SheFallsSoftly

from Casey Howard
to letters amandapalmer.net
date Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 8:05 PM
subject I wish I was cool like Ben Folds so that this would be more than just another fan letter
mailed-by gmail.com

Unfortunately, I am not awesome like Ben Folds, but I am a huge fan. I’ve got a massive migraine right now and am staying home from a job that I badly need to be at to pay my bills. The only thing that is making me feel better is “Runs in the Family” over and over and over again. It’s like you’re describing my life in that song (god how many people tell you that?). My depression and random inexplicable illnesses and throwing myself at any boy for the longest time in the absence of a general wellness. But everyone said I was fine.
When my father found out my little sister was cutting herself, he told her her life was a fucking Disney Land. And in a way it was. An overpriced distraction full of selfishness and soulless products. Everyone in masks. Everyone else the center of the show– but you can pretend to be famous if you buy the right things.
I just sent your booking agent a letter begging him to schedule you for a show in Oklahoma. That’s where I’m at right now. I go to college here, learning women’s studies in the least likely place to learn it. I also dance in a burlesque troupe here. I also am putting on a fetish ball. Obviously, I’m not from here. Usually I feel like I’m not from anywhere. Las Vegas NV is where I spent most of my life and it’s a terrible place to be from. No soul.
Anyway, in my burlesque troupe I did a performance of “Runs in the Family” just a few days after your CD came out. I made this ridiculous tattered tutu with scraps of cherry and black and white stripe fabric and paired it with these harlequin print stockings, a red and white corset, and a pair of black and white pasties. When people come out to these shows they expect to have a good time, but we’re so strange they’ve learned to expect the unexpected. Never in their wildest dreams, though, do I imagine that they expected me to come out and bare my soul (and chest) to them. To expose myself to them with a confused expression of horror, to twist my body as if I did not control it. To put it in the words of one of my audience members, “That’s not sexy.” But it was sex. The way I experienced it in my youth.
No one clapped when I left the stage.
I’d like to say that I’m glad that I made them double-back on their understanding of sexuality, that I didn’t need their applause… but when one of the other girls went up and shook it fierce and everyone screamed and yelled, I wanted to be her so badly. I was back to the point of fucking anyone that came along if it meant that I could have a standing ovation. That someone might love me.
It must be impossible for you to sing these songs every night, all of that hopelessness and pain again and again and again…
You have written the theme songs of my life. Half Jack. Delilah. Truce. Runs in the Family. Missed Me. Thank you so much for giving me that, for letting me share that with a stunned audience.
Casey