Hayley Anne Perkins

April 29, 2009

Music Recommendation: Heroes & Thieves by Vanessa Carlton

Filed under: Monday Music Recs — Tags: College, Green, High School, Lessons I've Learned, Memories, Music, Poetry — admin @ 9:05 pm

Revisions going well. Too busy to think about anything too concrete for blogging tonight. So, instead, thoughts on the album I listened to most while writing Green:

I shouldn’t have been surprised to love Heroes & Thieves so much. But generally, Vanessa Carlton’s been extremely hit-or-miss for me — her songs either change/dictate my entire life, or I really dislike them completely.

“White Houses,” from Harmonium, obviously is a song that I consider to have deeply affected my life. It is the one song that I listen to and can feel myself and my own life experience in every note, which I think is more or less the ultimate compliment to any songwriter — to have a listener find that much life in a song.

“A Thousand Miles,” which every single person in America knows, I think, considering how much radioplay it got when it came out in 2002 and continues to get now, seven years later… there were a few years that I couldn’t listen to this song, despite it being one of my longtime favorites, because it reminds me of Frank. He used to have a cassette in his big boat of a car that was just “A Thousand Miles” repeated over and over on a loop, and everyone in his car had to pick an ‘air’ instrument to play, and going anywhere with him was a jolly invisible orchestra to Vanessa Carlton. For months. I was usually piano, and Frank was always violin.

The first time I heard it after Frank died, I had a complete breakdown and for three years after that, I had a horrible visceral reaction every time I heard the opening tinkle of the piano. But then I had my car accident in November of 2007, and when I was thrifting that afternoon with Carolyn, Carly, and Katerina, “A Thousand Miles” came onto the radio — and I just felt warm.

I always play the ‘air’ violin, now.

With Heroes & Thieves, Vanessa Carlton created a complete album for the first time, or, in her words, “a real ‘body of work.’” There are only two songs on it that I really feel like could stand alone as singles, and those are the two that did (”Nolita Fairytale” and “Hands On Me”) but I think that’s the sign of an album rather than a collection of songs — something that is increasingly rare in the age of digital music pay-per-song sales. It’s a novel of an album, like Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska, that boasts all of the best qualities of Vanessa’s earlier fan-favorite songs, in the same way of Fall Out Boy’s Folie A Deux (another recent album masterpiece). Outside of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, I don’t think I’ve ever heard an album that inspired me more, on the whole, than Heroes & Thieves.

It makes sense. If there is one thing in this world that I am a sucker for besides sad-eyed musicians or glittering dust, it’s imagery. Vanessa Carlton’s songwriting is more poetic by leaps and bounds on this album than in her previous work — which is saying something, because I always thought that certain lines of her earlier songs had gems — the verses in “A Thousand Miles,” the entirety of “White Houses,” or “Like a shooting star/He shines” from “Ordinary Day” — but listening to Heroes & Thieves feels the same to me as reading a novel.

Heroes & Thieves (c) Vanessa Carlton/Universal Motown, 2007

“Nolita Fairytale”

I walk the streets with a song in my head –
We ebb and we flow, so.
Got my toes on my pup at the foot of my bed
(My heart always seems to know)
Now take the glitz back, I want the soul instead,
‘Cause I found some kind of
Fairytale.

“Hands On Me”

I first saw you at the video exchange
I know my heart and it will never change.
This temp work would be alright if you’d call me.
You’d call me –
I lay awake at night for you
And I pray…We’d cross the deepest oceans
Cargo across the sea
And if you don’t believe me
Just put your hands on me
And all the constellations
Shine down for us to see
And if you don’t believe me
Just put your hands on me

The subway radiates with heat
We’ve barely met and still I cross the street
To your door.

We’ll climb Tibetan mountains
Where we can barely breathe
I’ll see the Dali Lama
I’ll feel him blessing me
And all the constellations
Shine down for us to see
And if you don’t believe me
Just put your hands on me
Your hands on me…

First saw you at the video exchange.

“Spring Street”

I was heading down to Spring Street with a suitcase in my hand
Filled with love and life and grand illusion,
I knew you’d understand
I left you by the stairwell
And your eyes were wet with tears
Mother, you knew you had to let me go,
Even after all these years

“My Best”

Our secret’s safe –
An unspoken citadel.

“Come Undone”

I’m a special lover sometimes — but you only touch a ghost.
I’m a sycophantic courtier with an elegant repose.

“The One”

You’re always a golden boy,
And I’m the girl that you enjoy.
My parents say, ‘isn’t he a gifted son’
Time is always passing.But you’re always a golden boy,
And this girl’s heart that you destroy.
You smile at me and then you have your fun…
Time is always passing.

But you’ll always be my golden boy.
And I’m the summer girl that you enjoy.
Some melodies are best left undone.

“Heroes & Thieves”

I seek a solitude
That I can’t find without you.

“This Time”

It’s 4 a.m. and I’m wide awake
Waiting for my thoughts to fade –
A flickering of all of my mistakes,
And as the light starts creeping in,
I slowly feel.

“Fools Like Me”

When my hand was in your hand
My heart was pure
Now I see a different man
Rewriting memories
The dogs run down the beach
And all I’m left with
Is sand in my shoes.Now I recall that time at the cafe,
The thunderstorm outside
Words you could never say,
They hold the loudest tones
You say you’ll write
But it’s ink on a page,
Just ink on a page.

“Home”

Some live in towns
Cardboard shack on concrete
All bluster and bustling life
They search for the color they can never quite see
‘Cause it’s all white on white.

“More Than This”

Cradling stones hold fire bright
As crickets call out to the moonlight
As you lean in to steal a kiss
I’ll never need more than thisWe all share the pain of our histories
But the ache goes away if you could see
This night under stars, well, I call it peace
If you say, I’ll never need more than this

The trees grow so thick
You can barely see through
But the forest bestows the simplest of truths
You think you’ll be happy if granted one more wish
But the truth is you’ll never need more

Comments (4)

April 28, 2009

I Yelled at Meg Ryan Today

Filed under: Memes! Surveys! Lists!, Nostalgia & Memories — Tags: Elementary School, HAP Hits the Town, High School, Memories, Middle School, New York City — admin @ 9:02 pm

It’s true. I did.

I didn’t realize that it was Meg Ryan, at first, because her back was to me, but when she turned around, there was this horrible internal moment of… “O hai, America’s Sweetheart.”

Eurgh.

It may have been the seventh time in my life that I have been legitimately embarrassed. This clearly makes it a Traumatic Moment, because it really takes a lot to embarrass me. I suffer more from secondhand embarrassment, like thinking in the grocery store, “If I were that screaming child’s parent, I would be so embarrassed,” or, “Oh, god, they’re running that awkward set of prepubescent swimsuit photos of poor Robert Pattinson again in Us Weekly, he must be so embarrassed,” or whatever. But very rarely am I embarrassed for myself.

THE SEVEN TIMES I HAVE BEEN EMBARRASSED
by Hayley Anne Perkins

In Kindergarten, the other kids learned the alphabet and some phonics from these weird 1970s videos that were a lot like Sesame Street, but were just different enough so as not to breach copyright. I really liked them, personally, even though I could already read, and had known the alphabet for about four years already. The letter “K” was represented by “Kissing.” Two foamboard letter K’s danced around to a romantic kissing song and then kissed at the end. Everyone else thought it was gross. I berated them, citing Love and Romance and that Kissing Was Not Gross.Coupled with my refusal to get a cootie shot — BECAUSE COOTIES WERE NOT REAL; THERE WOULD BE A REAL VACCINATION IF THEY WERE — I was very unpopular fairly quickly.
When I got my name on the board with a check mark (sort of like getting two strikes in a three-strikes-you’re-out! detention system) in second grade. I got my name on the board, as I recall, for something having to do with my outfit, which is odd, because it was a black-and-white tweed skirt, a turtleneck, and black tights. I can’t remember exactly what the problem was, but I have a feeling it was the giant safety pin on the skirt being considered a potential weapon, or something. I felt like Stacy from The Baby-Sitters’ Club until that moment.The check mark was for protesting my name having been put on the board.
The day after Jeff, a classmate of mine from Kindergarten through high school graduation, learned about sex, he spent the entire duration of school find and/or making innuendo that no one else understood out of EVERYTHING EVERYONE SAID. I was the most vocal student in our third-grade class.To this day, I don’t understand what he was trying to say that I had said with half of the innuendos he made. I just remember getting incredibly embarrassed and flustered that I didn’t understand how the simple things I was saying — “MATT WON’T STOP POKING ME!” “But he DID do it!” — would suddenly cause him to laugh and leer and tattle on me. That may have been the most embarrassed I have ever been, and I didn’t even understand fully why.
Passing out on the first day of sixth grade. In front of everyone.This event will get a post all its own someday, when the trauma subsides.
When, on the first day of high school, I fell down two flights of stairs in a miniskirt and platform sandals. In front of the senior I was madly in love with and would continue to love into the present.It really wasn’t SO bad, but there was definitely a moment of, “ARE YOU SERIOUS? AM I SECRETLY THE CLODDISH MAIN CHARACTER OF A DISNEY CHANNEL ORIGINAL MOVIE RIGHT NOW?”
The precipitating event for my relationship with my high school sweetheart was the afternoon that I called him ugly and elbowed him in the groin within the span of about thirty minutes. I asked him to the Turnabout Dance the next day and he cornered me to ask if it was just an apology.That was more of a sorry/embarrassed.
I yelled at Meg Ryan.

Comments (13)

April 24, 2009

Diacritical Marks

Filed under: Biliophilia!, Creative Writing — Tags: Friends, Green — admin @ 9:00 pm

I got the first editing of Green in the mail today! The mailman dropped it on my doorstep and never rang the bell, so I’m lucky that it wasn’t raining or anything.

Let me tell you — my editor is smart. And she’s thorough. And rather than feeling depressed at how much work there is ahead, all of her bright red diacritical marks just make me more sure that at its core, Green is a good book… and with a few revisions, it can be a great book. I’m really relieved that’s how the editing process is turning out.

Too many writing teachers, artiste peers, and editors edit with a condescending tone. I’m really grateful that this isn’t case with Skeller.

Sorry for the short entry — lots of writing to do!

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April 20, 2009

Romance and Glamour Go Hand-In-Hand

Filed under: Creative Writing, Nostalgia & Memories, Wednesday Word Posts — Tags: Book Recs, History, Lessons I've Learned, on books!, Words — admin @ 8:56 pm

There is nothing more glamorous to me than rock’s reigning royal couples of the 1960s.

“I love you, but quietly.”

– Duncan Sanderson

Sammy Juste & Micky Dolenz

Part of it, I think, is the cultural glamour attributed to the 1960s in general: the patina of glossy mythology attributed to what was in actuality a harsh decade softened by its enduring pop culture, romanticized by the black-and-white turned color footage of the first celebrity nightclub hangouts, swooning fans at concerts, paparazzi shots of Tahitian honeymoons and London courthouse weddings. There is a star-crossed quality to transatlantic love. There is an unattainable quality to the 1960s, this sense that it was a swirling era of magic and change that will not come again in any of our lifetimes, if ever again, simply because were such a chance to arise, it would be compared to the 1960s… and it could only come up short.

“Being so close to him was electrifying.”

– Pattie Boyd

Chad & Jill Stuart

And then there is the glamour of those 1960s rock’n’roll lovers themselves — the most beautiful men and women I’ve ever seen, and they just look different than people do today. Lighter. More pensive. More in love. Their faces seem to fit together better (if I could look like I were from the 1960s, I would jump at the chance in a heartbeat). Maybe it was the excitement of the style revolution: letting down your long straight hair, being one of the first (or the first, Jean Shrimpton!) to wear a miniskirt. Everything is commonplace now, it’s all been done, we only have left to copy the styles of the past and remake only their small revolutions — the big revolutions have been had. The small revolutions have been had. We have innovation now, but we don’t take advantage. We only retool, not rethink. If you look into the faces of the beautiful 1960s, those minds are always racing, spinning, tripping a million ideas, new ideas.

“I met [him]… and then I went comatose and I was captured and
spellbound from here to eternity because he was so real
he was unreal.”

– Pamela Des Barres

Marianne Faithfull & Mick Jagger

I wonder if a part of the allure is its tragedy: so much youth and beauty so old and destroyed now. Or dead. Reading the passages about death of Gram Parsons in I’m With The Band reduced me to tears — and I don’t even like most of the tragically beautiful dead from Pamela Des Barres’ California:

“I was making a shirt for some record producer when the phone shook me from my buttonhole stitch. It was Michele Myer with the news that Gram Parsons had been found dead in Joshua Tree. I felt a dull thud somewhere inside myself and started to bawl… Gram had gotten thick and clumsy, like a puffy old man, way before his time. He wasn’t quite twenty-seven when he OD’d in his favorite spot in the desert… [he] died in the turquoise Naugahyde chair looking out the window… I listened to Gram’s pain every time he sang, and I felt it cut into me like a sliver of sharp ice, making me feel stuff I didn’t know was down in there… his beautiful hands dangling at his sides like forgotten flowers.”

“When Jim Morrison died, I flummoxed around wondering, what was it all for anyway?? Had he served his purpose, or what? Was I serving any purpose? Was there a purpose to serve?”

“Miss Christine, GTO, the Dr. Seuss character of the group, died a tragic death alone in a hotel room in Boston. … Her mascara had coursed down her cheeks in a splendid design…”

“Ah, the frailty of legends.”

Paul McCartney & Jane Asher

Looking at Keith Richards or Pete Townshend or Brigitte Bardot today, thinking about Jimi Hendrix and Keith Moon and Sharon Tate, makes me wonder: where will today’s rockstars and beauties be in fifty years?

I can’t imagine their legends enduring as it stands, but what will happen to little Nick Jonas, crying on stage that in just a little bit longer, he’ll be fine; the apparent new Eddie Vedder (according to Rolling Stone)?

Joe and Taylor, who are already turning their failed tweenage relationship into the fodder of Top Ten mainstream hits and endless glossy interview spreads — will she write a book one day about how beautiful it was to love him once upon a time?

How tragically will Miley inevitably fall?

How much harder can Britney or Amy be pushed? Lindsay’s already broken, not so beautifully as stars once did, her hands don’t dangle like flowers but like deli meat. Who will be the next beautifully broken…?

“Fame” is too easy today, that’s why there are no legends. “Fame” is not the goal: respect, endurance, change, innovation, mythology and beauty, those are the goals. Fame is a popular MySpace page. Fame is Dancing With the Stars, but not being one yourself. Fame is having enough Followers on Twitter.

George Harrison & Pattie Boyd

“Will you marry me? And if you won’t marry me, will you have dinner with me tonight?”

– George Harrison

There is something breathtakingly stomach-turning about the absurd perfection of 1960s rock’n’roll romances.

None of them lasted.

I don’t think that it would have been possible for them to make it past the next rise of romantic rock in the 1980s, any of them; they were romances meant to be grand and melodramatic and overshared and fleeting. But in becoming the epitome of romance… they did make it, more than most ‘lasting’ relationships ever will. They are, in their own way, the most enduring portrait of love.

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April 17, 2009

Planes, Trains, and Staten Island Ferries

Filed under: Nostalgia & Memories — Tags: Hometown, Music, New York City — admin @ 8:48 pm

Sometimes I feel like I’m in a perpetual state of forward motion, always commuting somewhere and never really able to stop and just be.

Since September 2005, I have moved 26 times.

I’m moving again in six weeks.

I’m so sick of moving, in both senses of the word — I’m sick of packing up and resettling in a new place, and I’m sick of being on the move.

I’m propelled forward so often that sometimes I feel as though I’ve developed vertigo, like the world is spinning and I’m not quite matched up, twirling crookedly at a different speed. I don’t get motion sickness, fortunately, but I am very sick of motion. Aside from the movement of moving, I also commute four hours every day to work at a job where I’m constantly shifting and twisting and feel a little like a boxer, flying like a butterfly, and being burned hurts about equally to being stung by a bee.

I spend about 40% of my waking hours in transit of some sort, and I really just want to be able to sit at a desk and not have to wear a uniform baseball cap and be still for a little while.

The interesting thing about being on the move, though, especially when coupled with that feeling of vertigo, is the effect of music on the whole experience. I have a $30 used iPod Shuffle, and it’s always on when I’m on any kind of public transit, which I usually am. I like when a song seems to sync perfectly with whatever scene I’m letting melt around in front of me, trying not to be a part of it because I know I’m only moving on through, that I feel like I’m in a movie.

Songs To Create A Living Soundtrack

“Tiny Dancer,” Elton John.

“Cecilia,” Simon & Garfunkel.

“Sex on Fire,” Kings of Leon.

“Sympathy for the Devil,” The Rolling Stones.

“Breathe Me,” sia.

“Teenage Wasteland,” The Who.

“Stay On Me,” Open Till Midnight.

“A Thousand Miles,” Vanessa Carlton.

“Windy,” The Association.

I wish this blog could be longer and more eloquent — I’m sure I’ll write a similar one eventually — but I’ve spent the whole day in taxis and shuttles and airplanes, and my head is spinning.

Comments (3)

April 15, 2009

STATUS: Manuscript Complete!

Filed under: Biliophilia!, Memes! Surveys! Lists!, Nostalgia & Memories — Tags: Friends, Green, High School, Music, on books!, Television, Words — admin @ 8:46 pm

…And I am wiped.

I’m not even sure that I can coherently form sentences right now. So in lieu of a discordant blog…

TEN RANDOM FACTS ABOUT GREEN

10. The main character of Green has existed in my head for six years, and so has the prologue. But the rest of the book eluded me until last time I was visiting my old college to see my friends, and I woke up suddenly at 5AM, wrote 25 pages in my notebook, and went back to sleep. When I woke up, I read it over and knew that it was the story that had been haunting me since mid-high school.

9. One of the characters of Green, in this draft at least, has the personality trademark of ordering extremely ostentatious Starbucks drinks. My life goal is not to be working for Starbucks anymore by the time anyone actually tries ordering one of them.

8. I swear to god I’ve seen my male lead in real life. He was coming out of Forbidden Planet comics on 13th Street, reading X-Men as he crossed the street into heavy traffic. I fell in love.

7. I accidentally used the word “dazzling” in one sentence without thinking, and then hyperventilated for about ten minutes.

6. The bulk of this manuscript was written between the hours of 2AM and 7AM.

5. I watched a LOT of South Park and American Dad! while writing this book in the middle of the night.

4. The main character underwent a total name change after I was already 35,000 words into the manuscript.

3. The album that I listened to the most times straight through while writing Green is “Heroes & Thieves” by Vanessa Carlton.

2. However, the artist I listened to most while writing Green was Fall Out Boy.

1. Green was both started and finished in Liz’s dorm room, 1200 miles away from where I live.

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April 14, 2009

Vintage Vernacular

Filed under: Biliophilia!, Nostalgia & Memories, Wednesday Word Posts — Tags: Book Recs, History, Inspirational Words, Poetry, Words — admin @ 8:28 pm

I love the way that words were used in the Cold War world, that technicolor time of lunar dreams and gelatin desserts, where words were revered as important in a way that seems lost today, in the land of LOL.

The first day that I worked for PBS, I swooned over a newsprint scrapbook the studio had been bequeathed by an ungrateful great-niece, and I discovered my favorite line of journalism in a wedding announcement from 1942:

“The flower-girl looked gay as she tossed daisy petals from her wicker basket and skipped up the aisle in a dress of salmon pink crepe noisette.”¹

That line would never be in a newspaper today, but it is so evocative and beautiful.

Another of my favorite reading passages of late is from Birds of Britain, under the chapeaux of blonde Susannah York:

“…This was the seminal film in Britain’s new wave, and took a refreshing historical jump across the dusty antimacassar chasm of Victoriana into a more like-minded century.”²

That sentence buzzed into my brain like a bee, stung my interest, and just keeps flying there, rolling over barrel-rolls, and I can’t shake it. I am smitten. In love with the words.

Some may say that the writing of the midcentury is already becoming archaic, overly descriptive, reading almost condescendingly in today’s climate of Politically Correct Self-Esteem. Celebrities today work to be Taken Seriously, all the while discrediting themselves by action (or inaction). Except in the apparent case of Robert Pattinson, no longer do celebrity interviews focus only on the sweet life a go-go –

“She’s a pixie, a Peter Pan type with a daybreaking smile and mischief in her eyes, and she’s finding it hard to believe that she is living in a real world, what with one fabulous thing after another happening to her!”³

Then there is the question of hopefulness in writing. Hope is a word that feels foreign sometimes, when every news story is of terrorists and unending guerilla warfare and American television shows, on average, sixty-three dead bodies an hour. If the midcentury, crippled with World War Two, McCarthyite propagandism, the eventual irreconcilable crush of Vietnam, could find a string of hope in nearly everything written, why can’t we?

“It isn’t all currency or current though. There’s priceless history between these covers. None of us is getting any younger. When, in a generation or so, a radio-active, cigar-smoking child picnicking on Saturn asks you what the Beatle affair was all about … Just play the child a few tracks from [Beatles for Sale] and he’ll probably understand what it was all about. The kids of AD 2000 will draw from the music much the same sense of well-being and warmth as we do today.
“For the magic of The Beatles is, I suspect, timeless and ageless. It has broken all frontiers and barriers. It has cut through differences of race, age, and class. It is adored by the world.”

1. Unknown.
2. Green, John D. Birds of Britain. London: The Macmillan Company, 1967.
3. Teen Magazine. 1963.
4. Taylor, Derek. Beatles For Sale (Sound Recording). 1964.

Comments (5)

April 11, 2009

A Eulogy

Filed under: Creative Writing, Nostalgia & Memories — Tags: Green, Lessons I've Learned, Words — admin @ 8:26 pm

My laptop died yesterday.

That’s why this blog is a day late, and a bit scattered. I am in mourning for my fallen friend.

She was a well-traveled laptop. She’d gone on cross-country tours with me and made over 16 moves. She’d even survived those 10 weeks of homelessness in New York City. It’s fitting that she died in transit.

She first got really sick when we were in Long Island over the summer. I was at Greg’s house, making poster graphics, when suddenly, she coughed and spluttered and restarted herself at just the same moment that the computer Greg’s mother was on across the room did the same. Some malady had eaten all of the bookmarks on my poor laptop and zapped the whole battery in one go. But bravely she soldiered on, clinging to her temperamental powern cord for dear life.

The got on OK through the fall… I thought she just had a case of the croup. The occasional electric shock and restarting should maybe have raised more an alarm in me, but… well, the dear was getting old.

She was actually at her sickest point the weekend I started Green, back in November. Liz was a very good nursemaid, helping me try to care for my poor laptop while writing 40 pages in two days, but the strain was just a bit too much and she just kept shutting off. Afterwards, we sent away for a new battery, and she must have been high on the transplant list, because she got one right away and seemed to be doing better.

But somehow, it just wasn’t enough. The battery wasn’t hearty enough and her powercord was just too diseased. Over the last week, her condition worsened.

When I noticed on our plane home to my parents’ house that she had gone unconscious, I made plans as soon as we landed to place her in hospice care with Jimmy overnight. He was able to reconnect her on/off switch but… it was just too late. He couldn’t restart her heart.

He told me to take her to the emergency room, and so I did: The Geek Squad were fast and efficient in their diagnosis and treatment, but she had been gone too long.

There was nothing more that could be done for her.

Right now, her organs are being harvested over at Best Buy for transplant into the new shell of a sister I can’t afford but bought anyway, to help me cope with the loss (and to, you know, have a computer).

RIP, laptop. Or, as you might say, lost as you are among the digital heavens: 11010011010100110.

Comments (8)

April 8, 2009

MEME: The Countdown

Filed under: Friday Free-For-All, Memes! Surveys! Lists! — Tags: Book Recs, College, Green, Meme, Memories, Music, New York City, Television — admin @ 8:21 pm

Here’s the deal: Seven days until my rough manuscript is due. Four chapters in that time. Two days spent mostly traveling.

This blog will be a time-saving, but entertaining, meme!

15 Random Favorites
1. Rain
2. Autumn
3. Writing
4. Television, in general.
5. Chinese food
6. Curly-haired brunette beautiful boys
7. Peanut Butter & Jelly on toast
8. Harry Potter
9. Flash Forward
10. Fall Out Boy
11. Ian Fleming’s James Bond: 007 novels
12. Lay’s potato chips
13. Macarons
14. Sushi
15. Halloween

14 Favorite Foods
1. Salmon skin roll
2. Cheeseburgers
3. Anpan
4. General Tso’s chicken
5. Baked potato soup
6. Panda Express orange chicken
7. Spaghetti & garlic bread
8. Catalina chicken
9. Spinach & cheese souffle
10. Barbecue eel roll
11. Black truffles
12. Pistachio macarons
13. McDonald’s french fries
14. Earl Grey tea

13 Most Watched Shows
1. Law & Order: SVU
2. CSI: New York
3. Futurama
4. Bones
5. The Office
6. Veronica Mars
7. Arrested Development
8. America’s Next Top Model
9. Boy Meets World
10. Family Guy
11. American Dad!
12. South Park
13. Flash Forward

12 Good Bands/Singers [In No Particular Order]
1. Fall Out Boy
2. Paramore
3. Robert Pattinson
4. statespeed
5. Mark & James
6. Demi Lovato
7. Open Till Midnight
8. Kings of Leon
9. RAPOSO
10. The Jonas Brothers
11. John Mayer
12. Savannah Outen

11 Memories from this Year
1. Shmores behind the libarry
2. Walking with Liz through Galesburg and looking at all of the pretty old houses — “I don’t know why I’m talking about all of this.” “It’s OK. I have a very good attention-filter.”
3. Writing Green!
4. Lauren kissing the van…
5. “Mom, we’re just watching a movie! No, Mom, don’t cry!”
6. “OH MY GOD, we’re in CONNECTICUT.”
7. Skeller’s stew (It happened. I’m sorry, but it did happen.)
8. “What time is the concert?” “…8:45.” “IT IS NINE O’CLOCK AND WE ARE 25 BLOCKS AWAY!” “Oh, well. Let’s go to Max Brenner’s.”
9. “If he were Edward Cullen, the FREAKY MOLE PERSON, then yeah… he’d be creepy.”
10. 10 Beatles albums for $50
11. Chicago with Liz and Carly! )

10 Close Friends
1. Liz
2. Jacee
3. Skeller
4. Sarah
5. Colleen
6. Christine
7. Jenn
8. Fallon
9. Jessie
10. Jimmy

9 Things You’re Looking Forward To
1. Finishing the rough draft.
2. Finishing this meme, which is more time-consuming than I thought.
3. Seeing Christine and Jimmy on Friday!
4. Celebratory sushi on Wednesday with my favorite people!
5. Cutting my hair; it’s really ridiculous.
6. Moving back to my favorite sleepy little town. It’s odd, but it’s true: I am looking forward to leaving New York City. I may be back someday.
7. The near future of the next few years.
8. SEEING MY GALESBURG GIRLS. I have missed you all so!
9. Writing. And writing and writing and writing…

8 Things You Wear Daily
1. Underwear
2. My uniform pants.
3. A tank top
4. My uniform shirt.
5. The most rockin’ glasses since 1958.
6. My uniform shoes.
7. My $30 iPod shuffle.
8. My purse from Aunt Mayme Jane’s.

7 Things That Annoy You
1. People who stop in huge clusters in the middle of the sidewalk.
2. HUMAN STATUES. I HATE THEM. THEY FREAK ME OUT IN THE SUBWAY.
3. When crab rangoons have crab in them.
4. People who order drinks from Starbucks that do not exist.
5. Misplaced apostrophes on public signs.
6. When coworkers who are eighteen years old complain about being “too old” to stand for six hours. Get over it.
7. Having to wear a uniform at all.

6 Things You Touch Every Day
1. The computer keyboard
2. A pen
3. My notebooks
4. My hair, because it’s always getting in my face.
5. The computer mouse
6. Teacups.

5 Movies You Could Watch Over and Over
1. Clue
2. Winning London
3. The Sandlot
4. Superbad
5. Polly

4 Your Favorite Toys When You Were Little
1. Birdo
2. Strawberry Shortcake
3. My Little Ponies
4. Care Bears

3 Members of the Opposite Sex You Have Kissed (most recently)
1. I really feel a lot of shame in answering this question. It’s sort of pathetic. Although also principled. Or something.
2. —
3. —

2 Of Your Favorite Songs At This Moment
1. “(Coffee’s for Closers),” Fall Out Boy
2. “Stay On Me,” Open Till Midnight

1 Person you’d Spend the Rest of Your Life With
1. Wow, that’d be boring.

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April 6, 2009

Princess Rosalind and the Bag of Marbles, or My Seventh Grade Year

Filed under: Biliophilia!, Creative Writing, Nostalgia & Memories — Tags: Green, Harry Potter, Inspirational Words, Lessons I've Learned, Memories, Middle School, on books! — admin @ 7:23 pm

It hit me for the first time last night while I was talking to Liz that I am nine days away from finishing the manuscript for a five-hundred page novel.

A FREAKING NOVEL. I WROTE A NOVEL. I mean, this should be obvious, considering the fact that… well… I’m a writer… and the reason that this blog exists is because… I… wrote a novel…

[Hayley Anne Perkins has trailed off and wandered away awkwardly to make tea and wait for the crickets to stop chirping.]

But it didn’t really hit me that I have written a novel.

There’s still a LOT of work to do — revisions, and then another set of revisions, and then a target-demographic test reading (any volunteers?), and then probably more revisions… but still: I’ve written at least the skeleton and some obscure organs, like the spleen, of a novel for which I feel a lot of pride.

When I was in seventh grade, I wrote my first “novel.” I am exceedingly, exceedingly glad that the one publishing house that I sent it to rejected it (though kindly, because I was only twelve). It was called A Bag of Marbles and it makes absolutely no logical sense. It was A Grand Manifesto on the importance of racial tolerance (I was a white, suburban seventh grader in a white, suburban middle school) that used a lot of very stereotypical names and descriptions for its characterizations. There was a Grand Forbidden Love Story aspect that my parents had me cut, because it did sort of come out of nowhere.

It actually probably wasn’t that much worse than some recent bestsellers, but at any rate, I’m very glad that it doesn’t come up on Google if you search my name or anything.

The name came from this passage, which I still sort of vainly like, though I will never use –

She opened the bag and the marbles spilled out onto the floor. I could tell at first glance that these were really special marbles, and I could see why they’d cost $150. I reached down and picked up a clear, red marble with a golden dragon imbedded in the center.

“These are part of a special collection called ‘Around the World’,” she said, picking up a saffron-yellow marble with an ivory monkey, “That’s the China marble. I really like that one. Here,” she said, dropping the yellow marble in my hand, “This one is India.”

We lay on our stomachs, looking at the marbles. Their beauty astounded me. There was emerald green with a shamrock for Ireland and periwinkle blue with a marble Eiffel Tower for France. Japan was perfectly clear, like a crystal bubble, with a tiny, tiny, pink origami crane in its inner depths. Botswana was a rich, grassy green, with a small silver elephant inside that looked almost as though it had been born, not made. Every country had it’s [sic] own beautiful, unique marble. We sat in silence, just fingering the cool, shining, clear stones. I especially liked the Hungarian marble, which was paprika red with a pysanky egg (one of those intricately decorated, gorgeous Easter eggs) inside.

“I love how they’re all so different,” she said, “But they all go together perfectly. They mix, but you wouldn’t think so at first glance.”

Deep, man. Deep.

[Hayley Anne Perkins wanders away again, wondering if she's ruined her own chances in the writing world by posting the above passage of seventh-grade moralizing.]

As I was waiting for the response from the publisher on A Bag Of Marbles, I fell head over heels for a certain British book series that had recently been published in America, and started to plot out a seven-book YA fantasy series involving a lot of magic and mystical herbology and fantastic beasts and where to find them. But it starred a princess, so clearly, it was so like, totally not Harry Potter.

Princess Rosalind was very small and dark-haired and pale with bright blue eyes, thank you very much, so again: she was obviously not just the female, royal version of Harry Potter. She wanted to learn magic, but was not actually a witch, so her powers would be limited to potions (hence all of the bizarre herbology. Which actually just turned into a list of made-up edible herbs. Which just devolved into a menu [see "Om Nom Nom," 3 April 2009]).

Most of the magical herbs had names that I only later came to realize were just obscure real words that I had read somewhere or another, like “yardang” and “macrodont” and “geas.” The aforementioned Fantastic Beasts were very similar to Michael Scott’s idea of prehistoric religious beliefs on The Office:

Maybe there’s some sort of animal… that we could make a sacrifice to. Like a giant buffalo. Or some sort of monster… like… something… with the body of a walrus… with the head of a sea lion. Or something with the body of an egret… with the head of a meerkat. Or just… the head of a monkey, with the antlers of a reindeer, with, ah… the body of a porcupine.

I also spent so much time laying out chapter titles with Very Clever Puns or Clues To The Solution Of The Mystery in them that I forgot to actually figure out anything concrete about the plot, or the characters, or the mythos of this world that was really a lot like the Bristol Renaissance Faire, only with wizards.

There was also a character who had been in existence since the Big Bang, and took one hundred human years to age one year. She had lived forever, and could remember endless lifetimes and stories and languages.

I never named her, and I had actually forgotten that she existed until I began writing this blog tonight. But it’s interesting to see that the deformed sister of a germ of one good idea began in seventh grade.

Have you achieved anything lately that you’ve been working towards since childhood?

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