Bella Bartalk

marks my 10 year anniversary with songwriting and my love affair with guitar.  And in honor of that, I’ve been reading Girls to the Front by Sara Marcus, making my friend Sarah Baker some riot grrrl CDs, and listening to a lot of different girl bands that I had put on the back burners for a while.

And it just so happens that a few months ago, while just hanging out and drinking coffee, Audrey Scott and I were talking about playing some shows in the Valley in February and here they are!  This weekend will undoubtedly be one of the craziest weekends of my life (so far) but we’ve been working really hard and I can’t wait to share what’s been happening.  So, I might play something on my own to celebrate my 10 years of writing and challenging male dominance in the punk scene, I might just make a toast to myself and those who have stuck with me all these years, and I might just cause a scene, regardless, I’ve been really demure with what I’ve been writing lately and that needs to stop.

I’m getting really tired of keeping my feminism quiet.  I’m getting tired of people thinking I’m just a merch girl, or the band’s photographer friend, or the girlfriend of the guy in the band.  I’m tired of people thinking it’s okay to make comments about how a girl needs to dress to get attention, or that I need to play acoustic guitar to get people to think I’m a good musician.  I’m sick of all that shit. 

So here’s to you 13 year old, me.  You had the right idea starting a punk band with your friends when you weren’t any good.  You were vulnerable and tough, and you were cool because you were doing something about the scene you were dissatisfied with.  You were conscience of those decisions and your art was strong enough to keep you coming back, weekend after weekend, blow after blow, and you got better and better with each power chord.

I want my songs to be like that again.  I want them to inspire girls the same way my favorite bands inspired me.  There’s so much shit out there in the world, and even if it’s too big to change it ourselves, we have the power to change what we can control, and that’s amazing to me.  We can start bands, and create art, and write poetry that affects OUR world around us, even if it’s the 3 friends we hang out with and eat lunch with once a week.  That teenage spirit we used to have still lives inside us, I firmly believe that, we just have to dig past all the crap that’s been buried on top of it.  Maybe I’m stuck in the ’90s and maybe I’ve been reading too many riot grrrl ‘zine excerpts, but it helps me sleep at night knowing that maybe one person at a show, will go home, get our 2 chord song stuck in their head and say “Hey, that’s not hard, I can start a band, too” and all of a sudden, their day is better.

…maybe this should’ve been an lj post. 
whatever.   Fuck you tumblr, I’ll write what I want.  Happy 10 year anniversary Ms. Wagner.