Tag Archives: Conversations with Nick Cave

Of Gods & Men & the Undecided

May 30, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Man, the stuff with the new music material is getting so interesting. I am discovering just how much I already know but that I am now gaining conscious access to in a completely different way.

Everything is getting so much more simplified. (I don’t know – can something get “more” simplified? Wouldn’t it just be “simpler”? You figure it out and get back to me. My brain’s not completely awake yet.)

I cannot wait to see how this material actually works with someone who knows nothing about music. I think it’s going to be extremely interesting, and probably gratifying.

I’m having weird sinus stuff in my head today – well, since last night. I guess pain is the correct word for it. I rarely get headaches of any sort, so when I get weirdly intense, pressure-based ones deep in the center of my head, my first thought is always that a tumor is growing. But some sort of more rational voice (a voice I rarely ever listen to, so I usually don’t give credence to it) is telling me that it’s more likely all this relentless rain and humidity over the last 5 days that’s causing it.

Whichever: Life-threatening tumor or sinus headache; all I know is that my brain is functioning at less than ideal capacity this morning.

I wasn’t even going to blog today. I was going to save my creative brainstuff for the novel, since the writing went so well yesterday. But it seems that I have to get this stream of other words out first, before the Voice from the novel kicks in.

On Instagram yesterday morning, Dana Petty posted the most amazing photo of Tom that I had ever seen. And he was a man who had thousands and thousands and thousands of pictures taken of him in the course of his 66 years of life. And this one was simply unbelievable to me.

He looked like a Spirit. He truly did. Like a luminous Spirit. It was taken by Dana in a hotel room in Amsterdam a few years ago. It’s actually his reflection in an enormous mirror, while he’s sitting on the end of a king-sized bed. It looks like it’s the middle of the day. He seems to be intently watching an old black & white movie on a television that seems to be just a little bit above the mirror. It’s hard to figure out in the photo because the TV is reflected on something above and behind him. The whole thing is just ghostly, really.

He looks larger than life and yet not even part of life at the same time. I couldn’t stop looking at it. All day long, I would go back onto Instagram and look at it – pondering it to no end.

It’s weird to think that I was actually a lot taller than he was, because, in my mind, he really was larger than life. All those rock & rollers from my girlhood that I absolutely worshiped – it turned out that I was a lot taller than all of them. Even when I wasn’t wearing heels, and I’m definitely a gal who likes to wear heels of some sort.

Even Cher, who I’d loved since I was about 5 years old – I thought of her as being the tallest woman ever. And I wound up towering over her, too. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, too. A woman of mythical proportions, frankly. And she was just a wisp of a woman.

It does weird things to you, when you’re just towering over all these people who, in your private mind, should have been enormous.

Robert Redford. I mean, my gosh. I never worshiped him, or anything close to that, but he was iconic. An iconic actor from my girlhood! And I totally towered over that guy, to the point that I felt like I needed to back away. I simply didn’t want to know that I was way too tall to be standing next to him in public. And I wasn’t wearing heels, either. And I really don’t think of myself as that tall. It was too freaky.

Thank goodness Keanu was taller than me – even when I was wearing high-heels. I met him at a party once and he was taller than me. Even though Keanu doesn’t actually mean anything to me, personally or emotionally; for some inexplicable reason, I just don’t want to be taller than Keanu.

This height thing I have is also why it’s been impossible for me to ever have any sort of “kittenish” demeanor, you know? Especially when I’m wearing heels. I’m always greeted more, like: Oh god, here comes trouble.

Many’s the time, folks, that I’ve wished I could be greeted more as “kittenish.” For sure. (Of course, part of it is my mouth; no one ever knows when I’ll be in a foul mood and cursing like a sailor. I have a real problem with the “f” word, even on a good day.)

Well!

In addition to the music material being really incredible yesterday, the Italian lessons went up a notch, too. So that was cool. They are no longer just throwing words at me, with the occasional phrases. They are sneaking grammar in now, too.

I’m glad that I already did study some Italian a long time ago, and of course, I’m relying a lot on my knowledge of French, too, so none of this is too difficult. Yet. And so it keeps it really fun. It’s not stressing me out, at all.

Which is good, because I have no shortage of areas within my life that heap stress on me if I so desire them to! At any given moment of any given hour of any given day! Or night!

Plenty-O-Stress, if I want it!

And I really do want to learn Italian this time around. It’s funny, but it occurred to me recently that the reason I was trying to learn Italian 35 years ago was because Peitor and I had become friends and he wanted me to go to Italy with him. But I gave up on Italian very early on because I found it too difficult.

(And yet I taught myself to read, write, and speak Mandarin Chinese, so that’s really weird, right? Who the hell knows what goes on in a brain – mine, specifically.)

When Peitor and I met, it was one of those things where we became instant friends – and very good friends. And, obviously, true friends since it is now 35 years later and we couldn’t be closer. We bonded immediately, and not in any sort of amorous way. We came to the conclusion that we were likely brother and sister in another life, since there is no erotic attraction between us at all, but we’ve been incredibly close since the absolute moment we met.

Anyway, all these decades later, I will likely be going to Italy now because of him but not with him, and I’ll be speaking Italian. Isn’t life strange?

Okay.

On that oft-regaled topic here of Nick Cave’s Conversations in Europe… He was in Belgium last night. For 3 hours. Well, on stage for 3 hours. I’m guessing he was in Belgium a little longer than that, but I guess if all these people are right, and he is actually God, then maybe he’s good at teleporting or something.

HIM (as God): Into Belgium, out of Belgium, 3 hours, total.

I really just don’t know.

I do keep pondering this, though. Because so many people – in Europe, especially – refer to him in some way as God.

I woke up at 3:56am today and my first thought – aside from the aching headache that plagued me with fears of tumors – my first thought was: Does he want to be thought of as God? On some level? Maybe he is subconsciously perpetuating this idea. I don’t know. I don’t think so, but I don’t actually know.

And I don’t actually know that he isn’t God. I have no ready proof, or anything. But I just keep coming back to this thought that he’s not God. And why would he want to be? It seems like it would surely be hard enough just being Nick Cave. (Or beautiful enough.) (And you are not the only ones I pester with these questions, gentle readers. I pester him with these questions, too. I leave no stone unturned in my ponderings.)

However, that said. Someone posted another fantastic photo of him last night, again in black & white. And just beautiful. But most of the postings were in Dutch so I have no clue what anybody said, except for the “3+ hours” part that he was on stage. That was in English.

All righty!!

I’m gonna take a look at Blessed By Light now. See where we’re going with that. And I hope this headache just goes the fuck away because all I really want to do is go right back to bed.

I didn’t have any breakfast-listening music today because of the headache, but I did have staring-out-the-open-window music from last night. Another true gem (excuse the pun) from The Last DJ: “Like A Diamond.” I streamed it about 20 times before drifting off to sleep.

And based on that ghostly photo of him that plagued me all day yesterday, it was a fitting end to the evening. It’s such a haunting sort of song about, well, not dying. Ever.

Have a good Thursday, wherever you are in the world, gang. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys! See ya.

Madmen crawl
Across the wall
Knight gets away
Kings all fall
And queens chase men
And saints all sin
And good things
All must end

But she goes on forever
She goes on forever
Yeah, she’s gonna shine forever
Like a diamond
In the sunlight

Big full moon
Above the road
I’m a long long way
From tomorrow
Gotta light my way
Down this highway
To get to her

‘Cause she goes on forever
She goes on forever
Yeah, she’s gonna shine forever
Like a diamond
In the sunlight

Deacons steal
And Ma can’t feel
If you’re lonely
And behind the wheel
When the ground gives way
You have to pray
To the unknown
And hope it’s real

But she goes on forever
She goes on forever
She’s gonna shine forever

She goes on forever
She goes on forever
Yeah, she’s gonna shine forever
Like a diamond
In the sunlight

c – 2002 Tom Petty

Me, again! Getting My Sh*t Together!!

May 29, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I forgot to mention in my post last night that if you’re on your phone and you want to view the photo gallery of Villa Monte Malbe, where the writer’s retreat will be held, you have to turn your phone sideways. The photos are down below the song lyrics.

My life got a lot better as the evening wore on, btw. Or at least more interesting.

Sandra eventually called and we spoke for about an hour. I can’t really post to my blog the details of what she said, but I’m still not sure if rehearsals for the play are being moved up to July or not. It sounds like there is a very good chance that they are, though. I still have to hear from the director.

But this of course means that I have to finish Blessed By Light really soon. Like, posthaste. This also means that frustrating days like yesterday simply have to stop.

I wrote 2 fucking words yesterday.

But part of that is because I’m starting to stress a little about the play (as well as the other play I’m writing with Sandra), and up until yesterday, I was getting good at keeping each project sort of “compartmentalized” in my brain and not letting them bleed into each other.

However, now I feel like all my projects are starting to look like this in my brain (I’m the strong, capable gal in the middle, soon to be eaten alive by all her thoughts):

This sort of reminds me that, lately, I’ve been missing my furry little boy like crazy. He died 2 months ago, already. The time just flies. I can’t believe it.

This morning, when I awoke, I truly thought I felt him jump up onto the bed to visit me. I turned and said, “Hi!” but there wasn’t any cat there. It was so strange. I mean, it really felt like he was physically there.

It makes me want to cry, but, you know, that doesn’t solve anything. So on we go.

After the phone call from Sandra, I worked on the new music material for teaching that guy piano, and the material is starting to go into some very interesting places. They throw out anything you ever knew about Theory & Composition (yay!), and simply distill music down to 7 notes. (I’m paraphrasing, but not by much.)

I can readily see, from what I’m learning, that if this guy who wants to learn piano, really has music in his head, then he’s going to be playing piano really quickly. He’s not going to have to get bogged down in all the stuff that I got bogged down in straight out of the gate.

I’m not going to waste time regretting anything I learned, especially since I’m still alive and can still learn this new stuff and have a new approach to music myself, even after all these decades. But it sure does feel like I wasted a lot of time on that piano, when it could have been so much more productive for me. Because ALL I had was music and rhythm in my head. And ALL of it wanted to get out. I did not understand what any of what I felt inside had to do with Bach or any of those others.

By the time I was 14, I had maybe written 3 songs on the piano, but I had written about a hundred already on my guitar. Complete songs, too: Verse/chorus, verse/chorus, bridge/chorus/out. I had a 3-ring notebook full of completed songs. Because on guitar, I was not bogged down by Theory & Composition in any way. For me, guitar was all about the rhythm and that facilitated the melodies and then the lyrics sort of cascaded down and attached themselves to the notes, you know?

I once turned in a song as an English assignment in 7th grade, and my teacher really liked it. And he said, “Do you write a lot of songs?” And when I told him about my 3-ring notebook, he asked if he could see it and then was sort astounded by it. The size & scope of it. I could not stop writing songs if I tried.

He was a published poet, with a PhD., and after seeing that notebook, he would spend time after class with me, helping me learn how to write poems, which in turn helped me gain clarity in lyric writing overnight. I had access to truly wonderful teachers, so it wasn’t that people didn’t care about my talent.

My songs were my whole life, though, whereas the piano had become the sort of underlying nightmare of my life. I knew how to play what they wanted me to play. And I knew how to deliver to them what they wanted to hear- tone, nuance, syncopation, feeling; but it in no way spoke to the music that was going on inside me. And I couldn’t understand why it didn’t connect, because I loved the piano, but it became a very stressful, frightening thing to me. It truly did.

And I see now that this current approach to music that I’m learning in order to try to help this other guy learn — it would have saved me 45 years ago. My stress-load would have disappeared. (Well, with that, and if those boys at the high school would have stopped raping me for 5 minutes…)

However! If wishes were horses…. (Yes! Then this would’ve been me! Prairie Rose! Lady Champion Rider!!) All right!

Meanwhile, on Earth…

I better get started on the novel here, gang. It’s gonna be July in a heart beat! I’m hopeful that I’ll get more than 2 words written today.

Tonight Nick Cave is having another Conversation somewhere in Europe, but in a truly odd turn of events, I can’t recall where!! I guess I finally have too much on my fucking mind… I’m sure it’s gonna be great, though. (And I’ll be darned if yet another person from the Netherlands didn’t post another photo on Instagram yesterday, calling him God….) (Wouldn’t it be funny, though, if, you know, it turned out I was wrong?? And he was God?? I guess I’d have to eat my hat. ) (I’d have to find it first…)

Okay! More coffee is on my immediate horizon! I’m gonna go grab it and get to work here.

I hope you have a really good day out there, gang. Wherever you are in the world and with whatever it is that is currently occupying you!

I leave you with this! It was my pre-breakfast-listening music today. I listened to it while feeding the cats. But then realized that the musicians who live next door to me were either awake very early or hadn’t been to sleep yet (Methinks the latter!), and they were out on their porch, smoking at 5am. And I didn’t want to annoy them so early in the morning with my music wafting through the open windows… (Although they play death metal and practice out in their garage and are pretty much the champions at annoying people with their music.) (Although they don’t annoy me. I honestly love living next door to them and listening to them practice because they remind me of my fair & bonny girlhood as a musician in NYC and all those wonderful cigarette-smoking musician guys – and I mean that truly, in the nicest way.)

But I leave you with this. A different song about boys, and summer, and everything that they can’t deal with anymore! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya.

She grew up in an Indiana town
Had a good-lookin’ mama who never was around
But she grew up tall and she grew up right
With them Indiana boys on them Indiana nights

Well, she moved down here at the age of eighteen
She blew the boys away, was more than they’d seen
I was introduced and we both started groovin’
She said, “I dig you baby, but I got to keep movin’ on
Keep movin’ on”

Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again

Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told
You never slow down, you never grow old
I’m tired of screwin’ up, tired of going down
Tired of myself, tired of this town

Oh, my my, oh, hell yes
Honey, put on that party dress
Buy me a drink, sing me a song
Take me as I come ’cause I can’t stay long

Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again

There’s pigeons down on Market Square
She’s standin’ in her underwear
Lookin’ down from a hotel room
Nightfall will be comin’ soon

Oh, my my, oh, hell yes.
You got to put on that party dress
It was too cold to cry when I woke up alone
I hit my last number and walked to the road

Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again

c- 1993 Tom Petty

Summer Can Officially Begin

May 28, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

It only took about 5 hours, but I got it all done.

The mayor came by and posed for pictures on my leafless front walk and, frankly, the whole village was astir. They had forgotten what my sidewalk actually looked like under all those piles of dead leaves. They decided to take some of those photos of the mayor on my leafless front walk and seal it in a time capsule that they then buried on the grounds behind the old abandoned elementary school.

Just kidding, of course. But it sure does look a lot nicer out there. And the statue of St. Francis looks delighted to be surrounded by blossoms again.

And it didn’t rain again until long after dark.

In fact, it was the most perfect evening.

A couple weeks ago, I posted the cover art for one of my books-in-progress, Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. The original photo for the cover was taken from my bedroom window at night – the window right across from my bed.

The photo was taken in late fall, just as a train was arriving. Since it was fall, though, it doesn’t capture how it feels to be hidden behind all of those amazing green leaves that are out there now, but you get the idea, I hope.

The streets are usually just incredibly quiet in the evening. Except when suddenly a freight train goes barreling past with its whistle screaming. (My whole house shakes then. It can be kind of frightening but I still just love that train.)

And I also just love to lie across my bed in the dark and listen to music and stare out my open window at that view. It’s kind of ancient, you know? The village is nearly 200 years old, and it’s surrounded by old burial grounds that are a couple thousand years old. From before the Native Indians were even here. There’s a feeling, a spirit, that comes through my open windows at night that is palpable. It really is.

It’s sort of an erotic feeling, but then, apparently everything in the known universe is erotic to me. (And I’m guessing that the unknown universe — once I get to know that, too — is going to feel off the charts for me.)

Yes, it’s safe to say that God, Himself, is erotic to me. It started when I was a little girl. He was all I had, really. I knew I had “real” parents out in the world somewhere, and I missed them terribly. Throughout my whole childhood. And in their absence, the feeling I clung to instead was God. He became everything to me, and, to my mind, everything I felt or thought about was just naturally part of Him.

Anyway. I digress.

Last evening was just beautiful. While I was working on that new teaching material on my guitar, and marveling at how ethereal those new Black Diamond strings sounded, it made me think of Tom Petty’s song, “Dreamville,” and I got sort of dreamy myself.

I eventually put the guitar down and called it a night, even though it was still light out. It’s at that point in the year where it stays light out now until about 9:30pm. I laid across my bed, stared out at those empty streets that are so oddly filled – to overflowing – with life. And I streamed “Dreamville” repeatedly until, yes, long after dark.

As I was listening, it occurred to me that it was the last time Tom Petty had that “young Tom Petty” quality to his voice. Even though he was already 52 when he wrote that song, and on the rest of the songs on that album (The Last DJ) he has his older Tom Petty voice. For some reason, his youth is captured once again in that specific song. And it never was again. I’m guessing it’s because the song is such an exquisite song about his childhood.

I was just in a trance, you know? For a couple of hours. Life just felt so intensely beautiful: the here & now; whatever’s coming; and all the beauty that came and passed. All of it together – I could feel it in the night outside my window. And I was so grateful for all of it. Even the “Tom Petty being dead now” stuff – I was just grateful last night that he had lived.

Shortly after I fell asleep, the rains came like crazy. Thunder, lightning, the works. It woke me, of course. I had all the windows in the house still wide open and I just didn’t care to get up and close any of them. It was just too perfect, being alive in all of that “God-stuff.” So wild & joyful.

Okay. It’s sunny here right now, but more rain is heading our way. (Oh, somebody took the most amazing photo of Nick Cave in the Netherlands last night. They posted it in black & white but it was still incredible. He was just standing there, listening, looking up at a guy who was asking him a question. It was kind of frustrating that I could only view it on my phone, because it was really a stunning shot.)

I’m guessing I’m just going to hang out all day at the desk and work on Blessed By Light, especially since I now might need to have it done & off by July… But I don’t want to stress. I just want to let life come, however it chooses to come. Thanks for visiting, gang. Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever it finds you! I love you guys. See ya.

“Dreamville”

Goin’ down to Lillian’s music store
To buy a black diamond string
Gonna wind it up on my guitar
Gonna make that silver sing

Like it was Dreamville
A long time ago
A million miles away
All the trees were green
In Dreamville

I keep wakin’ up all by myself
With a bluejay in my brain
Flappin’ his wings, makin’ me sing
It was just about to rain

Like it was Dreamville
Where I was born
Light years from here
And the air smelled good
In Dreamville

Like it was Dreamville
A long time ago
Light years from here
And the trees were green
In Dreamville

Ridin’ with my mamma
To Glen Springs Pool
The water was cold
My lips were blue
There was rock and roll
Across the dial
When I think of her
It makes me smile

Like it was Dreamville
A long time ago
A million miles away
All the trees were green
In Dreamville, in Dreamville

Yeah it was Dreamville
A long time ago
Light years from here
And the air smelled good
In Dreamville, in Dreamville

c – 2002 Tom Petty

It’s Just that Kind of Morning Around Here!!

May 27, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I’m brimming with way too many feelings today, gang!

The good news, though, is that we have a wonderful little reprieve here in the weather! It’s not going to rain again until later this evening. So I awoke to a glorious spring day!

However, I overslept, and woke to that glorious spring day a couple of hours later than I would have preferred, so I feel like half my day’s gone.

I was lazy again yesterday and didn’t do yoga, even though my body was starting to scream for it. Instead, I opted for the shortcut and decided to take Ibuprofen, and I forgot that those pills make me super sleepy. So I overslept today because I was lazy yesterday and so I awoke not super happy with myself for some of those choices I made yesterday, however…

We’re not gonna look back, are we? No! We’re moving ahead!

We have many little flowers to plant today in the pretty sunshine!!!

But this means that I have to go into my barn to get my flower boxes out, and I now have Virginia creeper growing all over that fucking barn door. So I have to deal with that today, too, without winding up in the Emergency Room because of exposure to Virginia creeper, which I am deathly allergic too. We’ll see how that goes.

This whole “Virginia creeper on the fucking barn door” thing makes me so angry. I’m just so fed up with that gigantic fallen oak tree out there by my barn that still hasn’t been hauled away.

I cannot tell you how many people have promised to come out here with a chainsaw and a truck and haul that enormous dead tree away. The tree fell over a few years before I even bought this house. The fallen tree is the reason why I need a new roof on my barn. And everyone I’ve talked to since even before buying the house who has promised to come take care of hauling that dead tree away has not done it.

It makes it really difficult to get in and out of the barn, or to deal with trying to replace the roof. And worse yet, that old dead oak tree positively loves Virginia creeper. It’s a veritable Virginia creeper magnet.

The tree is actually in segments, but each segment is about as big as a house. So it’s in a massive pile. It’s hard enough to maneuver around it when it’s not covered in Virginia creeper. However, it is indeed covered in Virginia creeper. Already. And it’s still only May.

So I look out my kitchen window, at the glorious spring morning, several hours later than I had hoped to be looking out at it because I was lazy yesterday, and I know I want to get my flower boxes out of that barn that I can readily see from my kitchen window and then I see all that fucking Virginia creeper all over my barn door, and I just get so fucking frustrated with all of humanity for LYING to me all the time!!

Come get this fucking tree already, you know??

And then yesterday evening, two separate things happened, both indirectly relating to my play Tell My Bones that could cause me to be in rehearsals for it as early as July.

Which, on the one hand, seems like a good thing! But I’m trying to finish writing this novel! I seriously want it done and off to the publisher before I have to focus on Tell My Bones.

And if we’re going to be getting this far ahead of schedule on the rehearsals, does this mean that in September, when I’ll be merrily following Nick Cave hither and yon all over Manhattan, that I will actually already be up to my eyeballs in the staged readings that will need 200 million % of my concentration??!! Please don’t tell me this!

And then Peitor texts me, bright & early. He’s now sequestered in that amazing little Airbnb on the English Channel! He has texted charming photos!! With stunning vistas! When can we get some work done on the scripts??!!

It all makes me just want to lean over and smack my forehead repeatedly on my desk and I’ve only been awake for an hour and a half!

And there you have it. My morning thus far.

So.

People in Amsterdam prefer not to post to Instagram in English. So I can’t guarantee you that everyone loved the Conversation with Nick Cave that happened there last night, but the photos have all the earmarks of people loving it.

He might have actually sang T.Rex’s Cosmic Dancer last night! But don’t quote me on that. The bunch of words that came before “T.Rex’s Cosmic Dancer” and the bunch of words that came after it in the Instagram post, were in a language I don’t understand. So they might have actually said, “I was so angry when he didn’t sing T.Rex’s Cosmic Dancer, that I left in a huff and will never go see him again.”

However, I’m guessing probably not.

The only thing that I saw posted in English was somebody saying that “God was in the house”.

[UPDATE: In a weird twist, I see that Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files newsletter today deals with God’s voice! I haven’t read it yet, though…]

This is of course a play on words, because Nick Cave wrote a truly amazing song called, “God is in the House.” And a lot of people also literally call Nick Cave, “God.”

I am indeed one of those people who thinks that the song “God is in the House,” is a real jaw-dropping song, no matter how many times I hear it. However, I am not one of those people who thinks Nick Cave is God.

I don’t even know what that word “God” means anymore, you know? I truly don’t. I did when I was a little girl. God was everything to me and I clung to Him and He somehow managed to help me survive years of terrifying abuse. And certainly during the first suicide attempt when I was 14, when people were fighting to save my life, He told me – maybe not in words but in a language I definitely understood was coming from God – to go back down there and stick it out, because it was eventually gonna end well. That it was gonna be worth it and I was gonna want to be there for that.

I don’t really know that God anymore. That voice is sort of distant to me, now. I hear God now as a sort of continually creating energy, that is always delivering more, more, more, and then still more, and more and more. As in: Here, this is Life, and I have a limitless supply of it. Make of it what you will.

I am willing to grant Nick Cave a lowercase “g,” you know? “Little god” among half-formed men. But, frankly, the words I would rather use to describe him are so much more magnificent than that because he is human. And seeing him in all of his humanness only heightens how extraordinary he actually is. To call him God, misses all of that, but to call him a “man” brings everything remarkable about him into tight focus.

For me, anyway.

Okay. I really, really gotta get going here, gang. The many tiny flowers await me!! And many dead leaves are begging to be raked and put into those handy dead-leaf bags! And patio furniture wants to be hosed down. And citronella candles want to be placed merrily about! So I’m gonna get started on that.

I leave you with breakfast-listening music from this morning. I went back to Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers’ Nobody’s Children. All the sort of naughty little songs that make me feel frisky!! Thanks for visiting. I love you guys! See ya!

WAYS TO BE WICKED

Honey tell me why you smile
When you see me hurt so bad
Tell me what I did to you babe
That could make you act like that
Yes I’ve been your fool before babe
And I probably will again
She ain’t afraid to let me have it
You ain’t afraid to stick it in
Yeah you know so many ways to be wicked
But you don’t know one little thing about love

Yeah I can take a little pain
I could hold it pretty well
I can watch your little eyes light up
When you’re walkin’ me through hell
Yes I’ve been your fool before, babe
And I probably will again
She ain’t afraid to let me have it
You ain’t afraid to stick it in

Yeah you know so many ways to be wicked

But you don’t know one little thing about love

Yeah those cobra eyes
Light with a smile
You take pride
In that devil down inside

I can take a little pain
I can hold it pretty well
I can watch your little eyes light up
When you’re walkin’ me through hell
Yeah I’ve been your fool before babe
And I probably will again
No you ain’t afraid to let me have it
Honey you ain’t afraid to stick it in

You know so many ways to be wicked
But you don’t know one little thing about love

c- 1985 Tom Petty & Mike Campbell

And Then The Rains Came!

May 26, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

For some reason, I had no clue that it was supposed to rain for about 5 days straight and that the holiday weekend was going to be a bit of a washout.

As I was lying in bed this morning, staring out at my tree and the general “weather” beyond it, I was thinking about my mind and how curiously it works. For instance, I knew right away that there was going to be a Conversation with Nick Cave tonight in the Netherlands. And tomorrow night, too. And I realized that I basically know where he’s going to be on any given evening for the rest of the fucking year, but I have no clue what the weather is going to be just on the other side of these windows, ever.

And it’s always right there on my phone, too, you know: Here’s the weather!! This is what it’s gonna be!! Look over here!! Here we are!! We’re telling you everything you need to know about planning your holiday weekend!!

Plus, when I drove into town the other day to buy food — that absolutely gorgeous spring day — I was right next to the place where I buy all my plants and gardening stuff and plant food and everything. It was all right there. On that gorgeous spring day. I was looking right at it. And I even saw that everything was on sale.

But I thought: No! I must return to my desk and stare at my laptop screen!!

And so I assured all those lovely little flowers: “Don’t worry! I’ll be back! When the sky is black and the rains come! In the lightning and torrential downpour! In the high winds! Then and only then will I return!”

I can still plant my flowers, because I don’t plant them in the ground; I plant them in flower boxes and put them out on my porches all summer. But I’m sure as heck not gonna rake leaves in the rain. I can’t even be bothered to do it in the best of weather…

And even I can see that this stupid dead leaf thing is getting ridiculous.

I want my house to look pretty; I really do. And I hate to resort to just asking the lawn care guys to do it, because I know I’m perfectly capable of raking a bunch of (practically weightless when they’re dry) dead leaves. And what I cannot do is manage the backyard. It’s way too big and it’s full of Virginia creeper, which I’m deathly allergic to.

I guess we’ll just see how everything plays out. There is only so much I’m willing to worry about on any given day, you know? And those darn leaves are just not gonna be one of those things.

The things I am willing to worry about are:

A.) the Black Diamond guitar strings did indeed arrive. They are on top of my dresser along with the little pair of wire clippers, and the guitar is right here in my room, too. The only thing missing from that tableau is me, changing the fucking strings. I’ve somehow decided that I don’t have time to do this. What an erroneous, weird thing to think.

B.) I realized I’ve only done yoga maybe 5 times this whole month and that’s not a good thing; my joints start to scream at me. I have to stop just constantly, constantly, constantly sitting at my desk. I have to figure out how to finish writing this novel before August and still have some sort of quality of life here.

Those are the 2 things I’m willing to worry at least a little bit about. Because, honestly, my life is just really wonderful these days.

[UPDATE: Several hours later. Consider it strung! ]

Okay! I think I’m gonna go hang out on the bed for a little bit and watch it rain and just drink my coffee. And just sort of get ready for a wonderful rainy day.

(And I’m gonna be very curious to see those Instagram photos out of the Netherlands tonight. You know, has Nick Cave gone through some sort of epiphany that has completely altered him? Or was it just something about Luxembourg itself? Obviously I don’t know, but he did look transformed. Really. I’m not exaggerating (for a change). He looked like 20 years of worry or something had melted off of him. He just seemed so different. And not only how he looked, but also that part where he had that guy from the audience sit next to him on the piano bench – he looked really happy there. And then he also sat down right at the edge of the stage at one point. Yes – in that same suit that I refuse to fixate on anymore. He sat down on the edge of the stage and was just talking to the people who were sitting right there in front of him. Then he seems to have gone right down among them to give someone specific a hug. Indeed, the wonderful people in Luxembourg gave me a ton of cool photos to ponder, that’s for sure.)

All right, then. I leave you with my breakfast-listening music from this morning. I’ve been thinking a lot about my family since yesterday’s post – that particular part of my birth family came here from Germany in the mid-1700s and settled in Kentucky. They actually settled specific parts of eastern Kentucky. They were well-known pioneers who worked alongside Daniel Boone to settle Kentucky. They are in the history books.

And even though I love NYC – just adore it – it wasn’t until I moved out here to the middle of absolute nowhere, to the wilds of Muskingum County, that I finally felt like I was home. Okay. Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya.

Decoration Day

May 25, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

When I was growing up, Memorial Day was more commonly called “Decoration Day,” because you went to the cemetery and decorated the graves of those in your family who had died in a war.

That photo above there is of my birth father, on leave from the Navy in 1965. He’s the one in the glasses, smoking a cigarette.

He didn’t die in a war. He died at 53, from cancer caused by Agent Orange, which he was exposed to repeatedly in Vietnam.

He was in the Navy for 20 years, from the time he was 17, and he was an active SEAL for most of that time. He spent a lot of time in Vietnam and had some very serious drug and alcohol problems because of everything that happened to him there. (Meaning, he eventually had a hard time coping with all the people he had killed, and he felt that he had killed them, basically, for no reason at all.)

He’s 20 years old in that photo. I was 5 by then and living in Cleveland. He didn’t know I even existed until I was 28 years old. It’s sufficient to say that he was really angry, just heartbroken, that no one had told him that I had ever even been born. He didn’t find out about me until I was completely grown. It killed him that he had totally missed my childhood.

However. In an interesting twist of fate…

When he first got into the Navy, when he was still in his late teens, my dad was stationed in the Philippines and one day, outside a bar that was frequented by American sailors, he found a tiny baby girl in a trash can – still alive. She’d been abandoned. He took the baby to an old, retired prostitute and he sent that woman money every month, to take care of the baby. And he did that until the “baby” was 18 years old. He knew that the little girl had survived, but after she turned 18, he didn’t keep in touch with that old woman anymore and did not know what became of the girl.

Even though my dad was only 15 when I was born, he was already in jail in Ross County, doing 6 months for stealing from a store. When he got out, he went to North Carolina to live with his older sister, my Aunt Jo, pictured there above, sitting in the doorway of her trailer home. She helped my dad get his criminal record cleared so that he could join the Navy when he was 17.

My Uncle Ralph is playing the guitar in that photo. My dad also played guitar and sang and wrote songs. But my Uncle Ralph became professional at it, went to Nashville and worked steadily with Tammy Wynette and George Jones, and a bunch of other really famous Country & Western greats. He eventually had his own band and had a couple of hits on the Country charts.

My Uncle Ralph is the only one in my dad’s family who’s still alive. Here’s a photo of my grandpa (my dad’s dad) and my Aunt Bobby Jean and my Uncle Earl. This is back when they all still lived in eastern Kentucky, in the early 1940s, before my dad or my Uncle Ralph were born. They’re all dead now.

My grandpa is the one in the overalls. They’re all sitting on the bumper of his old truck.

My grandpa was a horse trainer and a farmer, and he also played guitar and sang and hung out in bars and got really drunk. He died young from liver problems.

Here is a photo of my great grandpa. He’s the one standing on the top right. He is with all of his brothers – my great-uncles. My great-grandpa, Ashbel, was an Attorney General for the State of Kentucky. I don’t know if he played guitar or sang, but he definitely did not hang out in bars and get drunk…

My great-grandpa and his brothers, in Kentucky.

And here is my great-great-grandpa. He was a Kentucky State Senator. Kentucky was a split State, meaning that some of the State fought on the side of the Union, and some on the side of the Confederates during the Civil War. My great-great-grandpa was a Confederate, an absolute Rebel, through and through.

He died in the Battle of Cynthiana, during the Civil War, and this is a postcard of the monument that honors the soldiers who fell in that battle. His grave is marked by one of those little white gravestones in that circle. He’s actually buried there.

The Battle of Cynthiana War Memorial, Cynthiana, Kentucky

They were the nicest family, ever. And once they found out about me, they never once treated me like I was illegitimate or anything. They were all singers, songwriters, guitar players. My dad, in particular, thought I was a great songwriter and wanted me to leave NYC and go to Nashville, where I had family in the music business. But I didn’t. I certainly had a TON of country influences in my songs, but my songs were still more folk than country.

My name was Dory when I was born, btw.

My adoptive family changed my name to “Marilyn Joy.” (Even though my legal name is now regarded as Marilyn Jaye, it’s actually Marilyn Joy.)

So that’s that, as they say.

In an unrelated topic….

I don’t know what it is about Luxembourg, but, man, does that seem like it was a great show last night. I’m so serious. And, as you know, I have seen every single photo from the Conversations with Nick Cave that have been taken this year & posted to Instagram, and the photos on Instagram from the show last night are remarkably different.

You can feel it coming through the photos, you can hear it in Nick Cave’s voice in the (really short!!) video clips posted there, too.

I don’t know what happened there last night, what the difference was, but it seems like it was magical. Honestly. I’m not just saying that. The best photos so far definitely came from Luxembourg last night.

Oh, and at one point a guy from the audience was actually sharing the piano bench with him! Sitting next to Nick Cave, while he was singing “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry.” (Which sounded really great with just him and the piano.)

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that the seat I was hoping to get at the show in Town Hall in NYC was “next to him on the piano bench” but I was truly just joking. So when I saw that photo last night, I was sort of alarmed, you know? I had no idea that kind of thing really happened.

Anyway. It was just amazing, palpable. It has to have been just an incredible show.

Okay, let’s get that holiday happening here, gang! (You’re probably completely astounded to learn that I will spend most of my holiday at my desk, writing! But eventually, I’ll go out and buy all the flowers, soil, etc., wash down the patio furniture that’s out on the porch, and get that all happening. And, yes, I will finally rake up all those darn dead leaves from the fall…) (I’m sure all my neighbors will be glued to their windows, saying: “Come look! She’s finally fucking doing it!!”)

If you live in the United States, have a great holiday. Otherwise, have a wonderful Saturday, wherever you are in the world. I did not listen to any music during breakfast today, for some reason. I guess I was just digging the bird songs! But thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya.

PS: A happy belated birthday to Bob Dylan. He turned 117 years old yesterday. Something like that… He’s pictured here with Tom Petty in the mid-1980s, from that period when Tom and the Heartbreakers agreed to be his backup band and go on tour with him.

Of course, I adore Bob Dylan. And have since I was a young girl, just learning how to play guitar and to write songs. And he was one of the main reasons I wound up going to Greenwich Village and being a folk singer. But I loved him even more when I read his statement to the press after Tom died: “It’s shocking , crushing news. I thought the world of Tom. He was a great performer, full of the light, a friend, and I’ll never forget him.” Okay, gang. See ya.

Lucky Lady, Indeed!

May 24, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Wow, you know, except for the fact that she slept in some sort of fur stole (yes, I know – it’s a bed jacket), I wouldn’t mind being this lucky lady! Red roses while you’re still in bed?! That’s gotta be awesome.

For some reason, I have been fixating on long-stemmed red roses a lot lately. I have no idea why.

I love flowers. Plenty of men have given me flowers over the years. And my 2nd husband was amazing about that – he brought me flowers all the time. I’ve even received a lot of roses, but never long-stemmed red ones.

And I’ve gotten it in my head now that I really want these. I really do. And I don’t want to buy them for myself, or anything. Sometimes even I get really tired of being so capable. But apparently I don’t inspire this kind of idea in men.

I’m not sure what kinds of ideas I inspire in men. I’m not being coy there, either. I mean, obviously, I know some of the ideas but except for that cute electrician back in the fall – the one who was 20 years younger than me and who was thoughtful enough to assure me that I didn’t look nearly as old as I was – men don’t follow up on what they’re clearly thinking about.

And as far as that electrician – if he hadn’t shown me photos on his phone of his infant daughter and her mom only moments before hitting on me, I might have been more inclined to pursue it.

But I still think it comes down to this overwhelming (and often annoying) sort of personality that I have, plus I don’t know how to be coy. I just don’t know how to do that. I’m usually very upfront. I say what I mean, or I don’t say anything at all. And I think it throws people.

A really nice man I know, that I know is very attracted to me – a lot older than me, very wealthy, his wife recently died after a very long illness. He asked me recently how I liked living out in the country and I told him that it was fantastic. So quiet. So peaceful. And he then said that maybe he should try it; that maybe he should move out to the country and live with me.

I told him, point blank: “You can move in with me. I’ve got plenty of room. You want to?”

And I was totally serious. I don’t believe he would want to live with me, or want to stay if he did move in. I’m unbelievably intensely intense. Not many people in their right minds have pursued that idea of living with me. Nevertheless, I was serious.

And the look on his face. It was like deep in the recesses of his brain, the gates of heaven swung open. Clearly, he couldn’t believe his ears. I know he was thinking that he really, really wanted to do that. To live with me.

And I waited for his answer, but I’m not gonna ask twice, you know? It would look like I’m begging and I just don’t do that.

Well, I’ve got a list of men that I’m willing to beg, but it’s a really short list.

Anyway. The man was just tongue-tied. And I know he thought I was teasing him, but I actually wasn’t. I was deadly serious, but he was completely thrown by it and wouldn’t answer so I sort of said, “Okay. See ya.”

I think I have a sort of weird approach to relationships that, for some reason, confuses people when I think I’m being totally upfront. Or it makes them see me in that self-sufficient way that plagues me – a way that doesn’t inspire a dozen long-stemmed red roses, that’s for sure.

Even though the years are rapidly gaining on me – they are barreling at me now at quite a clip – I’m not officially dead yet, so I’m hopeful that there’s still some sort of amazing future ahead of me where some sort of amazing guy finally decides to buy me long-stemmed red roses. We’ll find out.

On a thoroughly unrelated note…

I awoke at 4:06am today because Peitor texted me from England. My ringer was off, but I think I awoke because I felt him psychically or something. (I had texted him last night, knowing full well it was the middle of the night in London, so then he texted me back, knowing full well it was the middle of the night in Crazeysburg.)

Anyway, I was awake then. And the very first bird of the morning began to sing. It was another one of those amazing mornings, where all the windows were open and this light breeze was filling the whole house. The only sound in the world was that one bird singing. One of the cats was sitting in one of the windows, listening to it. I think it was Doris, but it was too dark to really see her.

And once again, I was absolutely filled with Eros, you know? It was incredible. It’s happening every morning now. I laid there and tried to sort of study that feeling, because, for the most part, my body and my mind were really quiet. I had just woken up. It was like my body wasn’t even really there yet; it was as if I consisted of this wave of Eros and nothing else.

It felt like there was a sort of cord, or current of erotic energy running between my mind and, well, that whole area between my legs. It was quite pronounced, this current of energy. And I thought it was so interesting, that it wasn’t just down there in that one place. It was definitely flowing between my mind and between my legs.

And the more I observed it, the more it sort of overtook me. It was so beautiful. And I know for sure that I have never felt anything like it before. And I do not know where this energy is coming from. It just envelops me. I didn’t want to, you know, pursue it because I was still sleepy, plus I had all those cats in the room, looking at me. Even though it was still dark, they make me a little too paranoid for all-out erotic abandon. I’m not an exhibitionist, even when it’s just cats.

So I just laid there for close to an hour, in that swoon. And then it occurred to me that it’s almost time for all those Boys of Summer to return to the regional playhouse in town. Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that last summer, wow, it was overwhelming. Those guys were so young, so beautiful, and so talented. And of course, they stick around all summer and it was pretty darned intense. The sexual energy.

The young women were very talented, too. Very pretty. Very sort of dynamic. But with women, even though I’m attracted to them, when they’re younger than me, I feel very maternal. Very protective. And I thought to myself this morning, Isn’t that odd? I mean, with actual children, regardless of their gender, I feel maternal and protective. But with guys, the minute they’re not children, man. Everything shifts. And it never shifts back.

I wonder why that is? It was all very curious indeed. But by then every bird in Muskingum County was awake and singing, so I knew it was time to get out of bed and start this magnificent day.

Okay!!

Nick Cave will be conversing with the lucky people in Luxembourg tonight! Of course, it is sold out.

And you know, it’s curious, that everyone without fail says how wonderful these Conversations are; how beautiful, and meaningful, and awe-inspiring they are; how their lives have changed or are finally complete now (I’m not overstating it, either). But nobody ever really talks about what it is he says.

The only thing anyone has posted so far about anything he’s said (and I’m including the tours he did of Australia and New Zealand back in the winter) is that he doesn’t really like cereal. Someone posted that recently.

I do find that sort of interesting, you know. I guess. But aside from wondering how it might feel to ask him, “What would you like for breakfast?” but only because that would likely mean that, well, he was right there; but aside from that, I have never actually wondered what he eats for breakfast.

But it’s kind of curious that no one ever really says what he talks about. They are all kind of too breathless to speak.

I find that amazing. I really do.

All right. Let’s get Friday happening here, gang. If you’re Stateside, I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend!! I’ll be buying and planting my flowers this weekend and I can’t wait. As you now know, I love flowers! If you live everywhere else in the world, have a great weekend. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!

(Oops! Breakfast music today. I love this song!! Okay, see ya.)

You found me at some party
You thought I’d understand
You barreled over to me
With a drink in each hand
I respect your beliefs, girl,
And I consider you a friend,
But I’ve already been born once,
I don’t wanna to be born again.

Your knowledge is impressive
And your argument is good
But I am the resurrection, babe,
And you’re standing on my foot!

But my little boat is empty
It don’t go
And my oar is broken
It don’t row, row, row
But my little boat is empty
It don’t go
And my oar is broken
It don’t row, row, row
(Row!)

Your tiny little face
Keeps yapping in the gloom
Seven steps behind me
With your dustpan and broom.
I couldn’t help but imagine you
All postured and prone
But there’s a little guy on my shoulder
Says I should go home alone.
You keep leaning in on me
And you’re looking pretty pissed
That grave you’ve dug between your legs
Is hard to resist.

But my little boat is empty
It don’t go
And my oar is broken
It don’t row, row, row
But my little boat is empty
It don’t go
And my oar is broken
It don’t row, row, row

Give to God what belongs to God
And give the rest to me
Tell our gracious host to fuck himself
It’s time for us to leave.

But my little boat is empty
It don’t go
And my oar is broken
It don’t row, row, row
But my little boat is empty
It don’t go
And my oar is broken
It don’t row, row, row
Row…row…row…row…

c- 1997 Nick Cave

Watch Out! Here Comes Trouble!

May 22, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I didn’t move much from the desk yesterday, but oddly enough, instead of having more sentences in Chapter 22, I now have noticeably fewer.

It was just one of those days.

I stared at the manuscript. Read it. Re-read it. Re-read it, yet again and then still more. Stared at it some more, too. Wrote some stuff. Deleted it. Wrote some other stuff. Deleted that, too.

And then realized that the sentence that had come before it was the real culprit and had to go. And then on & on, until I now have a 5-sentence opening paragraph left for Chapter 22 and that’s it.

10 hours at the desk yesterday yielded less than I’d started out with.

But the good news is that I didn’t fuck up the coffee today! It looks just like coffee’s supposed to look and tastes like coffee’s supposed to taste. And I’m feeling really confident about the prospects for Chapter 22’s growth this morning. I know the Muse is hanging around. I can feel him.

I just have to make that 20-mile trek into town and buy food and then we’ll be good to go around here.

I had my first quiz in Italian last night! And I didn’t do so terrible!

I did okay, actually. But I think that, for now, most of my correct answers were just subconscious guesses based on the similarities between Italian and French and I know French pretty well. But it was only my first week. And I have a year to learn Italian. Plus the app is still really fun. I still look forward to doing it every day and feel a little disappointed when the daily lesson is over. So that says a lot right there.

And I worked for a couple of hours on the guitar last night. I still have a lot of ground to cover in the new material before I can incorporate it in to teaching piano. So I have to sort of absorb it at breakneck speed. But it really is fun.

Sadly, though, I have to confront the fact that I need new strings. I have been playing guitar for [heavy sigh] 50 years. And I still hate changing the strings. I usually don’t ever pull the “helpless girl” card in any area of my life. I take care of myself, come what may in this world.

However.

When it comes to changing my guitar strings, I go from this gal:

To this gal:

And I live completely alone now in the middle of fucking nowhere. Who’s gonna help me change my guitar strings??!!

When I played professionally in NY, my bands consisted almost exclusively of guys. And I don’t know what it is, but they seem to change guitar strings like they’re in a pit crew for NASCAR or something. They do it so fucking fast, it’s ridiculous.

I would always try to change my own strings, but they would have to just stand there and smoke, like, an entire pack of cigarettes and I’d still be trying to change the one string. Until, finally, one of them would just go insane and grab my guitar and say, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, just let me do that for you!”

And then the string would be changed, snipped, and in tune in a nanosecond.

So I got used to guys changing my guitar strings. Even though, in the rest of my world, I’m perfectly capable of, you know, doing stuff.

However, the time has come where I have had to face the fact that I really need new strings. Since the guitar store is 20 miles away and (I’ve discovered) really easily avoided, I forced myself to order some Black Diamond silver strings online. They should arrive momentarily.

And if the UPS driver doesn’t happen to play guitar…

Well, all in all, this is going to be a really big year for me, all the way around!

All righty.

Well, I’m learning new stuff every day. And yesterday, I discovered that people in Copenhagen prefer not to post to Instagram in English. So I’m only making an educated guess when I say that they all seemed to love Nick Cave’s Conversation last night!

However, what they do do, is post photos in color! None of this artsy black & white stuff, like the diabolical Norwegians did. So now I’ve discovered that the very same suit in all these different photos from last night – yes, from one concert – can look either olive green-ish, gray, or beige-ish/tan.

So, clearly, me and this obsession with Nick Cave’s oddly colorless suit, that I don’t even understand how it got started anymore. Well, clearly, since this tour is going to go on for most of the summer, and since I have a ton of fucking stuff in my brain already, I need to stop obsessing about his suit; stop pondering it so intensely on my phone and stop trying to figure out what color it actually is.

Clearly, that way madness lies; let me shun that!!

Okay!! (Methinks I’m probably still gonna obsess about that darn suit, but we’ll just see.)

Meanwhile, gang, have a wonderful Wednesday, wherever you are in the world!! I leave you with this!! My breakfast-listening music from the past couple mornings. Johnny Cash singing The Long Black Veil. Thanks for visiting. I love you, guys! See ya!

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?!

May 21, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Well, for starters: the coffee. But I think that’s the only thing I’m gonna screw up today!

I think my mind was wandering when I was setting up the percolator last night because the coffee came out looking almost like water this morning. Unfortunately, I slept in until 6:15am today, so rather than be patient and wait and make a whole new pot, I opted for those caffeine drops in a glass of water and off we go.

I am so sensitive to caffeine, though, that those drops will either make me hone in on my laptop for hours and write THE most amazing chapter in Blessed By Light today, or I’ll vacuum the entire house and then maybe go outside and rake leaves or something!

Yes, I know it’s the height of Spring! But a heck of a lot of dead fall leaves are still in my front yard and on my front porch and in heaps in my front garden and also strewn heavily about on my front sidewalk. And if you’re curious – yes! I am the only one on the whole block who still has dead leaves hanging around, and quite a prodigious amount, at that.

I do have lawn care guys all summer, but so far it’s only been one guy who’s come this month and he’s had his hands full just trying to contend with the staggering amount of weeds around here that we affectionately refer to as “my backyard.”

The other lawn care guy, who is of Native American ancestral heritage, has been in the wilds of incredibly beautiful Coshocton County at a Pow Wow (which I think means bonfires and a lot of drums and smoking a lot of weed, but I’m not 100% positive about that) and he won’t be coming around to help until next week – wherein, I imagine this place is going to start looking really nice because Memorial Day weekend is when I always plant all the flowers in the flower boxes and the outside of the house starts to look so pretty that all the neighbors overlook my absolute inability to give a fuck about raking my leaves in November when everybody else gets out there and does it.

(Another thing I refuse to do is shovel snow. And the minute it snows, all my neighbors are out there, dutifully shoveling their 2 feet of fucking sidewalk! But I refuse to be drawn in to their guilt trips because I have an enormous amount of sidewalk. Not just in front of my (dead-leaf-strewn) house, but I have a corner lot and the sidewalk along the side of my house goes clear past my barn to the alley in back. In case you’re curious, that’s far. It’s just not fair. It’s way more work than any of my neighbors have to do so I just refuse to do it. I’ve noticed that the snow always eventually melts anyway.)

Yes, me. Homeowner extraordinaire!

Okay!

Well, yesterday was so cool! Not only am I making actual progress with my studies of Italian this time around, but in an effort to help the guy learn piano without teaching him how to read music (which is something he doesn’t want to learn), I was investigating teaching methods that rely on improvisation and that dispense with music notes, theory & composition entirely.

(I’m glad I know how to read music. However, Music Theory & Composition, in case you were curious, gang, will just kill you. It will just turn you into a flat dead thing inside. It will pulverize your brain with a heavy wooden meat mallet and it will take a pair of wire cutters to your musical imagination and snip it right off. I took 2 grueling years of Theory & Composition many, many, many moons ago so I know whence I speak.)

But I found a teaching system that is just awesome, gang. I spent a few hours going over it last night. I only spent a handful of minutes (so far) going over the piano stuff, but the guitar stuff was too cool. It is so different from anything I was ever taught by a bazillion guitar teachers when I was growing up and it was really interesting. I got my guitar out and was practicing that stuff for a couple of hours last night. It’s all just fret work, but it’s a whole different approach to it.

I spent enough time looking over the piano stuff to know that I am going to have a whole new way of relating to the piano, too, when all of this is said and done. So it was just really cool.

Between this new way of learning Italian and this new approach to music, it just shows you that if you live long enough, new things come into your consciousness that erase anything old that was really bad.

But the flip-side of that sentiment… I was also thinking a lot last night about Nick the hit man for the Mob; still just thinking about all the probabilities and probable outcomes that I had never considered before. And up until last night, my conscience had taken solace in the fact that he would have been about 80 now anyway and I liked to imagine that he wasn’t even still alive.

Until I googled him.

Alas, he’s alive & well and still living in Manhattan. Shit, you know? That doesn’t help my conscience at all. That horrible last time I saw him, when he wanted to have “a little chat with me”, and he picked me up in a limo and we drove about half a block to an “Italian” restaurant in Midtown, mob guys everywhere. I was still just 20 years old and absolutely terrified and he, in essence, tore me a new one for killing his baby.

At the time, even though I was too scared to say anything, it made me angry because it was my baby, too, and it was not a decision I had really wanted to make. It was horrible. When I had come out of the anesthesia in the recovery room, there was a radio playing and – I kid you not – Queen was singing “Another One Bites the Dust.” And they were actually singing the chorus when I came out from under and heard it. I sobbed uncontrollably. The irony was just so not funny.

I cried when they were putting me under and sobbed when I came out from it, because I really wanted my baby but I thought it was the right thing. I couldn’t in good conscience have a kid whose father was a paid killer, right?

And yet, when I was 28 and finally met my own real dad – a man I absolutely worshiped… He’d been a Navy SEAL in Viet Nam from 1965 until 1975, when Saigon fell. And he killed more people in those ten years than you and I can possibly imagine. More than he even remembered. And he was paid to do that.

What is the real difference there?

But I totally adored him and he loved me like nobody’s business. More than anyone in my life had ever loved me.

And I deprived 2 people of that potential because I guess I thought I knew everything.

I’m not sure yet how to get my conscience to calm the fuck down, but life does indeed go on.

Okay. I’m gonna get started on the novel here now. And then I’m gonna practice my Italian, then practice my guitar, and wait for the Instagram photos to come in from Copenhagen, where Nick Cave is having a Conversation tonight. And I’m just gonna let everything be all right. It was all such a long time ago.

Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you, See ya.

A Little Work Won’t Kill Ya!

May 20, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

One thing about Peitor is that once he’s in England , it’s really hard to get him to come home. He really loves it there.

He went there this weekend because of the death of his father-in-law, and we were supposed to do some work over the phone while he was on some sort of airport layover on Wednesday.

All of his plans have changed now, though, and he’s taken an Air BNB in a little town on the English Channel, where he’s planning to go and stay, alone, as soon as all the memorial/funeral things are over. His husband will be flying back to Los Angeles on schedule, without him.

And so that is where Peitor will be when we, of course, work together over the phone some time this week.

God forbid we miss an opportunity to work together over the phone. In addition to the scripts we’re writing for Abstract Absurdity, he also has written a (really cool) book that I’ve been editing for him and we very often do that work over the phone, too.

I’ve done a lot of work with him over the phone, over the years, while he’s been in really gorgeous locations with stunning vistas. He constantly texts me photos of where he’s calling from while we’re working together over the phone.

It’s really just so weird how much time we’ve spent working with each other over the phone… You’d think that he’d rather just sit there and enjoy the stunning vistas from time to time.

Not that there are stunning vistas at the Algonquin Hotel – it’s in Midtown Manhattan. Still, I’m not planning on working with anyone over the phone while I’m there.

(And in all seriousness, I’m really, really hoping, gang, that I’m going to somehow manage to take care of all the tech rehearsals & any needed re-writes for the play and still make it to both of those Nick Cave shows in NYC without inconveniencing anyone. It’s that show at Lincoln Center that will be the hardest one to manage, schedule-wise, and that’s the one I really don’t want to miss. Not just because I got a great seat; it looks like it’s the kind of theater where you can’t really get a bad seat. But I think the acoustics in that theater are going to be amazing and I just don’t want to miss it, but I also don’t want to seem like some sort of weirdly obsessive person, or anything. )

(YES, I KNOW! I am a weirdly obsessive person! Thank you very much for pointing that out! But I just don’t want people that I’m working with professionally to find that out right away. I want them to get a little deeper in before they find that out…)

But I digress. Parenthetically.

You know, Peitor and I have actually spent a lot of time together, in person, not working. And when we’re doing the “not working” thing, we’re usually laughing really hard. And he has this incredibly good memory, so, often he will text me photos of places in NYC or LA or Palm Springs, where at some point we were together, not working and laughing really hard.

Okay. So speaking of working…

No, I didn’t get any work done on the novel yesterday and I didn’t even try. I could tell my mood was not conducive to writing.

I did do a lot of crying yesterday, though. Throughout the day. I really think it had something to do with that full moon, because I would suddenly find myself thinking about really unexpected things and then just crying. You know, just really short sort of tear-bursts and then I’d stop, but the things I found myself thinking about hurt really deep.

For instance, loyal readers of this lofty blog will no doubt recall that last August, I wrote a post called Mob Guys, Part 1. Wherein I talked about being 20 years old and moving to NYC and within about 17 seconds of moving there, getting pregnant. And really, really, really wanting that baby, but then finding out that the father (the 40-year-old man that really, really wanted to marry me) was a hit man for the Mob.

And I was so freaked out by this – that he killed people for a living – that I wound up becoming a killer, too, and killing a baby I really, really wanted. Which then enraged him because he really, really wanted that baby, too.

Yesterday, just sort of by chance, I saw this girl. She was wearing black Converse high-tops and a short black sundress. She was all legs. And had really long, straight brown hair. She couldn’t have been more than 17 years old. And there was just something about her that made me think that my kid would have been just like her.

And it started a whole ball of “what ifs?” rolling in my head. Would I have married my first husband if I’d had the baby? Probably not. Would I have eventually married Nick instead (the man in the Mob)? I doubt it, but he certainly would have stayed in my life. And I probably would have never moved away from NYC.

The “what ifs?” really escalated in my head; all the probabilities playing out in my mind. Probabilities that had never occurred to me before, even though I often think about that daughter I didn’t have & I miss her.

And it wasn’t so much the loss of her last night that really got to me, it was the sudden realization that Nick would have made a really great dad. I was completely certain of it, all of the sudden. And that thought had never once occurred to me before.

As the decades unfolded for me in NYC, the Mob was in my life to varying degrees, over and over. And not to overlook the very real fact that some of those guys do kill people, they also have families that mean the world to them. It is part & parcel of who they are; their love for their families defines them.

When I was 20, and fresh from Ohio, and the Mafia was terrifying to me, I didn’t know any of that stuff. I made the decision based mostly on the fact that I knew I would be a terrible mother at that age. And also because I had been illegitimate when I was born and I hated that fact about me and I didn’t want to pass it along to my own kid. And then, overriding that, was my fear of the Mob.

So, last night, remembering how angry Nick was when he found out that I killed his baby – a baby he really, really, really wanted (I can’t stress that enough, unfortunately); and when it finally occurred to me: Oh, man, he would have made a great dad; he would have loved that kid to the moon and back.

Well, deciding to judge him when I was 20 years old, and deciding to play God, as it were, without thinking of anybody, really, but myself – realizing all of that 38 years later; that was the hardest part of last night.

I don’t wish that kind of awakening on anybody, gang.