Tag Archives: Nick Cave

Here Comes A Really Beautiful Day!!

August 7, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Happy Friday, everybody.

If you are still sort of in lockdown mode (as am I), it probably feels like Saturday or Tuesday or maybe even Wednesday…

When I woke up this morning, it did not feel like Friday. It felt like Tuesday, and I felt a little crestfallen that it was already Friday. Where is August racing off to??

And I went down to the kitchen. It was still dark out, because it’s that time of the summer where things have definitely changed. It stays dark out just a little longer now. And the birds don’t start singing until about 6am — and there are maybe 3 of them, now, instead of 3000. So it’s just crickets now, during my entire breakfast.

But I stood at the kitchen sink, where I have a really great window. It’s really wide and tall. A great view. And I stared out at the dark yard and up at the sky, and I thought of that August 2 years ago, when the man was still alive and we were in the absolute thick of falling in love — which included some arguing, too, because I didn’t know how to be loved and so my constant insecurity kind of made him very frustrated.

Anyway, in my head this morning, I was talking to him and I said: Remember that August? When time stood still? And we didn’t even realize the summer was racing away?

And then after the cats were fed, and I was fed, and the many little dishes were washed, and I sat down again at the kitchen table to write in my Inner Being journals — he came through. Just like that. His words were in my head and they came out onto the page. He said hello, and that he loved me and that he did remember that August, and that he hadn’t wanted it to ever be over, but that we have evolved now (meaning both of us) and that nothing ever really ends. That’s what he “said” !

So, that made me super happy, gang. That man changed my life. My whole entire life. (If you’re new to the blog, he came into my life suddenly in July 2018, and died a handful of weeks later, in late September of 2018.) (He changed my life because he loved me, and he was actually the first person ever that I felt really loved me. Except for my grandma, but she loved me in a different way. She loved me in a “grandma” way, and this man loved me in every other way.)

And once I finally believed that he loved me (after a few really intense shouting matches, that’s for sure) my whole life changed.

Well, anyway. This is a magical house. And my kitchen is a magical place. Oh — my Amazon firestick 4 arrived yesterday, and the AC power cord to actually finally plug the TV into the wall (!!), and the only place I could find to put it for now is in my kitchen.

It seems crazy to have it in the kitchen, but there it sits, all plugged in. And I moved the hardwired speakers for the iPad up to my bedroom, where I keep my iPad at night. So now I have my iPad with great speakers — instead of the Bluetooth speaker that only lasts one hour — crowded onto my night table.

It just feels weird. But here is a photo I took last evening to send to Valerie (she’s the ~~culprit~~ friend who persuaded me to buy the firestick 4 because it was on sale). I’m watching Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries here:

(oh — and I can get the PBS Passport app on the firestick so I’ll be watching Endeavor on the TV this year instead of on the iPad!! It starts Sunday!!)

This morning, while I was lying in bed (feeling like it was Tuesday), I started thinking about Endeavor and how this would now be Season 7. And I recalled so well when that show first started. It was 3 houses ago. I had something like 3 TVs back then — including a much larger flat screen TV in the bedroom. And I had cable service, and premium channels, like HBO, Starz, Showtime, Cinemax, etc. (And on my iPad, I had Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime.)

And down in the family room, I had a really big digital TV that was hooked up with the DVD player, and it had the DVR box, and all that.

And a free-standing bar was in the family room, complete with top shelf liquor and all my bar ware. And wall-to-wall, built-in bookshelves. And art on the walls, and framed photos of friends and family set out on the end tables, etc.

Just like how most regular people live.

And then everything really changed. Not in a good way, but I won’t go back into that. And I got fed up with drinking and with watching television. And little by little, I got rid of everything but the iPad, the DVD player, and Amazon Prime.

So having a TV in my kitchen now does not really sit well with me, but it’s okay. And it has a really good picture.

On a totally different topic. here is the Cave Things item (see yesterday’s post re: Nick Cave’s new merchandise page) I want most (a silk screen thingie), but I can’t afford it so I’ve started a Kickstarter campaign so that you guys can help me buy it!! (I am totally kidding about that.)

I have to say,

Abstract Absurdity Productions is getting every spare dime out of me right now. Which reminds me, I took that webinar yesterday on equity financing versus debt financing for film funding, etc., and my brain did indeed explode by the end of the class. It was presented by 3 entertainment lawyers in LA, and it was an intense amount of information in just under 2 hours. Most of the basic liability information I had already gotten from my accountant, but there was still other stuff that just — well, it’s a lot to cram into this wee bonny brain of mine.

It’s not all that different from when I was running multi-media production companies 20 years ago, but this is on a much larger scale.

Anyway. Every spare fucking penny is allocated right now.

Hey. Look at this! I found this on an external hard drive while trying to find some Word files for the new Muse Revisited Volume 4 collection. It’s the house we had in Cleveland from 1966 until July 1971 — just weeks before my 11th birthday.

My bedroom was the window at the top left, behind that tree. It was a truly wonderful house. It really was. It had a big back porch off the kitchen, that had a big wooden swing hanging from the ceiling of the porch. And up above it, running most of the length of the back of the house, was a sun porch. There were 2 fireplaces in the house. And a den that had built-in bookcases on 3 of the 4 walls and a built-in desk. And the whole house had plenty of windows. We didn’t have central AC yet, but it was a really wonderful, breezy house.

Unfortunately, this is the house where my adoptive mother really started to unravel, so I have a lot of intense & terrifying memories from this house, as well. I also had my first orgasm here (I was 7), and I got my first period in this house — and I was so angry, because I was only 10 (almost 11) when that happened. And so none of my girlfriends were anywhere close to getting their periods yet. I hated that.

I was not a big fan of menstruation, in general, gang. And wasn’t sad to see it go at age 46. Although I was devastated to know for sure that I was never going to have children, other than that, I didn’t mind menopause coming so early.

Anyway. Beyond that lovely stuff — I loved that house and I loved my bedroom and I loved my little desk and I loved my big bed and I loved my record player and all my records and I loved the late 1960s. (That’s the house we lived in that summer they walked on the moon. And that’s the house we lived in when my dad was still kind of “around” and not a millionaire yet and was still really nice and we watched “Star Trek” together on the TV in the living room and I remember that it scared me! I watch that old TV show now and find it so funny that it used to scare me. Anyway. I got my first pair of fishnet tights there, and my first mini skirts. My first maxi-skirts. I lived there when I first learned French and Hebrew and learned how to ice skate and roller skate, and when I took dancing lessons and had tap shoes and ballet slippers. And I lived there when I learned how to read music and to play violin, piano, and guitar. How to ride a bike. I lived there when I fell in love with the Beatles, and with David Cassidy, and the Monkees TV show. And I lived there of course when MLK and RFK were assassinated, and George Wallace was gunned down, and when Johnny Cash had his TV show and the Everly Brothers, and the Smothers Brothers, and the Beach Boys all had TV shows. And I lived there when “Hair” was a huge scandalous hit on Broadway. And I lived there when “Laugh-In” was a huge scandalous hit on TV. And I lived there when the Beatles broke up. And when our dog got epilepsy and had to be put to sleep and I was heartbroken. And I lived there when “In the Heat of the Night” was a huge hit movie and we saw it at my dad’s drive-in theater and there was a naked woman in the movie and my little jaw fell open!! And I lived there when I started to fall in love with girls, and my little friends told me that it was a really weird thing to do. And when I lived there, every night after dinner, on the news Walter Cronkite would tell us how many US soldiers had been killed in Vietnam that day. It was quite a house. When my parents bought it, it cost something like $35K. The last time it sold, a few years ago, it went for something like $550K. Inflation is really just insane. Anyway. There was a lot to love about my childhood.)

All righty. I’m gonna get going here. It is Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town day so I am very excited to see what new stuff hits the page for the new novel.

Thanks for visiting. Enjoy what’s left of your Friday, wherever you are in the world. I leave you with another song from Lou Bega’s A Little Bit of Mambo album (1999). This time, it’s “Can I Tico Tico You” (“Tico” is a general term of endearment used by people who live in Costa Rica.) Enjoy, gang. I love you guys. See ya!

“Can I Tico Tico You”

Baby you’re my freak once in a week
we gettin’ kind of deep in my ’86 jeep
I don’t play no tricks you know the bomb ticks
the only style I play is my self-made hits
and it kicks like that yo’ it really does
was it number one hell yo’ it really was
I got the swing the king is back in the ring
ladies throw their bras when I start to sing

[Chorus:]
Can I rock it can I knock it
can I lick it can I kick it can I top it
you make me hazy you make me crazy
and baby I don’t know what I can do

We can start somethin’ fantastic that you never knew
forget you live in plastic when I keep my eyes on you
I can’t cool down because it’s gettin’ too hot
so please baby please baby never let us stop
and it kicks like that yo’ it really does
was it number one hell yo’ it really was
I got the swing the king is back in the ring
ladies throw their bras when I start to sing

[Chorus]

Another Productive Day in the Hinterlands!

August 6, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Yesterday was, I mean.

But first!! The Tom Petty website released another song yesterday that will be in the upcoming Wildflowers PT. 2 boxed set. It is called “There Goes Angela” and it was just lovely, gang! An acoustic home demo. I really loved it. I cannot find a link anymore to how you can listen to it (they had it posted yesterday). But it was one of those true Tom Petty awesome acoustic songs where he empowers the woman alone in the world, as he usually did in his songs.

Also, Nick Cave’s website revealed Cave Things today!! A place where you can buy sort of extremely expensive things that Nick Cave has designed or curated in some way. The items are really cool. Some of them are “coming soon,” but the descriptions are already there. Everything is pretty much on the pricey side. For instance, a really nice guitar pick with Warren Ellis’s picture on it, which in US dollars cost about $4, before shipping. So that’s sort of a pricey guitar pick that, you know, if I bought it I would be afraid to use, because I wouldn’t want to damage it, or anything.

Still, the stuff is really cool, but being the somewhat lowly scribe that I am, I cannot afford any of the items I actually really want. But check them out anyway, because if you are not a writer, then you can probably afford everything!!

So. Yesterday.

I spent the entire day working on the re-edits of The Muse Revisited collection and came to the decision that the “new” revised edition will only be one book, and only available in trade paper, POD (Print On Demand).

My decision came about because of the page count.

It turns out Volume 1 has a really small page count, so it doesn’t really make sense to offer it separately in trade paper, even though the page count works fine for an eBook.

Then Volume 2 has a really high page count. And volume 3 has a kind of average page count.

But if I put it all together in one book — all 3 volumes, together — it becomes way too expensive for Print On Demand. So then I thought, what if I pull some of the stories, to ease up on the page count, put it out as one new collection…

…but then I couldn’t offer it as an eBook because it would potentially cannibalize any sales of the tons of eBooks I already have in the marketplace, published by myself and other more traditional publishers who wouldn’t appreciate that at all.

So then I finally came up with the idea to put it out under one cover, but only as POD trade paper.

So I pulled the erotic memoir, the erotic fantasy stories, and the erotic romance stories from the (new) 4th volume. It’s only traditional erotic fiction. But then I’m adding some stories that were not included in volumes 1-3. And now the collection covers 1994-2012, and as of right now, has 25 previously published erotic fiction stories in it.

Plus! I finally found a copy of that publishing history that SomethingDark.eu had published in 2012, and so that will be included in the back of the book, and it lists my publications, honors and awards from 1990 to 2012, and also includes a list of all the reviews I wrote of erotic fiction and nonfiction books for various magazines and websites back in the early 2000’s. But it doesn’t include the erotic art shows I curated in NYC, or any of the multi-media work I produced, which was just a hugely massive amount of work (1997-2006).

But I thought it would make for an interesting book. Again, everything in it is previously published and will really only be for people who prefer books over eBooks.

The title is: The Muse Revisited, Volume 4: The Selected Erotic Fiction of Marilyn Jaye Lewis, 1994-2012. And the cover art is going to be black & white and feature this photo below in some way, that Valerie took of me at Coney Island in 1995, just prior to my 35th birthday.

I don’t know — you can sort of tell by the expression on my face that we probably weren’t up to any good. Holly Lane was there that day, too, because the Mermaid Parade was going on that day. And if you were ever at a Mermaid Parade at Coney Island in the old days — nothing respectable at all was ever going on. And it was a blast.

Okay, so I started a new publishing company, Marilyn’s Room Books, and it will be at marilynsroombooks.com — although nothing is there yet. I don’t know if I’ll just keep it as a vanity press or publish other writers down the road, but here’s the logo, in case you’re interested:

And here, for your reading pleasure, is one story from Volume 4, that does not appear in the other volumes. It is not what I would call “erotic,” necessarily — it’s more about erotic cannibalism. It is microfiction (less than 300 words), and it appeared in Dirty: Dirty: An Illustrated Anthology of Dirty Writing published by Jaded Ibis Press, 2013, and was written expressly for them.

(And with that, I’m gonna leave you, gang!! I gotta get ready for Abstract Absurdity Productions work here today! Thanks for visiting, though. I love you guys. See ya!)

**************************************************

“We Warned Her”
© 2012 Marilyn Jaye Lewis

It was autumn, so we slung her over the split-rails to dry in the crisper breezes, knowing the smoky air would trap the piquant flavor of her and keep it that way all through the winter. Sweet meat where there were once tight curls of flaming red hairs; those lips hairless now, smooth and cool. The throbbing, over. The tender folds salted and the blood drained. In spring, she was succulent to the eye – engorged, even, to the point where she’d driven us mad. We’d warned her: “From here, we can see your thigh!” She’d laughed at us – her mirth like tinkling bells strung through plum blossoms that are caught on the gentle wind of an April rain. We could hardly fault her for it – that blithe laugh. She’d seemed as intoxicated by spring as the dewy hyacinth blossoms, or as the swollen buds of the old roses that had not yet burst with their sultry fragrance of sin. She’d refused to believe us, yet here was her proof: gone now, from the waist up. Splitter-splatter went the shards of bone in blood. “Straighten your skirts,” we’d urged her. “Don’t sit that way – we’re going balmy!” Lewdly was how she sat, legs splayed down in the grass, those flowery dresses with their many underskirts of lace raised too high. Until it was plain that she’d worn nothing under those lacy skirts; that the fleshy folds beneath the tight red curls were swollen and wet with something salty-sweet. In the summer, she was even worse. (“I want to devour you,” I’d whispered once, my fingers plunging up into her while I lost control of my very breath. I licked them then – my fingers – and madly kissed the side of her damp face.)

And What A Fine Saturday It Is!

July 25, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis 1 Comment

So far, I’m sticking to my new schedule and it has been really effective. I got the new flash-memoir piece written and sent off for possible inclusion in a new anthology. We’ll see. It’s a new market for me — well, it’s a new LGBTQ+ small press.

And now I am at last getting ready to get back to work on Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town!! And I am really excited about that.

Sometime in the near future (?) I am going to be a guest on two different podcasts. I think primarily to promote my new novel The Guitar Hero Goes Home. But it could end up being that I just promote my delightful self, in general, and chatter away about many sex-positive things. I will keep you posted.

It is such a beautiful day here today. And overall I just feel so much calmer. Having that new weekly schedule has organized my life, overnight. I wake up, I look at the calendar on my wall, it tells me what I’m scheduled to work on today, and my life instantly falls into line. I don’t have to look at my desk, from one pile to another, and feel guilty before the day even starts because I’m not getting enough done.

Well, onto other topics.

I finally gave up on Quibi. I didn’t want to. I loved the whole idea of it and I loved the series, “Agua Donkeys” but that series is long over and I don’t like anything else they’re offering. And, after chatting with Valerie in Brooklyn the other day, and she reminded me that there is a new season of “Agatha Raisin” on Acorn TV — and I love “Agatha Raisin” and I love Acorn TV — I decided it would be a better way to spend my money, so I cancelled Quibi and I re-signed-up for Acorn TV and then watched the first episode of Season 3 of “Agatha Raisin” last evening and was just delighted from start to finish.

I used to subscribe to Acorn TV, and to Hulu, and to Netflix, and also to CBS Special Access, but then I cancelled everything except PBS Passport and Amazon Prime. It was just way too much TV. I also cancelled regular cable TV because of that — just too much. And its just me all by myself here. So it was just ridiculous.

I hate spending too much time in front of the TV (or streaming stuff on my iPad). It makes me feel like my whole life is drifting away from me. And even though there are TONS of shows on Acorn TV that I just love, I am going to try to not get all-out addicted to it. Of course, now that I have my trusty treadmill, I can sort of buffer the guilt-effect by doing the treadmill while streaming too much TV…

However, I did just pre-order the new Amazon firestick 4k. I did this because I really, really wanted to watch that Nick Cave solo concert on my smart TV the other night — the TV I inherited when my stepmom died that has sat on the floor in the dining room, gathering dust for 6 months.

However, when I went to hook it up, I remembered that I didn’t have the AC cable to plug the darn thing into the wall! And that’s why it’s sitting there gathering dust! That pesky electricity current that TV sets seem to really thrive on.

Anyway, I was chatting on the phone with Valerie when I suddenly remembered I needed to order the AC cable and at that point she urged me to get the 4k firestick because it was on sale… And since, if my friends told me to jump off a bridge, I would of course do it, I went ahead and ordered the firestick 4k along with the new AC cable.

[In America, when you tell your parents you want to do something because your friends are doing it, they say, “If your friends wanted you to jump off a bridge with them, would you do that, too?”] [It is best to reply “no,” but it is almost impossible to not reply instead, “What does that have to do with anything?!”]

Little by little, TV is inching its way back into my life. I can only assuage my conscience by reminding myself of that trusty treadmill…

And it’s not that I am that much of a workaholic that I can’t have something wonderful like Acorn TV again. I don’t mind not working, especially at night. But what I do mind is how easy it is for something like “Agatha Raisin” to lead to a nice bottle of St. Emilion and some Camembert, and then the next thing I will know is that I will have gained 20 pounds or something. Putting on weight is indeed something I have a real aversion to.

Okay. Well. Not that it’s even possible to find any bottle of St. Emilion, let alone a nice one, out here in the Hinterlands. Still, it’s the whole idea.

Anyway. Enough of my insanity. All craziness aside, I do love Acorn TV and I was sad to give up on Quibi because I loved the premise so much, but I simply wasn’t watching it anymore. None of the shows appealed to me. And almost every show on Acorn TV appeals to me.

Okay, gang. Let me get back to Thug Luckless here. I hope you are having a great Saturday, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I leave you with the official trailer for Season 3 of “Agatha Raisin”. Enjoy. I love you guys. See ya!

Can You Believe It’s That Time Already??

July 13, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

It is only July 13th and already a great big bunch of the birds around Muskingum County have begun migrating farther south.

I noticed two things over the weekend: One, that the cicadas have begun their noisy serenade in the evenings now. And, two: the birds no longer begin singing at 4:12am; they now begin at 5am, and there are lots fewer of them.

Then yesterday afternoon, I glanced out the window and noticed a huge flock of birds — they were flying too high and too fast for me to see what type of bird they were. Anyway — they were already flying south.

I just can’t believe how quickly my favorite time of year goes fleeting past — that time of year when hundreds of birds are singing like mad even before dawn, and my flowers are blooming, and the hot weather has truly arrived, along with the fireflies, and all 21 of my windows are wide open and stay open — all day, all night.

There’s maybe one month when all of that is happening right at the same time, and then the birds are the first to start moving along. By the end of August (just a few weeks away, really), it’s mostly the songs of crickets and cicadas that fill the air, and hardly any birds anymore.

The birds begin arriving in early April, so they’ve been here 3 months already, but still — it’s that moment when everything comes together at the same time. My favorite time. And that just flies by so quickly.

Well, I don’t want to get you depressed or anything. It’s just a melancholy sort of feeling for me. I wait all year for something that amounts to maybe one month and then it moves on.

However, the morning glories outside of my backdoor are just now starting to bloom — meaning, maybe 5 or 6 blossoms are out, but soon there will be dozens and dozens of them every morning. And my gorgeous hydrangea, off of my kitchen porch, is getting ready to burst into bloom now, too, so that will be wonderful and will last into late September.

Okay. Well, yesterday I did indeed finally finish the final edits on The Guitar Hero Goes Home. This is the third or fourth “final” edit but I honestly believe this is THE final edit, and I’m awaiting word from Valerie about when she will be able to focus on finishing up the cover design and then it will finally be published.

I’m trying to figure out what I want the name of my publishing company to be this time. (My last one was the EAA Signature Series, and it was hugely unpopular with the Federal Government, specifically, the US Attorney General, John Ashcroft. I’m aiming for a publishing company that will be less inflammatory this time around. The older I get, the less time I feel I have for going to prison.)

I’m not sure if I will publish other writers this time, or not. I am just going to wait and see what the future brings. Between the seemingly unending COVID 19 pandemic and the pandemic of the excruciatingly politically correct Socialist/Anarchist United States of Hitler Youth, I might want to just tend to my own little garden of words and leave it at that.

But we’ll see. If sanity somehow ends up reigning, I might be willing to leave my own backyard.

Today is my day to tootle off to the next town to do the grocery shopping. So I’m gonna get moving here.

Don’t forget, gang, that next week, on Thursday July 23rd, Nick Cave has that solo concert streaming on DICE: Idiot Prayer: Nick Cave Alone at Alexandra Palace. All details re: time zones and purchasing of tickets can be found on his web site here.

Okay! I hope you have a great Monday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting! I’m leaving you with this promotional video just released today for Nick Cave’s upcoming concert. (I have no clue why he chose to perform in such a hideously ugly venue — JUST KIDDING. It’s gorgeous!!) All righty!! Enjoy!! I love you guys. See ya.

Just Checking Back In Quickly

July 10, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Okay, gang, I just wanted to touch base here again this evening to let you know two things.

One is that those fan-made videos on Bad Seed TeeVee are unbelievably great, gang. They’re still streaming for several more hours, so get over there and watch some of them. You will be amazed by how talented these people are. And if you are a hardcore Nick Cave fan and are familiar with all of his records and videos, the creativity of some of these fan-videos will astound you.

I have been trying to log on & off of YouTube all day but I really want to get the editing done on The Guitar Hero Goes Home (100 more pages to go), so I can’t just hang out and endlessly watch the videos, unfortunately.

I can’t even pick an absolute favorite because I have just loved so many of them. But off the top of my head, I have to say I loved the puppet-reenactment of “The Weeping Song”, and the guy in the bathtub singing “No Pussy Blues”, the two women from the Netherlands singing “Henry Lee,” and then an animated version of “Get Ready for Love.”

Plus a whole bunch more. Anyway — go check it out! They’re so entertaining.

The other thing I wanted to say is that this week’s issue of PleaseKillMe.com (an online zine mainly about the history and culture of Punk music, but also art, poetry, fashion and music, in general, from the 1960s onward). Today’s issue has a never-before released 1983 interview with one of my heroes, the late Jim Carroll. He is backstage in Boston at the Paradise Theater, before a gig. (Jim Carroll was not only a poet and writer, but for many years, he also had a rock band that bordered on Punk). This was likely his biggest radio hit. Off of his album Catholic Boy, the song “People Who Died”:

It’s a great interview, although sometimes the sound is difficult because bands start playing in some other area of the club. But, overall, it was great. He talks mainly about his now- legendary book, his actual teenage diaries about growing up in NYC with a heroin habit while being a high school basketball star at the same time — The Basketball Diaries.

Jim Carroll, 1949-2009 | Cardboard Gods

In the video interview, he talks a lot about heroin vs. a methadone habit and has some interesting insights to what that was like in NYC back in the late 60s, early 70s. Then he also talks a bit about how he got started in the music business (thanks to Patti Smith and also the Rolling Stones — Keith Richards, in particular).

The interview took place just months before he became my teacher (!!) — I studied songwriting in a class he taught on NYC’s Upper West Side at the West Side Y. (I was already a big fan of his, so to have him as my teacher twice a week in just a regular classroom environment, not some big lecture hall or anything — it blew me the fuck away!)

If you’d like to read the article at PleaseKillMe.com, which goes along with the video, it is here.

Below, is just the video interview by itself.

And now I gotta scoot!!! Have a wonderful evening, gang, wherever you are in the world!! I love you guys!! See ya.

Have You Noticed that She Goes from the Sublime to the Ridiculous?

July 8, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Yes — if you must know — I bought more dishes yesterday. A set of four stoneware appetizer plates that look like this:

I know. Don’t look at me like that. I am fully aware that I never, ever, ever entertain anymore, and that I already have something like 25 appetizer plates, most of them porcelain, Limoges. Some that look exactly like this:

And others that have charming depictions of Provence on them. Still others that have just various French farm logos and windmills and cows and ~~cocks~~ roosters and stuff. And, yes, I have some covered in flowers, but none that look exactly like the ones covered in flowers that I bought yesterday! So you can readily see why I needed them.

I’ve already stated plainly — right here on this blog — that it is an addiction, this problem I have with buying dishes. And an addiction is sort of like a disease. So, you know, some compassion would probably be cool right now…

But, honestly, they were reduced for clearance. And I loved them. And I had to have them. And so I bought them. And, no, I can’t imagine a moment in time when I will ever use them at this point, because I live in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of cats, and perhaps, soon, a bunch of AI sex robots that look like Henry (probably around 30 of them) (and, actually, in that case, I will have almost enough appetizer plates!):

Henry es el robot sexual que cambia de pene y dice lo que quieres oír — See some previous post about the insane budget proposal for shooting “Lita’s Got To Go!” and how, for the same amount of money, I could purchase 30 top-of-the-line Henry’s from Realbotix.

Anyway.

Yesterday, I also bought — yes — a treadmill.

(This is where the title of today’s post likely comes from!!)

I am just so tired of it. While I had the virus, I gained 10 pounds. Once the virus was gone, and I could get out of bed for more then 2 minutes a day, I lost 8 of those 10 pounds immediately. However, even though I always eat exactly the very same organic vegetarian non-GMO boring things every single darn day — I put all the weight back on!!

So I started to do the aerobics, which helps, but its nowhere near as effective as seriously moving around every day, which I haven’t really done since the quarantine started here in mid-March. And even though the glucosamine supplements seem to have fixed the problem with my hip joint, I’m still really squeamish about walking too far from home and then maybe having the hip problem start again and have to walk all the way back in all that awful pain.

I love treadmills. And, in fact, in the days when I was always at the country club (I know!! I’m absolutely white!! But, hey, that’s where I met Gus Van Sant Sr and my whole life changed!!). Anyway, I was always on the treadmill at the club. I just love those things. So yesterday, I decided to get one of those really inexpensive ones, that, unlike Henry, has no bells or whistles, and folds up for storage. This way, if I do have any pain in my hip joint, I can just get off the treadmill, sit down at the kitchen table and stream something really delightful on the iPad!!

Which is sort of a way of saying that I am still loving that Belgian crime procedural, Professor T. Jesus, what a fun show. I am almost done with the available episodes. There was still one more season that was made (Season 3), which I’m guessing PBS will add to the stream next summer. (Currently you can stream Seasons 1 &2)

And that reminds me that the new season of Endeavor begins in August!! I had read it wouldn’t air until June of 2021, but this was erroneous information. It will actually air next month and I can’t wait. It is truly one of my very favorite shows.

But, regarding the treadmill — we’ll see how it goes. I was a little leery of buying any more workout equipment because it’s always so hard to get rid of it when you don’t want it anymore. (In the past, I’ve had a rowing machine and a stationary bike.) But I am so fed up with this COVID 19-related metabolism thing. It clearly looks as if it will be 2021 before I will really be able to go anywhere and do anything. And I had to do something. I absolutely cannot stand to put on weight. It makes me insane.

(Which reminds me, the director of Tell My Bones and I are considering putting together some sort of staged reading of the play, but in very short, edited segments and using local professional talent — of which there is actually quite a lot out here; there’s a lot of professional theater in the next town over, where the director has his summer mansion-on-the-hill, and certainly a ton in Columbus. However, we have to wait for the lockdown to be truly over in order to even think about that.)

Then the other thing I did yesterday, was: I deleted TikTok from my phone. I had been hearing that India banned TikTok and, honestly, I had no idea why and I kept meaning to investigate that, but for some reason I thought it was related to the many many many scantily clad young men doing all those amazingly provocative dances.

It turns out, it was more sinister than that. When I saw that Australia was getting ready to ban TikTok, as well, I saw a new piece on the BBC about it and was kind of stunned. China is just really off the charts. (China freely monitors you and tracks your data through the TikTok app.) So, just to make it a non-issue, I deleted the app.

It was a fun app, but honestly, I spend way more than enough time scrolling through Instagram!!! It’s kind of gotten ridiculous during this pandemic — the amount of time I spend on Instagram.

What’s ironic, though, is that scrolling through all those little TikTok videos really helped me pass the time while I recovered from the fucking virus — also a gift from China…. (And I am still so enraged about them forcing those Uyhgur women to have their heads shaved and then trying to sell us their hair!! If anyone ever shaved the hair off of my head, even if I weren’t forced into an internment camp while they were doing it, I would feel so demoralized. )

Oh, crap. Anyway.

Well, I did do some editing on The Guitar Hero Goes Home yesterday, but as I leaped back in to editing Chapter 7, it became apparent that too many weeks had gone by since I had begun the final edit on the novel and that it’s probably a good idea just to go back to page 1 and do a final final edit. I had sort of lost the momentum of the voice – if that makes sense. And since the entire novel is just one man talking, staying on track with that voice is key. So I’m going back to page 1 today.

Sample of the cover art but this is not finished

And while sorting through the mound of papers on the floor next to my desk (underneath the always-growing mound of photos of Nick Cave that I print off of the computer and put on the floor next to my desk), as I was searching through that for the newest edits of The Guitar Hero Goes Home, what to my wondering eyes should appear but — yes — the new pages of Thug Luckless: Welcome to P-Town!! I had totally forgotten, for a moment, anyway, that I was one-third of the way in to writing a completely new novel.

So. On we go — right, gang??

And on that note, I guess I better scoot!! I hope you are having a great Wednesday, wherever you are in the world!! I leave you with another old song from my wee bonny teenage girlhood.

I recently began following Stephen Bishop on Instagram, and was, of course, reminded of this amazingly lovely sad poignant song of his from when I was 16. (Talk about a perfect song for a melancholy 16-year-old girlhood!!) If you’re too young to know this song, it is really lovely — all about heartache (with which I have yet again been struggling here). So listen and enjoy — or cry or whatever suits you!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

“On And On”

Down in Jamaica, they got lots of pretty women
Steal your money, then they break your heart
Lonesome Sue, she’s in love with old Sam
Take him from the fire into the frying pan

On and on, she just keeps on trying
And she smiles when she feels like crying
On and on, on and on, on and on

Poor old Jimmy sits alone in the moonlight
Saw his woman kiss another man
So he takes a ladder, steals the stars from the sky
Puts on Sinatra and starts to cry

On and on, he just keeps on trying
And he smiles when he feels like crying
On and on, on and on, on and on

When the first time is the last time
It can make you feel so bad
But if you know it, show it
Hold on tight, don’t let her say goodnight

Got the sun on my shoulders and my toes in the sand
Woman’s left me for some other man
Aw, but I don’t care, I’ll just dream and stay tanned
Toss up my heart and see where it lands

On and on, I just keep on trying
And I smile when I feel like dying
On and on, on and on, on and on
On and on, on and on, on and on
On and on, on and on, on and on

Life Not Only Goes On, It Gets Better!!

June 11, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis 1 Comment

Well, if you saw last evening’s post, you’ll know by now that we had intense thunderstorms around here, and even a tornado near by. But it blew out all the high heat and humidity that was keeping me from being able to breathe all day yesterday.

PLUS!! My new dust buster arrived yesterday afternoon!! I mentioned it in a previous post this week. I got one of those high-powered ones, to hopefully make it easier to deal with all the cat hair around here (and cat litter that flies everywhere, too).

And it works like a charm!! I love this fucking thing. It keeps its battery power for a long time, and it truly is high-powered. It was kind of astounding to see how much filth it was picking up from deep in the carpeting.

If you’re sort of a cleaning-freak, like I am, you can no doubt relate to how cool I found that high-powered suction thing, and it made me just want to clean and clean and clean!!

So I did!!!

And it doesn’t disturb the cats nearly as much as the vacuum cleaner does, so I hope I won’t have to bring that out as often anymore. We’ll see!

So the combination of an awesome breeze blowing throughout the house at dawn this morning, and coming downstairs to a thoroughly clean house and cool temperatures… there’s just NO WAY this isn’t going to be a great day.

Okay.

Well, the other day, I bought an online course about the theology of Martin Luther and the complicated launch of the Protestant Reformation, beginning in 1517 A.D. I’ve been listening to it a little bit every night before I go to sleep.

I studied the Reformation in Divinity School, of course. And I’ve also done a ton of studying on my own about the various sects that also sprang from that era. Plus, my ancestors were not only alive in Germany at that time, but they were living in that region of Germany that was directly affected by Martin Luther’s tumultuous change of the Church. And they were definitely practicing Protestants, there are surviving records to prove it, so I find it really interesting to think about them and what it was like to live through those times of enormous change. (It wasn’t “just” the Church that changed because of Martin Luther; it was the scope of the Western mind.)

Anyway. The course is fascinating. And no disrespect intended, but, man, Martin Luther was really kind of nuts!!

I’m (sort of) just kidding, gang. But before he settled on his theology of the Gospel, his teachings went to some seriously dark and masochistic and impossible places.

When I was 13, there was a cinematic version of the play, Luther (written by John Osborne), that I saw in the movie theater, so I was at least aware that Martin Luther was extreme. But now that I’m way, way, WAY older, and a minister and all that, I understand now just how extreme that man was. Wow.

I find that kind of stuff so interesting, gang. I really do. Even though it’s safe to say that I don’t adhere to any of those Lutheran ideas or beliefs, I’m still fascinated by the religious arc of the Western mind over the centuries. I just never get tired of learning about all of that.

So, as it so often turns out, the medicine they had prescribed my dad when he got sick last week, only ended up making him sicker. So the doctor told him to stop taking the medicine yesterday, and he’s at the doctor’s office right now, this morning. So, here’s hoping he’s going to finally be back to normal here soon.

He’s the kind of person who will only listen to a doctor, you know? We both knew the medicine itself was making him really sick, and I really wanted to tell him to stop taking it, but I knew he would just ignore me because I’m not a doctor! So I was relieved when he finally called the doctor and the doctor told him to stop taking it!

I find it so amazing, honestly, how some people treat doctors as if they’re actual gods and as if medicine, simply because it’s prescribed by a doctor, holds some special inalienable power. Meaning, that their brains are just so locked into that kind of reverent thinking, they can’t even bring themselves to question it.

I’m just so not like that and never have been. I guess because I have to question and ponder everything. (Which, of course, can get really annoying to the people around me.) But if I’m going to be forced to consider another human being to be “God,” I’d rather just give in and call Nick Cave “God,” as so many Europeans are wont to do!!

(I am, yet again, sort of just kidding…)

Another cool thing that happened — now that I currently have no main barn door on my barn, that storm last evening blew through the barn and blew open one of the side doors of the barn, and also the shuttered window on the other side of it. There’s no glass in the window — just wooden, hand-made, 110-year-old shutters!

I can see that side of the barn from my kitchen window. And this morning, when I went out there to the barn to close the shutters, I saw that there are some old eye-hook type things at either side of the shutters, so I can keep them open if I want to.

And do you know what that means??!!

Yes!! It means I can get yet another window box, plant flowers in it, put it in that barn window all summer long and see the flowers from my kitchen window!!

I’m so excited. (I’ll also be able to see Kevin’s vintage 1965 VW camper van through the open barn window all summer long, not quite as exciting, but still…)

The one draw back is that it’s a long trek from the kitchen, where I’d have to get the water every day to water the flowers. I’m not sure how excited I’ll be about doing that, every single day, all summer long. I already have to make 7 trips a day, in and out of the kitchen, to water all the flowers on both of my porches…

Anyway. We’ll see. I just felt really excited when I realized it today.

I read on Deadline Hollywood yesterday that Johnny Depp’s documentary of Shane MacGowan, Crock of Gold, has been picked up by Magnolia Pictures in North America. Which means we’ll probably get to actually see it!!

I love Shane MacGowan. And I loved The Pogues, back when he was the driving force of the band. And it’s one of those things where I am continually astounded to discover that most Americans (especially if you’re not Irish-American) have never heard of Shane MaGowan or The Pogues. In NYC, especially back in the 1980s — back then, at least, NYC was an intensely Irish town — The Pogues were really popular.

I had all of their albums and EPs, up until Shane MaGowan essentially drank his way out of the band. At this point, though, after decades of having to jettison more albums with every move I’ve had to make, I’ve only kept Rum, Sodomy, & the Lash and If I Should Fall From Grace With God. But they are two incredible albums, gang. I’m so excited to see that documentary.

Okay. I’m going to get started here now. I hope that Thursday is just as beautiful where you are today, gang!! Thanks for visiting. I’ll leave you once again with two listening options today:

The song that, when Nick Cave sang it solo on his In Conversations tour, caused people all over the world to call Nick Cave “God.” The song is, in fact, titled “God is in the House,” from the truly timeless and amazing Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds album, No More Shall We Part (2001).

And then one of my favorite Shane MacGowan songs, which couldn’t be more different than the Nick Cave song: “Sally MacLennane,” from The Pogues album, Rum, Sodomy, & the Lash (1985). Compare and contrast!! Listen and enjoy, gang!! Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!

“God Is In The House”

We’ve laid the cables and the wires
We’ve split the wood and stoked
the fires
We’ve lit our town so there is no
Place for crime to hide
Our little church is painted white
And in the safety of the night
We all go quiet as a mouse
For the word is out
God is in the house
God is in the house
God is in the house
No cause for worry now
God is in the house

Moral sneaks in the White House
Computer geeks in the school house
Drug freaks in the crack house
We don’t have that stuff here
We have a tiny little Force
But we need them of course
For the kittens in the trees
And at night we are on our knees
As quiet as a mouse
For God is in the house
God is in the house
God is in the house
And no one’s left in doubt
God is in the house

Homos roaming the streets in packs
Queer bashers with tyre-jacks
Lesbian counter-attacks
That stuff is for the big cities
Our town is very pretty
We have a pretty little square
We have a woman for a mayor
Our policy is firm but fair
Now that God is in the house
God is in the house
God is in the house
Any day now He’ll come out
God is in the house

Well-meaning little therapists
Goose-stepping twelve-stepping Tea-totalitarianists
The tipsy, the reeling and the drop down pissed
We got no time for that stuff here
Zero crime and no fear
We’ve bred all our kittens white
So you can see them in the night
And at night we’re on our knees
As quiet as a mouse
Since the word got out
From the North down to the South
For no-one’s left in doubt
There’s no fear about
If we all hold hands and very quietly shout
Hallelujah
God is in the house
God is in the house
Oh I wish He would come out
God is in the house

“Sally MacLennane”

Well Jimmy played harmonica in the pub where I was born
He played it from the night time to the peaceful early morn
He soothed the souls of psychos and the men who had the horn
And they all looked very happy in the morning

Now Jimmy didn’t like his place in this world of ours
Where the elephant man broke strong men’s necks
When he’d had too many Powers
So sad to see the grieving of the people that he’s leaving
And he took the road for God knows in the morning

We walked him to the station in the rain
We kissed him as we put him on the train
And we sang him a song of times long gone
Though we knew that we’d be seeing him again
(Far away) sad to say I must be on my way
So buy me beer and whiskey ’cause I’m going far away (far away)
I’d like to think of me returning when I can
To the greatest little boozer and to Sally MacLennane

The years passed by the times had changed I grew to be a man
I learned to love the virtues of sweet Sally MacLennane
I took the jeers and drank the beers and crawled back home at dawn
And ended up a barman in the morning

I played the pump and took the hump and watered whiskey down
I talked of whores and horses to the men who drank the brown
I heard them say that Jimmy’s making money far away
And some people left for heaven without warning

When Jimmy came back home he was surprised that they were gone
He asked me all the details of the train that they went on
Some people they are scared to croak but Jimmy drank until he choked
And he took the road for heaven in the morning

With Great Sadness

June 8, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis 2 Comments

I honestly cannot believe I’m having to post this, but it is looking like my play about the painter Helen LaFrance, Tell My Bones, is being shelved indefinitely due to my being a white writer and the play is about a black woman.

Since the Black Lives Matter protests have taken over the country, no one wants to be perceived now as racist or as politically incorrect.

I’ve worked on Helen’s life story now for 8 years — as a screenplay first, then as a play with music.

I’m devastated. I can’t really even think straight. This has been going on since last evening, so I’m really just a mess. My nerves are destroyed.

Naturally, I got no significant work done on Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. And today — in between bouts of crying, I’m just worn out. Just wanting to vomit.

A bright note — the other day, I found a first edition of the photo book Fish in a Barrel, in excellent condition at list price. These are photos the photographer Peter Milne took of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds on tour, and it came out in 1993. It includes some of my favorite photos of them.

The book arrived in today’s mail. I’m happy but I’m also sad because I don’t know how 27 years flew by so quickly. This all seems like yesterday.

Don’t forget! If you live in Copenhagen, or can get there, Stranger Than Kindness, the Nick Cave exhibit, opened today!!

And on another sad note, my best friend Paul, who died from AIDS in 1999, would have been 61 today. I like to feel that he’s hanging out with me a little bit today, but honestly, I just don’t know anything anymore.

Have a good Monday, gang, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, I love you guys. See ya.

Gotta Be Brief, Gang!!

June 4, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Okay, well, last night’s post — Memory Lane — is actually going to be today’s post, too! If you didn’t already read it, you can scroll down to the previous post (Memory Lane) or use this link.

I am almost done editing Peitor’s book, about 50 more pages to go, so I want to get that finished here this morning and get it back to him, then get back to work on Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse.

But I wanted to alert you that, if you’re a fan of any of the stories linked up there in “From the Vault,” that whole section is being removed. I am doing new editions of The Muse Revisited Collection, including print-on-demand options to buy them in trade paper, so none of the stories will be available through the home page of this site. If you have direct links to any of the stories, they will still work, you just won’t be able to find them linked here.

So, just FYI.

Okay, I’m gonna close and get started here! However, I wanted to leave you with this very cool & very short video, for Nick Cave’s Stranger Than Kindness exhibit, FINALLY opening in Copenhagen on June 8th!! Enjoy!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya!!

It Can’t Possibly Be All The Booze…

May 3, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis 2 Comments

I used to love to drink and drinking used to love me — until I was about 42, or something like that. I don’t know. Somewhere around there, it stopped being fun.

Still, it doesn’t account for something astounding that I discovered yesterday. Because back in NYC when I was a songwriter — I never drank while writing. Nor did I ever do any drugs. I didn’t even smoke. I never wanted anything besides maybe caffeine to assist my brain while I was writing.

Although I’ve always kind of secretly wished I could be like Kerouac, or Philip K. Dick, or Stephen King in the early days, and just get really fucked up and see what came out. Take a bunch of speed and just start churning it, you know? However, I was never like that. Even though I did at times do a ton of speed and a ton of drinking when not writing.

Anyway. I was fooling around with my guitar yesterday afternoon and I couldn’t remember the chords to a song I’d written back in 1984 — a song that I played live for years. I was drawing a complete blank.

So I went to the storage closet and found the files that had all my old songs in them. And it was such a weird thing: there were quite a number of songs in there from the later days of my songwriting that I had no memory of whatsoever. And according to all the set lists I had stuffed in the files, too, I played those songs live a lot.

I even looked at the bottoms of the lyrics pages to see if maybe they were covers of someone else’s songs, but they all had my copyrights on them. Clearly, I’d written them.

It felt so fucking strange. And reading over the lyrics — they were good songs. Although they looked like they leaned more towards country than folk, but still good lyrics. And yet I had no clue what the melodies were that went along with them. It was like I’d never seen those songs before in my life. And yet there were lead sheets printed up and stored in there and everything.

It turns out that every song I ever wrote from 1974 (!!!!!) until 1994 — when I finally stopped the songwriting and focused on fiction writing exclusively — are in those files. There are songs in there from the early 80s that I never actually performed because I didn’t think they were very good — those songs I still remember perfectly — melodies and lyrics. I remember them; I just never really liked them. So the fact that a bunch of songs that I thought were good enough to perform (all the time) in the early 1990s– and I don’t remember them at all?

It felt like maybe somewhere in there, I became another person. You know? Like I split off into some other probable reality. Something like that. I’m serious. It really felt like that. What woman who had my name wrote and sang those songs?

All the songs –except for one — that I wrote between 1970 and 1973 are gone forever because I lost that notebook somewhere after moving to NYC in 1980. The one song that I still have from 1970 (yes, from when I was 10), I still have only because it was actually used in a short film that my Girl Scout troop made about air pollution for a huge conference on the environment that was held in downtown Cleveland that year. And the lyrics were also printed in the school bulletin, which my parents kept and then gave to me years later. (It’s a rather political song, as perhaps you can guess, since it was about the environment. Cleveland had horrific problems with pollution. We had steel mills and the auto industry back then. Cleveland is also notorious for having had an actual river that was so polluted it caught on fire — yes, a river that caught on fire.)

Help light Ignite, a celebration of the 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire ... — Cuyahoga River on fire in Cleveland, 1969

So that one song survives. And I don’t think I really need to see all the many songs I wrote from when I was 10 until I was 12 that are lost now. It would be cool, I guess. But I don’t really need to ever see them again.

That said, though, the songs I looked at yesterday from 1974 — when I was still only 13 — were interesting enough, thank you. Jesus. And then I found songs in there from 1975 — when I was in the mental hospital for 5 months. That’s when I closed the files and walked away.

Until yesterday, I had no clue any of those really old songs were in there. I’d thought that anything before 1981 was lost for all time. I glanced quickly through the old songs but I didn’t have the stomach to actually read them — especially those ones written in the mental hospital. I was only looking for chords for that one specific song from 1984, anyway — which I never did find. Although I found the original lyrics, which look like this:

Song in progress, 1984. NYC. I even made a note there that my grandfather was in the hospital back home in Ohio and that a cousin was having another baby. Knowing me, I probably wrote letters to them. I was always a big letter-writer (still am), even though almost no one ever wrote me back.

So yesterday was really very interesting. I will probably look over those files again today, because I know the chords to that song must be in there somewhere. And I think I might force myself to read over some of those lyrics from over 40 years ago. Plus, I even found the lyrics to 3 songs that Peitor and I wrote together back in, like, 1986 or something like that. One of those songs is one we always really loved, it’s titled “(I Can’t Help It If) I’m Still In Love With You.”

The demo was quite plaintive and little-girl-sounding. Tons of reverb on my angelic vocal and on his piano, and it had some sort of rain sound in the background, and the ubiquitous drum machine from those days. And the lyrics were essentially: you suck, the world sucks, my whole life now sucks because I met you in the first place and now you left me but I can’t help it, I’m still in love with you.

That kind of thing — but not in those words, of course. Peitor and I had a blast recording that. It was funny to us but, you know, it was actually good. It wasn’t a funny song — just funny to us.

Anyway. I guess it’s good that I saved all this stuff. I can’t imagine what if anything it really means to me all these decades later — to who I am as a writer. But I’m glad I’ve got them.

On the virus front: I’m feeling really good today…So here’s hoping. One of these darn days, I have to be actually really well. Right?? Maybe today will be the day…

Okay. Here is the cover art for the forthcoming Marc Bolan tribute album, AngelHeaded Hipster (produced by Hal Willner who I think just died in NYC from the virus). This is the album where Nick Cave sings “Cosmic Dancer” — and sings it so beautifully. I don’t even know how many times I’ve already watched the video. I just love it.

And I’m still loving that Bad Seed TeeVee. I’m still finding stuff on there that I haven’t seen yet — or even seen before, ever. It’s just so cool.

And on a somewhat unrelated music note– have you noticed that everyone’s buying ukuleles again? I mean, like, everyone’s buying them. And they have all different colors now, all different price ranges, too. Of course, the one I like best is the Epiphone Les Paul tenor acoustic-electric ukulele (below) — I’m not certain of this, but I don’t think there’s a more expensive one out there, so of course it’s the one I love. I’ve come close to buying it several times already…

Anyway, on that note… I’m going to get Sunday underway over here. I hope yours is a good one, wherever you are in the world. I leave you today with probably the most famous/favorite ukulele song, ever. From the late Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwoʻole; “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Enjoy, gang. And thanks for visiting. Make it a good one, okay? I love you guys. See ya.