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.

Camera Obscura

When my adorable son was barely three years old, he came upon his first 'little person' on line with us at the supermarket.  After thoughtfully scrutinizing her, he cried out… 'Look, Mom! It's a girl just turning into a lady!' Of course it is difficult for young children to comprehend the phases of life-- the concept that they are going to grow up, that their own parents and Grandparents were once young-- that this is a slow, gradual, continuous process.

Now that I am entering a late phase of life,  I again find it hard to grasp the lessons of time, to accept the harsh losses and assimilate the regrets of my peers who seem oddly unprepared, despite decades of identical 24-hour daily allotments, for their senior years.  Recently I saw my Dad cross over-- cross, with all its meanings, is the appropriate word, because he wore a tough and cantankerous skin over his purple hero's heart, even in death.

My mother, on the other hand, has deteriorated slowly and with a kind of demented grace.  She sits in a chair like a soft throne, with her thinning white hair pulled up in a tight knot, her famous cheekbones still defining her profile, her skin still soft but papery.  It is her eyes that tell the story-- watery, unfocused-- occasionally expressive but progressively less and less present.  Where are you, Mom-- in some honeymoon dream with your handsome decorated lover lifting you over some threshold, standing above the falls with the deafening roar of water rushing you off into another undertow of memory? It is difficult to know whether the sadness I read into her increasingly blank stare is hers or my own.

From her chairside, I facetime my son-- her favorite grandchild, the nurse-companion assures me-- and the three generations share a moment.  He is quite a man now; time has done its work here, too.  I meet his old school friends on the street and some of them have begun to lose their hair and take on that look of premature disappointment men in their 30's and 40's often wear.  The babies I held so recently are adults now-- the young couples I knew are turning grey, losing their religion.  Witnessing these passages is the way I process my own.  I am relatively unchanged, consistent.  I have different expectations.  I gave up on my vow to own a limestone townhouse on East 70th Street; I no longer want one.  I treasure my things, my books---  thank the angels I can still play bass and write songs and poetry.   I ask for little else-- can survive on the barest minimum in this city where I feel rich without money.  Yes, I was fortunate enough to have had the foresight to invest in an apartment when they were oh-so-cheap… exchanged vacations, movies, restaurants-- for a home, 'ant' that I was, having left my 'grasshopper' husband in the UK with the rest.

When I moved into my building it felt palatial.  We'd come from a studio apartment; my son endured his kindergarten friends remarking he slept in a closet; he did.  The head of our new coop was this elegant, intelligent woman who turned out to have been the fashion editor of the New York Times at a time when this was culturally important.  Her husband was a world-renowned Swedish photographer whose fashion photos were spectacularly smart and iconic.  Since I had a Swedish boyfriend, our kinship was sealed.  They took me under their wing, so to speak.  I adored them.  We shared evenings and ideas.  They were perennial attendees at my all-night musical Thanksgivings, and were treasured and wonderful guests.  Gus, the photographer-- also shared my passion for music.  He came to my gigs-- even the difficult solo ones-- critiqued my songwriting with brutal honesty and a sharp POV… gave his opinion freely of my friends, their work, etc.  He came to school events and photographed the children.  He'd knock on my door at night when I was home and sort through cds and art books.  He brought me albums and tapes and taught me so much about jazz.  When I visited Sweden, I'd bring him small things… I even photographed his boyhood home-- the apple trees and the stream running through his memory.  He was like the father I never experienced.  His love for his own children was boundless and unconditional, and somehow he realized I'd missed out, and generously shared a paternal affection.  I was proud of him.  His choice of wife-- stellar.  More than anything-- his decisive modus operandi-- as though he knew exactly what he thought and wanted and laid it out there.  This is rare.  True honesty and a point of view to go with it.  He attended coop meetings and harshly criticized injustices.  He supported me in my crusades and shared my sorrows without pity.  As a couple, they were the emotional roof over my head upstairs.

As he got older, he was a little more cantankerous-- scolded my friends at my own table, announced he disliked people to their face… knocked on my door and demanded that I cook him Swedish meatballs, bake him cookies-- insisted on eating on my sofa where he left stains and spilled wine.  Whatever was on my stereo, he would take it off and put on either Bud Powell or Art Tatum or his very favorite, Slim Gaillard.  He liked a bit of humor with his jazz.  He loved women, beauty in all forms… and knew how to convey a message with an image.  During the last year, he began to pocket small things from my apartment.  I caught him in the act once, and he responded, without remorse,  'You don't NEED this.  You don't even notice it!'  It was as though he was aware our time was a little foreshortened, and he needed some souvenirs.  He was becoming greedy of moments as the sand ran down in his hourglass.  I, too.

Last week he passed away.  My grief is disproportionate; after all, I am not even a relative.  To their children, with whom I am not nearly as intimate, I can only express sympathy and condolences.  To his wife, who somehow understands my attachment, well.. I will cherish the future hours we can hopefully spend together, sharing ideas, like two women.  She is the maternal role model I never had; the enduring, amazing wife-now-widow.  I will listen and learn what I can, while she is here and generous with her evenings.

Recently an aging fashion designer stopped me on the street and asked for them.  They were quite the 'it' couple in their day, he always assures me, and generally accompanies this with an anecdote or two.  This time, for some reason, he graphically described the palpable chemical attraction one could sense between them in their prime.  For some of us, imagining people in their 80's and 90's as the Rihanna or Brad Pitt of their era-- well, it takes imagination… but I have learned now… such is time.  These waves crashing onshore at this moment, the surfers riding this crest, the shells and animals and fossils that we find in their shallow temporary graves at the water's edge-- will be less than memory in mere minutes.  All our selfies and photos-- well, they are just digital sand.

The images Gus left behind-- both photographic and realtime-- are etched in my memory.  The photographs are fortunately ingrained in the internet and in books; he has left a hefty legacy and will not be forgotten.  It is his persona that has left a mark on me-- the in-your-face direct line to his mind-- his affection, his humor-- his laugh, not to mention his gorgeous physical presence and unique style even into his 90's-- his personal fashion and his pride, and his compassion-- his unequivocal appreciation for whatever I had made, and the example he set as a father, a husband… and a friend.  I grieve for selfish reasons, as one does.  Last night, in tribute… I reached for my Slim Gaillard… and it had vanished.  Dearest Gus.

Hard of Hearing

For about a year I was obsessed with this blue house uptown in East Harlem, by the tracks on Park Ave.  It was on the market for what seemed like an incredible price; I just had to find people to buy this-- to convert it into artists' studios-- a foundation, a home for me.  It has its own garage, back porches… a roof garden… multi-paned windows on 3 sides-- old moldings, a front stoop-- a face… it smiled at me, welcomed me.  Great things were going to be created there.  It had a soul, a heart-- I could feel Christmas there… old Christmases from 100 years ago-- a house with stories to tell...
Are you kidding me, my investor friends all asked, practically in unison?  Who wants to listen to machinery whooshing by all night?  This is an unsaleable lot, they insisted, unanimously.

But there are very few trains at night…  the sound of their approach,  their disappearance into the tunnel, or off toward the country--for me, is like a lullaby.  It is the sound of time, of distance…  even the whistles comfort me.

I have new neighbors downstairs-- the kind of people who pay cash for more space than they need, who acquire multiple apartments and gut-renovate without regard or respect for the building, for its history, for its soul, for their neighbors.  They were so friendly-- and then their contract was signed and they began the bullying soundtrack of rich people who see anything besides their own noise as annoyance.  People who see a coop as a business deal, not a communal living arrangement.  People who order staff around, have no manners or style-- just the loud irritating voice of large annual bonus money.

Although their young son has a drum kit and takes lessons, they do not like music.  They have written letters to management stating their upstairs neighbor has full band rehearsals at all hours.  I scarcely play here… I've had people over and have to field my new neighbors' complaints that they are trying to sleep at 8 PM-- whenever.  They are loud and discourteous.  The father speaks on his cellphone on the street-- they are noisy and cook smelly food that permeates into my closets.  Their air cooling system flushes itself through the bathrooms.  They bang on the ceiling with some kind of pole when a car passes at night with a loud radio.  They insist, because they know I am a bassist, that some kind of low frequency motor sound is emitted from my apartment while they are sleeping.  My space occupies about 1/4 of theirs.  They have several bathrooms while I have one.  When a recent leak in their ceiling caused water damage, they insisted the plumbers drill out my old tile floor and disable my facilities.  They threatened to sue, even though the fault was in the pipes, not my fixtures.  They have zeroed in on me as their target.

Fortunately most of the residents here have defended me.  They know I have lived here many years without issue.  We enjoy one another's piano playing and singing-- parties and laughter.  Famous musicians have practiced and lived here.  The ghost of a deceased Russian composer supposedly inhabits my apartment; she flickers lights on winter nights while I play my J-200… maybe she is playing tricks on the people downstairs who are ill-tempered and selfish.  While they wait for their building permits allowing them to destroy any marks of history in their space, I think about warning them that a bad spirit is down there, that the couple before them argued constantly, slept in separate bedrooms.  Pablo Casals once rehearsed in their living room; there is an indentation in the wood flooring where his cello rested.  They will surely have this removed.  People buy these beautiful old landmarked spaces now and turn them into soul-less post-modern model units.  Then they move; they flip.  They move on to bigger and newer projects.

I just finished reading a new book called 'Every Song Ever'.  In it Ben Ratliff thematically runs through records-- pieces of music-- performances… he illuminates what for him makes these privileged listening experiences.. the art of production,  the vision of a recording or a song-- he makes you stop and listen with his ears.  Some were things I'm familiar with; some less so.  His writing is good and he broadens an auditory moment into something visionary.  Whether the artist intended this or not-- magic often happens when musicians are in a moment.  Ratliff is like a guide on small song journeys.  I enjoyed this, even though I usually hate music criticism.  Here it felt more like appreciation.  He shares his POV and his genuine enchantment as an audience.  He is a privileged listener and so many of us, in this culture of a trillion sound bytes per day, have forgotten how to listen-- how to filter and prioritize what we hear, how to isolate the small human miracles that are sound-based and allow them to enter our body and soul and change us, make us better.

Recently I was at the house of a musician and he played a record for me-- an older record.  When I hear this, he said, it reminds me of the way I used to listen to music.  This touched me.  We players of rock and roll have damaged our ears with thousands of uber-decibel performances.  We have ringing, buzzing, the constant sense of wind, whistling… some of us can tune this out.  For most of us, volume was a drug of choice.  We must have known we were abusing our senses, but it felt like a religious experience. The power of sound enhanced.  We were transported.  Some of us were so high we didn't even notice the dangerous frequencies.  My first Who concert was so loud it was painful… but I wanted more.  Most of us now use white noise in our homes-- because the sound of silence is a reminder that we have done irreparable and annoying damage.  But earplugs in our 30's and 40's were not an option.  We embraced the wall of loudness like a surfer waits for a terrifying wave, and we paid a certain price.

New York City never sleeps.  There is not even a moment where traffic ceases, where activity stops.  Of course we are better able at 3 or 4 AM to decipher sounds--- but for anyone who has raised kids in the city, these children generally are terrific sleepers.  I could vacuum my son's room without waking him.  We 'accept' noise; we tune out the constant drone of things, and have to be reminded to 'hear' car sounds, etc.  Today 90% of the population walks around with beats or earbuds-- listening to phones and iPods, to our own private soundtrack, on top of the constant one on the outside.  We are hearing-tolerant.

My new neighbors, on the other hand, are intolerant.  I realized tonight--- they are listening for the sound of silence… and there is no such thing in the city.  In their spoiled demanding MO, and their inability to perceive what is obvious, things like footsteps, creaking radiators, rushing water, and the sound of life annoys them, unless it is their life.  They are like a barking dog who is trying to express his dissatisfaction at being locked inside while the world goes past his window.  They are the rock-throwers in the lovely glass building of my life, tantrumming and whining and exaggerating and complaining because they resent everyone who is not inside.  I am the enemy-- the squirrel running along their windowsill they cannot quite catch.  Ignore them, my building management advises.  But I don't like their kind of black-noise, red-noise, noisy, smelly ugly-noise.  Their barking.

My lovely blue house has been sold.  How I long for the night sound of trains, the whistling and rumbling without competing traffic noise--  the sound of every city everywhere because almost every town has its railroad;  the nostalgic old reminder that we are safe here in our bed while the world goes on around us, and people and things move from place to place while we sleep.  It is comforting and human to live in a city.  When we are sad we can walk outside and find a human voice, an all-night vendor who is happy to talk about the elections, to whistle a song, to remind us that there are other ears besides our own, and when we grow tired of conversation, we can sit on a stoop under the streetlights and listen quietly to the sound of trains in the cool night breeze of passing cars.