Blindsided

When I was in grade school, a blind boy moved into my neighborhood and we became friendly.  He was super intelligent and well read.  My Mom, who was a miraculously fast typist, was a volunteer transcriber of books into Braille.  In those days, the machine that punched the holes was incredibly interesting to me-- a child.  There were musical manuscripts, too; my Mom played piano and was useful for this work as well.     

I've written before about the special relationship I had with the blind boy-- how we had a kind of conversational intimacy I'd had yet to experience.  It was addicting; I loved our sacred after-school hours, exchanging ideas.  He could sense the hour of the day-- he could gauge the nearness of objects and I let him run his hands over my face and my hair.  My mother began to disapprove of our exclusive little twosome.  I moved and walked a certain way in his presence, as though it mattered more; this creeped her out.  I realized in retrospect, as an adult, that I'd never felt so 'seen'.  

So he went away and when he returned he had regained some of his sight.  He visited me and did not share this information; we were as we'd been.  Then I found out from some other kids that he could see me... and I was furious.  Why did he deceive me this way?  Because he was afraid I would no longer love him he said. Love-- a word we'd never exchanged; no one did, at that age.  It was something we casually put on valentines and repeated in songs.  

Anyway, things were never the same.  His family moved again and we didn't write-- braille or otherwise.  One day another boy walked into our classroom with a cane and dark glasses.  My heart opened... it turned out that he'd had some kind of surgery or episode and was light-sensitive.  He also was dull and silly and told bad jokes. After discovering Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder, I realized I'd somehow mistakenly linked a grade school disability with some kind of brilliance.  He was anything but.  

There's a man (one of many) in my neighborhood who asks for money with a cup and a cane.  He's wheelchair-bound-- used to sing but no more... he's missing one leg and part of the other.  We talk occasionally when I see him 'on break' in the park, eating some of his 'take'.  A local Mt. Sinai doctor told him he could be fitted with an artificial limb-- a prosthesis-- he could become mobile.  He'd rather just have the $5 deposited in his cup, please.  It wasn't the pain, he told me-- yes, it's not easy to go through this process; I read "Slow Man' during the pandemic and it was pretty graphic.  But my panhandling friend looked me penetratingly in the eye and asked 'Woman, where would I be without my disability?' And lit a cigarette.  

It stayed with me all day, his rhetorical question... I mean, who are we all, each one of us-- without our flaws and handicaps and failures? They motivate us, make us create and empathize... sometimes they kill us, cripple us, destroy our families and loved ones.  I have so many friends whose lives are defined by their substance of choice. After the blind boy in grade school, I have fallen in love with not just the addict but their addiction, somehow.  Heroin, when I was 19, was like a test of courage-- a living dare-- an edge you crossed or didn't.  I lived briefly with an addict and was fascinated by the rituals and the daily fluctuations... the obstacle course of a two day cycle-- I was spectator and enabler-- lover and audience-- it was like an adventure, sleeping with danger-- penetrating a deep enigma I could not understand.  Like with the blind boy, I was deluded into believing this other-worldly companionship was mystical and deep  and superior.  

We are all psychological magicians; we turn bad habits into rabbits, we stuff things into hats... we hide behind curtains and mask our true feelings.  We transform... we use drugs, we drink.. we fall in love. All these things change us, or change our belief in what we are.  We have plastic surgery and put on wigs-- we lose weight and build muscles and sculpt our bodies and faces.  In the end, we are only as real as our disabilities-- the B-side of our talents and potential.  At the end of the day, I admit I envy my wheelchair friend his simple answer.  All in.  I am so often on an existential fence.  

So many of my friends and acquaintances wear the badge of Recovery.  It's something the uninitiated of us cannot really understand.  My disability, I suppose, is not having had a diagnosable addiction or issue from which I could emerge like a phoenix.  I don't have any landmarks or the daily reward of measuring my own transformation.  I have no badge or social media post for which others congratulate me.  I do have the daily struggle of human existence--   trying hard to overcome my personal roadblocks, to survive long enough to leave something possibly memorable when I die.  And to recognize sympathy when it is warranted-- to accept and not necessarily fall in love with a disability, no matter how seductive we find these people who may not necessarily deserve our devotion. Then again, who am I to judge anyone on a street corner with a cup or a cane or dark glasses--- or the man in his penthouse failing to see anything from his massive glass world? Not necessarily disabled but disqualified....

Skin Deep

When I was young, I had perfect skin.  It meant nothing to me-- in fact, it had absolutely no currency in my life, was sort of an albatross that made it nearly impossible for me to become a punk-rocker outcast-type.  My older sister had acne.  She also had a slew of boyfriends and hiked her skirt way up when we left the house for school.  I wanted her skin.   She hated me for mine, and I would have traded in a second.  Acne would make me look older-- as would braces on my teeth, I thought.  People commented on my skin-- aunts and cousins--- the doctor.  When I went to buy make-up, even as a woman, the cosmetics salespeople would remark-- why do you need make-up?  You have perfect skin.  Lloyd Cole had a song about this.  I did nothing to deserve it-- ate plenty of chocolate and fries and smoked cigarettes-- but it remained, as it was.  Beauty's only skin deep, my mother used to say, and despite my flawless facial surface, I still believed my sister was way more attractive.

In the office of my Primary Care physician, a woman sits at the front desk and does intake.  The right half of her face is horribly deformed, as though it was burned or blown off in an explosion.  She is in her late 30's and it's tough to look at her.  She has no functioning eye or mouth; the left side is marked with some kind of warty growths, but somewhat normal.  Her voice is steady and courageous and sweet; if I were blind I might imagine her as beautiful.  I commend my doctor for hiring her because she is unsettling, physically.  As for her dignity-- I cannot say enough.  She is well dressed and stylish from the neck down.  Her hair is neat and pretty; her hands are lovely and efficient.

When my son was born, he was adorable and perfect.  I couldn't stop admiring him, especially since I felt I didn't deserve to have this baby; I hadn't planned this, and my lifestyle for the first 3 months of pregnancy was a little crooked and a-maternal.  His infant skin was so tender he couldn't tolerate any animal products-- wool, fur-- anything besides soft natural cottons.  It was as though his surface was a metaphor for my heart; here I was-- a new mother-- a protector-- and suddenly I felt stripped and raw and on the verge of not just tears but utter emotional collapse at the slightest hint of tragedy or sadness.  Maybe this is what they call postpartum depression.  I was a single mother and utterly enchanted with my baby; there was absolutely no room for self-inspection or analysis.  I was too busy trying to remember all the little infant things I had never learned and too absorbed in managing his care while I worked and kept my life on the level.  But in caring for another being, I learned the depth of compassion.

As a young woman I fell in love with a black man.  Our attraction had nothing to do with color, and his strangeness had more to do with cultural rather than racial differences.  Sometimes at night, I awoke and admired the beautiful contrast of his dark, strong arm draped across my body.  His skin had a different feel and smell and taste.  In those days, some people in some locales didn't appreciate our marriage and our presence as a couple.  The differences fascinated me; in the end we separated, but we both learned things about appearance and acceptance.

My skin is no longer perfect; few things about me are pretty; we enter the autumn and winter of our lives and our human foliage begins to fall away.  Many of my women friends fight this process with injections and treatments; their medically-enhanced beauty is truly skin-deep and temporary, but it suits them, and it doesn't bother me.  Nor does the economic ability to do such things.  Money, I have discovered, is a little skin-deep as well.  It is temporary and may create a sense of security, but people still get ill and have accidents and mishaps, and while they may be comfortable and well cared-for, their lives don't seem to be more valuable.  They do give more to charity-- as do people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, etc… but this kind of billionaire philanthropy seems a bit skin-deep and cavalier-- it is acknowledged and rewarded, but do they suffer or sacrifice to do this?  They all seem to drive expensive cars, live in enormous houses, collect things and wear rolexes.  They do little more than balance their tax burden, while being applauded for stunning generosity.

As for my friend who is ravaged by cancer, she grows thinner every week.  Her skin is translucent and stretched over the contours of her face in a way that is startling. She resembles an anorexic; her once long, graceful limbs are spindly and twiggy;  the bones of her knees are knobby and prominent beneath her loose pants.  I feel I can see through her skin into her soul; her veins are greenish and sickly.  She is skeletal and taut-- both old and young, like an underdeveloped fetus.  She walks with bitter resignation, daring anyone to comment.  I told her she looked pretty the other day; she had on a purple knit cap and her features were feverish and her skin was flushed from the cold.  She was furious and screamed at me… this is not a word that applies to her physical or mental state, she warned me.  Do not use this language in my presence.   I wept-- I am not tough-- I am permeable and fragile.  I wear my heart everywhere; without tattoos, my skin betrays me, my tears are ready and I am unarmed.  I will not tell her again that she has acquired this sort of porcelain-doll facade-- and while her eyes have lost their spark and are glazed and empty from pain and the drugs, there is a kind of quiet holy dignity in her long-suffering expression-- and after all the treatments, the side-effects and the rashes, ironically-- she has perfect skin.

Blink

This is a world without Kings.  A world without miracles.  The Dalai Lama is a man: he eats meat; he likes George Bush.  He laughs at himself.  Maybe this is good.  Maybe he should have a reality show.
Mrs. Clint Eastwood has one.  It is neither amusing nor entertaining.  It occupies cable real estate.  I used to think Clint was okay, even though he is a mediocre pianist.  I'll never watch Dirty Harry again.

People who order super sized pizzas read about the new billionaires dating celebrities and confusing legends and fame and what used to be talent with obscene bank accounts and ultra-conspicuous consumption.  Men who have no sense of art can now buy iconic paintings; no matter that they overpay for these; it is meaningless.  They can't tell  a hamburger from a Warhol anyway, so why should it annoy me that crooked art dealers profit from their ignorance?  It does.  They, too, mingle with the billionaires and date celebrities.  Money is the only ID required at events.  Doesn't matter how you got it or what you do with it.  It used to pass through hands, like religion or faith; now it sticks like glue-backed securities and shines like vaseline.  Derivatives, I call these people.  Ditto their art and their tastelessly scaled homes and their overpriced labelled handbags.  My friend had a new Balenciaga bag the other day.  It looks fake, I commented.  It is fake.  She is furious and won't speak to me.

It is generally late when I feel compelled to confess things.  It is at the precipice of a new day when I decide my night is beginning.  There is a bird outside my back window that comments every morning at 5:34.  It understands daylight savings time... it adjusts.  I can't fathom where it sits for this performance; there is very little foliage back there; mostly brick wall and garbage.  I can't quite place the source of the sound.  Then there is the barking dog.
I have little sympathy for this dog... which is unusual for me.  I was in an office waiting room last week and there was a blind woman with a German Shepherd.  He was sweet and ultra-attentive; the woman was gruff and unappreciative.  Dogs don't really require affection; people do.  Nonetheless, of the pair, I sided with the dog.  Very unsympathetic of me... but I'm noticing lately I am lacking in human sympathy. I am growing a sort of bark around my sensitive nature.  Things will look less spiny in full daylight; I know this, but I choose to document the needles at their entry...when it still hurts.  I am a bit of a hater.  I hate Mrs. Eastwood.  I hate Larry Gagosian.  I hate every single person at Goldman Sachs.  I hate the Cindy Sherman exhibition.  I hate women who are nice to me because they want to date one of my friends.  I hate the parents of precocious young guitar players who photograph and youtube their young gods with me stuck on the stage playing bass for someone I never signed up for.  I hate parents who worship their kids.  I hate people who use people and that is the basis of all social networking. I hate people who don't contribute.  I hate more music than I love and that is a sociological symptom.  Music is joy and most of what is out there is not music but misplaced ego noise.  Aural blood.  Tinnitus.  Messy stuff that just clutters.  Things that don't matter blocking the way for things that do.  Things that need to be hated out there concealing things that need to make us weep.

A woman stabbed her daughter yesterday.  9 years old.   She must wake up today and know that.  And tomorrow.   I pity this mother.  She can perhaps feel something.  She is mad, they say.  Madness is not a refuge; it is a knife you cannot control.  I have developed a certain respect for madness, especially the kind that has no regard for grace.  I admire this.  I know this is evil and I am confessing; it is one step beyond simply hating.  It means occasionally loving the murderer and I know this is wrong.  But in a way madness is the only freedom left.  It is outside the law, outside morality, outside.  

I'm sure when this fog lifts and the sun comes out one of these afternoons I'll repent.  But for now, my bird has gone for the day--- maybe it sleeps through the morning like I do.  It is an old bird; it's been clocking in for years now.  It might hate its routine.  I have heard birds don't really think.  It's not even a crime to kill a bird, the way it is to kill a dog.  It is okay to eat birds, to wear their feathers and sleep under quilts made from them.  I can't process this right now, the way I can't process the obsession we have with digging up Etan Patz like a cheap CSI episode or the suffocating empathy I have for the woman who stabbed her daughter out of what I sense was some kind of mad love.   There will be no closure for those of us who are still listening.  There will be no punishment for the unpunished and no funeral for death.  There is only the good night.  One can always choose the dark.  

Bedraggled

One brief expletive from my son marked the Wikipedia blackout in my world. Remember the 'Day Without Art'? Who even noticed this year? It was totally obscured by uber-festivities at Miami Basel. Could it be that the collectors were too young to recall the solemnity of 1989? The true desolate meaning of A Day Without Art? Too busy texting to even sense a blackout?

Years ago I read Saramago's 'Blindness'. Of course now there is the film, which seemed a bit odd to me, because the whole nightmarish premise is this total epidemic whiteout. Terrifying, crippling, devastating. For those of us who stake our happiness on literature and visual study, this is maybe worse than death. Fear of the dark that never lifts.

I've always wondered about the dreams of a congenitally blind person. Are they visual? Cinematic? And the blindspots of sighted people--- the narcissists who cannot bear the egoism of their mate, the overdressed, overbotoxed women who seem to have no mirrors, the bustling masses who ignore the panhandlers, buy their Hermes bag and fail to donate-- anywhere-- the talkers and interrupters, facebook addicts, the overeaters and cellphone abusers on buses and in elevators, the tone-deaf guitar players who plug in and blast and fail to see it is not the noise, it is the absence of music that annoys.

How about a Year Without Art? A decade? Is anyone listening? Perhaps A Day Without Technology. That will get our attention. A day with Blindness. It will take a crippling epidemic to bring out the truly democratic. Or my version of that. Or, as one of my aristocratic flatmates once remarked to the whining of another, regarding his conspicuous and non-paying gorgeous girlfriend: 'It's simple, old man: 'Those who have, give. Those who don't, don't.' It made sense to me. She was funny and shared her underwear and cigarettes freely. That counted, in those days. Come to think of it, I'm sure the guy's a republican. He had an enormous trust fund and liked to annoy his parents by bestowing it on unworthy bedfellows.

I just ran into an old friend who was virtually screaming at me for posting music on the internet. Did I know Spotify is banking billions and pays .0001% royalties to the artists? Sells your music for profit without rights? 'Yes,' I said. And if you haven't noticed, they are following the JP Morgan/Chase model. Except the average schmuck actually pays fees for this privilege.' Besides, Pat Benatar stole one of my songs in the 1980's and claimed synchronicitous creativity and total innocence. Who wanted the Love-is-a-Battlefield tiny Amazon as an enemy anyway? Not I. Not worth a lawsuit.

I have already taken on the healthcare system, the CDS scammers, Goldman Sachs, the need for free food stations in the city... how can I worry about Spotify too? He was furious. And on the subject of justice...can anyone poor really afford the privilege of suing? Is government on the side of punishing the banks who enticed and billed for mortgages people couldn't manage? Is homelessness a just price for these people?

I bought a Lichtenstein Entablature piece for a lawyer-friend. It has 'Iustitia' ironically chiseled on the cartoon-lintel. He paid 10,000 for this. I got nothing. I didn't want anything. Just the irony. The dealer who sold it probably made $5,000... who knows? Lichtenstein got maybe $300 apiece (some) originally; there are hundreds of these... he's rich, anyway, and a lawyer will eventually go after this copyright issue for him. Not so for my poor lost demos on youtube. Justice?

Here's a little Writerless parable:
A cute guy used to drink at my gigs, made drunk shy overtures, was a grad student at SVA. He begged me to come to his MFA show. So I went--- tons of painters, tons of people, he was drunk. But among the work was this 16-inch square painting of a bed. It was unmade; the sheets were rumpled, the blankets were thrown around... there was a cheap lamp in the upper corner with this eerie light. It gave me the feeling all Vermeers give me. The whites were mesmerizing, the shadows blue and creamy and thick. I couldn't tear myself away. 10 feet away, 6 inches away...

The artist? That's right, my young fan. So I took him home. The sex was perfect drunk-painter sex and neither of us slept or spoke. Three nights later he returned, totally sober, with a package. 'Your portrait', he said. It was a bed. Two crumpled pillows, the blue-white sheets, the shadows, some semblance of my down quilt, some imprint of our quiet broken passion It was like the painting in the show, but 100 times more perfect. It was wrenching. It was tearjerking. Edibly painterly, every brushstroke caressing and sensual and perfect. It was every dark film I'd ever seen, every poem and Leonard Cohen song I had ever loved. Heartwrecking. I couldn't stop looking at it. Except of course to go to actual bed with the guy again.

Somewhere during our brief affair I went back to some other boyfriend, but the painting was bar-none my most prized possession. I looked at it every day, many, many times. I looked at it when I woke up on the way to the bathroom, and at night it was the last thing I saw before I turned out the light. When I was down, I came home and thought how unbelievably fortunate I was to be able to see this. Years. It made me pray never to go blind. No Vermeer, Cezanne, Basquiat, Bacon or Giotto (well, maybe Giotto) would have been higher on my list of desert-island picks.

So one night I gave a party. Friends, musicians, writers, etc. A great all-night party with drugs, drink, tons of black eyeliner and wall-to-wall svelte 30 and 40-something downtown hipsters. My friends. The next morning, I awoke among bodies passed out. The painting was gone. Just like that. Not Goldman Sachs or J.P. Morgan or landlord or Spotify. A 'friend'.

You get what you need, I just advised my son. You get what you need.