Mood: Monday

I previously posted a photo of Ralph Fasanella’s painting titled May Day, painted in 1974 in oil on canvas.

Reading Fasanella’s Wikipedia entry provides an interesting look at how an artist develops, is influenced, and how his reputation, recognition, and popularity can be swayed by shifts in politics.

Among other things, I was struck by this: In a press release regarding his death, John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO, declared Fasanella to be “a true artist of the people in the tradition of Paul Robeson and Woody Guthrie.”

I discovered so much about Paul Robeson doing research for the Neverending Saga, and Woodie Guthrie has always been an important cultural reference for me.

About this painting in particular: Fasanella’s art was highly improvisational. He never planned out works, and rarely revised them. He said of his 1948 painting May Day, it “just came out of my belly. I never planned it. I don’t know how I did it.”

I suspect many writers can understand this, as well as musicians.

Button Sunday

Pay no attention to that silly button. With few exceptions, I like eating vegetables.

April 23 is National Asparagus Day. Asparagus is full of vitamins and minerals, rich in antioxidants, and high in protein and fiber. What’s not to love?


I just happen to have fresh asparagus. Some of this will be part of Sunday night’s dinner. =)


P.S. I know I’ve shared this collection on here before, but Portrait: The Music of Dan Fogelberg is the four-disk collection I’ve been listening to while I write. VERY little writing because it hurts my eyes to look at the computer too much. I’ve found that by not straining too much, I can watch TV. So over the past two or three weeks, Tom and I finally caught up to the paused Season 5 of “Yellowstone” (it resumes in the summer) and watched the second season of “Bridgerton.” I’m glad we waited on “Bridgerton” so that I wouldn’t still be thinking of intrigues and characters from the first season. Ultimately, this one was satisfying, as evidenced by the way we watched the last four shows at two a night because I NEEDED TO KNOW how things would be resolved!

Tiny Tuesday!

Below are the works that have been my playlist “from the box” for what I’ve been listening to when I can write and revise. Hopefully, I’ll be back at that full time after eye surgery in early summer, but I’m always grateful for the time I get to spend with my fiction and its characters.


First up, The Civil Wars and their CD Barton Hollow. This is the 2011 release from duo Joy Williams and John Paul White. They’re no longer working together, and they have what is to me a fascinating story that’s far more closely aligned with the novel Daisy Jones & The Six than any of the other band/artist parallels people try to draw. (Also, I’ve gotten info on how the streaming series strays from the book, and I think I’ll just stop with the book. Sometimes Hollywood makes questionable choices for more drama–understandable, but they sacrificed things that made me really like the book and respect the characters.) This link is to a 2013 interview with Joy Williams. There’s a mix of tension and magic as she describes The Civil Wars that makes me think of characters in the Neverending Saga, though not the ones people might expect. I think I need to order The Civil Wars’ second CD.

Second, Elvis Costello and The Imposters’ A Boy Named If. I need to give this CD more undistracted listening time. I’m always happy hearing Elvis Costello, whichever of his styles he dips into and on his many collaborations.

Third, Frank Enea’s Makeshift Days. Full disclosure: Frank Enea is related to someone I know personally, which was my impetus for getting this CD in 2003. I’m glad I did, because I enjoy the music, and his vocals are pleasingly reminiscent of Mick Jagger while remaining all his own.


Because of what I’m writing at the moment, these two CDs from the box hit at exactly the right time. The Jazz Divas features songs from Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, and Billie Holiday, among others. Legends!

Most recently is Ella Fitzerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book, a two-disk set that is perfection.

Here’s my tiny tribute to all the fantastic vocalists who brought us blues and soul. The power of those pipes!

Backtracking

I’d thought I could put some of the cardboard-sleeved CDs in the front sections of my binders, but there are just too many. Thus the Mellencamp CSd CDs went back in the box–here’s what I mean when I say “the box.”

When I was returning Richard Marx, I’d forgotten that I had a signed sleeve for the Limitless CD he released as the pandemic kicked off in 2020.

Since I was in the Ms, I pulled out my McCartney CSd CDs and listened to them while I wrote.

Paul McCartney: Pure McCartney 2016; Egypt Station 2018; and McCartney III from 2020.

Now I’ve gone back to the beginning of the alphabet in the box for my writing playlists, until I catch up to the Ms, starting with these.

A couple versions of the BoDeans’ “Closer to Free” (I think I picked this up to use on a soundtrack for a work video I made in the mid-1990s); Lindsey Buckingham and Christine McVie’s 2017 self-titled CD; The Best of Lindsey Buckingham: Solo Anthology from 2018; and Lindsey Buckingham’s self-titled CD from 2021.

I didn’t watch “Party of Five,” but if you did, maybe you’ll enjoy this blast from the past.


Happiest of birthdays to another of our nieces, who’s now fifteen years older than she was in this photo and still just as beautiful. We love you, Abby!

Hey, hey, you, you…

Managed to get another book read this month despite the vision challenges, Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Daisy Jones & the Six. When I saw Amy at the beginning of March, she recommended the book to me because she’d enjoyed it (she may have also been watching the Amazon series; I can’t remember). She said things about the story reminded her of characters or situations in my old Rock and Roll Soap Operas, as I called them. This actually made me less inclined to read the book, since those old R&RSOs are the foundation for the series I’ve been working on since 2019.

Why? It’s not so much that I fear being influenced by another writer’s work. It’s because I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve created completely out of my brain, in my attempt to flesh out my characters, what is for me new and original writing. Then I’ll read some artist’s biography or memoir and find something from their real lives that’s eerily similar. Timothy, among others, cautions me not to let it bother me, as there’s “nothing new under the sun.” But the possibility that anyone would think I plundered artists’ or celebrities’ lives for my fiction has a real “ick” factor for me. I started writing these stories when I was thirteen, and I’m significantly older than that now. The characters have grown and changed, as have I. It would be impossible for even me to find anyone I’ve known or known about who’d be their prototypes.

In deciding whether I wanted to read the novel, I read about it first, and readers kept mentioning that it was loosely based on Fleetwood Mac. Then I found out Lynne had read it, mentioned that, and she said she didn’t see parallels to Fleetwood Mac (other than the obvious; they’re in the music business). She had a copy (I couldn’t find it as an e-book, and right now, it’s easier on my eyes to read print books anyway) and loaned it to me. And like her, while reading it, I didn’t get a Fleetwood Mac vibe, though the author has been very clear that she loves and is inspired by Fleetwood Mac.

I must remember that people see/read/assume/judge whatever fits their narrative. I learned, when I (either alone or with my writing partners) had books published, that people read through the lenses of their own experiences, fears, hopes, losses, joys. It’s satisfying when someone tells me what they enjoyed about something I wrote, but I’d rather not know their analysis of how it’s their story, or their relative’s story, or even what they believe is my own personal story. My characters are too real to me, as they are, to be reflections of me or anyone else. Lynne and I first created them as inspired by our musician crushes. Decades later, not a single one of those real-life inspirations has lived a life anything like the lives I’ve written.

So when I finally sat down and read Daisy Jones & the Six, I enjoyed it for the stories and characters it offered. It was wonderful to be lost enough in the story to laugh, cry, and worry. I could sometimes see where Reid’s research coincided with my own, but I totally accepted her novel as a work of fiction born of her imagination, and I liked both her narrative choices and her characters (including the unlikable ones).

FAR more disturbing than anything else is that the book’s genre is listed as historical fiction. Yikes! I think of historical fiction as being from the 1800s or earlier. Does this mean that by my writing a series stretching from the 1950s to sometime in the 1980s, I have become a relic? Am I just a few pages away from telling people to get off my lawn? Or…

Mood: Monday

Photo previously posted was of the mixed media work Fly, by Lynn Whipple in 2011.

I’m unsure why birds keep finding their way into what I’m writing, but one benefit is that they draw me to new artists. I’ve really enjoyed exploring Lynn Whipple’s website and Instagram account.

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Happy birthday to our friend Steve C and remembering that time he had an entire jet to himself. Travel large, my friend! (Photo credit: a flight attendant with a sense of humor… Ah, those were the days.)