BLUE TOMATO JOURNAL

SILENT DREAMS - A WALTZ

2012-02-04T19:56:00.000-08:00

SILENT DREAMS: A musical-within-a-musical

set in 1955, near Broadway.

It revolves around the death

of a long time Boarding House resident,

Jana Medrova, who played piano for the Silent Movies.

She leaves a diary revealing an affair with Valentino.

===

The opening of the play

starts with Jana Medrova’s singing

(overhead in darkness)

What is your Silent Dream?

What is your soul longing for?

I have made up the entire story

out of my imagination

and written her a waltz.

Her verse goes like this:

Once upon a cinema mist,

I dreamed of being wantonly kissed,

By a turbaned sheik,

in a desert tryst,

But that was long, long, ago . . .

(chorus)

Silent Dreams,

All those Silent Dreams,

Melting your heart,

with the tenderest thought,

All those wonderful Silent Dreams.

(the boarding house)

The musical reflects my own longings.

~ ~ ~

Art imitating life.

Life imitating art.

Like this photo I took this morning.

===

For me,

Life is never as easy

-- nor as hard --

as I would like to make it --

just muddling my way

somewhere between

lobster bisque

and Drano.

which is why flowers help

And Rune Stones

So, today I drew two

to receive some guidance

and try to balance myself.

I drew Sowelu, the Sun

Then Wunjo, Joy,

The Rune Stone messages

for me today,

is to

stop writing the Memoir.

My shoulder has tendonitis

and my right eye is red and blurry.

(Occupational hazards).

I feel like time is running out, though.

as does Jana Medrova.

she sings in the Coda:

But dreams are for yesterday

when time is running short,

so, remember to live,

to love, and forgive.

Follow your heart,

And you’ll find

such peace of mind

in those wild and precious

Silent Dreams.

~~~

Maybe, in the greater scheme of things,

when the garden is bare,

and my workspace cluttered

putting a waltz called

Silent Dreams

on YouTube

is enough.

Do what you love

and that will be enough.

~ ~ ~

And maybe a waltz won’t save the world

or the whales

or the males,

But maybe it could.

~~~

I’m still a dreamer,

like all my characters.

What do you think?

Are we nothing more than the

choices we make?

I’m a skeptic, too, so I’m not sure.

More likely sound and fury

signifying nothing,

nothing at all.

~ ~ ~

My Six Word Memoir

(Have you heard of those?)

“Learning To Be A Good Loser”

Stay tuned . . .

SCROLL down for more posts

“Because of Love”

“I AM THE MUSIC”

Because of Love

2012-01-24T14:45:00.000-08:00

I had a dream in which I

was playing an unbelievably

beautiful chord on the piano.

Two white notes were

played together as part of

the chord structure.

When I went to the piano

the next morning I tried

to recreate the sound,

but I couldn’t hear it.

Yet, I was haunted and finally

did compose a song and called it

Because of Love

~~~

Last week I began rereading SHUG,

the earlier version of the

“Confessions of a Blue Tomato” Memoir.

How authentic is this

writing, I mused,

“This is the voice of love.”

Here’s the new Foreword,

"From the time I read Dear Store

(Rich’s Department Store)

to the reading of Driving Miss Daisy,

I’ve longed to write of the Atlanta I remember.

Growing up in the 40’s,

a time of streetcars and blackouts,

the dusty playground of

Joel Chandler Harris

Elementary School

where soldiers from Fort McPherson

gave bouncy jeep rides

to school children during World War II.

It’s a story about being an only child,

listening to the radio

collecting movie star photos,

and riding my bicycle to see

the Saturday movie Serials,

the smells of popcorn,

sticky floors and childish screams,

as the Mummy raised up out of his tomb

in the darkened Cascade Theater.

It’s a deep south '40's story of fresh peaches,

mimosa fronds, kudzu, Dutch Oven rolls,

Stone Mountain, Peachtree Street and the U.D.C

(United Daughters of the Confederacy).

It’s a city world, too,

growing up in the early days of television

and Stars of Tomorrow,

with the promise of an educational adventure

in drama at the University of Georgia.

And finally,

It’s a story in which our heroine

winds up as a gloved and girdled

girl of the 50’s,

miscast in the role of Betty Crocker.

~~~

Even so, it’s always been a story

about loving life

Amor Fati

(love your fate)

and loving to write about it

(Because of Love)

and write songs about.

This is a "crooner song"

for all of you who know that phrase.

I'd love for Frank Sinatra to sing it.

stay tuned . . .

scroll down for more posts

“I Am the Music”

“My Blue Tomato World”

====

I AM THE MUSIC

2012-01-11T08:20:00.000-08:00

How much do I love to make music?

Back in the 80's I sold

my wedding silver “Candlelight”

and bought a used Rhodes keyboard.

I recently sold my Mother’s ring set

to buy my new Yamaha Keyboard.

Both times it was worth it.

I have a little love affair

with every song I’ve ever composed.

It’s born with those first few notes,

that linger and breathe

from a perfect space

between the intervals,

with the perfect

amount of time

to take my breath away.

Sometimes with a rush of expectancy

or a gasp of delight

or a collapse into an undefinable sadness.

The musical phrase

that soon becomes the song,

expresses an emotion I’m feeling,

or have felt,

but had repressed until I

heard that particular new combination.

I stay in love with chords, too!

D-flat major 7th, in particular.

I love to improvise in that key

my fingers gliding over all those black notes.

(good jazz title - all those black notes

stay tuned . . .)

I Am The Music

is a song I composed

from hearing a poem

The Musical Soul

written by a boy, Kris Kirk,

who loved music, and knew

he was dying.

I chose a Pop arrangement style

because he especially loved Metallica.

Now, I've made a music video using

photos of some of my old lead sheets,

guitar, flutes and other

music memorabilia.

I’ve added on-screen lyrics

throughout the song.

They express even more

my relationship with music.

“So grab a note, come fly with me,

and we will soar, like birds so free.”

Thanks for listening . . .

Scroll down for more blog Posts

“My Blue Tomato World”

and

“Was Sisyphus Happy?”

===

A BLUE TOMATO WORLD

2011-12-23T10:10:00.001-08:00

A Blue Tomato World

Welcome to a Blue Tomato World,

a world of music and design.

Humor and Hollywood nostalgia.

I’ll just start by saying that

writing songs is more about

being born with a broken heart

than anything else.

I know it’s hard to think that

a baby can come out of a womb

so sad, and all, but I did.

It was like having a port wine

stain on my heart,

except that no one could see it,

especially me . . . not until later.

That’s when I wrote my first song

“Yesterday’s Love” at 16.

So take a look around my house

and listen to a song I composed
on this piano.

“I Really Miss You, Tonight!”
This is a new arrangement

I made on a Yamaha Keyboard
with saxophone, guitar, piano/vibraphone.

Don’t think I still feel sad.

I love making art out of sad stories.

When I was 8, I was to be in a May Festival

with my first long dress.

Mother got a free trip

to her home office in Omaha

and a side trip to Chicago.

She was gone for a week.

She had never left me before.

I had to sleep on an old cot, because

a neighbor came over to stay with Grandma..

and she slept in our bed.
I missed her so much that week.

So here's the song from YouTube

That's what Blue Tomato music is about.

Thanks for visiting.

stay tuned . . .

Scroll down for more blog posts

“Was Sisyphus Happy?”

and

“How Then Shall I Live”
~~

Was Sisyphus Happy?

2011-11-26T12:30:00.001-08:00

Was Sisyphus Happy?

He was condemned to heave a

huge round stone up a hill

only to have it

roll back down thunderously,

over and over again.

In Albert Camus' essay.

The Myth of Sisyphus

Camus writes:

“The struggle itself toward the heights

is enough to fill a man's heart.

One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

~~~

Rollo May’s interpretation in his book

The Cry For Myth, writes,

“For Sisyphus is a creative person

who even tried to erase death.

He never gives up but always is devoted to

creating a better kind of life;

he is a model of a hero who presses on

in spire of his or her despair.

Without such capacity to confront despair

we would not have had Beethoven

or Rembrandt or Michaelangelo

or Dante or Goethe or any others of the

great figures in the development of culture.”

~~~~~

May’s interpretation inspires me

and makes me feel like I’m not so alone

in writing songs, especially when they

may never be heard.

Yet, composing music out of despair

gives my life meaning.

I see from this journal entry

I was once again

disappointed

but continuing to create.

Here's a new

YouTube Creation.

I took some photos of my art attempts.

I’ve Waited So Long For That Day

is The song behind

Blue Tomato Creations

I wrote that song thinking of

what someone would sing if they’d won

the American Idol Contest.

(opening lyrics)

I’ve waited so long for this day,

It seemed so far away,

I’ve found a place where I belong

Someone to hear my song

Someone to hear my song.

press arrow to PLAY

stay tuned . . .

keep scrolling down for

more blue tomato blogs...

HOW THEN SHALL I LIVE?

2011-11-15T10:25:00.000-08:00

Thoughts at Thanksgiving

I have been aware for ever so long

of my mortality.

I don’t mean lately,

I mean since I was thirty.

Knowing I Shall die,

how then shall I live,

and what will I do

with my one wild and precious life?

I will take photos from inside my bedroom

and outside

to remember this red dogwood in Autumn

to remember the lavender verbena

I will make an arrangement from

fallen coleus leaves

And be grateful for my life

especially at Thanksgiving

for the friends who support me

who cheer me on.

~ ~ ~

And I will be grateful, too, for one special person,

Steve Jobs

for his attention to detail and design

for his incredible life.

He is an inspiration

because owning a MacBook

has made all my talents

come to life.

~~~

Lastly,

The Prologue

to the Memoir I’m writing

speaks to this theme

How Then Shall I Live?

~ ~ ~

"Confessions of a Blue Tomato"

Back in 1946, to me, the American Dream

was about being a hero of some kind.

I was sure, if you were a boy,

you had to do some kind of feat.

Lindbergh flying across the Atlantic.

Get a Purple Heart.

Work your way up from the mailroom,

climbing some kind of ladder of success.

And if you were a girl . . . well,

I mostly knew what I didn’t want to do,

like be a teacher or nurse or secretary

and what’s left then?

How could you prove your worth?

Silently, I dreamed of being tapped on the shoulder

by a Hollywood Director,

at a lunch counter

in a white angora sweater.

I kept those dreams during my

Betty Crocker Years

~~~

In my mid 30’s I had a great fear,

that I would be dead at 40.

That fear led to my making changes in my life,

like getting a divorce.

~~~

As I neared 50

I believed my life line indicated

I was going to die at 55.

I was so disturbed by that,

I made changes in my life again.

This time it led to walking out a corporate door

with no early retirement

no severance package.

I was 52.

I believed I could live off my savings.

~~~

I have come to know

those fears were coming from my instinctual self,

from the wise, intuiting woman

in the knowing cave

where the bones reside.

I was right to have heeded.

~~~

Gradually I began to relax

to sense the rest of my life

on the tip of my tongue, so to speak.

I had a great sense that my life

had five distinct parts

and that the last part

would be the best,

if only I could manage to get there

and discover what was around

that last bend.

This book is that story!

~~~

and this blog is part of that story, too

stay tuned . . .

Once Upon A Garden

2011-11-08T12:03:00.000-08:00

The wonderful thing about

taking photos of the Spring garden

is that you can set it to music

and watch it as the leaves fall

in Autumn.

I’m taking a break from writing every day,

and finishing a garden video

I started earlier.

If I didn't garden, I wouldn't have

poems and lyrics come to me.

I set the Spring Garden photos

to a song I composed

for the Musical: Silent Dreams

SILENT DREAMS is a

musical-within-a-musical,

set in 1955, near Broadway.

It revolves around the death of a long time

boarding house resident, Nedra Valova,

who played piano for the Silent Movies.

She leaves a diary revealing an affair with Valentino.

~~~

It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye

(lyrics)

WHEN I THINK OF YOU,

I REMEMBER

THE GIFT OF YOUR LOVE,

AND THE WARMTH OF YOUR SMILE,

IT’S SO HARD TO SAY GOOD BYE,

THE ECHO OF YOUR LOVE,

LINGERS ON

IN THIS SONG,

REMEMBERING THE TIMES

THAT WE SHARED.

YOU ALWAYS GAVE ME HOPE

FOR MY DREAMS,

AND LISTENED TO MY SCHEMES,

AND YOU LOVED ME

JUST THE WAY THAT I WAS,

A LONELY SOUL,

NOT A DAY GOES BY,

THAT I DON’T WONDER WHY,

YOU BLESSED MY LIFE

WITH YOUR LOVE,

YOU LEFT US WITH SUCH SADNESS,

IT’S SO HARD NOT TO CRY,

IT’S SO VERY HARD

TO SAY, GOODBYE.

So now, view my Spring 2011 garden.

and listen to the piano solo

It's So Hard To Say Goodbye.

ONCE UPON A GARDEN

~~~

(if you can't access it here you can
hear it on the you tube videos at the
top of this blog)

stay tuned . . .

~~~

Enneagram Women's Workshop

2011-11-05T17:22:00.000-07:00

I’ve enrolled in a Women’s Online

“Heart’s Desire” Enneagram Workshop.

I decided to make a blog post about it.

Here’s a photo of the book,

Wisdom of the Enneagram,

I’ve added a peacock feather

and a rose, symbolic of the

#3 Performer/ #4 Artist Wing

That’s my Enneagram Type.

We have twelve women in our group

I’ve added some art pieces

Sisters of the Moon, for all the

Intuitive Feeling women that have

helped open my heart.

Sisters of the Sun

I’m choosing them in gratitude for this

online community: Strangers in Good Company

(a great women’s movie)

Midnight Mamas

The pattern is done like paper dolls, with

different material and different arrangements.

Moon Dancers

I listen to the meditation tape here.

I do leg stretches lying on the rug

beside the white wicker bed tray.

My white bedroom looks out

onto the deck with pots of flowers

My Heart’s Desire is to write as

authentically as I can on my Memoir

Confessions of a Blue Tomato.

stay tuned . . .

May this workshop retreat

bring each of us

what we need most.

~~~

FIVE POINTS IN ATHENS, GA.

2011-10-17T09:38:00.000-07:00

I love this area of my home town

where I’ve lived for 40 years

ADD Drug Store still has a lunch counter.

That's my son, Troy, ordering a

BLT and grilled cheese

They have old menu signs

The lunch ladies can make you a milkshake

and there's even a P.O. in the back

that sells stamps and mails packages.

Across the street is The Homeplace

where I can buy unusual gifts.

Here's The Local Jam,

where I came for breakfast,

and brought my journal and pencils

The table in the booth is covered in brown paper

Great peach preserves!

I sketched a leaf I found on the sidewalk.

A real turntable behind the counter.

Local Jam - Get it!

When I chose U of Ga. for college in 1954

people said,

"Oh, you're going to a Party School!"

They were right!

So what if it was a "dry county" back then.

Now, it's an updated party school!

An interesting new place

5 Points Growlers

for college kids to walk up and

get an assortment of beer in gallons.

Earth Fare is here, too, where I

shop for organic Food.

I didn’t take any more photos.

But came back home

back to my cat Zsa,Zsa, who said,

"Why don't you ever take my photo?"

So I did.

Ah, back to this room of my own

with a garden view

where I write.

~ ~ ~

IF THE ROSEBUD ON THE COVER - A POEM

2011-08-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

I took some photos to illustrate

a poem from Late Bloomer

the one about the rosebud on the cover

There she is on the cover

I added a funny journal cover collage

flowers, a bird, pink champagne, a memento

a pink ribbon to tie things together

and added a song I wrote.

You can listen and read at the same time!

If the rosebud could speak, she'd say,
"Write me a Song"

The rose bush is in the pot on the left

and here's the poem.

If the Rosebud on the Cover

If the rosebud on the cover

could talk, she would tell you

her roots have been in a

pot for a dozen years or so.

She would tell you

her owner placed her by the

patio door, to see her

peach colored blooms and

smell a fragrance of myrrh.

“So few roses have

fragrance, anymore,”

she sighs.

The rosebud would remark that she was

anointed with raindrops in spring

and opened with unusual

beauty and grace,

then faded and died.

If the rosebud on the cover

could talk, she’d say that

something always

has to die

to be reborn.

stay tuned . . .

KIDS ATE THEIR POP TARTS

2011-08-22T06:52:00.000-07:00

Writing a Memoir is sobering.

What to put in a book you’re calling,

“Confessions of a Blue Tomato”

What to leave out!

What about accountability?

Ay, there’s the rub.

Kids ate their pop tarts

washed down with our dregs,

We had Bloody Mary’s

and Scrambled Eggs.

But, is this what the book is about?

Is it really about

Betty Crocker who mustn’t scream?

And isn’t it also about the Blue Tomato

who wrote songs because of

a broken heart?

Who also just edited in a scene

at a communications conference

that involved literature and sex

and was once a short story

I wrote called

Sleeping With Tolstoy.

What is my intent?

That’s what Marion the Librarian

is asking me in every sentence!

“What’s Your Intention?”

(That could be a Game Show!)

What kept me making my

unique entrances and exits

monologues and duets?

I want to write a story all the way from

showing my seven year old self

collecting paper and tin cans

and bacon grease,

delivering it to the meat man

to weigh and initial

so I can help win the War.

and get a Victory Badge.

Can that little girl be the Betty Crocker,

Blue Tomato
who Slept with Tolstoy --

and the woman who is writing this today?

This Memoir is an

"I have a dream . . . story"

to write music

to accomplish things

to be somebody . . .

and has

missed it a country mile,

as they say!

Yet, every time I set out to accomplish,

yet another bright idea,

there's a little optimistic soulful voice

down in “Who-ville”

that keeps cheering me on,

“Maybe, this time that dream

will come true!”

In one way I’ve already written it

in the lyrics in the Finale,

The Great Circle of Love,

from my musical -- Silent Dreams

“You have known, all along,

that inner song,

step inside, step inside, step inside

your soul.”

but will it pass the so, what, test?

. . . stay tuned

---

THE BLUE TOMATO JAZZ ALBUM

2011-08-15T19:23:00.000-07:00

I want to start this blog

with my desktop photo

it looks so much better than

the current overgrown,

under watered August garden.

This morning, I edited more of

Confessions of a Blue Tomato

I’m in1968-- those Betty Crocker days

structuring it in segments, for now,

with headings such as --

“The Summer of our Discontent”

“The Last Marriage Counselor

How I Know I’m Not Crazy”

~~~

Last night I folded three more

sets of xeroxed pages for the

poem book Late Bloomer

then took a

nice warm bath

where I get all my great ideas

like making that long wished for

Jazz Album with original songs.

That’s what I’ve wanted to do all along

This is the new keyboard.

It’s a Yamaha Arranger Workstation.

I worked for three hours today

off and on,

practicing just one song

recording it six times

and deleting all of them.

That’s why I’ve been putting

off this music project.

I KNOW the kind of energy

and dedication it takes.

I counted up last night

and I’ve composed 65 songs.

The last songs I composed

were for YouTube videos

Crayola Blues and Yes I Will.

They were such

beautiful surprises!

A kind of dreamy magic

to have songs

come to me like that.

My garden is like that, too,

always a beautiful surprise.

I beat the blue jays to get these figs.

What did I learn today?

Most every thing I do,

I have to wait

for the spirit

to come through me

or move me

give me courage,

like that day, back in 1979, when

I’d been teaching myself chords

and practiced a lot of songs

and asked if I could play at Sparky’s

and they said, "Yes".

That was a dream come true.

Wish me luck,

. . . stay tuned

CONFESSIONS OF A BLUE TOMATO

2011-08-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

It’s good to get out

even in hot weather,

and get a Wal-Mart Gift Card

for10% off Gasoline.

It’s good to get out

and not be a slug, like yesterday,

eating guacamole on Romaine leaves

and the rest of the ice cream

(ice cream is a no-no)

But it was free at Earth Fare last week.

It's too hot

to even take photos

so here's an old one

St. Francis and the Confederate jasmine

It’s good to get out because

in between Wal-Mart and Trader Joe’s,

I had the best idea for a new title for the

Memoir revision of Shug!

This was the photo on that cover.

Earlier, the revision was going to be called

Silently Dreaming:As the Music Winds Down

But now I’ve been so inspired

by a new book,

The Memoir Project:

The Thoroughly Non-Standardized

Text for Writing & Life.

by Marion Roach Smith

I've changed my focus.

Last week I had these title ideas:

The Envelope, Please

I Was Never Meant To Be A Star

Hold On To Your Dreams

Looking for Me.

The new memoir title

“Confessions of a Blue Tomato”

"How does that grab you?

Would you read it?"

. . . to be continued

~~~