S2E8: Janice Erlbaum

Episode Transcript:

[static]
[Evy] And where can we find our podcast?
[Webster] Ah yes of course
I think we should just have a recording of this
Ennio is gonna be pissed

[Static]

[Evy laughing] What are we doing?
[Webster] I felt like that was a really nice place to add it
[Janice] Yeah and I think your next guest is here, so...
[Evy] we'll cut that out
[Webster] yeah
[Janice] Oh I hope he's gonna cut a bunch of this out... All my... all my stammering and..
[Webster] Don't worry, there are no stupid questions anyway.

[intro]

[Evy] Hello and welcome to Word Up Podcast. I'm Evy!
[Webster] And I'm Webster.
[Evy] and today, we're here with Janice. Hi Janice!
[Janice] Hi, I'm thrilled to be here.
[E] wow. How are you today?
[J] Great, great. Oh God, I have nothing to say... How am I today? Are we recording this? Is this actually being recorded? I should've prepared a much better answer...
[E] just how are you?
[J] I'm great, I just got the French cover for my second children's book and it's a thing of beauty and I'm really excited about it.
[E] oh, congratulations.
[J] Thank you.
[W] What does that mean "You got the French cover"?
[J] The book was picked up by a French publisher and translated into French. Which hasn't happened for me yet, it's my fifth book, but I've been in Australia, in England, but never in France, before. So now, one of my books is in France.
[E] Wow, exciting.
[J] You're not gonna use any of this, right? This is all gonna be de...(voice fades out)
[W] This is all great.
[J] (makes weird sound) I'm the most uncomfortable person in the world.
[E] But, oh... You don't have to notice him.
[J] I don't
[E] It's okay. So tell us more about you and what brought you to be in all these countries with all your five books?
[J] Well, I'm a native New Yorker, and I spent the first fifty years of my life in New York, before coming to Amsterdam this September (2019). And I was writing from a very young age, always knew I wanted to be a writer. Wrote throughout grade school and high school. Had a little bit of a crisis of confidence and decided "I don't know what to do" in college. "Should I try and be a writer, or should I invest in something that makes money?" So I went to business school for six months. And then I went back to school for literature. And I... You know, New York is a very active, cultural scene. So from a young age, it was easy for me to find people to collaborate with, and it was easy for me to find places to showcase my work. When I was 20, I started contributing to an alternative newspaper called New York Press . I started going to the Nuyorican poet's cafe, which is in the east village in New York and meeting people that way. So I got to be part of a big creative community that nurtured me and taught me and helped me sort of launch my career.
[E] Wow, what a story..
[W] Yeah
[W] For me, writing was always something I discovered much later in my life. Writing for myself anyway, as opposed to, you know, being told to write at school. Was it something that you did at home, early on? Or... how did that.... come along?
[J] Yes. So... This is not actually my first book. My first book is called "Janice and the Giraffe". And I wrote it when I was four and I also illustrated it. And the giraffe is like... disturbingly phallic, not that four year olds are great at drawing giraffes anyway, but it really looks like I went to the zoo to visit a dick. Anyway, that was my first book. And, you know, I stapled it together, and it was like... You know, I was really proud of it. So yes, I was always making little books and writing stories. And I did little plays with myself, by using a tape recorder. I would record lines and then record other lines... I was a very unpopular child, I spent a lot of time by myself, and it sort of perfect... perfect conditions for growing a writer is... An anxious kid with too much time on their hands and a need to try and make connections. So yeah, I started very young, kept going. Nuyorican and New York Press was sort of like... That's when my "career" (and I'm doing air quotes, so I hope they're audible, audible air quotes) sort of began there, because once you've got publication credits, once you have performing credits, then you get more. It's like work begets work. When I would get invited to do a poetry reading, people would see me, and they would say "Hey, come do my poetry reading" or "Come do this". In '92, I was cast in a performance poetry group called The Pussy Poets. This is pre vagina monologues, so this was kinda hot-hot stuff. It wasn't our idea. A guy who hung around Nuyorican poet's cafe was like "I've a great idea" 'cause he was South-African. And he had a great idea, and we were going to be this poetry group, and he just cast us, he just reached out and grabbed the nearest five girls. There was no... And stuck us together, but immediately, because of the name, we started to take off. So then we were in this very bizarro position of having a big platform, but not being very good.
[W] right.
[E] And that pushed you to be good, or to...?
[J] It pushed us to get better, it pushed us into a lot of fights and creative disagreement. Until I left the group, diva that I am, to become a solo act.
[W] ahh... As the story goes.
[E] Beyonce!
[W] Justing Timberlake!
[J] I mean, you know... So as a solo act, I was still coasting of the pussy poets. I got to do Lollapalooza in '94, I got to do Woodstock '94, I appeared at all these places, I was on MTV, talking about my ex. Poetry was really hot in the early '90's and I was there. That completely sort of kept that ball rolling.Then I started writing for Bust Magazine, which was new, feminist magazine in the States. And through that visibility I got other writing gigs, and it just sort of built on itself, until my early 30's, when I finally wrote my book. You know, the book that I had been waiting to write all of my life. I finally was able to sit down and write it. And Girl Bomb is the title, it rhymes with my last name, (Erlbaum). I'd been writing and performing under that name, as a slam poet, Girl bomb is kinda catchy, easy to remember. So this came out in 2006. I published another memoir two years later. Then a novel, and then I started writing for tweens... Out of nowhere, because I have no kids, and my early stuff was all very very very very sexually explicit. So I don't know how I wound out writing for tweens, but it was just kind of a fluke. Yeah, that's the... Oh wait, I lest shit out.
[W] That's okay.
[J] The performing scene in the east village of New York, wasn't just limited to slam poetry, so... Slam poetry was very very hot, but then it sort of started to cool off, and I had displayed my dysfunctional behaviour all over town and I'd kinda burned then scene from myself, you know... Like I had slept with everybody, argued with everybody, and it was just time for me to find a new place to put myself. So I started doing comedy, at a different club, at a place called surf reality. And that's one of the reasons when I came to Amsterdam, the first thing I did was look for open mics, and that's how I found Word Up. Because the open mic scene that I was a part of was such a fundamental piece of my development and sort of a... My glory days were not being on MTV and being on lollapalooza my glory days were being in this shitty theater, on the lower east side, at an open mic. Because the community that sprang up around it, the collaboration, the intensity of the emotional relationships... It forged my deepest friendships, that still, 20 years later, are the people that are closest to me. So I have kind of a very very idealised notion of what an open mic can be and 2hat it can do. And I’ve seen the Word Up open mic, and I think it does wonders.Last time I was there, there were some kids behind me, who were very nervous about reading their poems. They were about gender identity, and I was so excited for them. I was so excited for them, that they were gonna read out loud and they were encouraging each other, and it's like... That to me is creative magic.

[E] You also said that it was for you about connections, and finding connections, because you said you were a lonely kid?
[J] Yes, yeah.
[E] So I'm just wondering... Is it connections more to yourself, or to the outside world, or finding something that you might have lost?
[J] As a weirdo, you wanna find other weirdo's. Because, even if your weird is different than their weird, they've experienced some of the same stuff that you have. And so, an open mic is a great place to find other weirdo's. And that means that artistic communities sometimes harbor predators, sometimes harbor people who are very mentally ill, or very marginalized for one reason or another. And yet, that's the segment of the population that often gets left out. Not the predators, they're all over the place. But marginalized people, people with mental illness, people who are heavily addicted and have no other place to go can sometimes find - as I've seen - solace at an open mic. At the Nuyorican in the early '90's there was a homeless guy names O'ryan, who would sort of walk in off the street rambling, read his poems that were written on the back of a greasy paper bag, and he was part of the thing... He was part of the scene. And as such, people looked out for him, interacted with him. I mean, I think part of the thing about being homeless, is you don't get to talk to people. Nobody talks to you. Boy, I'm really on a tangent here.
[W] that's good, right?
(all laughing)
[J] Because I had to leave home at the age of 15, there was domestic violence in my home, and I had to leave. I went straight to a shelter, so I never spent a night outside. I was not sleeping "rough" as they say. I always slept indoors, I always had food. But you still felt kinda homeless, living at a shelter. So that experience was really fundamental to shaping my personality after that. As a loner, it made me feel even further away from people. And so, to be in a community that embraced people who smelt bad, people who had bad teeth, or not all of their teeth, people who were personally repellent in many ways. I had been repellent, you know... I was a shoplifter, I sold drugs, I stole from people, so I kinda have to have empathy for the marginalized, that continues to this day. Like, when I was in New York, I would give people change. Because I'm doing just fine now, and nobody needs to worry about me. I could give away change in the subway. And somebody said "Oh, you know they're just gonna spend it on drugs" And I was like: "well, I smoke a lot of weed, so uhm... I'm not gonna judge, really, what they spend it on. They asked me "Can you spare some change?" and the answer is "Yes, I can" And God, there was some times when smoking a joint would've made all the difference in the world to me. 15/16/17 years old, a beer would've gotten in so god-damn handy. So uhm... I also went back to volunteer at the shelter. When I was trying to write Girl Bomb it's like I had a lot of archives, I had a lot of the notes that my friends and I had passed, I had a lot of my old journals and stuff. But going back to the actual, physical place where I had lived, and walking into the old rooms and smelling that particular cinder block/carpet/cement kind of smell really helped me to write this book Girl Bomb.
[W] And what was the... Was there a moment when you decided "I really need to write this book"? And if so, why did you feel the need to put it into a physical form that people can engage with?
[J] Well, after being part of The Pussy Poets and understanding the power of marketing, I kind of knew that "Oh, being homeless was the most interesting thing about me" Like, "I really need to push the homeless angle" You know what I mean? Talk it up, make it... I'm being a little bit fiseashes but... It wasn't really a part of my poetry, but I did write about it for New York Press and I knew it was something that not only made me interesting to other people, but had changed my life... Fundamentally. So it's a story I'd been trying to write... For a long time... And in different forms, would get two or three chapters in, and then would quit, and then would blame myself for being a lazy asshole and you know... Repeat.
[W] Just for our audience listening: would you be able to describe it, in a quick and easy way, what the book is about? Maybe we can put that at the front?
[J] It's called Girl Bomb, a halfway homeless memoir and it's the true story of the time I spent living in shelters and group homes in New York City in the 1980's and this book lead directly to the next book. Because when I went back to volunteer at the shelter, I met a young woman who was so fascinating that I became very involved in her life. And my next book was about her. So it's kinda handy the way that shakes down.
[W] Sweet. And you talk about your experience moving away from your parents' house and eventually moving into a shelter. Can you tell us what that was like? In detail, what was the... What drove you to get to that? 'Cause that's a massive change.
[J] I think it was... Yeah it was a real like... Split second decision. It was really... I must have been thinking about it, because I did know where to go, which was Covenant House which is still the largest provider of beds for homeless teenagers in the United States. But Covenant House at that time was one building in the middle of Times Square, which was a really seedy place to be. So I knew it existed, so I must have been sort of paying attention somehow. But I walked out, and I hadn't been planning to, I didn't really pack anything... I didn't think it through... And uhm... that was a real turning point for me. It was... You know, I grew up in New York City, and I went to public high school, and it's a very diverse place. And yet, I had been living in a very white New York, before I went to Covenant House. And then I was in the minority, and it was a really important experience, a really important experience for me. And not always comfortable, but it really allowed me to see my privilege in action, in such a profound way. The way that I was treated by the system was so very different from the way the girls I lived with were treated. And that was another reason why I wanted to go back to Covenant House... Was A) to sort of pay back what they had given me, and B) to bring this understanding that I had and put it to some kind of use.
[E] and is it that you leaving your home, or your parents' home, and you performing, did it go hand in hand, or did you take some time to..
[J] well, you know, in a weird way it they are kind of connected. In high school I was lucky enough to be part of the theatre club, and we had a teacher who could have cast easygoing, popular kids in the shows, but instead, he put me and some of the other more marginalized kids in the shows, and it was all we had. It was all we had. I mean, after rehearsal, I wanted to stay and build the sets, I had no... There was no place better to go, I mean, this was best that there was. So somebody reached out, took a chance, took me in, made me part of something and so I got to be in shows and people clapped and laughed and that was a feeling that I wanted...
[E] That's a sense of belonging
[J] ... to have again. Yeah, exactly.
[E] In a bigger way, right? That's also, you're part of something, and people appreciate you, it's feeling that, right?
[J] Yeah
[E] and also what you're talking also about your poetry club, is like.... I was thinking how much it's art and poetry and culture in general, really allows people to sort of hold onto that humanity, that connection, the feeling that you're part of something.
[J] Yeah, yeah. That's it. If you're lonely, and you go out to do karaoke, you're singing with other people, and it feels less lonely. You're not necessarily having a conversation, you're just kind of exchanging atoms.
[E] yeah and you're actually just probably talking for the first time in that day or something, perhaps.
[J] Yeah, perhaps.
[W] Do you think, given the experiences you had earlier on, you would've written the books that you have, or just written books if you hadn't walked out that early?
[J] you know, when I was young, I thought that writing was gonna be the thing that saved me. I thought "I'm going to write a book, and it's going to make money, and that money will get me out of the house" That was a child's... A nine year old's logic. "Oh, I'm gonna write a book, it's gonna make money, the money is gonna get me out of the house" So I always had the impetus to do it, I always really wanted to do it, and I think that it was a story that I had to get out, one way or another. So I'm glad I spent all that time alone in my room writing, journalling, making stuff up, drawing, living in that fantasy world. But to go back to the idea of the open mic's and community, in 2002, some friends and I started a writing group. We would meet every week, there were six of us, three of us would workshop one week, the other three would the other week. You had to email your pages by Friday night and blahblahblah. And we committed to each other to make a writing group. And that's how I was able to write the first draft of the book. I'd been professionally writing, I'd been payed to write, but I couldn't write a book. I just couldn't get it out until I made a commitment to other people that we were all going to struggle through this together. So that's how I was able to do the first draft of the book, was by coming together with other artists who had the same goals.
[E] So having a... in a way a mirror.
[J] A support, accountability, yeah.
[E] And on that note: would you like to share something with us?
[J] Sure.

(interlude)
This is a poem called A Woman Now

this must be it
this is what you were taught to want
this met him mouth open to kiss and this
two iodine fingers lynch brutal
hangnail tangles crisp hairs and
pinch your lips together

you moan, you don’t wince

pushed over and in your
whole clenching nails like a fist
the chafing burn to resist his
rabid quenching does not desist
in the face of your mask
you can’t deny but you’re not what you do
sucking to keep from drowning
dying for it or from it
a good lover to get it over get it over

just come
hurry up and come
just come
hurry up and come

shaking your whole body no
no notice me notice that I don’t want to
do this notice that I am dry under you
scraping myself with lout and lout again
slapping return carriage pounding keys
remorse code signals furied pleas
solace only with his impending release
and you continue to survive
cauterized gouges submitted inside
the surrender of his sudden naked eyes
widen your own perverse pride
cause there’s glory knowing how much
you can take before you tear
and you think you must be
a woman now
you can bear anything

26:10
(applause)
[W] very vivid
[J] Thank you, thank you. That's from my old poetry days, that is from the early 90's. This was a poem that I slammed with, you know. And people rated me on a scale of 1 to 10 on this poem, as well as others. Yeah, it was the birth of slam poetry, so anything that you could do to be like "I have the worst life" you know, that would get the 10's. Like "i had the worst life", "I like sex, how about you?" and "racism is bad" those were the three poems that you could always get a 10.
[W] plus
[E] Wow. That's very limited.
[J] It was, it was very limited. Hopefully it's expanded a little bit since then. No, it hasn't expanded. Somebody who knows is shaking their head.
[W] And what was the audience reactions when you would speak this one, because it's quite... Quite hard to take in.
[J] Yeah, it was... potent. And I would sometimes read it with another poem called The slut of Pascack Valley High which was about... Another poem about promiscuity but sort of having gotten a reputation... All my poems kind of had a narrative through line that was like... Yeah, a lot about romantic relationships, a lot about sex, I mean, we were The Pussy Poets so we kind of had to live up to that somehow, you know?
[W] Makes sense. You're not going to do a poem about Aristotle...
[J] No, although I did later in my life write a poem about Socrates, so you know... There you go. I sort of aged out of The Pussy Poets by then.
[E] And I'm just wondering like: How would you define yourself? Because you're visiting so many stages and you're a writer, you're a poet, slam-poet...
[J] Right...
[E] So how do you... Activist I feel like also. How do you... Do you have a certain way you like to introduce yourself or?
[J] I like to say I'm a writer, and kinda leave it at that. I mean, the thing is that like, writers don't need to go to open mic's. There came a time in doing open mic's where I started doing comedy, and like... Stand up comedy is such a high. It is such a rush. It is such an amazing feeling in your body, that I really started to think "oh, I wanna become a comedian" and started to, you know, making roads and play around... But there came a time where I realized "If you want to be a comedian, you have to be out six or seven nights a week, doing comedy. And if you want to be a writer, you have to be home six or seven nights a week, writing" And I had to choose. And I still loved getting up on stage and having people laugh and clap, and it was emediate. You wrote something and that night it was out there rather than at home labouring for months and nobody ever sees anything. It's really... I missed that instant gratification, but I did really have to choose at that point. What am I? I'm not a poet, I'm not a slam poet, I don't do that anymore. I don't really perform anymore, I'm a writer, and a writing coach. That's the other thing that I like to call myself.
[E] Yeah, because you also have a youtube channel for girls, is that right?
[J] Yeah, no, boys and the non-binary are also very very welcome. Yeah I started a series called Advise for young writers. Because again: I knew that I wanted to be a writer when I was eight years old, nine years old, and on. And there were no resources for me, like... There was nothing that was sort of in terms that I could understand, about the craft or about the business that could've been helpful for me, so... I wanted to pass on my wisdom in a series of 90 second to two minute little soundclips and yeah, they found a little bit of an audience, they're... Evergreen, as we like to say in the magazine industry. In that, they don't expire, the advise is good, I hope, will still be good.
[W] Do you think it's easier to be a writer today than it was back then, given all the information that people have access to? There's blogs and websites and online courses dedicated to anything you can find in the world...
[J] Yes, absolutely, when it comes to publishing, definitely. It's much easier to understand the business of writing now. It was very opaque for a long time, and that lead to a kind of gate keeping. If you didn't know people who could tell you what to do, then you didn't know what to do. And your stuff never got anywhere. So you know, again, publishing being kind of a very privileged world.
[W] I was gonna say, they said "It's not what you know, it's who you know" right?
[J] Yes, and like, a bad book is not going to get published because you know somebody, but a good book might go unpublished, because you know nobody, and nobody is giving you the advise that you need. 32:06 Now, again, you can look things up, you should be able to find everything that you need online, but still..It's a very very complex process of researching agents, finding an agent, writing a proposal, you know... Getting that part done, it's very labor intensive, there's all kinds of little curly queues, and you know, you just wanna write... You don't wanna have to sell it, you don't wanna have to market it. But that falls to the writer these days, so that's how it's become harder.
[W] Interesting
[J] Because there's so many more books, and nobody really.. Cares that much about any individual book. Ediitors don't have time to edit, publisists can't publisize every single book, and so... It's hard when you're at a large publisher to get attention and resources.
[E] It's also become, at least what I am seeing, very fast food, like the books that are published are not something that you neccessarily want to keep for 10 - 20 years.
[J] Right, yeah
[E] It's really something that you just read and then you just exchange or hand down or whatever.
[J] And maybe because of e-books, maybe that's in part because of e-books that it feels like less of a commitment that you've made to a text, you know. It's just this flimsy thing that will disappear eventually.
[E] It's such a shame in my opinion.
[J] Well, what's weird is that it seems like fast food and yet the process takes so long. If you sell a finished manuscript, the soonest you will see a book, is a year and a half, and often two years... It takes two years for your actual physical book to wind up in the stores, which is (whispering) forever.
[W] That's a very long time.
[J] Yeah, and like some things, if they rush things out, they can do that, but they don't do that unless it's a news thing, you know, that's very timely. It takes so long, so now writing for tweens, the challenge is: they're all very technically connected, they use this software, they use that software, and I'm trying to keep up to date with it, and it doesn't matter, because by the time thee book comes out, it's gonna be outdated anyway, so...
[E] No instant gratification. So what would be your advise for people who are thinking of writing a book, or just writing in general, like, what's your... What's the best advise you can offer?
[J] The best advise I can offer is: Something is better than nothing. Writing for five minutes is better than not writing for five minutes. That uhm... You don't start writing a book by writing the first sentence and then the second sentence and then the third sentence. You don't paint a picture by starting in the top left corner and painting it down. So those are my two fundamental principles, are "Something is better than nothing" and "Start anywhere". Start anywhere, start in the middle, start with the parts that you want to write the most. If you like battle scenes, skip to the battle scenes. If you like sex scenes, skip to the sex scenes. And get the momentum going that way.
[E] So it's excersizing the muscle...
[J] Exactly.
[W] And just trusting in the process as well.
[J] yeah
[E] wow
[W] well thank you very much for being with us today.
[J] Thank you for having me, I love being part of WordUp, I love being part of the podcast team. I'm so grateful to have met likeminded people.
[E] Thank you
[W] and for our audience listening, where can we find you? Where can they find Girl Bomb and where can they find your social media and all that sort of stuff?
[J] Okay, I have sworn off social media, but I have a website: www.girlbomb.com or janiceerlbaum.com and I love getting mail from readers, so please feel free to contact me.
[E] Nice, thank you.
[W] Thank you. And for our audience listening: you know where to find us: at www.worduppodcast.com , where you'll find past episodes with all our guests as well as information that we talked about in the podcast. Thank you.
[E] Thank you and goodbye
[W] Bye!
[E] Doei!

(outro)

[J] and this is the voice that I'm going to.. I'm going to speak like this, in podcast voice the entire time
[E] Oh my god.
[W] dum dum dum dum.
[E] Oh my god, we've birthed a monster...


Transcript by Audrey van Houten