And I keep thinking about my own life, and dreams, and failures, mostly.... and every day it's like another episode of "Erin dreams, Erin surrenders, she mostly fails and sometimes soars."
And then I thought of an emotional, slightly incorrect, and totally improvised video I made for a friend and thought, what the hell. Share your life. What have you but yourself to give?
There have been so many times I didn't listen to my body
a dread in my heart,
A deep desire not to go somewhere,
a worry about the car on the highway that made no sense
And always those feelings were proven true; awful, awe-ful.
I have many stories of when I didn't listen and it went badly.
I have two clear stories of when I did listen and it saved me.
Today was one of those stories, small though it may seem.
I awoke early enough for my workout, early enough to fit in a phone call, a dog walk and a brekkie before.
I went to my preferred boutique gym. I will not say the name here for I do not wish to associate this beautiful studio full of trainers I adore with fear or crime.
After a very intense class, I was struck by the sudden thought I should stop by the front desk and sign up for a class tomorrow with the receptionist.
This is silly; it takes me two minutes online from the comfort of my desk.
But stop I did. I even remarked on how silly it was to interrupt the receptionist's morning, but at least I got to chat with her. I like to flirt (friendly flirt!) with everyone I encounter. I feel it brightens the day, at least for me, whether or not the other responds.
And then, the few minutes passed, and I was all set for tomorrow's class and as I turned to the door
Sirens, helicopters, people fleeing into our gym from the back alley, police, guns drawn, clear and present danger,
right where I would have walked
in the line of fire
if I had walked out the two minutes earlier
to walk home.
***
I whispered Bless You to everyone I walked past on the way home, people of every race and age and religion and gender. Babies on their daddy's shoulders. The kitchen workers from the restaurant who were fleeing the danger. The homeless guy on the bike. The police. The sky.
***
In class, I had been listening to "Titanium" by Sia. This song always brings tears to my eyes; it makes me very emotional. I know that sounds silly. It's like getting weepy over, oh, I don't know... Rhythm is a Dancer. Or The Twist. But I get emotional because it triggers thoughts about my lost years as a struggling singer, about the story of Lauren diPino I just read thanks to ASCAP about how hard it is to "make it" as a musician, about my many prominent acquaintances in the music biz, the kind of household names who could have given me a hand but didn't or felt they couldn't or what have you. Maybe it was me, maybe it was like diPino's article says.... great voice, wrong timing.
I recently revisited my script for my old one woman show, "The One," which I wrote about my love life back in 2011 and performed across the country as a healing balm both for my broken romantic dreams (I know, I'm so dramatic) but also, I realized, rereading through both a screenplay version I wrote in 2013 and the original stageplay monologues, for my broken dreams.
Now I am old enough to feel like I don't give a shit, I'm who I am, I'm talented, I'm creating, I'm an artist; I've survived as an artist who pursued her passions her whole life and will never not be an artist. I'm lucky. I didn't stay home and wonder. I truly live every day as if it were my last.
***
In 2010 and 2011, my sister and I were roommates. We lived together in a spacious apartment right in the middle of Hollywood. She left for work early every day. I was writing my one woman show, my music career on hold and in confusion. (I'm still proud of this song though):
One morning, I had a hike planned with a friend, but I had to stop and put money in the bank before I met up with her. Normally I would walk for such a thing. The bank was a block and a half from my house, it was going to open in 11 minutes, and it was on the walkable way to the hike. But everything in me said DRIVE. DRIVE. DRIVE NOW. DRIVE.
That was silly. I would drive, park, and get there early. So instead, I set out on foot.
But something said, rush, run. So I ran. It was silly. I got there just as the manager was unlocking the door. It was early but he let me in. And just as I past the threshhold of the bank doors,
An Audi crashed right into the front door
Just where the manager and I had been
It stopped two feet from us
Bashing in the infrastructure of the doors
Blocking the entire entrance
and
had I not hurried
I would have been there right when that Audi was there.
The manager and I stared at each other
That feeling like when you come face to face with an animal in the wild
that presence of life and death
That here, now, are we in danger, we're paused, all time is now is everything
***
How many times do we escape death without ever even knowing it?
How many times do we escape wide-eyed
This is why I live every day as if it were my last. Because I have been saved: saved from my own hand. Saved from rolling my car at age 19 on an icy, hilly, twisty turny road in Minnesota the day before I turned 20. Saved from being broadsided by a cement mixing truck. Saved from a bad situation with a drug dealer at a party I wandered into. Saved from a motorcycle roll over. Saved from a collision face to face. Saved from a stalking ex. Saved from an Audi. Saved from muggers with guns at my head.
Geez.
That is all so dramatic. I haven't had drama like that since-
it's not true though. Just two years ago there was that boy who committed suicide right outside my window in an act of murder-suicide and partner abuse. There is crime in a big city; you learn to be smart and aware. So there is drama everywhere, but these days, I keep it as far from my personal life as I can, and I bless these children of God who get caught in its path.
***
So let me embrace you with a kiss, and send you blessings of love and art and beauty. Let me plead with you to call the ones you love and tell them so. Let me plead with you to make peace where you can, to dance in the rain, to read a novel, to discover a new songwriter, to write a play, to get out and play soccer with your friends.
***
Here are the beautiful things that also happened:
My dog greeted me with a kiss
My partner looks really cute in the morning with his hair all crazy
I had time for a nutritious smoothie bowl and a great cup of Kimbo coffee before class
My workout was fun and challenging
I'm wearing new pants I got on a fluke- UPS delivered a box delivered to a friend full of "defective" clothing from a fancy workout wear company. It was delivered TO her, she didn't order it, but still here the clothes were. So we divvied up the clothes and I took what fit me and she took what fit her or her daughter. And my pants are so cute.
I'm having lunch today with a lady who is 8.75 months pregnant. She could pop at anytime, really, even today! And if you've never given birth or witnessed the miracle, I suggest you do. It's legit the coolest thing I've ever seen or been a part of (helping my nephew be born), and I've done some cool stuff.
If you are reading this, your heart is beating, or you are a ghost. Either way, that is a miracle. :)
I've been busy writing- a new novel has come into my ethers and so I've been spending time working on plot, researching, getting to know all the characters... how they think, where they live, who they love and why.
In the meantime, please enjoy this poem:
Oh, life, how you flow into yourself, and into me, Astonished, a pearlized heart and a smile of stardust, And the places I have gone, and ballerinas in music boxes, and the smell of the pine trees in the clearing, and the people I have smiled at, and the homeless ladies and the window dressings and the forgetting of sadness just in time to remember it again as a sort of faded name on a dance card from the days when such a thing pertained to a courtship... And the people who smiled at me, and who did not look past, and who did not keep going but who, in me, saw sister, daughter, friend... and the poems, pages and pages and pages of poems, and you, and a secret keyhole in your heart that only I can fill, and the delighted surprise at the realization that somehow I have unlocked my way into the memory of your future...
...Because the radical act is to be happy. To follow your heart. To connect to people and love them even if they're wrong about stuff, and if they don't love you back when you're wrong about stuff, what do you care? Love them anyway. And then remember that true love doesn't enable and you don't have to put up with disrespect in the name of love, and love will sometimes be from far away...
...But back to following your heart, and how hard that actually is, and the navigation of the rushing white waters of the river of your life, and how much energy you really have and thinking about your heart now AND then, not to future trip but simply to let go of everything and honor the self and that might include honoring the niggling doubt not because it's true but to allow yourself to investigate all those feelings and explore...
...and being willing to stand out and apart sometimes...
...and still connecting to people, the people who matter, and you might never get to know until you are five hundred and thirty seven years old, and what the hell is the point of any of it anyway?
...and being willing to then, after sitting with all those feelings, not in the head per se, but in the heart, purely, and in the body, and in your blood, and in your toes, and as you cradle a child (or in my case, a pet), or touch the rough ridges of a tree, or pray before your deity, or bow your head because you are still a human creature and such creatures do experience fear and welcoming it as a friend you get to care for because she is dying of cancer rather than shun her and ignore her because she is dying of cancer seems the more loving response for everyone, and especially for yourself...
...after all that...
...when the time is right (and how will we know?)...
Take the risk.
All of this great humanity,
this is the radical act that we are being called upon to take,
not false, fake, presentational happy,
the endeavoring, and the failing, and the endeavoring once again,
allowing all of life and saying,
maybe I don't fit,
maybe sometimes I do,
but this day is mine.
I shall lead, I shall follow. I shall offer, I shall receive. I shall weep. Laugh. I shall dance badly, and I shall sing well. I shall listen, listen, listen to the silence within, listen, listen, listen to the words as you are speaking them. I shall listen to the music and the starry starry night. I shall come forward with my hands open, asking for more, for reasons, for help. And then those hands open shall be ready to work, to build, to pound nails and plant seeds. And the seasons and the beatitudes and the tides and the turning and this is the stuff of life and we are born and then we die and every day we die again and let this take your breath away so that you may join the heavenly choir. Temptations sing... oh, glory, jewel of the nile, childhood things, wonder, mystery, discovery, all making things like taxes tolerable, all things like the power bill and heartache tolerable, tolerable, tolerable.
The options are yours, then. Will you allow life to be radical, or tolerable?
Today the metamorphose is incomplete, and I have awakened as J. Alfred.
I am falling, again and again I am falling, you see,
and willfully, and against my will, an ancient pain,
sweetly, sensually, unrootable:
vines from a mobius strip wrapping round my body,
chains made of a flesh eating green, like a venus fly trap,
a nature, a desire. I want it. I fear it. It is me. It is he. It is all of us at once.
and words and words and words
and the poet sings
in dreams the message is perfect
but waking, she becomes ineffectual in her babel tower.
beautiful, and desirous, and possibly quite mad.
If ever I had known how to never
allow bitterness in my heart,
then I am child-like now, and so imagine my
shock at my own self-dismay,
as from all my shadows emerge, dusty, now dusting off the drapery,
the drudgery, engaging, on fire, a Demon.
like the brightest star that fell from the heavens,
plunging e’er deeper into the murky sludge, the far corners of paradise,
rising up now, the mists of eternity clearing way for that
truth greater than all facts and figures, the inhuman form
which whispering, places a single icicle of fear in my heart.
Oh, love! To be Juliet. To have died within moments of the first sweet lock,
to never know the other side of purity.
But I am not asleep, and nor am I awake.
I am breathless, I am all the breathing of the sky,
a billion stars shining in the heavens,
a single pebble on the sand.
No, I am no J. Alfred. Nor was meant to be.
And in the room, the girls giggle, talking of
nothing.
I am not walking on the beach, trousers rolled. I am not standing on the balcony, I am not sculpting David, I am not whimpering and I am not banging, I am singing-
I am singing!
(Each to each.) Which means-
the mermaid-
is me.
ah, drawing breath again, do I dare to be a human?
Emerging from this sea of crystal thoughts, wearing a crown of anemone and kelp?
Do you see? These waves are your dreams,
and these pink shells are recompense for your hopes that washed away
where once you wrote them along the beach,
and these glistening pearls within are made rarer, truer, more valuable in your eyes.
If you say so, I will remove my fishy scales,
lay down my cerulean triton, and emerge
a woman.
And if I say so, too, then the human voices waking us shall be our own.
(and it will have been worth it, and we will never know what we meant.)
This blog was originally posted on Apple news via http://markhusson.com/12blog/2018/3/3/parakeets-in-india#.Wprv69QrLGg.
It was my second trip to India, and I had started out very sick. The week before I had departed on this pilgrimage to Varanasi, to watch the burning of the dead bodies, and then go help build the school in Rishikesh, I had suffered away in a lover’s Cow Hollow apartment in San Francisco with strep throat. My fever had been so high I was hallucinating that he was an assassin sent by a FORMER boyfriend to kill me, but that’s a different story than what happened in Varanasi, and by the time I arrived at this gorgeous city dubbed “Venice of the East,” I was free of strep throat, probably, thanks to antibiotics, but still feverish and unable to eat, vomiting green bile.
I stayed at a hotel right on the Ganges River, listening every night to the boatmen sing, watching stray puppies chase after the children. Holy men in loin clothes strolled past the steps of our hotel, and only a few hundred yards away, the families of India burned their dead.
Sometimes, I hear my fellow western friends talk of India with horror at the poverty, the trash, the illness. They point out things like rape culture and the caste system. Controversially, I don’t see much difference between India and the US in those regards, but perhaps that’s because I live in a huge city overrun with its own problems of homelessness and violence. A lot of it depends on what you’re looking at, I suppose.
I was in Varanasi with a spiritual group that was working with a self-proclaimed guru. He’s pretty famous. I don’t know. He was angry on this trip. Because I was so sick, I missed most of the group outings and teachings. I was confined to my hotel, watching the river slumber by.
But every day, a little boy came to visit. His name was Ahmed, and he was a Muslim boy. I know because he came to sing the Qu’ran to me. Then he would offer to show me the finest shops. I would explain I was sick, and he would tilt his head left, then right, then left again, very quickly.
“I am sorry, madam,” he would say. “I will be back tomorrow.”
I loved that lilting cadence in his face. I would go back to my room and watch Bollywood movies, breathe heavily, drink flat Pepsi.
Finally, after a few days, I felt well enough to want to leave the Villa-turned-hotel and as I stepped out into the bright sun, Ahmed rushed up to meet me.
“Madam!” he cried. “Would you like to see an old fort?”
I looked into his big brown eyes and felt a small warm hand slipping into my own.
“Yes,” I said, against my better, urban, Western judgment. “Yes, I would.”
We hurried down along the river for a few minutes, maybe ten or so, until we reached an abandoned villa looming over the foamy water. We climbed up the hill and Ahmed passed easily through a hole in a fence that I could barely shimmy through. Then, he took my hand again and led me through what seemed like an empty palace: a large veranda over the front, looking over the river… a center square in a large property with crumbling pillars and mosaics along the walls and floors. Empty rooms, a place void of any humans, at least dwelling there.
“Madam,” said Ahmed. “Would you like to see some parakeets?”
I looked at the excitement on his face, like a kid at Disneyland or something.
“Yes!” I cried.
Ahmed nodded. He took my hand in his and we ran to the back of the house. There was a large, lonely willow tree reaching up over the high red walls. Ahmed put his fingers to his lips as we crept toward the willow. Then, he breathed in and raised his hands like a conductor about to instruct an orchestra. He brought his hands together in applause: clap, clap, clap, clap, and –
FLUTTER FLUTTER FLUTTER FLUTTER FLUTTER FLUTTER
Scores of little green birds bolted from the weeping willow tree, an exodus of rustling and flapping in every direction!
I laughed with sheer delight and felt a breath of life enter my body.
Then I looked at Ahmed and he looked at me. My heart burst open with a million little tingles of pleasure, and I wanted to cry. I fell in love at that moment with this sweet little boy. Not romantically. Just. Like. A mother. Like Mother India herself.
hmed,” I said, “how old are you?”
“Madam, I am eight years old.”
“And how do you speak English so well?” I asked. He tilted his head left and right a few moments, considering the question. “From the tourists such as yourself,” he responded.
And then, I took the risk. “And do you have a mother?” I asked.
Now I wonder why I even could ask such a question, but I did. I already had the fantasy in my mind’s eye. I could adopt him. I could bring him back to America with me and we could live together as mother and son. I could give him all sorts of opportunities. He could visit my parents in Minnesota with me.
“Of course, Madam!” he chuckled.
My heart began to fall.
“Oh, and… um… where is she?” I asked.
He opened his hands, explaining the obvious.
“At home, Madam!” he responded.
“I see. And… would you ever… would you like to visit America?” I asked. A last-ditch effort.
A horrified look crossed his face.
“No, Madam,” he said. “Oh, no. My mother says I must never go to America. No, no. It is a wicked, violent place!”
I paused for a moment. It was, but it wasn’t. So was India. So was the world. So had the world been in so many ways since the dawn of… since the dawn of opposition, whenever that was.
I let my heart suffer these slings and arrows. I let my heart love him, knowing that I would never see him again. I marveled that I had fallen in love, not romantically, but as a mother. And then, I smiled and nodded.
“Shall we go back to the hotel?” I asked. The world was spinning. My fever was returning.
“Alright,” he said, taking my hand and leading me out of the abandoned building. “And if you like, I can show you some nice shops along the way.”
I didn’t want to go to the shops, but I heard my voice murmur, “sure.”
I didn’t look back at that fresh, clean, green place where no people lived, only birds and trees. We stepped out onto the dusty streets where bicycles zoomed past and poor women reached their hands out in need. I looked up into the firmament of sky, as open and blue as my heart.
I know it has been a bit since I've posted. as you can imagine, we have been extra busy with "Spy v Spia." And that's the thing about life: it's busy. Ten years ago, being busy was a virtue. Now it just feels like some antiquated, bizarro indulgence, and by indulgence, I don't mean of the fun decadent chocolate variety, but like some sickness and since I wanted my beloved "Spy v Spia" to be the OPPOSITE of that illness of our culture at this moment, I just let myself be as present and focused on THAT as possible!!
And soon we will have updates for you. :)
But for now, I did want to drop a note and just send a few other updates and a poem.
What I am reading:
-The Taming of The Shrew. I just finished Act 3, wherein Petruccio marries Kate in horrifying fashion.
In light of the #MeToo movement and Weinstein, Franken, and the President....
This play takes on a new and interesting relevance.
I used to LOVE the banter betwixt Kate and Petruccio but HATE the moral values therein.
I'm reading it now for research on the next project I want to write, and I'm constantly shocked to find myself laughing.
And I guess this is why we still read ol' Will. It's still so f***ing relevant.
-Lincoln in the Bardo
Just started it.So far, only a few chapters in, I am blown away by its unconventional narrative style, its beauty, and honestly, I'm so happy to read a book that doesn't assume I'm an idiot reader. (Sorry, modern publishing.)
What I am watching:
-"Three Billboards Past Ebbing, Missouri"
I mean, just, wow. Wow wow wow wow wow. If ever there was any wonder whether or not Frances McDormand is a national treasure, and I don't know how there could be, THIS ensures it. She is incredible. But not just her- this whole film. I've long loved Martin McDonagh, the filmmaker, but THIS is a real beauty in the ripening of his work. I am so inspired.
What I am singing:
-just sang an online concert to raise money for victims of the Thomas fire here in SoCal. All proceeds go to the Ventura County United Way and there's still time to help! Every video share and we will donate an extra $1 to help the victims.
-prepping for auditions. Up next? I'm superstitious, so I don't want to say unless I book something, haha!
A poem I wrote yesterday:
12.9.17
Been a long time, then, since I have been myself
But as the moon, cut in half, smoking like the fires eating up the cliffs of the west
Reminds me that I have not been my self, it seems, too,
That the stars in population of the firmament of night
And the bright white against dark indigo ignite
In my own body the sole of truth which is-
I have never not been. Myself.
So, too, I wonder, cold air poisoning my ears,
Airs to which I listen but do not hear,
Who is this many selv’ed person, then?
Now a fool, then a sage, ever always a woman.
I am divine she, divine three in one,
Ancient, fecund, life everlasting.
The remembrances of all story pulsating through my hoary
Bones, hearkened as a moan, orgasmic moment of glory
Of some long lost couple, some prehistoric child
Suckling the milky stores from my breast, until I’m wild
Again.
Joy, sticks, goddess, marrow.
The things of life am I.
-Erin
This pic was taken by Diana Delzio of Modern PR after Carlo and I won "Best Screenplay" at the Catalina Film Festival. If I get to it, it will be our Holiday Card photo! If I don't, then, this is it! Happy Holidays! eek.
Love,
Erin
the poet, the muse, the comedienne-
the singer, the writer, playing in her garden
of stars and whimsy and stunts and action.
"Who knew Linda Hamilton, Bette Midler, and Anne of Green Gables could be wrapped up in one package?"
-a recent casting director, after talking to me for a few minutes
