Not Your Average Joe

the coveted Christmas prezzie

He’s on my radar once more—Aerosmith’s inimitable lead guitarist, known predominantly throughout the rock world as “Mister Joe Perry.” After 15 years of radio silence, I saw his autobiography on a shelf at the bookstore and stopped so abruptly that, had I been on the highway, I’d have caused a multi-vehicle pileup.

My heart did that crazy swoopy thing that hearts do when something too deep to reach is touched.

I dropped a five-ton hint on Ter, and if the book wasn’t beneath the tree on Christmas morning, I’d have gone out on Boxing Day to get it myself. (Sneaky Ter—she fooled my nosy fingers with a copy of Prince Lestat and disguised Rocks as a big square something wrapped in Nutcracker-themed paper. She knows.)

There was a time when I owned an extensive collection of Aerosmith albums. I even persuaded Ter to accompany me to a live show during the Get a Grip tour—the scariest crowd I’ve ever been a part of, but seeing the man himself made the risk worthwhile. He was in his prime at the time, when I believed that a man is at his best in his mid-to-late-30s. Mr. Perry was actually in his early 40s, challenging my parameters with flowing black hair and those long, smooth muscles. And he has aged in typically uncompromising style: he turned 64 on September 10 and still commands a third look.

So, what gives? I no longer have my Aerosmith albums, nor did I hang onto the band bio I devoured in the 1990s. I thought that he and I were done, that the affair was over. Gods are irreplaceable, of course, but even the vampire he sired has lain silent for almost two decades.

At one time, I considered him a strictly hormonal crush. Now I am unsure. Now I suspect a connection on some other level, a memory from another life in another world. It’s possible. It’s actually probable, given what I’m learning about how souls are but satellites of the mothership. I suppose it could be as simple as biological hardwiring, but if the appeal was purely physical, I doubt I’d care to do anything more than mate with him. This is not so. Not purely, anyway.

Rocks has jumped the queue to next in line after I finish my annual holiday wallow in The Night Circus. I am certain that it will be a fascinating read and reveal no common ground between him and me (except that we’re both Virgos). I am unlikely to buy any more Aerosmith albums, and when he played Victoria with his spinoff band a couple of years ago, I wasn’t the least bit tempted to get tickets … though I did get some cool pics of the tour bus.

What mystifies me is the crazy swoopy heart thing caused by someone I have not and will not meet. I may not know him, but I recognize him. Was he a lord in a previous life? Definitely. Was he my lord? I doubt it. All I can say is that he was on my radar before radar existed and he’s come around again.

It’s a deliciously, creatively compelling mystery, one that has borne fruit in the past and may signal something that I, as a writer, have been avoiding for more than a year. If Joe Perry is back, then Marcel de Chauvigny is sure to follow … and his is a story I don’t want to write.

Hear Me Roar!

There was never any doubt, just a little internal reluctance to commit myself entirely, but as of yesterday, I’ve thrown in completely with House Lannister.

A charming family, as you can see by the write up accompanying my latest acquisition. A Vancouver jeweler called Pyrrha got permission to create a line of sigil bling for the Game of Thrones houses and, well, I just had to scoop the Lannister lion.

Declaring for the Dark Side a) takes more courage than you’d think, and b) prompted me to ponder precisely what has attracted me to this particular family. It started with the Kingslayer, and in truth, after five books and three TV seasons, he and his literally little brother remain the sole objects of my, er, admiration. The rest of the family live by a code that directly opposes my own. If moral values count for anything, I should have signed with Team Stark—they’re the heroes of the piece, but the direwolf in their sigil just doesn’t do it for me. So after much thought, I’ve deduced that the Lannisters have called to me from a previous life. Or lives.

Seriously. It’s not a stretch for someone whose current clan sigil is also a lion, with a motto stating “Royal is My Race”, to accept that, some other place at some other time, I was, or was closely associated with, royalty. Ter razzes me about it all the time. For as long as I can remember, I’ve imagined that I was stolen from the royal nursery to be raised by a lovely middle-class Scottish family, which was to my benefit because I’d not have it any other way.

While wealth alone means little to me, the trappings of royalty seem distantly familiar—crimsons and golds, cavernous halls and luxurious coaches, rich food and fizzy wine, aimless socializing and a stream of servants fussing with hair and clothes and domestic maintenance. Some of these things I’ve replicated in this life, though I resent having to do some of the domestic maintenance myself, and I recognize now, from my middle-class point of view, that wealthy ruling families become wealthy ruling families by being ruthless rat bastards. That’s how kings were made. That’s why the MacGregors ruled the Scottish Highlands until Robert the Bruce listened to our arch rivals and made us into outlaws. Proof that being royal is not the same as being rich, sniff sniff.

I was not spoiled as a child, so my attitude of entitlement must have come from somewhere. And when I reclaim my former majesterial status, I will remember where I came from and try harder to alleviate the common man’s plight. In the meantime, I will wear my lion with pride.

Just don’t call me “princess”.

Anise in Wonderland

Music can inspire me to visions of Russian winters and Arabian nights, but once in a while, I hear something that throws me down a rabbit hole and into a scene so vivid that I must recreate it.

That’s how “Cafe de Nuit” came to be.

This week I was introduced to the music of Adam Hurst, a musician out of Portland who has so much credibility that I can’t do him any sort of justice here except to plug in a link to his website (click on his name to go there). A friend had posted a link to a couple of absolutely gorgeous tracks that sent Ter straight for the iTunes Store. The album is called “Ritual”, and I’m pretty sure it won’t be the lone Hurst album in our collection.

As each track played, I found myself slipping into fiction – picturing images, hearing bits of conversation, sensing raw emotion, that sort of thing. The music was dreamy enough to lull me into my angels’ world ... but then the last track started and everything changed.

The piece is called “Midnight Waltz” (hear here). From the first note, I was drinking absinthe with the Impressionists at that Parisian cafe. I smelled the cigarette smoke and heard the glasses tinkling, the voices murmuring; I felt the night air on my skin and the idle promise of something deeply, delightfully sensual to come. The scene was so strong, so overwhelming, that I had to write it all down before it would let me sleep.

It emerged as the blurb I posted on July 16. It’s both curious and thrilling how that sole piece of music was able to transport me to another time and place. That’s the magic of creativity, of writing and music and imagination. One begets another and art is born.

But is “Cafe de Nuit” art? Or is it a fragmental memory of another life?