A Dreamy Scrapbook

Despite one of my best friends/most astute film critics I know calling it "a coffee table book of a movie" (and though I hated to admit it, I agreed) Jane Campion's Bright Star remains one of my favorite films. When I need to calm down or just generally feel better, I put it on while I try to sleep or just watch on these frequently rainy days. I watch for the scene with the billowing curtain, for when they sweep the tattered butterflies into the dust bin, most especially for all the moments when they read Keats's poems and letters. 


I suppose that's why I made my own scrap book out of Jane Campion's scrap book. Her site is now defunct, but it seems I'm not the only one who loved it's dreamy moods. Something about the fact that the site no longer exists seems fitting, doesn't it? Makes it all the more romantic? I think Keats himself would have appreciated that kind of ephermera. The same guy whose tomb says "here lies one whose name was writ in water."


As I contemplate a lot of big decisions coming up for me on this Mother's Day in the US, I wish I had a bit more time to daydream to Bright Star. At least this work and wind in St Andrews will keep me busy and  thoughts of mothers at bay. 

"Release Me" into wonderwild - New Nic & Alix

Of all the songs we had on deck (and of all the songs we PREMIERED!) at Lincoln Center, I was perhaps most excited to let this one out of the bag. I'm super proud out it. Perhaps because it did not come easy. I'm normally a fast writer. I edit for a long time, but the primary chunk, the main idea-- the heart and soul of what the song's lyrics are going to be-- pretty much all happen in about fifteen minutes. That sort of makes me feel like a brat just saying it, but it's mostly a "don't force it" kind of situation.


Anyhow. This was not one of those fifteen minutes get in/get out kind of things. We knew we wanted a song about a certain feeling of change that Alix feels when she's brought to the brink. Years of stress and hiding her son's illness and just in-your-bones fear that she'd lose the son and heir she waited ten years for. The political scene is precarious and relies heavily on her son being perceived as the future of Russia. 


Also, she's a bit of a religious zealot. Highly interested in mystics, etc, but I mean, cut her some slack. I'd probably be pretty desperate to put my faith in anything I thought would work if I had a sick kid too. 


When the song begins, she's been told it's basically the end for Alexei and only a matter of time before he's gone. She's essentially begging for grace. And then, mid way through the song, she receives a telegram from a mystic who would change the course of her family's lives. The telegram was simple: just to leave the boy alone; to not fuss over him too much. And sure enough, his health improved and from that moment on, Grigori Rasputin was adopted into the Romanov family with catastrophic results. 


We wanted to simulate the feeling of a telegraph and morse code signals, so listen for that. And Steven and I kept circling around what the central 'idea' of the song should be. I kept saying, nope, nope, not quite right; a little too general. And finally, I had it and went away to birth this one. A difficult labor. But happy with the results. I felt a bit like the emotions expressed in the lyrics themselves by the time I was done. 


I wish I'd filmed the sound check which was pretty much flawless. This is marathon, labor of love five minute anthem to sing. And we're still streamlining scansion and tempos. Also, it's a good lesson to not have favorites in your own lyrics. Lyrics will always be flubbed for the rest of time and eternity. And chances are, if you have favorites, it'll be those. "So many prayers unanswered, bargains made and nights unslept, your words fold the space between promises broken and kept" will turn into a repeat of the last line. And no one will know but you. 


The best thing about Autumn is that I cease to care about what I wrote and only feel the emotion of her performance. Which is... the point, actually. Which she has always, always been a master of. Every time. I look forward to much much more of this song and Autumn. And this show and Autumn. Just...one of the most beautiful people all around, of all time. 


Like Nic & Alix on facebook here. Photos by Daniel Robinson

taking it back to 1936 & 1996

"I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken - and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived. "--Margaret Mitchell 

With all this talk I've been doing lately about The Passage being the greatest book of all time, I thought I should do some clarifying. While I do find Cronin's new book to be amazing, there is nothing that could ever be written by a mere mortal that could top the one and only. For me, since the age of 10, there is this book, and then...everything else.

That book, of course, is Gone With The Wind, the finest piece of literature ever written. (If you'd like to challenge me on that, I'd be happy to provide you with a lengthy explantion of why-- more on that later.)

As a child (and, really, almost anyone can back this up) I was literally possessed by the thing. My obsession was so complete and pathological that I'd get into arguments with people about the trivia, I'd buy 2 of every collectible (just in case), I sent a letter to a board game company about three (3!) errors I found in their game, I could recite it from beginning to end (one friend even claimed I'd speak from the movie in my sleep. I don't think I believe this.)

I was an automaton of facts. But it's as if that was the only way I could think of to truly express my love of it. I couldn't describe it, I could only quote, spew, collect, analyze it's own content-- not the depths of what I felt about it.

Catch me on pretty much any day and I could give you a love song about GWTW. I love it for what it is, I love it for what it isn't, I love it as symbol of my own version of The Old South-- which didn't have slavery (unless you count the way I forced my dear Grandmother to drive me all over the state of Georgia looking for GWTW memorabilia) but it did have a kind of charm that can never return.

It was filled with romantic things and all the time in the world to dream about all the good things in life, like iced tea & butter beans and hoop skirts and big canopy trees, and old houses and the way they smell, and the libraries filled with books and the way they smelled. Of powder rooms and perfumes and china and old pictures and endless room to wonder what all those folks' lives had been like. Endless hours to learn how to make a pig out of an acorn and some toothpicks. All the time you needed to get the smell of corn-relish out of the skin of your arms after you'd been stirring the pot that was bigger than you  for as much time as the corn relish needed.

Maybe I was born a writer or maybe I became one in those summers because I was given the room. The Old South of my life was one where everyone had as much time as they needed. I could tell a story every day about how much my extended summers with my grandparents meant to me.

But if you want to boil it down to one thing-- one thing that will always mean what it means-- it's Gone With The Wind. And everyone knew that was mine. And it was, strangely, something we could all do together-- it became all of ours (because I have a tendency to catch people up in my loves vortex). Like Grandma and Me, spinning down the highways and the time my Papoo bought me the ENTIRE 36 plate GWTW collector's plate series and kept it for me, as a surprise for me one day. I only even found out about it after he died, and it seemed like that's how he'd planned it all along.

(He still has a way of doing things like that-- more on him later.)

But in honor of the center of gravity of my childhood, I thought it'd be fun to show you the original Time Magazine review of the novel from July 6, 1936. It was also the inaugural book of the Time Book of the Month Club, the precursor, of course, to Oprah's Book Club.

Bright Star

In my infinite insomnia, I finally saw Bright Star last night. Most have criticized it as boring, but oh, not for me. In my past-life believing depths, John Keats is my soul mate. I love him beyond loving him. Beyond having met him, beyond any criticism of his poetry, etc. If I were to choose a dinner table of people I dream to meet, it's basically Margaret Mitchell & John Keats....well... and Camus.

No matter how many times i go back to his work, even in the movie, I felt a kind of psychic connection to it. The other characters would ask him to recite something, and I would know which poem he would choose and I would instinctually begin to recite that poem with him. It was uncanny.

Tonight, I feel like he'd say:
On leaving some Friends at an Early Hour

GIVE me a golden pen, and let me lean

On heap’d up flowers, in regions clear, and far;

Bring me a tablet whiter than a star,

Or hand of hymning angel, when ’tis seen

The silver strings of heavenly harp atween:

And let there glide by many a pearly car,

Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar,

And half discovered wings, and glances keen.

The while let music wander round my ears,

And as it reaches each delicious ending,

Let me write down a line of glorious tone,

And full of many wonders of the spheres:

For what a height my spirit is contending!

’Tis not content so soon to be alone.

But last night, and when this first started in the film, they said, "Mr . Keats, please recite something." Ane he began my favorite. And I KNEW he would say it. I could see it in his eyes before he began. And he and I said together, "When I have fears that I may cease to be before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain..." He choked up in the middle, but oh! And so, I am renewing my devotion to my first real boyfriend. And recommitting his works to memory, like I had done in college.


WHEN I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love! - then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.


Posthumous and Fugitive Poems