three cents: red medicine
martinesque
by manjula martin
[three cents is a newsletter about creative work, money, and love... usually.]
1. a thing about creative work
there is now a Korean edition of Scratch, the anthology i edited. translation is an amazing thing! the Korean publishers added all these cute little doodles of the contributors. they also apparently reordered the book, so who knows what is in there! (actually, the millions and millions of people in the world who speak Korean know, but i am not one of them.) you can buy it here.
exactly a year ago i was in Portland for the final event of the Scratch book tour. it was raining, naturally. i was stressed. for some reason, Powell's Books hadn't put the reading on their marquee, and i was devastated (that marquee mention is a bucket-list item for sure). then Cheryl Strayed, who was scheduled to appear, texted me to say she was terribly sick and had to cancel. i sat at a bar downtown having a plate of fries and a mild anxiety attack and resigning myself to the fact that no one was going to come to the event and my epic booky achievement of having a reading at Powell's was going to be a sad fascimile of the accomplishment i had always thought it would be.
but I cowboyed up. i put on red lipstick in the bookstore bathroom and walked slowly up the stairs to the reading space ... and saw probably 100 or more people already in the audience. the staff had to go get more chairs, it was so crowded. miraculously, no one left when i told them that Cheryl wasn't coming. and Cari Luna and Kevin Sampsell and i had a grand ole time doing the event, despite our lack of top billing power, and then i went out for alcoholic milkshakes with some old, dear Portland friends. late that night, maybe a little drunk, my sweetheart and i took photos in the Ace Hotel photobooth. i found the photostrip the other day; we seem so young and electric. i recount this evening mostly to remind myself it existed, because feels like much, much more time than one year has passed since my book came out.
since that rainy triumphant northwestern caper a lot has happened in my life, both personal and professional (not to fucking mention political). it has been A YEAR, as they say on the internet. i bought a cottage and got married and quit twitter. i put out four awesome issues of the magazine where i work, and it won a National Magazine Award. i sold a new nonfiction book (coming from Ten Speed Press in 2019). i went to Iceland in a snowy springtime and felt like i was at the edge of the world, teetering. i had an extended nine-month health crisis (of which i'm finally glimpsing the conclusion, after yet another surgery a couple of weeks ago). i dyed my hair platinum. i let go control of Who Pays Writers?, which (happily) means that the site is updated much more frequently these days, thanks to an amazing volunteer. i learned to say "no" to more things, including a couple offers to teach workshops on "making a living as a freelancer" because, well, i'm not a freelancer any more. and lately i find myself wanting to move on entirely from the "writers and money" beat.
so here's the meta question of the day: what happens when your "thing"—the thing that got you your first book deal and your agent and your "following"—isn't really the main thing you wanna do anymore? if i'm honest, editing Scratch and running Who Pays Writers? were always my side hustle. but they have provided me a lot of major opportunities.
i might get nervous about it sometimes, but i have always been pretty good at giving myself permission to change directions. as anyone who read my essay in Scratch knows, i've done it a lot in my life. every change, every turn, leads to a "what if" — what if i had kept doing costume design after high school; would i be working on Broadway and or designing rad clothes for real-sized women? what if i had stayed in Paris when i was 19; would i be working at Shakespeare & Co. and taking four weeks of vacation every August? what if i had stayed in New York when I was 23 and not quit that magazine job; would i be an editor at Conde Nast now? what if I'd stayed in Portland, would i run my own record store now? possibly. very likely. but I didn't. that's part of evolving as a person. and if you're a person who is also a writer or an artist, along with allowing your life to take new directions you also need to allow your work to evolve.
i might get nervous about it sometimes, but i have always been pretty good at giving myself permission to change directions. as anyone who read my essay in Scratch knows, i've done it a lot in my life. every change, every turn, leads to a "what if" — what if i had kept doing costume design after high school; would i be working on Broadway and or designing rad clothes for real-sized women? what if i had stayed in Paris when i was 19; would i be working at Shakespeare & Co. and taking four weeks of vacation every August? what if i had stayed in New York when I was 23 and not quit that magazine job; would i be an editor at Conde Nast now? what if I'd stayed in Portland, would i run my own record store now? possibly. very likely. but I didn't. that's part of evolving as a person. and if you're a person who is also a writer or an artist, along with allowing your life to take new directions you also need to allow your work to evolve.
2. a thing about love
one of my favorite bands is fugazi. i remember when Red Medicine, the album that i still think of as their "new" album, came out. it was 1995. i was living, for the first but not the last time, in San Francisco. i recall fugazi playing a show in Dolores Park* and i went with some friends, including old pals i'd seen the band with many times before (always $5, girls to the front!). when Red Medicine came out, many die-hard fans grumped about how it sounded so different, so un-punk, mellow, almost ambient. i never said anything in these conversations because i wasn't brave enough to differ and because i really, really liked the album. the crusty ole punks were right— it did sound different than fugazi's other albums. it wasn't as punk, as "raw" (although I could definitely write you a thinkpiece about how fugazi was never really that raw anyway, they were always experimental and high-brow, but that's for another manifesto). compared to the band's earlier albums, Red Medicine was practically jazz. it was also good. in retrospect the album is so obviously 100% still them, but it is also an evolution: Red Medicine is the kind of album that happens when a band learns and grows and makes new things, instead of just doing the thing that they happened to do first. which is kind of what artists are supposed to do, right?
this extended 1990s punk digression is my way of saying: i might change the nature of this newsletter in future editions. maybe even the title too. i still care very much about the relationship between writing and money and I still intend to fight for the rights of creative workers at every chance i get, and that will always be one of the things i'm into, one of the things I try to draw focus to as much as possible in all my work, because it's part of my worldview, which is how we all got here in the first place. but I might not write expressly or exclusively about that in this space. i might instead choose to write about my life, or my other work, or books i read, or just fucking tv or clouds. i imagine a lot of you who came to this newsletter for the solid #giglife content may not want to read my thoughts on clouds or whatever, but i hope you will stick around and see what evolves.
the freelancer Zan Romanoff recently wrote a piece about why she writes a tinyletter for free, and she reminded me that i do it because i like it. i do it as self-promotion, of course, who are we kidding, but really i do it because something about it reminds me of how i used to make zines, way back in the days when fugazi shows were a thing. i'd spend a week sequestered in my $350-dollar-a-month bedroom using a pair of scissors and a typewriter to create something that i wanted to show to my friends and comrades. i'd smudge it all around on scratch paper until i was sick of it enough to declare it 'done', and then i'd walk it to kinko's and stay up all night beneath the flourescent storefront lighting getting high off the xerox and glue-stick fumes and end up with a little folded square book. a thing i made, for you. i didn't do it to make money, i did it for a more innocent form of self-promotion—the actual promotion of the self, the urgent artistic drive to send out a piece of yourself into the world, ego and all, to express something without concerted strategy or desired outcome. i did it just to make something. to be heard. to expand my palate and also my palette. i wanted to try new medicines and seek new cures. i still do.
*self-fact-check: the internet says fugazi played Dolores Park in 2000 for the Food Not Bombs 20th anniversary, not in 1995. it's possible i was there in 2000 and i'm remembering it wrong; i was also living (briefly, again) in SF that summer. but it's also possible that the internet doesn't know everything and the band also played the park in '95 around the time the album came out. there were a lot of 'secret shows' back then. either way, i definitely remember folks at the show whining about how mellow fugazi had gotten in their old age. memory, like age, is a wily ole rascal!
3. some things about money:
Hobbies do not need to make money.
Indie book publicists are smart and we should listen to what they have to say.
Scratch contributor Alexander Chee on his often painful relationship with money.
Scratch contributor Sarah Smarsh on Dolly Parton's working-class feminism.
A profile of Marie Dutton Brown, publishing powerhouse and trailblazer.
As a print-magazine person, I am prime target-audience for life-and-style pieces about print-magazine archives.
Streaming is not good for musicians or fans but if you do it maybe try and make it a little bit better?
Hot salary negotiation tips from actress Ellen Pompeo, who seems kinda cool.
The Awl is dead, now can we all quit the internet?
The internet isn't forever, and it doesn't know everything. (See also: Fugazi show, above.)
Seriously, stop ordering shit from Amazon, you guys.
still glue-sticky after all these years,
xo,
m.
one of my favorite bands is fugazi. i remember when Red Medicine, the album that i still think of as their "new" album, came out. it was 1995. i was living, for the first but not the last time, in San Francisco. i recall fugazi playing a show in Dolores Park* and i went with some friends, including old pals i'd seen the band with many times before (always $5, girls to the front!). when Red Medicine came out, many die-hard fans grumped about how it sounded so different, so un-punk, mellow, almost ambient. i never said anything in these conversations because i wasn't brave enough to differ and because i really, really liked the album. the crusty ole punks were right— it did sound different than fugazi's other albums. it wasn't as punk, as "raw" (although I could definitely write you a thinkpiece about how fugazi was never really that raw anyway, they were always experimental and high-brow, but that's for another manifesto). compared to the band's earlier albums, Red Medicine was practically jazz. it was also good. in retrospect the album is so obviously 100% still them, but it is also an evolution: Red Medicine is the kind of album that happens when a band learns and grows and makes new things, instead of just doing the thing that they happened to do first. which is kind of what artists are supposed to do, right?
this extended 1990s punk digression is my way of saying: i might change the nature of this newsletter in future editions. maybe even the title too. i still care very much about the relationship between writing and money and I still intend to fight for the rights of creative workers at every chance i get, and that will always be one of the things i'm into, one of the things I try to draw focus to as much as possible in all my work, because it's part of my worldview, which is how we all got here in the first place. but I might not write expressly or exclusively about that in this space. i might instead choose to write about my life, or my other work, or books i read, or just fucking tv or clouds. i imagine a lot of you who came to this newsletter for the solid #giglife content may not want to read my thoughts on clouds or whatever, but i hope you will stick around and see what evolves.
the freelancer Zan Romanoff recently wrote a piece about why she writes a tinyletter for free, and she reminded me that i do it because i like it. i do it as self-promotion, of course, who are we kidding, but really i do it because something about it reminds me of how i used to make zines, way back in the days when fugazi shows were a thing. i'd spend a week sequestered in my $350-dollar-a-month bedroom using a pair of scissors and a typewriter to create something that i wanted to show to my friends and comrades. i'd smudge it all around on scratch paper until i was sick of it enough to declare it 'done', and then i'd walk it to kinko's and stay up all night beneath the flourescent storefront lighting getting high off the xerox and glue-stick fumes and end up with a little folded square book. a thing i made, for you. i didn't do it to make money, i did it for a more innocent form of self-promotion—the actual promotion of the self, the urgent artistic drive to send out a piece of yourself into the world, ego and all, to express something without concerted strategy or desired outcome. i did it just to make something. to be heard. to expand my palate and also my palette. i wanted to try new medicines and seek new cures. i still do.
*self-fact-check: the internet says fugazi played Dolores Park in 2000 for the Food Not Bombs 20th anniversary, not in 1995. it's possible i was there in 2000 and i'm remembering it wrong; i was also living (briefly, again) in SF that summer. but it's also possible that the internet doesn't know everything and the band also played the park in '95 around the time the album came out. there were a lot of 'secret shows' back then. either way, i definitely remember folks at the show whining about how mellow fugazi had gotten in their old age. memory, like age, is a wily ole rascal!
3. some things about money:
Hobbies do not need to make money.
Indie book publicists are smart and we should listen to what they have to say.
Scratch contributor Alexander Chee on his often painful relationship with money.
Scratch contributor Sarah Smarsh on Dolly Parton's working-class feminism.
A profile of Marie Dutton Brown, publishing powerhouse and trailblazer.
As a print-magazine person, I am prime target-audience for life-and-style pieces about print-magazine archives.
Streaming is not good for musicians or fans but if you do it maybe try and make it a little bit better?
Hot salary negotiation tips from actress Ellen Pompeo, who seems kinda cool.
The Awl is dead, now can we all quit the internet?
The internet isn't forever, and it doesn't know everything. (See also: Fugazi show, above.)
Seriously, stop ordering shit from Amazon, you guys.
still glue-sticky after all these years,
xo,
m.
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