Tag Archives: Blessed By Light by Marilyn Jaye Lewis

The Thrill of it All

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Yesterday was too beautiful, gang. Not just the weather, but everything about the day.

My weekly conference call with Peitor continued to astound and amaze, for two reasons. One being that how he wants to storyboard the shoot for the current project will make  the storyboard an art gallery exhibit, in and of itself.  An exhibition of abstract absurdity.  Just too delightful – how his mind works.

And second, we talked in depth about the Artists’ Retreat in Perugia (pictured above at sunset) and what I need to do, or to offer, etc., for my segment of the retreat. It was just incredibly exciting for me.  Even though I can see it will become a ton of work for me twice a year (hopefully every year); I’d still much rather teach in a villa in Italy than teach at my dining room table, which is where I’ve always taught for years.

I’m going to try to figure out how to format the photo gallery on this blog and upload some photos of the villa where the retreats are held. It’s just beautiful. 30 bedrooms, 30 bathrooms. A dining room, a tea room, a chapel, the main salon. Plus they have a separate apartment on the grounds that you can just rent for a vacation, without being part of any retreat in the villa.  The villa is on 800 acres, and it’s self-contained. Meaning they grow all their own organic food on the property. The villa is fully staffed with cooks and housekeeping and groundskeepers.  (And sheep and horses.)

Anyway, it’s too beautiful.  The only thing that distressed me a little bit was that Peitor won’t be there with me.  Not that I’m co-dependent by any stretch of the imagination; but he is, like, one of my closest friends, plus he speaks fluent Italian and is the overseer of the whole retreat. The primary caretaker of the grounds, who resides there year round, speaks English, but everyone else, meaning the entire country of course, speaks Italian.

Long ago, I studied Italian but found that I didn’t have a real affinity for the language. (I had the same experience with studying German and Portuguese. The languages just didn’t want to “take” for some reason. Yet French, Mandarin Chinese, and Biblical Hebrew were relatively easy for me.) The only things I really know how to say in Italian are “excuse me,” “thank you”, “goodbye”, “hello,” “postage stamp”, and “let’s eat now!”

So the thought that, in addition to all these writing projects I have going on (and by “projects,” I include pre-production and then production of two plays, which necessitate rehearsals and constant re-writes along the way), I’m gonna have to start studying Italian again… Well, I sensed stress inching in at the outer most recesses of my psyche.

I’m not a super good traveler, even in English. I’ve traveled a lot, but it’s always been for career-related things: readings, book signings, meetings with editors & publishers, or acquiring work from other artists for one project or another. I think of traveling as being very stressful, even though I do always enjoy meeting people. It seems I don’t ever travel to just enjoy myself.

My idea of enjoying myself involves really nice sheets on a reasonably comfortable hotel room bed, room service,  a writing desk, and a lover with a really fertile and limitless imagination – and that’s all I need (or want, really).  I can forego the latter and still have a delightful time alone with a comfortable bed, room service and a writing desk, but even then, it seems like well-meaning people are always wanting to drag me off to interesting art galleries, wonderful restaurants, and to have memorable conversations and stuff.  (You can readily see why people all over the world are annoying, right??)

Anyway. So I have to start studying Italian again because apparently Peitor is not intending to hold my hand (or to even be present) during all my various upcoming adventures in Italy.

You know, it can get sort of depressing to be regarded as someone who is so independent.  People tend to treat me as someone who is choosing to be independent. That it defines me – my independence. People just have to look at me and it seems like they jump right to this conclusion that I’m independent. Probably because I’m so tall.

THEM (thinking): Oh, she’s tall. Clearly she’s got everything under control.

ME (at any given moment, on any given day, thinking): I’m out of my fucking mind! How the hell did I even get here? And where do I think I’m going?

Every once in a blue moon, angels appear and they actually help me. One time, even though I was managing quite well with my luggage, a woman spontaneously helped me carry my suitcases down the stairs of the Paris Metro.  She simply took one of my suitcases and walked down the stairs with me, then set it down and went on her way. It was so nice! And I have remembered her for all time, even though she never even spoke a word to me.

Because I look so independent, people almost never ask if they can carry something for me, or hold the door for me, or get the elevator for me, or hold my chair out for me, or buy me a drink, or come up and see me sometime.

(The answers, btw, are: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.)

(I guess people assume that I’m some sort of tall, intelligent, feminist with a bad temper or something and so they don’t want to risk offending me. But what I actually am is tall and intelligent, with a bad temper only if you push me too far – but that’s called “getting my Irish up” and has nothing to do with me being a feminist.)

So for me, traveling just equals stress.  And traveling in foreign languages is, of course, even more stressful because I am always just by myself. And even traveling in English can be very stressful for me because of all the insane security at airports nowadays.

It used to be you just worried about going through Customs with any traces of illegal substances. Now, you don’t want to go through Customs with your own identity accompanying you. Or I should say “me.” Flying from Paris into the small town of Exeter, England, was one of the scariest moments of my life. I was coming from a book signing in Paris, and blithely going to visit a colleague in Exeter. And Customs stopped me.  Stopped me. In a big way. And questioned me for a really long time.

THEM: Who are you? (They’ve already got you on their screen, so they know.)

ME: A writer.

THEM: What do you write? (They already know. They can see that your FBI file labels you a pornographer with ties to international pedophiles, regardless of whether you wanted that or not. And that the US Justice Department considers you a pornographer who poses a threat to innocent children everywhere.)

ME:  I write romance stories.

THEM: Really? You’re sure about that? (At this moment, you’re exceedingly sure about this, even though you’ve just come from a book signing in Paris that celebrated a book you wrote decades ago about a fictional gang-rape in Chicago.) And what are you doing here?

ME: Just visiting.

THEM: Really? You flew from New York, to Paris, to tiny Exeter, and you’re just visiting? You’re sure about that?

At this point, do you say: “I’m here to visit a colleague who used to be a pop star in Yugoslavia with hit records, until he had to flee the Croatian War because he was gay and feared for his life, and now he’s living here in exile, awaiting permanent status, and meanwhile, he takes these wonderful photographs of naked young men that I want to license for a project we’re doing back in the States.” Do you say that?

HINT: The answer is NO.  You do not say this! (Because you’re not stupid.)

Instead, you reply: “I’m just visiting, really.” Repeat this until they finally let you go because they know they’re going to follow you all over England on that CCTV thing anyway.

Crimony. Is it any wonder that my idea of a  vacation is a nice hotel bed somewhere and room service (with or without the mindbogglingly imaginative lover)?

That said, though, I do indeed intend to brush up on my Italian…

So. Have a happy Sunday, gang, wherever you are in the world! I’m gonna get things crackin’ around here.  Meanwhile, in honor of Mother’s Day here in the States, I leave you with this. It’s a photo of my birth mom, Cherie. She’s 13 here, in a little town called Greenfield, Ohio. She’s holding my Uncle Mark while pregnant with yours truly!!!! Thanks for visiting. I love you guys! See ya.

My birth mother.

The Return of the Lovely Day!

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Not only is it Saturday (which means nothing to me, since all I ever do is work anyway), but the sunshine has returned and it’s just a really beautiful day around here again, gang.

Plus, Saturday means that I have another conference call with Peitor to work on our current micro-short script.  And also to find out more details about that Writers’ Retreat thing he wants me to do in Italy.

You know, I was consulting a colleague overseas about the retreat and it was interesting to hear what he had to say. I won’t go so far as to say it was insulting, it wasn’t that bad.  But it had to do with the idea that “I thought we’d agreed that it would be better to distance yourself from the erotic stuff.”

Well, maybe in some fantasy world it would be better, but all my readers ever seem to want from me is the erotic stuff.  So what is that saying? If I distance myself from that then I distance myself from my readers and then why write?

Not everything I do is outright erotic, but there are at least erotic moments in everything I write – the Cleveland TV pilot was getting really good feedback until I added quite a few erotic elements to it and then the feedback was, like, wow, this is the best version yet. Even in Tell My Bones there are a couple erotic moments.

In everybody’s real life there are (I would hope) plenty of erotic moments. And if you’re me, then you would re-phrase that to say, there have been a few un-erotic moments and the rest of my life has just been off the charts.

I can’t help it if I see things, or experience life, in this overtly erotic way. It’s just how I am. I know it would be so nice if I wasn’t like this; it would be so much more comfortable for everyone else. And in the long run, also for me. But that’s not how it turned out.

And when the muses swooped back into my life this past year, and it felt as if my whole life returned to me, all this erotic stuff started coming out in my work again.  And it has just been really joyful.

When the editor in NYC was going over the chapters of Blessed By Light recently, even though she loved what she was reading, she asked me in all seriousness, “What do you call this, Christian erotica?”

I was dumbfounded. Not only would that be an indescribably mind-bogglingly difficult genre to try to market, are you saying that only Christians can be blessed? Or that only “Christians” turn to Christ in an hour of extreme despair, when every other moment of their lives has been about music, and struggle, and drugs, and anger, and disappointment, and triumph, and rage, and love, and confusion, and sex, sex, sex, and loss, sorrow, defeat, and then back to sex and love and joy again? They pray because they can’t figure out what else to do in their moment of extreme despair, so then the book now becomes “Christian.” Or that if an aging man recalls the things that were erotic about this whole panoply of life , the whole book becomes erotica?

Man, oh man. I politely replied that I call it “a novel.” But her question truly blew me away.

But on we go, right? All I know is that I’m happy, I’m excited, and, yes, I’m really blessed. And if that feels erotic to me, oh well. And if I want to share that with other writers — in Italy, with wine and great food and stunning vistas, and incredible conversations — oh well.  I’m gonna try really hard not to worry too much about what you think of me, or of any of us.

And on that happy note! Have a great Saturday, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you! See ya! (PS: Play this one real loud.)

I can’t help about the shape I’m in
I can’t sing, I ain’t pretty and my legs are thin
But don’t ask me what I think of you
I might not give the answer that you want me to

Oh well

Now, when I talked to God I knew he’d understand
He said, “Stick by me and I’ll be your guiding hand
But don’t ask me what I think of you
I might not give the answer that you want me to”

Oh well

c – Peter Green/ Fleetwood Mac

If You’re Gonna Give Me Idiotic Book Covers…

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Then I suggest the one above!

It actually offends me less and makes about as much sense as most of the book covers I’ve been given over the last 30 years.

It’s a losing battle, though, one which I gave up fighting a long time ago. And except for Richard Kasak (a publisher who died quite a few years ago), I only got the covers I wanted when I designed the books myself.

And I only bring this up today because yesterday I was rudely awakened to something that really bothered me. (Yesterday was a big day for that kind of thing.) I was trying to investigate further this Neptune & Surf French audio book link I had seen because I wanted to write to my publisher in Paris.

I soon discovered it’s not really an “audio book.” Meaning, it’s not the entire book.  It’s excerpts. Still,  I’m pretty sure the amount of content included violates my contract. But I was soon overwhelmed by too many things that sort of “assaulted” me that I got depressed, gave up and said, I’m not dealing with this. Just let it go, Marilyn.

This particular French edition has been out for 8 years already and I had completely forgotten that the publisher changed the title of the book from Neptune & Surf to Sex in America. That had bothered me when it happened, even though, technically, I understood what the publisher was getting at, I still thought that it both: a.) only vaguely summed up what the book was about; as well as, b.) hugely overstated what the book was about.

Then they gave it this horrible cover, even though I had asked them not to give me a cover picturing a girl in her underwear. Technically, she’s in sparkly stockings and a necklace, so I guess she’s not really in her “underwear”. However, when I finally saw the cover back at my desk in America (where I was probably having Sex), it quietly enraged me, since I had specifically asked them, en francais!, not to do this.

Then, I remembered that they had deleted the novella, The Mercy Cure, from this edition because they thought that it was “too complicated.” This meant that this edition only contains 2 novellas, Gianni’s Girl (one of my most popular stories ever, about Italian bootleggers and a gang-rape in Chicago in 1927 – that’s so American, right?  – but I was glad they didn’t tinker with that), and the novella Neptune & Surf – which they changed to Neptune Avenue. (And, yes, technically, that title is easier to grasp and perhaps makes more sense, but I gave it the title of Neptune & Surf for very specific reasons, mostly because the story was written for and dedicated to Holly and all of our wonderful years of hardcore debauchery together on Coney Island. The title means a lot to me and to her.)

But all of that taken together means that no one on earth would possibly connect Sex In America with Neptune & Surf unless they were psychic in some sort of seriously scary way.

Plus the price of the book – a mass market paperback (in French) containing two novellas – is almost 17 dollars! That seems crazy to me.

So that depressed me. I don’t like broken links in the chain of commerce and product identity.

(And it also bothers me that Little, Brown, in London, somehow managed to put out into the international search engines that “Marilyn Lewis” is the author of their digital edition of Neptune & Surf, even though, all over their website, I’m “Marilyn Jaye Lewis”, which makes a huge difference because there are about 500 billion women in the world named “Marilyn Lewis.” Yet another annoying broken link in the chain of commerce and product identity!)

Anyway, at the beginning of the digital reading, the French woman who reads the excerpts of Neptune & Surf (aka Sex In America) says very complimentary things about the book and about the caliber of my writing. Extremely kind things. Which was nice. Still, the whole thing is prefaced by the concept of: Good writing in bad books and about how this is sort of a dirty secret of publishing houses – this good writing in these bad books that are hidden in dark corners of bookstores. (All of this was said in French, by the way, which only made it sound more authoritative.)

I probably don’t have to tell you that this really upset me. Even though most of my books have sold well and have not been relegated to dark corners in bookstores. I of course understood the point she was trying to make and it’s a public conception that I’ve been up against throughout my entire career.

It’s upsetting to think that all these decades later, I’m still up against this.  Yesterday was just not a good day for me. First, the entire universe seemed to want me to come to terms with the reality that Tom Petty is dead, and then come to terms with the reality that people will only find out that I’m a good writer if they happen to find themselves furtively lurking in the dark corner of a bookstore…

Plus that whole feeding frenzy over buying the Nick Cave ticket yesterday morning was also very disturbing to my equilibrium. (At Town Hall, it’s called Nick Cave Words + Music, btw, not Conversations with Nick Cave.) (I don’t think this means that he’s just going to say a bunch of words, and that he only saves actual “conversations” for people who aren’t American…)

Anyway, normally, I refuse to participate in stuff like that. I just can’t stand that feeding frenzy set up.  And I’m sure this morning’s sale will be so much worse, since it’s the regular tickets.

Obviously, I want all of Nick Cave’s endeavors all over America to sell out. [UPDATE: Town Hall indeed sold out in under half an hour –  Ed.] Loyal readers of this lofty blog  are probably really tired of me bemoaning the fact that most non-big city Americans do not even know who he is. Still, I was so seriously tempted to just abort the whole thing yesterday, it was making me so insane:

CLICK, Oops! Sorry, that ticket’s gone! Try again! CLICK, Oops! Sorry, that ticket’s gone! Try again! CLICK, Oops! Sorry, that ticket’s gone! Try again!

Over and over and over. And it happens at warp speed. You’re watching all the little blue dots on the seating map disappear in nanoseconds. Jesus fucking Christ, you know? What is that? It’s one of the things I hate about doing stuff online.

I would not even do something like that for myself, if for some convoluted reason I had to buy a ticket to hear myself speak. I’m definitely someone who moves quickly to: Fuck this shit, and then goes back to whatever it was I’d been doing. But, alas. Not for Nick Cave having a conversation. (And in that movie, 20,000 Days on Earth, when we go with him to his “therapist’s” office? Oh my god! That was the most ingenious thing I ever saw in my life. I’d probably sell my house to afford a ticket to go to therapy with Nick Cave.)

I digress. I’m just saying, I don’t like that kind of thing – buying tickets in that fiercely competitive way. I feel like I’m being spiritually eviscerated by the Internet. And I don’t even have a question I want to ask him.  Well, actually, I have an unending list of questions I want to ask him. Daily, I’m asking him questions in my head, from the moment I wake-up in the morning until I go to sleep at night, but these are not questions that would interest anyone else on earth. And a lot of the questions people do ask him are actually really, really cool questions. I’m actually very eager to hear what other people want to know.

So I stuck with it and got my ticket… And I’m happy, but the process sucked the life out of me for awhile.

So yesterday was a challenge.  But I’m going to try to make today a lot better.  This morning, at breakfast, I was once again listening to The Big Jangle (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, from the Playback collection) and just loving every moment of it, but also thinking, Man, these songs are over 40 years old. He died. Shouldn’t I be putting it to rest now? But the tears started to come again and I just can’t go there. I can’t. I have to shift gears and tell myself, He’s alive and well and only 30 years old and living inside my little tabletop jukebox.

And life, as it were, goes on….

Thanks for visiting, gang. Hope you have a perfect Friday wherever you are in the world! I love you guys. Seriously. I mean that. See ya.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chZ0DaT0x7g

Well It didn’t feel like Sunday
Didn’t feel like June
When he met his silent partner in that lonely corner room
That over looked the marquee
Of the Plaza All-Adult
And he was not lookin’ for romance
Just someone he could trust

[Chorus:]
And it wasn’t no way to carry on
It wasn’t no way to live
But he could put up with it for a little while
He was workin’ on something big

Speedball rang the night clerk
Said, “Send me up a drink”
The night clerk said “It’s Sunday man, …wait a minute
Let me think
There’s a little place outside of town that might
Still have some wine”
Speedball said, “Forget it, can I have an outside line?

[Chorus]

It was Monday when the day maids
Found the still made bed
All except the pillows that lay stacked
Up at the head
And one said, “I know I’ve seen his face
I wonder who he is?

And the other said, “He’s probably just another clown
Workin’ on something big”

c- 1981 Tom Petty

Sometimes -There’s God – So Quickly!

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I know, I’m hopelessly plebeian, but that is probably my favorite line from A Streetcar Named Desire.

I first read that play when I was about 15 and it was one of those lines that seared straight into my heart and I immediately put a lot of faith into those words ;  God was going to somehow manage to be there for me, even if He was gonna wait until I really, really, REALLY needed Him before regaling me with that miracle at the 11th hour.

Of course, in the play, it’s all about a woman needing a man to take care of her and she thinks she’s finally getting one. That’s a concept that has always been, even at age 15, indescribably foreign to me. Why on earth would I want a man to take care of me? Then he would have the power to tell me what to do!

Even though I really love dominant men, I am definitely not the kind of person who responds well to being told what to do. It’s a strange, hazy, jagged sort of line, isn’t it? Not something that can be sorted out in a single, lighthearted blog post, I’m guessing.  (It’s interesting to note, though, that I respond really well when someone puts actual thought into how best to subvert my churlishness by making something sound like a mere suggestion and not a mandate. My enormous ego assuaged, I can then do what you ask and still trot along happily behind you, my merry tail wagging away once more.)

However! Yes! I digress. That’s not at all what I was going to post about!

I was going to talk about Blessed By Light and how inserting a single clause within a sentence yesterday completely heightened the dynamic of what I had been trying to say for 3 days without understanding for 3 days what I was really trying to say!

The clause was “who now embodied everything I ever was in my youth” and it just made everything hit the stars, you know? I really just sat there and stared at the manuscript and went, Whoa.  Where did that come from?

Hence, my Tennessee Williams’ line, Sometimes – there’s God – so quickly.  Or the Muse. Take your pick. I lean more toward Muses than God. But it’s still a great line that often comes to me when I’m just really, really happy.

I only got 2 more pages written after that yesterday, because the phone calls that I knew were coming came and dealt with 2 other projects I’m working on and it set my mind off in other directions. Try as I did to reel my mind back in, it just never happened. But I still had just a beautiful night. I am just so happy with everything.

And the weather has been just incredible the last few days. It has made everything almost feel magical. I took a walk to the Dollar Store yesterday (the only store in the whole village except for the gas station across the road from it, where you can buy cigarettes, chewing tobacco, M&M’s and stuff, and nothing but the finest libations: beer and cheap wine, and windshield wiper fluid). And on my walk home, I was looking fondly at my house in the distance as it came ever closer, and I simply couldn’t believe how happy I was.  All of my projects are just going so well.

I don’t define myself solely by my writing, but my writing does account for about 98% of how I look at myself. I don’t care if that’s a good idea or not; it’s just how it is. And when the writing is going well, all is right with my world. I have the best muses ever.

I still have to deal somehow with this explosion of stuff on the Internet, where people seem to be doing renewed projects with past books of mine, and I haven’t seen royalty statements from these publishers in a few years. I posted here recently about the interesting hardcover editions of a novel of mine that never came out in hardcover, but which are selling for $203 per copy. And then I noticed an audio book of Neptune & Surf! In French! How nice! Were you planning on ever telling me you had done that?? Methinks not! (But I have to write that letter en francais! so it’ll take a little while.)

So there’s still little headache-type stuff that I have to figure out how to deal with, but it’s all okay. Everything will work out.

Okay, in about 34 minutes and 44 seconds, I’m gonna get my ticket to see Nick Cave at Town Hall, and then I’m gonna get crackin’ here on Blessed By Light. [UPDATE: I got my ticket, a really good seat in the front of the balcony, dead center, but wow, what a feeding frenzy that was. The pre-sale tickets were gone in about 12 minutes.  – Ed.]

I hope you have a really productive and happy Thursday, wherever you are in the world! (Assuming it’s still Thursday wherever you are in the world!)

I leave you with yet another really cool song from my breakfast-listening this morning. It’s from The Big Jangle – by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, 1978: Shadow of a Doubt (A Complex Kid). I really love this song. The melody is just great. And once you decipher all the lyrics, it’s so fucking singable! All right. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you. See ya.

There goes my baby
There goes my only one
I think she loves me
But she don’t wanna let on

Yeah, she likes to keep me guessing
She’s got me on the fence
With that little bit of mystery
She’s a complex kid
And she’s always been so hard to figure out
Yeah, she always likes to leave me with a shadow of a doubt

Sometimes at night, I
Wait around ’til she gets out
She don’t like workin’
She says she hates her boss

But she’s got me asking questions
She’s got me on the fence
With that little certain something
She’s a complex kid
And she’s always been so hard to get around
Yeah, she always likes to leave me with a shadow of a doubt

Just a shadow of a doubt
She says it keeps me running
I’m trying to figure out
If she’s leading up to something

And when she’s dreaming
Sometimes she sings in French
But in the morning
She don’t remember it

But she’s got me thinking ’bout it
Yeah, she’s got me on the fence
With that little bit of mystery
She’s a complex kid
And she’s always been so hard to live without
Yeah, she always likes to leave me with a shadow of a doubt

Well a shadow of a doubt
Well a shadow of a doubt

c- 1978 Tom Petty

Alas, Poor Sybil!

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Sybil is the girl up there on the book cover. Doomed to come into her hormonal peak in an era when most Americans were more comfortable with women being one-dimensional!!

(And I’m guessing that the author, “Joan Ellis,” was really a guy.)

But I guess it made for some good, solid reading. Yes, indeedy.

God knows, I was no stranger to these kinds of trashy paperbacks when I was young; they were just everywhere in the early 70s. Just everywhere. But I was not their target audience, that’s for sure.

Even though this era in erotic publishing in the US was sort of a “golden era” for the genre, it did absolutely nothing for me. And I was the horniest child imaginable, so it wasn’t that. It was the writing. It was not good! I was only 13 when I read Story of O and that was, like, from some other celestial realm. It took my breath away, it was so erotic.

For me, it all came down to the quality of the writing. It really did. I guess if you aren’t into dominant men (as I am and always have been, since about, I don’t know, age 6?), the quality of the writing might not mean anything at all to you. But I’ve known women who weren’t into dominant men, and women who weren’t even into men at all, who were still blown away by the writing in Story of O.

Wow. Well. that was certainly an unexpected tangent at 6:11am!

What I was intending to write about was something a little bit different. But not much.

Last evening,  I finally did get some energy going. My brain connected. I had Chapter 21 of Blessed By Light open in front of me. I was tweaking some stuff already written there and feeling primed to get some new stuff down, and then suddenly Peitor texted me.

I don’t keep my ringer on when I’m writing but I do keep my phone on the desk, so I saw that he was sending text after text after text. Which always means something important is on his mind, so I looked at the texts. And then suddenly, Valerie in Brooklyn started texting me, too. She’s working on some sample cover art for me and I needed to hear from her, so I was trying to read that, too. And then suddenly my dad called.

All of this happened at once, completely at the same time, at around 7 in the evening.  And no one had texted or called me all day. Suddenly, all my mental energy was re-routed toward my phone, which basically derailed any creative stuff getting written yesterday.

But the stuff from Peitor was really cool. He and a handful of creative people in L.A. (except for Peitor, I think the others involved are all women), anyway, they’re starting an artists’ retreat in Perugia, Italy.

Peitor lives a good portion of the year in Italy and England. And he agreed to take over this property for a friend in Italy and run it. And it’s amazing and really lovely.  And it’s upscale, you know. Really nice. It can house & feed 60 artists at one time.

Peitor is a composer and producer, and he scores films and TV and stuff. And the women onboard are, like, award-winning photographers for National Geographic, and artists in other disciplines, and other writers, as well as TV & film executives. All based in L.A.

They are getting their opening programs together for when the retreat actually opens again, and Peitor texted and asked me if I’d like to try to oversee some sort of erotic writing program there. Not for beginning writers, but more for writers who specifically wanted to write in some sort of erotic vein and the end result is  a book of collected stories or pieces that are erotic in some way and written during the retreat.  So, overseeing a retreat in Italy, as well as a publication. (And, of course,  wine is involved – the drinking of it, not the production of it!!)

And, of course, I was, like, YES!!!! with a zillion exclamation points. We then texted for over an hour, hashing out the details. So you can see why I never got back to the novel last night. My mind went off into this whole other realm.

I’ve taught writing before. It’s not an easy thing to do. And I was very picky about who I would take on as students, because it’s hard enough to help good writers become better writers.  Trying to teach someone who thinks they kinda might like to write…that’s just not even in a ballpark that I know how to show up in.

So, I can see how an undertaking like this particular retreat could require an enormous amount of energy from me, directed at a lot of people at once, and people from all over the world. I speak French and a little Mandarin Chinese, but that’s it.  Everyone’s gotta speak English, otherwise I’ll be useless. Yet, just because a writer might speak English, it doesn’t mean they’re thoughts slide together in the same way that a native speaker’s does, right? Still, I find the whole idea just really exciting, however it turns out.

But I think I totally passed out from exhaustion before 11pm last ngiht and then I was up at 4:11am, all excited about life and unable to fall back to sleep. Teaching that guy piano, and now this artists’ retreat in Italy. On top of all the other really cool projects I’m doing right this very minute.  I was also lying there wondering what seat I’m going to get when the tickets go on pre-sale for Nick Cave at Town Hall tomorrow morning. I know I’m going to get “a seat,” but will it be the seat I want? What is the seat I want? Actually, the seat I want is, you know, on the piano bench right next to him, but I’m thinking that’s not actually a seat that’s being offered…

I finally got out of bed at 5am, went downstairs to merrily feed the many scampering cats. We listened to The Big Jangle by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers all during breakfast. What a great CD. (It’s from the Playback collection.) It has all of my favorites from that period when I was 18-21 years old. Gem after gem, and not one of them longer than 3 minutes.  It’s pretty much: verse/chorus, verse/chorus, bridge, chorus, out. But just wonderful rock & roll songs! All of them infused with that intense attitude he had when he was young.

It all just made for a great start to another sunny spring morning around here.

(Oh, you’ll notice that I reloaded Boy, If You Want into the music player. This is a demo we made in my boyfriend’s bedroom, on his 8-track, in 1984. He was a drummer in a different band. We used his bass player and a lead guitar player that they knew. It’s just a demo, the sound quality on the acoustic guitar is terrible, but I always liked the demo, overall.)

Okay, on that note! I’m gonna get crackin’ around here on the novel because I know for sure I have 2 phone calls coming today that I need to take. I leave you with one of my favorite Tom Petty songs of all time! (Isn’t it everybody’s??!!) Here Comes My Girl, from 1978!!!

All right, gang. Thanks for visiting. I love you, guys. See ya!

Good Morning, Sunshine!

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This morning was just one of those mornings.

I woke at around 6am (late for me), dawn was already filling my splendid bedroom. A nice breeze was blowing in, birds were chirping outside. However, I felt like I’d been run over by a Mack truck during the night.

I was unbelievably exhausted. It was almost too much of an effort to even open my eyes.

I felt like I was trying to rise to the surface of life from deep down under some unfathomable ocean. But I knew I was happy. That much I was sure of, although it took a moment to remember why.

Ah yes! The Algonquin Hotel as a single woman! Nick Cave at Town Hall!

That helped me sort of focus. But it still took me about 45 minutes to actually get out of that bed.

I hate when that happens, because I really wanted to just spring out of bed today, merrily feed the cats, have my breakfast, and take my coffee back up to the laptop and get to work on Blessed By Light…

I’m still waiting for something remotely similar to energy to kick in, all these hours later. Although I did manage to make the drive into town and back to buy groceries and it is a really stunning spring day out there today, gang.  Just gorgeous. Unbelievably perfect. Spring is barreling toward summer today.

While I was on the main drag in the town, I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw the most perfect, dark-haired guy in the car behind me. About 20-something. The kind of guy that is nothing but trouble. The kind that I used to be a magnet for, about 45 years ago. And he was driving a vintage Dodge Challenger – the distant forerunner of the Hellcat, my dream car. Wow. It really perked up my tired little brain, if even for a moment.

But now I’m back at my desk, manuscript open in front of me, and the brain is struggling to connect again. What’s funny, though, is that I can feel the muses. They’re swirling all over today. I can practically touch them. You know – with my mind. So it isn’t a lack of that kind of energy,  and so I’m hopeful that the day will eventually yield something really good.

Plus it occurred to me this morning, as I was lying in bed, thinking about the Algonquin and Nick Cave (and myriad combinations thereof); it doesn’t really matter if we can’t pull the tech rehearsals together that particular week. I can make 17 hundred trips to New York, if I have to. And Sandra and I have the other play (the one we’ll be doing in Toronto) that we can work on, plus 2 other plays that we’re working on that are only in various stages of notes. No lack of constant things to be working on in New York.

I don’t want to make myself stressed. I just want to enjoy myself in a wide open world, you know? Come what may.

What I do need, though, is for this novel to be completed and off to the publisher before we begin the initial rehearsals for Tell My Bones here this summer, so I’m gonna get back to staring at Chapter 21 until the brain returns, gang!

Meanwhile, I hope that Tuesday has been really lovely, wherever you are (or Wednesday, if you’re reading this in that part of the world). I leave you, joyfully, with this, gang! (See yesterday’s post).  Listen and decide for yourself if it isn’t the most perfect music to shoot yourself in the head by! Or, I guess launch into some orgasmic frenzy. Your choice!

All righty. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys! See ya.

Hell, no! I’m Not F*cking Exhausted!

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Why would I be? Just because I never stop working?

Well, I guess there is that. But yesterday wound up being really cool. I got some great work done on Chapter 21 of Blessed By Light. And then Peitor texted, wanting an impromptu phone conference on one of our scripts.

That turned into a 2 hour call but it was fascinating, actually. He had more notes on our “big” project. And even though I love all of our projects, that particular one is going to be much more complex and I really, really love it. I think it is just brilliant in its absurdity, even if I say so myself.

All of our projects are Absurdist and micro-short: 3-, 5-, and 8-minute videos. And while they’re scripted, and have characters, we focus more on the absurdity of the premise of the story and the set-up of the shots.

The one we’re working on right now (today, actually, in a couple of hours) is very Bauhaus in terms of how we plan the shots, but more “absurd” than creepy – I guess, that’s not the best word to use, but a lot of that Bauhaus photography has that sense of doom or drama or creepiness in it. We do use those elements, and we use uncomfortable juxtapositions, and even though there is always an underlying theme or plot, mostly we just want to make ourselves laugh. So that underscores everything.

I love the Absurdist sensibility. I was 15 or 16 when I first began reading Ionesco‘s plays (in English).  And that was like having a wild wind come sweeping in from the Cosmos or something. It blew open all the doors of my mind and let some fresh air in.

Those were such difficult years for me. And even though I was very interested in music, film, theater, and poetry of all kinds and they were literal life ropes for me, my inner world was in complete chaos. Once I was released from the Mental Hospital, my life just went into this really dark, restrictive, messed-up place.  And I think the Universe decided I was in the best frame of mind for discovering Ionesco.

I love words, in general. But I really love when words are used in an unexpected way. Whether that’s in a really intense way (like Nick Cave), or in that whole other arena of Ionesco,  it really just thrills me.  Even while Theater of the Absurd, going back to Ubu Roi I think, was more of an outcry against restrictive social mores and abusive governments, the nonsensical stuff it creates can be really funny.

Anyway. Today, Saturday, is the day when Peitor and I have our usual, scheduled, conference call, and that’s another 2 or 3 hours, but dealing with our current micro-short project. And it’s mostly just setting up the shots in a script format. (You’ll never guess who does all that typing…Ibuprofen, anyone?)

Peitor is very good friends with a woman who is very famous – but not at all famous for anything close to what our main character in our current short is like. And because of that, I really, really want her to “star” in the project (I use that word “star” so loosely, gang). It would just be so inexplicably incongruous for her to be in that role, even though she could totally play it, and that’s what I love about it; it would just be so absurd. Normally, she would say yes to something like that. She has the best sense of humor. However, she’s just had a really tragic death happen in her family, so she might not want to come back to work yet, in any role at all. We’ll see.

Yesterday, I also discovered by “accident” (I don’t believe in accidents or coincidences or any of that stuff, so….) but I discovered stuff all over the Internet about my Helen LaFrance play, Tell My Bones, that really startled me and just sort of put pressure on me to make that the best possible play that it can possibly be – and as soon as possible. And then also some other stuff has come up re: the TV project I’m still developing out in L.A., and so, yes… I’m exhausted, gang.

Yesterday, I actually heard myself saying, Marilyn, you need to take a vacation. Which was really weird, because I never tell myself that. What would I do? Go somewhere  tranquil with my laptop and write? I’m already doing that here in the peace of Crazeysburg. There is peace and quiet, solitude and beauty all around me, 24/7;  I’m the one who brings the insanity the minute I wake up. My mind simply never stops. So why go on a vacation? I have too many deadlines looming anyway.

But maybe someday, right, gang? Can you even imagine it; me on vacation? No laptop, no nothing; just me, maybe in a cabin on a lake, sitting and staring at all the wonder of God’s creations? I honestly just don’t know what that would be like.

What I am gonna do right now is try to collapse for a little bit, drink my coffee and wait for Peitor to wake-up there out in West Hollywood so that I can get back to work!!

Okay, have a wonderful Saturday, wherever you are in the world, gang. I leave you with this – the insanity I woke up with this morning at 5am: David Bowie singing Cracked Actor. Why on earth would I suddenly be thinking about a song that I haven’t listened to since like, 1973? And what a message it has! At age 59 (almost), a song like Cracked Actor has a whole different spin on it than how it felt when I was 13. What the heck was I dreaming about just before I woke up to make my mind be singing a song like that?

Actually, I was dreaming about Nick Cave. There was some sort of a code that you could put into the Internet somehow and then these really cool black & white video things of Nick Cave would come back at you, with another sort of personalized code.  In my dream, I was very excited by this, and I was waiting for my code to see what sort of video thing I would receive. And then in the middle of that, I woke up singing Cracked Actor and suddenly thinking about David Bowie. And my world was obviously completely back to normal so the day was underway…

Okay. Thanks for visiting! I love you, guys. See ya!

Do You Wake-Up Dreaming?

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Or is it just the muse??

Wow, what an incredible morning. I awoke at 4am, just as the first birds were starting to sing. Now that all the windows in the house are open, the sound of the birds singing fills the whole house.

It’s so beautiful, because, by 5am, you can hear thousands of birds singing all at once.

Out here in Crazeysburg, there literally are no other sounds at this hour for many miles in all directions, except an occasional car (or the barrelling freight train with that awesome train-whistle scream, but that had already come through around 3am). The “peace in the valley” out here really highlights just how many birds there are. And it’s overwhelming when they all sing at once.

It’s one of the reasons why I don’t want to put air-conditioning into the house. Even though I had all the duct work and the furnace upgraded to handle air-conditioning. (The house is 118 years old, and didn’t even have electricity or indoor plumbing when it was first built.)  I can’t bear the thought of shutting out the sound of all those birds, or, as the summer goes on, the sound of the crickets and the cicadas.

The only time I even think about air-conditioning is when a heat wave comes through and my bedroom gets up to 102 degrees Fahrenheit and then in that soul-draining, mind-dulling, suffocating HEAT, I think, Why the FUCK haven’t I gotten this place air-conditioned yet??!!

But, anyway. I digress.

I awoke at 4am with the energy of the muses swirling all over me in the bed. It was breathtaking, really. It was such an erotic feeling. It made me think of how it might feel to spin a cocoon all around myself or something. Obviously, I don’t actually know if that would be an erotic sensation, having never spun a cocoon, but energetically, that’s what it brought to my mind. It was a really joyful feeling. Bordering on jubilation.

I have a feeling it’s going to be a really productive writing day if the muses are up and already so frisky at this hour.

The last thing I saw on Instagram last evening was a photo Dana Petty had posted of a butterfly landing on her thigh as she was sitting out in her garden. When I awoke today, in that incredible sort of erotic swoon, the first thing I thought of was that photo and it occurred to me that it was probably Tom Petty’s energy in that butterfly. Or his essence or something. Visiting her. Now that he’s off in the great beyond place, really “Learning to Fly.” That made me feel happy.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I usually meditate first thing in the morning, but recently I moved my meditation time to midday, right after lunch, and it seems to be helping me re-focus, or re-charge, in a more productive way.  And I come out of the meditations now inspired with a specific thing to do, so I get right back to work.

Yesterday, I came out of the meditation remembering that Peitor was waiting on me to send him a bunch of notes he’d lost on some scripts we were developing when I was in L.A. back in December. And I realized that all those notes were still in texts on my phone. So I went scrolling through 4 months of texts and got all those notes copied and sent to him, and then I remembered how, I don’t know, how sort of strange it was, when I was there in L.A. He was in his bed in the bedroom, I was on the futon in the living room, and we were texting each other script notes at 5am.

I mean, we could have easily spoken to each other if his bedroom door had been open. Yet we were texting. Still needing to communicate with each other even though neither one of us wanted to be out of bed yet; not wanting to commit, yet, to the day.

But what a great trip that was, oh my gosh. And I loved his apartment so much, the energy in it was so conducive to being creative. He used to have this great townhouse with a garden, by the corner of N. Fairfax and Sunset Boulevard. Then he and the guy he married got an apartment together right next door to the Sunset Marquis Hotel (which is such a cool hotel to hang out in),  and the new apartment is like straight out of 1967 or something like that. I didn’t think anything could be better than the townhouse was, but the new apartment is sort of magical – the energy inside it.

Plus, this trip, Peitor’s husband was off producing a TV show in Toronto, so we had the whole place to ourselves, which made us behave like unsupervised little kids or something.

That morning that he and I were texting at 5am, I had just discovered that Nick Cave’s The Ship Song sounded unbelievable in the earbuds of my new, upgraded iPhone and I was playing it over and over and over. It was mesmerizing, how good it sounded. I couldn’t believe I had waited so long to upgrade my iPhone. And the song had played “by accident.” I was listening to We Call upon the Author to Explain on Youtube, and I missed the repeat thing, and so The Ship Song suddenly came on and, it was like, Holy Fuck this sounds SO good!! It was like the Universe decided to suddenly give me this amazing gift, and the sun wasn’t even up yet. I had always loved that song, but this time I felt enveloped by it and the beauty of it was so powerfully overwhelming in those earbuds. And then I couldn’t stop playing it until Peitor finally came out of the bedroom.

So, you know, meditating midday not only helped me remember that Peitor needed those notes, but then all those beautiful memories unfolded, like a double gift from the Universe in the form of total recall.

Okay, well. I’m gonna get this day started over here. Chapter 21 in Blessed By Light awaits its erotic unveiling. I leave you with this really sexy little Tom Petty song from 1978, Casa Dega. I’ve been playing it down in my kitchen the last few mornings while having my breakfast. So, enjoy! It’s such a cool & sexy little song. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you! See ya.

Well the clouds go by in the big blue sky
As the sun beats down on casa dega
And the moon pulls the tide and the tide brings night
But night is more than just a night in casa dega
Oh baby now I think I’m starting to believe the things that I’ve heard
Cause tonight in casa dega I hang on every word
That she said to me as she holds my hand
And reads the lines of a stranger
Yeah and she knows my name yeah she knows my plan

In the past in the present and for the future

Oh honey now I think I’m starting to believe the things that I’ve heard
Cause tonight in casa dega I hang on every word

That she said…

Baby fools pay the price of a whisper in the night in casa dega
Time rolls by, night is only night, can I save you?

Yeah more than just a night…

The Muse Redux

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Last  night, around 8:15pm, I completed Chapter 20 of Blessed By Light. Not only that, but on its heels, an overview of Chapter 21 came right into my head. If I hadn’t been worn out from writing for 12 hours, I could have easily begun writing Chapter 21.

Isn’t it awesome when the Muse is like that?

Loyal readers of this lofty blog will no doubt recall that this particular novel is sort of being “dictated” to me by the Muse from some nonphysical place, so I never know what’s coming beforehand.  And perhaps you will also recall that as soon as I got the opening paragraph for Chapter 20 last week, I knew it was going to be an emotional chapter.  A contemplative one. And it was. In a most unexpected way.  It was just beautiful.

It’s a chapter where he (the Muse who is dictating this) is talking about the sudden, unexpected death of his best friend.  They’d been friends for 40 years and, although they’re both American musicians, from New York City, they met at a gig in London.

Obviously, I was thinking the chapter was going to deal with this intense, sad death, but most of it actually dealt with stuff about his first wife. Really sweet, moving stuff, and up until Chapter 20, anything having to do with his first wife is pretty brutal, emotionally.  So it was completely unexpected, for me, that his mind would suddenly dip into this beautiful place about this woman he now despises, while he’s grieving the death of his friend.

And then the closing paragraphs circled back to George (his best friend) and completely floored me. Only because I just wasn’t expecting it. I literally have no idea what’s coming in this novel until I type the words onto the page. (Closing paragraphs of Chapter 20; he’s talking about the mid- 1970s):

The world was really changing then, coming out into the open, and London had it all on display.

I think that’s why George and I hit it off so well right from the start. We were both kinda pretty looking, you know? Rough but pretty and so the boys in London came on to us. Boys. Until then, neither one of us had ever had that happen. It happened a whole lot after we each got really famous, but up until then?

We were hanging out together, backstage, smoking. Just shooting the breeze. Other bands everywhere, waiting to go on. We barely knew each other yet and then here come these London boys. Really pretty boys. In make-up and all, wearing jeans and tee shirts and high heels. And they came up to us and wanted to, you know. Go to the loo with us and give us oral sex.

We were, like – well, you hear that word ‘blowjob’ and your first thought is not to say ‘no.’ Still. He and I were simply into girls. That’s just how it was. So it was weird that he and I bonded over not wanting boys in make-up to give us blowjobs.

I think he might have changed his mind a little bit about that as time went on. He was just a man who eventually tried everything. But I was just never into it.

I’m vanilla; like you said, honey.

Oh well.

Your mouth is the only one in the world that I want, that’s for sure.

I just totally wasn’t expecting that.  And I thought it was so simple and beautiful. And suddenly I recalled how exciting the 1970s really were, musically. Even though I hated a whole lot of the music, so much change was in the air. I was a teenager in Ohio and I just wanted to go to New York City so badly. (I finally moved there in 1980 after going to California first, for some inexplicable reason, in late 1979.)

After I finally closed the laptop,  I did some yoga because my neck and shoulders and wrists were killing me from 12 hours of being hunched over at my desk.

Then I re-read all of Chapter 20 and was once again in awe of the whole creative process. The chapter is just so sweet, so moving. And I’d had no clue whatsoever that any of it was coming.

But I do have the framework already for Chapter 21 and I know it’s going to be short but very erotic. So I’m sure that’ll be worth tuning into.

I lit some candles, then, turned out the lights and just played music. The night was so beautiful. It had gotten up into the 80s yesterday so all the windows were open, a breeze was blowing through. The streets in this little town were completely quiet. An occasional car. Birds singing their final goodnight songs in the trees, you know? And I sat on the floor, looking out the windows, just talking to the Muse. Just so grateful that he chose me to tell this story through.

And I said, “Look at it out there. Summer’s coming. It’s gonna be the best one yet.” I haven’t been this happy in a really long time, gang.

Legs to Die For!!

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And in this humble instance, gang, I am talking about my own!!

Legs, that is.

If you’re on Instagram, like me, perhaps you are bombarded with ads for BetaBrand Dress Yoga Pants.  A couple months ago, I bought a pair of them, because I do yoga, and I also liked how the pants looked in the ad.

Gang, I would never do yoga in these pants! They are just too fucking sexy. They fit like a glove – if you wear gloves all over your legs, I guess. But, seriously, they fit like nobody’s business. I bought a specific style that they don’t seem to sell anymore but they really slide on like a second skin.

My legs are really long to begin with, but these yoga pants make my legs look about 12 feet long. And I bought the boot cut so that I could wear my new (vegan-friendly) cowboy boots with them, and those have a 3-inch stacked heel.  I am over 6 feet tall when I wear those boots. So the combined effect of the boots and the pants are just ridiculous. And I mean that in the best possible way. I look like nothing but long, skinny legs, towering over everybody.

Long story short, this is what I was wearing when I went to the Honda Dealership yesterday and it was un-fucking-believable. There are 2 female employees there and about 50 guys.  And I think every single one of those guys came into my field of vision yesterday.  And I’ve been going there twice a year for 3 years already. Never have I had such attentive service, even when I was there the first day, giving them thousands of dollars in cash. Good to know that long skinny legs still trump hard cold cash. (You know, I wonder, if I’d gone into that sales rep’s little office yesterday, closed the door, called him ‘honey’ and asked him real quietly if I could have some of my cold hard cash back – I wonder what he would have said??!! Perhaps something like, “I’ll try my best to arrange it” ??)

Anyway.

From there, it was off to that journey deeper into the country to go pick up the little clay imprint of Daddycakes’ paw from the vet. What an incredible drive it was.

It was drizzling rain, but still spring, you know, so all the trees everywhere were either in full blossom or that incredible shade of green. I decided to go the back route the whole way. It took me right through the town where the huge lake is, which, in summertime, is a town just insanely exploding with boats and flip-flops and cut-offs and muscle cars and booze and weed and music and hormones.

Yesterday it couldn’t have been more quiet, or more lovely in its springtime stuff and its drizzling rain. I didn’t see a single other person as I drove through the town.  All the little shops and cafes and bars and churches technically open for business, but not a soul was there. And once you drive through the town, it becomes just a winding road through empty cornfields and nothing but sky.

I was playing Jesus of the Moon again, over and over (see yesterday’s post) because the groove just fit. It was all too perfect. Even though the mission I was on was bittersweet – the last time I was out there at that vet’s office, Daddycakes was still alive, though barely. It was still just an awe-inspiring day.

And then I spent the evening working on Blessed By Light and got some really good writing done.

Today Is May 1st, which was not only Elvis’s Wedding Day but mine, as well!! In fact, we got married on May 1st in honor of Elvis and we went to Memphis on our honeymoon. That box of matches featured above is my treasured souvenir from Graceland – even though, by the time we got there that day, the last tour had already left and so we didn’t get to go inside. Got all the way to Graceland, finally, and stood in front of a locked gate!! But what a fine gate it was, gang.

Yes, 26 years ago today, I married my second husband. It lasted 14 years, although I physically left after 10. And even though loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I was not any kind of a wife that you’d probably ever want to have, I did try to leave that marriage 3 times in those 10 years. I wasn’t oblivious to the fact that I had a personality that was way too large for that marriage and that i was driving both of us crazy. However, I was always persuaded to stay and to try to make it work. Until it was just way too apparent that to try to live like some sort of Upper West Side happy housewife was driving me out of my fucking mind…

But here’s how I looked on my wedding day, 26 years ago. Long before all the silver hair arrived!!

In honor of Elvis, Marilyn Jaye officially became Marilyn Jaye Lewis on May 1st, 1993!!

Okay, gang!! I’m gonna get back to work on the novel here. Drink a little more coffee, eat some chocolate. I hope you have a wonderful day, wherever you are in the world!!

As a memento of yesterday, I leave you with this heartbreaking song – one of my favorites of all time, when I want to have my heart broken a little bit! (Trust me, even though my marriages don’t work out, I’m still capable of loving with all my soul and missing all the ones who got away.) Okay. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you! See ya!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWT90HzLF3U