Tag Archives: Nick Cave

Weirdest Dream, Ever!

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I overslept just hugely this morning. I didn’t wake up until almost 8 o’clock. I had been having a seemingly endless and very weird dream.

I dreamed that the Chinese government had somehow made my blog radioactive to children and it was up to me to somehow warn children who might be visiting my blog to not touch any links, otherwise the children would become radioactive.

It was an extremely difficult thing to try to figure out how to do — protect all these unseen children from all over the world who might accidentally visit my blog and click on something. But it was of dire importance. And I took it really seriously. I was working with some scientists in a brightly lit white laboratory, who were trying to come up with some type of implantable code that could undo the radioactivity within my blog, but also try to save children in the meantime.

Oh god, right? Really relaxing, peaceful sleep going on there…

Some of you readers who are new to the blog perhaps don’t know that about 15 years ago, I was looking at 5-15 years in a federal prison and something like $35,000 in fines because I had founded an  erotic authors association and had then begun an online publishing company specifically to publish hardcore erotic books from our members that no other traditional publishers would touch; and there was a new federal law, under George Bush, Jr., that made it an imprisoning offense  to publish any of this kind of stuff online without creating hugely expensive barriers to keep children off the site. (Anyone under the age of 18.)

I did not think it was constitutional to keep anyone away from reading those books if they wanted to. I didn’t think it was my job to determine what young people could or couldn’t read. (It’s so weird to think this actually happened back then, when you see all the things kids can easily access online nowadays — but of course, this is just what the Government was hoping to avoid and people like ME(!!), along with a bunch of my colleagues across the States, fought the law and eventually made pure unadulterated porn widely available to children everywhere!!)

Anyway. It wasn’t funny back then because I seriously did not want to go to prison, and I had already worked with & for other publishers and producers who had gone to federal prison on obscenity charges and had been wiped out financially.

I’m guessing that maybe somewhere in my subconscious, something connected to that was happening in my dreams last night. I don’t really know. But it was just one of those relentless, godawful dreams where it was up to me to try to do something completely impossible. (I still don’t care what children read, but I don’t want children to become radioactive for any reason whatsoever.)

You know, back in the late 1990s, when a production company hired me to write for a really cool adult multimedia project they were producing (DADAhouse), it was illegal to ship porn movies that had explicit anal sex in them to various cities in the Deep South. If you had produced a movie with anal sex in it and it got shipped to any one of those cities, you could go to prison — and some video producers up north actually did serve time for that.

Also, back then, it was illegal to produce movies or make photographs of anyone involved in a BDSM practice that showed any type of sexual intercourse or sexual gratification being derived from the BDSM thing. So you could show people suffering or being tortured in some way, as long as they weren’t depicted as getting off on it sexually. You could go to prison for that, too, back then. Which was why stories about that stuff — BDSM & actual sex — were always wildly popular, because that law didn’t apply to the written word — only to images.

Only 20 years ago — and so much has changed, hasn’t it? And everybody I’m sure knows by now, that a story I wrote in 1988, based on my own self as an 11-year-old girl who had been totally in love with an older neighbor-girl who had been my babysitter (and I cannot help that I was just this wildly imaginative, oversexed little girl), anyway, a story based on me and my own mind got me into very deep water with the FBI. I eventually rewrote the story as “Daddy’s Girl” — same story, really, in a way — I just made all the girls in it of legal age. (I won’t say what the title of the other story was, but I will say that if you see a story for sale online that alleges to have been written by me and there is a little drawing next to it of a young girl holding a flower — don’t click that link!! If you do, the FBI is going to pay you a very nasty little visit…)

Okay! Well! It seems like my morning here isn’t going much better than my dreams went…

On a cheerier note — there was a really cool photo all over Instagram this morning  of Nick Cave backstage with Elton John in Melbourne last night (or some night really close to last night — I still can’t figure out the time zone stuff and what day it might be over there).

Oh, and I’d like to thank one of my fellow bloggers in England for pointing out that I might not like having spiders in my bedroom if I lived in Australia… Point taken!! (I remember truly icky stories my first husband used to tell me about growing up in Singapore and the types of enormous insects that would get into his room at night and scurry across the ceiling over his bed…)

But this is Ohio!! Our insects here are of humble size and weight…

Another happy thing — it is snowing here right now! And it’s cold enough that it isn’t going to melt any time today. (And right this minute, a freight train is barreling past so I’m not sure if I could be happier than I am right at this moment…)

And that company in France which sells me all that stuff that keeps me looking light-years younger than I actually am — sent me more new products to try! One, a sort of mask that, if used twice a week for 5 minutes, will make me look “radiant.” We’ll see. I don’t actually ever have anyone telling me that my skin needs to look more radiant than it already looks…

But they also sent me this “nutri-plumping lip balm.” Not crazy about that name. I’m guessing it sounds better in French. However, it’s made for ladies of a certain age (of which I am one), who have thinning lips (I have always had thin lips so I’m not sure they can get thinner); anyway, it’s supposed to plump up your lips.

It actually does work — kind of. I can feel a difference but I don’t think it’s actually noticeable. But it doesn’t sting and burn like the old lip-plumper glosses used to. Those old lip-plumping glosses had one of the same ingredients in it that Viagra used to give guys erections. So me and my girlfriend (who shall remain nameless but who currently lives in Brooklyn…) would put that gloss on certain little places on our female bodies to see if they, too, would plump up and get more erect!! It worked!! But it also stung and burned like crazy and you couldn’t just wipe it off…

I guess the only thing that was better than being a weirdly oversexed young female creature was having a girlfriend who was as weirdly oversexed as I was. We were really blessed in that regard, I think — to have found each other at all. We were mostly out of our minds but we had a lot of fun.

Okay. Off I go. I need to get some actual work done here today since yesterday was a complete bust in that department. I hope you have a wonderful Wednesday, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting. I’ll leave you with a song that was hugely popular when me and the Brooklyn gal first started hooking up.  Play it LOUD, gang! Otherwise it won’t work correctly. All righty. I love you guys. See ya.

“Modern Love”

I know when to go out
And when to stay in
Get things done

I catch a paper boy
But things don’t really change
I’m standing in the wind
But I never wave bye-bye

But I try
I try

There’s no sign of life
It’s just the power to charm
I’m lying in the rain
But I never wave bye-bye

But I try
I try

Never gonna fall for
Modern love walks beside me
Modern love walks on by
Modern love gets me to the church on time

Church on time terrifies me
Church on time makes me party
Church on time puts my trust in God and man

God and man no confessions
God and man no religion
God and man don’t believe in modern love

It’s not really work
It’s just the power to charm
Still standing in the wind
But I never wave bye-bye

But I try
I try

Never gonna fall for
Modern love walks beside me
Modern love walks on by
Modern love gets me to the church on time

Church on time terrifies me
Church on time makes me party
Church on time puts my trust in God and man

God and man no confessions
God and man no religion
God and man don’t believe in modern love

Modern love walks beside me
Modern love walks on by
Modern love gets me to the church on time

Church on time terrifies me
Church on time makes me party
Church on time puts my trust in God and man

God and man no confessions
God and man no religion
God and man don’t believe in modern love

Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love
Modern love walks beside me
Modern love walks on by
Modern love walks beside me
Modern love walks on by
Never gonna fall for
Modern love
Modern love

 c – 1983 David Bowie

More Merriment Has Indeed Arrived!!

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I just couldn’t be happier, gang.

Partly because it started snowing last evening and then snowed all through the night, so it actually built up a bit out there and is still all over everything this morning!

It makes me doubly glad that my birth mom came last week and helped me decorate for Christmas, because if she hadn’t been here, I definitely would not have followed through on it — I would have put everything immediately back into storage because I was too overwhelmed by the past once I’d opened all those boxes.  However, now — here in the present — the tree is up and decorations are scattered about and there’s snow outside! Yay.

I recently discovered that I own the video of Cocteau’s 1950 film Orphée. I knew I had seen the film on video, but for some reason, I thought I had rented it.  Long ago. Apparently, though, I had bought it, long ago.

How fortuitous!  Since I had really enjoyed re-watching Cocteau’s other Orpheus-related film a couple weeks ago (see some other post below) and it, of course, made me think of his first one. So now I’m excited to watch Orphée  again!

I found the video when I was going through all my old movies, looking for the Christmas ones so that my mom and I could watch Christmas movies — we wound up watching Kubrick’s The Shining. Not really a Christmas movie (to put it mildly), but it does have a heck of a lot of snow!

And while going through all the old movies, I was kind of astounded by the number of movies I’d forgotten I owned. The Shining being a case in point. In fact, I discovered that I own a boxed set (DVDs) of Kubrick’s “greatest hits,” as it were: Lolita, Full Metal Jacket, 2001, Dr. Strangelove, Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining. Honestly, I had no idea I had all that. All quite excellent movies for watching with Mom (!!), however, the only one we watched was The Shining. Which was excellent enough, thank you.

It’s still such an intense movie, even all these years later. Also intensely long. Probably the only movie in that collection that I actually love, though, is 2001.

Anyway. I’m also happy because my new speakers for the iPad arrived!! They are just what I wanted. (And as an added bonus, I was able to give the empty shipping carton to the cats as an early Christmas present!) (I try not to let the cost of something deter me from giving generously.) (But they do love that empty box. They are already taking turns hiding in it and they are so freakin’ cute.)

So I’m really eager to start streaming a bunch of new stuff over the holidays. My watchlist is really, really long. You have no idea. I’m going to make a serious effort to watch this stuff and not keep circling back to the old reruns of Perry Mason and everything imaginable re: Nick Cave that I’ve seen ten million times. I know for sure, though, that I’m going to watch Charlie Brown and Rudolph over the next couple of days (on DVD) because I just love those movies. In fact, I might even be motivated enough to buy a new flat screen TV just because I love those two movies so much…

Okay, well, we’ll see. I do have to keep reminding myself that I have to go to NYC, Toronto, and LA in 2020 and that will cost me a fortune, when it’s all said and done. A new TV can wait…

So. Yesterday, late afternoon, guess what came to me? Letter #6 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse! I was actually pretty surprised by this. I wasn’t expecting it at all because I’m still just working away on the story notes for Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town. Plus, since my birth mom left, I’ve just been feeling sort of frustrated, angry, depressed. Wanting things to change in my life. Trying to just be patient; knowing that things are coming. Then. Suddenly, the new “letter” dropped into the forefront of my brain and I was incredibly lighthearted and happy. So that’ll be interesting.

All righty! I’m gonna scoot. I slept in really late this morning — 7am!! So I’m behind here. Thanks for visiting, though. I leave you with the breakfast-listening music from this snow-covered morning!! And if these don’t make you stupidly joyful then nothing will!! Okay! I love you guys. See ya!

Okay! I’ve Had My Bath!!

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And now I’m thinking about getting into bed and streaming an episode of the old Perry Mason TV show, and just being happy as all get-out.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I never get tired of this TV show — the one from the late 1950s-early 1960s that starred Raymond Burr as Perry Mason. I have seen every single episode of this show more times than I can count, and yet I never get tired of watching it. Ever. And now it’s included in Amazon Prime. So there you have it: Me — addicted to it again!

Okay, well, I have nothing to really report today but I didn’t want the day to end without me popping in here to report that I’m just super happy, for a change, and I had just a really nice day.

And the thing with my healthcare provider got straightened out, even though it was still a holiday weekend. And the potentially huge bit of horribleness I was worried that I had caused to my bills got straightened out, also. So I’m just really relieved about that, and I’m going to try to come up with some sort of — I don’t know what — some sort of way of not being intensely caught up in my head anymore and just pay closer attention to the actual calendar. You know, so that I can be part of the same world that most other people are part of. I really need to get a grip again and stop doing weird stuff that freaks me out.

I am getting so excited about my mom coming — she comes a week from tomorrow. It’s all I can do to keep myself from putting the tree up before she even gets here.

When I packed up all my Christmas stuff after my last Christmas at the old house, I knew I would be in a new home the next time I unpacked it all. I thought I was going to be back in NY, but I never dreamed it would be three years before I finally unpacked everything again, so I’m eager to see what kind of Christmas stuff I actually have.

I don’t really have too much that has sentimental value, because Wayne got rid of all that stuff when I left him. I had asked him to please keep it for me until I could get settled somewhere and instead, he threw it all away because he was angry that I left. I wanted to kill him when I found out. That was all the stuff that had true sentimental value for me and could never be replaced. So the stuff I have now is just stuff I’ve bought since then that I liked. But it will be nice to see it all. Poignant, though, because Fluffy and Bunny and Daddycakes have all died since then.

Anyway, I’m so excited to see my mom again and put up the decorations with her.

Tomorrow’s phone chat with the director has been moved to Wednesday, so tomorrow will once again be just about me and whatever I feel like writing. (I’m trying to sort of storyboard Thug Luckless.) And I’m hoping to get a better night’s sleep tonight! My uncle is on a cruise right now and he texts me almost every day. But this morning, he was somewhere in Israel and texted me at 3:30 in the morning, and it woke me and I couldn’t really go back to sleep.

So I’m really sleepy and I’m going to close this now. I hope you’ve had a really terrific Sunday wherever it took you and wherever you are in the world!!

Thanks for visiting, gang. I guess I’ll leave you with the song Tom Petty wrote for his daughter, AnnaKim, when she was just a baby and he had to leave her again and go back on the road. And I will  also leave you with the song Nick Cave ostensibly wrote for his son Luke when he was little. Feel free to contrast & compare!! I love you guys. See ya!

My favorite photo of Tom Petty and AnnaKim:

 

 

 

 

 

 

And my favorite photo of Nick Cave with Luke:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers “It’s Alright For Now”

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry”

She Could Benefit From A Brain Monitor, Don’t You think?

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Jesus, you know?

Not only do I need a keeper (and a handyman) but now I think I could use someone who limits the number of ideas my brain is allowed to have in any given year. Or day. Or perhaps every hour.

I’ve been working on Thug Luckless today and feeling like I don’t want him to just be a porn novel. Because I love this character. (He’s an AI sex robot in a post-apocalyptic town full of jaded, sex-starved broads.) And I’m really unsatisfied with everything I’ve written so far, because I want to rewrite it now with an actual story arc and a character arc, even though I want to keep the overall plot the same.

I simply cannot continue with it without making it a better book.

And then, of course, once I realized that, I wanted to bang my head on my keyboard because that means a whole lot more work — meaning brain work — is going to be involved. So, like, what the fuck?? Right? I have so many fucking projects.

But now that I’ve come to this understanding about Thug nothing less is going to satisfy me. So it’s just frustrating, you know? Especially since I live in a drug-free world and have to rely strictly on the adrenaline I was born with — except for caffeine…

Which reminds me that there is this Nick Cave thing on Instagram and I can’t really figure out what it is. (BTW, this sudden segue has nothing to do with drugs, it has to do with ideas.) Every Saturday, it posts a brief audio clip from one of his In Conversations. And even while I like listening to it (today he was answering a question that had something to do with his ideas), but it makes me ponder where this audio recording comes from. (The last several have been from his Conversations in NYC. With one from Helsinki.)

I’m not sure why I have to ponder absolutely everything. I can’t just, you know, accept a thing at face value and move on with my life. I have to bring everything to a grinding halt and look at it and examine it and wonder: Who’s doing this? Where’d they get this from? How come they’re allowed to upload it? How come I’m following this  — how did I find it in the first place? I have no clue; I only know I’ve been following it for a while. And its tag line is “The Secret Red Hand Files” — so what does that mean?

Anyway. It posts every Saturday. And I thought today was interesting in that I, personally, am getting a little overwhelmed with ideas, here, that could easily take me to the end of my life.

So, as I completely re-think Thug and try now to sort of outline it as actual fiction and not simply regard it as “porn,” I find my mind just wandering like crazy. You know, I start just staring at the wall and suddenly wondering if I could name my Top 5 favorite Tom Petty songs. I’ve never tried to do that before and it turns out that it’s really hard. I would need to have room for at least 10. Because, you know, my Top 4 would probably be “Runaway Trains,” “How Many More Days,” “Rhino Skin,” “You & Me,” and then suddenly I need to cram about 6 more songs in the number 5 slot. And then I’d have to cram the entirety of his album Hard Promises in there, too.

And meanwhile, Thug Luckless is not getting re-written, and the director is texting to schedule a chat with me for Monday so that we can get a plan in place for the first workshop in NYC re: Tell My Bones, and Sandra is texting about the Christmas promotion and my brain starts wondering when I’m going to do those final needed revisions on the play?

So this is where I decide that I’m gonna go take a shower…

Okay. Hope Saturday’s been good for you! And if you’re one of those hardcore football fans (which I am not), I hope your team’s winning. See ya.

Can you say 1979?

Don’t I Look Industrious?!

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I’m actually still in bed!

You know, some days I just look at my desk and feel the effort it will take to move  everything that’s on top of the desk — a ton of manuscripts in various stages of completion and piles of photos of Nick Cave that I’m always printing off from the Internet and then have nowhere to pin them up because my wall is already covered with stuff. I guess I just want to use up as much printer ink as I can because I enjoy spending a god-awful ton of money on ink…

Anyway.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I have the tiniest desk known to man. I always assumed that I would one day have a very grown up desk like other serious writers do! However, my desk was a wedding gift to me from my first husband. It meant so much to me, gang. It turned out, I was never able to part with it.  That was nearly 40 years ago.  I’ve written 6 novels at that desk, and God knows how many short stories, memoirs, essays, novellas. It went from having a typewriter sitting on it, to every stage of computer, and now the laptop. So I’m guessing it is officially My Desk.

That said, though, every morning, I have to unbury the top of the desk to find the laptop, and then put piles of stuff on the floor. Some mornings— such as this one here today— I look at all that stuff on top of the desk and just feel like blogging from bed…

Well, okay!

It is supposed to get up into the 50s Fahrenheit today. Kind of hard to believe because it is only 27 degrees out there right now. But it should be another beautiful day.  I heard from the director that tonight he will have his comments for me re: revisions on the play. So I am very eager to hear just how close to completion we might be! I don’t know, I’m just feeling like a lot of weight is off of me and I’m going to have more time now, in general, to focus on other things.  Regardless, it just feels good.

Yesterday, when I was looking for that photo of Fluffy helping me put up the Christmas tree, I found a couple other photos that I really loved. Another one from the old house:

A bunch of the cats looking out the screen door at the old house.

And several of the cats on my bed at the rental house:

Most of the feral cat colony, minus 2 of them

I love looking at old photos of the cats. Especially the really old photos of the ones who are gone now. I honestly just can’t believe how quickly the time passes and things change.

Okay, well. I guess I’m gonna get going here. Because I need more coffee and so I must get out of bed!! I leave you with another really old song that’s kind of haunting in a way, but made for nice breakfast music today. Have a great Sunday, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya!

For Fuck’s Sake, Why Can’t Life Ever Just Stay Awesome?

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It’s just been one of those days.

First. Work on the micro-short with Peitor went extremely well. We got great work done. We finished the 2nd segment of the script. 4 more segments to go.  The 2nd segment is approx. 90 seconds long. Still not a word of dialogue.

And the 2nd segment relies heavily on the filmmaking style Antonioni used in his movie from 1962, L’eclisse. Did you happen to see it? I thought you had! I know how much you enjoy black & white Italian movies from 1962. (You know, the reason Peitor and I have been friends for something like 35 fucking years is because when he said he wanted the segment to have the look of Antonioni’s L’eclisse, I knew exactly what he was talking about.) (Except for the part when she’s walking down the hall, I want the shots to have more of a feel of Polanski’s Repulsion but without all the arms molesting her. And I know you saw that!!)

Image result for polanski's repulsion
Catherine Deneuve in Polasnki’s Repulsion, 1965

By the way, our film is not in black & white. It’s just designed to feel like it is. And it’s not set in the 1960s, although our main character kind of is. (And as an aside, it’s kind of interesting that I didn’t end up like Deneuve’s character in Repulsion, all things considered. And even though today sort of sucks — overall, I think I’m doing pretty darned all right. However. If I end up wanting to eat an uncooked rabbit head that I’m carrying around in my purse, we can assume that things are at long last going seriously awry…)

Anyway. That was the highlight of the day — working with Peitor for a few hours.

My work on Letter #5 for Girl in the Night is frustrating me so I deleted all of it. I’m still going to keep the same premise for it (“Hymn to the Dark”) but it just kept feeling too plebeian. Sometimes plebeian is wanted. But not in this particular section of the book.  In this section, I want it to feel like, I don’t know — the genesis of angels or something. I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. I don’t even know what I fucking mean, at this point. I only know I haven’t captured it yet. So I will spend tonight trying again.

I did manage to wash my hair and shave my legs and even pay some attention to my (hideously chipped) toenails for the first time since before I went to New York — over a month ago already! (Can you believe that it was one month ago tonight that I saw Nick Cave at Town Hall? Man. In some ways it feels like a year.) (I wish I could just persuade somebody to live my life for me while I just stayed in bed and reaped the rewards of dreaming.) (Except for the times when I go see Nick Cave.) But anyway, when the weather gets colder and I wear actual shoes most of the time, instead of flip-flops everywhere, I tend to forget to look and see if my toenails need re-polishing. And I also tend to not wear my glasses most of the time, so I don’t usually see much of anything.  But today I got out of the shower and suddenly it was, like — holy moly. So I dealt with the toes.

Today is the 3rd anniversary of my sweet cat, Bunny, dying of a heart attack. She was the last of my house cats. I cannot tell you how much I miss having cats that actually interact with me. You know — the kind that let me cuddle with them and that purr and that like to sleep on the bed with me all night. Who look at me like they understand me when I chatter at them. Who act as if they actually love me. I just miss it so much. Even though Daddycakes was feral, he would purr and get on the bed with me a lot of the time, but he didn’t want to be cuddled or petted — he did allow me to do it, begrudgingly, so I tried not to overdo it. But, man. Feral cats are rough on the heartstrings.

Although, for the past several mornings, when it’s still dark out and I go into the dark bathroom to pee first thing, Huckleberry and Doris will come into the bathroom and lick my toes! This is a totally new thing. They will let me sort of reach down and pet them, but only once. If I try for twice, then they nip at me. So, you know, I’m trying to make the most out of peeing in the dark while they lick my toes… with those sandpaper-y little tongues.

This business of allowing life to be however it’s going to be without me orchestrating it to suit my needs… I’m not a big fan of it.

It sort of reminds me that I feel kind of at odds with what I posted this morning about Ghosteen. I even thought about deleting it. I wish I didn’t feel so deeply about things. I decided to keep it posted, just because I guess it’s better not to censor myself. To just “express.” I just think it’s such a beautiful album and I still don’t know how to process how it makes me feel.

And I wasn’t being mean about his wife’s dress. I mean, she does sort of describe it like that in that movie, not those 2 exact words, but they amount to the same thing — she had a sort of mission to have every woman wearing the same dress, and looking like some sort of prim cult from 40 years ago. I don’t remember exactly. But if you didn’t see One More Time With Feeling, then maybe I sounded really mean.

But that was not my intention.

Well, I guess I should either get back to work here, or do some yoga now. I’ll make up my mind momentarily. I just hope something wonderful comes out of this brain of mine tonight to salvage this frustrating day.

Oh you know, I saw something online today that the late painter Basquiat said about what the Lower East Side of NYC was like back in the late 70s & early 80s (that bombed-out, war-zone look), and there were some photos from back then included. This was when I lived down there, in Alphabet City. I just sort of take it as a given that people remember what it was like back then, but a lot of people who read my blog weren’t even born yet back then. So here is a really good photo of what it looked like on E. 12th Street back when I lived there (for 9 years). I don’t know this particular building’s exact location, but so much of the LES looked exactly like this back then. This could have easily been the “apartment” next door to me:

Somewhere below E. 14th Street, NYC, early 1980s.

It is so weird to think I simply lived like this. For so many years. I didn’t even think about it. It’s just how it was.

Honestly, a lot of the times I miss it. I don’t really enjoy what NYC has become.

All righty! I’m off to do something. I don’t know what yet. But here’s hoping that before the night ends, I will have written something worth keeping. I love you guys. See ya.

Hell’s Kitchen 5PM !!

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Lunch was great. Sandra was awake and up and about, so she hopped a Lyft and joined me & Wayne.

We went to the West Bank Cafe. I hadn’t been there in maybe 25 years— something like that. From before my marriage to Wayne. Back when I was having an extremely intense short-lived affair with a bass player who was engaged to be married. He mistakenly thought I was a dyke so he used to flirt with me rather recklessly. I guess I turned out to be not such a dyke…

Anyway, it turns out that— lo! —  these many years later, Wayne is friendly with the owner there and he introduced me today as his wife!! It was weird. Both Sandra and I were, like — actually we didn’t know what to make of it. Right away, I said that I was his ex-wife, and then I felt kind of bad — you know, the blinding speed with which I clarified that. Like, you know, please don’t think for a fraction of a second that I’m married to this perfectly reasonable, well-groomed man sitting here or anything. I did feel kind of bad.

Yes, I did talk a little tiny bit at length about Nick Cave during lunch, but only because they FINALLY got around to asking me how the show was last night. Wayne, of course, knows at least some of Nick Cave’s music, so that was cool.

Now I am back in my room. I have been quite busy! I’ve taken about 30 naps; looked for photos of Nick Cave on Instagram— of which there were many; not just from the show last night but because it’s also his birthday today, so everyone’s posting his photo and wishing him a happy happy.

I also spoke at length on the phone to Valerie, even though I’m spending several hours with her tomorrow.  Luckily, even after nearly 40 years, we still don’t run out of things to talk about.

I’m not sure I will make any progress on rewrites of the play today. I just want to lay in bed, drift in & out of sleep. Listen to all the crazy traffic outside.

Here is what it looks like directly across from my (extremely filthy) window at the Airbnb.

    Outside the filthy Airbnb window. The no longer quite so hellish Hell’s Kitchen. 5 pm.

Okay! Have a terrific evening, wherever you are in the world, gang!! I love you guys!

Everything Old is New Again

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I know, I should be excited this morning because in a couple of hours, I’ll have a brand new car. However, I woke up battling a huge bunch of sadness today, instead.

Part of it is because I’m still not quite believing that I’m the kind of girl who will be driving a Honda Civic. I know it’s a great car. But I would be more excited if I were driving a Hellcat. My dream car.

The other part of my sadness stems from this business of it being September. The cooler weather; this closing-of-the-windows business. The birds leaving for warmer climes.

I used to love September. I used to love fall. I guess since I wrote about this in Letter #2 of Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse, I can just go ahead and write about it here.

(And as an aside, Letter #3 began coming out yesterday, entirely unexpectedly and all of its own accord. It appears to be titled, “Baltimore.”)

Anyway, in Letter #2, “A Beach to His Waves,” I wrote about an older man who died, but who managed to thoroughly change my life before he left.

I knew him for less than 4 months, but they were the most intense, amazing, beautiful, magical 4 months I ever lived. He was terminal, with cancer, but wound up dying very suddenly from a heart attack instead.

He was in his early 70s, extremely happily married — kids, grandchildren. He’d had a really successful career.  But his wife and his kids were absolutely devastated by the fact that he was dying, incurable, and we met honestly by sheer accident, but it then did seem like it was no accident — it was some miraculous type of fate, or destiny, or something. But we did indeed meet, we were pulled together. And he just wanted to be with someone who didn’t treat him like he was fragile, and who didn’t treat him with kid gloves, and who wasn’t crying all the time. Even though he really did love those people, his wife and family, without doubt.

It just happened, we became lovers, and then it took over my life for just under 4 months. Not only was it the most amazing sex, he also taught me, for the first time in my life, how to accept being loved.  As far as I knew (or even know still today), I was never really loved when I was growing up. My (adoptive) mother told me point blank that I was not loved. My (adoptive) father told me the same thing, in different ways.

At best, I was tolerated, and usually just barely, since throughout my years of growing up, I was relentlessly abused.  A large part of it was the fact that I was adopted so I had nothing whatsoever in common with the people who adopted me. Nothing. I couldn’t have been more different if I were trying. And on top of it, I was very smart, very sexual, very psychic, very creative. Just this weird little kid from Jupiter and they really, really didn’t want to deal with me. Both parents eventually told me that they regretted adopting me and wanted me to just go away.

Anyway, I don’t want to drag all that up now, it is sufficient to say that I have never felt loved and never took it as a given that I ever would be loved, even though I am intensely loving on the giving side of that one-sided equation. (And of course went into the Ministry because of my relationship with Christ and his love, and my understanding that I was capable of being an endless supply of giving love to others.)

But this man, he changed all of that for me. He had been raised by a mother who had truly loved him. His whole life had been surrounded by love, so he could not even believe that anyone (me) could be coming from a place of never having been loved.  Felt loved, Even felt deserving of love. Any of it. And that put us in the curious position of him having fallen in love with me, and needing me to accept that love because he knew he was dying and didn’t want to leave life feeling like I was refusing to accept his love.

He managed to get through to me, you know. It wasn’t easy. But it did happen. And it changed my whole life. Everything about how I saw life, and felt life, and all of that. And what I allowed myself to feel, for the first time ever, was pretty staggering. I mean, I was already well into my 50s.

So, of course, he died. And it was quite sudden when he did. And I couldn’t go to the funeral or anything like that, because I didn’t officially exist.  He was married and all that. So my grief was very private, and very intense. But what got me through it was knowing that he didn’t want me to be sad. And I also immediately felt his true presence visiting me from the other side.  And he helped me find my way through my grief.

He doesn’t visit me every day anymore, but for awhile he did. He was with me constantly in spirit. I couldn’t see him or hear him, but inside my head, I heard him perfectly. He was there.

Well, my main point is that he died in early September. So there you have it. My inability to let summer go anymore. (And then Tom Petty also dying suddenly of a heart attack, and dying at the begininng of October — that stuff didn’t help me deal with my private loss.)

And until the Muse came into my life last fall, I really thought I was done with living. I didn’t want to kill myself or anything, but I really, really wanted to cross over that great divide and go be with that guy again, for eternity, even though I knew he had felt that his wife was his soul mate. So I wasn’t (am still not) really sure where that leaves me for eternity. But, the Muse came and suddenly all this writing came out of me. Just pouring out. Planting me really solidly within Life again. In a really joyful way. Still, when I wake up in the morning and realize it’s September now, that fall is coming, it is a battle not to get sad.

This morning I just felt overwhelmed by it.  Just too many question marks right now in my life — about both plays, about my novel, other projects that are still un-anchored anywhere, needing a firm home. You know. Just too many projects I’m generating that are not anchored anywhere yet. And still more projects on the back burner, waiting for my complete attention.

It was all I could do this morning to get through my meditation, then my Inner Being journaling thing, anything to just hold on and not feel so incredibly sad.

So. I’ll head out and get my new Honda Civic and not think about the Hellcat that perhaps deep in my heart, I would rather have. And you know, in terms of signs — how when someone you love dies, you long for signs that they are still with you? With him, early on, I once asked him to please show me a sign, and then he unleashed just a barrage of signs, until I was finally shouting out loud, “Okay STOP!!” because it was freaking me out. All the sudden signs that he was with me in spirit.

But a few months ago, out of the blue, I had to drive into the city and deal with all that horrible ugly traffic that I hate, in a city that I also hate, and suddenly, there on the freeway, moving into my lane, was a purple Hellcat. My dream car. I never actually see Hellcats on the road, only Dodge Challengers. Hellcats are pretty expensive. And this one was purple — the exact car I wanted. And the license plate is what told me it was his sign of signs for me. When he was a little boy, he had loved Elvis. Just worshiped him. And the license plate on the Hellcat read: ELV1S. So not just “Elvis” but that Elvis was #1. And then there was also a picture of a rocket blasting off on the license plate, too, which to me was symbolic of what he had done for a living (aeronautics).

A true SIgn of Signs, in my opinion. I followed that car for quite a while that day, until it sped off onto another highway.

Well, I got out of bed this morning crying, but determined to somehow save this day from the oblivion of my sorrow, you know? I’ll go get my new car. I’m sure I’ll be really happy once I’m driving it way too fast in Muskingum County.

It looks like it’s going to be another stunning day. I have to say, I don’t understand any of it.  Life, death, grief, joy, love, sex.  None of it. I don’t understand it. But I still choose to feel all of it.

Okay, so, have a great Friday, wherever you are and wherever it takes you. Thanks for visiting. Oh, and Iggy Pop’s new album Free, is very interesting. I haven’t heard the whole thing yet, but it does fill me with a lot to ponder — this aging thing.  Iggy Pop is managing to grow older quite gracefully. It is so interesting to me. Okay. I leave you with the song that came into my head the moment I came out of meditation and saw that dawn was approaching, and I was determined to stop crying and somehow face this too beautiful September day. I love you guys. See ya.

“Here Comes The Sun”

Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it’s all rightLittle darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling, it feels like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all rightLittle darling, the smiles returning to the faces
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been here
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun
and I say it’s all right

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…
Sun, sun, sun, here it comes…

Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting
Little darling, it seems like years since it’s been clear
Here comes the sun, here comes the sun,
and I say it’s all right
It’s all right

c – 1969 George Harrison

And Away We Go!!

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[First, here’s a quick update. I just saw some of the morning glories blooming outside my backdoor and could not resist posting them here!]

{Okay, back to the original post!!}

Yes, tomorrow morning, I’m trading in my beloved Honda Fit for a Honda Civic, and so I will drive to NY again and not fly.

As much as I don’t really feel like driving for 10 hours there and 10 hours back right now, I can’t grasp giving up 25,000 frequent flyer miles just to fly 500 miles and spend a minimum of 6 hours doing that. So I’ll just drive.

And don’t even speak to me about just buying a plane ticket. Those flights from here to that little airport in NY, 500 miles away, cost a fortune. I can of course fly direct to JFK or LaGuardia, and it’s faster and cheaper, but then I have to deal with getting to the train and taking that up to Rhinebeck. So, you know, it’s like, Jesus Christ, I’ll just get in my car and drive.

I was planning on leasing another Honda Fit because I really love that little car and it goes really fast. It just zips along. And you can park it anywhere because it’s really small. Plus it’s a hatchback that has back seats that fold down, so you can transport anything.

However, there is a sale right now on Honda Civics, and a Civic is cheaper than  a Fit right now, so I guess I’ll upgrade and become more like a respectable person. (For some reason, I feel like only grown-ups drive Honda Civics.) I guess we’ll see how it goes because that’s the car I’m getting. I realize that I do have to grow up at some point, but I wasn’t planning on doing that this year.

Well.

Another beautiful, beautiful morning here. I woke up and everything actually felt sacred. The peace and quiet of everything. Only one bird singing, and even the cicadas are dying off now. It was mostly just crickets. And it was really cool out — back down into the 50s again, which I wasn’t expecting, so when I went downstairs, all the windows were of course wide open, and the ceiling fans were whirring merrily away. It was fucking freezing! Those poor cats.

But, you know — they do have those handy fur coats…

However. The world felt sacred to me this morning, and I felt a little vulnerable within it. Like, I don’t really understand who I am anymore. I just don’t.

Yesterday was interesting. Wayne was back in NYC from his trip to Nepal, so we chatted on the phone for a while. His trip sounds like it was amazing, frankly. He was just tramping around — in the towns and in the foothills of the Himalayas, mounting 200-year-old staircases to get blessed by tiny living goddesses (meaning little 4-year-old girls); just doing whatever presented itself.

The thing with my song “Breaking Glass,” was an interesting story.  He did actually access the song through my Wikipedia page, and from there, through the Smithsonian website. He was specifically talking about me to some Nepali guy that he was tramping around with, and that sort of baffled me. But what baffled me more was when Wayne said, “I always really loved that song, ‘Breaking Glass’. It was one of my favorites of yours.”

I honestly did not know he even knew that song, let alone knew it well enough for him to have an opinion about it. Or to even talk about me to some stranger in Nepal. I don’t recall Wayne going to more than one of my gigs, even though we were married. I had the impression he didn’t care much about my music. So really, it was just baffling to me.

And then I mentioned to him that I would be in an airbnb for 3 nights in Manhattan because I was going to see Nick Cave. And then Wayne says,  “I remember you telling me about that first time you saw him, when all those people in the audience were only into murder.”

I was absolutely astounded by this. When would I have told him that? Not only was that show over 30 years ago, but it had happened several years before Wayne & I even met. Why did he even remember me saying something like that? (I mean, I was really upset by that first concert back then — 1988, I think. Because I thought Nick Cave was a genius; a really brilliant songwriter, even though his songs were really dark. But he wasn’t an actual murderer, he was a songwriter. And the audience behaved more like they found him to be a really gifted murderer. The whole fucking show truly upset me. Obviously enough to tell Wayne about it at some point, several years after it had happened, even though I have no memory of doing that.)

Still.

I honestly don’t think of Wayne as someone who even likes me very much, let alone as someone who ever listened to anything I ever said. And I feel like, you know, he stays in touch because he feels sorry for me, and doesn’t want me to accidentally set myself on fire or something. So the whole thing just threw me.

I’m so serious, people. Being married to me is the furthest thing from a picnic that you can possibly imagine. Basically, I want to have sex 15 times a day and then the moment that’s done, I need you to stop talking to me because I need to write. And then I have this really unattractive place where my voice goes if you’re really trying my patience.

That’s about it; the entirety of ‘me’.  Oh, and then the ‘f’ word nonstop.

I have two ex-husbands who are really kind to me. And I don’t understand why. I accept it because I love kindness. I try to be kind in return, because there’s a whole lot of stuff I do remember and I know darn well my marriages go so much better for the husband when I’m not actually in them. So yesterday just threw me. I was trying to remember who I really was.

I did a lot of work on those final pages of the play yesterday, but mostly what I came to was an understanding that a whole lot had to happen in a short space and it all had to be really moving; be tragic and then truly uplifting. So I’ve got my work cut out for me, but on we go.

And as soon as these pages are done, I will have some breathing room, finally. I can get back to In the Shadow of Narcissa, and Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. So I’m super excited. (Here’s something funny: I misspelled “erotic” there and so spell-check suggested “aortic.” I think that in this instance, considering my sense of Eros, my Muse, my mind — the words erotic and aortic are actually kind of interchangeable.)

Okay, gang! Have a thoroughly happy Thursday, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting. I leave you with what was in my Instagram feed this morning. I’m guessing you can see why I prefer this to having to think about my actual life. Okay! I love you guys. See ya.

Coolest Morning, Ever!

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I am just in the most amazingly blissed-out mood this morning.

The weather here in Crazeysburg is perfect. Just unbelievably perfect. Cool, but still warm enough to have all the windows open – yay!!

When I finished meditating, I opened my eyes and discovered that I was looking out a section of the window where I could just see the sun coming up through the leaves of my maple tree. Just absolutely dawn beginning, you know. And I don’t mean this Dawn, either. Although there is nothing at all wrong with them!

Image result for tony orlando and dawn candida

But just to see that sun coming up right at that moment, you know? It made my heart smile.

I think today is going to be a really good start to a peaceful holiday weekend around here. Stateside, we celebrate Labor Day on Monday. Labor Day used to be a holiday celebrating Labor Unions, but now it’s more of a holiday that celebrates shopping and, thus, all those non-Labor Union workers are forced to work!

When I was a wee bonny lass growing up in Cleveland, holidays were holidays and nobody worked. Cleveland was what was called a Blue-Collar town; lots of strong (rather corrupt) labor unions, and so lots of holidays, including Sundays.  On Sundays, Cleveland shut down, except for gas stations and an occasional restaurant. It was a day for going to church and then being with your family.

It is kind of amazing how hugely that has changed in this country and gone to the extreme side of commerce and consumerism, but far be it from me to try to turn back that tide.

I don’t know if it’s still like this in NYC or not, but, in a similar vein, it used to be that if you didn’t go to the liquor store in NYC before it closed on a Saturday night, you would be booze-less all day Sunday. Now, at least around here, you can buy booze on Sundays, but most places make you wait until after 12-noon. You know, give the churches half a chance to dissuade you…

Well, I seem to have digressed!

Yes, a holiday weekend is upon us and I know I don’t have to tell you how I am going to spend mine, right??!! Working on the play! Every free fucking minute.

I did get into a very interesting place with it yesterday — I’m still in this really difficult segment that I have been in for something like 2 weeks already. And, yes, the director has since gone back to NYC. But he has still been very supportive and patiently focusing on that “one step at a time” idea. (Whereas, I focus on the “goddammit, why can’t I write this fucking play???!!” idea.)

But yesterday, I found my way into some dialogue that was finally resonating for me, so I’m hopeful that I have at last really found my way in. The overall, arching premise is there, because, as you perhaps recall, I have already written this play 17 hundred times!! But the characters have little to no depth in regards to the new dialogue. So that is where I am hoping to have my breakthrough.

I talked with Valerie in Brooklyn for awhile yesterday, and she was experiencing the same shock & sadness regarding the summer being over and not being ready for it yet. And she concurred that July flew by in a mere heartbeat. So it made me feel kind of better about how I’ve been feeling over here. You know, now I know I’m not alone in this melancholy over the fleeing of summer.

Oh! I had an interesting dream about Nick Cave last night. He wasn’t physically in it; he had sent me 3 things. My favorite of the 3 being a bowl of macaroni & cheese. It was in a really round, white bowl. And it was made with white cheese instead of orange cheese, so a lot of whiteness was going on there. But it was hot and I was really happy, because macaroni & cheese is probably my favorite thing in the world.  And he had sent me 2 identical videos, compilations of stuff, and the videos were digital streams but I could still hold them in my hand. However, I woke up before watching the 2 videos, or even eating the mac & cheese.

Still, I thought that was interesting and I have no clue what it could have possibly meant. And,  you’ll notice, that once again there is that duplicate thing happening — I posted a couple months ago about how, when I dream about Nick Cave, there are always 2 of the very same thing in the dream. Last time, he emailed me 2 really large panes of glass in the shape of Australia. And this time, 2 digital videos that were the same.

And on a related note!! Not a whole lot came out of Norway last night on Instagram. And only one of the posts was in black & white this time, so, clearly, last time they were doing that excessive “posting in black & white” business on purpose– you know, to specifically drive me crazy.  I’m going to try to not hold it against them as an entire country, though.

And people from Helsinki are still posting. They seem to have just had an amazingly amazing time. I’m not being facetious, either. And the photos from inside the theater itself looked really cool — stairways that seemed to be lit up and looking like they went off in interesting directions to nowhere; M.C. Escher-like. (I know!! It’s so hard to believe that I’m writing a Pulitzer Prize-winning play while still finding time to endlessly ponder the stairways of theaters I will never visit in my lifetime that are thousands of miles away!!)

All right, gang! I’m going to close and get to work around here. I leave you with this!! It’s actually a really great pop song, gang! You should listen to it!! I’m posting it only because of the aforementioned thing up there. I hadn’t actually thought about the song in decades,but I used to just love it. And so I just played it and discovered that I still love it!

(And while playing it, I recalled, vividly, that I was watching the Tony Orlando & Dawn Variety Show on TV that night that I was babysitting in the swinging 1970s apartment complex when I was 14 and the dad came home early, wanting to fool around.  That was the time I called my 16-year-old girlfriend, to see if she wanted to come over and fool around with him instead, because he creeped me out and I just wanted to go home. And so she did.) (And I remember her standing under my bedroom window, later that evening, and tossing pebbles up to it so that I would come to my window. And  I did. It was summertime. We weren’t in school. And she told me that they’d fucked on the living room floor and then the mom came home early, but they didn’t get caught. But she said that the mom & dad got in a fight anyway because the mom came home and found a different babysitter! I mean, my girlfriend actually called all that out to me, out loud, up to my window. What a weird era that was.  And I don’t know if I said it out loud or only thought it, but I do remember being appalled that they had sex while his kids were sleeping upstairs.)

(This is also the same girl I posted about several months ago, where we got arrested and taken to jail that same summer and her dad blamed me. He blamed me for everything she did. I’m not overstating that in the slightest. Every time that guy laid eyes on me, he wanted to kill me.)

Anyway. I leave you with a really cool song this morning that has some really unexpected memories. Enjoy!! Thanks for visiting, gang! I love you guys. See ya!

“Candida”

The stars won’t come out
If they know that you’re about
‘Cause they couldn’t match the glow of your eyes
And, oh, who am I
Just an ordinary guy
Trying hard to win me first prizeOh, Candida
We could make it together
The further from here, girl, the better
Where the air is fresh and clean
Hmm, Candida
Just take my hand and I’ll lead ya
I promise life will be sweeter
And it said so in my dreams

The future is bright
The gypsy told me so last night
Said she saw our children playing in the sunshine
And there was you and I
In a house, baby, no lie
And all these things were yours and they were mine

Whoa my, Candida
We could make it together
The further from here, girl, the better
Where the air is fresh and clean
Hmm, Candida
Just take my hand and I’ll lead ya
I promise life will be sweeter
And it said so in my dreams

And, oh, who am I
Just an ordinary guy
You know, I’m trying hard to win me first prize

Oh my, Candida
We could make it together
The further from here, girl, the better
Where the air is fresh and clean
Whoa my, Candida
Just take my hand and I’ll lead ya
I promise that life will be sweeter
And it said so in my dreams

c- 1970 IRWIN LEVINE, TONI WINE