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The
Maplewoods Mirror #43 - October 2009
Welcome to my monthly newsletter on life and
writing. If you want to see my website for past issues and other
news, please visit www.chrismeeks.com. I also have an author site (click
here)
IN THIS ISSUE:
·
Gram Parsons and Room 8 (true story)
·
Sometimes the Magic Works (books as
bestsellers)
·
Independent Authorhood (a new paradigm
for writers)
·
“Inglourious Basterds”: The Ugly Beneath the
Beauty (film)
·
Photos from Joshua Tree
GRAM PARSONS and ROOM 8
This weekend, we slept in a desert death room.
Let me explain.
If you don’t recognize the name Gram Parsons,
he was known for his work in two bands, the Byrds and The Flying Burrito
Brothers, both in the late sixties. In the early seventies he recorded two
solo albums, known for their duets with Emmylou Harris. Parsons is credited
with creating country-rock, and Rolling Stone magazine ranked him
#87 on their list of the 100 Most Influential Artists of All Time. Like his
more famous predecessors, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, all
who went out earlier in the seventies, Parsons also abused drugs and
alcohol.
Flash forward thirty-some years. Ann and I were
invited to the wedding of two friends, Bill and Monica, up in the
picturesque desert of Joshua Tree, California. The national park there
draws many. We were told the Joshua Tree Inn was a great place, and when
Ann placed the reservation, she was told that Room 8 was available. “What’s
special about Room 8?” she asked.
“That’s where Gram Parsons died.” The name
didn’t seem familiar, but she soon learned who he was. We needed a room,
and she wasn’t worried about any ghost. She booked it. I would have done
the same. I’ve learned from my Uncle Roy, who owns a big hotel in West
Lafayette, Indiana, that the craziest things happen in the rooms, and every
room in every motel has a history.
Most hotels play down any deaths so as not to
scare people away. Room 8 at the Joshua Tree Inn, however, attracts
people—not the same kind or number who are enamored of Elvis, but still
there are people who see Parsons as a hero.
When we arrived, we discovered the little motel
of a dozen rooms had personality. The office was like a living room and
featured many posters and photographs from the seventies. The guest rooms
were in the back and built around a lightly graveled courtyard, raked
precisely like a Zen garden.
Room 8 wasn’t particularly large. A clean room
that held a California King, a stuffed chair and a little desk, the walls
were made of long bricks painted yellow. Utilitarian.
It did not look like a grand room to die in,
and it probably looks better now than it did on September 19,
1973. Today there are posters featuring Parsons, a CD labeled “Gram
Parsons, Room 8,” and a diary for travelers wishing to jot down their
thoughts.
There’s also a thick three-ring binder filled
with articles about Parsons’ death from various magazines in 1973 and
afterwards.
Parsons was born Cecil Ingram Connor and in
line for a large family fortune, thanks to his grandfather’s citrus
business in Florida. Young Cecil’s father committed suicide when Cecil was
twelve. A year later, his mother married Bob Parsons, who adopted Cecil and
his sister, and they lived in Florida. The kids took on the last name of
Parsons, and Cecil was called Gram after that.
His mother, an alcoholic, died from alcohol
poisoning on the day Gram graduated high school. He attended Harvard for a
semester before dropping out, having a large trust fund to live on. After
Harvard, he met Chris Hillman of the Byrds and joined that group for a
short time. He and Hillman later created the Flying Burrito Brothers.
Parsons, though, seemed to be following his
mother’s footsteps. While many of his fellow musicians recognized and
admired his talent, including Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling
Stones, Parsons drank heavily and could become belligerent. He left the
Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers with little notice, leaving his band
members in the lurch. He became addicted to heroin and broke the habit in
1972. He kept drinking more than ever, though, and some of his friends
would just leave him alone.
According to Emmylou Harris, however, Parsons
started cleaning up. She said, “He had stopped drinking. That might have
been what killed him: that he started to get straight and then he went back
to it.”
On Monday, September 17, 1973, Gram Parsons
went up to Joshua Tree National Monument, a place he loved and where he
once took psychedelics and looked for UFOs. He traveled there with his
friend Michael Martin, Martin's girlfriend Dale McElroy, and an old friend
from his high school days in Florida named Margaret Fisher. The next day,
Parsons drank a lot of Jack Daniels and then topped it off with some
morphine. His girlfriend, Fisher, found him passed out and blue on the
floor of Room 1. She freaked out and gave him an ice cube suppository,
which was supposed to help in overdose cases.
It worked, and Parsons was soon walking around—and
he was very tired. Fisher asked McElroy to stay in Parsons’ room, Room 8,
while he slept and while Fisher went to get some dinner. At some
point, Parsons’ breathing became labored. There were no phones in the room,
and McElroy feared he’d die if she left, so she tried to give him
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Fisher returned and then dashed for help.
An ambulance arrived but he already seemed
gone. He was taken to a nearby hospital but could not be revived. He was
declared dead at 12:30 a.m. September 19, 1973. He was only twenty-six.
A few days later, his friend Phil Kaufman
managed to steal Parsons’ body from LAX airport, return to Joshua Tree
National Monument, and set Parsons’ body ablaze to fulfill a promise that
Parsons would be cremated, which Parsons’ stepfather was not going to do.
Kaufman left Parsons’ bones smoldering in the park. Hikers alerted
officials of what they thought was a burning log.
As I absorbed this information and the room,
what was I to make of it all? I felt like a motorist who has come across a
car smashed into a tree, the driver dead, and a few witnesses talking about
the wreck. I saw what made the driver dead but not what made him special.
The CD marked "Gram Parsons, Room 8" wouldn't play. The other
music looked to be by other musicians inspired by Joshua Tree.
Did I feel a creative spirit in that room? No.
This is where he died when he was so out of it, he probably didn’t even
notice his blanket. Without knowing his music, I felt sad for a young man
who had so much talent unfulfilled. He missed becoming a truer legend,
missed fatherhood, missed more romance, missed more songwriting, missed
more heartbreak, surely, but missed living as it could be.
Too many of the articles described how in
recording sessions and in performance, Parsons was not fully present as he
could be when sober. Hillman often felt like a babysitter.
I’m not sure what demons drove Parsons or
whether he simply had things too easy early on. Perhaps he inherited an
addictive personality and did not recognize it, and his last thoughts were
too muted to see any mistakes.
However, as I read some of the room’s diary, I
was touched that music lovers remain attracted to what they see as a
positive spirit and talent. They also wrote about the lives they are living
and the lovers that they are with—and the hopes and dreams they have. Very
moving. I’m always impressed that people find spirit in music,
photography, acting, writing and all the arts. It staples me to the earth.
Joshua Tree is far too hot and dry for my usual
tastes, yet the amazing granite hills and the rolling high-desert
landscapes carry a special life force. So did seeing our friends Monica and
Bill marry each other as people clapped and cheered and the sun set on an
orange horizon. This is the kind of thing Gram passed up. He would have
been 63 this year. Staying around as best you can is what it’s all about.
After we returned to Los Angeles, I contacted
my friend Amy Dawes, a lover of music who has often written about it, who
wrote me that Parsons was "a natural and miraculous talent ... He was
the real thing and left a lot behind—it's no mystery that people still come
to pay homage."
Another friend sent me a link, below, to
Parsons singing with Emmylou Harris the song, “In My Hour of Darkness,”
which pictorially pays homage to Parsons’ life and also includes a few
shots of Room 8.
That led me to find "Love Hurts,"
which I instantly recognize. The last link is Parsons with the Flying
Burrito Brothers.
Talent is a special thing. It shouldn’t be wasted.
*
The Links:
IN MY HOUR OF DARKNESS
LOVE HURTS
CHRISTINE’S
TUNE
SOMETIMES THE MAGIC WORKS
"Sometimes the magic works," said the
theatre impresario in Shakespeare in Love. As much as I muse on
the subject of marketing in this newsletter, I can't always explain things.
For instance, I happened to check my books’ rankings on Amazon last month,
and my short story collections were inexplicably #3 and #19 in the list for
bestselling short story collections. They’ve been selling well ever since.
How was that possible?
All writers hope for the steady sales of
Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. We want our books to be in stores
the way Charles Dickens remains on shelves. What we get is akin to the
life of an ice cream cone in a toddler's sticky hands. Thus, I had to pinch
myself to see if the rankings were true. The Middle-Aged Man and the
Sea was ranked just behind Jumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth.
Four days after my discovery, a friend
sent me a link to a forum on Amazon. I’d never paid attention to the forums
before, but this one was marked “Great Short Story Collection.”
Someone named Neil Shapiro had started it by
writing, “I happened to hear part of the Book Chatter blog's live
show tonight and was intrigued enough by author Christopher Meeks to look
up his first book THE MIDDLE-AGED MAN AND THE SEA in the Kindle store. It
was priced at only $1.95 so figured I would give it a try and all I can say
is that's the cheapest way I have ever yet found a favorite author. If you
enjoy stories that feature insightful characterization and a clear
authorial voice I simply recommend this highly.”
After he wrote that, other people wrote on the
thread how they bought the book and loved it. That seemed to inspire sales.
This underscored a couple things for me. One is that as an author you can
suggest that people buy your books, but it really takes strangers,
enthusiastic lovers of your work, to make an impression.
Second, you never know when and where you’ll
connect with someone. The Book Chatter show, hosted by author
Stacey Cochran, is a simple single-camera video show on the Internet. That
night had 150 viewers. That’s not Oprah numbers, which every
author also wants. Yet all it took one person to mention my book on a
forum, and things took off.
If you have time, please do me a favor. Go to
the forum by
clicking here and think of something you might add to it. By your
writing there, it keeps the thread up front for new viewers to see.
INDEPENDENT AUTHORHOOD
As I mentioned above, Kindle readers have made
my two short story collections bestsellers on the device. People who use
the electronic reading device tend to be voracious readers. Most of
them had been avid readers of books who either travel a lot and
don't want to carry books or are people who simply find that books are
less expensive on the Kindle. The books also arrive instantly using
cell phone technology.
Amazon
CEO Jeff Bezos with the Kindle
Because Kindle users read so much, they are
open to trying out new authors including ones published by small presses or
through self-publishing. Now comes a list of the top 100 best-selling
independent authors on the Kindle. The authors on this list very
well may be authors who break out later in the print market.
You can see this list by
clicking here. If you don't have a Kindle, check the list anyway
because many of these books are in print. Peek at the sample
pages on Amazon.
Because Kindle users are able to get many of
these independent books for under $3, if the book sounds good, and they
like the free sample pages, they go for it. Thus, the bestseller list shows
how some new or midlist authors are finding what they always hoped for:
readers.
As I explained in an earlier article, a
writer named Boyd Morrison, whose agent could not place his book, had
his book sell so well on Kindle that Simon and Shuster took on the rights,
and Morrison now has a two-book deal.
(For my earlier article, click
here.)
The point is, we’re watching a paradigm shift
in the way publishing occurs. In the future, new authors may have to prove
themselves by self-publishing first, and if they do well, publishers will
take note as Simon and Shuster did for Boyd Morrison.
A great article by Nandini
Pandya on this very subject can be read by
clicking here.
"INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS:" THE UGLY
BENEATH THE BEAUTY
Recently I happened to be reading a New
York Times theatre review by Charles Isherwood. It began, "When
it comes to acts of murderous vengeance, bread baking cannot compete with
scalp collecting in terms of lurid allure. On the other hand, the toxic
loaves that figure in Daniel Goldfarb's play The Retributionists
can lay claim to some factual history, in contrast to the bloody deeds
visited upon nasty Nazi bigwigs in Quentin Tarantino's pop action movie Inglourious
Basterds."
While Isherwood didn't like The
Retributionists at all, which takes place months after WWII, I was
left thinking about Inglourious Basterds, which changes history in
a big way. Is Tarantino's movie "pop action" with
no real point? That's too easy a category (or catagery). The film
says something about Americans. We're crass and ugly. Whether Tarantino is
purposeful in that or just accidental is another question.
We can start with the title, whose misspellings
say, "So what? Ya wanna make somethin' of it?"
The dirty dozen basterds within the film are
Jewish commandos led by Brad Pitt's Tennessee-born Lt. Aldo Raine. How
appropriate that this group is led by a fun-loving Christian white boy.
He's the stereotypical American traveler in Europe and knows everything.
When he says he knows Italian best in order to trick Nazis at a screening,
he's so assured, we believe him until he opens his mouth.
Compare this to an earlier scene at a bar
without Raine. The story twists on a subtle but important difference in
German accents. There's no subtlety with Raine. He's the reining arrogant
American.
The Nazis are trusting and honorable compared
to Raine, too. One Nazi officer won't betray his fellow soldiers as Raine
tries to get information. Raine isn't about to torture the guy. No, he
brings in a Jew with a Louisville slugger who whacks the man's head like a
baseball. If that's not gruesome enough, Raine demands the scalps of dead
Nazis. This is no Native-American connection to the soul. It's about being
a crude and fun-loving man.
At the bar scene, a new German father lays down
his gun after Raine assures him they have to trust each other. Of course,
the German gets shot. That's what you get for trusting us. (But hey, he's a
Nazi. Should I feel sad?)
Last are the last scenes themselves. If you
haven't seen the movie, this will spoil it. (Can it be spoiled?) How are we
to take a whole new end to the European theatre with Hitler and his whole
high command killed in a Paris movie theatre in an orgy of imagery? Raine
and his crew consider themselves as the masterminds when in fact we see the
brave French theater owner and her black lover actually do them in. If
Raine never showed up, the Nazis would have been just as dead. The haughty
Americans think they did the job.
Add one more twist where a clever Nazi colonel
seals the end to the war. He, too, trusts Raine, but Raine doesn't stay
with the deal. Raine cold-bloodedly murders the man's driver. (But, hey,
he's a Nazi. Should I feel sad?)
The last shot is Raine crudely carving a
swastika in the man's forehead. I guess we're to laugh that the American
gets in the last dig. We're nothing if we don't get our way.
Non-Americans who see the film will recognize
our ugly breed instantly. We're the ones who decided to overrun Iraq
without bringing an army of translators. We had the translators, but the
Bush administration decided they weren't needed. Everyone would love us for
toppling Saddam. Fuck ‘em if they needed to know how long we'd hang around
or what we might do to repair the place. And we didn't need to question
anyone? Fuck ‘em. Mission accomplished.
This isn't to say I was bored in Inglourious
Basterds. I'm never bored in a Tarantino film. That's because one
purposeful thing he's a master of is tension. Look at Pulp Fiction. There
he created incredibly long scenes--as long as Stanley Kubrick used to
create. Tarantino plays with our attention spans and wins. Think of the
second scene in Pulp Fiction where Vincent, played by John
Travolta, talks about what a Quarter Pounder is called in Paris--a Royale.
There's all sorts of quirky dialogue, minutiae
that would drag in other films, but in Pulp Fiction we're
listening because we're tense. After all, in the previous scene, a young
man and woman, "Pumpkin" and "Honey Bunny," stand up
with guns in a restaurant and one shouts, "Any of you fuckin' pricks
move and I'll execute every one of you motherfuckers."
Then we meet Vincent and Jules (Samuel Jackson)
and want to know who they are. The dialogue tells us they're a bit funny,
and after a couple of minutes of that, they open a trunk full of guns and
select a few, for what we don't know. We learn "there could be five
guys up there."
Now we're on edge. And what happens? Vincent
and Jules continue their quirky conversation, arguing about their boss
Marsellus, his wife Mia, and foot massages. It goes for nearly eight
minutes--yet we're apprehensive as hell. When they burst into an apartment
full of college kids, hold them hostage, and start shooting away, we're
appalled and yet fascinated by Jules' twisted sense of justice, quoting the
Bible.
In Inglourious Basterds, many of the
scenes work similarly. The opening sequence with a Nazi who slowly drives
up a long driveway in the French countryside as a man chops wood has us
tense. Nazis always have us tense. This one, colonel Hans Landa (Christoph
Waltz) is especially fabulous.
The polite Landa arrives merely to ask about
Jewish neighbors. We're uptight in part because the Frenchman has three
beautiful, vulnerable daughters. We're more anxious when we see glimpses of
the neighbors under the floorboards. The pressure mounts as we watch Landa
drink a glass of milk. The scene ends in an orgasm of gunfire similar to
the one above with the college boys.
The scene in the bar is equally as long and
tense. Same with a scene with Landa and the French theatre owner who's a
survivor of the opening scene. In fact, Landa orders the woman a
glass of milk as if he knows who she really is. Tarantino revels in holding
our attention.
The fact that the film makes Americans seem
stupid and unpleasant, so what? You wanna make somethin' of it?
PHOTOS FROM JOSHUA TREE
Inside
the national park
Rock
formations in the park
The
pool at the Joshua Tree Inn
Sacred
Sands, where Bill and Monica married
Ann
near Sacred Sands
See you next time,
--Chris
For reviews or more information on my books below, click on the
cover.
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