What We Sew

In the current version of my life with its inefficiencies and endless unfinished book projects, home improvements on hiatus, music in my head, itineraries and symphonic lapses... it occurred to me to attend to the small of pile of 'things for mending' I keep on a bench in the bedroom.  I am surprisingly able to thread a tiny-eyed needle and one by one I attempted to manage missing buttons, small legging holes, cloth strap repairs, unravelling sweater edges, etc.  There was something not just satisfying but 'connecting' about it.  I thought, of course, of my mother, who sewed and knit with great mastery and excellence.  She taught me-- patiently and humbly, with that sense of one woman handing down generational secrets of the sex.

My mother's sewing box-- like a kind of doctor's bag filled with threads, needles, patches, ribbons and bands... pin cushions, and most memorable of all-- the darning egg on a stick which resembled a rattle or Caribbean percussion instrument.  With this she deftly repaired holes in socks; my father had several pairs hand-knitted by mothers and in-laws during the war-- argyles and striped... woolen for warmth and insulation inside his cold paratrooper boots as he marched or jumped into surf and swamp. Why, I would ask her, do new and few and pew not rhyme with 'sew'? I am not smart, she would tell me.  You will be smarter. 

Who repairs socks these days?  My son often disposes of them after sports; I used to buy them in huge packs of a dozen.  I don't have a 'darner'.  My mother was given an old Singer machine-- one of the ones with a kind of foot treadle.  She never got the hang of it, but preferred to hem, baste and hand-backstitch in what I can only recall as something approaching perfection.  Those nights by her side-- with my girls' painted wicker basket and the colored spools-- well, they felt so 19th century, in a good way.  And it is not coincidence that my recent sewing evening was close to Mother's Day. I felt her presence more strongly than usual, as though she was approving of my feminine task, and the metaphorical resonance of a needle and thread, like a kind of penance.

Recently the discontinuation of the penny was announced; like many things these days, more trouble than worth.  We had our little banks as children; mine was a kind of ceramic doll-head-- very 19th century, with the porcelain hair done up in a bun, the coin slot in the back, and the topknot itself a pin cushion.  So my bank had a duel use.  Sometime in the 70's I went to my mother's house and retrieved and dumped the bank; they were all wheat pennies... quite old... I have them still, in a box here... waiting to be devalued, I suppose.

Our lives in those days were filled with things-- things had the properties of people, in a way... we looked at them , we took them to bed, we spoke to them, we passed them around.  To make a telephone connection, one had to pick up a heavy handle, rotary dial a bunch of numbers, extend a curly cord a foot or two and sit, close to the wall jack, speaking in one end and listening with the other. 

In the 1960's and 70's, women in the city often had an answering service.  When you left your apartment, you dialed in and somehow magically the operators would receive your calls.  When you returned you'd phone in and they'd read out the messages.  You had a little relationship with your operator; mine was Grace-- a different woman at night, but Grace knew everything.  The cost of this service was small; you''d send a monthly check and they'd clip the hand-written message sheets together in your bill.  Besides her perfect cursive, I had no idea how tall Grace was-- old or young, black or white. 

One could easily go a day now without actually speaking to anyone... our lives are so enmeshed by social media and all of these time-consuming communication platforms.  I have only a few friends who make telephone calls; we still have landlines although these get little use. I work at a gallery Saturdays; it specializes in vintage mid-century French design.  People are most fascinated when the furniture is staged with period objects.. old radios and televisions... it seems that much of our nostalgia revolves around objects.  Our former lives were filled with things-- notebooks, pencils, rulers, book bags, stuffed animals-- scrapbooks and photographs, postcards and stamp collections-- souvenirs, dolls, shells, rocks.  

I worry about losing my memory; my mother lost hers, could not identify many of the photographs she loved to pour over in her album.  My sister cruelly destroyed mine, effectively wiping parts of my own memory by removing associated images.  I wonder when I will forget my grade school teachers, the seating order, the classroom numbers... my childhood dogs who haunt my dreams.  It will happen, one day.. or I will not recognize my own neighbors and friends.. I will forget song lyrics and confuse Beethoven and Mozart sonatas... 

As addled as she was in later life, my mother did not forget how to sew. I wish I had more of the skirts and dresses she hemmed with such skill, the knitted sweaters and the vests, for warmth.  She sat at the piano, at the end, surprised by the sound of the notes, and for seconds her fingers formed chords, but then it all disintegrated.

We had these handmade rag dolls-- one side was a sleeping face, and the other awake.  We'd change their bonnet in the morning, as kind of wake-up ritual, and put them to bed at night. I wonder how many children will save their obsolete pennies in a porcelain bank, will learn to sew with needle and thread and will be able to identify a darning egg.  For a couple of hours the other night, I created a 'mended' pile and felt accomplished in a way-- my stack of repaired patched leggings and tights felt like a kind of badge.  My mother might have nodded her approval.

So many things have been lost along the way-- left in other countries, missing or stolen.  I know as we age we do not log the things we forget; they simply disappear without ceremony or conscience. This terrifies me... who will remind me of what I no longer recall? My mother wore a thimble; I never mastered the art of using one.. kind of like playing the bass with a pick... I still have a thumbpick Johnny Winter gave me once... another of these tangibles that seem more meaningful as life goes on.  One watches celebrity possessions being auctioned for vast sums these days... even clothing.  It seems when human company becomes less available, things provide comfort... connection. And some of them, like the poor penny, while non-functional, do not die. 

I have no daughter to whom I can hand-down my dwindling skills.  My son will not pick up a needle and thread and remember moments. We do have some hand-made souvenirs and old photos-- paper ones. My old rag doll still sits on the bed in which he has not slept for decades. She has a clearly sewn heart beneath her old clothing; it serves. 

Not Vegetarian

As a needed literary palette-cleanser I picked up a Murakami novel. I'm beginning to outgrow certain books... or expecting more than I get.  Murakami is always admirable for trying... one often reads for the mystery factor... and he is literate and understands music, art... it's reassuring and good.  This time it was Kafka on the Shore... my expectations were different (the title, lol) but it was okay.

For months I've been waitlisted at NYPL for a couple of Han Kangs... The Vegetarian came last week and I devoured it in an evening. Maybe it was the still-lingering taste of Murakami, but I was underwhelmed. I felt like I'd been there, I'd known these people-- all of them, with their issues and a sort of projected character-narcissism I can't help attributing to the writer?  I am sinning here, I know... but with my limited years of life, diminishing by the moment, I feel annoyed when I am disappointed.  Murakami.. how can one compare (?); but his ambition never fails to impress even when he is less successful. And his characterizations-- well, they are so much less pretentious.  If I had bought this book, I would have felt duped. Apologies to the Nobelist.

A story in the Times today about an eccentric tough professor--  a kind of hoarder... who upon her death left sizable sums of money to selected students.  It felt meaningful, and in the context of recent relentless meditations on death, wills, afterlife... it was a kind of solution. Obviously, being memorialized with a New York Times post-mortem story had its own merit.

The river of death continues to flow past me... the mounting losses among friends, and the utter failure to honor these people who touch us so profoundly... and become a small paragraph-- a post, a broken heart meme... what can one do, without becoming a professional mourner?  Aside from the Pope and former presidents, funeral rituals have become less stringent since Covid.  One adjusted to the idea that a gathering or service would perpetrate more death, and postponed.  Reading history-- whole civilizations were characterized by the way they handled burial and afterlife philosophy.  What one leaves behind has ever-increasing longevity as opposed to the meagre years we are given here.  Not even an eye-blink in the monstrosity of time.

I was forced into a major discussion this week with a teenager who had decided he'd had enough education, and college would be meaningless.  Go ahead, I said... I mean, there are pictures of everything... does one really need to read the captions?  It's useful... and the richness of everyday existence is really measured by the resonance of experience-- how a song reminds us of something.. a piece of melody-- the way some assortment of trees calls up a Monet image or vice versa.  Art-- something not always understood... the process, the pieces.  How will you know about what came before? How will you know what there is to know? Dead writers are not often reviewed in daily media... but they are the foundation.  They are my intellectual family... my teachers. 

Once the actual experience of death is comprehended-- terrifying and unknowable-- it is the eternal obscurity that is depressing.  What we have been, what we have done-- it's just so temporary and unimportant in a culture which deifies the moment-- instant fame. No longer 15 minutes-- it's more like 15 seconds. One wonders that these monstrous people like Sean Diddy Combs are proving evil more memorable than goodness.  They receive enormous media time... and what is goodness?  Pope Francis became a kingpin... we are fascinated, but we go on sinning and wasting time and failing to rescue opportunities.

We cannot save people... The Vegetarian author knows that. I had a longtime best friend who suffered various mental illnesses and I acknowledge I grew tired of being sympathetic. It was exhausting watching her refuse food and company when she was one of the most artistically gifted people I'd ever known.  Part of it-- I was furious at losing my BFF who was better than I was at drawing and maybe singing.  And I adored her. But the option of choosing a kind of death in life seems so selfishly anti-humanitarian.  Not to mention requiring an enormous amount of medical and psychiatric attention. 

Personally I have befriended darkness and process this as a kind of shadow without which there is no light. I have disallowed mental illness but subscribe to psychological variety in the extreme.  I want to see art which explores these channels without shouting about it. Without promotion there is no exposure, I suppose. It is the paradox of this culture which prioritizes marketing above product... which monetizes just about everything... and defines success in amounts. Our heroes are in a way half baked... some of them suffer from the guilty pleasure of fame but many just continue the glam-squad lifestyle and continuous partying.  Maybe it is the new 'B-side' of creativity-- alternating phases of production and then celebration.

I keep returning to the classics-- I am obsessive and worried about my lapses... my failures to discover important things that are no longer popular or even in libraries.  The printed word-- it's so important. Currently I am reading Colm Tóibín's The Magician.. another digression before I start my next difficult 1200 page opus.  It tells the story of Thomas Mann... really just leads one to the writer himself... I wonder if he is read as widely as the Tóibín novel was in this decade.  

Daily obituaries remind... one must memorialize oneself I suppose-- this is the appeal of instagram?  That one's 'legacy' is copious and therefore significant?  And if one is undiscovered, is this worse than death?  There's a universe out there... an infinite, incomprehensible chronology... ever-expanding like the ratio of death to life. Until we have done ourselves in... all of us.  All of the art-- from cave paintings to Stonehenge to the $4 billion-dollars-worth of paintings sold at auction last week.  All of the books... the beautiful buildings-- the Sistine Chapel.  We can all sense goodness... it doesn't necessarily make us famous, but while we are living-- this tiny gift of time-- we can make something, we can leave a mark.  And we can 'not-fail' the ones who came before us, who sit patiently on library shelves, waiting... collecting dust, tottering on being remaindered in the next generation... Eek. Amen. 

.. Like a (- -) Cigarette Should...

My father, either from some residual emigré paranoia or fear of commitment, kept a packed suitcase in the  downstairs closet. So when he warned my mother sometime in the mid-60's at the family dinner table, 'Either quit smoking or I'm leaving,' she took it seriously. With wet eyes we ceremoniously flushed the last pack-- one by one. 

Nearly every childhood memory of my mother involves her graceful hands, her perfectly manicured long fingers, and a lit cigarette with old-world elegance between the first and second.  It was so much a part of her silhouette-- of her attitude and her fashion gestalt.  In photographs she is a bit like a 50's film star.  And while her health and life-stamina undoubtedly profited from giving up the habit, I never again found her image quite as seductive and appealing.  It was as though she gave up a shadow-persona or stopped dreaming and became simply a mother.

At the age of ten I used to steal a few cigarettes from the lovely silver and porcelain boxes that were laid out on nearly every end-table and surface in the den and living room.  These were a part of interior design culture-- accessorizing, the way flowers or bowls of things are casually strewn around contemporary rooms-- books and magazines.  Most of one's guests were smokers.  Ashtrays were everywhere... clean-up chores included dumping these before bed.  

But I'd steal one at night while I walked the dogs to the end of our dead-end street... I'd stand in the shadow of the streetlamp and pretend to inhale... watching my silhouette turn into a more womanly version of myself.  I felt grown-up-- and imagined myself in all kinds of mysterious scenarios. My older sister was often scolded for hiding packs of Winstons in her purse... I thought perhaps she and my mother were conspiring in secret. Neither of us really acquired the habit, although most of my boyfriends were heavy smokers. It was part of being cool and nonchalant; it made everyone seem older.

In high school kids smoked on the pavement outside... it was a sort of sign. Everyone had their personal style. As a musician, guitar players had their little tricks-- a cigarette somehow balanced in their guitar headstock, drummers with one hanging from their mouth while they played... and the whole front row a smoky backlit second stage of audience, providing atmosphere. Jazz bands with the spotlight suffused with tone looked magical.

When smoking was banned in clubs and restaurants the whole culture changed... photography changed, attitude.  We were less hidden and in clear, naked resolution.  Of course drugs were invisible... alcohol. But things were different.  I had a boyfriend who would smoke one single cigarette after dinner; this took discipline, but it was kind of a remarkable habit and I envied him his eight or ten minutes of escape into some other world. 

There was a bouncer at one club who against rules would light up after hours.  He was built like a tank and wore a solid gold pitbull around his neck. Who's gonna tell me to put this out he would ask me if I raised my eyebrow?  Ain't nobody.  And he would puff away with his whiskey.  I loved it. 

I've been reading Per Petterson the Norwegian writer.  One after another-- like pack after pack-- it became a two-week addiction. His economical sentences, the clear sense of presence and observation and his brutal self-chastising. Cigarettes are ubiquitous-- not an accessory but a device.  It occurs that what I love most about his writing is an ability to dissect a moment.  One wavers with him-- his human fallibility and hesitance... as he drives or walks-- barhops, weathers relationship failure and loneliness, as he processes grief.  

Somehow I feel I am inside his head-- through the translation, despite the unfamiliar landscape... he recruits the reader somehow. At least I found myself weeping with his disappointments and failures and sadness. And I remember the sense of smoking-- the way it is in a 60's film... the way it accompanies pauses and silences.  A cigarette allows one distance-- breath, ironically... to dissect a moment.  

I can remember putting coins into a machine for my Mom and pulling out Winstons or Kent... it felt like an important task and I knew it was like opening a book for her-- more than a habit, more than a need... more like a change of costume, or a privileged moment.  She escaped, she coped; she dreamed.  More than anything I miss this version of her.  

Often I wonder whether my own son will remember me on a stage, playing bass--- in another kind of state--slightly removed, in a smoky room... not just a mother but a person.  Music, too-- the experience, and even the memory-- allows one permission to dissect a moment... transforms one... of course there is no souvenir here-- no pack to discard or keep... no co-conspiratorial vibe, no grace of inhale... no breath.  Nothing replaces the simple ritual; it's become unhealthy, part of the now visually nostalgic normalcy of 60's movies... 

We've come so far... our 21st century wisdom so easily accelerates action, trades one vice for another, deletes romance, miscalculates the slow revelation of a simple action that was available to nearly all of us. The next generation will doubtless recall their parents differently... will doubtless not feel enchanted and moved by footage of Willy DeVille on a stool, swathed in the smoke of his stage cigarette and the spotlight, while he sings to us how heaven stood still.

Old Poets Society

Last week I binged on four novels by Per Petterson. Four. His clean, simple sentences are humbling and a little comforting in a world that feels so precariously skewed, so far from any sense of clarity. But one of the narrators observed that the past is a kind of foreign country; things are done differently there, he said. This resonated.  

I remember thinking and writing, in 2020, that the pandemic removed the future temporarily, and muddled the present.  For many of my generation, the past became a sort of refuge; it felt solid and safe.  Some of these people forgot completely about the future, and will never again trust in this.  They've become steeped in nostalgia and recollection to the extent that their present is nearly eclipsed by what came before. The issue is, our versions of the past are not as reliable as we think.  And yes, things were done differently there. Many old bets are 'off'. Still, this is not an excuse not to go on; we must do more than criticize and indulge one another with memories.

Facebook as a platform encourages this kind of behavior.  One can't open a page without being reminded of past celebrations and events-- griefs and losses. There we are -- happy and laughing-- in places that no longer exist, with friends who have sadly passed away.  

April being poetry month brings a slew of daily lines I'd posted in past years which at the time seemed more compelling, as though one needed a witness to just 'be'. And as much as one hates to admit, it is audience that affects our sense of self-worth.  I grew up copying poems into a notebook from the age of four, alternating with many of my own I never showed anyone until this 'me' era gave me a little encouragement. I was writing and performing my songs for years before I thought of sharing poems. It surprised me in the 1980's that much of the praise for my first recording was for lyrics.

When I used to take the night bus crosstown to the 3 train, on the way to work, I often met an older man named Bob.  He was a writer; he'd kept his student apartment on the west side for over fifty years so he could spend nights typing without disturbing his wife. Mostly he wrote poetry... he'd recite for me on the bus, old style, and as we got to know one another, he'd tell me amazing stories... he'd translated Neruda, and got to take him around the city on one of his very few visits here. It seemed almost incredulous.  He had incredibly chivalrous manners and always held my hand as I got off the bus.  

One day he dropped off a manila envelope of work... written in fastidious and beautiful longhand... lovely professional poems about nature, about love... about grief.  His wife had died, but he still kept his habit of crossing town to his little writing studio. I got the courage to give him a manuscript of Scars-- my first collection-- and he treated it as though it was established literature.  His praise was quiet but solid and he showed me a good deal of respect.  When the book came, he insisted on buying ten copies which he said he gave out to friends and fellow-poets. They need to know you, he would say.

I often ran into him-- walking, looking down, without a coat like an old Englishman-- no umbrella in the rain...  we exchanged work over the years and he gave me a good deal of confidence.  During the Covid quarantine one day he called me-- to see how I was, but really it was just to connect.  I felt terrible. He passed away two years ago-- his aging undoubtedly accelerated by the shock of the pandemic.  I still rode the bus often-- it was free-- and wrote verse in my head. 

A young woman in his building had somehow befriended him... put his work together in a book which was not of the quality he deserved.  In exchange I think she received much of his estate... his apartment, I'd heard... I don't know why I mistrusted her, but I do. Shame on me.

My other mentor/fellow poet was a woman named Siri... she was eighty when we met and had just published her first book, sponsored by a former laureate who taught at Columbia where she took an evening class.  Somehow we exchanged books and then work.  Her poems were interesting and serious; she had a degree in Botany from Harvard... her text was wonderfully suffused with flowers and tree names... she had also, I learned, been married to a very high-profile financier and lived well. 

For a few years Siri and I met for coffee and critiqued one another. Her respect for me was enormously helpful.  One day I heard she'd ironically tripped over one of those sidewalk tree-garden fences and hit her head.  From then on she was confused.  Soon afterward I dropped off an envelope of work and the doorman told me she'd passed away.  I still have a small pile of her 'new' work-- a poem about twin girls that haunts me still.  Her daughters are sort of celebrities and impossible to track down... but I often wonder if they ever cherished her work.

When I first moved to my neighborhood, in the 1990's, The Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y was active and provided not just a platform for readings but an incomparable library of mostly donated works from important poets who had read and spoken there over seventy-five years. The library was sadly dismantled to make room for a spa, and while the organization exists as an online resource, politics and contemporary financial priorities have altered its meaning. It is no longer a 'home' for old poets.

So now in 2025 I continue to receive the Knopf Poem of the Day emailed April mornings... occasionally a gem in there, but usually, like today-- a tough Anne Sexton-- someone from the more rigorous past.  The new poets-- well, for the most part they disappoint.  Still anxious to discover something... I begin to doubt myself. I have not been taught... I have just transcribed the voice which recites inside. But I am aware that my two under-celebrated mentors have given me the courage to envision some creative future where I will try to approach the standards they shared quietly in private poetic confidence. 

Categorically Speaking

I'm back to reading Javier Marías who sadly passed away two years ago. Now that I know his body of work is static and limited, I ration the few I have not yet read.  This one, like several others, takes its title from Shakespeare... Thus Bad Begins-- ominous words for these times, maybe more so when one considers the quotation ends 'and worse remains behind.'

Not to preface a lecture on Hamlet, but an entrance to one of Marías' mystery narratives which opens with a disturbing comment that truth is categorical. While the old 'me' would balk at such a concept, the quagmire of this political soup in which we find ourselves has broken into my belief system like a thief. I am having trouble maintaining and defending the things we held as self-evident in light of what is dangerously becoming law.

It's not just politics; in this AI era one would think fact-checking was a digital shadow that kept us all honest... but it doesn't seem to be working.  We are able to replay basketball points and foul-calls in great detail, from several vantage points, but our justice system does not have this tool.  Innocent people are deemed criminal and white-collar criminals are sometimes not just exonerated but rewarded according to the manipulations of legalities.  Then again, inside our jails there is another justice system, and an all-too-common abuse of power among prison employees that further obscures the administration of human rights. 

It's like a labyrinth of morality. Our government daily shakes the dice and changes the rules.  Immigrants who came here pursuing a dream under a democratic regime now find themselves hunted by ICE agents.  It's like getting on a train going west and having the sign changed arbitrarily, finding oneself headed anywhere.  Liars and cheaters are winning.  We have less social motivation to be good and kind, except that most of us, fortunately, are made this way.  

I am lucky to have women friends of all ages-- from 16 to 99. Listening to them complain about relationships and the difficulty of finding appropriate partners is one of my constant pastimes.  Of course at 99 the options are limited. But for those who are recently divorced or separated, or still single in this city and searching, truth can be categorical.  Online profiles and apps are filled with shysters and fibbers... men who are still married or partnered... people who like your profile photo enough to temporarily masquerade as exactly what you profess to want. And then all bets are off.  One still, in this digital dating world, goes on analogue dates, develops real attachments and in a city like New York, suffers break-ups and disappointments with someone who can melt back into anonymity in mere hours. 

We are confused; we are betrayed, we are like sheep without a proper pasture.  Most scenarios, like novels, have a variety of endings; some predictable and some, like the best of mysteries, will end in a shocking twist.  I can't help wondering where all of this is going... not even a hundred days into this presidency, and institutions of kindness and generosity are being dismantled, cultural platforms stripped and charitable organizations paralyzed.  Public research will be funded according to an agenda which serves not the people but itself.  

In the background of most Marías novels is the looming history of the Spanish Franco regime-- the way it persecuted freedom and then sort of deflated and petered out, with its proponents skulking away without much ado, and its victims in a sort of heroic limbo. Like the Third Reich in Germany, there's a residual national guilt that doesn't disappear, despite generations born without memory of these times.   Is this going to be the Great American Shame, the darkest era in our young history?  Will a national catastrophe or pandemic cause this terrible government to implode? It's hard to find a safe haven; it's hard to sleep when the very foundation of American justice seems like a kind of sport where the rules are constantly being changed by the Great Orange Moderator. 

When I was small I had a doll-sized figure of Sojourner Truth my nanny gave me. She fought for Freedom, I was told.  I stood her on a special shelf with my favorite shells and rocks. This was a symbol; truth was a solid, provable thing that had to do with freedom and civil rights.  It held the world up like an invisible column-- like God.  Even science was simply a quest to find the inherent truth of things-- the atomic number, the definition.  

So maybe in this era Marías will not see, truth has become simply a category-- an option. Guilt is relative; there are only the jailed and the jailors, the rulers and the ruled, the empowered and the powerless. There is love and there is a great lonely population, I am discovering, in our city which cannot seem to find its footing in these times where its elected leadership is questionably prosecuted but not convicted. 

No wonder people are obsessed with March Madness, with television and netflix and instagram and dating apps, with ordering food and cooking competitions-- with anything, really, where there is a kind of winner and loser. We can't even get a proper diagnosis here, because the business of medicine has subjugated science to profit, and prevents physicians from treating patients equally.  

As for me I am once again entranced by the skill and astute intelligence of Marías who insisted his many accolades were due to the general dearth of quality literature in our time. While temporally and politically skeptical, he has a way of finding his truth, uncategorically. At this moment it's all the closure I may get.

Holm, Sweet Holm

Despite my general aversion to travel, I spent last week in Stockholm. Arrivals in a new city are always a bit blurry and emotional; one sees shapes, rather than specific landscape... a kind of reverse deja-vu, rather than reality. Gradually one acclimates and forms attachments. I remember moving to London... it was so grey and lonely; I couldn't imagine ever having friends and hanging out. 

But this was maybe my 15th trip to Stockholm; it has a kind of familiarity for me.  It is friendly; I can manage the geography and move among the islands with confidence. The coffee is wonderful... the streets are navigable and the traffic, even in the city at rush hour, is near-non-existent. Pedestrians have priority; and yet, for an incorrigible urbanite like me, it is very much a city.

In any European city the history is immersive. Although New York is centuries old, we are hybrid and new; we are a conglomerate of 'others' who more or less chose to make their home here. Besides 9/11, we have not fought wars on Manhattan ground, we do not have millennia of history resonating in our architecture, in our lore. Over the years I have traveled and toured, there was a kind of fascination with Americans.  We were the authors of rock and roll, of rhythm and blues and be-bop. There seemed to be ubiquitous curiosity about our culture.

This time, I felt a little reserved.  Yes, I traveled during the first Trump presidency but most of the world seemed to pass that one off like the anomaly we assumed it was: this will be be temporary... like a reality show gone wrong. We had jokes, memes. This time, people looked at me with a kind of skepticism.  What could we be thinking? Major issues of war, NATO membership, EU unity preoccupied the news. America the hero had turned into America the selfish narcissist. In a country where social democracy and inclusivity are prized, the general sentiment was 'appalled'.

It was a little reassuring to watch the Belgian summit on Sky TV, to appreciate the way these countries stood up for one another; after all, they are neighbors, they share a continent.  But all of them together do not have the economic power of the US; their very existence could be threatened by the New World Order... and suddenly, the values I was taught in 20th century America were off the table.  There is an ocean between you and Russia, Zelensky reminded Trump who seemed irritated if anything by this observation. Between allies-- between democratic nations, there is no ocean but a bond, a spoken or unspoken promise. We grew up with this assurance.

So I found myself engaged in endless conversations about our politics. Rather than getting a modicum of respect for being a New Yorker, I felt helpless and ashamed. Along with my Swedish friends, I ask every day... how could this have happened? No, we are farther from the sounds of war here, but I no longer have faith in any kind of fatherland or protective constitutional assurance; right has become wrong and wrong is being distorted into status quo. 

Sleeping in strange beds in different time zones always produces a unique set of dreams.  For some reason  I woke at 5 AM the first night with a memory of my first Au Pair job, during my college years.  In exchange for room and board I cared for the two young sons of a writer-in-residence at my school.  After a week or so of acclimating myself to something besides a dormitory cot, I found my employer visiting me in my bed. He reeked of bourbon and was aggressive and romantic and begging. It was a pathetic denouement of a person I'd respected.  I'd considered myself fortunate to have this opportunity. What to do?  I could not cause a scandal; I was familiar with drunk episodes from my own family, and knew it was my 19-year-old word against his.  So I managed it... I got up, I resisted.. I paced... I adjusted.  I should have ratted him out; it was unconscionable and invasive.  But why did this come up, 50 years later, in Stockholm? Maybe I was confusing one of those Nobel prize films with my reality... the place, the betrayal, the strangeness. The betrayal.

During the week I was there I prayed for the Pope.  He doesn't need your prayers, my Catholic friend told me; we need his.  But still, I prayed.  I also watched the film Conclave on the plane. Pertinent and worrying. Will this Pope be replaced by someone with less tolerance? Will we care, we in America who seem to be giving up our rights on a daily basis, who will, like Europeans for centuries, perhaps be persecuted for our very beliefs and identifications?

In Stockholm my Swedish friends welcomed me; they publish my books and my cds.  I can find these in the libraries and in store windows. Although it is not their native language, I feel read, heard. Today my French friends told me they were cancelling the retirement trip they'd planned for years.  They do not want to come here now. Before I left I saw Swedes boycotting Starbucks, McDonald's, Tesla.  I brought home a pound of Arvid Nordquist Franskrost coffee-- with ecologically produced paper filters.  Great quality, inexpensive. No one wants US cash there. On the plane back I watched an extraordinary film called 'Bird' directed by Andrea Arnold.  It was both depressing and heartwarming. And it was better than anything I'd seen in a long time that was made in the US. I also brought home a case of food poisoning from the plane... or maybe it was just the stress of arriving in a city where I used to know every building and street, the familiar homeless men and the East Harlem bodega owners. The aggregate sounds of New York-- the sustain and crescendo-- have been the musical soundtrack to my life. I am no longer sure of my city, of our future, of our culture. It occurs to me that maybe I should turn around and return 'holm'. 

Delay

Sunday morning I came across an old diary; it fell out of a bookcase where I'd stashed it long ago behind stacks of calendars and discarded manuscripts.  I recognized the cover from some long-departed stationary shop where I used to browse and dream and finally take home a blank book dressed in old print fabric that in itself ignited memory. 

There I was-- at the age of these students I've been recently interviewing... me trying to find their core-- their soul and academic candor.  At eighteen one is so utterly vulnerable-- a single day is critical and life-changing. My discretion had prevailed, as though I was writing for a future self, and many of the boys and crushes and devastators... are nameless and protected.  Princeton for me revealed itself between the lines... I didn't understand the institution until much later, or absorb the significance of what I was learning, how they groomed us like living plants to become productive and resonant.

Looking around my city, gathering the critical daily news, I am overwhelmed with anxiety. It seems as though the first part of my life was a sort of consistent ascent... and now I am quite on the other side of a kind of lengthy plateau of satisfaction. Things have clearly broken... the progression of humanity toward some version of goodness and compassion has surely been interrupted; things feel uncomfortable and precarious.  What a fraud am I, I think; I am selling these optimistic young people a dream that is no longer there... they will not find what I found between the lines, because the lines have been re-drawn, digitized and replaced. I can't imagine my future in this accelerating singularity, and certainly not theirs. 

Not only have these kids grown up with a pandemic absorbing a good percentage of their adolescence, but the images of their heroes seem to have shifted. Their superstars and celebrities have little solidity. I've noticed the way television children seem staged and odd. Styled and changed and airbrushed, they are either brimming with some kind of dangerous overconfidence or they seem 'rehearsed'. On the subway, I observe school kids on their way home-- still rowdy and energized... but they seem somehow different.  I worry about them, the way I worry about my interviewees, the way I worry about the Mexican and Guatemalan children whose mothers sell candy on the trains with their babies and toddlers tied to their back with shawls and scarves... as though they are accessories, not children. I fear they are using their cultural cliches for sympathy. I have yet to witness a single sale. Please, I want to say... do not do this... I will give you a job.  But I cannot.

I can't imagine how my earlier childhood diary might read; most of those things were pre-sorted and discarded by my sister who cared not at all for sibling nostalgia. Besides some of my grammar school's Facebook posts, I have no photographs of the me I was. But this diary-- well it had the sense of me, of young-woman passion and some kind of vague ambition not to become but to 'be' and manifest my purpose. It was reassuring, in a way... as much as it was mortifyingly embarrassing. The players-- the Romeos and villains.. were not necessary to identify.  

My son tells me every day I grew up in the best time; the price of that, I say often, is my aging at this moment.  It's quite true that the second half of the last century was a spectacular revelation of culture and personal invention. The rich archive of film-- art-- music... is testimony.  I rarely run out of inspiration.  Today Ted Gioia on Substack called the new contemporary product 'Slop'. The present seems a bit of an appropriate place in history to begin to withdraw, to drop out.  I'm not sure what I'm learning.  

Of course I'm a bit behind. I watch films that were on festival programs a few years ago... they've had time to settle... rarely do I see the brand new ones. Hollywood in general seems to disappoint, as does music. Visual art... it's all sort of underbred and over-advertised.  Even streaming.. .these Netflix and Amazon award winners-- scripts often make me cringe. A random browse of cable channels brings a variety of game shows based on the most ridiculous premises... and a gamut of reality shows that seem to be designed to propel the cast into some kind of brand-stardom but instead make the adults seem petty, immature and ridiculous.  They are mean and competitive and small-minded.  They seem to be overstyled and blessed with some kind of monied success in life that is baffling and undeserved.  The digital dirty red carpet. I am embarrassed that incoming migrants watch this stuff and deduce that this is America.

It occurred to me today I'm living in a kind of delay... we all are, despite the instantaneous delivery of news. We are in a kind of aftershock from our own election... from the consequences of button pushing and premature action in moments we did not consider.  It takes a minute to translate events into history-- to assess what happened and extract the truth from the millions of accounts and AI phone video.  

In every guitar player's arsenal of effects probably the most essential is the delay pedal.  It makes amplification sound 'real'... it provides context and space. It supplies the 'room' in which we all exist. I watch films and do not pay for the privilege of being timely.  Some of them dissipate once I have distinguished the hype from the reality. It takes old people time to hear things-- we are slow to translate sounds into words sometimes. I am slow to absorb history, to figure out what happened yesterday and how I will go forward. Digital delay pedals can be set to go on forever.  With the analogue-- we create the template; it is all about the signal decay. It's a kind of prolonged audio shadow fading... a kind of death.

My personal delay settings change; yesterday it was half a century... today it might be a few hours. Love takes time, I have learned, but like history, the way we understand it takes longer.  Sometimes I hesitate to revisit memories; they disintegrate upon opening, like dried old paper, they remove themselves further and further in the delay chain. At 4 AM one can see reruns of earlier shows.  Even the news seems a little stable, unchanged. Who would know, turning it on, what is timely, what is original?  It is what we are not told that is becoming a little threatening... and the way we listen ought to take into account the space of our cosmic room... the delay length not just of the past but forward into the future: what is real, what is important; what repeats, what remains.