Busy Being Free: A Lifelong Romantic is Seduced by Solitude

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As well as being elegantly written, Busy Being Free is eminently readable - a treasure trove of profound insights into love, lust and female desire. -- Emma Lee Potter * DAILY MIRROR * 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 * Saint Tropez from ShanghaiThere is a palpable tension between love and freedom in the cactus tree. The "love concept" of the 70's play a crucial role in how Joni wrote the lyrics through the eyes of her youth. Freedom was in that period was an ultimate break-off from all 9-5 job, wealth acquisitions, societal behaviors, love of country traditions and conventions. I am surprised that a "man of faith" is not included in one verse cause that would have sum-up the "system". The woman is frankly searching for True love in others and herself. In the late 60's and early 70's the Answer to genuine/true and lasting love came in the form of the Jesus' movement. Conversely, I have seen and met many women in their 40's living up to their freedom in their youth and ending up desperately lonely and looking for True love to fill their empty hearts. The paradox is that True love is ultimately bonding but set us free. We can only assume that the woman found it otherwise the song doesn't offer any solution to her emptiness and search for love and freedom. I've really never read about sex and been so sharply reminded about how much it is tied up with the fundamentals of being a woman' David Meyer from the University of Michigan published a study recently that showed that switching what you’re doing mid-task increases the time it takes you to finish both tasks by 25%,” Bradberry wrote.

Busy Being Free by Emma Forrest | Hachette UK Busy Being Free by Emma Forrest | Hachette UK

Dance-in-the-living-room romantic... She can sigh a song without making it flimsy, declare sentiment without weighing it down. Jaunty numbers like her now-familiar jazz rendition of 'The Surrey With The Fringe On Top' (performed with a smile in the vocal) are also included. 'Hurry On Down' adds Warren Vache's cheeky cornet to superb effect." ~ Alix Cohen, Broadway World 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. Lauded by everyone from Nigella Lawson to Lisa Taddeo, the title of Busy Being Free is taken from the song Cactus Tree by Joni Mitchell, in which Mitchell sings about an unnamed woman’s need for freedom and resistance to romantic commitment. In every case, the woman “thinks she loves them all” but ultimately is always “too busy being free.” – a notion which ties in beautifully with the melodies of Busy Being Free. 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 FasanoTo describe a memoir as solipsistic may seem redundant, but Busy Being Free is solipsistic in the best way: that is to say, Forrest is hyper-aware that she is telling her own story. She does not attempt to extrapolate universal meanings or turn her hard-won insights into lessons for other women in similar situations, as many such books often do. “Getting to middle age has been a process of learning, knowing, believing,” she writes. “Now what? Having finished that painstaking excavation, what do you use the next half of your life for?” A look at what it is to be a woman, and what it is to define oneself outside of the framework so often ascribed to women – Busy Being Free is an absorbing account of being alone, and one you’ll want to read in a single, insatiable, sitting. Busy Being Free Summary La Fasano is an excellent interpreter, as much at ease with jazz as with music having cabaret roots... the perfect interpretation of Arlen’s songs with a sophisticated voice ..."

Busy Being Free by Emma Forrest review - The Guardian

Barbara Fasano breezes up onto the stage, like a gust of fresh air ... Ms. Fasano doesn't only provide knowledgable and skilled musical storytelling,she lends an air of levity, playfulness, and joy ... a treat to behold, and to hear." ~ Stephen Mosher, Broadway World Barbara’s many New York headline engagement include concert appearances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center’s American Songbook at the Appel Room, Rose Hall, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, New York Festival of Song, Town Hall and New York’s 92nd Street Y’s Lyrics and Lyricists series. Starring engagements in cabaret and nightclubs include Birdland, Jazz at Kitano, The Algonquin, Feinstein’s, The Carlyle, Iridium, 54 Below, Café Sabarsky, the Palace in Stamford, CT, Night Town in Cleveland, Live at Zedel and Pizza Express Live in London and the Royal Room at the Colony Hotel in Palm Beach. Arts centers and music festivals across the country include Saratoga Jazz Festival, Music Mountain Festival's Twilight Jazz, Kravis Center, Caramoor, Arizona Jazz Festival, Jersey Jazz, Kanbar Center, Cooperstown Music Festival, Provincetown Cabaret Festival, Sheldon Concert Hall and Jazz at The Bistro in St. Louis, Night Town in Cleveland, Prince Music Theatre, and Kerrytown Concert House. In one chapter she reflects on her worst sexual experiences, including several from her time as a precociously talented 16-year-old thrust into the adult world of newspaper journalism that would certainly qualify for #MeToo revision. “When I was a teenager, one man who – and I use my words very carefully here – had sex with me is now dead, and I know him to have been a very bad man, despite what the obituaries said.” But she goes on to say: “The interesting part is that I voluntarily kept seeing him for a few weeks.” 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, though I wonder if there is a generational aspect to this; it’s possible that younger women may not be as relaxed about, say, the blurring of professional and sexual relationships that Forrest regards as largely positive. I will start by saying that this memoir is witty and raw and for the most part feels honestly and beautifully written.

It made me laugh when she highly recommended being creative without having to worry about paying the bills. I wish. She moaned about not being able to afford to buy a place in London with a garden. Most people can’t even afford to live there period. But I tried to stay with her frame of reference and could see that coming from a huge Californian house would be a huge adjustment and I accepted her invite into her assimilation and transformation, warts and all. 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.” Having said that, there were parts of the book that I really enjoyed and that also made me reflect on my own experiences in a new light. She redeemed herself for the fact I had to keep looking up words. Busy Being Free utterly thrilled me with its exposition of loneliness, solitude, and the differences between the two. Utterly unique yet totally relatable. A book that made me think about sex and desire in completely different ways and the tender painful brutality of love. A totally intoxicating read, that fascinated me from start to end -- Abi Morgan

busy - Cambridge English Thesaurus with synonyms and examples busy - Cambridge English Thesaurus with synonyms and examples

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. 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. I’ve loved Emma Forrest since her first novel, Namedropper. This is perhaps her strongest book. Her writing has deepened and certain lines grabbed my heart. Still, I didn’t give it 5 stars because the ending seemed rushed to be tidied with a nice bow. And her ex-husband was straight up abusive at points but those behaviors are sort of described as just personality quirks. I don’t know if that’s how it was edited or if Emma has blinders about that. Still, I really loved reading Emma’s honest, messy, beautiful thoughts on motherhood, aging, sex and more. For a memoir that is meant to show the freedom she gained by being alone, I don’t understand why it was essentially just a list of every single interaction she’s ever had with a man, most of which are romanticised. Especially frustrating is that there’s no growth in this respect- she decides to be celibate for five years, and then needs her ex-husband to draw her out of her obsession with her new boy toy once she’s ready to date again. Plus there’s a weird focus on sex (seeing the moon while you shower turns you on? Hearing a new song or writing new material makes you rip off your pants? Seriously?) which feels a bit forced and over the top. 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.

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Compelling, mystical, deeply moving, darkly funny. Busy Being Free is a poetic, incisive, uncensored study of female solitude. I adored it. * Dolly Alderton * Immediately after her divorce, she recalls, she went on a date with a man who was wearing a T-shirt of “the wrong fabric”, the type that “would not fall into the right-shaped heap on the bedroom floor were he to remove it”, and so of course (of course!) she understands her daughter’s disappointment at a party cake that she believes to be chocolate flavoured, but that is in fact Sachertorte – “a grown-up cake for a grown-up party – not especially sweet, no buttercream inside, just bitter marmalade”. Neither episode illuminates anything about the other.