becoming a dog (person)
& KISS OFF KISS #microgrant recipients announced
happy new year to you all!
probably like you, i feel a little pando-shellshocked, so i am appropriately wary of wishing anything for the future. still, i love a new year! so… may your 2022 be better than 2021?!?!? even just a tiny bit better??!??!? is that too much to ask?!??!?
i am so pleased to announce that *you all* raised enough money through the Kiss Off Kiss “Pay What You Can” project to give away… 12 #microgrants!! the nominations y’all sent in were truly heartwarming, and the joy of giving away money to folks who were not expecting it is a satisfaction that i hope you all will know sometime. and it was so fun! you can read all about the recipients and see other stats from the project here. people have been praising and congratulating me for this effort, but i really did not do anything other than facilitate some joy and mutual aid. thank *you* for giving me this opportunity!! and… i am thinking of making this a yearly effort. what do you think?
ICYMI my anti-holiday album “F*ck That!” turned 10 this xmas so i did a low-key christmas morning sing-a-long on facebook. thanks to everyone who joined, and of course if you haven’t watched you can here.
now, on to the good stuff, this month’s essay:
if you did watch the sing-a-long, you will have met my newest family member… carl richard marx, my (now almost) 12 week old pup.
i have wanted a dog for many many years, but a combination of my job, my relationship statuses, and my housing situation made it impossible despite my fervent longings. i have spent countless therapy sessions over many years talking about this. my friends that have dogs know that i truly adore them. you know from my instagram that i happily dog sit. still, for all of the above reasons, it seemed like having my own dog was going to stay a wish unfulfilled.
but this fall, deep in the throes of a frustrating album campaign, i had a dream, the jist of which can be summed up this way: there’s got to be more to living than this, i am going to change my life and get a dog. the life changes would need to be several and significant (and now having a dog, more than i could have anticipated) but i set to work. i was able to negotiate something new in my housing situation. i decided i had enough savings to not work the significant amount of time necessary to really raise a pup on my own. after all, what are your savings for but big, beautiful things??
i don’t know if we classify this moment as Second Pando or Fourth Pando or WTF Pando, but i was not alone this fall in trying to find a dog. it was not easy! finally i did locate one and the next weeks were a time of anticipation, preparation, day-dreaming, soliciting advice, internet surfing, and trips to pet stores where i would wander the aisles, just enjoying the colors and shapes of everything that dogs could have. i also discovered how much i deeply love discarded animal parts. sorry vegans! i bought this theoretical dog an antler and some dried beef trachea in advance. i perused the preserved hooves but ultimately passed.
if you were with me on any of my fall travels, you knew all this. it’s all i talked about. i checked the website, instagram, and facebook of where my dog was coming from literally 10s of times a day. i stared longingly at their social media videos and pictures of families taking home their pups. someday it would be me!!
in mid-november, i got the confirmation that i could pick up my dog just before christmas. he would be 10 weeks old, and it turned out… WE HAVE THE SAME BIRTHDAY. so while i spent october 15 eating ice-cream cake and watching football alone in a northern virginia hotel room (don’t feel sorry for me, this is my happy place), carl richard marx was being born. the coincidence is profoundly cosmic to me. despite our 44 year age difference, we are like beings on the same cycle.
now that carl is here, i find myself changing in more ways than my dream or even fellow-dog people’s offered wisdom could have predicted. there is a certain extremely primal part of my brain that has been activated. it is not the part that loves or cares for another being, though that part is activated too but i was already familiar with it from my intimate partnerships. it is the part of me that is animal. it is wordless and attuned to body language and eye contact. it is a quiet place in my mind that feels elemental. i am aware of my own fur and the way i like to run fast. it is the ecstatic joy of a branch being dragged along the ground and a chicken that needs chasing. it is playful in a way that doesn’t include puns about the proletariat or 90’s power ballads (though i do still amuse my outer brain with these things) (hold on to the night! hold on to the mammaries!). maybe i’m falling short in describing it because it is not meant to be described.
i have a few friends that have both dogs and kids, and they have all said having a pup is harder. i already felt superior for not having kids, so i don’t need any additional validation. i joke! but this part of me that is animal, that i am happily unable to articulate, doesn’t care what’s harder, or whether the work or money are “worth it”. having carl just is and that’s all i need to know.
i do hope someday that carl is able to come with me on the road. you would love him. he’s big and curious and very excited to meet new people. he is unperturbed by larger dogs and electric fences. i think he’d probably dig being at a show - all those new smells and happy sounds. i am sure the line to rub his belly, which is his favorite thing ever, would be even longer than the line for music and tshirts.
in the meantime, he’ll be making some appearances on my social media, but my professional self is mostly going to be quiet. i am still a musician, of course, but i am also becoming a dog.
x erin
PS: i know you want some #carlcontent, so here you go!
here is when we had just met…
here is #youngsir awaiting instruction…
here is his stationary, courtesy of james! of james!…
¡ME GUSTA! : SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS
a german rockabilly band covered my anti-holiday anthem “Santa Is An Asshole” and it is wierd and glorious.
the submerged wreck of the clotilda, the last ship to carry enslaved africans to america, is turning out to yield even more history than previously thought. as a side note, i highly recommend zora neale hurston’s 1927 ethnography of the last surviving member of that terrible cargo, barracoon.
the bonkers story of how the rosetta stone was decoded.
a fascinating documentary of one of my favorite visual artists & activists working today, JR. you’ll remember he’s the person that constructed the giant child’s head peering over the US/Mexico border wall.
the best fonts of 2021. the only good thing that might have come out of this hell-fire year. nerd it out, MFckers!
some sea slugs dump their bodies and crawl around as heads only until they can grow new ones. jealous!!
2022 IN-PERSON SHOWS
April 30 - Portland OR
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
May 1 - Seattle WA
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
830PM 530PM
May 2 - San Francisco CA
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
May 4 - Highland Park CA
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
May 5 - San Diego CA
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
May 6 - Phoenix AZ
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
May 7 - Santa Fe NM
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
May 9 - Boulder CO
appearing as The Weather with Welcome To Night Vale
TICKETS
***
Feb 11 - 27 - Merced CA
Miss You Like Hell at Playhouse Merced
TICKETS
Feb 24 - 27 - Allentown PA
Miss You Like Hell at Muhlenberg College
TICKETS
Jun 1 - Jul 17 - Fayetteville AR
Miss You Like Hell at Theatre Squared
TICKETS
If you have further questions or concerns about COVID protocols, please contact the venues directly.
Reminder, Erin does not appear in productions of Miss You Like Hell
