An Interview with Chris Pureka

Back in December, I did time at a feminist bookstore. Our music stock was limited, a little Ani DiFranco here, a little Holly Near there, however store policy dictated that we could only spin CDs from the artists we sold. As the holiday season slowly sputtered to a stop, our staff, exhausted and cranky from long hours, irate customers, and the constant pressure of selling enough product to keep the store on its feet for another year, could only agree on one thing: if we had to listen to the same artist all day, it had to be Chris Pureka. The New England native’s vocals, both stark and soothing, were at once a backdrop and a focal point for our chaotic shifts; they simultaneously calmed us and intrigued our customers. Needless to say, Dryland, Chris Pureka’s latest release, was one of our top sellers.

While Driving North, released in 2004 is lovely; ruminative and haunting, Dryland, which hit stores in 2006, is evidence of Chris’s impressive artistic trajectory. As a writer, Chris travels ever inward. She manages to write from an internal place of intense vulnerability and specificity without ever excluding her audience. Instead, the personal nature of her music and the exactitude of her vision radiate out like spokes on an emotional wheel, providing multiple points of contact for her fans’ feelings and experiences to intersect with hers.

Recently, during a much needed respite from her grueling touring schedule, Chris took time to chat with me. We touched on a multitude of subjects, from her former job as a lab assistant at Smith College to her preference for boxers over briefs. However, it was this topic - the intensity of her writing and her consequential connection with her fans - to which we circled continuously back.

Queerky: First of all, thank you so much for taking time to talk.

Chris Pureka: No problem. I have a lot of down time right now. (laughs)

Q: Right off the bat I gotta ask you a serious question - boxers or briefs?

CP: Boxers.

Q: Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about your background. You have a degree in biology and you worked as a lab assistant. What compelled you to exchange such a secure, practical career for the quixotic life of a musician?

CP: I didn’t make the transition from scientist to musician overnight. I spent four years working in a lab but the whole time I was also working on music. I was aware of the ways in which having a day job was holding back (but) I didn’t actually leave that job until I was busy enough with music that I thought that I could make it work full time.

Q: Have you ever regretted that choice?

CP: (No) especially because I don’t think of it as irreversible. If in the next ten years I decide that I really want to do science again, I would do that.

Q: You list Gillian Welch, Ryan Adams, Patty Griffin, Kris Delmhorst, Peter Mulvey, Paul Simon, and Josh Ritter as influences. Have your influences changed over time? Who did you grow up listening to?

CP: Definitely. When I was growing up I listened to The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Cat Stevens. When I got older I listened to a lot of the alternative rock that came out of the 90’s - REM, Counting Crows, Toad the Wet Sprocket. Toad was actually my favorite band in high school. I listened to a lot of Ani DiFranco too. When I got to college I was introduced to the smaller indie artists that hadn’t been on my radar when I was younger, Dar Williams, Peter Mulvey, Melissa Ferrick, Kris Delmhorst, Martin Sexton, to name a few. Since then, I have been discovering the Alt-Country/Americana and indie scenes so my most recent influences are folks like Gillian Welch and Ryan Adams.

Q: Talk a little but about your writing process. Do you write every day? Only when inspired?

CP: I am pretty far removed from my writing process right now, which is sad. I have been touring so much that I haven’t had any time at all to work on new songs. That is something that I have found really hard about being a full-time musician. Usually I’ll work on writing and playing everyday for a few hours. Then eventually riffs and melodies evolve into songs. Most of my songs do come from a specific point of inspiration or intensity. I definitely use music as a cathartic process and a way to work through something emotional.

Q: Do you find you censor your writing either because you don’t want to hurt or expose someone in your life or because you feel like your fans have grown to expect a certain style from you?

CP: I have always censored myself a lot - but it is usually just trying to keep the bar high musically and lyrically. I only release or play a fraction of the songs that I write and I like to keep to that standard. I think that people that release every song they write usually end up releasing a lot of bad songs. I am a big fan of editing.

Q: Your fans relate to you in large part because of the personal nature of your lyrics, but I assume your identity also contributes to their allegiance. How do you define and why?

CP: I define myself as “queer” because it has implications in terms of gender and not just sexuality and also because it seems more political in nature.

Q: I’ve heard your music characterized as “womens’ music.” How do you feel about that phrase?

CP: I don’t favor labels like “lesbian musician” or “women’s music.” I think that those labels have specific implications that tend to pigeonhole artists. I define myself as a singer/songwriter. As an out musician I have a specific relationship with the queer community and I am constantly grateful for the loyalty and support that I have found there. Still, first and foremost I am a musician. I happen to be queer. My sexuality does not define my music and I don’t write songs about being queer. I am also not writing music for the queer community. I am writing music that I hope that a lot of people can relate to.

Q: Lesbians make fierce, loyal fans. On the surface this is a positive situation, but I wondered if you feel like having such a strong lesbian fan base has held you back in any way.

CP: There’s this escalating thing that happens, where the queer community is extremely loyal and that can really deter a wider audience. It’s unfortunate that it is that way. I think even more mainstream people can find themselves in a similar situation. For example, I feel like Dave Matthews ended up with the reputation of having a frat boy following. I liked Dave Matthews but at a certain point, that deterred me from listening more. I feel like people get hit with a label, these are their fans, and people that don’t identify with that label get deterred from being their fans. It’s the same in queer culture. I’ve seen straight people really connect to my music and then come to my show and feel alienated and not come back, and I hate that. That’s a really strong word but it’s frustrating. But that’s what happens when you come out. There are a lot of queer artists who don’t come out and you’re like, “Why aren’t you out? Come out!” because if they all did, it would be less extreme, it would dissipate the effect, but because people stay closeted the people who do come out end up taking on all of the energy from the queer community. It’s just a theory, but I feel like it makes sense.

Q: You mentioned relating to the label queer because of its political implications. Do you feel like as a queer performer there’s pressure for you to be overtly political?

CP: Yeah, but I’ve come to terms with the fact that that’s not what I do. I can be insightful in specific ways and that’s just not one of the ways that I’m insightful. I’m interested in music for the sake of music, not for a political outlet.

Q: Speaking again of writing versus performing, I have this theory that the writing impulse and the impulse to perform are pretty radically different and that writers are not necessarily natural performers and obviously vice versa. If you had to define yourself as either a writer or performer which label would you prefer to own? Why?

CP: I think that you are entirely correct. I think that it takes some very, very different skills to be able to write versus being able to perform - and not everyone that is good at one will be good at the other. I definitely identify more with being a writer. I think that I am naturally a more introverted person, so the need to be in the public eye hasn’t always appealed to me. I used to get really nervous before I would play. But that just meant that I had to work harder at being a performer.

Q: As an artist you tend to produce raw, emotionally charged songs. What is it like for you to go out night after night and present such honest, vulnerable work?

CP: It is an extremely vulnerable thing to do to put your emotional and personal thoughts out there for public scrutiny. It is always really hard the first few times that I play out a new song. Sometimes the act of performing a song will be cathartic and feel almost necessary. But there are definitely times when I really don’t feel like I want to share my experience. Those are often days when I would rather just be working on writing.

Q: So let’s say it’s one of those days where you just think, “I cannot play Compass Rose, I cannot be this vulnerable.” Do you alter your set list?

CP: I alter set lists based more on if there’s a show where there’s a specific energy people are interested in. There are two kinds of shows I play, one is a listening show where people are being quiet and attentive - that’s what I prefer - so I’ll play songs that work in that context. But there are definitely shows where I feel like people are there for a social reason, and it needs to be a more upbeat set. There are shows where I’m in a really bad mood and don’t want to play but then I end up having a really good show. There are also shows where that doesn’t happen, but you just have to take it as it comes because we plan our lives three months in advance, and you can’t change your mind at last second.

Q: Back to performing, arguably a performer/fan relationship is largely one sided; a performer puts out work; a fan relates and responds, and ends up feeling like she really knows the performer. What do you think about this dynamic? What sort of relationship are you comfortable having with your fans? Has anyone tried to push your boundaries?

CP: People do feel like they know me in a specific way, and I get it, I understand it. For the most part people are really respectful. There have been times where I feel like people have crossed the line, for instance people will be like, “Oh you should come have drinks with us,” and that’s fine, but sometimes I’ll be like “Nah, I’m cool, no thanks.” And sometimes people will really press the issue. I don’t appreciate that. People I don’t know will e-mail me and will be like, “Do you want to have dinner after your show?” and that just doesn’t make sense to me, and the Myspace thing makes people feel a lot closer than they would have ten years ago. I don’t have a problem with people asking me to hang out, that’s not the issue, it’s more like when people don’t respect me or try to push me - even physical boundaries, sometimes people feel like they can touch me and I’m like, “Don’t do that.” Sometimes people will be like, “Can I have a hug?” and that’s cute, but if they don’t ask first it can be weird.

Q: Can you relate at all to where your fans are coming from? For example, are there performers to whom you relate in a fanatical way?

CP: Growing up, you know like when I was fifteen, there were people I really admired. I understand that side of things really well. I feel like if I met my favorite artists now - I can’t really say how I would feel if I weren’t a performer - but I pretty much would want to shake their hand and be like, “Hey, cool, nice to meet you.” Actually, one of my favorite songwriters is Ryan Adams. I was in New York one time and he came into a bar I was at, and I was so excited but I couldn’t…I actually felt so strongly about performer boundaries that I didn’t even say anything and I actually regret that. I feel like there’s a compromise, a middle ground that needs to be met, there’s obviously an acceptable way to communicate with someone you like, so I feel like my reaction was actually extreme.

Q: Let’s talk a little about the business side of things. Dryland is self-released - I’m assuming that’s a hard option, but probably a freeing one. What are the pros and cons of that choice?

CP: I feel like the way I’ve been doing things - totally independent, (has) been working for me pretty well. At this point I’m inclined to stick with that. I have to work a lot harder to get to the same place (as artists signed to major labels), but if I get there, I have a lot more control, and I make more of a profit. I’ve been doing this for six, seven years, and I see people who started a year ago and signed to a major, and they’re where I am now. That can be hard to witness. With a major, you’re basically paying for opportunities to get your music out there, which is ultimately what everyone wants. It’s frustrating when I feel like I’m overlooked cause I’m not a priority in the press or in the venues. But I want all of my decisions to be my decisions - that’s really liberating. I’m particularly interested in not having pressure to release a record at a specific time. I already feel pressure just from myself and my fan base to constantly be writing all the time, and if there was a label that was like, “You need a record out by October,” I would hate that and it wouldn’t work with my personality. Basically, I’m comfortable where I am, but if a smaller label came along, I would be willing (to sign with them) if it made sense.

Q: Can you take us through a day in your life when you’re on tour?

CP: Wake up, get coffee, drive, drive, drive. Get to destination, unload the gear, sound check, eat something, play the show, drink something, find a hotel, sleep: repeat. Touring can be really great when you don’t have to play a show every single night. If it is a packed schedule, then there isn’t really any time to enjoy all the cool places you get to go, and you are literally sleeping in a different bed every night. It is also very, very tiring.

Q: When you come home from touring is it a hard transition?

CP: Yeah, I think that when I first come home, especially if its been a long tour, there’s a little bit of adjustment that needs to happen. It feels weird to be so still all of a sudden. Now that I’ve been doing it for a long time, it’s easier, the adjustment is faster. But when you first get home from a long tour you’re always like, “I can never do that again.” A lot of people will do two weeks, then home, and that’s a lot more manageable. I mostly don’t do that. If I’m gonna drive to Nashville, I might as well do Atlanta and all the cities that are down there cause otherwise you gotta spend the money on gas to get back there next time. It’s always a struggle to be at a financial place where you can afford to take more time off.

Q: Well, thank you so much. I think that’s all I need.

CP: You could write my biography at this point.

There are certainly worse ways to pass the time.

For more information on Chris Pureka, including tour dates and streaming audio, please visit her homepage or her little corner of Myspace.

Written by Sarah Terez Rosenblum

Sarah Terez Rosenblum spent the last four years of her life in Los Angeles and plans to return even though she hated it. She will be thirty in two years. Thank God she’ll have received her MFA in Creative Writing by then. That way, even though she’ll still be lacking any real idea of what she wants to do with her life, at least she’ll be massively in debt. You can contact her zeret18@gmail.com or visit her at myspace.com/raininariver. You can also buy her a pony. She’s always wanted one.

Sci-Fi or Outcry?

Queer films and censorship have a long, sordid history. We go way back, farther even than feather boas and trips to Home Depot. It started with the Puritans and religious groups like The Legion of Decency in the 1920s. Not to be outdone, the government hired its own moral barometer, Will Hays, to be its federally mandated censor, thus starting the era of the Hays Production Code. The code was finally abandoned in 1967, forty years ago, but like all unhealthy relationships, censorship has not gone away. In 1998, local government officials in Seoul, South Korea pulled the plug on the first Queer Film Fest, going so far as to threaten shutting off the electricity if organizers tried to screen the films elsewhere. And just last year in Vancouver, a conservative lobby group petitioned the Department of Canadian Heritage to cut funding to the Vancouver Queer Film Festival because the films were considered “degenerate and degrading to humanity.” But what about here in the U.S., in the supposed bastion of freedom? In addition to the usual religious zealots and right-wing naysayers, we now have a new proponent of censorship: ourselves.

Due to its purportedly transphobic nature, The Gendercator, a short film by Catherine Crouch, which was slated to be screened at Frameline, the LGBT film festival in San Francisco (June 14-24), has become the first film in 31 years to be removed from the festival’s lineup. Pressure from the transgender community, including hundreds of emails, complaints from sponsors and 150 signatures generated from the popular left-leaning blog Left in SF were sent to the artistic directors of Frameline, Michael Lumpkin and Jennifer Morris, and were integral in the decision not to screen the film. The Gendercator was part of the OUTer Limits program, a science fiction and experimental-themed screening, which is described on their website as follows:

“Tripped-out futuristic lesbians! Sword-wielding S&M nuns! Cannibalism! Trannies in space! Welcome to the outer limits of queer filmmaking in this series of shorts by six experimental, visionary filmmakers clearly weaned on sci-fi and fantasy films.”

The above description doesn’t particularly inspire much critical thought on pressing social issues. But that aside, Frameline’s decision to nix the film after it had been screened, accepted and put in a program with several other trans-themed films, calls into question the reasons for the dismissal of The Gendercator, which resonate more with Crouch’s politics than with her filmmaking. And if not, then why wasn’t the green monster dyke who beats up other lesbians branded internalized homophobia? Why didn’t the notion of queer cannibals raise any ruckus? Because the directors of those films don’t have this statement on their website:

“Things are getting very strange for women these days. More and more often we see young heterosexual women carving their bodies into porno Barbie dolls and lesbian women altering themselves into transmen. Our distorted cultural norms are making women feel compelled to use medical advances to change themselves, instead of working to change the world. This is one story, showing one possible scary future. I am hopeful that this story will foster discussion about female body modification and medical ethics.”

If “fostering discussion about female body modification” was Crouch’s ultimate goal, then she succeeded. People are talking about The Gendercator - The Bay Area Reporter, The New York Blade, countless blogs, press releases, listservs, it even has an entry on Wikipedia - but no one is actually watching the film. As of today, I’m the only person who has formally reviewed it (and it’s actually more of a description than a review. You can read it here). Crouch estimates only about 250 people have seen it, which begs the assumption that the film is being preemptively judged by the negative press surrounding it rather than from the film’s content. As Crouch puts it, “it’s a fear of what it is, not the reality of what it is.”

Crouch’s director’s statement falls prey to the liberal feminist idea that transgender people who surgically/chemically alter their bodies are somehow threatening to biologically male/female bodies and that instead of “working to change the world,” they are embracing patriarchal, heteronormative standards and expressions. That these beliefs exist among some lesbian (and straight) circles illustrates that more critical dialogue is necessary within our fractured communities. But the notion that the film itself has been construed as dangerous or having weighty, long-term consequences seems rather exaggerated, especially considering that as a work of art, it’s mediocre at best. In response to her director’s statement, Crouch says, “I don’t think my film/statement is transphobic because I don’t think it is in any way about the transexual people. The film is to women/about Sally and the statement is from me to women about women.” While some of Crouch’s opinions are outdated and offensive, the current campaign to stop her film from being screened at future venues (LA’s Outfest, Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival and the Michigan Womyn’s Musical Festival) is a form of censorship doing little to change these kinds of misconceptions and misunderstandings about trans issues.

A synopsis of the film is as follows:

It’s 1973 and a group of hippie dykes are celebrating Billie Jean King’s victory over Bobby Riggs. The protagonist Sally, who’s a sporty simpleton, passes out under a tree only to awaken 75 years later to discover that sisterhood isn’t so powerful after all. Sex roles and gender expression have reverted to caveman times and are enforced by law and medical intervention. Sally’s short hair and tendency to “dig” women make her a target for “gendercation,” which is kind of like compulsory gender reassignment surgery. Tork, a government official and expert gendercator, is put on the case. He informs Sally that gender and sexual conformity are mandatory and that she must choose to be either Jane or Tarzan. A few of Tork’s cronies step in to show Sally what manhood has to offer, namely receding hairlines and beer bellies. Of course, she has no real choice in the matter and is forced to undergo gendercation anyway. But, lo and behold, she’s rescued by some kind of underground lesbian mafia at the last minute. The end.

Crouch says her film is “a science fiction satire, not a prediction of the future but a comment on social phenomenon played out to logical ends. It’s not true; it’s exaggerated. I think if you take it literally, that’s not what it’s meant to convey. I’ve made several films that address gender, what kind of woman I am, etc. and this is one of those films. It’s based on my own life experiences and story.”

On May 12th, a month before it was supposed to go to Frameline, The Gendercator screened at Chicago Filmmakers in Chicago to an audience of two: Sam Feder and Jules Rosskam, creators of the acclaimed trans documentaries Boy I Am and TransParent. They found the film to be hateful and were part of the impetus to censor the film. Sam Feder says, “While endorsing and aiding the bodily violation of women, the film perpetuates archaic and anti-transgender ideas that trans-people are anti-gay and anti-feminist who conspire with the greater power.” On the Trans Group Blog, Rosskam exclaims, “‘The Gendercator,’ [is] an ignorant, transphobic film by Midwest lesbian director Catherine Crouch that depicts a 1970s ‘feminist’ tomboy who awakens in the 21st century to find that some of her friends have become men. ‘They made me do it. They’ll make you too,’ a transman (referred to by Crouch as an ‘altered lesbian’) tells his friend. Transsexuality is portrayed as the evil that has taken over the world, and as a way to enforce heteronormativity.”

Not to undermine the strong reactions of Feder, Rosskam and other members of the queer community, but to advocate for the film’s removal based on one interpretation of its possible implications is troubling. If opponents of The Gendercator believe that stopping the showing of this film is going to protect the public from themselves, it is a classic case of censorship, and that this response is coming from other queer filmmakers is baffling. If it is in fact the issues the film raises that need to be addressed and not the film itself then why advocate for its removal?

Another question to consider is if it is even applicable or relevant to place literal definitions of transgenderism onto a science fiction spoof and if so, what purpose does it serve? Tork and some of the characters in the film should not be read as transgender at all because identifying them as such implies that they are complicit in their gender modification, which they aren’t. They are part of a fictional, forced government agenda to eradicate all gender and sexual diversity - no butches, no twinks, no trannies, no nothing. If one were to interpret the film literally as a political statement about fear of trans bodies, one would also have to take into account the film’s other explicitly unrealistic elements. For instance, softball has also been eliminated from the dystopian version of society. Should we chalk this up to a fear of organized sports?

Uproars about controversial works by queer filmmakers abound, from the argument that only positive images of queers should be depicted to the use of stereotypes. There are films like Hidden Fuhrer, which explores the relationship between Hitler’s reprehensible deeds and his sublimated sexuality and self-denial. Or Heavenly Creatures, which chronicles the real life story of two teenaged lesbians who brutally murder their mother. Even John Cameron Mitchell’s real sex scenes in Shortbus have generated a good deal of media buzz. But trans people, who have only recently begun to garner greater acceptance from the broader queer community, are perhaps more susceptible to negative or contentious film representations. Queer media portrayals, however, are in no way universal or homogenous. Indeed, they are proof of the complex and variegated ways in which we are capable of expressing ourselves and how relentless we are at trying to incorporate every point of view, evidenced by the ever-growing LGBTIQQ acronym.

A strictly textual reading of the film, not of the filmmaker’s politics, presents an innocuous, somewhat cliched, B-rated film that is garnering much more attention than it deserves. And advocating for it to be barred from future festivals is, in a way, giving the film greater sway when it would’ve most likely dropped off into obscurity a few months after its festival runs. As Feder says, “Honestly what I think needs to be addressed is WHY people are reacting so strongly - the ISSUES need to be addressed not the film itself” (emphasis hers). I couldn’t agree more, especially when a majority of the arguments surrounding the film begin, “Well, I haven’t seen it but…”

Written by Anna Pulley

Anna is a post-Creative Writing major and validation junky. In addition to Queerky, she also writes for dykediva.com, centerstagechicago.com and does film reviews for theaspectratio.net. She uses quotation marks unnecessarily and spends entirely too much time justifying the artistic merit of limericks. You can contact her at banannarama01@yahoo.com