Riff Tracks
opening up
I’m offering something new.
Here’s how it works:
You send me a question (a current event that’s been living rent-free in your head, a decision you keep circling without landing, a dream you want to explore the meaning of, a desire or fear that feels a little vulnerable and maybe you haven’t said out loud before, anything really). I’ll take it in, no script, no rehearsal, just my pure and unfiltered attention.
Then, on the day you choose, an email will land in your inbox with either a 10 minute voice recording, just the words in a transcript, or both.
As interesting as it might be to hear someone else riff on your situation, this isn’t really about me being the expert on your life. I might be able to offer options for resolution, or articulate an abstraction that clarifies, but this is really an opportunity for me to learn to hone my discernment and intuition, and for you to have a sounding board that allows you fine tune your own inner knowing as you resonate, or don’t, with my reply.
It’s part intuitive, part agony aunt, and all my attention.
If this sounds like something for you, here’s how to get in on it:
You use the link to send me $20. (https://www.paypal.me/baerjenna)
Follow the link to Calendly and pick a day. (https://calendly.com/sync-with-jenna/riff-tracks)
Choose Just Me or Me + Oracle Cards, both are me just finding different ways into an answer.
If your question ends up sparking something I want to bring to a wider audience in an essay or future riff track I’ll always ask your permission first, and if you say yes, I’ll send you $10 back.
The time you choose may not be exactly when the email arrives, but you’ll absolutely receive my responses on the day you choose.
Here are the links again if you’re curious…
Send $20 to https://www.paypal.me/baerjenna
Head to https://calendly.com/sync-with-jenna/riff-tracks to schedule.
I hopped a train and went over to Fife to hang out with my friend and see her exhibition hanging in the cafe at an ecology centre. I’ve only seen bits and bobs of her work, so it was really fun to see so many paintings up and all together. It’s really wonderful to see your friends getting all lit up from deep within as they’re taking steps that make them feel vulnerable and excited at the same time.
She lives within walking distance of the train station, so she met me there and we walked back to her house for some lunch before we went to see her exhibition, and then walked some of the trails around the land of the eco centre. It was so so so so so sosososososososo good to be out in the trees, next to a loch/lake, tucked in between green hills.
I got in some puppy time as well. This is Speck, experiencing a rare moment of calm for all of us. He’s a tank, and a very energetic one who loves all the people and all the other dogs and just life in general. It’s both fantastic and exhausting.
I really wish I had more flexibility to be able to take day trips. Scotland is fantastic in so many ways, and it’s easy to forget how deeply my physical body responds to being out of the city. I love this city, don’t get me wrong, but I also deeply love train rides, the water, and being in greener, quieter, softer, places.
In order to determine whether or not a book of poetry is worth the purchase, I have to find at least three lines in from different poems that I need to be able to return to at any given moment of the day. You’d be surprised at how difficult this is, and besides having exactly zero budget for poetry books, it’s why I own very few. A title, Gift of Tongues (Blackburn, 1967), grabbed me out of a small stack of books in a charity shop today. It’s a compilation of 20th century poets, and here are the three lines that forced me into forking over £3 to be able to take it home with me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God come near me.
from Louis MacNeice’s Prayer Before Birth
and then,
The whole earth is our hospital
Endowed by the ruined millionaire,
Wherein, if we do well, we shall
Die of the absolute paternal care
That will not leave us, but prevents us everywhere.
from T.S. Eliot’s East Coker, section IV
and then,
He kissed me awake, and no one was sorry;
The sun shone on sails, eyes, pebbles, anything,
And the high green hill sits always by the sea.
from W.H. Auden’s Miranda’s Song
Fringe Cringe Fundraising
I’m doing my show, The Spider Witches of Appalachia, at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and that means I’ll need to wave this cringy little fundraising flag for the next several months. Since the beginning of time, creatives and artists of all types have been waving similar flags within their communities. If you know any cash-solvent patrons looking for creatives to support with loads of money and resource and connections, I’d be happy to bother them instead of you.
https://www.paypal.me/baerjenna
https://wise.com/pay/me/jenniferlaurenb
Every day (except Mondays) from 8 August to 30 August at 3:45pm I’ll be performing a show at a venue called The Outhouse. I’m pretty sure this is where they put new performers when they’re willing to give them a shot but still think they’ll probably stink.
The title of my show is The Spider Witches of Appalachia, and it’ll be listed as theatre but delivered mostly in a traditional oral storytelling style due to the fact that the venue is a bar that is willing to set up the barest black box style theatre situation in one corner (this is every Fringe venue unless you’re already famous and can fill an actual theatre). You can see my Fringe listings on the Festival Fringe website or the PBH’s Free Fringe website.
The story is about five generations of women in my family, and it explores the ways we pass things to and through each other and what happens to those transmissions when connections are broken or fragmented.
My biggest costs now will be for advertising and printing because I am solely responsible for gathering all of my own audiences for 20 performances. Fringe flyers and posters are already starting to go up around the city, just a few here and there for the big names with big agencies and big budgets and big ticket prices. This is not quite the echelon I’m working in yet, so it’ll be up to me to start plastering my own face on any available square inch of city I can find. Then, in August, I’ll be out on the streets with the other thousands of artists, and/or the folks they hire to do the flyering, handing out flyers to anyone who will take them, trying to convince folks to go off the beaten path up to my little venue to hear my little story.
So here I am, posting the QR codes and links to Paypal and Venmo and Wise, and hoping you’ll help me print my flyers.
Isn’t this so insane?! Thank you for being here. I love you.
Keep on keeping on!!