I Want the Angel

This season, as in so many previous, the operative human engine seems to be an evolving kind of empathy.  Zelensky's congressional address, like the star on our dysfunctional American political 'tree', seemed to mobilize some kind of national emotion.  Reading World's End, as I am, steeped in the harsh realities of WWI, it had extra resonance.  His small Napoleonic persona, in his sweats, also referred to the Battle of the Bulge; my father earned a Croix d'Honneur that day, and took home the wounds and scars of things we no longer see here in America.  We are much mired in Twitter controversies, the debt ceiling, the crypto implosion... and some of us-- well, only our social media and shopping.  We needed a televised reminder, another reason to care.  

The World Cup for many of us provided a happy reason to wake up-- the games were thrilling and the global celebrations and disappointments were compelling; we forgot about the needless deaths and prevailing bigotries of Qatar culture. We marveled at the modern stadiums and held our breath as country fought country on the field. The stellar final left a hole; for the depressed among Americans, and statistically there are millions, they are back to wondering what now? Football for six weeks. Some of my friends search television for inspiration, like religion; they embrace old Law and Orders, Sex and the City episodes... anything to remind them of their heyday, their moment in the sun-- the way things were, even when they were shitty. 

Personally I will watch any Truffaut, Antonioni, Fellini... anything with Benicio del Toro... seasonally the versions of Kings of Kings-- Jeffrey Hunter, Max von Sydow... and especially the DeMille silent one, where He emerges to doves and lilies... and prompted me to ask my Catholic nanny so long ago who washed his robe? Our housekeeper once told us, so we would shut up during her programs, that the people on television could see us.  Like Jesus, I used to ask? Something like that, she answered.  But I felt known.  I behaved-- for Jesus, Santa Claus, the actors on Days of Our Lives and the Man From Uncle.  I felt responsible... 

Reading World's End, discovering the big-business machines which drove wars-- the economic windfalls amidst the devastation and killing... I can't help but draw parallels with Putin's war.  It's worrying.  And while there are geographic boundaries and definitions, we are all involved somehow. We post on Facebook, we raise money, we carry flags-- we worry.  It's a distraction from the usual narcissism and voyeurism of social media which occupied maybe the most massive portion of our attention during the pandemic isolation.  

Sometimes I think rather than just friendships, commonalities... we seek our double on Facebook.  We want to find someone with an equally cruel father or abusive husband-- a cancer patient with exactly our diagnosis...  someone else who has lost all their belongings in a fire and is now laughing in a bar. Or someone who loves cats, or who hates cats and loathes anyone who likes them... some of these pet-haters have admitted this to me and also confessed that they spend hours on YouTube watching videos of ravaged animals being lifted from sewage-soaked gutters, placed in a filthy blanket in someone's car-trunk and nursed back to some version of poverty-life.  It exercises their capacity to feel-- to empathize.  

Anyone who takes the subway especially in early morning or late-night has witnessed the relentless parade of beggars and story-tellers-- addicts, sad-sacks, mentally deranged... and some simply out-of-everything.  The percentage of people who even engage or give is shameful.  I, too, am guilty... I go to pantry, try to distribute food, try to convince the homeless to at least get a daily hot meal from a shelter rather than the garbage.  I do see kind people leave things in bus shelters... on benches... are they safe?  I don't know. They don't know that I am safe, for that matter-- with my sad face and surfeit of empathy-- who returns to a warm home feeling guilty and disturbed, primed to distract myself with a classic noir movie.  

There are other iniquities... among the pet-lovers and animal empathizers among us... a pair of homeless men-- identical twins like an old Arbus photo I often see in front of the HRA on 14th street-- both in need of medication... they talk at one another; last week someone had shaved their heads-- maybe lice or scabies... they are either underdressed or bundled in layers, generally in the warm months.  They do not ask, they do not beg.  They are not appealing. Also on 14th Street I have seen an exasperated father screaming abuses at his mentally-challenged son who grasps onto him and talks without cease, hits himself in the head... makes noises.  Surely this would try any parent or caregiver but the maternal in me feels wounded.  I do no good with my endless private sorrows and foodstamp economizing.  

I have friends who give massive amounts... run organizations and charities.  We follow the billionaire narratives--- we know their loves and their homes, and their likes and dislikes.  I have spoken often about the 'generosity ratio'.... there is plenty left... does this make them less good?  I don't know.  Then we have the monstrous financial fairy-tales like the Sam Bank-Man Fried (as in the past participle) story.  I can still hear his pretentious interviews on Bloomberg, waving his crypto-wand, summoning investments from an audience who maybe admired or envied him? How do these people function, who could have lifted many of the world's poverty-veils with the massive wealth they swindled?  And even post-conviction.. his quality of life will be considerably better than the average flood-displaced Pakistani.

Empathy hurts, for some of us.  Playing music-- or the better part of it, is empathic; we listen and feel one another.  For audience it is often a kind of narcotic.  A sad song can take us into a nostalgic reverie that feels like pain.... or lift our heart.  A great lover is empathic... the way they give, the way they understand what their partner needs.  And yet many of us when we are most happy get up and break the heart of the person who lies beside us... as though we are drawn to the ending, do not trust bliss, feel the tourniquet of guilt.  

World's End reminds me how the earth absorbs blood.. how the theater of this war was cleared and rebuilt.  My friend discovered years later there had been a brutal murder in his apartment... the renovation left no trace of the victim.  And here we are-- the shootings, the hit-and-runs... the bloody sidewalks of New York City. Perhaps hardly a square yard that has not seen some violence or injury... 

Fortunately or unfortunately this empathy, this stray animal or shadow-- will follow us into the new year.  Our best celebrations will be dampened by sad news-- by illnesses and this terrible war... pandemics and crises world over-- the hungry and displaced... the waves of immigrants coming into a freezing city in T-shirts, being handed a blanket.  How do we process this? Where are we? Commercials for anti-depressants, for Jesus, for suicide prevention. Look in on your neighbor, they urge-- and still, for the parents among us... the ones that ask do you know where your children are?  they still stab.  

I am wrestling with these issues... like Jacob's angel... or believing the Jesus on television can see me... yes, some days I am joyful... watching the sun set across the Central Park reservoir, feeling the golden light on my face.  Other nights I absorb my friends' sorrows and discomfort and am a hare's breath from a deep pit of suicidal horror. I write a poem... or a song... and it's sometimes like throwing the coals on a freezing evening fire... sometimes.

Last night at the end of my subway platform there was a man kneeling... close to the edge.  I walked over-- with my bass and my protective mask and my helpless empathy; perhaps he was praying... perhaps he needed a scarf or gloves.  As I got closer I realized he was quietly vomiting into his hat.  A Christmas tableau.  I did nothing. Prayed... went home.  In my head I heard Jim Carroll's haunting lyrics...'I want the angel/whose darkness doubles/absorbs the brilliance of all my troubles.'  Empathy.  It might have killed him. Music. Sometimes it saves us. Amen.  

Memorial Eurythmics

I attended a zoom memorial tonight for the inimitable Buddy Fox, a true stalwart of the NewYork music scene and a friend and supporter for many years.  It got me thinking-- reminiscing, in the true spirit of memorial services-- afterward watching YouTube footage of various events he produced and organized with the greatest enthusiasm and spirit.  These people who dedicate themselves to the arts for sheer passion are of a dying breed. 

It occurred to me on Thursday that the death of John Lennon, 42 years ago, was a sort of wake-up call for my generation.  Like the assassination of JFK, we all remember where we were.  In 1963 I was a little young to sense the generational significance... but in 1980, the shooting at the Dakota was like a massive loss of innocence. 

Of course, the pre-internet spread of news was slower and the moment of apprehension maybe more memorable.  I was at my job in a highbrow art gallery and of all people my mother called to tell me the news, knowing I'd be devastated.  At the time I worked in an Upper East Side townhouse and took the call in the downstairs kitchen-- on a black rotary wall-phone. The kitchen was visible from the street-- it was a huge vintage 1940's/50's room with the classic red and white vinyl floor-tile and antique, rarely used appliances.  It was like a movie set, and several film directors rented the house out for shoots.  I remember the future Mrs. Spielberg did a romantic comedy there; although they paid for the downstairs rooms, I was allowed to keep working, and I somehow bonded with the actress. She had a nude scene and sat with me on a daybed, between takes, shivering and wrapped in a blanket while we drank coffee.  They also borrowed my old Armstrong silver school flute for a scene... I remembered this all these years later, because it happened close to the time of Lennon's death. 

On that December afternoon I was first disbelieving then inconsolable when my mother phoned; she was still beautiful then, and sympathetic.  Surely I had not yet broken her heart and become a full-time bassist in LES clubs. She knew I'd come across John many times-- in the club he supported, in his home where I visited his neighbors.  We in the city took his presence for granted.  Yes, there were photographers on Central Park West and 72nd Street but for the most part he lived like any New Yorker-- shopping, walking, eating out, etc.  People gave him his freedom from celebrity.  New York was like that in former days.  On December 8, 1980, the news spread quickly-- not instantly like today-- and people began to gather in dazed grief outside the Lennons' home. It was the saddest day in the city... and there we were at the epicenter of a generational wound. 

It occurred to me today that the sorrow of that killing may have had something to do with my commitment to music-- as though one could somehow remedy a tragedy by following a path. I moved shortly thereafter into a loft apartment in a converted factory building... and I felt forever changed, redirected;  it had been a kind of coming-of-age.  The image of that vintage kitchen in the townhouse on 92nd Street (where I met people like Claus von Bulow and Gregory Peck) is forever linked to the sad news.  Time-stamped.

My son and I laughingly confessed to one another that we'd secretly binged on Sex in the City episodes during the pandemic.  I'd shunned this kind of television long before, but I was so homesick for my city during quarantine that I obsessively trolled the Manhattan-Before-1990 site, and watched almost any film with vintage scenes of New York as it was, with the Towers watching over from downtown.  This is the version my son recalls; we spent a year or so of his childhood looking at apartments-- seeking a permanent home, exploring neighborhoods and breathing in the air of old rooms.  We surveyed our home-island from the roof Observatory of the South Tower and sneaked into Windows on the World a few times where I knew a guitar-playing waitress.  

So 9/11 was the second loss of innocence of my life.  My son was only 11, had been to the post-Lennon Dakota for a playdate, but we both felt a sort of cement-bond here, in the tragically sad widowed version of New York.  Things heal, but loss remains like a scar, no matter how many new buildings have changed the skyline and face of the city.  They distract but do not replace.

After the memorial tonight I remembered the also-inimitable Stan Bronstein, who played saxophone in Lennon's New York band, and passed away some years ago.  I was lucky enough to share stages with so many of these fallen heroes of the music scene, many of which were 'orchestrated' by Buddy.

I'm reading World's End by Upton Sinclair.  At the beginning the protagonist, more than 100 years ago, is studying the Dalcroze method of Eurythmics-- an academic and obsolete unique approach to music education.  Thinking back, recalling not just the memorial speeches but the vanished dazzle of the local New York music scene, I feel a little Dalcrozean-- brown-edged vintage, 'on-the-shelf', like a dusty box of souvenirs and old postcards.  I remembered how once I tried to keep up a column where I reviewed $1 cds-- for the surprise, for the back-ended discovery.   There were bins of these-- mostly demos and overlooked efforts, but occasionally I found something-- some gem among the proverbial garbage and flowers.  The shops are gone, for the most part.  Instagram and Tik Tok have their own popularity analytics...  anything can make the statistics today.  

But we are all changed since the Lennon days.  Maybe we were punished for the freedom he was allowed to wander publicly, unprotected.  We were taught some kind of lesson.  But celebrity without instagram, etc... well, it seemed a little more tolerable, a little more human.  One had to earn it.  Not to mention that fame and notoriety were a little more separate... artists were more original and unique... even comedy seemed better.  

As we age, our memories are less accurate; it took a roomful of people to describe the deceased tonight and still we did not do him adequate justice.  Thank goodness most of us can recall the landscape we find in old photos-- and can honor musicians not for what they are but what they were.  Many of them are still here in the city-- the scarred and human version that remains in my mind and heart and will not necessarily rest in peace.