Tag: riley

Silly Love Songs

Today, as Marika pointed out to me, is Paul McCartney’s birthday. I’ve made no secret on LJ of how much the Beatles and their music mean to me, so I won’t revisit that today, though I do wish Paul a happy sixty-sixth. I celebrate the life of this man who has so impacted our world with what he calls his “silly love songs”–not just because of the music itself, which would be enough, but the way that music has given him money and prestige he often uses to help heal our planet and its inhabitants.

It’s actually not one of Sir Paul’s silly love songs that has been on my mind. Yesterday, when reading that old entry about Tim’s art and writing bad poetry in response to MGH’s challenge, I could not get Chicago’s “Colour My World” out of my brain. I finally just had to go buy and download the damn thing so I could wallow in memories. (You, however, can listen to it for free courtesy of youtube.)

I suppose I was a bit of a Chicago fan, probably in part because of a surprise party Lynne gave me on what I think was my fifteenth birthday. I still have decorations from that party as well as vivid memories of some of the people there–Lynne, of course, and Susie and Gale and Tim G. and Riley, among others. Bonus photo from among my very favorites:


Tim G. and Riley looking like poster teens for illegal drugs and underage drinking.

At that birthday party, Alan I., who I barely knew, gave me a DOUBLE Chicago album, which was almost like going steady if I hadn’t already been Tim’s girlfriend and one of Riley’s obsessions. I remember the party as among the last of the happy times, because it wasn’t long after that when my parents moved us to a smaller town and yanked me into another school (to get me away from the poster teens for illegal drugs and underage drinking).

Since my parents had promised, SWORN, that they would never make me change schools again–thereby luring me to form real, lasting friendships for the first time in my life–I was one very angry teenager. That’s why they came up with The Bribe:

A piano and piano lessons. The first thing I did on the piano was painstakingly teach myself how to play “Colour My World.” I’m sure hearing that a thousand times a day made Bill and Dorothy sincerely regret The Bribe, but as they say, payback is hell.

I never progressed beyond the simplest music with my piano lessons. “Colour My World” would be played at my first wedding, and four years later, after my divorce, selling that piano (with my parents’ okay) brought me some much needed cash. Eventually, I would give my complete collection of Chicago albums, even the one from Alan, to Ed D., who sang at my second wedding twenty years ago today.

This has been a year of great loss for me–Riley and my mother–and I am having some rough moments. Still, I know that I will be okay because of silly love songs and all the people who color my world with hope and love. Thank you–and happy anniversary, Tom.

for my reference, previous posts about Riley

Leaving on a jet plane

In a little while, Mark G. Harris will be departing The Compound. Even though he’ll be blindfolded and driven in an indirect route to the airport, I have a sneaking suspicion he’ll be smuggling out some photos on his cell phone.

It’s been such a good visit, with a lot of conversation about writing and a lot of not doing much of anything, which is what he wanted. We’ve watched a ton of movies while eating Puterbaugh Popcorn–for some reason, all mushy romantic stuff, including Falling in Love, Heartburn, Crossing Delancey, Baby Boom, and Juno. One night we watched Across the Universe, which I thoroughly enjoyed because of the Beatles music and its look back at the tumultuous Sixties, but it made me miss Riley very much.

Last night, it was All Mark Request Night. Since he wanted to eat corn on the cob before he left, we had that with steak and this fabulous salad:


baby bella mushrooms and red bell pepper on a bed of baby spinach, with walnuts, crumbled bacon, and a choice of crumbled feta or blue cheese.

After a farewell visit from Rhonda, Lindsey, and Sugar, we watched Mark’s movie choice: Working Girl. I don’t think I’d ever seen the beginning, but I always relish Sigourney Weaver’s character (much the way I like Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada). I also appreciate all the views of the World Trade Center. Seeing it makes me happy and sad, which I guess is nostalgia. In fact, it feels like the theme of Mark’s visit has been nostalgia (even though I learned the shocking fact that MGH has never seen The Way We Were!).

Now I know what’s on the movie list for his next visit.

Hard to know what to say

When I wrote about you yesterday, I had no idea you’d slipped away.
Such a thing doesn’t even seem possible to me.
You’re always there.
You are all over my novel.
Including its dedication, which I usually write last.
But this time I wrote it first because this was in so many ways your book. OUR book.

Some things are just too hard to comprehend.

Of all the songs I could have thought about when I woke up today, this is the lyric that was on the pillow next to me.

It made me smile, and you’d know why.

I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.
Well I try my best
To be just like I am,
But everybody wants you
To be just like them.
They say sing while you slave and I just get bored.
I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.

I love you. The only reason I can write or think or breathe right now is that I know you knew that.

Normally, I’d never put something this private here. But your absence deserves to be noted. The world will never be better for losing a poet, and I will never be better for losing a friend.

But you were here and I got to know you and be loved by you and love you. Thank you.


John Riley Morris
March 8, 1955 to January 16, 2008

archives for my reference

Button Sunday

I am immersed in all things Beatles right now–especially the music–as I write the final chapters of A COVENTRY WEDDING. (Did you already know that title? Or is this the first time I’ve mentioned it? It’s my editor’s choice, and I didn’t find out until recently. It’s a good thing he told me, as it made me realize I needed to put a wedding in the book. Good to know, right?)

The above button, when I spotted it online, reminded me of when I bought this album.

When I was in college, I became aware that there was a gap in my familiarity with Beatles music. I knew all the early songs–not that I was born then, of course, my being only 35 now, and all–and I knew all The Breakup Approacheth music (which remains as wonderful to me as it was the first time I heard it–probably also before I was even born, ahem). I was writing a paper one afternoon, alone in our old house on Twelfth Avenue in Tuscaloosa, when a song came on the radio. I fell instantly in love with the song and its singer, so I called the radio station and asked about it.

“You’re kidding me, right?” the DJ asked. “You don’t know whose song that was?”

“No,” I said.

“It’s a BEATLES SONG. It’s ‘Here, There and Everywhere.’ How can you not know that?”

Grateful that my friend Riley would never, ever know that I didn’t know that, I said, “Okay, so who was singing it? Because that wasn’t the Beatles. I’d have recognized the Beatles. And there were no female Beatles.”

“That was Emmylou Harris.”

“Who’s Emmylou Harris?”

DJ: (longsuffering sigh)

So the first time I could scrape together some money, I bought this album:

thereby beginning my decades-long admiration for Emmylou Harris. And later, when I was no longer an impoverished college student but an impoverished teacher, I bought the Beatles’ Love Songs album so I could have both versions. “Here, There and Everywhere” remains one of my favorite songs, and you can bet it will be mentioned in A COVENTRY WEDDING.

You can make me (and Riley) happy and listen to the original on YouTube.

Previous posts about Riley:

October 14, 2007
December 27, 2006
June 24, 2006
December 8, 2005
September 30, 2005

Out of the Blue

A reviewer (almost all positive) who scolds us for too much Pet Shop Boy-ness in WHEN YOU DON’T SEE ME cracks me up. One of the good things about being a little further down the writing road and having Tim for a writing partner is that most criticism no longer wigs me out and if it does, he snaps me back to sanity. This time, however, I laughed even without Tim’s rational perspective. I can’t complain. The first reviews are for the most part very good (thank you, reviewers), and the reader mail that’s coming in ROCKS. Thank you to everyone who reads our books and writes us about them.

As you may have gathered from other posts, the Beatles are the theme band for my second Coventry book. I’m not only saturating my environment with Beatles music when I write, but the Beatles mean something to my character, too. (I wonder if I’ll get Beatle-bashed in a review some day?) Back when thirty-five was only some vague, meaningless number in the far-distant future, my friend Riley gave me George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, but I have been turntable-free for several years so I haven’t been able to listen to it.

Today, while writing, I really needed to hear a song from it, so I splurged and bought/downloaded the whole freaking album (all the original stuff plus whatever was added upon its thirtieth anniversary re-release) online. I am in GEORGE HARRISON HEAVEN. I only wish Riley were hanging out with me right now so we could listen to all these songs together, like the old days, while sandalwood and nag champa scent the air.

These flower child moments are ephemeral, however, as I was reminded when I had to divide up chicken necks for the dogs and EW, Rhonda, it happened to me, too. Tom tried to get me to take a photo, and I hope the Interwebs thank me for restraining myself. Rex’ll be enjoying chicken head sometime next week…

Previous posts about Riley:

December 27, 2006
June 24, 2006
December 8, 2005
September 30, 2005

Waxing Rhapsodic

For several days now, Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” has been a constant refrain playing through my head. In hopes of ridding myself of this earworm–even though it’s a good one–here’s one of my few posts that actually reveals personal information about my past. I’m sure I’ll only leave it up for a day or two before I become horrified and make it private and inaccessible.

One thing about Tom and me having no kids… There’s no captive audience for our longass boring stories. And you are free, too–you can save yourself by not reading:

George Gershwin and Me

Riley and me

Riley and I started being friends when I was 14. Several shared interests brought us together, among them The Hobbit, that we both thought of ourselves as writers, and our love of music. In Riley’s case, he actually was a musician who could play any instrument he picked up. He didn’t have the greatest singing voice in the world, but that was okay, because after all, didn’t we love Bob Dylan?
Continue reading “Riley and me”