Happy New Year

--This is a photo of Debbie Brubaker and Aggie Rodgers at about 6:00 am at our base camp on the first day of shooting the Bay Area parts of the script. We're at a rest stop off of highway 280. Debbie's a producer, and Aggie is a costume designer who also did "The Color Purple" movie and I just wanted to hang out with the two of them all the time.

(Debbie taught me how to do a film budget and deal with angry motorcycle cops. Aggie taught me that it's not good to sit down because it looks like you're not doing anything. And she taught me that you don't yell out another's name because then you'll get associated with problems. Instead you go, "Tsssst!")

(and this tends to be rambly because i'm going through an emotional time where i see beauty in so much now. if i went through this to edit it down, as i would if this were a book, i'd be embarrassed and wipe it away)
In seven years of writing this last screenplay, i realized that being a fast girl was actually a good thing. it taught me that the ability to fall in love for ten minutes at a time and see everyone as beautiful, is a good thing. to see everyone as human and vulnerable. ask any fast girl the truth in the early morning while she's putting her eyeliner on. she'll tell you. in the wee hours of the sweaty night, you're as connected to the universe as any artist banging her head against the wall four days straight. no. more.

the artist bangs her head against the wall for inspiration like a man with an unbuttoned shirt and hairy chest cruising a club for that night's love. someone to tell him his hair isn't receding and WHO CARES? the artist is no higher up than this cruisy guy. he's the unpretentious working class version of meditation and the zone.

and i have been to bed with the hairy chested guy and have also been the head-banging woman.

it enabled me to find peace for all my slutty moments. for all my slutty moments brought me to love. wrinkly face, dandruff, big-man-crying, love of any faker. we're all fakers. we can go to therapists to take off the saran wrap, or we can burn it off.

love.

so for all of this i still have the ability to fall in love and often, and i do. but now it's Art Love. i don't have time for too much of the midnight sweaty stuff. i ensured i wouldn't by getting fat. that saved my life and helped me focus away from the simplicity of my puerto rican tits and ass and rely on Character. ah, character-building. what an exhausting job.

so i still say "yes," but i don't end up in backseats like i used to. now i end up in all sorts of interesting places and i'm grateful to the art lovers who take me there. sometimes unknowingly. and my tsunami of affection is wildly inappropriate for having our clothes on, but jimmy crack corn and i so don't care.

Love is for ME. it's the most selfish emotion. it's like how giving a homeless guy $5 when you finally are off the dole and get paid, THAT's $5 for moi. me me me. so my tsunami of hugs is for me. it never really had to be reciprocal did it?

ask the girl with the morning eyeliner. she'd LIKE it to be reciprocal, but not really. that's so boring. too easy.

and so my latest yes landed me onto Debbie Brubaker's latest movie set as a bad servant to a bollywood star (more on this on another post. i'm still debriefing myself).

Before her, I had so many squeamish feelings about the movie business. as a cartoonist, i've always seen things move. i just avoided the bearded guys in baseball caps for something easier: publishing books. ha ha ha! that's so damn funny i so forgot to laugh.

who knew? i didn't know. art was what was supposed to be hard. writing? that was so easy, anyone could do it.
(i still make this same mistake time and time again)

but each time i'd hear about a former painter or visual artist going into film, i felt nudged: terri gilliam, david lynch, fellini, and now julian shnabel. i don't think life is supposed to be comfortable. that i'm supposed to sit back in a cushy sofa watching a skinny TV. what a waste. that's like being cattle. livestock. actually livestock has more purpose: they FEED people. if i just watch TV, i merely consume. i'm worse than a methane gas farter.

i digress. as usual.

i just spent $5 too much for my regular red little date book at a local store that hangs up photos of its shoplifters, but you best not try a new date book when you finally found one you can live with, and my first week of January is all post it notes and strings tied around my fingers.

anyhow, things are looking up. it's been a rough past 7 years. all my cells are supposed to be brand new, although I'm not buying anymore of that new age crap. everyone wants everything new and sealed in plastic, otherwise they think change is like starting a diet on tuesday. worthless when it comes to a story beginning: "so i had a crappy seven years and then my cells were new one morning and debbie brubaker and dorothy boerste (my therapist) saved my bacon!"

anyhow, let's just say that my cells are really crusty old, and my artist self is old enough to have been in this racket a long ass time, making a meagre living at my stuff since i was 17 or so. so when someone comes along and shows you a WAY and THE WAY, you know a change is a 'coming. and whatever was holding you back (fear of LA-only types), is gone.

i actually like LA. and think people in LA are very, very smart. so much so, you wonder what got so lost in the translation of what must be made? you can't think clearly when you're in LA and you have to run back to San Francisco to think right. Everyone's so damn smart, they speak in triple speak and use all sorts of reverse reverse psychology. All with a smile and a joke like you're olde timey best friends.

but business is business, backed by focus groups and statistics, and so i felt like hollywoodland isn't the kind of place a former shoplifter goes looking down at her gut for instinct. you get run over like a kitten playing in traffic if you go relying on your "feelings" too much.

or so i thought until dorothy and debbie. dorothy, my therapist, says: "your vulnerability is your greatest strength."

it still sometimes sounds like a zen koan and i can't think of it and take a step at the same time. i have to stop and go "oh yeah, i get it now."

anyhow, i moved to san francisco because of the same kind of important cartoonist, kris kovick. she was older than i was and wrote me a "fan" letter before i was published and i hung it up over my drawing table. she was a cartoonist and had made it into her forties with a sense of humor so much like mine! i'd already been beaten up by family and outsiders because of my mouth, i never imagined i'd make it to twenty-five.

Kris told me to come out here and i could stay with her but when i got here she said no and so i stayed with a friend's drug-addled lap-dancing girlfriend and her call-girl roommate. later when we got evicted, i could stay with kris. turns out, she said "no" earlier because she had bone marrow cancer.

anyhow, no matter how wacky she was (for most good artists are generally wacked), i let it go. she'd given me so much, she could do no wrong. even when i got mad at her, i let it go. i told her we were family and she could push everyone else away, but we were forever family.

when she killed herself with a shot of heroin and a bag on her head years later after being riddled with new types of cancer, everyone descended upon her estate. it was creepy. she was out of her head before she died and dangled her house in front of all these people. i bowed right out said, "if you threaten to give me this house with four people, i'll give it over. no way."

so she gave it over to a girl who got lammers to hook her up with a smarmy appraiser who low-balled it so when she bought kris' ex-girlfriend out, she didn't have to pay market rate. then she cut off her tits, took T, and called herself "Abe" or some retro, Americana sounding name, that made you think of signing the constitution by the fireplace, and belied the reality of inheriting a lesbian's estate, screwing over some folks and the tenants, and getting a sex change because everybody thinks white guys have it easier.

la la la...

death becomes like a corporate takeover nowadays. just not worth it unless you're done with having an open heart and all that crap.

anyhow, all this to say that Debbie Brubaker is this new example to me of how you can do movies. i loved working with and getting my wrist slapped by her crew so much, i will miss them. real down to earth folks. and i'm from back east, so i only thought of teamsters as guys who made people disappear. but teamsters she knows, they actually marry colored girls and make their own wine.

so i'm knowing that it's gonna be okay. if she can have that heart to have feral kitties on her front porch and be so strong as to deal with smarmy cops who want to be bribed, i say, "yes! THIS is how i want to live and do art!"

so after 6-7 really difficult years, she and dorothy (my therapist who's taught me to be water) are part of the light that now shows me of a new way. a new life. not in talking but by EXAMPLE.
now i get it when folks have always said that how i live is an example to other little kids who need to see another way. i get it.

THAT is an amazing gift to give someone. you give it to many.

so screw the weight, just for right now. think about what you want to do to say you were here. what have you got to lose? it's got to hurt to not do what you were here to do. part of what was so sad for me was the crack in my life-long belief that if you have faith in yourself and do things with honor, you'll be okay. i just didn't want to live if it was untrue. i understood edith piaf saying that if she couldn't sing, she wanted to die. i got it. yeah. live on for what? is THAT surviving? is watching TV and producing methane gas and consuming what it's all about? death isn't so bad. life is hard but now that i see a new way, it's like i'm finally coming up on a Sunday. it's gonna be okay. and like forgetting a bad, bad seven-year spanking, i think getting here was worth it.

use the resolution time to listen to the stage mother in your head. maybe you don't have to wait until you're out on your ass to try something new like the rest of us has to.

and to you young 'uns out there, you've got nothing to lose. no kids (probably), no house... just go crazy while you can. travel. love. blow smoke in people's faces and laugh and ring doorbells then catch airplanes to distant lands. embarrass yourself because all witness really do eventually die. every time i write or perform or trip over a mat in the rain, i don't care when i remember we all die and living neatly is so much less interesting.

live for your rocking chair when your knees are so shot, you get to boss someone else around for a change. and what if you don't have kids? oh, they don't stick around anyway. make sure you have interesting stories to ensure someone sticks around to hear all about it. that's how you don't age alone. be interesting enough to hang out with now and forever. forget about your house being clean. okay, clean behind the toilet because that's like letting your toenails get long and dirty. no dice.

but have a happy new year and pass it on the way you all have already done for me. i hope that i give back with energy and something worth paying attention to. i should've edited all this down, but i won't write if i have to over edit now. i've got a few book ideas and a movie to do. i'm keeping in touch best i can.

thanks to you all who've stuck around and given me support all of these years. i always make sure i write fan letters because of some of you. and i feel indignant whenever i remember if someone doesn't write back. "how dare you! i took the TIME to tell you how great you are! say THANK YOU!" (but often i forget the moment after i've sent it. like feeling love, fan letters are more for myself to feel good, anyway)

--erika