Showing posts with label losing my mind. Show all posts
Showing posts with label losing my mind. Show all posts

Thursday, August 13, 2026

The sun comes up. . .

 

OK  then, this is probably the last thing I should be doing, but it's a great song, illustrates how immobilizing an obsession can be, and of  course has that refrain, "losing my mind" (somehow, very relevant to this whole glorious mess). That last line, "You said you loved me" is a primal wail of  grief, which could only be expressed by someone who has been there and done  that.

So what do I conclude here? Nothing, except that it's a great song by a great songwriter, and it does  express something I've never heard expressed quite like this before. Sometimes I stand in the middle of the floor, not going left, not  going right. 

I have not yet given up on the return of my own sanity, which has been compromised at various points, but never entirely lost. But that other issue. . . yes, he WAS lost, and lost himself in a way that in retrospect looks like his life's ambition from  the start. Cruel? Yes, but so is this obsession, and I want to be rid of it.  Why can't the dead stay dead? Particularly if it happened 20 years ago, and the meaningful part, FORTY years ago.  That's a long time to be immobilized.


Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Losing My Mind



Do I know anything about Dorothy Collins? No. Except that she kicks the hell out of this song. I heard Cleo Laine sing it many years ago and thought it was definitive, then heard it again this morning and collapsed into helpless tears.

You said you loved me. Or were you just being kind?

I could only write The Glass Character, which is 312 pages of unfulfilled love, because I know everything there is to know about Stephen Sondheim's paean to hopeless longing. I like the heroic, torch-song way she sings this. She just has so much voice, yet you get the sense she is only using about 3/4 of it. Oh God. I dim the lights. . .

I've lived inside that yearning, sometimes for years. I had this friend. . . he said he loved me; he was just being kind. I can't say more. I can't.

Did I somehow transfer that gut-twisting yearning to my main character, Muriel Ashford? Am I right now suffering the same anguish because nobody even wants to look at this novel, which I am sure is the best thing I will ever write?

Are you there?

Anyone?