Everybody Knows

Sunday claustrophobia can creep up relatively unnoticed, like a stray cat with no voice.  The day's television newscasts were relentlessly alarming... not just the Afghan crisis but the hurricane which felt like a terrifying deja-vu.  For those of us with the disease of crippling empathy, it's difficult to convince ourselves that the sidewalks are actually safe; we are the lucky Americans at whom no one is shooting, and we are at least spared for now by the scourges of Mother Nature.

The reservoir at sunset was as smooth as an ice rink.  Not even ducks and geese disturbing the surface as though they were collectively observing the world catastrophes-- the fires and the floods, wars and famine-- sitting it out and celebrating the uptown calm of urban habitat on a summer weekend.  

Indulging in my pandemic television habit, I caught the Elizabeth Murray documentary, Everybody Knows, assuming the Leonard Cohen reference... who knows, I was mildly distracted since I've seen this one before.  I remember Elizabeth; I visited her studio once and was not as much impressed as inspired because she was one of those fortunate people with both a calling and a pathway.  Not only did she rarely doubt her work but she seemed to know exactly where she was going.  Also she had a wonderful husband-- the second-- but he 'got' her... and there is nothing better in this world than a partner who is truly that.  

Seeing the art world of the 70's and 80's is always jarring... there was clarity and importance.  There were critics and gallerists who had a point of view.  There were women gallerists who understood their artists-- who supported and promoted in just the right way-- not intrusive and not pushy and corrupting.  Art from the beginning was generous... it was expressing something without thought of compensation.  Yes, there were commissions and grants along the way but somehow it was the audience who profited, not the dealers.  It was the art world, not the art market.  I loved New York... the studios and the musicians practicing in drafty lofts... making my way up steep flights of old wood, kicking aside the garbage and scraps of fabric that littered the hallways... work was being done.  People with cigarettes hanging from their mouths were mixing colors and hammering things, with vinyl on their turntables-- the shiny black discs often spattered and fingerprinted with pigment.  

I remember being invited to a fancy dinner honoring the sculptor Noguchi who arrived wearing a flannel shirt and khaki pants.  One of his friends took me home to a raw space in Soho where I sat on an old mattress and watched him peel back canvas after canvas like a desert rug merchant.  It was a dream of enchantment-- like seeing the Stones in a small club with barely anyone there... the palpable sense of invention to a backbeat that came from some deep ground soil like audio Delta mud.  I left his place feeling my insides painted.

The death of Charlie Watts this week was another knoll in the endless dirge of my generation.  Like most bass players, I longed to share a stage with him.  In the early 90's when Bill Wyman had had enough, I was sounded for the audition.  Of course they were a male-dominated organization and I couldn't imagine it was anything but tokenism, and I refused.  Besides, I'd been called for famous auditions and the 'stars' were rarely there for the first elimination.  I wasn't going to fall for it.  Their sax player called me day after day-- I'd been lucky enough to share an all-night stage with him, and he pressured me.  Their manager...  but I had a child in nursery school... I couldn't leave.  We've got babysitters, he said... but it wasn't my 'trajectory'.  I wasn't like Elizabeth Murray and those other people with a 'team'.  I was alone, doing two jobs-- three jobs, sometimes.  And this is not about me... 

We'll all miss Charlie.  We have so much of him left behind... and I was also lucky enough to have stopped into Ronnie Scott's during the 80's when he was playing his 'heart' with various local jazz musicians.  He had his calling, and a pathway.  I wonder whether these youtube sensations with their hot licks and their virtuoso renditions of Bonham and Moon, the nine-year-olds who weigh less than an average bass drum but can play every single fill on every single Foo Fighters track.... do they have a pathway?  When you asked Charlie about his playing, he replied simply he liked making people dance.  

Circling the reservoir tonight there were few runners... as though everyone had returned to their nests for the evening to witness more of the drama on CNN.  It is compelling, disturbing and difficult to ignore.  Everybody Knows, Leonard Cohen sang, for the last time, at some point... and yes, we all know he had a co-writer... which matters little, because it is sort of the anthem at the bottom of my catalogue-- the funereal hymn, the accompaniment to every tragedy and nightfall and sunset... I could write endless alternate verses but it wouldn't matter... it suits the time-- the Plague, the racism, the economic divide... infidelity... failed and fragile love-- he covered it all.  For the rest of us-- the 'remainder' I think is the technical word for what is left after the subtracted... what we leave undone does little good and unfortunately not everybody will know.  

The Color of Blood

Over and over I hear myself repeat-- to no one in particular-- Forgive me, I have fallen in love with solitude.  As though I am unfaithful, ungrateful... and not unaware of the kindnesses that have graced me recently, the way a thin blanket of spring snow unexpectedly coats the world with a soft muting of color and sound...

My calendar is white; my schedule is the timetable of grief.  Relief comes occasionally with digressions into other universes... imagination, listening to music, writing.. those meaningful phonecalls from my 'family' of friends who reach out and exchange sad moments the way we musicians trade eights.

My son, as always, is so positive. This is his 'role' in the passion play of life.  He looks ahead-- fully subscribes to the promise of future and tolerates the present with a cheerful stoicism.  Mom, he says,
when I speak of my suffering friends-- these people are not your problem-- don't enlist.  I am grateful that his DNA somehow balances mine-- he is the counterpoint to my dark melody.  I am the strings-- I dream in 'cello' I remarked in a note to someone last night, who surely knows what I mean.

What I do not say to my son, who may have had his young heart broken or threatened at a sensitive time when his little soul decided pragmatism was far preferable to melancholy, is  Oh, but they are my problem.  Early this morning-- the 'end' of another of my unregimented days, I watched the painful testimony of George Floyd's brother on national news, against new footage of fires burning in Minneapolis.  For those who grew up in the 1960's, these scenes are all too familiar... the urban manifestation of anger and horror at atrocities inflicted for centuries now, in the name of racism.

It baffles me that even within a single family unit some people grow up with prejudices, hatreds, resentments-- downright meanness.  I spent years trying to unravel harsh criminal riddles... it seemed there had to be a reason for cruelty and violence-- a reaction-- like a scientific principle of physics... but this only applies to a small fraction.  This morning I found myself weeping with the CNN journalist at the frustration and sorrow of a man whose brother had virtually been executed on national television-- all justice denied, humanity at its very lowest and worst claiming a life for absolutely no reason-- the misled cruel child holding a kitten underwater, torturing animals for entertainment.

It is not only one of the most disturbing pieces of video we've seen in a long time, but deeply provocative and infuriating.  I was ashamed of what it seems to mean to be a white American, and tormented with guilt for our helplessness here.  As though we have had not had enough death and suffering, had our lives frozen in the face of a tiny biological enemy who can take the breath away from grown men; here we watched a uniformed man purporting to represent authority and law violate and render powerless a strong un-uniformed individual-- the audacity, the lack of respect and humanity-- the sick twisted miscarriage of authority and justice.  There is no greater crime than to deprive a human being of life.  What have we become?  What have we been?

I'm not sure if anger tempers sorrow somehow; at least it has a correlative action.  I know that justice is a balm but cannot compensate for life lost.  Hate crimes, for most of us, are unthinkable... what makes people behave in this way?  Our earliest literature and art caricatures and personifies human vices and sins, as though these are a 'given'.  Most of us are less familiar with the virtues.  The current America is not just sick with a global pandemic, but the pre-existing condition of epidemic greed and
economic disparity.  By far the majority of virus deaths occurred in the zip codes of the poorest communities.  My friend and musical partner who died was eulogized and celebrated internationally; not so most of the quiet victims.  The NY Times listed them, but we all saw how tiny the figure-- how brief the description.

Today I am sad for my America which when I grew up I personified as a handsome boy-- on the edge of possibility. Now I see my country as a ruined, stooped man with a cane, bleeding dollars from stuffed pockets, blind and deaf to misery and inequality, myopic and small-minded, drinking from the fountain of greed, drunk with selfish misconception.  From my heart George Floyd, I  am so sorry.  To every black man I pass in the park at dusk who waves to me, as if to reassure me-- I am 'safe'-- I apologize.  To the cashier in Harlem who no longer packs groceries with gloves because, he tells me-- they protect me but not you-- I could kiss him.

And to my first husband-- for his utter colorblindness and courage to play with white musicians when few black players were doing so... I learned so much about the world from you who had scarcely read a book when we met, but could speak bass like no one else from stage.  What a rich life you gave me in those few years-- opening my ears to things I'd not understood,  crossing boundaries and defying conventions... it is to you and the greater understanding and love of music I owe part of this debt of solitude... may you be happy and safe and steadfast in your refusal to be tainted by the ignorance of unfortunate haters and traitors.  We bleed the same color, you used to assure me... you who even then was surely more evolved and compassionate than most of us will ever be...
Amen.

Black Christmas

I have been dreading this moment, afraid of oversentimentalizing this shooting, this massacre, wondering why that word begins with a sacred prefix—it doesn’t look so evil in print… and how names change everything--- the way we’ll startle now when we hear these—Sandy Hook, Lanza, even Connecticut.  

We have listened to Anderson Cooper skipping over the few unpronounceable last names, refusing to repeat that of the shooter;  we have watched the CNN guy drawing diagrams on the screen.  We have not seen the chalk outlines and the blood, we have not seen parents beating their heads on the ground,  on walls, wanting to hold the corpses of their children before they are cold.  We have heard no screams.  We have imprinted the streets and landmarks of Newtown like a summer memory, we have tried to compare and contrast one horror with another; we have imagined our own phone call, the unbearable moment between the siren and the scream. 

We are all avoiding one another in the grocery store--- we do not look; we are guilty because our children are safe, we are buying food for our dinner, counting money--- things that are unthinkable for fresh grief.  We go home and turn on our televisions, some of us wondering why the image of the Palestinian father waving the corpse of his child several days ago at the Gaza border did not bring tears to our president.   Those New Yorkers still homeless and cold from the hurricane may feel more neglected and sad.   Bon Jovi and Bruce have spoken too many times now; they are silent.  This is not climate change or retribution of Mother Nature or even a drunk driver.  Maybe the shooter watched the concert on television.  It’s fairly likely that he did.  He may even have watched with his mother, shared popcorn or her home-baked Christmas cookies, no matter how much he hated it. 

I have gone over the seven sins tonight.  I am guilty of most of them, at some time or another.  I walked in the cold rain at midnight; it felt like some kind of punishment.  I passed the dogwalkers talking to illicit lovers on their phones, the secret ice cream eaters,  the possibility junkies—exchanging cards and sharing cigars with their neighbor.  I can rattle off all seven, although I often leave one out.  I mean--- I commit at least one every day—lust (passion--is this not good?), sloth, anger with frequency.   Gluttony I cannot afford, nor greed—and envy—well, I leave that to my neighbors when they compare their husbands’ end-of-year bonuses.  Pride—well, are we not supposed to be proud of our children when they are good, when they are brave?

I am mostly angry today.  None of this makes sense.  I try to feel empathy for the shooter, who apparently had none.  It is unbearable to empathize with the parents; any of us who has lost a child, who has even had one of those middle-of-the-night phone calls which years later has scarred over but still feels like a wound.   Where the fear is a noose and sometimes we hear the word ‘hospital’ or ‘jail’ and we breathe.   But we know the odds are against us, somehow.  And whether our own or our neighbor’s, we will have to bear some day the unbearable.  

My own was so young I have no photograph.  She had no favorite toy animal or song; there was so little to say.  I have only the reality that nothing rhymes with heartbreak or even with Christmas.   And on cold rainy nights when we try to grace someone else’s grief with our own, there are used condoms on the street, and on some blocks there are needles and half-empty coke bottles, and people sleeping, in old blankets and cardboard boxes, on church steps.

I am walking with the ghosts, glad my own drivers license has expired and who can ever afford a car anyway, because I’d be the one picking up hitchhikers, hoping I’ll come across someone I am missing, or their double, hoping I’ll make it across some bridge and maybe change someone’s life so when they get home they’ll put on their black clothes and pick up a rifle and decide not to load it—to go out for a walk in the rain or a drive, maybe, and sit on someone’s grave in some churchyard cemetery with a few cans of beer, and it will be enough.   

But the sirens will never stop, the scream is always there, within or out-of-earshot.  The dread is part of the prayer, the whisper is part of the message, the blood is on the inside or the outside.  For some of us God is inside the church; for others He is in the graveyard.  For some He is the stuff inside a needle, or in a glass, for some He is a rifle, or the madness inside our head.  For some He is the space between the siren and the scream:  the quiet space, the dead space, this silent night where you have to know about stars to believe they are behind the foggy mist.  And where you just might pretend for a few dreamless hours, in some light-years-distant non-lonely universe, that yes, there are sins and there are even maybe guns, but there is no ammunition-- that they forgot to invent that-- only blanks, and some fear, yes... but it is night and  things are as they were, and as they will be, same as it ever was…

 

Hip-hop-cracy

Now that there’s a palpable chance we’ll have a dark-skinned president, apparently CNN is about to present a special on Being Black in America. Something on which I can’t claim personal expertise except by proximity in bands, on the road, in bed, by marriage. And hell, some anthropologists have been claiming we all have a little mixed blood. I’m certainly the family black sheep and anyway, I have a constitutional right to speak out.

We all get the fact that black people are dominating culturally since the 1990’s. Sports— besides skiing and tennis— have long been their domain. The empire of Hip Hop has now eclipsed any musical corporate success for what has been a contemporary dynasty-age. As in the 60’s…fashion, style, comedy— TV, film-- go right along. Every white kid in Manhattan goes through at least a phase of wearing the clothes, blasting the music, adopting the body language and ‘talking the talk’. Even Madonna had to have an NBA notch in her goddess-belt.

And it’s not like color tells the story. Imagine a documentary on being ‘white’ in America… this includes the immigrant children of more nations, more cultures than satellite channels. I hosted some reggae musicians in my home in the late 1970’s in Manhattan. Rockstars. But restaurants refused to serve us. Harlem restaurants. Indian restaurants. Cab drivers passed us by. Only in the 5th Ave. offices of the Geffens and Ertigans were they embraced, served fine wine and steak, although most of them were vegans. The kind of disrespect experienced by the geniuses of jazz—Thelonious, Bird… outside the safe realm of a café or venue… makes our blood boil.

Which brings me to my current gripe. Jay-Z. How this no-talent pretentious thug became the Emperor of Black just pisses me off. My son told me he went to Harvard. Not true— unless Wikipedia is lying. Okay. We all know the Hip Hop music industry used the Gordon Gekko model of corporate protocol. That the Gotti family shenanigans look ‘campy’ when compared to these guys. Not all of them, but most of them. They have done more for the degradation of women— don’t get me started. The gilding of American values… murder, fraud, slander, libel—broad-scale money-laundering-- the shutting-up of the small voice--- the replacement of actual music with computer-generated beats all stolen from real drummers. And words— just words—without art, without ear— misused and forced into rhythmic slots to entice young kids into memorizing bullshit. Then they flash their diamond-studded smile as they emerge from Hummers wearing 6-figured watches and suits to match. They claim to be giving to the community and then charge exorbitant money for their clothing-lines (except you, Marbury!) and concerts. Sure, they give to hurricane relief and Darfur. The equivalent of you or I giving a few bucks. Too busy shopping, acquiring, merging. At least Gordon Gekko had the brains to stay out of music. But these guys? They are the new sheikhs of America.

The biggest King of Bullshit is this Jay-Z. No rhythm, no poetry. Just power. He even threatened to retire… but of course this was just a ruse. My son also told me he owned the Nets. Correction: 4.5 million out of a purchase price of $300,000,000. I own a few shares of Starbucks, I retort. I am not claiming to own. Maybe he owns Beyonce. She seemed like a good girl. I’ve heard rumors they’re both gay. Whatever. She is his temporary Queen. Of the harem. Looks over the golden cesspool of his King Midas life. In fact to me, seems the whitest black man since O.J. Can't dance...no groove. About as much soul as Cher. And about as real as her latest face.

I own an HP computer. Because it was given to me. I get nervous when I see those commercials. Guilt by association. I try to hate the Nets. Thank God I only have to hate 1.5% of them. The thing with sports is… you can’t achieve stardom unless you’ve earned something, you’ve paid a zillion hours of dues and sweat and tears and the hardest work there is. But music? Apparently you can walk out on a stage with nothing but attitude and the approval stamp of Mr. Jay-Z and clean up. Even if you’re lip-synching. Even if you’re deaf. Or def.

When is America going to wake up and realize the biggest BS story of all is this Jay-Zero. Like the reverse of the American Dream. The Milli-Vanilli of capitalist success. King of Balls. As long as his little posse is surrounding him. Because onstage? He comes off like a rhythm-challenged wimp. The sound of his voice is annoying. What were you thinking, Charlie Rose? I give to PBS. Has everyone fallen into this diamond-studded color trap?

I guess what prompted my July wrath is a little tidbit I heard on the news: that he has now claimed ownership of a color. Accumulating several millions from the use of ‘Black’ wasn’t enough. We now have to pay him royalties for the use of ‘Jay-Z blue’. I have an old guitar in precisely that shade—custom. Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit by and let him demand money for the use of lightwaves. In fact I think this is the biggest laugh of all. The bigger they come… don't get me started.

I wonder what Nelson Mandela thinks. The gigantic athletes of the past, whose rewards were like a drop in the bucket of these no-talent moguls. The countless runners in Africa who break records every day, who sing and play home-made instruments with finesse and grace and beauty… who struggle for food every day. Thelonious and Bird—all the nameless others-- if we could dig them up from their sad graves of tormented genius and under-rewarded lives. And not just the Bo Diddleys and John Lee Hookers… Muddy Waters and Robert Johnsons, Louis Armstrongs. I’ll even give a nod to Grandmaster Flash and some talented visionary rappers here. But I’m really talking about the ones who never made it to a stage. The ones who never will, because all the space is occupied by the gargantuan dark Satanic anti-genius shadow of Jay-Z. How many noble Black Americans are raped every day by the hideous obscene rewards for corporate-fueled musical mediocrity of the Roc-a- fella? I wonder if he pays royalties to the family of John D. and Nelson for this mockery. I am not laughing.

So if CNN gives you a nod in this documentary, shame on them. I despise everything about you and your BS fake larger-than life. Call me racist. I am not. This has nothing to do with your skin color. But the fact that you’ve used color, your bullshit ghetto-origin story to bilk your own people of all these millions and billions you use to build your pretentious empire of pompous empty Hummerdom. Give it back. Every undeserved diamond-studded penny. And especially the color blue which has been here for all universal time before it occurred to some asshole to put a name on it.

Crayola you, Mr. Jay-Zero.


.