11 A

Since the weekend I've been carrying dread like an unborn child. Literally... the quasi-physical heaviness of a pregnancy, without the joy, without the future. The relentless bad news, the threats to human freedoms and everyday security. It's overwhelming.

I watched a kind of forum on human empathy-- and identified as one of those people who prioritizes others-- known popularly as a 'people pleaser' which is not really a positive thing.  We do no good either for ourselves or others, yet it's built-in-- layered-- a little like a second heart which doesn't serve or beat, but simply aches.  There is no surgery for this; I suppose a high dosage of meds would temper it, but my friends know overstrict emotional self-parenting makes me reluctant to even use aspirin.  

My Irish nanny told me at the age of four not to tell my parents but I was a natural-born Catholic.  I asked her all kinds of questions about things, and I was perpetually preoccupied with the reviving of dead insects, plants, birds... tearing up in Church at the hymns and prayers, obsessed with but unable to fully fathom the Jesus story.  I watched magicians pull rabbits and living things from boxes... the personal metaphor of my personal hat somehow implies this secret belief that something mystical is hidden there-- that life is not all objective-- music, most of all, maybe. 

So while we cannot all be heroes, we can perhaps be conjurors... we can be fixers or healers.  Watching a concert at the Central Park bandshell Tuesday evening I realized how completely altered I was with each piece-- as though I physically melted into the cosmic architecture... I could almost sense the composer and his vision.  To be a musician is such a blessed thing... how I miss the gigs of old. Even those sweaty crowded dive bars-- to be part of the crowd-shaping thing... it was a blessing. 

And the actual heroes... well, they are passing with acceleration. Rick Derringer... we all disagreed with his politics in the end, but I had ties to him through various people I worked with.  One night he came into one of those east village bars in the days when cabaret laws enforced a three-people-only-rule onstage.  We were  a well-working trio... Rick, to participate, sat on a barstool across from the bandstand, plugged in and played like a phantom genius inhabiting our amplifiers.  I tried to remember that, and to honor his passing.

There are times when politics must take a back seat.  The irony of that plane crash yesterday-- in a second we recognize tragedy... the enormity and horror of a scene like this... the human grief... the families... and yet daily we hear news of missiles and war, and equally devastating destruction-- death and hideous injuries... and we digest this. What is wrong with us?  How have we grown immune to the architecture of suffering on a large scale?  Because it doesn't affect our neighborhood?  

I read and I read.  I watch way too much television.  I have friends who tell me they don't watch news... it's too terrible.  I cannot help feeling this responsibility-- just to know, and yet I cannot help. I also spend an inordinate amount of time reading books... they are both comforting and alarming... the past has taught this generation little; we seem to be repeating the same mistakes in different clothing. There is no DNA to identify a situation, but the parallels are disturbing.  The suppression of freedom-- the support of freedom to be racist and uncompassionate... what is our human responsibility? If a nation decides to attack another, it's a hideous barbaric choice. But still there are good people on both sides; and one cannot condone anti-semitism because the actions of Israel are aggressive and inhumane.  No religions teach this kind of thing. 

People like me, my psychiatrist friend tells me, get cancer.  They suffer and cannot exorcize what compels them to live inside this chronic empathic cloud. If it's not one thing, it's another.  I worry.  My son is my absolute source of light.  He, fortunately, has not inherited my emotional impairment.  He is smart and forward-thinking and extremely functional. Hats off to him, truly.

Yesterday I tried a local pharmacy-- sick of the lines and the monopoly of these huge drugstore chains and the whole profitable medical industry. It is right by a local mosque; the owner is Muslim and so kind.  When he walked from behind the counter, I saw he was a huge man, with a terrible disability... unidentifiable. I immediately invented this narrative that he'd been somehow beaten and tortured in a torn country and survived with a twisted architecture.  Painful to see him walk... and yet he was happy and smiling and grateful for my tiny business.  When I got home I realized my prescription was nearly at expiration.  I will not complain. I know this is wrong-- I'll simply wait and get a refill eventually. This is medicine; this is a business... and yet for me it is not.  I have adopted the pharmacist into my massive family of those for whom I worry.  

11A.  I hate flying... the slightest turbulence gives me terrible anxiety.  In 1988 I took Pan Am flight 103 the night before that horrific crash; I felt like a survivor in a way.  But I cannot imagine processing the miracle of walking away from a wreck like yesterday's. One man.  Defying a lethal diagnosis... dodging an executioner's bullets.  It's unfathomable... the burden of being that person, if you're someone like me-- how to process, how to return a massive 'favor'... the one home that survived the fires in a neighborhood destroyed... the one standing tree after a tornado. Nothing compares.  Inexplicable. 

Many of my friends have no religious beliefs.  They take a scientific perspective on death as a full biological stop. How does one explain the rapture of music?  I don't know. The thousands of movies that interpret and explore an afterlife-- angels and heaven and ghostly hauntings.  Like a hunting dog, I have often picked up the scent of previous lives, the déjà-vu.  I wonder if the passenger in 11A sensed these things.. how his life will change.  Already real estate brokers are asking a premium for 11A apartments.  People are booking the seat first... they could charge a premium.  

I'm hoping somehow to unburden myself of this weight.  Not hopeful because the news is cumulative;  problems outweigh solutions. Sicknesses far outnumber cures... and will continue. Death will relentlessly equate births... one cannot exist without the other, really... sort of a paradox.  We can only hope that each of us provides a little relief to someone-- sharing a sandwich, proverbially. It's contagious, kindness... really the only thing we can control-- our personal space, the way we manage it. A different kind of pandemic... maybe it's my ingrained vague version of Catholic belief... and the importance of mercy-- to feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, etc.  And maybe the victims of the plane crash were taken to heaven... but 11A was given a mission.  We are all, those here reading-- given a daily second chance.  Trying to decipher mine, today. 

I Want the Angel

This season, as in so many previous, the operative human engine seems to be an evolving kind of empathy.  Zelensky's congressional address, like the star on our dysfunctional American political 'tree', seemed to mobilize some kind of national emotion.  Reading World's End, as I am, steeped in the harsh realities of WWI, it had extra resonance.  His small Napoleonic persona, in his sweats, also referred to the Battle of the Bulge; my father earned a Croix d'Honneur that day, and took home the wounds and scars of things we no longer see here in America.  We are much mired in Twitter controversies, the debt ceiling, the crypto implosion... and some of us-- well, only our social media and shopping.  We needed a televised reminder, another reason to care.  

The World Cup for many of us provided a happy reason to wake up-- the games were thrilling and the global celebrations and disappointments were compelling; we forgot about the needless deaths and prevailing bigotries of Qatar culture. We marveled at the modern stadiums and held our breath as country fought country on the field. The stellar final left a hole; for the depressed among Americans, and statistically there are millions, they are back to wondering what now? Football for six weeks. Some of my friends search television for inspiration, like religion; they embrace old Law and Orders, Sex and the City episodes... anything to remind them of their heyday, their moment in the sun-- the way things were, even when they were shitty. 

Personally I will watch any Truffaut, Antonioni, Fellini... anything with Benicio del Toro... seasonally the versions of Kings of Kings-- Jeffrey Hunter, Max von Sydow... and especially the DeMille silent one, where He emerges to doves and lilies... and prompted me to ask my Catholic nanny so long ago who washed his robe? Our housekeeper once told us, so we would shut up during her programs, that the people on television could see us.  Like Jesus, I used to ask? Something like that, she answered.  But I felt known.  I behaved-- for Jesus, Santa Claus, the actors on Days of Our Lives and the Man From Uncle.  I felt responsible... 

Reading World's End, discovering the big-business machines which drove wars-- the economic windfalls amidst the devastation and killing... I can't help but draw parallels with Putin's war.  It's worrying.  And while there are geographic boundaries and definitions, we are all involved somehow. We post on Facebook, we raise money, we carry flags-- we worry.  It's a distraction from the usual narcissism and voyeurism of social media which occupied maybe the most massive portion of our attention during the pandemic isolation.  

Sometimes I think rather than just friendships, commonalities... we seek our double on Facebook.  We want to find someone with an equally cruel father or abusive husband-- a cancer patient with exactly our diagnosis...  someone else who has lost all their belongings in a fire and is now laughing in a bar. Or someone who loves cats, or who hates cats and loathes anyone who likes them... some of these pet-haters have admitted this to me and also confessed that they spend hours on YouTube watching videos of ravaged animals being lifted from sewage-soaked gutters, placed in a filthy blanket in someone's car-trunk and nursed back to some version of poverty-life.  It exercises their capacity to feel-- to empathize.  

Anyone who takes the subway especially in early morning or late-night has witnessed the relentless parade of beggars and story-tellers-- addicts, sad-sacks, mentally deranged... and some simply out-of-everything.  The percentage of people who even engage or give is shameful.  I, too, am guilty... I go to pantry, try to distribute food, try to convince the homeless to at least get a daily hot meal from a shelter rather than the garbage.  I do see kind people leave things in bus shelters... on benches... are they safe?  I don't know. They don't know that I am safe, for that matter-- with my sad face and surfeit of empathy-- who returns to a warm home feeling guilty and disturbed, primed to distract myself with a classic noir movie.  

There are other iniquities... among the pet-lovers and animal empathizers among us... a pair of homeless men-- identical twins like an old Arbus photo I often see in front of the HRA on 14th street-- both in need of medication... they talk at one another; last week someone had shaved their heads-- maybe lice or scabies... they are either underdressed or bundled in layers, generally in the warm months.  They do not ask, they do not beg.  They are not appealing. Also on 14th Street I have seen an exasperated father screaming abuses at his mentally-challenged son who grasps onto him and talks without cease, hits himself in the head... makes noises.  Surely this would try any parent or caregiver but the maternal in me feels wounded.  I do no good with my endless private sorrows and foodstamp economizing.  

I have friends who give massive amounts... run organizations and charities.  We follow the billionaire narratives--- we know their loves and their homes, and their likes and dislikes.  I have spoken often about the 'generosity ratio'.... there is plenty left... does this make them less good?  I don't know.  Then we have the monstrous financial fairy-tales like the Sam Bank-Man Fried (as in the past participle) story.  I can still hear his pretentious interviews on Bloomberg, waving his crypto-wand, summoning investments from an audience who maybe admired or envied him? How do these people function, who could have lifted many of the world's poverty-veils with the massive wealth they swindled?  And even post-conviction.. his quality of life will be considerably better than the average flood-displaced Pakistani.

Empathy hurts, for some of us.  Playing music-- or the better part of it, is empathic; we listen and feel one another.  For audience it is often a kind of narcotic.  A sad song can take us into a nostalgic reverie that feels like pain.... or lift our heart.  A great lover is empathic... the way they give, the way they understand what their partner needs.  And yet many of us when we are most happy get up and break the heart of the person who lies beside us... as though we are drawn to the ending, do not trust bliss, feel the tourniquet of guilt.  

World's End reminds me how the earth absorbs blood.. how the theater of this war was cleared and rebuilt.  My friend discovered years later there had been a brutal murder in his apartment... the renovation left no trace of the victim.  And here we are-- the shootings, the hit-and-runs... the bloody sidewalks of New York City. Perhaps hardly a square yard that has not seen some violence or injury... 

Fortunately or unfortunately this empathy, this stray animal or shadow-- will follow us into the new year.  Our best celebrations will be dampened by sad news-- by illnesses and this terrible war... pandemics and crises world over-- the hungry and displaced... the waves of immigrants coming into a freezing city in T-shirts, being handed a blanket.  How do we process this? Where are we? Commercials for anti-depressants, for Jesus, for suicide prevention. Look in on your neighbor, they urge-- and still, for the parents among us... the ones that ask do you know where your children are?  they still stab.  

I am wrestling with these issues... like Jacob's angel... or believing the Jesus on television can see me... yes, some days I am joyful... watching the sun set across the Central Park reservoir, feeling the golden light on my face.  Other nights I absorb my friends' sorrows and discomfort and am a hare's breath from a deep pit of suicidal horror. I write a poem... or a song... and it's sometimes like throwing the coals on a freezing evening fire... sometimes.

Last night at the end of my subway platform there was a man kneeling... close to the edge.  I walked over-- with my bass and my protective mask and my helpless empathy; perhaps he was praying... perhaps he needed a scarf or gloves.  As I got closer I realized he was quietly vomiting into his hat.  A Christmas tableau.  I did nothing. Prayed... went home.  In my head I heard Jim Carroll's haunting lyrics...'I want the angel/whose darkness doubles/absorbs the brilliance of all my troubles.'  Empathy.  It might have killed him. Music. Sometimes it saves us. Amen.  

The Anti-Saint

Death is in the house this week.  Not that he is ever anywhere else-- I often feel his cold breath on my right hand, reminding me not to take my eighth notes for granted.  Some nights it is my left ear-- like he is whispering to me in some weathery language: Listen to the rain, he says… or Notice how the fog speaks-- how it blurs lines and descriptions-- yes, this is his language, his courtship-- his entry…

Last week I sat with him by the side of my friend.  He taunted me-- She's mine, he said; she's been mine for years now… this is just the final approach…  Then stop the suffering and have her, I scolded him…  Ahh but don't you enjoy this time with me, he asked?  You and I and Jesus-the-cat in this lonely dark apartment, you with your silly rosary beads and your sympathy?   Me just having a rest in the city-- usually I must be quick and urgent here.  Exhausting, these urban hubs-- with the hit-and-runs, the shootings and overdoses… the jumpers and depressed, the muggers and murderers who beat me at my own game.  Then I have to consider revenge.  But you-- you're so quiet here…you the writer of my music… you're so facile with the language of gravestones and black winds… it's so peaceful sitting with you in the dark, watching…

This is the way Death spoke to me while he also watched my friend writhe in her extended agony without emotion.  He was quiet, he was cold.  I left him for a few hours and he finished the deed, left his mark and no sign that there was peace at the end.  My vigil was clearly over, and I ended up without a souvenir, without closure-- on the other side of the hideous yellow police-tape which was used to mark off her doorway.  No answers, no autopsy; without a will or testament, she is legal property of the city medical examiner's office, another cold corpse in the morgue awaiting the appearance of some kin or family who never showed up during her illness-- so why would they want to pay for a funeral?

There is little I can do; after all the nights and days of fear and diagnosis, treatment and suffering and anxiety… the questions and tears--- decisions and research… I cannot even be certain of her name.  She is another mystery-- another open wound in the sequence of human experiments for which I have somehow enlisted, my friends tell me-- out of some genetic defect which continues to prompt me to turn around every time someone says 'help'.  Or 'Mommy'. Or even 'Mami'.

I can't seem to sign up for lucrative jobs-- me, who turned down a Harvard Law scholarship-- the sore thumb of my family, with the ivy league black sheepskin.  I refuse to gig in club-date bands or even tribute projects which might compensate reasonably enough for me to afford groceries like a normal person--  to take a taxi every once in a while,  to see a movie that's not on free TV, have a coffee I didn't make myself… to buy anything that hasn't been used by someone else.  I admire your conscientious deprivation, Death commented-- As thought you're preparing for the next life-- when all bets are off.  And he has spared me, once or twice--- or many times-- when a city bus brushed so close as I crossed an avenue-- when a plate glass window fell 60 stories and sprayed me ever so lightly with the tiniest splinters… he's definitely loaned me a few free passes.

So how do I explain my attachment to a no-win situation-- a doomed patient who was not particularly loving or nice or even appreciative, although at the very end she did express some tough gratitude, and I assured her it was my privilege to have been able to be there? Was it my privilege?  Was it my own personal penance, my perverted version of twisted sainthood to atone for all the mistakes I've made-- the bad marriages and the failures?  I definitely identified somehow with my poor deceased friend, who had paid a lonely price for a pile of bad choices.  Was that it?

The truth is, I love my life.  I cling to my bizarre stoicism and spartan lifestyle and I manage to produce something I feel is worthwhile.  My distractions are emotional and empathetic ones; my path is often lonely and without luxury.  I read a description of middle-income housing  qualifiers last night and was shocked to discover the low-end cut-off was 10 times my annual income.  I am not just low, but below poverty income-qualifying.  Who is going to sit by my side at my end, with no prospect of reward or inheritance?  I have yet to come across my own double.

Still, I know I would have made the same choices, again and again.  We can't take all this stuff with us, and I have plenty of meaningful stuff, although I have no fortune.  No, I did not ask Death for a bit of extra time for good behavior, although maybe that is what I intended, subconsciously.  I have work to do-- things to leave behind that someone some day may value.. not in dollars, but in worth.   There is no closure at the end; there was no relief for me, and I feel the spirit of my friend wandering the dark streets--- after all, she is in the morgue, a kind of urban  purgatory; she did not help herself or me with any information or truth that might have made the process easier.  I, too, am stubborn and have some pride; I might have wanted control of my own end, when I had lost all else-- even if it meant dying like an abandoned dog, in pain and without loved ones-- only some version of me, which in itself is doubtful.  What separates me from my friend? I leave my poetry-- my music-- I make cds and books-- my 'calling'.  Do people acknowledge even the artistic version of sacrifice?  Occasionally there is a comment, or praise, or 'likes'… but in the end, it is another item for the loss column, on the balance sheets of pragmatism and poor financial health.  But I will continue, despite lack of closure.

For my friend there is perhaps burial-- or cremation, or scientific autopsy-- but there are still dreams and memories, and a past somewhere-- customers who drank what she poured, men who made passionate love to her-- cats and pets who slept at her feet.   And then there is me, the sleepless writer who will continue to commemorate this woman's poor life, to try to find some meaning and beauty, perhaps rescue something from her self-imposed obscurity-- martyrize her anti-heroics and pedestrian eccentricities, make some attempt of poetry out of the raw materials of disease and squalor.  Then-- like the rest of us, I will wait for my hour to look Death in the eye and say.. Remember me?  This is what I have done.