Stockholm Syndrome

I was in Sweden last week.  There were those late-nights when nothing much was happening, including sleep, and I turned the television on in my hotel room.  Not inclined to pay for premium or anything else, I am always surprised to see what if any of American pathetic reality-fare makes its way into Scandinavian standard broadcasting.  The only thing I could find was Naked and Afraid, and a constant home-renovation network.  So it was CNN for me, to get a little home-news.  Unfortunately the big story my first day was the Harry-Meghan drama.  Right away this did not seem viable.  I can't imagine any kind of car-chase in Manhattan; it's just not feasible. But the endless hours of commentating, the speculations and comparisons and the drama... well, ad nauseam.  There was virtually no other news.  While I've given the demoted couple a certain benefit of doubt, it was a Trumpian moment for them.  I placed a theoretical bet that it would take twenty-four hours for the correction, and there it was-- the humble cab driver, with a reality check.  It made the King and his Queen-consort look immediately better.  Even Oprah might regret all that money she doled out.

Then there was the Columbian plane-crash survivor-story.  Yes, we all want to pray and believe in these miracles... but to replace reality with a fairy-tale is not only news-unworthy but fraudulent.  Still, their fate is unclear.  What is clear is the unreliability of these news platforms which in their desperation to achieve viewer popularity seem to have blurred the lines of journalism and reporting to succumb to the public hunger for drama. 

Two young men came by to visit yesterday and we fell into the inevitable recurrent theme of 'the good old days' when not only originality was prized, but we took for granted the solidity of information.  Fact checking, accuracy.  The actual version-- the truth.  It takes me way too much time and a semi-analytical brain to sort through daily accounts of events, medical claims and recommendations.  Every news platform has a slightly different version of things. Like an old person's eyes, it takes a bit of time to gain clarity.  Maybe it's the quick-firing in this internet age that encourages premature ejaculation of information before it is verified or chronologized.

One thing I'm here for, back in the US, is the basketball playoffs.  And as I've said before, the beauty of sport is there is a clear winner. There are playbacks, disputed calls, a few disparities and bad behaviour, but for the most part, they even out in the end.  Grudges and prejudices get diluted by the number of games... we watch over and over the replays and footage from all kinds of angles, and a decision is made.  Hardly anyone blames the faulty hoop or the greased ball or the score-keeper.  It's not an election, but isn't it a little pathetic that a large part of the population can't seem to process the official decision of a national political process? The electoral officiators do not seem to have the authority of a sports referee. 

My son and I had a great discussion today about the athletes who refused the vaccine.  My position was always a little controversial, but as a covid survivor who donated blood and plasma pre and post-vaccine, I still respect a decision by someone whose entire life depends on their physical health.  Part of the problem here was the lack of transparency and clarity on the science.  Once policy was determined, in a culture of personal freedom, we are not used to being compelled to do certain things.  People were still getting sick; the data was not solid.  And it shifted-- it evolved.  The virus remained one step ahead of us, and that was worrying.  

In Stockholm, aside from collecting dust on apothecary shelves,  I saw not a single mask.  Nor on the SAS crammed airplanes I took back and forth, despite perpetual coughing and sneezing and obviously ill passengers.  As long as it was not Covid, no one took notice?  The airline boarding forms, if one read the fine print, asked one to agree to wear a mask on the flight.  This was obviously ignored.  And back in New York City it's pretty much business as usual.  The East Village bars, and Times Square are packed... clubs, restaurants seem more active than ever.  People are joyful and unafraid.  Yes, I still have a few acquaintances who cling to outdated virus-prevention like a dysfunctional marriage.  But they are the unhealthy ones.  What is undeniable is the skepticism toward information-- the mistrust.  It is just misplaced.

Who is to tell us in whom we are to trust-- in God, as our money states? The value of the dollar fluctuates daily-- a few of our 'solid' banking institutions have crumbled recently; do we blame God for this?  Greed? The compulsion to amass sums of money beyond the use of any human being?  The competitive and swift transfer of multi-dollars for ideas?  The very backbone of our government is tested by the debt ceiling.  What happened to dollar-for-dollar economics?  I worked my entire life to receive a meagre social security check every month.  I put this money aside.  As a self-employed struggling musician, I paid twice what a payrolled worked deducts.  I was honest and reported and paid in.  Am I to be punished for being a 'solid' citizen?  

So I will still watch my man Jimmy Butler and Jayson Tatum competing for an NBA title-- men who are earning more in one game than I have earned in a lifetime.  More than Babe Ruth maybe earned in a lifetime.  I will watch the scores rise, and witness the baskets that make these up.  Unlike the news which comes afterward-- the debt ceiling talks, the CDC pronouncements and the stock market numbers, all of which are questionable to the likes of me.  I admire the basketball skill-- the performance-- the clarity of outcome.  Let the talking heads discuss the upcoming election endlessly... for now, at least, in Basketball I trust. 

UNCOMMON SCENTS

The cusp of April/May in New York City is seasoned by foliage... in the parks, on the most unexpected streets where gutters are stalked by rats and vermin, garbage spillage is a constant... the breathtaking arcades of pink and white could be staging a coronation.  Central Park is at its gala-finest... And then, the pink and white rain of petals. But summer is coming... 

My country friends send me photos of their blooming lilac bushes. This seems sort of a Mother's Day reminder; while mine loved the color yellow, lilacs surrounded our house, grew in profusion without coaxing to touch the second-story and enter through open windows. Their sweetness was almost overpowering... they brought wasps and bees... the cuttings downstairs were overkill.  

I've always thought children, like dogs, have incredibly sensitive noses.  Young teenagers are beginning to discover scents-- their own, their peers', the kind that comes in a bottle.  Home memories are so often olfactory... people's houses had a characteristic scent-- our kitchen, the faintest buttery ghost of piecrust and cinnamon... it permeated the house, like perfume.  

My mother rarely wore perfume, although she had a collection of seductive bottles on her vanity-- for some reason they had to be French: Chanel, Arpège, Givenchy, Guerlain.  I've written before about playing with these... the exotic bottles in their boxes and velvet casings... the prisms from the lamp-crystals making rainbows on the ceiling.  I experimented by pouring them together, mixing them.  I was banished to my room for weeks.

My older sister who had precocious boy-experience wore Shalimar. We'd lie on the bed on spring nights like tonight, when we shared a room, and the scent of lilacs mixed with her perfume is as vivid a memory as her fascinating stories about boys-- their hair, their bodies and their faces.  Boys in middle school smelled like Old Spice and Canoe-- English Leather.  It was awful to me.  Some of them put stuff in their hair... 

In 1970 I thought I fell in love with an older boy.  I was 16; he was 23 and had been to Vietnam.  His body was ripped and tan, his hair was long and streaked with what looked like gold.  His eyes were blue and his teeth were crooked.  He was bad; he flirted with my mother and she warned me.  I was a toy, she said;  he'll chew you up and spit out the bones... but that only made it worse.  I lost sleep, I fantasized... I played Van Morrison over and over... Astral Weeks... Free... we went to concerts... he drove a Karmann Ghia that smelled of patchouli and hash. 

Patchouli.  All through the 1970's; I can almost smell it on old photographs.  My great young loves all used it like an aphrodisiac. Patchouli and leather, carseats, grassy lawns, bedsheets and sleeping bags... 

The first sign of Covid for me was the anosmia.  I had a bottle of bleach, was trying to disinfect my guitar and equipment I'd had on a crowded, infected pre-quarantine subway and realized I could stick my nose in the bottle... and smell nothing.  Even my doctor, mid-March 2020, was baffled.  It went on.. and on... for weeks and weeks.  Nothing.  Food was strange, coffee was terrible.  I thought I could taste grapes, or I imagined I could... but everything else was dull and wooden.  After several months bad smells-- rotting garbage, burned food-- began to process as this strange ginger-cookie scent.  It was weird.  I was grieving, losing friend after friend-- isolated.  I walked in the park... no lilacs, no roses, no spring rain moist-earth grassy fragrance.  Nothing.  Mother's Day was without joy.

My 12-string guitar, as if in pandemic sympathy, imploded.  In early summer I borrowed Alan's Taylor... I carried it home with the broken handle I knew so well... it was heavy, that case... it took a few days for me to have the courage to open it... and when I did, there it was... the scent of Alan-- absolute and vivid, in the room.. like a genie from a bottle.  I cried.  I took it out and played Walk Away Renée, the way he used to... in D.  After I played for a while, I put it back in the case... but the scent was on me... the sense of Alan.  

For many months I had this souvenir.  I took it out at 3 AM nearly every night; I wrote songs, I remembered, I cried sometimes... I talked to him.  At a certain time, it lost its magic.  My 12-string was repaired and I returned the Taylor which traveled to Virginia in a car. I began to recover my olfactory sense, but like my life, things were not the same.  My coffee still doesn't resonate, try as I do to sample different beans and roasts.  But I can smell my neighbor's brew at 6 AM when I am still awake playing my restored 12-string.  I'm not sure which neighbor it is but I am sure they are awake and brewing.  

As for me, I can now smell the lilacs both in the park and in my mind. Today I was in a shop and I heard 'Me and Mrs. Jones', my mother's favorite song from the 1970's, when men still flirted with her and her dreams went beyond kitchen narratives. Today I am so much older than she was at that moment in time... when I bought her the record so she could play it over and over.  I could not stop the tears.  While I have been a mother for thirty-three years, it will always be her holiday and it will always smell of lilacs.