Sonya Rhen's Blog, page 12

Happy New Year!

My Books

I hope 2013 was good to you!  I was happy to have one of my all time dreams come true this year, which was to see a book of mine published and on a shelf.  Even if it was just self-published and on my own book shelf.  Geez, they’re even “shiny” and new!

Happy New Year to everyone!

“Requite Me” Free on Amazon from 12/20/13-12/24/13

You can get my collection of poetry on the Kindle for free for the next 5 days! 

#FreeBook  #Kindle

Happy Holidays and Happy Reading!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G06MSEO

A Year in Passing

This past October marked the one year anniversary of my mother’s passing.  She died on October 2nd, 2012.  It was her 71st birthday.  It may seem like quite a coincidence, however it was the day that we made the decision to pull the plug on her life support machine.  I’m not sure if the doctor knew that it was her birthday, but it was kind of poetic and we decided to do it that day and not wait.

This past year has been hard.  It was very hard, especially the first three months.  Throughout the year there were many rough spots, times when I wanted or need my mother and she wasn’t there.  In truth, she hadn’t really been there like she used to be for several years, which was another pain altogether.  When she died, I not only mourned the physical loss of her, but I was then able to mourn the loss of her mental presence for the past two years.

The time that I most missed her was during the holidays and mother’s day.  But what took me by surprise, was when I missed her this past July at Med Fest.  I belong to a belly dance troupe and every year we dance at the Mediterranean Fantasy Festival that takes place in West Seattle.   This year, my father was mourning as well and he returned to his hometown of Dauphin, Pennsylvania to stay with his sister and be close to other family and friends.  So when the day of Med Fest came around, I was without mother or father.

Now, I had invited other family and friends, some of whom said they would try and make it.  But in the end, my husband and son went to play board games, everyone else was busy and no one came to see me dance.  My daughter was there, but she was dancing with us, so no one was there to see her dance either.  There were other belly dancing friends there, but they would have been there even if I hadn’t been dancing.

My point being, that normally this would not have bothered me in the least.  I have danced on several other occasions without having anyone I knew in the audience and it was fine.  But on this particular day I broke down.   I’m not kidding.  I literally broke down and cried in the middle of breakfast.  When my husband asked me what was wrong, I said that no one was coming to see me dance and I didn’t know why I was doing it anymore.  His response was that I should quit.  He didn’t get it.

If I may back up several years.  It was at Med Fest and we were still a pretty new troupe.  I was nervous.  My hands were sweating.  I’m standing behind the stage with my sword and I’m so worried that I’ll drop it, I’ll forget the group choreography, or whatever.  My stomach hurts.  We finally take the stage and I feel my hands shaking.  My face feels tight with trying to smile.  I look out at the audience and there is my father.  He has brought my mother to see the dancers.  She is sitting there in her wheelchair.  She seems happy enough, but who knows what she is thinking.

I get out on the stage to do my solo piece and I look at my mother.  I don’t even know if she knows who I am.  Suddenly, she breaks out with the biggest smile on her face and I know she knows me.  Her face is beaming and I can tell that she is happy.  My heart beats slow to a normal pace.  My face loosens to a natural smile and everything with the world is okay.  I don’t have to dance for anyone else in the audience.  I can dance to make my mother happy and nothing else matters.   From that moment forward I dance for my mother and I haven’t been nervous (much) or worried, because the rest just doesn’t matter.

This past year, I got out on stage with a heavy heart.  I looked at my daughter, who was so happy to be there and I realized that this year I dance for my mother…  and my daughter.  Nothing else matters.

If you happen to read this sometime close to my posting date, you may also want to look up KEXP’s John in the Morning dj’s “The Mom Show”.  It is his annual tribute to his mother who died of cancer and to everyone who’s lost someone.  I’m pretty sure it will be aired on Wednesday, November 13 between 6-10am.  If you miss it you can probably catch it in archives or at least see the playlist from it after.  If I were to request a song for my mother it would be Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World’.  She loved big band and especially Louis Armstrong.

KEXP

So, this is for my mother, who loved music and dancing with a passion.  I’m not positive, who she would say that she danced for, but I believe her answer would have been her family.

Whether your passion is dancing, music, writing or anything else, I think you can substitute what I’ve written about for any of those things.  When you think about what’s important in your life, I have this question for you.  Who do you dance for?

Requite Me: a tidbit

Here is a poem from my book Requite Me: Poems of Love, Jealousy and Angst.

 

Hand in Hand in Hand

(originally untitled)

Hand in hand in hand

We three walk across the land

Laughing, loving with greatest care

Slowly we learn what it means to share.

Heart in heart in heart

Sometimes love means we must part

Though tears may spill from our eyes

In our hearts understanding lies.

Daft Punk in My Electric Dreams

With the release this past May of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories, it gave me a chance to be nostalgic about one of my favorite movies of all time, Electric Dreams.  When this movie came out in 1984 I was in high school.  I heard music from the movie on my favorite radio station, KYYX – the Wave, which played new wave music.

I eagerly awaited the movie coming to SeaTac Mall theaters.  I waited and waited, and waited.  It never came to my local theater.  After a while this movie came out on VHS.  I was lucky that my local library had a copy.  Every time I saw it on the shelf I checked it out.  I saw this movie so many times I could practically quote the entire movie line by line.  As a joke my dad and I would call each other “Moles”.  (He watched it almost as many times as I did, just from me playing it in the living room.)

This movie is funny, witty, charming, delightful, and filled with great music.  The main characters are Miles (Lenny von Dohlen) and Madeline (Virginia Madsen).  Lenny went on to play various diverse roles, including one of the bad guys in Home Alone 3, but I was delightfully surprised to see him in an episode of Red Dwarf, even though he played a bad cop.  Virginia has been in many movies since Electric Dreams.  I actually had a copy of Slam Dance, but I think an old roommate stole it.  There are a lot of other great celebrities in this movie.  I love Ruth Westheimer as herself on the radio giving advice.  Bud Cort is wonderful as the computer.  You might know him best from Harold and Maude.

At the heart of this movie is the music.  It has several sweet love songs from Culture Club.  There are peppy pop songs that make you want to get up and dance as well as classical music.  The juxtaposition of electronic music and classical music comes together beautifully.   The song to get the most air play was of course “Together in Electric Dreams” by Giorgio Moroder (thus the Daft Punk connection) and Philip Oakey (of the Human League).   This movie to me is perfection.

The movie is a bit dated since computer technology has grown so fast.  But I still would recommend seeing it if you can.  If you were as crazy about this movie as I was, you may also have paid the $80 to get this movie on VHS.  If not, then the only copies available are on PAL DVD, VHS, or laser disc.  I think I have given up hope that they will put this movie out on a US version DVD.

If you loved this movie and have not discovered Daft Punk, then check out the collaborator podcast here:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/daft-punk-random-access-memories/id632674071

It has interviews with the collaborators of Random Access Memories; Georgio Moroder and Paul Williams to name a few.  If you like Daft Punk and have never heard of Electric Dreams, it’s worth checking out if you can find a copy or watch snippets on YouTube.  Giorgio Moroder even has a cameo in it as a DJ.

Who are you Together with in your Electric Dreams?

Shredded Orphans band logo

Shredded Orphans Band Logo

 

Here is the logo for my fictional band the Shredded Orphans.  I love it!  Thanks to Bri Nobile for the great art work!

How far would you go to make your characters real?

Recently, and by that I mean a year ago, I decided to take a circus class.  The class was offered by SANCA in Seattle.  It was a great family intro class.  I purchased the class as a Christmas gift for my family.  My husband thought it was a waste of money, since he thought we would never end up taking the class.  To quote him, “You don’t DO things!”

I am nothing, if not stubborn.  We all took the two hour class in the Spring.  My impetus for taking the class was two-fold; one – I wanted to give my family an experience together to remember, instead of a thing, as a gift and two – (which gave me the idea in the first place) was the fact that a character in my book was a trapeze artist.

Did you see that coming?  If you read the blog title, it was a bit foreshadowing.

So we all packed in the car and drove to Seattle to take a circus class.  My husband was in disbelief that we were actually doing it.  It’s not that he didn’t want to go, because he’s in pretty good shape and loves to juggle and does balancing tricks with the children.   I think he was of the opinion that mid-forty, out-0f-shape housewives, should not run off and join the circus.

We arrived and everything was fine.  I could do all the stretches as I’m a lot more flexible than my husband.  We warmed up with some running, which was not my favorite, but I survived.  Then we started to do some gymnastics.  These are things that I did in Jr. High, but not really since then.

Here is where the problem began.  As I was practicing kicking up, but not actually going into a handstand, (which I’ve never been able to do) I felt something in my hip.  It might have been a pain or a pop or a twinge, after a year I can’t remember.  I knew something bad had happened.  It wasn’t painful to walk on, but it didn’t feel great and I was having trouble lifting my right leg.

No lectures, please.  I did not stop and tell the instructor that something had happened.  I’m a writer.  I don’t like to talk to people about things.  I would much rather write about them.  Besides, I had signed a waiver.  I knew what the risks were.  I was pretty sure that if I just stretched it out, it would be fine anyway.

Next we moved onto the trapeze.  My big reason for taking the class.

There was a rope and you sat on the floor, rocked back and pulled yourself up.  It looked so easy.  My kids could do it.  My husband could do it.  I’m going to blame my leg (and not my lack of stomach muscles): I could not do it.  There were also two bars, where you hold yourself up with your arms and then raise your legs off the ground.  That wasn’t happening either.

Finally, we come to the actual trapeze.  It was only about 5 feet or so off the ground.  My mission – grab the trapeze with my hands, throw my legs up over the bar between my hands and hoist myself up (with help from the instructor.)

I got the hanging underneath the trapeze with my hands part down.  I was able to kick my left leg up onto the bar.  I could not get my right leg high enough to get on the bar.  I couldn’t bring myself to tell the instructor that I had injured my leg, probably a mixture of embarrassment and pride.  I was really struggling hard, because I had wanted to experience being on the trapeze, for myself and the sake of my character.  I felt like crying.

I struggled a few more times trying to get that injured leg up.  I was just about to admit defeat or maybe I had admitted defeat when the instructor, a very patient fellow, suggested we try something different.  I put my hands in the middle of the bar and swung my legs around the outside of the rope unto the bar.  For some very weird and wonderful reason, this worked.  Yeah!

Then with some pushing from behind, I managed to pull myself onto the bar, up in a sitting position on the trapeze.  Now I also, don’t do well with heights, so being up there was a little disconcerting and I was ready to hop back down right away.  The instructor (here I feel bad that I don’t remember his name) said something like, “Sit there for a minute.  You worked hard to get there.  Relax and enjoy your accomplishment.”

I did.  It felt good.  It felt great!  I almost cried, it was so beautiful.

Of course, no one else had problems getting up, just me.  But as I sat there, I really felt a sense of accomplishment.  I had done it.

I got down (with help) and we went on to juggling, tight rope walking and trampoline.  The rest of the family was pretty unanimous on the trampoline being their favorite, but I will have to go with my two minutes sitting on that very low trapeze.

I learned several things from this experience.  I learned that you should not wait six months after an injury to go to the doctor.  (She gave me exercises to do, which sometimes help when I remember to do them.)  I also learned that I should not look at joining the circus as a fallback career, if my writing doesn’t pan out.

So what have you done to put the “REAL” in your characters?

Lady Carden’s Grid

Lady Carden’s Grid.

National Poetry Month

In honor of National Poetry Month, I have decided to post a poem from Space Tripping with the Shredded Orphans.

http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/41

Here are the lyrics for the Shredded Orphans’ song “Queen of the Bees”

Queen of the Bees

Baby, you’re the Queen of the Bees

You don’t care if everybody sees

What you’ve done to me

Breaking me in two

YOU MAKE ME SICK

YOU MAKE ME SICK

I watch you ooze all over other guys

They stick to you like nasty little flies

They don’t even care

When you crack the whip

I CAN’T STAND YOU

I CAN’T STAND YOU

Baby, you call my name and I jump

Even when you’ve left me in the dump

I can’t believe I would

After what you did

I DON’T NEED YOU

I DON’T NEED YOU

Watch me fall down upon my knees

Because you are the Queen of the Bees

Tear my heart in two

Bleeding on the floor

I DON’T WANT YOU

I MUST HAVE YOU

My apologies if you didn’t care for this poem/song lyric.  The Shredded Orphans are a space punk band, or in their world a seismic rock band.  My book is due to be self-published summer of 2013.  You can read more about their adventures then.  Happy National Poetry month!

The Soundtrack to my life

I have been thinking about writing about soundtracks for awhile now.  Then last week, Roger Ebert died.  The next day they played a set of soundtrack music in honor of his passing on KEXP.  I thought that was quite brilliant and touching.

I have to say that I am a huge fan of soundtracks.  I don’t just mean those soundtracks of movies that have a lot of music in them.  While those are great (ex. 200 Cigarettes soundtrack is awesome), but I also really love the ambient soundtracks to movies.  I can listen to the soundtrack for Princess Bride and tell you where that occurs in the movie.  Who doesn’t love Ennio Morricone, Henry Mancini, John Williams and Giorgio Moroder?

It occurred to me that I like a lot of TV shows as well, because the music.  Buffy the Vampire Slayer had some of the best music in it.  I had realized this years ago, but recently, I noticed that other areas in my life are filled with music that moves and inspires me as well.  From listening to KEXP or KING fm in the car to the great pianists Arief and John at the church I attend.

My life is filled with music and I couldn’t imagine what it would be without it.  What music fills your life?