This quote delivered by Philip Seymour Hoffman in his role as rock critic Lester Bangs remains my favorite line from “Almost Famous.”
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This story the day after Nanci Griffith’s death will always be incomplete, because how can I tell you about the 10-year-old friend I never had?
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I wrote a poem about the last Blockbuster still in operation, but it’s also about returning to a time gone by and maybe even a flame that still flickers.
Read More...A 2005 column I wrote came from a part of my brain not normally accessed when I typed my thoughts on a laptop.
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A tweet and a song last night sent me down memory lane about writing on an unforgiving deadline, and the things our brains do to try to help.
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Whether I am speaking only for myself or also for others, here is long-overdue thanks to my therapist.
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Maybe someday I’ll climb the steps that have been in my mind for decades, and I’ll see where they take me. They have a story to tell.
Read More...The time I wrote about “the unbearable lightness of lightness,” unpeeling and yet still hiding the real me.
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A pause on my Monday morning to post a foreword of sorts to what I plan to be a series of blog posts celebrating and processing the first anniversary of my coming out as transgender.
Read More...Published December 28, 2016
Gary Laney died without warning Friday, two days before Christmas. He was 47. The news was crushing. The shock hasn’t worn off, and I am flailing about in search of words.
His funeral is happening now in Baton Rouge. I wish he were here to talk about it with me. Gary’s presence here two years ago, the day before the funeral of our first editor in the daily newspaper business, was a gift to me from the cosmos. Now, he’s gone, and we are not having lunch together, not having beers, not telling Lake Charles stories, laughing and crying.
In a year of so much loss, Gary’s death is one of the hardest losses to bear.
We first met in the mid-1980s, when my journalism career was just getting started and he was a high school student with an interest in sports writing and newspaper work. He came up one day to the makeshift press box at Legion Field in Lake Charles where I was covering American Legion games, and on some level, he never left. Gary was like a friendly puppy, tagging along as I did my job. He was likable, smart, curious, full of questions, and eager to discuss sports, music, writing and many other subjects.