Tag: riley

Legacy Writing 365:68

One year when I was living with another person who was on a break from graduate school (and who I completely lost track of later, though I think she was originally from Houston, and for all I know, may live on the next block from me now), Riley came to Tuscaloosa with the theater department from his college for a theater festival that the University of Alabama was helping host. His school was putting on Death of a Salesman, but the memory of it has been overshadowed by another production–I think from Auburn University in Montgomery–of Equus.

Not, however, because Equus was so good, though it might have been. All I remember about it was that I was sitting next to Riley in the auditorium and suffering from the WORST MIGRAINE OF ALL TIME. To this day, the mention of Equus makes me feel nauseated, so you can imagine how unthrilling I found all the publicity surrounding Daniel Radcliffe’s taking the role of Alan in the play’s 2007 revival.

Riley never traveled anywhere without his guitar, so I’m sure he eventually strummed my headache away. I still kind of miss my antique bed, pictured here.

Riley took this shot of me on the same visit. I’m holding back my hair as I bend down to pick up something, not clutching my head in pain, but it makes me wonder: Do big puffy sleeves cause migraines?

Today is Riley’s birthday. We lived apart so many years that it’s only on his birthday, and mine, when I’m forced to remember that he died in 2008. I miss our birthday phone calls, and the way he always made me laugh, and his guitar. Still, the most beloved friends never really leave us.

I love you, MVP.

Legacy Writing 365:4

There’s no reason I should have this photo or the other four that were obviously taken the same day. I didn’t shoot them; I wasn’t there. That I do have them means I badgered someone into giving them to me: either Tim, who’s front and center in the water, or Riley, the boy closest to him, next level up. I’d be willing to bet it was Riley who reluctantly handed them over.

Even though I wasn’t friends with the other three boys in the photos (one of whom isn’t pictured here because he was obviously manning the camera), and though I haven’t seen them in more years than I wish to divulge, I can name them all immediately. Maybe it’s because I haven’t seen them in all those years; they are fixed in time, always young, always long-haired, bell-bottomed, wearing illegal expressions on their achingly young faces.

I also don’t know where in North Alabama these photos were taken. I hope there are still as many remote places of natural beauty as there were then, where even a short hike would take you far from whatever troubled your spirit.

And when you’re a teenager, something is always troubling your spirit. It’s your job. You’re new on the planet, and it’s not perfect, and neither are the people trying to teach you how to be here. Everybody’s got advice and wisdom, and what they’ve forgotten is that no one older and with more experience could keep their lives perfectly on course, either, when they were young. They–we–you–everybody has to stumble over their own rocky terrain, take their own falls into cold, rushing water, get up, keep going.

It’s because of Tim and Riley, and everything we learned together and taught each other, and all the ways we betrayed each other and found our ways back those first decades of our lives, that I so easily slip into the world Stephenie Meyer created. I don’t care about the writing flaws. I can strip away the supernatural elements. What I see is three teenagers who are dealing with emotions and choices, desires and missteps, confusion and clarity, with fresh minds and untried hearts.

And this photo… One boy long out of touch; the other one dead. But here forever, in this blurry photo, are the boys who gave me music, art, poetry, laughter and tears, and my first lessons in the crazy beauty of romantic love.

Here forever in my heart, too.

Button Sunday


I’m not sure where I got any of these buttons. A couple seem to have been around forever. I might have picked one up at the Austin Record Convention sometime during the 1990s.

Doors lead singer, musician, poet, artist, filmmaker, and bad boy Jim Morrison died on this date in 1971. It was my brother who got me interested in The Doors. But it was Riley who used to sing “Love Street” to and about me, which sealed their place in my heart. He would draw pictures of me on “Love Street.” This song is part of my repertoire to sing when I’m riding in my car. Alone.

I still have my vinyl of Waiting for the Sun. It’s probably unplayable, but I’ll never get rid of it for nostalgia reasons. I can see Riley and me lying on the floor of my parents’ living room listening to it and talking about poetry, mysticism, and rock and roll.

Soundtracking

On his blog, Jeffrey Ricker asks:

Here’s a question–or actually several: what music inspires you? Have you ever written anything inspired by a particular piece of music? Do you listen to music while you write?

Here’s my answer:

I do make mental and sometimes real soundtracks for the novels I work on. Off the top of my head: Three Fortunes involved a lot of R.E.M. and a bit of U2 (Kieran was Irish, after all). I listened mainly to George Michael while working on I’m Your Man because there’s a lot of yearning in his songs and in the novel. I not only listened to the Pet Shop Boys during the period when we wrote When You Don’t See Me, but their songs became our chapter titles and the band was special to Nick. A Coventry Wedding was all Beatles, all the time, and though a lot of Beatles songs are mentioned in the novel, there are also coded references to their songs or song titles. Here’s one: Jandy meets a crotchety old artist in the book whose name is Wayne Plochman. In reality, Plochman is a brand of mustard: thus, “Mean Mr. Mustard” from the album Abbey Road.

I’d probably need to reread the other books to remember what songs were inspiring me while I wrote.

I write in silence, usually. The exception to this is when Tim and I work in the same dwelling, because he always has music playing. So a lot of times I mentally connect songs to my mood when I was writing something, even though they didn’t necessarily inspire it or have anything to do with it.

Speaking of music… One regret I have is that we took a fragment of a song lyric out of It Had to Be You. Every time I hear the song, it makes me laugh because of the scene it evokes–and not using it cost the readers a laugh in a comic moment in the novel. We were beginners and afraid of being sued.