Dial-ogue

I am not a huge fan of mega-corporations like Apple-- the very name seemed so pirated from my beloved Beatles record labels… but I'm betting on them in this latest little dispute.  Besides,  if McCartney wasn't able to plead his case successfully against Steve Jobs, I'm guessing the FBI will have even less chance.  And with all the tax money being used in the name of national security, if it all comes down to an iPhone, well… fill in the blank.

All this talk about phones and privacy has provoked an internal memory-blog.  For those of us in my generation and older, the cosmetic and utilitarian evolution of a telephone evokes iconic moments of emotion and nostalgia.  The quintessential rotary phone-- so Marilyn Monroe, so noir and cinematic… the ring, the cut-to-a phone shot in a black and white darkened room-- ominous, dangerous--- Hitchcock-ian-- the modern version of an Edgar Allen Poe Telltale Heart… etc… all so much a part of my adolescent landscape.  It seemed everything of emotional significance came through the phone… boys calling to ask us out, to just share an extra-curricular moment, to confess something--- our sisters would sit by us, trying to ascertain the other end of the conversation, making us nervous and self-conscious.  Schools and authority called our parents when we were in trouble… the deadly ring.

Growing up in an old Georgian house, there were unexplored treasures and souvenirs in the attic from families who'd lived there before; going through boxes and crates was a favorite rainy day activity.  We found an old black early-model  table telephone, among the things… and used it to invent a bizarre game of Rent-a-Car which involved dressing up as random characters who all intended to lease some specific kind of vehicle, while one of us manned the phone at the desk and dialed up some fantasy dealership to describe and order these.  The act of dialing was incredibly satisfying--- the smooth 'works' of the mechanism… it made this incredibly rich sound.

There were also occasional prank call weekends-- games or hanging-up on some boy we liked… or calling their mother and pretending to be someone else… just to connect with their house… it felt intimate and great.  My high-school boyfriend would call me at night-- I'd sit on the floor in a corner, in the dark, talking… touching the phone.  Ours was heavy and black… I felt as though he was inside the receiver..  it felt private and secret and safe.  My confidante.  The first summer I lived in Cambridge, on my own, we'd fall asleep on our phones… 500 miles apart…

When I was in labor with my son, I befriended the woman in the next bed who exchanged all kinds of incredible secrets with me and helped distract me from my pain.  She owned a phone sex business and tried to convince me this was a perfect way to make decent money while still being a stay-at-home Mom with  a baby.  All you needed was a nice voice, imagination, a little acting ability--- and you could make a decent day's salary in just 2 hours.  But somehow I had this relationship with my phone-- I couldn't abuse it; it was like a symbol of some kind of intimacy.  There were times we were close to starving and I'd take out her business card and think it over; but I never called.

When push button phones became standard, we all invented songs and silly melodies until that novelty finally wore off.  Dialing time was quick so it was harder to change your mind halfway into a call… somehow this made telephoning 'cheaper'… less significant…  and soon afterward, we all got message machines-- so we could connect with people even when they weren't home.  You didn't have to stay in staring at the telephone when you had a fight with your boyfriend or husband.  Phone traffic seemed to increase… Then caller ID took so much of the mystery away.  And we could screen calls.

Once my son had a cellphone, he could lie about where he was.  I had no clue he was cutting school.  Or he'd tell me he was working on a paper when he was at a concert-- maybe playing basketball at night in Central Park, getting high with kids in a rented hotel room.  Clueless we were.  One semester I paid tuition and he was in Cancun-- calling me, telling me about his classes, etc.  Of course roaming charges eventually busted him… but I hear people all the time on the street telling their mothers or husbands they are somewhere when they aren't… they are on the bus when they are having a drink with a stranger…. etc.

So it's not really a new concept that the phone is sort of an accessory to a crime or a falsehood.  They say something like half of all Facebook accounts are fake people.   All of this technology encourages us to mess with our identity-- it's like the converse of the sex-line.  You are eminently visible-- but why not use someone else's photo?  Or a photo you can not only take but alter and imbed-- all with the same piece of equipment.  You can even change your voice--- add a soundtrack.  And for what?

In this age of watching films, checking heart rates and paying bills with phones--- cameras, video, youtube--- I still don't have a cell phone.  Yes, it drives my friends and family crazy… but it bothers me that people text and don't often speak.  It seems so impersonal and de-privatized.  And then people answer calls in random public places-- at the gym, on a bus, in an elevator-- you hear this loud conversation-- both sides, often-- totally inappropriate information we are forced to witness, and knowing the caller never intended to have this drama acted out with an audience.  Hang up… and everyone is doing 3 things at once… your husband could be lying in bed with his lover while you text him a grocery list and he heart-emojis you back.  I go home and listen to voicemail… people still call me, or they email… slightly better than texting.  Men I know who cheat on their wives always email women-- wives occasionally look through their phone, and this way it's not so incriminating.  The casual habits of texters and phone-addicts makes this kind of secrecy less viable, less safe.  Everywhere I go-- -even while I am playing a gig, more than half the audience is doing something with a phone… doing several things… watching the gig through their phone camera… I don't get it.

Last week  I saw an old rotary phone in a thrift shop-- a black one, with a wall plug-- the way they originally were.  It was heavy… it was a little sculptural… it was incredibly attractive.  I had to touch it… maybe like those 1960's indie films-- or the old Warhol films… or the French nouvelle vague-- they have this nostalgia, this appeal-- like old Beatles photos-- George and Pattie Boyd… James Dean, Marilyn.  These people exchanged secrets,  intimacies on these old phones.  The one in the thrift shop had a kind of sex appeal-- it had a soul.  It had a vibe.  A young couple was taking selfies with their iPhones, posing-- pretending to speak on this old thing.  Irony.  Like an old stray dog, I had the urge to take it home with me… and suddenly I had this clear picture of my young Mom so many years ago… with her cigarette and her perfectly manicured hands… giving me this little mischievous wink and tilt of her head, saying.. 'let's just let it ring…. '

The End of the Innocence

Much as we would like to, it is hard to wipe the slate clean with a new year.  The ominous cycle of life and death has little regard for calendars or resolutions.  This new year, 2016, sounded so sweet--began with a prayer, but seems to have plowed forward with extra vengeance.  Loss is our companion, hope is a short straw in a bouquet of funereal flowers.  I walk my city often on the verge of tears; the blues touches me like an old lover,  and my solitude has become a fragile room of crackled glass.

Mornings wash up on my bedroom shore and bring dream-bottled messages that elude me.  Waking no longer gives me relief; I dread meeting people and the news seems at best ambiguous.  My friends are burdened and sad; the ones that are not seem disconnected and clueless.  Some days I get the sense I know no one, and find less relief in writing.  I am overloaded and grieving for too many.  Love seems futile and disappointing; against my instincts, I expect things and find them only occasionally in books, in lyrics of people who have long disappeared and left their wisdom and old beauty in vain for a world that texts and posts.

The economy is precarious and unpredictable; markets are manipulated by the masters who profit from them; young start-ups are not fresh ideas but opportunities for venture capitalists to line their accounts with even more spectacular numbers, and create instant billionaires while whole countries are in recessions and hard-working people lose their homes.  My neighbor Jamie Dimon earns more in one hour than I earned all year.  Some of those hours are spent at lunch, napping in a private jet, having a facial, shopping, texting his decorator.

I was fortunate enough to preview the SAG award films on disc… a little disappointed by the quality of these in general-- and cried at most of them (except the Steve Jobs)… although my son says I've been crying at Nike ads these days.  Spotlight was especially upsetting; as a truly single Mom I was extra vigilant knowing fatherless boys are ultra-susceptible to any male authority attention, and found myself chronically scrutinizing coaches, mentors, counselors and even older team-mates.

Children are such special and odd creatures… they come out, like puppies--- buoyant and dependent and so trusting… and at some fatal moment, in a soft or hard landing, they are profoundly changed by one experience or other.  We protect them, we nurture them… but who's to say when circumstances-- a fire, a natural disaster, an accident-- brings pain or fear or injury into their lives… unexpected death?  In New York, the 9/11 tragedy was a kind of mass loss of innocence.

Personally I love teenagers--- it's such an incredibly fragile time… and there's that moment, for us girls, when we spread our wings a little and suddenly we are swans-- with legs, and evolving bodies and we feel our power, and a certain radiance-- boys admire us, they touch us occasionally and we are electric.  I had this odd memory of one of my best girlfriends-- we had constant sleepovers as girls of 14-16 often do, finding the company of our families unbearable without our BFF.  I was a skinny teenager, with long colt legs that felt awkward to me, but served well in ballet class.  I felt inferior to my curvy older sister who was sexy like a dark Barbie.  But one night… my friend's Dad stopped me on the way to the bathroom-- in the dark hallway he started describing my legs and blocked my path with his authorial arm.  At first I thought it was a game, but I realized, as I tried to focus on the wall-- his Ivy League diploma in a frame… with a hot shudder that something awful was happening.  I could smell alcohol on his breath, and I thought of his grey-haired wife named Mary who went to bed early, looked chronically tired, had way too many children and was not a great housekeeper.

He released me, but a boundary had been crossed.  I felt weirdly both sickened and somewhere a little flattered; I knew this kind of thing happened to women and it was sort of a coming of age.  When I applied to colleges I skipped his alma mater--- I couldn't erase the sleazy association of being disrespected in the hallway under its name.  And it put a tiny 'cap' on my new-found feminine power… it spoiled my joy and changed me.  I never told my friend, of course.

We women go through life-- not a single one of us is not disrespected in some way-- abused, touched, threatened.  We learn to navigate these episodes for better or for worse.  They taint our experience and cause us pain. We choose to keep them silent or tattle and risk being blighted by association-- hated, passed over for promotion, unchosen.  Boys, too, have these incidents-- the hideous epidemic of priest abuse seems most evil of all.  The really sad fact is these things are waiting out there like traps; our children and babies are often unknowing bait-- and even a small cruelty, a rough hand, an especially harsh scolding-- -these things wreck them and hurt them and confuse and change them, and they are too young and innocent to be able to process this.   I often remember my macho older cousin who used to camp in Death Valley with a devoted black lab; one day I discovered him beating the dog mercilessly-- the dog that followed and watched him with complete love.  It was a lesson.

What am I trying to say here?  That I feel the happy balloon of our world has been pierced and punctured irreparably?  That the paradise of beauty of this world is being polluted and ruined-- the ecology spoiled… I can no longer believe in justice and truth and our leaders are greedy power-hungry narcissists and our music heroes are hocus-pocus businessmen and gangsters?  Beauty is artificial and religion is an argument, God is holding up his hands, palms up, listening to the whistle of a distant freight train which is carrying some lethal message?  I can no longer answer questions, I am losing my faith, unsure that my loved ones will survive the week.  And for those of us in psychic or physical pain, for whom life or the ambiguity becomes unbearable… death is not pretty, and it is inevitable and present.  Our heroes and enemies die, our lovers leave and our children cry, and we are a little helpless.  It's as though the back-current just overwhelms me some days.

And somehow when you least expect it, some fragile slivery moon rises in a black sky like a tilted bowl of golden light and you feel your heart hanging on the edge like a puppet, and the lights of cars on the bridges, entering the city with some kind of hope, like a living toy train set… and you can't look away, or leave… it takes your breath away-- and here you are, between birth and death, between knowledge and ignorance--- and you try to forgive those who hurt you, those who fail to protect you… slightly ruined but still able to cry and maybe even feel some kind of desire for love-- and walk blindly into the cold night.