I don’t know. Suddenly I’m nuts for these sugar babies.
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Twitter Song for Michael Jackson
July 1st, 2009 § 0
Continuing on with these very short Twitter songs…I watched a bit of the Martin Bashir documentary on Michael Jackson and then wrote this:
“Broken & Bright”
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Lyrics:
Hey I want to ride
A last time down sweetest streets
Hey I want to glide
A last time past sweetest screams
But one day I’ll fall
In a moonwalk of propofol
Broken and bright
Stars die in their own light
Chicago Song
June 30th, 2009 § 1
Still working on the complete audio piece, but the Chicago Song is done. This one’s a little long (a minute) but I’m digging the idea of Twitter-styling the rest of the US city capitals.
The Chicago “Big City” song:
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Lyrics:
You put the 8 ball there in the corner pocket
Hit the shoe shine boy, buy a girl a locket
Screw your head uptown in the city socket
this Chicago is a big big town
Takes a toll, that’s the big old city
Oh the big city, the night so bright and pretty
You take this girl alley dancing
Her eyes are smoke, her dress unfasten
The juice is right for sweet romancin
The place condemned, burn down the mansion!
Follow the Man straight to Chicago!
All the demand is for Chicago!
Oh the big city, oh the big city!
3 Twitter-style Songs for Boston, NYC & Philly
June 28th, 2009 § 3
I’m producing a short audio piece for Third Coast/Chicago Public Radio. The only real limit is that the piece has to feature, suggest, or somehow present the city of Chicago in some way.
My grandparents lived there and we took trips to Chi-town (as my grandfather called it) when I was a kid. Chicago has since then brought to mind music for me. Jazz clubs…Chicago mobsters. Speakeasies.
So I thought – what if Sherwin had the hobby of going around to all the different cities of the US and writing little songs about them? And that he’s finally come to Chicago to work on his Chicago theme.
In order to do this piece, I had to create 3 other songs for different cities. To kind of capture the sense that this is something that Sherwin does…tour around and write city themes.
So here are the 3 twitter-style theme songs for Boston, Philadelphia and New York. (I’ll post the final piece with the Chicago Theme a little later).
Fell Asleep in Boston:
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Lyrics:
Well I was trying to have some fun, when I fell asleep in Boston. I fell asleep in Boston, cause everything there’s exhausted.
Philadelphia:
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lyrics:
Put the hallways in the middle of the cellos and the fiddles, Philadelphia!
Put the cattle in the stalls and the secrets in the walls, Philadelphia!
Philadelphia, the air’s so sweet, you just lay down forget your feet…
New York Blanket:
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Lyrics:
Oh New York blanket please help me get to sleep tonight.
Oh New York blanket gonna set me into slumber’s sight.
Oh New York blanket please protect me from the blinding light!
Oh New York blanket gonna tuck me into bed all night…
“The Waiter” – our 48 Film
June 24th, 2009 § 0
Because two of the main ingredients of our film (Rick & Sean) couldn’t/can’t(shouldn’t?) really act, we decided that improvising might be a good way to fake it.
And then we also decided that it would be best not to figure out some big story. Not to know where we were going. If we knew the next scene, we felt stable. The story of “The Waiter” then sort of grew up in the air over the course of Saturday.
- Sean Hurley, Bill Rogers, Doria Bramante, and Sir Rick Ganley
Sam and the Butterfly
June 23rd, 2009 § 3
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Sam found a butterfly on its last little shred of wings. Seems like the butterfly itself was ok, but his wings were all torn up. I don’t know if that’s how butterflies begin the goodbye, but it seems like it.
First Record Player
June 22nd, 2009 § 0
I got my first record player when I was 6 or 7. It was portable, pale yellow and when you closed it it looked like a briefcase. I sometimes would walk around the house with it, pretending to be on my way to a meeting. Then I’d set it up in a different room and play a record.
For a long while I only had one record. Paul Simon’s Greatest Hits. But that was fine. There was enough music and mystery for a few years of little kid enjoyment.
Today, at the dump, I found a replica of my old record player. While it hums, and the needle transmits finger noise, the bed won’t spin. We don’t have any records anyway. So now I’m having these ebay visions…
What if I got the old band back together? I could buy Paul Simon’s Greatest Hits, I could get an old GE portable record player…and then I could walk around the house and have meetings again.
I miss those meetings.
Nora Roberts
June 20th, 2009 § 0
- The Fashion of Literary Relaxion
There’s a happy, hardworking article on romance novelist Nora Roberts in the new New Yorker. I always like when they kind of give up on the big guns, the Brainy Aces, drop their guard, lower their sites or whatever. Maybe they consider it slumming, or necessary acknowledgment of the peripheral, or maybe because Nora is gritty and smokes and can write sparklingly, they greenlighted this treatment. I’ve never read any of her books, but I hope to soon. I’ve seen that name reaching out with its firmly curving font like it’s being written as you read it…Airports, malls, every book store. Like a brand of bread I haven’t yet tried.
Some statistics: She can write a book in 45 days. She writes 5 or so books a year (maybe 7 or 8 including her J.D. Robbs). She’s written 200 books. Every minute (or second, I can’t remember) 27 Nora Roberts are purchased. She writes intuitively, doesn’t outline, and researches with Google. All three of which, we’re told, lead to doom.
When she’s not writing she sits on a chair in a smart suit, waiting for a never-arriving mint julep.
More stats: Moneywise, the romance genre is the Nascar of literature, accounting for $1.4 billion a year. Sci Fi and mystery each do a little less than half that and “literature” pulls in about 400 million.
I used to shake my head at such things as “romance” from behind the long lens of my tiny telescope affixed to the sharpest spire on Mount Olympus. I ruled fiercely in that tallish wasteland. I issued Mighty Decrees about what was what. I had big heavy hands and I saw fit to say what was fit. Goodbye to all that. Whatever works.
This is all just a lead in to the announcement that I am on a special diet of candy and smoke and will shortly become a romance novelist.
Louis Auchincloss and the Benefits of a Marble Head
June 17th, 2009 § 0
I think I tend to linger in my looking when the subject is a writer or artist. I like to see how neat or messy their world is, what they like to have near them. How they sit or stand.
Before reading the article on Auchincloss, I stared at this for a while and I wondered if I would ever have a sculpture head in my reading room. I don’t have a reading room, but I was more interested in the head part, rather than the room part. Having a bit of bust or sculpture in a room seems silly in these lighthanded days.
- Louis Auchincloss & Head
But just looking at Louis and the Head Shape, I realized that I would find it comforting. As though someone was there with me. Someone quiet, absorbed in their own reading. A kind of everlastingly quiet pal.
So yes. If I ever have a reading room, I will have myself a head.
Thank you Louis Auchincloss! If there’s greater flexibility in the future as far as heads, and I am able to procure the dimensions, I will do my best to have a “Louis Auchincloss” floating behind my reading sofas.
Burmese Days…
June 17th, 2009 § 0
Transcribing from notebook: “Finished Down & Out and the idea of leaving George was awkward. I realized I’d somehow miss him, which is hard to explain. So Burmese Days. Some lovely descriptions of “close air” and the vegetal fatness of U Po. The whole scene and range of characters seems at once far fetched and exactly right…these provincial post novels work for the fish-out-of-water…kind of stranding characters in places of pure discomfort…”
