Category Archives: writing life

The Ginger Woman

Uncategorized, writing life

I haven’t had time to write anything new to share, but I found this scrap of a story while going through some old papers. I wrote it ages ago, back when I was falling off barstools in pubs a lot. Enjoy — lk

The Ginger Woman

c. Lisa Kaiser 2023

“A pint of plain is your only man.”—Flann O’Brien

Oh the games I’ve played on Dublin afternoons as the innocent abroad stumbling into the black stuff, the life force, the ritual of the pint. Maurice showed me how that first night. First it’s admired while it partitions into pure black and white sectors: then stiffen your back for the long cold drink, raise it to your mouth, and plunge your upper lip into the cushion of foam. Come up for air and let the froth stick on your lip, shake and suck a bit, then scrape it off with your hand or teeth. Contemplate life and hauntings and burdens while the rings mark time down the glass.

It’s always the same story. Donal’s intellect, the lorry driver’s isolation, Leo’s smugness, Jack’s accusations. The castle’s cook and the bachelors from Cork. Tom and Ben polluted again. Even your man Maguire, the sap.

Then one day Jimmy broke my heart.

In Hell’s Kitchen now, I leave a lipstick crescent on my drink’s crown and remember. They start off sweet and turn bitter, best left a little undrunk and undone.

 

Carly Simon Was My Best English Teacher

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Most folks can point to a teacher who inspired them as they grew from child to adult, a mentor who saw something special in them that set them apart from the crowd. Sometimes they have books dedicated to them in suitably purple prose, or you hear these shout-outs during awards ceremonies, when the winner gets really teary and sappy and their trembling hand flutters to their throat as they thank some elderly drama teacher who gave them their start in a juvenile version of Our Town.

I can’t say that any teacher inspired me or had a positive impact on my development as a writer.

That said, I did have teachers, but the lessons I learned weren’t taught in the classroom.

I had my siblings’ record collections.

I can say definitively that Carly Simon was my very greatest English teacher. When I stumbled across her “Best of” album, from 1975, I was captivated. I’d never seen anyone like her or heard anyone with that voice—frankly, I’d never even heard the name “Carly” before. The whole package was intriguing, and of course her marriage to James Taylor just completed the picture (and confirms my theory that female singers and musicians back then were typically partnered up with another musician).

And then there were Carly Simon’s lyrics. Of course, as part of the Simon family, of the Simon & Schuster publishing house, Carly’s lyrics were not going to be of the moon-June-bloom variety. Nope, they dealt with adult matters, explored complex feelings, and used vocabulary that sent me straight to the dictionary. Yes, I was that child nerd who read the liner notes and then looked up the definitions of the words Carly was giving life to.

Take, for example, probably her best-known song, “You’re So Vain.” Hum along with me as we stumble over these mature words: “yacht,” which of course she rhymed to “apricot,” and “gavotte,” all in the opening lines. Add to my vocabulary homework the terms “naïve,” “Saratoga,” “Lear jet,” “Nova Scotia,” and “total eclipse of the sun.” Whew! My mind reeled at the story she was telling.

Then comes a whopper—“vain.” I wasn’t sure if it was a put down, a bit of praise, or a sin. (Remember—I grew up Polish Catholic, and vanity was a sin.) Like, Carly was hot for this guy in the song, but she was criticizing him the whole time, and then Mick Jagger joined in and it sounded like they were having a good laugh about it all, so what the heck was my childish brain supposed to do with all of this swagger?

I thought about it… and kept listening… and dreamed up my own stories over clouds in my coffee.

Songwriters as Storytellers, Or Why My Heart Still Belongs to 70s Soft Rock

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I often feel sorry for kids these days. I grew up in the 70s, when we weren’t marinating in mass media. TV wasn’t on 24 hours a day; reruns were a disappointment. You actually went outside and played, and you learned to entertain yourself. My friends and I invented characters, intricate plotlines, and sets and costumes. A lot of kids had imaginary friends. We knew how to create something out of nothing, no problem. We were storytellers, or “content creators” in today’s terminology.

Since we had a lot of time to fill, our minds were allowed to wander. My favorite daydream time was during my family’s weekly trips to my grandma’s house, 20 to 30 minutes away, depending on which route we took. There certainly was a lot of fighting and fussing in the station wagon. But there was a lot of peace, too. We usually listened to AM radio, soft rock that was unthreatening, soothing, and sappy. Cringey.

I listened and I heard. The stories told in these songs were more enlightening than any Grimm’s fairytale. (I could never figure out what lesson I was supposed to take away from those things.)

But 70s soft rock spoke to me.

She ran calling Wildfire.

Don’t it make my brown eyes blue.

Sara, smile.

You fill up my senses like a night in the forest.

I listened and I learned. I imagined the singers and their muses. I developed plot points connecting the origins of the song to how they played out, and beyond. I puzzled over some very adult themes, far more adult than my elementary school brain could comprehend. I get it now.

And sometimes I cringe, but doesn’t John Denver sort of hit you right in the solar plexus sometimes? Don’t you want to walk right into one of his stories, clad in flannel with your shoulders warm from the sunshine, and hang out for a while? I sure do. Still.

Introducing Lisa Kaiser, The Writer’s Blog

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Hi, I’m Lisa Kaiser. You know—Lisa Kaiser the Writer. Thanks for coming to my blog! I’m going to use this space to explore issues like writing, procrastinating about writing, and feeling better after having written something.  The age-old worries that every scribbler, chiseler, and scribe has felt when confronting a blank page or stone tablet. Don’t worry—I’ll be sure to write a happy ending for all.

Folks often ask my why and how I became a writer. I can’t say I was always driven to do so. I loved stories, but so does every kid. I wanted to be a poet, though, and was able to publish two poems (age 7) in the local newspaper. And I wrote a journal of our family vacation in Florida on a memo pad, so I guess a slight talent for observing and reporting was already bubbling up to the surface. But I can’t say that I was encouraged to keep writing—and certainly not to become a professional writer. I was told that “writing is the most egotistical act one can undertake.” And as a nice Catholic girl, I knew that pursuing anything smacking of ego was going to land me in the confessional for a long, long time.

So that was that.

Fast forward to a recession and a lack of opportunities, and a love of taking photos that needed captions, and the realization that if other people could do it, so could I. Egotistical, sure. But at this point I no longer feared darkening the door of a confessional.

I promise that my future blog posts will not be so egotistical. Thanks for reading!