Paradise, Sugar, summer, and X-ness

The time was gone when we'd actually sit in someone's family room and watch MTV, but Paradise City's images still made up a big part of listening to that song. We knew Axl was a jerk, but the *song* was still summertime. That was the year we cruised DMV drive.

Val had taken me to Grace Street before, and I was used to venues, dating my rock star at college, going to gig after gig with him and all our musician friends. So cruising really seemed pointless to me, just driving around a wide block, traffic at a standstill, and only one stretch of it really populated. It was usually impossible to get a spot on that stretch; so you'd crawl through the crowded, merc-lit street, and then it was half an hour around a boring circuit to get back again. If you *could* get a spot, though ... it was a fun way to blow an hour before actually going somewhere.

That year, it was Paradise City - Axl in his white jeans; the ageless avatar of Slash stripped out of black and hat, actually sexy under there - and Pour Some Sugar On Me. Every idiot with a too-large spoiler and giant speakers rigged in a hatchback serenaded the entirety of the cruising audience, and I can't remember a single other track that dominated. Those two songs were THAT. SUMMER.

Valerie died to the strains of Paradise City. And Def Leppard was her favorite band.

It is my punishment, and my poignancy, that Axl's damned white jeans will make me cry forevermore.

I miss my girl. She was my sister. Her husband, now - I guess he's my brother.


The orangey light outside the huge HQ building for the Division of Motor Vehicles. Me and Val being cute and using fake names. I was Sabrina because I'd liked that cartoon as a kid, and the name seemed exotic to me. Valerie used Penelope.

Sometimes, now, loving on my dog Penelope, it's not just her I am hugging. She's my girl too.

I never did know why she used Penelope - just, it amused her. It was so unlikely. And boys. Boys trying anything will believe anything. I mean - Sabrina? We both dared 'em to disbelieve. They never bothered to; honesty beside the point, when you are cruising.

Pour Some Sugar On Me.

Both the songs are anthemic, and impossibly catchy. Cryin' is playing at me right now - and we loved us some Aerosmith. (Val had a story about being a groupie and chewing gum.) But Sugar and Paradise, that was all anyone ever heard. When your car was inching forward, and the heated dark breeze of a Richmond summer night carried the distant strains of either of those songs back to us on the long slog through the boring 75% of the circuit - that was the promise. "You're almost there." Almost to the relevant part. The part that is lit, and full of people (boys) and music. The interesting bit.

Scent of hot asphalt hanging in the air, and not a little exhaust, including diesel. Voices, shouting, unrestrained singing. That kid on the skateboard, the first person I ever TOLD I was named Sabrina.

Valerie's laughter.

My girl.

We'd make a few turns. Or park, if we could. Then the lateral move, more parking, more crowded blocks, and The Jade Elephant, or Newgate Prison (hilariously, a dive bar unbeloved by Virginia Commonwealth University Police - now their headquarters - I guess they won). Dirt Woman sitting on his porch. "You can get the dirt off Donnie, but you can't get Donnie off the Dirt!" The Lee X theater, I think defunct already by the early 90s. Grassy scrub lots. The 7-11, maybe convenient for some, but impossibly distant and useless for those of us in heels.

That guy who made his friends drive him around in an old limo. He was cute. He'd give us rides to our cars. Every boy Val ever dated, or was thinking about it. The night I brought The Elfin One, and she laughs to this day about how I zeroed in on someone and said, "I want THAT one" and got his attention. It's all in the wrist - you just pick the one who appeals and is most likely *to* pay you some attention. He was tall. Dilliest smile you ever saw. He was ... unfortunate. Sigh.

My Val.

It's funny. Since she died, I talk to her - "Vally" I call her. I NEVER called her this in life. Some part of it is necessary now, and some part of it almost offends me for being unprecedented. Too cutesy, perhaps. But she's so dear. She was so damned small, in her hospital beds. I miss her.

Summer nights.

Right now, it's so humid in Richmond you just feel WET. Even walking the dog at 6:45 a.m., the humiture is intense. Even at ten o'clock at night, letting her out for the last time, dark - maybe even breezy - it is HOT outside.

Summer used to be what my dad called "soft" nights. Oh, it was still warm, even back then. But it didn't seem punishing. Maybe nothing does when you're half the age I am now, healthy, and ignorant of the future. Not that our future was bad. Val found the best husband she ever could have had. She had joy and SO much love. She and he knew what could come, and agreed.

No regrets.

That summer. Not regrettable. Not even a guilty-pleasure memory. I'm not ashamed we were hair-band chicks, into that kind of guy, brash, loud, laughing. As much as Val's laugh still rings, I never ever faded beside her. Neither of us ever did second-fiddle. We were the Cinderella twins from their old videos. We were catty, and open, and good in our skin, and interested and interesting. We were the 80s. We were the 90s. We were good with it all (and, no - neither of us was ever into the big-hair thing for *ourselves*).

The one time V ever faded into the background around me.

She was with me when I met Mr. X. It actually took about a year or two, that meeting.

It was the crack of the new millennium, and as an 80s throwback we went up to a bar in Springfield, to see the Bullet Boys, who sucked and had ZERO crowd. It wasn't even any fun for making fun of those who'd never gotten the memo that the 80s were over, because almost nobody was there. One other table - us two girls, maybe three guys. I don't remember most of them, because a *CLICK* happened. Mike. It wasn't sexual, but I've rarely experienced chemistry like that. He was fun to talk to, we stayed in touch on email and by phone, tried dating ever so briefly, then he met his wonderful, gorgeous, immensely generous wife.

November, 2002. I've just broken up with the "should be good on paper" guy with the SOUL PATCH (good grief, I though I was getting old at 34, and shouldn't be "picky"), and Mike's band is playing that same club, opening for - I think - Blind Guardian. The line this time wrapped around the building, and it. was. cold. Val and I get out of the car and end up in an alley around back, walking by hundreds along our way, wondering why the doors haven't opened, and hearing lots of grumbles. Only one attractive guy in the whole lot, and he's probably way too young. We take our places. And wait. And wait. I actually sent her back to the car at one point, to get my big wool coat. I hadn't wanted to wear it in the bar, but out here, waiting interminably, a little plastic jacket is not doing the job. The cold stabs from below. Val and I are shivering, miserable.

It turns out, BG's equipment was not compatible with American electrical systems. Which one might have thought could have been solved before several hundred people ended up stranded in the cold, but so-eth these things go-eth. Once we are inside, I go to touch up my face, and find the blackberry lipgloss in frozen shards, bleeding, and recalcitrant about remediation. I feel annoyed and Of Constrained Attractiveness for the rest of the night. And just as well, for the most part I can't find that hot guy anyway. We hang with Mike and the lovely (seriously - she gave me a FOOT MASSAGE, that wonderful woman) Mrs. Mike, and the night ends up being a lot of fun. Good company goes a long way.

At the end, coming out of the venue itself, there is an outer bar. Pool tables, flourescent lighting for my already not-so-flossy-feeling self, and ...Val pulls on me, "Diane, get a load" - and it's that guy. Definitely too young.

I dither and linger, Val takes a bathroom break, I'm on my own by some pool table, make eye contact, smile. He still doesn't come over. When she comes back, I grab her and make a beeline because it is late and we've got a hundred miles to go.

And, not being but so selfish, I leave the opportunities (between chicks hitting on him) open. "We just have to know. Are you single?"

"Sure!" he says.

And, Val told me, she might as well not have been there. "He lit up." "He was only looking at you."

I got his email and we booked it.

That's how I met Mr. X. Who turned out not to be 25 after all. What his age *was*, relative to my 34 at that time, we shall not discuss, because he's a coy one. But I won't say I wasn't glad he wasn't a baby.



Ahh, my Vally.

She was fun.

It was a day ...

... and it is an evening.

One of those days it's hard to keep yourself together. One of those days you feel like this, or this - or wish you did, because actually you are so much more fragile. One of those days you break, because of music. One of those days you are angry - and impotent. Cruelly, inhumanly, inhumanely - impotent. To help, to love, to DO.

It was a productive day. The sort of day you clear out the "pending work" folder and fill the recycling bin. You lob a few balls into other peoples courts, and check off a few things, completed, too. And even still, the sort of day you still have time to realize ... terrible, terrible things. Things you have always known, even articulated before, in different ways. But which still have the power to devastate.

Sometimes, it is a good thing to know that, when I say I am possessed of a  wee and paltry brain, really it is a joke.

Sometimes, it is a burden. To understand too well. And still be powerless. And still be the little girl, who is desperate and too tender and devastatingly weak.

Sometimes, it is a good thing, having a daily routine, having discipline - it keeps us together, most of the time.

Sometimes, it is a burden - the routine, the discipline. Keeping it together. And being devastatingly weak.

It is time to feel this. Instead of maintaining, to succumb.

It is evening.

It is night. Oh, Lord.

"I don't live by the river"

Editing at the top to add this curious note. One of the people at this concert dropped into my brother's life briefly, pretty much at the moment I was inspired to write this post. I hadn't gotten around to posting it yet when he told me about the encounter, days later.

Curious thing, life.

Should've worn the Chris Crafts.

But, I mean, it was a concert. It was The Clash. The little Asian cotton Maryjanes were the thing. I wore The Thing. And my nerdy jeans and beige socks, yeah. But then the cool top, it was kind of new wave. Vivid turquoise stripes, cool puffed sleeves.

As cool as *I* got in 1982.


I was fifteen.

My brother asked me to go to a concert with him. It was weird, but with his girlfriend's little sister going, maybe he kind of had to. Or maybe he was just being cool with me. It was about this period in our lives that sort of thing began to happen here and there.

Whether he had to bring me, or wanted to ... Didn't matter. We were excited. I remember us spotting other cars as we got closer to Williamsburg, "Bet they're going." Seeking shared anticipation.

Fortunately, for a change: not seeking boys. This isn't because I was with my brother, though usually he terrified any boys I might find interesting, event he other punks. No, it was because Joe Strummer with a mohawk looked too much like my big brother.

So I enjoyed the whole show without dreary old sex interfering mentally, and actually experienced the concert.


That unique smell - of The Reagan Years ... of the ozone-crackled electricity that was the music itself (mountains of speakers and amps) ... of that much youth packed into a venue. The incredible, the ineffable scent and sensation and sight of youth, in the early 80s. Angry youth, but exultant too.


The crush was intense at the front. I was with the other kid sister, against the barricade; barely more than a child.  Some guy saw me (us?) and got concerned. Or maybe he just wanted my spot. But ... it was after ... Maybe he really was scared for me. He signaled the roadies, they pulled me out of my cherry position. My memory has failed, in 35 years, as to her being pulled up to, but probably so. Dragged up onto the stage, shooed off it, shepherded around - and ended up out of the crush. I was annoyed.

Where my brother and his girlfriend were, who knew - I didn't care, there was nothing to be afraid of. Not even death by general admission. Safe. Wherever the older sibs were, they were never farther than the walls of the venue. Nobody in the crowd was out to hurt us. There was a show to go on.

And so, I wormed my way BACK up to the front, once again causing annoyance, but this time to the guy who had ordered us "saved" from the crowd. Maybe the other kid sister and I did this together. I just remember I was there.

I latched onto the barricade like a tick.

The Clash. Front row. Sea of kids, strange adulation and imperative demand. It was sensational.

At some point, we pulled ourselves back out - noise-fatigue, or the desire to find the others, or maybe they found us. I have some recollection of standing on the seats, scream-singing, bopping.

I had lost one of my flimsy cotton shoes, either in the dragging moment of my salvation, or stomped off during the second round, surrounded by combat boots. Stuck the other shoe in my back pocket - heaven knows why. Maybe I thought I'd find the lost one after the show. Maybe I even did. History and memory have failed in this detail.

Standing on a seat, beer-sopped socks, the muck of spit and sweat and beer and cigarettes. Just a few hours of a life; a meeting of four people. Of thousands.

Then a drive home, on an autumnal night. Ears ringing.


"Rock the Casbah" was the big deal that year, and it was pretty great. But even today, I maintain that "London Calling" is one of the great tracks in recording history. It echoes in a way beyond the mere sonic definition.


The weekend before that concert, The Clash appeared on SNL. Little Opie Cunningham was the host (this was before he disappeared completely *behind* cameras). He drank a beer live on camera, protested his Little Opie Cunningham-ness, and got ribbed by Eddie Murphy.



The ineffable scent of the 80s. The sound of soaring, roaring, echoing, raw music. GOOD music, but raw in a way that's really only synthesized anymore.

I really did see all the good concerts.

Born, and the Rest

Mama Ru on the Reagan years, tribe, and mainstreaming the un-mainstream-able (or NOT; for Ru is wise).



He IS an outstanding host, I've said it before, presiding over drag families for decades now and RuPaul's Drag Race for eight seasons and two All-Stars editions as well. Some of the people hes introduced us to mean a lot to those of us who are fans. Alaska T. is the only thing named Alaska on Earth I will ever love, and Katya and (OMG) Latrice Royale.

My friend Kristi and I agreed: Ru's saying recently that he could never go mainstream was marketing brilliance. The media has snapped-to - oh, and look, two Emmy nods as well. Whether you appreciate that sort of thing or not, this is a queen who has EARNED notoriety, and has worked his curvaceous ass off since he was scarcely a teenager. Someone who knows who he is (and does not care whether you call her he or she) and what he wants - you can really see it in some of the vintage vids available on YouTube (bonus if you click: Mama Ru's own mama, BUBBLE WRAP DANCING - and about 3/4 of a second of Ru with a beard - and I mean growing out of his face, not the metaphorical merkin).

Though there is the epic point-missing of not pointing out the incredible transformations on display every single week, times however-many-contestants-remain, take a look at some reasons to love RDR here. Go. Do. Enjoy! Gerald would.

Tools

There are times it frustrates me when people say they are atheists because of what people have done in the name of religion. PEOPLE do dunderheaded things in the name of all sorts of things, and though religion does have extreme examples, there are also extreme idiots (Richard Dawkins) screaming passionately about their atheism. He's as dangerous as any other zealot; and that is the issue: zealotry in human hands is the problem. Not G-d.

To withdraw belief in G-d because of human behavior honestly bewilders me.

It's like me and not having kids.


I never had children because I never experienced the bone-deep desire - the *urge* (so named because of its *urgency*)  to have a child.

This seems to me the very best of reasons never to have them. There have been other thoughts on the matter that have been a part of my life, but at bottom it's the simple absence of need to procreate or adopt, to be a parent, that has been ultimately responsible.

So I can see, very easily, the absence of need for G-d ... and for faith.

But many of the atheists I know once HAD faith - and lost it, because of other people. They experienced disillusionment and shame in religion, because of the jerks who espouse it (whether their own or not) and decided against G-d, because of man.

I suppose this is overwhelmingly arrogant: but this bewilders me.


Anything hideous ever done in the name of religion came about by the hands, and the tongues, of human beings.

Religion is a tool. It can be a poor tool, misused, No doubt about it. So can science and history; my blog is filled with examples of the wrongheaded invocation of history, the way we think it's some sort of plotline leading ever-onward to betterment, and how that must mean humanity now is the best humanity history has ever seen, because: history equals evolution.

Which: no.

So I ABSOLUTELY concur, that there are a hell of a lot of people out there blunting their blades, hammering with a tool meant to cut through confusion, or mistaking the philosophy and questioning of faith for final, firm truth.

But the idea that we then throw out all the tools, instead of sharpening or learning how to use them (for those interested in what those tools have wrought, or could) ...

Isn't that the very last word in Luddite behavior? "It's of no use to me and it scares me, so HULK SMASH!" ... ?



Again: yes. The tools of religion have hurt many people. So have the tools that created the thing we call culture, or advancement. Innovation requires tools.

For me, it is an innovation of the highest order to grow spiritually.

I tried to do that without tools, without a congregation, without inspiration. I ended up making up a lot of religious tools for myself. Offerings, prayers, little personal rituals.

And it got me to a point where I felt I wasn't really that good an innovator, and I needed the help of something outside my own wee and paltry brain.

I reached for religion. My church.

There I found the literally-angelic voice that perhaps inspired me most, but I also found Miss B., with whom I sat at yesterday's services. She was the first who ever welcomed me in the congregation, and she is the very, joyous definition of Christian fellowship. Not because we sit around quoting bible verses at one another. But because she saw me alone as a guest, and made me a member, as fully and as lovingly as education and confirmation and that bishop who laid hands on my head.

Religion, for me - as filled with ritual and script as my church is - is far less about dogma, and so much about communion: the communion of souls. Of just nice PEOPLE. Of congregation. Coming together, and sharing the sunshine yesterday. That is a religious act as profound as the eating of an intincted wafer.

I may still not be the craftsman, with my tools, that (oh, say) Jesus, who was a carpenter, was. But I am part of a team now, a crew, a congregation. Of people I honestly do love, though I spend little time with them of late. And appreciate and respect.

I found the phrase, "Okay, we're past the angelic robes and the beard and the penis, and we're onto something BIGGER!" one day over lunch ...

Faith and hope and growing spiritually? Yes, go big.

Why try for faith, without exultation?



What else is faith for but to bring us together as human beings, and what else, at bottom, does ANY religion foster? Even those religions we condemn as perverted - geared toward exclusion as much as inclusion - geared toward WINNING, and punishment of sin - still require one heart and mind to link to another, and another.

We're only human. We don't always do that well. We don't do it well in business or in study, in reaching goals or explaining them. It's not religion's fault.

And human behavior is human behavior - and flawed, as often as it is beautiful - in the pursuit of whatever it is we do to connect ourselves to others.

An ass in a choir robe is just as much of an ass once the robe is doffed and hymns are suddenly to blame for all that is wrong in the world. The robe didn't sin, neither (perhaps) did the hymn. They were there before disillusionment, and they'll be there after.



If I am a poor painter, I don't blame the brush; not even the paint. It lies within me to learn, or not. Perhaps it lies within me to know I'm a better writer than I am an artist.

But it's not the tools' fault, if I don't sell paintings for stunning pricetags.

The Rhythm of the Boogie the Beat

Janet's community has been at its best today, and inevitably it's all got me thinking. Thinking things like this ...

What a lot of us fail to see through our privilege is that "white is the default." I place that in quotes not for sarcasm, but because the words are not mine; they are at the base of #WeNeedDiverseBooks and the issues with diversity (not just in publishing, but I'm trying not to go off the rails here). I grew up understanding that whitneness is the signifying quality of American-ness, and never thinking about that. I lived in a suburb that was the product of white-flight, and went to a school named for a proponent of segregation and massive resistance. So-called "genteel racism" was (and even remains) not hidden.

THE major reason I decided to shelve The Ax and the Vase was that, no matter how good the writing is, nor even how interesting the story is: American publishing is not suffering from a dearth of tales of white dudes in power. There isn't a single POC in that novel, and I thought that was completely valid, and I WAS WRONG. I guilted about it, but didn't change it. The WIP is an entirely different matter.

... and this ...

Diversity is not an agenda.

Diversity is the reality of our world - in the past, where I write, in the present, in every part of the world, no matter what. There is diversity of age, of gender identification, of color, of religion, of tastes in ice cream, of economic/relationship/educational/class/intellectual status. We don't all have the same resources. There is no world without differences: yet many of us grew up not seeing that. Many grew up feeling invisible because "white is the default", and faces and voices of color were not proportionately seen and heard - even still, there's no money in it, as far as certain industries are concerned.

Dis-inclusiveness makes for poor writing. 

I write precisely because I want to see something of the word other than where I live. The inside of my navel would make an awful setting for a story. Story is for many readers not merely an escape, but a venture OUT - out of the day to day, out of what they already know, out of their own skin.

And diversity is not all about skin. Remember that it's much, much wider than "political correctness" or complaining about old white dudes. Old dudes need representation too, in cultures obsessed with youth.

Diversity is not a punishment for privilege, and it's not even the political rectitude so many who fear this punishment find so abhorrent. It's just the real landscape of the world we live in.

... and this ...

And too: diversity is not (only) about color/ethnicity.

I am mystified by those who can stomach Pandora bracelets or licorice or team fitness challenges. These things horrify me to a point it's hard not to think "You are doing it wrong" about those people who love this stuff. And I left out a lot - diversity in our health (mental illness and its challenges have been much on my mind of late), and stigmatizations that do not relate to ethnicity even tangentially. We "other" people for as many reasons as there are people marginalized or brutalized or CELEBRATED.

... and this ...

(D)iversity is not a quota system. There is no magic number to get all the people we're not to stow this talk of diversity.

Failure to include is the failure to reflect the world. ... I grew up in Downtown White Flight, but one of my closest friends was a Black girl named Holly. She wasn't invisible; she introduced me to the concept of Michael Jackson outside of The Five, and when she did Rapper's Delight, I damn near fell over in awe at the speed of her singing-speech.

Diversity is not a didactic directive that we all have to write about POC/disabled/young/old/mentally ill/poor/disenfranchised/licorice-loving/religiously alternative/gay/differently pinky-toed people. It's the distillation of the point that if we're writers, and if we pretend that non-us people are invisible, we are failing in our WORK - failing to reflect the abundance of the world we live in, or the one we're trying to build.

"I came that they might have life, and have it in abundance." Why would we want to revel in limitation?

***


My own final comment above brings to mind something that has always bothered me in production design most particularly, but does happen in prose.

Historicals are especially plagued with this - prop masters get so carried away finding JUST the right clothes or home furnishings or cars, or location scouts just the right place to shoot, that any other period than the exact year of their story is neglected. Nineteenth century homes contain nothing from the seventeenth or sixteenth; girls in 1970s productions wear only Dorothy Hamill haircuts and wedgies;

The picture-perfect past is only ONE single slice of the past, one instant's place on a timeline: when, in life, we all have a lot of our own past around us right now. Why would not *our* past have had *their* past about them?

It's a silly view, and it's poor world-building. It misses out on the beautiful English Georgian portrait hanging in the home of an early twentieth-century Australian. In my own home alone, thirty percent of my furniture would be gone - and the home itself - if someone reconstructed my "set" strictly in 2016 terms.

And so it is a silly view, that the world had no black people in it, just because I wrote a novel set in ancient Gaul - that only one woman was club-footed, and maybe there was like one miscarriage as a sub-plot, and everybody was intelligent and overall healthy and all the same color.

And so it is a silly view, that all the Black people in America were offstage in the 1950s, waiting for the Civil Rights movement and Jimi Hendrix and Oprah to give them stories to tell. It is a silly view, that Black people exist only in the context of cotton fields and The Cotton Club.

It is no view at all, and no voice. It is the brutality of non-seeing, of rendering people and lives invisible. Some of those people might be white, or rich, or men named William. Diversity is many things.

But a lack of it is only one thing: a bloody bore to read.


***


Edited to add this: PLEASE consider going to the link to Janet Reid's blog. It is not a short read, because today we commented unfettered, and the discussion was long. But the conversation is a glorious example of the best of human interaction, debate, conversation. It closes with thoughtful words from the lady herself, our hostess, Queen of the Known Universe (QOTKU) - and comments are closed. So the thoughts it will provoke: bring them into your world. Bring them here, too, I would love that.

But, for now, Lord, it is night. G-d rest you all.

Metal, Man

Most of my life I've never 'been' anything - I don't make much of an effort on those things that earn cred-points to 'make you' this or that or the other label-thing.

I'm a huge fan of Trek, but still consider myself somewhat outside Trekdom because I'm not dedicated and have never been to a Con and so on. I'm something of a nerd, but have never played video games (do we even call them that anymore, or is the word "games" itself now the entire description of what once we had to refer to as electronic games and so on?) or achieved academically or committed sufficiently to this, that, or the other geek-cred.

As with my association with subcultures throughout my life, I get in there from time to time, but I'm never a member.

I'm not even an 80s metal head.

When I was in high school, I thought I was a hippie but wasn't ... and thought I liked New Wave but wasn't all the way there ... and had friends into hair bands, but was shy of its brashness ... and, again: I wasn't anything.

The blurb under my bio? "I contain multitudes" ... ? In a way, it's both a brag and a lament. My personality is multifarious, nonconforming - but then, it's also a bit jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none.

It's fun to brag that my first two concerts were The Clash's Combat Rock tour and Bowie (I often don't point out that was Serious Moonlight - but still - I saw all the cool concerts). But I wasn't fully in with either of those crowds either.

When I met Beloved Ex late in 1987, and began a seven-ish year stint With the Band, I actually, finally, gained a bit of cred in the one place I've ever had it. And even that - by proxy, of course.

I spent those years gigging right along with BEx and the band. I even ran lights for them a time or two (not my first time; I did major in theater - and that comment that I was part of the Rhythm Nation refers to one of the best shows I ever did run lights for - a dance concert, set to the album). I helped set up and break down, I sold what swag they had from time to time, I absolutely acted a bit as an ambassador. It never hurt those guys to have a fox dancing and "WOO!"ing up front, getting others to actually form a crowd around the stage.

When BEx worked with a radio station on an in-house band called The Wham Bam Thank You Band - I was (by the radio guys we palled around with) called The Ma'am. My chagrin at the time was entirely faked.

So that post label, the one marked 80s Bimbastic Glory? It's the one label-claim I actually feel I can make. Yeah, it's a joke (I wasn't a bimbo, I just played one for the band). BEx and I were both actually pretty conservative, well-bred, nice kids. He was a bashful and mannerly corn-fed boy who opened doors for me and treated me right.

On stage, of course, he was a whole 'nuther story.

And so, I got my cred.



I have a soft spot for metal, and all those things we're supposed to find risible - or, worse, sanctify as part of My Youth - because it's been That Many Years since they were happening (both in the temporal and the hip senses of the term). Not all metal was born in the 80s and not all its musicians had the bad hair. (I had bad hair myself, but not because it was big.)

Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden, AC/DC - I love some of the greats, and some we are supposed to consider not-so-great. Hell, years ago I saw Sebastian Bach - specifically to gawk at whoever would go see him past his sell-by date, and possibly to throw some Silly String around the venue - and hell if he didn't smack my attitude down by sounding good. Still an asshat, of course. But the guy can sing, and that's his job. My hat was off. G'wan, Sebastian Bach.

More recently, the same friend and her husband and I went to go see The Cult. And Ian Astbury was great, they were tight, and it was a wonderful show, we had a great time. I could have lived without seeing that one guy from my past, but the music? My jam. That was an excellent show.

I still love this stuff. I don't OWN enough of it, of course, but then I don't own enough Janet Jackson nor *any* Loretta Lynn, nor much else of a lot of the music I love either.

Judas Priest. Jeebers, and by Priest, I mean only where Rob Halford is involved. Because - Halford! It's a rock shout unto itself, his name. Woo!

Dio. Aww. Ronnie James Dio. Tell me any fan who doesn't go all AWW when they remember him. He was the best manner of spectacle - and he seems also to have been a great guy, a nice one. Aww, Ronnie James Dio. Rest in Peace - or in mayhem, if that is more fun for a rock god, man.

And Zeppelin.

I have a hard time with Zeppelin, because - I mean, Jimmy Page once basically attemped to own a little girl for a year or two. Pretty much did. And how HIDEOUSLY horrifying. How sick, and way beyond rock-and-roll demented. It's all the worse, given he's all but internationally deified, and grey hair has conferred upon him forgiveness for all sins, if not English sainthood ...

But damn me if I can or will cut Led Zep's music out of my life. "Thank You" alone has some deep roots in my memories, and I can't excise those, nor do I care to.

And of course "Whole Lotta Love" - the performance of which is a major factor in my saying BEx on stage was a whole 'nuther guy above. I saw people who'd known him as my dorky boyfriend witness him on stage and just about die of shock.

On stage, Beloved Ex was one hell of a rock star.

He was a GREAT front man, a talented singer, guitarist, bass player, AND writer.

His spelling was the pits, but that was dealt with in the divorce.



I feel the need to get out in my car with the fantastic JVC sound system (once it gets past factory standard, it's a "sound system" not a stereo) and listen to something really loud.

I'd do it in the house. But Gossamer tends to jump.

Aww. Gossamer. Even more loveable than Ronnie James Dio. And that is saying something.

Be a 'Vert - We Need More 'Verts!

Talking with Cute Shoes recently, she was dreading some upcoming events and saying "I am such an introvert."

Knowing what a charming and successful woman CS is, and having been friends with her now for a few years, I was drawn up short at the assertion she is an introvert; I know few people who can better handle others, and I know too how confident she is in managing them when it is called for. But, thinking about it, I understood what she meant.

It's a bit like me and math. I was good at it as a student (current status - unknown), but good lordy did I hate it.

Social situations can be the same.

And, as much as some people who know me - and don't - will smirk at the idea, I am a default introvert myself.

Put me in a situation with people, I do well; I trained at the knee of my mother, a woman with the most remarkable *memory* for other people's lives I have ever seen, but also open and eager and extremely interested in making connections with others. And yet - at bottom, my mom is not actually confident. She is at times not unlike the nervous little girl I remember being; standing before the door of a friend's house, wanting them to come out and play, yet finding the doorbell suddenly overwhelming.

But take away other people, give me no daily schedule of discipline - office, errands, and so forth - and I'd scarcely ever leave my house.

My default operational status is "Sit. Stay." I quite love people. I even enjoy being sociable.

But, given no specific motivation to be among them? I will not be. I'll be home with Penelope and Gossamer.

Being "on" with others can be strangely physically exhausting. I come home from the Conference most years with a migraine, and a major area of stress for me with The Big Meeting recently was the need to be in the front of the room so much, even if I wasn't a speaker. To work with the hotel, to field questions and issues, to confer with executives on issues and practicalities.

Extroversion is exciting, it's rewarding. It can be fun, it can be surprising.

It's invariably exhausting, for some of us.



I'm not sure whether I can identify where on the spectrum of INTROVERT <---------------------> EXTROVERT I actually lie. Perhaps it varies; a sine wave of energy versus hermit-ly resting.

Are you more one than the other? Are you both, depending upon circumstances? Or are you both, but sometimes circumstances don't quite match your level of social energy as you wish it would ... ?

LGBT History - and My Culpability

Tom Williams welcomes Christopher Hawthorne Moss for a very good post, looking at another "invisible" population in history (and contemporary historical writing).  One of the personal conflicts I had in writing The Ax and the Vase, along with the fact that it's yet another European royal, is that the sole glimpse of a gay relationship is pretty graphically negative.  I could have rewritten the pejorative legend of Ragnachar, I could have found another way to handle it - but ... I didn't.  He was an archetypal villain in all the sources, and as I felt my way around the limits of the "fiction" in my historical fiction, somehow I just did not find the time to redeem this character.

This isn't a small matter of passing guilt, either.  It's something I have contemplated for years now, and something I hope to be able to address and to face with readers and with the world I live in - both explicitly and by a more general example.  I also expect to find more freedom in future works, not least because (at least at the moment) I don't have any more novels which will be written first-person from the POV of a ... well, a bigoted white king.  Clovis had charisma - and I consider his story necessary and fascinating - but let it not be said he suffered from a gapingly open mind, by the standard I expect of myself.

Even as much as I believe in Ax, I believe that this part of it - that accepting the historical propaganda against the one character who indulged non-heterosexuality - is problematic, and I expect to answer for it as Ax comes out.  In the meantime, consider Moss's work - and Tom's.  And give me time.  If I don't redeem Ragnachar, maybe I can redeem myself with future works.

Collection

Have you ever heard of Jan van Rymsdyk?  An artist of the most arresting work and a most intriguing life as well.  His most famous works depict the unborn ... as drawn, not from life, but from death.  Theirs and their mothers.  Eighteenth century ethics may make this link a squick-inducer - yet the work is undeniably arresting, and poignantly skillful.

Believe it or not, murder holes and other castle defenses may make for a lighter post.  A quick study in Castles 101, from English Historical Authors - and the second link here, this week, courtesy of Maria Grace.

"Why ... do we continue to airbrush black Africans out of Tudor England?"  This is a good question, as their presence in Tudor England is undeniable and very interesting; as an American, I had no idea the population included enough for records to indicate actual complain about there being "too manie" (the implications of which are a study unto themselves, especially for an American; this inescaspably brings to mind the image below).

"Willem van Heythuysen" by Kehinde Wiley
Image:  Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

(In searching for the image above, I found this one, which is beautiful.  Completely unrelated to this post - but very much worth a peek.)

I don't always find "bloodthirsty Roman" portrayals any more persuasive, if I'm honest, than I do the portrayals typically bandied about for "barbarians" - yet, because Romans even a couple of millennia on, still seem to induce a state of breathless fandom for so many, I do give less glowing assessments of their worth equal time.  Here we have them as headhunters, courtesy science, a lot of skulls out of Londinium, and the BBC.  Charming lot, those Romans.  Still, getting past the tendency to put white or black hats on or favorite or least-favorite historical populations, the forensics are still a draw.  If I really needed to cheer complete strangers on - or revile them - I'd be watching the Super Bowl.  (Tonight at my house, Sherlock on the PBS Roku box.)

And now, BBC journalists:  may we please discuss and define such slippery terms as "headhunters" and publish further findings which might explain exactly what happened to these men?  The meat here is missing.  Literally and figuratively, yes ...

Speaking of Rome - as we who read any sort of history are wont to to - yet another book I may need to pile on my toppling tower of TBR.  It's Peter Heather, it's my period (both for Ax and for the WIP), it's some of my CHARACTERS.  *And she sighs quietly to herself, resigned to need more books*

Preying and Hoping - the Difference

When I wrote The Uncensored Post, it had been my intention to follow up pretty quickly with a post about men which would put the negativity and outrage into better perspective, but time and inspiration have gone against my doing so to this point.  For that, my apologies, but now is the time.

Though a feminist and avowedly, publicly so, I have never fit into that half-delirious stereotype so many men *and* women fear, who refuse the label for themselves, or outright revile it for everyone.  I'm not a humorless, man-hating creature, out to set traps so I can consider men to be failures in one context or another.  Indeed, I never quite got over the eager proneness of my innocence, to indulge in crushes, and I was every bit as boy-crazy as any other kid when I was one.  It's just that my ability to find objects to crush on was refines with age, and my ability, too, to stick a landing so to speak - to stick with *one* crush (permanently) - reached an apex and hasn't fallen back down.  It's something of a privilege (and relief) of age.

Fun fact:  my very first crush of any kind, before I even had any idea of romantic interest, was Muhammad Ali.  I was about four or five - and he was right:  he was beautiful.

So on to the point, then.

Just now, in the grocery store (oddly enough - given how I was going on about grocery stores in that first post), I was approached by a guy.  (I say guy rather than man because, as young as he was, I feel almost squicky referring to him as fully mature, because I feel a certain need to repel myself from any hint of cougar-dom.)  He asked me what gym I work out at (I was wearing a knit cami and my "dog-walking" pants).  I laughed I'd been playing with my dog, and moved easily on.

The key to this encounter:  he let me move on, no further interest shown, no question, not even a backward glance.  It was fairly clear he was gauging his own possible level of attraction, but when the message came that there was not prospect, he stopped completely.  Passed him again a few minutes later, and zero "signals" of any kind.

The phrase men need to remember:  NO HARM/NO FOUL.  Now, most of us can live with a guy taking a shot.  As human beings, we'd never procreate at all, if  nobody approached anybody else, ever.  If there were no physical attraction.  It is vital to our humanity to make connections where none existed before.  The only problem is when there is no availability but that is ignored.

Persistence is a virtue - but a woman has an absolute, hermetic right to refuse and even to rebuff overtures.  So do men - and, in full disclosure, I have been rejected myself in making an approach.  Since I was eighteen (I remember the first time), I have been the one who started an approach which resulted in a relationship.  I get hit on, sure - but for pretty much all the significant relationships of my life, I initiated first contact.  That boy I watched Tootsie with.  The one I was sure I'd marry, senior year.  Beloved Ex.  That one with the metrosexual pants, whom a few folks were sure was gay (he was not).  Mr. X, in fact, has told me a hundred times he never would have crossed that room when I smiled at him, because he was sure I must be with somebody.  Shameless flirting is not enough.  So I just get pointblank.  There have been occasions it didn't work for me.  But I've been pretty lucky.

When someone says, though, "I have a girlfriend" or makes some demurring remark - I do precisely what I would expect and require any man to do in kind:  I let the heck go and either depart completely or change the subject.  Flatly.  The idea of pushing through a show of not being wanted is bewildering to me.

But our culture, unfortunately, has this "hard to get" practice, which renders BS in a man's mind any show of reluctance from a woman to his desires.  Even worse, there are women who actually *do* play hard to get.  (I don't mean to presuppose all games are terrible and must be forgone - but this one has created more problems than it can possibly be worth, and there are safer ways to tease someone you wish to keep on a hook; so "worse", above, isn't precisely a moral judgment ... even if I do find that dynamic personally worthless.)  So we've institutionalized the idea that "no" doesn't mean no, and that subtler signals, lord help us, might only be gaming cues.

I am again fortunate in that it is not typical for me to be outright misunderstood by anyone exhibiting interest.  In the past, I have indulged in ostentatious Ice-Queenery to get a point across, and when truly pressed, I've been able to provide acrobatically nimble rejections which leave no doubt and no room for further pressing.

Not all women are fortunate enough to have confidence enough that they're allowed to say no, never mind blessed with a pair of parents who taught them by unwitting but unremitting example just how to do it effectively.  I was given, and understood, boundaries from the earliest age.  It was also demonstrated to me in no uncertain terms that as a human being - as a girl - I had boundaries of my own, which were to be defended.  To some extent, this was a religious imperative imposed on a virgin daughter - but it was also the simple worth and value with which I was treated from the moment of my birth.  I was worth something, and nobody had a right to the core of me in any way, without my consent.  Ever.

Through my life, I have found men who did not plough over that worth, but who admired and valued it too.  That boy, that first love, that Beloved Ex - and Mr. X.  All of them responded to my sense of self with instinctive support, not some adversarial imposition of *their* sense of self as if it were an opposing force.

Not one of these men was in the slightest an emasculated nor submissive person.  As I expect not to be halved nor dominated, I do not reduce nor dominate either.  Beloved Ex and Mr. X, to be sure, are almost stereotypically manly - in all the good ways.  BEx has the warmth and comfort in his own skin I associate with manliness - with, indeed, the very model of manhood in my life, my own dad.  Who, himself, was no milquetoast.  He was passionately in love with my mom from the moment he found her, and was never anything less nor the worse for it.

No man has ever been diminished by emotional commitment to his partner.  Indeed, the measure of a real man (and a real woman) is the person who can give themselves completely and not see it as submission, as any negation of self.  To give fearlessly.

And I like:  real men.

I like them a very great deal indeed.



Edited to add that, ironically, this episode of Voyager happened to come up on my queue just after this post was finished.  Somewhere between Fatal Attraction and Trek, we have another character violating a crew member.  At least it wasn't Deanna getting raped again this time.  Voyager has a way of inverting the explorations of human relationships done on some of the other series.

No More Preciousness

For ten years now, particularly online, I have refused to enter my birthday in any profiles.  At jobs, I try to act as if I have no birthday.  I'm proud of my age, have earned every second of 45 years ... but ...

Ten years ago, my father died on my birthday.  And for ten years, it's been an awkward revelation and conversation every time.

In the state he was in at that time, I would not have had my dad live one single more day just to clear off "my" little day.  The fact that the two things share an anniversary is not a point of sadness for me; I was already at an age where celebrating a birthday like a five-year-old was silly, and in our family birthdays are anything but a religious event anyway.  But our culture encourages birthday parties for middle aged people, and office culture in particular enforces expectations of celebration and recognition I can tell you (particularly/even as the admin) it can be surprisingly difficult to get around.  And I really don't give much of a hang about happy birthday stuff, on its own merits.  But when you tell people what else happened that day - it is incredibly embarrassing for them.  It is also, if not emotionally painful, simply an unpleasantry I would prefer not to bring into public awareness.

So for this past decade, my strategy has been to take time off on my birthday.  This year being the tenth, I took off a lot of time in fact.  From yesterday through Monday (the anniversary of his memorial service - and, though I won't get too personally-identifiable-information about this, the birthday of someone else in our family).  Yesterday, I spent alone - the first time since dad died.  With the two of us in the same town, most often I spend the day with my mom.  We talk a bit about dad, sometimes we get sad, usually we laugh at some point.  But it's not as hard as it was the first few years, and last year we didn't talk about him a lot.

This year, we hardly mentioned him at all, and spent today together instead of yesterday.

So the secrecy or at least evasiveness about my birthday, over time, has become itself as much of an embarrassment as the conversation that usually makes other people regretful and embarrassed and contritely sympathetic when they find out.  I hate doing that to people, but yesterday I realized that over time the balance has shifted for me off of "this is about me" and wanting to just avoid it to "the not-telling is as stupidly dramatic as the telling, and I've gotten good enough at deflecting other people's at-a-loss emotional reactions to this accident of facts that I'm going to stop not-telling."

So.

Yesterday was my birthday.  And the day I lost my dad.  He was peerless and funny and wildly intelligent and the best dad in the business.  I was blessed to have his gruff, warm voice in my life for 35 years to the day, and say prayers of thanksgiving for him perhaps every day of my life.  He was a parent to be grateful for, and I am sorry that in his name I have to make people awkward from time to time.  But it is time to stop the game playing.  My name is Diane - and something truly awful happened on my birthday ten years ago.  And that is not about me.

Penelope

The housecleaning is almost done, and it'll be time for a bath pretty soon!  In two hours, I'll be adopting Pen, and she'll be home tonight.  I've had a little "pre-wedding jitters" - worrying I won't be the best mom for her, soberness in the face of taking the commitment for a little sweetheart's life - but the light of day often cures the frets of wee-hours insomnia.

... and such light we have today.  It's the kind of day my dad always greeted with a deep intake of breath, and either the joyous description of "glorious!" or "dazzling."  Actually, glorious was probably more his word.  But *I* think it's pretty dazzling.  That lightly cool, clear, bright and beautiful October gorgeousness this region produces in the most special, verdant, rich and fire-limned way.

It is a fine day to bring home a new girl.


***


Ten years ago this month, I welcomed Siddy to this house, to my hearth, to *her* home.  She had a certain canine elegance; she was a beautiful, funny, deeply soft girl.  Penelope has such juvenile *cuteness* - such wonderful goofy ears, such a bouncy-jouncy tail.

But both of them have a "soulful" gaze - the number of people who've said that to me, in separate contexts, does strike me.   Everyone who knew her sees Siddy in Penelope's big brown eyes.

I miss my old baby girl.

I'm excited to fall in love with the new liddle-liddle pup.

Music, Privilege, Cultural Appropriation, and My (Lack of) Cool

A friend and I got in a chat about music recently, and it illustrates about me one of those "I contain multitudes" aspects which I cultivate and love for keeping me from sinking into (pop-/cultural) stagnation, but of which I tend not to make a very public point.  I tend to be extremely sensitive to my state of privilege and the extent to which moving outside its generally-defined boundaries  is less a mark of nonconformity or sensitivity, and more a mark of cultural appropriation.  So, while I sometimes enjoy surprising people by knowing diddly-squat about those things outside my prescribed limits (and knowing nothing about, say, Josh Grobin and many of those things I am supposed to give a crap about), I never ever claim ownership nor expertise on art, and particularly music, especially that born of those lacking the level of entitlement my pigmentation and luck confer on me.

Friend:        i actually rediscovered one very good song recently
Friend:        not sure if you would like it though
D:               ohh what?
D:               Unless it's greasy contemporary country I'm probably in
D:               :-D
Friend:        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEHTTFOwsDs  
Friend:        its a hip hop song, but done with piano
Friend:        and its more moving than most
Friend:        its brings most people to tears or goosbumps
D:               I love hip hop.  And rap.
D:               It's a little sad, but I love Ice T and Snoop
Friend:        lol
Friend:        not really sad there, more funny
D:               well it might make THEM sad!
D:               :-)
Friend:        lol
D:               Nas is a good one for giving the occasional emotional goosebump too
Friend:        oh yeah he is
D:               That is one SMART man
D:               Who is this?  I'm not recognizing
Friend:        group by the name of atmosphere
D:               very nice
Friend:        he does a number of soulful songs
D:               His voice is sharp
D:               A lot of hip hop has become so produced its essence is lost
Friend:        which is why i hunt down the good ones
Friend:        k'naan is also a good one
D:               but you go back and listen to OLD scool - Rakim, or some of the guys like Nas who eschew new production and glitz
D:               it can really get you
D:               Rakim is dizzying.  
Friend:        need to look him up
D:               Definitely
D:               "Lyrics of Fury" will not lull you or feel beautiful but I think it's probably elementally Rakim
D:               he's failry early - and you can hear the forms which have since been used and debased
D:               It's perhaps a bit odd for me as a middle-aged, privileged white woman to act like I know anything, but when I really started listening I also did some reading as well because I wanted more than just to graze the edges.
D:               "It Was a Good Day" is a hair-raising song whose popularity sometimes obscures its power I think.  Coolio has done the same to himself.  He has serious talent but his hooks are so infectious you can miss it.

At the end of the day, it's all very self-congratulatory for a woman like me to preen about ... not precisely being a woman like me ... but it doesn't make me something *else* in any honest sense.  The culture of rap and hip hop aren't the fashion accessory some have succeeded in making out of it, and I don't want to be the insufferable dilettante accessorizing with cred I cannot legitimately earn.

So I like what I like.  Sometimes, I make a point of learning a little bit about it, out of respect and interest (this moves far beyond music; as a history and research geek, I've studied everything from the art and histopry of sari, to 19th-century jewelry, to the history of Catholicism in an effort to understand different things).  But usually, I just like what I like.  The Ices T and Cube can do with that what they like, which would probably be ignoring nits like me.  But I hope it legitimizes me, if not as a member of something I'm not, then at least as a consumer - and a member of the *whole* world I do live in.

Stunner

This week has been a stunner.  Good and bad and almost impossible to comprehend.  Four days later, I still can't even believe I saw X again.  Nothing is like laughter with him.  Nothing like a day in springtime.

Work has been almost beyond a challenge.

This morning I needed a coat, but it's been 90 degrees when I leave the office at the end of the day.  Outside right now:  thunder.

My head would be spinning anyway, but the throbbing is only one more thin peel in an endless onion's worth of layers.  It is Thursday night, 9:48.  One week ago right now, I was contemplating the possibility of seeing X again, and it'll be another hour perhaps before I can say it's been a week exactly.  Since I knew it would happen.  Since I began packing.  Since those hours which were the last ones in the almost three years since the last iteration of "the last time I saw him."

Four days since I actually saw him.  Four days ago, we laughed in the same room.  He left.  I got a good night's sleep, got on a grey and misty road, sped away ... from the last time I saw X.

I have hardly stopped moving in two months or so now.  Family visit, RavenCon events, heavy work schedule, always a demand.  Weekend before last, the first "normal" (boring) one I have had in a long time.  If the life of a single, middle-aged woman is supposed to be dull with routine, I have been doing it all wrong.

Lots of writing (and de-writing), but little of it these past seven days.  The truth - none this week.

There'll be bastard-brother subplots to gut next.  The bit with the fever and trichinosis.  I still don't know how to rework the rape of the kinswoman and estrangement between comrades.  At least I know how just to approach the work at all now, though.  More than I had for all too long there.

This weekend, I want to spend time with a friend.  Be steward of my hearth and home.  Get outside on a warm night, for loud music.  Come home, rest, and spend Sunday working on Ax.

Then time for the headaches again.

But, I suspect ... it'll be a long time again before another week peels away so many onion layers.


***


I still can't believe I saw Mr. X this week.  And now I can't believe I don't see him anymore.  Mmmmmm.  Hm.

RavenCon

This weekend was not good for me in the direct, applied way JRW's conference is, but even if only for the Wordsmith's workshop, I got a lot out of it for my writing.  I'm histfic, of course - not fantasy nor sci-fi - but the disparity in genres can be thin enough to become irrelevant.

I don't tend to do a lot of writing exercises, but the 55-word story was one of a bunch we did yesterday, which limbered up the muscles.  Equally as stimulating was the fact that I was lucky enough to attend with Leila.  It was she who gave me the 60-page cut late last year, and it was in a brainstorming session she and I were having I found at least two characters to cut entirely.  The 'smithing workshop also inspired me to tighten the opening scene right to a key event which should not be delayed by any intervening scenes.

So great stuff, and more inspiration than domestic sanitation or much of anything else this weekend.  Heh.  The house is a sty, but I did get some hand laundering done, and there are still socks and underwear enough to get me through the week.  Maybe even a few bits of actual clothing too, of course.

Inevitably, I kept comparing RC to JRW, and of course JRW is my nearest and dearest authorial event.  BUT, though RC needs to build in small improvements in timing/transition, and I'm dying to see attendance improve over the next couple of years, there are actually some things JRW could pick up from RavenCon.  Such as:  the workshops.  JRW doesn't offer the short bursts of creativity like that, and it was invigorating to actually *write* at an event which, for me, centered so much on that aspect.  It doesn't have to be innovative stuff; we worked on The Six Word Story before taking five for the 55-er, and it's not like The Six Word Story or flash fiction is widely unknown, but writing exercises survive because, even for contrarians like me, tools are worth picking up sometimes.

Plus, as a break from fairly static Q&A panels, they provide a great deal of relief.  I was entertained by everyone's work, surprised by the pieces we read, inspired, pleased.  The laser focus on *language* was incredibly appealing.  More than anything, having an active role in a session, which we tend not to do apart fro Q&A at JRW, was hugely engaging.

For me - for my writing - engagement is so deeply important.

Passion, or Love?

Writers talk about passion all the time, and there are quite a lot who talk about love, in discussing the creation of their characters.  Working on Clovis' emotional urgency, I've been thinking about this a good deal lately.

Being a middle-aged suburban hausfrau ... Clovis has never been an avatar for me.  He's not in any way my "ideal", someone I wish I could be, nor wish I could know or be with personally.  Characters are so often an expression of desire on the part of an author (or writer or 'Nartist) they often become meaningful in a very real emotional way for their creators.

For me, the emotional power of my characters is ... very different.  Perhaps, rather than passion, what I get from the inspiration of my story or my characters, or even the setting in which they live, is ignition.  Something indeed burns - but it's not my heart, not even my sighing admiration for these people or what they do.  To this day (and I have lived with Clovis now something like seven or eight years in the making), I could not say definitively that I quite "admire" the king.

I have enormous respect for the character as he seems to me, and a deep liking born both within his story and from what I brought to telling it myself.  I am fascinated by the dynamic of his choices, his legacy, his unquestionable charisma, ambition, power, and accomplishment.  Clovis is both intimately familiar to me and still almost alarmingly alien.  There is an extent to which gaining too much affinity for the man he was (the character he is) doesn't appeal to me, as it would sink me so far into the work I'd never be able to deal with it honestly.

Finally, though "admiration" is a bit of a precious offering to put before someone as pungent and (dare I say this) frank as the old Frank.  It seems a bit twee - like leaving a frilly Valentine card for Attila the Hun.

Certainly, I don't fear my own creation.  He lit a fire in me, and I do confess a hope almost as potent as prayer I brought forth a little more than a glowing ember.  Along with the respect, the liking, comes immense gratitude as well - to have known this story, this monarch, this husband, this founder - and to have had the privilege of relaying his story.  If there is kinship at all, as an author, with the character, that is the link through which we are bound.  That I was the conduit here, that - if a subject chooses its teller, not the author in control - I should have been chosen for this story.  This fresh tale, so new for my audience - and yet so fundamentally riveting.


***


I sit here tonight, an afghan poorly bunched up behind my back, not supporting it nearly enough - and in more pain, I believe, than I've been in throughout the past month and a half - and there it is.

Ignition.  The passion of a girl who won't do pink love notes.  The inspiration of a woman who can take on a man like Clovis.

A Riddle or A Bet

There's a genre of philosophical posers, such as "What if ... we're all tiny tiny creatures, living on a speck of dust, inside someone else's freshman dorm room ... ?" and "Would you rather marry a woman you knew to be faithful, but all the world thought she was a whore - or marry a woman everyone honors as virtuous, though you know she is not true to you?"

For the most part, I can't really engage with stuff like this.

But sometimes ... I do chuckle rather dryly to myself (aridly ... positively sere) and think I live in my own answer to such a riddle.  "Would you rather be without a love more perfect for you than you would ever have dared ask ... ?"

Or.

Yeah, that's where I start the dry laugh.  Or be *with* - what?  Meh.  No way.

Erick has enough guilt over the distance between us he's wished in the past he could erase himself from my experience.  Even apart from the hideous usurpation of autonomy that represents to me philosophically - it's flawed remediation at its base.  He wonders whether I could have had a "better" life without him.

He simply can't believe that my life is more joyous that I could have ever prayed, since meeting him.  Yeah, I'm deprived of things it's not as if I don't complain about.  But what I would have been deprived of otherwise ...

No bet in the world, no stake, could ever make me take that wager.  There is no "better" than The Best.

What Was With the Redheads?

Tonight on my way home from work, my back caved-in in the poorly lumbar-supported rental car seat (note to self:  tomorrow, bring some sort of a pad), I was listening for the first time to "Mothership", a Led Zeppelin double-disc I bought recently.  Zep is one of those bands I overdosed on in high school, which - apart from my ex husband's unforgettable performances of "Whole Lotta Love" (that sweet-faced blue-eyed boy would have SHOCKED my mother ...) - I pretty much never listened to again.  Over the past ten years, hearing a scrap of Zeppelin here or there might refresh for me the idea they were an amazing band, but I am slow to respond to my own musical interests, and still luddite enough I like the artifact of recorded media packaged lovingly (heh) by a record company, so it was just this past month I finally Amazon'd my way back to these guys (also on that order - Highway to Hell, and Appetite for Destruction - apparently, I was in a bit of a mood).

Anyway, so No Quarter is echoing and grinding its slow way out of the speakers, the vocals distorted almost as if by being skipped over wavelets on wide, easygoing water, and all I can think to myself is ...  "This is some trippy-assed sh*t."

It often escapes my memory, what a hippie I thought I wanted to be - at least half of me - at least at times.  But for years.  Even in college, chasing around hints of The Shifters or boys who dug the Dead for a minute, I harbored amateur boho fantasies.  But in high school, I probably came much closer.

We had these friends, TEO and I.  The one who had his own apartment in his mom and dad's house ... wait a minute.  Really - all of them did.  The one who made his own party light, hooked to his stereo, and introduced my utterly baffled fifteen-year-old self to the original Hitchhiker's tapes.  The one who played Stairway in his "dungeon" (we didn't think it whatsoever ironic his permanently-nocturnal netherworld was located at the *top* of his family's house).  The one from Cleveland, who still is perhaps the finest Southern Gentleman I've ever met.

All these guys - redheads, too.  Must've been luck - but we had quite the trifecta of sorta nerdy, sorta brilliantly creative, off-the-beaten-path friends  Party Light Douglas Adams was my best friend.  Stairway guy, though, and his Dungeon, were in a way central for all of us.  I was in awe that he could play guitar and sound like the record.  Lord, the things that awe us when we are so innocent.  (If I have no love for the girl I was at 25 ... the bursting affection I feel for fifteen-year-old me is a strange ghost of what I feel for my actual niece; I am almost *protective* of this remembered, wide-eyed, open self I once was.)

There was always a hormonal undercurrent - we were kids - but the fact was, the ways we were learning to be friends in those years was incredibly chaste.  Lying around for hours alone or in little, intimate groups, there was always flirting and excitement - but most of us really didn't act on those things back then.  We would "go to the beach" - just literally half-trip our way through the music we'd listen to, who even needed to actually do drugs.

To be sure, some of our friends were pot heads and we knew it.  We took the amusingly maternal protective attitude toward it only a very young, innocent teenage girl can, and tried to save them, or tried to just get a sort of innocent high off of being friends with real hippies.  Most of the time, these guys didn't actually do anything illicit around us.  They were sweet boys, with habits we didn't entirely share, who took in response to our own attitudes, a somewhat indulgent and incredibly gentle rebellious attitude in response.  Stairway played his guitar.  Party Light played his prodigious album collection.  Southern Gentleman drew, often on his jeans - or ours.  We'd philosophize (and relentlessly crush on Stairway's younger brother).

TEO and I would eye each other from time to time.  "We are Dungeon Women" - it was simultaneously something incredibly innocent, looking at it from thirty years onward - and, at the time, forbidden enough it was deliciously sweet.  Yeah, we weren't doing anything wrong.  But we weren't doing anything wrong in these boys' *apartments* - all alone - and we called one The Dungeon, and we knew what these kids got up to without us.

We also knew they were good guys.  The appeal wasn't Bad Boys.  The appeal was being guardian angels, perhaps saving graces, for wayward ones.  Our own parents, not entirely ignorant that we knew people who smoked pot and other such habits as would have been our own sentences of Dreadful Consequences, never quite went so far as to protect us from them.

Well, after a couple of years, I was told Party Light was no longer an acceptable companion.  But, if I am honest, I'm not sure that was connected to any specific wrongdoing on his part.  Parents are parents, time goes on, and friendships do end.  Even when you are that young.


***


Tonight, listening to the siren song of druggie music - and loving it in the most amusingly wholesome, affectionate way - I remembered how much all this had meant to me, once upon a time.  How pleasurable my high school years were, because of those friends, the right ones, the ones who ("I'm sorry, I don't understand; it's a depressed ... robot ...  ...  Um, what??") introduced me to the right things, the ones who lapsed us into altered states just with music, the ones we used to love, and gave speeches to about being good, and who sometimes didn't need their little brothers around to have us half-dazed in love just because at fifteen being in love is what you do just being out in the world.

Or, as it may be - away from the world.  Completely.  Ensconced in a Dungeon - happily.

Adverbial Adversarial

A terrifyingly large segment of the publishing industry is flatly, inflexibly *against* the use of (existence of?) adverbs.  It's one of those things I've never understood.  Sure, "I am angry," he said angrily is a poor piece of writing.  But adverbs came into existence in our language for a reason.  They do a job which sometimes can't be done another way as neatly.  Ahem.  "It isn't necessarily so" does not mean the same thing as "It isn't so" - sometimes, adverbs provide important content.

I was really happy to see this, is my point.  It's funny I happened to find this in my Twitter stream just this morning, because I'd been thinking of a post just like the one I'm writing last night before I went to bed - so it's nice to see that no less an entity than Harper Collins chose to Tweet it.

Kevyn Aucoin (RIP) said one that there are NO absolute rules for a makeup artist.  Not one.  Many artists and experts have acknowledged that exceptions make most rules.  I tend to be of this opinion about writing - there is no subject which MUST never be touched - no rule which must never be broken - no way of doing things we must not, cannot try.

In high school, one of my best teachers said we were never to use the words "things" or "stuff."  I refer you to the final sentence in my paragraph above, regarding my adherence to this rule.  Mrs. V. was wonderful and amazing - and the purpose of rules is to teach us something.  But if we never move beyond what we learn in class, our writing will never gain depth beyond what is taught us.  Sometimes, learning must be done by other means than instruction-by-pedagogue.  Several of us chose to respond to Mrs. V. by trying to find ways to use the phrase "stuff of life."  It was the only defense against totalitarianism by someone we loved, and who let us rebel against her in this way because she was no moron.  Her rule did something important for the kids who needed it.  For those of us who pushed at her with a smile ... we learned another way.  And, in my case, I like to think I moved well beyond the need for limiting my concern to the use of elementary terminology.

Adverbs don't just make a sentence memorable, they change its meaning. Sure, there are many times when a more precise verb can narrow the gap in understanding—but some verbs can't be fine-tuned any further. A sigh is just a sigh, but anyone who has ever been in love knows how important it is to distinguish between when she sighs happily and when she sighs otherwise.

This is the role and value of adverbs.  We have adjectives for a reason - modification is *necessary* to our tongue.  True every bit as much of verbs as it is of nouns.  Nouns are not the only parts of speech which can own character so particular it needs to be explicated.  Verbs are not by nature so much more descriptive of themselves than nouns--so it is unfair to deny them the companionship, or support, of adverbial modification.

Less, yes, is always more.  But our language - maybe all language - comes with descriptors for a reason.  Cooking without basil might well ruin dinner tonight.  Likewise, paring creative writing down by removing an entire class of descriptiveness - of *creativity* - lessens what can be done with words.

Why any writer, editor, or agent really wants to see that - I've never properly understood.