Happy Mother's Day!

I think today is Mother's Day. Not sure.

When I think of my mother, I think first of Jennifer Connelly. This is no simple elision.
The slippage for me between tv and reality, actors and family is real. Historied. Tradition-buttressed.

When my stepfather would threaten to blow up the tv or in other ways prevent me from watching certain shows (Remington Steele, Bring ‘Em Back Alive, Tales of The Gold Monkey and so on) it was as if someone had just laughingly told me they had murdered everyone I cared for and gotten away with it.

I would, mind blind with rage, tumble towards my room, fill up all my album sleeves with more layers of writing about the shows, the characters, things I would do to avenge them. I would throw myself against the wall. Try to knock myself out by hammering my temples through the furniture in my room.

All I had, all I was, all I cared for was on television. Too far away to be taken away, I’d erroneously thought. But once I was figured out, that too became a target. So I slowly learned to move those characters into my head. To merge the people in my everyday life with people in movies and tv. Every night, in order to fall asleep, I had to play out new episodes in my mind and play all the parts, experience all the relationships.

So fulfilling.

When I think of seeing my mother, which I will in 15 days I believe, I fall back. The strongest connections I had were the ones entirely in my head. I love Jennifer Connelly mother. She is so pretty and relentlessly present. I love Remington Steele. He is so witty and reads my thoughts. I understand these relationships, my role. I am good at it. Who wouldn’t be.

But now I have the unbearable perspective that all of this is the play of a sick child. Right when I need it most it fails to serve. My ability to extricate myself from my bifurcating reality is in question. Limits. Boundaries. Needs. Expectations. My mind conjures up the perverse, the miniscule and then bounds around in between.

This kind of writing here is my new album cover, layers of writing, against my murdered family.