Emma's Mixtape

I'm curious: do you think it's okay to take art as you wish to take it, not as the creator intended it be consumed? For anyone whose read 'Namedropper', you'll recall Viva has a thing about shaping her entire life around song lyrics that she's totally misheard. It's in my head because I went to see 'Public Enemies' tonight, and for the first fourty five minutes I was saying "Oh, but this is brilliant!" Then I got incredibly bored and went to sleep for an hour. Then I woke up for the last act, sitting forward in my seat, saying "Oh, but this film is so beautiful!" And I cried and everything! Even though I didn't understand whose death I was mourning or why. My dear friend, Barbara Ellen, when working as the film critic of The Times, said in her review of 'Mulholland Drive' that the movie is a masterpiece, so long as you decide when it ends. Is it our right, as an audience, to take what was presumably slaved over by the "cook" like an elaborate Sunday roast, and then enjoy it as if it were a bag of Pick'n'Mix?

I have a favourite book store in any city I've spent more than five minutes in (sidebar: the teenage country singer, Taylor Swift, has my heart, though I've yet to hear any of her music, after she said "If I've talked to you for more than five minutes, I've probably gone on to write a song about you".)
Anyway, my favourite book store in L.A, from long before I ever lived here, has always been 'Book Soup'. Each time I published a novel I'd ask my editor, "Can I do a reading at Book Soup?" And they'd always say they were totally booked up, because reading there is simply so prestigious. When 'Damage Control' came out, the store finally came to ME and asked ME to read there - this is ten years after I started publishing, after going to see Martin Amis read there, Jennifer Belle, Rachel Resnick, all these novelists I so admire. I got to the door, a-quiver with nerves, and was greeted with this sign:



I read on a Thursday, he the night before. I laughed so hard, I had - to invoke Kate Winslet at the Golden Globes - "gather" before I could speak. Hey, on book shelves, my name is generally after 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Maddox Ford. On billboards, it's a different story.

I am seething with rage right now:

http://jezebel.com/5259213/australian-rugby-group-sex-scandal-continues-to-generate-controversy

This is Bianca, my oldest friend in New York, who is forever going round having babies. Okay, this is only her second. Her first, Miles, is just learning to talk (in French, Spanish and English, naturally) and I love hearing them go back and forth with each other because, living in LA, I so miss east coast accents. Example (mother and child playing with a toy):

Miles: "Gimme!"
Bianca: "FUH-gedda-boud-it!"

With her black hair, braids,rose and red lips, Bianca may look like Frida Kahlo, but, I swear she sounds like Jame Gandolfini.

(I want to know: when you become a mum, do you automatically get mom-skillz or do you work for them? I stayed with a girlfriend whose cat had a right old feel of my eyelids in the night, and I was too sleepy to push it off the bed. In the morning my left eye was totally bloodshot and swollen. Everybody said "Rinse with saline", "Go to the doctor", "Use droplets from Wholefoods" and Bianca was the one who said "Rinse that motherfucker with water and do not stop until I tell you" - like I said: Gandolfini. Anyway, it worked. Completely. Just lots and lots of water. That was a pretty boring story, but I am genuinely interested about whether your wisdom hormones morph with child birth, because we surely did do some stupid things when we met ten years ago).

I love you B xxx

I got a cool letter today asking if I need any lucky objects to write my books and screenplays. Yes. And here they are: my retainer (because I grind my teeth when I'm concentrating), my personalized Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man (you realize that means that at the climax of 'Ghostbusters', when Dan Akroyd thought of the thing he wasn't supposed to think of, he was also thinking of me. You can buy your own version at www.eatyourfeet.com) And my Native American corn maiden ring, which I picked up last year when I was staying in Santa Fe.

I must quickly note how delighted I am that Carol Ann Duffy has been appointed Britain's first ever female Poet Laureate. My sister sent me a care package several years ago with Duffy's collection 'The World's Wife' included, and I've been a devotee ever since. This from 'Valentine', which is included in her 2005 collection 'Rapture':

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

I'd been thinking of Duffy just the other day in the context of a quote from Joni Mitchell. She mentioned why she'd written the song 'Amelia' for the late aviator, Amelia Earhart:

"I wanted to send regards from one solo pilot to another".

I found that very beautiful, as I do the tender yet courageous work of Carol Ann Duffy.

My amazing friend Sara, who is sort of the Welsh Holly Golightly meets Noam Chomsky (here she is looking dewy, whilst I look, per letter writer below, Jew-y), recently came on a research trip to Oxford University with me for a film I'm doing. As of last month, Sara is technically my assistant in life, and she does a damn fine job - I always think of the scene in 'Airplane', when the customer goes up to the information desk and asks "What time is Flight 103 to Houston?" and the next customer goes up and asks "What is the average weight of a rabbit?"



This picture of me in the Magdalen College dining hall illustrates my essential trouble in life: "Do Not pass this point" "Right, hold my bag, I'm passing this point." "Do not step on lawn" "Mind my camera for me, love, whilst I just step on this lawn".

The most beautiful thing we both saw on our expedition to Oxford was this:


Stained glass windows in sepia! That's going right in the script. And hopefully, in some version ('Bruce Springsteen With Cat'?) in the house of my dreams.

I was going through a file and found this letter from the U.K, in response to a newspaper essay I'd written. Not doing a lot to dispel stereotypes of people who compose angry letters to newspapers, it is printed entirely in red ink. All punctuation as is, I know it may as well read "Dear Emma, I am insane. Please ignore me." But I'm reprinting it here as I meditate on how hate is often brushed aside thanks to the place it frequently meets, on the cultural venn diagram, with comedy (see also Bill O'Reilly, James Dobson, Pat Buchanan etc). Here's the fan mail:

"Emma Forrest. A Jew girl.

“The reason I’m a Journalist lies in the last syllable”
May we suggest it also lies in your evil, but evil wicked crafty eyes, dear God, those eyes, and the nose? What a wonderful Yiddish snout is it, well done Jew girl, and your dreadful arrogance? So awfully Jewish, so awfully Jewish dear?

But darling, why have you failed to mention the most IMPORTANT group of Jews, we have in mind, the fantastic FIRST HUNDRED, never mind about the other thousands of swindling Jews and TRAITORS, just take the first hundred of course the Jews invented EVERYTHING, so clever, so awfully clever, they even invented Communism didn’t they darling?

The Jews, the vile evil Jews, never, but never has such a “race” existed on this earth, hated and loathed, the cause of all the worlds problems, all the world wars and strife, the filth on our T.V screens, our films, the wicked filthy hated Jews. Can you wonder darling that this country is slowly awakening to the true state of our country under the complete domination of just 300,000 thousand Jews? Who own this country LOCK, STOCK and Barrel, utterly control the so much that we stupid Gentiles thought belonged to them, the wicked shocking power of the “Chosen Ones” in this country called ENGLAND far, but far outweighs even their powers in the U.S.A. BUT, darling, your days are numbered, rest assured of the fact, THEY ARE NUMBERED, THAT’S A FACT.

The wrath and anger of so many Gentiles at the insidious power of the Jews in this country is daily becoming more obvious, what a slang the “Labour” Party recently when we were informed of the “Backers” of that party, what a shock, even for the wicked Jews, this was too much, too much for MILLIONS of Gentiles to stomach, what a shock, and what a NATIONAL bloody disgrace. The “ALL TIME GREATS” dear? You vile Jewish cow, we’ll give you all time greats before very long, just watch, just wait, we are simply sick and tired of the fucking Jews running OUR COUNTRY, WE WILL SMASH YOUR POWER and domination over ENGLAND. SMASH IT and send you Jews where you came from. Eastern Europe. OR the Illegal state of Israel and let the Arabs slit your vile filthy throats."

(note from Emma: It's interesting how anti-semites will never fail, in one breath, to chastise Jews for their inherent capitalist money greed, and...the simultaneous invention of Communism.)

...that was the name of a program sponsored by the London Underground when I was growing up. Riding the district line back and forth to school, I came to automatically memorize the poems posted in the subway car. I miss it. On foot in L.A, often staring into space at bus stops, my mind has become its own subway car and I've started memorizing poems again. When I speak them out loud, the only witnesses are generally wild flowers and crisp wrappers. Most recent:

No one
has lots of them
Lays or friends or anything
That can make a little light in all
that darkness
There is a cigarette you can
hold for a minute
In your weak mouth
And then the light goes out,
Rival, honey, friend
And then you stub it out.

Jack Spicer, 1957

I don't know what it says about me that the legendarily melancholic Spicer was my way back into poetry recital (except I do know) and I've tried it with several intonations. My favourite is to read the unspeakably bleak words with the joy and zeal of a Pastor preaching the light.

ps: just saw 'State of Play'. Bloody fantastic, Kevin McDonald is such a gifted director. Throughout the film, Russell Crowe looks like Lemmy from Motorhead if he took a job as a geography teacher, plus he is seriously the fattest person I've ever seen cast as a dramatic lead. It's as if, sometime around 'Gladiator', his attractiveness level became a national concern and there was a court mandated order that he should start gaining weight. And he's STILL so attractive, charisma in action, and just brilliant (can you imagine an actress ever being given a shot like that? Fat as total irrelevancy rather than plot point?)

We are living in extraordinary times. I have spells when I forget that and moments when it comes back to me like a thunderclap. I know that the optimism generated by Obama's election will likely puncture. But, for now, I do have the feeling that anything is possible (in a cultural context, but also in every corner of our personal lives.)



If you don't know Mavis Staples, trust me, she is a national treasure. This is from her 2007 album, 'We'll Never Turn Back'.