Don't Cry for Me, Minnesota

When I first arrived in New York, I dated a printmaker.  Not an artist, but a master printer who worked at a fantastic place where Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol made things.  It was hard work-- physical and artistic.  He was from Minnesota; I met him at a dinner. In those days there were these funky 'salons'-- people from Pratt or Parsons or Cooper Union-- they'd gather on weekend nights in small apartments-- walk-ups, or lofts which were under-occupied and commercially zoned.  Music generally came from a portable stereo-- or some people had guitars... but mostly it was artists, all dressed like paraders in thrift-shop wear, eating on boxes and cushions, smoking pot, drinking cheap alcohol.  They rarely shared work at these dinners-- it was about conversation and ideas. Some of them were to become famous... we all knew every single gallery show and the more promising among students stood out. It was like a mixer-- all this talent in a room, with smoke and quiet ambition and melting of ego. No photographs-- only the ones tacked on walls for inspiration.

Anyway, the Printer was out of place here.  He was shy, with his blonde ponytail-- half Irish, half Scandinavian.  He was sober and serious.  We went on a date or two; he had trouble speaking to me... he lived, fortunately, in a fantastic huge loft on the Bowery... which in those days was super affordable and of course he was well paid for his skill.  When I visited the studio to witness his work, I was overcome.  His technique was precise and masterly... the artists trusted and respected him enormously.  He spoke little and executed with brilliance. No, he had absolutely no ambition to create his own; still, he was a kind of maker. I was swept.  

The prints were pulled from these enormous presses of different varieties... laid out and then stacked when dry-- sometimes they were hand colored by the artist, but mostly they were piled up, waiting for the artist to sign, which they did, beginning with the one on top, so the last one pulled would often be numbered one of whatever.  Irony.  Of course they were virtually identical, but people are often seduced by the number '1', while the printer knows the last is first. 

Going through an old drawer of keepsakes last night, I found a handmade 'book'.  It was this lovely card from the shy printer, inviting me to come out with him.  Each page offered a different activity, with these charming illustrations and collages... like a children's book he'd created because it was so difficult for him to look me in the eye, or even touch me.  Last night, maybe 45 years later, it touched me. The smell of the paper and the inks in that studio, the phantom colors embedded in his rough hands... his sweater-- I remembered he insisted I wear it one damp early morning walking me home from one of those all-night soirees. It had a scent.  

My doorman told me last week that Low had cancelled their dates. Mimi Parker the singer and fulcrum of this band was ill and dying.  I remember so well their first album-- I played it over and over, went to an early concert where the breathtaking restraint of the music silenced the audience like nothing I'd experienced.  It was a small-ish club-- Brownie's?  I can't recall... but it was riveting and we went home without speaking.  I had a young boyfriend then-- it was romantic and the 90's in New York now seem so innocently grungy and real.  Night after night we'd put the cd on and it would provide the soundtrack to long hours of some kind of passion.  The music embedded in us-- it created a sort of Cathedral vibe, in my old converted-factory place with the sleep-loft.  Especially for musicians, whatever is on the turntable affects us-- paints a landscape. 

I'm sure thousands and millions of Low fans are mourning the loss of Mimi.  She was the epitome of unpretentious-- her voice true and crystalline-- soft and strong at the same time.  Minimal.  A worker and  musical angel. You'd trust her.  Apparently as a person she was the same.  Her life was perfect although she was a Mormon, but maybe that was part of her solidity.  At the funeral service in Duluth, everyone received a profiterole... and a recipe card. The message here to me-- is go on, be light and make something.  Each family also got a piece of her hand-sewn marriage quilt.  I'm sure the music was amazing... and by request, Tim Rutili performed his exquisite composition: 'All my friends are weeds and rain/All my friends are half-gone birds/Are magnets, all my friends are words/All my friends are funeral singers.'  

All my friends are funeral singers.  It seems not just cruel but wrong that a Mimi Parker is taken-- as though her number came up on the top of the pile, like a mistake.  Nothing is a mistake, Tyrone on 114th Street in Harlem announced last night.  There are regrets, there are omissions... there are secrets and lies, missteps and accidents.  But no mistakes. 

Tim's song is especially haunting for me as it goes on to say, at the end, 'All my friends are keeping time/ All my friends have just quit trying.'  If that is not a mistake, then it must be a kind of sin.  You may take time off to be a mother-- to love someone, to care for someone-- to fight a war, embrace some random person in an elevator.. but you must not drop your own narrative.  You must go on singing-- while you work, while you print-- in the back of your head... to accompany silently a Low melody or a lullaby, or the traffic noise. And at this point-- yes, to sadly recognize that we are all indeed funeral singers.