One of my favorite songs is “April, Come She Will” by Simon and Garfunkel, a sweet and deceptively simple tune on the surface, but it actually explores the deeper pain of a brief romance over the span of a few months. Once April—my birth month—rolls around, the first two lines become an on-and-off earworm for the full 30 days.
April, come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain
Then every subsequent month until September, I always get that month’s earworm:
May, she will stay
Resting in my arms again
June, she’ll change her tune
In restless walks she’ll prowl the night
July, she will fly
And give no warning to her flight
And here we are at August’s earworm, which doesn’t bode well if you take it too literally:
August, die she must
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold
And I’m not having any of that energy this August, thanks. I have three anniversary milestones this month, with two falling on the same day, August 5th. The first one is the 25th Anniversary of the inspo backstory for The Sound of Settling. But since the rockstar (who stalked me on his website and then called me out by name from the stage at a secret club show years before social media) doesn’t care, why should I? His silence is just as validating as the real answers I got from people who know him, so he knows how to find me whenever he’s ready to quit looking like a dick. Because EVERYONE now thinks he’s a dick. Maybe I’ll consider re-adding all of his music that I deleted from my phone if that ever happens, but until everyone gets hip to the fact that “Times Like These” is just a rewrite of “Heroes,” I’m focusing on my story being MINE. He gets the last two lines of the song, btw.
September, I remember
A love once new has now grown old
Grohl, bye.
The second August 5th anniversary is infinitely more meaningful. Six years ago, I adopted my sweet baby Maxine Rodham Pelosi Dublin from a neighbor’s cat’s litter. Maxi had violet eyes like Elizabeth Taylor and brought feisty female cat energy into my quiet lockdown apartment. I took Duke in a month later because no one wanted him, but for all of August 2020, it was just my baby Max and me.
She deserves her own tribute on Thursday, and she'll get it, because she’s now the Alpha around here. Duke is even like, “Just do whatever she wants!”
And this brings us to the most newsworthy milestone (although my stubborn Taurus brain contends that the music press would see that rock star 25th Anniversary secret show thing as something worth covering, but hey, when have I ever been right about something), the 11th anniversary of getting blocked by Trump on Twitter, where I’m still blocked, along with his Instagram.
A quick Google search indicates that the traditional 11th anniversary gift is steel, no joke! So guess what I want for my anniversary?
Yeah, I know I won’t get exactly what I want, but I should at least have some cake that day, right?
Now, let’s look at the positive things I can take into August, like this post giving me props for writing the truth instead of getting in trouble for it.
I know a few people who might argue with the take that there should be “more Tara Dublins in the world” when I’m more than enough already, but the point is that MY MIND IS WORTH MULTIMILLIONS. Outlets like MSN and SmartNews have picked up several of my recent pieces for Raw Story, and the feedback has been fantastic.
And then there are the raves for my rock and roll love story, and seriously, how many more AI book scandals do there need to be in the publishing industry before they notice me?
SO SILLY! Usually silly is good, and I love silly stuff, but there’s nothing fun about reading about yet another writer getting signed, then squandering their deal because they used AI.
My book is the ultimate meta-fanfiction, heavy on the fiction, and I wrote it in 2020 to occupy my time because I wasn’t going to take up knitting. Some of what I wrote in The Sound of Settling is indeed based on things I know about famous people, or heard them say, and all of the Easter eggs are connected to the real band that inspired my fictitious one. I know there’s great commercial potential for it, and it’s just a matter of time (EASTER EGG ALERT) before I get that deal.
Aside from TSOS and the sequel I wrote based solely on reader demand, I have one hell of a memoir in me. The stories I can tell about MAGA alone could be its own book, as could the tales about my time at the University of Georgia in the early 90s. Then there are the weird celeb encounters that have made me into my own game of Six Degrees of Separation, along with the radio gig and the decade of toiling in the service industry until the pandemic locked everything down and I finally started getting paid to write about politics online.
I named this Substack for all of those reasons and more, so this August, what needs to die is the Struggle Cycle of trying to land that deal and just land it already.
August, TRY SHE MUST, because I’ve got a hunger twisting my stomach into knots, and nothing falls into anyone’s lap anymore.
One of my favorite albums when I was young. So many classic songs. Good luck with all you do.