“I’m selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle, but if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”
— Marilyn Monroe
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
The next American Idol?
Hang up your microphone, William Hung. There's a new sheriff in town. And he wants you belted.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Insane
May you live in interesting times.
It’s one of my favorite phrases because it requires us to decide what it means. We can hear it as a blessing, as in, may your world be filled with interesting things. Or we can hear it as a curse, as in, may you have no peace or tranquility.
I choose to hear it as the former.
The other evening, a most interesting thing happened to me. I heard from a Canadian composer named Stacey Brown.
Stacey wants to use words that I wrote as subtitles for a five-part piece of chamber music she’s been commissioned to write. She’s named it “The Five Stages of Insanity.”
A few nights ago, she Googled the phrase hoping to find some inspiration in a scholarly journal article or somesuch. Instead, she found only this.
She wrote to ask permission to use them, perhaps, if the piece continues down the creative road it’s on. I’ve given her permission because, wow, what an amazing request. And now, perhaps, someday, when the piece is complete and performed in Montreal in March 2011, my name will be attached.
Sometimes it pays to go off your meds.
But only sometimes.
It’s one of my favorite phrases because it requires us to decide what it means. We can hear it as a blessing, as in, may your world be filled with interesting things. Or we can hear it as a curse, as in, may you have no peace or tranquility.
I choose to hear it as the former.
The other evening, a most interesting thing happened to me. I heard from a Canadian composer named Stacey Brown.
Stacey wants to use words that I wrote as subtitles for a five-part piece of chamber music she’s been commissioned to write. She’s named it “The Five Stages of Insanity.”
A few nights ago, she Googled the phrase hoping to find some inspiration in a scholarly journal article or somesuch. Instead, she found only this.
She wrote to ask permission to use them, perhaps, if the piece continues down the creative road it’s on. I’ve given her permission because, wow, what an amazing request. And now, perhaps, someday, when the piece is complete and performed in Montreal in March 2011, my name will be attached.
Sometimes it pays to go off your meds.
But only sometimes.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Bumper sticker to live by
Don’t confuse your soul with your ego. What grows one of them shrinks the other.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Banished
Right now, there are toddlers sitting alone, next to piles of rubble, uncertain what to do next because their parents are buried inside.
People wander aimlessly, dazed and confused. There’s nowhere to go. No one to find. Nothing to do. Except wander.
The screams have gone silent. The stench is unbearable. Next will come pestilence and violence. For some, death will bring mercy and, finally, relief.
And the blood — good Lord, the blood — it runs across the streets, in the mud, through the veins of those left behind to rebuild.
And to rebuild what?
A nation ravaged by nature, much of it human. An island frozen in time. A people devoid of joy, without hope. Where the winds destroy, the rain batters and the caretakers take what does not belong to them.
Even the collective rush to comfort is met with resistance from the gods. The port destroyed. Landing strips crumbled. The few roads that did exist covered with live wires or buried in rubble and mud.
And yet, we try. We give. We pray. Some of us rush to be near. We send our best, our most prepared, to fight their way in, salve the wounds and dole out hope along with clean water.
Along the way, they’ll unbury the innocent just to bury them again.
Most of us stand in awe — of nature’s power, of God’s will, of the kindness of strangers. We send our money. We speak with one voice. We pray with one heart. We desperately want to help those children who were left alone in an instant by the wrath of an angry planet.
Whatever it takes.
And yet, through the chaos comes Rush Limbaugh — the voice of hatred and ignorance — to call us crazy for such a show of humanity.
There he sits, well-medicated and over-fed, surrounded by the wretched excess of his life. He’ll leave more on his dinner plate tonight than most of them will have to eat all week. He’ll sit in his climate-controlled world, belching and farting from the overabundance that envelops him. Every so often, he’ll giggle about the idiots who hang on his words. Just before he counts his money. Again.
He, to whom so much has been given, has the audacity to say that we, the most prosperous nation in the history of time, owe nothing to the ragged, savaged people of Haiti, whose only crime is geography’s fault.
Nothing to the children. Nothing to the injured. Nothing to those who have nothing at all.
I pray to God there is a special place in hell for people like Rush Limbaugh. A place where there are no fires or demons or festering sores. Instead, there is nothing at all but a deep, dark hunger that gnaws at your soul. A searing emptiness, a horrific longing for something, anything to fill the void.
Where there’s no sustenance, no comfort, and most of all, no attention or adulation.
I want to believe that this time, he has stepped over a line that will bring about his downfall; that finally his own venom will poison him for good.
I want to believe that he, like the good people of Haiti, will find himself banished to Hell on Earth.
I want to believe.
Do I dare?
People wander aimlessly, dazed and confused. There’s nowhere to go. No one to find. Nothing to do. Except wander.
The screams have gone silent. The stench is unbearable. Next will come pestilence and violence. For some, death will bring mercy and, finally, relief.
And the blood — good Lord, the blood — it runs across the streets, in the mud, through the veins of those left behind to rebuild.
And to rebuild what?
A nation ravaged by nature, much of it human. An island frozen in time. A people devoid of joy, without hope. Where the winds destroy, the rain batters and the caretakers take what does not belong to them.
Even the collective rush to comfort is met with resistance from the gods. The port destroyed. Landing strips crumbled. The few roads that did exist covered with live wires or buried in rubble and mud.
And yet, we try. We give. We pray. Some of us rush to be near. We send our best, our most prepared, to fight their way in, salve the wounds and dole out hope along with clean water.
Along the way, they’ll unbury the innocent just to bury them again.
Most of us stand in awe — of nature’s power, of God’s will, of the kindness of strangers. We send our money. We speak with one voice. We pray with one heart. We desperately want to help those children who were left alone in an instant by the wrath of an angry planet.
Whatever it takes.
And yet, through the chaos comes Rush Limbaugh — the voice of hatred and ignorance — to call us crazy for such a show of humanity.
There he sits, well-medicated and over-fed, surrounded by the wretched excess of his life. He’ll leave more on his dinner plate tonight than most of them will have to eat all week. He’ll sit in his climate-controlled world, belching and farting from the overabundance that envelops him. Every so often, he’ll giggle about the idiots who hang on his words. Just before he counts his money. Again.
He, to whom so much has been given, has the audacity to say that we, the most prosperous nation in the history of time, owe nothing to the ragged, savaged people of Haiti, whose only crime is geography’s fault.
Nothing to the children. Nothing to the injured. Nothing to those who have nothing at all.
I pray to God there is a special place in hell for people like Rush Limbaugh. A place where there are no fires or demons or festering sores. Instead, there is nothing at all but a deep, dark hunger that gnaws at your soul. A searing emptiness, a horrific longing for something, anything to fill the void.
Where there’s no sustenance, no comfort, and most of all, no attention or adulation.
I want to believe that this time, he has stepped over a line that will bring about his downfall; that finally his own venom will poison him for good.
I want to believe that he, like the good people of Haiti, will find himself banished to Hell on Earth.
I want to believe.
Do I dare?
Sunday, December 27, 2009
10 things that won't be true at the end of 2010*
1. I’ve never read anything by Toni Morrison.
2. I’ve never made a pie crust — or any other pastry — from scratch.
3. I’ve never walked hand-in-hand in New York City.
4. I’ve never done more than 10 pushups in a row.
5. I’ve never seen Breakfast at Tiffany's, All About Eve, Casablanca, Citizen Kane or anything by Alfred Hitchcock except Psycho.
6. I’ve never been back to visit the closest thing to a childhood home I ever had.
7. I can’t stand salmon.
8. I’ve never taken a creative writing class.
9. I don’t belong to a church.
10. I am powerless over Diet Coke.
* These are not resolutions. Instead, they are promises to myself, to try new things, seek new experiences and take better care of myself.
How about you, dear reader? What are your plans for 2010?
2. I’ve never made a pie crust — or any other pastry — from scratch.
3. I’ve never walked hand-in-hand in New York City.
4. I’ve never done more than 10 pushups in a row.
5. I’ve never seen Breakfast at Tiffany's, All About Eve, Casablanca, Citizen Kane or anything by Alfred Hitchcock except Psycho.
6. I’ve never been back to visit the closest thing to a childhood home I ever had.
7. I can’t stand salmon.
8. I’ve never taken a creative writing class.
9. I don’t belong to a church.
10. I am powerless over Diet Coke.
* These are not resolutions. Instead, they are promises to myself, to try new things, seek new experiences and take better care of myself.
How about you, dear reader? What are your plans for 2010?
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