Category Archives: The Creative Process

What it means to write books, compose music, sing songs, paint, sculpt, create, discover, uncover, portray, design, illuminate.

Occupy LA : A Short Film

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I’m a lover of words, and a writer of words.  But sometimes pictures are all the words you need.  I shot this with my crappy camera.  Turns out some gorgeous music (by the inimitable Ken Rosser) and a profound subject matter are all it really takes to make a cool little moviette.   This is already a year and a half old, but I ran across it recently and discovered how proud of it I really am, so thought I’d resurrect it.   Besides, the movement still lives.

 

 

 

 

 

Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD.   Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog.   Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.

 

She’s a “Literary” Writer (Noted With a Wink In Her Eye and Quote Signs Made With Her Fingers)

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LIteraryWriter

Are our heads up our own asses if we call what we write “literary fiction?”

As writers hoping to sustain a living in the business, the idea of genres, of understanding genres, and knowing how to categorize what we write in terms of genres, we’re all, at some point, faced with the question: “what genre is your work?”

Literary Fiction, I’ve recently come to learn, is one of those categorizations that’s become a bit controversial.  Apparently, claiming such as your genre lends itself to a kind of pompous self-importance.

I’ve always called myself a writer of Literary Fiction, because the genre, as I’ve understood it, was not about the quality of a work, but about very specific components that had to be in place, versus other components that defined Genre or General Fiction.

My understanding of Literary Fiction was that its primary focus was on development of character, and the creation of complex inner stories that fuel the motives and behavior of the characters.  That plot is almost anecdotal (versus being the entire focal engine of Genre Fiction), serving instead merely to uncover and examine larger, more introspective, universal themes.

The film critic Terrence Rafferty recently noted that “literary fiction, by its nature, allows itself to dawdle, to linger on stray beauties even at the risk of losing its way.” [1]

It’s a nice turn of phrase (even being one of those stray beauties I like to linger on).  But I suspect it’s not meant to be a compliment of the term.

What I’m now hearing (in this present universe of hashtags and trends, where the average use-by date is usually about a minute long) is that the “literary” delineation is, or should be, reserved for others to determine and classify about your writing, and is clearly meant to denote a work superior to other genres, or, even more disturbing to me, a work of great acclaim, which assumes that the only great writing out there is the stuff that’s moved significant numbers or that’s made its authors into celebrities.   Because in today’s world, “great acclaim” isn’t a critical theory term; it’s a popularity term.   It’s a definition that precludes that if you’re not well-known you don’t deserve the term.

#literaryfiction #headupyourownass #whodoyouthinkyouare

No matter – as I can go on an editorial tangent like nobody’s business – but this does seem to be the current definition of Literary Fiction.  Little did I know that all this time of writing works that have tried to explore ideas, create characters who aren’t easy to define, to like or hate or peg, to build layers, and assuming that there is a proper term for that brand of writing, that I really just had my head up my own ass (as is how I’ve actually heard it put about authors who have the nerve to claim the Literary genre).

As said before, my understanding of the term has never been about quality, but simply about a different set of criteria.   Genre fiction (as objectively as I understand it) is all about plot, and about the effective ability to keep a reader’s attention glued via certain well-calculated tricks, like a heart-thumping pace; short, taut chapters that offer cliff-hangers, therefore producing the temptation, after saying to oneself “I’ll only read to the end of this chapter, then I really need to get to sleep,” to keep going because that cliff-hanger just won’t leave your brain alone, and, after all, the next chapter is so short, so you’ll just do the one more, and then the next thing you know the sun has risen.  Oooooh, those devilish little tricks!   And if the plot is akin to a roller-coaster ride, or a complicated treasure map, with twists and turns that seem to come from nowhere, and leave a little tickle in your stomach, then you’ve really got yourself a fun read.  And in that environment, who cares about the back story and underbelly of Dick and Jane (it also doesn’t hurt if Dick and Jane are soap-opera hot)?  The conflict in Genre Fiction is always external, never internal.   The blockades and barriers to get past are always out there in the cruel world.   Because rooting around inside heart and mind and dark cave and intention and motive and dysfunction and baggage can never be taken at a roadrunner’s clip, and Genre Fiction cannot afford the luxury of dawdling and lingering.   All right, it wasn’t exactly objective, but I don’t think I’m off the mark.

Truthfully, a lot of fun reading can be had the way of Genre Fiction (I had an absolute ball reading The Da Vinci Code, because I surrendered the idea of rich characters that felt like real people, or turns of phrases that would arrest my heart, and I just strapped my seat belt on).   But what if “fun” isn’t exactly the experience you’re looking for in a book?  What if a deeper experience is what you’re looking for?  What if being split open, being jolted, having your own belief systems challenged and provoked…say…is what you’re looking for in a reading experience?

That’s a very different kind of book.   And as such, it SHOULD have its own category.

So, if Literary Fiction isn’t what that kind of book should be called, then what?

Here’s an even harder question (at least it’s a hard one for me):  Why should we, as writers, shy away from claiming our ability to create characters of depth and richness, to unleash social and moral provocations, to forge atmosphere and mood and memory, to create a relationship between reader and work that is intimate and profound?

Hey, if you’re the only one who thinks your own writing accomplishes that, then the world of opinion will weed you out with its own (usually cruel) efforts.    There is no need for you (me, all of us) to feel unworthy of boldly staking your claim in the world of books, and relegating yourself, instead, to a genre that doesn’t really fit, out of some kind of false modesty.

That’s right.  We are straight up LITERARY gangsta.

 

 

*          *          *

  • Rafferty, Terrence (February 4, 2011). “Reluctant Seer,” New York Times  Sunday Book Review.


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Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD.   Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog.   Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.

The Assassination of Gabriel Champion

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“His strokes are not strokes at all, but gashes in the flesh of this life.”

Nearly twenty years in the making, my new novel The Assassination of Gabriel Champion has been my absolute labor of love, to use an overused cliche.  Which I realize doesn’t bode well for my reputation as a writer, but whaddaya gonna do?  The truth is, there is no more appropriate description of the experience for me.  It is a modern fable of love and loss, of violence and redemption, set in the world of art and artists, that asks the question:  What can we forgive? 

*          *          *

Writer NONA CHILDE is in love with artists.  They are the very embodiment of all her romantic notions.  She has, in fact, chosen an artist as the protagonist of her novel, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, which unfolds a tale as alluringly dark as a rain-drenched European night.  So when she meets DANIEL CROSS, a gifted painter who is teetering on the brink of Heathcliffian torment (an intoxicating contrivance in Nona’s mind), she is presented with the opportunity to finally complete the arc of a long-coveted torch song life.  What she isn’t prepared for is a real playing out of the scourge of an artist’s soul; one far darker than any she could conjure with a pen.

The relationship that ensues between the brooding Englishman artist and the passionate young American authoress thrusts them headlong into a kaleidoscope of violent mood and memory, of euphoric, obsessive, torrential love.  They begin to tear apart as irascibly as they are brought together, but not before involving one ARTHUR HUGHES DUFRESNE, a local poet with a devastating past who succeeds in complicating the tangle.

 

*          *          *

 

Here’s just a little sampling.  An amuse-bouche, if you will.

(excerpt)
It had become a culture so desensitized, so lacking in the keen recognition of nuance, that what was required any longer to stir someone’s soul was movement, noise, clangs and bangs, where news outlets were consigned to showing actual video footage of head-on collisions in order for the viewer to be impacted by the pronouncement of tragedy.  And where art had to stun (stir just wasn’t good enough anymore) by feats and stunts and concussion in order to be considered the legitimate New Art.  Bob Flanagan hammering a nail into his penis before a live audience at a “happening” was considered art by those for whom the criteria was, singularly, that the deed be undared by anyone else.

Flanagan had been a performance artist battling cystic fibrosis and exploring themes of pain threshold, and there was certainly validity in the idea of a coping mechanism being raised to an art by the very involvement of an audience, a reaction, an impact, and a relationship.  But the bottom line for Daniel was:  How do you sell that?

He suddenly realized that in this drunken instant he was thinking more like an art dealer than an artist, and he surprised himself that he had, in one swift indictment, reduced his entire impetus to paint to his ability to make a living from it. Never mind the idea of art that was authentically experiential, completely stripped of the possibility of the repeat generation of dollars dealt from one collector’s hands to another’s.  Commerce had always been the farthest down on Daniel’s list of reasons to create, yet today it seemed to be the first, instinctive weapon he drew in this invisible battle with an invisible foe, for his (a mere painter’s) rightful place.

The art world had been stricken with a bad case of the emperor’s new clothes, and the rest of the world was guileless and gullible, including Daniel, who had started to believe the buzz about his own work.  Maybe being just a painter was the gimmick assigned to Daniel by the critical circle.  And maybe in the end, he actually was starting to feel unworthy of the attention because, after all –– all he did was paint.
(end of excerpt)

Tell your friends.  🙂
http://www.amazon.com/The-Assassination-Gabriel-Champion-ebook/dp/B00CVCPLF4/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1

Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD.   Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog.   Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.

Satori

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Satori

I don’t know why this has struck me on the most lusciously overcast day we’ve seen yet this year, but a remembrance of one of the hottest days that last summer saw suddenly flit past my eyes, and I thought I’d share it here.  It was an especially hard day for me, as I futily tried to rid my brain of obsessive thoughts over a personal issue.  Here’s what happened (not the personal issue, which I’ll just keep personal, but the day in question).  I decided that going to see friends of mine who are in a band perform at a summer solstice fair in Santa Monica would be just the needed anesthetic for my flooded brain.

When I arrived at the beach, it was a gorgeous day in spite of the triple-digit heat, and everyone from every Venice/Santa Monica walk of life was out, and in their inimitably Bohemian form. My kind of folks. I traversed from where I’d parked my car about six blocks inland of Main Street, and found the stage where my friends would be playing.

And as the music began, and I found a nice shade spot on a nearby curb on which to sit, I began to catch myself, here and there, not listening to the music. The blue noise in my head was louder. So, I briefly moved away from the crowd and called a friend who lives in the neighborhood and had him meet me there, just to add to the party.

He showed up, and we sat together and clapped our hands and snapped our fingers, and “whoooo whoooo”d and whistled at the end of solos, and were happy to see each other. But I was still afflicted. What other tricks could I pull? What other pill could I pop?

And that’s when I realized that this music before me was being used by me as a tool for checking out. And it deserved to be heard for its own sake. Not as distraction from problems, where then its only task is to be noisy enough to drown out that other noise. For that matter, I could’ve found a nice landfill where sanitation trucks would loudly dump their refuse. Or just sat by the side of a freeway overpass and let the engines and car horns and screeches easily drown out the clutter in my head. But I chose music instead.

Something that is sacred and transformative. Something that is never noise. I whored it.

And just at the instant that I had this realization, I truly heard the music for the first time that day. And felt lifted. I even, at one point, felt my phone vibrate on my hip and I ignored it (something I simply never do) in favor of a magical moment between two guitar players that I just didn’t want to sacrifice. And then it was gone. Blue noise in the head back again. And as loud as ever.

I started to notice the people around me. A little boy, maybe 4 or 5, danced and twirled euphorically until his father swooped him up onto his shoulders and his mother suddenly slathered his little face with sun block. It took the kid by surprise, who expressed his great irritation in the form of tears, wails, and a furious wiping of his face. Until only seconds later, the annoying sun block was forgotten, and little tyke was euphoric in giggles and twirls once again. It made me smile, which turned into a laugh.

I noticed an older woman, maybe homeless, it was hard to tell, who found herself a chair in the hot sun, and sat for the entire two sets of music, never once moving to find shade, as everyone else was doing, and so completely focused on the music in front of her. And I wondered what key to enlightenment she had that I could not seem to find.

And in those moments of people-watching, I was once again tuned into the music. As if the music was the conduit to a sudden state of presence. To listening, and observing, and taking in every sensation, every smell, every sound, every judgment even. And embracing it all. The crazy man with the playhouse on his head, who played air drums right along with the real drummer on stage, was glorious to me. And I thought of the scene in the movie American Beauty where the video-wielding kid from next door shows his new girlfriend footage he’d taken of a piece of paper floating in the breeze, and how beautiful he found this thing that was really nothing. It is a statement about finding treasure in every cell of every thing.

And as my day progressed, I found myself in and out of this remarkable sense of true presence, of finding that treasure in every cell, interspersed with hits of my blues and my burdens, which are all about being chained to past and future, and recognized what Buddhists call satori, which is defined as a “brief flash of insight.” I was flashing all over the place. But could never seem to find what in aeronautics is called gimbal lock.

Can we really reach a point where we’re always in an uninterrupted state of true presence, never allowing our problems to sit in the brain and furiously try to work themselves out, as brains will do? Or if we can at least count on a few brief flashes here and there to periodically anchor us and remind us that everything has value for its own sake, and not just as tools for medicating our wounds, isn’t that enough?

And sure enough, on the ride home, I felt full. Full with a day of communing with friends, and hearing wonderful music, and eating great food, and laughing. And none of it made my problems go away. It just managed to put those problems in their proper place in my brain, instead of allowing them the indulgent, repressive center stage.

I heard music that day for its own sake, even if only for moments at a stretch. And I found great meaning in the littlest things, if only in brief flashes.

I’ll take it.

 

 

Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD.   Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog.   Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.

The Big Purr : CD Review

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Pasheen

I confess I have a particular weakness for female vocalists with low voices. It’s as if they are saying to a world that is enamored with high notes and prepubescent timbers, “tough shit.” And with a shrug of the shoulder and a gleam in the eye, they pull and tug at your groin with those low notes, rumble the rafters, and take you to places that only seem to exist in acid-washed film noir and lurid pulp novels. Pasheen is such a creature on her most recent jazz CD The Big Purr (it is tempting to suggest that the CD’s title is all about those low notes, but that’s awfully easy), and one suspects that she is clearly aware of the inevitable comparisons to sultry contraltos like Julie London, and so puts it right out there, as she does on the opening cut, So High, as if to say, “well, there’s Julie…and then there’s me.” Pasheen makes it clear that she won’t stand in anyone’s shadow, and then proceeds to blast the genre altogether with lyrics that are as playful and mischievous as they are seductive and alluring.

From the first sound one hears (the crackling of an old LP – remember those?) we are placed frankly and unapologetically in a world that could never be inhabited by the teeny-boppers who command the world’s current stage. There is wicked in every fiber of Pasheen’s voice. She is creating her world, song after song, layer after layer, paint stroke upon paint stroke, and welcoming us in, but with a “beware” sign. It’s an underground world. A world that moves at a stroll’s pace. A world of shadows and seduction. A world that almost doesn’t belong in today, but somehow equally in an era bygone and a tomorrow that waits patiently (read timelessly) until the bubble-gummers burn themselves out.

And then there’s that voice! It is textured and haunting, a lesson in the mastery of phrasing, a history rich with tales and battle scars and luscious liquored flavorings, always in impeccable control, if at moments purposely letting loose grace notes both feral and unrestrained, and with the fattest, sexiest vibrato I think I’ve ever heard. Most importantly, at least to this listener, the voice is rife with poignancy and pathos. And every bit of it works.

Pasheen seems happiest (in a lyric) when letting us know that she knows her environment, her fellow jazz players, the luminaries in the genre; and that while she most definitely celebrates them, she also takes her rightful place in the pantheon. Oh believe me, she belongs.

She has fun on cuts like Busy Man (“being a type-A over-achiever myself, I realize that I could end up in a 24-step program”). It’s a lyric that makes one chuckle, while all the time knowing full well that this Big Purr of a singer moves at a Type-A pace for NO ONE, but vamps by, daring you to come along. And so she creates contradictions that serve to remind us just how complex we human beings really are.

There is an underlying sadness in Vanity, a song about cosmetic surgery. What’s most compelling about this cut is Pasheen’s unwillingness to pick a side on the subject, but instead giving us a startling portrait of modern life’s arguably most pathological preoccupation, and that she even dares to broach such an internal-conflict topic within the jazz environment, a neighborhood, from a lyrical standpoint, that has usually been relegated to weepy love songs, clever Porter-esque turns of phrase, and comedic sexual innuendo. She dares to complicate the idiom.

If I seem to be harping a whole lot on lyric, it’s probably because I’m a vocalist too, and lyric means everything to us. But never for a minute think that the rest of the package is an afterthought. Strong melodic writing and a sophisticated harmonic environment puts these songs (more than half of which Pasheen composed or co-composed) squarely in a league with the most timeless of them.

Trumpeter Carl Saunders’ scatting, on his composition You’re So Cute, had me laughing in the jolliest way from pure joy at the fun he is obviously having, a trick that belongs exclusively and exuberantly to the jazz genre, and yet few do it well. I get the feeling this may be signature for Mr. Saunders, as he is given complete carte blanche on this cut, with Pasheen respectfully giving her colleague the floor. Takes balls to give the floor in that way, when it’s your album. But then Pasheen has a pair on her that, I dare say, rivals any of her male counterparts.

As evidenced in her tome to Billy Tipton. Her heart is practically breaking on the wonderfully odd and iconic song Cross Dress, leading us to consider a world so intolerant that it demands the Big Lie. It is equal parts shame-on-us reprimand and loving tribute to the many whose lives were relegated to the fringes. It is melancholic without ever moving into the territory of dirge-y sadness.

My favorite cut has to be the finale track, The Truth, composed by the Diva, herself, which paints a landscape of the Seek, the Search, the Path, and which suggests that this radiant singer has depth to spare, yet she keeps it light and fun: “Maybe god is a goddess in a strapless dress.” Frankly, I’m envisioning that goddess with shocking platinum hair.

She has the best of the best as her production and performance team: Co-producer Barry Coffing and engineer Talley Sherwood to start with, and a parade of some of the business’s top session players from L.A. and Houston, including celebrated woodwind player Bob Sheppard, who offers gorgeous warm-toned tenor solos on most of the tracks, and who, all, help to make every track strong and tight. Straight-ahead swing, crisp bossas, and ECM-esque rhythms create the bed for this body of work to lie on.

Pasheen straddles playfulness and pathos with equal aplomb on this recording of twelve stellar cuts, and celebrates the genre of jazz in such a unique Pasheen-only way, that one gets the feeling she loves rocking the boat of the comfortable, and shaking up folks’ worlds, all for the sake of a powerful musical moment.

Her liner notes include thank-you’s to animal rescuers and to our soldiers, which gives a clue into the passion and compassion at work in this beautiful songstress’ heart. But you won’t have had to read about it in the liner notes to feel it with every note sung.

You’ll find you need to hear The Big Purr again and again just to catch every finely layered nuance. It was a joy for this listener. Congratulations Diva!

And as always:
Create – even if you’re not an artist
Support artists – especially the independents
Live well – doesn’t take money to do it
And be whole

Pasheen:  http://www.reverbnation.com/pasheen

 

 

Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD.   Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog.   Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.

Vermin : CD Review

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Vermin-TedBrownArt copy

Vermin is the new album by Hans San Juan  (It’s actually already had its 1-year birthday, but I wasn’t writing a blog back then.)

I am so freakin’ excited by this album!   Still…one year later.  That Hans happens to have one of my kidneys inside his body doesn’t mean that any of my musical acumen has shaped him as a musician.   It really doesn’t.   No, seriously.   And yes, I CAN be completely objective about it.   No, SERIOUSLY!

Upon first listen of Hans’s debut full-length album Vermin, you’ll immediately conjure up inspirations of Pink Floyd. And the influences are most assuredly there.  But after a deeper, repeated listen, you get the clearer understanding of the past life Hans is surely channeling.  I say past life, because at 22 years old he is far too young to be writing music of such depth.

Early productions of Hans’ reveal a music that is wonderfully wild and unharnessed in a way that is as compelling as it is also screaming out for a little balance of some compositional and rhythmic rules (go to Cal Arts, dude!   They would eat you up there!  And you would chew the freakin’ scenery!)   But I have to say, Vermin betrays a giant step out of that wonderfully adolescent energy into a decidedly matured seasoning that has married those two ideals magnificently (and that, without taking my advice and going to Cal Arts).

At once operatic and romping in the playground of electronic innovations, Vermin seems to be telling a singular story. Themes of death abound, and ordinarily such a heaviness of theme coming from a 22-year-old would give me great discomfort, but having been there first-hand for a bit of Hans’ personal history (that his kidneys were failing him before a successful transplant took place), I see an undeniable correlation between his music and what must’ve been years of contemplating his own mortality (a concept hinted at by the front cover art of Ted Brown).  If our pain can’t be funneled and turned into something powerfully creative, then what is our pain for?  And THIS Hans has done, so beautifully that his voice, thickened with a choral effect that gives it an otherworldly edge, breaks my heart in all the best ways.

My personal favorite cuts (though there’s not a weak one in the bunch) are:

  • Inside Out, which, at forty-one seconds and with no lyrics but is the briefest of chants, is probably the most spine-tingling track I’ve heard in a long time. Here, then gone, a grace note, but not without leaving an indelible mark.
    http://hanssanjuan.bandcamp.com/track/inside-out
  • The larger-than-life finale Charlatan, which touches on themes of redemption (you get the feeling that though he’s talking to someone else, he’s really talking to himself, as well).
    http://hanssanjuan.bandcamp.com/track/charlatan
  • And the opening track, Below The Skin, which is as strong as any of the concept album cuts out there by the ones who do it best (U2, The Who, Pink Floyd, etc.), a bold anthem that sets the stage for grand, tormented, cock-strutting theatre.
    http://hanssanjuan.bandcamp.com/track/below-the-skin

It’s clear, though, that Hans is also having a blast, twisting our brains with abstract-expressionist lyrics that take a second, third, and even tenth rendering to decode. And like any one of the most hair-raising canvases of de Kooning or Basquiat, it doesn’t really matter if we ever do.  Hans has plugged us into words that are rich, dark, almost gothic, and more multi-layered than most of the 20-something music that’s presently out there.  His music/poetry is nutritious food for thought.

And this guitarist/vocalist/bass player is not in the studio alone. With Hans on Vermin are Paulina Franco (vocals), Mario Torrico and Craig Pilo (drums), Glen Rewal (saxophone), Tyler Davis and Matt Tye (engineering), and this ultra-talented crew supports Hans well.

Vermin is theatre, opera, poetry, and Jackson-Pollock-esque philosophy all in one little square package. It’s the kind of album you keep forever, the way you’d never pack up The White Album or Electric Lady Land to give to the Goodwill during spring cleaning.

Here’s hoping that more than just family and friends get to experience this beautiful accomplishment, because Hans San Juan’s transcendent Vermin is worth the world’s notice and more.

Visit Hans @ http://www.hanssanjuan.com.  And tell him Aff sent you.

And as always:
Create – even if you’re not an artist
Support artists – especially the independents
Live well – doesn’t take money to do it
And be whole

 

 

Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD.   Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog.   Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.

Belligerent Romance: song. heart. bravery.

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“…the only answer is to recklessly discard more armor.”
––– Eric Maisel

I am awakened rudely by construction in the neighborhood.  I fight it for a time, but eventually give in and hasten my exercise gear on.  I get myself outside for a good walking meditation (my thing these days), and can’t get Hans’ song out of my head.

Angela.

There are actually lots of songs with my name in the title.  The music from the television show Taxi is actually called Angela’s Theme.  There’s Helen Reddy’s Angie Baby. Of course, the Stones’ iconic Angie.  The Bee Gees have a song.  Even Motley Crue, stealing lines from Hendrix’s The Wind Cries Mary with their own “when the winds cry Angela” lyric.

It can be heady, this idea of your name inspiring song after song, but then again none of them were written for me.  So, how heady can I really get?

Until Hans.  I’m giving him a kidney in just three more days.  This anticipated event has dragged out for nine excruciating bureaucratic months. My best friend pointed out the symbolic time frame as indicative of a kind of birth. But now it’s here, and both of us (Hans and I) have to be bouncing off the walls in our own way.  Me, I’m doing these walking meditations every day now for a month solid. It’s equal parts exercise (I really hoof it) and opportunity to live with my own thoughts before my day officially begins with and in the world; to level myself and clear out my brain for the big day. I chant, I do mantras, I work out problems, I talk myself down from ledges, I rationalize behavior, I ask for forgiveness, I defend myself in imaginary arguments, and I thank the Forces That Be for everything.

But on today’s walk, all that activity got shoved to the various corners and crannies of my obsessive brain to make room for memories of last night, going to see Hans play his guitar in a coffee house, and open his set with Angela….written for me.

Interestingly enough, I’ve been involved with countless boyfriends, almost all of whom have been musician/composers, and yet none of them has ever written a song for me.  It is either a great poetic juxtaposition, or a really unsettling indication of the impact I have on the people I’m involved with.  Of course, I’m also a songwriter, and I’ve never written a song for any one of them either.  So, okay, maybe all it indicates is that every one of us is jaded and crusty and we’ve lost all sense of romance and inspiration.

Picasso painted every woman he ever fell for.  What has happened to that kind of belligerent romance?  The terrible compulsion to celebrate another human being?

So, hearing this song, sung by teenager Hans and his girlfriend and the drummer in his band, was a moment that left me speechless and tearful.  A moment that made me realize that inspiration and romance do still exist…. they’re just hiding amongst the young.  And if we still want to be touched by it, then the young are who we need to surround ourselves with.

I walked my regular route in the neighborhood, and tried to chant my daily mantra, which usually begins with “Love, reign over me…” (I have tended to find much more prayerful intention in rock songs than I’ve ever found from anything biblical.) “….make me mindful….give me grace…. deliver me from need….fill me with wonder….” etc.  Sometimes I chant for winning the lottery, but I sort of get that that’s not really how it works, and so those requests always come with tongue firmly planted in cheek.  Today I didn’t care about money or enlightenment.  Today I was intoxicated by having had a song written for me, for the first time in my life.  I felt like Marie-Thérèse, or Anaïs Nin, or Beethoven’s “immortal beloved”; women who have been painted, written about, composed for, dedicated symphonies.  I highly recommend it.  Being someone’s muse.  It’s a high like no other.

As I walked, I completely tuned out the music that was blasting through the iPod buds wedged in my ear.  Explanation: It’s easier for me to do my mantras against music; it’s a deliberate sensory overload; somehow things just stick themselves deeper in the subconscious when they’re too overloaded to have surface impact. It didn’t matter today anyway; I had abandoned my Pete Townsend-inspired mantra and my downloaded pop tunes, to be flooded with Hans’ song.  Or rather, the idea of Hans’ song.

A complete stranger who was walking my way held her palm up, and shouted “high five” as we passed each other.  I obliged.  First time I’ve ever been accosted in that way.  And I thought of this woman’s completely loopy bravery.  Just to infiltrate a perfect stranger’s sphere, for a split second, and engage.  What if I had refused her?  Treated her the way we treat the bag ladies who pass us by?  I wouldn’t be brave enough to throw my loopiness out there in that way; too afraid of rejection, of having someone look at me like I was nuts.  And then I thought of the oddly shaped angle that I was practically on the eve of having surgeons cut me open and pull a kidney out of my body, yet here I was assured that I would’ve been too afraid to be silly on the street with a passing stranger.  Which one really takes more bravery?

It takes a special kind of bravery to write a song for somebody.  It takes letting down one’s cool guard and daring to show a little vulnerability.  Letting the world peek into your opened and exposed heart.  And most especially, letting the person for whom the song is written peek into your heart, daring to let them know that you feel, and that they have impacted your life enough to inspire public song.

I once had a boyfriend, a brilliant composer, who, with me, was one day listening to a song written by a friend of ours with a woman’s name in the title.  He said, “I don’t think I could write a song with some woman’s name in the title.”  He said this with a kind of pride in the claim. I felt sad for him.  And sad for myself, as well, because I think that claim was my truth too.  We’re all just too cool.  Vulnerability is not attractive.

Leonard Bernstein’s Maria, from “Westside Story”, a song of truly loopy and delirious love.

Tom Waits’ Martha, an invocation of sweet, melancholy reminiscence.

The Beatles’ Michelle.

Elton John’s Daniel.

Brian’s Song.

Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.

The list goes on, and on, and encouragingly on.  Who knows which of these is based on an actual person, or is merely the playground of fiction?  And who cares?  Either one still requires a level of unadulterated celebration, and a willingness to abandon cool, which makes someone ultra-cool in my book.

Hans is brave.  He is brave to be a musician, going out there in the world for the scrutiny of the jaded.  He is brave to have withstood two years of debilitating dialysis, countless surgeries, stem cell experiments, and catheters and fistulas implanted beneath his skin.  And perhaps the bravest act of all is his daring to expose his great heart in so many ways, only one tiny example of which is the writing of a song entitled Angela.

(c) 2013 angela carole brown

(3 days later, on July 22, 2008, the transplant successfully took place at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. )

 

 

Angela Carole Brown is the author of three published books, The Assassination of Gabriel Champion, The Kidney Journals: Memoirs of a Desperate Lifesaver, and Trading Fours, and has produced several albums of music and a yoga/mindfulness CD.   Bindi Girl Chronicles is her writing blog.   Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & YouTube.