An April bouquet to you from my garden. Spring in California has decided to explode early. Everything is pumping…fruit trees and wisteria and orange blossoms and night blooming jasmine in abundance. It smells like a very expensive house of ill repute in my back yard, which I love.
At the moment I am not IN my backyard. I am sitting in my room at this astounding hotel in London called The Beaumont. Oh, my Lord. High cotton, indeed! The thread count on the sheets ALONE is over the top. Such a glorious building in the heart of Mayfair, down the road from Hyde Park. I am here with my dear pal Michele Brourman as we are performing at that glorious boite, Crazy Coq’s. This is our third year here, and we are having a splendid time. This is us in Regent’s Park, yesterday.
Oh, the heaven of being somewhere GREEN! California is starting to turn the color of a box of Cheerios already. (And to be in a place where one doesn’t feel guilty about flushing the john!)
We are having a wondrous time. The show, a new one for us called NOIR…or as I like to say, songs for trashy women and the wounded men who love them…is being very well received.
We have been wandering through the streets in the usual awe. Yesterday we stepped into a cathedral on Marleybone Road and someone was practicing the most astounding music on a HUGE pipe organ. We just stood there being bathed in sound.The older I get, the more I believe listening to beautiful live music is the best thing in the world one can do for the soul. It is beginning to feel as if London is my second home. I like the feeling!
This has been a lovely Spring so far. I had the great joy of getting a chance to reunite with three of my best girlfriends from Mercedes high school…Layne, my debate partner, Cindy , the head cheerleader, and Nancy the Mensa scholar. We met in the neutral territory of Santa Fe, where the faint green blush of Spring was JUST beginning to brush the trees. We laughed, we drank, we gossiped, and I remembered why I always loved them… three totally hilarious women who are wayyy smarter than me. Here’s to long-lasting girlfriend-ship! May have to write a song about it! Oh,yes… K.T. Oslin already did. It is called “80’s Ladies” and it is a pip.
I also had the amazing experience of meeting one of my great musical idols…the man who inspired me to get a guitar and sing folksongs so long ago. Noel Paul Stookey, of Peter, Paul, and Mary. Who knew he spent part of the year in Ojai, with his lovely wife, Elizabeth??? We met when they came to see a concert that George and I performed at the Rubicon theater. I burst into embarrassing tears when we shook hands. My musical career is all his fault. And what a delightful pair they both are. I am truly blessed!
Upon my return from London next week, I will immediately leap into my first straight play in 5 years…a brilliant piece by Jon Robin Baitz called OTHER DESERT CITIES. OMG! Can I remember anything that doesn’t have a melody? We shall soon find out. We open the end of May. I am so delighted to be back on the boards exercising my actress muscles again.
That is what is happening in my little world for the next few months.
Culturally:
FAVORITE TV– The Slap, also by Jon Robin Baitz. and of course…GAME OF THRONES!!!! (But they killed of my pal, Ciaran Hinds, the King Beyond the Wall. Of course! They kill of every character we love eventually, don’t they?)
READING– The Signature of All Things-Elizabeth Gilbert
MUSIC-“Blue Valentine” by Tom Waits.
What a great story teller!
And here is my poem for April:
DOGWOOD EASTER
I rise with the birds, the dawn, the son.
I cannot sleep another second
On last night’s sheets.
There is too much loud life.
I must walk out, barefoot,
Into this birth day morning.
Violets in purple constellations
Circle with slow grace
The brilliant dandelion suns,
A star-strewn galaxy
In the new-green,
New mown grass.
The scents of lilac, viburnum,
Narcissus and chive
Mingle like lively girls
In an uptown powder room.
In the crown of the dogwood
Mother Superior
In her apple pale ivory veil,
Bends and nods,
So unlike her rosy sister,
Pink and prurient whisperer
At the wood’s soft edge.
The liquid knife of song
From the throat of a blood-red Cardinal
In his pale green pulpit
Slices the morning into pieces,
Declaring in rhythm with my heart
Spring is here
And I am risen!
Have a wonderful Spring!
Much love,
Amanda
