The Girl Who Loved Dean Martin by: Tejaswini Apte-Rahm“

Hey pallies, likes all us Dino-holics are gonna be bountifully, beautifully blessed this very Dino-day with a swankest of swank special edition of ilovedinomartin that is potently perfecto in absolutely awesome admiration of our Dino in these closin' hours of Dino-amore month 2017.

Likes back on January 9, 2017 we shared with youse deep deep Dino-devotion that awesomely accented both youthful and international devotion to our most beloved Dino in the form of a magazine interview with Miss Tejaswini Apte-Rahm whose new short story  tomb tagged "These Circuses That Sweep Through the Landscape." Miss Tejaswini hails originallyh  from India, is a youngish scriber, and a deep devotee of our Dino.  Her beautiful book accents our Dino with one of her short stories puttin' Dino front and center: "The Girl Who Loved Dean Martin."  Youse can read our original postin'   HERE.

Well, likes through the magic of the internet Miss Apte-Rahm discovered our blog post on her work and sent us a most appreciate comment and as we communicated back and forth, Tejaswini agreed to write an exclusive post to be shared only here at ilovedinomartin.  That post follows below.  We do want to express our absolute appreciato for her not only for all the time and energy that she put into this special edition of ilovedinomartin, but also for her patience with us gettin' it into print as it arrived on our desk durin' the time we have been away from the Dino-action here.

We could go on and on with our deepest of deep delight in her efforts, but that woulda detain youse all from deeply diggin' her wise, wonderful words for your Dino-selves!  We would likes to pause a moment to  sez our THANK YOU VERY MUCH to Miss Tejaswini for her kindest of kind nod to ilovedinomartin:

"Reading that blog post by Dino Martin Peters was, for me, one of the happiest moments in my book’s journey, because this particular story is very special to me. One of the lines in that blog post really stuck in my mind – it was about ‘the international nature of Dino admiration’ – I hadn’t really thought of it that way – and then there was Danny G’s comment which observed that ‘Dino hits different chords in all of us’."

Without further adieu, we brings youse Miss Tejaswini Apte-Rahm special edition of ilovedinomartin.  Likes, btw pallies be sure to note the links found at the end of this post to be personally in communicato with her!  We for one can't wait to gets our Dino-hands on this most excellent volume amazin'ly accentin' awesome amore of our most most beloved Dino!

We remain,

Yours in Dino,

Dino Martin Peters
  

The Girl Who Loved Dean Martin by: Tejaswini Apte-Rahm“




The Girl Who Loved Dean Martin” is one of the stories in my short story collection, These Circuses That Sweep Through the Landscape (published by Aleph Book Company, India, December 2016). In the short time since the book was published, it has gotten some very good reviews – and many people have mentioned to me that of the ten stories they really liked the Dean Martin story in particular. 

I also spoke about the story in an interview with the Hindustan Times – and the next thing I knew, the Ilovedinomartin blog had discovered the interview online, and blogged about the writer in far off India who had written a short story on their favourite topic! Reading that blog post by Dino Martin Peters was, for me, one of the happiest moments in my book’s journey, because this particular story is very special to me. One of the lines in that blog post really stuck in my mind – it was about ‘the international nature of Dino admiration’ – I hadn’t really thought of it that way – and then there was Danny G’s comment which observed that ‘Dino hits different chords in all of us’.

Well, I thought I would write about the chord that Dino has struck with me, and why I wrote a story called The Girl Who Loved Dean Martin.   

The story

The story is set in London, and it’s about a girl who falls in love – true love - with Dean Martin. And she has a huge problem on her hands because when she discovers him, he has already been dead for many years. The story begins when, after her father has passed away, she is clearing out the attic. Late at night, in the clutter and dust of the attic, she discovers some old fashioned LP records and a record player. 

She plays one of the records – it happens to be a Dean Martin one. She is completely overcome by his voice and finds that the more she listens, the more hopelessly she falls in love with him. What happens next? How does she cope with this impossible love? That’s what my story sets out to explore.

The inspiration

The inspiration for the story came from a very personal experience. Often when I listened to one of my favourite singers – in particular Dean Martin – there were moments when I felt such an overwhelming admiration, that I felt I did not have the vocabulary to describe that intense emotion; I could only call it ‘love’. 

Now this intense feeling lasts only for a second or two, and then the moment passes. I got very interested in that intense, momentary experience – what should I call it, what words should I use to describe it?   And what if that experience wasn’t momentary, but sustained over a long period of time? What if it was not fan love, but real love?And so was born this story – it’s a ‘What If’ story that explores the difference between fan love and real love – and asks the question: ‘Who’s to say what the difference is?’ I leave it upto the reader to reach his or her own conclusion on what kind of love it is – I don’t push for a particular interpretation. But as the writer, the only way for me to write this story, was to
believe my character when she says it is true love, and to listen to her voice describing her experience of living with this impossible love. 

Why Dean?

So often people have asked me why I chose to write about Dean Martin – well, there are two reasons. First of all, it had to be a singer from a past era, because I wanted to write a story about a girl whose love ignores the limitations of time.

Secondly, it had to be Dean Martin because – well, it was just so natural to write about a singer I love. 

Here is an extract from the story, when the girl listens to Dean Martin for the first time, late at night in the attic: 

“A loud crackling breaks through the dust and then melts into a deep voice, mellow like wood-smoked honey, gentle and heart-breaking as lips against skin… It is big band music riding the cracked grooves of the disc, harsh trumpets, scratchy violins and the tippity-tap of a light cymbal swinging the tune along deftly. My heart stills; I listen closely, straining to swallow each note of the masculine voice into my lungs and stomach.”

And then a few minutes later, as she is overwhelmed by his voice: 

“…it is a stronger emotion than anything I have felt prior to this night of fine dust and dank attic; sitting on the wooden floor I am lifted up by the crackling, warped notes sung fifty years ago and my soul is in danger of being swept up and out through that murky window slanting towards the violet-black sky; I want to step off the roof and float and flail above the abyss, to twirl off into a frenzied dance, to sink to the floor and sob with my face in the rough grained planks, to have the life snuffed out of me, to go up in a smudge of smoke and merge into that languorous, persuasive voice that lazily sways the very air.”

Now this is strong stuff indeed, in the way of emotions. And the only way to write it, was to channel my own emotions towards Dean Martin’s voice, and then take it up several notches higher to create those dramatic moments of first discovering his voice in the attic. 

So what does my character do next? She starts reading as much as she can about Dean, collects his music, dreams of going to the Abruzzo coast in Italy because she discovers that his ancestors came from there. And she grapples with being misunderstood and lonely because of her strange love. 

Her female colleagues at the office simply can’t understand why she is single: “They are curious, so curious, about why I have no man; of course, they wouldn’t understand if I said I do. I do not tell them that I am indeed in love, that I content myself with listening to his tones and timbres, that he has stolen my soul ever so stealthily via my ear canal, that it is the middle ear, cochlea and tympanum that have become the organs of love.” Perhaps I should stop there to avoid any spoilers as to what happens next! 

Dean and me 

Since I love Dean Martin’s voice myself (though not to the same extreme as the character in my story), the experience of writing the story was joyful as well as emotionally draining. I listened to a lot of Dean while writing and editing. At times I got so caught up in the dilemma  of my main character that I would get a little tearful because her one true love was so unattainable! 

I also enjoyed doing some research into Dean Martin’s life – since my character is an expert on Dino, I had to try and be one too! In particular I really enjoyed reading Dean and Me: A Love Story by Jerry Lewis and James Kaplan, and Memories Are Made of This by his daughter Deana Martin. I found both books very moving, and a great read – not just for the purposes of thinking about my story, but also as a Dino fan.

Often Dean is the first soundtrack of my day, and it’s always a beautiful start to the morning – his voice makes the start of the day feel soothing and yet so full of possibilities. My husband is not a Dino fan and doesn’t necessarily understand my craze for his voice, but he nevertheless ends up listening to Dean again and again, because of me. And when I was away for a few weeks to promote my new book, he also ended up listening to Dean – because, he said, it made it seem as if I was still at home! For the launch of my short story collection a couple of months ago, he surprised me with a lovely present: a 10-CD box collection of Dean Martin’s songs. And inside he wrote: “To the girl who loves Dean Martin”. Needless to say, this beautiful gift brought a special kind of love to a very special occasion.*  *  *

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading about my journey with this story - please do connect with me through my website or Facebook page! The story collection, These Circuses That Sweep Through the Landscape, is available on Amazon.com 



Website: www.tejaswiniapterahm.com     
  Facebook: www.facebook.com/tejaswiniapterahm

Available on Amazon USA: http://amzn.to/2jv9TZe

And Amazon India: http://amzn.to/2giUwjH 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tejaswini_Apte  


Instagram: www.instagram.com/tejaswini_apte_rahm/