My Novel Taming Jaguars Is Finished!!!

 

Jasmine, Patsy, and Vera accompany me everywhere. They join me when I take a walk, help me do the dishes, cook baked ziti with me, and listen when I play the piano. After a handful of years, this is how I got to know them, and now that my fifth novel, "Taming Jaguars," is finished, it's time to send them off into the world. 

Jasmine is the "I" character in Taming Jaguars. It is summertime, and the story begins when at age forty-nine, she moves into the beach house owned by her new boyfriend, Rex, in the fictitious town of Cape Castle. Rex is Jasmine's first serious boyfriend since her marriage ended with a shocking confession over a decade ago. She is perpetually filled with anxiety that her relationship with Rex will not work out, so she spends the summer self-medicating with Chardonnay and through the healing scents of the ocean's sea salt. At first, Taming Jaguars was supposed to focus on Jasmine and Rex's burgeoning relationship, but after a year of outlines and sketches of my first few chapters, I realized I'd rather explore her friendship with two of my female characters, Patsy and Vera. I wanted to learn more about their personalities and histories because I found these unique and gutsy older women fascinating. 

Patsy is a blue-eyed blonde spending another summer living in her faded musician boyfriend's beach house. She is forty-four years old, and she ignores the ticking of her biological clock, preferring to focus on enjoying the hedonistic temptations in life. She brings her closest Cape Castle friend, Vera, into the mix who is a youthful seventy-nine-year-old with no qualms about wearing her bikini top every time she relaxes in the beach town. Throughout my novel, Vera sets out to help Patsy and Jasmine with their youthful dramas despite harboring a spicy secret of her own.

Now that the drafts are finished, my next step is spreading the word on social media. When I self-published my novels, Bliss, Bliss, Bliss  (2011) and Iggy Gorgess (2014), I connected with writers, editors, and indie publishers through Twitter, but now that Twitter is gone, I'm mostly on my Facebook Author Page, Instagram, and my Goodreads Author Page. Recently, I've discovered Substack, yet another website where writers can post notes and quotes from their novels.

Since Taming Jaguars is not yet a printed book, I am working on a one-page synopsis and author's bio to submit to independent publishers hoping to find someone who will help me get Jasmine, Patsy, and Vera into the hands and minds of readers.

Although Taming Jaguars mostly focuses on older women, my character Mel is an Instagram model in her early twenties, and the disdain Jasmine and Patsy have for her is often humorous. Here is a short excerpt that features Mel, Jasmine, and Patsy meeting Vera at the spa's indoor swimming pool:

            Mel changed from her white terrycloth robe into a skimpy, pink and tan bikini. I couldn't figure out where she had gotten a bikini?

            “Umm,” she said. “I should have told you both to bring bikinis today. I always carry one in my purse.”

            “That's resourceful,” Vera said.

            “But why would it be 'resourceful' to carry a bikini in your purse?” Patsy asked.

            “Because we are the inhabitants of a beach town.” 

            “It's silly,” Patsy said. “I always know when I'm going for a swim. I don't have many pop-up bikini moments to surprise me!”

            I laughed loudly, but Mel just shrugged.

           “Oh, don't be callous,” Vera said. “If you girls had carried bikinis in your purses today, you and Jasmine would be in the water with us right now instead of kicking your legs about at the edge of the pool! 

Thank you for reading a bit about my journey writing my fifth novel, Taming Jaguars. Stay tuned for more excerpts at the following links: 

https://www.facebook.com/chrissibliss/ 

https://www.instagram.com/christabelgorgess/?hl=en

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5232496.Chrissi_Sepe

https://substack.com/@chrissisepe?

Photo by Ralph Crane

 

Brooke Shields Saves The Day!

My Brooke Shields doll and two of my Brooke books

Do you believe in synchronicity? I do! Actress/Model/Wonderful Person, Brooke Shields, keeps popping up into my life. No, I've never met her in person. It's just that her pictures, books, and social media posts somehow repeatedly make their way into my life at the times I need her most.

Years ago, I dreamed I got a personal, handwritten letter in the mail from Brooke. I have no memory of what it said. Even when I first woke up, I couldn't remember. All I remember is that I woke up extremely upset and disappointed that it was only a dream. The feeling of longing was unmistakable, and it took a while to shake off the depression that she didn't actually write me. I felt sad thinking she never would. But something was going on in the universe that made me feel as though I should pay attention to Brooke.  

Photo from Reddit

The first time I saw Brooke Shields was on the cover of Time Magazine’s “Face of the 1980’s” issue. I was in my dad’s hospital room, a few days after he was diagnosed with cancer on my twelfth birthday. Brooke was almost sixteen, and she looked beautiful and glamorous in a pink dress that had a huge ruffle extending over the top of one shoulder. Looking at Brooke’s picture and reading the article about her model life allowed me to put my attention somewhere else for a moment. Fantasizing about her exciting life made me feel better because I desperately needed an escape, and she brought me comfort. Little did I know then that decades later, Brooke would provide me comfort as I faced other new chapters in my life.

Inspired by Brooke, I asked my mom if I could sign with 'Lil Stars Agency" when I was fourteen years old. This is one of my contact sheets used to choose a pic for my acting portfolio. I landed two extra jobs in two movies. One was as a camper in "Old Enough," and the other was as a student in "No Big Deal" starring Kevin Dillon.

During Brooke's heyday, I had posters of her on my bedroom wall. One was from her "Blue Lagoon" movie which I watched countless times on the only premium movie channel my family had called WHT. The channel streamed from a box which sat on the top of our TV, and the reason why it was our only movie channel is because my town didn't have cable lines yet! I don't have my posters anymore, but I still have a trade paperback book from that time period called "The Brooke Book," and of course, I still have my Brooke Shields doll. I treasure her even though her leg has now fallen out of its socket, held up only by her tights. She also doesn't have shoes anymore which my daughter probably lost when she was a kid.  

As the years rolled by, Brooke never left my mind. I remember her playing Rizzo in "Grease" on Broadway, and I watched every episode of her 1990's TV comedy show, "Suddenly Susan." Then, in the mid 2000's, the connection I felt with her in my dad's hospital room reappeared when she released a book called "Down Came the Rain" about her experience with postpartum depression. The book was released only months before I became a mom myself. I bought it shortly after I gave birth because I too suffered a bad case of postpartum depression. Again, she was there exactly when I needed her.

Photo from Woman's Day

Now, Brooke has a brand new book out called, “Brooke Shields is Not Allowed to Get Old.” It's about her experience of moving from adulthood into older adulthood, and I am amazed at how much I identify with it. Brooke has a largely positive view of getting older and isn't shy about revealing her own personal experiences. She is surprised about the benefits being an older woman brings which nobody tells us about, as I am too. It's as if society WANTS us to be miserable!  Here's a quote from her book's introduction: 

 “What I’ve come to realize – not only from my own lived experience but also from conversations with other women my age – is that these “later” years are all about coming into your own and pivoting in the directions you’ve always wanted to go. You can finally live the life you intended to, because you no longer have to act in accordance with external timelines, something that is part and parcel of being a woman.  I don’t have to get married by this date or have kids by this age or get a certain job before that milestone. My time is my own.”

                                                                 Photo credit - Alex Caley

I agree! We’ve all heard that midlife is supposed to be the end, especially for a woman. We are expected to be depressed about our changing looks and to be filled with regret of having our best years behind us. I would never want to return to my twenties and thirties. It's so freeing to know that I have reached all those milestones. Brooke has a theory of why she, and I, and countless others are finding ourselves to be way happier in this time of our lives than we ever expected to be:

“You start happy, you end happy, and somewhere in the middle things take a big dip. But that dip, for women, comes at age forty. From there, things start looking up! This era of forty-plus really is when things get easier, or maybe it’s just that we feel better equipped, but either way, happiness is on the upswing. For men, research shows, the bottom of the U comes at age fifty. Could it be that the narrative we’ve been fed of the irrelevant fifty-year-old woman is really just a product of men feeling their worst at this time? Might it be that they just assumed we’re bummed out, too, but never took the time to ask?”

 

I found this pic on Google which is of the exact same poster from "The Blue Lagoon" that I had on my bedroom wall!

Brooke has helped create her own hair products designed specifically for the particular needs of older women. These are a couple of her "Commence" products from inside my shower. They smell and work amazing! The pic below is the front and back of the postcard I get along with my Commence hair products packages

Brooke has saved the day for me many times throughout my life, and she's made me realize that women in midlife need each other now more than ever. Brooke even created an online community, originally called "Beginning is Now" and now renamed "Commence," which is a place where we women can share our stories and discuss our thoughts about subjects that only women in their forties, fifties, and sixties can truly understand because we are living this shared experience at the same time. I'm so grateful to Brooke for being so honest about her own personal experiences, opening the door for more of us to share things we may not have the courage to share about ourselves otherwise. I'm going to continue being a part of Brooke's community, and sometimes I wonder if the things we discuss in our women-in-midlife community are some of the things that were in that letter I dreamed about so many years ago?

 

Photo from Pinterest

 

Was He Lucky Or Are We?

 

I was entertaining friends for lunch when late in the visit, we decided to turn on the TV. The footage of Trump being shot was shown over and over again. Once all the details came in, we said, 'this must be the luckiest person to have ever walked this earth.' Then, a week later, President Biden stepped down from the presidential race, and Kamala Harris was the new Democratic candidate-to-be. Suddenly, ALL these joyful people appeared! Within the first 24 hours of President Biden's announcement, $81 million dollars was raised for Harris' campaign - the largest amount of fundraising money ever raised in a 24 hour period. 40,000 new voters registered to vote within the first 48 hours of the emergence of Harris' campaign. Tons of T-shirts of Kamala Harris were printed, and excitement was spread all over social media. Just observing the excessively large numbers of attendees at the Harris-Walz rallies over the past week show how many people have come together. No matter what the outcome of the presidential race, there will remain many, many people bonded together through the Harris-Walz campaign.

Maybe the presidential race was not meant to be determined by one of the candidates being assassinated? Maybe the presidential race was to be determined by a collective need for joy, love, positivity, and democracy? A unity between human beings who were hiding in the shadows of doom and gloom until Kamala Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee. Maybe WE are actually the luckiest people in the world because we are meant to stand together in large numbers AGAINST Project 2025 and, in time, to join together as one country as we always were in the past, not two separate countries. I believe all of these happenings were meant to materialize the notion that there truly IS strength in numbers!

"A Little Magic, A Little Kindness" - How I Found My People Through Laura Nyro

Laura Nyro 

Everyone is talking about how amazing Joni Mitchell is because she performed at this year's Grammys at the age of eighty. I agree, but whenever I think of Joni Mitchell, I'm reminded of Laura Nyro, and this makes me sad. In the late 1960's, both Laura and Joni were successful singer/songwriters, and they were major influences on each other. But by the 1970's, Joni's fame and presence in people's minds completely eclipsed Laura's. I appreciate Joni Mitchell's talents, but it is Laura Nyro's music that speaks to me. Joni is more popular, but there are a select few of us who prefer the more primal, soulful and passionate Laura Nyro. 

Laura Nyro was discovered by David Geffen while he was working as a talent agent, a few years before he became a record industry mogul. He quit the talent agency to devote all his time to managing Laura's career. But after releasing a few albums, it was clear that Laura shunned the public life that came with success.  She created music primarily to please herself. She and David Geffen parted ways and sold her song catalog for $4.5 million dollars, each receiving half. The sale allowed David Geffen to start his own record label, and Laura was now free to do anything she wanted. What she wanted to do was "nest," so she bought a house in Connecticut and spent most of her time there raising her new baby son. 

Laura Nyro and David Geffen (from Pinterest)

I first heard of Laura Nyro in an unusual, and somewhat embarrassing, way. I was seventeen and seeing a guy in my neighborhood who I suspected was also seeing another woman in our neighborhood. The first picture I ever saw of Laura Nyro reminded me of this woman. I was obsessed with looking at Laura's picture in my book. I was jealous, but also oddly curious, and eventually I figured, "Since I'm always looking at her picture, why don't I just listen to her music?!"  

My photocopy of the Harmony Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock article where I first saw Laura Nyro's picture 

I was never fortunate enough to meet Laura Nyro, but I attended her very rare, live concert at the Berklee Performance Center in Boston, Massachusetts in 1989. Shortly after that, I got married, moved to Canada, and met my new aunt, Rose, who turned out to be a Laura Nyro fan. The first thing she said to me was, "Has anyone ever told you that you look exactly like Laura Nyro?" She said she was first introduced to Laura Nyro's music in elementary school. Her teacher, a priest, played Laura's "Eli and the Thirteeth Confession" album in class, pointing out some of the album's spiritual lyrics, such as: "I was walking on God's good side," and "Lucky's taking over and his clover shows. Devil can't get out of hand cause Lucky's taking over and what Lucky says goes." I hadn't considered "Eli" to be a spiritual album, as many of the songs are filled with anger and contain themes of feminism, poverty, and deep, passionate love. "Eli" is a fast-paced, energetic album, with musically complicated rhythms and powerful lyrics. Plus, this is the same album that has the song "The Confession" with the lyrics, "Oh I hate my winsome lover, tell him I've had others at my breast."  I'm doubtful Aunt Rose's teacher played that song in class!

Aunt Rose on the left, and me on the right - first meeting where she said I looked like Laura Nyro

As a newlywed living in Canada, I was nesting too. I listened to a lot of Laura Nyro's music, and since so many of her early songs were about living in New York City, I gained solace in the fact that even though I was homesick, I knew that Laura had also left New York City when she moved to Connecticut and had probably been a bit homesick too.  By this time, I mostly enjoyed the two albums she recorded in Connecticut, "Nesting" and "Smile." She sang about new things I was doing while nesting, like cooking. I often listened to her song, "Midnight Blue," and sang along to the lyrics: "There's smoke in the kitchen, shrimps curled." I watched a lot of Canadian TV, and one day I saw an acapella band called "The Nylons" performing Laura's song "Eli's Coming." Very soon afterward, while working at HMV Music Store in Toronto, Canada, I spotted one of The Nylons' singers, Micah Barnes, shopping for CDs.  I approached him and we chatted for a bit, mostly about Laura's "Nested" and "Smile" albums, agreeing how wonderful yet underrated they are. Meeting another Laura Nyro fan made me feel less alone and more at home in Canada. I imagined it was more special than meeting a Rolling Stones fan or a Joni Mitchell fan because a lot of people are fans of them, but when it comes to Laura Nyro, there are so few of us. I realized I was finding my people.

Laura Nyro (from Google)

In the mid-1990's, I moved back to New York City and worked in Manhattan as a legal secretary. My first boss, Murray, was an attorney who told me he used to have long hair and had attended the famous Woodstock festival in 1969. I was so impressed!  During the three years I worked for him, we had many conversations about music. When I told him how much I loved Laura Nyro, a memory was sparked in him. "I met her once!" he said. He told me that one night, he was hanging out with a friend who was friends with Laura Nyro before she was famous. The friend needed to briefly stop by her apartment in the Bronx, but when she greeted them at the door, she asked them to come inside. She wanted their feedback on a new song she wrote, so she sat at her piano and played it for them. He then asked me if he could borrow a couple of my Laura Nyro CDs. One afternoon, after typing my dictations of his letters by listening to his voice on the tapes he had recorded at home, I told him I heard Laura's music playing in the background. "No you didn't!" he answered shyly, but obviously I did!

Murray often said he and I weren't just boss and secretary, we were also friends. I let him read my "Iggy Gorgess" novel's manuscript over a decade before it was published in book form.  In fact, I changed the very last line of my novel because of his criticism, and I think it is better after taking his advice. Then, in 1998, I was devastated when Murray was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I never thought he would get cancer because he was already forty-six years old, and my experience of losing my dad at age fifteen convinced me that Murray was safe because he had already passed forty-one, the age my dad died of cancer. Murray was admitted to the hospital, and my firm sent me to the record store to buy a bunch of CDs he could listen to in his hospital room because I was the only one who knew exactly what music he liked. I visited him in the hospital and brought the huge pile of CDs I'd bought.  He passed away four years later. 

I stopped listening to Laura's music for several years after that. 

I was reunited with Laura's music through YouTube after I found out she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012. Bette Midler gave her a beautiful tribute, saying she was "the very essence of New York City: passionate, romantic, ethereal, eternal."  Her only child, Gil Bianchini, attended the ceremony and accepted her award. Through Laura's music, I learned to never hesitate to embrace the art I love even if it is different from what most people enjoy. Our passions draw us toward the people we are meant to meet, and I've found it's sweeter if that club has only a a handful of members. There are few things in life more beautiful than being bonded together by something rare and eternally special. 

I'm Bewitched

My need for escape is a constant in my life. I think it is for most artistic people. We're more dreamers than doers, and after we've done all the things we absolutely need to do, we spend the rest of our free time indulging in fantasy. In many people's minds, fantasizing sounds like a lazy luxury unless one has an abnormal amount of time to spare. During the pandemic, my escape was watching every single episode of the old black and white TV series, "Perry Mason." It consumed so much of my life that I made Perry the focus of my essay, "How I Survived 2020." After the pandemic, my essay was published and nominated for the Pushcart Prize so, ultimately, I believe my escape wasn't time wasted!

Now three years later, my escape is the classic TV series "Bewitched." It's a TV show starring Elizabeth Montgomery that aired in the late 1960's to early 1970's about an immortal witch named Samantha who marries a mortal human named Darrin. I regularly watched the reruns as a child, but as an adult, the only episode I could remember was one where Endora, Samantha's mom, puts a spell on Darrin that makes his ears grow to an enormous size every time he tells a lie. Recently, one morning, I was changing the channels on my TV and saw two children with weird-painted eyebrows, dressed in peasant clothes, and made to look like "Hansel and Gretel" from the children's story.  Samantha and Darrin's young daughter, Tabitha, has used her witch powers to trade places with Hansel and Gretel by taking them out of the storybook and into her bedroom, then leaving them there to deal with her puzzled parents while she jumps into the book herself. The premise is so funny, and the Hansel and Gretel kids look so goofy, that I started watching Bewitched every morning to have a laugh before I began my workday.

To feed my TV obsessions, I like to shop for things. During my Perry Mason stage, I found a mug for my desk that says, "Life Happens, Perry Helps." For my Bewitched obsession, I bought a cubic zirconia replica of the Pave Heart diamond necklace Samantha wears on the show so that I can wear it as I watch. 

I know it sounds crazy, but I find nothing wrong with having an escape that makes you feel good. Bewitched is a series that promotes positivity. Elizabeth Montgomery had a lot of influence on the show and in how the female characters were represented. Even older women were cast in major roles. Samantha's mother, Endora, played by Agnes Moorehead, appears in all eight seasons as a strong and self-assured woman in her mid sixties and early seventies.  Another older woman, Samantha's Aunt Clara played by actress Marion Lorne, was in her eighties at the time, and her character has boyfriends and she is shown very actively dating men. 

Samantha and her mom, Endora, hanging out in the garden

Another thing I love about Bewitched is that animals are portrayed as sentient beings. On Season 1, Episode 2,  “Ling Ling,” a cat who Samantha puts a spell on to temporarily turn her into a woman, decides she doesn't want to go back to being a cat because, in her words, “I like to be pampered and made a fuss over."  She tells Samantha that if she too had spent her life scrounging around alleys searching for scraps, she'd understand why she doesn't want to go back to being a cat.  She says, "from now on, it will be martinis and sardines all the way.”  On Season 2, Episode 25, "The Horse's Mouth," Samantha sees a horse wandering in the park and wants to know why, so she puts a spell on the horse so that she can talk with him or her.  The horse transforms into a tough, brunette-haired woman who tells Samantha that she just jumped off of a truck to flee her racetrack life because she was being neglected by her trainer and never wins any races.  I love these episodes because they embrace the belief that animals deserve respect and have emotions.

Elizabeth Montgomery was thirty-nine years old during the last season of Bewitched, and over its eight seasons, Samantha's character evolves from a just-married young woman wearing plain, housewife dresses in Season 1 to a freedom-loving woman decked out in short miniskirts and white knee-high socks. Part of this change was obviously influenced by the emerging women's movement and hippie revolution, but I like to think her change in identity has more to do with the fact that when we women approach age forty, we are liberated from a lot of the restrictions we had when we were younger.  We are wiser, confident, carefree, and not bothered and dragged down by the things that used to concern us needlessly. 

Samantha, played by actress Elizabeth Montgomery

Besides entertainment, there is a more important reason why we should have happy obsessions. A friend of mine once told me that a common thread in people who are depressed is that they have lost their ability to fantasize. They can't free themselves from their troubling thoughts and are unable to immerse themselves in another world. Considering this, I say we shouldn't feel guilty about sometimes indulging in fantasies and finding ourselves entranced by other realities.  The ability to escape from our ordinary lives from time to time may even be essential. 

Me and Samantha wearing the Pave Heart 

Barbie - She's Not Who You Think She Is

 

Our Barbie Dreamplane

Barbie Mania has arrived!  The new Barbie movie stars Margot Robbie as a Barbie doll who comes to life.  Although many have dismissed this movie as just another scheme for a large corporation to make money, I have a different take on it. 

The Barbie Doll was invented by a woman named Ruth Handler in 1959.  She named the doll after her young daughter, Barbara.  The very first Barbie doll was not only available as a blonde, she could also by purchased as a brunette, and her clothes were designed by a woman named Charlotte Johnson.  

When I was a kid, I wasn't a huge Barbie doll fan.  I preferred the soft feel of my cuddly, stuffed animals.   But when I was twelve, I suddenly wanted Barbie dolls at a time when most girls are about to give them up.  Maybe I was aware of my teen years approaching and was trying to cling onto the last vestiges of childhood?  

The Barbies I had were the typical ones everybody is familiar with - blonde hair, long legs, and the world's tiniest waist.  These attributes unfortunately reduced Barbie to not much more than an impossibly-proportioned fashion model.  But as an adult shopping for dolls with my daughter, I discovered the "I Can Be" Barbie dolls where Barbie now had a serious profession, such as being a doctor, engineer, or veterinarian.  Plus, while doing research for this blog entry, I was surprised to learn that these "I Can Be" Barbie dolls were not even the first Barbies to have admirable careers. As far back as 1965, one Barbie doll was working as an astronaut!  Apparently, Barbie was meant to be more than just a sex symbol who dated Ken.

Below is my Curvy Barbie Doll.  I put shorts on her.

In March 2018, just in time for International Women's Day, Mattel released their "Role Model" Barbie dolls.  There was as Amelia Earhart Barbie patterned after the famous aviator and a Patti Jenkins Barbie made in honor of the director of the Wonder Woman movies.  During the Covid pandemic of 2020, essential worker Barbies were created to pay homage to the nurses, doctors, and paramedics working on the hospitals' front lines.  As part of their "Thank You Heroes" program, Mattel donated $5 from each doll sold to a foundation set up to help the children of these first responders. 

A few weeks ago, my teenage daughter and I had dinner at the Malibu Barbie Cafe in downtown Manhattan.  As we entered, I saw women and girls of all ages.  Nearly all of us wore something pink or with the Barbie logo on it.  A few different groups of women in their twenties wore hot pink dresses and floor length gowns made of silk or satin.  Later, while eating dinner, I spotted a small group of moms and daughters entering the dining area, and one of the little girls wore a crown that said "Birthday Princess."  It warmed my heart to see so many women and girls decked out in pink and tiaras to commemorate the upcoming movie.  I realized that Barbie is something that unites us not only as we are now but also as the girls we once were.  The celebration of Barbie is something particularly for us.  

Today, Barbie dolls represent women of all races and body types.  My favorite Barbie doll is my Curvy Barbie.  She has realistic body proportions, and I say it's about time. The only Barbie doll missing now is "Mature Woman Barbie."  But she won't be Barbie's grandmother.  Instead, she will be a realistic Barbie who represents women in their forties and beyond.  Her face will have laugh lines and her hair a few gray streaks.  But best of all, she'll be a wiser, bolder, Barbie who will never be afraid to speak her mind no matter how unconventional her opinion may be! 

Me at the Malibu Barbie Cafe - South Street Seaport, NYC - July 2023

This Is Not A Post About Chicago

It all started with a beautiful man.  But don't most things start that way?  An attractive person can change your world.  I grew up on 1980's movies where it's usually a male character who falls in love at first sight with a female character and then spends the rest of the movie pursuing her and having thoughts about nothing but her.  Movies like "Valley Girl" when Randy the punk spotted beautiful valley girl, Julie, on the beach and then crashed the preppie party to meet her. Well, I'm not about to crash any parties, but after seeing Robert Lamm of Chicago on their "Live at Tanglewood" concert video from 1970,  I have been consumed by all things Chicago. 

THE video! "Beginnings" from "Chicago - Live at Tanglewood"

A few months ago in August, I flipped my TV channel remote on the Chicago episode of AXS Channel's "Rock Legends" series. I remembered that my former stepfather gave me his "Chicago IX -  Greatest Hits" album on vinyl when I was a teenager.   This was in the 1980's, and until I'd heard this album, I had no idea that Chicago had a full brass section and a singer with a deep voice.  I was only familiar with their videos showing Peter Cetera as their lead singer, a blonde-haired tenor who sang ballads. It was a pleasant surprise to discover this earlier version of Chicago, and I listened to my "Chicago IX" album regularly.  I was told the singer with the deep voice on my album was Terry Kath who died in the 1970's in a gun accident.  My favorite songs on the album were "Make Me Smile," "Call on Me," "Beginnings," and "Feeling Stronger Everyday." 

My new Chicago bracelet set that I asked an Etsy artist to make for me featuring my favorite Chicago song 

After the AXS episode refreshed my memory of how much I loved those songs, I decided to look on YouTube for Chicago videos. I searched for "Beginnings" and stumbled upon the Tanglewood concert.  At first, I assumed the long-haired man getting ready to sing at the microphone was the deceased Terry Kath.  Basically, I just assumed this because I knew he wasn't Peter Cetera.   But right away, I heard him say, "Terry," while looking to his side and gesturing with his hand, so I said to myself, "Oh. This isn't Terry Kath. BUT THEN WHO IS THIS HANDSOME GUY??!!"  I Googled and found out it was Robert Lamm and that he is still alive and STILL good-looking at age seventy-eight. 

Soon I was watching every single Chicago video and documentary I could find.  Not just to see 1970's Robert Lamm but because Chicago's musicianship speaks to me. Even though I consider myself primarily a novelist, at the core of my heart, I am a musician.  When I was five years old, I begged my parents to let me take piano lessons.  They put me off until I was six because they didn't want to waste money on a piano only to have me change my mind.  I didn't change my mind, and I took lessons until I was sixteen. Then, when I was eighteen, I enrolled at Boston's Berklee College of Music.  Watching live Chicago videos during the Terry Kath years of 1970 through 1977 is like being at Berklee again.  Every night I enjoy sitting with a half glass of Chardonnay or a half bottle of Guinness beer with my headphones on and plugged into YouTube.  I am behind in my podcasts and in editing the 2nd draft of my newest novel because I keep watching and listening to Chicago in the 1970's, and it feels so good.

Pin from my Pinterest Board dedicated solely to Chicago's Robert Lamm

One day last month, I was really angry.  Just from the usual, everyday life's frustrations. So at night, I put the entire "Live at Tanglewood" concert into my headphones yet again. Terry Kath's amazing and busy guitar playing and Danny Seraphine's wild, forceful, drumming helped get everything out of me.  It was cathartic and exactly what I needed.  I was able to sleep peacefully that night.

So why do I keep on watching and listening to Chicago? I believe it is because obsessions allow us to distract our minds from the everyday things that are troubling us. Things like the fact that I have only $10 left in my checking account.  Or when I think about how if I carry my mug of tea down the stairs, I may trip and fall and die like Ivana Trump did while carrying her mug of coffee.  Or if something like that doesn't happen to me, and I live another forty years, is the planet going to be half submerged under water by then?  These days, when I have anxious thoughts, I immediately switch them, and instead, I plug into Chicago.

I know that eventually my fascination with Chicago will dim, but I don't want it to yet because I'm having too much fun. I'm excited I'll get to see Chicago play live when they tour the East Coast in April 2023.  But what would be even better is if one night, Robert Lamm could magically step out of that "Chicago - Live at Tanglewood" YouTube video from out of my laptop the same way Jeff Daniels stepped off the movie theater screen in Woody Allen's "The Purple Rose of Cairo!"  If that happened, I could remain in a dream fantasy world forever. Surely, this would be the perfect cure for my anxiety.  If only!

My ticket confirmation to see Chicago.  Robert Lamm is in the middle in white pants.

The Poem I Wrote As A Love Letter To My Vocal Cords

 

My Dad singing with his cover band "Beach Road" in the 1970's

In April 2016, I wrote a blog entry entitled, "Finally - Dad. (Part 1)."  I said that it was very difficult to write about my dad who died when I was fifteen but that eventually I would write more entries about him.  So here we are, six years later, with Part 2. In Part 1, I wrote about my dad's love of Walt Whitman's poetry and said that he wrote his own version of Whitman's collection of poems, "Leaves of Grass,"  by changing the words and setting the poems to music. Here in Part 2, I would like to share a poem that I wrote years ago, "Lifedream," and the story behind it. 

Even though my dad was a talented songwriter, his true love was singing.  His favorite singer was Teddy Pendergrass whose albums he often played at family gatherings, exclaiming, "Listen how Teddy sings this note! Nobody can sing like Teddy!" This prompted teasing from my aunt who told him, "You talk about him like he's your friend! 'Hey Teddy, let's go outside and play ball!'" My dad loved Pendergrass, but he judged other singers very harshly, and I could never understand why.  They all sounded good to me, and I figured that since they were on TV, they had to be good!  I never had the courage to actually sing in front of my dad.  Instead, I blared albums on my record player and sang along with my favorite singers at the time, Donna Summer and Diana Ross, behind the closed door of my bedroom.  I'll never forget the thrill I had on a car ride with my mom on the way to applepicking when she mentioned that my dad told her he had heard me singing in my room, and if I studied, I had the potential of becoming a really good singer.  My dad didn't throw singing compliments around lightly, so the joy I felt at that moment was monumental.  I immediately enrolled in singing lessons and continued them even after he died.  I knew singing was the closest I could be to him, and it was a way to make him proud of me. When I turned eighteen, I moved to Boston to study singing and songwriting at Berklee College of Music. I needed to know what truly made a singer good or bad.  Otherwise, I feared I'd become one of those singers that my dad would have hated!

College life and living in the dorms were not kind to my voice.  The stuffiness of the dorm rooms exacerbated my allergies, and the beer drinking and late nights roaming the halls screaming and being silly made my voice hoarse.  At one point, I was limited to a three-note range.  My voice teacher recommended an ear, nose and throat specialist to examine my vocal cords.  The diagnosis wasn't good. I had the beginnings of vocal nodules, simply called "nodes," which are benign growths on the vocal cords that develop when people abuse their voices.  The struggle to heal my voice was difficult and depressing. I stopped drinking beer and staying up late.  I stopped singing and screaming in the hallways.   But I kept on writing.  The following poem, "Lifedream," is a metaphorical poem I wrote to my vocal cords, expressing my sadness and disappointment and my fear that my voice would never come back:

"Lifedream"

I will shelter you like a thin sheet of ice./Put you in a tiny box./Preserve you till I'm ready.  

No, I'd never give you up./Never give up skating.

But you and I don't think alike./Never meant to hurt you./And up until the end of time,/I'll never give up skating. 

But maybe I can't save the ice./My body crushed and crumbling through./If I can't live my life on ice,/I'll never love you true.

I will shelter you and hold you tight./Together we will move.

If I fall through this sheet of ice,/My life's dream I will lose.

Slowly, my vocal range came back.  In fact, my voice teacher told me she had never seen anyone overcome vocal damage to the extent that I was able to with no outside medical treatment. But I still felt I would never be able to sing as well as my dad would have wanted me to.  Anytime I had a late night or was run down, my sensitivity to hoarseness acted up.  My voice teacher also told me that my speaking voice was harsh and very different from my singing voice.  She said you must speak the same way that you sing but that trying to speak in a way that wasn't natural to me might change my personality. I didn't want to do that, and eventually, I just decided that if I couldn't sing as well as my dad, there was no use in singing at all.  It all turned out okay though because I'm happy now writing novels.  Plus, it's been beautiful to rediscover my poem and to remember those days when singing was so meaningful to me.

Written, Created, Directed, Produced, and Acted by Women

Marie Reuther as Julie in "Kamikaze"

These days, when I need to relax and take time out from writing my novel, I like to stream TV series.  I'm enjoying this but am hoping my novel won't take ten years to finish like "Catcher in the Rye" did for J.D. Salinger.  Then again, if my novel could turn out even one tenth as good as "Catcher in the Rye,"  I'll take it!  As much as I love Holden Caulfield, lately I find myself drawn more towards stories that have female lead characters and scripts written by women.  I find that when women create female characters and write situations and dialogue for them, they portray women a lot closer to how we really are.  I've noticed that female writers are more comfortable with writing their female leads as antiheroes.  This is refreshing, as opposed to being inundated with idealized versions of women or women depicted as martyrs or victims.  It is more like real life.  The below three series are a few of my most recent favorites.  They may not sit well with everyone, but I believe they are truthful to the female experience and portray women as imperfect human beings with life lessons to learn.  

Kamikaze on HBO Max  Favorite Line: "Do what you want."  

At first, I was hesitant to watch "Kamikaze" because of the depressing premise:  An eighteen-year-old girl named Julie gets a text from her dad telling her that his plane is crashing and advising her to "do what you want."  Also on that airplane is her mother and twenty-two-year-old brother, her only sibling.  After the crash, she is so distraught she doesn't get out of bed for three days.  When she does get out of bed, she has one goal which is to die too so she can be with them.  She decides to fly on a different commercial flight every day until one of the flights crashes.  But after a close call, the relieved man sitting next to her tells her that based on statistics, a person would have to fly every single day for twenty-nine years to die in a plane crash.  So she abandons that plan and decides to focus on having fun instead. She continues to live her life recklessly and still has a death wish because she hasn't changed her mind about wanting to die and rejoin her family.  She travels to different countries, setting her eyes on particular guys she wants to have sex with.  She breaks some hearts but who can judge her when she has just endured the unfathomable grief of losing her entire family?  I lost my father as a teenager so I imagine I felt one third of the type of pain she feels, and I also remember some months of not fearing death and of living recklessly.  Spoiler Alert:  At the end of the series, Julie discovers she is pregnant.  She doesn't know which guy out of a possible four is the father, but she ends her death wish, and I believe this is because when her baby is born, she will regain a part of her precious family back.  Julie is portrayed as a daring young woman who decides to take charge of her life.  Even though her choices are destructive, she still has the courage to follow her own path.  The women who created and wrote for this series were not afraid to portray Julie as a female antihero.  

Gypsy on Netflix  Favorite Line: "Nothing's certain, except for whatever's happening right here.  In this moment."

Jean Holloway is a psychotherapist who lives a cushy life with her husband and nine-year-old daughter in the suburbs.  Like Julie in "Kamikaze," she is also living recklessly, but it is not due to having suffered a life-changing loss. Instead, it is because she is depressed at the fact that her lifestyle is not true to her authentic self.  As a young woman, Jean shunned committment but reluctantly settled down because she feared living life alone.  Her mother put this fear into her head.  As a therapist, Jean sets out to help her patients but continually veers off the track as she becomes fascinated by and envious of the people who her patients describe as being toxic in their lives.  Her patients seek therapy to break obsessions with these people, but in turn, Jean becomes obsessed by her patients' descriptions of them because she believes these toxic people are living the types of exciting lives that she wants to live.  She is bored and needs an escape.  She goes on a quest to befriend these people by finding them and introducing herself as Diane Hart, a journalist. Jean is leading a secret, dual life, using an identity she feels is closer to the free spirited woman she used to be.  

Naomi Watts as Jean in "Gypsy"

Blythe Danner as Nancy (Jean's mom) in "Gypsy"

Jean forms new relationships and friendships as Diane Hart, and learns her new friends' secrets by asking her patients questions about them during their therapy sessions with her.  One patient get frustrated, telling Jean he doesn't want to delve deeper into understanding his toxic ex-girlfriend.  Instead, he is trying to get over her.  Jean manipulates her patients and guides them to make changes in their lives that suit her new connections with the people she has met as Diane Hart.  But not everything Jean does is malicious.  She also sets out to do good.  For one of her patients who is a mom struggling in her relationship with her grown daughter, she rewrites a letter that was given to her from the patient's daughter. Jean thinks the letter is too cold so she changes it, mimicking the daughter's handwriting, writing a warmer letter.  When the mom reads the new letter rewritten by Jean, she is comforted and leaves the therapy session happy. Jean also consistently shows love and respect for her own daughter who is misunderstood at school.   My favorite part of this series is Jean's relationship with her own mother, played brilliantly by Gwyneth Paltrow's mom, Blythe Danner.  Jean and her mom have a very strained relationship.  Her mom knows that Jean is manipulative and is destroying other people's lives.  But she is also the only person who knows her secrets and the only one who understands her.  Although we have trouble liking Jean by the end of the series, seeing her mother's unconditional love for her is heartwarming.  "Gypsy" portrays a real and flawed woman who doesn't murder anyone but has a long way to go in working on herself.  I think this is true to life.  Women are usually portrayed on TV and in movies as having had to endure some type of trauma to make them act maliciously, yet Jean has a loving family behind her and has had no trauma. She is just a human who hurts. She's not a victim, and she's not a martyr.  She's a realistic and damaged woman.

Fleabag on Amazon Prime   Favorite Line: "You already know what you're going to do." 

"Fleabag" is not only created and written by a woman, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, but Waller-Bridge also stars in it. "Fleabag" is a comedy, but also sad, as the female lead (only referred to as "Fleabag") is a young woman who feels responsible for the death of her best friend, Boo, who walked into moving traffic to try to get injured so she could get the attention of her philadering boyfriend, but she dies accidentally instead.  Fleabag feels responsible because she turns out to be the one who the boyfriend was unfaithful with, yet Boo didn't know it was Fleabag who slept with him. Fleabag misses Boo terribly, as she was the only person she felt close to because Fleabag is unable to form any other lasting relationships, as she just compulsively sleeps with men as an addiction.  Even though she's sad and lonely and often clashes with her self-absorbed sister, callous stepmother, and emotionally-absent father, Fleabag finds something funny in every situation.  Her sense of humor is her saving grace.  Fleabag also has an eye-opening scene with actress, Kristin Scott Thomas, who co-stars in one episode as a career woman who wants to impart some wisdom about the female experience, and she does so to Fleabag when they go out for a drink together.  She says that women are born in pain.  They have menstrual periods, endure childbirth and sore boobs, and because of this, women have the pain within themselves.  But men, on the other hand, have to create their own pain, and they seek it by finding wars to fight and crises to worry about.  Men have to create their own guilt whereas women are excellent at carrying their guilt all by themselves without ever having to create it or to go out and seek it.  

When Fleabag finally finds love, the man she falls for is a priest.  This is something we can all relate to, as my great-grandfather was a priest who left the priesthood to marry my great-grandmother.  Of course, I'm just kidding when I say that this is relatable to all people (although it is true what I said about my great-grandparents, so it IS relatable to me), but I do believe every woman can find something to relate to when watching TV series where women do the writing because when we women create female characters and stories about women, we are writing for us.

Andrew Scott as The Priest and Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Fleabag in "Fleabag"

Madonna Is Here To Disturb The Peace

 

Me as a teen, dressed up as Madonna, when I auditioned for a Pepsi commercial

Recent picture of Madonna I have framed on my desk

"Artists are here to disturb the peace." This James Baldwin quote is the theme behind Madonna's new concert/art film, "Madame X."   Many of the late novelist's quotes are visible behind the musicians and dancers as they perform in "Madame X," and Madonna adds one of her own when she says, "We aren't here to be popular, we're here to be free." 

The first time I heard Madonna's music, I was a teenager growing up in Staten Island, New York, and the song "Physical Attraction" came on my bedroom radio.  I thought "Madonna" was an all-female soul group, but then I saw her on Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" show and was surprised she was one person!  When Clark asked her what she aspired to, she answered, "I want to rule the world." I thought she sounded arrogant, but it turns out she was right.  Shortly after that, I watched her perform "Like a Virgin" live on the MTV Video Music Awards, and her fame just skyrocked.  Suddenly, girls and teenagers wanted to be Madonna and started dressing up like her. I did this too one time when I auditioned for a Pepsi commercial, hence the top photo in this blog.  I didn't get the commercial, but I did make it past the first round, and it was fun to spend the day dressed as Madonna!

I still have my clipping of Madonna in "Time" magazine - May 27, 1985

A couple of years later, I was off to college.  When I met my college bestie, Lauren, we bonded over the surprising discovery that we both chose to go to Berklee College of Music because "'Til Tuesday" singer/songwriter Aimee Mann went there.  By that point, I thought it wasn't cool to like Madonna anymore.  Instead, Aimee Mann was the type of cool punk-pop singer I wanted to be.  Even so, one night, I admitted to Lauren that I "sort of still liked Madonna."  Lauren said there was nothing wrong with that and told me she liked Madonna too!  I felt at that moment, I was never going to grow out of liking Madonna.  In my mind, she was now officially here to stay.

While still at Berklee, I got a job at Tower Records.  One day, I was stocking one of my sections in the back of the Rock/Pop floor when Madonna's "Vogue" video came on a TV that was above my head. It was the first time I had ever seen it, and I was mesmerized at what a celebration of music and art it was! Sometimes, I still get teary-eyed when I hear "Vogue" because it reminds me of that moment I first saw the video, crouching in the middle of the Tower Records floor.  It takes me back to that time period in my life, living on my own for the first time and working to support myself in my own apartment.  Madonna's music has been with me at many stages of my life, and when an artist has been around for so long, each song jogs a different memory.  

I also saved my article of Madonna in NYC's "Daily News Magazine" - June 2, 1985

Earlier this month, in anticipation of "Madame X," I rewatched Madonna's first concert movie, "Truth or Dare," from 1991. When I later watched "Madame X," I noticed a vast difference between today's Madonna and the Madonna of thirty years ago.  The Madonna of "Madame X" is a wiser Madonna.  It is reflected in her music.  "Truth or Dare" is a concert film filled with pop music, and the lyrics are focused on herself. On the "Madame X" album, her lyrics are socially conscious, and the songs incorporate several different styles of music from different parts of the world. Her song "Batuka" was written in the style of Batuque music which is from Cape Verde and is considered one of its oldest music forms.  Batuque music was created by women and was always played by women.  My favorite part of the "Madame X" film is when she performs her song "Batuka" with an all-female band of drummers ranging in ages from teenagers to older women.  Batuque music was banned by the church because drumming was considered "rebel" music, yet somehow it survived and is still played by women today.  As Madonna says in "Madame X," "Women are powerful." 

There is a joke in the "Truth or Dare" movie that backup singer/dancer Niki Haris makes, saying there will be a Madonna "Like a Virgin" tour in 2025.  Now, we are only four years away from 2025, and Madonna is still touring in her early sixties!  Performers like Madonna and The Rolling Stones are sometimes criticized for still rocking out in their later years.  Even more troubling to some is the fact that Madonna is dating a man thirty-six years younger than she is.  This is another thing she has in common with The Rolling Stones, as singer Mick Jagger has been dating much younger women for many years. Maybe Madonna and Mick Jagger date such young people because they need a partner who matches their amazing energy? 

Madonna proves to us every day that older women are meant to be celebrated instead of being put out to pasture.  I love how the "Madame X" movie begins with a montage of Madonna's sexual moments of controversy throughout her entire career, and at the end of the montage, Madonna says that what is actually the most controversial thing about her is that she stuck around.  

Madonna and her boyfriend, Ahlamalik Williams, celebrating her 62nd birthday in Jamaica (usmagazine.com)