Dreaming in Orange

Walking downtown from Harlem today I saw a disabled city sanitation truck being hitched up for towing. It was kind of spectacular-- these are heavy pieces of equipment, filled with stinking tons of garbage in various states of compression and processing-- organic and inorganic.  I couldn't help thinking back to the days when my son's early boyhood obsession was observing and naming all the trucks and service vehicles on the streets.  It was like an all-day movie-- endless spontaneous entertainment-- and a scene like this would have provoked much pointing and shouting and the inevitable slew of toddler speculations and questions.

So there I was, across the street with my eyebrows raised, mouth open-- and no one was there.  I thought of my grown son downtown, with his expensive watch and his designer boots and his iPhone--- how we went to a little playgroup at the Presbyterian church two mornings a week.  There were wooden blocks there-- and little cars the children rode around on.  There were puppets and some books and puzzles.  Things seemed innocent.  My childhood toys from the 1950's were even simpler-- a tin house with a few pieces of doll furniture-- books, crayons, puzzles.  Mostly we dug with spoons in the garden and filled cups with water from the outside hose.  We chalked up the sidewalk and played hopscotch, made costumes and pretended to be pirates or gypsies or gangsters.

I used to wheel my baby back and forth to my job with his little things-- a reindeer made out of a sock, a few small cars.  Later-- a tiny garbage truck and a digger, a firetruck and an ambulance.  These days most babies I see holding their mother's phones, or with plastic replicas.   No one seems to be pointing things out-- few kids standing around construction sites all day watching these massive excavations-- steam shovels and dump trucks.  We read some simple books over and over; we sang songs and clapped hands.  Today technology seems to have replaced so many of these activities.

There were times, raising my son alone, when I lived on a bag of stale doughnuts.  One fall I collected discarded pumpkins from our garbage area and we ate these until my dreams turned orange.
A phone message one day that same season ordered me to report to an address on Fifth Avenue; it turned out to be F.A.O. Schwartz where I was informed some anonymous man had paid for a shopping spree.  We were overcome; my little boy asked for play-dough and we were sent home with a lovely set of wooden trains that made me feel ashamed.

I'm getting old now; I stop on the street and exclaim at funny dogs-- or children when they are fretting or sad.  They are eating complicated food products and drinking sophisticated drinks from
places like Starbucks with well-designed containers.  I feel like an alien from another century, and I suppose I am.  I gasp open-mouthed at the sunset when I look toward the park at the end of the day-- or up at the moon as I leave my apartment at night.  These things seem new and wonderful.   On the Saturday train there are still break-dancers who risk their limbs on the poles and straps to entertain riders.  They leave me breathless and gaping; my fellow riders simply hold their phones up.

Recently I read in the Times that an enormous percentage of adults sleep with a stuffed animal.  I found this a little shocking, although I do know many people who share a bed with their dogs and cats.  Surely these same people have their cellphones on the night-table and consult their Instagram or Facebook.  I used to sleep with a land-phone by my bed when my first husband was touring, hoping he'd call at some ungodly hour from a far-away hotel room.  When he didn't, I'd stare at the ceiling and wonder.

Somewhere between the monied rush of well-heeled pedestrians in my neighborhood and the homeless street population there should be a place for me.  I go to the library and take home books...
I feel both fortunate and passed-over.  I am no longer a player and yet I am just that-- not a brilliant but a decent musician who manages to find a place for myself between a song and a kind of spiritual vehicle.  I am both lost and found, misplaced yet contented.  Like everyone, I am stuck here between past and future, but somehow more committed to the present than ever.  There is nothing I really need, beyond the barest necessities-- and yet I live in a complex nest of cultural insulation.  I have banked many things of value, although none of them are monetary.

Riding up in the elevator with my neighbors, I am the shabby tenant.  Then again, no one suspects my groceries were purchased with foodstamps, or that there is a poem brewing in my head.  It occurred to me-- phone-less and vaguely out of synch with sidewalk traffic, watching that garbage truck through the eyes of a boy who no longer exists,  I have regained a kind of old innocence and it feels fine.

Homeward Bound

On the way home last night, I hitched an uptown First Ave bus; it was after midnight-- my card was near-empty but the driver was kind and waved me on.  The ride uptown took nearly ninety minutes.  It seemed every stop was crowded with the down-and-out crowd.  By 34th Street the bus was jammed with passengers-- many of them homeless men and women with oversized carts filled with stuff.  The stench was strong, but the driver patiently rolled out the handicapped ramp and let them all board, mostly without paying.  it occurred to me that they wait for this man-- maybe the beginning of his shift, and they know they can rely on transport, these forgotten untouchables.  Maybe some of them ride all night to stay warm.  A few disputes erupted among cranky territorial passengers, but for the most part people were complacent; many came from the VA hospital, Bellevue… a drunk man kept yelling he needed a hospital… but then he passed out and slept like a baby.  It was a kind of pre-Thanksgiving reality check.

When I was young, I used to visit my friend's grandparents in the same building where I now live.  It was a little far uptown to be fashionable, in those days-- a great old turn-of-the-century prewar with a grand lobby but no doormen or luxury services.  Their space was massive-- lofty-- with skylights and high ceilings, and resembled my imagined version of a successful European artist's studio c. 1900. It stretched from one end of the building to another, with huge windows onto upper Madison Avenue.  Sparsely furnished, there were plenty of loungey sofas and reading chairs with quaint lamps-- tables and ashtrays-- window-seats and desks.  As they were part of an important publishing firm, they entertained writers and intellectuals; there were books everywhere… yards and yards of shelves, and piles and piles of treasured volumes, magazines, journals.  The radiators clanked in winter; in summer, in those pre-air-conditioned years, the top floor was sweltering.  The park was half a block away, and there was often a breeze on the roof, if you climbed up at evening.  It was a source of gossip and rumors-- secrets were exchanged here, a few inappropriate relationships, many drunken dinner debates-- a million cigarettes, deals inked and stories begun.

The sprawling apartment-- undecorated and decorous as it was, felt like the heart of adult New York.  This was what I would be when I grew up and got old--  a host-- a home-conversationalist in a book-lined room alive with  dialogue and energy-- ideas and excitement-- like a sort of club whose membership required no dress-code or mindset, but a passion for literature and art.  But more than anything-- it was a home.  You knew where you were when you were there; you could wander and browse, sit and lose yourself in a poem or look out the window… but you felt 'embraced'.

Thirty-five years later, I bought into their building-- a funky back-door apartment in need of renovation but with the pedigree and bone structure that had become part of my Manhattan dream.   It was cheap and a little dilapidated, but I was a young single Mom and felt so empowered to have bought what would really be my own true home.  My first Thanksgiving was blessed, for so many reasons… but I felt the tradition of that building, even though the publishing family had died long before, and that grand space had been divided into smaller units.  There were neighbors who had grown old in this place that seemed magical to me;  there were senior couples with piles of books and great art and they welcomed me into their homes with the often shabby old chintz curtains and the beautiful but worn Persian rugs; they spoke the cultured and human language of old New York; they had ideas-- they loved music-- they wrote, still read Latin and Greek, many of them… they treated their neighbors with kindness and generosity.

In those years the old building had a single employee: a superintendent who'd been born here… he was in his 60's, had raised his family in the ground floor rear unit.  He painted, polished brass, cleaned the old marble.  The rest of us chipped in and tended the garden, had lobby parties-- we were a true cooperative in the old sense-- a group of tenants who all cherished our home, who seemed to agree that our space and privacy were sacred.  Our individual priorities included maintaining a low public profile, modest monthly fees, a non-pretentious simplicity of style.  The architecture spoke for itself-- a quiet, old elegance, without luxury.  They welcomed me-- financially limited as I was, because they knew I was happy to be part of this lifestyle.

It took years to fill what seemed like a massive space to me-- to furnish it with my books, the art I've collected over the years, the finds and objects, the old furniture I've gathered at random auctions… It is quite full now-- my instruments, the things I love… I have quite everything I ever longed for as a young woman… and yet I am no longer content and secure the way I was twenty years ago.  In the early 90's, I helped a senior woman in my building-- Jane, was her name-- to pack up her spartan belongings.  Regretfully, she told me she had intended to die in this apartment, but her very modest pension from years of brilliant editorial work no longer covered rising maintenance costs.  I recognized so many of the wonderful books we carefully piled into these boxes like relics from a life well-lived and no longer valued.  The economy had changed,  New York had undergone a massive progressive facelift; the Wall Street culture had created a greed-bubble that has not just priced most of us out of the market, but has altered the rank-and-file New York City human profile.

While Jane was forced to move in with her son somewhere out of state, I find myself living on $3 a day most weeks--- having given up all luxuries including the subway, some days, in favor of walking, rice-based meals… my entire annual clothing allowance is less than some people spend on lunch.  Haircuts… movies… vacations… a day at the beach… have been so long left behind… but these days I dare not buy myself even a coffee.  Until last night's ride, I have been plagued with my annual Thanksgiving dinner anxiety-- putting on a brave face while calculating how I will pull together the meal on a skeletal budget, how it will set me back.  But turning the key into my place-- like a souvenir-shop of my life, a three-dimensional photo-album of memories-- I realized I was 'home' and the idea of these people on the bus having nowhere to 'let down' just seemed tragic and inhuman.

In recent years young bankers and hedge-fund managers have recognized my old building as the potential cash cow they envisioned. These families renovate, destroy, combine, disregard… and then sell. They have way more space than anyone requires; they are rarely home and they have no observable sentimental possessions or books. They have architects and designers, and mostly photoshoot-ready but soulless apartments.  The ghosts of former tenants and the spirits in old walls and floors sigh and creak at night.  The old radiators still bang, although they will manage to eradicate these eventually.  They have forced doormen and lobby improvements-- fancy elevators. They have usurped the great old roof with their equipment and air systems. Even as the smallest shareholder,  monthly costs nearly exceed my very humble income as a musician/poet.  My slender spending habits have become emaciated.  And tonight, as I listen to the soft roar that is New York City seep through my leaky windows, I wonder if these people feel 'home'.  As in home-less.

There is some George Segal movie on from the 70's and this is New York, the way I remember it… before clothing advertised things.. when even rich people's apartments were comfortable and slightly messy and filled with things... when hair was not perfect and women had wrinkles and the buildings looked habitable and a little dirty.  I realize I am of a dying or defeated generation here-- hanging in, holding on to what I know and love-- my building, my old guitars… sentiment...

Things change-- I know this, and not all change is bad. But this Wall Street generation changed the rules for many of us who thought we had secured some kind of tranquility for our older age.  Our trusted annuities and medical plans have been up-ended, our modest pensions have been diminished and decent healthcare is precarious and prohibitive.  I naively bought shares in a wonderful institution, only to find myself a tiny minimized partner in a corporation with an agenda of money and attitudes and little regard for human values and the great cultural mesh upon which this city was founded.

I will be home for Thanksgiving, and I will try to forge onward and resist what feels like a tidal insult to everything I am.  My neighbors will never share a bus ride like the First Ave. M15 at 2 AM; they don't want to see or smell this kind of thing, and they seem to enjoy the demolition of old walls as much as they enjoy their indulgent vacations.  They will grow old, too-- not as gracefully as this building has, and maybe one day they will discover nostalgia or homesickness-- that nothing is ever as precious as that which has been lost.   By then I'll be sharing a cigarette with the old ghosts on the stairs while, God willing, someone might be enjoying a home-cooked turkey in what will always be the old rooms with the book-lined walls.

Bleeding Arts

If there is anyone out there who noticed the gap, it is not lack of desire or urgency but simply a crippling malwaritis of the keyboard which is not just annoying and hesitant but manifests itself like some form of Gutenberg Tourette's. Of course the $52 royalty check last month wasn't quite enough for a new machine, so even though it is a little funny and Masson-esque, and who would sue an anonymous blogger for a misstatement or obscenity... I was in self-imposed exile.

That said, a month of unexpressed mental entries have stained my brain like dark espresso and I am ornery as an old scribe with no ink. This is the sound of one finger typing. Several times on each key.

For Christmas, my next-door neighbors (our apartments are unfortunately contiguous along the entire length so there is little escape) have bought their pubescent Eric Clapton (Clapped-on?) only-child an entire drum kit with which to enhance his in-house little music heaven. All mothers know teen passions are oh-so-brief so I'm giving the little dork a month in which to disrespect his parents by rejecting the whole music thing altogether. I can even hear that it is one of those Best-Buy specials, not something you actually select at a percussion store. It sounds cheap and designed for cover-music only. The mother has given me a few sympathetic head-tilts in the mailroom, somewhere between apology and revenge, and I contain the urge to blurt out--- "It is nothing compared to your husband's rendition of Miles' All Blues---" over and over on their digital piano. Any seasoned musician prefers the sound of garbage trucks and sirens to the practice sessions of someone who has no musical aptitude whatsoever and even less ability to perceive this.
Guitar Center makes a major fortune from this population which is massive, daunting, and some are of course on the airwaves, banking piles, winning American Idol, Grammies, etc.

To cap it off, a 'painting' has been hung in my hallway, opposite the elevator, so there is no way to avoid seeing it when the door opens. It is actually a large square canvas slathered with shades of blue and green which would be otherwise inoffensive but something about the 'composition' and the technique... well, it makes the Miles Davis man seem almost talented.

I have finally put my finger on what really bothers me about Beyonce. I was in the gym, watching a screen of one of her group-dance videos, without the headphones--- and it was like these Amazon Victoria's Secret models--- but in overdrive. Sped up, jerking like they were poked. Remember the shimmy? That subtle thing Marilyn did, That little sexy move the Raylettes had--- Tina Turner was awesome, but she did move like she was on crack. Beyonce, though, takes it to another level. It's not a move, it's like a weapon. She's a pretty girl-- but it's all just so over-the-top, it makes me yawn. Absolutely zero on the sensuality for all the pelvic thrusts and booty-shakes. It's some crazy wonder-woman cartoon for Tae-bo, a calorie-burnfest, or the thing they put astronauts through before the launch....but no sex. Did you ever sleep with one of those guys who think women like a warrior-thrust in double-time on top of them? Go for it, JayZee.

Last night we had yet another 10-year old music prodigy sitting in, making the Stevie face, stringing the licks together in a 12-bar E blues, the parents cellphoning footage (I'd like to keep a face-bag on stage for these occasions), the tourists getting autographs from the little guys...while we on stage just plod along, trying to scrape some dignity from the beer-stained stage carpet which has borne its share of volume without complaint, unlike myself. These kids--- like the Idol contestants-- could fill a stadium--- 1000 stadiums. And their parents could fill another 5,000.

I remember a Christmas in the 1960's when I bought myself a Candy-Apple-red strat with my babysitting money--- $150. And my mother found it under my bed and made me take it back. 'This is for boys', she said, in that tone which you didn't mess with. It's my money, I wanted to say. I'm going to have a band and I'm going to be someone. I'm going to pierce my nose and get a tattoo and wear 1/4-inch black liner on my eyes and tight black pants to school. But I took the thing back and contented myself with the classical guitar and the flute and the Chopin and the new pink toeshoes and Hendrix on my little plastic record player. I burned and bled. Do I remind her that guitar now sells for $35,000? I do not.

What will happen to these kids and their stage parents, their wanted-to-be-Clapton fathers and wanted-to-be-Mrs.Clapton mothers? Will their kids learn to bleed and burn, not that it helps, not that it feels good to be middle-aged with 300 songs in some kind of tin can and one review from some UK paper saying it was brilliant? How pathetic am I, sitting in Starbucks with my tattered Roberto Bolano and listening to my indie-horror music, and the one finger ticking away precious minutes, wondering how I will ever find the means to help my dead friend's daughter make her fake-blood film, how I will ever record my blood and coffee-stained songs, how I will even e-mail-ask how much I can get in bartered studio time with a broken keyboard?

Jimi, you picked a good time to die. Dime store artists and musicians are as plentiful as tweets; the real ones are misplaced, overdosing, shivering...dying of dread. Bleeding. While the whole bloody culture eats itself to death here...doughnuts and Beyonce, burgers and fries, Michael Buble and the X Factor. Sarah Mclaughlin selling animal pathos while people beat their kids to death, disappointed TV contestants getting more public sympathy than a million earthquake victims.... Wall Street is rocking, bonuses are flowing like American sewage water.

Welcome to the future... the hangover of 2011.