Can you imagine, when you're going at it hot and heavy, suddenly whipping out your Arrid with Perstop to deodorize your "sex perspiration"? This product supposedly nukes the "most offensive odor" (sex sweat), not unlike the Lysol douche which disinfects away all signs that you've had sex. All these ads talk about how doctors recommend the product, though they don't say WHICH doctors and how they managed to solicit their medical opinions. This is yet another of the ubiquitous ads of the era (1950s) which convey the message that women stink, but here they are saying women particularly stink when they are sexually excited, an odor so foul and offensive that it must be stamped out at once or it will knock your partner on his ass. The only good thing about it is the acknowledgement that women feel sexual "excitement" at all, though of course, if and when they do, all signs of it must be immediately eradicated.
Another journal entry. I get inspired in the morning and run off at the keyboard with my personal philosophy. May 9/15
Saturday again;
beautiful again. I don’t know. I keep telling myself I should be more unhappy, or
not happy with what I have. All these people who continually exhort you to be
happy with what you have: do they need to say it to you, or to themselves? And
even if it’s to you, why are they so compelled to say it? What business is it
of theirs what another person does? Are they so affronted by people who AREN’T
happy with what they have? Do they have to be checked and corrected by someone
with an obviously superior world view?
Why are we constantly
being told how we should feel, how we should think? In the trivializing age of
Facebook, etc., it’s even worse, with memes and other spiritual sound bites
abounding, most of them patently untrue. It’s never “This is whatI believe”
or even “this is what I think you should do”, it’s “DO THIS”, as if the words are being passed down on high from Mount
Olympus.
For God’s sake, don’t
ask for anything beyond what you have already! At the same time, you can have
absolutely anything you want in life if you try hard enough! (OK then, my order
is in: 5 million dollars and a palomino pony.) And how about this one: never quit! Never quit! This is one of
the most self-limiting things a person can practice, because sometimes quitting
is the most liberating thing a person can do. It can release you from the
shackles of trying, and trying, and trying, and feeling like a miserable
failure because you “can’t succeed”, and what’s the matter with you anyway, shouldn’t
you be able to have anything you want if you just try hard enough (and keep
trying, and keep trying)?
I’ve known people
who’ve gotten divorced, and when they tell their friends and relatives, it’s
either “Oh NO!” (as in, a tornado
just destroyed my house), or ‘Oh, nooooo.
. . “ as in “my cat just got run over”, or – it’s harder to describe this “oh
no”, but it’s a combination of grief, disappointment and bewildered judgement,
as in “how in hell could YOU have let this happen?” These people, and that means
most people, see it as a failure and even an unmitigated tragedy.
And there’s an even
worse one, a sort of appalled, horrified silence, sort of like “my son was
caught masturbating in class”. They just don’t know what to say.
So what of the people
who have been in a miserable relationship for years and years, have felt
alienated and alone, have fought bitterly and without hope of resolution, have
endured infidelities and physical and emotional abuse from their partners? I’m afraid
it’s still “nooooooo” from most
people, because they have no idea what was going on, OR, they had full
knowledge of what was going on and felt they should still stay together for the
sake of the children. Or maybe they just weren’t trying hard enough.
Walking away from
anything is a failure, even if, after walking away, you find the love of your life
and are happy for the first time in your life. No, stay stuck, it’s more noble,
and for God's sake keep your problems to yourself because talking about them, or even admitting
you have them and couldn’t tolerate them any more, makes your friends and
relatives deeply uncomfortable.
And that brings me to
this point: gratuitous advice. Why are we supposed to be so grateful when
someone throws buckets of unsolicited advice at us, when we either haven’t asked
for it or have maybe asked them one small, simple question? This demonstrates
several things. One, the advice-giver believes their view of things is far
superior to yours, and by extension, you’re pretty incompetent at what you do
and need to be set straight. Two, that you should be grateful for these stone tablets, even if you’re being hit over the head with them. Three, that your
obvious failure is an affront to them and, yes, makes them very uncomfortable.
Buckets of advice douse this ineffectual, smoldering fire. Or so they think.
Advice-giving and
homilies are a great way to shut someone up, usually someone suffering grief
and pain. Here, have this, it’ll solve everything. You may go away now. Your
grief and pain has just been corrected. I should know; I have never experienced
anything like that! “Hmm, well, I'm glad that never happens to me. Here’s what you
should do.”
It is the very rare
person who can receive your pain, and do you know what? We usually have to pay
them. Even then, real help is a dicey proposition because most therapists go by
the book and say very trite things so they can congratulate THEMSELVES on what
a great job they’re doing. And if your dismay and even anger persist, well
then, you just have a lousy attitude and should correct yourself and adjust to the therapeutic environment. I'm giving you all this help, and you’re not “co-operating”, which means you're just innately self-destructive. Sorry, I can’t treat you any more if you’re not willing to change.
I won’t get into such
trite crap as “everything happens for a reason” (a baby dying of leukemia?
School shootings? Al-Qaeda? The Third Reich? I could go on.) It’s almost as bad as "it's all part of God’s plan” (something someone said to me when my son’s roommate was murdered, his head kicked in in a parking lot by two "friends" after a bar fight). Or, worst of all, “God
never gives us more than we can handle.”
Oh yes? Have you ever heard of suicide, or are “those people” outside the human pale? I knew a lady who liked to say, “Our prisons and psychiatric
hospitals are full of people who had more than they could handle.”
But hey. I never have more than I can handle, so
I can inflict this philosophy on you with impugnity. In fact, having “helped”
you this way, I can dust off my hands and carry on, free from having to stare
into the grief-stricken eyes of a fellow human being in genuine human pain.
Today's journal entry. It's nothing I haven't said before, but maybe I need to say it again.
May 8/15
I keep deleting what
I’ve written, then starting again. Just as well, because some of it makes me
sick. It’s pretty sad stuff that is only useful for giving me something to do, and to show myself, "see, I'm still writing".
Part of me wanted to
keep all of it, but I don’t read back much anyway. I just get tired of it, of
myself, of Facebook and its emptiness. People saying “just concentrate on the
joy of the writing, and you WILL be a bestseller.” It will just happen by some
magic. It’s like “do what you love and the money will follow”. People really do
believe that. If you don’t, your karma is off, your vibes are too negative, and
you don’t really deserve to be a bestseller anyway because you are committing
the unpardonable sin of WANTING to be, to have a decent readership for your
books.
You should completely ignore your ambition to be published (because it's kind of stinky anyway, like being a whore), put it aside, write for the pure
joy of writing, and THEN, voila!, your work will suddenly, magically sell like
mad! A contract will drop into your lap, a Fifty
Shades-size one, with no effort, just as New York agents will bust down
your door before they even read your stuff. I see this naïve belief everywhere,
and if you try to counter it with reality and experience, you’re treated like a
sour old thing who has no optimism or faith and who DOESN’T believe success is guaranteed if only you stop wanting it.
To me, that's pretty dishonest, because it's a hidden agenda. The "advice" or imperative is "write only for the joy of it", though beneath that, unacknowledged, unadmitted, lurks this sense that being so pure of heart will cause the Great God Publishing to bring his/her wand down on your head and grant your every bestselling wish. In other words, you will succeed so lavishly BECAUSE you stopped caring about such crass, unworthy things as having a readership for your work.
This whole thing
about publishing, readership, etc. is highly stigmatized and causes so much
embarrassment that people will do just about anything to cover it up. The LAST
thing you should want is to have people buy your books. “Stop thinking about
the market and start thinking about the joy of what you do!” one of those
meme-y things says, and I see a lot of them. “The market” reminds me of “meat
market” or an inert commodity that is bought and sold.
A book IS that, yes
it is. A commodity that is bought and sold. What else can it be?I say this over and over again: we don’t expect a concert pianist to
play in an empty hall. It would be completely humiliating, not to mention a huge
waste of training, practice, time, money, and the cost of a Steinway. And we don't tell the pianist, "Oh, just play for the joy of playing, even if nobody ever hears it. " And yet, for writers it's a completely different thing.
Human language and
communication began to seriously evolve with the storyteller who sat by the
fire, a circle of tribespeople sitting around and avidly listening. The
first thing he or she probably talked about was that day’s hunt, probably
exaggerating its glories and downplaying its failures. Gradually it evolved
into more elaborate storytelling, exploits. People listened and learned what a
human being is, even if in distorted form. It was one of the main building blocks of culture, and it defined humanity as an animal different from any other.
What if no one had
sat around the fire? I think we might
still be conducting our business with sticks and stones.
It suddenly occurs to me that my last post probably made no sense to anyone but me. I think - I hope - I was trying to draw parallels between the Biblical story of Jacob and Esau, and George and Ira Gershwin. Sounds silly? Maybe. But it seemed oh-so-significant at the time. My Gershwin exploration is a dreamlike experience, and you know how hard it is to explain or even describe a dream to someone else, if you can even remember it. And somehow it falls apart on remembering.
But meanwhile! Here is a fabulous recording of one of the GG brothers' most charming songs. It has a killer lyric that is very hard to get your tongue around, and a fast, sassy, brilliant tune. Maureen McGovern, an underrated singer with an incredible range, gets around this very handily, and with operatic precision. And for all that, she still has fun with it. By Jove, by jing, by Strauss is the thing!
(P. S. Kiri te Kanawa does a bizarre version of this in a thick Yiddish accent - wtf?? - and does not sing the high-altitude coloratura solo which McGovern knocks off with such aplomb. Now, it could be that the arrangement was written especially for her. At any rate, like this song that flames up like a peacock on fire, it's killer.)
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
I should I guess
try to slow this down or stop it or spread it out or something.
Why?
I’m getting
greedy.
For what, we don’t
know. But I am here on the line
Does it matter
how much things have changed since –
Does it seem to?
No, it doesn’t.
This is a timeless time. Are you appearing to people still?
I haven’t for a
while because I was not sure they would know me.
Oh they would.
For some reason I am thinking of Jacob and Esau
What brought THAT
to your mind?
Something about
birthright – you and Ira – I don’t know.
“The hands are the
hands of Esau.” You know how it goes?
I need to be reminded!
Jacob stole Esau’s
birthright, or he sold it for a bowl of soup. Great deal, eh? Did you ever pay
attention to what my real name is?
Jacob.
Esau being the
eldest, so he’d get the caboodle, all of it.
I just found the reference,
here it is:
21 Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was childless. The
Lord answered his prayer, and his wife Rebekah became pregnant.
22 The babies jostled each other within her, and she said, “Why is this happening to me?” So she went to inquire of the Lord. 23 The Lord said to her, “Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger.” 24 When the time came for her to give birth, there were twin boys in her womb. 25 The first to come out was red, and his whole body was like a hairy garment;so they named him Esau. 26 After this, his brother came out, with his hand grasping Esau’s heel; so he was named Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when Rebekah gave birth to them. 27 The boys grew up, and Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was content to stay at home among the tents. 28 Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob. 29 Once when Jacob was cooking some stew, Esau came in from the open country, famished. 30 He said to Jacob, “Quick, let me have some of that red stew! I’m famished!” (That is why he was also called Edom. 31 Jacob replied, “First sell me your birthright.” 32 “Look, I am about to die,” Esau said. “What good is the birthright to me?” 33 But Jacob said, “Swear to me first.” So he swore an oath to him, selling his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau some bread and some lentil stew. He ate and drank, and then got up and left. So Esau despised his birthright.
Rings true in a way.
I don’t think he despised
his birthright but some things do ring true in it, including your own
cleverness and the way your personalities contrast. I just looked up the rest
of it and Jacob fools his father twice!
His father seems unable to go back on it, so poor Esau. . . in a way, he’s
cursed, or certainly not blessed. But who on earth could outfox Jacob?
Nobody. He looks after his own. Yet Esau loves him, maybe too much.
He’s beholden to him?
It should be the other way around, but it isn’t. George ends up
being the genius.
You have no trouble saying that, do you.
No. I have no trouble saying that. Ira would have no trouble saying
that. He was the favored son, but look what happened, I jumped on the piano
stool and was off. And it was Ira’s piano. He was supposed to take lessons. You
could say the piano was his birthright, and I stole it. At least I had no
trouble taking it.
But it really was.
It really was. Did he feel left behind? Then he wrote these
incredible lyrics, and it became evident we really were “twins”, with the words
and music intertwining.
That is absolutely fantastic! “The hands are hands of Esau, but
the voice is the voice of Jacob.” Pulling a switch, there, and a clever one.
It’s almost like you/he stole Esau’s hands!
Esau’s hands were hairy. Jacob’s hands were smooth. Boy they sure
got it backwards there.
Yeah I’ve seen pictures. Wow.
I’m just resonating from this
"I was a 'single' wife How a young married woman overcame the "one neglect" that often wrecks romance
1. Ours was the perfect marriage. . . at first. But slowly, gradually, a strangeness grew up between us. I couldn't believe Jim's love had cooled so fast!
2. One day, Miss R., a nurse from my home town, found me crying and wormed the whole thing out of me. "Don't be offended, darling," she began, shyly. "I've seen this happen before. Many wives have lost their husbands' love through their neglect of feminine hygiene (intimate personal cleanliness).
3. Then she told me what she'd heard a doctor advise: Lysol Disinfectant. "You see," she went on, "Lysol won't harm sensitive vaginal tissues - just follow the easy directions. Lysol cleanses thoroughly and deodorizes. No wonder this famous germicide is the mainstay of thousands of women for feminine hygiene."
4. Ever since, I've used Lysol. It's so economical, so easy to use, gives me such a wonderful feeling of personal daintiness. And - here's the most wonderful thing - Jim and I are once again happy as doves."
Check this with your doctor
Lysol is NON-CAUSTIC - gentle and efficient in proper dilution. Contains no free alkali. It is not carbolic acid. EFFECTIVE - a powerful germicide, active in presence of organic matter (such as mucus, serum, etc.) SPREADING - Lysol solutions spread and thus virtually search out germs in deep crevices. ECONOMICAL - small bottle makes almost a gallon of solution for feminine hygiene.
CLEANLY ODOR disappears after use. LASTING - Lysol keeps full strength indefinitely, no matter how often it is uncorked.
Jan. 23, 1936
One Thirty-Two East Seventy-Second Street
New York
Dear Elizabeth -
After much patient waiting I finally was rewarded with an epistle (a very well typed epistle I may add) from you. I find its a very good idea to write letters so seldomly as it works up a been desire, almost amounting to pain in the receiving person, and its a swell idea unless of course the person happens to die waiting.
It's nice that things whizz for you out where beauties play my music. On the 9th February I'm playing the same frogs with the Washington Sym. - your mother has asked If she could give me a party in Wash. on that evening and I answered a quick "yes". I wish you were there.
Ira's Follies opens in town next week & it reminds me of a year ago when you had that lovely dress on & we went to the opening of 8:40.
Hope now you are in the pink, physically, mentally & professionally & affectionately & that you'll write soon to
George
& talents go to earn an honest dollar. When life whizzes by, one is really living, so drink it in, honey.
The Mexican trip was fun & educational. No, I didn't fight with Eddie or even the Doc. We all got along 'splendid'. Much sightseeing, travelling for 10 days at an average height of about 7500 ft., seeing all the churches (but no synagogues) looking, but in vain, for the Mexican beauties one hears about, listening to the music but finding difficult to get anyone to play anything away from 6/8 time. Spent a great deal of time with charming fat Diego Rivera & charming lovely Mrs. Diego Rivera. Made color pencil portraits of them both.
Here I am back in old New York again, freezing cold. It's 10 above zero today. Night before last I played in Philly with the Philadelphia Symphony, the concerto & a suite from Porgy. It was a major thrill to hear that band
OK, Gershwinites: and are there any of you actually out there? Never mind, nobody reads my blog anyway, or hardly anyone, so I may as well pursue my current obsession (as usual!). One of these days I'm going to change the title of it to Gershwin's Ghost. You see, George himself is beginning to wonder if I am in fact working up to another book, which would be OK if it appears after my death and somebody else does all the slamming-headlong-into-the-cement-wall/humilating failure for me.
It's pretty easy to find samples of GG's handwriting, and the most interesting thing about these samples is his reference to meeting "charming fat Diego Rivera & charming lovely Mrs. Diego Rivera", the latter now celebrated as an artist in her own right by her real name, Frida Kahlo.
I have to confess that some of this was a little hard to transcribe. That reference to "playing the same frogs" must, surely, be "songs", unless one of the songs was "Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal". I am not sure who Elizabeth is, or was, and the Mexican letter consists of only page 2 and 3. What interests me - and maybe this was as casual then as an email, who knows - is how open he is about handwriting/answering letters from interested people and "fans". It must have been a thrill to get a handwritten note, not just from a secretary but from the great man himself.
By the way, he refers to playing with the Washington Symphony on February 9. No coincidence, is it, that the date happens to be my birthday?
“George even passed the most acid of tests for great leadership by
remaining a presence to his followers even after he’d left the planet. Ann
‘Willow Weep for Me’ Ronell told me some half century after his death that she
still ‘saw’ Gershwin regularly in the crowds of the Upper West Side, looking as
if he’d just walked out the door. And on that same day, Burton ‘How About You’
Lane testified to an even more precise epiphany. Lane had recently been to a
concert of Gershwin’s newly-refurbished piano rolls being played on a baby grand
pianola in a pool of spotlight. And as the notes began to go mechanically down
and up, ‘There was George for a moment,’ he exclaimed, ‘playing away. I almost
passed out.’”
FAILUREisonly
atemporary chantionetoustraightoryournextsuccessOnly thosewho dareto fail greatlycaneverachieve greatlyur busineinlife is
nottosucceed,
but toontinue tofail ingoodpirits.If thereexists nopossibility offailure, hen victory is meaningless ailuri aman
hasblunderedbut is notcapable fcashingin on the experience.Remember, noman is afailure who has
friends.One mustbegod to be abl to tell uccessesrom failureswithout
makingamistakeExperience is simplythenamewegive ur mistakes.Success isgoing from failure to failurewithout losingnthusiasmThe only real failure in life is
the failureto tryThere
ar noecrets to succes
resultof preparation hard workand learningrom failureLife’seal faile is whenou donotrealize how close yowere tsuccesswhen you
gave up.Success builds character, failure reveals iThere are no ailures just experiences
and your reactions to
themFailure is the tuition you pay for successA man may allmany times, but he won’t
be a failure until he says that someonpushedhim.Failure is notfalling down but refusing to get upYou cannot do wrong without suffering wronHe who failto plan,
plans to fail.Defeat is not theworst offailures. Not to have tried is the
truefailure.Notice thedifference betweenwhhappens when a man says to himself, “I have failed three times,”and what happens when he says, “I
am a failureI have notfailed. I’ve just found 10ways thatwon’t
workNeveconfuse a single defeat
withainal defeat.
A few more intriguing bits about Gershwin’s work, indicating he must have
had a deep interest in Jewish mysticism:
In Jewish mythology, a dybbuk (Yiddish: דיבוק, from
Hebrew word meaning adhere or cling) is a malicious possessing spirit believed
to be the dislocated soul of a dead person.
A
migrant soul?! And perhaps Ira, raised in the same tradition, was
subconsciously thinking of the same thing, his soul merging with his brother’s.
I don’t see GG as a dybbuk at all – he was a gentle soul and everyone loved him,
though I also think he was extremely lonely and was completely disoriented after
his death. And yet, if you strip away the evil connotations, a dybbuk is just an
unhappy camper like a ghost, frustrated or feeling incomplete or not listened
to. This is why Chanon in the story is “reduced to practicing evil rites,”
because he felt so powerless.
I
am very surprised, but perhaps I shouldn’t be, that the writer of I Got
Rhythm and Rhapsody in Blue could be so interested in dark Jewish
ritual, but he did after all grow up bilingual, i. e. speaking Yiddish, so the
stories were there. You look at this and think: George Gershwin? Mysticism,
migrant souls, WHAT? Then you dig up all this stuff. Instead of
developing The Dybbuk (the rights were tied up), he wrote Porgy and
Bess which was also about a marginalized and powerless black community.
There is a chilling song in it called The Buzzard which is about a vast
dark bird waiting to swoop down and feed on Porgy’s flesh: he tells it, “Ain’t
nobody dead this mornin’!” This is like something out of classic
myth.
Shakespearian phrases we use
every day! Try to have a conversation
without them. Illustrated by my best friend, father, brother, uncle, cousin, and all-around mitochondrial chimera, William Shatner. (There were supposed to be 50 of these. I don't know what happened to the last one.) - "Dead as a
doornail" -Henry VI, Part II - "Not slept one
wink" -Cymbeline - "The world's mine
oyster" -The Merry Wives of Windsor - "Obscene" -Love's
Labour's Lost - "Bedazzled" -The
Taming of the Shrew - "In stitches" -Twelfth
Night - "Addiction" -Othello - "Faint-hearted"
-Henry VI, Part I -"One fell swoop" -Macbeth - "Vanish into thin
air" -Othello
- "Swagger" -Henry
V - "Own flesh and
blood" -Hamlet - "Zany" -Love's
Labour's Lost -"Give the devil his due" -Henry
IV, Part I -"There's method in my
madness" -Hamlet - "Salad days" -Antony
and Cleopatra - "Spotless
reputation" -Richard II - "Full circle" -King
Lear - "All of a
sudden" -The Taming of the Shrew - "Come what, come
may" -Macbeth - "Fancy-free" -A
Midsummer Night's Dream
-"Lie low" -Much
Ado About Nothing - "Send packing" -Henry
IV - "Foregone
conclusion" -Othello - "A sorry sight"
-Macbeth - "For goodness
sake" -Henry VIII -"Good riddance" -The
Merchant of Venice - "Neither here not
there" -Othello - "Mum's the word"
-Henry VI, Part II - "What's done is
done" -Macbeth - "Eaten out of house
and home" -Henry IV, Part II - "Rant" -Hamlet - "Knock knock! Who's
there?" -Macbeth - "With bated
breath" -The Merchant of Venice
- "A wild goose
chase" -Romeo and Juliet - "Assassination"
-Macbeth - "Too much of a good
thing" -As You Like It - "A heart of
gold" -Henry V - "Such stuff as dreams
are made on" -The Tempest - "Fashionable" -Troilus
and Cressida - "Puking" -As
You Like It -
“Green-eyed monster” – The Merchant of Venice - “As good
luck would have it” – The Merry Wives of Windsor - “The
be-all and end-all” – Macbeth - “A sorry
sight” – Macbeth - “Fair
play” – The Tempest - “Good
riddance” – The Merchant of Venice - “In a pickle” – The Tempest - “Love is blind” – The Merchant of Venice
