Tag Archives: Nick Cave Red Hand Files

Best Day Ever!

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!

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.

Part of Basin Street, during a full moon this past September.

Off We Go, Back To Work!

Leave a comment

It isn’t actually snowing here today — as the little picture above would imply. It’s raining. And is going to rain nonstop until tomorrow, when it will turn to snow. So it’s kind of an appropriate picture.

I cannot tarry here today because Peitor got back to Los Angeles on Monday and is expecting to get back to work this morning on our micro-script — often titled “Lita’s Got To Go” but sometimes it’s called other things! (I prefer it’s Swedish subtitle: Lita måste gå.)

Anyway. I have to get back in the mindspace for that intensely well-crafted absurdity, so I can’t spend too long on the blog today.

Oh, before I forget, there’s a new Nick Cave Red Hand Files letter out today. It’s very, very interesting, about the song “Hollywood” from the album Ghosteen. I love that song.  (I know, I know, I know — someday I’ll try to dig up a Nick Cave song that I hate, just to prove to you how fair and impartial I can be!! Meanwhile, as pigs fly…)

Anyway. You can read it at the Red Hand Files link up there if you so choose!!

I spent yesterday streaming more of those old Black Books TV episodes on Amazon. That show just really makes me laugh. I know it’s politically incorrect to laugh at drunks anymore but I just find it so stupidly funny. I really just do. I laugh out loud.

And I also did this:

Yes, I did indeed start yet a third journal and clipped a pen to it and carried it around. Meaning, down to the kitchen, back up to my desk, over to the night table.

It does sort of seem, on the face of it, to be kind of ridiculous to have all these separate journals for all the many things that go on in mind that need constant processing. Why not put it all in just one book and not isolate everything like this?

Frankly, I’m not sure. But for now, this is how it is. And I’m hoping it will just stop here, you know? (Oh, and I do want to mention that I am well aware that my little bedside lamp there is intensely un-chic and is well over 60 years old… I, personally, have only owned it since 2004, when Mikey Rivera found it at a garage sale somewhere in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and brought it home to me. I fell instantly in love with it. That’s some kid’s childhood embodied there in that lamp! How can I part with it?? Plus that little green glass part of it is its own separate night light!! It’s just too cool, even though I’m not exactly into the sailboat motif anywhere else in the house, or in my life…) (As if I have a motif in my house other than “old.”)

(And that coaster there on my night table is of a pub in London. I bought the set of coasters at the Heathrow airport about 20 years ago, and it has different illustrations of famous old pubs in London. I also have a set of coasters illustrating popular tourist spots in Paris — the Moulin Rouge one sits on my desk. For some reason, I love coasters bought in airports. And a friend of mine who lives here in the US but who is British,  took a vacation several years ago in Switzerland and, without knowing my slavish devotion to coasters bought in foreign airports, brought me back a set of coasters of pastoral spots in Switzerland. She said, as she sheepishly gave them to me, “I’m not sure why I bought you these weird things, I just saw them and suddenly felt compelled to get them for you…” I was thrilled!!)

So I still have all the Christmas stuff hanging out in the dining room. I just haven’t felt like dragging all those boxes out of storage yet. It felt really nice to just kind of lounge around and read magazines and talk on the phone and stream old TV shows that I’d never seen before… Kind of a little paradise around here for a couple of days.

But I am indeed back to work today because Peitor insisted on it. (I know: first, he insists on dashing off to London for 2 weeks; now he insists on dashing back to work. And my job, I guess, is to just be flexible and let people be whoever they need to be in this life…)

And even though I’ve already seen him a couple times during the holidays, I have an official meeting with the director of Tell My Bones on Tuesday. I actually can’t wait. It’s going to be a good meeting, I know. Even though I still have to do some revisions on the play. (He’s actually asked me to wait until the first table read in NYC because he thinks it will be more instructive for me that way, so I haven’t felt too pressured to do any more rewrites on it just yet.)

Plus, I just love having meetings with people who have vision, who have great ideas. And he does. Plus I love knowing that I am only responsible for writing the play. I don’t have to execute any of his ideas — just write the play. He is always saying to me: “Marilyn, that’s not your job; that’s my job. Just write and let me do my job, okay?”

Okay!

It’s so cool to have a project and not have to be overseeing absolutely everything. I guess this is part of my 2020 horoscope, where it said that this year I was going to learn how to be interdependent.

So, on that note, I need to scoot because I have to get myself sorted here at the desk before Peitor calls. And, of course, get more coffee. (BTW, I drink really, really weak old-fashioned coffee, because I can’t handle very much caffeine at all. I just love the process of constantly drinking coffee but I do like at least a little caffeine. So when I’m saying that I’m always drinking all this coffee, I’m not actually wired to the rafters or anything. I can barely feel it. )

But that said, I’m gonna get more coffee and get going around here. Thanks for visiting, gang! I haven’t actually been playing much music around here, except Sting and old Nick Cave songs that I’ve already posted here recently. Although, I do really love this other song, that I played yesterday while making my lunch, so I’ll leave you with that. You probably already know it because it’s a monster hit that’s already a year old, so I won’t post the lyrics, which are exceptionally lengthy. It’s a really cool song, though — “a lot” by 21 Savage featuring J. Cole.

All righty! Have a terrific first Friday of 2020!!I love you guys. See ya.

Best Morning of Christmas Eve, Ever!

Leave a comment

For some reason, all day yesterday, I kept thinking about that concert film from 2018, Distant Sky: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Live in Copenhagen. I really wished I could re-watch it. I kept thinking about how great it would sound on my new speakers, plus I just really loved that concert and wanted to see it again.

You know, I have a private email address that only about 6 people know. Two of my friends have it; one of my ex-husbands has it (the other ex-husband only texts me on my phone); and then about 3 business-related people have it. It’s so that I can be sure that emails coming from any of those people never wind up in the junk folder, and never get lost among a ton of spam emails. I won’t ever accidentally delete it, or not see that it’s there the moment it arrives.

There’s only ever about 3 active things in that inbox, and right now they’re all emails from the director of my play. Around 2:30am, though, I saw that my ex-husband (in Seattle) had emailed me. It was no less than 8 animated Christmas gifs, the one posted above being among them! I find it so funny & sweet that he does that, because he’s Chinese, Buddhist, born & raised in Singapore — and he sends me the most Westernized depictions of Christmas imaginable.  It’s so funny. But he also said something really sweet to me and it was just the best little Christmas email to get at 2:30am.

And then at about 6am this morning, I was still in bed and checked that email inbox again and, lo & behold, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds had written to me!! They never write to me at that email address — they only use my main one that the whole world knows!!

Well, upon closer inspection, it turns out that YouTube has that email address  — and they were the ones actually writing to me. But it was to tell me that Distant Sky: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Live in Copenhagen had just been uploaded to YouTube!! And that I could start watching it right that very second if I wanted to!

Fucking-A, right??!! Yay. I seriously really was thinking about that movie all day yesterday. I’m so happy!

I know… I’m committed to making this effort to watch only new things. (You’ll notice, though, that being “committed to making an effort” has a glaring loophole in it — you can see it a mile away.) Plus, it’s Christmas — who watches anything new on Christmas? I think it’ll be cool if I can manage to get through the next 2 days without watching It’s A Wonderful Life or A Christmas Carol or The Bishop’s Wife or Holiday Inn, or even some sort of old foreign film about Nazis in Paris at Christmas or something like that.

We’ll see how it goes. I am, though, going to SERIOUSLY make an effort to not sit at my desk. I am going to try to avoid the hypnotic pull of it. I really am.

Even though, last evening at the Granville Inn, I ran into Kevin — the director of my play — and his husband, Christopher. And so now all I want to do is work on some revisions of the play! But last night, Kevin — who greeted me with this amazing hug and a big smile and said really joyously, “I love you!” and it left me a little breathless because it’s been quite a while since anyone has done that to me — but he also said, “We’re not discussing work until after the holiday, okay?!”

And I said, “Okay!!” And I’m gonna try to stick to that. I really am. And if that means I’m forced to re-watch Distant Sky: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Live in Copenhagen in order to not sit down at my desk, well, you know….

I’m actually so glad that I looked really nice last evening. I was hoping to run into that older man — that widower who’s a transplanted New Yorker — because he’s really interested in my play and I wanted to give him one of the Christmas cards. He’s been really sick, but I was wondering if maybe he was feeling better and would stop in at the Inn before Christmas. So I had actually washed my hair and it was behaving splendidly — you know, silky and bouncy and just really full and not as if half of it had just fallen out in the shower and was hanging around the bathtub drain…(such is the life of hair at age 59 and a half). Plus, I had decided to wear make-up– eye make-up, that is. I never wear any other make-up anymore, even though I have a ton of it and I love make-up; I just hate wearing it now because it adds about 20 years to my face. And I spend 17 trillion dollars a year on products that ensure I look 15 years younger than I am when I roll out of bed each morning and so that I can go out bravely into the Hinterlands and have much younger people gush breathlessly that I don’t look anywhere near as old as I am!

I don’t want to ruin all that by wearing anything more than eye make-up.

But anyway. Last night, there I was, actually looking really good for a change. And I had on these cute little silver earrings shaped like cats in Santa hats with tiny bells on them (a gift from Kara last Christmas) and my little gold “Joy” pin with the tiny rhinestones. I just looked really tastefully festive and sort of “grown-up-ish.” In short: I looked nothing like how I usually look and then I ran into my director and his husband! So I thought privately to myself: oh, yay! they’ll think I look like this all the time…

All righty. Enough of that.

Nick Cave was either up really late or up very early, because I also got a Red Hand Files thingy in my (other) inbox just before dawn! I only know it’s about Christmas. I haven’t read it yet. But you can read it here if you so choose!

Right now, I’m gonna get more coffee, finish up the laundry, brush my teeth, admire my still-behaving hair in the mirror, and then get in my grown-up car and join the throngs of people who, comme moi, decided to save all their grocery shopping for Christmas Eve day — the worst traffic day of the whole year, even in a small town.

Then I will come home, not smoke Chesterfields, not drink bourbon, not sit at my desk and write… but still have a really great Christmas Eve!!

Okay. I leave you with this. It still breaks my heart to pieces (I loved this man and they killed him). But there’s still a lot of joy left there, too, gang. Death doesn’t kill love, it only transforms it. So play it loud and rejoice. And thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!

Just A Truly Weird Morning So Far…

Leave a comment

Well, I’ve been physically awake since 4:30am, and I’m feeling good, you know — happy, whatever. But my brain has decided to go in slow motion, or something. I’m not sure what’s going on with me.

All morning, I have tried to post to this blog and complete sentences have been very slow in arriving. So this will probably be a short post. And maybe if the brain returns, I will post more later on this evening.

Late last night, I got a sudden text from Peitor. He was in an airplane at LAX, getting ready to take off for London. He even sent a photo from inside the plane (it actually looked pretty cool — sort of purplish lighting.) Anyway. Loyal readers of this lofty blog perhaps recall that Peitor has a habit of suddenly taking off for Europe. Usually London. And usually it means he’s in some sort of a frame of mind. That’s all I can really say about it on the blog, though, because it’s personal to him. But I was thinking, well, okay — will we be working on the script while you’re gone? I mean, this darn script is already taking us forever as it is, and we were supposed to work on it again tomorrow…

Well, I guess we’ll just see. He hasn’t texted again, so I still have no idea why he suddenly took off for London.

I know he was waiting to hear about scoring a film by a director that I absolutely love, who’s based in England. So maybe it was that. I just don’t know yet. But it threw me that not only was he suddenly leaving, but he was already on the plane.

Another friend was acting extremely strange yesterday, too. And since I have so few friends left (btw, I noticed that a ton of you didn’t show up the other day when I was holding open interviews here in Crazeysburg for new friends…). But seriously, I have so few people in my life right now, that when even two of them start acting unpredictably on the same day, it means that 75% of my friends are acting strange at the same time.

Well, anyway. Laundry here is almost done and then I’m heading into town to get the food. My birth mom actually left some deliciously tasty looking yummies in my freezer! Vegetarian lasagna and some sort of spinach phyllo something or other and pumpkin-sage ravioli.  But I’m out of things like fruit and vegetables and my coveted organic Greek yogurt, so I still have to drive into town today.

Here’s hoping that my inability to form coherent sentences has little impact on my ability to drive.

And then I’m going to either work on Thug Luckless or work on notes for the new “letter” for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. Perhaps even a little of both, if the brain begins working by then. (I honestly don’t know what’s the matter with me. If you could see the amount of typos I keep having to fix just in this short post, you’d be aghast!)

I have to mention here (again) just how much I love the new speakers I bought for the iPad. They are hard wired speakers — you know, that you plug into the wall. My last speakers lasted 10 years and decided to bite the dust while my mom was here and we were watching The Polar Express. I had to switch them out for the bluetooth speaker, which is cheap and has a short battery life. But these new speakers — wow. I was listening to Ghosteen this morning and just could not believe the sound quality. Jaw-dropping. And I only spent 20 bucks on them! (Plus, they’re made by the same company that made the old — more expensive — speakers. Incredible what 10 years can achieve.)

Oh, and right after I posted to the blog yesterday, Nick Cave sent out another Red Hand Files reply letter thing.  You can read it here. It was mostly about that song “Deanna.” I thought it was very, very interesting. I read it several times, actually. (But, of course that’s me and I’m a bit obsessive…)

So, okay. I’m gonna scoot and get the laundry done and get to town and back so that I can sit right back down here at my desk and hopefully begin thinking straight. I have high hopes, but we’ll see!!

Thanks for visiting. I’m sure I will return! I love you guys. See ya!

(Me, in relation to my head right now…)

Finished, For Now!

Leave a comment

These are only the photos of the dining room, but we did the family room and the kitchen, too. And that’s it. I’m exhausted!!

As soon as it gets dark — in about an hour — we’re going to go take a walk to look at the neighborhood Christmas lights. It’s getting really cold now, so it will feel like Christmas!!

The trees, decorated!

The main tree, with more ornaments on it than you can possibly imagine because the previous tree was a lot larger!

So those are shots of my dining room in there, too. I think it’s funny that it’s decorated so much because not a single solitary soul will see it. No one ever comes to visit me! Here’s hoping the cats appreciate my festive mood…

Okay! Hope you’ve had a good one, gang! There was a Red Hand Files thing from Nick Cave today, but I’m on my phone and don’t really know how to link it. It was about humor.  The necessity of it. And about Conway Savage having been arrestingly funny.

All righty. I love you guys. See ya!

And So The Voyage Begins!!

Leave a comment

I’ve started all the housecleaning stuff here that I wanted to get to before my mom arrives.  After all, when she left here back in late September, she was leaving a really clean house. I came home from New York to the tidiest house imaginable. It made me so happy.

I wouldn’t want her to arrive next Monday and think, you know: Jesus, doesn’t this gal ever clean anything?

Because, truthfully, when I’m not working on a project (or seven) I’m a bit of a cleaning freak. To the point where I can sort of be annoying. I’m one of those people — I might not actually say it to you, but I’ll be privately thinking it: Wow, did you just move something a fraction of an inch from where I had it?

You’d think I wouldn’t be so — well, I guess anal-retentive is the phrase for it but it sure is unattractive — but you’d think I wouldn’t be like that, since I have 7 cats who usually decide that everything pretty much goes wherever they want it. Still. I do notice when things aren’t exactly where I last placed them.

However… Cleaning is not the voyage I’m speaking of, up there in the title of today’s post!

I’m speaking once again about Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town, the new novel that is fully underway in my brain.

It’s exciting. That whole process of writing a new novel — how the ideas begin to just sort of tumble down into my mind. Sort of like clothes falling down a laundry chute or something. Ideas just tumble in and I have to keep running to my notebook and jot down notes. That’s when I know for sure that a full-blown novel is actually in there, preparing to come out. It just really excites me.

It’s such a different process from, like, Girl in the Night, where I have no clue what I’m going to write, or when I’m going to write it. I only know that I want the book to be under 200 pages, so that means about 18 “Letters” total, depending on the length of each one.

Beyond that, I don’t have any clue what the “Letters” will focus on. The book is just a great big blank in my mind, extending before me. Then, suddenly the next title for a “Letter” will emerge, and maybe a color or a tone will accompany the title. But I won’t really know what it’s going to be about until the piece completely arrives, sort of like a mist rolling in at the edges of my awareness. And then, suddenly, the whole piece will sort of “download.” It could be weeks between title and download, though.

In the Shadow of Narcissa is a similar feeling, but it’s a lot simpler, since each of those pieces is only about 600 words. The only difficult part of that book is to try to retain the perspective I had as a toddler, when the inside of our house was pretty much my whole world, and everything about being alive was brand new and I didn’t understand anything.

I still don’t understand anything, but nothing is brand new anymore.

Well, I shouldn’t say that; I still have feelings about things that I’ve never felt before. So that’s cool.

Anyway, it’s a wonderful feeling — to have all these ideas rushing at me about Thug. It feels like it’s going to be a really complex, dark, amusing, intense sort of filthy book.

You know, in the old days, I used to have to write with the voices of my publishers in my head and their financial agendas looking over my shoulder — which also meant that my agent was looking over my shoulder, too. And that meant I had to seriously rein-in some of the things I wanted to write. Even though I seriously miss having publishers, it really does sort of free up my mind. My imagination. Since the small press market has shrunk so drastically, and each press is just glutted with writers trying to get a deal, I just write what I want to write now and then worry about who there might be to publish it after it’s done.

It just feels so good. Really liberating.

All righty. It’s Tuesday yet again, which means I have no food in the house!! So I gotta drive into town and do something about that. For some reason, the main road out of here is closed. So I have to sort of go the back way — the road that winds along where the old Erie Canal used to be about 200 years ago. And it’s a lovely, narrow old road. However, it takes long enough to get to town and back on the regular road.

Meanwhile…Nick Cave sent out a Red Hand Files letter thing this morning. He actually touched on some things I think about a lot. You can read it here. Today it’s about grieving — having to grieve publicly, I guess is how you’d describe it.

Okay, I gotta scoot! Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting, gang! I leave you with nothing today because I didn’t listen to any music at breakfast. I just sat there quietly and looked at the cats eating while I ate and I wondered how I got here (to Earth) and how they got into my life and where we’re all going to after this… I love you guys. See ya!

The cats eating breakfast in their corner of the kitchen, 2 summers ago, before Daddycakes died.

Ah,Tuesday! It Rears Its Lovely Head Once More!!

Leave a comment

Yes, Tuesday is laundry day around here! So that’s already underway.

And it’s also the day I have to drive into town and get groceries. All I have left around here are arugula and tomatoes. Healthy as I am, even I need a little more excitement than that. (Well, a lot more excitement than that, but we’re talking about food right now.)

Sometimes that part of living in the middle of nowhere gets a wee bit old — having to drive 25 miles & back to get the food. Because I spend maybe 20 minutes in the actual market. Then an hour driving. And then about 20 more minutes putting all the groceries away.

And I’ve already spent a chunk of the morning going over stuff with the director again for Tell My Bones and our Christmas promotion. And so I’m just now sitting down to blog at an hour when the blog is usually already posted.

So my day’s gone.

I’m going to spend what’s left of it (after the shopping trek) doing some more tweaking on Letter #5 from Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. And then, if I have the right headspace after that, I’m going to work some more on Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town. I just woke up in that kind of a mood.

Working with Thug takes a lot out of me, though, and if I’m not in the right headspace then it’s just useless. Writing that kind of porn (meaning the kind people wish to actually read) is like neurosurgery with words. Even though 99.9% of the words are filthy dirty & disgusting, they still have to be incredibly precise and in the exact specific place in the sentence; and then each sentence has to be precisely right. And then you can’t have too many words or it ruins everything.

So it’s a lot of work. However, it’s a task I’m willing to undertake for the sake of mankind (and good porn).

William at the A1000Mistakes blog in Australia (my favorite blog for learning about cool music I’ve never heard of before!), commented here yesterday about the unfortunate situation on the Internet and artists getting ripped off, etc.

What’s happening to me now is just sort of getting out of control. It’s never been this bad — where so much of my stuff is illegally being offered for free or for sale, all over the world.  I have enough of an enormous ego to feel flattered, you know — if you want it that bad, then, great. However, it truly erodes my income. But at the same time, these are really old stories and novels and novellas, and so it sort of just makes me feel like I have to focus my energy on the new work and let go of these things I can’t control.

The truth is that without the Internet I never could have gotten as popular as I did, as quickly as I did — all over the world. I loved the World Wide Web. I thought it was the most awesome thing back in the late 1990s. And back then, it went hand in hand with driving sales of actual books in bookstores.

And, because of the kinds of books I primarily wrote, Amazon was also a godsend to me. Most people did not want to go out to a public bookstore and openly buy the kind of books I wrote (because publishers usually put such horrifically tacky covers on them!!). So the privacy factor of Amazon really helped put me on the map, 20 years ago.

Still, as much as I personally love the ease of Amazon, they were also the beginning of the erosion of my earnings, way back when, because they were the ones who started to make it so fucking easy for people to buy cheap used copies of my stuff, that I got no royalties on whatsoever. Eventually, the Internet and eBooks helped put all of my publishers out of business (small presses, primarily). So this disruption of my career has been going on for quite a while now and, for the most part, I’m used to it.

This sudden onslaught of so much of it at once is a little hard to take, though. However.

I made the decision a long time ago that I was going to be a writer, no matter what. I’m used to the winds of fortune constantly changing. I would not recommend being a professional writer to anyone on the planet, though, unless you can stomach that.

A few years ago, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a national newspaper of the Philippines, interviewed me in the late Spring, as students were graduating school, and among the questions they asked me was what I would advise these students who might want to make a career out of writing literary erotica.

I was dumbfounded, you know? Why on Earth would they ever want to do that? You’ve got to be out of your fucking mind to, you know, willingly choose this if you had even the remotest option of doing something else. And if, for whatever reason, like me, you know you don’t really have an option: you either write what’s in your head, or you blow your head completely off. Well, if that’s the case, then nothing I say is going to persuade or deter you.

But anyway. I’m used to things being less than perfect. My main goal is to write something good enough that somebody somewhere likes it so much that they want to keep it. Because it only takes one copy of something to be buried away for safe keeping — like a scroll in a clay jug in a cave in the cliffs over Qumran — to help it be part of the physical world for a really, really long time.

That’s the goal, anyway, when I put a word on some sort of page. And the Internet and everything that comes along with it, is part of that; be it good or less than good.

Okay. Nick Cave sent out a Red Hand Files thingy today! It was all about:

Ghosteen Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

Had I known he was actually going to eventually tell us what Ghosteen was about, I’m thinking I might not have spent all those hours pondering it while listening to it in my bed, or at my desk, or in my kitchen, or while I was doing yoga, or driving all over Muskingum County, or while I was taking a shower….

However, that’s all water under the bridge, as it were. What matters more is that I still look really young for my age so not too much time was lost there.

I’m just kidding, of course. Mostly. Anyway. You can read it here if you so choose! As always, he’s eloquent and thought-provoking. And the album is just breathtaking, however you interpret it (or try to).

FYI: “Spinning Song” is a song I really love. I have no clue what it’s about. It is not one of the songs that breaks my heart or anything; I just really like the imagery, even though I don’t understand it. At all. But it seems to be a little bit about Elvis. And “the Queen” whose hair was a stairway, makes me think of Priscilla — not just on their wedding day, but more specifically, in the official photo from when the baby was first born: Priscilla’s hair is not to be believed. I never could understand her hair in those days. As a young girl, her hair actually kind of frightened me. (But then it turned out, in the 1980s, that she just had regular hair like everyone else.) (And that she was also incredibly funny and cute.)

Okay.  I’m gonna scoot. The day is practically over already!!! Have a perfect Tuesday, wherever you are in the world, and whatever it finds you doing. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

Finally! It’s Tuesday!!

3 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HIM: “Yes, I’m sure.”

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, I’m outta here!!

Now, That’s A Man Who Knows How to Say, ‘I Love You’…

Leave a comment

I am speaking of Tom Jones, of course.

For some unknown reason, I woke up this morning bordering on feeling really depressed and the voice in my head was singing “I (Who Have Nothing).”   If you don’t know this song, I of course will regale you with it at the bottom of this post.

If you’ve read my novel Freak Parade (and who hasn’t? ), you no doubt already know that I love Tom Jones — and have since I was a wee bonny lass, that’s for sure. I guess that’s a polite way of saying that he’s been around forever. (Because I’ve already been around forever and he’s been around even longer than that!)

Anyway. Boy, that man can sing. And because he can be so passionate, so deep, so emotional and powerful — because of those very things, I really couldn’t manage getting on YouTube before the sun was even up in order to listen to that (really old) intensely emotional song. Even though I really wanted to, because I thought it might give me some insight into why I would wake up singing it when I haven’t actually heard that song in years.

But I really just can’t listen to Tom Jones at 5:30 in the morning. (I guess if I was married to him or something, I could listen to him at 5:30 in the morning. Of course, he’s probably not actually singing at 5:30 in the morning. Who knows what he’s doing at that hour? It could be that he’s actually just sleeping. Anyway.)

So I got out of bed instead, and tried to focus on not feeling depressed. I’ve made good headway with 4 of the cats. Huckleberry and Doris — the two who always accompany me to the bathroom first thing in the morning, are now letting me pet them several times in a row. Mind you, I have to be peeing in the dark while this is going on , but I will take whatever meager crumbs of love that I can get. But it’s really so cute. They really seem to like being petted in this small way. Huckleberry has started purring — a thing I never heard her do in these 7 years. And Doris will actually bat at my hand if I pet Huckleberry for too long without petting her, too.

But if I pet them for one moment longer than they deem appropriate, they nip at me and scratch.

And Weenie and Scottie now both allow me to pet them one time before I set their bowls of food down in front of them in the morning, but that’s it. If I try to pet them more than once, they bite. Still, it’s progress. (It only took 7 years to be able to pet a cat once….)

I’m patient, if nothing else. And that was actually kind of why I was depressed this morning — sometimes I just feel like giving up. Just that sense of “why do I do all this every day; day in, day out?” And I of course mean everything in my life when I say that — not just this business of trying to permanently foster an entire colony of feral cats.

For the most part, I’m actually really happy. But some days, I wake up and look at it all – life, I mean — and I think: not this again; didn’t I do all this just yesterday, and every single solitary other day before this one? For what? What’s the goal here? Is there in fact a goal? A reason to be here, beyond just doing the same darn thing every single day? What is life, anyway? What does all this mean?

And then I can quickly spiral downward from there, if I’m not careful. Man, it can happen really quickly.

So I do try really, really hard to distract myself from thinking like that. And the cats — as un-demonstrative as they are — they can be very good at distracting me. And I do honestly think, on some really deep level, that that’s why they’re here. To distract the heck out of me.

Anyway, after breakfast, I went back up to my room to meditate, but I just didn’t feel like it today.  So I got on YouTube and finally listened to Tom Jones sing “I (Who have Nothing)”. And, man, that fucker can sing.  I’m still not sure why I woke up with that song in my head — it did indeed remind me of Freak Parade, and of all that was going on in my life when I began writing that novel back in 2005 (or I should say, all that had happened to me before then, which made me write the novel). But maybe, on some deep level,  my ears needed to hear the entire Universe, in the guise of Tom Jones, say “I love you” in that indescribably overpowering way. (And he doesn’t seem to be straining himself, or anything, when he sings like that; it just comes out.)

Well, I don’t actually really know what anything is about. I know I have the day ahead of me and I want it to be productive and maybe even joyful. I guess we’ll see.

There was yet another Red Hand Files newsletter thing today that Nick Cave sent out. I felt terrible reading it. I shouldn’t have posted anything on my blog the other day about  some of the things people write in and say to him. So if you read what I posted, just delete it in your head. And I will attempt to mind my own business (a thing that is sometimes exceedingly hard for me to do).

Okay. I’m gonna get started here. Work on the play. Set the Italian lessons aside for a moment. Get back to thinking in English. Have a wonderful Monday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, gang. The video I’m leaving you with is poor quality, visually, but the sound is what’s important, and it’s incredible. All right. I love you guys. See ya.

“I (Who Have Nothing)”

I, I who have nothing
I, I who have no one
Adore you, and want you so
I’m just a no one,
With nothing to give you but, oh
I Love You

He, He buys you diamonds
Bright, sparkling diamonds
But believe me, dear when I say,
That he can give you the world,
But he’ll never love you the way
I Love You

He can take you anyplace he wants
To fancy clubs and restaurants
But I can only watch you with
My nose pressed up against the window pane
I, I who have nothing
I, I who have no one
Must watch you, go dancing by
Wrapped in the arms of somebody else
When darling it’s I
Who Loves you

I Love You
I Love You
I Love You
c- 1970 Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Giulio Rapetti, Labati Donida