Never Keep Your Visions To Yourself
Dreams To Remember From Dames Nation
Dames Nation, you never, ever disappoint. Instead, you surprise us, you delight us, you warm the cockles of our hearts. Thank you to all of you who responded to our Post-40 Dreams survey (and by all means, if you’d still like to do so, we’re going to leave it up for a while, so feel free!). Your generosity, thoughtfulness, and trust in sharing these personal, tender things with us has just knocked our socks off. Thank you, thank you.
Because we wanted to incorporate so much of so many of your responses, we’re going to publish them across two weeks, in roughly chronological order, with material about your youthful & young adulthood dreams interpolated with ours this week. Next week, we’ll bring you thoughts about your journeys from the other side of 40.
JUST KIDS
Dame Karen: When Dame Sophie and I started talking about doing a Two Bossy Dames issue on post-40 dreams, I wanted to bring in our mutual friend and Dames National Sarah Howard Parker. Sarah and I met in 10th grade and haven’t stopped talking and laughing since. We met because we were both theater kids, but we were absolutely not in the same league; we went to a high school with a really good theater program and Sarah was the ingenue, the one who got all the leads until the teacher decided to give someone else a chance, the one who also wrote and directed and built sets, and who everyone assumed would be famous. She tells part of that story below, and next week when we get into discussing post-40 dreams that came true or are in the process of coming true, we’ll talk to Sarah about finally following her dreams of acting decades after giving them up. Sarah is also a great writer, particularly when it comes to writing about books and karaoke. We wrote this article together for the much-missed Awl about better, more original song choices (which nearly got us in a fight at a karaoke bar, true story!) and we have a karaoke advice Tumblr that we may start again some day, who can say?
Sarah, 46, she/her: [We asked Sarah about making her theater debut playing Tessie in a community theater production of Annie]
It was just a really wonderful experience. And it was like a lot of kids, but also a lot of adults. My parents dropped me off; I was like, 10, and I was on my own, really for the first time in an adult world. It was a community theater, but it was very professional. There were expectations on us to learn our lines and our blocking and know where we're supposed to be. And I just loved everything about it. I loved that my throat would get a little sore and my mom would make me a thermos of hot tea. I would have a book that I would bring to rehearsal but literally never read because I was just so excited to be there. I remember when it was over, we had a program and everybody who had been involved in the production signed it. And like, I just remember thinking and saying to a lot of the people, “I just don't want it to be over.” I really loved the whole experience. I felt like a minor celebrity. There was a Girl Scout troop who came and they stayed after and the cast signed their posters. I thought, “ I'm like probably the most famous person in Deerfield, Massachusetts.”
Karen, 46, she/her: I started making up stories and telling them to my parents, but my true interest was always non-fiction, something I didn’t realize until I was in my late 30s. Kind of like Harriet The Spy, I always had little notebooks and I would take them to places like waiting rooms, or my extended families’ houses or I’d sit on the stairs when my parents had friends over and just write down everything I thought was funny or interesting or weird…I referred to it as “Close Observations”...I don’t remember where I got that phrase, but my mother in particular loved it and encouraged me. She was a journalist and used to take me with her on interviews and to work and I’m sure I got this idea from watching her. I was a big reader as well and read a lot of classics, including Harriet The Spy, of course, and I was a Judy Blume STAN, but I mostly wanted to read “trash,” e.g. Sweet Valley High, anything under the Sweet Dreams or Wildfire Romance imprints, etc. I got a diary for my 9th birthday (along with my most desired gift, a clock radio) and it became my evening routine to listen to the radio and write about my day.1
Sophie, 46, she/her: I have no memory of wanting to be a writer or feeling compelled to write or even enjoying writing in my childhood. I loved reading and consumed books like they were actual food, making my way steadily through Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, EL Kongisburg, Ruth Chew, Joan Aiken, Madeleine L’Engle, and L.M. Montgomery (*waves enthusiastically to my fellow Emily of New Moon fans*). Bless my 7th grade English teacher, Mrs. Lyons, who was the first to tell me that I had a distinctive writing voice, and to encourage me to work on it.2
At the time, I fancied myself a future music critic, so I very methodically subscribed to Rolling Stone, SPIN, and Sassy, and became a fan of Ann Powers’s writing in The New York Times. I read all of their music coverage & reviews religiously, often making notes on what to buy or borrow or ask friends to dub for me, and I wrote (and talked and talked) about music constantly. Never for publication, but in letters, my journal, and liner notes for the mixtapes I painstakingly created, I was on terrain where I felt what it was to have expertise.
Jessie Salsbury (45, she/her): I was involved in Theatre in high school and college but didn’t pursue it much for a long time. When I was younger, I was an extremely conservative Christian and I was taught Theatre was ‘bad.’
Kate (47, she/her): I've always read; I've always read more than most people I know. But STEM careers were always held up as "better" and English and writing in particular were both derided by my immediate family. I definitely internalized that.
Julie Falatko (About to turn 51, she/her): I have always loved writing, but, like both of you, didn't think of it as being something I could do as a job. I worked as a technical writer and variously in other corporate writing capabilities, and got closer when I got a library degree (so then I had the writing experience, and the books experience). It wasn't until I met someone who was the son of one of my favorite authors when I was a kid (Ellen Conford) that it finally sunk in that I could write books too, for real, like I'd always wanted to.
IN OUR 20s
Sarah: I went to Ithaca College and it was a little weird because there were two programs that I had applied for. And one was the BFA which was specifically in acting or musical theater, and the other one was a BA in drama. I didn't really realize at beginning stages of my Ithaca career that if I was going to do the BA program, it would not have as many performance opportunities, which is in fact what happened.
I did a lot of film and TV stuff; some of it I hope never comes to the surface! I graduated from college and I moved to New York City and my parents were kind of like, “alright, you're going to try this acting thing out? We'll give you a year, we'll pay your health insurance for a year and then let's kind of see where you are.” During that year. I worked at a restaurant, Bluewater Grill, and I had my days free but I would get to work at like five o'clock and then I would get off work at like one in the morning. And then we would go out, because, you know, the late 90s in New York City. I would then sleep all day through any audition. I had headshots and I had a little bit of hustle. I mean, I certainly did not have the hustle that I have now, which I think is funny. But I did a couple things for MTV, and I did some independent films and then it was kind of I don't know, really the timeline but it was closing in on a year like and I was also getting sick of not having money to do anything. The restaurant life, while fun, was a huge grind. I did have some other friends who were working in publishing or working in other industries and I thought “Oh, they go to work during the day and then they go out at kind of a normal time and then they have their weekends free!” That all seemed appealing to me. And so I got a publishing job at Simon and Schuster. I stopped auditioning…it wasn't like I left some illustrious acting career behind. I had not really done anything that interesting. My yearning at that point was for a more normalized life, which is so funny because I was like 23. Like, I didn't know anything. That was my time to be crazy. What was I doing?
Karen: All along, and despite encouragement from my parents, friends, and a few teachers, I still didn’t think there was any way I could be A Writer as as a career. I wasn’t interested in writing fiction and didn’t run across any examples of what I would now recognize as essays and/or cultural criticism. I kept on writing long missives in my diaries about people, places, things, stuff I’d read, stuff I’d watched, made one-off issues of various ‘zines I never carried on, and tried to read Good Magazines like Harper’s and The New Yorker but found them pretty boring.3
ANYWAY!
It seems absolutely wild now but the internet made me feel a sense of discovery and joy in reading and a sense of possibility in writing that I’d never felt before when I first logged on for any length of time in 1998. I’d just graduated from college six months early but with barely a 3.0 average. I had become really interested in interdisciplinary fields like Comparative Literature, American Studies, and Gender Studies but it seemed at the time that it was too late and school was OVER. My undergraduate career was mediocre at best and therefore I didn’t think grad school was for “slackers” like me, especially after years of classes and campus life with what I thought of as a bunch of overachieving nerds who didn’t love smoking weed as much as I did. I’d also lived with severe depression and anxiety (two of the reasons I loved smoking weed, in retrospect) since I was a very young child but I didn’t really realize that yet and certainly didn’t want to get therapy about it. After moving home for six months and working full time at a record store, I moved to Boston with my then-boyfriend who I’d picked up at said record store and because it was 1998 and the economy was temporarily booming, I immediately got A Real Job in the office of a school. It turned out to be very boring and I moved on to my own publishing job, which also turned out to be very boring. I had all sorts of free time at work and started reading websites like Salon, Feed, and Suck. I loved the irreverent, funny, and yes snarky way people wrote on the internet. It seemed so much more accessible and real than, say, Details or Paper or even the original Sassy. I discovered online diaries and then online bulletin boards and I felt fully at home. The early joke was that the internet was all about people talking about what they had for lunch--well, that was a dream come true for me. I wrote about this a few years ago, and the title of the article really sums it up well: I Wanted Everyone In The World To Tell Me What They Were Doing.
Sophie: A couple of things derailed my teenage dreams: I got really sick my last year of college and wound up having to have surgery twice by 25, and I just felt like…*sad raspberry-blowing sound* I had to be responsible. Getting sick took the wind out of my sails in ways I think I still feel the effects of decades later. And then there was my treasured hope, tucked away in a drawer in my mind. Culture writing – even in the late 90s heyday of alt-weeklies and before the collapse of magazines as we knew them – seemed way too chancey for someone who couldn’t under any circumstances skate by without health insurance, and what did I even have to offer anymore to that field?4 I’d spent four years immersed in the Han and Tang Dynasties, not at shows!
At this point I was working for a medical publisher (sing it with me now, BORING, not that it had to be, but it definitely was), and was able to finish most of my work for the day by lunchtime, leaving me hours of time to surf the net, as we definitely didn’t say anymore in those days. My favorite haunts were places like Hissyfit, FameTracker, and Television Without Pity (née Mighty Big TV). Oh, and the Bust boards.
WHEN SOPHIE AND KAREN MET
Karen: So there we were on the Bust message boards. Sophie, was that your first iteration as sophiebiblio?
Sophie: No, that became my nom de internet with the advent of Twitter. I believe at that time I was bookgrrrl?
Karen: OMG YES
Sophie: And you were hellsbelle, if I recall?
Karen: I was indeed; that was my online name for years; I also used it in my eventual online diary and “pitas” which was an early blogging site. I later regretted it because people assumed it was supposed to be goth when it was supposed to be like, “mid-century Russ Meyer heroine but maybe with glasses.”
Sophie: ah! Pitas! These babies’ first blogs!
Karen: Pitas still existed online until maybe three years ago?! I used to go and look at ours all the time. They finally disappeared. They were sort of like Twitter but really, really slow. Anyway, you quickly became my Bust board fav--I thought you were so funny and clever and whip-smart but in an enviable refined and bookish way. AND I STILL THINK THAT!
Sophie: I am a shameless praise-craver and yet I may not be able to process this much praise in one go! Tears! I will try to soldier on! I, meanwhile, thought you were hilariously witty, and so, so culturally literate. You crack me up all the time to this day and I still have to look up references you share all the time. I didn’t know who Russ Meyer was! There was scarcely even a Google to help me!
Karen: Then and now we filled in a lot of gaps for each other.
Sophie: It’s beautiful! We started emailing back and forth pretty quickly, because we risked taking over entire threads with our little side-conversations, and quickly realized how spookily our lives and interests overlapped.
Karen: Yes indeed, which was so exciting because I’d always loved having pen pals and this seemed like the best possible pen pal situation EVER. I still wasn’t sure if we should use real names; I specifically remember you asking me “May I call you Karen?” and just feeling very silly but also totally psyched. It was at that time we’d both started thinking about library school.
Sophie: Yep! Since time immemorial, bored folks who love to ask questions all day have found their way to library school.
Karen: It seemed so natural. I understand now that my love of collecting, grouping, and making connections between information and the people who seek it wasn’t best suited to librarianship, but I honestly regret NOTHING. The field was just getting Really Online when I started grad school in 2001 and it was a truly exciting time to be learning about the very science of information, as it was changing so fast! I worked full time the entire time I was in grad school, which was not ideal, but I also figured out that I was REALLY good at and fond of school when it was a topic I was all in on. It also all brought me to you and it brought me to where I am today. SOB!
Sophie: Saaaaaaame! I still love librarianship (it’s been an amicable breakup), not least because it brought me to so many of the best people in my life, and this very newsletter would not exist without it. My favorite thing about my brain (yes, I have thought about it, very normal) is that it’s good at drawing on a lot of material and synthesizing the most interesting bits into something new that I can express clearly. It’s what made me a good librarian and teacher, I think it’s been essential to being a good parent, and it’s been materially useful in my *~new career~* as a writer. [A writer! Me! That’s what I do! Still exciting!]
Karen: I think knowing you and writing to and with you all of these years has kept me sharp and in practice as a writer and as someone who thinks about popular culture and how we all interact with it, for better and for worse. I have similar relationships with a few other people, including Sarah--part of our friendship is constantly bouncing ideas and “bits” and projects and, yes, dreams off each other and realizing, damn, these brilliant people want to do this with me? And now seeing the responses from Dames Nation and the willingness for other people to be vulnerable and brave, I feel even more lucky and more sure that if I hadn’t taken the long way here and continue to take a long way, honestly, I wouldn’t be where I am now, which feels very right.
Dames Pivoting To Their Dreams
Anne H. (47, she/her): For pretty much my entire life I have pursued artistic skills and projects as hobbies [but] It's only really been through conversations with the women who run the art co-op, and with other artists, that it dawned on me that not only *could* I pursue this as a real thing, *I was already doing it*.
Jessie, 39: I worked a miserable job for a toxic boss throughout my 20s. I was too scared to quit because of the recession. After 8.5 years of misery, I quit. My volunteer work in rape crisis advocacy brought me to law school at age 36.
Teach_La_La, 68: I started grad school @ 25 but had 2 babies within 15 months so was a full time teacher & mom until my girls were in college & with much trepidation, I signed up again for grad school & graduated with a Masters in Education specializing as a Reading Specialist.
Your Dames Again Here: Friends, because we received so many great responses, and you were so generous with what you shared in them, we are going to close out on this last bit of stage-setting here this week. Next week, we’ll focus more closely on your insightful reflections on the life-changing magic of turning 40 or older. Please do join us!
I also started writing a series of “novels” at this time about a 12 year old, Juliet Henry, who was somehow a semi-professional dancer as well as a sixth grader. Every “novel,” which was actually a very short story, revolved around Juliet Henry having some sort of madcap adventure (Her dog escaped and ran all over town! Her family went hiking and got lost in the woods! You get it…) and having to rush onto the stage at the last minute to perform her big solo. Producers, feel free to get in touch re: the Juliet Henry original limited series.
A high school English teacher told me I was a good New Yorker mimic, which I now suspect was a not-unreasonable criticism of my precocious-to-pretentious 16 year-old self, but if so, the joke’s on her, because I will take that to my grave as a sky-high compliment!
Still do! Find the exquisite peace of stopping subscribing to The New Yorker! I’m telling you--if you suspect you might love not reading The New Yorker you are correct!
2022 Sophie has to laugh indulgently at 1999 Sophie, because she just wrapped her Most Bylines In A Single Week-week ever, with an in-depth costume design piece (a sensational collaboration with TBD guest editor Emma Fraser for Town & Country featuring The Gilded Age, 1883, and Vienna Blood); another, for Alma on what a pleasant surprise it is to see urbane, pre-WW2 European Jewish life on-screen in Vienna Blood; and one more for Vulture on how to approach a deep dive on Formula One once Drive to Survive has made you fall in love with all the Vroom Vroom Boys (TM)
Two Bossy Dames is brought to you by:
Sheila Bridges’s gorgeous Harlem Toile de Jouy wallpaper (in the NYT), which has extra historical resonances this week of Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings
This incredible work of thirst journalism featuring Morgan Spector, his abs, and…babka. It all makes sense, we promise!
And today, on Bridgerton Season 2 release day, we urge you to watch responsibly, with Bianca Hernandez-Knight’s essential Lady Karen de Bourgh Costume Comment BINGO Set
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I'm still dreaming! And so glad to hear that just by being together, it appears, I helped to influence you, Karen! Being your mom has been such a gift and I'm so proud of you.