life – Page 13 – Kelley Eskridge

Connections

Many thanks to you and Nicola for signing several books for me in the past few months. I gave them to my partner, Lisa, as a wedding present. We will be getting married next Tuesday, September 2nd, in San Francisco. She was terribly surprised and especially happy to receive a copy of Dangerous Space, a book she’d wanted since she found out it had been published.

I really appreciate you both going to such trouble to accommodate your readers. After Lisa told me how much she loved The Blue Place, I read it and the two other books within the span of a week. I just read your short story, “Strings,” that you mentioned in the past day or so on your blog, and I enjoyed it very much. I will read the rest of the stories after Lisa finishes the book, as well as your novel Solitaire.

Please pass my thanks along to Nicola. Very best wishes to you both.

Patti Weltler

And our best wishes to you! My apologies for taking so long with this — you’re practically an old married couple already (grin). I’m delighted for you and Lisa, and hope your wedding was absolutely splendid.

And you may have squeaked in under the wire on this incarnation of personalized books. I think we’re going to have to find a better system for the future. Since we moved, it’s very tough to get to University Books to sign things — we end traveling anywhere from 25 to 45 minutes each way, plus the time it takes to park and get into the store and sign, and then we get distracted by all the pretty books… It is a much larger cost in energy and time than it used to be. We may have to get people to start sending books to our post office box or something instead. We’ll see.

Because it pleases me to accommodate readers when I can. It’s a relationship, after all, albeit a distant and single-stranded one. It may only be a few words written on the title page, but I value it as the often most direct and personal connection between artist and art and audience.

And on the practical side, I think artists can no longer afford to ignore the importance — the imperative — of the direct and the personal. I imagine it’s a huge challenge for A-list actors and rock stars and mega-popular authors like Stephen King. There’s always been a cultural tension between privacy and access: the assumption that it’s okay to insert oneself into the private experience of famous people in a way that one would never do to some random stranger on the street. That’s been exploded by the internet — the ability to keep tabs on people anywhere in the world, to monitor everything they say and do in public, to “stay close” in a way that (I worry) feels “real” to people because it’s happening in real time. And I think the end result is that famous people no longer feel like strangers to us. We confuse (or choose to ignore) the difference between our personal connection to their work, which may be very deep, and our personal connection to them, which is usually none.

I certainly wish for personal connection with artists whose work touches me. But my mom and dad raised me right, so I don’t march up to celebrities in the middle of their dinner and demand an autograph. And it wouldn’t satisfy me anyway: that moment of interaction does not constitute a real relationship. It’s not a connection, it’s an encounter. It’s one of the unexpected consequences of art, I think, this blurring of the lines between art and self that translates into a desire to blur the lines with the artist. I don’t know what everyone else seeks when they approach an artist: I seek to touch them in an instant as deeply as they have touched me in hours or years. I seek to matter to them as much as their work matters to me.

Which is a fool’s game, of course. There is no way to re-balance the scales in an instant, unless you pull someone out of the way of a speeding bus or something. The truth is, I cannot have “a relationship” with these people. They are for the most part beyond the reach of the small-crowd appearance where everyone in the room is real to everyone else, the random-but-real moments of encounter, the situational golden moment.

But I’m not famous. I am a common artist, and it is both professionally important and personally rewarding to me to read for people, to sign books, to have the occasional beer, to have conversations here in my little corner of the internet about things that interest me. I’m glad I like it: not all artists do, and I think those who are not willing to create some space for connection with audience will find they have less audience as time goes by. This is the world we live in. And I’m glad to be in this world, Patti, to sign books for you and Lisa, and to wish you both a marriage full of joy and love.

No matter what

It’s our 15th wedding anniversary. Nicola wrote about it today and posted some pictures, and as she showed them to me last night we had the inevitable god, we were young conversation. So predictable (grin), and so amazing to have that kind of predictability in my life. I never expected it. I did not see her coming, this fascinating person with whom I can mark milestones and drink wine and laugh and cry and talk and talk and talk about the changes that come to us all if we live long enough.

As she says in her post, we have no matter what engraved inside our rings. Of all the promises we have made to each other, that’s the fundamental one. No matter what happens, no matter how we change and grow, no matter what we need to do, how we fuck up, whether we always understand each other or like each other’s choices… well, we are Kelley and Nicola no matter what.

No matter what is the biggest responsibility I’ve ever taken on, and the biggest safety net I’ve ever had. And that’s the real trick, isn’t it? When something is both the challenge and the reward.

photo by Mark Tiedemann

A nice evening

Thanks to our friend Craig for a lovely evening at Black Bottle last night. I’ve been wanting a night out in the city in a place like this, casual and utterly urban. It was noisy and crowded, so it was hard to talk but the energy of it was like fizz in the air. I liked that our table was near the window, the street so close and so full of other lives passing by while we lived our lives inside with small plates of yummy food, with brandy and orange juice, with grownup conversation. I always say thank you to people who refill my water glass or bring me food, and it was nice that last night it mattered to them that I did, nice to exchange those smiles and be more real to each other for a second or two. And then it was nice to say goodbye to the noise and the rush and the sometimes-overwhelming buzz of other humans close by, to get into our little car and drive home under a slate-blue sky full of clouds that had turned nearly navy blue in some mad trick of atmospherics. To sit by the fire with tea and toast with jam and only each other, in the quiet.

Happy birthday, Chuck

I’ve known my friend Chuck Munro for more than 25 years. We met at the University of South Florida Theatre Department, where we were both taking acting degrees. We worked together in classes, and acted together in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as Helena and Demetrius, and I had the fun of being in the chorus of Jesus Christ Superstar when Chuck played Judas Iscariot. Chuck was handsome and talented (a great actor and singer). He had a beautiful smile. He attended to people in the oldest sense of the word — when Chuck turned his attention fully toward you, you felt as if you were his only priority for that moment. And he had a reserved charm, a sense of something held back behind that killer smile. We all fell in love with him.

He was one of my two close friends in college (I’ll be talking about the other one in a couple of weeks…) At that point in my life I had taken reserve to a new art form, but Chuck was someone I could always talk to. He was comfortable to be with. He made me feel smart and interesting and safe being myself, even when my self was really weird.

And he introduced me to the music of U2. For that alone he stands among the awesome people in my pantheon (grin).

When Chuck moved to Chicago, he lived for a time with me and my roommate until he found a place of his own. And with that place, a life of his own. I left Chicago in 1987 and we’ve never lived close to each other since. He came to my wedding, and I went to his, but really we are the kind of friends who speak maybe once a year — and it’s always as if we just talked yesterday. Our friendship doesn’t seem to operate on linear time. When I was in Chicago last year we met up — only briefly, because life is so damn busy — and I cried to leave him because he is still that special, still handsome and smart, a charming, questing soul with a killer smile and compassion in his heart for everyone.

Happy birthday, Chuck. I love you.

The faster I go, the behinder I get

I have posts…hmm, what are these posts doing? Are they simmering like stew? Are they building themselves up in my brain like coral on a reef? Are they brewing like tea? There are so many metaphors for the black-box backbrain process of writing, of bringing ideas together to the point where words may give them shape.

But I’m not there yet. I would be, except that I ~~hate hate hate hate Windows!~~ have experienced ~~three hours~~ a few technical difficulties this morning. And I have places to go and things to do, and the posts that are… mulching, fermenting, gestating: whatever they’re doing, they’re not done. And I really need to be finishing up the Humans At Work website because I want it ready for beta testing before I go off next week ~~to sit for eight hours on uncomfortable chairs with some mind-numbing talk show blasting from a corner TV waiting for my turn to be rejected~~ for jury duty.

Sometimes life is all about the details. I can handle details, but it’s not always a fun experience. My parents are both great at managing details. Why did I not get these cheerful give-me-a-list-and-stand-back genes? Because the universe needs a good laugh every once in a while, and today it’s my turn to pop out of the little box wearing a funny nose and waving my arms back and forth. And probably not getting as much done as I would like. Ah well…I’ve said before that I don’t believe in fate or god, but I can’t resist this quote:

I was put on this earth to accomplish a number of things. Right now I am so far behind that I will never die. — Who knows who said this, but it’s true

However, do not feel sorry for me. I have become quite good at rewarding myself for entering the ~~ninth circle of hell~~ detail zone, and so one of the things on my list today is this.

Enjoy your day, whatever you’re doing!

Mad Rush for Strings

When I first wrote about vidding, I said:

I wish there were a way to respond like this to a novel or short story. Imagine. Wow. If someone did something like this in response to my work, I would cry like a baby and count myself blessed. — from my post “Vid it“

And today comes this from Karina Melendez — her response to my story “Strings”.

The words are taken (a bit randomly) from…”Strings”. The music is by Philip Glass. The beautiful footage belongs to Patricia Rozema and Aaron Platt. — Karina Melendez, describing the origins of “Mad Rush“.

And so I’m crying and I’m blessed. I’m overwhelmed by this beautiful gift. It’s just astonishing.

Because apart from the incredible personal meaning this has for me, I stand in awe of what she’s done for fiction. It would never have occurred to me to use words in this way, and I think it’s fucking brilliant. This is not a “video of the story” — it’s a response that uses the story I wrote to show the story that she feels. This is not the story of “Strings,” it’s the heart of “Strings” — what music means, how it feels, what it does. And how what we keep inside us will always find a way out.

Watch it, please, please. And please go let Karina know what you think.

Saying thank you doesn’t seem like enough, somehow. And so I thought that along with my thanks, I would offer the story itself. Here is “Strings”. It’s one of my best. I hope you enjoy it.

Fear

This morning I read this on PostSecret:

Today I made a list of my fears. It wasn’t as long as I thought it would be. — an anonymous postcard from PostSecret today

Fear’s a tricky thing: some fear is there for a good reason, and it’s as if all the rest of our fear — our insecurities, our denials of self or others, our defensiveness, the way we turn from risk or adventure — piggybacks onto it. As if the fact that there are some things to be afraid of in the world makes it reasonable to be afraid of everything. Fear makes us think that everything will kill us in some way. And our culture makes us think that being afraid of anything makes us weak and wimpy and…. well, there are very few positive words.

Talk about a no-win situation. But here’s my take on it. Running away from someone trying to harm you = Good. Running away from our personal fears, in my experience = Fear Grows Bigger Teeth, Bites Harder, Rules Me More. But when I let that happen — when I let fear bite me in the ass — that doesn’t make me weak. It just makes me a person who is so scared right now that I put myself in a box to “keep myself safe.” And there’s nothing at all wrong with being safe. But it turns out that I can’t have all the things I want if I’m safely in the box, and so, as with everything else, I have to choose.

I’m not sure we always have to tackle fear head-on — we don’t always need that kind of stress, you know? — but I think it’s good to look it square in the eye and say I see you there. For me, knowing what I’m really afraid of at least lets me choose whether to take it on, as opposed to finding myself blinking in a box wondering how the hell did I get here?

I hope that person’s list was really short, and I hope the things on it are all things that will make her shake her head and say, okay, I can live with that, and then drop her box in the recycling bin on her way out the door.

Le destin, c’est moi

Nous tissons notre destin, nous le tirons de nous comme l’araignÃ©e sa toile. — Francois Muriac

We weave our destiny, we draw it from ourselves like the spider spins its web.

I don’t believe in fate. I don’t subscribe to the notion of a higher being with a plan for me. But I know life is not random, either, although there are times when the random delights or damages us for a moment or forever.

In my philosophy, the four most powerful things in the universe are love, joy, fear and choice. History is made from their stew. People live and die for them, from them. We stand tall or twist ourselves out of true by the choices we make from love and joy and fear. Most of those are small daily choices about whether to do, how to respond, what to let in and keep out. And from those things we weave ourselves. My life is the web of my choices.

Destiny is a funny word. I don’t believe in destiny spelled out in a Big Book somewhere, as if the universe was simply some giant cosmic puppet theatre. I choose not to see myself and my life reduced to that. So I do not think there is A Path I Am Meant To Walk, and yet it is clear to me when I’m doing things that… hmm. That fit with the essential core of me, the soul, the spirit, whatever you choose to call it. I know when I feel aligned and when I don’t. I know when I am out of true.

As I get older, I trust more and more my own instincts about these choices. I trust my sense of whether things are right or wrong for me, my sense of when to act and when to stand still. I trust that I can be hurt and survive, and so I no longer always need to blindly defend myself against the possibility of pain. I trust that I can be joyful without the other shoe dropping on me, and so I no longer always need to “deserve” happiness. I trust that I can live with complexity, and so I am no longer so afraid to feel whatever it is that I feel.

And even when the random intervenes, even when things happen that I did not choose, it is still my choice how to respond.

And so I make my choices and my life weaves itself around me. And many of those choices the last couple of years have been big ones, the kind that alter the patterns forever. I am not who I expected to be. And yet I am totally myself. I’m creating daily a destiny that can only be mine, because it is made of my choices, my love, my fear, my joy.

And just in case I’m sounding a little too far inside my own navel, I hasten to add that the Muriac quote from which spring all these musings comes from one of my favorite t-shirts:

You can find all the quotes and translations here. Perhaps they’ll make you muse too, or perhaps they’ll just make you want to find a baguette and the nearest bottle of wine. Happy Saturday, either way.

Demons

Nicola writes today about the official exorcist of the Westminster diocese… Apparently, I am essentially a “rational satanist” and am going Straight To Hell without even a milkshake or anything.

From my perspective this priest is easy to dismiss: I’m not Christian and his threats of hell have no power over me. They are literally meaningless to me. And that’s when I got interested. Because I am curious about what demons mean to people who believe in them. I ask from genuine curiosity. Would anyone be willing to speak here about your understanding of demons? What are they, how do they manifest? Do they frighten you?

Pale blue dot

After I left high school, I spent a year at Northwestern University. Going to St. Paul’s was one of the five best choices I’ve ever made, and going to Northwestern was certainly one of the five worst. Utter misery. I fled after a year. By this point, I had been away from home for five years, and I felt completely out of sync with other 18-year-olds. Dislocated, rootless. So I moved back to Tampa and lived with my mom and enrolled in the theatre department of the University of South Florida.

There are a million stories from those years. This one is about Cosmos.

Cosmos was a television show about science and the universe, presented by Carl Sagan. We loved it. We’d cook dinner and sit on the floor at the coffee table in front of the TV, eating tuna casserole or spaghetti, absolutely enraptured. And then we’d talk and talk about what we had learned.

Sagan was astonishingly good at making science personal. He was luminous with love of the universe, and passionate about stewardship of the earth. He was clear-eyed about the fact that our planet and we ourselves are both cosmically insignificant, and that we are also amazing, astonishing, capable of extraordinary things. He told us that everything here, including us, was made of star stuff. He made me remember that I did have roots — on this little blue planet on the fringes of the Milky Way, itself only one of a hundred billion galaxies each with a hundred billion stars. He single-handedly restored my sense of wonder in a universe of which, it turned out, I was not the center. Good lessons in so many ways.

I can highly recommend his nonfiction works, of which there are many (The Dragons of Eden, Broca’s Brain, and Pale Blue Dot, the list goes on). He also wrote the science fiction novel Contact, which was made into a movie starring Jodie Foster.

Every single time I saw or heard or read him, it was so clear that he was stone in love with life, the universe and everything. It was all just amazing to him, and he wanted the rest of us to understand how precious it is.