Dripping with sweat,
he wonders,
where’s he’s going,
where he’s been,
and where he’s at.
Today’s Theme Music
Life is but a roller coaster, you know? One hour you’re up, the next hour finds you on the ground. We flutter from ecstasy to frustration, coping with drugs, alcohol and other escapes.
Love, wow, love can be the wildest roller coaster. The Ohio Players covered it in song, “Love Rollercoaster,” in nineteen seventy-five. I enjoyed the song when it came out, along with a few other million people. It became one of those ubiquitous songs, played in clubs and on the radio twenty-four/seven.
Besides being one of the anthems of nineteen seventies America, “Love Rollercoaster” is burdened with an urban myth. Not too long into the song is a scream. I never thought much about the scream, considering it part of their presentation, but others assigned serious reasons behind the scream, like people or animals being killed or injured. After explaining what caused the scream (one of the singers – surprise!), the Ohio Players embraced a vow of silence about the song, refusing to talk about the scream.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers later covered it. I enjoy their version, but, being a traditionalist, I stayed with the Ohio Players.
The Writer’s Life
Eva’s final paragraph invokes the same takeaway I’d discovered:
“One of the most important takeaway for me was the realization that all writers, (regardless of fame or fortune) share this: we all must face the blank page, we sit alone with our thoughts, we wrestle with insecurity, we know nothing will emerge from the page unless we do the work, we pray that it will be good, we hope others will like it. Welcome to the writer’s life.”
This is where the discipline, desire, and drive enter, and you tell yourself, “Just keep writing,” and try to write the best that you can.
And then you edit.
photo by Karl Fernandes
“You do not need to leave your room, remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” Franz Kafka
And so the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing summer conference began with the reading of this Kafka quote. Throughout the weeklong conference, an overarching theme of trust—whether it’s trusting your individual style, voice and process, or allowing yourself to write freely, “clean out the pipes” even if it’s bad writing, or that ideas can come from the subconscious when you least expect it, so be ready and listen for it—revealed itself over and over again.
The MVICW, founded by Alexander Weinstein and in its eighth year, provided poetry and fiction workshops that…
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Midnight Cha-Cha-Cha and Tabasco
A friend’s picturesque and intimate memory of herself and her mother, and the life they lived.
I am about sixteen. I wake up in the middle of night. The sound of distant crunching, faint music and the light spilling into the corridor lure me like the tune of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I get out of bed. Naz, the canine of miscellaneous origin curled up at the bottom of my bed, opens his sleep-glazed eyes briefly, then closes them again. No cause for alarm. He’s seen this happen before over the years. Many, many times.
At the small kitchen table, my mother is leafing through an out-of-date Il Corriere della Sera or Le Monde which she hasn’t had time to look at sooner. She’s at the office all day and sometimes doesn’t come home until late. She is buttering a row of three of four grissini, trying not to break them, balances a small piece of parmigiano on the pan flute-like construction, then shakes…
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Cosmopolitan Dress
We stopped in mid-morning during the round of errands to drop a book off with a friend. She was embarking on travel. It started with several lengthy flights, and she lacked anything to read. Could anyone suggest anything?
What did she seek? She’s well-read, but for this, she thought she’d like a mystery. How ’bout “Dissolution,” by C.J. Sansom? After a brief description, she was enticed into accepting our offering.
Opening her door, we were impressed with how she was dressed. Usually, she looks like most folks in southern Oregon, ready to hike or pick fruit. Today, she was dressed in svelte black clothes. We gushed with admiration.
She blushed with confession. “These are my p.j. bottoms. I haven’t dressed yet.”
Ah. Well, she still looked quite cosmopolitan.
Today’s Theme Music
Ah, love songs. I love them, especially when one side is singing to the other, attempting to sway them to stay together.
Such is what I take from this song, “Buddy Holly,” by Weezer. It came out in during my second or third spring, in nineteen ninety-four. I always understood a few refrains:
Oo-ee-oo I look just like Buddy Holly
Oh-oh, and you’re Mary Tyler Moore
I don’t care what they say about us anyway
I don’t care bout that
~ h/t AZLyrics.com
It’s the rest of the song that always mystified me. Fortunately, we moved into the Internet age, where Google searches and various websites, like AZLyrics, are able to clarify the words.
Sing along if you know them. As a bonus, Spike Lee directed the video. Fun stuff.
Singufloofity
Singufloofity (Catfinition): A cat with one color of fur.
In Use: “A black singufloofity, Crystal’s shade was so deep, it often cast a sheen like black oil.”
Tighten Up
He knows he needs to tighten up, but the threads are stripped, and the nut just spins, and spins, without getting anywhere.
