Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #108: Imagining Song: "Suzanne"

Cover for the single of "Suzanne"

Music informs my writing. I am a musician, I play guitar, mandolin, and banjo, and I perform locally. From the onset, my writing has explored themes related to music. From one of my earliest publications, "Son of a Preacher Man" (after an old song by sixties singer Dusty Springfield) to "What Debussy Wrote for the Guitar," to my novella The Last Minstrel, music has motivated my imagination. In 2013, I got the idea for another such story, "Suzanne."

"Suzanne" became a best-selling and signature song for folk artist Judy Collins. It was written by Canadian songwriter, the late Leonard Cohen and has been recorded by more artists than any of his other songs ("Hallelujah" included). Cohen's is also a poet, and his song lyrics reach the level of poetry at times. "Suzanne" always intrigued me. It's about someone who is in love with Suzanne. She lives in a house by the sea from which you can see the Statue of Liberty; a lot of what he (I assume it's a guy narrating the song) says about her is enigmatic. They apparently have a live-in relationship. But the lyrics say, "You know that she's half-crazy, and that's why you want to be there." The chorus is enigmatic. It repeats (and is the only rhyming line in the poem), And you want to travel with her and you want to travel blind / And you think that you can trust her, for she's touched your perfect body with her mind.

The guy stays with her for some reason, something she gives him. It has some other lines that are hard to interpret. Here's another stanza of the song. Speaking of Suzanne, it says

… she shows you where to look amid the garbage and the flowers.

There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning.

They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever

While Suzanne holds the mirror.

I puzzled over the lyrics for years. My interpretation is that Suzanne is speaking the two middle lines. In other words, she is indeed "half-crazy," perhaps from drugs. The two lines are her half-crazy talk. But the narrator of the song stays with her for some reason. I think—again, my interpretation—that he too is so burned-out, disillusioned about life, and so rootless that he finds something appealing in Suzanne's insanity.

So the story: Sossity Chandler is filming a video beside the Ohio River. She stays behind to enjoy some privacy, goes for a walk, and runs into a girl who recognizes her and says she's a fan of her music. Sossity accepts an invitation to go into her riverside cabin. The girl has a guitar and requests a song. Sossity plays her first hit and most popular song, "Cloud Shadows." The girl, named Deidre, says she listened to her music. The song "Cloud Shadows," she says, always sends her messages and helps her read what is written in the clouds.

At that moment, her boyfriend appears. He and Sossity talk in private. He informs her that Deidre is recovering from a breakdown due to hallucinogenic drugs. She is improving, he says, noting that a year ago she was "stark, raving mad." Sossity sympathizes. When they go back inside, Deidre is painting. She is an artist of considerable skill. Sossity talks with her, says she likes her art (which is indeed remarkable) and says she would like to see her again. She feels a pang of guilt then:

Sossity felt disgusted by her words and the patronizing tone of her voice, which sounded like how she would speak to a small child. Deidra Bennett was a woman and human being, not someone to whom you must speak in slow, deliberate phrases so she could understand. “I like it a lot. Your art is beautiful. So are you. Can I come back and see you sometime?”

Consulting more with her boyfriend, she promises to get them tickets to a small concert she is doing in Philadelphia in a few months, Deidre cannot handle big crowds, her boyfriend says, but a small venue would be fine. It would help her get more in contact with the exterior world. She asks Alan, her boyfriend, what he does for a living. He replies: I take care of her. I had a job in marketing for a firm in Philly. After I met her, I left to live here. It’s a better deal than what I had. And, of course, I love her. 

The content of Cohen's song is repeated and done as a variation in my story.

Sossity leaves. Once again, her status of a celebrity singer has brought her in contact with the truths of human existence—with the drama that plays out over the word all the time but of which we witness so very little.

The story appeared in Foliate Oak. You can read it here.

For additional titles, see my Writer's Page.

I would love to hear your comments.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #107: Magic and Mayhem: "Leviticus."

Saint Augustine

I don't write a lot of horror, and I've explained why elsewhere, though I can give a capsulized version of why here. I don't believe evil is ultimate. The old teachings of theologians like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, which I encountered in younger days, proposed that evil has no ontology; that is, it has no real standing in the universe but is a twisting and perverting of something else, something that has a legitimate place in the scheme of things. The Seventeenth-Century poet Robert Herrick put it this way:  "Evil no nature hath; the loss of good / Is that which gives to sin its livelihood." Evil is not a thing to itself but rather another thing modified and stripped of its good, used for a purpose other than its original purpose.

Most horror writing sees evil as ultimate. My story "Leviticus" combined these ideas.

Marcie has been dumped by her boyfriend. The girl he left her for, Eloise, taunts and mocks her. She wants revenge but is not so foolish as to try to harm the girl. Her sister tells her "Maybe you ought to talk to Leviticus." Leviticus was a girl in her school who practiced magic. Marcie remembers that some people who claimed to practice magic or be in league with evil power, but Leviticus was a legitimate, bona fide practitioner. Her lifestyle made people either scornful or afraid of her. Marcie befriended her, though she never asked, in all their years in school together, for Leviticus (whose real name is Carol-Lynn) to do magic for her. She arranges to meet her old high school friend.

Leviticus

She is surprised to see that Leviticus no longer dresses in black, like in the old days. She also runs a boutique Marcie has shopped at. But she does do magic. When Marcie tells her what she wants, Leviticus begins to question her motivations. Not liking her moralistic tone, Marcie stomps out of their meeting and goes to the library. Leviticus appears there and warns her against getting a book of spells and trying to do magic herself. "Not a good idea—kind of like trying to teach yourself to use a nuclear reactor," her old friend tells her. Leviticus agrees to help her.

The plan involves sending a monster to kill Eloise—though Leviticus makes it clear that she cannot kill anyone. Marcie remembers a time when a football player who circulated rumors that Leviticus had gone down for the whole team suddenly died. She clarifies: “I didn’t kill him. I simply opened the door to justice. Through his desire to hurt, he had weakened his resistance to the forces of evil who always want to destroy us but are held back by certain forces from doing so. He was vulnerable. When I do that kind of magic, I only weaken the protection people like him have. The results can vary.” She promises to send a monster after Eloise. But Marcie will have to participate in the project.

rakshasha

Leviticus says she will send a rakshasha, a demon from Hindu lore. Marcie must stand in a magic circle and be careful because the rakshasha is violent and will try to kill her if it can. She successfully sends the creature to get Eloise, but then complications set in. Two hours pass. She must relieve herself. Finally, when things get unbearable, she reaches outside the circle, retrieves a decorative jar she has filled with marbles, pours them on the floor, and uses the it as a receptacle. When the rakshasa returns, however, it attacks, choking and biting her. The creatures are venomous. Marcie sees that the marbles from the container have rolled to a low spot on the floor and covered up part of the magic circle. The poison from the rakshasha begins to work. She kicks the marbles away, reforming the magical protection and driving off the demonic creature. But the damage is done. Darkness closes over Marcie's eyes and she reflects on the irony that last thing she sees is a container sitting on the stairs full of her own urine.

She wakes up in the hospital. Leviticus is there with her. She was able to rescue Marcie and counteract the poison. Leviticus also informs her the creature debilitated Eloise and then slowly tortured her death. Marcie feels satisfaction that she has her revenge. But she also realizes that she should have made the focus of it her boyfriend, not Eloise. Leviticus asks if she wants to learn magic—a thing she had offered to Marcie in their school days but Marcie had declined. Now she agrees. She wants to learn to magic to get back at her boyfriend. She will become an apprentice. Leviticus will be her teacher.

The story appeared in the UK publication Sanitarium. You can get a copy of it here.

For additional titles, see my Writer's Page.

I would love to hear your comments.

Happy reading.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #106: Revising Myth: "The Sleeping Beauty.

Princess Aurora, the Sleeping Beauty in the Disney film

Revising fairy tales is a major movement in writing these days. Some of it comes from feminism. The lilting, passive princesses of the old tales, and their Disney counterparts in the cartoon adaptations of them are now fierce warrior women. Simpering characters like Snow White, who dreams about her Prince showing up someday now leads an army in an attack on her evil stepmother's castle. And some of the revisions of fairy tales come from unanswered questions. How did all the evil queens and stepmothers get to be evil? What were the lives of the Seven Dwarfs before Snow White showed up and after she left? What kind of Queen did Cinderella make once she married the Prince and took up her rule of her kingdom? These sorts of questions brought about the concept for my story, "The Sleeping Beauty."

Snow White leads an attack in Mirror, Mirror

That is a familiar fairy tale and one that was made into a popular cartoon by Disney Enterprises. The point I used for the construction of the tale was that the King decreed that no one in the kingdom could own a spinning wheeling under pain of death. A little harsh, in opinion. I mean, maybe smash the spinning wheel, fine the person or give them ninety days in jail, but don’t kill them. And in my story, they had extended the prohibition. Anyone who brought a needle or any other kind of sharp sewing implement near the Princess died. The main character of my story, Whitney, works as a seamstress in the palace (and also as a whore, a thing that is the usual secondary occupation for commoner women who work there). In a hurry to finish sewing some garments, she sticks a needle in sleeve of her dress, something she does to save time while sewing, and hurries to see Princess Aurora. The Queen sees the needle and sentences her to be hanged. As the guards carry her away, the King intervenes, saying that since she knew the decree and disobeyed, she must be a traitor who meant to harm the Princess. He orders the guards to give her a traitor's death.

Punishment for treason in the ancient kingdoms was to be hanged not to death but to semi-consciousness and then to be disemboweled (if you saw the film Braveheart, this is what is done to Wallace). Whitney is taken to a dungeon cell to await her fate. A man comes in, whispers that he will save her, and tells her he will have to act like he is raping her, which was the only way he could get into her cell. She begs and pleads as he makes loves to her. After he leaves, she is led to the gallows. He is the executioner.

He manages to fake her death through an elaborate ruse. After she is hanged, he puts a bag of cow intestines beside her and appears to pull them out of her. He takes her body to a small village where his wife and many other families live. They treat Whitney for hypothermia and for the damage to her neck and shoulders from the hanging. When she recovers, she learns that the executioner's wife, Tamsin, is the witch Maleficent and has repudiated magic. She also learns that the curse on Princess Aurora is not a curse but a blessing to keep the Princess from becoming as evil and corrupt as her parents. Tamsin enlists Whitney to help the curse that is a blessing take effect.

By Tamsin's magic, she is transported to the castle. She tells the Princess what is going to happen. Aurora is defensive but then admits that she knows of the evil her parents have fallen to and willingly pricks her finger on a spinner wheel Tamsin has magically supplied. Whitney also serves as conduit for eight serving women who were killed by the King and Queen for bringing sewing implements close to the Princess. The women, in the form of superhuman ghouls, kill the King and his guards; the Queen leaps from a window to her death to avoid them. Knowing justice is done, they transform from ghouls to angelic-appearing being and disappear.

An underground insurgency that had been waiting for the proper moment arises gains control of the kingdom. The people support them and they prove just and benevolent rulers. They place Aurora in a sleeping chamber to await the kiss of a prince, which happens six years later. Aurora offers Whitney a place in the palace, but she declines the offer and returns to Tamsin's village, marries, and chooses a quiet life. Aurora and her husband rule their kingdom justly. So, I guess you could say everyone lived happily ever after.

The story appeared in a print journal, Mystic Signals, Issue #24,and is available. Get a copy here.

For more titles, see my Writer's Page.

To read a revised story from the New Testament, get a copy of The Prophetess. A young girl is possessed by a spirit and is a prophetess. How did she become possessed? What was the dynamic of her ability to tell fortunes? And how is she finally freed?

I would love to hear your comments.

Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer, #105. Ferity and Civilization. "The Feral Girl."

Ancient statue of Romulus and Remus nursing

Stories of feral human beings—human beings who grow up without the amenities of civilization or even of human care—are something we have always found fascinating. The Romans had, as a founding myth, the story of Romulus and Remus, two baby boys who were abandoned in the woods and raised by a she-wolf. They grew up fierce as wolves, and Romulus went on to found the city of Rome, which had as its symbol, a wolf. Millennia later, Tarzan, raised by apes, would become a well-known figure in fantasy culture. And on occasion, stories of children raised by animals crop up—some dubious but some apparently confirmed.

In "The Feral Girl," I exploited the old idea of children taken from civilization and becoming wild once more. The influences were many. I had written and published a story some called "Ferity," in a now-defunct magazine, Earthspeak. In that tale, a highly successful CEO spends time in a friend's cabin out in the wilderness and experiences a certain amount of ferity, which in this story is simply feeling close to nature and to natural rhythms and currents. She returns to her job more in touch with her primal instincts, more able to function effectively in the wilderness of the corporate world. This story shared some of that idea, but it dealt with a child, not an adult. I had listened to a book on tape called Outposts by British author Simon Winchester, famous for his books Krakatoa and The Professor and the Madman.

Outposts was about the remnants of the once vast British Empire. Remarkably, there still is a British Empire, but it mostly consists of small islands in remote places around the world. Winchester visits and writes on these sites. In one part of the book, he sails in a yacht to some remote islands in the Indian ocean; one, Diego Garcia, that was seized by the British. The British built a joint monitoring base there with the Americans and evicted the local population. Winchester sails there, his boat is impounded, and he has various run-ins with bureaucrats and military personnel before finally being towed out of the area and told not to return.

Island in the Chagos Archipelago

In "The Feral Girl," the main character, Geoffrey, is sailing with his girlfriend, Edith. They stop at one of the islands in the Chagos Archipelago, near Diego Garcia, knowing they are in a restricted area. Geoffrey paints and the two of them enjoy the unspoiled environment. Soon, however, they realize they are not alone. They find droppings that look human and eventually see a child, naked, furtive, and elusive, near them. Thinking she might have survived a ship wreck and is traumatized, but not wanting to call the British authorities because they are there illegally, they make a successful attempt to befriend the girl, who eventually allows them to feed and clothe her. She is particularly attracted to Edith, the basic need of a child (she looks about eight) being the love and care of a mother.

The girl, whose name is Sophia, eventually trust them and opens up to them. She begins to talk and tell her story. They learn her family was sailing about the area. Her father, she says, was "making a movie" the island. She survived (none of the others on the boat did) and, they later found out, had lived alone on the island for fourteen months. Edith, who in her teen years had gotten pregnant and given her child up for adoption, bonds with Sophia. As they expected, the British navy does show up, recognizes the girl and are astonished, and tow them to the main base on Diego Garcia.

US/British base at Diego Garcia

There they learn more.  The film father had been making a film was critical of the British government and their deportation of the native population from the islands. Their boat was caught in a storm and all of them perished save the girl, who had survived on the island. She has relatives, Geoffrey and Edith are told, who are flying out to take the girl with them.

Edith thinks of Sophia in terms of the child she bore and has never seen (she will not be allowed to contact the child for another eight years). She knows, of course, that seeing Sophia as a surrogate for the child she lost will not work. Still, her pain is apparent to Geoffrey. They meet the parents. The father is a Member of Parliament, so they know it would be pointless to make a claim of custody. The family, though, seem to be decent, compassionate people and Geoffrey realizes it would be wrong to show them rudeness or contest their claim on Edith. After a meeting, Sophia leaves. Geoffrey and Edith are escorted out of the territorial waters of the Chagos Archipelago and told not to return.

They sail off, hoping the best for Sophia. Edith aches for her loss of long ago. The sea around them quiet and stretching out in all directions.

The story was published in an online journal called The Feathered Flounder. I can now find no record of it. I wrote a blog on the story, "Ferity." Read it here, You might be able to order a copy of "Ferity" here. The link works but I'm not sure if the offer is still active.

For more titles, see my Writer's Page.

Some great summer reading would include The Sorceress of Time. A warrior princess is fighting a battle with treacherous invaders and with her own fear and uncertainty. She will find the key to the future--and to her doubts--when she visits the past.

I would love to hear your comments.

Happy reading.