Busy Being Free: A Lifelong Romantic is Seduced by Solitude

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She does not attempt to extrapolate universal meanings or turn her hard-won insights into lessons for other women Steven Suskin of PLAYBILL raves, "The good news today is that we now have another Arlen collection that can be played alongside Harold's. Fasano brings us Arlen treasures both familiar and non ... praise the band, and the singer, and thank them for a bluesy, jazzy, swinging album of Arlen." At times I laughed out loud but I also nearly gave up on the book two or three times because the name dropping and superfluous vocabulary became irritating. So many of you have been so generous during these past 2 years. As we re-emerge from this COVID crisis, it's still tough days for all of us ... including performers. If you'd like to buy us a drink at the bar, GO HERE. photo: Jeff Fasano The Hungover Games by Sophie Heawood is one of the only books I have allowed myself to re-read in recent years. A hilarious memoir based between London and LA, such is my obsession with it that I will read anything and everything that Heawood subsequently recommends. And so it was that when she recently shared a picture of Busy Being Free by Emma Forrest on its publication day, I soon after bought it, and moved it to the top of my ever-growing pile of books I Want To Finish Before The Year Is Out.

Busy Being Free - PressReader Busy Being Free - PressReader

Barbara is a native New Yorker, who grew up in a spirited Italian Catholic household – excellent preparation for a life in show business! From her early childhood, music and stories were a way of life. Her mother made the Sunday lasagna while listening to Italian American singers like Jerry Vale on the radio. Her father listened to Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Bing Crosby and sang along in a joyful baritone, teaching Barbara many of his favorite songs. From the early Streisand albums, she learned the music of her favorite composer, Harold Arlen, and as a teenager learned to play the guitar, memorizing recordings by Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell and other singer-songwriters. Combine all this with her grandparents’ stories of Neapolitan singers and vaudeville and you see how her musical identity was forged. Within her eclectic choices, what remains consistent is her ability to invest a lyric with deep emotional truth, creating virtual one-act plays out of each song. Barbara continues to amaze me. She excels in sounding as if the songs were written just for her ... such robust energy, I just had to play the replay button. There should be mention of her co-producer/pianist John di Martino. His piano support is just about the most intelligent and useful any smart and wise singer could have." ~ Dan Singer, In Tune International Mike from West Linn, OrI'm not sure that this is a fact ... more of a personal view. The lyrics here concern a woman who seems to yearn to be free and to be accomplishing that freedom. But her heart is "full and hollow, like a cactus tree". As I heard the lyrics the woman was very happy being free, going from man to man as she wished, living the free love life of the times. Being busy has somehow become a badge of honor. The prevailing notion is that if you aren’t super busy, you aren’t important or hard working,” wrote Bradberry in his post How Being Busy Makes You Unproductive. “The truth is, busyness makes you less productive.” Compelling, mystical, deeply moving, darkly funny. Busy Being Free is a poetic, incisive, uncensored study of female solitude. I adored it. * Dolly Alderton *Barbara Fasano is not just a singer, she is a persuasive storyteller. In her warm alto, supported by John di Martino's blissful arrangements and a swinging band, she is committed to telling these stories ... an exceptional ballad singer who can also swing. And sing she does. Borrowing from the tapestry of her life, she imbues truth in her delivery at every turn." ~ John Hoglund, Cabaret Scenes

Busy Being Free by Emma Forrest | Waterstones

For someone whose career has started in journalism, I didn’t ask anybody anywhere any of the most basic questions. I asked some interesting abstract ones. I think this made for good interviews and less successful life choices.” Personal productivity… is the most important one, as it centres around the time that I make to spend with my family, my friends and doing things that fulfil me as a living person,” he wrote. “I know it’s odd to look at the time you spend with your family as being productive... but by doing so, I’m mentally making it more important. I’m giving it the same weighted value that I put on being able to keep a roof over my head and food on the table. Personal productivity keeps me human and reminds me what really matters in this world."From the author of Your Voice in My Head and Royals comes a beautiful, breath-taking, unputdownable memoir about love and heartbreak, sex and celibacy, growing up and starting again. With this record, Barbara Fasano proves that she is not just a great Italian crooner, an heir to Sinatra for our time, but a jazz singer of the first rank."—David Hajdu, music critic, The New Republic Forrest is examining, with an unflinching eye and a formidable cultural frame of reference... what it means for a woman to find herself alone in her 40s and to redefine herself outside a context of marriage, motherhood and men... One of Forrest's greatest gifts as a writer - apart from her humour; like its predecessor, Busy Being Free is frequently hilarious - is her instinct for ambiguity. She writes so well about messy lives because she understands the contradictions we are all prone to... the fact that she has written about this mid life excavation with such ferocity and frankness is cause for celebration. -- Stephanie Merritt * THE OBSERVER * We’re so enamored with multitasking that we think we’re getting more done, even though our brains aren’t physically capable of this,” Bradberry wrote. “Regardless of what we might think, we are most productive when we manage our schedules enough to ensure that we can focus effectively on the task at hand.”

Busy Being Free by Emma Forrest | Waterstones Busy Being Free by Emma Forrest | Waterstones

Barbara Fasano is the real deal! A natural romantic interpreter... The beauty of the Arlen songs and the breathlessness of Fasano’s beautiful singing comes fully through. Each musical genre has examples of albums that demand repeated listening and appreciation... this is one of them!" A few years later a female roommate of mine was appalled that I thought that. To her the woman was miserable and unhappy ... hollow. We argued about this more than once. A girlfriend, at about this same time saw it both ways, as I now do.Forrest, now 45, had a hugely successful adolescence. A teenage columnist for The Sunday Times, she became a music journalist and published her first novel, Namedropper, aged 22. She went on to write more novels before leaving journalism to work as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Her 2011 memoir Your Voice in My Head detailed her experience with mental illness, suicide attempts and the death of her psychiatrist, and in part examined her relationship with the actor Colin Farrell.