Archives

Shitbuckets & South Africa: Part 2 (The World’s Worst Hostel)

July 5, 2013

Note: You can read Part 1 here. Or, to bring you up to speed: My friends and I are drunk in St. Lucia, South Africa. It’s 3 a.m., and we’ve just returned to our terrible, moldy hostel. The owner is possibly wearing a thong Speedo.

 

Think of all the lush, green places you’ve ever seen in your life. Chances are they didn’t include your mattress.

But a moss-encrusted bed is exactly what we got at the World’s Worst Hostel.

My three friends and I were sharing a quad room, and we all looked at our beds with dismay. There was no way any of us could sleep on those those boggy mattresses. A sheet wouldn’t provide enough of a barrier unless it was made of metal, and no amount of alcohol could dull the fetid stench. We’d have mushrooms growing on us by morning, if the foul odors didn’t kill us first.

We spread sheets out over the mattresses, then unrolled our sleeping bags on top of that, hoping rip-stop nylon would do the trick. Unfortunately, the air was wet and sticky, which made the inside of my sleeping bag soggy. It stuck to me as if it had been lined with gummy adhesive.

A few minutes in my sleeping bag felt as long as entire high school years. I kicked the stupid, hot fabric off my legs. I couldn’t do this. All the sugar from that bucket of alcohol still coursed through my veins. Even under the best circumstances, even if I had been stretched out on a rainbow bed made of unicorn fur, I was nowhere close to sleep.

I stepped into my flip-flops and padded down the hallway into the bar area, where people still congregated around the hostel owner. The owner’s dog, Nicholson, wandered in and out of the building, trying to avoid all the people who wanted to blow weed smoke in his face. Cloudy puddles of mysterious liquid spread across the floor.

“Looks like you’re ready to party,” the owner said and shoved a beer at me. I am not certain how I looked that night, but I guarantee Ready to Party was last on that list, far below Ready to Cry and Ready to Drool on Myself.

However, the threadbare bar couch was cleaner and more comfortable than my bed. I accepted the beer, hoping it would be enough to knock me out. I was in sleepytime drunk mode, while everyone else in the bar appeared to be in smashing-beer-cans-on-foreheads, start-a-fight drunk mode.

The bar looked a little bit like this, if the crocodiles were people.

 

At that point, I’m pretty sure D decided to stay up and party with the owner and his crew, while my friends E and P were back in the room, trying to sleep. But I’m not positive. (See, alcohol has this weird effect on me in that it makes my memory fuzzy. It also makes me intoxicated.)

I know I finished the beer and began the trek back to swamplandia, aka my bed. But first I stopped at the bathroom to wash the night’s grime and sweat from my face. The water from the faucet was yellow. Tiny frogs jumped around my feet, and mosquitos swarmed my bare legs.

I hated this place.

I was lonely and uncomfortable. I was far away from my husband and my pets. I missed my bed. I missed falling asleep with my dog snuggled into the crook of my knees.

Dog! That’s what I needed. Just then Nicholson the Dog walked past the open door of the bathroom. He was the approximate size and shape of my own dog. If I squinted, he even looked a little bit like Lemon. You could say it was the canine version of beer goggles.

I tucked Nicholson under my arm and carried this strange creature into my bed.

Nicholson the Sleep-Inducing Dog.

 

My little Lemon.

 

Turns out I was right. With the dog wedged next to me on the tiny twin bed, it wasn’t long before I fell asleep.

Around 5 a.m., I awoke to banging. It was my friend, P, trying to get out the door of our room. Not only had the wood swollen shut, the rusty lock was jammed. P pulled again, so hard he grunted from the exertion, but the door didn’t budge.

So P did the next best thing. He walked over to the window and pushed open the pane.

“What’s going on?” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “Just go to sleep.”

I looked away, but I still heard the unmistakable sound of someone urinating.

Nicholson apparently heard it too. He leapt from the bed and ran to the door, where he scratched at the wood and began to whine. The dog had to pee.

I tried to help, but I couldn’t open the door either. I already dognapped this poor creature, I wasn’t about to force him to piddle inside. t had to get the dog outside.

My only hope was the window.

The hostel was sort of situated on a slope. So even though we were on the first floor, we were more than a story from the ground but not quite two stories up. It was too high to drop a dog from the window, that’s for sure.

Thank God I’ve had a lot of experience sneaking out of windows. I tied a couple bedsheets together, then wrapped one of the ends around Nicholson and carefully lowered him to the ground.

Then, because I also had to pee, I lowered myself out of the window too.

Nicholson did his business, then ran away from me. I didn’t blame him.

Inside the bathroom, the floor was dotted with sewage puddles. Nicholson had the right idea, I decided, and I headed outside to the wild, overgrown area to pee too. That’s how filthy this hostel was. Actual dirt was cleaner than the bathroom.

Afterward, I returned to the room. By the time I kicked open the door, my friends were already packing to go.

Shitbuckets & South Africa: Part 1

July 5, 2013

A few days ago, a friend of mine said she just wrote a poem using the word “shitbucket.” I told her I had an incident that involves shitbuckets and South Africa, and I made a promise to tell her that story someday.

Today is that day. (Don’t worry. When I say “shitbucket,” it’s not what you’re thinking.)

My friends and I had been traveling through South Africa for nearly a month. We spent the bulk of our nights camping in thin, leaky tents at wildlife parks — dirty, shivering and surrounded by hyenas.

It’s so fluffy!

 

Any accommodation with four walls and a roof had to be a step up from sleeping on the ground, right?

No. And Bib’s backpacker hostel proved it.

Bib’s is located in St. Lucia, a coastal part of South Africa that is laced with marshes and wetlands. It’s the kind of place that begs the question, “Is that a log or a crocodile near my leg?” And the answer is almost always crocodile.

Yeah, that one’s a crocodile.

 

Hippos are also known to roam the streets, but you do not get them confused with logs. Or anything else.

He looks hungry. I might even say hungry, hungry.

 

The city of St. Lucia itself is overgrown and weathered. It reminded me of the little towns in Florida that used to be resort hotspots — formerly posh, now just mildewy buildings populated by weird old people who keep pet alligators.

In keeping with the overall theme of mold, the hostel had damp, saggy mattresses and wood walls that never quite seemed to stand upright. My friends and I didn’t care, though. We were scrappy and tough! We slept on dirt! We used bushes for toilet paper!

We were, however, dismayed when the front desk clerk told us the internet wasn’t working. We might not need toilet paper, but wifi was necessary.

“That’s not part of the deal,” the clerk sneered. “What made you think we even have internet?”

My friend, P, pointed at the big sign in front of the hostel. “Your sign says, ‘International Hostel and Internet Cafe.’”

The clerk just shook her head and pointed us to an internet cafe down the road.

Along the way, my friends and I passed boarded-up surf shops, neglected cafes, dank little bars and dilapidated discotheques. It was early evening, and we were tired and cranky. After a month of near-freezing temperatures, suddenly we were slick with sweat and buckling under the humidity of the wetlands. We desperately needed to cheer ourselves up.

That’s when we came to a consensus — this was the town where we would get our party on.

We had all been so good for a month, carefully watching our minimal backpacker budgets and avoiding all bars and nightlife. Not that there’s much wild nightlife in Kruger National Park, unless you count a lioness eating a zebra.

We deserved this, and St. Lucia was the spot. We were going to slip out of our hefty backpacks, unzip our convertible hiking khakis into shorts and let our dirty, knotted hair down. We were going to get crunk.

First stop: A random, dumpy bar that advertised a fish bowl of alcohol.

The bartender ran out of fishbowls, so he used a bucket instead.

 

“What’s in it?” I asked the bartender.

“Do you care?” he said.

Excellent question. I did not.

I think it had algae.

 

By the bottom of the bowl, I had forced the bartender to play Die Antwoord on my iPod and berated other bar patrons for not knowing this South African rap group.

Second stop: A ramshackle nightclub with a band that played terrible cover songs. Was that REO Speedwagon? Or the sounds of a dying wildebeest? I’ll never know. We danced anyway.

This nightclub is also where sloshed, aging Afrikaners felt comfortable enough to grab us. They gyrated with tight denim pants against us and bragged about their boerewors.

My friends and I were just about to leave when we were saved by a handful of young university students. The guys said it was so-and-so’s birthday, they were having after-hours at their rental place, blah blah. You know how these things go.

Third stop: We ended up back at the guys’ vacation rental.

Some dude. Some drinks.

 

They blasted some Akon and gave us drinks with no ice. My friend, D, ended up in her underwear in the pool. Some other people did too. I think there was some kind of accident involving a wet passport.

Inside the apartment, one of the young men decided to play mixologist and crafted a specialty shot called “Shitbucket.” It involved leaning one’s head back and pouring a combination of questionable liquor down one’s throat. It also involved several people chanting “Shit-BUCKET! Shit-BUCKET! Shit-BUCKET!”

This right here is everything my mother ever warned me about.

 

No, wait. THIS is.

 

It tasted like root beer that had been freshly made from actual roots. Dirt and all.

After that, I had two more.

Final stop: We made it back to the hostel. The bars had long closed, but the hostel’s party was just getting started. And by that, I mean the owner was handing out free beer to girls and wearing a thong Speedo. To this day, I don’t remember if he was actually in a thong Speedo, or if I just remember him as the type to chillax at his place of business in a thong Speedo.

Here’s what I am certain of: At that point, the night got worse.

Stay tuned for part two tomorrow.

9 lessons from Nelson Mandela

July 2, 2013

“I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter; I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb. … I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.” — Nelson Mandela

Mandela painting on Constitution Hill in Johannesburg, South Africa.

 

There are two doors to enter the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, South Africa. One for whites. One for everybody else.

The segregated entrance of the Apartheid Museum.

 

The rules aren’t enforced anymore, of course. Apartheid — the systematic racial segregation of South Africa — ended in 1994. But that’s the way it used to be. There were whites, and then there was everybody else.

And then came Nelson Mandela.

To be clear, I don’t know Mandela, and I am no expert in the politics of South Africa. I am simply someone who grew up watching the fall of apartheid on the news. Later, when I visited South Africa for the first time, I was moved by the fight for equality and efforts to move toward human dignity for all.

Out of everything from the anti-apartheid movement, I think I related most to Mandela because he was a troublemaker and I appreciate that in a person. I feel for the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels — the whole Steve Jobs quote. I like all of that. And that was Mandela.

The name given to Mandela at birth, Rolihlahla, translates to “pulling the branch of the tree;” one who does not follow the established order. And Mandela certainly lived up to that name. It takes a certain kind of troublemaker to challenge authority, spend 27 years in prison, go on to become the first black South African president of your country and destroy decades of forced oppression.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, as Mandela is hospitalized in critical condition. His death is inevitable, but I hope we can keep some of the lessons from his life alive:

1. Lead by example.

While imprisoned, Mandela was restricted to a 6.5-foot by 8-foot cell with nothing but concrete floor and a bucket for waste. He was assigned to hard labor in a lime quarry. For much of that time, he was allowed just one letter every six months and one visitor per year for a half hour. Still, he walked tall and refused to show fear.

His fellow prisoners said just the act of watching Mandela walk through the courtyard, upright and proud, gave them the energy to go on.

Sign pointing to the Mandela Cell at the Old Fort in Johannesburg. Mandela was only briefly held here. The majority of his imprisonment was on Robben Island in Table Bay.

 

2. Know that words have power.

During the 1970s, while he was imprisoned, Mandela wrote his memoir. Copies were wrapped in plastic containers and buried in the prison garden. It was hoped that another prisoner, due to be released soon, would smuggle it out. The containers were eventually discovered and Mandela was severely punished.

Mandela’s manuscripts.

 

He continued to write anyway.

Knowing that words have such great impact, Mandela began to write more than his memoirs. The Old Fort in Johannesburg contains just a small sample of Mandela’s writings from his time on Robben Island — a total of 76 boxes in all. During his 27 years of imprisonment, Mandela sent more than 70,000 pieces of correspondence to prison authorities, lawyers and family. He frequently wrote on behalf of his fellow inmates, detailing issues about the quality of the food, protesting the regulations that banned books or filing complaints about improper care.

3. Value reconciliation over justice.

Mandela had every reason to hold grudges against his captors. Instead he worked toward reconciliation, which served as an example to a nation of wounded people.

As he wrote in “The Long Walk to Freedom”: “… the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away another man’s freedom is a prisoner of hatred, he is locked behind the bars of prejudice and narrow-mindedness. I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else’s freedom. Just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of their community.”

Constitution Hill in Johannesburg serves as a visual example of this. The country’s highest Constitutional Court, which hears cases of human rights violations, now stands on the site of the Old Fort Prison, where freedom fighters were once held behind bars. Within the courtroom, a ribbon of glass serves as a symbol of the transparency of the proceedings.

Symbolic glass towers have been constructed atop the stairwells of the old prison on Constitution Hill.

 

4. Speak someone’s language.

This can be interpreted figuratively or, in Mandela’s case, literally. He spent many years learning and perfecting Afrikaans, the language of his oppressors. He realized that whatever solution might be found to apartheid would come from truly understanding one another.

As he once said, “If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”

5. Listen first, speak last.

Mandela grew up with the tribal tradition of consensus building, in which a leader listens first and speaks last, consolidating and integrating all of the views that have been expressed.

In “The Long Walk to Freedom,” Mandela writes, “Democracy meant all men were to be heard, and a decision was taken together as a people. Majority rule was a foreign notion. A minority was not to be crushed by a majority.”

Years later, Mandela used this technique as president. While members of his cabinet shouted at him, Mandela simply listened. When they were done and Mandela spoke, he summarized their thoughts before he deftly steered the conversation into the direction he wanted it to go.

“Lead from the back,” he said. “Let others believe they are in front.”

6. Spread knowledge.

In 2005, Mandela announced that his son, Makgatho, died of AIDS. Rather than keep quiet about the cause of death, Mandela said the disease should be given publicity so people will learn about it and stop being ashamed.

7. Learn about the experience of others. 

This might be my favorite Mandela quote, because it says so much about empathy.

Mandela quote on Constitution Hill, which once held jail cells and is now home to South Africa’s highest court.

 

8. Devote your life to something worth dying for.

Mandela was so committed to equality of all people that he said of his fight, “It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

9. Realize work is not accomplished alone.

Mandela wasn’t the only person who fought apartheid — he is just one of many who believed in the dignity of all. There were decades of uprisings and protests. Many people sacrificed their lives, including hundreds of schoolchildren.

At the exit of the Apartheid Museum, there is a bridge that passes through two piles of rocks. On the right side is a small pile. On the left side, the pile is enormous. As each visitor leaves, they are asked to move a rock from the right side to the left.

The big stack of rocks is what people, together, have already accomplished. It demonstrates how one small thing, done by many people, can move mountains.

Rock pile at the Apartheid Museum.

 

As Mandela said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Clinging: A Miscarriage Story

May 20, 2013

On Saturday, my husband and I went to the discount theater to see “Warm Bodies,” a zombie love story. If that sounds like an usual choice for date night, I suppose it is. But right now my body is in limbo, and I feel half-human, half-zombie myself.

I am pregnant. The child I carry inside me, however, is likely dead.

The zombie movie was my idea. I wanted to hunker down and be anonymous. Let the darkness of the theater wash over me. Give my mind a rest for two hours. Then, just as the movie started, a family sat down in the row directly behind us. They brought bags of fast food into the theater. They texted and talked. When the woman’s cell phone rang, she answered the call. And when her baby cried out, she didn’t leave the theater to soothe the infant.

My sadness at my own situation turned to rage and judgment inside that theater. If I had a baby, I wouldn’t bring him or her to a zombie movie. Why is that woman a mother and not me? What makes her more worthy of having a child? Why am I the barren one? Why me? Why me? Why me?

It was only a month ago that I found out I was expecting. I took an at-home pregnancy test on a whim, and I was shocked to see it was positive. I immediately drove to the drugstore and bought another box. I lined up the tests on the bathroom counter and took them, one by one. In response, one by one, I received positive blue lines.

 

My husband and I have been hoping to conceive for a while, so this was huge news. When he came home from work that night, I greeted him at the door with a kiss. “I made something for you,” I said. He looked over my shoulder to the kitchen counter, expecting a casserole. I shoved the pregnancy tests at him instead. He cried. I cried.

We recently attended an orientation for foster-to-adopt through the county, and now we marveled at how the universe works in strange ways. We were happy. He patted my tummy and kissed it with joy.

Almost immediately I felt pregnant and ripe. My breasts swelled. My pulse felt quicker and almost heavier. I could feel tugging inside, where my uterus was stretching to make room for baby. Each night I looked at my profile in the mirror to see if I was showing yet.

At age 36, I am old enough to receive the official medical diagnosis of “advanced maternal age.” I knew there could be complications with the pregnancy, but I felt pretty confident in my health. I make responsible lifestyle choices, I am active and I eat a ton of kale. Plus, my older sister and I are so much alike. She never had any miscarriages or other issues — not even morning sickness — and she gave birth to two healthy boys.

Still, every week that ticked by felt like an accomplishment. My husband and I began taking photos each week of me posing with a piece of fruit that represented the baby’s size. This was blueberry week. We couldn’t wait for watermelon.

 

Last Thursday was my first ultrasound. My husband got off work early, and we walked to the obstetrician’s office together. I reclined on a table topped with crinkly paper, and the doctor positioned my husband on my left side, where he could hold my hand and have a perfect view of the screen.

“You’re going to want to see the heartbeat, dad,” the doctor smiled.

This tiny bean appeared on the screen. Black and white. As beautiful as any silent movie star.

 

After a few minutes of expanding the view of the bean, probing around, expanding the view again, the doctor said, “Oh. Okay.” She sighed.

One long minute later she said, “You know what? I’m not seeing a heartbeat here.”

Those words seem so abrupt when I type them here. But in actuality, this doctor was perfect. She was the precise mix of everything I needed at the very moment I needed it: Straightforward medical talk, sensitivity about the situation, hope for the future. She said she didn’t want to sugarcoat anything, and the outlook was grim. She said the baby should be farther along than it is, but we would do another ultrasound in a few days to be certain. She also ordered blood work, to be completed on two different days, to look for fluctuations in my pregnancy hormones.

I pulled my feet from the stirrups and drew my knees close to my chest. I tugged at my paper gown as far as it would go, even though it never really covers anything.

The thing is, I think I already knew. Even before the ultrasound. Even before the doctor said anything.

Because all those beautiful signals I had that my body was changing? They all stopped about seven weeks into my pregnancy. My breasts didn’t ache anymore. I no longer felt the tugging of my uterus. Even my skin changed. I just didn’t feel it anymore.

Before the ultrasound, I thought I was being paranoid. So I turned to Google, because that’s what I do. I’m good at searching for and finding the answers I want. I found page after page of pregnancy forums and websites, in which dozens of women wrote, “My symptoms went away at week 7, and everything was fine.” Or “I didn’t have any symptoms and everything was fine.” Or “Stop worrying. You’ll cause a miscarriage.”

I meditated, and I prayed. I held one hand over my heart and put the other hand to my stomach, and I whispered out loud, “Hey there, little tomato. Hang in there. Your mama loves you. Please stay with me. Please.”

And even as I pleaded with this embryo, I knew.

The baby stopped growing.

They can’t tell me why. It’s a frustrating truth that modern medicine knows so much about keeping penises erect but so little about what causes miscarriage.

“It is nothing you did,” the doctor stressed. “It is nothing you ate or drank. It is not because you exercised too much or didn’t exercise enough. It is not because of something you wore or a product you used or anything at all. You did not do this.”

But I have to wonder. It’s hard not to wonder. Was it the day I took a walk when it was hot outside? Did I ride my bike down a road that was too bumpy? Was it the wine I drank before I knew I was pregnant? Were my grocery bags too heavy? Was I too anxious? Did I get enough rest? Did I get too much rest?

Even the word “miscarriage” has an accusing tone, as though I was the guilty party here. I mishandled the baby. Oops. My bad.

*****

I have been crying a lot. Whole body ugly cries with extra salty tears, the kind that make your eyes raw and skin sting and chest weary.

I have also been sleeping. Not well. Not for long stretches. But fitfully, unusually. Normally, my husband says I sleep like a corpse. But now it’s like I have been trying to outrun my nightmares, tossing my body all over the bed. When I wake, my fingers are clenched on the fitted sheet, as if I might fall off if I don’t hang on.

But mostly I am so sad. So sad. I’m actually surprised by the ferocity of my grief. I didn’t think something so tiny would have such a debilitating effect.

Rationally, I know this is a little mass of tissue and cells. But in my heart? I grieve for the entire lifetime that has just been taken from me. I had names. I had so many plans. I imagined a future. Birthday parties. Soccer games. A bookshelf that overflows with “Where the Wild Things Are” and “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” Family vacations to far-off locales. And just like that, all of it is gone.

Except it is not gone. Not yet. This baby still has a place carved out inside of me, even though he or she will never use it. I have three options now, and none of them sound appealing: Wait for my body to realize the pregnancy is no longer viable and let it purge itself naturally; force the embryo out with medicine; have the tissue scraped away.

It is strange that my body still clings to this child. This body wants to keep it. But this body also rejected it. I did everything I could to ensure my child would find a place of comfort and safety within me, and for whatever reason it wasn’t enough.

Now when I am hit with a wave of nausea, I know it is not caused by the life of a blooming baby. It is the tremendous fear that I no longer know my body, that I have become less than human, that as much as I want to create life, I inadvertently destroy it too.

Lit Out Loud: 11 Songs Inspired by Books

April 13, 2013

The Coachella Music and Arts Festival has moved into my neighborhood for the next two weeks. The lineup of great live music got me to thinking about how music relates to my other great love — books.

 

Of course all art feeds off each other. Visual artists are inspired by musicians who are inspired by writers who are inspired by painters and so on. It’s the human centipede of art. Everything is digested by someone else eventually. But I feel like the link between music and writing is particularly strong — I know many musicians who feed off ink and many writers who are fueled by song. So I compiled a few great songs inspired by books.

This is by no means a comprehensive list. There are about five gagillion songs inspired by the Bible, so I didn’t even go there. I know Mumford & Sons have a couple Steinbeck-inspired tunes, but frankly, listening to Mumford & Sons makes me tired. And there’s a Kate Bush song about “Wuthering Heights,” but I hate it.

This is just a sampler of the bookish tunes I do like. If I missed one of your favorites, let me know in the comments!

 

The Song: Ramble On • Led Zeppelin

The inspiration: Lord of the Rings • J.R.R. Tolkien

Oh, total LOTR nerds, those Led Zep guys. Give Robert Plant a wedgie the next time you see him.

 

The song: Sympathy for the Devil • The Rolling Stones

The inspiration: The Master and Margarita • Mikhail Bulgakov

Marianne Faithfull gave Mick Jagger a copy of the book as a gift. I haven’t read it yet, but the character of the devil in the novel is apparently quite sophisticated, “a man of wealth and taste.”

 

The song: Killing An Arab • the Cure

The inspiration: The Stranger • Albert Camus

This is an exact retelling of “The Stranger” in just over two minutes, like musical Cliffs Notes. You don’t even have to read the book now. Seriously. I read it.

 

The song: Don’t Stand So Close to Me • the Police

The inspiration: Lolita • Vladimir Nabokov

Ah, the song that inspired me to pick up Nabokov at an inappropriate age. Music: Inspiring sex, drugs and reading.

 

The song: White Rabbit • Jefferson Airplane

The inspiration: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass • Lewis Carroll

Remember what the dormouse said: Feed your head! (Although the dormouse didn’t really say that, so don’t put that in your next English class essay.)

 

The song: All Along the Watchtower • Bob Dylan (But I’m linking the Jimi version, because I like it better and this is my website.)

The inspiration: Frankenstein • Mary Shelley

This one is a bit of a stretch. But other people on the internet say it, so it must be true.

 

The song: Hey Jack Kerouac • 10,000 Maniacs

The inspiration: On the Road • Jack Kerouac

I’m baffled by why there aren’t more beat-inspired songs, since the writing of that era was incredibly ripe with rhythm, experimentation and vitality. Or do these songs exist and I just don’t know them yet?

 

The song: How Soon is Now • The Smiths

The inspiration: Middlemarch • George Eliot

The Smiths have other songs that reference a bunch of dead writers. But this is one of my favorite songs of all time with some of my favorite lyrics of all time.

“I am the son, and the heir, of a shyness that is criminally vulgar/I am the son and heir, of nothing in particular,” an adaptation of this line from Middlemarch, “To be born the son of a Middlemarch manufacturer, and inevitable heir to nothing in particular.”

 

The song: Sylvia Plath • Ryan Adams

The inspiration: The poetry of Sylvia Plath

Beautiful and sad, just like Sylvia Plath.

 

The song: 1984 by David Bowie

The inspiration: 1984 • George Orwell

Apparently David Bowie wrote an entire, never-produced rock opera based on “1984.” Can someone please bring this to life for me? What do I have to do to make this happen? I picture it as dystopian dinner theater. “I’ll have the tofu and Big Brother, please.”

 

Song: Shadrach • Beastie Boys

Inspired by: J.D. Salinger

Inspired by Salinger? Not really. But one of the greatest lines of all time is, “I’ve got more stories than J.D.’s got Salinger/ I hold the title, and you are the challenger.”

If you want a song that was truly inspired by Salinger, check out “Bananafishbones,” based on one of my favorite short stories, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” And then you can go ahead and read all of Salinger’s “Nine Stories,”  because it is a tremendous book.

About Me.

Maggie Downs is an award-winning journalist with more than 15 years of professional writing and editing experience. She lives in Palm Springs, Calif., with her husband, a blind dog and one ninja cat.
Contact her at maggiedowns (at) gmail (dot) com.

About Me.

Maggie Downs is an award-winning journalist with more than 15 years of professional writing and editing experience. She lives in Palm Springs, Calif., with her husband, a blind dog and one ninja cat.
Contact her at maggiedowns (at) gmail (dot) com.

Date Me.

January 2025
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031