Maundy Thursday

So it's April... for all of us fools. In two days the weather has dangled a bit of midsummer tease and barely twelve hours later punished those of us who packed away winter gear.  I went walking through Harlem, comforted by a single pair of geese in the Meer pond... they looked elderly, black-faced, leathery and thin. Fearlessly they came to greet me and took that pose geese couples seem to prefer-- one standing and one roosting. 

With my sack of cheap groceries I thought about my financial adventures... I began as a student with extra jobs and hourly tasks, found myself doing well selling art and making music. In my punk-rock phase, one of the guitarists squinted at me over his shades: You can play, yeah, but you play like you've got a day gig, he observed. Taking his dare, I quit-- I crossed over into full-time musician.  Not easy-- alternating the 'for art's sake' bands with more lucrative ones, still managing to avoid the grind of club-dates and cover-music.  I was working.. earning cash to pay bills.  In black jeans and motorcycle boots I'd never felt so 'pure': I had a purpose, a calling. I loved going home on the subway at 4 AM with cash in my pocket after sometimes two shows.  Daytime I ran around from rehearsal to studio... a bass on my back... I was connected. 

While I passed on some lucrative opportunities, there were a few highs and lows; I managed to buy an apartment, have a baby, move to London and back. As a senior musician, I have lost so many friends and bandmates to industry and life attrition, it's truly wearying. My steady gigs have imploded, many of my favorites have either left the earth or retired. The ones who remain are less reliable; there is illness, injury, arthritis and hand issues--joint replacements-- and just plain exhaustion.  As I've said hundreds of times, the pandemic aged us; it changed the culture radically. My only safety net these days is a barely-adequate social security payment. Despite a progressive city mayor, our government is deteriorating. America is like a dysfunctional family... absolutely no stability even among the questionable presidential circle.  No predictability either, Pam Bondi being the latest to bite the dust. 

It mirrors the fickle tide of instagram culture-- this turning on and off, the 'it' girl of the moment becoming a future victim of the current foundering system. The future itself is unreliable and ominous-- war and the monsters of Hollywood are looming.  Portioning out the few dollars available to me, I regrettably must pay into a failing medicare system which I once believed would protect me.  There is no protection for the poor... and the debt-burdened middle class who choose to imitate the rich-- well, no one will bail them out either. 

Circling the park, I couldn't help hearkening back to the early pandemic weeks when this was my life: the braver among us venturing outside, viewing one another with caution, hiking our urban paths with palpable dread. At least money was a little less pertinent; everyone was vulnerable and the rich were as deprived as the poor. One bright spot: our government took pity on the self-employed and reached out and supported us musicians.

On a bench close to 110th Street a man was washing his feet.  I suddenly remembered Maundy Thursday. Beside him was his friend in a wheelchair, with no legs. He waved at me... smiling a warm, gap-toothed greeting.  Running around was someone's little dog in a quilted coat and booties.  The man in the wheelchair held out his hand; for me the irony was too much. These days I'm always on the edge of tears. 

In Trump world, we're on our own. No sympathy, many devils. The inconsistency of a truly incompetent leader is unnerving. I am waiting for this to be over. We march, we protest... for a few hours we feel a sense of solidarity and comradeship.  We are democrats-- we can make decisions and preserve freedom.  But can we?  These midterm elections will be a challenge... the very system is being undermined. The stock market level baffles me when it seems all bets are off. But the rich are adding to their stockpiles.  America is going to the moon once again... March Madness generating more money than ever.  The enormous gambling/betting industry is not just a trap of illusory hope but also erodes our faith in the innocence of sports. 

Some of my struggling friends obsessively buy Lotto tickets. Others post relentlessly on Facebook soliciting viewers and promoting gigs. A few get paid to entice people into online games.  It's humiliating.   I'm still living with no frills, putting every spare dollar into yet another printed book no one will read. What matters is what we do, not the admiration or remuneration we receive.  In spite of the mess, something of this old vision must remain. 

April brings the return of pigeons to those of us who live on single-digit floors. I've said many times the only thing worse than fucking pigeons is pigeons fucking... which they do-- often, with loud lust in the courtyard outside of my bedroom window. Flying rats, my neighbor called them.  I feel mean; sometimes I cannot help admitting their iridescent beauty and other times I see them as a swarm of fat predators soiling my sills and the sidewalk. I tried this morning to remember the heroic among them-- the carriers in wartime, the John Wick Koch Bridge flock. It's hard.  Maybe they are the city welfare class of birds. They seem to stay away from the park where other breeds thrive. Sometimes I do talk to them but have learned that little tilt of their head means nothing and they don't care. 

Meanwhile we have the ubiquitous dog population-- supporting a whole canine industry of fashion and insurance and cuisine that dazzles. I love animals in general... but now I've read they are contributing massively to climate change. And for those of us who work and write in our apartments, many neighbors are unaware their dogs are vocal during the day... maybe they are agitated by the pigeon antics. In city courtyards it's near impossible to identify the source of sound-- it is like a cavern, with echoes bouncing in all directions.  And with city building ordinances, it's more than likely that one of the adjacent buildings will be repointing with its own relentless decibel assault. 

And yet we April fools love our city life-- well, most of us, anyway. The rich will take off summer weekends, return tanned and refreshed.  Me-- I'll sweat it out again. I gave up my straight gig for the life of a musician... the guitarist who dared me passed away long ago... but he changed me. The dream was real, and I loved it.  I still love it. Not sure where I belong... but it seems to have its own properties, this quandary of my own design. As one of my newer songs concludes, 'There's nowhere I belong.'

Stockholm Syndrome

I was in Sweden last week.  There were those late-nights when nothing much was happening, including sleep, and I turned the television on in my hotel room.  Not inclined to pay for premium or anything else, I am always surprised to see what if any of American pathetic reality-fare makes its way into Scandinavian standard broadcasting.  The only thing I could find was Naked and Afraid, and a constant home-renovation network.  So it was CNN for me, to get a little home-news.  Unfortunately the big story my first day was the Harry-Meghan drama.  Right away this did not seem viable.  I can't imagine any kind of car-chase in Manhattan; it's just not feasible. But the endless hours of commentating, the speculations and comparisons and the drama... well, ad nauseam.  There was virtually no other news.  While I've given the demoted couple a certain benefit of doubt, it was a Trumpian moment for them.  I placed a theoretical bet that it would take twenty-four hours for the correction, and there it was-- the humble cab driver, with a reality check.  It made the King and his Queen-consort look immediately better.  Even Oprah might regret all that money she doled out.

Then there was the Columbian plane-crash survivor-story.  Yes, we all want to pray and believe in these miracles... but to replace reality with a fairy-tale is not only news-unworthy but fraudulent.  Still, their fate is unclear.  What is clear is the unreliability of these news platforms which in their desperation to achieve viewer popularity seem to have blurred the lines of journalism and reporting to succumb to the public hunger for drama. 

Two young men came by to visit yesterday and we fell into the inevitable recurrent theme of 'the good old days' when not only originality was prized, but we took for granted the solidity of information.  Fact checking, accuracy.  The actual version-- the truth.  It takes me way too much time and a semi-analytical brain to sort through daily accounts of events, medical claims and recommendations.  Every news platform has a slightly different version of things. Like an old person's eyes, it takes a bit of time to gain clarity.  Maybe it's the quick-firing in this internet age that encourages premature ejaculation of information before it is verified or chronologized.

One thing I'm here for, back in the US, is the basketball playoffs.  And as I've said before, the beauty of sport is there is a clear winner. There are playbacks, disputed calls, a few disparities and bad behaviour, but for the most part, they even out in the end.  Grudges and prejudices get diluted by the number of games... we watch over and over the replays and footage from all kinds of angles, and a decision is made.  Hardly anyone blames the faulty hoop or the greased ball or the score-keeper.  It's not an election, but isn't it a little pathetic that a large part of the population can't seem to process the official decision of a national political process? The electoral officiators do not seem to have the authority of a sports referee. 

My son and I had a great discussion today about the athletes who refused the vaccine.  My position was always a little controversial, but as a covid survivor who donated blood and plasma pre and post-vaccine, I still respect a decision by someone whose entire life depends on their physical health.  Part of the problem here was the lack of transparency and clarity on the science.  Once policy was determined, in a culture of personal freedom, we are not used to being compelled to do certain things.  People were still getting sick; the data was not solid.  And it shifted-- it evolved.  The virus remained one step ahead of us, and that was worrying.  

In Stockholm, aside from collecting dust on apothecary shelves,  I saw not a single mask.  Nor on the SAS crammed airplanes I took back and forth, despite perpetual coughing and sneezing and obviously ill passengers.  As long as it was not Covid, no one took notice?  The airline boarding forms, if one read the fine print, asked one to agree to wear a mask on the flight.  This was obviously ignored.  And back in New York City it's pretty much business as usual.  The East Village bars, and Times Square are packed... clubs, restaurants seem more active than ever.  People are joyful and unafraid.  Yes, I still have a few acquaintances who cling to outdated virus-prevention like a dysfunctional marriage.  But they are the unhealthy ones.  What is undeniable is the skepticism toward information-- the mistrust.  It is just misplaced.

Who is to tell us in whom we are to trust-- in God, as our money states? The value of the dollar fluctuates daily-- a few of our 'solid' banking institutions have crumbled recently; do we blame God for this?  Greed? The compulsion to amass sums of money beyond the use of any human being?  The competitive and swift transfer of multi-dollars for ideas?  The very backbone of our government is tested by the debt ceiling.  What happened to dollar-for-dollar economics?  I worked my entire life to receive a meagre social security check every month.  I put this money aside.  As a self-employed struggling musician, I paid twice what a payrolled worked deducts.  I was honest and reported and paid in.  Am I to be punished for being a 'solid' citizen?  

So I will still watch my man Jimmy Butler and Jayson Tatum competing for an NBA title-- men who are earning more in one game than I have earned in a lifetime.  More than Babe Ruth maybe earned in a lifetime.  I will watch the scores rise, and witness the baskets that make these up.  Unlike the news which comes afterward-- the debt ceiling talks, the CDC pronouncements and the stock market numbers, all of which are questionable to the likes of me.  I admire the basketball skill-- the performance-- the clarity of outcome.  Let the talking heads discuss the upcoming election endlessly... for now, at least, in Basketball I trust. 

Homeward Bound

On the way home last night, I hitched an uptown First Ave bus; it was after midnight-- my card was near-empty but the driver was kind and waved me on.  The ride uptown took nearly ninety minutes.  It seemed every stop was crowded with the down-and-out crowd.  By 34th Street the bus was jammed with passengers-- many of them homeless men and women with oversized carts filled with stuff.  The stench was strong, but the driver patiently rolled out the handicapped ramp and let them all board, mostly without paying.  it occurred to me that they wait for this man-- maybe the beginning of his shift, and they know they can rely on transport, these forgotten untouchables.  Maybe some of them ride all night to stay warm.  A few disputes erupted among cranky territorial passengers, but for the most part people were complacent; many came from the VA hospital, Bellevue… a drunk man kept yelling he needed a hospital… but then he passed out and slept like a baby.  It was a kind of pre-Thanksgiving reality check.

When I was young, I used to visit my friend's grandparents in the same building where I now live.  It was a little far uptown to be fashionable, in those days-- a great old turn-of-the-century prewar with a grand lobby but no doormen or luxury services.  Their space was massive-- lofty-- with skylights and high ceilings, and resembled my imagined version of a successful European artist's studio c. 1900. It stretched from one end of the building to another, with huge windows onto upper Madison Avenue.  Sparsely furnished, there were plenty of loungey sofas and reading chairs with quaint lamps-- tables and ashtrays-- window-seats and desks.  As they were part of an important publishing firm, they entertained writers and intellectuals; there were books everywhere… yards and yards of shelves, and piles and piles of treasured volumes, magazines, journals.  The radiators clanked in winter; in summer, in those pre-air-conditioned years, the top floor was sweltering.  The park was half a block away, and there was often a breeze on the roof, if you climbed up at evening.  It was a source of gossip and rumors-- secrets were exchanged here, a few inappropriate relationships, many drunken dinner debates-- a million cigarettes, deals inked and stories begun.

The sprawling apartment-- undecorated and decorous as it was, felt like the heart of adult New York.  This was what I would be when I grew up and got old--  a host-- a home-conversationalist in a book-lined room alive with  dialogue and energy-- ideas and excitement-- like a sort of club whose membership required no dress-code or mindset, but a passion for literature and art.  But more than anything-- it was a home.  You knew where you were when you were there; you could wander and browse, sit and lose yourself in a poem or look out the window… but you felt 'embraced'.

Thirty-five years later, I bought into their building-- a funky back-door apartment in need of renovation but with the pedigree and bone structure that had become part of my Manhattan dream.   It was cheap and a little dilapidated, but I was a young single Mom and felt so empowered to have bought what would really be my own true home.  My first Thanksgiving was blessed, for so many reasons… but I felt the tradition of that building, even though the publishing family had died long before, and that grand space had been divided into smaller units.  There were neighbors who had grown old in this place that seemed magical to me;  there were senior couples with piles of books and great art and they welcomed me into their homes with the often shabby old chintz curtains and the beautiful but worn Persian rugs; they spoke the cultured and human language of old New York; they had ideas-- they loved music-- they wrote, still read Latin and Greek, many of them… they treated their neighbors with kindness and generosity.

In those years the old building had a single employee: a superintendent who'd been born here… he was in his 60's, had raised his family in the ground floor rear unit.  He painted, polished brass, cleaned the old marble.  The rest of us chipped in and tended the garden, had lobby parties-- we were a true cooperative in the old sense-- a group of tenants who all cherished our home, who seemed to agree that our space and privacy were sacred.  Our individual priorities included maintaining a low public profile, modest monthly fees, a non-pretentious simplicity of style.  The architecture spoke for itself-- a quiet, old elegance, without luxury.  They welcomed me-- financially limited as I was, because they knew I was happy to be part of this lifestyle.

It took years to fill what seemed like a massive space to me-- to furnish it with my books, the art I've collected over the years, the finds and objects, the old furniture I've gathered at random auctions… It is quite full now-- my instruments, the things I love… I have quite everything I ever longed for as a young woman… and yet I am no longer content and secure the way I was twenty years ago.  In the early 90's, I helped a senior woman in my building-- Jane, was her name-- to pack up her spartan belongings.  Regretfully, she told me she had intended to die in this apartment, but her very modest pension from years of brilliant editorial work no longer covered rising maintenance costs.  I recognized so many of the wonderful books we carefully piled into these boxes like relics from a life well-lived and no longer valued.  The economy had changed,  New York had undergone a massive progressive facelift; the Wall Street culture had created a greed-bubble that has not just priced most of us out of the market, but has altered the rank-and-file New York City human profile.

While Jane was forced to move in with her son somewhere out of state, I find myself living on $3 a day most weeks--- having given up all luxuries including the subway, some days, in favor of walking, rice-based meals… my entire annual clothing allowance is less than some people spend on lunch.  Haircuts… movies… vacations… a day at the beach… have been so long left behind… but these days I dare not buy myself even a coffee.  Until last night's ride, I have been plagued with my annual Thanksgiving dinner anxiety-- putting on a brave face while calculating how I will pull together the meal on a skeletal budget, how it will set me back.  But turning the key into my place-- like a souvenir-shop of my life, a three-dimensional photo-album of memories-- I realized I was 'home' and the idea of these people on the bus having nowhere to 'let down' just seemed tragic and inhuman.

In recent years young bankers and hedge-fund managers have recognized my old building as the potential cash cow they envisioned. These families renovate, destroy, combine, disregard… and then sell. They have way more space than anyone requires; they are rarely home and they have no observable sentimental possessions or books. They have architects and designers, and mostly photoshoot-ready but soulless apartments.  The ghosts of former tenants and the spirits in old walls and floors sigh and creak at night.  The old radiators still bang, although they will manage to eradicate these eventually.  They have forced doormen and lobby improvements-- fancy elevators. They have usurped the great old roof with their equipment and air systems. Even as the smallest shareholder,  monthly costs nearly exceed my very humble income as a musician/poet.  My slender spending habits have become emaciated.  And tonight, as I listen to the soft roar that is New York City seep through my leaky windows, I wonder if these people feel 'home'.  As in home-less.

There is some George Segal movie on from the 70's and this is New York, the way I remember it… before clothing advertised things.. when even rich people's apartments were comfortable and slightly messy and filled with things... when hair was not perfect and women had wrinkles and the buildings looked habitable and a little dirty.  I realize I am of a dying or defeated generation here-- hanging in, holding on to what I know and love-- my building, my old guitars… sentiment...

Things change-- I know this, and not all change is bad. But this Wall Street generation changed the rules for many of us who thought we had secured some kind of tranquility for our older age.  Our trusted annuities and medical plans have been up-ended, our modest pensions have been diminished and decent healthcare is precarious and prohibitive.  I naively bought shares in a wonderful institution, only to find myself a tiny minimized partner in a corporation with an agenda of money and attitudes and little regard for human values and the great cultural mesh upon which this city was founded.

I will be home for Thanksgiving, and I will try to forge onward and resist what feels like a tidal insult to everything I am.  My neighbors will never share a bus ride like the First Ave. M15 at 2 AM; they don't want to see or smell this kind of thing, and they seem to enjoy the demolition of old walls as much as they enjoy their indulgent vacations.  They will grow old, too-- not as gracefully as this building has, and maybe one day they will discover nostalgia or homesickness-- that nothing is ever as precious as that which has been lost.   By then I'll be sharing a cigarette with the old ghosts on the stairs while, God willing, someone might be enjoying a home-cooked turkey in what will always be the old rooms with the book-lined walls.