Happy third birthday to my favorite human, the one and only Miss Tigerlily. No one on Earth makes me as happy, as easily as this crazy girl. I was with her on her actual BIRTH day, and I'm wishing we could hang out an invite some fictional characters to a tea party on military time today. But alas, duty calls. Rain check, Tigs! Hope your costume for the day is extra wacky!
Today, let's celebrate the flawed man and the weird, wild, amazing mind of Roald Dahl. I've said before that Roald Dahl is perhaps the largest influence on my writing. I wonder if it shows up to you all, but his work is always looming large in my own mind as I write. As child, his stories used to frighten me, but tickle my mind into insomnia, where I'd spend all night in the dark dreaming up and playing at my own stories. In my darkest moments, his stories felt like what my childhood felt like. Also in my lightest. And I suspect, most children. Because I think, fundamentally, there is something fantastical and also something spooky about what it means to be a child.
Dahl is also the source of one of my favorite quotes about writing: "A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom." Amen, brother.
I cannot pick a favorite story of his. Though James & the Giant Peach is up there. Along with Matilda. Both of which have been turned into musicals. Matilda being one of my favorite musicals I've ever seen. Man, I wish I were working on that show... I digress... I eagerly look forward to its arrival here in NYC, so that everyone else can experience the strange glee I felt every moment of those hours in London watching those Revolting Children.
Planes, trains, and automobiles are what my life is about, even as I attempt to be still. I'll be logging a lot of car hours this weekend as I trek around South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia. I feel pretty worried at the moment, but I can tell you what I'm going to do no matter what. I'm going to roll the windows down of whatever rented car I might happen to be in and let it all in: the heat, the petrichor, the buzz, the hum. Driving around in the South when I was a kid, I felt like I could do anything. That everything was on the road ahead of me. It used to make me want to get out and run. That's how strong I felt. I thought I could get there faster than the car on my own two feet.
All this week, I'm babysitting a family of three kids-- an American family, living in India (Dad is one of the original Silicon Valley Tech magnates), in London for the Olympics. Other than attempting to meet the wide-ranging needs and attention demands of an 11, 8, and 5 year old simultaneously, it's great fun.
The weather is ideal, and we're camped out in their family home: a sprawling, four-storey townhouse in Georgian Connaught Square near Marble Arch. We're sharing the square with former Prime Minister Tony Blair & fam and DJ Paul Oakenfold. The gated garden in the center of the Square is immaculately well-kept, but apparently, it was the one-time site of the Tyburn Tree-- London's public execution site.
I'm trying recall another time when I've been responsible for this many children. I don't think I have. But it's funny because... until I realized I'd waited too long to have such a big family... I had wanted four kids. Twelve hours a day with three certainly has its challenges, but being around them really brings out certain instincts in me. How freely they took me in, dispensed their affection all over me. It sure is nice. And I have a pretty good idea of what kind of mother I'll be: calmer and much less of pushover than I am in regular life. Anyhow, enough of the hypothetics. Felix, Nora, Lulu (interesting, since that was my mother's nickname for me when I was a kid) and I have a big day ahead in Hyde Park, so I'm off. Hope you have a great day.
For a while, it has seemed to me that with most people, their strengths are also their weaknesses. That old "the way you do one thing is the way you do everything" principle. The same traits we possess that make people love us, that make us good at what we do, are the ones that get us in trouble. Do you feel that's true about you? I know it's true with me. It poses a real conundrum because with traits like this, it's not as simple as just breaking yourself of a bad habit. You'd also be breaking yourself of a good habit. And be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. For me, it's most especially two things and two things that-- laughably-- do not complement each other. I am both a teacher's pet, and a stubborn rebel. Being teacher's pet gets me into less trouble than being stubborn. But it also yields fewer rewards than being resilient and sticking to my guns; never quitting. I've been really stubborn with my family lately. These are also the same people I'd pretty much do anything to please. Annoyed at my own delayed ability to reconfigure the challenging puzzle I've laid out for myself, I've resented their advice, I've taken it all as the same message I end up telling myself: that I'm failing. I suppose somewhere lurking in my teacher's pet complex is the need to test it out. If I can't get a 100% on the test, I'll try to flunk it with aplomb. To push people to absolute limit to see if I can get them to abandon me. The thing about developing sophisticated coping mechanisms and handling difficult situations well as a child is that then your family cements that as who you will always be. But sometimes, the things that made you good at getting out of a dangerous situation or making the best out of that situation when you were ten, will backfire in your ability to read situations at age thirty. So you recalibrate, adjusting the levels on the dial of these traits. I've been listening to a lot of The Lumineers lately. I'd recommend you do the same.
I can't be told ah ah it can't be done
I don't know where I belong. I don't know where I went wrong. But I can write a song.
If there's one thing I love, it's kids pretending to be adults. This MCA tribute featuring kids acting out the Sabotage video made my day. Or...in the words of one commenter on the video... "words cannot describe how this made my heart squish." I concur.
My favorite weirdo kid is two! I was so crazy yesterday with meetings that I didn't devote the proper attention to the wonderful milestone that is another year of life for the kid I feel is somehow a little bit mine. Happy Birthday, Tigerlily! (Sorry this is a day late!)
I will never stop telling you and anyone who will listen what its like to watch someone being born. How peaceful it is, in spite of all those movies we've all seen with people screaming. I love that Tigerlily's birthday is so close to Mother's Day. And that my memories of her coming into the world, the idea of Emily as a mom, of me taking my place as the kind of surrogate mom that I myself was so fortunate to have a few of-- these new ideas are eclipsing my feelings of loss and sadness that have always marked that holiday for me.
Emily says Tigerlily is a first-rate weirdo. And I say that's just her destiny. And ours. Thank you Miss Tiggs, for being born and giving me a glimpse of how great it is be a mother. Even if its just an eccentric Auntie-Mother a few times a year.
So I know I've been promising you there was a toothfairy musical for... um, years. But we're finally ready to show you a song from our klutzy, matchmaking toothfairy musical. It's a bit ELF meets The Little Mermaid, which is partially why we got crazypants singer and former Broadway Ariel herself, Chelsea Morgan Stock to sing "Why Not Me" with adorable Kathy as The Kid.
In the actual Curious Johnson: The Toothfairy Musical (that's her name, the Toothfairy) The Kid is a boy, and on an accidental encounter with said kid, whose mom has recently died, our matchmaking fairy falls in love with the kid's young, studly dad. Also, tries to get the kid one more day to spend with his mom. Problems ensue.
But before that, the Smartass Kid and the Smartass Fairy engage in a Believe-Off when the kid says he doesn't believe in magical creatures. There are still some tweaks I want to make on this. But, eff it, let's go on a believing spree! Just one more thing: TWO ceiling-high key changes, thank you very much, Miss Stock. Okay. Chelsea, Kathy, hit it:
The Tonys are a nice yearly reminder of why we're still in this game. Why we struggle on. Another set of folks who have a real knack for reminding us all where the inspiration is are the title of show folks, seen below singing about their "First Time" at a Broadway Show. Susan & Hunter's first shows are two of my favorites-- two shows that never fail to make me cry, but for very different reasons.
The below is also an amazing lesson in juxtaposition. And how the right juxtaposition creates a kind of really special synergy. Anymore, it's hard to create something completely new that makes people feel something. But that is the point and always will be. To make people feel something. The real feeling of what it means to be alive-- which, let's be real: equal parts Annie & Angels in America is about as close a metaphorical cocktail for that as I can think of.
What starts as comedy here, as something so light-hearted, something that takes itself so lightly becomes the reason. The reason why we do this. The life and death, and the life and art juxtaposition.
I dare you to watch them hold up Annie next to Angels in America-- talk about Summer & Fall, the sun will come out "Tomorrow" and the light in Central Park at Bethesda Fountain and living with and dying from AIDS-- and not feel what they want you to feel. And not feel what you felt the first time you ever hoped to make a difference by working anywhere in the arts in a modern society that increasingly doesn't take what we do seriously or lightly. I dare you to do this-- the moment at 6:41 when Heidi's voice cracks after what Jeff just said, the moment just after that when "ice in the pipes" has the double force of both Jeff and Susan, and how the key change happens on "but in the Summer..."
I was not prepared to feel what I felt at this juxtaposition. That's why it works. The silly art folks willing to try anything to throw us off our carefully guarded balance, to get in there and make us feel something.
We are not going away. The World only spins forward. The sun will come out tomorrow. The great work begins. Leapin' Lizards.
Farewell, twenties. This is the last weekend I'll have have to contemplate my activities as a twenty-something. As for this final Friday, I'm having a "birthday party" at my house. I use quotes because almost no one can come and also, it's not technically my birthday. I shouldn't complain because I'm having two parties in the US, but I'm prepared to hit the eject button on the house party and go out dancing with G and whoever else might show up. Let's hit the button for the links.
You guys. We need to talk about Matilda. I mean, it's been a while since I've had that glorious feeling of going to the box office to pick up my comps to see the culmination of years of work, the best thing in the world-- a new musical. So I was riding high just to be there. And it's an understatement to say that tonally, Roald Dahl is one of my biggest inspirations-- Matilda, the story of an abused little girl with sort-of-superpowers who finds a surrogate mother, most-especially close to my heart and close to home.
But I wasn't sold after the first act. I thought.... Billy Elliot + Spring Awakening + Annie + Oliver! In fact, I spent a majority of my dreams on Thursday night rewriting said first act. The parents are sort of a weak link and there's too much of them. (I saw the Mr. Wormwood understudy-- he was like a cross between Pete Doherty and Beetlejuice.) Miss Honey's first act song could (and she deserves) way way better. That's not to say, however, that there are moments where they get it absolutely right. The opening number is amazing and so right for right now. What it isn't, though, is as close to Roald Dahl as it could be. Bertie Carvel, however, as Miss Trunchbull is so pitch perfect, I actually squirmed with glee every moment the character was onstage. At first, in fact, I was convinced the role was being played by Summer Heights High's Chris Lilley. The Lavender and the Matilda were delightful. And there is this adorable Asian child with these prosthetic ears that just... I can't.
After we came back from intermission, we got things started off right and the perfection simply never stopped. The show hits its stride in a way like I have almost never seen. The way it commits to its own vocabulary and insanity and Roald Dahl-ness. There are no less than four perfect numbers. Perfect in every possible way. Lyrically, musically, tonally, conceptually, dramaturgically. I actually COULD NOT contain myself in my seat.
"When I Grow Up" on these swings...dude, the video does not do it justice. Same for "Revolting Children" and Trunchbull's big second act number "The Smell of Rebellion" set in gym class is so over-the-top-wacky that it WORKS like nothing I have ever seen. (I really want the TRUNCH hoodie she wears in the number.) Kudos, Tim Minchin. (And Dennis Kelly & Matthew Warchus & Peter Darling.) Kudos.
So listen. I'm one jaded-ass m-fing theatre-goer. I spend a lot of time analyzing and deconstructing theatre that it's almost impossible for me to let myself go to the point where I get swept up in what the show wants me to feel. But the second act of this show Took. My. Breath away. That is rare. That is precious. That is heaven. See this show.
When people ask me how I manage to be as "normal" or "well-adjusted" as I am given my childhood, I almost never tell them this one key ingredient: Whitney Houston. Therapy is awesome. I pretty much think everyone could benefit from some therapy. It's important to see a professional. I spent time with a few. Some were actual psychologists and counselors, but more were professionals of another kind. The absolute best of the best-- musicians.
It's not even just that Whitney's voice was perfect in 1991 and 1992...or effortless...or that she was an absolute first rate interpreter of songs. And that is so key, isn't it? Perfect voices don't mean much if there's nothing behind the eyes. If you aren't conveying the emotion behind the songs.
It's not even that those songs on The Bodyguard soundtrack or any of Whitney's other hits were so applicable to my life situation as an abused 10 year old. But the depth of feeling behind everything Whitney sang-- that I knew.
When I left my mom's house and moved in with my dad and my cold-as-ice step family in 1992, I had no where but the sanctuary of my own bedroom and my own mind. I locked myself in my room and sang at the top of my lungs to "I Have Nothing" so many times, it's actually no wonder why my stepfamily didn't like me too much. But I guess somewhere in my little kid subconscious, I knew that the only way out is through.
I sang in front of the mirror. I cried a lot. I watched what it looked like and heard what it sounded like for me to feel everything I felt about having an addict for a mother, about being abandoned like that, about not feeling like I would ever belong anywhere. I looked myself in the eye and told myself everything I needed to hear. That's how I learned what it took to always land on the other side of whatever I was going to go through in my life. The cassette tape never gave out, never got sick of me. Whitney never felt that song any less, no matter how many times I needed to feel whatever I felt...at that level.
You cannot opt out of these things if you want to survive.
I suppose that's part of what makes me so sad today, thinking about Whitney's early passing and her own addictions. How could she so precisely feel it all in performing, but need the aid of cocaine, booze-- you name it-- in daily life? I think about how young she was when she got into the business. I think about what makes us secure and what draws us into our insecurities.
Look at that video of the famous "Star Spangled Banner." There are so many levels. It's so rich. But the best part-- the part that reveals what was great about Whitney is everything about the word "brave" at the end there. Not because of the notes or the orchestra but because of how at home she was, how confident, how she knew herself and the world on that last chromatic breakdown. Watch her arms. Watch her face. How she knew exactly what the world was going to give her. And what her voice would do. Control.
Which, of course, is a word I go back to a lot thinking about addiction. The difference between what you can and cannot control. Moments like the end of that National Anthem are so perfect, so perfectly full of emotion, it's hard not to look at her and think she's invincible. It's impossible not to think of my mother. How quickly you can go from an invincible heart to a young death-- either of the body or the soul or both. How unconscious it might be if you aren't just singing your guts out with feeling. And even if you are.
I think about this all the time. But especially on days like today. Do what makes your heart strong. Do what makes you invincible. Do the thing that no one can ever take away from you. Drugs are never that. It's not a coincidence that cocaine weakens your heart. Alcohol is never that. It's not a coincidence that alcohol breaks down your liver-- the organ that filters out toxins. And they lose potency over time. Moments like this, however, do not. They will always make you feel.
Being around all my friends' adorable kids is pretty much the best Christmas time present I could imagine. (And thanks to my new lens-- it's so pretty!-- I can photograph the living daylights out of them without needing actual daylight!) The side bonus is that I also see these kids' parents & the rest of the folks I've been pal-ing around with for the past 20 ish years. It's a brilliant, warm feeling to be around the people you never have to explain anything to. It's my favorite part of the holidays. Class of 2000 annual Christmas reunion, Commence.
But if you're bored, waiting for your own holiday reunion to commence (so much down time around the holidays. Sigh.) here are some links for you.
So...many...adorable...children...in kilts. The Colonel Jock MacDonald Memorial was awesome this year. There were so many talented kids. I sort of wanted to steal some of them. It was cool to recognize so many of them from last year and see how they've grown as performers. A lot of them were (to use an old speech & debate term) double entered in more than one event. I got to see a lot more piping this year. Adorbs. Sadly, the piper we thought should have won did not. However! There was this girl piper (who we missed seeing-- she must have been amazing) who swept most of the categories. Girl power.
My favorite event though I think will always be the clarsach. The celtic harp is so gorgeous it makes my heart hurt. Last year, I recorded the clarsach final on my phone and I listen to it all the time. Sadly, I recorded it on a program that wouldn't let me email it off my phone, so I can't really show you. And I've been looking for what tune it was ever since. No one could tell me. Turns out, it's because the girl had done a really amazing, elaborated arrangement of this song, "Leaving Lismore." I finally figured it out while looking for some good clarsach to share with you. So here is a slightly simpler version of what might be my favorite Gaelic song:
And... a Bonus Video...
PS- if you really wanna be freaked out, click here.
All weekend, I've been loving on the last (tear) REM single, "We All Go Back to Where We Belong" starring my twin, Kirsten in some cool stop-motion photography style action. It's not actually stop-motion, but it often looks like it. I'm pretty sure they just played her the song and filmed her. It has all that awkwardness of knowing you're being filmed, and all the comfort of listening to a song you realize in the middle you really like.
The song (which sounds a little 70s to me. There's a horn section that lends the song to the Virgin Suicides soundtrack, in my o-pinion.) is off their first ever definitive greatest hits album. And the title of it could be the title of my life so far...even the dates are exactly correct: Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbarge: 1982-2011.
I've always had a soft spot for R.E.M. They were at UGA in Athens at the same time as my dad. I always liked to imagine them at parties together. What a conversation between my dad and Michael Stipe might look like.
And during that first stint of zealous, painfully earnest ambition I had between the ages of twelve and sixteen, I listened the their 1998 album UP (my favorite of their oeuvre-- weird, I know.) on a loop while I wrote my first novel. (Perhaps if I'm ever feeling zany enough [or drunk enough] I'll post some of that little twelve-year-old existential-Buddhist-historical attempt. Don't hold your breath though.)
I will hold my breath for the compilation though. What about you guys? Will you buy it? I find myself frequently missing the 90s. I think it will be nice to have an express train back there whenever I want.
Flashback to the year I was born: 1982- Savannah Smiles. This was one of my fave pictures all throughout childhood. I don't know how much I actually liked it (the plotline was a bit gruesome) but my mom loved it and always suggested we watch it, so we did.
I liked that her name was Savannah-- one of my favorite names and one of my favorite cities.
A little girl runs away because her social climbing parents don't pay attention to her. She's incepted by some crooks, who she, of course grows to love even more than her parents. The "goodbye Bootsie scene" the soundtrack, that harmonica. "I hope no one ever tells her we're bad guys..." I die. That was my childhood, folks.
The whole story was kind of depressing in that sunny 70s/early 80s way, but the real life story got really sad-pants when the girl who played Savannah, Bridgette Andersen died at the early age of 21 of an accidental drug and alcohol overdose. Wow, that sort of ruins the fun sunny Saturday attitude I had when I sat down to write this post.
Oh well, I still recommend. Iona and I have pralines and cream ice cream to eat. Off to watch!
Looking back, I can't remember a single one of my childhood bedrooms before I moved in with my dad. And yet I know I had a million imagination spaces. Places where I would go to be by myself and daydream. Most of them were outside actually. I'd spend a lot of time looking for hideaways hidden in hedges or up in an apricot tree. Stairwells that were mostly hidden. Or even the adobe hut I built in my backyard. (Yes, real adobe.)
I think these spaces are really important for children. I know that's where I let my brain/imagination go wherever it wanted and it's probably part of why I'm a writer. I remember that Emily's little sister, Olivia (though we called he almost nothing but Yaya when she was little) had the most amazing dreaming nook. It was really just a little crawl-space closet under a stairwell, but Emily's mom painted it lavender and decked it out with all kinds of things for Yaya to love and dream to. I secretly covet that space even today, and used to crawl into it just for a minute, up until I was about eighteen.
Where was your childhood imagination space? Wouldn't the room above be amazing? Even though there's pretty much no chance, due to the unfortunate decorating trends of the 80's, that my room ever looked like this, I'm going to dream that it did. I'm going to pretend that curly haired little blonde girl was me and this was one of my rooms I can't remember.
I finally saw The Kids are All Right on the plane ride back to Scotland from the States in December. And I liked it. But I'll never be able to look at Josh Hutcherson and not think of my second favorite movie of all-time. The perfect Little Manhattan. It came out the year I moved to NYC and it's Upper West Side-iness coincided with my own little bout of hanging out near the 72nd & Broadway stop.
If it doesn't make you want to fall in love, it will make you want to fall in love with New York. So if you've never seen it, run don't walk to get it. It's kind of like a Woody Allen movie about kids. I'm serious when I say, it's a perfect movie. And just the thought of it makes me homesick for New York. Even when they're having a Thundersnow and it's a mild 45-50 degrees F around here. It is a quintessential New York movie.
It also has a quintessential NYC soundtrack featuring "At Last," a bouncing "Love" by Matt White (which actually sounds like a sunny spring day in Central Park, and of course, "In My Life." With the Dakota right there, it's hard not to think of that song. And good guarantee that someone is going to cry.
One of my favorite memories of the part of my childhood when I lived with my mother is when the family heirloom Pinkie & Blue boy paintings came to live with us. To this day, I don't quote know their story of how we got them. How valuable they were (if at all.)
My mom knew pretty much nothing about art, but she thought these were the originals and the most amazing paintings ever. She also thought they had been painted by the same artist (they weren't). All I knew, is that I wanted to be Pinkie. Only once I was moved out, living with my dad, and had gotten the internet, did I start to research the paintings I had stared up at in our living room.
While I doubt the paintings (inherited from my great-grandmother) were the cheap $30 print variety (Ethel was too much a snob for that kind of thing) I wonder what kind of reproduction they were for our family to assign so much value to them. And I wonder where they are now and if I'll ever see them again.
I think about how we decide to assign value to things all the time. The gold standard. Art. Reproductions of art. I suppose it's a habit from growing up in a Buddhist organization whose name means "value creation."
Maybe one day, I'll track them down and hang them in my house in Scotland.
One of the things I love to do whenever I come back to Vegas is dig through all my boxes that my Dad keeps in his basement. I reread fiction I wrote when I was a little kid (truly, I was a weird child), remember all the cool books I bought and read, but can't schlep with me everywhere, and look at old photos of my friends when we were really awkward looking (some of us still are ;).
I especially love all the stuff from my summers spent with my grandparents in Georgia. My grandmother taught me how to quilt and is a prize-winning quilter. I don't know that I still remember how to quilt, but at one point, I was decent enough to help my grandmother make this amazing little dutch girl quilt when I was twelve. (That throw pillow, I even handled all by myself.)
Having Tigerlily around makes me think about women and traditions passed down through the generations. I'm a bit too old to rock this pink quilt anymore, but I spruced up my family's antique bed (my favorite bed ever) with it this trip. I hope one day to pass it on to my daughter. And in the event that I don't have one, I'll give it to Tigerlily. Even if she isn't into pink, it's really warm and perfect for a little girl.
I'm headed back to Scotland this evening-- and I'm very much looking forward to it-- but it's been nice digging through boxes and remembering for the past ten days.
. I remember that Emily's little sister, Olivia (though we called he almost nothing but Yaya when she was little) had the most amazing dreaming nook. It was really just a little crawl-space closet under a stairwell, but Emily's mom painted it lavender and decked it out with all kinds of things for Yaya to love and dream to. I secretly covet that space even today, and used to crawl into it just for a minute, up until I was about eighteen. 
on the plane ride back to Scotland from the States in December. And I liked it. But I'll never be able to look at Josh Hutcherson and not think of my second favorite movie of all-time. The perfect Little Manhattan
. It came out the year I moved to NYC and it's Upper West Side-iness coincided with my own little bout of hanging out near the 72nd & Broadway stop. 
," a bouncing "Love" by Matt White 
(which actually sounds like a sunny spring day in Central Park, and of course, "In My Life." With the Dakota right there, it's hard not to think of that song. And good guarantee that someone is going to cry. 
