Sometimes, you can't go home.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/nyregion/10rent.html?em&ex=1178942400&en=54d190f9afd3696c&ei=5087%0A
Oh, NY is for the rich only. : ( all of us artist's are being pushed out! It's soooooooooo SAD. We love NYC so much. Even Brooklyn, Queens is becoming too expensive for US! The BRONX is the only reasonable $ place left? Sigh.

and read this latest article from Crain's NY
http://www.crainsny.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070514/FREE/70514009/1059
Tell, me, why every rich person in the world is buying up all the apartments and renting them for insane $$$$$$$????? So now the most amazing city in the world is ONLY for the wealthy who USE our gorgeous, bohemian town as a place to invest and shop. While we artists and natives LIVE and BREATHE NYC....it's in our blood. It's our pulse. These people...those with the money to buy up our little Manhattan ISLAND. . . .don't even know what it's like to ride a subway or a bus. To be ONE with the beat and the rhythm of this tiny little piece of land that is the most important influence to us native artists there.... We're being driven out!!!!

We CAN'T go home!

Being away from my hometown, is being away from my family. My mother, my father, my sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews, and life long friends. It's being away from all I know and love.

Maybe I chose a way that is, well, too hard? What the heck. I don't know. I'm so confused sometimes.

My hometown is New York. My hometown all of my adult life has been New York City. My mother comes from Long Island. My father is from Queens. My Grandmothers are from Brooklyn. Oh we bounced around alot, just outside of New York; my dad moving whereever he could find work in the early days.

New York...the boroughs....New York the lifestyle. These are my roots.

Since losing my NYC apartment to circumstances bitterly beyond my control, it has been a struggle on a daily basis to accept my life in Nashville.

I had to leave behind sentimental furniture in New York because I couldn't afford to move it. I could barely afford the gas to go and get my things. It was an emotional hell, I tell you. I left New York with an ol' 82 dodge cargo van peeing oil, and she decided to overheat and stop rush hour traffic, at, yeah, you got it, the Lincoln Tunnel. Lucky for Port Authority, they guided me to get me out of the way of the Tunnel's mouth leading to New Jersey. There I was, at their rescue garage, near broke, all my shit packed up in this ol' van...having coffee with the rescuers, thinking.... okay, I've got to be strong and get through this....

That was last year. Last May. It's been a year since. And it doesn't get any easier. Even though it will...I have to have faith about it. I lost my tiny apartment on 82nd Street, while I was living temporarily in Nashville, working on a music project and just taking a break in the south.

Yep. I want to go home. I want to be at home in New York City. My mother earth. But I cannot go home. Read the article above. And you'll know why. It's so painful. It's a knot in the stomach. I miss summertime at the Jersey shore and out in the surf of Long Island.

Oh, don't tell me about it's meant to be. If everything operated on the "meant to be" trip, then we'd have no freewill, no choice -- and things wouldn't occur just on circumstance. Meant to be is reserved for those who truly surrender their will to GOD. To the FATHER.

If you surrender your will, and say, Lord, only thy will be done...then things are, meant to be. Your will entirely becomes the will of the Lord.

But it doesn't save you from the trials and tribulations of life. No, it helps you to cope with them.

Is it the Father's will that I'm here. In Nashville? Maybe. I'm renting a fantastic cottage. It's spectacular. Though I can't afford to pay my gas bill from this past winter.

I have a hard time coping with the loss of my New York City apartment. Yeah, I shed tears about losing my home....that was only about 400 square feet in size anyway. But, it was my home...nestled in a city that was mother earth to me.

But now I have to find a new home, maybe? And new roots. Could it be Nashville. Folks, I don't know. I don't know if I fit in here. I'm too artsy fartsy...

Nashville and New York City. Can it go together? Well, according to the CMA it could with the CMA Awards going to NYC two years ago for Country Takes Manhattan. But they didn't care about us country musicians who actually live in Manhattan....we were left out of everything, except the mayor's office invited a few of us citybillies to his mansion for a CMA shindig he was hosting. cool....but I was here in Nashville at the moment...working on a music project.

Well, me being here is: Manhattan takes Country. And I'm called a Yankee anyway. I feel like I'm in a meadow, alone. Just me and my art, and Miss Gypz Jingles, my cat....and Tigerlily, my motorcycle. Miss Tigerlily had to surrender her beautiful NYC license plates two weeks ago. Sigh.

Who Said A City Girl Can't Be Country? - Well, who cares?

I just want to go home and have a delicious Katz knish with spicy mustard, and a plate of crispy french fries. I want to go see my friends play at 55 Bar, Hank's, at SouthPaw, at Pete's back room, at the Baggot Inn.

I want to curl up in my dad's lap and watch the news. I want to annoy my mother with my silly antics that make her laugh anyway. I want to have a Starbucks with my big sister, Donna, and race around the Hamptons in her corvette that her awesome husband bought her for her birthday. I want to play cowboy and Indians with my nieces and nephews. I want to get ridiculously silly with my two sisters and brother Linda, Lou, Brian....and laugh, laugh, laugh.

This weekend is my nieces communion. In Yorktown Heights.

I won't be there. Fu*k.

I want to go home. But I can no longer afford home. And I don't know where else to go.

So I stay in my home in Nashville and do my artwork. I hoola hoop in my yard. I bartend at a local bar in Antioch. I pick up odds and ends work whereever I can, while I do my art. I'm in the land of $8 - $10 an hour.... $20 below what I made in NYC. And they say it's because it's cheaper to live in the south, that's why.

Bullshit. Gas is still nearly $3.50. Food costs just about the same. So does utilities. The only difference is rent. And, let's see, last time I checked you're still talking about somewhere between $700 - $900 for a decent place to live here in the South. In NYC, it's far more money now....but still. Who can make ends meet on $8 or $10 per hour? Anywhere!

That's why our economy is in such trouble with this false reading that it's flourishing. IT'S BECAUSE OF CREDIT CARD PURCHASES. I don't know one person, outside of the socialites and celebrities, who can live on their income. NOT ONE. Most people have credit cards, or have inherited money, or something like that.

But, here I sit trying to figure it all out. Where the hell on earth do I belong? Nashville is okay....but I NEED friends and family. I've got to get out and make friends...but WHERE? Sitting at a bar? Gosh....no I need to figure out the art community here....burst onto the scene somewhere and find some cool people to hang out with.....

Oh, how I miss my little piece of earth in NYC. The little piece of earth that I hung onto for years....the humble one room that I rented for $975 per month...so tiny and incredibly modest. It's gone...long gone...now being rented for over double that. God, what to do?

Dig into Nashville, perhaps...yes...okay! ? It's a sweet little town. I can get used to it....but,

I want to go home. But can no longer afford home. But that's where the decent jobs are that I can secure that support my art. The jobs where you don't have to have a degree. It's all about experience. Now the ratio of income to rent price is so off kilter. People are living in their offices, folks. Or you've got a one bedroom shared by four or five people....just to engage in a job that is the ticket to a strong career? Oh my goodness....is there any government person that cares what's happening to our world? When one can't go home.

I don't know where to go. I don't know what the f*ck to do.