THE WANDERER

The path I have taken has gone to many places and challenged a lot of my thinking and I suppose that can be frightening for some individuals but I don't see things like that. I was born a wanderer. I have always had a deep inner desire for travel and adventure and I've always set my own pace in life without being governed by tradition, though tradition surely seems to wanna govern me. I'm not saying that I'm not founded with deep roots that grow up nor am I saying that there aren't drawbacks to being true to yourself when you're a wanderer. There can be many complications that go hand and hand with this path. Being a seeker, a wanderer is plagued with uphill climbs but it can also mean many great things; poetic sensibility, self-reflection, empathy, it can mean a hedonism and a libertarianism and also a lack of judgement in the best of ways. What I think is frightening is when you don't push through to your own limits, and then to know when to limit yourself when you reach that point. Then again there are no real limits, or are there? When you don't go the miles in your lifes work, listen inside and fine tune your calling no matter how hard it is or how much time it takes you may find yourself in the half life. Purgatory. And by the way that is part of the natural process. Its not estranged, at least for me. Your own projections of what is and is not acceptable for you might become unclear. This is the great challenge. The challenge to break on through. This is the other side. To even know this is profound, especially when you're on the road and defining things, finding your clear. I've found that when you don't know when to close or open the door you get stuck in the half world and that's just no good, then again that place is there to teach you something about yourself so you're not through learning and that is good. That place can be one of the coldest times in hell, one of those times when the life spray cools in the thrust of the strand, with flicks of the tongues, blinks of the eye and touch of hands but you will come through and you wont always be there. You will, if your spirit is strong enough get back up and go at it again and again and again and again. There is no promise of anything though, outside of truly knowing yourself. Your limits and your deep love and you will have incredible respect for yourself for setting your sails North even if you end up somewhere faintly familiar but also very unrecognizable in the deep South or just in an ocean of thought, which may be the case for me right now and by the way, and for a wanderer is a very sensual and moving place to be.

THANK YOU FOR SEEING ME

I just need to say that it has been an incredibly moving experience to come to the place in my life where my first book is almost complete - I am also finding myself freezing in the final process due to a lot of anxiety as the process is really becoming so real and personal for me, not that it wasn't always that way when I was writing over the years, but because I'm just now digesting that I actually do have a book to birth and that all of my personal entires are going to come alive on those pages -- That my soul is going to be exposed to the public and that is somewhat terrifying, so terrifying that I tried to talk myself out of publishing today and then I came to this thought; That no matter how much I try to escape this troubled world there is no way out, there is however a way in...a way back to self and a way to a deeper purpose on this planet. It is through this love of creating that I find some comfort. The whole process helped me in some way sort out some of my struggles and make a little more sense outta this world I live in and in some way I am hoping that in turn my book of poetry/prose/shorts might be able to help someone else. I'm sure I'll move past this anxiety soon and my book will come out in Feb/March as planned. This whole process in general,current anxiety included, has been beyond heartbreaking, beautiful,challenging and freakishly humorous so I really appreciate you support wherever you are be it in the past, the present or the future. Your kindness has meant and continues to mean SO very much to me. ~ Wendy Rose Watson

The last 24 hours

Pulled the last 24 hours through with some Lousiana Chicory Coffee that my publisher sent me back to Georgia with so I'm not so terribly exhausted from a long day/night on the lash--A writing/REsearch lash, that is- working on several things to come including the design and look for my book. I know exactly what I want. I'm ambitious. I don't let others do my thinking, talking or naming. I know who I am and I'm never going to live through someone else to complete myself or my mission, not that I'm being asked to but felt it settled in me to say that. No there's no more nights of apprehension and hot weeping over some tangled illusion that I cannot break through and yeah, I've certainly been there - I was once swallowed whole. Engulfed. Willingly. Now, as the present is in focus there are only days and nights of explosive joy...you know the kinda joy I mean... these days we still refer to as 'now' these days of what may still be illusion when looking back to the past. These days it seems there's a ghost walking along side of me guiding every step of the way.... because 'these days' I'm certainly not 'one' for the keeping and certainly not 'one' right now.

My words on Lou Reed / A Tribute

It's been a week and 2 days since Lou Reeds passing and because I'm back home from my trip I'm just having the opportunity to catch up and read all the thoughtful entries online that everyone has posted. I remember waking up seeing the ocean that day and within the first 5 minutes of taking in the day my publisher told me that Lou had passed on. I had so much more work to do but the thought of pausing seemed right inside so I did and we changed the flight back home.I was having trouble thinking straight. So here I am feeling a bit shaken again as it's all sinking in. I am not the kind of person who can write the lines all the time, sometimes the words get caught up inside and come later but today I do want to say that Lou Reeds work taught me a lot about writing and also taught me about staying true to myself. I posted an entry in my Church of the Victorian Cult blog just last year on his birthday as to honor him and just really can't get past his passing. I'm sentimental like that and though I never met Lou Reed his work will continue to impact my life, he left us with some real gems and for that I will be forever thankful and touched -- It's my belief that we are here to leave things behind and the things we leave, even if they speak to only one person are precious. Lou spoke to many and he will be and is deeply missed. I know most of you have probably already read Laurie Andersons heartbreaking obituary and if not you should as it shook me deep inside as I just had the opportunity to read it. I know her grieving must go so beyond right now as I cannot imagine living without your great love by your side. I'm choosing to post this poetic and touching memorial tribute from Mother of two. Widow. Student of religious imagery. Author. Poet and performer Patti Smith. Patti knew what it was like to lose her great love Fred 'Sonic' Smith and then also be able to somehow recapture that love and magnify his strengths and gifts after a long mourning period. Thank you Patti & my condolences to Laurie Anderson during her grieving process. I too am weary, we all are. Sorrow breaks the heart open. Sorrow is a precious Spring. You have to treasure it, honor it and then move on and begin again to celebrate this thing called living... `Wendy Rose Watson WORDS FROM PATTI SMITH - MOURING FOR LOU REED On Sunday morning, I rose early. I had decided the night before to go to the ocean, so I slipped a book and a bottle of water into a sack and caught a ride to Rockaway Beach. It felt like a significant date, but I failed to conjure anything specific. The beach was empty, and, with the anniversary of Hurricane Sandy looming, the quiet sea seemed to embody the contradictory truth of nature. I stood there for a while, tracing the path of a low-flying plane, when I received a text message from my daughter, Jesse. Lou Reed was dead. I flinched and took a deep breath. I had seen him with his wife, Laurie, in the city recently, and I’d sensed that he was ill. A weariness shadowed her customary brightness. When Lou said goodbye, his dark eyes seemed to contain an infinite and benevolent sadness. I met Lou at Max’s Kansas City in 1970. The Velvet Underground played two sets a night for several weeks that summer. The critic and scholar Donald Lyons was shocked that I had never seen them, and he escorted me upstairs for the second set of their first night. I loved to dance, and you could dance for hours to the music of the Velvet Underground. A dissonant surf doo-wop drone allowing you to move very fast or very slow. It was my late and revelatory introduction to “Sister Ray.” Within a few years, in that same room upstairs at Max’s, Lenny Kaye, Richard Sohl, and I presented our own land of a thousand dances. Lou would often stop by to see what we were up to. A complicated man, he encouraged our efforts, then turned and provoked me like a Machiavellian schoolboy. I would try to steer clear of him, but, catlike, he would suddenly reappear, and disarm me with some Delmore Schwartz line about love or courage. I didn’t understand his erratic behavior or the intensity of his moods, which shifted, like his speech patterns, from speedy to laconic. But I understood his devotion to poetry and the transporting quality of his performances. He had black eyes, black T-shirt, pale skin. He was curious, sometimes suspicious, a voracious reader, and a sonic explorer. An obscure guitar pedal was for him another kind of poem. He was our connection to the infamous air of the Factory. He had made Edie Sedgwick dance. Andy Warhol whispered in his ear. Lou brought the sensibilities of art and literature into his music. He was our generation’s New York poet, championing its misfits as Whitman had championed its workingman and Lorca its persecuted. As my band evolved and covered his songs, Lou bestowed his blessings. Toward the end of the seventies, I was preparing to leave the city for Detroit when I bumped into him by the elevator in the old Gramercy Park Hotel. I was carrying a book of poems by Rupert Brooke. He took the book out of my hand and we looked at the poet’s photograph together. So beautiful, he said, so sad. It was a moment of complete peace. As news of Lou’s death spread, a rippling sensation mounted, then burst, filling the atmosphere with hyperkinetic energy. Scores of messages found their way to me. A call from Sam Shepard, driving a truck through Kentucky. A modest Japanese photographer sending a text from Tokyo—“I am crying.” As I mourned by the sea, two images came to mind, watermarking the paper- colored sky. The first was the face of his wife, Laurie. She was his mirror; in her eyes you can see his kindness, sincerity, and empathy. The second was the “great big clipper ship” that he longed to board, from the lyrics of his masterpiece, “Heroin.” I envisioned it waiting for him beneath the constellation formed by the souls of the poets he so wished to join. Before I slept, I searched for the significance of the date—October 27th—and found it to be the birthday of both Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath. Lou had chosen the perfect day to set sail—the day of poets, on Sunday morning, the world behind him. ♦

Thank You Cherry Red Records/359/ Alan McGee

Just returned from a very inspiring trip to the Ghost Beach in the Gulf Shores of Alabama. Lots to do to settle back in but I just checked my post and found a package addressed to me filled with new full lengths accompanied with a thoughtful hand written message. Thank You (Cherry Red Records /359 & Alan McGee) for this highly anticipated jeweled envelope of sound and vision -- A treasure that guarantees to make the unpacking of my very tattered black weathered suitcase a bright new chapter in the book of life and the month of November. Just like 100 years in the past or 100 years in the future the stories are all there. They can often be found in the sound and vision of music and writing...