Murder by Death

Twelve years ago the woman I referred to as my adopted stepmother suicided in her apartment.  For two years prior she'd been begging me to help her with this; she was in her mid-90's, in constant pain, had sort of wrapped up her life and even presided over a couple of retrospective exhibitions that paid tribute to her career as an artist. Her preferred farewell was a heroin overdose. You, my dear, with your rock and roll junkie friends, can get this for me, she insisted. But the complications of facilitating someone's death-- of copping drugs, administering or even just leaving them on a nightable... can result in a murder charge.

She was furious with me.  After decades of organizing her art-- selling, showing, documenting-- she froze me out.  She finally orchestrated an exit with plastic bags and towels-- sealed doors and several tanks of helium. It became a tabloid story-- sort of a vaguely gruesome scenario which eclipsed her reputation as an artist. This was unfortunate and for me-- well, I suffer guilt...  Damned if I do, damned since I did not.  Her final act of revenge: the one possession I was to inherit-- a sketchbook-- was left to another-- a double slap because I loved her.

The world of musicians has long crossed paths with the edges of culture: the highbrow galas, but also the very lowbrow dirty street junkie culture and the sometimes intriguing world of pornography and the sex industry.  The stars and celebrities hung out at gigs and late-night clubs. In certain historic eras, club behaviors exceeded boundaries of what is generally deemed normalcy. Performances sometimes used violence, blood, sexuality as part of the show-- elaborating on the angst and passion that drove the music.

I met a man who was known for Mapplethorpe-type photography. He was occasionally at gigs and asked me to create music for his films.  I had not seen them but knew they pushed boundaries of sexuality and human relationships. For years I refused but on one night he was with a persuasive woman; we had a great discussion in which he scolded me for my lack of ambition re: my own songwriting.  Anyway, I agreed to provide 14 songs for a horror film he was planning. The premise was a girl stalking a serial killer, begging for her own death, which the killer refused; it was sort of a twisted unrequited love thing. 

So I went into the studio of my choice and recorded.  For weeks he sat quietly and respectfully... made very few suggestions, had files made for the film, paid all bills, including my guest musicians... and left me with recorded original songs which I released as a cd.  Shortly thereafter he was arrested on some drug charges, did prison time; all of his reels and computers were apparently confiscated.

Fast forward... post-prison he continued to work... kept my studio friends swish with assignments... wrote me occasionally, asking for my collaboration on his writings and photography publications which I refused.  Certainly no edgier than Serrano or Araki or Moriyama... it just was outside my aesthetic comfort parameter. Meanwhile we had copious and active email conversations about the issues of bondage, pain, sexuality-- the line between art and violence.  The man was brilliant and dedicated.  Dark. He was also a loving and concerned father to a boy who had both physical and psychological issues. But I found his work disturbing.  I also cannot watch war films, Hostel, any kind of torture.  I cannot. 

My very famous writer-neighbor was an insatiable womanizer. He used to confide in me.. it occurs to me now ironically that he had actually slept with my old stepmother when she was in her prime and he was young.  But at one point he had an affair with a very well-known writer who insisted on being slapped while they had sex.  Not just slapped but sort of beaten.  He found it difficult and she found him unsatisfying so they broke up. I remember seeing a film called Things Behind the Sun where the singer of a band gets gang-raped and her sexuality is thereafter permanently inextricable from a kind of violent abuse.  It's disturbing.  But one must admit, there are people who crave physical abuse... who crave even perhaps the act of murder or death.  How does one process or resolve these things?

Last week I saw on network news that my film director who passed away last year is now being investigated as a disturbed serial killer. The Gilgo Beach murderer, one reporter alleged, is a saint compared to this man. They were uncovering all kinds of props and weapons and things from his basement... digging holes. Because of the internet search-association with my under-watched music videos for which he provided images (without my knowledge, but I did not protest), I'm being hounded-- dogged-- by several news platforms-- reporters, Dateline-style investigators. They even pretend to be cd buyers and listeners. It's humiliating and disturbing. Netflix producers are salivating.

The fact is I find it difficult to imagine any scenario but the one where his fictional inventions are being confused with reality.  His narratives and deep delving into the mechanisms of sexuality, sado-machism and even death-- have resulted in a colossal misunderstanding.  Of course I cannot be sure. This is the stuff of jury trials and investigations. One must pay for crimes, but must one pay for the criminal narrative? Where is justice on this edge of love and pain, of pleasure and violence? 

I do know there is a roster of women who have disappeared.  I have known a couple.  One no more than twenty sat long hours in the studio quietly while I played my guitar and sang.  She was utterly beautiful; later she sent me copies of her writings which were heart-breaking and tormented. She was obsessed with self-punishment and also in love with the dark director. She'd escaped some terrible family situation and did not want to be found.  She'd changed her name. I felt maternal. She left him; he was sad, but I heard from her several times.  He is now being accused of the disappearance of these women.  The Gilgo Beach killer is a predatory heinous mutation.  R.C. (as he was known) was rather a kind of extreme and edgy male sanctuary for abused and traumatized women. Whatever went down seemed in a bizarre way consensual. 

I've been studying ancient civilizations this year-- an online course. The terrifying cruelties allowed and practiced by some of these sophisticated cultures are horrific.  King and crowds watch deaths and torture and choreographed hideous violence for sheer entertainment.  What kind of civilization is this?  And yet these things are still practiced today by mostly sick people. But when the victim craves being a victim?  What does one do? I am on the side of art which can use extreme images to mirror our worse instincts. And there is the fact that these Hostel movies and others which celebrate gratuitous violence gross enormous sums at the box office.

While I have no idea or proof of the actual Philadelphia alleged serial killer narrative, I do know how manipulative the media is, and how lawyers and reporters spin stories to make them sensational and lucrative.  It terrifies me more than the crime. There may be a version of crime but I am certain there is a broad misunderstanding here. The psychology of pain and cruelty is complicated and evades me, but the copious conversations I had with this man seem so much more honest and truthful and closer to a kind of deep human intimacy with psychological aberration than the harsh and clumsy indictments they are televising. I delved into them today-- the way these detectives and reporters are delving into his possessions and home and grounds. What I found was a fascinating, brilliant man who seemed more sane and quiet and accountable than most of us. Brutal honesty... that seems the operative here.  For those who claim responsibility for extracting truths, dig a bit deeper, and God help them. 

Death of the Cool

Long ago in the city I had a chaste affair with a client of the art gallery where I worked.  It was sponsored and encouraged by my boss and ended when he went back to Greece. He left me a tasteful Tiffany bracelet the value of which far exceeded the sum total of all my possessions at the time.  So I returned it-- and with the proceeds I bought a great raincoat and a Husqvarna Sewing Machine-- absolute top-of-the-line with a set of fancy stitch cams and multiple accessories.  It was white metal, weighed a ton; at the time I made things and this was like the Porsche of equipment. I sewed quilts galore... wedding presents and baby gifts-- pillow, comforters... I cut up childhood dresses and patched them together; I amassed Liberty handkerchiefs and thrift-shop scrap bags. It was my companion... it welcomed me after work and kept me company through the nights I waited up for whichever musician I was living with at the time. I couldn't wait to get home to it.

Like any well-made machinery, it required maintenance.  When I took up rock and roll in earnest, I neglected it. Decades. At some point after 9/11 I discovered it was self-oiling and failed from lack of use, so I frantically searched repairs. Of course the obvious shops were not in my budget.  I instead went exploring the fashion district and came upon a tiny sliver of a storefront chock full of old machines. One had to sidestep inside down a narrow hallway to reach a worktable/counter behind which was a high wall of shelving stacked with hundreds of machines-- tagged, untagged-- all varieties.  A small, elderly Chinese man with little English greeted me and when I wrote out the brand name, he lit up.  $30, he said. Favorite. Two week.  So I lugged the thing on three subways to 27th Street and confidently left it in what I was sure were his competent hands.

You're crazy, said my boyfriend at the time.  The guy is a mechanical disaster. No, no, I insisted.  He is a genius. He has psychic diagnostic powers and magical hands. Two weeks later I called the number he wrote down on a crumpled scrap of Chinese newsprint and after about twenty rings he picked up, told me he needed a part and it would be another two weeks-- maybe another $20.  This went on... I was in and out of town; I let it go.  I prayed to the Swedish and Chinese gods.

Eight months later, I collected it, paid $60 cash, got it home to find it only sewed in reverse. Well... my Swedish neighbor upstairs was so overjoyed to see his own country's brand, he borrowed it and swore he'd get it going. I left it up there for years.  He actually fixed my black raincoat-pocket and other things.  He died several years ago; it sits now in my closet, waiting-- neglected. The Chinese repair shop is now a luxury high-rise. 

Yesterday someone posted photos of me at a glam rock show wearing a purple satin blouse. I remember how Alan begged me to dress for this one performance where I unfortunately discovered that guitar straps slip right off of satin; it was a rough gig. I'd gone to my friend Jayme's on the UWS to borrow it.. she had closets filled with vintage great clothing and things she'd remade.  It's perfect, she insisted.  No returns... I'd traded her some vinyl, fair and square. I don't know enough about fashion but I took it to a resale place and it sold in one day for a very decent price.  Wow.  Jayme.

So yesterday thinking about her...I stopped at her apartment building on the UWS.  I can't remember when I'd seen her last... years... the pandemic widened these gaps... but she called me every once in a while; we both raised sons on our own... had intimacies to share. The doorman told me she'd moved in with her brother, out of town. I was open-mouthed... she was one of those truly bohemian city fixtures.  Her apartment was old but she created this exotic and homey vibe with purple velvet and just great 'stuff'. She had excellent taste in music, too. Old Stones, Kinks, Faces...  she could tell a cool new band from a poser in a second. She was brusque but also quiet and soft-- formerly sexy and sought-after by rock and roll elite.  One of those lithe women you see among the crowds at Monterrey or Woodstock. Cameras loved her low-slung jeans and hippy tops... her great haircuts. Even when she was broke, people comped her-- her hairdresser, her doctor, her dentist.  It was uncanny. 

Apparently she'd not just left the building.  Late last night, after a deep-search for her brother, I found her three-line obituary, from June. She'd been privately and quietly cremated. I was devastated. No one seemed to know about it... as though she slipped out of a back door when we weren't looking.  She'd done this once at my Thanksgiving dinner; my friends overwhelmed her and she went into the bathroom, maybe got high, and disappeared.  She cared little for food and socializing.  Her magical husband had died young and I think she never moved on from the perfect tantric sex and bohemian heaven he provided. She did come to gigs although she often left early-- quietly.  She was also a valued and an astute critic of my work.  

I'm reading Dawn Powell; following her vintage characters through the post-war version of Greenwich Village is a trip. The apartments-- the fashion-- the wild parties and rituals of entertaining. Aside from the changes technology has imposed on dating, we're fundamentally not all that different.  Just the details-- the interiors-- the materiality.  It's another, much more desirable world. The one I could count on in Jayme's place-- the vinyl, the occult and Goth books, the exotic textiles and the layers of personality. Someone who valued her fostered animals over her own livelihood, and who would not consider life without a paintbox and a sewing machine.

I heard a young woman comment the other day 'Mid-century style is over. No one wants it'.  I took it a little personally. And yes, we Baby Boomers are beginning to outlive our utility. The 1980's and 90's have much more appeal to current generations than the women of Dawn Powell. My apartment is stocked with library, vinyl, instruments, art and tiny memories. Odd trinkets in drawers and old rock-and-roll T-shirts that are losing value. Who will recognize the stained glass heart earrings my college boyfriend made me for our anniversary fifty-five years ago... the leather bracelets I got in Berlin before the wall came down-- the Camden market coat with metal trim...?  Will my son know my Pleaides editions of Proust bought in 1970's Paris or my fifty-three Trollope novels all collected from sundry used bookshops? 

Most days we city dwellers pass thousands of people on the street... and only the few we 'know' will light us up like human candles. The recognition of our trinkets, like old fossils, do the same.  But maybe, like my old sewing machine, they no longer serve.  It occurs to me that Jayme spared us the sentimentality of death and the post-mortem inventorying and distribution. I miss her terribly today and am still recovering from the disbelief of no farewell or phonecall.  No notification, no address, no ceremony, no grave, no tree planting or charity directive. We older people have the illusion that we are what we leave behind... but in truth we have likely outlived our usefulness-- our valued possessions have little meaning to the next generation and while I can hear the endless melodies that spill out from my bookshelves and collections, they will eventually be as mute as the resonant final lesson of Jayme.