Sarah Tomlinson: Blog

Dear Santa,

I know I haven't written to you in a few years (okay, so like thirty), and it probably seems a little fair weather of me to turn up now, but I only want two things this holiday season, both kind of hard to ask for, so there's nowhere else to go.

May I please have some of those Christian Dior temporary tattoos made of real gold? I know this is an awful, bougie request. Especially given all of the poor kids in the world that can't afford real tattoos. And the fact that I could, in fact, get a real tattoo that I would have for the rest of my life for about the same cost as this ephemeral gilded decadence. But they are so pretty and glam, and I just know they would make me happy in that pure, sparkly little girl way I can sometimes still achieve, like when I used to come home from school, and my mom had baked fresh granola, and the whole house smelled like cinnamon and love, and it made the milk a little warm when I ate some right out of the oven, and it tasted just like heaven.

The second request is a little trickier, but I'm going to throw it at you anyway. I've still got faith, even though you didn't come through with a Cabbage Patch Doll. Remember in 2011 when everything I really wanted was about to come true, and then it really didn't. And people I love started getting sick, and I realized this was my entrée into adulthood-not anything big and ceremonial with framed photos I would have forever, but a lot of small, infinitely hard life changes that would require me to be more patient and steady and kind than I'd ever been called upon to be, and this after twenty years of nearly total adolescent freedom?

And remember how I started doing that thing before I fell asleep where I mentally touched everyone I love, beginning with my family, and moving out through my closest friends, my new friends, my mentors and teachers and yoga instructors, to anyone who'd done something particularly nice for me that day, like those guys at the liquor store who let me cut in line to buy those heavy bags of ice and even lifted them out of my arms and set them down on the counter for me?

Uh, no, this is not praying. I was raised by hippies. I'm a liberal. Anyhow, I'm not going to get into a fight with you so close to your big day. The point is that after I went through my list, I wished for all of them one single second when they didn't feel any pain or fear or sadness. It made me happy, just to think it might be possible, this one golden second of peace. Then, one night, I realized my family members and friends are among the most privileged people in the world. So I thought--why not?--and I extended it to everyone, especially the women and children who get particularly brutalized, and the many, many people who have never known anything but war, and I wished for all of them, one single second when they felt no pain or fear or sadness. And then I wished John Lennon was still around, because I figured he'd probably know how to help you make it happen--you guys are both more than a little magic. After all, it was at Christmas 1969 that he and Yoko put up their peace billboards. I'm not telling you how to do your job. I'm just saying that it's all I really want this year (except, of course, for that one item noted above), and I think a lot of other people want it too, even if they've never stopped to think about it.
Thanks so much. Yes, I know the drill--I'm going to clean my room right now.

Much love, Sarah

For twenty years, we were mostly silent. Hardly even speaking with each other about "the shooting" this black hole, which we moved away from in time, and yet, which we never really seemed to get further away from. Still shadowing our lives as it did with the fact that one of our own had hated us, enough to want us dead, and had succeeded in taking two of our most beloved from us, while those who had been charged with protecting us had failed to keep us safe.

Having survived this, we knew truths that others did not know. About the world and people, and what they were and were not capable of, and this knowledge, which had come to us from violence and its perversions, created a perverted form of truth within us. Like a twisted version of The Emperor's New Clothes, we were both the emperor who was naked, and the only one who could see our true state. Even those who were closest to us, our families, friends, lovers, wives, husbands, children, saw us as clothed, as whole, as normal. Or as normal as we could be, when we still had within us the ghosts of the misfit teens we had always been.

And yet, we knew the truth. We had been marked by tragedy. It had stripped us of defenses other people took for granted-their ignorant belief in some inherent logic in the world had been ripped from us. And it had left us particularly tender and vulnerable while trying to navigate our lives, now forever altered. We were ashamed of being different. And it was terrible to return to this state of shame, as many of us had been made to feel ashamed of our differences in the lives we had before we found Simon's Rock, that wonderful but all-to-brief oasis of acceptance.

And so we kept quiet, even amongst ourselves, and tried to deny our nakedness, as well as the ridiculous farce of pretending we had clothes. Most of us had never really been joiners to begin with. And so maybe this was our natural state, this isolation, especially in our grief, and our increasing certainty as time passed, that in some profound way the grief would never go away. It was a part of Galen now, of the shooting, of Simon's Rock. And these were all things too woven into our emotional DNA to let go of, no matter the cost of hanging onto them.

When I finally broke my silence by publishing an essay about the shooting, it was only after the piece, which I had written and performed for maybe a dozen people in Los Angeles, had sat on my computer for two-and-a-half-years. I was only driven to share it then by one more tragedy. And by the resulting bafflement expressed around me in a variety of social situations. Those who had previously seemed like relatively intelligent adults suddenly seemed like small children trying to understand where the people in the TV had gone when it was switched off. I found myself impatient with their naïve ignorance, having finally accepted years ago that you can't force answers onto a tragedy because senselessness is at its core.

The essay went out into the world and what resulted was its own form of answer, though--a gift so profound and surprising I could hardly stand to receive it. All of you were returned to me, and with you, Simon's Rock, which had been lost to me in my grief. You contacted me with such beautiful, humble, troubled, grateful correspondence. You dared to wrestle with your own pain and guilt and shame within my sight. Even though you had not seen me in nearly twenty years, even though I was essentially a stranger to you. This simple communion reminded me how exceptional all of you are. Because in some profound way you are seekers. It's what brought you to forego the traditional path and find your way to Simon's Rock--where Galen and Nacunan, also seekers, were drawn as well.

I had forgotten about this quality of being exceptional, because it had made the ensuing
loss all that more profound. I'm sure, like me, you have found it incredibly difficult to come back over and over again during these twenty years to the fact that there wasn't just the grief that came out of the violence of the shooting. There was the unalterable fact that Galen Gibson was a truly exceptional person, even with and particularly because of the things within him that were sometimes difficult. And that we all are, and have always been aware, of how exceptional he was. And it has always added to the pain of losing him, and to our shame at remaining behind in what we see as our naked, unexceptional states.

And yet, it is also that which must finally be our consolation, because it is all we are left with--it truly was a gift to have this exceptional person in our midst for far too brief a time. And because, maybe in that time, he found something exceptional within us too, because we were his people, and I know how happy he was amongst us for the time we did have together. Of course we lost sight of this, because our sudden loss of him has only spotlighted how special he was, and will continue to be so, for as long as the rest of us are here to remember.

We found each other--Galen found us--for a reason. I suppose it is up to all of us to decide for ourselves what that reason was. But I am extremely comforted to finally have our loss spoken out loud, and to feel all of you here with me, at the place of the wound, which of course is also the place of the healing.

Of all the messages I received in the aftermath of my essay, there was one that meant the most to me. When I saw it in my inbox, two days after my piece was published, I immediately burst into tears before I had read a single word. So great was my sorrow and guilt to be sitting there in my bungalow in Los Angeles, writing, living, when Galen was not alive to do what he was meant to do, and instead his father, bearer of that loss, was reaching out to me.

During the course of my correspondence with Mr. Gibson, I apologized for not having been able to read Goneboy because it had always upset me too much. He wrote a reply that was exactly what I needed to hear; had needed without realizing it for these twenty years. I wanted to share it today because I know he meant it for all of us equally. He wrote of Goneboy: "Oh, don't worry about reading it or not reading it. Ever. It's just out there doing its work now. You get busy with yours!"

So I have, and so I will. These twenty years have gone by all too fast. There's a lot I want to accomplish. Not just for myself, but for all of you, for Simon's Rock, and of course, for that exceptional young man we carry with us forever in our hearts.

My essay, OUR SCHOOL SHOOTING, is up on Salon this week.

I felt a familiar, creeping dread when I saw the first mention of the July shooting in Aurora, Colorado, on Twitter and again not two weeks later when I read newspaper reports about the massacre at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. It had been even worse when I first became aware of the shootings at Virginia Tech and Columbine.

These incidents upset me not only because the violence was shocking and terrible to consider - a fear so deep we don't allow ourselves to think about it until moments like this: that an ordinary day will be shattered by pain, death, loss and the horrible accident of being in the wrong place at the wrong time -- but also because I am not only an observer. The images from these news stories open a portal to my past and bring up memories that have dimmed but never cease to be accompanied by grief, confusion and the question, "Why did this have to happen?"

It's true. I listened to nothing but Conor, all the way from Los Angeles to Nashville. And he was an excellent companion. Not a back seat driver at all. More like a back seat therapist.

Mostly the trip was lovely. Except for the rain storms in Arizona during the first day. But, hey, it's just like that saying: you've gotta break some eggs if you want to make an omelet; you've got to have some rain if you want to see some rainbows. And I saw six.

When the newspaper arrived outside my hotel room in Albuquerque, the lead story was about rest stop serial killers. I opted not to read it, since I didn't want those dark thoughts in my mind while traveling alone. But my dad did. And was plenty worried. If you read it, don't worry. That human head they found in the bag in Barstow was not mine.

Highlights: Eating BBQ at Big Vern's in Shamrock, TX. Getting good news in OK. Stopping at Loretta Lynn's dude ranch on my way into Nashville. Coal Miner's Daughter was my favorite movie when I was little. I loved that scene where she hit her husband in the hand with the purse. There was real poetry in that moment for me as a child.

Now that I've arrived, I'm officially stepping out on Los Angeles with Nashville. She's so pretty. And such a good flirt. I arrived at Traci's house last night, bearing a pumpkin I had bought earlier in the day from a farmer with three teeth, who told me about his adventures putting up chain link fences in Long Beach in the late '70s, just in time to get dinner. The most amazing collard greens of my life. And Cowboy and so many other lovely people welcomed me to their city with all of the music talk and food talk I could possibly want. It helps that I'm staying with the best hostess, ever. My friend Traci can open a can of whoop ass just as gracefully as she cans peaches. Now that's a true Southern Lady. I've been in her big, beautiful back yard all afternoon, hanging out with the wonder dogs Willie and Lucy and enjoying my favorite past times: writing and dreaming.

I know the photo is blurry. I'm on vacation. Cut a girl some slack.

A new year. A new decade. A new economy. At least that's what they're telling us. Read my thoughts on the matter on The Huffington Post. Yes, I'm very excited to be writing for Ms. Huffington and co. Become a Fan. What the hey, right? My mom is.

In other news, ALL ABOUT ME, I just gave a reading at the enchanting Tavin Boutique in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles as part of a delicious new salon called Little Birds. The night was co-founded by my friend Steffie Nelson. And I debuted an excerpt from my new novel-in-progress, "The Year of Mr. Nobody," in which our heroine Stella follows Keith Richards and the lads to Marrakesh in the spring of '67. Debauch ensues. You wouldn't expect anything less, would you? Get a wrap up of the reading.

The book I co-wrote with actor Todd Bridges, "Killing Willis," comes out on March 16, 2010. And let me just tell you, it's juicy. Pre-order it on Amazon. What the hey, right? My mom did.

Other than that, I'm working on some exciting projects, if I do say so myself, including a TV pilot, feature film (rom com, of course), and a revision of my second novel, "Sizzle."

And currently obsessing about the new season of "Big Love" (Mormon rock rocks!), music by Band of Skulls, and the chocolate hazelnut fudge flavor of Coconut Bliss "nice" cream.

By Sarah Tomlinson,
Globe Correspondent / February 20, 2009

LOS ANGELES - The rapt crowd at the Troubadour watches Juana Molina's every move on Tuesday night, almost as if she were a magician performing sleights of hand. They sway to the bossa nova-flavored rhythms of her lush, giddy indie rock songs and sing along to the Spanish lyrics.

Wearing a black skirt and tank top, the wiry Argentine singer-songwriter has the poise of a music teacher on recital day - albeit one with a ferocious core. It is remarkable how effortlessly Molina unleashes so much music - a sonic collage of guitar, keyboard, and voice she creates with the help of two loop machines. The sound is even fuller now that she's being backed by a band for the first time.

The drummer and bassist are part of the tour in support of Molina's fourth album, "Un Dia," which comes to the Brattle Theatre on Thursday. And she's beginning to see the advantages of being part of a band.

"The dynamics are more controllable when you play with more people," Molina says over a cup of Earl Gray and a pastry before the show. "Because I can just build things all of the sudden, or have more impact with certain sounds."

Molina, 47, estimates it would require more than a dozen musicians and four singers to play her songs as they are recorded - just her, the instruments, and the loop machine in her home studio in Buenos Aires - and she fears such a large band would actually give the audience a less intense experience, lacking the synergy that can occur between a few tightly focused musicians. No two performances are exactly alike anyway, she says, so she strives to create something more ephemeral and, ultimately, more true when she performs. "What I really try to do is to keep the spirit of the songs," she says. "Some things on the record are things that I don't know how I did. Maybe a better musician would just repeat it exactly. But sometimes I can't. Sometimes it's a combination of a late finger, and another one that was ahead."

Molina didn't record "Un Dia," which follows three critically lauded releases - her 2003 debut, "Segundo"; 2004's "Tres Cosas"; and 2006's "Son" - with the idea of performing the songs with a band. Rather, she approached the songwriting process just as she has all her music since giving up a career as a television star to pursue her first love. She worked on the material slowly, over time, letting ideas blossom and mature. "Some songs grow," she says. "Some songs die. You need to let them go for a bit."

Once it came time to tour, though, she decided she wanted to do something different and invited two musicians to join her.

As a songwriter, Molina is both a practical craftsman and an openhearted dreamer. For longtime fan Andy Cabic of San Francisco-based indie rock band Vetiver, which often swapped songs with Molina when they toured Europe in 2007, it is this mix of intelligence and emotion that gives her songs power. "She has it all," he says by phone amid preparations for a European tour. "I know that she is very conscious of the rationale and reason behind her approach. But when you're in the middle of hearing it all, it's very fluid and full of feeling."

Molina's songs come to fruition in a deeply personal way. And although she is thrilled to be playing shows with other musicians, she does not expect to bring collaborators into her songwriting and recording process anytime soon. "It's better in the way that I have no witnesses, so I am totally free," she says. "I don't avoid doing things that I could regret, because there's no one there. And, if I don't like them, I just get rid of them, and no one will know, ever, about them."

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Drum roll please: I've dared to begin my second novel after eight years spent working on, and obsessing over, my as-yet-unpublished first book "Because the Night." The fresh start is exhilarating and scary; I'd imagine it feels something akin to dating during a trial separation. I can't quite let go of the potential of the primary attachment, and yet, the new possibilities are starting to seem pretty enticing, especially following such a long season of frustrated desire. I workshopped the first 30-odd pages in my novel class tonight. What could be better than being compared to "Beautiful Girls," one of my favorite films, ever? "We all want something beautiful." Indeed.

But distractions abound. In the immortal words of my main man Marc Bolan, "I try to write my novel, but all I do is play..." Yes, that was me at Tom and Lucinda's absolutely dynamite housewarming/Valentine's soiree, doing the voices from my talking Nanny doll with Fran Drescher (in my defense, have you ever met someone whose doll you own?) -- "Remember, the bigger the hair, the smaller the hips look." So true. And she is truly lovely.

Speaking of Beautiful Girls, I just caught Greg doing a solo acoustic set at the Troubadour with Mark Lanegan. It was nice to see him looking and sounding so well. "If I Were Going" -- I'm 16 again. Mark's voice -- total wow. Their cover of "I Get a Kick Out of You" -- maybe a little, you know, but the kick they got out of it? Infectious.

Charlie Louvin at Spaceland, the night the lights went out in Silverlake. 81-years-old, still smoking his Winstons and charming the hell out of everyone in sight. What a dynamo. It does not get more real deal than his story of playing in a Kentucky parking lot for some miners who'd just gotten off the night shift and wouldn't take no for an answer. He and Lucinda killed the two songs they sang together. Magic.

My newest favoritest band, Plants and Animals, playing at the Canadian Consulate as part of the Grammy festivities. Look for Laurel and I on CBC (Canadian national television), as they enlisted her to do a comedy bit as we came in the door. There are few bands that would inspire me to brave an hour of traffic for a three-song set. Plants and Animals is that band. "Bye Bye Bye" is as sublime as anything by Queen. Their percussion pineapple is sweet. They sang. We danced. The Canadians get their pride on. No poutine, though. Speaking of, remember the time I wrote a travel article about Quebec for The Boston Globe that said I ate peasant? Yes, as in poor people.

By Sarah Tomlinson,
Globe Correspondent / January 23, 2009

LOS ANGELES - It was hard to tell who was having more fun at Longwave's show at the Troubadour in December - the fans or the band. The indie rockers, decked out in the vintage boots and fitted black attire of their hip Brooklyn neighborhood, were playing moody, symphonic music more appropriate for breaking up than rocking out, but they were decidedly lighthearted. During one swooning number from the band's fourth album, "Secrets Are Sinister," singer/guitarist Steve Schiltz paused to playfully tap one of drummer Jason Molina's cymbals with his finger before unleashing a fierce guitar solo. The band's high spirits were contagious, and the crowd cheered mightily and sang along to old favorites, even playing air drums from time to time.

It was a remarkably warm welcome for Longwave's first LA show in five years, especially heartening for a band that didn't know for a while if it would ever perform again. On a morale-crushing night in December 2005, Longwave played to a meager audience at the Middle East Downstairs after learning RCA Records had dropped them. "The last show in Boston was the real nail in the coffin there for a second," says Schiltz, whose unruly curls give him a boyish air, sitting with his bandmates in an unassuming conference room the night before their Los Angeles show. "That show was tough for us, and I remember thinking, '. . . This is just the end of it.' "

But, as sometimes happens, this downturn didn't kill the band; it actually made it stronger. At the Troubadour, the mop-topped quartet played harder, faster, and louder than they did during more elegiac shows of the past. It was as if they'd been liberated by the time when they were lucky to play for a handful of people at shows booked mostly to pay down their debt. When the band did dip into old material, including the ballad "Wake Me When It's Over" from its 2003 major label debut, "The Strangest Things," it roughed up the songs' refined beauty.

This brashness has carried over from the new, more raw "Secrets Are Sinister," released in November. The band recorded the album on its own with producer Peter Katis (Interpol), with production costs covered by the band's longtime publisher, Chrysalis Music Publishing, before finding a label to release it. When it came time to find a label, Longwave again chose to work with a friend, who convinced the group to sign with the newly formed label Original Signal Recordings (Butch Walker, the Bronx ). The band returned to the studio with a fresh sense of possibility. "We were all excited about trying something else," Schiltz says, citing production details such as adding hand claps or changing out the bass strings.

Each band member brought ideas inspired by projects he had worked on during Longwave's downtime. Schiltz had the chance to experiment with a grittier, more flamboyant guitar style while backing Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. during solo tours. Founding guitarist Shannon Ferguson and drummer Molina developed a side project, Falcon, whose minimal sound seems to have contributed to Longwave's new airier feel. New bassist Morgan King was recruited from Brooklyn-based indie rock band Robbers on High Street, bringing a muscular but melodic bass style.

For all the fresh influences, Longwave's new album still maintains the lush romanticism the band has always favored. Longtime fan Damian Kulash of Los Angeles-based OK Go, which plays the Paradise on March 12 before taking Longwave out as openers on a string of East Coast dates, says Longwave's deeply felt music sets the band apart. "The type of music they do would have been really cool in the early '90s, but was not particularly cool when they started doing it," says Kulash by phone during a break from recording a new record. "It seems to me like it fits again in some way - actually beautiful music, and music with a soul, as opposed to music with a snarl or a grimace."

Having learned the hard way that major label support and years of touring don't guarantee success in an increasingly mercurial music world, the band is keeping its expectations low. But its members are clearly thrilled to be a band again. "We decided that it was still fun playing together," says Schiltz. "At that point, it was like, 'Well, what do you do next but make another record?' That's what bands do."

© Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

When the cherry cigar-smoking security guard outside the Legion Hall in Highland Park on Friday night asked if I had ID, I momentarily feared I was going to be deemed too old for the lo fi debauch inside. But the show, which I was invited to by my amazing writerly friend Jen Sincero of "Don't Sleep with Your Drummer" fame (www.jensincero.com), was a fundraiser for an Internet radio site called Kill Radio, so it was a good mixed crowd (i.e. I clearly wasn't the only one feeling nostalgic). It's not that I miss the faint smell of mildew or the crummy house sound, but the sense of possibility, that those in attendance might have stumbled upon a little bit of magic.

In this case, the something special was being thrown down by a local garage rock quartet called Spider Problem. Raw, raucous, and helmed by a frontwoman who actually managed to make rock seem dangerous again, the band played the kind of set that's truly refreshing -- funny, dirty and dangerous. Now that yoga is the new Starbucks, her waterfall back bends were less spectacular than they might have once been (even that most sexy and serpentine of frontmen, Iggy Pop, would probably seem stiff and stilted after the number of people I've seen doing yoga at parties; well, this is California), but the overall effect was delightfully demented as she rambled nonsense between songs, wrung a symphony of emotion from her one mighty note, and repeatedly dropped, slid and crumbled to the ground, often taking her guitar player with her.

Spider Problem (http://www.myspace.com/spiderproblem). Wow. Playing at a house party near you.

For years, I asked the questions during interviews with everyone from Deepak Chopra to Miley Cyrus. Plus, I've had the thrill of speaking with so many musical heroes -- Joan Armatrading (my first concert, ever, in Augusta, Maine, and the best soundtrack for a bitter divorce, according to an informal survey of my friends' moms), Conor Oberst and Chan Marshall (who sang me a bit of the Bob Dylan song that inspired my name).

So it was a little unnerving to sit on the other side of the tape recorder for once. Luckily, my colleague Mark Shanahan from The Boston Globe went easy on me -- he was charming and exceedingly generous with his time when he put together a piece about me and Tila, which ran in his column "Names and Faces" on 12/18. But he still kept me on high alert, quickly cutting to the juicy questions (see below), even though I told him it would be indiscreet to "write and tell." He pulled the gem about my mom right from this blog o' mine. Who says that said mom is my only reader? What says she gets her own show (day-in-the-life-of-a-small-town-librarian) before me (author of two TV pilots)? As long as she lets me be an intern.

A shot of Tequila
Would you take dating advice from Tila Tequila (above)? Didn't think so. But it's great that the MySpace star and host of MTV's "A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila" has written a book. It's even better that Tequila's tome is ghost written by Sarah Tomlinson, a former Boston freelancer whose work regularly appeared in the Globe and the Phoenix, among other publications. "No, I did not sleep with her," Tomlinson said of her sexually ambiguous subject. "But she did teach me how to flirt - it's all in the eyes. . . . You have to use your eyes." Called "Hooking Up With Tila Tequila," the book includes revealing pictures and plenty of bawdy language. "My mom's a librarian in Bremen, Maine," said Tomlinson. "But she can't stock it because it's too racy."