Whistler's Mother

I watched way too much television this weekend-- binged on Black History Month documentaries some of which I'd seen before but which seemed to have new currency.  The Central Park Five film was particularly upsetting... a different variety of police brutality and racism in the 1980's version of city.  As a runner, then, I remember identifying with the jogger;  as a runner, now... waking up morning after morning to a curtailed life, and as a mother... well, I wept for the young men whose lives were amputated and sabotaged.  I hope they've used their settlements well.  

Waking up these alarm-less mornings, I find myself in a half-state of self-identification-- calculating dates, days of the week... marking another strike on my virtual wall of days without a gig.   Unintentionally I often sift through sands of old mornings; the bottom of the proverbial hourglass is rich with these-- heavy-- and to isolate one or two-- well, it is a choice-- it is difficult and leads inevitably down a path of some autobiographical anecdote.  I can't imagine sitting in prison without tools to express and chronicle what one is forced to examine from the beach of one's own life... or driving down some road with brakes on-- no going forward, no U-turns.  The lives of those boys and countless incarcerated innocents-- well, they haunt me.

I searched tonight metaphorically for '29', feeling a bit cheated, but also as though in this limbo of late-February numbers compelled to sew a written memory into the warp and weft of time.  We have stopped becoming, many of us... and what we become matters.  Many of my peers complain or confess they have stopped using their fingers.  We practice, some of us-- but our people are missing.  Our wakings have less clarity; we are foggy and sad.  We know what we will lose today and it is painful.  

In the midst of difficult family reminiscence, as though I need to put a 'cap' on it, I remembered today having breakfast with my father.  He rarely spoke, on the way to work-- spread the Times in front of his face while he gulped his coffee and occasional sardines on toast.  Mostly he rushed out.  We were annoying in the morning.  My mother had a cigarette to keep her company... and the prospect of luxury hours alone with not much on her agenda, so I imagined, except preparing for the evening.  

But once a year I'd go to work with him... take the train, and somewhere near the Graybar building was a place called Il Trattoria, or something like that-- where they served good strong coffee and Italian breads sliced in half-- buttered and grilled.  It was so good, that toast-- no wonder my father shunned his breakfast often.  There he'd be, in this noisy, cluttered place, with his train-friends, all suited and hatted... with their Stetsons and their young-man handsome profiles-- the masters of the business universe which seemed to swarm the streets of midtown in those days.  I can still smell the vague smoky air-- the ghost fumes of train, the hint of after-shave-- the hustle.  I could almost paint it, like a Lester Johnson pack of Walking Men-- like an office-army without formation or rank.  

On a nostalgic website, below a vintage Manhattan photograph from the 1940's, someone recently commented...'except the hats, this could be today'.  But it was precisely the hats that defined the time-- the vague voluntary uniform that sheltered men like my father-- disguised them... protected them.  On that day that I'd accompany him, I'd see him as a completely different species-- a generic man-- strong, protective-- belonging, somehow, to a sort of mise-en-scène-- a plan.  I felt safe and normal.

Of course, at home-- nothing was really normal. My Dad was a bit miserable, disappointed, depressed-- whatever... the ex-soldier without any heroism in his domestic life, with only daughters who annoyed him and a wife who never seemed to tip his scale to happy.   Still, the silhouette he became every day-- was crucial to his purpose in life, the order of days-- to progress and Republicanism.  I noticed that black people wore similar hats, too... but there was a different rhythm to street populations.  Everyone moved slower in their neighborhoods-- with a sort of heavy deliberation, but also a kind of dance to their feet.  I couldn't quite put my finger on it.  

Watching the Ellis Haizlip documentary for the third time, Gladys Knight got me to open my mouth and sing-- it was like an alarm went off in my head.  I looked around the room-- I was alone, but something ignited there.  Through the past years I've walked the city and heard music in my head.  I've written lyrics, transcribed dialogue that was spoken to me, or that I spoke out loud, as though a voice used me as a muse. Lately the masks have muffled not just my voice but my spirit.  I can't imagine singing.  Or whistling.  Another thing that seems to date movies-- we don't have many scripts with people walking down the street whistling a tune.  

I've always loved whistlers... they do the most with what God gives them... the best of them have perfect pitch and bell-clear tone; they have facility-- vibrato and trill-skills.  A passing car silences them... no one hears, or sometimes fellow-passengers on buses resent their music.  There was a man I used to see uptown-- he had a limp but compensated for his heavy foot with a tune that rivaled birds.  I spoke to him once or twice-- he said the music just came to him... the melodies-- he was not responsible- they just came.  He'd rest on the benches on 110th Street and have a cigarette... in between smoke rings, he'd whistle... as though the tunes hitched a ride on the dissolving 'O's.  Most of the time he wore an old hat.  

The tragedies of the past year are about to come full circle with this shortened month.  I tried to postpone it by inventing a 29, but I can't slow time.  Then there are the small losses-- the ones which add up to a diminished life here, although the pile-up of empty days has been a blessing to some-- an opportunity to rest, to grieve, to invent.  Still, pandemic masks like a blight have stifled our expression, camouflaged our emotions, confused our natural facial recognition abilities... discouraged street-eating and drinking, whispering, tongue-sticking and kissing.  They have all but obliterated whistlers.  

Blurred and Muddy

Another Saturday post-gig late-night.  All musicians have these hours where you are wired and tired but never that good kind of closure-exhaustion like doctors have after a successful surgery.  It is we who feel cut open and badly sutured too often-- we are the operators, but we are also the patients; we suffer from our own performance-- we criticize and rehash and wonder how we ever got the idea of standing in front of a drinking crowd while we pour out our hearts and try to make our instruments speak our angst.  Why would anyone want to do such a thing-- public humiliation, emotional guillotines, our own version of original karaoke of ourselves without a prompt?

Nothing I can locate on the new Time Warner line-up.  Of course, once I get used to numbers and a system-- -they change it.  Nothing is ever familiar these days; even my dial-tone tonight seems wrong.  PBS is usually good for a 4 AM film--- but at the moment they are once again showing this Muddy Waters/Rolling Stones/Chicago from 1981.  I've seen this before--- several times, although somehow I've never been able to stay with it.  Tonight I'm a little desperate for distraction, can't face Facebook or my voicemail… tomorrow the gig won't be quite as raw as it seems in the immediate 'wake' hours; I need to feed the distance.  Suddenly 1981 seems kind of innocent.  Muddy is the young/old Muddy I remember meeting at the Bottom Line.  I sat on his lap that one night--- on his hard, trunk-like legs and felt his calloused rough hands.  I was kind of a girl.  Bob Dylan sat in, too, that night-- not on him but with him, although Muddy seemed to care little for Dylan who was in one of those periods where he'd lost a considerable amount of star power.  Hard to imagine.  

The Checkerboard 1981 seems like a hold-over of the 70's.  People were still badly dressed; Mick has on some kind of lame orange-colored v-neck track suit or sweat pants.  He is chewing gum while Keith swills his Jack and looks still like the old Keith in his white Oxford shirt.  Muddy seems not all that impressed by the Stones although he seems to enjoy repeating 'Mick Jagger' in that great Muddy accent which post-Adam Levine has new irony.  Mick is goofy and mugging for maybe some girl.  Of course the whole night is a set-up.  I read somewhere the Stones asked the club owner to let in mostly black people and he could only muster like 10.  They show the waitress numerous times… the whole table-seating thing is annoying and obtrusive.   Muddy is unflappable.  He is rough and raw and always the same--- just right--- never slick, always gets you.  All these forgettable rap lyrics we incessantly hear … all the Jay-Z dynasties and unbreakables and niggahs… and Muddy says You don't have to go and it is enough.  Mick mugs and imitates and even wails a little, but there is something silly and childish even with Keith and Ronnie licking out.  It was better before they got up there.  But it took all those people sitting in to make us realize how much better it was before they got there, even though no one would have filmed it.

There is something still innocent about these rockstars going to a small club, even with the film crew and the set-up and the girlfriends and the entourage and the bottles of Jack flowing and the bullshit.  There is still something innocent because the music is still live and no auto-correct or backing tracks and it's American black music from the time just before Hip-Hop and it feels rootsy and folksy and direct and important. This is a document-- not so much editing and we hear the music, we know the truth.  It is a truth that obsesses the Stones, and Bob Dylan, and Led Zeppelin, Clapton--- all the white rock stars.  And there is Muddy… same as he ever was, with his big face and big hands, and his You said you loved me baby…why don't you call me on the phone when people still had those big black receivers and curly cords and you had to be home when your baby called and it was important and magical.

1981---before AIDS was discovered-- people still had the 70's recklessness and the time factor in relationships because there was no email or texting and no overkill.  There was still the 'waiting'.   Songs and records and tapes and radio were important.  John Lennon had just been killed--- we were still in shock, but in a way that marked the end of the 1970's...   I remember that year so well--- as I entered Central Park today for my gig--- I thought about how none of that Strawberry Fields hype existed, none of the shitty folkies sitting around playing Lennon songs for tourists and cheap photo ops of the sundial with flowers and John and Yoko memorabilia.  John still wandered our streets and peeked into local bars and shops.

I had just moved into this model's apartment--- it felt like a palace-- it had double-height ceilings and a brick wall and a sleep loft and a tiny balcony.  I knew I'd be the happiest I'd ever be in that place, and I was.   Right at that moment when Mick was onstage at the Checkerboard, I had my appendix out and Debbie Harry and Chris Stein were down the hall and we'd hang out on the hospital roof.  Everything was perfect.  My love affairs and my stray dog and my apartment and my new bass guitar and the gigs at CBGB's.

Tonight those PBS Stones (and I, too, for that matter) have all since finished with their future babies and those kids are grown, and except Keith, most of the wives and girlfriends have separate lives… they are gray and wrinkled and changed, and the money flows, the Jack Daniels has maybe stopped-- -the gum-chewing silliness.  Our Muddy is long gone, and only the memory of his wooden hands is with me… and the sameness of his performance--- always Muddy---hard again, hard always… just the recording quality changing… but the blues, despite the millions of bands who claim to own it and feel it and play it… the blues will always belong to Muddy…and John Lee… and Albert and Freddie and BB… like a primary color.  We pay tribute, we learn, we listen… but like the past we can't change what preceded us-- no surgery or remixes can alter what was, clear as clear, pure as pure.  Everything but muddy, no matter how we try or do not try to muck it all up.

America Has Talent?

Tonight I was walking across East 60th street, weaving my way through the usual evening crowd of well-dressed young teens and tourists flocking every available stoop and railing, waiting impatiently for their chance to sample the Serendipity version of dessert heaven. There is a party atmosphere— it is summer holiday; the night air is clear and breezy-- many hold balloons and brightly colored bags of sweets from Dylan’s.

On the south side of 60th Street it is trash pickup night; debris and unwanted furnishings from summer renovations and tenant changes line the curb in irregular clumps like a tiny shantytown. A pair of homeless men have parked their carts and assess the merchandise; tonight the sidewalk displays an especially rich inventory. One of them is seated on a small sofa and trying on pair after pair of athletic footwear someone has discarded. He walks, tests the fit. Sits down again, and suddenly one of the shoes is hurling and spiraling through the air, down 60th street, clear across to the East side of Second Avenue where cars are entering the 59th Street bridge. Wow, I think. What an arm. What an NFL quarterback super-bowl-worthy pass. Incredible. The power, the perfect arc, the speed. The talent.

Okay, you do the math, follow the dots back to his past, his ‘hood. The wealth of athletic talent in the average underprivileged New York City neighborhood. The courts of Coney Island…the Rucker tournament players who make many college basketball stars look like amateurs, but who end up on unemployment lines, using anything to dull the ache of unfulfilled promise.

Then there’s the music. Some of these people hum with more grit and soul than the average MTV star or American Idol winner. How about that girl on ‘Prep’ who has her own $6 million apartment on Park Ave. and a vocal coach who is paid by the hour more than a weekly minimum wage salary so this brat can imitate other pop stars and appear to have talent? Okay, we the disgruntled and educated tell ourselves… it’s all marketing anyway. The toxic world of New York which used to nurture ideas and individuality. We have the cult of competitive narcissism and celebrity… like one enormous cultural hot-dog eating contest… while the rest of the world is starving and suffering.

Of course, there is no scarcity of talent. They are everywhere.. the invisible readers of obscure books, the writers of unpublished decent poetry, the sketchers on the subway who occasionally visit free Chelsea galleries and go home and tear their hair out. I even concede there is much talent among the hugely successful. I am an admirer of the acting ability of Meryl Streep. The popularity of her current box-office feat baffles me. I grew up watching Julia Child on channel 13 when I was home with measles or chicken pox in those innocent pre-innoculation days and was too sick to change channels. Even then I thought she was in drag. The person. She was weird and awkward and discombobulated and not quite credible, to me. She didn’t make me want to cook the way Graham Kerr did. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Comics used to imitate her. And there are plenty of taped shows available. We didn’t need the movie. I don’t get it. Now I do. She was kind of the first 'indie' chef. Is the film some reminder that celebrity chefs, who now have $2000 haircuts and celebrity spouses, used to be unattractive? We have several versions of Top Chef, we have 24-hour food channels. Chefs are the new rockstars. Nora Ephron has plenty of money. She could feed everyone in the Congo with a year’s worth of Sleepless in Seattle and Harry and Sally reruns. She has celebrity friends. Can’t she come up with something new?

Okay. I didn’t see it. I don’t want to see Meryl Streep like a human muppet doing an expensive imitation. Julia Child was already a kind of dysfunctional muppet. She might be a symbol that America had some talent among the understyled and unfashionable. She was smart and was a real person… she wasn’t auditioned and created by media spinners and picked for photogenic charisma. She was the essence of what used to be channel 13… the Mr. Wizard of cookery.

These days on PBS we get some babe begging for money while Wayne Dyer and other useless cultish quacks prattle and prance across the screen giving us advice about how to cure ADHD and sexless marriages. These people are stupid, narcissistic and misleading. They are also very rich. They are marketing experts. Is PBS that desperate? Do the Ziffs and the Bronfmans blindly give money? Don’t they have a programming opinion? Bring back the Mostly Mozart, Upstairs-Downstairs, the real Julia Child cooking… Marie Antoinette… Mary Queen of Scots… okay. The POVs, the films… even an occasional Charlie Rose… most of it is okay… but these telethons? Please. And leave out the Hollywood versions… actors playing Jackie Kennedy and Andy Warhol and Julia Child who are well-documented on film. What are they trying to do to the small piece of reality we all carry with us? We are confused enough. Somewhere America Has Talent but it is not on TV. Maybe on youtube but the cult of narcissism and compulsive media documenting has made the ‘needle in a haystack’ metaphor a gross understatement. Ditto the plea ‘someone take out the trash’.