Interview with Rebecca Loudon [by Reb Livingston]

I can’t recall ever having a dream about Rebecca Loudon. That’s because we’re both Rebeccas and there can be only one. If she appeared in my dreamscape, my entire psyche would likely collapse. It would like going back or forward in time and running into yourself – you’d disrupt the entire space/time continuum or some shit like that. Did I tell you that Rebecca Loudon’s favorite movie is Donnie Darko? That’s my favorite movie. One time many years ago when I was totally drunk I went to a midnight showing of Donnie Darko and yelled out all the lines. People wanted to fight me. Now you’re starting to understand why it is against the laws of physics and nature for Rebecca Loudon to appear in my dreams.

Rebecca Loudon lives and writes in Seattle. She is the author of Tarantella and Radish King, from Ravenna Books, and Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home, from No Tell Books. Her third collection, Cadaver Dogs, is forthcoming from No Tell Books. She is the founder and teacher of two writing workshops, The Wallingford Irregulars, which is in its 9th year, and The Foundry, which is 2 years old. She wrote the libretti for Bone Island Suite, a 5 part song cycle for soprano and orchestra which received its premiere with Philharmonia Northwest in April 2006, Yangshuo Quay for chamber choir and clarinet obbligato, and Other Voices, for choir and chamber orchestra. She is currently writing the libretto for an opera, Red Queen. She is a violinist with Philharmonia Northwest Chamber Orchestra, and teaches violin lessons to children.

Reb: In your chapbook, Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home, you didn't "imagine" what the famous aviator might have said, you literally channeled her. She spoke to you and you wrote down what she said. How do you explain this to the simple folk?

Rebecca: I am not, by nature, a woo-woo type of woman. I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny, my horoscope, crossing over, numerology, low fat mayonnaise or Walt Disney. My poems don’t “come” to me, they don’t float down from a lofty place in the heavens, and I don’t gleefully skip through meadows plucking the stanzas in bouquets like Stevie Nicks. Writing Navigate was a different type of experience for me.

I have just returned from a visit to my landlord--the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with. I was living in a frozen house in the dead of winter with no heat because my landlord refused to fix my broken furnace. I spent hours wrapped in blankets by my fireplace sucking smoke into my lungs and shivering. In the mornings I dressed in eleven sweaters and five pair of socks and wool pants and drove to my glamorous job. As always, I had my trusty notebook by my side, and by the second week of no heat and shivering, I began to hear Amelia Earhart’s voice in my head. She seemed to favor the morning commute in which to speak which was dangerous, but who am I to question A VOICE FROM BEYOND? I opened my notebook and simply took dictation as I drove. After 2 weeks, Amelia shut up. She was there and then she was gone. During this time period I discovered I had a jolly strong case of pneumonia and had been suffering fevers for quite some time. High fevers. I started hacking rust up from my lungs. I could barely walk. My eyes crossed and I slept 30 or 40 hours a night or not at all. But I had some interesting notes that were almost legible, which finally revealed a partial imagined history of Amelia Earhart and her little Electra. Yes, it’s odd when crazy stuff happens to sane, down to earth women like me, but I’d also like to add in my defense that I’ve been secretly married to the dead composer Robert Schumann since 1854 and we have a solid completely normal relationship. And that I had nothing to do with the fact that when they opened Schumann’s coffin to study his brain his head was missing.

Reb: You're a vegetarian yet you wrote a book called Cadaver Dogs. WTF? Are you being political? Are you judging me cause I eat steak?

Rebecca: Do you eat puppies? I won’t judge you for eating steak but if you eat puppies, we may have to agree to disagree. People are frequently surprised and somewhat disappointed when they find that Cadaver Dogs is not a book of dead dog poems. Cadaver dogs are police dogs trained to detect human remains. On the surface, Cadaver Dogs consists of poems exploring the way animals, all animals, not just our family pets, affect our lives. If you peel away a few layers, you may or may not discover that Cadaver Dogs is a series of poems about the perils of being a child in a dangerous world. I recently told my therapist that I liked animals better than people. She said she wasn’t surprised, so I fired her. But the truth is, when I was a child, my dog never told me that I have trust issues. He just put his head on my lap and slobbered. And the cats that live with me now love every single poem I write and never judge the way I dress.

Reb: When are you going to ditch poetry and write something people want to read?

Rebecca: As soon as Jesus returns and takes me to either heaven or Post Falls, Idaho in his 1968 red Impala SS featuring gills on the fenders in front of the wheel openings, black and red leather interior and a 425 hp engine, I’m going to write about what really happened during that whole walking on the water incident.

Comments

[charlax]

Entry for April 17, 2008
ONE44
CharlaXFabels
Ask me Why?
You ask why?
The answer is because.
You ask why I follow this Jesus.
Why I love Him the way I do?
When the world's turned away from His teachings
and the people who serve Him are few.
Define service you, tell me just what you expected me to do.
It's not the rewards I'm after
Or gifts that I hope to receive
It's the Presence that calls for commitment
It's the Spirit I trust and believe.
Works all are good and rewards he will give but don't trust in your own good for salvations from him. The Lord doesn't shelter His faithful
Or spare them all suffering and pain;
Like everyone else I have burdens,
And walk through my share of rain. The pain we all have is absorbed in his side where the spear thrust poured out his water and blood. Yet He gives me a plan and a purpose,
And that joy only Christians have known,
I never know what comes tomorrow,
But I do know I'm never alone. He says that he dwells within us and as long as we follow him he keeps us. It's the love always there when you need it;
It's the words that redeem and inspire,
It's the longing to ever be with Him
That burns in my heart like a fire. The fire in the ashes of a Phoenix reborn the central focus of us all should be the Cross.
So you ask why I love my Lord Jesus.
Well, friend, that's so easy to see
but the one thing that fills me with wonder is
Why Jesus loved someone like you and me. The wonder is that he came and he DID it at all the people eye meet the people that fall would not wait one hour with someone to come. You cannot judge GOD by the people he made some are goats some are bad some are good they are sheep.
Author CharlaX

[Rebecca Loudon]

You're definitely going to Post Falls, Idaho.

[Collin Kelley]

A woo-woo type of woman...

Now that's a book title.

[Poppy]

dear Rebecca,
i really love your book Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home
Can you please upload an online readable version for me? and other readers?
i really like your work but im not aloud to buy books off the internet and i cant find it in a book store!
please get back to me on ellierose1998@hotmail.com
from
Poppy, 13

[Rebecca Loudon]

Dear Poppy,

Your e-mail absolutely made my day. I'm sorry I can't upload an online readable version, but I hope the book will still be around when you are able to buy books online. Until then, I wish you the very very best and if you're writing I hope you keep going forward with it. It's hard work but well worth it. And read everything you can. You're certainly on the right track.

Warm regards,
Rebecca Loudon

[Geoff Leone]

Feb. 9, 2010
Copenhagen

Whom is this?

I have been in a bubble the last five years but wish to celebrate RL. I don't recall anything about our correspondence over the years but hope it didn't phase her. The story of her dog eat dog life before the first book was nothing like mine.

Really don't enjoy biting another dog's tail.

Honest,

Geoff Leone

[Kathy White(Benham)]

Are you the Rebeca that used to work at the Red Dot Corp.