.. Like a (- -) Cigarette Should...

My father, either from some residual emigré paranoia or fear of commitment, kept a packed suitcase in the  downstairs closet. So when he warned my mother sometime in the mid-60's at the family dinner table, 'Either quit smoking or I'm leaving,' she took it seriously. With wet eyes we ceremoniously flushed the last pack-- one by one. 

Nearly every childhood memory of my mother involves her graceful hands, her perfectly manicured long fingers, and a lit cigarette with old-world elegance between the first and second.  It was so much a part of her silhouette-- of her attitude and her fashion gestalt.  In photographs she is a bit like a 50's film star.  And while her health and life-stamina undoubtedly profited from giving up the habit, I never again found her image quite as seductive and appealing.  It was as though she gave up a shadow-persona or stopped dreaming and became simply a mother.

At the age of ten I used to steal a few cigarettes from the lovely silver and porcelain boxes that were laid out on nearly every end-table and surface in the den and living room.  These were a part of interior design culture-- accessorizing, the way flowers or bowls of things are casually strewn around contemporary rooms-- books and magazines.  Most of one's guests were smokers.  Ashtrays were everywhere... clean-up chores included dumping these before bed.  

But I'd steal one at night while I walked the dogs to the end of our dead-end street... I'd stand in the shadow of the streetlamp and pretend to inhale... watching my silhouette turn into a more womanly version of myself.  I felt grown-up-- and imagined myself in all kinds of mysterious scenarios. My older sister was often scolded for hiding packs of Winstons in her purse... I thought perhaps she and my mother were conspiring in secret. Neither of us really acquired the habit, although most of my boyfriends were heavy smokers. It was part of being cool and nonchalant; it made everyone seem older.

In high school kids smoked on the pavement outside... it was a sort of sign. Everyone had their personal style. As a musician, guitar players had their little tricks-- a cigarette somehow balanced in their guitar headstock, drummers with one hanging from their mouth while they played... and the whole front row a smoky backlit second stage of audience, providing atmosphere. Jazz bands with the spotlight suffused with tone looked magical.

When smoking was banned in clubs and restaurants the whole culture changed... photography changed, attitude.  We were less hidden and in clear, naked resolution.  Of course drugs were invisible... alcohol. But things were different.  I had a boyfriend who would smoke one single cigarette after dinner; this took discipline, but it was kind of a remarkable habit and I envied him his eight or ten minutes of escape into some other world. 

There was a bouncer at one club who against rules would light up after hours.  He was built like a tank and wore a solid gold pitbull around his neck. Who's gonna tell me to put this out he would ask me if I raised my eyebrow?  Ain't nobody.  And he would puff away with his whiskey.  I loved it. 

I've been reading Per Petterson the Norwegian writer.  One after another-- like pack after pack-- it became a two-week addiction. His economical sentences, the clear sense of presence and observation and his brutal self-chastising. Cigarettes are ubiquitous-- not an accessory but a device.  It occurs that what I love most about his writing is an ability to dissect a moment.  One wavers with him-- his human fallibility and hesitance... as he drives or walks-- barhops, weathers relationship failure and loneliness, as he processes grief.  

Somehow I feel I am inside his head-- through the translation, despite the unfamiliar landscape... he recruits the reader somehow. At least I found myself weeping with his disappointments and failures and sadness. And I remember the sense of smoking-- the way it is in a 60's film... the way it accompanies pauses and silences.  A cigarette allows one distance-- breath, ironically... to dissect a moment.  

I can remember putting coins into a machine for my Mom and pulling out Winstons or Kent... it felt like an important task and I knew it was like opening a book for her-- more than a habit, more than a need... more like a change of costume, or a privileged moment.  She escaped, she coped; she dreamed.  More than anything I miss this version of her.  

Often I wonder whether my own son will remember me on a stage, playing bass--- in another kind of state--slightly removed, in a smoky room... not just a mother but a person.  Music, too-- the experience, and even the memory-- allows one permission to dissect a moment... transforms one... of course there is no souvenir here-- no pack to discard or keep... no co-conspiratorial vibe, no grace of inhale... no breath.  Nothing replaces the simple ritual; it's become unhealthy, part of the now visually nostalgic normalcy of 60's movies... 

We've come so far... our 21st century wisdom so easily accelerates action, trades one vice for another, deletes romance, miscalculates the slow revelation of a simple action that was available to nearly all of us. The next generation will doubtless recall their parents differently... will doubtless not feel enchanted and moved by footage of Willy DeVille on a stool, swathed in the smoke of his stage cigarette and the spotlight, while he sings to us how heaven stood still.

The Waitress Said 'Come See Me'

My friends spend altogether too much time reminiscing.  It seemed okay during the pandemic, when we'd call one another and just float time like a newspaper boat in a pond; but now it seems to waste precious moments we could be putting to use-- to age us.

Occasionally my son likes to see old photos of the Manhattan he recalls.  He's still young, so it's not as depressing when we share memories. He thinks he recalls subway tokens-- and I go on about the price of things on old menus and window-displays.  I remember when bus fare was increased to 35 cents.  You needed to come up with that extra dime to throw in the till.  

My first real post-college job was a gallery on 69th Street off Madison.  Every morning I'd buy a coffee and a buttered roll for exactly 35 cents.  I began to walk... to use my bus fare for breakfast. Inside at work we'd all sit and gab about the night before-- the 70's were exciting times in the city-- music, new restaurants... everyone seemed to know where everyone was.  The art shows that changed monthly-- we could cover most of them in a week on our lunch hour-- Castelli, Schoelkopf, Wildenstein, Knoedler, Martha Jackson.

I came back to New York post-college, to pursue a career in art restoration.  I'd worked hard to qualify for an exclusive dual-doctorate program affiliated with the Metropolitan Museum.  Just acceptance here was like an award.  I managed to score a house-sitting gig on the upper east side that first fall... I'd walk across 79th Street mornings and I'd pass this diner-- the kind you saw everywhere in those days, that no longer exist.  I'd look in and see the waitress in her pink dress and her white apron going from table to table with the glass coffeepot, refilling the cups of mostly businessmen with open newspapers and an egg-plate pushed to the side. I'd stare in at this waitress with her hair in a French knot, her efficient white shoes and her white-stockinged legs, like a nurse.  

Meanwhile my brain was memorizing images from 17th-century paintings, and Cathedral details from the Medieval Architecture course.  I was deciphering formulae for the sciences of pigment analysis, X-ray spectroscopy and varnish-removal-- examining textiles and canvas weaves-- identifying geographic provenance from materials... distinguishing forgeries and re-paints from the authentic object.  This fascinated me.  

But more and more I thought about the waitress.  I'd stop behind a telephone pole and watch her through the glass-- her every move and her signature gestures.  I began to envy her, as though my then-boyfriend was her admirer.  Her life-- it was so simple.  I was so broke-- picking up extra jobs, baby-sitting at night, living on cheap supermarket past-sell-date items... walking, borrowing books.  But the waitress--- her apron pocket full of change, she could break-- fix herself an egg-salad sandwich on rye toast (whisky down), smoke a few cigarettes with her coffee, read one of the tabloids a customer had left.  And then she could go home where I imagined she had a neat little studio, maybe a cat-- a plant, curtains.  She could do her nails and watch TV all night-- or meet someone for a drink.  

The academic soup of my life began to sour.  All that work-- four more years after eight intensive undergraduate semesters where I grew and learned and produced.  I couldn't quite imagine myself at the end of the road, applying for a museum position-- spending a decade on a single Rembrandt painting-- analyzing, cleaning, in-painting, repairing.  Who was I, I wondered, with this calling, to examine paintings, to fix things as though I were a doctor-- things that were dead, things that maybe were better off left alone, as they were?  

On the other hand, the waitress served people-- lonely men with bored wives who no longer fixed their breakfast-- single bachelors whose newspaper time before work was the best part of the day-- where for less than a dollar they'd be served exactly what they ordered-- eggs over easy or sunnyside-up, with buttered toast and that wonderful bottomless cup of coffee that washed it down. A quarter for the waitress who provided exactly what they needed.  

My boyfriend at the time was a guitar player.  He worked clubs late hours; I tried to be there, but my class schedule was demanding and a sleep-deprived mind was noticeably inefficient.  On weekends I'd hang out late; after gigs we'd go eat at a diner.  The waitresses flirted with the musicians... at 4 AM it was mostly bands, bartenders... a few drunk party-goers... but the waitresses were like 'home' to these guys. They welcomed them, brought them food, ashtrays, coffee refills.  One in particular was so beautiful... she slipped my boyfriend a note with her phone number.  I found it in his pocket.  She made silver jewelry in her spare time. She looked like Dylan's Susan... the perfect Greenwich Village silhouette.  Downtown girls could wear jeans with their white shirts... they looked good. They were mostly kind to me, except one who had actually slept with my boyfriend.  I tried not to be jealous.

It wasn't exactly the person, it was the simple symmetry of their life. They served, they laughed and talked, they smoked during breaks, they went home with full pockets.  They shared shifts and gossip. They slept all day and woke up to work, like the musicians.  How many songwriters have written odes to them, how many poets-- me included? 

Waitressing doesn't seem to have the romance it did in those days-- when it was like a template for something.  My morning trips past the diner haunted me beyond what was rational; I took a leave from graduate school, and never really regretted.  When I started playing bass in bands, I referred to my gallery job as my 'waitress' gig.  It enabled me to do what I needed to do at night where my life seemed to make sense.

Years later, as a young mother, I spent early mornings with the baby in a local diner, lingering over the breakfast special and looking wistfully at the passing cars. There was a career-waitress there who sat with me during breaks-- she had the deep voice of a chain-smoker and the hard 'r's of a New York accent. Cawfee, she said, and entered soprano-range when she cooed over my son.  I loved her; I trusted her even though she had terrible boyfriends who stole from her and abused her.  She didn't even make it to middle age; she got a brain tumor and suffered.  All those people she served and cared for, smiled at and nicknamed... they disappeared like a pack of cigarettes.  Her drug-addict boyfriend kept her rent-controlled studio for a time.  I saw him pan-handling one afternoon and choked back the urge to smack him.

There should be, among the city statues and landmarks, a waitress figure-- a woman with her hair in a ponytail, or a net-- an apron, a pad and pencil... a menu.  The real symbol of diner-lore, of the city... the person we've sung about and chatted up, the one who changed my life even though I never even spoke to her... who showed me maybe not the path to what I was to become, but the reality of what I was not.

Vacancy

Here in the city, living as we do in cubicles-- stacked space, with shared walls or ceilings... it is hard to establish good fences-- physically or metaphorically.  The behavior and culture of our neighbors affects us more than we would like.  The noise-- their habits, their courtesy or lack thereof, their comings and goings and those of their friends-- well, we often know more than we want, and vice versa.  While the pandemic has silenced parties and gatherings for the most part, there is still a sort of presence adjacent or upstairs.  I hear my neighbors exercise, occasionally cough... argue....  In March/April it was as though a mute had been placed on everything.  Many people left the city for safer space in the country.  Some moved out permanently.  The nightly 7 PM noisemaking for essential workers was an event-- a relief, for those of us who are accustomed to a certain level of sound.

I have written a poem about my very first apartment, where through the ceiling I heard violent, hysterical arguments-- pleading... tears and weeping... it was disturbing, and affected my belief in my own relationship, although the couple upstairs seemed meek and innocuous when they emerged from the elevator.   My second apartment-- the studio where I relished my party years... shared a wall with a strange man who smoked and watched a gigantic television 24/7.  Though he had a balcony he literally never stepped out.  He'd bang on my door when I played music too loud... and considering the size of his television speakers, he had a flawed case for complaint.  He bullied me a little-- would look behind me to see what was going on.  Otherwise we never spoke.  One night when he knocked, I had some visiting members of Steel Pulse there-- a reggae band from the UK.  With their dreads and innovative hairstyles, they turned heads on the street, even in the 1980's.  Two of them who  were tall and buff and shirtless knocked back at him.  'You have a problem, man?' they asked, calmly but firmly in their West Indian accents.  'Because if you have a problem you need to take it up with me.  You have a problem?'  That cured.  He never knocked again.  One evening when the superintendent was inspecting something, I looked in.  The whole apartment was like a Holiday Inn room-- with two empty chairs, a coffee table... not a single accessory besides a giant ashtray, the TV and these curtains filthy with old stale smoke stains.  I'm sure he is still there, although undoubtedly forced to take his cigarette breaks on the street.  

My current home for two decades has been a haven for me.  Maybe seven years ago my downstairs neighbors sold their gigantic apartment to a Brazilian family.  They were kind and friendly-- until the day they closed on their home.  I had two friends over-- a Sunday afternoon before Christmas... we were doing a vocal rehearsal-- not usual for me.  Anyway, the husband burst in and announced he could hear us.  As though he and his three kids and dog didn't make a sound.   This felt like an invasion.  I'm an adult-- I own my home, have been here for twenty plus years without an issue.  Of course we are aware of one another-- children practicing squeaky violins, opera singers, parties... happiness... I am not the person who plays in my apartment--- yes, a little acoustic guitar but my professional musician friends had gigs-- we don't entertain in our homes.  It was a rare guest who sat down at my keyboard and proceeded to belt out a song.  Not in my 'wheelhouse', they say.  But I felt ambivalent.  I was technically within rights, but also loath to create in-house tension. 

Anyway, the Brazilians pushed and pressured-- as though there was an agenda-- they needed renovations because of their upstairs neighbor?  It was unclear.   One day the wife came upstairs screaming about water in her apartment-- no pipes above theirs in mine; the damage was from a higher point, but I was blamed and also had to allow the plumbers to demolish my walls to access the issues.  She stopped speaking to me and made a sort of pout whenever we had to pass in the hallway.  I became an untouchable.  She forced her husband to do all the calling and whining.  Not to mention their son had a set of electric drums.  They were very noisy people.  Did I complain about her high-pitched screaming, the children's lack of musical ability, her husband's hallway calls to his broker in Brazilian?  I did not.   

At a point they moved out and a crew of construction workers moved in.  For two years, well beyond all permits and allowances, they drilled and hammered-- caused my apartment to be covered in plastic protection, spread dust and debris everywhere-- damaged walls, electrical... not to mention ear-splitting noise.  Me, a day sleeper... was put into a state of perpetual exhaustion.  It was a nightmare.  Even my building management read me my legal rights.  I have never been interested in money, but they eventually sent a professional crew in to thoroughly clean everything-- every book was removed and replaced-- every cd, every album.  It was painful to witness, and like a shuffled deck of cards, nothing has been quite right.  But I settled in. Their occasional complaints were addressed to the super.  They spent summers in the Hamptons so there were periods of peace for me.  I prayed they would move.  After five years they listed the apartment for some obscene amount.  I prayed more... then the pandemic came.  Worst of all, they hired a cook.  Despite my lingering covid-anosmia, it was like a Brazilian garlic cloud hung in my closets, exhaled from my clothing.  Out of some twisted sense of dignity, I refused to complain.  

When the New York Times article came out (which was mistaken for my obituary), my other neighbors circulated this around the building.  The Brazilian wife gave me a token little greeting one day... as though my Ivy League pedigree had shamed her into some kind of apology.  Not exactly...  and besides, they went to the Hamptons for the warm months.  You can play your bass, she said to me, as though giving me an award, and as though I tormented them with amplifiers and decibels (I do not).  

Last week-- just like that-- they left.  Like a swarm of bees, or locusts.  Done.  For a day there were loud sounds, a huge moving truck, and then silence.  Apparently they've gone to Miami where hopefully they will have a huge tract and no neighbors.  I've grown so used to the annoyance of their hostile presence that I feel anxious about who or what will replace them.  It warned me, in a way-- took the safety factor of my home, left me wondering when someone would ring or phone or complain even though the sounds that bothered them were probably not even mine.  I began to pity them-- their shoddy renovation, their attempt to customize their home-- the dearth of culture-- books, art, among the generic furnishings.  Their petty priorities.  

There are motors in the alleyways, exhaust fans and laundry equipment... like occasional tooth pain or a headache, most noise subsides, recedes.   People who are sensitive this way do not belong in a city-- in a communal living situation where we share air currents and sound waves-- where we breathe and exhale in unison.  Some nights when I was awake writing in silence on my laptop I could swear I heard her husband snoring.  These intimacies are not just disturbing but embarrassing.  TMI.  

Five years ago I would have been elated to see them go.  I have some affection for most all my neighbors but these were like constant thorns.  Because of the pandemic, we have learned to trust one another less-- to distance ourselves... we fear one another.  We can lock our doors, but we cannot keep the virus threat outside.  We sleep with anxiety and wonder when and if we will return to life as it was.  I play occasionally-- I write... I read... but I don't feel the same exhilaration of music, the same camaraderie, the same assumptions.  I am quiet.  I can't blame my downstairs neighbors for taking away my sense of security- of safety and insulation... because they have left behind another kind of emptiness.  Maybe even they could not bear the silence-- the absence.  

Last night I woke up and smelled the ghost of their cooking-- that Brazilian stew or meaty pong that stayed around long after meals were done.  The windows are quite dark.  In the middle of these nights when I miss things and people especially, could it be that I count their narcissistic family among the absences?  I never really got an apology; not in the vocabulary of such people.  I will get over it, will recover from the low-level abuse and discomfort of bad neighboritis.  I doubt they will read this, but they were part of my life and I bid them despedida.

Losing My Accent

It's been years since I watched a DVD on a television screen; my player is one of those VCR dual purpose machines that is no longer even patch-able into any viable system.  But recently I figured out how to connect my computer to TV, and as a test, I used an old video someone converted to digital.  So there I was, 30 years ago, puttering around a former apartment which in itself brought up a major nostalgia wave.  I loved my 'bachelorette' pad-- the compact but cool bi-level loft with the brick wall and the balcony where I'd hosted rockstars and journalists, wild parties, intimate candlelit dinners, rehearsals, recording sessions, baby showers and toddler play-dates.  Where I'd gone from vinyl to tape to cd, from Smith-Corona to Microsoft, from art consultant to bassist, historian to songwriter, 20's to 30's, single to married (and repeat...)...

Suddenly this woman who coyly shielded herself from the cameraman and then with candor dropped the charade was devastatingly familiar... and yet so far away.   I suppose since I've ignored the whole phone-culture, the selfie-obsession, the instant i-Movie phenomenon... I'm missing a couple of generations of self-documentation.  But thanks to the thoughtfulness of a visiting friend with a video-camera, a few 'slices' of my life-as-a-mother were recorded, along with some footage of me at the age of 9 playing Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz.  Where the little girl in the sailor dress seems like some random animated doll-puppet, the young mother at home with her baby-boy was this woman I wanted to know.  It was as though I suddenly understood what men found appealing all through those years-- this casual grace, an unstudied sense of style... black hair pulled back in a cheap barrette, strands of hair falling like a shadow across a face I recalled like an old actor in her prime movie.

I've never been a mirror-worshipper-- rather a mirror-avoider.  There is a time, however, in nearly every girl's life where she makes this leap from awkward adolescence to some kind of swan-hood-- a moment where her body makes sense-- whether it is in a dance-class, on a sports field, drawing a picture-- acting-- suddenly you are a coherent 'being'; your parts work, your brain works.  You cease to be a duckling and you are given a glimpse of your potential-- your power.  For some of us, the accident of physical beauty provides either a motivator or a hindrance.  For others, the confluence of emotion and intelligence and action just seem to synch up and suddenly we are 'real'.  A camera can either confirm or contradict this perception; of course now, there are so many digital manipulations available, one can't really trust a photo.  Sometimes it took that moment where we were chosen for a part-- a team-- a friendship.  That boy we crushed on suddenly looks at us as though he's seeing for the first time... or some amazing new girl in your class wants to be your BFF, with blood signatures and clothing exchanges and vows.  It feels good.  We are validated.

In the video I could feel that validation-- a confidence, a confirmation...  her smile, her speech-- the calmness... as though life was a slow river and we had all the time in the world in this lovely boat of love and relentless gifting.  Even the baby could feel it-- he was relaxed and easy, and the way mother and son touched one another was so lovely... with trust and a profound sense of family.  I was absolutely mesmerized; the idea this was my 'self' was both exhilarating and devastatingly poignant.

My friends and I have come so far.  So many have veered off the road-- passed away from illness or accident or suicide.  Many have dipped into the lowest emotional depths.  Aging is difficult. Personally, I do avoid mirrors but being a working musician, I see the photos-- the craggy shadows and lines I do not cover over.  I see myself as a tree in winter--- the same branch-arms that once were dressed in lush green are now craggy and stiffer.  They have yet to break off-- I find a kind of brittle strength in these years, but my old beauty is missing.

Looking at the video again, I remember I had two lovers at the time; one was tall and southern- -the other was young and slender and European-- a musician, like me.  The young musician moved in and for several years we maintained a kind of family... but this ended, and he returned to his home.  There were other lovers, other roommates... the southern man and I are still close friends although there have been distances between us.  I can remember his face-- he reminded me of a young Gregory Peck and it took my breath away.  Now he is nearly as craggy as I.  He often brings me lunch and we take trips together.  Today he mentioned how he hates his southern accent.  For me, it is part of what I love--what remains.  Every once in a while he slips up and says 'si-REEN' or 'GUItar' with the accent on the first syllable.

Recently I've been interviewing kids for my alma mater-- mostly young women and many of them recent immigrants.  They are altogether so anxious to 'lose' their accents and become fully integrated American girls.  I look back at the young woman I was 30 years ago and understand why my Mom nagged and nagged me to make better choices while I laughed and smiled and waved her warnings away... all these years later I see how she understood that the 'accent' of my womanhood was something I would eventually leave behind.  Time is on your side for oh-so-long... until it isn't.   Which is not all that bad, I will testify...  wishing a heartfelt 'carpe diem' to my readers.