Itinerantdaughter's Blog

So in not one but two books I’ve read recently, the novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett have been cited as works that contain the most biting satire, the most ruthless quips, and the most rapid back-and-forth of any in literature.  I never thought I would like her work as her name alone suggests her genre is one I like to call “mannered.”  I know there’s an actual name for it –– Victorian-ish times, lots of activities take place in parlors, poor families are ashamed because they only have one maid, and jobs are frequently referred to as “posts.”  I’ve never been an enormous fan of Edith Wharton & co., so I assumed this wouldn’t be to my liking.  But then ICB was mentioned in The Art of Cruelty, which I devoured in less than three hours, and also by my darling John Waters, who speaks of her with a reverence much like mine for him.

“She was English, looked exactly like the illustration on the Old Maid card, never had sex even once, and wrote twenty dark, hilarious, evil little novels between the years 1911 and 1969.  Pick any one of them.  They’re all pretty much the same.  Little actual action, almost no description, and endless pages of hermetically sealed, stylized, sharp, cruel, venomous Edwardian dialogue.  ‘Once you pick up a Compton-Burnett,’ Ivy commented about her own books, ‘it’s hard not to put them down.'”

The deal was totally sealed (hermetically?) when I was perusing old posts in this blog (yes, to survey my kingdom) what do I discover/re-discover but LO AND BEHOLD!  The novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett are an example of “camp” according to Susan Sontag!  Woah.  Woah.  I had to reach out to Amazon STAT.  So now I have begun Parents and Children, and while there are definitely some zingers (“I suppose actions speak louder than words” is met with “I have never found fault with silence”) it is, as the Penguin Modern Classic synopsis says, “less savage in them” than her other books.  Boo!

Full report upon completion.

From Lewis Lapham’s With the Beatles, about their 1968 pilgrimage to the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi:

“On Friday evening the Maharishi spoke to the entire student body in the lecture hall, charcoal fires burning in braziers set in rows against the whitewashed walls, candles flickering on the armrests of the wicker chairs, the night air softened with the scent of incense.  Behind a bank of flowers and a battery of microphones, the Maharishi perched on his platform-sofa at the end of the hall nearest the river.  A coquettish smile strayed across his face when he clapped his hands in joyous exclamation and announced the presence of the Beatles, ‘the blessed leaders of the world’s youth,’ seated in the front row just below the portrait of the Guru Dev.  The announcement was both superfluous and late.  The Beatles had arrived a few minutes before the Maharishi began to speak, and their entrance hadn’t gone unnoticed –– the four most famous musicians in the world vividly  costumed in purple velvet and gold braid, their feminine accompaniment trailing behind them in white and orange silk, drifting into the candlelight at the slow and solemn pace of figures maybe once seen in a Christmas pageant or a psychedelic dream.  Nobody needed to be told that the ashram had been blessed with a visitation of divine celebrity.

Satisfied with the omens, the Maharishi set about the task of conducting what I was told was his regular evening broadcast.  He first asked how long everybody had managed to meditate since he’d last seen them, and when a Swedish woman eagerly raised her hand, he nodded in the manner of a proud and doting schoolmaster.

‘Yes?’ he said.  ‘How long, please?’

‘Forty-two hours, Maharishi.’

‘Was the meditation harmonious?’

‘Oh yes, Maharishi, very harmonious.’

‘And do you remember anything of it?’

The Swedish woman looked down at her hands in an attitude of sheepish apology.  ‘No, Maharishi.’

The yogi assured her that she had made no mistake, and then, directing his voice to the company at large, he asked if anybody could report forty-one hours.  Hearing no response, he proceeded to count down the hours from forty, to thirty-nine, to thirty-eight, to thirty-seven.  At thirty hours, a Canadian woman tentatively raised her hand to say she had accomplished three ten-hour segments interrupted by fifteen-minute breaks for warm milk and honey sandwiches.

‘And you felt what, please?’

The woman replied in the matter-of-fact voice of voice of a nurse reading a patients blood or urine test.  ‘The usual disassociation from my body in the first segment’ she said, followed, in the second segment, ‘by a sensation of intense and pleasurable warmth.’  During the third segment she’d begun to sing old music-hall songs, the words to which she thought she’d forgotten.

The Maharishi continued his counting.  At twenty-three hours, Gunther, the Lufthansa pilot, stood up to say that his friend, George, who didn’t understand English, had experience a feeling much like fainting, which had alarmed him.  The Maharishi pronounced the difficulty irrelevant.  ‘In hospitals they call it fainting, ‘ he said, ‘In Rishikesh we call it transcending.’  Meditations of less than seven hours didn’t warrant discussion, and the Maharishi asked only for a few show of hands.  When he completed his review, he accepted more subtle questions from people curious about the distinction between ‘God-consciousness’ and ‘supreme knowledge,’ wanting to know whether ‘rapturous joy’ always accompanied ‘the descent into pure being.’  The answers were discursive and abstract, taking place in what Geoffrey later identified as the two dimensions of primary meaning, at the level of the root and the level of the leaf.

Before bringing the lesson to an end, the Maharishi cast his soft, almost feminine glance upon Prudence Farrow, Mia’s sistser, seated in the front row.

‘And Prudence?’

“Twelve hours, Maharishi.’

The answer was barely audible, but it so pleased the Maharishi that he pressed his hands together in praise of the Guru Dev, and then, turning toward a small altar decorated with ferns and palm fronds, he performed a ceremony involving the burning of sandalwood, the chanting of a Vedic scripture, and the ringing of tiny bells.  The ritual inspired a good many of the older students in the hall to prostrate themselves at full length upon the cow dung floor.”

My next field trip, I’ve decided, is to visit Prudence Farrow (now Bruns?) and take a TM lesson from her in northwest Florida.

For realsies, this is no joke!

I have explained numerous times, verbally and in writing, my opportunity to be a zombie extra in the upcoming film produced by Brad Pitt’s production company today, so I’ll just copy and paste my plea for moolah from one of the two sources to which I applied.  Well, first, here is my email to the casting agent, whose name I was given by a friend of my boss’:

Dear Ms. M,

And her response:

Dear ID,

Thank you for your email about being part of our Glasgow crowd on World War Z.  It would be a pleasure to be able to welcome you and PM along on the shoot!

We will be filming in Central Glasgow from 19th August until the end of the month and we will be able to fit in with whatever dates work best for you. Whilst keeping an eye on continuity and making sure you get a good spot and don’t end up at the back.

Please could you send pictures and if you are able your measurements in inches.
For you: Dress size, bust, waist, hips and shoe
And for Peter: Head size, collar, chest, waist, Inside leg and shoe.

When your pictures arrive I will show them to costume and see if we can let you have a costume brief as you may have clothes in your wardrobe that would suit or we may buy some things specifically for you.

This is my number to call if you have any questions at all in the meantime.

Speak soon,

Kind regards

CM

And here is my application to start a page on Kickstarter to raise funds for my $1,000 (give or take) plane ticket to Glasgow.  There was a word count so I couldn’t get quite as cheeky as I wanted to (shame!) but it has all the relevant info.

Category

Art

Funding Goal

$1,000 – $5,000

Project Description

It’s kind of a long story, but basically I work for this well-known and sort of nutso publisher who happens to be friends with this Londoner named Ed who made a gazillion dollars (give or take) representing rock stars when they made book deals for their autobiographies and is a pretty cool dude, and he now represents this author named Max Brooks, who writes about zombies, the undead, et al (very big these days.) Max’s next book will be published by my maniac boss, and Max’s last book, WORLD WAR Z, is being made into a movie by Brad Pitt’s production co. They are hiring 1000 extras to play zombies in Glasgow, and the casting agent said I could be an extra, so I’m trying to raise money to get there. That’s the nutshell version.

Project Rewards

Well, I don’t think I could offer a reward based on the movie, as I will be just a lowly extra and can’t get, like, tickets to the premiere or anything (for myself, let alone anyone else) BUT I am a writer and I am in the midst of writing what will be a fantastic and hilarious memoir about my former job working for a dying true crime writer (think TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE if Morrie were a wannabe Mafioso instead of a benevolent teacher-type.) Tony Danza features prominently in the plot. Anyway, for anyone who contributes to this fund, I plan to offer them a) a spot as an extra in the film version of that book (which obvi will happen, because come on: little blond WASPy amanuensis, dying irascible egomaniac, Tony Danza –– as himself –– playing his ukulele, hang out sesh-es with men in the WPP –– it’s just a given) and b) an autographed copy of that book and c) a personalized love letter from yours truly, which, if you have read this proposal carefully, you know will be rather spectacular.

Links

Hm. I don’t have anything really up right now because I just got the email from the casting director this morning, but I’ll put some shtuff on my blog, which is https://itinerantdaughter.wordpress.com. Stay tuned. And I don’t know if I can stick this piece of info in there anywhere, but I only need about $1000 for the plane ticket, according to orbitz.com, but I put myself in the $1,000 – $5,000 bracket even though I need the bottom end. I’ll figure out accommodations on my own. Kisses!

Aaaaaaaaaaand I’m pretty sure they’re going to reject it because it’s not arty enough or something, but I say if my ex-boyfriend can fund his stop-motion clay animation film about “a shy, neurotic wolf (Faye) who develops a mysterious itch on her thigh as she tries to befriend a group of extroverted, freewheeling bunnies”, then I can try to fund this.

Of course you’re welcome to donate on your own and not through any sort of quasi-charitable channel.  Just email me at itinerantdaughterandson@gmail.com and I’ll tell you where to send your cold, hard cash.