Tag Archives: re-writing

Yes! Onward!

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Gang, I hope you had a happy 4th (if you live State-side, that is)!

As I posted yesterday, around these parts – Crazeysburg, specifically – we’re having our 4th on the 5th. Which, of course, irritates me because I’m long past the holiday mood and am headlong into a regular day here.

However, I only live one block from where all the merriment will ensue soon, so I’m guessing I will be forced to at least spiritually participate, since all my windows are open.

Anyway. As grumbley as I am about it not happening on the actual 4th, I know I will enjoy the fireworks tonight because I have that clear view of them from my kitchen porch.

Speaking of the kitchen porch, and thus speaking indirectly of the spider who lives out there and builds those extensive webs (see some other post from the other day, only God knows which one). Last evening, I went out to the porch to water the flowers and I saw a little beetle stuck in one of the webs.  He was perfectly alive and the spider hadn’t done anything about it.

This happens from time to time, and when it does, I carefully remove the insect from the web and set it free.  I did this to the beetle and his little legs grabbed onto my finger and he did not want to let go.

I tried to set him down in the grass and send him on his merry beetle way, because I am a gal who has things to do & people to see! But he just wanted to stay put on my hand and not go anywhere. I even tried scooting him on to a blade of grass, to use it as a transport to the actual lawn, but he would have none of it. He kept avoiding the blade of grass and staying put on my hand. And the bottoms of his feet were kind of sticky or something like that. I mean, I could feel that he had a real hold on me and wasn’t going to budge.

It was actually quite endearing. But I really did have to go back inside and, yes, go sit back down at my desk, so I finally was able to move him down onto the grass. And for several minutes afterward, I could still feel the pressure of his little feet on my hand.

It was so cool. But then I wiped down all the old webs to try to keep that from happening again. If the spider is still around, I know he had new ones back in place by sundown. I haven’t actually checked yet.

But, speaking of my desk…

So, yes, as I posted yesterday, during the night on Wednesday, all the final edits for Blessed By Light finally arrived and I was prepared for yesterday to just be a final read-through of the novel so that I could sign off on it in my head and focus on the play.

I had a brief email exchange yesterday morning regarding my revisions for Chapters 1 & 2, and while the editor felt they were working just fine, I in fact did more revisions to those chapters yesterday, along with minor revisions on chapters 3, 4, 5 & 6! And I know I am going to do some tweaking to Chapters 7 & 8 today.

But that really is going to be it. From Chapter 9 onward, the novel moves into a different tone, because the 2 main characters are more securely into their relationship, so the tone changes.   But I just wanted elements of that tone to be in there from the beginning of Chapter 1, so that’s what I worked on all day yesterday. For about 10 hours.

I knew there weren’t going to be any fireworks yesterday, or anything, so it didn’t really feel like a holiday to me anyway.

Still, I did acutely notice that my life is so different nowadays from what it was in NYC. It didn’t matter which holiday it was back then, Wayne & I always cooked and baked and bought a ton of booze and fine wine and had an apartment full of noisy, happy people. Always. That’s just how we were.

And I still have all the stuff that goes along with cooking and baking for tons of people – I have a really good-sized kitchen here in the depths of Crazeysburg. I have lots of cupboards, tons of storage.  And every single nook & cranny is full of things made for cooking and baking and God knows I have a ton of dishes, too.

So, I couldn’t help but be reminded of all that, as I went down to the kitchen for my 4th of July dinner last night, and it was an orange, 3 pieces of broccoli,  and one of those “green” smoothies that’s full of all sorts of things you don’t want.

But I’m actually okay with it. Things change. I am definitely someone who needs change.  When I left NYC, aside from an impending divorce, I was ready to leave. NYC was morphing into something I didn’t really enjoy anymore.

I was on the phone with my Uncle yesterday and he kept laughing about it, you know: “What is going on with you? Why are you living there? Why are you staying there? It makes no sense! Did they take your passport? Are you unable to get out?”

But I’m really, really happy here, for the first time ever in my life. I cannot explain it. And loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I had to beg the realtor to show me this house. I had to beg two realtors, in fact. I brought it up 5 times.

ME: “I want to go out to Muskingum County and at least look at that house.”

THEM: “No you don’t.”

ME: “Why??!! It sounds perfect for me!”

THEM: “It’s not. It’s a mess of a house. Been on the market almost 2 years.”

But when I finally persuaded a realtor to take me through it, she couldn’t believe how much work had been done to the inside of the house in the 2 years it had been languishing on the market.

Anyway. It was the perfect house for me. And I bought it. And I’m ridiculously happy here, even though everyone who knows me – from my wee bonny girlhood days in Cleveland, onward – equates me with an intensely urban environment.

But it is a great house for writing in. It’s so incredibly quiet here.

Okay, well! I see there is a new Red Hand Files newsletter from Nick Cave in my inbox, gang! So I think I will close this and read that and then get back to work around here!!

Oh, one other thing that happened yesterday – how easy Amazon makes my world!

I was typing away, and a little thing popped up in the bottom corner of my laptop screen. It was Amazon, alerting me that I might want to buy White Lunar right away, because it was on sale! (White Lunar is a soundtrack collection by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis from a number of years ago.)

Amazon usually tells me to buy things I already own, but I don’t actually own this CD collection yet. Truthfully, I don’t know that I was actually planning to own it, although I do own another one of their soundtrack CDs that I really love.  I can’t remember now which one it is, but it’s that Depression-era country sounding type thing. I really love it.

So I just clicked a little button and the entire purchase was completely done and I just went right on typing revisions of the novel.

And that is one reason why I have so much fucking music in this house! It’s so darn easy!

Okay, gang. I leave you with this version of Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side as performed  by a now-defunct Australian band, Yves Klein Blue.

I was turned onto this cover of the song yesterday morning, on the a1000mistakes blog site out of Australia, and I just love it!! Enjoy your Friday wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!

Happy Independence Day!!

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Do all kinds of independent things today, gang, okay??!!

I am not a jingoist kind of gal, or anything, so this is my only annual homage to the 4th of July:

The smallest coffee cup in my house that is not meant for espresso!

The only good thing about this coffee cup is that it is so small, I have to constantly go back down to the kitchen to refill it. So it’s a good “exercise mug”!! (It actually doesn’t look as small as it really is from this angle.)

You’ll note in the background there – my tickets to see Nick Cave in NYC! I decided the only way I would ever remember to bring them with me was to have them in plain sight every single solitary day for something like 4 or 5 months.

Speaking of Nick Cave (and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think I’m always speaking about Nick Cave…), I had a dream about him last night that was so strange.  He sent me 2 emails and inside each email was a window – an actual window like you would have in your house. And each window was in the shape of Australia. (Don’t ask me how actual windows can arrive in an email.)

The dream was strange enough to wake me up at around 3am and try to figure out what the heck it could mean. (I have no clue.)

I don’t dream about Nick Cave often, but when I do, there is always that duplicate thing happening – meaning 2 of the same thing. (Oh, and when I dream about him, he’s always wearing a white shirt and a black suit.) (I know, clearly, my issues with his suits extend to unfathomable psychological depths.) (And when I dream about other people, I never notice what they’re wearing at all, and I doubt that if I dream of them more than once, they’re wearing the very same thing every single time.)

Anyway. In dreams, baby!!!

Well, lest you think anything I ever plan to do on any given day ever pans out….

No! The final edits for Blessed By Light did not arrive until very late last night, when I was already asleep. So I was not able to do that final read-through of the novel yesterday. I will likely do it today, even though it’s a holiday.

I did do a bunch of stuff with the new laptop yesterday, though, so that is finally up and completely running.  It has great speakers! I’m still not using it as my main computer, though, because the novel is in a WORD Add-in app that I’m not going to transfer to the new laptop.

Even though those novel-writing apps are cool to use, I have found that as soon as I need to send a chapter, or the whole book, to someone, I have to reformat the whole darn thing or nobody can read it correctly because the file arrives weirdly at their end.

So that app’s going, but everything else transferred and I am now a Brave New Girl with a fully updated laptop.

The other thing I wasted a ridiculous amount of time on last evening, was I tried to join a new dating site.  One of those sites that is strictly for bisexuals or bi-curious’s looking to hookup, and has nothing whatsoever to do with the L word. (No!! Not lesbian! I am indeed speaking of love right now, and about how I don’t actually want it.)

Bi-curious, I have found, is generally a married woman who’s cheating her brains out, or a married woman whose husband has an agenda that he deeply wishes you to participate in.

True bisexuals are harder to find than you would think, so I’m not too terrifically picky. However, I did have the most ridiculously difficult time setting up my little profile! It kept wanting to use my private email address as my user name!!

You can probably readily see why I might shy away from a thing like that!

But also, it kept telling me that I couldn’t use my private email address as my user name!! And then wouldn’t let me change it. And I couldn’t set up my entire profile without changing that user name problem.

Even so, as I was attempting to set up my profile,  you know, realizing that I’m looking for a bisexual gal who is a vegetarian, doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, doesn’t do drugs, and wants NSA hookups with no LTR — you know. I mean, there are about 14 people who live out here in the Hinterlands. And I seriously know in my bones that none of them are gonna fit this description. Plus, I know I only have about 5 minutes of free time every 3 weeks.

I felt completely confident that I was setting myself up to fail. However, I kept trying to make the darn thing work because I was just in that insistent sort of mood. You know: I wanted a girl! Who doesn’t drink or smoke or get high or eat animals or want to spend more than 5  minutes with me every 3 weeks!!

Finally , I broke down and started a Tech Help ticket to try to make my private email address as my user name go away. And immediately they replied, letting me know that they would look into my problem within 48 hours…

Well, in 48 hours, god knows I won’t be thinking about dating anybody anymore because I’ll be up to my eyeballs in revisions of my play. So that was an evening well spent!

Oh, and then I discovered that the fireworks around here this year won’t be until tomorrow. Well, that totally sucks because I really only appreciate 4th of July fireworks on the 4th of July. By tomorrow, my mind will be on a whole new path, even though fireworks will be filling the sky in plain view of my kitchen porch. (They do that weird scheduling thing because all the little towns around here try not to conflict with other towns’ fireworks, including the event in the main city, which draws millions of people.)

Well, anyway. Onward, gang!! It’ll still be a really nice Independence Day for me!

Okay.

I leave you with this fun video from the Another Man Magazine site in the UK. The band is Wild Daughter and the song is “Mr G.”  It’s highly stylized gay fetish, which is always fun on the 4th of July!

All righty! Have a wonderful day, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys! See ya!

Solar Celestial Insanity!

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How ’bout that solar eclipse yesterday, gang??!!

Wasn’t it cool? I saw it by way of Brian May‘s Instagram feed. (If you’re too young to know who he is, he was the lead guitarist for Queen.) He is very much into celestial occurrences of all kinds and posts incredible footage of stuff that goes on in the heavens while it’s happening.

So that was my experience of the solar eclipse!

Apparently Instagram is now the center of my life here on Earth.  I can take a break from vacuuming the house, sit on the corner of my bed, sweating profusely in the indescribable heat & humidity, and watch a live feed of the solar eclipse in Santiago, Chile, courtesy of Brian May while he pauses an outdoor rehearsal somewhere in preparation for a tour with Queen (Adam Lambert playing the Freddie Mercury role).

Instagram certainly encapsulates the whole fucking world, doesn’t it, gang?!

My other experience of the solar eclipse yesterday was a pronounced intensity in one of my key relationships. That’s all I’m gonna say about that, though. It is sufficient to simply state that everything is back on track & on we go.

Edits for Blessed By Light are still coming in, so I wasn’t able to completely finish that yesterday. I’m hoping that today will be all about reading the novel again from Page 1 and making sure I have all the edits addressed and just see how I feel about the whole book (again).

To me, it feels like an homage to every older man that I have ever loved. And yet I already know for certain that it rubs feminists the wrong way, and I just have to wonder, honestly, why is that?  He’s a man with a mind of his own.  I wonder why that’s so off-putting to some women?

I was talking to my wonderfully other-worldly friend Kara about this the other day, and she said that when it comes to literature, it’s a good thing to have a character that brings out strong feelings in a reader, either way. I liked her take on that so I’m gonna go with that one.

BTW, we had seriously intense weather here yesterday evening. Kara lives about 25 miles from me, but it’s still out here in the Hinterlands, and she texted me this cool photo from out by where she lives:

Storm brewing last evening in the Hinterlands

My dad called me on the phone last evening, in the middle of the torrential downpour with thunder & lighting and tornado sirens going off. And I was discussing with him this situation about the guy in my new novel, and also about how the book has a lot of sex in it but not as much as my readers usually prefer, and that I expect it to sell on a small press in a narrow market, that it’s not the kind of novel that will be a bestseller or anything.

And he said,  “You never know, Marilyn. This book could sell better than you’re thinking; the timing could be right. It could become a cult favorite or something.” And he said this during a torrential downpour, thunder & lighting, tornado sirens screaming outside my open windows, AND this is a man who has always gone to great lengths to assure me that every single thing in my whole entire life is always gonna suck.

So the whole entire conversation was just surreal. It was very nice for him to be on my side, for a change. But it was just surreal.

Anyway. That weather. Wow.

It began with a sudden gust of very high winds around 6pm. Really high winds. It was slamming doors inside my house and blowing stuff around, and outside it was bending trees way over and just very intense. No rain yet, or anything, but very threatening skies as brooding clouds came trampling in.

I was upstairs in my guest room, lowering the windows and across the street from me, on the grassy corner where the train tracks are, a young guy – couldn’t have been more than 17 — long blonde hair, really scraggly facial hair, shirtless, wiry & muscular, a couple tattoos on his arms, torn & faded jeans, sneakers.  In short, incredibly cute. He was just standing there, looking up at my enormous maple tree blowing in the wind and then looking at everything all around him, his face an expression of joyful jubilation over just being alive in all that intense, high wind.

He was just standing there, taking it all in, really joyfully. And I fell totally in love with him in that instant, you know? Life.

God, I love boys. And boys in summer, especially.

Okay, well. Since I didn’t get all my edits until very late last night, I spent the day doing laundry, vacuuming, getting the house a little bit in order. So that kinda felt good, even though it was stupidly hot while I was doing all that.

I fell asleep last night in the thunder & lighting and all that wild insanity, and yet awoke really joyfully this morning at 4:53am.

I was awash in all that lovely Eros again and I leave you today with the song I was unexpectedly singing – out loud – when my eyes opened onto the dark & still-rainy morning!

Have a great Wednesday, wherever you are in the world, gang. I love you guys! See ya!

“I Could Have Danced All Night”
(from “My Fair Lady” musical)

Bed! Bed! I couldn’t go to bed!
My head’s too light to try to set it down!
Sleep! Sleep! I couldn’t sleep tonight!
Not for all the jewels in the crown!

I could have danced all night
I could have danced all night
And still have begged for more
I could have spread my wings
And done a thousand things
I’ve never done before

I’ll never know what made it so exciting
Why all at once my heart took flight

I only know when he
Began to dance with me
I could have danced, danced, danced,
All night!

I could have danced all night
I could have danced all night
And still have begged for more
I could have spread my wings
And done a thousand things
I’ve never done before

I’ll never know what made it so exciting
Why all at once my heart took flight

I only know when he
Began to dance with me
I could have danced, danced, danced,
All night!

c – 1956 Frederick Loewe, Alan Jay Lerner

Wow! Thanks, Gang!

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And I am not being at all sarcastic when I say, “Thank you so much for downloading all those eBooks yesterday, for FREE!”

(God knows, I wouldn’t want to be encumbered with all those royalties, or anything, had you chosen to pay cash…)

Of course, I’m just kidding! Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that this same thing happened during the Christmas week last year, when all my eBooks were available as free downloads and the thousands of eBooks that were downloaded for free during that one week made my head spin. It astounds me that so many people still want to read the old erotica, paying or not.

Actually, I do want to take a moment to thank those readers who bought Twilight of the Immortal on Amazon in June! For some unknown reason, that book got a little popular again! I really appreciate that, gang. I love that book.

And there is sex in that book, too, you know.  You needn’t fear that it is 600 pages of no sex. There is, indeed, sex in it. Just not graphic erotica. Nothing explicit. Plus, it’s a lot of girl/girl sex, and a little bit of guy/guy sex.  (Mostly Rudolph Valentino getting a blowjob from a young Mexican guy – a prostitute who works out of a call house off Sunset Boulevard.) (Okay, I just gave that away! But you still might want to read it for yourself and experience the exquisiteness of my use of language!)

(And for those readers who took issue with my insistence that Rudolph Valentino was bisexual – there is a great book from several years ago, a biography of Samuel Steward titled, Secret Historian, written by Justin Spring, that corroborated what I put in my own book before Secret Historian even came out. Samuel Steward details an episode of oral sex he had with Valentino in a hotel room — in Ohio!! — in July of 1926. A month before Valentino died. I’m not going to go into all those details here, but I will say that Secret Historian is an incredible book, gang, and not just because it mentions this Valentino episode. But because it is ALL about the life and experiences of an incredible sexual renegade (Samuel Steward was also “an intimate friend” of Thornton Wilder’s, among just a ton of other people – Gertrude Stein, etc.)  from the days when gay sex was still very much illegal in America. I highly recommend the book if you’re interested in that kind of secret history.)

Anyway. I digress! Thank you recent purchasers of Twilight of the Immortal. I appreciate it so much.

As well, I appreciate non-purchasing readers of anything I’ve ever written!!

Yesterday’s mail brought me something really unexpected and just so sweet.  Foun Kee, my first husband, sent me a gift for my upcoming birthday, along with a little handwritten note. It really just made my day. It was wrapped in newspaper – the color ad insert from the local grocery store out there (he lives in Seattle), so it was interesting to see what people eat and what they pay for it in Seattle!

Yesterday evening, however, took a very dark and horrible downward turn!

Yes! I decided it was time to tackle the set up of the new laptop. OMG! If you think I used the ‘f’ word a lot just for no reason at all, you should hear what happens when I have 3 solid hours of very good reasons to use it!!

And the darn thing is still not completely set up because I still have to migrate all my files from the old laptop to the new one. Plus it was 90 degrees in here while I was trying to do all that. I was down at the kitchen table, and streaming episodes of Endeavour again, so at least that part had a sort of psychologically calming effect.  But, man, that stuff makes me so nuts.

And it makes me want to hold on to my current laptop as long as I possibly can! But then I remind myself that this happens every single time I get a new laptop and eventually I come to terms with the new one and all harmony is restored to my writing life.

And curiously enough (at least to me, anyway) – on my current laptop, I chose a photo of Tintern Abbey in Wales as the screen background. And on the new laptop, I chose a photo I took myself of Basin Street this past fall — on Halloween, actually:

Basin Street in the early fall.

It’s enormous as the background of my new laptop. And I realized I must be truly happy here, gang, if I want to look at this every time I start my computer…

Okay, I’ve scoured the Internet to try to get a copy of one of the photos taken of Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue onstage at Glastonbury the other day, but I cannot find the exact one I want — which is on Instagram and I can’t get it off of there. But I did find a decent one from the BBC, so allow me to steal it and paste it here!

Related image

You know, being an American girl through and through, I have no real clue who Kylie Minogue is. Obviously I do know that she’s a popular singer from the world beyond America, but I primarily know this because she sang that duet with Nick Cave a million years ago, and then put in a stunning appearance in the back seat of his car in the film 20,000 Days on Earth. Also, there was a really funny episode of The Vicar of Dibley many years ago (all the episodes are funny), about getting Kylie Minogue to perform at their community fair thing. (You can actually watch it here, gang. If you’re not familiar with this old British TV show, it was so fucking funny.) But that is the extent of what I know about Kylie Minogue – except that she & Nick Cave looked incredibly blissed out and happy to be singing together again. (I think they might have done other things together, a million years ago, but don’t quote me on that or anything. I wouldn’t want to have another one of those “Valentino in a hotel room” type of arguments on my hands!)

All righty, gang. I’m gonna get this day underway. I think it’s going to be all about the final editing of Blessed By Light and then finding it in myself to really switch gears and re-direct my focus to revisions on the play, finally. (I know, I keep saying that.)

Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world!  Thanks for visiting, and thank you, again, for downloading all the eBooks. I really do appreciate the continued interest in my earlier stuff.

I leave you with a little peace of heaven. I love Jane Siberry. If you have never seen/heard her perform live (and this specific song, too), you are missing a transcendent experience. She truly sings like an angel – like something right out of heaven. And then of course, I probably don’t have to tell you how KD Lang sings. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys! See ya!

Calling All Angels
Santa Maria, Santa Teresa, Santa Anna, Santa Susannah
Santa Cecilia, Santa Copelia, Santa Domenica, Mary Angelica
Frater Achad, Frater Pietro, Julianus, Petronilla
Santa, Santos, Miroslaw, Vladimir and all the rest
A man is placed upon the steps and a baby cries
High above you can hear the church bells start to ring
And as the heaviness, oh, the heaviness, the body settles in
Somewhere you can hear a mother sing
Then it’s one foot, then the other as you step out on the road
Step out on the road, how much weight, how much?
Then it’s how long and how far and how many times
Oh, before it’s too late?
Calling all angels, calling all angels
Walk me through this one, don’t leave me alone
Calling all angels, calling all angels
We’re tryin’, we’re hopin’ but we’re not sure how
Oh, and every day you gaze upon the sunset with such love and intensity
Why?
It’s ah, it’s almost as if you could only crack the code then you’d finally understand
What this all means
Oh, but if you could, do you think you would trade in all
All the pain and suffering?
Oh, but then you’d miss the beauty of the light upon this earth
And the, and the sweetness of the leaving
Calling all angels, calling all angels
Walk me through this one, don’t leave me alone
Calling all angels, calling all angels
We’re tryin’, we’re hopin’ but we’re not sure how
Calling all angels (calling all angels), calling all angels (calling all angels)
Walk me through this one, don’t leave me alone (walk me through this one, don’t leave me alone)
Calling all angels, calling all angels
We’re tryin’, we’re hopin’, we’re hurtin’, we’re lovin’
We’re cryin’, we’re callin’ ’cause we’re not sure how this goes

 

c – 1991 Jane Siberry

July Is On It’s Way, Gang!

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If you live State-side, then you’re well aware that during this upcoming week, as we celebrate our long-ago decision to not be England, everything pretty much comes to a stop around here and it’s now all about cookouts and kayaking and canoeing and camping and FIREWORKS and bug spray…

Even though I actually love a lot of that stuff, especially camping (I know, I don’t seem like the kind of gal who would like that sort of thing, but I actually do) (and NO, it’s not because I like to have sex in tents, although that is a HUGE part of it), I will more than likely spend a huge amount of this upcoming holiday week working on revisions of the play, since rehearsals begin  in just a few weeks!

I also have a birthday in July, so sometimes July is also all about cake.

Re: camping, loyal readers of this lofty blog, who know my deep and often uncontrollable passion for dishes, will no doubt be in no way nonplussed to learn that my obsession with buying dishes also extends to dishes and cookware made specifically for camping.

It is RIDICULOUS, the amount of Coleman dishes and cookware I own, and I have not actually been camping in, I guess, decades at this point.

Since I’m ostensibly a “New Yorker,” the people I am friends with like to go off to the mountains and stuff, but only to stay in glamorous old mountain  inns and have incredible meals served in dining rooms that have damask table cloths & such. Maybe go on a little hike to take in the splendid vistas, but then go back to the hotel and get a massage.

I used to beg people to go camping with me and everyone was pretty much shocked and horrified to discover that I liked that kind of thing.

The last person I begged to go camping with me was Mikey Rivera, when we were still together and living in the teeming heat of NYC.

ME (super excited by the prospects of being alone in a tent with him, far from the madding crowd of Manhattan):  “Come on, Papi, let’s go up to the mountains and go camping!!”

HIM: “There’s bears up there, Boo.”

And that was the end of that delightful adventure!

Anyway, lots and lots and LOTS of people go camping out here in the Hinterlands. And tons of people go kayaking and canoeing.  Cookouts, bonfires.

I don’t do these kinds of things out here because a.) it seems like I’m always under a deadline for something these days; and b.) none of these folks are vegetarians. Not even close.  And the stranger the animal, the more likely they are to want to eat it.

The stuff that goes on, foodwise out here, can be emotionally debilitating for me, so I kinda steer clear of that.

I will, however, douse myself in bug spray and watch the fireworks from my porch because it has a clear view of the sky over at the ballpark. And I do love fireworks. God knows.

Well, work with Peitor yesterday on the micro-short video script was INTENSE. Man, this little video (8 minutes) is getting intensely complex. It’s too wonderful, really. Because the bottom line is that the premise is absolutely absurd.  Without doubt, completely absurd.

As I’ve said here before, there is very little dialogue in the video.  Perhaps a total of 2 minutes, tops.  And that part is the most absurd section of all.  And yet the entire (wildly brief) thing is, cinematically, an homage to Hitchcock, Bunuel, Bergman, Fellini, and Polanski.

It is just too intense and too fucking funny. And I think that he and I have seen way too many movies for our own good.

Okay!

Brighton did not yield much in the way of Instagram photos of Nick Cave’s Conversation there last night. There was one photo I really loved – I think he was leaving the stage at that point. And there was an interesting photo that Susie Cave posted of a little girl sitting on the edge of the stage.

And now we must find a new reason to go on obsessing, because his Conversations are on hiatus until late August, gang.

I got word last night that the final comments from the editor re: Blessed By Light won’t be arriving in my inbox until Tuesday.  So I seriously have to start focusing on the play. July’s presence in my world is imminent.

But I’m still having trouble disconnecting from one project and launching into revisions of another.

I still have not yet dealt with setting up the new laptop, either.  I’m really not sure what my problem is because now it’s getting sort of extreme — my aversion to doing this, even while I already know I love that new laptop.

Surely, this is not another one of those instances where I keep something that I love at arm’s length from me?? That would just be too easy, gang! There must be some other, less honest way to explain this dilemma with the laptop!

All righty, gang. I’m gonna get more coffee and take a look at the day and decide how I feel about being alive in it! (Pretty good, I think, but that’s just off the top of my head.)

Enjoy your Sunday, wherever you are in the world.  In honor of the upcoming holiday week, I leave you with some songs from my childhood, as put together by Mickey Newbury (but then made famous by Elvis): “American Trilogy.”

I’m guessing all these songs are politically incorrect now, even though one of them was written by a white woman from the North. But anyway. I still love this trilogy. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys! See ya!

Oh I wish I was in the land of cotton
Old times there are not forgotten
Look away, look away, look away Dixieland
Oh I wish I was in Dixie, away, away
In Dixieland I’ll take my stand to live and die in Dixie
Cause Dixieland, that’s where I was born
Early Lord one frosty morning
Look away, look away, look away Dixieland

Glory, glory hallelujah
Glory, glory hallelujah
Glory, glory hallelujah
His truth is marching on

So hush little baby
Don’t you cry
You know your daddy’s bound to die
But all my trials, Lord will soon be over

Trad. Arranged by Mickey Newbury 1971

Good Morning All You Groovy Cats & Kittens!

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I’m feeling lots better today! No new bruises during the night, so I’m just gonna go with that and feel happy!

Before I forget, starting Monday, July 1st, as part of the annual Summer Sale, all the eBook titles that I publish with Smashwords will once again be free to download, in all eBook formats, for the entire month.

There are no new books included in that download. Twilight of the Immortal will be included in the free download, but other than that title, all the others are graphically erotic and not suitable for all readers.

I will post the complete links on Monday.

Okay!!

Only a couple photos out of Brighton last night. I’m guessing it’s another one of those things where people are following the rules and not using their phones. Because there were photos from before & after the actual Conversation with Nick Cave and everyone loved it. They are back to calling him God, btw. I forgot to mention that.

Oh, I also want to follow up on the new Raconteurs album that came out last week, Help Us Stranger. I’ve listened to the whole thing now and I really like it a lot.  Sort of mid-60s-Beatles-esque throughout much of it.  Just a very happy album with really catchy grooves.

I’m still not warming up to the new Stray Cats album, though.  They should have just saturated the fuck out of it with reverb and yet they did not! Of course it could sound better as vinyl, and I’m only listening to it as an MP3, which usually changes the sound a lot. But it’s that lack of that specific sound quality that’s bothering me. Not the songs themselves.

To me, rockabilly isn’t just the rhythm as the overall sound. I don’t care if I can’t understand the words, either. I just really want to hear that noisy reverb chaotic sort of mess, along with that incredible rockabilly rhythm.

With this new Stray Cats record, I can actually understand every single word, so I find that all I’m doing is listening to every single word. And, you know, rockabilly songs are not exactly profound, or anything – I would really just rather feel the overall sensation, and for me, that’s missing.

Other types of music – the kind of songs that God writes, for instance (aka Nick Cave) – if I can’t understand every single solitary word I go insane.

And speaking of words…

Today is Saturday, which means another phone marathon with Peitor in Los Angeles to work on the current micro-short video script.

It’s really amazing to me, gang, how it’s taking shape.

It’s dark & absurd. With the truly absurd part coming in the 5th segment (naturally, my favorite part). There are a total of 6 segments, and the  whole video is under 8 minutes, total. It’s a cross between Ingmar Bergman and Bauhaus photography, although most of it is in color.  (The title of the video is actually in Swedish, with an English subtitle.)

Anyway, it’s super fun, but it is also a heck of a lot of tight brain-focusing and a lot of fast typing, because Peitor starts getting on a roll, forgetting that I’m over here, typing.  Or trying to.

Still no edits/comments from NY on Blessed By Light, but I have to get to work on Tell My Bones, regardless.  Just make myself switch gears however I can. Probably won’t start today, though.  I’m actually kinda really, really worn out over here.

I keep forgetting to mention how amazing the fireflies are out here this summer. Just thousands of them. They are so pretty. Prime viewing time is at about 9:15 pm. They are all over my backyard then.

I just watch from the huge kitchen window. Because the mosquitoes out here are nasty. I can’t set one foot outside in the evening if I’m not covered in bug spray. And I hate being covered in bug spray.

I also have an amazing spider in the upper corner of my kitchen porch. You should see the amount of webs this guy builds, and how quickly he does it. Once they get all raggedy looking, I wipe them all down and get rid of them. But by sunset, he has them all back in place. It’s staggering, really, how quickly he works and how elaborate they are and how much space they take up. And when the sun’s all the way down and it’s truly nighttime, he just sits there in the middle of it all. He’s pretty big. I can see him really easily because there’s a streetlight on the corner across the street.

And a pigeon has built her nest in the rain gutter above my kitchen porch. Yes, the same gutter that I had gotten all tidily repaired last fall because the starlings did so much damage to it by building their nests there. (I won’t even tell you all the damage the starlings have done to the gutters over my back door. And all the various other birds’ nests sprouting out from gutters in other areas of the roof – plus, a ton of tiny little maple trees growing like crazy in a couple of the other gutters. It’s a bit of a mess. I used to feel guilty about it until I noticed that all my neighbors have the same thing going on.)

Okay, well. That’s it for the nature talk today. I’m gonna get going here. Grab some more coffee.  Take in this gorgeous morning before it’s time for the phone call.

I hope you have a wonderful Saturday, wherever you are in the world! I leave you with my breakfast-listening music from today.  “Palaces of Montezuma” from Grinderman 2. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys! See ya!

“Palaces Of Montezuma”

Psychedelic invocations
Of Mata Hari at the station
I give to you
A Javan princess of Hindu Birth
A woman of flesh, a child of earth
I give to you
The hanging gardens of Babylon
Miles Davis, the black unicorn
I give to you
The palaces of Montezuma
And the gardens of Akbar’s tomb
I give to you
The Spider Goddess and the Needle Boy
The slave-dwarves they employ
I give to you
A custard-coloured super-dream
Of Ali McGraw and Steve McQueen
I give to you

C’mon baby, let’s get out of the cold
And gimme, gimmme, gimme your precious love for me to hold

The epic of Gilgamesh
A pretty little black A-line dress
I give to you
The spinal cord of JFK
Wrapped in Marilyn Monroe’s negligee
I give to you
I want nothing in return
Just the softest little breathless word
I ask of you
A word contained in a grain of sand
That can barely walk, can’t even stand
I ask of you

C’mon baby, let’s get out of the cold
And gimme, gimme, gimme your precious love for me to hold
C’mon baby, come out of the cold
And gimme, gimme, gimme your precious love for me to hold

c – 2010 Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, James Sclavunos, Martyn Casey

All Good Things

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I had one of those out of body things during my morning meditation today.

I was suddenly standing on the side of a huge hill that was absolutely covered with huge drifts of untrodden white, powdery snow. The sun was coming up at the top of the hill and the snow became blindingly white.

It was really beautiful. I was the only person, anywhere.  I decided not to try to make it any farther up the hill, and I turned to the right, and kept walking in that direction, until I came to the edge of a precipice and the view was astounding. A great divide. A canyon of some kind.  Surrounded by enormous snow-covered cliffs for as far as the eye could see.

And it felt futile to try to go on. There was simply too much “nature” to contend with, yet at the same time, it gave me a true sense of peace about being exactly where I was, because everything was so beautiful.

And then the meditation music ended, right then. And I came right back & opened my eyes (to a very warm and sunny morning).

It was, I guess, a good way to start the day. I do feel like I’m in a new era now, because the novel’s done.

I read it from start to finish last evening. It took about 4 1/2 hours. I did find one typo, but I’m still awaiting the official edits/comments from NY.

I was kind of overwhelmed by the book – in a good way. Although I’m not happy with the second to the last line. So I’m going to look at that today. And then try to really get a grasp on the whole thing, the complete picture of it, you know? It is such a strange novel. It’s beautiful, though.

I woke around 4a.m. today and felt a little sad because the book was over.  Gradually the birds started singing, and that pulled me out of it. It’s not like my life is over. I’m excited to get to work on the upcoming play. And once those revisions are done (for the time being), I can get back to work on Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. It should be fun to write hardcore erotica in the overwhelmingly oppressive heat & humidity of deep summer!!

I’m sure I will keep you posted…(in between cold showers).

Okay. Truth be told, I still have not completely set up that new laptop, so I will probably make some time to give it my complete attention. It’s really a wonderful laptop and it’s stupid to not be using it. But I just hate migrating all the old stuff into the new stuff and finding out what’s not going to upgrade or which passwords I’ve hopelessly forgotten, or which software I have to reload, and how to get all my favorite URLs back in my browser, etc.

Just tedious, mind-numbing, potentially frustrating stuff.  And I’ve noticed that lots of people use stealth browsers now and I’m not sure if I want to start doing that — go into some brave new world, or just stay here on the old browser where it’s beautiful & happy.

I do have one stealth browser that I use if I’m going on Yandex or something, because the one time I went to sites through Yandex, boy, did my little laptop become a target for stealthware, or whatever you call it.

I don’t want stealthware on my laptop, but I honestly don’t care if the Russians are spying, or anything like that. I expect the Russians to be spying. And I expect us to be spying on them, too.  It’s just how we are, I guess. NYC, in the 80s especially, was full of spies, from all over, not just Russia. I dated a couple of spies and they were both exceptionally interesting men. Talk about fearless, you know? Jesus.

The Russian spy was a race car driver from what we once affectionately called “Yugoslavia.” He worked in tandem with some communist Chinese spies (always very, very nice to me), and he had quite a few illegal Irish girls spying for the Russians, too (they were sort of wretched, unhappy creatures, though). He was always trying to get me to spy for the Russians. I was very noncommittal about it.  I was in such a strange place in my life back then.

A very good friend of mine was on leave from the Marines at one point, and came to stay in my apartment for a few days. He found issues of Guns & Ammo in my apartment, and that’s never been the kind of zine I was known to have read.  Ever.

We were eating bowls of cereal, watching PeeWee’s Playhouse on the Saturday morning cartoons, hanging out in bed in our underwear; easy -breezy.

HIM (noticing the magazines): “What are you reading Guns & Ammo for?”

ME (somewhere in the clouds): “Oh, some guy I’m dating wants me to spy for the Russians. Wants me to learn how to use a gun.”

HIM: “Are you out of your fucking mind???!!! You get the death penalty for that, Mare!! It’s a capital offense.”

He then made me call the guy and tell him that I wasn’t going to see him anymore – and why. ME (on phone): “Because I don’t want to get the death penalty.”

(I actually said that, gang. The guy accepted it, too. He said something like, “Okay. I get it. No problem.” And I didn’t see him anymore.)

But anyway.  I don’t know that I want to commit to a full-time stealth browser because I kinda like being tracked (by non-Russians) on the Internet! It helps me get right back to where I was before. 1700 less things to try to remember.

I guess we’ll see.

Okay.

Not too many photos out of Liverpool last night, but still getting some really wonderful photos posted to Instagram from Nick Cave’s Conversation in Nottingham, 2 nights ago. I don’t know, it just looks like it was a cool show.

Of course, on Instagram, they all look like the exact same show. They honestly do. If you saw all these photos I save on Instagram, you’d think I was out of my mind, because they all look exactly the same. However, sometimes, you just get the feeling that one show or another was particularly amazing. Just judging from thoroughly identical Instagram photos, I still think the Luxembourg show seems like it was off-the-charts special.

Okay. I’m gonna get going here gang and try to fix that 2nd to the last line of the novel and see if I can’t sign off on it and move forward into some sort of new era of my sometimes wonderful, always engaging LIFE.

I leave you with the breakfast-listening music from this morning, “Time to Move On.”  It was wistful. I did not cry, although I kind of wanted to. Mostly, I guess I’m just willing to walk into the future, come what may.  I hope I’ll see you there! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya!

“Time To Move On”

It’s time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It’s time to move on, it’s time to get goingBroken skyline, movin’ through the airport
She’s an honest defector
Conscientious objector
Now her own protectorBroken skyline, which way to love land
Which way to something better
Which way to forgiveness
Which way do I go

Time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It’s time to move on, it’s time to get going

Sometime later, getting the words wrong
Wasting the meaning and losing the rhyme
Nauseous adrenaline
Like breakin’ up a dogfight
Like a deer in the headlights
Frozen in real time
I’m losing my mind

It’s time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It’s time to move on, it’s time to get going

c- 1994 Tom Petty

Jubilation!

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Yes, I completed the revision of Chapter 2 in Blessed By Light last evening and sent that and the revision of Chapter 1 off to NY to be re-edited by the editor!

I think I’m really happy with the changes. I’ll know for sure when I get started here this morning. But if I feel the same as I did last night,  then I think the rest of the read-through will just be looking for stray typos and such.

Even though the last 5 chapters have not come back from NY yet, I know that I at least liked the chapters and they won’t need any major overhauls.

That makes me feel so happy, gang. Because now I can finally just take in the whole novel and see what the hell I’ve written! Finally. I have not read this whole novel straight through, ever.  I was putting together the TOC last evening, writing out the chapter titles, and with some of them, I was literally thinking, Hm. I wonder what this chapter was about… I only have a vague recollection.

And the chapters are super short – the whole novel is super short. It’s only about 148 pages. And yet it still took me 10 months to write it.

I know I did a ton of script work in that time frame, too, but when I wrote Twilight of the Immortal, back in 2010, it only took me a year. That was a 600 page novel. And I was still writing a lot of short stories back then, too.

Blessed By Light has just been the strangest writing experience I’ve ever had. And, of course, it’s been my favorite.

When I think of the  research that went into Twilight of the Immortal, and how I labored to capture every personality, every historical individual, spell everyone’s names correctly, make sure all the dates & places matched up with what history has documented about those people’s whereabouts at that time, etc.  Put together the bibliography, and the “Cast of Characters” – short bios on everybody in the book, and that alone was something like 30 pages. And I did all that in one year, while meeting numerous deadlines for short story sales in France & Spain.

Blessed By Light is in that weird 2nd person POV. And there is no real place identified. Los Angeles is implied. But never outright stated. He does talk briefly about Paris and NY. He talks about experiences in London from 40 years prior. He talks a lot about growing up, but never says where it was. His best friend is named George, and when his sister was 15, she dated a guy named Joe. But no one else in the book has a name!

The main character has no name. The woman he’s talking to throughout the book has no name. His  previous wives have no names, though he talks about each of them in great detail. His daughters have no names. There are parents, grandparents, siblings, previous love affairs, band members – no one at all has a name. And we don’t know where anyone’s from.

And yet the book is primarily about fame.  Yet, no names.

And even though George is really the only main character who has a name, through at least half of the novel, George is dead. Presumably killed by an overzealous, unstable fan, but we never really know that for sure. She might have been his lover. She might have known him really well.

And it’s only about 148 pages total, and still took me nearly a year to write! Even though I didn’t have to document or research anything at all.

It has just been so strange. But so wonderful.

On an entirely different note!

There was a different suit in Nottingham last night!

Yes, Nick Cave was wearing a different suit.

At first, I felt sort of guilty. Like, somebody told on me, or something.

THEM: “There’s a 12-year-old writer in Crazeysburg who keeps complaining about the suit. Maybe you could wear a different color tonight.”

Anyway. It was funny – a little startling, but funny. It was definitely a brown suit. Or at least, it looked brown in the 2 color photos that were posted to Instagram last night. Some sort of dark color.

And then, me being me, I had to obsess for a little while over the validity of that, and check through all the photos I’ve saved of his Conversations in the UK to make sure that, yes, previously, he had been wearing the same grey suit every single night… And Nottingham yielded something entirely different.

God only knows why I get so obsessed about the weirdest, stupidest things!  Leave it alone, Marilyn. That way, madness lies…

So I did some yoga, studied Italian. Tried to behave like (my version of) a normal person.

Overall, I had really just a great day yesterday.

So I’m gonna get started here, gang.  It’s another gorgeous day but we are in the beginnings of a heat wave here. Nothing too severe (I hope) that will last for the next week.  So here’s hoping that by this time next week, I’m still pleased as punch with my continuing decision to not get central AC installed in this incredibly old house! Even though the new furnace and all the new duct work is primed and waiting!!

Methinks I’m probably playing with fire to be so cavalier about repeatedly putting it off, but I guess we shall see.

Have a wonderful Wednesday, wherever you are in the world, gang.  Thanks for visiting. I love you, guys! Ciao, baby!!

Voglio andare in biblioteca!!

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Yes, indeedy! I want to go the library!

I actually might say this while I’m in Italy, gang!!

We are at long last inching our way into the ballpark of things I can see myself possibly saying while sequestered in Villa Monte Malbe in Perugia.

We shall see! But the important thing is that I’m still really enjoying the Mondly app. It’s really fun. I do real well on my quizzes, which is remarkable. They are throwing so much stuff at me every day,  only a fraction of which I am retaining at this point, because my primary focus is on revisions of Blessed By Light and then, of course, revisions of Tell My Bones. So why I score well on the quizzes is a complete mystery to me.

I guess it means that somewhere, deep down inside me, Italian is making itself known to me and that this time next year, when I step off the plane in Rome and open my mouth, fluent Italian will spring forth!

That’s the goal, anyway.

Okay!

Gosh, it’s a lovely day here today, gang. Just unbelievably pretty out there.  Last evening we had – yes, more rain! – but it has made for just a really, really nice day today.

I watched the final episode of season 6 of Endeavour last evening. It was really good, although I do have to say that it had some very tidy “happy endings” all the way around, for all the characters. But, still. It was nice to know that everything is back where it needs to be and all set up for a killer season 7 next summer!

It’s amazing how quickly I get addicted to that show. And they only do 4 episodes in a season.  In the old days, back when it first came on and I would actually watch it on a television set, I used to DVR it and re-watch each episode so many times. But now I just don’t have time. I’m lucky to watch it once. But, wow, do I love that show.

For some unknown reason, after I watched Endeavour down in the kitchen last evening, I suddenly decided to wash the downstairs bathroom floor. This is the floor that had Daddycakes’ footprints on it. After he died, I was unable to bring myself to clean the floor because of his little paw prints being there on the tile.

It’s been over 2 months now since he died, and even though there were still traces of his  paw prints on the bathroom floor, what I really actually had, was a very dirty bathroom floor.

So I tried not to get sad and I finally mopped it. I have to say, it certainly looks a lot better.

But I really miss that cat.

Okay.

Well. Nick Cave is in Nottingham tonight. And, yes, for all you Americans who, like me,  grew up on the story of Robin Hood, it turns out that Nottingham is an actual place.

Of course, I’ve known for a very long time that Nottingham is an actual place, but I remember how strange it seemed, when I first learned that it was indeed an actual place.  It just sounded so intensely mythical.

Plus, there are connections between Robin Hood and some sort of folk-hero bandit  type person who indeed lived in Sherwood Forest.

All that stuff just fascinates me.  How myths, and legends, and stuff get handed down through storytelling.

On my birth mother’s side, I am partially of Scottish descent, and that particular last name on that side is Hood.  On my birth father’s side, as I’ve detailed here on the blog, I have connections to quite a few interesting historical people, including Daniel Boone and Chief Blue Jacket. And I’m also a cousin to Louisa May Alcott.

But, on my birth mother’s side, the relatives were a lot humbler in origin. But I tell people that the family name on that side was Hood, and that I’m a direct descendant of Robin.

You’d be amazed how many people actually believe me when I say that. It’s all in how you say it, you know?  Especially if you’ve been throwing around names like Daniel Boone and Chief Blue Jacket.

Anyway. I digress.

We’ll see how it goes on Instagram tonight, but I’m noticing that people who aren’t supposed to be taking pictures with their phones during the Conversations, wait a day or two, and then suddenly the photos they weren’t supposed to take start getting posted to Instagram.

There was one photo of Nick Cave posted last night, in black & white, from Scotland that was just beautiful. So we’ll see.

I guess I’d better get to work here on the revisions of Blessed By Light. I decided to do a significant overhaul of Chapter Two, so that’s on my plate for today. And for some reason, I’m looking forward to this and not freaking out.

I leave you with this, gang. And, yes, I know, I’ve left you with this before. But yesterday, I drove into town to get groceries. On the way back, I was going my usual 95 mph. No one else on the highway.  A bit of atmospheric rain, making everything intensely green again all over Muskingum County for as far as the eye could see. I was listening to the “Wildflowers” CD for the first time in a long time, and when this song came on, I punched the REPEAT button and totally cranked up the volume.

It’s a really sexy little song, gang. A great groove.  But for some reason, when you’re driving in the rain, and this song is playing REALLY loud, and you’re sailing along super fast because you’re in Muskingum County which means that the Sheriff is never too worried about what you might be getting up to in your going-very-fast vehicle; well, then the sexiness of the song gets amp-ed up and — I don’t know — it just makes you really want to have sex.

(I know. It doesn’t take much to make me really want to have sex, but this is just, I don’t know, I guess, yet another one of those endless things that make me really want to have sex. Before you stoop to mocking me, though, you should get in your car, drive fast through Muskingum County in the rain, and crank this song, and see if it doesn’t do it for you, too.)

All righty! Thanks for visiting, gang! Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world!! I love you guys! See ya!

[Come on, now, play it A LOT louder than that or it won’t work! – Ed.]

“Cabin Down Below”

Come on go with me, babe
Come on go with me, girl
Baby, let’s go
To the cabin down below

I got a radio
Put it on soft and low
Baby, let’s go
To the cabin down below

Well, I’ve had my eye on you
For a long, long time
I’m watching everything you do
Baby, you’re gonna be mine

Come on go with me, babe
Come on go with me, girl
Baby, let’s go
To the cabin down below

Time’s been moving slow
Since we both got here
Come on slide a little closer
Let me whisper in your ear

Well I got a radio
Turn it on soft and low
Baby, let’s go
To the cabin down below

Oh, baby, let’s go
To the cabin down below
Baby, let’s love
In the cabin down below

c – 1994 Tom Petty

Easy-Peasy, Gang!

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Yes, I am of course talking about the endless editing that I’m now doing to Blessed By Light.

I finally signed off on the revisions to Chapter One (I’m really happy with them, btw; this is the strangest novel I’ve ever read, gang, and I think that’s a good thing). But then I realized that Chapter Two could be more streamlined, so I’m up to my eyeballs now in that.

But, honestly, it’s not so bad now. I got past all the stymied weirdness of the other day. And I know for sure that the whole book doesn’t need editing; it’s just these opening chapters that I want to tighten.

So.

I’m okay with it.

That’s me, btw, up at the top there. 30 years ago. I was at my best friend’s beach house in North Carolina. He has long since died from AIDS. But back then – wow, he was the only person who could calm me down.

Actually, when we knew for sure he was dying, that he would not survive, that was his main concern: “Marilyn, how are you going to be okay without me?”

And I absolutely did not know.  Although I didn’t want him dying while worrying about me, so I told him that I would figure it out – how to be okay without him.

I guess I did; I’ve managed, anyway, even though I don’t have any other “best friend” and that is super lonely. But I can guarantee you there are no other photos in existence of me looking that relaxed.

Anyway! It’s a beautiful day here. I didn’t blog earlier because I slept in until 7 a.m.!! I don’t remember the last time I did that, but it felt good. I woke up happy.  But now that I’ve switched my meditation time back to first thing in the morning, then I do that Inner Being journaling thing, and then I had to get started on the revisions. Then do yoga…

So, anyway, here we are! Day’s half over!

I’m gonna say first, though, that I am hopelessly lost now re: all these Conversations with Nick Cave in the UK. I don’t think anyone in Scotland posted to Instagram last night. Plus, all these johnny-come-latelies from London and Manchester are still posting to Instagram, confusing me, and other people who have tickets to upcoming shows back in Scandinavia are posting things that haven’t even happened yet, and since Nick Cave apparently insists on wearing the same darn suit all the time, I am losing my ability to figure out where the heck he is.

The UK is really decidedly weird, though. Meaning that they seem to be incredibly okay with detaching themselves from their phones and so not posting pictures to Instagram. So they are really just screwing me up.

Oh, sort of on an unrelated note. Right this moment there is an amazing photo of Iggy Pop on Instagram that he posted to his own official page. He’s in concert and, as usual, is only wearing clothes from the waist down. But this photo is an extreme close-up of him from the waist up. He’s in his 70s now and still really muscular, but his skin is an absolute roadmap of lines and wrinkles. It is just jaw-dropping and breathtaking. It truly is.

I love Iggy Pop.

Back in the early 80s, when I was taking that songwriting workshop with (the late) Jim Carroll, one of our assignments was to write some specific lyrics and turn them in. And at that particular time, I was reading Iggy Pop’s memoir, I Need More, from his years living in Germany. So I wrote a song about that.

Here’s a photo of page 1 of my graded assignment – Jim Carroll’s comments. (I treasure this, obviously. Usually we didn’t have to turn stuff in, we went over stuff in class. So I don’t have his handwriting on too many things.) (Oh, I adored Jim Carroll, too, in case you’re new to this lofty blog.)

The song I wrote about Iggy Pop as an assignment for Jim Carroll’s songwriting workshop in early 1984.

Jim Carroll actually terrified me. He was SUPER nice. He really was. But he was also really tall – hence, The Basketball Diaries. And I was really shy. Whenever he would stand too close to me, I would sort of silently panic and freak out. Once, I arrived for class just as he was arriving and so we road up alone together in the elevator (he was usually surrounded by a swarm of students, but this time it was just him & me). He had an intense Bronx accent, and he said, “Hey, so, what’s yer name again – Mary Ann?”

ME: (inaudible reply)

HIM (smiles): “Hm. So how ya doin’?”

ME (just a sort of chirp): “oh. you know. fine.”

I was just terrified of him. It was too funny.

One time, at the end of a class, students still all over the place, he was talking to me about something I had written and while he was talking to me, he was picking at some lint or something on the lapel of my jeans jacket. So, in essence, he was touching me. I have no clue what he was talking about because the blood just went barreling through my eardrums and drowned out everything else. I was so excited that he was, you know, sort of touching me….Anyway.

I’m not 100% positive about this, but I think that Jim Carroll died in the same way that F. Scott Fitzgerald did — had a heart attack at his desk while he was in the middle of writing something.

Well, to switch gears entirely.

After I was done meditating this morning, I decided to get yet another hotel room in NYC for after that first Conversation with Nick Cave that’s happening on Saturday night, 9/21.  I got a hotel room close to Lincoln Center.

I had been planning to maybe ask Sandra if I could just stay that one night in her pieds a terre there in the city, because it’s close to Lincoln Center.

She & her husband now live up in Rhinebeck, which is where I’ll be when we aren’t rehearsing in the city, and I’ve been worrying how intensely rude it will feel for me to leave Lincoln Center and grab that last train out of Penn Station and then arrive back at their house up in Rhinebeck really late and maybe even wake them up.

But then I was afraid to ask her if I could borrow her pieds a terre, because it feels sort of presumptuous to do that – you know, she being an actress and I’m just a lowly scribe. But mostly because I still feel really weird about being in NYC for rehearsals of my own play and then inserting these 2 Nick Cave Conversations in the middle of all that and making myself unavailable for 2 nights.

But, anyway, I finally decided on getting another hotel room and so I’ll just do that and now I feel a little more relaxed about that whole thing.

So life is just working out merrily on all fronts!

And work with Peitor on the micro-short video scripts yesterday was kind of incredible. Extremely intense. It is a shot by shot kind of script that we’re working on right now. So I’m sort of transcribing the thoughts that are in his head – the visuals.  Sort of putting a storyboard into text (before we actually storyboard it), since this particular video has almost no dialogue, and it’s loaded with abstract visuals and industrial sorts of sounds.

I was kinda tired by the time we ended the call. And we only had maybe a page and a half of script. Just intense brain-work for me. But it’s all still so exciting.

Okay, I’m gonna close.  Have a good Sunday, whatever’s left of it where you are, gang! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya.