Why hello. Nice to see you again. Nice to have something I wanted to put here. There is much to tell, actually, but now isn't the right time. Right now, I am thinking about the one year anniversary of my very interesting sojourn to Ghana. A year ago right now, I was just settling into my second full day. None of what I'm about to tell you had happened yet. I've been working on this "short" story for a year. Even in the Accra airport, I began to write this down in notebooks, along with the almost overwhelming amount of emotional and physical information I had taken in over the two weeks. I can't share everything with you here. But I did want to give you a little taste. Just for context, here's the blurb: Somewhere between rekindling a trans-atlantic romance and calling it quits for good, a couple tries a new locale on holiday in Ghana’s Cape Coast. At an isolated nature reserve, an eccentric Dutch couple reveals more than anyone bargained for about our biological evolution when we choose to stay together. And here is the text! A nice non-emotional, yet meatier middle chunk of MONKEY SANCTUARY.
Forty-five minutes later, they were still in the car on the way to the monkey reserve that was “right up the road.”
Casey had underestimated how big Ghana was. Almost everything they said was "close" ended up being an hour drive at least. Maybe it was all the extra police stops you had to make. Every few miles, the police in navy and light blue camo (She couldn’t quite see the point in that particular camo) would pull over every car and inspect. Gordon would warn her each time to hide any electronics. (“They’ll take it. They’ll find a reason to take it.”)
Or maybe everything took so long because-- with the exception of the George W. Bush Expressway, ironically enough, both “The Best Road in All of Africa,” but also simply the best road in all of Africa-- the roads were allso bad.
In LA, the roads always failed at the edges. In Ghana, every road seemed to have huge, craggy chunks pulled up in the middle that had to be sharply swerved around—a kind of alien asphalt phlegm that Ghana kept trying to cough up. The center literally would not hold.
Rachael Yamagata is an artist I'm a bit ashamed to say I forgot about. I was a huge fan of her 2004 album, Happenstance, but in my mind, other than a few duets with folks I like, and this baller album she did with KCRW in 2005, she wasn't really putting out any new music. Not so. Whoops. With the release of her newest album, and her busting back onto my radar in a major way, I did some looking into my old musical friend, and turns out I missed albums in 2008 (Elephants...Teeth Sinking Into Heart) and 2011 (Crowd funded Chesapeake). Again, whoops. But Heavyweight. What a beautiful EP. Same earthy, sensual sound. Her voice, still like smoke slowly rolling out of a bottle. Same deliberate, if pregnantly pausing piano. I'm personally loving Falling In Love Again and It'll Do. She's in New York this week.
Comparison is the thief of Joy. It's a lesson I've always had to learn the hard way. I'm hard on myself. Always. So I stack myself up against others all the time. I transfer my own judgement of myself onto my dealings with my family-- and make them the people who are disappointed in me, when really I am the one. It's me. I'm comparing me to others. Not them. In college, my friend Parisa had this great rule we always tried to follow whenever that feeling crept up on us about other women. Whenever you feel tempted to feel jealous or envious of another girl, you should immediately become their friend. Nothing will kill that jealousy faster than becoming friends. It really works and I've done it a lot. Some of my best friends came from The Parisa Method. It's also the inspiration for the series I do on this blog: "Be My Friend, So & So." I've talked about Liz Merriwether, Liz Gilbert, Allie Brosch and others. So here's a new one in honor of Nevada writer, Claire Vaye Watkins' new collection of short stories, Battleborn. If you know your state mottoes, you'll see right away that these are short stories about our shared (ambivalently felt, in my case; less so, in hers) home state of Nevada. Drifters, wanderers, that washed-out old photo feeling that comes from the place... that's Battleborn. I'm only one story in, but that was pretty much enough. I'm sold. She has lots of interesting things to say about writing and the Battleborn State (NV was admitted to Union in 1863 during the height of the Civil War, thus the moniker) on this Granta podcast. The sound is rather low, so crank up that volume. One of the things I like best about Claire is the free writers workshop she's put together for rural Nevada teens, The Mohave School. It took me a long time to own where I'm from (or at least accept it and love it as one of the places I'm from) but now that I've arrived in that mental state, I'd love to get involved in her endeavors there. The thing I could always say is that there are far more stories in Nevada than anyone would think at first guess. FOR EXAMPLE, in Claire's case, this little teeny tiny bio detail. My most extensive experience with Charles Manson was playing Squeaky Fromme in Assassins where I sang a love duet to him (while John Hinckley Jr. sang to Jodie Foster.) Perhaps because that song is called "Unworthy of Your Love," that detail feels simultaneously like a joke and also massively significant. I suppose, I think it's interesting to look at the parallels and the diversions between any two people. Like me, Claire was born in California and thereafter moved to Nevada (Pahrump in her case.) Like me, she had an alcoholic mother (she describes her mother as "this incredible dynamo; a great bullshitter.") My father is the opposite of Charlie Manson's right hand man. Unlike me, she stayed in Nevada and went to UNR. We both did postgrad writing programs in places you might not expect. Bringing this back home to the beginning of this post, and in my continued effort to get really seriously real with myself and you on this blog, I suppose I want to say this. (In addition to "Be My Friend, Claire Vaye Watkins.) I want to say that Claire is two years younger than me and has been published in all manner of places I envy. The Paris Review. Granta. She gets compared to Cormac McCarthy and Annie Proulx and Joan Didion. My teeth hurt, I am so envious. But here's my confession: I don't even send my stories out anymore. I have been propped up and pared down so many times now, I don't know what to think. I don't send any fiction out into the world, save on this blog. I both know and don't know why that is at the moment. I have been hoarding. I have been waiting for people to ask. And when people finally ask-- and mean it; not just as a courtesy-- it feels like my heart is going to explode. I cry on the spot. I am trying to work through this unworthiness I feel-- with my family and with myself. And in the odd manner in which I choose and sometimes choose not to share my work with others. All photos from the author's (really beautiful) website
Even though we'll have to wait until 2014, Paddington the Bear is coming to the big screen in a mix of CGI and live action. I've always been in a big fan and in fact, Paddington was the inspiration for one of my oldest, (Still) most favorite short stories, Paddington. Even though my Paddington was a Jack Russell terrier and not a bear, they sort of hold the same place in my heart.
And even though I wrote this short story when I was about 20 years old, it still feels really right on and still gives away pretty much everything you need to know about me.
Every now and then something so amazing comes along that it just makes your week. (Month! Year!) There are only two known recordings on Flannery O'Connor's voice. This is one of them. (Here is the other, btw, of her reading from her essay, "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction.") It's so perfect and complete, I can scaresely believe it's true. For 37 minutes, she reads the entirety of "A Good Man Is Hard To Find."
Living in the UK, I don't often get to hear the kind of Southern voice I love so much; the kind that scarcely makes it into any dramatic interpretations or impressions of Southern accents, but is what I hear in my mind when I think of my family and my childhood summers in Georgia. I was always very proud that Flannery O'Connor was from Georgia. And proud to be from there myself because that was where she was from. I don't care what anyone else might say while trying to be modern or clever, women writers with Georgia roots are where it's at, people.
Since I've basically been away from my computer for the last week, it was tough to assemble a full roster of Friday links for you guys. Not to mention, 2012 has also already been a full-on addressing of problems and miscommunications gauntlet. Boom. Elvis would be proud and so would my hypothetical therapist because business is being taken care of on all fronts. Nevertheless, here is what's going on around the interwebs. (Mostly on NYMag....okay.)
- Finally, I was really excited about SMASH, the new show about the making of a Broadway musical. It's hired a lot of my pals and hopefully will raise the profile of what I do for a living. Sad was I to learn that Debra Messing, playing the lyricist (ugh) has joined the cheating ranks of her co-star Christian Borle, and has been sleeping with my friend's husband. (Read Comment 7.) Don't get me wrong, I think he's filthy, too. Stop it with the cheating, people. STOP. IT!
Thought it was about time to reveal some of what I was working on (and what was doing a number on me) this summer. It's an excerpt from the title story of my novel in short stories, Living Donors. Here's the copy about the collection and the story starts after the jump.
Zadie is trying to remember a time before she feared dogs;
her father, the last time he genuinely enjoyed a meal, and Debbie, the exact
way she felt the day she looked into a mirrored ball and saw her future.
Living Donors traces
interlocking stories through three generations of a new kind of family as they
try, fail, and cross over their own boundaries in parenthood, joy, and
satisfaction. On a kind of nomadic childhood, the thing that stays constant for
Zadie is her bright inner world—a kind of compass that cannot be skewed.
Despite neglect and jealousy from her mother and stepmother, Zadie navigates
the channels towards adulthood in a style all her own. Zadie learns when to
break allegiances and seek surrogate nurturing. With help from her father &
friends, ancient stories from relatives, and her humorous imagination, Zadie
finds a sense of home in the world of families who count her as their own. But
at what cost?
Stories of hope, the loss of it, loyalty and
violence, Living Donors looks towards
the moments when the magic of youth can sour into shame, tragedy, or worse--
resignation. And the pound of flesh we owe to be a member of any family.
All week, I've been drowning in stories of liver cirrhosis and addiction and what kind of person we become when the addictions win. How we get to that point. I was struggling. Then, there was this message and this song from a childhood mentor of mine, Duncan Sheik and I was heartened. Real honesty always wins.
Hello Friends,Duncan here, offering you belated apologies for the cancellation of my June tour. The truth is I didn’t do it because I realized I was drinking too much and chose to confront that situation, with the help of family, great friends and some thoughtful, highly qualified professionals. In fact, I entered a treatment center the same day my most recent effort Covers 80s was released. With as much gallows humor as I could muster, I told the staff there, ”My record is coming out and I’m checking in.”
Those of you who know me through music, personally, or both, know that like everyone else I’ve had my share of ups and downs in my life and career, and there were many contributing factors here that I will share with you in the future. While this episode may sound like a low point, the experience actually confirmed for me how much I want to go forward in my creative life, and how much I sincerely value all of those who have supported me.
I do want to share one very fascinating thing I learned while at the treatment center. Drinking as much as I was, it would seem I did a real number on my neurochemical functions.As I learned about dopamine, serotonin, and GABA levels and how they affect the “reward” center in your brain, some bells started to go off in my nuerochemically compromised head. To vastly oversimplify this physiological process, the current thinking on the subject is that all alcoholics and addicts have something called Reward Deficiency Syndrome or RDS. The example I was given was this: Person One, with normal brain function, wakes up on a beautiful crisp autumn morning and walks out the door enjoying the sun and the nice cool air and all is well in the universe of their head. Person Two, whose brain functions have been rejiggered due to too much drinking or drugging, walks out the same door on the same beautiful morning and doesn’t feel any joy at all about the weather or anything else for that matter. Not until they have a drink anyway. What was terribly interesting about this example to me was how it characterizes a very similar situation Vis a Vis my Buddhist practice. When I get up in the morning and chant with a lot of focus and determination I’m Person One. When my practice is undisciplined or lazy or rushed, I’m Person Two. There is actually much more to say about how my practice relates to this situation but I will leave it for another time.
Having left treatment with the blessing of my excellent recovery counselors, I’m currently in Jakarta, Indonesia, writing songs as well as formulating ideas for a book and working on a few musical theater projects, including Alice In Wonderland, The Nightingale and American Psycho. I’m chanting, playing guitar and writing stories.Life is good. Actually, exponentially better than when I was drinking like a ridiculous fish.
All of this to say, I’m well, and truly sorry for any inconvenience or disappointment caused by my abrupt cancellation of the tour. But I look forward to the opportunity to make it up to you. Plans to reschedule the tour for this spring are currently underway, (It looks like I’ll be doing a bunch of shows as a co-bill with the wonderful Suzanne Vega) as well as for a coinciding remix version of Covers 80s (by lots of cool electronic music folks and some fancy DJ’s).So there may be, God forbid, music people will want to dance to. I consider all of it a good thing, a new challenge, an interesting riddle, a gift. And I promise you that both the music and I will be better for it.
When I think back on all the times in my life where I truly needed a gift, I always received one in the form of a song. "What Matters" is a prime example of that. The following are some of the most vivid and real lyrics I've heard in ages. The sense of place, the simultaneity of humor and introspective reckoning is at a level I aspire to every day. This is why, since I was a kid, Duncan's been a kind of hero of mine. A hero who let me share with him some his life and some of his struggles whether that be chanting together or talking about musicals, or laughing at his 40th birthday dinner or through songs I wish I'd written. Like this one. Talking about what matters-- it has all mattered and continues to matter to me.
How about some fiction!? Why not? It's Tuesday. Here is an excerpt from my final semester short story, called Alice's House. It is in no way biographical.
***
Zadie’s dad ruffled her hair and hugged her too hard when he met her at the gate.
“My Sweetpea is home for good.”
While Zadie’s mom thought it was just Christmas vacation and shared custody as usual, Zadie and her Dad knew she was never going back. Maybe her mom wouldn’t even notice she was missing. She hadn’t when Zadie had left. Zadie had called and used her saved tenth birthday money to pay for her own cab, while her mother slept. So maybe, if Zadie just never got back on the plane, her mom would keep sleeping through that too.
Just the existence of her Dad, just knowing he was alive in the world-- something about the idea of him, had always brought Zadie to the verge of tears. She wanted to hug him forever. She wanted to tell him everything.
But then she was silent when they joined her stepmother, Alice, in her dad’s beat up silver car. Alice sat stiffly upright, looking uncomfortable or embarrassed—Zadie couldn’t tell.
“You look just like your father,” said Alice. “But everyone probably tells you that.”
“Yeah,” said Zadie.
All the way from the airport to the house, Zadie sat quietly in the back, listening to the rattle of the muffler and waiting for one of them to talk.
For my short story collection, there is probably no greater influence on my writing than Jane Eyre. Particularly the first section when she's a child, but the whole thing, really. Last night, I went to a presentation by the Literary Society about Jane Eyre "as an autobiography" (as it is actually called.)
The guy made a big issue about the difference between the I speaker and the I of the story. That it isn't Jane Eyre narrating her own story, but Jane Rochester, who is the "heir" of Jane Eyre's struggles. I didn't take away as much as I had hoped from the lecture, but I did enjoy the time he spent focusing on Jane's identity reconfigured in relation to authority.
I see my short story collection as a kind of modern gothic Jane Eyre. Much of it deals with ideas of family and role models and the powerless vs. the powerful-- mostly dealing with children. And female children at that. So I liked when he talked about Jane's female role models mostly being teachers of how she didn't want to be.
And I liked his focus on the liminal spaces in Jane Eyre-- when she's on the moors, how she's constantly sitting in windows-- and the portrayal of the instability of an unmarried female identity. The nature of true independence, stability, without excess. And rejecting any ideas except equality.
So then I wanted to look at the website Focus Features has set up for the new film. The more I'm hearing and seeing of it, the more excited I'm actually getting. (Though-- truly startling to learn that at one time Ellen Page was attached to this project. Wow. That would have been a mistake. But I think the casting now is just where it should be. )
Plus, Fassbender's hot. For that matter, you know who else is? Cary Fukunaga. Who knew! The half Japanese, half Swedish hottie is same guy who directed the amazing Sin Nombre.
I turned in my first short story to be workshopped this morning. Inevitably, you feel good about it until the moment you send it, and then you hate it. Which is pretty much how I feel right now, and will continue to feel until Thursday afternoon, when it's all over.
Maybe I'll be able to distract myself with feeling nervous and mind-racking about my playwriting intensive, which starts tonight and is four hours long and our topic is "the ex-lover." (Oh, what shall I write about!?)
Or maybe I'll be lulled away from it by the landscapes of Bamff, in Perthshire, where I am going to stay with Sophie and her family tomorrow.
In any case, I may feel a hatred for what I've just written, and even what I might write later tonight, but I also feel a certain sense of "Ah well" about. Which is to say, I don't feel stressed out about it. The one pervasive thing that dominates my life here is the lack of stress. I don't have it. Not everything goes my way. I don't always feel great or pretty or brilliant or even funny (normally my fall back). But I don't feel stressed out. And that is worth the price of admission, folks.
I suppose since I brought it up, and since it's been awhile since I posted any fiction of mine on here, I'll give you snippet of 'The Tomb' after the jump. It's sort of an ancillary section of the story. Maybe I'll post the whole thing once my classmates have gotten their teeth into it.
My friend, McC, being her usual badass self, sent me this little technological gadget, "I Write Like" which will apparently tell me which of the lit giants I write like. I entered "Warrior Princess" and got told I write like Nabokov (is it the child exploitation thing?) Unexpectedly legit, but flattering... (also interesting for me given his ties all those Russian-y, 1917/1918 revolution-y events) even if I think they might just say everyone writes like Nabokov (a great letter writer btw).
Even perhaps more legit (and thus prompting me to question the actual legit-ness of this coding widget), I entered "Babies & James"and it told me James Joyce. I'll take it!
(Funny, also because Nabokov didn't particularly respect Joyce, and was pretty vocal about it. haha)
I wonder if it would tell Cronin he writes like himself?
...with this girl! Look at her try to figure out what the deal is with these animals in her crib!
Today is a day for perfect things, like The Imperfectionists and this one. She's starting to look like a person (looks JUST like Emily to me) instead of a bean. And I'm almost done with a children's book about her that Corinne is going to have some amazing artwork for! More on that later.... in the meantime, enjoy this little bit of perfection!
I love the title, I love/want to crawl out of my skin about every character. The situations, the reactions to those situations, the dialogue-- everything feels fresh.
It also talks around/about what's going to happen to print media. It's the topic I always pretend isn't a topic (Even as I read The Imperfectionists from my kindle-- but hey, I bought it with real money, I'm reading it, and I've been able to focus my eyes better and read faster on the kindle than I have in about 8 years.) But the issues Rachman brings up, along with another conversation yesterday, got me thinking about dear old Rice man, Larry McMurtry-- an avid shunner of technology. (Though, I have a story about that. He has some loop holes).
I went and re-read this great feature on his Fondren talk, and then dredged up some of my old notes that I took during his lectures the few times I was lucky enough to hear Rice's former creative writing professor chat with me and some others about writing.
I want to talk about Larry more later, but let's just say, I cannot begin to fathom doing any serious novel work (let alone something like 29 books) on a typewriter (even an Hermes 3000). The idea of it just scares the crap out of me.
Tom Rachman (and I agree with him) in every interview seems to talk about balance between the internet and technological offerings and the old school stuff. He's a smarty. We're friends on facebook.
In addition, I've officially decided to become real friends with Tom Rachman. I've been thinking about making Rome one of my first trips once I'm living in Europe, so I guess I'll friend him then :)
I love that The Imperfectionists is really a novel in short stories. Each of the real chapters (Excluding the backstory stuff that butters between the slices) could stand entirely on it's own. And yet, together, this thing is just the greatest! (I'm laughing out loud on the train, squirming in my bed, or just shaking my head in downright disbelief sometimes).
Of course, this makes me think of Cronin's fantastic Mary & O'Neill, which I supposed is less linnear, more kaleidoscopic from what I remember. I've been feeling more and more like I should revisit that one, anyhow, since for the past several months, I've been working on a project like that of my own.
If you're reading this, it means you've perhaps already read (or at least have extreme immediate access to) many of my short stories. While contemplating what I'll be working on when I first get to Scotland, in addition to the new novel, I'll also need to be doing more short stories. I already have several that I'm both still very proud of, and that I think belong together tonally, etc and at least belong together in a collection.
But with a few tweaks, here and there, I think could be taken a step past that. So that's my plan. We'll see what happens.
Zadie and Scotty saved Big Sky America for last. Even though the rain had water logged the wood of the tree house, putting out most of the sparks with a little singe, they knew that Big Sky America would be different. Scotty stood poised over the fuse, waiting for Zadie to start their traditional fireworks song. “You have to sing it or it’s bad luck,” Scotty said. “And if you don’t, I won’t let you come back in my tree house.” So she stood up on the thick wrung of the tree house railing, where they had positioned the red white & blue rocket. With arms outstretched, she sang a non-sense aria she knew by heart. Scotty clapped and then steadied himself with the lighter he had taken from his dad. “Ready? One, two, now” The fire geyser of sparks knocked the whole thing off balance and it fell of the railing onto the wet wood of the tree house deck. Instead of shooting upwards, it spun streams of fire in colored circles around the children’s bare legs. Zadie could feel it singing her little legs and she smelled burnt hair. They both screamed and jumped, while the firework itself screeched and hissed it’s way dead.
A moment later, Zadie saw her mother and Mr. Booter come running from Scotty’s house. Zadie’s mother looked like a dwarf below when she yelled, “Don’t make me come up there and get you. You know I don’t like heights.” Mr. Booter had already started climbing the ladder. “Are you kids okay?” he asked. When he got to the top, he stood staring at the burnt-out carcass of the Big Sky America. “You two are lucky this wood is so wet or else you might have burnt this house down with you in it.” Zadie knew she was in real trouble. Her mother would start yelling at Mr. Booter, and then later, she would yell at Zadie. And she’d really never ever be allowed to Scotty again this time. Scotty’s last memory of her would be a screaming girl with a horrible, ugly mullet. Zadie followed her mother with her head bent low, trying not to look at Scotty. But instead of going to their own house, her mother walked with Mr. Booter into Scotty’s house. After a confused moment, Zadie followed her mother in as well.
Those nights alone with James Taylor seem to last forever. The hours between midnight and eight never used to seem so endless. She remembers nights alone in her bedroom with Karen. Her sister would sleep and Mom would sleep and everyone would sleep. Dad was probably sleeping, too, but he wasn’t down the hall like the rest. But Deb would stay awake as long as she could because she could hum her songs and not work at anything. When everyone who knew her was asleep, she was anybody she wanted. She was a millionaire or married to one and draped in jewels. And she gave to charities. And she never went back to Oregon. She was sixteen and she was timeless. But these nights in California weren’t like back in Oregon. She couldn’t lie still for hours anymore. She had to move. In all her hours with James, she felt she must have aged five years each night.
"It's been a holy host of others standing around me/still I'm on the dark side of the moon/and it seems like it goes on like this forever, oh/so you must forgive me/ if I'm up and gone to Carolina in my mind"
Fumbling through tapes without cases, Deb snatches at that one: yeah, the live album. Her vodka and cranberry will leave a ring mark on the stereo when she rests it there to begin her dance. On side A, she starts with “Carolina in My Mind,” her favorite. When she listens to James Taylor, Deb can remember back to a time when she wasn’t thirty years old and strapped to a sick little kid. She moves her head back and forth, stumbling over her own feet some, partly because she has had a few drinks, but mostly because she is into it. Touching her short, thinning hair, Debi moves all around and turns the volume up all the way up.
James Taylor makes her think of sex. Maybe it was just that all music, every song seemed to be about her. She thinks about how so many songs have captured her emotions, or inspired her emotions. Sweet Baby James is calling that raw sensation from within her, and with every blast of Russ Kunkel’s drums, she can feel that Carolina summer of 1976 when she had it all.
Okay, so short story time. I'm going to start posting "Babies & James," the short story I wrote my freshman year of college for Marsha Recknagel (I've since re-written several times.)
It was probably the first thing that made anyone pay attention to me as a writer (and lord knows, I've just been asking everyone to pay attention my whole life!). I basically had to fight my way into that class freshman year, since Marsha normally didn't take freshmen. But of course, audacious and unstoppable as I was at the time, I walked into that teeny tiny classroom in Fondren Library armed with the fat block of 300 pages that was my first novel and a speech about why she should allow me in.
She spent the whole class talking about how she wouldn't take freshmen (I suppose, really, what do most freshman have to write about) and gesticulating with her very distinctive hands.
Anyhow, after the class was over, I waited and slammed my book down on her podium and gave my speech. Another freshman, this kick-ass kid named Rolf, also stayed. When I was done rambling, Rolf added, "yeah, I want to get in too." And she just let us! All that and the whole thing was just a deterrent for the meek!
That was a great class. This story actually came out of an assignment to write a story from the point of view of someone we hated. At the time, I thought I hated my mom, so this was originally a first person pov story. There was a lot it gained from that, but ultimately, most of what was so sad of the story you missed out on, because you had to be able to see Deb both as she sees herself and how she really is. A lot of this is true, but I've taken a lot of liberties as well.
It's a long one, so I'll be posting it in installments over the next couple of days. I'll leave you with this image for now, before I post the first installment. It's my favorite picture of my mom. Everything I like to remember about her is distilled down to this one image.
. 
. I'll take it!
and this one. She's starting to look like a person (looks JUST like Emily to me) instead of a bean. And I'm almost done with a children's book about her that 
, which I supposed is less linnear, more kaleidoscopic from what I remember. I've been feeling more and more like I should revisit that one, anyhow, since for the past several months, I've been working on a project like that of my own.
