by beautiful chance

Dear Lucky,

A bit of writing by the composer of your song for today caught my eye, because it was a review of a book about Debussy.  As I read the review aloud to the staff here at the Dodo, we played some of the works mentioned in the article.  Then, we played this piece by the reviewer of the book, to sort of bring it all home.  It's really lovely and I know you will enjoy it immensely.























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The Snout.

Dear Getaway Drivers,

I just read a book that got me to thinking... about memory and story and their intersections and overlaps.  I'd tell you all about this book, except that I am going to give it to you for Christmas, and I don't want you to go buying it yourselves.  Maybe I will tell you about it January, after everyone has opened their gifts.  Anyway, this book got me to thinking....

About the Mercury car known as the Snout.  No one remembers the Snout.  I drove it all over the place, with cops on my tail.  I have searched this world wide web over and I cannot find this car- it had a black vinyl top and the rest of the coupe was white.  It was a time when stock cars were on primetime tv and movies were about outrunning the dunderheaded law in Pontiacs.  Those times are long gone and so is a definite identification of the Snout. 

The Snout was parked in the driveway for a good long while, and I couldn't drive, but I could jump into it, with the window down, and pretend the doors were welded shut and that we had to hurry to outrun the g-men.  I had two good girlfriends in those days and they would sometimes play at detective with me, or at getaway car, in the Snout.  I feel like maybe I enjoyed these narratives more than they did, because, now that I think about it, they were mostly actors in my pretend theater.  They seemed jolly enough about participating, though. 

It's a shame we will never know what they thought about all these cops chasing us after we'd robbed a bank.  I wonder if either of them have ever gone back and dug up the money? 

a short film

Understand me now.

Dear Record Player,

Listen to this terrific song, which has been pared down so elegantly, so intensely, by Nina Simone.  It's your song for today.

Police my Desire (if you Dare).

Dear Dazed & Confused,

I am delighted to read this essay, which sends my mind in a hundred directions, with a thousand threads to follow.  Is then, the poet the poem?  Because I have heard otherwise.  Is the actress the character?  Is the protagonist the author?  Is the audience the believer? 

Will everything be swept under the rug?  Can desire even be policed?

French women: yes, I love to love them, and probably for the same reason men do, which is to say that they aim to please visually.  I always thought, though, that they somehow didn't care if men weren't pleased.  The French Woman* is, of course, a construct of mine, and yours, and everyone else's, and I wish they all could be California Girls. 

I have been watching a French Female, in an anthropological spirit, on YouTube- she gives rules and advice for being and looking French.  I think she tapes these dubious lectures in Berlin, where I suppose it is easier to separate the distinguishing characteristics of the French Female from the rest of the world.  Watching one of these videos on How to Wear Perfume Like a French Female, I noted that I would never presume to speak for the American Female in such a general, published way (although, you might want at this point, to call my little kettle black).  If the 19 minutes of video is to be believed, there are many proscriptions to be followed in the application of scent on a woman in France. The author/protagonist/actress/poet of these videos talks with her hands mesmerizingly- her long fingers are painted with bright polish that the eye follows back and forth across the screen, like the ball in a tennis match.  So you don't trouble yourself to watch it, let me tell you the thesis of it all: do not apply so much perfume that anyone who isn't French can smell you.  Hmm, actually, maybe I missed the thesis after all?

We may never know what these French women of my imagination and acquaintance think and feel, but I adore the chance/desire/leisure/liberté to put on some lipstick and consider it all, don't you?












* She wears a scarf just so, she is rabidly self-assured, she is never 'too much,' and she always looks as though she knows a secret that you do not.

re-built quilt

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...left me a mule to ride.