Tag Archives: Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

To Heaven in a Hellcat!

April 22, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis 2 Comments

I don’t know about you guys, but now that the full effect of that full moon is over, I feel 100% calmer around here. The intensity as well as the giddiness have subsided. Yay.

Good thing, because I have a lot of work to do around here, and I need to focus.

Sandra, the actress I write for in NY, texted yesterday that she’s doing the Shakespeare Festival in NYC for 1 month, then another one-week gig back in Florida, and then she will be arriving here. Yes, HERE! In the Hinterlands! To begin rehearsing the one-woman play I wrote for her, Tell My Bones.

(The director of Tell My Bones, while also based in NYC, is the Artistic Director of a professional theater company in a town 20 miles from here and will also be here in the Hinterlands all summer. Except that he lives in a staggeringly lovely, palatial home with something like 7 bathrooms, privately tucked away at the end of a 3-mile driveway, hidden behind many, many tall trees; whereas I live in sort of the pioneer era; I do have indoor plumbing, heat and electricity but that’s about it as far as modern conveniences go in this 118-year-old house. And I have a wonderful little raccoon living in my 108-year-old barn. Anyway, the director has an incredible theater-rehearsal space right there in his home, naturally, which is where we will rehearse.)

So that means one less 11-hour drive (each way) to NY for me this year. I have to say I’m relieved about that.

However, this little reprieve brought on by Sandra’s Shakespeare Festival run means that I have this sudden chunk of time to complete Blessed By Light, and even have it off to potential publishers before Tell My Bones gets underway. (With The Guide to Being Fabulous on the heels of that.)

Hence the need for focusing around here.

The editor in NYC finished her final edits on the first 19 chapters of the novel last evening and sent them to me. So I will begin writing Chapter 20 today. I don’t envision more than 10 more chapters before the book is done. So completing it reasonably soon is doable.

The editor made my day again yesterday with her concluding comments. She said, “This pulses with passion, love, sorrow — damn! Congrats to you. Nobody writes like you.”

And I have to say that this made me feel intensely relieved because, as loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall, Blessed By Light, while it has lots of erotic stuff in it, is unlike any of the other novels, or even short stories, that I’ve written thus far. And “thus far” now entails 30 years. It’s sort of an unusual point in my career to begin writing so differently. And I had no control over this sudden change; the novel simply began coming out back in late August and all I did was try to keep up with it, you know?

Oh, something really cool happened to me yesterday afternoon.

I will preface this by saying that my dream car is the Dodge Challenger Hellcat. I really want one of those cars (in fact I write briefly about the Hellcat in Blessed By Light), but readers who know me even only slightly, know that I already have a problem with speeding when I’m on the highway. And I’ve never once gotten a speeding ticket, or even a parking ticket for that matter. And owning a Hellcat would probably just be too much of a temptation, you know? (It goes up to 210 MPH.) The Sheriff and the Highway Patrol would probably be all over me then. You know, they do target certain cars and a Honda Fit (what I currently own) is not one of them.

Well, yesterday I discovered that a young guy I know casually out here in the Hinterlands, has a brand new HEMI Challenger! Holy Shit! His is black and I really like the purple ones, but still. I couldn’t believe it. After asking him a little bit about the legendary speed of the car (he barely touches the gas pedal and he’s going 145 MPH), he told me that if I wanted to, he would let me drive it out on the highway. Of course I said yes. OMG! I’m so excited.

Well, all righty, gang! I best get going around here. You know, today is the final day to stream Distant Sky Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Live in Copenhagen for free. I am so tempted to watch it again, but Jesus. I really gotta work. But don’t let me stop you if you haven’t seen it yet! God, it was good.

Have a great Monday, wherever you are in the world. I leave you with this: The most depressing although truly beautiful song about a fast car ever written!! Thanks for visiting! I love you, gang. See ya.

Wow, Looks Like A SUPER Happy Easter!

April 20, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

For these two, anyway! (Have you seen any of these XXX Bunny videos? They’re so funny. Well, it’s hard to laugh through some of it. Actually, it’s hard to know how to react since they’re pretty hardcore but the guy’s always got that ludicrous bunny head on the whole time.)

Yeah, well, okay. For some reason, I’m just feeling really silly about Easter this year. Not the part about Christ dying, or any of that stuff. But just my overall feelings this weekend are silly.

(And as an aside, if you are into the Secret Gospels – the Secret Gospel of Thomas or the Secret Gospel of Mark specifically – you have to wonder if maybe Jesus the man would have found XXX Bunny videos rather engaging. Honestly, the secret gospels are more interesting to me than 90% of the accepted Gospels. The kernels of truth within them, that seem to be hiding in plain site, I believe point closer to the direction of Jesus the man than anything else does. Except, perhaps, the Beatitudes. One point of interest, to me, anyway, is the role of Lazarus in the Secret Gospel of Mark. The concept that we achieve salvation through sin. I know that I’ve always kind of felt that to be true. Anyway, check out the scholarly writings on the Secret Gospel of Mark, if you’re interested.)

I guess the nonstop stress I’ve been under with so many darn writing deadlines since September, is needing an escape valve, finally, so here it comes.

And perhaps it also has to do with that “Pink” Moon this weekend (a Blue Moon, but for some reason because it’s a double-full moon in April, it’s called a Pink Moon). I’m usually really sensitive to full moons, but with this one, I’m going from feeling intense to suddenly finding everything silly.

Oh, and I have to say that last evening, a total stranger – a woman in her 60s, I think – came up to me and gave me a big hug. She was so nice, so friendly. She was with her husband. She said, “Don’t worry. You’re going to make it! You just looked like you needed a hug.”

It was so nice, because I actually did need one at that moment. I was probably thinking something confounding about Nick Cave, but honestly, I don’t really remember. I just know I needed that fucking hug! And suddenly there it was!

That’s another nice thing about living out in the Hinterlands. A total stranger can hug you just because they think you need one and then you’ll never see that person again.

Another thing I love about the Hinterlands is how people, just in general, express how they feel. Especially on their bumper stickers. I tend to find that I don’t agree with anything written on bumper stickers. I’m not sure why that is, but I do find it interesting to read what people feel so passionate about that they feel they have to broadcast it across their bumpers. (Usually truck bumpers, or the back window of the cab of the truck since, out here, most people drive trucks. They also own a heck of a lot of guns.) Across the cab window of one truck I saw recently, there was a decal that said, in huge letters: Shoot Your Local Heroin Dealer. That was pretty passionate, I thought. And entirely unexpected.

We have a terrible opioid epidemic out here in Ohio. This past Christmas, I was driving along the highway on a very chilly, grey day. It looked like it would snow at any moment and I turned off down this short road that I drive down a lot, and suddenly there was this small truck, sort of like a box truck that you rent when you’re moving. And it was parked at the weirdest angle at the side of the road. It just looked eerie. And when I drove past the driver’s side of the truck, the young woman was slumped down a little over the steering wheel and she looked dead.

I dialed 911 and they came right away. It was breathtaking how fast they came. And then I drove on. I don’t know if she was dead yet or not. And all through Christmas I wondered about her. Who she was. If they’d managed to save her or not – just in time for Christmas. And if they had saved her, I wondered if she was pissed off about that or not. Maybe she wanted to die. And I wondered if her family was happy she survived or if they’d kinda been wishing she’d die and be done with it. Opioids really destroy homes and families and lives. So who knows what was going on there.

I know from my own experience, that during my first suicide attempt, when I was 14, my life was just so awful. Yet, underneath my unconsciousness (this was after about 16 hours already), I could hear a voice from God or the Universe or my Higher Self, telling me not to die. And I struggled so hard to regain consciousness. The nurse in the Emergency Room was the kindest person I had ever met in my whole life. That’s the kind of angel who can really help you pull yourself back in from the abyss. I don’t recall too much of what happened, but I do remember her saying, “Come on, Marilyn, who’s the President of the United Sates?” and I kept replying “George Washington.”

But she did pull me through and obviously, I’m still alive. However, the truth is that my life got a whole lot worse for several years after that. And I often wondered what I was still alive for. And so maybe the woman in that truck at Christmas already knew there was nothing ahead of her but more bad stuff. I don’t know.

I do often think that, if I were capable of believing in vigilante justice, that awful year in my life of being 14 (after my boyfriend was killed), could have been salvaged somehow by simply shooting the guys that raped me; shooting my parents for being so disgustingly ugly in that courtroom during the custody fight; shooting my mother’s lawyer for being scum. You know, BAM. GAME OVER. Stuff like that. But we have these rules here that encourage us to rely on laws that let horrible lives and horrible people just drag on and on, forever, right? We’re not supposed to just shoot everybody, contrary to what life in America is like these days. But I feel sometimes that if some sort of concrete justice could have been done, then maybe – well, who knows.

All I know is that once in awhile, an angel appears and is so kind that she can make you hang on, at least until the next moment of kindness finds you. (For me, that next moment came 6 years later, when I met my first husband in Brooklyn, before we were married, I mean. Just meeting him. He was so incredibly kind to me.)

All righty! Wow. I do indeed digress! I wanted to post about something entirely different:

The feedback last evening from the editor regarding my new novel, Blessed By Light, really made my whole night. She had a list of minor edits and then she said, “Marilyn, you’ve written a fascinating book.”

Yippee ki yi yay!! And so on me go!

Okay, I gotta get ready for my call with Peitor in Los Angeles because we are working on one of our scripts here this morning. I hope you have a terrific Holy Saturday, wherever you are in the world!!

I leave you with this, just because I’ve been listening to it a lot lately! Enjoy. I love you, guys. Thanks for visiting. See ya!

An Appendage to the Day’s post!

April 19, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Okay, so I streamed Distant Sky Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Live in Copenhagen! (See today’s earlier post just below.)

Oh man, it was such a good movie. Although certain songs are gonna make you want to shoot yourself.

Meaning, pretty much any of the songs from Skeleton Tree. They were just too beautiful. Honestly.

The whole concert was amazing. Sort of a full disclosure here, though: I’ve watched quite a number of the homemade – or iPhone made – unofficial videos of Nick Cave’s concerts from this particular tour, so I knew pretty much what would happen throughout. But the production values of this movie in Copenhagen aren’t even in the same universe as any of those phone-made videos on YouTube. Just breathtaking. Truly breathtaking.

Speaking specifically for me, the two early songs he does (Tupelo and The Mercy Seat), were incredibly good and particularly hard to take because of all that life that has now passed under my bridge. So many years ago, I first heard those songs alone in my room in the tenement on E.12^th Street and I loved every single moment of discovering Nick Cave. (A tenement that, ironically, Lydia Lunch used to live in, but that was before I put in my own years in that same hellhole in NYC that I called home.)

Anyway. It’s hard for me to understand what the passage of time means. I do not understand it. I only know that you blink and a whole ton of time is just plain gone. I remember every minute, perhaps even every moment, of the “gone” time (I think that’s what makes me neurotic), but I cannot figure out how time “goes.” Where it passes to. And a song like Tupelo triggers something in me from so long ago, which is just so unfathomably deep, and now that he’s added certain lyrics that seem to speak of the death of his own son, it also becomes just too full of love & heartache. And then for me, the song becomes too beautiful for words and, in my mind, or my heart, “too beautiful” translates into something really painful. So hard to endure.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog unfortunately know that I suffer from suicidal depressions. So, no, I don’t own a revolver. I’m just making an illustrative joke. I’m not going to shoot myself.

Nevertheless, Nick Cave’s music, for me, is a minefield. His use of the English language is staggering. There’s a way he strings words together that absolutely confounds me – in its unexpected imagery, its beauty, its darkness, its power. From my perspective as a writer, his use of language amazes me and always has. Sometimes I do not know how to process it. So I think, I have to shoot myself to stop thinking about it.

I have no real clue why any of us are here, but I do feel very strongly that once we’re here, we should stick with it somehow and work it out in the best possible ways we can manage.

There is a very old convent an hour away from me. Carmelite nuns. There is always a room available when my mind becomes too much for me to take. And, trust me, that’s where I go. To the convent. A room with a simple bed, and then a small, very old stone chapel where I’m basically on my knees alone the whole time, talking to Jesus, and that’s no joke. I joke about my ministry all the time on this blog, but I actually did go through divinity school; I did get ordained; I do follow the call of Jesus Christ, my problem (or my joy) is that I hear him in a way that other people simply don’t. And that includes every single one of my professors at school. And I’m guessing includes every single one of those nuns at the convent.

The nuns are amazing, though. So kind. And they have that vow of silence going on that they expect you to participate in. Everything is just so quiet. They’ll ask you to turn in your cell phone and then they’ll tell you where your room is, and then that’s it. Silence until you’re all prayed out and ready to leave.

I guess this is an odd way to give a good review of a movie I loved. But I have so many issues with Time right now, and where on earth it’s going to. And that movie triggered that for me. But I don’t want to lose sight of how beautiful the movie was. And it’s so blessedly un-American. The music is so intelligent; so intellectual, so deeply emotional, complex and often abstract; and sometimes so politically incorrect (his version of Stagger Lee springs joyously to mind) that it is simply glorious to behold — all that un-American, non-Puritanical stuff going on, among thousands and thousands of enraptured people. The audience, I mean. I love it just so very much. Because to me, Nick Cave’s music is all about a Mind thinking; a Heart feeling; art in process.

So I loved it, even though it was hard for me.

Exciting day here!

April 19, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

As soon as I finish posting this, I’m going to go plant myself in front of my iPad and watch the free streaming of Distant Sky Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Live in Copenhagen.

I think that’s going to be a really nice way to kick off Good Friday, right? (If you’re not a Nick Cave fan, that comment will be meaningless to you. However, Nick Cave has a very interesting relationship with Jesus. I’m not entirely sure what it is, but it’s there; a relationship running like a wildly un-navigable river beneath his life . At least, that ‘s what it looks like from the outside.)

Anyway. I’m excited to watch the movie. I’m guessing you can still sign up to stream it. It’s free all weekend.

I’m also excited because tomorrow, I resume working with Peitor Angell on our micro-short comedy videos. Working some more on the scripts. He’s been in Italy for a really long time and he is finally back in L.A. and I will have his complete attention for maybe 2 hours.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that when I was in L.A. with him back in early December, he and I formed a writing-producing company, Contextual Absurdity Productions. Just for creating & producing micro-short comedies. (5-15 minutes in length.)

Peitor is primarily a music producer and composer, and we have been close friends since my singer-songwriter days in NYC – 35 years ago already. And I have to say that I am so looking forward to getting back to work with him on these scripts because he makes me laugh so hard. And I really need that right now. He makes me cry, I laugh so hard. And, with my steadily advancing age, I also have to try really hard not to piss myself. I’m not always successful there, because, man, he makes me laugh just so hard.

It’s all absurd, dark humor. The scripts we’re writing, I mean. Getting back to it will be a welcome change to all the sadness around here.

Although I have to say, when I was feeding all the cats this morning, down in the kitchen, handing out their food bowls to their happy little selves, I felt Daddycakes behind me, in the spot he was always in when it was feeding time. I truly felt him. To the point that I was surprised when I turned and there wasn’t a cat waiting there.

I do really believe his essence is with us. And that gives me a sense of quiet joy.

Of course, loyal readers know that ever since last year, when I moved into this old house here in Crazysburg (118 year-old house in a 200 year-old town), I have been astounded by the amount of spirit activity that goes on around here. As if not only my house but the whole town is some sort of friendly portal. I have never once felt afraid, but I am positively sure that I will never bring a Ouija board into this house, because I think that would be truly overwhelming. I think the spirits would be lining up around the block to get a chance to come through on the board. I really do. And I’d kinda rather not know for sure just how many spirits there are in this house or in this town.

However, my other novel-in-progress, Down to the Meadows of Sleep, is all about this town and its spirits. I do love living here. Wish it weren’t quite so far from the airport, but oh well.

Okay, gang. Gonna go stream the film now. Then get back to work on Blessed By Light.

As always, thanks for visiting. Have a meaningful Good Friday, in whatever way works best for you. I love you, gang. And I leave you with THE most beautiful version of The 23rd Psalm ever, which was the theme song to one of the funniest shows, ever. Okay, guys. I’m outta here. See ya!

It Was One of those Nights

April 17, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I awoke at 2 a.m. and could not fall back to sleep until 3:30. Primarily thinking about Daddycakes and feeling like I didn’t do enough to save him and wondering if he was somewhere in the afterlife, angry at me for letting him die when he should have been in the prime of his kitty life.

It’s just so different when you’re dealing with rescued feral cats. They make the rules, because they are wild animals, and then you — or me actually; I am the one who has to try to figure out if I step aside and let them have their own connection to God’s world, or do I try to intervene somehow and make a decision about life and death?

Playing God, basically. It got to the point where the cat was simply suffering too much and my heart couldn’t handle it so I had him put to sleep.

Then of course, by feeling guilty for the decisions I made regarding him, it means I think I am God: I should have known better, or I should have known more about that cat’s life or death and the quality of it or lack of it, and just done all sorts of different things that I can’t even imagine at this point.

Honestly, how can we possibly know those things? We make those kinds of decisions through whatever filters we have in our brains that tell us we have answers to these sorts of questions and that’s not really saying very much at all. Because we don’t know how to create life; we know how to do away with it. We simply make a decision. And that’s not saying anything at all, in the scope of what is nonphysical, I mean.

Well, I finally made myself stop thinking about Daddycakes, and instead decided to worry about the novel.

I went to the grocery store late yesterday afternoon – always an investment of time because I live in the middle of the country and the grocery store is about 4 towns away.

It was a glorious spring day. It really was. The countryside was turning that tiny spring green. Birds everywhere. Daffodils blooming in the most unlikely places. (And you know that a person had to plant those; daffodils don’t just spring up in the middle of nowhere along the highway. And that makes me love people, because I know I’m one of the passing strangers for which those daffodils were joyfully planted.) And all along the way, the farms had all their little baby calves out now, finding their footing in the green pastures.

It was just so beautiful. A testament to the renewal of life.

I’m guessing I was listening to something by Nick Cave, but I don’t recall what. It’s always either Nick Cave or Tom Petty. My little Honda fit is overflowing with CDs by either Nick Cave or Tom Petty and one single CD of Anne Murray’s Greatest Hits. (Inside my house is another story. In there, the world overflows with music of every possible stripe and persuasion. But for some reason, none of that makes it out to the car.)

(And to see me getting into the car is ridiculous: “Oh my god, what I am going to listen to?” If I’m going to the Dollar Store, it’s a 3-minute trip and the music is not so crucial. But everywhere else I go to from here in the middle of nowhere, is a journey. It requires a soundtrack. If I’m going far, far away, like to NY, then it’s hands down Tom Petty’s LIVE Anthology, because traveling on Interstate 80 is intensely American and so you need that American rock & roll; 3-minute awesome songs about falling in love or falling out of love, or chasing a dream and that’s basically it. It could not be better or more clear cut.

(But other journeys require Nick Cave, but he can be so dicey because you never know when he’s going to throw you under the fucking bus. Which is what I love about his writing, but it can get harrowing. You can be driving along at 95 MPH, which is what I tend to do out here on these highways, listening to “Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere?” and at first you’re thinking, man what a song. Then the next minute, you have to pull over, grab your revolver from out of the glove compartment and shoot yourself because it’s just too fucking horribly SAD.

(Or, I guess, you can just turn the music off. But that’s the dilemma: you’re on a journey that requires a soundtrack; you’re not supposed to turn it off. So I’ll sit there in the driver’s seat, engine on, looking at all the CDs and trying to figure out which one will not cause me to want to shoot myself while going 95 mph? Sometimes I sit there for several minutes, not going anywhere and driving myself insane.)

Anyway, I get to the grocery store, and in the parking lot, I get a message on my phone from the editor in NYC who is editing my novel, Blessed By Light.

She sends me updates, chapter by chapter, because it’s much easier to manage that way. And while all her comments thus far have been very positive, this particular message says: “This chapter kicks ass. Kudos.” Followed by comments on the next chapter: “Excellent chapter. He seems distraught, guilty, tired. Beautifully written.”

And while this made me feel good in the grocery store parking lot, at 3 a.m., alone in my bed in the guilt-ridden dark, all it did was make me wonder about the previous chapters, which were only “good”. Shouldn’t they all kick ass? Shouldn’t they all be beautifully written? Should I start all over from scratch? Am I a total failure now? I used to be a good writer.

You know, I start to doubt my sense of pacing, my sense of building a story arc, my sense of anything at all because I’ve suddenly forgotten what reality is even for. If I ever even knew, I mean.

Death does that to you. Even tiny little furry deaths.

Well, it’s another glorious spring day here in the Hinterlands. I’m going to give it all another shot and see how this day turns out. As usual, no guarantees but I am tying so hard to be happy. I have a wonderful novel in progress, that is sometimes good and sometimes it kicks ass. I need to count my blessings today.

Have a good Wednesday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting. I love you, gang. And I leave you with this! See ya.

My Gratitude

April 16, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I want to thank everybody, even total strangers visiting the blog or on Instagram, who showed love and support yesterday as I tried to cope with the death of Daddycakes.

When cats are feral, they are wild animals. It is so hard to know what to do and exactly when to do it when they are in peril or dying. So these last few days have not been at all fun – watching him suffer but knowing that he still had enough strength in him to attack a doctor.

Anyway, it’s over now and he’s at peace and his little family here is adjusting to his absence, and my friends, as well as total strangers showed me so much love. So that’s how the day is starting out today.

Hopeful.

I haven’t been able to really do too much on the novel since Sunday. But the comments from the editor keep coming in daily and they are making me feel good. Not too much needs changing – negligible grammar things. Yesterday, she said that the writing was poignant and funny like barbed wire.

Since the story is told totally in 2nd person from a man’s POV, and since the woman he is talking to never once says a thing throughout the entire novel, it’s imperative that the man be likable, believable, capable of making you, the reader, feel something. So, comments about how the editor is responding to the character are so important to me.

And so far, so good. Loyal readers of this lofty blog know by now that Blessed By Light is unlike any novel I’ve written thus far, and it is coming entirely from the realm of the Muse. It’s been a really beautiful adventure.

Yesterday, before everything got horrifically dire with Daddycakes and I had to drop everything and somehow get him situated into the car without the help of any sort of restraint or cat carrying device and drive 30 miles to the veterinarian farther out into the country who was willing to treat a feral cat; before that happened – my new boots arrived.

I love these boots. They are vegetarian-friendly and yet look like leather. They fit perfectly and I just totally love them. And they hardly cost anything because they aren’t made of any sort of dead animal! Anyway, look!!

Okay! On that happy note, I’m gonna get the day underway here, gang. I’m trying like heck to stay focused on the love and just keep going, you know?

The future’s bright and I’ve got nothing but opportunities lining up at my door. I need to stay focused and charitable and generous and loving about the world and being in it. (Although, I have to say that Notre Dame Cathedral going up in flames while Daddycakes was dying was a little more than I could really process yesterday.)

Anyway. Thanks for visiting. I leave you with the song I played over & over in the car yesterday as I tried to keep Daddycakes calm. It worked. (On the trip home, though, without him, it only made me cry so I had to turn it off and just listen to the silence.) Okay. I love you, gang. See ya.

Into My Arms

I don’t believe in an interventionist God
But I know, darling, that you do
But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him
Not to intervene when it came to you
Not to touch a hair on your head
To leave you as you are
And if He felt He had to direct you
Then direct you into my arms

Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms

And I don’t believe in the existence of angels
But looking at you I wonder if that’s true
But if I did I would summon them together
And ask them to watch over you
To each burn a candle for you
To make bright and clear your path
And to walk, like Christ, in grace and love
And guide you into my arms

Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms

But I believe in Love
And I know that you do too
And I believe in some kind of path
That we can walk down, me and you
So keep your candles burning
And make her journey bright and pure
That she will keep returning
Always and evermore

Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms, O Lord
Into my arms

c- 1997 Nick Cave

Rainy April Sunday

April 14, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

That’s the view outside the window in my upstairs hall at the top of the stairs.

You can see that it is indeed a rainy Sunday morning in April, here in Crazysburg.

My cat, Daddycakes, is still alive. He stays out in the open now, which is encouraging. He’s no longer hiding under the bed. And he sort of “engages” with us — meaning he stays around us, but he drifts away, eyes open.

His sisters, Tommy and Huckleberry, are kind of spooked by him. They’ll stare at him cautiously and won’t approach him. 2 of his daughters and his son don’t seem to really care too much, one way or the other, that he’s dying. They go about their business, as usual.

But his other 2 daughters, Doris and Lucy, who have been ridiculously attached to him their whole furry little lives, seem to be devastated by what is hanging on our horizon. They don’t show up for meals or treats, preferring to just hide away and occasionally eat the dry food set out for them upstairs.

So it’s sad. Every hour I give him a few drops of water from an eye-dropper type thing. And 3 times a day, I give him 5 drops of this other stuff. Thank goodness, that’s down from having to give him 5 drops every 15 minutes, which is exhausting when you might prefer to sleep. I don’t know that it will “save” him, and I do believe that if he’s choosing to go, he’s going to go; but you don’t want to just sit around and do absolutely nothing and simply watch your lovely creature die, do you?

The gestures are never meaningless even if they’re futile.

It’s all sad, sad, sad, and the rain is sort of doing all my crying for me. But oddly enough, I am able to focus on the novel. I guess because it’s my way of planting a sort of tree of life for the future.

Thanks for visiting, gang. Have a good Sunday – in fact, it’s Palm Sunday today, if you’re into that. I don’t like Palm Sunday, even though I’m a minister. To me, it’s just a reminder of how seriously the mob can turn on you within a handful of days and nail you to a cross. To me, I just want it to be a rainy Sunday in April. I didn’t even take Communion today.

I leave you with what I’ve been listening to. Enjoy! (If that’s the right word for it.) I love you, gang. See ya.

Let us go now, my one true love
Call the gasman, cut the power out
We can set out, we can set out for the distant skies
Watch the sun, watch it rising in your eyes

Let us go now, my darling companion
Set out for the distant skies
See the sun, see it rising
See it rising, rising in your eyes

They told us our gods would outlive us
They told us our dreams would outlive us
They told us our gods would outlive us
But they lied

Let us go now, my only companion
Set out for the distant skies
Soon the children will be rising, will be rising
This is not for our eyes

c- 2016 Warren Lee Ellis / Nicholas Edward Cave

I’m Afraid I’m Getting Ready

April 13, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I’m afraid it’s getting to be time to say goodbye to Daddycakes (see post below about the ill health of my sweet cat).

It is always so sad when a creature you love must die. He’s only 7. He is so sick (kidneys) that I just don’t see how he is going to recover from this. So I’m trying to keep him comfortable and let him know that he has been a joy to me every moment that I have known him. Yes, even those times when I was sitting on my bed in my PJs and he came up unexpectedly and pissed on my back. I still loved the heck out of him.

All right.

I know to my American readers, it must seem like I’m on a mission to force you to love Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. I sort of am on a mission. However, I don’t want to force feed you or anything.

If you’re interested, though, you can go to the official Nick Cave web site right now and sign up to stream his upcoming film, Distant Sky, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Live in Copenhagen. The free streaming happens Easter weekend. And then the film will have its official launch next year. Go here to sign up. You can also watch some of the official footage on Youtube. It’s really, really good.

Well, I have to say I am really happy with the feedback I keep getting from the editor of my new novel, Blessed By Light. It’s a bittersweet happiness because, of course, my cat is dying. And I’m also falling out of love at the same time. (Not with the cat; with the man I’ve been in love with.) So it’s all bittersweet around here. But I keep finding reasons to keep going.

Thanks for visiting, gang. Have a super terrific Saturday wherever you are in the world. I love you. See ya!

Nick Cave in earlier days. What’s not to love, gang??

Oh, People! Not Again!

April 7, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Gentle readers and fellow travelers, and loyal readers of this lofty blog!

You no doubt recall that, over the years, I have been confounded by collector’s copies of my various books that pop up all over the Internet at prices that even I cannot reasonably afford.

Usually I find it amusing. But I also find it a little jarring because all those books get snatched up pretty quickly and I cannot understand the perceived value in them or why anyone in their right mind would pay those kinds of prices. (Usually $300-$600 for a trade paperback.)

I can, however, understand people wanting copies of the original French edition of Neptune & Surf by Editions Blanche Paris 2001, because the cover was just way too cool! But those copies only go for around $99. This is what it looked like:I think this cover finally put to rest the very wrong impression that Neptune & Surf was a book about the sea…

Anyway. Yes! I digress!

I can’t remember how on earth I discovered this yesterday, but there are currently 16 copies of When the Night Stood Still being sold on Amazon by outside vendors for $203 – $247 each.

When the Night Stood Still is an erotic novel I wrote 15 years ago. I wrote it exclusively for Barnes & Noble to distribute, which they did. It sold out of its print run (thank you, gentle readers).

But the very curious thing about this current book that’s being sold on Amazon: It’s a hardcover edition. There was never a hardcover edition of When the Night Stood Still. Which I’m guessing is what makes these 16 books so valuable. To the crook who manufactured it, especially.

There is no cover image available for the current book, but this is what the book once looked like:

When the Night Stood Still by Marilyn Jaye Lewis

I don’t understand why anyone in their right mind chose to rob me blind by way of this particular book.

I wrote 3 erotic romance novels in the space of 1 year, all of which made me completely insane to write. I’m not a genre-fiction writer. I write literary fiction , although there is usually 700 million tons more sex in my literary fiction than in most other books of that lofty realm. (Except for maybe The Death of Bunny Munro — you’ve gotta read that book if you haven’t already, gang! It’s fantastic!)

Okay!! I digress!!

I hated writing those erotic romances because I had to turn them around so quickly. Plus they each had to be 75,000 words and 255 pages. So fucking precise. The worst part was that, for the 2 titles I sold to Barnes & Noble (the 3rd went to Walden Books), I had to periodically turn in chapters to them so that they could ‘approve’ them and they always, without fail, said that I had to put in more sex.

Back then, I had a lot of sex. In my personal life, I mean. Anyone who knows me from back then would attest to this fact about me. Certainly people who were married to me would attest to that fact, and, in fact, a certain Divorce Decree might even attest to the prodigious amount of sex I was also having outside the marriage, outside the confines of connubial bliss, as it were.

It was just ridiculous, the amount of sex I had. However. That said. The Chief Mucky-Mucks at Barnes & Noble did not think my characters were having enough sex. And yet they were having more sex than I was having. It was just stupid, the amount of sex they wanted in those erotic romances. There was no way to make it a believable part of the plot. Although I did my very best to make it seem genuine to the characters. I really did. And that is why each one of those novels was a nightmare to write.

And the worst part, of course, was that back then, when the erotic romance genre was brand new, they would only let me write about male-female vaginal intercourse, cunnilingus, fellatio, or masturbation; 2 participants or solo, but that was it.

My life wasn’t anything like that so that particular mandate felt like trying to keep my imagination in a vice-grip. It literally hurt my brain, trying to rein it in all the time. No anal sex, no questionably-consensual rape, no bondage, no discipline, no 3-ways or more-ways, no nothing. Just two intensely heterosexual people, refusing to admit that they’re in love (until page 255); yet 2 people so ridiculously horny that they must constantly, CONSTANTLY, have the most vanilla sex imaginable.

It really was insane. And of course, I wanted the characters to be likable and realistically well drawn, 3-dimensional, you know. What a year from hell that was! Although the money was good…

The thing I finally decided to do was to simply have the characters have sex in wildly different places. That way I could focus on the atmosphere, the surroundings, the accoutrements, as it were.

I usually chose various showers. I have a thing for showers, personally. Not that I like to have sex in showers; I don’t. I find sex in the shower a little dicey — not the safest place. And also not the most comfortable place. But I have some weird fetish about beautiful bathrooms. Beautiful, opulent bathrooms have always taken my breath away. Or showers that pop up in unexpected places — outdoors, and such. I just love that. So it was sort of like subterfuge: go into elaborate detail about the bathroom and the shower itself, and make the reader just in awe of my ability to imagine (ridiculously impractical) showers, and then the fact that 2 grown-up heterosexuals are having sex in there becomes beside the point.

Multiply that times 255 pages and, voila!, another Marilyn Jaye Lewis erotic masterpiece is born!

Seriously; do you really think that’s worth between $203 and $247, even with a hard cover added now? By the way, you can buy the original trade paper of When the Night Stood Still at much more reasonable prices here. It actually is a well-written book, but it’s genre-fiction.

That said, though, if you are into genre erotic fiction, When Hearts Collide is a lot better, but it was much more popular and now it’s much harder to find. Readers don’t seem to want to sell their used copies, which is really just totally endearing and cool in my opinion. (Thanks, gentle readers!)

Well, okey-dokey!! Sunday is upon us and I must get back to the re-writes on the play. I do want to leave you with this, however. This is what I’ve been listening to in my car, over & over, when I’m out driving in the utter darkness of the hills and valleys here in the remote hinterlands of Muskingum County, Ohio. I love the regular “Do You Love Me” and I play that a lot, too, but the “Part 2” version is just wonderfully harrowing and awesome, and perfect for driving alone and thinking at night in the middle of nowhere..

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

Onward! And Onward! And Onward I go
Where no man before could be bothered to go
Till the soles of my shoes are shot full of holes
And it’s all downhill with a bullet
This ramblin’ and rovin’ has taken it’s course
I’m grazing with the dinosaurs and the dear old horses
And the city streets crack and a great hole forces
Me down with my
soapbox, my pulpit
The theatre ceiling is
silver star-spangled
And the coins in my
pocket go jingle-jangle

There’s a man in the
theatre with girlish eyes
Who’s holding my
childhood to ransom
On the screen
there’s a death,
there’s a rustle of cloth
And a sickly voice
calling me handsome
There’s a man in the
theatre with sly
girlish eyes
On the screen there’s
an ape, a gorilla
There’s a groan, there’s
a cough, there’s a
rustle of cloth
And a voice that stinks of death and vanilla
This is a secret, mauled and mangled
And the coins in my pocket go jingle-jangle

The walls of the ceiling are painted in blood
The lights go down, the red curtains come apart
The room is full of smoke and dialogue I know by heart
And the coins in my pocket go jingle-jangle
As the great screen cracked and popped
The clock of my boyhood was wound
down and stopped
And my handsome little body oddly propped
And my trousers right down to my ankles
Yes, it’s on onward! And upward!
And I’m off to find love
Do you love me? If you do, I’m thankful

This city is an ogre
squatting by the river
It gives life but it takes it
away, my youth
There comes a time
when you just
cannot deliver
This is a fact. This is a
stone cold truth.
Do you love me?
I love you, handsome
But do you love me?
Yes, I love you,
you are handsome
Amongst the cogs and
the wires, my youth
Vanilla breath and
handsome apes with
girlish eyes
Dreams that roam
between truth and untruth

Memories that become monstrous lies
So onward! And Onward! And Onward I go!
Onward! And Upward! And I’m off to find love
With blue-black bracelets on my wrists and ankles
And the coins in my pocket go jingle-jangle

c- 1994, Nick Cave

Holy McMoly!!

March 12, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Man, was I sick. 3 long weeks of that garbage. But I finally broke down and went to the clinic over the weekend. They promptly put me on 4 different meds, all of which had to be taken at different times, in different quantities, and that alone can make a sick mind really rebel against the system. But I am finally almost well!

Jeepers, that took forever.

While I was down for the count, I laid in bed and watched a lot of YouTube stuff on my phone. You know, I really hate to watch those indescribably “unofficial” videos of concerts other people make with their phones, because I know the entertainers really wish that people wouldn’t do that. There is no quality control whatsoever, and of course there is no way for the entertainer to “merchandize” that.

And yet…

I was not able to resist watching Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds in concert in Saint Petersburg Russia last July recorded (not at all well) on some Russian guy’s phone.

And I am talking terrible sound quality. And I am talking terrible visual quality. And yet I am still talking: What a mesmerizing concert. Even under those wretched video conditions. Often, the guy taping it couldn’t keep pace with Nick Cave moving all over the stage and so only God knew what we were suddenly looking at. And sometimes his phone would drop briefly and he would only be capturing the backs of the heads of the people in front of him. And I would find myself calling out to him in my horrifying laryngitis-infused gasp: “Dude, dude!! Fix your phone!! I can’t see!!” As if I were actually there beside him, watching it all on his phone.

Yes, I feel a little guilty. I didn’t pay the 3 billion rubles the actual tickets must have cost, and the sound & visuals were awful, plus I was hopped-up on various cold meds throughout, yet it was still astoundingly cool. A great show.

And I have to say to all you Americans out there reading my blog; yes, you who steadfastly refuse to listen to Nick Cave — I must say that all those Russians, who speak a language that could not be more dissimilar to English if it tried; yes they were all singing along in English to those lofty Nick Cave songs and you can’t even be bothered to listen to them in your own native language. A word to the wise is sufficient!

Okay!! Onward.

I am hoping against hope to get back at the revisions of Tell My Bones today. I have been so sick that it was hard to even get out of bed, let alone to think in an even remotely creative way. And of course the clock is ticking. Sandra and the director of the play patiently await my revisions in NYC so that rehearsals can begin!

Nothing like a little pressure and a whole lot of stress to get those creative juices churning… But here we go, gang.

I hope all is going good in your part of the world! Sorry for my prolonged absence. Thanks for visiting. I love you!! See ya!

(I know you’re not gonna listen to it, but here’s one of my (many, many) favorites from about 20 years ago or so. Thank god we don’t have to learn this whole song in Russian….)