Tag Archives: Tell My Bones: The Helen LaFrance Story

This Is Why You Have To Stay Married!

Leave a comment

It used to be that when I wanted Wayne’s feedback on something I’d just written, all I had to do was get up from my desk chair, go into the other room and hand it to him and then stand there while he read it and then listen to what he had to say.

But once you get divorced, you relinquish those rights!

Now you have to do this thing called “patiently waiting”!! (Nobody warned me about this, btw, and that just doesn’t seem fair.)

When I was married, I didn’t have to be patient about any fucking thing under the sun (and I’m sure he would be very willing to concur on this. I think, if I recall correctly, that far distant dialogue went something like this: “Christ, Marilyn, can you just give me a fucking minute??!!” Exact topic involved is immaterial.)

Anyway.

Nowadays, I have to email him a doc file and wait for him to have time to get on the PC and download the file and then read it, formulate a (glowing) opinion and then text me.

(Which reminds me!! Nick Cave sent out a Red Hand Files thing today, sort of all about texting. It was very fun (and even educational — although he neglected to include the phone number where we can all text him at when he’s hanging out in an airport). (I’m thinking that’s just an oversight that he will correct later today.) Anyhow. You can read it here if you so choose!!)

Well, Wayne did at least text me again yesterday, saying that he was going to read the new version of Tell My Bones “soon” and get right back to me. However, “soon” is one of those words that is wide open to interpretation.

And when you’re no longer married you also relinquish the right to “badger” the person who used to be part of your legal property. You can’t just keep going over and disturbing whatever it is he’s trying to do at his own desk, and say, “Come on, man. I’m waiting.”

So now, with no legal rights left, I’m just sitting here, waiting. If you can imagine that. And I really, really do want to know his opinion on how the play is ending now. That part is not a joke. I’m really relying on his insights here and I don’t want to look at the play again without hearing his opinion of the ending first. (Which I don’t believe is working as good as it could be but I’m not sure why.)

The director is really busy with some other project in NYC right now, and I won’t be able to get his complete attention about this until something like February 15th. And I just don’t want to wait that long. And I can’t concentrate on any of my other projects right now because I want to sign off on the play. And I want to feel that I’ve made it the best it can be, for now.

So I’m waiting. (We’re going into Day 3 here…) (Of course “three’s the charm” is something we so often hear but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything at all.)

Meanwhile, I keep getting weather alerts on my iPhone telling me that it’s snowing out. I’m not 100% sure how they define “snow” because I keep going to my window, all excited, and seeing only freezing rain.  And I love snow, so it just feels like it’s one of those days where everything, on all fronts, is sort of working against my ability to achieve bliss.

You know, in sort of a round-about way — thinking about bliss, lack thereof, marriage, etc. — one of the things the late bandleader/clarinetist Artie Shaw says in the Ken Burns Jazz documentary, is how he began to really hate having to play the song “Begin the Beguine” because that was what the audiences always wanted to hear and they never wanted to hear anything else.

I can understand why he felt that way (this is going all the way back to the late 1930s, btw), but it made me kind of sad because, in all honesty, if God himself asked me what my actual very favorite song of all time was, it would not only be “Begin the Beguine,” but it would also be Artie Shaw’s version of it.

I’m really serious. Nothing moves me like that specific song does. That song is really the only song ever written that fills me with enough hope about love that when I hear it, I can actually imagine getting married again. (I don’t know to whom, I’m just saying that song makes me feel that hopeful about the nature of love.)

If you don’t know the song, Artie Shaw didn’t write it — Cole Porter wrote it. And tons of people have recorded many versions of it over the years, but Artie Shaw’s instrumental version of it from 1938 was the most popular version of it, ever. (Followed closely by Ella Fitzgerald’s version of it, which includes the lyrics, which are wistful indeed.)

So, even though I understood why Artie Shaw felt that way about the song, it made me feel a little sad because I am just so grateful that he recorded it at all and that he did such a brilliant job of it. It is so joyful, so smooth, so free. (And it makes me just want to drink a vodka martini straight up, with 3 olives, and light up an unfiltered cigarette, too!) (But not alone.)

Okay, well. I am going to get back to sitting patiently, awaiting a text. See how the day unfolds. Thanks for visiting, gang. I hope the world is going your way today, wherever you are in it. I love you guys. See ya.

“Being the Beguine”

When they begin the beguine
It brings back the sound of music so tender,
It brings back a night of tropical splendor,
It brings back a memory ever green.

I’m with you once more under the stars,
And down by the shore an orchestra’s playing
And even the palms seem to be swaying
When they begin the beguine.

To live it again is past all endeavor,
Except when that tune clutches my heart,
And there we are, swearing to love forever,
And promising never, never to part.

What moments divine, what rapture serene,
Till clouds came along to disperse the joys we had tasted,
And now when I hear people curse the chance that was wasted,
I know but too well what they mean;

So don’t let them begin the beguine
Let the love that was once a fire remain an ember;
Let it sleep like the dead desire I only remember
When they begin the beguine.

Oh yes, let them begin the beguine, make them play
Till the stars that were there before return above you,
Till you whisper to me once more,
“Darling, I love you!”
And we suddenly know, what heaven we’re in,
When they begin the beguine

c- 1935 Cole Porter

Contrary to What this Looks Like!!

Leave a comment

It’s actually quite a rainy little Tuesday morning here. Although laundry is indeed underway!

And last night, I went into town and got my groceries so I don’t really have to go anywhere or do anything today outside of my house if I don’t want to. So I’m feeling kinda cozy here!

While texting back & forth with Wayne yesterday regarding my (our) old accountant in NYC (Wayne doesn’t actually keep tabs on my accountant, he uses the same one), I told Wayne that I had an updated version of Tell My Bones and asked him if he wanted to read it. And he said yes, so now I’m waiting to hear what he thinks.

He’s actually a helpful critic for me because he does tend to like my work, in general, but he also knows what I’m capable of and usually has good insight into how something may or may not be working as well as it could. (Plus, he was a professional stage actor for a really long time and has read a ton of scripts.) So I’m really curious to know how he feels about that chunk of dialogue at the end. After I hear back from him, I’ll look at the script one more time from start to finish. And then sort of “get ready” for the trip back to New York. Mentally, I mean.

I keep getting the feeling that this new character arc is so unexpected and intense, and the one song the character sings is so creepy, that Sandra is going to switch gears and say that she wants to do that supporting role instead of playing the lead of Helen. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if that happens. But we’ll wait and see. Sandra won’t be reading the script until after she gets settled in up in Canada.

So.

Booty Core continues to astound and amaze — burn-wise. Wow, gang. Yesterday almost killed me. But it’s only a 30-minute workout so that makes it endurable. (Plus the video instructor will suddenly say things like, “don’t forget to smile,” which cracks me up and makes it easier. Or she says, “if you don’t feel like you’re gonna die right now then you’re not doing it right!”) And the difference in my core muscles is really incredible, considering that I’ve only been doing this workout for a few days.

The downside, of course, is that it’s making me curvier. Already. I’m not super thrilled with that, since I really enjoyed being straight up & down and wouldn’t mind returning to that (I’m just so 1970s, gang — the culture from which the chic anorexic look sprang), but I just try not to look in the mirror, you know? (I realize that young women nowadays want to be super curvy but that whole look just creeps me out. My goal here is not to get more curves, it’s to simply be able to walk across the floor… Well, that part’s going really well, too. So I guess that’s the trade-off: you want to be able to walk, you’re ass is gonna get curvier.)

(1970s women, courtesy of Helmut Newton — these are the types of images I grew up with and I loved them! If you don’t know who he was, he was a famous photographer, not a designer or anything. And he did a ton of erotic nudes, as well.)

1970s, Vogue, Helmut Newton
Vogue, 1972, Helmut Newton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Charlotte Rampling, 1973, by Helmut Newton

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An occasional muscle, perhaps, but no curves… (this look had something to do with the popular notion back then that you could never be too rich or too thin.) (And nowadays, I guess, only about 4 people in the world are rich, so why bother to be thin?)

Anyway. That was all yesterday. We only look forward now, right? Right!!

Okay! So. I’m not sure yet what today is going to be about. (Besides more Booty Core.) I’ll either write something, or I won’t. I might work on the new website for Abstract Absurdity Productions, but I might not. I haven’t made up my mind yet about anything. I only know that I am in a really good mood around here and I am super happy with how all the various projects are going. So I might just spend some time kicking back and feeling happy. We’ll see!!

Meanwhile, I hope you have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world! Try not to get too rich or too thin today! Thanks for visiting, gang. I leave you with my breakfast-listening music from this morning — “Satin Doll” by Duke Ellington & his Famous Orchestra. (Although the version on the CD I was listening to is over 8 minutes long and is incredible!!) All righty. I love you guys. Enjoy. See ya!

Such Intense Decisions!

Leave a comment

Do I want to post to the blog, or keep doing the paperwork for my taxes?

I’ll tell you this much — I am astounded by all my business-related expenses from last year.  I am hoping the IRS will not feel similarly. They get sort of funny when your business expenses seem a little disproportionate to your business’s income…

However. I feel confident they will have plenty of reasons to tax me a whole lot more in 2020, so onward, gang!!

And in the middle of “crunching the numbers,” I got the much-anticipated text from the director of Tell My Bones. He loved the new character arc. He is going to try to pin down Sandra’s schedule (she starts rehearsals in Stratford, Canada in 5 days), and he wants to pin down the other actors and finally get the first table-read at the Dramatists Guild in NYC underway.

Which means, coincidentally, more intense contracts that I have to sign.

Which means also another business-related trip to NYC, almost immediately. (I just went through all my receipts from this past trip to NYC, for gas stations, restaurants, the Airbnb, Amtrak trains, many many many Lyft cabs — I got kind of exhausted, looking at all that stuff. And now I’m going to do it all over again. Although I think I will fly there… Right.)

I’m just getting so accustomed to being squirreled away in the peace & quiet of my sanctuary in the middle of nowhere…

Plus — did you know I maintain five websites now?? Well, I do. Funny how that happened. It seems like it was only yesterday when I sort of lost my mind and dismantled a ton of websites, stepped down from my many Executive Director positions, yadda, yadda, yadda, and maintained a single blog. And that was it.

And now it is, once again, five websites later. (Of course, none of them are anywhere near as time consuming as the old ones were. Just nowhere close to it.) (Which is why I’m not on prescription meds, I guess! Yay!) (And I sleep through the night now. Like a baby. Only occasionally waking up to wonder what Nick Cave might be wearing, but other than that, I sleep!)

Well, the Booty Core class went up a notch yesterday. Wow, did I feel the burn. But it’s okay. It’s still fun. I’m really liking it a lot. But it is definitely intense now. To the point that, late last evening, I realized I had burned through more calories than I usually do and my tummy was empty. And wanting ice cream, of all things. So off to the dollar store I went!!

And, boy, did I stand there and ponder.  Because, you know, I don’t want to bombard myself with junk. But I really, really wanted ice cream. It’s great that they put the calorie count right on the front of the tubs now. So I went for the lowest-calorie one with the least amount of bad stuff in it that would still be considered delicious ice cream.

And as I was getting ready to pay for it, a wee tiny voice in the far back of my brain cried out plaintively: buy milk! buy milk!

But for some fucking reason, I did not buy milk!! And now I am out again! But I still have coffee to drink!!

Aaaarrrgggh… Back to the dollar store I shall have to go.

A few days ago, at the store in town, I bought a really cool looking jar of instant coffee. I never drink instant coffee. But this jar had the coolest shape to it, and it was actually made of glass. And it didn’t cost much. I was just so attracted to the jar itself. And the instant coffee made me think of my friend/colleague in Exeter, England — the musician/artist who is a Croatian war exile. (I’ve blogged about him before.) But when I stayed with him in his place in Exeter, we always drank instant coffee and had very long, wonderful conversations. So it made me think very fondly of him.

So I bought the instant coffee, and I’m actually drinking it now in the afternoons, which means I’m going through way more milk than usual. (Because instant coffee tastes terrible, so you have to put a lot of milk in it.)

I’m guessing you think I’m insane, but my point here is that it’s an hour there & back, to the fucking market, because I live in the fucking middle of nowhere. I’d really rather not buy milk from the dollar store or the gas station, unless it’s, like, right now, and I fucking have to because I’m out of it. Again.

Which sort of reminds me (only because my Croatian friend in Exeter is gay)… if loyal readers of this lofty blog recall that, early last summer, a deaf guy made me that guitar-pick necklace? Well, he is also mentally handicapped. He can speak, but he’s loaded with stuff to enable him to hear.

I saw him the other day. He said, “Do you still have that necklace I made for you?”

And of course, I do. I just treasure that thing. So much. I was astounded when he gave it to me.  Out of the clear blue sky. That he even thought of me at all.

Well, he looked depressed. I mean, he actually looked on the verge of tears. I said, “What’s wrong?” And he was very angry at his girl friend because she had called him a homosexual. And then he said, “But I’m bisexual. I’m not homosexual. It’s not the same thing. I like boys and girls.”

I was just astounded that he was telling me this. (But I blogged about this recently — how young guys have always seemed to feel very comfortable telling me about their sexuality.) I was very supportive of him, you know. Obviously.  And it sounds like his girlfriend is a bitch. I didn’t tell him that, but I did tell him that his girlfriend sounded ignorant and he might want to break up with her. But I thought to myself: wow, this is so amazing; he’s deaf and mentally handicapped and yet in touch with bisexuality.

Just kind of awesome, right? (Oh, plus, I’m old enough to be his grandmother.) Anyway, I told him that I understood what he was saying about himself because I was bisexual, too. That I like both guys and gals but that I’m not a lesbian.

And he said, “You’re bisexual?!”

I said, “Yes.”

And then he hugged me and he said, “I will keep this to myself.”

Oh my god. It was just too precious. Just so sweet. It made my day.

Okay, well. I’m gonna grab lunch. Finish the taxes. (I think. Maybe.) (In fact, Wayne, my ex-husband in NYC, just now texted me my old accountant’s current phone number in NYC because, clearly, this is the last time I should attempt to do my own taxes!) And then I’m gonna feel a little bit more of the Booty Core burn!!

Oh, and last night, as Kansas City was winning the Superbowl, oddly enough, I was watching the episode of Ken Burns’ Jazz that’s all about Count Basie and the Kansas City stomp/jazz/blues/swing era. Another really great episode!! So much stuff that I didn’t know about Kansas City. So I’m gonna leave you today with “One O’clock Jump”! By Count Basie and his Orchestra, from 1937. Enjoy, gang. It really swings.

Okay, thanks for visiting. Have a terrific Monday, okay? I love you guys. See ya!

The Better it Gets, Gang, the Better it Gets!

Leave a comment

Okay, well. Yesterday was amazing. Peitor and I worked for hours (on the phone) but we got nothing new done on the “Lita” script because we wanted to start getting our Mission Statement down on paper for Abstract Absurdity Productions and figuring out how we wanted to approach the layout of the web site, etc. (which is my job to execute in my “spare” time!!).

And then, while in the midst of that, we wrote three new micro-micro-shorts. I’m so serious. It’s, like, insane. How creative we are together. And the stuff is so funny that, once again, I ended up crying.

And it’s not the kind of thing that a viewer would necessarily see as “funny.” More, like — hm. that went someplace I didn’t expect. And even though the micro-micro-shorts are under 60 seconds in length, they are complete stories and are just really complex as far as filmmaking and ideas and sound, which, to Peitor and me, is a large part of what makes it so funny.

But it did, again, become extremely apparent that I’m going to have to spend a lot more time in Los Angeles. And I’m super hoping that my birth mom is going to be okay with practically living here when the time comes.

It is her birthday today, btw. She is 73. And it also would have been my stepmom’s birthday. So I called my dad first thing this morning and he’s not doing so great today. But overall, he’s managing.

And oddly enough, Peitor’s dad died yesterday morning. But that’s sort of really personal to him so I can’t comment on that. I can only say that we were off-the-charts creative yesterday. And just all day and on into the night — when I wasn’t thinking curiously about Nick Cave’s final Conversation in Brussels and wondering how on Earth I would live the rest of my life without knowing where he is, what he’s wearing and what he’s talking about, I was thinking about one specific story Peitor and I had thought up yesterday and it would just make me laugh out loud.

Which leads to the topic of the final Conversation in Brussels last night. Only a couple of photos of Nick Cave were posted to Instagram, but quite a few photos of the enormous sign in the theater lobby stating that phones weren’t allowed during the performance were posted. So, people in Brussels apparently have a strong belief in the truth of signs.

[mini update: as the morning went on, tons of photos and videos got posted, including him singing “15 Feet of Pure White Snow”!!!! Yay!!]

[another update — it looks like someone got engaged on the stage in Brussels last night!?]

I know, I know. I really and truly hate when people take out their phones in any type of performance space. I really do. And it’s really great that some people somewhere still know how to experience their lives without their phones. I’m actually that way myself. I would rather revisit what’s in my mind than what’s on my phone. Still… man, Jeez. Well. Okay, I’m not gonna go there. Don’t use your phones when you’re not supposed to!

The director of Tell My Bones texted yesterday saying that by Sunday night, he would have time to read the script and have comments for me re: the new character arc. I know I still want to work on the final bit of dialogue before the final song, but I am really eager to hear what he thinks of the new stuff. Because, honestly, I think this play is just about almost entirely finished!!!!! (Until it goes into actual table-reads…)

But this also means that I have all of today and tomorrow to either get to work on the new website, or even maybe take a little break and just do Booty Core (see yesterday’s post) and then relax!! Who knows? We shall see.

Meanwhile, have a happy Saturday, gang, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting. I leave you with my breakfast-listening music from this morning. I just love the atmosphere of this entrancing song! From 2009, “Listen the Snow is Falling” by Thea Gilmore (but it’s from the Lennon/Ono Wedding Album, originally, but this version is just so hypnotic.). All righty. I love you guys. See ya.

“Listen the Snow is Falling”

Listen, the snow is falling over town
Listen, the snow is falling everywhere
Between Empire State Building
And between Trafalgar Square
Listen, the snow is falling over town

Listen, the snow is falling over town
Listen, the snow is falling everywhere
Between your bed and mine
Between your head and my mind
Listen, the snow is falling over town

Between Tokyo and Paris
Between London and Dallas
Between your love and mine
Listen, the snow is falling everywhere

Snowdrift, snowfall, snowfall
Listen

c – 1969 John Lennon & Yoko Ono

A Turn in the Road

Leave a comment

I guess my life is getting ready to be different.

You know how you can feel it — that things are changing? The way you’re perceiving your life, or the reality of your life, or maybe what you think is the reality of your life?

I guess I started feeling it the other night, when Peitor began texting about certain new goals he had for Abstract Absurdity — our  production company — and I realized that my perceptions of that part of my life were shifting.  And not just realizing I was going to have to go to LA more often. But realizing the full scope of the micro-shorts that he and I are creating — they are extremely strange. Visually, they’re abstract; story-wise, they’re absurd. And they’re super short.  But they rely heavily on the vision of the directors of New Wave foreign cinema. From 50 years ago, basically.

And I think it’s strange that he and I know all these films. The other day, we were working out a shot of a sexual assault that needs to be viewed from the POV of inside an overturned vacuum cleaner, and Peitor wanted to include the sound of the vacuum cleaner bag deflating/sighing. And I said, “how are we going to get that?” And he said, “We’ll just make it up. Do something ‘Jacques Tati.'” And I said okay.

And then I thought that it’s so weird that I’ve seen most of Jacques Tati’s films, so I knew what he meant. Why have I seen all of those Jacques Tati films? Have you? I mean, really; why? What is my life?

And then the new section of Tell My Bones — if I can use a pun without meaning to —  dramatically shifts the scope of that play.  In one 3 or 4 minute song, I’ve managed to visually push it into the areas of lynchings and slave auctions and the extreme racism of alleged white “Christians.”  I still haven’t heard back from the director but I know he is going to be, at the very least, taken aback by where I took  the storyline, and how I took it there. Where did it come from? The only thing I really know is that it took me a few weeks and a lot of nausea to get it there.

Then yesterday, I spent 9 hours doing another edit of Blessed By Light. It didn’t actually need much real editing, just some punctuation tweaking here & there. And then I sent it off to yet another small press. (I still haven’t heard back from any of them.) But after reading it again, from start to finish, without having read it like that in about 7 months, I was struck anew by how strange it is.

I love reading it. I love that I wrote it. But I still don’t understand what it actually is, besides a short “experimental novel.” Which I guess is just a really handy label for saying: “I wrote this but I don’t understand what it is.”

And I saw that this same small press publishes chap books – of poetry and fiction. And I thought, but my chap book (In the Shadow of Narcissa) is nonfiction. It’s flash-nonfiction. It’s a flash-nonfiction memoir chap book.

You know, leave it to me to be hard at work on something that doesn’t actually have a ready category. Yet again. ( I have done this more times than you can possibly imagine, throughout my career.)

And I have just been working really, really hard for like the last 17 months. Without a break. Going from project to project, and then back again. And I am so incredibly happy with how everything is turning out. But everything I’m doing is so strange.

And when I was pouring my first cup of coffee this morning, it occurred  to me that my writer-friend in Brussels is correct — Blessed By Light is a weird title. No one on Earth will understand what it means and they’ll think it’s some sort of New Age-Christian book. But what it is, is a fictional American rock & roll legend thinking about his life– and doing stuff, falling in love, talking about his life, his career, trying to deal with his family, his best friend’s death, having to quit smoking — in the final year of his life. That’s all it is. (Except that he thinks his life is beautiful.)

“The Guitar Hero Goes Home” is a chapter title, but it’s probably a better title for the whole book — with “home” meaning “heaven” or something like that.

Even though Neptune & Surf has been around now for over 20 years, no one ever related to that title, either. They always thought it was going to be about the ocean and the planets or something. Or mythology. But it’s named after 2 streets in Coney island — in Brooklyn. The French publisher thought “Neptune Avenue” made more sense as a title, and they were completely right. It made way more sense.

Anyway. I don’t want to belabor the nonsensical aspects of my life — of which there are many. I’m only saying that I can feel my life shifting. From the creative process, to the going-back-out-into-the-world process. And all that it may or may not entail.

And thinking about mortality — will I be around next year, ten years from now, forty years from now? How much of my work will I actually get done? What’s going to be my legacy? I had sort of a life from hell and then wrote a lot of weird stuff. And was alone (with cats) most of the time.

That kind of seems accurate.

This morning, I woke up around 4:30am and the strangest song was going through my head — a Paul McCartney song from 1970: “That Would Be Something.” I loved the McCartney album. I was 9 when it came out and I played it nonstop for months. But I hadn’t thought about that album in years.

Whenever I wake up with a specific song in my head, I play it on YouTube, even before I turn on a light or get out of bed. Because I want to see if the song tells me something, before my mind gets cluttered up with regular life.

So I played the song and it was, like —oh my god— my entire 9 year-old life came right back to me. I was such a strange little kid. Music was my entire world. Playing records, but also playing the piano, the guitar, the violin. Music meant everything to me. I think music was my barricade against my mother. I think it protected me, somehow, and helped me survive. (It didn’t keep me sane, but it helped me survive the insanity, for sure.)

Overall, though, I realized this morning that, for whatever reason, I’m just plain strange. And my life is probably just going to be about writing stuff and putting it into the world. And then over & out.

And I also realized — remember a few months back, when one of my nylon stockings disappeared from the washing machine in the space of 20 minutes? It never ever came back.

So I’m guessing that reality is not just about manifestation, but de-manifestation, as well. Certainly food for thought.

Okay. Nick Cave will be Conversing in Brussels tonight and tomorrow night, and then he’s done. I cannot stress what a dearth came out of Nijmegen. Honestly. I think it was worse than Portland, Oregon. I know he was already in Belgium last year.  I don’t remember how it went. (I do remember that Luxembourg’s show looked like it was astoundingly amazing. But I’m not 100% sure how long I plan on remembering all this stuff…)

Anyway. I’m gonna scoot. I have some more boring legal documents I have to go over this morning, and then maybe I’ll just sit and stare for awhile. Not sure yet. But thanks for visiting. Have a super Thursday, wherever you are in the world! You know what I’m leaving you with, but you’re probably not expecting the entire song to have only 2 lines of lyrics…still, it’s a really catchy song. It really is. And for whatever reason, it totally encapsulates my girlhood and makes an uncanny point about where my mind still is.

All righty. I love you guys. See ya.

“That Would Be Something”

That would be something,
It really would be something,
That would be something,
To meet you in the falling rain, momma,
Meet you in the falling rain.

Oo-hmm-hmm,
Oo-hmm-hmm,
Oo-hmm-hmm,
Meet you in the falling rain, momma,
Meet you in the falling rain.

That would be something,
It really would be something,
Mm, that would be something,
To meet you in the falling rain, momma,
Meet you in the falling rain.

Meet you in the falling rain, momma,
Meet you in the falling rain.
Meet you in the falling rain, momma,
Meet you in the falling rain.

That would be something,
It really would be something,
That would be something,
To meet you in the falling rain, momma,
Meet you in the falling rain.
Meet you in the falling rain, momma,
Meet you in the falling rain.

Oh, oh.

Meet you in the falling rain, momma,
Meet you in the falling rain.
Meet you in the falling rain, momma,
Meet you in the falling rain.

Oh!
Oh!

Uh, now, meet you in the falling rain, momma,
Meet you in the falling rain.
I meet you in the falling rain, momma,
Meet you in the falling rain.
Meet you in the falling rain, momma,
Meet you in the falling rain.
Uh, meet you in the falling rain, momma,
Meet you in the falling rain.

c – 1970 Paul McCartney

Those Lucky Fuckers!! Jesus!

Leave a comment

Man. That show in Eindhoven, Netherlands, last night seems to have been just incredibly great. The photos on Instagram were amazing (Nick Cave’s Conversation). One person had also been to the show in Essen, Germany (which had also looked really great), and said that the show in Eindhoven was even better.

Well, those photos — I couldn’t believe them.

And someone posted a full minute of him singing “Waiting for You,” from Ghosteen, and I really just couldn’t believe how fucking good it was. And it just means that the Ghosteen tour is going to be off the charts.

Crap — you know?! (I say it like that because I will not be attending any of these events.)

Okay, well, tonight he will be back in the Netherlands, in Nijmegen… And I will be so pissed off if it’s really, really good!

Which reminds me, that the other day, when I posted about pre-orders for the Nick Cave art exhibition book — Stranger Than Kindness — I forgot to post the link, which is here.

I’ve also been meaning to post that, at least in the United States, the MP3 edition of Rowland S. Howard’s incredible solo album from 1999, Teenage Snuff Film, will be available for download in early March. You can pre-order it here. (It’s Amazon US, but I don’t know if that means you have to live in the US to download it or not. I’m guessing it will be available for download from everywhere, though.)

Well, gang. The work on Tell My Bones yesterday was really productive — I’m still not finished, but I am really, really close.

The problem is that this one segment deals with racism, Jim Crow and, specifically, lynchings. It is not easy for me to be creative and artistic about all this. I mean, in a sense, it is easy because I feel strongly about it, but it makes me sick to my stomach while I’m doing it. And it wears me out.

And I’m trying to find that balance between making the point and not bombarding the audience with it. Helen, herself, talked to me in only a very minimal way about the racial problems she experienced in her life; her primary focus was her art and her family. Those were the topics that were of utmost importance to her. Plus, her family — even back in 1919, when she was born — were not sharecroppers. They owned their own farm, did reasonably well, and were definitely much better off than the white farmers around them.

She attributed her family’s well-being to their being devout Christians. Still, they were descended from slaves, and they were living in a Jim Crow State. And I felt that something needed to be said about that.

And in wanting to get a better understanding of what Kentucky was like when Helen was born, and specifically in Graves County, I had to research the statistics of lynchings in the State of Kentucky (which, of course, reveals horrible photos, too). It was all just stomach-turning, you know? Even though they did lynch a number of white men, the statistics document that it was overwhelmingly black.

And the statistics are so precise, too — which is also sickening in and of itself. The names, the race, the sex, what they were accused of (usually rape, attempted rape, or murder), the date they were lynched, and which county it took place in. If you’ve documented all of this, then why couldn’t it have been stopped? But it was mob justice. There were 135 lynchings listed in a 39-year sampling. I printed out a table and it took up four pages. And that was just for the State of Kentucky.

You know, when I was 14, I was raped by a black guy and a white guy. And the very last thing I would have ever wanted was for either of them to be hanged. It is just so sickening to me.

It was a relief, though, to see that in the county that my own ancestors herald from, there were no reported lynchings — black or white. My great-great grandfather was a Kentucky State senator, notoriously on the side of the Confederacy– to the extent that he was booted out of the Senate. (Kentucky was a split State; part Union, part Confederate.) And he owned house slaves. But the county he lived in bordered Ohio, as opposed to Tennessee, where the lynchings seemed to get seriously out of control. Logan County, specifically.

I hate to use the word “ironic” here, because of its sarcastic connotations, but it is ironic that I’m a white woman descended from Kentucky slave owners, writing about the life of a black woman descended from Kentucky slaves. I mean, it is what it is, but it’s still indicative of something that’s out of balance.  Meaning, I can’t imagine any black writers, descended from slaves, ever writing about me. I could be wrong, of course, but why would they?

Anyway, I undertook the project of writing about Helen’s life primarily because she was a woman and, as a woman myself, I understood her life-long drive to find peace, privacy, and enough money to support herself while she did her art. But there are these other racial elements that, sadly, have to be factored in, as well, even though they were not Helen’s primary concern — in her conversations with me or in her journals.

So, all that considered, I am making good progress with the play. I might even finally finish this new segment today. I am just so close. And then we will be ready for the table-reads in NYC.

Okay, gang. I’m gonna scoot. Got laundry to attend to, then gotta get back to the play.  Thanks for visiting. I hope Tuesday is terrific for you, wherever you are in the world!! I leave you with that truly lovely song from Ghosteen, mentioned above. All righty. I love you guys. See ya.

Strange Timing, Indeed!

3 Comments

Even though I couldn’t care less about basketball (or any sport besides Eastern Conference hockey, or NY Yankees baseball games), like most of America, I was really stunned by the deaths of Kobe Bryant and his daughter, and all the other people in that helicopter crash yesterday.

And, of course, when it became apparent that he left behind a young wife and 3 more daughters, including a 7 month-old baby — well, that just sort of threw off my energy midday yesterday. All that grief. And all those families. That whole chain reaction of sorrow. I wasn’t able to keep working on the play. It just threw me.

So it felt kind of weird to wake-up this morning and be in this spectacularly happy place.

All of my own grief, stemming from my stepmom’s death 12 days ago, was completely and utterly gone this morning. Just when most of the nation is in this state of mourning, I finally woke-up really happy.

Well, who really knows how these things work, but if I’m feeling happy again, I’m just gonna run with it.

(Oh, and oddly enough, today is the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.) (Below are those horrible train tracks. Today, I’m really going to celebrate that screaming freight train outside my door that’s not going anywhere awful.) (See a previous post from sometime in December, about me growing up in Cleveland, under the specter of Auschwitz.)

Image result for auschwitz liberation
AP photo. Auschwitz

Okay, so. Yes. I did work on Tell My Bones for quite a while yesterday, but then got sort of derailed — if you’ll excuse the timing of that weird sort of unintended pun.

I ended up watching another episode of Ken Burns’ Jazz, while making myself eat something that looked like a reasonable “dinner.” (Reasonable for me, which translates as “indescribably boring” for anyone else on planet Earth.)

And then Peitor started texting me out of the blue and the entire evening changed.

He texted me about a high-profile start-up in Los Angeles that he wants Abstract Absurdity Productions to supply content to.  And I texted back “ok” but also added that we might have to work a little bit faster, if that was his goal…

You know, like, more than one 8-minute film every 10 years.

Seriously, though. He was serious. And even though I initially proposed this co-production company to him because I love being creative with him and I wanted to make our scripts into actual micro-shorts that we could upload to various online platforms, he has always wanted to aim beyond that. Make the company a financial success.

ME: “Well, gosh, if you’re gonna be that way about it, I guess we’ll just have to be a success.”

Kidding aside, though, I still haven’t gotten the website together. Or worked on the Mission Statement, or our bios, or anything, really. I thought it was really neat that we had a logline for Lita’s Got to Go! (More affectionately known as Lita måste gå!) and I figured that eventually I would find time to get back to work on the website. (We have 3 primary micro-scripts, and then about 5 micro-micro shorts after that, to work on, so we have, like, a lot of stuff on our plate here and we’re really lagging behind schedule. Whatever that schedule might be.)

But last night, it became apparent that I have to speed all of that up a bit, and I also had to start getting a spreadsheet together for our contacts list — even though Peitor is the one involved in looking for the right cinematographer, and the actors & crew and all that, I’m the kind of person who likes to know who’s producing what in the world of micro-shorts and who their reps and lawyers are (and all that). (Although, the one key character, who pulls the whole absurd concept of our film together, the only character in the film with speaking lines, and only about 5 lines, at that — there is an A-list actor that I have wanted from the start, and I am committed to getting him. We’ll see.)

(Of course, winning the Pulitzer will make all this easier! Everyone takes calls from people who win Pulitzers!) (And, seriously, I was looking up the criteria for winning a Pulitzer for Drama and I saw that Tell My Bones fits all the criteria for at least getting nominated, so, you know — we’re still pointed in the right direction!!)

Well, last night, it also became apparent that I was eventually going to be having to spend way more time in LA than I’d thought. Which isn’t a bad thing, because I love LA. Still, my brain and my career have been focused more in the direction of NYC. So last night, the potentialities of my life shifted significantly.

And I realized that my life was a little different from what I thought it was.

Okay. Nick Cave’s Conversations resume in the Netherlands tonight. In Eindhoven.  (I want to add, again, that the photos out of Bremen kept coming onto Instagram and they were just so great.) (Oh, and my suspicions were confirmed re: The Bremen Town Musicians. Here is a statue that I saw posted on Instagram (this isn’t the same photo, though; this is a stock photo.)

Image result for bremen town musicians statue in bremen

Okay, I gotta close this and get back to work on the play. I am just about done with the new (and final) segment. Have a good Monday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting. I’ll leave you with my breakfast listening music from today. Yes!! From Neil Diamond’s massive hit album, Hot August Night, back in 1972, “Cracklin’ Rosie”!

You know, my adoptive mom also loved this song (and Neil Diamond) and she also used to drink Crackling Rose wine — the wine this song is based on.  I tried to find a photo of the original wine bottle, but could only find the label:

 

 

 

 

Anyway, so I leave you with this wonderful song, gang!! Even the cats loved listening to this song this morning! All righty I love you guys.  See ya.

“Cracklin’ Rosie”

Aw, Cracklin’ Rosie, get on board
We’re gonna ride
Till there ain’t no more to go
Taking it slow
And Lord, don’t you know
We’ll have me a time with a poor man’s lady

Hitchin’ on a twilight train
Ain’t nothing here that I care to take along
Maybe a song
To sing when I want
No need to say please to no man
For a happy tune

Oh, I love my Rosie child
You got the way to make me happy
You and me we go in style
Cracklin’ Rose,
You’re a store-bought woman
But you make me sing like a guitar hummin’
So hang on to me, girl,
Our song keeps runnin’ on
Play it now, play it now
Play it now, my baby

Cracklin’ Rosie, make me a smile
Girl, if it lasts for an hour, that’s all right
We got all night to set the world right
Find us a dream that don’t ask no questions
Yeah

Oh, I love my Rosie child
You got the way to make me happy
You and me we go in style
Cracklin’ Rose,
You’re a store-bought woman
But you make me sing like a guitar hummin’
So hang on to me, girl
Our song keeps runnin’ on
Play it now, play it now
Play it now, my baby

Cracklin’ Rosie, make me a smile
Girl, if it lasts for an hour, that’s all right
We got all night
To set the world right
Find us a dream that don’t ask no questions
Ba ba ba ba ba ……

c – 1970 Neil Diamond

Everything’s Better With A Little Snow On It!

Leave a comment

Well, we didn’t get this kind of accumulation, just a dusting on rooftops and parked cars, but it snowed all last evening and on into the night. Just that pretty, swirling, falling snow.

It looks so pretty swirling in the streetlights, too. Makes me wish that my fireplace worked, but oh well.

I’ve had another one of those mornings where it started out as a battle to keep my thoughts in a good place.  But overall, I feel like I’m doing a lot better today.

And my hair, gang — that new stuff really works. I mean, there hasn’t been time for any growth yet, but it does make my hair look fuller without making it frizzy. And definitely less of my hair is falling out. So that’s nice.

Wow, the show in Bremen last night looks like it was another really great show! (Conversation with Nick Cave.) The photos started getting posted to Instagram right away and didn’t stop for a few hours (which is kind of remarkable because it was really late at night where those people were). The photos were all so good!(Black suit.)  And everyone — even though I don’t speak German — was saying it was a fantastic show. Someone posted (in English) that Nick Cave was in a really good mood.

There was a snippet of him singing “Breathless” — I love that song. (I know, I know. I love every song. Maybe from now on I should say that I hate every song, but you will know that it is just my secret code for “love” but it will look to blog-outsiders like I have a wide variety of negative opinions and then the world at large will take me more seriously!)

Okay, anyway. It just looks like it was another really great show. Gosh, I just wish I could be attending these darn things!!!! It’s so frustrating. There are 4 shows left — Netherlands and then Brussels. (And then he’s retiring to some sort of villa in the South of France and he’s not going to work again, ever.) (Oops! I meant to say, he’s just going to keep flying around and working and working and working and working and working and….)

Anyway.

More good work (of my own!) on Tell My Bones yesterday, but I’m still not finished. It’s actually a point in the play where I have to deal with something that truly offends me — racism, Jim Crow stuff, and worse. And so I can’t just sort of sail through it. I have to insert this dark & creepy musical chunk in there and yet still smoothly segue back to what I’ve already written and still end the show at a very high, very uplifting place.

So the process has sort of gone from the ease of “brush strokes” to the precision of “needlepoint” — if you know what I mean. And having to focus so closely on stuff that actually offends me is a little draining, to say the least. But I am almost finished. I don’t know if I’ll finish it today, but if I don’t, I know that by tomorrow it will certainly be done. So that’s exciting.

I love working on this play, but I have these other half-finished projects sitting on my desk (or spilling on to floor, as the case may be) that I really love, as well. And sometimes I wonder, “God, am I ever going to finish all this stuff?”

And they each require such a specific focus, too. Like, In the Shadow of Narcissa is only going to be about 40 or so pages. That’s nothing, really. But it has to be written from the POV of myself when I had a very limited vocabulary and no experience whatsoever of the outside world. It’s sort of like I have to create 40 (meaningful) pages of childhood memories with access to only a handful of words.

And then, of course, basically switch to hardcore sex and jaded ennui for all the other projects.

Sometimes I just don’t understand anything. (Meaning myself, my work, my mind, my life.) Nevertheless, I still think there’s a really great reason why we’re all alive. So I’m gonna push onward.

Oh! Last night, completely by accident, I discovered that I had a YouTube channel. Oh my god. I’d forgotten all about that. According to YouTube, it was 9 years old already.  It was back when my friend Jay was living with me for a few months (in the old house), and I had a nice Nikon digital camera. I was a heavy drinker back then, for sure. Not that I was drunk in any of the videos. Just saying. Those years were not good ones for me. There was some footage of Fluffy, so that was heartbreaking. And my flowers blooming and stuff.  And there were some videos I took in a hotel in Midtown, where my room had a really, really dreadful view. (The Warwick Hotel on W. 54th Street. It used to be one of my favorite hotels and I had totally forgotten about it until last night.)

Anyway, it was a shock to suddenly see all this stuff from my life — online, no less. And also to see that a few hundred strangers had viewed it, and there were even people following the channel. (That must have felt very futile since I had totally forgotten it was even there.)

Well, long story short — I deleted all of it. Let’s just stick with the here & now and move forward, right? Good lord.

Oh, and yesterday I received a FedEx package. It was from Wayne, my ex-husband in NYC. And inside it was a large white (unscented)  pillar candle that he designed, with an inscription on the candle. And the inscription was a parody, or a send-up, of Gwyneth Paltrow’s candle that “smells like her vagina”  but using the name “Mike Hunt”.

Yes, it was in questionable taste. (He had warned me that something vulgar was coming my way, though.) (And he was correct.) (If you’re not grasping this whole thing, the candle is elegantly inscribed: “This candle smells like Mike Hunt” — meaning: my cunt.)

Well, it’s not chocolates and roses, is it? But it’s — I don’t know — the thought that counts? Or at least an indication that I still exist…

Okay! I gotta scoot. I want to get started here. Have a really great Sunday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, gang. I was once again back to George Harrison’s “Give Me Love” this morning, so I won’t  post it again. But — oh, here. Let’s do “Breathless.” I just hate this song!!! Okay. I love you guys. See ya.

“Breathless”

It’s up in the morning and on the downs
Little white clouds like gamboling lambs
And I am breathless over you
And the red-breasted robin beats his wings
His throat it trembles when he sings
For he is helpless before you
The happy hooded bluebells bow
And bend their heads all a-down
Heavied by the early morning dew
At the whispering stream, at the bubbling brook
The fishes leap up to take a look
For they are breathless over you
Still your hands
And still your heart
For still your face comes shining through
And all the morning glows anew

Still your mind
Still your soul
For still, the fire of love is true
And I am breathless without you
The wind circles among the trees
And it bangs about the new-made leaves
For it is breathless without you
The fox chases the rabbit round
The rabbit hides beneath the ground
For he is defenseless without you
The sky of daytime dies away
And all the earthly things they stop to play
For we are all breathless without you
I listen to my juddering bones
The blood in my veins and the wind in my lungs
And I am breathless without you
Still your hands
And still your heart
For still your face comes shining through
And all the morning glows anew
Still your soul
Still your mind
Still, the fire of love is true
And I am breathless without you

c – 2004 Nick Cave

Another Odd Little Morning

6 Comments

I’m having another weird morning. I guess maybe I’m still grieving and trying to pretend that I’m not.

Every morning this week, it seems the moment I’m awake, I’m already in the headspace of — I don’t know what to call it — damage control? Trying not to crumble to pieces?

In the downstairs bathroom, before I fed the cats, I turned on the bathroom light to see how my hair-growth serum was working (it is, gang!), I was appalled by how my face looked. I looked like I’d been crying all night. As far as I know, I was sleeping all night.

And I was in a great frame of mind when I fell asleep. I’d been texting with Peitor about the “Lita” script we’d worked on during the day. And I was looking forward to the work I was going to do today on the play.

Anyway. For whatever reason, I guess my soul is just crying, for now.

However, I am really excited about today, all other things aside, because I can really feel that whole new segment of Tell My Bones shifting into place.  It’s probably still going to take me a couple of days to get it onto paper the way I envision it, but I can just feel it all inside of me. It’s ready to come out.

I was reading over some pages of the play yesterday and happened to read one small chunk of dialogue that the character named “A White Minister” recites, as he’s having a sort of blasphemous meltdown on the pulpit.  And it read so smoothly and it was so direct and straightforward, even though he’s nuts. And I remembered how long I labored over that one chunk of dialogue. I mean, for over a week. I had such a difficult time with that. And now, all these months later, there it is, just part of the overall play. A handful of sentences. Nothing to indicate that I had lost my mind over it — and I think there was some sort of heatwave going on at the time, too.

It’s just funny.  No one would ever know. But at the same time, those kinds of things (multiplied by years of encountering those sorts of stumbling blocks while I’m working — usually on a novel), have just shown me that eventually the words you need do come and they end up surprising you, in a good way. So now, when something takes a while to hit the page, I know that when the right words arrive it is going to be worth the wait.

(I was just now interrupted by Facebook alerting me that a wonderful old friend from my NYC days has a birthday today. So I popped over to FB to wish him a happy birthday, and I noticed that one of my extremely-intense-mob-guy, super-short-lived-fiance’s from the Bronx is having a birthday soon. But guess what? He’s suddenly 10 years younger than me! He used to be one year younger than me. But he looks good — in a sort of intense, scary kind of way.) (I’m on his shit-list now, in a really big way. He has quite an impressive grasp on four-letter-and-more-letter words, gang (including but not limited to a recent phone call: “You fucking cunt, you come to fucking New York and you can’t even fucking call me? What is your fucking problem, you are such a fucking lying cunt” followed closely by “come on, Marilyn, come back to New York, let’s get married. I fucking love you, even though you are so full of shit, why do you have to be such a cunt?”). I didn’t have a ready answer for all that, but anyway, I doubt I will be wishing him a happy birthday on Facebook this year. Although I’m sure he would welcome a reason to pick up the phone and yell at me again. )

Yes, I digress.

Anyway. This morning, at the breakfast table — it was still dark out. I happened to look toward the sink and saw this:

L to R: Huckleberry, Lucy and Weenie, at about 6:30am.

It was so unexpected. I thought I was alone in the kitchen, since they were all done eating. I was so happy I had my phone on the table. I don’t usually have it anywhere near me at that early hour.

You’ll notice that the spot for the dishwasher is a gaping hole… Two years ago, when I bought the house, at the top of my list was: Buy a new dishwasher. I’m not really clear on what happened to that idea.

Well, I submitted the piece from Blessed By Light yesterday for the Literary Arts Fair (see a post below somewhere).  They have a strict word-limit of 1200 words. So I had to remove 428 words from “The Guitar Hero Goes Home” — and, no, it wasn’t 428 uses of the word “fuck.” So I edited it down and made it “family friendly” as requested, and sent it off to them. But if they end up approving the piece itself, I would still have to sort of audition it, if I’m understanding them correctly. You know, read it in front of the Board members to make sure I’m not some droning lunatic, or something. Actually, I don’t really understand it, but I did submit the piece. So we’ll see.

And on that note, I will close by saying that quite a few more photos and little videos from Nick Cave’s Conversation in Essen, Germany, kept coming through on Instagram well into the night, and all of them were really just amazing. So different from the other two shows in Germany this past week. It seemed like it, anyway. Tonight he is in Bremen, Germany. I always just love seeing what all these various theaters look like, you know? They are each just so different.

All righty, I have decided to leave you with this, today. It was the first thing in my head when I awoke at 5:02am. This is another one of those songs that I adored in my girlhood. I was 7, almost 8, when this was a massive hit on AM radio. I had a little transistor radio, it looked like this:

It had one of those tiny ear pieces, and I would lie in my bed at night in the dark, with that ear piece in my ear, and I’d listen to the radio, and whenever this song came on, I was just in heaven, gang. Man, I loved this song!! And my little 7-year-old pelvic area would rock in time to the — what is this, a samba rhythm? A cha-cha? I don’t really know.

Anyway, I leave you with “Somethin’ Stupid” by Frank & Nancy Sinatra.  Have a great Saturday wherever you are in the world! I’m gonna go wash my yucky hair and then get down to work here on Tell My Bones. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya.

“Somethin’ Stupid”

I know I stand in line until you think you have the time
To spend an evening with me
And if we go someplace to dance, I know that there’s a chance
You won’t be leaving with me
And afterwards we drop into a quiet little place and have a drink or two
And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like “I love you”

I can see it in your eyes
That you despise the same old lies you heard the night before
And though it’s just a line to you, for me it’s true
And never seemed so right before

I practice every day to find some clever lines to say
To make the meaning come through
But then I think I’ll wait until the evening gets late and I’m alone with you
The time is right, your perfume fills my head, the stars get red and, oh, the night’s so blue
And then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like “I love you”

The time is right, your perfume fills my head, the stars get red and, oh, the night’s so blue
And then I go and spoil it all by sayin’ something stupid like “I love you”

I love you
I love you
I love you

[Fade:]
I love you

c – 1966 C. Carson Parks