Just a Man

Written by Charise Sowells

This afternoon I had the emotional experience of seeing a black man cuffed on the sidewalk and forcefully seated on a curb, surrounded by 4 cop cars and 8 white cops. The man in cuffs was stressed out and scared but complying. One man (also black) was filming and reassuring the man he was documenting it all and he saw what happened and this was race based and he had his back. Cops asked him to stop filming but he didn't because he knew his rights. I began filming as well.

Looking on, I fought back tears in fear of what may happen to this man. We've all seen a million videos like this now but this was the first time it was happening right there in front of me and the powerlessness was overwhelming. In a hushed voice an officer said something to the man in cuffs about jaywalking. People do that in Santa Monica all the time. The man filming said a white woman was jaywalking at the exact same time and asked why she wasn't in cuffs, answering his own question with, "We know why."

I filmed until my phone ran out of space and then hustled late to my appointment. I couldn't stop wondering what happened after I walked away. I was eager to get back and see if he was still there, hoping there wouldn't be any blood on the sidewalk or street where he'd been. Had he been arrested? Had he been released? Is he injured? Is he alive? Will this be in the news tonight?

At one point the man in cuffs said, "I don't even see myself as a black man. I'm just a man. No more. No less. That's how I see it." If only the world could see that too...

Morning Be Gone

Written by Charise Sowells

It's here. Morning. Like an uninvited guest. The eternal party crasher. Just when the fun begins and REM sleep is in full swing for the second or third cycle of the evening, morning intercepts, squashing my dreams. Sometimes it's the sun coming in through the window. Or the no longer piercing but still skin crawling cellphone alarm, obnoxious if only due to what it represents: the death of the night and the impending doom of dreaded obligation. "No more rest for you, sleepyhead," the Bossanova fusion groove says attempting to gently ease me out of my resting state. Its tone growing louder and more persistent with each repetition.

Somedays, it's the slow moving chill from the absence of blankets that wakes me up, climbing down my spine, vertebrae by vertebrae. Or the earth shattering mattress movement as my husband shockingly jumps out of bed with more energy than I seem capable of having at any time of day without a shot of some kind of caffeine to my system. But no matter how it happens, morning always comes bright and early, like it or not. And knowing that somehow doesn't make it any easier.

Artists as Limitless Changemakers

Written by Charise Sowells

Published on Haulix Daily

The creative path sometimes feels like a selfish and lonely road. Finding ways of using your talents to make a difference and give back to the community can truly be a positive shift. It was for me.

Several years ago, I came across an ad for a nonprofit event that was truly transformative. It was a screening of the documentary, Very Young Girls, about underage sex trafficking in our own backyard, the US of A. When the movie was over, everyone in the room was bawling or enraged. All of us wanted to get involved somehow. As an artist, I immediately started thinking about how I could raise awareness through my work.

Due to my background in film production, I decided to make a PSA. After researching for several months, I reached out to local organizations, the police department, and abolitionists to deepen my understanding. Upon completion, Channel Austin added the video to their rotation. I also screened it at one of the music showcases I put together as the Editor and Event Planner of The Deli Magazine. People were shocked and disturbed, the community was moved. They wanted to know more, including ways to get involved, so I referred them to local organizations working to fight against modern day slavery.

To be able to make a positive impact on the world with something I created was not only fulfilling, but also very motivational. It was a game changer for me as an artist and entrepreneur and something I work to incorporate into projects I take on moving forward. As long as you are authentic in the charitable work you align yourself with, the change you can make as an artist is limitless.

Lucky Me: A Close Call With a Predatory Producer

Written by Charise Sowells

Published on Mind Equals Blown

In 2001, I graduated early from Orange County High School of the Arts feeling that even in a school full of misfit weirdos I still didn’t belong. I’d moved from St. Paul, Minnesota to Orange County, California just a couple years prior. It all felt like some strange drug induced nightmare in a parallel universe and I wanted out. So I kept myself busy by studying, volunteering, waitressing, creating, performing, and socializing.

In the year before NYU, I worked full time to save money and took music and dance courses at Long Beach City College. It was there that I met a producer more than ten years my senior in front of the bulletin board. We recorded a song I had written about 9/11 at his home studio. Unfortunately, he lost the files after months of work so we never released it. But we kept in touch for years, recording other material. I also wrote songs for other artists of his and he used some of my writing in a musical he produced. He became like family, my mother quickly trusted him and so did I.

Years later, he called me as I was sitting in Virgin Megastore, just down the block from my freshman year dorm. We caught up, I was a junior or senior then at NYU. Life was good. New York was still magical. Then, he chimed in and said I was lucky that he never tried anything. I asked him to explain because I hoped I had misunderstood what he was saying. I hadn’t. He went on to say I was lucky he never tried anything because he definitely could have. I was a teenager alone in his house, recording, eating pizza, drinking his boxed wine, and he perceived me to be “eager” to make it as an artist. Suddenly, everything this relationship had been to me for years changed in that instant.

I hadn’t realized it, but apparently I truly was lucky this man hadn’t “tried anything” with me. My stomach dropped and I ended the conversation abruptly. He attempted to connect time and time again via various social media channels, email and phone but I wasn’t eager to maintain that relationship, naturally. A collaborative relationship with anyone is already a vulnerable and intimate space to hold, some might even call it sacred. Whatever it was, he killed it and I felt anything but safe, trembling on the other end of the line after we hung up.

This story feels important to share because as artists, people prey on our dreams and as women, people often prey in other ways as well. I’m not sure why this producer didn’t put his thoughts into action with me but I’m grateful to have been “lucky” in that regard. Others are not so lucky. I too have been not so lucky in other circumstances and when that happens, it changes you.

How Hanna Horvath Made me Fat (and Happy)

Written by Charise Sowells

Published on You and Me Magazine

Rolls of tatted white flesh bounce up and down, jiggling with every motion, every grope, every slap. She is unapologetic and free, changing angles and positions. Changing lovers. Changing hands.

It was only recently that I realized my parents’ divorce is what triggered my anorexia at 8 years of age. Stick thin as always, a bottomless pit eating everything in sight but never gaining a pound. Suddenly, things were different. My world was askew. As I prepared to go onstage and dance, I looked down at my leotard and noticed a tiny dip between my lower and upper abs. It was not perfectly flat. Never had been. Just like all the stomachs of the women in my family. We were fertile creatures with uteruses full of miracle grow. Bell shaped pots, ripe with seeds. We gave hippie a new meaning. But from that moment on, everyone else was perfect and I, in my mind’s eye, was flawed. The switch had been flipped and it would remain that way for decades.

She wears granny panties and crop tops, pairs booty shorts with thunder thighs. She goes braless. She rocks a bush. Sometimes she shaves. Maybe even waxes. She owns her body: every dimple, fold, lump and pimple. She rarely wears makeup and prefers reading to the gym. Her body is a temple of her soul, not a shrine to it or reflection of it. It’s a vessel, and she’s merely living in it.

At 13, I became vegetarian out of my love for animals, largely inspired by Lisa Simpson’s episode with the lamb. It wasn’t long before it became a convenient excuse to not eat in Midwestern households where “it’s not a meal without meat”. Tae-Bo and Jane Fonda workout sessions bookended my school days. I did sit-ups daily, hundreds. My hairline began to recede. My teeth began to yellow. Friends recommended bulimia. I tried it but preferred a controlled intake to vomiting my meals, taking pride in my willpower.

She has friends of varying shapes and sizes. They are the blind leading the blind, pawing their way through this world full of foreign objects and harsh realities, tripping over each other along the way. She is narcissistic with a big heart, fumbling hard.

In high school, my friends and I traded pill boxes. We often competed to see who could take the most diet pills in a day without feeling like they were going to have a heart attack. Eventually Metabolife went off the market for being too close to meth in its chemical makeup. I got caught stealing it before then, running down the street with bottles of pills emptied into my purse. This is when I realized I had a serious problem. But I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t curvy enough to be voluptuous or skinny enough to be waif, the only two body types in the media at the time. And like so many other things about me: not black enough, not white enough, not straight enough, not gay enough, not talented enough - I believed I wasn’t enough of anything.

Throughout college and nearly a decade after, my lack of self-worth showed up everywhere in my life. I changed jobs, cities, friends, and lovers. Traded diet pills for booze and caffeinated beverages. I was going out all the time and achieving. Doing everything I was supposed to on paper. But I was alone in my struggle. Ashamed. Writhing with inner turmoil, I had the self-awareness to know I only had myself to blame but I had no idea how to change what was happening inside. Then I saw GIRLS.

She makes love in the light of day without hesitation or posturing. She laughs. She cries. She feels, thinks, and questions. She bends. She does not break. She cracks, but does not break. She falls and gets up, only to inevitably fall again.

This woman was real. So real, I felt I could reach through the screen and touch her. The show was compared to Sex and the City initially but unlike those polished and mature New Yorkers, the actresses in GIRLS didn’t look like actresses. They looked like my neighbor, my classmate, my friend. It didn’t feel like they were playing characters, it felt like real people revealing themselves to the world, flaws and all. And I never saw myself the same again.

Cooking became yet another way to express myself and eating became one of life’s great pleasures. I threw out my clothes year after year, buying a new wardrobe that actually fit this foreign figure I was morphing into day by day. It was strange, but I soon realized that freeing up my mind from all that self-hatred and constant critiquing created mental space for me to be even more productive, listen better, and fully relax without any vices. I became the curvy lady I am today, several sizes bigger with a balanced diet and a healthy workout regimen. And my hair has never been so long and healthy!

Was it, in part, the typical self-assuredness that comes with entering your 30’s that led to this change? My back injury? My husband’s love? I think it’s safe to say yes to all of those things. But Hannah Horvath was a major catalyst in this journey of learning to love myself, inside and out. She helped me realize that while I am not my body, it is important that I nourish and respect my physical self because it is my vessel (at least for this cycle around the sun). And because my spirit is with me wherever I go, possibly in this life and beyond, I have worked hard to be kind to myself no matter what the packaging looks like and no matter what the contents are inside the package. Hannah helped me to finally be able to say, I’m worth it. No matter what the situation may be.

She smiles with charmingly crooked teeth, dancing around the room. She gives herself to the journey and comes out on the other side. She grows. She changes. She learns. She loves with abandon.