As soon as I think I feel better, I immediately feel wiped out again. Just tired, though. The weight is definitely out of my lungs now, so I’m not going to complain. I’m just trying to roll with it.
Peitor and I have decided to do Abstract Absurdity Productions work tomorrow instead.
Meanwhile…
Even though 90% of the songs I wrote in the 80s & 90s have not been digitalized, I actually do have an mpg file of one of the earliest songs I wrote after I moved to NYC. I was 21.
This song was actually really popular in the folk clubs and other folk artists covered it, which, of course, was a thrill for me.
It has a very Caribbean feel to it.
Here’s me back then. And this is Stephen, the guy who is playing all the instruments on this particular recording from back then. We made this recording in his bedroom. We recorded a ton of music together in his bedroom, although he was a drummer/singer in a New Wave band. Almost everyone I knew back then was a musician, and almost all of us played a different style of music, in different clubs, different parts of the city. But we all got along really well. (Let’s just say we partied intensely. I seem to recall never sleeping for about a decade…)
Anyway. Stephen was one of the nicest & most talented guys I ever knew. He was from the South, and has long since returned there to get married and settle down.
We are pictured under a statue of Bo Jangles in Richmond, Virginia. 1982. Enjoy, gang! I love you guys.
“SAME OLD STORY”
Well, I’ve got a story that you gotta hear
Oh, come on, sinners, gather near
Well, I promise it’s a story you’ll like real well
About liars
lovers, cheaters
And I’ve a got a secret, do you wanna know?
I’ll tell you all about it, then I gotta go
I’m going down to the water when the tide comes up
And jump over
Up and over
‘Cause I took a journey into paradise
Giving up my freedom was the sacrifice
Oh, but I had a man who said the price
Was worth it
For love
And I believed him
CHORUS
It’s the same old story ‘bout a woman who’s found
That she’s tired of his drinkin’ and his runnin’ around
So she tries to get him into settling down
And he leaves her.
(Not in body, but soul)
I’m not a dummy, Lord, I went to school
Oh, but I took a gamble on a stubborn mule
If I thought I could change him,
I was more a fool
But I tried to
Every chance I got
Soon, he was comin’ in at quarter to three
I tried to pretend it didn’t bother me
Until the night when I saw him
Kiss that dark-haired girl
And he held her
In the back seat of his car
CHORUS
It’s the same old story ‘bout a woman who’s found
That she’s tired of his drinkin’ and his runnin’ around
So she tries to get him into settling down
And he leaves her.
That is a photo of where I went to Divinity School. Home of one hundred year’s worth of Evangelical old-style camp meetings by the river. I loved that school and those people. I really did. I left when they wanted me to begin my ministry by being the Youth Minister.
I left for 2 reasons. One: I knew that what I really believed about Christ was not something they would want getting anywhere near their children. And two: I figured it would just be a matter of time before someone’s parents googled me and then they really wouldn’t want me being anywhere near their children.
From there, though, I moved on to a more urban environment and got my counseling from intensely forward-thinking, pro-gay-and-everything-else ministers in a cathedral setting. Old stone pews, beautiful stained glass windows. Incredible choir. (They were the ones who gave me my Pastoral Care & Hospital Visitation training in hopes that I might become a Chaplain. I learned so much from them — I learned so much from them about the business side of being a minister and all that it entailed (a mind-numbing amount of stuff). But where the Progressives differed from the Evangelicals was that they didn’t accept my belief that Christ could literally heal people and they were waiting for me to outgrow that.) (I didn’t.)
Anyway. Not sure where that little digression came from, right off the bat.
So.
It’s a beautiful — but very chilly — day here today. I’m not feeling as good as I felt yesterday but I still feel pretty good, all things considered. I’m going to try to do a little Abstract Absurdity Productions work with Peitor over the phone this afternoon. We’ll see how that goes. I still get really tired when I do too much talking, but I miss that feeling of connection and of working. (Although Peitor texts me everyday, it’s still not the same thing.)
I’m feeling a little depressed today. Feeling overwhelmed by my projects that have lost momentum (the 2 plays with Sandra, and the micro-short films with Peitor). I’m trying to remind myself, though, that I don’t have to regain that ground all in one day, and also that the entire world lost momentum on their various projects…
I’m trying to just be realistic. Not a word I really take too well to, though, even in the best of times.
I think part of it is because I feel almost back to normal so it’s frustrating to not just be back to normal. And I’m also someone who feels guilty about just lying around in bed. So if I’m not feeling totally sick, it’s hard to allow myself to keep lying around in bed.
So that’s my big complaint for today, I guess. Party-Pooper mode was bound to hit me at some point. [party pooper – noun: a person who throws gloom over social enjoyment. Or, in this case, social-distancing enjoyment. — Ed.]
I’m going to close now and get back in bed. Maybe later I will feel better and then post again! Have a good Tuesday, wherever you are in the world, gang. I leave you with what I’ve been listening to. I love you guys. See ya.
“Underneath The Stars”
Underneath the stars I’ll meet you
Underneath the stars I’ll greet you
There beneath the stars I’ll leave you
Before you go of your own free will
Go gently
Underneath the stars you met me
Underneath the stars you left me
I wonder if the stars regret me
At least you’ll go of your own free will
Go gently
Here beneath the stars I’m landing
And here beneath the stars not ending
Why on earth am I pretending?
I’m here again, the stars befriending
They come and go of their own free will
Go gently
Go gently
Underneath the stars you met me
And Underneath the stars you left me
I wonder if the stars regret me
I’m sure they’d like me if they only met me
They come and go of their own free will
I’m trying not to get zealous and overdo it around here, but I do think the virus has moved out of my lungs, finally.
I awoke at 4:30am and laid there for awhile, feeling absolutely fantastic. My breathing was completely back to normal for the first time in 9 days. Plus, my bed felt really incredible. On the phone yesterday, my dad had persuaded me to change my sheets and wash the blankets, etc., because I’d been in the same bedding since before I’d gotten sick.
And then I realized I’d also been wearing the same darn chemise with the same white tee shirt on top of it for the entire time, too.
Even though I had found the energy everyday to take a 2-minute shower, I would just get right back into the same chemise, tee shirt, and collapse back into the same bed linens. And I realized that my dad was right — it was probably a good idea to get up the energy to do some laundry.
Just FYI — even though, on the outside — or I should say “verbally” — my reaction to anything any man ever tells me to do is to automatically say “no;” I am in fact intensely submissive by nature and, 99.9% of the time, I will first say “no” and then do exactly what I’m told.
MY DAD (on phone): “You really ought to wash those sheets, Marilyn. That virus is probably all over them.”
ME (on phone): “I don’t think so. I’m so tired. I don’t think the virus lives that long on fabric…” (gets out of bed, washes sheets, then washes everything else in sight)
(The only man I say “no” to and then steadfastly adhere to that intensely negative mindset is the second husband. When/if he ever advises me to do something, I not only automatically say “no,” but a filter type thing — called “You’re Not the Boss of Me” — also gets lowered down over the inside of my brain to ensure that no advise he is trying to give me permeates my consciousness in any way whatsoever.)
Okay. Anyway. All those clean sheets and blankets and the clean tee shirt/chemise helped me get the best sleep I’d had in awhile.
And now I’ve officially switched to the Spring/Summer sheets, too — the 125,000-thread-count pure cotton sheets from Italy. So it was really just a great night’s sleep, and I woke up breathing. Like I used to do 9 days ago.
I don’t know how you guys are about Easter (assuming you celebrate it at all), but for me, even though it’s a joyous holiday, it’s also a day where I do a lot of thinking about my life. Meaning, if the Resurrection is telling me anything at all, it’s telling me to look at my life before I die. Is this how I want to be living it? If not, then here’s yet another chance to try to get it right.
Usually, every single darn year, my answer is “no, this is not how I want to be living my life,” and in this case, the word “no” is not because I have a serious issue with male authority. It’s because whenever I’m pressed to really take account of my life, I’m simply never satisfied with how I’m living it.
The older I get, the tighter the focus gets on “my work.” If I die today, and leave this huge amount of unfinished work behind, it would be okay. Because I honestly believe that we get to finish in the Afterlife whatever we left unfinished here.
However, I also believe really strongly that I didn’t come here to be physical and to start a bunch of projects, just to go back over there (wherever there is) and finish them there, you know? Why bother to come here at all then, right? So I am hopeful that, before I die, I’ll finish all these many projects I have that are half-finished. Even if I don’t get them out into the world, I’d like to at least leave a tidy stack of finished novels, memoirs, stories, micro-short screenplays, and plays on my desk, with a little handwritten note to my sister on the top of the stack: Please take care of these. Thank you.
(Plus, I still really, really want to record that album with Peitor, of maybe 14 or 15 of my favorite songs that I wrote when I was a singer-songwriter, too.) (Readers of this lofty blog, perhaps recall that back when a VP at Columbia Records was trying to get me signed there, Peitor produced a demo for me in his studio that I absolutely loved. He made my songs & my voice sound like nothing else I had ever heard before; I really felt he captured a certain magic in my songs. But the VP at Columbia Records famously said to me, “Why are you singing like this? I can’t do anything with this.” So I’d really like a chance to go back into the studio for real this time, and have Peitor produce all of my best songs. Maybe title it: This is Why I’m Singing Like This, Even If You Can’t Do Anything With It…)
So, since it was Easter yesterday, I was thinking about this stuff — my life. And realizing that I’m going to be 60 in about 14 seconds, so I really need to make a commitment to trying harder to get this stuff done.
Part of the challenge is that most of my projects aim a little higher than I can reach, so I always have to evolve as a writer while I’m in the process of doing the writing. My vision for what I want to achieve with my work is always way out there beyond my grasp, so I am always in the process of finding my way. (When I first began writing Neptune & Surf in 1994, inspired by an extremely long day/night of drinking in Coney Island with Holly Lane, I had never written anything longer than short stories. I know for a fact that I re-wrote the opening page to that book 60 or 70 times before I could even undertake writing the rest of the book; I was trying to learn how to write.)
Well, anyway, I decided yesterday that for however long I continue to be alive over here on this side of reality, my mind is just going to have to work harder. Find better words. String them together in a better way. And then if I die anyway and nothing’s finished, well, I’ll worry about it when I get to the Afterlife.
On other topics — I am now deeply into Love in the Time of Cholera and just loving every moment of that book. It is indeed better to be reading it during not only a pandemic, but also to be in some weird form of all-consuming love that has no roadmap whatsoever. It’s good to be reminded that for all time, throughout everything, people have managed to love unconditionally with no hope of grasping any conclusion, while life just went barreling on and tumbling down all around them.
So. I’m learning to just let each day be whatever it has to be.
The Nick Cave art book, Stranger Than Kindness, is just really interesting — thought-provoking; indeed a ponderer’s paradise. Although his handwriting is often just indescribably indecipherable. Lots of original versions of song lyrics are in the book. And I really love seeing what writers write, re-write, re-visit, and then compare it to what was ultimately chosen as the finished vision.
I’m not super well-informed about The Birthday Party era of Nick Cave’s career. I have the Boys Next Door album (CD) that has the song “Shivers” on it and I think that album is so good. It really captures that era of music so well. The songs are very good, too, when placed directly in that whole scene. But I didn’t know anything about the Boys Next Door or the The Birthday Party when I first discovered Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds in 1985. I was so blown away by the Bad Seeds stuff that I hit the ground running with that. (Plus, it was really difficult and expensive to get import albums back then, even in NYC, and I was extremely poor back then.) Over recent years, I have since watched various videos of The Birthday Party on YouTube and they are really good songs.
I also have had the book King Ink, since forever. (Scarily enough, I now see that I have had it for 31 years now. It is really extremely difficult at this moment to wrap my mind around that number.) I remember the day I bought it so perfectly. I was in St. Mark’s Bookstore, on St. Mark’s Place in the East Village. I had no money to speak of, but I was planning to buy some of those underground zines that I used to love — and I got published in several of them, too, btw.
My eyesight must have been amazing back then because I remember the whole sky cracking open when I suddenly saw, way over at the front of the store, way up high, behind the cash registers, far, far from where anyone could possibly touch it or steal it, there was a book written by Nick Cave.
I was, like, holy fucking moly. And I put everything down that I was thinking I was going to buy and went directly to the cashier and asked him if that book was by Nick Cave the songwriter, and he said yes, and then I told him I had to have that book. He looked at me dubiously because he had to climb up on a ladder to retrieve it and he said sort of disgustedly, “It’s $25…”
I was quite taken aback by that amount because I truly couldn’t afford that amount, but I still had to have it, so I made the guy get it down for me, and I bought it without even knowing what the fuck it was. It was the only copy of the book that they had (it was an import from England) and I felt like the cashier was going to grab it right back from me because I’m sure it was written all over my face: oh my god, I can’t afford this. So I bought it. (And we won’t discuss the myriad insane things I had to scramble around and do back in those days to try to scrape together my fucking rent even without buying a $25 book.)
Well, long story even longer — all The Birthday Party song lyrics were included in King Ink. So I have at least known the lyrics to their songs since 1989. But I didn’t know the music to them until years later.
Their songs are very, very interesting. Intense, dark, funny, and, well, intense. And a couple of the original handwritten lyrics are included in Stranger Than Kindness. So I was thinking about those songs a lot yesterday, too. I played “Mutiny in Heaven” on YouTube several times. While it’s obviously dark, I think it’s just an incredible song.Unbelievable. (It is down below the photograph.)
Anyway. In the photo from one of my bookcases in my family room just now, you can see that I thought it was worth the $25 I didn’t have — 6 moves and 31 years later. (Oh, and down at the bottom of that horizontal stack, is a book that contains the script and some movie stills from Francois Truffaut’s famous film, The 400 Blows. I took the book out of the local library when I was 15 and loved that book (and the film itself) so much, that I wound up stealing that book from the library and was not allowed to use the library ever again. But you can see that I thought that book was worth it, too — 14 moves and 45 years later.)
Okay, see ya, gang. I gotta scoot! Thanks for visiting. I love you!!
“Mutiny In Heaven”
Well ah jumpt! and fled this fucken heap on doctored wings
Mah flailin pinions, with splints and rags and crutches!
(Damn things nearly hardly flap)
Canker upon canker upon one million tiny punctures
That look like…
Long thin red ribbons draped across the arms of a lil mortal girl
(Like a ground -plan of Hell)
Curse these smartin strings! These fucken ruptures!
Enough! Enough is enough!
(If this is Heaven ah’m bailin out)
If this is Heaven ah’m bailin out
Ah caint tolerate this ol tin-tub
So fulla trash and rats! Felt one crawl across mah soul
For a seckon there , as thought as wassa back down in the ghetto!
(Rats in Paradise! Rats in Paradise!)
Ah’m bailin out! There’s a mutiny in Heaven!
Ah wassa born…
And Lord shakin, even then was dumpt into some icy font
Like some great stinky unclean!
From slum-chuch to slum-church, ah spilt mah heart
To some fat cunt behind a screen…
Evil poppin eye presst up to the opening
He’d slide shut the lil perforated hatch…at night mah body
Blusht
To the whistle of the birch
With a lil practice ah soon learnt to use in on mahself
Punishment?! Reward!! Punishment?! Reward!!
Well, ah tied on…percht on mah bed ah was…
Sticken a needle in mah arm…
Ah tied off! Fucken wings burst out mah back
(Like ah was cuttin teeth!!)
Ah took off!!!
(Rats in Paradise! Rats in Paradise!)
There’s a mutiny in Heaven!
Oh Lord, ah git down on mah knees
(Ah git down on mah knees and start to pray)
Wrapped in mah mongrel wings, ah nearly freeze
In the howlin wind and drivin rain
(All the trash blowin round ‘n’ round)
From slum-heaven into town
Ah take mah tiny pain and rollin back mah sleeve
(Roll anna roll anna roll anna roll)
Ah yank the drip outa mah vein! UTOPIATE! Ah’m bailin out!
UTOPIATE!
If this is Heaven ah’m bailin out!
Mah threadbare soul teems with vermin and louse
Thoughts come like a plague to the head…in God’s house!
Mutiny in Heaven!
(Ars infectio forco Dio)
To the plank!
(Rats in Paradise! Rats in Paradise!)
Ah’m bailin out!
(Hail Hypuss Dermio Vita Rex!)
Hole inna ghetto! Hole inna ghetto!
(Scabio Murem per Sanctum…Dio, Dio, Dio)
Yes, I know — don’t say it!! I can give my cats the virus…. So, no, I haven’t actually allowed them to bring me any tea.
I’m feeling noticeably better this morning. However, it’s the same darn thing: As soon as I start moving around, go downstairs and get the breakfast, etc., I get worn out again. All I can really safely do is lie on my back and scroll through Instagram endlessly. Or prop myself up on more pillows and read either Love in the Time of Cholera or THIS (which arrived on my kitchen porch yesterday!!):
This book weighs a ton, though. So I actually have to sit up to read this one. It is quite entrancing, I have to say. (This is the companion book to Nick Cave’s art exhibit that will open at some point soon in Copenhagen. I am finding the book very, very, very interesting, indeed.)
And then, when I lie on my side, hug my various pillows and stare in the direction of my night table, I can continue to stream movies on my iPad! Last night, I began watching Patrick Melrose (2018), which stars Benedict Cumberbatch. It originally ran on Showtime, which I didn’t subscribe to so I didn’t get to see it, but now it’s streaming free on Amazon. So I’m watching it. It is really well done but very intense. Pushes many, many, many of my childhood/young adult buttons (frightening parents, suicidal tendencies, massively out of control drug abuse), but so far, I’m handling it. It really is very well done.
Well, today is Holy Saturday. And tonight is the Easter Vigil. I have no plans to do anything at all but lie in bed and do the various aforementioned things, as well as sleep a lot. But it’s kind of good, you know, because all this enforced downtime and alone-time gives me a whole lot of time to ponder things, and that’s probably my favorite thing on Earth to do! So, as long as I’m still breathing okay, I won’t complain.
(I am kinda wondering what’s gonna happen when I run out of food, though. Although Kara texts every day, to see if I need anything. I just hate to have her go out into the virus to buy me stuff and then drive for a total of 50 miles just to drop it all off on my porch. I guess we’ll see. Within the next few days, I am going to run out of food.)
All righty, that’s it for now. I’m going back to bed. I hope you are having a good weekend, wherever you are in the world!!Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya!
First of all, if you honor Good Friday in some way, I hope it is a meaningful day for you and that the next 48 hours help you find your way to things that you might not even know you’re seeking.
On another note…
Last evening was really something around here. Another heavy wind kicked up from out of nowhere and not only carried off more pieces of my neighbor’s privacy fence, but it also took an entire strip of roof off of my barn (!!!!). And all I could do was stand there at my kitchen window and watch it happen and then look at it lie there in the intensely overgrown grass of my insane backyard.
I’m sort of praying that a group of Amish men come trotting by in their horse-drawn buggy and say, “Hey, can we fix that barn for you?” (FYI — Amish people are really, really good at building barns…)
Oh, Lordy.
Anyway, I got really sick yesterday evening, too. The breathing problems came swooping back, worse than ever, and just hung around for several hours.
Late afternoon, I suddenly found that my appetite had returned and I was really excited about that. So I went downstairs and actually cooked myself some dinner. Then ate it. Then washed all the dishes and put them away… and then discovered that I had completely worn myself out by doing that and could no longer breathe.
And then right at that moment was when my dad called to see how I was doing and he got so panicky, listening to me trying to talk/breathe, that it only alarmed me more.
I do those breathing exercises to help keep my lungs from getting pneumonia, so I did those every hour, but other than that, I tried not to move for the remainder of the night and then managed to sleep for 7 uninterrupted hours.
I’m much better right now but, obviously, I can’t keep getting out of bed until I’m really back to normal. Plus, now, every single person I know — all of whom mean well — but they keep warning me that I can give the virus to my cats. Yes. Every single person keeps telling me that I can give the virus to my cats!! And that alone freaks me out and is exhausting to hear because it’s not like I can get up enough energy to clean at this point, you know?
But anyway… I am feeling better right now.
I was hoping to do Holy Communion today. It doesn’t take a lot of energy, but apparently, even a little energy is too much right now. If I can’t do it today, I sure hope that by Sunday, I can. Here is my Communion kit, in case you’re interested! The outside, and the inside:
I love this kit. I haven’t taken Communion in a while, though. It was starting to feel too automatic, so I stopped. (OMG — Nick Cave is in there!! Too funny. He is, like, everywhere, isn’t he??)
All righty, gang. Have a Good Friday, wherever you are in the world, okay? Thanks for visiting. I’m going back to bed now. I love you guys. See ya.
After having a couple of really lovely hours yesterday evening — up in the 70s Fahrenheit, sunny, warm, gorgeous — the temperature is plummeting now, down to the 40s. And it is now cloudy, windy and grey.
But it’s okay, because God knows, I’m not going anywhere.
I can’t tell yet if I feel better today. I’m breathing better, but I am ridiculously tired. My main complaint remains the short battery life of my blue tooth speaker. The hard-wired speakers for my iPad are down in the kitchen. And up here in bed, I rely on a cute little blue tooth speaker that, while aesthetically pleasing because it is a pretty frosted pink color with a really pretty blue light, it in fact cost me all of five dollars and, you know, needs re-charging quite frequently and, of course, the outlet is a mile away from the bed.
I have finished watching all the episodes of DCI Banks, and am now working my way through the most recent Agatha Christie re-makes from the BBC. And even though this current batch of remakes are my least favorite adaptations of Agatha Christie novels that I have ever watched, they still draw me in because the acting and the sets are incredible, but — truly — as if on cue, the very moment the episode reaches its zenith of suspense, the little speaker shuts off and needs to be re-charged.
It’s actually funny, its that reliable.
Anyway. So I’d already watched The Pale Horse before I got sick, then I watched The ABC Murders — and even though I love John Malkovich just generally, it was my least favorite Poirot adaptation of all time. There was way too much bloody murder and lurid sex in it! I know — normally lurid sex is a deeply wanted commodity, but not in Agatha Christie, for godsakes!! It’s like an affront to the senses. I really found it incredibly annoying, although the very same scenes in some other writer’s TV-movie adaptation would have been really desirable and I would have thought: Wow, that scene was really well done (because, actually they were really well written, dark and troubling sex scenes, just not for Agatha Christie…).
And now I am watching Ordeal By Innocence (2018), which, so far, is the best of the lot. I am trying to pace watching it with my constant need to sleep, so that the blue tooth is re-charging while I am doing the same!
All righty. That said, I need to go collapse in bed again. I leave you with another John Prine song, Spanish Pipedream (aka Blow Up Your TV), from off his debut album in 1971. (John Prine died late Tuesday night from complications with COVID 19. He was 73.)
Even though the song is really old, I identify with this particular song a lot at this stage of my life — and not because I identify with strippers, or Vietnam War draft-dodgers on their way to Canada, or with peaches, or having lots of children. I identify with this song because when I moved out here to the country and bought what I consider to be my first true home ever, I gave up my ministry. And I also got rid of my TV service.
Before I moved here to Crazeysburg, I had my little black shirt with the white collar, and I used to work a lot with the elderly, make home Communion visits to the housebound (or in nursing homes), and counsel people, mostly for grief & loss. But I knew that the path I was on with Jesus was leading me farther and farther away from what “regular” Christians needed from me as a minister — and that is putting it mildly.
Out here in the middle of nowhere, with no more formal ministry of any kind — I have done a whole lot of communing with Jesus privately, wherein I don’t have to answer to any established dogma.
So I love how the chorus of this song sort of reflects what I personally went through when I moved out here to the country. It’s such a joyful song.
All righty. Thanks for visiting, gang. Enjoy your Maundy Thursday (Jesus’s Last Supper) wherever you are in the world!! I love you guys. See ya.
“Spanish Pipedream (Blow Up Your TV)”
She was a level-headed dancer on the road to alcohol
And I was just a soldier on my way to Montreal
Well she pressed her chest against me
About the time the juke box broke
Yeah, she gave me a peck on the back of the neck
And these are the words she spoke
[Chorus:]
Blow up your TV throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus on your own
Well, I sat there at the table and I acted real naive
For I knew that topless lady had something up her sleeve
Well, she danced around the bar room and she did the hoochy-coo
Yeah she sang her song all night long, tellin’ me what to do
[Chorus]
Well, I was young and hungry and about to leave that place
When just as I was leavin’, well she looked me in the face
I said “You must know the answer.”
“She said, “No but I’ll give it a try.”
And to this very day we’ve been livin’ our way
And here is the reason why
We blew up our TV threw away our paper
Went to the country, built us a home
Had a lot of children, fed ’em on peaches
They all found Jesus on their own
I slept 11 straight hours last night, and somewhere during the worst thunderstorm I can remember hearing in a long time, my fever broke and I awoke this morning to find that the cute little baby elephant who’s been sitting on my chest since Sunday night had departed.
I’m still having trouble breathing but that horrible weight in my lungs is gone.
However, before I collapse right back into bed again, I want to give you a few happy updates!
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds have posted the new dates for their UK & European Ghosteen tour! (And now that I know I will be in Zurich on June 3rd, 2021, this pretty much means that I can count on everything important in my professional life, in the US and Canada, being scheduled for June 3rd, 2021, as well!!)
Okay. I sure hope I’m kidding about that!
Also, Nick Cave sent out another Red Hand Files letter today, this one talks about the new, utterly amazing Dylan song, “Murder Most Foul.” (I’m still listening to it, gang. And when you consider that the song is 17 minutes long, it’s quite an investment of focus.)
An interesting thing about the song — I texted YouTube links for the song to all of my friends right when the song came out. Well, to the ones that I knew liked Bob Dylan. And Kara was the first one who texted me back about it, and she had the same first-response that I did. And she nailed it: “That violin…” she said.
I know. That violin. It sears right into you; it manages to both chill and awaken your heart. It’s incredible.
All right. I need to get back to bed, so I will post the sad news. John Prine had been struggling with COVID 19 since the end of March and he finally succumbed last night. He was definitely one of those people who had seriously complex underlying health issues, so I’m sad to say that I was not surprised he succumbed. Still, I wish he could have gone in a less horrible way.
John Prine’s songs were a huge part of the 70s and 80s for me, being that, at that point in my life, I was a country/folksinger-songwriter myself. And into the 90s, when I met Wayne and we got married, etc., Wayne was also a big John Prine fan. And Prine’s album, The Missing Years, was one of the cassettes (!!) we played relentlessly in the car when we drove cross-country on our honeymoon.
So I’ll leave you with 2 distinct types of John Prine songs. The bluegrass type that I feel he was best known for, and then a song from The Missing Years, that features Tom Petty, and is about James Dean, a movie star I totally love (and it also mentions my beloved Grandma’s first cousin, John Garfield!! ).
I’m gonna close now because I’m super tired, gang. Sorry for any typos. But thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!
“That’s The Way That The World Goes ‘Round”
I know a guy that’s got a lot to lose.
He’s a pretty nice fellow but he’s kind of confused.
He’s got muscles in his head that ain’t never been used.
Thinks he owns half of this town.
Starts drinking heavy, gets a big red nose.
Beats his old lady with a rubber hose,
Then he takes her out to dinner and buys her new clothes.
That’s the way that the world goes ’round.
That’s the way that the world goes ’round.
You’re up one day and the next you’re down.
It’s half an inch of water and you think you’re gonna drown.
That’s the way that the world goes ’round.
I was sitting in the bathtub counting my toes,
When the radiator broke, water all froze.
I got stuck in the ice without my clothes,
Naked as the eyes of a clown.
I was crying ice cubes hoping I’d croak,
When the sun come through the window, the ice all broke.
I stood up and laughed thought it was a joke
That’s the way that the world goes ’round.
A young man from a small town
With a very large imagination
Lay alone in his room with his radio on
Looking for another station
When the static from the mouthpiece
Gave way to the sound below
James Dean went out to Hollywood
And put his picture in a Picture Show.
James Dean went out to Hollywood
And put his picture in a Picture Show.
[Chorus:]
And It’s Oh Daddy get off of your knees
Mamma why’d you have to go
Your darling Jim is out a limb
I put my picture in a Picture Show
Whoa Ho! Put my picture in a Picture Show
Hamburgers Cheeseburgers
Wilbur and Orville Wright
John Garfield in the afternoon
Montgomery Clift at night
When the static hit the mouthpiece
Gave way to the sound below
James Dean went out to Hollywood
And put his picture in a Picture Show.
[Chorus]
A Mocca man in a wigwam sitting on a Reservation.
With a big black hole in the belly of his soul
Waiting on an explanation
While the white man sits on his fat can
And takes pictures of the Navajo
Every time he clicks his Kodak pics
He steals a little bit of soul.
Every time he clicks his Kodak pics
He steals a little bit of soul.
[Chorus]
Yie Hi! Put my picture in a Picture Show
Here we go!
A young man from a small town
With a very large imagination…
Well, I am indeed, sick, gang. But it is very, very mild. So far, my only real complaint is that my blue tooth speaker has such a short battery life. Streaming Agatha Christie movies on my iPad in bed and as soon as it gets to a key scene, the speaker will undoubtedly shut off. And so then I just go to sleep while it recharges.
But that’s the worst of it.
Alas, today I will be brief! Thanks for visiting, gang. Have a terrific Tuesday wherever you are in the world! I love you guys. See ya!!
I deleted that earlier post from this morning. I just don’t want that energy going out into my world right now. As long as I don’t have a fever, I’m not going to dwell on it. But I am gonna just hang out in bed today.
I’ll probably post again later.
Have a good Monday, wherever you are in the world, gang!! I love you guys.
I’m still leaving you with the same music, though. Breakfast-listening song from today!
Marilyn's Room 