rebeccakuder

Jack Hardy (household icon)

Jack Hardy playing at my wedding

When Jack Hardy and his band played the Studebaker Family Reunion in 2001, he and the band stayed at our house.  I came back from work that Saturday afternoon to a kitchen full of fiddles and song; they were warming up for the evening’s gig.  Five years later, he came back with a band that included his bright-glowing daughter, Morgan.  I haven’t met his other family, but was so impressed with Morgan.  She seemed wise and mature for her years, and full of talent.

Jack Hardy sang and played at my wedding.  Jack’s presence filled whatever space he inhabited, no matter the scale and scope.  His songs seep into my soul.

My daughter might be his most fervent three-year-old fan.  She loves and sings so many of his songs.  “The moon is full, it’s just not hungry anymore,” she sings, looking up at the moon.  When the recent ice storm truncated our willow tree, she wanted to play Jack’s Willow Song.  (She looked out the window, told the tree to listen as we played it inside.)  In the mornings when we make oatmeal, first she has to pick up the 1 cup metal measuring cup–it’s her telephone–and call Jack Hardy to tell him to come over and play “Blackberry Pie” or “Sheila” or her recent favorite, “Willie Goggins’ Hat.”  My husband and I had been saying we should call him on the actual phone, and let the girl talk to him for real.  I wish we hadn’t waited so long.

His ways of knowing and telling about nature and human nature will help form hers.  Jack Hardy is part of her landscape and her narrative, and she will never get to hear him play his music in person.  I ache when I think about what his children and family are going through.  But the hardest thing for me to release at the news of his passing is that Merida won’t be able to hear him play live.

There’s a hole in the world now.  True of anyone’s passing, but the gap Jack leaves here is so large, and will echo, as do the strains of his music, through time and space.

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Cutting, that fragile balance

Spring cleaning.

Having gained sufficient time and distance from the sentences in my novel, I’m cutting.  Many sentences have too many words.  Some need words rearranged, the most important word relocated to the end of the sentence, emphasizing the point.  There is something so refreshing about this process of paring down, pruning to make a thing flourish.  The trick is  balance: how to tell when you’re tinkering to tinker, when the first way was better.  Breathing with each sentence, the comfort of making them stronger, the comfort of those moments when I know I’ve made them better.

Delicious, rewarding, nerdy.  Yes.

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A proud moment

This morning, completely unprompted, my daughter said, “Filitino Box Spring Hog,” then further clarified to say,  “Cookin’ up a Filitino Box Spring Hog!”  (Naturally, I made her repeat it for the camera.)

Indoctrinating her into the world of cultish/semi-obscure music is working.  I’m so proud!  (Can “Chocolate Jesus” be far behind?)

And here they are, the lyrics of Tom Waits’ “Filipino Box Spring Hog” pasted below, thieved (along with the photo of Little Red’s Recovery Room) from Tom Waits Library.  And here’s a live video. Boy do I wish I’d seen that Mule Variations tour!

Filipino Box Spring Hog

(Mule Variations studio version, 1999)

Well I hung on to Mary’s stump
I danced with a soldier’s glee
With a Rum Soaked Crook(2) and a big fat laugh
I spent my last dollar on thee
I saw Bill Bones, gave him a yell
Kehoe spiked the nog
With a chain link fence and a scrap iron jaw
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog

Spider rolled in from Hollister Burn(3)
with a one-eyed stolen mare
Donned himself with chicken fat
Sawin’ on a jaw bone violin there
Kathleen was sittin’ down in Little Red’s Recovery Room(4)
in her criminal underwear bra
I was naked to the waist with my fierce black hound
And I’m cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog

Dig a big pit in a dirt alley road
Fill it with madrone and bay
Stinks like hell and the neighbors complain
Don’t give a hoot what they say
Gotta slap that hog
Roll em over twice
Gotta baste him with a sweeping broom
You gotta swat them flies and chain up the dogs
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog

Rattle snake piccata with grapes and figs
Old brown Betty(5) with a yellow wig
Tain’t the mince meat(6) filagree
And it ain’t the turkey neck stew(8)
And it ain’t them bruleed okra seeds
though she made them especially for you
Worse won a prize for her bottom black pie
The beans got thrown to the dogs

Jaheseus Christ, I can always make room
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog
Cookin’ up a Filipino Box Spring Hog

rebeccakuder

The alpha and the omega

Something emerging...

I got this trick via Jim Krusoe, who attributes it to Carol Emshwiller.  (Thanks, Jim and Carol!)

Writers of fiction: Take the first and last words of a piece, then put them together.  The idea is that the resulting phrase might somehow relate to the whole.  Here are mine.

The Watery Girl: “Something emerging.”

The Eight Mile Suspended Carnival (which is rough and will surely change): “Mim hands.”

Both, weirdly, work.

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Avena con leche y miel by any other name…

One locale, in Merida Mexico, to get avena con leche y miel.

(Another post about what I eat for breakfast!  Possible boredom ahead!)

I love Mark Bittman.  I was sad when I learned of his stepping away from the Minimalist column, but he’s still around, and freer to opine.  I’m loving him even more.  Take, for instance, his opinionator blog post about McDonald’s oatmeal, from which I excerpt the following:

Others will argue that the McDonald’s version is more “convenient.” This is nonsense; in the time it takes to go into a McDonald’s, stand in line, order, wait, pay and leave, you could make oatmeal for four while taking your vitamins, brushing your teeth and half-unloading the dishwasher.

(Thanks, by the way, to Jennifer New at Mothers of Invention for sharing Bittman’s post, which I might have missed.)  Bittman’s comment made me laugh, but it’s also kinda creepy because I think he’s been surveilling my home.  This describes most mornings in my house, except that he didn’t mention the three-year-old on the step ladder, helping make the “avena con leche y miel” which is what we call it, or “avena,” which was one of the first Spanish words my child learned.  (I’ll explain why another time.)

Anyway, yeah, what Bittman said.  Oatmeal has gotten a bad rap, and it’s easy to make, and good for you.  Eat it!  You can even throw in a handful of cooked brown rice for extra chewy texture.  Mmm, oatmeal!

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Happy Valentine’s Day

Tom Waits, an icon and inspiration

Today’s beautiful song…  As much as Tom Waits was (and is still) a balladeer, it seems somehow accidental that he wrote and sang this song.  I love the 1970s introspection, like he’s talking to himself…  I wish I could have that time machine and go back and sit next to the piano for this one.

I love the way this song makes me feel.  I am so glad not to be lonely.  Hoping that anyone who’s lonely today will feel less lonely listening to this gorgeous little dream.

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Maybe that’s it.

What you cannot recreate

(The following might be the final paragraph of The Eight Mile Suspended Carnival.   It will make no sense without the novel that comes before it.  It might not even make sense with the novel that comes before it.  But what the heck.  It’s my blog, I can post if I want to.)

Ladies and gentlemen.  Jettison what you can recreate.  Take the essentials: bolts, wire, rope.  Other parts can be found elsewhere.  Take what you most need.  Take the things you can use: arms, hands, legs, and sometimes other parts.  Hands.

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Funny, I don’t feel any different.

The storm inside, the storm outside

What a day.  What a lilting, bourgeois opera, but I have yet to write the libretto.  The highlight:

1) I finished my novel today.  The ice storm helped, offering time at home, and sound effects.  That crackle of ice on limb on wind opened something and let me let it be done.  The end of the story was very simple.  Ends are weird, and I don’t know if this is the right one, but it came clear and natural, so I will let it be for now.  There’s still a passel of work to do, but I got to the end of the story!  This novel took me ages, what feel like lifetimes, to finish–the first note I have with the germ of idea is from 2001, and I’ve been writing it since 2004.  But for now I’m done.  In a way.

To celebrate, I opened the week-and-a-half-old bottle of wine from the fridge (a very good wine that my friend Kurt, owner of Emporium, recommended) and put on The Black Rider by Tom Waits.  (Sounds from Tom Waits have been partially to blame for the novel.)  My husband celebrated with me; my daughter said she didn’t like the music but didn’t insist I turn it off.

After dinner, I noticed the dripping from the picture window (a leak, we need to figure out why, and have it fixed) was tap tap tapping with a tad more force than it had been this afternoon into the yogurt containers there to catch the drips…still is, but now fortified by towels, and other vessels to catch the water…saw a thin line of shine, so just in case, I emptied the cabinet below of myriad cups, saucers, tea, cocoa, and other important detritus…all dry…so for now, all I can do it sit back and wait to see if this really is the storm of the season, and see if the power will go out.

And probably best to eat some ice cream, which is still frozen.  That’s the most obvious bourgeois bit, the ice cream.  Because I’m not trapped in an ice-covered wonderland without it.

But I just heard a really creaky sound outside…

rebeccakuder

Productive procrastination (the dreams of others)

"Michel Leiris faisant une libation ; à droite, la mambo Lorgina Delorge"

Today, I sit at the precipice of WHAT HAPPENS NEXT in the plot of my novel, and have to write some new stuff, in other words, I’m looking into the abyss.  Which means I need inspiration.

I have this interesting book of dreams of Michel Leiris.  It’s from the Eridanos Library, whose books I’ve found at various used book shops through the years, and every one I’ve read has been completely worth the time.  They have these quiet, considered covers that jump off the shelf because they are not screaming orange, twirling batons, and otherwise displaying excessive narcissism.  This book in particular is a wonder to open at random.  It’s a collection of short entries, thirty-seven years of a person’s dreams.  Leiris hung out with the Surrealists, and this book is rich with imagery and the ineffable.  (Clearly someone whose dreams should be considered.)  Here’s what I found today, on p. 56, from an undated dream, probably sometime between 1926 and 1929:

“I am going on a trip, so I have to move all the books in my library from one room to another.

Since the occasion calls for me to show one of my manuscripts to some of my friends, I go down to the street, rip what appears to be streetcar tracks from the pavement, and go back up to the apartment, dragging meters of rails behind me that bang on the stairs with every step I take.  I then realize that this load is in fact made up of a series of large glass objects similar to those coasters that used to be placed under the feet of pianos in middle-class living rooms to protect the carpet or the floor.  Because this is indeed my manuscript, I am fairly annoyed.  But I manage to console myself, given the fact that my arrival provokes the following comments: ‘He’s quite something, that Leiris!  You as him for a manuscript, and he drags the rails up from the street.’  On the other hand, though, these objects finally reveal themselves to be melting ice, and although the chain quickly dissolves, I hope I will be able to reconstitute some of its elements.”

What a dream!  What an image!  I post this not only to procrastinate (a noble end in itself) but because I love typing up words from other writers.  It’s a way of getting inside the artist’s soul, physically.  (I’ve sometimes wondered if it’s different, because I’m typing on a laptop, while Leiris, for instance, was probably writing by hand, so maybe I’m having a closer experience to getting inside the typesetter’s hand, in 1987, but if I ponder this question too long, my brain will fold into an origami crane and I will never get anything done.)

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Pith from Rebecca

Look closely: you will find pith here.

If your nouns and verbs can do the work, let them.  You’ll have little need for adjectives and adverbs.

(p.s. It’s a shame I can’t–or won’t–follow this advice.  I just tried that exercise where you take a page of your work and banish all adjectives and adverbs.  It wasn’t as bad as I thought, but it wasn’t as good as I’d hope.  Some things made no sense without the adjectives.  Worth trying, though, and worth keeping in mind as I write.)