Tag Archives: Nick Cave Red Hand Files

This Is Why You Have To Stay Married!

February 6, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

It used to be that when I wanted Wayne’s feedback on something I’d just written, all I had to do was get up from my desk chair, go into the other room and hand it to him and then stand there while he read it and then listen to what he had to say.

But once you get divorced, you relinquish those rights!

Now you have to do this thing called “patiently waiting”!! (Nobody warned me about this, btw, and that just doesn’t seem fair.)

When I was married, I didn’t have to be patient about any fucking thing under the sun (and I’m sure he would be very willing to concur on this. I think, if I recall correctly, that far distant dialogue went something like this: “Christ, Marilyn, can you just give me a fucking minute??!!” Exact topic involved is immaterial.)

Anyway.

Nowadays, I have to email him a doc file and wait for him to have time to get on the PC and download the file and then read it, formulate a (glowing) opinion and then text me.

(Which reminds me!! Nick Cave sent out a Red Hand Files thing today, sort of all about texting. It was very fun (and even educational — although he neglected to include the phone number where we can all text him at when he’s hanging out in an airport). (I’m thinking that’s just an oversight that he will correct later today.) Anyhow. You can read it here if you so choose!!)

Well, Wayne did at least text me again yesterday, saying that he was going to read the new version of Tell My Bones “soon” and get right back to me. However, “soon” is one of those words that is wide open to interpretation.

And when you’re no longer married you also relinquish the right to “badger” the person who used to be part of your legal property. You can’t just keep going over and disturbing whatever it is he’s trying to do at his own desk, and say, “Come on, man. I’m waiting.”

So now, with no legal rights left, I’m just sitting here, waiting. If you can imagine that. And I really, really do want to know his opinion on how the play is ending now. That part is not a joke. I’m really relying on his insights here and I don’t want to look at the play again without hearing his opinion of the ending first. (Which I don’t believe is working as good as it could be but I’m not sure why.)

The director is really busy with some other project in NYC right now, and I won’t be able to get his complete attention about this until something like February 15th. And I just don’t want to wait that long. And I can’t concentrate on any of my other projects right now because I want to sign off on the play. And I want to feel that I’ve made it the best it can be, for now.

So I’m waiting. (We’re going into Day 3 here…) (Of course “three’s the charm” is something we so often hear but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all.)

Meanwhile, I keep getting weather alerts on my iPhone telling me that it’s snowing out. I’m not 100% sure how they define “snow” because I keep going to my window, all excited, and seeing only freezing rain. And I love snow, so it just feels like it’s one of those days where everything, on all fronts, is sort of working against my ability to achieve bliss.

You know, in sort of a round-about way — thinking about bliss, lack thereof, marriage, etc. — one of the things the late bandleader/clarinetist Artie Shaw says in the Ken Burns Jazz documentary, is how he began to really hate having to play the song “Begin the Beguine” because that was what the audiences always wanted to hear and they never wanted to hear anything else.

I can understand why he felt that way (this is going all the way back to the late 1930s, btw), but it made me kind of sad because, in all honesty, if God himself asked me what my actual very favorite song of all time was, it would not only be “Begin the Beguine,” but it would also be Artie Shaw’s version of it.

I’m really serious. Nothing moves me like that specific song does. That song is really the only song ever written that fills me with enough hope about love that when I hear it, I can actually imagine getting married again. (I don’t know to whom, I’m just saying that song makes me feel that hopeful about the nature of love.)

If you don’t know the song, Artie Shaw didn’t write it — Cole Porter wrote it. And tons of people have recorded many versions of it over the years, but Artie Shaw’s instrumental version of it from 1938 was the most popular version of it, ever. (Followed closely by Ella Fitzgerald’s version of it, which includes the lyrics, which are wistful indeed.)

So, even though I understood why Artie Shaw felt that way about the song, it made me feel a little sad because I am just so grateful that he recorded it at all and that he did such a brilliant job of it. It is so joyful, so smooth, so free. (And it makes me just want to drink a vodka martini straight up, with 3 olives, and light up an unfiltered cigarette, too!) (But not alone.)

Okay, well. I am going to get back to sitting patiently, awaiting a text. See how the day unfolds. Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope the world is going your way today, wherever you are in it. I love you guys. See ya.

“Being the Beguine”

When they begin the beguine
It brings back the sound of music so tender,
It brings back a night of tropical splendor,
It brings back a memory ever green.

I’m with you once more under the stars,
And down by the shore an orchestra’s playing
And even the palms seem to be swaying
When they begin the beguine.

To live it again is past all endeavor,
Except when that tune clutches my heart,
And there we are, swearing to love forever,
And promising never, never to part.

What moments divine, what rapture serene,
Till clouds came along to disperse the joys we had tasted,
And now when I hear people curse the chance that was wasted,
I know but too well what they mean;

So don’t let them begin the beguine
Let the love that was once a fire remain an ember;
Let it sleep like the dead desire I only remember
When they begin the beguine.

Oh yes, let them begin the beguine, make them play
Till the stars that were there before return above you,
Till you whisper to me once more,
“Darling, I love you!”
And we suddenly know, what heaven we’re in,
When they begin the beguine

c- 1935 Cole Porter

Oops! Another One That I Forgot to Title!!

January 31, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

You know, I started working out religiously when I was 12 because, culturally, it’s just what you did. You were supposed to stay fit. Not because you needed to be “fit” at age 12, but because you were setting up good habits for the rest of your life. (Seriously.) (And this was before junk food and fast food took over the whole nation. I actually did not know anyone, yet, who was overweight.)

It’s sort of weird, right? How my entire life seems to have been about making sure I look really good when I finally die.

But, anyway. By “culturally” I’m talking about upper-middle-class white Midwestern America, because that’s what we were when I was 12. In 1972.

And I wouldn’t have dreamed of not working out. I was told to work out, so I did. Back then, it was calisthenics. In fact, when I was 11, I won one of those President’s Physical Fitness awards in gym class, which was all about calisthenics. The award was a congratulatory letter from the President of the United Sates and a patch that looked like this (mine was a “1” not a “3”). And when I won mine, guess who was President??!! Nixon. (Man, I wish I’d kept that letter!) Anyway, it looked like this:

So, from a wee bonny age, even the President of the United States, marred as he was by scandals that seem so harmless nowadays, urged me to get off my tiny butt and stay in shape!

And so I’ve just always done that. For a long time, it was calisthenics. And I mean, a really long time. And then, in the 1980s, it was aerobics. That was the craze. I did that for years, and that was actually really fun. In fact, Cher made a couple of aerobics videos that were really great. I loved those.

I also got into “the gym” stuff–free weights, rowing machines, stationary bikes, treadmills. I loved all that stuff. (Except when it came time to get rid of them. That part is never fun.) (And I recall one afternoon, when I was still living in the hellhole tenement apartment on E.12th Street in the East Village, one of my 5 lb. free weights accidentally rolled out the open 5th-story window, and as I was racing down 5 flights of stairs to get to the street, I’m envisioning someone dead on the sidewalk with a fractured skull, and me facing Manslaughter charges and a trip to Rikers Island, all expenses paid by the City of New York… but what I found, thank god, was a little Puerto Rican boy, walking off with it and I had to beg him to give it back, as he loudly proclaimed the “finder’s keepers” rule.)

Anyway!!! Yes. So, I have been doing yoga now for about 13 years. It has kept me sane and it also helped me stop drinking myself to death, back when I first moved back to Ohio to look after my ailing adoptive mother, and then found out that I had made just a horrible error in judgment. Moving back here was just a terrible, terrible mistake.

And since the ill-advised move back to Ohio coincided with the man I loved turning out to have a horrible gambling habit that wiped me out of my entire life savings — including a $9000 check from the insurance company to get a new roof put on my house (as much as you might truly love somebody, you know, think really, really hard about giving them one of your ATM cards. Seriously. Or, if you do, then check your bank balance, like, every 5 minutes.). And that horrible thing happened right when the world economy tanked and ravaged the publishing industry, putting 4 of my primary publishers out of business on the very same day…

Yes, when all of that happened at once, and I woke up every single morning wanting to commit suicide (and I continue to give thanks to the beautiful and gifted writer/publisher/editor Sean Meriwether in NYC — of Velvet Mafia fame — for taking so many of my distraught phone calls back then and helping me not kill myself) — well, I ultimately chose heavy drinking instead. And, you know, that’s gonna kill you, too. So truly, yoga saved me. It did. A couple of my girlfriends back in NYC who were really worried about me persuaded me to at least try yoga, and I wound up loving it on so many levels and it did really save my life.

So I’ve been a yoga-type gal for 13 years now. But yesterday, for whatever inexplicable reason, I decided to buy a 21-day video Pilates-type workout program, called Booty Core. I’m not sure what possessed me to suddenly switch it up — I’m not, like, obsessed with my butt or anything. I’m not even obsessed with working out; it’s just something I’ve always done. But you know what? I’m pushing 60 now, and back around the holidays, I was hanging out with a female friend who is 32. And a pen rolled off the table and down to the floor and then under the bar a little bit. So I got down on the floor — actually knelt all the way down and reached under the bar and got the pen. And she was literally aghast. She said, “How did you do that? At your age?”

I was, like, mystified. “How did I do what?”

“Get all the way down on the floor like that and then get right back up?”

Jesus, you know? I just found that so weird. And then she said, “I can’t even do that!” And she’s only 32-fucking-years old! It was just so weird. And I guess I thank god for President Richard Milhous Nixon and all the good habits he instilled in me — and trust me, that’s not a thing I ever thought I would find it in me to say.

So. I’m gonna try Booty Core for 21 days and see if maybe I can pick up a lot more pens from the floor!

On another topic.

Only a couple of photos posted to Instagram last night from the first Conversation in Brussels with Nick Cave. Although there were quite a few posts, but only, like, 2 people actually took photos during the show. But everybody who posted, of course, loved it. And it sounds like maybe he’s doing a few songs from Ghosteen now. (?) Tonight is the last night of the Conversations tour. I’m guessing he will continue to have conversations, but none that we are invited to attend (even if we pay him!!) and that just sucks!

I’m sorry, I don’t have a photo credit for this. I grabbed it from the ticket sales site in the Netherlands.

I am going to go out on a limb here and encourage you to never attend a Conversation with Nick Cave. Because then you will never, ever want it to end. (And if you slavishly follow the posts on Instagram, as I do, you will see that I am not the only one who says this!!) I imagine that, if for some inexplicable yet heavenly reason, I ever ran into him on the street, I would dig out whatever loose change I could find in my pockets, hand it to him and try to get him to answer a question for me. Any question. (ME: “Here!! I have 14 cents. Will you please tell me what it was like the first time you had –“)

Because his answers are awesome.

Which reminds me, that the very moment I posted to the blog here yesterday, Nick Cave sent out another one of his Red Hand Files letter things. And it was uncanny. Whoa, like, it made me want to go right back to the blog and remove my post. If you recall yesterday’s post, it was all about my trying to come to terms with how fucking strange my writing always is. And yesterday’s Red Hand Files was all about whether or not you had to be mentally ill to be a great artist…

Anyway… my own fucking insanity aside, it was another really great Red Hand Files, because he is just so eloquent. And I’m just so frustrated that his In Conversations are going to end. Again.

Okay. I really gotta get moving here. Peitor will be calling from West Hollywood momentarily because we have to work on our micro-script and, of course, now the pressure feels sort of intense. Like, you know, we actually have to finish this darn thing, make the video, then make about 8 more…(!!)

For whatever weird reason, this song was in my head the moment I woke up this morning, and so I played it throughout breakfast and I’m leaving you with it today!! From the 1960 Broadway musical Camelot. (Yes, the very year I was born.) “How to Handle A Woman.” As sung here by Richard Burton. Okay, thanks for visiting, gang. I hope today is good to you, wherever you are in the world!! I love you guys. See ya.

“How To Handle A Woman”

“How to handle a woman?
There’s a way, ” said the wise old man,
“A way known by every woman
Since the whole rigmarole began.”
“Do I flatter her?” I begged him answer.
“Do I threaten or cajole or plead?
Do I brood or play the gay romancer?”
Said he, smiling: “No indeed.
How to handle a woman?
Mark me well, I will tell you, sir:
The way to handle a woman
Is to love her… simply love her…
Merely love her… love her… love her.”

c – 1960 Lerner & Loewe

Could It Get More Auspicious??!!

January 29, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

My god.

First, I got out of bed at about 4:48am. Stuck my little feet into my cuddly slippers. Opened the Venetian blind and, lo & behold! SNOW outside!! Everywhere!! Yay!!

And just now, when I opened my laptop to get down to the blog post for today, this was awaiting me! Another ladybug!!

A ladybug inside my laptop in the dead of winter.

I am, of course, taking it as another sign! Of what, I don’t know, but it’s probably really good. It really just sort of blew me away. (See my post from a couple weeks ago re: the other ladybug and Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files thingy about signs, from the summer.)

And I’ll say here that I think the city of Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, is one of those places that is full of rule-followers because very few people have posted anything at all to Instagram from the Conversation Nick Cave had there last night. The main person who did post (some great video stuff!!), was also at the previous night’s show in Eindhoven, where everyone posted tons of amazing stuff. So that person doesn’t count as “someone from Nijmegen.”

Of course, if I’m in attendance at a show, I seriously hate when people use their phones during the performance because they get incredibly distracting. However, if I’m not attending, I really want everybody to use their phones!! How else will I know what it was like??

I know. They say that you can’t have it both ways. However, I am someone who has dedicated my entire life to getting it both ways! In every way imaginable! So this is cause for consternation.

Grumble, grumble.

Meanwhile. Yesterday, I got this:

Yes, another chemise and it’s the dead of winter, but it was indescribably inexpensive. And I loved the color. So I got it, even though I won’t be able to wear it until spring.

And even though it fits perfectly, it’s one of those clingy kinds. I normally don’t like “clingy” because I am still trying to understand how I became a woman who has curves. Honestly. Forever, it seems, I had always been 34B-32-35. Almost straight up & down.

Post-menopause, even though I only weigh 6 pounds more, I became 40C-32-38. It’s just crazy. I can’t get used to it — that gal in the mirror. And it’s not like I finished menopause yesterday or anything. It’s been 14 years already. I’ve had quite a while to get used to this. (I “changed” early — at age 46.)

There are so many things about being post-menopausal that I absolutely love. But this “curvy” thing. Man. I look like somebody’s mom, without the benefit of being anybody’s mom. And it’s weird to look like a mom when I’m only 12…

Anyway. I decided to keep the chemise because it fits and its soft and the color is really pretty. And I decided that I guess this year is the year I will try to get used to having curves. I’m guessing I’m gonna have them for a really long time now. I don’t see this as a situation that’s going to reverse, or anything.

Okay, well!! Yes, yesterday, I finished the character arc revision to Tell My Bones!! I’m super eager to hear what the director has to say. I’m still not 100% happy with a small chunk of dialogue that comes right before the ending of the play, so I know I will eventually want to focus on that. However, yesterday evening, I got an email from a small press in NYC that I am really intrigued by so I want to take all of today and go over Blessed By Light, from start to finish; make sure I don’t want to tweak it at all, or if I do, then tweak it. Then send the novel off to the publisher.

So I have a long editing day ahead of me here and I’m going to get started.

Have a great Wednesday, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting! I leave you with my breakfast-listening music. Still on Neil Diamond’s Hot August Night, but this time it’s “Sweet Caroline” — probably my most favorite version of this song. All righty. I love you guys. See ya!

“Sweet Caroline”

Where it began
I can’t begin to knowin’
But then I know it’s growin’ strong

Was in the spring
And spring became the summer
Who’d have believed you’d come along

Hands, touchin’ hands
Reachin’ out, touchin’ me, touchin’ you

Sweet Caroline
Good times never seemed so good
I’ve been inclined
To believe they never would
But now I…

…look at the night
And it don’t seem so lonely
We fill it up with only two

And when I hurt
Hurtin’ runs off my shoulders
How can I hurt when I’m holdin’ you?

Warm, touchin’ warm
Reachin’ out, touchin’ me, touchin’ you

Sweet Caroline
Good times never seemed so good
I’ve been inclined
To believe they never would
Oh, no, no

Sweet Caroline
Good times never seemed so good
Sweet Caroline
I believed they never could

Sweet Caroline
Good times never seemed so good…

c – 1969 Neil Diamond

A Little Too Industrious For My Taste!

January 23, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Wow, gang. When it was all said and done, yesterday sorta, kinda sucked.

I probably shouldn’t say it like that and should look at the positive stuff instead, but for whatever petulant reason, I don’t feel like doing that right now.

Just as I was getting down to work on the play yesterday, something — I don’t recall now what it was — reminded me that I had to update the Life Story Rights for two (living) people who are characters in Tell My Bones and that I also still needed to send them their additional option money. And if I don’t do this stuff, it doesn’t matter how good the play is, no one will produce it.

Funny how you can sort of happily overlook stuff like that in your creative frenzy of being a writer!

What this means is that I had to stop everything and do a whole lot of fucking typing yesterday. Boring legal typing. Pages of it. So boring that you would rather do anything else imaginable.

I would type about half a page and then have to flop down onto the bed and stare out the window, I was so bored. Or take a nap. Or go take a shower. Or discover a Pinterest page with a whole lot of sexy photos of the (now very) late Tom Petty from when he was about 31 years old and try not to cry.

You know, really important stuff like that.

I didn’t finish typing the darn documents (10 pages) until after 6pm. It dragged out for the whole darn day because I just couldn’t stay focused. It was just so boring. (And every single word has to be correct or it won’t hold up in a court of law, which you hope it won’t come to anyway.)

And then I realized that I am still sort of grieving. Definitely, things are still not 100% right with me, emotionally. And I did that thing again, where I ate half a bag of tortilla chips last night instead of forcing myself to eat a real dinner. I hate when I do that because it just ends up making me feel sick. Even though they’re organic, non-GMO, multi-grain chips, they still have a ton of salt and carbs. That’s the 2nd night this week that I’ve done that, so I think I just won’t bring those chips into the house anymore. (Depriving myself of something I love is always my “fallback” response.)

Normally, I have the most stupidly healthy diet that you can possibly imagine. You wouldn’t even want to imagine it because it would just bore you to tears. (For instance, if I do eat chips, I eat only seven, because it gives me 3 grams of protein and not too many calories. I am that weird — seven chips. I count them out and then that’s what I eat. Or I allow myself 28 grams of dark chocolate a day — primarily for brain health, although I love dark chocolate. This amounts to 5 tiny squares, that I space throughout the day. It’s really that insane around here.) But because of that, a half a bag of chips at once is a real assault on me now and it made me feel so sick. For hours.

(And I don’t think of this as being neurotic, per se. And it’s not that I wish to live forever, because I sure don’t. But if I’m going to be even still alive next week, I want to be healthy and look as good as I possibly can. I’m fucking past middle age here. This is about vanity, gang; not neurosis.)

Crap. Anyway.

But grief is so weird, right? It just gets in there and short-circuits your brain. Even while you can see it happening, you just don’t get in there and stop it. It would take too much out of you. (Or out of me, in this instance.)

I wound up going to bed at 9:30pm because I was just so emotionally exhausted. I didn’t want to cry or be depressed; I just wanted to sleep and forget. And I turned out the light and THEN I happened to glance at my phone (ringer off) and noticed a TON of texts! From my friend in Houston, battling the cancer; from my sister, going in for surgery today. From some people I don’t know on Instagram. It was crazy. I was trying so hard to be polite, you know? Reply to the texts, then turn over and try to go to sleep. But I’d turn over and only see that whole corner of the room behind my head light up with more texts.

Jesus, this went on for over an hour. All these texts. And a couple of the conversations were upsetting me — and I was trying to tell myself not to judge; to be tolerant. To just let people live their own lives and make their own choices.

But then I thought, I better make sure my (birth) mom is okay, so then I texted her. But she of course is more rational and didn’t reply; she was likely having a beer and a cigarette and thinking: fuck if I’m gonna get in the middle of these crazy-texting daughters of mine…

Anyway, I finally fell asleep while in the middle of my friend in Houston sending me photos of meteorites and chondrites that he works on at NASA that have fallen from the sky and are billions of years old… (It was actually cool but I fell asleep anyway.)

So that was me, yesterday. I got a lot done but I went kicking and screaming into doing it. (Oh, except that I am now up to Episode 4 of Ken Burns’ Jazz and it is just a great episode. Each episode is about 2 hours, so it’s taking me awhile.)

One really cool thing that happened yesterday: Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files thing was amazing! He essentially gave a fan in Serbia the clothes off his back!! You can read it here.

Tonight, his Conversations resume in Essen, Germany. I’m guessing no one can top that theater in Wiesenbad, though. So far, Wiesenbad, Montreal, and (I think) Helsinki (?) had the most beautiful theaters.

Oh, and if you check out the a1000Mistakes blog out of Australia, he has a link to a long but really cool bunch of interviews regarding an upcoming tribute to Rowland S. Howard: Pop Crimes — The Songs of Rowland S. Howard. You can read it here.

Okay, well. The director of the play just texted me from NYC and asked how I was doing with the throughline of the new character arc, so I have to get moving here. Because my reply to his question was probably not as forthcoming as it could have been… So let me get at it here.

I hope Thursday is good to you, gang, wherever you are in the world. We don’t get out of this world alive — as we all know if we read that Jim Morrison bio from about 30 years ago:

However, it still seems like a wanted thing — making the best of being here while we are. So I hope you have a good day. I leave you with more Duke Ellington, just because it makes me feel good. If you’re having an iffy sort of day, give it a spin and it’ll get you on a better track — all puns intended. All righty. I love you guys. Thanks for visiting. See ya.

Just So Intensely Strange — Even for Me!!

January 22, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Okay. Well. I’m having a good morning here. I honestly am.

I slept in until 6am. Awoke happy. The first thing I did was start streaming “Clementine” by Jean Goldkette & His Orchestra, featuring Bix Beiderbecke (1927).

If you don’t know this tune then that’s probably why there’s a big hole in your life (listen now and everything will finally be fine!):

Anyway, I continued streaming it while getting the cats fed and getting my own breakfast together. (And it was quite a surreal tune to listen to while watching 7 feral cats pace about the floor in anticipation of breakfast.) But I finally turned it off while I was actually eating my own breakfast.

But the whole time, I was thinking intensely about Nick Cave. (I want to say again that the theater he had his Conversation in last night, in Wiesenbad, Germany, was just jaw-dropping. All the Instagram posts were so beautiful. There were quite a few more posts by this morning.)

After breakfast, I took my coffee cup and went back upstairs to meditate, like I always do. I set my coffee cup on my night table and suddenly realized that I had a totally different coffee cup from the one I thought I had!

This is really intensely bizarre for someone like me, because I guarantee you my cups and my breakfast bowls always match, and they are always seasonal. For instance, I would never, ever in a million years, use my summer coffee cup with the brightly colored flowers on it in the dead of winter. It’s just never gonna happen. Ever.

But I thought I was drinking out of my red vintage Kellogg’s mug that I use all during January, when I suddenly realized I was drinking out of this one instead — and I’d been drinking out of it for nearly an hour already before I noticed it:

I don’t know. You’d think I would sort of notice a skull & cross bones at my breakfast table. Yet, I didn’t.

If you’re new to this blog — like, if this is your first day here — you’ll just think I’m superficially crazy. But I have a thing about dishes. A seriously deep-rooted addiction to them. I’m deeply crazy — it’s not superficial. I would never sit down to breakfast (in my own kitchen) with a cup that didn’t match my bowl.

And this one is my pre-Easter coffee cup. I use this cup and its matching bowl from Mardis Gras up until Easter. (Seriously — and on Easter morning, I change to the pastel yellow set with the single bas relief fleur de lis on it.)

So weird that I reached for this one today, filled it, drank from it, re-filled it, took it upstairs…. without noticing I’d done it. But what’s even sort of weirder, in my opinion, is that it’s the only coffee cup I own that was made in Germany.

I was thinking about Nick Cave in Germany and I picked up that cup! And it was made at Waechtersbach, which is only about an hour from Wiesbaden. Don’t you think that’s so weird?

Well, anyway. I do.

So, what I was thinking about Nick Cave is that these snippets of him singing (on Instagram) — the songs are all slowed down from their normal tempos (as were yesterday’s posts from Baden-Baden). And I keep feeling like he’s sad.

And then I think that I’m just projecting something on to these songs because there’s no way to really know, since the videos are micro-short, and none of the videos are of him talking to the audience. The photos of him talking to the audience are really lovely, though, even though he’s not smiling in any of them, but then he almost never smiles. (I don’t know, maybe at home he smiles constantly so, by the time he’s out in public, he’s just tired of it.) Although, here’s a photo I love. I don’t remember when this is from, but it’s not that long ago.

Anyway, this wasn’t supposed to be a Nick Cave tribute or anything. I was actually really thinking about the difference between projecting feelings that come from within us, and receiving information that comes from outside of us. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say: receiving information that comes from deeper within us.

Receiving is just way more accurate than projecting, but you really have to tune in to your feelings, or thoughts, and get clarity, you know? Is this feeling coming from me — a sort of reflexive reaction from my brain– or is it coming to me from somewhere deeper?

This is something I think about a lot — ever since I began keeping the Inner Being journals every morning. It’s been 7 months now that I’ve been doing it — what I call “dialogues” with my Inner Being. Writing them down, right after meditation. Or, if for some reason I don’t meditate (which is rare, but it happens), then I do it right before I sit down at my desk.

I haven’t missed a day dialoguing with my Inner Being in 7 months.

And I am really learning to be wary of coming to conclusions that are based on projecting rather than on receiving. I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with always wanting clarity on everything, but I am. Which was why this thing with the coffee cup this morning just really startled me. I’m usually just so intensely aware of every single fucking moment…

I know! You’re wondering: Gosh, how come she lives alone? She’d be so nice to come home to!!

In fact, I don’t usually even say “hello”. Instead:

ME (seeing you coming up the walk from a long, hard day, then I open the screen door): “You know what I was thinking?” (then I proceed to tell you exactly what I was thinking. All day.)

YOU: (complete silence, as you hope against hope that there’s still beer in the fridge.)

Anyway.

Well, this is something else I’ve been curious about. I have this sort of pronounced feeling that “all is well” in my life now. And it seems to be coming from this relationship I have with my adoptive dad, which, to put it in the tiniest nutshell you can possibly imagine, has not been easy. And this morning, I was wondering why I’m feeling that way right now, and I realized that this is the first time, since I was a really young girl, that there hasn’t been a wife between him and me. (This doesn’t include my adoptive mother because he was actually the person who protected me from my adoptive mother.) Even though I loved both of my stepmoms, I really did — they were both really nice to me. It just feels different now that the wives are gone. There’s no longer another person there that, you know, means everything to him. (Even though, obviously, he’s still thinking about my stepmom constantly, and grieving deeply for her.)

But this is a new feeling for me. Almost like I exist again. Something like that.

Okay. I’m now seeing that there’s a new Red Hand Files thingy from Nick Cave in my inbox! I shall go investigate it. And then get on with my day. I’m expecting to get some really good stuff done with the revisions of Tell My Bones today, because I finally got some good insights yesterday.

Have a great Wednesday, wherever it leads you! Feel free to come visit, if you’d like to know every single thing I’ve been thinking about while you were away… (yes, there’s beer in the fridge — leftover from when my birth mom was here). I leave you with what I was listening to last night, while drifting off to sleep. “Black & Tan Fantasie” by Duke Ellington, 1928. An erotic little tune, actually. (Although, probably my favorite Duke Ellington song is “Take the A Train.”) All righty. I love you guys. See ya.

Okay, Home Again

January 19, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Well, it did snow for the entire drive back, but so far, it’s not really accumulating. Nothing like what the northern part of the Midwest has gotten.

Anyway, I wanted to post those links from Friday.

The Finest Example posted an excerpt from my new novel Blessed By Light. The excerpt has been posted online before, but in a slightly different version. The excerpt is titled, “The Guitar Hero Goes Home.” You can read it here.

The Finest Example is a brand new online zine out of Wales, and is actively seeking art, stories, poems. So check them out if you want to contribute something.

And also on Friday, Nick Cave posted a new Red Hand Files response. It was mostly about how he and The Bad Seeds feel about their ever-evolving musical sound and how the fans (may or may not) have reacted over the decades.

It was interesting. His usual eloquence and amazing choice of words.

For me, though — wow, I can’t imagine not wanting to evolve with a band or songwriter as they evolve. Assuming they do evolve. If the music stagnates, or perhaps de-vovles, I do lose interest. But, obviously, I never lost interest in Nick Cave — or in Lou Reed, or in Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers — and they changed year after year after year. The Heartbreakers’ last records could not have been more different than how they sounded in the beginning. For instance, there’s no way to even compare an album like You’re Gonna Get It, from 1978, with Mojo, from 2010, or their last studio album, Hypnotic Eye, from 2014.

(Which also reminds me that Mike Campbell has a new band now (and a new video — and a new album coming soon). He did about 2 years’ of touring as a guitarist with Fleetwood Mac, but now he has his own thing — The Dirty Knobs! They will be on tour this whole upcoming year.)

Okay. I’m gonna, scoot. Gotta pay bills. Collapse. Stuff like that! See ya, gang.

Leaving you with three things: one of my favorite songs from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ second album, You’re Gonna Get It; they’re perennial hit, “I Need to Know” from 1978.

Probably my favorite off of Mojo, from 2010, although it’s hard to pick an actual favorite. It was an incredible blues/rock album. The song is “Runnin’ Man’s Bible”:

My favorite off of Hypnotic Eye, 2014 — “Full Grown Boy”:

Mini Update

January 17, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Naturally I’ve already had to make a rest stop, since I managed to drink 3 cups of coffee before I left. But here in the public toilet stall in the middle of nowhere, I of course checked my email!!

An excerpt from my novel Blessed By Light has gone “live” at that new literary zine out of Wales— The Finest Example.com! It’s a slightly different version of Chapter 18, titled “The Guitar Hero Goes Home.” I see that it already has some “likes” and a nice comment! As soon as I’m not in a public toilet stall, I will post the link to it!!

And I see that Nick Cave has also posted a Red Hand Files thing!! It seems to be about music and Kanye…

This Day Is Almost Sucking

January 16, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Grief really sucks, you know? Doesn’t it?

And for me, there’s also a lot of anger in it — in grief. I hate having to “work shit out”. In my brain, I mean. In my heart. I’d rather just, you know, go along my merry way.

I don’t like to be angry. And I also don’t like to feel crippled by grief. I’m guessing I’m the only person on Earth who feels this way…

Well, very early this morning, even though it is nearly freezing outside, a bird was singing outside my window. I knew it was connected to my stepmom. I just knew it. She was a very intensely spiritual person while she was alive and I’m guessing she hasn’t changed since yesterday, when she died.

I don’t know if she was telling me she was all right, or telling me to get my ass out of bed and stop crying. Maybe a little of both? But I know it was connected to her — that little merrily singing bird in the dead of winter, in the maple tree right outside my window. So I am going to try to make the best out of this day somehow. Then first thing tomorrow, I’m leaving to go be with my dad. Then the funeral is Saturday.

And I will make every effort not to shoot myself, because it would be so intensely inappropriate.

Meanwhile.

Here are a couple things that might be of interest to you.

If you are an American artist of any kind — writer, visual, etc. Please join the Copyright Alliance. It is free to join. Copyrights are once again coming under attack in the USA and you need to stay informed about what is at stake for the copyrights of your work in the age of the Internet. Join here. It takes 2 minutes.

On Instagram this morning, Stefanos Rokos announced that his art exhibition in Antwerp has been extended by popular demand. It will run again from January 22 -February 9th. These are the incredible paintings inspired by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ No More Shall We Part album. If you live in Belgium or will be traveling there, the details of the gallery and the exhibit are here.

Which reminds me, that it is now almost two weeks since there was a Red Hand Files thingy from Nick Cave!! (Perhaps the bird outside my window today was telling me to find a reason to go on living anyway. I guess we’ll see.)

All right. I need to go. I’m not sure my writing will yield anything productive today. I’m not sure if I’m going to even try. Yesterday was all about sitting at the kitchen table and staring; calling my dad every few hours to make sure he wasn’t falling to pieces — although he was.

I have no clue what today will be about. I’m so angry and I’m just so fucking sad. I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with life, you know. But I’m guessing that will change. Everything always does.

Have a good day, wherever you are. I love you guys.

Best Day Ever!

January 11, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Well, work with Peitor on the micro-script yesterday was so fun. Plus, it was just one of those sessions where we got so much accomplished — even though, you know, we are still nowhere near done.

Yes! An 8 minute film. And we’ve been working on it for a year now. And still nowhere near done with the script (because we’re going shot by shot).

I still don’t know why Peitor was in Dallas yesterday. From the background sounds, he was clearly in a hotel room with Graham. I could hear the television and I could hear room service arrive with Graham’s breakfast. But when I said to Peitor, “I can’t remember why you’re in Dallas right now.” He replied, “I can’t remember either!”

Then he just laughed it off and said, “I just want you to know, Marilyn, how much I love working on this script with you. It always feels like we’re kids, having a sleepover, you know? The parents are sound asleep in their rooms, but we’re still up, in bed with a little flashlight, creating our make-believe world.”

I’m not sure if that’s what my immaturity brings to the table, or if he and I share equally in that, but I thought it was kind of telling. You know, me still being 12 and all that. I think it’s rubbing off on him. (I’m 59 and he’s 62.)

Well, I discovered yesterday that he’s been actively pitching the logline for Lita’s Got to Go to people he meets, or knows, in LA and in London, so I guess it’s okay to post it here. I’m actually the one who was supposed to create the official website months ago (for Abstract Absurdity Productions), but it was back when I was putting up what I thought was going to be a simple, one-page blog for In the Shadow of Narcissa, and that wound up being a little task from Hell. So after that, I took a break. Because the site for Abstract Absurdity has to be a little more complex than a one-page blog…

And now here it is, months later, and I still haven’t done it. Anyway. Here is the current logline:

“Lita’s Got to Go is a short abstract absurd comedy in 7 acts about a psychologically unstable woman who becomes obsessed when she senses her housekeeper has been inappropriate with her furniture.”

And it is heavily informed by Polanski, Antonioni, Hitchcock, and Bergman, and the Bauhaus school. And it is possibly going to be in Swedish with English subtitles, although we keep vacillating on that. (Regardless, there are only about 5 lines of dialogue, total.)

So yesterday was good!

Although Nick Cave went a whole week without sending out a Red Hand Files letter. I hope it’s not connected to the catastrophic fires going on in Australia. (Perhaps maybe he simply stumbled upon a latent inner ability to take a vacation? The In Conversations resume in Europe in about a week, and then there’s the Ghosteen tour of Europe coming up, which I’m guessing will sort of expand into South America and Central America and North America and well, Australia — one would hope. )

Anyway, here’s something I found truly remarkable yesterday: A huge lit billboard along the main highway here – yes, out here in the middle of rural-nowhere Muskingum County, Ohio — asking people to donate to help Australia. Plus, it was worded in such a way that you could easily see where to make your donations, even if you were zipping past at 95 mph, as I usually am!

I think a genius designed that billboard.

[GENIUS (speaking in the boardroom): “Twelve-year-old girls will likely be driving past this billboard really fast, so let’s make sure the URL is easy to see and to remember!”]

Well, okay, it’s Saturday morning. Quite mild here. A little bit of sun making it’s way into the sky. Looks like a pretty day. I’m gonna get to work here on rewriting that character arc in Tell My Bones.

(Oh, wait — let me give you a head’s up about a fellow blogger, Peter Wyn Mosey, a writer from Wales, who has a new webzine launching today: The Finest Example. Stories, art, & poems. Visit, follow, & submit work!! I’m going to!)

Okay, as much as I hesitate to do this too often, lest you start to think I’m living in some sort of time warp here, I’m leaving you with my breakfast listening music from today, which was once again Rudy Vallee — but a different song from the previous days. This one was truly a smash hit. It’s super catchy, too. “You Oughta Be In Pictures” from 1934. I love this song.

It occurred to me during breakfast, that this was the first time I was listening to the song in a really old house — you know, that would have likely had a radio back in 1934 that probably actually broadcasted this song! It was interesting to think about that. The life of radio waves, sound waves, space & time.

All righty, well, thanks for visiting!! Enjoy your Saturday, wherever you are in the world! I love you guys. See ya.

(And here’s another site, this one in LA, with a detailed list of links on how to help firefighters, the Red cross, and wildlife in Australia.)

“You Oughta Be In Pictures”

(Rudy Vallee’s extended version)

As I look at you
A thought goes through my mind
What a marvelous find
You’d make upon the screen
I am proud that I have you
Right by my side
But I’d be satisfied to share you
With the public to be seen

You ought to be in pictures
You’re wonderful to see
You ought to be in pictures
Oh, what a hit you would be
Your voice would thrill a nation
Your face would be adored
You’d make a great sensation
With wealth and fame – your reward

And if you should kiss the way you kiss
When we are all alone
You’d make ev’ry girl and man a fan
Worshiping at your throne

You ought to shine as brightly
As Jupiter and Mars
You ought to be in pictures
My star of stars

You’re lovely as a Crawford
Like Davies you are gay
You surely should be offered
A starring part right away

You’re sweet as a Gaynor
And you’re as hot as the gal named West
You’d surely make even Garbo jealous
If you took a movie test

You ought to dress like Tashman
And ride in motor cars
You ought to be in pictures
My star of stars

c – 1934 DANA SUESSE, EDWARD HEYMAN, & RUDY VALLEE

Don’t Puke — It’s Art!

January 7, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis 1 Comment

Jesus Christ — what a fucking day.

I have spent the entire day at my desk, working on In the Shadow of Narcissa (the memoir about my early childhood). Or trying to.

Primarily, I was just going to reformat it today from web pages into a traditional manuscript format, but then I realized that I need to re-write the opening segment somehow, because it sounds more like a prologue right now. I’m not sure if I want to keep it as a prologue. Ideally, I want it to have the present-tense approach that the other segments have except that the first segment happens when I am only about 18 months old. And even though I remember when it happened, I’m not sure how to write from the POV of myself at 18 months old.

When I gave it a try, though, I discovered that putting myself directly into that headspace of myself at 18 months (the first time my adoptive mother physically abused me) really upset me and I spent several hours after that just wanting to throw up. And wondering why the fuck am I writing this damn thing? Why revisit all this? But also feeling like it’s my life and all I really know how to do is create from my life. And for whatever reason, I feel it’s really necessary for me to write this little book.

My childhood — it had moments that were so beautiful. And they were the last beautiful moments I had until I got well into my 50s. Which, of course, sucks. So I want to write this darn book. Process the whole darn thing. But it also kept making me feel like vomiting.

And I also realized today that Thug Luckless is me, as well — in the sense that he’s this robot on the outside that becomes this deeply sentient thing on the inside, through sexual contact with a whole fucked-up town, whether he wants it or not. You know — I saw weird parallels with my own life. I’m okay with that, though, because he’s a character. So I can “act out” through him. Whereas the Narcissa book is a memoir. It’s me. When I first began writing it this past summer, it didn’t bother me like this. And it’s really just this opening segment that is upsetting me so much today.

As the sun was going down, even though — or maybe because — it was getting pretty chilly out, I decided to take a walk. Just get air, you know? To stop this desire to vomit.

And, my god, I love this town out here in the middle of nowhere. First off, I headed directly across the street from my house and then stopped in the middle of the train tracks. I looked west and saw the sun going down in the distance, over those tracks that just go on and on through the rest of the entire state. It was so fucking beautiful. All the old houses in stark outline along the tracks. And the trees. The clear sky with those streaks of amber and orange, sinking way down. And the tracks receding forever into it. A couple stars coming out. Amazing. I wished I’d brought my phone to take a picture.

And then everywhere I looked as I walked, I was just struck by the age of this town and how stunning it looked at that specific hour of twilight. Everything so darn quiet. Such old houses. Such unexpected architecture. And the sidewalk is so close to the houses that you can look right into them. (A lot of the sidewalks are still the old brick ones from well over a hundred years ago.) I also noticed tonight that a lot of people here have dogs.

In one house, the front room light was on, the curtains were open. I saw an old man sitting at his dining table, writing something. He had tons of books everywhere. And two boxers were right there in the window, staring at me! They startled me, because I saw the man in the background first, before I saw the two dogs. You know how they get so tense when they stare at you. And suddenly, there they were. I just love boxers.

So many dogs, watching me along the way. Too cute.

And then I turned back onto Basin Street, heading in the direction of my house, and I suddenly realized — wow, there it is. On the corner. Lights on down in my kitchen, lights on up in my bedroom. My home, you know? I finally have a home — and peace from that mercilessly mean woman who raised me.

Somehow, I am going to write this book. For heaven’s sake, it’s only going to be about 40 pages… and it deals with her in what I consider her “best ” years. I’ve got to figure out how to deal with this.

Well, when I went back inside, I sat at the kitchen table and read a new issue of Mojo that came in the mail yesterday. And watched a couple more of those old episodes of Black Books and laughed really hard. And also saw that I can stream Rocketman and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood now– two movies that I really wanted to see. So that made me happy.

Then I went back up to my room, to my desk, trying to figure out how to approach that first prologue/segment of In the Shadow of Narcissa without losing my mind, and right then, as I sat down, a little ladybug was scurrying across a photo of Nick Cave that’s sitting on my desk.

The little beetle was just there, walking across his face. And of course, it instantly reminded me of one of his Red Hand Files letters from the summertime, when he wrote about ladybugs in connection to his dead son, Arthur, and how believing in something (in signs) helps us survive.

So, I took it as a sign, you know? I tried to take a picture of it before it walked off and went down the side of my desk:

The ladybug is there on the left, getting ready to walk off of the picture.

So that’s been my day. Illuminating, I guess. I’ll try to deal with the memoir again tomorrow, before I go off to meet with the director and focus on Tell My Bones.

And now, I’m gonna go crash on the bed, turn down the lights and stream something.

I hope Tuesday was good for you, gang, wherever you are in the world. I love you guys. See ya.