Driving Mr. Madden

Throughout my life, my father was something of a mystery to me.  He had very rare moments of joy or lightness, but mostly he brooded-- he paced, he fretted, he lay awake at night.  Of course in the 21st century one would have recognized the classic symptoms of post-war PTSD, but in the 1950's, retired soldiers were expected to re-acclimate to civilian life-- to have families and jobs and be 'normal'.

Whether or not he was CIA, as some of my curious boyfriends were convinced, he'd had a challenging military enlistment punctuated by wounds and acts of great heroism. As many soldiers will attest, the accolades and medals do little to assuage the deep psychological trauma that went mostly unaddressed in those 'happy' days of the 1950's.  Many self-medicated with alcohol or prescriptions, but they were mostly on their own.

At some point in my adulthood, my mother tried to soften the emotional walls I'd created to shield myself from the effects of his moods and disapproval. I was referred to as 'the one who works in bars' with a kind of built-in question as though not even that description was apt. Anyway, during one of his more difficult depressive episodes, she related a story to open my heart  a little. As his enabler and life partner, it was rare that she divulged anything, especially to a daughter whose natural inclinations toward the arts and free speech made her suspect and outside the realm of trust.

During his European service, my father as Captain of the 101st Airborne had a driver. Besides his military field heroics he also participated in some dangerous undercover intelligence missions.  His driver was a black man from Kentucky. They became close. The driver made him promise if he was ever killed in action, my father would go to his family in person and deliver the news.  He did not want his poor mother who could not even read to have one of those terrible telegrams she feared.  So they made a pact.  One day during a risky maneuver, they were attacked and a grenade blew up the jeep.  My father was wounded but not critically; his driver, attempting to shield my father, took the brunt and was instantly killed.

After 9/11 my father was given a hero's license plate which allowed him to park anywhere in the city.  For some reason he seemed a little lightened by this recognition.  While he still experienced periodic deep depressive episodes, he began to attend weekly Old Guard meetings. Being too macho to submit to psychiatric treatment, these meetings were therapeutic.  I guess he was able to pull this story from his memory...  one of the terrible guilts from which he suffered. Most of them were unavoidable-- the consequences of following military orders.  But this was a personal debt he'd left unpaid and it ate at him, decades later.

Why he never attempted to contact the family is a complicated mystery, like most of my father's narrative. For me who goes to great lengths to fulfill even the silliest of promises, this is baffling. But recently it occurred to me that among the landmarks of my life that most irked my father, I married a black man. Perhaps he saw this as a painful reminder and criticism of his personal failure. I don't know; he so rarely gave me a kind look or an embrace; I both feared and hated him.

Last week I read the Count of Monte Cristo... a classic I had written off long ago as a 'boys' book.  It was in my son's teenage library, untouched. And it was fantastically entertaining. Adventure, intrigue, conspiracy, murder, romance... everything one would want.  But most of all it was a story of not just revenge but the resolution of deep irreparable damage from the miscarriage of justice, the way one envious man can turn against another. The unlikely resolution of one man's trauma results in further damage. 

Today as a kind of personal dare I have begun the daunting Divine Comedy. Dante, like Dantès in the Dumas, had been wrongly accused, and the writing of this was a kind of retribution. Whatever the motive, I surely read it in school-- the Longfellow translation which is maybe not the best but I learned today how HWL faced this project just after his beloved wife was killed in a house fire. He, too, was wounded in the inferno. A double dare.  

As we age, the issues of guilt and anxiety weigh on us.  We look back and try to re-interpret our past as though there is a moral there. Sometimes we find understanding-- forgiveness. I tried hard to forgive my father, and have done so, to the extent that I have forgiven myself where he has not. We don't have an enlightened guide like Virgil to guide us through the layers of narrative, to shed light on the good and evil of our present which seems, like worlds past, to have confused the system of punishment and reward.  The life which seemed so easy and simple in the 1950's has become cluttered and confused. One wants to write a guidebook to take us through these times where there are literally millions of digital answers to whatever question we pose. A definitive contemporary Divine Comedy.

In the end, we are each of us responsible for not just ourself, but someone else-- maybe one other person-- fulfilling the promise we made, or explaining, or listening to the man on the bus who looks ill... or the lady on the park bench who stares, day after day, who leaves her lunch untouched on the seat. I am sure that my father, to someone else, was a hero-- was perhaps kind, and understanding. And I hope somehow that driver's mother-- now long dead, certainly, was able to find peace.  After all-- no one's presence could really have relieved the pain of losing her son.  Maybe my father knew that. He was a believer, I think. Maybe at the end, he finally forgave himself.

Bisesquicentennial Harmonies

I'm reading another massive Hungarian novel.  Not sure if it's the Satantango ripple effect or just coincidence, but these novels have engaged me in 2026.  It occurred tonight that I once picked Hungary for a European country report in primary school-- those days when an encyclopedia column and a globe was all that was required. I remember making a topographical map out of colored clays on a piece of plywood... I loved doing these things... but aside from the Magyars and Saint Stephen I recalled little.  My current book-- Celestial Harmonies-- is a sort of tour de force of legend, history, personal recollections and downright lies and fabrications. It's wildly baroque and epic.

Surely these modern authors would be thrilled by their recent election; the literature is suffused with Communist resentment and Nazi guilt. For some reason the city of Budapest itself fascinates me-- the two sides, like yin and yang, separated by water, joined by a bridge. My novel is divided into two parts which fact seems to echo this geography like a metaphor; meanwhile I have much trouble with the names and have no clue of pronunciation.  

In personal experience I have known three Hungarian men-- all of whom were named Imre. One of these was my 'date' for the Bicentennial celebrations in the summer of 1976.  I'd just graduated from college and Imre was a political science PhD candidate.  He had a kind of Brian Jones haircut and wore khaki suits with blue shirts that matched his eyes.  I guess he was cute but I only remember seeing the Tall Ships downtown, and walking from the seaport all the way uptown to Yorkville where he ordered some Hungarian traditional dinner in his native language.

Here I am with this memory which surfaced fifty years later in another American celebratory milestone year in which I curiously find myself steeped in Hungarian lore. There's a tiny irony.  And the fact that this is a year of patriotic guilt as opposed to celebration... American politics and the way our national spirit has been distorted into a Munchian monster resembling Shame more than Pride.  

For those of us who are born and raised with cumulative guilt, this keeps us awake.  Guilt, as they say, is a Motherfucker. I lie awake some nights trying to invent metaphors for the couple-- like shame is the distorted haunting shadow of guilt... the hangover that doesn't clear.  I have friends-- recovered alcoholics and more, who seem married to shame. And yet... there are people like our president who don't seem to understand the meaning of either concept. They golf away their cares while we empaths toss and turn, worry about immigrants and displaced Palestinian children-- wounded Iranian protestors and the starving babies of Sudan. 

King Charles, for one, never looks happy. His expression is appropriately pained and compassionate most of the time-- his known pleasure was rock music-- Status Quo and loud bands that drowned out his sorrows and worries... the guilt that is implicit in anyone so privileged by birth. There is nobility in being a sad king. He has his reasons, too.

The stepsister of guilt and shame is blame.  We empaths tend to point fingers at ourselves... if only I hadn't left my college boyfriend he might not have died... if I'd skipped that Theoretical Shes gig at CBGB's my daughter might have been born healthy. How far can I go? Parents who have lost children in mass shootings and other tragedies manage to find a way to place blame... on the shooter's parents, or the gun companies... on the Camp Mystic administrators.  Lawyers encourage this thinking. It's profitable. Does this make anything better?  Yes for justice, no for misplaced cause and effect.

The shocking killing and suicide by Justin Fairfax last week shook us all. How does one pay for mistakes and crippling guilt or shame or self-hatred?  It's a hideous chain of emotional disturbance and a residual curse for his children. Yesterday's mass shooting by a father in Louisiana is nearly impossible to process. How does one begin with love and arrive at these hideous endpoints? How to minimize damage in these cases? What makes some of us fret and suffer over things we cannot control? I read somewhere that without man, God would be horribly bored.  And without God man would be innocent. Is it fear of judgement that makes us behave or not?  What is compassion and how can one keep it reasonably humanitarian versus uselessly dramatic?

As someone who feels small things disproportionately, I have had to temper my instincts with a kind of rationale-- hiding parental worry and panic, blinking back tears on the subway and streets for struggling unfortunates. Does empathy help? If one is a physical therapist-- yes, or as a musician, executing an ensemble vision...  But not always.  We get in our own way, we suffer and damage ourselves and others. I recognize and adore my friends who love too much, too easily, who fall on their proverbial face time and again and end up as victims... emptying pockets for undeserving predators we don't always recognize. Manipulative panhandlers park themselves outside posh restaurants to try to extort these feelings. It's painful but one must draw a boundary.

Hungary is among the landlocked countries... I think of these as having little relief, somehow... nowhere to breathe. The 2026 celebratory year creates a kind of memory arc for those of us who recall 1976.  I wonder what happened to my friend Imre who walked the city with me in his suit-- whether he returned to Budapest and worked for change in a new generation which could perhaps forget their former German alliance. Here... what a different post-Watergate America we walked-- hopeful enough to elect Jimmy Carter who stood for decency and humanity.  I was old enough to have my young guilt and shames but Vietnam had finished... the guilty president resigned. I had none of the dreadful national guilt and shame I feel now especially when I leave the country. Lost integrity, trust... and where is the blame now? Not a question of nostalgia, but future.  It took the Hungarians a long time to effect change, but they managed. On the 4th of July, I imagine all those who voted for the current president standing up and raising their guilty hand in admission.  Then I will celebrate.

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.'

MC5,000,000

Some nights I lie awake and wonder when it it was that everything seemed to change... was it post 9/11? At some point around the millennium the culture shifted. The cult of mediocrity took hold of what was edgy and original.  Jagged corners began to be filed and rounded.  People's faces began to be cosmetically genericized. And while fashion continued to push boundaries of sexuality, it, too, lost a bit of its iconic style and elegance. 

Popularity trumps quality.  Celebrity and social media far outweigh what is original and good.  One can no longer even trust criticism because a good review could be an arrangement-- payment for a favor, an advertising contract.  The old tried-and-true publications are suddenly rife with errors and less-than-stellar writing. As the concept of pronouns expanded, their usage in journalism and language is sadly battered and incorrect. Does no one learn grammar these days?  Is not the Manual of Style part of an AI editing app? 

I read today that the average radiologist cannot distinguish between a clinical X-ray and one generated by AI.  What does this do to the science and credibility of diagnostics? The fact that  artificially generated music sounds passable is not as much a credit to the technology as an alarming critique of what is being actually humanly released. It's depressing.. .like a large muddy pond with few sparkles and waves and dull slow fish swimming close to the bottom.

Three AM last night-- a variety of musical programs on various PBS stations.. one after another.. I could not name a single artist today-- nothing seemed compelling or passionate... the live audience was startlingly receptive and happy and the sound systems were excellent.. but the material? Forgettable.  Boring. Much ado.

We old souls send each other video footage and YouTube clips of exciting bands from our teenage years-- the MC5, early James Brown.. .today it was the 1966 Blues Magoos. The visuals are rough and generally black and white... the audio is flawed... but what is perfectly clear is the originality-- the break-through sense that these bands were doing something new and exciting.  Even now this comes shining through.

In 2001, I was super fortunate to attend the annual R & B award ceremony with John Lee Hooker's manager who was accepting a posthumous honor on his behalf.  On the heels of 9/11, it was a modest under-attended event hosted by the legendary Ossie Davis and Dionne Warwick.  Neither performed but got down to the business at hand. Today, I barely recognize half the names called at the recent Grammy awards-- music and songs less so; regrettably it's a chore to watch even a few minutes of the show.  I feel silly.  But back in the day, every single artist was someone I knew well... someone for whom I had massive reverence. Icons. Winners.

After the program we all sat for a meal at a few simple tables upstairs at the Beacon Theatre, I think we were. I was at a table with Sly and the Family Stone.  Sly himself was not able to attend, but his mother was there accepting the award on his behalf, and I sat next to the amazing Larry Graham who was polite and a little more subdued than I would have thought.  Prince was alone-- shockingly tiny even in heels-- impeccable, with a true aura as one imagines.  Anyway, all of these people had at some point shaken my world, caused a minor musical earthquake, came onstage with a presence and a concept and a solid performance the likes of which had not been seen or heard before. But the ceremony?  It was simple, unassuming, inexpensive.  No one performed or put on a huge spectacle. The stars were the award recipients.  It was enough... we could sing their songs in our heads.

Today-- we have spectacle... masses and masses of product... choices in galactic numbers that garnish billions of live-streams and instagram looks.  Overwhelming choices. A virtual ocean of brands. Everyone clamoring to create a brand but really less mattering product than ever. And the ones among us who remember... we share a certain nostalgia for what once mattered. The recent extraordinary prices at Christie's for Jim Irsay's collected guitars and things is monetary proof of this nostalgia.  But one thing I am sure of-- whoever paid $14 million  for Dave Gilmour's guitar is not going to be making the kind of music that made it covetable in the first place.

In the current urban Trump-world I find myself disqualified for the health plan I relied on.  As a musican/writer I have slightly more money than a welfare recipient but less than an average teacher.  So what do I do?  I go online to find literally hundreds of choices---all of which are similar but indistinctly different and obviously profiting anyone besides the patient and doctor.  I also learned that one MUST have a prescription drug plan which covers very little until one has paid in close to a fortune to purchase medicines that cost a tiny fraction of what we are charged.  It's a kind of medical blackmail here... and hidden costs and the freedom to change these figures at any time while we the poor subscribers have our banks and social security checks auto-deducted for the privilege of this false security.

I keep reading the phrase 'Original Medicare'. There is nothing original about these plans which dance around the core concept which most of us suckers paid in for our entire lifetime to find we are utterly out in some medical winter.  What is affordable for the likes of me who walks everywhere and has yet to buy a plastic bottle of water?  Am I untreatable? 

So I listened yesterday to the Morphine album Cure for Pain.  May Mark Sandman rest in peace... at least he belonged to a time when music genuinely made us less or more morose, as we chose... when the choices were not overwhelming and the pickings were fewer and fatter. Now every expensive vapid television segment comes with boutique drug marketing of emotional stability in a bottle and unfortunately we Americans are sicker and less happy than ever. The morphing of medicine is beginning to parallel the streaming platforms for music... the thinning quality, the lack of originality and analogue diagnosis.  Even the healthplan names and the insurance companies are designed to entice and deceive the end user. And back I must go diving into this quagmire or I may lose my home if God forbid I should need a prescription. Excuse me while I mutter an 'Ah, humanity'.

Broken Ing-Lish

It's Oscar night.  I have little interest in watching the award show... diminishing returns for me who at one point, years ago, saw every nominee and felt a kind of excitement.  March Madness has more appeal.  My taste in film seems to hearken back to a high-school-era course which opened my eyes to European and experimental things and blew my moderated teenage mind.

I'm also editing a collection of lyrics.  This is a tedious and maddening process for me; having a quasi-indie label based in another country, there is really no one who can assist. Film editors are essential; they make masterpieces out of footage, make sense of lengthy narrative visuals and prevent the Director and cinematographer from indulgences which might leave an audience bored and apathetic. One must be popular, also.

The fact that I have sat through two showings of the 8-hour Satantango but cannot watch any of the Avengers or Spiderman or even Dune series is baffling to my son.  French New Wave cinema of the nineteen sixties seduced me with what I have called 'movies at the speed of life'.  I can watch documentaries, endless train footage, conversational exchanges à la My Dinner with Andre... but people in costumes brandishing weapons make me cringe.  It's overwhelming.

Long novels have always enchanted me-- nothing like the endless descriptions and loaded sentences of Proust. It takes a writer pages to describe a moment.  Film maybe has the advantage here... and audiences complain when features exceed three hours.  As though they have not spent at least that scrolling through their daily instagram.

Back to the editing.  I know my writing can be improved.  One tends to fall in love with spontaneous inspiration and to resist altering this, as though we might be sacrificing something irrecoverable.  My coming collection of lyrics seems archival more than impressive.  I am unemotionally deleting unnecessary punctuation and making minor layout choices, well aware that my audience is tiny.

Half a lifetime ago, new in my current neighborhood, I was waiting with my little boy in a 1990's bagel shop for an after-school snack. We were approached by a handsome white-haired man who commented on the Jeanette Winterson novel I was carrying.  It was obvious that he was well-read and intelligent. I don't even like Winterson all that much and didn't feel like defending my literary preferences.  But he followed me... he pursued me, in a way. He lived on my block which seemed safe enough.  Later that evening he delivered a pile of impressive and arcane books to me, with scrawled notes.

So I looked him up; he was Gordon Lish who had somehow not been on my personal radar despite the fact that I'd dated a writer via whom I'd met the cream of the city literati, including Joan Didion and William Gaddis (among my favorites). Most famous for editing (or perhaps 'writing') Raymond Carver, Gordon was extremely opinionated.  Under his slightly tyrannic influence, I surrounded myself with Cormac McCarthy, Cynthia Ozick, Dawn Powell, etc.  

Sheepishly, I shared some of my poetry.  Maybe because I am a songwriter/bassist, he was vaguely complimentary. I also was warned that he was a major womanizer and most of his protégées were his lovers. He  actually showed up at one of my solo performances after which he called me 'brave'.  Despite the fact he lived two doors away, he mailed me handwritten postcards almost daily.  It was flattering... and gradually I began to sort of temper my writing to please him, as one does.  He bragged that he 'wrote' the best passages of some of the new novels he published which were uniformly minimal, choppy, stark and sort of jarring. It was a style. It seeped into me, in a way... and was compounded by the fact he returned my typed manuscripts with heavy cross-outs and suggestions.  Occasionally there would be only one word worth saving. And it seemed enough.

He flattered me by telling me he was going to start an imprint and publish my poetry. Yes, I was duly flattered... and inspired. Of course this did not transpire and either he tired of the 'chase' or genuinely disliked the fact that I rebelliously continued to allow a modicum of human emotion in my lyrics.  Also, I am a musician; I hear rhythms in words... I'm not sure my rigorous editor was listening at all-- he was so busy deleting.

We had kind of a falling out, some years later.  We're still neighbors; I'm old and he's quite old. I saved a quantity of his postcards, and I cherish the many nights we sat in his apartment and talked until dawn. He's brilliant, and his own writing has a particular masculine elegance that is incomparable. I admire him and in a way regret I was an uncooperative pedestrian writer in the presence of genius. 

Tonight, after the show, I scrolled through the published fashion photographs of actors and directors... some of the outfits are wonderful, but some of them, I chuckle to myself, could use editing-- like Dr. Doolittle 'portmanteau' animals that don't belong together... not everything works. What do I know?  I am badly dressed...but I know something.  I know enough to have had Mr. Lish marvel at my library and the breadth of my reading... enough to have him request my company at screenings and lectures. These things affect us.  

Yes, I'd much rather spend early morning hours watching Tarkovsky or Bergman or Khutsiev.  Is this taste?  Does this permeate my own output?  I read daily poetry from various well-respected platforms... some of these are good... some of them endlessly destroy their own soul with the piling of excess and tone-deaf lines.  They weigh themselves down. And then there are the constant wanna-bes whose verse is so clichéd and cringeworthy one could forever give up writing.  These manage to reproduce themselves  in online posts and memes.  On my own Facebook page, Meta mimics me daily with a horrifying AI version of my own words. 

Okay. Surely I could use an editor, but it's late... one becomes one's own audience, and I could never please Mr. Lish entirely. He began to give me orders, such as forbidding me to have a cellphone.  I do barely use mine... and I have included some of my work without his deletions-- as it were, so to speak.   About to publish a kind of abridged 'songbook', I am a little proud of the melodies and musical architecture which frame these lyrics.  And like most projects, they will have an afterlife of their own... or none at all.  I will (still) continue until I cannot. 

Family Ties

Crossing the uptown park today, it occurred that I had neglected my regular walks and visits.  The Reservoir at sunset-- the usual tourists and locals waiting for the golden minutes to coat buildings with rare urban incandescence-- and a tiny jet trail in the sky, like a distant reminder of the newest American war. The water still covered with a clean-ish snow and ice-layer... one wondered where the ducks were hiding.  I'd last seen them squawking and flapping during the New Year's Eve fireworks... trying to process the fear from what they undoubtedly perceived as an attack... sounding a group alarm-- a warning. 

Difficult to process that we are stepping into the third month of this year... the way the future seems accelerated and indifferent, as though it already belongs to someone else and we, the elders, are being ever more quickly left behind. I'm not quite ready to admit that my February has poured its diminished sand into the March glass which is thankfully one of the longer ones.

Just a week ago the geese seemed agitated and aware of the pending blizzard; more than metereologist predictions I trust bird wisdom; after all, in an Olympic season, they have broken all distance and speed records with their migratory skill. 

Weather issues kept us from outdoor rituals and had me watching more of the Milan games than I anticipated. The rewards and heartbreaks of these uber-athletes are not just entertainment. The best among them have a sort of super-power-- a fixation on a personal goal that transcends parameters.  Others have a kind of competitive energy-- occasionally one sees a speed skater look back, the way racehorses and animals do not. There is team spirit, but rarely a tie in these games.

Personally I've never had that competitive edge, although I recently realized, being the second daughter, that my arrival was the single most psychologically affecting factor in my older sister's life. I never quite assessed my own value, the way she undoubtedly knew every measurement, grade, achievement, failure and bank balance. I gave up plenty of allowance, treats, gifts... just to retain her good will.  It was an endless quest which both my cousins and good friends were quick to notice.  My mother, too, often whispered in my ear ('don't tell your sister'), knowing her nature.  

I have girlfriends, as an older woman, whose friendship is everything for me.  Among them, a few whose subtle lack of trust and critical eye betray childhood indoctrination with this archetypal jealousy, for want of a better word. It's Biblical-- it's Classical... Shakespearean and Fairy Tale subject. It's motivating for some-- they've amassed fortunes and risen to the top of their corporate structures.  For me, it has stained what I would have wanted to keep as a sacred bond-- like ducks and geese, caring for one another.  In my world, it began as the simple coveting of things, progressed to tattletales and toxic narratives culminating in manipulating our aged parents and forging a will which deprived my son and me of all due material inheritance.

Does this make people feel better? Is cheating, lying, scheming, declaring war a means to some kind of inner peace?  It is not.  It is a self-consuming fire that burns and at worst motivates people to become Dateline-worthy murderers and felons. It is maybe an accident of simple birth order... or a true sociopathic embedded obsession.  Over and over I listen to our self-Midasized President who has amassed the largest pot of any previous political office-holder. He can't stop comparing himself to his predecessor-- to downgrading and maligning every Biden-authored program or decision. Will it ever be enough, for a man whose insidious ambition should disqualify him from any of the honors he craves?  

I remember reading The Bad Seed as a small girl and worrying. Watching the Olympic ceremonies-- the medal counting and the bestowing of these symbols of greatness (some of them breaking, ironically)... what would our lives be without these competitions... the lists of bank accounts and billionaires, the excessive piling of assets? It's a little alarming.  Even literature-- poetry-- music... must be 'qualified' and categorically numbered.

As the second-born, I came into the world as 'less'.  I would always be younger, less privileged, less skilled.. at least through childhood. I played the game-- I hung back, I let her have the yellow and green M&Ms and the extra brownie. I covered for her indiscretions and bad love affairs.... at my own cost. I remember sitting in the back seat of a 1960's Firebird freezing in my nightgown and robe while my sister had some kind of sexual encounter with a married gym teacher in his toolshed. Did I divulge the cause of my bronchial infection and school absences? No-- I non-judgmentally indulged my Sister-master.  I might still-- today-- if I weren't absolutely prohibited by friends and other family. I would watch my smaller purse open, the pictures come off the wall... the never-satisfied hunger of some deep deranged desire drain my resources.  And still... I feel whole... I feel sorry for the perpetrator.  Not the President... but my sister, who has a bit of that side-eyed bitterness and deep resentment.  It's unfixable.

There are no more disturbing tragedies than the ones in our own family-- no worse missed opportunities of love and protection and alliance.  It is no wonder the world cannot seem to balance itself, to tolerate and allow, to disagree and smile.  I've heard the moon will turn blood-red Tuesday.  Tonight it seemed so innocent and slightly diminished, like a transparent spot on the still-blue eastern sky at sunset.  I rely on her sisterhood-- from the night sky through the Firebird windscreen to her recovery from the pending eclipse-- surely one of a dwindling number I will eventually not total.

Dollars and Scents

I'm reading 2666.. the mammoth Bolaño which is divided into sections. Currently I'm in the hellish panoramic depths of a chaotic and distinctly Mexican criminal investigation into the serial killings of young women.  In these times, there was no electronic trail to follow and these women-- some of them actually girls-- go missing and turn up mutilated, raped, abused.  It's compelling and disturbing reading. Somehow it mixes in my brain with the Nancy Guthrie mystery. But the relentless sequence of bodies.. it takes days for their absence to be logged, and since most of them are poor working women in the dubious culture of Santa Teresa, the news is neither reliable nor nationally remarkable.

So I'm not yet sure how I will process the whole of this novel.  His writing is luminous and his narratives are compelling and readable. I miss Bolaño with a personal sense of loss and grief.  These dark people who have left us a world that is both startling and comforting... the characters remain with us, are us.  My intimate friends have become the ones in these books... the authors a kind of paternal presence.  They are there for me-- they do not change. By their means, I see through myself--' As Though Through Glass', my 2015 collection was titled (followed by the (implied) denouement phrase 'I watched you shatter').

In a dark place today, I feel as though I am witnessing the crumbling of a dynasty, of a civilization... the crooked mistakes of what one once saw as progress undermining us like massive fissures and portentous seismic adjustments.  I am seeing Jeffrey Epstein as the ultimate modern Superhero or Villain.. it doesn't seem to matter anymore.  With the seven sins as his private constitution, he manipulated the world, preying on contemporary addictions to greed, false senses of power-- massive money, schemes and games.  I am relying on this story to bring down the great web which seems to have entangled and entrapped our better intentions. I also realize there is too much at stake here... and not everyone implicated is as simple as the Prince Andrew fall-from-grace. But something like the financial crisis feels as though it's unraveling in a dark background. Pay great attention to the man/men behind the curtain. For way too long we've had our heads in the sands of the internet and phone-distractions

Lately at 4 AM I pick up a guitar and try to remember who I am. Songs come like prayers-- so many of them commemorated old friends or times.  Occasionally my old torch-lamp flickers-- the one I picked up on a corner dump in Trenton in 1972-- it still belongs, the way some things don't...and blinks as though the spirits of Alan and others long-gone are my audience.  When I was studying art I had to give a talk on the Giacometti sculpture at MOMA-- The Palace at 4 AM... I remember I went a little too deeply into the psychological space... it still resonates, these empty personal rooms of an artist's vision.  Like so many things from an analogue past it became part of my private architecture, my iconography.

Among the ever-increasing numbers of disposable emails today was one advertising a new 'pale pink' apartment complex somewhere in Brooklyn.  I once lived in a pale pink building which seemed to be the unintentional outcome of some kind of concrete facing of an old factory on the East Side of Manhattan. Pink is not an enticing attribute for an urban building. I was never 'that girl' who wore pink-- not even the rock-and-roll kind. Maybe for some lost character from a Sex in the City episode or a Barbie fan... but today... perhaps the color of diluted blood. 

From out of some blue, today, came the opening line of a William Gaddis novel... 'Money?, in a voice that rustled'.. something like that. Written today, it occurred, there would be no question mark. How innocent the days of The Bonfire of the Vanities seem.  The enormity of instant wealth-- mergers and venture capital...cryptocurrency fortunes... the bloated corporate banks... the new American economy of tilt. The whitewashing of money, the normalization of evil. 

Often I walk down the street and identify the smells of luxury... well-dressed women with pricey perfumes that have become part of a compulsory culture of scent.... and then there is the cheap cologne of debt which hovers... sometimes indistinguishable, but loud.  I don't know how these people perceive their own flesh... we have become so accustomed to customizing what we are given... with money one can dispense with unmentionables, or acquire newer versions-- teeth, hair, skin... we can ski on broken limbs. There is progress here, but for whom? 

In the 1970's my friend worked for Halston.  She used to give me samples and gift me their uniquely scented bath talc.. it was subtle and a little earthy.  I loved it. Obsolete now, a nostalgic friend found a container on eBay, from Canada... gifted it to me.  It's not the same... it is like an AI version of the stuff, we both agreed, after a month-long wait, paperwork, and an import tariff of more than the cost of the box. A contemporary disappointment.. a vintage fraud. Besides, talc is now an illegal substance, I think. 

I will go back to Bolaño who understood women although he did not live to see a decent Mexican President and the political perversion of the American dream.  The scents of death and rotting corpses in a hot climate not quite as bad as the stench of a rotting America. As an oddity and closet rebel, it was maybe never my dream, but it is currently becoming my nightmare.