What We Miss

To distract myself this week, I'm reading Annie Ernaux.  Turns out it's neither distracting nor particularly shattering.  It does remind me of this nagging voice begging for my own solution to memoir.  We're on a kind of cusp, at this age, where things surface like 8-ball messages, and one fears this will be the last appearance in the cranial integuum. The palimpsest sensation, Annie calls it, conjuring Proust-- uncontested master of the medium-- who never won a Nobel prize. 

I want to go home, my mom repeated over and over in the depths of her dementia.  I am beginning to understand this more as I adapt and re-adapt to a culture which increasingly relies on media for memory. One neither remembers nor forgets; it's all on Instagram. My older friends often post their small accomplishments, as if soliciting accolades they are no longer winning... musicians craving applause from their home studios and bedrooms. I try to be amused.  Like memoir, there is a boundary between resonance and sentimentality.  I still demand a certain level of creativity from myself and fear falling short. 

Thinking back over years with a predominant audio/visual memory, I separate personal eras by rooms-- by apartments, the series of homes we have as an urbanite.  I can still 'see' the nursery where I spent my first two years in a city apartment.  My psychiatrist friend finds this extraordinary; most of the 'frame' is attached to a moment of frustration-- wanting to climb out of my crib to join my family in the hallway. So it's primarily an emotional memory; the visual is something I reconstruct from looking around me, as though it's a photograph.

For some reason today I remembered the first weeks with my son; I'd come back from London, expecting to return, but ended up stuck here with no money, no job... shocked and unprepared for motherhood in a moment when post-natal syndromes were not discussed. On my own, I found a decent job, toured the day-care options.  On the upper east side there was a well-reviewed sort of nursery-- with kind women, clean facilities. Rows of hospital-style cribs held sleeping infants in their little happy pajamas... it was cheerful and peaceful. But suddenly I became maternal... I panicked. The idea of dropping my tiny son every morning to this strange 'home' seemed just wrong.

So I left... I cried, sat in a church pew asking Jesus what I should do-- temporarily living on a dollar bag of yesterday's doughnuts or rolls I picked up at the local Genovese store (how I miss it)-- to support my little family. Somehow I managed... wheeling a carriage up and downtown, getting up once a week at 5 AM and taking a commuter train to leave the baby with his Grandma for an 8-hour shift, returning at the end of the day... I was a little like that TV commercial with the waitress apologizing to her boss for her child, promising it would not happen again. And I was exhausted.  At night I did bass gigs to keep my sanity. Occasionally I dragged him to songwriting sessions and even studios.  Not ideal but we survived. 

I imagine not just my own childhood memories but his... where would they have been had he spent the first two years in a sterile room with twenty other infants?  Would he have become a basketball player? I doubt his little brain would have been the impressive street-smart product of extensive itineraries around the city. 

It occurs to me, watching the constant parade of young parents with their prams and strollers, how the technology has changed everything.  It is simpler to 'watch' one's infant with a caretaker, to access help in an emergency... and also to yield to the temptation to use the phone-- to chat, to respond-- to shop... order food, watch a movie... anything.  In my time I had only the baby for conversation-- I talked, sang to him-- I read Proust, incidentally, out loud.  It was the language-- the sounds... it didn't matter what I said-- it mattered that it was the two of us... a kind of dialogue. We bonded emotionally... we were stuck with one another. We went to the park and played. As he grew he followed our travels on the subway map and learned to read by navigating station signs. He was extraordinary and I loved every minute of those trying and sleep-deprived years. There was a phrase Annie used (trans.) referencing the use of 'life' in her writing: 'we drained reality dry'.

In this era of autism diagnoses, of blame games for learning disabilities, etc... we rarely look at our technology habits as a culprit. To me, there is an epidemic attention deficit; I rarely feel that conversational palpable intimacy... people are texting or receiving or making notes or looking at something. I don't see how children have not adapted to that by becoming less responsive, less investigative.  Babies too often hold tablets and phones and amuse themselves with a screen rather than a sandbox.  Maybe it's an urban thing... but I see it everywhere.  And I talk to babies; I love them. But society is chronically distracted. 

Dementia seems the complement to autism... the denouement of awareness and focus.  As a precursor, I am noticing adults failing to 'see' things... sensitive to being criticized but rarely able to access their own self-perception.  We are visually hyperconscious but socially a little myopic.  We miss things... how can one possibly sustain this statistically staggering screen time and the emotional connections daily life used to present as normalcy?  Random conversations, meetings, discoveries.  Meditations and daydreams. Unanticipated moonrises and spontaneous sunsets... that feeling one has lived a lifetime in a single spectacular unpredictable analogue day.  Where have they gone? 

I rue the time I spend texting on the phone my son makes me carry for safety... but it is mostly turned off. Some of my friends get annoyed that I do not answer calls unless I'm home on my landline and it's a genuine 'call', a conversational visit. Texts are deceptively two sides of an actually one-sided dialogue... I can't shake the feeling that increasing phone-use equates to missing life.  Thinking of giving it up altogether.  Digital memory is not the same, and forgetting is all too allowable when we feel the false security of instagram and Facebook records of moments.  The meaning and quality of memoir will surely change; I feel the urgency to transcribe what I recall; whether or not there will be audience is another quandary.

Tolite Hostias

When we set out as teenagers to find our so-called path, few of us consider what we will not be, how we will fail at our dreams.  Of course, many of us lack the opportunities of more fortunate friends... and of those, few have the courage to fight the down-winds and up-currents that seem to prevent any version of success as we imagine it.  Fewer still have the genuine nugget of talent that blossoms into valued accomplishment, and the vision and stamina to break new ground.

I could never stand my own writing.  The gap between what I could do and what my 'heroes' did was just too broad.  Be true to yourself, my mentors advised, and like so many, one winds up consciously or unconsciously mining one's own life for material.  This is both our truth, and our betrayal.  While a few ex-boyfriends and husbands might relish finding themselves written into a song, I am one of those people who cringes at old photographs.  Facebook has always been the bitter pill I wash down with joyful memories of actually making music.

While I doubt posterity will be deciphering the messages in my songs and poems, I keep at it.  A few of my friends are urging me to write memoirs; it seems I look back on things with a particular kind of telescopic/microscopic viewfinder that entertains them.  Whether or not my narratives would appeal to a general public is ambiguous; it's hard enough enough to find sufficient audience to support my poetry projects.  Few of us sell many cds, in my circle. I chose this path; like crime, it doesn't pay much.

My parents died several years ago, so I can no longer offend them. My friends-- well, I could flatter them, but I rarely flatter myself, and while I can show up badly dressed and confessional, it's hard to be truthful and not betray people in the process.  Eulogies are kind to me... grief is my companion of late, and the songs I sing in memoriam are uncontested.  

I grew up with a circle of girlfriends who were joined at the hip, at that age when intimacy is easy and secrets are passed like a shared lunchbox.  One especially-- I met her in middle school-- at age eleven? She was sweet and beautiful in my eyes, although my mother described her as 'chubby'.  She was terrible at sports, which was critical among the criteria for mean-girl popularity.  She was not a mean girl.  I defended her to that crowd... I held her hand and chose her. For me her talent-- her intelligence, and her artistic genius... well.. she had the natural ability of a da Vinci... she won the national Carnegie Mellon scholarship... I mean, her draughtsmanship was extraordinary.  She made me things-- she drew me, my dogs.  And we sang-- in choir, at school, in church-- on the way to school... she the alto, I the soprano... it was perfect.  

She and I loved the Kinks, The Who, the Beatles, the Stones.  She had this habit of buying multiple copies of whatever she loved.  Albums in duplicate... Hendrix, Cream... The Who, Traffic.. the 60's... we loved most everything.. we sang.  She introduced me to jazz... we listened to Beethoven, Miles, Ian and Sylvia, Tim Hardin, Simon and Garfunkel, Donovan, Dylan.  A new release was a major event; we lay around at night reading album-cover notes like sacred texts... memorizing lyrics. I played guitar... she drew, I drew, but nothing like what she produced.  It was like love... we slept in the same room most of the time... we roller-skated to school, we did our homework together... we crushed and suffered... she had an old red Valiant she called Red Devil... she picked me up and we had adventures... I was too young to drive. 

Anyway, all through college we wrote, we visited one another... she met all my boyfriends; she married young, some someone with a kind of title who cheated on her with a teenager... and I think it devastated her.  She was never quite the same... immersed herself in Buddhism, with work in a bakery, lived in a sort of ashram for a time. Nevertheless she faithfully attended gigs, exuded great love and support... had a strange new group of people but still came to my Thanksgiving, showed up at my rock and roll impromptu wedding with a home-baked cake, was thrilled when my son was born, etc. Never bitter, never competitive.. always sisterly and loving as my own sister was not.  

So she suffered some terrible griefs and losses, began to shift focus to pathological resentment of her father.  All our fathers post-war were fucked up.  The war, their disappointments and responsibilities... PTSD, their drinking and their quiet suffering wives. I left mine at sixteen and tried not to let his mistakes become mine... but we are never sure about these things.  We share our truths, their lies and deceits. 

Anyway, my beloved friend ended up in and out of various hospitals with serious medical issues, then ensuing emotional problems.. eating disorders and syndromes.. it was relentless.  She was on all kinds of meds... none seemed to help. Me-- I selfishly missed my beloved talented genius companion.  I wanted to shake her out of her emotional quicksand, to get her on the track of extraordinary greatness she deserved, and could not.  

There was an early Elvis Costello song in her name... we loved it. Her highschool boyfriend was a singer/songwriter and wrote one for her.  I had this dream that I would become famous and call her up on stage to sing 'Tolite Hostias' or 'When Life Begins to Fail Me' a-cappella in two-part impeccable harmony.  Her voice was pure and true. Like so many artists, she could see through music; she had a perfect ear. 

At a point in middle age we parted ways.  She refuses to speak to me although I have reached out to her many times.  The tough-love approach I used with my son did not work with her.  I am sure she found me harsh and uncompassionate... mean.   Looking back, all these years later, trying to swim against some time-current, I remember she had encephalitis as a girl-- was so ill; perhaps this altered her brain environment.  It was not all self-indulgence and metaphoric illness but a legitimate diagnosis.  

Some of my old friends will recognize her here.  I doubt she follows me; she unfriended me long ago and shuns me.  Parts of life are unforgiving.  I am surely betraying her here, although I have spared the devil in the details. In writing memoir, one discovers the devil is the details.  I insist here (a perfect word for a proverbial sibling), the loveliness of her remains like a visual afterimage behind closed eyes.

Organizing a life, rather than milestone to milestone, we often skip from betrayal to betrayal.  This is maybe the true value of autobiography; no one knows us like we know/reveal ourselves, at least the writers among us-- outside of a few of maybe our oldest companions-- the ones who propped themselves on the bed beside us at the windowsill, sketched us as we sketched them, harmonized, exchanged clothes, sang to us, read, memorized, cried, ached and longed with the innocent shared honesty of adolescence.  It was not my job to keep her on some path to acknowledgement; it was her choice to veer off. 

I miss her-- her large sedentary cat we called Brick, her red Valiant, her roller skates and her record collection-- our special created language only we spoke, her grace and beauty which like mine has wizened and aged into something unrecognizable.  She is still mentioned in my nightly prayers-- along, tonight, with the request that she forgive me for this and other betrayals. 

My Rider In the Dark

I often wake during the night and browse the news on an iPad my son gave me.  Somehow the technology offers a variety of platforms I would not normally see.  Yesterday, among the dismal global disarray and haunting obituaries was an odd story about a horse which had run off with a pack of wild mustangs and returned, 8 years later-- some pounds thinner-- but somehow, like a Jack London novella, he'd made his way back home.  Of course, unlike the novella, we know nothing of his wanderings-- like a teenager kidnapped by a cult or a runaway gang-- he'd had a life... and somehow decided it wasn't for him.

So I had a stray dog, years ago; he passed me on a street in Harlem, and we both looked back at the same instant, like star-crossed lovers.  He followed me; I fed him.  A few days later I had to go 'on the road' for a gig-weekend, left him with a friend who tied him outside the Broome Street bar while he had a beer.  The dog broke loose, returned to my apartment several miles uptown.  It was extraordinary.  He had some strange habits... God only knew from whence he came, and what had formed his canine version of urban-wild. He was unpredictable.  I made up stories and songs... he was moody-- sometimes affectionate and obedient, but most of the time he was wild and callow and kept a perpetual eye on the door or open window. 

My mother's father left her mother, with two children... never to return.  It warped her, surely, and prompted her to marry a strong man with straight edges-- a war-hero with a certain chip on his shoulder-- my father.  She worshipped him, never criticized.  Her Mom, my Grandma, passed away at a very young age, in her so-called prime.  Did she grieve his absence? I never met her, but I think not. In highschool my Mom's estranged father (presumably my Grandfather) phoned- invited her to his 80th birthday.  She'd not seen him for at least 35-40 years, and declined, with a cold edgy voice (I listened in, as you could do in those old days).  Shortly thereafter he died, and while I begged, she would not let me accompany her to the funeral.  It upset her... after all these years, and in those days, when I was 15 or so and she was still a beautiful woman, she occasionally confided in me.  At the service, her obstetrician.. who had delivered her, was there-- took her aside and assured her there was not a drop of her alleged father's blood in her.  She related this to me, confidentially.  I was an imaginative teenager who wrote stories.  I invented all sorts of scenarios... who were we, after all?   

At Christmastime that year this obstetrician phoned and invited her and her daughters (us) to his grand home somewhere upstate.  She declined.  I begged and pleaded...  but in the end she buried this bit of information and never spoke again of her father.  I don't even think I'd seen a photo of him; there were few enough of my beautiful Grandma and they were snatched up by various cousins.  I mean-- he was a bad father... why was it that she refused to abandon the original narrative?  I don't know...

When I was about 17, an English man approached me and told me he was my real Grandfather.  It seemed plausible... and on my roguish post-college discovery path, it was a kind of fairy-tale.  It appealed. I listened and accepted... he took me all sorts of places and introduced me to Chinese literature and writers I'd not known about (William Gaddis, John Gardner).  He painted, spoke all kinds of languages... told me my Grandma had been a great beauty and he was a boy at the time.  It's unlikely but I believed.  I visited him; he affectionately called me his little mouse or his monkey. Unlike my father he praised my little original songs and was first on line at the London Virgin Megastore to buy my album.  You're right in front of Madonna, he rejoiced (alphabetically only).  He felt like a Grandfather.. and besides, it engendered all sorts of identity odysseys.  

I remember once I came home early after school and the gardener's truck was parked in the driveway.  The house was wide open, with the fragrance of freshly-baked pie. My poor oppressed but still beautiful mother, ditto the gardener, were nowhere to be seen.  I started to climb the staircase to the bedrooms, my heart pounding... but turned around and left the house-- came back hours later, loudly announcing my arrival.  My mother's favorite song was Me and Mrs. Jones.  We watched Billy Paul on Soul Train.  She had the record-- we played it over and over and she sang it.  It gave me joy to see her eyes tear up... we sang together.  

But it occurs to me-- especially in the pre and early post-war years-- that there were all kinds of secrets.  Every family has them.  I have them.  My women friends in successful marriages often tell me the secret to this success is precisely in what remains hidden.  Why confound their spouse when they can reminisce with me about old affairs and crushes? You're only as sick as your secrets I learned at an Alanon meeting.  I did not understand what this meant. I did once tell my son-- it's okay to have secrets as long as someone knows each one... you spread them around, you do not harbor them.  It's healthier.  One of my character flaws is I generally preferred the narratives of my affairs and mistakes; they felt familiar and exciting. 

The literary market is flooded with memoir-- some good, some bad, some fictional.  How can one reveal secrets without conscripting unwilling acquaintances? Or like Proust or Kerouac, do we rape our lives for material? Water it down, romanticize it?  Tonight I watched Interview with the Vampire. I don't normally like Vampire stories but I'd read this one on a plane so long ago. During one of the interview sections which punctuate the episodes, the writer asks 'Is this reality or is this performance?' Even vampires have secrets... maybe especially vampires.  Why would we expect truth from an immortal? Why would he be capable of love, or inclined to tell his truth? 

In the Ethicist column of the Times today there was a query from someone wondering whether she should tell her neighbor's child that her husband is his real father (they'd had an affair).  There are days when I wonder whether I am my father's child.  Certainly not by personality or temperament.  Besides, I am the dark daughter. Neither of my parents had the black hair and eyes-- they were fairer. I am taller than my sister who has the curvy body of my father's family.  My mother called me often her dark horse... which brings us back to Mongo the runaway stallion who surely knows more than he reveals.  My hero of the day.  I've been walking around with the Led Zeppelin vision of Traveling Riverside Blues in my head-- every time they or Robert Johnson mention 'my rider' I get a little chill.  It opens me, as music does, sometimes... especially when it cuts right to the chase, and finds those buried horse-hearts.  

Through the Open Window Tonight

 My friend Jim Bessman passed away suddenly this week; it was a shock and a huge loss to the music community.  He was a fine writer and paid attention not just to the celebrities among us, but to the more obscure and less acknowledged.  Not a week ago, he'd offered to review my new book, although poetry was not his bedfellow.  Over time he'd accumulated a massive body of writing; to pay homage to his legacy, it occurred to me to memoir-ize an old friend.

Recently I've heard from several people that a book is being written about the late John Campbell.  I would doubt I'd be any kind of prodigious source... but these things slip through our mental fingers before we know it.  Jim's death reminded me of the fragility of even the staunchest friendships.  

The first time I heard John he played solo at some kind of Delta blues event.  It was maybe early or mid-80's and he was at the front end of a series of performers.  I seem to recall it was maybe a Sunday afternoon...  at Under Acme or some such vanished place... maybe not. Anyway, he had recently moved to the city and among us downtown regulars he looked and spoke like a new arrival. I sat at a front table and I could see his thin fingers trembling with nerves.  I'd never heard his name at that moment, but his approach to blues was undeniably unique-- delicate and sure at the same time. I hung on the notes... I can remember, nearly 40 years later, the sound of his guitars.  Sometimes blues goes straight to your heart; you recognize it. 

The next time we met was backstage at a John Lee Hooker concert at the Bottom Line where I was lucky enough to be the bass player.  I was still a novice musician--not yet comfortable on the gig and a little overwhelmed by the backstage celebrity crowd.  John Campbell introduced himself... praised the simplicity of my playing in a way that convinced me.  He told me I was the first bassist with JLH that he could stand, lol.  He gave me confidence.  I had a kind of voice but I hadn't known it then.  

Later on we met at the old Lone Star on 13th Street.  He repeated his praise... told me I was part of the dream band he wanted to create-- me and the late great Charles Otis, one of the groovingest drummers New York ever saw... with strong NOLA roots.  Charles and I played many gigs together.  I loved the guy.  I can't recall who was playing that night, but we drank upstairs with some of Muddy Waters' former band members.   I remember the bartender buying me a burger; the old Lone Star was like a home for its regulars.  John also introduced me with great respect to Ronnie Earl, a fellow guitar hero and friend.

Later on I played in a band with Zonder Kennedy, Mark Grandfield and Bob Medici... a regular gig on Houston Street I think. John often came by and sat in with us on the tiny space we used as a stage.  I loved that band.. those gigs.  As always, John's playing was unique and soulful and passionate.  The little dream band never happened; John was becoming a star, I'd moved to London part-time, got married, etc.  One night I was playing bass downtown with a huge pregnant stomach, setting up... and he in his southern-gentleman accent blurted out that he wished he could help carry the baby for me-- I looked so burdened with my gear.  He blushed, I didn't.  

When my son was about 10 months old, I went down with a date to see the record-deal signed version of John.  He was still absolutely killing on his guitar... special... but he was on the edge of rockstardom... he was super thin-- wiry and fragile but somehow strong.  I took my date ( a well-known writer) backstage where John spoke to us with mad enthusiasm and energy that was a little worrying.  

The last time I saw him was in a casket at his wake underneath a guitar-shaped floral arrangement at the ironically named Campbell funeral home.  It was around this time of year-- early summer.  The Hell's Angels were there in the crowd with their bikes illegally parked on Madison Avenue; the security detail was jumpy.  The funeral the next day (I fictionalized it in a novel) was at a church filled with musicians, family and a slew of beautiful women.  It was tragic.  

Fortunately John left a daughter behind, and a catalogue of recordings... but I fear he was never canonized the way some of his heroes were.  He was not just gifted but 'charged'.  He also had the manners and courtesy of an old-world  southern gentleman, so foreign in the hard-drinking and drugging music scene of the 1980's. More than anything, he gave me a bonafide blues 'crown' I wore from that moment on.  He complimented and acknowledged me at a time when I felt a little lost in the crossfire of the 1980's New York City music scene.  Charles Otis and I kept up a friendship until he passed a few years ago.  We often spoke of John and felt somehow connected as part of the 'dream trio' we never executed.  Charles, too, made me feel 'real'.  He surely was one of a kind. 

I'm sure I contributed nothing here to the legacy of John Campbell. The performances and recordings spoke for themselves, and hopefully the forthcoming book and people like Zonder will fill in the rest.  If Jim Bessman was still here to finish our interview I might have shared with him that I was thinking about John when I wrote : 

'Through the open window tonight

I can sense Mississippi dirt-- 

thin-necked fingers tapping softly

on plantation-wood coffins…

your old Gibson buried 

with hot reptilean cravings, 

cooling at last in delta mud…'

But this was not to be.  Rest in Peace John Campbell, Jim Bessman, Charles Otis.  The list will sadly go on, until one day it won't.