The Color of Blood

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Collections-- Part 1

Saturday afternoons for years I work at a gallery.  Generally it is quiet there- people come in one or two at a time, spend time thoughtfully in what are generally minimal displays, occasionally engage in a brief dialogue, and leave.  But for the past month, visitors have come in droves more or less, brought in by review after review of a place that is usually off the press radar.  What brings the attention is a small show of selected collections of seven artists.  Each grouping has been carefully curated from objects or small precious things from their respective homes.  In one case, the articles are gathered posthumously from the apartment of a deceased photographer who was apparently kind of a hoarder.  These are grouped on a wall in the front of the gallery-- close together and informally, as they might be in one's home-- simultaneously thoughtfully and not thoughtfully, so they seem a bit spontaneous and natural, in direct contrast to the clean minimalism of the gallery.

The number of people attracted to this random grouping has been astonishing.  I mean, it looks a bit like any vaguely middle-class bohemian parlor-wall-- things painted a bit amateurishly, things of vague value from thrift shops and flea markets...  of a certain period.  Week after week, people gaze in through the glass and sigh at this wall-- with a kind of nostalgia-- young people, well-dressed people; some even ask prices, which are irrelevant to this non-selling exhibition.  What they are seeing is a kind of diorama of this now-deceased person's home, of his aesthetic.   And they respond.

Each of the artists in the show is a collector... of things-- of art, toys, objects... souvenirs.  In a way it is a voyeuristic non-verbal biography of their personal culture-- a portrait of what they love, what comforts them or reminds them-- what inspires and excites them.  True artists are pioneers.  They discover things-- places-- in a different way.  They see a landscape and go home and paint horizontal geometry; they hear a siren and a crash and they compose a violent symphony.  They find a rock or some random object, and they transform it-- they absorb and transcend.

Over the last twenty years or so, people's homes in this city have become more and more minimal.  Technology allows them to live without paper; many have renovated apartments and removed books, records--- things.  Their lives are hard-edged and their lines are clean.  They have windows onto the city, gadgets which fit into drawers and low-tables with only a single book or object.  Clutter has become something to be shunned or hidden.  Closets are organized; there are experts who assist  with this process-- they oversee the discarding and paring-down of the unnecessary.   iPods and phones hold thousands of albums; we no longer need the packages.  Thrift shops are crammed with donations; some have recently declined to accept books; they are glutted with material.

But I have noticed-- inspiration has changed.  The things that 'drive' contemporary art have changed.  Art is about walls, or computers, or animation-- or concepts.  Art is packaged, marketed, less 'hands-on' and more mechanized, impersonalized.  It is digital-- animated, computer-generated.  It has ideas-- large ideas-- but less soul, less heart.  Some of it is created on a huge scale--  cute things-- toys, animals-- that tower over us, as though these 'soft' things are only culturally relevant when they are bloated or monumentalized.  We are jaded and spoiled and cannot 'see' the obvious.  We are adult children and are emotionally unsophisticated from the constant bombardment of phone-stimuli.  The New York Times recently revealed staggering numbers of adults who admit to sleeping with a stuffed toy.  The culture of pets and domestic animals is larger than ever; we sublimate and transfer and rely on our animals for affection.

So maybe this is a clue to the reception of the show-- that these same people who have eliminated the clutter in their lives, but maybe not the longing of their hearts-- are looking at this wall with a kind of recognition.  It represents domestic nostalgia-- a version of visual comfort and aesthetic calm-- like seeing a wall of small landscapes, or a display of rocks... a row of vases, or a garden of things that have grown, things that are interesting to see and aesthetically pleasing.  Inspiring and spiritually nourishing.  Beautiful and not inaccessible, the way museum art can be-- but small and personal and meaningful, the way life and 'collecting' used to be.   They find a connection, here-- they look and look, they ask prices, and standing in front of the wall seems to change their 'speed'.

When my son's friends came into the gallery to see this well-received show, they  remarked that the 'wall' looked just like my apartment.  Millenials come into my home these days and marvel at the number of paintings on the wall, and the rows of books-- the shelves of vinyl and the instruments.  They look around and sometimes they take down a book and absorb themselves.  Sometimes I remind myself I am not going to live forever and I must begin to sift through my possessions.  This is difficult for me; it is a life lived here--- my things, my friends, my nonhuman children-- my muses and my comfort.  Yes, there is a degree of relative clutter, but there is also a kind of soul.  The room is not about the space but what defines it-- the content.   This is my life... my collection, my object-family.

The exhibition ended on Saturday.  It gave me a little hope that gallery-visitors and cultural trendsetters are maybe beginning to thaw just slightly from the techno-cold aesthetic that has defined interior design and contemporary office decor.   These people who paint their skin and own animals and live in 'clean' spaces are beginning to let humanity in... a bit of history, nostalgia-- vinyl, materials... the thrill of a forgotten thrift-shop painting.  Take out your earphones once in a while and talk to an older person-- listen to the sound of things, and find your passion, your own unique collection.  You will be rich in ways you have yet to uncover.

 (To be continued)

Camera Obscura

When my adorable son was barely three years old, he came upon his first 'little person' on line with us at the supermarket.  After thoughtfully scrutinizing her, he cried out… 'Look, Mom! It's a girl just turning into a lady!' Of course it is difficult for young children to comprehend the phases of life-- the concept that they are going to grow up, that their own parents and Grandparents were once young-- that this is a slow, gradual, continuous process.

Now that I am entering a late phase of life,  I again find it hard to grasp the lessons of time, to accept the harsh losses and assimilate the regrets of my peers who seem oddly unprepared, despite decades of identical 24-hour daily allotments, for their senior years.  Recently I saw my Dad cross over-- cross, with all its meanings, is the appropriate word, because he wore a tough and cantankerous skin over his purple hero's heart, even in death.

My mother, on the other hand, has deteriorated slowly and with a kind of demented grace.  She sits in a chair like a soft throne, with her thinning white hair pulled up in a tight knot, her famous cheekbones still defining her profile, her skin still soft but papery.  It is her eyes that tell the story-- watery, unfocused-- occasionally expressive but progressively less and less present.  Where are you, Mom-- in some honeymoon dream with your handsome decorated lover lifting you over some threshold, standing above the falls with the deafening roar of water rushing you off into another undertow of memory? It is difficult to know whether the sadness I read into her increasingly blank stare is hers or my own.

From her chairside, I facetime my son-- her favorite grandchild, the nurse-companion assures me-- and the three generations share a moment.  He is quite a man now; time has done its work here, too.  I meet his old school friends on the street and some of them have begun to lose their hair and take on that look of premature disappointment men in their 30's and 40's often wear.  The babies I held so recently are adults now-- the young couples I knew are turning grey, losing their religion.  Witnessing these passages is the way I process my own.  I am relatively unchanged, consistent.  I have different expectations.  I gave up on my vow to own a limestone townhouse on East 70th Street; I no longer want one.  I treasure my things, my books---  thank the angels I can still play bass and write songs and poetry.   I ask for little else-- can survive on the barest minimum in this city where I feel rich without money.  Yes, I was fortunate enough to have had the foresight to invest in an apartment when they were oh-so-cheap… exchanged vacations, movies, restaurants-- for a home, 'ant' that I was, having left my 'grasshopper' husband in the UK with the rest.

When I moved into my building it felt palatial.  We'd come from a studio apartment; my son endured his kindergarten friends remarking he slept in a closet; he did.  The head of our new coop was this elegant, intelligent woman who turned out to have been the fashion editor of the New York Times at a time when this was culturally important.  Her husband was a world-renowned Swedish photographer whose fashion photos were spectacularly smart and iconic.  Since I had a Swedish boyfriend, our kinship was sealed.  They took me under their wing, so to speak.  I adored them.  We shared evenings and ideas.  They were perennial attendees at my all-night musical Thanksgivings, and were treasured and wonderful guests.  Gus, the photographer-- also shared my passion for music.  He came to my gigs-- even the difficult solo ones-- critiqued my songwriting with brutal honesty and a sharp POV… gave his opinion freely of my friends, their work, etc.  He came to school events and photographed the children.  He'd knock on my door at night when I was home and sort through cds and art books.  He brought me albums and tapes and taught me so much about jazz.  When I visited Sweden, I'd bring him small things… I even photographed his boyhood home-- the apple trees and the stream running through his memory.  He was like the father I never experienced.  His love for his own children was boundless and unconditional, and somehow he realized I'd missed out, and generously shared a paternal affection.  I was proud of him.  His choice of wife-- stellar.  More than anything-- his decisive modus operandi-- as though he knew exactly what he thought and wanted and laid it out there.  This is rare.  True honesty and a point of view to go with it.  He attended coop meetings and harshly criticized injustices.  He supported me in my crusades and shared my sorrows without pity.  As a couple, they were the emotional roof over my head upstairs.

As he got older, he was a little more cantankerous-- scolded my friends at my own table, announced he disliked people to their face… knocked on my door and demanded that I cook him Swedish meatballs, bake him cookies-- insisted on eating on my sofa where he left stains and spilled wine.  Whatever was on my stereo, he would take it off and put on either Bud Powell or Art Tatum or his very favorite, Slim Gaillard.  He liked a bit of humor with his jazz.  He loved women, beauty in all forms… and knew how to convey a message with an image.  During the last year, he began to pocket small things from my apartment.  I caught him in the act once, and he responded, without remorse,  'You don't NEED this.  You don't even notice it!'  It was as though he was aware our time was a little foreshortened, and he needed some souvenirs.  He was becoming greedy of moments as the sand ran down in his hourglass.  I, too.

Last week he passed away.  My grief is disproportionate; after all, I am not even a relative.  To their children, with whom I am not nearly as intimate, I can only express sympathy and condolences.  To his wife, who somehow understands my attachment, well.. I will cherish the future hours we can hopefully spend together, sharing ideas, like two women.  She is the maternal role model I never had; the enduring, amazing wife-now-widow.  I will listen and learn what I can, while she is here and generous with her evenings.

Recently an aging fashion designer stopped me on the street and asked for them.  They were quite the 'it' couple in their day, he always assures me, and generally accompanies this with an anecdote or two.  This time, for some reason, he graphically described the palpable chemical attraction one could sense between them in their prime.  For some of us, imagining people in their 80's and 90's as the Rihanna or Brad Pitt of their era-- well, it takes imagination… but I have learned now… such is time.  These waves crashing onshore at this moment, the surfers riding this crest, the shells and animals and fossils that we find in their shallow temporary graves at the water's edge-- will be less than memory in mere minutes.  All our selfies and photos-- well, they are just digital sand.

The images Gus left behind-- both photographic and realtime-- are etched in my memory.  The photographs are fortunately ingrained in the internet and in books; he has left a hefty legacy and will not be forgotten.  It is his persona that has left a mark on me-- the in-your-face direct line to his mind-- his affection, his humor-- his laugh, not to mention his gorgeous physical presence and unique style even into his 90's-- his personal fashion and his pride, and his compassion-- his unequivocal appreciation for whatever I had made, and the example he set as a father, a husband… and a friend.  I grieve for selfish reasons, as one does.  Last night, in tribute… I reached for my Slim Gaillard… and it had vanished.  Dearest Gus.

So and sew...

I’ve been reading Harold Brodkey. Okay. Don’t beat me up. I know he's self-indulgent, beyond baroque, masturbatory, etc. His characters are hyper-verbose and unapologetic about contradicting themselves. They are good and bad; guilty and not guilty. But at least he was intelligent. And every once in a while he says something brilliant and is even willing to admit he stole it from someone else. Like this one: “I think style is usually just the way someone gets past the pain of amateurishness.” I loved that remark. Style is the earmark of New York Culture. Artist John Currin and his wife were recently featured in the New York Times Style section. Not a painting to be seen...just their trendy staged apartment and their photo-shoot-ready attire. Two nerds transformed by ‘stylists’ into ‘icons’. Many more people will know their clothes than their artwork which is more or less worthy (another subject).

So stylists are the new spin artists, the new public relations power-mongers, the machinery which drives the Culture of Amateurishness we have become. Which makes sense--- because we have time for tweets but not editorials, texts but not letters; lunches are short, food is microwaved, internet speed is breakneck...even agricultural crops are souped up because people don’t have time to wait for seeds to germinate naturally. We are full-grown children...emotional dwarfs zipping around from relationship to relationship. We don’t have time to become ‘professional’ in the traditional sense. We are a half-baked society with empty wallets and full closets to testify to our enormous style.

So yesterday I went to this exhibition at the Park Avenue Armory of quilts--- not just any quilts, -- exclusively red and white quilts which was a sort of tradition because red-dyed cotton tended to outlast other colors and most of these were centuries old. The incredible thing is, at first this graphic carnival--- like looking at sheets of stamps or a roomful of flags. But as you began to navigate the space, and to focus in on the individual quilts, you realize that each one is the product of thousands of hours of patient, tedious work-- piecing toward a whole, stitching meticulously during spare minutes in an era when spare minutes were rare. Not to mention the last thing these seamstress/artists would have imagined is their intimate work publicly displayed in a palatial-sized urban hall being i-photo’d by thousands.

Very few quilts are signed, except the ones which bear embroidered names of church-members or family trees. They are surviving soft testimony of some kind of self-less diligence and pride of craftsmanship, mixed with an undeniable protestant work-ethic thing, and also some kind of love. They all radiate this human, imperfect, elegant hominess we seem to be missing. The feeling that millions of old fashioned minutes are sewn with the cares and worries and dreams and sorrows into these now-precious things we with all our stylish crap forgot about. Nothing we buy at Tiffany will ever compare. Personal ego-less masterpieces which altogether defined a certain ‘culture’ which to this audience was more a charming relic than nostalgia. For me it was like a giant Valentine. Straight to the writerless heart.

So outside into the Park Avenue March cold and the in-your-face super-sized sculpted colored flowers and insects which now grace our mall like cartoon monsters or Koons cousins. Grotesque monuments to our culture of juvenility. What happened to carving from a block of marble? Now we get these mould-made Nara giant smooth dolls without even the ‘character’ of trolls. Just huge unedible candy people. I thought the death of culture began when the M&M store opened in Times Square. What is wrong with people? Does the Emperor need to be stark naked?

The quilts... not facebook. The humanity-- the confiding, confessional thing...after all, people slept under these, sweated out illnesses, made love, conceived children.

So, tonight I'm back from another rock and roll extravaganza-marathon gig. I returned to a seething voicemail-lashing from my unequivocably brilliant writer/editor neighbor for reading Harold Brodkey. It was heartwarming. Not like the quilts, but otherwise. And at least I admitted it (Brodkey-esque?).

As a self-confessed amateur professional, I say signing autographs is overrated. All of us who’ve slept with celebrities know that. And getting compliments is like the first drink for an alcoholic. Accept them only if you’re willing to antidote it with a dose of self-pity. Because you need it. But to be berated by someone of truly superior intelligence is like a blessing. Maybe a Jewish blessing but a blessing nevertheless. You are worth it.

Amen.