extras & easter eggs
Never Ready is not a memoir. All of the characters are imaginary, and the action is fabricated. However, I did draw on my own experiences in real places to shape Henri’s story.
On this page, I point some out and celebrate them a little. The “what is real” question is always a part of the story, whether I’m reading a book, watching a movie or dance, or listening to music or lines from a play.
Every month, I will add to the clues. I also hope you will contact me with your findings.
I embellished a little describing the sculpture at St. Marks’s, but it is a real place, and a wonderful one.
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naming is very important; it creates a world.
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Mark explains this to Henri, and I agree 100%. All the names in the story have significance and some sparked weird coincidences. For example, I picked Helene as the mother’s name because it is used in French and English (not to mention others) and because it means shining light. Her beauty, humor, and intelligence shine the way the Drake family.
When that light isn’t present, the family suffers, and so Helene’s departure is the storm that sends Henri on her Wizard of Oz journey. It was kind of an uncanny coincidence that a just a few months after I wrote the story (© May 2024) the storm that hurt so many was also named Helene.
There are a million hilarious name sites out there. Check the meaning of the names of the characters you liked best and let me know what you find.
why Gilbert’s Guile?
Check out this gift from the Linda Hall Library, a fantastic entry on Gilbert, the guy I named a big dance after.
Gilbert was way ahead of his time understanding gravity, which is so important to modern dance, but he also added the beautiful idea of the earth’s soul.
To wonderful Gilbert, I added guile because I think it’s such an important concept, if a little lost in common vocabulary. I rediscovered it, you guessed it, in Of Human Bondage. Come on everyone, get your guile on and spend some time celebrating your local library.
And, dance company’s frequently have nicknames for their repertory. How could I resist Gigi, when it’s also the story of a precocious girl finding her way in the city?