We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Pleasant Gehman a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Pleasant thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

I’ve made a living as a full time creator since 1984. I was twenty-three at the time and newly divorced. I was working temp jobs in sterile offices and doing part-time stints in retail to make ends meet…and it was killing my soul.

The turning point came for me when I was in a storeroom at a shop, putting tags on lingerie, and the girl I was working with started a conversation.

“I heard you’re in a band…” she said. I answered yes.

“I heard you write stories and do poetry readings, and write for rock’n’roll magazines…” again I said yes.

“Someone told me you’re a great painter, too.” once again, I answered affirmatively.

“Can you answer a question for me?” she asked and I nodded.

Then she asked,, “What are you doing HERE?”

I shocked her by bursting into tears and wailing, ” I don’t know- I’m wasting my brain”
When I walked off my shift that day, I gave notice and made a vow to myself that I would either l make a living as a a full-time artist or literally die trying. That was forty years ago, and I managed to keep my vow.

I am now 63 years old. I usually state my occupation as “artist” because I do so many things it sounds pretentious to list them all. I’m a best selling author with nine critically acclaimed books out; one of my earlier books, “The Underground Guide To Los Angeles” stayed on The LA Times best Sellers List for nine weeks.

My latest book, “Rock‘n’Roll Witch: A Memoir of Sex Magick, Drugs And Rock’n’Roll was published in May 2022 by Punk Hostage Press. It’s all paranormal and witchy stories; most of them feature close friends who experienced them too, like The Go-Go’s, The Cramps, The Gun Club, Alex Chilton, The Blasters… I could go on and on. All but two of my books are memoirs…and the ones that are not were about subjects I’m passionate about: Los Angeles and Middle Eastern dance.

I am also an actor with several film and television credits.
I fronted three bands in the 1980’s and 90s and they all recorded albums, toured, and had songs on the soundtracks of major motion pictures.

Since the early 2000’s, I’ve toured globally teaching and performing dance- several times across Europe and North America, Egypt, Turkey, China… I’ve also performed and taught danced in Europe and the UK many, many times.

I’ve produced a lot of shows over the years, including Belle, Book And Candle, which I co-produce with Shana Leilani; we just celebrated our fifth anniversary in May. It’s an occult burlesque show by and for witches…but the general public is welcome, of course!
I draw and paint and have had many art shows . I’ve been highly intuitive since i was a small child and I work as a professional psychic and energy healer with clients around the globe as well as here in Los Angeles.

Because I started doing all of this in the analog days, decades before smart phones and social media existed, all facets of my career grew much more slowly than they might have if I’d started more recently… but I wouldn’t change a things because it’s been a wild, absolutely amazing ride…and I’m doing what I love!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

As for my writing, my friend Randy Kaye and I founded a fanzine called “Lobotomy” in 1978, after we started hearing about English ‘zines like Sniffing Glue. There weren’t really any fanzines in LA yet- not like later with Flipside and Ben Is Dead. We always always put it together when we were shitfaced drunk, usually on my living room floor or at photographer Theresa Kereakes’ place- they were both called “The Lobomotomy Apartment”.

Since I always cut typing class in high school cause it was boring, I hand wrote a lot of it, though my typing skills definitely improved as time went on. I had a coral colored manual Smith Corona typewriter from the 1950’s that I got at a yard sale, and it typed in cursive! Eventually, I got another more modern (manual) typewriter, but I’d write a review by hand and it would take 10-20 minutes, and then another two hours to hunt’n’peck type it so it looked “professional”.

All the interviews in Lobotomy were off the chain cause nobody in punk had handlers or press people back then; you could just call the bands themselves at whatever hotel they were staying at, ask if they wanted to get drunk and go to thrift stores and to do an interview, and they always said yes. Most bands coming through LA that were signed stayed at The Continental Hyatt House-or Riot House, as we called it. But if they didn’t have a label, they stayed at The Tropicana Motel, which was like the LA equivalent of The Chelsea. Blondie, Johnny Thunders And The Heartbreakers and The Cramps always stayed there, Tom Waits and Chuck E. Weiss lived in the bungalows in the back; Leee Black Childers and Levi & The Rockats occupied Room 100A for months. The people at the front desk knew who I was- I’d call them up and go, “Whose in town?” and they’d always put me through to anyone who was staying there, like Johnny Thunders, The Dead Boys, whoever. Once I was all hung over in the Tropicana’s coffee shop Duke’s on a weekday morning after a night hanging out with The Damned. Tom Waits sat across from me and said, pointedly, “Pleasant, you gotta stay in school!”

All this lead to me working for LA Weekly, Los Angeles Magazine, Bam!, Spin, Request, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and many more rock publications.

At the time of Lobotomy, was working as the ticket taker at The Whisky, and the club started letting me book shows there. Then I started my band, The Screaming Sirens in 1983, and was simultaneously working as the booker for two seminal pLA Punk lubs, Cathay De Grande and Raji’s.

Since I’d grown up in the theater -my mom had been on roadway and taught musical Theater at Wesleyan University when I was a kid- it was natural for me to know how to put together great shows. So that as well as my dance experience lead me to t produce my occult burlesque show Belle, Book And Candle, which has had a monthly run at El Cid in Silverlake for five years.

Have you ever had to pivot?

My career has had so many twists and turns and detours that people who don’t know me personally have no idea what to make of it. To an outsider, my life doesn’t make sense.

A question I get constantly is “How did you go from punk rock to touring the world as a dancer… and working as a psychic?”

For me, it was organic; I didn’t plan the drastic pivots; I explored using my own talents and discovered I was pretty good at many things, Luckily, others thought so too, and hired me!

I’d start getting interested in a subject– like belly dance- just for fun. I’d wanted to be a dancer as a child, but was told I’d never achieve my dreams cause my feet were flat.

So, as an adult I started taking classes just for fun and then go home and practice for hours. I wasn’t even considering that I’d have a career in dance- I mean, who thinks they could start a dance career at the age of thirty, with no prior dance training? It was absurd even think that… .but somehow, with A LOT of hard work, it turned into my career of the past thirty-three years.

All I can say is that I followed my dreams and… worked my ass off.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

When people ask me how I’m so good with social media at my age, my stock answer is that it beats the hell out of wandering up and down the streets of Los Angeles handing out paper flyers!

Seriously though: if you want to make a liviing as an artist, social media is your best friend- because YOU and YOUR WORK are you’re main product! Social media is free advertising… take as much advantage of that as you can and get your work out there.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @princessofhollywood. ( my personal account) @belle_book_and_candle. (the account for my occult burlesque show, Belle, Book And Candle @ramonesducks. ( an urban wildlife project)
• Twitter: @PleasantGehman1 ( general) @@PrincessFarhana ( my dance stage name. @TarotAlimah ( witchy stuff)
• Youtube: Princess Farhana
• Other: Facebook: @pleasant Gehman

Image Credits
All Images by Christina I. Hughes / Maharet