Tag Archives: Tell My Bones: The Helen LaFrance Story

Molto Bene!

May 16, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Ciao, gang!

Yes, as of yesterday, I began studying Italian again. It gives me about a year to get thoroughly, totally, and 100% fluent. Yay! We shall see!

Of course, I don’t need to be fluent. I really only need to get from the Rome airport to the train that takes me to Perugia. Still, as long as I’m studying it, why not try to finally learn the language, right?

I bought the Mondly app. So far, it’s actually really fun. Yesterday, in addition to a bunch of other stuff they threw at me very quickly, I learned how to say: “This is my mother, this is my father, this is my sister, and this is my brother.”

I feel 100% certain that these are 4 sentences I will never need to say while in Italy, but for some reason, these sentences “took,” while the other stuff they went over yesterday, I have already forgotten. But it was only my first day…

And it actually is really fun. It’s set up like a game and it moves pretty fast, so you just sort of have to jump in and your brain starts clicking. It was a nice break from sitting, literally, for hours in front of Blessed By Light yesterday, with very little new stuff coming. I got, maybe, half a page and I was in front of the manuscript from 7am until 7pm.

I took a little time out, of course, to become fluent in Italian. And I also actually left the house yesterday!

Yes, I made myself go outside and take a walk. It was a gorgeous day, so I made myself walk over to the cemetery. And once I was there, you know the views are so lovely. It’s on a hill looking over the valley, which is full of cornfields that are just now getting planted, with tons of gorgeous hills in the background, trees everywhere, and everything is just so green for miles and miles. And the sky was perfectly blue with those fluffy white clouds. So I stayed a little while before turning around and heading straight back to the cramped little desk.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I always go to the part of the graveyard where all the founders of this village were buried, nearly 200 years ago. They have the best view of the valley, too.

I usually hang out and talk with them, because I’m writing a really fun & sexy murder mystery “starring” them as the frisky dead people who live in the fictional town of Hurley Falls and must solve a murder among the living, in my other novel-in-progress, Down to the Meadows of Sleep. But there were some people in the churchyard across the way, mowing the grounds, and I didn’t want them to think I was completely nuts so I didn’t speak to any of the gravestones yesterday. But it was a beautiful walk. It really helped me clear my head.

BTW, thanks for the really kind words yesterday re: the excerpt from Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. I definitely appreciate it.

Even though it’s presented as erotic love letters to the muse, it’s sort of an erotic memoir at the same time. I’m thinking it’s creative nonfiction. I’m only about 30 pages into it, because I’m juggling about 17 zillion projects at the same time and I really want Blessed By Light completed and off my desk as soon as possible.

I’m guessing that Sandra is still someplace really noisy because she has yet to call me re: rehearsals, and I am now resorting to texts that say things like, “Please let me know when you can chat,” “When can I call you?” “Please call me!” – things like that. And still nothing. It gets frustrating because what I need to chat with her about will take about 5 minutes… I know she’s in rehearsals for something else right now, but it makes me antsy. So that added to the fun of sitting at my desk and staring at a manuscript for 12 hours yesterday.

Also, I have to say that I’m really happy that so many people in Germany are posting photos on Instagram of the Conversations with Nick Cave going on over there right now. Everyone is totally, totally loving it. Mostly they’re saying this in German, which, as you now know, is a language I don’t wholly understand. However, most people are using at least some English and it’s clear they’re loving it.

The only thing that perplexes me is that Nick Cave seems to be wearing a sort of beige-ish colored suit. He’s worn this, so far, at both shows. A sort of “absence” of color and I’m not understanding that. It seems like he usually wears black or this beautiful shade of blue.

So that gave me more to ponder as I sat and stared at the manuscript for 12 hours: Why is he wearing beige? What’s up with that? Is it really beige, or is it just the lighting? I actually asked myself that stuff many times yesterday even though I knew, for 100% sure, that no answers would be forthcoming.

Yes, I really am that nuts sometimes. I can’t stand when a manuscript refuses to write itself. It makes me crazy and my mind wanders.

But actually on a related note…

My replacement copy of B Sides & Rarities arrived in the mail yesterday. I discovered only recently that I accidentally gave that CD boxed set away to charity when I was selling the other house and putting a bunch of stuff into storage, thinking I was moving back to New York.

I was actually going through a lot of grief back then – meaning, I was grieving. Over a lot of things. A lot of loss. And I wasn’t thinking clearly. At all. And stuff that should have gone into the storage piles, went in the “give to charity” piles, and I actually accidentally gave away a lot of stuff I loved. And I didn’t discover this for a couple of years, when I finally bought this house here in Muskingum County and took everything out of storage.

First, I had to deal with the very sad and real fact that I gave away every single Tom Petty CD except for their Greatest Hits. You can imagine that this distressed me last year, when I had to confront what my mind had done. That it had lapsed like that (and that’s only part of the weird shit I was doing, but grief does that to you). And then I had to go about buying them all over again.

It was only a couple weeks ago, when I went looking for B Sides & Rarities, to play in the car, when I discovered that it, too, was gone. And that was the original boxed set from when it first came out, about 15 years ago, or something like that. Plus, a lover had bought that for me. It had been a gift. He sent it to me from San Francisco right when it came out because he knew how badly I wanted it. It was so cool when it arrived in the mail, you know? I was so happy.

And I gave the fucking thing away.

Anyway. So I bought it again, too. But the cheaper version that doens’t have the box. And it arrived yesterday. And it made me think about how crazy I can be and I hope that it doesn’t happen again.

In honor of attempting to not be crazy, I took The Big Jangle out of the CD player in the kitchen, and listened instead to Nobody’s Children during breakfast. Granted, this is still from the Playback collection, and Tom Petty is still dead, but this CD contains songs that were never released so they don’t bring back any sort of intense & beautiful memories from my fair and bonny girlhood.

(Frankly, Nobody’s Children has a lot of sort of “dirty” songs on it -sort of the “naughty” songs that were never released – and I’ve listened to it a lot while having great sex. Actually, not to insult anyone, but I think the CD itself caused the great sex, and that the sex would not have been as good had another CD been playing! Don’t take it personally, though!)

Well, it’s something that I can’t actually prove either way at this point, because all those lovers are gone from my life and I’m not gonna call them out of the blue now and ask them to come out to Crazeysbrug – a village that no one on Earth has ever heard of – so we can have sex while listening to something else and see if the sex is still as good; but the upshot is that when I play the CD, even during breakfast, there is a bit of the Pavlovian response… So that was frisky & fun at 5:33am.

Okay, gang!! I’m hoping that the manuscript lurches ever onward towards its completion today. Meanwhile, I’m gonna leave you with all of this:

First, 3 sort of obscure-ish Nick Cave songs that I absolutely love. I think you could say that, technically, they weren’t released, either.

The first one is on B Sides & Rarities, the other two, I don’t know if you can actually get them anywhere but they’re on Youtube.

The last song is probably my very favorite Tom Petty song from the entire 6-CD Playback collection. It was never released, but it’s on Nobody’s Children. It’s a sexy little song with Lenny Kravitz providing bass and some backing vocals – as well as some very sexy little memories pour moi!

Okay! Enjoy your Thursday, wherever you are in the world!Thanks for visiting, gang! I love you guys. See ya.

Shoot Me Down

I’ve Got Another Woman Now, Dear

I Do, Dear, I Do

You Come Through

The Delights of Anonymity in the Hinterlands!

May 14, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

First of all. Some of you may know that Doris Day died yesterday.

She was 97. She was an incredibly effective animal rights activist. I loved her movies when I was growing up. And as an adult, I supported her animal rights organization for decades. It was awesome to watch her make truly meaningful changes to the welfare and legal rights of animals in this country. (And in her private life, she was a Christian Scientist, who fully believed in Jesus’ power to heal, and she stood by that, even though a lot of people ridiculed her for it. In my estimate, she really was just an incredible human being. Plus, she was from Ohio!)

Image result for doris day be kind to animals — Doris Day R.I.P.

I named one of my little feral kittens after her. Here’s Doris (now 6 years old) at my kitchen sink, back in early March. (Lovely to look at, but, alas, you can’t touch her or she will scratch you silly because she’s feral.)

Which reminds me that, after Daddycakes died (he was her father), I couldn’t bring myself to wash the bathroom floor. He had left little footprints there and I couldn’t stand the thought of removing all traces of him, you know? He’s been dead a month now and I noticed this morning that the little paw prints have pretty much faded away.

Anyway.

My ticket arrived yesterday to see Nick Cave at Town Hall in September. Now all I have to do is remember to bring the darn thing to New York. Only 4 months away. Shouldn’t be too tricky. I’ll just staple it to my forehead and wear it until September. Perhaps seeing it in the mirror everyday will remind me to take the darn thing with me.

I realize that had I chosen the digital option, I wouldn’t have this potential memory problem, but I really wanted to have the ticket stub after it was over. (Of course, it cost 17 hundred million dollars more to get an actual ticket and have it mailed to me, but oh well.)

(Plus they have this “ticket insurance” thing. Where, you’re online and you’ve just purchased your ticket after an 8-minute barrage of truly unpleasant sensory perceptions. The screen is telling you that you’re almost ready to thoroughly finalize the purchase you’ve just made; American Express has already pinged! you on your phone to alert you that someone has already used your card number to purchase some sort of ticket online, “do you recognize this purchase?”; and yet TicketMaster still highly suggests that you purchase ticket insurance to insure that the ticket you’re in the process of really, finally, thoroughly purchasing really actually happens and then belongs to you. Unbelievable. They highly recommend you do this because chances are high that something will go horribly wrong with your purchase and the only way to guard against their fucking up is by spending a few dollars more, even though the sole reason they even exist is to simply sell tickets to people…So I bought that, too.)

So, I highly recommend to myself that I bring the darn thing with me to New York.

Okay!

Today is a lovely day!! Sunny and mild. All I’m doing today is laundry and working on Blessed By Light. Maybe do a little yoga if I can tear myself away from the laptop. I don’t have to run any errands because I already did all that yesterday. In fact, I don’t even have to leave the house until maybe Thursday, and only then if a friend of mine from in town needs a ride to the airport.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that last year, I let this same friend keep his vintage 1965 VW camper van in my barn for the summer while he went off to Montana. (This is not his van but it looks exactly like this. It’s so cool.)

Well, he’s doing the same thing again this summer and so this past Sunday, he came by to put his van in my barn. And then I had to drive him back into town.

I can’t emphasize enough, gang, how much time I spend at my desk writing. I write, then write, then write again, and then write a little more. Now that the Mormon missionaries have stopped dropping by, I interact with basically no one.

I might say hi or just exchange meaningless bullshit with people I barely know, but other than that, now that I’ve moved out to the Hinterlands, I rarely meaningfully interact with anybody in person. I talk to plenty of people on the phone in LA or NYC, but that’s it; nothing too meaningful in person. So it was actually really interesting on Sunday, driving my friend into town. I don’t really “know” him at all. Last year, I overheard him saying that he needed a safe, dry, free place to store his van for 5 months so I offered him my barn, and so now we’re “friends.” But I don’t actually know him.

On Sunday, we sat on my porch for a few minutes so that he could smoke half a cigarette, and in those few minutes he told me about a trip he took to Denver to attend a Grateful Dead concert several years ago, and what he told me about that trip (not the concert, just the trip) revealed so much about him.

And then in the car ride into town, he was talking about some roses he had gotten for his mom since it was Mother’s Day, and, again, he revealed so much about himself – simply by the words he was choosing, the things he was choosing to say. And it also magnified what he was choosing not to say. I found it just so interesting.

Of course, we all do this all the time – communicate in this way, choosing words over other words, facts over other facts – but since I rarely interact with anyone meaningfully anymore, I guess it’s just really noticeable to me now. It came into such tight focus, this process of communicating with spoken language.

Yesterday while I was out, without really wanting to, I was listening to this ridiculous conversation between this guy and this girl, they were about 30 years younger than me. It only mildly got on my nerves, but when the young woman said, “If a guy wants to fuck a girl in the butt that much then he should just fuck a guy,” I actually said, “Oh, I totally disagree with that.”

I actually said this, out loud. They looked at me, stunned, The girl said, “Really?” Like she honestly couldn’t believe that girls might like anal sex, for one thing, or that I had just spoken. And they both looked at me, like they really genuinely wanted to know what I thought about anal sex, and I thought to myself, Jesus Christ, the one time you decide to say something meaningful out in the Hinterlands, THIS is what you choose to say??!!

So I didn’t say anything else. I just sort of smiled. I knew my desk was calling, needing me to come back home and to stop talking to people all unsupervised and stuff.

I’m hopeful that today will yield all kinds of wonderful things for the novel. I’m also hopeful that maybe Sandra might even call me – I’ve been trying to get her to call me for over a week now because I need to talk to her about some important stuff re: rehearsals for Tell My Bones. On Friday, she suddenly texted me from NYC and said, “It’s really noisy where I am right now but as soon as I get somewhere quiet, I’ll call” and that was the last I heard…. Perhaps today she will at long last be someplace quiet. We’ll see!

Meanwhile, enjoy your Tuesday, wherever you are in the world!! I did indeed go back to listening to The Big Jangle during breakfast this morning just because it makes me happy and I thought, so what? It’s better than wanting to cry first thing in the morning, you know? So I leave you with this! One of the jangliest of the big jangles. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys! See ya!!

She threw down her golden band
Crushed it with her feet into the sand
Took her silent partner by the hand
Yeah yeah oh yeah yeah

Somewhere near the edge of town
She said she was torn and turned around
“Can you help me cast this evil down?”
Yeah yeah oh yeah yeah

We’ll drive for the line now
There’s nothing to be lost
You and I will cross over
With no second thoughts

Dreams fade hope dies hard
She cups her eyes and stares out at the stars
Says “I feel we’ve traveled very far”
Yeah yeah oh yeah yeah
Yeah yeah oh yeah yeah
Yeah yeah oh yeah yeah

c – 1978 Tom Petty

If You’re Gonna Give Me Idiotic Book Covers…

May 10, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Then I suggest the one above!

It actually offends me less and makes about as much sense as most of the book covers I’ve been given over the last 30 years.

It’s a losing battle, though, one which I gave up fighting a long time ago. And except for Richard Kasak (a publisher who died quite a few years ago), I only got the covers I wanted when I designed the books myself.

And I only bring this up today because yesterday I was rudely awakened to something that really bothered me. (Yesterday was a big day for that kind of thing.) I was trying to investigate further this Neptune & Surf French audio book link I had seen because I wanted to write to my publisher in Paris.

I soon discovered it’s not really an “audio book.” Meaning, it’s not the entire book. It’s excerpts. Still, I’m pretty sure the amount of content included violates my contract. But I was soon overwhelmed by too many things that sort of “assaulted” me that I got depressed, gave up and said, I’m not dealing with this. Just let it go, Marilyn.

This particular French edition has been out for 8 years already and I had completely forgotten that the publisher changed the title of the book from Neptune & Surf to Sex in America. That had bothered me when it happened, even though, technically, I understood what the publisher was getting at, I still thought that it both: a.) only vaguely summed up what the book was about; as well as, b.) hugely overstated what the book was about.

Then they gave it this horrible cover, even though I had asked them not to give me a cover picturing a girl in her underwear. Technically, she’s in sparkly stockings and a necklace, so I guess she’s not really in her “underwear”. However, when I finally saw the cover back at my desk in America (where I was probably having Sex), it quietly enraged me, since I had specifically asked them, en francais!, not to do this.

Then, I remembered that they had deleted the novella, The Mercy Cure, from this edition because they thought that it was “too complicated.” This meant that this edition only contains 2 novellas, Gianni’s Girl (one of my most popular stories ever, about Italian bootleggers and a gang-rape in Chicago in 1927 – that’s so American, right? – but I was glad they didn’t tinker with that), and the novella Neptune & Surf – which they changed to Neptune Avenue. (And, yes, technically, that title is easier to grasp and perhaps makes more sense, but I gave it the title of Neptune & Surf for very specific reasons, mostly because the story was written for and dedicated to Holly and all of our wonderful years of hardcore debauchery together on Coney Island. The title means a lot to me and to her.)

But all of that taken together means that no one on earth would possibly connect Sex In America with Neptune & Surf unless they were psychic in some sort of seriously scary way.

Plus the price of the book – a mass market paperback (in French) containing two novellas – is almost 17 dollars! That seems crazy to me.

So that depressed me. I don’t like broken links in the chain of commerce and product identity.

(And it also bothers me that Little, Brown, in London, somehow managed to put out into the international search engines that “Marilyn Lewis” is the author of their digital edition of Neptune & Surf, even though, all over their website, I’m “Marilyn Jaye Lewis”, which makes a huge difference because there are about 500 billion women in the world named “Marilyn Lewis.” Yet another annoying broken link in the chain of commerce and product identity!)

Anyway, at the beginning of the digital reading, the French woman who reads the excerpts of Neptune & Surf (aka Sex In America) says very complimentary things about the book and about the caliber of my writing. Extremely kind things. Which was nice. Still, the whole thing is prefaced by the concept of: Good writing in bad books and about how this is sort of a dirty secret of publishing houses – this good writing in these bad books that are hidden in dark corners of bookstores. (All of this was said in French, by the way, which only made it sound more authoritative.)

I probably don’t have to tell you that this really upset me. Even though most of my books have sold well and have not been relegated to dark corners in bookstores. I of course understood the point she was trying to make and it’s a public conception that I’ve been up against throughout my entire career.

It’s upsetting to think that all these decades later, I’m still up against this. Yesterday was just not a good day for me. First, the entire universe seemed to want me to come to terms with the reality that Tom Petty is dead, and then come to terms with the reality that people will only find out that I’m a good writer if they happen to find themselves furtively lurking in the dark corner of a bookstore…

Plus that whole feeding frenzy over buying the Nick Cave ticket yesterday morning was also very disturbing to my equilibrium. (At Town Hall, it’s called Nick Cave Words + Music, btw, not Conversations with Nick Cave.) (I don’t think this means that he’s just going to say a bunch of words, and that he only saves actual “conversations” for people who aren’t American…)

Anyway, normally, I refuse to participate in stuff like that. I just can’t stand that feeding frenzy set up. And I’m sure this morning’s sale will be so much worse, since it’s the regular tickets.

Obviously, I want all of Nick Cave’s endeavors all over America to sell out. [UPDATE: Town Hall indeed sold out in under half an hour – Ed.] Loyal readers of this lofty blog are probably really tired of me bemoaning the fact that most non-big city Americans do not even know who he is. Still, I was so seriously tempted to just abort the whole thing yesterday, it was making me so insane:

CLICK, Oops! Sorry, that ticket’s gone! Try again! CLICK, Oops! Sorry, that ticket’s gone! Try again! CLICK, Oops! Sorry, that ticket’s gone! Try again!

Over and over and over. And it happens at warp speed. You’re watching all the little blue dots on the seating map disappear in nanoseconds. Jesus fucking Christ, you know? What is that? It’s one of the things I hate about doing stuff online.

I would not even do something like that for myself, if for some convoluted reason I had to buy a ticket to hear myself speak. I’m definitely someone who moves quickly to: Fuck this shit, and then goes back to whatever it was I’d been doing. But, alas. Not for Nick Cave having a conversation. (And in that movie, 20,000 Days on Earth, when we go with him to his “therapist’s” office? Oh my god! That was the most ingenious thing I ever saw in my life. I’d probably sell my house to afford a ticket to go to therapy with Nick Cave.)

I digress. I’m just saying, I don’t like that kind of thing – buying tickets in that fiercely competitive way. I feel like I’m being spiritually eviscerated by the Internet. And I don’t even have a question I want to ask him. Well, actually, I have an unending list of questions I want to ask him. Daily, I’m asking him questions in my head, from the moment I wake-up in the morning until I go to sleep at night, but these are not questions that would interest anyone else on earth. And a lot of the questions people do ask him are actually really, really cool questions. I’m actually very eager to hear what other people want to know.

So I stuck with it and got my ticket… And I’m happy, but the process sucked the life out of me for awhile.

So yesterday was a challenge. But I’m going to try to make today a lot better. This morning, at breakfast, I was once again listening to The Big Jangle (Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, from the Playback collection) and just loving every moment of it, but also thinking, Man, these songs are over 40 years old. He died. Shouldn’t I be putting it to rest now? But the tears started to come again and I just can’t go there. I can’t. I have to shift gears and tell myself, He’s alive and well and only 30 years old and living inside my little tabletop jukebox.

And life, as it were, goes on….

Thanks for visiting, gang. Hope you have a perfect Friday wherever you are in the world! I love you guys. Seriously. I mean that. See ya.

Well It didn’t feel like Sunday
Didn’t feel like June
When he met his silent partner in that lonely corner room
That over looked the marquee
Of the Plaza All-Adult
And he was not lookin’ for romance
Just someone he could trust

[Chorus:]
And it wasn’t no way to carry on
It wasn’t no way to live
But he could put up with it for a little while
He was workin’ on something big

Speedball rang the night clerk
Said, “Send me up a drink”
The night clerk said “It’s Sunday man, …wait a minute
Let me think
There’s a little place outside of town that might
Still have some wine”
Speedball said, “Forget it, can I have an outside line?

[Chorus]

It was Monday when the day maids
Found the still made bed
All except the pillows that lay stacked
Up at the head
And one said, “I know I’ve seen his face
I wonder who he is?

And the other said, “He’s probably just another clown
Workin’ on something big”

c- 1981 Tom Petty

Good Morning, Sunshine!

May 7, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

This morning was just one of those mornings.

I woke at around 6am (late for me), dawn was already filling my splendid bedroom. A nice breeze was blowing in, birds were chirping outside. However, I felt like I’d been run over by a Mack truck during the night.

I was unbelievably exhausted. It was almost too much of an effort to even open my eyes.

I felt like I was trying to rise to the surface of life from deep down under some unfathomable ocean. But I knew I was happy. That much I was sure of, although it took a moment to remember why.

Ah yes! The Algonquin Hotel as a single woman! Nick Cave at Town Hall!

That helped me sort of focus. But it still took me about 45 minutes to actually get out of that bed.

I hate when that happens, because I really wanted to just spring out of bed today, merrily feed the cats, have my breakfast, and take my coffee back up to the laptop and get to work on Blessed By Light…

I’m still waiting for something remotely similar to energy to kick in, all these hours later. Although I did manage to make the drive into town and back to buy groceries and it is a really stunning spring day out there today, gang. Just gorgeous. Unbelievably perfect. Spring is barreling toward summer today.

While I was on the main drag in the town, I glanced in my rear view mirror and saw the most perfect, dark-haired guy in the car behind me. About 20-something. The kind of guy that is nothing but trouble. The kind that I used to be a magnet for, about 45 years ago. And he was driving a vintage Dodge Challenger – the distant forerunner of the Hellcat, my dream car. Wow. It really perked up my tired little brain, if even for a moment.

But now I’m back at my desk, manuscript open in front of me, and the brain is struggling to connect again. What’s funny, though, is that I can feel the muses. They’re swirling all over today. I can practically touch them. You know – with my mind. So it isn’t a lack of that kind of energy, and so I’m hopeful that the day will eventually yield something really good.

Plus it occurred to me this morning, as I was lying in bed, thinking about the Algonquin and Nick Cave (and myriad combinations thereof); it doesn’t really matter if we can’t pull the tech rehearsals together that particular week. I can make 17 hundred trips to New York, if I have to. And Sandra and I have the other play (the one we’ll be doing in Toronto) that we can work on, plus 2 other plays that we’re working on that are only in various stages of notes. No lack of constant things to be working on in New York.

I don’t want to make myself stressed. I just want to enjoy myself in a wide open world, you know? Come what may.

What I do need, though, is for this novel to be completed and off to the publisher before we begin the initial rehearsals for Tell My Bones here this summer, so I’m gonna get back to staring at Chapter 21 until the brain returns, gang!

Meanwhile, I hope that Tuesday has been really lovely, wherever you are (or Wednesday, if you’re reading this in that part of the world). I leave you, joyfully, with this, gang! (See yesterday’s post). Listen and decide for yourself if it isn’t the most perfect music to shoot yourself in the head by! Or, I guess launch into some orgasmic frenzy. Your choice!

All righty. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys! See ya.

Heaven

May 6, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I booked a suite at the Algonquin Hotel in New York for the night of September 23rd. I love that hotel. For its literary history, mostly, but it’s also just a really pretty, historic hotel that I have always loved.

I’m very happy. And I don’t care that I’ll be all by myself in way too many rooms. Nick Cave is having a Conversation that night in New York City, around the corner at Town Hall. Yay!

So now all I have to do is persuade everybody involved with my play (starting with Sandra, tomorrow morning) that the New York rehearsals for the staged reading (with all the musicians and tech people) have to take place right around that date because I really, really, REALLY don’t want to have to make three trips to NYC in the fall.

But I’m so excited. I love New York in late September. I love the Algonquin, and obviously I love Nick Cave. I even love Town Hall – I’ve seen some really amazing people there over the years.

I also decided this past fall, when I was last in New York, that I don’t do the ex-husband thing anymore.

I used to always, always, always, without fail, let my ex know when I would be in the city and we’d always get together and have dinner, walk around together, like old times, but you know what? I just suddenly came to a decision before that last trip that I couldn’t keep doing it. We still talk on the phone occasionally and email each other (I’m like that with both my ex’s). And they both buy me gifts for my birthday, for Christmas. Which is really nice and I’m grateful that they can each find it in themselves to think so kindly of me after marriages that were so incendiary.

But I finally realized, I left that second marriage because I was really, really, really unhappy. And even though I still interact with my second husband professionally (he was a professional theater actor for a really long time and he’s very good friends with Sandra), I would rather just be by myself in New York then pretend I wasn’t really unhappy in that marriage, which I tend to do when we go out to dinner together.

You know: Don’t say one fucking thing about how it really was; let’s just be nice and be friends. Pretend all that heartbreaking stuff didn’t happen. And then he’ll pick up the tab, which makes me feel like a child.

And I don’t want him to tell me anymore that he hopes my writing is going really well, as he’s helping me into a cab. And I don’t want to hear him say, ever again, anymore, ever: I hope you find yourself, Marilyn. I hope you’re happy.

Because the undertone is, well, you know.

(FYI: We spent our first anniversary at the Algonquin, so, for me, this will be, like, huge. To be there by myself. Just me. Happy little me.)

Another really interesting thing happened to me today. This guy I only know casually begged me to give him piano lessons.

He bought a piano. A really nice one. Really. And I said, “Wow, this is a nice piano.” And he said that he didn’t play and wanted to learn. And I said that it’s easy to learn and that there are those cool apps now that you can put on your phone and learn how to play.

Long story short, though, he wanted a human being to teach him how to play and begged me to teach him, when he found out that I knew how to play. As in, hire me to teach him how to play the piano.

So I finally agreed.

I’m sure it would not surprise any loyal readers of this lofty blog, to learn that playing the piano wound up being a really traumatizing thing for me. I mean, why wouldn’t it? Every single goddamned fucking thing in my life has traumatized me!

Okay, perhaps I exaggerate there, but I used to be an incredibly gifted pianist. And when I was 14, all the local piano teachers said that they’d taught me all they could and that I really needed to go to the Conservatory and study there. So my parents sent me. Well, my mom did because my dad was gone by then.

So this is where I studied, and I hated it:

Why, you may ask? Because it was intensely joyless. And it was frightening. Right away, focusing on Bach, which is, like, 17 different tempos for each hand, at once. and my teacher was incredibly strict. The only time she ever smiled at me was when I gave my first recital and blew everybody away.

And mostly I blew everybody away because I thought that if I didn’t, that crazy lady with the metronome would fucking kill me. I went to every single lesson with rabid butterflies in my stomach — yes, rabid; meaning, butterflies frothing at the mouth! I was so afraid of that teacher.

It was just awful – the pressure. And I couldn’t tell anybody how I felt because not only was I intensely shy, but my boyfriend had been killed by then, and the rapes had happened, and all of that. So my mind was just unraveling and it was hard for me to speak to people, about anything at all. And after the suicide attempt, when I was put in the mental hospital, there was a grand piano there and this really kind music therapist wanted me to play it as part of my therapy.

And I simply couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. It was like I’d snapped. Part of me actually died, spiritually – the pianist part of me – after that suicide attempt. My guitar I could still play, but not the piano. I couldn’t handle it. I had been so traumatized by that teacher and her metronome and BACH… And even though I bought a piano a few years ago, I wound up giving it away. So it’s going to be interesting, teaching someone how to play.

I think it’ll actually be a really, really beautiful thing. I loved playing so very much – before all the pressure. I think it’ll be wonderful to go back to when everything was simple. You know: Here’s middle C.

Okay. Have a great night, gang! Wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya.

Hell, no! I’m Not F*cking Exhausted!

May 4, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis 4 Comments

Why would I be? Just because I never stop working?

Well, I guess there is that. But yesterday wound up being really cool. I got some great work done on Chapter 21 of Blessed By Light. And then Peitor texted, wanting an impromptu phone conference on one of our scripts.

That turned into a 2 hour call but it was fascinating, actually. He had more notes on our “big” project. And even though I love all of our projects, that particular one is going to be much more complex and I really, really love it. I think it is just brilliant in its absurdity, even if I say so myself.

All of our projects are Absurdist and micro-short: 3-, 5-, and 8-minute videos. And while they’re scripted, and have characters, we focus more on the absurdity of the premise of the story and the set-up of the shots.

The one we’re working on right now (today, actually, in a couple of hours) is very Bauhaus in terms of how we plan the shots, but more “absurd” than creepy – I guess, that’s not the best word to use, but a lot of that Bauhaus photography has that sense of doom or drama or creepiness in it. We do use those elements, and we use uncomfortable juxtapositions, and even though there is always an underlying theme or plot, mostly we just want to make ourselves laugh. So that underscores everything.

I love the Absurdist sensibility. I was 15 or 16 when I first began reading Ionesco‘s plays (in English). And that was like having a wild wind come sweeping in from the Cosmos or something. It blew open all the doors of my mind and let some fresh air in.

Those were such difficult years for me. And even though I was very interested in music, film, theater, and poetry of all kinds and they were literal life ropes for me, my inner world was in complete chaos. Once I was released from the Mental Hospital, my life just went into this really dark, restrictive, messed-up place. And I think the Universe decided I was in the best frame of mind for discovering Ionesco.

I love words, in general. But I really love when words are used in an unexpected way. Whether that’s in a really intense way (like Nick Cave), or in that whole other arena of Ionesco, it really just thrills me. Even while Theater of the Absurd, going back to Ubu Roi I think, was more of an outcry against restrictive social mores and abusive governments, the nonsensical stuff it creates can be really funny.

Anyway. Today, Saturday, is the day when Peitor and I have our usual, scheduled, conference call, and that’s another 2 or 3 hours, but dealing with our current micro-short project. And it’s mostly just setting up the shots in a script format. (You’ll never guess who does all that typing…Ibuprofen, anyone?)

Peitor is very good friends with a woman who is very famous – but not at all famous for anything close to what our main character in our current short is like. And because of that, I really, really want her to “star” in the project (I use that word “star” so loosely, gang). It would just be so inexplicably incongruous for her to be in that role, even though she could totally play it, and that’s what I love about it; it would just be so absurd. Normally, she would say yes to something like that. She has the best sense of humor. However, she’s just had a really tragic death happen in her family, so she might not want to come back to work yet, in any role at all. We’ll see.

Yesterday, I also discovered by “accident” (I don’t believe in accidents or coincidences or any of that stuff, so….) but I discovered stuff all over the Internet about my Helen LaFrance play, Tell My Bones, that really startled me and just sort of put pressure on me to make that the best possible play that it can possibly be – and as soon as possible. And then also some other stuff has come up re: the TV project I’m still developing out in L.A., and so, yes… I’m exhausted, gang.

Yesterday, I actually heard myself saying, Marilyn, you need to take a vacation. Which was really weird, because I never tell myself that. What would I do? Go somewhere tranquil with my laptop and write? I’m already doing that here in the peace of Crazeysburg. There is peace and quiet, solitude and beauty all around me, 24/7; I’m the one who brings the insanity the minute I wake up. My mind simply never stops. So why go on a vacation? I have too many deadlines looming anyway.

But maybe someday, right, gang? Can you even imagine it; me on vacation? No laptop, no nothing; just me, maybe in a cabin on a lake, sitting and staring at all the wonder of God’s creations? I honestly just don’t know what that would be like.

What I am gonna do right now is try to collapse for a little bit, drink my coffee and wait for Peitor to wake-up there out in West Hollywood so that I can get back to work!!

Okay, have a wonderful Saturday, wherever you are in the world, gang. I leave you with this – the insanity I woke up with this morning at 5am: David Bowie singing Cracked Actor. Why on earth would I suddenly be thinking about a song that I haven’t listened to since like, 1973? And what a message it has! At age 59 (almost), a song like Cracked Actor has a whole different spin on it than how it felt when I was 13. What the heck was I dreaming about just before I woke up to make my mind be singing a song like that?

Actually, I was dreaming about Nick Cave. There was some sort of a code that you could put into the Internet somehow and then these really cool black & white video things of Nick Cave would come back at you, with another sort of personalized code. In my dream, I was very excited by this, and I was waiting for my code to see what sort of video thing I would receive. And then in the middle of that, I woke up singing Cracked Actor and suddenly thinking about David Bowie. And my world was obviously completely back to normal so the day was underway…

Okay. Thanks for visiting! I love you, guys. See ya!

Weepy Kind of Morning

April 30, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I’m gonna leave here soon to make that drive farther out into the country to that veterinarian’s office. He made a little clay paw print of Daddycakes for me and it’s ready for me to pick up.

Daddycakes died over 2 weeks ago already, and his death was so slow and awful that all I felt for several days was just stress. Horrible stress. Even after he was euthanized, I just felt so much stress. When the stress finally subsided, I never went into any type of true grief mode. I had to focus on writing the novel because I need to have it off to a publisher before we start rehearsals for my play this summer, whenever Sandra arrives here from New York and says “let’s begin.”

And as an aside – it is always a huge question mark when Sandra will reply to texts. She’s a working actress and is always working. So I never know when she will find 4 seconds to reply. And the worst is when she suddenly decides to FaceTime me without any warning and I have to take the call because I need some sort of vital information from her but I haven’t washed my hair in, like, 17 days, or something horrible like that. (Please, people!! Don’t FaceTime me!!)

Anyway, on Sunday morning, at 5am, I was lying in my bed in the dark, thinking about life, and suddenly an eerie light filled one corner of my room. It was coming from my iPhone. So I looked at it and there was the text I needed from Sandra. Giving me the information the director had been waiting on for over a week.

I wanted to text right back, but I knew she was in her quiet place. She was probably downstairs in her great room, off the kitchen. The room is so tranquil and surrounded by huge windows, looking out at trees. She was probably the only one awake in the whole, quiet house, with the sun just barely coming up at the edge of the sky, and she was probably just sitting there, thinking about her own life and finally decided to text me. I wanted her to have that solitude for as long as possible.

Anyway.

So. This morning I woke up to a rainy little spring morning, birds singing, the cats playing merrily on the floor around my bed, wanting me to get up and feed them. And that’s when it finally struck me that I was going to make that journey this morning in the rain and all that is left of my wonderfully compassionate stray cat, Daddycakes, is a clay paw print.

It just felt sad.

And from there I have to go to the Honda dealership to get that required maintenance done on my leased car. That always takes hours. I’m bringing along the script for Burn This by Lanford Wilson, because the play is in a revival now on Broadway and I want to refresh my memory.

I don’t understand why people decide to revive such iconic classics. I really don’t. I’m sure that whoever is in it currently does a great job but no one on Earth can be John Malkovich except John Malkovich. (I know, I know; theater is a living, evolving thing and doesn’t ever stop in time and many, many men have taken on the role since then, but still; when someone nails it so extraordinarily the first time, why permit it to live again? Let’s put it into a special vault in Heaven or something.)

One bright spot in the day, though, is that my Honda Fit’s lease is almost over. And I’m trying to figure out what I want to do next. And there are a couple of used Hellcat’s for sale at that particular Honda dealership that I can actually afford. (See my blog post, “To Heaven in a Hellcat”, that mentions my dream car here.) So I’m gonna try to figure out if I actually want to own my dream car, or if I’d rather go another 3 years without having to worry about any maintenance whatsoever and just lease another Honda Fit.

Either way, it’ll feel good to dream. My brain needs a break.

Then I’ll come home and work on Blessed By Light some more because Chapter 20 is almost done!

All right, gang. I hope you have a sweet and gentle day out there, wherever you are in the world! Thanks for visiting. Today I leave you with this. I think I played it about 40 times, repeatedly, as I was out driving around in the wilderness yesterday. Such a mesmerizing song. Okay. I love you, gang. See ya!

JESUS OF THE MOON

Stepped out of the St. James hotel
And I left you behind curled up like a child
A change is gonna come
And as the door whispered shut
I walked on down the high-windowed hall

You lay sleeping on the unmade bed
The weatherman on the television in the St. James hotel said

That the rains are gonna come
And I stepped out on the streets
All sparkling clean with the early morning dew

Maybe it was you or maybe it was me?
You came on like a punch in the heart
Lying there with the light on your hair
Like a Jesus of the moon
A Jesus of the planets and the stars

Well, I kept thinking about what the weatherman said
And if the voices of the living can be heard by the dead
Well, the day is gonna come when we find out
And in some kind of way I take a little comfort from that
Now and then

Cause people often talk about being scared of change
But for me I’m more afraid of things staying the same
Cause the game is never won
By standing in any one place
For too long

Maybe it was you or maybe it was me?
But there was a chord in you that I could not find to strike
You lying there with all the light in your hair
Like a Jesus of the moon
A Jesus of the planets and the stars

I see the many girls walking down the empty streets
Maybe once or twice one of them smiles at me
You can’t blame anyone for saying hello
I say hey
I say hello, I say hello

Will it be me or will it be you?
One must stay and one must depart
You lying there in the St. James hotel bed
Like a Jesus of the moon
A Jesus of the planets and the stars

I say hello… hello… hello…

c – 2008 Nick Cave

He Is Risen – The Cat, I Mean

April 18, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I know, it’s sacrilegious, especially the day before Good Friday. But I’m an ordained minister, gang. Jesus already knows full well that I’m full of sacrilege. (Hence, I have no church of my own; no flock to lead. And not ever likely to get one.)

First, though, I need to tell you that late last evening, the director was finally able to get back to me about my revisions for the staged reading script for Tell My Bones.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that for 2 months, I labored over how best to take the director’s comments and not only revise my overall play, but also trim it down to under 30 minutes for the upcoming staged readings in Rhinebeck and NYC. And by “labored over,” I mean that I was truly near tearing my hair out. I really struggled.

But I was finally able to get the revisions to him, right on schedule, late last week. And last night he wrote and told me that it was “captivating”, while staying true to my original script and that he loved it. And that now we have to begin.

So that truly excited me, gang. “Captivating” is quite a cool and entirely unexpected word. It gave me those butterflies down in my tummy! It’s the beginning, now, of such a very long process: 3 staged readings in the NYC area, then it transfers to Florida, for a staged reading there (and hopefully an actual run of the play), before it transfers back to NYC, Off-Broadway. We’re literally looking at years (plus, multiply that whole scenario by the other play we’ll be doing in Toronto) — it is a long, drawn-out process, indeed. But I am so excited, and so happy. I’ve already been working on both these plays (with/for Sandra Caldwell) for 7 years.

Anyway, the part about Daddycakes being “risen”…

I awoke this morning around 6 a.m. I turned over in bed and saw Doris sitting in the open window, looking out at the dark street (there is a screen, btw), and right next to her was Daddycakes, standing with his two front paws on the window sill, also looking out at the street.

He was really there, gang. I really saw him. Of course when I looked away for a moment and looked back, he was gone. But I could tell his spirit was free now and that he was visiting us, part of his little clan again.

It really made me feel peaceful. I could feel it intensely – that his spirit was so free now and happy.

When each of my past cats has died, they always, without fail, make one final visitation to me from beyond, to let me know that everything in their new world is okay. Usually I only hear them or feel, but this time I saw Daddycakes. I really did. It was so lovely. To see him happy there, with his daughter.

Okay. I’m gonna get started around here today, gang. Gotta get back to Blessed By Light. The editor, and the edits, are almost done and I will soon be getting started on new chapters. Only about 80 pages to go and the novel will be complete.

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

(Oh, and in case you were wondering yesterday why on earth I had one lonely CD of Anne Murray’s amongst all that Nick Cave and Tom Petty stuff, here’s why! Listen and enjoy, folks!! This is such an addictive song!)

It Was One of those Nights

April 17, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

I awoke at 2 a.m. and could not fall back to sleep until 3:30. Primarily thinking about Daddycakes and feeling like I didn’t do enough to save him and wondering if he was somewhere in the afterlife, angry at me for letting him die when he should have been in the prime of his kitty life.

It’s just so different when you’re dealing with rescued feral cats. They make the rules, because they are wild animals, and then you — or me actually; I am the one who has to try to figure out if I step aside and let them have their own connection to God’s world, or do I try to intervene somehow and make a decision about life and death?

Playing God, basically. It got to the point where the cat was simply suffering too much and my heart couldn’t handle it so I had him put to sleep.

Then of course, by feeling guilty for the decisions I made regarding him, it means I think I am God: I should have known better, or I should have known more about that cat’s life or death and the quality of it or lack of it, and just done all sorts of different things that I can’t even imagine at this point.

Honestly, how can we possibly know those things? We make those kinds of decisions through whatever filters we have in our brains that tell us we have answers to these sorts of questions and that’s not really saying very much at all. Because we don’t know how to create life; we know how to do away with it. We simply make a decision. And that’s not saying anything at all, in the scope of what is nonphysical, I mean.

Well, I finally made myself stop thinking about Daddycakes, and instead decided to worry about the novel.

I went to the grocery store late yesterday afternoon – always an investment of time because I live in the middle of the country and the grocery store is about 4 towns away.

It was a glorious spring day. It really was. The countryside was turning that tiny spring green. Birds everywhere. Daffodils blooming in the most unlikely places. (And you know that a person had to plant those; daffodils don’t just spring up in the middle of nowhere along the highway. And that makes me love people, because I know I’m one of the passing strangers for which those daffodils were joyfully planted.) And all along the way, the farms had all their little baby calves out now, finding their footing in the green pastures.

It was just so beautiful. A testament to the renewal of life.

I’m guessing I was listening to something by Nick Cave, but I don’t recall what. It’s always either Nick Cave or Tom Petty. My little Honda fit is overflowing with CDs by either Nick Cave or Tom Petty and one single CD of Anne Murray’s Greatest Hits. (Inside my house is another story. In there, the world overflows with music of every possible stripe and persuasion. But for some reason, none of that makes it out to the car.)

(And to see me getting into the car is ridiculous: “Oh my god, what I am going to listen to?” If I’m going to the Dollar Store, it’s a 3-minute trip and the music is not so crucial. But everywhere else I go to from here in the middle of nowhere, is a journey. It requires a soundtrack. If I’m going far, far away, like to NY, then it’s hands down Tom Petty’s LIVE Anthology, because traveling on Interstate 80 is intensely American and so you need that American rock & roll; 3-minute awesome songs about falling in love or falling out of love, or chasing a dream and that’s basically it. It could not be better or more clear cut.

(But other journeys require Nick Cave, but he can be so dicey because you never know when he’s going to throw you under the fucking bus. Which is what I love about his writing, but it can get harrowing. You can be driving along at 95 MPH, which is what I tend to do out here on these highways, listening to “Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere?” and at first you’re thinking, man what a song. Then the next minute, you have to pull over, grab your revolver from out of the glove compartment and shoot yourself because it’s just too fucking horribly SAD.

(Or, I guess, you can just turn the music off. But that’s the dilemma: you’re on a journey that requires a soundtrack; you’re not supposed to turn it off. So I’ll sit there in the driver’s seat, engine on, looking at all the CDs and trying to figure out which one will not cause me to want to shoot myself while going 95 mph? Sometimes I sit there for several minutes, not going anywhere and driving myself insane.)

Anyway, I get to the grocery store, and in the parking lot, I get a message on my phone from the editor in NYC who is editing my novel, Blessed By Light.

She sends me updates, chapter by chapter, because it’s much easier to manage that way. And while all her comments thus far have been very positive, this particular message says: “This chapter kicks ass. Kudos.” Followed by comments on the next chapter: “Excellent chapter. He seems distraught, guilty, tired. Beautifully written.”

And while this made me feel good in the grocery store parking lot, at 3 a.m., alone in my bed in the guilt-ridden dark, all it did was make me wonder about the previous chapters, which were only “good”. Shouldn’t they all kick ass? Shouldn’t they all be beautifully written? Should I start all over from scratch? Am I a total failure now? I used to be a good writer.

You know, I start to doubt my sense of pacing, my sense of building a story arc, my sense of anything at all because I’ve suddenly forgotten what reality is even for. If I ever even knew, I mean.

Death does that to you. Even tiny little furry deaths.

Well, it’s another glorious spring day here in the Hinterlands. I’m going to give it all another shot and see how this day turns out. As usual, no guarantees but I am tying so hard to be happy. I have a wonderful novel in progress, that is sometimes good and sometimes it kicks ass. I need to count my blessings today.

Have a good Wednesday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting. I love you, gang. And I leave you with this! See ya.

All the World’s A Page!!

April 12, 2019 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Yes, I completed the revisions for the staged reading version of my play, Tell My Bones, and sent them off to the director yesterday!

And right on the heels of that, the first round of edits for my new novel-in-progress, Blessed By Light, arrived in my inbox from the editor! And the comments are all positive.

Yay. So I’m finally going to be able to get back to work on the book, starting today. I’m excited. I really am not that far from completing it. I’ll work on it until the next round of re-writes are needed on the play.

In sadder news…

One of my little furry guys is not at all well. I’m not sure he’s going to make it. I am indeed very sad about that.

He’s the daddy of the colony of ferals I rescued 7 years ago. Well, I rescued 3 ferals – a brother and 2 sisters. But they were a super incestuous little bunch and the sisters had kittens in my basement after I trapped them. The 3 ferals were about 6 months old at that point.

Due to huge cutbacks in funding for the animal rescue shelters that particular spring, I wound up with a colony of cats that were absolutely feral and unadoptable and no one would take them. (2 of the male kittens were adoptable and found good homes.)

That’s the short version of why I have so many cats in my house that hate people. It has, at times, been difficult to live with a colony of feral cats. But they are beautiful, and usually quite healthy. And the all-powerful Cat God seems to think that these many scampering happy cats are indeed a blessing to me.

I constantly revise what I consider a blessing in this life. So that’s good. Anyway. Here’s Daddycakes in healthier times.