Tag Archives: Abstract Absurdity Productions

Separation Anxiety!! Better Late Than Never!!

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Yes, the moment my birth mom left here yesterday afternoon, I realized I had separation anxiety! Even at my lofty age!!

And it was real. I felt really un-anchored, frightened, and sort of lost when she left. To the point where I almost slept in the guest room last night, instead of in my own bed, because, you know, that was where she slept for 3 nights. And even while it’s my house and I can sleep wherever I want within it, I convinced myself that I shouldn’t really do that, sleep in the guest room anymore. That it probably wasn’t going to be in my emotional best interests somehow.

But it’s so weird — you know, those are emotional reactions that toddlers have. I was wondering if maybe it was some sort of delayed reaction, since my birth mom didn’t raise me and I certainly didn’t know her when I was a toddler. I was probably just making up for lost time.

When I hugged her goodbye as she was getting into my sister’s car, I said, “Thanks for coming.” And she said, “I’ll be back soon.” It really meant the world to me that she said that, because I think that she saw a little tiny bit of my insanity while she was here, even though I tried really hard to keep it under wraps. However, my insanity is so voluminous that something around the edges is always bound to peek out.

But she did leave some of her stuff in the kitchen, so she really is planning to be back. And it means so much to me — to not be abandoned or discarded. Plus, she’s already planning to be here next year to take care of my cats for me when I have to go to NYC, to Toronto, to Los Angeles.

Something else she did that I just really appreciated — she asked me what I was working on right now, writing-wise, so I told her about Thug Luckless and that whole premise. And she just beamed; she really just smiled and even chuckled a little. And said, “That sounds really good.”

I got the sense, though, that she was trying to talk about Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse — because of the rape stuff. But I absolutely could not go there. I just glossed right over that, along with In the Shadow of Narcissa. I just called them “memoirs” and moved on.

I’m able to say that I was raped, and I’m able to even say that I was raped repeatedly, but I always add that it was a long time ago, and then I drop the subject. For many, many years, I wasn’t even able to say it, or to even think it. I had to keep that information extremely far away from me, and especially from my own ears. I wasn’t able to listen to myself saying it because then I had to claim it somehow.  But that was a long time ago now. I’ve processed all of it. Made art out of a lot of it. I’m okay with it. But I don’t like to “discuss” it because it doesn’t serve any purpose at all. It won’t fix anything or change anything.

Perhaps she wants to comfort me somehow and maybe I’m depriving her of the chance to do that. But  for now, you know, this is how I handle it.

But I do miss her already. Still, it’s back to work over here today.

Peitor is calling from West Hollywood in about an hour and we’ll be working on the micro-script. I also decided that, as part of my need to break out of any isolating routines — I have new hard-wired speakers for the iPad arriving on Monday and once those get here, I’m going to set aside time several nights a week to stream new TV shows and movies. I haven’t done that in over a year. And since I will be helping Peitor develop a new TV series starting in January 2020, I figure I ought to touch base with the current popular writing styles because they seem to change constantly.

This past year has been sort of relentlessly about the outgo of my own ideas, and now I need to make some time for the inflow of other ideas, even while I still have so much of my own writing to get down on paper. But it really did sort of freak me out a little these past few days, to see just how fidgety I got when I wasn’t at my desk, working.  So I want to sort of break up that habit because I don’t want to become completely anti-social, or even a sociopath, which I am fully capable of becoming if I’m not careful…

Okay!!On that chipper note!!

Well, as much as I love Christmas music — especially Johnny Mathis and Andy Williams — it was refreshing to get Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds back into the little tabletop jukebox in the kitchen last evening. However, this morning, I was back to Marianne Faithfull’s Negative Capability. Actually, it was Nick Cave and Marianne Faithfull, because I was listening to “Gypsy Faerie Queen” again, over & over at breakfast. I just love that song, even though it’s not a subject matter that I particularly relate to. I just really love the song. It calms me down. A lot.

So that was breakfast! And now we sally forth into the rest of the morning. Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope this is a happy Friday for you, wherever you are in the world and with whatever you’re up to. I love you guys. See ya!

Where Would I be Without the Telephone??

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Today has been all about phone conferences, gang, and now I am all talked out.

I think I’m gonna collapse on the bed for awhile, just to be in a different posture from sitting at my desk.

In between conference calls, Peitor had needed me to watch the film, This Beautiful Fantastic, which I absolutely loved. The 2nd call was me and Peitor working on our micro-script, so I needed to fit the movie in between the two phone calls — before I talked to him — and so I watched it at my desk, as well. And now I am seriously tired of sitting at my tiny cramped little desk. I’ve got that crimp in my neck thing going on.

But I loved that movie. It was so charming and the dialogue was just quirky and wonderful.

And then our work on the script was intense because we suddenly went in this whole other direction from where our notes indicated we had originally wanted to go with the story. So that threw me and it meant a lot of fast typing as I tried to type all the notes as Peitor was sort of re-thinking aloud and I was re-thinking his re-thinking. And even though it seems like the script is going in a more profound direction, now I’m really just tired.

My first call, though, was with the director in NYC and, because of all of our schedules with projects for 2020, we have tentatively come to the decision to do the first table read in NYC in mid-February. I’m super excited about the prospects of being in NYC in mid-February, but the upshot is that plane fares and hotel rooms are a lot cheaper during February than any other month of the year because no traveler in their right mind wants to be in NYC in February…

But honestly, I’m excited because I can’t wait for the first table read, regardless of the weather.

I have to say that everything in my life right at this particular moment is really just incredibly splendid. Except for my neck! So I’m gonna close this for now, collapse on the bed and study my Italian lesson for the day. Maybe even take a nap after that!!

I hope that Friday is great for you, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting. I leave you with the official trailer for the film, This Beautiful Fantastic, in the event you haven’t yet seen it. Perhaps I will write more later. We’ll see. Okay. I love you guys! See ya!

A Day…

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I had a hard enough time dealing with thoughts of my friend today and his cancer and how severe it has already gotten, so quickly. It’s heartbreaking for me to think of him living alone there in Houston, with his cat, and not being able to hold much food down and just losing so much weight. It’s got to feel worse than isolating. And he’s the kind of man who just doesn’t want anybody taking care of him or worrying about him. And so I’m trying to figure out the best way to be about all this — what’s best for him, and I don’t really know.

Then, for some strange reason, UPS accidentally delivered a colon cancer kit to my house — to someone who doesn’t live here. It was my address but I’ve never heard of the man. And I couldn’t find a listing for him anywhere in the village except at my address. It felt worse than creepy, you know? I feel bad for the man but at the same time, I just didn’t want it in my house and couldn’t understand why it had been delivered. Obviously, it was a mistake, but it just felt shocking. All this sudden cancer stuff, so close to home.

But on the upside,  I did finalize the details for my birth mom’s trip here. She’ll come on December 9th and stay about 3 days, and she said that she wants to help me decorate the house and the tree, and for me to hold off doing that until she gets here.

I can’t tell you how happy that made me. It’s so strange how elements of my childhood — unrequited things from long ago — are coming back now in this bittersweet way. Plus, I just feel like such a child half the time now. It is so weird. I simply don’t feel like a grown-up at all anymore. It’s hard to describe it. I make jokes about being immature, but it’s not really that. It’s more like my childhood is always right up here with me — never too far away anymore. Obviously, I can take care of myself and all that, but it’s like all this bad stuff from so long ago, or stuff that was so hard on me, sad for me, is coming back around but in a healed way. Like things have healed now. I finally get to really be me.

Well, sad as much of the morning was, my work with Peitor on the micro-script was wonderful today. Sometimes he just makes me laugh so hard. And, actually, I was so tempted to post one of his new songs here to my blog this morning because it is such a lovely, sad, song.  Sort of alternative/ambiance thing. Really beautiful. But you know, he’d put me in front of a firing squad if I did that! Because it isn’t even mastered yet; it hasn’t been released. I’m not at liberty to just share it with the world. But, gosh, it is such a good song.

He had sent me an updated mix of it on Thursday, so I was listening to it again this morning, thinking about my friend and his cancer and all. The song is called “Requiem for the Lost.”

Well, it’s just beautiful. And when I got on the phone with Peitor this morning, I told him again how much I love that song (I love all his music — he’s a film & TV composer, and a songwriter, and primarily a music producer. ) And then he told me about a new TV series he’ll be developing beginning in January and “Requiem for the Lost” and a bunch of other new songs will feature in the series. I can’t discuss his actual idea, obviously, but it was a wonderful concept and I was very excited for him. And then he asked me to collaborate on it with him!

I was just thrilled. Of course, I accepted. So we’ll start working on a new TV series project beginning in January. So I guess I’ll be going to LA more next year, too. Which is all right with me — I love LA. And they have such a cool apartment there in West Hollywood.

Anyway. It was an up & down kind of day.

I made a few minor tweaks to “Hymn to the Dark.” I’m not sure what I’m going to work on next. I might take a tiny break from writing.  I’ve been making some headway in my friend’s new book about his travels in the Netherlands and I’m really liking it. I’m finding it very calming. So we’ll see.

Gonna call it a night now, though. Hope your Friday was good for you, wherever it took you and wherever you are in the world. I leave you with this. It’s sort of in keeping with the feelings around here today. Leonard Cohen’s final — and posthumous — album is out now: Thanks for the Dance. Here’s a video about it. Okay. I love you guys. See ya.

What A Difference a Sad Little Day Makes

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Yesterday was so good, gang.

Even though I’m a little stressed because of both plays moving forward at the same time, in 2 different countries, I’m of course extremely happy about it.

And I got really good work done on Letter #5 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. (I posted it here yesterday afternoon, but I still want to tweak two specific things.)

While I was vacuuming the house, though, I noticed that my oldest friend in the world — he’s my age, 59, but we have been good friends since were 12, so he is my “oldest” friend.  I noticed that he had called me but didn’t leave a message.

He always just texts me so I thought maybe he called my number by accident.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog will no doubt recall him, because I’ve blogged about him before — he is a geologist and he works for NASA in their current space program. He’s lived all over the world and studied rocks, but for the last couple of decades, he’s been in Houston, Texas, working with NASA.

I see him maybe once a year, twice if I’m lucky, because he still has family in Ohio and comes back for graduations and stuff like that.

We are very close, though. We have always had the same tastes in music, literature, drama, movies, and art. And we have the same sense of humor — the silly and the absurd.

But the two key things that are really different about us: I was in my early 30s before I found out that he was gay. (Very weird, considering I was “out” as a bisexual since I was 14 years old. And I put “out” in quotes only because it never occurred to me that it was something I should be secretive about. ) And, more notably, he’s a devout atheist. Hugely atheist. Whereas, I am hugely not atheist.

But somehow, we’re able to still be really close. And last summer when he came through Ohio, he decided he wanted to start looking for a house in the next county over from me, where it is known for all of its caves and hiking. And I mean, internationally known: a couple million backpackers go through that area, from all over the world, every year.  He’s getting ready to retire and wants to move back and buy an old house and  live near the caves and the cliffs and all those rocks.

I can’t even believe that he is at “retirement” age, because, as a writer, I have the mindset that I am never going to retire. If I can still spell, still craft a sentence, I’ll still be “working” in some capacity up until I die. I don’t understand this concept of retiring. Plus I’m still only 12, and so any form of retirement is just a long way off…

But last night, he did it again. Called and didn’t leave a message.

When I’m at my desk, my ringer is off on my phone. So I don’t know if someone’s calling me unless I happen to see it on the screen. And, again, I didn’t see his call until he’d hung up. And it’s just not like him to ever do that. He always texts me. So I texted him: Are you trying to reach me?

He texted back right away. Yes, I am. I know it’s late but please call. We need to talk.

SHIT, you know? You just know it can’t be good. So I called him right away.

And it is cancer. And its very advanced already. And it’s the kind of cancer most people don’t survive, only because it’s the kind of cancer most people don’t even know they have until the cancer has become entrenched, which is what happened to him. He’s still too early into the chemo-radiation thing for there to be any prognosis yet. At all. They have no clue yet if he’s going to survive or not. But he’s in very bad shape.

So we talked about the treatment, and we talked about how badly he wishes he could just gain some weight now (he’s almost to the Auschwitz-looking stage). And he talked about his atheism, and he told a very silly but funny Amish joke, and then we talked at length about the Romanovs. Because we are both hugely interested in Russian history and Russian literature, and the Romanovs have always been extremely interesting to me. So we focused on the Romanovs instead of on cancer. And then we closed the conversation with him saying he hoped to be back here in the spring, to look at more houses and finally find one that he wanted to buy. And then he asked me how many cats I have now, and I said that I was down to 7. And he said, “Okay, that’s good. You still need way more than that to be a crazy cat lady. But God bless you for taking such good care of them.”

And, of course, I found it so strange that he chose to say “God bless you.” Just so very unlike him. But I didn’t draw attention to it.

And afterward, when we hung up, it was late and I simply went right to sleep because I didn’t want to process any of it. At all.

When I awoke at 4:30 this morning, for a blessed moment, my mind was a complete blank. First, I thought about the two plays and specifically the work I’ll need to do in Canada. And then I thought about Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse, and whether or not I wanted to tweak Letter #5 some more. And then I remembered that the Ghosteen CD (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) had arrived yesterday from Amazon in England. And the packaging of the CD was very beautiful; spare but beautiful and I was so happy that I had bought it. And then I remembered that Peitor would be calling from Los Angeles this morning because we have to work on the micro-script.

And only then did I remember that my oldest friend in the world is, well, not doing so well at all.

And of course, I couldn’t help but start thinking about us as 12-year- olds (he was the first person ever, and I mean EVER, to tell me that I was intelligent); then as 16-year-olds. Books and music and movies always solidified our friendship. And he never judged me, ever, for any of the terrible stuff that happened to me back then. He was always just my friend.

When we were 17, he said, “You have to see that new movie, Annie Hall. She’s just like you, Marilyn. She’s you.” And even though I did see the movie (5 times) and loved it, it was years before I was able to get any sort of perspective on myself and see that he had been right. I was just like her, and back then, I even dressed like her.  (The actual character, not Diane Keaton.)

Image result for photos of diane keaton as annie hall

And then, that same year, I think — right before we graduated high school — there was a hit song on the radio at the time, “Ariel,” and, again, he said, “That’s you, Marilyn!”

Maybe. Yeah, probably. Even more than 40 years later.

So I played it on YouTube in the dark, while I was still in bed and trying not to cry because it won’t solve anything.

But I leave you with that, because I have to get ready for my phone call with Peitor now. I hope you all have a good day, wherever you are in the world. I love you guys.

Finally! It’s Tuesday!!

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Wow, I really slept in today, gang. It felt great but I kinda feel like half my day’s gone already.

I need to go into town and get groceries today because there is practically nothing left. Milk, V8 Juice, Almonds, and Cocoanut Water. That’s all there is in the house. And that’s about a 2-hour chunk of time, total, right there — driving into town & back to get groceries.

(My spellcheck is alerting me that my spelling of “cocoanut” hasn’t been in popular use for the last century. Yet this is how I was taught to spell it and I am not a century-years old yet…hmm.)

Anyway. I overslept. But only because, yet again, my bed and my room were so incredibly comfortable. I just slept so great. And the very moment I awoke, I checked my email because I’m still awaiting those comments from the director re: my revisions on the play. They have not yet arrived! But I did notice that the very moment I opened my eyes and checked my email, a Red Hand Files letter-thingy from Nick Cave arrived at that very moment. So I’m guessing this was why I bothered to wake up at all! Because, I tell you; man, I was really sleeping soundly there.

I am just so eager to get the director’s notes to see how close we are to signing off on the play and beginning the Christmas campaign for producers/backers. Even if the director wants me to do some additional work, I know he’s not going to ask me to undo anything that’s already there. I’m thinking that he’ll want something more done to the ending, though. We’ll see. But one thing I know without doubt is that his instincts for what’s needed are always just so on target. So his feedback is just really important to me.

(And someone else who is just so on target re: what a script needs is Peitor and I am really looking forward to being back on track with him with our script, for real, this Friday. I just love that project so much. And even though the finished film will only be about 8 minutes long, every single moment of screen time is considered, shot by shot, because there is almost no dialogue in the film. Honestly, maybe 6 or 7 sentences of dialogue, total. But the film is so absurd that every single viewable thing that an audience can process has to be accounted for. Even if they’re red herrings and sending the audience, subliminally, in an erroneous direction — every shot has to be seriously thought out. So that’s why this script is taking so long. (Plus, the film is funny — so we do spend a lot of time laughing our asses off.)

I want to give an early plug to a fellow blogger‘s book:

F*ck Sales Let's Talk: A Common Sense Approach to Sales by [Robert, Anthony]

I’m currently reading this in my “spare time.” The blog is called Tony’s Bologna, and Anthony Robert is the blogger.  So far, I am really enjoying the book because it is easy to grasp and very humorous.

The book is indeed about sales strategies and how to better approach selling; and while I am not only “an artist,” but also one who is very, very nearly close to being out of my mind most of the time — one thing I have always been really good at is that I give “good meetings.” I seriously do.I have my shark elements, for sure.

That comes from having grown up in an era where women were simply not taken seriously, ever. And if you were Attractive. Young. Loved sex. Then forget about it — no one was ever, ever, ever going to do anything more than be patronizing towards you. (Oh, and stare primarily at your tits and ask you if you wanted to have sex. Because men owned the world back then — and if we’re brutally honest about it, they still kinda do.)

Well, what I really wanted was to be taken seriously and have sex, but you really can’t do both. And since my career has always been the most important thing to me, 100% for always and forever, whether I was in the music business or in the publishing industry — well, hard as it is to imagine, my sexual availability actually has to completely disappear during meetings. (I know! Sometimes for as much as 60 minutes — or longer, if lunch is involved — I have to seem sexually unavailable! It’s exhausting.)

But seriously. Especially nowadays, artists do have to sell themselves, always. Just always. So even though you might not be in a corporate selling environment, or you might rather die than work in, like, a store; it still helps to understand how to sell something — meaning, your own work; your art. Because there is a lot of psychological stuff going on that’s super good to know about in a meeting (and “meetings” crop up in a lot of different ways if you’re an artist and you need to sell yourself). And this particular book, Fuck Sales, Let’s Talk…, is a really fun approach to all that stuff, if you’re interested.

Okay, well. Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files thingy today was very interesting. And amusing, but also, to me, very interesting. Because, of course, I ponder. Overall, it’s about Nick Cave’s version of the song “Stagger Lee.” A song that, especially if you’re an American (because we are Puritanical to our very cores, when you get right down to it), well, it makes your jaw drop the first time you hear it  — and it’s been around forever now, yet a huge portion, just a really huge portion of Americans are unfamiliar with Nick Cave’s version of “Stagger Lee.”

Not too long ago, for some reason that I can no longer remember, I was showing a young woman the original “Stagger Lee” video on YouTube. She lives in Kentucky. Sort of educated in certain specific areas, but all tatted up and pierced everywhere and a smoker, 420 friendly and all that, and for some reason, it just never occurred to me that  she wouldn’t connect with how amazing the song was.

Well, she didn’t. Oddly enough, the first thing that amazed her was that he was smoking a cigarette on the stage (in the video). Even though she smokes, she was taken aback by it: “Whoa, he’s smoking on stage.” (Which to me, shows just how culturally brain-washed younger people are nowadays about making choices — even their own choices, because she smokes.) Anyway. Once she said that, I thought: oh boy, smoking is so much the very least of it… And then he sings all the other stuff and she was just shocked by it. She said, “Wow, that’s harsh.”

And I said, “Don’t you think that’s amazing, though — where he took that song? How extreme it is?” But she couldn’t go there; I had seriously misjudged her mind’s ability to go out on a limb.

You know, as an aside — in the old days, the only people who were pierced and had copious amounts of tattoos, were the fetishists. The marginal people, well outside of mainstream thinking. Now it’s more a signal of mass-tribalism and fashion. It’s not necessarily an indicator anymore of where a person’s mind is capable of going.

Anyway. I still think that what Nick Cave did with that song, even though I am the last person to celebrate murder in any way; I still think it was courageous and brilliant and true to the character he was creating at that specific moment; just so over-the-top in a gloriously horrific way. And the video still blows my mind — the pink tee shirt and the white pants, and all those cool men and the absolute noisy chaos of the ending — which I had always assumed was some orgy of sex and murder. But perhaps it’s just sex. Or just murder.

Nick Cave made a comment in his response today about how he sometimes wonders if anyone really listens seriously to his lyrics (I’m paraphrasing) and my initial reaction was, “What sort of weird Nick Cave planet are you on, dude?? Everyone listens to every single word of your lyrics!”

But then I was reminded of my recent brunch with Wayne and Sandra in NYC, wherein Sandra, an absolute woman of the world, had never heard of Nick Cave at all; but Wayne had and has at least known of him for a very long time because Wayne was married to me for 14 years, but he only owns the CD Murder Ballads; a thing he acquired only recently because a niece gave it to him as a gift.

So I made a remark about “Stagger Lee” because I know Wayne’s sensibilities and I know that would be the type of song Wayne would love. But he didn’t know the song. I said,”You’re sure the CD is Murder Ballads?”

HIM: “Yes, I’m sure.”

ME: ” And you don’t remember hearing that song?”

HIM: “I guess I have to listen to it again. Pay more attention to the lyrics…”

So, I guess Nick Cave is actually right. Who knew?

Okay, anyway. I gotta scoot and drive into town and get some food for this barren place! Then I have 7 trillion emails to wade through, then I’m gonna work some more on “Hymn to the Dark” from Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

Listening to “Stagger Lee” at an inappropriate age!! (Or perhaps just having some sort of weird sex thing in the afternoon.) (Actually, this is one of those kittens who lost his mittens and mom got pissed… I used to have this book when I was a little girl and this illustration always perturbed me.)

Okay, I’m outta here!!

I Guess That’s Just the Kind of Mood I’m in Today!

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Some days you just wake up like this, right? Wondering about all that Action for Men!

(And I sure as heck want to know the “10 Ways to Spot a No Limit Girl,” don’t you?) (I’m guessing, the first way to spot her is that she has to live in Crazeysburg; as for the 9 other ways, I just can’t even imagine…)

I am, of course, just kidding. I have limits. (I have two, actually.)

Okay, truth be told — I did absolutely no writing yesterday!! I just didn’t feel like it. For most of the day, my laptop was actually even closed. And I spent a great big bunch of time getting back into bed. It was really fun. I was reading and stuff.  Things I haven’t had the brain-space to do in a couple months.

Today, though, I woke up back in writing mode. Still not sure if it will be the new segment of In the Shadow of Narcissa, or Letter #5 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. (Titled “Hymn to the Dark” — I get the impression, that one’s going to be sort of intense and take a lot out of me. Not sure yet why.) And I also still have Thug Luckless hanging out, waiting for more adventures. But that also takes a lot out of me, even though it’s pure porn. For those of you who think (or perhaps know first hand) that writing pure porn is easy — I beg to differ! Writing bad porn is easy; writing porn that people are willing to pay money for in this day & age of nonstop free porn, is a whole other story (pun intended, I guess). It’s just as time-consuming as writing anything else.

Well, my stupid bathroom scale claims I put on 2 more pounds during the night. Apparently, lying around and reading is really fattening. I seriously have to break down and buy another new scale — one that actually works this time. I would hate to develop some sort of weird eating disorder, all because of a diabolically Sadistic bathroom scale… (It is starting to fuck with my head a little bit. I got out of the shower and looked at myself in the bathroom mirror: have I actually put on 9.3 pounds in the past 3 days? It doesn’t look like it, and yet, my scale says otherwise. I guess those 7 almonds have to go. And the 4 ounces of organic cranberry juice; I don’t suppose I really need that…) It’s just ridiculous.

I actually do need the almonds and the cranberry juice! I am a woman of a certain age!!! Every single thing I fucking eat every single day is expertly calculated for aging as seamlessly as possible around here. You would be bored to tears (yes, you would literally cry) if I told you the really boring — and pathetically short — list of indescribably healthy things I eat around here every single day.  I really need to get rid of the stupid scale.

Okay, then. Onward!!

My progress with the cats has been sort of a little miracle around here. After 7 years. I don’t know what’s causing it, but it makes me really happy. Now, when I first sit up in bed in the morning (in the dark — it always has to still be dark out), Huckleberry and Doris now come scampering into the bedroom and then follow me into the bathroom to be petted! I can pet them kind of a lot now, and Huckleberry always purrs. And now 2 other cats are starting to join us in there — Lucie and Weenie. Although, they stay out of petting reach, but they are definitely in there now, too. They are trying to figure out what’s going on, because Huckleberry and Doris do seem to be really, really happy while they’re getting petted. (Weenie lets me pet him once a day,  as I put his bowl of food in front of him down in the kitchen, so he might actually get brave. Lucie used to let me pet her like crazy when Daddycakes was still alive, but only if I was petting him at the same time. Since he died, she has steered clear of letting me touch her.)

Huckleberry, Weenie and Lucie, back when we lived briefly at the rental house and I used to force them to work really, really hard!

I try to just be so patient with them, and go at whatever pace they’re comfortable with, because, sweet as they look, they are still wild animals and the bottom line is that they will attack — become all claws and teeth and draw blood and break skin and such.  But I can’t tell you how badly I want to just scoop them up and hug them and cuddle them, tote them with me in my arms from room to room and happily babble at them… I think they’d rather die than endure that, at this point, anyway. And perhaps even forever. We’ll see.

Okay, well. I’m gonna  get started here.  Figure out what I’m going to work on today. (Next week, I’m back on schedule with Peitor again with the micro-short script, too, so I do have to get back on track here today.)

I’m still in Ghosteen mode around here, and still listening to “Night Raid” over and over, trying to figure it out. Although, at the In Conversation at Town Hall in NYC, someone asked Nick Cave what the song “Girl in Amber” was about and he said that he didn’t know. So, you know, I could be on a fool’s errand here. Who knows. And I do know there is a fine line between pondering and fixating — it’s actually a fine line that I’m quite familiar with! In fact, I guess you could say I call that space between pondering and fixating my home away from home!

But anyway, since I am still focused on “Night Raid,” I will instead leave you with the song that was not only in my head when I awoke this morning at 5:30am, but I actually found myself singing it — which is sort of a tall order at 5:30 in the morning because it’s super passionate. It’s another song from my wee bonny girlhood. It was a hit the year I was born (1960), but I had the record as a little girl, and passionate little girl that I was, I used to love this song.  (And I think, now more than ever, for various reasons that I’m not going to blog about, it resonates with me.)

Okey-dokey! Have a wonderful Friday! Wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

“Where The Boys Are”

Where the boys are, someone waits for me
A smilin’ face, a warm embrace, two arms to hold me tenderly

Where the boys are, my true love will be
He’s walkin’ down some street in town and I know he’s lookin’ there for me

In the crowd of a million people I’ll find my valentine
And then I’ll climb to the highest steeple and tell the world he’s mine

‘Til he holds me I’ll wait impatiently
Where the boys are, where the boys are
Where the boys are, someone waits for me

‘Til he holds me I’ll wait impatiently
Where the boys are, where the boys are
Where the boys are, someone waits for me

c – 1960 Greenfield Howard, Sedaka Neil

C’è una festa qui!

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Yes! There’s a party going on here today, gang! Finally – a day wherein my mind doesn’t have to do anything!

I’m still going to do something — not sure what. Either work on the new segment of In the Shadow of Narcissa, or Letter #5 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. Both of them have already begun inching into my brain. But knowing that I don’t actually have to work on that play today is like having a mini brain-vacation.

I honestly don’t know if the director will sign off on those revisions. But at least I got to the point where I felt that I had done what I was trying to do, and I liked it. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I nailed it theatrically. We’ll see.

But meanwhile, it feels good. And I’m taking a break from working on the micro-short script with Peitor until next week. I just need to feel, you know — “not blocked in,” time-wise.

I’m no longer on speaking terms with my insane bathroom scale. For the last few days, it has been assuring me that I’ve gained between 5 to 8 pounds. Even though my measurements are exactly the same and my clothes fit the way they should and I eat the same damn thing every single darn day — and, on Monday, I was at my goal weight and had been for a couple of weeks.

I know the scale is fucked up and has been since I bought it. I should just stop this masochistic torture and go buy another fucking scale. The Dollar Store has the old-fashioned kind for $9. I should just go get it. But for some reason, my mind is kind of fascinated by this scale — its unpredictability.  It’s sadistic approach to punishment & reward — you know, in the true BDSM sense of that concept; where the Top makes sure that the rules remain in flux, constantly changing, so that the bottom never knows whether s/he will be rewarded or punished.  It’s fun if you’re having sex, but not so fun if you’re intensely vain, like me, and want to begin each morning knowing that absolutely everything is perfect with your meticulously tended to body.

But the new scale is so sleek and modern looking! The old-fashioned scales are not… Clearly I’m putting too much emphasis on appearances here, all the way around.

Okay! That’s my worst problem of the day, so you can see that things are pretty good here. And I found the best birthday present for Kara, so I’m super excited about that. She’s not easy to shop for because she will never ever tell you what she wants or needs, or even likes. Last year, I bought her candy — in a plastic champagne bottle. At least it was celebratory-looking. But I gave it to her, feeling like: well, here, at least I’m giving you something. But then it turned out that she actually really liked it. She texted me at 3 in the morning; she was outside on her back steps in the freezing cold, drinking an espresso, looking at the moon, eating her chocolates alone and smoking a cigarette — and was apparently in heaven.

So you never know what makes someone happy. But I did indeed find something this year that I know she will like — because it will remind her, in a comforting way, of her mom who passed away unexpectedly last fall.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that Kara is my only real friend out here in the Hinterlands, although I do have acquaintances. But Kara is so good at buying gifts! And she’ll just suddenly turn up with, like, a pair of earrings and say, “I saw these and they really looked like something you’d like so I bought them.” And then it will turn out that I love them. She’s done that a couple of times — bought me these amazing earrings that really bring out the hippy-chick in me, and then also bought me these really pretty fake pearls that are just so elegant, even though they’re fake. (I still remember how to look elegant, even though I don’t do it very often anymore.) They actually look more elegant than the real pearls I own. It’s funny.

Anyway. It’s been frustrating to not be able to do the same for her — except by accident.

All righty! I’m gonna get more coffee and think about the freedom of this day, and decide what it is that’s calling to me loudest and work on that for awhile. I hope you have a splendid little day, wherever you are in the world.

I’m still in Ghosteen mode around here in the mornings; still listening to “Night Raid” on repeat, trying to figure out that song. That line “annexed your insides in a late night raid” and then they go get something to eat. What the heck does that mean? Has she gotten pregnant or something? What is it? It seems so specific.

Anyway, I’m still pondering over that song, so I’ll leave you with a song that sprang into my head the moment I awoke at 5:30am this morning.  A super-fun song from my wee bonny girlhood! (It’s a song written by Neil Diamond, but this is the version I grew up with.) All righty! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya!

“I’m A Believer”

I thought love was only true in fairy tales
Meant for someone else but not for me.
Love was out to get me
That’s the way it seemed.
Disappointment haunted all my dreams.

Then I saw her face, now I’m a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
I’m in love, I’m a believer!
I couldn’t leave her if I tried.

I thought love was more or less a givin’ thing,
Seems the more I gave the less I got.
What’s the use in tryin’?
All you get is pain.
When I needed sunshine I got rain.

Then I saw her face, now I’m a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
I’m in love, I’m a believer!
I couldn’t leave her if I tried.

Love was out to get me
Now, that’s the way it seemed
Disappointment haunted all my dreams

Oh, then I saw her face, now I’m a believer
Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
I’m in love, I’m a believer!
I couldn’t leave her if I tried.

Yes, I saw her face, now I’m a believer
And not a trace of doubt in my mind.
Said I’m a believer
I’m a believer
I’m a believer
Said I’m a believer
I’m a believer
I said I’m a believer
I’m a believer

c – 1967 Neil Diamond

Let’s Try that Again!!

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Okay! Another day!! We’re gonna see if we can’t find some sort of balance here and do some writing that I end up keeping — not deleting — by the end of the day.

I think I’m working on Tell My Bones rewrites today. That seems to be what’s calling loudest to me right now.

By the way, Helen LaFrance will be 100 years old in just a few weeks. Her old church there in Mayfield, Kentucky, is planning a big birthday celebration for her. They’re going to send me videos of it, which the director will upload to the Tell My Bones website.

Oh, and also, please visit the web site and sign up for the newsletter! Even if you don’t think you’re likely to get to NYC to see the play —  you never know!

(And follow it on facebook here. And on Instagram at tellmybones.) (Please!! And thank you.)

Okay. I just went down to get more coffee and the world outside looked amazing as the sun was coming up, so I went out onto the kitchen porch and took a photo of Basin Street (the light there in the tree is a street light, not the sun):

Basin Street from the kitchen porch just now, as the same came up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All righty. I just got a text from Peitor just now, as his plane was landing in NYC, and he was trying to come up with loglines for our first micro-short production, Lita’s Got to Go. Here’s my favorite so far (although it doesn’t even hint at the key thing that happens):

“A psychologically disturbed woman becomes obsessed when she senses her housekeeper has been inappropriate with her furniture.”

(This is a micro-short piece of abstract absurdist humor, with that creepy Bauhaus cinematography. And erotic undertones.) (I’m guessing it will be 8 of the best minutes of your life.)

Oh, and by the way, I’m not sure now if the writer’s retreat is going to take place in Italy or not. There’s issues with the electricity there at the villa that Peitor is unhappy with, so he might be moving all the various retreats to a castle in Devon — in England. Of course I speak fluent Devon, so that would make my life a lot easier!! But we’ll see. Either way, it’s not getting underway until next year, so I’m still studying my Italian. I’ll keep you posted.

Okay, gang, this is short today because I want to get started on the play.

I leave you with my breakfast-listening music, “In My Own Particular Way”; a wonderful song off of Marianne Faithfull’s album from earlier this year (or maybe late last year?), Negative Capability. It’s an amazing album, by the way; really just sort of chilling but celebratory, too. And it’s one of those things that makes Instagram so great — I initially found out about it on Instagram because of following Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. (I find a ton of cool music by following musicians on Instagram.)

I met Marianne Faithfull once while I was working at MoMA in NYC. I think it was 1986; I was maybe 25 or 26 years old. Broken English had certainly already happened, and I think she had another album out by then, but regardless, she was this mega icon from my girlhood and I had just turned around and suddenly she was standing right there. She was smoking (you could still smoke indoors back then) and I remember she was wearing a leopard-print blazer of some kind. I was so excited, I blurted, “Oh god — hi!!” And she smiled and said, “Oh god — hi!!” It was really sweet and funny, and she had the throatiest voice since Dietrich.

I was a lot taller than her, though. I’m not sure why it bothers me that so many of these cultural icons from my youth are not taller than me. But anyway, she made my day. She even asked me my name. She was very nice.

Okay. Thanks for visiting, gang. Have a terrific Thursday, wherever it finds you and with whatever it finds you doing (or perhaps meeting!!). I love you guys. See ya.

“In My Own Particular Way”

Send me someone to love
Someone who could love me back
Love me for who I really am
Not an image and not for money
I know I’m not young and I’m damaged
But I’m still pretty, kind and funny

In my own particular way
In my own particular way
Capable of loving in my own particular way
And ready to love
At last

It’s taken me a long time to learn
In fact my whole life so far
So much rubbish I had to burn
So much I had to go through

Send me someone please who’ll love me
Someone who can see all my faults
But love me nevertheless
And we will love each other

In our own particular way
In our own particular way
Capable of living in our own particular way
And ready to love
At last

In my own particular way
In my own particular way
Capable of loving in my own particular way
And ready to love
At last

c – 2018 Marianne Faithfull, Ed Harcourt, Warren Ellis, Robert Mcvey

For Fuck’s Sake, Why Can’t Life Ever Just Stay Awesome?

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It’s just been one of those days.

First. Work on the micro-short with Peitor went extremely well. We got great work done. We finished the 2nd segment of the script. 4 more segments to go.  The 2nd segment is approx. 90 seconds long. Still not a word of dialogue.

And the 2nd segment relies heavily on the filmmaking style Antonioni used in his movie from 1962, L’eclisse. Did you happen to see it? I thought you had! I know how much you enjoy black & white Italian movies from 1962. (You know, the reason Peitor and I have been friends for something like 35 fucking years is because when he said he wanted the segment to have the look of Antonioni’s L’eclisse, I knew exactly what he was talking about.) (Except for the part when she’s walking down the hall, I want the shots to have more of a feel of Polanski’s Repulsion but without all the arms molesting her. And I know you saw that!!)

Image result for polanski's repulsion
Catherine Deneuve in Polasnki’s Repulsion, 1965

By the way, our film is not in black & white. It’s just designed to feel like it is. And it’s not set in the 1960s, although our main character kind of is. (And as an aside, it’s kind of interesting that I didn’t end up like Deneuve’s character in Repulsion, all things considered. And even though today sort of sucks — overall, I think I’m doing pretty darned all right. However. If I end up wanting to eat an uncooked rabbit head that I’m carrying around in my purse, we can assume that things are at long last going seriously awry…)

Anyway. That was the highlight of the day — working with Peitor for a few hours.

My work on Letter #5 for Girl in the Night is frustrating me so I deleted all of it. I’m still going to keep the same premise for it (“Hymn to the Dark”) but it just kept feeling too plebeian. Sometimes plebeian is wanted. But not in this particular section of the book.  In this section, I want it to feel like, I don’t know — the genesis of angels or something. I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. I don’t even know what I fucking mean, at this point. I only know I haven’t captured it yet. So I will spend tonight trying again.

I did manage to wash my hair and shave my legs and even pay some attention to my (hideously chipped) toenails for the first time since before I went to New York — over a month ago already! (Can you believe that it was one month ago tonight that I saw Nick Cave at Town Hall? Man. In some ways it feels like a year.) (I wish I could just persuade somebody to live my life for me while I just stayed in bed and reaped the rewards of dreaming.) (Except for the times when I go see Nick Cave.) But anyway, when the weather gets colder and I wear actual shoes most of the time, instead of flip-flops everywhere, I tend to forget to look and see if my toenails need re-polishing. And I also tend to not wear my glasses most of the time, so I don’t usually see much of anything.  But today I got out of the shower and suddenly it was, like — holy moly. So I dealt with the toes.

Today is the 3rd anniversary of my sweet cat, Bunny, dying of a heart attack. She was the last of my house cats. I cannot tell you how much I miss having cats that actually interact with me. You know — the kind that let me cuddle with them and that purr and that like to sleep on the bed with me all night. Who look at me like they understand me when I chatter at them. Who act as if they actually love me. I just miss it so much. Even though Daddycakes was feral, he would purr and get on the bed with me a lot of the time, but he didn’t want to be cuddled or petted — he did allow me to do it, begrudgingly, so I tried not to overdo it. But, man. Feral cats are rough on the heartstrings.

Although, for the past several mornings, when it’s still dark out and I go into the dark bathroom to pee first thing, Huckleberry and Doris will come into the bathroom and lick my toes! This is a totally new thing. They will let me sort of reach down and pet them, but only once. If I try for twice, then they nip at me. So, you know, I’m trying to make the most out of peeing in the dark while they lick my toes… with those sandpaper-y little tongues.

This business of allowing life to be however it’s going to be without me orchestrating it to suit my needs… I’m not a big fan of it.

It sort of reminds me that I feel kind of at odds with what I posted this morning about Ghosteen. I even thought about deleting it. I wish I didn’t feel so deeply about things. I decided to keep it posted, just because I guess it’s better not to censor myself. To just “express.” I just think it’s such a beautiful album and I still don’t know how to process how it makes me feel.

And I wasn’t being mean about his wife’s dress. I mean, she does sort of describe it like that in that movie, not those 2 exact words, but they amount to the same thing — she had a sort of mission to have every woman wearing the same dress, and looking like some sort of prim cult from 40 years ago. I don’t remember exactly. But if you didn’t see One More Time With Feeling, then maybe I sounded really mean.

But that was not my intention.

Well, I guess I should either get back to work here, or do some yoga now. I’ll make up my mind momentarily. I just hope something wonderful comes out of this brain of mine tonight to salvage this frustrating day.

Oh you know, I saw something online today that the late painter Basquiat said about what the Lower East Side of NYC was like back in the late 70s & early 80s (that bombed-out, war-zone look), and there were some photos from back then included. This was when I lived down there, in Alphabet City. I just sort of take it as a given that people remember what it was like back then, but a lot of people who read my blog weren’t even born yet back then. So here is a really good photo of what it looked like on E. 12th Street back when I lived there (for 9 years). I don’t know this particular building’s exact location, but so much of the LES looked exactly like this back then. This could have easily been the “apartment” next door to me:

Somewhere below E. 14th Street, NYC, early 1980s.

It is so weird to think I simply lived like this. For so many years. I didn’t even think about it. It’s just how it was.

Honestly, a lot of the times I miss it. I don’t really enjoy what NYC has become.

All righty! I’m off to do something. I don’t know what yet. But here’s hoping that before the night ends, I will have written something worth keeping. I love you guys. See ya.

Don’t You Worry ‘Bout Me

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Well, from the sublime to the ridiculous — after all those mornings of not wanting to budge from bed until long after the sun was up, this morning, I was up and out of bed by 4:30. What the hell, right?

I guess just go with it.

I have a lot to work on today. Not only Letter #5 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse, but also Peitor and I are supposed to work on our script for a few hours this morning over the phone. (For our micro-short known variously as “Lita’s Gotta Go” or “Lita’s Got to Go” or “Leta’s Got to Go”, or the Swedish subtitle, “Lita maste ga.”)

Anyway.

Wow, Instagram sure was pink last night.

I didn’t stop working until about 10PM last night, and that was the first time I’d gotten on Instagram all day, and quickly discovered an ad campaign or Vogue layout or both for the Vampire’s Wife’s pink dress.

Then I awoke around 3am, thinking about that pink dress campaign and how it sort of has the feel of a visual offshoot of the Ghosteen album cover — soft, pink, harmless. Not that the album cover is pink but it does have pink in it and it does feel intensely harmless. Like it could be a mural on the wall of a child’s nursery. And it struck me that the two projects combined — the new album and its subsequent merchandising and upcoming tour, and the pink dress merchandising campaign — is not just the processing of grief, but inadvertently the merchandising of grief, on a huge scale.

You know how I ponder things, and sometimes I ponder things past the point of no return, because I certainly don’t want to see Ghosteen that way. But it is part of the job: you make the record, you have to tour, sell tickets, sell the merchandise, hopefully sell the record itself; earn your living (even a guy’s “gotta make ends meet/on Jubilee Street” right?).

The dress doesn’t really weigh on me as much. Although, I don’t support women’s fashion overall, whether it’s the puritanical conformity of the Vampire’s Wife dress, or the sort of horrific complicated torture chambers of Alexander McQueen’s fashions, and everything in between. I realize, at the bottom line, women’s fashion is really just about the mind of the designer, but the overriding consequence of “women’s fashion” still bespeaks of the trivialization (and sometimes the attempted annihilation) of the minds, unique identities, and bodies of women. You know, there’s just no way around the decades, and decades, and decades of that symbolism. I’ve always been attracted to style icons — Bianca Jagger in the 1970s rushes to mind — but an overall blanket of “women’s fashion” has always sort of repelled me (the primary reason I didn’t last long as a professional fashion model when I was in my late teens — my own agent, the man responsible for getting me employed, yelling at me in front of the entire office that if I didn’t like being treated like a piece of meat, I was in the wrong business. And he was right.). (And then my adoptive dad coming to town and taking me out to dinner and finding out that I was working as a professional fashion model: “If you want men to think you’re stupid, Marilyn, then being a model is the best thing to be.” Thanks, Dad.)

Well, anyway.

I do love where men’s fashions have gone in this current century, though. Men’s fashions used to be just as annihilating of a man’s psychological freedom, his spirit. And now, with magazine’s like Another Man especially, men’s bodies, their personae within the fashions, within the mise en scene, seem to have become liquid art. Just something so invigorating and uplifting to look at there. To my mind, at least.

But I’m digressing. I was just lying there at 3am today, thinking about Ghosteen and the necessary fact of having to merchandise it, and then wondering what on Earth that would really mean. Are you ultimately merchandising the death of a child? My mind can’t really even begin to go there. It was so disturbing. I’m hoping, of course, that the experience is something that helps audiences transcend some specific grief; find release, maybe? Not just be swept into some sort of oceanic abyss of emotion, being that it will be on that frenzied scale of a live concert. That ultimately uncontrollable emotional scale. (I’m guessing you can tell that I don’t go to concerts, either. They just have become this huge, unwieldy “thing”. A veritable sea of “too much.”)

Skeleton Tree felt so different to me, as a record. There was still a lot of grief there, but it did feel like individual songs. And even while they were equally abstract, there were songs that I could viscerally connect with in terms of my own life — “Girl in Amber,” “Distant Sky,” “Jesus Alone,” and “I Need You.”

Ghosteen just seems so sweeping and not as if it contains separate, individual songs that you can just sort of toss out there in a song lineup. And it’s just a devastating album — in its grief, its beauty, its overwhelming, abstract imagery.  It might be easier if it wasn’t a sort of “concept” album; if it wasn’t a sort of microscopic focus on the byproduct of emotional chaos brought on by a child’s death. But I guess that’s sort of obvious, isn’t it — it would all be so much easier if it wasn’t that. Jesus. I just can’t process what it means to create a (hopefully) cathartic work of art about grief, about life, love, death; and then have to, you know, “take it on the road!” and wear a pink dress.

Just forever and ever, right? The death of a child has been unbearable. Psalm 137 (KJV) springs horribly to mind — and that’s from twenty-five hundred years ago.

Oh god. Some mornings,you know,  life is just a wee bit stultifying.

But then I started thinking about David Byrne and how he has this really popular show on Broadway right now — American Utopia. I hope I get to see it. The Broadway cast album is out already, and it made me think of that Talking Heads song that I used to just love – “Don’t Worry About the Government”. Such simple times, you know? Early days in NYC. Life, even in its turmoil and awfulness, its drugs and booze and poverty and violence, was still new and still full of kinetic excitement for me and my friends. Daily.

But being in my early 20s, and being age 59 now — you can’t compare the two. You just can’t. There’s that pesky thing of experience fucking that comparison all up.

Still, it did make me go on YouTube at around 4am and play that song and realize that I still know every glorious word to it. And I remembered just how much that chorus meant to me, spoke to me, in those days.

Anyway. I gotta get started here. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya!

“Don’t Worry About The Government”

I see the clouds that move across the sky
I see the wind that moves the clouds away
It moves the clouds over by the building
I pick the building that I want to live in

I smell the pine trees and the peaches in the woods
I see the pine cones that fall by the highway
That’s the highway that goes to the building
I pick the building that I want to live in

It’s over there, it’s over there
My building has every convenience
It’s gonna make life easy for me
It’s gonna be easy to get things done
I will relax along with my loved ones

CHORUS
Loved ones, loved ones visit the building,
take the highway, park and come up and see me
I’ll be working, working but if you come visit
I’ll put down what I’m doing, my friends are important

Don’t you worry ’bout me
I wouldn’t worry about me
Don’t you worry ’bout me
Don’t you worry ’bout me

I see the states, across this big nation
I see the laws made in Washington, D.C.
I think of the ones I consider my favorites
I think of the people that are working for me

Some civil servants are just like my loved ones
They work so hard and they try to be strong
I’m a lucky guy to live in my building
They own the buildings to help them along

It’s over there, it’s over there
My building has every convenience
It’s gonna make life easy for me
It’s gonna be easy to get things done
I will relax along with my loved ones

CHORUS
Loved ones, loved ones visit the building
Take the highway, park and come up and see me
I’ll be working, working but if you come visit
I’ll put down what I’m doing, my friends are important

I wouldn’t worry ’bout me
I wouldn’t worry about me
Don’t you worry ’bout me
Don’t you worry ’bout ME…

c – 1977 David Byrne