10+10 Fishers Against the Wind. The Space Lady
The Space Lady - Major Tom Susan, the sweet Space Lady.
It's March 2014, Susan Dietrich Schneider, or better known as "the Space Lady," is on stage, singing again after 14 years. She was convinced by Eric, her second husband.
Eric, whose last name is Schneider, had tried to make a name for himself as a singer and musician under the name Eric Ian, and his Susan - although she had left music back in 2000 - helps him with backing vocals and plays the flute.
Eric knows that Susan grew up in a family of musicians and that, as a young woman, she was a street performer under the name "the Space Lady," but he didn’t know much more.
Yet that sweet woman he met in 2008 had an amazing story to tell: Susan, who had a solid musical background and a degree from Colorado University, had gone to Frisco to be a hippie (it was the summer of love) and there she met Joel (Dunsany, aka "the Cosmic Man"). Joel is a musician and experimenter, full of ideas, and dresses in a strange way: with a winged helmet and a light bulb on his head. Now Joel wants to take his music on the road, but he can't because he's a conscientious objector; he ripped up the letter that ordered him to go to Vietnam and is on the run from Uncle Sam's law. So in his place, donned with the aforementioned helmet and a pair of white wings, performs our Susan.
Susan is good, and her character is striking; she also writes poetry, paints, dances...
The name circulates, she becomes a little myth in certain circles; in 1990, some recordings of her performances are released on disc (The Space Lady by Amazing Thingz).
Not Joel, though; he hides, his fear becomes morbid.
The two live on the streets, she performs, they are two bohemians. But then a child is born.
Susan drops everything, takes a nursing degree, and starts working.
And she leaves Joel.
It’s the year 2000.
Then she meets Eric.
When Eric learns the whole story, thanks also to Irwin Chusid, who points out "the Space Lady" among the icons of "outsider music," he decides to manage her and revive "the Space Lady."
Eric decides to send out a thousand postcards with the message "The Space Lady Is Back!" and, incredibly, he receives replies! Two record labels offer to let her record an album, a tour in the USA and Europe is proposed to her, and there’s even a project for a documentary about her.
And so, we arrive at that March of 2014.
There will be another tour and two more albums. Eric and Susan stayed together until 2016, until his death.
Susan still performs occasionally and remains true to her life choices, her pacifism, vegetarianism, and universal love...
