Playback is a Bitch

Last night in East Harlem a woman was sitting in her automated wheelchair, outside of a Duane Reade.  It was hard not to look-- she was beautiful-- ageless and drawn from illness.  She was breathing from a mouth device that looked at first glance like a sort of kazoo.  I hesitated, but had to ask... she motioned her head with difficulty, toward the door... so weak, thin as a young child, she could barely manage the armrest controls.  I held the door... it was an ordeal for her to just enter. She thanked me, barely speaking...  using the mouthpiece... absolutely no breath of self-pity or bitterness, she went forward... 

Me, the useless sympathy-soaked sponge of human compassion... Jesus, I asked, what sort of punishment is this for a human being-- what payback? As though there is any rationale for suffering-- for the homeless veterans, for the woman incinerated in a chocolate factory, for the souls crushed in last week's tornadoes, for my friend whose brain tumor has stripped her of her postural dignity, her grace. 

People used to console me when my sister repeatedly forged and narrated to our disadvantage... don't worry, she'll get her payback. But she doesn't.  Life doesn't work this way... childhood cancers, neuro-muscular diseases... they continue to ravage the good and the bad.  Beloved wives are hit by drunk drivers,  children fall from cliffs and brave men drown in cold seas.  

I find myself struggling often with the occupational annoyances of most career musicians-- tinnitus, compromised audio issues.  Few of us trust ourselves completely in the studio, mixing.  Many bravely step out on stage and turn their amplifiers up without consideration. It's not intentional, but there's a certain competitive performance headspace volume which comes with the territory, despite the advice of sound engineers.  

Last night I watched Woodstock: The Director's Cut... a longer version of the original which I had not seen for at least 40 years?  It's become sort of a cliché to my generation... a landmark, a cultural monument to a time that seems further and further away than ever.  I keep thinking the way I heard music back then was different from the way it sounds now.  I play vinyl records occasionally... my headphones only underscore the sense that my ears are not created equal.  Not that I would have done things differently...

Alvin Lee was incredible.  I forgot how great... having had the opportunity to travel with him in the early 80's... I could only remember how privileged I was to sit in his dressing room while he messed around on his red Gibson 335, casually churning out jaw-dropping ideas and phrases.  He was fairly quiet otherwise.  And Hendrix, of course-- that improvisational ending of Purple Haze as though he gave up on his band and just played.  You feel him move from 'stage-guitarist' into inspiration and truth.  

But the innocence-- the vibe, of course... and most of all-- the lack of branding... no corporate sponsorship or signage except messages on T-shirts and flags.  At the end of the film there's a reeling-off of musicians who have passed... and then of words-- things that have since lost their meaning-- integrity, compassion, kindness, etc... equality... 

I have friends that work at the recently fallen banks.  In the Woodstock days financial CEOs made a reasonable salary.  Greed was not the religion of corporate culture.  There was economic inequality but nothing like that of today.  There's a website that lists the payment received by each artist at the festival.  It's staggeringly modest. 

No performers at Woodstock had earpieces or pitch correction; some of the bands were awful.  Something musicians know-- the audience is often hearing something completely different.  Stage volume is deceptive.  If you played in dive bars, you never heard yourself sing. Someone had to play it back-- and it was rare that anyone recorded live performances.  It required equipment and planning, like these festivals.  Stephen Stills... in those days-- well, he was just so damn good, no matter what he became. 

The pandemic musical intermission encouraged me to rethink musical priorities.  Recently I rediscovered a singer I'd heard almost by accident in a Washington, D.C. club long ago-- Eva Cassidy.  Yes, she was doing covers, but her guitar playing was excellent, and her voice-- well, up there with anyone.  I was riveted.  It was reassuring to listen to her performance which was so fortunately captured with little fanfare and alteration by some angel in 1996.  It's humbling-- nearly perfect.  Eva passed away just months after the recording. Unfortunately, there's now a pop-up message on every YouTube video reminding the listener that a new album has been released adding strings and orchestration to these magical tracks.  Schmaltz it up, why don't you?  Okay... it's a real orchestra, but doubtful she would have approved; unfortunately, we can't speak for the dead.  Legacies and family members sell these people out.  The likes of me cannot save them.  Most often there is no Director's cut. 

I am a huge Clifford Brown fan.  He, too, died way too young; I have most all of his recorded material and among them my least favorite is the one with strings. I'm opinionated and stubborn, but why, I ask? And who will profit from this girl's brilliantly pristine performances now?  I don't know.  Current engineers can create nearly anything out of sound waves and a computer; they can even fool a dog or a whale. For the rest of us, playback, when we actually get to hear it, can be a bitch. 

Endgame

I'm sitting in Starbucks… the forced change of scene is necessary sometimes… I isolate with my computer… like a priest living inside the confessional I begin to lose connection.  Even the soundtrack… a dark, early John Lee Hooker now… it grounds me here.  At home I might be ricocheting from youtube suggestions into some pathway of black nostalgic meandering, following some poetic fork in my mind always down, these nights… no bio-rhythm, no sleep pattern… just a kind of palpable emotional exhaustion, like a padded velvet room with a sense of dampness-- evaporated tears.

Death has become a companion; we can only make friends with his presence at this point; he is not going away, but is going to continue to intrude, hang around like mold in old buildings.  Behind new renovations these things exist-- like previous tenants whose obituaries are archived in the hearts of their children who are themselves forgetting in assisted-living communities.  Time is not kind in the second half of your life.  Moments flood into my bedroom, like tides… I am soaked and compelled… the wash-up version of these deja-vus are often weighted and poignant.. or damaged.  Things seem so fragile-- possibilities I'd transformed into life-choices; marriages-- my first husband--was an instant-- an attraction in a way-- nothing more-- but then there he was, months later, coming to New York-- walking side by side for two days while the summer humidity transformed us into animals with a twisted fate.  I believed in the moment then.  Sex was a version of religion-- a kind of dank purity-- or maybe ignorance; it was irresistible and terrifying and the moment was so important.  Nothing was regrettable-- even children-- that incredibly random fragility of unpremeditated chemistry-- like a brilliant solo-- Miles, Coltrane-- at their most fucked up, tangled moment-- with an epiphany.  I can remember conversations-- long distance calls-- as though things were inside the phone-- dreams and words that remained there for years.

Here in a public place-- a store-- people share themselves,  whether we like it or not: their tragedies,  their stories- their likenesses or differences-- some of us because we are so desperate in our loneliness--we pretend to listen, to find a thread-- we try to belong even though we don't belong to anything anymore.  Our descriptions seem pathetic-- we use colors and they are so often pale shades of grey which give me a glimpse into the paint-world of Van Gogh who maybe realized this and filled his work with pigments that lived and fought against the dulling wash of memory.

My father's passing is processing itself with no effort from me.  Those in his life who were parts of his inner circle have chosen not to eulogize him-- not even a public obituary.  The world is a mystery-- we cannot control loved ones and personally I can't control who I love or don't love; it just seems to happen.  I am wearing my Dad's shadow along with my habitual black-- the least pretentious color, I always sensed-- along with the invisible torch of mourning that is maybe the most inspiring aspect of life.  We are here; we are not here.  When my first love died, I was young enough to be unbearably distraught.  He was the most magical human I'd ever encountered; maybe it was drugs and the time, and my emotional innocence-- but I still feel his messages and signs.  I woke up with his scent… balloons in my house would wander into the bedroom while I slept and hang beside me, unmoving.  I talk to him-- I write his songs, I play for him.  But my father?  I feel so little-- a sense of relief that he no longer has to file his 1040 and other things that caused him stress.  He was never just a person for me-- always a kind of symbol of ill-fitting authority and unwanted paternity.  He hated me.  He hated himself… I understood that and he hated me even more for my insight and candor.

At these times of maybe enhanced introspection which is my euphemism for mourning--- we writers are hyper-sensitive to messages and signs.  For me, that makes my day overwhelming even before I leave my apartment.   Last night-- I was at the YMCA.. and I went into a bathroom.  There was blood in a toilet-- maybe one of the young gymnasts mismanaging her monthly issues which gave me a pang of inappropriate compassion-- teenagers are so delicate and at the mercy of hideous parenting, sometimes; or maybe it reminded me of a miscarriage I'd had, in my first apartment in New York-- alone and desolate and left with a souvenir of a passionate night I was unwilling to serialize.   Maybe just a sign of life-- of the least common denominator of us all-- or of death… of wounds, and pain, and the bizarre thought that no matter how much purple Prince ingested, no matter how ill he was, how beautiful, how radiant and costumed-- his blood would look like all of ours.  Ditto my father's, who created no world-shaking solos, no anthems-- my father of the hero's deeds and the bloodshed and the purple hearts.

In the yoga room I peered in for a brief second--watching all the graceful bodies desperately contorting to find peace and some kind of physical meaning.  Just observing this was a kind of violation of the rule-- I am an outsider… a voyeur.   I am just passing, looking into rooms-- not participating but hearing things other people don't always hear, seeing things other people don't see.   When doves cry-- when the soul of an infant wakes in the night--fusses, maybe bawls-- and eventually finds sleep once again, even though no one has come to relieve or comfort… I am listening.  Such is my life.

Last night at 3 AM I was stuck on a train with a tall black man-- the obvious physique of a basketball star-- that quiet loose power I've grown to love especially,  having had a point-guard son.    He was coming from work at the men's shelter downtown-- his job.  He'd had a tough few years, he told me while they repaired track… played in the Final Four, recruited by the NBA, sat on a bench and eventually played in Europe while they negotiated-- went up for a dunk, and came down one night with just a few degrees of torsion… and ripped some ligament in his knee… had a bad surgery, another one… and he was ruined.  Some anger and frustration issues-- drugs, petty gang stuff-- his Mom died.   His voice cracked a little when he mentioned his Mom.  I tear up easily these days.  I've learned from my son not to give into my instincts to touch people or hug them-- I'm an old white lady, he reminds me.  Anyway, he was recovering from addictions, trying to manage his injury… glad to have a job and a place to sleep.  A familiar story… because for every rockstar and athletic miracle there are thousands of random parallel tragedies… a massive infantry for every general.

But somehow, among the Prince videos we are all obsessively watching-- among the Bowie footage, the quiet Lonnie Mack brilliance, the Kurt Cobain and Nick Cave-- the Coltrane and Clifford Brown-- the achingly beautiful crumbs left us by the godsmacked mutants of the human mistake--  there are these unrecorded moments which haunt me.  The grace of my basketball player-- coming down in slow-motion Hi-Def black and white like a dancer, like a genie-- like a diver breaking the water-surface after a triple-pike… or a jumper from some impossible bridge, hitting the current like a bomb… I play it over and over-- his non-existent youtube moment,  his mime of greatness, of perfect athletic prize--this man who hugged me with strength and restraint so that I could feel his heart, at 96th Street… who is lost to me in a kind of death of a moment.  For you-- the former Nike star with the cheap size 16 sneakers now--- I am carrying your torch along with all the others, in my private graveyard of moments, of lives seen like fragile starlight, of the incomprehensible ever-mounting statistical infinity of deaths which will always overshadow our lives in a sort of morbid quiet combat.. where no matter how hard we play and cry and write and love, silence is coming to wash away even the last of memory.