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I tried to warn her that this would happen but would she listen? No. No she would not…

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Yeah, well. Remember how, early last summer, when the 2 practically free tubes of expensive cellulite appearance reducing creme arrived from the company in France and I was worried that it would work so well — because everything else under the sun that they’ve sent me either for free or practically free, worked so well that I then was forced to keep buying it because I am so fucking vain?

Well, I was worried that it would be the same way with the cellulite appearance reducing creme — that it would work too well. And it’s just too expensive to justify adding it to the long list of cremes and scrubs and masks and cleansers that I already buy every month from that company (and have been buying from them since 1999) because no one ever, ever, ever thinks I am 59 years old — and it’s not just because I’m immature. Which I am. But still. I’m talking specifically about my skin, here.

Well, as I posted the other day, I finally started using the expensive cellulite appearance reducing creme last week, and it really works. And I don’t know how it does but it does. It doesn’t make anything go away, it just reduces the appearance of it. But since I never go anywhere where my thighs are part of what you can see of me — because I am 59 years old, and even if you think I’m only 42 and a half, I’m still not going to dress in something that has my legs hanging out because I don’t want to look like I think I’m 17 and have an inability to age gracefully. (!!)

But for some inexplicable reason, when I got out of the shower yesterday, I sort of idly wondered what would happen if I put that creme all over my body, even though I don’t have cellulite all over my body. I don’t really know why I did it, frankly, but I did it.

And guess what happened? It made that little wrinkly spot directly at the center of my neck completely disappear. Gone. I now have the neck of a 41 year-old. I mean, it was awesome. I mean, holy shit!!

So guess what else happened??!! Yes, that’s right. I got immediately on the company’s website and bought 2 more tubes!!!! AAAArrrrgh!!! $47 plus $8 shipping for a single 6 ounce tube. And I bought 2, since the shipping charge would be the same. And God knows, I didn’t want to ever find myself in a public situation where that little wrinkly spot in the center of my neck ever, ever reappeared again.

I knew this would happen. I just knew it. The company makes incredible products, and 95% of it is plant-based, and they fix things — most of which you don’t even know you have problems with until they offer to fix it for free (one time) and your vanity is so intense that then you cannot live without the product because it fixed the thing you didn’t know you had a problem with.

They once sent me a free acne-controlling face mask. I don’t have acne and never did. But I love their face masks. So I used it and could not believe how great it made my skin look! So now I always have a tube of that in my medicine cabinet — $17 (plus $8 shipping) for 1 ounce of light blue stuff that fights something I don’t even have.

My medicine cabinet is 4 feet high — it extends up to the ceiling. It has 4 deep shelves, all of which are brimming with my many, many products from France (usually with a 2-3 month back-up for each product, because I wouldn’t want to even imagine running out of something and not being able to get to France).

I’m guessing that when my mom was staying here while I was in NYC, she probably had a heart attack when she opened the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, and saw the absolute tidal wall of beauty products confronting her (and quite a few of the products weren’t even there because I took them with me to NYC). I have no drugs at all — except Flonase. I’m a drug-free kind of gal, relying instead on Jesus and my Inner Being to handle any medical emergencies that might pop up. So everything, absolutely everything in my bathroom is dedicated to my skin. (Well, I have a toothbrush, toothpaste and dental floss. But otherwise…)

It’s just un-fucking-real.  And now yet another product has become part of that permanent beauty landscape. (But when I’m one-hundred-and-four years old, and only look 92 and a half, who will have the last laugh??!!)

Okay, so there we have it: Me, up to weirdness in the bathroom again, and another expensive habit is born!! All righty. I gotta scoot. I gotta work on the PLAY. Thanks for visiting, gang. Have a wonderful Wednesday wherever you are in the world! I love you guys. See ya!

“Thank Heaven For Little Girls”

Each time I see a little girl of
Five or six or seven
I can’t resist the joyous urge
To smile and say…

Thank heaven for little girls
For little girls get bigger every day
Thank heaven for little girls
They grow up in the most delightful way.

Their little eyes so helpless and appealing
Someday will flash and have you crashing thru the ceiling.

Thank heaven for little girls
Thank heaven for them all,
No matter where no matter who
Without them what would little boys do?

Their little eyes so helpless and appealing
Someday will flash and have you crashing thru the ceiling.

Thank heaven for little girls
Thank heaven for them all
No matter where no matter who
Without them what would little boys do?

Without them what would little boys do?

c -1957  Loewe Frederick, Lerner Alan Jay

In My Room

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I try not to get on Instagram or check email until my morning is well under way, because you just never know what lies in wait for you online that could just fuck up your whole day. You don’t really want to wade into those dangerous waters until you’ve at least had coffee and meditated…

However, this morning, for some reason, it was about 5:30am, and I was barely even awake, let alone out of bed, and I started scrolling through Instagram and almost immediately found a post from Brian Wilson, where he was quoting something Keith Richards had said and it just sort of happily set the tone for my morning.

Keith was commenting about certain very early songs by the Beach Boys that Brian Wilson had of course written, and one of the songs Keith mentioned was “In My Room.”

I had forgotten all about that song and I used to just love it. It was a “B” side, never a bona fide “hit,” but it was included on the greatest hits double album, Endless Summer. And that’s where I first heard the song, at age 14.

Of course, I got right on YouTube and played “In My Room,” as I lay there in the dark, contemplating getting out of bed.

It is still such a sweet song and it made me realize just how much of my life has been spent in my room. (My various online businesses and blogs have either been called Marilyn’s Room, or referred to my room in some way, for that very reason — my whole entire life seems to happen in my room. Try as I have to always move my offices out of my various bedrooms over the years, it always moves back in. I love my room!)

It also made me think about Keith Richards, whom I seem to have loved my whole entire life, beginning at age 11, when I’d read the monumental Rolling Stone magazine interview with John Lennon (whom I had loved since I was about 9).  Lennon talked a lot about the Stones and Bob Dylan in that interview — and that’s how I really got introduced to the “real” Rolling Stones, not the “evil” ones that the media had perpetuated.

Anyway, from that interview with John Lennon, I managed to find the equally monumental interview Rolling Stone magazine had done with Keith Richards, at his infamous villa in the South of France, earlier in 1971.

Image result for keith richards 1971 south of france villa
Keith Richards, Villa Nellcote, South of France, 1971

You know, it was difficult enough to be 11 years old and try to truly understand John Lennon, a man I genuinely idolized; it was a whole other planet of astonishment being 11 years old and trying to understand Keith Richards, especially since I knew very little about the Stones at that point, and knew only a handful of their hit songs.

It is safe to say he made an overwhelming impression on me. I had to read the interview with a dictionary at hand, because some of the words he used I didn’t even know yet. (I remember that “decadent” was one of the words I had to look up, and it was used somehow in connection to Nazis and it took me a really long time — years — before I grasped what he was getting at there.) I also remember going to the library to find all the books & recordings I could on the Delta Blues singers. I knew most of the old rock & rollers and rockabilly guys by then, but the Delta Blues was new to me.

Anyway, it was cool to lay there in the dark this morning, listen to “In My Room” and think about Keith Richards and realize just how young he’d been when I was 11  (he was only 28!!) — he seemed ancient to me.  Like he’d been alive forever… (this song is actually quite appropriate, isn’t it??!!)

Okay, so here’s a photo of my room from when I was 12.

My room, circa 1972

I was actually taking a picture of my dog, Brindle. However, you can sort of see my room. You can see that great old Zenith radio!! That was the actual radio I listened to, even though it was probably 20 years old by then — a castoff from my parents. (I never had any sort of state-of-the-art hi-fi equipment, ever. Even my record player was a portable, battery-operated thing.)

I still have my stuffed animals on my bed — from my actual childhood. Not “new” stuffed animals. I seem to have been reading A Blues I Can Whistle, which I recall I had to read for 7th grade English class. (I also recall that I loved the book!! Here is the synopsis: A young man, institutionalized after attempting suicide, writes about what happened the summer after his first year of college.)

And there is my little 3-ring binder, too, not only with flowers on it (because, after all, I was a girl), but also photos of Alice Cooper and his band –photos that had come with the record School’s Out — are taped to the front of the binder. (A pair of paper panties also came with that album!) The binder holds all the songs I had written by then. (What I wouldn’t give to still have that binder and look at all those old songs.)

So that’s one of my many rooms. As near as I can recall, I have had 19 bedrooms in my lifetime…

And for no reason at all, here I am at age 2, ten years earlier, at the first house in Cleveland. (I found it while trying to find photos of my room). A bag of Wise potato chips are in front of me, my favorite potato chips, ever.

Me in Cleveland in 1962

Okay. I’m gonna get back to work here. I hope you have a terrific Tuesday.

Oh, wait! Nick Cave sent out a Red Hand Files newsletter today that was extremely interesting and eloquent — a few words longer than last week’s. About shyness and his wife. You can read it here. (Interestingly enough, when I saw Nick Cave at Town Hall, his wife was sitting a few seats over from me, in the same row. And at one point, when he was talking about his wife being his Muse, he did a sort of impersonation of how nervous she was likely acting over being talked about publicly as his Muse, and she actually was doing that exact nervous thing right at that moment. And I mean, exactly. Sort of fluttery and stuff.)

Okay. So, thanks for visiting!! You know what I’m leaving you with today!! I love you guys, See ya.

“In My Room”

There’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to
In my room, in my room
In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears
In my room, in my room

Do my dreaming and my scheming
Lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing
Laugh at yesterday

Now it’s dark and I’m alone
But I won’t be afraid
In my room, in my room
In my room, in my room
In my room, in my room

c – 1963 Brian Wilson, Gary Usher

Darn it, forgot to title this!

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All righty. I’m back.

What a cool morning! Still tons of fog here, but it doesn’t look nearly as dramatic as it did before the sun came up. Actually, when I got up around 2am to use the bathroom, it looked really spooky outside. I guess mostly because I wasn’t expecting everything in the world outside my windows to have disappeared.

You know, Muskingum County is so intensely spirit-filled, just in general, that a little bit of fog goes a long way. It can turn cool into creepy in a nanosecond. And I’m not just saying this because I’m some sort of lunatic. Muskingum County — and especially Crazeysburg, with its “stopped in time” sort of feel to it — is unlike any place where I’ve ever been.

The ancient burial mounds all over the place have a lot to do with it, I think. The mounds here are sacred grounds to the Latter Day Saints, in fact. They believe Christ had his Second Coming around here, 2000 years ago. And it’s kind of uncanny, some of the terrain documented in the Book of Mormon that you can easily interpret as being all over this region, with all its ancient burial mounds.

And a couple hundred years ago, when the locals dug up some of the burial mounds on farms around here, they discovered the skeletons of giants — 9 to 12 feet tall. They were not Native Americans — meaning, people who migrated here from the general region of Mongolia and became known as “American Indians.” These skeletons predated that. The ancient people are considered Sun Worshipers.  And they were sometimes buried with stone tablets that have ancient Greek and Biblical Hebrew symbols carved on them. So those giants were real old. It does sort of seem they had to have come here by boat, and they just have a number of uncanny similarities with what is documented in the various books within the Book of Mormon. (My in-progress murder mystery, Down to the Meadows of Sleep: The Hurley Falls Mystery, uses all that cool stuff in the plot.)

That doesn’t necessarily mean that Jesus appeared here to the ancient people, as is written. But it does mean that all of it is really, really interesting to ponder.(The Latter Day Saints are really just the coolest people. However, for me, their intense adherence to concepts of “sin” make it entirely unwieldy as a way of understanding life, and they seem even more dedicated to the need for procreation than even the Catholics are — and I think that rigidity comes from an understandable fear born from what happened to Joseph Smith.)

But I digress. And, plus, that’s only my opinion.

I have to say that within my lifetime, I have been all over Ohio, just all over it. And none of it has ever felt the way it feels here in Muskingum County. I’m not opposed to believing Christ appeared here. It seems he appeared all over the place after he died. The definition of “appear” is upon which all of it hinges. You know, even Paul says that Jesus did not go up to the sky as flesh & bone and then reappear in flesh & bone. It was as “spirit.” And certainly the Gnostics had a whole lot to say about the nature of how Christ appears. So that word and how you define it is key.

(And when you’re called to follow Christ, as I was as a 5-year-old girl in Cleveland, it is generally in spirit — for me, it was an aural & spiritual call; not a physical one.)

Anyway. A huge blanket of dense fog settling over Crazeysburg in the middle of the night, makes it all feel just that much more fascinating. My photos with my phone don’t do it justice, of course. (See post below from early this morning.)

Okay, well, I’m happy to report that there’s way more milk still in my fridge this week than there was on Monday of last week, so I’m guessing I’m not drinking nearly as much coffee. And so I guess that is a good thing. And I’m not spending as much time in bed, delaying that getting up & getting started thing. That’s not necessarily a good or a bad thing, just saying that I’ve stopped doing it.

I also wanted to report — if you’ve been reading this blog since early summer — that now that all the intense humidity is gone, I have finally been using that expensive new body creme that I got from the company in France (the company that I buy all of my expensive beauty products from and they do manage to take about 2 decades off my apparent age). Anyway, Kara was after me for ages to try the stuff and see if it worked. It is a creme that “reduces the appearance of cellulite.” (While I wouldn’t say that I struggle with cellulite, my thighs are indeed the cellulite capitol of the world and always have been, throughout all recorded time.)

Anyway, I finally decided to try it and it actually works. I’m not sure how, though. It doesn’t get rid of cellulite, but when you use it, it does indeed reduce the appearance of it.  But if, like, the next day you don’t use it, you still have all the cellulite you’ve ever had. It didn’t go anywhere.

It’s really interesting to ponder and try to figure out how it actually works — and it’s made from plant products. But it’s very expensive so I doubt I will ever actually buy it once these 2 tubes of it are gone.  I’m not usually in a situation where my thighs are the things on me that anyone’s ever really noticing anyway.  I guess you never know what could happen in life, though, so it’s good to know this creme exists. (Although I shudder to think about what would be underway if suddenly my thighs were of intense interest to anyone…)

All righty.

Today is all about the play — well, mostly the play, and a little bit of yoga. So I’m gonna get started here. I hope it’s a great Monday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting! I leave you with an interesting concept: The Mormons singing the famous Shaker hymn, “Simple Gifts.” If you have a minute and a half to spare, it’s worth listening to. It’s undeniably lovely. Okay. I love you guys. See ya!

I’ve Noticed that Sometimes It Takes Her Forever to Get Her Mind Back

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Well, finally. My mind came back.

The rewrites I need to make on Tell My Bones — the direction I need to take and the voices I needed to hear from my characters, are finally arriving.

I’m guessing that by the end of this coming week, I might even have the new version of the play entirely finished.

It is such an incredible relief when the voices you need to hear finally start talking to you. Of course, this means that all the other projects I’m doing will take a back seat for a week or two, but I totally don’t mind. It is just such a relief to finally move past certain difficulties I’ve been having — re: personalities involved in the play — and just concentrate on the PLAY. Make space in my head to allow the revisions to just come.

I’ve blogged here in the past about my singer-songwriter career in NYC, way back in the old days of the 1980s, and how naive I was back then about people’s ability to literally sabotage your whole career. And then how it started to happen again in the early days of my writing career, but at that point, I did what I felt I had to do to ensure that I didn’t get sabotaged again.  I’m not going to go into all of it again here, only enough to say that I’ve been around long enough to know that it’s real. People do try to sabotage you.

You know, even if people aren’t consciously aware that they’re doing it to you, on some emotional level, because of their own insecurity, some people do want to see you fail. It’s up to you, of course, to allow that to happen or not. And because of naivety, I allowed it to happen to my music career, but I’ve never allowed it to happen again. But it’s that feeling of incredible disappointment, when you see it coming at you from someone you had no clue whatsoever there was ever any reason to distrust. However, in these few weeks since I’ve been home from NY, shit happened and continued to happen, so my eyes are open. For sure. Unfortunately.

I guess I really just needed to process that whole thing and find the best way to keep the relationship intact, but move forward with a better understanding of what is really in play, underneath it all.

Peitor’s brief phone conversation with me on Thursday really helped me get back on track and get my head together. (And I guess 3 hours of crying in the dark yesterday morning was the final processing of everything. And I can finally move forward. Allow people to be whoever they need to be, but move forward.)

So here we are.

Well, tickets began going on sale in Europe yesterday for the 2020  Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds tour, supporting their new indescribably staggering album, Ghosteen.

If it weren’t for the fact that I will be up to my eyeballs with stuff for the play in NY by then, as well as overseeing the Writer’s Retreat either in Italy or England, I seriously contemplated the idea of buying a ticket to one of those concerts, just choosing a country I’d never been to before, and going.

But, of course, it is just indescribably impractical. And I feel completely, 100% confident, that they will eventually come to the States and add Crazeysburg to their line-up of venues. (We do have a Little League ball field here, with ample bleachers to hold all 14 of us who live here. So of course it will clearly happen. Patience is key.)

Anyway. Whatever. Who knows what the fuck is going to happen in my life by mid- 2020, right? I should try to just focus on the weekend for now. It is the final weekend of October and I just last night realized that I haven’t set out a single Halloween decoration. I keep thinking, subconsciously, that it’s still September.  Oh well.

I’m gonna close this and get started here. Go down to the kitchen and get another cup of coffee. Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope you have a splendid Saturday, wherever you are in the world!! I leave you with this parting shot of Tom Petty, early 1990s, drinking a cup of coffee. (He was a Maxwell House drinker to the end — according to his second wife, Dana.) Okay. I love you guys. See ya.

Coffee! Always has been and forever will be the beverage of champions!

Let’s Try that Again!!

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Okay! Another day!! We’re gonna see if we can’t find some sort of balance here and do some writing that I end up keeping — not deleting — by the end of the day.

I think I’m working on Tell My Bones rewrites today. That seems to be what’s calling loudest to me right now.

By the way, Helen LaFrance will be 100 years old in just a few weeks. Her old church there in Mayfield, Kentucky, is planning a big birthday celebration for her. They’re going to send me videos of it, which the director will upload to the Tell My Bones website.

Oh, and also, please visit the web site and sign up for the newsletter! Even if you don’t think you’re likely to get to NYC to see the play —  you never know!

(And follow it on facebook here. And on Instagram at tellmybones.) (Please!! And thank you.)

Okay. I just went down to get more coffee and the world outside looked amazing as the sun was coming up, so I went out onto the kitchen porch and took a photo of Basin Street (the light there in the tree is a street light, not the sun):

Basin Street from the kitchen porch just now, as the same came up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All righty. I just got a text from Peitor just now, as his plane was landing in NYC, and he was trying to come up with loglines for our first micro-short production, Lita’s Got to Go. Here’s my favorite so far (although it doesn’t even hint at the key thing that happens):

“A psychologically disturbed woman becomes obsessed when she senses her housekeeper has been inappropriate with her furniture.”

(This is a micro-short piece of abstract absurdist humor, with that creepy Bauhaus cinematography. And erotic undertones.) (I’m guessing it will be 8 of the best minutes of your life.)

Oh, and by the way, I’m not sure now if the writer’s retreat is going to take place in Italy or not. There’s issues with the electricity there at the villa that Peitor is unhappy with, so he might be moving all the various retreats to a castle in Devon — in England. Of course I speak fluent Devon, so that would make my life a lot easier!! But we’ll see. Either way, it’s not getting underway until next year, so I’m still studying my Italian. I’ll keep you posted.

Okay, gang, this is short today because I want to get started on the play.

I leave you with my breakfast-listening music, “In My Own Particular Way”; a wonderful song off of Marianne Faithfull’s album from earlier this year (or maybe late last year?), Negative Capability. It’s an amazing album, by the way; really just sort of chilling but celebratory, too. And it’s one of those things that makes Instagram so great — I initially found out about it on Instagram because of following Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. (I find a ton of cool music by following musicians on Instagram.)

I met Marianne Faithfull once while I was working at MoMA in NYC. I think it was 1986; I was maybe 25 or 26 years old. Broken English had certainly already happened, and I think she had another album out by then, but regardless, she was this mega icon from my girlhood and I had just turned around and suddenly she was standing right there. She was smoking (you could still smoke indoors back then) and I remember she was wearing a leopard-print blazer of some kind. I was so excited, I blurted, “Oh god — hi!!” And she smiled and said, “Oh god — hi!!” It was really sweet and funny, and she had the throatiest voice since Dietrich.

I was a lot taller than her, though. I’m not sure why it bothers me that so many of these cultural icons from my youth are not taller than me. But anyway, she made my day. She even asked me my name. She was very nice.

Okay. Thanks for visiting, gang. Have a terrific Thursday, wherever it finds you and with whatever it finds you doing (or perhaps meeting!!). I love you guys. See ya.

“In My Own Particular Way”

Send me someone to love
Someone who could love me back
Love me for who I really am
Not an image and not for money
I know I’m not young and I’m damaged
But I’m still pretty, kind and funny

In my own particular way
In my own particular way
Capable of loving in my own particular way
And ready to love
At last

It’s taken me a long time to learn
In fact my whole life so far
So much rubbish I had to burn
So much I had to go through

Send me someone please who’ll love me
Someone who can see all my faults
But love me nevertheless
And we will love each other

In our own particular way
In our own particular way
Capable of living in our own particular way
And ready to love
At last

In my own particular way
In my own particular way
Capable of loving in my own particular way
And ready to love
At last

c – 2018 Marianne Faithfull, Ed Harcourt, Warren Ellis, Robert Mcvey

Hmmm. What Fucking Planet is She On…

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Yeah, well, I guess it would have been nice to have been alerted that a little PR blast about “me, the playwright” was going out yesterday. I probably wouldn’t have chosen yesterday to blog about being suicidal and going off to a convent…

Crap. You know?

This is why blogging is always so dicey for me. I actually blog about not only my real life, but also the constant insanity that is really in my head. And as pretty as I am on the outside, well you know, the Portrait of Dorian Gray is often in full bloom on the inside.

So there we have it. My experience of yesterday. All kinds of new traffic coming in through my (outdated, inaccurate) Wikipedia page because of a new crop of strangers googling me; and then finding out about all the joys of being moi.

Okay. We’re just going to move on. But I’m also going to bring this up again, as I so often do around here: When you’re a woman and you’re a writer, nothing will likely speak more to the heart of you than Virginia Woolfe’s A Room of One’s Own. If for some inexcusable reason, you don’t know the book; her overall premise:

“In referencing the tale of a woman who rejected motherhood and lived outside marriage, a woman about to be hanged, the narrator identifies women writers such as herself as outsiders who exist in a potentially dangerous space.”

And once having read it, nothing will feel so horrific as knowing that, even while Virginia Woolfe understood all of it,  she ultimately walked off to the river with rocks in her pocket. She should not have ended that way. I am not going to end that way, I just refuse; even if sometimes the only thing that will help me is taking cover amid a bunch of Carmelite nuns — women who also reject motherhood and live outside marriage but inside the auspices of the Patriarchy. (Wouldn’t that be cool? To just go off and let some guy take care of you? Jesus Christ, right? And no pun intended there… But the minute you let some guy take care of you, he gets to tell you what to do. And loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I will always, without fail, say “NO!” even before I hear what the guy is even trying to say!!! AAAAAaaaarrrrgh!!!!)

But, Jesus. Come on. Even in a First World country, in the 21st Century, it is fucking hard to be a woman, be a writer, and live on a single, wildly fluctuating income — and afford a room of your own that’s quiet so that you can focus and write.

The pressure in my life sometimes feels insurmountable. I am someone who pulls miracle after miracle after miracle out of her hat. But it gets not only exhausting but also daunting: looking into that hat and wondering if another miracle is gonna manage to come out of there one more time.

And in this instance, unfortunately, I am talking about a situation involving other, private people that I cannot blog about. But it’s making me feel undermined and sniped at. And it hurts.

So — on to more beautiful things.

Nick Cave sent out a Red Hand Files newsletter yesterday that was just beautiful.  You can read it here. You know, is it wrong & selfish  to say that it’s too bad men like him (meaning, “rock stars”) weren’t around when I was growing up in the 1970s, or do you just feel appreciative that he’s alive right now?

Oh, and also, during one of Nick Cave’s Conversations in Austin the other night, a woman was sitting next to him on his piano bench while he sang “Shivers.” I ask you, just what kind of hat do you have to have in order to pull that kind of miracle out of it???!!! I thought my Miracle Hat was pretty cool but au contraire! It pales in comparison.

(The people in Austin eventually put a whole bunch of cool stuff on Instagram.) (I believe he’s going to be in Portland tonight. We’ll see what kinds of magical hats the people possess in Portland…)

Well, this week, when I’m not gently tearing my hair out over rewrites of Tell My Bones, I intend to write another short segment of In the Shadow of Narcissa. It’s a difficult one because it goes deeper into the abuse my brother suffered at the hands of our adoptive mother when he was just a little boy.  And to write it from the perspective of a 4-year-old girl. And not through the lens of my own fear of our mother, but from that desperate feeling of wanting to help my brother but being given the constant mandate from her that I was not allowed to care about what happened to him.

Not being permitted to feel things was probably the hardest part of living with her.

The fucked-up-ness was simply manifold.

But I’m also going to take a look at the 4th segment of Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. It’s going to be that “Litany” segment. It should just be very interesting. I’m very eager to write that because I can’t imagine how it’s going to hit the page.

Meanwhile, I’m going to get laundry started here. And at some point, I have to go back into town and buy groceries. I’m gonna wait until the fog lifts, though.  We’ve had an amazingly dense fog here since late last evening.

The fog as seen from my kitchen window just now. The same Carl Sandburg fog that “crept in on little cat feet.” Oh no!! Not more cats!!

Okay, gang. I’m gonna scoot.

Have a terrific Tuesday wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting. I leave you with two options, both equally from my own perception of life. The first is one I really enjoy believing in. I really, honestly do. Someday, I’ll meet my soulmate and we’ll go off to the Chapel of Love.

The second is more like how I experience love, for real. You know, intensely deeply, but no chapel anywhere on the horizon. (This song was actually playing on the record player when I lost — or got rid of — my virginity. Go figure. The gods are funny, for sure.)

All righty. I love you guys. See ya.

“Piece of My Heart”
Oh, come on, come on, come on, come on!
Didn’t I make you feel like you were the only man -yeah!
Didn’t I give you nearly everything that a woman possibly can?
Honey, you know I did!
And each time I tell myself that I, well I think I’ve had enough,
But I’m gonna show you, baby, that a woman can be tough.
I want you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it,
Take it!
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby!
Oh, oh, break it!
Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, oh, have a!
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby,
You know you got it if it makes you feel good,
Oh, yes indeed.
You’re out on the streets looking good,
And baby deep down in your heart I guess you know that it ain’t right,
Never, never, never, never, never, never hear me when I cry at night,
Babe, I cry all the time!
And each time I tell myself that I, well I can’t stand the pain,
But when you hold me in your arms, I’ll sing it once again.
I’ll say come on, come on, come on, come on and take it!
Take it!
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby.
Oh, oh, break it!
Break another little bit of my heart now, darling, yeah,
Oh, oh, have a!
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby,
You know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good.
I need you to come on, come on, come on, come on and take it,
Take it!
Take another little piece of my heart now, baby!
oh, oh, break it!
Break another little bit of my heart, now darling, yeah, c’mon now.
oh, oh, have a
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby.
You know you got it -whoahhhhh!!
Take it!
Take it! Take another little piece of my heart now, baby,
Oh, oh, break it!
Break another little bit of my heart, now darling, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Oh, oh, have a
Have another little piece of my heart now, baby, hey,
You know you got it, child, if it makes you feel good.
c –  1967 JERRY RAGOVOY / BERT BERNS

Adventures in Wild Weight Fluctuations!!

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I’m still keeping this new bathroom scale. If only because I want to try to hack the code.

Apparently, I gained 5 pounds during the night. (After losing 9 pounds the previous day.)

At the very least, the scale reconnects me with everything I ate the day before. You know, it sort of acts as a grounding rod for my wildly dispersed reality. From moment to moment, I can no longer tell you what’s happening to my life. I am just so caught up in my head these days. Absolutely everything flies past me. So this new bathroom scale — its seeming slight relation to reality — sort of helps anchor me. I step on the scale. I look at that wildly unexpected number. And it makes me stop and think and remember yesterday: What was yesterday?  What did I do? What did I think? What did I eat?

So the new bathroom scale is sort of an adventure in consciousness.

An alert just came through on my laptop that the drummer Ginger Baker died. This also serves as an anchor in reality: a.) I did not know he was even still alive; b.) I can’t believe he was 80; and c.) another part of my girlhood — gone.

When these things happen, I immediately feel that I either have to die right away. Like, I don’t know, tomorrow maybe. Or just live for some stupidly long time so that the main point to my whole existence becomes: Everything and everyone I ever knew is gone. This “in between” business — where you watch everything you ever knew disappear in bits and pieces; that part gets hard to process. So I’d rather just deal with one extreme or the other. Die now, or live so very long that nothing has relevance anymore and everyone assumes I simply am just never going to die.

On a sort of similar note… I’ve been thinking the last couple days that I’d really like to take a drive to the old Civil War battle ground in Cynthiana, Kentucky, and visit my great-great-grandfather’s grave. He’s buried there in a Confederacy War Memorial. For some bizarre reason, google maps assures me this is only 3 and a 1/2 hours from Crazeysburg. I’m not sure how that could possibly be. It feels like it should be much farther away. So I think I’m going to set aside a couple days here in the fall and do that. Find some sort of a strange motel there and stay over for one night. Maybe even drink bourbon for the first time in a couple of years. (I can’t imagine being in Kentucky again and not drinking bourbon.)

I’ve listened to Ghosteen a few more times.  And that anchors me, too, actually. It has such a presence to it that I just hone right in and everything else in my mind and in my world simply stops.  I’m just listening. Picturing all this stuff that I don’t understand at all — meaning, the images just come because the lyrics are so precise and so intense, yet I have no idea what any of that whole first part of the record means. (I don’t necessarily know what the second part means, but I feel like I intuitively grasp it. The first part — any hope of concrete meaning flies away from me in all directions but it sustains such an intense beauty, regardless.)

It is enigmatic, to be sure. I feel like there is absolutely no way in. By that, I think I mean that this is sort of an operatic painting about his life, his family, his marriage — and how can you ever truly understand how the inside of someone else’s perspective of life really feels? Well, anyway, I can’t. So I can’t find my way into it. Which doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful or that I don’t love it, or that it doesn’t cause me to feel a lot of things.

Nick Cave has said things before about how songs speak to you, personally; you know, you feel like a song was written just for you and it becomes yours, in a way. Actually, there is no Nick Cave song, ever, that I felt spoke to me, personally. I do feel that way about pretty much every single song Tom Petty ever wrote — starting with “American Girl.” I heard that song in my teens and immediately wondered, “How come that guy knows how it feels to be me?” But with Nick Cave — he’s on this whole other planet from me. It’s one that I absolutely love, with all my being and all my soul, but it could not be more different from my planet if it tried. Yet I still love, basically, everything he ever wrote. Or likely will write.  Still, this new record goes even beyond that. Really, like discovering a whole new planet. Complete with a language that sounds remarkably similar to the one I know, and yet, eludes me. I think it’s just something I have to feel in my heart. And maybe meaning will come later. Or the “meaning” is simply that I feel it all very intensely. That is the meaning to it.

Okay. And on that note, the Conversations continue tonight in Austin. Maybe one lone photo appeared on Instagram from last night so, clearly this “put your phones away” idea is working. Eventually, I will no longer have any reason whatsoever to be on Instagram! But that’s okay.

All righty!! I’m gonna scoot and get Sunday underway here. Have a great day, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

“American Girl”

Well, she was an American girl
Raised on promises
She couldn’t help thinkin’
That there was a little more to life somewhere else
After all it was a great big world
With lots of places to run to
And if she had to die tryin’
She had one little promise she was gonna keep.

Oh yeah, all right
Take it easy, baby
Make it last all night
She was an American girl

Well it was kind of cold that night,
She stood alone on her balcony
Yeah, she could hear the cars roll by,
Out on 441 like waves crashin’ on the beach
And for one desperate moment there
He crept back in her memory
God it’s so painful when something that’s so close
Is still so far out of reach

Oh yeah, all right
Take it easy, baby
Make it last all night
She was an American girl

c- 1976 Tom Petty

Oh Man, I Knew It Was Gonna Hurt…

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I actually did get to listen to Ghosteen last night — the new album by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds.  It was still available on YouTube once I got home and was safely in bed. In my room. The only place in the world that protects me from the world. Usually.

You perhaps recall that when he first announced the new album last week and described what it was going to be about, my initial, sort of primal reaction was, Oh no, now what. A sort of “please keep that away from me” kind of feeling.

I had barely survived the first time listening to Skeleton Tree. It took a long time for me to be able to listen to that album without feeling like the world was being pulled out from under me. And I was worried that Ghosteen was going to be worse. Meaning, just too emotionally intense for me.

And guess what, gang??!!

I was right.

It’s really just a beautiful, beautiful album.  Just stunning. On so many levels. But I’m wondering, would I rather be hit by a freight train, or listen to this album again?

I’m thinking freight train. But I’m not 100% sure. I mean, luckily, God saw to it that I have ready access to a freight train — it runs right past my door, sometimes several times a day. And night. I already pre-ordered both the MP3 and the CD of Ghosteen. So when one of those things arrives, I’ll wait to press the “start” button until I know for sure a train is coming, and then decide at the last minute…

Jesus Christ, right?

It is just too beautiful. And part of what tormented me most is that, a huge portion of it, I don’t understand. The whole first album, which is being told by “the children.” Or it simply is “the children.” And I don’t understand why it’s “the children.”  I couldn’t figure that part out.  Why is it “the children”? And I’m thinking it’s maybe because I never had any so I’m not able to access something important there. And that alone, that state of being childless, is just something that’s unbearable for me, on any given day, at any given time, in any given year.

So that got triggered, and from there, everything sort of spiraled down for me.  The only way I know how to handle that whole subject is to close the door and walk away. But, come on! It’s a Nick Cave album! He hasn’t had a new album out in a couple of years. I don’t want to just close the door and walk away.

The second half, the part about “the parents” was easier for me to at least maybe understand.  I could understand why “the parents” were saying that second part.

Well, anyway. I’m sure I will adjust over time. Find my way back from the train tracks and maybe not be any worse for wear. Or, maybe even create great art. That would be cool. (I’m being sarcastic there because, of course, I think that’s the sole reason I even exist — to create art.  And it gets tiring. Wouldn’t it be cool if God had created me for something/anything else?  You know, like: Let’s let her have this great LIFE so that she doesn’t have to create art in order to process the simple act of getting out of bed in the morning…)

So, anyway. In all honesty, it is a beautiful record. Majestic and exquisite. Just so beautiful. And whether or not I can process it, isn’t the actual point, is it? Great art is supposed to make you feel something, so in that respect, it was a truly GREAT work of art. (And I did, indeed, see that coming.)

Okay.

So Sandra texted me yesterday and guess what? She’s working on a new play. Writing a new play, I mean. I am her collaborator on theater projects so this means that I, too, am working on a new play.

We have two other plays on the back burner, that are just barely even developed. But it sounds like this new one has her complete attention. Even though she’ll be going to Stratford to play the role of Mama Morton in “Chicago” at the same time that we’ll be doing the full-length staged reading of Tell My Bones in NYC; and we have our other play to do in Toronto, although that one has come to a little bit of a standstill right now, awaiting words from lawyers and accountants. Apparently, we will be undertaking another new play.

You know, when she texted me that, I wanted to just lie down and refuse to get back up. I’m sort of wiped out. These new Tell My Bones rewrites are probably the most important work I’ve had to undertake in my entire career. I need to focus.

This is when it would be good to just say “fuck the world,” and just  drink & smoke.

But I don’t really do either anymore. So, onward.

The morning here — meaning 5:30 am — was quite, quite lovely. There was something sacred in the stillness. The heatwave broke. Fall is really here. Another opportunity to try to figure out what the heck any of this all means, and why love seems to still be at the root of all of it.

I woke up crying. Not sobbing, or anything, but tears were in my eyes from the moment I awoke and they stayed there all during breakfast.

But I stayed in bed for a little while, wondering about the “story” of a person’s life, juxtaposed against how that life might have felt to be lived. F. Scott Fitzgerald came to my mind. He is now considered one of the greatest literary writers of the 20th Century. If you know his life, his career, at all, you will know that his outrageously uncontrolled alcoholism defined him while he was alive. And his wife was nuts and every extravagant thing about her cost him a fortune. It wasn’t until he died that his writing, alone — his creations, his art — could stand on its own, without the pain of how his life felt to be lived. (I’m not even going to try to talk about Zelda and her tragic fate because now she’s too bogged down in revisionist, feminist theory kinds of stuff.)

But there was the “life” he was creating while he lived. Meaning his endless and amazing short stories (that he wrote to keep himself afloat financially) and then his beautiful novels — that not only document the times he was living in, but created them at the very same time: The Jazz Age.

And then there was his actual life. Complicated, frustrating, passionate, tragic, short. And absolutely saturated with booze.

I’ve been thinking about this stuff lately because I am so very, very tired of “my life” and how it lived. But because I know how to write, it “saves” everything, you know? I can create a reason for life to feel worthwhile. And most days, that’s enough for me. Other days, nothing’s enough.

Okay, I’m gonna scoot. Get more coffee. Look at the beautiful, sacred morning some more. Embrace autumn. Let love be enough. Thanks for visiting. I love you, guys. See ya.

“Bye Bye Blackbird”
c – 1926

Blackbird, blackbird singing the blues all day right outside my door
Blackbird, blackbird gotta be on your way
Where there’s sunshine galore
All through the winter you just hang around
Now you’re going back home
Blackbird, blackbird gotta be on your way
Where there’s sunshine galore

Pack up all my cares and woes,
Here I go, singing low,
Bye, bye, blackbird.
Where somebody waits for me,
Sugar’s sweet, so is he,
Bye, bye, blackbird.

No one here can love and understand me,
Oh, what hard luck stories they all hand me.

Make my bed and light the light,
I’ll arrive late tonight,
Blackbird, bye, bye.

Pack up all my cares and woes,
Here I go, singing low,
Bye, bye, blackbird.
Where somebody waits for me,
Sugar’s sweet, so is he,
Bye, bye, bye, bye, blackbird.

I said, no one here can love and understand me,
Oh, what hard luck stories they all hand me.

So, make my bed and light the light,
I’ll arrive late tonight,
Blackbird, bye, bye.
Make my bed and light the light,
I’ll arrive late tonight,
Blackbird,
I said blackbird,
I said blackbird,
Oh, blackbird, bye, bye.

c – 1926 Henderson -Dixon

Wake Up! Smell Coffee! Pay Overdue Internet Bill!!

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Nothing quite like that gentle reminder from your Internet provider that your bill might be a little bit overdue… (i.e., they interrupt your service at 8 a.m. on the dot…)

You know, it isn’t actually my fault.

For years — literally — my bill was always due on the first of the month. And then, like, 2 months ago, I noticed that the due date had been randomly changed to the 23rd of the month — and they never officially told me this!! Or explained why!!

Of course, they might have told me this and explained why. I never actually read the bill. I just pay it on the first and throw the bill away.

When they changed my due date, I decided to ignore it and keep paying it on the first. This morning, they decided to stop ignoring the fact that I was ignoring them, and they introduced me to this concept of: pay your bill or we’re cutting you off.

So, anyway.  They sort of put a crimp in the joy of my first cup of coffee of the morning while I skim over email — noticing there was a new Red Hand Files newsletter from Nick Cave in there!! Yay! And when I went to click on it and read it — Ooops! Right at that precise moment it became 8 a.m. and then no Internet connection.

Aaaaaach. Fuck you fuck you fuck you.

Of course, their “fuck you” to me carried more weight.

So I called them and conversed with the robot and paid my fucking bill.

And here I now am. Doing laundry. Drinking coffee. Once again, beginning my day.

My cough seemed to get worse during the night, not better. So I didn’t sleep too great. When I finally did get some decent sleep, I overslept and then slept in until 6:30 am. But here’s hoping I will finally kick this stupid cold today.

Okay.

Yesterday was very interesting indeed!

I went to a gas station about 15 miles from here because they had a really great price on gas yesterday. (No, I didn’t drive 15 miles out of my way and use all that gas just to save on gas; it was on the way into town where I buy my groceries.)

It was evening already — dark out. That time that I actually find a little magical at a gas station in the middle of nowhere — all those lights and very few people anywhere around. Well, this lady who’s putting gas in her own car, looks over at me. And then looks at me again. And finally calls out to me: “Do you live in Crazeysburg?”

Me, astounded that anyone on Earth is actually speaking to me, gets very excited and says, “Yes, I do!”

It turns out that she’s my neighbor — she lives one house away from me. And she loves my new car! So she didn’t really recognize me at all, she recognized the car. And so we talked at length about “the car.”

And actually, an elderly couple was coming out of the dollar store, back before I went to NY, and they stopped in the parking lot and stared sort of spellbound at my grown-up, molten lava-colored Honda Civic, and said, “That’s a beautiful car.”

And in Rhinebeck, Sandra’s husband also really loved my new car. In fact, so did my mom — that fateful day when I took that trip to the cornfields of Hell and back and then finally hooked up with her. In a gas station in a tiny town called Clarksburg, where the first words out of her mouth were, “You have a new car!! You didn’t tell me! I’ve been driving all over for a fucking hour, looking for a white Honda Fit!”

Yeah, well. Anyway.

It is so weird to me, that I could own a car that anyone would look at twice, let alone fall in love with at first sight. And to have it be a car that I don’t actually emotionally connect to. I’m gracious, and say “thank you”, and all that. But somewhere deep inside, I’m usually thinking: you should see the car I really wanna buy…

But onward! It was kind of cool speaking to an actual neighbor (whose name was Angie). And now I know that everyone is noticing my new car (all 14 of the people who live around here). (And they’re probably wondering: How come she has that spiffy new car and the roof of her barn is still a complete wreck?! Where is her sense of home-owning priorities?)

Well, you know what Shakespeare said. Some are born with great cars, some achieve great cars, and others have great cars thrust upon them by the Honda dealership even though they were happy with their little Honda Fits and the roofs of their barns are still a complete wreck.

Nick Cave’s Red Hand Files newsletter today was really beautiful. About saying goodbye. And oddly enough, while I was meditating this morning, the man I wrote about recently  — the older married guy with cancer that I fell in love with who changed my life and then died — his essence came to me while I was meditating and he was saying something about me needing to let him go.

Naturally, I immediately blocked that. That’s my fallback position whenever anyone anywhere, living or dead, suggests something to me that would be in my best interests but that I have no desire whatsoever to accept, to acknowledge, or to even listen to.  (I’m making a joke of it but it actually isn’t funny.)

Then I did that Inner Being journaling thing right after the meditation, and there he was again — it was all about me needing to let that guy go. But it supposedly wasn’t about “saying goodbye,” it was about me evolving and expanding past where I am now and who I am now and to be really joyful about it, because spirits are eternal and that guy’s spirit isn’t actually going anywhere; you know, he’ll be there forever, but that I need to sort of redefine myself now and move into my future, and not think so much about someone who has moved on to the next realm.

So I said: okay, I will — think about it really seriously.

And then I put on my less churlish, grown-up self and reluctantly said, “Okay, I will.” And that twinge, you know — of goodbye. That I actually really have to do this and how much it sucks, even though my future is evolving into something really wonderful. And then that Red Hand Files letter being all about goodbyes. It was really bittersweet. Very beautiful.

All right. Speaking of Instagram! Which I was! I was inwardly saying that while there are remarkably fewer photos getting posted to Instagram re: the Nick Cave Conversations now (and I mean from, like, 20 down to like maybe three), Chicago looked like another great show. And tonight is Minneapolis! A town I don’t think I’ve ever been to. I’m not 100% positive about that. I might have passed through it at some point in my distant past. But what matters is that I won’t be there tonight! (I don’t mean that to sound like I’m excited to not be seeing Nick Cave tonight. I mean that it doesn’t matter whether or not I’ve ever been to Minneapolis before. Being there tonight would be the important thing, you know. Anyway.)

There is also a brand new Instagram account for my play Tell My Bones. I’m not a huge social media person. So I’m not really sure how you find it. I think maybe you just go to Instagram and look for tellmybones . And then, of course, follow it.

The website has still not launched but it will soon. (I’m guessing that you can guess what the URL will be…) I don’t handle any of that side of the marketing or publicity, etc., and it is so cool to just get alerts that all this stuff is happening! That all I’m in charge of is writing the play.

Okay, on that note — I gotta go write the play! (Well, that and finish doing the laundry.)

Thanks for visiting, guys. Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world. All other things in my heart considered, I’m doing okay with tomorrow being the anniversary of Tom Petty’s death. I’m just moving on in all kinds of ways here, aren’t I? But I do leave you with this, “In the Dark of the Sun,” from their 1991 album Into the Great Wide Open. Okay. I love you guys. See ya.

“In the Dark of the Sun”

In the dark of the sun will you save me a place?
Give me hope, give me comfort, get me to
A better place?
I saw you sail across a river
Underneath Orion’s sword
In your eyes there was a freedom
I had never known before

Hey, yeah, yeah, in the dark of the sun
We will stand together
Yeah we will stand as one in the dark of the sun

Past my days of great confusion
Past my days of wondering why
Will I sail into the heavens
Constellations in my eyes?

Hey, yeah, yeah, in the dark of the sun
We will stand together
Yeah we will stand as one in the dark of the sun

c – 1991 Tom Petty

Yeah, Well. Now It’s All About Work…

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I feel like I need a vacation just from having been away for 8 days… plus catching that darn cold. But, alas. It’s not to be.

I know I’ve said this before, but I honestly can’t even imagine what a vacation would feel like, or where I would even go.

It, of course, has come to my attention that the first full-length staged reading of Tell My Bones will be happening in NYC directly before I’m supposed to oversee my first Writers Retreat at Villa Monte Malbe, so that’s interesting, right?

Not that it can’t be done. It certainly can. I’m mostly just concerned about what will likely be my intensely frazzled frame of mind. Going back to NYC, dealing with the rehearsals, then the actual reading and all that that will entail, then fly off to Italy, go deep into Perugia, all by myself, where I don’t speak the language (even though I study it every single darn day– the only way I will be any good at Italian is if everyone there just gives me written quizzes and doesn’t attempt to actually converse with me), then attempt to communicate with the staff at the retreat– the kitchen staff, housekeeping , none of whom, I’ve been assured, speak English; and then try to help about 15-20 writers that I won’t have met before have some sort of magical relaxing creative ethereal sort of experience.

You know, it’s always really important to me that when other writers work with me — either in a collaborative way, or they hire me to be their editor, or they come to me as a writing student — I always want the other person to find something truly expansive in that experience. Help people approach their writing in an empowering way, or maybe in a way that helps them understand themselves better as someone gifted and born to write. That type of thing. It matters a lot to me.  I would rather not be out of my fucking mind while I’m trying to do that.

I guess we’ll see.

More wonderful photos out of Canada last night! This time, Toronto. Although I don’t think anything is going to compare with that theater in Montreal. (I’m speaking about the Conversations with Nick Cave, in case you’re new here and wondering what the fuck I’m suddenly talking about.)

Next he will be in Chicago — a mere 45 minutes from Crazeysburg!! (By plane, that is. ) I really like Chicago. I have some wonderful memories from the old historic Palmer House Hotel there!! And their Art Institute. I wish I were going…

Anyway. I’m gonna scoot here and get to work.  I’m kinda hoping the Universe has something figured out for me because, left to my own devices, all I manage to do is work too much. Oh, and a web site for Tell My Bones will be forthcoming in the very near future, gang! Meanwhile, please follow the new facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/tellmybones/

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Okay. Thanks for visiting, gang!! Have a super Sunday, wherever you are in the world!! I leave you with this true gem from Tom Petty’s Highway Companion solo album, “Square One.” I think he wrote it about himself & Dana, but then I think he wrote everything about Dana… She was his angel. Okay. I love you guys. See ya.

“Square One”

Had to find some higher ground.
Had some fear to get around.
You can’t say what you don’t know.
Later on won’t work no more.

Last time through I hid my tracks.
So well I could not get back.
Yeah my way was hard to find.
Can’t sell your soul for peace of mind.

[Chorus:]
Square one, my slate is clear.
Rest your head on me my dear.
It took a world of trouble, took a world of tears.
It took a long time to get back here.

Tried so hard to stand alone.
Struggled to see past my nose.
Always had more dogs than bones.
I could never wear those clothes.

It’s a dark victory.
You won and you are so lost.
Told us you were satisfied, but it never came across

Square one, my slate is clear.
Rest your head on me my dear.
It took a world of trouble, took a world of tears.
It took a long time to get back here.
c – 2006 Tom Petty