A week or so back, I received an email, from the contact page. (That’s how it works, by the way, if you want to contact me. I have that “comments” thing but it doesn’t work. What you say to eliza, stays with eliza.)

This email reads, redacted for my correspondent’s privacy (and with her permission):

"Hi Elizabeth,

I hope I have the right person, although I don't imagine there are too many writers with the same three names as yours.

I have been searching for an article you wrote … titled "Sultry Like Me." I have one copy that I have saved all these years that is quite old and worn and would like to replace it. I have tried Cosmo's site and they do not appear to have archives. If you have it on file I would greatly appreciate you sending it to me. The information in that piece went miles for me in the way of self esteem and quite frankly, is an integral part of who I am today. Even if it is unavailable, for that I thank you.”

Somebody out there has saved all these years a piece I wrote for Cosmo? Back then I was a smartass just out of college with a just-published novel taking a gamble on the hope that writing success was just around the corner and that I would never have to bury myself in an office. I was busy writing my epic novel and at the behest of my (then) agent, writing what I thought of as “fluff” for women’s magazines.

An editor of one of those women’s magazines took me to lunch (and I was literally so hungry that I relished those lunches) to probe my dry, witty, sarcastic mind for more pieces. She asked what my novel was about. In retrospect, I know what she wanted to hear:

Spunky Everygirl Searches for Mr. Right.

But I wasn’t writing that, so I told her the truth – my novel was about a chaos physicist studying the patterns in the game of baseball, while finding those same patterns in his own relationships. Also, life and loss and love and Shakespeare and stuff.

The editor looked at me hard. “Are you familiar with the term `high concept’?”

I replied, “You mean, like, `Shark terrorizes Long Island community’?”

She asked for the check. I heard my career snap like a breadstick. She killed my next two commissioned pieces through her assistant. (“I honestly don’t know why she’s not calling you back. And I’m not being evasive.”)

The thing is, that editor (not from Cosmo, by the way) has probably forgotten that lunch, just as I had forgotten “Sultry Like Me,” which a gentle reader from cyberspace says it is an integral part of who she is today.

So many morals here that I barely know how to address them:

It is daunting to realize how our every exchange is so fraught with power and tenderness. We never know who we touch or how we touch them.

Labels: Cosmopolitan, getting thanks, giving thanks, Sultry Like Me, women's magazines

posted by Elizabeth at 2:03 PM  

Went to The General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen tonight (their motto: “By Hammer and Hand All Arts Do Stand!”) to attend a lecture on the piano. A piano technician was supposed to take apart the Society’s Weber piano and compare it to a Steinway. This didn’t quite happen, but it was entertaining nonetheless, and I made the acquaintance of a few researchers who may help me in the quest that began when I found a piano on the street last spring. It is a 1927 Sohmer upright. Sohmer was a good reliable German-made line, beloved by Hoagy Carmichael, Al Jolson, Rudolph Valentino. When Irving Berlin wrote “I Love a Piano,” he wrote it on a Sohmer.

Two weeks after I found (and adopted) the piano, I learned by web-surfing (see how useful web-surfing is?) that the building (ten blocks from my apartment) which had housed the factory in which the piano was born had been declared a historic landmark. My neighborhood is lousy with retired tuners and piano builders; it’s Astoria, home of Steinway. A piano technician, ML, lives just down the street. I called him in to have a look at my Sohmer, daffily optimistic that I just needed a tuning, and was told that the extensive water damage on the soundboard would require $5,000 in repairs. Another $3,000 in cosmetic repairs would restore the creature to its former glory – it’s solid mahoghany, which someone at some point saw fit to cover with black paint.

Oh, but its action, oh, but its tone! I am in love and cannot let it go. And so it has sat in my living room since Groundhog’s Day, occasionally singing “Sheep May Safely Graze” when I ask it to, but refusing the “Moonlight Sonata.”

I had hoped, tonight, that the lecturing technician would cheerfully agree to come and take a look at the old girl, and heartily refute ML’s crazy estimate: “Water damage? What water damage? That green on the felt isn’t mold – it’s just green felt!” But alas. More daffy optimism. But when I mentioned ML to tonight’s piano technician, he all but genuflected. Apparently, I had had the rock star of piano rebuilders in my living room, drinking my coffee, giving me the bad news, petting my ill piano. “No point in my looking at it, if ML’s seen it.”

So what to do. Can’t let go, can’t afford repairs; piece of New York City history, instrument that cannot be duplicated if the same amount of money were spent to buy a new one. (“Maybe a Chinese piano,” spat ML, and this was before the toy recall.) Well, it was a miracle that I found the piano, that morning when I had just been wishing for one, so all I can do is wait for another one. Another miracle, or another piano.

Labels: Astoria, piano, piano technician, Sohmer

posted by Elizabeth at 9:47 PM   0 Comments Links to this post

I was recently asked by my friend/director (she has produced and directed two of the shorts I wrote) to make a “special guest appearance” at her scene studies class. The class is one targeted towards directors working in film and traditionally they have worked with assigned actors of assigned genders – two women, two men, a man with a woman. They can use scenes from existing film scripts or ones they are working on. My friend chose a scene from the Billy Wilder film “The Apartment” and I was hauled in to play a third character (a trailblazing event, apparently) -- the bitchy, drunk ex-girlfriend of the heroine’s (married) boyfriend.

I should point out, no typecasting was involved. Or so I tell myself.

Being in one of those commercial rehearsal rooms on the west side in the Garment District evoked many ghosts, but – that’s another story. When our “The Apartment” scene was done (“Oh, you’re not a real actress? But you were so good!”), I watched the other two scenes, which were from original scripts the directors had written.

And God help me, I do love actors (and actresses – I use the term gender-neutrally.) They’re infuriating creatures, but when they’re on, I can forgive them their hi-I-love-you-bye-I-love-you hugs, their massive insecurity, their general (that is, generally-speaking) illiteracy, their solipsism (go look it up, actors). My friend/director sat by my side during these scenes, eager for my opinions, and somewhat surprised by them. “Tell me about Mary,” (name changed) I whispered. “Really?” she hissed back. “Her?”

The thing about Mary was that I couldn’t tell, looking at her, whether she was beautiful or plain. Not ugly – actresses are never ugly (or else I would have been one) – but just ordinarily symmetrically-featured with no glaring exceptions of cheekbones, lips or eyes. During the scene and its many redos, “Mary” was both hard and plain, and hard and beautiful, depending on what she was playing and what the emotions of the scene demanded. The dichotomy kept me watching, and watching intently.

Far more engaging, n’est-ce pas?

And the thing is, for most of us, that is true of the people we love. Are they beautiful? Or is it their smile that makes them beautiful, or their solemnity, or their intensity, or their insouciance? With someone merely pretty – or very, very pretty – one thinks, am I here, am I worthy of being here, or am I merely audience? With a plain/beauty, one thinks, I see you, I see you in me, can you see me? And me in you? I think you might. I hope you will.

I want to do a piece on the beautiful females of film who have played the "drab" one (usually accomplished by putting them in cardigans and dyeing their hair brown) but that is for another time (and maybe for a place that pays $$ :)).

Labels: acting, beauty

posted by Elizabeth at 8:05 PM   0 Comments Links to this post