Getting Started.

Coming to the Blogosphere for the first time, I expect to start slowly and cautiously down Bloggers Lane until I get the hang of it all. My goal is to have everything in place for the New Year: the photos and the musings of a sixty-something native New Yorker; stories I can recall (as well as make up!) from my past written towards the idea for a fictional Memoir of a Screecher. The novel I have written in the past few years—A Birdhouse in Brooklyn—will be posted by chapter, serialized on this blog, if you will. 

I started actively living as a painter in my youth. New York was a gloriously seedy place of freedom, with none of the Disnified Mallification that has crimped its former style. But things change. I have changed; not always of my own volition but even when the Boot of Fate was doing the kicking I consciously or unconsciously agreed with the direction. That lovely, discriminating and sometimes bewildering and frightening Boot kicked me to Paris, France where I met my future husband, a British musician. The Boot kicked me into a marriage which has sometimes riotously sustained itself for 20 years. Circumstances wedged me into a spot too tightly to continue painting and make a living. Making money was a soul-sucking endeavor but it was, for over fifteen years, comparatively easy money. The Boot kicked my nagging conscious around a little and nudged me into a different creative direction with The Mister. We began songwriting together, while he records and performs the songs. Still, the Golden Handcuffs chafed. Finally, I was kicked out of the lucrative corporate job and the Boot kept kicking as I made my half-hearted way through the corporate channels of hell until I saw the Light. 

I began to write in earnest. The novel was started while I collaborated on a screenplay of an original idea of mine with a former co-worker who had also felt the Boot. We went our separate ways but I was convinced I had a good story in me and threw myself into writing a novel that came out of personal experiences during and after 9/11, paths detoured, complicated friendships weathered and love reconnected.

I call the blog "The American Friend" because I communicate with distant friends in other countries. One friend in particular is a writer who lives in Barcelona. We share many stories, ideas and collaborations. We share a great love of the Wim Wenders film. 

I am her American Friend.