On finding your memoir in the kitchen: dinner is served

Today on Huffington Post I'm sharing (in words) one of my seven video essays on the art of memoir. Here I'm thinking about those memoirs that begin in the kitchen and about the writers (MFK Fisher, Mary Gordon, Lavinia Greenlaw, Diana Abu-Jaber, and Chang-Rae Lee) who lead the way.

The link is here.

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The Importance of Music to Girls, and other notes on redemption

How would you paint regret? I asked, most recently, and I have been moved beyond words by the responses, not just on this blog proper, but also on Facebook, and also late two nights ago, while talking with my son, who said: "Regret is a path directed by a one-way sign; just beyond the sign is a storm."

This morning I embrace the collective wisdom and generosity of all of you. Why blog? This is why blog. Because you get so much more than you give.

Speaking of giving: Several weeks ago, I sold an historical novel, Dangerous Neighbors, to Laura Geringer, now collaborating with the extraordinarily exciting new USA presence, Egmont. Those who have known me for a long time know just what that sale meant to me: that I would live to see a very different kind of Kephart novel in the world, that I had been buoyed by the faith of an editor whose mind I wholly value, that perhaps I, more literary, always, than commercial, would still have a future with books in a world in which commercial is the gauge by which authors are most measured.

It meant, in other words, everything, and Jane Satterfield, whose brilliant memoir, Daughters of Empire, launched a few weeks ago, celebrated the news with me by sending along a book of which she had lately been speaking: The Importance of Music to Girls, by Lavinia Greenlaw.

A few days ago, in the midst of frustration over the novel for adults that I'm now writing, I took Jane's gift outside and started to read. Utter endorphin release. Near immediate calm. The sensation that passes through me when I am confident that I am reading a good book. Over the course of fifty-six taut, quirky, magical-because-they-are-quirky essays The Importance of Music traces Greenlaw's awareness of/fascination with/life-bending relationship to music. From dancing, Roethke like, on her father's shoes, to learning to dance, to studying Bowie's attitude on the Ziggy Stardust LAp cover, to playing the piano too fast or too slow, these exquisite star bursts tremble with the true stuff of life.

Or, at least, with a life I understand. For, like Greenlaw, music has always been the charge within. I, too, was a girl dancing in the basement to music turned up loud. I was the girl singing, untamed, in the car. I was the girl dancing on ice and on a stage. I was a girl because of music. Here is Greenlaw:

If we sung out of trepidation or the need for release, the experience was nonetheless one of joy, as was dancing. I danced in line with my friends and alone in front of the mirror, as a rehearsal of love. It was preparation for saying "Look at me" and "Yes, I will" and "I know how."

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