Scene Not Heard

I'm about to release a cd of original music. At these small benchmarks in our creative life, one becomes reflective.  For me, performing seldom these days, I ask myself why I am still working-- day after day-- without audience, without goals or a plan.  It occurred to me last night that when I was 3 years old I made a vinyl record.  It was one of those amusement-park booths where you actually sing into a microphone and they press up one copy on some kind of bona-fide machinery.  I sang Around the World I've Searched for You... a song I knew well from my mother who played a small repertoire of sheet music on the piano. I sang in perfect pitch-- didn't miss a lyric.  After the little performance, my father announced me-- my age, my name... and then clearly, amid the audible background sounds of carnival, I ask my sister.. Wanna do it? She denied. Silence.  Head shaking, I imagine.

At nursery school they acknowledged my musical abilities; they urged my parents to send me to a special school.  Apparently I'd not only had the lead role in their little performances, but I wrote the songs. My teachers told me this, when I got older; my mother was terrified I'd have a miserable life on some cheap stage and tried her best to discourage me.  I played all the instruments in my house-- not a genius, but it was comforting and felt like 'home'. I made up little melodies. In middle school and high school I was somewhat encouraged, and sang and danced in school performances. My older sister did as well... she was a natural drama queen, lol.

As a girl I was careful; it was the two of us, against conservative parents, and nothing was worth incurring the wrath of my older sister.  She was, unlike the dark Barbie to which I compared her physically, barbed.  She surveyed everything I acquired, suffered any accolade, and conspired to steal candy and gifts, which I freely gave her.  She was older; she had a certifiable mean-girl power. Despite certain talents which I was given, inherently-- I hid under a sort of cloak of mediocrity.  I had no ambition to be 'seen' or perform outside of the normal school parameters. I played our guitar quietly and secretly, shut myself up with books, early classic rock and Beethoven, and wrote my little stories and poems in notebooks which I've learned she discarded.

I've been reading Mann's Joseph and His Brothers.  It's an old translation, slow-going-- deliberately Biblical.  One must look up names and places and I've forgotten so much. But I've always been obsessed with the Jacob story-- the sibling rivalry, the stealing of the birthright.  Deception is common in these legends-- one wonders if the switching of Leah for Rachel was payback of a sort.  But clearly Jacob was the chosen brother... somehow the trickery was part of his destiny. And his acquired name, Israel, which I understand has something to do with struggle-- well, it all seems vaguely pertinent to the current situation in the Middle East.

Mann, at the beginning, touches on the Osiris legend.  I've always loved that name, and even as a girl, I wandered the Egyptian corridors of the Metropolitan Museum looking at images. But Osiris married his sister... and was killed by his jealous brother, dug up and put back together by his sister for enough time to make a baby, Horus.  It's endlessly complex and debatable and there are versions and tangents... but all of these histories seem to revolve around issues of parental favoritism, sibling jealousies... epic infighting. 

Joseph, the son of Jacob's beloved Rachel, was the favorite.  His fate-- both the good and the bad, seemed predetermined by the jealousy of his brothers.  Also his persona.  One molds oneself according to family peculiarities and dynamics.  But even as an adolescent, standing at the well, being scolded by his father, Joseph-- like a Biblical Elvis-- seemed destined for stardom.  While I am at the very beginning of this daunting novel and nearing the ending of a strange life, I can't help personalizing these issues. 

I've always shunned self-promotion.  Somehow it seems wrong for any kind of artist although it seems to have become not just prerequisite but part of the product. Of course they say success is generally the best revenge... but I'm not sure I ever wanted revenge. I just wanted not to be victimized.  What a terrible attitude this seems, in these times when even disabilities and flaws are displayed with pride. 

This new cd is the iceberg-tip of my productive output.  Were it not for the producer and arranger here, I probably would not have released anything.  I am grateful to him, for looking under the rock of my relative anonymity and wanting to chip away and bring a few of these to light.  Way beyond the threat of sibling hatred as I am, there is maybe a small sense of relief. Like Thomas Mann and the limited fame of this epic novel-- his personal magnum opus--  one is so often praised for the things that come easily, and overlooked for that which is difficult.  Unlike Mann, I will not be read by generations, or acknowledged by more than a small circle.  I am thinking more, in terms of this world, how rivalries-- jealousies, familial and tribal resentments-- national and political competition-- have destroyed so much of what might have been good and so worth saving.  

Waiting (2020 version)

One of my ex-boyfriends had a song I heard him perform only once; the chorus went Wai-hay-hay-hay...way-hay-hay-hay-hay-hay- tinngggg...  It went on.. not easy to sing on key unless you're sort of a yodeler...  but somehow some version of it has been repeating in my head.   Here we are, nearly in unison, across the world-- taking one of those 'breaths' a brilliant conductor can orchestrate and control by simply holding up his baton... while the brass, the strings, the woodwinds-- they all freeze in mid-breath or mid-stroke... waiting.

We spend a good part of our lives waiting; less so in the 5g internet age where responses are immediate-- goods are located and purchased, conversations anywhere in real-time, deals made, interruptions even possible.  When I was small I waited evenings for my father to turn the corner in his business suit-- he shared a cab and walked the last block or so.  Daddy! we'd yell, joyfully... greeting him just before he'd retire to the den with the scotch-on-the-rocks he'd waited for all day.

And now, the good witch in the story says, 'we must wait'... while the batter magically becomes cake, the oats and water turn into porridge, the pasta softens and curls, coffee brews.  Trees grow and fruit ripens, nested eggs hatch with life, babies are pulled from laboring mothers and childhood begins.  We keep ourselves occupied with schooling and tasks-- with jobs and careers and games and entertainment... while nature cycles on and provides us with most of what we expect.

So what now, as the whole world is paused-- not quite in unison-- for what have we waited?  For a new order?  For a universal decree of mourning?  A mass funeral for those families who have waited many weeks without comfort?  A diminished life for those who have been sickened and not quite recovered? Those who have been wounded and disabled?  A vaccine or cure for something that scarcely existed just six months ago?  A medal of honor for those who perished, who gave their lives unknowingly for some kind of cruel science?  Rewards for the medics and attendants who cared tirelessly and often hopelessly for people who were strangers and became intimates? For society to resume its habits and ways, or to resume with slightly altered protocol?  Will people be kind to one another? Has the waiting tested their patience to the limit?

For me, aside from its homophonic twin, waiting had a certain romance to it.  The 'hardest part', Tom Petty insisted, but I disagree.  The diagnosis is worse-- the verdict, the failure to acquit, the end.  We are all here waiting for death, some have said.... life itself is the waiting.

Ironically, people have learned to stand on line with more patience.  Of course, most have phones and social 'pacifiers' with which to entertain themselves.  I bring a book; I read, look around-- enjoy the air.  Things take much time these days; I waited tonight on a long supermarket line to find the price of chicken had doubled once again.  On my way out, I remarked about it to a woman with greying dreadlocks...  But I'll buy you chicken, baby, she said... in this voice that brought on a flood of tears.  No, no, I reassured her-- I'm fine-- just cranky.  We all need a hug, baby, she said... but we gotta wait for that shit! .... and we laughed.

Like those Biblical patriarchs and Greek heroes-- we wait for love, we wait for death, we wait for God to listen and look and reply.  Most of the time, we are clueless and helpless.  Especially now-- we wait for our mayors and governors to advise us, to coordinate a plan-- to be safe.

The tent hospital in Central Park has been dismantled-- just like that, it vanished almost overnight.  Families of those who did not survive here will have no place to pass and remember their loved one.  It is a grass field, once again.  Will children play here and forget the small successes and tragedies that marked this lawn in the month of April?  

I have learned from experience that grief subsides with the passing of four seasons.  My friend whose husband passed away does not believe this.  You need to get by one birthday, one Christmas, one anniversary, one snowfall, one fireworks display, one turkey dinner... etc.  It is unimaginable but it comes-- the day when you forget for an hour or two, you sleep without a dream, you laugh deeply and uncontrollably.

Walking around the Harlem Meer at dusk tonight, I witness people with masks zig-zagging paths to avoid others.  A few men are maskless by a bench, laughing and smoking, sharing food, touching.  Will we ever trust one another enough to stand shoulder-by-shoulder in crowds?  I passed one of my son's former mentors last night and we spontaneously and courageously clasped hands.  It was so human and healing and strange.  A woman shook her head as though we'd violated some civic law.

I am willing to wait for the next version of future... but not with phone in hand, biding my time.  I am hoping to fill this with some kind of energy-- some kind of work, some kind of prayer... so when the baton lowers,  I will pledge myself forward into the next measure, knowing it is likely to be the 'hardest part'.

You, Too…..

For the last 8 years, I take this weekly Latin hip-hop dance class.  The teacher is this dread-locked, sexy, ultra-talented dancer/percussionist/DJ who choreographs routines to great Latin and Brazilian music I wouldn't otherwise get to hear.  Lately he's been playing this version of U2's  'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' with a samba beat, and Spanish lyrics--- it's fantastic and grooving and nostalgic all at once.  The chorus is in English… as though there's no translation for this lyric.

I remember well when this song came out-- I was fortunate to be a guest on the Lou Reed/U2 tour and I saw from stage left-- at Wembley-- and other massive stadiums, night after night, Bono come out and sing these lyrics with compelling personal passion.  Backstage the band was all hanging out with various supermodels-- who knows what was going on in his head-- a young mid-life crisis-- a confession, a genuine plateau of confusion, as often happens when people encounter that kind of massive success:  questions rather than answers?  He was sweet and adorable and at some kind of peak in every way, and when he sang this song, he made himself vulnerable… it was like an anthem of self doubt.

But it wasn't until this week, doing my little steps and turns, that it suddenly occurred to me that the lyric doesn't mean just this unfinished search for some kind of answer, but maybe the writer hasn't a clue what it is he is even looking for.  Seems so simple--- but all these years, I didn't get it.

Anyone observing my dance class would undoubtedly see all kinds of 'lost' people: the tattooed and outfitted girls who are living their Beyonce and Janet Jackson fantasy--- the older Hispanic women who shake their hips with real soul and sexiness, the men who can't seem to get the rhythm in their body-- the over-50 women who bare their midriffs that no one wants to see-- one who wears a leather bustier and even manages a split.  It's a little over the top, and one wonders what drives these people… there's significant competition for the front row, and having our teacher grab one of us for a few bars is a coveted reward.  I lose myself in the music-- it's exotic and different, and I'm beginning to understand the bass rhythms.

At the end of the class, there's a cool-down to this Brazilian version of a Bryan Adams song.  Another guy who, in the late 1980's, was looking for his heaven in the arms of the British princess.  He bought himself a house and moved over there, wrote her a couple of songs-- the tabloids printed stories of their affair…who knows?  I'm sure he was devastated by her death.  I guess he didn't quite know what he was looking for-- neither did the Princess, apparently.  Or she knew what she wasn't looking for, which  made the royal family uncomfortable.

I never found what I was looking for in London, although I thought I did, briefly.  As often happens in life, the answer we find doesn't necessarily take us through the next set of questions.  Our lives don't stop-- they roll on endlessly, with our own high and low tides and storms and days of calm.  Sometimes what we most want passes us by when we're asleep or obsessing about something useless.  We fail to love the person in our path because they don't look exactly like our current version of love, and then it might be too late.

As I get older, I think I spend less time waiting.  I used to love the periods in my life when I was pining for some boy or man, crossing off days on my calendar until he came.  There was nothing like those days and nights-- they felt lit up, enchanted-- thrilling.  But these days, I am inclined to reach out and embrace whatever I find in my path.  I love going to flea markets and thrift stores-- you never find anything you want, but the random discovery is what makes these visits amazing.  It's like scraping the bottom of some strange ocean with a net and coming up with a shell or a plant or some amazing rock.  Useless but  day-changing.  You take the thing home and it becomes part of you.

I watch people drop off donation boxes to thrift stores-- the book boxes are sad and predictable--- college textbooks, marriage manuals, What to Expect When You're Expecting, Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, some Steven King and Joyce Carol Oates, then fitness and diet books, retirement planning, sometimes books about healing or cancer… then self-help books, manuals on depression, dealing with death, meditation tapes-- -a Bible… and there you have it… a man who maybe found what he was looking for, at least on a Barnes and Noble bookshelf,.. and then, like all of us, realized that we have limited options at the end.

Night after night, people dig through our trash on my corner--- looking.  People buy Lotto tickets-- it's uncanny the numbers of dollars spent because they believe they are going to win-- that they will be able to have what they are looking for.  The belief factor-- is mind-blowing.  People of limited income will spend a small fortune over a lifetime… convinced that the next ticket is going to be 'it'.

My rich neighbors seem to have more money than they can count-- -some of them get into collecting.  Men buy expensive guitars which they'll never play like a young hungry musician who cannot do anything but play, because he has no choice, and his heart is already full of music.  These wealthy guitar owners will never find what he has, but they might look around-- play a little, feel something-- fantasize about a different life.  One of my friends tells me she is working at a soup kitchen some nights-- feeding the homeless.  She is looking for something, maybe… paring away at her guilt because she is extremely fortunate… and doesn't realize that this system is failing the truly oppressed and underfed… but she is not looking there, not walking through East Harlem at 3 AM and seeing the numbers of bodies looking for cans and bottles, or dreaming under boxes and blankets-- dreaming of something they may or may not have found.

I think I now know it is the looking that matters--- not really the finding.  And the richest things we find are rarely if ever the ones we are looking for, because life doesn't work that way.  The best we can do is keep postponing the ending, because the finding will go on and on, and that is a gift in itself.  It's just a matter of trying not to predict or ask-- and accept the random order of life as it is, because some things are so constant-- the light and dark, the sky, the stars and moon, the seasons, moving the clock back one hour as we will all obediently do this weekend--gaining an extra hour of looking, maybe an hour of shivering in the cold or rain, an hour of love, of music, of a hotel room you have bought for a night of love, of time spent writing a song, of pain, of pleasure, of looking, as I will see it, because it might just be the hour when I will find something I wasn't looking for at all, like a poem,  and it will be enough.

Paulbearers

Another funeral yesterday.  They seem to come in waves.  For the wife--- the kids, the mother--- this is a life-shaping devastation.   For the rest of us, the mourners--- it is more temporary. We go out into the spring sunlight, return to our lives, speak a little less that day.  I try to dress badly for funerals.  Okay, I admit-- these days I don't really have to try--- this seems to be my mode of default.  It just feels so inappropriate to put on make-up and a nice dress.  I'm sure someone processes this as disrespect, but for me-- observing the blow-dried fashionistas--- it just seems wrong.  People forgive you-- -the rock and roller, etc.  It is okay to be 'odd'.  These people have been your audience.

I've been re-reading Faulkner-- Absalom, Absalom.  I was processing the tough version of mourning in the Civil War-ravaged South where the women were violently widowed, and the tragic figure of Judith,
in a primitive dress sewn from whatever re-cycled cloth was available--  betrothed in innocence to her half-brother, becomes a widow and a pallbearer within hours.  I would want to walk forever, feeling the unbearable weight of that rough wooden box on my shoulder until I dropped.  No drama in those times-- life was hard and death in the ravaged south seems so cruel it is almost bloodless.

I'd been to funerals at this Church before…the minister is a woman with a sort of monotonal voice that always sounds priestly--- comforting, in a way.  On this occasion she forgot the Lord's Prayer… right in the middle… I was reciting, without thinking-- feeling the coffin on my shoulder, the discomfort of unbleached ropey shirting-- and she was silent.  Deliver us from evil, she did not say.  Maybe the Episcopal version no longer acknowledges evil--- they are afraid it will frighten away their congregation, in this time where hellish greed fuels the ambitions of our new heroes.  Where a 19-year-old basketball player's salary could feed an entire continent.  But it doesn't.  The developers continue to develop, the digital ching of each accumulated million continues to be the preferred soundtrack of businessmen, the random incredulous accident of beauty is now available for anyone with a fat wallet,  physical imperfections are cause for self-hatred and social disgust, and fashion is not a choice but a pre-requisite.

There has been evil since man was born-- evil and death--- pain and suffering, sorrow and joy.  These days people seem to think joy is a birthright.  Rich people eradicate pain, ugliness.  They live way up high in this city-- -where there is a magnificent view but they see nothing-- no hustlers on the street, no-one shoving or pushing, no-one robbing or stabbing or killing.  They demand things… even people in the projects--- they demand foodstamps and better housing and expensive sneakers.  They demand that there are 2000 versions of E-news now, so we can listen to as many versions of why Beyonce's sister punched Jay-Z (who undoubtedly deserves it and who else could get close enough to do it but an 'inside' woman?  I would have paid her to do this, except I don't have any money).  And the rest of the world news is a tiny postage stamp on the oversized envelope of their daily information intake, if that.

Two nights ago I'd walked up to my usual grocery store in Harlem--- 112th and Lenox.  And I heard that familiar pop-pop-pop like toy caps--- like a transistor-radio version of gunshot…. but it was real.. someone was robbing the store, had sprayed bullets… no groceries for me… the luck of the Irish that my amnesiac Mom had kept me on the phone too long, asking endless questions, worrying about things she can no longer identify, or I could have been the occupant of that box on the altar yesterday.

It is Harlem… no one gave it much attention.  The blue tape came out, the sirens… the guys on the corner put out their joints.  The cops rerouted me to St. Nicholas, another supermarket further uptown where my cashier gave me just a tiny side-smirk when I told him their sister store was shut down for the night.

They are calm, these people.  They accept things.  For the most part, they have given up on ambition-- they are provided for--- they have virtually free accommodation in Manhattan-- their new white neighbors are paying 4 and 5 figures for rent, but they have foodstamps, family--- a 'hood…friends… they greet one another with warmth and cool handshakes.  If they get sick and need a wheelchair-- an amputation-- they accept it.  They don't seem to worry.  Many of them go to church; some of them don't.  The women wait long minutes for buses to go just a few blocks.  It seems there is always a funeral going on, always an ambulance--- police cars, people outside, the smell of marijuana, incense, and music… boom boxes, open car doors.  It is a kind of life in my city where neighborhoods have been renovated ad mortem, ad anonymity.  We who remember--- maybe we are the pallbearers of our former city.  We remember, we find the carved facades of the Louis Sullivan buildings even though their storefronts have been transformed into fashionista modernity.

Waiting for the crosstown last night, one of the Broadway homeless regulars was being placed onto a stretcher.  There were all kinds of secretions and body fluids on the sidewalk.  Two women cops were smirking and keeping their distance.  A water bug was running toward some of the puddles of waste, and they jumped back.  Probably some bad garbage he'd eaten.  Some kind of thick yellow snot was hanging out of his nose.  He looked bewildered or spooked--- but he always looked like that, with his wild matted dreads every which way and his leathery old face with the child's eyes.  On the sidewalk was his friend… he cried, this man-- audible weeping…. like a solo tragic Greek chorus-- he reminds me.  He had his pants rolled up to show off the oozing sores on his legs.  He was barefoot-- as always--even in winter.  He actually generates little income, because people are reluctant to approach him.  It is that disturbing… unless, of course, you have your earbuds in.  I gestured to the cops, who were way more comfortable here than at the burglary scene where they were surrounded by resentful neighbors… Yeah, he's next, one of them smirked at me… like we were sharing some kind of joke.

Maybe they are next.  Maybe I am next.  On the train downtown from the funeral, a beautifully-dressed black man made room for me.  He was coming from a funeral… just like me, he said.  He showed me his Bible, inside a briefcase.  I told him how the minister forgot the Lord's Prayer and he shook his head.  But I'm sure she was thinking-- she was pallbearing in her way…  let's hope so, anyway… let's hope she wasn't planning her lunch menu, or trying to recall her botox appointment-- or realizing suddenly that maybe she and her husband hadn't had sex since Ash Wednesday-- or a worrisome foreshadowing of future dementia.  Or maybe… hopefully….  she was genuinely stricken by the tearful passionate eulogy of this lovely man's son.   At least she apologized, acknowledged the 'unpriestliness' of her lapse.  23rd Street came all too soon.  I realize I can recite many of the Psalms.  They were my earliest poems, along with Rudyard Kipling.  Whatever-- I could have ridden forever with this man who had religion on his tongue and smelled so good.  I could have crawled into his lap and closed my eyes.  His name is Paul, he told me, as he warmly gripped my hand in parting--- like the apostle.  Like the great love of my young life.  I'm exhausted.  I'm tired from caring too much, from worrying about the guy with the rotting feet on the corner who cries.  I'm exhausted from lying in bed listening to my ghosts, from carrying the metaphorical coffin of my dead lovers and those who have no mourners.

And this morning I am especially weary for the NY Times blogger who was singing the pathetic praises of that barometer of low mediocrity, Patricia Lockwood… whose name is far better poetry than anything she has produced...I ask myself:  'What tale shall serve me here among/ Mine angry and defrauded young?'