Hello, Kari - you won't remember me, I'm here via FB. We have mutual friends.
This whole thing - and thank you for 'taking the skin off it', and giving this debate space and articulacy - resembles so much of the music business as well. As a folksinger and songwriter, I see festivals and venues setting up spaces for the *young* emerging talent... by the time you're in your middle years, the silent tales goes, you're supposed to have already emerged - if you're any good.
'Best under 25', 'Top acts under 30' - the contests, the short-cuts, the promo one-offs - sometimes the whole premise of a music venue or festival stage tells me repeatedly, that I'm too old.
Bollocks. I'm finally old enough. I'm old enough to speak my mind, argue my case, see what's going on, care less how I look, and be less self-obsessed than I was when younger - so my writing has changed immensely, and in the last few years I've written more protest songs, political songs, and songs about social justice, climate change and energy issues than I ever did in my youth about roses and unicorns.
I just have to be prepared to sing them in settings of my own choosing and creation, because 'the scene' wants its females to be breathy-voiced young things in flippy dresses and long hair, singing tales from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
I used to sing pretty. I write and sing *powerful*, now. The scene doesn't like me, but whatever audiences I carve out for myself - they invariably do.
Sorry, got on a rant there, and wandered from your topic. Power to your elbow, and to the elbows of all you fine writers here. I've just placed an order with biblio.com for some books, every one of them written by a woman. Sorry, fellas. Blunt instrument and all that.
no subject
This whole thing - and thank you for 'taking the skin off it', and giving this debate space and articulacy - resembles so much of the music business as well. As a folksinger and songwriter, I see festivals and venues setting up spaces for the *young* emerging talent... by the time you're in your middle years, the silent tales goes, you're supposed to have already emerged - if you're any good.
'Best under 25', 'Top acts under 30' - the contests, the short-cuts, the promo one-offs - sometimes the whole premise of a music venue or festival stage tells me repeatedly, that I'm too old.
Bollocks. I'm finally old enough. I'm old enough to speak my mind, argue my case, see what's going on, care less how I look, and be less self-obsessed than I was when younger - so my writing has changed immensely, and in the last few years I've written more protest songs, political songs, and songs about social justice, climate change and energy issues than I ever did in my youth about roses and unicorns.
I just have to be prepared to sing them in settings of my own choosing and creation, because 'the scene' wants its females to be breathy-voiced young things in flippy dresses and long hair, singing tales from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
I used to sing pretty. I write and sing *powerful*, now. The scene doesn't like me, but whatever audiences I carve out for myself - they invariably do.
Sorry, got on a rant there, and wandered from your topic. Power to your elbow, and to the elbows of all you fine writers here. I've just placed an order with biblio.com for some books, every one of them written by a woman. Sorry, fellas. Blunt instrument and all that.
Talis Kimberley