So my friend Jayne (and if you haven't read her blog, you really should) has a great post up, wishing her sister Meredith a happy birthday.
Meredith and I became friends in 8th grade (basically because of our contempt for a certain teacher who always wore a shirt with a stain on the back that looked like a semi-colon) - and she and I have been friends ever since. Through her, I became friends with her older sister Jayne.
Jayne acknowledges the beautiful Meredith in a post that brought tears to my eyes.
Here are my additional things about Meredith:
-- She pretty much single-handedly brought "punk" to our high school.
-- She got married in December (I cannot believe it was 14 years ago) - during a huge snowfall. It was a great wedding.
-- She supported my Grey Poupon habit.
-- I very well remember her playing the piano solo from Billy Joel's "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant"
-- She can recite the movie "What's Up, Doc" from beginning to end.
-- When I fall - she laughs. She loves it when people fall.
-- The summer after I graduated high school, I had a bit of a rough time for various reasons. Meredith would show up at my house, and say, "Get in. We're going to the beach." She made sure I got out of the house.
-- She was telling me once about a friend of hers who was always trying to analyze every little thing - every little gesture - every little subtext moment, and Meredith, exasperated, said to me, "I just see things - and I don't care!" We roared.
-- She used to walk out of the room when Jayne and I would start talking about Trixie Belden.
-- My first impression of her was in 8th grade - and it was 50s day - so she had on a white pleated skirt - and it was during gym class or something - I didn't know Mere that well - and she was in the outfield for a softball game, in her 1950s get-up, doing a Charleston-dance, out in the field. And I remember thinking, "God, she seems so confident ... so ... so ... breezy." BREEZY was the word. I told her this later, and we actually still reference it, in an amusing mocking way. "Well, Meredith, you know how breezy you are..."
-- In high school she introduced me to ELO, to Adam Ant, to the B-52s. Meredith was always very cool.
-- I have laughed with Meredith so hard that silence reigned between the two of us for 25 minutes at a time.
-- I know that whenever I go home I can call her up, and say, "Can I come over?" and she will be there.
Meredith. One of my forever people.
Happy birthday, friend!
Bill McCabe wrote the following in the Comments section of my post Blog-Banter:
"It is nice to finally have a conversation where you don't need to explain the entire back story."
AbsoLUTEly!! There is an immediate shorthand with certain bloggers - it is a joy and a relief when you "don't need to explain the entire back story".
When someone says "Richard Reid" and nobody goes, "Who is that?"
Readers: what are your favorite scary movie scenes? Or ... scariest movies you ever saw?
For me - First on the list: "The Exorcist".
I would say that that movie is pretty much un-watchably scary.
And "Rosemary's Baby" too. Roman Polanski's placement of the damn camera is terrifying! It puts you on edge.
I don't find watching that movie to be pleasant. I find it to be one long shriek-fest of nail-biting anxiety.
Great acting, though.
And recently I rented "The Ring" - thinking I was in for your basic scary movie - not realizing that I was about to watch an absolute NIGHTMARE. I was literally leaping out of my skin.
There was one point which was so terrifying that I leapt out of my seat, turned the TV off, and paced around my room, just to get myself together.
Just found this over on Number 2 Pencil - 100 Scariest Movie Scenes of All Time. (Warning: I got about 10 pop-ups when I clicked on the link...) Jesus, even just seeing a movie still of the #1 "scariest scene of all time" gives me goose bumps.
At long last, after owning it for years, I am reading Ernie O'Malley's classic of the 1916 Easter Rising, On Another Man's Wound. I'm only on Chapter 2 at the moment, but I can already tell that his writing style is far above and beyond the other "Irish Nationalist" memoirs I have tried to read. As my dad said, when he recommended I read this book, "Most of the other books read like: 'And then we hid in the bushes and blew up some lorries'". Ernie O'Malley can certainly write.
So far, here is my favorite paragraph:
On market days we could sense the roughness of country people. Awkward men drinking pints of frothy porter, using wiry ash plants on each other in daylight or being dragged and sometimes carried to the barracks by police. Bullocks beaten through the streets, the shrill complaining of pigs, a steady waft of speech and smells of cow dung and fresh horse droppings. Shawled barefooted women selling eggs and yellow, strong salty butter in plaited osier baskets, salty dilisk in trays, or minding bonnovs with a sugan. A ballad singer with an old song or one of a recent happening, stressing his syllables, rushing a long line into a short singing spacve whilst the people gathered in a circle, following the words eagerly. They bought his broadsheets and hummed the notes as they walked around. Old women with pleated frills to their white caps, the more wealthy with black bonnets shaking from a spangle of flat beads; boys in corduroy trousers and bare feet; rosy girls in tight-laced boots, which some had put on at the entrance to the town. Through all, talk, laughter, hot-blooded sudden blows, a sense of the bare breath of Mayo, backed by rounded mountains and sea, frayed lake-edges and the straight reach of Nephin mountain.
"The bare breath of Mayo" ... I like that. The O'Malleys are from Mayo, I have family there ... and Ernie O'Malleys words capture the feeling of it perfectly.
This entry is from when I was in grad school. One of my best friends in school was a crazy Texan who would wear his Stetson hat to voice class. We were two peas in a pod. He is one of the most insightful men I have ever met. And he loves women. But somehow our relationship was always like brother and sister, or kindred spirits. We're still good friends. (Beth and Betsy - you met him!)
This is a very grad school-esque entry, all about acting, and craft, and the bonds that are formed between people when you are in any intensive program like that. It may sound like we are insane - and perhaps we were - but we always made sense to each other.
He and I "got" each other, in current-language parlance. From the first time we ever had a conversation, we "got" each other.
Oh, and by the way, in the entry, I talk about a note he passed me once in class - and how I will "keep it forever". Well, I have. It is on my bulletin board right now - and I will never get rid of it. I read that little note, in blue moments, and remember who I am.
He put his notebook down. We exchanged Hey, how ya doins all with a deep subtext going on. Hm.
He asked me what I was doing. I had 45 minutes before I had to be anywhere. Then he offered up to me what was going on, what had just happened to him in his acting class.
He is so open. So angry, so conflicted, so self-aware. I really relate to this man. We can actually TALK to each other and actually BE in the conversation. It's hard sometimes, to describe a conversation like this one. It has an essence, hard to capture, yet so potent. Deep. We're very alike, he and I.
He described something he's going through very complex, very specific and I was right with him. I know it in my bones, in my blood. "I know just what you mean, **** ."
"Yeah, I actually thought about you. I had a feeling you'd know. I mean, from that night we spent together, member, and what we talked about?"
"Yeah."
He told me about B. [his acting teacher]. What she had said to him in class.
We go all over the place in our conversations, but somehow, we keep up with each other. Nobody else can. Others try to follow us, and get completely lost, or left behind, like: "Oh I thought we were still talking about this " **** and I will stare at them blankly, like: "Man, we moved on from that AGES ago... Now we're talking about this."
So, for the most part, when **** and I are deep in conversation, people leave us alone. It's all telepathic with the two of us.
So I said to him, about what was going on in his class: "So do you find that to be abusive or helpful? Sounds abusive to me, actually."
We give each other room to explain ourselves, though. It's all about listening.
We talked about hands. Why women are so into men's hands. How he doesn't get that. I reached out and took his hand, to explain it to him. "I'm not indiscriminately into hands. But certain men have hands I love. For me, it has to do with if I can feel you in the hands. If I can feel the man in his hands."
"Ohhhh." (Light bulb on for **** .) "Yeah, okay, I know what you mean now."
"Cause not every guy is really in his hands."
We talked about Fool for Love. Beirut. The scenes we are working on.
**** , to me: "Oh no! Don't learn your lines yet! Get into the situation Time and place. Don't even look at the lines! Understand the situation."
We both want this year to be about getting out of the way, getting our egos or whatever out of the way, so that we can act.
He had had a mind-blowing day. B. called him "a Rolls Royce with a dent No, you're not a Rolls Royce. You're a **** ."
As he was talking to me, really confiding in me, I got tears in my eyes.
Can we let go? Can we allow ourselves to breathe? To just breathe? So much of acting is in the breath. Everything starts with the breath, and half the time we're up on stage and we're all stressed out and we're barely breathing at all.
**** and I sat in the courtyard at school and practiced breathing together. Slow breath in. Concentrate only on your breathing. Be in your body. BE IN YOUR BODY.
Then came **** 's BRILLIANT observations about my drawings.
Okay, so let me talk about these drawings now:
What do I draw? It's really just a doodle, but when I doodle, I draw ladies' faces. There are cartoon lady-faces all around the borders of all my notebook pages. Some have straight hair, some have glasses, some have boingy-boing curls, some have long eyelashes I am always doodling this woman. She literally is everywhere. I do not even know I am doing it half the time.
So **** had noticed these drawings before, and had mentioned them to me once or twice.
The first time he brought up "the lady", all he said to me was, with no preamble, "Who's that lady, darlin'?"
I had no idea what he was talking about. "What lady?"
Silently, **** pointed at my notebook, and I suddenly saw, as if for the first time, the 20 "ladies" clamoring in the margins. I BURST into laughter.
"I have no idea who that lady is!"
**** does drawings, too: skeletal woodcut-ish faces with deep shadows under the eyes, eyes bored into the head. These faces are all over his various notebooks. A counterpart to my "lady". That's what **** calls her. "The lady."
Last year, in voice class, I noticed a skeletal face staring up at me from ****'s voice journal.
Or maybe I noticed it on the memorable day he sat next to me in Theatre History, and we wrote notes to each other in our respective notebooks, like we were in high school. Legs sticking out from under our desks. Whispering. Random guffaws. Shelagh said it looked like he and I had become the same person.
Anyway, whenever it was - I noticed this skeletor drawing in ****'s notebook and I mentioned it to ***** afterwards and we had an intriguing talk about him. Ruminating or, no, not even just commenting on these faces we draw, over and over and over. What are they about? Why? Who are these people?
And I remember **** saying point-blank, "Well, I know I'm drawing myself."
And that sparked a tiny bit of recognition in me. I remember him suddenly drawing the parallel between his drawings and mine. I didnt even know he noticed my "ladies".
****'s eyes, man. Nothing gets by those eyes. Nothing. Especially if you're a woman.
I remember feeling sort of startled when he dragged me into the discussion of his drawings. Wait, this is about you, not me!
But **** is smarter than me in some ways. He was like: I had noticed your drawings, and related to them on a subconscious level, because subconsciously again I recognized myself in it. I saw your drawings and was like: Oh. You do that too?
**** said casually, "It's like that lady you draw."
I was puzzled, again having no idea what he was talking about. "What lady?"
"You know. The same lady you draw everywhere. The one with the luscious lips."
Startled. I felt naked.
I was almost pissed to be discovered like that. How dare he see so much? I can never ever hide when I am with **** . It pisses me off.
This was all last year, during the first conversation about the drawings.
And it came up again today.
**** actually looked like one of his own drawings today, sitting in the courtyard. The eyes burrowed into his head surrounded by shadows that almost look like bruises, the pale sensitive face, the pain exuding from that face.
**** burst out, "That's why I just love the lady you draw! And her lips! Those sensuous lips! You're drawin' yourself, darlin'."
There are moments when I feel closer to **** , more known by **** , than anyone else at this school. Even Shelagh. I do not know what I would do without him. He sees my dirt, my shame, the stuff I don't like about myself. And he loves it. It makes me human to him. We talked about that today.
We talked about Lily Taylor.
We talked about Jennifer Jason Leigh. She drives **** crazy. He said, "I want to see her in a movie where she does nothing. Where she sits still. Where she keeps it simple. She's always so busy distracting herself, twitching, all mannerisms. It drives me out of my fucking mind."
We talked about Martin Landau.
**** told me a story about Landau and Tim Burton, during the filming of Ed Wood, a movie I loved. Landau said to Burton, during the rehearsal process, "So this film is a tribute to Bela Lugosi." And Burton said, "No, it's a tribute to acting."
I welled up as **** told me this. It's true. That's the genius of the movie, that's actually why I loved the movie. The horrible pathos of the scene with the octopus Lugosi flailing about in the puddle with the octopus arms it was hilarious, and tragic. M.G. and I saw that film together, and we were literally laughing and crying at the same moment. Humiliation hand in hand with dignity: acting in a nutshell.
So **** and I parted, after we had a conversation about holding tension in our mouths.
**** has always commented on how tense my mouth is. So sitting there, in the courtyard, I consciously tried to relax my jaw. **** scoffed at my attempt, openly. "Sweetheart, you're TENSE. Come on now. Really relax."
So we both sat there, doing it, massaging our jaws, sticking our tongues out, moving our mouths around. We roared at how stupid we must look.
I told him about the clipped-tongue thing I had when I was a baby. And also about having braces for three years in high school.
**** exclaimed, "Ohhhhh! No wonder!" He meant it kindly but it just came out funny. I laughed, and threw my arms around him, saying, "No wonder you're all fucked up, Sheila!"
"No! No! You know what I mean!"
"No, I know. I'm kidding."
**** kept pondering this, silently - I could tell - the fact that I hold tension in my mouth, and that I had braces when I was a kid ... He kept looking at me ponderingly.
Later that day, in voice class, he passed me a note. A propos of nothing. I literally will keep this note forever. FOREVER. I CHERISH IT. Here it is, spelling mistakes and all:
"That explains a whole lot. ie: about your mouth. You have beautiful teeth. It's muscle memory. You may have been an ugly duckling. Your now a swann. Swann's are beautiful. And mean."
HAHAHAHAHA
Swanns are beautiful and mean. That is absolutely classic.
**** loves me because I am like a swann. I am beautiful and MEAN.
Later in the day, I left a scrap of paper in his mailbox. All it said was:
To: ****
From: Sheila
And in that big space, I drew a "lady". Just for him.
.. and also: Happy birthday, Cashel! You're six years old! Can't believe it!
The Aunties will be driving up to see you, telescope in hand ...
So last night I had a wonderful time with Emily Jones and Bill McCabe - at a little old speakeasy, where there was a wood fire crackling, and people carving pumpkins.
We sat at a scratched wooden table in the back and talked like maniacs.
It was such a breath of fresh air to hang out with people as addicted to current events as I am!!
And Mike? Just so you know: we talked about you the ENTIRE TIME. Heh heh.
I would say, that posts like hers are ... essentially ... why I blog.
It's not about consolidating my rigidity - or tuning out the world - or leaping onto a rigid soapbox - at least not entirely. It also can be about learning from one another.
It can be about being okay with disagreement - and not just being okay with it - but LOVING it. And not needing to only surround yourself with those who AGREE with you.
Nothing more tiresome than a monolith of agreement.
Thanks, Michele.
My heart is a bit heavy at the moment (despite the fact that I am completely looking forward to my burgers-and-beer meeting this afternoon with Emily and Bill - cannot wait!!)
I have had some sad news about a mentor-type man from my life.
Jack Temchin, a man who went to bat for me at a crucial moment a couple of years ago, I found out last night died of a heart attack. I am very very sad to hear the news. I wish I had known ... I wish I had seen him more recently ...
This man, in one moment, actually in TWO moments, took my side against the powers-that-be, and got my loyalty forever.
The following is the story of Jack Temchin, in relation to me, and what he did for me. Perhaps a "selfish" way to write in memory of him - but it doesn't seem that way for me. His belief in me, his standing up for me, has made a huge impact.
I am very sad he is gone. Very sad.
Jack Temchin, RIP
Jack Temchin, after a long career at the Manhattan Theatre Club, as well as publishing a best-selling series of monologue books for actors, was hired by the Actors Studio MFA Program (my graduate program) to produce the 11-week "thesis" season. This was done at the Circle in the Square Downtown Theatre, on Bleecker Street (an amazing space if ever there was one).
Temchin's job was to be part of the thesis-approval committee - and once all theses were approved and cast - it was Temchin's job to design the season.
This was an insane job - with actors, directors, and playwrights bombarding his small office with neurotic and not-so-neurotic requests: "I wish that my project was LAST in the night ... not in the middle..." "Could you PLEASE talk to so-and-so and tell her that I have no plans on casting her?" "Why did you place my project so late in the season? Nobody will come to see it!!"
The panic was understandable, completely, because the stakes were very high. For all of us. This was what we had been working for, non-stop, for the past 3 years - we all wanted everything to be right for us PERSONALLY.
So Jack had 120 personalities to satisfy. I did not envy him his assignment.
He made quite a few enemies.
He was not always tactful. He would say things to people like, "End of discussion. Your project is going up 3rd and that's the end of the discussion. Grow up."
I always appreciated that about him - because it was very practical, it had a whiff of the actual professional world (which I really missed, at times, in the cloister of graduate school).
My thesis project was After the Fall, Arthur Miller's haunting (and flawed) play about his marriage to Marilyn Monroe. The play as a whole does not work, but we didn't do the whole play. We picked out two scenes - which are stunning, all on their own. I was very pleased - I got the director I wanted, I got the co-star I wanted - I was happy.
I was also cast in another project, a short play called "Gertrude Down", an original work by a playwright in the program.
"Gertrude Down" was a Reservoir-Dogs-esque play, except with all women - all these gun-toting women sitting in a big empty warehouse, smoking cigarettes, arguing - talking about nothing - and they are all waiting for ... something. You are not sure what. But it's ominous. And I was the "boss". All the other women were dressed up in bimbo outfits, sparkley nail polish, stilettos - but I, as the boss, was dressed in a man's pinstripe suit, black shiny shoes, a tie, and a fedora.
I would take out a cigarette, and all the bimbo girls would fight over who got to light it for me. It was a great part, I loved it. I was tough, no-nonsense.
Anyway:
Temchin decided to launch the entire thesis season with "After the Fall" AND "Gertrude Down". There were 2 other projects on the docket for the first night - and Temchin made sure that my two pieces weren't back to back - so that I wouldn't have to have a quick change or whatever.
One of the incomprehensible things about most of the complaints of the student body was: They didn't want to be seen in two pieces in the same night, especially if one of them was their thesis project. They wanted to have ALL of their focus directed on their one main project, and not diffuse their concentration.
I literally could not understand that viewpoint. It seemed so ... I can't even find a word for it. It just baffled me.
Perhaps it is because I had been out in the theatrical world BEFORE I went into grad school and I knew in my heart how advantageous it would be to be seen in two completely different pieces in the same night.
I was THRILLED, to tell you the truth.
In "After the Fall" I was playing a tortured sex-bomb nightclub singer poured into a teeny little dress with high heels, used and thrown-out by men, a woman-child with terrible insomnia, and horrible insecurities, constantly drinking to take the edge off. A possible tour-de-force part.
In "Gertrude Down" I was all butch, and tough, wearing a fedora, bossing everyone around, an alpha-Female.
What a great thing for me!
But my fellow students went into an uproar on my behalf, (I still don't know why they butted into my business - I think they were just using my situation as an example of what they DIDN'T want, assuming that I would feel the same way as they did). So I heard through the graduate-school grapevine that others in my class were complaining to Temchin, "standing up for me" was what they called it, saying to Temchin: "Sheila shouldn't be in 2 pieces in the same night! That's unfair!"
I hated that they assumed I had the same views as them. And I hated that they almost sabotaged my chance to show off my diversity as an actress. I was in a panic that Temchin would change the schedule. I had to make things right.
I stormed into Temchin's office (a man I didn't know very well yet), and demanded, "Don't you DARE change the schedule just because the other boneheads in this program feel like THEY couldn't handle doing two different pieces in one night - Do NOT change the schedule. I didn't ask them to come to you, and I'm pissed that they did. They're idiots. As long as you don't put my two pieces back to back, and as long as you put 'After the Fall' FIRST on the program, so I can get it out of the way, I am perfectly fine with appearing in two pieces, and frankly, I am totally baffled at why everybody thinks it would be a bad idea."
That is not word for word what I said - but I do know that I launched into an impassioned monologue - and the word "boneheads" was used.
Temchin looked up at me - took it all in - took ME in - then leaned back in his chair, threw back his head and ROARED with laughter. He just laughed and laughed and laughed.
I turned around and shut the door on all the nosy "boneheads" out in the hallway. I had been shouting. About all of them. With an open door. While they were sitting right there.
I was too upset to laugh yet - I said, "You're not gonna change the schedule are you? I have no idea why nobody else wants to appear in 2 pieces in the same night. Don't they realize how GOOD it would be to show the audience that you can do the contrast? What the f*** is the matter with them??"
Temchin, still laughing, said, "You're no dummy."
And that was all he said.
"You're no dummy."
So I got him to promise he wouldn't change the schedule. But in the middle of all of that, he noticed that I was carrying a Richard Ford novel under my arm, and he interrupted the entire conversation and said, "A great writer, isn't he?"
It was hard for me to segue. I said, "Ford? Yeah. He's good."
It was as though Temchin had seen me for the first time. He was staring up at me, looking at me. Not just my surface, I could feel, but at ME. He made me sit down ... and then he got me to talking about literature.
We had never had a conversation before I barged into his office and demanded that he do what I ask.
He loved that I was carrying a NOVEL, and not "10 Things to Know if you want to be an actor" or "How to get the casting office to love you" or "Helpful Tips to Actors Who Want To Be In Soap Operas" ... or whatever. He thought that was so refreshing. An actor who had interests outside of acting ...
Anyway - it was that one conversation that sealed the deal for the two of us.
After that - after he saw how much I gave a shit about my work, also how realistic I was (that I knew, in my heart, that being seen in two pieces was BETTER than only being seen in one), he could not do enough for me.
He satisfied my every demand. He kept checking in with me as the thesis season went on. "How's it going? Anything you need?"
He was amazing with me. A true mentor.
Another story about this man, who became one of my champions:
I had an idea for "After the Fall" - and I needed help executing it. The character, Maggie, becomes famous, as a singer. Her most famous number is "Little Girl Blue", a ballad. My idea was this:
Have a haunting echoey recording of me singing that song ... and play it over the scene changes, or at appropriate moments during the show ... My idea for it was NOT that it should be what the character actually sounded like when the song played on the radio, but that it should be a kind of photo-negative of the same song, to show how troubled she was, how doomed.
I wanted it to sound literally like singing this song was this character's last gasp for breath. No more energy, no more sexiness left ... all feeling drained ... she was giving up ... she was sinking ...
The lyrics fit with that idea:
"Sit there and count your fingers
What can you do?
Old girl, you're through
Sit there and count your little fingers
Unlucky little girl blue ...
No use, old girl - you may as well surrender
Your hopes are getting slender
Why won't somebody send a tender blue boy
To cheer up little girl blue"
Nina Simone does a great version of this.
You can jazz it up, but my picture for it was of a woman, at 4 am, rain coming down, sliding off into perhaps an overdose ... all alone ... and this is her last expression.
Great idea, huh?
Well, nobody would help me.
I was told there was no budget, there was nobody set up to record such a thing. (Interesting how LATER in the season when other actors wanted to do special sound-stuff - the school found a way. But I was the test-case, and they gave me a hard time.) Rich Gershberg, the guy chosen to direct my piece, did his best to get me what I wanted - but the school just did not give a crap.
They didn't count on Jack Temchin.
My brother the musician stepped up - and we recorded me singing the song on his equipment - not very sophisticated - but hey, for me, I was a woman with a mission.
Then, lo and behold, on the night of our Tech-Dress rehearsal, there was a worried conference between all of these upper-level people - about the quality of the recording. It wasn't good enough, clear enough, it sounded amateurish.
Rich came over to me, with Temchin, and murmured to me, "There are some concerns about the quality of the recording--"
I had fucking had it. I exploded.
"I HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR WEEKS AND NOBODY WOULD HELP ME. I HAVE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR WEEKS AND NOBODY WOULD HELP ME."
Rich said, "I know, Sheila, I know, and now they understand that you were right --"
I burst into tears. "Rich! Nobody listened to me!"
"Sheila. They're listening now."
Temchin came over, and took me in his spindly little arms. "Okay, sweetheart, we're gonna fix it. Bill Riley has a state-of-the-art recording studio at home, and you are going to go over there right now, and record exactly what you want - He can make it sound just like what you want, exactly what you have been asking for for 3 weeks now."
It was midnight. I was exhausted.
"Record it now? We open tomorrow night, Jack!"
I was hysterical. I admit. My nerves were frayed, I felt like I completely had not been taken seriously, and now they were trying to cover their tracks.
I went into Temchin's office the next day, completely embarrassed that I had been screaming like that, in front of the Dean, in front of the organizing committees - I said, "I'm sorry I threw such a fit."
Temchin gave me this look. This dead-on look. "Sweetheart, you don't have to apologize. They fucked up. They know it. And you let them know it. If this program doesn't invest in YOU, then we have no business being an acting program."
So Jack made it all better.
He got me into a cab, he gave me money to go up to Bill Riley's recording studio on the Upper West Side, he had told Bill Riley to give me whatever I wanted - and everything worked out in the end.
The recording that Bill Riley made, of me singing that song, was beyond my wildest dreams.
He created EXACTLY what I asked. He took me seriously as an artist. So did Jack Temchin. I wasn't just some whimsical idiot making an unreasonable demand. I had a good idea, it was MY thesis... and I just needed some help bringing my idea into reality.
I knew how I wanted to perform the song ... soft and whispery ... as though ... throughout the process of the song, the life ran out of me, the tide pulled back.
I told Riley my idea. I told him I thought a slight echo would be the best ... I wanted it to sound like I was at the bottom of a well.
I gave him all my crazy images, by this point it was 2 in the morning, and Riley DID it.
I still have a copy of me singing that song, in the way that I wanted to.
And we used it in the production - Jack Temchin cleared all obstacles out of the way.
He told the sound designer, "This is an actress who knows what she wants. She is not a diva. She needs help. So GIVE her that help."
And everybody did.
This may sound like a trivial story to tell, on the occasion of the passing of this man.
But, to me, he was a champion.
We used to call such people "spirit warriors" in college. Over the course of those weeks, with my thesis craziness, he went to battle, on the side of my spirit.
He recognized my worth, he recognized ME.
I will never forget him for that. I didn't even really know him that well. But he will always have a special place in my heart because of how he went to bat for me, during that crazy time.
Jack Temchin: Rest in Peace.
A post from Michele, honoring firemen everywhere.
Her father was a fireman. She eloquently describes her "moment of realization" as a child:
[My father] was, at that time, a volunteer firefighter on Long Island, in addtion to his paid position in the city. One evening, a huge grocery store went up in flames. My mother and the rest of the firemen's wives had the duty of bringing coffee and other drinks to the firemen. Hey, it was the 70's. Women did that sort of thing without question.So mom packed us up into the car and we went to watch the Big Apple grocery store burn down. I thought it would be fun and exciting. Instead, it was terrifying. I watched the roof collapse. I watched the building crumble underneath the flames. I watched as firemen kept going in, towards the flames instead of away from them. What kind of idiot goes into a burning building? A brave one, I suppose.
Shortly after that, a volunteer fireman from my father's company died in the line of duty. My father's chosen profession suddenly took on a different tone for me. I never thought about the death part. I never even considered the fact that one day he might not come home from work. I went to bed that night angry. How could my father be so selfish that he would risk his life to save strangers and their property when he had kids and a wife at home who needed him? A small voice in my head replied: That's not selfish. It's selfless.
I saw the picture on the front page of the New York Times today, and my jaw dropped at the sight. It is a terrifying photograph. Terrifying.
I thought of those men, those human beings, who appear almost as specks in the photograph. Those brave men - dwarfed by this catastrophe almost beyond their control - and yet there they are, lined up along a fire hose, facing the inferno.
Again, as I have said time and time again, my brain goes blank almost when faced with such men.
I don't know what to say, how to thank them ... how to carve out enough space in my heart for my humility, my gratitude.
Go read all of Michele's post. She finds the words.
So I have done this Gender Genie thing, like most other bloggers, and no matter what I do, no matter what post I enter, the Gender Genie guesses that I am a man. And it's not a close tie, either. It is overWHELMingly in favor of the Male.
I not only put in my rant-y pissed-off posts, but more personal stuff.
It didn't matter. Political or personal, the Gender Genie thinks that I am MALE.
Very interesting. I wonder what it is. Syntax? Grammar choices, sentence structure? Lack of qualifiers?
Extended post on Oxblog by Patrick Belton about Paul Muldoon, specifically, and Irish poets in general.
I love Paul Muldoon, as well.
I've seen Seamus Heaney a couple of times, when he gives readings at NYU. You just fall in love with him. You just have to.
And I heard Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill read her work at the Ireland House, here in New York - which was an extraordinary experience. She only writes in Irish. "I can't hear the poetry in English." So Nuala talked about her process, she described what was going on with her when writing each poem, she gave a brief synopsis of the poem, all in English - and then she launched into the Irish language for the poem itself. And dammitall, if you couldn't get her exact meaning.
Anyway -
Patrick at Oxblog: You must ask Muldoon out for a pint, and then tell us all how it goes.
Thanks for a very unexpected post - a topic which is very dear to my heart.
Here's a bit of Paul Muldoon:
"The Sightseers"
My father and mother, my brother and sister
and I, with uncle Pat, our dour best-loved uncle,
had set out that Sunday afternoon in July
in his broken-down Ford
not to visit some graveyard -- one died of shingles,
one of fever, another's knees turned to jelly --
but the brand-new roundabout at Ballygawley,
the first in mid-Ulster.
Uncle Pat was telling us how the B-Specials
had stopped him one night somewhere near Ballygawley
and smashed his bicycle
and made him sing the Sash and curse the Pope of Rome.
They held a pistol so hard against his forehead
there was still the mark of an O when he got home.
Random Facts About Me - with accompanying links when appropriate
The Questionnaire:
My Favorite Word: Elixir
My Least Favorite Word: Plether
Noise I love: Ocean waves
Noise I hate The phone ringing
What turns me on (spiritually, creatively): A good book, my nephew Cashel, hanging out with old friends
What turns me off: Close-mindedness, gossip meant to hurt somebody
Profession I would like to attempt: Olympic figure skater, astro-physicist, Secretary of State
Profession I would hate: Executive Administrative Assistant
My favorite curse-word: Jag-off (a Chicago regionalism)
If heaven exists, what would I like to hear God say when I arrive: "Welcome, Sheila - all your family members are waiting for you over there - Grandpa and Mummy Gina and Pop and Mike and Jimmy and Joe and Angus - and dinner is just about to be served, and you will be sitting between Marilyn Monroe and Teddy Roosevelt. Welcome."
Onto the Facts:
-- I do not have a sweet tooth but I could be addicted to Doritos if I had no impulse control.
-- I have every book that L.M. Montgomery ever wrote, even the god-awful Pat of Silver Bush.
-- I have had three marriage proposals. Two I said "No" to, and one I said "Yes" to. But I'm still not married! Huh. I will leave you to puzzle that one out.
-- There was a time in my life when I was unable to listen to anything other than Nirvana. There was also a good year when the Foo Fighters' "The Color and the Shape" never went back into its case - it was always in my stereo or in my walkman.
-- I'm very big on having celebrity crushes. My first was Ralph Macchio, during his stint on Eight is Enough. I have since moved on to Harrison Ford, Jeff Bridges, Russell Crowe, Ewan McGregor.
-- A couple of my favorite movies: Running On Empty, Only Angels Have Wings, The Big Sleep, The Fisher King, Empire Strikes Back, Ball of Fire, Double Life of Veronique, Notorious, Bring It On
-- I did a play once called LESBIAN BATHHOUSE. It is NOT on my resume.
-- I have about 30 cousins and they are all amazing people.
-- I've only had one boyfriend, one guy who has met the parents. This was when the first George Bush was in office.
-- I love Metallica.
-- I am legally blind.
-- I love Guinness and I love scotch.
-- I cannot and will not function without a cup of coffee in the morning.
-- Do not come between me and my Hitachi Magic Wand.
-- I went through a huge Sylvia Plath phase in high school, unaware that I was behaving like a total cliche.
-- I have a lot of conservative views (see Edmund Burke, to know what I'm really talking about) - but I am not in any way, shape, or form, a social conservative. All that family values, moral values, religious right stuff is highly offensive to me, personally.
-- I only need 5 or 6 hours of sleep.
-- I'm against the death penalty.
-- I am the oldest of 4 kids.
-- The Bible is a great read.
-- My favorite weather is grey rainy windy chilly days.
-- My parents rock. I feel like, on some cosmic level, I must have CHOSEN them as my parents.
-- I worry about my future.
-- When I was 9 or 10, my best friends were Jen and Katy. We used to pretend we were witches. We made up witch-songs, we had witch-names.
-- I saw "Dog Day Afternoon" while babysitting when I was 12, and knew then that I HAD to be an actor.
-- I have great friends. From all periods of my life.
-- I walk while reading a book.
-- I would never have an abortion myself, but I am pro-choice.
-- My favorite places on earth are:
Glendolough (Ireland)
Beth's deck (RI)
Narragansett Beach (RI)
The entire city of Chicago
This one random tiny lake in Minnesota where I camped once, with deer literally all around my tent - the first place I saw aurora borealis
The wild west coast of Ireland
-- I have dated two guys at the same time, completely double-timing both of them, until one of them won out. Temporarily.
-- A couple of my favorite novels: Crime and Punishment, Mating, Possession, Jane Eyre, Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, The Shipping News, East of Eden, Harriet the Spy, Scoop, The Pigman, Franny and Zooey, Catch-22
-- My favorite theatrical character is Rosalind in "As You Like It".
-- I lived in Beacon Hill in Boston.
I lived in Mt. Airy outside of Philadelphia
I lived in Woodland Hills in Los Angeles County
I lived in the financial district in San Francisco
I lived in "boy's town" in Chicago (the gay neighborhood)
I lived in Wrigleyville in Chicago
I lived on the Upper West Side in Manhattan
I lived in Hoboken
-- I love biographies. Excellent ones I have read: David McCullough's bio of John Adams, Gerald Clark's bio of Truman Capote, Scott Berg's biography of Charles Lindbergh, Richard Ellmann's biography of James Joyce
-- I don't like abstract modern art, really. I love Michelangelo, daVinci, Rubens ... I love the boxes of Joseph Cornell. I love deChirico too.
-- I'd like to have children. Or, at least, A child.
-- I'm a hawk, in terms of American foreign policy, and protecting our interests - in our own country and abroad. I'm not afraid of saying that I am proud of America, and I love my country. Even in its failings, even with all its faults. I love this nation dearly.
-- I have never had a "Beatles phase". There is no "phase". There is just one long continuous obsession. I have listened to the Beatles almost constantly throughout my entire life, with no let-up. Since Betsy and I discovered "Sgt. Pepper" in 5th grade.
-- My friend Beth and I used to dance like such banshees at high school dances that we would be drenched in sweat, our Irish faces hot and red, and we would run over to the side of the gym and press our hot sweaty heads up against the cool tiles before running back into the slam-dancing fray. And then we honestly wondered why we did not have boyfriends.
-- I was made fun of in junior high. People put signs on my back proclaiming lovely statements like, "Look at my ugly pants!" I'm getting revenge on all those shit-heads now.
-- I spent the millennium in Dublin with my friend Ann Marie
-- My best teachers were:
Mrs. Rand (2nd grade)
Mrs. Dickison (6th grade)
Mr. Crothers (10th grade English)
Kimber Wheelock (acting, college)
Judith Swift (acting, college)
Maury Klein (the History of the Industrial Revolution in college)
Carla Belver (acting in Philadelphia)
Sam Schacht (my acting teacher now)
-- In kindergarten, I recited the lyrics of "American Pie" in their entirety for Show and Tell.
-- I love Christopher Hitchens and Camille Paglia. I don't agree with everything they write, but I always perk up my ears when they've weighed in on something.
-- I had my first kiss at 17 years of age.
-- I rarely remember my dreams. This has not always been the case.
-- I'm Catholic and all, but there is one man out there who actually made me contemplate the possibility of past lives and reincarnation. Not because he believed in it, he was Catholic, too - but because not only did I love him, but he seemed familiar to me. It was more like I recognized him. From a past life. My friend Kate said, "Yeah, your Celtic tribe probably slaughtered his Celtic tribe."
-- I read Shakespeare's sonnets out loud to myself if I'm stressed out.
-- I laughed so hard once in college that I literally peed my pants.
-- Me and my friends Jayne, Meredith, and Dolores made a 2-hour movie in high school called "The Troubled Days and Nights of Husbands, Wives, Lovers and Children in Hope and Despair". I played, among other things, a murderous LUNATIC named Andrea. I did a dance with a meat cleaver to the tune of "The Hall of the Mountain King".
-- Gay people should be able to be married. End of story.
-- As the oldest child, I am often consumed with worry about my younger siblings, even though they are fine. I lie awake at night worrying: Are they okay? Are they happy? Is everything all right with them?
-- I love to jitterbug. My friends Mitchell and my Brian are my favorite partners. They know how to lead.
-- I love my friend Beth's marriage to her husband Tom. I know it's not perfect and all, but still - I love them together. I like who they are with each other, and I like who they are TO each other.
-- I have always been fascinated by madness.
-- Meryl Streep's performance in "Postcards from the Edge" is highly under-rated. I think it's comedic genius - one of my favorite pieces of acting ever.
-- My father has given his children a sense of history and cultural continuity. We grew up being proud that we were American. But we also grew up surrounded by Irishness, and he let us know that we were a part of that tradition too.
-- I have had platinum hair.
I have had jet-black hair.
I have shaved all my hair off, a la Sinead O'Connor.
-- Things I need to do before I die:
Travel through Iran
Take the train across Siberia
Go to Tibet
-- Ongoing passions:
Physics
Totalitarian Regimes
Films
Literature
The male-female dynamic
-- My friend Betsy and I, during grade school recesses, would sit on top of the jungle gym and sing the entire score of "Oliver" at the tops of our lungs. Crowds of kids would gather about and listen. We were geeks, but we were happy.
-- My brother Brendan is an actor and a musician and a great dad.
-- My sister Jean is a teacher in a middle school.
-- My sister Siobhan is an actor and a musician.
-- My mom is a wonderful painter - watercolor and oils.
-- My dad is a librarian. Here is who my dad is: Ask him a question about something, and he will stand up, go to one of the MANY book shelves in the house, and pull down a book (he knows just where to find it, in the 1000s of books he has) - and read you a quote that will answer your question.
-- My nephew Cashel is an articulate sweet-hearted boy who loves "Star Wars". He and his friend Jack have bonded about "Star Wars" to an intense degree. Cashel, speaking to my parents, rhapsodized about his friendship with Jack and actually said the following words: "The first time I saw Jack - I could see the twinkle of 'Star Wars' in his eyes."
-- The first time I saw "Harold and Maude" was at The Music Box Theatre in Chicago, and I laughed so hard and so loudly at the general with only one arm that I had to get up and leave, to try to get a-hold of myself. My guffaws were annoying people.
-- I have a tattoo of a phoenix on the back of my left shoulder. I drew it myself in a notebook during a bout with a 103 degree fever, and then I walked into a tattoo parlor, still sick, and held the notebook out, saying, "Could you put that on my shoulder?" Reluctantly, (tattoo artist could see how sick I was, thought I would regret it) the guy gave me the tattoo. I've never regretted it.
And after writing the memory below, the stream-of-consciousness ran out ... and I stopped ... and so I will end with this tale:
-- I was involved in a production of Clifford Odets' Golden Boy in Chicago. It was a wonderful production, but it did not generate an audience.
We had read somewhere that William Hurt was looking for a theatre company to be involved in. He missed the stage. We weren't just a random group of actors happy to have jobs - we were an ensemble, a company - so we sent a note to his agency, inviting him to come see Golden Boy.
Well - he did come - with his assistant - and on the night he showed up to see it, we had NO audience. Not ONE OTHER PERSON showed up. It was so mortifying. But we did the entire 3-act play solely for William Hurt and his assistant - as though there were a full house. It was one of the weirdest theatrical experiences I have ever had. On any other night, we would have CANCELED if only 2 people showed up ... but this was William Hurt! Flown in from Los Angeles!
We were all very embarrassed. We came out for our curtain call, mortified at making him come all that way to see this obvious failure. And he was sitting there, clapping, (an odd lonely sound - 2 people clapping in a big empty theatre) - and he had tears running down his face.
Afterwards, we all sat around in the lobby of the theatre with William Hurt, and talked about theatre, the state of the theatre, and acting - until 3 or 4 in the morning.
He needed a ride back to his hotel. Michael, one of the actors in the show, offered him a ride with the rest of us, in his pick-up truck.
So I sat in the back of a rickety pick-up truck with William Hurt, as we drove through the quiet dark streets of Chicago, my hair blowing like crazy, William Hurt was just beaming - and laughing in exhilaration - He looked so happy.
He hugged all of us good-bye, holding on to each one of us so tight - He said that we had made him believe in the possibility of good theatre again in this country.
It is a night I will never forget: laughing and screaming "Whoo-hoo!!" into the wind with William Hurt, crouched in the back of a battered pick-up truck.
People get to me through typing all kinds of Search terms. Some not so interesting - like "redheads" or "redheaded actress" - kind of boring, and has nothing to do with my blog - but then some are pretty cool.
My one post on July 4 about the Second Continental Congress generates a couple of clicks a day - and has ever since July. I find this so heartening. People looking for information - and there I am (or there is the quote from Paul Johnson that I provide for everybody, I should say).
So I like that. When I can sense that something I have posted has taught somebody something.
But I just do not know what to do with the knowledge that someone got to me today by Googling the ... I can't even really call it a "search term" ... uh ... someone got to me through typing, "Lara Flynn Boyle's pathology" into Google.
I laughed out loud when I saw my referral log.
...An editorial by Cathy Young in a major newspaper discussing the rights of the defendant in rape cases.
It's about TIME.
Attitudes toward sexual assault victims have changed greatly in the past 30 years -- and thank goodness for that. In the early 1970s, juries in many states were still commonly instructed to consider evidence of "unchaste character" (such as going to bars alone or using birth control) as detracting from a woman's credibility or suggesting that she was likely to have consented. Rape shield laws forbidding the use of the complainant's sexual past as evidence are rightly seen as an important accomplishment of the women's movement.And yet many people, including feminists such as Columbia University law professor Vivian Berger, have cautioned against going too far in protecting the accuser at the expense of the accused. In some cases, the woman's past -- including her sexual past -- can indeed be relevant to the man's guilt, particularly in he said/she said cases without much physical evidence.
What if the woman has a record of making false accusations of rape or other crimes? What if she is so mentally unstable that she has trouble distinguishing between imagination and reality? What if she has engaged in sexual acts that could provide an alternate explanation for the physical evidence which the prosecution is using to prove sexual assault?
Damn - even just ASKING these questions is inflammatory. I can see the smoke shooting out of Susan Faludi's ears from miles away.
Cathy Young, the author of this piece, acknowledges fully that rape is not, and can never be, a black and white issue - due to the he said/she said nature of the crime - and also because it is true that you can be raped by your husband, it is true that prostitutes can be raped, none of that stuff can be ignored. All kinds of information has to be taken into account, and we cannot hold women on such a pedestal that the mere mention of a woman having sex somehow besmirches her in our eyes.
"So she's had a bunch of one-night stands? She's a slut - she was asking for it."
Yawn.
Women have to be responsible for their own safety, and not put themselves in compromising positions, yes. But you know what? At some point, that caution doesn't matter. Women get attacked for no reason, meaningless things happen, things you cannot avoid. I am no fight for a big strong man, and I am a SPITFIRE. If a man decided to drag me into the shadows, he may have to fight with me a bit - but not all that much. Short of locking ourselves in our rooms, and only going out with chaperones, women have to risk a bit if we want to live free lives. You have to weigh the risks.
As in: "Okay. I am not going to travel at 3 am all the way up to Washington Heights, by myself, to meet someone for a drink". If I chose to do such a thing, then - well, I still will not say "asking for it" - but I will say that I was then being WILDLY irresponsible with my own safety and should not be shocked if I were harassed, mugged, what-have-you.
Young says, with stunning simplicity (so simple that it made me realize how we do not hear people outside the blog-world making this point all that much):
Some victim advocates worry that even if the woman in such a case has not been raped, she may be brutally abused by the legal process. They seem to forget that being falsely accused of rape is a terrible form of abuse as well.
Young also writes:
Rape is a despicable crime, and an accusation of rape should be taken very seriously -- but the rights of the accused should be rigorously protected. After the 1997 trial of sportscaster Marv Albert, defending the judge's decision to admit compromising information about Albert's sexual past but not about his accuser's, feminist attorney Gloria Allred decried "the notion that there's some sort of moral equivalency between the defendant and the victim." Yet as long as the defendant hasn't been convicted, he and the victim are indeed moral equals in the eyes of the law.
Gloria Allred's blinkered position scares me. He's the 'DEFENDANT' during the trial, not the 'RAPIST'. That is the whole point of our justice system, that is the whole point of Western freakin' civilization, woman.
He hasn't been convicted yet, remember?
I've joined the ranks of the babes over at Outside the Beltway.
Thanks for the nomination, Bill!
It's good to be in the company of all the other techno-"chicks"!
My friend Pat McCurdy, a very successful musician in Milwaukee and Chicago, has a song called, "Lookin' at Chicks" - a ridiculous song, hilarious in its implications, with a rather bluesy jazzy beat. You can see the lyrics over here. Anyway, he says during his shows, "And remember, ladies, if there are any feminists out there - I spell chicks with a Y."
CHYX.
HAHA. Meanwhile, the song itself would be deemed so offensive to any rigid humorless feminist worthy of the name (I'm not one of those people, obviously) - The song is about a man's addiction to pornography, basically, and staring at women, all day long, every day - but then, as a PANDER to "feminists", Pat spells "chicks" - already considered offensive by certain groups who have no sense of humor - with a Y!!
I don't know - that's my kind of sense of humor. It makes no sense in an etiological way whatsoever.
The man made me laugh, I'll tell ya. I heard him say that stupid joke 50 times probably, and it made me laugh every time.
But then again, I'm simple-minded and relatively easy to please.
Anyway:
Nice to be one of the Blog Chyx. Thanks!
Additional comment: Oh, and I'm the jackass who Trackbacked the post on Outside the Beltway 5,000 times. I didn't mean to.
That Phelps guy scares me. He really does. I know he's a wacko, I know he is choking on his own hatred, and why do I give him the time of day ... well, I don't give him the time of day, but too many people believe his brand of hatred. It's evil. HE'S the one who is evil, and who is missing the entire POINT of being a human being.
Michele says it all better than I could.
or ... next Friday to be exact, Halloween, is my dear nephew Cashel's sixth birthday.
I can hardly believe it.
My sisters and I are piling into a car at 6 am on Saturday morning and driving up to Maine for his birthday party. We are buying him a telescope. A real one. One he can grow into. He is MR. Space - so I cannot wait for him to have it.
When Cashel was ... maybe 4 years old ... he turned to his dad, my brother, and announced, bluntly, "It's all about space."
Nobody needed to ask him what "it" referred to, because it was obvious.
Brendan promptly turned it into a kind of hypnotic Moby-esque rap song, with Cashel saying over and over and over and over again, "It's all about space. It's all about space. It's all about space. It's all about space."
We used to BLAST that song, and dance around, with Cashel giggling like a maniac at the sound of his own voice.
My dear little boy. My heart melts!
Cashel used to be positively unable to say the letter "r". He would contort his mouth into grotesque positions, and try to get the sound out, but finally, he ended up compromising, settling on the sound "ee".
"Auntie Sheila, let's go in the wat-ee!"
It was hilarious.
But best of all, and going along with the space theme, was the time when Cashel, who was sitting on my lap, both of us having come back from the beach, he was having some juice, and facing out, his little blonde head turned away from me.
But suddenly, with no warning, Cashel craned his neck around to stare up at me, and said the following:
"Auntie Sheila, 8 billion yee-ees ago, an asteeyoid cee-yashed into the ee-eath, and made a big kee-yay-tee, killing all the dinosau-ees."
A couple weeks ago, when he and I strolled through the Meteor section in the Museum of Natural History, I turned to him, and said that, word for word, imitating his pronunciation - He doesn't quite remember the moment, but he knows that that was who he used to be, and he thinks that it is DAMN funny.
His favorite part, as is mine, is his butchering of the word "crater" into an 8-syllable extravaganza: kee-yay-tee....
So this little Spaceman is gonna get himself a telescope from the 3 Aunties.
That's what he calls us: "the Aunties." "Where are the Aunties right now?" "I'm going swimming with the Aunties."
We are one.
My latest read has been Zelda, the biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, written by Nancy Milford.
Allison recommended it to me - Well, that is an understatement. Basically, Allison said to me, "Until you read this book, we don't have anything to talk about." So I picked it up - and had to call Allison this morning to tell her how I could not put the damn thing DOWN.
I have so many thoughts about Zelda - so much to ponder - I am early on in the book. Fitzgerald is already famous, but has not written Gatsby yet. They just had a little girl, and they have just moved to Paris. Basically to escape the financial wreck they had made of their lives in New York.
There is, as of yet, no real intimations of Zelda's madness - although she was certainly a wild woman, and completely devoted to the cultivation of her own personality. She invented the personality cult! So I suppose in her intense narcissism there are some warning signs of how she would end up. Which already makes me very sad. That vibrant life - that child of the jazz age - a woman of uncommon gifts, with nowhere to focus them - The only place she could focus all of her talent was on the "spectacle" of her own life, which she consciously created.
All of this is endlessly fascinating.
I like the book because it is not too Freudian, like so many biographies are. It does not attempt to "explain" Zelda, which I find a highly condescending way to treat a human personality, it does not attempt to find root causes -
Milford describes events - Milford, whenever she can, lets the Fitzgeralds speak for themselves - excerpting from their journals and letters. This is the best part of the book.
Yeah, F. Scott Fitzgerald can write - but you know what? So could Zelda. He would put her letters word for word into his own stories and novels, and would not let her pursue publishing her journals (people offered her money to publish them) - because then it would have been revealed that This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and the Damned (and others) owed enormous debts to the scribbling talent of his wife.
In the book, at this moment, this kind of sucking-the-muse-dry aspect of their relationship has not yet caused any problems. But you can feel the battle that is to come.
Here is an amazing letter Zelda wrote to Scott, during their whirlwind courtship. In it, she presciently describes exactly what their relationship would become, and who the two of them, as a couple, would come to respresent to all the "children of the jazz age":
Scott - there's nothing in all the world I want but you - and your precious love - All the material things are nothing. I'd just hate to live a sordid, colorless existence - because you'd soon love me less - and less - and I'd do anything - anything - to keep your heart for my own - I don't want to live - I want to love first, and live incidentally - Why don't you feel that I'm waiting - I'll come to you, Lover, when you're ready - Don't - don't ever think of the things you can't give me - You've trusted me wiht the dearest heart of all - and it's so damn much more than anybody else in all the world has ever had -How can you think deliberately of life without me - If you should die - O Darling - darling Scot - It'd be like going blind. I know I would, too - I'd have no purpose in life - just a pretty - decoration. Don't you think I was made for you? I feel like you had me ordered - and I was delivered to you - to be worn - I want you to wear me, like a watch-charm or a button hole bouquet - to the world. And then, when we're alone, I want to help - to know that you can't do anything without me.
Zelda also wrote him letters such as this one - which obviously pushed Scott over the edge, already jealous of her wild ways:
Scott, you're really awfully silly - In the first place, I haven't kissed anybody good-bye, and in the second place, nobody's left in the first place - You know, darling, that I love you too much to want to. If I did have an honest - or dishonest - desire to kiss just one or two people, I might - but I couldn't ever want to - my mouth is yours.But s'pose I did - Don't you know it'd be just absolutely nothing - Why can't you understand that nothing means anything except your darling self and your love -
Not quite a letter to soothe the savage beast, eh?
I don't know - there are times when I really can understand Zelda. I told Allison this morning that there are moments, reading letters such as that, that I feel as if Zelda is my most-secret ID self. She IS an Id. She lives to please herself. We all have that desire to be happy, to only please ourselves, within us. Or maybe I shouldn't presume to speak for those of you out there who will deny this, and who will only admit to the highest core values of self-sacrifice and doing the right thing? Well, for me, a lowly sinner down here, I have an enormous desire to only please myself, to live only for me, to never give a damn about what anybody thinks, to never ever ever be cooped up, fenced in, pinned down - to never ever accept any obligations that will infringe upon my ability to do what I want to do and go where I want to go -
This is the raging Id. This, I believe, is also the side of me that is the artist, the dreamer.
I put a tight lid on this Id. I rarely let her out. I am afraid of her. I am afraid of the damage she would wrought.
But in reading Zelda's words, I think: Woah. I know that girl. I know that desire. I just do not act upon those desires. She does.
And you know what? I know the end of the story. I know what happens to Zelda. I know her breakdown, her descent into madness, a descent from which she never recovered, and her horrible horrible end. It makes me shiver with the cruelty of it, the - awful-ness of it - That such a bright and hopeful spirit, that a woman with such potential - would die like that - (she died locked up in her room in a mental institution, when the institution caught on fire) ... is tragic. Just ... fucking tragic.
If she had been born at another time ... who knows what she might have become?
Listen to this excerpt of her writing, describing a summer dusk in Montgomery Alabama, where she grew up:
There exists in Montgomery a time and quality that appertains to nowhere else. It began about half past six on an early summer night, with the flicker and sputter of the corner street lights going on, and it lasted until the great incandescent globes were black inside with moths and beetles and the children were called into bed from the dusty streets ... The drug stores are bright at night with the organdie baalloons of girls' dresses under the big electric fans. Automobiles stand along the curbs in front of open frame houses at dusk, and sounds of supper being prepared drift through the soft splotches of darkness to the young world that moves every evening out of doors. Telephones ring, and the lacy blackness under the trees disgorges young girls in white and pink, leaping over the squares of warm light toward the tinkling sound with an expectancy that people have only in places where any event is a pleasant one. Nothing seems ever to happen.
And here is an excerpt from a review Zelda wrote of Scott's book The Beautiful and the Damned. Gloria, in that book, is based entirely on Zelda - on Scott's understanding of her, as well as taking the words right out of Zelda's mouth and putting them into the character. Kind of like what Joyce did with Molly Bloom at the end of Ulysses.
To Scott, there was only one woman on the planet who could hold his interest - and that was Zelda.
To Joyce, Nora was the woman who taught him about women. After their first "date", walking through Dublin, June 16, 1904 (the day he later chose to make the entirety of Ulysses take place on, in honor of Nora) - Joyce wrote, "She has made a man of me."
Amazing. These symbiotic relationships - between artists and their partners - artists and their muses -
Anyway, here is Zelda's insouciant review of her husband's book:
It seems to me that on one page I recognized a portion of an old diary of mine which mysteriously disappeared shortly after my marriage, and also scraps of letters, which, though considerably edited, sound to me vaguely familiar. In fact, Mr. Fitzgerald - I believe that is how he spells his name - seems to believe that plagiarism begins at home.
And here, finally, is an excerpt from Zelda's essay "Eulogy on the Flapper". As the "original" flapper, the woman who invented the role, it's great to see what she has to say about it - (and again, when I read this, I felt an odd jolt of recognition - I feel that way! I know what she is talking about! - and it's not a part of me that I am overwhelmingly PROUD of - not a part of me that ever has been given free reign, except for a couple of months in the fall of 1993 - but damn, she is there, inside of me):
How can a girl say again, "I do not want to be respectable because respectable girls are not attractive," and how can she again so wisely arrive at the knowledge that "boys do dance most with the girls they kiss most," and that "men will marry the girls they could kiss before they had asked papa?" Perceiving these things, the Flapper awoke from her lethargy of sub-deb-ism, bobbed her hair, put on her choicest pair of earrings and a great deal of audacity and rouge and went into the battle. She flirted because it was fun to flirt and wore a one-piece bathing suit because she had a good figure, she covered her face with powder and paint because she didn't need it and she refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn't boring. She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do. Mothers disapproved of their sons taking the Flapper to dances, to teas, to swim and most of all to heart. She had mostly masculine friends, but youth does not need friends - it needs only crowds ...
A couple years ago, I had an obsessive Fitzgerald phase. I had read Gatsby in high school, obviously, and not much else. I don't think any of his other stuff can really compare, but still - the books, even the earliest stories, are filled with arrestingly good prose - sentences which one MUST stop and relish - He was something else.
And so was Zelda.
Damn, he is the real deal. He looks like he is 15 years old. An astonishing game.
And to all you Yankee fans who have gloated in my face over the years:
I feel no sympathy with your pain right now. You gotta eat that pain, just like everybody else has had to.
Oh, and a funny thing:
I was walking home from the bar, walking cross town. There was a strange chastened quiet through the streets - there was none of the drunken yahoo-ness on display like in weeks past. People huddled together on corners, and I heard phrases like, "DAMMit" and "Fuckin' Allan Boone! He SUCKS!"
A homeless man, lying on the sidewalk, back up against a building, called up to me, "Who won tonight?"
I said, "The Marlins."
He took this information in for a second and then nodded like a wise sage. "The Marlins are a TEAM. The Yankees are just a collection of individuals."
The man obviously doesn't even have a television, but he knows the truth.
A couple years ago, my friend Brett, who is obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe, and Halloween is his favorite holiday, had a party. A Halloween party, obviously.
Halloween has now been co-opted by my nephew Cashel's birthday.
3 years ago, a kindly store owner asked Cashel, "What are you going to be for Halloween?"
Cashel pondered this a bit, and then answered, "Three!"
He is brilliant. And I am NOT biased.
But back to Halloween. And my friend Brett's party.
It was, perhaps, the most elaborate party I had ever been to. Beating even my damn prom. Brett lives in a penthouse apartment over by the UN. It has a terrace, which wraps around the building - filled with plants, a grill, patio furniture - It used to have an unobstructed view of the East River, and now Trump has built up a huge tall thin skyscraper, right in the middle of the block, ruining everything. It's a shame.
Brett jerry-rigged the entire apartment.
Black witch hats descended from the ceiling on invisible strings. There was a "dead man" lying in state on one of the long bay window-sills. A smoke machine (hidden somewhere) billowed fog around us, obeying secret cues.
Brett had gotten a BOOK on carving pumpkins - and even though that sounds obsessive and slightly insane, the pumpkins he carved were literally works of art. I'd never seen anything like them. Elaborate pirate ships fighting across mighty seas, with skull-and-cross-bones flag flying - A flock of witches on broomsticks - flying across the moon. The pumpkins seemed to be more air and space, than actual pumpkin.
We, as guests, had to dress as actual dead people. That was one of the "rules". You couldn't go as an M&M, or a Coke can.
So Jesus Christ showed up at the party. Al Capone showed up at the party. Endira Gandhi was at the party. Brett, the host, was Edgar Allan Poe. My friends Brooke and Jim, married, showed up as JFK and Jackie. (JFK and Jackie on vacation in Hyannisport, to be precise.)
I had thought of going as Edie Sedgwick. Andy Warhol's silver-headed muse. She died from an overdose (big surprise).
But finally - I decided to be Sharon Tate.
It was in terrible taste. I admit.
God forgive me.
It was the most politically incorrect costume at the party. John F. Kennedy took one look at me when I walked in and said, "Okay. That is WRONG."
Later that night, Sharon Tate, Jackie O, and Mrs. Al Capone danced like maniacs in the middle of the living room.
I had a platinum wig. I wore ivory pancake makeup and false eyelashes. White lipstick. I wore a white slip. I made myself pregnant. And I covered my arms and legs with Beatles lyrics, in red magic marker.
I do not defend myself. I know that it was terrible. I know that it was "wrong".
I do not defend it.
As anyone who reads me knows, I love well-written scathing movie reviews. There is nothing that pleases me more.
I haven't even SEEN "Beyond Borders", starring the luscious Angelina Jolie, and I wasn't planning on seeing the film, but after reading this review, I will definitely not go to see it.
I think my favorite part of this review is the "warning" they put at the end of every review, letting you know if it's violent, if there's sex in it, whatever. The New York Times always puts pretty funny warnings at their reviews - the review for the universally panned "Battlefield Earth" said in the warning at the end:
"Battlefield Earth" includes astonishingly loud violence and intimations of alien sexuality.
That just makes me LAUGH.
Anyway, at the end of the "Beyond Borders" review, the warning goes:
It has strong language, sexuality and shameless and scandalously cynical re-creations of third world suffering and violence that aren't even relieved by on-screen alcohol consumption.
HA!
A couple of good quotes from the review:
That's when the dashing Dr. Nick Callahan (Mr. Owen) invades the fund-raiser she is attending with her new husband, Henry (Linus Roache). A band has slammed through the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" The song's title asks a spiritual question that will soon come to haunt not only Sarah but also the audience.
And:
Then they finally tryst. The sweat beads seductively on their skins while they expel plumes of cigarette smoke that accentuate their glamorously gaunt jawlines.
And this:
Sarah and Nick shoulder all the pain of the world and barely have time for themselves; isn't it awful? The director, Martin Campbell, an accomplished action filmmaker, must have forgotten that in the 1940's "Casablanca" had the good sense to have Rick note that the troubles of two people don't amount to a hill of beans.
I don't even have to see the movie to know that that is a great point.
The James Joyce Center co-sponsored a contest with The Irish Times voting on the best Irish novels. They had a predetermined list of books which the voters could choose from.
So while the outcome may be a bit predictable - it's also a cream-rising-to-the-top list, which pleases a literary elitist such as myself.
I haven't read a lot of these books. I have read most of the Top 10 -
The only exceptions are:
John McGahern's "Amongst Women" (great title, huh?) which my father assures me is tremendous.
I also haven't read Flann O'Brien's "The Third Policeman", although I adored "At Swim-Two-Birds", which was the URL of my old blog. That signifies nothing, just thought I would mention it. "At Swim-Two-Birds" is a classic.
I also haven't read any John Banville - which will probably shock my father - who is a huge fan. Am I right about that, dad?
Patrick McCabe's "Butcher Boy" seems misplaced on the Top 10.
I read it. Whatever. It was interesting and all - but to beat out other Irish books, such as "Lion, Witch and Wardrobe" or Francis Stewart's "Black List Section H"??
WhatEVER.
William Trevor is another author I've never read.
Here's the list of the Top 50:
James Joyce Ulysses (1922)
James Joyce A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)
John McGahern Amongst Women (1990)
Flann OBrien At Swim Two Birds (1939)
Oscar Wilde The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891)
Jonathan Swift Gullivers Travels (1726)
Flann OBrien The Third Policeman (1967)
Bram Stoker Dracula (1897)
John Banville The Book of Evidence 1988
Patrick McCabe The Butcher Boy (1992)
James Plunkett Strumpet City (1969)
C. S. Lewis The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950)
Edna OBrien The Country Girls (1960)
Samuel Beckett Molloy (1951)
Patrick Kavanagh Tarry Flynn (1948)
Brian Moore Judith Hearne (1955)
Elizabeth Bowen The Last September (1929)
Lawrence Sterne Tristram Shandy (1760)
Jennifer Johnston How Many Miles to Babylon? (1974)
Kate OBrien The Land of Spices (1941)
Samuel Beckett Murphy (1938)
John McGahern The Barracks (1963)
Maria Edgeworth Castle Rackrent (1800)
Roddy Doyle The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (1996)
Seamus Deane Reading in the Dark (1996)
William Trevor Felicias Journey (1994)
Jennifer Johnston The Captains and the Kings (1972)
William Trevor Fools of Fortune (1983)
Molly Keane Good Behaviour (1981)
Colm Toibin The South (1990)
Sam Hanna Bell December Bride (1950)
Somerville and Ross The Real Charlotte (1894)
Brian Moore The Emperor of Ice Cream (1965)
Eugene McCabe Death and Nightingales (1992)
James Stephens The Charwomens Daughter (1912)
Keith Ridgway The Parts (2003)
J G Farrell The Siege of Krishnapur (1973)
Aidan Higgins Langrishe Go Down (1966)
Francis Stuart Black List, Section H (1971)
Charles Maturin Melmoth the Wanderer (1820)
Christopher Nolan The Banyan Tree (1999)
John Banville Birchwood 1973
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu Uncle Silas (1864)
George Moore A Drama in Muslin (1886)
George Moore Esther Waters (1894)
Thomas Kilroy The Big Chapel (1971)
William Carleton The Black Prophet (1847)
Deirdre Madden The Birds of the Innocent Wood (1988)
Hugo Hamilton Surrogate City (1990)
Sean OReilly Love and Sleep (2002)
Despite the embarrassment I may feel by my own gushing prose, here is the next installment of Diary Friday.
I am 17 years old here, a freshman at college. But at times I sound like I have to be all of 13 years old. But regardless; I will post it anyway.
I like the story I tell here. I had completely forgotten about all of this, and now I feel like it's in my memory-bank again. That's pretty cool.
Just a bit o' background: "Mummy Gina" was my grandmother. "Pop" was my grandfather.
This entry is in honor of Grandparents everywhere.
When I'm in the bosom of my family, I just sit there watching, hoping I can become an adult as well-adjusted as all of them. They're so nice to one another. I watched Tom help Christopher put a toy together, his head bent over it, Christopher leaning close to him --
I keep anticipating men to be egotistical and shitty. Even men in my own family. And there's Tom, who looks like a tough guy (all the brothers call him "Gonzales"), he's very handsome, in a tough gang-leader like way. And the way he is with Chris ... the way he is with all of us ... It's wonderful.
The way my dad and all his brothers treat each other: I mean, they tease mercilessly, but they respect each other. They like each other as people. Also the family is so elastic, letting new people in with ease, like Jo and Chris.
On Mummy Gina's table there were stacks and stacks of old photos. Not of us, but of Dad when he was little. And even older photos than that. That's basically how I spent those three hours, studying each and every picture. Oh GOD. I wanted to take them all to make a scrapbook. I was enthralled, close to tears. History has never felt so close to me.
Last night for the first time I felt that -- even if I didn't become overwhelmingly famous and respected -- it might be all right. Because by the time I die, hopefully I'll have a lot of happy funny memories to look back on, and get satisfaction from that.
Browsing through the pictures:
Mummy Gina's senior picture, Dad in a sunsuit, Dad with a crewcut, about 5 years old, Terry as a baby, Tony -- all of them on Christmas day. Jimmy: a tough little guy with slicked hair. Terry and Joe as teenagers playing baseball in the backyard. Regina going off to all her proms.
I couldn't drag my eyes away.
My favorites were Dad in the sunsuit.
Then there were really old pictures. Brown and blurred.
The only memories I have of Pop are of a stationary quiet old man, who sat under a blanket in the sunroom, painting color-by-numbers. He had emphysema, I think. But there were all of these pictures of him as a teenager, a young man. He was GORGEOUS.
He was born in 1901, so he grew up in the teens and '20s. Diary, he was breath-taking. And he was crazy, too. So many of them made me laugh.
There was a group of photos from a trip Pop took once, and Mummy Gina referred to it as: "the infamous trip to Canada." It was in 1917 or 1918, and he went to Canada with his best friends. There were about three pictures of all of them, 5 or 6 handsome college guys, in their bathing suits -- really old-fashioned cloth kinds -- posing on a stone wall by a river, in these mock balletic statuesque positions, legs stuck out in arabesques, heads thrown back, arms out to steady themselves. And there's Pop among them. Just 5 nutty guys. Like today.
I guess they met 5 girls on this "infamous trip to Canada", on a road somewhere -- Everyone was referring to them as "the dancing girls." "Have you come across the pictures of the dancing girls yet?" I can just see it: 5 guys having a great time, running into 5 just as nutty girls.
There's one picture of all of them with their arms around each other, doing a Chorus Line kick, guys with knickers on, and boots, the girls were all flappers, wearing small hats and T-strap shoes. And everyone was laughing uproariously. They're on a ROAD somewhere in Canada.
There was a shot of just the girls, holding hands, and being crazy. It's a blurred picture, because they're all dancing, in motion, but you can see their giggling faces fine. Every time I think about the whole situation, it makes me laugh a little harder.
And Pop was there --
He wasn't born an old man. He was an extremely exquisite-looking college guy who loved to be rowdy and crazy in Canada with his four best friends.
I can't tell you how many times I kept pulling them out again and again to stare at them -- each face -- I could feel my own face gliding into a grin each time I looked. The pictures were so EXCITING to me.
There were many more exciting pictures: Mummy Gina's mother -- it must have been taken at the turn of the century or before. She was so beautiful. Her beauty shone out of that dull black and white. There's a man beside her with a shiny top hat.
Suddenly everything is real to me.
Mummy Gina was a pretty 17 year old who wore overalls and babysat.
Pop was a handsome nut who cavorted with unknown Canadian flappers and clowned around in his bathing suit.
Dad wore sunsuits, and was a baby who had no teeth
Regina was an extremely fat little baby
Mummy Gina had a MOTHER who was very beautiful.
Life ... life ...
Everyone has a history. What will be my history, when I'm old? What pictures will be lying around of MY life?
It doesn't matter if your history is world-known or what -- Your life is important because you're you. I must remember that. I have to be happy. Even if I don't become an actress. It shouldn't matter that much.
I loved looking at those pictures. No one will ever know how much they all meant to me.
I never really knew Pop. But now I feel like I do.
It's so so beautiful!!!!
Read other Diary Fridays here ....
Okay, so this is trivial, but it is indicative of something that pisses me off.
Beyonce apparently said, about Madonna kissing Britney and Christia Aguilera at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards, something to the effect of, "I would never do something like that."
"I have standards. There are things I will not do," the devoutly Christian singer was quoted as saying.
She is quoted as saying she was "shocked" when she saw it.
So now, of course, the jackbooted army of political correctness is in an uproar (that may be a slight exaggeration - I mean, after all, who the hell cares) - and Beyonce was forced to explain herself, a la poor Easterbrook.
She said she was misquoted. She said, "I have never judged anyone based on his or her sexual orientation and have no intention of starting now. I have a lot of gay and lesbian fans and I love them no differently than my straight fans."
Why is it so threatening that Beyonce MIGHT have said, "I would never do something like that."??
It's her personal choice! We don't all have to throw a happy little block party just because Madonna kissed Britney and Madonna kissed Christina. I mean - who ever said that that was a huge victory for gay rights anyway? Last time I checked (which was ... oh ... NEVER) those three women are STRAIGHT. Straight girls dressed up in slut outfits, pretending to be lesbians. To turn on the millions of men watching. I have lesbian friends. When they make out with their girlfriends, you can bet they're not thinking, "Wow ... if men were watching us, they would be so turned ON right now!" Madonna and Britney and Christina were embodying the classic male fantasy of women-on-women love.
And whatever - that's fine.
But why judge Beyonce if, personally, she wants nothing to do with anything like that?
Why is it such a CRIME?
It's not like Beyonce said something REALLY inflammatory, like, "I hate f***, and I wish they all would die." (I hate the "f" word and I won't put it on my site. It's a hateful word - I'm just using it as an example. Like when stupid Jewel said that Bob Dylan must be the f-word, because he didn't find HER attractive. I can think of a word for Jewel, but that's another word I won't put on my site.)
What - Beyonce is close-minded and filled with prejudice because she wouldn't do something like that?
Gimme a break.
Why is the idea that some people would NEVER do something like that - through their own personal choice, their religious feelings, whatever - so threatening??
Get over yourself. You're gay. Yay for you. You have embraced who you are. Great. So ... you don't need to convert the whole damn world. You can get laws changed to up your equality, all of that stuff I support. But you can't change how people THINK.
That's my main problem with hate-crime legislation.
But that's a rant for another day.
Not only is today the one-year marker of the Moscow theatre siege (Man - it really does not feel like it happened a year ago to me ... more like a couple of months) - but it is also the "anniversary" of the suicide bomber driving into the Marine barracks in Beirut.
What, is Oct. 23 "Let's all act like raging Islamic lunatics" day?
Original article by Tom Friedman.
Terrible. Terrible events.
Lt. Smash - or, I should say, Citizen Smash, has some places where you can go to pay your respects to the Marines who lost their lives.
The following post was written by a "guest-editor" - my dear friend Betsy. Here's a bit of background, before I give her the stage.
We have been friends since the tender age of 10. We both loved "Little House on the Prairie" as kids, were obsessed with it, totally into it ... I remember a brief period in 5th grade where I actually wore a BONNET TO SCHOOL. (What a loser. But anyway, I digress.)
Later, during our adolescence, there is one night that will live in infamy in the minds of Betsy and myself: we were 16 or whatever, and we watched an episode of "Little House on the Prairie" and we saw it in a whole new light and we COULD NOT STOP making fun of it. It was the episode where Carrie fell down the well - I am sure those of you who watched the show religiously will remember it very clearly. One of the things that made us laugh the hardest was Michael Landon TRYING to cry. He was desperate to get some tears on his face, so his face was all scrunched up. I describe me and Betsy's response to this during the following Diary Friday.
Betsy, now a mother of three gorgeous kids, a guidance counselor, a great woman, recently got sucked into an episode of "Little House" - She was surfing around, came upon it, and settled in to watch. As she watched, observations began to fly through her brain, and she started to sketch them down.
She promptly sent her observations to me - and as I read it, I felt everything freeze up in me. Why did I freeze? Here is why: I felt, as I read it, that: This is too funny for me to even DEAL WITH RIGHT NOW.
I asked her if I could post her writing on my blog, and she said Yes.
"Little House" fans and enemies (Ann Marie - I think you are gonna love this), I present to you - the words of BETSY:
-- This is only the second time I have seen this episode where they blow up the entire town to end the series. Every other episode I have seen many times over.
-- Although Charles and Caroline had left they show, they returned for this finale, and we did get the regular Charles crying scene (more on Charles later).
-- Caroline had a new hat.
-- I think the costume budget was the lowest on the set, because the clothes everyone wore to blow up the town were:
1. everyone's finest
and
2. the same finest clothes as seen from the beginning. Laura never got a new dress beyond her wedding (the red-flowered very fitted piece), and Mr. Edwards never wore anything beyond the red and black flannel shirt
-- I had to laugh at my recollection of a man on the show "I love the 70s", calling Nellie "the original prairie bitch". Although she was not present with Percival and the twins for the town destruction, her replacement, the new bitch, was there.
-- While Willy Olsen was always a pain-in-the-ass kid, he grew up to be quite hot
-- And staying with that subject, Almonzo, while originally thought of as a hot babe, can't hold a candle to Willy, and also can't cry nearly as well as Charles, even when blowing up his own house
-- Favorite episodes:
1. Albert falling in love with the girl who gets raped and becomes pregnant (Olivia), and then who dies in a fall trying to escape her rapist and whose dying words are words of love to Albert
AND
2. Laura and Almonzo breaking up and how they get back together in the bed filled with ice to soothe Manly's fever
-- Featured characters who got to blow up pivotal buildings:
Doc Baker (gay?)
Nels Olsen (had a fat sister in the circus)
Mr. Edwards ( ... get out of the way for Old Dan Tucker)
Manly (with Laura, baby Rose and Shannon Dougherty (Jenny) looking on)
-- Reverend Alden also returned to blow up the town, but he just stood about crying and praying
-- The show and series ends with people leaving the blown-out remains of the town, singing "Onward Christian soldiers" - and then riding out to their new homes (Sleepy Eye, perhaps?), past the original Little House on the Prairie - I find this odd as that place was always as far out of the way as one could get, and finally it becomes the main thoroughfare out of town? And the last shot closes in from the house to a group of rabbits that had been released from the barn before the final destruction ... Perhaps I have never really understood the show ...
-- And finally - with the passing of John Ritter, I couldn't get through the show without thinking about the impact Michael Landon had upon my life and his early passing. I wept along with him.
A reader has requested of me yet another Recommended Reading list, one which has given me great pleasure compiling: Recommended Theatre/Film Books.
(See my Recommended Fiction here, and my Recommended Non-Fiction here. These are not static lists. I already want to go into these two and add stuff, take stuff away. But so be it.)
Theatre/film a huge genre, obviously, and there are many different components - actual training books for actors, biographies of famous writers and actors and directors - books written by film directors ...
I decided not to differentiate and put all of my favorites together in one list.
My criteria?
That the books on the list have helped me to grow as an artist. That the books on the list gave me insights, or lessons which I have found applicable in the every-day life of being an actress. That the books on the list are damn good reads. Because acting books can be really boring, or theoretical - like any genre geared towards a specific discipline.
There are books on this list which I have not only enjoyed, but which have changed the course of my life.
A high bar? Yes. As it should be.
So. Here we go. The books are not in any particular order - it is a mish-mash. I will feel free to add to this list later, if I find that I have forgotten some.
This book is a goldmine. Cameron Crowe, director of Say Anything, Jerry Maguire, and Almost Famous (a major talent, obviously) basically bent the 90-something arm of Billy Wilder (director of more classic movies than can even be listed here) - to have long conversations about each and every one of his films.
My favorite (and semi-autistic thing) to do is rent a Wilder film (or to watch the ones I already own, like Some Like it Hot) - read the sections having to do with this film, and then sit down and watch it. In AWE. Seeing HOW he put it all together - knowing the stories behind the film - how insecure Fred MacMurray was when he got the part in Double Indemnity - when he finally accepted the role, after hemming and hawing, he took Billy Wilder and said, "You must PROMISE me to tell me when I'm bad."
The conversations Cameron Crowe has with Wilder are not ironed out, or edited. We get to see when Wilder has had enough, saying stuff to Crowe like, "Okay, I'm tired. Leave now." And Cameron Crowe asks the most detailed questions - asking for shot-by-shot analysis at times.
And the stories from Wilder - about Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, Walter Matthau, Kirk Douglas, Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray - it is juicy juicy stuff. I mean - this man directed Some Like it Hot, The Apartment, Double FREAKIN' Indemnity, Witness for the Prosecution, Sunset Boulevard, Sabrina ... and a ton of others. Truly, there were giants in those days.
The book is gorgeously put together as well - glossy pages, with movie stills, great photos of Wilder whispering in Marilyn Monroe's ear, or showing Jack Lemmon how to tango for that hilarious scene in Some Like It Hot ... I recently watched this movie again for the 700th time, and I laughed JUST as hard during that tango scene as I had the first time I saw it. When the couple whips around so that Lemmon (in drag) is facing the camera, and he has the rose in his teeth - with these dead serious eyes - I crack UP every time.
At the end of the book, Billy Wilder, who wrote most of his own screenplays, gives his own list of Suggestions for Writers. Here is my favorite suggestion, one I reference time and time and time again in my own work:
"If something's not right in the third act, then look for the problem in the first act."
Brilliant man. A great book, a great tribute. And it makes me love Cameron Crowe even more.
2. Acting in Film, by Michael Caine
A laugh-out-loud funny book. If you have ever watched Michael Caine accept one of the numerous acting awards he has in his pocket, you will not be surprised at the hilarity. The man is a legend in Hollywood for very good reason: He makes brilliant art-house films, he makes Hannah and her Sisters, and then he turns around and makes Jaws 3-D. To him: work is work. And that is the most admirable thing about him.
He chooses his jobs based on the weather of the location where they will be shooting. One of my favorite quotes from the book is:
"I close the script very quickly if the first sentence is: "Alaska. Our hero is seen struggling through a blizzard".
This is a book which became an instant classic upon its publication amongst teachers and students, and for very good reason. It is a Master Class in the art of film-acting. A lot of the book is practical advice. Seemingly simple and obvious, but you would be surprised. The first time I did a film, one of the crew guys came over to me on a coffee break and said, "It is so refreshing to work with actors who ... come in prepared." This shocked me, since I'm a preparation freak - but I appreciated the compliment - and I realized something: "Huh. There are a lot of boneheads out there who are working. Maybe I have a shot." So Michael Caine focuses a lot on being an autonomous professional, like: "Know your lines. Do NOT do your own stunts. Take a walk through the set before they begin shooting."
One of the great tips in the book (which I have used) is: "During a close-up, don't blink." May seem simplistic - but it is essential. You lose all your power if you blink. And not only that, but: the audience relates to actors through the eyes. More so in film than in theatre. And the great movie stars, the ones who don't even seem like actors, they seem more to be part of some collective unconscious, categorically DO NOT BLINK THEIR EYES during close-up.
Michael Caine doles out his tips for how to act in film by telling stories from his own life. Most of them hilarious, things I will never forget.
Maybe someday I'll do a compilation of anecdotes from that book.
If you ever find yourself doing a film, or if you are an actor who wants to get into film, then you have NO business not reading this book.
3. Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov
This book is definitely for people already immersed in the world of the theatre. It's not a beginner's book. It's also a wee bit obsessive. Hence - I LOVE this book.
Stella Adler was one of the most famous stage actresses during the 1920s and 1930s - she came out of the vibrant Yiddish theatre tradition in lower Manhattan, and was one of the founding members of the Group Theatre. If you don't know what the Group Theatre is ... well, there will be a book later down this list for you.
Stella Adler eventually became one of America's premiere acting teachers, and opened up a studio in New York, which still exists.
She was, by all accounts, a piece of work. With her fake eyelashes, and apartment full of crystal and pug dogs, and her bleached blonde do, etc. And a genius with actors. Nobody has a bad word to say about her. Robert DeNiro credits HER with making him into an actor, with believing in him. The list of other actors like that whom she trained and influenced is endless.
But anyway, this book came out recently, and it is a compilation of Adler's lectures on the three playwrights: Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov.
The interesting thing about Stella, as a teacher, is that she, unlike other Group Theatre founding members who became teachers (like Sandy Meisner, Lee Strasberg) did not have a set SYSTEM - she did not think that there was one way to be good as an actor, or one way to train an actor. Since she had been such an amazing actress herself, her advice for actors is very different. Very passionate, not as articulate perhaps, but completely coming from her gut.
If you want to understand script analysis - then Stella Adler is your gal. Stella Adler's true genius lay in script analysis. I am sorry that she died before I could take her class in script break-down.
But these collected lectures are the next best thing.
I've worked on Chekhov, I've worked on Ibsen, I've worked on Strindberg - and these deeply impassioned fantastic lectures MOVE me to WORK.
That's what you want, in acting books, by the way. You want them to move you to get up and DO.
This book is a prime example. I can barely finish the chapter on Uncle Vanya before I want to leap up and try it myself.
4. Making Movies, by Sidney Lumet
Another classic. This book, written by the (once-great, in my opinion) Sidney Lumet, is geared more towards directors of films, but actors can get so much out of it too.
As the man whose FIRST FILM WAS 12 ANGRY MEN (he was such a damn prodigy) - he has a lot to offer, so many great stories - and a lot of terrific practical advice - down to how to work with the Director of Photography, how to work with different camera stops, how to cajole the Teamsters, even ... and also - how to deal with big massive stars like Katherine Hepburn, who are, quite rightly, out to test you on the first day. Out to see for themselves: Who is going to be in charge here, you or me?
His stories about Katherine Hepburn bring tears to my eyes just thinking about them, sitting here at my desk.
I'm addicted, by the way, to great anecdotes about actors. Please send any along if you think of them!
For example, on the first day of rehearsal for the film of Long Day's Journey into Night - Sidney Lumet immediately could feel that Katherine Hepburn was pushing him, testing him, throwing around her ego to see what he would take. You have to EARN the trust of massive movie stars, because they have so much to lose, and they are not gonna just hand over their careers to you - an unknown, a nobody. You have to prove that you are WORTH directing them.
And rightly so, in my opinion.
I'm no huge star, but I certainly know how much it SUCKS to be in the hands of an incompetent director. If I became a huge star, I would do my best to avoid such a situation at all costs. Even if it meant bull-dozing right over somebody.
Hepburn was subtle about the testing, I can't remember the details - but it was something along the lines of placing herself at the head of the rehearsal table, rather than moving aside to let HIM sit there. Symbolically, the leader. Sidney Lumet summoned up his courage and put her, gently of course, in her place. He took charge. He sat down at the head of the table, and, firmly, began the rehearsal.
Later in the day, after the first read-through of that most difficult (some might say impossible) script, there was a long tense silence ... as everyone waited to see what would happen next ... who would speak first ... would Sidney take control ... what was going to happen? And suddenly, from Katherine Hepburn, came this teeny little voice, "Help?"
Meaning: "Okay. Yes, I know I am Katherine Hepburn, and I am a huge movie star, but this role is a bitch, and I'm scared, and I trust you now, and can you help me to play her correctly?
See, I have tears in my eyes right now.
THAT is an actor. THAT is a giant.
5. Year of the King, by Antony Sher
There is a reason why this gem of a book is on every acting teacher's short list of recommended books.
Antony Sher kept a journal and a sketchbook during the year he was preparing to play Richard III at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1984.
Sher was, understandably, terrified at being asked to play the role, terrified of the long long long shadow of Lawrence Olivier's interpretation. Sher needed to find his own way in, his own interpretation, he could not imitate Olivier.
You go through Sher's process, step by step - his ideas about Richard - intellectual ideas - and then trying to physicalize those ideas, which is the actor's MAIN job. You read about Sher's insomnia, his insecurities, his anxiety that playing the part of Richard III will injure him (many many actors, due to the physical challenges of playing Richard, hunching their backs over, limping, whatever, have ended up with permanent physical problems after a long run of Richard III - Antony Sher tried to counter-act that, by meeting with physical therapists, meeting with chiropractors). His approach is intensely detailed - no stone left unturned. And the IMAGE he comes up for Richard III - the image from which all else followed (costume, staging, performance) is ... mind-bogglingly cool. And original. You'll have to read the book to find out what it is.
For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about when I say "the image he used", I will give you an example: Anthony Hopkins, when he began to play Hannibal Lectre in Silence of the Lambs used the image of a CAT. He wanted the character to be sleek, and focused, and capable of great stillness. He felt, quite rightly, that that would be far more terrifying than an openly jibbering lunatic. So the sleek costume and the receding hairline, and the huge eyes - all of that stuff came from Hopkins' original interpretation of this psychotic character as a CAT.
Sher's book is also a great lesson in script analysis. After reading it, you will feel compelled to take up Richard III again as well. I saw the play in a whole new way.
Antony Sher's interpretation of Richard III has been called 'one of the most critically acclaimed Shakespearean performances in the 20th century.'
A wonderful book. One of my favorites.
6. Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931-1940, by Wendy Smith
This book changed my life.
I read it in Chicago, while I was living there. I read it in the freezing winter of 1994-1995. I remember crying on the El train, when reading about the world premiere of Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty. It's an amazing story - I will relate it in here someday.
Anyway. I put down the book and realized, like a flash of lightning:
I am playing it safe.
I am not living the life of my dreams.
Where did all my dreams go?
I am hiding from myself.
I must shake things up.
I must not be afraid.
I literally was a changed woman.
I was in Chicago - I was involved with the Cactus Theatre - an ensemble of actors and directors who used, as our primary inspiration, the Group Theatre in the 1930s.
The characters from this book (Ruth Nelson, Phoebe Brand, Morris Carnovsky, John Garfield, Lee Strasberg, Elia "Gadget" Kazan, Clifford Odets) were like old friends - or like someone holding a lantern out in front of me on a dark night.
The book said to me, "Be bold and mighty forces will come to your aid."
I immediately applied to graduate school in New York, flew to New York, auditioned, got in, did 2 more plays in Chicago, boom-boom, and then left Chicago for good - in less than 4 months after putting down that book.
I may have eventually left Chicago - but not with the same intense focus and drive as that book gave me.
It is also a classic of American history. The Group Theatre should be TAUGHT in schools. Truly. As a country with no "national theatre" - this was the closest we ever got. We should honor the memory of their attempt.
7. Elia Kazan: A Life, by Elia Kazan
A big rambling tangent MESS of an autobiography.
But it is chock-full, I'm tellin' ya - chock-full of those damned ANECDOTES I love so much!
He and Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford (the all-important producer of the Group Theatre) created the Actors Studio together in the late 1940s - so you can get the inside scoop - you hear the conversations - you get mini-portraits of Strasberg, of Marlon Brando, of Tennessee Williams.
Elia Kazan knows how to tell a tale. He sure does.
He can't edit himself for shit, but this book is a towering contribution to my life. Every time I have read it, I find something new. I learn something deeper.
8. The Devil's Candy, by Julie Salamon
Okay, so this CYNICAL book is a bit of a departure from the rest of the list - but it is AS essential to any theatre/film book library as the other more inspirational ones.
It is the story of the making of the film DEBACLE Bonfire of the Vanities. The film was such a massive financial disaster that it is continuously referenced when other huge BOMBS come down the pike.
This book is the story of WHY and HOW this debacle occurred.
It is the ugly side of Hollywood, the cynical side, the ignorant side. And not only that: Bonfire of the Vanities had all this hype attached to it - I mean, Brian DePalma! Tom Hanks! Melanie Griffith (who was really hot at the time)! And Tom Wolfe's hit book! It's a slam-dunk, right?
This book tells the inexorable story of how the film kept stepping wrong, how one bad decision had a domino effect, another bad decision had another domino effect - until finally, the entire film was a runaway train.
This is a FANTASTIC book. A must-read. Don't miss it.
9. Audition, by Michael Shurtleff
I think this book is in its 5,876th printing right now or something like that. And rightly so.
It is the Bible. It is the Torah. It is the Dead Sea Scrolls. Whatever.
It is IT.
Michael Shurtleff talks about the art of the "audition" - a stumbling block for most actors, who freeze up, or they try too hard to please - or they make it through 3 or 4 callbacks, and then give up - whatever. Every actor is different.
This book (to quote a line from Odets' Golden Boy): "stiffens the space between my shoulderblades".
It is an empowering book, a beautiful book - a book of practical tips, and a book of soaring inspiration.
Yes, it's about the getting-a-job aspect of being an actor. But the reason the book is in its 10,348th printing is because it is about so much more than that: It is about NEVER FORGETTING, in the middle of the hustle and bustle of job-getting, and callbacks, and nonsense - WHY you are doing this in the first place. NEVER forget what drew you to this profession in the first place. Keeping your own dreams alive is just as much a part of an actors job as learning lines. This book helps you to do that.
It is a beloved book.
10. The Kid Stays in the Picture, by Robert Evans
Robert Evans - the producer responsible for bringing us Harold and Maude, Love Story, The Godfather, Barefoot in the Park, Rosemary's Baby, Chinatown (for God's SAKE!) - the youngest head of a studio - a one-time actor turned head-of-Paramount pictures - a self-described "bad boy" - describes his journey is this insta-classic.
He writes the way he speaks, in this hard-boiled tough-guy prose.
"Lemme tell ya. This broad was hard as nails."
Stuff like that. It's a fun read.
But more than that: it is the ultimate insider's look at the power structure of Hollywood, how deals are made, how these producers live, how they lose their minds - how they LIVE their jobs - Robert Evans, obviously, blended art and commerce in a way rarely seen in producers.
He developed the script of The Godfather with Puzo, he nursed projects to life, he gave Coppola his first chance to direct, stuff like that. This was unheard-of for producers before his time. He was truly a revolutionary. And kind of lovable, too.
The following anecdote (which I posted in here before, so I will post it here again) - kind of blew my mind, I have to say. It was literally something that had NEVER entered my mind before - very exciting. Here's the setup:
He had to wine and dine Ali McGraw (an unknown model at the time, and his future wife) in order to get her to agree to do Love Story. She told him she wanted to approve of her co-stars. An unknown making such a demand? Robert Evans went to set her straight. I just LOVE his prose - it's dee-lish - and if you have ever actually heard him in an interview - he actually talks like this:
I set up a lunch date with Love Story's mentor and star, MacGraw, at La Grenouille. By the time dessert was served, I would have made the phone book with her. Would you say she got to me? I sure in hell knew I didn't get to her. With all my props, my position, my "boy wonder" rep, she was as turned off to me as I was turned on to her. My competition was a model/actor she had been living with for three years, sharing the bills in a 3 1/2 room apartment on West 77th Street. Almost purposefully, she kept on interjecting how in love she was. Leaving the restaurant, I hailed a cab. As it pulled up she gave me her last zinger."Hope we shoot in the summer. Robin and I are getting married in the fall. We plan to spend October in Venice. Ever been there?"
"Nope."
"Then wait. Only go there when you're madly in love."
That's it. I grabbed her arm, whispering, "Never plan, kid. Planning's for the poor."
She tried to snap back. "No way--"
"Let me finish, Miss Charm. An hour ago, Love Story was even money to end up in the shredder. You win, I lose. Got it? Stop being Miss Inverse Snob, will ya? It doesn't wear well. Don't turn your nose down to success. If anything goes wrong with you and Blondie between now and post time, I'm seven digits away."
There is so much that I love about that. Needless to say, Ali McGraw agreed to stop being a snob, agreed to do the film, on his terms and became world-famous over the course of one damn weekend.
But the line that really blew me away, which - sort of shifted the wiring in my brain a bit, was:
"Never plan, kid. Planning's for the poor."
Robert Evans took risks. BIG risks. He risked it all. And he paid a huge price for that. But still: the point is to risk it all.
11. Tom, by Lyle Leverich
Fantastic biography of HALF of Tennessee Williams' life. Sadly, tragically, Leverich (the author) died before he could complete the other volumes.
This book takes you up to the fabled opening of Glass Menagerie in Chicago, with Laurette Taylor as Amanda. The story of that opening night in Chicago is another great anecdote. Maybe that would be a great series for me to put together: Favorite theatre anecdotes. That one, along with the opening of Waiting for Lefty are my all-time faves. They make me proud to be an actor.
Tom is almost beyond praise. It is an exhaustive look at the man - at his childhood - his sister Rose - who was institutionalized - and finally - lobotomized - which was the key event in Tennessee's life - the wound he never recovered from. But thank God, in a horrible way, that he never recovered from that wound, because it was FROM that pain that he wrote Glass Menagerie, Streetcar Named Desire, and everything else. It was a desperate desire to try to make things right, to try to heal the memory of his poor sister, to try to run away from the fact that he had abandoned her - HE had gotten out! HE had found the theatre and fled that house, never looking back, leaving her to her demons.
It is a wonderfully written book, sensitively told, filled with excerpts from Tennessee's voluminous correspondences with friends and family, diary excerpts - not to mention his amazing ascent to the pinnacle of his profession.
And ... my fingers are tired. So I suppose that that is it for now.
Happy reading.
I saw the movie a couple of days ago and it still has not completely released me from its grip.
I had two dreams last night - both of which I know came from this Mystic River fog.
1. I had a dream about Deirdre Peck - a girl I went to grade school with, a tough girl, a nice girl - I went to some of her birthday parties. She was a tomboy. An old soul. Kind of like Jodie Foster when she was a kid. And Dee Dee Peck died, maybe ... 10 years ago or something like that. In wierd circumstances, I believe, although I don't know any details. I am not haunted by Dee Dee Peck - we were friends for about 5 minutes when we were 9 years old. But there she was. In my dream. Clear as day. Sitting at the bottom of a flight of steps which were coated in ice, looking over her shoulder back up at me. She was a kid in the dream. Not a grown woman. A kid, just looking up at me.
2. I had a dream about an old flame of mine. A long-standing flame. We're actually still friends, in a kind of invisible "I know you're out there" kind of way. I see him when he visits New York. Anyway, this guy is a big MANIAC - a tall guy, with crazy black hair - who, as a human being, obviously has insecurities, and flaws, and fears, but he never shows them. Or, if he does show them, it's never in a neurotic worried way, he does it in a brash masculine way, like: "DAMN! I am feeling REALLY INSECURE right now!" He proclaims his humanity in a loud voice, and everybody bursts into laughter. I like being with him because he never cares what people think. And he also made it his GOAL IN LIFE to make me laugh. Even now, when we get together for drinks on his once-a-year trip to NYC, he makes it his #1 priority to make me laugh.
Anyway, I had a dream about him last night. I rarely dream about him. He didn't look like himself, but it wasn't his features that were different. It looked like something had collapsed - inside of him. Which was the worst tragedy in the world to me. I never ever ever want that wild free soul to collapse, become small, become scared. I stared at his eyes, I stared at the diminished soul in his eyes - and thought: where is that brash confidence? Where is that loud arrogant I-could-own-the-world-if-I-chose-to stance? Where is my old friend? Where did he go?
It is only now, looking back on these two dreams, put together, that I can see where they came from.
Mystic River.
I'm working on writing about it, in more depth. Maybe that will help me loosen its grip on me.
Okay, so this is weird.
I was just sitting here at my desk, and it floated through my mind: "Hmm. I started my blog in ... late October of last year, I think ... Must be coming up on an anniversary..."
I went to check my old blog - and lo and behold - TOMORROW is my one-year anniversary of being a Blog Goddess.
Hoo-yah!
Setting up my own blog has, I can say without exaggeration, changed my life.
In a bunch of ways which I'm not sure I want to divulge - but suffice it to say that:
Blogging has provided me with an outlet. A space to SHOUT. A space to blab. Whatever. I used to keep intensely detailed journals, which is all well and good. I still journal - but that is an inward pursuit. Journaling is about communicating with my own unconscious, not trying to communicate with anybody else. Blogging has helped me so much, in terms of formulating how I think about things - things I need to learn - issues I need to delve in more. Also - challenging myself to articulate my thoughts, my vague convictions about things, into words. Cold clear words. Awesome practice.
It also has kept me writing. I write every day. In a public way.
Writing every day in a journal is also great - but to write for an audience (even if it's only 30 people) is a different muscle altogether.
I have had a pretty bad last couple of years. From about 1999 on. I won't go into why. But it's not been a good time for me, and I've had a very hard time going on with life, at times. There was a good stretch in 2002 when ... I was beyond language. Anyone who's ever been seriously depressed will know the state of which I speak. I couldn't write in my journal, I couldn't write emails to friends ... I just had no words for how sad I was, how disappointed I was in things.
And then, one morning in October, 2002 - I suddenly DID what I had been musing about for over a year, since September 11, when I discovered Andrew Sullivan, Little Green Footballs, James Lileks, and a host of others - I sat down, got an account with Blog-spot, and created a Blog in the space of one morning.
I don't know why suddenly, on October 18, I decided to get into action. It was not on any To Do List. It was just a vague wish, a vague "I'd like to have one of those" ... And it took me 3 hours (maybe less) to make it into a reality.
Not to get too melodramatic here - I will try to use as plain language as possible -
Blogging has changed my life. The word-less stretch of 2002, when I could no longer communicate, even with myself - feels like it could never happen again. The muscle, the communicative muscle, has been FLEXED. And it feels like it is in for me for good. In this way, blogging has done wonders for my mood, my quality of life.
But that's not the only reason it has changed my life. For me, it may be the most important reason - but it's not the sole reason.
I also have discovered this enormous NOISY community - a community that I LOVE - a community that I cherish being a part of -
I didn't even know all you guys were out there!! But now I do!
And reading such people as:
Michele Catalano - hot, sassy, PISSED, hilarious
Dean Esmay - thought-provoking, has been very generous to me - is responsible for getting me off Blogspot
Asparagirl - her blog had a huge impact on me, and that's all I need to say
Mike Hendrix - what a MAN. Love him. Love the "Tough Chicks" essay - love it all.
Dr. Frank (who was the first blogger EVER to link to me - thanks, man!)
Emily Jones - what a ballsy awesome hilarious woman - I think her "fisks" are my favorite "fisks"
Broom of Anger - a window into Belfast and other worlds - I love her style - she's a recent discovery
Bill McCabe - what can I say - I check his blog every day, he checks mine every day - He is a great person.
Kimberly Swygert - I think of her site as one of the most dangerous and most important sites in the blog world - It's almost radioactive
Stephen Green - classic. Just classic.
Pejman - I mean, I love him for the "Thought of the Day" alone
Iranian Girl - Love her blog. Love her insights. You GO, girl.
Glenn Reynolds - Of course.
James Lileks Of course.
Steve Silver - My Hoboken MAN! His blog, at times, makes me laugh out loud. Great stuff.
Ben Kepple - Ben Kepple is a real idol to me.
Rachel Lucas - Rachel Lucas should be on Mount Rushmore or something.
Sgt. Hook - His site ROCKS. I never ever know what I will find there, and I am always glad I visited.
The Rossi Rant - Man, this chick has heart. That's why life can be so hard for her - I relate. She feels everything - she's a beautiful soul.
Tim Blair - I mean, come ON. The man is brilliant.
Barefoot Kitchen Witch - my old dear friend Jayne - my barefoot kitchen witch Jayne - I've always been a fan of her writing, since she wrote these terrifying Steven King-esque things in high school.
Baldilocks - my new discovery. This woman is amazing.
Patrick Prescott - Another daily read. He's got a wide array of interests - I never know what he's gonna say, or what he will focus on each day - His blog is a constant surprise.
Acidman This man should also be on Mount Rushmore.
Andrea Harris...One of my heroes. What can I say.
I know I am leaving people off - Please forgive ...
But anyway - finding this whole world of voices, chattering, babbling, arguing - was like opening up a genie's bottle. Woah.
It was good to join my voice to the Babel. Good to be there. To be a part of it.
The events of September 11 deeply impacted me, mobilized me, enraged me - as they did most of us. Being able to write it all out, and get into discussions with people - (as opposed to sitting weeping in a coffee shop writing in my journal - see the difference?) is awesome.
Keeping a blog is not all about my own self-improvement - but that is what I am present to at the moment.
Thanks to everybody - all my faithful readers. I love when you comment, I love when you get into discussions - I love that you come here, and thank you!
And thank you as well to all of the people I read. A daily dose of your words enriches my life and expands my brain.
This is a long-winded way of saying Happy Birthday To Me.
So long ... and thanks for the fish!
As always, he writes with passion - heartfelt - truthful.
He says it all - he says what I can't say:
this morning i realized that i might just have to start raising the money to buy the cubs or forever learn to live with this sick rotting nauseous feeling that is fermenting in the pit of my gut.what do you do when your dreams will never become realized?
where do you go when all the beer at wrigley wont satisfy?
the beer vendors at the friendly confines come right to your seat and pour two cupfulls at a time to numb the oncoming pain. and if you dont think its pain, youre high.
or a yankee fan.
the meek will inherit the earth but i dont want the damn earth, i want a ring.
i want to wear a hoodie that says cubs world champs on the front and fuckers on the back.
it seems like i want so little and i cant even have that. i dont care any more if i never get a car, or a house, or kids, or even a hot wife who wouldnt mind being nice once in a while.
ive completely given up on having a career of any substance.
....and he just kind of takes it from there....
The picture Tony posts of that Red Sox fan is ... dreadful. Just dreadful. I relate. I understand.
Plastic bags of box cutters found aboard two planes from Southwest Airlines. In the next 24 hours, all commercial aircraft will be searched.
A note in both packages indicated the items were intended to challenge the TSA checkpoint security procedures, Southwest said.
Mission accomplished, eh?
I'm sure they have a list of suspects:
Nordic-looking grandmothers
5-year-old Amish boys
Frail old Jewish men
Breastfeeding mothers
Care to add any?
Today's entry is from October 1, 1983. I think I'm 14 years old. Something like that.
It seems a propos to post this today.
And now - Yaz Fever is in!
As we came down the little narrow street towards Fenway Park - it was packed with screaming people waving Yaz banners. And as we were driving up, we passed this schoolbus full of kids, they all had on Yaz hats - and were really rowdy. We started waving at them - I whipped off Jean's Yaz hat, and they all started applauding and cheering with us. The whole bus waved banners at us, and the whole street went nuts!!
Inside Fenway Park, it was a mad house. And coming out into the stands, with the lights, and the sizzling excitement, and the teams right there warming up ... Our seats were really good. Right along the third baseline.
We looked for Yaz but couldn't find him. I felt like I was waiting for the curtain to open on a big show or something.
At 7:30, they announced the line-up. Yaz was fifth. We all went wild when they called his name. The crowd was screaming and screaming and screaming - we just would not stop. It was great.
I love Boston. I love the Red Sox. I love the people in Boston.
The game started. Cleveland was up first.
I wish we could have seen Yaz play first, but he was the designated hitter. When they announced Dennis Eckersley, Brendan went, "Oh, don't boo!" Everyone did, anyway.
And Jim Rice was right out there. I LOVE JIM RICE. It was so amazing to see all these stars and players I have idolized since I was 8 years old! They were all right there!!
When the Red Sox were up, you could just feel the anticipation. Just waiting for Yaz. He was up 5th. But everyone went hysterical whenever anyone made a hit. I got so worked up!
Then - oh God - when Yaz was on deck - all these camera flashes went off - everywhere across the Park - blinding! All I could do was just stare at Yaz warming up. He is such a hero to me. I swear that nobody was watching the actual game. They were just watching him.
Then - when he was up - and he started for the plate - I can't explain it.
Or - yes, I can.
All of Fenway Park immediately stood up and cheered and cheered and cheered - I was leaping, waving my arms, SCREAMING. This went on for about five minutes. Or longer. Really! No one got tired, no one could stop.
Yaz just stood there with his bat - and stood there - as the whole Park went NUTS - and after a while, he turned to us, and tipped his hat.
Oh my God, it was so beautiful the way he did it.
We all went bonkers!
Me and Brendan were screaming and waving, Jean was crying - then Yaz tipped his hat again - It was positively wonderful.
I almost cried. I wonder if Yaz almost cried.
Finally - FINALLY - we all sat down, still all revved up. Then - he took his stance - and on the first pitch - you could hear this CRACK - the crack of the bat - and everyone JUMPED UP again - yelling, screaming, going positively crazy - I almost had a coronary. It was a single, but we got to see Yaz hit. We got to see Yaz hit. This will be the last time we ever get to see Yaz hit.
I have always loved Yaz. He seems like a really nice guy - or something. Like he has kept his feet on the ground. And the way he tipped his hat to all of us - to all of Boston - I still feel like crying, when I think of it.
The other amazing thing about the night was when we all stood up for "The Star-Spangled Banner".
It is very hard NOT to feel patriotic - with the flag waving in the wind against the dark sky, and everyone around you, hands on their hearts, singing LOUD.
America really is beautiful.
Baseball games make me realize that all over again.
3 more hours until ...
I, like SageOne, do not want to say a word.
But I'm outta here.
Going to the gym, then heading down to Dempsey's.
HOLY SHIT.
But that's all I'm gonna say.
I'm very superstitious.
Let me just say: last night was a glorious experience - with my cell phone ringing off the hook - brother, parents, college friends - my sister Siobhan and I hugged like maniacs at the end ...
Here's the nicest thing:
The Yankee fan I "slayed with my penetrating gaze" - is a regular at Dempsey's, where Siobhan bartends. He had been saying all along, "This won't go to game 7. It won't go to Game 7." An interesting perspective from a man who actually had tickets to Game 7!!
Maybe half an hour after the Red Sox won last night, this guy (wish I could remember his name) came over to us, started talking to us - and, with no bitterness, with no jackassedness, offered Siobhan his ticket.
It did not come out of "SCREW the Yankees, and SCREW Boston" - it came out of, "You know what? Siobhan is a huge Boston fan - this would mean so much to her - and ... I think she should be there."
Damn nice of him, don't you think?
It's still a bit up in the air - whether or not she is going - for various reasons on his end - but she kept saying, "Even just that you offered - really. I appreciate the offer so much."
So tonight?
Yet another evening spent in a bar.
I am excited to get my life back. Do some grocery shopping. Read a book. Hang out.
But that's all I'm saying - any more and I feel that I will be jinxing something ....
It's gonna be quite a game, that's all I have to say.
One thing to add about the above: The Yankee fan refused to charge Siobhan for the ticket. He insisted on giving it to her for free.
This sucks. It's no fun being a Red Sox fan. Some Yankee jackass said to me at the bar this evening, "After all this - the World Series will seem anticlimactic."
And I slayed him with my penetrating gaze and snapped, "You can ONLY SAY THAT because you're a YANKEES FAN!"
He accepted my scolding, and nodded. "Okay, okay."
Some people have no sense.
I'm not even enjoying myself.
Look at me: I'm blogging about how much this all sucks on my way home from the bar.
Dammit.
Have to make this quick - don't have much time today:
I read the following column about a certain baseketball player's accuser, and how she apparently said "No" to KB at least twice.
Lathwick discusses - does no really mean no?
I find this discussion annoying. Or - at least it's annoying in the form it is usually discussed.
Camille Paglia, to my taste, writes about all of this the best. I read her stuff, and think: YES. Yes. Now THAT is empowering.
But anyway:
"No means no" has become a catch-phrase, a symbol standing in for something else, a slogan.
No means no. As though, that is the end of the discussion.
Well - I don't really buy that. Okay? I know how things can get fluid and ambiguous between men and women - especially if you're trying to negotiate some kind of hook-up, shall we say. I know how CLEAR I have to be, at times. Sometimes I wish I wasn't forced to be so CLEAR - because people might get their feelings hurt - but you know what? Emotions, hormones - whatever - cloud the issue. Also clouds up people's ears. I understand fully that that is part of the rules of the game.
I've had to say to people, "Look. I am not interested in you."
I have hated having to do that. And up until the point where I found myself having to say that, I had felt that I was being PERFECTLY clear about my disinterest - but so-and-so wasn't "getting it". Sometimes you have to spell stuff out.
Lord knows there have been guys who have had to spell stuff out to me. They may have said to me, point-blank, "I'm not really into having a relationship right now" - but because of their vibe towards me, or the way they put their arm around me, or whatever jackass signal I was picking up on - I would think, "Huh. I think he's still interested in me, though."
You know, the whole mixed-signals thing.
Sometimes "no" ain't enough. Sorry, girls, it's not.
There's a difference between saying, "No", followed by a little giggly embarrassed laugh - pushing someone's hand away - and standing straight up and screaming, "NO, GODDAMMIT, NO" right in someone's face.
Now, I don't know what went on between you know who and that girl. Nobody knows.
But I do know that "No" does NOT always mean No.
It's not about what you say, ultimately.
Just saying the word "No" is not a magic charm, just saying the measly little word "No" will not make the sexed-up man suddenly "pouf" back into an obedient guy, sitting on the edge of the bed, obeying your precious wishes.
What the hell world do these women live in, who believe this? A world where they are brainwashed that No always means No, no matter how you say it.
Obviously, there is such a thing as violent rape. Where women are screaming "NO" at the tops of their lungs, to no avail. I know people who have been attacked like that. And there is also such a thing as taking advantage of somebody. There are men who would look at a drunk girl passed out in the middle of a frat party and think, "Oh, shit, gotta get that girl out of here before something bad happens", and there are men who would look at the same thing and decide to take advantage of her vulnerable situation.
But unwelcome advances? Someone grabbing your ass? Someone trying to force you to do something you don't want to do? You're only prepared to make out with someone, and they keep trying to force you to do more?
Don't say No.
Scream it.
I think half the problem is women believe in the power of the words themselves. After all, we have been told over and over and over and over that No means No, right?
I took a self-defense class in Chicago. And my teachers, all of them cops, were not of the cushy-let's-sit-in-a-healing-circle-and-teach-guys-that-no-means-no variety.
They were big meaty cops who had seen a lot of horrible shit in their days, who knew that men are physically stronger than women, and these cops believed that women need to know tricks of how to defend themselves.
They weren't sloganeers. No does NOT always mean no - of COURSE it doesn't if one of the parties isn't listening to you at all!!
I recently had a couple dates with a guy who I wasn't interested in at all. I went on 2 dates with him, and realized: Nope. He ain't for me. So I said to him, gently, trying not to be brutal, "I guess I'm just not looking for a relationship right now." Blah. It was kind of a lie, but you know - it's the dating game. You're not gonna say, "I find you boring, and you do not get my sense of humor at all, and I never want to see you again." So anyway, what I said to him was not clear enough (even though, from MY point of view, my lack of interest in him could not have been more plain!) - and this guy continued to call me EVERY FREAKIN' day. I finally had to say to him, "I didn't feel a spark with you. I'm not interested in you. At all." He hasn't called me since. So I learned an important lesson: Be clear. Be brutal if you must be. Because otherwise, people may not even be able to hear what you are saying. People hear what they want to hear, they try to read between the lines, they try to pick up on unspoken signals ...
Again, I have no idea what happened between KB and his accuser - I'm not even speculating.
I'm just sick of people expecting "no means no" to work some kind of wonder on the mess and chaos of social relations. Get real, people.
A great column by Brooks on the Yankees and the Red Sox (or, more specifically, the fans of these 2 teams). And, in a broader context, it's about the entire rageful Northeast!
I swear I'll be able to write about other things some day in the future ... but not yet ... not yet.
A notable quotable from Brooks' column:
It's interesting, for example, to turn and watch Yankee and Red Sox fans as they watch a game. As the game goes on, they almost never display pleasure, contentment or joy. Instead, during the game they experience long periods of contempt interrupted by short bursts of vindication.
That is so aptly put it is not even amusing.
Listened to the game last night on the radio. Cheering out loud, by myself, in my kitchen, having a glass of wine, and reading From Beirut to Jerusalem intermittently.
I am legitimately insane.
Thank goodness Jesus Christ was apparently WITH Trot Nixon last night. Interesting how, if Trot messes up, or if nothing happens, he doesn't say, "Well, Jesus Christ turned his back on me out there."
So ... in the world of Trot Nixon ... Jesus hovers around the bat, and decides WHEN Trot gets a huge play ... Jesus is the strategist for the Red Sox.
Whatever, dude. Wake up to reality.
Anyway. Glad they won. Sounds like it was a good game. My cousin was there, somewhere, in the crowd. Hob-nobbing with J-Lo? Who knows.
Today I will try to sneak out of work early and go down to Dempsey's to catch the tail-end of today's game.
I have spent more time in bars over the last week and a half than I have since college.
My little nephew Cashel (soon to be 6) was in town today. So we met up at the Museum of Natural History this morning at 10 am.
I haven't seen him since August. It has been a bit ... wrenching. I must say.
I sat, in the grey morning, reading, waiting for them to show.
Looked up. Saw Cashel and Maria (his mother) coming down the sidewalk. Cashel was already in a squirmy state of excitement - and when he saw me - he broke into a run. An excited run.
I jumped up and ran at him too.
To see him - his huge smile - as he ran at me - laughing hysterically - happily -
I have tears in my eyes. I love him so much.
I feel like the 3 of us must have walked 10 miles today - through the various exhibits in the museum. We looked at everything, we ate, we watched a movie about vertebrates.
Long conversations about whales, and dinosaurs, and meteorites, and the rain forests. Walking around and around and around, looking at everything, hanging out with my nephew.
It was beautiful.
But not as beautiful at the sight of him breaking into a run when he saw me.
Thank you, God.
I think Pedro Martinez is a disgrace. I think his behavior was disgraceful. I cannot believe he was not tossed out of the game. And God, I'm a Boston fan! We need him! But that doesn't change the fact that I think he behaved appallingly.
Zimmer was obviously charging Martinez - but Zimmer is an old man. There is no excuse for Martinez's behavior. It was an absolute disgrace. Push him away from you, bat him back, but to take his head in your hands, and throw him down onto the grass?
Not to mention the Yankee thugs beating up a Fenway Park worker. The man has CLEAT MARKS IN HIS BACK. Fucking neanderthals.
Jesus. The whole thing was a debacle.
And yet - this evening I will watch again. Riviera Cafe in the West Village. A watering-hole for Red Sox fans in the surrounding area.
But last night ... Jesus. The whole game had a bad bad vibe.
Zimmer could have broken his neck. You do not throw old men down on the ground. You do not throw old men down on the ground. You do not throw old men on the ground.
More than anything else?
Besides the obvious things (humor, intelligence, thinks I'm gorgeous, etc.)?
What I really want in a man, what it really comes down to is this:
I want a worthy foe.
I want a worthy foe.
Additional comment:
I only added "thinks I'm gorgeous" because I have had the experience, time and time again, of a man falling in love primarily with my mind - but not being all that attracted to what I look like. I need someone who LOVES what I look like. I love to have a guy say "So, tell me what you think about such and such..." but I also love to hear a guy say, "You are the hottest thing in the room right now."
I need BOTH.
But most of all, let me make the same old point again: I want someone to spar with. A worthy sparring partner. To the end of my days.
Red Sox meet the Yankees once again.
4:18? What is up with that? Are the executives, the powers-that-be, testing our devotion, our commitment? "Heh heh, they expect the games to be at the hour or the half-hour...Let's see how they do with 4:18, baby!!"
Anyway, I am going to watch the game at Dempsey's Pub. My sister Siobhan, another insane Red Sox fan (she borders on autistic - although her autism doesn't hold a candle to my brother Brendan's level of Red Sox knowledge) - is the bartender at Dempsey's. It's in the East Village. Her Red Sox mania is so well-known, that Red Sox fans from around the boroughs of Manhattan flock to Dempsey's, in order to be with their own kind.
So it looks to me like it will be a good atmosphere for today's lunacy.
Clemens vs. Martinez.
I feel a knot in my stomach.
Bring it on.
Come on, baby, let's DO this thing.
It's only fun watching the Red Sox play the Yankees in a sea of Yankee fans if the Red Sox win.
OBVIOUSLY.
Otherwise, it is a shrieking nightmare of depression and hostility.
This Diary Friday entry is a bit heavy, perhaps. But hey - Sometimes life be heavy. Sometimes life be light. It is from the summer of 1998. It has to do with some revelations (incoherent, at times) that I had, regarding God, love, and loss. So read on, if you dare.
One small Sheila tip: if you ever meet me, and you hear me begin to discuss quantum physics as a metaphor for life and the human condition - know that it is time to shut me up, take me out for margaritas, and go do karaoke or something equally as light-hearted and fun!
But that feeling comes so rare these days, so I don't feel like I have the right to judge it or belittle it.
Okay ... so you love Interview magazine. All right then.
Do not judge that which excites you.
And then later, on the heels of these ruminations about what excites me, I had a "revelation" (not the right word) - the "revelation" stopped me in my tracks on 7th Avenue. Something came into my head and it was like I hit a forcefield. Boom. Stop.
Well, whatever it was - suddenly this image, or a whole world, came into my head. Like a little movie.
Summer - I was still in Chicago. I had gone home to RI. It was at the height of the P. thing. I was on another fucking PLANET. I could feel it - something huge was coming. But that is just me editorializing it, in retrospect.
What came into my mind on 7th Avenue was just the visuals -
Me walking into the living room, in my big faded purple T shirt, cut-offs, running sneakers - I had been out for a run - I walked in, and Mum and Dad were out on the porch and there were other people there. Not inner sanctum people, I know that, and it tells me what a state I was in, to behave in such a manner in front of random people. Maybe it was a friend of Siobhan's, or of Mum and Dad's.
So I walked in, and Dad called out to me, by way of greting, "P. called" - And it was like a nuclear reaction. Those words hit my atmosphere and I COMBUSTED. It was totally spontaneous what happened: I started screaming and staggering forward, as though an arrow had struck me. And I histrionically and dramatically (and truthfully, too!) threw myself down (in degrees) over the armchair - it was like a melodramatic stage death, or like a little kid pretending to get shot. And down I went, shrieking and laughing, over the armchair, and then further down, falling over the ottoman, with everyone watching, and laughing, and then I tumbled down off the ottoman and onto the floor - splat - and I lay there like a jibbering lunatic.
I don't want to editorialize it or try to explain it.
It is what it is. It was what it was.
P. called my house and talked to Dad, and I promptly became a shrieking banshee in front of people I didn't know.
That is what happened.
Life tasted more than good. Everything was so exciting. Something huge was coming. I could feel it. And I was ready for it. For whatever it was.
And being THAT excited, and THAT free ...
See, I don't want to analyze this, because then it sounds like a pity party, or a naive nostalgia joy-ride.
But, in that moment, when I fell over the ottoman, there was no fear, no tentativeness, no caution. I look back on my fearlessness in AWE.
And then I leapt to my feet and ATTACKED Dad for details. I grilled him as fearlessly as if he were Ann or Mitchell. "Okay. TELL ME EVERYTHING."
I was a fucking goofball.
It was high school all over again, only 5,000 times better - cause it was a real love affair.
And Dad was pretty good about it, I have to say - because I was totally OUT of control - Dad became, in the words of Ann and I, "a good reporter". He didn't just tell me the facts, he interpreted them. He said, "It sounded like he was getting such a kick out of himself - calling you -" See, that is the kind of stuff I need to hear!
I fired questions at Dad. "And then what did he say?" "And then what?" "Okay, tell me that part again." "What did his voice sound like?"
I had forgotten all of this - I had forgotten that moment of histrionic fearlessness, excitement, joy - It was just the specific moment I had forgotten. Not the whole era, of course, not that whole crazy summer. That summer becomes a wash the further away from it I get. It is now a phrase, an icon - the words standing in for the whole. Like saying "the 60s" or "the Middle Ages" - and you get all these pictures in your head, just from the words. "That summer" is that way for me.
So much has happened since then. So much.
I really don't think about that summer anymore. When I fantasize stuff, or daydream, I never go back in time. I never lie around and daydream about that summer, as amazing as it was. I suppose it hurts too much - to recall all that ecstasy - and to know what a fucking disaster was approaching.
Everything is colored by what came after.
But anyway, there it was, on 7th Avenue: a visitation. A wrinkle in time. The past as vivid as the present moment.
And - the "revelation" was about the excitement - that word kept coming up in my mind - the excitement - how excited I was - and then, simultaneously, I thought of the Interview magazines, and Boom - it was as though I had literally walked into an invisible wall. I stood still.
I remembered the excitement of that year - the living breathing excitement - and compared it to the excitement of now - finding old magazines on a table in Manhattan ...
All of this happened in a split-second.
Then came the wave - that wave that sometimes comes. I don't ride the wave. I just let it wash over me.
Actually, no: this was more like a ripple.
God, I just can't describe it:
It was a very brief moment of paralysis, and something rippled through me - I waited it out - and then I kept going.
I felt a bit shaky - a bit on the edge - aware of the bruise in my heart - all that is left of the original wound. Like a bad spot in an apple - that goes all the way through.
I don't know - it was sort of startling.
Later, at home, I was thinking about it. Thinking, as opposed to experiencing.
The vision of that summer had nothing to do with emotions, or remembering it - I was IN it. It LIVED. But later, reflecting -
I felt this sort of dying wistfulness. A dying sadness. Like that line from Tennyson:
"Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying."
A "dying echo" - a wild echo flying, and then dying ...
Putting it into words doesn't seem right.
Will I ever feel that again? Will anyone ever engender such hysteria and elation in me again?
No, it wasn't in a question form, these thoughts. It was more like statements coming at me:
"I will never..."
"That moment was it for me..."
"Now it is Interview magazines ..."
I didn't stay long in this, I put it behind me, and stepped over the abyss again.
A day or so later - I had another moment - on 7th Street in Hoboken -
I've been thinking a lot about God lately. Or ... no, it's more of a ... which came first the chicken or the egg kind of thing.
I have been drawn to churches since the start of the summer. I see them everywhere, and I go into them. Any denomination. I stand there. Or, like St. Mary's in Times Square, I go in, and sit, or kneel. I light a candle. I ... pray? I wouldn't give that word to it. It feels more like a shedding, a dropping away of ballast, a time of be-ing. I'm sure religious types would say, "That's praying." But if I don't relate to a word, then I don't relate to it. I believe in relativity. Not chaos - but relativity. I won't have someone tell me what words to use. I won't have someone define the terms for me. Or try to control my language.
So, from this magnetic church thing, I surmise that - I am searching. I am trying to be open to ... spiritual guidance. In whatever form it takes. Just the dark flickering atmosphere of St. Mary's is enough for me. I remember what Sue R. said to me - saying that she thought in a past life I had been a religious fanatic, or a saint. She said, bluntly, "Ya drove God crazy." So now, I want to know God in my own way. Not in a way organized by somebody else. I don't even think of God as a ... Supreme Being ... or anything like that. A "being", to me, is like a human "being" - something singular, something identifiable. I see God as being all things. Down to the teeniest quantum particle. It's an energy source. It's matter. It's love. It's science. It's the stars, the waves. The mystery of the fact that we are actually here. That consciousness has evolved, that we are a race that can question our own existence - to me, that is a miracle. God is impartial, in a way. Tidal waves, death, the cosmos, childbirth - God creates it all.
I get into trouble when I try to put any of this into words. I don't believe that religions should have anything to do with WORDS anyway.
Jesus said it all best, I think. He's the one who spoke all of this most effectively. Everything else seems diluted to me, or overly intellectual - or lacking in curiosity.
I've always had my most intense spiritual experiences with nature - that night on the beach during the hurricane with Betsy and Kate - stuff like that.
Anyway. Something else is going on now, with me - a more conscious searching, I think.
I'm trying to be open to receiving gifts, messages - I am trying not to close myself off - even though I have a lot of sadness - I remember that piece on masks, read to us at the Happening retreat in high school, about God splashing moonlight onto our pillows, basically screaming at us, "I'm here! Here I am!"
I want to be open to all that. That comfort, that sense of a pattern. I can feel myself becoming bitter. Hard. Mad.
The books I am reading now: Brief History of Time, Schroedinger's Cat .... Quantum mechanics. Like ... WHAT?
Cosmology and quantum physics.
I can't even begin to understand the arithmetic, but I groove on the concepts.
Like the particles Stephen Hawking describes falling into black holes - pairs - those damn pairs - that keep recurring and recurring throughout nature - pairs, eternally circling around one another - crashing, annihilating, creating - a constant dance of two - and then - one gets pulled into the black hole. They are separated. And the one that is not pulled in, is somehow ... well ... there is evidence, then, that some things do escape from black holes.
The power of TWO.
I have no idea what the hell I am talking about.
But on a very down-to-earth human level - I can see a metaphor in all of this for the human condition. (Ed.: Hey, Sheila ... let's go grab some margaritas...) It goes all the way down to the micro-level, and we can never get to the center of it.
It's my "religion".
It makes me think of Madeleine L'Engle's Christian books - the one she wrote on "Christian art" - To her, it doesn't matter if it's a Jew who produced it - if it's "good art", then, for her, it is affirmation of the Christian tradition.
I certainly do NOT agree with this. Who gives a crap if it's a pagan, a Jew, a Muslim, a Christian, or a raging Marxist freak? If it's good art, it's good art. Madeleine L'Engle is a Christian - she's also an artist - so she feels that she must see all great art through a Christian filter. Yuk. She is searching, in her own way - trying to make sense of why and how someone who doesn't believe what she believes could make a work of art that she responds to spiritually. There is something very distasteful to me in all of that. However, she is my favorite writer. So I read her theological diatribes about Christian art anyway.
My view is:
It's all about the search. Regardless of what you believe. If you believe nothing, if you believe in Allah, if you believe in God, if you believe in wine, women and song ...
Sam always says to us in acting class - "The question is not: Do I feel it? The question is: Am I searching?"
Or like Tennessee Williams wrote in Camino Real - I think this is my favorite Williams line ever: "Make voyages. Attempt them. That's all there is."
Back to 7th Avenue: I was at some sort of nadir. Walking down that street. I felt like I was falling into a black hole. Separated from the other half of my "pair" - now we were separated - by an entire universe -
It was so hot. The air had a still and stagnant quality to it. I remember thinking: How the hell am I going to get through this night?
The sky was really weird - and sort of an optical illusion. It was this musky blue color - spreading across the whole sky - as flat and unmoving as the air. It didn't look like a storm was coming. The sky didn't have that unhealthy swollen look. It was flat. TOTALLY flat.
The illusion part was that the blueness I saw was not just the sky - as I first thought - but clouds too. And haze. All pasted together up there. Haze - clouds - sky - all on the same plane. With no depth. What I was looking at was a cloud cover. Not the blue of the atmosphere. But it all seemed to be ONE.
And here is how the illusion revealed itself to me : it looked like there was a rip in the sky.
No. Not a rip. More like - a tear. Or like - something had been ripped, and then pasted back on, or taped on over the blue - and the edges of this ripped piece of blue paper were pink. So high high high up - was this jagged outline.
In all the flat blue monotony - there it was - this bright pink rip - a rip in the sky.
I looked up at it at just the right moment. 20 seconds later, the sky had shifted, and the pink rip wasn't as dramatic or clear. In seeing that pink, with the musky blue in front of and behind it - I could see that the entire sky was actually covered with this opaque haze. The blue I had been looking at was not actually the sky, it was just an illusion of sky. But without the perspective/context of the pink rip up there, you never would have been able to tell. It LOOKED like all that blue was actually blue atmosphere.
To me, in the state I was in, the crisis, the nadir, whatever - (I'm a little lamb who's lost in the wood - someone to watch over me) - that bright pink rip in the sky was the equivalent of God splashing the moonlight on oblivious pillows - To me, it was "God" showing itself to me. To all of us, actually. Quietly. No big fanfare. A quiet message, way up in the sky, saying, "Hey there. I'm here." You might miss it. I might have missed it. Even if you saw the pink rip and thought, "Oh, how cool", you might miss the deeper truth being revealed.
Sheila - what is that truth?
I think that the truth is not limited to houses of worship, or Bibles, or Torahs, or Korans. It's about the human race. It's about love. It's about beauty in all things. The miracle of life. The unexplained mystery of our universe.
Seeing God up in the sky certainly didn't change my life, or make things better. I still wonder if I will ever feel excitement like I felt during that summer when all still seemed possible. But, still - it was like I had a moment of awareness. A moment of awareness of love, in the middle of the nadir. Something called out to me: "Look up! Look up!" And I did. And I got a message. I felt like something was communicating to me.
Trying to express this in human words is an exercise in futility. It sounds so ... sentimental. Or ... new agey. Or whatever.
The Desiderata:
I am a child of the universe
I have a right to be here
With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams
It is still a beautiful world.
That says it best. That says it best.
Parables. Extended metaphors. Talismans. Symbols. Stories standing in for the truth.
The experience of God should be kept abstract.
Let the mystery remain a mystery.
Read other Diary Fridays, should you so choose...
I go here and I don't feel so alone anymore.
They randomly linked to me a couple of days ago - which I LOVE - too funny - and have had a great time scrolling through the rest of the Boston/Red Sox links.
Some highlights:
Reasons for wanting the Sox to win
A couple well-chosen words to Yankee fans... from Erika
Superstition. Yup. I feel the same way.
The latest idiocy from the Vatican: Condoms don't stop Aids
To me, this statement (that condoms should not be used "because they have tiny holes in them through which the HIV virus can pass") is not just idiotic - harmful - foolish - but evil. Yes. It's evil.
Africa is ravaged by this disease. Ravaged. It is an epidemic. Condom use is not widely practiced in Africa, anyway. To warn people against using condoms, with this misinformation, is infuriating. Evil.
How DARE you?
Full disclosure: I'm a Catholic. Obviously. But this shit makes me NUTS.
The game last night was great and all, but it is WRENCHING MY SOUL.
Glad to see Johnny Damon in the dugout ... for the most part recovered.
I was cheering my team on in a SEA of Yankee fans. That is no fun. There is a Red Sox bar down in the West Village ... I will go there to see the next one. I must be amongst my people for such a SOUL-WRENCHING experience.
thinking about anything OTHER than the upcoming game this evening.
I will go to the pub in Hoboken, filled with refugee Red Sox fans ... and try not to lose my mind.
This is almost an unpleasant experience, actually.
So, yes, my Sunday night performance went great ... Thank you for everybody who wrote in to ask me!! And for those who are engaging in a sort of Irish brawl throughout my comments, complete with Irish brogues - I love that! So here is a brief update:
Every time I perform the piece, I gain confidence in it.
It is a far different experience to perform your OWN words as opposed to somebody else's. I have found, so far, that the experience for me is an odd mixture of confidence/certainty - and UTTER NEEDINESS. I believe in the integrity of the piece, I enjoy doing it, and yet ... since I wrote it, and since it is about an event in my life ... I have a tendency to FREAK OUT with nervi-ness before and after-hand. I feel like a raw freakin' nerve.
But this is neither here nor there.
The Irish Arts Center is a great venue and I was pleased to be a part of their lineup.
My parents were in attendance (I have been blessed, in terms of parents ... truly blessed!) - my aunt Regina, her friend, my friend David, my friend Barbara ....
I was so glad to have my Peeps there with me.
And ... let me just tell you ... to hear these waves of laughter coming back at me, while I am up on the stage, sometimes a wave of laughter, sometimes a thunderclap ... There is literally nothing else like that sound on the earth. It is the best sound in the world. (Well, maybe a baby laughing is THE best sound .... but an audience bursting into spontaneous laughter because of something you, the actor have done, is a close second). It feels AWESOME.
It was the kind of night where ... I was dropped off at home by my friend David, and I had to just sit, quietly, in a chair in my room, and just sit there. Living in it. Reveling in it. Not bustling about, not writing, not distracting myself with TV, or whatever ... Just sit there. Just BE.
More to come. More to come.
The piece has LEGS, dammit, it has LEGS! So I will see where it takes me.
I guess you could say that (and I say this with humility, and also, a kind of weird shyness) - that I'm proud of myself.
Yes. I am proud of myself.
I do want to update you all on my performance evening (it went great!) - but right now the Red Sox are paramount in my mind.
Derek Lowe, man ... He just came ... and DID what he HAD to do.
Great game. A real nail-biter.
A fight broke out in the bar because the one random A's fan started cheering when Johnny Damon and Damian Jackson cracked skulls. Jackass.
How could you CHEER at that? What the hell is wrong with people?
Anyway. Here we go. Now things are gonna get REALLY nuts.
I hope Damon is okay. It looked really bad. And, of course, they KEPT showing it.
Has anyone heard any updates on how he is doing? I've looked ... but can't find anything yet...
I come from a long long line of Red Sox fanatics. As I watched the game, at Liberty Cafe, in Hoboken, I could FEEL, across the country, my brother watching, my cousins watching, my sister watching in Queens, my parents watching in Rhode Island ...
The first Red Sox game I ever saw, at Fenway, when I was 8 years old, was against the A's.
2 seconds after the game was won, my cell phone rang, and it was my brother, in Los Angeles, LOSING HIS MIND.
It was great. Just great.
Through the haze of illness, I have pulled out the following journal entry, as the next installment of Diary Friday.
It is one of those entries which makes me glad I keep a journal. For the most part, my journal is filled with sadness, depression, what worries me, what hurts me ... It's where I work out stuff. But occasaionally, I will jot something down, a happy goofy memory ... something I probably would NOT remember otherwise ... and it's a little blessing to re-visit it.
This is an entry from my senior year in college. It describes a night out bowling with a bunch of good friends, all of whom were in the theatre department.
Cheeses galore, veggies, crackers, bread, Brie, wine.
Great music. Looked at Edwin Drood slides.
Then on a whim we all bundled up and went bowling. And had THE BEST TIME. We went to this Bowlarama in scary Pawtucket. Someone was murdered in Pawtucket this very morning. It's a tough place.
Let me paint the picture for you. I cannot believe that we were not mugged.
It was League night. There were also a lot of tough teenagers, being sullen and hostile. There's nothing more hostile than a teenager from Pawtucket. Then, the 8 of us arrive. Theatre geeks. Loud. Flamboyant. And INTO bowling, no matter how much we sucked.
Susan in a bright red dress with little black dogs over it, and shiny black spandex tights. She got gutter ball after gutter ball after gutter ball. It was extremely funny.
We are not normal people. We don't just bowl. We don't just do anything. We throw our hearts into it. After every spin, there would be a production number of some kind. Screams. Hugs. Sobs. (Jackie cried, once.) Susan kept standing up there, stock still, for at least a minute, after her 10th straight gutter ball. She was struck dumb. Immovable. Susan finally got a spare, and the resulting celebration she had a FIT. David W. raced up there to whirl her around.
Jackie wearing silky grey pants, and a sweater. Glamorous as always. Offhandedly tossing the ball into the lane. Her pattern? Her first try gutter. Second try she would knock down about 8. And her last try? Gutter. She had no set up, no carry thru. She just stood up there and whipped the ball down wildly. And she would get really sullen after gutter balls. Didn't want to talk about it, or discuss it. She also cried for real when she got a spare.
Me I had my hair pulled back. I had on huge hoop earrings, a silky white shirt, tight jeans. My setup would be I would shake my ass in everyone's face and then I would very very seductively toss the ball down the lane. Such a jackass. And after all that, I would basically seductively toss the ball straight into the gutter. It took me 2 strings to warm up. I, too, got frustrated after gutters and would stomp back to my seat. Quite bratty. I also flirted madly with the guy in charge. He loved me and came over to keep score for me and Jackie. I strolled around like I owned the place.
Mitchell totally in black, with Joan Crawford-like jacket with shoulder pads bigger than mine. He is so handsome. It kills me. Especially with his hair short. His face is fantastic. It makes me laugh. He is also a FUNNY bowler. I now want to go bowling with him every day. Cigarette hanging out of his mouth, seriously tallying up the scores, barking funny comments out of the side of his mouth. He is a serious bowler too. He would do many wild Carlton Fisk-like gesticulations to try to change the direction of the ball. Then, he'd invariably realize how ridiculous he looked, glance around to see if anyone had noticed. And of course we ALL had noticed, because we were all looking at him. We laughed explosively. "I was trying to make it turn," Mitchell would say like he really had to explain.
David S Pretty normal. (Looking, anyway.)
Russell also pretty normal as a bowler. These two seemed tame to me.
And then there was
Tony. Tony. Tony. Okay. Tony had on a white tuxedo shirt, black tuxedo pants with a black satin stripe down the side, matching purple and blue paisley cummerbund and bowtie, and then a shimmering purple velvety velour smoking jacket with black satin lapels. And bowling shoes. I didn't even realize how hilarious he looked until halfway thru our time there. They had a bar and Tony went up and ordered us all beers, and he came back with a loaded-down tray, and in the blazer, and tuxedo pants, he looked like a bizarre Bowlarama waiter.
God, I love my friends. "We might be laughing a bit too loud but that never hurt no one "
Tony was a wild bowler. Sometimes right on the money, and sometimes he would whip it, with total conviction, right into the gutter. He took none of it seriously. He would laugh after every gutter ball. Hysterically. Something about gutter balls (other people's gutter balls) are extremely funny. So there we all were, holding our beers, and pointing at Tony, laughing uproariously.
Then David W. What a creature. What a piece of work. He is the most riotous person I know. First of all, he looked like a guido from hell gold chains, flashy open shirt, pleated pants
I just cannot laugh hard enough to satisfy how funny he is. He would walk up there ultra-confident and arrogant, with that funny deadpan TOTALLY serious look on his face, picking up a ball jauntily as though he were Mr. Pro, doing this magnificent sweeping setup, sliding to his knees as he let the ball go, and then the ball would careen right into the gutter. It happened to him so many times. And his face! It was all Mr. Macho Yeah, I meant to do that
big deal
When he would get a strike or a spare, he would do a mad Solid Gold dancer dance routine, or he would whirl around to face us, leaping and bounding, like it was the World Series. He busted up Susan mercilessly about her gutter balls, making fun of her, and then he would go up there and immediately get one
Every time the two of us would end up up there together, he would come onto me like a madman, distracting me. "Hey baby
what are you doin' later? How you doin', baby? Come here often??"
He is out of control. And it is all totally sincere.
We were two very noisy lanes, and the League kept giving us dirty looks. We had become their enemies.
The punks next to us were 15-year-old tough guys
and they just did not know what to do with David W. They could not take their eyes off of him. They could not believe what they were seeing. They were dumbfounded.
David was dressed like a Cranston guido, with the pinkie rings, and the open shirt, but he was behaving like a MANIAC. He was DISCO dancing at the end of his lane.
So these kids were gaping at him, literally slack-jawed, and they kept muttering to each other, "Faggot. That guy is such a faggot. Look at that guy. What a fag." It was all "fag fag fag fag".
The funniest thing is that David is the most viciously heterosexual guy in our group he just happened to be out of control so they called HIM a fag Meanwhile, there is Tony strolling around in purple velour and paisley, and Mitchell strolling around in shoulder pads and penny loafers. And Tony and Mitchell really are "fags"! But no the teenagers latched onto DAVID as a "fag".
After they left, I told Mitchell and David what had gone on, how they had kept calling David a "fag". Mitchell automatically assumed (poor thing) that the dudes had been harassing him. For some reason, he has been harassed constantly this year. It makes me see red. But I said, reassuringly, "No! They were calling David a fag!"
And the three of us exploded. David just LOVED it. "Me?? I love it!"
It was just so ironic Tony sashays by in velour, and the kids don't say a word.
Tonight there was a roaring wind, and shaggy clouds in the night sky, with bright crystal-clear starry sky, in all the rifts between the clouds a moon that seems to half-fade into darkness. I loved the sky tonight. All of us going outside to pile into cars to go bowling
we had to stop, and stare up at the sky. It demanded our attention. Susan was so cute, and Parisian, in her black coat, red scarf, and black beret, gasping up at the sky in admiration and awe. It was shiveringly cold. Because of the amazingly strong wind, and all of those clouds it's a very uncanny sight to see white clouds at night. It was a spectacle. And the clouds seemed low to me torn apart, and hurrying by and behind them, actually overwhelming them, was the vast brilliant wintry cosmos.
We all were struck quite dumb by it, there on the freezing scary Pawtucket sidewalk.
Read other Diary Fridays, should you so choose....
Here's a reminder, for those of you in the New York area
I will be performing a piece I wrote, "74 Facts and One Lie", at the Sunday night cabaret of the Irish Arts Center on October 5 (this Sunday).
Here are the DEETS:
When: Sunday, October 5, 2003, 7 pm
Where: The Irish Arts Center
553 West 51st Street (in between 10th and 11th)
New York, NY 10019
Price: $5.00
Also, there's a bar, so you can drink as you watch.