Exhumed, Excited, Exeunt

Get out your garlic, lock up your sons, and polish your crucifixes!

I have been exhumed.

Last week I received an email to my business address from a music production company in London with a polite enquiry as to where vocalist X might be located.
I wrote back affirming my identity and asked how I could help. It emerged that a certain producer had been trying to track me down for some time and was very keen to book me to do a PA performance of a couple of my old hits for a ‘retro 90’s club night’ (wait? The 90’s is retro already?) and also to record some vocals on a remix. I was completely astonished – it has been literally years since I did anything like that in connection with my old band.

All very flattering.

What was slightly less flattering was when he mentioned that he didn’t suppose I got out very much these days.

OUTRAGEOUS!

Just because I am no longer a chart-topping diva nor a regular on the UK club scene any more does not mean I am not a much-sought after international performer, you know!
Why up until as recently as a year ago I was making major waves right here in America, the largest music market in the world.
I was world-famous in Stepford for my Clash-inspired rendition of “Wheels on the Bus”, and many children literally cried when I sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, although I could never work out why their parents flashed me such dirty looks..

But it is true that I haven’t performed for over a year.

I have been mostly taken up with writing this blog, and more recently with trying to write my book.
For months I was stuck on page one of my masterwork, and although I spent many brow-furrowed hours in my bed office thinking furiously about the witty, intelligent prose and the deep meaningful content I was to pour onto the page, one rarely heard more than discontented sighs, the crumple-pause-thwack of discarded scribble on A4 and the eventual guilty clicking of my departure from Word for Twitter or Facebook.
I just couldn’t focus.
Eventually I took Husband’s advice and put myself on an online course called “How to write a non-fiction book”. This was an unusual step for me.  I dislike classes, I hate being told what to do, I am highly suspicious of the internet, which is pretty funny when you think about the fact that I spend almost all of my free time on it (yes, you may comment on that irony and I will most likely not delete it unless you are exceptionally rude).
But let’s face it, I needed some help and there were not many other options.   I was quite reassured by the fact that the tutor was a professor of creative writing at Columbia University, a published author herself, not to mention a former editor at a well known New York publishing house.
Shockingly, there was homework almost instantly. I was forced to describe the outline of my book in great detail as well as the putative market.

I mumbled something about a book based on the blog, uhh, I have a cat, I like cups of tea,did she want to know what I had for breakfast, um, some people with children might like it, um, uh..

She was pleasant but ruthless.

She made it clear that she thought that the only thing that was going to sell my ‘mommy memoir’ (I’ll pause here while you fetch your sick bags at that term) was that I had been a pop star, but now I was an ordinary mother, “one we can all relate to” and that I should be drawing attention to that in each and every chapter “whilst retaining my humorous, honest and self-deprecating voice.” . She also mentioned that I might want to turn it into a ‘How-to” type of book, as these are very popular and she thought that would be very attractive to an agent or publisher in the USA.

This was all good and interesting advice. I just had a few eensy problems with it:
Firstly, I don’t usually spend a great deal of time talking about my popstar past. I find it all a bit embarrassing, to be honest. Don’t get me wrong. I loved what I did, I was very proud of my achievements and I had a great time doing it, but I did make a conscious choice to move on to pastures new. I very occasionally have a pang of missing it, but for the most part I don’t want to be back where I was – it was too stressful. When I tell people that they usually find it difficult to believe me and often imply that the best years of my life must already be over – a bit of a downer. In addition they ALWAYS google me, snicker over the promo videos and point out how different (ie older, worse hair )I look in real life. GAH!
I would happily have exploited every crazy episode of my rock-n-roll past if I thought it would get me the elusive book deal, but this brought me to my second problem:
After six years of maternal exile chez  Hotel California I was not sure I could actually remember anything about them and wasn’t entirely certain I hadn’t made it all up.

Every time I change a nappy a bit of my memory gets wiped along with the baby’s arse.

Columbia Tutor’s advice was  all very American. I could see myself heading for a title like:
Being a Mom is Just Like Being a Rock Star! How to be a # 1 Hit with your kids.

Not really the piece of literary genius that I had in mind.  Ahem.

I began to wonder if it might be a good idea to pitch the book in Britain, especially as I have a large following there (oh Columbia Tutor, you’d be so proud of the self-promotion and claiming of popularity!). Perhaps my own particular brand of humour might be better appreciated at home? Plus they wouldn’t edit the ‘u’ out.
On the downside, though, I would have a smaller chance of being chosen for Oprah’s book club. Smaller than the 1 in 1 billion chance that I had anyway. Even more than I do now as an unwritten unpublished author with a highly selective audience.

I don’t often get home to London, much less get away on my own. Last time I visited in May was the first time I’d managed to garner the escape velocity to crash through the maternal atmosphere of anxiety and guilt that surrounds leaving home for more than an afternoon’s sojourn to the shops and that took me SIX YEARS to muster. Once achieved, however, I swore I wouldn’t let so much time pass before I did it again. I’d aim for twice per year, send out a general request to the Universe to provide me with

a) a legitimate reason to come home beyond having lunch with random people I meet on Twitter and

b) the funding for said trips.

With marvellous synchronicity, it turns out the retro club night is on the very same evening as my aunt’s 60th and my grandfather’s 90th birthday party (an event I’d been hoping to attend anyway) but the club will only need me to be there at midnight and it’s just 15 minutes drive from the party. My fee will cover the flight.
I confessed earlier that I did occasionally miss my old lifestyle a tiny bit. I think this might be just enough to scratch the itch. A one-off PA for a laugh, rather than a career make/breaking event plus day in the studio where nothing is at stake and I don’t have to rush back to make supper for anyone or worry about what time I have to get up the next day – ahh. It will be like a holiday back in time but without the worry of ‘will I ever get married and have children?” looming over me.

And the book. Yes. I am fairly sure, given the serendipitous nature of things and the way it’s all going, that something interesting will happen as a result of this trip. What it will be I cannot say – new material, an epiphany, a chance meeting, who knows? But I’ve put the thought out there, and something is sure to come back.
(I doubt I’ll be sitting next to Oprah on the plane, though. I don’t think she flies economy.)

I will be in town at the end of November so I have two months to remember the words to the songs, get myself in amazing shape and reverse-age ten years.

Any tips and suggestions gratefully received.