from Bay Windows
September 19, 2002
by By Zoë Gemelli
When asked to change the word 'fuck' to 'freak,' Alix Olson's self-inflicted Tourette Syndrome kicked in. She began saying 'fuck' and 'cunt' more often. "Part of why I over use those words," she explained, "it's not just because that's how my brain works, it's because I don't believe those words should have that kind of validity."
And when she hits a few of stages in New England over the next week, she will surely be pronouncing each word in all of her poignant radical feminist poems with the special emphasis that put her on the cover of Ms. Magazine at 25.
Touring to promote her new CD, "Built That Way," a musical ride through selections of her hard-hitting performance poetry, she hits Maine, Northampton and Provincetown this time around. For this latest effort she tapped on a few friends to help kick out the jams, including Boston-based folkies Catie Curtis and Pamela Means. What transpired is a new brand of music, something Olson calls, "folk poetry."
Bay Windows got the chance to speak with her during a recent stop in Burlington, Vt., where Olson was staying an extra day to give a poetry workshop at Outright Vermont, a gay and lesbian community space. She often does these types of events the day after a show, where the age limit is set to 21-plus, giving younger people the chance to experience the message. And it frees their mind to writing, she says.
In the self-penned Ms. Magazine article (which she explained was put on the chopping block by editors) she revealed he sometimes not so nice elements of being on the road in a diary-like story. Just a few of the day-to-day grind can run from harassment to facing the different faces of the lesbian scene. She thought that to be queer meant to take up the feminist battle cry, and yet there are many women who have created their own brand of feminism, taking only what they need and leaving key elements behind.
Regardless of what she might find around the next corner, Olson keeps moving on-"I'm doing a small Catholic school in Nebraska." She'll also be performing in other homophobic territory in Wyoming and Idaho. "Every experience reminds me of why it's important to be feisty about your identity and your sexuality, if not for yourself then for other people."
Performer with a cause
Born to politically focused mother and father professors in a small Pennsylvania town, Olson learned about leftist movements through them. Some of her earliest memories are of sitting under tables coloring in protest signs.
As a young feminist, Olson came out in the New York Nuyorican slam poetry scene-before slam became mainstream. After winning numerous awards for her performance, she took poetry on the road. She tired to play venues where music usually emanated from the stage, but booking agents were hesitant to have poetry nights for fear they wouldn't fill their clubs. Then she realized that the kinship she felt with folk musicians would fill music venues since their audiences are usually the same.
"Traveling with musicians all of the time, I get to play with them. I'll bring them out they experiment with me on stage, with my work," she explained. She's also learned from those musical friends: "It's given me a little more improvisational bravery. And [now] I'm working with a bunch of different pedals, and loops and things." Her next CD comes out in December, but the one after that she wants to play and write more of the music.
No life without politics
Anyone who knows her name immediately equates it with the word radical. And yet, on the other end of the phone was a sweet, sometimes shy, often soft and delicate when describing the people and things around her that are inspiring to her. Could this be the fireball feminist of the legend? Even she says, "often queer women are humble about being amazing." Not wanting to describe herself that way, there is a sense of humility about her and her honest approach to telling her stories and relating them to the grand scheme of the world. "Personality is just as important as politics," and it's her nature that gets people listening.
"People always ask how I got to my politics and I never remember not having them. I watched my parents and they were good people, and their friends were good people and they went to political rallies in D.C. and they were good people. And I just thought that good politics meant that you were a good person."
She tries to maintain a positive vibe at her shows. "There are a lot of things that are so heavy and serious that need to be explored, but there's definitely a lighter side to all of them." Most of her audience is gay and they respond to her voice. "My shows feel like a small piece of a larger solidarity movement. One part kind of feels like a protest rally, one part a peace rally and I guess one part concert."
"A lot people wonder if I have an alternative set or a different way to approach things depending on where I am, I kind of wish I did sometimes, but I definitely don't," Olson explained that her would have to temper her politics and herself too often, "I think it's really important to be unabashed about certain things."
Poetry as music
When asked what this new combination of music and words was doing to her poetry she replied that it has "added an interesting element. I am encouraged to experiment now that I can see the different directions it can go."
"Built Like That" has a musical soul but Olson says, "I'm obsessed with words and that's what I want people to pay attention to." Before the album was recorded, her friendships with Means and Curtis were flourishing. Means taught her about what she calls "little thing-a-ma-bobs" otherwise known as frets on a guitar, and Curtis guided her via email on how to deal with obsessive fans and stardom.
The main thrust behind putting out the CD was to give her fans something to take home. Not one to write out her poems--they are all in her head-she doesn't think that reading her words will come across the same way as hearing them performed. "The energy of performance poetry is so much about performing it live." The album isn't all music driven, there are performed poems, similar to what would be heard live. For "audiences that don't like poetry, (the CD) is kind of a way of spoon-feeding it a bit with music."
A September day
In the wake of what happened to the place she calls home, New York City, she has written a new piece about Sept. 11. With her own personal set of anguish on that day she continues to take up her cause. "I look around and there's so much to change. If I can even tackle a tiny part of it, that's gonna be my life."
When she recently performed an anti-war piece at a San Diego Pride celebration she offended a lot of people and was labeled unpatriotic. "It definitely is a changing queer community. I think the more people that come into the gay community, the more diversity in politics you're going to have. But it's kind of disappointing to me. I kind of expect my community to be radical," she laughs. "I have such a strong agenda that it's important to not let that interfere with my audiences process or what people are dealing with. And not watering down what [I] think.
She still has her strong opinions, like what it means to be a gay Republican, "Either you're self-hating or you're against yourself." She feels that many people think they don't have to fight for political change. "If you have nothing to gain from changing politics, depending on what your identity is, if you're taken care of by the status quo, the mainstream normative hegemony, then your not invested in it."
Her words will hopefully ignite passion in people who feel they don't have a voice. And continue to inspire those who are already believers.
(Alix Olson plays Maine Colby College on Sept 19, contact 207-859-6340; Iron Horse in Northampton, MA on Sept 20, tickets are $8 at 1-800-the-tick or www.iheg.com/tickets.htm. She'll be at Vixen in Provincetown, Sept 21. Tickets are $7 at the door. For more info go to www.alixolson.com.)