Because I fell and bruised my thigh beyond my ability to comprehend (if you are on your computer, you can see my Instagram photo from yesterday down below, which shows the awesome bruise and just how swelled up it got), I wound up spending a huge portion of yesterday in bed.
Not because I couldn’t walk, but because the pain was excruciating.
But today, even though the bruise is obviously still there and still swollen, the pain is really minimal.
And, while CBD oil did nothing to stop that kind of pain, it did calm me the fuck down and made everything in my world seem manageable. And by “manageable” I guess I mean “just go to bed and stream The Monkees and forget about everything else in the world. ”
Oh, and I should mention here that I wound up liking that documentary, Hey, Hey We’re The Monkees, which I had started watching the other day. It was very informative and emotional.
Anyway. I also slept a lot yesterday, seeing as how I was already in bed. I didn’t get out of bed until after 5am today, which is later than I’ve been doing for quite a few weeks now.
So nothing new has been done to the new short story “Novitiate.” And at this point, if it is getting confusing:
The Guitar Hero Goes Home is now available in print with the corrected cover and the corrected text. (Also eBook — Amazon)
“Half-Moon Bride” will be available as a stand alone eBook in a few weeks (with my new publisher)
1954 Powder Blue Pickup will be coming out in print before the year is over, also with my new publisher
“Novitiate” will be part of what I currently call The Muse Revisited Vol. 4, which will also include my more popular “taboo erotica” short stories and novellas from the scope of my career. That will come out in print with my new publisher, as well, but probably not until early 2021 (especially if I don’t quit falling down on my kitchen porch).
So that’s what’s going on there, in erotica land.
In non-erotica land, the staged reading of my play, Tell My Bones, will premier online on Sunday evening EST, November 22nd. It will be free, but you will need to RSVP at an eventbrite link, which I will give to you when I have it. And if you miss the premier, you will have a window of maybe 3-5 days to watch it anyway.
Okay!
So Cave Things announced yesterday that you can pre-order the following really cute picture discs, each have one song on them from Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace, which is being released as an album and also a film in November. Here are the picture discs, drawn by Nick Cave (I believe they are each £30, except that there are only 500 copies in each title, so you need to pre-order right away).
And with that, I’m also gonna close. So have a really nice Wednesday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, gang!! I love you guys. See ya!!
I awoke at 3:56am today, and the first thing I did was check my Amazon music library for the new Tom Petty album (which I apparently paid for at 12:01 am) and the only things in there were the 5 songs they had already dropped weeks ago…
So, after breakfast, journaling, meditation, cleaning up after 7 cats, etc., I spent about 15 minutes just trying to find the actual customer service page on Amazon. Then it took close to 30 more minutes to straighten out the problem.
I haven’t listened to it yet but at least now it is there. And I hope the rest of the day is just easy-peasy…
Yesterday, there was something on Instagram indicating that some of Nick Cave’s fans don’t like Cave Things because they feel it is mercenary and exploitative. And I guess he has been “cancelled” by some of his “cancel culture” fans because of it.
I do think the stuff is really expensive, but it kind of amuses me. Plus, I am a capitalist, and I feel that if the market will bear it, then one should reap the rewards of it.
I certainly would do it if I thought anyone on Earth would pay me £300 plus shipping for anything whatsoever.
On a similar note, though — yesterday was a little depressing for me. The Guitar Hero Goes Home is not exactly selling like hotcakes, and no one has reviewed it, except for the initial reviews I got before the book was published. So there it languishes. Even though, because it is experimental fiction and not erotic fiction, I did not really expect it to sell that great. And I was sort of hoping that after I died, there would be some sort of market for it. And I’m actually really okay with that. But what depressed me, was that I scrolled through the out of print book titles of mine that are being sold on Amazon and they are once again, going for extremely high prices.
For instance, a copy of Entangled Lives, selling for $967 plus $3.99 shipping (I’m guessing that Nick Cave autographed it…) (Just kidding.). A mass market paperback of Neptune & Surf selling for $132 plus $3.98 shipping. Seven “new” editions of a hardcover version of When the Night Stood Still — each selling for $98.96 plus shipping, and that book never came out in hardcover, ever, so that’s just criminal all the way around.
What bothered me most was that a print edition of Twilight of the Immortal is selling for $244.99 plus shipping, and that edition is full of typos, which is why I canceled the contract with that publisher and pulled it from stores all over the world. And then hired a professional editor to edit the eBook edition. But it doesn’t really matter too much, does it?
And I felt two things: why can’t people pay those kinds of prices while the books are still in print and I can benefit from it in some way? And why is there more of a market for my out of print books, than for a brand new one that is just now “in print”?
I can’t really answer that. But it makes me kind of sad — that my name is worth more than my actual living self.
So that sort of helped yesterday feel sucky. (But it does bode well for that idea that TheGuitar Hero Goes Home will sell great after I’m dead…)
Otherwise, I did get some writing done on the new erotic short story (“Novitiate”). And in case you haven’t seen it yet, I posted a brief excerpt from it last night.
So, you know, it’s a sort of “onward” kind of day around here.
Tonight will be that killing frost, so I spent some time saying goodbye to the petunias yesterday. And we shall see what next summer brings.
Other than that, I don’t really have too much to say here today, gang.
I leave you with last night’s listening music. “Heart of Gold,” by Neil Young, from off of his incredibly great album Harvest (1972). Listen and enjoy. Have a wonder-filled Friday, wherever you are in the world. And thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.
Yes, tomorrow is allegedly bringing with it a killer frost, and so I will be bidding a fond adieu to all my petunias today.
Even though I don’t usually grow petunias, because of the virus, I wasn’t able to get what I usually like to plant in the flower boxes on the porches. However, the petunias made me really, really happy this summer. Just a constant riot of color — not to mention one of the flower boxes on the front porch served as home base to my lovely toad. (Through his impeccable patience, I eventually learned how to not water his head when watering the petunias…) (Nobody stares at you quite as patiently as a toad with water on his head.)
And in honor of tomorrow bringing the first real frost, today is an amazingly lovely fall day. Cool but not cold, sunny, with gorgeous leaves everywhere — most of them still on the trees for as far as the eye can see.
And I’m doing laundry. This is the time of year where I start to bring out the flannel sheets for my own bed – the bottom sheet, only. I don’t usually need all the flannel sheets until closer to Thanksgiving (late fall).
So everything is changing and I am doing totally okay with it. I’m not morbidly missing the summer. (We’ll see how tomorrow goes — the “new” Tom Petty album drops tomorrow. It might make me really sad and really miss the summer, but we’ll just wait and see.)
Tom Petty Wildflowers & All the Rest
I keep thinking that, one of these days, life will just be fine and I’ll be okay with everything that comes my way. (I’ve been thinking this for 60 years now, but that fact should not cloud our judgment! Today could end up being the very day when suddenly I am forever totally okay with everything…)
Okay!
Well, the publisher needs an excerpt from “Half-Moon Bride” to put on their website, and they suggest that it be, you know — erotic. To get people to want to read more of the story (i.e., to buy it).
So I’m reading it over for the first time since I wrote it, trying to process this whole insane story. It is just, like, pornographic from start to finish, gang, so where do you jump in and create an “excerpt”? You kind of have to read it from start to finish, to get any real grasp on it. Separating out even the smallest segment of it just ends up seeming like utterly insane porn, in my opinion. (Two hermaphrodites on their wedding night; one extremely giant-sized, the other one rather petite (and a truly clueless virgin). And if you don’t know those facts ahead of time, then it really comes off sounding insane.) (i.e., the clueless virgin loses her virginity while trying to come to terms with also suddenly having a P-spot and her first erection…) (aka: the joys of hermaphrodite sex!!)
But the publisher needs me to do this ASAP, because they asked for it last week, so I need to figure out an “excerpt” that will not make me seem like the most insane writer in the annals of recorded history.
Once I do that, I will get back to work on the newest erotic short story around here, “Novitiate.” (If I can come up with excerpts from either story that seem tame enough for the blog, I will post them this evening. We’ll see!)
And over at Cave Things, a new charm is coming soon that I’m sure you’ll want to grab as soon as it’s available:
Isn’t that cute?? I’m guessing it will cost about £300 (plus shipping) and sell out in about ten minutes…
All right, well. I need to go downstairs and check on that laundry and finish making the bed. I hope you have a lovely Thursday wherever you are in the world and in whatever season it is where you are!! I leave you with my driving to town & back music from yesterday. This is such a great song for driving really fast on an almost empty highway, with blue skies and gorgeous fall trees all around you for miles and miles and miles. I hadn’t listened to this song in years. Rod Stewart’s legendary version of “Rhythm of My Heart,” from his 1991 album, Vagabond. Needless to say, to get the full effect of this song, you have to turn the volume up to eleven…
Okay!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I might be back tonight to regale you with brand-new literary “erotica”. We’ll see how it goes. I love you guys. See ya!
“Rhythm Of My Heart”
Across the street the river runs
Down in the gutter life is slipping away
Let me still exist in another place
Running under cover of a helicopter blade
The flames are getting higher in effigy
Burning down the bridges of my memory
Love may still be alive somewhere someway
where they’re downing only deer
a hundred steel towns away
Oh the rhythm of my heart is beating like a drum
with the words “I love you” rolling off my tongue
No never will I roam for I know my place is home
where the ocean meets the sky
I’ll be sailing
Photographs and kerosene light up my darkness
light it up, light it up
I can still feel the touch of your thin blue jeans
Running down the alley I’ve got my eyes all over you baby
Oh baby
Oh the rhythm of my heart is beating like a drum
with the words “I love you” rolling off my tongue
No never will I roam for I know my place is home
where the ocean meets the sky I’ll be sailing
I’ll be sailing
Oh I’ve got lightning in my veins
shifting like the handle of a slot machine
Love may still exist in another place
I’m just yanking back the handle
no expression on my face
Oh the rhythm of my heart is beating like a drum
with the words “I love you” rolling off my tongue
Never will I roam for I know my place is home
where the ocean meets the sky
I’ll be sailing
Oh the rhythm of my heart is beating like a drum
with the words “I love you” rolling off my tongue
No never will I roam for I know my place is home
where the ocean meets the sky
I’ll be sailing
The rhythm of my heart is beating like a drum
with the words “I love you” rolling off my tongue
Never will I roam for I know my place is home
where the ocean meets the sky
I’ll be sailing
First of all, I’m in a much better mood today, gang — like, 1000%.
Part of it was that I wasn’t actually feeling so great yesterday. (In addition to the emotional weirdness brought on by the chairs — see yesterday’s post, if you so desire. Otherwise — onward; don’t look back!!)
I take a lot of digestive enzyme supplements and probiotics in order to be able to digest broccoli. I don’t actually like broccoli, but I have noticed an amazing difference in how my brain focuses after eating broccoli, so for YEARS, I have tried to eat broccoli (blanched) at least once a day. But I can’t digest it.
Well, then I noticed that none of the digestive enzyme-type things were actually helping — and in fact, some new ones I was taking seemed to be making matters worse. I was in abdominal pain for about 24 hours. And then, finally, yesterday, it occurred to me to just stop eating broccoli. So I didn’t eat it. And without eating broccoli, I no longer needed all the extra enzyme stuff to try to digest it.
And today, I feel 100% fine.
Can you believe it took me that long to figure out that I should just stop eating broccoli??? It is so weird, the things we force ourselves to believe sometimes — i.e., broccoli is good for me so I need to eat it.
Anyway. Even though I felt truly horrible all day yesterday, I did get some great work done on the new erotic short story, “Novitiate,” so I’m hoping that today will be the same.
It’s turning out to be a very interesting story — it’s taking on a shape and tone that I hadn’t really expected at first. So my decision to get out of the story’s way, and stop being an emotional roadblock to it, turned out to be a really good idea.
I tell you, gang — stories really do know how to tell themselves if we can get out of their ways and just write.
I’m also finding that The Monkees’ records make a terrific soundtrack for writing “Novitiate” by — the story takes place in the summer of 1966, on the cusp of Free Love and those kinds of ideas. And for me, those old Monkees’ records have the perfect sound for that era, since I listened to those records a lot from 1966-1968. I’m finding that the second album, specifically — More of the Monkees — just lets the whole story open up in my head. (More of the Monkees is actually a really, really great album. It was recorded in 1966 and then released in January 1967. It’s the album that has their fantastic version of Neil Diamond’s “I’m A Believer” on it.)
So I am once again in a really good place.
I did get a chance to listen to the first piece off the upcoming Nick Cave – Nicholas Lens collaboration, L.I.T.A.N.I.E.S (due in December). The piece is titled “Litany of The Forsaken.” It’s quite hypnotic, although I’m not 100% sure, yet, what it’s about.
I also rented the new documentary film on Ronnie Wood, the Mike Figgis-directed Somebody Up There Like’s Me.
I watched about 20 wonderful minutes of it last evening, when suddenly the buffering would not cease. I’m guessing thousands of people all over the place were streaming it at once. (Saturday night, 8pm.) So I’m going to try to watch the rest of it at a less popular movie-streaming time. I was really enjoying it, so, that on top of not feeling well sort of sucked.
But ever onward we go, right?
Okay. So, I’m gonna get started here. I hope your Sunday is shaping up to be a really great one, wherever you are in the world!! I’m leaving you with my breakfast-listening music from this morning, “Mary Mary” from More of the Monkees. It was actually written by Mike Nesmith in 1966 — he was one of the Monkees. It’s a great song, guys. So turn it up! Listen and try not to dance!!!! (Full disclosure: I was dancing all over the kitchen this morning at 5am, in my PJs, while listening to this and feeding the cats!!) All righty. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya.
For whatever reason — I guess the Autumn Equinox — I now get up at 4am and get out of bed! Whereas, I used to get up at 4am and just lie there for an hour.
Anyway, luckily, I was more than wide awake at 5am for the Bad Seed TeeVee chat-a-long to the Lawless soundtrack (Nick Cave & Warren Ellis). (I will say it again: that is such a beautiful soundtrack, gang; so atmospheric.)
It was fun. At one point I looked at the number of people in the chat and it was something like 900, but most people weren’t actually chatting. So it wasn’t completely insane.
And now it is 7am here and still completely dark out. So you really know it’s fall.
I spent a good chunk of my afternoon yesterday with Kevin, the director of my play (Tell My Bones) and his husband, Chris. So I did not get as much done on the new erotic short story as I had hoped. About 4 or 5 hours, at the most. It is still really challenging. I know what I want to say, but for some reason, I keep hesitating to say it — or write it, I mean.
(And on a side note — I spent about an hour chatting on the phone yesterday with an older gentleman I met through Gus Van Sant Sr. Well, we didn’t meet, we spoke on the phone about my play, via Gus. And at one point, I said something like, “I’ve been doing it a long time, already. I’m 60 years old…” And he said, “You’re kidding me! You sound like a kid!!”)
YAY!!!! Twice in one week…..
Oh, and, at one point yesterday, while I was talking to Chris about something, I noticed he was staring at my neck. I was wearing a sort of hippy-chick blouse that had a deep “V” neckline, and I didn’t ask him, but I just knew he was thinking: Man, no way does her neck look 60 years old….
(YES!! All those many miraculous skin products from France strike again!!) (Yes, yet again, another new product from France. First, they gave a jar of it to me for free. Then, they gave me another jar at half-price. We’ll see what happens after this, because it is really expensive but now I am hooked on it…) (As usual.)
Me, yesterday!!! So youthful-looking!!!
Okay, anyway.
So, yesterday was nice even though I didn’t get enough work done on the new story. And I did finally get to chat with Valerie for the first time since her mom died. And the weather was just really, really lovely yesterday. All the trees have changed colors and it was mild enough to not need a jacket or anything. Just perfect weather. It was really a nice drive over to Kevin’s mansion on the hill.
So today, we will try again to make some significant headway with the new story. I guess what we really need is to make headway with myself — get myself to stop hesitating and just write the story the way it is asking me to tell it. Because the story is all up here in my head. I’m the one who is laboring over how to tell it. So we’ll work on that.
As of, like, right now.
So, thanks for visiting, gang. I hope you have a really nice Friday, wherever you are in the world. Last night, I was listening to the 6 songs that have now been dropped for next week’s upcoming release of Tom Petty’s Wildflowers & All the Rest. (Listening to them over & over, actually. In my bed , in the dark. Thinking about life. And, of course, death, because now I can’t stop thinking about one without the other.) And I really love that song, “Leave Virginia Alone.”
Today, I’m gonna leave you with Rod Stewart’s version of it, though. He had a hit with it back in 1995. Listen and enjoy. I love you guys. See ya!
“Leave Virginia Alone”
Well they chased her
Down the alley
And over the hill
To steel her will
She was as hot as
Georgia asphalt
When the A-crowd came
To adore her brain
So leave Virginia alone
Leave Virginia alone
She’s not like you
And me
She’s not like you
And me
You should’ve seen her
Back in the city
Poetry and jewels
Broke all the rules
She was as high as
A Georgia pine tree
Makeup and pills,
Overdue bills
So Leave Virginia alone
Leave Virginia alone
She’s not like you
And me
She’s not like you
And me
Some sunny day
When the hands of time have
Gone their way
You’ll understand
Why it was so hard
To run away
To run away
She’s a loser
She’s a forgiver
She still finds good
Where no one could
You ought to want her
More than money
Cadillacs and rust
Diamonds and dust
So Leave Virginia alone
Leave Virginia alone
She’s not like you
And me
She’s not like you
And me
Ah, yeah
Leave Virginia alone
Leave Virginia alone
She’s not like you
And me
She’s not like you
And me
I’m going to be switching when I post to the blog for a while. I need the early hours of the morning to work on the new erotic short story (titled “Novitiate”), and then do a final edit of the whole collection of stories, in order to get the book off to the publisher as soon as possible.
So, I will either post midday, when I’m getting a break, or I will post after dinner, when I’m done writing for the day.
That will be starting today!!
Before I go, though, the Nick Cave web site sent out a reminder yesterday re: the live online listen-a-long on Bad Seed TeeVee this Friday, Oct.9th. And this is the official time zone thingie. It appears I was wrong yet again, so I’m glad they sent that out!
“This will be a live event available worldwide at the following times on Friday 9th October: Sydney, Melbourne 8pm AEDT / Wellington 10pm NZDT / Paris, Berlin 11am CEST / London 10am BST / Sao Paulo 6am BRT / New York 5am EDT / Mexico City 4am CDT / Los Angeles 2am PDT”
Okay! So I’m gonna scoot and I’ll be back later! Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world!! I love you guys. See ya!!
Finally. I found a teeny-tiny link that would let me access the classic editor.
To be fair-ish, I think that WordPress thinks there are readily accessed links to get to the old editor but none of those links worked. Hence, my complete meltdown this morning, after clicking link after link after link…
But anyway. For now, I have my blog back and I cannot imagine why anyone on Earth thinks the new editor is easier to use than this older one is.
I’m going to try to have a good day here. But it’s sort of been a battle since waking up this morning. Regardless of the whole blog incident. Trying to see certain people in the best light. Trying to just have faith, trust that things will go in the best direction for everyone even if it means letting them go, try not to think that people you rely on to be decent and be your “friend” totally have their own interests at heart.
That kind of of thing.
Most days, I can handle it, because it’s called “life”. Other days, it adds to the piles of straw that breaks the wee bonny camel’s back.
The bright spot on the horizon today is that I’m having lunch with the director of my play, Tell My Bones, and I am really, really looking forward to being in the presence of another human being. (And a human being who has actually been really, really supportive of me from day one.) As I said yesterday, it’s been 3 months now since I’ve seen anyone that I actually know. (Texting and talking on the telephone is great but it doesn’t actually count, you know?)
I do like living in the middle of nowhere, gang, but I don’t like having no meaningful or even just fun interactions with human beings. It is going on 7 months now, this whole virus thing. (As if you didn’t know.) And even though I know that for a few people I know, the virus has caused them to be in really close quarters with people they love or are married to and it has driven the relationships to the breaking point — it’s still people to interact with!!!!
All I have are cats — and they aren’t even domestic cats. So, basically, they all run away from me when I enter a room (unless it’s time to eat). Sometimes, it just feels like too much. That this virus crap is never gonna end.
Okay. Onward from that.
This is not actually a topic that is any cheerier, but I did see the results a survey this week, of 20,000 American college students regarding their thoughts on freedom of speech & expression, and tolerance vs. intolerance, violence as a suitable option against people who disagree with you, and how your specific University handles all that.
The majority of students who responded said they felt they did not feel comfortable expressing themselves to other students or to faculty. Which is so sad. The worst colleges for safe self-expression tended to be Liberal ones, as well as in the Ivy League.
The University of Chicago got the highest rating for protecting the rights of its students & faculty, though.
But what I found really interesting — and not in a good way — when it came to intolerance of other students and faculty, liberal female students were the worst offenders, followed closely by LGBTQ+ students.
Intolerance is just an outcropping of fear. So this sort of shows that we haven’t made any real progress at all in “equality,” have we? We just somehow managed to instill in liberal women and people who identify as LGBTQ+ (these are both categories that I fit into, btw) that intolerance and violence are the necessary means for shutting people down who threaten your sense of yourself.
It is just amazing to me. And it’s also been interesting to see, over this summer of all these riots, looting, hate, anarchy, etc., that young conservative female students who have spoken out all seem to be much more emotionally centered, self-confident, and tolerant. So, everything from the “old days” seems to have reversed.
It’s just very, very interesting.
Okay. So. More “coming soon” things on Nick Cave’s Cave Things that are really cool!! You might want to go check them out. My favorite thing so far is a china milk jug!! However, me thinks it will once again be way, way, way out of my price range, but do not let this deter you!!
And also something that is sort of related, but not really — Warren Ellis and Blixa Bargeld are now both on Instagram!
All righty. That’s really kind of it here today. Due to my time-consuming meltdown here this morning, I have not yet done yoga. So I want to get going with that and then get a little writing done before heading out to meet Kevin for lunch.
It is indeed the 3rd anniversary of Tom Petty’s death today. What I prefer to focus on is that new album of his coming out in 2 weeks. They’ve dropped another new song, his own demo version of “Leave Virginia Alone,” which was a hit for Rod Stewart. (I pre-ordered the album, of course, so I get all the songs as they drop. I also pre-ordered Bruce Springsteen’s new one, Letter to You, and of course Nick Cave’s new one, Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Berlin Alexanderplatz.) (Just kidding — it’s Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace.)
However, all that said, I have decided to leave you with my breakfast-listening music from today, a very old Rolling Stones song, “You Better Move On.” I have loved it since I was a wee bonny girl. (Released in the UK in 1964, and in the USA in 1965, on their album December’s Children.) It was written by Arthur Alexander.
Okay. Enjoy. And thanks for visiting. I realize some of you have visited 3 times already this morning (!!) — I deleted the meltdown entries, though, and this is the official entry for today. So thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya.
Yes, today’s the day I have to trim back the hydrangea. And while this is a sad day for me, it is a day much celebrated by all my neighbors.
Because this means that: a.) they won’t have to look at an enormously huge brown & drooping hydrangea anymore; and b.) they will finally have free access to the entire sidewalk when walking their dogs, riding their bikes, or pushing their baby strollers, etc., etc.
Plus, since my lawn guy was having such severe back problems (he’s getting surgery soon) that the last time he was here, I told him just to cut the grass and not worry about trimming anything or blowing away the clippings from the sidewalk. So today I have to sweep all those now very- dead clippings up, too, and my sidewalk is only about 17 miles long…
Lest you’ve forgotten about my very long sidewalk, here it is from September of last year:
I know it doesn’t look 17 miles long, but it is.
(And you should see my neighbor’s fence now, gang. Remember that intense wind from early spring that blew the roof off of my barn? Well, it wreaked havoc on that wooden fence there. It is just one great big blown apart mess now, and I guess the neighbors have no immediate plans of doing anything about it.
(And they have two little girls and so now we can all readily see that those little girls have every available backyard plaything known to man! Seriously, if it’s made out of hideous plastic and you can buy it for a child and put it in a yard, these little girls have got it.)
All righty.
So, I did the final tweaking and the read-through of 1954 Powder Blue Pickup yesterday and I was really, really happy with it, gang. Just really happy. Today, after I do all my strenuous “yard work,” I’m going to do the manuscript formatting and then send it off to the publisher and I will keep you posted!!
This morning, on Instagram, the official Nick Cave page released an announcement that on Oct. 9th, on Bad Seed TeeVee, there will be this:
And while I have never actually watched the film Lawless all the way through (even though I own it — I also own The Proposition and have never watched it all the way through, either. I just have problems with all the violence. And sometimes, I say to myself “this is the day when I will be able to just sit and watch this and not get squeamish about all the violence”, and then I last about 5 minutes….)
That said, though, the music from the film Lawless is really great. It’s very sort of “Great Depression-era American bluegrass music” type original stuff. Beautiful. And it has performers like Emmylou Harris and Ralph Stanley (who has since passed away).
And as near as I can tell, AEST is an Australian time zone which requires higher math skills to figure out, so I honestly have no clue whatsoever what 8PM AEST really means in, you know, the time zone that everybody else actually lives in…
Plus, I don’t know about you, but I still have trouble watching stuff and looking at chat at the same time! (I’m one of those people who still can’t watch the news and look at the other news scrolling along the bottom of the screen without going insane.) But this is only because I’m ancient, so don’t let the chat room thing deter you.
And also, I think you are required to provide your own snacks. I think I read somewhere, though, that you can pre-order snacks from Cave Things, but the only option is regular pretzels in a 1-ounce snack-size bag that is autographed by Nick Cave and costs £300 plus shipping, and you must pre-order it today, otherwise they won’t guarantee that it will reach you by Oct 9th…
(I am so very much kidding about all of that!!!! So don’t go looking for it.)
All righty!!!!
I did get an email from Valerie during the night, and it sounds like it is just even more difficult for her right now than I could imagine. The wake for her mom is tomorrow. Plus, she has selflessly chosen to adopt her mom’s wild little dog, even though Valerie already has a pitbull and about 6 house cats, and about a dozen feral cats that live out back in her yard in Brooklyn. So the menagerie has grown…
Okay, on that note, I’m gonna leave you now. And do yoga and then trim a hydrangea… I’m leaving you with “Sheila” again, by Tommy Roe, since that’s pretty much the only song going through my head these days (Valerie’s “real” name is Sheila, and that was her mom’s name, too, and Valerie and I have been connected now for a very, very, very long time and I have always loved that fucking song.)
All right. Thanks for visiting. Have a good Tuesday, okay? I love you guys. See ya.
[UPDATE: Here’s that photo I went looking for yesterday. Valerie’s mom is on the left, and Valerie is on the right, and two aunts are in the middle — all are on their their way from NYC to Ireland for a vacation.]
Sorry I was not able to get back here to post more yesterday, but I was hard at work on 1954 Powder Blue Pickup for another 12 hours.
However, it is DONE, gang! And I just love it. I really do.
It’s 62 pages, about 35,000 words. I will go over the whole thing a final time today and then send it off to the new publisher tomorrow. And then we shall see.
For me, personally, it’s my most favorite thing that I’ve ever written. And I have written a whole heck of a lot of stuff, gang. But I just love this one.
And as is par for my usual course, it’s a love story with an implied “happily ever after” ending — but before we get to that happy ending, it’s indescribably filthy as hell!! And it’s totally hardcore and pushes every boundary of “questionable consent” imaginable. (As all good love stories should, in my happy opinion! Yay.) Okay.
So, golly, I am exhausted here. But I’m just really, really happy.
I’m going to dash into town to get the groceries here in a minute, and then spend the whole day doing the final edit on the book, because tomorrow, I absolutely must prune back the hydrangea so that the dead blossoms, etc., can be picked up for yard compost when the truck comes by on Wednesday.
All of my neighbors now have their autumn mums on their porches, and their various pumpkins and decorative fall squashes and even Halloween lights!
And yet I still have all my summer petunias out, and all my happy little summer bird ornaments, and yard angels and summer “Welcome” signs and mosquito-repelling candles, etc., so I have to sort of kind of get with the program somehow — although I’m keeping my petunias until the frost comes and kills them.
Still, I’m going to gather all the various flower boxes onto the kitchen porch, so that at least the rest of the house & barn look like they’re appropriate for fall.
And then I guess we’ll get ever onward to the close of another year.
Well, I have not been able to actually speak to Valerie yet about her mom’s death. It will probably be several days before she’ll be taking any phone calls. It has just been a really, really rough year for her. Big changes now for her, too. She is the last one left in her family now. Her younger brother died a very long time ago (he used to be my computer guy, back in the Dark Ages), then her dad died a few years back, and now her mom.
I tried to find a photo I have of her and her mom and one of her aunt’s heading off on a trip to Ireland many years ago, but I can’t find it. But they are all super-NYC Irish-Catholic blue-eyed blondes, and they all looked exactly alike. It was sort of uncanny.
Anyway, I feel very sad about that.
Okay, well, while hunting for that photo of Val and her mom, I saw that Nick Cave sent out a new Red Hand File just now. It appears to have something to do with magic, but I have not read it yet. Perhaps we can all follow this link and go over there and read it together!! Yay!!
Other than that, folks, well, I honestly have nothing going on over here. I have just been in another world, trying to get that novella written. And it looks like I am gonna close this now, scoot into town, and then get right back to work on it so that I can officially say it is done!
I leave you with, like, the very first thing I saw on Instagram, the moment my eyes opened today. So I played it at breakfast. Rather intense breakfast-listening music; I’m not sure what the cats thought of it. (They do tend to prefer Broadway show tunes, frankly.) But it was Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ version of an old Leadbelly song “Black Betty.” As far as I know, it’s only on their B Sides & Rarities album (2005), but was recorded (as a B-side) in 1986.
So I leave you with that, oh, and I guess, in honor of my cats, I’ll also leave you with my hands-down favorite Broadway show tune of all time — “Letters” from the ill-fated Broadway fucking amazing show, “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.” It was based on a lesser-known Tolstoy novel (just kidding — it was based on War & Peace), and I had tickets to see it in September 2017, when I went to NYC to work with Sandra on our other play. And I was so FUCKING excited to see it but the darn thing CLOSED before I could get there. (It was really, really unfortunate why that show closed, but I won’t go into it here.)
Okay, enjoy and thanks for visiting, gang. Have a terrific Monday, wherever you are in the world! I love you guys. See ya.
Jesus Christ, you know?? No less than 3 cats threw up before 6am this morning.
Lucy coughed up a hairball at the top of the stairs.
Some mystery cat was a piggy and ate too much dry cat food and then threw it back up, only partially digested, in my bedroom (hence my reluctance to ever go barefoot in this house, especially in the dark).
Then in the middle of my own breakfast, Huckleberry threw up her canned cat food on the kitchen floor because she wolfed it down like a crazy person who was never going to see canned cat food again, so it came right back up. (She does that a lot, even though she’s gotten canned cat food for breakfast, every single morning of her life, for over 8 years now…)
And so the day begins! Yay.
Yesterday was a perfect day, gang. I spent many hours going over the gangbang segment and, overall, I thought it worked really well, I just wanted to tweak it. The dialogue, mainly. But now that section’s complete and I’m happy with it, and now that means I only have one section left and 1954 Powder Blue Pickup will be done!! I’m so excited.
I only wish that Michael Hemmingson were still alive. This is the kind of novella he would have really appreciated and probably would have published. (Meaning that it’s 99.9% anal sex.)
Michael Hemmingson, gone but never forgotten, not even for a minute
However, in regards to publishing it, I won’t go into all the details yet, but yesterday, I accepted a multi-year, exclusive publishing deal for all of my new taboo erotica, so I’m guessing that 1954 Powder Blue Pickup will likely be for sale, in print and digital, by late fall.
I’m super excited, gang. But I’ll go into more detail when I know absolutely for certain.
And I also think that The Muse Revisited Volume 4 is going to be slightly re-envisioned in its overall premise.
Okay. Another head’s up regarding the staged reading for my play, Tell My Bones. (Sunday evening, EST, November 22nd) There will be a link soon for you to make reservations to stream it. It will be free to stream — and it will also be available to stream from several websites (tellmybones.com, our Facebook page, through blueprint productions. com, and I believe through Harlem One Stop, and probably even here on Marilyn’s Room) but primarily it will be an evenbrite thing on YouTube, and streaming everywhere through there. It will run about 45 minutes.
And I’m really hoping you guys will make your reservations and then stream it — because, not only do I hope you will like the play, but also, I need those viewing numbers. I really do. The amount of views it gets matters to potential producers. And this is the first step toward getting it actually produced on stage in NYC (once the virus is over).
So — hugely thanking you in advance!! I will keep you posted.
So, last evening, I started streaming the new documentary on Brian Jones, Rolling Stone: The Life & Death of Brian Jones. I’m more than halfway through it, and will finish watching it tonight. It is really good, but nowhere near as uplifting as that documentary on Bill Wyman is (The Quiet One). I really did love that Bill Wyman documentary.
However, Bill Wyman and Brian Jones were two incredibly different types of people. (Brian Jones, in case you aren’t aware of who he is, was the original founding member of the Rolling Stones back in 1962 and died in 1969, shortly after being ousted from the group due to severe drug use and psychological problems.)
I was already very aware that Brian Jones had a reputation for not having been very nice. He allegedly had a sadistic streak, and could also get physically abusive toward women (at least to Anita Pallenberg), and he also had 5 illegitimate babies by 1965 (when he was only 25 years old), and it didn’t seem like he was doing much about taking care of any of them, accept at least acknowledging that they were his.
So, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the documentary was sort of depressing — it does basically say that all those rumors about him were true. However, it goes much deeper into his personality and his emotional issues, stemming from childhood, and the serious psychological problems that developed from that. (Compounded by unbelievable quantities of alcohol and drug use that he was infamous for.)
It also looks more closely at the personality dynamics within the Stones, and why Mick & Keith came to the forefront, even though it was Brian’s band, etc. Really sad stuff, that you can easily see why it got so emotionally complicated for Brian and why he felt so defeated by it. (He was dead by age 27.)
It’s not a film that seems to have been supported, endorsed, or acknowledged in any official way at all by the Rolling Stones themselves, so I’m guessing they want their distance from it, but so far, it is a really good documentary. Eye-opening, and balanced, but really sad.
All righty. Well. On that note!!
I’ll get the morning underway here and inch ever closer to completing 1954 Powder Blue Pickup!! And when it’s done, I’ll see if Michael Hemmingson (in spirit) wants to come hang out at my kitchen table for a bit and celebrate!! Yay. (I’m guessing he will.)
Marilyn & Michael in the old days…
Okay. Thanks for visiting. Enjoy your Saturday, wherever you are in the world!! Oh! And before I forget — that pornographic wallpaper over at Cave Things is now available for sale!! (It’s rather on the pink side — I saw a photo of it on a wall on Instagram yesterday — so here’s hoping you have a room that will look pretty in pink!)
All righty. I leave you with some early Stones, heavily influenced by all the many instruments Brian Jones was so good at playing: “Paint It Black,” their huge hit from Aftermath (1966). Enjoy. And I love you guys. See ya!
“Paint It Black”
I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors anymore, I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by, dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes
I see a line of cars and they’re all painted black
With flowers and my love both never to come back
I see people turn their heads and quickly look away
Like a newborn baby, it just happens everyday
I look inside myself and see my heart is black
I see my red door and must have it painted black
Maybe then I’ll fade away and not have to face the facts
It’s not easy facing up when your whole world is black
No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue
I could not foresee this thing happening to you
If I look hard enough into the setting sun
My love will laugh with me before the morning comes
I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors anymore, I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by, dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes
Hmm, hmm, hmm…
I wanna see it painted, painted black
Black as night, black as coal
I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky
I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black
Marilyn's Room 