Slow Days and Savage Gardens
I had pondered whether to write a December dispatch. Various ideas were considered, played around with, put aside for a spell. Maybe I would write an end-of-year bite wishing you all good cheer and robust health for the forthcoming year. That was my intention. It's a few days to Christmas, and nobody wants me cluttering up their email folder. I had planned to say that going forward, this newsletter will be more regular, and I’m launching a paid subscriber option (more content from me!) But last Sunday, Anne Rice died and then, on Saturday morning, I woke early to see an urgent text message from a friend.
Eve Babitz had passed away. Immediately, everything in my world changed.
If I were to name any writers who had a deep, profound impact on me, they would be amongst the first I would mention. Rice predates my infatuation with women Surrealists, starting when I was 15 or 16 and still at school. To put it mildly, I hated school — they were the most miserable years of my life. For one, I did not enjoy anything and never clicked with any of the assigned material, which meant I was considered remedial or a bit thick. During the early to mid-90s I fell headfirst into ‘The Vampire Chronicles’, escaping into worlds of gorgeous demons and their eternal lives filled with sex and death; creatures who lived and loved and mourned. It was balm to me, opening up my worlds, perceptions, and beliefs. Repeatedly, throughout the pandemic, I have thought about rereading the Chronicles, and the new year provides the perfect opportunity. Now the Vampire Queen of New Orleans has joined her coterie of beautiful eternal beings in the Savage Garden. (ps. I recommend her erotic BDSM Sleeping Beauty erotic novels, too).
As for Babitz — where do I start with Evie B? It’s so difficult to pinpoint exactly when fell in love with Eve. I want to say it was in the early 2010s, but I cannot say. The first time I read Eve's Hollywood, it was like finding the missing piece of a puzzle, something I had been seeking for my entire life. Everything she writes about Los Angeles is precisely what I felt the first time I visited the city, and why I continue to love LA the way I do. The pure JOY in her work, and of reading her work, is unparalleled. Eve was the real deal: the native Los Angeles-born writer who saw the glamour in the sleaze, the glitter in the dirt, and beauty when others saw a Wasteland.
“‘Wasteland’ is a word I don’t understand anyway because physically, surely, they couldn’t have thought it was a wasteland – it has all these citrus trees and flowers growing everywhere,” she wrote. “Culturally, LA has always been a humid jungle alive with seething LA projects that I guess people from other places can’t see. It takes a certain kind of innocence to like LA, anyway. It requires a certain plain happiness inside to be happy in LA, to choose it and be happy here.”
- Eve Babitz, Daughters of the Wasteland.
Eve was brilliant, eviscerating, and funny in a single sentence; so skilled and off the cuff she made you sit up and say, “how the fuck does she write like this?” She made it seem so easy when it is never, ever, easy. She was a marvel, a genius, the embodiment of the LA woman who propositioned Jim Morrison within three minutes of meeting him. There is so much I want to say about her, but others have done and said it much more eloquently than myself, and whatever I write here will never be enough. Words can’t and will never do justice to you what her work meant to me and the pleasure and joy of reading her work.
I never set out to be a writer. It's something I fell into, a path opened up for me one day, and I took it. It was the same as academia; Surrealism found its way to me when i needed it, and Eve's work was the same. If I could write like anyone — or should someone asks me to name my favourite writer — I will always respond 'Eve Babitz.'
In the first of these newsletters I launched in January, I briefly touched on Eve, saying I’d write about her in more depth another time. I guess now is the perfect opportunity. But then again, it always was the right time. And now, in times of uncertainty and repressed joy, I once again turn to Eve. Thank you, Evie B. For everything.
And thank you all for reading my sporadically idiosyncratic newsletter this year. Stay safe, be well, and see you in the new year.
Love Letters During A Nightmare is written by me, Sabina Stent, about things I adore, enjoy, and generally have on my mind. The main bulk of the newsletter is free, but I have launched a paid-subscriber option for 2022 that you are welcome to sign up for now or at your convenience. If you feel more comfortable subscribing on Patreon, please let me know, because that can be arranged! Should you wish to make a one-off tip, that is also very much appreciated, Thank you for reading!
Ouch, 2 women icons in a row. Death comes in 3's, as they say. Was there a 3rd around that time? You might like by post about Anne. I swear that woman visits me. Or I'm delusional. Either way is fine. ;)