The Lady is a Marvel

Poised at the front of the queue I waited as the usher shifted her weight from her left to right foot and eyed me up and down for the fifteenth time. She knew I meant business. As more and more people filtered in through the door, the adrenaline started to rush into my veins and caused my face to get hot. None of these people would cut in front of me. No. Fucking. Way.

A pregnant woman teetered on her toes next to me, looking over my shoulder. I wrestled with my morality for a moment. No fetus was going to beat me down the stairs. It hadn't even bought a ticket, the cheeky fucker. The woman let out a frustrated breath and wrapped herself around her belly as if it were a parcel she were carrying and not a belly full of fluid with a person suspended in it. I rolled my eyes and created a tiny pocket in front of me and motioned for her to fill it. Of course I let the pregnant lady wait ahead of me. I'm not a monster.

Just then the usher unhooked the rope, and at last we were off. Everyone had to make the same decision, to run or to possibly spill our drinks. We all looked like adult egg-and-spoon contestants trying to contain the liquid in our glasses whilst we maintained a brisk pace down the stairs. Steve and I settled in some equally cold and uncomfortable seats at the front of the stage. I always get a seat at the front of the stage. That's why I show up early.

I had seen lady Rizo two times before. Once on a whim before I had ever heard of her, and then the last time for her Violet album launch. It's a fantastic album. You can listen here: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/artist/lady-rizo/id319457979 Last night I was unsure of what to expect. The first two shows were drastically different and this time she'd just finished her run at the Edinburgh festival and had recently completed a tour of Australia and New Zealand. Through my Twitter feed I followed her; inexplicably proud, as if I'd discovered her. And I had, as thousands of people are now discovering her. I wanted her to be as good as she was the first time I saw her. When I was totally absorbed in the glamor and the fun. For her to not have watered down her show too much, for it to be worth me nearly cutting off a pregnant woman and it was. It really, really was.

To say Lady Rizo is a delight would be like saying a perfectly chilled glass of vintage Dom Perignon was 'nice' and not 'utterly delicious.' She is a force majure of raw, visceral vocal skill, pure sexuality and unapologetic humour. Last night she added a denuded vulnerability I'd not seen before, and at times felt I shouldn't have been seeing, but I never even attempted to look away. It would be impossible. She is a bejeweled, disco princess of desire. She is somehow both vintage and current and you can't take your eyes off of her.

In the three times I've seen Lady Rizo, she has had varying musical accompaniment. From a full band, to just a guitar and a drum kit. The musicians she works with are impeccable. Their timing and their cohesion never falters. Last night she performed with just her cellist come guitarist, Yaine. He is her beautiful co-writer who at times appears to know what Lady Rizo is about to do before she does. His cello wept and rejoiced under Rizo's sensually dark, dripping vocals. At times, while watching them together I caught myself fantasizing that they were lovers. The intimacy between them feels more than musical and is insanely beautiful.

Last night's performance centered around her genesis as Lady Rizo. An angel and a devil were selected from the audience with much hilarity, and as her tale of romance and betrayal unfurled, mash ups of DeAngelo and the Carpenters surprised and thrilled us. The whole night she had us eating out of the palm of her hand, and occasionally her beautifully displayed cleavage.

The evolution of Lady Rizo's gowns continue to reveal her success. No longer the head-to-toe sequins, which upon closer inspection were damaged and patched multiple times. Last night's gowns looked as though they stepped right out of the Charles James exhibit in New York. The feather eyelashes were retired and it was an altogether very sophisticated Lady Rizo that stood before us. Her costume changes were as theatrical as they were inclusive and are all part of the fun. We in the audience were as invested in a boa made of ribbon as we were her melancholy and slightly manic rendition of  Amanda Palmer's 'I Google you.'

Once the show was over she sat in the back happily signing autographs with the enthusiasm of someone who still maybe can't believe people want them. I told her giddily that 'I really appreciate what you do.' To which she responded with a very sweet 'thank you for standing in line to tell me that' and then signed the tank top I bought at her last performance, her hooded eyes printed across my breasts. I hope people tell Lady Rizo that they appreciate what she does every night, but if they don't, the crowds she is drawing certainly convey that very important message.

If you live in London. please do yourself a massive favour and go and see her in this tiny, stuffy, incredibly intimate venue before she starts filling stadiums. The rest of the world, please look here to find her performing somewhere local to you. http://www.ladyrizo.com/calendar/

Not. For. You.

I didn't Google Jennifer Lawrence's tits today. A small piece of me wanted to; because I like to see nice tits. But I also really, really don't like looking at tits that people don't want me to see.

When an Irish and a French magazine posted topless photos of Kate Middleton on holiday awhile back I was disgusted. Those photos should not have been taken and certainly shouldn't have been published. The fact that those photos, taken under such voyeuristic circumstances actually sold magazines is so, so disappointing. If that was your girlfriend or wife that some stranger was photographing and then profiting from you'd be livid, but the desire to see the food source of young Prince George outweighed greater conscience. The response to these two publications which were most regurgitated was that 'she shouldn't have been topless then.'  She was a girl on holiday. We're all topless at some stage. It's not about those tits belonging to a princess, it's about them belonging to a person and our obsession with celebrity often forgets this crucial detail.

Celebrities like Jennifer Lawrence and Rhianna were today exposed by technology. Nude photos that they'd taken for personal use have been posted all over the internet. Photos that they may have thought were deleted, photos they took for themselves or for someone else, but most certainly not for me and you. Some may argue that stars like Rhianna, with her sexy videos and twerking leave little to the imagination anyway, but that's not really the point is it? Marketing your body and your persona is a choice. Having your body exposed to the world by creepy hackers is totally different. She wasn't asking for it.

The most upsetting thing for me is to read the commentary that 'if they took the photos, then they deserve this.' No they don't. These photos were stolen. These women are victims. This rape-culture bullshit is such a fucking cliche and I thought we were getting better, but it appears that victim-blame is alive and well. The fucker. 'If she was wearing that she deserved for it', right? No. Just because someone took some naked photos does not mean that you get to see them and comment on them and judge them and perv on them. If you have downloaded those photos today then shame on you.

I was listening to BBC Radio 2 today (try not to judge me) and there was a whole call-in segment where people could comment on this fiasco. What the great people of Britain were saying was pathetic. 'She looks great, so what's the problem?' This whole idea that a violation becomes less of a violation if it's in some backwards way complimentary is infuriating. Well yes, I'll tolerate you wanking over my image because at least it's enough to turn you on? No. The reality is that none of us should be discussing these photos because none of us should have seen them.

When we download and share these images we are committing a crime against these women. We are looking at bodies we should not be looking at. Like a peeping tom, downloading those images and looking at them is wrong. These women have reported this violation as a crime. If you are looking at these images you are a criminal and what you are saying is that your hard-on is more important than the person. You are disregarding the wishes of an actual person with feelings. These women are saying 'no'. They have said 'no' and there are still people downloading these images, that give no fucks and this is scary.

In this age where nothing is sacred and every thought is shared with everyone else it may be hard to believe that we do not deserve to see these photos. After all, we are people and we deserve all the stuff. But these photos were never intended to be seen by us. I implore you to please not click on the links, don't perpetuate this culture that 'because internet'. These women can't help the fact that they were hacked and violated, but we can help to not violate them further. 

The Big Six

It's been six days since I signed off of Facebook and here's the top six things that have changed in my life:

1. I think about what I say more
That's not to say I consider my words before opening my mouth...hopefully in 6 more days that will happen. However, when there is no immediate outlet for your thoughts you have to turn inward and think about where these thoughts are coming from, what they mean and how to use them constructively.

2. I take less photos
I have seen numerous hilarious things all over London in the past 6 days and eaten some fabulous food and photographed none of it. I'm just enjoying it and that has been a nice feeling.

3. People have to try harder to contact me
In the last 6 days I have gone out four nights or afternoons and not one of those dates was organized on Facebook. It's gooood! I'm using my phone again like an actual damn phone! Eureka!

4. I spend more time talking to my lovely husband
Instead of us both being on our phones, we are talking to each other. He's finally figured out that when he asks 'did you see on Facebook...?' the answer will really be 'no' and that he'll have to tell me what the funny thing was, and that's nice.

5. I'm spending more time on E-Bay
They say you normally replace one addiction with anther, so this was a natural progression. So far I have bought a neon pink kimono and some Pekinese dogs made of porcelain.

6. I have more time
Yes we just established that this extra time is being spent on E-Bay, but I'm planning on taking a screenwriting course and a Mindfulness course this month. I have so much more time. I'm yet to start using that to my advantage, but I'm confident I will.

Try it for a week and see what you discover. You really don't have anything to lose. All that bullshit you tell yourself about things being organized on Facebook that you will miss is really bullshit. If people want you there they will call you or text you. Fact.

You can still watch stuff on the internet. I still saw the farting remix of Anaconda without Facebook! The internet exists beyond the blue thumbs! Live, people! Live!

That said I may be back next week. I haven't decided yet, but for now I'm enjoying being totally retro and communicating with people and not profiles.

Face to Facebook

I'm 'bout to do something cray and give up Facebook.

As it stands I can only make this promise to myself for a week and then I'll have to see if I am still a person after seven whole days of no one 'liking' my photos or posts. Tomorrow begins the first of my seven 24-hour periods where I don't spray my verbal diarrhea in the bar that innocently asks 'What's on your mind?'

I've been thinking about this since I returned from Sri Lanka. Whilst away, my life became increasingly virtual. My interactions and my thoughts were shared through the medium of Instagram and Facebook and it felt normal. Now that I'm back in the land of free time and beer, I'm worried that I have nothing to say, or at least that I've forgotten how to say it. Am I capable of more than one thought at a time? Am I able to respond authentically to your words without a little blue thumb? Because that's just it. I feel that my dealings with other people are becoming less and less intimate and authentic. Yuck.

I'll still be writing. I hope that this exercise will improve my writing, because right now what I'm writing in my tiny text box is making me sad. I don't want to engage in a conversation about Ferguson or Israel on Facebook. I'm not interested in reading inspirational quotes that tell me how to live or how not to, as is usually the case. I don't want to be bombarded with images of people dumping buckets of ice on their heads or videos that play without my permission and without sound that me make me panic momentarily that I've gone deaf. I fucking hate that.

It's not that I don't want to talk to you. I do. Very much. But I want it to be a conversation. A conversation that not everyone can see or weigh in on. A conversation that doesn't creepily produce ads that are linked to our conversation. I'm curious to see how many of you will talk to me. How many will email me and start an actual correspondence that may result in me hearing your voice or seeing you. Facebook has made me so lazy. Why get on the train and meet for a coffee when we can catch up through our screens? Why go to the cinema together when we can each download the same film, watch it and then exchange notes via status updates? Why have dinner when it's easier to eat mindlessly in front of the TV and then get back on the internet.

I've justified for years that I needed Facebook because I'm so damn international, but I don't. It's a convenient excuse and maybe I'm just afraid that if I don't log on I'll be lonely. But I'm kinda lonely right now. I'm in a city with my best friends and a bazillion great things to do and I'm sat on my ass reading about the lives of people who I don't matter to.

I think what I worry about the most is that I won't see enough cat videos each day. How the hell am I going to cope with that? If you care to help me detox you can email me on kandykorn143@yahoo.co.uk or subscribe to my blog. I'll be posting here about my progress, and my failings. I look forward to our conversation. 

You've got your Zion Me...

Today I read a story about how a 90-year-old Jewish woman in Belgium was denied medical treatment due to her religion. The doctor refused to see her and instructed her to ‘Go to Gaza to be treated.’ In Belgium… That’s a fucking long way to travel, Doctor Douche. This highly educated imbecile later acknowledged his outburst and blamed it on an ‘emotional reaction’ he was having to the current Israel/Palestine conflict. Correct me if I’m wrong, but as the doctor actually instructed the woman to travel to Gaza he must have known that geographically she had not a damned thing to do with the current climate in the Middle East. Nothing to do with firing bullets or launching rockets…this man knew this logically, but he couldn’t understand it emotionally. This is a problem.

Earlier last week I wrote about how I was offended that the majority of news sources who were supporting Israel’s right to defend itself (as I do) were falling back on the lame argument that because the same people who are protesting against Israel may or may not have protested against other humanitarian atrocities like Darfur and Syria they were Anti-Semites. I call bullshit. There are better arguments than that, more accurate than that, and a journalist accusing those demonstrating against the humanitarian crisis in Israel of being Anti-Semitic is ludicrous. But people demonstrating against Jews is a different story.

Fact. I am a Jew. Fact. I am not an Israeli, nor do I live in Israel. Not all Israelis are Jews, not all Jews are Israelis. This is a truth that cannot be denied. I am linked to Israel by religion, but so are Christians, Catholics and Muslims. Fact. I do not support the Israeli occupation of Palestine. 2005 blah, blah, blah anywhere else in the world we would see this as colonialism and occupation. It doesn’t make it right just because they keep trying to kill each other. It doesn’t make it right just because it’s in a part of the world that few have visited and even fewer understand. I don’t get it either. Not a clue.

I can be Jewish and I can be pro a two state solution. I can be a Jew and want you to stop killing people. These two things are not mutually exclusive. So if you refuse to treat me at your hospital because you watched the news last night and were unhappy with a terrible situation in a whole other country which is neither sanctioned nor approved by me, then yes, you Dr. Douchebag have become an Anti-Semite. If you put a sign on the door of your cafe that says ‘Dogs allowed, Jews are not’, you, bastardo are an Anti-Semite. The Israel/Palestine conflict did not create this poison. For the people doing these things so close to home, that poison that has always been there; fermenting, rotting and now it’s starting to seep out. And now I can smell it.   

When a B&B in the UK refused to let a gay couple stay the night at their establishment, like any good Brit I wrote a strongly worded letter. I got pissed off and I wondered who the hell raised those people? Those hateful, miserable assholes? I stood in solidarity with my friends and agreed that that is not how you treat people. I signed a petition to boycott their establishment and I posted my disgust on Facebook. As per usual, I never left anyone doubting exactly how I felt about that situation. When Russia was/is hunting gays in the streets I protested, I fumed, I posted articles and raised awareness. I boycotted products from China for three years until South Sudan became independent and China stopped sending weapons to fund the genocide there. And no one is looking for a pat on the back...However, today I saw the post about the Belgian doctor on Facebook three times. All posted by Jewish friends all with comments made by their Jewish friends. It’s starting to feel a bit lonely out here, guys.

You can hate violence and policy and war without hating me. Do I think that anyone who opposes the war is Anti-Semitic? No I certainly do not. Do I think that anyone who does not speak up and oppose Anti-Semitism is an Anti-Semite? No. But it does hurt. Many of you whose voices boom for peace and cry out for a stop to the war are very quiet when in your own backyard I possibly wouldn’t be seen by a doctor or would have my place of worship burned to the ground, not for fighting and killing children, but just for existing. Just for having Jewish parents and having had a Bat-Mitzvah. I would stand with you. I have stood with you.

I am not this conflict. Neither are you. We are so much more than that and if we lose sight of this then I’m afraid we’re all doomed. 

Once

I went to Israel once

But before I went I was quizzed by those who would fly me there
Torah portions needed explaining because at 26 I could have been anyone
At 26 I wasn’t just free to board and for the first time in my whole life
I had to explain myself, convince someone else that I was safe
Safe enough to be let on the plane to go there, to her

I went to Israel once and I saw the lines
On her face they were deep and curved, whittled from suffering mouths,
they were rivers with no water
But on her streets I saw nothing and I walked a lot of those streets
Too stupid to be afraid and too wild to know I was stupid I just put
one foot in front of the other as I smoked like the Israelis smoke
Like rockets smoke when they hit, but not just between lips
This smoke courts a different kind of cancer

I went to Israel once and I felt free
Not the kind of home of the brave shit, but like the wind shit
The kind where you might be prepared to die if you were asked to fight
But fighting doesn’t work and it hasn’t worked and it’s not working
Blue veins of division clogged with rubbish and with tents
Whose beds are slept in, but whose children want better beds, bunk beds
Not to hide under but to climb

I went to Israel once, but it was just once
So I can’t beat that drum or point my finger because
I only know how it felt and how it looked and what kind of beautiful voodoo
It did on my soul and how cocktails and falafel danced on my tongue
But now my tongue is steeped in bile that tastes like wax
and causes the juices from my jaw to run like tears run and
tear tracks down my face like desperate fingers twisted into claws
attached to hands pushing up soil from graves
So many graves, shallow and numerous
Streets full of them, them that carry bloodied children in their arms
Them that don’t build bomb shelters for their own

I went to Israel once and I would go back
I’d go back because that’s what we do
We keep going back and forth, but always back to where it all remains
To where the ghosts of our millions found the strength to finally give up
I use the word ‘we’, though in this seemingly eternal conflict I will pull no triggers
I will throw no grenades and I will never put on a helmet
But I will ‘we’ until I can no longer because I am a Jew and for that I will not be sorry
I will not defend this fighting and I will not be baited to debate
But I will feel every death, every ounce of blood spilled will be a little bit on my hands
Every rocket fired will be a little closer to my house and I am so fucking lucky
That I live here, that I get to live here
And that I went to Israel once

Answering a question that has no answer

People often ask me what it’s like to be away from Steve for so long. And the truth is…it’s not like anything. It just is.

I can’t compare how our relationship works to anything. It’s not like I’m away at war or at sea. It’s nothing as romantic as that. I’m just away. He’s just away from me, right now. To have a partner like Steve is what I imagine it feels like to be independently wealthy; I never really worry about much and I always feel secure. And as much as I’d like to credit blind luck with this, it’s really nothing to do with luck and all to do with him.

Sometimes people don’t understand me. It’s been that way my whole life and it’s clearly my problem, and something I work on every day, though at times I forget, become complacent and hurt someone’s feelings. I probably hurt Steve’s feelings a lot, but I’d never know it. Because hurting sometimes is just a part of loving me and it’s certainly not nice or fair. It just is.

When I got offered this job I never considered that I wouldn’t do it. I believe that two happy people make the best couples and if I went back to the job I had before this, I would be ok. We would be ok, but I wouldn’t be happy. That’s not to say that every day is like my birthday now, but much more often there are candles to blow out.

I don’t call as much as I should. I separate my year into pieces and portion them out methodically like vegetables on a child’s plate. I know I have time with Steve and time without Steve and that’s just how it is. I know I have time where I will never get what I want to eat for breakfast and then for that I will be rewarded with anything I want in a few months’ time. I always thought I had no patience. It turns out I do. It turns out I am a lot of things I thought I wasn't and I do a lot of things I thought I couldn't.

With every discovery I am a different form of myself. No more, no less, just different but the same. Ultimately showing yourself to someone is not a luxury afforded to all, and I know many who spend a great deal of time censoring themselves or polishing their corners until they bleed. I know people who bite their tongue so often it is now just a piece of meat in their mouth that they try to avoid. I used to bleed too, because the polishing never lasts and you have to keep at it. Eventually my corners would cut and I’d be back to where I started. I haven’t wasted time or energy on buffing my edges for many years, and though my flesh is not smooth and I do not feel particularly nice, I am very loved.

Mine and Steve’s story is not unique. We met and I loved him. He loved me back. Isn’t that how most love stories go? We rent a little flat and have no children. We have no pets and we have no plans. We are just navigating the changeable waters of intimacy, of companionship and of time. To say I love him never seems big enough, but it’s all the vocabulary I have.

So what’s it like to be away from my husband for six months of the year? It’s not like anything. It just is.