Songs in My Neighborhood

Listening to the radio as I worked last night, I was reminded how songs that mention ‘home places’ are somehow a little extra special. Starbuck’s ‘Moonlight Feels Right’ (1976) was on the radio when I got back into the truck. I arrived just a moment before the line “I’ll take you on a trip beside the ocean and drop the top at Chesapeake Bay.” It brought back memories. One night in particular when the entire gang ( and then some) were hanging out in Deale Island, Md.,  drinking and swimming and generally having a good time.  Deale Island isn’t really an island; it’s a peninsula, so there are fresh water tributaries running into the Chesapeake Bay. It was in one of these that we were swimming. All of a sudden, one of the guys on shore hollered  “everybody outta the water”, and a dozen or so dripping bodies burst out of the water like trained seals.

Since we weren’t were we were supposed to be, or more aptly, since we were where we weren’t supposed to be, everyone assumed the yell was a police alert, hence the prompt evacuation. No police, something of more immediate concern – water moccasins. Water moccasins are nasty vipers with nasty attitudes. Like copperheads, they will attack without provocation to defend their nesting area. Water moccasins are dark; they blend in with the water, especially at night. Their bite is miserably painful, and the venom rots the flesh. Few people die from the bites, but death is possible. Thanks to the moonlight and the sharp eyes of one of the guys, we escaped unharmed. Moonlight Feels Right was playing on the radio at the time. Every time I hear this song, I see a snapshot of that night.

There are places that have many songs; Dallas, New York, Chicago, L.A., San Francisco, etc. The Chesapeake Bay only has the one that I know of. While I was living in Dallas, a song that always amused me was Steely Dan’s “My Old School.” There is one line that says “California tumbles into the sea, that’ll be the day I go back to Annandale.”  I agreed, completely, though I expected Cali to fall long before now. It was California’s ‘tumbling’ that moved me off the west coast and into Dallas. Anyway, I had lived in Annandale briefly and while it was okay, the traffic was insane and I had no desire to go back. Even in the early Eighties, getting on the Capitol Beltway during rush hour meant wasting your life away. I’d just crank up the radio and sing, and marvel at the people who pulled over to wait it out.

Along side the road – at that time four lanes each direction packed bumper to bumper with vehicles – the intrepid would pull over, pull out a lounge chair, and read a book. I was tempted to join the shoulder sitters, but I never did. Every time I heard “My Old School,” I would remember the drive home from work, and sing ‘never going back’ with gusto. I am a die-hard Steely Dan fan. ‘Any Major Dude’ saved my sanity when I did come back from Dallas, but that tale is told elsewhere.

Dallas, of course, has numerous song mentions. My favorite is “Dallas, too close to New Orleans” from The Grateful Dead’s Truckin’. I just think that’s funny because they are worlds apart psychologically, and nothing is close to anything in Texas. Close means it took less than an hour to get there. It’s hard for me to pick a Dallas song that has actual Dallas memories attached. Nearly every one I knew in Dallas was in the music business somehow, so I was surrounded by music. I associate almost as much music with Dallas as I do with growing up in Maryland. I had a helluva lot of fun in Texas. Ask me someday and I’ll tell you about the Big Shoe and the Rain of Frogs. That was one strange weekend….

Aural Projection

Aural Projection

On  December  6, 2011, Dobie Gray died. Dobie was a musician, a singer. I only know one of his songs. That song, Drift Away, was written by Mentor Williams and recorded by Dobie Gray in 1973. For the last 38 years, Drift Away has been one of the few songs to consistently touch me. Many songs have had special moments in my life, some have gotten me through the really rough times, but few still touch me the same way now as they did then. Drift Away is my song. It perfectly describes the impact music has on my life and my soul.

There are songs that should never be allowed to die. They need to be renewed, so that subsequent generations can benefit from them. There are songs that are so iconic, it seems sacrilegious to remake them. Drift away is both, it needed to be remade to bring it back into the light, but what an undertaking! Uncle Kracker teamed up with Dobie Gray to do a beautiful remake. Either version moves me to tears every single time I hear them. Every time. Not because the song is sad or associated with sad memories, but because this song so perfectly says what I want to say. This song uplifts me, even when I am already up. When I am down, Drift Away reaches down into the depths of my misery, wraps its music around the ache in my soul, and sets me free.

This is a crank-it-up-and-sing-your-heart-out song. Hit repeat and play it again. I’m thankful Mentor Williams put a piece of his soul into the song, and I’m thankful Dobie Gray found it, wrapped it in a piece of his own soul, and poured it out for the world to hear.

Besides rescuing me from random funks, Drift Away takes me back. When I hear it, I feel the sun on my arms and legs. I feel the soft, cool grass between my toes. I hear the mingled voices of dozens of young people loving life on a warm summer day. I smell summer, that summer. This song plants me firmly in the middle of Fort Washington Park, on the huge green in the center, with Frisbees flying, touch football games, the mingled music of cruising cars, boom-boxes, and guitar toting hippies.  I don’t mean I remember the scene; I actually experience it. I don’t get that from the Uncle Kracker version of the song, just from Dobie’s rendition. Most songs that do this sort of thing for me only give me little flashes, like seeing snapshots. Dobie gives me the whole movie, in Technicolor, with Dolby quad sound.

Since we spent the entire summer in that park, with hundreds of other kids, I have a lot of good memories of Fort Washington. A lot of songs, sounds, and aromas elicit mental snapshots of that time. The snapshots have entire stories behind them, but with Drift Away, there is no single story; just that immersive experience I described above. Drift Away is my trigger for an instant connection with the universe, a three minute meditation that truly does ‘sooth my soul’.

Walking inside the Clouds

I love fog. Fog is magical. Fog wipes away the 'what is' and opens the door to the 'what might be'. You can be anywhere, in a fog. A plain old field by light of day becomes another country or planet in a fog. You could be Underhill, trudging across the frozen tundras, or weightless on the moon, in a fog. Creatures that might shy away from humans come out and cavort in a fog. Fairies love a fog, ask any will-o-the-wisp! Familiar things take on new dimensions, the outlines blur and the colors dim. Its easy to believe that a tree might uproot itself and go for a stroll, in a fog. Sound, too, becomes magical in a fog. Voices carry across the field, so those far away sound near, and those near sound distant. Water babbles better in the fog. You can almost make out the words. I think that is the water nymphs teasing me. So here is the fog; where the world is something other than it was, where faeries romp and dryads walk their trees; where water nymphs sing and laugh and splash about. Here is fog; where you can be transported to any place that you can imagine, and several you never thought of. Here is fog; where imagination, and magic, and possibility are one.

I love fog. I had the pleasure of driving around in it all night. I know most drivers dislike the fog, it does make things iffy, but I love it. Ugly places look pretty in fog. Pretty places look ethereal, but ugly ones suddenly become lovely. The photograph at the top of the post is a small street that runs between two shopping centers. Shopping centers are not pretty. If you stand where I stood, without fog, all you see are squat little buildings. With fog, its a landing strip on another planet. Fog is best in the dark, second best just as day begins to break. Once the sun is up, the fog quickly dissipates. If it sticks around, it backs off, like a shy child. Or, as it did this morning, it wanders off to visit with the cows.

 Even if you don't go off on fantastic journeys to otherworldly places, fog is fabulous. The idea of being inside of a cloud is just wonderful. When I see clouds in the sky, I always wonder if there are beings walking around inside of it. If I were light enough to walk inside a sky cloud, I imagine it would be sort of springy and firm. It would cradle me in safety, yet let me climb and descend as I chose.  I imagine the tops as being very fluffy so my feet could sink in, and the bottoms as being sort of thick and firm, like the skin on a pudding, keeping me from falling through the cloud.  I love to find a light source and look at the millions of droplets that form the cloud/fog.  When you see a cloud in the sky, it is hard to believe that it is not solid. It looks firm and fluffy, like whipped cream. But when it sits on the ground and you stand inside it, it isn't solid. You can clearly see the spaces between the droplets. Being inside a cloud makes quantum physics make sense. Nothing is solid, its just that we are bigger than the spaces between, and so we don't fall through.

I love fog.

Plausible Humor

I just watched an episode of Two Broke Girls. I wish they'd write a little more realistically, though the idea of buying one of a kind designer jewelery in the bathroom is amusing. What I am wondering is why these girls would hike all over town trying to get a decent price for the gold content of unique, collectible rings. Why not auction them off? If the best the gold monkeys would offer is $225 for one ring, start the bidding at $225. Seems like something a rich girl would know. I'm a poor girl and I know it.

This is why I don't write comedy, I guess.  I need it to be plausible. I think there's plenty of fodder for realistic comedy. People do some whacked shit. My sister mentioned that someone had sent a Christmas card to her office, which was passed around so everyone could read it. One guy signed it and passed the card and pen to the next employee. Perfectly natural and funny as hell. Funny is stuff we might actually do. I guess that's why I found the idea of selling rings in the bathroom funny - I can see that as something that could happen.

I had a guy offer me $2 for a cigarette in New york City about ten years ago. I gave him two cigarettes, no charge. I can imagine getting busting for black-market cigarette distribution because you sold a 30cent Virginia cigarette for $2 in NYC. It's ridiculous but plausible. Cigarettes are a controlled substance. I can see the beggar being undercover, and having twenty ATF agents drop into a crouch and whip out gold-plated Glocks for the bust would just be funny.

Something else I find amusing is when someone unwittingly tosses out double entendres. You know the sort I mean, the ones that just silence all conversation for a moment while everyone looks at the poor innocent who said it. We had awesome little chocolate cookies at work the other night. Some of them had white chocolate kisses on them, some had maraschino cherries. One of the guys walked over to the cookies and said - enthusiastically - "Yeah, we got some good cherry action going on over here."  Half a dozen amused faces looked up from paperwork and one voice said "Dude, are you fornicating with the cookies again? Didn't we talk to you about that?" Then the sheer joy of watching as the innocent realizes what he said to begin with. It's just funny.

I think the problem with sit-coms is that they tend to lock the characters into a particular sort of behavior. The characters aren't fully developed, they're just caracatures. Constant short jokes aren't funny after a while. What is funny is seeing tall people and short people working in the same space. Every one puts things down where they can easily reach them again. If one guy is 6-foot-something and the other is barely 5 feet tall, they aren't going to agree on what is reachable. It's even funnier if the tall person is female and the short person male. When he climbs up to where she put the salt shaker, he is suddenly confronted with tampons or a stash of K-Y. Or she has to get under the counter to find a bowl he put away and finds a copy of Bestiality magazine open to the centerfold.

That's funny on different levels. First, just being faced with the unexpected is funny. None of those items belong in a kitchen, most men are wigged out by feminine accoutrements, and most women would be appalled to be flashed by the centerfold of a tasteful magazine; Bestiality magazine would just exaggerate the disgust. Not to mention, anyone finding that magazine in the kitchen is going to think twice before eating the turkey.

Second, it's funny because it makes us think about our world view. I imagine really tall people see a lot of crooked hair parts, dandruff, and bald spots.Not to mention, cleavage. Really short people probably notice double chins, nose hair, and buggers. For either to suddenly see the world from a different height opens up huge potential for comedy. I can just see the guy using the K-Y in place of WD-40 to oil a hinge, or the girl shoving the centerfold under the stove as a roach repellent.

Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues (Or Why emotional scenes are so hard to write.)

I suck at mopey. I always have. Oh, I can kick out a mean moping, wallow in the mire of misery, I just suck at putting it into words.  John Steinbeck did good mopey stuff. It was honest. People suffering life, and while they were sad stories, they were full of life too. Poe can mope in style - read Annabelle Lee. I write bad mope. The whiny sort of crap that makes you scream "Oh, fergodssakes, JUMP already!"
What brings this up?, you might ask.
I'm watching a movie - Hope Floats. Here's a woman who is hurting, and the story is real. I mean, its believably written. When I write it, it feels contrived and embarrassing. I think writing sorrow is too much like letting down defenses. It's uncomfortable and when I read what I wrote, it sounds stilted. It makes me cringe. Obviously I need to practice.

I titled this piece after a song - Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues. Everybody gets the blues sometimes. (That's another song. Lets see how many I can reference in one paragraph and stay on topic.) We all have times when no matter how bright the sun is outside, it's raining inside (Sunrise - Uriah Heep). Since these are universal emotions, you'd think they'd be easier to put down on paper. Sometimes the words are too personal, at least for me. And if I think too much while I am writing it, it stinks. But if I don't think, if I just let the words flow, its too personal and I can't bear to let it go public. The weird thing about that is that it doesn't have to be something I've actually experienced and it can still end up feeling way too personal.

Anywho, Hope Floats. This is a good movie. There's a lot of life in it. It starts out with our heroine learning - on live television- that her husband and best friend are having an affair. That made me think of all the crappy shows we have like that. Why do people watch? Why do people want to see someone's life ripped to pieces like that? And why do people go on those shows? I totally do not get this. Why trick someone into that kind of humiliation? Just as bad are the people who go on thinking they are going to humiliate someone else and not recognizing how badly they come off, themselves. I also don't get why anyone would do televised court TV.

This goes back to the "too public" thing I was talking about earlier. I think its mostly good that we don't cave in to 'shame', but I also think its maybe a little bad that we don't seem to have any shame either. I remember thinking, back in the '90's, that it was rather nice that chubby females were not ashamed of being chubby. In the '70's thin was definitely 'in' and chubby girls did everything they could to hide their weight. In the early '90's that changed, which is mostly good. You shouldn't be ashamed of your body and it ought to be okay to not be perfect.

You shouldn't be ashamed that once upon a time you made some mistake that probably felt like the end of the world at the time. Doing stupid stuff is part of growing. Everyone makes mistakes but doing the same stupid stuff repeatedly is just stupid. Don't be ashamed of the things you actually learned some lesson from. By the same token, you shouldn't really wear your past idiocies as some sort of Badge of Glory either.

Somehow we've gone to the other extreme. A hundred years ago, you could never live down some mistakes. Now we act like they are something to be proud of. No middle ground. Same with weight - we went from semi-starved to fat, and every body is still half dressed. We have guts hanging out and butt cracks escaping. I still believe we should not be ashamed of our bodies, but I wish we took a little better care of them!

I think they put the televised humiliation scene into the movie hoping to make a point. It repeats later, a different scene, but we get to see the reaction of the heroine to someone else's suffering. Maybe it made a few people realize how ugly those shows are. It was another scene that made me aware of how awkward my written emotional scenes are compared to how well done this scene was.

I make connections. So this scenario also brought to mind the other TV shows - the ones that supposedly are meant to educate the public - like "Hoarders". Supposedly they are trying to get people to understand that this lifestyle isn't a choice, it's an illness. The shows aren't popular because viewers want to see people get help. Humans are judgmental and these shows feed that.

People often say that children are cruel. I think humans have a stunning capacity for cruelty. That makes writing emotional scenes even harder. You're trying to convey the misery without eliciting the ridicule factor. 'Hope Floats' used visuals to keep the sympathy with the heroine. The 'best friend' was less attractive, poorly groomed, slightly sleazy looking. The heroine was pretty, dignified and reacted with quiet grace. The husband was a jerk.

The acting is what made the scene, not the writing. Movie scripts are sparse, unlike books. A book might describe the look on her face, the tremble in her shoulders. A book might state that she held back her tears, and might give insight into her thoughts. Movie scripts do not. The dialog is interpreted by the director and actors, so what the writer envisioned and what gets acted out may not match. This is why movies are rarely what the book reader expected.

I watched this scene and wondered if I could write it as a book scene. This is when I admitted to myself that I suck at writing this sort of scene and started figuring out why I find these scenes so challenging. Shame and judgment are inherently connected. I think people try so hard to suppress feeling shame that it makes them even more judgmental, as a sort of defense mechanism.  I get very attached to my characters. I become protective. I don't want to open them up to ridicule, I try to shield them. As a result, my scenes are stilted. I have the same problem in reverse if I dislike a character; I write them as too nasty. In reality, mean people are sometimes nice and nice people are occasionally real jerks.

Book: The Horse Boy

The Horse Boy Rupert Isaacson, 2009, Little, Brown & CompanyA Father's Quest to Heal His Son
What is it like to watch your child slide into autism? What would you do to heal him? Would you travel halfway around the world, trek across Mongolia, into Siberia, on horseback? To heal your child, would you eat half raw, boiled yak organs and drink fermented sour yaks milk tea? And would you - could you- do all this with that child in tow?
We judge, harshly, the parent whose child is publicly disruptive. 'Control your kid!' We think.
Some even say it, venomously. 'Control. Your. Kid!'
What a frightening concept! Control your kid. As parents, as adults, shouldn't we strive to guide our children? To educate them, to encourage them? Shouldn't we be teaching them how to be true to themselves in a world that demands conformity? Oddly enough, we celebrate those who don't conform - the star athletes, the brilliant scientists, the excellent artists of every stripe, and the business people who build something new. Yet we seek to control our children, and mold them in our images.
Parents with autistic children struggle just to communicate!And they do it with a fierce, deep love that aches and thrills, and somehow provides the strength to keep trying.
It's hard. To, day after day, nurture, love and protect a child you cannot connect with. It is stressful, exhausting, frustrating. And when you add the censure, the judgements of those who have no idea what your family goes through, the condemning looks and commentary, it is also infuriating.
You wouldn't wish this struggle on anyone. You wouldn't wish this suffering on any child. Yet you do wish those stone throwers could live your life for just one day. They might, you think, develop some compassion.
We never know what someone else is going through. That snarly face on the train might be someone suffering deep physical pain, or exhausted from nursing an aging parent while working a full time job, or caught up in the circular mental rehashing of something traumatic to them. Even if we have experienced a similar event, we don't know what it is like for them, because it isn't just one event, its one event on top of everything else they have experienced in their lives. We Don't Know! If we could look at these people with that knowledge - that we don't know- and send them a postive thought, of love, or relief, of something to make them smile, not only would they benefit, so would we! You've surely felt it... when someone is looking at you with disapproval, even if you didn't see it, you felt the negative vibrations. You've also felt the uplifting vibrations when a stranger shares a smile with you, or seems to understand your struggle. How you respond to others affects them. And you. More love, less judgement.
There is hope in The Horse Boy. Stress, fear, worry, exhaustion, wonder, awe, joy, beauty, compassion, and profound love. Worth Reading. (Also a movie; the book gives you more of the Father's thoughts. I enjoyed the book more because so much had to be edited out of the movie.)

Funny Books!: Sweet Potato Queens, Stephanie Plum, and every thingTerry Pratchet has ever written

God save the Sweet Potato Queens Jill Connor Browne, 2001, Three Rivers Press

Here's my advice: If it says Sweet Potato Queen anywhere in the title, and Jill Connor Browne somewhere on the cover. Get it, read it, love it, pass it on! This woman is hilarious. I suspect that a lot of men might be utterly baffled by her books, but most women will join me in the floor with side splitting laughter and tears rolling down aching cheeks. I was still in chapter one and I wanted to go out and organize a parade just so I could personally experience that level of uninhibited fun!
The Sweet Potato Queen's stories remind me of my own stories, bringing to mind some of those wonderfully hilarious events - the sort that can still make your ribs ache even 20 years after the fact. Letters from readers that are so funny, I had to call my sister to read them to her. (Because, yes, they reminded me of some of her stories -especially the projectile vomit slide story! And wouldn't you like to know?)
GO! Get any of the books by Jill Connor Browne. Read 'em and weep (tears of laughter!)

More? Get the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich.  Start with "One for the Money", there are at least 18 now, in numerical order. (Two for the Dough, Three to get Deadly, etc.) These books make me laugh my tookus off, out loud, in public. Enough that random strangers want to know what I'm reading.

Another hilarious writer - and probably my all time favorite- is Terry Pratchet. I don't care which book it is, its hilarious. Disc World is the planet, and Ankh Morpork is the place to be! Can I pick just one to review? No. Pick a book - any book - and read. You can start anywhere or here. Terry has books for young adults in the DiscWorld series that are good enough for adults too. He's good. That's an understatement.