Accepting Love

Whenever I find myself in a difficult situation or experience, I try to ask myself, "What is it about love that I'm not learning?". Sometimes the answer is a bit convoluted and I have to dig around a bit to find it, and sometimes it's looking me in the face.

It's my belief that all we're really here for is to learn love. The Beatles were right when they sang, "All You Need Is Love", because if you boil everything down--the so-called good and bad lessons--it's only about love: love for others and love for ourselves. Love covers a multitude of sins, and I know from my own experiences that when I apply the love lesson to any given situation, I'm prompted to act from the best part of myself rather than ego or fear. I'm no saint, as we all know, so it's not always easy. It's never easy because it's so easy to act from fear.

We've been going through a financial crisis for so long now that I've almost come to accept it as our lot in life. Almost. Right behind that defeatist attitude, however, lies the knowledge that it's only a test. It's a test that I intend to pass though. When someone offers help, my first reaction is to feel small and undeserving--a failure--but when I ask myself, "What is it about love that I'm not learning?", I know that I'm supposed to learn to accept love, to turn off the negative voices and allow people the joy they receive from their selfless actions.

By accepting assistance from others I not only allow them the blessing that giving bestows, I also keep the flow moving so that when it's my turn, I'll have what it requires to help others. It's a continuum of energy that sets us up for an ever-expanding dance of giving and receiving. That's what the adage, "'Tis more blessed to give than to receive" means. And isn't that what life is about anyway? All creatures on this planet benefit from working together for the good of all--it's only human beings that have distorted that into the I, me, mine mentality that plagues and poisons our society, which comes from fear and which is the opposite of love.

How can I ever expect to be in a position to help others when I cannot receive or accept help myself? Today, I not only accept the love that my friends send, I return that love to them by not stopping the flow that they've set up, and when I am able, I shall pass it on to the next person in need.

Sunday Pate

My new book, With A Bullet, is a story set in London in the 1970s. It's about four people in the world of popular music who are dealing with their individual issues, some having to do with acquiring fame and fortune and some with living with it.

The title comes from Billboard's Top 100 jargon. When a record goes "Number 40 with a bullet", for example, it means that it shot up out of nowhere and is predicted to go straight to the Top 10.

I actually wrote this book many years ago, but it was pretty godawful. The manuscript was one thing that I was glad went in The Great Dump of 2001. A few months ago the story started haunting me and I knew that I could rewrite it into something worth reading. The characters are so firmly etched upon my life that my brain actually missed them (see this entry, The House I Never Lived In, for an explanation). The book is no longer self-indulgently autobiographical; they have evolved their own identities quite apart from those they previously had. I've grown up, it seems, and I can create characters that have little to do with me. That's the gift that years of experience gives us writers.

Here's a little taste, from Chapter 4:

     The salmon pate was about the best thing Katy had eaten all day. In fact, it was all she’d eaten. She took a sip from her wine glass and looked at Shelly, who sat across the room talking about skiing in Colorado.
     Yet another party, this time in the Mayfair home of her lawyer, John Dunne, and his girlfriend Denise. It was an intimate get together though, which Katy appreciated. She was tired after a full week of promotional appearances on London’s television talk shows, and longed to go to bed.
     With help from the cozy warmth of the room and the soft conversation around her, Katy felt her eyes become heavy, and she stood to pay another visit to the buffet table, which was laid with a pleasant array of cocktail party fare. In the foyer the doorbell rang, but she paid no mind. The pate beckoned, and she slathered a fair amount onto a pita triangle and took a bite.
     Someone came into the room, making an entrance that caused Katy to turn and look. She knew the face, but for a fraction of a second she was at a loss at placing a name to it.
     “Of course,” she thought. “Jason Talmadge!”
     Jason had been a member of one of the most celebrated bands of the Sixties, and now he had a new band whose records were topping the charts every time one came out. He was tall, with coarse dark hair, expressive eyes, and boyish good looks that still made his fans quiver. It didn’t matter that he was married and had kids, every girl was sure that he would marry her, if only they she could somehow meet him.
     He put across an air of approachability although he was a very private person in reality, but then, Jason was the quintessential rock star, and knew how to butter his bread on all sides, while remaining untouched by the whirlwind around him. His was a charmed life, or so it seemed until recently. Word had started going around that his marriage was in trouble. The fans would of course welcome a divorce, but to Jason, it was catastrophic; he needed the solidarity of family life to balance his own legend.
     Not wanting to appear excited, Katy turned her attention back to the pate. Without warning, the hors d’ouevre was suddenly snatched from her hand and she turned to see Jason stuffing it into his mouth, a huge, playful smile on his face.
     “That’s just to let you know that I’m not giving you everything in this town,” he said, a piece of pate falling from his mouth and onto his tie. He roared with laughter, wiping it off with his finger and licking it.
     “Did you plan this?” she asked.
     “What? Meeting you? Yes.”
     “No, I mean your tie being the exact color as the salmon.”
     “Of course!” he said and paused to pour a glass of wine. “I suppose introductions would be completely redundant,” he said after a moment.
     “Maybe not,” she said blithely. “What’s your name again?” They both laughed.
     “Do you think you can get away with this then? I mean, knocking me out of first place on the Top Ten?” he asked.
     “Me knock you out? Right. Like that’s going to happen.”
     “Oh, you haven’t heard the news then.”
     “What news?” she asked cautiously.
     “You’re Number One, love. I just heard it on the way here.”
     Forgetting that they’d only just met, Katy placed both her palms against his chest as if seeking strength to remain standing.
     “You’re kidding…”
     “Nope!” He grabbed an olive and popped in into his attractive mouth. “I never joke about the charts.”
     “Wow! I mean, wow!” She bit her fist, then looked at him again, remembering who he was and realizing the importance of what he’d just told her. “Oh, Jason, I’m sorry. Here I am—and you’re—”
     “Don’t sweat it, kid. Welcome to the asylum.”

World Beat Music

I'm not writing tonight. In fact, I'm going to go to bed as soon as this entry is posted. I wrote all afternoon and now I'm just plain old tired.

Meantime, enjoy this composition by James Plakovic, who is known for what he calls his "two dimensional sculptures of playable music". I'm not sure when this piece was composed, but the entire composition is scored for 37 instruments and contains a total of 32 measures. The total playing time is approximately 40 seconds. The link below will take you to a midi version of it. You can hear the fully orchestrated version on his website, but I couldn't get the sound clips to work. This piece, which is titled, World Beat Music, doesn't sound as unpleasant as I thought it was going to. Click the image to enlarge it, and Listen to it here.

See and hear more of Plakovic's music here.

Afraid of Death? Not Anymore!

Click to enable enhugination.

Speelchicker

I'm having a hard time tonight knowing where to take my story. There are a number of frustrating issues with my new book, you see, not the least of which is the fact that this was something I wrote way back when. I mean wa-a-ay back. The only good thing about it was the characters, so I've resurrected them. The story had potential, but it needed a lot of surgery. I'm working all that out as well, and I'm liking the results. The story hasn't changed all that much, but it has matured; I've added some twists that I wasn't able to invent when I was younger. I think it's going to be good.

Actually, I know where I'm taking the story, but tonight I'm stumped with how to get from point A to point C, because I haven't completely worked out point B. I shut down Word and played a game or two of Sudoku, then I looked over at the bookcase and saw that RW's book (which you should read, by the way) is neatly tucked between Mary Shelly and Dylan Thomas, and I realized that I must get firm with myself. Plus, Nettl's book is out, and here I sit playing Sudoku. It's not that I'm competitive, I just vaguely mind when someone completes something and I haven't.

Another problem is that I don't have the original manuscript; I'm reinventing it as I go. Actually, that's probably a good thing because I won't be tempted to take the lazy way out and use something I'll regret later. And there's so much of that crapola in the original.

Yet another thing is the damned spellchecker. It's a very good tool, but do I really need to have it on while I'm writing? Doesn't my constant stopping to correct something kind of break the creative flow? I think it might, so I've turned it off until I'm finished writing for the night. Then I'll turn it back on and make my corrections. We'll see if that helps anyway.

Now I must stop blogging so that I can get back to work. I refuse to think of blogging as one of my ways to avoid writing, however...

I Always Miss the Fun News

On January 10, 1992, twelve 40-foot containers holding 28,000 plastic bath toys were washed overboard off a cargo ship into the middle of the Pacific Ocean and broke open. The floating toys, which were on their way from Hong Kong to Tacoma, Washington, included yellow rubber duckies, blue turtles, red beavers, and green frogs that have since been caught up in the world’s ocean currents and continue turning up on the most improbable shores. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a retired oceanographer, saw from the beginning how valuable the toys could be in tracing ocean currents, and correctly predicted their trip through the Northwest Passage.

The "Friendly Floatees", as they became known, made their first landfall in mid November of 1993, when the counter-clockwise Subpolar Gyre started dumping the toys on Alaskan shores. It took the ducks about three years to drift full circle on the Gyre. They turned up all over the Pacific: Japan, Hawaii, North America and Australia.

As Ebbesmeyer predicted, some of the toys escaped the Gyre to flow North through the Bering Strait into the Arctic. Between 1995 and 2000 they slowly drifted eastward, frozen in the arctic ice, at a rate of 1 mile per day. Since 2000, the ducks started reaching the North Atlantic, being sighted from the shores of Maine to Massachusetts. In 2001, the ducks reached the site where the Titanic sank. In 2003, the plastic toys reached the shores of the Hebrides, off the coast of Scotland.

If you spot one of these plastic toys on a beach--its colors probably faded, with the imprint "The Early Years" on it--then you’ve found one member of the plastic armada that set sail 17 years ago. At some point, the scientific team that tracked their progress offered $100 apiece for the ducks, provided you could tell them when and where you’d found them. The offer was valid only from July through to December 2003, and only for Friendly Floatees found in New England, Canada, or Iceland. However, Friendly Floatees have become so famous that they can fetch up to $1,000 at auction.

Hat tip to Strange Maps and Wikipedia.

What's in a Name?

Life could have been so much easier for me if my parents had either 1) given me a name they intended to call me, or 2) called me by the name they actually gave me. My name has been a big frickin' deal my entire life.

I was christened Sheila Kathryn, but did they call me Sheila? No. When I was a baby, it was Sheila K, but all I remember is Kathy. At the age of 9 this was changed to Kaye, and until their deaths, my mom still called me Kathy while my dad called me Kaye. I preferred Kaye, and used it until 1999, when my pen name, Steph, took over by the use of online friends who never knew Kaye. But even that began as a masculine nom de plume, Stephan Karl, which is what my parents had planned to name me, until I emerged from the womb and my gender was plain for all to see. Still, all through my school years, the kids called me Kaye while the teachers called me Sheila, which, for some reason, gave the kids reason to make fun of me. WTF.

In there somewhere is Kate, which my English friends dubbed me in the late Seventies, and even that was split into Katy and Katesy by some of them. Various nicknames included Johnny, Wally, Jody, Kayeberger, Berg, and Wolfi. We won't even go into last names. I was widowed once and divorced once, so that gave me two of those, but I simplified that decades ago by sticking to my maiden name.

But nowhere in my moniker nightmare was the name Stephanie ever, ever used. So why do people insist on calling me that? I've had Nettl introduce me, "This is my partner, Steph," and the lame brain turns right around and says while they're shaking my hand, "Nice to meet you, Stephanie!"

GRRR! If someone tells me their name is Bob, I don't go and call them Robert, do I? I figure, like any polite, sane person would, that the name I am told is the name they prefer. Duh!

Last week when I called the pizza place, I made an order to be delivered and the guy says, "So this is [insert address here]?" "Yes," I replied. "Okay, Stephanie, we'll have it there in 30 minutes!"

Hey, when did I ever tell you numbnutz that my name is Stephanie!?

Lately, I'm really missing being Kaye. I've always been happy that my parents didn't give me an "ie" name (not to insult all you Debbies and Suzies out there). Well, except for Kathy, and I hated being called that for other, more personal reasons. If I'd known that "Stephanie" was going to be such an issue, I would have stuck with Kaye in the first place. It's a strong name.

Frank was the only person ever to call me Sheila. Well, and the IRS. But this name business has always been a thorn in my flesh, especially where my trolls and stalkers are concerned. They seem to think that knowing my full name gives them power over me somehow, but that borders on the nefarious to me, like something out of a novel about witches knowing one's true name and using it to cast spells.

I like Steph a lot, but Stephanie will not be tolerated. It just doesn't fit.

"Who Am I?" #6

We are brother and sister though a lot of people wouldn't expect it. We have spent our lives in movies, but we've always worked separately. We've each won Academy Awards and we are known for being eccentric.

Who are we?

Happy Birthday Spotlight: My Son, Micah

I thought that for Micah's birthday today, I'd share with you some things that people have said about him. Micah is a brilliant, innovative musician, composer, producer, artist, craftsman -- need I go on? Let's make it simple. He's a true Renaissance Man in every sense of the word. Genius is a word that I don't use much because it's as overused as the standing ovation (also something I don't do unless I really feel the performer deserves it. Nowadays, everyone gets a standing ovation, rendering the gesture meaningless. But I'm rambling...). Micah is a genius, and I'd say that even if he wasn't my son. He masters everything that he sets himself to and he's a deeply spiritual man, fun-loving with a playfully self-deprecating sense of humor. But this is what I say. Here's what other people say:

"I've always loved listening to Micah's compositions because they're always so musically interesting. He has lots of content and his soloing is never overkill. He shows a lot of room for growth and potential and has direction in his approach." George Lynch (Dokken/Lynch Mob)

"I have been a fan of Micah's for some time now. Temple [Temple of Unmanifest Dreams, his CD] just sweeps you away to somewhere else. Most of what you're hearing is a guitar, too! I am in awe of Micah's musical genius on this CD. Having heard some demos of what is to come, I can say keep your eye on this guy. If anyone today is breaking new ground in guitar music it is Micah!" Marauder

His Bio:

Micah Atwell mixes nostalgic, brooding, ambient soundscapes with edgy, organic rock influence to define a new dimension of electronic guitar. His unique blend of emotive minimalist complexity is constantly making new impressions with listeners from all backgrounds and preferences.

Raised between bustling southern California and rural, spacious Kansas, Micah developed a dichotomous affinity for time and rhythm. At age 16, he began teaching himself guitar and spent his formative years writing blues-based hard rock instrumentals. Over time, he shifted his evolving sound and style towards the more experimental electronic and ambient genres. This has allowed him to tap into a much greater list of influences, technical experience, and creative freedom.

Micah produced and self-released his 2008 debut album, Temple of Unmanifest Dreams, an emotionally charged and meditative ambient/electronic guitar odyssey geared for audiences of such popular radio programs as the nationally syndicated Hearts of Space and similar regional broadcasts. This haunting, meditative compilation is an astounding testament to what a guitar can convey, and it continues to receive sweeping reviews at every turn.

He also has a growing interest in the production music industry and Internet music collaborations. Micah has scored music for video and animation and is active with artists in the US and UK, co-writing and co-producing some very eclectic compositions.

Micah Atwell has received numerous positive critiques from legendary guitarist George Lynch and in 2008 secured a Top 40 ranking in the industry-sponsored international Guitar Idol competition.

His Website
His Facebook Profile

Happy birthday, Micah. I love you and am very proud of you!