"Nice camera, you with someone in the band?"

My insecurities are back! Thanks bourgeoning writing career 🥺

As a new-ish parent it’s rare that I’m outside at night. If I am, I’m paying for the sweet release of night air. With a sitter at home my mind leaps in circles always doodling math scenarios… (Ok, this beer is $8, and if I have two in an hour, which the sitter charges $15 per, it’s really about $15.50 a beer, so I think that’s a good deal. If I order more food it gets cheaper… garçon!)

But, better than sitting at a bar trying to justify $20 beers (I forgot tip!), and a husband willing to hang at home, I’ve started to take long aimless walks around my neighborhood.

I forgot how much I miss wandering in that blue hour, which needles on blackness. Local kiddos are in bed, dogs have been walked, people are for the most part, in their homes. I hope that no one sees me, craning my neck to peer into their yellow windows, box-cut into the brick. I don’t think I’m alone in admitting that these little vignettes of other people’s lives lends me some sort of comfort. Especially after a trying day, I can escape into another world, even if for a split second. The first rendition of reality tv, distilled from quick glances like these.

The feeling swells when I round the corner on my favorite homes, my dream homes. The handful that boast personality, charm, and effortless care. Gardens with rose bush trellises and creeping lavender along the curb. Black shutters on white wood panes. Built-in bookcases. Paintings in gold-leaf frames. I stand outside trying not to picture myself inside. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor … or something. Even though the last time I uttered those words back to a priest, Bill Clinton was president, they cling to my mind uninvited.

—

Last week, I pitched my memoir to an agent in an unconventional way. The event was organized by writer’s association here in Maine — so yes, you pay for it. A bit of a privileged way into an already “closed-gate” publishing world. It was overall, a good experience because in the weeks leading up, I dove deep into the query letter process. The themes of my memoir became more apparent, and I learned a lot about the business side of writing. Then my fifteen minutes came and went. In this short time span, not only do you give your pitch, you also receive a couple verbal notes on your query letter. The agent gave me a few suggestions on my manuscript submission (5 pages), and then it was over. It went by so fast, I had to think twice if I imagined the whole thing. It doesn’t help that in my case, the entirety of it existed in those 15 minutes. It began, it ended. There is no follow up email from the agent. No book offer. You move on.

Something so intense happened to me after. A feeling that I can only describe as a hollowing, came in waves, not unlike contractions. I am coming to terms that this just might be the emotion that greets writers after a pitch or presentation. I wonder if my 10+ years of working in photography, and all those immediate “oohs!” and “ahhs!”, has softened me.

You hear it in so many interviews with successful entrepreneurs, creators, writers, actors, you name it. They struggle, they struggle some more, they get a little break, they question everything and almost quit, and then… boom! They make it. As a society we used to concentrate on the boom. Books like The Secret had us making collages that centered around the boom. Today, I’m noticing we’re all about the work, the grind. How many new entrepreneurs do you know that love to tout how busy they all are? Working late, overtime, weekends. Burnout is cool again because we’re building our dreams people!

I don’t know about either approach (I am guilty of both). I don’t care how beautifully designed they are, posters that tell me to work hard and be nice to people makes me just want to coast on what laurels I have, be an asshole, and see what falls into my lap. That seems like a life without much stress, and isn’t it that what’s killing us anyways?

Walking in my neighborhood, I wonder how many of the homes I covet, have families inside that are complaining about their kitchen being old? How many of them are not even perusing through their beautiful built-in bookcases, but are in instead, on their laptops looking for their next dream home?

Ian and I took our time in dating, in getting married, in having a child. We didn’t exit college with a grad school in mind or even a job lined up. We drove a van around Europe. We tended bars. Ian was a seasonnaire in Switzerland. I interned at magazines for subway fare. I lived off garage sales, tips, shitty beer, and concert tickets for most of my 20s. A desire to own a home or start investing, did not hit us until later in life.

Although our way of life is not uncommon, it was made out to be by select friends and family that surrounded us. I can’t tell you how many times that I’ve heard that “X arts degree doesn’t mean shit unless you become a professor.” That drove me to pursue photography harder than ever. It still does. Each day I cash a check, I dance a little fuck-you-jig to anyone who feeds this tired starving artist stereotype.

But then, that damn Pitch happened.

It’s like I had built up a booby-trapped moat around my photography career, but didn’t spend enough time contemplating what coping mechanisms were in place for my writing one. I have been throwing myself at workshops, and submitting ideas to magazines. I’m starting a publication with some friends, and yet, despite all these movements, I still feel so… inadequate.

This feeling used to happen to me early on in my photography career. Especially since my first gigs were on red carpets (less fun than you think), and covering live music (really, really fun). In almost every photo pit or press pile, I’d encounter a man at least 15 years my senior who would inevitably stare at my camera for a few moments before leaning in close and asking me all the details of my gear. Even though they knew, they asked anyways, throwing numbers at me like an over-caffeinated high school math teacher. (For context, I usually only had three pieces of gear: an old Rebel I inherited from a friend, a 50mm 1.8, and the cheapest flash on the market. If you’re not a photographer, this is sort of equivalent to wearing shitty running shoes to a marathon. It’s going to take a lot more effort to finish.)

And then sometimes, it doesn’t matter what camera you have... Dan Mangan singing on a banquet table at the Polaris Music Prize, 2010.

To get over my insecurities, while their expensive telephotos swung over my shoulders, I became more outgoing. I got closer to the bands. I only had a 50mm 1.8 for crying out loud, I had to. I started to worry less about my gear, and more about who I’d meet after the set was over. Who was their manager? Did they need promo shots? Did anyone want whiskey shots?

Frequenting the same venues, bars, and festivals, some of these men became nice. Some even friends. But with others, I could sense disdain. After questioning my gear, the next question was some form of “are you dating anyone in the band?” As much as the teenager in me wishes that were true (and it was technically true for a few months), it always clipped my legs from under me. I managed to swerve out of the boring conversations about depth of field, but always stepped right back into the trope that plagues so many women in the entertainment industry: That we’re here to show the boys a good time, and maybe get them some great photos along the way.

Writer Kate Masewich and I challenged The Black Lips to a shotgun contest right before our interview. Whether it came from fear or not, controlling the power narrative between journalist and subject became important to me.

I fail to mention the numerous, and extremely talented women in my field. The pits felt male heavy to me because I was always so hyper-aware of them. But pounding the pavement even harder, were the women. Dodging crowd-surfing lead singers, confetti canons, tossed beer cans, and stupid questions, we were everywhere. We were foxes in a rabid henhouse, trying to get the shots and come out relatively unscathed. I always wondered if we were more agile because of something in our DNA, but really it was all about survival.

—

This is really all to say, that I’m trying to find a connection to where my confidence flourished in photography and where it’s failing in writing. I don’t have an answer to this yet, because that bridge is not even in my view. The photo pit for writers is such a different landscape. I can’t barge into a workshop with a beer in my back pocket and ask who the fucking manager is. The superficial aura of “the writer” is in a way, everything I tried slough off me all those years fighting a male dominated industry. The last five or so writer’s groups I’ve been in, have been filled with subdued, intelligent, women who speak “sweetly” (even if you know there’s a coded passive aggressiveness to it all). I look at them sometimes in the same way the male photographers might have looked at me. In the way.

I do wonder what shape and form this pivot will take in my writing career. Will it finally be a magazine accepting a story idea of mine? Will a literary journal publish an essay? Will I get a fellowship? Will an editor scoop me up and help carve something pretty from my rudimentary drafts? I can’t help but notice all of these happenings are from external sources — writers are taught to sit and wait around for a knight to pluck them from insulated obscurity. Is this narrative true? Does it even matter? Do I just need to work hard and be nice after all?

—

When I walk by my dream homes in the daylight, a different feeling comes over me. I see cracks in the foundation and think about the costs involved in a repair. I look at an older woman bent over her garden plucking weeds out with one hand, the other soothing her lower back. I see unused pools and empty driveways, parents off to work all day to afford the houses they rarely set foot in.

When I return to my front door, I see all of these things tenfold, my wallet leaks at the sight of it most days. As writer and photographers we’re taught to observe everything, take it all in, but sometimes it just becomes too much. Is it so bad that I want to only see my house from the outside at the blue hour? For now, I think that’s the mantra I’ll hang above my desk as motivation. Wait for the warm yellow lamps to turn on before you come home. Bask in it. And when someone walks by, smile your dream home smile and wave.