Turning the page

Aside from the various Christmas gifs and Charlie Brown vignettes and musical e-cards, I can divide this season's personal email wishes fairly neatly into two categories.  The first: a terse but cheery message heavy with jpeg attachments-- large families in warm living rooms- -dogs, kids... the chaos of wrapping paper and ribbon littering the floor around the decorated tree-- Grandmas around hearths, grandbabies crawling, children of children, festive sweaters and laughter.  Or seated around large tables laden with dishes and bottles... everyone toasting the camera with laughter and joy... view after view as though we are looking through some social keyhole onto the version of normal American holiday cheer we have come to recognize as a kind of status quo.  Many of these.  Here am I-- scrolling through-- reminded of Christmases past when my biggest challenge was the piled up dishes and flatware-- the confectioners sugar fingerprints on sofas-- the broken wine glasses, trips to the recycling with empties... no camera.  

And the other half... text-heavy messages without photos or emojis or gifs... long sad paragraphs that conjure the old 'America's Neediest Cases' feature in newspapers.  I grew up relishing these-- sometimes weeping and learning to disburse my petty childhood disappointments against the magnitude of real human tragedy.  Please, I would beg my perfectly manicured mother, can't we bring them some presents?  She had little sympathy for much of anything outside our family circle.   'Volunteering' was the mysterious thing women did without their husbands... but essentially it was as though charity and pity were not part of being a 1950's housewife.  

The 2021 version of Neediest Cases, personally delivered in my Facebook and email inbox, was sobering-- the predominant theme being isolation.  My generation was generally comfortable with alternative living arrangements--- serial monogamy, uncoupling and individualism.  In times of sickness, tragedy-- what felt like independence can dissolve into acute loneliness... depression, anxiety... lassitude and hopelessness.  Those of us accustomed to freedom were compelled to give up our wandering, eccentric socializing and submit to enforced alone-ness.  For some it was transforming and meditative.  For others it was unbearable.  Not to mention the claustrophobia of quarantine fomenting break-ups and bad drama-- relapsing bad behaviors and paranoias.  But these are my friends... like my mother I found myself a little overwhelmed and, while sympathetic, unable to do much besides listen.

And then there are the deaths and losses-- some timely and expected, some shocking and devastating.  The crying and 'care' emojis have surpassed all others. Our shaky foundations and podiums are damaged.  Layer upon layer of hardship came last week via email-- some coping with enormous courage and strength, some confessing their weakness with another kind of unacknowledged bravery. When the tears subsided and my vision cleared, I saw as well the emigrés of my beloved city-- the ones who gave up-- abandoned ship-- for safer shores that failed to quell their terrible homesickness. A few in particular had seemed part of the very fabric here-- the foundation.  Indigenous musicians who had once beckoned like gods to the likes of me, who put down roots and discovered the secret landmarks of an artistic world that once was New York City.   

Yes, the past 19 months have been hard.  We received tiny grants and gig-assistance and rent rollbacks-- food stamps and free covid care... but it was not enough to break up the monotony of waiting that became our daily lives.  Of course, as I've explained many times-- this has been a process.  The attrition of artistic institutions in the city-- the small, human ones-- is an old story.  But the overwhelming current disparity between the small artists and the corporate behemoths-- well, it has been crushing.  And the larger they grow, the harder it is for them to see the small treasures that used to form the bohemian personality of our city.  No one seems to realize that so many of the grant-worthy creators are not visible.  It used to be woven into the very definition of an artist that they were incapable of self-promotion.  

Taylor Swift has posted huge sales... Bruce Springsteen sold his catalogue for a fortune.  Meanwhile the tiny, fragile talents have slipped into cracks-- even suicides... maybe given up and taken a job delivering Amazon packages, stomping out the sparks and feathers of imagination.  I remember so well the joy of my first apartment-- classes, jobs, art galleries... sneaking into clubs and movie theaters... talking and smoking into early morning hours with others... drinking ketchup soup, crashing at places that smelled of paint, while guitars and amps were dragged up long flights of tenement stairs.  To have been thwarted with a nightmarish year-long hiatus would have been more than devastating-- Broadway and the LES the new boulevards of broken dreams.  It's surely the more fragile genius that is crushed first... and I grieve the missed opportunities and invention that have been few and far between enough before all of this.  

You are old, said the youth to Father William, or me...  and maybe young musicians no longer crave artistic Nirvana but instagram fame. Maybe I am wasting my sympathy on what I consider the tragedy of our city, while dire social, civic and racial issues rage on, beneath the pall of this pandemic.  At least I have some sympathy-- and useless as it seems, I will forge onward into yet another 365-part quandary, god willing.  For those fortunate enough to have celebrated, I wish you well.  To the senders of the sad emails, holidays are almost over... you've weathered another masked and trying season with some naked grace. And despite falling on deaf ears, or none at all, I vow I will not be silent as I walk into evening. 

Omicronic

The pandemic, in all its variations and behaviors, has again become the enigmatic chart-topper of the year.  It commands a massive global audience-- we participate, we read, we listen-- suffer, weep and throw up our hands.  It has confused performance with spectators, victim with aggressor, mourner with mourned.  Like a biological fugue, it plays on... movement upon movement-- scherzo upon adagio; just when we think we've reached the finale, there is another coda.  

One thing of which it reminds me is the proverbial sound of one hand clapping.  We have experienced the solitude of isolation-- of grief and loss, of quarantine.  Those of us who are comfortable with ourselves have indulged-- even enjoyed and 'caught up' with scrap books, nostalgia, creative projects we'd procrastinated.  We read from our bedside stack of books... we watch old films and try out recipes.  

The couples among us have either flourished or suffered.  Some compete for space or crave silence... some embrace the home-honeymoon scenario. But the performers-- the singers and players and actors-- have taken a major hit.  Yes, they go on their Facebook pages and zoom-entertain... but I notice the audience is dropping off.  Some of the die-hards look anxiously at their live stats as they sit at a piano, counting the drop-ins and regretting the passers-by.  I feel sheepish sneaking away.  But to broadcast myself? I shudder (shutter). 

I've already admitted to indulging in scads of old films-- way too much television, a healthy amount of YouTube concerts and comedy. Reading-- yes, but proportionately more screen time and channel changing.  The old films are always comforting... and seeing New York City as it was seems more compelling than ever.  Pandemic-era shows are immediately recognizable and besides the incessant news, I grow distant.  

Another thing I've noticed is how quickly the brief cultural timestamps seem... as though the expiration dates are closer and closer.  While old films have a timelessness... the newer ones (aside from Titanic and a few ubiquitously recycled classics) seem irrelevant and cheap. Contemporary celebrity is a vast field of edited heads and faces. Modern options have altered them-- morphed some of them into a kind of generic air-brushed idolatry.  Flash back to Ingrid Bergman or Veronica Lake-- Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck.  They are iconic... unmistakable.    

I am the recipient of hundreds of art blogs and online publications.  I browse auctions and museums-- virtual galleries and whatever I can... but see these sadly as imagery with short shelf-lives.  Yes, I'm old and cranky... but I wonder where Jean Michel would be if he'd survived.  A fat, cigar-smoking billionaire with trademarked colors, photographed in LVMH with Beyonce and Jay Z?  I suppose the riddle answers itself because he did not get that far, nor did he relish the pre-millennial changes as they affected his work.  

The irony of covid robbing us of smell and taste is poignant.  Once the Black Lives Matter violence subsided, I feel as though we all fell into a kind of bland stupor.  We fooled ourselves into reverting to old habits-- crowds and concerts, shopping and sports... and now we are again forced to reconsider.  What did we accomplish?  Our country is a divided mess, we are reeling from isolated natural disasters which raise the bar of anxiety.  But mostly we look into our little social media mirrors with unprecedented narcissism, the way the Queen in Snow White was told over and over she was beautiful.  We sing Christmas songs to one another online, we buy gifts and pretend.  

Who is watching?  There used to be movie magazines and celebrity papers for the kings and queens of Hollywood.. but did a local underwear model have millions of 'followers'?  Girls coloring their hair in front of phone cameras and cats parading in costumes... If we added up all the numbers on instagram, what kind of infinity would this be?  I can't help feeling this is all some catastrophic distraction, and covid aside, there is something wrong with everyone. 

Is it me, one of my friends asked on Facebook, after seeing a few of our old rebel heroes posing with political superstars who veto abortion and refuse vaccines and masks?  Where are priorities? And more important, where is science and data?  How is it possible that the Uber-protector America has let us all slip through its medical fingers, despite our obedience to accept not one but three unproven vaccines?  Are we just narcissistic little guinea pigs who post on our social media our immunity-badge which seems to fail us at just the wrong moment?  Is there something they are not telling us, or have we just lost the ability to listen, to read between lines?  

I've been playing, over and over, on my double bass, a few Christmas melodies.  I could fool an amateur into thinking I am proficient on this instrument.  Over and over in my head and my heart, I wish my friends and even my enemies and fellow countrymen a Merry and peaceful Christmas... with tidings of comfort and joy (emphasis on comfort-- repeat 2x)...