"Morphine, morphine, what makes you so mean?/
You never used to do me like you do./
Where’s that sweet gal I knew?"
-Gillian Welch
Writing is my abusive boyfriend. I said this on the phone to Marshall the other day and straightaway he came up with all these reasons that this is too extreme a comparison. Maybe he’s right, but here’s the truth: For days, weeks, sometimes, I sit at the computer in the mornings and stare at the screen. I peck out a few sentences of whatever it is a I’m working on and then I sit back again and stare at the wall, at the curtain that’s blocking my mind from wandering too far - out the window and into the real world: to the neighbor’s backyard, the trees beyond, further. I sit and I sit as you’re supposed to do. I try to picture that half-inch-by-half-inch frame of a moment that you’re supposed to imagine when you write (Someone said, “At night your headlights only illuminate several yards ahead of you at a time, but you can make the whole trip that way.”)
I sit and I think about the headlights and about the small frame, but soon I’m looking at my real photos on the windowsill and I’m thinking I need new frames for those and I’m thinking about my car’s front broken headlight and how it makes me look kind of trashy no matter what, in certain settings. I think about these things, not what I’m supposed to be writing about and then I scream, sometimes out loud and I put my fingers on the keys again and again but only embarrassingly overwrought biznullshit comes out and it’s horrible and it’s horrible.
But I hang on. I come back. Why? I remember the good times.
The times when writing and I were fricking one, when it was good and it gave me that heady, light, cacklingly-happy, superior-to-the-poor,-unenlightened-masses-who-don’t-have-what-We-have, dear Writing, feeling.
The other day, without warning, that sensation, that ability or that bluebird of whatever the hell it is, returned, and I was clickity-clacking and forgetting the world around me, because Writing and Me, we were all there was. Writing was so good to me, Writing was sorry about all the times before, said, “Baby, you know I love you,” like Leo Johnson from Twin Peaks. And I, like Shelley before she started seeing that Bobby Briggs on the side, nodded, acquiesced, fell into willing forgetfulness about all the past bad times that surely indicated future bad times. I was just so happy now, for this one blissful day. I went to campus feeling like I had a secret and classmates would see me and shoot me looks they thought were shrewd.
"What makes you so happy?” they said and I just laughed and laughed.
It’s something special between us; nobody else can hope to understand.
New, New Music News
I’m in love, love, love with the new Tom Waits trio of cds. Kathleen Brennan once said Waits has two types of songs, “Grim Reapers and Grand Weepers.” He’s divvied up his new set into a cd of each, plus another of random, lovely odds and ends. Been listening to the “Bawlers” cd for the past few days. Listened to it driving up to Greensboro the other evening, listened to it tonight while cooking dinner, and no matter who I’m with, we both end up totally swooning. The man’s songs represent, always, some world not one of his listeners can ever quite inhabit completely. We hold our breaths, plunge our heads under the swirling waves for a time, but we’ve always gotta come up for air and the real world. That’s not what we want. We want to curl up inside this music and live there. But we can’t. And that keeps us wanting more.
Also went to see Joanna Newsom play on Saturday night in Greensboro. There’s been a lotta hullabaloo about her new record and whether or not it’s too much of a long-winded departure from its crazyamazing predecessor, The Milk-Eyed Mender. Before I went to the show, I was skeptical: I just do not care for the to-me-rather-gaudy string arrangements on the new record; I like the simple, folky quality of the one before it and the fact that they’re discrete songs instead of 14-minute compositions.
The show on Saturday, though, with just her with three musicians playing accordion, drums, glockenspiel, guitar/banjo-y things and singing really nice harmonies - was just really, um, well, magical. La mujer is just such a self-possessed, maddeningly impressive virtuoso. It left me really liking the new record, or at least three of its five sprawling tunes and just underscored how she’s grown as a musician and I could feel nothing but lucky to be there in that concert hall to be one of the folks witnessing it. So (gasp), yeah.
Anyhoo. Like Abba says, I am thankful for the music. Happy Turkeys, ya’ll.
You never used to do me like you do./
Where’s that sweet gal I knew?"
-Gillian Welch
Writing is my abusive boyfriend. I said this on the phone to Marshall the other day and straightaway he came up with all these reasons that this is too extreme a comparison. Maybe he’s right, but here’s the truth: For days, weeks, sometimes, I sit at the computer in the mornings and stare at the screen. I peck out a few sentences of whatever it is a I’m working on and then I sit back again and stare at the wall, at the curtain that’s blocking my mind from wandering too far - out the window and into the real world: to the neighbor’s backyard, the trees beyond, further. I sit and I sit as you’re supposed to do. I try to picture that half-inch-by-half-inch frame of a moment that you’re supposed to imagine when you write (Someone said, “At night your headlights only illuminate several yards ahead of you at a time, but you can make the whole trip that way.”)
I sit and I think about the headlights and about the small frame, but soon I’m looking at my real photos on the windowsill and I’m thinking I need new frames for those and I’m thinking about my car’s front broken headlight and how it makes me look kind of trashy no matter what, in certain settings. I think about these things, not what I’m supposed to be writing about and then I scream, sometimes out loud and I put my fingers on the keys again and again but only embarrassingly overwrought biznullshit comes out and it’s horrible and it’s horrible.
But I hang on. I come back. Why? I remember the good times.
The times when writing and I were fricking one, when it was good and it gave me that heady, light, cacklingly-happy, superior-to-the-poor,-unenlightened-masses-who-don’t-have-what-We-have, dear Writing, feeling.
The other day, without warning, that sensation, that ability or that bluebird of whatever the hell it is, returned, and I was clickity-clacking and forgetting the world around me, because Writing and Me, we were all there was. Writing was so good to me, Writing was sorry about all the times before, said, “Baby, you know I love you,” like Leo Johnson from Twin Peaks. And I, like Shelley before she started seeing that Bobby Briggs on the side, nodded, acquiesced, fell into willing forgetfulness about all the past bad times that surely indicated future bad times. I was just so happy now, for this one blissful day. I went to campus feeling like I had a secret and classmates would see me and shoot me looks they thought were shrewd.
"What makes you so happy?” they said and I just laughed and laughed.
It’s something special between us; nobody else can hope to understand.
New, New Music News
I’m in love, love, love with the new Tom Waits trio of cds. Kathleen Brennan once said Waits has two types of songs, “Grim Reapers and Grand Weepers.” He’s divvied up his new set into a cd of each, plus another of random, lovely odds and ends. Been listening to the “Bawlers” cd for the past few days. Listened to it driving up to Greensboro the other evening, listened to it tonight while cooking dinner, and no matter who I’m with, we both end up totally swooning. The man’s songs represent, always, some world not one of his listeners can ever quite inhabit completely. We hold our breaths, plunge our heads under the swirling waves for a time, but we’ve always gotta come up for air and the real world. That’s not what we want. We want to curl up inside this music and live there. But we can’t. And that keeps us wanting more.
Also went to see Joanna Newsom play on Saturday night in Greensboro. There’s been a lotta hullabaloo about her new record and whether or not it’s too much of a long-winded departure from its crazyamazing predecessor, The Milk-Eyed Mender. Before I went to the show, I was skeptical: I just do not care for the to-me-rather-gaudy string arrangements on the new record; I like the simple, folky quality of the one before it and the fact that they’re discrete songs instead of 14-minute compositions.
The show on Saturday, though, with just her with three musicians playing accordion, drums, glockenspiel, guitar/banjo-y things and singing really nice harmonies - was just really, um, well, magical. La mujer is just such a self-possessed, maddeningly impressive virtuoso. It left me really liking the new record, or at least three of its five sprawling tunes and just underscored how she’s grown as a musician and I could feel nothing but lucky to be there in that concert hall to be one of the folks witnessing it. So (gasp), yeah.
Anyhoo. Like Abba says, I am thankful for the music. Happy Turkeys, ya’ll.
posted by Alice at 11:01 AM
1 Comments:
Hey Alice -- I have no idea who said it anymore, but it's the best quote about writing I've ever heard: "If you hold back what is dull and uninteresting, you are sure to hold back what is clear and brilliant too..."
Or something like that. See, if you have nothing but crap to write about, just start writing it, write ALL the crap you can think of, just write and write and write reams of fecal matter... then (and for me this is about 90% accurate) you WILL have a gem at the end. You'll eventually edit out the feces, but it will have been worth it to slog through that, and not hate yourself for it, but just let yourself write dull crapola until the clear stuff finds its way through. And never start editing until you feel really DONE with a piece. Because the crap is somehow (for me) the fertilizer that makes the rest of the good stuff grow.
Just some more unsolicited advice from your California pal... take your vitamins!
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