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A job, a gig and a hustle

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A job, a gig and a hustle

Category Archives: hustle

“When you say “I am_____…” meditations by poet Bill Lavender

15 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by DW in artists, gig, hustle, job, labor, New Orleans, people

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Bill Lavender, Xavier Review

To say that it is complicated to talk about work in America is an understatement. Work is an outsized religion, with equal numbers zealots and agnostics shouting about its ability to build character -or to ruin it.

That complication has been in my own life many times, when I took a particular (down?) turn in my work life so that I could honor a gig or a hustle that I had in mind, and watched employers, friends, and family furrow their brow when I told them what I had done.  But because I live in New Orleans, announcements of giving up a full-time job to pursue something less defined are usually met with understanding and even admiration. In way of appreciation, I began this particular blog to pay respect to the New Orleans ease around different work types and the often-necessary hustle.

One such person who personifies the glorious tangle of it all, refusing to comb the strands out in order to make it easier for others is my pal Bill Lavender who is (from my view) the multiple choice of poet, publisher, explainer, musician, builder, tinkerer, fisher, mediator, backyard griller, agreeable drinking/dining companion, kitchen helper, father,  cat-tender, back-up dog walker, interested grandfather, designer/part-owner of my favorite backyard pool and screened porch, full-time partner to writer/professor Nancy Dixon. Nancy is, by the way, another who fully understands and has lived the job, gig, and hustle life.  I’d even say that because she lived it for so long, with such honesty, she interprets life with far more intuition than either Bill or I or most people can. I know without a doubt that most of her circle deeply respect her ability to suss out any situation and that skill is clearly derived from a life lived rather than a workplace taught. I’d like to write more about her some day but she is a much bigger presence in my life and harder for me to observe without a little awe and a great deal of gratitude.

I write about Bill here because I returned today to a piece about his life as a poet that he had written a few years back. I have read this piece maybe a dozen times already, often finding  one or two paragraphs that I wanted to reread, or longer passages so I could accurately quote them to friends. This is one such passage that charmed me:

For me, poetry (as a vocation, an identity, a life’s work, an obsession) did not grow out of English class, but out of passing notes at the back of it, handing around scraps of paper that one would get one in trouble if the teacher saw.

Throughout the piece, he puzzles over the role of language, truth, other people, emotion, and the world to his poetry.  He shares the struggle in keeping poetry in his life, which took him into prominence in academia, but where his success or his person or his politics or his diffidence or none of those at all but just general university stupidity (we all have our theories), resulted in a well-publicized firing, shocking many. I remember having dinner with he and Nancy in the days directly after, and how flummoxed he was by it and what it meant and what he should do as protest.

In the end as he says,

“Then they fired me and I was, after a brief flurry of petitions and irate letter-writing, relieved.

Now I’m back in construction, this time as an employee, though a well-paid one. I run my little press from my house, with help from my wife, New Orleans scholar and writer Nancy Dixon…and/or an occasional volunteer or intern. And though there is always this problem or that, and though I work too hard and there is never enough time for this thing or that (including writing), it’s pretty ok.

There is much more to find in this piece than how his vocation fits into his definition as a worker. The passage with granddaughter Roxy and the cracker is so beautifully illuminating about the poet’s mind that I am humbled by it. Additionally, the clarity he sees around the role of Occupy is one that I share and yet had not been able to explain to others before reading this and so it remains the anchor for me in this piece. I know I will use those few words of analysis for a long time.

But in terms of what AJG&H (this blog) is meant to do, I think Bill offers one fine idea in it:

When you say I am_____, the number of words that you can use to fill in that blank , either adjectives or nouns, is not infinite. You select from a multiple choice list given to you by the culture, by the long bloody, political history of the world. 

That is the truth. We are defined by the list of words that we are labeled with, some we gladly choose to be known for, others that are forced on us. Infinite it is not. The list I gave you about Bill at the beginning of this piece are how I know him: through his poetry, by what he has built around town, and through social time with he and Nancy, sometimes in the company of their family.  If he saw my list, I am sure he would be surprised or bemused by some. Or maybe not.

“In the Thick(et) of Poetry: Meditations on 50 Years in the Language Game,” Xavier Review 37-1

 

 

OUT TO LUNCH : Intellectual Property Podcast

12 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by DW in artists, gig, hustle, interview, job, labor, New Orleans, photos

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Cheryl Gerber, intellectual property

This podcast features Photojournalist Cheryl Gerber, my neighbor and pal who is a award-winning freelance journalist and documentary photographer.  She  is a staff photographer for Gambit and a regular contributor to the New York Times, the Associated Press, and New Orleans Magazine.

Her book Life in the Big Easy is a standout; find my review here.

On the podcast, Cheryl talks about her diligence in keeping track of her work, using a law firm in New York.

The work has changed a lot since she said she “used to drive to Gambit’s offices holding wet photos out of the window!” Yet, the digital format is “made for her” she says.

Out To Lunch

 

 

Save Buskers Bunkhouse by Pearl Heart – GoFundMe

06 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by DW in gig, hustle, New Orleans

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buskers

 Buskers Bunkhouse in New Orleans, formerly known as Kamp Katrina, is being reincarnated as a nonprofit in Bywater…The house needs repairs. Ms Pearl’s concern is that she may not be able to meet with the demands for these repairs in time as she is on a fixed income. Fines can reach up to 500 dollars a day for each offense.

Source: Save Buskers Bunkhouse by Pearl Heart – GoFundMe

15 photos of New Orleans street performers 

06 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by DW in gig, hustle, musicians, New Orleans, photos

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French Quarter, gig, informal economy, outsider culture

This slideshow of FQ buskers includes a few of the most known and constant performers over the last 35 years. For many of these photos, the scene is so recognizable to me that it is possible that my teenaged self was just off the side, sitting on the ground, taking it all in. To this day, the interaction with and observation of public street performers and hustlers remains a valued part of my daily life.

 

Juggling, dancing, playing music or freezing in time, performers have been a part of the French Quarter landscape for decades.

15 photos of New Orleans street performers | NOLA.com

Criminalizing the hustle: Policing poor people’s survival strategies from Eric Garner to Alton Sterling – Salon.com

12 Tuesday Jul 2016

Posted by DW in hustle, labor, New Orleans

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Alton Sterling, Baton Rouge, police

The danger of the hustle

The contemporary era of policing and mass incarceration emerged precisely to confront black people with limited or no access to formal work. As the sociologist Loïc Wacquant puts it, “in the wake of the race riots of the 1960s, the police, courts, and prison have been deployed to contain the urban dislocations wrought by economic deregulation and the implosion of the ghetto as ethnoracial container, and to impose the discipline of insecure employment at the bottom of the polarizing class structure.”

In other words, prisons supplanted social aid and the criminal justice system became the state’s main tool to discipline the black poor, locked into segregated neighborhoods and locked out of good jobs.

In New York City, a model focused on so-called quality of life offenses took root, aimed in large part at the public face of informal work, from panhandling and squeegee men to drug dealers and loosie sellers as drugs and violence filled painfully long stretches of unrequested time off. The policing theory, known as broken windows, posits that cracking down on low-level offenses helps decrease crime across the board. That’s heavily debated, and it’s notable that recent decades’ widespread decline in crime includes cities that have employed variable policing methods. What’s certain is that it renders poor people’s survival strategies a crime.

Source: Criminalizing the hustle: Policing poor people’s survival strategies from Eric Garner to Alton Sterling – Salon.com

Every day we’re hustling: Why we love “hustlers” — but not “whores” 

06 Wednesday Jul 2016

Posted by DW in hustle

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hustle

I appreciate the piece linked below on the use of hustler versus whore via the sex work connotations of both terms. Absolutely true how women involved in sex worker are tagged with the much more punitive term while men are assigned the less damaging of the two.

The “hustler” archetype has experienced a steady, exponentially positive, and — despite its deep roots in gay culture — heterosexual treatment in the media. Hustler magazine launched in 1975, as a more graphic version of Playboy. It boasted a circulation of 3.8 million in 1976, and while that number declined significantly in subsequent years, the magazine is arguably the mainstream prototype of heterosexually lensed “hustler” as aspirational, rather than derogatory.

When people talk to me about the name and subject of this blog, they rarely use of the term hustler as meaning a sex worker, but I certainly expected some readers to see it that way and am happy to include this discussion here.

Of course, hustle has more definitions in our current language:

images.duckduckgo

Hip Hop Loops for the hustlers!

Ladies and gentleman! Diginoiz is proud to present the  ‘Return Of The Hustle’! Hip Hop loops with great sound, good feeling, catchy melodies but still based in the hood vibe. Loops for all hustle producers who love the best quality of sound, precision and something more than the industry standards!

 

…one is celebrated, while the other remains cloaked in stigma: Salon dot com on hustlers versus whores

Troy Simon’s journey from tap dancing on Bourbon Street to Yale Divinity School 

25 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by DW in hustle, New Orleans, people

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French Quarter

Yes those hustling around you have dreams and ambition too. Some of them will achieve them.

 

Troy Simon’s journey from tap dancing on Bourbon Street to Yale Divinity School | NOLA.com

Issue One: Invisible Labour | mice cms

25 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by DW in cooperatives, gig, hustle, job, labor, people, ruthless growth

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capitalism, labor organizing, outsider culture

Thanks to “sophistiratchet #blackademic beast from/in/of New Orleans” Terri Coleman for highlighting this publication on her Facebookistan page. Cultural appropriation is so constant in colonial economies that artists are forced to enthusiastically participate in maintaining its dominance.  The artists in this issue intelligently and sensitively address how labor as a commodity when it comes to creating and sharing art assists that frame of events.

How can we account for all of the invisible labour that’s required for us to do our so-called radical work? Informed by intersectional and materialist feminisms, Issue 01 foregrounds forms of labour that go unrecognized in the white spaces of contemporary and media art worlds. This issue is concerned with the before, the after, the behind-the-scenes, and the off-camera. How much not-art is required to make the art? What’s the cost and who puts their life on the line? Without reducing all forms of life to labour, the works featured in this issue allow us to think value differently, to acknowledge all that we do to keep ourselves and our communities vivacious and resilient.

Source: Issue One: Invisible Labour | mice cms

 

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Beautiful Hustle

21 Sunday Feb 2016

My pal out in the Square showing off her amazing costume craft. This activity is part of her expression of her combined Latina/New Orleans culture and she carries it off with deep concentration and dignity. Having a hustle can be important for non-economic reasons for some; to use art to regain their emotional footing, to connect with the public, to articulate their love for their region.12771624_10206063192401978_1532892655159675049_o

Posted by DW | Filed under hustle, New Orleans

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1010 ways to buy without money

24 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by DW in entrepreneurs, hustle

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barter

1010logo

What is a book worth? The answer to this question is, like most things, relative… A project called 1010 Ways to Buy Without Money will see stalls ‘selling’ books for a variety of prices, set either by the organizers or by the donors of the books. These might involve taking snacks to the office for colleagues, or creating a photo diary, drawing a self-portrait, or more practically, donating clothes, blood and even organs. The one thing they all have in common is they can’t involve the exchange of money.

The initiative is now entering its fifth year and has spread around the world, with events held from London to Georgia, Madrid to Montevideo and Romania. It is now a participatory project in which anyone can create their own book fair of the same style – the organisers provide materials, information and advice, as long as some guidelines are followed, such as adhering to the no-money approach and creating a Facebook event. This year, in addition to Barcelona, individuals are already organising events in four Brazilian cities, the Californian town of Bishop, the Colombian city of Barranquilla, Montevideo in Uruguay, the Ecuadorian city of Santo Domingo and Ciudad Real, in Spain.

Here is the information to create your own event.

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Word origins

job
1557, in phrase jobbe of worke , perhaps a variant of gobbe "mass, lump" (c.1400, see gob). Sense of "work done for pay" first recorded 1660. On the job "hard at work" is from 1882. Jobber "one who does odd jobs" is from 1706.

gig
1570 "light carriage, small boat." A job usually for a specified time; especially : an entertainer's engagement, first known use 1926

hustle
"To get in a quick, illegal manner" is 1840 in Amer.Eng.; "to sell goods aggressively" is 1887. The noun sense of "illegal business activity" is first recorded 1963 in Amer.Eng.

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African-American organizing airbnb Alton Sterling Banking barter Baton Rouge Big Freedia Bill Lavender Blue Linen Night book review buskers capitalism Carrie Brownstein Cheryl Gerber Cleveland model COVID-19 DIY Doreen Ketchens drinking culture Evergreen Cooperatives Fensterstock festivals French Quarter Gawker Ghalib gig housing hustle illegal economy informal economy intellectual property interviews Introduction Jackson Square job Katy Reckdahl labor organizing MACCNO makerculture makerspace Mardi Gras Indians Marx Mr. Chill Music Under New York New Orleans New York City Nicole Sallak Anderson outsider culture police Reckdahl renters Rich Campanella Rifkin RIP Scotty Cathcart Hill street vending Sweden unemployment Universal basic income Wandergesellen work Xavier Review

book reviews collaborative commons cooperatives entrepreneurs gig hustle interview job labor musicians New Orleans people photos ruthless growth U.S. economic policy

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African-American organizing airbnb Alton Sterling Banking barter Baton Rouge Big Freedia Bill Lavender Blue Linen Night book review buskers capitalism Carrie Brownstein Cheryl Gerber Cleveland model COVID-19 DIY Doreen Ketchens drinking culture Evergreen Cooperatives Fensterstock festivals French Quarter Gawker Ghalib gig housing hustle illegal economy informal economy intellectual property interviews Introduction Jackson Square job Katy Reckdahl labor organizing MACCNO makerculture makerspace Mardi Gras Indians Marx Mr. Chill Music Under New York New Orleans New York City Nicole Sallak Anderson outsider culture police Reckdahl renters Rich Campanella Rifkin RIP Scotty Cathcart Hill street vending Sweden unemployment Universal basic income Wandergesellen work Xavier Review

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