lori carson life and music

“Now you are twenty-one/ Finally, it makes sense/ that you have moved away/ into your own afterlife.” — from Majority by Dana Gioia

It rained off and on all day. I was attempting to write. The new book is very different from the first one. The first one wasn’t easy but I knew it meant something. It felt important to me and sometimes I was able to get lost in it. The new one is hard to write all the time. I lose track of what I’m doing. Still, every day I work on it. Today I moved some paragraphs around, cut a few sentences, tried not to lose faith in it, or in myself.

I took Doe for a walk in the afternoon. She likes to go to the Corner Bookstore on Madison because the young writer who works there always gives her a treat. He spotted her immediately as we came in. She followed him into the back room, while I read the first few pages of Nadine Gordimer’s new one, and then the beginning of a memoir called “Wild.”

On the way out, I noticed a sign about a reading that was scheduled to happen later. “Poetry Tonight,” the sign said. I didn’t know who the poet was, but I decided to go on the spot. I love being read to. I love stories. I love writers. So I was already looking forward to the evening, walking home in the drizzle.

By 5:45, it was raining again. I hurried over to Corner Books under a black umbrella. The bookstore was already packed with a sharp looking crowd. I saw Doe’s friend, the young writer, standing behind a table of wine and cheese. One man was holding court. I heard him say he had just arrived from California. He was tan and looked very successful. I thought he was probably a publisher or an agent. But it turned out, he was the poet. I’m unfamiliar with tan poets who look so successful. The ones I know are a different sort. Not so tan, for one thing.

I took a seat near the back, in the corner. As every seat filled, a woman about my age squeezed past to sit beside me. I learned she had been the stage manager for City Opera for twenty-three years. We got to talking about second chapters, about starting over. It seems to be a very common thing for many women in mid-life.

When the poet came over to greet my new friend, he introduced himself to me. He asked me if I was a singer, an opera singer, assuming I might be because I appeared to know this woman. I told him I was indeed a singer. But not an opera singer, no.

Soon he was being introduced, in the most generous way, by another man who seemed to know him well. The man’s eyes filled with tears describing a kindness the poet had shown him. Turned out this poet had also held a government office for a time. He’d wielded great power over other poets, other people in the arts. I grew suspicious of him then, because I’m suspicious of power and position. I can’t help it.

But then he began to read his poems. The first couple had rhymes that distracted, but by the third, I was drawn in. Listening to his thoughts gleaned from loss, and hard won perspective, I was moved by his insights. He was a beautiful poet, it turned out. There was one about the nature of mature love. He was married to a woman named Mary, and had been for a long time. He and Mary had lost a child, he told us. The last poem he read was about the lost child, watching him grow up in the bodies of other children.

I bought two copies of his new book and stood on line to thank him. When I reached him, he said, “Would you like to make a record one day?” I said, “Yes, I would.”

No, I didn’t. That’s only what I wish I’d said. Instead, my ego kicked in and I defended my accomplishments, quickly and inadequately.

Then I walked home in the rain. I didn’t bother to open my umbrella. It wasn’t raining very hard. I was feeling the combination of having been moved, in this pure way, by the poetry I’d heard, and also the discomfort of having my ego triggered. It’s an unwieldy beast when awakened, my ego. It wants the world to take notice of me.

But most of the time, I am content to live my own reality, to document my own insights. The poet and I have this in common. Tan or winter-pale, it doesn’t matter. We’re both attempting to make sense of things. Ego is no help at all in this, and neither is the recognition of the world.

Wrestling my demons, as I do. Sometimes, more than others. Anger like righteousness. The lines I draw in the sand are constantly redrawn, a little closer, a little farther away. Rules adjusted to the mysterious tides in me.

This morning we walked out of the vet’s office after waiting for over an hour. Doe couldn’t have anything to eat until after she’d had two tests, given an hour apart. She gets sick if she goes too long without eating. I explained this to the techs, but it got to be eleven-thirty, and still they weren’t ready for her, which meant she wouldn’t have anything to eat until two at best. I’d called and spoken to someone. I’d explained the situation to the doctor. When I asked to come back another day, they said they had no early morning hours, so it would be the same next time. The medication would have to be thawed and I would need to call, and remind someone to do it, if I wanted it to be thawed before we got there.

That’s when I lost it. I had to call them to remind them to thaw the medication?? That’s when they crossed the line that had been creeping up as we sat in the waiting room for over an hour, Doe hungry, and me worried that she was going to start to vomit and not be able to stop.

But I mean to write about my anger, the way it comes up, and gets me into trouble. Not terrible trouble, necessarily, but the kind where I’m charging down the sidewalk, alone, because everyone else is wrong. I think my father was like this. I think tendencies like this are inherited. It’s a form of insanity. I wish being aware of it made it easier to stop.

There are days when I feel angry at everyone. Never Doe or the cats. But they’re easy. People are less agreeable.

K. is coming to stay tonight. All week she has changed her mind. She was coming and then not coming. I don’t think I’ve slept eight hours since Monday. She’s driven me crazy. But she is a dear friend of mine. At the bottom of it all is worry. Anxiety. It’s too much for me to handle, and too much for her to attempt. She’s unstable and traveling with her elderly dog who is incontinent and blind. I’m afraid for her, and overwhelmed at the prospect of having them stay here with Doe and me and three cats in this small apartment.

Anger is the voice that reaches through my quietness to shout. “Enough!”

Anger wants me to live in the desert where there are no irritants for many miles other than snakes and probably scorpions. I have fantasies of silence and privacy and nothing to stir the ugliness in me. A peaceful place inside myself and out. It’s the biggest dream I have.

It’s not so unusual to see early daffodils on a sunny hill in the park, but to see them everywhere, in early March, is strange. Spring has been fooled by the mild winter. We never had that season. After the snow in October, there was hardly a chill that lasted longer than a few days, and now flowers are blooming, and it’s strange.

I don’t like the cold weather but I do like the seasons. They give the year a shape. They indicate the rate that time is passing. They mimic something that goes on in me. Or I, in them. This morning, I noticed the cherry blossom trees across the street are already full of tight buds. It caused a mild wave of anxiety in me. I think it has to do with wanting things to be as they have been. So much feels different already. Not even Spring can be counted on to come as it should in May.

I’m reading Murakami’s 1Q84, very slowly, and interrupted by other things. The translation feels odd to me. The story and characters are interesting enough to keep me reading, but something feels off. I haven’t read anything about this in reviews of the book, so maybe it’s just me. I usually enjoy translations. There are always untranslatable things that provide flavor and a juxtaposition that can be wonderful. Most of Per Peterson’s books come to mind. But this one feels strangely stilted. Maybe there’s an explanation within the book that I haven’t come to yet. It’s the size of a telephone book, so there is still time.

I’ve been working on my own book for many hours a day. I’ll turn it in to my editor today or tomorrow, so she can get started. All weekend I went through the troublesome part three, making changes. By the time it sees the light of day, hopefully, the book will have come together. It’s difficult to keep perspective. I’m looking forward to taking a break from it because nothing else seems to get done when I’m writing. I need to get my taxes together, and finish up some other things that require paperwork.

What a strange dream. And another one, after it, just when I thought I’d never be able to get back to sleep.

In the second dream, I was standing at the door of an apartment with broken locks. I seemed to live there. A neighbor approached and grabbed my breast. That’s when I knew I was dreaming, and forced myself awake again.

The first dream was much more intense. I was in a house or apartment. He was there. He was watching me go around locking up all the windows. I noticed that his fingernails were very long, and remembered that I’d heard he and another man were going around assaulting women. The long nails played a part in this, somehow. I told myself he would never hurt me, and I was probably safe. I don’t remember our conversation, but as we spoke, I observed his behavior was becoming more, and more, peculiar.

Then he attacked me. I didn’t struggle against him, just lay there under his heavy weight.
“Don’t you love me anymore?’ I asked him.
He looked at me with utter contempt. “What a ridiculous name you have,” he said.
Then he placed his eye against my eye, shining a red laser-bright light into it. I knew it was going to kill me.
“Please,” I said. “I want to live!”

What the hell? I haven’t dreamed about him in a long time. I guess I’ve come to see him as dangerous. I couldn’t fall back asleep for at least an hour. I lay awake and thought about what it meant. I know I did fall back asleep, eventually, because there was the second dream with the broken locks and the neighbor.

Always, waking up during the night, there is Doe’s body, soft but with a little weight. Whenever I shift, she repositions, leaning against me, a comfort.

By the morning, I could hear the rain falling. The day began early, as it does, every morning, the same. Throw my clothes on, take Doe out for her walk, while the cats meow, and yowl, and beg for breakfast.

Thirty minutes later, everyone is fed and napping. I sit with coffee, in front of the computer, stalling with Facebook, email, and Scrabble, before I begin to work.

Well, it’s happened. My book will be published in the summer of 2013, which seems a very long time from now. But until then, I can dream about how it will change my life. Maybe I’ll meet a really sexy, smart man on a book tour and we’ll get married and move to Costa Rica so we can volunteer every day at an orphanage full of smiling children.

After it comes out, I’ll be reminded that these things don’t change your life. That this is my life and will continue to be, with mostly modest adjustments, and a few surprises.

Doe curled up at my feet. A cat on a chair, another two in hiding. Rain falling outside. A rooftop view. The sound of my upstairs neighbor pushing her vacuum cleaner. Walks in the park. Writer’s meeting on Wednesday nights. Lunch with Paul. Daily calls from Marissa. A visit with my mother on the weekend. Time spent with my niece and nephews. Playing the piano and guitar. Songwriting exercises with Gregory. Movies with Laura. Long phone calls with Kim. Writing, writing.. Not so bad, all in all.

And my new record will be released in March, full of many of the songs I’ve written over the past five years, or so. The release is important. Though exposing it to the world is usually disappointing. It’s like prayer, in a way, to send songs, stories, creative work of whatever sort, out into the world. Goodbye. Go. You’re on your own. Who needs all the clutter? Go make your magic elsewhere.

It’s difficult to relax. It takes a lot of work. Anything unresolved gnaws and nags. I understand wanting to turn away from the world completely, because waiting, and especially wanting, is so uncomfortable. I suspect these feelings of discomfort once motivated some caveman to kill his dinner. Hunger, that’s what it is.

Last week, I got the call. A negotiation has begun to sell my book, but this week, there is no news, and so I wait for the shoe to drop. But why? When the news is so good, and negotiations probably take time.

I try to keep busy. I write. I’m writing a new book, but I’ve returned to the old. My editor-to-be thinks the third second should be in the present tense, I hear, like the rest of the book. So, I am back in the old book, changing every sentence in the third section. At the end of the day I realize I haven’t heard from my agent, and maybe something is wrong. So I walk Doe and I try to forget it, but can’t. I need to get the call, to hear that all is as it should be, but it doesn’t come. How to stop being the person I am, who worries everything to death, and leans towards disaster? I know the answer, and I do these things, and they help, but when will she call?

Once I waited for phone calls from boys, but now the news is all about the book, the record, my work. Maybe this is a kind of progress. Even if the call never comes, I’ve still got the satisfaction of having done it, and I love doing it. It’s only waiting that kills.

“I’m so hard to handle/I’m selfish and I’m sad.” — Joni Mitchell, from Wish I Had a River.

I’ve always identified with Joni Mitchell, or rather with the person gleaned or imagined from the lyrics of Joni Mitchell. Before Joni Mitchell, I read into the songs of other artists, trying to figure out what was meant by an obscure reference. How did it apply to my teenaged life? But with Joni Mitchell songs, there seemed to be no need for wondering. The stories she told were clear. It was easy to know what she meant.  Of course, now I know that what she “meant” was to tell a story from her own perspective, facts reimagined, people and places changed. That’s the fun of it. To make something truer than true. Or distort the world until it reflects what you need it to.

Still, at the bottom of it, beneath the words, the story, the melodies, there is the message being sent into the world:

“Help me, I think I’m falling.”

Or my own song: “fell and fell and fell into the loneliness.”

Today thoughts and feelings transmit themselves directly into the winter air. Don’t need a vessel to deliver them. Tears fall caused only by the wind. Looking at the sky, I think of the atmosphere, trapped by gravity. Still, nothing’s changed.

“It was just a false alarm.”

Do you drown it in whiskey? I’m still sending prayers up into the yellow tree tops. Watching leaves drift to the ground. Every year I lose a little. The answers come quiet and always the same. Don’t want, don’t want, don’twant. Like air escaped from a balloon. I surrender. What choice is there? A boxing match with the wind?

“You have your wonderful memories,” people said later, as if memories were solace. — Joan Didion, from Blue Nights.

Cold, gray Saturday, snow coming down in sloppy buckets. Rain and snow all mixed together. Wind too, and it’s still October. Found Doe’s winter coat in a basket of hats and gloves. She didn’t want to go out in it. Hates both the coat and the winter weather.

All forecasts predicted the same thing. Snow would accumulate on the still leafy branches of fall trees, and cause them to come down onto power lines. By Sunday, it had come true. My brother’s family escaped to my mother’s house to spend Halloween somewhere Chloe would be able to trick or treat. Their town was in the dark. Now, on Tuesday morning, it still is, along with a lot of other towns.

All weekend, I read and listened to music. Haven’t heard that Jayhawks record in a long time. Don’t look so sad Marina/Save it for a rainy day. Every song is a good one. How rare is that? And the production is of one piece with the songs. That’s something I’ve always struggled with.

Nice when the weather gives you permission to do what you want to do anyway.  Got through the new Russell Banks,  Lost Memory of Skin. I kept waiting for it to become something more, but it never did. Read the new Joan Didion too. Blue Nights. Beautiful and heartbreaking. I want to read it again. What does she mean exactly by the last line? “Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her.” Tricky thing to express grief. The way it takes over everything. How to represent it? When does it become only maudlin? Her book is everything I want my book to be. But I remind myself that, probably, it’s not realistic, not possible. Maybe when I’ve been writing books for twenty years.

I’ve finished the new draft, and will turn it in sometime this week. It’s nearly impossible to leave it alone — one more look through to change a small thing. Hard to resist cutting it, fixing it. But I think the new part three accomplishes what the book needed,  though it is far from perfect. I do have the desire to make it perfect, to hone it the way a song is honed, until every syllable is resting comfortably, but when a rough edge is made smooth, something else is unintentionally changed. Better to walk away, leave it alone now. It is my first book, whatever happens next.

Now, there is the new record to launch, which means I’m not sure what. Just get it out there, I suppose, and try not to worry about its reception, or lack thereof. Is there a place for something so sad and gentle in the new world? Hard to know. Meeting with Jana at Steven’s office today to look at the layout. Have to get it to the manufacturer now in order for it to be released in January.

It feels like I haven’t written in ages. I’ve been working on my book. If I described how it consumes me, it wouldn’t sound believable.  On recommendation from my thoughtful and kind agent, I’m taking a week away from it. Will not even look at it. I’ve been immersed in it for so long that I wake up thinking of certain sentences. I know all the problem spots. Someone said a story is not finished until you’ve taken out all the commas and put them back in the same place.

At the same time, I’m taking steps to release the record I finished last spring. It will be called Another Year. I’ve been speaking with Steve Saporta, who I’ve known for a very long time. He has a company called Invasion Group. They’re going to help with the release. It’s a whole new world now. I met with his people this week, and it was all explained to me. Anyway, I must get the artwork together this month. That’s what I’ve promised to do. The record and the book are cross referenced. Not just because the themes are similar. Also, in the book I use lyrics from some of the songs (along with other, older songs).

I’m all work and no play. But that’s what I like. Last night I ran into a woman I haven’t seen in years. We went for a coffee, and I realized she had lost it. People crack at this age. The bottom begins to move out from under you. It’s the natural course of things. If you have nothing to tether you to the world, you’re in trouble. People are tethered by their families, I think. Work is what tethers me. As an aging human being, I must face my changing place in the world, but in the world of my work, there is no age, no finish, no getting there. I can mature in a beautiful way. One of the songs on Another Year is called Get There.. just thought of that. It’s a pretty one, I think.

Doe is sick for the first time in a year. I hope it’s just something she ate. We were up all night, but now she sleeps soundly beside me.

Okay, time for breakfast, and then cleaning out the closet, swapping summer things for sweaters. Though it’s warm today, fall is here.

Worked for a solid month, three to eight hours a day, every day before I wrote the right sentence. I’m not exaggerating. I was starting to panic near the end. But then the door opened, and the story that made sense occurred to me (while walking Doe in the park). It came to me piece meal, one bit leading to the next, and now all I have to do is write it, which I have been doing.

I had the sense that if I kept trying, kept writing, trying different things, it would break open, the way it does. I have a lot of experience with it happening in my songwriting. You know when you haven’t hit the spot with a lyric, or melody. There’s a sense that if you can just get a little deeper, or not deeper, but more true, you can do something that takes your song to the next level.

Interesting how it’s all the same. Creativity, in whatever form. Beauty exists beyond us, and we access it through art, as artists, and as viewers/listeners/readers. It exists beyond us, and as artists, we have to find a way to let it come to us, because it can’t be forced. On the other hand, it won’t come if I’m not not completely focused and prepared (by working). Mysterious process.

Whenever I write anything like this, I read it back later and think I’ve sounded pretentious, but I only want to describe it because it amazes me, and I don’t claim to know more about it than my personal experience with having the door open, and that’s when it feels like the song or story, or whatever comes through me, more than from me.

Lost a friend from high school this week, and because of Facebook, I was immediately connected to the whole group of friends I ran with then. We shared our sadness, and memories, and it’s been quite moving. I don’t know why it amazes me that actual connections, relationships, were made. My sense is always that I am on the periphery of everything. It was a revelation, as I searched for the photo album full of the group of us as teenagers, to feel the love I have for these former-friends of mine.

I was thinking about how I have probably mistaken my feeling of separateness as something unique when, in fact,  human beings feel this way. We long to connect, and at the same time, fear a loss of individuality. I think it must be in our DNA, and tied to survival of the species.

I once saw a Buddhist therapist (for a year or so), who told me that my romantic pain was actually the pain of having been separated from every other human being at birth. He thought in another realm we were all one. I’ve always viewed spiritual talk as magical thinking. I’ve been dismissive, but more and more, I can see the connection between us is magical, and very real.