Secrets of the Self – how I became a warrior by Alysse Aallyn

Dormancy –

Artists spend a lot of time trying to find and develop their unique voice. Purveyors of art want you to copy first – so they can compare it to something they already sell – and put a unique – but not TOO unique – touch on it later.

These contrasting mandates send the artist down a lot of rabbit holes with no rabbits at the end.

Before I discovered True Crime my own work annoyed me with its amorphousness. I could not figure out where my sense of doom was coming from. Everyone around me just assumed I was being fashionably angsty. You know! Modern megrims!

But then I attended the Beth Carpenter trial for capital murder in New London, CT in 2002. The guilty were paraded before us – the hitman, the girlfriend, the coked-up lawyer, the hitman’s son. Frozen in the press gallery (my husband was covering it) our eyes boggled. American law gave the story shape – defense attorneys battled right in front of us with the prosecution bar. The jury, invisible on TV, sat before us dressed as if attending sporting event. Which this was – the outcome in question right up to the end.

This was thrilling modern theatre – the view (the harbor was visible from the courthouse), the company (Press World), even the food was good – we tried a different restaurant every day (once the jury treated us to an Italian meal.)

I became an addict of Court TV, segueing to the ID channel (where I appeared on Blood Relatives in 2014.) I began reading the true crime greats of which, it turns out, there are many. A novel I had been struggling with – Model Prisoner (which could have described me) was freed into becoming Woman Into Wolf. I based Find Courtney on 2 famous cases.

LIZZIE BORDEN:
“Not I But the Moon”…

Not I but the moon

Decrees each loss of blood

You confided slyly, Besom-Breast!

I’ll crochet a horsehair head for you and

Lacework- stitch your flesh, my darling

You and Scrimshaw Pate – He

Who Must Know Better.

Hot wax outlines a new broom’s sweep in

Sacred dust: chorus of shoe-buttons popping like

Potato-eyes. Oh, I shall dine on you

My darlings, rolling you in

Pig viands, I dredge your souls in

Righteous lard. I am the sanctified enemy

Of the paper cut people:

My hymn shall rock

The laughing house.