Dollars and Scents

I'm reading 2666.. the mammoth Bolaño which is divided into sections. Currently I'm in the hellish panoramic depths of a chaotic and distinctly Mexican criminal investigation into the serial killings of young women.  In these times, there was no electronic trail to follow and these women-- some of them actually girls-- go missing and turn up mutilated, raped, abused.  It's compelling and disturbing reading. Somehow it mixes in my brain with the Nancy Guthrie mystery. But the relentless sequence of bodies.. it takes days for their absence to be logged, and since most of them are poor working women in the dubious culture of Santa Teresa, the news is neither reliable nor nationally remarkable.

So I'm not yet sure how I will process the whole of this novel.  His writing is luminous and his narratives are compelling and readable. I miss Bolaño with a personal sense of loss and grief.  These dark people who have left us a world that is both startling and comforting... the characters remain with us, are us.  My intimate friends have become the ones in these books... the authors a kind of paternal presence.  They are there for me-- they do not change. By their means, I see through myself--' As Though Through Glass', my 2015 collection was titled (followed by the (implied) denouement phrase 'I watched you shatter').

In a dark place today, I feel as though I am witnessing the crumbling of a dynasty, of a civilization... the crooked mistakes of what one once saw as progress undermining us like massive fissures and portentous seismic adjustments.  I am seeing Jeffrey Epstein as the ultimate modern Superhero or Villain.. it doesn't seem to matter anymore.  With the seven sins as his private constitution, he manipulated the world, preying on contemporary addictions to greed, false senses of power-- massive money, schemes and games.  I am relying on this story to bring down the great web which seems to have entangled and entrapped our better intentions. I also realize there is too much at stake here... and not everyone implicated is as simple as the Prince Andrew fall-from-grace. But something like the financial crisis feels as though it's unraveling in a dark background. Pay great attention to the man/men behind the curtain. For way too long we've had our heads in the sands of the internet and phone-distractions

Lately at 4 AM I pick up a guitar and try to remember who I am. Songs come like prayers-- so many of them commemorated old friends or times.  Occasionally my old torch-lamp flickers-- the one I picked up on a corner dump in Trenton in 1972-- it still belongs, the way some things don't...and blinks as though the spirits of Alan and others long-gone are my audience.  When I was studying art I had to give a talk on the Giacometti sculpture at MOMA-- The Palace at 4 AM... I remember I went a little too deeply into the psychological space... it still resonates, these empty personal rooms of an artist's vision.  Like so many things from an analogue past it became part of my private architecture, my iconography.

Among the ever-increasing numbers of disposable emails today was one advertising a new 'pale pink' apartment complex somewhere in Brooklyn.  I once lived in a pale pink building which seemed to be the unintentional outcome of some kind of concrete facing of an old factory on the East Side of Manhattan. Pink is not an enticing attribute for an urban building. I was never 'that girl' who wore pink-- not even the rock-and-roll kind. Maybe for some lost character from a Sex in the City episode or a Barbie fan... but today... perhaps the color of diluted blood. 

From out of some blue, today, came the opening line of a William Gaddis novel... 'Money?, in a voice that rustled'.. something like that. Written today, it occurred, there would be no question mark. How innocent the days of The Bonfire of the Vanities seem.  The enormity of instant wealth-- mergers and venture capital...cryptocurrency fortunes... the bloated corporate banks... the new American economy of tilt. The whitewashing of money, the normalization of evil. 

Often I walk down the street and identify the smells of luxury... well-dressed women with pricey perfumes that have become part of a compulsory culture of scent.... and then there is the cheap cologne of debt which hovers... sometimes indistinguishable, but loud.  I don't know how these people perceive their own flesh... we have become so accustomed to customizing what we are given... with money one can dispense with unmentionables, or acquire newer versions-- teeth, hair, skin... we can ski on broken limbs. There is progress here, but for whom? 

In the 1970's my friend worked for Halston.  She used to give me samples and gift me their uniquely scented bath talc.. it was subtle and a little earthy.  I loved it. Obsolete now, a nostalgic friend found a container on eBay, from Canada... gifted it to me.  It's not the same... it is like an AI version of the stuff, we both agreed, after a month-long wait, paperwork, and an import tariff of more than the cost of the box. A contemporary disappointment.. a vintage fraud. Besides, talc is now an illegal substance, I think. 

I will go back to Bolaño who understood women although he did not live to see a decent Mexican President and the political perversion of the American dream.  The scents of death and rotting corpses in a hot climate not quite as bad as the stench of a rotting America. As an oddity and closet rebel, it was maybe never my dream, but it is currently becoming my nightmare. 

Memorial Eurythmics

I attended a zoom memorial tonight for the inimitable Buddy Fox, a true stalwart of the NewYork music scene and a friend and supporter for many years.  It got me thinking-- reminiscing, in the true spirit of memorial services-- afterward watching YouTube footage of various events he produced and organized with the greatest enthusiasm and spirit.  These people who dedicate themselves to the arts for sheer passion are of a dying breed. 

It occurred to me on Thursday that the death of John Lennon, 42 years ago, was a sort of wake-up call for my generation.  Like the assassination of JFK, we all remember where we were.  In 1963 I was a little young to sense the generational significance... but in 1980, the shooting at the Dakota was like a massive loss of innocence. 

Of course, the pre-internet spread of news was slower and the moment of apprehension maybe more memorable.  I was at my job in a highbrow art gallery and of all people my mother called to tell me the news, knowing I'd be devastated.  At the time I worked in an Upper East Side townhouse and took the call in the downstairs kitchen-- on a black rotary wall-phone. The kitchen was visible from the street-- it was a huge vintage 1940's/50's room with the classic red and white vinyl floor-tile and antique, rarely used appliances.  It was like a movie set, and several film directors rented the house out for shoots.  I remember the future Mrs. Spielberg did a romantic comedy there; although they paid for the downstairs rooms, I was allowed to keep working, and I somehow bonded with the actress. She had a nude scene and sat with me on a daybed, between takes, shivering and wrapped in a blanket while we drank coffee.  They also borrowed my old Armstrong silver school flute for a scene... I remembered this all these years later, because it happened close to the time of Lennon's death. 

On that December afternoon I was first disbelieving then inconsolable when my mother phoned; she was still beautiful then, and sympathetic.  Surely I had not yet broken her heart and become a full-time bassist in LES clubs. She knew I'd come across John many times-- in the club he supported, in his home where I visited his neighbors.  We in the city took his presence for granted.  Yes, there were photographers on Central Park West and 72nd Street but for the most part he lived like any New Yorker-- shopping, walking, eating out, etc.  People gave him his freedom from celebrity.  New York was like that in former days.  On December 8, 1980, the news spread quickly-- not instantly like today-- and people began to gather in dazed grief outside the Lennons' home. It was the saddest day in the city... and there we were at the epicenter of a generational wound. 

It occurred to me today that the sorrow of that killing may have had something to do with my commitment to music-- as though one could somehow remedy a tragedy by following a path. I moved shortly thereafter into a loft apartment in a converted factory building... and I felt forever changed, redirected;  it had been a kind of coming-of-age.  The image of that vintage kitchen in the townhouse on 92nd Street (where I met people like Claus von Bulow and Gregory Peck) is forever linked to the sad news.  Time-stamped.

My son and I laughingly confessed to one another that we'd secretly binged on Sex in the City episodes during the pandemic.  I'd shunned this kind of television long before, but I was so homesick for my city during quarantine that I obsessively trolled the Manhattan-Before-1990 site, and watched almost any film with vintage scenes of New York as it was, with the Towers watching over from downtown.  This is the version my son recalls; we spent a year or so of his childhood looking at apartments-- seeking a permanent home, exploring neighborhoods and breathing in the air of old rooms.  We surveyed our home-island from the roof Observatory of the South Tower and sneaked into Windows on the World a few times where I knew a guitar-playing waitress.  

So 9/11 was the second loss of innocence of my life.  My son was only 11, had been to the post-Lennon Dakota for a playdate, but we both felt a sort of cement-bond here, in the tragically sad widowed version of New York.  Things heal, but loss remains like a scar, no matter how many new buildings have changed the skyline and face of the city.  They distract but do not replace.

After the memorial tonight I remembered the also-inimitable Stan Bronstein, who played saxophone in Lennon's New York band, and passed away some years ago.  I was lucky enough to share stages with so many of these fallen heroes of the music scene, many of which were 'orchestrated' by Buddy.

I'm reading World's End by Upton Sinclair.  At the beginning the protagonist, more than 100 years ago, is studying the Dalcroze method of Eurythmics-- an academic and obsolete unique approach to music education.  Thinking back, recalling not just the memorial speeches but the vanished dazzle of the local New York music scene, I feel a little Dalcrozean-- brown-edged vintage, 'on-the-shelf', like a dusty box of souvenirs and old postcards.  I remembered how once I tried to keep up a column where I reviewed $1 cds-- for the surprise, for the back-ended discovery.   There were bins of these-- mostly demos and overlooked efforts, but occasionally I found something-- some gem among the proverbial garbage and flowers.  The shops are gone, for the most part.  Instagram and Tik Tok have their own popularity analytics...  anything can make the statistics today.  

But we are all changed since the Lennon days.  Maybe we were punished for the freedom he was allowed to wander publicly, unprotected.  We were taught some kind of lesson.  But celebrity without instagram, etc... well, it seemed a little more tolerable, a little more human.  One had to earn it.  Not to mention that fame and notoriety were a little more separate... artists were more original and unique... even comedy seemed better.  

As we age, our memories are less accurate; it took a roomful of people to describe the deceased tonight and still we did not do him adequate justice.  Thank goodness most of us can recall the landscape we find in old photos-- and can honor musicians not for what they are but what they were.  Many of them are still here in the city-- the scarred and human version that remains in my mind and heart and will not necessarily rest in peace. 

Sex in the City

Lately I've been feeling not exactly discouraged but 'slackened'-- maybe I'm coming off the cruel backlash of April, but the spirit of May has felt more like a nagging hangover than a renaissance.  The indignities of our political climate are being swallowed down like the shitty mediocre coffee we've all come to accept here... one tweet from some useless celebrity talking head, and the crowd sway seems to drown out all protest.  The spring art auctions used to cheer me up-- but now it's all a huge manipulated hedge fund... who needs the tax burdens and massive maintenance issues of real estate when they can buy and sell for millions per square inch?  Much more practical... and you get your name out there not just in the tabloids, but the mainstream media.

So many of my beloved old venues have shut down, having given up trying to keep their heads above encroaching debt-water.  I have fewer gigs, and can ill-afford going much anywhere with a door.  Restaurants don't appreciate food stamps.  My overnight inspiration feels sorely moot and underappreciated.  I stray--- like a sad old lamb.   I readily confess to binging on familiar television noir films, but when those run out-- I admit I have recently discovered Sex in the City.  Yes-- me, who shunned Seinfeld, Friends--  every other sitcom in their time... I've found something addicting in viewing the version of 'ruined' New York I snubbed in the 90's.  Compared to what we get now-- it looks decent.  Obviously others have discovered this, too, apparently, because it seems to be on 24/7 in endless loops.

Of course, each generation had its own version of urban life--- the 'ripe' adult phase-- your girlfriends and roommates-- the inappropriate affairs... the intoxicating hurricane cultures and fads.... bars and restaurants, clubs-- infinite entertainments of menus, club music, art galleries.  Things were being invented nightly... men were plentiful and you could go uptown or downtown-- upscale or slummy/grungy... there was nothing like being on your own, with safety in numbers... and people were wide-eyed and alive-- not buried in their phones and texting.  We danced and yelled and sang and ate and ran around streets which still felt historic and important and yet new.

What I've discovered, twenty-something years later, is the 'vintage-lite' appeal of this show-- well, the girl-gang thing, a non-familial and more intelligent form of Kardashianism-- but also a certain marketing of New York to the rest of the world who peered in with fascination and voyeurism.  How many girls spent their salaries on shoe collections and longed for a West Village studio and a newspaper column?  Or the old-school Park Avenue husband?  The jogs and horseback rides in Central Park, cafes and bookstores, club openings, new restaurants... billboards on buses, New York Times reviews...these things have changed.  The internet has changed most everything.  And New York-- well, the local celebrities and eccentrics have all but disappeared in the whitewash of social media.

I sound like an old person now, and I am.  Maybe I failed to 'get' what everyone else got, immersed as I had been in my Proust and Jean Genet and David Foster Wallace... but I guess what I'm saying is I would gladly take this SITC version of New York over what we have now.  The early episodes still feature landlines and answering machines... cigarettes in bars,  couples actually looking at one another over dinner-- taxis-- labels and not brands-- video rental stores and Tower Records...coffee shops... it's 'new' nostalgia but it beats what we're getting today.

In the 90's I had many visitors from Scandinavia who obsessed over the 60's and the roots of American rock and roll.  They wandered around Greenwich village looking for Bob Dylan's footprints and Jimi Hendrix's old apartments.  They photographed places where Allen Ginsberg had drank and read, visited CBGB's and bought Patti Smith books. I tolerated their hero worship with my 'been there, done that' attitude... after all-- I'd been at Newport in the 60's and met John Lennon several times... I am/was a true New Yorker.

Earlier this week a young couple from Norway visited.  One of them had never been to America.  He is a renowned but not rich guitarist and she is an artist.  In order to afford the lowest fare level and a one-star hotel for 3 nights, he worked painting houses and gardening.  They arrived during the worst spring weather I've seen in years-- a stubborn nor'easter pattern which spread a 3-day pall of cold rain and cloud-cover over the city like a punishment.  It was funereal and depressing.  For a tourist budget which allows for little more than self-directed walking tours and street food, it was a wash.  There were rats in their dark room and the communal bathrooms smelled of sewage.  Visibility was low on the bridges; the Empire State building seemed to evaporate in the fog.  I can't remember a drearier Mother's Day; I wore a fleece coat and watched basketball playoffs with my son in a local bar; everyone seemed muted and cold.

The Norwegians showed up at my Monday night gig, where we old rockers were doing our best to keep up an electric tradition.  I can't even buy anyone a drink these days; at least there was no cover... but I had to resist the urge to apologize on behalf of my city.  The presidential American shame is bad enough--- but here we all were--- downtown on the Lower East Side... and I was hard pressed to muster a little rock-and-roll joy and to keep myself from talking about the good old days.  It is what it is, my guitar player says, as we headed west toward the ailing nighttime trains, past the stores and spaces of what used to be... thinking about the concept of future shock and the reality that every three months Downtown morphs and sheds another skin.  I used to guide people through architecture and galleries, down streets; even the Metropolitan Museum is now wearing a Play It Loud banner like an old seer dressed in young man's clothing.  I no longer belong anywhere except my own apartment.  I wondered how this couple processed the city-- the dream they'd had-- the streets of gold vinyl and talent-- the art and the poetry and the grit now a slick modified vision of pseudo-luxury and bling... the unwholesome smell of over-taxed sewers and wet garbage and the omnipresent homeless-- soaken and broken and swollen.

So I failed in my usual role of tour-guide and old-cultural liaison.  They looked cold and hungry and bewildered from their miserable trek in what seemed like winter rain.  They came looking for paradise-- a souvenir honeymoon to remember for all time from the Scandinavian countryside, and found a shrouded, subdued island in the midst of an urban identity crisis.  Was it the nor'easter that spoiled the dream or was this just a meteorologic excuse for something that has long evaporated except for in late-night television re-runs?   I wanted to cry and only hoped, from my cold but dry bed last night, they had enough love between them to have a little sex in the city.

Not Losing My Accent

Shortly after 9/11, in the storm of teenage hell, I wrote a novel.  I was aware that the city was morphing around me;  kids were bumping their heads not only on playroom ceilings, but on the new restrictions and security procedures that changed New York like a kind of bad facelift.  The short chapters captured a certain moment of LES nostalgia that was becoming fragile.  I got an immediate offer from a successful film producer… Get yourself an agent, he said-- I want this script.

So I got myself an agent.  She was experienced and reputable and famous; she loved the idea, the narrator, the project… but wanted me to develop the literary property before I sold it out.  Week after week, chapter after chapter.  At a certain moment, she called me.  I am worried, she said.  This is a compelling story (it was semi-autobiographical-- a single-Mom musician returning to the city from the UK, struggling to maintain her identity in the club-culture)… but the narrator is a teenage girl (true).  It straddles two categories, she observed.  I am very uncomfortable when things straddle two categories.  We are going to have to pick sides.

What? I said to myself and to her… It's a book… It's going to be a film… It's a story… What do you mean? But she was adamant.  Her industry, she explained, needs to know whether this is an adult or a young-adult product.  We need to know our market.  I looked on with horror as her editors deleted and chopped everything that was vaguely X or R-rated… down to PG and NPG and NFS and PDA… having decided the narrator's age was going to 'brand'.

The end product was a little like a deflated guitar.  It lost its bite, its charm, its soul.  I abandoned the dream of indie-film success and went back to songwriting and starving.  Teenage Hell.  Unsaleable poetry-- even the word terrifies agents-- especially mine.  Besides foundation grants and literary prizes which are generally doled out to those who already have lucrative teaching jobs and plenty of support, poetry is a non-existent economic entity.  Excluding Kardashian-quotes and viral facebook-memes, that is.

Two weeks ago on Primary Day, my best friend assumed I was voting for Cynthia Nixon.  In principle, I find her appealing… but the phrase my agent used appeared in the 8-ball window of my mind's eye like a word-flag.   Somehow I couldn't reconcile her political candidate-persona with the Sex in the City lawyer-image.  I wasn't sure which one was running-- my bad, I know… but she straddled two categories in my head, and I couldn't check the box.

Saturday night my blues band played a midtown club.  Ticket prices for a couple exceed what musicians like me receive for a usual gig.  We keep alive the traditions and music of Junior Wells, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker and Little Walter.  This was folk music-- of and for the people... juke-joint stuff, dive-bar fare.  We used to play small clubs on the lower east side for no cover charge.  Many of the original bluesmen sat in with us and gave us their nod.  I did my first gigs with Charles Otis... Bill Dicey... men that are long gone, but lived the poor-man's life.  We played for tips, mostly.  Occasionally real rock stars would stop by and want to sit in-- it reminded them of why they began to play.

I got home Saturday night to a slew of messages and apologies-- people who wanted to come-- some of them actually showed up-- but they couldn't afford the cover.  I happened to notice the only black person in the room was a friend of mine who works for a bank.  So what categories were we straddling?  Me, the artist-- I received a meal I could never afford to buy from a venue I could never afford to enter.  These days I'm lucky to manage subway fare home.  Not complaining-- just finding the irony here.

Outside of Fine Fare on upper Lenox around midnight is a man in a wheelchair who straddles categories.  He's partially blind and missing his legs.  He has a voice, though, and a good brain.  He is not afraid to ask for what he needs, and while I rarely have enough to buy him a sandwich, just bread is no good.  I have my food stamps card and am happy to get him an instant soup container which is allowable.  How he will get the boiling water is another issue, but we both know hot food is not a card option; it straddles another category.

Ironically, someone at my show had bought a Kindle copy of my old novel which was posted in some edited version by an eager friend who passed away before she had the chance to shop what she loved of the manuscript.  It now belongs to another generation of nostalgia; after all, the current culture seems to revere everything that reminds them of the disappearing East Village culture.  The old leather jackets and thrift-shop clothing have been canonized and relics of squatters and street pioneers and poets are behind glass in museums.

The literary commercial phenomena of the 2000's turned out to be the category-straddlers--- Twilight, Hunger Games, etc....  I've since learned that the tiny group of my book-readers are mostly adults-- men, even-- who loved the content and related to the teenage narrator who is the voice, not the author.  Was that not the point? I'm  sure my agent never ate her words, and I suspect she was glad to relieve herself of a badly-dressed client who spent more time in dive bars than she would have liked.  My novel is somewhat water under the bridge-- or is it?  I have crossed new boundaries of time and age, and straddle more categories than I ever imagined.  Cynthia Nixon lost the primary by a virtual landslide, but she still has plenty of money in the bank from her TV lawyer-role.  Maybe she should have changed her last name.  Personally, I am guilty or innocent as charged... I cannot and will not be other than who or what I am, categorically.

Wildfire of the Vanities

The passing of Tom Wolfe is yet one more fallen leaf from the tree of my New York City.  Like Quentin Crisp, Truman Capote, Andy Warhol-- he walked among the ubiquitous social landmarks of the version of our eccentric and rich urban culture I inherited in the 1970's.  He'd occasionally show up at the gallery where I worked; you could find him daily lunching at his favorite table in the Isle of Capri on Third Avenue and 61st Street-- right in the windowed perimeter area as though he was willingly on display, in his signature white suit, impeccably groomed and accessorized.  His hair was perfect.  Like so many writers of the 20th century who lambasted and loved the city, there will be no one to fill the vacuum he leaves.

A year or so ago, I saw him on the street, looking frail and aged maybe beyond his years, and it occurred to me that his generational tide was receding in a sad way; my own peers have grown old, whether they fight this or not.  We prepare ourselves for these clockwork ravages of time-- the natural purges of decades... but unlike the seasonal rhythms of nature-- the human race is not deciduous.  We die off, and the replacements are quite unlike their parent foliage.  If our annual cherry trees lost their color we would notice; not as much with the changing of the cultural guard.

The Bonfire of the Vanities seems innocent now, compared with the widened gap in our economic architecture; the millionaires have ballooned into billionaires, crime is criming, institutional corruption is rampant and pungent-- Wall Street, politics-- the music business-- just about everything is tainted with the stench of greed and the manipulations of power brokers.  Our daily news brings us one falling man after another-- the ones who grab, who touch, who lie, cheat, hoard and dissemble.  We are a diseased culture all dressed up like queens and princesses-- like strippers and whores-- we are enhanced, coiffed, made-up, pumped up like nothing else.

Coming uptown last Monday I was re-routed by the massive security barricades surrounding the Met Gala.  The police presence rivaled the Pope's visit.  Pedestrians and traffic were forced to bypass a wide radius around the temporary palatial-scale tenting surrounding the museum like a Christo installation-- for what?  So that the rain or elements did not alter the finery of the attendees who are not the New York social stars, but the usual nouveau celebrities-- the Kardashians, Beyonce, Rihanna--- on and on...  my museum-- selling itself to Hollywood for money-- so that the crowd-drawers-- the Costume Institute-- the rock and roll culture-- can continue to put on show-stoppers that bring audience but dwarf the art for which the museum was built to house?

I grew up at the cultural knees of this place.  I wandered its vast rooms and explored everything from Greek amphora to Chinese porcelain.  I prayed to the virgins, wept over the Dead Christ images, held my breath at the exquisite painted life of these dedicated artists of the past-- dreamed their dreams,  absorbed their images of history and mythology like my own bloodline.  A library card was all it took to gain access to these halls...  even as a young girl I let my princess fantasies loose when I ascended the Grand staircases.  I often did my homework in the Temple of Dendur and walked my dog at night outside the windows so I could imagine myself alone by the great silent pool.  

I've been experiencing for years the pop-wash of the museums-- the DJ's and soundtracks in the auction houses, the clublike atmosphere they create to pull in the younger crowd-- to make art 'relevant'... but somehow the paparazzi and celebrity-pomp seemed misplaced at the Metropolitan Museum.

Of course, that is the point now.  The celebrity culture owns everything; even the British House of Windsor, come this Saturday.  I used to get my fashion sense through art-- studying the great costumes and creations of the past via these paintings.  Now art is fashion, fashion is art...  the museums take their inspiration from the culture rather than lifting us to some artistic epiphany.  My first Graduate School 'talk' at the museum was the Giovanni Bellini Madonna-- most of these artists worked on Church commissions-- religious subjects and altarpieces; the spiritual informed their work and they innovated as they observed life:  humanized saints and Christ himself-- fleshy angels and suffering martyrs.  So the themed Gala-- with Catholicism nothing more than a fashion statement-- seemed like true trashy irony.

Not that I'm a religious prude-- but for Christ's sake, the pretentious uber-spending on religious grounds was Vatican-esque.  And Katy Perry literally stopping traffic in her angel wings which seemed more Victoria's Secret than Catholic... Rihanna with her Papal helmet and Sara Jessica Parker-- from the side of a bus to a Nativity on her head--- it was a little ridiculous. And yes, offensive, especially in light of the events of the world, the religious suffering, the poverty and devastation elsewhere, where religion maybe has a different meaning.

Downtown the Rockefeller sale reminded that wealth used to go hand in hand with some reverence for culture.  The collection was staggering and amazing.  That 1905 Picasso was haunting and deep.  Who among the Gala attendees will leave behind anything of this stature-- something museum-worthy in the old sense?  I don't know.  Tom Wolfe was in the hospital with an infection.  I wonder if he'd even had an invitation; whatever, I'm sure the display of vanities on 82nd and Fifth Avenue did not escape him.

Among the objects in the upstairs rooms of Christie's were small furnishings and things which seemed personal and precious.  A huge sort of greenhouse was constructed, with birdsong piped via speakers, and real hedgerow foliage around the display, like real gardens.  Scads of young employees waltzed around with their catalogues, eagerly waiting to show and open things-- unable to answer 99% pf the questions because they haven't a clue about the subject matter-- the meaning.  A young Hispanic woman circled the large greenhouse perimeter sweeping stray leaves into one of those old-fashioned movie-theatre dustpans...  this was her job.  Sweep, sweep... around and around.  She wore a black maid's uniform with an apron, and her eyes were red as though she'd been crying.  I imagined this was her second job and she was glad to have it-- and then perhaps regretted having to lap around while all these gapers got a glimpse of the formerly treasured objects maybe lovingly selected by an American royal family.  She was looking down-- engrossed in her task.  Around her neck was a simple cross, which touched me-- so like a young saint she was-- pious and simple, bowed and lost in the crush of the pursuit of something like money, less like art...

RIP Tom Wolfe-- whatever you represented, you will be missed.

Smoke and Mirrors

We approach the end of the year all too quickly, it seems… the downhill of December has its momentum, and try as we may, the new year is waiting like a hungry mouth to swallow things we are maybe not ready to let go.  I no longer shop for Christmas-- it's enough to manage basics, my son will maybe bring me a tree;  this is my holiday-- sitting by the colored lights in the semi-dark, collecting inventory moments.  It's been so unseasonably warm-- but there will be a price to pay.  On the news they spoke of a stagnant air mass-- that is an ugly description.  Photos of people in Beijing wearing cheap masks as though this will protect them from breathing in the terrible smog.  For someone who is sad in China, this blur of oppressive air and being confined inside must be unbearable.  I have such a tiny carbon footprint here-- my friends tease me.  No car, no taxis-- I scarcely use a dishwasher.  Still no cell phone-- I am often in semi-darkness, by the glow of my computer, writing-- sometimes the lights of the city outside are enough.  Gigs are bright and loud-- I love them, but I retreat.

Lately I have a sense of my neighbors' proximity-- as though the walls are getting thinner… like I am being invaded, slightly.  I do not know the new people, I do not really want to know the new people-- my old neighbors were interesting-- they were writers and critics and artists, but many have been forced out by an unkind economic pendulum.  Or they have died.  I am hanging in, imagining some young girl in my future helping me pack boxes for who knows what, the way I have done in my past for one or two of them.  But I hear the unfamiliar habits of new people through the walls-- faintly but clearly-- and I feel just a tiny bit less 'safe'.

One of my friends engaged me last night in a discussion about dating and expectations, and partnerships, and love.  For some reason I remembered an episode I'd not thought about for so long.  It was my first art gallery job in New York.  I was maybe 22-- there was a recession, I was on a break from Graduate school, writing another paper, and I got a lucky job in one of the best modern galleries in New York… I'd gone in and volunteered.  I want to work here, I said.  You don't have to pay me and I will work very hard.  So they sat me at the front desk where people like Andy Warhol stopped in every week, and because I was a little pretty and so eager, they spoke to me.  I loved my job.  Someone relieved me for lunch, and I hated to leave my post.  I sorted photographs and copied prices into auction catalogues (they used to come on an addendum which was difficult for the bidder), wrote invitations and worked their old phone system which at the time seemed massively futuristic.  I took home $92 a week.  I also worked at Bloomingdale's on Saturdays and Thursday nights, and after paying rent had barely enough to manage a pack of chicken legs, enough rice and eggs to get through a week-- and my morning roll and butter and coffee from a cheap deli.  The bus.  Often I walked to save the 35 cents.  It was one of those rare gaps in my life where I'd just left a boyfriend to bravely discover the city on my own, and the struggle to 'make it' was difficult but ecstatic.  New York in the 1970's was shedding a skin and changing-- but the aura of the old films was there, and the punks and musicians were simmering in some creative soup of poverty.  We girls depended also on dates to provide a relief meal or two so we could actually afford to go out and hear a band.

Anyway, all the great collectors came in and out of my gallery uptown-- I learned to recognize them; they very unpretentiously in those days gave me their name-- quietly and respectfully, and I would call one of the directors upstairs-- my bosses.  One night I was called upstairs, and asked if I would go to dinner with one of these clients-- a Greek man-- he was handsome and dark and always well-dressed with beautiful shoes--hats and gloves.  Do this, my boss said.  I had only a few cheap cotton dresses, but I wore one of them with my old pearls.  He took me to one of the great French restaurants in New York, and I was a little baffled by the menu… so he ordered for me, and watched while I ate course after course.  The food was incredible-- I was nearly starving from my spartan diet… I felt almost high during dessert.  My dinner companion ate nothing.  He sat and drank some wine, he vaguely watched me, spoke little.

The following week they asked me again to have dinner with him.  Same scenario, another restaurant.  This time he asked me if I wanted to see his place.  For some reason I was not afraid-- I knew my boss expected something and I was curious.  He owned a huge house in the 50's… his flat was on a couple of floors.  Inside it felt like a hotel-- very few things, some over-sized furniture, etc….  he poured himself a drink… he was extremely polite… and asked me if I'd stay the night, sleep with him--  he didn't want sex, just company.  So I agreed.  His bed was enormous, he had these beautiful books on the night tables-- everything was immaculate and there was this faint smell of old leather.  Most of the night he sat up and smoked.  The only vaguely incongruous curiosity was this mirror over the bed on the ceiling, 12 or 14 feet up.  It suggested a past erotic life that didn't make sense. I got used to it; maybe it was there when he bought the place, and it provided some lighting device.  I never commented; he never touched me, and in the morning I went home to change.

Week after week this went on--- he began to tell me he'd lost his wife, somehow-- she was some opera singer…I saw her photo, and she was beautiful.  There had been a little boy-- small fragments of his story revealed themselves.  These were the days before anti-depressants and he was chronically, oppressively sad.  He slept and ate little, he travelled, I knew--- ran some huge family business… and he bought art.  In his sparsely furnished apartments there were great pieces of sculpture and amazing paintings.  He took risks.  He supported new gallery stars.  It was amazing to sleep with these things-- to sense them in the dark, the way I now feel my own unlit paintings at night.  He treated me with formality and respect, even though I was cheaply dressed and so green in so many ways;  he spoke to me with depth and intelligence.  I began to touch him… just a little, at first.  I felt so empathically helpless… I was so eager to somehow please my gallery which was my lifeline-- I had no idea what they expected, but the Director, on these Thursdays, would give me a little wink when he left-- it was our secret.

Anyway, he left the country for an extended time, gave me a beautiful gift from Tiffany which I returned.  I used the money to buy myself a raincoat and a fantastic sewing machine.  In a way it was the most beautiful bargain of my life-- a kind of short story I never told.  It was chastely sexual, it was some kind of love, it was sort of a black pearl inside the shell of my young student existence.  The Director is now deceased, and I feel permission to share this-- one of the privileged fairy-tales-with-no-closure of my past, one of my anti-Sex-in-the-City episodes that shaped and changed me.  Of course I went out and did my wilding and lived with my musicians, and was summarily adopted by this city, my birthplace.  But I realize it put sort of a dark stamp on the concept of marriage as the storybook institution we perceive at 21 or 22… it was another surprising B-side and it left me with a kind of warning, an insight into full-blown adult disappointment and deep heartbreak like a kind of scar.  I can still see his dark hair, the cloud of smoke by the faint light of dawn, hear the early morning midtown traffic, my own dark hair and young face in the mirror above… like a sort of Julio Larraz painting.

These days I feel things in my past-- the warp and weft of my existence around which this tapestry of my life has woven itself.  What I realize is we can sense this 'fabric', but we can't actually see it-- not until it's too late.  I do feel a bit of the unravelling lately-- maybe the deaths, the fear of enemies in the world in a new way-- what can we believe?  The high-pressure air mass gives us sunshine and hope but it is married to the invisible stagnant air which is maybe toxic and dangerous?  My son's friend has a new tattoo to commemorate his Mom's death.  It is a lovely thing… but what about all the tattoos we don't see?

This bird that has come to Prospect Park-- it is a truly extraordinary thing.  Of course I would like to see it, but I also know I'd be part of the crowd there which is running back and forth, trying to follow its little twittery path while it explores its new environment.  I see this as a sign-- a good sign-- that unexpected tiny things of great beauty can happen in our lives, that this supersedes art as it is today, that
a random moment can take our breath away.  Besides, this bird is a loner-- and a male… it seemed to have a little scar on its beak in one of the photos, and if you look closely, its eye-- it is not a young bird.  It knows something.  Maybe it is running away from some sorrow or tragedy--- just flew on a whim, or the distraction of grief distorted its trajectory.  I am certain it has come out of its way to a strange and dangerous city to tell us something, and some of us are hopefully still listening.

The Dog in the Room

Anyone who lives in the city is aware of the dog culture.  More than ever, dogs have become part and parcel of not just personal fashion statements, but a symbol of something…. kindness, unselfishness, an identification with canine values--- like loyalty, integrity, unconditional love… whatever.  At night, my neighbors emerge and socialize on the street while their dogs sniff around and enjoy their brief outdoor recreation.  Some of these people would never speak, have nothing in common-- but somehow they bond via their breeds, their veterinary preferences, dietary recommendations, etc.  Like nannies, their  dog-walkers and sitters are frequent visitors to Manhattan buildings.

I love dogs as much as anyone; I grew up with them, I often adopted a stray in my college dorm-- it grounded me, gave me a sort of domestic vibe that took the edge off the academic competition and relief from the exhausting chatter of my fellow roommates.   But here in the city, and I have kept adopted strays and loved and cared for them, there is a dog-luxury-culture that turns me off.  One of my neighbors wheels her poodle around in a baby stroller.  I mean, if you're childless and lonely, this is a solution.  The dog seems only slightly ashamed.  But recently a sort of storefront canine day-spa has opened where a tek-serve-type place closed.. .and I've been spying on the patrons.  Mostly there are several dogs running around on a linoleum floor with few toys or distractions.  I guess they get some exercise, like prisoners doing yard-laps.  But they seem agitated and embarrassed--- like a cat in a huge fishbowl.  I mean, what's so bad about staying home?  Watching a little TV.  Looking out the window.  Waiting.  

My stray dog Rags was a wiry foxy hybrid of the Harlem/Bronx 1980's variety-- before Pit Bulls infiltrated the mutt population.  He was the one that escaped a Soho bar and came more than 100 blocks uptown to find me.  But he also seemed to have little regard for the boundary of my home, and ran away every chance he got.  He did often return, but not after giving me some sleepless nights and reminding me that he was an animal, not a human member of the household, and he intended to go back into his habitat when it suited him.  I had to respect that.  He wasn't particularly social and besides feeding and walking him, I left the grooming to a bi-annual bath which was miserable for both of us.  

I have one neighbor who somehow lost his show-quality Golden Retriever and immediately bought this Great Pyrenees as a distraction.  It weighs as much as a small bear.  They are rarely home and 2 or 3 people come in and out daily to walk it.  It's alone.  Waiting.  I wonder if city dogs have shorter lives; plenty of them seem to get cancer-- tumors, diseases, allergies.  There is a pit bull near my friend's gallery in Chelsea.  Occasionally when I'm there it walks by… it's a little terrifying and tough… but for some reason, it loves me.  Its owners warn people not to touch him;  but he seems to recognize me from another life.  I remind him of someone.  When they pass the gallery, sometimes the dog just sits and refuses to move.  Waiting.  I love that dog, but I ask it, silently, how it feels to be on a rope and have to repress all instincts and sit politely in some strange non-earthy environment all day waiting to be fed, waiting for company, waiting?  No wonder dogs in packs have another mentality.  

So I have this dog-repression empathy now.  A few of my friends-- well, their lives revolve around their dogs.  The ones that are home all day-- well, that's okay.  But a couple of them buy these high-maintenance breeds that require 24-hour air conditioning and special diets.  They hate the heat, and they look beautiful, but also a little psychotic.  Ugly childless couples who would have nerdy funky kids with short legs and frizzy hair and big ears.  They get these Siberian huskies to stand in for the graceful blonde/blue-eyed Nordic leggy kids they will never have.  And the dogs do crazy things.  They bite people and they puke in the house, and their expression is like a cry for help.  Ah Wilderness, their icy eyes say.   I'm a Jack London novel shelved with Sex in the City.  I'm hot and I want to dig a hole in the snow and sleep.  I want to kill me some pigeons and squirrels.  Help.  They live short lives and die of bizarre things like vitamin overdoses or intestinal parasites from eating mice.  They crave mice.  

My Swedish ex-boyfriend once told me he fell in love with me because I looked like his German Shepherd.  Maybe I am the dog.  I feel like I can read their minds.  The bulldogs with their long lists of ailments and weaknesses whose eyes bleed fluid.  The skinny little chihuahua mixes who shiver and beg you not to touch them.  The puppies who are joyful and pampered and haven't yet figured out that their life is going to change,  that they are very soon not going to be as pettable and cuddly and will be  relegated to an empty dark apartment where they will spend long bored hours sleeping and waiting by the door to have their basic needs met.  I pity them.  I want to set them all free somewhere.  

It seems unfair that anyone can adopt one-- whether they intend to mistreat and torture it, or whether they unknowingly condemn it to a life of boredom and enforced waiting.  So many of them are 'whims' to satisfy the kids, or a selfish indulgence that gets stale and begins to annoy, once the novelty has worn off and the weather has grown cold and rainy and you want to have a drink after work with that sexy woman who gave you 'the look' in the office, and your dog is at home, waiting in his apartment prison.  And some of these people come home resentful.  Some of them become abusive-- or give the dog up, let it go, pretend it ran away.  Facebook pages are devoted to these poor animals stuck in public and private shelters, wondering how they got there, and maybe thinking their crummy apartment was better than the cage and the fluorescent lights they must endure now.   Thousands and thousands of them, the victims of human neglect-- and not like kids who are conceived and born into families-- these dogs were deliberately adopted or bought or acquired.  

Who has not commented on the anagrammatic significance of the dog-word?  Maybe this explains our connection.   But they are everywhere in the urban streets… the sleek and beautiful and the mutty and ratty, the long and short legged, the spotted and spiky and furry-- the pug nosed and snouty-- more variety, it seems, than humans… on a rhinestone-studded leash, running in the park, tied outside Starbucks, peeking out of a handbag on the subway-- the cared-for, the uncared-for, the cheerful and the depressed.  Somehow they all break my heart, like foster children.  They don't want to be photographed-- they can't see the the stupid selfies, they can't see themselves in mirrors, they have no idea how ridiculous they look in their little rain boots, or why their owner will never have a date or a bedmate, besides them.  They dream of mountains and forests and snow.  Of other dogs.  They are lonely… they sleep, they pace out their apartments. Waiting.  My dog-owning friends, and these are many-- will hate me for this one.  But I don't want a dog.  I don't want to own anyone or anything living that doesn't follow me of its own accord.  I don't want to subjugate an animal or pull it or humiliate it.  It feels wrong.  

For all the Manhattan parents who cannot control their children because they will all say embarrassing things, get acne, be rude to teachers, wear hideous clothing… their dog will look exactly as the breed dictates.  It will stay photo-perfect on a leash and will have a little preventive muzzle if it bites.  You will force it to behave, and if it doesn't, it will rarely come outside.  It will make you feel normal.  Man's best friend, like a kept woman who never speaks up.  At worst it will bark.   But a dog's best friend will always be a dog.  A-dog.  

Reel to Real

Okay.  I confess I watched a few minutes of the Jersey Housewives--- enough to see one of these women whining about her autistic child who, despite all the therapists and housekeepers money can buy, is a bit of a challenge.  So… although she spent umpteen thousands and many weeks of tears getting pregnant in the first place, she now is going to go to California on her own to 'get a break' and have her stomach surgically reduced at the same time.  (I’ve got a mind to give up living… but I think I’ll go shopping instead).  After all, it is all about her. 

On the 106 bus yesterday, people were sighing and trying not to complain about the nearly 5 minutes it took to board and secure the wheelchair of a young black teenager with such severe cerebral palsy, his head and neck have to be strapped against the chair, and a sort of tray is attached to his chest to catch saliva and whatever fluids drip uncontrollably because he cannot close his mouth, and his tongue moves constantly between 3 or 4 irregular rows of teeth, as though he’s trying to say something we cannot understand. I wonder if his Mom whines.  He was alone--- relying on the driver--- unable to get a drink, protect himself from the soaking rain, blow his nose, wipe his eyes,  complain.  He seemed to be smiling, even when 2 boys boarded the bus, stared rudely at his plastic bib, and declared it was ‘disgusting’.  I wanted to kiss him.  But that is pathetic too. 

To think I used to complain about Sex in the City…now this Housewives (with an emphasis on ‘real’ just in case we were wondering) stuff has gone so far back down the ladder of media ‘evolution’—do people really find this entertaining? These prematurely botoxed brainless women with plasterboard mansions and hair extensions screaming like bloody siren-brats? They need to clean latrines for a few weeks.  They need to spend a few days with the boy on the bus.  They need to read a Pearl Buck novel and reevaluate what it is to be a woman. 

It is very confusing, though--- they are on magazine covers and talk shows, they travel among celebrities, they do fashion shoots.  At least Marge Simpson stays in a box.  Apparently in the US, as opposed to the UK, you can buy a crown and be a princess.

Ask Jay-Z--- you can buy yourself a free pass to royalty—a color, changed name, the top of the charts---whatever.  Celebrity Fairy Dust… Remember the couple that crashed the Obama Inaugural Ball?  She managed to crash a reality show and get paid, and now she’s eloped with a rockstar.  Is that a 21^st century fairy-tale or what?  And the princess is probably 50 years old.  Does anyone ever call these people out? Say--- hey, you’re not even really singing! You’re just an impostor!

There is also the celebrity cancer thing.  Michael Douglas--- Angelina—Giuliana…these people make it almost desirable to have cancer.  They are more beautiful, they do not appear to suffer… they get clothing and more invitations, more dinners--- awards, accolades.  Not so for the people on the 106 bus,  a percentage of whom, according to statistics, will be diagnosed, are being treated, are in pain—have earned a crown of thorns. 

And who isn’t an imposter?  A-Rod who hit an unadulterated home-run today?  Lindsay Lohan-clean?  Michelle Obama with her Barbie hair and bangs?  A confessed murderer? After all, do we all not lie about small things, exaggerate?  Amplify our guitars and voices, wear clothing, smile, tolerate?

I attended another Blues Hall of Fame induction.  For me, Blues is what it was.  Who are these people, in 2013, including myself, and what is blues to this new culture besides the soundtrack to Viagra commercials?  There’s a Russian guy who for maybe 35 years has been busking on 23^rd St with a cheap little amp, singing and playing 12-bars.    Sure, he’s improved… but is the blues the music or the circumstances of his life?  He wasn't at the induction. The guy from Canarsie who get on our stage with difficulty, bears scars and holes from heroin abuse and beatings--- plays a harmonica and makes up lyrics that can’t quite find a rhythm?  He seems to have the blues.  He certainly dresses badly and wears a Disabled reduced-fare MTA pass around his neck.  When he sings or raps, I believe him.  He wasn't at the induction either.  How about the kids with the expensive guitars whose Dads diligently paid for lessons and Clapton-camp until after 30 years of diligently covering Muddy and Buddy like top-40, now sit in with their idols---at least the few who are left?  A few of these were there.  On and offstage.  Waiting for their Warholian Blues Moment.  Maybe if Andy had lived he'd have done a portfolio of Great Bluesmen.  It would have made a statement.  I would have trusted his judgment.    

Today I passed my neighborhood Health Food Store.   There is a vintage set of Beatles dolls in the window from the Yellow Submarine era, as a sort of nostalgic and dusty symbol—because this is where John Lennon shopped when he was a New Yorker.  I remember being on line here several times with some annoying asshole who pretended to be John Lennon, flirting and making jokes in his Liverpool accent while I waited to pay for my rice.  I was in my 20’s then, and the store manager suggested that I might not want to be rude to a fellow customer, and I replied…You mean that Beatle impersonator asshole?  And he whispered to me that no, that was the real John Lennon.  The thing is, the guy was annoying and I didn’t believe him.  I think the real John Lennon appreciated me for that.  He stopped making stupid comments and I continued to ignore him.  After all, what was the difference?  If I had a cellphone would I have taken a shot of us and posted it on my facebook page every year on his birthday to commemorate this happy coincidence?  Maybe if it had been George.  And I still don’t have a cellphone in 2013.

There used to be this Rod Stewart look-alike and he’d take people to the Hard Rock Café and they’d pick up the tab.  For all of us.  He’d even protest and they’d insist.  Last month I refused to go see the imposter CBGB’s bathroom that’s been replicated in a venerated Museum.  If this is the CBGB’s bathroom, I reason, how can I trust the Temple of Dendur? 

What was it Dennis Hopper said in ‘River's Edge’?  I’m not crazy; I know it’s a doll.  These people today do not know it’s a doll.  They can’t tell the real from the imposter because the labels have been all mixed up.  Like the last decade’s Real World… the endless versions of ‘Real’ Housewives.  Real housewives were pushing shopping carts today on east 106^th St with clusters of kids and benefit cards.  Real housewives are sitting on their stoops swapping cigarettes and spitting out bad teeth they can’t afford to fix.

Two girls were in my building lobby this afternoon wearing T-shirts that said ‘Anyone But Quinn”.  They were passing out leaflets.  I asked them who they were really for, and they didn’t seem to know, but they were earning $5 an hour and ‘meeting cool people’. 

We hope, eventually, the ‘real’ mayor of New York will step up to the plate.

Loaded

Okay.  I went to my gynecologist yesterday---hadn’t been to see him way longer than the recommended interval, but there it is.  I’ve had the same doctor since high school.  Until last year, he literally had barely spoken to me-- the way I like it.  You want the person who’s clinically intimate to be non-intrusive.  He’s also appropriately non-judgmental,  matter-of-factly used to rattle off potential hazards when I needed such information,  dismantled anxiety by his unusual calm and slightly bored delivery.  Everything is perceived as 'normal’ even if it isn’t--- even if it is an emergency or a sorrow, or you need an abortion in menopause, or you have a miscarried twin, or an accident or a fear.  Routine. 

There was a time in my life when I had kind of a crush on my gynecologist.  In the exam room, fantasy helps you.  I think I'd seen him on the street-- he was a ‘guy’…tall and kind of handsome, had a good marriage from all reports, 4 okay kids…  and I have to admit--- he has this great ‘touch’…like few doctors do, and most of these are women—like he understands me. 

But yesterday, he breaks character and asks me if I’d be part of a study he was doing--- a new drug—no side effects—to effectively ‘rejuvenate’ my sexuality, above and below the waist.  I hate medicine of any sort.  He knows this.  But, he claims… I would feel more like having sex.  I would feel 25 again.  So of course, I respond…’What makes you think I want to feel 25 again?’  And he laughs,  says—I’d feel better about myself.  My sex drive.  And I ask him if he thinks a little plastic surgery and a haircut by someone besides my guitar player with a straightedge might make me feel better about myself?  I mean, do I look like someone who obsesses about personal cosmetics?  I don’t even know how to put on makeup.  He has a little laugh.

So this morning, I get a phone call from him… immediately I recognize his leveled, monotonal voice—old-school, to let me know everything is status quo, and have I thought over his proposal?  I need some smart women to help me, he almost cajoles… You mean sarcastic and verbal and sharp-tongued?  That, too, he admits.  So is this a medical version of Sex and the City or an actual drug study?  Well, he concedes… a little of both.

So... I give him a piece of my Princeton mind.  Yes, I struggle for a little non-sexed respect in the sexed/sexist world of music, and reaching a certain age is like reassurance that you never again have to deal with the image-forward thing… unless you’re Dolly Parton, of course, or holding up the back-end of a cosmetically weighted contract.  I do find sublimating my long-honed sexuality in my writing and performance all the rejuvenation I require in this moment, and I’m not sure I want to spend my mature years pining and lusting and obsessing and inflicting the kind of psychic pain on my self and others for which I spent many years repenting.

Well, he offers… after a gynecological pause … how about your friends?

My friends? I’m going to furnish him with a pre-fabricated cast for his version of the over-50 Sex-in-the-City?  And what is he offering in return?  Vaginal rejuvenation?  I just met a Seventh-day Adventist in the subway, and even he had a better deal. He laughs.  Some women, he says, are willing to sacrifice for this.  You mean, I say… their first-born, and their second-born, etc…?  He laughs again.  Gives me his cell-phone, in case I change my mind.   I don’t change my mind, I retort.  Some nights I don’t even change my clothes. 

But am I supposed to hang up and think about this?  Like on the train last night…when some muscle-guy with demonic tattoos and a ripped vintage Metallica shirt leers at me?  Am I supposed to consider this?  My days of elevator encounters and one-night filmscripts definitely 'inform'  my private vocabulary, but I am still someone’s mother, and someone’s lover, and someone’s confidante--- even though they don’t need me in the desperate way they used to, nor I them.  I am just a little more attached to my self and my obsession to produce something artistically as worthwhile as a baby.  Maybe my heart is buried in my poetic head and my passion is in my fingers, but whatever bullet I want to load in my creative gun is not going to be over or under-the-counter or in my (or someone else’s) anatomical pants.    

Yeah.