Music Monday - Natalie Maines Sings Jeff Buckley

On Natalie Maines' newest album, Mother, one of the highlights is her cover of "Lover, You Should Have Come Over." One of my favorite songs from youth, reinterpreted by another one of my favorite singers from youth. Natalie and Jeff's vocals share a similar flesh-searing quality. They've always cut through the meat, straight to the bone. 

This album is a prime example of that. Ben Harper has a lot to do with what works about this album too. It's no wonder she got hooked up with Harper, who, despite his successes as a vocalist, etc etc will first and forever be known as an amazing pedal-steel player. (Like my dad! And Natalie Maines's dad, Lloyd-- one of the best EVER.)

I'm not sure I realized initially how many covers would be on her new album. But I'm loving it all so far. You too can stream the whole album as part of NPR's First Listen. The album goes on sale May 7th.

Happy Monday!

My kingdom for a kiss upon her shoulder...

Buckley was meant to be sung in a church in Texas by Natalie Maines.

Here's my other fave.

What is going on? Friday Links

What is going on out there, you guys? I'm having a lot of feelings. Personally, so much is going right for me... it makes me feel a tad guilty to feel it all. I get sucked back into the feeling I've had so often for the past few years that things were so bad out there, it became a conflict to feel personally happy. 

I know that's not advisable, or even possible, but it's a very heavy pull to resist. I'm not sure anyone realizes how much time I spend thinking about safety, danger, and terrorism. Both personally and professionally. In addition to my own traumas, I've literally spent years living in the emotional world of my characters where Russian terrorism is the heart of their identity. And so much information. It feels like that has seeped into reality and the present day. It's not the truth, it's just how it feels. 

I feel a lot more about these brothers in Boston, but here is not the place for them. Instead, perhaps, it's best to remember how much is going on in the world on all ends of the spectrum. So here are you links:

- I spend a lot of time on this blog.
- Always enjoy a good Elizabeth Warren bank smack down.
- UGH.
- Sylvia Plath's New York. 
- Let's move back to St. Andrews and live here!
- Um... the tunnel people of my hometown? Vegas, who ARE you?
- My fabulous fellow Rice '04 classmate, Caroline Shaw, just won the Pultizer in music!
- A map of NYC's inequality based on subway stop.
- You guys. The English language is rich and diverse. Try harder. Instead of Awesome.

London Night - 1934

Like with Denim London, something just feels right about a London cast in shades of eerie blue. 

This series is actually a photo series from the 1930's that feels both otherworldly and also very immediate. I feel sucked into these haunting images, but also slightly scared someone might jump out from behind one of those columns and mugs me. 

These photos-- of a London that would soon disappear with the coming of the second world war -- were curated by two photographers John Morrison and Harold Burdekin into a book called London Night. It's out of print, but thanks to Vintage enthusiasts, The Library Time Machine,  many of the photos have been made available for viewing online.  All the photos in the series are prime examples the advances that were made in night photography at the time. The word that gets thrown around to describe them is "atmospheric" and I couldn't agree more. 

For more on London Night, check out here (sorry, its the Daily Mail.) and here. Thanks to the lovely Caroline for sending these my way!

But I Have Been Privy To Something True...

I remember with utter clarity the moment Sophie first performed "Something Old, Something New" for me. She had just finished it, Mama Louise was consulting on the newest additions, and we were at Bamff in the Morning Room. Everything was cast in a kind of golden/pink light. It was one of the happiest moments of my life. It came to symbolize something. Something old and something new-- and all the "splendid times that would probably ensue." (And they did!) I beamed, still stunned and still wondering how I had fallen into this surreal crevice of people who seemed to be just embracing me all the time. And I remember thinking that I needed to pay attention to this moment because Sophie's album was going to be something so special. So unlike anything in contemporary song writing. 

Looking at the landscape of music during my lifetime, I have a hard time naming many, if any, lyricists who leave their guts on the table the way Sophie does. F. Scott Fitzgerald said that price you pay for doing first rate professional work is that you've got to "sell your heart." Sophie does that and somehow manages to keep it too. She is unflinching from the grief she's experienced. And even though I missed that darkest chapter in her life, when Fred was quickly and unexpectedly taken from her, I can't help but know -- because she has succeeded in conveying to me through song and soul-- the strange dark place she journeyed through.

In "Something Old, Something New," the vivid New York she experienced in the aftermath of Fred's death is perfectly etched, and we see the city as a perfect conduit to move her into the alternate version of her life without Fred. And the friends who would help her. The upside down bridal imagery is arresting. It breaks and eventually raises my heart to think of her re-imagining her wedding and her future. 

"Song I Never Wrote For You," was the first original song off the album I heard. And also, the last song I heard Sophie play live on my last day in Scotland. She was just wrapping up recording the album. I heard some not-quite mixed tracks. And on Dublin street, as I went through clothes to give away, her simple, pure piano version echoed down the hall to me as she played. I thought about Fred and I thought about Sophie and how I would miss this part of my life so dreadfully. No part of my American life is as simple, or bare, or uncomplicated, or earnest as any moment I spent with Sophie. Except for when I listen to her album from my house in Hollywood. 

Sophie Ramsay is a blessing to this or any life. Add her to yours. 

Abandoned Nevada

When I was growing up and my grandmother would drive me all over the deep south in search of all Gone with the Wind related historical sites of interest, I was always deeply and adolescently moved by abandoned buildings. Perhaps it was just the feeling of connection to a physical manifestation of all my abandonment issues. (!) I'm still drawn by that mood. How many posts have I done on abandoned buildings like theatres? Or this in Scotland? But when I was an angst-y adolescent, it was too big to be contained. I wanted to do a book of photographs with that feeling. 

Too bad I didn't know at age 10 that Sally Mann was already doing it way better than I ever could have. But, listen, Nevada holds its own on the ghost town front. From derelict boom towns to discarded neon graveyards, Nevada knows how to love 'em and leave 'em better any pretty much anybody. 

Buzzfeed did this nice (if a little bright) photo aggregate and I just keep going back to this haunting pic (above) my friend and fellow Nevada writer turned New York writer Foster Kamer posted on a recent trip back home. I like to look and just get the sad out. 

The Absolute Worst

Have you seen this online kerfuffle about Los Angeles being "the absolute worst place ever"? I almost posted about this last week when the first article was published, but new developments seemed to keep cropping up, so I waited to see how it played out to get a more comprehensive look at the blow back. 

I clicked the original Vice article expecting to laugh. When I saw it was written by the recent transplant from London, I was actually excited. Being well aware of the jolt to the system a move from London to Los Angeles can present, I settled in with some coffee and got ready to be delighted by the usual pithy, insightful Britishisms that inevitably result from British critiques of American culture. 

This was not that. I'm sure the article was meant to bait us, meant to be incendiary, but still. By the end, I almost felt like the article was being written by some Chav wearing Burberry and chains from the bleakest bus stop in Essex, absolutely appalled by anything other than what they're used to.

Then there was this retort from the LAist, calling out the laziness and oddball choices of which things 'the writer' felt actually made LA the worst place ever. Doing some investigating into Jamie Lee Curtis Taete, it turns out that JLCT is yet another amateur making it very difficult for professionals. Not really a writer at all. A blogger. A mostly non-verbal commentator.  Maybe I'm just grouchy with people who have blogs with no words. 

Personally, I'm with the doll that is Joseph Gordon-Levitt. What is there to love? About anywhere. I'm not by nature a critical person. I definitely don't believe in un-constructive criticism of the host. I've been on the receiving end of too many wonderful host cities and people to feel like that.  And at the end of the day, I think, you moved here. Make the best of it. But some people carve their niche in the world by hating everything. The absolute worst thing is that the mood in the world-- at least in America-- has moved in that direction enough to give them some readership. 

All in all, I'd say the very first commenter on the Vice article had the right idea. Not just about LA, but about everywhere:

"The worst and I mean the WORST thing about LA is all the people who move here from some other place and then proceed to bitch about it. YOU are the reason the traffic is so bad and the rents are so high." Speak on, Dennis Cruz, Facilities Manager at the Gersh Agency.

St Andrews Day Links

Happy St Andrews Day! About now, the processional is making its way to the East Sands for piping and fireworks. The weather here has decided to ease my Scotland sickness. It's been raining in LA, so it really does feel like a day in Auld Reekie. Not only is this the day that honors Scotland's patron saint, it's also Sophie's birthday! 

Sophie, in addition to being one of my lifetime best friends, a brilliant and heart-breaking musician, is  also someone who simply embodies Scotland for me. I think listening to her music, no matter where you might find yourself, gives you the feeling that you're listening to her by a hearth and crackling fire in Perthshire. 

Every year, Scotland tourism does a lot to promote the event and this year is no different. Here is a fun little whathaveyou from Scotland.org where you can Saltire your face. Who doesn't want to look like an extra from Braveheart, right?

And more links!

- In case you want to know more about St Andrew, here is my post from a few years back. 
- Because it's Scotland, we might as well get political about it. 
- Downton in New York? This is the best idea ever! (Though why do they call Downton a rom/com?)
- Interesting Theresa Rebeck interview on her exit from SMASH.
- My boo, Taylor, has started blogging again. The poet hedonist hard at work. 
- These two people together on one stage make me proud to be American.
- This jacket.
- I was ambivalent before, but, man, this Second Season of GIRLS looks prrrrretty good!

Please Don't Ruin Anna Karenina, Keira Knightley

Keira Knightley, though only in her mid-twenties, has already gotten to play a substantial chunk of literatures greatest heroines: Lizzy Bennet, Lara from Dr. Zhivago, Ruth from Never Let Me Go (though she's more the villain of that story) and now Anna Karenina. Personally, I've never been a fan. I think she holds all her emotion in her nose. And I don't think anyone ever plays a Vivien Leigh role better than Vivien Leigh.  And I think she's too young to play Anna Karenina.

But I'm intrigued. For the texture of the time period (which I write about constantly in Nicholas & Alexandra) And largely by the drug that is ANY new adaptation of classic literature, Anna Karenina being a favorite. But also by the uber uber young Aaron Johnson (sorry I refuse to call him Aaron Taylor-Johnson) as Vronsky (he's 22! He was born in the 90's!), Matthew Macfadyn as Oblonsky (he is never ever not good) and Jude Law as Karenin. Jude Law has turned himself into a bit of joke in recent years, but I like to remember back to a time when he wasn't a leading man, but a magnificent character actor and villain. Or even more recently than that, when he was able to bring leading man focus and character actor complexity to Hamlet on Broadway and the West End. My gut says his performance as Karenin (where he lets his natural hair line free!) is the performance of this film. 

But of course, it won't be all art-- not all the time. There will have to be some Hollywood cross promotions like the Anna Karenina line at Banana Republic and whathaveyou. 

McC stagged us free advance screening tickets, and if my shit were here from London yet (sigh) I'd bust out my fake fur and rock it out down to the theatre. Opens everywhere November 16th.

When I Look Back On Those Neon Nights - Miss Atomic Bomb

Almost every song ever written by The Killers carries a kind of inescapable Vegas about it. They aren't just from here-- they radiate the ambience of here. A perpetual nostalgia. They also seem to understand the significance of their origin. They lean into it. Sam's Town. And this latest effort, our state motto: Battle Born. I wonder if that Vegas palate they paint with is detectable to anyone not from here. Once, in the radio station here, I told Kade that "When You  Were Young" was what growing up in Vegas sounded like. He thought about for a minute, and then agreed. 

"Miss Atomic Bomb" sees that feeling and then raises it with so much local specificity and ambience, it puts a squeeze on my heart a bit. My hometown band still has the same sound they've always had (there's a guitar homage to "Mr. Brightside" on "Miss Atomic Bomb," as if Mister & Miss were a couple) but I do think they've grown. Brandon Flowers has never sounded better. And this is one of the most beautifully shot performance videos I've ever seen. 

The Pressure Is Good For You

Let's hope so. 

What is a Rebel?

Here's a Saturday quote from my most quotable boyfriend, the sexy/brilliant Albert Camus:

"What is a rebel? A man who says no."

From the most amazing The Rebel. 

If you've never read it, run don't walk to the bookstore or internet. 

Go Mighty, Camp Mighty

The folks at Go Mighty are known for awesome retreats for people (started out just as ladies) in media. There's an invite only Mighty Summit, which one day, I'd like to be invited to, but in the mean time, I'm thinking about going to the recently made co-ed Camp Mighty in Palm Springs.  (McC? Shall we? We can brainstorm our world take over? I know how you love Palm Springs!)

This year's speakers include Ben Silbermann, one of the cofounders of Pinterest, and Margaret Gould Stewart, the Director of Product Design at facebook-- to name just two. And even though I'm massively strapped for cash,  I wouldn't mind the jolt in confidence. (Doesn't hurt that it's at the lovely ACE Hotel either.)

I love their girls with big ideas vibe. And not just the big ideas part, but the implementing them part. 

I just feel like it's pretty easy to feel like you're losing your edge on being good at life. Mighty Girl, Go Mighty, Camp Mighty and the Mighty Summit make me think it's mighty easy to remember and enumerate all the reasons you are, in fact, good at life as long as you surround yourself with a community of champions. Not that they are "winners" but champions of each other. I'm very interested in that. 

Camp Mighty
Nov 15-17

Happy 100th Birthday, Rice University!

Today, I am wishing a wonderful Centennial Celebration to my beloved alma mater, Rice University. We are a small, strange, and lovely place. I hope we will always fight to keep it that way. We are a small, strange, and lovely group of people; filled with wild, brilliant, silly thoughts. 

I had a hard and lesson-filled four years there.  I remember the joy of winning the world series, jumping in Gillis's pool (no longer the president's house. They've filled the pool in now) and the more than one occasion I sat locked in my car out in the parking lot, staring up at the stadium and crying. They were an intense four years. Sometimes it just felt good to cry it out. In many ways, I think I made the absolute most of them. In other ways, I wish I'd worked a lot harder. 

But out of all my decisions, in my whole life, no decision (or the lead up to it) has had more impact on my life than choosing Rice. It is the fulcrum on which the everything else pivots: my career, my friends, the way I interact with the people I keep in my life. 

I haven't always agreed with the direction our current president has taken the school, but I insist that there exists an inherent Rice-ness at the soul of those swampy acres that no ambitious professional academic administrator could squash. Try all you like, but I think you'll never make Rice like Duke or Columbia or Harvard. And I'm glad for that fact. I always think of the West Wing: Let Bartlet Be Bartlet. 

Let Rice Be Rice. 

I wish I could be there to celebrate homecoming with everyone, but I am sending all my love and thanks to a place I love so dearly. Happy Birthday, Rice. Gurrrrl, you look good for 100. Go Owls. 

Into the Mystic, Away From The Market

One really good reason not to cut funding for PBS, Mitt, is their awesome series, Sound Tracks featuring (among others) the fabulous Gaelic singer Julie Fowlis. I have previously written about her awesomeness when her song, "Tha Mo Ghaol Air Àird" was featured in the BRAVE trailers. 

You don't put your soul up to the mercy of "The Market." Art is our soul. The less we appreciate it, the less we're fulfilled. I'll go down with the ship on that one because I don't want to live in a world that doesn't set aside time and space and money for art for its own sake. I think a lot of why it's hard to feel fulfilled in modern life is our turning away from appreciating art on a regular basis. 

Lots of things don't make money, but keep us full of life. Children for one. Or maybe we should send them back to work. That's in line with the same Dickensian England style attitude that I just can't get behind. 

I want to live in a world where someone thinks to put Wynton Marsalis, Youssou N'dour and Of Monsters and Men in the same show. I want always to remember that it's a big world and America is just one piece of it. I want to be able to experience Scotland even when I can't be there and the music of Senegal even if I never go. 

The Market only lets us have what we know we want. PBS or an entity like BBC gives us what maybe we didn't know we wanted. Big Bird, sure. Julie Fowlis, singing with her baby on her lap, hell yes. 

Watch Sound Tracks: Preview Trailer on PBS. See more from Sound Tracks.

Moving Pictures - The Falling Soldier

Since reading Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others, which is all about visual representations of pain and suffering and the way we experience the suffering of others via the medium of photography, I've wanted to do a series on some of the career-making photographs mentioned. 

Robert Capa's "The Falling Soldier"  believed to be taken in Cerro Muriano, Spain on September 5, 1936 was first on my list, as I find it absolutely gut wrenching. A soldier, in the exact moment of death from multiple gun shot wounds during the Spanish Civil War. I've massively interested in that period in history and locale (even writing a musical about it) and this really just captures so much emotion to me. 

Not only did this photo make Capa's career (he went on to become one of the most celebrated war photographers of all time) but it has since become one of the most controversial photos in history. In 1975, accusations came that photo was in fact staged. These accusations were often politically charged and leveled by Franco supporting Falangists. Critics pointed to landscape points far in the distance and matched them up with other places, proving it couldn't be what Capa claimed. It went back and forth. The man photographed was finally identified. His brother confirmed his death at Cerro Muriano, but in 2009 further evidence in a journal refuted that testimony. People still don't agree. 

Fake or not, you can't say the photo isn't striking and moving. The way certain dance can move or haunt because you didn't expect the body to move that way. In its own way, it's utterly authentic. What do you think? You can check out the negatives at the International Center of Photography here in NYC. 

Haw River Ballroom & My Future Artist Colony

After our awesome lunch at the Saxapahaw General Store, we walked the one one road in the town down towards the river. I fell a bit in love with this little condensed compound: a very British style pub called The Eddy, a coffee shop/arts/events ballroom, and the most amazing Sawmill-turned-exposed brick condos EVER. 

I'm dreaming of a next next summer spent living in a two bedroom exposed brick splendor for like $400 a piece and me and Steven finishing Tercio de Muerte or whatever else strikes our fancy. We'll sit outside in the mornings with coffee and strategize the day's writing. We'll write all day. One our days off, we'll go to the art gallery. At night, we'll hit up the ballroom for whatever band is has come to to this small spot on the map. 

The balance between being right in the middle of it all and being right in the middle of nowhere has become a key component of the overall balance of my life, I gotta tell ya. I wouldn't mind spending the whole summer with Lucie right up the street too. 

Everything about this area of North Carolina makes me want to sit outside and make things. Everything about it whispers in your ear how easy it is to be happy. Everything smells like cedar. Everything sounds like cicadas. The whole day, I just kept thinking, "Yep, this is what life is supposed to feel like...."

Your Local 5 Star Gas Station - Saxapahaw General Store

Since my return from abroad, I've been working a lot on retaining that British/European sensibility I genuinely identify with now that I'm back in the States (for now). But I also recognized that it's important to be where you are and love where you are. So I've been on a bit of a mission to fall in love with America again. I got a little answer to my prayers on a five day road trip through some of my favorite parts of the South (largely the hippie parts) with my family. 

Some of the best time I ever spend I spend with my Godmother Lucie-- wherever we are, but especially in North Carolina. Saxpahaw is close enough to university towns to have that feel, but out of the way enough to have small Southern town charm with a hippie soft edge. 

Saxapahaw might be the middle of nowhere, but it is the nexus of all things to love about small hippie Southern artists' towns. Our first stop was the SXPHW General Store where we feasted on brisket sandwiches and local grown vegetables, local cheeses and beers. If I had been travelling with anything more than a small backback, I would have taken a whole lot of that home (Home? Where?) with me. 

We sat in the sunshine while the vegetable garden grew all around us. There, Lucie and I plotted the artist colony in repurposed mill condos we'll start next summer... To Be Continued...

Happy Roald Dahl Day!

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. 

A New Yorker is Someone Who Longs For New York

A lot has come and gone in New York since when I last lived here two years ago. H & H Bagels is gone. On the flip side, we have an Experimental Cocktail Club. And last week, we learned that Broadway/Times Square Main stay, Colony Music would close its doors. 

This disappearing act and others are all being documented by Jeremiah Moss on his blog, Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, aka the Book of Lamentations: A Bitterly Nostalgic Look at a City in the Process of Going Extinct. 

It is a melancholy blog that you can't help but feel achey scrolling through-- memory after memory of places lost to New York's escalating rents, corporate buy-outs, and fickle tastes. He says goodbye to all kinds of things I didn't even know we'd lost: the Les Desirs bakeries and the  Partners & Crime Mystery Bookshops. 

Justin Davidson of New York Magazine called Moss, "the defender of all the undistinguished hunks of masonry that lend the streets their rhythm and give people a place to live and earn a living: bodegas, curio stores, a metalworking shop in Soho, diners, and dingy bars."

He's expanded into an additional blog: Dreams of a Vanishing New York, where he posts his dreams and those of other New Yorkers. He started this side project after he noticed he'd be having dreams about the vanishing aspects of New York's character. 

Though, he's also quick to point out that it's not just what's going away, but what's replacing it. I don't know that I agree with him on the High Line, but I see his point. And cities built on tourism are kind of a common thread in my lifetime. 

I always think of the monologue in the wonderful You've Got Mail, on the night when Kathleen Kelly is closing her bookstore. 

People are always saying that change is a good thing. But all they're really saying is that something you didn't want to happen at all... has happened. My store is closing this week. I own a store, did I ever tell you that? It's a lovely store, and in a week it'll be something really depressing, like a Baby Gap. Soon, it'll be just a memory. In fact, someone, some foolish person, will probably think it's a tribute to this city, the way it keeps changing on you, the way you can never count on it, or something. I know because that's the sort of thing I'm always saying. But the truth is... I'm heartbroken. I feel as if a part of me has died, and my mother has died all over again, and no one can ever make it right. 

Which is all to say, I think this is indicative of an even bigger problem-- in our spheres of employment and occupation and our interests. A massive consolidation of value controlled by "the market." Cannibalizing the specialties to feed the consolidated giants. There's a lot we choose not to concern ourselves with. There's a lot of world out there, but we seem to be sticking to our comfort zones. Even I'm at Starbucks right now because I know what I'm going to get and they have free internet. But it depresses me. 

This is an American Soul question to me. (And a human soul question.) One we're not going to immediately get to the bottom of, for sure. But I think it's important for us to not breeze past it on the way to whatever we're going to do next. I think Jeremiah Ross's blog is that moment before movement. We have to at least sit with it for a while, roll it around in our thoughts and then proceed.  At least then we'll be able to say wherever we end up, it wasn't by accident, because we were too busy to pay attention. Wherever we end up, we'll be able to say we did it deliberately. 

“There is this sense of powerlessness as the city is being radically changed around them and the things they love about it are being taken away,” Mr. Moss said. “There’s this anxiety about being discarded. A lot of the dreams have to do with destruction and the fear of destruction, but there’s also a wish for destruction. I think underneath the anxiety, is the thought that if the thing you fear happens, then you don’t fear it anymore.” 

Life & Fiction - Close, But they Never Actually Touch

Ever since I first conceived the interweaving storylines for my novel, I've been intrigued by issues of writer's ethics, plagiarism, and how much credit do we owe our sources of inspiration. I tend to be of the opinion that everything is fiction and all experiences are fair game in some way and I think that the process of writing about our experiences changes us and those around us no matter what.

So let me just say that I'm more intrigued by The Words than I have been by any other film in a long, long time. It seems a little big-budget-y and I'm sure it will not live up to my expectations, but nonetheless, I am-- now more than perhaps any other time in my life-- super drawn to it. Don't worry, guys, I'm not so desperate as to think of plagiarizing... I just know what Brad Cooper is feeling in those low moments so dramatically underscored in these previews. 

The Words comes out Sept 7. I may even see it in the theaters. That should tell you something.