Tag Archives: Marianne Faithfull Gypsy Faerie Queen

A Success — So far!!

April 5, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis 2 Comments

Well, I made it to the market in town and back, without coming closer than 6 feet to anyone at all. Here’s hoping I get through another week without any symptoms.

Although, I have to say that my idea to get to the market the moment it opened on a Sunday morning, when it was also pouring down rain — well, it was an idea shared by a whole lot more people than I was expecting.

But still! I got in & out of the market in under 15 minutes. And now the trip to town is done for another week. Next week, the virus will likely be at it’s peak, though. But we’ll just take it one week at a time.

Yesterday was a bit of an interesting thing. It ended on a really good note for me — although, I was really alarmed to learn that Marianne Faithfull had been hospitalized in London with the virus yesterday. They say she is stable — I hope this is true.

But other than that, I ended the evening feeling really happy yesterday.

However, the early part of the day was not so good.

Man, when you least expect it, people can get really unglued from all this stress. I called a colleague in NY yesterday, to find out how she was doing — she had called and left me a voicemail the night before, so I was not expecting her to be off-the-charts crazy by yesterday morning. But she sure was. And then the emotional damage she transferred over to me, had left me feeling really assaulted, you know? From out of nowhere.

So then Peitor talked to me on the phone for about an hour and was so helpful — he brought me in from that ledge. He truly did — he got me firmly on to a much healthier train of thought that helped my outlook for the rest of my day. (Plus, I am just so fucking in love right now, gang, despite everything, and I just love that.) But it also meant that Peitor and I didn’t work on Abstract Absurdity Productions stuff yesterday. But we are scheduled to work this afternoon instead.

The drive home from the market this morning was enchanting. The rain had stopped and the clouds were beginning to disperse, but there were still enough clouds to keep the sun from really coming through yet, so the filtered light was ethereal.

None of the trees have leaves yet, but there are just tons of dogwoods and tulip trees in this whole region and all of them are in full bloom right now. My drive to town and back is full of hills, and this morning, on my drive home, from the tops of the hills I could see down into the various valleys, into the tiny towns, and all those dogwoods and tulip trees in bloom, cows and horses dotting the hillsides; and now the red-winged blackbirds are back, too — they were everywhere! And, of course, almost no people or cars anywhere…it was just like a painting or something. So breathtaking.

Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) World birds online ... — Always a sure sign that Spring has arrived in Ohio!

I was so relieved to have the shopping behind me for another week, and the ride was so beautiful, that I didn’t even feel like speeding. I was really enjoying the drive.

In town, the gasoline prices are now at $1.60 a gallon! Of course, I have no need for gas right now, since I only make one trip to town each week. (Which, of course, is why the gas prices have plummeted — no one needs gas right now.) But it was really something see.

And the shops that have those lit marquees out in front of them all had upbeat sayings on them. You know, “Keep Smiling.” Stuff like that. It really did feel like a dream. The farther you get from the bigger cities (even in Ohio), the friendlier the people are; the kinder they are. I know I’m eventually going to have to spend a lot more time back in NYC, and more time in LA, once all this virus stuff passes through — and I don’t regret any of that. I’m looking forward to it. But, man, living out here in the Hinterlands, in the middle of nowhere, has been the most amazing experience for me, ever.

All righty, gang. I hope you’re able to enjoy your Sunday, wherever you are in the world. I need to get ready for my phone call with Peitor now, so I’m gonna scoot!! I’ll leave you with a song & a prayer for Marianne Faithfull — counting on her full and complete recovery. Stay well. I love you guys. See ya.

“The Gypsy Faerie Queen”

I’m known by many different names
My good friend Will calls me Puck and Robin Goodfellow
I follow the gypsy faerie queen
I follow the gypsy faerie queen

She walks the length and breadth of England
Singing her song, using her wand
To help and heal the land and the creatures on it
She’s dressed in rags of moleskin
And wears a crown of Rowan berries on her brow

And I follow, follow, follow
The gypsy faerie queen
We exist, exist, exist
In the twilight in-between

She bears a blackthorn staff
To help her in her walking
I only listen to her sing
But I never hear her talking anymore
Though once she did
Though once she did

And I follow, follow, follow
My gypsy faerie queen
We exist, exist, exist
In the twilight in-between

And I follow, follow, follow
My gypsy faerie queen
We exist, exist, exist
In the country in-between

Me and my gypsy queen

Separation Anxiety!! Better Late Than Never!!

December 13, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay!!On that chipper note!!

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

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

You Just Never Know What A Day Brings, Do You?

November 20, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis 2 Comments

I don’t know what it is about reality, gang, but just for no reason at all, I woke up battling those depression triggers this morning.

Those thoughts that I know are going to lead to nothing productive. You know — put your canoe in the stream here, where it’s all dark & negative, and let’s go. No, I refuse to put my canoe in there. Or over there, or over there, or over there.

I have so many streams of consciousness that are just useless to me. All these thoughts where I know I don’t want to go. Why do they keep wanting to pop up? I’m okay, as long as I stay on top of all these triggers and keep steering myself in another direction. But I don’t know why some mornings start out like this.

I’m actually really happy. I have only 2 things on my plate today, both of which I’m really excited about. During my meditation yesterday, I got clarity on Letter #5 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse.

There is always a general underlying theme to each letter (each letter also being a memoir of sorts). For instance, Letter #2 was about intercourse: not knowing what it was, then knowing what it was; not liking it, liking it; the ecstasy of it versus rape.

Even though the titles for the letters always come first (Letter #5 is “Hymn to the Dark”), the titles usually don’t illuminate what the letter will actually be about. I get an overall feeling or color in my mind, but it takes a while for the true gist of it to actually come through. For awhile, all I could get was “the genesis of angels and what angels smell like” but what the heck does that actually mean?

So, even though I was beginning to make some headway, yesterday during meditation, I got that real clarity I needed. Letter #5 is primarily about the orgasm. First, trying to figure out what they are — but can we ever truly figure out what they are?

I remember really clearly being 5 years old, and waking quite suddenly, very early on a summer morning. and my body, between my legs, needed to do something with great urgency. I could not figure out what. The only thing I could equate it with was peeing so I did that, right in my bed there, and immediately discovered that this was not what my body was wanting to feel.

Then when I was 6, the little stories in my head started. Erotic, you know. And I loved those little stories. I’d lie in my bed at night and the little stories would unfold, and I just loved that. And then when I was 7, for some unknown (but wonderful) reason, I figured out that if I touched myself at the same time, the stories got super interesting. The orgasm part stymied me, though, because I knew my body wanted to get to something urgent there but I was convinced that all I was going to do was pee. And I already knew for sure that I didn’t want to do that.

But one night, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I figured well, if I pee, I pee, but I just really need to feel this urgent thing — and that’s when I didn’t pee at all and had my first orgasm. Although it was literally years before I knew that it had a name and that it eventually happened to everybody. Because right away, at age 7, I tried to talk to all my little girlfriends about it– ME: “You know, those stories in your head at night and they feel really good?” — and none of them had even the remotest clue what I was talking about, so I just thought it best to stop talking about it.

But even at age 59, I still remember so many of those little stories that were in my head. They were so captivating back then. And even without intercourse or any of that stuff yet, they were really filthy dirty little stories, even by my 59-year-old mind’s standards. But oddly enough, that one specific night at age 7 where I couldn’t hold back any longer — that story was just weird. I was up on deck on a big boat, in the middle of the night. It was storming really badly — pouring rain, lightning. And I’m on the sea in a huge boat, alone except for the man who was almost always in all my little stories. We didn’t do anything “sexual”; it was simply full of really intense erotic feelings. And it’s kind of amusing now that something so full of the symbols of Nature would be the time I finally couldn’t help but have an orgasm. I am not someone who is ever prone to using erotic euphemisms, you know? And I guarantee you that if I were ever up on deck on some boat on the sea in a terrible storm, I would not find it erotic in the least. I’d be super pissed-off. With or without the man.

But, I digress. “Hymn to the Dark” just has elements of that stuff in it, and I’m excited that it’s finally really unfolding.

However, in another brief digression — I also remember that my parents used to close my bedroom door part-way at night, and that the hall light used to slice in and form a sort of crow shape on the ceiling above my bedroom door. And I decided that this crow of light was God, looking over me. Protecting me. Weird, isn’t it? Especially considering that, in my 20s, when I went to study with the Lakota Sioux medicine man, we discovered that my Power Animal was a white cockatoo. Another bird. (A “really intelligent and affectionate bird that needs to be taught a lot of boundaries,” according to Google just now. Sounds like someone I know!! Really well!!)

All right, so. The other thing that I’m happy about today is that the notes from the director came through, finally, last evening. And he was very, very happy with the revisions. I still need to work on one of the character arcs at the end there. But he’s ready to start Workshopping the play. Which is so exciting to me. But it does indeed mean another trip back to NYC and I’ll probably have to fly this time. You don’t want to risk getting stuck in the wilds of Pennsylvania in the winter. Plus I can’t just put a great big ton of mileage on my car, because it’s leased. But I’ll just deal with it when I deal with it. (Driving to the airport an hour from here; long-term parking; shuttles; then dealing with LaGuardia airport and all that madness on the other end. I just hate dealing with all that stuff anymore. But whatever.)

I’m happy.

Okay, I’m gonna close and get started here today! I leave you with my breakfast-listening music. I was back in Negative Capability mode this morning. Marianne Faithfull. I just find that album (well, except for “They Come By Night”) to be really soothing, even while the songs can sometimes be very emotional. But this morning it was “The Gypsy Faerie Queen,” over and over, as I tried to keep my humble canoe from heading out into any dreary, unproductive waters. I’m usually not into faeries or witches or any sort of mystical forest creature type things. But I find this song, especially the musical arrangement of it, to be just stunning. And the vocals are hypnotic. So, enjoy. Thanks for visiting, gang. Have a great Wednesday — watch where you’re putting your canoe! I love you guys. See ya!