TALES AND TRAVAILS FROM A NOT-YET-DEAD POET

Stories- we’re fascinated by them…stories of people, places, indelible traces…

…What was that song -you know the one I mean-

from “back in the day” - that song which still

occasionally drifts into YOUR head even today- like

the smiling ghost of an old friend- and you still

remember those lyrics all these years later - and you

feel that nostalgic twinge - of those ol’

“warm’n’fuzzies”…?

What was your song??

Chances are, those lyrics - of “your song” - were

performed - in Poetic Form!

In a nutshell THAT’S the Power of Poetry - what’s

said - and HOW- it’s read…can create an impression

in your mind.

Like most, I didn’t start out on my journey by

dreaming of becoming a Performance Poet…

Hardly.

And if you’re like me, your “education” about the

spoken word likely began early…

My Mom could affectionately whisper my name “Jim”

in such a sweet way that I’d feel like the best-behaved

Little Boy on the planet…

Or…she could ear-splittingly screech “JIM” on those

rare occasions, almost curling the paint on the walls,

when my Devilish nature took over- and I “allegedly”

misbehaved…!

Inflection 101.

In school, do you remember- as I do - that teacher

who made the lesson “come alive”- and pique your

interest in an otherwise hopelessly dull subject?

…And - that “other” instructor, whose low monotone

would almost make you prefer the nerve-jangling

sounds of fingernails -excruciatingly clawing their way

down -that scarred, tortured blackboard?

Inflection 201.

I’d learn more about inflection- and the necessity of

speaking & writing concisely- precisely - in my short

stint as a Newspaper Reporter in the now-defunct

Hartford Times in the mid-70’s…

A year out of College, there I’d be, agonizingly taking

notes during 4-hour local Planning & Zoning

Commission meetings - listening to some dreary

Politico take 10 minutes to drone on about his

mundane musings - which he easily could’ve wrapped

up in 2…

At that point, I knew…if I ever got my hands on a

microphone - I vowed “Don’t Be That Guy”…

To this day, I keep reminding myself…”You still love

groovin’ to the Allman Bros “Ramblin’ Man” - but

unless you can play guitar like Dicky Betts- (and I

can’t) don’t be one yourself”!

Be Clear & Concise - 101.

Back then I also began working in my first love-

Radio- at WCCC-FM - a Rock station - where I

rubbed elbows with a rising young talent- 24-year-old

Howard Stern.

During his year-plus in Hartford, Howard was evolving

- turbocharging his career - almost from the Clark-

Kent-like mediocrity when he first began - to

Superman status toward the end of his meteoric reign

in Hartford. Shortly before he moved up to the top-tier

markets, I saw him onstage at a huge concert venue -

where most of us exposure-craving DJ’s would

eagerly jump at the chance to stand in front of the

throngs of fans- and bring on the headliner…

But with the spotlight momentarily on him- Howard

didn’t do what most other jocks did- excitedly

announce the list of other shows “coming soon” to the

City…instead - he only bellowed out these three

words…

“I’M HOWARD STERN”

…and the fans in that sold-out Civic Center unleashed

a deafening roar…

Stage-presence - Postgraduate Level.

During my radio years, I sold advertising full time, and

pulled part-time air shifts too…

Had plenty of fun spinning the tunes- but carrying on

a conversation by yourself on mic is an acquired, yet

elusive art… and since I couldn’t captivate an

audience like Howard Stern could, the Bombastic

Boss kept exhorting me to - in so many encouraging

words - “Shut up and play the hits!!”

In selling to clients, on the other hand, I drew upon my

experience as a reporter…each had their own story-

and the more questions I could ask them - the better

I’d do - and success would usually follow.

Early in my career, I’d write the ad copy for some of

the smaller businesses myself - as creatively as I

could within the 30 or 60 second commercial “walls”-

while still working on the essentials like the name,

location, products - all that fun stuff!

And for that matter, writing Newspaper stories was

another exercise in brevity- for news coverage, you

get to the meat of the matter- and write at an easily-

understood Grammar School level. When the story is

complex- boil it down!!

I much preferred feature writing, where I could

interview, then flesh out their story with personal

anecdotes …but those opportunities were relatively

few.

During election season, we’d read the press releases

sent in by the local candidates for office - hoping we’d

publish…

Now, I always looked at writing as a “life skill”- almost

like breathing…and since I could functionally breathe

and write- I assumed nearly everyone else could,

too…

Then, I started reading a few of the mangled “Press

Releases” sent into the second-largest Newspaper in

Connecticut on behalf of these local candidates…

Silently shaking my head, I’d mumble…”OK- so- not

“EVERYONE” - can write!!”

Be Clear & Concise. 201

Many years later, I moved on to selling billboard

advertising for a large corporation- Lamar Adv. Co.

Occasionally, we’d get email communiques from

Corporate HQ in Baton Rouge- directly from the CEO

- and his messages were astonishingly simple…

Rather than show off his Mighty Corporate Stature or

his Elite Harvard University Education, he was laser-

focused on delivering an easy-to-understand

Directive- leaving no room for ambiguity or

misinterpretation. He’d make HIS words- count!

Less…IS More…

Be Clear & Concise. Post-Graduate Level

After retiring, I eventually dusted off my pen and

joined a local Writer’s Group and we Zoomed

through the Pandemic. Now sometimes, ANY Zoom

Meeting can be like Root Canal without the Novocain,

so I tried to spare The Group that agony - with fast-

paced story-writing, provocatively igniting, tried to be

engaging -occasionally enraging - and as entertaining

as possible…and since I DON’T play the Guitar…no

rambling!

Occasionally, I’d write in verse…then one day, I heard

about this group- The Shore Poets- with live Open

Mic sessions in the Long Beach NY Library…

And suddenly…all these “lessons” I’d been learning-

all came together!!

My poetic stories can be brief & whimsical…30

seconds for

“Catfish me- my real-life fantasy”…”she doesn’t care

about our 50-year age gap- swore to me so as she

slid down her strap”…

A different story- can be a wee bit longer - like my

dubious “Poets Guide to filing your Taxes”…laced

with a few improbable scenarios!

Yet another takes you through the real-life story of the

Incan “Ice Maiden” - a young teenager sacrificed to

the gods 500 years ago- pondering all the family and

village dynamics which led to her bearing the curse of

becoming “the chosen one”…to save everyone she

knew…

But it doesn’t end there- for her remains were

famously discovered in 1995, studied, and she would

subsequently “teach us volumes, without uttering a

word- your mitochondrial DNA was so well-

preserved”…

And - if given the fateful choice- would she have

chosen…

…”To reappear in 500 years- like a Sleeping BEAUTY

And posthumously feted - like a STAR IN A MOVIE

Or - would you have chosen a life of obscurity

Lived & died with the rest - in anonymous

tranquility”…

I titled it “Girl of the Andes.” This poem is a 5-minute

soliloquy, and it’s patterned after the iconic “Green

Fields Of France”, where the hiker sits by the

gravestone of a fallen WW1 soldier - reflecting on the

soldier’s earlier life -the state of the world which

caused his demise- and the ensuing carnage which

the soldier likely sacrificed his life to prevent - but is

still happening to this day.

Poetry, I’ve found, exists in life itself- and virtually

ANY story can be remade into poetic form…

Lately, I’ve focused on parody songwriting- with a

humorously jabbing Political twist.

Now- Politics aside for the moment (I promise)-

I’ve found parody writing to be a complete paradox.

On one hand, the songwriters I’ve borrowed from-

Dylan, Bowie, Billy Joel, Gil Scott Heron & others-

have penned unforgettable melodies & lyrics for the

ages -THEY’VE done the heavy lifting for you- and

when you’re on stage, borrowing those melodies and

mimicking their inflections- your connection to the

audience can be Electric!!

On the other hand, their lyrics are often amazingly

simple in their brilliance- which makes them so

accessible- and beloved…

BUT- as a parody writer- you’ve got to write your

lyrics within the confines of their melodic “walls” …

For instance, if their line is 10 words - you can’t jam in

18 words- or try to stretch out 6…

And if they’re at 23 syllables- can can’t cram in 35…or

slide by with 12…

AND…borrowing a beloved melody pushes you to a

far higher standard of accountability with the crowd. If

your words fall flat - if your intended meaning goes

splat- the ensuing audience’s moans and groans will

make you want to crawl under a rock…and there are

simply no rocks to hide under - from the glaring lights

on stage!!

So - it’s an easy-sounding- yet elevated challenge -

but when you make that Electric Connection- the

crowd goes nuts.

I’ve recorded a number of my politically- acerbic

parodies & posted them on YouTube & Tik Tok. Now,

since virtually no one would recognize my real name,

I created a Brand- “The Grouchy Grandpa Channel”

as my platform.

This is a pure hobby for me- and since I’m not

attempting to make any money off this, what I do is

legally considered “Fair Use” (DISCLAIMER-I’m not

an Attorney- nor do I play one on TV- so please- don’t

take this as “Legal Advice” -from me!!)

Throughout my life experiences, I’ve found there are

only 3 ways to speak…

You can speak AT someone…

You can speak TO someone

Or…you can speak WITH someone…

Now…if you’re on the receiving end…which way -

would YOU prefer to be engaged??

Whenever I’m performing poetry onstage, I try to

make it feel like a one-on-one convo with a good

friend - sharing a story and a good reaction…

And lastly…CHEATING…

Admit it…you cheat!

Remember when you’d cheat

- with a taste of that forbidden sweet?

How about that extra swig from that frosty cold

brew??

Or- when you lopped off that one promised loop in

your exercise regimen?

Or that time Uncle Sam would’ve furrowed his brow -

if he only knew about that piece of fudge oozing out of

your tax return…??

Whether your cheating involves the fallacious,

voracious, or the salacious (and spare us your sordid

details)...you cheat!

Everyone cheats…and yes…I cheat, too.

Whenever I write Poetry, I cheat (and not with that

creepy AI stuff, either)...

I can make every line rhyme - and I usually do…even

when my story touches the 8-minute mark.

No - I’m not a walking Thesaurus…I’m more like a

lumbering Brontosaurus…

but whenever I’m stuck for a word I whip out the App

“RhymeZone”

It’s a gold mine of ideas - and it & bailed me out of

countless jams…

And when I absolutely, positively can’t find a word to

rhyme, I simply change the line - and end with a

different word…that shines!

Rhyme Zone - try it yourself, and you’ll be well on

your way - to earning your PhD - in Poetry.

Cheating - Doctorate Level

Everyone has a story…

…and that’s Mine!

Thanks for your Time!

Oh- and here’s my YouTube Link to The Grouchy

Grandpa Channel…

…and about my earlier-stated promise of “Politics

Aside”? …

Well, Sorry, Mate -

It had an expiration date!

https://youtube.com/@grouchygrandpa-vt5og?si=nebSVwX1YWwV6DYZ

Performance Poet and Digital Creator Jim Coulter

weaves tales of the whimsical, ethereal, satirical, political, and often hysterical. Jim has been published in several Anthologies, and also photographs “ Poetry In Nature” along the shoreline of Long Beach NY. Follow Jim on the “Grouchy Grandpa Channel” on YouTube and Tik Tok.

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G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.

The Power of Poetry

Hi all, I’m Tammy. There are many, like me, who believe that writing is a vehicle of creating connections, to oneself and others. The sense of isolation diminishes, even disappears. We do not want to live a life in a vacuum. Robert Frost said, “A poem begins with a lump in the throat; a homesickness or a love sickness. It is a reaching-out toward expression; an effort to find fulfillment. A complete poem is one where an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words. ”Roger Rosenblatt once said, “We go through the arduous task of learning how to speak in order to tell the stories within.” The drive to say, “I am/was here” is hardwired in humans. This “drive” has been with us since we were aware of our “humanness.” The Indonesian handprints are at least 39,900 years old.

I am a believer that the creative process enables deeper critical thinking. It represents the highest level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; that being: self-actualization. There are many, like me, who write as a form of therapy; when the world does not make sense, when it is colder than icebergs, or when it shows a sign that there is hope. I hone the emotion in my personal lyrical poetry into a piece of highly polished art. The poem becomes a lantern for the reader, signaling someone understands and waits to embrace them.

I teach poetry because I know the healing power of words.

I know the human mind is poetic in nature. I know that with a handful of instruction and an armload of encouragement poems emerge from those who never thought they possessed the gift. I teach poetry because I understand the soul, in all of us, suffers and rejoices. I know the yearning to release/express. I, like my students, am like Keller, seeking the sight of words.

I have had the pleasure of serving as Suffolk County Poet Laureate (2009 – 2011) and the Long Island Poet of the Year (2017). I have devoted my adult life to poetry and having a location on Long Island that is open to anyone wishing to utilize it, is a vision forty years in the making that is now a reality that is the Long Island Poetry Literature Repository.

One of my most memorable experiences concerning poetry and its power is when I conducted “residency workshops” in the Suffolk County correctional facilities for five years. For the first three I would only hold workshops for the female inmates. One of the guards asked me to please include the male inmates. I relented and was ashamed after spending time with them. The men were in as much need to have a positive form of expression as the women. I was not, and still am not, Pollyanna about the inmates, but I also know the verse, “There but by the grace of God go I.”

In the fifth year I held workshops in two of Suffolk County facilities. I edited an anthology of their work, Finding Our Voices. Neither facility wanted to be associated with the other, one being the Riverhead County Jail and the other being the Day Jail in Hauppauge for drug and alcohol offensives. The Riverhead facility claimed that the day inmates in Hauppauge were nothing more than posers. The day inmates in Hauppauge said that the Riverhead inmates were all criminals. I found this separation of themselves from the other fascinating. I made sure each inmate received a copy of the anthology, which was partially funded by the Huntington Arts Council and BOCES.

The apex of my experiences, concerning the power of poetry, is the following story. Years ago, I had a poetry website. One of the contributors was a woman who I will call Mary. Her poems were getting darker and deeply depressing. I finally reached out to her and expressed my concern. She wrote back saying how she was an American stuck in Romania. She had sold all her belongings to join a man she had met online. He became abusive and broke her hand. She could not work, as she did not speak the language.

She said she had reached out to the United States Consulate; they would not help her. I asked if I could try to help her. Yes, she said. I called The Retreat, an organization that assists domestically abused women. They contacted the US Consulate on her behalf, next thing she and I knew, the consulate paid for her return ticket and The Retreat gave her shelter. A couple of weeks later I was the featured reader at a poetry reading in her area and asked if she would care to go. We met at a deli, as the location of the shelter was not to be shared. When she got in my car she said, “I’m scared.” Of what I asked. She replied of reading in public. I said, “After what you just went through, THIS is what you are scared of??” We both laughed. Several months later she moved to North Carolina to live with her sister. Many years later I worked at The Retreat as a Court Advocate.

I would like to think that poetry brought about what I mentioned at the beginning of this article: that writing is a vehicle for creating connections, to oneself and others. The sense of isolation diminishes, even disappears.

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Tammy has earned her Ph.D. in Humanities & Culture in the Interdisciplinary Studies program at Union Institute & University. Her dissertation was: The Healing Power of Poetry. She teaches at Long Island University, at the C W Post campus, as an adjunct assistant professor in the departments of: English, Humanities, and Sociology. She is the Founder and President of Long Island Poetry & Literature Repository. She was the first female appointed to the post of Suffolk County Poet Laureate 2009-2011. She is the Editor of Long Island Sounds Anthology.

Some of her accomplishments: 2017 WWBP Long Island Poet of the Year; 2016 Charter Member of the Long Island Authors’ Circle; National Association Poetry Therapy Member (since 2015); 2012 – 2020 Poet-in-Residence Southampton Historical Museum; 2011 Nominated Pushcart Prize, “Beneath an Irish Sky” by Mobius; 2011 - 2014 Poetry Director of Youth Program in Ireland at the Gerard Manly Hopkins Festival; 2010 Mobius’ Editor-in-Chief Choice; 2009 Recipient of LIWG Community Service Award; Listed in Poets & Writers since 2006.

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G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.

Poetry’s Hold on Me

Artwork by Victoria Cebotar

Poems pop up unexpectedly. I find it’s better to allow than command their appearance. But I am required to put pen to paper or hover fingers above a keyboard and be still. The seeds for poems are in the wind, the trees, the dirt, the news, works of art, interactions with humans and other beings who catch my attention. Some poems wake me up in the middle of the night suggesting edits, additions, new directions.

I grew up in a house filled with books. My father was a singer, an actor and a sales executive and my mother was a drama major in college who became a high school English teacher and advisor to the Drama club. Both taught me to appreciate fine writing and the power of clear communication, which I suppose is what led me to study anthropological linguistics and then fall into a career in publishing. 

I’ve always read much more prose than poetry, but my writing has taken the form of poetry — the free verse kind.

For that I have to thank my high school English teacher Arthur Smith, who gave me A Stone, A Leaf, A Door, a book of Thomas Wolfe’s gorgeous prose refashioned as poetry. And the more I write, the more I take to heart my college English professor William Gifford’s insistence on succinct and precise writing, no matter what form it takes.

Over the years, I’ve written poetry in cycles, with lengthy gaps between forays. A couple of decades ago, I shared some poems with friends. That gave me the courage to attend a Performance Poets Association open mic in Glen Cove, which led to opportunities to read as a featured poet at coffeehouse and bookstore events and then to a few acceptances for publication. I tried a poetry workshop but was too unsure of myself at the time to continue.

© Emily-Sue Sloane

First published in We Are Beach Glass, by Emily-Sue Sloane (2022) 

I felt I needed to sort out what I wanted and needed from this creative process. I talked about it often with my wife, Linda Sussman, who is a singer and songwriter, and my brother-in-law, Scudder Parker, who is a poet. Was it enough just to write? Did I need to be published? To read in front of an audience?

At some point, life took over and I simply stopped writing. For a very long time.

A few years ago, after I retired from my day job in publishing, I revisited some of my old poems — so old that I first had to reformat the files on my computer or retype them altogether! I saw that some needed revising, and that was the beginning of my pathway back. I attended a poetry workshop at the local library and received a warm welcome there, as well as encouragement and suggestions of other workshops to check out. New poems started to flow. The weekly workshops drove me to keep writing.

I began to submit my work for publication. When the first acceptance during this phase popped into my email, Linda and I did our happy dance right in the middle of a Manhattan Starbucks, where we were killing time before a Sweet Honey in the Rock concert. Every acceptance since has elicited the same level of excitement!

My daily routine these days is to spend a few hours working on my poetry: writing, revising, submitting for publication, organizing, trashing. I attend two weekly writing workshops, a poetry appreciation meeting and occasional readings and open mics. One positive aspect of sheltering at home in a pandemic has been the accessibility of poetry events on Zoom.

I continue to explore what I enjoy about writing and what I want and need from the creative process — often wishing that I could make music or draw instead. 

© Emily-Sue Sloane

First published in We Are Beach Glass, by Emily-Sue Sloane (2022)

For me, writing is meditation. Sometimes it takes me to a deep place where time stops and words flow; other times my chattering mind churns up only garbage. I try to follow Naomi Goldberg’s advice in her book Writing Down the Bones to write, simply write, without judgment; write down the compost in order to get to what lives underneath.

Some poems appear on the page nearly finished; others are a struggle, forcing me to think more deeply about what I’m trying to say. Some require research and lengthy consultations with a dictionary or thesaurus. Some prompt me to write about the process itself.

I’m almost always surprised by the results.

Many people dislike editing their work; others never stop revising. I enjoy editing and continue to learn ways to improve, especially from other poets at my workshops. Like most poets, I’ve learned to “kill my darlings,” those metaphors, similes and phrases that the poet may love but that really don’t serve the poem. And I’m always working to tilt my writing more toward poetry than prose.

My wife is my first reader and best editor. She brings her musical and literary sensibilities to the page. If I initially resist her suggestions, I usually come to realize that she’s right.

I enjoy sharing my poetry, but I don’t like to boast about it. Social media provides an opportunity for the former but necessitates the latter. Submitting poems to journals, anthologies and contests is a lot like playing the lottery: It takes me from hope to disappointment and occasionally to joy — just enough success to keep me in the game. Reading poems to an audience is a more immediate and intimate way to share, even on Zoom, and the experience usually clarifies what does and doesn’t work as spoken word. But as an introvert, I admit those are the times I wish I had inherited my dad’s talent and delight in performing!

© Emily-Sue Sloane

First published in Shot Glass Journal (Muse-Pie Press), June 2020

Every day I worry that I will stop writing again. Until that happens, I am putting one word in front of the other, calling them to order and sending poems out into the world, where I hope they will resonate as true, providing solace for whatever’s ailing a reader or listener, and touching a funny bone or heart along the way.

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Emily-Sue Sloane is a lifelong Long Islander who writes poetry to capture moments of wonder, worry and human connection. She is the author of We Are Beach Glass, a new full-length poetry collection (BookBaby, 2022). Emily-Sue has won first-place awards in poetry contests held by Calling All Writers, the Long Island Fair, Nassau County Poet Laureate Society, Performance Poets Association and Princess Ronkonkoma Productions, and she was a finalist in the Babylon Village Poetry Contest.

Additional publishing credits include print and online journals and anthologies: Amethyst Review; The Avocet; Bards Annual; Boston Literary Magazine; CHAOS: The Poetry Vortex; Corona, an anthology of poems; Escape, a CAW Anthology; Hope, a CAW Anthology; Front Porch Review; The Long Island Quarterly; Mobius; Muddy River Poetry Review; Never Forgotten: 100 Poets Remember 9/11; Panoply; Paumonok; Poeming Pigeon: From Pandemic to Protest; The Poet’s Art; PPA Literary Review; The RavensPerch; Shot Glass Journal; Suffolk County Poetry Review; Trees in a Garden of Ashes; and Walt’s Corner.

For more information, please visit emilysuesloane.com

G&E In Motion does not necessarily agree with the opinions of our guest bloggers. That would be boring and counterproductive. We have simply found the author’s thoughts to be interesting, intelligent, unique, insightful, and/or important. We may not agree on the words but we surely agree on their right to express them and proudly present this platform as a means to do so.

La Vita Quotidiana: The Artist and Daily Life

The phrase “la vita quotidiana” never hit me so hard as it did during COVID-19, when a dystopian reality hit the world in a wave, like 80,000 fans at Yankee Stadium moving as one amoeba, rising falling and watching the wave move through the stands.  I saw COVID-19 coming, like everyone. I had the privilege of a door to close to keep the virus out, human contact out, and money enough to get food and medicine delivered right to my door.

Here’s my artist’s daily life now without la vita quotidiana.  I wake up I check my handheld screen, make espresso and it’s never as good as if I was in Napoli, but it’s a placeholder for la vita quotidiana I am not living.  I drink the espresso and look at my gallon of Sicilian olive oil on the counter with the picture of the carrozzella, another placeholder for the trees my grandparents harvested as youth field workers, landless peasants.  I open another screen, type on a keyboard, conscious to keep my fingers and neck from stiffening.  Hours and hours dissolve while my brain works almost not attached to a body.  I turn to the piano keyboard, working on the lead sheet of “Fly Me to the Moon.”  I take a break to eat.  I go into my audio cave—two walls where I glued soundproofing to the walls and threw a sleeping bag over a makeshift lean-to. I can’t explain the architecture of how I rigged this, but I can try—I zip gunned a framed canvass to the underside of a corner shelf, and stuck a four-foot length of scrap wood under it as a leg.  I didn’t bother to measure or cut the leg, so it’s on a diagonal.  However it fits.  Perfect. Sturdy.  Holds the roof up.  Over the top goes the sleeping bag.  This is my audio cave. 

I record podcasts in there.  Yes, I talk to the walls.  As a kid in the Bronx this was the ultimate nightmare: once you start talking to the walls, you know you’re in trouble.  The people in the white coats are “coming to take you away.”  That was a popular song lyric in my youth. “They’re coming to take you away hah hah, they’re coming to take you away.” Maybe you remember it, you baby-boomers out there. I’m aiming for a hundred stories, a Decameron, because that one Giovanni B. did something admirable with his plague.  So, why can’t I?

I survived 2020 with a stack of N95 masks. How I got them is a story in and of itself--an under the table deal, what we used to call on the street--a racket. March 3rd, 2020 another fellow actor friend in NYC told me, “Annie I know a guy who sees what’s coming. He’s warehoused N95 masks, hand sanitizer, and packets of alcohol wipes.  Meet me on the corner of 13th and 6th and I’ll hook you up.”  Like a drug deal, my buddy, let’s call him Adam, jumped into my car without me even pulling over, as I drove eastbound on West 12th. He directed me to an undisclosed location. Take a right here, the next left, pull over, wait here, I’ll be right back.  I gave him some cash, and he brought me double what I paid for.  “You’re gonna need this,” he kept saying. “You above all.”  I didn’t know I wouldn’t see him for over a year from that moment.  We were all going, into effect, underground.  Back to our caves to face whatever home life we’d created or failed to.  Adam saved my life. Spleenless and immunocompromised with lungs already with fibrosis from radiation from a teenage bout with Hodgkin’s Disease, I was not slated to do well if I came in contact with this mysterious virus with its protein spiked crown, each sure to mutate.

I telephoned my old doctor, the hero who saved me in 1981 at Sloan-Kettering.   “I’m just calling to say hi,” I said, “I don’t have COVID.”

“If you had it, this would be a goodbye phone call,” he said to me.  “Ten or fifteen years from now it’ll be discussed how the hemoglobin structure of Italians made them more susceptible.  We look at malaria now, we see how people with variant hemoglobin structures are differentially affected.  But you, you’re from Bari, your bloodline is really Constantinopolitan.  You’re not really Italian.  I don’t mean that as an insult.  I mean it in terms of hemoglobin structure.  That might actually be protecting you from the path of the pathogen.”

I face-timed Rome every day.  Friends. Friends like family with a newborn baby who wouldn’t see the face of strangers the whole first year of his life.  I wondered about these babies of 2020, without interaction with other babies, without the sounds and smells of the cities around them, without faces except the ones they lived with in confinement.  Sheltering-in-place. In Rome and all over Italy, my friends and family were in “la zona rosa”—red zones; they couldn’t leave the house without a reason or written permit.  There was no passeggiata.  La vita quotidiana had come to a halt; la dolce vita,--on stop.  I’m thinking of emergency brakes, I’m thinking of those old cassette deck players, a simple square was the icon for “stop” and someone’s thick finger just pressed it, pressed it hard.  Stop.   Italy was two weeks ahead of New York in terms of the COVID wave so talking to my friends I knew what was coming ahead of time to New York.  I braced myself.  Stocked up on any food available for delivery. Dove deep into writing and painting still lifes of lemons.  I thought about the long de-evolution of humans in society; As kids we studied the local communal living in Iroquois longhouses where extended families and communities cooperated to survive and held ritual for spiritual awakeness and healing.  How did humans devolve in post-colonial capitalist society to believe that each human being needs to pull themselves up by their bootstraps?  As President Obama once pointed out --What if you don’t have boots?  How did we acquiesce into living apart in “apart”ments, literally naming the trend?  How did we isolate and warehouse and medicate our elders into zombies in “old age homes?”  And how do these words not stick in our throats as they writhe out of our mouths?  How are humans praising whatever deity on one hand and not caring for elders on the other?  How do companies have individuals each paying a couple of bucks a month for invisible “cloud” space, the intellectual closet space and $12 bucks for this, $18 bucks for that, for audio files, website files, and then poof, one “php” change and it all evaporates like a Buddhist’s “I told you so.”  

The other day I took an N95 masked walk on City Island with another fellow actor.  A City Island elder hippie wise woman stopped me in the street: 

            “What’s your birthday?” she accosted me in a friendly “I see through you” way. 

            “Six-one” I told her, “Marilyn Monroe.”  

            “Ahh yes,” she said, “That’s right.  What year?”   

            “63,” I told her.  

            “Ahh, yes that was a good year.”  She nodded putting it all together and getting to the root of my soul:  “You don’t know the difference between what’s real and what’s not.  That will be a lifelong struggle. And constant creative ideas.  You can’t turn it off.”

            “Yes, thanks,” I said.  “I’ll take all the free advice I can get.”

            And so, in search and hope for la vita quotidiana and la dolce vita once again, this one artist signs off for now, going to pop a croissant in the toaster, and dream of la cornetta di crema and the daily flow of a life in community with human touch I once knew, as I stare at screens of light, cup my hands over my eyes to give darkness as a gift to my brain, and keep breathing knowing full well every breath is a privilege while I have it.  One day, one day, the breath will fly free.  For now it stays with me, comes back home.

THANKS:

Annie first gives thanks and abbracci forti to Greg Cioffi and Emily Dinova who Annie claims she was the first to see them fall in love, love at first site, while overlapping in the costume shop in Manhattan Plaza.  Like all memories this one has a few puzzle pieces: the audition where Greg showed off his chest hair, then the costume room where Annie overlapped with Greg, and a minute later spotted Emily in the crosswalk on her way there.  BAM, it was a cosmic event.  Crosswalks are the place of city cosmos.  Greg and Emily were cast as lovers in Tony n’ Tina’s wedding.  Annie was cast as Grandma.  The rest is artistic history.  Here we are.   Annie celebrates la vita quotidiana that Emily and Greg have so artfully woven together. Graziemille to Adam Feingold, Emily Jordan Agnes Kunkel, and Sanford Kempin.

---

Annie Rachele Lanzillotto

Author, poet, performance-artist, actor, director, songwriter, and activist

Author, poet, performance-artist, actor, director, songwriter, and activist, Annie Rachele Lanzillotto is a consummate cantastoria, one who sings epic tales in the piazza and walks with a big stick.  She has promoted audience participation in hundreds of performances everywhere from the Arthur Avenue Retail Market to the Guggenheim Museum to the Napoli Città Libro festival.   While sheltering-in-place alone, she embarked on a solo Decameron, with a nod to Boccaccio, to tell one hundred original stories, in her podcast, "Annie's Story Cave” which can be heard everywhere. 

Forthcoming are two memoir essays: “The Wallmakers / I Muratori,”  (KGB Bar Lit Mag online) edited by Pat Zumhagen; and “Another Spring” in the anthology “Talking to the Girls, Personal Reflections on The Triangle Factory Fire” (New Village Press), edited by Edvige Giunta and Mary Anne Trasciatti.  Lanzillotto’s books include the double flip book: Hard Candy: Caregiving, Mourning, and Stage Light; and Pitch Roll Yaw, (Guernica World Editions), L is for Lion: an italian bronx butch freedom memoir (SUNY Press; finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Award), and Schistsong (Bordighera Press.) Her original albums include: Blue Pill; Never Argue With a Jackass; Swampjuice: Yankee with a Southern Peasant Soul.  Lanzillotto was on the founding board of the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition.  She is the Artistic Director of Street Cry Inc.  Member of Theatre 68.  All love and thanks and in memory of the ancestors.

LINKS to Annie’s work: 

·      Podcast: “Annie’s Story Cave” is on every platform and: StreetCryInc.org. 

·      Books: order through any bookstore, or here http://www.annielanzillotto.com

·      Audiobooks: https://www.audible.com/author/Annie-Rachele-Lanzillotto/B00APRVO9E

·      Original albums: annielanzillotto.bandcamp.com

·      Paintings: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/annie-lanzillotto

·      Icewoman Performance Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3FimguzDxs

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