2021-01-23 - 8:33 a.m.

Marilyn's message: Love Yourself. Be who you are.

I am attending a writing workshop with Hay House publishing, who are really the self help and spiritualist new age publishers.

It is a terriffic seminar on how to write a novel. The majority of what they publish is How To or Memoir with wisdom to be shared.

Not the right publisher for me at all, and not much emphasis on fiction which is my interest. The structure of a live lecture ( via zoom), homework writing assignments itself makes it valuable.

So of course, I at some point thought of writers who have cannelled!

In part as the question essentially was asked if channelling was BS and just marketing,
and the presenter Reid Tracey, CEO of Hay house was unabashed and unequivocal in his resounding "Oh yes! Very real! We have writers who both occassionally channel and write their own books, and our editors much prefer when they channel! Those books are often written super fast, and are better!"

So I wondered, not quite sure why, but thought. hey if I have a struggle writing maybe I should just try to channel! Lol. Great dream!
Inspired by my small psychic moment of the day of the inauguration , as after the inaugeration itself I listening to Nina Simone singing this:
Ah...hold up....i stopped myself from losing this entry by running a Google search. , as still only writing on my phone as my CyberMonday steal of deal on a new laptop is not ready.....

So if YOU are so inclined just google Nina Simone's brilliant emotional song "Its a New Day" with its melancholy minor tonality lilting like a cry of prayer, a cry of anguish juxtaposed with the uplift of pulling oneself out of doldrums in a reach for positive celebration, hitting a high. The one song captures an emotionsl roller coaster ending on am incredible triumphant note.

I was in that time of waiting, in between having watched the inauguration, having shared the replay of the highlights streamed to the living room TV for emerging afternoon awaking teens, and the evening celebratory concert. I had to make dinner but did not want to do anything else as there was not enough time to really accomplish anything, and I did not want to. I just wanted to celebrate this moment.

I mean who doesn't want to listen to Amanda Gorman's poem again? I listened to it in awe, and then listened again in hope .

I was then just reflective, in a post celebratory cake chill ( Yes I baked cake!)

and I was just listening to Nina sing that song over a few times, then obsessed to find various renditions, including Adam Lambert's American Idol fabulous over the top musical theater style one.

So when John Legand sang that song live streamed I was ready!

My oldest drolly commented , "ah you were psychic", matter of fact.

Lol

Oh yes, small, ever so small pyschic moments.

We all have them at times and if pay attention notice them. Nothing grandiose, like channelling Marilyn, but heck wouldn't that be a great story?

I wondered...how much fan fiction is there written about Norma Jean becoming Marilyn?

Any channelling of her?
My first Google turned up an article in which channelling was discussed and a random quote said those channelled were always men. WtF???? I swear it was written in the article as always ..citing the dude who was founder of Wicca that wrote a book on how to channel.

Crazy!

I mean how nutty. Really??? Always men? Heck even progressive early new agism was misogynistic! That kinda blew my mind...
As well, the only channelled stories/books I really know of are of Mary Magdeline and A Couse In Miracles...

But back to the main point.

Turns out of course a novel imagining Norma Jean's life was written, Blond, by Joyce Carol Oates!

Which made me laugh having abandoned her lectures on how to write and abandomed my kick of reading her novels and moved onto read Wally Lamb instead of her works as I find more entertainment and humor in his story telling. Joyce Carol Oates novels feel like watching an exhausting therapy session to me. I don't want to emotionally live through someone else's therapy session with such intensity. It is just too draining of my energy.

Wally Lamb for some reason makes me LAUGH while having an AH HA moment !

And then this:
https://thoughtcatalog.com/m-j-pack/2016/04/conversations-with-dead-people-session-one-marilyn-monroe/

My curiosity is satiated.

What really struck me is the strength of her message.

Timely and wonderful to hear. My former sister in law happens to be a writer for TV. She worked on I Am the Night which was a TBS story of the Black Dahlia murders told from the perspective of a daughter of the believed murderer. It did touch on the evils of Hollywood. They are real! There have bern many who lost themselves in that wuest fir fame.

So it was terriffic to tead the account of the Marilyn message to be yourself just now as I am very proud of my son who has done just that.

I am proud he was fired!
Yes!!!! He refused to do things he found unethical as an actor.

He drew a line, understanding that in one's work a person has to hold on to the integrity of who you are. You have to draw a line and hold it strongly. If you don't draw the line and allow it to move, little by little that changes who you are.

You become yourself based upon your choices, based upon your work. We can't be completely defined by our work but we also can not be deceived by ignoring the reality that our daily work DOES become a defining part of who we become.

I am going to use the show mentioned as an example of how at times it serves to tell a story of evil, as a warning, as a help, as a healing mechanism, but how it does not serve the story to be explicit in re-creating evil:

I Am the Night was absolutely a story of a young woman wanting to know who she was, thinking finding out about her past would help her. In a way the telling of the story was healing for her as she wanted the world to know who she was as well as who others really were. It was an unmasking revealing power of unmitigated evil.

Yet, even in the telling and showing, there was nothing exceptionally graphic that it was unwatchable. Truth of evil can be depicted without the gross vulgarity of re-creating it.

It does not serve a story to dehumanize by such depictions. That show depicted some horrific moments, but in doing so there were some heinous violent crimes that were shown through dialogue of characters speaking of them rather than acted out as ugly re-creations.

It is offensive, unnecessary and certainly not the purpose of any of us to re-create violence.

So my son drew a line. Said NO in the job he had of ugly violence that was serving no one. It did not need to be shown explicitly when the telling of the acts alone gets the point.

I could not have been more proud when in the work he already did I read "stunt double" for some of the scenes of distrubing brutality.

I AM AS PROUD of what he refused to do as the wonderful acting work he has done. This young man has played in stagesand films of over 40 projects and stories told over the dozen years before his US TV debut. He has played villians and the antagonistic role of criminals, and heck even some murderer roles depicted in Shakespeare. So he knows how to play evil. Yet in those prior works the writing was strong enough to carry a story without cheap sensationalism of ugly violence. My son aspires to create art. He is an artist and yes, the studio may believe he is a diva thinking himself too good for that work as he was asked to do it, well it is true! It WAS beneath him ! He has dignity, and truth is some scenes as originally written just should be cut as they had no value added to the story, and are benesth ALL: they are beneath the writer, the actors and the viewers when they descend into such vulgarity of violent evil.

I am proud he is setting an example to others to honor and respect and value yourself and your values over a paycheck or worry about what others think.

He has other work, and will continue to. The PR did not drop yet for the new work, but I can't wait to see him in another show when its new epidodes come out soon. So he has worked with more than one TV production company and is getting auditions. He has a recent story of a good audition of a part NOT landed which was so exciting to hear. When the choice of an actor is down to the last 2 or 3 in serious consideration for a role with an A list actor of character, that is very encouraging he will get not only work, but even better roles than has yet played ( even though he did not land that particular role just now).

I encouraged him to read the stories Chadwick Boesman, who told of when he had challenges getting work because he turned down roles that he felt beneath him and degrading.

Yes! I know my son's mentors are proud of him. My son was reminded by his beautiful girlfriend that he did important work. The studio loves to gossip he it seems, which is good as frankly the more some hear of others demanding respect, the stronger they may feel in sticking up for their own self respect. My son's girlfriend reminded him that perhaps he paved the way for some other actors to say "No" and set healthy boundaries for how a studio has a right to use their bodies. Depiction of one's body is a very different thing than acting! Shakespeare depicted any possible manner of the human condition, trust me nothing this studio could write could rival those depictions of a character, yet in Shakespeare performances you don't see every act with detail of copulation, killings, and violent rape and murder. Yet those are all elements of Shakespearean stories! My son has played Hamlet and conveyed all the nuances of that incredible role, and yet even then, somehow , in one particular brilliant adaptation driven by the actress playing Ophelia interpreting her reading and her playing of a scene, showing an interpretation of a mad Hamlet so unhinged that he was desperately violating Ophelia in a rage, the intensity and depiction of madness left viewers with a shocked, and shocking empathy. There was somehow this marvelous arch of the character such that there was pity and empathy for not only Ophelia but Hamlet and somehow, hard to explain how, that rough raw description using lyrical language and stunning choreography of blocking of that scene was oddly a depiction of ugliness of the madness , yet beautifully rendered. THAT was the wonder and beauty of the art of good acting. To cheapen such possibility of achieving art by vulgarity was not a fair assumption to expect an actor to make JUST because a show is written for television rather than theater. It was suggested that my son knew what he signed up for, NO, scripts for the shows depicting vulgarity beyond his line of comfort were non existent when he signed the contract. The answer to the question if he knew what he signed up for is YES he knew, however the studio was changing the expectations of what they wanted delivered. It reminds me to not feel saddened at my own having been fired when I set boundaries for integrity in my work. No, I am proud as well, at my own insistence of being true to my self and of honoring the values I hold dear. Honesty, truth and respect of others with dignity don't seem unusual or revolutionary, yet somehow in some spaves it can be game changing when those are made priority. Sometimes, asserting them can make you a disruptor that some are afraid of. I have been such a disruptor. And yes; I am frankly quite proud of that.

�

�