Secondhand Gold Dust Woman

"I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else's muse. I am not a muse. I am the somebody. End of fucking story."

Side One

Track One: "Intrigue"

I wasn't drawn to Daisy Jones & The Six by hype. I enjoyed what Taylor Jenkins-Reid did with 2016's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo as it was smarter than the beach read label it was stamped with. It began as a frothy, fictionalized champagne swig of 1950s Hollywood, but unfurled into a layered and sensitive narrative of women and men navigating the rigid sexual and social expectations of the film industry, and the era at large, all of this entertaining, keeping me turning pages. For Daisy Jones & The Six, Reid takes a detour to the 1970s California rock music scene to focus on the quick rise and crashing fall of a fictional rock group, and with that synopsis alone I was expecting such a tale to be in capable hands.

As a music fan, I'm also a fool who believes writing about music isn't akin to "dancing about architecture". That there is more to music, its impact on our culture than just an infectious melody and it should be written as so. Still, so few can capture the pulse and flow of music in text, and so few do it within fiction, so whenever I see a book associated to music on such a level, I'm a moth to a flame, hoping that someone will get it 'right'.

Track Two: "The Shape Of You"

Instead of a straight shot of a biography, Daisy Jones is akin to reading the transcript of a (disjointed) Behind The Music episode. Nestling into a documentary series binge session is how I spend my dross weekends, so this wasn't a deal breaker, in fact, I found it a rather interesting way to set up a story and it fit realistically with the usual payoff of interviewing of a rock band: how everyone would view a person or a situation differently, adding to band lore. As I read thorough Daisy Jones, I began to notice that such a structure lent to some prose limitations.

A cardinal sin of telling instead of showing leaves this book in a limbo of character development. We don't feel these characters, we're told how to feel about them. Motivations for particular actions with our central characters aren't clear, as external characters are just named dropped without much explanation as to who they are. Each voice tends to blend together, they could all be the same person if we weren't told. Without exposition or sensory details, we speed through the band's formation and their rise to fame, all without feeling the struggle. One day they're playing at weddings, the next they have a hit album. The whole thing feels like an thin outline of an idea, a gimmick. None of it feels natural.

Oh, and that weird 'twist' to discover who the interviewer is? Unnecessary.

Track Three: "You're The Inspiration"

Daisy Jones is a captain obvious veiled ode to the turbulent ride of the band Fleetwood Mac with numerous characters that resemble choice band members. Stevie Nicks' drug-addled wild child sprite is reincarnated in Daisy Jones. Lindsey Buckingham begat Billy Dunne as a disgruntled visionary artist who's in an emotional tug-of-war with its enigmatic lead singer. Christine McVie will see herself in Karen Karen, the frustrated keyboardist who has pulled back her femininity to exist in the man's world known as rock n' roll. The easy-going drummer that is Warren Rhodes is Mick Fleetwood. All well and good, but it's lazy as TJR isn't bringing anything of interest to the table with these characters to where we can excuse the striking resemblances.

Not to say one can't be entertained when following the follies of a fictional band. Almost Famous  (what this book wants to be) didn't just follow a fictional '70s rock band and its groupies, but had a young man's coming of age nestled in its story. Bette Midler growls, gripes, and guzzles booze and pills to give off Janis Joplin vibes in an Oscar-nominated performance in The Rose. Eddie and the Cruisers follows a pub band whose moody lead singer goes MIA, and its wrapped up in an intriguing mystery about lost master tapes, and the transition of rock n' roll from the '60s into the '70s. The Five Heartbeats recall the Motown era with a band that echoes the harmonies and hardships of The Temptations. All these films had a neat twist, a change-up that made them familiar, yet different. In short, Daisy Jones is just pure Fleetwood Mac fan fiction that feels more like wish-fulfillment than an actual nuance approach to anatomy of a band.

Track Four: "Message In The Music"

I admit it's a nice touch that at the end of the book we're treated to the full lyrical layout of Aurora, the fictional 'seminal' album of the band that causes them much artistic and personal grief, but big problem: we don't know how these songs are supposed to sound. As someone who has listened to their fair share of 1970s era rock and owns a few of the albums Reid was inspired by, I know of the sound and vibe of the time, but for someone who hasn't a clue the way the music is described would be confusing. Once again a limitation towards writing a book such as this. Music is something you have to hear, feel. These are just words on a page.

Of course, the sound of silence may be resolved when Daisy Jones is given the screen time it was warbled to be from jump since Reese Witherspoon has taken the reigns of an upcoming Amazon Prime streaming project (of course, she wrote the praising cover blurb...🙄), but while Reid does takes great pains to tell us how taxing the album was to create, it's just dead air. At the end, who cares about Aurora when you have Rumours?

Turn me over...

March On

I couldn't help but roll my eyes when I saw the trailer. Another Little Women adaptation? Groundbreaking.

From operas to television miniseries, there are a lot of Little Women adaptations, seven film treatments alone --- this including two lost silent films and anime adaptations. Lousia May Alcott with one book penned an ode to sisterhood that can be crowned the OG of reboots, predating the reboot craze of today. A craze that far too often in its eagerness to cash in on nostalgic comfort, disappoints at renovating its source anew for richer thought.

Little Women, in all of its 151 years of shelf life, has endured as a classic text as it's not just a product of its era, but can be read as a timeless portrait of family dynamics and coming of age during uncertain times. Is it a universal tale? Somewhat. Verdict is out on that as one could argue that for all the times that Little Women has been adapted for a new generation a tale of girlhood from a diverse voice isn't given the chance to speak, but the question of relevancy rises more so when it's brought to life on screen. When each generation gets a re-introduction to the March sisters I do tend to wonder: Do we really need another film about four sisters who are growing up in the midst of the Civil War, this in 2020, this when there has been so much social upheaval for women's rights, and this when there are other stories and novels worthy to be told about the turmoil and wonder of growing up girl?

Be Kind Rewind --- one of my favorite YouTube channels --- answered my question, and then some as it not only nudged me into giving the 2019 Greta Gerwig-directed version a shot after being indifferent about it initially, but to see Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy come alive for the umpteenth time isn't as stale or redundant at first glance.

BKR focuses on the 1939, 1949 and 1994 versions (skipping the 2018 Hallmark-y modernized one --- yeah, there's a modernized Little Women), giving ample discussion on how each film is approached by its prospective release era, and what it meant for the social climate of the time. Being raised on, and showing some bias with the 1994 Winona Ryder-led version, it was interesting to understand that the tone of the film, though being set in the 1860s, echoed the '90s being in the throes of the 2nd wave of women's movements, as it emphasized more on the March sisters career choices and desires to be seen equal to men much more than previous adaptations.

Whatever the opinion on reboots and refashions (please...STOP!), it is fascinating how one story --- written over two centuries ago --- can be told with such variance, and yet never once lose its message and its literary achievement.

I Capture The Blue Castle

L.M. Montgomery does something refreshing with The Blue Castle: she writes the anti-romance story.

Um, let me dial down that sweeping statement just a bit...

This is a romance story, straight up. There is passion, flushes of cheeks, silent stares, dinners that look out on a enchanting lakeside landscape, the archetypal brooding, enigmatic mountain man that can blow a back out and chop a tree with ease (and who in my mind looked liked a rugged Henry Cavill...rowr). It's riddled with all the romance book clichés that conjure up wistful, windswept cover women, promises of a love affair to end all love affairs, and "heaving bosoms". Still, even sainted with these hallmarks, The Blue Castle is the type of romance story that doesn't fuss in the proverbial as it not only deals with matters of the heart, but also concerns itself with how the heroine finds love within.

For a book written in 1926, set in a time before World War I, it was a pretty bold choice to have a heroine who is 29 years old, unmarried, and loathing it. Women aren't supposed to show this on their face, no, they're supposed to grin and bear the spinsterhood, be the subservient shut-in. Valancy Stirling is a archetype character that doesn't want to accept such complacency, and I already love her for this.

Blue Castle was Montgomery's first novel written for adults, and its obvious that Valancy Stirling is no Anne Shirley, L.M. Montgomery's most iconic literary creation. She's jaded and cynical, bereft of hope and just plain miserable, relegated to being the spinster of her family and seeing no prospects for her future. She lives with an overbearing mother, and whiny elder cousin who hover over her like an infantile invalid, and dictate her daily existence. tl;dr: they are insufferable. Her other family members are equally insufferable, with one creepy uncle (isn't always there always that one creepy uncle?) who makes her the butt of his sexist and lame jokes, all while holding the rest of the Stirlings hostage with his ample will if they dare so challenge his opinions. Oh, and to add to the #firstworldproblems, Valancy is often compared to her beautiful (but dingbat) cousin, Olive whose simple existence frustrates Valancy because why is always about Marsha, Marsha, Marsha?!?

For this, Valancy is truly living in a private, socially claustrophobic hell, as she has resigned herself to never living for herself and living out her days unloved and untouched by a man, even though she desires such. Her only escapes are the nature books of a John Foster whose prose Valancy knows by heart --- this to the chagrin of her mother who finds them "racy reads" (cause oak trees make one horny?) --- and in dreams of a "blue castle", a fictitious place where she can be free to be the woman she wishes to be.

"They never knew that Valancy had two homes–the ugly red brick box of a home, on Elm Street, and the Blue Castle in Spain. Valancy had lived spiritually in the Blue Castle ever since she could remember. She had been a very tiny child when she found herself possessed of it. Always, when she shut her eyes, she could see it plainly, with its turrets and banners on the pine-clad mountain height, wrapped in its faint, blue loveliness, against the sunset skies of a fair and unknown land. Everything wonderful and beautiful was in that castle. Jewels that queens might have worn; robes of moonlight and fire; couches of roses and gold; long flights of shallow marble steps, with great, white urns, and with slender, mist-clad maidens going up and down them; courts, marble-pillared, where shimmering fountains fell and nightingales sang among the myrtles; halls of mirrors that reflected only handsome knights and lovely women–herself the loveliest of all, for whose glance men died. All that supported her through the boredom of her days was the hope of going on a dream spree at night. Most, if not all, of the Stirlings would have died of horror if they had known half the things Valancy did in her Blue Castle."

These escapes to this imagined "blue castle" bring some ease to Valancy in her lonely hours, but once departed from them Valancy begins to feel chest pains and becomes worrisome to their cause. Not wanting to involve her family, she take matters into her own hands to visit in secret Dr. Trent, a noted heart specialist, who lives in the same (fictional) Ontario town of Deerwood as the Stirlings, and who has been denounced by her family as a no-nothing "quack". Seeing Dr. Trent only provides a devastating blow of news for Valancy, but such news allows her to shed her conventional constraints and truly live life for herself, and well, "do crazy shit".

Year In Review: Where'd You Go, Belle?

Alexandra Reading by Laura Lacambra Shubert

Yes, I'm still here.

I could make numerous excuses why I haven't graced this space since the spring, but excuses just waste time. I got lost in my reading and didn't blog, it is just that.

So why even keep this blog up, you say? Out of habit, out of nostalgia for what was blogging in its infancy, mostly. Though blogging has been subjected to an 'ok boomer' practice at decade's end and seeing a slow funeral march toward corporate takeover and personal disenchantment, it's still a lifeline in some regard, a environment that appeals to my camera shy self (the brave ones can do BookTube), a place where I can put megaphone to mouth and holler. Blogs can survive in the roarin' 2020s, and it starts here and now in this space.

With all this newfound gusto, first thing's first: Febreze the fuck out of the 2010s (which was a terrible decade for me) and give 2019 a proper sendoff (because it wore out it's welcome too)...