Jill Robinson 2013-05-25T23:17:44-04:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=jill-robinson Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Jill Robinson Good old fashioned elbow grease. The Perfume Collector tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3246728 2013-05-09T13:31:20-04:00 2013-05-10T11:36:34-04:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/
Kathleen Tessaro's new novel, The Perfume Collector (Harper), is a mystery, a journey, which takes us from Paris in 1955, to spring in London the same year. Then we're in New York, and it's 1927! We visit Monte Carlo, England, and ah, back to Paris.

The Perfume Collector, Tessaro's striking fifth novel, is fragrant with suspense. You will learn astonishing secrets about perfumes: classic, forbidden, long lost, as memorable as this story.

Tessaro is the rare writer who defines the exact place we are. She is a fine host; you can feel her fascination as her characters arrive in each perfectly detailed scene. We first meet Eva d' Orsay in Paris. She is not having a good day. Her life has been, as we learn, a puzzle. But then Eva never showed anyone what she could do with numbers. (If she'd lived in America now she'd be running Apple). But this talent "was secret...she couldn't recall a time when numbers hadn't carved through the chaos...bringing order."

After we meet Eva we go to meet Grace Munroe, dashing to dress for an evening she's decided she will not care for. Tessaro tells us:
there was an air of danger to her gatherings, the frisson of mischief. At her most famous dinner party, she hired a sprinkling of actors to pose as staff and one as an unfortunate guest who was then dramatically poisoned during the first course. It was then up to the remaining guests to solve the mystery before the police arrived or they were eliminated through one heinous end or another.


Then, by the door, as Grace is leaving she finds a letter from France. It's been typed on "heavy good quality paper." The letter is from a lawyer who announces (with apologies for "her recent loss") that she is the beneficiary of the estate of Madame Eva d' Orsay. The letter includes an airplane ticket to Paris.

"I've never met an Eva d' Orsay," Grace tells her friend, "I've no idea who she was."

Of course she must go to Paris to receive the legacy. Of course all great style begins in Paris. Here's this advice to a gentleman: "Anyone can wear a suit, but casual clothing is the great equalizer. What I adore is that you look as if you're not taking anything too seriously. That makes everyone else appear overdressed."

This is a novel to read on a long Sunday. You'll want to set yourself up with some choice blueberries, something fresh to sip in your favorite cup.

And, a touch of your favorite perfume would not be remiss. As you come to that part of the story, you'll be sniffing everything -- wondering. Really? Yes. Exactly. This is a terrific novel about two women who never meet; but transform each other's lives.

Don't read it too fast. You'll miss clues, which come like tiny dabs of perfume. There is, for example, the old leather satchel out of the vintage perfume shop with its collection of ancient vials, fragrances so well described, you sniff the air around the book. When The Perfume Collector becomes a film, where Emma Watson might play both Eva and Grace. Instead of 3D, fragrances will waft from the screen, defining each character, each stunning surprise.

You'll love Eva and Grace. And, of course, Monsieur Tissot. One could cherish a whole novel about him, not to mention Madame Zed. But I say too much. What you have here is a trip to Paris: no check-ins required.]]> Yesterdays tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3165444 2013-04-26T16:17:41-04:00 2013-04-26T17:14:28-04:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/ Yesterdays a jazz musical at the Promenade Theatre in Santa Monica. It's only running until May 5.

Theatre By the Blind is the only theatre group in the country composed entirely of blind actors. This is their tenth production.

Yesterdays is magic, however, not because the terrific jazz musicians and performers are blind, but because the story, the music, the lyrics and the people we meet are funny, heartbreaking, lusty originals. The directors, Greg Shane and Lindsay Nyman, keep the story, written by Nyman and Colin Simson, going so fast that it's suddenly over before you've gotten all settled into how much you love the show and its characters.

Yesterdays is one of those small clubs having a hard time. It would have been called a lounge a few decades ago. It's the place you go to be with people who also march to different drummers, who gather in coffee places, church basements, and round campfires where our souls are acceptable and safe. Here you might be up or down, or down and out and feel the sound that keeps your spirit lit any day, your heart beating even as it is breaking.

The feel of the theatre, the set, the characters, becomes that home to the audience. We are watching a show, sure, but we are in this club; we hear them, need no introductions. There's a keyboard piano. I close my eyes. I feel the shifting, the seat-dancing of the audience as we get caught up by Laywood Blocker's keen fingers, all ecstasy expression on his piano.

Then there's Bert Grose, lurking in the corner; there is no more seductive tone than his alto sax -- you inhale his sound, like the arousing flavor of perfume. And then there's Willie Robinson, who lives for the beat of his drums; They are his breath, his soul, his heart.
Candy, snug and snazzy in her spangled scarlet cocktail dress, is the bright and optimistic owner of this jazz spot. This a place "for the old souls of Hollywood to stay alive - sometimes we've been up so long, we close at Sunset."

Any good show needs a villain. Yesterdays has Mr. Herman Thorndike, known as T-dog, played by Ernest Pipoly, fur coat over his double breasted suit, if you please. He wants to close the club. "He's not into real estate," someone says, "he's fake estate." T-Dog's sure Candy's never going to come up with the rent this month. But Candy's clear, "why should facing reality mean giving up on your dreams," and as it has been since the beginning of show biz time, "They'll find a star, put on a show, and save the stage (or the barn) or Yesterday's!"

"We'll make this night spectacular," Candy says, "And I'm even gonna work on my purple martini recipe!"

Young Michael Quinn, played by Sean Gorecki, longs to be a "lounge singer," you sense his tender anxiety, the paradox of the best young talent. He knows he's excellent. Also knows this is too scary. His walk stammers as he approaches the mike to try out. But you're warm; his heat fills the theatre even as he tells Candy, and Vicky his girlfriend, played by Maria Perez, he isn't sure he can sing well enough "If people are watching me."

"What good is a gift," one of the musicians tells him, "if you don't share it with anyone?"
One of the characters tells him "Close your eyes when you sing. That way you won't see any disappointment in their eyes." which he can't see because Sean is, also, blind. But this does not mean his imagination is not providing fear's clear images. So, with his eyes closed, Michael sings -- the show is a triumph. Yesterday's will be here tomorrow.

And Sean Gorecki will be here, too; he is a star, gentle and talented as George Shearing, the pianist and singer who started in America's first all blind jazz band, and was, as Sean will be, a legend in his own time.

Also, a point, the theatre itself is small, original in construction; a couple of us tripped perhaps, because we can see, we make assumptions about how things should be; we don't use all our senses as we move through a dark theatre. One of the many things I learned watching Yesterdays is that vision is far more than sight.]]> Here Now: The Actor's Gang's Heart of Darkness tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3047021 2013-04-12T18:10:21-04:00 2013-04-12T18:10:30-04:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/ Heart of Darkness, at the Ivy Substation Theatre in Culver City. This classic novel has been tailored to fit our sleek time. Every rich line has its place, on the voyage Keythe Farley has directed.

There have been several versions of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Most of all, perhaps, are Conrad's very own: The "final" manuscript was published in 1898: Conrad continued to edit, republish, revise and reconsider. He produced the most consistent and polished edition, in 1921. (And we whine about rewriting.)

(To Note: recent variations: Apocalypse Now, where Marlon Brando played the demonic Kurtz and a documentary called the Heart of Darkness.)

And now, here's Brian T. Finney. He is Marlowe; the narrator, the voyager. He becomes every character. You need no more cast to feel the story. And you will never picture Marlowe in any other image again.

The stage of this small theatre in Culver City is empty, dark. We see the looming outlines of three sails.

Tim Robbins, The creative director of The Actor's Gang, welcomes the opening night audience with the glow of a 10-year-old kid who is really excited to show you what his buddies have made here. Everything the Actor's Gang does has the expectation of invention.

Now through the darkness you see a man crouching on each side of the stage in rough 19th century dockworkers' boots. This is foggy London. Pre-dawn. Heartbeats echo through the theatre, (even louder than our own).

A man you've never seen (and will never forget) arrives on stage, an agitated presence with a huge story to tell you. Here's Brian Finney, as the young chap, Charlie Marlowe showing us the map of the world projected across the sails. He points to a giant continent: "The empty place on the map is therefore where I must go."

The dockworkers adjust the sails. We see clouds over ocean; hear the lapping of water. The sound effects, the music all designed by the composer Mark Nichols, astonish, and place us in each scene, hitching up suspense, and tension.

Marlowe never stops moving, becomes the characters he encounters; accents in place. Now and then the dockworkers set up a table, flip a chair over to become a part of a ship, whatever is required, it's subtle, convincing, never distracting. The sails are lit with seaside glory as Mr. Marlowe sets off on his voyage to Africa.

He has no wardrobe changes, only this curious twist of pale cactus gauze. He shifts it about into a grand ascot for his meeting with the Colonial Authority, wipes his face, makes it into a shawl to huddle under, or uses it to wipe blood from his boots. Ingenious as a child at play with its sucky blanket. (Are we all born performers?) This actor surely is a grand editor, and a choreographer as well. Each move he makes is part of the story.

What is important here, with all the dimensions of sound and lighting, and the wardrobe of giant images projected on the sails' adaptive canvas, is the threatening swell of fear. There are serpentine ripples of the Congo, and then, with a horrid clattering, we see giant tusks yanked from elephants' faces.

This is the story of the rape of the Ivory Coast. One will never again be amused at the jaunty use of "ivories" when playing the piano. Not after seeing the images on sails of tall black men marching in chains. We hear gunshots. The gaping holes the men dig are where they will fall, linked forever, left to die.

Conrad's work was once considered racist, written in the attitude of his time. But when you see it presented here, it is a story about our most horrific heritage: the destruction of ourselves; of our greatest treasure -- our planet, its people.

"A philanthropic idea," Marlowe reflects as he sees the tall men, "gives the native's something to do."

Marlowe offers a dying man a biscuit, "He held the biscuit," Marlowe tells us, "As he died." Then Marlowe reconsiders, "I was to come acquainted with a pitiless folly. In the demoralization of the land Kurtz kept up his backbone," Marlowe cases the audience, "That's backbone." There's an uneasy laugh. Finney does irony with astute valor.

As the sails darken with jungle leaves, jungle sounds surround us, Marlowe leaves for a two hundred mile search. He will find the source of all this horror: The ghastly, madman, eerie (is he real?) Kurtz, who runs this grim Belgian business. Marlowe describes this trek, "Tramp: Camp, cook, sleep, strike camp. March, camp, cook, sleep, and strike camp..."

This tour de force Mr. Finney has created declares, expresses, ponders, and like Charlie Marlowe's journey, never stands still, even as we see the transformation of his character, the strangling of his rage with the piece of gauze in his hands.

When Marlowe encounters Kurtz (even more monstrous perhaps than the monster King Leopold, who, unlike Kurtz, never saw the horrors dug out under his command.) The sails reflect fiery, filthy smoke, "loyal to the nightmare of my choice. This is a vapour belly exhaled by the Earth."

We watch the sweat gleam real, darkening Finney's ruddy European curls; and, when at the end, we hear the haunting sound of death. That echoing roar of gargling pebbles. We feel in our bones the reality of Kurtz's last word.

How many of us in fact do know that 11 million were killed under Belgium's rule. And six million have been killed in the last 10 years, digging out the Congo's rich resources for our computers.

At the end of the play, Marlowe has returned to meet the young woman intended for Kurtz, who still loves him. She wants to know his last word. And Marlowe is weeping with a glow -- "I lay down the ghosts of Kurtz's with a lie," he tells us.

"She knew it. She was sure. She was weeping."

And Marlowe is weeping with a glow -- "I lay down the ghosts of Kurtz's lists with a lie."

We see Marlowe sitting quietly in the Buddha position we saw him in early in the play. He has experienced the notion of "being caught up in the essence of the incredible," he speaks to us, "we live as we dream: alone."

We guess he has come to some peace. And our imaginations are refreshed. We have been at sea, shot in jungles, sailed along the Congo, all emotions from grief, outrage, horror to despair have been wrenched out, refreshed by sea air, excellent language and a great story. Not a customary experience.

As we gathered to celebrate this enlightened exploration of elevated evil we discussed, "What did Kurtz really mean with that last word?" And we each knew our own answer was true.

That word, its expression here, woke me with a jolt the next morning. I fear it will again. Such is the impact of this play.]]> The L.A. Marathon tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2918984 2013-03-21T13:26:26-04:00 2013-05-21T05:12:01-04:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/ Law and Order marathon. I learned a lot more about Elliot and Olivia. Elliot's mom was bipolar. This explained his perceptions, his conflicts. I needed to write new pages. Couldn't think what to write. Crossed this out. Tore that up. Bad Example for the writers I'd be working with day after tomorrow.

I went to sleep about two a.m. At four a.m. I woke up. Legs cramped. Slathered them with horse lineament. Tried to sleep. A bit later I heard -- no, felt, more than heard, a kind of dense hum, not too far away. Not traffic, really, but a looming spirit sound -- like when I was a kid and I'd lie on the lawn in the summer and hear the grass purring the sound of land under my ears.

Yes! I sit up. I'll bet it's the L.A. marathon runners. This year, they're blocking off Sepulveda at Ohio. So they'll be coming down exactly where I live.

For us a marathon involves a casing of maps, texting times and directions so we know where we can't go. I mean it's so L.A. -- Running. The first guy who did the 26 mile dash we call the Marathon, legged it in Greece long before running shoes, and jock straps. (Can you imagine running 26 miles in a white mini toga?) Well, he died. Finished the race. But died.

A lot of centuries later we're still doing his race. I'd like to know they'll be making my grandma's chicken soup on Mars.

All the wonder of the Greek myths we learned comes over me: you have to see what it is. I guess there'll be a lot of young people waving banners; serious faces. 'Someone should be out there,' I tell myself. It's five a.m. The street's lavender with early morning light. I pull on jeans, sweatshirt; walk fast up the street.

There's still this distant hum. Is it really the sound of running, are they almost here? I see a guy in a blue shirt running the wrong way. A man in a white robe is walking a small dog.

The barricades are up. Two big cops sit in big cop cars behind the long set of Sepulveda barricades. On the other side of the street, above a grassy knoll there's a pair of white pagoda shaped tents; tables inside, folded canvas cots leaning by. It's a First Aid center set up by USC.

Grassy Knoll. Those two words set forever on the brain of those who remembered John Kennedy's assassination. The grassy knoll was where the assassin hid; a memory; connections set forever in a writer's Thesaurus, a mind guide far firmer than hard drive. I plan to sit on this grassy knoll near this duet of red tents here.

Pasadena Pacer's Running Club. there's a small cheerful man, Paolo, says his name badge, "Hi, may the course be with you!" We laugh. He explains this club was set up in 1996; "We meet every Saturday at the Rose Bowl Aquatic Center; they have a great pool," he says. How does he know I'm wild for great swimming pools?

Dave McCarthy, also friendly, also in a red Pasadena Pacers t-shirt, is setting up tables. "Our club was started by Steve Smith 13 years ago." He's a smart chiropractor. His book "Run Healthy. Run Strong," will be out next year. Dr. Steve wants his patients to run. "If you move your joints, you will be healthier." Yeah. When I sit working all day.

"Steve's wife Robin is here, you have to meet her," Paolo introduces me to a tall blond woman who reminds me of my roommate from Stanford. You'd trust her with your life.

"Our first group started at 7 a.m. June 6 1997," Robin says. "No one was there. But then 35 people came. Sixteen did a full marathon. Everyone else cheer-leaded that year. The marathon changes your life forever. Once you cross that finish line your spirit changes forever."

They're kind of like the L.A. good guys I liked in school, long ago -- not dreamboats, jocks or big deals, but smart, reliable, gentle, basically happy. Archaic type. I'm immediately at home. "Do you need anything?" I ask -- "Cookies?"

"Food is great." they laugh, "always welcome."

"I have Girl Scout cookies! I'll come back." I walk home fast. Faster than usual. Do not pretend you are running. Maybe this is something to write about. I need three pages -- why does it even occur to me to write. Because you tell other writers there's always something to write.

I shove a yellow pad and some pens into a Trader Joe's 'Save Planet' bag with a lot of Girl Scout cookie boxes, trail mix and nuts and walk even faster back to the corner.

Dave catches on that I don't understand why people run. Or what it has to do with anything I know about.

He explains: "There are three principles." like steps. I get that. First, exercise below your ability level. Second, train in a shallow gradient. Third, do it in a group. Even two people together. "You do what you can do. And it's okay." Sounds like Writing. Cooking. Swimming. I get this.

He talks about the preconditioning program. The first Saturday; walk four minutes, run two. Then the next Saturday. Walk three. Run two. Then the third Saturday, walk three, run three. The fourth, you walk two, run four. By the fifth Saturday you'll running for five minutes.

Dave speaks with the mellow understanding of a good teacher. "We have many programs for people who have never run a marathon."

There are many other people here now. I am sitting under a scarlet fold-it tent from Wal-mart. Have finished helping Paolo set up a tray of pretzels perched on dabs of peanut butter. There are big aluminum foil trays of banana chunks, wedges of orange Reeses chocolate peanut butter cups. (They're very good.) Someone brought plastic gloves for food handling.

There's a young woman with green feather palm tree in her headband. "May the course be with you," she says. There's an eight-year-old Sophie with her family and Hilda Xiciara, the Marathon Coach. She's been running for 12 years.

Now there are at least a hundred people watching gathered here at this pivotal corner. You've made the first twenty miles. Only six to go! Only six. The first "runners" we see are cheered. However they are not exactly running: they whiz by on recumbent bikes, lying back, peddling with arms or legs. Some of these bikes have two people: one has no legs, so pedals with arms; the other who has no arms, pedals with legs. No matter what you're missing, you can do the Marathon.

Everyone watching here now has cowbells, horns and there are signs: It's Saint Patrick's Day, and it is L.A., so some woman has a beer mug hat, and beer mug shades.

There are special runners with small fans who run out to greet some of the runners. I run (really) over to Sepulveda to watch the vast waves of runners coming up the street, cheering, sweating, grinning, frowning, waving arms, gripping fists, jaws. To say a crowd of runners doesn't begin to define the motion magic of watching the marathon head-on. I click/phone pictures on my cell, jogging towards them. Then breathless, I return to the Pacers H.Q.

A woman trots by with a sign "Show me your nipple guards!" It's not just to make people laugh, Robin tells me, "It's because if women don't wear them, their nipples can bleed from fabric rubbing against them." The Ronnie North Band is here now; Ronnie on drums with his two guitars -- and down the road a bit the South Bay Running Team in Royal Blue t-shirts has set up their silver and blue tent. Wende has brought more food. "This is the best egg salad sandwich ever," she gives one to me. She's right.

Janet is this year's young president, "You realize once you put in the dedication, motivation to put a plan in place, there's nothing you cannot do. this becomes an extension of family." This is like writers. How we are now with each other."

Janet tells me, "My dad is 74. He got inspired, and now he's starting a group in South America. The first Marathon will be Epic."

One woman tells me her husband never talked when he came home from work. "Now that he runs, he turns off the TV at night. And really talks to me."

"Cholesterol lowers. You pop out of your body, you're out there watching your body run."

Now as people of all ages, all types, all conditions come running by, waves of people, panting, charging, sweating, running in waves, swells of the splendor of action, faces glowing, charged up by this cheering corner. Like all great spiritual healing programs, this has less to do with the winning; the gift is knowing you can DO this.

Will is not running this year, he's sitting next to me now. "I was in a motorcycle accident. But I'll run next year, I learned here that there's more to life than nine to five," he says, "I want to be here, to give my energy, the excitement, our presence drives the pace. So they know I'm grateful for the inspiration. I've learned we are designed to propel ourselves forward."

And Janet says it best: "Everyone has a story to tell. And everyone has a race to run."]]> Lead Ins tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2863461 2013-03-20T11:13:06-04:00 2013-05-20T05:12:02-04:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/ Lines are longer now.

"Can you believe it took 45 minutes to get here, I mean, like really!" has been a sure L.A. lead in for the past couple of years, but right up there with the 405, in a dead heat with the NRA, for worst in the world, is CVS.

"Like, they called with the 'your prescription is ready' tape at eight last night. I've been here in line a half hour, and they got no record of the call!"

I'm at the CVS in Westwood; on Wellworth. I want the CVS CEO's to know how this is: standing in the line, waiting for prescriptions to be filled.

"I mean the taped calls are a pain," this gaunt guy with a ponytail and 'Don't Call' t-shirt ignites the talk. "Yeah," he goes, "I figure the agent likes the script - I'm sure it's that call."

"Exactly," I say, "Last night I tipped over my Diet Coke trying to find the phone. Missed the big "Law and Order" moment, and, it was the CVS Rick Perry voice tape: "your prescription is ready to be picked up.'"

I'd been really proud of myself this morning. Got up, did Yoga stretches. Saw I had only one "Save your Heart" pill left. So I followed the CVS' drill on the bottle. I called the number of the recording listed here. Paid attention to directions. Tapped in script number. Entered the time I wanted to pick it up. Done.

Not driving this week, so fave writer George picks me up. We go to CVS, just miss smashing into a two Camry collision. They were racing a biker through a red light.

Arrive at CVS.

"Not ready," Elise shakes her head. Gives me the 'what can I do' look.

"But the CVS call said it would be by 9:30 a.m.," I am just warming up. Take deep breath.

"That was then," Elise holds her hands up. George gets us each a Diet Coke to pass the time.

"I don't mind having a heart attack," I tell Elise. "But my writers might miss the chicken soup."

"How much do you have to write to come for the soup?" Elise asks. It is clear she is no more devoted to CVS than I am.

"Three pages. How long do I have to wait?"

She checks with pharmacist. "Twenty minutes."

"Never mind," I say. We leave. Return in 20 minutes.

"It's not going to be filled." Elise shrugs.

"Why?"

"You must ask the pharmacist."

"Good luck," says a newcomer in line. who is sitting on the floor, leaning against the cold pill counter reading Trader Joe's paper. Has on 'Whiskey A Go-Go' t-shirt. "Vintage," I nod at the shirt, "Cool."

"Not really," he says. His kid returns with a chocolate bar he's picked out. Sits on the floor next to his dad who opens the bar. They sit there. Chewing.

CVS pharmacists failed try-outs for "Girls." Express exact same interest and awareness of ancient pharmaceutical practices.

"Yeah, I can't believe it," I growl at Elise.

"Great way to get it all out," says woman with copper locks and 'Actor's Gang' t-shirt. "I've been here twice and they can't find my script."

I think we would dine out on this. I like her. "You're funny," I say.

"Haven't felt funny in years," she says, "Too many scripts, but thanks, anyway."

"I remember when scripts meant something you hoped to finish writing so you could pay your rent," says a man in a "Suits" shirt with collar, roll up sleeves and pen in his hand, making notes on a small pad. George gives me the bossy look that means do not ask if he's a writer.

"Yeah," the ponytail guy says, "and I remember when script meant the scrawled on piece of paper you'd slip to someone for the stuff you needed so you could write your dynamite novel very real fast."

"Ah yes," another woman in a Lakers sweatshirt says, "I could get a week's speed faster and cheaper than a real doctor refill here." This, I dimly remember, is true.

"And they knew what you wanted and why," says Ponytail/Don't Call guy.
Elise reports, "you cannot get prescription filled because Insurance will not pay until 5 days from now."

I ask one of the pharmacists why the tape voice said it would be ready to pick up this morning, Pharmacist gives me blank glance, returns to texting.

"Don't bother," says Lakers shirt.

"You could buy five with cash." Another pharmacist suggests. She's adjusting her eye makeup in a security mirror.

"And how much would that be?" I check out the cash in my pocket.

"Five pills, Jerry what would that be?" Silence. Long period of computer research; Pharmacists working on calculators. But it's hard, when you're a kid pharmacist. I mean, like subtract the what, and carry - where? The boy one shifted his gum from left jaw to right.

The kid and his dad have finished the chocolate bar. Kid has done several cute laps through incontinence aisles, punching at the packaged tummies. Has a toy in hand. Dad shakes his head. "Hey, I said, 'no toys today.' I have to get mom's pills. Chill."

"One?" Kid lifts forefinger.

"No, get a comic. I'll read it to you. We'll be here like, forever."

"Jill," Elise calls out to me, smiles. This says something big about you when they know your name at CVS. (Or something about frequent attendance.) "You go on," whispers the 'Actor's Gang' person, "I've got my eyes on Mr. Ponytail; we met cute; in line at CVS. Musical, don't you think?"

"Call it 'Drugstore,'" I say.

"I can dance," says the 'Lakers' person, doing a tap and turn.

"Let's go for it," says Ponytail. George glares at me from the counter.

"This will be eight dollars," says Elise. She shrugs again, hands me bottle with five very small pills. I'm going to look up what the generic price of this quintet of triangles really is. When the Congress is whining over what the President is trying to do, such as keep Medicare, let alone Obamacare, I wonder why the pharmacy cartels are allowed to rape the government programs with these scorching prices. I think of how America was invented to free people from countries controlled by landowning aristocracies. Now in this particular sense, they own our bodies, our lives, profiting on what is no longer innocence, but a certain, what, hopelessness, I mean what can we do?

I'd get involved, but I got this show to do. This musical. Lots of chorus lines. Lines. Yes. Interesting: on line.

Rachel Maddow had a tough talk last night; about the way the NRA fronts the gun manufacturers, (who make our outrage against weapons seem a "Prohibition" move against patriots just wanting to put fresh deer on their kids' plates.) She compared this to the same "The New Prohibition" uproar set up by tobacco companies when it came clear cigarettes were killing us. In both cases, guns and tobacco, the companies hid their profit issues deftly behind their concern for our "rights" very like, as we're just beginning to learn, the pharmaceutical cartels are sabotaging medical plans with outrageous price hikes even on generic drugs.

New reports show that even CVS and other pharmacies basically charge what they choose for generic meds. Maybe it can be seen as a new social consciousness move. After all, the aging population is hanging around in old t-shirts, crowding aisles, draining our economy (e.g. their profits.)

"Maybe we're being mean," says 'Actor's Gang' person, "CVS is giving us a place to hang out, talk about the stuff we're using, slug some Diet Coke. Just like Sit-Ins."

"What's a Sit-In?" A young girl on crutches joins us. Ponytail brings her a folding chair from the flu shot line.

"Kind of like 'Occupy,'" Actors' Gang offers her some chips from a bag she's passing around.

"But then CVS provides us with the place where we can gather, grumble. And oh, yes, buy stuff we don't need; while we wait for the stuff we do need."

New Lead-In, "What's got you riled up right now?"]]> Rewriting tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2819769 2013-03-06T12:13:56-05:00 2013-05-06T05:12:01-04:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/
Yes! The End.

But this is when the work begins. It took me over twenty years of commercial writing to catch that rewriting is when it gets real, and interesting.

The first draft is climbing the mountain. Then you see the view -- you see territory you never knew was there.

You cut away extra lines, branches blocking the view; extra words tumbling through the story's progress. Imagination's scalpel clears new routes. What used to be Santa Monica Boulevard at 4 p.m. becomes swift as the Coast Highway at dawn.

I'm talking to myself now. I've been working on Blue Coyote, a kids book, my ego arrogance in place-starched firm as maids' caps in Downton Abbey. It's been 15 years now. I've been drawing, painting, rewriting, sending it out, over and over. Agents, editors insisted there are rules for children's books: is it a book with pictures? Or a picture book? Quite a different matter. And then who are you writing it for? Who cares? I thought. A kid will love it. It's about Hollywood. And a Grandpa the kid loves. Grandpa disappears, she finds him. But today writing a kid's book, like some recipes for cookies was beginning to sound like math class.

One agent said anthromorphizing animals (no animal I know can say that word) is out. Kids don't go for that any more. Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse are at the Motion Picture Home, but the Lion King and his kid are still playing. So is Hello Kitty and gangs of others I'm not up to Googling right now. More important, when I showed my granddaughters the drawings for ZB, the Blue Coyote who lives in the village behind the Hollywood sign, my seven-year-old granddaughter said, "You're the only one who can turn animals into people and people into animals." She smiled. She liked the idea; turned on a show about animated Teeth who are characters. Not very cute and furry, but confirming kids have imagination.
So last week I showed Blue Coyote to a new friend. "I want to get this idea to 'someone,'" she said. L.A.'s magic wand is "get this to someone." You don't know who this "someone" is, but visions dance in your head.

I'm not clear why I took this seriously. It hit me: one of those Now or Never moments: I rewrote all night: I learned several things: I reached in and found a new perspective on my own work.

I learned what was perfect in London fifteen years ago will not play in L.A. today. For one-thing kids may not know what a village is. No. I will not make it into a mall. But the market in the 'W' will have mall stuff. And the teashop will be a smoothie/coffee place.

I learned time away from a project is a gift. By being with small kids here, I saw where I'd gone wrong.

My references to life in London were for my own memory; and gifts to the young writers I left behind in London.

Post Possum was archaic. Who even gets mail? Children text, rather better then we do; smaller; faster fingers. They would wonder what the red telephone booth was for: was that a port-a-potty? Call the lion Oscar; not Gable. Every kid knows Oscar is a big deal in Hollywood. He will be fire chief. A slim lion who might save your life.

Kids do not sit quietly now in the trunk of the great olive tree, the way I used to after school, reading long storybooks. To catch their attention fast: ask a question; stay one step ahead; To move fast enough is not easy. Kids like suspense, and action. Of course. Their days are scheduled, programmed and organized.

But how could I find that catch you get when you're writing something new -- the feel of the first kicks; when it wakes you at odd hours.

This would be a duel between me and every word, every image I'd loved. The phrase one of the iconic editors used to use was "you have to kill your babies." (I doubt the editor said this to gay writers -- men were not the fathers they are now. "Hang your own troops" would have been the thing perhaps.)

"Tomorrow," My friend had said, "I want the story, the pictures and your bio to me tomorrow." Writers require deadlines. By morning I had cut the story from 87 pages to 28. A trim synopsis.

When ZB asks the photographer in the village where her Grandpa is, Flash says he's with his agent whose office is in the 'O,' next to the 'H' where ZB lives "what does an agent do?" ZB asks. (A lot of kids may not know.) "He keeps famous people feeling good, even when they aren't famous yet. Or anymore."

What makes my story here relevant to all writers is the discovery that characters do not retire. Like great actors they're up for the run of the play. They don't age, fade away. They weather adjustments, new moves, gestures, and situations.

They were, (can I point this out?) glad to see me; unlike what are those things -- yes, school reunions, they hadn't gotten all out of shape, or stuffy. They were like the marionettes I had when I was a kid -- wanting (like me) to be taken out, placed on stage, hoping to be up there. And around dawn, as I adjusted the new neighborhood, a skateboard jazz group sketched its way on stage. The poodles with their violins found the Orthodox Jewish Raccoon with his saxophone very appealing; he tipped his top hat as poodles skipped by; on the way to their recital.

Writers file people, scenes, expressions and gestures, everyday. A week ago I'd seen an Orthodox drummer playing jazz in a South Pasadena restaurant. I knew he'd show up somewhere. Writing fiction is sort of like writers' groups - you pick up people you like and they turn out to be writers; you meet interesting people and they do become storybook animals.

And when you're writing what you see will come on board. (Not always skateboards)
The point of this is that rewriting can be a festival of surprises. As a book slims down it often opens up, revealing a direct storyline you didn't see. But how would you, you're just the writer.]]> The Spaghetti tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2768165 2013-02-28T13:00:02-05:00 2013-04-30T05:12:01-04:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/
The spaghetti I love best is not spaghetti.

I remembered this as I made some Friday night. During the hour I spent waiting for the sauce to work through its story, I watched a National Geographic show about cougars, cheetahs and lions in Tanzania. They showed some porn scenes of cougars mating. This distracted me from the subject of spaghetti.

But I had never heard that cougars make love 50 times a day when the female is fertile; the males battle for her, they get very high; they know the season's coming like we know when a holiday's coming up and we run around shopping like mad.

I went and checked the sauce. It will be fine.

The first spaghetti I ever saw wormed its way through a large bowl of Pyrex glass. This was in my friend Marcia's kitchen. Her mom made the spaghetti. She was a big mom, with a short-sleeved blouse, a lot of thick curly hair and a striped apron wound around her belly. She was Jewish, warm and had what I guessed was something called an open heart.

I'd never seen anyone's actual mother in a kitchen. My grandmother had her own kitchen in her little apartment. She made chicken soup for actors in the Army. I knew moms did cook. I heard moms cooking on radio shows. And some kids said their moms made their sandwiches.
We never had spaghetti at home. "Jews do not eat Italian," my Aunt Lil explained. This was not precisely true, because my first mother-in-law who was Jewish and on her fourth marriage, taught me how to make lasagne, which next to my son and daughter, was one of the rewards of that marriage.

I'm watching the National Geographic show again. And pulling many oregano leaves off the branches. Cheetahs are wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am, guys. They are faster than cougars at everything, and far faster than lions, who are smarter at stalking cheetahs -- their fast food. Lion brothers like to go after one cheetah. Not an appetizing scene, rather like watching two guys at Barney's Beanery after a big game.

Time to check the sauce. Yes.

Gino Santin taught me this sauce. He owns the Santini and L'Incontro restaurants in London. You walk in and you are in Veneto, the Italian plain between the base of the Alps and the Adriatic Sea. Venice is in the center of the plain.

Gino first taught me to make risotto in his kitchen. He stood by, conducting every swirl and swoop of the heavy spoon he'd handed me. Such a gift.

A week or so later, I asked Gino how to make a perfect, real Italian spaghetti sauce.
"There's no one way," he explained; his voice -- oh, this was more like dancing with Pavarotti than cooking -- "ideally, you use the fresh long Italian plum tomatoes, from San Marzano. They are firm, dark red, full of pulp; you'll find them more easily in late summer when you might as well buy a lot, make several helpings of sauce to freeze for later."

"But you can also," he smiled," make a perfectly good salsa using cans of peeled Italian tomatoes."

"No!" I said.

"Oh; yes!" his cheeks gleamed, sunny as tomatoes, "the best sauce is simple. If you're using fresh tomatoes like these, you'll need about eight. I found these tomatoes I am chopping at Bristol Farms this afternoon.

I moved the table so I could see the lions. I didn't know lion families are called prides. This is why they seem English. (Although some L.A. families I know are prides.)

Lions do kill step-cubs their mates have by other guys in the same pride. That shows them who's still in charge.

Now I'm learning that, like me, some cheetah women will go after guys they think will be good mates. This upsets the brothers of the cheetah she's already been with and they fight.

This is how the cheetah I was talking about got nailed by the lions. He was so into the battle with his brother-in-law he didn't see the real danger coming down, which reminds me -- back to the tomato sauce.

The blue ceramic bowl of tomatoes I have here is rather like the one Gino handed to his sous chef. Gino's tomatoes were chopped with leonine finesse and cheetah speed. Then Gino poured the Italian olive oil into his heavy pan. This rich oil redefines what we call olive oil; the fragrance is Venetian sunlight and shadow. A perfume so erotic, Armani might well consider. But then one would eat his suits.

I layer my deep frying pan with the oil. It gleams slow; a satin gown slipping around the ebony body of the pan. "You must heat this very, very, gently," I remember Gino's voice, gentle as the heat. I sprinkle in the large garlic cloves I've chopped fine as baby diamonds. "This Garlic must be fried slowly, only until the color changes." Yes. I remember. When the garlic is pale gold and translucent, I ladle in the chopped tomatoes.

That day in London we ate a light lunch of slender asparagus sliced into sautéed polenta. My husband had a portion of the heated up Osso Buco Gino had saved for him from the night before.

After an hour the tomato sauce was thick and splendid, and Gino clipped many basil leaves from the plants in the herb garden outside the door to the kitchen, and scattered them through fresh linguine, after it was done al dente; barely three minutes in the boiling water. Then he grated a touch of Parmesan cheese on top of our flat white bowls. My definitive spaghetti, as I said, is not precisely spaghetti.

Yes the sauce takes time. As I eat a small bowl of sauce I watch a proud lion stroll across the Masai plain. The red on his paws is not spaghetti sauce. The Masai word, "Szrenght," means land that goes on forever, and the legends and folklore of what we eat and hunt and crave also go on forever.]]> Slam tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2672105 2013-02-20T17:01:39-05:00 2013-04-22T05:12:01-04:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/
This was an event in Santa Monica at a place called Zanzibar. I went with the writer, George Jordan, who knows about these matters. He explained that Slams are part of a very huge thing called the Moth Project. Here, people hang out listening to other people telling their true stories.

I'd first heard about Moth from my friend, Bliss Broyard, a dazzling young New York novelist who visited around Christmas time. "You're perfect for Moth," she said.

"What is it?"

"You just do what you always do. You tell stories. I'll have a friend call you."

And she did. Her friend listened; told me to tell my whole best story. Which I did. (I left out movie star pieces because tough young people tell me "people don't want to hear old movie star stories anymore."

That's okay. I've had enough big adventures even without movie stars (which I never could have considered possible.)

"Great story. You had me crying," Bliss' friend said, "I'll put you in touch with Kemp who goes to Slam's in L.A."

"Great!" It was this feeling like (I told myself do not write about this without using the word "like") I did when I was accepted at Stanford, or got my first book deal. I was 'In.' Wow.

But then you go to college and find out that's the bare beginning of the steps, the rules, the work, the anxious waiting for grades, the not getting this test right either.

And, then you decide to write. You get the book deal (this was in the last century) -- and you have to write the book, restructure the book, rewrite the book, edit the book, reconsider the book, edit it again. And then, when it is published, you wait for reviews. (Nothing counts, you learn, until you get the New York Times review (but what about your picture?)

What I'm saying is, as with all that, you don't just apply, show up, the music swells, and it says, The End. Zap: you have arrived.

No! Here, at the Slam, I'm told, you show up, put your name in a hat and if it's pulled out you tell a story for five minutes on the subject of the night. It has to be true. Mostly, I'd guess, they sense truth the way I've learned, from working with writers for about 20 years, that you can feel the reality in the delivery, the expression: Storyteller truth has a fragrance, a rhythm, a beat you move to.

SLAM: Cool L.A., January evening. Stand in line with other people I like right away. Not too many. I'll have a chance.

But like the first of anything it is kind of scary. I don't know the drill. George runs off, gets us hot tea at a café. We stand for half hour. Door opens at seven. We go into a large sort of cave, with cushioned levels, benches and chairs, dark, around a wide stage, walls with giant prints from North Africa. Does not feel like L.A.; except maybe as it was in some of the canyon cafes in the sixties. Kemp, a writer, meets us, with Shannon, who's an artist. Like them a lot.

"You'll have your chance," Kemp's sure -- "it's not that big." Ten read each time. He introduces me to the evening's producer' Friendly. I'm all sure of myself in my red bowtie, of course I'll get chosen -- I mean after all -- these are just kids.

The M.C. is a sort of wise hillbilly Sally Jesse Raphael, slinky person. Just as the first day at Ram's Head playhouse at Stanford when I was sure I'd be a star, (after all, I was friends with Warner Leroy, the director; I'd get a part right away,) I sat half listening, half practicing in my head what I'd say.

You have five minutes in a Slam. That's it?

I can't say, "Hello, how are you doing?" in five minutes. I began to listen more carefully. Don't be mean; "Like" is the new comma, eat it," I warned myself. The stories were loose, funny, antic, a lot about guys going wrong. The best stories still are about that. Then an older woman (Still younger by far than I am, does a man/woman story.) Yeah. Don't go there, doesn't play well. So I told myself, lay it out there, talk about losing memory, learning to write again: three pages, double spaced, every day, no pages, no dinner."

Yes. Good Story. Grown up story. For Now: Pay Attention: Guy tells odd story about being bald. Would not have been first thing I noticed about him if he hadn't made a story of it. Another girl tells another guy not showing up sort of story -- would knock many of mine out.

This young Frenchman is heaven. Not clear about the story, but if you have that voice, who cares.

Now there's an intermission. New friend nearby tells me "just as well, you wouldn't want to be called in the first half --" The judges will be more wiped, therefore, less picky after Intermission. So. Five more to go. I sharpen up my bowtie. Polish the words.

Impossible, I figure, to match this story by the girl, a ventriloquist, whose friend beheads her Andy Hardy puppet doll before a show.

Can't beat that. I recognize this, "to hell with it -- let it go" feeling, like when I quit Ram's Head because I'd never be an actress, (not the look,) ever, like when I wouldn't turn in pieces for deadlines, no one would want them -- I felt myself turn down the radar, switch off the beams, and be grateful when this extremely cute actor named Moses Storm (I am not making up this name) won. Don't exactly recall his story, but I knew he'd win. The cool assurance, the charm, the motor, all there. Sigh.

I was relieved it was over, if I ever do this again, which I won't after all, why? It's for kids but I would surely leave the romance stuff for them. Maybe a writing story. Sometime. Then it turns out, everyone whose name is still in hat is called to come on up and give the first line of one's story. Don't bother, I tell myself.

"Get up there," George bosses. "Yes" I tell myself: Talk about "three pages, no dinner."
I stand up, "So this ravishing Englishman was speaking, 'She went out on me and I stabbed her.' and I told my friend, 'he's capable of passion; designed for me."

I said to our new friends I'd be back for the next Slam. March 5th. Like everything, it's about the showing up, finding new faces, hearing New Voices, you'll come to know, "It's not," as I tell young writers, "about where it's going to get you."

Life is all about sitting around the campfire telling our stories, has been since time began. It's the living a lot so you got the stories to tell, and about loving enough so you really catch onto the stories you're hearing.

The Slam, then, is one of these new worlds where we meet together; hear each other in real time, real life. There's more, all around, and I'll be there, like listening, like learning.]]> Lincoln tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2632042 2013-02-08T11:24:16-05:00 2013-04-10T05:12:01-04:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/ Lincoln for the second time. There is no more vigorous movie about where we are right now. Yes, Lincoln is about the Civil War, but it is equally about the war between President Obama and Congress. Only in Lincoln, it is the Rebels, the Democrats, who are the bad guys.

Here they are, with the rigid defiant expressions our own president faces today. I started to say our own iconic president, but the implication of the word is too haunting. There's a moment when a character says of Lincoln, "he's aged 10 years-" and I think how, when we look at our own president's picture on his books, in 2007, and now, and we see the isolation of this office, when commanded with integrity and vision.

I cannot tell you about every frame I love, or why, because that would take longer than the movie itself and this movie is not long enough. Here, in Lincoln, Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner, give us suspense (hard to do when we think we know the story), momentum, the range of war -- vast battlefields plastered with bodies, the shell of faces left behind when the spirits are gone. Who else could get that look true without the vulgarity of the gory exposé?

But in Kushner's brilliant screenplay, character reigns, as it must in every true drama, as it does in every Steven Spielberg film. I wanted to wander along the road, watching the president, hunkered over in reflection, huddling in his shawl, angular as his horse. I wanted to be in Lincoln's world, as I am in a great novel for a day or so, to wrap it in my arms, go back to favorite lines, and expressions.

I want right now to freeze that instant, when somehow Mr. Spielberg casts a glint of light on Daniel Day Lewis' eye, the rest of his face in smoky shadow. I want to flip back to scenes, which astonished or amused me -- I'd like to summon up the congressional characters for comic relief, but then I can see that when our own Congress gets ready to muster up its next vote from the "Hicks and Hacks," -- that's how Lincoln called them. Or was it Tommy Lee Jones who said that? Those furry headed, pinched mouth palefaces; Congress matches up with everyone round here now. Wonder if they'd be surprised to learn lobbying's no new game.

It is a unique director who respects the writer's story and characters and at the same time, can endow it with the gorgeous plumage of film's transcendent tools.

The major wrangle here is the Thirteenth Amendment, which will promise equality for all. The mid-belly of our culture has only begun to digest (let alone resolve) this issue.
Lincoln is an emotional, fire dance of a story about a figure in American history who is so loved he is almost folklore. And yet we see real marital rage, and then intimate details -- the president helping his wife out of her corset -- maybe a touché' bookend to Gone With the Wind where Hattie McDaniel's cinches Scarlett up tight.

I want to hold the lines, the expressions, even the terror, the perfectly defined grief close -- each shot of Daniel Day Lewis and his sons, which tears your heart out as does the close up on this one grasp of Lincoln's hand, in the scene at Wilmington.

Even though the story begins with Abraham Lincoln as the president, you don't need flashbacks to show you how he was as a kid; you figure he walked at this angle; you catch that he was an awkward kid, tall for his age, far too smart, therefore bullied. So he'd wander off, think for himself. When the president says, after devastating news, "At times like this I'm best alone," he is that kid again, off to find the silence to fuel the rising force of ideas.

You guess, (well, I guess), Day Lewis, dreamed of Lincoln while he made Spielberg wait long for his answer (would he take the part?) And Lincoln sat around there, coaching Day Lewis -- until he had the turn of Lincoln's head, the brow shifts, the despair, the wry acceptance, and then the powerful assertion, "I am the president..." Perhaps Lincoln has visited our president. Or he saw the movie.

I'd like an hour more of Lincoln -- with an intermission (thank you) and could the cast come on stage real afterwards, to take cheers in their soft bow ties? I want to see the expressions again.

A week or so ago I saw Amour, and about 15 of us in the audience hung around in the theatre talking to each other, comforting each other. After Lincoln I wanted people to come back to a place I might have to gather around a candlelit table; (electricity would be impertinent) we'd talk about each character, each scene; exchanging moments, we'd talk about our president's hopes and how we can let him know we're with him.

This is a movie I'll want to see until I remember every move, every angle, the background images of every scene, (who was the man in the peacock blue embroidered jacket? how could I have missed his meaning?)

I won't forget the moment when Lincoln's valet holds the gloves the president has left behind, and gazes after Mr. Lincoln as he walks down the hallway in the dusk to the doorway with the glass panel like a sunset and you guess the valet senses he will not see his president again.

Only art and passion can create a world, in the burgundy, golden oak, and plummy silver tones of its time, a world so real that when you leave the theatre you are, uneasy, almost landed into a time you do not really know.]]> About Freud's Last Session tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2592539 2013-01-31T18:40:06-05:00 2013-04-02T05:12:01-04:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/
Dr. Freud would see the connections.

When writers I love cannot write, I say "write what you cannot bear to tell anyone." I've kind of forgotten that lately. I've been revising a book I've worked on for fifteen years. Sent it off. And I've completed another book I love. Sent it off -- once more, then twice, and again. I cannot bear to say how abandoned I feel without these works growing within me.

My father was a writer. He always told me when I could not write, "Sit down and bring me three pages with something you don't want to tell me."

When my father, Dore Schary, was very young, he was a playwright in New York. And when my brother and sister and I were kids, he told us stories about the years during the Depression when he and his friend, the playwright Moss Hart, spent time at WPA camps. These camps provided for city kids whose parents were struggling, their lives shattered by the Depression. My father and Moss organized shows with the kids, helping them find their talents, getting other young New York theatre people to come up, coach acting, dancing, singing; they'd bring musical instruments, put on shows and concerts, or sit around campfires as we've done since time began, telling stories, clapping hands, encouraging and comforting each other because times were rough and families were far away.

The "Up at Camp," stories became a kind of habit with some of the kids we played with in Brentwood when I was growing up. We all went to the same small school. In those days, there were no fences, no security systems (well, when you got famous enough to make people enraged, you'd have a watchman going around the grounds at night with a flashlight). But after school, all of us, a pack of about ten kids from show business families, would be on our own. While we'd swim in each other's pools, play tennis or croquet, visit ponies or dogs, we'd turn the action into theatre. Someone would have run away, been kidnapped, was about to be executed and needed a rescue force.

Many of our parents working in movies stilled dreamed of what was then considered the superior art: theatre; the play on the stage (and, if not in London, only then, in New York.)
But we could make plays easily -- no cameras or mikes necessary -- and on rare rainy days, we'd gather at our house, where we had a puppet theatre and a set of really nice marionettes.

Each afternoon, we joined together making stories we could be a part of. A story, which answered a question; "I wonder?"

Everyone took turns deciding what the play would be. We'd put crowns, hats, wings or cloaks from my father's silk pocket hankies, on the marionettes. Sometimes, we'd start a story about, say, a pirate and kidnapper, (kidnapping was a big subject -- like polio and the fear of invasions). Then, we'd find the pirate flag and hoist it on our boat we had in our pool. We'd become cowboys and Indians, pioneers. And we'd play nuns and priests (daring, since some of us were Jewish). We'd bless some. Others would confess sins and be banished.

When we played the scenes we invented together, we took them seriously. Like theatre, these daily events were lifelines to realities we'd never know, quests to find out how this would be? How that would feel?

Theatre is all about wonder. It's close enough, real enough for us to feel right there -- if it's excellent, one feels like they are part of the show and therefore, it's difficult to leave these people we've come to know so very well. The world outside is invasive. If we love the play, we want to remain there. Hear it all again.

Nothing was too remote, too horrifying or too fantastical to imagine, to play in the hidden stage on our ivy-colored hillsides. There was nothing we could not say.

Each story, somehow answered the question; "I wonder?" How would I be?"

So I am here in L.A. now, and the characters I've lived with are gone. The New York publishing scene is collapsing. Writers I love gather together to fill the void editors once played.
We hunt for new roads for our work to travel. We're finding them.

Those of us sulking are rather like carriage makers glaring at automobiles rattling by. (As well they might sulk. Would I had a horse and carriage to traverse empty Mulholland Drive -- faster than the 10.)

What to write? My father also told me, "When you can't find the idea, go to where ideas are."
So I went to see Freud's Last Session at the Broad Theatre. Mark St. Germain's riveting play is essentially a conversation about the Question of God between C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud. And there, in this play is the line: "What a person says is less important than what they cannot say."

Thinking about what they dare not to say, you feel C.S. Lewis considering what he might say, and see Dr. Freud frowning under his potent brow through his trove of comebacks, assertions and slams. Here you watch two men engage in passionate dialogue; jousting round the giant subject which has fueled man's fiercest battles from the beginning of time. I use the 'man' pronoun, but I mean the human creature, which is given to battle as a wary lion. Maybe only land comes up as an alternative attack issue. The thing we can fight over when even God won't do. But then, war over race and gender come out of concepts of God, and God's intent.
Wars are about one's own right to believe. They are also about the other people's rage and terror over what they think you believe, or do not believe.

In this exchange between the gangly C.S. Lewis, played by Tom Cavanagh, and the powerful Judd Hirsch as Freud, you feel the character Hirsch become as completely Freud as Daniel Day Lewis has become Lincoln. (Whenever I think of Freud, I will see Hirsch.)

I keep returning to the line: "What a person says is less important than what he cannot say." And my father's variation, "write about what you don't think you know how to say." Hirsch makes you feel Freud's anguish as the cancer in his throat makes any speech unbearable. I cringe. I writhe in my seat, clutch its arms, as strongly as I did at Django Unchained and Zero Dark Thirty. This is torture and action as real and big on this stage as those scenes on screen.

Live theatre, in fact, truly speaks that line of Dr. Freud's, for live theatre actors express passion, horrors and suspense, knowing all the emotion comes from them. We feel them breathe; we catch the howl that starts from the belly. They have to grab us. They have no background music, no striking camera angles. Yet, here Judd Hirsch's hot coal eyes target us, catch us, cut in sharp as any close up.

It is only theatre that does in fact do what one might imagine it cannot. In an analytic office as real and intimate as it surely was well over a century ago, Clifton Taylor, the light designer, has created sunlight from another time coming through the window onto the wide analytic couch, glowing on the wooden surfaces, the leather books, in Vienna. No big special effects team could have created a more subtle, effective atmosphere in the tone of the day.

Perhaps this is part of the magical bond that exists between live theatre and its audience. I don't feel that exchange in movies even though I love movies and see them all the time (and I'm more at ease with some TV series characters than with my family. This may be because the TV character doesn't know how snarky I can get.)

Theatre does do what movies cannot. Theatre has the immediate, minute by minute, challenge to lift us right away, each of us, onto the stage. The actors can feel the character of our listening. We can't pretend we don't love this, or that we do not get that.

Even a friendly audience, say at a preview, to celebrate, to project good wishes, must generate authentic energy. No moment of inattention will go unnoticed on stage. Listless appreciation is received as dislike. And if it comes within the performance you'll feel the slowdown in the energy up there.

This is why it is, then, equally wonderful to be watching a play, feel the audience's total engagement around you, as I did when I saw "Freud's Last Session."

We were right with these two men; our minds wrangled with them; Freud protested against the existence of God with the passion of one who cannot conceive of a more powerful force than his own mind and we felt C.S. Lewis, hoping (praying) that the God he believes in might find the humility nevertheless to step across the line, and alleviate Freud's stormy, terrible, choking.

The next day, in fact, when I went to my desk, light coming in from my window across my legal pad seemed to come from another time. And I had to remind myself I was not in Vienna, and that I could not put on a Persian collared coat and go to Dr. Freud's funeral, nor could I find out if C.S. Lewis was there, because when I read the play's program, I learned this encounter may never have taken place.

It is important that I do not ever know that. Because as I watched this new writer discuss his beliefs with this iconic figure, I knew that perhaps, if I watch enough strong theatre, I will know how to write to my father, and how to hear his voice come along through time and answer back.]]> Happy New Year -- The Pool's Open tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2536926 2013-01-25T13:19:56-05:00 2013-03-27T05:12:01-04:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/ So, swimming. That's where we are. I am excited for when Equinox is over the "refurb" holiday break and has reopened the pool.

What I do here instead of 'laps' is pick a letter in the alphabet and let that letter lead me to a word. Then I'll swim along to thoughts about words beginning with that letter. I never know what the letter's going to be until I slip right into the pool.

You don't dive at Equinox (unless you're a hulk of a guy in which case you do whatever you feel especially if also in Congress).

So I climb the steps to the pool; it is cold in L.A. this morning. Cold in L.A. really? So there's no global warming after all. (Not true. Mr. O says there is. Therefore true. I shudder as I come into pool's loft. (Think glass walled basketball court). Slipped in the water fast.

"God!" It's cold. I mean, this is L.A. We like our pool's warm as a good cup of tea. We have that tie to England, you know -- that's why we welcome their Jaguars and their actors with such open arms -- I mean Englishmen talk, really talk. Stop it. I tell myself as I start my swim. God! Today's letter is G. I Guess. Another word: Guess I'll get used to this cold water if I swim fast and find a little grace in my attitude. Don't usually have much Grace before 9:00 a.m. and this is 7:30 a.m. God and Grace. Not a bad start. Grace, I turn into a backstroke. Think Esther Williams, she always smiled and curved her arms back. (She was the swim star.) Married to Ben Gage. Why do I remember that? 'G' Yes. Gable. There was a star, also Grant, Cary and Grace Kelly. My father said he wanted to give her Prince a bottle of Lavoris for their wedding. Why do beautiful women marry unappealing men? Grace, backstroke -- more charming when you smile. Why am I practicing charm and smiles at 7 a.m. in a pool full of surly unsmiling hulks?

Now Gabriel, a young man, (not hulk, has charm. Does smile.) Is going to be a star at whatever he does -- he lit up the Santa Monica High stage at 18 playing the Ezio Pinza part in South Pacific. Talk about Some Enchanted Evening!

No bike kicks. Smooth.

Generous, long kicks, God gives (yes! Gives' has the G.) Moving with Grace makes you think up generous thoughts; (rare for you.) Waking up cranky fuels the hype you need to get you here to begin with.

So God, grace, generosity. Ghosts. Yes, real phantoms, spirits of people you love who slip into the pool, they're here in bed, next to you. My Grandmother stands by, guiding me when I make chicken soup. You know that story. But you have to tell them you need some Guidance -- Gee (does anyone say 'Gee' anymore? Gee whiz? Ask Gabriel) I switch lanes there's a lummox here splashing hard next to me yes, spirit guides exist, real as global warming, a lot more real to our lives now than guns. (A word not accepted in pool.)

Guides will come when you have a goal. Such as three pages, double-spaced, every week. That's how the writers I know guide each other. That's how you write, a goal you can manage. When I started writing, I'd gear myself up to finish a whole book. I'd give myself tough goals, unreal deadlines. No grace -- meaning the mulling and brooding time we need, like swimming, giving words a generous space to roam, to go wherever they want. I got a gallery to slide through right now, getting me to the glory I feel when I sit down, pick up the pen and write.

Not unlike the glory of the first strokes in the pool; I got to be here to get the gist of what I need to say. Like you got to be here even when it's cold, you got to write words -- they'll come together. Goals are great (nice 'g' word) -- but we like to make them so big -- we get these images of glory up there on our mind's home page. That's not much use when telling a story. I used to write with an image of myself on Good Morning America (thinking more of what I'd wear, than what this character was doing (usually waiting for her wake up call.) Goodness knows why.]]> Hands Up tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2348578 2012-12-21T17:53:46-05:00 2013-02-20T05:12:02-05:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/
I tell new writers. "When you're grief stricken, shocked all words have fled, just pick up an object at hand, something manageable you haven't noticed -- describe it. Words will creep by."

I turned all of television. Look at the mugs where I keep pencils. This one is Terra Cotta once held mustard. Write about this mug. And what mustard means to me -- the smell of the mustard my grandfather liked on his latkes. The trace of mustard on his trim beard as he spoke of the silver rim on the family mustard pot on his mother's dinner table in Riga. That pot, and everything else, had been left behind when the family fled from the pogroms in Poland to New York. I'd reached out my finger to wipe away the mustard then. I was around six. Grandpa was elegant; a violinist. He would not want mustard on the violin.

"No!" my mother said. She handed her father her napkin. I'd wanted to dab away the mustard myself. Only grown-ups are afraid to touch old people.

Now I am back to where I am.

Why didn't I react like a nice person, say 'thank you for your concern," when a friend called to tell me there was a shooting in Connecticut; I should call my daughter to see if my grandchildren were okay.

"They're way up north and much older," I snapped. Then I turned on the television back on. I froze. I couldn't call anyone. It was after midnight when I started to write about the mustard pot. Didn't get very far.

Then I noticed my friend, Barri Clark, who writes detective novels, had left her scarf at my house yesterday. It was draped right here over the red rocking chair. The scarf is long, dark grey, with black borders and abstract butterflies or peonies printed in violent slashes, spread across the silk. Beautiful life forms, all torn up, ripped apart. Gone.

Last week Barri and I went to hear our friend read from her novel. It was the first night of Hanukkah, but Marina needed us to be there. Barri drove. She prefers her driving to mine. She's right about that. I left my car at her place and we wandered around South Pasadena, ate supper at a café, (mini latkes with shredded brisket, applesauce and mustard. A jazz guitarist was playing. He looked like an Orthodox Jew with his hat, the salt and pepper beard like my grandpa's. This made me feel better about not being with family. I mean here he is tapping out his rhythm, giving what he does so well. And we were going to cheer a devoted writer.

Somehow in all of this, I lost my car keys. Barri took that in with quiet cool. We looked everywhere we'd been. Then I noticed the hole in the pocket of this trench coat. Yeah. I called Triple A. The key maker (locksmith -- there, that's the word) rumbled by in around forty minutes; in his van, a computer office on wheels. This is L.A. I do portable writer's workshops; rumble over, to hear them; all around L.A.

So, Ralph, I think his name was, worked on making me a key, without grumbling, for about an hour. It was a cold and soggy night. Ralph explained he couldn't legally make a key for a car without the owner being there. So Barri went inside and brought out a winter coat for me and one for her, and we stood there for another forty-five minutes.

"So," I asked Ralph about his accent, "where are you from?"

"Israel," he said.

"It's nice of you to do this. It's the first night of Hanukkah."

"So what am I gonna do? Leave you here without a key to your car?"

Barri stood there with me, warm and easy. The significant friend is the one who doesn't get bugged.

This last weekend, Barri came to a gathering of writers and some of my family. This was no longer a party. Our feelings had been transformed by the shootings. I made a lot of chicken soup; friends brought other things to eat. There were around twenty-five people in my small flat. Everyone was subdued, careful, and aware. Eager to help out, to bring a cup of tea to someone who just arrived. To pass the bowl of red rice to someone across the table.

Eager for something to do. Yes, here was a place where for even a moment the helpless pit of grief was not quite as deep. Very few people knew each other, but they reached out, as one does when strangers are drawn together to celebrate, to protest, or to grieve.

"You have a lot of chairs," someone pointed out. True. A lot of old rocking chairs and director's chairs. People sat and talked quietly. One writer mentioned that "in the Mayan Calendar, December 21, 2012 is supposed to be the end of the world."

But Lucas, a young writer, said "on that day, some spiritualists say there'll be a turn in the human psyche and it will be positive."

I'm looking here at the patterns on Barri's scarf, all shifting in the silk arena framed in black. Could these be bluebirds flying off? And here's a peacock's tail; no, this is no drowning daffodil, but a sunrise coming up behind the savage storm. Sometimes our lives seem truly bordered by grief. There's no purpose to a moment, a day, a life, or a death. No sense. Gargantuan events seem out of proposition to anything we have ever heard of.

Soothsayer's lay out answers; patterns to decipher. There are no answers. Or rather the answers there are, the patterns we see pictures, say, of brain waves, are unacceptable. We get together; shake hands with a real grip. Tear up some bread to dip in mustard, then in the soup. (Gives it a bit of Lark.)

We stay close. We hang on. The positive turn in the psyche will define humanity's survival.
Just after the middle of the last century, we had the third major assassination. I was running a two-way radio show on KLAC. The news about Robert Kennedy came up. "We're not playing commercials," I declared. "Today we're not selling stuff. We're going to talk about what's become of 'America;' leaders just shot down like this."
I was fired right away.

"You can say anything. But you can't mess around with our sponsors!" And now the right to bear arms seems to rule the right to life. America was formed by people who fled lands where the aristocracy ruled. What is this, the new industrial aristocracy, suggesting teachers carry arms? Will they market armor for children? Is our President's vision of America paralyzed by the industrial aristocracy? Is our Senate and Congress frozen from action by the NRA- its morality hand-cuffed.]]> Complaint Dept. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2233538 2012-12-03T15:29:15-05:00 2013-02-02T05:12:01-05:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/
It plays a nice supporting role in my new book, almost Oscar qualified -- it did, the pool, transform my life. After my Englishman left this planet, my body decided to give up walking. Lie down. Die.

Bullied into swimming, I survived. Became friendly with the fierce lean young woman in red Speedo who did three laps to my one. This was when the pool was still L.A. Sports Club; a year before Equinox came with its Super Pac and decided the club needed upgrading. The gym is near the 405, you see, which is setting major examples for why home improvements don't -- I mean don't -- improve.

So the 405, which I've told you has won the Worst Traffic Awards in USA over the past five years, must have inspired Equinox; the department of competitive corporate power games; the fix-ups that create fuck ups.

Everyone agrees the pool was the best in L.A. That's why some of us pay membership fees rather than buy Ferraris. That's why we perch forever, waiting for a lane, fall in love with the staff, the parking guys. Milton, all Johnny Depp allure. And Jose, with his concerned bear hugs. And all this, the appetizer for the long swim down the mesmerizing cool of the sky-lit lanes.

I learned to walk again because to get to the pool from the changing room you have to climb fifty-six steps. Why not make it Thirty-Nine steps, I wondered, in honor of the movie. I could think of thirty-eight other movies as I climb. During the first months, I'd have to stop, every three steps. Breathe. Now the staircase seems no more daunting than the steps to my back door porch. No big deal.

And, at first, swimming 15 minutes felt like a challenge; now a half hour is nothing. I like to come in the evening when no one is here and I can swim as long as I like. The lights are low, and you see the Moon and the romance of the night sky.

So. Just before Thanksgiving; I approached the stairs to find a ragged strip of cloth binding the pool steps, and a notice:

"Due to improvements, you'll have to take the elevator to second floor, walk across gym to pool."

In a bathing suit?! Through the burly network of robot exercise machines and their steely alpha people in forceful workout mode. And, then, (what?) to come back through that ferocious arena, all wet, dragging towels? And for how long?

That was only the half of it. Not only was something needing to be done to the stairs (which had been re-tiled six months ago), but now the great glass walls around the pool were sullen, hung-over with drop clothes. "Improving the tile." We were told. "Fixing what needs not to be fixed," said Red Speedo. "Only about 10 days," informed sources confirmed.

"Yeah." We agreed. So very not convinced.

Pool was embarrassed, as I am, saronged in wet towels, skittering through the muscle brigade then down through the sleek lobby.

You can handle everything, I remind myself, recalling that they did have robes for executive members. I suggested to management one might make robes available for mortals during the reconstruction period; was presented with man's robe. Started to put it on. Filthy. I placed it on manager's desk. So what is this?

"So sorry. You'll have robes in a few days. And if you leave your keys, or ID with us you can use one."

Trust. A trusting management is such a comfort. My keys, I explain, are with Milton and Jose who park my car. That's one. Two: I don't leave ID with anyone. Just as it was with the 98 steps -- who recalls -- I'm now used to walking invisible in wet towels through the gym. May try it at Landmark on Saturday nights to see if they'll find me a seat at a movie I want to see.

So anyway, it's been 10 days; soon the pool will be done! And for Christmas I will pretend Equinox is my cruise ship and swim everyday, lounge on the new couches, drink protein smoothies to toast the New Year, and write something or other.

Not likely. Our sources in Benghazi tweeted Red Speedo and me that the pool will be totally closed for two weeks, during December. Guess which weeks. I myself will bypass the 405 -- go speeding up the coast highway to Malibu and take up surfing with that guy in Zuma. No one owns the ocean. Not yet.]]> Please Write tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2166591 2012-11-21T17:36:41-05:00 2013-01-21T05:12:01-05:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/
I am corrected. "No," I am told, 'he said, he will not write another novel.'

Ah, but on the front page of the New York Times, our ultimate authority, there is a picture of you, Mr. Roth, not, indeed, at a desk, but leaning back in your Eames chair, yes relaxed, "The struggle with writing is over. I'm free. Every morning I study a chapter in "iPhones for Dummies."

I pick up a copy of Portnoy's Complaint at the Last Bookstore, here in L.A.

It pulses with vigor and fury.

That doesn't end. I'd like you to rage, rage against the dying of light.

I'm only two years younger than you are, Mr. Roth, and I'm just hitting a new stride. And, look, Nancy Pelosi, 72, is standing tall as leader of the House, and that's tougher than being a writer.
Mr. Roth, you inspired all of us. It wasn't just Goodbye Columbus, your first book, but even more, Portnoy's Complaint in which, for the first time, you wrote about a man getting himself off. A year or so earlier, they'd have cut off your Wall Street Journal subscription for writing up such a scene.

I'd gather with women writers then we were just beginning to write words we weren't supposed to know. (We didn't want to be Marjorie Morningstar.) We read each other scenes we'd kept hidden in journals. You were a talisman. You found a way to mix wit with sullen anguish and make it rise. "Write what you're scared to tell anyone, write what you did that you'd never tell anyone," we urged each other. Miller, Mailer, Roth. So why not us?

You wrote about guilt, about being a young Jewish kid, when the world around us was deep into mourning. I'd wanted to be Christian and free of the Grief, the survivor guilt. I knew God would shake his head.

In the picture of you on the Tablet you look resigned to the fate of age as defined by our culture. "I don't want to read, to write more... I studied, I thought enough is enough."
You are a Sage. Sages do not retire. The Youngsters don't know that when you're an Elder, you can sit around, write, read, dance alone to real jazz we love. Hang out. No one asks us to show up, to behave, get dressed or come over. I say Elder because I hated the word Senior since I was a kid; the Seniors at school were chilly know-it-alls. They finally left and were never heard from again, which we're supposed to do.

What happened to the legacy of our best grandparents, professors and crusty editors, skilled, in the arts of torment, demand and attitude?

I guess what brought us down was the end of attics, of guest rooms, where grandparents could hide out, tell stories, wrap bony arms around us in a way Apple hasn't figured out.

I mean barring emergency action: such as looming or actual death, family calls upon us once a year or so (major flaw of the holiday season. What warm thing can we send the seniors? Shawls are out. New Nikes please.)

We can teach youngsters the art of defiance; and how to proclaim. We invented the protest, all sorts of successful outrage. Just think; heroic ancient heroes were never as old as we are, and we are in superior shape, we swagger well in leather jackets, on a good day can summon up command.

There's a far better picture of you, Mr. Roth in Salon: you have affected a smile; there are actual books behind you. There is salty concern in your eyes. Just as America discovered there are new voters, that white bread is toast, so we have this our generation. We have the perspective to summon up keen wit, the references for going deep.

In this picture in Salon, your long fingers are poised to leap upon a pen.

Dear Mr. Roth, please write.]]> Daily Life tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2084587 2012-11-07T19:02:26-05:00 2013-01-07T05:12:01-05:00 Jill Robinson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jill-robinson/
I dressed nicely to vote. Did not wear my Obama button. (Don't start trouble.) I pull on a safari jacket to hold my ballot, my ID's. Yes, wear this red, white and blue bow tie. This is an event, once every four years. Acknowledge the dignity of this right. I carried my walking stick. There might be a long line.

I walked through the park, which belongs to the Veteran's Administration. During the Second World War, this was a camp circled by barbed wire, where Japanese Americans were interned. They were citizens, born here, but suspected because they looked like the people we were fighting.

I expected to wait; and was ready for conflict, ready to frown at a definitive opponent. I cased people walking by. There was no line. There was no tension. I looked confused, and a volunteer looked at my ballot.

"You're at the green table, that way," she smiled. So they knew I believe in global warming.
There was an Asian woman at the ballot table. Had her mother grown up here during the Second World War? I voted quietly, carefully; slipping out my prop notes (was that cheating?) handed in my ballot to Larry, his name on his cap. I walked out into the sunlight.
Like many friends I've been obsessed, spending far too much time expecting clues from TV channels about the results of the elections. Writers I work agreed we might not know the results of this election for days.

We watched the lines in Florida, feared for friends on the East Coast. My daughter, her favorite tree uprooted, smashed into the front of her house in Upstate Connecticut, still does not have power. Asking her what she thinks about the election, whether she can get to the polls (has she got enough gas to get to work?) seems beyond the point.

For most Americans, most of the world's people, our own daily lives are the point. I remember hating the phrase "daily life," when I was a kid growing up in L.A. I did not want a "daily life," like a housewife, you'd know what time you'd get up. Everything would have a pattern. A daily life would be disciplined, neat. You'd keep your crayons in the right order in the box. Have your homework done before you go to bed. Write your thank-you notes, plan the weeks dinner menus, what you'll wear for weekend events, and the gifts to send your aunt and second cousin for their birthdays next month.

I wanted, and achieved a life I can look back and see as a series of dramatic scenes.
And in truth, the foreseeable daily life was a vision of 1950s America. For most people, any orderly recompense, any reliable relationship or predictable future is devoutly to be wished and rarely endowed.

I came home, place the "I Voted" sticker on my desk lamp.

Americans on our own are resourceful; we invented a mobile society with not a lot of daily order, but an enormous amount of inventive spirit.

Things happen. They don't always go our favorite way, to say the least, but we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, look around to see what we can do, how we can help.

And we go on. What pleased me most today was that I could do this: could walk over, get the ballot right side up in the slot, mark down my choice clear and firm, fold the ballot and hand it to Larry. This was a fine day. As much order as I'll need for this week. Much as I'm likely to have. I picked up my pen. This I suppose is my daily life, after all.]]>