anything

 

Dear E.,

Anything you want, you got it.

Love,

M.

My Black Sedan

 

Notebook Page: Addendum- a thing added or to be added, ca. 1968.  Eva Hesse.

Dear People,

If you are 'my people' you will know exactly what I mean, and maybe you don't even need to read this letter, but, if you are anyone else, you will want to hop into my Black Sedan, and let me tell you about the things I have been reading.  It is all memoir and auto fiction for me at this location in the mapping of my present via a fitful and clumsy reviewing of my past (revisionist history?).  Okay, you can call it the same old existential crisis, but I think maybe it is just living.  In any case, I am waiting for the leaves to fall, like I do, and I am reading all these great women writing their experience of living.  The thing that is so wonderful is that it feels like home; like a mirror; like this mirror.  

Maybe all we can ever have is reflections, but these images feel close to what I think could be true.  Jenny Erpenbeck says "...we want to write because we find it hard to make ourselves understood.  Because we find that things fall by the wayside when we speak."  Sing it, sister!  My wayside is littered with the things I meant to say and the questions I wanted to ask.  Like this one:  What, then, do I do instead of trying to get people to like me?  Or this one;  Why did you keep on giving me all that false hope? 

Claire Dederer writes that you find yourself "...flying the flag of idleness and melancholy.  You find yourself not just wanting to do nothing but somehow needing to do nothing.  Maybe a woman's version of a midlife crisis involves stopping doing stuff?"  And haven't we said things that amount to this to each other nearly every time we meet?  Déjà vu!*

Which, because I am reading also Biography of X, brings me to the notion of conviction in making art.  I have often found intention to matter, to be required for making art, but I am ready to let conviction be the one that got away.  I wish someone had told me it was fine to let ambivalence be my muse, but, let's not cry over that spilled milk, let us instead assert that ambivalence is just the ticket for art making, and even for living.  My years of desperately seeking conviction should not be your story; maybe you will want to tell a story that goes like this:

One fine Spring day I set out to make my way in the world, and I met many strange and wonderful beings along the way, and I hoped they would like me, but I also knew it was okay if they didn't.  I could give them things, little trinkets I found, an acorn cap, or a stone, and it was only just that: a giving that neither made or unmade me; their acquisition was not my diminishment.  The little things they might give me, magic passwords and permissions, well I was free to use them as long as I liked, but also free to discard them if they began to feel confining.  The continuing exchange of ideas and words and deeds was the main thing, the quest was just sort of there so if any dolts should ask you what you were doing, you could answer that you were seeking the fair princess imprisoned in her turret.

  

*  Olivia Rodrigo is another of the real, non-animated Disney Princesses, like Annette Funicello, Selena Gomez, Zendaya, Demi Levato, Brittany Spears, Christina Aguilera, Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, etc.  

Notes:  Erpenbeck, Jenny.  Not a Novel- A Memoir in Pieces, New Directions, New York, page 143.                    Dederer, Claire, Love and Trouble- A Midlife Reckoning, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, page 9. 

 

So good!

 

Dear Radio Dodo Listeners,

I have been thinking of you, as always, but, you wouldn't know it, would you?  I will write again soon, but for now, please enjoy a very fine song for today!

Play it Right.

 

Dear Radio Dodo Listeners,

What do you like best?  This or this?  Write me at the usual address in Pueblo, Colo., and let me know, won't you? 

Irene

 

Dear Irene,

Again, I say, sit down by the fireside bright, and listen to these great versions of a great song:

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Bonus Irene

Stay.

 

Dear Holidays,

Why not stay a little longer?  It's sure been nice, seeing you everyday for the last 24 days.  Best wishes for the new year!

no use in trying to deal with the dying

Dear Ramona,

Here is your song for today.  Did you know, my friend, that we could have a Bob Dylan written song everyday, for a year, and there would still be half a year's more?   I haven't even written one, but I think maybe that should be a project of mine- to write a song.  I know I want to use d minor in it.  And I think 3/4 time.  It should rhyme, at least a little.  And it should be performed in a suit like Jenny Lewis wears, but in a less 21st. century unicorn color scheme.

This thing is real.

Dear Listeners,

Oh!  Here is a song for today that you don't want to miss- it comes to our attention from the vast network of discerning Dodo listeners.  A sort of ersatz 'listener request.'  Here is another version, with just Mavis.  Enjoy!

From their rooms.

Dear You,

Are you in your room right now?  I am in mine, and there are two pots boiling in the room to the right, and to the left, the porch lamp holds the House Finch nest and eggs again.  This room, is nowhere near, and it is not now, but it is great, and it is your song(s) for the day.  I love this series of performances called In my Room, brought to you by Rolling Stone.  I hope it inspires you to play in your family band, because I am playing in mine.

Seven Hundred

Dear Skates,

Thank you for the days.  Which is also your song for today.

Yes, it is time again to note my total consecutive days of roller skating, today at 700.  It also signals me to invite you again to try it, to take a chance on eight wheels.  If you want to start out right, you could take this thorough and helpful lesson online. 

I really feel that you want to roller skate, and if there is a time that I could convince you, let it be now.

Oh, and let's have Petula Clark, too.  And why not have Los Imposibles also?

Falling Down

Dear People of the Past,

Your song for today comes in three fine versions: un, deux, trois.  I first heard this song as a very young girl and it has accompanied me for many years, as an ersatz anthem of feminism, and a declaration of individual will.  I hope it will come in handy for you in some way or another.

Gather Momentum

 

 

Dear Ticketed Passengers,

It takes a lot to laugh but it takes a train to gather momentum.  The glory of the metaphor of the train is the gathering of momentum, and I offer you some songs to illustrate my point.  Use them to pick up speed, or to gather your forces.

 Station to Station

Kundalini Express

Trans Europa Express

Peace Train

Mystery Train

With a train the sound is also of going, the decreasing, dopplered -ainnnn sound; the sound of being gone.  You can use it to let them know you have left.

Love in Vain

It Takes a Lot to Laugh, it Takes a Train to Cry

Seasonal.

Dear Holiday Merry Makers,

Your song for today.

The greening has begun.

Dear December,

It's you and me baby, that makes the world go around.  Here is your song for today.  It's Al Green, on account of the fact that now the ground, after just a few lovely, soggy days, has gone All Green.  So the Fall, which is still floating and swirling gorgeous yellow and russet leaves, is on the way out, and the few minutes of the actual winter look of the place, the silver, faded shafts, and dark, leafless branches, has gone already.  It's a narrow season, the one I speak of, and delicately liminal.






PS  A few more versions of the same song, because it is a fine song.  Etta, UB40, Marcia Griffiths. Griffiths.

In typical precise order.

Dear Streets,

Your song for today has been heard on the Dodo before, but it must be played again, and I recommend, just for this song, a whiskey and soda with a little lemon twist.  It's a darn fine combination.

I think I have told you about seeing the incomparable Jonathan Richman in 1989 or 1990?  He played a place we used to go to for interesting music called The Barn.  When I try to determine where it was now, it's all a low fog of causeway and Delta flatness.  Suffice it to say it was there, it was small, it was real, and I fell for Jonathan Richman like a ton of bricks; you would have too, he is solid charisma.

This song's trudging passages, alternating with frenzied staccato still send me.  Here are some chords if you want to try it for yourself.

Thought by thought.

Dear Radio Dodo Listener,

Your song for today is a really full pail; a stack of a song, that tells it all for everyone.  Steer Your Way.

There haven't been any songs here from this beautiful, beautiful final album from Brother Leonard, because I haven't yet wanted to talk to you about this album.  The day after he died I found myself in conversation with other mourners and I could not really accept their thoughts.  I didn't even want their thoughts.  I only wanted my thoughts, my place of private grief with a single, high window, and maybe a candle for when the sun went down.  I wanted my cot there, my plain table, a tiny chair, and blank paper and a good fountain pen.  What did I want to write there?  Something I still cannot write: all the things I want to write; the love, and the gratitude, and the deep, are always beyond my reach.  The only elegy I can write is hash and stale borrowings.  It's like that though, even for the great ones, I think.

I have listened to the album enough to have changed my mind four times on which is the best cut, and I am ready to tell you that this is it.  No further listenings will yield a different choice.  It's this one, but oh! so many of them are terrific.  You want it darker?  Listen to the whole thing.

Holy Moonmen!

Dear Moon Mission Enthusiasts,

Can you believe this amazing recreation of NASA's trip to the moon?  I love that people will make this kind of geeky thing, and that we can play with it, right now, right here, for free.  Enjoy it, and have a moon song for today.

Images of Matchstick Men

Dear Matchstick Man, 

A sculptor I know asked about the difference between sentiment and sentimentality.  Right now, run and write down what you think it is, before I go and ruin your gestating definitions.  If you like what you write, you can keep writing, and skip this reading.  If you really like what you write, you can keep writing and then write it to someone.  Maybe to me, maybe to The World.  If you really really like what you write, you can put it in a book, on a shelf, in a library.  Then, you should rest, I think, because that's a lot of doing.




Meanwhile, a few of you may have not run and gotten a pencil, and so let us now consider what might be meant by 'sentiment.'  A sentiment is a nice thought or feeling when you look at that sugar bowl that used to be your great grandmother's, as you remember her fondness for tea with sugar, and her enormous aluminum tea kettle, her hob, her back stoop, her crocheted hot pads.  This is well and good and it's what makes Proust great.

'Sentimental', now, is a little stickier perhaps.  It can mean that you are being too soft, or blinded to the hard truths.  Great grandmother is long dead, her kettle is long gone, and there was a time when they thought that aluminum cooking utensils and pots were giving us all Alzheimer's.  Plus what, there must be 7 million other great grandmothers who liked sugar in their tea and Proust has already written all we could hope for in one lifetime of reading.

Now what?  Another thought experiment: let's risk it, let's go ahead and be mushy instead of erudite.  It isn't all that bad, these hearts, flowers, and cliché symbols where a tender, delicacy of expression might have been.  If that is the worst we can do, to make a silly greeting card when we were shooting for a pietà, well, so what? 




I hope your book is done by now, and I hope it is filled with the truths and beauties of a thousand years and a million gestures of kindness and insight.






Oh, yes, and don't forget to take this song with you, when you go.

White Freightliner

Dear Blues,

A song for you today, in three versions. 

One.

Two.

Three.

Now that you know it, here are the chords so you can play it yourself on your back porch.  Don't you  just love the way the song sounds like the engine and the truck and the road and the speed of going?

Times 3.

Dear Radio Heads,

Today on Radio Dodo we have a choice of three songs for today which are the same three songs.  Me, I can't decide which is the best.  See what you think, and write to me at the station.  Send an SASE and I will mail you an autographed photo.


One,

Two,

Three.