Shine

Posted on 01/21/2011 by Jane Devin

(In memory of a friend who sang, danced, told stories and jokes, wrote, thought, spoke out, warmed up a crowd, became famous, got depressed, pulled herself up & out, but who never did learn how to juggle, hold steady, or swallow her fears).

What if you became irrelevant?

What if you let go of that power you worked so hard to acquire? What if you just let it float away like a Saturday balloon, and watched it fly farther & farther away?

What if you let yourself be erased from the lists you were on -
not knowing if you’d ever make another list,
not knowing how long you’d want the erasure to last,
or whether / when you’d want to come back?

What if you waved goodbye to those fiercely loyal fans, and missed their affirmations?
Those heartfelt letters, some stained in tears, those spontaneous shouts of pure happiness?
Would there still be a sense of purpose, a sense of place?

Would the ego falter in silence, or hold steady?

What would it be like to walk alone, without the entourage and hangers-on?
If the only outstretched hands in your path were familiar and loving?

***

The hardest part of flying involves an anchor.

The beautiful weight of children bounced on a hip.
Those happy, steadying burdens of morning chaos and nightly rituals.

When will we be there, why is the sky blue, look at me, see what I did.

In the din of applause, in the largest arenas, in the midst of high flying success, this is what is missed.

Playful eyes and toothless smiles. The scent of a baby’s head.
Blush filled first crushes, giggling slumber parties, shopping for prom dresses.
You can’t buy this kind of tenderness, or order it around your schedule.
Something will go on without you, whether it’s the show, or the ones you leave behind.

***

“The messenger of misery has visited my house,” Marlon Brando once complained, not recognizing himself in either the message or in the twisted roots of misery.

A string of far-away islands doesn’t matter if you bring the sickness with you.

When Angela Lansbury’s Malibu home was destroyed by fire, she swooped up her Tinseltown children and moved them to rural Ireland, leaving the sickness in the ashes.
Her children thrived.

Others find balance by replacing the revolving door of celebrity
with ones they can choose to open, or shut securely.
They trade The Scene & the mob of paparazzi for grocery carts and soccer games,
and approach the red carpet as if it were a once-in-awhile date instead of a lifelong marriage.

***

What if you weren’t irrelevant after all?

What if the most significant thing you ever did was done apart from a crowd?

What if the power of love was really the zenith,
and the depth of all your fears proved to be shallow?

What if you knew there were no lists that actually mattered, except the ones you write yourself?
What if you put your faith in the real people who wrote you those heartfelt letters -
and didn’t buy into the now-or-never, strike-while-it’s-hot argument?

What if you let yourself be moved by those who have no agenda –
who don’t care if you forego an act
& show up naked-faced in whatever mood you woke up with?

What if you let yourself be loved like that?

What if, in the midst of that bone-crushing frenzy, that soul sapping rush,
you found yourself needing something else, or something more?
Would you take it, would you even know that you could?

***

Dreams don’t die with the headlines of young death or star-struck tragedy. “Not me,” the aspiring say, shaking their heads in wonderment, “they had it all and threw it away. I wouldn’t do that.”

Then they pause, and confusion hits. ”How could it happen? They had so much. . .they had everything.”

Still, their bright eyes shine with desire. The hopeful acolytes gather in lines that stretch around city blocks, their scuffed dance shoes polished, their songs and scripts memorized.

They stand for hours, feet blistered, throats raw, palms sweating,
waiting for their chance to shine.

Shine, I would tell them, but not so brightly that it burns.
Save some of yourself for yourself
& know that “enough” is not just a way out,
but a way back.

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Poverty Series I: Beyond Joe & Jane Six-Pack and other Human Parodies

Posted on 10/07/2008 by Jane Devin

INTRODUCTION

We live in a world of instant everything. Every human situation, it seems, comes attached with cliches, platitudes, bromides, stereotypes and parodies. There is, conceivably, a box to place every person in, and a label to slap them with. There are also socially created barriers that inform perception, determine response, and decide opportunity. As society evolves, so do these barriers.

In the 1970′s, for instance, it was not unusual for job applicants to lack college degrees. Today, four year degrees are required for almost every corporate position, including those that are considered entry-level.

Throughout history, but even more apparent in today’s political climate, the have-nots have born the brunt of social stereotypes, bootstrap philosophies, and feel-good bromides. They’ve been romanticized in songs and novels, damned by social critics, and sacrificed at the altars of law and politics.

The pride and strength of the working poor is legendary — their clothes are old, but never dirty*, their love for each other overcomes all, and they’re only poor if they choose to be* — because it’s love, and not money after all, that makes a person truly rich. They bear drudgery and ridicule with hearty stamina, and sing and dance their way through meager lives filled with hardship, always hoping, always praying, and never losing sight of what’s really important.

At the same time, there’s something wrong with those people — something inherently flawed about them, like their character, their ambition, or their intelligence. It can’t be about any of the “isms” because, as we’ve all come to learn through the example of the rare exception, the -ism’s don’t really exist. After all, if Loretta Lynn can work her way out of a coal mining town in Kentucky, and Oprah Winfrey can become a billionaire, then anyone can. It’s just a matter of really wanting to achieve, and working hard enough to find success. And since there’s no such thing as luck, unless you’re talking about the kind people make for themselves, there are no logical reasons for failure, only excuses.

Last night, engaged in a conversation with a new friend, I had cause to revisit some of my darkest days as a young single parent. My husband had managed to get a divorce from another state, with the Navy’s help no less, stating that he had no children. He left while I was pregnant and had a one year old daughter. His legal maneuver left him off the hook for child support but still gave him the legal rights of a father. There was no legal recourse for me since at the time my state, Nevada, did not cross jurisdictions. It took twelve years to find even the minor relief of terminating his rights. He never paid child support, and never saw or expressed interest in seeing the children.

I worked two jobs, while struggling to pay daycare and rent. One job wouldn’t cover both, much less buy groceries, and I was evicted twice, and had my power shut off several times. One of the lowest points I remember was a cold day in October, when I washed my cocktail waitress uniform out in a dark bathroom, with cold water, because I had no electricity. No heat, either, so the babies were bundled in snowsuits and covered with blankets. We had no food in the house to speak of, and when I woke up to go to work, my uniform was still wet. I had to hop a bus to daycare, then to a casino where a poker player fried my leg and my last pair of nylons with the tip of his cigar. I broke down crying, and was promptly fired.

In those dark days, hope was tinged with desperation and need, and I drove myself past exhaustion, while at the same time trying to be the kind of mother I always wanted. One who was essentially happy, loving, and present. It took years, an incredible amount of energy, and living through multiple traumas to make a life that wasn’t desperate, or teetering on the brink of disaster. It wasn’t even a middle class life — there was no home in the suburbs, 401K, or college fund — but it was a life that covered the essentials.

I know poverty because I’ve lived through its varied realities, from the grumbling hunger to the bone-chilling coldness; from the pain of infections I couldn’t afford antibiotics for, to being robbed because I lived in a bad neighborhood and was an easy target. I’ve suffered from the policies and punitive measures that steal hope, time, and money from those who can least afford to lose anything.

I know bootstraps and bromides. The romanticizing of poverty, and the damnation of the poor. In this series, we’ll discuss economic realities and policies, as well as the emotional cost of being poor in America, the richest country in the world.

Excerpted from songs:
*Stevie Wonder, Livin’ for the City
*Dolly Parton, Coat of Many Colors

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Shapeshifters, Sexy Ghosts, and Other Mysterious Blobs

Posted on 07/27/2008 by Jane Devin

I recently had cause to remember The Year that Blew My Mind. It wasn’t mind-blowing in a good way – the oyster of the world didn’t open up and reveal any grand pearls of wisdom – instead, my gray matter was challenged to find reason for the unreasonable, and causes for the inexcusable. The resulting implosion left my mind scattered across a parallel universe, in which people made no sense, and reality could shape-shift like Play-Doh. In that world, people could mold their own blobs of facts and opinions without any regard for the actual truth or evidence of a thing. They could believe that Elvis is still alive, the Holocaust never happened, and that George W. Bush was a great President.

One of the blobs I recall came from a philosophy class, in the form of a particularly stubborn student who sought support for his shapeshifting opinion. “Reality is all just what we believe,” he said. “If I didn’t believe this Pepsi can existed, then it wouldn’t exist.” No matter how others argued that the Pepsi can was a material fact that existed independently of his thoughts – that it would exist with or without his belief in it – the student persisted in a type of egotistical thinking that left him in charge not only of objects in his own path, but that gave him the God-like ability to change matter into non-matter.

Outside of that class, I had never run across people who were prone to believe that a Pepsi can – or any objective fact – couldn’t really exist without their permission. They may have had differentiating opinions and beliefs, but they were based on some part of reality, even if cherry-picked to meet a personal need, belief, or preference.

For instance, I once had a neighbor who was enthralled with Tammy Faye Baker. For reasons that escaped me, he just adored the heavily made-up Queen of PTL and religious scandal. When I brought up issues like 24K gold bathrooms, “seeds of faith”, and vulnerable, workaday investors, he didn’t deny the facts – he simply hand-picked which ones were more important to him. She was funny, and charismatic, and he thought she had paid enough for her crimes. He chose beliefs that best met his personal concept.

And we all do that to some extent, particularly for people we love or admire, or even hate. We often magnify either the good or the bad, until the good is shined to a heroic luster, or the bad is blown up to villainous infamy. Reams of poetry are written for new lovers, who are coddled in the glow of novelty, while scathing diatribes are written about former lovers, who became stale, hurtful, or disappointing in some way.

In the world of shape-shifting reality though, Tammy Faye Baker might be Mother Theresa in same-sex drag. Maybe those tears she shed were really the sweat of Jesus and his twelve drag afficionados.

Lovers, past or present, may be wiped from existence with the stroke of a new memory. Maybe that drunken one night stand didn’t really happen. Maybe people just woke up naked together because they were recreating Rodan’s The Kiss for artistic reasons when they were suddenly felled by the sleeping disease African trypanosomiasis. Maybe, too, the lover in question wasn’t really a human being, but a sex-starved ghost like the one who visited Anna Nicole.

After living through The Year that Blew My Mind, I gathered up my gray matter to ask a singular question about the shapeshifters: Why? The singular answer that came back to me was Motive.

As complex creatures, we are connected to each other not only by DNA, but by story, opinion, and belief. We lack no opportunities to hand-pick facts and beliefs that best fit our individual paradigms. We can overlook bad traits in those we love because their love makes us feel great, and feeling great is more important than finding fault. When the bloom falls off the rose, and love lessens, then the bad thing we once ignored suddenly overwhelms everything else. The wet towels left on the floor become a symbol of disrespect – the forgotten anniversary becomes evidence that he or she never cared in the first place. Opportunities to connect or disconnect abound, and are most often reasonable, even if often exaggerated. Wet towels and forgotten anniversaries are annoying, and can be symptomatic of a larger problem.

The question in the shape-shifting world, though, is why people seek to change material fact or create whole new matter altogether. The answers are as varied as the motives.

Recently, I heard a story about two friends who had a private conversation. One of those friends then went and shared that conversation with another friend. That friend then made their conversation public, and a joke was taken wildly out of context and used as ammunition against friends #1 and #2. People formed strong opinions based on misunderstood third-hand evidence, but no one – not a single person – thought to question the motives of friend #3, whose actions had a rolling stone effect of harm and damages. There’s little doubt that she knew it would, as the resulting fallout proved, yet the major role she played in creating strife went unchecked. Motive? To create drama and gain attention. Mission accomplished.

Closer to home, The Bastard continues to make up rules as he goes along, leaving devastation and despair in his wake. His motive is to feel more powerful, and to exert what power he does have in ways that buoys his flagging ego. Mission accomplished.

Bush, Cheney, and Company continue to reorder matter and facts in their Invisible Pepsi Can world, where an “axis of evil” exists against the backdrop of the All-Mighty, All-Good, All-Powerful capitalist structure of America. WMD’s exist, then they don’t. Soldiers die, but it’s not all that sad if they hide the coffins from public view. It’s not about the oil, but then it is – oil companies who haven’t been in Iraq for 36 years now have no-bid contracts. The mission is really, finally accomplished.

Those of us who believe in objective truth can’t let ourselves be undone by those who believe that the world spins on an shape-shifting, make-believe axis. The truth of both fact and matter will eventually bear out, no matter how many people choose to create blobs of something else.

The shapeshifters are frustrating (and even frightening when they hold power), but by examining their motives – by asking just that one question – we can better understand the world they live in and avoid getting caught up in their crazy-making blobs.

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If Verne Troyer Can Get Laid. . .

Posted on 07/01/2008 by Jane Devin

I was going to make this my new response to every friend who complains to me about their lackluster sex life. I was going to keep it as a mantra in my head since as you all know, given that I’ve spilled my aching guts here more than once, my own sex life is nothing to wax erotic over.

It’s too easy, though, to think the way a normal person thinks. To call upon the romantic ideals of the middle-class and see love and lust behind every thrust and moan. Sometimes a gyration is just a gyration, and a tongue is just a tongue. Sometimes people, including some pretty nice looking ones, put out for reasons that have nothing to do with the laws of attraction.

Fame, even one grainy speck of it, seems to act as an aphrodisiac. Somehow sleeping with a hairy, three-eyed hunchback is less repulsive if that hunchback has appeared in the National Enquirer, drunkenly pissed in a corner, or otherwise flaunted their fucked-upness in front of millions of people.

Others may ponder the perversity of humping a freakish celebrity little person and making a sex tape of the debacle, but I can’t help but see a broader, more positive issue here for us middle-class mensches.

I mean, c’mon people! If Verne Troyer can get laid. . .

Doesn’t this negate the whole meaning of impossible? Doesn’t it just turn the hollow thud of pipe dreams into a virtual waterslide of hope?

Maybe there really can be world peace. . .
Maybe there really will be a Democratic dream ticket.
Maybe Starbucks will bring back the Coconut Mocha Frappacino just for Tod,
and my friend Neil will live happily ever after with Sophia.

Maybe I really can make that paycheck stretch into next month. Maybe Trader Joe’s will open in my neighborhood. Hell, while I’m dreaming large. . .

Maybe there really will be a Mac Powerbook in my future. A small house by the beach, and a puppy that doesn’t hump his fleece toys at every opportunity. Maybe time will stop for about a year and let me finish at least 40 of the things I’ve started. Maybe I’ll learn the difference between sincerity and placation. Maybe chocolate really can be part of a balanced diet, and that cute girl at the bookstore won’t end up being an ex-cult member, reptile collector, or straight Republican!

And we don’t even have to be famous to realize our dreams! No, because in our little perverse world, there was no rational reason Verne Troyer got laid. If Vern were a leprechaun sitting on a pot of gold and boxes of Godiva, pulling a steady stream of pearls and diamonds out of his little ass, chances are 1001% that he would not get laid. The fact that he did only proves that the world makes no sense. And in a senseless world, no dream – no matter how unattainable our rational minds once thought they were – is off limits.

We, the everyday people, can skip fame, and all the paranoia and suspicion that goes with it. We’ll never have to worry, even at the heights of our dubious successes, if we are some vapid, attention-starved woman’s Verne Troyer. We’ll never have to feel dumb for mistaking that hand in our pocket for a romantic gesture. Best of all, we won’t have to suffer the humiliation of seeing our hard-wrought, sweating sex tapes in the dollar bin, where they’ll be sought after only by poverty stricken perverts and those looking for a gag gift.

Instead, when hope fails us and our dreams seem far away — when we’re reaching for the stars and ending up with palms full of pigeon shit — we only have to remember that Verne Troyer, drunken little person and sleepwalking pisser, got laid.

Now really, don’t your own dreams suddenly feel a little more obtainable?

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In Honor of My Muse: Patricia Neal

Posted on 03/29/2008 by Jane Devin

She’s got that low, sensual, beautiful, Southern voice. The perfect blend of drawl and inflection that’s all at once a lullaby and a catalyst — an invitation to lay back on the porch swing and lazily watch the moon, or to rise up in the morning like Joan of Arc, prepared to honor the trumpet’s call to battle.

When I write short stories and poetry, it’s most often her voice that accompanies, reading the words back to me, imbuing them with a wealth of feeling that belies the ragged poverty of pen and paper.

Sure, I can write a pretty good line every now and then, but without her cadence, the sentences seem like only so much type — forgettable words that fade all too quickly into a pale background, or that fall short for lack of tone and timbre.

Hers was the first voice I heard that made me really want to sit up and pay attention. I was nine years old, and she was the original Olivia Walton in The Homecoming: A Christmas Story. I would have traded all six kids, and grandma and grandpa too, just to hear her tell the tale on her own.

I love her face. Her strong lines and proud features speak to me of dignity: of standing steady in the face of adversity, while honoring the spark of passion that creates, laughs, loves, and sustains. Unadorned, her true-to-life beauty rose above her profession of acting. The bleached and painted others who shared her craft seemed stiff next to her, unreal, as if they really were just actresses, and not wise, resourceful women who had known, and could tap into, every emotion in the well of shared humanity.

She is a woman whose voice once inspired a child to write poetry, and whose voice I still hear when I’d rather listen than speak.

This is what I want for navigating the circumstance:
swift justice and tender mercies.
To bestow a fortune of luck upon the unlucky.
An untying of the knot that binds my hands.

To open that heart-shaped Pandora’s box
and find it mercifully empty,
wanting for nothing more than locks and chains
and a place deep in the mantle of Earth
where it will melt into legend,
a myth of Hades’ proportion.

There’s some key around my neck, but I don’t mind.
The clink of decades past,
or the rusted metal of prolonged strength.

If you listen closely, you will hear it — that perfect blend of drawl and inflection. That knowing tap into the well of human experience. On my birthday, I honor my longest, dearest, and most inspiring muse — Patricia Neal.

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Stalkerazzi Laws May Get Some Teeth

Posted on 02/13/2008 by Jane Devin

After the taxpayers of Los Angeles shelled out $25,000 in expenses to protect the public and a young celebrity during her recent trip to a hospital, L.A. Councilman Dennis Zine proposed a new “buffer zone” law that will effect the most rabid of paparazzi — namely those who gather in large swarms, blazing flashbulbs within inches of their target — going so far as to stand in front of vehicles, or engaging in dangerous road chases, all for the sake of a celebrity snapshot.

While California does have some paparazzi laws in place, photographers are rarely cited and when they are the charges are usually misdemeanor, rather than criminal, offenses. Zine’s proposal, at this juncture, looks like it would criminalize the ambush tactics used by paparazzi who fail to keep a reasonable distance from their target, or who engage in dangerous chases.

I believe that stronger laws are necessary and overdue. After Princess Diana’s death, the public was treated to a few moments of a tabloid-driven media that seemed to be examining its conscience. Unfortunately, those moments quickly faded. Since then, celebrities such as James Brolin and Barbra Streisand, Pierce Brosnan, and Lindsay Lohan have all had close calls with aggressive entertainment photographers, who have either run them off the road or struck their cars during a chase. It should not take another death, celebrity or passerby, for lawmakers, news outlets, and the public to recognize the danger.

It’s also a matter of respect. While the worst aggressors will lean on the 1st amendment to claim encroachment rights on another’s personal space, there is no constitutional or other legal right whatsoever to harass another person, or restrict their movements, or impede their activities — all of which the paparazzi has done, and continues to do, almost without restriction.

As I wrote last year, being a public figure of any sort should not negate someone’s right to privacy or freedom of movement. Several posters disagreed with me, basically using the argument that celebrities are different: that being ambushed is part of the career they’ve chosen.

I don’t know how that logic works. As far as I know, celebrities are not locked into a 24- hour contract with the public to entertain or be accessible. A successful career in any field, including entertainment, should not make someone a virtual hostage to the whims of the public or negate their rights as a private individual.

As for the media’s defense that excessive intrusiveness exists because the public demands it — that we “create the need” for aggressive, car-chasing, garbage stealing paparazzi — I can only say it’s an elaborate lie.

First, the public cannot want something it doesn’t even know exists. Most of us don’t know, until the media tells us, what a celebrity’s personal life is like, where they’re dining, who they’re dating, or what tattoos they have on their backside. We don’t know – and most likely would never wonder – what is in a public figure’s garbage can or how many Jack & Cokes they had at the Viper Room.

The type of microscopic scrutiny and bold intrusions into celebrity lives offered up by gossip outlets and their photographers are less a consequence of public demand than public manipulation. Sensationalism sells, but only because it is produced and promoted. If tomorrow, there were no more photographs of panty-less starlets falling on the red carpet or close-ups of celebrity cellulite, the public would be none the wiser, and no less interested in whatever other, less invasive, celebrity news came their way.

It is not the public that demands crotch shots and minute-by-minute coverage of celebrity breakdowns. It’s the media that sets that bar, seeking the most sensational story in the hopes of inflaming or piquing the worst of the public’s curiosity. And unfortunately, it’s that bottom line which informs many tabloid decisions.

Lastly, even if the public had an expressed curiosity in sensationalism — even if they were writing letters by the tens of thousands demanding upskirt shots and ambulance chases — it does not mean that the media should abandon common sense and ethics to cater to the basest tastes. That they do so daily, with or without “public demand,” necessitates the need for stronger, more enforceable laws.

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