P.S. on Vwives

P.S. on the last post--just for the record, I did not write any of the "Tips for Cheaters," and was reluctant to add the "G Spot" section. I tried to make the site as clean as I could while working with this client. This was my first account, and I did run it by the company for potential terms of service violations, but alas, this client got what he wanted. And maybe some others are too. Shudder.

Shepard Fairey: Inspiration or Infringement - A Response

Just a quick post on my break.

This afternoon I got really interested in the Fresh Air program today on NPR, Shepard Fairey: Inspiration or Infringement. The artist, Fairey, sued the Associated Press for bullying about copyright. He used Obama's face in the popular HOPE poster.

These were my thoughts. Check out the discussion and recommend my argument! I mean, if you want. No pressure. I'm just excited to have a registered account on NPR.

"How can you copyright a person's face? As an artist, I have used photographs as the basis for paintings, changing colors, backgrounds, etc. For example, I did a drawing of Martin Luther King Jr. for a magazine because I couldn't just call up Martin to sit for me. Can you copyright the angle or the lighting on a persons face? I don't think so."

On another note, I have a full time job as a writer/editor (so the Music degree isn't useless, or . . . ?) and on my breaks, I hop on to write between writing. But I can write about things that actually interest me, versus, say, roofing and urodynamics and short sales and detectives.

Here's the first site I ever wrote, which still makes me laugh: Vwives.com. Check it out!

My History of Writing

This lino-cut print by Guy Ottewell is a good representation of how I feel when I write--sort of half-naked, exposing myself, like a little girl widening her eyes enough to get down to the flesh and bones of how she really perceives what's going on around her, and within her.


Here is a brief history of my obsession with writing:

When I was thirteen, at the beginning my freshman year of high school, I decided to keep a journal of my thoughts—not just what I was doing, but what I really thought about things. There is a distinct difference in my mind between the journal and the diary, and I believed that. The founding fathers wrote journals, not diaries. Anne Frank wrote a diary—a beautiful record of her doings, but she was also an excellent journalist in that she took the time to expound on her ideas and philosophies in relation to the events of the day, and that’s what I wanted to do. Expound, and create the philosophy of my own life.

One of the twists in this plot, to me, was that my sister was the one who I thought was (and I think she still is) the most brilliant writer. She used to write so much all the time, and then, one day, she just decided that wasn't what she wanted to do. She wanted to be a vet, and then a psychologist, and then a photographer, and she's settled there for now. I was like, what? How can you stop writing because you're so, so good at it? Maybe it was around that time that I decided, maybe subconsciously, that if she wasn't going to pursue writing, then I would.

I carried a notebook with me constantly. I wrote during class and at home and during orchestra rehearsals in the evening and during lunch. In high school, my dad even grounded me from my notebook (this also happened to Harriet the Spy, a kindred spirit) for a week because I stayed up too late writing, but the groundation wasn’t entirely effective because I just wrote on pieces of paper and stuck them in when he gave it back.

This behavior kept up over the years where I would rather write to myself than talk to anyone else. I remember, senior year, writing 30 pages in one sitting about one weekend because I had a crush on a boy at the orchestra festival in Boulder. He looked like Harry Potter. I only saw him twice in my life and we didn’t even talk very much, and somehow I had more words to say about him than I had ever spoken with him. So pictures are worth a thousand words, I guess.

Now, I have more than 50 “volumes” in boxes, which equates to about 10,000 pages all about my relatively mundane life—although, to me, my life isn’t mundane at all. I feel like I’ve lived 10 people’s lives already with so many characters and travels and adventures. I feel like the celebrity of my own life, and, in ways, I hope that everyone feels that way, that everyone feels they have a story worth living, perhaps even worth taking notes on now and then.

There’s a lot of good and lot of ill in these notebooks, and for a few years I couldn’t bring myself to pull them out and read them because they would take me to strange places, annals in my mind that were too familiar and meant to be avoided. It’s the vortex experience, if you’ve read that one Joan Didian book about death. Not that I’ve died, but some memories just feel like death because I don’t live in the past anymore. The past is like these grainy, intangible light particles that don’t make for a substantial meal of any sort. Like oxygen bars. Oxygen ice cream bars. So not fulfilling. Just like living in the past.

I used to think, well, what will I do with all these journals—what is the point, no one will ever read them in their entirety. I feel sorry for anyone who would. So what is the point, really?

Today’s thoughts have revolved around the purpose of self-discovery, and the value in taking time to figure yourself out. While these thousands of pages may mean nothing to anyone, including me sometimes, they were and are the tools that give me insight into the realm of my own understanding. Now I know the way my brain works, and as my brain changes, I keep figuring it out—it’s a constant process. By practicing the exercise of brain-juice extraction, I have better learned to understand the workings of my own mind to the point that I can apply my mind with greater facility—at least to the activities I care about.

This does not apply to Saturday mornings spent asleep until noon with only thoughts of orange rolls and the previous night’s dreams.

I remember thinking in my teens, will this ever stop? Will I ever stop spending so many hours of every week with a pen in hand? I told myself, maybe whenever I get married, I’ll stop writing, because see, I had this honesty policy. I refused to write anything but the truth, which means that the notebooks do contain swear words, and frightening encounters, and faults, and really good honest things too, but it is the one venue where I allow myself to be perfectly honest.

And so, really, I thought back then that maybe I would stop writing so much when I got married because then I’d have to write about sex, and maybe that’s not appropriate for future generations.

But, that too is a part of life. I’ll spare the details. But truth is, I haven’t been writing as much since we’ve been married—lots of adjustments, lots of reorganizing our lives with couple habits instead of single-person habits.

However . . . I’m getting back into it.

The point of this entry was to declare that I was void of original thought and was planning to put up experts from a recent journal: J38, June 16–July 24, 2007. That’s how they’re all labeled. J_ with the dates. Journal 38.

This particular journal I specifically christened to mark a turning point in my self-discovery, and it turned out to be just that—so intentions do make a difference, I guess. I covered it with vintage-print Halloween paper that says, “Friendly Fairy, Witch, or Fay, Fulfil the Wish You wish to day.” Just like that. And on the inside cover, I wrote

Everything changes on Halloween

Above a postcard of a Renoir painting. Renoir is one of my favorites.

Experts from My Journals

Summer, 2007

To be continued . . .

A Parting of Ways

After hours of discussion (or, maybe just a 30 second conversation), Sam and I have come to the conclusion that I have officially commandeered this blog to the point that he doesn't want to interrupt the flow. The flow, brotha, the flow!

Sam, it has been a pleasure partnering with you in this endeavor. Thank you for granting me my own creative space. I look forward to discovering more about you through samlambson.com, the more professional half of our online soul union. See you at home for some Rummikub and din.

To celebrate, I'll be in the process of giving the blog a new look. This temporary permanent title, "The Misgnomers," is subject to change as the gnomes come and go.

Thank, you readers! It's all mine! All mine! Ha ha ha!

I have ten minutes left of my break to write something profound.

Max Karamofsky and the Cracker Boy

by Liz Lambson

Max Karamofsky was a British-Italian mouse who lived in a discarded Nalgene water bottle in a gutter below the window of not-so-acclaimed artist Will Wagstaff.

For lunch everyday, Max Karamofsky drank small drops of linseed oil that seeped from the windowsill of aforementioned Mr. Wagstaff with pieces of Keebler crackers discarded by a small boy who only ate Keebler crackers on his way to school every morning for breakfast.

And the reason why these crackers were so abundant and so consistently provided was because the little boy had eaten Keebler crackers for every meal every day of his life since he was born. His parents only fed him these crackers and sugar water from a bottle, and later, from a cup.

Soon, the little boy never passed by Max Karamofsky in the Nalgene bottle because the boy passed away from malnutrition.

And the moral of this story is, that while crackers may suffice for mice, you'd better think twice about eating the same thing everyday . . . or you'll pay the price.

Thank you.

Liz

Last night I couldn't sleep. So this is what I thought about.

There are a few little known facts about me that my close friends know. Like how I used to live in a trailer park growing up, and how once I drank bleach thinking it was lemonade, and how my family lived in Germany at one point, and how I came to join the LDS church, and how I once dressed up as a Crayon to visit my older brother’s 4th grade class—things like that. I believe in sharing honest experiences, which is one of the reasons I want to write books, only none of my stories have endings yet, so I keep waiting.

One thing that some people know about me is that just after I turned ten, my mother left home, and I haven’t spoken to her or seen her since. She’s from Korea, and she went back to Korea, and I assume she’s still there. It’s a long story, and a short story, and a mysterious story, but no matter how much time passes, my perspective on that event continues to change, and it’s something that has affected me deeply throughout my life.

In some ways, the older I get, the more distant I am from that turning point in my upbringing and its effects; and in other ways, the older I get, the more I understand and empathize with the situation. There’s that song, “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” which, most of the time, I think is a really silly name for a song, and other times, I feel like humming to myself.

There’s this Bob Dylan song that I heard for the first time over the summer, and I would weep every time I heard it because it struck that chord that I don’t often play anymore, which is the memory or the longing for this mother of mine.

Well, if you're travelin' in the north country fair,
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline,
Remember me to one who lives there.
She once was a true love of mine.

Well, if you go when the snowflakes storm,
When the rivers freeze and summer ends,
Please see if she's wearing a coat so warm,
To keep her from the howlin' winds.

Please see for me if her hair hangs long,
If it rolls and flows all down her breast.
Please see for me if her hair hangs long,
That's the way I remember her best.

I'm a-wonderin' if she remembers me at all.
Many times I've often prayed
In the darkness of my night,
In the brightness of my day.

So if you're travelin' in the north country fair,
Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline,
Remember me to one who lives there.
She once was a true love of mine.

I don’t often think of myself as having a very close relationship with her, as I don’t even remember very much about her and her character—the sound of her voice even—because I was very young, but at the same time, I believe that daughters and mothers have a special connection that isn’t easily dissolved no matter how much time or circumstance my intervene. I do believe that families are eternal and there are spiritual connections formed between familial relationships that aren’t broken by this mortal experience. I still have dreams where I meet her again, and I wonder what sort of conversation we’ll have in the life to come if I don’t run into her again on this plane of existence.

I know Sam and I will be together forever in this way because the relationships we form in this life, especially family relationships, create these holy, sanctioned bonds that leave permanent marks on your soul. As hard as we humans try to forget things, we can’t really cut out the pieces of ourselves that are imprints of our influence on and experiences with each other. Like, as much as I may try to erase memories of past boyfriends, etc., the fact is, I learned something from my experiences with them, and kudos to them for teaching me and helping me along in my self discovery.

A few years ago I went on a trip to Mexico with a small group of BYU students. I was learning Spanish, and we stayed with Mexican families (holla to Hazel and the whole clan), and as part of the trip, we went to visit an orphanage as a “service project.”

I’m wary of some kinds of service projects, mostly the ones where I’m not sure how it’s actually giving service, or where I’m not sure if what I’m doing will have any sort of lasting effect on the people I’m supposed to be serving. We were asked to buy toys and gifts to give to the children, so we stopped at a dollar store, or a peso store, and bought all sorts of cheap toys. I bought a few little satin purses for the girls.

When we got to the orphanage, we were first taken up to a room full of cribs and babies. The girls in my group went wild, picking up the babies and playing with them, and I felt very awkward. I don’t think I’m a very coo-ey or naturally cuddly kind of person, so at first I just didn’t know what to do. But someone handed me a tired-looking baby boy who was maybe six months old, and he just held on to me. He really liked me, and I was shocked because I wasn’t doing anything to entertain him, and I’ve convinced myself over the years that children don’t like me. But he just clung to me with his fists and hung on and seemed to really enjoy just being held, so I stuck with him as long as I could and started feeling very strange, like I wanted to promise him that I’d never leave him and I’d take care of him, but I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t make that promise, at least not to this little boy, and eventually I gave him back and we were all escorted to the other side of the orphanage to visit the older kids.

Everyone pulled out their toys and the room just exploded with commotion. It was like a gym with no carpet and just children everywhere. Most of them were really excited about the toys, but I started looking around at the orphanage workers, and they didn’t look very happy. I realized, maybe we were just making a mess—children were getting out of control, they were fighting over all these cheap trinkets, and what they really needed wasn’t toys or material goods, it was family, and we couldn’t give that to them. We were providing a temporary high, a quick fix, a drag on the cigarette or something. Maybe that’s a cynical way to view it, but I started losing it, fast. I didn’t want to be in that room.

I caught a little girl’s eyes. She was sitting in another girl’s lap and looked so forlorn and depressed. She didn’t want to play with any toys. I handed her a purse, and she looked at me with this empty expression that said, “That’s not what I want and it’s not what I need. What I need, you can’t give me.”

I had to get out of there, so I got up, and I walked towards the door. No one seemed to notice me leaving in the commotion, except my advisor, who looked at me as I passed him and said something like, “Don’t you feel so lucky,” to which I responded with this burning feeling, because at that moment, I felt like an orphan. I felt like I could empathize with these children because I knew what it felt like for a parent to choose to leave you behind. I don’t think it’s the luckiest of feelings.

I went back to the baby room where one orphanage worker was trying to take care of like 20 babies. Yeah, I thought, we were a big help at the orphanage, our group was. Making a mess and then leaving. Maybe it wasn’t like that, but that’s how I saw it. I started talking with this woman in what Spanish I knew, asking if I could help her, and how old the children were. She gave me a spoon and a jar and had me feed a pair of twins, and I started feeling better. I know people need to eat to survive, but I don’t know if people need cheap toys to survive.

The rest of the Mexico trip was fine—actually, it was really great. I mean, I got sick and threw up for the first time in ten years and had to do some really awful lab tests when I got back to the States. But it was a wonderful trip in so many ways. Still, of all the experiences we had there, the orphanage comes to my mind the most, and not because I felt warm and fuzzy about it, but because I felt so disturbed by the familiarity of broken family relationships. More people experience it than I wish did. Not to say there’s no mercy or no recovery. There is. I believe in an infinite Atonement that heals even the most impossible wounds. It gives new chances and sunrises and all of those new beginnings, you could say, that make life progress the way it does.

So here’s to family, and here’s to mothers. And fathers and brothers and sisters and husbands and wives and children. Geez, I’m starting to sound like a John Maher song.

Analyzing my Dreams: NBA/Jazz Improv

Last night I had this dream that I was an improv actress cheerleader for the NBA. This was a common practice; instead of cheerleaders, we were like clowns that did skits during the breaks in the game.

For some odd reason (perhaps because this was a dream), a lot of the skits were super, super gory—like, the makeup artists went wild with the fake-blood-and-burned-flesh look. This was my very first time doing improv for the NBA, but I didn't really know how much improv I would have to do, so I was feeling a little nervous.

I was herded into the makeup room where I was done up, and the makeup artist gave me my clues. “Eight. Ten. Twenty-four. Thirty-two. Fifty-six.”
8.

10.

24.

32.

56.

I repeated this over and over in my mind to remember this sequence of numbers because I knew someone would be asking me a question, and one of these numbers would be the answer. The makeup artist asked me if I could remember that, and we discussed the relationship between the numbers so I could remember them.

The girl next to me had just finished a skit and only had a few minutes between skits to have her injury makeup removed and makeup for the next skit put on.

Time was running out.

I quickly ran down the hall to the Temporary Props department where I was directed, and a man was already rushing out with a manilla envelope for me because the cue was up! We needed to be on! I snatched the envelope and ran out in my tennis shoes after the girl who would be my skit partner. She was way ahead of me, and I was pounding hard to catch up.

As soon as I stepped into the gym I pushed against the floor so hard with my feet—I had so much nervous energy—that I rocketed like 50 feet in the air and started to panic. I started falling down and oh, man, the floor was like right there, and smooth landing—yes!—and I ran to the edge of the court.

I started following my skit partner's lead. I was like a done up cheerleader-nurse with rosy cheeks. We started singing straight pitches to the players as they ran by in a line. I listened to the pitch my partner sang and would match it. I was all smiles and I raised my eyebrows a lot, and I was nervous, because I'm not really an actress.

Fin dream.

The Correlation to my Subconscious

Now and again, I enjoy interpreting my own dreams, and this is what I've come up with. This weekend the Black History Month Music Night and Poetry Jam is coming up, and I was invited to be the featured jazz singer of the night. And I'm a little nervous about it because a lot of it's improvisation. I mean I have my makeup—I bought a new top yesterday and I'm thinking about how to do my hair, and some of the pieces are there—the numbers, the lyrics, the combo (my skit partners).


But the thing is, I really don't know how much improvising I'll really have to do—it could be a lot, or it could be A LOT. With jazz, you just improvise, and that's what makes it exciting. There's a little bit of preparation, and a few pieces in place . . .

And then you run out on the court and see players and people you don't recognize, and your skit partners sing some note and you try to catch it and just go with it and just feel the feeling in the room, even when, inside, you're not really sure what's going on, or what you're doing, or how this story is going to end.

This, then, is one of the lamest endings to any short story or novel, as the critics will tell you:

“And then I woke up.”

The Wild Murderer and the Ten Virgins

This morning I played a recording session for a pop LDS album. Maybe pop isn't the right word. Maybe classical isn't the right word. To some, maybe music isn't even the right word.

I'm pretty unopinionated—when I go, I don't know what the projects are before I show up, so I look at the music, play a few whole notes, and wait for a check in the mail. Mostly, they're film scores or projects for the LDS Church or Deseret Book. Some of them are like these no-name indie projects from the other side of the country that come to Utah for affordable studio fares, like that one movie about the little girl who went to her uncle's house for the summer and the crazy aunt who just got out of the asylum murdered her little cousin and then stabbed the uncle—something like that.

Needless to say, I haven't heard a whiff about that movie on any popular market. I mean, the score for that movie was pretty dark, and everyone knows that a lame score makes for a lame movie (except in the case of What's Eating Gilbert Grape).

But strangely . . . some of the projects come back to haunt you.

Not that my crazy aunt has come to kill me. But sometime last year I played for the soundtrack for a program called “The Ten Virgins,” and then I forgot about it. And now my Relief Society is putting on the program, and I volunteered to sing. Isn't that wild? I get to pretend to be one of the ten virgins and go along with my own whole notes.

What a wonderful world.

Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak

My alter ego, the grouchy existentialist version of myself, took over the last post. Sorry. That's all I have to say about that. But, get this: I managed to bring my walkman back to life with one dead battery, and one living. Talk about charity. One old wrinkly battery + one juicy young battery =

Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak.

This was a great program today on NPR, so great that I'm going to readvertise it. The idea is to sum up your love life in six words:

What do you want for dinner?
- Drew Magary

If I get Chlamydia, blame MySpace.
- Hanorah Slocum

Tried men. Tried women. Like cats.
- Dona Bumgarner

Inevitably, his obituary didn't mention me.
- R. Sue Dodea

So I wonder as I wander, what do I have to say about love in six-word bunches?

• Vegas this weekend. It's about time.

• When in Rome, meet in Rome.

• The toilet seat is always down.

• When you're thirteen, everyone's a jerk.

• Strangers in the night . . . wait—what?

• I'm in love with Sam Lambson.

That's all I can come up with for now. Please respond with your own. So fun!

The Economy of Me

"The young are naturally splendid and liberal because they still don't know what it's like to want, and they don't have to earn with their own hard work the riches within which they swim."

-"Of the Noble Customs and the Liberal Studies of Youth," Pier Paulo Vergerio, Padova, 1370-1444, Translated by Sam


I think I would consider myself a conservative liberal.

Whatever that means. All I know is that I went nuts at the grocery store because they were out of AA batteries, which means another day without NPR on my walkman at work.

Compensation. Today's thoughts have revolved and spun and whiz-banged around this idea. I stormed into the bedroom and started heaving unfolded and perfectly clean laundry into the air, yelling, "Laundry! Laundry! Tons and tons of laundry!" Because no matter how much laundry I do, there is inevitably more, and it spends more time on the floor than on my body.

I'm not pointing fingers here--it's a joint effort between Sam and I to leave our clothes all over creation, along with the food, and the books, and the CDs, and everything else. All in all, I think we're very clean. But somehow it compounded today as this week I celebrate my first five whole whopping months of full-time employment, and I ponder this idea of just compensation, and how at least at this point, I feel it's not happening to the extent that I would hope.

It could be ingratitude. It could be delusion. It could be the notion that I feel I have great talents to offer up to the world around me, talents which are stifled by circumstance. I could be playing the victim--not unusual for the likes of my kind. I could be longing for a new direction. Or I could be longing to make at least as much as if I were working retail or food service, which I'm not sure I am.

Strange how my experience at McDonalds seems so far . . . and yet, so close to home.

What Young Girls Need to Know

I've been asked to give a 40-minute talk/presentation/conglomerate of sound, spiritually uplifting words of wisdom/paraphrasation of my life experience to a group of maybe 40 teenage girls tomorrow night, and frankly, I haven't gotten past writing down a really cheesy and irrelevant introduction of myself.

The theme for this year for the youth of the Church is "Be Thou an Example," which is loosely my topic, and I'm thinking to myself the following:
I mean, seriously, like, this is what you could get yourself into:

Not that I've literally drowned myself, but it has made me think, when I was thirteen, what did I really need to know?

1. How to gawk at the unruly size of my own backside.
2. How to survive bra and dress shopping with my dad after being led into the maternity section.
3. How to avoid creepy old men in AOL chat rooms.
4. How to not embarrass myself.
5. How to not get laughed at by the cheerleaders by wearing a cow-spotted Gateway sweatshirt to school.
6. How to firmly resolve not to embarrass myself.
7. How to get out of swimming after having my hair relaxed.
8. How to dance.
9. How to be a high school freshman.
10. How to get the best possible score in the monthly Teen magazine quiz.
11. How to memorize my student counsel speech and not forget it in front of 300 people and fail miserably without a chance.
12. How to write notes to the boy I like.
13. How to not eat an entire bag of Doritos and three frozen burritos in one sitting after school.
14. How to lose twenty pounds.
15. How to write in my journal during class without being caught by Mr. Smith, economics guru.
16. He wasn't really a guru. Just a middle-aged man with a mustache.
17. How to play the clarinet after having my braces adjusted.
18. How to find the best acne solution.
19. How to wear makeup, including eyeliner application and finding the right shade of Covergirl powder.
20. How to apply a picture of Josh Hartnett to the side of my dresser.

I mean, these are just a few things, but . . . I just don't think that's what I'm supposed to talk about tomorrow night.