Peitor has familial obligations in – yes!! – Iowa this weekend. So we are not working on any scripts this morning. (It seems weird, doesn’t it – that he spent his childhood in both Florence, Italy and Iowa??!!) (It’s because both of his parents were tenured University Professors. In Literature. Both of them. Talk about intense. Both of his parents were always extremely friendly and all. But they’re both ridiculously intelligent. You always wanted to be wearing your best vocabulary whenever they came to visit in NYC.)
Anyway. So I have a little bit of a reprieve from “projects” today, which is good because now I have way too many that I’m trying to focus on every day. I know it’s because I started that memoir website thing from out of nowhere, and then setting up the page became stupidly time-consuming. I wasn’t expecting that.
But Sandra is in fact flying in here in a couple weeks to begin the initial rehearsals of the play (staying with the director because she’s allergic to cats!!), so I have to redirect my focus away from In the Shadow of Narcissa for a moment and get back to Tell My Bones.
I’m in a good place about that, though. And I’ve been kind of waiting for that feeling: that the play was getting queued up inside me.
If I’m not feeling aligned energetically with a project, it’s useless to kill time sitting and waiting on it. I go in the emotional direction of whatever calls me on any given day. It works out better for me that way. But sometimes, deadlines sort of force you to focus on something, regardless. So I’m gad that I can feel the play bubbling up inside me again because that’s what needs my attention most right now.
Plus, the Internet has been super wonky around here the past few days. It will suddenly go out, for hours, in the whole area. It’s frustrating but it is also a forced “vacation.” I can’t do anything online. I can’t work on the new memoir. I can’t stream any new music. I can’t watch anything on Youtube or Amazon Prime. I can’t work on my Italian lessons, either. Or even tune my guitar!
So I’ve been using it as a signal to just STOP, you know? Because I never just stop until it’s time to collapse in bed at night. And even then, I usually spend an hour or two doing other weird stuff that I won’t go into right now.
Anyway. It does feel good to sort of just stop. To be peaceful. To just listen to the earth. To take in, sort of from a distance, all the things that are going on right now.
Okay. This will be brief because the Internet has gone in & out about 5 times since I started writing this!! Hopefully, Spectrum will have it all figured out by tomorrow.
Have a wonderful Saturday, gang, wherever you are in the world!! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya!
The internet NEVER used to go out on my typewriter!!
If you live State-side, then you’re well aware that during this upcoming week, as we celebrate our long-ago decision to not be England, everything pretty much comes to a stop around here and it’s now all about cookouts and kayaking and canoeing and camping and FIREWORKS and bug spray…
Even though I actually love a lot of that stuff, especially camping (I know, I don’t seem like the kind of gal who would like that sort of thing, but I actually do) (and NO, it’s not because I like to have sex in tents, although that is a HUGE part of it), I will more than likely spend a huge amount of this upcoming holiday week working on revisions of the play, since rehearsals begin in just a few weeks!
I also have a birthday in July, so sometimes July is also all about cake.
Re: camping, loyal readers of this lofty blog, who know my deep and often uncontrollable passion for dishes, will no doubt be in no way nonplussed to learn that my obsession with buying dishes also extends to dishes and cookware made specifically for camping.
It is RIDICULOUS, the amount of Coleman dishes and cookware I own, and I have not actually been camping in, I guess, decades at this point.
Since I’m ostensibly a “New Yorker,” the people I am friends with like to go off to the mountains and stuff, but only to stay in glamorous old mountain inns and have incredible meals served in dining rooms that have damask table cloths & such. Maybe go on a little hike to take in the splendid vistas, but then go back to the hotel and get a massage.
I used to beg people to go camping with me and everyone was pretty much shocked and horrified to discover that I liked that kind of thing.
The last person I begged to go camping with me was Mikey Rivera, when we were still together and living in the teeming heat of NYC.
ME (super excited by the prospects of being alone in a tent with him, far from the madding crowd of Manhattan): “Come on, Papi, let’s go up to the mountains and go camping!!”
HIM: “There’s bears up there, Boo.”
And that was the end of that delightful adventure!
Anyway, lots and lots and LOTS of people go camping out here in the Hinterlands. And tons of people go kayaking and canoeing. Cookouts, bonfires.
I don’t do these kinds of things out here because a.) it seems like I’m always under a deadline for something these days; and b.) none of these folks are vegetarians. Not even close. And the stranger the animal, the more likely they are to want to eat it.
The stuff that goes on, foodwise out here, can be emotionally debilitating for me, so I kinda steer clear of that.
I will, however, douse myself in bug spray and watch the fireworks from my porch because it has a clear view of the sky over at the ballpark. And I do love fireworks. God knows.
Well, work with Peitor yesterday on the micro-short video script was INTENSE. Man, this little video (8 minutes) is getting intensely complex. It’s too wonderful, really. Because the bottom line is that the premise is absolutely absurd. Without doubt, completely absurd.
As I’ve said here before, there is very little dialogue in the video. Perhaps a total of 2 minutes, tops. And that part is the most absurd section of all. And yet the entire (wildly brief) thing is, cinematically, an homage to Hitchcock, Bunuel, Bergman, Fellini, and Polanski.
It is just too intense and too fucking funny. And I think that he and I have seen way too many movies for our own good.
Okay!
Brighton did not yield much in the way of Instagram photos of Nick Cave’s Conversation there last night. There was one photo I really loved – I think he was leaving the stage at that point. And there was an interesting photo that Susie Cave posted of a little girl sitting on the edge of the stage.
And now we must find a new reason to go on obsessing, because his Conversations are on hiatus until late August, gang.
I got word last night that the final comments from the editor re: Blessed By Light won’t be arriving in my inbox until Tuesday. So I seriously have to start focusing on the play. July’s presence in my world is imminent.
But I’m still having trouble disconnecting from one project and launching into revisions of another.
I still have not yet dealt with setting up the new laptop, either. I’m really not sure what my problem is because now it’s getting sort of extreme — my aversion to doing this, even while I already know I love that new laptop.
Surely, this is not another one of those instances where I keep something that I love at arm’s length from me?? That would just be too easy, gang! There must be some other, less honest way to explain this dilemma with the laptop!
All righty, gang. I’m gonna get more coffee and take a look at the day and decide how I feel about being alive in it! (Pretty good, I think, but that’s just off the top of my head.)
Enjoy your Sunday, wherever you are in the world. In honor of the upcoming holiday week, I leave you with some songs from my childhood, as put together by Mickey Newbury (but then made famous by Elvis): “American Trilogy.”
I’m guessing all these songs are politically incorrect now, even though one of them was written by a white woman from the North. But anyway. I still love this trilogy. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys! See ya!
Oh I wish I was in the land of cotton
Old times there are not forgotten
Look away, look away, look away Dixieland
Oh I wish I was in Dixie, away, away
In Dixieland I’ll take my stand to live and die in Dixie
Cause Dixieland, that’s where I was born
Early Lord one frosty morning
Look away, look away, look away Dixieland
Glory, glory hallelujah
Glory, glory hallelujah
Glory, glory hallelujah
His truth is marching on
So hush little baby
Don’t you cry
You know your daddy’s bound to die
But all my trials, Lord will soon be over
I’m feeling lots better today! No new bruises during the night, so I’m just gonna go with that and feel happy!
Before I forget, starting Monday, July 1st, as part of the annual Summer Sale, all the eBook titles that I publish with Smashwords will once again be free to download, in all eBook formats, for the entire month.
There are no new books included in that download. Twilight of the Immortal will be included in the free download, but other than that title, all the others are graphically erotic and not suitable for all readers.
I will post the complete links on Monday.
Okay!!
Only a couple photos out of Brighton last night. I’m guessing it’s another one of those things where people are following the rules and not using their phones. Because there were photos from before & after the actual Conversation with Nick Cave and everyone loved it. They are back to calling him God, btw. I forgot to mention that.
Oh, I also want to follow up on the new Raconteurs album that came out last week, Help Us Stranger. I’ve listened to the whole thing now and I really like it a lot. Sort of mid-60s-Beatles-esque throughout much of it. Just a very happy album with really catchy grooves.
I’m still not warming up to the new Stray Cats album, though. They should have just saturated the fuck out of it with reverb and yet they did not! Of course it could sound better as vinyl, and I’m only listening to it as an MP3, which usually changes the sound a lot. But it’s that lack of that specific sound quality that’s bothering me. Not the songs themselves.
To me, rockabilly isn’t just the rhythm as the overall sound. I don’t care if I can’t understand the words, either. I just really want to hear that noisy reverb chaotic sort of mess, along with that incredible rockabilly rhythm.
With this new Stray Cats record, I can actually understand every single word, so I find that all I’m doing is listening to every single word. And, you know, rockabilly songs are not exactly profound, or anything – I would really just rather feel the overall sensation, and for me, that’s missing.
Other types of music – the kind of songs that God writes, for instance (aka Nick Cave) – if I can’t understand every single solitary word I go insane.
And speaking of words…
Today is Saturday, which means another phone marathon with Peitor in Los Angeles to work on the current micro-short video script.
It’s really amazing to me, gang, how it’s taking shape.
It’s dark & absurd. With the truly absurd part coming in the 5th segment (naturally, my favorite part). There are a total of 6 segments, and the whole video is under 8 minutes, total. It’s a cross between Ingmar Bergman and Bauhaus photography, although most of it is in color. (The title of the video is actually in Swedish, with an English subtitle.)
Anyway, it’s super fun, but it is also a heck of a lot of tight brain-focusing and a lot of fast typing, because Peitor starts getting on a roll, forgetting that I’m over here, typing. Or trying to.
Still no edits/comments from NY on Blessed By Light, but I have to get to work on Tell My Bones, regardless. Just make myself switch gears however I can. Probably won’t start today, though. I’m actually kinda really, really worn out over here.
I keep forgetting to mention how amazing the fireflies are out here this summer. Just thousands of them. They are so pretty. Prime viewing time is at about 9:15 pm. They are all over my backyard then.
I just watch from the huge kitchen window. Because the mosquitoes out here are nasty. I can’t set one foot outside in the evening if I’m not covered in bug spray. And I hate being covered in bug spray.
I also have an amazing spider in the upper corner of my kitchen porch. You should see the amount of webs this guy builds, and how quickly he does it. Once they get all raggedy looking, I wipe them all down and get rid of them. But by sunset, he has them all back in place. It’s staggering, really, how quickly he works and how elaborate they are and how much space they take up. And when the sun’s all the way down and it’s truly nighttime, he just sits there in the middle of it all. He’s pretty big. I can see him really easily because there’s a streetlight on the corner across the street.
And a pigeon has built her nest in the rain gutter above my kitchen porch. Yes, the same gutter that I had gotten all tidily repaired last fall because the starlings did so much damage to it by building their nests there. (I won’t even tell you all the damage the starlings have done to the gutters over my back door. And all the various other birds’ nests sprouting out from gutters in other areas of the roof – plus, a ton of tiny little maple trees growing like crazy in a couple of the other gutters. It’s a bit of a mess. I used to feel guilty about it until I noticed that all my neighbors have the same thing going on.)
Okay, well. That’s it for the nature talk today. I’m gonna get going here. Grab some more coffee. Take in this gorgeous morning before it’s time for the phone call.
I hope you have a wonderful Saturday, wherever you are in the world! I leave you with my breakfast-listening music from today. “Palaces of Montezuma” from Grinderman 2. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys! See ya!
“Palaces Of Montezuma”
Psychedelic invocations
Of Mata Hari at the station
I give to you
A Javan princess of Hindu Birth
A woman of flesh, a child of earth
I give to you
The hanging gardens of Babylon
Miles Davis, the black unicorn
I give to you
The palaces of Montezuma
And the gardens of Akbar’s tomb
I give to you
The Spider Goddess and the Needle Boy
The slave-dwarves they employ
I give to you
A custard-coloured super-dream
Of Ali McGraw and Steve McQueen
I give to you
C’mon baby, let’s get out of the cold
And gimme, gimmme, gimme your precious love for me to hold
The epic of Gilgamesh
A pretty little black A-line dress
I give to you
The spinal cord of JFK
Wrapped in Marilyn Monroe’s negligee
I give to you
I want nothing in return
Just the softest little breathless word
I ask of you
A word contained in a grain of sand
That can barely walk, can’t even stand
I ask of you
C’mon baby, let’s get out of the cold
And gimme, gimme, gimme your precious love for me to hold
C’mon baby, come out of the cold
And gimme, gimme, gimme your precious love for me to hold
c – 2010 Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, James Sclavunos, Martyn Casey
I always have to go down to the kitchen and get the coffee myself, and in the process, try not to trip over hundreds of scampering cats who can’t stand me.
Okay. Perhaps I exaggerate – there are only 7 cats here who can’t stand me.
But I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’ve never had this sort of announcement when the coffee was ready. Least of all, by a guy who wore a seriously nice robe such as the one pictured above! (And I guarantee you; I have had plenty of nightgowns that looked like hers, so that can’t be the issue here.)
I guess it’ll just remain one of those eternal mysteries, gang – why it is that vintage advertisements never seem to reflect the life I’ve lived.
Still awaiting comments & edits from NY on Blessed By Light. In the meantime, I’m trying to sort of urge my mind into the Tell My Bones groove. The play could not possibly be more different from Blessed By Light if it tried, so I seriously have to find a way to steer my mind away from one creative track and onto another.
It feels like that “changing horses in midstream” kind of thing. My mind doesn’t really feel ready to let go of Blessed By Light, but it has to. It is almost July and rehearsals will begin in a few weeks, and the director wants to see all my revisions for the entire play before we get started. (The rehearsals, though, will primarily be for the staged reading version of the script, which is only a 30 minute condensed version of the whole play.)
Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I went through a lot of stress, creating that staged reading version of the script back in January/February, and made significant changes to the storytelling at that point that haven’t been incorporated into the overall script yet. So I have to tackle that. And of course tackle it as the heat of July approaches.
But I actually do okay, writing in intensely unbearable heat. Sleeping in it is where I have serious problems.
Okay!
Yesterday’s post, curiously enough, yielded lots of traffic from Russia that I don’t usually experience – and none of it came through the WordPress Reader. Indeed curious, right?
Freaked me out just a little bit, I have to say. But on we go.
The last few days have yielded another sort of interesting development.
Even while being incredibly happy with finishing the new novel, and really happy with how it reads as a completed book, I’ve had these weird physical things that have started to perplex me. Relentless and usually overwhelming fatigue is an ongoing issue. Now pain issues. And now bruises appearing from out of nowhere that I can’t explain.
Yesterday evening, I found several more bruises. But you know, that sudden out of body experience I had while meditating yesterday morning felt really profound to me. That idea that it was futile to go on because there was too much “nature” out in front of me, and yet that feeling of peace about being right where I was, because everything was so beautiful right where I was.
Obviously, I don’t like seeing these bruises. And yesterday, I found 4 more. I like to believe it’s just some weird byproduct of being a vegetarian and maybe not getting enough of some sort of vitamin. Still, whatever it ends up being, that sense of peace came over me again yesterday and it was profound. I felt totally okay with everything.
I’m so happy that I finished the novel, and I know I’ll finish the play, and I feel certain I’ll finish Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse.
I have several other projects that I’ve already started – 3 plays, another novel, and a memoir; and then TV adaptations for 2 of my older novels. But yesterday, it suddenly felt like, well, if I don’t complete those projects for whatever reason, it’s okay. It’s these 3 primary ones that are front & center right now that matter most to me and I know for sure I’m going to finish those.
It’s a type of thinking I’ve never really had before, but it all felt really, really good to me. Like absolutely everything is all right, no matter what path I end up finding myself on.
Plus I think that the people that I love in this life know that I love them. And that’s really important to me.
Loyal readers of this lofty blog know all about Greg, the boy I fell in love with when I was 11 years old and he was 12; and I stayed in love with him until he was killed in an accident the summer I was 14 and he was 15. And then all sorts of horrible things began to unravel in my world after he died. And I never got a chance to tell him that I loved him. I was a child, you know? Throughout that whole relationship. Even though we had a ton of sex. I was still a child, really. I was overwhelmed by all the feelings I had for him, but it would never have occurred to me to say “I love you.” It just wasn’t part of my emotional landscape yet.
And I don’t think anything ever felt worse to me than having him suddenly be gone, forever, without being able to tell him that I loved him.
But ever since then, boy, I’ll tell you. I try to express how I feel towards people as best I can. Even though on so many levels, I am a really self-involved person, I do actually care deeply about people. Obviously, readers here know that I have this life-long processing of physical abuse and rape issues that I still deal with many decades later; things that have caused me to have intimacy problems that I try to process in the most productive ways I can. Still, it makes “relationships” very hard for me to maintain. But underneath all the drama, I still care deeply about people.
And I guess in some ways, even though this sounds sort of lame or even like an emotional cop out, my writing is always about human emotions and the emotional complexities of “being here” and the messages we give each other by “being here.” I do care very much about the human condition, the human heart, and I try to put all of that into my writing and hope that it continues to affect people positively. Even when there’s a lot of sex going on in what I’m writing, the human heart is always the central issue for me. That struggle for the heart to connect while it’s still here.
Love people. Help them feel loved. Let people know they’re not alone. Life is the same innate journey for all of us, even while we experience it each in our own unique way. I really believe there is an undercurrent to all of it that is exactly the same for all of us, and it comes from love.
Okay.
I still did not set up the laptop. I have some revisions I need to make by tomorrow to the micro-short video script that Peitor and I are working on, so I will probably avoid the laptop yet again and focus on that today! Or at least this morning. And then avoid the laptop by doing stuff like washing my hair, doing yoga, finding something to stare at and then stare at it. Study Italian. Play the guitar…
I so don’t want to deal with that laptop, and yet I also can’t wait for it to be ready for me to use!! What a conundrum!
All righty!
The Conversations with Nick Cave continue in Brighton for the next couple nights and then will completely disappear from the landscape for a couple of months, wherein I’m certain he will have all sorts of private (lower case ‘c’) conversations and wear whatever he wants to wear! Instagram will somehow survive and continue to get all clogged up with all sorts of things that may or may not mean anything.
As usual, we shall see!
The breakfast-listening music was a little sad today – one of Tom Petty’s many “divorce” songs before he finally got up his nerve (basically) to divorce Jane. It’s a song I’ve posted here numerous times over the years just because I really love the darn song: “Only A Broken Heart.”
(You know, if you like Tom Petty and have never read either his official biography, Petty, by Warren Zane, a really good book and a NY Times Bestseller from 2015; or Conversations with Tom Petty by Paul Zollo, a phenomenally good book from 2006; you should read them. He talks about pretty much every song he ever wrote and why he wrote them and what was going on in his life when he wrote what he wrote, as well as songs that might mean a lot to you that he barely even remembers writing because it meant almost nothing to him. Even his huge hit “Wildflowers,” a really gentle little love song/folk song, he says was actually a song he wrote for himself; because he knew he was unhappy but that he deserved to be happy and he needed to get a divorce… It’s just all very, very interesting if you like Tom Petty.)
Okay, enjoy your Friday, folks. Wherever it takes you! Thanks for visiting, gang. Please know I love you guys so much!! See ya!
“Only A Broken Heart”
Here comes that feeling I’ve seen in your eyes
Back in the old days, before the hard times
But I’m not afraid anymore
It’s only a broken heart
I know the place where you keep your secrets
Out of the sunshine, down in a valley
But I’m not afraid anymore
It’s only a broken heart
What would I give, to start all over again
To clean up my mistakes
Stand in the moonlight, stand under heaven
Wait for an answer, hold out forever
But don’t be afraid anymore
It’s only a broken heart
What would I give, to start all over again
To clean up my mistakes
I know your weakness, you’ve seen my dark side
The end of the rainbow is always a long ride
But I’m not afraid anymore
It’s only a broken heart
I actually might say this while I’m in Italy, gang!!
We are at long last inching our way into the ballpark of things I can see myself possibly saying while sequestered in Villa Monte Malbe in Perugia.
We shall see! But the important thing is that I’m still really enjoying the Mondly app. It’s really fun. I do real well on my quizzes, which is remarkable. They are throwing so much stuff at me every day, only a fraction of which I am retaining at this point, because my primary focus is on revisions of Blessed By Light and then, of course, revisions of Tell My Bones. So why I score well on the quizzes is a complete mystery to me.
I guess it means that somewhere, deep down inside me, Italian is making itself known to me and that this time next year, when I step off the plane in Rome and open my mouth, fluent Italian will spring forth!
That’s the goal, anyway.
Okay!
Gosh, it’s a lovely day here today, gang. Just unbelievably pretty out there. Last evening we had – yes, more rain! – but it has made for just a really, really nice day today.
I watched the final episode of season 6 of Endeavour last evening. It was really good, although I do have to say that it had some very tidy “happy endings” all the way around, for all the characters. But, still. It was nice to know that everything is back where it needs to be and all set up for a killer season 7 next summer!
It’s amazing how quickly I get addicted to that show. And they only do 4 episodes in a season. In the old days, back when it first came on and I would actually watch it on a television set, I used to DVR it and re-watch each episode so many times. But now I just don’t have time. I’m lucky to watch it once. But, wow, do I love that show.
For some unknown reason, after I watched Endeavour down in the kitchen last evening, I suddenly decided to wash the downstairs bathroom floor. This is the floor that had Daddycakes’ footprints on it. After he died, I was unable to bring myself to clean the floor because of his little paw prints being there on the tile.
It’s been over 2 months now since he died, and even though there were still traces of his paw prints on the bathroom floor, what I really actually had, was a very dirty bathroom floor.
So I tried not to get sad and I finally mopped it. I have to say, it certainly looks a lot better.
But I really miss that cat.
Okay.
Well. Nick Cave is in Nottingham tonight. And, yes, for all you Americans who, like me, grew up on the story of Robin Hood, it turns out that Nottingham is an actual place.
Of course, I’ve known for a very long time that Nottingham is an actual place, but I remember how strange it seemed, when I first learned that it was indeed an actual place. It just sounded so intensely mythical.
Plus, there are connections between Robin Hood and some sort of folk-hero bandit type person who indeed lived in Sherwood Forest.
All that stuff just fascinates me. How myths, and legends, and stuff get handed down through storytelling.
On my birth mother’s side, I am partially of Scottish descent, and that particular last name on that side is Hood. On my birth father’s side, as I’ve detailed here on the blog, I have connections to quite a few interesting historical people, including Daniel Boone and Chief Blue Jacket. And I’m also a cousin to Louisa May Alcott.
But, on my birth mother’s side, the relatives were a lot humbler in origin. But I tell people that the family name on that side was Hood, and that I’m a direct descendant of Robin.
You’d be amazed how many people actually believe me when I say that. It’s all in how you say it, you know? Especially if you’ve been throwing around names like Daniel Boone and Chief Blue Jacket.
Anyway. I digress.
We’ll see how it goes on Instagram tonight, but I’m noticing that people who aren’t supposed to be taking pictures with their phones during the Conversations, wait a day or two, and then suddenly the photos they weren’t supposed to take start getting posted to Instagram.
There was one photo of Nick Cave posted last night, in black & white, from Scotland that was just beautiful. So we’ll see.
I guess I’d better get to work here on the revisions of Blessed By Light. I decided to do a significant overhaul of Chapter Two, so that’s on my plate for today. And for some reason, I’m looking forward to this and not freaking out.
I leave you with this, gang. And, yes, I know, I’ve left you with this before. But yesterday, I drove into town to get groceries. On the way back, I was going my usual 95 mph. No one else on the highway. A bit of atmospheric rain, making everything intensely green again all over Muskingum County for as far as the eye could see. I was listening to the “Wildflowers” CD for the first time in a long time, and when this song came on, I punched the REPEAT button and totally cranked up the volume.
It’s a really sexy little song, gang. A great groove. But for some reason, when you’re driving in the rain, and this song is playing REALLY loud, and you’re sailing along super fast because you’re in Muskingum County which means that the Sheriff is never too worried about what you might be getting up to in your going-very-fast vehicle; well, then the sexiness of the song gets amp-ed up and — I don’t know — it just makes you really want to have sex.
(I know. It doesn’t take much to make me really want to have sex, but this is just, I don’t know, I guess, yet another one of those endless things that make me really want to have sex. Before you stoop to mocking me, though, you should get in your car, drive fast through Muskingum County in the rain, and crank this song, and see if it doesn’t do it for you, too.)
All righty! Thanks for visiting, gang! Have a terrific Tuesday, wherever you are in the world!! I love you guys! See ya!
[Come on, now, play it A LOT louder than that or it won’t work! – Ed.]
“Cabin Down Below”
Come on go with me, babe
Come on go with me, girl
Baby, let’s go
To the cabin down below
I got a radio
Put it on soft and low
Baby, let’s go
To the cabin down below
Well, I’ve had my eye on you
For a long, long time
I’m watching everything you do
Baby, you’re gonna be mine
Come on go with me, babe
Come on go with me, girl
Baby, let’s go
To the cabin down below
Time’s been moving slow
Since we both got here
Come on slide a little closer
Let me whisper in your ear
Well I got a radio
Turn it on soft and low
Baby, let’s go
To the cabin down below
Oh, baby, let’s go
To the cabin down below
Baby, let’s love
In the cabin down below
Yes, I am of course talking about the endless editing that I’m now doing to Blessed By Light.
I finally signed off on the revisions to Chapter One (I’m really happy with them, btw; this is the strangest novel I’ve ever read, gang, and I think that’s a good thing). But then I realized that Chapter Two could be more streamlined, so I’m up to my eyeballs now in that.
But, honestly, it’s not so bad now. I got past all the stymied weirdness of the other day. And I know for sure that the whole book doesn’t need editing; it’s just these opening chapters that I want to tighten.
So.
I’m okay with it.
That’s me, btw, up at the top there. 30 years ago. I was at my best friend’s beach house in North Carolina. He has long since died from AIDS. But back then – wow, he was the only person who could calm me down.
Actually, when we knew for sure he was dying, that he would not survive, that was his main concern: “Marilyn, how are you going to be okay without me?”
And I absolutely did not know. Although I didn’t want him dying while worrying about me, so I told him that I would figure it out – how to be okay without him.
I guess I did; I’ve managed, anyway, even though I don’t have any other “best friend” and that is super lonely. But I can guarantee you there are no other photos in existence of me looking that relaxed.
Anyway! It’s a beautiful day here. I didn’t blog earlier because I slept in until 7 a.m.!! I don’t remember the last time I did that, but it felt good. I woke up happy. But now that I’ve switched my meditation time back to first thing in the morning, then I do that Inner Being journaling thing, and then I had to get started on the revisions. Then do yoga…
So, anyway, here we are! Day’s half over!
I’m gonna say first, though, that I am hopelessly lost now re: all these Conversations with Nick Cave in the UK. I don’t think anyone in Scotland posted to Instagram last night. Plus, all these johnny-come-latelies from London and Manchester are still posting to Instagram, confusing me, and other people who have tickets to upcoming shows back in Scandinavia are posting things that haven’t even happened yet, and since Nick Cave apparently insists on wearing the same darn suit all the time, I am losing my ability to figure out where the heck he is.
The UK is really decidedly weird, though. Meaning that they seem to be incredibly okay with detaching themselves from their phones and so not posting pictures to Instagram. So they are really just screwing me up.
Oh, sort of on an unrelated note. Right this moment there is an amazing photo of Iggy Pop on Instagram that he posted to his own official page. He’s in concert and, as usual, is only wearing clothes from the waist down. But this photo is an extreme close-up of him from the waist up. He’s in his 70s now and still really muscular, but his skin is an absolute roadmap of lines and wrinkles. It is just jaw-dropping and breathtaking. It truly is.
I love Iggy Pop.
Back in the early 80s, when I was taking that songwriting workshop with (the late) Jim Carroll, one of our assignments was to write some specific lyrics and turn them in. And at that particular time, I was reading Iggy Pop’s memoir, I Need More, from his years living in Germany. So I wrote a song about that.
Here’s a photo of page 1 of my graded assignment – Jim Carroll’s comments. (I treasure this, obviously. Usually we didn’t have to turn stuff in, we went over stuff in class. So I don’t have his handwriting on too many things.) (Oh, I adored Jim Carroll, too, in case you’re new to this lofty blog.)
The song I wrote about Iggy Pop as an assignment for Jim Carroll’s songwriting workshop in early 1984.
Jim Carroll actually terrified me. He was SUPER nice. He really was. But he was also really tall – hence, The Basketball Diaries. And I was really shy. Whenever he would stand too close to me, I would sort of silently panic and freak out. Once, I arrived for class just as he was arriving and so we road up alone together in the elevator (he was usually surrounded by a swarm of students, but this time it was just him & me). He had an intense Bronx accent, and he said, “Hey, so, what’s yer name again – Mary Ann?”
ME: (inaudible reply)
HIM (smiles): “Hm. So how ya doin’?”
ME (just a sort of chirp): “oh. you know. fine.”
I was just terrified of him. It was too funny.
One time, at the end of a class, students still all over the place, he was talking to me about something I had written and while he was talking to me, he was picking at some lint or something on the lapel of my jeans jacket. So, in essence, he was touching me. I have no clue what he was talking about because the blood just went barreling through my eardrums and drowned out everything else. I was so excited that he was, you know, sort of touching me….Anyway.
I’m not 100% positive about this, but I think that Jim Carroll died in the same way that F. Scott Fitzgerald did — had a heart attack at his desk while he was in the middle of writing something.
Well, to switch gears entirely.
After I was done meditating this morning, I decided to get yet another hotel room in NYC for after that first Conversation with Nick Cave that’s happening on Saturday night, 9/21. I got a hotel room close to Lincoln Center.
I had been planning to maybe ask Sandra if I could just stay that one night in her pieds a terre there in the city, because it’s close to Lincoln Center.
She & her husband now live up in Rhinebeck, which is where I’ll be when we aren’t rehearsing in the city, and I’ve been worrying how intensely rude it will feel for me to leave Lincoln Center and grab that last train out of Penn Station and then arrive back at their house up in Rhinebeck really late and maybe even wake them up.
But then I was afraid to ask her if I could borrow her pieds a terre, because it feels sort of presumptuous to do that – you know, she being an actress and I’m just a lowly scribe. But mostly because I still feel really weird about being in NYC for rehearsals of my own play and then inserting these 2 Nick Cave Conversations in the middle of all that and making myself unavailable for 2 nights.
But, anyway, I finally decided on getting another hotel room and so I’ll just do that and now I feel a little more relaxed about that whole thing.
So life is just working out merrily on all fronts!
And work with Peitor on the micro-short video scripts yesterday was kind of incredible. Extremely intense. It is a shot by shot kind of script that we’re working on right now. So I’m sort of transcribing the thoughts that are in his head – the visuals. Sort of putting a storyboard into text (before we actually storyboard it), since this particular video has almost no dialogue, and it’s loaded with abstract visuals and industrial sorts of sounds.
I was kinda tired by the time we ended the call. And we only had maybe a page and a half of script. Just intense brain-work for me. But it’s all still so exciting.
Okay, I’m gonna close. Have a good Sunday, whatever’s left of it where you are, gang! Thanks for visiting! I love you guys. See ya.
I don’t know about you guys, but I feel worlds better today! Like a real weight has been lifted from me spiritually.
Part of it is because a truly amazing thing happened here first thing this morning: the SUN came up! For the first time in I don’t know how long, it isn’t RAINING!
I don’t mind rain, but it did go on for days. The Wakatomika Creek flooded – it doesn’t take much to flood that creek, but there is seriously a whole big bunch of water all over the place down there on the main road.
So it’s really nice to see the sun.
I had to re-think everything around here yesterday, gang. My brain just had some sort of weird meltdown. I got so stymied in Chapter One of Blessed By Light yesterday, that I knew something had to give around here.
I could tell the opening chapter was going to need re-vising now that the whole novel is finished. Meaning that, now that I know exactly how the novel ends, it re-informs how the novel starts.
However, I couldn’t get my mind wrapped around the changes I needed to make. It was like my mind suddenly decided to just stop working. And for some reason, I couldn’t force myself to get away from my desk and focus on something/anything more productive. (Meaning, meditation and yoga.)
And so… the more frustrated I got with the chapter, the more frustrated I got with the chapter. And I was magnetically adhered to it. No power on earth could separate me from the madness of that chapter yesterday…
So I decided that I need to go back to meditating first thing in the morning, when my resistance to everything is low. When my energy is still calm and (usually) joyful. (Which I started this morning.) And then I also need to really, really, REALLY force myself back into my daily yoga routine. FORCE myself to take breaks from my fucking desk.
Yesterday, while I was in the throes of that immovable weirdness, I was thinking: I need to pay someone in this village to come over here every day and force me away from my desk and tell me that it’s time to do yoga and to meditate….
I mean, it felt that crazy. Like, the only way I can manage it is to be accountable to someone that I’m paying, right? Make someone stand there until I physically get up from the desk, unroll the yoga mat and get started. (Once I get started, I’m fine. I love to do yoga. Why? Because it makes me feel so fantastic and calm and it frees my crazy mind.)
It’s just ridiculous how fixated I can get on something until it becomes, literally, impossible for me to stop. Or to even move. I mean, I could physically move. I did keep going down to the kitchen to get more coffee. As if amping up that nonsense was going to help me redirect my energy. It didn’t. It just made me more intensely worse.
And I still do that journaling thing in the mornings, too. Those conversations with my Inner Being, right after breakfast.
My Inner Being wasn’t super impressed with me yesterday, either.
However, as George Harrison pointed out many, many years ago: Here comes the sun, little darling!
So I just feel lots better today. So far, my resistance to everything imaginable on planet Earth is quite low. And I have another new coffee mug. This one is pink and it has a really loving quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald printed on it.
I love F. Scott Fitzgerald. He’s my favorite novelist. Even though I have a lot of favorite writers, for some reason, he is my absolute favorite. I guess because I fell in love with him as a man, not just as a writer, back when I was first exposed to his novels and short stories.
I mean, obviously, he had been dead forever by the time I was first exposed to his work in high school. But I still fell in love with him. Had to find out everything about him that I possibly could. A few of my current cats are named after him & his family – although “Zelli”, a kitten named after Zelda who turned out to be a boy cat, so I called him Zelli – he got adopted out to a good home.
Anyway, I have a really loving quote by F. Scott Fitzgerald on my new coffee cup, and it feels really good to have my coffee cup love me.
Sometimes I call upon F. Scott Fitzgerald to help me in my moments of insanity as a writer. “Help me here, please, Scott! What should I do about this chapter??!! I mean, besides drink heavily and smoke a lot?”
F. Scott Fitzgerald smoking
It sucks to not drink heavily and smoke a lot, gang. Honestly, that was the best part of my writing in the old days – the flipside of a hard day’s work, you know? Drink and smoke and fucking unwind.
F. Scott Fitzgerald thinking about drinking.
Since becoming a complete vegetarian many years ago (I had been a pescatarian for quite a while before that), I can no longer really drink. Because I get drunk immediately. Alcohol goes directly into my bloodstream since the only stuff that’s ever in my stomach gets digested in about 14 seconds nowadays. And even though I was never a serious smoker – I only smoked when I drank. When they stopped making Chesterfield Kings available anywhere where I could actually get at them (apparently they are still sold in Europe but with different packaging that totally sucks), I simply gave up smoking. They were the only cigarettes I really liked.
I just can’t picture F. Scott writing his masterpieces while meditating and doing yoga, though, you know?
I often think to myself, after an endless day of being at my desk, whether the writing went well or didn’t go so hot; I often think, I should go outside on my porch, smoke a cigarette and at least drink a beer. I always have beer in the fridge for the lawn care guys. And I have Pall Malls and Marlboros around here for other people I know who smoke.
But I know I would just make myself sick. So I sit on my bed and stare out the open window and listen to music. And that’s actually really quite beautiful. And I know that next month, once rehearsals start, and my play starts becoming a reality, my whole life is gonna change. (At the very least, I hope I’ll learn how to drink again!!)
Okay, gang! The Rolling Stones have hit the road here in America! They are about 45 minutes away from me, in Chicago (I think). I can remember the days when that would have meant a lot to me – the Stones being on tour. I saw them several times when I was young and it would cost maybe $15 to see them. Now, it’s just sort of something I see constantly on Instagram.
It’s mostly Ronnie and Keith working that Instagram thing. They are really active on it. Mick is, too, but much more in his endlessly narcissistic way. You know, for him, it seems to be all about looking 35 still, even though he had emergency heart surgery a few weeks ago. I mean, he does look great. But his posts always seem to be about how great he looks.
But with Keith and Ronnie, it’s always about the music and their daughters and wives and art and about how great life is just hanging out in the backyard. That kind of thing.
Anyway. The Stones are rolling.
Lots of photos posted from Nick Cave’s Conversation in Manchester last night. As usual, one really good one that I wish I get get off of my phone and onto my wall. But I’ve got enough things to keep me completely insane, I don’t need to fixate on that, too. (Plus, there are plenty of amazing photos of Nick Cave out there that I can get onto my wall – if I had enough wall space, that is!)
And on that happy note…
I guess I really need to get back to work on Chapter One of Blessed By Light now. I hope I’m on much firmer footing here today, psychologically. I just love this novel, gang. I really do. Even if I say it myself. It just really celebrates what I love about men. It’s definitely not gonna go over too well with feminists, but then they have never really been my readers anyway. God knows.
Thanks for visiting. I hope you enjoy this wonderful Solstice! I love you guys! See ya!
Me in my hellhole apartment on E. 12th Street, 1985! Back when I could drink & smoke & do all kinds of crazy shit to my heart’s content!
Life does indeed go on, as proved by the fact that I yet again woke up this morning and here I am, blogging.
I’m happy about that, and all. But one of those situations that began rearing its little head on Friday remains. But it does not flower and bloom into niceness. Rather, it looks increasingly like it goes down that dark alley that leads to a door with a lawyer’s name on it.
And I hate having to do that.
However, it did give me a great reason to call Gus Van Sant, Sr. on the telephone last evening, and since he is one of the nicest men on planet Earth, it changed the energy of my whole evening.
It was actually late at night (my time, anyway; he’s on the West Coast) and I was outside, under the stars, leaning against my car while I spoke to him on the phone.
I think that’s the best way to speak on the phone to men who are amazing and great. It brings together all sorts of elements that are hard to define but that are nonetheless breathtaking. Meaning: stars, the universe, nights in summer, a voice on the telephone.
It creates an indelible memory; captures a person in your mind for all time.
And when we were done talking business stuff, he told me about a friend of his who was killed the other day. And then he said, “I don’t know why I’m telling you about all this, Marilyn. But life flies by; it goes so fast.”
I loved, loved, loved working for that man. I worked for him for 5 years, until his wife died and he moved back to the West Coast to be near his daughter and his son (the filmmaker, Gus Van Sant, Jr). (He was his son’s business manager.) I learned a lot about the back end of making movies by working for him at the production company, which was a good thing to learn, but the thing I remember most is that we always listened to the old Big Band music while we worked. In particular, he loved Ella Fitzgerald.
I love that kind of music anyway, and I love Ella Fitzgerald too, but it broke my heart when he moved away and now one song that I had always loved before became completely saturated with his personality – “Skylark.” Because of the stories he used to tell me about his life, I hear this song and think that those memories of his are actually mine now, too. In a way.
Another thing that happened yesterday is that I was looking for an old CD – the 5th Dimensions Age of Aquarius. I really wanted to hear their version of the song, “Blowin’ Away.” A song written by that amazing & sort of underrated songwriter, Laura Nyro.
I never did find the CD, but while I was down on the floor, looking at the very bottom row of the CD rack, my attention was of course drawn to the bottom row of the bookshelf that was right next to it because I have some Nick Cave-related books down there (collected interviews with him & such) and so why wouldn’t my attention be magnetically drawn there?
But then my eye was drawn to a slim volume of poetry, The Beautifully Worthless, from 2005 by Ali Liebegott. She has since become a well-known writer. But the book won a Lambda Award for Best Lesbian Debut Fiction, back when my friends at Suspect Thoughts Press had published it. (Even though I think it’s still really more poetry than fiction.) (It has long-since been re-issued with City Lights Press, fyi.)
And I thought, man, that was such a good book. And I pulled it out and started flipping through it, and then became so immersed in its beautiful, plaintive voice again that I went back and I started from the beginning, while still sitting there on the floor.
And I read books like this, and I’ve been in the LGBTQA community my entire professional life, so I know the answers to my own question, and I understand the answers to my own question, but my own question still remains and that is: Why do we have to call it “Lesbian” poetry?
Why can’t it just be POETRY? (Yes, I know the “marketing” answer, and the political answer and it has become cultural.) But it still sort of bothers me – these constant, never-ending pigeonholes. This endless drive toward “diversity” that fractures the unity of Spirit.
I don’t read a book like The Beautifully Worthless and think to myself, Wow, these are such great lesbian poems. No, what I think is: Wow, this book is so good.
I understand that if you placed me against some sort of scale, I would perhaps be way closer to the “lesbian” side of things than maybe you are (I don’t actually know you, so I don’t know for sure); but still. You know? Can’t an amazing book about an experience of life just be an amazing book about an experience of life?
(When my agent was trying to shop my novel Twilight of the Immortal, publisher after publisher bridled at how many lesbians were in the novel – and these were actual historical figures, known to be lesbians, who surrounded the public & private life of the movie star, Rudolph Valentino. And the publishers said, “How are we gonna market a book that has all these lesbians in it?” It was dumbfounding. And it wound up on the smallest press imaginable because of that, and I eventually pulled it from that publisher and published it myself. It was crazy. Most readers who’ve read that book, loved it. The few who didn’t love it, took issue with my view on Valentino’s private sex life. But none of them ever said they had trouble reading it because lesbians were in the book.)
Well, whatever. I sure know that you can’t even attempt to fight City Hall unless you want to be gunned down on the steps of it. So on we go with our labels and our pigeonholes.
In fact, when I had to write a recent press release re: Tell My Bones, I was told to focus on the “diversity” aspect of all of it because of Sandra Caldwell’s transgender stuff, which just feels so foreign to me.
I’ve been friends with Sandra since 1992 and now I have to speak about her as a “transgender actor” instead of as, you know, my friend Sandra, who’s been in a ton of films & TV shows & plays.
Plus, I had to speak of myself as a “bisexual playwright.” To me, that is so weird. To label myself as specifically “bisexual” anything. If you’ve read anything I’ve ever written, you can come to that understanding pretty quickly. Or if you date me, or marry me, or whatever. I guess, if you just have a simple conversation with me, it might never come up. But the idea that it’s part of the approach to press materials now is so strange to me. If I’m bisexual, does it make you want to see a play I’ve written more, or less?
I would hope it doesn’t matter at all.
However, I do live in reality and I also live in the middle of fucking nowhere because people nowadays make me a little nuts…
Anyway, The Beautifully Worthless is a really beautiful book. (I’m not sure, but I think a lesbian wrote it.)
(Wild Animals I Have Known : Polk Street Diaries is also a really good book, that is also in my bookcase, on the same shelf – and has also recently been reissued. But it’s written by a gay guy – Kevin Bentley. And it’s all about life and sex and amazing men and the human heart. But you know…it’s written by a gay guy.)
Okay. I’m gonna scoot and get my Sunday morning started!
And I leave you, oddly enough, with a song called “Thursday” by Morphine. It was my curious choice for breakfast-listening music today! But anyway. Isn’t everything just a little bit curious? Okay. Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya.
“Thursday”
We used to meet every Thursday
Thursday
Thursday in the afternoon
For a couple a beers
And a game of pool
We used to go to a motel
A motel
A motel across the street
And the name of the motel
Was the “Wagon Wheel”
OH!
One day she said
C’mon C’mon
She said why don’t you come back to my house
She said my husbands out of town
You know he’s gone till the end of the month
Well I was just so nervous, so nervous
You know I couldn’t really quite relax
‘Cause I was really never quite sure
When her husband was coming back
It turned out it was one of the neighbours
One of the neighbours, one of the neighbours that saw my car
And they told her, yeah they told her
They think they know who you are
Well her husband is a violent man
A very violent and jealous man
Now I have to leave this town
I gotta leave while I still can
We should have kept it every Thursday
Thursday
Thursday in the afternoon
For a couple of beers
And a game of pool
I’ve spent the morning thus far bestowing my heady thoughts and lofty opinions onto someone other than you, and that cut way into my allotted blogging time for today, so I’m gonna be quick.
Mostly, I wanted to point out something about the whole blogging culture on WordPress. For a lot of people, WordPress is an offshoot of some form of social media. I’ve noticed that a lot of the bloggers I interact with at whatever level, are very interested in getting “likes” and “followers.” And, as loyal readers of my own lofty blog are well aware by now, I have never been about that. I’m about writing because I go crazy if I don’t.
I love it if you “like” me. And if you choose to follow me, that’s great, but I always prefer readers over followers, and I don’t really understand that whole culture of “liking” and “following.” I’ve had my “online journal/blog” for 22 years now. It was a whole different culture when I started out and I’ve sort of remained back in that Dark Age because I was always so happy there!
My long-winded point, though, is that most of my readers do not visit my blog through any type of social media. And I’ve noticed that WordPress has it set up so that you can’t actually contact me through my blog if you don’t have your own WordPress site, which, of course, seems to me to be a little invasive and unfair. So, last night, I added a “contact me” thingie up there at the top of my page – in the header area.
I toyed with the idea of adding the built-in WordPress “Contact” form but that looked way too off-putting and formal, so it’s just an email address link. But it’s there!
Okay!
The lights never did go out last night. The tornado siren went off, though. Briefly, thank god. If you don’t live in an area of the world where you have tornadoes, when a siren goes off, you’re supposed to go down into your basement.
Well, my basement is unfinished and is 118 years old. It’s not the creepiest basement ever, but it’s high on the list of creepy basements and I’m definitely not gonna go down there if the lights go out. So I just sat on the couch in my family room – cats scampering hither & yon because that siren is LOUD – and I just sort of hoped that the tornado would not materialize.
It didn’t. So I then spent the rest of the evening working on my Italian lessons. And then called it a (rainy) night!
Okay, thanks for visiting, gang. I really gotta scoot. It’s uncanny how, after the meeting I had on Tuesday, everything, energy-wise, is shifting into the realm of Tell My Bones. I really, really gotta start paying attention to that play really, really soon. So I’ve got to get Blessed By Light finished.
I hope you have a great day out there, wherever you are in the world!! I love you guys. See ya!
(PS: There was no breakfast-listening music this morning as I was instead reading an interview with KD Lang in a recent issue of Mojo. But I leave you with this bouncy little gem, one of my favorite songs of hers from Absolute Torch & Twang, “Luck In My Eyes”. Okay! See ya!)
“Luck In My Eyes”
I can feel a mountain rain
that’ll wash away
and shine again
empty my pockets
that were weighing me down
sift through my soul
to see what’s lost and found
gonna walk away from trouble
with my head held high
then look closely you’ll see
luck in my eyes
I can hear a howling wind
that sweeps away
the pain that’s been
take all my sorrow
and I’ll cast away
the worries tomorrow
that I had today
gonna walk away from trouble
with my head held high
then look closely you’ll see
luck in my eyes
all my troubles, all my troubles, gone
with luck in my eyes
all my worry’s all my worry’s, gone
Lunch was exceedingly interesting (see post from this morning).
Yes, rehearsals begin in late July. Yes, Florida is probably going to get bypassed entirely and Tell My Bones will go straight from staged readings in NYC & Rhinebeck, to either Off-Broadway or Midtown Manhattan.
Yes, I need to finish revisions on the entire play before late July. Yes, I’m stressed. Yes, I want to finish Blessed By Light before that. Yes, I’m not sure how I’m gonna do that. But yes, I am going to try.
And most importantly – YES!! I have a new coffee mug!!
Marilyn's Room 