I have received an unexpectedly poignant e-mail from an intimidating writer friend I long admired, never knowing he actually admired me. This is what he wrote:
"OK, I give up and give in. Where are the blogs that keep life sane for so many of us? Where are the reviews of Broadway plays nobody has any attention of seeing for $300 a ticket? Your disappearance is more mysterious than Sarah Palin's plans for the political future."
Had I but known that anyone really needed or wanted or even slightly relished my ramblings, I probably would never have put aside the Blogs. My reasons for doing so were three-fold. First, I remember that Hemingway, whose actual prose I did not that much admire but felt compelled to read and envied because of the lions, the mountains, the bullfights, the wars, the romantic adventures and the public esteem, not to mention the sales, said he never made love during the course of writing a book as he was afraid he would leave his best writing in bed, though I suspect he was not all that good there. As I am revving up to write what I hope will be my best novel, I didn’t want to leave my best writing in blog.
The second reason is that I got a bill from my Tekkie on moving from California that broke down his billing, where he charged like a lawyer, by the hour, a very high hourly rate, and in several instances charged me for that hour when it had only been one phone call, for example, that took five minutes. So when I by mistake deleted my ‘Friends’ list, which made it easy to assault all of you at once, I could not bring myself to ask him to reconstruct the list for me, and a friend who volunteered to help me reconstruct it for nothing, never did(it’s okay, she was not that long, or apparently, that good a friend.) Therefore a combination of my natural thrift, learned from my mother who had lived through the First Great Depression, and feared nothing so much as running out of money except running out of men, coupled with my saving up my juices, led to, or rather, out of my blogging.
The third and possibly most honest reason is that I am basically lazy, and have not allowed myself the luxury of lassitude for lo these many years. Some summers ago I led a Writer’s Workshop at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference where a guest Real Writer (there were many Bogii—I believe that to be the correct plural for Bogus,-- including the man who ran it, an amiable alcoholic who had once run with the bulls and/or Hemingway) was Eudora Welty. I asked her if she wrote every day, and she replied in her quavery, wavery, high-pitched Mississipian, “Oooooooonly when I haaave a project.” I took that as my dictum, if dictum be the correct word, and never again worked every day unless I was immersed in something I hoped would be major, taking exception for poems, all of which were rejected by the New Yorker. Until I began to Blog.
Still the bleat of longing from that unexpected source has touched my heart, or my ego(probably both,) as there is nothing a writer needs more than approval, except a publisher and most of them are dead or made redundant now. I asked my Last Therapist(cue Robert Browning: “That’s my last therapist hanging on the wall, looking as though he wants to help,”) to make me able to love myself unconditionally, just because I was a good person, and not just if I had a work accepted or was engaged in writing something, and he said without hesitating: “Too late.”
It is too late for a lot of things, including finding that Great Love (I already had it, but wasn’t fully cognizant of that fact till it was gone and I saw what was left in the world,) or rescuing my darling friend Tom Korman’s languishing career as an agent/manager with something I wrote that would be “Happening,” and so would give him the chance of being back in action. Pam, Tom’s loving and adorable and level-headed-in-spite-of-living-in-and-around-Show Business wife, called me this morning to tell me that Tom had died. That he managed to stay alive these past few years was a tribute both to his love of the business, in spite of its more or less shutting him out, and Pam’s love of him, never wavering, in a town and so-called society that drops people the moment they stop being of use. He was heavy on humanity, but short on loyalty from those he represented, most of whom he made big stars at which point they dropped him for one of the powerful agencies. He and Sue Mengers, who were partners in New York at the beginning of her now notorious career, represented me when I had my play on Broadway the week my daughter was born, before Sue stole Phyllis Rabb’s Roleidex from her desk at William Morris and struck out on her own, making big waves, one of them Goodbye to Tom, who she never again honored as he deserved to be honored, including with a returned phone call, unless somebody they both knew like Lee Solters died, and maybe not even then. He called her when he heard she was ill, and she never even bothered to call him back, but I am sure she will wish she could call him back now and say how sorry she is, and how much she loved him. I am really sorry, as he was a genuine mensch in a seemingly glittery world that doesn’t have many, never turning ugly, never turning bitter towards those who betrayed him in the least auspicious way, the suddenly unreturned call that lets you know, in spite of all the costly parties you gave when things were good and everyone came, that you are no longer a viable part of the action. But he had a great big heart that finally, quickly gave out on him. I have suggested to Pam that she send his ashes to Sue Mengers, in lieu of flowers.
So I am back in New York where walking in the street is like taking a warm bath, but not one that makes you comfortable, where a darling new friend called me this morning from what sounded like her bathrtub, but it was the traffic splashing by on 30th Street. She is a fabulous woman who carries enough burdens for five 21st Century heroines, a child with learning and attention disabilities, a husband depressed because he has no work, a mother with dementia, and a job she somehow manages to do brilliantly in spite of all, to my never-wavering wonder. If I have any penchant for self-pity, (and what writer doesn’t, with the possible exception of Phillip Roth who converts it to pitilessness?) I am brought up short just reminding myself of her. And of course Tom. As long as you are alive, there is a chance, except of course in Hollywood.
Which brings me to today’s New York Times, which features on the front of the Weekend Arts section, an article on Cary Grant, headed ‘Once Upon a Time, A Real Leading Man.’ As my longtime friends know, I had the privilege of having Cary Grant not only as an actual friend but a fan, which made bubbles in my brain when he would call, as he did often, once we were friends, as he was a telephone freak, had a never-ending curiosity and interest, and, I would venture, the occasional feeling of boredom or loneliness in spite of being Cary Grant, when he would call and go on sometimes for hours. He called me one Sunday at a quarter of eight in the morning, giving the opening salvo that always dizzied me: “Hello, Gwen: this is Cary Grant. Am I disturbing you?” Well, hardly. That day he was calling because there was a review of my poetry book 'Changes' in the LA Times that was highly favorable, and he said he wanted to be the first to read it to me. Sometimes there’s God so slowly.
His birthday was the 18th of January, two days after Don’s, one after Ben Franklin’s, so I used to do a three day Polish birthday, celebrating my three favorite guys. I always invited him to the party for Don, and he never came, but he always called to give him a birthday wish, and when it was my daughter’s birthday—Madeleine was the same age as his late-come Jennifer, who was invited to his party but didn’t come—he sent Western Onion, a costumed trio to sing Happy Birthday to her. He was a true gent. He was really Cary Grant.
The headline, reading as it does, gives the aura of Fairy Tale that he gave off: Someday my Prince Will Come, which he was, on screen and in life. We first became telephone buddies at the finale of the 60s, when he called to tell me that he had had “a devil of a time getting your number from your publisher. I wanted to thank you for sending me this copy of The Pretenders.” Garbage-men didn’t bother to thank me. I had to lie down on the terrazzo floor of the kitchen so my face would cool as I realized it was really Cary Grant. Charles Champlin, then the Arts Editor for the LA Times suggested the screenplay had yet to be written that could bring Cary Grant out of retirement. By that time we were actual friends, so I wrote it, a lively(I think it was) romantic comedy for him and David Niven about two old guys who had both had an affair with the same woman(Irene Dunne, Voice Over, Off-Camera) and now her grand-daughter, eight, was a multi-millionairess and was left to the two of them to court her on a yachting-trip through the Greek Islands, at the end of which she would choose between them. “It’s very funny,” Cary Grant said. “But why are you sending it to me? I wouldn’t want Jennifer to see me up there on the screen, looking so old.” Old he was still the handsomest. I wrote a meditation for men, some years after his death: “ Cary Grant still looks better than you do.”
Anyway, the movie got made, badly, without him—I will not say who played the Grant part because I don’t want any of you to try and find it to see it, it was so awful. I forgave him for passing on it, but I still haven’t forgiven him for dying. The world, as is pointed out in the article, is a much less classy place, and the movies—well, what have we got for Romantic Comedy? Adam Sandler? Seth Rogen? Is it a wonder we have turned our erotic imaginings to vampires?
But to leave the not so wondrous wonders of CelluLa La Land and turn back to the front pages, there is that picture of what the media called the Beer Summit. A friend of mine, a serious journalist at Time, expressed pain yesterday because it was the 40th day since the killing of that beautiful young woman in Iran, and 40 days after death is important in Muslim culture, so there were protests and demonstrations(over a hundred of the earlier protestors have been beaten to death in prison) and here the top of the news was that conciliatory, stupid(can I use that word that Obama wishes he hadn’t?) beerfest. Jon Stewart made reference last night, sotto voce, and seemingly in passing, to the waning days of our empire. Frank Rich wrote that we can’t leave our commentary to Jon Stewart, but I am afraid that is as incisive as it’s going to get. The downside is that who Jon Stewart interviewed was Judd Apatow, the singular force behind lowering movie comedy standards, who first gave us Seth Rogen, moving us a million years away from Cary Grant. The upside is Apatow had the cover of Time Magazine( he showed the mock-up to the camera in his carefree romp through self-adulation) but Obama knocked him off it, with his wished-for program for Health Care. The Downside of the Upside is that Health Care got scuttled by beer.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Gwennie's Most Excellent 4th of July Adventure
Those of you who have known me for some years know also of my (as yet) unproduced musical comedy, about a woman, down on her luck in New York, who crashes parties, looking for love and free hors d’oeuvres. I named my heroine Sylvia, and yesterday, in an effort to pull myself from my summer torpor, I Sylviaed, going in for the second act of Mary Stuart, which I had seen the first act of when my darling Fiona was here from Belfast, and I had been too sick to tough out the entire play, which renewed my admiration for Shakespeare, who really knew how to lay down what was going to unravel later at the same time always moving the action along, something that cannot be said for Herr Schiller. Anyway, I brazened it out(“Your ticket?” “My husband has it,”) and was glad I had gone, enjoying the play not more than one act at a time, bumping into a friend and his friend, livening up the afternoon with frozen margaritas. On the way home I fell into conversation with a young couple who had just come from HAIR, she an artist, he an actor, which brightened up a day I had thought would go uncelebrated, even though it was the Fourth of July, something we had always made festive when Don was here, the nation had a prominent place in our hearts, and the children were still adorable.
I had had an e-mail from a new youngish friend asking me if I would watch fireworks, and had sent a peevish reply that that was something I didn’t do anymore. But lo, as I walked on Central Park South about to enter my building I saw a young woman, very sweet and pretty, wearing a black T=shirt and four long strands of South Sea seed pearls that I had noted that morning, falling gracefully as they did across her bosom, and greeted her, remarking that I had seen her before. She seemed a little flustered, and it turned out that she was from Brazil, an au pair whose brother and mother had flown in from San Paolo for the week; they had locked themselves out of the apartment where they were staying. She introduced me to her mother, whose name was Silvia. Naturally I didn’t need any more reason to come to their aid.
I got a locksmith’s # from our security guard, called and was assured the locksmith was on his way, and we went to meet him at the building of their absentee host, a student of Silvia’s--she teaches Ayengar(sp?) yoga in Brazil. Portuguese is the one language I would yet love to learn, so my good Samaritaning was not without a degree of self-interest. We went to the building, a toney brownstone on East 62nd Street, just a few doors from the Park Avenue synagogue and even more importantly in this alleged culture where celebrity means more to us than God, Joan Rivers. I rang all the bells, and a kind art dealer, a Dane,-- I don’t think there was anyone in New York yesterday from New York(they were all probably in the Hamptons) let us into the building, since he had seen them there before. The locksmith arrived, an Israeli, and I asked if he had gotten his training in Israel but he said, no, here, something that was soon substantiated by the fact that didn’t know what he was doing, pulling what looked like a wide palate knife from his sack and trying to jimmy the door. Silvia, concerned that he would damage it, said that they would go instead to a hostel, where they could stay till getting hold of the maid, due back on Monday.
But it was the Glorious Fourth, and she’d told me her story—like my heroine she was a widow—there’d been a gas leak from the heater in their bathroom when Laisa was seven and Miguel was one, and her husband had been asphyxiated, and it was only recently she’d been able to speak about it, the pain of loss had been so shocking and intense. So we went back to my place, I checked the computer, and found that the fireworks were going to take place on the Hudson River near 57th St. at 9:26(nothing will be left to the world as unfathomable mystery with the Internet, and I suppose that’s a good thing) took a taxi to 12th Avenue and 57th—barricaded, thousands of people and a lot of nervous police(I didn’t think until later that more than crowd control they might be concerned about terrorists) who advised us to go further uptown where there might be a view. We took another taxi to 66th and the river and got there just in time.
My friend who had e-mailed me, Megan, said that nothing could touch Redentore, the fireworks in Venice, but this certainly came close. The exact number of pops and bangs and lights and trickles can probably be found on Google(Macy’s Fireworks, July 4th, 2009) and twas truly a sight to see. Missing was the music(that was further downriver) but I heard in my head The Stars and Stripes Forever, and was tempted to sing it aloud as the crowd oohed and aahed, but contained myself, having broken out in several directions already that day. Afterwards I took them to dinner at Ollie’s, a Chinese noodle place on Broadway, and we called a few hostels(they’d downloaded them at the Apple Store—is there no end to the seeming e-miracles)--when all I had thought to do was call Traveler’s Aid(they were closed for the weekend) and found them a place to stay. They dropped me at home on their way to the hostel, we exchanged numbers, swore eternal friendship and parted, and Silvia said she would pay me back with yoga lessons, when I visit her in Sao(pronounced San) Paolo.
A good, longtime friend I’d called in the country to ask if they could stay in her NY apartment(mine could sleep only one, even with yoga mats, of which I have two) said to be careful, that if they were Brazilians visiting here they had money, and I shouldn’t be so generous, and then there is my wonderful friend Gary the attorney who long ago told me not to confuse what is insane with what is fascinating(best public example: Sarah Palin) But anyone who can articulate the way your bones interlock with your soul when you do Ayengar yoga cannot possibly be a bad person. Even more important, when I looked in the mirror this morning, I appeared strangely younger, as if an act of kindness had stripped away, if not some years, some cares. The other night I saw again ‘The Wizard of Oz’, when Frank Morgan looks in the crystal ball and describes Auntie Em as ‘careworn.’ And I could not help but think how much more poetic it seemed to have suffered the years on the farm in Kansas, rather than in the great cities of the world, where we get to become simply ‘old.’
I had had an e-mail from a new youngish friend asking me if I would watch fireworks, and had sent a peevish reply that that was something I didn’t do anymore. But lo, as I walked on Central Park South about to enter my building I saw a young woman, very sweet and pretty, wearing a black T=shirt and four long strands of South Sea seed pearls that I had noted that morning, falling gracefully as they did across her bosom, and greeted her, remarking that I had seen her before. She seemed a little flustered, and it turned out that she was from Brazil, an au pair whose brother and mother had flown in from San Paolo for the week; they had locked themselves out of the apartment where they were staying. She introduced me to her mother, whose name was Silvia. Naturally I didn’t need any more reason to come to their aid.
I got a locksmith’s # from our security guard, called and was assured the locksmith was on his way, and we went to meet him at the building of their absentee host, a student of Silvia’s--she teaches Ayengar(sp?) yoga in Brazil. Portuguese is the one language I would yet love to learn, so my good Samaritaning was not without a degree of self-interest. We went to the building, a toney brownstone on East 62nd Street, just a few doors from the Park Avenue synagogue and even more importantly in this alleged culture where celebrity means more to us than God, Joan Rivers. I rang all the bells, and a kind art dealer, a Dane,-- I don’t think there was anyone in New York yesterday from New York(they were all probably in the Hamptons) let us into the building, since he had seen them there before. The locksmith arrived, an Israeli, and I asked if he had gotten his training in Israel but he said, no, here, something that was soon substantiated by the fact that didn’t know what he was doing, pulling what looked like a wide palate knife from his sack and trying to jimmy the door. Silvia, concerned that he would damage it, said that they would go instead to a hostel, where they could stay till getting hold of the maid, due back on Monday.
But it was the Glorious Fourth, and she’d told me her story—like my heroine she was a widow—there’d been a gas leak from the heater in their bathroom when Laisa was seven and Miguel was one, and her husband had been asphyxiated, and it was only recently she’d been able to speak about it, the pain of loss had been so shocking and intense. So we went back to my place, I checked the computer, and found that the fireworks were going to take place on the Hudson River near 57th St. at 9:26(nothing will be left to the world as unfathomable mystery with the Internet, and I suppose that’s a good thing) took a taxi to 12th Avenue and 57th—barricaded, thousands of people and a lot of nervous police(I didn’t think until later that more than crowd control they might be concerned about terrorists) who advised us to go further uptown where there might be a view. We took another taxi to 66th and the river and got there just in time.
My friend who had e-mailed me, Megan, said that nothing could touch Redentore, the fireworks in Venice, but this certainly came close. The exact number of pops and bangs and lights and trickles can probably be found on Google(Macy’s Fireworks, July 4th, 2009) and twas truly a sight to see. Missing was the music(that was further downriver) but I heard in my head The Stars and Stripes Forever, and was tempted to sing it aloud as the crowd oohed and aahed, but contained myself, having broken out in several directions already that day. Afterwards I took them to dinner at Ollie’s, a Chinese noodle place on Broadway, and we called a few hostels(they’d downloaded them at the Apple Store—is there no end to the seeming e-miracles)--when all I had thought to do was call Traveler’s Aid(they were closed for the weekend) and found them a place to stay. They dropped me at home on their way to the hostel, we exchanged numbers, swore eternal friendship and parted, and Silvia said she would pay me back with yoga lessons, when I visit her in Sao(pronounced San) Paolo.
A good, longtime friend I’d called in the country to ask if they could stay in her NY apartment(mine could sleep only one, even with yoga mats, of which I have two) said to be careful, that if they were Brazilians visiting here they had money, and I shouldn’t be so generous, and then there is my wonderful friend Gary the attorney who long ago told me not to confuse what is insane with what is fascinating(best public example: Sarah Palin) But anyone who can articulate the way your bones interlock with your soul when you do Ayengar yoga cannot possibly be a bad person. Even more important, when I looked in the mirror this morning, I appeared strangely younger, as if an act of kindness had stripped away, if not some years, some cares. The other night I saw again ‘The Wizard of Oz’, when Frank Morgan looks in the crystal ball and describes Auntie Em as ‘careworn.’ And I could not help but think how much more poetic it seemed to have suffered the years on the farm in Kansas, rather than in the great cities of the world, where we get to become simply ‘old.’
Monday, June 01, 2009
REUNION: Priceless. For everything Else, there's Mastercard
There is much to be said-- everything in fact-- for being with people you have known since the beginning of your adult life, to whom you have to explain nothing. There is only the joy of seeing them again, the embrace, the how are you? the not even needing to tell them what you have been doing, what prospects there are. To be alive at such times is enough, to be able to be who you really are.
So it was that I arrived at my Bryn Mawr Reunion-- I will not say which one it was, as there is a sense of embarrassment in our society at growing older, instead of realizing how lucky we are to have lived this long, gotten this far. Bryn Mawr, with its majestic Gothic buildings, the old M. Carey Thomas library now called 'The Great Hall' which indeed it always was even when we sat in little green-lit cubicles studying, fearful of dropping a pencil as it sounded like a thunderclap and a sneeze echoed forever, the Cloisters where legend had it Katharine Hepburn swam nude in the little pool the night before Comprehensives when Truth was we all did, for luck, the weeping cherry tree cut into the shape of a palapa, offering shade-- everything so preened and perfect, flags waving from the towers, it is lucky the eyes are still working, and the heart can remember how it felt to arrive there the first time, and be so overwhelmed, so intimidated, it was hard to see-- well, secondary anyway,-- how beautiful it was.
Lovely(although one shouldn't probably use words like that, as Feminists prevail)pink-shirted young undergraduates were there as helpers, a fantastically impressive woman, Jane McAuliffe, specialist in Islam, is the new president,and it is only right to feel a sense of pride to have gone there, and actually gotten through. There was no Phi Beta Kappa at Bryn Mawr, as we were told, on entering, that to graduate from there was the equivalent of Phi Bet Kappa anywhere else. AMEN.
A Hepburn quote is painted on the wall of the Campus Center: 'As long as you do what really interests you, at least one person will be pleased.' Amen to that, too. Would we had all learned that lesson, especially me.
So it was that I arrived at my Bryn Mawr Reunion-- I will not say which one it was, as there is a sense of embarrassment in our society at growing older, instead of realizing how lucky we are to have lived this long, gotten this far. Bryn Mawr, with its majestic Gothic buildings, the old M. Carey Thomas library now called 'The Great Hall' which indeed it always was even when we sat in little green-lit cubicles studying, fearful of dropping a pencil as it sounded like a thunderclap and a sneeze echoed forever, the Cloisters where legend had it Katharine Hepburn swam nude in the little pool the night before Comprehensives when Truth was we all did, for luck, the weeping cherry tree cut into the shape of a palapa, offering shade-- everything so preened and perfect, flags waving from the towers, it is lucky the eyes are still working, and the heart can remember how it felt to arrive there the first time, and be so overwhelmed, so intimidated, it was hard to see-- well, secondary anyway,-- how beautiful it was.
Lovely(although one shouldn't probably use words like that, as Feminists prevail)pink-shirted young undergraduates were there as helpers, a fantastically impressive woman, Jane McAuliffe, specialist in Islam, is the new president,and it is only right to feel a sense of pride to have gone there, and actually gotten through. There was no Phi Beta Kappa at Bryn Mawr, as we were told, on entering, that to graduate from there was the equivalent of Phi Bet Kappa anywhere else. AMEN.
A Hepburn quote is painted on the wall of the Campus Center: 'As long as you do what really interests you, at least one person will be pleased.' Amen to that, too. Would we had all learned that lesson, especially me.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
A Tree Still Grows
When I was a very little girl, the big Bestseller (capitalized in my mind even then) was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. My mother in her never-ending hope of Upliftment(of the material kind) was a social director at a hotel where its author, Betty Smith, was a guest, and telling her that her daughter, then maybe around eight, wanted to be a writer, succeeded in getting her to write to me. I remember the way the letter looked, all carefully typed and single spaced and filled with kind advice, none of which I remember now, but all of which I hope I took. I treasured the letter for years but so many years have passed I haven’t a clue where along the line I lost it, but then I lost wedding pictures, too, not to mention the people in them. But I do remember almost as clearly as if I were reading it now that her main counsel was to look at everything, and take it all in, and when I wrote about what I saw and felt, to write from the heart. I think she told me to love people, but I might just be being fanciful, because it was so generous of her to bother writing me, and single spaced at that, and hers was—this I do remember for sure—a wonderful book.
But I had never been to Brooklyn until yesterday. It was, almost as though prescribed, a remarkable day. The one before it had been too hot, and today is too cold, but like Goldilocks I was ushered into a day that was JUST RIGHT. There was a soft wind blowing off the waters which I had never really noted were nearby in spite of this being an island—at no time during my life have I had a sense of geography—even when traveling the world for the Journal I never knew exactly where I was, but the kindness of strangers, etc. and a lucky gift for language got me where I was going. Yesterday though I had a wonderful guide, the husband of a new friend who has a palpable love for his borough, and gave me details even The Museum of New York would be hard-put to match(”There the house of Diamond Jim Brady, who was mayor, and there his mistress, a dance hall girl.”) Children did not play in the streets, but there were acres of green they might be hiding behind, and parks and cemeteries to take care of all the city’s no-longer-living history, including someplace to bury Boss Tweed, and Leonard Bernstein, returned there by his own request.
My hosts live in a red-doored brownstone, with polished wooden floors, a real house with nooks and a stained-glass skylight, a backyard where Francie Nolan might be playing even now. There is that neighborhood feel to it, that somehow you just can’t get in Manhattan where I once lived in a high rise and never met anyone else in the building until I had my hair cut at Dusty Fleming’s in LA and the woman getting shampooed in the next chair was from my New York floor. Yesterday being Memorial Day Brooklyn was quiet, the storefronts closed, Weight Watchers along with those selling what would ruin their determination to slim down. But we found a charming almost sidewalk café—that is to say, it had sides that opened and there were two tables on the sidewalk, so Mimi, who was present, could come along as though we were actually in Europe, Greece in this case, with a menu that had a water-color rendering of – was it Santorini?—someplace magical in Greece, and we drank retsina and had almost Spanikopitas(it was spinach pie) and something cheesily pleasing in dough. So it was all breezily Mediterranean, and a fine memorial to the diversity that still makes up New York, especially if you cross the bridge.
I wish I knew where that letter was.
But I had never been to Brooklyn until yesterday. It was, almost as though prescribed, a remarkable day. The one before it had been too hot, and today is too cold, but like Goldilocks I was ushered into a day that was JUST RIGHT. There was a soft wind blowing off the waters which I had never really noted were nearby in spite of this being an island—at no time during my life have I had a sense of geography—even when traveling the world for the Journal I never knew exactly where I was, but the kindness of strangers, etc. and a lucky gift for language got me where I was going. Yesterday though I had a wonderful guide, the husband of a new friend who has a palpable love for his borough, and gave me details even The Museum of New York would be hard-put to match(”There the house of Diamond Jim Brady, who was mayor, and there his mistress, a dance hall girl.”) Children did not play in the streets, but there were acres of green they might be hiding behind, and parks and cemeteries to take care of all the city’s no-longer-living history, including someplace to bury Boss Tweed, and Leonard Bernstein, returned there by his own request.
My hosts live in a red-doored brownstone, with polished wooden floors, a real house with nooks and a stained-glass skylight, a backyard where Francie Nolan might be playing even now. There is that neighborhood feel to it, that somehow you just can’t get in Manhattan where I once lived in a high rise and never met anyone else in the building until I had my hair cut at Dusty Fleming’s in LA and the woman getting shampooed in the next chair was from my New York floor. Yesterday being Memorial Day Brooklyn was quiet, the storefronts closed, Weight Watchers along with those selling what would ruin their determination to slim down. But we found a charming almost sidewalk café—that is to say, it had sides that opened and there were two tables on the sidewalk, so Mimi, who was present, could come along as though we were actually in Europe, Greece in this case, with a menu that had a water-color rendering of – was it Santorini?—someplace magical in Greece, and we drank retsina and had almost Spanikopitas(it was spinach pie) and something cheesily pleasing in dough. So it was all breezily Mediterranean, and a fine memorial to the diversity that still makes up New York, especially if you cross the bridge.
I wish I knew where that letter was.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
SURRENDER DOROTHY!
So apparently Mother Nature is attuned to cyberspace. Having read my report that the first Robin Redbreast retreated in the chill, she released Spring today to the full. As if by a signal, Forsythia burst from the barren branches, violets carpeted the sidelines, dancing along with the daffodils, while, though you could see the forest for the trees(elms along the Literary Walk, twisting skyward) you couldn’t see the grass for the people. It was a true release, as if everyone had been let out of jail. Locals, tourists, Mimi and I, plus a brass combo, trumpet, slide trombone and tuba, playing (What a surprise!) When the Saints Go Marching In, were part of the explosion. A Yugoslavian bride with her retinue of coffee-silk-clad bridesmaids and silver-beaded traditional-costumed flower-girl, caught the blessing and saved a fortune, having her wedding in Central Park.
Though the Literary Walk ¼ offends me—FitzGreene Halleck, so obscure that he was not even taught by the boring poetry teacher at Stanford is there along with Bobby Burns(no argument) Sir Walter Scott(a little plodding, but he did his job) and Shakespeare(no question), the four who are honored with statues, there is no disputing it is as glorious a park as exists anywhere. Especially on a day like today, one of which the poets would sing no matter on what level their gift.
Earlier than that, I had joined with two lovely new friends, one a bright PR writerperson who blogs, and a would-be writer and sweet spirit I picked up on the crosstown bus, to have brunch. The blogger(Single Gal in the City) had the patience to drag me into this century, so I am now on Facebook, and from now on you can go directly to www.reportfromthefront.com as I will not be sending these individually to anyone except those who are Century-Impaired.
So as the sun sinks slowly in the West, not so fast as the West would have sunk under another Republican Administration, let us bid goodbye to our charming but antiquated ways, stop grieving over Michael Crichton who easily would have understood all this shit, and hope that his spirit will endure even though ER is off the air and there will be no more Jurassic sequels, and he will drop a little futuristic and technological savvy onto my head, and the understanding, along with the words, will flow.
Though the Literary Walk ¼ offends me—FitzGreene Halleck, so obscure that he was not even taught by the boring poetry teacher at Stanford is there along with Bobby Burns(no argument) Sir Walter Scott(a little plodding, but he did his job) and Shakespeare(no question), the four who are honored with statues, there is no disputing it is as glorious a park as exists anywhere. Especially on a day like today, one of which the poets would sing no matter on what level their gift.
Earlier than that, I had joined with two lovely new friends, one a bright PR writerperson who blogs, and a would-be writer and sweet spirit I picked up on the crosstown bus, to have brunch. The blogger(Single Gal in the City) had the patience to drag me into this century, so I am now on Facebook, and from now on you can go directly to www.reportfromthefront.com as I will not be sending these individually to anyone except those who are Century-Impaired.
So as the sun sinks slowly in the West, not so fast as the West would have sunk under another Republican Administration, let us bid goodbye to our charming but antiquated ways, stop grieving over Michael Crichton who easily would have understood all this shit, and hope that his spirit will endure even though ER is off the air and there will be no more Jurassic sequels, and he will drop a little futuristic and technological savvy onto my head, and the understanding, along with the words, will flow.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
In Lieu of Diamonds
There is a great story I read long ago in Helen Hayes’ autobiography, when Charles MacArthur was courting her, and they were eating peanuts, and he said “I wish they were emeralds.” Then they both became very successful, and he gave her a lot of emeralds, and finally said “I wish they were peanuts.”
My husband, usually borderline impoverished, was a great romantic, so no matter how little money he had, whenever I finished a novel, or had a new work, (including my musical comedy, begun so long ago he was still alive to believe in me and cheer me on and think it was wonderful) he would give me a diamond. There was an engagement ring(the stone was a big Marquis, but flawed, not that it showed, but at least it made it only a little unaffordable,) earrings for which I had to have my ears pierced(it hurt—I could only take one and then went to lunch with Tungson Park, of Koreagate, at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, and encouraged by the truth that I had the admiration of an international scoundrel, as I had argued in his defense, fictionally, in Ladies in Waiting, went back for the second lobe. Then there were bracelets and pendants(a diamond 13 when I published my thirteenth novel, and all manner of little antique pieces to celebrate every accomplishment, almost all of them lost or stolen in the years he’s been gone, save, as Tommy Thompson would have writ, the lovely, dainty little ring that looks like a lyre, which I never take off so it won’t be stolen or lost.) Don called me dainty once, and delicate, and the words killed me, as they were something I never considered I would be considered. So it was that after his unbelievably untimely parting, whenever I finished something I would buy myself a little jewel, because I needed and felt entitled to that affirmation. But as the years went by, there was less and less to affirm myself for: the joy in the work and the output never diminished, but a loving reception for the work itself did.
Still, if you live long enough, things can turn around. So it is that not only my musical appears to be surfacing, gulping for air in this economically strangling time, but an ancient(comparatively) movie of mine for which I kept the stage rights, is to become a musical by someone very au courant and esteemed on the Great White(not exactly,) Way. But in the absence of Don, or a flush economy, I have had to downsize my reward. Thus it is that yesterday Mimi and I slogged through the frozen slush to Gracious Homes and bought a very smart and shiny black toilet seat. It seems exactly the right note. My cartoon by Herblock, in which the Chief Justice ponders the decision that writers of Fiction can be held liable for libel, and considers whether he should think the same for those who had just published a book on the Supreme Court justices themselves, commemorating what was essentially the death knell for my happy career as a novelist—the lawsuit over my novel ‘Touching’—is on the bathroom wall, framed in black, as is the poster from the play that opened on Broadway when Madeleine did, so the Times reviewer wished long life to my baby and instant death to my comedy. Above that, on a shelf, is my beauteous grown daughter on her first wedding day, escorted by my handsome and confident Robert in his tux, in a pailleted black shiny frame. As Shakespeare might have noted if he paid attention to the Seven Ages of Woman: sans diamonds, sans décor, sans hairdresser, sans smooth skin slightly tanned, sans romance, sans everything but optimism, a possible new beginning, and a little white dog who cannot walk three blocks without turning gray.
So bit by bit it feels as if there may be Life after Life. The Bel-Air is reprinting HAPPY AT THE BEL-AIR, the wonderful little book starring my late dog, a Yokie. (Robert Browning, “That’s my last Doggie on the Shelf, looking as if he knew he was on Oprah” which he was but she didn’t show the book. I was thinking of making the re-done dedication, ‘To Oprah, you bitch, you could have made him immortal.’ But what’s the point. The past is the past, and I have Mimi, and one day she might have a book.) We’re going for our walk now. She sort of looks forward to it, having the gift, as I apparently do, too, of not remembering that for every joy there will probably be a painful comeuppance. In her case, a bath.
My husband, usually borderline impoverished, was a great romantic, so no matter how little money he had, whenever I finished a novel, or had a new work, (including my musical comedy, begun so long ago he was still alive to believe in me and cheer me on and think it was wonderful) he would give me a diamond. There was an engagement ring(the stone was a big Marquis, but flawed, not that it showed, but at least it made it only a little unaffordable,) earrings for which I had to have my ears pierced(it hurt—I could only take one and then went to lunch with Tungson Park, of Koreagate, at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, and encouraged by the truth that I had the admiration of an international scoundrel, as I had argued in his defense, fictionally, in Ladies in Waiting, went back for the second lobe. Then there were bracelets and pendants(a diamond 13 when I published my thirteenth novel, and all manner of little antique pieces to celebrate every accomplishment, almost all of them lost or stolen in the years he’s been gone, save, as Tommy Thompson would have writ, the lovely, dainty little ring that looks like a lyre, which I never take off so it won’t be stolen or lost.) Don called me dainty once, and delicate, and the words killed me, as they were something I never considered I would be considered. So it was that after his unbelievably untimely parting, whenever I finished something I would buy myself a little jewel, because I needed and felt entitled to that affirmation. But as the years went by, there was less and less to affirm myself for: the joy in the work and the output never diminished, but a loving reception for the work itself did.
Still, if you live long enough, things can turn around. So it is that not only my musical appears to be surfacing, gulping for air in this economically strangling time, but an ancient(comparatively) movie of mine for which I kept the stage rights, is to become a musical by someone very au courant and esteemed on the Great White(not exactly,) Way. But in the absence of Don, or a flush economy, I have had to downsize my reward. Thus it is that yesterday Mimi and I slogged through the frozen slush to Gracious Homes and bought a very smart and shiny black toilet seat. It seems exactly the right note. My cartoon by Herblock, in which the Chief Justice ponders the decision that writers of Fiction can be held liable for libel, and considers whether he should think the same for those who had just published a book on the Supreme Court justices themselves, commemorating what was essentially the death knell for my happy career as a novelist—the lawsuit over my novel ‘Touching’—is on the bathroom wall, framed in black, as is the poster from the play that opened on Broadway when Madeleine did, so the Times reviewer wished long life to my baby and instant death to my comedy. Above that, on a shelf, is my beauteous grown daughter on her first wedding day, escorted by my handsome and confident Robert in his tux, in a pailleted black shiny frame. As Shakespeare might have noted if he paid attention to the Seven Ages of Woman: sans diamonds, sans décor, sans hairdresser, sans smooth skin slightly tanned, sans romance, sans everything but optimism, a possible new beginning, and a little white dog who cannot walk three blocks without turning gray.
So bit by bit it feels as if there may be Life after Life. The Bel-Air is reprinting HAPPY AT THE BEL-AIR, the wonderful little book starring my late dog, a Yokie. (Robert Browning, “That’s my last Doggie on the Shelf, looking as if he knew he was on Oprah” which he was but she didn’t show the book. I was thinking of making the re-done dedication, ‘To Oprah, you bitch, you could have made him immortal.’ But what’s the point. The past is the past, and I have Mimi, and one day she might have a book.) We’re going for our walk now. She sort of looks forward to it, having the gift, as I apparently do, too, of not remembering that for every joy there will probably be a painful comeuppance. In her case, a bath.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Barack, the Musical
Not since the overture for the revival of South Pacific at Lincoln Center, when the lid of the pit drew slowly back like the top of a piano, and the lush sound of that wonderful music played by a full orchestra invaded my ears, have I been so moved. To have a president who can speak! Explain! Inspire courage and at the same time love his wife, was overwhelming. I wept at his words, the resonance of his voice, the truth that we have survived the moron and his Vice, as Maureen Dowd called him all the time, accurately, and have a chance at restoration was beyond uplifting. Maybe we had to fall so low so we could rise.
The President’s speech was preceded by my foray into my next career which should have been my first one: the musical theater. There was a ‘MeetnGreet’ for all those submitting projects to NYMF, the New York Musical Festival, and I went enthusiastically, which my son once explained to me meant ‘infused with the love of God.’ Well, I have that, too, on occasion, but mainly what I am and have always been is infused with the love of musicals, a passion that has been increasingly hard to sustain for the past several years as I saw/heard what was out there, including a revival of what is arguably the best of all time, Gypsy, as I am that rare dissenting voice that cannot bear Patti Lupone, and had to leave at intermission because she was so ferocious singing ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’ I was afraid of what she might do with ‘Roses’Turn.’ I had the joyful privilege of a friendship with Julie Styne, the composer, and am happy for him that the show lives forever, but think he would have been frightened of her, too. Of the new, ‘In the Heights’ which won the Tony was likewise awful, in my opinion, and I hear the new ‘Guys and Dolls’ by my old special friend Frank Loesser is really the worst, so I will skip that and any personal stories about Frank although I have some good ones. Those theater folk with whom I late-dinnered the other evening after ‘Love and Loss and What I Wore’ a reading of a light but touching piece by five clever actresses, were all annoyed at Jo Sullivan, Frank’s very rich widow, for permitting it to be so miscast(Oliver Platt as Sky,) heavy-laden(the set obscures much of it from the audience) and dopily re-set in the ‘30s, which makes no sense at all, unless they were also reviving the Depression. So the only honorable thing I could do was put my work where my opinion was, and try to bring back what it was about the musical comedy I loved, and just DO it. Thus it was that I found myself deep into 44th Street, at a bar above a bar, with the others who had made submissions. I expected them all to be twenty, as I was when I Gung-Hoed into the world after Bryn Mawr, but rather than uniformly young, what they were, at least those I met, were beyond eclectic. One was a parole officer who’s written ‘Charles and Diana, the Musical,’ another a man who sells tickets on Broadway at TCKTS where you get them cheap—he’s written a Hip-hop--, a man who has “The Gay Bride of Frankenstein” and another sweet but vaguely depressed guy who’s written a musical about Jonestown. My my. Best of last season’s presentations one attender opined was a musical about pedophilia, while another expressed pleasure over a musical based on Meet John Doe, the classic starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, about a good guy who becomes the hood ornament for needy American men who pledges to jump from a tall building to rectify the lack of attention being paid to needy good guys, and who, on realizing it is a swindle, is really going to jump, dissuaded only by the love and pleadings (and could she plead!) of Barbara, only in the musical they changed the locale to the Brooklyn Bridge and in it he jumped. That must have been a spirit lifter.
But in the midst of that mélange, where we all wore name tags, a man said to me ‘You didn’t write The Pretenders?’ and I all but shouted ‘YES, I did!’ SO it turned out that my evening was MADE, MADE, MADE. And I went happily home to watch my president, whom I can proudly claim at last is genuinely MY president, and listen to him be eloquent and make wonderful sense. When he said he would end the war in Iraq the camera flashed on a less than elated John McCain as, at the Academy Awards, it had focused on Angelina when Jennifer Aniston was speaking, but this time with a wee bit more portent. A tad more weighty, though without the 115 carats of emerald dangling from each ear. I thought they were green glass, and admired her for putting all her money into needy babies, those she didn’t actually adopt. The high angled cube of glass on her artfully held finger, then, must also have been an emerald, but that in no way is meant to diminish John McCain, who wore only a patriot’s insignia in his lapel, and looked a little less unhappy at the news that we do not torture.
So were we in our original times, the country that is, not the adaptation of musicals, a town crier could ring his bell and announce the hour and say “All’s Right with the World.” Well, maybe not exactly, but it’s righter than it was, and I have almost as much conviction as Obama that we will make it right, now that we have a real leader. You’ll find out what happens with our history. And I will let you know what happens with my musical. At least I will if Life is Fair, which it seldom is but happens sometime. God Bless us Almost Every One.
The President’s speech was preceded by my foray into my next career which should have been my first one: the musical theater. There was a ‘MeetnGreet’ for all those submitting projects to NYMF, the New York Musical Festival, and I went enthusiastically, which my son once explained to me meant ‘infused with the love of God.’ Well, I have that, too, on occasion, but mainly what I am and have always been is infused with the love of musicals, a passion that has been increasingly hard to sustain for the past several years as I saw/heard what was out there, including a revival of what is arguably the best of all time, Gypsy, as I am that rare dissenting voice that cannot bear Patti Lupone, and had to leave at intermission because she was so ferocious singing ‘Everything’s Coming Up Roses’ I was afraid of what she might do with ‘Roses’Turn.’ I had the joyful privilege of a friendship with Julie Styne, the composer, and am happy for him that the show lives forever, but think he would have been frightened of her, too. Of the new, ‘In the Heights’ which won the Tony was likewise awful, in my opinion, and I hear the new ‘Guys and Dolls’ by my old special friend Frank Loesser is really the worst, so I will skip that and any personal stories about Frank although I have some good ones. Those theater folk with whom I late-dinnered the other evening after ‘Love and Loss and What I Wore’ a reading of a light but touching piece by five clever actresses, were all annoyed at Jo Sullivan, Frank’s very rich widow, for permitting it to be so miscast(Oliver Platt as Sky,) heavy-laden(the set obscures much of it from the audience) and dopily re-set in the ‘30s, which makes no sense at all, unless they were also reviving the Depression. So the only honorable thing I could do was put my work where my opinion was, and try to bring back what it was about the musical comedy I loved, and just DO it. Thus it was that I found myself deep into 44th Street, at a bar above a bar, with the others who had made submissions. I expected them all to be twenty, as I was when I Gung-Hoed into the world after Bryn Mawr, but rather than uniformly young, what they were, at least those I met, were beyond eclectic. One was a parole officer who’s written ‘Charles and Diana, the Musical,’ another a man who sells tickets on Broadway at TCKTS where you get them cheap—he’s written a Hip-hop--, a man who has “The Gay Bride of Frankenstein” and another sweet but vaguely depressed guy who’s written a musical about Jonestown. My my. Best of last season’s presentations one attender opined was a musical about pedophilia, while another expressed pleasure over a musical based on Meet John Doe, the classic starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, about a good guy who becomes the hood ornament for needy American men who pledges to jump from a tall building to rectify the lack of attention being paid to needy good guys, and who, on realizing it is a swindle, is really going to jump, dissuaded only by the love and pleadings (and could she plead!) of Barbara, only in the musical they changed the locale to the Brooklyn Bridge and in it he jumped. That must have been a spirit lifter.
But in the midst of that mélange, where we all wore name tags, a man said to me ‘You didn’t write The Pretenders?’ and I all but shouted ‘YES, I did!’ SO it turned out that my evening was MADE, MADE, MADE. And I went happily home to watch my president, whom I can proudly claim at last is genuinely MY president, and listen to him be eloquent and make wonderful sense. When he said he would end the war in Iraq the camera flashed on a less than elated John McCain as, at the Academy Awards, it had focused on Angelina when Jennifer Aniston was speaking, but this time with a wee bit more portent. A tad more weighty, though without the 115 carats of emerald dangling from each ear. I thought they were green glass, and admired her for putting all her money into needy babies, those she didn’t actually adopt. The high angled cube of glass on her artfully held finger, then, must also have been an emerald, but that in no way is meant to diminish John McCain, who wore only a patriot’s insignia in his lapel, and looked a little less unhappy at the news that we do not torture.
So were we in our original times, the country that is, not the adaptation of musicals, a town crier could ring his bell and announce the hour and say “All’s Right with the World.” Well, maybe not exactly, but it’s righter than it was, and I have almost as much conviction as Obama that we will make it right, now that we have a real leader. You’ll find out what happens with our history. And I will let you know what happens with my musical. At least I will if Life is Fair, which it seldom is but happens sometime. God Bless us Almost Every One.
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