Category : Friends
I try to overcome my disability
I’m looking for a magic potion … life is unfair, life is unfair!
My goal is to over come my anxiety
I need to escape confusion, to avoid the wrong perception
Please listen to my song, my new creation, I try to make connection
I feel bitter and unhappy, my life is a calamity…
I just resent the disappointment, but I’m not unlike you, I’m not unlike you
If only I could throw away my disability
Now I must start from scratch, I must forget my past and think about my future
Dreams always come true at last
– Joelle Dieux,”Life is Unfair”
Imagine two women, huddled in the back of the number 24 bus from Comte d’Urgell to Parc Güell, one of the Gaudi treasures in the Barcelona metro area, huddled and in intense conversation, finding common ground in breathless Spanish over our personal healthcare exiles.
That describes me and Joelle after we met at a Spanish language school in 2015 in Barcelona, Spain. It turned out we’d both been ostracized by our families due to our health issues, all of which were beyond our control…or even our asking.
Joelle and I partook of several of the school’s extracurricular events and trips and have kept in touch ever since via email and occasional post. As time moved forward, we discovered we both shared a love of songwriting and all things creative…and in keeping things generally positive, but always real.
Joelle’s rap song, “Life Is Unfair,” her first song in English, tells it exactly how it is. Not how some corporatocrat selling books on positive affirmations to the proles would tell it, but from the gut of her own experiences of living the half-life and havoc of illness and disability. Her rhymes are great, and as I well know, the only real therapy is in keeping it real, and this song does just that.
[This is a post dedicated to my Friends doing great creative work. Life would be nothing without them! Enjoy, Alison]
After Hurricane Katrina destroys her city, an unlikely heroine turns to art and revenge to survive. A failed hooker, magician’s assistant, hotel maid and ice cream truck driver, Katrina Lalande comes barreling back in her old red Cadillac to haunt the abusive husband who thought he’d finished her off during the storm. Bent on revenge but determined to find hope in the wreckage, she remembers her past life as Vincent van Gogh as she paints murals on flood-damaged homes, trying to plug the leaks in her city and her heart.
Kelly has been a lifelong friend, without whom I would have surely gone (far more) insane long before now. She is also, hands down, the best writer I’ve ever read. Her tales are deliciously entertaining and provide an example of the top-notch quality I strive for when writing songs, with 25,000 books sold independently to prove it.
Her stories feature the desperate, the accomplished, the vengeful, the artistic, the mysterious and the erotic, and readers should be warned: Kelly’s literary voice is as singular as her DNA.
I still remember the time at CB West High School, where a very misguided teacher thought that Kelly’s writing was TOO good – that it must have been plagiarized. But, to his chagrin, she was – and is – that good.
You can choose to either be threatened by such talent, or you can lay back, curl up under a warm blanket, and enjoy what she has on offer. My personal favorite: What Remained of Katrina (yes, that is the book’s summary at the top of this post). Queen Latifah, are you reading this one? Because I could swear this has your name written all over it…