Love is Tearing Me Apart... Again

At a party a couple of weeks ago, I was talking to someone about my novel, which goes on-sale today, when he interrupted me.

“Awww,” he said, “You’re in love with your book!”

I was trying to think of a self-deprecating, humble response but the fact was, he was right. I am head-over-fucking-heels.

And in keeping with the book’s title, that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Here’s Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh on love:

“Love can be a kind of sickness… What makes us sick is attachment. Although it is a sweet internal formation, this kind of love with attachment is like a drug. It makes us feel wonderful, but once we are addicted, we cannot have peace.”

The strange thing about publishing a book about the kind of heartbreak I felt so frequently in my teens and early twenties now that I’m older and married to a terrific guy is that it’s been a while since I’ve indulged in that kind of selfish, grasping love my characters are experiencing right now, the kind of love that I’ve doomed them to experience over and over again, every time someone opens the book...

Not too long ago, another friend helped me see how sick with love I was over the book. I mean, all the signs were there: I was thinking about it all the time, I was anxious about whether it would work, I was terrified about what would happen to me if it failed.

So we listened to the song that is also the book’s title. And for the first time in weeks I didn’t think about the book’s Amazon ranking, marketing budget, or critical reception. I just thought about all the people who’d helped me write it: my editors, agent, husband, friends, teachers, family, and Ian Curtis and Joy Division who created the saddest, most beautiful song in the world.

I’m anxious and nervous all over again, and I feel as if I can’t do enough for this book. Except, the thing is, the book doesn’t care. The book doesn’t want to be a success. The book doesn’t want anything.

The book isn’t alive. The book isn’t me. The book is just something I did with the help of a lot of other people.

Now if only I could remember that.

Feeling unsustainable

Here's a short story I wrote a while back.

I’m walking around in the museum of knowledge, kinda bored if you want to know the truth, and it occurs to me I must’ve skipped past a few of my favorite exhibits

the out-of-this-world
space adventure,
the dam’s-done-broke-
gushing-rushing log flume,
the hands-over-my-eyes
shouldn’t-peek-but-I-do
funhouse with the witches
and the blood and the goo

Excuse me, I say, walking backwards on the conveyer belt, I want to go back.

You can only go forward in the museum of knowledge, says the woman behind the counter.

But I didn’t start at the beginning, I pleaded. Someone dropped me off midway by mistake, and all you’ve got here is atlases and dinosaur bones and periodic tables.

What’s back there wouldn’t interest you, she said, it’s kids stuff.

Oh, but it would interest me, I said, it’s… it’s important. You know the funhouse back here?

She nods solemnly.

The funhouse is important. I need to remember it.

She nods again, frowning, grave, but I get the sense that she’s going to lift the velvet rope.

It’s my dream, see, she just works here.

***

I’m walking arm-in-arm with sprightly, smiling, wool-capped Kimber Dean. It’s not her, really, but a close approximation, and in this world I’m embracing her, but it’s not Kimber the woman I’m embracing, though I have those dreams too, no, it’s Kimber the activist I’m holding tightly this time, the Kimber who was quoted all the time on all things leftist and labor-related, only after a while there was someone else heading up the coalition on fair trade and I remember what a mutual friend once said about her, how she told him she just plain burnt-out on activism by her junior year and decided to settle into life instead, and it was then that I met her, smiling and smart-assed and hunkered down with a girlfriend that didn’t last long but none of that mattered anyway because Kimber never knew I existed, never knew I cared.

In this world, though, Kimber Dean and I walked arm-in-arm, she could barely keep her eyes open, and she was self-deprecating about her achievements and her appearance, and this was so unlike her, not that I knew what she was like at all, but this was so like me, and I tried to tell her she was beautiful and cool and great, but she just shook her head and told me how tired she was.

And so I told her to sleep, and then I told her I’d carry her, and she fell asleep, and carry her, I did.

She was light at first, and it felt good to lift her up real high above the pavement where the boy had been beaten, above the grassy quad where the kids had camped, and I convinced myself I could carry her all the way home.

But of course I couldn’t.

***

I tell him about the dreams, about the war between the me who was never really a kid and the me who is most certainly already an adult, between the me who cares deeply about the world and the me who wants to not give a fuck, and I say, Even when I was young, I felt like I was old, and even though I know I’m young now I’m still older than I was then, back then when I didn’t realize I was young.

It’s just, I sigh, It’s just… I want Marc Jacobs to dress me. I want Marc Jacobs to want to dress me.

While I still have lots of collagen, I add.

And he says, I don’t know why all the pretty girls think they’re not pretty.

That’s not what I’m saying! I say. I know I’m pretty. I just want Marc Jacobs to make me a dress which, you know, makes that clear. And while I’m at it, I want a casio keyboard, and not to care, and… Remember all the people who saw Joy Division play for the first time?

He does.

I want to be part of something like that. I’ve never been part of anything like that. Not the Seattle riots, not New York in the 80s or even New York in the 90s. I never toured with the Dead, or danced in Ibiza, or even saw a Dark Side of the Moon laser light show. I never wrote about the war or protested the Republican National Convention’s descent on New York or threw a brick at Starbucks; I stayed at home and watched it all on the Internet.

Look, I said, I’m not even talking about Woodstock or Four dead in Ohio or Dylan going electric because I wasn’t alive for that stuff so I can’t feel guilty about not being there, but as for the other stuff I’ve got no excuse.

He knows what I’m talking about because he was Christian as a teenager.

I conclude, There’s simply no reason I shouldn’t be friends with M.I.A.

I draw a diagram in the air with my beer.

On the one side, there’s me

And I’m fabulous and political
And Marc Jacobs wants to dress me
And I’m a total fucking rockstar

And on the other side, I’m editing a book on sustainability
And I have a day job
And I’m really responsible.

Do you really want to be a rockstar? He says, knowing I don’t.
ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY, I say, knowing I do.

Well, then give it ten years of performing in dive bars. With dirty bathrooms.

This is a dirty trick because he knows I hate dirty bathrooms.

WHERE
IS
MY
AUDIENCE? I roar.

Ah, fame, he says, so elusive.

I don’t want to be FAMOUS! I said, spitting out the word, appalled thoughts of the Britney Spears, American tragedy article still unsettling my mind. I just want a small New York following. Maybe I should start a blog.

You have a blog, he points out, and might I remind you you only wrote two posts?

That doesn’t matter, I say. If a blog lives on the Web and no one links to it, it doesn’t exist at all. Maybe I’ll call my blog “I want Marc Jacobs to want to dress me” and someone will link to it and eventually Marc Jacobs will link to it, too

and then it hits me.

I don’t even like Marc Jacobs’ Fall collection, I sigh. I mean I like Marc, don't get me wrong, the shimmery dresses I saw at Bloomingdale's are to die for. But the jackets make even the skinny girls look fat.

I feel fat, I say, and he gets angry and I know he’s going to say something about pretty girls again but only because he misunderstands.

Not fat physically, I say,

Fat… mentally.

Unsustainable? He asks and I know he understands.

Yes, I say, I feel unsustainable.

Because if Marc Jacobs told me he wanted to dress me in the coat
that makes even the skinny girls look fat

(and if he added that it was made in a Sri Lankan sweatshop)

I’d still put it on.

It's ten feet away, the door, and the next door another ten, and the final door forty in all. One door isn't even closed, just there. How some people can move through these doors with such relative ease fills me with such jealousy and curiosity. How do you do it?

There are words for this, I know. I would like to put a word on it, just so I can blame something other than myself. But I do blame myself. I know it's not my fault exactly but it still seems so stupid, so pointless, to be this way.

And anyway it is my fault. There were other versions of me I could have been. I chose this one or at least it feels like I did. I couldn't have always been so scared of the door.

When characters in books move through doors, it feels so fake, so staged. It feels so counter to what I am... which is essentially in this room.

I am essentially in this room.

When characters in books listen to other people, it feels so fake, so staged. I don't listen to other people. I try to listen but I've already made up my mind. I'm already thinking about what to make you listen to next.

Look. I made a real effort to be here, okay? As for you, you must want to be here because I've never heard you talk about the doors or the stairs or the turnstyle or the doors again or sitting there or geting off or the stairs again or going there. I never hear you talk about it. How do you...?

Nevermind.

Why I Hate American Idol

I'm back after a brief hiatus. This week, I'll announce the winners of my first-ever treasure hunt. For now, a brief rant.

Why I Hate American Idol

The reason I hate this abysmal show is not the lack of talent of the singers; it’s not the cheesiness of the performances; it’s not even the inanity of the judges. Or rather it’s those reasons, but not only those reasons.

First and foremost, however, is that it violates one of my few musical beliefs (the only other I can think of at the moment is that vibraphones are usually, like milk was to Ron Burgundy, a bad choice).

But my number one belief, the only belief that really matters since I suspect most people are with me on the vibraphone thing, is that you should never, ever cover a song unless you add something special to it, unless you truly make it your own.

And that doesn’t mean turning a rock or pop song into a fucking country ballad, Idols, simply because it’s a different genre. It means you need talent, style, an honest-to-God unique voice (And preferably, an honest-to-God goddamn band.) Think Jimi Henrix covering All Along the Watchtower. Brilliant, moving, goosebump-inducing cause he rocked the fuck out of Dylan’s slow folk jam. Same goes for Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujiah (Has anyone actually heard Leonard Cohen sing?) Johnny Cash’s Hurt (in my opinion, not as good as NIN’s, but Cash is a God), or Sublime’s Trenchtown Rock (RIP Bradley, RIP Bob).

So when I was flipping by just in time to hear some hack cover True Colors (I refuse to even learn his name, that’s how strongly I feel about this) in a version so utterly devoid of the beauty, the messiness, the feeling, the crackling imperfection that Cyndi Lauper brought to it (incidentally, she did not write the song—Billy Steinberg did—but Lauper rented that shit to OWN), it made me realize how much our nation has lost its fucking mind. Or at least its fucking taste. Which we had at some point, I know we did. Pop music has not always been synonymous with airbrushed former Mouseketeers and voices that only a vocoder could love… and it doesn’t have to be.

I know, I know. It's not really pop music, what they're doing: it's musical theatre without Disney sponsorship. Which brings me to one more belief: musical theatre singing sucks. It's nasally and cheesy and loud and generic and obnoxious. It's all well and good if you've got family in from out of town who want to see Times Square but let's not confuse it with actual music.

And look, I also know I’m five years too late or whatever on this but it bears mentioning because the novelty has worn off and then some and people still seem to like this shit, so…

Seriously, people. Turn off your fucking televisions, turn your backs on these overzealous karaoke singers and demand something BETTER. Start by supporting real musicians by buying the music they spent their lives perfecting. I promise you won’t be sorry.

Unless the band you choose to support has a vibraphonist.

I haven't forgotten you!

Been busy finishing up a cool freelance project and preparing for my improv graduation show... I'll be posting regularly again next week!