Publisher @ Current Words Publishing
It’s corn season! And I feel duty-bound to report to my fellow pigness owners that not only do piggies LOVE corn husks, they go crazy for corn silk, which, in our family, we call pighetti.
Yes, you read it here first. When it gets into the dictionary… it’s mine: pighetti: corn silk for pignessess.
Just trim off the yucky brown bits, and there you go! Happy pignessess! Pighetti season!
The first thing I felt myself noticing about the film Asteroid City was how orange everything was.
The orange was gorgeous, and a device of course, and part of what makes it a poem.
The movie is a poem.
The movie is a poem because it is not a full and complete story as much as it is a full and complete poem about grief.
The mother who has died in the color part of the movie is just an actress, and the story of her surviving family is just part of the script of the play, and in the black and white part of the movie, she is still alive and well, and it is actually the playwright who has died. Which, in the narrative, makes sense as the color part of the movie, the play, remains unfinished.
Some people. might mildly enjoy the film’s “story” and leave feeling unsatisfied, because they do not understand poetry, and they do not understand that it is a poem.
If there is a central theme to the black and white section of the film, it is creative people doubting their creativity, and struggling to manage their “art” while they live, or not, their lives.
If there is a central theme to the color part of the movie I would say it is people trying to manage the relationships in their lives, and struggling to be open about their struggles and emotions, because they are too concerned about the affect they will have on those around them, who they love.
But the overall theme of the film is just the feeling, the feeling of wanting something special to happen, the feeling of wanting lives that end to go on indefinitely, the feelings of wanting to be accepted in the full splendor of our own weirdness, the feelings of how hot and uncomfortable and trapped life can feel, and then, in a whiff, all the circumstances and all the people you were worrying about are gone when you wake up. And maybe you weren’t ready. And the world is so orange, and the world is so grey, and can we connect more than superficially, and do we know what to do when everyone has gotten up and gone, and we’re still working things out?
If you need a thread… if you need a frame around your story… if you need a linear: “…and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened…,” sort of story that you can successfully sum-up for another human, this might not be your movie. But that is no reason to slam it. It is a lush, and sparse, and warm, and disconnected, and full-of-feeling poem. And like life, the end moves into the current space and time, and you probably were not ready for it. But that doesn’t mean we slam it based on our own short-comings, and our own reluctance to let go of the handrail, and float in a poem masquerading as a film. One very interesting thing about my daughter, which may be, in part, a reflection of her coming up as a consumer of reels, she is not so bound to the linear in story-telling, and she went with it. She liked it; she got it enough to be entertained, and she didn’t ask too much more of it.
And it seems like many people didn’t get it, and were none too pleased that it looked and felt like
Moonrise Kingdom, but didn’t wrap up in a nice bow.
The family in Moonrise Kingdom has four children, one female teen in crisis, and three small hellions for sons. Asteroid City has the same: one male teen in crisis, and three small hellions for daughters. But no neat ending. Grief is not neat.
Asteroid City is a poem. If you like poetry, you might like seeing a movie that is only masquerading as a film, and is, in truth, a poem. I loved it.
Thanks to Aunt Lee& Nathan, Sophie and Mouse, and I are spending the weekend in Idyllwild.
This means we eat what we want!
Brunch at The Red Kettle.
Mom: chili, peach pie, coffee. A real Agent Cooper kinda-lunch, and they make a damn fine cup of coffee.
Sophie & Mouse: Chicken strips with fries, and beaucoup gravy, and apple juice.
Then we go shopping and buy dumb stuff:
shaved ice
candy necklaces
salt water taffy
small felted rabbit
crazy expensive bath bombs
and earrings (for Sophie) and adding to Mom’s huge, and Sophie’s non-existent button collection:
While we were shopping we went into one store that had all these beautiful blown glass items, quite large, in a case under the counter. “Those are so pretty!” said Sophie. “What are they?”
“Those are bongs,” I said, “you use them to smoke weed and get high.”
“Oh my gosh,” said the woman behind the counter (about my age, store owner I surmise), “I love that. So matter-of-fact, and no judgement.”
I also bought a pro-choice button (which is already affixed to the hoodie I wore to the 2016/17 Women’s march on Washington (the hoodie that is signed by all the people who were on the bus with me…. always have a Sharpie about your person, okay?), so the shopkeep and I had a good long talk about legislators legislating weed, and trans folks, and women’s bodies, when there’s MAGA and mass shootings, and anti-semitism, and all the things that are sooooooo wrong with USA right now, so we got along really well. And I bought Sophie her first bong. (Nope, just kidding on that last part…. Have you ever used a bong? I never have, though I have seen a few in action.
Then stop at the little grocery in town (there are two) and rustle up the perfect dinner. Sophie declared it was better than Thanksgiving!
Sophie… by request: Pillsbury crescent rolls, Spam, peas, mashed and gobs of gravy. For Mom, fruit, olive bread smeared with labne, grilled halloumi, Q ginger beer.
Then we played Trash Pandas, and M.A.S.H. Sophie won Trash Pandas, but lost at MASH as she is going to live in a shack with her friend from school, drive a murder van, and make $0.003/year as an origami instructor. I am going to marry Eddy from Two-Set Violin (I like Eddy, but I was hoping to get 1970 Paul McCartney), have one child, and make a million dollars a year as a singer (funny that “successful novelist” is not in my future.). Oh! And I get to drive Vera’s Land Rover (see the British TV show VERA).
Interrupting the weekend for a little bit tomorrow to have a Devil’s Party Press author marketing meeting. Trying to build a community among the authors and Dave and me so that we can all foster each other’s success. Men work from sun to sun, but a publisher’s work is never done.
If you get a chance to visit Idyllwild, it’s fun. I even like the round and round drive up the mountain (Sophie takes motion sickness pills and puts a blanket over her head…. so experiences may vary. You do you.)
Thanks Aunt Lee and Nathan for the weekend~
Astrud Gilberto has left the world at age 83.
Her voice was just so beautiful.
I don’t know how she came to be 83, but it happens to us all in time. And she was living in Philadelphia! I missed my chance to stalk her.
Well, she had one of the most beautiful voices ever.
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/06/1180416189/astrud-gilberto-the-girl-from-ipanema-singer-dies-at-83
T’was the night before Easter
and time to dye eggs
a holiday activity
for which my daughter always begs.
Because we’re just three
a dozen’s all I bought.
Not enough to share
both my daughter and I thought.
So I said she could do them,
each one and all,
and I would watch her,
and we’d have a ball.
She makes them precisely.
It takes her all night,
and so I’m not bored,
I decided to write.
I got out the words
to make me a poem,
and we both took our time
it was really slow goin’.
Now she has her eggs,
and I have some words.
They say Easter’s for bunnies;
I think it’s for the birds.
And now, without further ado, I present… my poem!
Of course, with magnetic poetry you’re limited to the words they give you, but, sometimes, just having a physical word there, in your hand, moves your brain.
This is my (final version of my ) poem, as I would type it out, and adding, in a few bits that I could not find magnetized:
The Persistence of My Memory
Hello remembered rain, flowering my vision
with your pattering
against a delicate purple
window of poetry called the past-
each yesterday
going easily slow,
always abundant,
full
filled
delicious, fluid with music.
But the photos-
the photos contrast,
look rough,
ugly,
taste weird.
No poetry of purple flowering,
just tarnished silver halide-
No rain pattering-
no sound on muck
mucky
gelatin emulsion.
And Kodak never lies.
Screw memory,
that drunk companion
not at all companionable,
& a week’s worth of wages
for an empty seat
lugged around forever, and forever again
tangling up the turnstiles,
a heavy, broken, ghost.
Wanna submit to the Horror Writers Association (HWA) for their horror book of poetry? If you are published in HALLOWEEN PARTY, you can. Gravelight PressDevil’s Party Press family, and we pay every author in HALLOWEEN PARTY $25 (and give each author a free copy of the anthology), and that $25 check is enough to qualify for membership in the HWA.
The HWA is currently soliciting for a volume of poetry. Why not submit?
Here’s a little horror ditty (I’m not saying it’s very pretty…).
Little Bo Weep (by D.Pearce)
Now I lay me down to sleep
and thinking ’bout dismembering sheep.
No hooves to leap
no baaaaahs to bleep
just nightmares in the meadow’s deep.
Like a tea with too much steep
the blood into the wool will seep.
I chopping chopping as she weeps
that simpering whimpering
dopey BoPeep.
Then I round the herd will creep
for bones and fuzz and tails to sweep
And when the sheep are in a heap
what will be the reap I reap?
At lastly long and blissful sleep.
Horror poetry. See? It’s easy. 😉
And fun!
C’mon, write a horror poem and submit!
HA! I got you! You thought I was going to put up the Beatles version, didn’t you?
Well, there’s a reason I didn’t put that first, but I will put it below.
George, I never knew him, but he always struck me as soft and gentle, in the way that men are not supposed to be soft and gentle. And I think it was very hard for him, as it is for so many people in so many bands, not to be overshadowed by the other members. And I am a Beatle girl, until the age of 30 or so, there was no other band I would spend my limited record money on (aside from Wings, because I was desperately in love with Paul). So I love the Beatles version, but George was given so few slots in the band’s catalogue, so let’s begin with him here, and paired with another gentle great, Paul Simon. And BONUS, if you watch all the way through you get “Homeward Bound” too, one of my favorite S&G songs. I had S&G’s greatest hits (still do have it) because I stole it from my brother, so that was his record money, not mine, and I know I that I probably wore out “Homeward Bound” and “America.”
But this is about the great song, “Here Comes the Sun, ” which I have literally had on “Alexa” repeat since Dave took Sophie to school… so a few hours.
What do I like about it?
Well, it’s plinky might be the first thing I would say. It’s got great plinky guitar. I like plinky guitar; I am a big fan of it. Secondly, that plinky guitar acts like an extra voice: it follows the melody through the song, literally singing the main tune right along with George. I remember hearing that the Beatles had conflict over George wanting to (often) have the guitar follow the melody in the songs, as an extra voice. And the story went that Paul didn’t like it. I do not know if that is true, and Paul may be the sometimes most-hated Beatle, but the guy is a hugely successful songwriter, so there’s that. I think the plinky and the guitar acting like a voice works here, and ads to the gentleness of the song.
The second thing I like about “Here Comes the Sun” is that it is understated. If we assume it’s England, where the sun often hides, and it’s been a long cold lonely sunless period, then WOW! the sun is out!!!
But this is “Here comes the sun… do-do-do-do…,” and “…it’s alright.” It’s low-key, low energy, they way an introvert gets excited about things. Harrison was probably an introvert, and I feel that, and I feel that low-key excitement. It’s no less joyful for not being an explosion of confetti and balloons.
I chose this song today because yesterday I took my teen daughter into teen-daughter heaven, what you probably know of as a store called Claire’s. I have had some fun times finding little doo-dads (doo-dads, am I 100 years old?) at Claire’s, but the three or four times I have been there in 2023 I have been assaulted, every single damn time, by the same two songs, one a country western song, and one a pop song, both of which are guilty of crap formulaic song writing and being ear worms. I will not name the atrocities lest they attack you too. I sentence them to exile from the planet. And clearly neither song writer ever listened to George Harrison.
So, I am using George today, to lift my mood in a gentle “I might have a hangover” way, and also because George can be heard over and over and exterminate those earworms without becoming one himself, because George would never do that. George has mad skills. And I love George with ELO, on his own, with The Beatles, and really quite a lot with The Traveling Wilburys, a band that was much too short-lived.
And, on that note, I want to introduce you to another George song that I adore:
“Give Me Love” almost always brings me to the edge of tears, and not because of the lyrics. The music is sweet, and sad, and… oh I dunno. It’s just something.
It’s good to have gentleness in the craziness of life. George gave us gentleness.
Rest well George. Thanks for all the gentle sweetness.
“Would you welcome now, to the midnight special, the fabulous Bee Gees!”
“Nights on Broadway” is one of those wonderful “stalker” songs from the 60s and 70s. If you’ve ever been stalked, it isn’t even remotely funny, so, ignore my rude post, and I apologize. And, in the 50s, 60s, and 70s (not all of which I was alive for), and probably many decades previously, stalking was A-ok. It was how a young man professed his obsessional love for HIS woman. Got it? It was okay; nobody thought anything of it beyond, “Why is she being so cruel to the one who truly loves her?” I’ll tell you why, now, as a grownup, in hindsight, it’s because of the stalking.
Yes, yes, okay.
But, this is a freaking great song! And so just ignore the stalker bits and take the words with a grain of salt.
Robin reminds me of Neville Longbottom, and he dances about as well as I would expect Neville Longbottom to dance, but as Jamal says in this video, he isn’t using anything artificial to get himself to those high notes, and neither is Maurice.
Maurice is, IMHO the cutest Bee Gee, which of course does not count their absolutely scrummy younger bother who was not in the group, Andy Gibb. Whatever genetics were doing in that family, they got it perfect with Andy, but Andy, sadly, did not survive Rock & Roll.
I love, BTW, watching Jamal watch the Be Gees. Jamal’s kinda scrummy too, easy-on-the-eyes, and he’s adorable watching music he hasn’t heard before.
I’m just trying to keep the whole “stalker vibe” going you know.
And I just have to wax poetic about the harmony going on here. The Bee Gees usually have three layers of vocal going on, which makes sense. And I really enjoy singing along to this one and jumping from branch to branch, level to level. I’ve become a mezzo in my old age, but once I get warmed up, I can still hit those Maurice high notes. “Oh yeah yeah. Yeah!”
Because of those levels, it’s a song most singers can sing along to. You just find your range. It’s there.
I love the idea, too, of blaming the behavior, the “out of control” on the nights on Broadway. I have had those moments, more when I was younger I admit, where I was so pumped up and excited (nothing to do with booze or other substances, this pumped-up must come from your own endorphins), that I felt sure that something magical was going to happen, or that, if I did something reckless, like grab someone and kiss them, it would not be my fault.
I actually did grab someone and kiss them once. Adrian Smith (I think it was Smith) had gone to Paris with me and a bunch of other kids in 9th or 10th grade. In Paris I was many things that I really enjoyed: I was proficient in the language (at the time) with a good accent; I was free of my f-ing parents; I was free of my “boring weirdo nerd” status in high school; and I was, for the first fucking time in my life, autonomous, because my French teacher was a delightfully absentee landlord. I went wherever I wanted in Paris, and my friends followed because I was the best at French, reading maps, navigating subways, and asking for directions, and I also had a lot of ideas about where we should go.
Getting on the plane to go home was like walking to the gallows for me. It was like I had finally been able to breathe, and the universe was insisting I get back in the damn box. I could have cried my heart out the whole flight home, surrounded by other kids who had had enough, and could not wait to get back to Mom and Dad. I failed, I knew it, when that plane took off, because I could not, the whole time I was in Paris, come up with a plan to escape the school trip and stay in France. It was, I think, my first time realizing I could get out of my co-dependent family situation, but I didn’t have the smarts to figure out how I would: get work, get a place to live, avoid the authorities, and, most of all, hide from the long arm of my mother. As good as I was at all those other things, I was hopeless at saving myself. In fact, I think I’ve only just got there now, in my old, mezzo-soprano fucking age. *sigh*
When we got off of the plane in Philly, the parents of all of us were there, and mine were in my face. They wanted me to be soooo excited to see them. They wanted me to be more interested in them than anything else. And my mother wanted me to tell her every detail of the trip, because I wasn’t allowed to have private adventures.
At some point, feeling like my life had ended and I’d never be free again, I came upon fellow student and traveler, Adrian. He stopped to say something to me, and I walked up to him, slid my hands up his cheeks and into his hair, and pulled his face to mine, and laid one on him, just like in the movies. Just like you would expect a person to do in Paris, of course. Just like that guy in that photo from when the war is over, and he just kisses that nurse, and she just has to take it, accept it, give in to it, because it’s all beyond anyone’s control, but it is loose and reckless in a forgivable and not at all stalkery sort of way.
Yes it is.
And you can blame it all, on the nights on Broadway.
When you’re “singing them love songs, singing them straight to the heart songs.”
I wonder where Adrian is today. I certainly wasn’t in love with him, but he was a very nice guy, and I was in love with the me who could just lay a guy out with a kiss. I wonder if that girl’s still in here somewhere.
Ultimately I think what I did with all the co-dependence and control was to find a way to live with it. A therapist once told me that we’re all in a rubber fence with our families, and maybe even a rubber cage is better to say. We can never be free. Not all the way. And some don’t have families they need to be free of, and others do. And those that do probably learn to live inside the lines, a bit of a shrunken life, or they escape in some other way, which could be substances, and was for my brother, and I am glad, as boring a human as I may be, that substances was never where I went to pop the top on the cage. If someone keeps yelling at you, and you just walk away, well, you’ve pretty much taken the weapon away. But, I don’t think you can go back. I don’t think you can accept the cage sometimes and ignore it others. I think, in all honesty, I finally just realized the cage was a construct, like the Matrix, that I no longer needed to believe in.
Or maybe I just got swept up by the “Nights on Broadway.”
May you not stalk or be stalked, but may you have a little romance with yourself, and if you get a little tipsy on love, may you be able to blame it all on the “Nights on Broadway.”
Okay, I am pretty sure this is the original Paul vocal, but not so sure it is the original music. HOWEVER, I am using this clip anyway because you get to see my boyfriends… and Paul gives me that conspiratorial wink at the end. Yeah, 1968 Paul wants to get with me. And you know what? He can. Oh yeah. The door is always open for that guy.
Sally Star, Philly peeps, always played this song on her show on her birthday. She had a crush on Paul too!
My brother, Billy (nicknamed Ear to his friends, but always Billy to me) and I loved Sally and the Beatles. Hell, I wanted to be Sally. I mean, look at her! In fact I am sure my brother introduced me to Sally (and I know he’s responsible for The Beatles), and he and I loved The Three Stooges and Bullwinkle! My poor baby sister, Lee, came a lot of years later, and she missed out on all of that. 😦 But I know I definitely wanted a sister, not a little brother, and in that aspect I lucked out. And my brother, as usual, was gracious about me winning (we had a bet; he bet on brother).
I have NEVER liked being sung to. First of all… SHY PeRSON! For fucks’ sake, please don’t sing to me in a public place! OMG, people. Secondly the song Americans sing is almost a dirge; it’s slow and boring and awkwardly high in the middle. My favorite part of it is the “and many more” I always add. Otherwise it kinda blows. Birthday by the Beatles (like most British things over American things) is better. Waaaay better.
But the Beatles song, “Birthday,” makes me glad to be alive. And YES, shy or not, I will freaking karaoke and dance, while sober, if you dance with me! Can’t we go singing and dancing? OMG, why did all the singing and dancing stop in 1986??? I have more in me!
Today is also the day I first held Sophie (though I think it was 12/21 in China), and pretty late at night, after we flew 2-3 hours from Beijing to Nanchang in a plane that sounded like an old broken down escalator or monorail. We were sure we were going to die, but we had no choice but to get on that plane and go, and then drive 2 more hours through the cold dark to Nanchang proper to receive the best addition to our lives that we (Dave, my spouse) and I could ever imagine. Poor Sophie had been waiting in the lobby for 4+ hours, bundled up like it was arctic winter, so she was as red as a beet, and her nanny handed her to us, and then all the SWI staff headed out for the two hour drive home. Just like that, the only people Sophie had ever known left her and disappeared. Well and truly dumped, with us. They left her with the weirdos. And ever since then my birthday has been more lovely and more sweet, and less about me, which is good too.
Aw, my spouse brought me flowers this morning. Amazing!
And I am currently wearing about 8 new pieces of jewelry (why be subtle on your birthday folks?) that my life-long friend and talented artist Krissi made me, including this gorgeous bracelet (green is my favorite color too!):
As for this song… the lightly veiled reason for this shameless post about my own birthday, I could listen to this any time of the year, and all day long. It’s a great song! It’s all about rocking out, and so is this old lady! Listen to it; you’re gonna love it. And hey, you should own The White Album anyway. ON VINYL. That’s right, buy a record player and experience it!! I love vinyl! More snap crackle and pop than Rice Crispies!
So yeah, they say it’s my birthday ((my happy birthday as my sister always says), and it freaking is!!
I’m glad it’s my birthday… happy birthday to me…
Anyone who knows me well has heard me rave about Tom Robbins. One story that I especially like about him is that, along the path of his career, he found drumming. Like Ringo, drumming, but more like a drum circle sort of drumming, as I understand it. Why?
If you know Robbins you know he is a slow writer. He’s not cranking out a book a year, and he is, for me, perilously old now… meaning I might not get another book out of him.
Robbins, one of the most unique writers ever, uses drumming to help him find the music and rhythm in his writing, and also to fight procrastination. When the mind wanders, as Robbins’ mind surely must, the drumming helps him refocus on his writing.
What can you do with a writing coach? You can meet, as often, weekly, or as little, every other month, as you like, but when you meet with me you will have to hand over some of your writing: a page, a chapter… you’re going to get there. We can work on your schedule; we can read your work to each other to check on the music and rhythm in your writing; we can try exercises; we can craft your online author presence. I help you give your writing the time, grace, and respect it needs, and I make you accountable so that you finish your damn novel. Robbins has a dozen books. That is not enough for me, and I wish he had more. Those books have gotten me through some dark nights, and some long days. Who is waiting for your book? Who will you rescue from a long dark night with your story?
Coaching is so reasonable and so worth it. For $50/hour, and you can split that into 2 half hour meetings if you like, you get editing, planning, encouragement, a clear head, and the friendship you need to get your book done. When you’re Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, I can help you wake up and get to the keyboard. And it’s my favorite thing to do, after reading Tom Robbins, that is.
BTW, late bloomers, did you know Robbins was just on the cusp of 40 when he published his first book? And it took him 2 years to write it?
And did you know that all coaching inquiries come with a free hour-long Zoom meeting to talk about what you want and if coaching is right for you?
If you really want to be a writer, and you have an idea, or many ideas, but you just don’t know if you can do it… if you just don’t know if you are an author, but you want to be, coaching can get you there.
Good luck with your book~
Much love~ Dianne, possessor of an MA and an MFA, writing teacher and encourager for over 20 years, and Tom Robbins’ #1 fan. My favorite book: Still Life With Woodpecker.
Find out all about coaching, shoot me an email (dianne@devilspartypress.com) or fill out the nice form Dave made.
Dianne Pearce Writes 