Odd-i-sea

Recently I got an email from an old friend-- well, we shared a job-- she replaced me and discovered I was the only 'ear' qualified to comprehend the insanity and challenges required by her daily agenda.  So we had a kind of bond.  This was more than thirty years ago.  I remember I introduced her to a man I knew-- she was the kind of woman anyone loved to date-- fun, smart, well-dressed, just edgy enough to appeal across the spectrum.

But suddenly-- well, she'd changed her life, moved across the country, again... approaching 70, blurting out that she'd messed up-- failed to find her calling, maybe-- that perfect relationship that eludes most of us. It was a moment-- and I am privileged to be on the receiving end because I do see how some of us spend decades following tangents, under the illusion that we are 'in the moment', aligned with some karmic rhythm... maybe in love with another fun loser, deciding yes, we can be a back-up dancer at the age of 40, or a master chef, or a fashion designer.  It's all spread out there, when we are young-- the choices, and we are at the edge of a vast river of time that seems utterly infinite, and some of us just want to inhale the scent of water, sense the passage of time-- watch the clouds reshape, the inevitable miracle of sunset... it goes on.

Bob Dylan at 85 mentioned in a recent interview that 'Time stands still while we move.' Not original-- there are  umpteen lyrics going back millennia but he does have a kind of 'authority'.  What he says seems to matter... it percolates and becomes 'word'. Maybe that's what my friend misses-- a certain  lack of impact.

I met a young woman last week who plays bass-- she has a Spector which undoubtedly cost her more than I've ever paid for an instrument... but I mentioned Lou Reed (Spector endorsements by his musicians) and she had absolutely not a clue. Icon-- cornerstone... absolute blank.  Okay.  She's Korean... but still... is it my bad to expect young musicians to have some classic rock referential? 

Christopher Nolan's Odyssey will undoubtedly introduce a whole virgin generation to the classics... the way Oppenheimer maybe reminded us that horrific world destruction is only a button away. I'm not sure I want to see the new film-- I hate watching bloody recreated battles and heroics and super-heroes.  But I'm the minority.  The Charles Laughton Hunchback of Notre Dame caused me to vomit up my dinner at the age of 8.  My son grew up seeing movies like Hostel as date-night fare.  

But what do we expect?  We who studied and read and digested historic literature and the sequences of Kings and empires... now see a generation that values the present above all else.  And supposing they are right-- in terms of physics, and the Time-Stands-Still theory, this is it. And we are infinitesimally unimportant in the universe.  Our lifetime is meaningless.

In my early thirties,  I had that cartoon on my refrigerator-- the one with the well-dressed woman looking at her shopping list and captioned 'Oh my God! I forgot to have children!' When I got home from giving birth to my son, I took it down with irony and a tiny sliver of regret.  And it was only the merest quirk of fate that motherhood happened-- an unrehearsed moment, a rogue sperm, etc. 

Conversely, how many times do I beat myself up for a negative scenario-- if only I'd taken a night off, maybe my daughter would have been born healthy... or obsessing over that woman who fell into a manhole.. if only she'd parked inches away?  It goes on.... we move, while the moment sits there.  Daily choreography presents itself so that we encounter random adventures-- me, just a half hour ago, with my bag of yesterday' bagels... and a homeless man, right there outside the store-- his head on a table, outside in the heat and the wildfire-polluted air... people on the sidewalk wearing masks, and there he was-- sweaty and dirty as though he'd been in a fire himself.  The bagels were clean; he was hungry... it was perfect.

I have many friends of all kinds; some torment themselves daily that nothing they've done was ever enough while some seem to gloat and float in a clueless contingency of confidence.  Some are psychologists-- psychiatrists... who have totally abandoned the concept of compassion. They do not see or hear or fathom that they might be missing the machinery of emotion.  Perhaps that makes them professional.  

So to my friend... I am the quintessence of unprofessional, unclaimed, unacknowledged, unrewarded.  I suppose the rhythm of my life is such that I cannot even make an assessment-- negative or positive.  Aside from regrets about my daughter, some missed opportunities surely-- maybe I expected less.  I've also listened to plenty of stories.  They interest me.  I care.  I have learned that the reasons people choose for their trouble or outcome are not always the essential reasons.  So many failed relationships.  I have strings of ex-boyfriends and non-boyfriends.  When one is in a relationship, other men feel 'safe' around us-- they confide, they open.  There are women in this life-- who change men... it could be the way they feel-- their skin, their scent... it is irresistible. Some men discover this too late.  It's sort of a magic thing... it happens. Few possess these women.  The metaphor of Helen... 

I have no clue what Christopher Nolan will do with Homer. But the metaphors always obsess me. I am not sure about Gen X or Y or Z... their frame of reference seems so limited. It used to amuse us that Jay Leno interviewed people on the street whose knowledge of current events was non-existent.  Now this seems epidemic. But does it matter?  Me, an aging old relic with shabby clothes and way too many books... still unable to assess my own existence beyond the simple math of sharing a bagel with a homeless man. 

You Say You Want a Resolution

The year is one week old.  If it were a newborn, it would be home from the hospital by now, adjusting to the quiet of a room, bonding with a mother, trying out its voice and perhaps discovering its own tiny hands. As a segment of time, it has already grown familiar and we forget to light candles or say prayers and simply let the hours accommodate football and leftovers and bad habits.  Work.  We are as we were, most of us, carrying our resolutions in our pockets or wearing them like bracelets, or setting them free like balloons in the unseasonably warm January wind.

Digitally speaking, or relating to photography, resolution has to do with clarity of image-- the distinction of objects against a background.  New Year' s Day for me seems sharp... it is deceptively new and manageable and stands out.  I usually hoard alone-time, visit the same bookshop or church... I walk in the evening clarity and replay things.  It occurred to me this year that my memories are vertical-- they stack, by date or event... and while distant recalls are blurry-- I can flip through past December 31sts like a box of postcards.  The early ones-- middle school and teenage nights--- I'd tag along with my older sister to a movie... or we'd be grouped in some neighbor's home-- whoever had a live-in babysitter or nanny... while our parents went out en masse and celebrated or got drunk. But as we grew older-- this night was well-planned and meaningful. We anticipated it.  I had a dress-- an early Betsey Johnson slinky black thing-- I wore it year after year... I felt tall and grown up and sexy and photographable.  Boys wrapped me in their arms and danced... spilled champagne on it... I closed my eyes and held the moment.  

In college I often traveled during Christmas break and ended up in El Salvador watching beach-fireworks or in Stockholm with the Auroras and explosions against the freezing black Scandinavian sky. My first year in Manhattan after graduation, I partied at an apartment on the Upper West side... it belonged to some preppy drug dealer and it was fantastically crowded with all kinds of bohemians and art students and the sound of classic soul blasting through a spectacular stereo system.  Someone popped a champagne cork in their eye... after an ER visit some of us ended up at the Corso on East 86th Street, dancing to Tito Puente until past noon on the 1st.  We all vowed we would spend every New Year's Eve together--- forever. I never saw most of those people again, despite the best intentions... 

Once I became a musician there were the gigs-- many, many- -some in dive bars, some in fancy venues and hotels... Chinese restaurants, the Tribeca Grill with Hiram Bullock, a Led Zeppelin tribute set once with some society orchestra... one at Caroline's, many at BB King's... and I would wheel equipment home in the early hours, my pockets stuffed with cash which seemed all wrong, because it was I who'd had the fun.  Or I'd take a subway with wilting revelers, exhausted waitresses and bus-boys... way past all closing time, watching new couples succumbing to passion among the drunks and vomiters...  At home there would be either a sleeping child or quiet rooms to welcome me-- maybe a message from my mother, and I indulged in what I perceived as the religion of January 1-- the resolution of day from year.  It seemed sacred and fragile.

In Sweden on New Year's Day, the whole country in unison watches Walt Disney.  Huddled and hungover under blankets, you can see in every candled window the television sets in synch.  Rituals. Breakfasts-- special pastries in Italy, and fish courses.  

This year, as the last two, I missed Alan Merrill.  Not only were we bandmates and spectators at our own revelry, but we were like brother and sister... we could wink or blink and the other would understand.  I saluted him as I stacked the vertical layers of the holiday one on top of the other, and things bled out.  The 'odds', the tiny movies of our lives which escape but remain at these moments-- they come back like fairy smoke and deceive us with their narcotic aura.  Modeling, as a child in a frock on some runway in the Catskills... or wearing a narrow skirt and a tank top later in a photo session, realizing I am not a model...  I don't belong here.  The perfect romance I had once in an elevator trip in the old music building at 3 AM... the laundry room at college one magical night... these deviations or vacations from our life-narrative that we have neither integrated nor fully dismissed.  Like an 8-ball, these moments enter the glass octagon window of our vision with a kind of clarity, and then disappear.  

I read a definition of music as "an art of sound in time that expresses ideas and emotions in significant forms through the elements of rhythm, melody, harmony, and color."  It made sense to me... what I do needs to have some kind of idea, or emotion.  How to use 'music' in a sentence?  One cannot.  I remember when I arrived in the UK, with my pop-hooks and predictable lyrics... realizing it was all useless and meaningless.  I talked with Lou Reed, I watched young bands smash one another until they bled... I slept with punks, I tore my clothes-- I smoked and used a plectrum.  I read, I dismantled myself and examined the pieces by the neon light of a pub across from my London flat.  

Gradually I began to become who I am.  My bass playing was characterized not by the way I struck the strings but the way I released them.  Music wrapped itself around my limbs like a lover.  It bled.  

I realize I am aging but I am still becoming.  I stack the movies of my days-- the lyrics and the pictures... like vertical chapters of some continuum that relentlessly goes forward.  One week-- like a thin slice of layer cake, the rest of which will be devoured, while it sags and grows stale and the icing melts and discolors.  Memories occupy more space than my present or my future... I wander among these columns of my life... I visit scenes of passion-- of birth, of pain, of joy... most of all the tiny narratives that were discarded from the essential manuscript but seem to have special 'resolution' among the privileged moments of one's life.  As we accumulate time, we peel off as well... the irony of gaining days and losing time.  

Once again I enter the third year without Alan, the sixth without my mother, the 28th without my baby girl; the losses mount as we gather a dwindling future.  We grow old and cannot make new life; we cannot replace. Someone at this ungodly hour is composing, someone is painting, someone is inventing.  These things go on in the city-- beneath the digital webs and networks-- the texts and signals... we are human, we are wounded and vulnerable.  We weep and we love, we mourn and we pray.  I am determined to discover something this year, even if it is myself in yet a new decade, should I be so lucky. I will leave some poetry and some music as defined and hope it will resolve into a life beyond mine, that it will find resolution.  

What we Talk About When We Talk About Breakfast

As if the pending election news and impeachment hearings aren't enough, the sustainable food movement has now forced me to reconsider the very fundamentals of traditional meal priorities.  Contradictory to everything our mothers assured us (and we in turn indoctrinated our kids) about nutrition, it seems breakfast is losing ground as a frontrunner.

I grew up in the 1950's with cereal boxes as the morning centerpiece on a black formica deco table, sitting in a Breuer-style chair upholstered in indestructible woven yellow vinyl.  We read the box text over and over  while we shoveled in the contents, motivated by the promise of some small toy at the bottom.  Tony the Tiger-- the athletes and cartoon heroes... My mother read the paper next to me with first a cigarette and coffee,  then a single warmed doughnut.  My Dad ate toasted buttered Italian bread with 'the boys' at a Trattoria near Grand Central Station and drank mugs of dark roast.  It set them up for an energetic workday.

As a teenager, I discovered hot cereal and Wheatena... I had to get up early to walk the dogs, and cooked myself a hearty breakfast with melted butter and cream.  The box looks nostalgically identical today on the supermarket shelf but nothing tastes the way it did then-- it was just so good...

In college I had instant Cream of Wheat and electric-kettle boiled eggs.  Someone was gifted the first Mister Coffee machine which improved our lives.  Among the Ivy League boys I dated initially was a privileged one who introduced me to Sunday Eggs Benedict and Vodka Screwdrivers at a local French restaurant.  He also showed me how to produce wonderful coffee with a Chemex beaker and filters.  There was French Roast-- Kona, Jamaican Mountain... it was a new world.

My first gallery job in New York was on 69th Street.  There was one delicatessen on Madison.  One.  They provided a buttered roll and coffee for something like 50 cents.  I was poor-- a student-- and this was a ritual... I traded bus fare for morning food and walked to work.  Those were sacred days... things happened... I could smell sweet butter on my fingers as I typed and people like Andy Warhol came through the door.

When I was pregnant I craved McDonald's eggs and biscuits.  I ate multiple orders and fantasized about them at 5 AM.  As a mother, breakfast was important-- cereal, pancakes... my son was an athlete.. I tried hard to force something on him at 6:30 AM and also signed him up for free BOE morning meals.

While my son was in school, I took on extra jobs.  Once, to earn the extra cash to pay for a double bass, I painted kitchens for a contractor; I learned how to carefully finish cabinets.  My 'boss' flirted inappropriately with me... but brought the best mandarin orange muffins every morning from a place called Petak's.  I can still taste these-- how I collected any stray crumbs from the brown bag.  One day my 'boss' pulled me into a bedroom and asked me to paint his dick.  That was the end of the muffins.

Since middle age, I've been a slacker musician-- making my own schedule according to gig ETA's... staying up nights... I abused Starbucks for a while, and traded morning meals for massive amounts of coffee.  Milk, for adults, is not a priority.  On the days I'm awake early, I see most of the world brown-bagging bagels, biscuit sandwiches, Whole Foods hearty oats options... yoghurts.  Even Taco Bell has pre-11 AM specials.  While I shun food until I'm fully awake, I love the sense of breakfast-- the human coffee-and-muffin line, the scent of croissants.

Recently I bought a box of cornflakes.  They were god-awful... they tasted medicinal and synthetic.  I haven't found a muffin that compares to those Petak masterpieces from the 1990's.  I've binged on pancakes while on the road and don't have much desire except occasionally a hotel buffet of scrambled eggs somewhere feels nostalgic.  I remember having breakfast with Lou Reed in Amsterdam in a darkened dining hall...  trying to order an omelette with my first husband in Times Square where we were refused service because of his dreadlocks.

So now even Dr. Oz has conceded that the whole culture of breakfast is a hoax.  The quality of contemporary cornflakes made it feel less sad, but for those of us who grew up in the 1950's-- and my own father came from farm country where they ate leftover popped corn with milk in bowls-- this requires something of a cultural reset.  Of course I begin to suspect there is some marketing or financial reason for the 'demilitarization' of breakfast.  Steering us away from the cereal box heroes and milk-carton tragedies, somehow aiding the coffee culture to fill some nutritional vacuum and eventually sell more lunch options... to increase morning productivity by taking away the line-waiting and desk-eating.  I'm not sure.

I do know that no 2020 Wheatena comes close to the stuff I cooked in the 60's; no butter or cream has the fragrance of the small glass bottles and tubs of my school years.  And the muffins-- well, I am jaded now, and poor-- food stamps cannot buy a croissant on Spring Street.  Even bagels are a disappointment.  Every now and again I walk through Zabar's on Third Ave. and they are giving out
chunks of crumbcake or bread.  I am reminded that, unlike  Les Miserables, there is a hierarchy-- it is not simply a loaf of bread-- but there is a class system of food.  Maybe breakfast is simply too pedestrian and proletarian for our current food-fad and weight-obsessed culture.  Still, I can't imagine those workers in the old photos, sitting astride steel beams above the city with their bags open and their thermoses steaming hot.. without a hearty morning meal.  I am quite sure that drive-ins and truck-stops will be forever serving bacon and eggs-over-- French Toast, hotcakes, whatever.  For the rest-- the Dr. Oz followers and the Trump voters-- well, let them have their noontime cake.  Or, as some of the senators were served this week-- a glass of milk.

I will forever remember the funky diners with the taped-up vinyl booths where we sat smoking and talking after gigs in the 1970's until the sun came up and the early birds-- especially the loners and bachelors--  came to start their day... where the posted menu in the window, like a loyal friend, announced in bold red italics 'Breakfast All Day!'

As-salted

It's been a cranky week for Writerless... annoying editing setbacks, difficulties transferring analogue files... the older I get, the harder it is to move on from technology to technology.  Things get technically easier, but across the board, quality suffers.  Nothing like home-made pie, reel-to-reel recordings, dark-room printed photographs... I found one someone made of my son as an adolescent-- it was like a cross between a Calvin Klein ad and a Rebel Without a Cause handbill. Shot on the old roof of my building which is now divvied up among the rich for their air conditioning outboard equipment, it was timeless-- powerful... it had a vibe.  Things today don't seem to have a vibe.  Go pick up your new KAWS Uniqlo T-shirt... be a walking cartoon ad...  I see the same tattoos on people, over and over.

Last weekend was my 45th college reunion.  Did I go?  Have I ever? I am a lifetime committed absentee.  But Thursday and Friday night I played (again) at the (44th?) Max's Kansas City Reunion Extravaganza.  It was in a different venue this time which didn't quite feel right... besides, the bar portion of the club where you enter is a late-night hang-out for the young nouveau LES high-renters who have only just discovered the eighties.  Hardly anyone over 30; as opposed to the Max's performers and audience on the 'venue' side who were pretty much 50 and up.  On the way in I pass 2 young couples engaged in a little drunken hysterical repartee and this tall blonde spontaneously throws her drink in the air-- maybe unintentionally... christens me everywhere, except fortunately my old motorcycle boots shield me from the broken glass as it shattered on the hard floor.  So she looks at me-- points... Are you gonna buy me a drink?  I let her have it, verbally.  Are you going to buy me a new shirt and jeans, I ask her? Getting into full-armed Princeton bitch mode... I stared her down accusatively...until she backed off... but it changed my 'vibe' (that word again) and that was on her.

After a week of gigs--- subways, walking-- not a single purchased drink or bag of chips--- I earned $50.  Yes.  That is the deal.  Either you play in tribute bands, club dates, do Broadway... or have a job. I remember way back as a young bassist someone in a punk band told me I played like I had a job.  I did-- have a job, that is.  If you wanna really play, he said-- quit your day job.  So I did.  He was right... there's a difference... but looking around the room at the Max's reunion, nearly everyone played like they had a job--- or a husband.. or a trust fund, or an inheritance... except the few of us who stood around without drinks (for playing for no money, you get 50% off at the bar which is still out-of-reach) waiting to play like our lives depend on it (they do).   Of course the few bands who were successful from the old days were not there (Blondie, Television, etc.)  Or passed on (Lou Reed, etc.)... or decided to have a job, become a doctor or lawyer.

Anyway,  Saturday I worked all day at my friend's gallery to help make my monthly apartment payment.  I had no sleep, no lunch... some free coffee... but at 6 PM on the way home I had $2 and besides a hot dog, there isn't much you can do with it.  Union Square market is so pricey... no samples out at that hour, stands are packed up for the day and despite the advice from the HRA that you use your foodstamps at greenmarkets, they want your credit not benefit card.  Then I see the Martin's Pretzel truck.. loading up... remember they have those $1 plastic baggies of broken pieces... get a little energy buzz... until the vendor guy says to me-- nah.. no more... all packed up... except in a barrel waiting for loading are a bunch of bags that look about to become trash... How much, I ask?  $5 he says.  $5... for a small sandwich bag of crumbs.  I look sheepish... How much you got, he asks?  I show him the contents of my poor wallet... $2... okay, he says, as though he is splitting his steak dinner with me and while I eagerly tear into the bag because I am on the verge of passing out, he points his finger in my face and says... like you would scold a misbehaving child... Remember that, next week.  I wanted to spit the pretzel at him... they are stale and hard enough to break a tooth-- another unaffordable... but he had my $2 and I'm not that stupid.  I had no choice except put him in that mental box with the drink-spiller of the previous night.

On to the 4 train which is backed up and local and messed up and everyone is cranky.  There is a pre-Puerto Rican day crowd and demonstrators from another parade and the car is packed.  I am sitting next to a fat asshole in a tank top with cheap tattoos and shorts and he has his phone angled so he seems to be photographing the strange-looking crotch of the guy crammed in over us.  He gives me a sideways look and shuts his phone down.  We are stuck at 28th St... and a girl across the car seems to be freaking out... she is cursing under her breath and scrunching her face and slapping her knees... but she is a knockout... maybe 27... black hair, pale eyes... white skin and this look of punk exoticism from another planet.  So the fat asshole is maybe trying to flirt with her... and he asks.. What's your problem? She answers-- and she is tough... I'm pregnant and I'm sick and I need to get home.  Me..I offer her a pretzel... but she is getting into it with the asshole who calls her a cunt and other things...and she stands up and starts ragging on him... until some crazy old woman (my age?) takes the stage waving her handmade flyers and shouting at us all because we are cruel meat eaters.

Anyway, the fat asshole is now standing up in his shorts which are disturbingly short and enough to make us all sick.... and I gently grab the pregnant girl and walk her down to the end of the car.  It's not worth it, I say. You have to protect your baby...  which I can't really see, because honestly she doesn't look pregnant to me... but who cares?  Anyway, after a few minutes of the fat guy ranting about women some hefty black girl built like a linebacker walks over to him and screams in his face and makes a fist and all hell is about to break loose but the guy realizes he's like a Trump supporter in a small crowd of democrats and Gay Rights Activists and Black Lives Matter supporters and he sits down... then a young black kid with dreads goes over and rags on him, too, calls him a mother----er and c---sucker and other things... and the car is cheering him on... but the pregnant girl and I are by the rear car door and the train is finally moving and now her eyes get red and she is worn down and starts weeping on me.   I remember how a train accident caused me to lose a baby once... and think... here.. this could be the one, the girl that has my baby's donated organs-- and she is really hanging onto me now-- letting it go--- and here we are, like a religious pastiche of Mother and Weeping unidentified Daughter...  and finally it is my stop and she says she'll be okay.

The black guy says he'll make sure she gets off safe in East Harlem... and now I am on my way home where I can strategize the $1.82 left on my benefit card until Tuesday and I'm nearly safe.  I'm weeping myself, wet with the pregnant girl's tears which could be DNA-simpatico to my own, the taste of the stale salt pretzel on my tongue like a bad communion wafer, and the stench of that spilled drink still in my nose because I have on the same old jeans.

The phone rings as I come in and it's an ex-boyfriend driving back from Nashville, lying his ass off as usual about how he misses me and about a phantom divorce except he doesn't know I know he's not so secretly married and he makes an excuse he has to fix something in the car when it's another call from his wife, because these stalking spouses have radar for when their men call ex-girlfriends...  but then I turn the ringer off... and I remember it was he that took that great shot of my son on the roof... kind of a good souvenir of a bad relationship... and I also realize someone found my missing guitar strap and the evening sunset is just so warm and the city is almost quiet up in my hood... just the car radios and the Puerto Rican flag wavers yelling as they pass...  and I can still play bass like I don't have a job, which I don't, except for playing bass... and for now I can close my front door and rule the world. Que vaya con Dios, I pray to my pregnant daughter-- another orphaned dream in the urban mix.

Night Manager

In the 1970's, New York City was a very different place.  It was dangerous and sleazy; anything could happen.  You'd walk down a side-street at night with a sense of shadows, with your heart beating.  Muggings were common; crime was woven into the fabric and you expected to be threatened.  In a way it was like the dare of the city-- are you tough enough, are your dreams compelling enough to lie down with rabid dogs, spar with the urban devil himself?  There was a certain underlying surf we had to ride out-- a dark fire we were expected to navigate.  The noir permeated our art-- our music and poetry-- our clothes, our choices.

On the other hand, there was a wild freedom in our private sex lives.  We were walking an edge-- trying out things.  There was no internet or linked-in.  You'd meet someone and take a risk.  There were no personal phones-- only a door or a window to crawl out if you found yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I was young and all-connected.  I was straddling worlds-- downtown, uptown-- the art world and the music underground.  It was thrilling and new.  Every day I'd get introduced into someone's world that rocked my own.  I'd walk into a club at night and hear something new-- see someone trying to change things.  Sometimes you'd exchange ideas; sometimes you exchanged bodies.

One afternoon I was studying at the Figaro on Bleecker Street, and this actor sat down at my table… he wasn't super famous but I recognized him.  He was slightly older… and he was smart; we spoke about theatre and Proust.  We made a date to meet the next night at a west-side bar.  I went to the library that evening and looked him up; he'd written a couple of books, and his publisher was well-known.  Everything in those days ended up in bed, and we had a few nights of passion.  I was dating a guitar player at the same time who came back to town and I wasn't home much to answer calls.  I don't think I even had an answering machine.  Anyway, one day I was getting into a car with the guitar player and the actor passed me… I looked the other way.   He called me a few nights later, sounded drunk and insecure about his sexual performance… it was a stupid conversation and I was 22 or 23 and didn't feel like getting into a whole psychological tunnel…

Two days later, someone broke into my little apartment on the first floor.  It was a vulnerable place and I probably never even drew the curtains when I stayed out all night… but they took everything.  In those days everything fit into a couple of suitcases-- but it was all I had, and when I came home on a Sunday evening to find my window smashed, the mattress stripped and the place ransacked, I was spooked.  The cops assured me it was no Kojak episode but most likely a desperate junkie looking for cash and things to sell for dope.  My guitar player was going on the road; I stayed with a friend at the Chelsea Hotel for a few days while they put in a new window and locks on the door.

At the Chelsea I inhaled the quintessence of 1970's New York.  Sid and Nancy were there; Viva and I shared a cigarette on the stairs.  My friend was working with John Cale; he'd been robbed too and he processed the dare of the city with a certain bitter mistrust.  It was a cool hang, but I needed to face my independence without a support system.  I moved back to my little place, bought new sheets and a cheap little TV, was at last drifting off to sleep with Johnny Carson on the black and white 12-inch… when the phone rang.  I'd been gone for a week and thought it was my guitar player-- whispering… but then I heard the actor's voice, indisputably, asking me if I knew what he was doing… I jumped out of bed in a cold sweat, and ran up the stairwell to the next floor-- banged on a random door.  Some guy answered-- I begged him to let me in… I'm sure he thought I was crazy; thinking back, he had no pants on--  I stuttered something about someone stalking me…  anyway, he went into his bedroom and I curled up on his dirty carpet.  He had a small dog and it had new puppies… I lay there like a dog myself until the sun came up and I had the nerve to go downstairs.

I hadn't thought about this for so many years, but it was maybe the first coming-of-age reality check of the city.  In a way I'd been lucky; no one had really hurt me… and thinking back, it was undoubtedly a total coincidence that the actor phoned at that moment.  I'm sure he had no knowledge that I'd been robbed, that I'd been away… or did he?  It was the first time I felt genuinely unsafe-- a little terrified-- and had thoughts about finding a more secure apartment, about making wiser and less random choices, about becoming part of a couple as opposed to being the wild and free girl.  In a way I changed my vision that night; in a way I accepted there would be a kind of dependence on men in my life.  The end of innocence, which for girls is so often some threat or unmanageable fear which changes us and forces us to make a slightly desperate choice.  It's not 'live free or die', but  'live'.  It's a form of terrorism, but that's another discussion.

Like most things in life, we give up one thing for another; nothing stays the same, no one retains their innocence unless someone else arranges this for us.  Of course life in the city today feels much safer; people have phones for emergencies, everyone's marital and employment status is pretty much general knowledge, as is their age and address, their political affiliations and criminal record-- their net worth.  People sort through hundreds of prospects on dating sites-- they hook up, they regroup, they text and sext and move on.  I seldom walk into a club these days and encounter something that changes my world.  I no longer fall in love and rarely walk the dark streets with a sense of danger and excitement.  I miss those times; I've had a good and a rich life here, but I do miss myself when I was still brave enough or maybe dumb enough to take a nightly walk on the wild side.  When there was a viable and findable wild side.

You, Too…..

For the last 8 years, I take this weekly Latin hip-hop dance class.  The teacher is this dread-locked, sexy, ultra-talented dancer/percussionist/DJ who choreographs routines to great Latin and Brazilian music I wouldn't otherwise get to hear.  Lately he's been playing this version of U2's  'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' with a samba beat, and Spanish lyrics--- it's fantastic and grooving and nostalgic all at once.  The chorus is in English… as though there's no translation for this lyric.

I remember well when this song came out-- I was fortunate to be a guest on the Lou Reed/U2 tour and I saw from stage left-- at Wembley-- and other massive stadiums, night after night, Bono come out and sing these lyrics with compelling personal passion.  Backstage the band was all hanging out with various supermodels-- who knows what was going on in his head-- a young mid-life crisis-- a confession, a genuine plateau of confusion, as often happens when people encounter that kind of massive success:  questions rather than answers?  He was sweet and adorable and at some kind of peak in every way, and when he sang this song, he made himself vulnerable… it was like an anthem of self doubt.

But it wasn't until this week, doing my little steps and turns, that it suddenly occurred to me that the lyric doesn't mean just this unfinished search for some kind of answer, but maybe the writer hasn't a clue what it is he is even looking for.  Seems so simple--- but all these years, I didn't get it.

Anyone observing my dance class would undoubtedly see all kinds of 'lost' people: the tattooed and outfitted girls who are living their Beyonce and Janet Jackson fantasy--- the older Hispanic women who shake their hips with real soul and sexiness, the men who can't seem to get the rhythm in their body-- the over-50 women who bare their midriffs that no one wants to see-- one who wears a leather bustier and even manages a split.  It's a little over the top, and one wonders what drives these people… there's significant competition for the front row, and having our teacher grab one of us for a few bars is a coveted reward.  I lose myself in the music-- it's exotic and different, and I'm beginning to understand the bass rhythms.

At the end of the class, there's a cool-down to this Brazilian version of a Bryan Adams song.  Another guy who, in the late 1980's, was looking for his heaven in the arms of the British princess.  He bought himself a house and moved over there, wrote her a couple of songs-- the tabloids printed stories of their affair…who knows?  I'm sure he was devastated by her death.  I guess he didn't quite know what he was looking for-- neither did the Princess, apparently.  Or she knew what she wasn't looking for, which  made the royal family uncomfortable.

I never found what I was looking for in London, although I thought I did, briefly.  As often happens in life, the answer we find doesn't necessarily take us through the next set of questions.  Our lives don't stop-- they roll on endlessly, with our own high and low tides and storms and days of calm.  Sometimes what we most want passes us by when we're asleep or obsessing about something useless.  We fail to love the person in our path because they don't look exactly like our current version of love, and then it might be too late.

As I get older, I think I spend less time waiting.  I used to love the periods in my life when I was pining for some boy or man, crossing off days on my calendar until he came.  There was nothing like those days and nights-- they felt lit up, enchanted-- thrilling.  But these days, I am inclined to reach out and embrace whatever I find in my path.  I love going to flea markets and thrift stores-- you never find anything you want, but the random discovery is what makes these visits amazing.  It's like scraping the bottom of some strange ocean with a net and coming up with a shell or a plant or some amazing rock.  Useless but  day-changing.  You take the thing home and it becomes part of you.

I watch people drop off donation boxes to thrift stores-- the book boxes are sad and predictable--- college textbooks, marriage manuals, What to Expect When You're Expecting, Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems, some Steven King and Joyce Carol Oates, then fitness and diet books, retirement planning, sometimes books about healing or cancer… then self-help books, manuals on depression, dealing with death, meditation tapes-- -a Bible… and there you have it… a man who maybe found what he was looking for, at least on a Barnes and Noble bookshelf,.. and then, like all of us, realized that we have limited options at the end.

Night after night, people dig through our trash on my corner--- looking.  People buy Lotto tickets-- it's uncanny the numbers of dollars spent because they believe they are going to win-- that they will be able to have what they are looking for.  The belief factor-- is mind-blowing.  People of limited income will spend a small fortune over a lifetime… convinced that the next ticket is going to be 'it'.

My rich neighbors seem to have more money than they can count-- -some of them get into collecting.  Men buy expensive guitars which they'll never play like a young hungry musician who cannot do anything but play, because he has no choice, and his heart is already full of music.  These wealthy guitar owners will never find what he has, but they might look around-- play a little, feel something-- fantasize about a different life.  One of my friends tells me she is working at a soup kitchen some nights-- feeding the homeless.  She is looking for something, maybe… paring away at her guilt because she is extremely fortunate… and doesn't realize that this system is failing the truly oppressed and underfed… but she is not looking there, not walking through East Harlem at 3 AM and seeing the numbers of bodies looking for cans and bottles, or dreaming under boxes and blankets-- dreaming of something they may or may not have found.

I think I now know it is the looking that matters--- not really the finding.  And the richest things we find are rarely if ever the ones we are looking for, because life doesn't work that way.  The best we can do is keep postponing the ending, because the finding will go on and on, and that is a gift in itself.  It's just a matter of trying not to predict or ask-- and accept the random order of life as it is, because some things are so constant-- the light and dark, the sky, the stars and moon, the seasons, moving the clock back one hour as we will all obediently do this weekend--gaining an extra hour of looking, maybe an hour of shivering in the cold or rain, an hour of love, of music, of a hotel room you have bought for a night of love, of time spent writing a song, of pain, of pleasure, of looking, as I will see it, because it might just be the hour when I will find something I wasn't looking for at all, like a poem,  and it will be enough.

Some Kinda Love

Betrayals and break-ups always seem more prevalent in the rain. This cold relentless October rain was sort of a jolt to the city; just one week ago we were bathing in the radiant sunlight of a warm September, waving to our Pope, feeling a kind of hopeful optimism and magnanimity.  Everything I did felt just a little 'blessed'.  Tonight, it's business as usual. I've committed my one or two unforgivable social etiquette sins-- let the rebel-girl out of my mouth--  been just a tiny bit mean-spirited.  I'm soaked, freezing, snappy and blustery.

As I grow older, I'm noticing I become a little more clairvoyant and uber-empathetic.  I don't just observe-- I actually feel things around me.  I can read minds and hearts and find myself having to blink  and look away more often.  Tonight I began to hypothesize that there are two kinds of love-obsessed people: the ones that are all about being loved, and the ones that are addicted to loving.  We know the narcissists-- attractive and charming-- generally someone at their beck and call, their 'mirror-boy' (or girl), not to mention some in the wings, waiting for a stage-cue. But their counterpart-- the 'lovers' who are  so good at maintaining relationships, at partner-grooming and socializing--  they give gifts, they dote-- a little like pet-owners?  And I can spot them in a second.  The ones not currently 'in a relationship' are stalking the online dating sites, browsing Bridal magazines, seeing themselves as half of any given celebrity couple.  They are theoretical, future wives.  They make very good partners-- they cook, decorate, make reservations-- and for some men-- this is great.  They will get married, have kids, vacation, play doubles, barbecue, retire… and some will wonder where it all went.   I see these couples all too often… they seem happy and even look good together-- this is important.  But what I see now, also, is this missed connection somewhere; for the 'other half' of us-- the ones who don't really know what it is we want from love---- they will fail us and we, of course, will fail them.

Having read too much from an early age, I tend to infuse common objects with symbolic meaning.  I see a card lying in the road and find some ironic synchronicity.  Tonight I stepped onto a curb and there was a long stem… without the 'head' of the rose--- just the twig, and the thorns, lying on the puddled sidewalk.  At first it looked ominously decapitated… this is a bad sign, I think.  A death card.

A car passes-- windows open, despite the wet night… blasting some Coldplay…  Magic, I think it's called…and I don't and I don't want anybody else but you… the driver hitting the steering wheel, mouthing lyrics… I could feel his exhilaration… young, driving through the wet city, Friday night… picking up his girl… it has always been this way-- music lets us love-- through the lyrics, through the sounds… we let go, we align with someone's joy… we dance…

I can remember how this is and was… the songs we love, the songs we loved… burying our face into some chest, eyes closed… feeling enfolded and lifted into the music… even when it is a different man -- we can still close our eyes and be inside the song, inside an old memory , another dance… it is okay.  How many lovers, dancers, are closing their eyes in the wrong arms… leaving their dreams in a heap on the floor while they crawl into some warm bed… the wrong bed, the right bed… we can close our eyes and be somewhere-- anywhere.

Thinking back… how this bald man coming out of this building, with the glasses and his shirt collar buttoned up tight--- he could have been that soft long haired boy, swaying by the stage with a beer can, looking at you like you can save his life… and you can…and you did, maybe,  and who am I now, this woman walking on the slick sidewalk in the street lamplight thinking about old love, evaporated nights, reading a message into some missing rose petals?   Loves me, loves me not… we'll never know this way, will we?

James our local boom box-bearing homeless resident of the street… is howling tonight, holding his box like a megaphone, screeching out lyrics to a distorted track… he is looking not just thin but taut and drawn, ashen… wired and wiry, angry and boisterous… pointing up at the moon, chanting and preaching, singing and stomping.  Where is his love?  Who will dance with him in his dream?

In the lamplight I see something shiny-- it's a jade earring… I take it into the Starbucks on the corner.  A woman has called them, they tell me-- maybe 5 or 6 times, looking for this earring.  It was nowhere.  No, she hasn't left a number… but I leave the earring--- it's perfect and lovely...another piece to a cosmic puzzle that won't be solved, a lost soul watching its other half sail away..

My apartment feels cold and damp; my son surprises me with a late-night visit-- comes to sleep over-- feeling some October restlessness he can't shake…I remember those times, when everywhere felt like a rocking boat, a crowded subway-- except that one bed where you could lie in the dark forever, listening to the minutes-- a record on the turntable… a 25 minute universe, while all you are is the music, the ceiling, the bit of streetlight streaking onto the wall… the man beside you for an lp eternity… your version of paradise… inside this music where you can really love, like Neil Young says.  He hasn't quite found that bed this time… and maybe his boyhood room feels like 'home' for tonight.  Within minutes he is sleeping peacefully.

I am still thinking about my bad angel-- the one bed where I could always find my home… missing for so long, the last time lying beside him on his hospital bed, trying to absorb the pain… Sing to me, he said, in a morphine stupor, but he can't hear me anymore… and the lights, the lights were harsh and the machines were humming and the roses by his bed-- the perfect white roses-- they couldn't keep him any more than this headless stem I have somehow carried home… and that one person-- even if he lived.. he might have slept with other women because people do this-- they betray you, they go away, they shoot up and pass out and step out in front of cars and they jump-- they jump into and off and away.

I do one of those random record picks with eyes closed and I get the Velvet Underground… the one that starts with Candy Says.. so fragile and vulnerable… and I light a candle, and my son wakes up and joins me for a glass of wine and makes fun of my music.. while he stares off, unusually pensive, for him….By about the 3rd track he taunts me a little, singing in his out of tune buoyant boy-voice that gets me smirking… mocking the lyrics and now he is up and mock-dancing and grabbing my funny green stem in his mouth-- I am full out laughing… Put on your red pajamas and find out..  and I am singing, too, now… suddenly Lou Reed and I are as we were, as we will always be, in the music…

Guest List

I am having a fucked-up day.  Not the day, exactly, but me.  Yes, the cold air was a stern memo that Thanksgiving is closing in, and that huge meal-- -with the guests you haven't even invited-- is looming like a turkey-flavored noose in your kitchen that needs new plaster and paint, suitable lighting, and a functioning oven.  Calls have backed up on voicemail--- your usual dinner companions with that slight impatient edge in their tone which could either mean--- what's up with the delayed invitation?-- or maybe, gee, if you're slammed this year, I could go out to the Hamptons with my co-workers….I almost regret the timing of my broken wrist this summer; it would have been the perfect excuse.  Maybe I'll be diagnosed with something hideous and this will be the last supper… or none at all.  I hate myself when I get this way.  I really enjoy entertaining, I am in general such a terrible friend these days that a single festive dinner can be a great purging of hostess-guilt.

But suddenly it seems as though last year was just a few weeks ago.  Like instead of looking forward to holidays, they are tracking me.  They stalk me with accusatory ribbon-clad fingers and they ring bells which are out of tune with my tinnitus B-flat.  Maybe it was the Mexican cashier in Asssociated today who when I asked him which were the pears on sale looked me right in the eye and said 'they're not here'.  No apology, no courtesy--- a kind of resentment that he has to ring up groceries for people who are as poor as he is, and who remind him that his debit card is overdrawn with things like cans of coke and snickers bars.  Or maybe it's that I'm out of rice and didn't feel like hauling another 20-pound bag onto the counter so Juan-Carlos can give me Mexican attitude.  I just dumped some tomato sauce on oatmeal.  The God's truth.

Turn back the clock---I used to get that brisk fall air electric feeling--- sex is great under blankets, and Christmas parties were amazing…and the Mexican cashiers fell over themselves to pack my bags and begged to deliver.  Pears?  Take these--- we'll just throw them in-- no charge.  Men asked for your number in the aisles, women exchanged recipes and admired your shoes, even babies held out their arms.  A trip to the grocery store was an adventure.  It was also necessary leveling.  You felt like a wife-- a mother.  The rest of the day?  Men held doors for you, stuck notes in your pocket.  You were shining.

And so much of it is my own fault.  My girlfriends and men friends tell me I make no effort--- or make an effort not to make an effort.  I'm too tired of myself to consider this or its alternative.  I skip calls, fail to RSVP, spend way too much time on the internet when I'm supposed to be learning how to use Logic Pro.  I am writing-- -that is there--- it's just the execution, the recording--- the directions and effort seem so tedious and impossible.  I'm chronically under-published and unsung.  Tonight someone I actually knew spent $142,000,000 on a painting-- -someone with a lovely wife who makes an effort--- and I am sitting here considering the Warholian irony of introducing Francesco Rinaldi to the Quaker Oats man.

I'm here in layers of old sweats, my coagulated meal in a bowl that looks unwashable, and I actually, rather than sparring with the help screens of my Logic, type in 'what do you do when you feel messed up?'  And I am taken to some website that tells me I must accept that Tinkerbell is dead and let Jesus in.  Okay.  A small stage laugh, here.  But I never particularly liked Tinkerbell….what I did like was the relationship… that a wild flying boy and a fairy had this intimacy… it made me feel better about life.

Last night my first husband called me to tell me he's getting married.  Or maybe he's already married…to a 29 year old six-foot-tall model whose picture online is somewhere between a Victoria's Secret angel and a stripper profile body-shot.  Of course she is using him for his rockstar connections; he is 66 and unwell but still gets royalties and has a free pass to the few stellar recording studios on this continent.  There is a youtube clip of her getting thrown offstage at the Apollo amateur night just a few months ago.  To be kind, they only allowed a mini-second of actual singing…and who really cares because her legs are amazing and she rocked the lace camisole and the hair weave.  And he sounded so happy…. and really, he came to me in my 20's after meeting backstage--- with a ring and a proposal.  We scarcely knew one another.  It was exciting--- it was lovely and passionate and magical.   So why begrudge him a bit of senior happiness?

The thing is…everything ends.  Your happy marriage, even if you stay together, generally ends.  Your passionate affair.  Your first night.  Your first love.  Your ballet career.  Your second love.  A great film.  Your third love.  Songs.  Symphonies.  Your best gig.  Even Proust ends.  There are no more pages, at a certain point.  I suppose you can be pragmatic and spend your life preparing for the end, like financial advisors counsel us, but there is no emotional pension plan.  You can wait until your husband tells you he doesn't love you, or you can take off the first night you feel the slightest inclination to turn over and sleep facing the wall.  That was my style, I guess.  Maybe it was fear.  I'll never know.

What I do know is that you can't really control the end.  You can prepare for it--- you can even become isolated and accustomed to solitude… but then you miss so much fun.  Pleasure and pain.  It's hard to recognize the midpoint between your youth and your old age.  Not everyone goes out like Lou Reed with a loving intelligent companion and a disease which lets you slow down until you've stopped, and the world mourning your loss and acknowledging your value.  And not everyone loses their memory like my Mom who isn't sure whether she's a child or a grandmother.

Memory can be painful.  Good memories--- bad memories… Last night my ex-husband told me he loved me 'like a thirsty man' and never forgave himself for turning gold into brass… and me for failing to see him through his wild years.  I couldn't stand the anticipated end and I made my exit.  Trust me--it felt equally as bad as being left.

So 30 years later, he has that feeling-- a wedding feeling-- and I don't have the heart to tell him--- he is crazy and blind, and the coming hurt will kill him, maybe.  He is fragile.  The girl has friended me on Facebook and wants to have coffee.  I will give her a gift.  I will go to the Tinkerbell website and type in 'what do you give your aging ex-husband's sexy child-bride as a token of your support?'  Let Jesus in, it will say.  Even though you are a fairy-murderer,  even though you are a cranky old loner who talks to insane jazz musicians and ex-husbands at 4 AM.

So I am wondering… whether Jesus prefers mushroom or chestnut stuffing, and if he'd like to bring a date.