Author: Kelley

Seattle snowbrain

It’s snowing here. Excuse me while I just go off into a corner of the internet and bang my head. (Ow! Ow ow ow! Okay, not really, since the internet is only hard in metaphorical, logistical, political, moral, ethical and communication ways, but doesn’t actually have any walls, except that’s a whole new set of metaphors so let’s not go there right now…)

Okay, sorry. This unfortunate incident has been brought to you by The Snowbrain Drivers of Seattle, who do not get that snow is, like, water, you know? It’s slippery! And when you smush it into the road with your hot tires and then the cold wind blows, it turns into ice! (Oh my god! You should totally have stayed awake in science class!) And guess what? If you put your car on a patch of that ice and push your gas pedal, your tires will go round and round and round and make a funny noise, and your car will go sideways!

I went to the gym early this morning, when everything was cold and still and asphalt- and tree-colored, as the world should be. When I came out of my workout, everything was cold and blowy and white. That is not how I like my immediate environment to be. If I wanted a winter wonderland, I would live in Saskatchewan (*bows in respect to all of you who are Not Like Me*). And almost immediately, many people on the road decided that the best thing to do when driving in snow is to try to outrun it. So they went faster. They tailgated. They ran the yellow lights on a left turn. And their tires made funny noises, and their cars went sideways.

I went straight from the gym to the grocery store to do all the Thanksgiving shopping. I think there were maybe ten customers there, and we all had that focused, determined look of people who know that the last loaf of bread will be gone baby gone four hours from now. Because there are going to be three inches of snow and we will all starve in our homes!

I swear, I am not making any of this up. (Edited to add: And now I have proof!)

The turkey is in the refrigerator. The car is in the driveway. I am going to have some more tea and contemplate the joy of not being on the road right now.

Enjoy your day.

Taking readers apart

I am flat out delighted by this lovely review of Dangerous Space from Terry Weyna at Reading The Leaves. Apart from all the other nice things she says, I think she’s the first reviewer who has specifically called out what is, for me, the core of “Dangerous Space” — the artist’s creative process, and the role that other people sometimes play in it.

As for taking readers apart, well… yay (grin). There is no better praise for a writer than making people feel.

It’s true that I’m not doing as much writing as I’d like to be right now. And much of what I am doing, you don’t see — screenplay, story drafts, yadda yadda. I’m living in story all the time (even when I go to the grocery store) and that’s deep and rich and compelling for me. But it’s not enough. I want you to live in my stories too; I want them to live in you. It’s hard to explain all the thousand things I feel when a reader lets me know that’s happened. I suppose that is why I tell stories about it instead.

Enjoy your day.

The next step

You know I love music. It fuels my writing, my nights in the pub, my fireside conversations with friends. It makes moments in movies, and in life, more ecstatic or more bittersweet. The best music punches straight in, blows a goodbye kiss to my thinking brain and blasts into the bright hot murky cold stir-it-up places within me. Not all music is the ecstatic kind, but I’ve always been ecstatic on some level about it. I hear a song I like, I get excited, you know? It pleases me to hear myself sung back to me.

And this pleases me too: this Seattle Times profile of Seattle band The Head and the Heart, and their in-studio session at KEXP. Threshold experiences fascinate me: people standing in a doorway, or on a cliff, ready to step… Those moments of And so it begins.

Enjoy your day.

Overheard at the gym

I have talked before about the world of women (not ladies!) at my gym. If you have opinions about the niceness and demureness of sedate-looking women of a certain age, well, keep your jury out on that until you spent some time working out with them. Because a 70-something woman told this joke today…

Three old ladies are sitting on a park bench. A flasher stops in front of them and pulls his raincoat wide. So Mabel has a stroke. Then Louella has a stroke. But Bessie was too old; she couldn’t reach that far.

Enjoy your day.

The creative tango

In September, Slate Magazine ran a fascinating series of articles by Joshua Wolf Shenk examining the dynamics of creative relationships. I’ve been reading them over and over: they speak to me very deeply of my own experience with both Nicola and my screenwriting work. I have been having conversations in my head with Shenk and planning blog posts, but you know, I keep finding more internal paths to follow, more thinking to do, and so this is a long way of telling you I got nothin’ (big smile to everyone on the internet).

Or perhaps it’s better to say that I’ve got so much, so deep, that I am not sure what to share or where to start. There’s something in these ideas that feels so essential to me, so defining…. I have been, at times, one of the most solitary people I know. I value my singularity, my individuality, my autonomy, the particularity of my vision, all that precious me me me stuff that artists get to acknowledge publicly to an extent that other people aren’t always allowed. But I know that my writing — my core identity — would not be what it is without my creative relationships. Me you me you me me me…

If you’re interested, go take a look. Start here, and then follow the links through to Shenk’s analysis of the Lennon/McCartney relationship (both parts). Let me know what you think.

And enjoy your day. In spite of rain and the vagaries of life, I’m enjoying mine.

Inside out

Halloween and Christmas were my Two Favorite Days as a kid, better than my birthday (I am not sure they were better than the occasional McDonald’s Food Days we had, because those completely nutritionally-incorrect french fries were like catnip to me, and that’s just the way it was).

But I digress.

Halloween: the day when, if we allow it, some part of our inside comes out to play. A big day in 60’s Tampa. What do you want to be? my mom would ask. Mostly, I didn’t know; so she let ideas float in the air for a week or so and then, if necessary, gently steered me toward something interesting (no Snow White plastic dresses from a bag for my mom!). She made most of my costumes (including a gorgeous tissue paper sunflower headdress on year).

My folks took me out at dusk and waited in the shadows at the end of the sidewalk so that I could go up by myself to the houses. Scary, sometimes. Then as I got older, I ran with a group of kids, with a group of parents wandering a block or so behind us, their cocktail ice clinking in time with their amiable conversation. Then those couple of magic years when we kids were old enough to go by ourselves; no one told us that meant we were on the cusp of being too old to go at all, and I’m glad. Those sorts of understandings come soon enough to me without the well-intentioned help of others.

And then there’s adult Halloween, which turns out to be quite a different beastie that asks a new question: What do you want to show? When we’re kids, it’s cool to be something we’re not. When we’re adults, if we’re lucky, we have the opportunity every so often to be something we are.

I spent Halloween 1986 with my friends Chuck and Karen in Chicago. We all went out to a dance at the local theatre company (just three blocks away) where we took acting classes together (and where I did theatre subscription telemarketing in exchange for a reduction on tuition, and lemme tell you, it’s a circle of hell so far down that they don’t even have a number for it yet). We had, as I recall, a grand night, and I got to dance to 80’s music in the actual 80’s, which does my head in just thinking about it.

There’s a lot showing in this photo, but I won’t tell you what it is.

Have a wonderful Halloween. Let something out to play.

On Punctuation

Here’s a wonderful exuberant poem, a throw your head back and howl poem, a laugh so hard with someone that you both can’t breathe and that’s all part of the fun poem, a dance all night and then go out for eggs and bacon and biscuits with gravy poem. This poem smiles at drunk people in the street and flirts just a little bit with everyone in the room because why not? Enough of life is about stopping. And sometimes the opposite of stopping is not going too far; sometimes it’s taking that one more step to the yippee.

Many thanks to Seattle poet Elizabeth Austen for her generous permission to share it with you here. You can also find it at The Writer’s Almanac (and hear it read by Garrison Keillor).

Enjoy

On Punctuation
by Elizabeth Austen

not for me the dogma of the period
preaching order and a sure conclusion
and no not for me the prissy
formality or tight-lipped fence
of the colon and as for the semi-
colon call it what it is
a period slumming
with the commas
a poser at the bar
feigning liberation with one hand
tightening the leash with the other
oh give me the headlong run-on
fragment dangling its feet
over the edge give me the sly
comma with its come-hither
wave teasing all the characters
on either side give me ellipses
not just a gang of periods
a trail of possibilities
or give me the sweet interrupting dash
the running leaping joining dash all the voices
gleeing out over one another
oh if I must
punctuate
give me the YIPPEE
of the exclamation point
give me give me the curling
cupping curve mounting the period
with voluptuous uncertainty

“On Punctuation” by Elizabeth Austen, from The Girl Who Goes Alone. © Floating Bridge Press, 2010. Reprinted with the poet’s permission.

Contracorriente (Undertow)

I had the pleasure of seeing Undertow last night at the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. It’s a beautiful film, powerful and sad. A story of the heart: love, fear and redemption. Take your hankies: there’s a moment at the end that just had me gone, gone, gone. Beautifully acted, gorgeous cinematography, and nuanced directing by Javier Fuentes-Leon, whom I had the pleasure of meeting as well. It was interesting to hear about the process behind the story and the coming together of the film. There is so much more than the Hollywood way to do these things, although you wouldn’t think so to look at Hollywood.

I love movies, and Undertow has reminded me once again of what it is that I really love: the power of a good story well told, about small choices that have enormous consequences, about big feelings and dreams and fears. About what happens when we lose ourselves, and when we find ourselves.

Undertow has won a truckload of awards, and is playing in theatres in US cities on a traveling basis, and screening at festivals all over the world. Check the schedule, go find it, and enjoy.
 

Thank you

Nicola and I celebrated birthdays in September with the Griffith/Eskridge Birthday Jubilee. It’s not exactly over yet — we still have gifts of meals, wine, conversation, and story to enjoy. But it’s definitely time for me to say thank you to everyone who wished me well, sent me champagne and wine, took me out for splendid meals and made me fabulous dinners in their homes, organized treats for me, told me they loved me, and generally made me feel special and happy to be alive.

And because this is the only way I have to thank one of you, here I am waving through the internet to the reader who sent me an Amazon.com gift card. Thank you! I have pre-ordered the new Stephen King book and I am looking forward to it with glee. Hah, which means I’ll still be celebrating in November.

And, you know, I just can’t find anything wrong with that.

Enjoy your day.

Out here

Today is National Coming Out Day.

I met Nicola in June 1988, and said goodbye to her six weeks later with my world and my life completely changed. I’d talked to people before about the possibility that I was bisexual. I’d had intense emotional friendships with men and women, love affairs with men, crushes on women, and moved in both straight and gay circles in Atlanta where I was living, and everyone wondered what was up with me. Then Nicola came along and rocked my world on every level.

I went back to Atlanta alone and knew I had to do… something. And then I read about National Coming Out Day. There was going to be an NCOD ad in the Atlanta newspaper: anyone could register and put their name on the ad. And so I did.

I’m a private person (really, I am, this blog notwithstanding). I was alone in the South with a lot to sort out and a boatload of sadness. I had survived much of my life by flying under the radar; doing what I needed to do so unobtrusively that people didn’t get in my way. Sending in my name was huge for me: and, being me, I didn’t tell anyone I was doing it. I didn’t seek counsel or talk it out or get support. I just did it.

I was scared. Why? I don’t know. Maybe I thought my name would be in 75-point type on the front page of the paper and my neighbors in the apartment complex would nail dead squirrels to my door. Maybe I just felt revealed. Maybe I thought I would ping someone’s radar in a way that I couldn’t anticipate and might not like. There are all sorts of reasons people are afraid.

On October 11, 1988 — the first ever National Coming Out Day — I opened the newspaper and found my name in the company of hundreds of others. Hundreds. Astonishing. Our names were in about 2-point type; you needed a microscope to read them. No one that I knew ever saw my name there. But I saw it. And it was a great and good thing for me. It made me feel brave, and it made me feel proud.

I look forward to the day when everyone can be out without being afraid or feeling alone. If you came out today — even to yourself — then welcome. You just made a difference. It’s better out here when we’re all here together.