Goodwill Hunting

One of my bad angels has been playing tricks on me.  Beside the trash can on my corner, she's been leaving small piles of books-- old books, from the 40's, 50's and 60's, the way I love them… Mayakovsky, Celine, Rebecca West-- Chomsky, lectures of Nabokov... some days it's Marx, Engels-- Freud, Jung.   I am compelled of course to bend down, sort through them, be observed by my neighbors as a trash-picker.  Sometimes I explain-- plead-- Take these orphaned treasures… someone!  They will be rained on, spat on, trampled, peed on by over-pampered and un-knowing dogs.  I already own nearly every single one; I pride myself on my home library-- this is my family, my furnishings, my confidants and mentors.  So far I've had one 'taker'… a woman from Boston,  wedding-dress shopping with her daughter, who took pity on The Letters of Virginia Woolf after I guaranteed it.

Moments like these, I realize how I am perceived and perhaps scorned by my neighbors--- or not.  I give it little thought, am inclined to keep the lowest possible profile in my old building anyway, where for me the most venerable tenants are the former fashion editor of the New York Times and her photographer husband, who, 60 years ago, were the red-carpet 'it-couple' of Manhattan.   They were surely omitted from the A and B list of last night's annual Costume Institute gala-- even though their knowledge of fashion history, art, photography, culture in general vastly overshadows that of our new celebrity stars.  How many of the red carpet walkers have actually been to the Museum to view the art, to investigate the sources of the classic designers?  I had a glimpse of Beyonce's typically disappearing dress.  Maybe I'm just old and bitter, but is this not the Emperor's New Clothes in all its finery?  She is essentially naked, with a few wisps of blingy fabric clinging to her.  Much like her performances-- sex and strippery-- with a very few references to actual dance and music.  And if you get close, she is 'lined' with a sort of gut-compressing body-stocking--- not even her actual skin.   And really, no matter how many trainers you have,  do we really want to see what her husband maybe doesn't even look at anymore?

A woman visiting from Paris mentioned to me the other day that New York women had lost their style. Guilty, I say, with great gusto.  Most of them, as far as she can see, are walking around in their gym clothes.  Paris women do not do this.  And then these underdressed women overcompensate at events… they over-dress, over-coif,  wear excessive make-up and jewelry.

For me, like the music culture and the myriads of art galleries, it's hard to keep up with fashion.  Quantity has certainly replaced quality as the statistic of choice.   Young designers have achieved status and success that used to be reserved for the very select few.  Old established firms have been re-branded and taken over by another generation of fashionistas; I wonder if their predecessors would approve.  It all seems to be symptomatic of the creeping epidemic of cheap blingy competitive greed culture eradicating the old Manhattan 'facade' of cool casual deco solidity and replacing it with cheap candy-coated money.

When I was in high school, I had a kind of style.  I wore capes and high-laced boots and extremely short leather and suede skirts.  I made clothes out of vintage material, and I re-processed ice skates and work boots.  For events, I had a couple of prototype Betsey Johnson slinky knits.  They were unique and had a presence.  These days,  at late middle age, I've been through many phases and have learned the value of living my life as I choose, and paying the price.  My friends have branded me a financial anorexic.  I buy nothing, live on $4 a day, mostly, and like Bukowski, I don't discard things until they are utterly unusable.  Bukowski had a kind of anti-style.  He hated shopping, as I do.  Stores embarrass me-- I feel sorry for the salespeople, and sorry for the buyers who pile merchandise in baskets with a kind of desperation.  Thrift shops are filled with things that have never been worn-- sad garments that have lost their appeal and never served a purpose.  I pity these things.  I also have an extremely small carbon footprint.  I don't drive; I only use public transportation.   I don't have air conditioning and I don't buy plastic water bottles.  I do buy art.  I starve for this.  Literally, sometimes.  I also starve for the possibility of creating something that might be considered 'art'.  I feel sorry for artists who are brilliant.  I feel less sorry for artists who are bad,  and think there should be some means of clearing the field, of eliminating the handicapped so the gifted can move forward with a little clarity and support.

The day before yesterday, I went to look at an art auction preview; there was really nothing absolutely compelling, and I switched gears and went to browse a Goodwill store.  As usual, there were the book hoarders, the nerds with iPhones price-checking to see if they could turn a profit on an old record or vintage turntable.  Then there were the smelly women shoppers--- the lonely, neglected and bitter husbandless breed who haunt these thrift shops desperate for a conversation, a chance meeting, an argument.   They criticize and malign not just the goods but their fellow shoppers.  One of these pongy women told me, after I declined to rat on someone who was tearing into an unpriced 'pile', that my apathy is exactly what Hitler wanted from me.  I fear these people sometimes; I have much more in common with them than with my rich neighbors who have contempt for the poor and badly dressed.  I fear their smell, and have to confess I find comfort sometimes in my old quilts and over-laundered sheets.  I tolerate the ghosts of lovers and the soft pliable pages of used books with old cracking bindings and inscriptions of people who are long-dead.

I prize soul over style-- can't imagine Otis Redding or Sam Cooke or Robert Johnson on a red carpet-- maybe an old wide-planked wood floor.  Old leather is comforting.  Old friends, old buildings.  I am soft and pliant like my books-- no longer shiny.  I also feel bad about the people that don't get to sit in with my band and wanted to, I feel guilty for the people who come out and buy more drinks than they can afford, I feel terrible that I failed to buy the Mexican kitchen staff their midnight Cinco de Mayo tequila shots last night,  and I am devastated that the Nigerian painter went to the wrong show and was not on the guest-list.  I feel embarrassed that people must buy my music and books, even when they spend the cost of 100 cds on ridiculous shoes that don't fit.   And I am so sorry to the kind man who keeps offering to take me for incredible meals--I no longer have enough spare gratitude for such things and a decent black coffee is really more than I can accept.

Who am I?  I am someone's mother, and used to be someone's daughter.  I am less prized than formerly as someone's lover.  I play other people's music in old clothes and other people's discarded shoes.  I ride home on the early morning subway with poems in my head and songs in my heart, some of which I will never be able to record.  I will never walk any red carpet, unless it is one stained with my own blood.  Last night a fellow musician told me that he'd listened to my album multiple times--- that it was unique and original and I had my own 'style' of writing.  He'll never know how that feels like an award, a trophy.  One listener.  It is enough. 

The World in a Glass Hat

The word holiday in some cultures means a day of rest-- a day with family, maybe religious services-- prayer, feast, fasting…. but once an 's' is added--- it brings a little angst-- the burdensome part of family-- shopping, clothes, parties you must give or attend, gifts you can't afford, gifts you don't want--people you can't face… the face you cannot fake.  So New Year's Day, in a sense, is a bit of relief.  Of course when I was young, it was a terrible reminder that school was about to begin again, that all the great Christmas anticipation was funneling into the dread of grey-white winter days and afternoon sunsets.  The only bright spot ahead was a snow day or two.

Because I am a musician, and my 'work' is often other people's partying, I have begun to crave solitude.  I love my work, but some nights I admit I fantasize about coming home.  These days, with kids grown, relationships settling into a flattish line, I find myself adjusting to 'the rest of my life' with a tranquility that surprises me.  My ongoing resolution is demanding more of myself and less of others.  I am trying hard to minimize my disappointment with others' failure to honor their own commitments.  But I will never fail to observe this failure, and I will sadly continue to communicate my distress in the interest of truth.

Today I went for a late-afternoon run around the reservoir at sunset.  I had spoken to no one since 5 AM; even my voicemail had a day 'off'.  The winter light at sunset, the incomparable silhouette of my city skyline across the water, like a great circle of architectural dreams, never fails to take my breath away, to remind me I am alive in this magical home of enormous challenges and inspiration.  I went up to Harlem to pick up my modest week's worth of groceries, absorbing the passing soundtrack-- Katy Perry blasting from the skating rink sounded almost symphonic, like the ice-dancers version of the Messiah-- and hockey pucks whacking out their own rhythm; a man leading a bike tour, yelling all kinds of misinformation as he pointed out the sights.  I resisted the temptation to knock him off.

Up in Harlem people chilling-- a girl punching her boyfriend, a couple shouting it out in front of the liquor store where the cashier is encased in a bulletproof booth, a huge man on his flip-phone yelling and gesturing madly 'you ain't LISTENING, bro-- that's your PREDICAMENT'… over and over, like a play.  In south Harlem I am still an outsider--- I am usually the only white person in the grocery store, but they no longer ask for ID when I check out my few items.  People in my neighborhood are impatient; the supermarkets are overcrowded and the shoppers are impatient and angry.  Everything is a delivery.  Up here, people buy less carefully; they wait patiently in line, and they walk slowly.  Occasionally women my age and older argue about pricing and sales, but for the most part, people don't question things.  Handicapped people are everywhere; medical issues mean disability; life with a cane or a wheelchair doesn't seem to frighten them.  Their ambitions have either been thwarted or flattened; they seem to accept what is.  They will never own a condo in the new 200 story monstrosity with a google-worthy view of Manhattan, but they will get foodstamps and a decent project apartment for life. Some of them even have park views… so who is the winner here?

On the way back, passing the monstrous dark loom of Mt. Sinai (the ugly Jewish hospital, according to the central park tour-guide), thinking about the patients inside who marked the New Year from a bed… the first city births, and the first city deaths… those that could not quite drag themselves across the timeline... it occurred to me… if everyone simply told the truth, most of our more complex problems would recede.   If the doctors told them.. you have something we can't cure--- we can give you some poison that will maybe make your tumor suffer just a tiny bit more than the rest of you, but we really haven't a clue…  maybe they would have a choice.   I mean, there are certain drugs that work--- like aspirin-- but the biotech culture will continue to roll us into the trillion dollar irony of health-care.

If people went into a store and realized they really don't need these shoes that are $400…in fact, they really only need the ones they have… and if they went to pay for something, and owned that they really don't have enough money, because isn't that what a credit card is saying?  If the cable television executives and the huge entertainment companies just came out and said.. well, all of this crap we're promoting… it's pretty terrible; you don't need to watch it, and we don't need to make it anymore…
If the Academy one year decided to abolish awards because they really don't have many actors of the standard for which these awards were intended.  In fact-- what is competition and awards?  We either have the drive to be the best we can, or we don't.

And Jay-Zee and Beyonce, the so-called NYC 'royalty'… they would be dethroned because really all they have is a shitload of money, and a smart team of 'branding' experts.  And what is branding?  It used to be the cruel mark cattle ranchers burned into animals who are then 'property' and can be marketed, bred, tortured, killed, eaten-- whatever, for profit.  We live in a branded world-- of copyrights and lawsuits and copycats because so little seems original in the way that Mozart and Bach were original-- or Caravaggio or Leonardo.  Branding simply enables the exponential financial growth of mediocrity n this world where so-called experts 'authenticate' a work of art which is not original in the first place.  And if there was no lying, we would not need any of these people.

In fact, this middle-aged couple sitting next to me in Starbucks who obviously met online-- she is an aging Russian beauty with now-dyed hair, and a touch too much make-up, she is looking into his eyes with this desperate glow, like the new LED Christmas decorations on Madison Ave. which look happy but really lack the soul and 'life' of the old ones.  And he is telling her about his child support payments, and she is trying so hard because she needs a husband, even though he is a bit old, and he is lying to her, it is quite obvious he is a fool and a fake, and she is lying to him, too, because she hasn't paid her rent for months, even though she has an expensive haircut and a shopping bag.

Downtown so-called poets are reading Bukowski in an annual festival.  People who imitate and celebrate Bukowski, as though by reading these words, they will become poets, even though Bukowski himself would have told them, this is not poetry, and what was good about him was that he simply tried to tell the truth.  Isn't that what art used to be and when artists made art about lying, well, were they not honest about that?  And somewhere we all know about truth-- children don't lie, at least not until they learn that this is a very useful tool for getting something that they need.  If we consume artificial food we become sick and die… our flesh and blood know this-- but we don't seem to 'get' that we are a bit starved for art and music, some of us-- and for love, real love-- not the invented kind, and maybe even for a sense of God, a real sense of our soul, and we overcompensate with this competitive greed-culture… we stuff and stuff ourselves with crap…. and here we are on the streets, beating people for their iPhones, and paying masters-of-lying surgeons money we do not have to make us look like people we think have better lives than we have.

In Shanghai people stampeded at a New Year's celebration; one theory was that this was triggered by a paper shower of fake $100 bills thrown from a balcony.  The irony of the story was so poignant, so revolting, and so tragically 'real'.  Here we are, the untrammeled of us-- we have the gift of life, and we grow up knowing we must clothe our naked bodies, this is 'civilization', maybe the first 'lie'… but it is also protection, and has a meaning.  Still, we have our eyes, and our ears, and our mouths, and we have invented learning and books, and we can create… we can learn, we can discover…we can look back at our old year and see where we have failed to see, where we have been misled and fooled.

The blessing of the New Year is the illusion that we are turning a page, that we can start clean, we can start over.  Of course, as any addict knows-- it is not this easy, but we believe-- -and for that midnight moment-- the one that walks across the global timeline, hour by hour, country by country… we are all given this chance, together-- this annual chance, or the illusion of it, because it of course belongs to all of us, at every moment.  And we are human, and we will continue to fail to understand this, because we are too busy toasting our own selves, our false happiness or our refusal to be sad or lonely or truthful, and acknowledge that our enormous success or our abysmal failure… there is really little difference, it is part of our process, our life, which tragically, like the Shanghai victims, where we reach for something which glitters and it is death… the truth may feel like failure, but if we are truly honest, we will never fail ourselves.  As Sylvia Plath said in a privileged moment of clarity, and I remember this poem so well from my girlhood… 'we have only come to look'.