When I turned 25 I was struck with the powerful realization that if I didn't leave Danbury, CT I was going to marry another fat alcoholic and we were going to have fat alcoholic kids who hated us. I would drudge along doing what I was told and secretly rebelling in my heart until I had a heart attack or cirrhosis of the liver.
My car had died and I was bumming rides from a lovely coworker kind enough to drive my sorry ass to work. I threw my four functioning brain cells together and figured that if I lived in New York City, I wouldn't need to drive, I could probably get gigs and maybe, oh, become famous or something ridiculously arrogant like that.
I knew someone who knew someone who was living in an all women's residence, kind of like a dorm, on Gramercy Park. It was pretty cheap, rent included breakfast and dinner, was in a great neighborhood and foolishly, they accepted my application. I had a place to live. I was working in direct mail marketing and NYC is the Mecca of the industry, so finding a job wasn't difficult. I was good to go.
So almost two months to day after I turned 25, I moved to New York City, not knowing anyone, really, not knowing my way around, and with very little material possessions.
One thing I did have was a CD-player/boom-box kind of thing. One of the first places I wandered was St. Marks Place which led me to the record store, Sounds.
Giddy with excitement and the possibility of recreating myself, I decided to discover something NEW for me. I'd been listening to a lot of alternative rock for a while, thrown in with some R&B and dance music and of course, the stand by classic rock that is ever present in Danbury, CT.
I had never heard of Polly Jean Harvey, and I saw this CD cover and bought it without even hearing it. Sounds doesn't have listening stations:
Oh my God.
I was an instant fan. She was angry and tiny and loud and played her own guitar and I wanted to be like her.
This CD was on heavy rotation for the majority of that summer and fall. Whenever this song pops up on my iPod, it's so quiet in the beginning I usually think my iPod has accidentally shut off, and then I start to hear that high falsetto "lick my legs, I'm on fire" and I then I smile and turn it up.
This song reminds me of walking around New York and getting confused because I just left W. 4th Street, how did I end up turning on 10th Street? I remember smuggling bourbon into my room at the Parkside Evangeline Residence for Young Business Women - which was strictly verboten, but I thought I was slick enough to get away with it. I think of my first friends in New York, other "inmates" of The Convent, as we liked to call it. I think of how I would walk to work, hustling my ass off to get there on time and hating my co-worker Eyeore who tattled on me all of the time for my personal calls and ate lots of stinky fish at her desk. I think of the first time my ass was grabbed on the subway, the first time I had street meat, and the first time I hugged myself with insane glee, knowing that I was finally in New York City and now maybe my "real life" could begin.
More than anything, "Rid Of Me" reminds me of my strong desire to be a musician, and how I had almost the same amount of fear. Sometimes I would audaciously audition for a band, or even at Don't Tell Mama up in the Theater District, where I did a vampy strip tease to "You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile" I was wearing a suit jacket and skirt and looked kind of like a mini-van Mom before shimmying and shucking it down to a very tight white tank top with a giant smile painted across my large boobs. The gays loved me. I was asked to come back in a few weeks, but I didn't, because the fear kicked back in. I have something I call "Reverse Stage Fright". I have the nads to get up and read poetry or sing my songs, some of them very emotionally bare...and when I sit down, at the end of my spot, I shake like a leaf, waiting for punishment for putting the truth out there.
P.J. Harvey is so raw on the album, I aspired to be as honest and as open about my passion and pain. One of my deep regrets is having the ambition and a touch of audacity to start to go for my dreams, but not enough audacity or self-confidence to keep going. At least I didn't have it at 25. At 25, I was still not exactly sure who I was or what I really wanted. At 25, I was starting over after already feeling like I had lived a lifetime of failure. At 25 I was sitting in my little room on Gramercy Park, blowing pot smoke out the window and staring down on Irving Place, scouring the Village Voice for auditions and bands looking for singers and attempting to write my own music on my beat up, mis-strung Giannini guitar. "Rid of Me" puts that ancient crap guitar back in my hands, and the pavement under my feet - I had no idea what was going to happen to me, I just know that I wanted SOMETHING to happen.
My car had died and I was bumming rides from a lovely coworker kind enough to drive my sorry ass to work. I threw my four functioning brain cells together and figured that if I lived in New York City, I wouldn't need to drive, I could probably get gigs and maybe, oh, become famous or something ridiculously arrogant like that.
I knew someone who knew someone who was living in an all women's residence, kind of like a dorm, on Gramercy Park. It was pretty cheap, rent included breakfast and dinner, was in a great neighborhood and foolishly, they accepted my application. I had a place to live. I was working in direct mail marketing and NYC is the Mecca of the industry, so finding a job wasn't difficult. I was good to go.
So almost two months to day after I turned 25, I moved to New York City, not knowing anyone, really, not knowing my way around, and with very little material possessions.
Giddy with excitement and the possibility of recreating myself, I decided to discover something NEW for me. I'd been listening to a lot of alternative rock for a while, thrown in with some R&B and dance music and of course, the stand by classic rock that is ever present in Danbury, CT.
I had never heard of Polly Jean Harvey, and I saw this CD cover and bought it without even hearing it. Sounds doesn't have listening stations:
I was an instant fan. She was angry and tiny and loud and played her own guitar and I wanted to be like her.
This CD was on heavy rotation for the majority of that summer and fall. Whenever this song pops up on my iPod, it's so quiet in the beginning I usually think my iPod has accidentally shut off, and then I start to hear that high falsetto "lick my legs, I'm on fire" and I then I smile and turn it up.
This song reminds me of walking around New York and getting confused because I just left W. 4th Street, how did I end up turning on 10th Street? I remember smuggling bourbon into my room at the Parkside Evangeline Residence for Young Business Women - which was strictly verboten, but I thought I was slick enough to get away with it. I think of my first friends in New York, other "inmates" of The Convent, as we liked to call it. I think of how I would walk to work, hustling my ass off to get there on time and hating my co-worker Eyeore who tattled on me all of the time for my personal calls and ate lots of stinky fish at her desk. I think of the first time my ass was grabbed on the subway, the first time I had street meat, and the first time I hugged myself with insane glee, knowing that I was finally in New York City and now maybe my "real life" could begin.
More than anything, "Rid Of Me" reminds me of my strong desire to be a musician, and how I had almost the same amount of fear. Sometimes I would audaciously audition for a band, or even at Don't Tell Mama up in the Theater District, where I did a vampy strip tease to "You're Never Fully Dressed Without A Smile" I was wearing a suit jacket and skirt and looked kind of like a mini-van Mom before shimmying and shucking it down to a very tight white tank top with a giant smile painted across my large boobs. The gays loved me. I was asked to come back in a few weeks, but I didn't, because the fear kicked back in. I have something I call "Reverse Stage Fright". I have the nads to get up and read poetry or sing my songs, some of them very emotionally bare...and when I sit down, at the end of my spot, I shake like a leaf, waiting for punishment for putting the truth out there.
P.J. Harvey is so raw on the album, I aspired to be as honest and as open about my passion and pain. One of my deep regrets is having the ambition and a touch of audacity to start to go for my dreams, but not enough audacity or self-confidence to keep going. At least I didn't have it at 25. At 25, I was still not exactly sure who I was or what I really wanted. At 25, I was starting over after already feeling like I had lived a lifetime of failure. At 25 I was sitting in my little room on Gramercy Park, blowing pot smoke out the window and staring down on Irving Place, scouring the Village Voice for auditions and bands looking for singers and attempting to write my own music on my beat up, mis-strung Giannini guitar. "Rid of Me" puts that ancient crap guitar back in my hands, and the pavement under my feet - I had no idea what was going to happen to me, I just know that I wanted SOMETHING to happen.
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