To Be or Naught

When I was maybe thirteen I closed myself in my bedroom, put on my new Jimi Hendrix album, stood on the side of my bed frame and did this crazy deep breathing alternating with challenging breath-holding... it was like a prescription a girl at school had given me-- to make myself faint. I woke up to the last song on the album.. I must have blacked out for thirty minutes... and felt profoundly changed, as though I'd done some mind-altering drug, or entered another reality entirely.  It was terrifying.  My mother asked me later that night what that huge sound had been... it was me, I did not say, crashing on the floor, simulating a kind of death.  I never again played with that scenario.  

A few weeks ago I ran into a woman in my neighborhood. She is familiar... I'd see her years back coming from the 92nd St Y where she swam and exercised-- with a perfect geometric haircut and coordinated outfits.  She liked her ballet flats, her accessories and pins.  We'd smile at one another-- two independent neighborhood women who lived presumably alone.  Then there was a gap-- several years-- we had different daily paths, but recently we met in the grocery store... she seemed warm and glad to see me.  She'd been isolated since the pandemic, she said.  People were no longer kind to her.  That seems impossible, I replied, knowing exactly what she meant, but trying to pry her out of some perceptible bleak mood. You look so fantastic, I said... you're so fashion-forward and well-kept. You haven't aged, I insisted.  She complimented me on my 'style' which is aging rocker/bag lady no-longer-chic, but we had a little laugh. 

Yesterday someone told me she suicided; they described her... we don't even know her name.  All these months I've been agonizing over my friend who succumbed to her brain tumor, my two beloved neighbors who are both suffering from incurable and fatal cancers. And here is this woman-- it was said she'd fallen... but then revealed that she took her life.  I don't know why I thought about my teenage blackout... but I did. 

According to statistics nearly fifty percent of Manhattan households are individuals.  This is a city of single people-- of dreamers and workers and maybe many consummate romantics who spend decades searching for a partner. As a young woman, not even out of college, I was engaged to a man who on paper satisfied every possible criterion for the perfect husband. He was handsome, too, like Alan Bates in Far from the Madding Crowd (my favorite movie at the time)... athletic, brilliant, funny, macho, adoring, a little crazy.  And yet from the moment he put that diamond on my hand I was panicky-- looking for some flaw or crack in the human plaster. Who does this?  Insecure, self-loathing women who feel undeserving of success?  I don't know... but since he passed all tests, I began to misbehave until it became impossible.  He even tried to repair the engagement months later but I was in another headspace.

Many of my women friends made viable partnerships.  A few have wonderful marriages which exceed the sum of their parts. It's hard for single women to really understand what this requires; at our advancing age, it seems incredible to imagine someone making us coffee in the morning when we're exhausted, or embracing us at the end of a rough day.  There is no one. Children are the best-- but they really only want to know what's for dinner. And they grow up and hopefully follow their own dreams.

Throughout my adult life I've lived with men-- for better or worse. I've had two formal engagements-- and two marriages, neither of which was preceded by an engagement, neither of which was particularly successful.  One of them produced my son.  While I've followed my heart, creatively, 'managed' my decades with more passion than prudence, I was never quite 'completed' by a relationship.  The last few nights I've been thinking about how tough I was... I think I wanted to partner with someone who was a prodigy-- an inventor. I wanted to serve someone whose genius was worthy of my sacrificing any ambition I had to his.  And yet, even when I dated someone who seemed fantastic, I ripped them apart in my head-- I exaggerated the smallest fault into a reason to separate. 

But it occurs to me that I was equally hard on myself.  Sure-- I have an Ivy League education, I excelled at things-- I read, I think, I walk, I play bass, I write poetry... but I have not changed the world.  I have not left some scientific contribution or altered literature with groundbreaking talent.  At my age Anthony Trollope had been dead for years, after managing to produce twelve children and fifty three novels.  Einstein had changed modern physics. Mozart-- at less than half my age had put us all to shame. I suppose what I expected from myself I transferred to my fictional version of a partner. The possibility of this becoming a reality, especially after decades, becomes nil. 

Of course all of us women had our suitors-- the men with whom we had sex or the ones who took us to dinner and wanted to make something more... but these begin to diminish.  They themselves become fragile and sad.  The woman who suicided confided to me-- no one had reached out to her for some time.  There is no one to comfort us or pour us a drink at the end of a hard day... or a good day. We are used to this... I suppose I painted myself into this corner and I expect nothing.  But for this woman, it apparently became overwhelming-- the absence of someone. I'm not sure.

Reading the Boggs James Baldwin biography, I remember well the character in Another Country he based on his friend who jumped from the George Washington Bridge.  It haunted James who himself attempted suicide several times. Fortunately for us he was unsuccessful. In my neighborhood, over the past few months, there have been a few jumpers.  It's shocking. We'll never be sure what was in their head, whether they wanted to change their mind at the last second, when it was too late.  Unhappy people have become radicalized and transformed into alternate strong characters.  Often these mass murderers end up killing themselves.  I read the journal of a man who had survived his bridge jump, who admitted that in the instant, he was immediately sorry.

Maybe it takes a biographer to decipher our digressions and behaviors. I am trying, sifting through the unwritten messages left for me by the people I have lost, to analyze my own behavior and understand where I might have veered off my proscribed destiny.  As I write, tonight, ironically a televised biography  playing in the background about Marilyn Monroe.  I don't think I would ever throw in the proverbial towel, and I do take responsibility. It's not always easy, this life... our fate... the choices we've made versus the hand we've been dealt. There's only one version, so far, of this life.  Despite all of the barbs and potholes, I'll take it on. While I never played teenage life-and-death-roulette again, it's ironic that the soundtrack of that incident foreshadowed Jimi's own suicide.  Or not. 

There is never enough kindness in this world.  We in the city often barely speak to or know our neighbors. There is a constant existing possibility of truth or understanding between human beings, without ulterior motives.  And for those of us who find themselves solitary-- without a witness or companion, we are a bit myopic; we lack the advantage and privilege of dialogue. While Marilyn's death is still a bit of a mystery, the fact is, she died alone.  For those of us who live this daily existence, whether by choice or circumstance, we might find a way to extend a version of kindness to ourselves.

Ficciones

My father was a great dancer.  He had athletic grace and the kind of poise and balance that made him a good tennis player.  The legend was that before the war, he'd worked upstate at the upscale resorts-- rolling out courts, teaching tennis... while at night he'd be paid tips to dance with the widows and spinsters.  Growing up, he and my Mom shone at weddings, events, and holidays... whenever there was live music they'd be demonstrating all the traditional 1940's and 50's ensemble routines. Graced with that extra marital intimacy vibe, stepping and spinning like young professionals, they looked to us like movie stars, not parents.

When my mother had dementia late in life and the television became her companion, she loved Dancing with the Stars, although the anticipation was way more engaging than the actual show.  I think she liked the music, and repeating the show title. She had always had a predilection for songs about stars-- When You Wish Upon a Star, Catch a Falling Star and Put it in Your Pocket, Starlight... she'd play and sing with the sheet music in her funny little voice.  She used to read to us at night-- a book where there was a girl named Star and that was her favorite.

My first experience with altered realities was following my BFF's instructions on holding deep breaths until we fainted. It was like inhaling glue; we put on a Hendrix album and passed out... the record was on the last track when we came to, in a sort of musical backward swirl.  It was a dangerous little experiment but I literally saw stars.  I guess I was about 13/14.  It stayed with me. It also scared me.

This week I was trying to distract myself from the depressing political news, and turned on the TV.  In my mother's honor I tried Dancing with the Stars.  It was shockingly lame.  Just a stageful of B and C level celebrities, most of whom I barely recognized, trying desperately to invent themselves as some sort of ballroom contestant. Literally unwatchable.  Also embarrassing, graceless, mortifying, pathetic.  I mean-- I felt sorry for them all, for different reasons.  Flipping around network television, the game shows, the convoluted reality shows-- it was like the downfall of culture, right there onscreen.  Sad excuses for plots and contests--- who is watching this stuff?  Back to my Indie films and documentary channels.  Break for the republican candidate debate which was equally or more ridiculous.  

I've been re-reading Borges-- always a treat.  The story-telling, the humor- the plots and gaucho/macho heroes-- the sheer Arabian-Nights-variety of characters is entertainment.  And then we have Borges himself.  His autobiographical assessment is candid and humble.  His accomplishments are dazzling, especially considering the genetic blindness that did not eclipse his trajectory; the poise and philosophical grace with which he adjusted... well, it's inspirational. 

What struck me this round is his brutal assessment of his own early work. As opposed to our culture where everyone is shouting out on instagram, he had the taste and intelligence to self-criticize.  He grew, and made sure that his work opened accordingly.  He edited, translated, understood.  The breadth of his literacy is overwhelming. He even cleverly uses Mark Twain to give his opinion of Jane Austen, and pokes fun at his own poetry.  Hungering for the stars-- I remembered that line, from an early poem.  Anyway, I was entertained... only disheartened by the sheer limit of his output, and my failure to grasp much besides English these days. 

I tried to see the really terrible television fare as Borgesian characters... but it was impossible.  Everyone seems to be tarted up, costumed and squeezed into some invented version of themselves. Where are the editors, where is honesty? People who aspire to become president of my country are petty and visionless.  I doubt anyone was listening, and there wasn't much to listen to.  There's this new standard of arguing and word-batting.  Childishness and lack of poise.  I think of my parents dancing as a couple, without the jerking and twerking and graceless posing.  For that matter, any garden-variety strip club has better dancing.  Why is America encouraging these shows?  

It's kind of an irony that we call celebrities 'stars'... in fact it's rather absurd. When we were little we had Winky Dink, an animated little star who spoke to us.  We drew with him on our television screens. My mother loved him, too... or her or them.  I know little of star-gender.

Today would have been Marc Bolan's birthday. Another awesome talent gone too soon. Over and over in my head today 'you got a hubcap diamond star halo.'  A lyric worthy of Hendrix.. . something that transported me, when I was a teenager-- it felt sexy and original.  Dead at 29.  These people took what they had and created things.  Surely he's out there tonight, pushing celestial envelopes and stepping over astral swirls, while my parents perform a quiet tango of forgiveness and we here labor on, praying for some extra-planetary relief.  

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. 

Dreamtime

I never thought I'd care about football... but raising a sports-minded son, as a single parent, I had to indulge in his passions.  For a boy without a father, athletes are family-- role-models, personal legends. The recent near-tragedy of Damar Hamlin was world news.  As a family friend told me years ago, part of the appeal of sport is that it is among the few things in life with a clear winner and loser; games are black and white.  

Politics used to be similar, but no longer.  Election results have become arguable and not absolute.  Plus I am learning from Shadi Hamid's recent book that democracy is not the guarantee of human rights and freedoms, but just a majority vote which we all know can be manipulated, debated, miscounted.  The obscene number of voters who do not go to polls guarantees that winning candidates do not necessarily even reflect popular preference. And of course, our electoral college system allows that the winner does not necessarily have the popular majority.

Yes, there were some bad calls and replays tonight, but the Chiefs outplayed the Bengals.  The margin does not count.  There will be one winner in the end. Billions of dollars will be spent on this; Super Bowl Sunday is close to being an American holiday.  The morning after, there is a letdown... some of us watch the Grammys and others dive back into March Madness basketball. And there are statistics. Unlike other realms of entertainment, record-breakers keep their status.  We all remember Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Michael Jordan.  

Fame and celebrity is a tough business.  There is not always a statistic or a hierarchy.  Musicians-- even award-winning ones-- do not always stay current.  We watch documentaries, discover and rediscover, but in this instantaneous minute-culture, we have short memories.  Song-plays are often interrupted and brief; gone are the days of album-listening, lying on window seats and reading liner notes, absorbing into our being these landmark creations which linked with our personal history.

No sooner have we swept up the confetti of New Year's Eve, than the deaths begin to accumulate.  January always seems the cruelest month.  The litany goes on and on.  Jeff Beck was a wound... Lisa Marie Presley a shock... people like Gina Lollobrigida, hardly known by my son's generation, passes and is compared to Marilyn Monroe. We listen and listen to the Yardbirds, to every Beck performance on album and YouTube-- there are millions.  We mourn and celebrate, celebrate and mourn.  Lisa Marie-- well, I'd scarcely listened to her music, but now I have. Sadly, in a culture where things are quickly processed and discarded, death is like a second chance. It makes one relevant.

The horrific and culture-shaking death of Tyre Nichols eclipsed all others.  For us mothers of boys who have misbehaved and wandered, who have been misapprehended and misunderstood, this is the most terrible of all griefs.  Heartbreaking were his mother's words that her son assured her he would be famous. Murder makes one not just relevant but unforgettable.  The victim of a brutal inhuman event is historic.  People will wear his face and name on their shirts; they will take these into the streets and try to reckon with justice.  It's all wrong.  All we want is to wake up and have our sons beside us, spilling their food on the sofa, trekking mud on our floors... smashing up the car... giving us a birthday bear-hug.

On top of the book on democracy, and Miss MacIntosh, My Darling which will be the slow/constant literary under-accompaniment of winter-spring 2023, I have borrowed the new Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger.  I get only a week with this, so I am binge-reading. The hallucinatory passages entwine with the Marguerite Young in a unique way-- like an opium dream or an ectoplasmic swim in an alternate reality.  But the death theme is relentless.  The longing for family... the absence or presence of God, or his alternate-- Quantum Physics, the esoteric explanations of reality-- it is another McCarthy expedition through a nostalgic geography and endless descriptions. Empty people, sad people.  People with souls who are alone, people who are legendary and forgotten, people who are brilliant and suffering, tough and heroic and poignant and terse.  

The death of Tom Verlaine wove itself into my insomniac literary hallucination yesterday in a way he might have appreciated.  He was mysterious and evasive, shunning the spotlight but often haunting the same stacks of books as I.  I worshipped his playing; I have every vinyl... saw every performance I could, back in the 70's.  His personal exploration of guitar was gutting and somehow familiar.  It was tasteful and edgy, deeply musical and poetic.  For years I fantasized about his collaborative blessing to my songwriting, but never approached.  I think he did have one or two of my poetry volumes, not that he might have cared.  Once or twice I shared a cigarette with him, exploring the dirty piles of books outside the Strand.  We brushed shoulders often in the 90's, Friday nights in the Proofs section, in the Strand basement.  My son was small and liked making piles of things.  It was dusty and mice often appeared behind the shelves. We almost never spoke but occasionally Tom would make a small stack of things for me on a Friday... once or twice there was even a note.  I've kept them all.

I've brought his name up with some young guitarists-- the kind that know about Hendrix but not that much... his recent occasional personal appearances in Chelsea were unremarkable.  He had lost his relevance to the current generation.  He was probably glad of that. His death, as he might have known, brought a certain celebrity he'd never enjoyed.  The name-dropping of other more conspicuous peers and admirers piqued interest with those who had perhaps forgotten his music.  His assumed name rings a bell, of course... there are those who went back and looked at the poetry.  Once he left me a book--   

So I wept all night-- as we do, sometimes, for ourselves, at the loss of someone.  Dreamtime-- that album-- it is not yet bearable for me to listen.  But I stayed awake reading... thinking perhaps being the reader he was, that he'd taken the same recent trip through the McCarthy.  I know he knew about Marguerite Young... few people have read this one; he might have.  I'm sure it is there among the piles and piles of books in his place.  When music is unbearably emotional and difficult, books are less painful.  

There was a quotation I read this morning-- something about having read a quantity of books in common with someone creates a bond stronger than blood.  There is a certain generational commonality in the literary requisites of the old New York music scene... I was less obsessed, post-college, with the French poets and more into the New York School-- like Frank O'Hara, whose personal charisma maybe helped cement his literary legend.  These people haunt my rooms at night-- their words, the memory of the ringing guitar of Tom Verlaine, the person he created to protect the fragile musical soul he was.  His death was shattering... but it occurs that his absence was well-anticipated.  He prepared us, with his elusive presence... and as I wander still down the dark hallways of the literature we had in common, his melodies accompany my dreams like living ghosts.  

Chelsea Peers

I spent the week looking at art.  There was the New Now sale at Phillips featuring several Afro-American contemporary superstars, complete with a pop-up basketball court--then Swann-- gallery viewings, photography in East Harlem,  and a small Chelsea space which auctions dusty and vintage treasures which smell of old New York. I travel alone.  Masked and mingling, anonymous-- my itinerary included no destination which required a fee or the presentation of mandated documents.  But somehow visuals seem acceptable with a mask. Crowd activities just don't feel right; it's as though everyone is partying and pretending to be 'back' but it's a kind of forced celebration.  I don't trust it.  Actually I don't trust myself these days. I'm liable to speak my post-pandemic mind and one thing that has emerged from the grief and the anger and the Black Lives Matter movement is a kind of naked honesty.   

Most of all I loved the dusty space with the stacks of estate canvases and once-discovered objects whose owners had passed away or been replaced by descendants who value space over things.  I lingered until they were sick of me.  Walking east from 11th Ave. an SIR truck passed.  I waved like an idiot, remembering all those fantastic rehearsals and evenings in studios which felt as though I'd 'arrived' as a musician.  One night there was a private performance of a reinvented Blondie with a tiny audience.  I was privileged.  

From the Highline the profusion of new architectural structures gives 'concrete jungle' a new meaning.  It's kind of fantastically overwhelming and feels nothing like the perpendiculars of tradition. The paths were packed with tourists photographing, taking selfies, shooting video.  Glass windows reveal fishbowl lives of the apparently rich occupants of these new buildings which require plenty of income.  No one seems to care that they are observed; it's a culture of posting and Instagram-- everything is up for public 'grabs' so why bother with curtains or shades? But it's also a visual carnival of shapes and profiles.

In between the new are the remnants-- the stalwarts of old buildings where long-time renters hang on to their little corner of a city which has grown like weeds around the stumps of their abodes.  Thousands of apartments tower over their modest 4-story existence, rob them of sun, expose them to the hordes of walkers trying to wrap their insatiable tourist heads around the spirit of New York.  

For me the greatest 'jolt' is the Hudson Yards... it's absolutely a transplanted vision grafted onto the hips of the Manhattan profile.  It was disorienting and although I've viewed it many times from the river, walking through its plazas and amusements was like being in another state.  I'm not the only person who found the Vessel an architectural failure, but its current status as a sort of empty morgue is more than ironic.  Who knew it would become a living blingy monument to death?  

In the 70's we'd sometimes climb a fence and explore the Yards.  I remember the SVA students had their annual exhibitions there-- warehouses and space-- accommodated performances and films.  One came often to my gigs... invited me shyly to see his work there, among the old tracks and the pitted earth.  It was  a sort of journey into a cavernous house with electric music and crowd-echo-- plastic cups of wine and hundreds of aspiring artists in their Doc Martens and plaid...  I felt 'old'; I was something over 30... and I searched out my painter, in a small dark corner where his work was a heart-stopping revelation... studies in white, like contemporary Vermeers, that took my breath away.  I was speechless.  He was drunk-- kind of a cliché for painters at their own openings... but I tried to convey my utter admiration for his work.  He was young, midwestern-- played drums in an indie band... had this sort of James Dean tormented innocence aura.

A few nights later he rang my doorbell.  People did that in those days.  He brought a bottle of cheap wine, and the painting, wrapped in a rag.  It was so beautiful.  Yes, we listened to Luna I think it was... his friends... and yes, we slept together.  He was passionate and intuitive the way painters were, in those days... I felt I'd been initiated into one of his works.  I felt painted, from the inside.  It was a one-night thing for me-- or maybe one week.  I waved at him across the subway tracks at Columbus Circle years later.  I think he designed windows for Tiffany and that sort of thing.  He was no longer a boy.  I still had my bass.. he threw me a salute and a midwestern kiss with his talented hand with which he now only rarely painted.

Walking through the Yards in late September sunset, Year-of-the-Pandemic + 1, I remembered this... the smell of the train tracks, and the faint aura of turpentine on his skin.  These things do not happen anymore-- meetings in the privacy of dark crowds and old underused warehouses where unknown history has unfolded, and few things were photographed.  The walls and the ceilings and floors have been removed like old debris... moneyed people occupy the piled homes with stainless steel kitchens and marble saunas... with gyms and theaters and adult play spaces.  

There are few urban fairy tales like this now, things that happen only in utter privacy and the dark.  Certainly not in this ironically masked culture when everything else is laid out in online platforms and Instagram posts.  And the painting--- someone stole it from my home one night; I gave a party-- I think I mentioned the tragic story in another blog.  One of my guests... put it under their coat, slipped it out the open door... I hope it is loved, wherever it is.  Occasionally I imagine I will see it at an auction, in a thrift shop or gallery... but in the context of this culture, it is a small thing.  It would surely be overlooked.  And as old as I have become these days... as poor and as unacknowledged, I felt kind of young walking through the sad newness of this architectural Disneyworld-- the plazas and the courts-- the arenas and playgrounds...  I am initiated... I am masked... but I am seeing.  I am experienced, I answer the Hendrix question.  Here we are now; entertain us.

If Six was Nine

Among the thousands of stories and heroics of ER and hospital personnel we read in the news daily, there was yet another recent version of the Jimi Hendrix tragedy.  More last-minute accounts and conflicting narratives of his final night:  the number of pills he took, the one found on the floor, the testimony of Eric Burdon, bad decisions of poor Monica who was scarcely a reliable or competent 'nurse'... whether the Mafia or the CIA or his own greedy management was responsible.  We read, we go back to that moment-- What if, we wonder-- and repeat our frustration and sorrow at the cruel loss of one of our cultural icons who in a few years changed rock guitar--- opened up a door, as these people do.  It is like a record-- it goes round endlessly and really we cannot see between the vinyl lines.

Beneath the veneer of this pandemic which has become 'life' for so many of us, there are other layers of existence-- one being made up of the lonely and otherwise sick, because death does not kindly stop for a global illness.  He rages on, tormenting his victims with cancer, allowing motorcycle accidents and fires-- terrifying explosions and bullet wounds.  And then the secret dying-- the suicides and sleepers, the debtors and evicted unemployed, the ones too confused to apply for government aid-- the panhandlers who can no longer survive on what frightened people do not put in their cup... the sidewalk singers and saxophones, the crawlers and street-barkers who have lost their place.  For all of these on the underbelly of the city, things have become more difficult.  Some reach out a hand for any substance anyone will spare-- bets are off, fear is the black cloud that follows their evening dread.  I see many sitting on the park perimeter, where they can still find the rare city benches that allow a person to lie down.

Many of these people surround themselves with things--- carts and strollers-- anything with wheels that will allow them to transport their possessions a short distance-- to the public bathrooms by the Meer, to food sources which are plentiful these days, ironically; at a bus shed the other night I found three small shopping bags with wonderfully packed dinners inside-- 'Please Take'  the packages said.  I did not.   But most of the homeless still scrounge through trashcans, scavenge outside fast-food stores where lines of people often eat quickly and discard scraps.  Yesterday a girl on Park Avenue and 111th Street was sitting on the curb eating from an old KFC bucket... a Citibike lying next to her-- she was filthy-- her lovely skin streaked with street soot... how do we save these people, I thought?  She looked up at me with eyes that rolled in her head... Yo, Mama, she said...  I kept walking.

I've been going through the possessions of a friend who passed from the virus.  It's a huge daunting task and even his family cannot manage.  He is of that 'race' of people who become a kind of hoarder... we are all guilty in my generation-- we collect things-- we are sentimental-- records, cassettes, cds, photographs... old clothing.  For those who are celebrities and musicians-- fans give them things; fans make them things.  When I was 15 I had a crush on Dustin Hoffman and waited outside his stage door to give him a careful portrait I'd drawn.  I met him at one point as adults and he claimed to still have it... who knows?  People with money have storage spaces and large homes-- on the street one must carry on their back or their carts.  Who is to say what is precious and valuable?

As we go through things-- postcards and pins and guitar picks-- each one opens up a little storybook-- a memory we might otherwise have lost... and some of these things, as we age, become 'orphaned'.. we have lost their identity, that moment... which boyfriend, which pressed flower.. which country?  When people die suddenly, they leave behind a flood of information, of sentiment and even secrets...
back it flows-- out to a vast sea of lost time-- the achingly beautiful moments and the useless unworthy junk... altogether.  Writers and artists sacrifice their lives to unravel these things-- to sort them, rescue them... because we failed somehow to rescue the deceased.

I remember a friend's father who was a compelling but complicated man;  he went home one night when he was in his alleged prime and put a pistol in his mouth.  Just before, he'd been at a diner and had a grilled cheese and coffee, smoked a cigarette... tipped the waitress modestly, as he did.  She spoke to me afterward-- how she could have saved him, had she only known.  Oh, but you did, in a way, I reassured her... perhaps many times... and she did not understand.

The death of my friend's son is the current knife in my back.  He belongs to one of the underlayers of these times-- the privileged happy, with the so-called 'everything'-- and yet they take their lives.  We spend endless nights tossing and regretting and wondering-- if we only-- just to go back-- those minutes-- he was alone and did this thing-- or perhaps, as I like to think, crossed a line-- knew immediately he wanted to go back-- the way jumpers who survive often describe the moment-- and was unable.  If only... Jimi Hendrix... Kurt Cobain... the sad suiciders full of brilliance who deprive us, who cannot bear their burden.  And then,  perhaps we have the story all wrong.

My mother always used to tell me, when I brought home sick or stray animals-- You cannot save everything.  It happened with men, too-- so many worth saving but so little time-- I eventually gave up.  Still, in my evening rounds of the Meer, I meet eyes with those who are willing;  I wave at the ones who seem 'parked' semi-permanently in the dusk with their packages and odds.  The pond is becoming greenish and murky at the edges, like the pool of New Yorkers who remain stubbornly in their city.  Please, I repeat to myself at night, please do not... to all of those who may be teetering on the edge of another world that beckons.  Do not leave us here, wondering, missing... beating ourselves, the way women in ancient cultures beat themselves in mourning... I understand this ritual, now.

I have on my table here a cheap little box with a metal pick inside-- the souvenir of my friend... equal to maybe one single cell in a massive organism that was his legacy.  He died of the virus, not his own hand, although we are left with the same sense of helpless failure.  In the multitudes of minutiae and memories, I realize he was saving himself, in a way, knowing that there is really no one at the end...  who will save us, tragic as it is.  If Six was only Nine....

November Reign

It occurred to me Thursday, having stayed up all night after a late gig, facing the massive cooking-marathon with equal parts of anticipation and dread, that I hated Thanksgiving as a child.  I don't have those warm Kodak-memories of family and holiday cheer.  Like most children, I didn't particularly care about food, especially unfamiliar things.  Even playdates, besides beloved milk and cookies, brought strange smells and styles of cooking that made me customize schedules to exclude mealtimes.  Family structure in those days was rigid; parents forced children to eat, made few concessions to aversions and allergies.  We sat at table and absorbed dysfunction without having the skills or permission to process these dynamics.

How things have changed... mothers and fathers seem super attentive to their kids' food preferences.  They experiment and compete.  Even the cooking shows on the Food Channel have under-12 contestants who can not only prepare but know about food chemistry and cuisine.  In the 1950's we had unsophisticated palates.  My mother became a better chef as time went on, and lunch progressed from grilled velveeta-cheese to salads and wider nutritional choices, but our childhood food experiences were limited.

Thinking back, most Thanksgivings were at our aunt's.. not our 'blood-aunt' but one of those women in my parents' circle that we referred to that way.  She had her actual relatives crammed into an expanded dining dais-arrangement that was always uncomfortable and anxiety-provoking.  One of her sisters was super fat and had married a blind man; my sister would make weird faces at him and whisper to me that he can't see her anyway, but I was halfway between suppressed giggling and actual fear of his disability.  I hated the food.  Rolls were safe.  Milk.  Even the pie was awful.  Back then my mother would sometimes let me have a peanut-butter sandwich before we left.  And it wasn't the food-- I just wanted to leave, to go up to my cousin's room and look at her strange dolls and books.  To go home-- back to my little easels and looms and library.  My lair.

Once I reached teenage years, I could do volunteer work-- serve at the local shelter, cook for the poor and sick; this was a relief.  During college, these holidays were for reuniting with old mates-- for football, for some-- the meaning changes.  Newly married, I wanted my British husband to experience American tradition-- despite the fact that I had to invent mine since most of my extended family had 'fallen out' by this time from divorce or petty dramas.  And once my son was born, well.. I reinvented the day for him-- there was the Wednesday night visit to the inflating of the floats, then the parade... and I learned to cook turkey and host my musical families with joy.  I'm an adult now, I repeated over and over when my own family began to leave us out of their inner-sanctum invitations.  Me the single Mom-- perpetually hung over from lack of sleep and late-night gigs-- the annual Hendrix tribute foremost on my mind every late November; I checked the Head-of-Household box on my tax return and appreciated the one perk of being a sole parent.

For a time in the 90's and early 2000's, my annual dinners were all-night parties; I hosted people who hated their families, European transplants who simply enjoyed the food, my son's friends who escaped their own dinners, strays and band members.  My house was full and my cooking skills impressed even me.  There was music... there was joy and great conversation.

This year, for the first time in decades, there was no Hendrix tribute.  There is no more BB King's; Iridium closes down before 10 PM... even the Cutting Room seemed not welcoming.  I struggled to find the motivation to plan a dinner.  So many friends have been ill, have lost family members and parents, lost their personal mojo to the crushing daily reality of Trumped America; the holiday reminder of an increasingly distant past and pending future isolation grows a little more palpable.  My son's relationships are in flux; many of his closest friends are married and have started their own families.

My usual guests have seemed less enthusiastic than in the past.  I have dropped a couple of them along with the more challenging dishes-- the sweet-potato/green-apple casserole which requires hours of prep-- the pies.  I still do a huge turkey with my well-loved stuffing-- the cranberry, the other fixings... my building staff waits patiently for their plate-- my son eats up a storm, but my own enthusiasm has shifted.  I keep diagnosing the start of this as the 2016 post-election shock.  It's hard to believe that by next November we will have chosen again, god-willing we are able to survive one more year and have the collective sense to do something about this.

Nevertheless, this was the smallest table in a long time.  I didn't even bother changing into my traditional dress.  We sat and enjoyed one another at an intimate meal, and I finished clean-up at a reasonable hour.  Of course there are a few days' worth of leftovers and sharing, an extra reason for my son to come uptown and help me with my Christmas tree... but the shift in time is apparent.  Maybe I will have grandchildren before long and these traditions will regain their magic.  I'm not sure.  Watching this cartoon president pretend to honor the confused military ranks certainly took the air out of our Thanksgiving balloons.

I thought this year about the 1963 holiday-- how profoundly, post-assassination, our world had changed... how in 2001 I felt so conscientious about giving and appreciating, about generosity and post-9/11 understanding... the second generational loss-of-innocence for us baby-boomers: we re-set  our sense of compassion... humility, humanity.  But Thursday night the football game was blaring from the back room-- nothing on my turntable; halfway through eating I realized we hadn't lit the candles.  And just this morning, on the last day of a sad month, I can't seem to recall saying my usual Thanksgiving grace.  Amen, November.

Oh what will you give me...

When I was 16, my parents sent me on one of those international exchange programs.  I chose Mexico where I lived as a native in a rural place in the state of Veracruz.  It was a life-changing time; my host family had never even seen an airplane-- had no electricity or plumbing-- and there was nothing but our common humanity to provide a basis for bonding.  I ate strange food, rose with the roosters, lived simply and without worry.  At the end of my stay, all the students in the Americas met up at an international conference in Mexico City at the soccer stadium, where I was asked to play my guitar and sing something uniquely American.  I performed Universal Soldier in front of a massive audience; I even got an encore.  Racking my brain to find a song promoting world peace and unity, I tried out The Bells of Rhymney but halfway through the second verse realized I didn't know the words.   I choked, left the stage while the announcer mumbled something about la señorita being 'muy despeinada'.

After I met Andy Warhol several years later (he often passed by the gallery where I worked)  I told him the story, as my first public humiliation.  He laughed and said as long as no one filmed it, it wouldn't be held against me.  I wanted to ask him if that might have been my 15 minutes, but he didn't really like questions; he liked answers.  So many years later, I still dread solo gigs, as much as I feel this is as close to my real core, and am somehow compelled to subject myself to this.  I've analyzed and analyzed: who cares if I'm terrible?  Plenty of people are terrible?  Nothing helps, and really, few people care.

I'm not sure if it's my age and impatience, but I've recently found myself reacting with increasing bitterness and cynicism at the state of culture in general.  Music disappoints; I rarely see films or concerts-- I cannot really afford these things anyway.  I know Carnegie Hall lives on, the Philharmonic-- and maybe this is a sad omission but I don't miss them; I have cds and records.  What I do miss is the complete paralyzing excitement of seeing something like the de Kooning women in the 1960's-- Andy's wallpapered room of cows-- the first Graffiti show, early Jean-Michel… Hendrix.  John Lee Hooker-- before I knew about him, or Tim Buckley in the 1960's.  I've wondered if I'm just too old and ruined to see anything with new eyes.

My neighbor is a famous editor and writer.  His work is indisputably important and post-modern.  He is critical of what I do, although he occasionally praises me.  There's a certain snobbery in his circle; contemporary writing has to be tough and terse.  I browsed one of his recent books; one section is just a list of words… difficult words, uncomfortable words outside of most people's reach.  Okay… maybe like a Donald Judd or some minimal sequential thing-- but Judd has a certain universal, unpretentious simplicity.  The literary version is awkward and I hated it.

Personally I know my poetry is flawed; it is human and personal and maybe too emotional.  It is overly confessional and sympathetic, and I want it to be accessible and not difficult.  I think I'm not sure whether at this stage of my life I'd fall in love with Proust again, or be able to read Georges Perec or even Jean Genet with the intensity I gave these so many years ago.  I might be critical of Henry James now, or find Trollope excessive or silly.  I cringe occasionally at Anne Sexton; I worshipped her in the 1970's.  Some of the books my neighbor promotes-- well, they are brilliant, in a way--- but they do not sweep me off my literary feet, and I care little for the characters.  The language doesn't get in my blood.  I want to be better, and I want my heroes to be better, as well.  I am not claiming to be an artist or a great poet, but I do want to be read, and understood.

Again, I am not sure what I am expecting.  I do know that few millennials have the sense of context that my generation was given.  Education has changed; history, aside from phenomena like Hamilton-the-musical, seems less pertinent to this generation.  We used to be able to look at a painting or hear a recording and place it in a timeline; not so, now.  Reading has changed for so many, and the way people perceive music.  They listen to so many things simultaneously, while multi-tasking; even volume has become subjective.  Art seems to play to this audience-- it is rare that I enter a gallery and find quiet simple canvasses.  There are crowds and chatter-- phones and selfies.  There is theatrical lighting and music and there is performance;  at my one and only visit to the new Whitney, there were roving performance artists; they were embarrassing and distracting.  I could not 'hear' the paintings.

But most of all there seems to be this sense of 'self'… I mean, even Andy Warhol had anxiety about his work-- insecurity.  A true artist hears his voice and executes as best he can, but he is never sure-- he has doubt and asks questions.  He knows his work is a process.  This culture seems to be so sure of itself-- so smug and narcissistic.  And a majority of the audience is obedient; they like what they are told to like, they hear what they are given, they wear what they think they should wear, what their 'icons' wear.  This worries me-- the diversion and commercialization of the process.  Art and fashion have become bedfellows; this has energized fashion but cheapened art.  And while I detest the massive cultural joke of Jeff Koons, I am also left cold by the more pretentious, dehumanized, technology-heavy exhibitions.  And there is so much out there-- trillions of images and soundbytes-- so much spectacle-- so many celebrities and events, a million channels.  How can we expect anyone to connect deeply and intimately with ideas the way one reads an old book in a quiet room?  Somewhere in every country, artists are despairing-- important canvasses and books are burning in a digital bonfire.  A sacred tree is surely falling at any given moment in a night forest, and no one will hear.

Still, I have this relentless need to communicate, which I think is the seed of all art, and a certain faith that I may touch even one person, or change something.  I suppose the experience of being dropped into a strange cultural river at 16 taught me a certain lesson… and I am grateful for The Bells of Rhymney, the riveting and beautiful words of a Welsh coal miner who educated himself, which somehow found their way into music and onto my teenage record player and changed my life.

Remember (the Axis-Bold-as-Love kind)

November always leaves too quickly for me.  It is my favorite of the cruel months—nearing the end, but far enough for quiet sinning reverie--- still the magic feeling of 9 and newness, and the soft ember of the word.  The annual Hendrix birthday gig brings up a sad tale I have been unable to write or commemorate—not in a song or a poem… so I will try here, in the lingery last hours of the month of long lunescent Rockwell Kent-ish nights….

My friend met this woman on a crosstown bus—she picked him up, she’d boasted… he looked so eligible and kind and ‘presentable’; she, the black-haired, black-clad, black-eyed stranger who in another time might have had a veil.   The sex was great—you could feel that… he treated her with uptown attention, and she led him across the soft boundary of downtown edge.  They’d show up late at my gigs—both of them tall and giggling… and they’d dance, like some old-world ballroom couple… they’d drink, go out to get high, come back and dance until the end.  Although she was much younger, she instantly embraced my dark sisterhood, and  confided with abandon things I felt I hadn’t deserved.

Anyway, it went on--- the relationship had its webs--- maybe a wanted or unwanted pregnancy, a dangerous flirtation with one of his friends…. some street drama, some interior drama…the usual.  When they’d show up, I was happy.  She always asked us to play ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ and we would oblige.  Jimi would have loved her--- she was leggy and unafraid and so dangerous in that black-Irish witchy sort of way. 

I visited her once or twice at her place; it was an appalling mess.  Clothes everywhere, food containers, ashtrays overflowing--- bottles, the scent of marijuana and sex and perfume.  She was obsessed with shoes and had maxed out not just her own credit cards in a sort of charming way because everything was smashing on her, and worth every cent. 

But most of all, she wanted my hat-- the old black Stetson which I could let her wear, but couldn’t give up.  Until one day she called me urgently---I had to come over that minute… and she greeted me stark naked except for the new hat—she’d managed to find a twin—and her great hoarse infectious laugh and a joint and a filthy martini glass.  So her fall outerwear debut—the hat and a new black Raymond-Chandler-esque raincoat, with whichever of her spectacular shoe choices--- was well received by all.

As the year wore on, her silly insistence on my friend making an honest woman of her began to wear on him.  He was distancing himself slightly from her indiscretions, her excursions, her junky ex-boyfriends, the debt and the hangovers.  I, of course, forgave her everything.  All I had to do was watch her dance, listen to her stories, receive.  You are my angel sister, she used to tell me; when you find a diamond on the street--- it will be me, giving.  

One day he called me—in utter grief.  She’d been standing on the platform at West 4^th Street, 11 AM, about to change trains—and the rush of tunnel wind blew off her hat.  Undoubtedly she was stoned--she generally smoked a joint before her morning coffee--  so as she reached for the hat, with impaired leggy grace,  she leaned in and something jutting from the oncoming train slammed into her head with mythological force.  And there she was, stunned and silenced, the white skin and the black hair, with streaks of red now, bleeding profusely into the lap of an NYU law student who spoke eloquently to the NY Post, the hat trampled and lost somewhere by the voyeuristic crowd.  She was DOA, in her black trenchcoat--- hatless. 

Somehow I felt responsible.  Somehow I couldn’t grieve.  It was more than I could stand.  Her family came and probably witnessed with horror the mess of her apartment, apparently made judgments, because they refused to disclose the circumstances of her funeral.  I craved a piece of her, I wanted to call the law student who maybe had a bloody souvenir.  But I couldn’t find her. 

I have yet to find a diamond, but I am always looking down and occasionally pick up a shining dime which I know is a wink from somewhere.  And I silently dedicate the Hendrix always to her.  Maybe they are together somehow, and he is playing 'The Wind Cries Mary' or 'Angel' or something new he wrote just for her.  And she is dancing—with the shoes, and the trenchcoat she never paid for, naked underneath,a cigarette in her mouth, the mascara’d eyes closed, locks of black hair falling everywhere, wearing Jimi’s hat.  She had a hat, I complained to some version of God, who took her for his own one rainy November wish, eleven moons in, never to grow old.