I suppose you could say I am an "outsider" musician. I do some art too but I am very amateur. I have a friend who works in the mental health field, one of the nicer ones in that field, who also plays some music with me, and he does not like the outsider term and tells me to say I am an "insider" so sometimes I say I do "outsider/insider" music to compromise.
I am so called craxy and being open about it lately because I, like so many others with these labels, have experienced a lot of injustice. I am just lately in life getting more involved in the mad pride movement, a growing human and civil rights movement. I don't only write songs with mentally ill labeled people, I write with people all over the world, but I do write with many mad pride activists. We have an e-album on Last.fm for fundraising for mad pride, both for MindFreedom and The Icarus Project. It is called "Icarus." By the way, I spell craxy with an "x" after a woman in the mad pride movement named Xenobia who also wrote the song "Spiny Grrl" with me on the Icarus e-album on Last. Fm. It feels better to say it with an "x."
I don't like being open all the time. It is painful. Sometimes I have been attacked for it. I get misunderstood a lot. I am awkward with social interactions lately in my life, even online sometimes.
I consider myself sort of a street musician on the information highway. I do a lot of free music but would gladly accept donations, like patrons of the arts or something. I would love to make a living from music and art, because I am living on disability and to it's not enough to live on. I go through cycles. I have supposedly bipolar and PTSD but these diagnostic labels are very limiting. I need the health care not only for the mental stuff but I am also pretty disabled now by physical illness. Too much of it. I don't have it as bad as some, but bad enough. I think a lot of mentally ill labeled people get sick a lot too. The stress and hard livings so many of us have causes the immune system to break down.
I am lucky lately that I can go to the Integrative Medicine clinic started by Doctor Weil, a very wonderful naturopath. It is being covered on my health plan. They are very helpful. I do a mix of natural and conventional medicine for both mind and body and they are very helpful with this. I had been neglected in health care a lot. Sometimes it is because of my mental illness label too.
It is like no one takes anything you say about your body or anything seriously once they know you have the mental illness label. It is so frustrating. I know a guy who bled internally in the mental hospital for a month from a broken back, and was ignored and neglected. There are so many lawsuits waiting to happen in every direction in the mental hell system, right and left, so many human rights violations, it is a big mess. It needs major reform, maybe not even reform, maybe the whole thing needs to be dismantled. We need support and some help sometimes, but not this mess, not this oppression.
I sing a lot about injustice. I complain a lot. I should get paid to be a professional complainer. I won't shut up, though, until things change. I am a shy person too, so it is sort of hard.
I used to not be so shy. I am painfully shy and awkward with people. But I used to do theater, musical theater, sometimes in front of an audience of up to 1,000 people. Now I don't perform anymore. I used to be in some bands. I was in a band that used to be compared to The Fugs called Barely Bipedal, established by James Jordan. They are still going, I think. They were all a big influence on me. It was a lot more experimental than the music I do now, though I am working with a couple of musicians who also were in Barely Bipedal.
I do music with three Erics, by the way, so don't be confused. I work with Eric Dahlman, Eric Royer and Eric Baldoni, all very talented Erics who are lately adding on to some of my solo pieces and dramatically improving them. These songs are available on Last.Fm as "Project Bluebird with the Erics." More songs are going to be added onto that one soon. There are about 6 e-albums on Last.fm for free download right now.
We may do one CD, we are not sure yet. I like free stuff. But we are considering maybe doing one CD with this one label that treats artists well. I am not sure yet. I am waiting to hear back from them again actually. They had seemed interested. I like to do free stuff though, and I will always have some free music out there for download.
I keep saying "we," well the thing is, Project Bluebird is not at all all about me. It is a very collaborative project where I write songs with people all around the world. It can be draining at times, keeping track of everything, but it was all worth it and still is. I have not played music lately because I am feeling sick. I have fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue and one doctor said I have chronic epstein barr but this is up in the air. I have other issues too and it could take an encylopedia to list them all. Also, my voice is sort of hoarse from a cold. But lately I can make a few music videos. So I do some of those in the meantime. I do music videos for my own music and also for friends' music. I also feature some friends' art. These are both on and offline friends that I work with.
I also write. I got my degree in creative writing at the University of Arizona. I started out in theater then went into that. I love theater but I can't do it anymore. I maybe can write for it, who knows. I don't know really where to post my poems. I do have some bad ones I put up here and there that I cringe about, but some of them are OK.
By the way, none of this music and art would be possible without the generous assistance of my dear friend, Daniel Brudno, who helps me with everything just about, especially when I am too sick to drive or get around. He gets groceries for me, he helps me clean. Sometimes I get too weak to do stuff. Dan, who is a great flamenco guitarist and photographer himself, helps me with so much and I just wanted to thank him here.
Major poets involved with this project are Lizzie Woolfolk, Eisy Murphy, Loree Jo Tipmore, Terry McLain, Mike Loghry, Joseph Lima, Mike Welch, Andrew Buckle, Ramblingvine, Piotr Kolasinski, Neal Bilbrey and Nancy Pontius and many other writers from around the world.
My Review:
I met Nancy through the social media network site, StumbleUpon, and have been deeply impressed with both her music and her art since I first laid eyes on one of her music videos from her YouTube channel. Nancy creates and presents music combined with images from such a depth of meaning and concept, and that reflects some of the otherwise imperceptible aspects of reality, I am often in awe when I see or hear her work. Nancy has the courage to show us, the viewer, characteristics of the real world that otherwise may go unnoticed or ignored. Her work stems from a wide variety of standpoints: here the political realm, there the natural realm; here the intangible, there the subconsciousness. I am talking about talent here, friends. One of the rare breed. Nancy edits and produces her own music videos (see examples following this review and more on her YouTube channel here), and often her music videos either feature her own art or another's artwork. I am at a loss of words to describe Nancy's music, because I am not sure of a sufficient comparison, as Nancy's music strikes me as unique and deserving of its own genre. Without a doubt, Nancy's music touches deeply within whomever listens, her music videos are more of a journey than just watching, like peering through a window or portal. It's what I like most about Nancy's music. I often work while having one of Nancy's videos or music tracks playing in the background because the music is soothing and sultry to the ears and consciousness (in fact, I'm listening to her newest music video, Animus Invidious for the umpteenth time as I write this review!). Nancy also creates art. And does she ever! She has a flick photostream here, and her fractal work just blows me away every time I see her newest and latest work. Nancy accomplishes fractals that I have never been able to do! You can see some examples of her artwork following this review and more on her flickr photostream. It is a joy and honor to feature Nancy this month because she brings to all aspects of her creativity, her generosity, her kindness, her peaceful demeanor, and her ability to See the world and then to represent it to the rest of us so that we, too, can witness.
Nancy also has a MySpace page here (how about dropping her a friend request?), and be sure to give her tracks a listen at Last.Fm (download if you like them!), watch and be carried away by her music videos at YouTube (rate 5 stars and then why not subscribe to her channel?), and peer into her digital windows at Flickr (the perfect chance to leave Nancy and comment and tell her how much you like her work).
