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A job, a gig and a hustle

Category Archives: people

Rest in Power, Mr. Chill

29 Sunday Dec 2019

Posted by DW in job, New Orleans, people

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Katy Reckdahl, Mr. Chill, RIP

The brilliant Katy Reckdahl has written another of her gems for nola.com, highlighting the passing of a great neighbor and community leader, Mr. Chill. His chosen work allowed him the platform to change his life and find his path, thereby helping generations of New Orleanians.

 

Finally, when he tired of the streets, he called his mother and told her he was going to barber school. He stayed in her house for several months, taking the bus to his classes. For his final test for his barber’s license, he cut the hair of two young teenagers, his son, Wilbert Wilson Jr., and his nephew Harry Cass.

“He wasn’t that great of a barber at first,” Cass said. “But he worked at it, like he worked at everything. So he kept cutting and kept cutting, and he got good at it.”

https://www.nola.com/news/article_99641b7e-29d5-11ea-abe7-4bbf7a5ea68b.html?fbclid=IwAR0e_lYbjAFaxs9Vi0KacV-hl5WvEr78sP1yc_UBitjzuLcSAMFMYMXI6mM

“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

 

 

Festival worker perspective

15 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by DW in entrepreneurs, New Orleans, people, photos

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festivals, Rich Campanella, work

 At the Old U.S. Mint food booths

Image-1 (1)photo by @nolacampanella

Love has passed

05 Wednesday Oct 2016

Posted by DW in New Orleans, people

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Jackson Square

Angie Bradford facebook post:

Really sad to hear about the passing of Dr. Love. He brought so much laughter and adventure into our lives. He was a legend around the city but especially at Jackson Square. I can never think of the Square without thinking of him. We wouldn’t see him for a little bit, but when he’d come back, he always had some tall story to tell about where he’d just come from. One of my favorite memories of him was when John Michael was a little boy…Me, John Michael, Dr. Love and Tuba went walking through the Bywater. Tuba had on a pair of plastic boobs and Dr. Love had his necklace of keys on and was carrying his golf club swinging it every now and then as he explained how he’d just come back from teaching golf at a club for boys. We laughed so much that day that my stomach hurt. You can only imagine the looks we got with Tuba wearing those fake boobs over his clothes. And the words back and forth between John Michael, Tuba, and Dr. Love just made for a comedy. You will be missed Dr. Love…Your name was a fit for you because you really did bring Love and laughter wherever you went.

Subway singer going up

18 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by DW in musicians, people

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Music Under New York, New York City

After the marriage ended, Ms. Ridley established herself underground. She became affiliated with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Music Under New York, a program under which selected musicians perform in the transit system. She appeared twice a week at a designated spot. She said that no money was ever stolen from her and she was never assaulted.

And she developed her act, learning to work an audience that wasn’t inclined to stand still. She figures that thousands of commuters over the years have sung duets with her.

Ms. Ridley relishes these connections: “We’re face to face,” she said, describing the appeal of busking.

Subway singer going up

The Ballad of Big Freedia: How the New Orleans Bounce Icon Was Betrayed By Her City’s Housing Crisis 

25 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by DW in entrepreneurs, gig, musicians, New Orleans, people, ruthless growth

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Big Freedia, Fensterstock

Alison Fensterstock has written an insightful and impressive analysis of one hard-working performer’s legal tangle and how giggers interactions with authority often end up badly for the creative community. How many people were sorry they accepted aid after Katrina or BP later on when they found themselves mired in red tape over it? In this case, as Fensterstock points out, the ebb and flow of funds when a performer begins to hit their moment can be confusing and disorienting and can result in a trip to the courthouse. Why would the authorities feel the need to do any more than fine Freedia for a lack of good accounting? Why require further punishment? One might think that those in authority want to find ways to punish him and others like him who won’t just go put on the white shirt and black pants and bus that table.

 

Cashauna Hill, the executive director of the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Center, cautioned that she couldn’t speak directly to the rapper’s case. But “especially for a cash-based economy, the requirement to predict income is incredibly difficult,” she said. “Performers don’t have that kind of set, consistent clear structure.”

 The Ballad of Big Freedia: How the New Orleans Bounce Icon Was Betrayed By Her City’s Housing Crisis | Pitchfork

 

Update: Big Freedia gets probation

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

 

About mice

Dispatches from the Graveyard Shift: What It’s Like to Work at a 24-Hour New Orleans Bar | Tales of the Cocktail

17 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by DW in job, New Orleans, people

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drinking culture

Jennifer Kay regales us with her stories from her 7 years working the graveyard bartending shift, a stone’s throw from Bourbon Street.

I think one of the great things about New Orleans is that we don’t care what anyone does for a living. No one is impressed with anyone because of our occupations. In New Orleans, all walks of life party together. You don’t get that in other cities. In New Orleans, we don’t really care if a celebrity walks in because you know what, you have a job just like me, it’s just that your job is different.

Source: Dispatches from the Graveyard Shift: What It’s Like to Work at a 24-Hour New Orleans Bar | Tales of the Cocktail

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl-Review

07 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by DW in book reviews, gig, job, people

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book review, Carrie Brownstein, DIY, informal economy, makerculture

 

A slim memoir from Portlandia’s Carrie Brownstein, but be warned: it is definitely not about that work. Instead, this is about her early family life in the Northwest and her young woman life in one of the best unknown bands of the 1990s/2000s, Sleater-Kinney. Of course, they are still around and releasing good music, but their unknown status is probably past, largely because of Brownstein’s new TV fame and because the teens that found them then are now critics and paid writers and can reciprocate with open love and respect and everyone else can pretend to have followed them for years. For those who do follow them, this book will be familiar in its existentialist language, even as the actual events are presented plainly, dramatically and only rarely as funny.  All of that seems perfect for a book about this painfully present band that was always more about intense performances with alternately obscure or in-your-face lyrics and was much less- if it all- about any rock posturing or god(dess) complex. Brownstein certainly understands and communicates that just being in a band was a lifesaver, but that she used it respectfully to find her adult voice to say something rather than just using it to seem cool is also clear.

Brownstein writes about herself in a rush, seemingly annoyed by her own youth and spends more time and positive energy on the others who make up that time, like her father, her bandmates Corin and Janet and even legendary bands around her such as Bikini Kill or known names like Eddie Vedder (was oddly glad to hear that he is a good guy). That makes sense because the best descriptions in the book are of seeing bands and in describing the scene (maybe the first era that this term was used without irony) in the staplegun marketing of rock and politics back then. Those chapters definitely brought that time back clearly and does so without false nostalgia. Those pieces reminded me of the best writing of Ellen Willis, which to me is saying something.

Brownstein can dazzle with phrases and apt opinions such as “Within the world of the band there was a me and a not me” and “Anything that isn’t traditional for women apparently requires that we remind people what an anomaly it is, even when it becomes less and less of an anomaly” but also can run circles around herself and an opinion so long that it makes you put the book down for a bit. I can relate to that as a writer and I suspect that she is both afraid of revealing too much and unable to resist showing the many sides of any situation that she notices. Both can be disconcerting for autobiographical writing, but lucky for us, she does her best to curb those impulses and her undeniable charisma comes through at almost all times. I hope for many more books by Brownstein, and much more of Sleater-Kinney and yes, many more seasons of Portlandia.

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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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