What We Think About When We Think About Snow

During one of my random online reading jags which can involve tangent after tangent, winding up in some dead-end cul-de-sac in a country whose name-change has confused me, I somehow got to Joan Didion's list of favorite books. It's been widely circulated, this list, as Joan is fairly universally admired for her clarity and seriously earnest writing. A young writer with less brilliance and direction would want insight into her formula.

I was vaguely reassured that not a single title on the list had escaped me. Remembering I had a small interview published-- years ago, during which I was forced to commit to my own 'desert island' list of novels. Novels, yes... they have always entrapped me, although I wonder now, with my mental timeline diminishing, if I would devour Proust the way I did at twenty-- or Dickens (I think I would)... or why I currently find Thomas Mann's religious novels so satisfying. On and on...

I take great comfort scanning the shelves of my library at night... maintain a fairly rigorous schedule of reading, although I digress. Nor have I been led too far off-course except for the recent discovery of a few forgotten Nobelists and some brilliant contemporary Europeans (nothing in 2025 came close to 'Solenoid' by Mircea Cărtărescu). But lately I've begun to wonder who I was when I read George Eliot or, like Joan, Ford Madox Ford. So I looked further to see when the Didion list had been compiled and for whom.

Snow... today... a sort of blessing, especially weekend snow. As a winter baby, accumulations were a gift. Also the frequency of postponed birthday celebrations... or childhood illnesses... someone always had chickenpox or measles... in those days of nominal vaccinations. How life has changed. My winter reading mostly Jack London or Sigrid Undset... cold American pioneer novels... later, Thomas Mann. And nothing like the Russian winters of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Solzhenitsyn. As an older adult-- Laxness, Høeg, Fosse... on and on...

So much chatter today about where one was in the blizzard of 1978, or 1983, or 2006. A kind of weather-nostalgia and of course in New York City the snow transforms our landscape-- softens the verticals and rounds sonic edges. I distinctly remember reading Mark Twain as a girl while my father watched football in our jalousied porch room with the Venetian blinds drawn at dusk.

Like many Americans today I binged on football to distract from the disturbing confrontations around the globe. At a point, after hours of football, I get this sort of nausea-- like psychic claustrophobia. My father had his first major nervous breakdown during a blizzard weekend. The panic of being shut in with his young family-- the responsibility, the claustrophobia... the scent of whiskey in that room with the newspapers strewn around and the snowy visual noise on the TV screens in those days-- black and white, the muffled roar of the crowd from the rear console speaker... the tiny athletes like toys on a static screen.

Maybe I've inherited the football syndrome from my father... shut in here... although me, I pick up a bass and let my fingers wander, and scan walls thinking books do not just furnish a room, they have become my family. Unlike my father's daughters, they require no upkeep; they do not ask questions, they seem to understand how the narcissism of this media-obsessed culture has cornered me into a sort of cork-lined analogue stubbornness. They witnessed the process, they populated the years and the memories and will outlive my small-minded existence, will go on to furnish other rooms.

The snow will melt-- eventually, after it acquires the grey five-o'clock shadow of city soot. For now, we are a bit graced-- pardoned, dismissed...postponed. Plenty of city people sleeping off hangovers in the cold morning... regretting or rejoicing the upcoming Super Bowl contenders... dusting themselves off, absolved, a little blessed... a little taste of Arctic innocence. Forgiveness, like many things, will sadly melt away and we are left with what we inherit from our own mistakes. No Super Bowl of life, of country, of existence. In Kiev and Minneapolis and Iran there is no melting; the ICE of another composition and cleanup is not simple. God help us to figure this one out.

Deadly Shames

When I was a teenager and my father was going through one of his PTSD post-war 'episodes', I hid in the upstairs hallway and eavesdropped on his conversations with my mother.  Some things were inaudible, but after begging my mother to unravel the root of the latest patriarchal angst, she related a story as best she could.  It seems when he was Captain of the 101st Airborne, he had a driver who happened to be a black man.  They were close; my father was anything but a bigot, although he had his rules and boundaries. Anyway, on an especially perilous assignment, the driver asked him to promise that if he were ever mortally wounded, my father would go to see his family, in the midwest US, and explain in person what had happened.  He wrote down all the particulars, and my father swore. 

As it happened, a grenade hit their jeep; my father was wounded but his driver was killed.  Certainly the family got the mandatory telegram and official condolence. My father recovered from the injuries, returned to active duty until August, 1945.  He'd meant to keep his promise but never did.  Before the end of his life, he apparently confessed this to a group of Old Guard veterans who finally, at 80-something, were facing their war-demons with the help of a professional psychiatrist, and maybe got some relief.  He would not have shared this with me.

Years before, when my mother told her version of the story, she hoped I'd show some compassion for my father who was tough and harsh and suffering from not just combat but private guilts.  It helped for minutes; but it occurred to me as well that it was not too late. 

I've struggled in relationships with difficult men and alcoholics, like my father.  The common denominator is not just the baggage of guilt, but the cult of shame.  Shame allows one to continue to avoid difficult truths, and paves a future path that carries the limp of the past.

At the gallery where I work Saturdays, there's a fantastic Robert Gober show that deals with so many historic, emotional and ethical issues.  One of the pieces he chose is an unpretentious ceramic sculpture by Mary Carlson.  It is a tiny, fragile bust of a woman with long hair, covering her face with her hands.  The artist credits Masaccio for inspiration.  The genius of Gober's curation is that among the layers on layers of interrelated narrative, individual pieces resonate personally for the viewer; it's nearly impossible not to be moved by some object or juxtaposition. There is something for everyone, and for me it is this tiny sculpture.  

I remember well in college visiting the Brancacci Chapel in Florence where I had ample time to study the Masaccio Expulsion of Adam and Eve.  Unlike this tiny ceramic, the figures are monumental and heavy. When I saw them, in the 1970's, they still had the fig leaves which were painted in by order, and removed only in the 1980's after restoration.  But the howling face of Eve, and that of Adam, covered by his hands, are the epitome of human shame.  

Certainly Freudian and other psychologists and sociologists have dissected the subject.  Gober, whose work is impressed with the tragedy and aftermath of the AIDS crisis in New York, is well aware. Studying religious art, I realized that sin is one thing, but shame is the emotional scar one carries.  In the case of my father, and so many alcoholics,  this grows-- it becomes ingrained, and often they manage to transfer it to their children-- like a sort of haunting they fail to exorcise.  Shame, like disease,  is contagious.

Forgiveness is a component of the antidote-- forgiving oneself as well as somehow atoning for whatever crime or oversight tripped us up in the first place.  Most often, perpetrators lack shame, while innocents, overwhelmed with compassion and self-criticism, process their lives as failures, burden themselves with shame they have not earned.  I have friends-- myself included, who feel they do not deserve a happy, healthy home, or some accolade that seems to have come too easily. 

My first husband was a black man.  He was a celebrated musician and a charming person, but interracial marriages were still the exception in those days.  My father was livid.  Both parents boycotted our wedding and basically excommunicated me. The marriage was tough enough; while we're still friends, my ex recently accused me of not wanting a half-black baby.  Of course this couldn't be farther from the truth; I was young and we were both irresponsible. But I began to think about my father, and whether in his sickness he had interpreted the racial issue as a personal reminder of that failure to contact his driver's family-- a thorn which had accompanied his lifelong torment, or more likely simply the scapegoat of a horrific and lengthy war experience.  Being decorated as he was, he always maintained the true heroes had passed away and it was not appropriate to celebrate oneself.  

It's apparent to me that guilt precedes shame... but shame does not necessarily follow.  Still, among the killings, the suicides, the longings and failures, the rejections and divorces, people are suffering; they are sorry, and they regret.  And the legacy of shame distorts not just the narrative but its truth. The current violence not just in Israel but wherever it exists, will ripple down through grief, through pain and bloodshed, and through the lives of all those who perpetrate these acts, who have learned nothing from the past, from art, from the silent wounds that old soldiers hand down to families. It's never too late to repent of poor judgement, to pay for acts of violence which are in the current situation shameless.  Looking at the little ceramic sculpture today, cut off as she is and nailed to a wooden table, I see not just shame but horror.  This is a human reaction not a judgment. And a reminder that these issues, these conflicts... the lineage... goes farther back than those frescoes, farther than any of us can remember.

All Apologies?

I suppose every working man or woman has a certain anticipatory excitement on the way to a job… maybe not every day, but on special days.  For us musicians, it never gets old; if it does, you've chosen  the wrong profession.  Usually I'm struggling on and off a combination of subway platforms and crosstown buses because my compensation has pretty much excluded the economic possibility of a taxi or car service.   Except this one gig, where my 'boss' happens to be my neighbor and we ride downtown together frequently.

On the drive tonight looking east, a pumpkin moon was rising, orange-ghosty and huge over the Roosevelt Island skyline.  It wasn't quite full-- I'd missed that, but still was glad for the panoramic view across the river and the sense of being on the way somewhere-- to stand up in front of some people (hopefully) and give them some kind of memory or joy.  It had been a long complicated day without air conditioning in the first summer heatwave-- and a little over two years since my Dad passed.  Night trips in his car were always upriver-- on the way home from Brooklyn or Long Island or wherever… me always glad whatever celebration or visit was over, that there was less to dread-- burdensome meals, hours in strange homes trying to be normal and sociable… feeling the judgmental glare of parents and waiting for the inevitable adult argument when they got home.  I'd learned the pattern, and was just glad the faithful moon always remembered the way back to my bedroom window.

The death of my father, I've said many times,  brought me a kind of relief.  It was final… there was no more slim possibility of reconciliation or the tense notion of it.  There had been a moment-- maybe seven years ago-- I'd printed out and shown my Dad a pile of articles I'd written-- blogs, essays… well-censored… and he'd given me a sort of near-embrace and said 'Let this be the start of a new regime between us.'  It felt pivotal and grown-up, like some kind of breakthrough.  But the next time I saw him, he'd reverted to that barely tolerant hostility he'd shown me since my college graduation where he seemed publicly pleased at my awards and achievements.  And what have you done for me lately, I could almost hear him sigh under his labored breath?

I suspect my sister had something to do with maintaining my enemy status; it was imperative that I be deleted from the final recipe of his will.  God only knows what false vendettas were added to the maybe legitimate ones to which he seemed to cling:  I'd built a wall out of it.   But one day past what would have been his 99th birthday, my cousin sent me a listing of his truly heroic wartime feats and medals.  It came on like a surge today-- the pride, the humility, the legacy.  Me… with my smalltime club gigs and shows-- how could I possibly fathom the aftermath of this kind of performance?  The theatre of war, it is often referenced… here I am, the progeny of one of the great honorees… failing to understand the impossible wake of such a life-- caught up in the petty deeds of offspring who seemed more a requirement than an elective in his family reality.  Here is a man who faced down death and massive terrifying wounding violence daily--   clearly marked but never whining about his trauma-- with an estranged daughter who was raised in safety and maybe suffered from occasional stage fright.

So I spent the afternoon and evening in some kind of penitent state-- with a bit of shame and remorse thrown in, a bit of delayed grief.  Meanwhile a beloved musician had passed away this week; he often joined us onstage to sing one of his band's anthemic songs, and his sweet lack of narcissism was extraordinary.  We were planning a small tribute-- unrehearsed, of course-- from the very stage where we'd all been together just six weeks ago.   On the way downtown, watching that moonrise, I was a little excited to be trying a couple of his original compositions-- embracing the challenge and the music.  As we started the first song, I saw a familiar profile in the audience-- was about to wave and beckon-- and then realized with a tremor that he'd gone-- what was I thinking?  Was this a ghost? A mirage?  Or just some generic tall rock and roller with a hat and dark glasses?  And here was the first song, the dedication… I was totally thrown, and flubbed my way through like a blindfolded man in a cave.

So I failed them both-- my musical friend, who would have forgiven me-- and my Dad, who wouldn't have.   Or maybe I got it wrong… maybe this was the lesson of the night:  shame, a little unintended disrespect, to have messed up the great music…. but maybe I didn't fail my Dad.   Even the chorus lyrics were questioning and ironic: 'She may call you up tonight/Then what could I say that would sound right?' Maybe it was just impossible to succeed, to follow an act of historic heroism that had no sequel.  I felt a little faint onstage, but fought my way through the rest of the set.

Another friend gave me a ride uptown… He intends to live to be 140, and so has not even turned the corner into the second half of his story.   As for me, I am looking ahead and behind tonight-- trying to forgive myself for my terrible performance (so many musicians and old soldiers use alcohol in place of forgiveness)-- not less for my failure to understand my father and accept his lack of forgiveness-- after all, maybe I failed him less than he failed himself.  It seemed apt, on the childhood drive upriver, realizing with irony that I was on the Left Bank(e)-- our tribute-- and my moon had receded into normalcy in the hot night sky that promised a brutal morning in the urban world of no-air-conditioning.  Me the post-midnight pumpkin now-- on the B-side, the roundtrip return-- still a daughter, in spite of it all.

Sister of Mercy

Did you ever forget the moon?  So absorbed in my earthly noise I have been -- my unfinished projects and my issues-- I completely neglected to look 'up'.  And there it was-- a little tired, but brave enough to follow me all the way up the East River Promenade tonight, reminding me to breathe-- and by the end of the path, venturing to glow on the stage of my admiration -- streaking across the water as it used to, working its magic and mischief.  After all, it's been so faithful and steadfast, this moon-- through its moods and phases-- tolerant while we invent galaxies and downgrade planets-- weathering sun storms and eclipses, asteroids and even human invasion, name-calling and privacy violations-- patient while we blame it for all sorts of things from floods to madness….

Being the Jewish 'Day of Atonement', the city felt just a little subdued.  The Pope will arrive tomorrow; I am obsessed with this. No matter how I steel myself, I cry watching the news coverage;  we are all so moved by his message of mercy (except Donald Trump, so far-- one meeting I could never envision-- Pride and false power vs. Humility and true spiritual majesty).   I thought about my old father-- the one that hates me, that will not forgive me-- the one who observes this day with ritualistic austerity, who asks for forgiveness for his sins, but does not seem to be able to forgive himself, or me.  Maybe that is key: I remind him of himself? His shortcomings?  His failures?  We are so different-- he, the war hero, the emotional stoic-- and me, words and confessions freely flowing through my music and art.  I danced, I sang, I asked questions and experimented and felt things out… I was punished and silenced-- as an adult, I was shunned.

My religion is one of forgiveness and compassion-- not many rituals or ceremonies, but a commitment to honesty and to listening-- to apologizing not to a deity but to those I may have hurt.  On the run along the river, I passed the old site of my son's pre-school-- some warm memories, and one terrible one.  I was trying to resurrect my musical career- went to Nashville for an overnight-- left him, with written explicit instructions, with his father.  One night.  In the morning I received a call from the pre-school; my son had arrived alone; he'd been unable to 'wake' his visiting Dad, got himself dressed and toddled off to school.  He was 3.  Anyone with a child knows how dangerous the city can be, and getting from home to school for a toddler is fraught with obstacles.  He managed to latch our front door behind him, but had forgotten a coat.  It was a rainy November day.  He crossed streets and Avenues, walked underneath the 59th St bridge.. on his own, smart as he was, he knew every landmark on the way.  He arrived a bit early-- (who tells time at 3?), determined but soaked and freezing.  The school contacted me, informed me if I did not appear by the end of the day, they were calling Child Services.  I managed to get on the next plane, left my career somewhere behind, and found my son happily playing, wearing the unfamiliar school spare overalls and sweatshirt… his Dad had been sleeping on the floor, he explained... he couldn't wake him… he didn't  want to be late, was afraid he'd done something wrong…

How do you forgive a parent whose substance use over-rides his obligation to a child?  I couldn't stop inventing scenarios of true horror and thanking our angels for watching over my boy.  I'd left my suitcase in Tennessee-- my husband (ex) was gone when we got home.  The fridge was filled with cans of Sam Adams; the house smelled of whiskey and puke.  There was a stain on the floor.  I'm not sure my son even remembers this incident… at a certain point he was unwilling to talk about anything personal; he drew his boundaries in.  For me, I don't understand how his father, whom we have not seen for some 20 years, and my own, who is rather absent, do not apologize.  I guess they cannot.  Difficult for me to forgive my father.  Somehow I prayed my husband would make things right, would exorcise his demons and be the man I loved, the father he had once longed to be.  But I had gained clarity regarding my primary responsibility and priorities.

For years my son endured some of the hardships of single parenthood-- small deprivations and painful exclusions from things he wanted to do; in the short run it hurt and I apologized, but I knew this was not lasting.  To a teenager, these material things are everything.  I feel guilty.  I used to feel guilty for everything in my house as a girl.  If the dogs misbehaved, it was my fault-- I loved them, failed to lock a door or put away a stick of butter; when my Dad was awakened and cranky, it was my fault… my fault that he withdrew into periods of silence, my fault that he yelled at my Mom.  My fault that he drank.  My son doesn't feel guilty.  At least there is that.

Further upriver in the moonlight I passed the hospital where my father once stayed and shunned my visits, and I feel angry.  There will be no reconciliation, no prodigal daughter.  I have seen too much and I understand now about shame and guilt, and about his failure to atone for these things.  But underneath the Atonement Moon tonight, I began to forgive myself for not forgiving my father, and I began to feel lighter.

I thought tonight, as I often do, about the story of Jacob and Esau, about the birthright and how in my own family my mother is no longer able to protect me and offer my hand for the blessing to the emotionally blind father.  It is amazing that just one touch, one blessing, was airtight in those days.  Now we have lawyers and wills and greedy petty fights among children for their piece of the financial blessing.  How did people have this kind of trust in those days-- this kind of faith and belief, the power of a word, even in the face of a swindle-- although it was a fated or maybe God-ordained 'switch'?  We don't know too much about Esau's future… but the legacy of Jacob was imperative.

Friday I am going to stand in Central Park for hours to catch a glimpse of Pope Francis.  I will listen to him talk about climate change and compassion, and about mercy.  I pray that somehow he will make the specter of Donald Trump and these overblown non-apologizers a little smaller.  I feel his love-- for children, for all people.  Suffer the little children to come to me, and forbid them not.  The Hispanic child who handed him the letter today, begging for her father's immigration status-- so brave.  And her father-- so proud and so loving of this girl who climbed over the fence to greet this Holy Man in whom she believes.  I pray that we will remember his message of love and his example of humility-- of compassion and forgiveness.  Forbid them not.

On Saturday Beyonce will take the stage in Central Park and all bets will be off.  I can't help thinking Jay-Z planned this juxtaposition, this ironic and slightly hideous synchronicity.  We have short memories, some of us.  We forget, we forbid.  We have a bad night, we recover, we clean up and go on, but some of us fail to recognize what we leave in our wake-- even the one we created without consciousness, without clear brains.  Someone will suffer for this twisted legacy,  the flip side of a blessing, which all too many of us have had to endure until we learn not just to forgive but to ask forgiveness.  To look-- up, down, back and underneath us.  To see, to shine.  

This wise Atonement Moon changed me tonight; even the light in my apartment seems different.  I am trying to let go of impossible wishes and to tend to my own dreams.  And when I 'see' that I have made a wrong turn, there is somewhere… even when our parents and lovers and friends fail us… some version of mercy-- within or without, a kind of embrace-- the brilliant broken moonlight streaking across the black river, like the heart of Pope Francis,  shining.

Under Cover

More than 30 years ago, I made my first demo-tape.  A keyboard player who worked with some rockstar really liked it-- took a copy, gave it to his boss.  A year later, my song was on the radio.  A little changed, rearranged, but it was definitely the song.  Funny--- no one had contacted me; I hadn't signed any papers.  I called a friend; he recognized it-- then we called the keyboard player.  He stammered and stuttered, apologized… apparently it had been 'adopted' or folded into some recipe which someone else seemed to think he'd invented.  But the hook-- even the lyric, the theme--- it was there…

My friend consulted a lawyer.  You are going to be a rich girl, the lawyer said to me.  But what was the meaning of this?  That I would sue some huge record company-- me, a small-time new artist with a 4-track demo?  We had meetings, we had papers… and I pulled out.  It wasn't about the money, it was the shameless version of apology I received from the producer--- about how maybe you hear something, and it stays in your subconscious, or it re-emerges with an idea-- it may or may not be mine.  What-ever.   It was the first music-business lesson.

Later, I was asked to co-write with a pop-star.  This meant she would cover my song and we would split royalties.  When I protested, they said they'd rewrite the song and I'd get zero.  Second lesson.
Besides, if my music was so eminently adaptable, maybe it was generic and not good enough.  Back to the drawing room.

So the Pharrell/Marvin Gaye thing registered as something of a 'Huh?' moment for me. I mean, there is little I hear these days that is not traceable to something else.  The production may be updated or changed--- the beats, the sounds-- but the melodies are so non-memorable.  I'll bet after the Grammies this year, the only person who really saw a spike in sales was whoever manufactured John Mayer's glasses.  The visual seems to have eclipsed the song.  The spectacle, not the soundtrack.  I'll bet Stevie Wonder has noticed this.  And then there is Angus Young--- in the same clothes he was in the first time I saw him, almost 40 years ago.

I'm about to publish a small book of poetry and have been obsessing about the cover.  The Bo Diddley song has been going over and over in my head.  It's odd-- in old times, books looked pretty much the same-- leather bindings--- occasional hand-tooling and gilt trim for the very rich.  But what was important and valued--- was the text.  A book was its contents.  Now?  So many are so under-read.  The classics are recycled, reprinted-- covers evolve, books are 'styled' to sell as objects.  Sometimes, in 'new' books,  good writing is hidden beneath the plot; like a metal guitar shredder, the 'notes' obscure the absence of core melody.

When I was younger I did a Sunday afternoon solo gig on Bleecker St.  Don't you know any covers, the owner used to complain? No, I answered, priding myself on my principles.  I actually wrote a song called 'Cover' so I could finally answer 'yes'.  And one called 'Undercover'.  That one felt right.   I am neither a borrower or a lender.

So now it is the first day of spring, and we in New York City are about to get a dusting of snow.  Our sidewalks and streets have just been stripped of the last of the winter 'cover' which revealed underneath a vast layer of soaked and pressed litter-- like fossils of Christmas and Valentine's Day and thousands of candy wrappers and flattened Starbucks cups everywhere.  Walking down Madison Ave… to my right were the clean shop windows filled with all the bling a rockstar's wallet can buy… and to the left, is the gutter spread of trash, of objects covered with the grey-black film of melted dirty snow.  Jewelry, garbage, leather bags, garbage, porcelain, garbage… art galleries…garbage… until I began to reverse the order and really everything lost its meaning, its 'cover'.  Later today this will change… like a new coat of paint, the sweat and spit and dog-shit and the papers-- everything will be magical again for a few hours.

There is another author with the same name as mine.  Her book is about incest--- about her father raping her, her childhood trauma.  I don't know what the cover looks like.  My own father thinks I wrote this book.  He hasn't spoken to me for years, but he really hadn't spoken to me before, so the mistaken identity thing was a kind of icing on his paternal bitter cake.  It's useless for me to explain that this is another person, because having a reason to excommunicate me-- it suits him.  As I was contemplating my cover today-- maybe a moment where I'd hand my finished book over to my father and receive exoneration-- I began to think.. .well, this never happened to me… but other things happened.  The fact is there is shame in my family history and cause for shame.  Cover-ups and substance abuse… and my own father never harmed me, not physically-- but his absence and lack of sobriety caused childhood trauma that shouldn't have happened.   The irony is, I am the one that spent years trying to apologize--- trying to atone for his sins, trying to appease his anger.  So maybe, in a way, that other girl is me, has uncovered things that are not so far from the ones that should not have happened in our house, even thought the 'cast' is different.

Making up my bed this morning, I thought of all the things that happened, inside these covers, and other covers--- the intimacies, the passion, the nights of refusing intimacies, the hours of sickness, of feverish children who feel entitled to pass nights of illness in their mother's sheets, of nights of grief and desolation, of nightmares and beautiful dreams of our missing loves that cruelly disintegrate as we wake. The way my son and his girlfriend spent hours picking the quilt that dresses the bed in their new apartment.  Because so much of their life will take place there, and it is important.

In truth, my father, like most people,  will never read my book.  He won't listen to the songs I've recorded, and that is fine.  But he just may see the cover.  Or not.