him, Lacanian, seemingly sympathetic to incels whereas I think they should be lined up and shot by an armed militia of geriatric leather dykes..I can go on and on, really. But in the flesh, I quite like him and our creative visions line up perfectly. He’s served as a much needed reminder to me that sons aren’t inescapably guilty of their father’s crimes. Nobody is set in stone, not even the son of an imperialist warhawk. I’ve always embodied flux, it was baked into every aspect of my upbringing and it’s been essential for my survival, but someone like Mike has to learn and relearn flux over and over again. The red flood, the eternal flux, the real movement of everything in its state of flow and dynamism…all of this is diametrically opposed to the white bourgeois imperialist values that were disciplined into him since the moment he took his first breath, the values that he is supposed to uphold and discipline into others. It’s the work of all great artists to undermine the dominant order of things, but the true challenge is to undermine it in a way that is always in service of the real movement, the eternal flux. That Mike is called to do that from where he’s standing is inspiring to me and it’s a desire we both share. Not everyone is called to do this type of thing, we have to keep our comrades close.
All that being said, Mike and I had a lot to catch up on. While I was on the road he started beefing with Peter Vack and Betsey Brown because he correctly called Betsey’s film Actors a mediocre minstrel show. That film has been a point of contention between me and Ben for the past 4 years (before it was even finished.) Having it all come to a head in this way is surreal and thrilling but it also puts me in a tense spot between the band, who is unequivocally on the side of Vack and my relationship with Crumps, who is obviously right.
While I was venting to Mike about my problems with the band and not wanting to go on a monster North American leg all summer long and my fears around potentially leaving the project at the top of my game, an old friend of mine from my professional theatre days interrupted our conversation. I hadn’t seen him since I left my position in the cast of Stomp to join BODEGA 4 years ago. He was singing my praises and vouching for my work and then he started telling us that he’s the music director on a major motion picture that is being produced and distributed by Amazon. He gathered the best dancers and musicians he knows to create the core performance ensemble for the film (he mentions that the ensemble includes a lifelong hero of mine, Michelle Dorrance). He offers me a position on the spot.
“We shoot June and July. Come to rehearsal Monday and your contract will be waiting. Be ready to dance and learn some difficult music.”
And just like that my whole life changed. Crumps was just as shocked as I was. Call it divine intervention..call it flux.