Divinity Rising: All Part of the Show -

Sometimes, it’s so hard to say goodbye to yesterday. That’s exactly what I’m doing in many areas of my life, but I also recently had to make a tough decision to let go of my baby of the past three years: Sub Rosa, the Gypsie Courtyard. Weekly production, booking, hosting was becoming too much for me, and I found myself unable to really pursue my own art forms and be such a supporter of everyone else at the same time. I am capable of and wanted to host higher quality shows, but found it hard while I was locked into the weekly duties of taking care of Sub Rosa. It’s been coming for a while. I have been struggling to keep it going because I know it means something to the people who were involved and came regularly and it meant something to me. You all mean so much to me. I wanted to keep it alive for you all, but had to know when to let go and follow where my heart was leading. Thank you for the amazing and overwhelming response of support I have gotten so far. I have met so many amazing talents over the last three years and believe in each of you so much. You’ve all touched me, blessed me and filled me up with wonder and good stuff. You all have such exciting journeys ahead of you if you just believe in the whispers from your heart that guide you. I will continue to produce events on a less regular schedule with a main focus on developing my performance art and hope to work with many of you in those events. I will be posting calls to artists, performers, models, etc for different productions. This is the first one: My next show is Poetry, Pop, and Paint and the information for the call can be found here on facebook : http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=188781017831980

In other news, the debut of  my song Broken went so well! Thanks to my partner, Jada Parks for her photography and inspiration and to Nick Peay for the perfect music! Artography was such an awesome and fun event produced by Kenn Parks, and I was very happy with the response! I wish I had set up a webcam as suggested by my friend Tim to stream people’s responses to the web. Some people were creeped out to the point of being unable to look in my direction. One woman leaned in to tell me that I was very brave. Others let me know how much they enjoyed it, and I met some really awesome artists, creatives. Kenn did a great job at creating an event for people to mingle, appreciate art, and I foresee some awesome collaborations coming out of it. I enjoyed it immensely and can’t wait to do more living exhibits in the future. Here are some awesome photos by Tim Valentino of VU (pronounced View) Photography and Joe Mays and a phone video by Tim Druck. Enjoy! I am still working on the parade video footage and photos to share with you. Hope to have them done by the next newsletter.

On another note, I’ve found myself in a place where people that used to scare me with bullying or by holding their approval/love over my head no longer scare me. I’ ve found them raise their heads and try to surface  with the type of behavior that would have used to make me give in or try to defend myself or try to make everything “ok” . I’ve found it quite liberating to realize that I’ve come to a place where I don’t really care what they think.  I’ve found that the more I tried to shine, the more of a target I became. Somewhere in my journey, I overcame a need to prove myself to haters, people who wanted to hold me back and decided to let my actions speak for me. I am human like everyone else on a path of learning, trying to figure out who I am, go for my heart’s desires and learn how to best be me. Part of that process includes falling, making mistakes. We all do. If we didn’t, none of us would learn to walk..we’d still be crawling around on the ground.  Some of us aren’t happy with just learning to walk. We want to fly. The further you are from the ground, the harder you may find yourself falling.  It’s far too easy to weigh ourselves down with our own judgment and criticism.   The last thing we need is a bully or someone we trust/care about to continually grab on to our legs and try to pull us back down. The truth is it has never really been them holding us down that keeps us from flying…it’s our failure to push off of them and leave them behind. It sucks that they are lonely where they are, but maybe if you continue to rise, they will see that they can, too.   My favorite quote this year has been “Do not speak about your greatest gifts…Leave the talking to others.”  I’m trying to make that my mantra.  You’re either for me or against me and if you’re against me, the past is your home and I’m not looking down / back as I rise. The people I now find myself surrounded by and consider friends that have shown  me real love/support, inspire me to continue to rise, and actually care about my well being/happiness and I theirs  are more precious to me than gold, and the others are..well, people….people I once knew.   It’s hard to say goodbye and walk away from the habit/desire of giving others your power and letting them make you feel bad about yourself or scare you into giving up on flying, but definitely a hurdle worth leaping over.  So, raise a glass with me and toast to the liberation of saying good bye to the fears of yesterday!!

Hey everyone! I’m so excited about tonight! I’m performing at the Mother Lodge festival in Louisville, Kentucky with NYC Lady Rizo and a slew of other talented performers like Tyrone Cotton, JP Lebangood, Adam Rapp and Craig Wright.

I got to see Lady Rizo last year and she had me in stitches/awe the entire time! She is just in town for tonight! I can’t say enough good things about her. JP Lebangood is a local favorite performer of mine as well. Billed as “The Mad Bastard”, he lives up to his moniker in a way that forces you to laugh at his bouts of madness. He is an extremely talented writer and comedian. I’m performing a snippet from Doomsday Lover including Baby Girl and Soul Hungry, which means I’ll be all dolled up!

There is a 7pm and 9 pm show, Cost is $8

I’ll be performing/releasing a new song titled Broken as part of a live art exhibit with the Broken Doll photos that I did with Jada Parks. I’m excited to bring this new song to you, but am even more excited about the delivery method in being a living piece of art. I will be there live as a broken doll, surrounded by broken dolls, chained to the exhibit of broken doll photos. This will happen as part of Motherlodge on Friday 3/25. I believe tickets are $8. Also going on that night:

“Superwolf (NYC) Four 1 Act plays of rock and roll and extreme confessions written by Bekah Brunstetter, Jason Grote, Joel Horwood(UK) and Eric Meyer. Featuring: Kate Benson, Jamie Effros, Evan Enderle, and Sherri Kronfeld. Music by JANITORS OF THE APOCALYPSE “

If you can’t make it Friday night to see the release of Broken, you can come to Artography at Creation Gardens on 725 E Market St on Saturday, where the exhibit will be set up/I will be performing. There will be over 100 artists, bands, music, and a good chunk of proceeds go to support three important nonprofit organizations, including the Fairness Campaign. Saturday’s festivities begin at 4 p.m. and tickets are $15 Check out the full list of stuff going on at this amazing festival!

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=194584897229792

The St. Patrick’s Day parade was so much fun! I am so grateful to the forty people who came out as magical people and walked with us or kept it magical on the sidelines! I am so honored to have had each of you as part of the event.  I want to clean up some of the vocals on “Magical People” and have it mastered, but then it will be available to purchase online! Later this week, I will have photos and video for you! Stay tuned!

I hope that this update finds you all well and actively creating your dreams!

In a world where we create what we believe in, I believe in you!

Beautiful Photos from Lisa Oeschli of Solidarity Photos coming soon!

Sometimes…I feel broken. I know I’m not alone. The thing about being broken is that it makes you want to go around trying to fix everyone else’s broken..It’s hard not to for me.It’s also hard not to hate /lash out at similar cracks we see in others.  Maybe it is  my own cracks, fissures, remaining pains and hurts that make me want to hug everyone else and try to help when I see it in them.  It’s hard to remember to focus on my own cracks and hurts and to simply allow what I see in others to reflect something back to me. With that in mind, I did a photo shoot with local photographer/artist Jada parks. I’ve attached a few sneak preview photos. The photos will be part of a live art exhibit march 25, 26 called Artography. The photos will be put into collages that will be on display, and I will be there live in the middle of the display as a broken doll surrounded by my broken dolls as I sing. A lot of people think the photos are creepy. They are. There is nothing scarier than the fact that we  have cracks within us. We  have weakness. The people around us  have cracks and weaknesses. To me: it is scary that some of the cracks can not be fixed. However, we can live brilliantly whether we are cracked or not!!

Coming up before that, though, is the St. Patrick’s Day parade!!! I am super excited! The float is coming along nicely, and Ethridge Enterprises, LLC signed on as our executive producer, which takes care of the supplies! Fashion Designer Genna Yussman is providing some costumes for the Vixens. Cool World Productions will be catching everything on video, thanks to the Great Escape comic books and records and Bearno’s in the Highlands. We’ll be having our after party about 6:30 at Bearnos and shooting some footage there as well.

There are several ways you can be involved and on video if you want! One, come out to the parade in costume as magical people and hold up the sign “Yes, DR, magical people are here!”  as our float goes by…We’ll be turning our cameras outward looking for our magical brethren.

Two, Come out to the after party at Bearno’s in the Highlands, starting around 6:30 – then stick around for some of the wildest karaoke in town.

Three, you can advertise your business in the video or in the program we will be handing out. Deadline March 4.

The parade and after party are family friendly. Hope to see you there! Read more information about the parade by clicking here

Special thanks to Genna Yussman for the use of some of her fabulous costumes, Pagan Community Ministries, Framer’s Supply, Black Water Divers, Hataritaville, and the Va Va Vixens!!