Fall-back

My son was born the first week of November... accompanied by the urban score of Election Day, the NYC Marathon... the first seasonal cold wind, the crush of dead leaves underfoot and the shocking afternoon darkness on the first Sunday of standard time setting. Each passing year I am overwhelmed by the nostalgia of parenthood. Our children cannot understand how we annually celebrate their arrival... how the indescribable agony of childbirth announced that we were splitting ourselves in two... how we sang silly songs and blew out candles but in our heart was the future soundtrack of an unwritten Roy Orbison ballad.

Even with photographs, it's difficult for our kids to understand the young, naive woman who was their mother, the novel intimacy of harboring a growing human inside a body whose power we'd maybe only recently absorbed. In my case, I was fulfilling a callow promise I'd made to my husband-- to have his child, despite serious reservations.  Our courtship had been brief but intense; 'no one will ever love you the way I do,' he repeated as he showed up in airports, intercepted my daily itinerary, flew transatlantic until he was broke, waiting for me to nod my head while he begged, on one knee, for me to become Mrs. British Journalist.  

So when my husband strayed, I tried to brush it off-- he was insecure-- he was dramatic; it would fade. I waited it out, remembering the pleading oaths he'd sworn... and then the surprise of pregnancy. I grew up quickly... held out hope, suffered. It wasn't so much the demise of the marriage as the betrayal of something in which I'd let myself believe. I talked to my growing stomach-- confessed, confided.  I'd agreed to define myself as part of a couple... and now the definition had become smeared-- obsolete... wrong. I no longer knew who I was or even where, having transported all my instruments and gear to the UK.

We urban dwellers learn to sleep through sirens... but the subdued quiet of a West-London 3 AM was more than I could bear. I returned to my city where the noise drowned out sorrow, the autumn rain camouflaged  wet eyes, and pounds of candy corn took the place of whiskey. I got up on smoky stages looking like a balloon and played my blue bass.

Who am I, I wondered, as I walked November midnight streets of Manhattan with a baby carriage? My exhaustion was overwhelming but did not translate into sleep. I felt hollow without my maternal stomach, traumatized at the act of separation and terrified of the task of raising a person when I no longer recognized the skin I was in: someone's mother... a nursing machine, one-half of a couple whose future was a puzzle, whose past was maybe just a terrible mistake-- a con job?

Thirty-six years later I woke up today after setting back my manual clock, having watched the last game of an entertaining World Series I would never have enjoyed had I not raised a sports-obsessed man. The apple fell far from this tree. I began the day with a radio interview; somewhere in the world people were hearing my music... it was shocking, in a way.  Somewhere I was still a musician-- a songwriter, despite this waking image of my life as a kind of huge parchment game-basket with thousands of lettered tiles leaking out in piles. 

Last week I watched a documentary on dying.  It was distressing-- horrifying, dismantling.  Again-- who are we, creatures who frantically train our bodies and minds-- run errands and break hearts... when we are all headed for the same unappealing and painful fate? 

Savoring my free hour after the clock resetting, I noticed Sheryl Crow was on PBS with a less-impressive Jason Isbell, conversing about her songwriting and playing samples in the grand hall of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with an exceptional sound system and a rapt sophisticated audience. Jason's accompaniment was annoying.  She is very polished-- even with her pancake make-up and false eyelashes... she can sing. I pondered her lyrics 'If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad.' Is this art? Am I bitter?  The last gig I played I went home on the subway with $60. I considered walking 5 miles to save $1.45. According to the internet, the starting range to book Sheryl Crow is between $300,000 and $499,000.   I remember meeting her, many years ago-- juggernauting along with her endorsements and rockstar hookups, following her dream on the road while I was wheeling around a baby. Not that there is a musical comparison. And after great success, Sheryl has more or less purchased motherhood.

I've noticed my son's friends are beginning to have grey hairs.  This ages me. His very boyish former science teacher greeted me in the street the other day... 'Did I recognize him,' he wanted to know, sheepish about the fact that he was now fifty-something? Are we judged by the way others see us?  I remember well, after a high-school musical performance, my mother asked 'You think you're good? This is high school!' These were my parents... maybe I over-processed their judgment which was skewed by the fear that their daughter might make the terrible choices I've since embraced.  

Tonight in the early dusk the sidewalks are littered with trampled discarded marathon signs and placards. Some of the runners were still limping along Fifth Avenue nearly twelve hours after the starting gun-- some falling short of their goal, some failing entirely.  I'm almost relieved another November milestone is over. Tuesday the mayoral elections will pass, and then it will be my son's thirty-sixth birthday.  He will celebrate with his friends; I will not share my nostalgia and current malaise... he seems to be happy with who he is at the moment-- not to question or doubt, not to empathically suffer along with ill friends and neighbors the way I do.  He will enjoy spending his money eating and drinking. He does not think about his absent father whom he barely recalls, and he certainly is little acquainted with the dark streak that marks my heart like a cross, like a wound. 

Meanwhile, hearing my own song 'Black Bells' on a radio show reminded me I am consistent if nothing else, and not ashamed of what I have produced, although I could always be better. Hard to judge oneself, and if one doesn't exploit social media, there is little access to external judgement or assurance.  Am I happy, in the Sheryl Crow sense?  Do I regret? No... maybe...  I endure these phases-- the doubt and black moods a lifetime of creativity, intermittent betrayal and suspension of belief have guaranteed. They are my 'material', for better or for worse, 'til death do me part.  If I choose, I can hear the sirens, but have learned-- Daylight Saving or Eastern Standard-- to sleep with them. 

11 A

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Into the Mystic

Tuesday evening I went to a lecture on Mysticism. Actually it was sort of a book tour by an author who'd written on the topic.  Guesting on the panel was a well-known scholar and Medievalist who was there to generate a kind of Socratic discussion because the author himself seemed a little quagmired.  The Medievalist was skilled as a teacher-- the way she spoke in clear language, the way she addressed the packed audience-- was masterful and charismatic.  I remembered why I loved school-- the classes, sitting at the feet of professors, receiving information and ideas, and perpetually turning my intellectual world upside down.

So for the first forty-five minutes I was in a kind of familiar heaven... recalling things I'd studied-- old texts, narratives... saints and martyrs.  This had been my post-college major; I'd travelled, kneeled in old churches throughout Europe in search of understanding. The medieval centuries were harsh, punctuated by passionate religious sentiment-- and also by wars, disease, cruelty and torture. Fathoming these times was a challenge... the mystics and visionaries were both celebrated and punished. I also remembered consulting St Gregory... how the Bible stories had four meanings-- the historical, the allegorical, the moral and then the mystical. It was part of study, interpretation.  It was assumed.

The celebrated author speaking was also a 'philosopher', a designation which makes me squirm. These people seem less necessary in the present; they often pontificate on about pop culture-- sports, fashion, football, human weakness and addiction. They manipulate facts and maneuver narratives-- kind of like psychotherapy.  I have a hard time with this.  The issue of feminism crept in, as it does... especially since the larger number of stigmatics were women.  There was a hint of sexualizing... it's trendy... and then this conclusion about the outcome of 17th-century Mysticism being music... Bach. The author began to reference classic rock... at this point I looked at the shelves behind me, tried to plot my escape. 

Maybe I misunderstood-- missed one of the leaps of faith and took a wrong turn.  Maybe after weeks of relentless political rhetoric I am hostile and defensive.  And I've been a musician most of my life-- a passionate devotee of everything from medieval chants to Prog rock. Composers often dream melodies and songs; I do... but is this mysticism? Music transforms one-- it opens us, makes us fall in love. What would cinema be without music? I read once Scorsese spent eighty percent of his Mean Streets budget securing rights to the songs he felt were essential to the film. It is the very soundtrack of our lives. But mysticism?  More like a kind of unique personal recipe, I imagine, where inspiration supplies the ingredients.

Anyway, as I begin my annual fall alumni interviews, I wonder if I would fare well at a university in these times-- when song lyrics are taught in poetry classes, when CBGB's and NYC street culture are the stuff of Master's theses. I just suddenly felt a little duped.  I came expecting some revelation and instead was led via a circuitous intellectual musical-chairs to some pop-culture home base.  Scanning the shelves nearest to my chair was comforting; I'd read many of these books-- they were old friends, some in new packaging, but familiars. My heart opened. 

Back in college I'd had one or two low-key mystical experiences... things coming together that had been broken... a bird one night in my little college room which was absolutely sealed and locked. I craved these things, some extra-terrestrial epiphany at a time when my sexuality was blossoming and my brain being primed.  In art history classes I was drawn to these depictions of martyrs who were torn and penetrated.  It was mesmerizing; at the same time I became acquainted with drug use and friends who experimented with physical challenges and extremes like cutting.  I suppose today we have the gym-obsessed body-builders; it's become all too common to distort one's living anatomy. 

On the way home from the event, I started to think about my neighbor who has grown svelte and fashionable since her daily injections of Ozembic.  I saw her with her dog in her Prada... she's begun to look positively malnourished... her cheeks are sallow and sunken.  Oh no, I want to tell her.. you've gone too far... but I don't mention that she looks perhaps self-stigmatized. Instead I compliment her on her shoes which cost more than an average month's rent in Manhattan. Maybe two months.  

At home I took a couple of books from the shelves, as I often do at night... like a promise for tomorrow... and somehow had this flashback of Van Morrison.. Into the Mystic... it must have been 1970... I was barely 17.... a senior boy came into my college dorm room-- he was so handsome, with his long golden hair and his steel-blue eyes.  I had just picked up my copy of Moondance... he heard it playing from the hallway.. and by the last track, he had coaxed me into a slow dance with him... one of those magical romantic moments when I had no idea who I was or what I was doing but the moment carried me off.  

Here I was, free-associating, contracting the huge spiritual concept of mysticism into a shortened and altered form of the word, and a pop song... so maybe the panel authors were not so wrong.. and maybe the whole  meaning has somehow merged with this vernacularized version of whatever 'transports' us. At the time I remember imagining a sea called Mystic... the future... everything I was about to know. 

Thank goodness for these privileged moments-- me now, more than fifty years on, looking back on one of those heart-piercing instants, along with its indelible soundtrack... a kind of personal spirituality. What a thing is memory-- which connects us to ourselves, to our wounds and our blisses, our love and our sickness, as though these things were painted, as though filmed.  The eternal which will end with us... no matter how many posts or photos there are... only we can reach back into ourself... to browse our own long journey-- without books or Google or the internet.. and so precisely recall and revive the ignitions.  Amen.

Scene Not Heard

I'm about to release a cd of original music. At these small benchmarks in our creative life, one becomes reflective.  For me, performing seldom these days, I ask myself why I am still working-- day after day-- without audience, without goals or a plan.  It occurred to me last night that when I was 3 years old I made a vinyl record.  It was one of those amusement-park booths where you actually sing into a microphone and they press up one copy on some kind of bona-fide machinery.  I sang Around the World I've Searched for You... a song I knew well from my mother who played a small repertoire of sheet music on the piano. I sang in perfect pitch-- didn't miss a lyric.  After the little performance, my father announced me-- my age, my name... and then clearly, amid the audible background sounds of carnival, I ask my sister.. Wanna do it? She denied. Silence.  Head shaking, I imagine.

At nursery school they acknowledged my musical abilities; they urged my parents to send me to a special school.  Apparently I'd not only had the lead role in their little performances, but I wrote the songs. My teachers told me this, when I got older; my mother was terrified I'd have a miserable life on some cheap stage and tried her best to discourage me.  I played all the instruments in my house-- not a genius, but it was comforting and felt like 'home'. I made up little melodies. In middle school and high school I was somewhat encouraged, and sang and danced in school performances. My older sister did as well... she was a natural drama queen, lol.

As a girl I was careful; it was the two of us, against conservative parents, and nothing was worth incurring the wrath of my older sister.  She was, unlike the dark Barbie to which I compared her physically, barbed.  She surveyed everything I acquired, suffered any accolade, and conspired to steal candy and gifts, which I freely gave her.  She was older; she had a certifiable mean-girl power. Despite certain talents which I was given, inherently-- I hid under a sort of cloak of mediocrity.  I had no ambition to be 'seen' or perform outside of the normal school parameters. I played our guitar quietly and secretly, shut myself up with books, early classic rock and Beethoven, and wrote my little stories and poems in notebooks which I've learned she discarded.

I've been reading Mann's Joseph and His Brothers.  It's an old translation, slow-going-- deliberately Biblical.  One must look up names and places and I've forgotten so much. But I've always been obsessed with the Jacob story-- the sibling rivalry, the stealing of the birthright.  Deception is common in these legends-- one wonders if the switching of Leah for Rachel was payback of a sort.  But clearly Jacob was the chosen brother... somehow the trickery was part of his destiny. And his acquired name, Israel, which I understand has something to do with struggle-- well, it all seems vaguely pertinent to the current situation in the Middle East.

Mann, at the beginning, touches on the Osiris legend.  I've always loved that name, and even as a girl, I wandered the Egyptian corridors of the Metropolitan Museum looking at images. But Osiris married his sister... and was killed by his jealous brother, dug up and put back together by his sister for enough time to make a baby, Horus.  It's endlessly complex and debatable and there are versions and tangents... but all of these histories seem to revolve around issues of parental favoritism, sibling jealousies... epic infighting. 

Joseph, the son of Jacob's beloved Rachel, was the favorite.  His fate-- both the good and the bad, seemed predetermined by the jealousy of his brothers.  Also his persona.  One molds oneself according to family peculiarities and dynamics.  But even as an adolescent, standing at the well, being scolded by his father, Joseph-- like a Biblical Elvis-- seemed destined for stardom.  While I am at the very beginning of this daunting novel and nearing the ending of a strange life, I can't help personalizing these issues. 

I've always shunned self-promotion.  Somehow it seems wrong for any kind of artist although it seems to have become not just prerequisite but part of the product. Of course they say success is generally the best revenge... but I'm not sure I ever wanted revenge. I just wanted not to be victimized.  What a terrible attitude this seems, in these times when even disabilities and flaws are displayed with pride. 

This new cd is the iceberg-tip of my productive output.  Were it not for the producer and arranger here, I probably would not have released anything.  I am grateful to him, for looking under the rock of my relative anonymity and wanting to chip away and bring a few of these to light.  Way beyond the threat of sibling hatred as I am, there is maybe a small sense of relief. Like Thomas Mann and the limited fame of this epic novel-- his personal magnum opus--  one is so often praised for the things that come easily, and overlooked for that which is difficult.  Unlike Mann, I will not be read by generations, or acknowledged by more than a small circle.  I am thinking more, in terms of this world, how rivalries-- jealousies, familial and tribal resentments-- national and political competition-- have destroyed so much of what might have been good and so worth saving.  

Don't Cry for Me, Minnesota

When I first arrived in New York, I dated a printmaker.  Not an artist, but a master printer who worked at a fantastic place where Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, Warhol made things.  It was hard work-- physical and artistic.  He was from Minnesota; I met him at a dinner. In those days there were these funky 'salons'-- people from Pratt or Parsons or Cooper Union-- they'd gather on weekend nights in small apartments-- walk-ups, or lofts which were under-occupied and commercially zoned.  Music generally came from a portable stereo-- or some people had guitars... but mostly it was artists, all dressed like paraders in thrift-shop wear, eating on boxes and cushions, smoking pot, drinking cheap alcohol.  They rarely shared work at these dinners-- it was about conversation and ideas. Some of them were to become famous... we all knew every single gallery show and the more promising among students stood out. It was like a mixer-- all this talent in a room, with smoke and quiet ambition and melting of ego. No photographs-- only the ones tacked on walls for inspiration.

Anyway, the Printer was out of place here.  He was shy, with his blonde ponytail-- half Irish, half Scandinavian.  He was sober and serious.  We went on a date or two; he had trouble speaking to me... he lived, fortunately, in a fantastic huge loft on the Bowery... which in those days was super affordable and of course he was well paid for his skill.  When I visited the studio to witness his work, I was overcome.  His technique was precise and masterly... the artists trusted and respected him enormously.  He spoke little and executed with brilliance. No, he had absolutely no ambition to create his own; still, he was a kind of maker. I was swept.  

The prints were pulled from these enormous presses of different varieties... laid out and then stacked when dry-- sometimes they were hand colored by the artist, but mostly they were piled up, waiting for the artist to sign, which they did, beginning with the one on top, so the last one pulled would often be numbered one of whatever.  Irony.  Of course they were virtually identical, but people are often seduced by the number '1', while the printer knows the last is first. 

Going through an old drawer of keepsakes last night, I found a handmade 'book'.  It was this lovely card from the shy printer, inviting me to come out with him.  Each page offered a different activity, with these charming illustrations and collages... like a children's book he'd created because it was so difficult for him to look me in the eye, or even touch me.  Last night, maybe 45 years later, it touched me. The smell of the paper and the inks in that studio, the phantom colors embedded in his rough hands... his sweater-- I remembered he insisted I wear it one damp early morning walking me home from one of those all-night soirees. It had a scent.  

My doorman told me last week that Low had cancelled their dates. Mimi Parker the singer and fulcrum of this band was ill and dying.  I remember so well their first album-- I played it over and over, went to an early concert where the breathtaking restraint of the music silenced the audience like nothing I'd experienced.  It was a small-ish club-- Brownie's?  I can't recall... but it was riveting and we went home without speaking.  I had a young boyfriend then-- it was romantic and the 90's in New York now seem so innocently grungy and real.  Night after night we'd put the cd on and it would provide the soundtrack to long hours of some kind of passion.  The music embedded in us-- it created a sort of Cathedral vibe, in my old converted-factory place with the sleep-loft.  Especially for musicians, whatever is on the turntable affects us-- paints a landscape. 

I'm sure thousands and millions of Low fans are mourning the loss of Mimi.  She was the epitome of unpretentious-- her voice true and crystalline-- soft and strong at the same time.  Minimal.  A worker and  musical angel. You'd trust her.  Apparently as a person she was the same.  Her life was perfect although she was a Mormon, but maybe that was part of her solidity.  At the funeral service in Duluth, everyone received a profiterole... and a recipe card. The message here to me-- is go on, be light and make something.  Each family also got a piece of her hand-sewn marriage quilt.  I'm sure the music was amazing... and by request, Tim Rutili performed his exquisite composition: 'All my friends are weeds and rain/All my friends are half-gone birds/Are magnets, all my friends are words/All my friends are funeral singers.'  

All my friends are funeral singers.  It seems not just cruel but wrong that a Mimi Parker is taken-- as though her number came up on the top of the pile, like a mistake.  Nothing is a mistake, Tyrone on 114th Street in Harlem announced last night.  There are regrets, there are omissions... there are secrets and lies, missteps and accidents.  But no mistakes. 

Tim's song is especially haunting for me as it goes on to say, at the end, 'All my friends are keeping time/ All my friends have just quit trying.'  If that is not a mistake, then it must be a kind of sin.  You may take time off to be a mother-- to love someone, to care for someone-- to fight a war, embrace some random person in an elevator.. but you must not drop your own narrative.  You must go on singing-- while you work, while you print-- in the back of your head... to accompany silently a Low melody or a lullaby, or the traffic noise. And at this point-- yes, to sadly recognize that we are all indeed funeral singers. 

The Suitcase

On the eve of my own birthday I find myself testing mixed waters of introspection, gratitude, dissatisfaction, nostalgia--  a murky pool or some kind of strange episodic soup.  Sink, swim, stir... ?  Things I never expected have been served up against a human landscape that is both familiar and ominous. Whether we thrive or survive used to be a choice; I'm not so certain anymore.  

Over the past few days I've had deep conversations with my girlfriends that prompted this state of ruthlessly self-critical reflection.  Of course the pandemic has forced many of us backward into a sort of Plato's cave of stagnation; I for one am truly disoriented.  I've been forced to distinguish between what I believe and what is true.  There used to be more clarity and confidence.

When I was a girl, my father kept a packed suitcase in the coat closet.  Not that he used it, but it was kind of a symbol-- for him, an escape hatch; for us, the threat of consequences if we weren't good children.  For my poor Mom, God knows.  So many of us girls have held onto relationships where one or the other keeps a metaphorical suitcase on some shelf... past, present or future.  My friends remind me periodically about the poor choices I've made in my life.  Choices, yes.  Poor? I'm less sure about that.  

This morning I read a Facebook post which mentioned a song I hadn't heard since I was girl and recalled how I received the record as a birthday present, so long ago.  It was the Who Knows Where the Time Goes album from Judy Collins.  In those years I listened closely to folksingers-- rock and roll-- anything that took me out of my teenage existence and into some atmospheric zone of music and daydreams and hope.  I'm not sure I fully understood the meaning of time; things often seem so drawn out and boring when you're a teen--  you long for things and they are at the other end of a school break, or downtown in the city where you are not allowed at night.  Time was often your enemy. 

All these decades later, the accumulated experiences are maybe more than I can fathom.  I felt so wrung out at 24-- I had achieved nothing... felt so worn and useless and 'old'.  I know that girl.  By the light of my laptop keys tonight the person I am now-- the writer-- has waded through miles and years of people and places- experiences, joys-- births, deaths, griefs, passions and emptinesses.  But I still know that girl.  It occurs to me that she was missing some kind of belief-- that the father with his suitcase was so absorbed in his own difficulties that he forgot to teach his children how to love themselves.  It was confusing.  

On the same album is a heartbreaking song called My Father.  I played that today... I remember how sad it made me back then.  I used to pretend someone else was my father-- someone kind and happy. Mine was so often dark and disappointed by life.  Unable to experience joy.  I failed him too... in his limited parameter of what children should be-- the acceptable journeys and small successes of life-- I had no place.  

I have friends who still, in their 60's, resent parental shortcomings, family dysfunctions.  It's not exactly that... I mean, we all have to find our own voice, but somewhere we also crave for those we love to be happy.  For my father, this was impossible.  I understood little his war experiences and heroics.  Medals and awards did not compensate for the horror he witnessed, for the guilt of survival, and maybe this inability to embrace life.  People didn't have therapy then, or it was taboo.  Even now, plenty of veterans live on street corners and beneath bridges- unable to process what they saw, unable to integrate petty daily life with the scale of violence and terror of war.  

I've been forthcoming about expressing my dissatisfaction with the relationship I had or did not have with my father.  I was relieved, in a way, when he passed.  I'd tried many times to make some kind of amends, but he was not having it. He hated everything about me, or I felt that.  Maybe, one ex-husband postulated, he was envious of my free spirit and my unconventional decisions.  It made him bitter... reminded him of what he missed.  Whatever.  I failed him... and somehow I suspect he processed this as his failure.  But listening to the song today, I cried my eyes out.  I'm a grownup-- beyond that.  I was hard on him, as he was on me.  But I should have forgiven him.  I couldn't possibly fathom the hardships he lived through and I was relatively spoiled.  So what if someone doesn't support your 'platform', ignores your work and product?  Being a musician, it's rare anyone really listens.  Not many buy my books and fewer actually read.  And I'm not any stellar example of thwarted or underserved talent.  I'm an independent woman-- a mother, a friend.. and forever, despite death, a daughter.

In honor of the song... rather than blowing out an unmanageable number of candles tomorrow, I think I will light one for him.  I know my mother was overjoyed on this day so many years ago... she celebrated me with home-made cakes and hand-knitted sweaters over the years.  As a grandmother she loved my son with all her heart.  Her husband? I don't quite know where he was... but he provided for us... he never used that suitcase; it might have been all he could manage, and for that I must be grateful.  

So I suppose the blessing of this birthday is that of forgiveness.  It won't come all at once, like a cleansing wind, but I will resolve to soften my heart in that direction.  I lecture people all day long about how the gift we give to others is the most valued we can receive ourselves.  Music is an amazing thing-- these soundtracks of our lives still have things to teach us, messages we can still hear, as long as we keep listening.  

Co(vid)-dependence

Part of my winter ritual includes interviewing prospective freshmen for my alma mater which becomes more and more beloved to me as I gradually become a little too old to be informationally useful to these young hopefuls.   It's incredible to me that it's been more than fifty years since I entered those academic rooms, with trepidation.  Some of us are brought up by parents who praise and bolster our visions and ambitions, but many of my generation were born into families that had narrowly escaped some form of hardship, and banked their future heavily on children.  So while my grades and tests were okay, the passions of my heart-- music and art-- were very little valued.  I entered college feeling sub-par, a bit useless and untalented.  

Face-to-face interviews were always standard, but the pandemic has prohibited meetings.  Personally I choose now to interview 'blind', by telephone without images.  God forbid these students (most of whom are scholarship applicants) should feel pressured to create a zoom 'set' for the likes of me.  Audio-only just seems more democratic and elicits a different set of responses.  Many of the names are difficult to pronounce; their origins and ethnicity, in the current climate, have become part of their currency, and predictably it takes very little time for them to reveal their affiliations and sources of pride.  I notice the Afro-American students are very Black-Lives-Matter confident.  They are involved and active-- they display healthy awareness and explain readily how they are going to integrate academics and community.  

But this year I have maybe selfishly tried to have a real dialogue about the challenges of the last two years.    I generally speak with many Asian students and once they begin to relax, they reveal things. Many of them use the word 'introvert' to describe themselves.  Their families are close-knit and often crowded into small apartments with multi-generations and new fears about the elder's vulnerabilities. But they spoke also about the hate-crimes perpetrated in their neighborhoods; their families were more protective and less permissive; one of them had a relative who was shot.  

So here are urban teenagers who two years ago were the most sophisticated-- now living a sort of claustrophobic, a-social existence. Many had been sophomores when the quarantine began-- just beginning to sprout wings and relationships... two years later they have been deprived of normal teenage rituals, and the natural intimacy of classroom camaraderie.  No one brushes their hand as they pass on the stairwell, slips a paper note.  There is no one to imitate-- dress, behaviour-- to envy, to dislike, to crush on.  I remember when my son was a teenager the operative word was 'random'... everything was 'random'. In my life, so many of my encounters and epiphanies were these privileged random moments and meetings-- this is why we live in a city of millions of intersections and concurrences.  Today-- this year and last-- nothing is random. While former life glided by on a metaphorical ice-rink, now we are slugging along in weighted deep mud. Two of my interviewees actually used the word 'depressed'.  Yes, we are having a major mental health moment here... and children are the most fragile of all because the present is everything for them.  They spoke in the third person but this is a crucial point. 

My son is so positive.  He never complains or worries me.  He's tough and goes forward, no matter what.  I am so impressed, especially coming from my single parenting as an open-hearted but honest human with flaws on display and worries.  Paralleling the not-always-accurate rapid tests, there is an epidemic of this sort of false positivity.  No worries, these people say.  Even the late-night hosts... they joke about roombas and their grooming lapses, etc... but they don't see the home of one of the girls I interviewed who wakes up in a one-bedroom apartment that houses 7 people... and tries to find a place to set up her iPad... no privacy, but also no companionship. The dignity with which she simply described, without a hint of complaint. 

Today I saw that Princeton has cancelled communal dining for now; meals are grab-and-go.  I could feel the anxiety of a first-year student who is shy and often a little isolated.  They don't always communicate insecurities because they are in a challenging environment and they are pressured to keep up.  I know my own first semester I often lingered over lunch and dinner, enjoying the company of others.  It is where I met my future roommates and boyfriends.  I felt connected.  It's probably part of the explanation for the well-documented weight-gain of new students.  Meals are their sanctioned down-time and they prolong it-- rationalized procrastination.    

Children are incredibly resilient.  They adjust to moving, to new siblings, family upheavals and even illness with amazing flexibility and courage.  Snow days, cancellations- for some these are new and fun.  They have time with family, time with social media.  But for others, it is like a punishment-- a sentence to be confined in a non-nurturing household.  Some of them are fragile and alone. Personally I would have gone crazy.  

Even now, among my adult circle, there are many who have adjusted with that positive facade to solitude. They post and write and play and sing.  Others are more shadowed.  Some have confessed their depression and sadness to me.  I share mine... the sort of crippling effect of 'less'.  For older people social interaction is harder.   I see friends who have become a little too comfortable with the curtain of quarantine, like a kind of life-mask they may never want to remove. For most of us musicians, we miss so terribly the casual real-time conversation of our instruments.  What I see on Facebook and on television for the most part is diminished... uninspired.. the tributes and re-makes... I am disappointed, mutually uninspired.  It's an unfortunate downward cycle from which I hope we will recover... but I have lost confidence. I am not like my son, and wear my broken heart often on my raveled sleeve.   

For these newly-labeled adults, I hope their worlds are not permanently set back by this strange vaccinated world order. I hope the institutions realize there is more discrepancy than ever in the lives of young students.  It's harder than ever to evaluate the potential of people who have been thwarted in their very sensitive growth years.  I pray for them... I feel their pain, even when they conceal it.  For my friends,  I am here-- a little useless with my open heart and my inadequate output, but still here, thanking God for the ones that remain.

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. 

Pet Sounds

Years ago in the city-- before the animal-litter laws and formal leashing enforcements--I took in a feral dog.  No one called it that, but it was definitely not domesticated.  It couldn't bear to be touched or even approached... but was so beaten up by the elements and other wild animals, it accepted the can of meat I offered it on the sidewalk of upper Madison Avenue one afternoon.  A week later, like some spirit-animal, it found its way from the Broome Street bar where it was tied up to the townhouse gallery on 92nd Street where I worked.  It waited for me for days until I came in. 

He got used to humans, and despite the fact I lived in this cool loft with a brick wall and a balcony where the dog could pace and watch the world, he'd give me this look every once in a while, like 'is this IT?" He'd take every opportunity to escape and run wild in the park or down to the East River, just to remind me of his roots-- his canine soul.  

The dog-to-human ratio in the city has increased since the pandemic.  Everyone has a dog now and many have new dogs or newly-acquired dogs.  Shelters have never been so empty.  In my building maybe the majority have dogs.  Not a single cat that I know of, across 48 or so apartments, but barking dogs-- large dogs, small dogs, neurotic dogs, sweet grateful rescue dogs.  It's nice.  After the death of my feral pet who lived an uncannily long life, I never replaced him.  Apologies to my son who wanted a dog so badly-- and I regret this, but I was so stressed with single-parenthood and working nights, living often from a bag of yesterday's stale bagels or leftovers... I just couldn't manage having to disappoint an extra pair of begging sad eyes.

Every day it seems one friend or other calls me to check in-- or really to check themselves in, because every single one has some complaint or symptom they had never noticed.  They are bored, they hate their spouse; they hate sex; they hate food or they eat compulsively.  They drink too much or not enough.  Their back hurts...  their leg hurts; their feet hurt.  They have carpal tunnel and hand tendinitis.  They are claustrophobic and nonproductive-- addicted to exercise or slobbed out watching hours of reality TV repeats with bags of Nachos and imaginary guacamole they don't even bother to whip up.  They hate themselves and do not shower or shave.  They order clothing that doesn't fit.  They lie to their family and themselves.  The cheaters can't meet their secret lovers and the users have trouble getting their dealers to meet them.  

Personally I feel dull.  I miss the conversational/musical stimulation of a good underrehearsed gig and the edge I take on at the end of a night, criticizing my own work to my peers, assessing the audience... sharing anecdotes from the ride home where at 3 AM there's always some psycho or self-appointed orator or performance-vomiter on the subway.  I remarked tonight that I used to be a C# minor chord and now I'm more a D-flat minor diminished.  Thats it-- I'm diminished.

But it occurred to me today-- we have become our own pets.  Our little claustrophobic daily routines, our limited circumferential routes-- even our eating-- we are leashed and restrained... dual-domesticated.  Even the bi-polar among us-- our extremes are room to room, not block to block.  We are stifled and tamed. We talk the talk, but we no longer walk the walk.  We can't... we're masked and quarantined.  We're leveled.  Sit.  Lie down.  Sleep.  We pick up after ourselves-- well, some of us do.  The other day my neighbors were in the elevator and I wanted to ask 'which one of you does the barking?  But I simply smiled with my eyes.  I've learned to do that-- straight-faced underneath.  It's a new kind of disguise.

When my son was little we inherited a pet snail from his science classroom.  It lived in a plastic salad container  and required very little maintenance.  Once a week I'd put it on the kitchen counter and clean the little house out.   Instead of pulling inside its shell like a frightened turtle, it let its antennae all the way out like it was stretching.  Extending.  I sang to it... figured it can't see, but maybe it could hear.  It seemed to tilt in my direction.  It was brave-- it was exploring the world outside its container.  Back inside, it would circle several times--laps-- like a swimmer without water, spreading its slime around the way they do.  His name, bestowed with the innocent irony kids exude, was Speeder.  He, too, lived way beyond the normal expectancy of his breed, but there you go.  He had his little routine, his little life-- his outings and his feedings.  

My personal production this week oozes rather than runs.  I'm beginning to feel like that snail in my container-- all of us-- corralled and boxed and restrained-- slowed down... becoming in a way complacent and compliant with what we have, with the future sequentially postponed in blocks of time that melt and freeze like those soft Dali clock faces hanging on lines.  Even the dark of days' end is greedy and quick; we are deprived of long sunsets and poetic evenings. Trapped like leashed dogs, like fish in a bowl, like amphibians under rocks-- alone in our doll houses and little plastic cages which social media has rendered transparent, we are our own voyeurs-- performers and audience simultaneously.  Sometimes I feel as though I could be eating that plastic sushi you see in restaurant windows.  With our diminished smell and taste, we Covid survivors-- what difference would it make? We are no longer feral; we talk about our masks and wash our hands and don't touch one another.  

Last night as I ran around the reservoir in the wind, a duck was squawking.  What was it saying... maybe 'is this IT?' I envied it the freedom to change ponds, to get up and fly away.  I wondered if it could see the cartoon-colored lights of the southern skyline from the park-- the way it's changed, as though it's another city altogether-- another backdrop, another 'set' which emerges with more and more clarity as the leaves disappear.  I remember the ducks in Iceland-- how they didn't seem to mind the cold... and the night I buried Speeder by the Meer-- sadly, in the moist black dirt, noticing as I held him one last time how he smelled of the sea.

The Color of Blood

Over and over I hear myself repeat-- to no one in particular-- Forgive me, I have fallen in love with solitude.  As though I am unfaithful, ungrateful... and not unaware of the kindnesses that have graced me recently, the way a thin blanket of spring snow unexpectedly coats the world with a soft muting of color and sound...

My calendar is white; my schedule is the timetable of grief.  Relief comes occasionally with digressions into other universes... imagination, listening to music, writing.. those meaningful phonecalls from my 'family' of friends who reach out and exchange sad moments the way we musicians trade eights.

My son, as always, is so positive. This is his 'role' in the passion play of life.  He looks ahead-- fully subscribes to the promise of future and tolerates the present with a cheerful stoicism.  Mom, he says,
when I speak of my suffering friends-- these people are not your problem-- don't enlist.  I am grateful that his DNA somehow balances mine-- he is the counterpoint to my dark melody.  I am the strings-- I dream in 'cello' I remarked in a note to someone last night, who surely knows what I mean.

What I do not say to my son, who may have had his young heart broken or threatened at a sensitive time when his little soul decided pragmatism was far preferable to melancholy, is  Oh, but they are my problem.  Early this morning-- the 'end' of another of my unregimented days, I watched the painful testimony of George Floyd's brother on national news, against new footage of fires burning in Minneapolis.  For those who grew up in the 1960's, these scenes are all too familiar... the urban manifestation of anger and horror at atrocities inflicted for centuries now, in the name of racism.

It baffles me that even within a single family unit some people grow up with prejudices, hatreds, resentments-- downright meanness.  I spent years trying to unravel harsh criminal riddles... it seemed there had to be a reason for cruelty and violence-- a reaction-- like a scientific principle of physics... but this only applies to a small fraction.  This morning I found myself weeping with the CNN journalist at the frustration and sorrow of a man whose brother had virtually been executed on national television-- all justice denied, humanity at its very lowest and worst claiming a life for absolutely no reason-- the misled cruel child holding a kitten underwater, torturing animals for entertainment.

It is not only one of the most disturbing pieces of video we've seen in a long time, but deeply provocative and infuriating.  I was ashamed of what it seems to mean to be a white American, and tormented with guilt for our helplessness here.  As though we have had not had enough death and suffering, had our lives frozen in the face of a tiny biological enemy who can take the breath away from grown men; here we watched a uniformed man purporting to represent authority and law violate and render powerless a strong un-uniformed individual-- the audacity, the lack of respect and humanity-- the sick twisted miscarriage of authority and justice.  There is no greater crime than to deprive a human being of life.  What have we become?  What have we been?

I'm not sure if anger tempers sorrow somehow; at least it has a correlative action.  I know that justice is a balm but cannot compensate for life lost.  Hate crimes, for most of us, are unthinkable... what makes people behave in this way?  Our earliest literature and art caricatures and personifies human vices and sins, as though these are a 'given'.  Most of us are less familiar with the virtues.  The current America is not just sick with a global pandemic, but the pre-existing condition of epidemic greed and
economic disparity.  By far the majority of virus deaths occurred in the zip codes of the poorest communities.  My friend and musical partner who died was eulogized and celebrated internationally; not so most of the quiet victims.  The NY Times listed them, but we all saw how tiny the figure-- how brief the description.

Today I am sad for my America which when I grew up I personified as a handsome boy-- on the edge of possibility. Now I see my country as a ruined, stooped man with a cane, bleeding dollars from stuffed pockets, blind and deaf to misery and inequality, myopic and small-minded, drinking from the fountain of greed, drunk with selfish misconception.  From my heart George Floyd, I  am so sorry.  To every black man I pass in the park at dusk who waves to me, as if to reassure me-- I am 'safe'-- I apologize.  To the cashier in Harlem who no longer packs groceries with gloves because, he tells me-- they protect me but not you-- I could kiss him.

And to my first husband-- for his utter colorblindness and courage to play with white musicians when few black players were doing so... I learned so much about the world from you who had scarcely read a book when we met, but could speak bass like no one else from stage.  What a rich life you gave me in those few years-- opening my ears to things I'd not understood,  crossing boundaries and defying conventions... it is to you and the greater understanding and love of music I owe part of this debt of solitude... may you be happy and safe and steadfast in your refusal to be tainted by the ignorance of unfortunate haters and traitors.  We bleed the same color, you used to assure me... you who even then was surely more evolved and compassionate than most of us will ever be...
Amen.

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.

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)

Instagram Coffee

When I first went to college I signed up for a minimal meal plan, to save money for tuition.  There were no cooking facilities or even refrigerators in dormitories back then... I had one of those cheap little electric kettles and I bought myself packets of instant cream of wheat-- a relatively new product.  The previous years I'd gone to high-school in a morning session (over-crowded school-scheduling) which required a 5 AM wake-up to walk dogs and put together a sustaining breakfast.  I cooked myself a pot of hot porridge or wheat cereal-- this took some twenty minutes-- with butter, cream (yes-- my indulgent mother) and brown sugar,  cafe-au-lait-- which had to get me through six long break-less hours until lunch. Even the memory of it is hearty and good.  My first homesick dormitory morning of instant mush was horrifying.  It tasted like paper--was either pasty or soupy-- gritty and awful.  Coffee was no better.

I've never been able to drink instant coffee.  As low-maintenance and minimal as my eating habits have become, by necessity, fast food has never been my thing.  I like brewed coffee-- pour-over, fresh-steeped.  In my son's well-designed office there are several varieties of machines which produce a perfect cup in seconds; individual servings with endless combinations of roasts and flavors... lattes, espresso, cappuccino-- all pre-measured, packaged in a disposable clean pod... all tasting, to me, suspiciously like airport coffee.  I've noticed many, many new chains of dedicated boutiques, all featuring some brewing or roasting specialty-- the craft of coffee, the process-- some at a premium that rivals the price of a good pound of fresh beans.  They all seem to have a following.  It seems even the post-millennials know the difference between office-brew and high-test.  My son goes out to Starbucks for his caffeine fix.  Manhattan is packed with chefs and food choices.  While McDonald's and Burger King don't seem to suffer, restaurants of all varieties,-- take-out trucks and stores offer seriously decent dishes for every meal.  Sommeliers have never been as sought-after; cheese experts, pastry chefs are in high career-demand.

So what happened to music?  Why do we get this variety of instant shake-and-bake beats and lyrics that pass as records?  Where are the writers and the inspired, tormented poets-with-guitars?  Out in a tent on a backroad in Mississippi?  Sleeping with the gypsies in a caravan in Croatia?

I've been playing in bands for 40 years or so, and consider myself a second-tier musician.  I sympathize with the geniuses of my circle who surpassed their curriculum before they even entered music school-- who could not only show their teachers a few things but can play their proverbial asses off.  Many of them live in low-income or subsidized housing projects.   Some of them are dead, having indulged their souls and bodies in the process of challenging their own talents... or tormenting themselves in the self-doubting ritual of most brilliant artists who see the light and cannot quite get there every night.  Few of them receive the acknowledgment they are due; they must turn on award shows and watch the endless accolades of achievement doled out to the mediocre and uninspired.
It is like watching a cup of instant coffee win the taste award year after year.  It's a depressing sentence.

On another level, I co-host a weekly jam in a New York City club whose name bears tribute to one of the great figures in American music.  Many of our friends and wonderfully talented colleagues join us in celebrating our community here, in perpetuating a certain tradition.  But nearly every week we are joined by someone who gives themselves a list of credits-- who gets up onstage and displays the musical flavor-profile of a water-cooler-style instant coffee.  Do they get this?  Are they listening?  I don't know.  Some of it is simple skill and practice.  Some of it is 'ear'-- the ability to discern what is good from what is merely adequate.  But much of it is simple failure to listen.  Can these people distinguish a freshly-grilled burger from a fast-food filler-patty?  I would think so.   But here they are, offering up the audio version of plastic food choices, sometimes via instruments which belonged to celebrities before them, which cost a small fortune, but sound cheap and misused.

Or is it that we are not just deaf but blind?  In this world of a billion pairs of fashion eyeglasses, people do not see themselves.  We have Beyonce-unlikes who flaunt themselves on the street-- women of age with enhanced lips and injected faces who choose to dress and behave like their own daughters.  I remember becoming 40-ish... I could see in the mirror I was turning like a late-summer leaf-- from a youngish woman to a mature one.  At first I was panicky and loathed myself-- discovered tricks of hair-color and make-up.  But then I began to realize it's not so bad-- I don't have to be beautiful all my life; it's time to focus on content.  I've been loved; I can still continue to love.  So I have left behind my girlhood; there is still the memory and the experience.  And now, I have long left behind my 40's and in photographs quite see the beauty I did not understand at the time.

Recently I had an accident on the subway steps; it wasn't too serious but I noticed my knee had somehow kept the memory of some old injury and was stubbornly refusing to heal itself.  It was reminding me of my past-- fiercely holding on to some long-forgotten fear and stress of pain-- maybe from my ballet days.   A friend of mine has had a cancer recurrence.. like a message from his body-- a voice-- a scar which was untended.

Late Monday night, after my gig, I watched St. Louis Blues on some free non-cable network.  This is the story of the great W.C. Handy-- his struggle with music.  Even the actors playing these roles-- Nat King Cole, Eartha Kitt--- Ruby Dee... had a kind of genius and exquisite talent we rarely see in our time.  The voice of Eartha Kitt-- unadorned, unadulterated-- those eyes-- I could not take my eyes from the screen.  The temporary blindness of W. C. Handy-- the depth of his musical nature-- how he nurtured and groomed this as he matured.  I think of my fellow musicians here--- even myself, with my handicaps and mediocrities-- how many thousands of nights we stood trying to understand ourselves onstage-- learning to listen and find our place in the music; how we suffer and starve-- me, the Princeton summa cum laude girl with the scholarships and accolades-- struggling to just be-- to let go of being loved, admired-- to be sometimes misjudged or slighted, hit on by club-owners and horn players--- chided, praised, cheated, marginalized and drowned out-- just for these moments of musical truth-- for my tiny contribution to something larger.  I am no genius; I am a cog, but I think I am finally a listening, genuine cog.

W.C. Handy had his retribution: parental forgiveness, restoration of sight-- great lifetime acknowledgment.  Not so for me-- I have my old scars, like the pain in my knee which will heal, telling my story, somehow inserting themselves into the music-- the experience, the joy, the sweat and truth we try so hard to convey, with tedious long years and words-- 2-track soundbites and voices ringing like old bells in the face of the Instagram wall that stands before us with ever more facile digital brickwork, every day.  And yet, I wouldn't trade a single analogue minute, old and scarred as I am, me and my vintage guitars, my scraps of paper and my dreams.

Noise of Summer

Summer mornings, rather than waking abruptly,  I occasionally slide from sleep into a sort of continuum of awareness.  Maybe it's the open window-- the way muffled night sounds blend into day noise-- a sense of nostalgia in the warm breeze, the birdsong-- but sometimes I forget where I am, what phase of life I am coasting into-- a sort of soft landing… as though I am steering through a dream, and for seconds feel I can time travel.  I often think of my Mom-- she is somewhere between life and death, between awareness and dementia-- and I miss her voice, her quiet singing and those kitchen sounds that are part of all of our personal geography.  During these moments, I can bring her back-- I can bring myself back… I listen for familiar clues, for music.

Most people these days reach for their phone, upon waking-- the way we used to reach for our lover, check the alarm, calculate how we could prolong morning bed-time-- before children, responsibility, reality called us into our day.  For some of my friends, waking brings the hard landing of depression, of regret-- we are no longer who we were, we are no longer lying with our great loves, no longer waiting for our babies and toddlers to jump on us with their laughter and their affection-- our puppies and kittens have aged and passed on.  Here we are with our past-prime selves, reconciling our agenda with
another remembered present… bringing the sounds of the day into focus.

Friday afternoon I went to have my hearing checked.  I am on Obamacare-enforced medicaid, like many of the income-challenged in this city, and while they relentlessly remind us to visit our healthcare facilities, they generally cover very few reasonable remedies.  Reluctantly I agreed to see the audiologist, having abused my ears for a lifetime, played ten thousand loud rock and roll gigs swimming in decibel-rich oceans, weathered a virtual hurricane of guitarists who have heard little above 4,000 Hz since their teenage years.  Many of them nevertheless lay it on for the rest of us, like a thin audio sandwich slathered in ketchup and mayonnaise so the main ingredients are virtually indistinguishable.

Not that I am innocent; volume was definitely my substance of choice, I confess to the ENT specialist who made me earplugs 10 years ago when a European tour left a permanent souvenir in my ears.  I remember how as a young player I'd melt into Marshall stacks and absorb the aural loops and acrobatics of stage audio.  I'd imagine riding a rough massive sound wave which rose and curled and brought me breathless to some new beach of musical denouement... but like all great drugs and unprotected sex-- there's a price and I am paying it.  My Dad survived five years of combat with some wounds and scars; his hearing loss was low on the macho-hero list of complaints; there is no purple heart for inner-ear damage.

In the city, there is a constant subtle roar; some neighborhoods are louder, but few are completely free of this-- motors, traffic, air conditioning, underground sounds, airplanes and helicopters-- the cumulative buzz of voices-- a rush, like wind-- even in the quiet patches.  There is very little silence, and when there is-- in these dead audio moments, I am aware of the rushing in my ears which crescendos to a whistling in the hours after loud gigs.  Yes, I now use my earplugs-- my protective devices which are a little too little, a little too late… but they take the edge off, and they don't really ruin the experience.  Some of my peers lament their hearing loss chronically.  They miss their old acuity and the way music sounded.  For me, I chalk it up-- I'm alive... I can put headphones on at medium-volume and still indulge.  There is perpetual noise in my life.  I ride subways, I walk the streets, I leave my windows open and hear the living sound of urban energy, like a blend of grey-waves.

What surprised me Friday is how little my hearing parameters seemed to have changed, despite the tinnitus.  I can understand speech, and apparently the new normal is significantly less acute than it was years ago.  Look around.  Scarcely anyone in the city is not wearing earbuds or some kind of headphones.  Speak to anyone on the street and they first remove their device.  On subway platforms musicians are playing to a vastly diminished audience; most everyone has their own portable entertainment in their phone.  But the ambient noise level-- when trains pass, especially dual trains-- exceeds most normal phone volumes.  No wonder we are an increasingly deaf culture.

Like the old Luddite I am, still without a cellphone, I am hyper-aware of the constant public phone-use.   Everyone in the street is talking-- earbuds in, microphones on-- looking straight ahead, and having a conversation-- on buses, trains… in elevators, at the gym… everyone is talking at once.  It's loud, as well.   I often wonder if lovers ever have those late night phone-in-the-closet dialogues when they sleep apart-- where listening is the focused activity.  No visual-- nothing but waiting for the voice on the receiver telling you what you want to hear.  It was everything-- the whispering, the confessions… the sound-on-sound intimacy.  We exchanged our first words of love in the dark, this way, so many of us.  It felt important and sexy-- listening.  It was all we had, and we invested in it.  Anyone could pick up another extension and eavesdrop, but it still felt so private and safe.  With all the texting and face timing, I don't think voice-to-voice communication is the same.

The face of the city has changed so drastically.  Many of my friends spend time on sites that post old photos of New York.  They look important and great to us, these images.  What people don't often speak about is how the sounds of the city have changed-- how not just the music has changed-- but how the way we hear music is different.  We are in our own little worlds, listening to our personal downloads-- watching clips, sampling songs-- texting and sharing… but essentially we are solitary. We are missing that version of conversation-- whispering, lying in bed in the morning with the street sounds seeping through windows, the stereo on… looking up at the ceiling, sharing our dreams and plans… inventing dialogue-- a version of love that relied less on visuals and more on what we said and how we said it.

So while I function with a soft roar in my ears-- a whistling and ringing and rushing I can never remove, I realize it is the memory of things I heard that I value more than the actual sound.  Like a painting of the moment-- a cinematic recreation rather than a digital accuracy, or like old photographs where not everything is in sharp focus, but the image is somehow present, and important.  I will take my audio memories any day, vintage as they are, faded and fingerprinted with static and ambience, blurred like dreams and weighted with longing and love; I am still listening.  

The Anti-Saint

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...'