Saturday, January 9, 2016

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  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!




  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!



  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

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Letters home










Can I say something about George's hand? How can you stop me? It's my blog, and I'll go on about it if I want to. I have no special skills in analyzing handwriting, but I do pick up vibes from it, some of them distressingly negative. But I love this guy's handwriting, it's the writing of someone I'd like to meet. There is an optimism and freshness and energy about it, but at the same time, a diligence, even a neatness and precision interspersed with a few artistic flourishes in the capitols. It seems to surge forward bravely and even eagerly, and chimes in a way that's quite palpable even after all these years. It's friendly stuff. Does it reflect any of his complicated, paradoxical nature? No. It doesn't. Maybe biographers have pushed that pedal a little too hard over the years. A genius doesn't have to strain and labour to be a genius. In my long and tumultuous exploration of Gershwiniana (too many syllables, there), I've compared him again and again to Mozart, so lavishly, naturally gifted that it seemed almost supernatural. GG did not come from a music family - at all. They were tradesmen and furriers and even bookies and borderline crooks. He was, as they used to say, "a hop out of kin". But his hand is refreshingly normal, eager, with a kind of upward sweep and a let's-get-going that does seem to be reflective of his biographical self. Which makes his death that much more horrible. Come right in, George, I want to talk to you.

                 

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Friday, January 8, 2016

His face, at first just ghostly




Where should I begin?

 I don't know when it began. After I realized my third novel was crashing in flames, and would never rise again? Perhaps. But I think it started long before that.

 How can you NOT know about Gershwin? At least something. At least some of those songs: The way you wear your hat. I got rhythm. And even (though we don't know where, or why) Swanee, how I love ya, how I love ya.

 It's a delicate thing when you begin to feel a presence in your life. You're not sure how to receive it. And it's a lonely thing, because either you offer it up to mediums and spiritualists and those who are supposed to understand, or you tell non-spiritualists and are seen as basically crazy.

 I would not recommend you offer it up at all, lonely as it is. You take a terrible risk. The presence I feel now-this-minute is catlike, sleek, lovely, indescribable, and even describing it here is somehow risky because I begin to feel foolish. Most of all, I wonder if it's the right thing for him.

 But wouldn't he understand?



GG was rougher around the edges than most people knew, or saw. He cursed more. He fumed. Didn't get openly angry because he did not want to appear vulnerable, which he was, terribly. Tin Pan Alley followed him all his life, to the point that the critics ripped into him for writing Porgy and Bess without having the proper classical roots to even attempt such a thing. He was sensitive about technical know-how and hated it when they accused him of not having it. It was kind of like expecting Picasso to learn art techniques with a paint-by-numbers set. If he had had that standardized technical background, Porgy and Bess would have been forgotten a very long time ago.

 I could write about GG the autodidact, the pianist, lover, etc., and it would all be right, or at least correct. But what about the lonely soul, seemingly even lonelier after his passing? What about all those frequent, baffling George appearances, which seem to make people's hair stand on end? For he keeps appearing, perhaps as revenge (no matter how playful) for his horrible, unforgiveably botched and bungled death.

His diseased brain, that beautiful brain that gave us the transporting miracle of his music, was gutted, cored like a grapefruit. The medical staff, embarrassed that they could not cure him and perhaps hoping he would die rather than turn into a vegetable, abandoned him to a room, where he died alone. George. Gershwin. Died. Alone.



Some spiritualist friends of mine have told me that the WORST thing that can happen to a person is to die in a room alone, especially in a state of spiritual confusion. GG had lapsed into a coma when the tumor in his brain finally exploded. He didn't know what was happening to him. He must have been looking down at his ravaged, ruined body and brain, knowing he had to leave, but not understanding, not understanding at all.

 I remember that thing in A Christmas Carol about Jacob Marley. If a man's spirit doesn't engage with his fellow man during his lifetime, he's cursed to wander around endlessly after his death, seeking something he can never find. 

 Is it too late for George?

 I am not a medium, but I do not sweep aside the (many, many) impressions I receive from people who have passed. It happens all the time, really. When I dared share my George adventure with a medium in Nanaimo, someone I've known for 25 years, he at first seemed interested - "fascinating!", he exclaimed again and again - and then, suddenly, with no warning or explanation at all, he dumped all my revelations as phony, inauthentic, even concocted by me to try to play the spiritualist and overstep the bounds, because after all, I've had no Medium Training and thus know nothing. 




So Paul B. (I won't give his full name, not to protect him but me) ripped into my vision. I cannot tell you how devastated I was. It didn't merely pull the rug out from under. It was more like falling through the ice. This man's arrogance is nothing new. Years ago I sent him some samples of the novel I was writing, because he seemed very interested, and I had already read an entire manuscript of his (which was extremely dull and even offensive in places). I got this answer from him: well, Margaret, I think you need to be extremely careful not to make a fool of yourself sending this out to publishers, because they're going to see it as some kind of zany soap opera (the thing was a gut-wrenching take on the abuse I suffered as a child). Devastated, I wrote back to say: listen, Paul, these were just samples, not the whole novel. Please, read the whole thing before saying stuff like that! 

 And this was a so-called "friend". At that point, I wished I had not trusted ANYONE with my work.
Years went by, I didn't count how many, and then I got one of his calligraphy-written letters ("I don't know how I know how to do this", he told me), saying he wanted to apologize to me for saying those nasty dismissive things, but he couldn't help it because the subject matter of my novel had triggered all his "unresolved issues". It was a case of "look what you made me do", I see now, but of course I couldn't see it then. I just felt amazed that anyone had apologized to me for being abusive: it had never happened before, not in my lifetime. I tried to put the "zany soap opera" remark behind me, even though he admitted he had not even read the excerpts from the novel before condemning it. The outline was enough for him to form an opinion.

 Fuckface, bastard, I hope he dies. . . but he won't. He has set up a backwater fiefdom in Nanaimo, and is now a little prince strutting around with little old ladies hanging on to his every word. When he suddenly cut my George impressions out from under me, it was "zany soap opera" all over again, only worse, because he was accusing me of being an amateur and a fraud, someone who should keep her fingers out of this stuff before the Devil comes marching into her living room.

 Fuck that.


But something happens with George, and I have found out about it. He appears to people, not always where he knows he will be understood. I don't see him, but I feel him and I always know who it is. He walked in, just like Love walked in, and walked around the left side of my office chair and stood in front of me.

 I still feel him, slipping around the room, silently, occasionally tapping me on my (always) left shoulder to correct something I'm thinking, or clarify. "Display" was one word I received (it's a felt knowledge, so I sort of have to translate it into actual words). I was thinking about his appearance, how elegantly he dressed, how well-turned-out he was, and I wondered if it was at least partly a - hmmm - a -

 Now I know. Yes, it makes sense because he was already wildly famous by the time he was in his mid-twenties. It's not such a long way from being a song-plugger on Tin Pan Alley to world fame. Not if you're George Gershwin. A hop, skip and a jump is enough.



Why is he here? You can make up your own mind whether he is or not, as I often have to do. I never went to Medium School, and I firmly believe each person who practices spiritualism in any form IS their method. You don't learn it out of a book. Paul B. is so overeducated I am surprised he doesn't waddle when he walks. He has two Master's degrees and a PhD. To my mind, no one is duller and less-equipped to handle reality than an academic. Like Napoleon, he has grabbed the crown of mediumship and plunked it down on his own swelled head.

 George is smiling, though only a little, and I feel warmth on my left side. It's like a cat rubbing on me, almost imperceptibly. Sleek and warm and lovely, but there is a melancholy, a heartbreak really, or he wouldn't have been able to write those songs. "All my friends are leaving me," he said when he was very near to his deathbed. It's true. Scared of his illness and the bizarre behaviour that went along with an undiagnosed/untreated, grapefruit-sized tumour in his head, they did abandon him, even his soul-mate Kay Swift who was not allowed anywhere near him. Only a few remained, including Oscar Levant, who was so phobic about death that he could not stand to hear the word "insurance". 

 But he stayed, played him songs out of Porgy and Bess on the piano (which George, his co-ordination destroyed, could no longer play), and sang them in his bellowing baritone. It's often said that in a crisis, you find out who your real friends are.



But even Oscar's dogged loyalty couldn't save George. When you pass out of this world in confusion, with not even a kindly nurse or a cleaning lady in the room with you, no human energy at all, you don't know you're dead, don't know where the hell you are and what's going on. This has to be resolved somehow, and the upshot of it is that this world and the next become separated by a gauzy veil, the thinnest and most permeable of membranes. You can easily slip back and forth between worlds.

 It's called being a ghost, folks. Why don't I finally say it? George Gershwin, as amiable and benevolent as he is, is a ghost.

 So who am I to be receiving these impressions, I who have never gone to Medium School? Why is it someone so famous? Do you think I know? Is it like reincarnation, where everyone thinks they used to be George Washington or Cleopatra, not just some schlub digging potatoes in the fields? 

 Is it the fact I open to him, I welcome him, I pay attention to him, I - in fact - love him?



Mediums and spiritualists go on and on about Love being the Ultimate Reality and all that. But I am here to tell you something. There are things more important than love, and I will tell you what they are. I will list them for you right now.

 Respect.

 Understanding.

 Loyalty.

 Compassion.

 Courage.

 Acceptance.

 Forgiveness. Yes, even that, the thing I often scorn and rage about. Forgiveness is more important than Love, because without it, Love is soon destroyed. It is more fragile than we realize.

 So if all these other things are more important than Love, then loving George isn't such a big deal, is it? Of course it's a big deal, it's huge. It graces my life. I feel his presence and it wraps around my left side. He faces me and wants me to understand, and in that plea I almost see him.



I wouldn't be afraid to see him, I would know who he was and why he was doing this. I'm not meant to go trumpet all this to the world, and in fact I only write it here because I know only a handful of people ever read this blog (with the exception of the entry I See Dead People, which has had more than 110,000 views to date because, I think, it's on Pinterest). It's safe. I can do this. I need to, because goddamn, sometimes it's lonely being who I am and carrying all this baggage, and losing so much along the way.

 And I think, somehow, George would understand.







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George is on my mind




Away with the music of Broadway
Be off with your Irving Berlin
Oh I give no quarter to Kern or Cole Porter
And Gershwin keeps pounding on tin

How can I be civil when hearing this drivel
It`s only for nightclubbin` souses
Oh give me the free `n` easy waltz that is Vienneasy and
Go tell the band If they want a hand
The waltz must be Strauss`s

Ya, ya ya, give me oom-pa-pah
When I want a melody
Lilting through the house
Then I want a melody
By Strauss
It laughs, it sings, the world is in rhyme
Swinging to three-quarter time

Let the Danube flow along
And the Fledermauss
Keep the wine and give me song
By Strauss

By Jove, by Jing, by Strauss is the thing
So I say to ha-cha-cha, heraus!
Just give me your oom-pa-pah, by Strauss!

Let the Danube flow along
And the Fledermauss
Keep the wine and give me song
By Strauss

By Jove, by Jing, by Strauss is the thing
So I say to ha-cha-cha, heraus!
Just give me your oom-pa-pah, by Strauss!
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The strangest thing I've ever seen on the internet


 
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Thursday, January 7, 2016

For my friend (while he waits and hopes)







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Getting carried away?




Meet The Dutch Owl Who Loves To Land On People’s Heads

262 days ago by Dainius

An owl that likes to land on people’s heads has rocketed a small Dutch town to fame. Menno Shaefer, a 48-year-old from Zaandam, Netherlands, managed to document this friendly 6lb (2.7kg) European Eagle Owl as it tried to roost on the heads of onlookers in Noordeinde town. There, it sat for up to a minute before looking for another resting spot.

“Whilst photographing the owl, it did try to land one my head once,” said Shaefer to NL Times. “However, as soon as I lifted my camera to get a shot, the owl flew onto my neighbor standing by my side.” Residents think that the owl might have escaped from an aviary in Oosterwolde, and are excited by the publicity. “I have seen photographers and birders from around the country, from The Hague to Spijkenisse, they come from everywhere to see the eagle owl. Our village is finally on the map!” , said one happy resident.

As to why the owl behaves this way, Schaefer said, “It was a very funny thing to watch, however I’m just as confused as anyone as to why it does this.”




















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Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Feelin' jerky? Homoerotica from the bird sanctuary


Wednesday January 06, 2016

Oregon activist Ryan Bundy compares government to slave master with whip

An armed, self-styled militia group has been occupying a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon since Saturday night. Calling themselves the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, the group is led by sons of Cliven Bundy, a Nevada rancher who has engaged previously in armed standoffs with the federal government.





Ryan Bundy, one of the sons of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, speaks with a reporter at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016, near Burns, Ore. With the takeover entering its fourth day Wednesday, authorities had not removed the group of roughly 20 people from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon's high desert country. (Rick Bowmer/Associated Press)




 These news items blur the line between satire and psychosis. There is no doubt in my mind we're witnessing history here. That is what moved me to make the very first, and very likely ONLY, Citizens for Constitutional Freedom Blingee!
Others have discovered an even more powerful means of honouring this well-nigh-impossible-to-believe historic standoff: Bundy homoerotic fanfic!






(Lots more here!):

https://twitter.com/hashtag/bundyeroticfanfic?src=hash




POST-POST BLATHER. I just keep finding new dimensions of this excruciating story. Though my first Blingee was poetic and beautiful, even heart-touching, it omitted several key details: mainly, they weren't blastin' their guns, goldern it! "Hey, Cletus! Did-jall run ahta ammo?"

So this one, I hope, addresses those former deficiencies, and augments the bird-sanctuary ambience of the standoff. That slow-flying dove had better watch its feathery little back. Surely it's a spy for Obama! Such corrupt Democratic symbols won't be tolerated on sacred American ground.




Oh all right, just ONE more. . . 





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Some great literary porn




You wouldn't normally associate E. L. Doctorow's classic novel Ragtime (profusely adapted for both stage and screen) with eroticism. Would you? I don't know. Maybe. When I first read it, whenever that was (and you can tell something by the way the pages of my paperback copy have turned not yellow, but brown), a certain passage stuck in my head. So did a few others, and all of them had to do with sex.

Not that Doctorow is a pornographer or even an especially sensual writer, though he does have his moments. His strength is describing what's right in front of him, and I seldom feel his characters' hearts beating. But once in a while. . . 




Doctorow is a notorious name-dropper in this thing and keeps on referring to the movers and shakers of the day, people like Henry Ford, Harry Houdini, Admiral Peary, and - most notably - two women, famous or even infamous for very different reasons. I don't know much about Emma Goldman except that she was an anarchist and a rabble-rouser, and had a face like a rail fence. Evelyn Nesbit was considered a scarlet woman and spent her evenings sitting around on a red velvet swing while men looked her up, or is it the other way around? 

I won't even try to navigate the ambitions of this book, because they are just so extreme. A novel is always a reduction of reality, but reducing this gigantic sprawl of history to any sort of pages is pretty remarkable, that is, without freeze-drying and removing all the juices in the process.

This passage has juices. It's just the kind of scene that my mind wanders to when.  . . oh hell, who has sexual fantasies at my age anyway? Life is full of surprises. I thought things would sort of dry up at menopause, but instead, wow, wowsa, wowsy, wow-wow-wow-wow!






So I still enjoy imagining scenes, toying with characters, even writing the stuff myself (see: The Glass Character, which has its share of erotic moments while Muriel Ashford hopelessly throbs for her dear, distant, impossible amour). The "explosive" conclusion of this scene is such a surprise that it initially kind of shocked me. I know men of that era were supposed to be almost as chaste as women, but I don't imagine too many of them could manage it.

I love costume dramas, the ones that go on in my head I mean, and I love Victorian and Edwardian scenes because the women's gowns are just ravishing, making practically anyone look graceful and beautiful, and are at the same time mortal prisons. It appeals to my innate sense of masochism. But wouldn't all those layers be perversely exciting? A man might have to take a course of study to undress his wife on his wedding night (and by the way, have you ever thought of this? In the past, a good many people, both men and women, knew nothing at all about the sex act when they married. And yet, they had these huge families. They must've figured it out, but how good was it? I mean, for her? Oh Jesus, just read the excerpt!)




Though it's not likely they ever met, Doctorow has fun with an erotically-charged encounter between Emma Goldman and Evelyn Nesbit. Writers can move the chess-pieces around any way they want, and manipulate their women figures like so many helpless dolls. One wonders if the author reacted anything like Mother's Younger Brother.

















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