Neither Nor'easter

My father, after a 1960's weekend-long winter Nor'easter, checked himself into a psych facility for a considerable stay. Coming from a family who only disclosed good news, I never quite knew whether it was alcohol, classic depression or business issues with some military PTSD in the mix. I remember he was essentially glued to the sofa in our windowed porch room with the snow piling on the jalousie glass slats insulating like soft white feathers. Football on the black-and-white set, an ice bucket and a bottle of Johnny Walker on the end-table, financial newspapers spread like a blanket... 'In my White room with black curtains... goodbye windows, tired starlings...' lyrics swarm my head when I think of that long weekend.  

Two-plus days of relentless rain in late September New York revived a little cancel culture. It was enough to saturate the glue which holds together the fragile pieces of my generation's aging psyche, and cause a bit of brain-melt, a bit of panic for some.  'You up?' I saw several times in my messaging app... but I didn't dare reply lest the sound of my own voice betray my isolation-- the echo of solitude.

The social media of my peers is a little sad. It ranges from 'those who do protest too much' i.e. happy photos of family events and excursions and food...  to lengthy detailed descriptions of medical nightmares with selfies from hospital beds and requests for aid.  Then there are the chronic daily historians who post memorials to the ever-growing population of the talented deceased. Old photos and files that grow heavier each year because the anniversaries continue to cycle like an unbroken record on continuous play. We look at our newsfeed to discover which of our former bandmates and acquaintances have passed away-- some in real time but altogether too many who somehow slipped away unremarked months ago.  We failed to notice they stopped liking our posts--  stopped wishing us well on our birthday... and we learn they may have died in their apartment or home undiscovered for days, having retired from jobs, their presence not missed by anyone in particular until their voicemail is full, their email has reached a storage limit...

Some post brave photos which do not hide their wrinkles and sagging faces.  So beautiful, people comment.  I mean-- this is life and we age as biology dictates.  I remember Gloria Steinem, my idol as a teenager, telling America 'this is what 60 looks like' as she bravely flaunted her un-altered great looks for a camera.  But soon afterward, she succumbed to the temptation of plastic surgery.

I'm moderately horrified to see photos from gigs... I do not check mirrors and do not 'see'' myself as others do.  I bravely ignore cosmetic realities and play my bass with pretty much the same drive as before. But I see some women on the stage with their faces pulled and pinched and pumped jumping around like old rabbits and I feel sad.  It might be hard to look me in the eye, with my slightly melted face, but unless one has a small fortune and can afford constant attention and consistent maintenance, the altered results of procedures just project a weird sort of insecurity to me.  Like one of those arthritis drug commercials. I don't find this version of Madonna pretty... it's desperate.  But what other version is there? 

I remember when witnessing a friend turn 30 aroused deep pity.  By 40's I was womanly and in love with life.  Joys and challenges of motherhood eclipsed my personal middle-age ambitions but I managed to produce and perform on a level I found satisfying.  Now in my 70's there's another benchmark altogether.  Tonight I watched a Bergman film I'd seen in the 1970's... thinking these characters are so much older and now I could be their mother. Many actors are dead. I've taken their place in line... the ranks move up and up, and eventually we'll fall off into the sea.

What terrified me this weekend was the idea that the glue will disappear before the substance... so that we'll become as a pile of threads which formerly made a stunning dress.  My mother was this-- threads of clarity and intelligence floating in a world without gravity as though she'd lost her footing altogether. What will become of us, we who thought we were so clever and strutted our little accomplishments across a smallish stage for years? What next? 

While the expression 'moving forward' is omni-present in our social and other lives, many of my peers are not moving forward, but looking backward as though their past accomplishments reassure their current version that they had or have value. One wastes the present rediscovering the past which will fail us in the end because the more we disturb it, the less intact it becomes.  And I learned with the death of Alan Merrill that the future is tenuous as well, because the best-laid plans can disintegrate with the death of a critical bandmate... and there is no residual trace of something that never happened. My own father, while he recovered from his episodes, never seemed to really grasp the concept of 'forward' but languished with sobriety and a bit of misery into old age with God-knows-what haunted thoughts and dreams.  Old soldier that he was, he seemed ready to take his place in the front line at nearly 97 years.

So here we are with the tapering rain and the wind in a kind of extended weather denouement and somehow the assurance that a brighter day will dawn. Floodwaters will recede and evaporate leaving damage and scars, but the world will go on.  Not so much our own lives... they are becoming less and less resilient and one day one of these events will be ours and we will be no more. Who will find me? Who will remember my small sorrows and regrets, who will know these lavender-flowered patches in my bedquilt belonged once to a hand-me-down dress I wore on my first day of first grade?

I spent a good part of Saturday night browsing my library shelves-- wondering whether to go back to Dostoyevsky, could I ever read Boswell's Life of Johnson in its entirety, Gibbon's Decline and Fall... ? I finally chose the last Saramago novel I'd been saving... I remember going to hear him read some years ago... he was an old man, and spoke no English-- rarely traveled.  The astonishing thing about Saramago is that he met and recognized his soulmate at 66-- left his partner and directly married this woman and ensured a passionate and creative future.  Meanwhile, I was utterly thrilled, waited on a huge slow-snaking line to have him sign a ratty copy of The Rise According to Jesus Christ. He patted my hand, knowing it was my heart he was signing, not a crisp first edition for lucrative resale. Priceless. It occurs tonight that, God willing, I will soon be the age he was when we met. There will be no more Saramago to read... but at least I will not have left these pages unturned.  

We Can Be Mayors....

In the midst of the World Series, NBA season opening, football Sundays, I am a little obsessed with the mayoral race.  Of course my son taught me that in sports, there is a clear winner and something uniquely satisfying about clarity in this complicated world.  But in light of the recent gambling scandal, one begins to doubt.  Where politics is concerned, we have once again sunk back into petty messaging and accusations.  These pertain to the contest, I suppose... but once the voting is over, then the real game begins, and this is worrying.

I took an out-of-town break yesterday and visited the spectacular new art museum at my alma mater. The breathtaking concept of the architecture-- the way the building combined a sense of future with traditional breadth of collecting... was uplifting.  Unfortunately, even this project was stained by negative allegations against the architect; still, his design, which was already in progress, is stellar.

Cult of personality, when I was more naive, integrated one's work occasionally with who one was.  Now,  'persona' has eclipsed what they actually do. The whole lucrative business of branding bases itself on the concept that a celebrity can convince us to do/buy nearly anything. It's worrying... as though all of America has this teenage brain which is unable to separate fact and reality from fantasy and facade.

Visiting old universities and colleges, the 'scent' of academia is palpable and appealing.  I wondered what I'd be if I'd stayed with my art studies, as planned.  At this moment, I'd have probably aged out of the new curatorial generation and contented myself with restoring old paintings or regretting not having taken up the bass. Water under the bridge.  I did have some great conversations and reminisced about old days and my intimacy with the objects in the former museum building where I occasionally pored over manuscripts and painted treasures in a back room.

Sunday night I watched a Tarkovsky film-- Stalker.  It's an extraordinary piece of work with even the film texture a particular choice-- alternating from sepia-tone to rich color-- from depressing, dark reality to a kind of spiritual epiphany. Without doing a movie review, it is both terrifying and then reassuring-- from the ominous post-apocalyptic wasteland to the resilience of the human spirit.  The dialogue stands out; it's poetic, philosophical and inspiring.  One quote stayed with me 'Passion is nothing but the friction of the soul against the outside world'... something like that, which may actually have been lifted from Herman Hesse.

On the way back from Princeton it was cold and damp... leather jacket weather... but I found myself waiting on a train platform with a young student dressed in a sequined sort of bathing suit with a small skirt-- no sleeves, no jacket-- bare legs with high-heeled white boots.  Her flesh was on display;  ditto the fact that she did not shave or groom herself anywhere-- an odd combination.  She was freezing, on her way to a Sabrina Carpenter concert where she would go directly from the train to the venue.  No one really stared at her but in case she needed protection, we struck up a conversation-- about the concert, about her studies.  She worked as a valet summers and spent all her money on concert merch.  Within minutes another woman appeared -- in a pink satin mini dress-- bare arms, with gold fishnets and the same white boots.  They did not know one another.  It was extraordinary... the pink dress was studying neuro-biology and had only a bag with books.  A coat, she told me, would ruin her outfit.  She, too, was shivering. 

No judgment.  In my day we wore jeans to concerts-- there were few 'followers' or even pussy hats or costume choices, although the Zappa Halloween show was something to see.  These girls had the confidence to get on a commuter train-- alone, dressed this way... well, it is Halloween week... but this was something else. Still, I have to concede that their passion, their hero-- white pop-Disney-girlie-dress-up icon, was as valid as my Rolling Stones and Proust and Caspar David Friedrich schoolgirl obsessions.

I fail to understand the current culture of superhero movies, the custom of adults dressing up in costumes, imitating comic books.  Is life so terrifying that one needs to arm oneself against it, imagine one can bend reality with these powers and super traits? Superman reversing the spin of the world to reverse time and save his love-- was a novel idea, but the unlikely movie scenarios come one after another, at the expense of what used to be considered the 'art' of film. It seems not just juvenile but absurd. And while I understand little boys wearing sports jerseys and gear to games, I don't 'see' grown men vying for sports jerseys at auctions for millions of dollars-- or even collecting sneakers and dressing up for games. Then I think of the World Cup and there's something legitimately passionate and patriotic about the spectators. 

It all comes down to this nagging question in my head: who are we and have we changed?  I think we have.  I mean, I have to admire these two Princeton students-- not even 20, for committing to their passion...for wearing it in and out of context... like a movement for them, I suppose. The incredibly lucrative marketing of the merchandise-- the commodification of fame-- well, that's another story. In my day star athletes made a tiny fraction of what bench players now command. 

Getting back to the elections, I have a harder and harder time deciphering who the candidates are. Their opponents define them by their mistakes and failures; we the voters try to see beyond this to their leadership capabilities and their true commitment.  No one at this level is pure. Separating ambition from mission is difficult. I can't help seeing Mamdani in a mirror wearing a superhero cape; he seems too much of that generation to me, and I am also influenced by my son who met him as an aspiring rapper. It worries me.

We are no longer either what we eat, or what we say we are, in politics. Nor are we what we wear, as we learn from the athletes who switch teams and uniforms according to payout. Dressing as Sabrina Carpenter doesn't make us singers or superstars or beautiful, but it does take us a little out of our own reality... and it makes us part of something. Those two women made friends on the train... maybe lifelong friends. That matters. 

I am off to the polls at the moment; I am not thrilled with either choice and I am not defined by my vote. I think in my student days-- anticipating my first eligible Presidential election--I WAS that. Despite Watergate, I had belief and conviction... volunteered and worked for them. I was exploring my soul, trying to understand art and uncover my personal 'calling' by experiencing friction with the outside world. Fifty years later-- badly dressed, and certainly not in costume, I'll pick a candidate and tonight I'll watch the World Series, but I'll always take Tarkovsky.

Sidelined

Last night my son texted me-- root for the Chargers, he said.  I admit I root for anyone but the Chiefs... they've had enough success... not to mention the fact that their extraordinarily well-compensated stars consume as well a lion's share of the extensive advertising space. Dandruff shampoo, artificially dyed breakfast cereal-- health insurance... medications... nothing is beneath them if the money is there... and the money continues to roll in. Not to mention the women, the attention, the endorsements and 'gifts'. 

How did I get entrapped into amateur football fandom? Me-- the Bohemian rock musican/closet literary intellectual who haunted art galleries and museums from adolescence and beyond...  dismissively refusing to even watch my high school boyfriend's soccer games which I designated as absurd and sweaty and pointless? We parents must adapt to our kids' obsessions-- to tune in, so to speak.  The funny part is my son maintains this tiny corner of childhood belief that I (even still) bring him luck. 

What fascinates me, analyzing my role as audience here... is the way all sports fans seem to harbor this childlike faith that our presence-- even on the couch-- can somehow alter the game.  We yell, we root, we cheer, we groan... but we continue to watch.  Ditto-- or moreso, when our kids played competitive sports.  We absolutely HAD to be there.  Not just for support, but for this absurd incredibility that somehow we'd change the outcome.  They wouldn't win without us-- our fervent parental praying they would make the shot... holding their lucky undershirt or the little dinosaur towel I carried in a bag from nursery school onward. These tokens.

And the uniforms.  Nothing transforms a boy like his first baseball jersey...  his first pair of serious Nikes or Jordans. The mini-helmets and shin guards... the hockey skates and shoulder pads... like a superhero.  The fantasy is palpable; talent and practice are another thing-- but here-- a little piece of imitation reality and your child is wearing it. 

Some of the parents dream along. They coach, they carpool, they enroll and hire trainers.  They drive to tryouts, they pay for all kinds of leagues and venues... they take their kids to the professional arenas, no matter what the cost.  If they win the athletic lottery, the payoff is huge. Children are the second chance for many adults. Similarly, they buy them guitars and amplifiers... they get lessons and are driven to concerts.  Some of them have talent; some of them burn out before high school. 

But the dream... it's bigger than ever.  The Taylor Swifts and Patrick Mahomes's of the world.  Yesterday a 26-year-old baseball player signed a $765 million contract for doing what he loves. His agent made more in a day than Babe Ruth made in his entire career, even after inflation adjustment.  Assad was deposed yesterday; Haitian gangs massacred 150 elderly people... but more Americans were thinking ahead toward the 2025 baseball season.  Well, as Peter Pan urged us-- happier thoughts give us just that much more power. 

And without the audience, sports would be sort of a dud.  The pandemic confirmed this.  We participate, we fantasize...we bet-- another huge industry-- and we buy tickets and watch.  Those of us at home-- we pay, too.  I have to buy ESPN channels so my son can enjoy holidays here without depriving himself of football or baseball championships. Which came first?  The game or the money?  We know which, of course... but the investments roll on, the industry and marketing explodes with exponential regularity. We are, most of us, victims somehow-- willing, excited, happy victims.  Everyone seems to have their team. Vicarious thrill, sportsmanship, fandom, bromances, reality escape.... whatever... it accelerates.  It has a season-- a beginning and an endpoint.  Infinity of journalists and analysts-- biographers, documentarists... and now the television contracts for retired players-- competitive channels and entertainment platforms.  We cannot seem to get enough despite constant commercial interruption and annoying solicitations... there will be a winner.  A trophy... a ring. 

We are all of us dreamers in a way... we imagine ourselves on some field of ultimate content... and when we grow up and become ordinary, we sometimes imagine our children garnishing the rewards we once maybe coveted.  My son, who had unusual talent as a player, is very realistic and rational about his abilities.  Yes, he harbored his passion and parlayed that into some kind of career, but he humbly declines any 'could have been' scenarios.  As for me? A  part of me believed.  I support whatever he does, but I do know that he maybe once had a dream.  I remember the way I felt watching him walk out onto his first NCAA court.  It was thrilling. Now-- 16 years later... he's very even-keeled and practical... and ambitious. He still absolutely and passionately loves the game... most games... and he will find his way... and I will root for the Chargers, or whomever he wants. 

I just discovered the 2025 Super Bowl falls on my birthday. We used to have parties, when my son was little... now life is more complicated, or less so... I've learned to watch alone, as many Americans do, although they do this in bars, via their social media, twittering and posting, gambling progressively-- but most of all, we are not just audience-- we participate. Our hearts beat faster, we jump around and coo and curse and celebrate or mope... but as the industry well knows, we are 'in'. Most of us, that is. The sports scrooges among us-- and I know quite a few-- may be missing something culturally significant.  

I'm pretty sure now my acquired or vicarious passion for sports has replaced something else-- maybe my concert attendance or gig-watching.  The same arenas are used for music; at the Super Bowl they become field-fellows... part of the spectacle. Rather than climb grandstands to watch rockstars on a screen with a phone-recording audience, I see games...  young men and women in their prime physically striving for something... I see their fans dressed up and yelling their heads off like family. Partisanship and loyalty are spread among a number of available teams-- geographic loyalties acknowledged.  It seems a little more innocent and less threatening than a political competition. Dare I use the word democratic? Maybe I'm fooling myself  but in this heartbreaking election year I think I feel a kind of Sunday 'hope'. God Bless Detroit-- Buffalo-- the overpaid underdogs since the Jets have virtually imploded.  Forgive me my naïveté... but I am feeling just that bit more 'American'. Amen. 

Handicapped

I recently overheard my neighbor and his friends discussing their golf handicaps.  I've heard this term used re: horse racing and it always confused me.  When I was young, the phrase 'Hire the handicapped' was bantered around. There were also ranks of parking spaces designated exclusively for these so-called unfortunates with the wheelchair icon painted on pavement.  More recently the word has been designated insulting.  Even 'disabled' is used with great care. 

It's a weird word. I remember reading somewhere it came from 'cap in hand', a reference to street beggars in older times who often displayed (or faked) disabilities to collect alms in a hat.  Whatever. It's become distasteful.  It's used with a kind of irony among my friends who are suffering the indignities of illnesses and aging.  One friend not only copes daily with the devastation of a brain tumor, but has lost the use of her hand.  Another has not quite recovered from hip surgery... another wrist surgery; then there are musicians' hand issues, drummers' spinal woes, general anxiety and depression... cardiac problems. We are an aging generation... we have used and abused ourselves in various ways.  

I am sympathetic; I've been lucky to survive and recover.  Two weeks ago I had an accident-- not life-threatening but enough to limit my usual freedoms. I've become, in a temporary way, handicapped, as my friends joke... and it's jokable, not permanent, unworthy of a special parking space or license plate-- or hopefully not.  

But I've been watching a good deal more television.. football, taking in the Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce phenomenon which I'm sorry to say makes me less fond of the Chiefs.  I'd like to see an underdog in the Super Bowl, despite the political and social media feeding frenzy this celebrity serendipity has caused.  I mean, if she changes the election, like Oprah did in 2008, well and good.  But for me it's enough-- the money, the endless athlete's endorsements and influencing... the massive payments in addition to the fortune they are paid to play which makes the heroes of my era look like middle-class losers. 

And these endless boring game shows-- with second-rate celebrity hosts and guests and absurd criteria and rules... who is watching this stuff?  It just seems desperate and forgettable.  

I'm reading Septology-- the seven-part masterpiece of this year's Nobel-winning author, Jon Fosse.  He's quintessentially Norwegian and for the last decades I've considered Scandinavia my second home. I've left my heart there-- a couple of times, not to mention a beloved bass guitar waiting for me to tour again. Anyway, it's a wonderful winter read. The snow... the small towns of Norway-- the fjords, the boats, the childhood reminiscences. The narrator is a painter-- a loner who has suffered losses, but manages to find a kind of redemption in his work which I can almost see, somehow.  And his quiet obsession with religion, his daily coming to terms with what is God-- in his art, in his simple way of life.  It's sublime.

My temporary injury and this novel remind me of what has been lost-- and how we go on, we find our lives and our meaning day by day, reinventing our path to accommodate the normal indignities of age, the diminishing exterior 'light' of our presence as the years pass.  And still, we find some spirit-- some determination-- we befriend the present and reintroduce the past like an old boyfriend who was amazing but no longer serves.

For many of us, this reveals and highlights our so-called handicaps. Some of us become defined by this alone.  But for others, we begin to see the less inspiring narratives of our culture as the true handicapped-- the banal, silly, petty, appearance-obsessed, botox and Wegovy-dependent overpaid housewives, non-achieving but omnipresent celebrity image-makers whose contributions are well celebrated but are anything but world-changing. 

Today I pray for my distressed and disabled friends.  For me I have the blessing of choosing the option of rehabilitation-- of acceptance, of continuing to exist with some kind of muse pulling me along, coaxing and cajoling.. a deepened sense of what remains, of God in my small universe, whatever that means... of life... cap in hand not for pity but for reverence and awe. With grace I intend to recover from this small setback and shine as I can in this flawed and aging skin I've been so generously granted, God willing. 

What I Am Not

 I'm reading the autobiography of Edward Dahlberg.  His prose is uniquely compelling-- descriptive and  'limber' with literary intelligence.  He is classically trained and gifted... in a way that writers do not seem to be, these days.  From the very first sentence I was enchanted and hooked.

Last week I watched a documentary about the jazz scene in Pittsburgh, called We Knew What We Had.  I was in tears-- the quality of musicianship, the wholehearted commitment to performance-- people like Art Blakey, Erroll Garner, Earl Hines, Ray Brown...the exquisite command of what their instrument can do and what they select in the moment.  I was actually standing in front of the television.  Tough for me to call myself a bassist.   Most of these musicians have passed; the documentary relies on their surviving colleagues and successors to describe them.  A few players have famously left their life story-- Miles, Mingus, Art Pepper (my personal favorite) but not many are really writers, nor did they all have the luxury of the retrospective.  Their lives and deaths were jagged.

While I cannot put myself in the same sentence as these masters, I have the skill to appreciate what they did/do, the good fortune to have enough education to find them... the belief, maybe, that when we expose ourselves to things that are really good-- to 'art' (or Art, as in Blakey), it makes us better.  

Solitude and confinement in the past year has forced on us the bandwidth to contemplate our own autobiographical truths... who we are, what we love, what we miss... and while we are focused on health as a priority, and politics-- social change, issues... I'm not sure we've all made the effort to improve our solitary human condition.

When I was a girl I imagined each person was given a sort of scroll of life-- like a map-- and certain things were 'set' but others were chosen.  As we got older, we passed through this trajectory; I'd imagine 100 years and at 50 I'd be halfway done.  But people died-- they left us before their time.  Was this 'written'? Preordained? Was death a punishment?  I struggled with this and came up with a sort of darker version of  life's 'certificate' as a tiny core on which we built day by day-- like a tinker toy city that expanded.  I laid out plans for things-- I listed ambitions and designations... books I needed, records.... like recipes a chef collects.

Now that I'm in the winding-down phases... I see life as the finite infinite we are given; as we grow, we become-- we annex and enrich-- the focused among us-- and we subtract.  We lose daylight on the way to winter, we pass up opportunities--moments... we watch television, we look at social media... we read endless posts and news articles... that stack of magazines by our bed has now become a three-story virtual pile.  We also spend a good part of life butting our heads against things-- trying on relationships that don't fit, changing our bodies to become our heroes, imitating and following instructions that lead nowhere.  I have become aware of my own autobiography as what I have done-- not nearly enough-- and despite the so-called best-laid plans, what I am not.  

Like those brilliant jazz pianists, I tried to incorporate a fair amount of improv into the course of my life and that brings with it the added risk of failure, of tangent-travel that is not always efficient.  I don't regret most things-- even the failed love affairs that broke me.  I am not a partner.  I have not grown 'with' someone, which seems, in the past year, to be the privileged state.  That said, I have watched so many people lose their personal 'half' and mourn and grieve in a way that seems irreconcilable.  

I am not a collaborator; I am fairly solitary.  Musically I have worked with wonderful artists but have not been a partner, nor a celebrity.  As a player,  I am not a 'noodler'.  I don't fuck with other people's songs and play what I think is right.  I don't really like writing for others; I have too much to say on my own, and need to be edited.  Lately I am less of a scribbler; I attribute this to technology and to the pandemic: we don't carry pens and paper with us-- we don't wander and converse randomly, we don't dawdle and gape and listen to the dreams of others because they are publicly masked and sober.  

Several times this week I was asked 'what I do' and I have replied 'I am not a musician' with that 'lol' gesture I've grown attached to.  I am not in love; I am not sure I have the capacity for these things, although I remember well how important they are.  In my projected or actual autobiography these episodes are married to songs or poetry or places I may or may not revisit.  They are recorded in letters and diaries... I am not sure anyone will discover these things and I will perhaps not spend my limited time revisiting them.  I am not unhappy.  As I told my son over and over when he grew up, we are rich people; we do not have money.  He had a hard time wrapping his teenage brain around that one, but his little one-line Valentine's Day message to me indicated that he may now understand.  

I am alone; I am not alone.  I am surrounded by wonderful things and opportunities-- many of these in books and audio resources.  The present is here, but the past has so much to offer.  People like Dahlberg or Erroll Garner who are utterly brilliant but so little 'searched' compared to the celebrities of today.  I fail myself every single day and the fact that I commit each night to the possibility of growth tells me I am not dying yet.  We are strong; we lift weights and play football... and then we bleed out in a second.. we are crushed, we are broken-- we drown, we suffocate.  I am not nearly enough, and yet several times I have been something to someone. Does this comfort me?  It does not; I am not counting deeds.  I wrote a song for a jazz musician this year-- she will never record this now, but she loved it... in the modulation the lyric went 'Well I've been somebody's lover/But he don't need me now/ Like a broken clock, an open box/Some things are just too late.'  The repeat... Some things are just too late.  I am trying to be tough and go forward; the night is not gentle or good. 

November Reign

It occurred to me Thursday, having stayed up all night after a late gig, facing the massive cooking-marathon with equal parts of anticipation and dread, that I hated Thanksgiving as a child.  I don't have those warm Kodak-memories of family and holiday cheer.  Like most children, I didn't particularly care about food, especially unfamiliar things.  Even playdates, besides beloved milk and cookies, brought strange smells and styles of cooking that made me customize schedules to exclude mealtimes.  Family structure in those days was rigid; parents forced children to eat, made few concessions to aversions and allergies.  We sat at table and absorbed dysfunction without having the skills or permission to process these dynamics.

How things have changed... mothers and fathers seem super attentive to their kids' food preferences.  They experiment and compete.  Even the cooking shows on the Food Channel have under-12 contestants who can not only prepare but know about food chemistry and cuisine.  In the 1950's we had unsophisticated palates.  My mother became a better chef as time went on, and lunch progressed from grilled velveeta-cheese to salads and wider nutritional choices, but our childhood food experiences were limited.

Thinking back, most Thanksgivings were at our aunt's.. not our 'blood-aunt' but one of those women in my parents' circle that we referred to that way.  She had her actual relatives crammed into an expanded dining dais-arrangement that was always uncomfortable and anxiety-provoking.  One of her sisters was super fat and had married a blind man; my sister would make weird faces at him and whisper to me that he can't see her anyway, but I was halfway between suppressed giggling and actual fear of his disability.  I hated the food.  Rolls were safe.  Milk.  Even the pie was awful.  Back then my mother would sometimes let me have a peanut-butter sandwich before we left.  And it wasn't the food-- I just wanted to leave, to go up to my cousin's room and look at her strange dolls and books.  To go home-- back to my little easels and looms and library.  My lair.

Once I reached teenage years, I could do volunteer work-- serve at the local shelter, cook for the poor and sick; this was a relief.  During college, these holidays were for reuniting with old mates-- for football, for some-- the meaning changes.  Newly married, I wanted my British husband to experience American tradition-- despite the fact that I had to invent mine since most of my extended family had 'fallen out' by this time from divorce or petty dramas.  And once my son was born, well.. I reinvented the day for him-- there was the Wednesday night visit to the inflating of the floats, then the parade... and I learned to cook turkey and host my musical families with joy.  I'm an adult now, I repeated over and over when my own family began to leave us out of their inner-sanctum invitations.  Me the single Mom-- perpetually hung over from lack of sleep and late-night gigs-- the annual Hendrix tribute foremost on my mind every late November; I checked the Head-of-Household box on my tax return and appreciated the one perk of being a sole parent.

For a time in the 90's and early 2000's, my annual dinners were all-night parties; I hosted people who hated their families, European transplants who simply enjoyed the food, my son's friends who escaped their own dinners, strays and band members.  My house was full and my cooking skills impressed even me.  There was music... there was joy and great conversation.

This year, for the first time in decades, there was no Hendrix tribute.  There is no more BB King's; Iridium closes down before 10 PM... even the Cutting Room seemed not welcoming.  I struggled to find the motivation to plan a dinner.  So many friends have been ill, have lost family members and parents, lost their personal mojo to the crushing daily reality of Trumped America; the holiday reminder of an increasingly distant past and pending future isolation grows a little more palpable.  My son's relationships are in flux; many of his closest friends are married and have started their own families.

My usual guests have seemed less enthusiastic than in the past.  I have dropped a couple of them along with the more challenging dishes-- the sweet-potato/green-apple casserole which requires hours of prep-- the pies.  I still do a huge turkey with my well-loved stuffing-- the cranberry, the other fixings... my building staff waits patiently for their plate-- my son eats up a storm, but my own enthusiasm has shifted.  I keep diagnosing the start of this as the 2016 post-election shock.  It's hard to believe that by next November we will have chosen again, god-willing we are able to survive one more year and have the collective sense to do something about this.

Nevertheless, this was the smallest table in a long time.  I didn't even bother changing into my traditional dress.  We sat and enjoyed one another at an intimate meal, and I finished clean-up at a reasonable hour.  Of course there are a few days' worth of leftovers and sharing, an extra reason for my son to come uptown and help me with my Christmas tree... but the shift in time is apparent.  Maybe I will have grandchildren before long and these traditions will regain their magic.  I'm not sure.  Watching this cartoon president pretend to honor the confused military ranks certainly took the air out of our Thanksgiving balloons.

I thought this year about the 1963 holiday-- how profoundly, post-assassination, our world had changed... how in 2001 I felt so conscientious about giving and appreciating, about generosity and post-9/11 understanding... the second generational loss-of-innocence for us baby-boomers: we re-set  our sense of compassion... humility, humanity.  But Thursday night the football game was blaring from the back room-- nothing on my turntable; halfway through eating I realized we hadn't lit the candles.  And just this morning, on the last day of a sad month, I can't seem to recall saying my usual Thanksgiving grace.  Amen, November.

Amateur Our

Every winter  I interview prospective freshman for my alma mater.  It's a rewarding task; it enables me to pay back a little for the really stellar education I received, and it allows me to connect with these amazing young women who are eager for knowledge and skills to change the world, to solve problems, to heal the wounds of humanity and make a contribution.  Most of them come from poorer families and need financial aid.  They are prepared and bright; they are enthusiastic and compassionate.  Few of them will win admission, but most of them deserve this, and all of them will go on to have productive lives, I am quite sure.

To support the mission of diversity, many of these girls are from immigrant families.  For some of them,  they are recent immigrants, and English is a second language; they have overcome challenges and have seen things most American kids can only imagine.  This week several of them happen to be from countries on the new 'banned' list.  While I am a kind of ambassador for my alma mater, we are now confronted with confusing issues and worries I cannot wholly facilitate.  Politics is not a subject on the interview agenda, but this year we cannot help but acknowledge current events.  I feel apologetic and ashamed of my country.  The real irony is, 18-year-olds whose native language is Farsi and Arabic have been studying government and American history-- requirements to embark on a higher education program.  All of them are better versed in constitutionality and American justice than our current president.  What kind of world is this?

My friend is tall and statuesque, and looks like a model.   She loves music.  She is even married to sort of a rockstar.  She sings; she gets up on amateur stages and wails.  She has all the great moves and gestures, but she is truly a terrible singer.  So she got it in her head to try her fortune at the Apollo Theatre.  I have to give her points for guts; she stepped out on the stage with all confidence, and every man and woman in the place was taken with her appearance.  But then she opened her mouth.  The audience, in reaction, opened their mouths in disbelief.  It took about 45 seconds before she was booed off the stage.  Democracy.  Did she learn something?  She is still making recordings, taking lessons from people who are quite willing to take her money, trying to jump onstage with people.  In her favor, she is hurting no one; fooling no one.

Night after night, I play alongside other bands of all varieties.  Some have great ideas and lack the musical skill to execute; some are well-practiced and derivative.  And some have absolutely no clue what music might be.  A classical orchestra requires auditions, a level of achievement and a competitive field of music students who are ready to make the leap to professionalism.  But re: rock and roll and pop-- it seems all bets are off.  Last night a combination of people took the stage who seemed to have no common thread except an umbrella band name.  No one played their instrument with any competence; the songs were formless and the performance was not even comical.  Technical issues and lack of experience kept them onstage far longer than their allotted slot.  No one booed, no one turned the power off.  I guess they had some friends in the house… but it was a true 'Little Miss Sunshine' moment.  I've witnessed altogether too many recently.  What happened to the 'hook' by which I mean not the song, but the stage removal device?

I have recently been to a few young art galleries.  At one, the director started a conversation with me about abstract expressionism, the New York School, etc.  She consistently mispronounced names and
misstated facts.  She seemed to have no frame of reference or context, no sense of art history or even contemporary culture… yet was exhibiting at art fairs alongside established, experienced gallerists, selling student-ish derivative paintings for $20-50,000.  P.S…. she is very attractive and well dressed.  But who are her buyers?  Her next show is 'pre-sold', she bragged.  I couldn't help thinking this was the kind of smoke-and-mirror game we used to play when some guy called us and we claimed we were busy, night after night… until he finally swore eternal allegiance in exchange for one dinner.

Next week is the Superbowl--- an American institution, an athletic contest with a huge audience and the significance of a kind of annual war-game.  Plenty of athletes may not have leadership qualities, but they are fierce and well-trained.  No one suits up for pro football who has not spent thousands and thousands of hours in drills and scrimmages and grueling exercise.  The game itself has a certain number of variables, but either team has hard-earned the opportunity to compete.

Maybe the best man doesn't always win the American presidency, but never before has the reality-show culture usurped our politics.  This is a serious job, with serious repercussions.  It is a position of leadership and power.  Kings and queens in history have on occasion inherited an office for which they were unsuited, but never has the collective consensus of a nation been so willingly corralled into idiocy.  I have had enough.  A week's worth of incompetence, blatant inexperience and bad decision-making has awakened even the most soporific of dreamers and optimists into a reality check.  The inauguration felt to me like a kind of funeral and after 9 days of mourning, I'm sick to death of the cult of mediocrity and amateurism.  I refuse to sell out my fellow countrymen to what is not a compromise but a dangerous regime of lunacy.  One man's hyper-extended fantasy of narcissism and abuse of office is not going to deflate and sicken the platform of civil rights and humanitarian ethics that has defined much of my generation's decency.   I've never been a patriot, but it's damned unAmerican and way past time for the proverbial 'hook'.  Time for the sound of one hand clapping… and as the emcee says, 'NEXT...'

Angst-giving

Does anyone else have one of those friends who is always lecturing about something or other?  This week it's  'New York is the next target-- do you have your emergency water kit and your cash stash and your canned foods and gas mask and LED flashlights all prepared?'  Or it's physical fitness tips-- the superiority of kettle bells, the uselessness of cardio-- dietary guidelines, health warnings.  One of those people who lives from sound byte to sound byte, who reads one mediocre article and is suddenly an expert, who wants to convert you when he is going to be a defaulting believer within weeks-- ?….On to the next trend...

These are the same people who take offense if you reply or contradict or discuss or point out (useless-- they cannot 'listen') whatever-- and despite their enthusiastic advice, they are miserable and lost-- jumping from bandwagon to bandwagon, feeling renewed and reborn for a day or two before they realize or do not realize that they are the same clueless, unhappy, physically unfit mess they were before, during, and after, but somehow convincing you of their superior wisdom seems tantamount to having it.

If they happen to show up for your Thanksgiving dinner, they are always delivering food-channel-worthy monologues and recipes even though your other guests are busy eating and drinking and enjoying despite the annoying analysis by this person who of course doesn't contribute to your meal, or if they do, it's something completely incompatible and odd which they defend and promote by elaborating on its historic and religious and nutritional value, and how it's gluten-free and vegan and futuristic and essential, even though it looks and smells awful and remains undisturbed on every single plate at the end of the meal.  Does the maker notice?  He does not.

Every Thanksgiving I've become a little more skilled at heading these people off in advance by pleading a gig or an entire NBA team coming to pioneer a city-home holiday which I'd won in a charity auction-- spending the day at the food kitchen, a chicken pox epidemic, a broken stove, or all of the above.  I stop answering the phone a week before the holiday and tilt my head sympathetically when one sobs to me that they have no invitation, failing to consider the reason for this, and of course failing to consider hosting their own meal, because they are not a chef, but a professional and skilled guest/food-critic. Not to mention an eater.

I'm committed to the role of host, because as a musician I rarely have the time or resources to give home parties, and I do it for my son, remembering how much I hated childhood Thanksgivings at an aunt's home where I hated the food, the folding chairs at the overcrowded children's table, my uncomfortable sashed dresses and mary-janes, and the abominably unfamiliar dishes emerging course after course relentlessly from my aunt's staffed kitchen.  Not to mention the sideward parental glares admonishing me to sit up, stop whispering and playing with food, etc.

My son is allowed to binge on football, come and go as he pleases, invite whomever to our table, eat without reprimand and with joy, because he loves to eat.  No surprises ever on the menu-- food is traditional, the way he likes it, and it's a happy family day, despite the exhausting and elaborate preparation it requires.  It's a ritual in our household where there are few-- a tradition in a non-traditional family.  Our 'Grace', on the other hand, is democratic, spontaneous and loose.  There is no guilt, hopefully… just food and no rules.

This year, on each of my numerous trips to various shops and stands for ingredients, there were more than the usual number of panhandlers--- not just the calculating ones who know they get extra sympathy on the holiday, although the warm weather didn't help their plight.  But there was one man I'd not seen before who'd been sleeping by the 96th Street subway for days-- no sign, no cup, except the one I placed.  His skin was blackened as though he'd been sleeping on the subway tracks in a fire, his face was leathery and wrinkled and impossible to date with accuracy.  He smelled of stale alcohol-breath and tobacco and unwashed skin.  I watched my neighbors getting their wine and champagne deliveries in cases, their neatly boxed food orders arriving, their kitchen staff running up and down, unpacking brand new Williams and Sonoma appliances and kitchen aids… then I'd go back down the road and pass my subway sleeper… and the whole scenario began to seem to me like a bad living cartoon version of America or New York at the moment-- the have-so-muches and the have-nothings.

As I broiled and basted my turkey-- not from Pathmark this year, because my old store-- part of the Thanksgiving ritual-- the Harlem institution I attended regularly-- has been bought by the same people who have built that hideous too-thin-to-be-phallic building at 57th and Park.  What will become of the overnight shufflers with shopping carts who roll up and down the aisles until dawn, chattering and keeping warm until the sun comes up in winter?  Will 125th Street become the next billionaire's row?  I put out my food, lit my thrift shop candles, put on some cds for guests and enjoyed my warm home, which seems palatial when I considered the cardboard roof of my sleeper.

One of my neighbors this year invited herself to my meal-- she has a new puppy and it requires sooo much work, she explained, with her other dogs and her horses… but she can't leave it for more than an hour at a time… she'll be over at 7, she promised… even though my dinner is scheduled at 8-- but NO, she exclaimed! She has to be in bed at 9!  She also happens to be a Psychotherapist-- one of those people who cannot 'see' themselves because they are so busy analyzing?  I asked her if she'd bring the subway sleeper… she could use her psychoanalytic skills maybe to convince him to stop using drugs and drinking and to seek help?  Anyway, only then did she decide to forego Thanksgiving.

As I listened to various versions of 'Grace'… I thought about how this year I was a little less thankful, a little more bitter, and a little more inclined to try to focus on the 'giving'.  I served the food, tried to pacify the vegans and vegetarians, tried not to inject any moralism into a meal, but I don't feel like doing my 'leftover' Saturday dinner for my lecturer and my second round eaters.  Neither did I bring a plate to my sleeper, like a guilty Christian, because I have noticed the food kitchens are overflowing with helpers at this holiday who are all too willing to fulfill their charitable quota in this civilized way.  Then they forget.  His issue is more complex-- he is not willing to communicate or move; he does not smile.  He does not receive; he does not complain or speak or ingratiate or beg.  He certainly does not lecture, but he is teaching me something, here.

The streets seemed clean, yesterday-- the can and bottle-collectors had a worrisome day off; hopefully the overflow of extra Friday garbage would get them through the weekend.  At one UES church meal, they charged $35 to keep the homeless away.  At the annual AA marathon meal, the homeless had begun to invade… the recovering attendees were complaining… Another of my fortunate friends spent her Wednesday night at a soup kitchen, before flying off on holiday, and in the photo she emailed, with her plastic shower cap, serving the smiling needy, I swear I recognized one of my neighbors in the bread line, pointing at the creamed corn-- the one with the 12-room apartment overlooking Central Park whom I've encountered haggling with the fruit vendor on the corner.  I've zoomed in and blown up the photo several times, and I can almost swear it is this man, taking and not giving, failing to say Grace, demanding his due side dishes, lecturing.

Non-election

I’ve been worrying lately about how anesthetized I feel about this election.  I wonder if it has something to do with age… so many voting opportunities--- I used to get this choked-up sense of importance--- of power and personal freedom, of being part of a political movement… we could do something here, we could change things… in that old voting booth with the levers that clicked, behind the heavy curtain that felt like an x-ray shield--- like protection from something lethal...

Lately I notice I’m content to pick up a book—Emerson, Yeats.. .anything--- and just read a fragment.  This seems to be a habit of older people who always seemed to me when I visited-- non-linear---the conversation, the teas-- and they’d inevitably  have a pile of worn books--- like old friends… which they’d visit, I imagined, in the dark lonely overnight hours.  My shelves are dense with books I used to feel I had to start at the beginning and plow through…  but now I’m content to just be there, in a chair-- and listen for a minute.  Change my life. 

This kind of listening seems to have become obsolete… all the texting and attention-deficit hypocrisy that seems to pass for contemporary conversation.   Like permanence… young people here seem to be moving all the time… I worry that my son will never lie in his bed and night and feel the ghosts settle in the walls, the memories seep like black smoke underneath his door and surround him, the little panic buttons that will remind him of what he has lost.   Or I worry that he will.  

We separate… we become separate… this is a kind of lesson for death.  There is no easy way to die and there is no easy way to separate… not really.  That feeling of your first child--- you have just given birth--- and there is a separate little body there in the room… a body you will fear and fret over—whose every little pain you will fear more than your own.   And you are alone—and you could lose this small person—which would be unbearable… but here you are on this first morning, his actual birth-day, and you are still awake, nothing has really changed, except you are writing lyrics on the pastel-colored Babysitter’s-Reminder pad that came free with the crib linens, even though you know you’ll never have a babysitter because that’s not you.  And you still won’t be able to read your own handwriting in the morning… so you reassure yourself that nothing has changed.

So I am thinking today… this morning--- waking up and trying to read the lyrics I wrote in the middle of the night… and seeing something I wrote maybe years ago, on a night when I was keeping watch over a feverish child-- and delirious from exhaustion, and the only company I had maybe was that longing… that unbearable, desire-drenched deep-wounding thing that was part of some kind of innocence. 

But at least it reminds me of last night--  lying in bed—thinking about all the strangers I’d had this bed intimacy with… and there is this body next to me… with a penis, like all the others, like all the strangers in your life with whom you’ve become physically 'intimate' as my mother refers to it-- and what you don’t know about him fuels the night… takes you forward like a drug… and maybe you think making new memories will keep you safe from the old ones… but they don’t.  And you turn another page… farther away from this… another fragment you read… you ingest this moment, you adopt it.  It is yours, you can claim it... and still it doesn’t feel that way anymore.

But this other memory comes into my mind--- maybe because I read last night yet another story about a boy-molesting football coach—this one closer to home… in Brooklyn-- a school which tried to recruit my son-- and I am thinking-- -what has changed… is the innocence just unraveling?  So I had another memory fire-off… of maybe freshman year, in some beat-up old Buick, in the back seat driving down some country road.. half- conscious from drugs and alcohol... and happy, so happy… the way you were in those days… just to be in a car—because it is always the beginning of some great story….you are still at the beginning of everything-- and this unmistakeable sound…  tooth by tooth, the captain of the football team.. unzipping not your zipper but HIS… and you are high, in the back seat--- listening… and this is no mistake…he is going down on your drunk boyfriend who thinks it is you, is saying your name--- over and over, and this makes you happy… he is so innocent.   And you don’t want to interrupt his pleasure… and you never tell him… the football guy-- Mr. handsome/macho/future JP Morgan power broker with the perfect wife.  But now, 2012, you’d like to call him up and tell him, because the Football Captain—he looked just like Romney…. And you want to laugh, but you can’t wake the guy in your bed now who wouldn’t understand. 

And you still can’t read your handwriting in the morning…

And no matter how many times it wakes you, the panic button… and you try to understand it, to write it, to smother it-- you know you're on the other side of some bell-curve of this longing....and you try to convince yourself... to understand what it is that you are losing, or not losing.  And you make a point to remember some guy from the gym or maybe that painter you fucked on the roof so many years ago… the one whose love you felt… you actually felt… because he wasn’t afraid to lose you.   That one. Yes.  

Haunted Houses or The Man Who Made Off with 60 Minutes

I’ve been having that dream again—where you open a closet door and there’s another room--- another apartment--- like a gift of space-- -an interior miracle--- an illusion, you think--and then it is real--- you are stepping into it with relief. Apparently it’s a classic New York City dream. There’s a whole dedicated dream manual for Manhattan Psychs—with subway fantasies, tramway terrors, bridge and elevator fears, Hudson River drownings and apartment claustrophobia. Last night there was a whole loftspace--- but as the dream wore on, holes began to appear on the walls--- cracks in the ceiling; the door was unlocked and broken. A trick....a moral-- that if you get what you wish for, there will be a price to pay.

Halloween eve... we got to see the horrifying masks of the Madoff ghouls on 60 minutes. The voice of Ruth Madoff-- the calm, composed, botoxed emotionless voice... ... and the son— with the non-existent upper lip of the father, baring only his bottom teeth... he and his trophy wife-mask, prepped and rehearsed, attempting to manipulate a little public support for his trial. Come on Morley Safer--- how can you call them ‘victims’? Victims of luxury? Victims of their own pathetic refusal to look at the bloated gifthorse that allowed them the excessive lifestyle of billionaires? Two educated boys, one of whom at least had the moral conscience to punish himself, and maybe punish his mother for sins which she absolutely refuses to acknowledge. And this one-- -this smart boy like Satan’s accomplice who stoked the fire and claims to have absolutely no idea that there was any burning going on?

It was at best a disappointing piece of journalism. Maybe CBS had to promise not to ask questions, had to let Mrs. Madoff have her day in TV court. On a football night, it maybe helped the ratings....but you’d have to be a dumb Saint to give her the feeblest sympathy vote... and to listen to that suicide charade. She can’t weigh more than 100 pounds and at her age an overdose is pretty manageable. Ambien. Give me a break. I’ll bet they took enough for a decent night’s sleep. No guts, no balls, no remorse. Andrew’s wife was smiling. It was a disgrace. They at least deserve the pillory, not a half-hour of prime time without hecklers. Is this journalism? It was more like bad theatre. I’ve had another recurring dream where Libyan rebels are carrying Qaddaffi only his face is the emotion-free bloody face of Madoff. It’s horrible. I guess the Madoff masks are still big sellers this Halloween, with the devil horns already molded on. Now you can dress as the whole family. The 99% of us are going as skeletons, but we’ll have our costume underneath where it belongs.

I went to see my own parents who seem to have forgiven my personal filial sins. After all, I’m middle-aged which pretty well does time for whatever youthful wild rebel-antics offended them. They seem to have retreated into their bedroom, as though the space of their house is no longer appropriate. As though the dream is reversed. Their vision is retrospective, they have no aspirations. Why don’t you go in the yard and get some fresh air, I asked my mother. After all, it’s paid for. No thank you, she replied, I have a window. There are two of them in that room. They speak little. Their reference points are identical. The TV is on. They watch each other watching. Maybe they figure if they take up very little space, God will spare them longer. Something like that. They scarcely eat. They don’t lose things. They don’t get mugged or worry.

So maybe when you are finally ready to die, a coffin is all the room you want. Maybe claustrophobia is just an absurd prescient terror of the end. Compared to the space of the womb, it’s actually roomy...although my mother remarked she wants to be cremated because she’s afraid she’ll suffocate in a coffin. No one laughed. I have a mental picture of them tonight sitting in their respective chairs, wearing funny hats, sucking on a few tangerine jelly beans, watching an old Hitchcock film, dozing. Their ghosts are patient...benign.

I think Bernie Madoff should have a coffin-sized cell. I think his son should have to spend nights in a coffin-sized closet and be let out on a leash with enough pocket money for a hotdog and a doughnut I think all 3 of them should have to wear the John Doe uniform and dump trash like my son did after he stole a pair of sunglasses from Saks Fifth Avenue. At the very least. They should get to live in the projects and work at the kind of McDonald’s where people jump over the counter and smack you in the head. I think they should be forced to wear a tattoo that says Liar. The faithful wife Ruth. Whither thou goest. Except jail of course.

That Harry Markopoulos figured it out. How can these people be sitting calmly on 60 minutes, getting paid for their books and interviews, living on tens of millions—maybe more—they socked away. How many Wall Street executives even worry enough to need to take Ambien? Why are we making a federal case and crucifying athletes for performance-enhancing drugs while these rich criminals are getting away with financial murder? The 60-minute clock ticks its end-comment. Now what? Trick or treat? On Wall Street it’s all about the candy.