Tag Archives: playwright

Yeah, I Know. I’m Immature…

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Sometimes I just can’t resist, gang.

“Playtime in Pussyland!!” I just wish. But no, this pussy always has to work.

Okay.

Today has all the earmarks of being annoying. I’m already doing the laundry. I have to wash my hideous hair, then shave my legs, all that. Be indescribably presentable, even though I am always here by myself. Then I have to VOTE because it’s election day here in these fine United States. Then I have to drive 25 miles to the Honda Dealership to get my permanent plates, because my temporary tags expired two weeks ago and they neglected to tell me.  After that, I have to drive another 10 miles in a different direction and buy groceries because I’m down to one tomato, some arugula, a protein bar, and a bunch of dark chocolate-covered espresso beans. I have to do yoga, of course. And I have to vacuum — in the colder months, I have to vacuum all the time because the windows are no longer open and the accumulation of cat hair gets unbearable and I am actually allergic to cats (hence my dependency on Flonase for all my breathing needs).

And already, I can feel a new segment for In the Shadow of Narcissa creeping in at the edges of my brain, and daily, I get more and more intimations for Letter #5 (“Hymn to the Dark”) for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse (the section I began writing last week or something like that and then deleted because it felt too plebeian.) Neither of these can I pay attention to right now because I must complete the revised ending for Tell My Bones.

I hate when I have all these niggly little things to do in one day because it keeps me from being able to sit at my desk and focus for uninterrupted chunks of time. The actual “writing” might take only 2 or 3 hours, but there’s tons of hours before that where the words are trying to fall into place. So when I’m running hither & yon, my brain gets jumbled and time gets wasted.

Oh, and here at 9:30am, one of my ex-husbands is calling to chat. He lives in Seattle now and always gets up in time for the stock market to open on the East Coast. Today, he’s calling for our annual “Thanksgiving” chat. (We always chat around every imaginable holiday — yes, even the Chinese New Year because he happens to be Chinese. From Singapore, originally.) Well, I love chatting with him, so that’s not annoying or anything. He always makes me laugh. And we never chat for long because I guess the stock market needs a constant sort of “looking at”. But it’s just, you know. Another thing going on today.

Well, on another note.

Apparently Helen LaFrance’s 100th birthday was a huge & happy success. Wanda is going to be sending me photos from the celebration, which I will then have posted to the Tell My Bones web site. Plus, there are also some large Helen LaFrance murals in several of the churches in Mayfield, Kentucky, that people there are restoring. So donations can be made to that (in the event you would want to contribute) and I will try to have some sort of link for that on the TMB web site, too. Although, for tax reasons, I’m not entirely sure how to do that. But anyway. It’s a project that is underway. I believe the murals are 40 or 50 years old now.

Well, the remaining leaves on my maple tree are turning that golden-yellow color. It’s usually December before the leaves really fall off the tree — in one big sort of swoop, down they all go.  Some day, I’ll have to remember to take a photo of how huge this tree is. It is easily twice as tall as my house. It’s just huge and has, as you can imagine, tons of leaves.

I just love this tree, though. It means so much to me. And early this morning, as I sat on the side of the bed, with my cup of coffee, looking out the window, I noticed the leaves were truly changing now and it made me wistful. (All the other trees in town change their leaves long before my silver maple does.) But it also made me excited for spring to come again. And for the leaves to return.

I will only say, briefly — because I do not like to dwell — but when “the man” was still alive and we would lie on my bed in the dark. Well. It was the height of summer and so all the windows and the blinds were open. And the tree shielded us from everything. It was just beautiful. We could do whatever we wanted and it wasn’t as if anyone could see in. The tree is just massive. All those leaves made everything so private. That summer was just so lovely.

One night, in particular, will stay with me forever — and I try not to cry when I think about it, yet I do think about it because it was so monumental to me. It was like one of those moments in time that you feel  as if it’s all you will ever really need — you know? You can die after you have that moment. But of course, you don’t die. Life goes on, which is why you remember it and try not to cry.  But we were lying across my bed, naked, staring out the window at the night. He was lying on top of me, we weren’t doing anything, just sort of lying there, looking out. The night was so still & beautiful & quiet. The streetlight was coming in the through the leaves on the tree. It was dark in my room. We were listening to the live version of “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” by Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers — the best summer song they ever did, ever. And suddenly here comes the freight train. Just barreling through.

It was the most amazing moment. I begged him at that moment to never, ever leave me. And I meant it with all my heart, even though we already knew he was going to die. (Plus, he was married, for god’s sake. Happily married. If he weren’t dying, he wouldn’t have even been there to begin with.)

However. It was too poignant for words. And he did die. At home with his wife — in their bed, whatever that looked like. And a whole other summer came and went since then.

But my tree — you know, it shares my memories. It truly does.

And for some reason, I’ve stopped wearing my summer PJs, and instead of moving on to my winter PJs, I’ve gone in the other direction and started wearing a little black chemise to bed. I’m not sure what’s come over me. It means I have to crank up the heat! Because it really is getting cold at night out there — down into the 30s and even into the 20s Fahrenheit.  A chemise is not the thing to be wearing right now. Apparently, on some level, I still cannot let the summer go.

So, sitting there early this morning, on the side of the bed, with my cup of coffee, looking out the window and wearing a little black chemise… I did indeed see that the leaves were truly changing and that winter is going to be right around the corner here, any day. And I’m gonna have to get into those winter PJs or my heating bill will be a fortune!

I’m hoping my birth mom will come back in early December and help me decorate the house for Christmas. Last year was supposed to be my first “happy Christmas” in my new house, but I was grieving. This year, should be lots better.

Okay!! Gotta go. Phone will be ringing here soon. Thanks for visiting, gang. Have a terrific Tuesday wherever you are in the world. I leave you with the obvious, even though I haven’t played it in a while. (This is the best version of the song, ever. And now has more memories than my heart can contain.) I love you guys. See ya!

“Mary Jane’s Last Dance”

She grew up in an Indiana town
Had a good-lookin’ mama who never was around
But she grew up tall and she grew up right
With them Indiana boys on them Indiana nights

Well, she moved down here at the age of eighteen
She blew the boys away, was more than they’d seen
I was introduced and we both started groovin’
She said, “I dig you baby, but I got to keep movin’ on
Keep movin’ on”

Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again

Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told
You never slow down, you never grow old
I’m tired of screwin’ up, tired of going down
Tired of myself, tired of this town

Oh, my my, oh, hell yes
Honey, put on that party dress
Buy me a drink, sing me a song
Take me as I come ’cause I can’t stay long

Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again

There’s pigeons down on Market Square
She’s standin’ in her underwear
Lookin’ down from a hotel room
Nightfall will be comin’ soon

Oh, my my, oh, hell yes.
You got to put on that party dress
It was too cold to cry when I woke up alone
I hit my last number and walked to the road

Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain
I feel summer creepin’ in and I’m tired of this town again

c – 1993 Tom Petty

“best friends, collaborators, and business partners”

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This morning, I was thinking about the concept of “best friend.”

I was thinking of it because Keanu Reeves has a “best friend” — the coolest woman, ever.  She’s an artist. I can’t remember her name now, but she’s absolutely totally interesting. There is an amazingly powerful PR campaign out there in the world, strongly discouraging us from thinking that the two are dating. Instead, they are “best friends, collaborators, and business partners.” (They were all over Instagram yesterday, too, because of that art museum gala fashion fundraiser thing in Los Angeles on Saturday.)

And they always look indescribably happy when they are out & about together, which seems to be all the time. And they are always holding hands and stuff.

They do look extremely happy and they are just intensely interesting looking people. And I was thinking this morning how it is infinitely more appealing to be best friends, collaborators and business partners with someone, than to be “dating.”

(I hate dating. I am not a “dater.” I am not someone who has ever gone out on “dates.” If I’m out to dinner with you, you’re either my best friend, collaborator and/or business partner, or we’re planning on having sex after we eat, or you’ve called me on the phone and I got the distinct impression we were going to move in together and get married, so I agreed to meet you for dinner first.) (That is my way of explaining that when Wayne and I were introduced by mutual friends at a Christmas party in Brooklyn Heights in 1991, I had the distinct impression he and I were going to get married. I came to this impression not because I felt like he and I would fall in love, but because of the fact that, in those first few moments that we were speaking to each other, he mentioned Emmylou Harris and Patti Smith in the same sentence — two of the most profound female influences on my life as a songwriter to that point (and he didn’t know that yet). So when he took down my phone number, and then called me extremely late one night and asked me out on a date, non-dater that I was, I still said okay. By summer, we were living together; by the following spring, we were married.) (Perhaps you can see why I avoid dating; the commitment is just huge.)

Anyway, I digress!! I was lying in bed in the dark this morning, thinking about the concept of “best friend,” and then it occurred to me that I had missed the 20th anniversary of the death of my best friend in the world, Paul — back on October 22nd.

I don’t think this is a bad thing. I never, ever forget his birthday, which means more to me than the day he died. But back on October 22nd, a couple of weeks ago, I kept wondering why the date meant something to me; why was it sticking out in my mind all day? October 20th was Tom Petty’s birthday.  October 23rd was the anniversary of Bunny’s death (one of my sweet cats). But why would October 22nd mean anything?

But this morning in the dark, I finally remembered.  And it was hard to believe that it had really been 20 years.  The day he died was a gorgeous fall day in Manhattan. I had been working all day in my business partner’s apartment — she lived 20 blocks from me, a straight shot down Riverside Drive, so I always walked to her apartment and back. And that day was so beautiful that, after work, I decided to walk home through Riverside Park, along the Hudson River.

At one point, I stopped and just looked out at the river and I couldn’t believe how much profound joy I felt, a sense of peace I had never felt before. Life seemed unspeakably beautiful; New York City  itself filled me with so much joy, especially on that gorgeous October day.

And then, a couple of hours later, Paul’s mom called me from the nursing  home and told me that Paul had died.

I know the news pierced me and I cried, but mostly I recalled the feeling I’d had walking along the river in Riverside Park, and I knew then that had been Paul saying goodbye to me. He always loved visiting me in NYC; equally in my days of poverty and in my days of success.

So when I think of Paul’s actual death, I think of that gorgeous day and that profound sense of peace and joy. However, the 7 years it took him to die (from AIDS), were a whole other story. I nearly lost my mind with grief over what he was going through and what was going to lie ahead for me — the rest of my life without a best friend. I drank and smoked really heavily that whole time, hardly ate,  lost a ton of weight. Stopped the songwriting totally, abruptly broke up the band. Went into my room and started writing intense erotic fiction.

By the time he died, he and I had already worked it through as best we could: he was leaving and I was going to be left behind and I was going to survive somehow.

I did, of course. And even though Peitor comes close to being that type of best friend for me over the course of all these years, it is not the same. Peitor and I met as adults in NYC; we were both already in the music business, dealing with the stress of daily “life in NYC” in a huge way. Whereas Paul and I had met at 17, in high school in Ohio — doing high school plays (he designed and built all the sets and then went on to do that as a career in professional theater and in the movies); all of our dreams were still ahead of us. Everything was brand new. That part of life doesn’t come again. (Not that it should — a lot of what was brand new at age 17 truly sucked.)

This morning, while it struck me as sort of profound that I had missed the 20th anniversary of my best friend’s death, it nevertheless seemed extremely cool to me that Keanu has such an interesting “best friend, collaborator and business partner.” If you have to be famous and wear labels, those labels are so much more life-affirming than the label of “dating.” True best friends are more valuable than anything else in the whole world.

Okay. So here we are. Monday. I seriously need to tackle this ending of Tell My Bones. A lot of intense plot points have to entwine, explode and yet, ultimately, be joyful. So I’m gonna get back at it. (And likely eat a lot of dark chocolate — I do that when the mind gets too intense even for coffee!)

I hope you have a really wonderful day out there, wherever you are in the world. And if your best friend is still here with you in the physical, well, I don’t know — just enjoy the heck out of yourselves!

I’m still in Art Garfunkel’s Angel Clare mode around here. I leave you with another truly lovely song, but it’s one that used to just break my heart when I was a young girl. I identified with it way too much. But it is still beautiful. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys! See ya!

“Mary Was An Only Child”

Mary was an only child,
Nobody held her, nobody smiled.
She was born in a trailer, wretched and poor,
And she shone like a gem in a five and dime store.

Mary had no friends at all,
Just famous faces pinned to the wall.
All of them watched her, none of them saw
That she shone like a gem in a five and dime store.

And if you watch the stars at night,
And find them shining equally bright,
You might have seen Jesus and not have known what you saw.
Who would notice a gem in a five and dime store?

c – 1973 Albert Hammond, Mike Hazlewood

Everything is just so much better!

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I’m feeling lots better today. I’m not 100% yet, though. For some reason, any time I try to eat something, I feel like I’m going to throw it right back up. But then I don’t.

But I did get a lot of sleep, so that felt great.

I’ve also made incredible progress on the revisions of the play. Still have some really challenging segments left— but I am almost at the end of the play, and the stuff that I’ve done over the last couple days, I’m just really, really happy with. So it is almost done.

Speaking of the play and, therefore of Helen… I listened to Wanda’s radio interview that announced Helen’s 100th birthday celebration at the church in Mayfield— she talked a bit about the play and the DJ said that Kevin Connell has written it — which I found amusing because I think people still just naturally assume that when they see a man’s name, then the man did everything. And the DJ doesn’t seem to have seen my name at all. (Kevin is the director. We are both mentioned on the splash page of the website.)

In the old days, that would have made me nuts, but nowadays, it matters more to me that the play at least gets mentioned — and they got the name of the play correct! (Wanda got my name wrong — she’s known me 7 years already and still thinks my name is Mary Jane. You’d be surprised just how many people think my name is Mary Jane.)

Anyway. Helen had her birthday celebration today. I couldn’t attend — it’s a 12 hour drive from here. But we did send flowers. I hope it was an incredible time for everybody involved.

For no reason whatsoever, here’s a photo Peitor sent me of himself and his husband, Graham, playing Clue at their dining room table in West Hollywood on Halloween!! I wish I could have been there!! It’s been almost a year since I was with Peitor in LA.

Peitor is on our right and Graham, on the left!

I love playing Clue, by the way. It’s actually the only board game I like.  I’m not a big game player. (I guess you could take that a few ways! And they’d all be true…)

Okay, as much as I love summer and all that, tomorrow is my favorite day of the year — when we set our clocks back and get an extra hour of darkness in the morning!! I get up so early as it is that it’s kind of awesome to have yet another hour of darkness to lay in bed and drink coffee!!! And contemplate my Muse. Yay!!

Well I might be mistaken, but it did seem that by late yesterday, the free downloading of Ribbon of Darkness had ceased. I do appreciate that people wanted to read that. But still. And now it’s here on the site, so you can read it for free anyway.  I can’t believe it’s been 30 years since I met my real dad, and 20 years now since he died, at the age of 54. As difficult as all that stuff was back then, I’m glad I have that story to preserve my own memories, if nothing else.

All righty! I’m gonna study my Italian now. Enjoy what’s left of Saturday wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.

Ciao!!!

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