soundtrack for this blog

street spirit (fade out)

look at this and smile

long days without responsiblity. what a cool place to be. i am writing so that is good. that is always good. it's weird and difficult to get into the head of a young guy who is depressed and scared. it's like method acting - it's method writing - and that makes it stressful because i don't want to be depressed or scared. but i have to go there to write him.

on itunes right now: yikes! it's not radiohead! it's muse, "time is running out."

maybe that's appropriate, since winter break is half over........

15 steps

on itunes right now: 15 steps, performed live at the greek theater.

okay, i have started the gawain/the bends story. began in new york. i have so many pieces to put togehter, but of course this is the fun part, the creative part. my ok:novel is out being read. i can't do anything with it right now. so i am getting inside gawain's head.

boy is that a feat. me, getting inside the head of a 21 year old boy. this should be quite a ride.

listening to lennon

after so much thom yorke, i felt i had to listen to one of his influences. i asked for, and received, Lennon Legend cd for xmas. so right now, on itunes, is "jealous guy."

i also, music-wise, received the following: snow patrol, red jumpsuit apparatus, alkaline trio, muse and taking back sunday. think my 14 year old son had anything to do with those choices?

also got the dvd, Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man. i saw it in the theater and am thrilled that i can watch it again. highlights - rufus wainwright singing hallelujah, and a duet with cohen and bono.

in a kind of post xmas lull. but i need to write. going to nyc was inspirational for my novel. gotta grab that energy and go with it. so enough blogging.

blame it on the falling sky

gawain - in in new york

my new york diary of gawain, who is clearly not meant to be in nyc:

I don’t think this is the place for me. There are too many people. They are all dressed dark, in black coats. Bulky. And they all move through the streets, sidewalks, with these faces filled with purpose and they look angry. I thought they were angry at me. I tried to stay out of their way but its hard and I bumped into people a lot.

Once I tripped over a stroller, I thought the mother would kill me with her glare.

Johnson wants to meet in times square and I take the subway there. That was enough of an adventure, I wanted to go back to the hotel just to get out from underground. I bought a ticket at the machine and I wasn’t sure what to buy or how much it would cost and people in line behind me were more and more annoyed. I hurried, I did, but I wasn’t fast. Then I had the ticket and didn’t know what to do with it. I had to wait, and watch someone else; oh, I see. You pass it through the slot on the entrance gate.

And then wait for a train and the ones on the other side, going the other way, they are so loud, I reflexively covered my ears. And then felt like an idiot, no one else covered their ears. I felt like I was four years old. I forced my hands back down to my side, but my ears suffered the more for it. Incredibly loud and discordant and painful. Not like loud music. Just loud screeching and metal rubbing against metal and a whine that would shame any monster who thought he had a frightening scream.

-----------------------
on itunes right now, appropriately: my iron lung

new york

a bar, i sat in a bar. i never go to bars. i had a ginger mojito and am not entirely sure what that is. i drank probably 1/10th of it. dinner at a nice italian restaurant. joanne and jim and sam and benett, holly, billy, aaron and carson. we missed richard. walked past the dakota. haven't really left the upper westside yet, but will tomorrow - times square and herald square.

a bar. me in a bar.

how to disappear

playing on itunes right now: how to disappear completely.

thom yorke said in one interview that this song is his favorite of all they've done. it was also used in the movie, "life as a house," and came as a surprise to me when i watched the movie recently. (my husband, on hearing me exclaim about a radiohead song in the movie, threw up his hands and said, "of course!")

i tried to work on gawain, my musician character, but he's not ready or i'm not ready yet. i'm still in the ok:novel story, my head is in that. i have a couple of people reading it for feedback, and i feel poised, waiting to hear what suggestions and comments they have, and what i still need to do for it. so i'm in a holding pattern.

but - going to new york in two days. and what will happen, of course, is that i will have to write a new york scene. either in ok:novel or in the gawain novel. in fact, maybe that will jump start gawain! yeah.....that's what i will do, start out in nyc. cool.

over on the right, that painting, is by my husband, richard sedivy. his show with 15 of these paintings opens on january 13, at hunsaker/scheslinger fine art, in bergamot station, santa monica. exquisite and evocative paintings. you must see them in person, there are details that don't show up in a photo.

silent sunday

sunday afternoon and it is very quiet. nothing on itunes. nothing on tv (that my son would be watching, not me, not on a sunday afternoon). in my head i am singing "winter wonderland" and wish i could stop singing it.

go to my links list, and click on speed of dark and scroll down to find the parody of "bohemian rhapsody" but about xmas. very amusing.

i hate the sunday paper because they print obits of young men and women who died in iraq over the last week and it breaks my heart to see 18 year olds, 22 year olds, and they are gone. stupid, stupid war. i know all the reasons for not pulling out all at once (stability, fairness to the iraqis, etc.) but i don't really care. i think all the troops should just come on home.

i want the bumper sticker that reads, "Stewart/Colbert 2008: or the terrorists win"

android not paranoid?

slowly the clock is watching. watching me? slowly what?
how is that adverb doing any ad-ing to anything? this is not a series of questions.

today the paranormal demanded attention but i didn't give in. live in the real world, i said to it. it declined and dripped away. why can't you write like music, i heard it say. i have no answer to that. so i hold my head in my hands. why can't i? rising up from the bass line, i hear sine waves. i do, i hear them. they oscillate. if i had an oscillator, i would trace their ryhthm and show you. i will trace the sounds of this song and draw it for you.

on itunes right now: paranoid android. of course...

snakey ladders

okay, consider this question. a student asks me for ONE radiohead song that he should listen to, to get a taste of what radiohead is about. Try picking one!

ultimately, i chose "exit music" because i know this student likes show tunes, and i thought this might have enough drama in it to appeal to him. another student suggested "creep" since that was their big hit. i also thought of "just" and "karma police." and of course i can think of many others and make a case why they would be good...

because it is not the weekend, i have not been writing. because the weekend is now so close, i am eagerly looking forward to spending some time writing.

on itunes right now: "sit down, stand up (snakes and ladders)"

just a thought

immerse your soul

on itunes: iluvya, from thom yorke's spitting feathers japanese import ep. phew, that's a lot of words for a short cd.

it's weird and disco-y. back in the 70's i put on fashion shows and would look for music just like this (well, the 70's version of this) as background for the fashion models on the runway. this would have been appropriately weird and interesting for the more avant garde designers, in particular the japanese. remember commes de garcon? like that.

i got my tattoo! the tree, and around the ankle, "immerse your soul in love." the tattoo artist added some flourishes to make everything connect all the way around the ankle. it looks beautiful. i will take a picture of it and post it, when the redness has disappeared a bit more.

my singer/songwriter guy is knocking on the inside of my head. what a weird image. he might be named Gawain. his mother might have had a penchant for naming her children after the knights of the round table. Gawain is a good name, since the knight was idealistic and loyal and also naive. that would fit my character. look, see how he is encroaching on my brain? i have to work on his story over winter break. he'll never forgive me if i don't. here's the thing - his story will be written to The Bends. the last song on The Bends is Street Spirit. The last line in Street Spirit is "immerse your soul in love." see how it all ties together? life is like that. my life is, anyway.

oh, wow, and see, Street Spirit just came on itunes, too!

so in honor of gawain, a poem from, oh, let's say Rilke. what a surprise. here is the first (beautiful) line from the First Elegy:

Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me
suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed
in the overwhelming existence.

tattoo you, tattoo me

on itunes right now: "like spinning plates" - the live version on "i might be wrong" ep

thinking about a new tattoo. think i've got it. think i'll go for it this weekend. a simple tree design at my ankle and then around my ankle, like a bracelet, the words "immerse your soul in love" - from "street spirit." in the cool font that's on the street spirit ep. well, first i have to see how much it costs! the tree is definite however.

oh, now "idioteque" is playing. if only i could spell it.

i renamed the titles of my chapters. now they are the ok computer titles in parentheses, and my titles above them. i like it, they resonate off each other and i think it's stronger than just the ok computer titles alone. merges the two.

and i think i am almost done. i am going to go through it a few more times, now and during the winter break, and then i think i have to declare it finished. onward to an agent. shit and wow. but then i can move on to my young singer/songwriter dude in "the bends." he's pushing at me to tell his story. and i also must get back to loralie, whose basic story is finished but needs a great deal of polish, spit and shine. i have things to do! why am i writing my blog??

back to save the universe

The Grammys were announced and The Eraser is nominated for 'Best Alternative Album'

some good competition, too: Arctic Monkeys, Flaming Lips, Gnarls Barkley and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. all good, yet strangely, i want thom to win. will he even attend the awards? will they ask him to play or is he not "exciting enough?" (many years ago, when radiohead was up for a grammy, it was decided by the academy that they weren't a very visually appealing band and wouldn't be good for the ratings.)

in other categories, i found red hot chili peppers up for at least two awards (maybe three, i didn't print out the list). I really hope they win a grammy; stadium arcadium is a totally cool album. "snow (hey oh)" alone is worth the price of the two-disc album!

on itunes right now: exit music from when they played at the greek theater in la, back in june.

thom rocks out

check this out on youtube. red hot chili peppers on the jools holland show. thom rockin' out. about 58 seconds in. but watch the entire thing, cuz rhcp are great, too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnL6gQRabD0

we alone fly past all things

i am waiting for something. i don't know what. writing is not appearing from my fingers onto the computer screen. i feel like i am taking a deep breath just before i plunge in again. i hope so! i hate writer's block, it pisses me off.

it's a night for rilke, from the duino elegies, the second elegy:

lovers, if they knew how, might utter strange, marvelous
words in the night air. for it seems that everything
hides us. Look: trees do exist; the houses
that we live in still stand. We alone
fly past all things, as fugitive as the wind.
And all things conspire to keep silent about us, half
out of shame perhaps, half as unutterable hope.

wishing and hoping

proof that they are in the studio, working on their 7th album - look at dead air space to see photos (one here) of the lads at work.

on itunes while i look at the photos: you and whose army

oh no, i said too much

i actually didn't play radiohead for a while on sunday afternoon. i played rem instead.

i like rem, i like the songs, the place they take me back to. but i am now officially spoiled by radiohead. rem sounds simple to me, musically. there is not the rich texture and complex guitar parts as there is in radiohead songs.

this is not to say rem has bad songs. just that i must stop comparing anyone to radiohead. i should just have two categories: radiohead and everyone else. then i can rate all the "everyone elses" as good or bad, better or best. but radiohead are outside that rating. i can think of nothing, save some late beatles work, that i can listen to over and over again, and still hear something i hadn't heard before - that's what radiohead music is.

i played ok computer repeatedly for about two months while i wrote to it and i kept (and keep) discovering new elements in each song.

so, sorry rem. i love "stand" and "end of the world as we know it" and others. but it's not the same love i have for radiohead's music. a separate love all its own.

are you such a dreamer?

on itunes right now: 2+2=5

all day long, the line in my head, "are you such a dreamer?"

i spent too much free time poking around the net and finding all kind of miscellaneous radiohead stuff: concert bootlegs, photos, massive amount of personal opinions. i have to say that the message board on greenplastic.com has some of the wittiest writers, who manage to maintain everyone's dignity even as they put each other down. quite clever.

poetry from eileen myles poem, the sadness of leaving:
"1,000,000 women
not me moving through
the street tonight
of this filmy
city & I
crown myself
again & again
and there
can't be
two kings."

fade out again

"All people living well living different from me. all these things I want but there’s no hope. I am not fit for them. And again, I am alone. it makes me shiver, and I can’t communicate. I feel strangled, I feel dead. Feel this in you, feel this nothingness and fade out again. When it is black and there is no hope, fade out again. Redemption comes from where and why does it not come for me. redemption comes for some and it does not come for me. I can’t see this, can’t see these things that are flying around me, they attack me and I can’t see them. Fade out again. Sing and play, and play guitar, and fade out again. And that’s how I will end, fade out. I was told, immerse your soul in love. I did and I cannot. I can no longer feel."

soliloquy from a future new character, my musician-guy, next novel. The Bends. written while listening to Street Spirit.

i hate mistakes

i meant, guitar teacher, not guitar teaching, in the post below. i should be copy-editing better than that.

on itunes at this very moment: thom yorke singing neil young's "after the goldrush"

weezer and radiohead

my son is in his bedroom with his guitar teaching and they are playing every weezer song they know. i am in my office (not far enough away) listening to radiohead, on itunes, on shuffle mode. the two don't really mix. not at the same time.

i am SO thinking about my NEXT novel and this is not good. i need to think about THIS novel. and i am. but i am also thinking about my next one.

so this is dull today. probably because i haven't written anything yet. later, i will. right now, i just want to listen to my weezer-inflected radiohead (or is it inflicted? depends on context).

poetry for the day:

"This is how you change, this is how you tear me open. I live on the edge of your love, and I bleed to see you.”

(The Hyperboreans song, Tear Me Open.)

this is what you get

i don't know why that line is up there

it goes through my brain right now. it will be supplanted by something else, as it supplanted "blame it on the black star."

close reading of the first chapter of the novel. look at every word. does that "that" need to be there? do i need to qualify every emotion? ruthless cutting. the best kind.

the beatles for today's poetry: one line: and all it connotes: "i read the news today, oh boy."

living inside a song

in my novel i explored why fans study their favorite bands' songs so much, why they buy every version, why they discuss them endlessly on the internet.

i wrote: ". . . because you love their songs so much. You want to be in them. You want to get inside them and see them from the center looking out. You want to inhabit them. And that’s what your fans want to do. It’s not enough to listen to your songs. They want to get into the middle of them and walk around inside that landscape and be a part of it.”

on itunes: a live version of "house of cards." i love this song. i can't wait until it's on a record with better sound quality.

because, like with all radiohead songs, i want to walk around inside it.

ee cumming: "for whatever we lose (like a you or a me) its always ourselves we find in the sea"