My Life as a Homeless and Disabled Entrepreneur

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By Rachel Haywire | 11/02/09

One of the reasons I was a target of so much harassment in the music industry was because of that thing called slander. It seems like every successful female artist I meet has been the target of slander in one way or another. Many people don't like it when women do well in the world of entertainment and I'm not just talking about men here. It is often other women who can be the most jealous and resentful.

Since there was nobody in the industry that I had slept with people couldn't accuse me of "sleeping my way to the top" so they looked for something else to attack me for. They noticed that I was doing a lot of traveling. Popping up in a bunch of random cities. Going to a bunch of shows and festivals. They also knew that I didn't have a stable job. Rumors began to fly and it was suddenly common talk that I was on some kind of trust fund. How else would I be able to travel around the country as an underground musician? Obviously I wasn't making any real money as an artist.

While I do share a lot of my private life with the public one of the things I did not want to share was that I was on disability. I find it to be extremely embarrassing and have a strong a desire to beat my disability/get off SSI. There are a lot of people who do not agree with the notion of SSI and feel that it should be abolished. They do not like that their tax money is going to helping the disabled community. (yet they seem to have no problem with it going to the war on drugs or the war on "terror") I did not want to be known as a disability case but as an artist. So what if I'm disabled? This has nothing to do with my music or my writing. I don't want people to give me special treatment because I'm disabled. I want to be judged for my art and nothing more.

For a while I was using my disability money to pay rent in the ghetto of Brooklyn (see Bushwick- where you can live in a community of artists next to Section 8 housing) but after getting sick of living with no windows in my room and getting sick of everything in my warehouse of 7 artists collapsing (see The Real World- the masochistic counterculture) I decided to move to Astoria in Queens. Within several months I was evicted because I was unable to pay my rent. The money I was getting on SSI was not enough for me to survive in NYC unless I wanted to move into another sh***y warehouse with illegal conditions.

I became homeless once again and used my SSI money to pursue a career in entertainment as opposed to live a domestic lifestyle. What many people don't know is that this is the life I was living before I moved to NYC. The only major difference was that I had finally made a name for myself as an artist. I stayed with friends from around the country in whatever city I was performing in. All of my money went to traveling. Sometimes promoters would pay for me to travel if I would play in their city. A few amateur photographers paid for me to travel if I was willing to do photo shoots with them.

While I went through many financial struggles as a homeless musician they were nothing compared to the financial struggles I went through while living in NYC. I didn't care if I was crashing on a random floor. As long as I was able to make music it was going to be all right. Many people give up their material possessions to make music. I gave up my home. It mattered more to me to be a recording/performing artist in a tiny little genre than to have a place to come home to. This is completely psychotic but what can I say? It was the path I decided to take. I didn't tell anybody I was homeless up until recently. Who wants to admit that they're homeless when they appear to be doing well to the masses? Yet after all of my SSI money went to fighting a legal battle against a band that did everything in their power to destroy me I finally admitted that I was without physical residence.

I once considered success to be fame because I was idealistic and naive. The more I traveled the better I did as a musician. Everybody knew who I was- at least in this tiny little underground. Of course things eventually backfired for this very reason. Everybody knew who I was. Yet nobody actually had a clue. "Who is this stupid b***h? How does she get the money to do all this traveling?" You can see where this is going. I was the hot new target to pick on. The latest scapegoat.

The rumors got so bad that none of the established record labels in my niche were willing to work with me. I formed machineKUNT Records with the intention of creating a new niche and demographic. A good friend of mine decided that I had money making potential and decided to invest in my company. Things were finally starting to look up after being ostracized from the genre I gave up my home to make music for. Yet it's not like my friend was rich or that I was suddenly getting more disability money. It's just that when you start your own company and use your disability money to travel you run into a lot of new opportunities. machineKUNT Records began to grow and I was able to sign new artists to my label. I released the "Extreme Women in the Dark Future" compilation and circulated it around the globe. I packaged all of the envelopes, wrote down the addresses of all of the customers, worked on constant myspace promotion, and did everything else I could to make my company grow no matter how menial the task.

Since I finally had an investor I was now able to hire new employees. Was I suddenly making any money with machineKUNT? No. All of it was going back to the company. Was I living anywhere? No. I was still homeless. Yet my dream had now become a reality. I often look back and say that I'm glad I got slandered. If I would have been signed to a bigger record label I might be more famous now and I might even be on tour in Europe but I never would have been able to do things on my own terms. I can honestly say that I know the value of hard work. Maybe not "waking up a 8 AM and going to the same boring job 6 days a week just to get paid" hard work but "going to sleep at 8 AM and working 7 turbulent days a week without getting paid" hard work. I could throw in that I did this all as a disabled person but that's not what I want to be known for. Disabled? Homeless? Who cares? I'm a f*****g artist.

I no longer see fame as success. Fame is a curse that I wouldn't wish upon anybody especially if it's fame within a small group of people. I see success as being able to run my own company on my own terms. I see success as creating culture. And I'm still trying to finish school so I can become more successful. The last time I was in school I was running a dominatrix company. Who knows what will happen next? One thing I know is that I will never work for anybody but myself.

I look up to women like Gala Darling and Molly Crabapple who are also creative entrepreneurs. They are living their dream and running their own companies only they're actually getting paid for them. They aren't homeless. This is the kind of life that I'd like to be living. This is the sort of thing that I strive for. Another good example is Emilie Autumn. I actually found out about her when a bunch of people in the industrial genre were slandering her name. (it's funny the way that works out) Destroy X of Angelspit makes her own clothing and runs her own makeup company. If these women are doing it why can't I?

Lydia Lunch was a homeless prostitute. Wendy O. Williams was a junkie who committed suicide. People still think that Courtney Love killed Kurt Cobain. Yet all of these women did exactly what they wanted to and there was nobody who could stop them. The most important thing was that they were able to share their art with the world. Some sacrificed more than others. Other women ended up becoming a part of the group that oppressed them. They now enjoy harassing me with the people who once harassed them. Go figure. If the people who made my life a living hell were to offer me a tour in Europe I would immediately tell them to kiss my ass.

Recently I decided to try a social experiment. I started posting outlandish things to my facebook and twitter accounts to my audience. If people were going to accuse me of being on a trust fund I was going to act like it. I told them that I was at a protest in Tokyo fighting for body modification rights. (I don't even have any body mods) That I was getting custom-made rings that said "hardcore" on them. That I was buying 9 corsets at once in France. Getting into fights with industry competition in Paris. Working on secret political campaigns in Greece. Almost everybody ate it up. No matter how outlandish my updates were there were very few people who questioned them. "Say hi to my friends in Greece for me. The police hate body modification in Tokyo and I'm glad you're doing something about it. I've been looking for a corset like that myself!" What I learned from this social experiment was that people were even stupider than I thought. It wasn't just the masses who believed I was on a trust fund but a large portion of people who I considered my friends.

Last week I was raped. I ended up telling my audience because this was not something I felt comfortable keeping bottled up inside. The hate mail began flooding in. "What sort of publicity stunt is this? You're always making yourself out to be a victim for attention." I live in a world in which my own audience believes that I'm going to protests in Tokyo and fighting for body modification rights- getting deported from Tokyo and flying to Paris the next day to buy a bunch of customized corsets- but thinks that getting raped is some type of publicity stunt. My own f*****g audience. I'd kill myself if it wasn't for knowing that my suicide would become a new internet meme.

Or maybe it's something else that is keeping me alive. My company that everybody makes fun of. My music project that nobody can stand. The rest of the world may view these endeavors as ridiculous exercises in feminism and narcissism but the rest of the world doesn't matter. What matters is that I am doing what I want. Even the possibility of getting this rapist in jail keeps me alive. The possibility of getting off disability in the future. The possibility of knowing that I had an impact on my generation and that what motivated me wasn't money or glamor but the desire to break the system and start from scratch. I'm a homeless and disabled entrepreneur. I might as well come clean with it once and for all. I didn't get to this point because I received some kind of trust fund. I got to this point because I worked my ass off no matter what situation I was faced with.

You are amazing

And that's not random!

TheHaywire, I hope you'll get everything you said!
Everything.

And if one day, you succeed to tour in Europe, tell us about it!