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Importance of Imagination

Importance of Imagination
J.K. Rowling Speaks @ Harvard
Commencement June 2008
Post Created by Jk the secret keeper
Created June 7th 2013
Posted June 9th 2013 J.K. Rowling, author of the best-selling Harry Potter book series, delivers her Commencement Address, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination…”

“I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today.”

It is Rowling’s gift to draw universal life lessons from her own discoveries—of personal failure “on an epic scale,” and, from a day job at Amnesty International, “evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power.” And yet, “I also learned more about human goodness…than I had ever known before.” Of those who “prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all,” who “choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience,” Rowling said, “I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do.…I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters.”

Quoting Plutarch, she said, “What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.” In a final challenge, the 42-year-old Rowling—seeming too young and too slight for the weight of her words—told the graduates, “If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”

In honoring Rowling for igniting in millions the passion to read, Harvard discovered that it had also welcomed a teacher beyond compare.

So follows the video of the J.K. Rowlings Harvard Commencement Speech from June 2008 followed by the text of the speech.

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement 2008

Text of Commencement Speech June 2008

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These may seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that would never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension. I know that the irony strikes with the force of a cartoon anvil, now.

So they hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above the price of rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

So given a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to speak against their governments. Visitors to our offices included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had left behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, people who have been kind enough not to sue me when I took their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

I wish you all very good lives. Thank you very much.

A Conversation with J.K. Rowling and Daniel Radcliffe

The Women of Harry Potter (Talking to J.K. Rowling)QUOTATIONS on FAILURE/IMAGINATION:

“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”— Plutarch

“If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.” — J.K. Rowling

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning.” ― Gloria Steinem

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” ― Sylvia Plath

“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” ― Maya Angelou

Meryl Streep Talks From Serious to Funny

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Meryl Streep Talks From Serious to Funny
Barnard 2010 Commencement Speaker and More
Post Created June 6th 2013
Created by Jk the secret keeper
Posted June 7th 2013I seem to be having an addiction growing toward listening to great commencement speeches. It is that time of the year. Who better to listen to than Meryl Streep with her list of films and the number of nominations for an Academy Award for Best Actress. I’ve followed her ever since I saw her in the Wendy Wasserstein play: Uncommon Women. She was brilliant and our baby cat is named after one of my favorite characters from it: Carter. She was the super-intelligent, outstanding and just the kind of weird I love and Meryl’s character was the self assured, beautiful, intelligent, you wished to be gay, character. She moved me in that role and I have been a follower and fan ever since. Of course when she was the run-away mother in Kramer vs Kramer, you hated her and you wanted her to go away. The same, when she played a bigot in the film “Julia” with Jane Fonda. But then came The Deer Hunter and her career just kept getting better and growing bigger and larger from that point on. Her speech follows on video after poster and the transcript follows after the video. I have also added a 4 parts video of Meryl Streep as a guest on Inside the Actors Studio. All four are very funny and worth the listen. It is a younger Meryl but quite brilliant with her humour. Following those is a video with Meryl’s many voices and saved for last, Nora Ephron paying a very humourous tribute to Meryl. Do ENJOY! Jk the secret keeper

this is your time by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 2013

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Meryl Streep, Barnard Commencement Speaker 2010, Columbia University

Tips and Inspiration for Achieving Success

Thank you, all. Thank you, President Spar, Ms. Golden, President Tilghman, Members of the Board of Trustees, distinguished faculty, proud swelling parents and family, and gorgeous class of 2010. If you are all really, really lucky, and if you continue to work super hard, and you remember your thank you notes and everybody’s name; and you follow through on every task that’s asked of you and also somehow anticipate problems before they even arise and you somehow sidestep disaster and score big. If you get great scores on your LSATS, or MSATS, or ERSATS or whatever. And you get into your dream grad school or internship which leads to a super job with a paycheck commensurate with responsibilities of leadership or if you somehow get that documentary on a shoe-string budget and it gets accepted at Sundance and maybe it wins Sundance and then you go on to be nominated for an Oscar and then you win the Oscar. Or if that money-making website that you designed with your friends somehow suddenly attracts investors and advertisers and becomes the go-to site for whatever it is you’re selling, blogging, sharing, or net-casting and success shinning, hoped-for but never really anticipated success comes your way I guarantee you someone you know or love come to you and say, “Will you address the graduates at my college?” And you’ll say “Yeah sure, when is it? May 2010? 2010? Yeah sure, that’s months away and then the nightmare begins. The nightmare we’ve all had and I assure you, you’ll continue to have even after graduation, 40 years after graduation. About a week before the due date, you wake up in the middle of the night, “Huh, I have a paper due and I haven’t done the reading, Oh my god!”

If you have been touched by the success fairy, people think you know why. People think success breeds enlightenment and you are duty bound to spread it around like manure, fertilize those young minds, let them in on the secret, what is it that you know that no one else knows, the self examination begins, one looks inward, one opens an interior door. Cobwebs, black, the lights bulbs burned out, the airless dank refrigerator of an insanely over-scheduled, unexamined life that usually just gets take-out. Where is my writer friend, Anna Quindlen when I need her? On another book tour.

Hello I’m Meryl Streep, and today, Class of 2010 and I am really, I am very honored, and humbled to be asked to pass on tips and inspiration to you for achieving success in this next part of your lives. President Spar, when I consider the other distinguished medal recipients and venerable Board of Trustees, the many accomplished faculty and family members, people who’ve actually done things, produced things, while I have pretended to do things, I can think about 3,800 people who should have been on this list before me and you know since my success has depended wholly on putting things over on people. So I’m not sure parents think I’m that great a role model anyway.

I am however an expert in pretending to be an expert in various areas, so just randomly like everything else in this speech, I am or I was an expert in kissing on stage and on screen. How did I prepare for this? Well most of my preparation took place in my suburban high school or rather behind my suburban high school in New Jersey. One is obliged to do great deal of kissing in my line of work. Air kissing, ass-kissing, kissing up and of course actual kissing, much like hookers, actors have to do it with people we may not like or even know. We may have to do it with friends, which, believe it or not is particularly awkward, for people of my generation, it’s awkward.

My other areas of faux expertise, river rafting, miming the effects of radiation poisoning, knowing which shoes go with which bag, coffee plantation, Turkish, Polish, German, French, Italian, that’s Iowa-Italian from the bridges of Madison county, bit of the Bronx, Aramaic, Yiddish, Irish clog dancing, cooking, singing, riding horses, knitting, playing the violin, and simulating steamy sexual encounters, these are some of the areas in which, I have pretended quite proficiently to be successful, or the other way around. As have many women here, I’m sure.

Women, I feel I can say this authoritatively, especially at Barnard where they can’t hear us, what am I talking about? They professionally can’t hear us. Women are better at acting than men. Why? Because we have to be, if successfully convincing someone bigger than you are of something he doesn’t know is a survival skill, this is how women have survived through the millennia. Pretending is not just play. Pretending is imagined possibility. Pretending or acting is a very valuable life skill and we all do it. All the time, we don’t want to be caught doing it but nevertheless it’s part of the adaptations of our species, we change who we are to fit the exigencies of our time, and not just strategically, or to our own advantage, sometimes sympathetically, without our even knowing it for the betterment of the whole group.

I remember very clearly my own first conscious attempt at acting. I was six placing my mother’s half slip over my head in preparation to play the Virgin Mary in our living room. As I swaddled my Betsy Wetsy doll I felt quieted, holy, actually, and my transfigured face and very changed demeanor captured on super-8 by my dad pulled my little brother Harry to play Joseph and Dana too, a barnyard animal, into the trance. They were actually pulled into this nativity scene by the intensity of my focus. In my usual technique for getting them to do what I want, yelling at them would never ever have achieved and I learned something on that day.

Later when I was nine, I remember taking my mother’s eyebrow pencil and carefully drawing lines all over my face, replicating the wrinkles that I had memorized on the face of my grandmother whom I adored and made my mother take my picture and I look at it now and of course, I look like myself now and my grandmother then. But I do really remember in my bones, how it was possible on that day to feel her age. I stooped, I felt weighted down but cheerful, you know I felt like her.

Empathy is at the heart of the actor’s art. And in high school, another form of acting took hold of me. I wanted to learn how to be appealing. So I studied the character I imagined I wanted to be that of the generically pretty high school girl. I researched her deeply, that is to say shallowly, in Vogue, in Seventeen, and in Mademoiselle Magazines. I tried to imitate her hair, her lipstick, her lashes, the clothes of the lithesome, beautiful and generically appealing high school girls that I saw in those pages. I ate an apple a day, period. I peroxided my hair, ironed it straight. I demanded brand name clothes, my mother shut me down on that one. But I did, I worked harder on this characterization really than anyone I think I’ve ever done since. I worked on my giggle, I lightened it. Because I like it when it went, kind of “ehuh” and the end, “eheeh” “ehaeaahaha” because I thought it sounded child like, and cute. This was all about appealing to boys and at the same time being accepted by the girls, a very tricky negotiation.

Often success in one area precludes succeeding in the other. And along with all my other exterior choices, I worked on my, what actors call, my interior adjustment. I adjusted my natural temperament which tends to be slightly bossy, a little opinionated, loud, a little loud, full of pronouncements and high spirits, and I willfully cultivated softness, agreeableness, a breezy, natural sort of sweetness, even shyness if you will, which was very, very, very effective on the boys. But the girls didn’t buy it. They didn’t like me; they sniffed it out, the acting. And they were probably right, but I was committed, this was absolutely not a cynical exercise, this was a vestigial survival courtship skill I was developing. And I reached a point senior year, when my adjustment felt like me, I had actually convinced myself that I was this person and she, me, pretty, talented, but not stuck-up. You know, a girl who laughed a lot at every stupid thing every boy said and who lowered her eyes at the right moment and deferred, who learned to defer when the boys took over the conversation, I really remember this so clearly and I could tell it was working, I was much less annoying to the guys than I had been, they liked me better and I like that, this was conscious but it was at the same time motivated and fully-felt this was real, real acting.

I got to Vassar which 43 years ago was a single-sex institution, like all the colleges in what they call the Seven Sisters, the female Ivy League and I made some quick but lifelong and challenging friends. And with their help outside of any competition for boys my brain woke up. I got up and I got outside myself and I found myself again. I didn’t have to pretend, I could be goofy, vehement, aggressive, and slovenly and open and funny and tough and my friends let me. I didn’t wash my hair for three weeks once. They accepted me like the Velveteen Rabbit. I became real instead of an imagined stuffed bunny but I stockpiled that character from high school and I breathed life into her again some years later as Linda in the “Deer Hunter.” There is probably not one of you graduates who has ever seen this film but the “Deer Hunter” it won best picture in 1978 Robert De Niro, Chris Walken, not funny at all. And I played Linda, a small town girl in a working class background, a lovely, quiet, hapless girl, who waited for the boy she loved to come back from the war in Vietnam. Often men my age, President Clinton, by the way, when I met him said, “Men my age, mention that character as their favorite of all the women I’ve played.” And I have my own secret understanding of why that is and it confirms every decision I made in high school. This is not to denigrate that girl by the way or the men who are drawn to her in anyway because she’s still part of me and I’m part of her. She wasn’t acting but she was just behaving in a way that cowed girls, submissive girls, beaten up girls with very few ways out have behaved forever and still do in many worlds. Now, in a measure of how much the world has changed the character most men mention as their favorite is, Miranda Priestly.

Now as a measure of how the world has changed. The character most men mention as their favorite. Miranda Priestly. The beleaguered totalitarian at the head of Runway magazine in Devil Wears Prada. To my mind this represents such an optimistic shift. They relate to Miranda. They wanted to date Linda. They felt sorry for Linda but they feel like Miranda. They can relate to her issues, the high standards she sets for herself and others. The thanklessness of the leadership position. The “Nobody understands me” thing. The loneliness. They stand outside one character and they pity her and they kind of fall in love with her but they look through the eyes of this other character. This is a huge deal because as people in the movie business know the absolute hardest thing in the whole world is to persuade a straight male audience to identify with a woman protagonist to feel themselves embodied by her. This more than any other factor explains why we get the movies we get and the paucity of the roles where women drive the film. It’s much easier for the female audience because we were all grown up brought up identifying with male characters from Shakespeare to Salinger. We have less trouble following Hamlet’s dilemma viscerally or Romeo’s or Tybalt or Huck Finn or Peter Pan — I remember holding that sword up to Hook — I felt like him. But it is much much much harder for heterosexual boys to identify with Juliet or Desdemona, Wendy in Peter Pan or Joe in Little Women or the Little Mermaid or Pocohontas. why I don’t know, but it just is. There has always been a resistance to imaginatively assume a persona, if that persona is a she. But things are changing now and it’s in your generation we’re seeing this. Men are adapting… about time…they are adapting consciously and also without consciously and without realizing it for the better of the whole group. They are changing their deepest prejudices to regard as normal the things that their fathers would have found very very difficult and their grandfathers would have abhorred and the door to this emotional shift is empathy. As Jung said, emotion is the chief source of becoming conscious. There can be no transforming of lightness into dark of apathy into movement without emotion. Or as Leonard Cohen says pay attention to the cracks because that’s where the light gets in. You, young women of Barnard have not had to squeeze yourself into the corset of being cute or to muffle your opinions but you haven’t left campus yet. I’m just kidding. What you have had is the privilege of a very specific education. You are people who may able to draw on a completely different perspective to imagine a different possibility than women and men who went to coed schools.

How this difference is going to serve you it’s hard to quantify now, it may take you forty years like it did me to analyze your advantage. But today is about looking forward into a world where so-called women’s issues, human issues of gender inequality lie at the crux of global problems from poverty to the AIDS crisis to the rise in violent fundamentalist juntas, human trafficking and human rights abuses and you’re going to have the opportunity and the obligation, by virtue of your providence, to speed progress in all those areas. And this is a place where the need is very great, the news is too. This is your time and it feels normal to you but really there is no normal. There’s only change, and resistance to it and then more change.

Never before in the history or country have most of the advanced degrees been awarded to women but now they are. Since the dawn of man, it’s hardly more than 100 years since we were even allowed into these buildings except to clean them but soon most of law and medical degrees will probably also go to women. Around the world, poor women now own property who used to be property and according to Economist magazine, for the last two decades, the increase of female employment in the rich world has been the main driving force of growth. Those women have contributed more to global GDP growth than have either new technology or the new giants India or china. Cracks in the ceiling, cracks in the door, cracks in the Court and on the Senate floor.

You know, I gave a speech at Vassar 27 years ago. It was a really big hit. Everyone loved it, really. Tom Brokaw said it was the very best commencement speech he had ever heard and of course I believed this. And it was much easier to construct than this one. It came out pretty easily because back then I knew so much. I was a new mother, I had two academy awards and it was all coming together so nicely. I was smart and I understood boiler plate and what sounded good and because I had been on the squad in high school, earnest full-throated cheerleading was my specialty so that’s what I did but now, I feel like I know about 1/16th of what that young woman knew. Things don’t seem as certain today. Now I’m 60, I have four adult children who are all facing the same challenges you are. I’m more sanguine about all the things that I still don’t know and I’m still curious about.

What I do know about success, fame, celebrity that would fill another speech. How it separates you from your friends, from reality, from proportion. Your own sweet anonymity, a treasure you don’t even know you have until it’s gone. How it makes things tough for your family and whether being famous matters one bit, in the end, in the whole flux of time. I know I was invited here because of that. How famous I am. I how many awards I’ve won and while I am I am overweeningly proud of the work that, believe me, I did not do on my own. I can assure that awards have very little bearing on my own personal happiness. My own sense of well-being and purpose in the world. That comes from studying the world feelingly, with empathy in my work. It comes from staying alert and alive and involved in the lives of the people that I love and the people in the wider world who need my help. No matter what you see me or hear me saying when I’m on your TV holding a statuette spewing, that’s acting.

Being a celebrity has taught me to hide but being an actor has opened my soul.

Being here today has forced me to look around inside there for something useful that I can share with you and I’m really grateful you gave me the chance.

You know you don’t have to be famous. You just have to make your mother and father proud of you and you already have. Bravo to you. Congratulations.

Barnard College
May 16, 2010

Inside the Actors Studio — Meryl Streep Pt. 1

Inside the Actors Studio — Meryl Streep Pt. 2

Inside the Actors Studio — Meryl Streep Pt. 3

Inside the Actors Studio — Meryl Streep Pt. 4

The Many Voices of Meryl Streep

Nora Ephron Highly Recommends Having Meryl Streep Play You
QUOTATIONS on RAISE INSPIRATION:

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.” ― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections

“I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.” ― Edgar Allan Poe

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.” ― Vincent van Gogh

Letters of Import: Last Time This Year 12

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Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
Last Time This Year 12
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Illustrated & abstract digital art by j. kiley
First Published March 19th 2013
Published Early Tuesday AM
Twelfth Posted June 4th 2013
Tuesday, December 18th 2007

Dear Annie,

This week I want to tell you some serious shit about myself. Letting my guard down almost to naked in these revelations. You know more about me in these letters than anyone does so far. And I haven’t even started filling you in on anything that gets close to the deeper meanings in my life.

I have been reading a great deal lately about bipolar disorder. Nobody has come out and told me straight that it is part of what I am dealing with in all my weirdness and bizarre behaviors. But I am not without analyzing the material and figuring out what seems too familiar to my life. I may not see things accurately from the inside but when I see it in Scottie’s eyes and read it in my writing I know without any real reluctance that bipolar visits me on a regular schedule with its major fluctuations.

I have the speed of someone who mainlines coke. Try having a conversation with me when I am not depressed or suicidal. How often does that occur. My wanting to die. Being obsessed in my mind all the time with thinking of ways to cut open my arms and bleeding out. It seems a gruesome way to die but even though blood usually bothers me, in this state of mind it seems the easiest way to slip away into death. Losing consciousness into a slow comatose state. Pain becomes unnoticeable. It really ends the pain. Suicide does. It’s not death I seek. It’s peace. Pain free and finished. No more memories. No more primal screams inside my mind. No emotions. No tears. Stolen. Robbed. Buried deep within my soul so it bears the suffering I should feel. What I feel is lack of feeling anything when I am deeply depressed. Maybe I am wrong about that. Maybe depression is the strongest of feelings. It may be all of them at once. All the negative emotions ripping out my heart at one time.

Who says bipolar isn’t fun. It can take you higher than a kite. Not a drug high, though that is kind of what you feel. But in this instance I am speaking about real flying high in the sky. Soaring. Catching the up draft. Being your own motor and wings. When I write on bipolar, I am hooked up to the muse and she goes fast. She is one blazing force of nature. Hot waves of energy pass through me. All that she wants is to give freely but you need to accept her terms. Simple really: just create until you can’t see the screen of your laptop. All becomes a blur and even then you must keep moving forward until the last ounce of creativity is used up. You will know when. You just stop. There is nothing left but to end it.

I read a book called “Touched With Fire” by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison. She has become my Goddess. Her words speak to my mind like she lives inside of it. Her theory about creativity and divine madness and the artistic temperament all touch my insides like fire has scorched my body with truth. When I was a teenager, I had the strangest idea that I was going crazy. But why would I even think that. What did it feel like to be crazy? I had no idea but somehow I thought I was headed in that direction. It felt like it would be so easy to just lose your mind. It would break away just like that. Well, reading “Touched With Fire” was actually reassuring. Knowing all these famous and creative people who had bipolar and a divine madness, as I have grown to like it referred to. An artistic temperament that made you delusional, but made you one hell of a creative artist. A poet, a musician, a writer, a painter, from Lord Byron to Beethoven, Lincoln to Churchill, Kurt Cobain to Emily Dickinson. People from all professions that contributed great amounts of creative work to charge up the world with gifts unimaginable.

It does make one grandiose at times. Feeling better about yourself. Going on an ego trip one minute and feeling like death is the only answer the next. It destroys your ability to think clearly or tell the difference between reality and delusions that appear so real and believable. It is so destructive and then so creative and productive. Bipolar enables you to produce feats of creation beyond the bounds of most people. You go for hours and days just creating. Your concentration is unbelievable and so crystal clear and focused. Everything keeps pouring out of you.

It’s balancing the mood swings that make it so difficult. I will not take psych meds. They are poison to me. They have fucked up my health. They’ve caused me to faint. I’ve had seizures. My mind gets so dulled out I can’t think clearly or remember anything. It’s fucked up my short term memory so I am lost at recalling anything someone has just told me. Terrible with names I heard a moment ago. I try to say something and if I don’t get it out in that moment, it is gone. Blue what, I ask myself. Why did I say blue and then forget what if anything did it mean? It is frustrating. When I get into conversations with people, I get so excited that I must speak more words in a minute than anyone speaks in an hour. And topics are like butterflies flitting from flower to flower but in a hurricane wind storm.

The divine madness does allow me to be creative. It frees my mind to release control and let ideas and words and images flow through my mind and out onto paper. Thank the goddess I have a computer so I can almost keep up with my thoughts. My hand would break if I had to write as fast as my thoughts pour out of me. The drawback is the pain I feel going from pure elation to feeling terror and depression and the loneliness I feel when all I want to do is die. There is such a hopelessness. I cannot reach out to anyone. What do I say? I am too frightened or introverted to open up about the depth of my darkness. It is an all-consuming dark that takes over. Blinding me to anyone or anything. I have figured out how to work through the suicidal feelings and the depth of the depression that pulls me into the darkest, deepest of holes. I write. I keep writing. Anything that comes into my mind. I have no shame about speaking the truth. There is no honour in silence. The world must know and understand that there are places the mind can take you that do exist but only some can enter.

This is what you would be working with if you ever became my psychoanalyst. You would hear my stories and live through my mind and delusion and irrational thoughts. I have ruined relationships, I am sure because I had no idea the bipolar was causing me to behave in ways that I did not understand. I have hurt my partner because of what I thought I needed. It fucks you up sexually. Being abused when I was a child screwed me up to have sex with anyone but it also set me up to think or believe that is the only way one can relate to another human being. Everything between myself and another person always became sexual. It wasn’t because I wanted sex. It was because that was the way it was supposed to be. So I was taught by my abusers. If you wanted attention, you spent time with them and when they tried to touch you, you tried to stop them but it never worked. If you didn’t want attention they just raped you and molested you. It taught me that was the way life was. Sick. Demented. Perverted. Cold. Damaging. Surreal. Abusive. Everyone abused me except one. She was someone special. Someday I will tell you all about her.

It seems sex is supposed to be one of the addictions that bipolars have. Would I say I was addicted to sex. Yes. Not in the way you think. It was really fucked up for me. Now I don’t want anyone touching me.

If we work together, I hope you can help me with this. I don’t trust anyone but for an unknown reason I am drawn to you and I believe you are the one who can help me. I have gone to so many shrinks. Some I became really attached to. But most of them fucked me up more than I already was. One even thought because I was obsessed with her that I was going to stalk her. She was the one that was crazy not me. I admit I do get obsessed but that is one of my personalities. That therapist knew that. She also knew that she became obsessed when she lost the only one who loved her. That person died suddenly and it crushed her. Shattered her into pieces. Left her feeling abandoned. Nobody to love her. So when anyone shows her any attention she is drawn to them like a magnet. She is so filled with needs. But the others let her have her needs and accept her. That therapist was a fool and really fucked up that alter to the point where she felt so bad about herself that she just wanted to disappear forever. Instead she just felt guilty about everything she felt and she started to feel that if she felt love that she was being bad. What kind of therapist drives a kid to feel that she is bad for feeling love?

These are issues that need to be worked on. It is an enormous job to take on the responsibility of us as a client. Mr. Xxx was a jackass. He had no idea who we were. He drove everyone underground into the darkest hole. We felt depressed all of the time. All we wanted to do was sleep. So that is exactly what we did. Sleep. All day. All night. Get up because Scottie made us feel we needed to wake up. And we felt guilty leaving her alone by herself. Not that we were great company. All we did once we were awake was to watch TV until it was time to go back to bed. The only time we got up during the day was to go to out therapy appointments or to see the doctor. The world was fucked. We were fucked up. We just wanted to block out everything. We didn’t want to feel anything. Whenever we felt anything we just would fuck things up.

Now we actually have a chance to rejoin part of the human race. We may actually get to see you in therapy. Something might actually start to make us feel better. Right now that is the only hope we have. The hope that someday soon we can tell Mr. Xxx to go fuck himself. With great pleasure I would look forward to that moment. To really, actually, in a state of reality, I would be able to utter those words. “GO FUCK YOURSELF. IT IS OVER. I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN.” Exit stage left. Here it comes, the final curtain call with Mr. Xxx. The forceful and intentional slamming of his office door so hard that the reverberations would be felt all the way to the door of my home and Scottie would hear and applaud. That is the day I am waiting ever so patiently for. Do I have the guts to do that? You had better prepare yourself to wear headphones at that very moment. Be sure it will happen. Exactly when, is still to be determined. As a child I was a famous door slammer. I slammed my bedroom door so hard, so many times, that the last time I did it, it fell off its’ hinges and crashed to the floor. The truth. May the goddess strike me with lightning if I am telling a lie. Oh, by the way, I do not lie. I tell the truth. I am too honest for anyone to believe.

So there you have some of it. Do you still have the courage to take me on as your client? The last length of time that it took to write this letter has left me with a blank in my mind as to what exactly I shared with you in the words I wrote. And whether I have the courage to read this over is, at this very moment, an uncertainty. I may just take my chances that you will be able to accept my honesty and to get past it and accept the conditions of my paying you, or rather, my insurance paying you to hire you as my soon to be next psychoanalyst. I do hope this deal goes into effect in as short a time as possible. The waiting and anticipation is, pardon the expression, killing me, literally killing me. I have so little time left to deal with where I am now. I am in desperate need to change the conditions of my life and to rid myself of someone I need to be gone from my consciousness and I need you to help me do it.

I am not an extremely confident person at the moment. Do not let the bipolar or stronger personalities fool you. We are very afraid of change. We fear leaving our home to go anywhere. And now we have finally gotten to a place where it actually might happen. That we will in the real world, fire our psychotherapist, better recognized by the name Mr. Xxx, for all his perversely sick sense of humour and his tasteless innuendos of a sexual nature and the endless telling of his self-promoting and unwanted sharing of his personal life during my therapy time when we are supposed to be working on getting me into a better state of being. And added onto that, his egotistical need to be the smartest person in the room. It is sickening and I really want to see it come to an, unknowing on his part, ending and before the next full moon rising. That gives us some time but not more than I will manage to live through.

This has been exhausting but worth letting go of some truths. I am trying to be open with you and writing these letters is great practice for when the real therapy sessions actually happen in my waking life. You sitting across from me and my either lying down on the couch or sitting up facing you. I don’t know how traditional you will want to play it. We will see. Soon. Please make it soon.

Until next time, I hope things have progressed.

Regards,
Madison This note is to assure the strictest of confidence.

To Annie,

At this moment I am not trying to be a coward, but I feel if I hold back now or never send this to you, then I am freeing myself up to write whatever I wish without need of censorship. Maybe someday, when I am feeling more familiar with just who you are and what you might mean to me, this parameter will be altered and a copy of this and future letters will be relayed to you. For now I want to maintain secrecy, to protect you, Annie, and to protect myself from over testing the boundaries between us and to record the development of our relationship.

I want Annie Haskell to trust me. I want you to know I am trying to protect you and also myself from any humiliation. Writing to you in this way frees up my words as I speak them onto the page. Some future date, if I feel trusting enough, I will release to you what I have written in honesty. Right now, I will keep my words confidential. On my honour, no others shall see these pages, I promise you that.

Regards,
Madison Taylor

Annie Haskell --- Madison Tayler's Psychoanalyst's Office

Madison Tayler’s Fantasy of Annie Haskell’s Office as a Psychoanalyst. Not real.

Maksim — Somewhere In Time — Theme Song #1 For “Letters of Import”This is the poem I would like to include in this letter. I like to leave a poem if I find one that I would like to share with you. Since I am not even sure if I am going to give these letters to you, I felt it is okay if I include a poem in these letters. And if some day, I change my mind and I hand my building collection of letters to you, then I will likely evaluate all that I have written to determine if all of the content feels acceptable to me to share openly with you. I may feel too shy to be so vulnerable. We will proceed as we have for now and see this as a way of recording the experience of getting to know you and in turn get to know how this all effects me as I record this experience in writing.Don’t Lock Me Up
By Madison Taylor
December 16th 2007

Don’t lock me up
Don’t make me sleep
Losing consciousness
Loses part of me
Holding on awake
Needing senses sharp
Safety’s what I seek
Don’t want nightmares
Living inside of me
Roaming my sleep
Dead wanting me
If I’m awake
There’s no way out
To follow me
If I let go
Give in to them
Let sleep take hold
They’ll find me easy
Trap me, bind me
They’ll never ever
Let me go.

the labyrinth called “wandering wonderland.” it is where madison, scottie and their cats loves to escape to

madison’s “woods of imagination” where she takes long walks to reflect. it is starts just past the labyrinth

LE CHATEAU DE ROCHER

le chateau de rocher is the home of madison and scottie & their three cats sparky toker & patrick

glass enclosed pool le chateau de rocher

madison’s study/library

scottie’s study library

QUOTATIONS from: LETTERS of IMPORT: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst

“A Dream

The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares”
— Madison Taylor

“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander”

“A therapeutic relationship is often more psycho-emotionally intimate than a marriage, or a romantic attachment. I know things about my patients that they would never dream of revealing to their spouses or families. Why is that? One word — trust. If you do not have a connection with a therapist, you cannot trust them. If you do not have trust, you will not expose yourself, and if you do not expose your innermost being, what good is the therapy?” — unknown but ask any great therapist

“Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence…whether much that is glorious–whether all that is profound–does not spring from disease of thought…” — Edgar Allan PoeQUOTATIONS on BIPOLAR:

“Others imply that they know what it is like to be depressed because they have gone through a divorce, lost a job, or broken up with someone. But these experiences carry with them feelings. Depression, instead, is flat, hollow, and unendurable. It is also tiresome. People cannot abide being around you when you are depressed. They might think that they ought to, and they might even try, but you know and they know that you are tedious beyond belief: you are irritable and paranoid and humorless and lifeless and critical and demanding and no reassurance is ever enough. You’re frightened, and you’re frightening, and you’re “not at all like yourself but will be soon,” but you know you won’t.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“There is a particular kind of pain, elation, loneliness, and terror involved in this kind of madness. When you’re high it’s tremendous. The ideas and feelings are fast and frequent like shooting stars, and you follow them until you find better and brighter ones. Shyness goes, the right words and gestures are suddenly there, the power to captivate others a felt certainty. There are interests found in uninteresting people. Sensuality is pervasive and the desire to seduce and be seduced irresistible. Feelings of ease, intensity, power, well-being, financial omnipotence, and euphoria pervade one’s marrow. But, somewhere, this changes. The fast ideas are far too fast, and there are far too many; overwhelming confusion replaces clarity. Memory goes. Humor and absorption on friends’ faces are replaced by fear and concern. Everything previously moving with the grain is now against– you are irritable, angry, frightened, uncontrollable, and enmeshed totally in the blackest caves of the mind. You never knew those caves were there. It will never end, for madness carves its own reality.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“I compare myself with my former self, not with others. Not only that, I tend to compare my current self with the best I have been, which is when I have been mildly manic. When I am my present “normal” self, I am far removed from when I have been my liveliest, most productive, most intense, most outgoing and effervescent. In sort, for myself, I am a hard act to follow.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Manic-depression distorts moods and thoughts, incites dreadful behaviors, destroys the basis of rational thought, and too often erodes the desire and will to live. It is an illness that is biological in its origins, yet one that feels psychological in the experience of it, an illness that is unique in conferring advantage and pleasure, yet one that brings in its wake almost unendurable suffering and, not infrequently, suicide.” ― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Bipolar robs you of that which is you. It can take from you the very core of your being and replace it with something that is completely opposite of who and what you truly are. Because my bipolar went untreated for so long, I spent many years looking in the mirror and seeing a person I did not recognize or understand. Not only did bipolar rob me of my sanity, but it robbed me of my ability to see beyond the space it dictated me to look. I no longer could tell reality from fantasy, and I walked in a world no longer my own.” ― Alyssa Reyans, Letters from a Bipolar Mother

“Depression is a painfully slow, crashing death. Mania is the other extreme, a wild roller coaster run off its tracks, an eight ball of coke cut with speed. It’s fun and it’s frightening as hell. Some patients – bipolar type I – experience both extremes; other – bipolar type II – suffer depression almost exclusively. But the “mixed state,” the mercurial churning of both high and low, is the most dangerous, the most deadly. Suicide too often results from the impulsive nature and physical speed of psychotic mania coupled with depression’s paranoid self-loathing.” ― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family

“Compared to bipolar’s magic, reality seems a raw deal. It’s not just the boredom that makes recovery so difficult, it’s the slow dawning pain that comes with sanity – the realization of illnesss, the humiliating scenes, the blown money and friendships and confidence. Depression seems almost inevitable. The pendulum swings back from transcendence in shards, a bloody, dangerous mess. Crazy high is better than crazy low. So we gamble, dump the pills, and stick it to the control freaks and doctors. They don’t understand, we say. They just don’t get it. They’ll never be artists.” ― David Lovelace, Scattershot: My Bipolar Family

“Absurdity and anti—absurdity are the two poles of creative energy.” ― Karl Lagerfeld

“Except you cannot outrun insanity, anymore than you can outrun your own shadow.” ― Alyssa Reyans, Letters from a Bipolar Mother

“Imagining…is better than remembering something”

1 Reply

“Imagining…is better than remembering something”
POST CREATED BY JENNIFER KILEY
ILLUSTRATED by j. kiley
Created May 23rd 2013
Posted May 24th 2013

garp book cover

“Imagining something is better than remembering something.” — John Irving

garp and helen outside house predisastered

“Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day: what you make to eat.” — Garp, “The World According to Garp”

“Oh FUCK the longings and agonies of youth.” – T.S Garp

garp and helen on bleechers

Q: What is your thoughts on the future of books? asking John Irving

“If you are careful,’ Garp wrote, ‘if you use good ingredients, and you don’t take any shortcuts, then you can usually cook something very good. Sometimes it is the only worthwhile product you can salvage from a day; what you make to eat. With writing, I find, you can have all the right ingredients, give plenty of time and care, and still get nothing. Also true of love. Cooking, therefore, can keep a person who tries hard, sane.”

“You know, everybody dies. My parents died. Your father died. Everybody dies. I’m going to die too. So will you. The thing is, to have a life before we die. It can be a real adventure having a life.” — John Irving; The World According To Garp

jenny with young garp

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP — FILM TRAILER

glenn close as jenny fields in “the world according to garp”

“A part of adolescence is feeling that there’s no one else around who’s enough like yourself to understand you.” — T.S. Garp, The World According to Garp

dean of garp's school has head injury. jenny is telling him about how she conceived garp. he is shocked. 642x366

dean of garp’s school has head injury. jenny is telling him about how she conceived garp. he is shocked. his verbal response, being in a state of shock, “you raped a dying man!” now you will have to read the book or see film to find out why this is so hysterically funny.

Between Helen and Garp, the Under Toad became their code phrase for anxiety. Long after the monster was clarified for Walt (‘Undertow, dummy, not Under Toad!’ Duncan had howled), Garp and Helen evoked the beast as a way of referring to their own sense of danger. When the traffic was heavy, when the road was icy – when depression had moved in overnight – they said to each other, ‘The Under Toad is strong today’.

‘Remember’, Duncan asked on the plane, ‘how Walt asked if it was green or brown?’

Both Garp and Duncan laughed. But it was neither green nor brown, Garp thought. It was me. It was Helen. It was the color of bad weather. It was the size of an automobile.” — John Irving in The World According to Garp

helen at gym watching wrestling practice

John Irving – 2009 National Book Festival

The World According To Garp
The Hotel New Hampshire
The Cider House Rules
A Prayer From Owen Meanie
In Own Person
Last Night In Twisted River

“You only grow by coming to the end of something and by beginning something else.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

The amazing John Lithgow as Roberta Muldoon in “The World According to Garp,” a film based on John Irving’s novel of the same name. The 1982 movie includes John Lithgow as a transsexual ex-football player, Robin Williams as the writer T. S. Garp, and Glenn Close as Garp’s mother. Lithgow’s heartfelt performance won him an Academy Award nomination! The trailer from YouTube.

garp with roberta muldoon former football player on nfl now jenny’s bodyguard

“Imagining something is better than remembering something.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

“Perhaps in every writer’s life there needs to be that moment when some other writer is attacked as unworthy of the job.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

“Don Whitcomb would remember that Garp told him what the act of starting a novel felt like. ‘It’s like trying to make the dead come alive,’ he said. ‘No, no, that’s not right – it’s more like trying to keep everyone alive, forever. Even the ones who must die in the end. They’re the most important to keep alive.’ Finally, Garp said it in a way that seemed to please him. ‘A novelist is a doctor who sees only terminal cases,’ Garp said.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

John Irving At Home Excerpt From: The World According To Garp:

Before we go to the story of the under toad I would like to quote one of my favorite lines from the book and the film. Garp says it to his son, Duncan, who is inside a baby carriage at the time. “Don’t be a baby Duncan, say ‘Da-Da.’ This line makes me laugh every time I hear it. Now to the Under Toad.

The Under Toad Is Strong Today

It was Walt’s fourth summer at Dog’s Head Harbor, Duncan remembered, when Garp and Helen and Duncan observed Walt watching the sea. He stood ankle-deep in the foam from the surf and peered into the waves, without taking a step, for the longest time. The family went down to the water’s edge to have a word with him.

“What are you doing, Walt?” Helen asked.

“What are you looking for, dummy?” Duncan asked him.

“I’m trying to see the Under Toad,” Walt said.

“The what?” said Garp.

“The Under Toad,” Walt said. ” I’m trying to see it. How big is it?”

And Garp and Helen and Duncan held their breath; they realized that all these years Walt had been dreading a giant toad, lurking offshore, waiting to suck him under and drag him out to sea. The terrible Under Toad.

Garp tried to imagine it with him. Would it ever surface? Did it ever float? Or was it always down under, slimy and bloated and ever-watchful for ankles its coated tongue could snare? The vile Under Toad.

Between Helen and Garp, the Under Toad became their code phrase for anxiety. Long after the monster was clarified for Walt ( “Undertow, dummy, not Under Toad!” Duncan had howled), Garp and Helen evoked the beast as a way of referring to their own sense of danger. When the traffic was heavy, when the road was icy – when depression had moved in overnight – they said to each other, “The Under Toad is strong today.”

“Remember,” Duncan asked on the plane, “how Walt asked if it was green or brown?”

Both Garp and Duncan laughed. But it was neither green nor brown, Garp thought. It was me. It was Helen. It was the color of bad weather. It was the size of an automobile.

(Excerpt from The World According to Garp by John Irving)

garp and helen in bed pre-cheating maybe

“‘Death, it seems,’ Garp wrote, ‘does not like to wait until we are prepared for it. Death is indulgent and enjoys, when it can, a flair for the dramatic.’” — John Irving; The World According to Garp (1978)

The World According to Garp by John Irving

The World According to Garp is a comic and compassionate coming-of-age novel that established John Irving as one of the most imaginative writers of his generation. A worldwide bestseller since its publication in 1978, Irving’s classic is filled with stories inside stories about the life and times of T. S. Garp, novelist and bastard son of Jenny Fields—a feminist leader ahead of her time. Beyond that, The World According to Garp virtually defies synopsis.

John IRVING on InnerVIEWS with Ernie Manouse
“Another thing I noticed while rereading was how clear Irving’s writing is, sentence by sentence. Critics don’t give Irving much credit for his prose style, maybe because his zany plots and characters overshadow it. (Or maybe it’s his enthusiastic use of italics and exclamation points.) But I was impressed by how gracefully he writes, even when he’s being “unsubtle.” There is a transparency to his exposition that is not easy to achieve, but Irving does nothing to draw attention to his effort. In contemporary fiction, this lack of preciousness is rare. Irving’s style has only become simpler over the years. It’s almost as if he decided to keep his prose straightforward so that his plotting could become more elaborate.” — Hannah Gersen, ”Collision Courses and Castration Anxiety: Rereading John Irving.”

helen in black could be when she is telling student she has to end their affair

roberta hugging jenny

garp reading mom’s jenny fields book

“Jenny had read enough stories to know that hers didn’t sound like the good stories in her memory. She wondered what could be wrong, and she frequently sent Garp on errands to the few bookstores that sold books in English. She wanted to look more closely at how books began; she had quickly produced over three hundred typed pages, yet she felt that her book never really started.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

The World According to Garp (John Irving 1978)

This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields—a feminist leader ahead of her times. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes—even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with “lunacy and sorrow”; yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust. In more than thirty languages, in more than forty countries—with more than ten million copies in print—this novel provides almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line: “In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”

garp in drag at his mom’s memorial service. no men allowed.

“A few windows are open, a few refrigerators are humming. There is the faint, trapped warble from some televisions tuned in to The Late Show, and the blue-gray glow from the picture tubes throbs from a few of the houses. To Garp this glow looks like cancer, insidious and numbing, putting his world to sleep. Maybe television causes cancer, Garp thinks; but his real irritation is a writer’s irritation: he knows that wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn’t reading.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

garp with roberta at jenny’s memorial

“Imagining something better than remembering something.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

“He wrote once that a novel was ‘only a place for storage – of all the meaningful things that a novelist isn’t able to use in his life.’” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

garp in bed depressed

John Irving talks sex, social misfits, and writing

Why do you keep returning to the politics of sexual identity in your work?

When I finished “The World According to Garp” in 1978, I was naïve enough to think that I will never write about this subject again; that our intolerance of our own sexual differences will surely go away, and that Garp will be seen someday as a relic of the post-sexual-liberation days, when men and women still literally were killing one another. In that book, a man is killed by a woman who hates men. His mother is murdered by a man who hates women. It’s a kind of dual sexual-assassination story, a cynical way of saying: well you think there was a sexual revolution, how come men and women hate each other?

But there isn’t anything that extreme in your latest novel.

True, but it’s still the same damn subject. It’s still about our obstinate intolerance to sexual differences. It explores our lingering suspicion, distrust, dislike, and non-acceptance of our sexual identities.JOHN IRVING’S novel, “In One Person”, is narrated by Billy Abbot, a bisexual author, who recalls coming of age in a small New England town in the 1950s. As a thoughtful, tormented teenager, Billy takes a fancy to various people, such as his stepfather, his friend’s mother, the captain of the school wrestling team, and the local librarian, Miss Frost (who reveals to Billy an important secret about her own identity). The mood of the latter half of the book darkens when Billy moves to New York in the 1980s and witnesses the tragic fallout of the AIDS epidemic.

Mr Irving published his debut novel “Setting Free the Bears” in 1968. But it was “The World According to Garp”, his fourth book, which made him an internationally renowned bestselling author. Four of his books have been adapted for the screen, including “The Cider House Rules”, for which Mr Irving won an Academy Award for the adapted screenplay in 2000In a conversation with The Economist, Mr Irving talks about discovering his own sexual identity as a teenager, how Ronald Reagan ignored the AIDS epidemic, and why he always champions the outsider in his novels.

What interested you in giving a voice to a bisexual male in this novel?

I think there is often a “what if” proposition that gets me thinking about all my novels. I find my way into a lot of characters by thinking ‘what would that be like?’ The character of the sexual misfit—someone out of step with what society’s expectations of sexual relationships are—is very familiar to me.

Did you ever think you might be bisexual?

Growing up in the ’50s and ’60s, I spent more time imagining sex than actually having it. There was a period in that time where I was frightened of half of my sexual fantasises. I was attracted to my friend’s mothers, and I did have an occasional crush on a boy in the wrestling team. [But] I liked girls in my life, and it proceeded in a normal, unchallenged course.

Why do you keep returning to the politics of sexual identity in your work?

But there isn’t anything that extreme in your latest novel.

Do you represent outsiders and social misfits because mainstream culture fails to? Or do they simply have more nuances as characters?

Both. It’s not very interesting to establish sympathy for people who on the surface are instantly sympathetic. I guess I’m always attracted to people who, if their lives were headlines in a newspaper, you might not be very sympathetic about them.

Did having an absent father growing up help you to fictionalise him in your novels?

That’s a great way to put it. I use to tease my mother when I decided that I wanted to be a writer, and say: well if you don’t tell me things about who my dad was, I’m going to just make things up. I wouldn’t say this made me a writer. But it was constructive as a teenager to be left to my imagination about who this guy was.

What influence did Dickens have on you?

“Great Expectations” was an important novel in my adolescence. It was very much one of those emblematic novels that made me wish I could write like that. It helped that my models as a writer were dead over a hundred years before I began to write. They were safe people to imitate. There was no way I could sound like Dickens or Hardy if I tried.

What writers from New England influenced your work?

Melville made a huge impact on me. Reading him encouraged me to write about what I most feared, or what I hope never happens to me or anyone I love. I think in every novel of mine there is cloud which you, the reader, knows is coming. Well that comes from Melville.

“In One Person” describes the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. What’s your opinion of how the Reagan administration responded to the crises?

For seven out of eight years of his presidency, Regan did not utter the name of the disease. What is even more incriminating is that it’s hard to imagine that we ever had a president—or will ever have again—who personally knew as many gay guys as he did. He was in the movie business for Christ’s sake. The attitude was: it’s only drug addicts and gay guys who are getting this disease. That wasn’t just said among heartless homophobes, it was actually said by people who were in Reagan’s administration, while Reagan maintained a silence.

Did you have many friends who died of AIDS?

Yes. I was living in New York in the 80s, and as a straight guy I had many gay friends, but I also had friends that I subsequently found out were gay, because they were dying. Similarly, parents found out about their children being gay, because they were dying from AIDS.

When you finished writing “The Cider House Rules” in 1985, were you hopeful that attitudes to abortion rights in the United States would change?

No. I thought this is going to get worse. That minority of people who hate abortion rights, they will always hate it. It’s no surprise that most people in the United States who oppose abortion rights also oppose gay rights too. It’s coming from an element of sexual disapproval. Their attitude is, I don’t like this, therefore it shouldn’t be allowed. It’s what I call in America, the old prohibition instinct: you don’t like drinking, nobody should do it, you don’t like abortion, no one should have one.

What do you rate as the most technically important aspect to your novels?

I think my approach with writing toward a pre-existing ending, knowing what a story is before I begin the first chapter.

Are you referring to your method of writing the last line of the novel first?

Sometimes it can be the last line, maybe the last few paragraphs, or even the last couple of pages. I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin.

This is the life and times of T. S. Garp, the bastard son of Jenny Fields, a feminist leader ahead of her time. This is the life and death of a famous mother and her almost-famous son; theirs is a world of sexual extremes, even of sexual assassinations. It is a novel rich with lunacy and sorrow, yet the dark, violent events of the story do not undermine a comedy both ribald and robust. In more than thirty languages, in more than forty countries–with more than ten million copies in print–this novel provides almost cheerful, even hilarious evidence of its famous last line: “In the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases.”

garp quote: “we are all terminal cases” over jenny fields nurse’s uniform

How I’d sell The World According to Garp in a few sentences

It is a gripping book that connects you to every character in the story. In the end, it manages to encompass and successfully interweave themes that are central to the politics and societal issues of both the old and modern worlds and it explores paradigms of feminism and sexual roles in a concentrated manner.

Read it.

Be advised, though. This book is not for those who are prone to lightheartedness at the mention of bodily limbs gone awry/gone, period.

For those of you who would rather watch a story play out on the big screen, there’s a 1982 film based off the book starring Robin Williams as T.S. Garp, the namesake of the novel, and Glenn Close as his mother, Jenny Fields.

“They were involved in that awkward procedure of getting to unknow each other.” — John Irving

“Life is an X-rated soap opera.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

QUOTATIONS by JOHN IRVING:

“…but writers, Garp knew, were just observers – good and ruthless imitators of human behavior” — John Irving from The World According to Garp. (I can’t stress how important this quotation is to me. J.I.)

garp says: i’ll stay up and think weird thoughts for awhile

“Not only were certain types of arrogance tolerated by the society of the Steering School, certain kinds were encouraged; but acceptable arrogance was a matter of taste and style. What you were arrogant about had to appear worthy- of higher purpose- and the manner in which you were arrogant was supposed to be charming.” — John Irving, The World According To Garp u

“Crazy people made him crazy. It was as if he personally resented them giving into madness – in part, because he so frequently labored to behave sanely. When some people gave up the labor of sanity, or failed at it, Garp suspected them of not trying hard enough. ” — John Irving

“I feel like Irving has a sense of reality that is so spot on, despite the fact that his subject matter feels almost fantastical. How he manages to meld these opposing qualities in such an imaginative way is just beyond my understanding, but man does it make for good reading.”– Unknown

“She felt if she ever had children she would love them no less when they were twenty than when they were two; they might need you more at twenty, she thought. What do you really need when you’re two? In the hospital, the babies were the easiest patients. The older they got, the more they needed; and the less anyone wanted or loved them.” — John Irving (The World According to Garp)

“If you don’t feel that you are possibly on the edge of humiliating yourself, of losing control of the whole thing, then probably what you are doing isn’t very vital” -John Irving

“In this dirty minded world you are either somebody’s wife or somebody’s whore—or fast on your way to becoming one or the other. I wanted a job and I wanted to live alone. That made me a sexual suspect. Then I wanted a baby, but I didn’t want to have to share my body or my life to have one. That made me a sexual suspect too.” — John Irving, The World According to Garp

“There are always suicides among people who are unable to say what they mean.” — John Irving

“As for Jenny, she felt that women—just like men—should at least be able to make conscious decisions about the course of their lives; if that made her a feminist, she said, then she guessed she was one.” — Jenny Fields (The World According To Garp)

“Garp has to die; it’s what the book is about, a double assassination of a mother and her son. More to the point: a woman who is killed by a woman-hating man and a man who is killed by a woman who hates men.” — John Irving, on the end of The World According to Garp.

“It is only the vividness of memory that keeps the dead alive forever; a writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as our personal memories.” — John Irving (The World According to Garp)

“I may have written this novel twenty years ago, but I go back there almost every day—back to those fears. Even the smallest detail of The World According to Garp is an expression of fear; even the curious pockmark on the face of the Viennese prostitute—it is also an expression of that most terrible fear. “The silvery gouge on her forehead was nearly as big as her mouth; her pockmark looked to Garp like a small, open grave.” A child’s grave …

When Garp was published, people who’d lost children wrote to me. “I lost one, too,” they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn’t lost any children. I’m just a father with a good imagination. In my imagination, I lose my children every day. — John Irving

“Garp would say that the autobiographical basis – if there even was one – was the least interesting level on which to read a novel. He would always say that the art of fiction was the act of imagining truly – was, like any art, a process of selection.”– Unknown

“He wrote Helen that a young writer needs desperately to live with someone and he had decided that he wanted to live with her; even marry her, he offered, because sex was simply necessary but it took too much of one’s time if one had to be constantly planning how one was going to get it. Therefore, Garp reasoned, it is better to live with it!
Helen revised several letters before she finally sent him one that said that he could, so to speak, go stick it in his ear. Did he think she was going through college so rigorously so that she could provide him with sex that was not even necessary to plan?” — from Garp — John Irving

“Don’t you want to know how I die?” Garp asked them.
They didn’t say anything.
“I kill myself,” Garp said, pleasantly. “In order to become fully established that seems almost necessary. I mean it, really,” Garp said. “In the present fashion, you’ll agree this is one way of recognizing a writer’s seriousness? Since the art of the writing doesn’t always make the writer’s seriousness apparent, it’s something necessary to reveal the depth of one’s personal anguish by other means. Killing yourself seems to mean that you were serious after all. It’s true,” Garp said, but his sarcasm was unpleasant and Helen sighed; John Wolf stretched again. “And thereafter,” Garp said, “much seriousness is suddenly revealed in the work—where it had escaped notice before.” — From “The World According to Garp,” by John Irving

‎”Your memory is a monster; you forget – it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you – and summons them to your recall with will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!” — John Irving – The World According To Garp

“Human sexuality makes farcical our most serious intentions.” — Garp in The World According to Garp by John Irving

“It is an important distinction to note that she looked not only as if she had taken good care of herself, but that she had good reason to have done so … She looked to be in such total possession of her life that only the most confident men could continue to look at her if she looked back at them. Even in bus stations, she was a woman who was stared at only until she looked back.” — The World According To Garp

“a manner betraying both carelessness and intense perfection” — Unknown

The Mystery of Storytelling

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The Mystery of Storytelling
TED Talk Julian Friedmann @ TEDxEaling
Post written and Created by Jennifer Kiley
Post Created May 20th 2013
Posted May 23rd 2013

The World According to Garp by John Irving

The first book I read of John Irving. It was turned into a film and there is nothing about this book or film that follow the rules of how Americans always get there Happy Endings. It is a brilliant book and a film I wasn’t sure I liked when I first saw it. Reason is that so much was left out from the book. Eventually, though I realized that the film was quite unique on its own. So I love both book and film and we are not talking about sentimental happy endings or all is good and nothing bad ever happens. This has so many surprises. If you haven’t read the book or seen the film I highly recommend both.

I will warn you that this TED Talk starts out rather brutal in talking about the expectations of a screenwriter, in having a script accepted, which I would say could be applied to writers in a general manner. The rejection words are quite a deal more prevalent according to the speaker of this TED Talk. It happens that he is an agent. A very good one after you get past his opening statements. Don’t fall off the mountain until you listen to more of the video. It’s not that he becomes more encouraging but he does have some rather good points to tell writers, screen or otherwise.

He talks a great deal about writers and writing. The thoughts of famous writers come up. What they think is important for a writer to know. Language. Storytelling. Most famous writers will tell you, of course, to write from out of your own experiences. When asked if there is a formula to writing, the answers come back to some of the origins of storytelling. For example: Campfire tales. Some ingredients to storytelling: Pity. Fear. Catharsis. Beethoven’s approach to a happy ending comes up. His theory is: Suffering. Struggle. Overcoming.

I must say that I am only giving you an overall view of what was talked about on this video. Listening to the video will give you a great deal more. So I shall continue.

Why do we need stories? It all started with Cave paintings. One goes out into the woods to kill a wild animal. Prehistoric caves were the first cinema. They rehearse there fear by looking at the cave paintings. The same is true with the audience in today’s theatres. What do we do to the audience to make it so they have experiences?

Now, this next point, I have a friend who will get a laugh out of this one. It seems that American films love to have happy endings. Did I mention the speaker is British? Well, yes he is. He feels that no one can compete with the American film maker. They have more money and bigger stars. That may be so in American and how the world reacts to the US stars but I feel that British and Australia actors, male and female, are much better. More interesting to watch and to listen to. I rather hate it when a Brit is cast in a role and must lose their British accent for the part. I always wish that they would change the character into someone British so that the actor would be able to speak in their normal tongue.

But back to American film makers, they like accessible characters and once again, they like to have sentimental happy endings. One of the parts that take away the anticipation of what kind of ending will happen that will surprise you rather than being able to breath a sigh of relief that all’s well that ends well. I know from sudden shocking experiences from watching British Television shows or Films, main characters die. And you/I am shocked and saddened that a character that I looked forward to seeing again later is now dead or they lose the love of their life. No, so the British do not appease the audience, nor do they hold your hand and say: “Don’t worry, everything is going to be alright. Everything will be perfectly fine.” I mean, just look at Mary Poppins, she always leaves at the end and you really don’t want her to, but she does. Now in the movie, the happy ending is that the family find their way back to each other. How I won’t say, you have to see the film, if you haven’t already.

John Irving on MidMorning

This interview will counter the theory that Americans always write for the Happy Ending. Maybe that is why I fell in love with the first novel I read that John Irving wrote (It wasn’t his 1st Novel by my first one I read of his): “The World According To Garp.” He doesn’t hold back on what happens to his characters. it is a great novel to start with. It will make you a guaranteed fan, unless you’re brain dead. He shows his brilliance as a writer in “GARP.” Every turn of the page a surprise. Quite magical and diverse and he loves BEARS, Gizzlies. {{{Smile}}}

Next issue is Dialogue: American movies have 2/3rds less dialogue. Also, Americans have lower levels of expectation in their educations. Basically, I think he was saying that a great many Americans are rather stupid and often more ignorant, also. He has his point there. A lot of Americans are not that bright. They, also, tend to be dangerous and vote for the wrong people at elections. So, in American films, there is a tendency to tell their stories in a much more visual way. An audience believes what they see. They do not believe what they hear. Scenes are also shorter in American films. They cut off a bit from the beginning and the ending of a scene to make the audience figure out what happens. They want the audience to work for it. It does give them something to do while the film just shows the ridiculous. There is so much garbage produced today. It is quite rare to find the GEM.They do occasionally exist. But it is like what Kurt Cobain says: “I liked it better when I didn’t have money. You’d walk into a shop and find something unique that sets off in your imagination, that you just want to possess that object, but you aren’t sure you can afford it. Then you find out you can but barely. So you buy it, and it becomes the treasure that you so rarely find. Now when you have all the money you have ever needed you lose those moments of discovery. Because you can afford everything and anything you want. Those special moments have been lost forever.”

Well, in the film industry, those moments have mostly been lost forever. The majority of films given the “Green Light” and then made mostly turn out to be crap. That is very disappointing and you are not really sure who you can trust anymore who will be offering you a gem or fake jewelry. You’re on your own. I will never lie here. If I find a film that I find that is fascinating and brilliant, I will be sure to tell you and encourage you to definitely see it. But keep in mind those treasures are becoming more and more difficult to find in the sand. You need more than a metal detector these days.

Next topic comes up around discussing Diana Rigg: Worse reviews ever book. When writing a screenplay or writing anything, there are a lot of rejections. Not only that, but you will be rejected by people who are less talented then you are. He apologizes and asks that “writers please forgive us agents.Remember us when you make it.”

Writers, after they make it, can say: “Only we are the storytellers.” And the writers thinking to themselves: “Very High and Mighty Agents Think That They Have the Power.”

Now if what I have written makes you curious and you’d like to know more, then I would suggest you will enjoy this speaker’s TED Talk on this video on “The Mystery of Storytelling.” I love routing through the TED Talk library to find the gems. This is one of them. And trust me, even in the TED Talks, there are not many that shine, either. “The Mystery of Storytelling ” does and the next one I am going to present does, also. You will like the concept behind that one also. It’s a rather curious subject matter, that causes your mind to ponder and some who I feel who will want the possibility it discusses to have to inside/outside chance of an underlying truth to it.

I’d say that one will be released from “the secret keeper in the next few days. I am the walking wounded and did several work ups on posts before I went in for some surgery. This is the year of the scalpel for me but don’t worry I promised to “POST A POST-A-DAY” and I will. Some of the time I may draw from some of my favorite POSTS, just updated and added onto. Everyone grows in their thinking and hopefully I will as well and be able to add more now from where I was then when one of my ideas became a post in need a growing but it had to have a beginning somewhere. Let’s hope that works. Or maybe I will heal in short spurts and moments when my mind and body work and creativity is alive and well inside of me.

So, press the play button and enjoy this TED Talk on “The Mystery of Storytelling.” Writer or not, everyone usually loves a good story and Julian Friedmann tells a good one on this Video. Hope you can get passed his opening comments, because once done, the video has a great deal to say that is quite brilliant and worth the listen. ENJOY. BE PATIENT AND LET THE FOOTAGE ROLL.

The Mystery of Storytelling: Julian Friedmann at TEDxEaling

The World According To Garp (1982) Scene

John Irving: Advice to Aspiring Novelists: Don’t Shoot Yourself

Big Think Interview with John Irving

QUOTATIONS on STORYTELLING:

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.” ― Philip Pullman

“Every great love starts with a great story…” ― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” ― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind

“There are books full of great writing that don’t have very good stories. Read sometimes for the story… don’t be like the book-snobs who won’t do that. Read sometimes for the words–the language. Don’t be like the play-it-safers who won’t do that. But when you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that book.” ― Stephen King

“Funny how a beautiful song could tell such a sad story” ― Sarah Dessen, Lock and Key

“Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.” ― Willa Cather

“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.” ― Doris Lessing, Under My Skin

“You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone’s soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose. That tale will move them and drive them and who knows that they might do because of it, because of your words. That is your role, your gift.” ― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus [My comment about the book "The Night Circus"---EXCEPTIONAL. Discovered through a "Like" page on FB. Rented through library, then begged for it as a Christmas Present. It is a MAGICAL, MYSTICAL, METAPHYSICAL book, that should be read by all who find the MYSTERIOUS fascinating. It is up there with the EXCEPTIONAL few books that hold you HYPNOTICALLY in the ETHER and will not let you go until the very end. And I am not sure if you are released even then. THE NIGHT CIRCUS is high on my list of originality in storytelling. HIGHLY RECOMMEND. May even have done a review of it after the first time I read it. It was a rush read job b/c I didn't own the book then but did get it as a present. Now I want to read it again. Don't have it on Kindle so it has been hidden due to some rearranging and organizing of my writing space and overhauling it with a new couch for my recoveries. Can't do stairs for awhile. So I get to relax a bit and get to catch up on reading books I've wanted to spend time with and to veg out a bit with old and new films I have wanted to watch.] NEXT!

“No, no! The adventures first, explanations take such a dreadful time.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

“Artists use lies to tell the truth. Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.” ― Alan Moore, V for Vendetta

TIME TO TAKE MY DRUGS TO KNOCK OUT THE PAIN AND MY BRAIN AT THE SAME TIME AND OFF INTO STRUGGLING TO STAY AWAKE OR TO GIVE INTO SLEEP. I AM AFRAID TO SAY THAT THE SLEEP STATE SO FAIR HAS WON OUT ON ME. THE DRUGS THE HOSPITAL AND DOC/SURGEON PRESCRIBED KNOCK ME ON MY ASS. I AM BARELY ABLE TO KEEP MY EYE LIDS FROM STAYING OPEN. I SUPPOSE THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT BUT OH HOW I HATE TO SURRENDER. ENJOY THE VIDEOS. THEY ARE INSIGHTFUL AND SHARE THE INNER WORKINGS OF JOHN IRVING THE AUTHOR/WRITER AND ON THE TED TALK AN AGENT WHO IS HONEST BUT UNFORTUNATELY FINDS US LIVING IN A WORLD WHERE THE IMAGINATION IS NOT HONOURED IN THE MANNER TO WHICH IT IS DUE AND SURFACE CRAP SO FAR FROM BEING CREATIVE IS WHAT WE ARE FINDING IT REPLACED WITH. IT IS THE RUINATION OF THE WORLD OF ART. WE HAVE TO STAY STRONG AND KEEP REMINDING PEOPLE THAT ART IS THE SAVING GRACE OF OUR CIVILIZATION AND IF IT GOES SO GOES CULTURE AND THAT WHICH HOLDS IT TOGETHER. EVER HEARD OF SODOM AND GOMORRAH? WELL, IF YOU HAVEN’T I WOULD LOOK IT UP. WHEN YOU LOSE YOUR CENTER ALL COLLAPSES AROUND YOU. jk the secret keeper By Jennifer Kiley POWER TO THE CREATIVE UNIVERSE/MULTIVERSES. YEAH !

Nora Ephron’s Lessons About Love: Today She Would Be 72

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Nora Ephron’s Lessons About Love:
Things The Legendary Writer And Director Taught Us
Huffington Post Matthew Jacob
Posted May 19th 2013
Post Created by Jk the secret keeper
Posted May 20th 2013

HAPPY BIRTHDAY 72 NORA EPHRON MAY 19th 2013
Today 72 Years Old if she hadn’t died from Leukemia

Sleepless In Seattle Trailer
Had she not died of leukemia last summer, Nora Ephron would have turned 72 today. The universally loved writer, director, producer and HuffPost contributing editor spent nearly 30 years in the thick of the movie industry, becoming synonymous with modern romantic comedy thanks to quirky and immensely successful movies like “When Harry Met Sally…,” “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail.”

Along the way, all disciples of the Ephron bible of love learned a thing or two about modern-day relationships, both romantic and platonic. Ephron advocates hang on to the many saccharine observations about life that poured out of the mouth of Meg Ryan — who starred in four of the 13 movies Ephron directed — or any of the other A-list players who frequented Ephron’s filmography (Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Rita Wilson, Billy Crystal, Steve Martin).

Sleepless In Seattle— Finally Meeting
Nearly a year after her passing, Hollywood and the literary community are still commemorating Ephron’s life. A spate of tributes celebrating the “Julie & Julia” scribe’s life have emerged from the likes of Lena Dunham, Tom Hanks, Mike Nichols and her own son Jacob Bernstein, who recounted her final hours in a touching New York Times Magazine piece.

But amid all the kind words and continued accolades (we haven’t forgotten the three Oscar nominations she received for Best Original Screenplay), what’s most remembered about Ephron are the lessons she bestowed upon us through her characters. With that, we celebrate her 72nd birthday with what we learned about love thanks to the one and only Nora Ephron.

Fake Orgasm Scene in “When Harry Met Sally”
QUOTATIONS: NORA EPHRON

“I love that you get cold when it’s 71 degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend the day with you, I can still smell your perfume on my clothes. And I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.”
Harry Burns (Billy Crystal) in “When Harry Met Sally…”

“Destiny is something we’ve invented because we can’t stand the fact that everything that happens is accidental.”
Annie Reed (Meg Ryan) in “Sleepless in Seattle”

“When you’re attracted to someone, it just means that your subconscious is attracted to their subconscious, subconsciously. So what we think of as fate is just two neuroses knowing that they are a perfect match.”
Dennis Reed (David Hyde Pierce) in “Sleepless in Seattle”

“You gotta learn to laugh — it’s the way to true love.” Michael (John Travolta) in “Michael”

“I’ll have what she is having.” — “When Harry Met Sally”

Tippi Hedren: The Birds-Marnie-Hitchcock-Activism

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Tippi Hedren: The Birds-Marnie-Hitchcock-Activism
By Jennifer Kiley
Written 11.13.12
Reworked May 11th 2013
Posted May 12th 2013

sean connery as mark kissing tippi hedren as marnie

Watched “Marnie” on Saturday for the more than 100th time. It inspired me to pull out this post I starting writing just after I saw made for TV film “The Girl,” about the relationship between Tippi Hedren and Alfred Hitchcock while they made the films “The Birds” and “Marnie.”

Read on and discover Tippi Hedren and if you have never seen the films she made with Hitchcock, I would highly recommend that you either find them on DVD or Blu-Ray or find a site that streams them. They are both fantastic films that will grab a hold of your attention until the last reel finishes rolling. Jk the SK

Sienna Miller plays Tippi Hedren in HBO’s ‘The Girl’

A response to a comment made on my post: “Alfred Hitchcock: Man or Beast.”
Mr. Hitchcock had an obsession with Tippi Hedren and pursued her endlessly and she rebuffed him. He retaliated by the cruelty he showed in his treatment of her during the shooting of the the films “The Birds” and “Marnie.” In “The Birds,” he taped over and over the birds attacking her in the scene in the phone booth, where he even has a fake bird come crashing through the phone booth’s glass walls, purposefully to terrorize.

Her nerves were shot already. This just caused her to be further traumatized. Then to add to this, the scene where Tippi’s character is caught up against the door of a room in the house which the birds have surrounded, she has this scene shot over and over for hours as the birds literally attack her, causing her injuries and to bleed. He refused to yell “cut.”

During the filming of “Marnie,” all along still pursuing her sexually and he felt romantically to her rejection and threatening her when she says that she is going to quit, by telling her he will ruin her in the film industry. He traumatizes her during several of the sexually questionable scenes.

Reputations: Alfred Hitchcock (Episode 2 Hitch: Alfred The Auteur)

Her character in “Marnie” witnesses something traumatizing when she is a child but it is buried. She becomes a kleptomaniac and hates the touch of any man. Sean Connery plays the male lead who finds her character out and convinces her it would be the best thing for her if she marry him.

mark and marnie at recetrack

Of course, this eventually leads to a scene where he cannot hold back any longer from wanting to be sexual with his wife.

This scene Hitchcock plays to the creep in himself and the scene ends up appearing real, if it is not so, that Sean Connery’s character drops her robe to the floor and she is naked. He then forces himself on her. Which, of course, by the next morning, he finds her floating in the ship’s pool face down.

marnie movie poster

The sex scene is created in such a way that leads you to see Hitchcock as a voyeuristic creep who relishes every moment that Tippi Hedren is suffering while doing the scene. Added to the scene is that Hitchcock takes his time before he says “cut” long after it should have been said.

marnie dinner party

This makes me so angry that he treated Tippi in such a manner. He throws himself on her while they are in the limo just before the premiere of “The Birds.” It was quite clear from the start that Tippi Hedren was not interested in Hitchcock in this manner and he kept forcing himself on her and everyone could see it happening including his wife but would do nothing to stop him. He was too powerful.

marnie changing hair colour

I am a fan of Tippi Hedren’s for her portrait of the character of Marnie. I felt a connection with her from the first time I watched this film as a kid. It always captures me. It is a traumatic experience but a release and satisfaction comes from the ending.

I, also, respect Ms. Hedren for her work with animals, wild and tame. This furthers my respect for her. Her advocacy for the humane treatment of animals. My strongest of causes.

I have loved animals for my entire life and could not live without them as companions and in their existence on Earth in the wild preferred but in man made habitats that are humanely structured.

melanie griffith with mom tippi hedren

Her daughter Melanie Griffith stated of the film “Hitchcock,” that she hoped they portrayed him accurately, as the motherfucker that he was.

Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie with Tippi Hedren and Sean Connery

You see why he has lost a great deal of any honour or good feelings that I had for him. He was well known for not having respect for actors and also known for his casting of blonds. I told my partner while watching “The Girl” that he better not have treated Julie Andrews like that when they made “Torn Curtain.”

marnie-tippi with hitchcock

If he tried I am sure that Paul Newman would have punched him out. Paul Newman said of Julie: “That she is the last of the great broads.” Not offensive in the manner to which I am sure he meant it. Jk the secret keeper

The following is a brief biography of Tippi Hedren and hopefully some trailers from her films “The Birds” and “Marnie” for which I felt she should have been honoured by the Academy with no less than an Oscar Nomination. She was brilliant in playing the character of Marnie.

marnie mark trying to kiss her

An excellent performance that I have watched over and over again. My film collection would, of course, have “Marnie” amongst all the other remarkable films made over the years. I am an obsessive cinephile who appreciates films from any era or language.

Marnie — Trailer

Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren—the Kiss in Marnie Marnie — Trailer

Tippi Hedren talks about the kiss scene from Marnie Marnie — Trailer

Date and Place of Birth
19 January 1930
New Ulm, Minnesota, USA

Birth Name
Nathalie Kay Hedren

Height
5′ 5″ (1.65 m)
Biography:

From working for (Best Director) Alfred Hitchcock, to a movie written by (Worst Director) Edward D. Wood Jr., Tippi Hedren, the Minnesota girl of Scandinavian descent, has had a distinctive career. She moved to New York City in 1950 and worked as a fashion model for the next eleven years. In 1952, at age 22, she married 18-year-old Peter Griffith (divorced in 1961). She gave birth to her only child, future star Melanie Griffith, on August 9, 1957.

Alfred Hitchcock discovered Tippi, the pretty cover girl, while viewing a 1962 TV commercial on NBC’s “Today” (1952). He put her under personal contract and cast her in The Birds (1963). pet shop in “the birds” rod taylor and tippi hedren
In a cover article about the movie in Look magazine (Dec. 4, 1962), Hitchcock praised her; he also told the Associated Press: “Tippi Hedren is really remarkable. She’s already reaching the lows and highs of terror”.

the birds rod taylor jessica tandy tippi hedren

Her next film was the title role in Hitchcock’s masterpiece Marnie (1964) with Sean Connery, and she gave the performance of her life.

Though it took years before she won well-deserved admiration for her work, the film is now widely considered a classic. The professional relationship with Hitchcock ended with mutual bitterness and disappointment during the filming of Marnie.

marnie with gun

Movie Legend — Tippi Hedren

That year, she married her then-agent, Noel Marshall (divorced in 1982). She had a cameo in Charles Chaplin’s final film A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), which flopped. Thereafter, Tippi and her husband Marshall collected big cats and other wildlife for the film Roar (1981), which they starred in and produced. The film took 11 years and $17 million to make, but it only made $2 million worldwide. Nevertheless, the film was a turning point in her life; she became actively involved in animal rights, as well as a wide variety of humanitarian and environmental causes. She married her third husband, businessman Luis Barrenecha, in 1985 but divorced him 10 years later. In 2002, she married her fourth husband, veterinarian Martin Dinnes.

Tippi has devoted much time and effort to charitable causes: she is a volunteer International Relief Coordinator for “Food for the Hungry”. She has traveled worldwide to set up relief programs following earthquakes, hurricanes, famine and war, and has received numerous awards for her efforts, including the “Humanitarian Award” presented to her by the Baha’i Faith. As for animal causes, she is founder and President of “The Roar Foundation”. Onscreen, she continues to work frequently in films, theater and TV. She appeared in I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (1998), finally bringing to the big screen the last screenplay written by the late Edward D. Wood Jr. in 1974 (and featuring Wood regulars Vampira and Conrad Brooks, just about the only surviving members of Wood’s stock company).

She also enjoyed playing comedic roles, such as an abortion rights activist in Alexander Payne’s satire Citizen Ruth (1996) and slapping Jude Law in I Heart Huckabees (2004). She was also a cast member of the night-time soap opera “Fashion House” (2006). Tippi’s contributions to world cinema have been honored with Life Achievement awards in France at The Beauvais Film Festival Cinemalia 1994; in Spain, by The Fundacion Municipal De Cine in 1995; and at the Riverside International Film Festival in 2007. In 1999, Tippi was honored as “Woman of Vision” by Women in Film and Video in Washington, D.C., and received the Presidential Medal for her work in film from Hofstra University. She enjoys spending time with her daughter, Melanie Griffith, son-in-law Antonio Banderas, and grandchildren Alexander Bauer, Dakota Johnson, and Stella Banderas. Biography By: kdhaisch@aol.com
Spouse:
Martin Dinnes
(2002 – present)

Luis Barrenecha
(1985 – 1995) (divorced)

Noel Marshall
(27 September 1964 – 1982) (divorced)

Peter Griffith
(1952 – 1961) (divorced) 1 child (Melanie Griffith)
Trade Mark:

Platinum blonde hair
Sparkling green eyes
Voluptuous figure
Deep sultry voice

Tippi Hedren on relationship with Hitchcock

Trivia:

At the end of shooting Mister Kingstreet’s War (1973), she discovered that the big cats used in the production had no place to go and would likely languish in small cages. This prompted her to obtain a parcel of land on her own to establish a home with a natural setting for retired big cats. She named it Shambala and it exists to this day.

Mother of Melanie Griffith.

Presides over The Roar Foundation, an animal preserve outside of Los Angeles.

Director Alfred Hitchcock unsuccessfully pursued a relationship with her during the filming of Marnie (1964).

Is a vegetarian.

She named one of her house cats after Sean Connery, her co-star in Marnie (1964).

Lobbying for passage of Shambala Wild Animal Protection Act.

Participated in panel at University of Illinois on “Hitchcock, Women and Terror”, October 2001.

Her first television commercial was for a cigarette brand in the early 1950s. She learned to smoke for the commercial, because she felt viewers would know if she was faking it. Her smoking habit lasted for 15 years until her daughter, actress Melanie Griffith, then 10 years old, came to her after a school health lecture and begged her to stop.

Received a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7060 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California on January 30, 2003.

Alfred Hitchcock saw her in a 1962 commercial aired during the “Today” (1952) show and cast her in The Birds (1963). In the commercial for a diet drink, she is seen walking down a street and a man whistles at her slim, attractive figure, and she turns her head with an acknowledging smile. In the opening scene of The Birds (1963), the same thing happens as she walks toward the bird shop. This was an inside joke by Hitchcock.

Grandmother of Alexander Bauer, Dakota Johnson, and Stella Banderas.

Mother-in-law of Antonio Banderas. Former mother-in-law of Don Johnson and Steven Bauer.

Operates an exotic animal sanctuary which prompted her testimony in February 2005 in Riverside Superior Court. Hedren made a complaint regarding animal cruelty by a tiger rescuer and was told by U.S. Department of Agriculture that there were not enough inspectors to respond to her complaint. She eventually made room for a lion rather than have it go to the rescuer. She stated she felt like she was walking through a trash dump.

Her store owner father, Bernard, was Swedish and her school teacher mother, Dorathea, was German-Norwegian.

Friend of Linda Blair, Rod Taylor and Diane McBain.

Has a sister named Patty Davis.

She met with Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma Reville for the final time in London, England, in 1966, while she was filming Charles Chaplin’s last film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967). They took her to tea at Claridge’s. The atmosphere was tense because she knew Hitchcock was upset that she had been cast in what was expected to be a big film, and he was unable to hide his bitterness.

Camille Paglia on Women and Magic in Hitchcock BFI

Her performance as Melanie Daniels in The Birds (1963) is ranked #86 on Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.

British neo-progressive band Landmarq have a song titled “Tippi Hedren” on their 1992 album “Solitary Witness”.

Attended Suzanne Pleshette’s funeral in 2008. They starred together in The Birds (1963).

One of her favorite sweet treats is Marnie’s red velvet cake, which she named after her character from the film of the same name Marnie (1964). She graciously provided the recipe for this three-layer cake to a website called high-societea.com, which specializes in articles on tea and accompanying treats.

Requested director Alfred Hitchcock to give her the fur coat that she wore in The Birds (1963), and he graciously gave it to her but charged it to the production company. Eventually, she stopped wearing fur after she became an animal rights activist.

Found it touching when Sean Connery, her leading man from Marnie (1964), said on television that she was underrated while almost everyone in Hollywood was overrated.

Of all her films, Marnie (1964) continues to be her favorite film, because of the complex title character. This is even more telling, considering all the problems that reportedly took place during the filming, which spelled the end of her professional relationship with the film’s director Alfred Hitchcock, as well as the mixed critical reception and the indifferent box office results upon the film’s release.

In most of her films (and in all of her films before 1982 except Tiger by the Tail (1970), her character’s name starts with an M: Melanie Daniels in The Birds (1963), Marnie in Marnie (1964), Martha Mears in A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), Marla Oaks in Satan’s Harvest (1970), Maggie Kingstreet in Mister Kingstreet’s War (1973), Margaret Tenhausen in The Harrad Experiment (1973), Madelaine in Roar (1981), Marcia Stevens in Inevitable Grace (1994), Maylinda Austed in I Woke Up Early the Day I Died (1998), Martha in The Darklings (1999) (TV), Michelle Labner in Searching for Haizmann (2003), Mary in Dark Wolf (2003) (V), Mary Jane in I Heart Huckabees (2004), and Minnie in Dead Write (2007).

Bridget Fonda, who played her daughter in the straight-to-cable film Break Up (1998), gushed to her about how she had watched Marnie (1964) “a million times”.

She was supposed to play the leads in Bedtime Story (1964) (opposite David Niven and Marlon Brando), Mirage (1965) (opposite Gregory Peck and Walter Matthau), and Fahrenheit 451 (1966) (opposite Oskar Werner), but Hitchcock told the directors and producers that she wasn’t available to work with them. Shirley Jones, Diane Baker, and Julie Christie eventually played the parts she was considered for.

Actress Sienna Miller portrayed her in the cable movie “The Girl” (2012), which dealt with Tippi’s three years with Alfred Hitchcock. She told Miller to portray her as strong, since she rejected Hitchcock’s advances, even though it meant the end of her career as a leading lady. She said she was happy with Miller’s portrayal.(View Video of Sienna Miller talking about playing Tippi Hedren in “The Girl”)

Met President John F. Kennedy once when he was on vacation, as she was, in the South of France. Later, she was driving to her horse-riding lesson in preparation for her role in Marnie (1964), when she learned about the President’s assassination. She said that she was “stunned, and very angry,” that the assassination could have happened.

Is a fan of actor Johnny Depp and named one of her house cats after him. Even though, she hasn’t met him, her son-in-law Antonio Banderas acted with him in Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003), and her grand daughter Dakota Johnson appeared in 21 Jump Street (2012), though not in the same scenes as Depp.Personal Quotes

[on Alfred Hitchcock] To be the object of somebody’s obsession is a really awful feeling when you can’t return it.

[on 3/1/05, when asked which is her favorite of the Alfred Hitchcock films she starred in] I think Marnie (1964). They were both so different that it’s kind of hard to figure out which, but The Birds (1963) was sort of a chase. All of the Hitchcock films have a mystery to them and that sort of thing, but the personality of Marnie was so intriguing. She was really – poor Marnie.

My advice to anyone contemplating acting as a profession is to be independently wealthy or have another vocation as a backup. [Melanie Griffith] and [Antonio Banderas] are well set, but most actors make a pittance.

For years, directors and producers came up to me and said they’d wanted me for a role, but [Alfred Hitchcock] wouldn’t allow it. The worst was when I found out that François Truffaut had wanted to cast me. I’d never heard a word about it. That one hurt.

[on being offered the title role in Marnie (1964) by Alfred Hitchcock] I was stunned. I was amazed that he would offer me this incredible role and that he would have that kind of faith in me . . . I thought Marnie was an extremely interesting role to play and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

[on working with Sean Connery, her leading man in Marnie (1964)] He was just fabulous, a consummate actor with a great sense of humor. He was practicing his golf swing all the time – a rather profound golfer. We honored him on June 8, 2006, at the American Film Institute. They asked me to speak about him, which was great fun. It was one of the most wonderful evenings.

It is interesting because some of the critics who really panned [Marnie (1964)] when it came out see it again and it is like they are reviewing an entirely different movie. I think a lot of it was that all those years ago, people were not aware of how a trauma being inflicted upon a child can affect what happens to them as an adult if it isn’t properly dealt with. I think there were multiple reasons why they didn’t like it. For some reason, the painted backdrops really bothered people forty years ago – that was a big deal for some reason with the critics. I kept thinking “So what, it’s a movie!”

[In 2006, when asked whether she can watch The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964) and separate herself from the experience of making them] I can do that now and it is quite a relief, actually. I can look at it and think “She did a good job!” There were years where I would see things and wish I could do them over but now I can just watch them.

They called and asked what I thought about a remake of The Birds (1963) and I thought: ‘Why would you do that? Why?’ I mean, can’t we find new stories, new things to do?

Tippi Hedren – Talks about “The Birds” & Alfred Hitchcock plus other Leading Ladies
When you do a love scene with someone in a movie, you have cameras and lights surrounding you. It’s not very romantic, especially considering what I was going through. A lot of people have asked me whether or not I had a fling with Sean Connery during the filming of Marnie (1964), and the answer is no. Marnie was so frigid and cold that she screamed when a man came near her. If I had strong feelings for him in real life, it would have shown through my eyes in the film. I was too dedicated to acting. So, no, I don’t really know what it’s like to kiss Sean Connery.

Tippi Hedren: Hitchcock Ruined My Career | HPL

Salary:

The Birds (1963)
$500 per week

Marnie (1964)
$600/per week

BFI Tippi Hedren in Conversation
An extremely moving conversation, especially when she described her being stalked by Alfred Hitchcock.

Tippi Hedren battles for lions, tigers, against Hitchcock and circus. Oh, my! Interview (AUDIO) For all Animal Activists this Interview with Tippi Hedren is highly enlightening.
QUOTATIONS on OBSESSION:

“Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession, friendship is never anything but sharing.” ― Elie Wiesel

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it. Those who do not do it, think of it as a cousin of stamp collecting, a sister of the trophy cabinet, bastard of a sound bank account and a weak mind.” ― Jeanette Winterson

“I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.” ― Margaret Atwood

“Don’t be self-conscious, if I could dream at all, it would be about you. And I’m not ashamed of it.” ― Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

“They do not love that do not show their love. The course of true love never did run smooth. Love is a familiar. Love is a devil. There is no evil angel but Love.” ― William Shakespeare

“I have little left in myself — I must have you. The world may laugh — may call me absurd, selfish — but it does not signify. My very soul demands you: it will be satisfied, or it will take deadly vengeance on its frame.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“If you ever looked at me once with what I know is in you, I would be your slave.” ― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“May she wake in torment!” he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. “Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there—not in heaven—not perished—where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer—I repeat it till my tongue stiffens—Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you—haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” ― Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“All extremes of feeling are allied with madness.” ― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

“The first time I saw you, my heart fell. The second time I saw you, my heart fell. The third time fourth time fifth time and every time since, my heart has fallen.
I stared at her.
You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Your hair, your eyes, your lips, your body that you haven’t grown into, the way you walk, smile, laugh, the way your cheeks drop when you’re mad or upset, the way you drag your feet when you’re tired. Every single thing about you is beautiful.
I stared at her.
When I see you the World stops. It stops and all that exists for me is you and my eyes staring at you. There’s nothing else. No noise, no other people, no thoughts or worries, no yesterday, no tomorrow. The World just stops and it is a beautiful place and there is only you. Just you, and my eyes staring at you.
I stared.
When you’re gone, the World starts again, and I don’t like it as much. I can live in it, but I don’t like it. I just walk around in it and wait to see you again and wait for it to stop again. I love it when it stops. It’s the best fucking thing I’ve ever known or ever felt, the best thing, and that, beautiful Girl, is why I stare at you.” ― James Frey, A Million Little Pieces

“I love the ground under his feet, and the air over his head, and everything he touches and every word he says. I love all his looks, and all his actions and him entirely and all together.” ― Emily Brontë

“I desire to be with you. I miss you. I feel lonely when I can’t see you. I am obsessed with you, fascinated by you, infatuated with you. I hunger for your taste, your smell, the feel of your soul touching mine.” ― Jack Llawayllynn, Indulgence

“This connection we have isn’t going away, it’s only getting stronger. Because the more I spend time with her, the closer I want to be.” ― Simone Elkeles, Perfect Chemistry

“Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there.” ― Jeanette Winterson, The Passion

“I wanted to see you again, touch you, know who you were, see if I would find you identical with the ideal image of you which had remained with me and perhaps shatter my dream with the aid of reality. -Claude Frollo ” ― Victor Hugo, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame

“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.” ― Claude Monet

“It’s not like love at first sight, really. It’s more like… gravity moves. When you see her, suddenly it’s not the earth holding you here anymore. She does. And nothing matters more than her. And you would do anything for her, be anything for her… You become whatever she needs you to be, whether that’s a protector, or a lover, or a friend, or a brother.” ― Stephenie Meyer, Eclipse

“I vow I am, and always will be, constant and faithful in my love for you, Anais. Nothing you or anyone else does shall alter these feelings. I am forever loving, forever waiting, forever yearning…forever yours.” ― Charlotte Featherstone, Addicted

“To have the beginning of a truly great story, you need to have a character you’re completely and utterly obsessed with. Without obsession, to the point of a maddening addiction,there’s no point to continue. ” ― Jennifer Salaiz

Why Lists Appeal To Us ?

3 Replies

Why Lists Appeal To Us
Inspired by Susan Sontag
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Created May Day 05.01.13
Posted 05.02.13

Quite Busy — abstract digital art

WHY LISTS APPEAL TO US

Whenever I am online and come across the top (fill in with random number) list, I cannot resist finding out who or what made that list. I am, especially, interested in lists that would contain films, books, actors, food, who died and how, famous scandals, famous or infamous murders. I am sure there are many other curiosities I’d want to add to this list.

Umberto Eco stated: “The list is the origin of culture.” It is a currency of culture, unfortunately, also.

Susan Sontag had the clout. When she made a list it meant something because she was somebody. I think to our own self our lists would mean something. It would record our opinion for this period of time what we lied or disliked. It would also be a fun game to play with friends or friendly acquaintances. We could make our list fun. Make up our own. Do some research and find out interesting details and make lists out of them. That is what I am going to try to do with this post. Make a fun group of lists. Adding some illustrations. Make it a fun and possibly inspiring post that might set off the spirit in you, the reader, and possibly fellow artist, to make your own lists.

Oh, and I just want to make it clear this has nothing to do with making lists of things to do for chores. I, personally, hate to do those lists. If I need to absolutely have a number of things that need doing, I will tell Shawn, my partner, and hope she will remember. With my writing I make outlines for a screenplay. For a post for my blog, I will set up a new edit page and copy & paste the beginnings of the post and add to it as I build to prepare post. For writing a poem, if it is for an X-treme Haiku poem, I collect and research the words and definitions I might want to use. First though I choose the main word. The center of the poem from which I am to build the complete structure. In a technical way, these are a kind of list but in this post I really am thinking more in the line of specific likes and dislikes and lists of the top ten or twenty of something specifically related. Enough of that as an explanation.

A list is like an unordered stream of consciousness of likes and dislikes flowing from ones mind like a meditation forming it self into a creative poetic form.

THESE ARE NOT NECESSARILY IN THE ORDER OF REFERENCE BUT JUST HAPPEN TO BE IN THE ORDER OF HOW MY MIND DELIVERED THEM TO MY BRAIN:

Things I Like: cats, techno gadgets, sound of the ocean, love, lily, metaphysical books, metaphysical passionate poetry, writing, writing love poems, great poems, e.e. cummings, dreams, white horse in dreams, philosophy, psychology, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, editing manuscript, rewriting manuscript, illustrating manuscript’s rewrites, posting on the secret keeper, love reading great poems & books by Niamh Clune, living with Shawn, our family of animals, saki our amazon parrot, my body naked, reading, water, streams, rivers, lakes, coke(drinking kind), mescaline, mysteries, British TV, marijuana, panthers, wild cats, horses, massages, being warm, music, having money to help other people, swimming pools, horseback riding, walks on the beach, classic films, understanding, wisdom, knowledge, libraries, lesbians, gay people, psychotherapist, friends, emails, lottery, winning lottery, fantasies, day dreaming, great/good dreams, angels, black, white, rainbows, good crying, feeling good, delicious food, freshly baked bread, chocolate, eclairs, coconuts, orange juice, music mp3, great documentaries, dvds, dvrs, laptop computers, tablets, cell phones, text messages,

Things I Dislike: spiders, snakes, lizards, republicans, tea party jackasses, nightmares, clutter, pain, site of blood, animals bites, parrot bites, liars, interloper, covet, floods, feeling cold, mean people, classism, 1%, car accidents, awful music, loud noises, pain in back, pain in whole body, starvation, droughts, hungry children, homelessness, bugs except fireflies butterflies and lady bugs, demons, black magic, curses, evil, guns, killing, bombs, hatred, pedophiles, spanking children,

Things I Like: furry animals, great films, great actors, smoking good weed, high naturally, good hypomania, tablet, sleep when ready, being awake, working on creative projects, ear buds with music at the other end, great art, abstract digital art, Jackson Pollock dropping phase, Walkman, comedy, plays, theatre, good erotica, women with character, hugging the right person, British accent(the one Henry Higgins taught Eliza Doolittle, Julie Andrews, Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe, Maggie Smith, British Actors, Nicole Kidman, Virginia Woolf, Veggie Cheeseburgers, rain, sound of rain, laughing, truth, honesty, peace, writing screenplays, film making, creating abstract digital art, making collages, making posters, using my laptop, creating stories, writing books, writing poetry, writing letters to those I love, making my friends smile, creating blog posts, swearing when necessary, tickling, blueberry pie, cupcakes with white frosting, my niece Christa, my great nephew Luke, my brother AL, Carl G. Jung, playwrights, screenplays, short stories, reading about psychology, being on the internet, skyping with someone I care about, chatting online, posting my poems, creating ideas for blog, working on posts for blog, getting high naturally, hypomania when in control, trusting, trust

Things I Dislike: reality tv, tv where women are brutally murdered, cigarette smoke, racist sexist white males, homophobia, Westboro Baptist Church, Survivalists, terrorists(homegrown & worldly), people who seek to be presidents should not be, women who don’t support other women’s rights, dogmatic individuals, messianic lunatics, fundamentalists, Taliban, censorship, prudes, homophobes, religious right, war, the shadow mother, abusive people, people who harm children, murderers, people who don’t try to be understanding, bigots, depression, delusions, suicide, bullying, physical abuse, sexual abuse, child abuse, stupidity, ignorance, close mindedness, domestic violence, drunkedness, father’s who abuse, mother’s who abuse, none responsive to your children, beating children,

TOP 25 FILMS ACCORDING TO IMDB (Internet Movie Data Base)

Rank Rating Title Votes
1. 9.2 The Shawshank Redemption (1994) 959,986
2. 9.2 The Godfather (1972) 684,463
3. 9.0 The Godfather: Part II (1974) 441,880
4. 8.9 Pulp Fiction (1994) 747,062
5. 8.9 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) 291,444
6. 8.9 12 Angry Men (1957) 236,037
7. 8.9 The Dark Knight (2008) 933,988
8. 8.9 Schindler’s List (1993) 492,471
9. 8.8 The Lord of the Rings:
The Return of the King (2003) 685,775
10. 8.8 Fight Club (1999) 730,858
11. 8.8 Star Wars: Episode V -
The Empire Strikes Back (1980) 470,576
12. 8.8 The Lord of the Rings:
The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) 710,646
13. 8.8 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) 401,249
14. 8.7 Inception (2010) 749,430
15. 8.7 Goodfellas (1990) 418,847
16. 8.7 Star Wars (1977) 527,265
17. 8.7 Seven Samurai (1954) 148,699
18. 8.7 Forrest Gump (1994) 631,307
19. 8.7 The Matrix (1999) 692,586
20. 8.7 The Lord of the Rings:
The Two Towers (2002) 615,729
21. 8.7 City of God (2002) 315,150
22. 8.6 Se7en (1995) 558,811
23. 8.6 The Silence of the Lambs (1991) 469,175
24. 8.6 Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) 131,741
25. 8.6 Casablanca (1942) 255,926

25 BEST NOVELS

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
13. 1984 by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O’Hara
23. U.S.A.(trilogy) by John Dos Passos
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster

TOP 63 TV SHOWS OF ALL TIME

1. Dexter (2006 TV Series)
2. Game of Thrones (2011 TV Series)
3. Breaking Bad (2008 TV Series)
4. Lost (2004 TV Series)
5. Sherlock (2010 TV Series)
6. Louie (2010 TV Series)
7. House M.D. (2004 TV Series)
8. Doctor Who (2005 TV Series)
9. The Sopranos (1999 TV Series)
10. The Wire (2002 TV Series)
11. Futurama (1999 TV Series)
12. Battlestar Galactica (2004 TV Series)
13. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005 TV Series)
14. The X-Files (1993 TV Series)
15. Arrested Development (2003 TV Series)
16. How I Met Your Mother (2005 TV Series)
17. Mad Men (2007 TV Series)
18. Friends (1994 TV Series)
19. Firefly (2002 TV Series)
20. Six Feet Under (2001 TV Series)
21. The Simpsons (1989 TV Series)
22. Spartacus: War of the Damned (2010 TV Series)
23. Deadwood (2004 TV Series)
24. 24 (2001 TV Series)
25. The Big Bang Theory (2007 TV Series)
26. Oz (1997 TV Series)
27. The Walking Dead (2010 TV Series)
28. Modern Family (2009 TV Series)
29. South Park (1997 TV Series)
30. Monk (2002 TV Series)
31. Fringe (2008 TV Series)
32. Death Note (2006 TV Series)
33. Family Guy (1999 TV Series)
34. Band of Brothers (2001 Mini-Series)
35. Criminal Minds (2005 TV Series)
36. Seinfeld (1990 TV Series)
37. True Blood (2008 TV Series)
38. Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000 TV Series)
39. Scrubs (2001 TV Series)
40. Twilight Zone (1959 TV Series)
41. Prison Break (2005 TV Series)
42. The Office (2005 TV Series)
43. The West Wing (1999 TV Series)
44. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000 TV Series)
45. Sons of Anarchy (2008 TV Series)
46. Supernatural (2005 TV Series)
47. Psych (2006 TV Series)
48. The 4400 (2004 TV Series)
49. The Shield (2002 TV Series)
50. Married with Children (1987 TV Series)
51. Boardwalk Empire (2010 TV Series)
52. Mr. Bean (1990 TV Series)
53. Entourage (2004 TV Series)
54. Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 TV Series)
55. Rome (2005 TV Series)
56. Weeds (2005 TV Series)
57. Twin Peaks (1990 TV Series)
58. Coupling (2000 TV Series)
59. Homeland (2011 TV Series)
60. Freaks and Geeks (1999 TV Series)
61. Heroes (2006 TV Series)
62. White Collar (2009 TV Series)
63. Castle (2009 TV Series)

Rank Name Cumulative Top Currency Stars
Score Profession(s) Age
1 Will Smith 10.00 Actor, Composer, Director, Producer, Rapper, Writer 44
2 Johnny Depp 9.89 Actor, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 49
2 Leonardo DiCaprio 9.89 Actor, Producer, Writer 38
2 Angelina Jolie 9.89 Actress, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo) 37
2 Brad Pitt 9.89 Actor, Producer 49
6 Tom Hanks 9.87 Actor, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 56
7 George Clooney 9.81 Actor, Director, Producer, Writer 51
8 Denzel Washington 9.76 Actor 58
9 Matt Damon 9.69 Actor, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 42
10 Jack Nicholson 9.68 Actor, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 76
11 Julia Roberts 9.65 Actress, Producer 45
12 Adam Sandler 9.61 Actor, Composer, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 46
13 Tom Cruise 9.60 Actor, Director, Producer, Writer 50
14 Russell Crowe 9.57 Actor, Director, Musician, Producer, Singer, Writer 49
15 Will Ferrell 9.56 Actor, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 45
16 Meryl Streep 9.55 Actress, Singer 63
17 Robert De Niro 9.54 Actor, Director, Producer 69
18 Ben Stiller 9.50 Actor, Director, Producer, Writer 47
19 Jim Carrey 9.42 Actor, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 51
20 Clint Eastwood 9.33 Actor, Composer, Director, Producer, Writer 82
21 Robert Downey 9.29 Actor, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 48
22 Nicole Kidman 9.27 Actress, Producer, Singer (Cameo) 45
23 Bruce Willis 9.16 Actor, Director, Musician, Producer 58
24 Nicolas Cage 9.02 Actor, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo) 49
25 Al Pacino 9.00 Actor, Director, Producer, Writer 73

Rank Name Cumulative Top Currency Actresses
Score Profession(s) Age
1 Angelina Jolie 9.89 Actress, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo) 37
2 Julia Roberts 9.65 Actress, Producer 45
3 Meryl Streep 9.55 Actress, Singer 63
4 Nicole Kidman 9.27 Actress, Producer, Singer (Cameo) 45
5 Reese Witherspoon 8.24 Actress, Producer 37
6 Charlize Theron 8.00 Actress 37
7 Cate Blanchett 7.85 Actress, Producer 43
8 Jodie Foster 7.78 Actor, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo) 50
8 Keira Knightley 7.78 Actress, Singer (Cameo) 28
8 Gwyneth Paltrow 7.78 Actress, Director, Singer (Cameo), Writer 40
11 Drew Barrymore 7.76 Actress, Director, Producer 38
12 Cameron Diaz 7.72 Actress, Model, Producer, Singer (Cameo) 40
13 Kate Winslet 7.63 Actress 37
14 Sandra Bullock 7.60 Actress, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 48
15 Jennifer Aniston 7.58 Actress, Producer 44
15 Halle Berry 7.58 Actress, Fragrance, Producer 46
17 Renee Zellweger 7.50 Actress 44
18 Hilary Swank 7.43 Actress, Producer 38
19 Penelope Cruz 7.39 Actress, Dancer, Producer, Singer (Cameo) 39
20 Scarlett Johansson 7.34 Actress, Director, Singer (Cameo) 28
21 Anne Hathaway 7.27 Actress, Singer (Cameo) 30
21 Kate Hudson 7.27 Actress, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 34
21 Natalie Portman 7.27 Actress, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 31
24 Catherine Zeta-Jones 7.24 Actress 43
25 Helen Mirren 7.15 Actress, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo) 67

Rank Name Cumulative Top Currency Actors
Score Profession(s) Age
1 Will Smith 10.00 Actor, Composer, Director, Producer, Rapper, Writer 44
2 Johnny Depp 9.89 Actor, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 49
2 Leonardo DiCaprio 9.89 Actor, Producer, Writer 38
2 Brad Pitt 9.89 Actor, Producer 49
5 Tom Hanks 9.87 Actor, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 56
6 George Clooney 9.81 Actor, Director, Producer, Writer 51
7 Denzel Washington 9.76 Actor 58
8 Matt Damon 9.69 Actor, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 42
9 Jack Nicholson 9.68 Actor, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 76
10 Adam Sandler 9.61 Actor, Composer, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 46
11 Tom Cruise 9.60 Actor, Director, Producer, Writer 50
12 Russell Crowe 9.57 Actor, Director, Musician, Producer, Singer, Writer 49
13 Will Ferrell 9.56 Actor, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 45
14 Robert De Niro 9.54 Actor, Director, Producer 69
15 Ben Stiller 9.50 Actor, Director, Producer, Writer 47
16 Jim Carrey 9.42 Actor, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 51
17 Clint Eastwood 9.33 Actor, Composer, Director, Producer, Writer 82
18 Robert Downey 9.29 Actor, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 48
19 Bruce Willis 9.16 Actor, Director, Musician, Producer 58
20 Nicolas Cage 9.02 Actor, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo) 49
21 Al Pacino 9.00 Actor, Director, Producer, Writer 73
22 Harrison Ford 8.69 Actor, Producer 70
23 Keanu Reeves 8.59 Actor, Singer (Cameo) 48
24 Mel Gibson 8.52 Actor, Director, Producer, Singer (Cameo), Writer 57
25 Christian Bale 8.49 Actor, Producer, Singer (Cameo) 39

Maksim Mrvica — Hungarian Rhapsody #2

QUOTATIONS on LISTS

“The list could surely go on, and there is nothing more wonderful than a list, instrument of wondrous hypotyposis.” ― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“I love the ritual of drawing up lists, and there’s something wonderfully satisfying about ticking tasks off.” ― Shaida Kazie Ali

“In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:

the Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages,

the Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success,

the Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At The Moment,

the Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case,

the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,

the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,

the Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified,

Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread and the Books You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.”
― Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler

Letters of Import: We Chose Life 7

1 Reply

Letters of Import: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst
We Chose Life 7
Written by Jennifer Kiley
Illustrations & abstract digital art by j. kiley
© jennifer kiley 2013
First Posting 03.19.13
Posted Weekly Early Tuesday Morning
Seventh Posting 04.30.13 Tuesday, November 13th, 2007

Dear Annie

I must bring this to your immediate attention. Last week, when I wrote to you in our usual letter, I included a poem. It was a raw and painful poem to write. I would really like to discuss some of it with you in this letter. I hope you don’t mind. It has been making me feel rather vulnerable, even though I haven’t sent you the letter yet. Someday, any day, might be when I do get brave enough and really write these letters with the direct expectation of mailing them to you or handing them to you in person. The second way would make me feel more assured that you received the letters personally and no one else touched them or might accidentally open them. I don’t think anyone at the counseling center would ever do something like that intentionally. But these are very private letters meant for your eyes only. Just thinking about discussing the poem I wrote is making me feel rather anxious. In fact, I feel like I am starting to have a panic attack. Let me take a Klonopin before we continue. After that I will post the poem and the paragraph that followed it. I want to discuss that along with the poem. I’ll be right back.

Here I am, back really quickly. It will only take about 15 minutes for the med to take effect. Well, here goes, this is the poem once again appearing in one of my letters I am writing to only you. If I ever give these letters to you, I must have your word that you will never ever show these to anyone else. No one must know what I am telling you. These have to be our secret. If you only knew how I feel inside.

How do I really feel about you Annie? Right now, I have no idea. Too afraid to go inside to find out what I truly feel. The whole of the world confounds me. It just makes me feel depressed. It just feels that I can’t hold onto the people I love. They just tend to die. It’s not like they’re even old. When you die in your twenties, I would call that dying “Forever Young.” Too many die FY. You’re not going to do that, are you Annie?

What do you think of my poem? If you read it now, how would you decipher it? I’ll play both of us. You go first, or should I? Let me pull out the first three lines. The writer, the lover, the thinker: isn’t something missing? Whose feeling anything? The lover is just sexual. You can do that without any feelings at all. The writer is mental but could be emotional with the words they are expressing. But I don’t think so. It’s cerebral. The thinker, existential separation anxiety filled with analytical theorizing until infinity gets exhausted.

Someone is missing. Someone who connects in a soulful way with people or animals. Who is that? Lets think about it. Send out feelings to find out who they are? You think a spiritualist. I thought I was one of those people. I believe in the spirit, the soul, the astral body, the separation from the physical. The soul is just carrying the weight of the body while its heart beats and air fills its lungs and the grey matter still is able to function to make the physical tissues of the body perform.

I was thinking tonight about Heaven Annie. As I made it up the stairs to bed and my cat always raced up the stairs before me. We play that game every night. I make believe I’m going to beat him tonight. It’s always the challenge. There’s no way in Hell that I can ever beat him. But he loves the game. You want to know his name? He goes by many. He has such a magnificent personality. We call him Sparky because he sparks like fireworks. It’s not his official name. That one is proper. We named him Higgins after the character in the great Broadway play Pygmalion. He responds to anything but Higgins and he rather prefers being called Sparky.

What the Hell are we talking about? Is it about making it through with some enjoyment and to try to forget about all the nightmares? Or are we suppose to face the nightmares? The soul tells me that we have to or we won’t make it. I have too many. How about you? What are your bad dreams? What tried to fuck you up? Any bad people in your dreams? You seem pretty together but anyone can put a mask on. Why do you suppose we all try to hide from everyone? We are all human. Our feelings fall somewhere into the human category. Are we afraid people will think we are crazy or too weird?

Back to the poem, the next three lines are pretty explosive. Feeling the fool for not hearing, the silence for not screaming and feelings trying to blow the whole thing wide open but being stopped somehow. What stopped me? You probably would like to know that. A good reason, how about one of the abusers threatened to kill me right at the moment I told him if he didn’t stop I would go to the police. Wrong thing to say to a nasty, mean pedophile. He tried to kill me but he stopped at just making me feel he was going to crush my head into stones like Stonehenge. He pulled back but not until he told me he would not only kill me but my whole family. Those other people who also abused me. For some reason I felt I needed to protect them. I didn’t care if he killed me. My life was ruined. They all in combination destroyed who I am. They crushed my life. I am dead. My spirit has been stolen from me. It’s like in Peter Pan, they stole my shadow, my reflection. I don’t have one any longer. I am invisible. That’s why no one can see me. Why I never get noticed except when someone wants to hurt me or make me feel more pain so that I really do want to be invisible. I just wanted to die.

The only reason I stayed alive was I loved my grandmother. The funny thing about it all, my grandma, she had an accident shortly after this and went into the hospital. She never went home again. I saw her once at the hospital. I climbed into her hospital bed with her. Under the oxygen tent, we hugged. I held her so close. Her arms used her strength, as much as she could and held me close. Then it was time to go. I gave a bunch of kisses to say goodbye to her. I didn’t know I would never see her alive again.

She died in protest. They wanted her to become one of the forgotten. She wasn’t going to let them do that to her. She told them that it was something she would never do, going to a nursing home. She stopped her breathing and her heart from beating. She left me behind. I stopped living when she stopped, too.

“The feelings trying to explode…Where was the awareness?” I was clueless on what or who to, if anyone, to talk to. I never talked to anyone back then. Words were not my companion when spoken out loud. Not something I even knew how to do. Didn’t know how. Had no practice. What would have been the right words to say anyway? I didn’t know them to say or to even write down on paper. I am only learning now how to connect my words with feeling.

“We say ‘Welcome to the surface.’ It should have been Welcome to the circus. “Now what needs to be done?” We need to find someone new that we can really talk to. Someone who will listen and really hear what we are saying. Not judge us. Try to understand. And not constantly criticize us and try to put us down. Diminish who we are. That’s been done all our life except in college. For some reason I mattered when I was in college. I felt important and wanted. The same happened when I was part of the Women’s Center when I lived in Connecticut. It’s not so much I want to feel important. I just want to feel like I matter. Everyone I think needs to feel important in some way.

“Releasing the energy ensnared for decades amongst twisted webs…” I have been so blocked. My thoughts and feelings didn’t have an outlet. And I didn’t know how to say the words. I was made my own prisoner eventually, out of fear. Demons possessed me with fear. All the demons from all the years of abuse and made to feel like I was nothing, a nobody that had no worth or purpose.

“The voice is seeking freedom but holding onto multiple secrets.” We have a central voice but we also have multiple voices. With all the alters, we have to listen to all their voices and all the needs they tell us that they have. It’s hard to keep track or remember. It is really confusing inside our head sometimes. But we were working with a woman therapist who had her moments of quality therapy but she had her problems. I have an obsessive alter who was in love with her and obsessed with her. Let’s call it quite dependent. We were attached. We needed her. She was the first therapist that figured out what was going on inside our head. She figured out the DID. I have to admit when she told us we has other personalities, it really freaked us out. Kind of went into shock and some heavy denial. No way could that be possible. She said the psychiatrist agreed with her after he tested me.

That was the big secret. We thought realizing we were Gay was enough of a shock but being MPD was more difficult. Coming out of that closet was worst. It took us a while before we could tell Scottie and we had been together for a long time at that point. Almost 15 years. When I found the courage to tell her, her reaction was: “Oh, I already knew.” I asked her why she didn’t tell me. “Because you needed to figure that out yourself.” Of course, she was right. It wasn’t easy. Like I usually do, I bought or borrowed every book I could find on the subject of MPD. I learned it all. Enough to get a degree.

There is so much more to discuss in this poem. I packed it with a great deal of exposure of my past. I need a break. I may try to answer more of the points in this letter or carry it over to the next letter.

It’s a list of some of the confusion that smashed into our life. It started when we were really little and didn’t stop. The abuse continued when we were adults. No was the word that meant nothing to anyone who wanted something from us. Our body betrayed us. We couldn’t stop anyone from forcing us. Some didn’t even realize they were forcing us but they were. If we shut down inside we became frozen. We couldn’t stop what was happening. This started when we were little and continued into our adult relationships. It was all on some degree of force. We weren’t there in our bodies. We left or went deep inside or floated on the ceiling until it was over.

It wasn’t consensual. It was a form of rape and abuse. We wanted love but not sex. We didn’t want to be sexually aroused because it would always end with us disappearing and our bodies would shut down. It was like turning the keys off in a car. The engine would stop running and so would we. Eventually we created an outside person, a human robot, who faked our life like a computer. She would accumulate data. And learned the expected behavior and that would be hos she would perform. We were safe inside while she was out there living a fake life as a fake person. A puppet represented us. She hid in plain sight. No one would find us with the puppet self having a controlled pattern of behavior, always asking questions to improve her performance do she wouldn’t be detected.

Our hiding place was discovered by this woman therapist. She saw through the facade. She was tricky and scary to us. She got to close. We started to care too much. She opened up the rawness in us. She made us need people. Specifically, she made us need her too desperately. We felt so close to her. But more like the fox in Le Petite Prince by Antoine de St. Exupery. She tamed part of our wildness. She made us want to be loved by her. Being loved and wanting to love in return puts such a control on you. I began to develop an overwhelming need for her. It was driving me mad. Everything started falling apart. My life felt out of control.

Our hiding place was revealed. There was no place to go except into madness and wanting to commit suicide. Suicide has always been a part of our life. It is a part of our breathing. It is always an alternative to the divine madness. We can escape that way any time we chose. But it is not an answer we can choose. Not with all that we are responsible for. Our life needs us to be in it. Everything has changed. We are learning to begin to live. We have found a purpose. It is delicate and sometimes difficult to balance but we are giving our new life all that we are able to give it. We know and are learning what we are able to do. We are able to write. We are able to be creative. Our artistic nature is starting to blossom. We are letting it be free. It likes that. It feels like are trusted to let the muse guide us. She always seems to be when we need her. We don’t push it. We let it be a natural flow. We like, no we love where we are now. It does have its difficulties with the mentally creative activities that bombard our brain. But we work hard on that more with our doc then with Mr. Xxx. He is about as helpful as a dead skeleton. His sense of warmth and communication I’d to tell stories that do not at all relate to what I am feeling or going through. He doesn’t help me at all except to give me reasons to escape my life. He lets me run away. I know I have my weaknesses but I need to find my life before I die or I kill myself because I can’t live with the confusion any longer or the depressions or rage.

I want to say that I am here and I want to stay alive. We want to be here. We choose life.

We fought through them trying to destroy us. They didn’t succeed. We are still alive. No matter how many battles. No matter how many nights we have to fight to make it alive til morning gets here. Therapy, knowing my psychoanalyst is there is so reassuring. It means at least one person is out there in our Universe that knows we are alive. That we exist. Being alive is a higher grade than just existing. The artist that lives inside of us makes it all matter. Otherwise, nothing else matters. If I didn’t have my art, my animals, the women I love and the men who are decent that I love. A good home and family who I love and who love me. The special people who know who they are. They are part of what make this life I live matter. But that involves some major time tripping. I am having visions of a future in my life, but I must be patient and wait for that time to happen. It is a good sign that I make it to that future. Others do not.

Here in 2007 I have you Annie. I am focusing on that. Your presence is beginning to mean something more to me than I even understand at this moment. We will see where that takes us.

Until next time.

Regards,
Madison I attach this to the letters I write to you Annie to assure the strictest of confidence.

To Annie,

Regards,
Madison Taylor

Madison Tayler’s Fantasy of Annie Haskell’s Office as a Psychoanalyst. Not real.

Maksim — Somewhere In Time — Theme Song #1 For “Letters of Import”

Damien Rice — The Blowers Daughter — film Closer (1980 Theme Song # 7 for Letter of Import: We Chose Life 7

the labyrinth called “wandering wonderland.” it is where madison, scottie and their cats, patrick, sparky and toker love to escape to

madison’s “woods of imagination” where she takes long walks to reflect. it starts just past the labyrinth

QUOTATIONS from: LETTERS of IMPORT: Private Writings to a Psychoanalyst

“A Dream

The beginning always starts out with a dream.
It is all a dream
And we are all players
In our own nightmares”
— Madison Taylor

“For that fine madness still he did retain,
Which rightly should possess a poet’s brain.”
~Michael Drayton~
(1563-1631)

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?”
Christopher Marlowe for “Hero and Leander”

“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive. This ecstasy, this forgetfulness of living, comes to the artist, caught up and out of himself in a sheet of flame…” — Jack London

“There are two kinds of people. One kind…they congealed into their final selves…you can expect no more surprises from them…the other kind keep moving, changing… They are fluid. They keep moving forward and making new trysts with life, and the motion of it keeps them young. In my opinion, they are the only people who are still alive…” ― Gail Godwin

Happy Birthday 4/26/13 Stana Katic

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Happy Birthday 4/26/13 Stana Katic
Created by Jennifer Kiley
Redesigned Material from the secret keeper posts
Posted April 26th 2013

being as it's to time by j. kiley © jennifer kiley 803x2621

Castle/Beckett — Best Love Story Part One

Castle/Beckett — Best Love Story Part Two

Castle/Beckett — Best Love Story Part Three

Philip Wesley — Two Souls

QUOTATIONS on DESIRE:

“To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing — the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one’s hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again.” ― Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” ― Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma

“I want her to melt into me, like butter on toast. I want to absorb her and walk around for the rest of my days with her encased in my skin. — I want.” ― Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants

“Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone.” ― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

“But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise on your lips.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again. “Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing.” ― Karen Marie Moning, Shadowfever

“Language is a skin: I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tip of my words. My language trembles with desire.” ― Roland Barthes

“I have outlasted all desire,
My dreams and I have grown apart;
My grief alone is left entire,
The gleamings of an empty heart.

The storms of ruthless dispensation
Have struck my flowery garland numb,
I live in lonely desolation
And wonder when my end will come.

Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted
By tardy winter’s whistling chill,
A single leaf which has outlasted
Its season will be trembling still.”
― Alexander Pushkin

“There is no fulfillment that is not made sweeter for the prolonging of desire”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel’s Dart

“Please, touch me, I pray.” ― Jess C. Scott, The Intern

“Oh to have you with me, to have you here, not to be alone, but to be with you, my beauty, you of all souls! You.” ― Anne Rice, Pandora

“I spin worlds where we could be together. I dream you. For me, imagination and desire are very close.” ― Jeanette Winterson

“….love and desire enjoy a symbiotic relationship, meaning that one cannot exist without the other. Desire is an enemy to contentment; desire is illness, a feverish brain. Who can be considered healthy who wants? The very word want suggests a lack, an impoverishment, and that is what desire is: an impoverishment of the brain, a flaw, a mistake.” ― Lauren Oliver, Delirium

“When you were a wandering desire in the mist, I too was there, a wandering desire. Then we sought one another, and out of our eagerness dreams were born. And dreams were time limitless, and dreams were space without measure.” ― Kahlil Gibran

“Her cheeks were flushed. She caught hold of the Savage’s arm and pressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not… Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queen’s ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“To be desired is perhaps the closest anybody in this life can reach to feeling immortal.” ― John Berger

“Anxiety and desire are two, often conflicting, orientations to the unknown. Both are tilted toward the future. Desire implies a willingness, or a need, to engage this unknown, while anxiety suggests a fear of it. Desire takes one out of oneself, into the possibility or relationship, but it also takes one deeper into oneself. Anxiety turns one back on oneself, but only onto the self that is already known.” ― Mark Epstein, Open to Desire: Embracing a Lust for Life – Insights from Buddhism and Psychotherapy

“Because life is short. I feel we’re made of a hunger, a desire for life – if that can be described as a material. As I get older, I’m trying to open that channel more. If you don’t, if you close off desire and get complacent, life loses its freshness and sweetness, and that’s what I crave. That’s my bliss.” ― Sarah Slean

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the secret keeper

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Category Archives: films

Importance of Imagination

Meryl Streep Talks From Serious to Funny

Letters of Import: Last Time This Year 12

“Imagining…is better than remembering something”

The Mystery of Storytelling

Nora Ephron’s Lessons About Love: Today She Would Be 72

Tippi Hedren: The Birds-Marnie-Hitchcock-Activism

Why Lists Appeal To Us ?

Letters of Import: We Chose Life 7

Happy Birthday 4/26/13 Stana Katic

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