Defining Your Life

Recently on Facebook there's been a flurry of activity, guess it's always been there but have become very aware of it of late, the Me as victim, the victim of life, hard luck woes, the ill person as the hero.

 

 

I fought this battle a few years ago though I never thought of it as a battle, it just was, either I was going to live or die.  Dead was easy, all worries gone, living which was what happened was the less desired choice at the time though I'm enjoying breathing now that that did happen.  Never once did it occur to me to announce any of this across the Internet or to ask others to share in my burden, there was loss of my business, times with no food etc costs were so astronomical, but that's life.  I did bribe a nurse at the hospital with some lovely strawberries I was given for a real cup of coffee and I did ask my real life closest friend to come get me outta there so I could have some decent food and a cigarette.

 

 

I wrote today on one of the bevy of Cancer statuses I've been seeing around Facebook to share that I absolutely refuse to define my life via this.  I hope that my life will be judged as I judge myself through living with integrity, a moral backbone and respect for others.  One thing I'm very sure of and I'm not sure of a lot is that I didn't become some sort of saint because I had a few tumors cut out of me and it didn't justify any of my past bad behaviour, I was responsible and accountable when I lived my life a certain way just as I am for it now that I think I live it 'better'.

A Journey To Love.

Several years ago, time tangles in my brain, not exactly sure how long ago it was, not very, I was having dinner with my parents, didn't want to but my father insisted.  When we left the restaurant he kissed me goodnight, fell to the ground and was dead.  When I 'cleared' I realized I had lost the only truly unconditional love I had ever felt.  The years that followed were ones of illness, surgery, loss of business and deaths of a man I was very close to and my sister.  I found the Internet.

I've never really brought into the whole cyber friendship and love thing but certain people did become part of my daily life.  Some have continued to be great joys to me some have not, I guess just like in real life and many have become part of my real life.  What I never expected was to find that elusive man who would 'get me'.  He said the nicest thing to me today on the phone as I count the days to return to England to be with him, how he loved me because I'm who I am.  He'll never have to worry about that, I'll always be who I am, an educated, somewhat talented NYC Jewish female artist who really hates BS, bigotry of any sort, lack of integrity, a pain in the ass and very annoying if I'm hungry, which is always.   I'll never call him chum, though I've been called a chum, a tart, a bird, a strumpet, I like all of them coming from the voice I hear at the other end of the phone line but here we don't have chums and I'll never ask for a cuppa, don't like tea, I have a cup of coffee, that's what we have here unless you're doing the Starbuck's bit with those fancy latte names I really haven't studied.  I've been informed I'll have to learn some of these colloquialisms to know what's going on, so I guess I will though I really don't mind not knowing if they sound amusing to me but they surely won't become part of my daily usage of word.  Where's my coffee, I want it now, sounds more like me.

What has become part of my daily life is the knowledge and the feeling of being covered in love.  Over the years we had spoken of him coming to NYC the way you do in cyberspace with people you don't really know.  That didn't happen but I did go to England.  I arrived in London on my birthday as I had done for so many years when my father was alive the plane ticket and endless theatre performances being an annual gift.  My mother generously gave me this ticket. 

Duggy was waiting for me at Gatwick.  I heard that voice I had heard so often in song and over Skype call out my name, saw the gusto of hair and a smile of such purity, honesty and joy that at that moment I knew I was home.  We never stopped talking, we still haven't stopped talking, he'd probably say it's me who never shuts up, we talked through the day and the night and then I felt the gentlest touch I'd ever felt and I asked are we really going to do this and he said yes.  My father would have approved.

An Unfound Door.

Yesterday I went to the corner deli to get cigarettes and a chocolate bar, everywhere were newspapers with photographs of a young devastatingly beautiful Elizabeth Taylor on the covers. I had seen a still very gorgeous Taylor while in college. I had my first and last show of some of my paintings, a piece or two from a series I had been working on based on Michaelangelo's slaves on his tomb for Pope Julius, a great favorite of mine and something I was 'studying' whatever that means as an art student in a small mountain village in Switzerland. Apparently, I don't remember much, my professor, a charming man who enjoyed a bit of scotch with his breakfast and who had come to this small Swiss village to teach via Oxford had sent in my work for a show in the very posh village of Gstaad where the swells and stars gathered. So I had to go to the opening, not really one of my favorite things to do.

As I walked from where the bus dropped us off to the gallery space, this all a bit hazy, except for seeing the most beautiful face I had ever seen. She had a scarf on her head, so I didn't really see the famous black hair, but I'll never forget her eyes, her skin, flawless, such incredible beauty without any make-up on. That I'll never forget. No idea where she was going, but it wasn't anywhere about celebrity, just a woman walking in a mountain village. I had to go to this opening where the swells had gathered. When two women came up to me covered in furs and jewels and asked me while looking at one of my paintings if this was the new 'dry brush' technique, I decided right there to give up any thoughts of trying to make it in the world of 'art'.

So I drank too much wine, got a bit ill on the bus back from Gstaad to Leysin, the village where I went to school and went to my room and studio which was on top of the building I lived in, an old TB hospital where Thomas Mann wrote The Magic Mountain and destroyed all my work, a practice I tend to continue to this day.

In The Beginning And A Penguin Party

For over a year I had kept a blog going on MySpace. It had started as a release of sorts, a way of spitting out what I was feeling at a certain moment, an easy way out, I thought, easier than, 'painting it'. It's not easy and being 100% truthful isn't or writing something somebody else might actually read. In the process the blog started getting lots of attention especially by a few musicians so it grew into a combination of personal events that touched me and as support of musicians and artists I had both great regard for as people as well as for their work. I hope to be able to do the same here. So I'll begin with a combo platter...

On January 7th of this year while dangling about yet another music networking site I saw a man named Dave Milligan make a page. A few things attracted me to click the button and 'check him out', The name of his main band, The Penguin Party, the words he wrote, "It's all about music. That's all I do. All the time. Help!" and his name, Dave Milligan.

While growing up in Queens, New York I met a gal in Junior High School who I became inseparable from. I come from a very educated middle class background and though I truly admired where she came from, a lack of formal education but parents of unequaled integrity, she didn't. So she dreamed of having my opportunity and I hung out at her joint. With very good grades and a horse bet she got into the Ivy League and I went to a small American College in Switzerland. She met a man who was part of the stately homes of England and I didn't. The man's name is David Milligan and I so admired him and just really liked him. He left his background and married a not so regal Jewish girl from Queens whose father drove a truck for The Daily News and spent a lot of time at the horse tracks. I do remember him (the father) telling me, "if you want to meet a man who reads, go to the library, if you want to meet a man who drinks, go to the bar". Sound advice that didn't need ten years of University study. Anyway my friend took a Blanche Dubois bath and became Lady Milligan and we lost touch eventually, though there are endless stories of the Milligan purchase of a home here in NYC and their renting of a floor to Tiny Dancer of Elton John fame.

So I befriended Dave Milligan on Rock and Roll Tribe the site where I found him, began writing little notes which he kindly responded to, post way too many pictures of ridiculous penguins on his page, this amuses me and listened to his music, which I was blown away by, the originality, the skill and joy of it all, so I asked him to make a band page at Scrub Radio, an Internet Indy station I'm very involved with and to join the chat room there. Now Dave and his band and others he supports through his small Indy label, Sitting Target Music, have become darlings of the station and Dave a regular chatter...and he's not all about music. He's a husband and father who works hard to provide for his family and a supporter of the arts. I knew it was a good name.

The Penguin Party's CD's are available at

www.thepenguinparty.co.uk and www.sittingtarget.net