March 2008 Archives

Photo credit: Nancy Bellen.

Ianthe Brautigan was born in San Francisco at the tail-end of the Beat Era. Her book You Can’t Catch Death: A Daughter's Memoir (St. Martin's Press, 2000), recently optioned for a movie, chronicles her life growing up as the daughter of poet and novelist Richard Brautigan and grappling with his suicide in 1984. Her work has appeared in Cartwheels on The Faultline, The Poet’s Eye: A Tribute to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Antioch Review, and will appear in Confrontations. She's taught at Sonoma State University and lives in Northern California, where she's currently working on a novel.

Ianthe Brautigan on the Web: Red Room, You Can't Catch Death

Cecil Vortex: What sort of writing had you done before you started working on your memoir?

Ianthe Brautigan: I was actually a Theater Arts major, and I was going to the Junior College, and I fell in love with my English 1A class and ended up writing nonfiction essays. At that point I realized that I was going to be torn between the two worlds, and I decided to choose writing. I still went to New York and worked for Roundabout Theatre and was in the theater world and toyed with that for a little while. And then I came back to Sonoma County and really started writing in earnest and did all the things that writers do -- I took creative writing courses and did workshops and worked with Robin Beeman, who's in the county and is absolutely phenomenal. I got my undergrad in English Literature at Sonoma State, which was the best thing I could have ever done…. You need to read a lot of stuff and get an idea of what's going on. Then I got my MFA at San Francisco State University, and I don't recommend that for everybody.

Going back to my memoir, God, I had started that in the form of poetry right after my dad died. And I'm a terrible poet. But I wrote a prose poem and Don Emblen read it and he said, "You're onto it -- this is what you should be doing; stay away from that poetry stuff." [laughter] And I began writing about my dad. And as you might imagine, it took a long time.

CV: Was the transition from short stories to poetry to memoir writing difficult, or did you feel like you were finding your natural genre?

IB: I think it's important to try all sorts of stuff. I love writing short stories. I've written a novella. I think that in memoir and nonfiction writing, you're using the craft of fiction writing. In fact, a lot of what makes, I think, a good memoir is that it has a lot of fictive elements, except it's based on truth.

CV: Can you elaborate on that -- how fiction-writing techniques can play a role in memoir writing?

He sounds surprised
at everything he says he's
constantly surprising himself.

"Is there food somewhere around here?" is what I asked.

"There is?!" he self-flabbergasted. "Nordic Sub Shop -- right next door?! Good food?!?"

Surprise, surprise, surprise.

If the ceasefire has fully unraveled by the Fall, let me be among the first to predict that the GOP will argue that "the insurgents want [insert Democrat nominee here] to win -- they're insurging to control our election. That's how much they fear John McCain. And yes, a vote against John McCain is a vote for the terrorists."

I'm so happy. The world is purring today. And I'll tell you why: Dyngus Day.

I have this recurring dream in which the brakes in my car give out. The shudder these dreams share is that moment when I'm pressing down but the car careens.

I've had this dream in various forms for probably twenty years or so. Not too often -- every couple of months I'd guess. I had a version of it last night as one of my last late-dawn eye-flitters. The thing that struck me, as I yawned myself into the day, is that we're hardwired for metaphor.

Our brains could operate in a much more literal fashion. We could fall asleep and a fast-talking phantom self could give us an eight-hour lecture on exactly what it is we hope for and what we fear. But instead we close our eyes and we generate these little poems for ourselves.

In my case, my brain seems to have found a metaphor it likes and it's sticking with it. I suspect that the brakes meant one thing when I was twenty and they mean something a little different now that I'm two times twenty. But the image persists. Or maybe it's been the same mortality song all along: "hey, wait -- stop time!" And wouldn't that be nice?

That sensation of soft brakes is so real, I find myself wondering if I ever owned a car that had this problem. Was there something wrong with the brakes on that strawberry-scented Chevy Impala I drove as a teenager? Or the gold Accord that carried me from New Jersey to the West Coast?

I don't think so. These aren't real brakes, after all. Just a poem I tell myself at night.

This morning while dropping my kids off at school, it occurred to me that California is now my home. I've lived here longer than I've lived anywhere else.

I spent seventeen years on the east coast, interrupted by five years as a kid in Holland. Meanwhile, my California experience will hit nineteen years this coming July.

Oh, I've been keeping one eye out for the "when will I have spent half my life out here?" milestone -- it's waving at me from about 3 years down the road. But this subtler calendar-flip slipped past me in the night.

If I was super-dooper rich, I think I would hire someone to scan my personal numerology, looking for just this sort of Highly Significant Moment.

"Mr. Vortex, did you know that your heart has now beaten more times than a bumblebee's wings will flap, using standard bumblebee life expectancy charts and such?"

"Thank you, Harold."

"Also, if all the work emails you've sent were compiled into one document, it would be eight times longer than Finnegan's Wake."

"That's fascinating, Harold. Here's a gold doubloon with my face on it."

I saw you watching when I got up
and I want to reassure you,
it's not you, it's me. It's not the way

you were snapping your fingers. Or how
loudly you were breathing. Sure,
I don't like your shirt. But

there are lots of shirts
here I don't like.
Look at that guy, for example.

No, this is about me.
And the choices I've made.
The potatoes I had last night, for example.

Back in the 90s, there was an SF band I loved called "Eskimo." They had one song in particular I was so sure was gonna be an alt-rock super-smash. We'd go to the shows and this tune ("Dado Peru") would kick in and the crowd would start to sway....

Well, Dado never broke out the way I expected it to. And I kinda sorta forgot about it until this past weekend, when it showed up on my ipod. I played it for my 10-year-old daughter, who agreed that it was the most-est. And we drove down Franklin in Oakland, raising our arms in the air, swaying like we just didn't care....

When I got home I started thinking, golly, I know it's against the law, but wouldn't it be great if I could rip that tune and put it up on Cecil to share with the world, without going to jail?

Lo and also behold -- the world wide web has saved me from a life of crime. Turns out the band was kind of enough to post the tune right here. May I recommend that you crank the speakers?

For Bay Area folks who share fond Eskimo memories, that very same site contains eight (8!) Eskimo tunes I've never before heard. I just downloaded them and will, yes, get to swaying momentarily.

Yiba ho!

From 2004 to 2006 I was part of a loose cabal of audio-oriented miscreants known as Monkey Vortex Radio Theater. Between us, we produced around 35 or so short bits of MP3 whackiness. Yes, and it's hard to imagine a time when we had the brainwidth to produce 35 or so short bits of MP3 whackiness. But there was such a time.

Anyways, somewhere along the line a very nice fellow named Hank offered to make a Flash animation out of our theme sound-bit and one of our cartoon mascots. But -- the shame! -- I never got around to putting it up on the site or even plugging it here on ye olde Cecil.

Well that smudge on my conscience gets watered down today with this very link. Enjoy! And thanks "so-called Hank," wherever you are.

Lots of noise this week about Obama and the former minister at his church. I'm pro-Obama, so I'm gonna see things through that filter, but I don't think there's substance to the issue. If O. hadn't repeatedly rejected what Wright has said, that'd be different. But he has.

I think most of us like and associate with folks whose political views would look, um, unhelpful repeated over and over on TV. This hits particularly close for me, as many of you know. Heavy sigh.

I have this pal (let's call him "Bill"). Bill believes that for several years now -- since shortly before 9/11 in fact -- Eskimos have been taking the marmalade out of these homemade marmalade jars he makes and replacing them with store-bought marmalade. Now, I didn't choose "Bill" as my friend because of his ignorant theories about the Inuit. In fact, I've repeatedly rejected and denounced his statements.

But he's still my friend.

There's a slow-motion scam being perpetuated by the Clinton campaign and I must speak out.

The short version: Barring a complete Obama meltdown, you know, I know, and the American people know they can't win on elected delegates. So you're increasingly hearing them talk about the popular vote. If Hillary wins the popular vote, they argue, she should be our candidate. And that sounds like a pretty reasonable position. We all went through Florida in 2000. Electoral College? What a crock! Democracy is about one person one vote. If she wins the popular vote, little d democrats should insist she be the nominee, right?

The problem with that canard is that while you can argue "one person, one vote, electoral college, grrr" in the general, the nomination process is different. As we all know way too well, some states caucus, some states run primaries. As we also know, caucusing, like 'em or not, take a much bigger time commitment than pulling the lever in a primary, so the turnout numbers are dramatically depressed.

If the caucus states all have substantially lower vote turnout percentages than their primary bretheren, selecting a nominee by counting the total votes makes votes in a primary state worth a lot more than votes in a caucus state. How do fix that problem with the math? We find a neutral measure that assigns a total # of votes to each state based on their relative size. And yeah, we call those neutral measures "delegates." That's why, in the nomination process, delegates are a much truer measure of "popularity" than the popular vote.

I know the popular vote is popular. We should invite it to parties. We should buy it drinks. We should ask it to sign our yearbooks. We just shouldn't use it to choose our nominee.

waiting on line
in my mind. everybody

cutting and they
don't even know it and hey

I was here. getting coffee
and a scone but

also waiting.

Lovely. (Link via ye olde zefrank.com.

The lavender lemonade is back
at my local coffee shop.
I'd given up on her.

All the lemon factories, moved off-planet.
"We Thank You For Your Business."

Empty cups, traced with
mint and cane.

I've been lost
behind the

lost

behind the
dark berry side of this Lavender Moon.

Here comes the lemonade.

So I've always heard that Las Vegas was known for having something for everybody. Harley Davidson-brand pedicures? Check. A shadow-puppet show featuring the songs of Hugo Chavez? Check. Guys who wear blue face paint and speak in pig latin? I'm telling you, it's all here.

One example, though, I found kinda gross. Frankly.

I get off the plane yesterday, and there's this poster with a bunch of half-naked guys on it -- "The Thunder from Down Under." It's a troupe of -- and I'm not making this up -- lactose-intolerant Australian male strippers.

I don't like to judge but that's just weird.

Here's a travel tip that works for me and might work great for you too!

When I'm away from home, sometimes I'll see somebody on a cab line or in the hotel lobby who looks like my friend Dave. And I'll go up to them and I'll say: "Dave. Dave. Dave. Dave." And they'll say something like, "I'm sorry, you've mistaken me for somebody else." And I'll say: "Dave." And they'll say, "Can you step back a few feet? You're standing too close to me."

And I'll keep saying: "Dave. Dave. Dave. Dave." until eventually, through force of will, I cause them to transmute at the molecular level into my friend Dave. With Dave's scruffy beard. Dave's John Lennon glasses.

"Dave!" I'll say. "Yes, I am Dave," they'll say. Dave!

Bodies fly 
           close
                overhead

glittering geese eyes

turning my body to track

invisible, lovely 
                        dark 

                                          honk.

I'll admit that I was a little surprised this past weekend by the flurry of emails I received in response to the (arguably tepid) stand I took against eggs and feathers. Or rather, against the "egg and feather" craze that's been blighting hipster shacks like "Zack's Breakfastery" in Detroit and "The Most Important Meal" in Kansas City.

Josh from Hoboken writes: "Dear Cesil (sic): you are a big jerk. Eggs and feathers wrawk! Stop saying bad things about eggs and feathers!"

Doug in Chicago writes: "Mr. Vortix (sic): you and everyone else over the age of 25 can eat your eggs the way you like. I'll have mine with feathers!"

Perhaps the authors of these misbegotten missives think I can be startled into silence. If anything, the result has been the obverse. With each new addled assault that stumbles its way into my bulging inbox, I find myself emboldened to take up the battle cry against this repulsive phenomenon with plus vigor ("more vigor")!

Dishes like "Eggs Benedict (and Feathers)" or "Eggs Over Medium (and Feathers)" or even "(Feathers and) Soft Boiled Egg" are just the latest step in la grande decline ("the grand decline"). And I for one will not sit quietly by, tuning my viola while Rome cooks egg dishes decorated with feathers!

At an Italian restaurant last night, while I was picking at my spaghetti bolognese, a perfect little gentleman of around 2 or 3 years old came up to me and stared.

Whatever I did -- peekabo, wiggly fingers, wiggly fingers on head, big smile, surprise face -- it didn't matter. He just stared. It was wonderful. And once again I found myself so grateful that I don't live in Belgium or Austria or one of those other places (Portugal) where they take their children and send them into the forest and don't let them come back until they're 25.

You can criticize Americans and say that we watch too much TV or that we put feathers in places we probably shouldn't (egg dishes), but you have to admit: at least we don't make our young people live in the forest.