Thursday, November 27, 2008

The Alchemy of Writing and Turkey

The "little" short story I decided to write to keep the juices flowing until I go to Ireland has taken on a life of it's own! It's 7000+ words and I've gotten wrapped up in a complex business involving lock picking, alchemy and William Butler Yeats! I haven't forgotten about Brandy by any means, I've just left her at JFK, waiting for me to join her in December where we will have the adventures and experiences necessary to finish her story in Dublin.

As I already mentioned, the jaunt to Ireland now serves two purposes - seeking Brandy's banshees and learning more about W.B Yeats. I read his life story awhile back but I want VISUALS! I want to see the letters and the first editions. Last week I read Rosa Alchemica and I must say - it is no wonder that man had several nervous breakdowns! If that story was not inspired by massive quantities of hallucinogens then Timothy Leary is indeed dead. And, although I hate to admit it, I have a great deal of difficulty following the convoluted phrasing and complex sentence structure. Listen, I will admit to being able to drag out a sentence with the best of them but reading a sentence THREE TIMES just to get the meaning leaves me with the desire to take a ride to the GWB and throw my Mensa pin in the Hudson River!

It's THANKSGIVING DAY and I am most grateful for one thing - my writing. After all those years in a band, singing, songwriting, acting, doing voiceovers in Manhattan (Hungarian poodles for dog food commercials!) - after poverty, single motherhood, abandonment and drama - after Thailand and California and France, Italy, Monaco, Spain and the Caribbean - I have finally returned full circle to the place I began. When I was a naive teen, slobbering over a broken heart and writing poetry, seeing a therapist because of abuse and setting myself up for abuse-yet-to-come because I just wasn't getting it, something inside told me "You ain't seen nothin' yet, kid!". I knew if I wanted to be a writer I had to LIVE first, to have memories, knowledge and experience to draw from that would put the early pain into perspective and, more importantly, carve new depths. Well, life carved so deep I had to crawl out with Prozac but now the worst is long behind me and the best is yet to come. And THE BEST THING - the sense of humor that carried me through all the tough times has not only stayed with me, it's made it's way INTO MY WRITING.

BRANDY KICKS ASS!

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