Tag Archives: writing

And This Is How I Feel About That!

June 3, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Well, yesterday was a really unfortunate eye-opening sort of day.

I was more than happy to participate in the black lives matter hashtag because I do believe, with every fiber of my being, that the civil rights of black Americans need to be respected without question, 24/7.

However, I also believe that about every American. There are, unfortunately, a whole lot of Americans who are indeed treated like second class citizens, at all times. That’s gone on for as long as I’ve been an American.

Civil liberties are extremely important to me, and because of that, I’ve learned the really difficult part of that — and that is that sometimes I have to support the rights of people I absolutely do not agree with but it’s the underlying foundation of being part of a Democracy.

It’s a really delicately balanced give & take, and because of that, America’s destiny has always been fraught with extreme emotions and outright violence. But I don’t support violence. I am a complete pacifist. And I don’t support racism of any kind.

I chose not to participate in the Black Out on Instagram yesterday because it felt a little like being forced by the Union to walk the picket line, even when you see some huge holes in the agenda that you can’t get on board with. For instance, the violence. And the underlying anti-white agenda that’s going on there, too. And the militant thinking, etc.

Not everyone is in all those camps, but all those camps were under the banner of that agenda yesterday.

Signing on for the Black Out meant you were supporting the whole kit & caboodle, and I’m not such a generally-sweeping kind of gal. I prefer to stand back and be a critical thinker and throw my support behind each specific thing that I truly believe in.

But standing back, allowed me to see some of the really inexcusable stuff that went on. For instance, people choosing to not participate in the Black Out but posting their own meaningful posts about nonviolence instead, were slammed as racists.

Sean Ono Lennon springs hugely to mind. He posted an incredibly thoughtful post, in line with his Buddhist beliefs in nonviolence, and that nonviolent revolutions bring on more substantial change, and instead of being praised for being his own person and having his own mind, he was treated like a racist by total strangers slamming him on Instagram.

So, that kind of stuff, I can’t participate in. Anything militant, I can’t participate in, regardless of nationality, race, gender, religion, etc.

But the hugest hole in all of this is that I wouldn’t vote for Joe Biden if you paid me. So where are all these protest leading?

Anyone with an ounce of critical thinking can see that Biden’s sleazy and ineffective — and yet much more controllable than any of the other candidates who were vying for the job — and, if elected, he will likely just be a puppet President for the Democrats to prop up and stand behind so that they can then get down to practicing their own brand of dirty politics, business-as-usual. Because Democrats are just as guilty of that stuff — Hilary and Obama seem to have led the pack during their final year in the White House, based on what seems to have come to light in the Senate Judicial Investigative Committee on Mike Flynn.

So where does that leave someone like me? Voting for an Independent candidate again, which means — in the eyes of many — a wasted vote. No Independent candidate is ever ever ever going to be elected President of the United States.

Anyway, my point is, the protests (which are beginning to become more peaceful in some cities), are only throwing way more voters into Trump’s lap. And leaving no strong leader-type candidate to oppose him. None. Zippo.

That’s a huge gaping leaky hole in that boat that’s organizing both violent and nonviolent protests all over the country. You know — what is all this massive (and justified) unrest leading to? Joe Biden? And is there going to be a Presidential debate between Biden and Trump? In what universe is Biden ever going to win that? Honestly, we all know he has trouble forming coherent sentences.

And so where does that really leave people like me, who are nonviolent, who don’t support racism, who do support the complex inter-balance of civil liberties across the board…

So, yesterday was not a pretty picture at all, in my opinion.

And then something else happened that appalled me beyond belief.

A white man connected to my play, Tell My Bones — a play about the 100-year-old black painter Helen LaFrance — was using Helen’s incredible painting, “Canning Peaches,” as his wallpaper during a Zoom meeting the other day, and he was accused of being a “white Master on a slave plantation” and told to remove the painting.

Is this really what we’re coming to in America? Such extreme intolerance between the races? Helen’s painting couldn’t be more magnificent — especially if you’re lucky enough to see the painting in person. Her use of light, of primary colors, and her unbelievable attention to detail and perspective just stagger the eyes when you really look at it. (And she’s a Memory Painter, which means, she paints everything from her memories — she uses no live models or actual landscapes.)

Are we really saying that only black people are permitted to stand in front of, or be depicted in front of, any of Helen’s paintings that feature black people in them? (And in the case of “Canning Peaches,” it’s Helen and her mother. They aren’t slaves or even sharecroppers. They’re in the farm house that Helen grew up in — on the farm her family owned.) So, really?

Well, it happened, gang. Just this week.

Canning Peaches by Helen LaFrance. Permanent Collection of Kentucky Folk Art Center at Morehead State University

You know, I wrote, first, the screenplay (Tell My Bones), and now the play, about Helen LaFrance because I fell in love with her paintings. And I wanted to try to help the world find out about her art.

And when I secured a chance to actually meet her in person (through Gus Van Sant, Sr.), I had a 15-year old beat-up car, with 150,000 miles on it, but I threw an overnight bag into it and just took off. By myself. And it was a 10-hour drive. Plus, back then, I was suffering from acute anxiety disorder and I had a dread fear of crossing bridges. But I had to drive over so many fucking bridges to get to the farthest south-western corner of Kentucky, where Helen lived (in a nursing home) — including the enormous bridge spanning the Ohio River just to get into the State of Kentucky.

But I drove and drove and drove. And drove and drove and drove. And crossed many, many bridges that made me feel like I was going to have a heart attack. And when I finally arrived in Mayfield, and the woman who handles all of Helen’s business affairs, took me in to meet Helen, Helen was not at all interested in talking to any white person. She was cold as stone, suspicious, and not friendly at all. (She was working on a painting and would barely look at me.) (She paints with her left hand now, because she is paralyzed down her right side.)

You know, some white people have been of great help to her career, but a number of white people have exploited her terribly. So she was absolutely unimpressed with me and my white girl enthusiasm.

But I stuck with it and eventually I guess she could see that I was genuinely in love with her art and that I wanted to write about her life. And by the time the trip was over, she had given me the Life Story Rights to write about her life, and the okay for me to have access to her handwritten journals.

So when this man told me on Tuesday that he was accused of being a “white Master on a slave plantation” because he used “Canning Peaches” as his Zoom background and being forced to remove it — Jesus. I didn’t know whether to cry or to scream or to shoot myself. (And this was an educated white person accusing him of this, btw.)

What has happened to critical thinking in this country? I just don’t know. But it really hurt when he told me that. It really upset me. Plus, it was so humiliating for him — he couldn’t be more in love with Helen’s paintings if he tried.

So. Anyway.

Now I will talk about Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds!

According to Instagram, today is the 35th Anniversary of the release of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ astoundingly amazing album The First Born is Dead.

This is the record that totally blew my mind and made me a life-long believer in the utter genius that is Nick Cave. (I’ve written in detail about this before — getting off the subway train in Hoboken, NJ, to visit my girlfriend, finding that tiny record store along the way, which was filled with impossible-to-get (expensive) imports, and finding The First Born is Dead, taking it home, playing it, and becoming eternally stupefied.)

So anyway. Let us celebrate that, okay??!! Not so much my stupefication, but the album, over all. And let’s celebrate that it’s June, and that somehow, someway, everything always kind of works out all right. All things considered.

I’m gonna leave you not with the really, really famous song, “Tupelo,” but another favorite of mine from that album, “Train Long Suffering.” So listen and enjoy.

Thanks for visiting, gang!!! I hope you enjoy your Wednesday, wherever you are in the world today — regardless of your race, nationality, gender, sexual preference, religion, education level, or state of your bank account!! Yay! Seriously, though. Thanks for visiting. I love you guys. See ya!

“Train-Long Suffering”

Woo-wooooooo Woo!
In the name of pain!
(In the name of pain and suffering)
In the name of pain!
(In the name of pain and suffering)
There comes a train!
(There comes a train)
Yeah!
A long black train
(There comes a train)
Lord, a long black train

Woo-woo! Woo-woo!

Punched from the tunnel
(The tunnel of love is long and lonely)
Engines steaming like a fist
(A fistful of memories)
Into the jolly jaw of morning
(Yeah! O yeah!)
O baby it gets smashed!
(You know that it gets smashed)
O baby it gets smashed!
(You know that it gets smashed)

I kick every goddamn splinter
Into all the looking eyes in the world
Into all the laughing eyes
Of all the girls in the world
Oooooo-woooooh
She ain’t never comin back
She ain’t never comin back
She ain’t never comin back
She ain’t never comin back
And the name of the pain is…
And the name of the pain is…
And the name of the pain is…
And the name of the pain is…
The name of the pain is
A train long-suffering

On rails of pain
(On rails of pain and suffering)
There comes a train
(There comes a train long-suffering)
On rails of pain
(On rails of pain and suffering)
O baby blow its whistle in the rain

Woo-oo Woo! Woo-oo Woo!

Who’s the engine driver?
(The engine drivers over yonder)
His name is Memory
(His name is Memory)
O Memory is his name
(Woooooo-wo!)
Destination: Misery
(Pain and misery)
O pain and misery
(Pain and misery)
O pain and misery
Hey! Hey!
(Pain and misery)
Hey! That’s a sad lookin sack!
Oooh that’s a sad lookin sack!
And the name of the pain is…
And the name of the pain is…
Ooh the name of the pain is
A train long-suffering

There is a train!
(It’s got a name)
Yeah! It’s a train long-suffering
O Lord a train!
(A long black train)
Lord! Of pain and suffering
Each night so black
(O yeah! So black)
And in the darkness of my sack
I’m missing you baby
(I’m missing you)
And I just dunno what to do
(dunno what to do)
(Train long-suffering)
(Train long-suffering)
(Train long-suffering)
(Train long-suffering)
O she ain’t never comin back
O she ain’t never comin back
O she ain’t never comin back
O she ain’t never comin back
And the name of the pain is…
And the name of the pain is…
The name of the train is…
The name of the train is
Pain and suffering

Okey-Dokey! Sorry, Gang!!

June 1, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

All righty! Well, I’m a little bit late posting here today.

What a gorgeous day here in Crazeysburg, gang! I ran out of a couple things in the fridge so I decided to go ahead and drive into town and do the marketing this morning.

What an incredible day for a drive into town. Just lovely. And so now the marketing is done for the week.

I hope this finds all of you faring well during all the riots and unrest we’re having, Stateside. (And, I don’t know — if you live somewhere other than the States and are having riots and unrest, too, well I hope you’re okay, also!)

Here in Crazeysburg, all is well. And sometime this week (I think) I might be getting that brand new barn door!! I’m going to hear from the Amish guys sometime tonight to get the firm date. But I am so excited, gang!! I cannot wait. And I can’t wait to see Kevin’s face when he gets back from Montana in the fall and sees how great the barn will be looking by then!

And the other Kevin in my life — the director of my play, Tell My Bones — should be calling sometime today to go over the plans for the Zoom staged reading that we’re taping sometime this month. I’m excited to get the update on that, too. (And I’m going to try to persuade him and his husband to come out of lockdown and meet me for dinner one night soon at the Granville Inn!!! We’ll see what they say…)

And Peitor texted a while ago and wants to do more Abstract Absurdity Productions work today, so I said okay.

So between that, and the editing I’m still doing on Peitor’s book (more than halfway done with that), and any work I can get done on Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse, my day is just about over!! Or so it seems…

On an unrelated note… loyal readers of this lofty blog will no doubt recall that I had to finally unfollow the Keanu hashtag on Instagram recently because it was literally jamming my feed with endless, endless, endless photos of Keanu. (And doing that has now allowed tons more photos of alpacas, bears, birds of the world, and the Rolling Stones to flood into my feed!!)

But interestingly enough, there is an “official” Keanu Instagram account that I discovered by way of the Johnny Depp official Instagram account — (and there’s also an actual Johnny Depp account that he personally posts to once in a blue moon and when he does, in a nanosecond 65,739 viewers have already viewed it…)

Anyway, I thought that was interesting. An official Keanu account. So I clicked “follow” and it turns out that they have to approve you! Clicking “follow” is merely a request. You don’t get to just follow him, willy-nilly!! (Probably because the average Keanu fan is just indescribably rabid about Keanu.) Well, the other day, I got approved! I now get to officially follow Keanu’s official account! And they only post maybe one photo every 3 days…. much better than that other stuff.

Okay, so.

Life here is just really good, gang. What can I say? Perfect weather. All my many projects are moving ahead again. My heart is as happy as can be right now. And my refrigerator is full of food!!

And my dad is slowly coming out of lockdown — he’s doing his own grocery shopping now. Throughout the first 2 and 1/2 months of the quarantine, his grocery shopping was done for him by people who work at the Nursing Home-compound-place where he lives. He still has to wear a mask and all that, because the virus is still really prevalent in the county where he lives, but he is really enjoying at least being able to go to the store now. And plus he gets some dinner invitations from friends, now, too. So that’s nice. (If you’re new to the blog — my dad is about 90 years old, and his wife of over 30 years died in mid-January. So not only was he alone in the quarantine, but he’s still grieving the loss of my stepmom. So all the isolation has been rough on him.)

But things are moving forward — at least, here in Ohio, they are. I hope it’s similar where you’re at.

All righty, on that note — it is now after 12-noon here, so I’m going to get started on the editing.

I hope you have a great Monday, wherever you are in the world. Thanks for visiting, gang! This morning, on the intothelightadventures blog, she mentioned a Cat Stevens song that I used to love that I hadn’t thought of in years (“Moonshadow”), so it got me into a Cat Stevens mood again. So, today I leave you with a really gorgeous “live” version he did of the song, “How Can I tell You I Love You?” (a song that means a lot to me, gang). So, I hope you enjoy it. Have a great day. I love you guys. See ya!

How Can I Tell You

How can I tell you that I love you, I love you
But I can’t think of right words to say
I long to tell you that I’m always thinking of you
I’m always thinking of you, but my words
Just blow away, just blow away
It always ends up to one thing, honey
And I can’t think of right words to say
Wherever I am girl, I’m always walking with you
I’m always walking with you, but I look and you’re not there
Whoever I’m with, I’m always, always talking to you
I’m always talking to you, and I’m sad that
You can’t hear, sad that you can’t hear
It always ends up to one thing, honey,
When I look and you’re not there
I need to know you, need to feel my arms around you
Feel my arms around you, like a sea around a shore
And – each night and day I pray, in hope
That I might find you, in hope that I might
Find you, because heart’s can do no more
It always ends up to one thing honey, still I kneel upon the floor
How can I tell you that I love you, I love you
But I can’t think of right words to say
I long to tell you that I’m always thinking of you
I’m always thinking of you….
It always ends up to one thing honey
And I can’t think of right words to say

c – 1971 Yusef Islam

Happy Sunday!!

May 31, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis 2 Comments

Assuming, of course, that you’re not living somewhere that’s paralyzed by both the virus lockdown and now the riots.

What a mess.

Here, it is another cool and gorgeous day. However, by “cool” I mean that tonight it’s supposed to go way down to 42 degrees Fahrenheit — not enough to kill my flowers, but still pretty cold. So we’ll see how they manage.

Currently, if you’re into space travel stuff, the historic NASA SpaceX launch and DRAGON hookup is streaming live. You can watch it here.

And aside from all the riots right now reminding me of Cleveland, all this NASA stuff reminds me of my childhood in Cleveland, too. We always watched all those Apollo launches on TV, and if the launches took place during a school day, we dropped everything and watched it on a TV in the classroom. Black & white, of course. (Back then, all of our classrooms had television sets, but it was primarily to watch PBS educational broadcasting. I’m guessing they don’t do that anymore…)

This is how our classrooms actually looked in Cleveland in the late 1960s. And notice the Girl Scout over on the right!! I’d forgotten that we always had to wear out Girl Scout uniforms on days when our troop had its meetings after school. Ah well. Yesteryear.

Oh! And in case you’re interested! Here is my actual Girl Scout sash from those long ago days. Considering I will be 60 in about 6 weeks, and that I was a Girl Scout when I was 9… this sash is pretty old. (And I sewed on each of those little merit badges myself.)

My Girl Scout sash, from Troop 1334. Circa 1969

Okay! So.

Yesterday, Peitor and I got some great work done on Abstract Absurdity Productions stuff. It really felt like we were back on schedule now. And like the lockdown stuff was really coming to an end. We shall see.

(Of course, now the riots in LA are sort of screwing all that up — mandatory curfews there again, etc.)

Here, in Muskingum County, the lockdown is essentially over. We have had a grand total of 40 cases of the virus so far, with no deaths (about 86,000 people live in Muskingum County) .

To give you an idea of how unlike most of Ohio this is, where my dad lives, they still get dozens of new confirmed cases every day, and have over 1000 people with the virus right now — just in his county alone (about 383,000 people live in his county — huge difference).

However, here in Crazeysburg — which, more & more, feels to me like some sort of dreamland — the gasoline prices are on the rise again ($2.09 a gallon), no one has to wear masks anywhere (in the town), and you no longer have to stay 6 feet apart from anyone if you don’t want to. And the local factory is back in business, but at 50% staff.

I still have to leave the county once a week to get my groceries — and even though I’ve had the virus already, I still wear a mask when I go into the next county, because I’m hugely paranoid about catching it again. But other than that, it at least feels completely normal around Crazeysburg now.

Well, all righty. I still have some book editing to do for Peitor — I’m halfway done with that. And then I want to spend the rest of the day working on that new segment for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. So I’m gonna close this and get going.

Have a happy Sunday, wherever you are in the world. I forgot to mention a while back that the new Einstürzende Neubauten album did indeed come out (Alles In Allem). Over on the a1000mistakes blog out of Australia, he mentioned a song off the album today called “Wedding,” which I also like, so I’m leaving you with that today!

The song is in German. I have no idea what it’s about, except that I’m guessing a wedding factors into it somehow. (But with Einstürzende Neubauten, you don’t really know that for sure. You’d simply have to understand German to really know.) I just like how it sounds. I like the whole album, too. So listen and enjoy! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya!

A Lovely Little Morning in Crazeysburg!

May 30, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Wow, gang. The temperature dipped down into the 50s Fahrenheit, making for just a delightful little morning here. I could still keep some of the windows open during the night, but also get snuggly in bed. Perfect sleeping weather.

And now the sun is shining and the birds are chirping and it just feels like a perfect morning.

I got good work done on the edits of Peitor’s new book yesterday — still have a few days worth of work ahead of me, though. But he’s written a really cool book — a really engaging read, so I don’t mind editing it at all.

And when I wasn’t editing, I was continuing to read Sharon Olds’ collection of poems, The Father. And even though it is extremely well written, and some very arresting imagery is expressed (it’s a collection of poems chronicling the death of her father), I just kept going right back to Anne Sexton’s Complete Poems. She just inspires me to the moon and back, you know? And she’s really moving me along in Letter #8 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse.

It’s weird because this is certainly not the first time I’ve read Anne Sexton’s poems, or even The Complete Poems — Wayne and I had that book, back when I was still married to him, back in NYC. And I used to read it. But for whatever reason, right now, I am totally hooked into it. Totally. Can’t put her poems down.

And even while she is not the aforementioned “Muse” I’m writing to (i.e., “erotic love letters to the Muse”), she is definitely “musing” me right along right now. And I am really enjoying that flow.

I’m reading the Sharon Olds collection specifically because I began reading an academic book that focuses on how the “confessional- style” poets Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Sharon Olds deal with the themes of father-daughter incest in their poetry.

(After Anne Sexton’s death, a previous psychiatrist of hers, violating the mandate of doctor-patient confidentiality, released Anne’s private transcripts to the world (via a book about Anne’s life), revealing that she may have been the victim of incest with her father when she was growing up, and also that Anne herself had engaged in incestuous behavior with one of her daughters — with which that particular daughter concurred, later, in her own memoir.)

Sharon Olds doesn’t seem to have had that issue to contend with in her life, but some of the ideas she touches on in The Father poems could be construed as exploring a certain sexual energy, for lack of a better way of explaining it. But, to me, it feels more like a human energy, a “thought-exploration” that opens all kinds of doors inside a woman’s mind when someone she loves has died. I certainly wouldn’t describe it as “incest” or even truly “Oedipal”, for that matter.

I’ve read a lot of Sylvia Plath in my life, but not a lot of Adrienne Rich poems, for some reason. But I still found that academic book (mentioned above) highly interesting because the incest theme is certainly a huge part of my own life and my writing (my biological father, not my adoptive one). And the book did sort of indicate that, in regards to that specific theme in my life, I definitely seem to have never grown up. (I am paraphrasing, hugely.) But in that same regard, based on the author’s conclusions about Anne Sexton and Anne’s approach to that topic in her own work — and drawing from Freud and that whole crowd — neither one of us really grew up.

It could be that my intense immaturity is why I find Anne Sexton’s poems so inspiring! (I do, of course, jest.) (I think.)

Anyway. I appear to be deep into some sort of digression here. Not sure how that happened. One minute, I was talking about the lovely weather, then the next minute, I was talking about incest…

But that’s just the splendiferous joy of spending time in Marilyn’s Room. We never know where my digressions will take us!!

Meanwhile…

Wow, I really enjoyed that movie I mentioned yesterday Behind the Curtain (1929). I finished streaming it last evening, and it did indeed have Charlie Chan in it — midway through, the location switches to San Francisco and that is where Charlie Chan is living at that point. AND, I might add, they had an actual Chinese actor playing Charlie Chan!! Something they don’t seem to have ever again done, until some remake in the early 1980s, or something like that.

Plus, Boris Karloff puts in an appearance, as well — playing a Persian manservant (!!). But overall, I just felt the story was really good, really engaging. I mean the morals are outdated, but the storyline was really good for its era. It was certainly a much deeper film than any of the Charlie Chan one-hour movies that Hollywood began making in the 1930s, when Warner Oland began starring as Charlie Chan. (And the Charlie Chan movies get even more formulaic after Warner Oland died and Sidney Toler was playing Charlie Chan — well in the 1940s. It gets to the point when I can no longer even watch them; they just become paper-thin.)

Anyway, Behind the Curtain was a nice surprise.

Overall, I had just a wonderful day and evening yesterday. Today, I’m scheduled to work again with Peitor on Abstract Absurdity Productions stuff. Plus chat with Valerie about design-related stuff for my upcoming novel The Guitar Hero Goes Home.

Which reminds me… I was chatting on the phone with my ex-husband, Wayne, in NYC, the other day. And he was commenting on a sample of the cover art I had texted him for The Guitar Hero Goes Home. Apparently, he had gone onto Amazon to see if the novel was for sale yet, and he told me he was kind of astounded by how many of my books are for sale on Amazon…

Well, this astounded me because nowadays I have only two-pages on Amazon, mostly for out of print books or for eBooks. Whereas, even just a few years ago, I had a couple dozen pages, and most of my books, from all over the world, were still in print.

Wayne commented to me, “Wow, you’ve really done a lot of writing.’

And then I thought, like: Wow, where were you the entire time we were married? You know? I was publishing tons of stuff the entire time we were married. I was winning literary awards all over the fucking place. Giving readings all the time — and not just in NYC, but in Boston, Cambridge, LA, London, Paris. I was using my advance money from publishers in Europe to take us on great vacations. And I was always, always, always working on one publishing project or another the entire time we were married.

It felt shocking to me that he seems to have no recollection of this. And it makes me wonder who he remembers being married to for 14 years, you know? It was actually kind of upsetting to me, but I didn’t say anything. We’re not married anymore, and haven’t been since 2007. There’s no reason to even go there, right?

However, it did sort of renew that feeling in me that the work women do is never deemed as important as what the men are doing. At least, in my marriage it felt that way.

Although, when I left Wayne and began living with Mikey Rivera, it was just so different. Mikey was unbelievably supportive of my writing — of every single thing I wrote. He was an under-educated Puerto Rican plumber, raised in a Brooklyn ghetto, but he was just so proud of my being a writer. And during those early years with him, I really began to write some of my best work.

Anyway. Life goes on.

So, I’ll close this now and get Saturday happening here! Thanks for visiting, gang. I was listening to the Essential Nina Simone last night while drifting in and out of sleep — and, eventually, I was dead to the world as it played on into the darkness and turned itself off.

What a great collection! I’ll just randomly leave you with her version of a BeeGees’ song I’ve always loved, “To Love Somebody.” Listen and enjoy, but the entire selection is just stellar. And have a great Saturday, wherever you are in the world, gang! I love you guys. See ya!

Just Something Promising to Look At…

May 29, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis 3 Comments

Well, the news continues to disturb and distress, doesn’t it, gang?

You know, if you aren’t American and have no idea where or what Minneapolis is — it always seemed to me to be a city that had a very open-minded and tolerant reputation. And it’s a northern city, to say the least. (Northern cities usually have a reputation of being more tolerant, in general, and Minneapolis is probably the largest northern city we have.) (Of course, I grew up in Cleveland, which is also a northern city, and all throughout my childhood, there were violent race riots and massive protests and the National Guard being sent in and fires set all over the place that destroyed lives, etc.)

I don’t know. Maybe Minneapolis’ reputation for tolerance was a little erroneous, or even subjective. Or maybe the tension of the lockdown on top of the tragic, racially-charged killing, just caused the whole city to explode.

Just a great big horrible, awful mess. (And it’s interesting that so much of Instagram wants to blame Trump for what happened. I seem to recall all kinds of similar awfulness happening throughout Obama’s reign. And of course, I just mentioned how, nearly 60 years ago, this kind of awfulness was happening all the time, and Trump was still growing up out in Queens, so… It gets hard to follow the regrettable chain of ideas that springs simply from hate.)

A well-known writer from the rock & roll days that I follow on Instagram is a serious Trump hater. Like, beyond your ability to comprehend. He blames Trump for absolutely everything imaginable. He even made a statement the other day that Trump dodged COVID 19 the same way that he dodged the Vietnam War. What the heck? This writer is old enough to have served in Vietnam, too, and didn’t, so, like why’s he even bringing that up?

I guess to give the impression that he’s blinded by hate.

And even though I’m not a Republican — although I am definitely no longer a Democrat, since they became the Party of Supreme Intolerance — I have no issue with how Trump handled COVID 19.

During the peak of the crisis, even while I had the virus, I watched the President’s press conference every single night. The Federal Government seemed to be doing an amazing job of staying on top of the horror, daily — and it was intensely revealing to see how these alleged “journalists” would take the President’s answers to their intensely-politically-motivated questions and then turn the answers into headlines the following morning that were meant strictly to incite emotions and to not deliver actual facts.

I saw it happen again and again in the NY Times and with CNN — two news outlets that I used to swear by, you know? I saw it with my own eyes; heard it with my own ears: Wait, I saw that press conference and that’s not what the President said.

It was scary to see all that hate heaped into the NY-based news outlets by “journalists,” while all those New Yorkers were trapped in the quarantined epicenter and already struggling against so much tragedy caused by that Virus. (New York City is also the epicenter of Trump-haters — followed closely by Los Angeles– so the headlines seemed to just be exacerbating the city’s fears.)

Anyway, here was this NYC-based rock & roll writer, spewing so much hate in his Instagram feed, while I was actually faring just fine with the Federal Government’s handling of the pandemic.

Because I’m a writer, I have to file a Schedule C every year with my taxes, meaning I am also responsible for paying for my own healthcare, at a premium rate.

Health insurance is ridiculously expensive in America — most Americans simply cannot afford it without assistance of some sort, myself included. And I don’t believe in health insurance — while I do believe that it is unconstitutional to force Americans, by law, to buy health insurance. That was Obama’s legacy, btw, and he was allegedly a Democrat (that I voted for) (but he was actually a Socialist).

Anyway, because Obama forced into law something that was unconstitutional, I joined a Christian healthcare cooperative, that costs me next to nothing every month and keeps me within the law. But because we were in lockdown, the Federal Government started sending out special weekly payments to people like me who are alone and have to handle all kinds of expenses — i.e., ridiculously expensive health insurance — with next to know opportunities for money to come in until the lockdown is completely over.

Because of the Federal Government, I have survived just fine — but, then, I don’t have to pay for health insurance. The pandemic has been beyond “regrettable,” but Trump didn’t cause it — Trump, a Republican whom I didn’t vote for. (Whereas Obama, a Democrat whom I did vote for, did in fact create this horrible economic situation where Americans are forced by law to have health insurance that most of them cannot possibly afford, with or without the added awfulness of the pandemic.)

So it is, indeed, a great big mess for a lot of people right now. But I do honestly believe that a huge portion of the national media makes things a whole lot worse — purposely feeding people emotionally biased “news,” intentionally manipulating them, until feelings and facts have become hopelessly blurred.

And unfortunately, I have found that I did have to jettison CNN and the NY Times, in order to find out what was actually going on in the world.

So, well, I guess that’s how I feel about that. (“And other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?”)

Oh — and here’s something I realized the other day — when Abraham Lincoln was heading by train to Washington DC for his inauguration as President, he traveled on the Baltimore & Ohio rail lines, and stopped overnight at the Buxton Inn in Granville, Ohio. (The Buxton Inn is across the street from my beloved Granville Inn –itself a National Landmark, but nowhere near as old as the Buxton Inn.)

But it occurred to me the other day that, even though my house wasn’t here back then, the railroad tracks were, and Crazeysburg was already here, and I’m thinking that Lincoln’s train probably was on those very train tracks that are outside of my house! Just so cool, right?? (Assuming you don’t also hate Lincoln — a Republican– which I don’t.)

Well, all righty!! I know I try not to get political on this blog, but some days I just have to give in. It really just gets to be too much sometimes — how all the faces change, and the sides rearrange and the issues have different names, but the bad news stays exactly the same.

Today is going to be full of thunderstorms, so that should be suitably dramatic and will see if my breathing becomes once again affected by the intense humidity of thunderstorms. I still have to do a ton of editing on Peitor’s new book. Then meet with him for a few hours over the phone and work on Abstract Absurdity Productions stuff. And then also do some more work on Letter #8 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse.

I’m guessing the day will be over in a heartbeat. Currently, I’m streaming Behind the Curtain — a movie made in 1929, which is technically a Charlie Chan movie, but I’m halfway through it and so far, Charlie Chan hasn’t put in an actual appearance. It’s more about Scotland Yard getting help from Charlie Chan, via overseas letters, in solving a local murder. It is actually a really good movie. And it’s “pre-Code” so it has its salacious elements right out front. No innuendo needed.

Okay. I’ll close this and get on with my day, gang. Thanks for visiting. I hope Friday is okay to you, wherever you are in the world. I leave you with something I happened to see on Bad Seed TeeVee last evening and then was reminded of on Instagram this morning! Rather timely, as it were. I sure hope the tragedy in Minneapolis can find some sort of balance before more people die and the whole city goes up in flames. Okay. I love you guys. See ya.

“In The Ghetto”

As the snow flies
On a cold and grey Chicago morn
A poor little baby child is born in the ghetto

And his mama cries
Cause there’s one thing that she don’t need
Is another little hungry mouth to feed in the ghetto

Oh people don’t you understand
This child needs a helping hand
He’s gonna grow to be an angry young man some day
Take a look at you and me
Are we that blind to see?
Do we simply turn our heads and look the other way?

And the world turns
And the hungry little boy with the runny nose
Plays in the streets as the cold wind blows in the ghetto
And his hunger burns
So he starts to roam the streets at night
And he learns how to steal and he learns how to fight in the ghetto

Then one night in desperation
The young man breaks away
He buys a gun and steals a car
He tries to run but he don’t get far
And his mama cries
A crowd gathers round an angry young man
Face down in the street with a gun in his hand in the ghetto

And as her young man dies
On a cold and grey Chicago morn
Another little baby child is born in the ghetto

c – 1969 Mac Davis

Sure Hope the Morning Gets Better…

May 28, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis 6 Comments

Wow, what a weird morning I’ve had here so far, gang.

My perceptions have been all screwy.

First, I awoke around 3:45am, looked at my phone to see if there were any texts on it. There were, including one that was of great interest to me which turned out to not actually be there.

I like to think I was somehow still half asleep when I looked at the phone, but I could have sworn I saw what I saw. So that was intensely creepy.

I got up to go to the bathroom, stepped on something weird, which felt like a fuzzy cat toy of some kind. I turned on the lamp for a moment and there was absolutely nothing on the floor but the floor itself. So that was weird.

In the (dark) bathroom, I heard a very loud ticking sound that also creeped me out. It sounded like it was coming from the cabinet under the sink, but it wasn’t. And then the sound suddenly stopped.

Then I saw something weird on the bathroom floor, and thought: what the fuck is that? But upon blinking my eyes, I realized that it was just the bathroom scale.

When I came back into the (dark) bedroom, I saw a weird glow coming from the far side of the bed, on the floor. When I went to investigate, there was absolutely nothing there at all. No glow, no light, no nothing.

I decided at that point to get out of the bedroom and just go downstairs and start my morning. And even though everything was perfectly fine downstairs, I really was starting to worry that I was losing my mind.

So we’ll see how this day actually goes, gang. The sun is up now and all seems to be right with the world (and my bedroom), so here’s hoping…

(The most disappointing part of it, though, is that yesterday, I had such a great day — from start to finish. I was expecting to wake up this morning still in the momentum of the great day yesterday, and instead, woke up in a completely different Universe.)

Me with my imaginary (though undeniably handsome) friends, watching my life go off the rails…

Okay.

I don’t know if I’m working on Abstract Absurdity Productions stuff today or tomorrow, but I do know that I am doing a final edit on Peitor’s new book, starting today. I imagine it will take me about a week, so that means a couple of my own writing projects will likely take a backseat for right now, but at least it gets that project off his desk and will help him/us focus on film stuff. Los Angeles is starting to come out of lockdown now, too, so we have a lot of work to catch up on.

I am still making good progress with the new segment for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. (I am surprised by just how intense that segment is, though. I will likely split up the book editing work this week with working on that new segment.)

So! Little by little, we are getting back to normal around here. (Or perhaps, me being out of my mind is going to be part of that “new” normal we keep hearing so much about!) (I hope not.)

I still have a TON of web work to do on the Abstract Absurdity Productions web site, though, which is sort of stressing me out — remember how that site was supposed to launch by April 1st??!! And I had planned to hire “a happiness engineer” to help me quickly pull that site together, but then all these expenses came up for the barn so now I’m not sure. I guess we’ll just see.

What a strange, strange day, though, gang.

Last evening, down in my kitchen, I streamed yet another Charlie Chan movie that I’ve seen a million times — Charlie Chan in Monte Carlo (1938). This was the last full Charlie Chan film Warner Oland made before he died. And thinking about that at the kitchen table last evening, caused me to google his cause of death — I knew he had died suddenly, and then they brought in Sidney Toler to be Charlie Chan for a bunch more films. But I never knew what had happened to Warner Oland. (He was , by far, my favorite Charlie Chan.) (And it turns out he was not part-Asian, although he’d said he was.)

But it turns out he was a really, really cool individual. I was kind of flabbergasted. He even did a lot of early stage work with Alla Nazimova!! (Who I write about, at length in my novel Twilight of the Immortal.) Warner was his Americanized stage name — he was actually born in Sweden (and died there, too, as it turned out). He married a playwright, who mastered the Swedish language, so that the two of them could translate the playwright Strindberg’s plays into English.

He and his wife were married for 30 years and were both very successful. And then — yes — his alcoholism (!!) caused him to walk off the set of a Charlie Chan movie, and that quickly killed the 30-year marriage. And shortly after the divorce, he visited friends back in Sweden, got pneumonia, discovered he also had emphysema, and then suddenly died. It all seems to have happened in very short order.

And in fact, 20th Century Fox (the studio he had walked out on) took the footage they had already filmed, replaced the Charlie Chan character with Peter Lorre playing Mr. Moto and released it as a Mr. Moto film!! Isn’t that wild? I of course saw that very same Mr. Moto movie just a couple weeks ago, and I wondered why on earth Keye Luke was in a Mr. Moto movie, still playing Charlie Chan’s Number One son….

I always loved Keye Luke because he reminded me so much of my first husband, Chong Foun Kee. They looked quite similar and had similar characteristics. Both good-looking and super friendly…

Anyway. It was quite a successful google expedition. I learned all kinds of interesting stuff!

I’m also making great progress in studying my French on the Mondly app. It’s quite fun and I’m actually learning stuff, even after 52 years of “studying” French…

On another topic altogether, the Nick Cave exhibit in Copenhagen, Stranger Than Kindness, has officially announced the re-scheduled opening date: June 20th and it will run until February 13, 2021!! Details are here.

So that’s exciting! The world really is getting back to normal.

And on that great note, I guess I’d better get started around here.

I hope you have a good day, wherever you are in the world. I hope all your perceptions are spot-on and you don’t drive yourself crazy on this happy Thursday. I leave you with my breakfast-listening music — John Lee Hooker singing his hit “Boom Boom” from 1962. Such a sexy song. It hasn’t aged a bit. All righty, enjoy! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love love you guys. See ya.

Boom Boom

Boom, boom, boom, boom
I’m gonna shoot you right down
Right off your feet
Take you home with me
Put you in my house
Boom, boom, boom, boom
Mmmm hmmm
Mm hm hm hm

I love to see you walk
Up and down the floor
When you talking to me
That baby talk
I like it like that
You talk like that
You knock me dead
Right off my feet
A haw haw haw haw
Whoa!

Once you walk that walk
And talk that talk
And whisper in my ear
Tell me that you love me
I love that talk
That baby talk
You knock me dead
Right off my feet
A haw haw haw haw
Yeah, yeah!

Wow!! Another Splendid Day!!

May 27, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Yes, I’m just hanging out here in Crazeysburg with my ~~cock~~ rooster today!! What could be better –right, gang??!! It’s going to be another really gorgeous day.

Okay, well. Yesterday, as gorgeous as it also was, was an adventure in gardening, so I never got back here to post again. I was too exhausted.

I went to town early, in order to get my groceries and then to get the flowers for the summer — but apparently this pandemic has made it next to impossible to get impatiens, which is my preferred flower for the boxes & planters on the porches, because they bloom like crazy, all summer long, and they require no maintenance except for watering.

Well, there were no impatiens at all — none, zippo, zero. So I had to load up on my second preference, which they did have– petunias. They require a little bit more maintenance, but not much, and at least they bloom all summer long, too.

But by the time I got everything home, even though it was only 10am, it was already in the mid-80s Fahrenheit. Just super sunny and super hot. And I had bought 42 plants that needed to be replanted into 9 flower boxes and planters. But because of the intense heat, I was exhausted by 10:03am…

However, I carried on. Plus!! I have a toad this year!! I discovered him last week, when I was raking that enormous pile of leaves outside my back door. He came hopping out of the leaves, startled me, and then delighted me, and then went over and sat closer to the house and watched me rake for quite a while.

Well, yesterday, it looked like the very same toad, but I honestly have no clue if it was or wasn’t. However, there he suddenly was, on the kitchen porch, right in the middle of all my gardening stuff, hopping around in the shade of all the many new flowers that were waiting to be re-planted.

He stayed on the porch with me for really quite a while. I chattered at him and asked him all kinds of questions while I worked, but he was cagey and answered none of them.

Eventually, he hopped off the other end of the porch and went his happy way, but it was really nice having him to talk to. (Or at least to look at. Although for much of the time, he was motionless and just staring at me while I talked to him — so, it actually made it seem like he was listening to me!! Which was so nice!!) (My cats pretend like they’re listening to me when I chatter at them all day long, but they know that if they just look at me patiently for at least a moment, I will eventually leave them alone and go away!!)

It seemed like it took forever for me to get the flowers planted. People were texting me and the phone was ringing and I had to keep getting things to drink because it was inching up toward the 90s and I was sweating like crazy. And then I was hungry. And then I was exhausted again. And on and on. And then, by around 1pm, I ran out of potting soil and I only had one planter left to do!! But I had to drop everything, get back into my car and drive back into town!!

Yes, another 25 mile trip (each way)!! Except that on this trip, I was all sweaty and dusted with potting soil from head to toe.

Luckily, halfway to town, I remembered that there is a really big gardening center along Highway 16. I don’t ever shop there because they’re privately owned and very expensive. But all I needed was one bag of organic potting soil, so I stopped there and went inside and got my potting soil and wished that I could afford to shop there more often because they have such great garden stuff!!

And you can tell they’re privately owned because they have uplifting Scripture from the Bible printed on large banners and hung on the wall by the check-out. Which means they’re Christian and hold Christian values and they want you to know that your patronage is practically sacred to them. Publicly-owned stores nowadays would never risk publicly displaying Christian values. Atheists will write many, many angry letters to try to shame you for it. (If you’re privately owned, you can just advise the Atheists to shop elsewhere and keep on keeping on…)

Anyway!!

So, by the time I got the final planter finished, and swept off the porch and had everything watered and all cleaned up, and then took a shower and got all the potting soil washed off of myself — it was 5 hours, total. And it was really hot, outside and inside, and I was just unbelievably exhausted.

But the flowers got done! And I was happy. Summer can now begin!!

And then, because of something someone had posted on Instagram yesterday afternoon, I felt like watching that movie, Billy Elliot– the original one; not the new musical version, which I haven’t seen yet.

So, after dinner, I streamed Billy Elliot at the kitchen table and all the flowers were on the porch there, and the kitchen door was open as were all the windows, and the world was beautiful and I had the most wonderful evening. And I could not believe that Billy Elliot came out in 2001 and is 19 years old already. I could remember, plain as day, sitting in a movie theater in NYC — I was still married. With no thoughts whatsoever of ever leaving New York.

It is just scary, gang — where does the time go??!! Honestly!

Okay, well, today is going to be about making more progress with Letter #8 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. Then tomorrow, Peitor and I are supposed to get back on schedule with Abstract Absurdity Productions stuff. He has another producer on board now who can better advise us about budgets for short subject films. So that’s exciting!

And this morning, Nick Cave sent out another Red Hand Files letter where he talks about the personality, or mindset, of creative people (that’s sort of putting it in a nutshell). I totally related to what he said. You can read it and decide for yourself at the link there.

And on that happy note!! I’m gonna close this and reply to the 5 texts I have gotten in the past 20 minutes… And then get down to work here!!

Have a great Wednesday, wherever you are in the world, gang!! Thanks for visiting. I had forgotten that T.Rex’s original version of “Cosmic Dancer” starts off the Billy Elliot movie (in such a glorious way, too). So, even though I streamed the re-mastered version of T. Rex’s Electric Warrior as I drifted off to sleep last night, I’m gonna close this with Nick Cave’s version of “Cosmic Dancer” again, which I just love — and which is available now for purchase, gang, wherever you buy your music!! All righty. Enjoy. I love you guys. See ya.

Wow, What A Day!!

May 26, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Okay, gang, I’m just saying hi. I gotta be brief for right now.

Not only is it a stunning morning around here today but today is my day to drive into town and buy all my flowers for my porches for the summer!! So I’m super excited.

I still haven’t raked those leaves from around the front porch yet, so I want to try to do that this morning, too, before it gets way too hot.

I am still hard at work on Letter #8, “The Choice to Kill,” for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. I got great work done on it yesterday, but it’s one of those segments that’s going to be a little intense, so it is a little slow going (i.e., I’ve re-written the first page of it about 6 times already). But I’m still happy with it.

And life is returning!! I got a text from a friend last night who lives in Granville, and he said that my beloved Granville Inn is re-opening this week! He has reservations there for dinner on Saturday night. So the new normal is apparently upon us!! I might actually get to see people again soon!! We shall see.

Okay, have a good morning, wherever you are in the world, and I will try to get back here later today and at least post photos of my flowers.

By the way, if you’re viewing this on a computer and not a phone, you can visit my Instagram page through the photo toward the bottom of the left hand side of the page. I posted a video there at 5am this morning, showing just how noisy all these wonderful birds are at that hour! For some reason, WordPress doesn’t let me post videos from my phone. They have to be converted to a different file format — and who the heck has time for that at 5am, right??!!

Okay! Thanks for visiting, gang. Hopefully, I’ll check in again later. I love you guys. See ya!

Remember them as you see fit!

May 25, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

First, before I launch into the merriment of this holiday which is meant to honor the dead who served our country in some form of military service, but is now more about cookouts and picnics and going to the lake or beach, etc. — I just wanted to say that I don’t think my lungs are ever going to get back to normal!!!

Basically, I’m breathing fine now but as soon as high humidity is in the air (like today), it once again becomes a struggle to catch my breath. I’m starting to feel like this is permanent — that a little bat disease is part of my lungs now. Forever and for all time. (It has been over two months now.)

I happen to love bats so, you know, I guess I’ll deal with it, but it is really frustrating that it just won’t go away.

Okay!! Well. I’m doing laundry here. It’s another absolutely stunning day (high humidity notwithstanding). I like to think I’m going to go out and clean up those leaves that are still hanging out around my front porch, but we’ll see. I’m still working on that new “Letter” (#8 “The Choice to Kill”) for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. And once I’m on a roll, it’s seriously hard to get me to stop and do anything else — unless, of course, a natural stopping place simply happens all by itself.

I’m also now reading The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton, after having read Live or Die (1966) the other day, about 3 times in a row. (A great book of poems — it won the Pulitzer Prize for that year.)

The Complete Poems is sort of like an orgy of awesomeness. It includes ten volumes of her poetry — including Live or Die, along with 2 complete books of posthumous poems, as well as the very last poems she wrote, and then also a bunch of poems from the entire course of her career that she had set aside because she didn’t know where they fit in.

If you like Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems is a real treasure, since you can see how her writing style progressed over the years all under one cover.

I like all of her poems, but I prefer the ones from around 1960 – 1967. Her later poems, from 1971-1974 are still very good but sort of merciless. I can identify with everything she writes about, but the closer she gets to committing suicide (she killed herself in Oct.1974), the harder it is for me to take, because I totally relate to all that stuff she writes (and seems to think about constantly) and I don’t want to, you know?

(And in fact, 1974, the year she finally committed suicide, was a truly horrible year for me. Just the nadir of my existence. So I have my own personal demons rumbling under her poems at that point, too.)

The difference between a writer/woman like Anne Sexton and a writer/woman like me (except for the glaring oversight that I haven’t won my Pulitzer Prize yet!!): She seems to have been waiting her whole life for the right time and place — the exact moment — to kill herself. It seems like her entire life (she lived to be 46) was just something she did while waiting for the best moment to die. (She attempted suicide a few times.) And that’s okay. It’s not a judgment; it’s an observation.

I’ve actually known a few writers who were like that (who ultimately also committed suicide). But I just don’t want to be one of those. It is something I fight against with everything that I am. (I attempted suicide twice, between 1975 – 1979, and have struggled from suicidal depressions ever since.)

The thing that has (sort of) saved me, though, is that at least in Western society, women are no longer expected to find the best possible husband, help him earn as much money as he can, have children, run a perfect house while the man goes out and is the one who does all the great stuff — and try to have a stellar writing career of her own. (Assuming they don’t go out of their fucking minds — i.e., Diary of A Mad Housewife or Anne Sexton’s whole life.)

It’s still a choice you can make if you want to — and a ton of women still do — but society, as a whole, doesn’t really care anymore if you’re a woman and don’t want to go that route.

Another glaring difference between Anne and me — she re-committed herself to the same mental hospital several times.

When I was committed to a mental hospital — a private one, like the one Anne describes in her poems; the kind of hospital that doesn’t seem to exist anymore because they became indescribably expensive– I was committed against my will and hated every moment of it (nearly 5 months). And while in there I was exposed to a lot of the older patients who were there by choice and seemed to be content to live their entire lives there — re-committing themselves when their outside lives became unmanageable for them.

Here are some shots from the hospital I was in over 40 years ago — it’s closed now:

When I was there, the roads were paved but the entry still looked just like this.

I remember standing on this porch many times and just wanting to run away.

Here’s a photo of the demolition getting underway, sometime in the early 2000s, I think.

More of the demolition — but that white building was the Arts Therapy building (and the upstairs was the schoolhouse). In Arts Therapy I learned about Jackson Pollack and Picasso. And I also stole a bottle of black India ink and some needlepoint needles, because me and my roommate, Kathy, were going to give ourselves tattoos. (We did. With varying results.)

I found those sort of “eternal” adult patients truly horrifying, since I would have given anything to get out of that place. And once I got out, I never wanted to go back. A couple of the people my age that I became friends with in there, developed that habit of going in & out of mental institutions well into their adulthood. And I just found that horrifying.

And it wasn’t that I didn’t continue to suffer from mental illness — because I did. But I hid it to the best of my ability because freedom has always meant everything to me. Even the freedom to be fucking nuts.

Well, anyway!! Whenever July 14th rolls around each year (the day I was committed in 1975), I celebrate my freedom, regardless of whatever else might or might not be going on in my life; at least I’m free.

Okay! I hope this finds you feeling really free today, too, regardless of the waning pandemic and the continuing social restrictions. I’m going to get back to the laundry and then get back down to work on Letter #8 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse.

Thanks for visiting, gang. I leave you with my breakfast-listening music from this morning — a leftover from Bob Dylan’s birthday yesterday: Joan Baez’s “Diamonds & Rust,” a song she wrote for him back in 1975 (after suddenly getting a phone call from him again after they’d been split up for many years). It’s one of my favorite songs of hers (followed closely by “Love Song to A Stranger,” “Blessed Are…” and “Billy Rose”). So listen and enjoy and have a great Memorial Day (or Monday) wherever it takes you. I love you guys. See ya!

“Diamonds & Rust”

Well I’ll be damned
Here comes your ghost again
But that’s not unusual
It’s just that the moon is full
And you happened to call
And here I sit
Hand on the telephone
Hearing a voice I’d known
A couple of light years ago
Heading straight for a fall

As I remember your eyes
Were bluer than robin’s eggs
My poetry was lousy you said
Where are you calling from?
A booth in the midwest
Ten years ago
I bought you some cufflinks
You brought me something
We both know what memories can bring
They bring diamonds and rust

Well you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes the girl on the half-shell
Would keep you unharmed

Now I see you standing
With brown leaves falling around
And snow in your hair
Now you’re smiling out the window
Of that crummy hotel
Over Washington Square
Our breath comes out white clouds
Mingles and hangs in the air
Speaking strictly for me
We both could have died then and there

Now you’re telling me
You’re not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
Because I need some of that vagueness now
It’s all come back too clearly
Yes I loved you dearly
And if you’re offering me diamonds and rust
I’ve already paid

Summer is Basically Here, Gang!!

May 24, 2020 marilyn jaye lewis Leave a comment

Yesterday was just amazing! Such a beautiful day. I was able to keep the windows open all through the night.

And for me, nothing beats that feeling of waking up just before dawn to wide-open windows. All that fresh air. All those birds singing. All that peace.

Loyal readers of this lofty blog no doubt recall that I am in love with the silver maple tree in front of my house. My house is 119-years-old and I’m guessing the tree is about the same age — it is easily twice as tall as my house.

The front part of my house is totally shaded by the tree — including my bedroom. Here is a view of the tree right now, as I’m leaning out from one of my bedroom windows and trying to look up. I’d say this is still only, maybe, 1/4 of the way up the tree.

My silver maple. God only knows how many people have been shaded by this tree in this bedroom over the past century.

My house is what’s called a “salt box” style house, so the front of it is flat — straight up and down. The ceilings inside are high, so the second story, where the two bedrooms are, is up pretty high. It’s very difficult to see into the windows of the second story from outside — you have to be pretty far down the street to do that. In the summertime, the tree makes it just about impossible to see up into the windows from any angle, yet I still have an amazing view of the outside because the windows are really tall. All of the main windows in the house (10 out of 21 of them) are 6-ft, 4-inches tall.

The combined amount of privacy I get in my room from the enormous tree and the old-fashioned style of the house is kind of magical, gang.

Just one of the many reasons why I love living here. (And also why I hate raking leaves now — there are just a ton of them in the fall. It’s insane. I used to love the meditative process of raking leaves in autumn, but now it’s like — you’re kidding, right??!! Jesus.)

Okay!!!

Another great thing that happened yesterday — I sat down at my desk to do some more editing on The Guitar Hero Goes Home, and suddenly — and I mean truly from out of nowhere — Letter# 8 for Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse started to come out!!

I mean, it was not even on my mind, in the slightest way. And suddenly the words started coming. A whole stream of them.

I was literally in the process of editing Chapter 7 of the Guitar Hero, when a bunch of words came into my head. And they were kind of provocative, so I stopped what I was doing and wrote them down in my notebook. But suddenly a bunch more words came out, and a title: “The Choice to Kill.”

And I was, like — whoa; this is Letter #8 for Girl in the Night.

In total, about 8 paragraphs came out all at once. So I stopped editing Guitar Hero and gave my attention to Girl in the Night: Erotic Love Letters to the Muse. I hope to have it finished today but it’s kind of an intense section (as perhaps the title of it implies) so I’m not sure how long it will really take me.

I hadn’t even thought about Girl in the Night since February (when I wrote Letters #6 & 7) because I was so busy revising the play (Tell My Bones) at that point. And then, of course, I got completely wiped out by the coronavirus for nearly 2 months.

So this is exciting, gang.

(That whole time I was sick, I really struggled with thoughts that I was never going to write again. And so, now, to have it just spring up again — feels like old times!!)

Okay. Well, today is Bob Dylan’s 79th birthday. And in honor of that event, I went over to YouTube to find a song to post here for the occasion. However, I can never log onto YouTube without first checking to see what’s playing on Bad See TeeVee.

This morning, I logged on just in time to hear Warren Ellis give an impromptu commercial for the channel over the phone, while, visually, there were these great little animated line drawings of Warren and Nick Cave “dancing” provocatively in their Y-fronts.

(That’s why I can’t ever get onto YouTube without checking Bad Seed TeeVee first, because you just never know what the heck you’ll be looking at!)

And then it went into the video for “Red Right Hand”, which is just so great — the video as well as the song (from the incredible Let Love In album, 1994). So I’m going to leave you with that song today, in addition to a Bob Dylan song, in honor of his 79th birthday.

I have chosen a song of Dylan’s that I absolutely LOVE — it won the Oscar in 2001 for Best Original Song — from the movie Wonder Boys, which I also totally love — to pieces!! (I think most writers loved that movie; it really captured just how fucking insane it is to be a writer, and also to struggle with the politics of academia, if you ended up choosing that route.) (I didn’t. I was always just a “hit the ground running” kind of writer, hoping I wouldn’t starve to death…) (I didn’t.)

All righty!! So, as the sun shines in on me, I’m going to close this now and get going. Have a great Sunday, wherever you are in the world — and continue to enjoy the holiday weekend if you live Stateside! Thanks for visiting, gang. I love you guys. See ya!

“Things Have Changed”
(from “Wonder Boys” soundtrack)

A worried man with a worried mind
No one in front of me and nothing behind
There’s a woman on my lap and she’s drinking champagne
Got white skin, got assassin’s eyes
I’m looking up into the sapphire-tinted skies
I’m well dressed, waiting on the last train

Standing on the gallows with my head in a noose
Any minute now I’m expecting all hell to break loose

[Chorus:]
People are crazy and times are strange
I’m locked in tight, I’m out of range
I used to care, but things have changed

This place ain’t doing me any good
I’m in the wrong town, I should be in Hollywood
Just for a second there I thought I saw something move
Gonna take dancing lessons, do the jitterbug rag
Ain’t no shortcuts, gonna dress in drag
Only a fool in here would think he’s got anything to prove

Lot of water under the bridge, lot of other stuff too
Don’t get up gentlemen, I’m only passing through

[Chorus]

I’ve been walking forty miles of bad road
If the Bible is right, the world will explode
I’ve been trying to get as far away from myself as I can
Some things are too hot to touch
The human mind can only stand so much
You can’t win with a losing hand

Feel like falling in love with the first woman I meet
Putting her in a wheelbarrow and wheeling her down the street

[Chorus]

I hurt easy, I just don’t show it
You can hurt someone and not even know it
The next sixty seconds could be like an eternity
Gonna get low down, gonna fly high
All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie
I’m in love with a woman who don’t even appeal to me

Mr. Jinx and Miss Lucy, they jumped in the lake
I’m not that eager to make a mistake

[Chorus]

c – 2000 Bob Dylan