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.  

What's in a Name

Pathmark 125th Street has long joined the ranks of  discarded NYC institutions now--the site under transformation into an enormous residential and retail development.  For me, embracing designated economic poverty as an older adult, it was a reality-experience.  The simple enormity of the space at this location, unlike the crowded Manhattan supermarkets with narrow aisles and limited wares, was spectacular for someone like me who,  excepting road-trip stops,  was under-exposed to mall-shopping.  I visited Pathmark for the sales, the availability, the simple 'gift' of space... the late-night hours, proximity to subway.  Where else could I score a decent fresh turkey for 69 cents a pound?  The scams, the schemes of visiting regulars-- the simple neighborhood habits of those who brought folding chairs and sat basking in the generous 'lobby' air conditioning in summer-- the recycling, the socializing and innocent panhandling...  all part of the past 'innocence' of New York.

Finding bargains these days and living on food stamps is a challenge.  Last week I was in one of my current preferred grocery destinations in Harlem, and I heard a woman yelling... 'Princeton!' with more and more conviction.  So I turned-- yes, there those old days when some random boyfriend or bandmate would refer to me sarcastically by my alma-mater and like 'Mom' which never fails to prick my ears anywhere, I respond.   A small toddler had been leaning against my cart with that dreamy fearless curiosity 2-year-olds can display even in a crowd... eventually the woman came over, grabbed him, gave him a little smack... 'don't you wander, Princeton!'  I couldn't resist... yes, this was his given birth name.  Princeton. In the 'hood.  I had a little conversation with them both, assured the child he was going to be smart and important... and then a little inner monologue with myself on the way home about names.

I have a simple, basic three-letter name.  Actually my mother gave me the French 5-letter version, so the meaning of it would be understood as 'beloved' and not mistaken for the other derivative spelling-- 'friend'.  But the ratio of four-to-one/ vowels-to-consonants is a hard-spell for a child not to mention pretentious in the milieu of the 60's.  Compared to today's 'Beyonce' and Destiny-- the tag-names of the 21st century-- it is minimal.

My elementary school was part of the 1960's bussing experience.  Besides the physical introduction of diversity, there were the names.  We were all basically Tom, Dick and Harrys-- Kathy, Robin and Susans, in those days-- but these kids-- they were named after kings and presidents.  Their names were hyphenated and ornate-- colorful.  The girls were Velma and Darcelle; this elevated and embellished our morning role-call.  I went home and asked my Mom for a better name.  She did not grace this with a reply--  she who had given me one only, insisting when I got married my surname would fall into middle-status.

Many of my fellow students, as the 60's wore on, re-appropriated their African names.  Some of the Jewish kids I met in the city became radicalized and used Hebrew.  Rockers re-christened often--became single-names or branded themselves somehow, while it was fairly common for actors and public performers to round the edges of their ethnicities and smooth out family names into generic and non-specific identities.  My own father's family, like many immigrants desperately seeking 'Americanization'  had done this.   Go figure.

Lately it is rare that, in my local Starbucks where I am currently interviewing kids for my alma-mater (yes, little Princeton, I mention your name often) I rarely see a staff name-tag that looks familiar to me.  The variety of these is like the constantly expanding nomenclature for coffees and drinks-- exotic, conversation-provoking, ethnically transparent or confusing-- non-gender-identifying.  There are kids with names of countries, of seas, of flowers... of foods, of liquor brands and corporations.  Rappers acquire 3-part sentence names or words.  Common-- that one always sticks to me.  My name, in this expanded overpopulated internet world of infinite repeats-- is-- well, common.  Like most everything else.

I have googled my own name to find a whole column's worth of 'me'... I have even received mail and messages for my namesakes.  Three of us know one another-- in this city.  One friended me on Facebook.  Yesterday I asked a girl in the supermarket about her name tag... her Mom couldn't spell, she told me, but now she likes it.  It's different.  Desnity.  Spellcheck did a double-take, too.

While our traditional old-school vocabulary seems to decrease in usage, new languages and acronyms have become part of our work-arsenal.  People actually speak less to one another these days-- they text, they have their bluetooth and earbuds in... they engage less eye-to-eye.  They do listen... and they wear names.  It is hard to find a single human on a subway without a label or-- more often, several.  Wearing someone else's name was always strange to me.

At the end of her life, for some time, my mother could barely speak.  Her caretaker called her 'Queenie' which seemed wrong to me.  Queenie did not protest much of anything at the end.  Inside she'd regressed beyond even recognizing herself as 'Mom'.  But somehow, even at the very end, when I called her name,  I could see a small light.  Gift of God, the meaning.  No matter how we change, alter, edit, revise... no matter what our intimates and lovers call us in the dark, there is something in our original naming that imprints.  I thought about this, reading the obituary of Kirk Douglas... his adopted name meaning 'church', but his original name, 'Issur' meaning 'he who wrestles with God'... surely defined him.   Anyway, I think somehow he might have agreed, in the end.