April 2004
theESTROGENzone

by Red101

Monthly Dig: an Interview with Alix Olson

"Alix Olson is a red-hot, fire-bellied, feminismo-spewin' volcano. Listen to her now!"
~Alison Bechdel, Cartoonist, Creator Of "dykes To Watch Out For"



From her bio: Alix Olson is a nationally touring folk poet and progressive queer artist-activist whose quick wit, fearless poetry, and charismatic presence sells out venues across the country. One part peace vigil, one part protest rally, and one part joyful raucous concert, Alix ignites audiences everywhere she performs.

If you haven’t heard of Alix Olson, it’s high time you paid this woman some attention. The first time I heard anything out of her, she was on a stage, and I was sitting in the audience, mouth open, totally floored.

A friend of mine bought me tickets to her show, but I had no idea who she was. Beforehand, I went to her website to check her out. I read some of her poetry, and was really impressed with it’s fearlessness, and her sense of our world. I liked her politics, I agreed with her stance on social issues, and I really admired her skillful use of the word ‘fuck’. But nothing had prepared me for Alix Olson’s live slam performance. An Alix Olson show is, hands down, one of the most exciting, invigorating, disturbing, make-you-wanna-get-off-your-ass-and-do-something experiences I’ve ever had. Yeah, I’m a huge fan.

Alix grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, with what she describes as a ‘progressive’ family, where she apparently developed a knack for words and a desire to have them heard. Now living in New York, Alix was a member of the National Slam Championship Team Nuyorican. She has received numerous awards for both her poetry and activism, has appeared on the cover of Ms. Magazine, and had her work in the likes of Girlfriends Magazine and The Advocate (just to name a couple). She is currently on tour promoting her latest album, Independence Meal. On Easter Sunday, from Chicago, Alix took a few minutes out of her busy schedule to talk to me.


What do you think of today’s female pop icons? Do you think they’re worse, better, or the same as what you grew up with?

Do you mean like mainstream...Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera kind of women?

Yeah, exactly.

I think in their own way, they probably feel that they are representing some type of woman to women. I think that at the same time, they’re obviously kind of puppets of the patriarchal system. I think it’s too bad that there aren’t more examples because...I think there’s too much criticism of those particular women who are just trying to sort of make a name for themselves. If we had more mainstream attention on a whole variety of women, then it would be more fair, because girls could pick and choose who they wanted to be like and who they wanted to aspire to. I think it’s unfortunate to put that much pressure on justa a couple of women. I don’t want to criticize other women for trying to get by...what they do to try and have a name for themselves and what they feel is strong in this country. At the same time, I would hope that there’s more to aspire to than shake your hips, flash your tits...you know.


I would hope. (Alix has a great giggle by the way.)


The topics that you cover run the full spectrum of social issues. You talk about religion, feminism, politics, capitalism, homosexuality, the media. Is there any single issue that you feel most passionate about, or can you even seperate any of those?

I don’t think that you can seperate it. I think what it really comes down to, and I think that’s probably what most of my work comes down to - ranging from socio-political, economic issues, to love relationships - is the intensity of power dynamics in human relationships, and the way this society is structured around those power dynamics. I think in the capitalist system, we’re so pitted against each other that the issues of race, class, gender, sexuality...all those things are really heightened, and I think we’re really divided from each other because we live in this competitive system where we’re fighting for this small amount of what we perceive to be hard to obtain. You know, money, and power, and influence. Even love, fighting for the attention of one person. So I really think for me it comes down to the type of system we devise, as a country, to make ourselves either feel as allied to each other, or in competition with each other. I think right now, we feel very much in competition, so I think that’s what I focus on a lot.


I’m sure you don’t think our current political adminsitration helps with that much?

Not so much (great giggle). I think right now, I’m feeling pretty inspired by people though. We’ve had some really amazing shows in the last couple of weeks where...people are very, very, very, very vocally critical about the government, and yet optimistic about the future, and I think that’s a really amazing combination. It definitely uplifts me and makes me feel like it’s time for me to keep doing my work right now. So yeah, I think in the short-term, things are gonna change.


You spend about 300 days of the year on the road, right?

Yeah, I do. That’s on the road, probably about 240 shows. A lot of drive days in there.

That’s an awful lot of time on a road.

It is, but I get to see a lot of the country, and I get to see a lot of different kinds of people and I get to talk to those people.



I really like ‘Wholly Human’ on your latest album. It’s like a travel diary of middle America.

Yeah (laughing).

The things that you talk about on there, are those some of your actual experiences?

Yeah, yeah! Oh, those are all real. Scary but true.

How does the mind set, the attitudes you see in some of these smaller towns affect you while you’re on the road? Does it inspire you? Does it frustrate you?

I really have to seperate my audiences, who are obviously sort of involved in us and in political culture to come to the shows, and from....well, they’re just different. At the same time, I feel like these small towns...I get engaged in some of the most fascinating political dialogue with people at gas stations and diners. More so than I would in a cosmopolitan area where people are rushing around and have no time to sit down and really talk. So, I feel like there’s really not that much of a difference. I feel like this whole idea of ‘middle America’ is kind of a construct to divide people who think they are edgy and hip from the rest. I have found that there’s not that much of a difference. People are thinking, wherever they are. They might be working harder, and they have less time to follow up on more progressive articles, but they’re still thinking about the same issues. If anything, they’re more passionate about them because their lives really depend on the outcome of those issues. There’s a real anti-Bush sentiment everywhere around the country, atleast that’s what I’ve found.

I the most important thing is to not be condescending and not approach the quote middle-America with this sense of, “Well, they don’t know what they’re talking about”, because they really do, and their lives are at stake.

Well, with all this time you spend travelling, what do you do for a vacation?

Laughs...What? What’s that? No, I get time off. I take a week here and there. I’ve got lots of friends around the country and we all just kind of divvy it up. There are times when I’m doing a show somewhere, and I’ll take that whole week off and just spend time with friends.

Just sit around and do nothing?

Yeah, but you know I’m very lucky. We get to go to all kinds of crazy places. We have a show coming up in Hawaii. They’re flying us out there, and we’ve got ten days there, and one show.

Oh, that’ll be nice!

YEAHHHHH! So, sometimes things work out like that.

You have a lot of youth oriented slam-poetry links on your website. Do you get to work with any of those groups?

Yeah, I do. Before I started touring full time, I was actually a poet in residence at four or five different elementary schools, so I spent a lot of time there. I also taught poetry in Rikers Island, which is the prison system, and Hetrick-Martin, which is a gay and lesbian highschool in New York. So, I pretty much was teaching full time before I went on tour. Now, sometimes I’ll do a college, and sometimes I’ll do a workshop for the college slam group or the women’s group, whoever asks me to do it on campus.

You’re pretty intense, and I wonder how kids seem to react to you?

Well, I wouldn’t do that kind of peotry for a youth group. Hopefully, I’m not as intense in person as I am on stage. But I really love kids, and I think we get along pretty well.

What do you like most about what you get to do?

I think that partly, if I was sitting at home, or had a nine to five job...first of all, I’m pretty antsy, so that wouldn’t work out very well. But I think that I’d be wondering what was happening around the country and really frustrated from relying on reports from the media. So I feel that I get to be sort of this travelling, alternative media of sorts, you know? I get to really get a sense of what’s happening from town to town, and because of that, I feel much more optimistic about the country than what I would otherwise. I really get to hear about local struggles, and what people are doing on a local level. You know that bumper sticker, ‘Think globally, act locally’?

Yeah.

I get to think globally, even though I don’t feel I get to act locally very much. You know, other people are doing that work. If anything, I feel frustrated that I don’t get to do more than pass through and hear what they’re doing, and hopefully give them some support and lend them a little bit of inspiration for the night. But I think I leave feeling very uplifted by the struggles I see happening.

Are there any people that you really admire right now, who are active politically and socially?

Totally. I love Greg Palast. He wrote ‘The Best Democracy Money Can Buy’, and it’s just chalk full of information about what the government has done, and how much they’re in bed with corporations. Greg Palast is amazing. He came up with a lot of the history of what’s happening in Iraq right now. And, he’s very funny. Michael Moore is one of my big inspirations. I love his art, I love his film, I love his writing. Arundhati Roy is one of my new favorites...well not new, but new to me...favorite writers. And people, of course, like Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich continue to be inspirations to me. I read them all the time.

I think that artists and writers who are really tackling, head-on, issues that we’re confronting, and realize that we don’t have time to not talk about these things, are important to me. I mean, I go to concerts and shows right now, and people don’t mention what’s happening and I can’t, I don’t understand that. I feel like it’s so much a part of our lives, that any artist who has a priviledge of time and space on stage needs to be talking about this stuff. They have a responsibility in figuring out what’s happening, because people who don’t have time to read these sort of alternative perspectives on what’s happening, rely on people like us to do that, to spread the information. People who are really involved in it and vested in it, make me very inspired.

So you do feel they have a resposibility?

I do. I mean, I don’t want to speak for other people, but at the same time, it definitely feels in my gut like this is something...people are dying! There was a report yesterday that 450 people had died in Fallujah, and another thousands were injured in the last five days. And you don’t hear about that on CNN, you know. I had to read about that on TruthOut.org and BBC. This is something that’s a catastrophe, it’s a global catastrophe, and I feel like it’s irresponsible not to talk about it.

The media seemed to get so conservative after 9-11, and everybody was afraid to be ‘anti-war’ because that somehow made them ‘anti-American’. Do you think it’s gotten worse since then, or do you think it’s the same?

I think for a while it got worse, and I think now it’s changing, just because things are getting so bad. People, families of the soldiers who are dying are now enraged and demanding answers from the government. When you have civilians being kidnapped, when you have New York Times reporters being kidnapped, I think that puts a really fresh spin on the whole thing. I think that people are starting to wake up and realize that this is not ‘bleed your patriotic blood’ and ‘cow-tow your patriotism’. I think that this is something that people are starting to realize is kind of messed up, wondering, ‘Why are we there and what are we doing? What’s happening and why are things getting worse as opposed to better?’ We have a president who’s not intelligent enough to even be able to pretend to convince us that it’s okay. And I think that’s a positive thing, that being able to see through this stuff is a good thing.

Howard Zinn is on your new album, and he has been quoted saying some great things about you. I take it you actually got to meet him?

Yeah. We have the same booking agent, and they planned a benefit, and we did it together. He was just a total inspiration. I’ve read his books since the time I was in highschool, til recently. He’s very down to earth, very grass roots guy. He’ll talk to anybody. He’s just very unaware of how much he affects people and very unaware of how important he is in today’s political civilization and social climate. Because of that, he’s able to just be really grounded and available, and I really admire that. That’s very important in a cultural figure.

You made Concerned Women for America’s ‘10 Most Dangerous Women’ list. How’d you like that?

Proudly! That was good, that was very good. I was surprised by that! Apparently, this woman from CWA snuck into a show and just completely did not enjoy what I had to say, and called me one of the top ten most dangerous women in America.

Well, I thought it was great!

Great for my resume, right?

Definitely. Very impressive!

I don’t think she really knew that it would be applauded by my audience.

Okay, one last question for you, so you can get back to your Easter celebrations (as we both laugh). What do you listen to while you’re on the road?

My tour manager and I stock up a lot on spoken-word CDs, you know, books on tape. We just finished Howard Zinn’s “Artists in a Time of War’, which is incredible. I recommend that. We listen to a variety of music. We have a lot of mixes that people make for us and that we make. A lot of times, people give us their own music at shows...spend a lot of time listening to new stuff. Right now we’re listening to the new Indigo Girls CD (we both laugh) which I really like. We vary it up. We listen to a lot of radio, a lot of talk radio shows, ranging from progressive stuff, to NPR, to right wing religious stuff. We get really into that. We could listen to that for hours. We get really disappointed when it goes away.

You know, them ranting and raving about homosexuality...they’re just so obsessed with us! I think it’s funny. I mean, I’m obsessed with us too, but they seem incredibly into what we’re doing, you know.

Yeah, obsessed in a different way I think.

Maybe they’re a little gay! I don’t think they’d be that obsessed if there wasn’t a little piece of them that we’re touching. It’s kind of interesting to listen to them, and disect their psyches. We spend a lot of time doing that.

I guess you do have to keep up with what they’re doing, don’t you?

For sure, and I kind of get....really into it, yeah.

 

Alix is on her way to a town near you! Get yourself to one of her shows! If you miss it, you can still pick up her albums, ‘built like that’ and ‘Independence Meal’. Both are considered Mandatory Listening Material by theESTROGENzone. Click on her picture at the top of the page to visit her website.