Pour Myself a Cup of Ambition

The whole idea of having a desk job had seemed the opposite of who she thought she was.

She looked around at all the others, wondering if they saw her playing her role, watching them watching her-to see if there were any cracks in the facade.

The notion of imposter syndrome was strong in her, except it was true.  She was the real imposter. 

The longer she stayed there, and talked to the others on the career ladder, in the cubicles, in the lunchroom and the hallways. She wasn't sure about her uniqueness anymore. Nobody else wanted to be there either.  Everyone else had a dream as well.

But she had lived hers.  She had been on the stage, she had been singing.  She had lived inside the music in a way that she couldn't find life anywhere else.

She wasn't sure that she was ever going to focus on getting a promotion, but she knew she was disappointed when she didn't get them.  The coffee wasn't her driving force, but it helped the mornings pass and it made her happy.

On the weekends, when she didn't drink it, she might spend the morning crying, which ruined her voice for singing for the rest of the day.  So she made sure to remember her ambition on the weekends, ambition not to become CEO of her company-but to SING.  Not even onstage again, but just to carry the music in her throat. In her mouth, it felt better than being kissed.  It felt like being loved.

Only Trouble Is/Gee Whiz!!

She worried early on, already in her 20’s that is was BAD to fantasize about being married to this guy. To imagine a life with him, frockling through the buttercups (like in the sweet-sappy love scenes on TV).

A year went by before she realized that her fantasy life was still active.

He worried, at this point in his life, mid 40’s, that he hadn’t made it at all.  That the early success should just pave the way for a lifetime career, that he was always just a few dingy bar sets away from a return to the spotlight. He had stopped performing for a while, but had never stopped playing.  

He found himself in the mirror of his bathroom playing and looking himself in the eye.  THAT’s what got him back onstage. To call up his friends who were gigging, to ask if he could get his sea legs again.TO get up a band when he could, to invest back in himself, the ONE thing he knew he was good at.  To get to that penultimate song. To break their hearts. (Damn, he wishes that there was a deeper hatred in him, something bitter, so he could ATTACK his audiences-really tear them apart and break them-not just their hearts but everything-so they could see the error of their ways. But sadly for any cowboy who has more heart than he wants to admit, he doesn’t WANT to hurt anyone.  All this breaking he does, he just tears apart their hearts so they will mend back together again.

And that’s what he is most proud of.

This thing he cannot articulate, but KNOWS IN THE MOMENT that this is the only thing in life he has.

This power to heal strangers.

And then they just ask for an autograph and the spell is broken.

==

Dream

by the Everly Brothers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbU3zdAgiX8

Thank you, thank you, thank you thank you

At one point, there was a conversation about songs written for occasions.

They were hanging around, gravity pulling them to a couch. No clock ticking.

Christmas songs.
Birthday songs.
Holiday songs.
Wedding songs.
Break up/death songs
Are they the same? 
How are they different?

There is that gratitude song.
How does it go?
Thank you, thank you, thank you thank you
Oh, right. That one.

She kept singing it, enjoying the sense of gratitude. he wondered if she was thanking him, if she ever would.  And why there is nothing that touches his heart, moves him to be kinder.  If he ever would thank her-which he should. Maybe it was guilt that stood in front of him. She was the type who wouldn't hold back-except to the man who wouldn't allow any tenderness.

It was easier to sing than to try to recite the line with a straight face.

Their eyes met.  Voices falling into harmony easily. Her hand brushed his fingers, her leg swung back and forth from her knee, like an upside down metronome.

Smiles.  Eye contact. Maybe this moment is the way gratitude plays out.

Frightened of this thing that I've become

(His POV): I sit in my empty house-not empty of stuff, but empty of people, empty of music.  I can't remember the last time I played.
I think of her.
She was the last time I loved.  And really, my last best chance, even though I always assumed I'd have more.  More time to connect.  Always more audiences to face, until there weren't any more.

And then, there is this SILENCE.  This LOSS of music. I mean, I can play a cd or the radio. But I DONT SING anymore, and I don't know why.  My whole life has been about practicing, like exercise, which I've done well for most of my life. But, like exercise, I don't have the energy for it,

Funny, how your body, mind and spirit fade away slowly, almost without you even noticing it.  until you can't look yourself in the face anymore.  Especially when you realize you probably have at least another decade or two of your life sentence.

You can go for a VERY long time without speaking to anyone, and it occurs to you that you probably will.

Dreaming of Vila

Dreaming of Vila

Love Made Visible (Book) of the Barter Theater

Invisible Magic IS Love.

And "Love made visible" is the deeper mission of the Barter Theater.  When farmers couldn't offer money, they could offer things to pay for tickets. And then the actors got fed. 

A way of living as close to the bone as you can, and being happy, truly happy, in a circle of friends who are in the same situation. 

Much like the Fringe Theater, or all theater.

A Sip of Sparkling Burgandy Brew

Is it inappropriate to sing a song comparing the intoxication of love to alcohol?

What if your man, the guitarist, is a member of AA? What if you want him to stay sober?  Can you just avoid the idea of getting drunk entirely?

What happens when you perform in bars all the time?

Someday, you all will have "plenty of money", and you won't have to accept every gig.  But then again, if you are financially stable, you miss a hell of a lot of fun.

Can you be poor and stay sober?  Rich, yet eager to get drunk to forget? Does it have to be one or the other?

You Go To My Head
Keely Smith

I Have The Earth, Dear

There are some days when you forget your own name.

And you KNOW there are things you are supposed to know.  But they are like dreams when you wake up too suddenly. Or the name of your neighbor as you grew up. (Shirley). Just out of reach.

It's either the start of dementia, or the continuation of the long slow decline.  From alcohol or age, you can't tell anymore.  Not that it matters by now. You spend your childhood ignoring all the warnings, and your 30's laughing them off, and your 50's backpedaling, and by now everything is too late. You have been warned.

One day you forget the name of your book.  Of your favorite song.  But then you remember having to look it up, in the Ws, but not the Wh's, like Why or What or Who.  It's a W-I.  With. With Plenty of Money. And you.

Back when you lived hardscrabble.  When everyday you were haunted by not having ENOUGH. And those few glorious days, few and far between when you had money to pay the band AND for gas, and money for the motel AND you had money enough to EAT on the road.  and maybe even money enough to buy her a pair of cowboy boots that made her stand sexier.

I keep your picture.  Even if I can't remember who you are. You led me like a clue, into who I used to be.  I don't remember the particulars, but it was a glorious life.

I have the earth, dear.  And I have the sky.

“I Keep your Picture” by David Dundas

https://youtu.be/7VvZAo73dUk

Falling Out and in Love with the Man(uscript)

Falling Out and in Love with the Man(uscript)

Sometimes it's good to be obsessed with your writing.

And then sometimes, it makes you sick with the intensity.

So it's good to be able to take a step back, and get back into your life. AND, you'd be amazed at how much easier it is to edit when you have a little perspective.

And then, when you get back into it, there's a lot of THERE there. Sure, trim away all the fat.  Lots of crap, but now it's easier to let go of it.

And I'm sure it'll be a cycle.  I need to get through this draft.  And then, rinse, repeat.

I'll forget again. But I'll fall in love again.

Siren Song/Lover You Should have come over

The Buckleys

I hope you are as fascinated by the novel writing process as I am.

I'm taking 2 classes (1 on Query Letters to Lit Agents and one on World Building in Fiction). Getting an editor lined up, workshopping one of the chapters.  Very exciting.

My goal this month is a readable draft.  I have the structure, and 250 pages of scenes, notes, and things to write.  I want to send out the first 50 pages to my editor asap.

I've published several short stories and plays, but getting together a giant chunk of something (with a full time job plus travel) is tremendously difficult. But rewarding!

You Can make it There

You can have a life, a DEVOTION around the cult of NYC.  You can be its slave for years, trying to get it to love you back.

But it doesn't give a fuck.

You can starve, can live in a closet, can work 24/7, can work as a barista, can perform on Broadway.  you can make it there one day and feel like you are starting over the very next.

Other cities will welcome you back with open arms.  Embrace you like your Mom.  Alumnae returning to the geographies of their youth.  New York will be like, 'Oh, did you leave the party?"

Every neighborhood, every block is a new beginning.  You start from scratch, you reinvent yourself.  Hopefully smarter this time. 

You can go for years and never run into any of your previous friends, or selves.  And then you can spend 24 hours playing "This is your life", and seeing mirrors everywhere you go.

They Can't Take That Away from Me

She saw him at a distance sometimes.

A picture, a performance, an album release, something good he's done at a distance.

She thinks that he has moved on from her; that they have parted ways. They have and they had.  But life has a funny ways of turning lines into circles.

The way he wears his hat, she sees it in the photographs, how she had turned it once at a jaunty angle. It's almost a message to her.  You made a good adjustment in my life.

But there are moments when she doesn't feel the echo ever return to her.  She sees their past, but she does not see their future.  A theater piece, in a constant cycle of beginning, middle and end of show, to be turned back over again tomorrow like the same sands in an hourglass. She sees instead, the time he sang out into the ocean, a perfect, endless, beautiful, drug-induced song-trance song he improvised and never remembered again.  SCENE!!!