Being Poor (part 1: Mr. Brightside)

My alma mater is a highly endowed institution; the weekly alumni publication manages to find us no matter where we go, whether we subscribe or not.  We are all potential endowment contributors.  I personally gave as I could.  These days my level of contribution  is $10-20 at best, and even that is a stretch... I have several times joked with classmates, many of whom have illustrious careers and paths of success, that I single-handedly lower their average income by double-percentage points... so I was a little taken aback when my alumni magazine cover article was titled 'Being Poor'.  Of course they were not referring to 'us', but to 'them'.

I am considered by many of my friends to be eccentric; my life choices are difficult and not conventional.  I live by my art.  I am somewhat proud of this, and fierce about my refusal to give in.  I am a hold-out-- a relic of the old New York bohemian cliché.  I do not live in subsidized housing-- have managed to make my own way, somehow.  The frequent 'number-crunching' sessions which challenge me at 3 AM are not about growth and retirement issues, profit and loss, value and cost... but basic bottom-line life issues.  How to eat, maintain my 'roof' (i.e. apartment), and manage to pay basic telephone/internet/Con Ed.  Beyond this, I buy virtually nothing--- a few subway rides to gigs... taxis are not on my expense sheets-- nor are clothes or movies, cellphones, take-out, a slice of pizza.  Over the past years I learned to forego my old craving for New York City street pretzels.  They do not accept foodstamps which, now that I have stopped resisting this benefit, provide a much more generous nutritional budget than I ever allowed myself.

Certainly I am not complaining.  I used to remind my son, growing up, when he whined about being the only player on his team without Jordans...  we are RICH-- we just do not have money.   I believe this, somehow.  I also distinctly remember the irony of what I would tell my mother, when she asked what I would become when I grew up-- that I want to be POOR-- a slap in the face to her fierce bourgeois values and the covert shadow of bitterness she hid so well when my Dad's personal psychology warranted an economic downturn in our household.

Unlike my mother, I have pretty much always had control of my life.  I had the best education money can (cannot?) buy without spending much... all the opportunities anyone can want-- a chance at the Golden Ring, a taste of self-made wealth... and then the haunting ironies of the dream of music and art.  As  a single Mom who traded everything for sole custody, I found myself back in the city with nothing-- my hands, my brain, a newborn who needed little I could not biologically provide-- a 'roof'... and a daily challenge to somehow manage foraging enough to keep us going.  There were days I played in the subway, did bars for the bucket-- got just enough gigs to get by, many days, on a bag of yesterday's donuts.  I learned the meaning of 'no':  no luxuries, no restaurants, no non-essentials, etc.  I had feet... my main means of transport... I was young enough that people wanted to give us things.  There is a sort of barter system here-- even in the city.  You discover these things-- free clinics, donated food-- the things people no longer need-- one man's garbage, etc.  You become resourceful and make things out of nothing-- the beauty of music. Yes, I had a guitar... and then you create out of your dreams... you paint with words-- you become, in the motto of my neighbor who chalked this everywhere he could-- on sidewalks and trees and discarded appliances-- your dream.

My friends know my personal economics are beyond any normal concept of thrift. Since I haunt the bargain-corps of Harlem and uptown-- I know the price of everything, to a penny-- I walk among the poor, and I am pretty much accepted into their society.  It is a different kind of culture-- and admittedly there are those who abuse the system, rely on being given what they need, have a certain reverse-entitlement.  But there are also the 'finders', like me, who navigate and calculate.  I will walk a good mile to save cents on potatoes or vegetables.  Occasionally I look into a cafe-- see people enjoying a coffee and a bagel-- anything-- sushi-- and I envy... I mean, I could splurge just once-- but something else must suffer.  And what I do 'score' ... is processed like an unexpected floral delivery.  It's all a gift-- it's the B-side of 'nothing'... which is everything, in a way.

Not that I don't worry obsessively and wake in the middle of the night (or day-- because my nights are when I 'make' them-- when I have finished my poems or my gigs or my puttering around with books) regretting that I didn't marry that nice man with the Hamptons estate and the baseball team... panicking I will lose my head or my mobility and be taken from my home into the worst city-run nursing facility with no reading material and bad TV.

But yesterday I found a quarter on the curb... 11 cents further uptown, shining like a diamond on the sidewalk.  The Turkish man who sells slightly damaged vegetables cheap gifted me a lemon and some ginger.  I will manage my bargain turkey I carried all the way from Target and will eat with a few friends-- my son... all the trimmings, thanks to foodstamps which no longer make me feel guilty but rewarded, in a way... and I can share this bounty.  I find I have everything I have ever wanted-- and a little more-- I am spoiled, and privileged, and I am damned grateful for this life of mine.  My classmates often accuse me of conducting some kind of socio-personal experiment, of feeling morally superior because I don't need money.  Oh but I do get paid for things... and I work hard, I do.  We musicians can make $100 for a night's work and with a little mercy and smart-economics, I can parlay this into a little joy, which is more than I can say for a good sector of this city population who have organic meals and grain-fed turkey, salon-hair, silver service, football tickets, Amazon Prime, Apple stock and i-Phone-Xs, balcony-views of the parade... healthy children... and fail to look out of their own windows as they mouth their grace.

(to be continued)

HeART Broken

So yesterday I went, with caution and a sprinkling of malice aforethought, to maybe the most unabashedly commercial of all art fairs--- Art Expo New York.  The Pier, and even the trip there, already gives me a little spatial anxiety.   I mean, Macy's is not really my store, and in general, selective people with some kind of style and focus do better in a limited space with fewer exhibitors so they can actually 'see' the inventory.  Old-school art collectors are generally selective.  Even the Armory seems small compared to the scale of the Pier which not only dwarfs the art and the audience, but inherently poses the question: if this is 'art'-- a pricey, unique, manually generated commodity-- why does there seem to be a department-store sense of endless supply and mass-marketed over-availability?

Sundays in Manhattan are special for me…. always a little hung-over, that okay-to-be-late-and-not-answer-phones thing, maybe a tiny bit of church-vibe and spirit-access, and generally no gigs.  No cell, no iPad… just me, my mind and myself-- my new BFF.   On the trek west into the outer-borough of the highway Pier strip, I passed a little 'exhibit' of thrown-away furniture outside an old Hell's Kitchen building.  A filthy, saggy sofa which brought up memories of the first furniture I ever actually ordered and didn't 'acquire'…. with hope, a new husband, a little cool apartment with a patch of river view if you leaned all the way out.  Visions of the parties,  visitors now vanished,  nights of early MTV, dinners and cigarettes, bottles and toasts, stray dogs, sleep-over guests, couch-sex, tears and embraces, good meals and bad meals, Christmas gift openings, proposals, promises, discussions, good reads… and finally one day these members of our furniture family are put out for the Salvation Army or dump-maceration.  It had a certain Tracey Emin vibe, this little configuration of past dysfunction and current disuse… of dreams gone wrong, stained and threadbare relationships finally boundary-expelled from hearts and homes… maybe an illness or death, etc. I had a nostalgic pang of material withdrawal… a little tug at that place where old songs and great paintings nest.

But that sofa was to be the beginning and end of my Sunday art quest.  The minute I entered the cavernous Pier exhibition arena, the vague buzz of muted crowd noise, several music tracks muffled by the space, and the maze of booths-- hundreds and thousands, like one of those shanty-town photos with a jillion temporary homes and the sense of a hundred dramas in every one.  I tried to plan a route, but the scale and the arrangement made it nearly impossible to comprehend even the diagram.  Okay, I admit--- I'm not great with geographic technology.  So I tried to push myself like a shopping cart through a couple of aisles.  There they were-- the after-Picassos, the facile abstracts, the pseudo Harings and Basquiats, the graffiti-pieces, the studenty minimalists, the Sunday painter bad landscapes-- the birds and butterflies, the glitterized club-scenes, the tacky blown-up photographs, the mosaics, the paintings on glass, the ceramic monstrosities.  Then there were the lights-- the neon installations and the LED backed glass pieces, the constructions of found objects which failed to improve on their garbage roots, the gimmicks and crystals.  The mere number of these things-- one came down and another one went up.  Even the intricate webby OCD paintings looked as though they were cranked out by the dozen-- no thought, except --look at ME, I'm an ARTIST!

And then--  the celebrity and especially the rockstar art:  Jim Morrrison as a jigsaw puzzle, Jim Morrison out of spaghetti strokes of some kind of resin-paint, Jim Morrison in blue, Jim Morrison in red, Jim Morrison in red, white and blue, Jim Morrison from postage stamps, the Doors as dog-faces and cartoons.  Objects-- painted, cheap guitars with Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi and the Ramones… holograms of the Beatles,  Mick Jagger in candy and Swarovski crystals.  Glass guitars with lights inside, lights outside, black lights-- guitars that play music, and endless digital rockstar cartoons on a loop.

I finally made it over to the 'solo' area, hoping that the one-artist concept would have a little booth-consistency and thematic coherence.   But here were the artists themselves, seated like hopeful dogs at the pound-- waiting to be chosen, acknowledged, petted, taken home.  It was beyond sad.  I had to keep that non-engaged expression on my face because every single one of them, despite my sub-par clothing, greeted me like those Celebrity Apprentice contenders trying to lure customers into their pop-up store so they could log attendance.  Also, being late Sunday afternoon, this was their last shot.  Prices were being slashed, deals were being made.  Or were they? One artist-- the only one whose work caused me to stop and browse-- sheepishly admitted, despite the 'Blue Ribbon' she'd been awarded-- like best-in-show in the mutt competition-- that she had not sold a single thing.  Packing up her wares, driving 12 hours in a rented truck… un packing, building, painting, hanging-- the business cards and photos-- then 5 long days of standing or sitting, including a reception-- making smalltalk to people who haven't a clue, conversing with bitter disappointed fellow artists, hoping for a gallery affiliation…  then the depressing de-installation and the long drive home, with a hole in your pocket.  It was unbearable.

The saddest of all-- was the number of galleries and artists from the Ukraine.  People with a hopeless economy, putting all the eggs they maybe do not even have-- into the basket of this Art Expo, and then losing, like gamblers at the roulette wheel with no chips left.  I tried hard to like the Ukrainian art-- even inquired about price, was told I'd get a huge deal-- maybe $500… then the gallery head who looked a bit like the So You Think You Can Dance host-- quoted $1,000, and I left without a bad conscience.  But we owe the Ukranians a huge apology… in Russian, of course.  I am so sorry…maybe you tried to appeal to the Americans who love the Kardashians and Beyonce and brought the worst stuff you had.

Okay… one 'bright' spot… a gallery from Nigeria, which equally underestimated American taste (or not) and hung stereo-typical African art-- but at least they had soul and panache.  One of the gallery reps-- dressed in a suit despite the oppressive heat of the Pier lights and stale air-- took me in and gave me an analysis of a few pieces-- he was the artist-- and the story, and the symbolism, were truly a revelation.  He was so charming and lovely and full of life and passion, and I so wished I could have liked his work a little more, because he broke my heart.  Maybe 30 years ago I would have taken him home; he's going to be in New York for another week, he wrote on his card, hopefully.  But I'm way beyond this kind of sympathy vote.  All I now have is my ear, my heart, my eyes, my love of art, my passion to see something that rocks my aesthetic world and compels me to sacrifice food, phone, cosmetics, clothing, as I do, to support the artist.

I left at 6, with the sounds of de-installing and the sour stench of disappointment oppressive.  The late afternoon air felt a little better and I had to forego revisiting my sofa for a bus ride, because I really needed to get back to my little haven and remind myself about art and spirit and the smell of old paint.  I miss my Nigerian a little, but I can email him, and hope that he never reads my harsh words here, and that he returns to his country and figures out how not to please people with his art and just hunker down and DO it.  Because the saddest thing of all is the wasted talent-- the human ability to draw and paint and make things, and the desire to do this, and the undeniable skill and uber-skill which really has nothing to do with art because being an artist is solitary and sad and difficult, and you must resign yourself to be unloved-- maybe hated-- and you must sacrifice and become horrible and smelly.  Or not.    You can become a Kardashian.  I'm sure we'll be buying their paintings before long.

Touch.com

Once a week I take a Latin Hip Hop dance class.  I've been doing this for years now.  The teacher is a dread-locked ab-ripped prime specimen of dancer-athlete funk-man.  Most of the girls in the always-packed class have a sort of crush on him and he radiates sexy wild confidence and charisma.    I forget my cares there, and dance like no tomorrow, even though I am older by far than anyone else.  Over the years, I've become friendly with my teacher; he's confided his heartbreaks and challenges; occasionally now he has aches and pains and injuries.

Tonight there were a few new girls.  He interacted with one of them, as he often does-- guiding her through a routine-- and as he put his hand on her arm, she trembled and blushed to deep red.  I had this flashback of being 15, an aspiring ballerina, in this African technique class with a well-known dancer named Rod Rodgers.  We all had this giggly girl fascination with him; he was statuesque and beautiful, and he moved like a young god.  He'd touch us to correct our posture or stance, and I would feel electrified.  Walking home I would touch myself wherever he touched me and feel changed forever.  He was always gentle and never inappropriate… he was strong and extremely tender, as though he was well aware of our fragile age and our beating hearts.  I knew when I was older and found my soulmate, he would touch me exactly that way.

Over the years I have exchanged so many stories with hundreds and thousands of women.  Some have been so violated and abused; some feared and hated men; others craved their attention mercilessly.  I realized, in this class tonight, that my sense of men-- my personal barometer of the physical experience-- had so much to do with my dance teacher, and his lyrical personal tenderness with just the right mix of respect and love and no agenda but his professional focus.  No shame, no awkward hesitation.  He was strong and direct and perfect.  Graceful.  Nurturing.

When I met my first love, I wasn't completely sure until he touched me.  Then I knew.  I've had so many lovers since-- a couple of husbands, and many live-in partners.  Not all of them were just right, but one or two were.  I find it hard to fathom, in this era of online dating and Facebook romance, how anyone can sense this from a digital introduction.  I don't even know how people can buy something as personal as a guitar online.  I have to hold them.  I can go through hundreds; then one is just right-- the Goldilocks thing… but harder.  It's so intimate… your guitar… the neck, the body… you will be holding this thing and playing your heart out through this….how can anyone buy a guitar by spec and color and shape, like a mail-order bride?  You will grow old with this, and become more and more entwined.  It will become your voice, your muse, your friend.  When your lover leaves, you will pick it up and it will cry for you.

When you have children, something in you knows how they need to be touched-- at least for some of us.  They elicit some ultimate tenderness---especially when they are feverish or sad, or sleeping.  You stroke their hair and some wonderful calm and quiet joy fills your heart.  They grow up and you miss this.  Sometimes you don't even realize that you miss this.  I can't remember my tough father ever touching me… I am sure my Mom must have, but she was always busy.  I had dogs.  They were always happy to sleep on my bed and endlessly affectionate.

Last week I observed my son and his girlfriend.  He touches her in this way that lets me know he has understood something.  I hope this is what she needs; they seem to be so happy together, and this doesn't always last.  Sometimes you get to this point where the mere touch of someone is enough to drive you mad-- the same person whose body you couldn't get enough of just a few brief months before.  Such is life and passion.

I am older now; I can only remember the way I used to toss and turn at night thinking about my first great love-- how the separations were unbearable and the minutes felt like days… and how the nights together would pass-- sometimes we'd stay awake, to stretch them out.  How I would dream about him.  He died so young; I have a pack of letters which were painful for him to write-- the kind of letters you only write in your 20's when you are brave and burning up.  I have these to remind me that it was real--  and to remind me about the touch.

Last night at a noisy rock club, a woman I'd just met was ill.  She lay down on a bench next to me with her head in my lap, and I stroked her hair the way I used to stroke my son's when he was sick.  I felt this wave of compassion--- of peace.  Maybe this is what nurses have-- the ones with a calling;  or caretakers.  Maybe this is what love and passion become as we get older, because lately I have not thought about 'the touch'.  Anyway, the woman got better.

I don't like people to play my guitars anymore… well, maybe a few people--- but only the ones I really love-- the ones that have 'the touch'.  It's like having a new baby-- they are so innocent and clean and tiny--- and everyone wants to pick them up, and you let them, but it is unbearable, and you want everyone to hold them just right--with gentleness and a sense of what is exactly right for them.  Some of us have this-- a kind of healing thing, a kind of 'connection' that made your husband not want to leave, that makes your kids know they are 'home' when they cry on your shoulder.  And some of us may never understand this; some of us are warped by cruelty and have fallen in love with pain.  Some people whack their guitars and smash things and feel better.  I guess I used to do that occasionally too.  But I know better, and I will always be grateful to Rod Rodgers, and I hope that new girl in my dance class  and my own kids will pass on 'the touch'.

Bed Post

I think I’m going to write a novel called The Talking Bed.  Of course, I don’t even need a Google-search to know, like most things, it’s already been done.  Fortunately for us, titles aren’t copyright- proof or we might have a way to filter the tsunami of crap that’s come down the pike in the name of culture.  But since we all seem to resort to under-the-blankets for several varieties of trust or confession, the concept is amusing.   Besides, there’s no privacy anywhere—no truth, no real contract for solitude, certainly no guarantee for prayer.  Why not betrayal by one’s own bed?

I watched an old Bergman film last night--- The Passion.  Tough to say whether it’s my predilection for the Swedish cultural reverence, or the period, or the crashing tedium of recent film-watching…but it stayed with me.  From the opening scenes-- -the pace, the cinematography, the quiet breathing of Max von Sydow—it was hypnotic.  It felt important.  For me, anyway. 

Cut to the Contemporary art sale at Phillips’ tonight where the Emperor’s New Clothes has become something to own rather than an ironic warning.  Most offensive for me is that artist who sticks chewing gum on a canvas in an unattractive arrangement and banks 6 figures.  The catalogue actually has the balls to relate the fact that the guy doesn’t even chew the gum himself but hires college kids to do it for him for 50 cents a piece.  Kind of a Warholian joke or maybe a metaphor for what the banks are doing to us.  Wasn't it also a 'green art' project we did when the kids were in kindergarten and were learning about recycling? Don’t get me started. 

At the risk of becoming the cranky old woman, because anyone with education and memory must have some opinion here, I am searching to find things of recent manufacture that feel ‘important’.  I’ve retreated to my little book-lined anthill of indie songwriting and poetry and simply wince when one of my rich friends gushes about their latest Damian Hirst Butterfly purchase.  Last night for food-money I had to ghost-write an article on one of the big young collectors.  I have to admit I can’t find much to criticize--- the guy, although massively wealthy, seems relatively intelligent and philanthropic and of course, the gist of the article, he has created his own Private Museum. 

The old saying ‘you can’t have everything; where would you put it?” is no longer valid, because of course, you put it in your own Private Museum.  From there you can lend it out, give it away, auction it off, store it-- -whatever… an enormous tax write-off, a solution to having your 45 room triple-penthouse look like a hoarder’s hideout, a relief from renting apartment-priced storage from Crozier or Cadogan Tate,  not to mention insurance.  It is also kind of a living monument to yourself--- your taste, your sophistication--- at least in principle.  And a way of covering up your mistakes, your unwise purchases in the name of philanthropy.  Let's face it-- some of these things don't wear well in your private living room.

So in one of his clever flippant hedge-fund manager remarks, the guy says, of course, art has no intrinsic value: it is just marketing.  Maybe your art has no value, I retort silently, but mine does.  I have starved for weeks, gone without new shoes and clothes for years, to have some small painting I simply couldn’t live without.  Can Mr. Private Museum live without his art?  He can.  In fact, I’ll bet he could live without his wife because although she seemed nice enough, I really couldn’t tell her apart from at least 3 other Private Museum wives who sat at an adjacent table.  

I’m also beginning to see a definite trend of artifice in these trophy women—like some of them used to have soft, blowy hair, or neat ponytails and well-tailored dresses.  Now they seem to have these megalo-hairstyles like somewhere between the Jersey Housewives and Barbie.  I sense a certain rococo tendency in the jewelry and accessories… like even a charity dinner is a red-carpet moment for these well-photographed housewives.  Like a Dave LaChapelle thing…just a little more blingy than chic. 

Oh, Andy, where are you now?  Will your hundreds of soupcans and thousands of Marilyns be enough to go around?  At least my old guitar continues to increase in value because there was little demand  and few produced because they were for actual real musicians back then-- and when you play it—well, it sings.  It’s old and it’s done thousands of gigs and at least for now it hasn’t been bought by some hedge fund hoarder who will hide it in a guitar mausoleum.  I’ll be playing realtime unique music on it while Forbes magazine photographs Mr. PM proudly displaying a wall of 5-cent gum chewed and spat out maybe by the same drunk NYU students who just stuffed one of the artist’s bills in our jar.