Elusive: An upcoming book by Ducky DooLittle
August 23rd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
My next book is available for pre-purchase. It’s self-published. Buy now, help me cover printing costs and join in the celebration via Kickstarter!
Sliding off a bar stool and pissing in your pants?
May 17th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Being an artist doesn’t take much, just everything you got. Which means, of course, that as the process is giving your life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it’s no big deal. – Hubert Selby, Jr.
I have been consuming documentaries about writers…
Born Into This is a collection of interviews about and mixed with seven years worth of footage of Charles Bukowski. Prolific he may have been, but oh-so-drunk and angry. Towards the end of the film we get to watch him physically and verbally abuse his beloved. What an ass. So I checked some of his books out of the library because, even if the bastard is dead, I will not give him my money. I win! (Known for writing Love is a Dog From Hell.)
Next I watched William S. Burroughs: A Man Within. I don’t know… is it bad that I want to like a person in order to really love their work? I appreciate pieces of his work… queer, out, but again angry as all fuck. I could never get over the fact that he clumsily shot his own wife in the head and then fled the country to avoid the consequences. And the whole dead beat dad behavior that these “tortured” writers display. WTF? We are all tortured in some way, feed your kids. (Best known for writing Naked Lunch.)
Which brings me to Hubert Selby, Jr: I/ll Be Better Tomorrow. After the first two films, I did not expect to enjoy this one. But I did. Greatly. A warm man, yet raw and brutally self-destructive. It opens with him reading in front of an audience, “Where were you dad? Sliding off a bar stool and pissing in your pants?” His nickname was Cubby because he was the cub, carrying his father’s name. And he continued to use the name, feeling like the kids on the streets of Brooklyn would beat him up for being named “Hubert.” He ran away at 16 and joined the merchant marines. Sailed the world. Fucked things. Contracted TB and was never the same. In their efforts to save his life they cut out his ribs and chunks of his lungs. He asked to keep the removed ribs so he could make letter openers for his friends. (Geezz…. how I miss real mail. So much better than email.) Despite his bestselling books, he live most of his life in poverty due to his drug addiction. In the end of the film they say, “His life was a living example for anyone who thought they were gonna get rich writing. Though he did live a rich life.” Ain’t that the truth. (Best known for writing Last Exit to Brooklyn.)
Vulnerable
April 30th, 2011 § 5 Comments
I teeter in this place. Never sure. Never totally at ease. I open up such intimate parts of my life to the world. In writing, online and on stage. My rough upbringing, having had a mentally ill mother, homelessness, my history as a sex worker, pieces of my sexuality… to name a few. For the most part, when I do share, I wait until a vast amount of time has past and then find that distance gives me the freedom. (Hopefully any parties involved in the story are dead and/or unrecognizable due to that distance.)
But with as much as I share about my history, I am at the same to so deeply private about most of my life. Especially what I may be going through in the immediate. When I see people expounding on their immediate life issues in (blogs and on facebook) they so often seem off the handle or down right insane to me. Blasting their life out into the world as it unfolds. I’m never sure how much I should share and who I should share it with. Sometimes I wonder why I even have the compulsion to share.
I do know why. I just question it at times.
I do it because I love the moments when I get off stage and someone steps up to tell me I have had an impact on their life. They ask for hugs. They hand me little handmade tokens of affection. They give me lovely words. And the love letters that come into my email box are astoundingly beautiful. People relate to pieces of my story. They feel they are less alone in their experience. It’s deeply touching.
But other times people will step up to me, after being exposed to my work, and behave as though they believe they know me. Really know me. They think because they have seen one little window into who I am or what my experiences has been – that they know me. And they don’t. It’s confusing and almost hurtful at times. To think they are so enamored by the vision they have created in their head that they can’t see that I am a whole soul that exists beyond and despite what they might know of me.
This thing, to be even slightly well known, is a baffling affair. When giving me words of advice on how to write my memoir, Augusten Burroughs (of Running with Scissors fame) said, “Just write as though no one is ever going to read it.” Not as easy as it sounds.
“What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful.” ~Brene Brown
Books
April 11th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
A case of books arrived. If you’ve always wanted an autographed copy, send me a message and I can make that happen right now. They are $20, including shipping. (If you are outside the US, just a bit more for postage.)