Category Archives: Uncategorized

Me, A Grown Up!

September 7, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

All right, well. I got the new car.

No CD player. It’s all about streaming.

What the fuck? Do they not know how many CDs I still own? And even though I do stream a ton of music, there are hundreds of CDs that I don’t have in any sort of streaming version, including some Nick Cave stuff and several early Tom Petty CDs. I’m not sure how they think I’m going to be able to pull out of my driveway without certain songs on certain days.

I don’t actually have a driveway, but still. The thought of ripping CDs onto my laptop then transferring them to my phone– I am not a Geek. I am a crazed, lunatic writer. I do not have time to do stuff like that anymore.

That pissed me off so much that I almost got right back out of the car and said, “Take this back, please, and give me the old Honda Fit.” This grown-up business really sucks.

But here is the car I got. This is not the actual car. I don’t have a showroom to park it in. But I am too lazy to go downstairs right now and photograph the actual car. But it looks just like this, so don’t worry.

It does weird things like drives for you automatically for 10 seconds. It has a radar up front that automatically applies your brakes if someone ahead of you puts on their brakes. It keeps pace with the car in front you: if that car speeds up or slows down, you do, too. It has automatic lights so that you can blind people with your brights at night without meaning to — or you can drive in complete darkness, if you prefer to not blind people. (That seems to be my option: blind others or drive in total darkness.)

The other thing it does, which totally cracks me up because I love language: if you inch outside of your lane at either side, an orange warning comes on in front of you that reads: Lane Departure.

That word “departure” is what cracks me up. Who thought of that? They probably thought “watch what you’re doing, asshole” was too offensive to the driver, or that “put your fucking phone down & pay attention, you’re driving!” was too long to cram into that little orange space.

But the thing that disappoints me the most about the Civic is that it does indeed go really fast, but it is a more solid vehicle than the Fit so you do not feel like you’re going really fast. There is no soaring sort of thrill. So what is the point of going really fast? I might as well just go the fucking speed limit, you know? And save on gas and stuff like that.

They are forcing me to grow up. And I do not appreciate it. However, it is mine for the next 3 years.

As I was leaving the Honda dealership in the new car yesterday, across the street was a used car lot and right out there in front was a used Hellcat. It was in a bright metallic lime green color, not my favorite. But still. I looked at that car as I drove away and my heart sank… (Those Hellcats go from 0 to 210 mph in about 3 seconds. I realize there’s no earthly reason to do that if you’re not drag racing, but still. It just made me feel so sad.)

Anyway. So now I look like a grown up when I’m in my perfectly grown up car. (I’m not one, but no one will know that.)

Okay, well. Sandra and I actually spoke on the phone for 4 seconds yesterday. I was in the Honda dealership when she finally called me and I couldn’t talk. So now we are playing phone tag. A step up from texting…

The play rewrites are, of course, not finished. I’m getting stressed and depressed and all that stuff that I do so well. But I decided late last night to do some radical segment-intending, 24/7, for the next several days and pull myself past this. I usually only do segment-intending when I’m getting ready to get into the car. I have two profound needs whenever I’m driving. The main one is to not kill any animals out here in the middle of nowhere where there are so many scurrying about, and the other is to not wreck the car, since I am only borrowing it for 3 years and then giving it back.

For me, my segment-intending always includes giving appreciation to St. Francis (animals) and St. Christopher (the car). And then of course to Christ because he’s that thing in my life that tries to keep me from generally going insane. But segment-intending doesn’t really involve saints unless you’re me and your mind chooses to do weird shit like that.

But segment-intending works extremely well. So I decided to break the day/night into 5-hour segments, so every 5 hours, I visualize the next 5 hours going really smoothly and me not stressing out — staying calm, happy, even.

So far, it is working great. It really is. I’m in my second segment right now and not freaking out about anything at all, and only thinking of death as a viable solution in the most meager, fleeting sort of way. (Just kidding about that.)

And I slept like a rock for 5 hours last night, woke up and wasn’t worried about anything at all. I feel like I have this sort of mental protective force-field all around me, keeping out the garbage thoughts, and helping me just stay calm. It really is interesting, how my mind can actually feel it — feel protected, I mean. From my own thoughts.

However, on that note, my mind will feel even better when I finish the rewrites on the play so I better get started here. (Oh, I’ll mention here that it looks like all those additional Conversations with Nick Cave for January 2020 that went on sale yesterday sold out in, like, 4 minutes. I think this means that he is never going to stop conversing. This is not a judgement at all, but an observation.)

Okay!! I leave you with this song I used to really just love. It was breakfast-listening music today and I hadn’t heard it in years. I still loved it. It is such a soaring song. “The Whole of the Moon,” from The Waterboys album, This is the Sea (1985). Enjoy. Have a super Saturday, wherever you are in the world, gang. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!

“The Whole Of The Moon”

I pictured a rainbow
You held it in your hands
I had flashes
But you saw the plan
I wandered out in the world for years
While you just stayed in your room
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moonYou were there at the turnstiles
With the wind at your heels
You stretched for the stars
And you know how it feels
To reach too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon

I was grounded
While you filled the skies
I was dumbfounded by truths
You cut through lies
I saw the rain-dirty valley
You saw Brigadoon
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon

I spoke about wings
You just flew
I wondered, I guessed and I tried
You just knew
I sighed
But you swooned
I saw the crescent
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

With a torch in your pocket
And the wind at your heels
You climbed on the ladder
And you know how it feels
To get too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon
The whole of the moon

Unicorns and cannonballs
Palaces and piers
Trumpets, towers, and tenements
Wide oceans full of tears
Flags, rags, ferry boats
Scimitars and scarves
Every precious dream and vision
Underneath the stars

Yes, you climbed on the ladder
With the wind in your sails
You came like a comet
Blazing your trail
Too high
Too far
Too soon
You saw the whole of the moon

c – 1985 Mike Scott

Everything Old is New Again

September 6, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I know, I should be excited this morning because in a couple of hours, I’ll have a brand new car. However, I woke up battling a huge bunch of sadness today, instead.

Part of it is because I’m still not quite believing that I’m the kind of girl who will be driving a Honda Civic. I know it’s a great car. But I would be more excited if I were driving a Hellcat. My dream car.

The other part of my sadness stems from this business of it being September. The cooler weather; this closing-of-the-windows business. The birds leaving for warmer climes.

I used to love September. I used to love fall. I guess since I wrote about this in Letter #2 of Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse, I can just go ahead and write about it here.

(And as an aside, Letter #3 began coming out yesterday, entirely unexpectedly and all of its own accord. It appears to be titled, “Baltimore.”)

Anyway, in Letter #2, “A Beach to His Waves,” I wrote about an older man who died, but who managed to thoroughly change my life before he left.

I knew him for less than 4 months, but they were the most intense, amazing, beautiful, magical 4 months I ever lived. He was terminal, with cancer, but wound up dying very suddenly from a heart attack instead.

He was in his early 70s, extremely happily married — kids, grandchildren. He’d had a really successful career. But his wife and his kids were absolutely devastated by the fact that he was dying, incurable, and we met honestly by sheer accident, but it then did seem like it was no accident — it was some miraculous type of fate, or destiny, or something. But we did indeed meet, we were pulled together. And he just wanted to be with someone who didn’t treat him like he was fragile, and who didn’t treat him with kid gloves, and who wasn’t crying all the time. Even though he really did love those people, his wife and family, without doubt.

It just happened, we became lovers, and then it took over my life for just under 4 months. Not only was it the most amazing sex, he also taught me, for the first time in my life, how to accept being loved. As far as I knew (or even know still today), I was never really loved when I was growing up. My (adoptive) mother told me point blank that I was not loved. My (adoptive) father told me the same thing, in different ways.

At best, I was tolerated, and usually just barely, since throughout my years of growing up, I was relentlessly abused. A large part of it was the fact that I was adopted so I had nothing whatsoever in common with the people who adopted me. Nothing. I couldn’t have been more different if I were trying. And on top of it, I was very smart, very sexual, very psychic, very creative. Just this weird little kid from Jupiter and they really, really didn’t want to deal with me. Both parents eventually told me that they regretted adopting me and wanted me to just go away.

Anyway, I don’t want to drag all that up now, it is sufficient to say that I have never felt loved and never took it as a given that I ever would be loved, even though I am intensely loving on the giving side of that one-sided equation. (And of course went into the Ministry because of my relationship with Christ and his love, and my understanding that I was capable of being an endless supply of giving love to others.)

But this man, he changed all of that for me. He had been raised by a mother who had truly loved him. His whole life had been surrounded by love, so he could not even believe that anyone (me) could be coming from a place of never having been loved. Felt loved, Even felt deserving of love. Any of it. And that put us in the curious position of him having fallen in love with me, and needing me to accept that love because he knew he was dying and didn’t want to leave life feeling like I was refusing to accept his love.

He managed to get through to me, you know. It wasn’t easy. But it did happen. And it changed my whole life. Everything about how I saw life, and felt life, and all of that. And what I allowed myself to feel, for the first time ever, was pretty staggering. I mean, I was already well into my 50s.

So, of course, he died. And it was quite sudden when he did. And I couldn’t go to the funeral or anything like that, because I didn’t officially exist. He was married and all that. So my grief was very private, and very intense. But what got me through it was knowing that he didn’t want me to be sad. And I also immediately felt his true presence visiting me from the other side. And he helped me find my way through my grief.

He doesn’t visit me every day anymore, but for awhile he did. He was with me constantly in spirit. I couldn’t see him or hear him, but inside my head, I heard him perfectly. He was there.

Well, my main point is that he died in early September. So there you have it. My inability to let summer go anymore. (And then Tom Petty also dying suddenly of a heart attack, and dying at the begininng of October — that stuff didn’t help me deal with my private loss.)

And until the Muse came into my life last fall, I really thought I was done with living. I didn’t want to kill myself or anything, but I really, really wanted to cross over that great divide and go be with that guy again, for eternity, even though I knew he had felt that his wife was his soul mate. So I wasn’t (am still not) really sure where that leaves me for eternity. But, the Muse came and suddenly all this writing came out of me. Just pouring out. Planting me really solidly within Life again. In a really joyful way. Still, when I wake up in the morning and realize it’s September now, that fall is coming, it is a battle not to get sad.

This morning I just felt overwhelmed by it. Just too many question marks right now in my life — about both plays, about my novel, other projects that are still un-anchored anywhere, needing a firm home. You know. Just too many projects I’m generating that are not anchored anywhere yet. And still more projects on the back burner, waiting for my complete attention.

It was all I could do this morning to get through my meditation, then my Inner Being journaling thing, anything to just hold on and not feel so incredibly sad.

So. I’ll head out and get my new Honda Civic and not think about the Hellcat that perhaps deep in my heart, I would rather have. And you know, in terms of signs — how when someone you love dies, you long for signs that they are still with you? With him, early on, I once asked him to please show me a sign, and then he unleashed just a barrage of signs, until I was finally shouting out loud, “Okay STOP!!” because it was freaking me out. All the sudden signs that he was with me in spirit.

But a few months ago, out of the blue, I had to drive into the city and deal with all that horrible ugly traffic that I hate, in a city that I also hate, and suddenly, there on the freeway, moving into my lane, was a purple Hellcat. My dream car. I never actually see Hellcats on the road, only Dodge Challengers. Hellcats are pretty expensive. And this one was purple — the exact car I wanted. And the license plate is what told me it was his sign of signs for me. When he was a little boy, he had loved Elvis. Just worshiped him. And the license plate on the Hellcat read: ELV1S. So not just “Elvis” but that Elvis was #1. And then there was also a picture of a rocket blasting off on the license plate, too, which to me was symbolic of what he had done for a living (aeronautics).

A true SIgn of Signs, in my opinion. I followed that car for quite a while that day, until it sped off onto another highway.

Well, I got out of bed this morning crying, but determined to somehow save this day from the oblivion of my sorrow, you know? I’ll go get my new car. I’m sure I’ll be really happy once I’m driving it way too fast in Muskingum County.

It looks like it’s going to be another stunning day. I have to say, I don’t understand any of it. Life, death, grief, joy, love, sex. None of it. I don’t understand it. But I still choose to feel all of it.

Okay, so, have a great Friday, wherever you are and wherever it takes you. Thanks for visiting. Oh, and Iggy Pop’s new album Free, is very interesting. I haven’t heard the whole thing yet, but it does fill me with a lot to ponder — this aging thing. Iggy Pop is managing to grow older quite gracefully. It is so interesting to me. Okay. I leave you with the song that came into my head the moment I came out of meditation and saw that dawn was approaching, and I was determined to stop crying and somehow face this too beautiful September day. I love you guys. See ya.

“Here Comes The Sun”

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it’s all rightLittle darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all rightLittle darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all right

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it’s all right
It’s all right

c – 1969 George Harrison

And Away We Go!!

September 5, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

[First, here’s a quick update. I just saw some of the morning glories blooming outside my backdoor and could not resist posting them here!]

{Okay, back to the original post!!}

Yes, tomorrow morning, I’m trading in my beloved Honda Fit for a Honda Civic, and so I will drive to NY again and not fly.

As much as I don’t really feel like driving for 10 hours there and 10 hours back right now, I can’t grasp giving up 25,000 frequent flyer miles just to fly 500 miles and spend a minimum of 6 hours doing that. So I’ll just drive.

And don’t even speak to me about just buying a plane ticket. Those flights from here to that little airport in NY, 500 miles away, cost a fortune. I can of course fly direct to JFK or LaGuardia, and it’s faster and cheaper, but then I have to deal with getting to the train and taking that up to Rhinebeck. So, you know, it’s like, Jesus Christ, I’ll just get in my car and drive.

I was planning on leasing another Honda Fit because I really love that little car and it goes really fast. It just zips along. And you can park it anywhere because it’s really small. Plus it’s a hatchback that has back seats that fold down, so you can transport anything.

However, there is a sale right now on Honda Civics, and a Civic is cheaper than a Fit right now, so I guess I’ll upgrade and become more like a respectable person. (For some reason, I feel like only grown-ups drive Honda Civics.) I guess we’ll see how it goes because that’s the car I’m getting. I realize that I do have to grow up at some point, but I wasn’t planning on doing that this year.

Well.

Another beautiful, beautiful morning here. I woke up and everything actually felt sacred. The peace and quiet of everything. Only one bird singing, and even the cicadas are dying off now. It was mostly just crickets. And it was really cool out — back down into the 50s again, which I wasn’t expecting, so when I went downstairs, all the windows were of course wide open, and the ceiling fans were whirring merrily away. It was fucking freezing! Those poor cats.

But, you know — they do have those handy fur coats…

However. The world felt sacred to me this morning, and I felt a little vulnerable within it. Like, I don’t really understand who I am anymore. I just don’t.

Yesterday was interesting. Wayne was back in NYC from his trip to Nepal, so we chatted on the phone for a while. His trip sounds like it was amazing, frankly. He was just tramping around — in the towns and in the foothills of the Himalayas, mounting 200-year-old staircases to get blessed by tiny living goddesses (meaning little 4-year-old girls); just doing whatever presented itself.

The thing with my song “Breaking Glass,” was an interesting story. He did actually access the song through my Wikipedia page, and from there, through the Smithsonian website. He was specifically talking about me to some Nepali guy that he was tramping around with, and that sort of baffled me. But what baffled me more was when Wayne said, “I always really loved that song, ‘Breaking Glass’. It was one of my favorites of yours.”

I honestly did not know he even knew that song, let alone knew it well enough for him to have an opinion about it. Or to even talk about me to some stranger in Nepal. I don’t recall Wayne going to more than one of my gigs, even though we were married. I had the impression he didn’t care much about my music. So really, it was just baffling to me.

And then I mentioned to him that I would be in an airbnb for 3 nights in Manhattan because I was going to see Nick Cave. And then Wayne says, “I remember you telling me about that first time you saw him, when all those people in the audience were only into murder.”

I was absolutely astounded by this. When would I have told him that? Not only was that show over 30 years ago, but it had happened several years before Wayne & I even met. Why did he even remember me saying something like that? (I mean, I was really upset by that first concert back then — 1988, I think. Because I thought Nick Cave was a genius; a really brilliant songwriter, even though his songs were really dark. But he wasn’t an actual murderer, he was a songwriter. And the audience behaved more like they found him to be a really gifted murderer. The whole fucking show truly upset me. Obviously enough to tell Wayne about it at some point, several years after it had happened, even though I have no memory of doing that.)

Still.

I honestly don’t think of Wayne as someone who even likes me very much, let alone as someone who ever listened to anything I ever said. And I feel like, you know, he stays in touch because he feels sorry for me, and doesn’t want me to accidentally set myself on fire or something. So the whole thing just threw me.

I’m so serious, people. Being married to me is the furthest thing from a picnic that you can possibly imagine. Basically, I want to have sex 15 times a day and then the moment that’s done, I need you to stop talking to me because I need to write. And then I have this really unattractive place where my voice goes if you’re really trying my patience.

That’s about it; the entirety of ‘me’. Oh, and then the ‘f’ word nonstop.

I have two ex-husbands who are really kind to me. And I don’t understand why. I accept it because I love kindness. I try to be kind in return, because there’s a whole lot of stuff I do remember and I know darn well my marriages go so much better for the husband when I’m not actually in them. So yesterday just threw me. I was trying to remember who I really was.

I did a lot of work on those final pages of the play yesterday, but mostly what I came to was an understanding that a whole lot had to happen in a short space and it all had to be really moving; be tragic and then truly uplifting. So I’ve got my work cut out for me, but on we go.

And as soon as these pages are done, I will have some breathing room, finally. I can get back to In the Shadow of Narcissa, and Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. So I’m super excited. (Here’s something funny: I misspelled “erotic” there and so spell-check suggested “aortic.” I think that in this instance, considering my sense of Eros, my Muse, my mind — the words erotic and aortic are actually kind of interchangeable.)

Okay, gang! Have a thoroughly happy Thursday, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting. I leave you with what was in my Instagram feed this morning. I’m guessing you can see why I prefer this to having to think about my actual life. Okay! I love you guys. See ya.

È meravigliosa!

September 4, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Yes!!! It’s wonderful!!!

I finally made it to the end of the most important segment of the play last night. And I could not be more delighted — even though it’s a death scene, it goes to a tragic place. But it is relived within a dream, so it doesn’t have the same kind of sadness to it that it would have had in “real-time.”

And there is a sense of jubilation woven all around the tragedy, creating absolute (controlled) chaos. Helen is in agonizing despair, crying out Psalm 22, while the choir is in this jubilant refrain of Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel?, as Helen’s grandson, who has waited all his life to get a job on the railroad, finally gets that job up in Louisville, and then gets crushed by a train — but he goes gloriously to the sweet hereafter in all that joyous singing, while Helen’s heart breaks into a million pieces.

And all of it takes place within Helen’s dream where she is inside one of her paintings and the ghosts of her family come “alive” again.

I have been struggling with that whole section — 16 pages — for a couple of weeks now. It felt so amazing to finally finish it last night.

As usual, the Muse was working overtime and I could not have felt more appreciative.

Well, I did indeed make the 100 mile trek to get the less-than-10 minute interview for the TSA Precheck yesterday. And yes, I did manage to get a wee bit lost and my iPhone maps decided to stop speaking to me, only wanting to show me images while I was trying to drive, lost, on a strange freeway. Through some miracle of divine guidance, I finally found the darn place and made it right on time for my interview. But, man, what a lot of driving, a lot of gasoline, and then the “check oil” light came on halfway home… all that for a 10-minute interview.

So I called my sales rep at Honda when I got home, and I will leave it to him to let me know if I should come in and trade in the car for a new lease right now. I am so close to being at my maximum allowed mileage on the current lease, and now I need an oil change…

Plus, yesterday, I was trying to book my flight to NY — I want to fly into Stewart International because I’ll primarily be staying in Rhinebeck with Sandra, and as you can guess, there are no flights that come anywhere close to being a direct flight between here and a small airport like that one.

I have a variety of layover choices in Philadelphia, that range from 2 hours to about 8 hours. I’m not exaggerating. I could make about 7 commuter train trips between Philadelphia and NYC in that 8-hour layover. A direct flight between here and Stewart International would be 1 hour. But since there is no such thing as a direct flight between here and there, the minimum travel time is 6 hours, including me having to leave by 4:15am to make the one-hour drive to the airport to catch the first flight out at 6am.

And all of that would cost me 25,000 frequent flyer miles!!!!! (Round trip). I’m, like, you’re kidding, right? I can go to fucking Alaska for that. So now, if I do lease a new car right away, I think I’m gonna go ahead and drive again. It’s a 10-hour drive. And I can leave at whatever time in the morning I want to. But I can’t do it if I don’t have the new car yet, because I’m too close to going over my max miles.

So we’ll see what the rep says when he calls me back today.

Meanwhile, I am at last nearing the end of the play. I have one final section to revise. Between 15-20 more pages, tops. And I don’t have the luxury of it taking me an additional 2 weeks, so I’m hoping to have the rewrites finished here momentarily!! (Or, you know, maybe a week. That still gets the play to NYC a week before I get there.)

A quick update re: the sudden hashtag keanu situation in my Instagram feed — I’m actually finding it kind of soothing. Having my Instagram feed positively inundated with harmless photos of Keanu, night & day. It helps neutralize the somewhat emotional knee-jerk responses that I have to a lot of the other things/people I’m following. So I think I’m gonna keep it. A sort of social-media therapy: hashtag keanu; a new route to bliss.

You know, for many years, I was very good friends with a journalist who wrote primarily for Rolling Stone, the New York Times, etc. — big media outlets. And he interviewed a ton of movie stars in his career (he’s now a talking-head on a sports show). And the only movie star that he had nice things to say about was Keanu. He genuinely liked him.

I met Keanu at a party once in NYC, a million years ago, and I won’t say I actually liked him. He did something that insulted me — he looked down the front of my little black dress. I know it was very funny when they did that to the stepmom in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but I had spent a fortune on that little black cocktail dress I was wearing, and I was in the process of being stood-up by my date because he was stuck in a midtown recording studio and was not going to make it to the party.

And it wasn’t just Keanu who was coming onto me that night while I wore that dress; a number of men were. And some were very nice & polite about it. But when the one guy you’ve gone to all that trouble for, doesn’t show up, then it doesn’t matter if you end up being the tallest, prettiest gal in the room; you just don’t give a fuck, you know?

I’m sure that on any other evening, any other night, any other year, Keanu is indeed very likable.

All righty!! I’m gonna get started here. I leave you with the song I was listening to this morning — another little love letter to the Muse!! I used to just love this song when I was 7 years old. Really, gang. I played this record all the time and sang along to it, too! I woke up at 4am today, thinking about this song for the first time in decades. And so of course I found it on Youtube. I sang along to it as the cats ate their breakfasts and they seemed to enjoy it. Purrrhaps you will, too! Thanks for visiting, gang! I love you guys. See ya!

“Call Me”

If you’re feeling sad and lonely
There’s a service I can render
Tell the one who loves you only
I can be so warm and tender
Call me
Don’t be afraid, you can call me
Maybe it’s late, but just call me
Tell me, and I’ll be around

When it seems your friends desert you
There’s somebody thinking of you
I’m the one who’ll never hurt you
Maybe that’s because I love you

Call me
Don’t be afraid, you can call me
Maybe it’s late, but just call me
Tell me, and I’ll be around

Now don’t forget me
‘Cause if you let me
I will always stay by you
You’ve got to trust me
That’s how it must be
There’s so much that I can do

If you call I’ll be right with you
You and I should be together
Take this love I long to give you
I’ll be at your side forever

Call me
Please, call me
Call me
Tell me, and I’ll be around

Call me
Don’t be afraid, you can call me
Maybe it’s late, but just call me

c – 1965 Tony Hatch

Dicey, Indeed!

September 3, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Let’s say that yesterday was Keanu Reeves’ 55th birthday. And that you saw some mention of it in your Instagram feed, so you rashly decided to start following #keanureeves.

Wow, you know what happens then? Your Instagram feed gets positively inundated with photos of Keanu, at every stage of his professional life, from every film, every magazine, every TV talk show appearance, every moment he was out on some street within the range of some photographer’s lens.

I’m now getting photo after photo after photo of Keanu. What’s nice about that, though, is that it doesn’t require me to think at all. I don’t even have to hit the “like” button either. I can just sort of scroll away, into oblivion, not thinking, not liking or unliking, just staring.

I enjoy not thinking. I so rarely get the chance.

I might actually unfollow everybody else in order to just have an endless stream of photos of Keanu that don’t require me to do any thinking at all.

We’ll see.

Here’s something that is getting to me, though. I think that the closer we get to the anniversary of Tom Petty’s death (which came really close to his birthday, too, regrettably), Dana is posting stuff that is really hard for me to take. Just personal, simple stuff. I’m never gonna unfollow her, that’s for certain. But last night, when I went to sleep, the final post I saw in my feed was of him in bed with his dog and his cat, talking to them, some movie playing in the background. You couldn’t see him — just the dog and the cat, but you could hear him. It made me sad because not only was it just so simple, but he apparently died in that bed. Even though the paramedics got his heart going again, his brain never came back and so he “technically” died at the hospital. Still, you know. He was in that bed.

Then first thing this morning at 5:30am, for some reason, the very moment my eyes opened, I checked my Instagram feed and I don’t usually do that first thing. I’m usually awake for hours before I do that. But right there in front of me, was another 40-second clip of him in bed with his dog, and he was playing a harmonica — the really high-pitched notes– to make his dog go a little nutty. It was cute, of course. But it broke my heart. Because I ponder all of it: the bedroom, the drapes, the choice of colors in there, the books on the shelves, the furnishings, the man alive in the bed loving his dog, the wife he loved right next to him, filming it with her phone, again the TV on in the background — everything.

I don’t really know what to do with that information, you know? Because he’s dead now, and when he was alive, I don’t think he wanted a bunch of strangers to see that private stuff. But now, I guess it doesn’t really matter what he would have wanted back then. And I can’t not ponder it. But there is no sort of answer to be gotten from it or anything.

All right.

Well, today is all about getting myself out the door soon because I have my interview for the TSA Precheck and I have to drive 100 miles. I’m not even exaggerating; such is the price one pays when one lives in the middle of nowhere. I’m hoping it gets processed before I have to go to New York City, which is right around the corner.

I finally heard from Sandra this morning! Meaning that she finally texted me, at dawn. We haven’t discussed anything yet re: Tell My Bones rewrites, or even the other play we’re working on re: Toronto. But at least I finally heard from her. I know the trip will go well. I just know it. There are nothing but loose ends, but it’ll all work out.

There’s a new Red Hand Files newsletter from Nick Cave today, really beautiful, about forgiveness. You can check it out at the link there, if you want to.

And now I gotta scoot. Thanks for visiting, gang. I leave you with a shot of my kitchen table from last night. As you can see, I’m a little behind on my MOJO Magazines. However, my table looks really good compared to how it looked before I actually cleared most of the junk off! (I know…)

And here’s what I was playing on the little jukebox. Enjoy! I love you guys. See ya.

“Hungry Heart”

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack
I went out for a ride and I never went back
Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going

[Chorus:]
Everybody’s got a hungry heart
Everybody’s got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody’s got a hungry heart

I met her in a Kingstown bar
We fell in love. I knew it had to end
We took what we had and we ripped it apart
Now here I am down in Kingstown again

[Chorus]

Everybody needs a place to rest
Everybody wants to have a home
Don’t make no difference what nobody says
Ain’t nobody like to be alone

[Chorus]

c – 1980 Bruce Springsteen

14 Free Seconds While I Drink My Final Coffee of Summer!!

September 2, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

All righty!! The Labor Day holiday is here! The last gasp of summer is upon us!

I noticed quite a few cars heading off to work this morning, around 5:30am. So I guess a number of my neighbors are working on this fine American holiday that’s supposed to celebrate not working!

Ah, well.

I’m working, too, of course! But yesterday, I finally finished that segment of the play that I’d been struggling with for over 2 weeks, sent it off to the director in NYC, and he really loved it. And I actually do, too.

I finally, finally nailed it. And it only amounts to a lowly 2 and a 1/2 pages (!!), but it’s a story arc that shifts us from joy into something dark and turbulent, and none of it takes place in real-time; it all takes place within a painting within a dream. So it just took me forever.

The next segment is tragic, but I have a grasp already on how I want it to play out. So I’m feeling really good. I don’t mind working my life away.

And speaking of working our lives away… this morning, Nick Cave announced a million more Conversations in Europe for January 2020 !!!

Or maybe just 8? Whatever the true number, more Conversations are coming in January. However, I’m still not seeing Crazeysburg on that list of upcoming shows, and we are only a hop, skip, and a jump (and a jump and a jump and a jump and a jump and a jump and a jump and a plane and a bus ride) from let’s say, Germany… and there are at least 14 people here who would likely be willing to brave the January weather and make that 3-block trek in the ice and snow to our humble Town Hall… I guess 14 people will simply have to wait for Providence to shine upon them some other time.

Okay, gang. If you’re Stateside and having a cookout today, or going to the lake, or any of those really fun & cool things that I will once again not be doing, have a really great time!! Thanks for visiting! I leave you with what I was listening to this final morning of summer… a true heartbreaker, as we say goodbye to what we long for. But so very lovely. I love you guys! See ya!!

“Que La Vie Était Jolie”

Que la vie était jolie
Près de toi au long des jours
Aujourd’hui tout est fini
Dans les bras d’un autre amour

Au matin s’en est allé
Celui que j’ai tant aimé
Et je pleure sans espoir
Sans espoir de le revoir

Je voudrai ne plus penser
A la joie à nos baisers
Malgré tout j’entends sa voix
Qui me dit tous ces mots-là

Mes amis ont essayé
De m’aider à oublier
Mais je reste sans désir
Je suis triste à en mourir

Une fille est à son bras
Y’a pas longtemps, c’était moi
C’était moi qui l’embrassais
Et j’y croirai à jamais

Que la vie était jolie
Près de toi au long des jours
Aujourd’hui tout est fini
Mais je t’attendrai toujours

c – 1963 DANYEL GERARD, DANIEL HORTIS

Have A Happy Labor Day Weekend!

September 1, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Okay, gang. I don’t think I can really post much here over the remainder of the holiday. I’m really, really pressed for time with the rewrites on the play.

If I don’t return soon, then have a great holiday weekend if you live Stateside!

Only one photo out of Iceland last night from the Conversation there with Nick Cave. So either the people in Iceland are really well behaved, or truly iconoclastic and they shun things like Instagram. So, only one photo (but a nice one!). And yet still people keep posting from Helsinki…

Anyway!

Okay, I gotta scoot!! And as always, if you’re heading out for one last summer vacation, take one for me!! I love you guys. See ya!

The Price You Pay

August 31, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

For whatever reason, the gods decided I would suddenly start listening to old Bruce Springsteen albums yesterday.

It began yesterday afternoon, when I hit that wall while working on Tell My Bones and needed to just collapse on my bed for a few minutes and try to stop overthinking.

Stopping the overthinking is pretty much an impossibility for me. What I do is find some new thought stream where I can start overthinking about something else. But I always pretend that I’m going to just relax and stop overthinking…

But when I do collapse and try to stop thinking, I usually like to listen to music and suddenly that old Springsteen album, The River, fell into my field of vision in my Amazon stream.

I used to really love Bruce Springsteen. Ohio in the 1970s was huge Springsteen territory and he toured Ohio relentlessly back then. I saw him many times. The River was the last album to come out while I was still living in Ohio, and it came out right at that juncture where I moved to NYC. So for me, The River is oddly both filled with Ohio memories and very early memories of NYC.

It was never my favorite album of his. I liked a handful of the songs on it and that was it. (It’s a double-album, so there are a lot of songs on it.) And the titular song, “The River”, reminded me way too much of what life felt like in Ohio, and so I just played the album less and less as life went on in NYC, and then amazing albums like Nebraska and Born in the USA came out, and I never played The River again.

Well, I scrolled through the song titles in The River yesterday and saw that I recognized quite a few of them, had no recollection of some of them, but when my eye hit “The Price You Pay,” I stopped and thought, I’ll play this. I don’t remember it, but I know that I used to really love it.

That song goes back almost 40 years now. I usually play my music really loud, and yesterday was one of those days. So I flopped down on my bed, stared up at the ceiling and the song began playing, overtaking my room, and it was, like, holy fuck; this song is my whole goddamned LIFE.

Suddenly, everything I had lived since 1980 sprang into clear view, and then every girl I had been and every dream I had had in the 1970s jumped in there, too. And I realized that I did manage to live all my dreams to one extent or another, and I did sacrifice so fucking much in order to do that and I did pay a huge price for it; specifically, I got 2 divorces and never got to have any children. The scope of my life felt sort of devastating. Not necessarily in a bad way, but certainly in an overwhelming way.

You know, my life has been extremely hard. But only because I have always refused to let myself be squished down and pushed into some sort of box. I have always just seen life the way I see it, and I have always felt the need to express the way I see my own life, and usually that has wound up making a lot of people feel really challenged and uncomfortable. And then of course that often used to make me feel bad, but I couldn’t see how I could be anybody else but myself.

And the repeated sexual assaults and the rape stuff happening to me while I was in school — that stuff was directly related to the type of person I was, someone who just couldn’t back down. Even though it would have made my life so much simpler. And it just built up after Greg died. Right after he died. None of those boys gave a fuck that I was dying from grief inside; they only saw me as a girl who wasn’t a virgin. They would not leave me alone. And I’ve always been the type of person, even if I’m scared to death, I will always speak up for myself and defend myself. And that just pissed them off more until everything just blew up, in a horrible way.

But I always got back up somehow and was just still myself.

Still, pretty quickly, I learned to just accept that, for some reason, being myself meant that the stakes were always going to be high. Even in my final year of high school, when Greg had been dead for 3 years already, some muscle-bound jock in the hallway at school told some other jock, “That girl’s a whore.” So I said, “You’re an asshole,” and it made him look like a total idiot. Even though I knew there was a 50-50 chance that that type of guy would find me after school and rape me, too, and that thought actually did scare me; I wasn’t a whore and he was an asshole and I was not going to not defend myself. In the hallway at school, no less.

Anyway. That type of attitude was underlying everything I was once I got to New York and started to have my real life. I know that my life could have been so much simpler if I could have learned how to turn a blind eye to things, or to back down even a little bit. And I’ll tell you, I would have loved to have had a simpler life. Many’s the time when I was deeply wishing I wasn’t me. Times like when my trust fund was removed, or when I was disinherited all over the place. But lack of money isn’t going to make me become someone else.

Whatever. I can’t help it. I’m still just me. But now that I’m inching toward the closing chapters of my life, I see that there was indeed a price to pay. I’m guessing I still would have lived my life the way I did, even if I had known all of the consequences beforehand.

Also, yesterday, Dana Petty posted 5 very short videos of Tom Petty at Fenway Park in 2014. I watched it a couple times because it was sort of transfixing. First, they were alone in the limo, approaching the stadium and he was so quiet, so introspective. Just staring out the window. He was 64 years old at this point. She said something to him and he really quietly, distractedly, said “Yes.” That was it. Then they got out of the limo and the Heartbreakers were already there and no one even said hello to him; just silence. Then some other backstage footage, then him onstage in front of tens of thousands of people, singing, “She was an American girl, raised on promises,” and the crowd going crazy. Then him coming off the stage and he was wired; just full of adrenaline, chatty, smiling, joking, posing for very quick photos with security people, then getting on his bus. For a split second, Dana caught his face at an angle where I totally saw the young Tom Petty, from when he was maybe 30, back when he was such a rambunctious fighter. Just a flash of it– right there in his face when he smiled. It broke my heart. I saw the whole thing, you know, in a flash: He was 30, then he was 60, then he was dead.

Almost 2 years now since he died. For me, now, it feels like his whole life was just some movie I saw that I really loved. It feels almost like he never really existed. He was a dream I had or something; one that I dearly loved. So much grief has shifted inside me and has slowly become something else. When I play his records, it gets very dicey for me; I never know when all those old feelings will surface in a sort of tsunami of love and loss. And it occurred to me that it has got to be so hard for Dana Petty to grieve normally because social media can just make everything remain so immediate. She’ll post some sort of photo or footage of him that is remarkably interesting or beautiful, and then thousands of people will immediately “like” it. That dopamine rush of social media, you know? Those crippling feelings of grief and of loss, and then you post your grief out into the world and then have thousands of total strangers “like” it in the space of a heartbeat.

How can you really process any sort of loss in that atmosphere? I don’t know. It all seems so strange.

Okay. I’m gonna get started here this morning. The director texted last night, wanting to see the new pages, so I have to focus. Have a great Saturday, wherever you are! The Conversations with Nick Cave resume tonight in Iceland! That should be cool (no pun intended), assuming that people who live in Iceland are rule-breakers, that is, like those folks in Helsinki were, and they post to Instagram when they’re not supposed to!

All righty! Thanks for visiting. I leave you with an opportunity to consider the price you pay. I love you guys. See ya!

“The Price You Pay”

You make up your mind, you choose the chance you take
You ride to where the highway ends and the desert breaks
Out on to an open road you ride until the day
You learn to sleep at night with the price you payNow with their hands held high, they reached out for the open skies
And in one last breath they built the roads they’d ride to their death
Driving on through the night, unable to break away
From the restless pull of the price you payOh, the price you pay, oh, the price you pay
Now you can’t walk away from the price you pay

Now they’d come so far and they’d waited so long
Just to end up caught in a dream where everything goes wrong
Where the dark of night holds back the light of the day
And you’ve gotta stand and fight for the price you pay

Oh, the price you pay, oh, the price you pay
Now you can’t walk away from the price you pay

Little girl down on the strand
With that pretty little baby in your hands
Do you remember the story of the promised land
How he crossed the desert sands
And could not enter the chosen land
On the banks of the river he stayed
To face the price you pay

So let the game start, you better run you little wild heart
You can run through all the nights and all the days
But just across the county line, a stranger passing through put up a sign
That counts the men fallen away to the price you pay, and girl before the end of the day,
I’m gonna tear it down and throw it away

c – 1980 Bruce Springsteen

Coolest Morning, Ever!

August 30, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I am just in the most amazingly blissed-out mood this morning.

The weather here in Crazeysburg is perfect. Just unbelievably perfect. Cool, but still warm enough to have all the windows open – yay!!

When I finished meditating, I opened my eyes and discovered that I was looking out a section of the window where I could just see the sun coming up through the leaves of my maple tree. Just absolutely dawn beginning, you know. And I don’t mean this Dawn, either. Although there is nothing at all wrong with them!

But just to see that sun coming up right at that moment, you know? It made my heart smile.

I think today is going to be a really good start to a peaceful holiday weekend around here. Stateside, we celebrate Labor Day on Monday. Labor Day used to be a holiday celebrating Labor Unions, but now it’s more of a holiday that celebrates shopping and, thus, all those non-Labor Union workers are forced to work!

When I was a wee bonny lass growing up in Cleveland, holidays were holidays and nobody worked. Cleveland was what was called a Blue-Collar town; lots of strong (rather corrupt) labor unions, and so lots of holidays, including Sundays. On Sundays, Cleveland shut down, except for gas stations and an occasional restaurant. It was a day for going to church and then being with your family.

It is kind of amazing how hugely that has changed in this country and gone to the extreme side of commerce and consumerism, but far be it from me to try to turn back that tide.

I don’t know if it’s still like this in NYC or not, but, in a similar vein, it used to be that if you didn’t go to the liquor store in NYC before it closed on a Saturday night, you would be booze-less all day Sunday. Now, at least around here, you can buy booze on Sundays, but most places make you wait until after 12-noon. You know, give the churches half a chance to dissuade you…

Well, I seem to have digressed!

Yes, a holiday weekend is upon us and I know I don’t have to tell you how I am going to spend mine, right??!! Working on the play! Every free fucking minute.

I did get into a very interesting place with it yesterday — I’m still in this really difficult segment that I have been in for something like 2 weeks already. And, yes, the director has since gone back to NYC. But he has still been very supportive and patiently focusing on that “one step at a time” idea. (Whereas, I focus on the “goddammit, why can’t I write this fucking play???!!” idea.)

But yesterday, I found my way into some dialogue that was finally resonating for me, so I’m hopeful that I have at last really found my way in. The overall, arching premise is there, because, as you perhaps recall, I have already written this play 17 hundred times!! But the characters have little to no depth in regards to the new dialogue. So that is where I am hoping to have my breakthrough.

I talked with Valerie in Brooklyn for awhile yesterday, and she was experiencing the same shock & sadness regarding the summer being over and not being ready for it yet. And she concurred that July flew by in a mere heartbeat. So it made me feel kind of better about how I’ve been feeling over here. You know, now I know I’m not alone in this melancholy over the fleeing of summer.

Oh! I had an interesting dream about Nick Cave last night. He wasn’t physically in it; he had sent me 3 things. My favorite of the 3 being a bowl of macaroni & cheese. It was in a really round, white bowl. And it was made with white cheese instead of orange cheese, so a lot of whiteness was going on there. But it was hot and I was really happy, because macaroni & cheese is probably my favorite thing in the world. And he had sent me 2 identical videos, compilations of stuff, and the videos were digital streams but I could still hold them in my hand. However, I woke up before watching the 2 videos, or even eating the mac & cheese.

Still, I thought that was interesting and I have no clue what it could have possibly meant. And, you’ll notice, that once again there is that duplicate thing happening — I posted a couple months ago about how, when I dream about Nick Cave, there are always 2 of the very same thing in the dream. Last time, he emailed me 2 really large panes of glass in the shape of Australia. And this time, 2 digital videos that were the same.

And on a related note!! Not a whole lot came out of Norway last night on Instagram. And only one of the posts was in black & white this time, so, clearly, last time they were doing that excessive “posting in black & white” business on purpose– you know, to specifically drive me crazy. I’m going to try to not hold it against them as an entire country, though.

And people from Helsinki are still posting. They seem to have just had an amazingly amazing time. I’m not being facetious, either. And the photos from inside the theater itself looked really cool — stairways that seemed to be lit up and looking like they went off in interesting directions to nowhere; M.C. Escher-like. (I know!! It’s so hard to believe that I’m writing a Pulitzer Prize-winning play while still finding time to endlessly ponder the stairways of theaters I will never visit in my lifetime that are thousands of miles away!!)

All right, gang! I’m going to close and get to work around here. I leave you with this!! It’s actually a really great pop song, gang! You should listen to it!! I’m posting it only because of the aforementioned thing up there. I hadn’t actually thought about the song in decades,but I used to just love it. And so I just played it and discovered that I still love it!

(And while playing it, I recalled, vividly, that I was watching the Tony Orlando & Dawn Variety Show on TV that night that I was babysitting in the swinging 1970s apartment complex when I was 14 and the dad came home early, wanting to fool around. That was the time I called my 16-year-old girlfriend, to see if she wanted to come over and fool around with him instead, because he creeped me out and I just wanted to go home. And so she did.) (And I remember her standing under my bedroom window, later that evening, and tossing pebbles up to it so that I would come to my window. And I did. It was summertime. We weren’t in school. And she told me that they’d fucked on the living room floor and then the mom came home early, but they didn’t get caught. But she said that the mom & dad got in a fight anyway because the mom came home and found a different babysitter! I mean, my girlfriend actually called all that out to me, out loud, up to my window. What a weird era that was. And I don’t know if I said it out loud or only thought it, but I do remember being appalled that they had sex while his kids were sleeping upstairs.)

(This is also the same girl I posted about several months ago, where we got arrested and taken to jail that same summer and her dad blamed me. He blamed me for everything she did. I’m not overstating that in the slightest. Every time that guy laid eyes on me, he wanted to kill me.)

Anyway. I leave you with a really cool song this morning that has some really unexpected memories. Enjoy!! Thanks for visiting, gang! I love you guys. See ya!

“Candida”

The stars won’t come out
If they know that you’re about
‘Cause they couldn’t match the glow of your eyes
And, oh, who am I
Just an ordinary guy
Trying hard to win me first prizeOh, Candida
We could make it together
The further from here, girl, the better
Where the air is fresh and clean
Hmm, Candida
Just take my hand and I’ll lead ya
I promise life will be sweeter
And it said so in my dreams

The future is bright
The gypsy told me so last night
Said she saw our children playing in the sunshine
And there was you and I
In a house, baby, no lie
And all these things were yours and they were mine

Whoa my, Candida
We could make it together
The further from here, girl, the better
Where the air is fresh and clean
Hmm, Candida
Just take my hand and I’ll lead ya
I promise life will be sweeter
And it said so in my dreams

And, oh, who am I
Just an ordinary guy
You know, I’m trying hard to win me first prize

Oh my, Candida
We could make it together
The further from here, girl, the better
Where the air is fresh and clean
Whoa my, Candida
Just take my hand and I’ll lead ya
I promise that life will be sweeter
And it said so in my dreams

c- 1970 IRWIN LEVINE, TONI WINE

Va Tutto Bene!

August 29, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Yes! Everything is all right!

It was with great joy that I watched the trash collectors collecting my trash yesterday. Honestly, it helped me feel a restoration of sanity around here, knowing that I had paid that fucking bill. And the 2 other bills that had crept up “past due.”

What a weird feeling that was last week, when they didn’t stop to collect my trash. Sort of the confirmation that I was really soaring off into La-La Land around here. That is the cheapest bill I have, too. Something like $9 a month. Anyway. That felt good; watching the trash go.

I’ve also acquiesced to the window-closing thing that I have to do around here now. I close a few of them late at night and then just open them again mid-morning. Just like a normal person would do.

It was 54 degrees Fahrenheit when I got out of bed today. Honestly, at any other point in my life, I would be rapturously rejoicing over this perfect weather, you know? It’s just this darn deadline for the play that makes me feel as if summer passed me by. And it also occurs to me that next August, when it’s back to being 102 degrees when I get out of bed in the morning, I will be wondering: why the fuck didn’t I enjoy last August’s perfect weather when I had the chance??!! So I’m trying to do that while I have the chance.

Then I also did all the paperwork for my TSA Pre-Check, and will go for my interview on Tuesday. Yes, behaving like a human being who flies in airplanes again. I’m trying really hard to just be normal.

(And I also applied for that special International Customs dispensation, that removes any traces of internationally-known pedophiles who attached themselves uninvited to one’s illustrious pornography career. It only costs an additional 17 thousand dollars, but I felt it was worth it!) (I am, of course, kidding about that. There is no special International Customs dispensation for that. Instead, I opted for the Special Notarized Document showing that I did everything the FBI asked me to do so please leave me alone now. That only cost me an additional $2, so I opted for that.) (I am of course kidding about that, too.)

What I am doing, though, is just trying to let everything go. And fly in airplanes again and stuff like that. I realize that being out of my mind half the time is just part of my charm, but it sure gets tiring.

And I have also discovered that I don’t really like those new hair-volumizing products from France that I posted about recently. They smell great and they do give me volume at the roots, but like most hair products that allegedly give one’s hair volume, they make the rest of my hair super frizzy. I can’t stand that. So rather than get rid of all my mirrors, I’ve decided that I’m once more going back to my tried & true Avalon Organics. Honestly it’s the only stuff that works. (If you don’t have untreated silver hair, let me tell you, it’s really frizzy. It’s nothing at all like the hair you had as a wee bonny girl — or even as a wee bonny 30-year-old.)

(Me, as a wee bonny 30-year-old. Say goodbye to that hair forever.) (Heavy sigh)So, even though I have not yet cleaned my house (and this is really just getting beyond ridiculous, gang — the dust and the cat hair — but I know I will have to clean it top to bottom before I go to NYC because my birth mom will be staying here to take care of the cats and I don’t want her coming in my kitchen door, seeing the disaster and then turning around and leaving. Actually, what she would do is clean my house and I don’t want that, either.).

But anyway, aside from my house needing to be cleaned, I am really starting to feel like a regular person again. Even though I’m still working on rewrites of the play.

And of course, on that happy note, I’m gonna get back to it. I leave you with my breakfast-listening music, the song about the Lime Tree Arbor. A beautiful song. I’ve been playing The Boatman’s Call since Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files newsletter the other day. I guess it’s an appropriate album to listen to as summer departs. (His Conversations will be back in Norway tonight. We’ll see if the Norwegians continue to post pictures to Instagram in black & white, or if that other time was just done specifically to drive me mad…)

Okay! Thanks for visiting, gang. I gotta get moving here. Have a really nice Thursday, wherever you are in the world!! I love you guys. See ya!