Does This Make Me Look

Recently a good friend pointed me in the direction of The Blue Jean Committee documentary (Parts 1 & 2), a selection in the Documentary Now! series. It’s brilliant and made me think about my other favorite, er, documentary, This Is Spinal Tap, which also got my noggin’ wrapped around how rock’n’roll both as a culture and pertaining to individual humans, is ripe for depictions of absurdity. Other creative ventures don’t really come in for the same sort of send-ups. Actors come closest as targets of fictional mockery (Waiting for Guffman comes most immediately to mind probably because I was just staring at Christopher Guest’s face on IMDB) but visual artists and writers not so much (maybe because there’s not a lot to do with individuals staring at blank canvases/paper). R&R musicians have always blurred the line between bad behavior’s absurdity and excitement. Living vicariously through stories of TV sets thrown out windows and jet planes filled with licentiousness. I came of age reading and being thrilled by those moments, thinking in some part of my brain “Now that’s living” and “Fuck, yeah, rock’n’roll.”

Yet by the time I reached a level of grown-up where I was making a living in that business, it quickly became clear I could only handle a chaos-adjacent kind of existence. Of course, that’s why journalism made sense. I would only be visiting. When I was at SPIN, this visitation level of safety was sometimes put to the test. During my first year at the magazine, one of my coworkers spent time with the Butthole Surfers and wrote about the debauchery from such a deeply personal level that for a minute we wondered if we’d need to airlift him off the ranch (p.58). While others on staff went the distance into the wee hours with various and sundry music types. I wanted that too. But I also wanted safety, and it was all too obvious in too many situations that the boys, while not necessarily beyond the reach of danger, were in a far safer place than I would be at 4AM in a hotel room or bar. Not to mention, when I tested the boundaries of what worked for me, I pretty quickly discovered that I didn’t have a C.Love-level desire for mental or physical destruction or even a beyond-average appetite for adventure. As Chauncey Gardner said in Being There, “I like to watch“.

I knew this detachment the very first time I was given a pass to go backstage and meet a band I loved: The Psychedelic Furs when I was still in college circa mid-late 1980s. A friend had finagled some all-access malarkey. I had no reason to be there except as a girl who wanted to be in their presence. It was all twinkly and magic but also weird and disjointed. Yes, there were the musicians in post-show dishevelment. A mix of emotional high and I-am-a-golden-god attitude that rppled through. There was no destruction of the backstage area. There was a party at a house we went to. Again, no breaking of stuff that I remember. There were drugs, but nothing crazy to my memory. The thing that has stayed with me, along with the headiness of being invited to a party as a plus-one to a popular band, is that the LA Times music journalist Robert Hilburn was there and I thought “I want to be him someday” and then, in essence, ten years later I became my own version of him.

Naturally, nothing ever looks the way you think it will once you get there. This is a good thing. In no universe would I have wanted to end up naked on a bearskin rug in some grotty run-down shack while a band nodded off around me (see Rolling Stones documentary and/or the excellent 1971: the Year That Music Changed Everything for detalis on that kind of hoo-ha). Instead, the bands I knew could and did act extremely silly, but not as insane as I’d read about in the Creem magazine of my youth. Maybe it was the time. The nineties scene that I covered had a slightly more conscientious vibe with bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains acting stupid and self-destructive often enough but in less outward-facing ways. Standing sidestage while Kurt destroyed things was a level of breathtaking that bordered on end-of-times and Eddie literally swinging from rafters while bandmates and audience hoped to gawd he didn’t lose his grip and … die … was an adrenaline dump&pump but yet the melee would come to a close, the show would end, I’d go home or to a hotel if on the road and begin normal patterns of breathing again.

In some universe, I felt one half-step away from the hell&hiJinks of bands like Motley Crue (never met ’em) and the like. Once at a dinner with Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs), David Lee Roth stopped by. His energy was definitely tuned high as if we all expected him to turn over the table or at least jump on top of it and do a high kick. It was actually weird given the rest of the folx there, and even especially those who actually could be considered rock stars, were pretty subdued, but Mr. Hot For Teacher was working a vibe that suggested he could become the performing monkey we might expect him to be. Then he pulled out a joint, depite having just been busted in Washington Square Park for buying a $5 bag of pot (now that’s absurdity). By the time I met other musicians whose notorious reputations had gone before them, they were either half-heartedly kicking at the tires of trouble (Metallica. Therapy. I had a very civilized conversation with James Hetfield while doing shots of Jägermeister until he then almost got in a fist-fight with someone. But only almost. Instead, he ordered another shot) or had hung up their jousting sticks altogether (AC/DC’s Angus Young sitting around a table at a posh Italian place with record executives talking about current events while wearing long pants).

By the time my career in music journalism had ended, I’d come to understand myself a bit better. I like guardrails. I’m someone who, if I’d had to live the scene in Spinal Tap where they all get lost trying to get to the stage (“Hello Cleveland“), I would have been so freaked out about getting in trouble with somebody/everybody that I might have been weeping. I always felt one step away from getting fired and therefore losing my career/housing/etc., this at a place where other writers were charging blow-up kayaks on the company card and not turning in their stories on deadline because they were in jail. But still, I felt if I was late on any level, that was it for me. Finito. I was someone who did a dry run to an interview location so I’d know how long it would take and therefore not be late. Obviously, this was absurd given on-time in the music industry was at least 60 minutes after the appointed hour. The members of They Might Be Giants were the only people who I remember being early to an interview. But my problems with telling (R&R) time were my secret (along with the fact that I didn’t love the Beatles sufficiently).

In the end, the endless entertainment I’ve had around and inside the rock’n’roll is an ongoing treasure trove of memories (witness I keep pulling them out for this blog) along with a deep appreciation of the entertainment its absurdity brings on the regular. My dream triple feature pretty much covers it all: The Song Remains the Same, This Is Spinal Tap, The Decline of Western Civilization Part Two…not necessarily in that order. The highs, the lows, the silliness. For those about to rock, I salute you.

I’ve had a couple of not-my-finest-hour moments in the last few weeks. Both of them with my dad. Both reminders that when I react to what’s in front of me reflexively, no matter how many (feels like millions) hours I’ve spent meditating or thinking on the nature of intention and/or concentrating on my breath, the situation can go sideways very quickly. The first happened as we were on our way into Silver Sneakers class and I’d reminded him to grab his cane and when he resisted—as happens on the regular, by which I mean always—stating that he didn’t really think he needed it, I snapped and said, “Yes, you need it because you’re an old man.” Those last four words hung in the air like noxious fumes. Fuck, I thought, that was mean. I apologized. He said, “no problem. I am old,” then carried on…cane in hand. I felt bad for the rest of the day (still do, actually. The gurgle in my stomach as I wrote about it is noisy). It was no consolation whatsoever knowing he would not remember what I’d said an hour later. In fact, when I apologized again, he did not know what I was talking about, although I do think a residue of emotion is left behind from a moment like that. Just as when that noxious fume passes, your eyes still sting.

The second emotionally toxic event happened later in the week, before a lunch with his golf buddies. We had discussed that morning how I was going to pick him up at his place. Upon arrival, I found his car gone. When I went to the restaurant, I found him there already. He was surprised to see me and said he was glad I could make it. I, in turn, said, “Dad, a couple of hours ago we talked about me picking you up.” As soon as I said it, I knew it had been a mistake to bring it up. A cloud passed over his face that held scared shitless. He had no memory of our conversation. I mean, I was scared by it as well, although this slippage is very much how he rolls now. And my bringing it up did nothing except to upset and also embarrass him in front of his friends. In that moment I realized there was no plausible reason for me to have brought it up. I don’t want him to feel bad, obviously. And it’s not his fault he can’t remember. Not willful ignorance or inattention. Nor is this Alzheimer’s. This is a 96-year-old memory bank that has begun to cash out its vaults. Or, as David Sedaris says in his brilliant essay, Happy-Go-Lucky (story collection of the same name) about his dad’s journey into his nineties “… he’s what used to be called ‘soft in the head.'” Dennis’s pops is also in this headspace and I watch (& learn) how his kids are around him. At the beginning there were a few “dad, don’t you remember”s, then it became clear that no, he didn’t and therefore they all need to start the moment from jump. A good friend referred to these situations (which she went through with a parent) as acting exercises. And, yes, that all feels true. The useful exercise is to be in the moment of what my dad says as if it’s new. Because it is.

This isn’t a passive act. I absolutely do have my freak-the-fuck outs around him still driving and living on his own. He’s not interested in giving up either the keys to his car or his house, nor is he interested in me being a chauffeur or roommate, even though I’ve come up with some sly ways to do both every once in a while. (Acting.) All this to say it brings my ego into check. I don’t need to be right or prove a point (“Yes, we discussed this!”). I do need to pay attention. Right now him being safe and comfortable are the main drivers although often I’m not sure how those two things work together. Or what I need to do to make sure they’re happening. When to let go, when to close in.

Not having kids, this is my first time on the slippery slope of age-related give and take. Managing someone you love’s raw reactions, including anger, is quite a thing. Currently, I’m watching Better Things (complicated single mom raising three daughters. Lots of mistakes on all sides. very dark-but-so-brilliant humor. loving it) and realizing emotions and age. How as a parent of kids from baby to teenage, logic doesn’t really matter. Feelings are EVERYWHERE, all the time. And that’s just the way it is. Transferring that to my current situation, I’m coming to understand that the bread on both sides of this life sandwich has the same porous element. Unless it’s open-faced (losing someone young), the sense of being bookended by squishy feelings is a thing, somewhere in the middle all the elements become piled on, stacked, messy, but contained. It’s wild.

Right now, my dad lands in his anger all the time—something that’s always been a current running underneath but has never been obviously present, in fact, most folx believe him to be a very chill dude—that he will mutter or snap with no filter. On some level, it seems freeing when I can step back and observe. I’ve also begun to not take it personally or apologize to anyone for it.

Expressed anger. Gak, my emotional core that feels it’s too scary to entertain since it can only destroy: friendships, relationships, all of life. Yet I also know that’s not at all true. The author Emma Straub, whose newsletter I adore, wrote a recent one about anger after losing her father. It’s raw.

I watch my dad be angry and I get it. Or at least I think I do. I ascribe feelings of frustration and fear as motivation. And I’m not going anywhere as he expresses it.

I’m also working on giving myself some grace around my mistakes in communication. I will continue to have not-my-finest-hours although hopefully not the same ones. That keeps it interesting. Forward, backward, sideways, do-si-do.

Currently I’m writing a novel about a past-its-prime band in the process of reuniting while Dennis is on tour with a bus full of ballet dancers. Groups of people working together, although my particular threesome is only alive in my mind and on the page. It got me thinking about a seed planted in last week’s post about being together alone: “I was stepping into other people’s lives. I wasn’t in the band so that camaraderie didn’t exist. I knew some people, but they were all living their home lives and I was visiting.” The act of writing is a solo venture. One that I adore. I never feel isolated because my characters seem very alive in my head, speaking and tussling and causing drama (even sometimes saying stuff out loud, which could be startling to someone looking in and wondering why I’m talking in an empty room. This is why having cats is quite handy.).

The publishing industry is obviously a joint venture and so spending my career years in it as a music journalist really merged the two moments of inside/outside engagement. Still and all, when I’d go to do an interview, the point was to be a conduit for that person’s story or experience. The half-hidden responsibility of making someone feel comfortable enough to take the floor while drawing them out just enough to remind them you’re there. For sure, a lot of the interviews were built around a publicist-set-up situation to do with a new album, tour, or just simply to get the kind of buzz around a band that would launch them. When someone like Hunter S Thompson set out to become the story—even more than Tom Wolfe had in moving New Journalism into the lexicon (great piece he wrote about that here)—the lens on the journalist flipped a bit, but yet the point as I usually flexed it was to observe, record, write it up.

This worked pretty well for me, even if my ego sometimes got tangled up in blue. On one side, I really just wanted to watch. Don’t mind me, carry on, do your worst. Then I’d go away and write it all down. On the other side, I would often ache to be a part of that band of merry-muckruckers making music, trouble, and leaning on each other. I’d sometimes try and slip into the scene, as I did during a 1992 on-the-road interview with Pearl Jam in Europe. It was early days for them, small clubs, big bus, quickly expanding crowds, and they were bonded in the single-minded purpose to play the fuck out of their songs while also having fun. They got along (hopefully still do, as well as humans can after a three-decade-plus relationship) especially as they were still getting to know each other after two years, one recording session, a handful of tours There was a frisson of creating and cavorting together while finding their individual selves inside some group think. I wanted to be a part of all that, even though I was only a visitor. And a journalist at that. Something none of them were meant to forget. Going to a hash den in the Netherlands with Jeff Ament wasn’t like a couple of pals bellying up to the bar, comparing choices of hashish, then settling into a stoned conversation about life, even though we did that and I wanted to think that’s just who we were, the steady-red record light reminded us otherwise. The number of times he said “off the record” about things as innocuous as an artist he admired signaled he was well aware I was taking down his story. Going back to my hotel room to write up my thoughts—or, rather, try to write them. I. Was. Very. Stoned—was my job even if the next morning I saw I’d written a whole lot of high nonsense.

No one seemed at all mad or weirded out about me hanging out as if I were one of them, but I do remember how I felt after the last show I was covering, when I asked for a ride back to my hotel and their tour manager told me not unkindly that the bus was headed in another direction out of town from where I was staying, so this was sayonara. By the tine I’d reached my room that night, I was feeling the deflation of leaving the band. It was a recurring theme: get the assignment, join the madness, leave, do the work. And it was a best of…worst of…. situation. I loved my job and the chance to be exactly where I was but I didn’t pay attention to what happened inside me after the story ended. How I avoided coming to terms with being a visitor in other people’s places by quickly moving on to the next moment.

Total dichotomy since, honestly, my proclivity has always been to have an eye on the exit even as I arrive. Whether that’s because I entertain an imposter syndrome that leads me to think some mask will slip or given a sense of exhaustion after a while to keep up an appearance/repartee (I suspect those two things are the same in fundamental ways). In my music J days, I didn’t go too deep on the see-saw of adrenaline: gearing up for entry into a band/musician’s world, the heady flight of togetherness inside their scene, followed by the settling back down to the ground to gather my things, go somewhere quiet, and write what I saw/felt.

Since then I’ve done a fair amount of looking at those moments and turning over the feelings like some emotional Rubik’s cube. For sure the colors never match up right, but the messiness is actually fine. Blue squares rubbed up to red, lined next to yellow. Ideas, pursuit, writing. Solo, togetherness, fluid. They all dovetail. Lately more times than not, I feel my life as random with a soupçon of intention. Moments happen and how I hold them and go forward becomes the thing. And that’s actually a relief, less exhausting, a bit of letting go. I said all that out loud with some amount of feeling and the resident felines appeared to agree. Although it’s kibble time, so they’re enthusiastic about most anything right now.

Currently, Dennis is on the road stage managing the World Ballet Series company as they tour Swan Lake across the country until November. His current location is somewhere between Long Beach (last night’s performance) and Fresno (tonight’s) as he travels in a van with a crew of tech folkx while the dancers are on a giant bus a few miles behind. As he was gearing up for the trip, my memories began sending out little space capsules filled with perception/reality moments around my on-the-road experiences of yore as a music journalist and beyond. What wanderlust looks like in before and after settings.

When I was a wee-tyke-teenager and thought of traveling with a band, the fantasy was end-to-end intrigue: new exotic cities, deep conversations with musicians sitting in the back of a bus, nighttime road lights flashing like strobes as I listened to them wax on with secrets they’d never told anyone else. (Funny I never thought of myself as the performer stepping off the coach for soundcheck and show—that is obviously a post for another day, or maybe one I keep writing over and over again between the lines.) In reality, the only times I spent on band buses were few and far between. The closest I got to deep conversation was with Eddie Vedder in Groningen, Netherlands, in 1992 when we talked about abortion rights while sitting in a middle row of the bus. No streetlights. Middle of the day. The bus did drive a short distance to a graveyard as I remember–although I have no memory of why that particular destination. The other bus moment I had was a brief city-to-city connection when I was writing a (very small) book (pamphlet almost) on Bush. There was no conversation regarding anything deep. In fact there was no conversation at all because the entire band and crew (excepting the driver) were so deeply addicted to watching DVDs of The X Files on the mounted television in the bus that nobody was allowed to speak during the hours of viewing, which were always.

Then there were the hotel rooms. Early in my music-J career I’d imagined a Chelsea Hotel sort of existence of the travel variety. Every lobby filled with touring artists hanging out spontaneously breaking into song and deep intellectual thought…or at least just great celebrity sightings. That never happened. I did go to the Chelsea Hotel, mostly to use the lobby as a cut-through on my way to the El Quixote restaurant next door. And for a story in SPIN‘s June 1991 issue, I wrote a one-pager about the storied place complete with a shot of a Sid&Nancy-style setup that was billed as fashion and got us some kind of product advertising. But by this time, the nineties, there were no Patti’s or Andy’s or Lou’s to ogle. And these days, well… the hotel’s doors have reopened, rooms retrofitted, but obviously none of that spark exists (cue this doc for stories).

The first hotel I stepped into as a journalist was circa late 80s in London where I’d been sent by Rolling Stone to cover a music festival. Paul McCartney and Chrissie Hynde were among the performers. I remember them most because A) legend, B) backstage they gave journalists wearing leather (shoes and the like) a hard time. Or maybe that was just Chrissie, but yet …. a sharp flashback. Also acute was my excitement about being put up in a posh hotel. The night before the show, I’d walked into the lobby of this fancy-pants place (can’t actually remember the name) wired on adrenaline, gotten my key (actual brass affairs back then), walked into my room and was flushed with a sense of joy and my own importance. I may have (probably did) jumped on the massive bed, pulled back the brocade curtains for a view of some park or other, and opened up all the things that I could open (mini fridge, armoire, closets), then I took a bath with a glass of something (probably bubbly). That a year later, I was back in London on my first trip for SPIN to interview the Cure and walked into a room so decidedly different from that first luxe moment I think I instantly understood the difference between the magazines. No bouncing on the bed (rickety), ooh-ing at the view behind the curtains (brick wall), or opening cabinets (nothing to find there). Definitely no bath (only a tiny shower stall). Maybe I had a shot of whisky alone someplace outside the room, which helped me sleep?!

Over time I waxed and waned at many hotels that fell somewhere in between the first luxe landing and that next down-market moment. I even had a regular spot in Seattle that I booked into on my many trips to that city in the early 1990s: The Warwick. If walls could talk…well, they wouldn’t have squat to say except that I probably snored. Possibly they might have heard some sniffling because toward the end of my time at SPIN, I have a vivid memory of being so homesick to stop traveling and stay put in my apartment on 14th street that I was despondent. I felt a bone-deep sadness sitting and staring out the window at the Warwick into the dark night and feeling gut-empty loneliness. My toenails, hair follicles, the whole of me was aching for familiar and for connection, which I had come to discover is not often a thing when you travel to get a story. I was stepping into other people’s lives. I wasn’t in the band so that camaraderie didn’t exist. I knew some people, but they were all living their home lives and I was visiting. There was an emotional distance I was meant to keep in order to stay objective (actually, this last bit is something of a joke given my MO was to become besties with my subject so they’d tell me everything. See tour bus fantasy above. This method didn’t really work, although I had some good conversations, I wouldn’t say the friendships forged were the forever type).

None of these moments are meant to be played as tiny violin solos of sorrow. Although they do remind me that everything is shaded with so much nuance as to be moot in the way of sketching a life template. I did love most of my career travels, watching and writing and generally taking in experience. On the other hand, I also ached to return home and maybe become a bookstore clerk who never went anywhere. Both desires were true. Only one happened (so far). As my honey travels up the west coast and then across the country with this merry band of leaping ladies&gentlemen, he’s working his proverbial tail off living a whole range of adventure and yearning. I’m living vicariously through daily photos and stories. And in this moment, that’s all good as I open the curtains and stare at the butterflies, watch the cats dance (and disrupt), and make my own bed (almost) every morning.

OOH, babeez, what a week: hot in the hundreds, a coupla shots in the way of Covid booster/flu, and a touch of dental surgery. It’s of the latter I’d like to focus on. In the process of doing some work on my chompers, I was given a bit of twilight sedation. Demerol to be exact. Dripped into my vein so that I was not totally knocked out for the three-hour procedure but nor was I conscious. This in-between state got me to thinking—not during the procedure, mind you; not even directly afterward since I was loopy as Feck—of how weird it is to be tangentially aware of what is happening around you but not be able to form any actionable opinions or movements around it.

In this case, while Mr.GoodDentist was hammering and scraping, building a better foundation in my mouth while I loop-de-looped in my head, I appreciated he was getting the job done without me screaming and thrashing in pain. Being detached enough to not cause a fuss is clearly the best choice for all involved. But the parallel track this brought to mind was how often during my music journalism career I chose emotional twilight sedation over alertness. At the beginning of this weird week, I’d spoken to a writer working on a book about Sinead O’Connor who wanted to talk about the state of the music business when I worked at SPIN and, more specifically, about a piece I wrote for Jane Magazine in 1997 called “It Happened to Me” about the sexual harassment suit brought against owner Bob Guccione, Jr., and the magazine that same year. Her questions were straightforward around the article: how it came to be, how it felt to write it. It was her last question that poked like a sharp stick. The memory of how the editor I’d worked with on the piece made me go back three times to dig deeper and bring more of my emotions to the article and how I resisted, not for any other reason than I thought I was bringing it all. In the end, I chipped away at the hard ground cover of my thoughts and feelings as deeply as I could. Today, reading it, I know there was so much more but at the time, that mental topsoil was just not giving way to all the stuff underneath. A lot of it explained away in my noggin/soul as This was the business, what did I expect?

So much of my music journalism career was spent with thoughts like that. I existed in a place detached from the core of my emotional temperature gauge. Some might say I disassociated from the events. They’re not wrong when read in the context of feeling outside of yourself and observing actions as if from a distance. But the thing is, there were plenty of times when I clocked feelings of pride or exhilaration at certain bad-behavior events. One time in particular comes to mind. I was at a random venue sitting with the singer of a band that had grown from playing local clubs to stadium-size shows. I’d known this guy for a couple of years, back when the group was just starting, playing small places in the midwest, then crashing onto a small indie label and growing large on a huge record label from there. At the time, their type of surge-n-slow bombastic rock songs straddled both the so-called grunge and the anthemic, attracting folx who loved Nirvana and Rush. There we were, a group of us in some-such club having drinks, etc., he on my left. Suddenly he leaned over and bit into my pleather pants at the knee, managing to rip a hole clean through, then looked at me with a shit-eating grin, grabbed his drink and went back to whatever conversation was happening as if he’d just grabbed a handful of nuts. Maybe there was already a little tear that he took advantage of like some kind of puppy-needs-chew-toy moment, but the act was aggressive and startling. My reaction: I laughed as my ego swelled. Out of all the people in the place whose pants he could have chomped into, he chose mine. I think I may have hoped someone had seen it happen and then thought, Damn, I wish B—- C—– would rip out the knee of my trousers with his teeth. I do remember being caught up short seeing the concerned expression on the face of my friend sitting to my right and suspecting that I should be equally as rattled. Yet when she asked, Are you alright? I laughed. Sure. Naturally. This is par for the rock’n’roll course. C’mon, you’d be daft to not expect a rock star to bite through your pants. Isn’t that what we’re here for?

Well, no, not really. My overriding sense of detachment at the time kept me flying over these emotional flashpoints at a distance where the air felt very thin and it was hard to think straight. That was my excuse for not immediately connecting with the annoyance that some rock dude had just ruined a pair of my favorite pants, which I couldn’t afford to replace, nor had he offered to. And what about that weird pride at being chosen for this kind of aggressive act? I decided it was flattering for no other reason than he was a known quantity, something I didn’t think I was. Boy did I need out of that game, which I did, not leaving behind aggro sexism for good but at least putting some distance between myself and a business that uses that behavior as a badge of honor, point of pride.

I still to this day have so much love for the ladies who played the game back then, banded together, and made their point in both music and interviews. I’m also happy that a portion of the male musicians I worked with considered themselves feminists and for the most part acted like that, at least in my presence. The twilight sedation around those years has faded and the loopy aftereffects diminished too. Eventually, everything ends up merging back together: body, mind, soul, emotions, and whatever else I left out there. The healing process takes paying attention: understanding the swelling is a protective thing to give stuff space to heal, and the tender-to-the- touch bruise a reminder to pay attention and be okay with the discomfort. Won’t last forever. Oh, and my mouth’s getting better as well.

It’s guaranteed you’ll find me choked up every Tuesday morning in a Yucaipa Silver Sneakers class at 9.30 AM standing somewhere either behind, beside, or on a straight-back metal chair with my dad to my left. (We have our usual spots, as most everyone does.) The emotion usually catches me off guard. I’ll be marching in place, making sure to bring my knees up and not slouch when I’ll catch his reflection in the mirror up front. Actually, multiple reflections because the back-of-the-room mirror catches and repeats endless iterations of him funhouse style. He always seems to be really concentrating even though he’s been coming to this class for about ten years so the moves are pretty baked in. But he complains he can’t really hear the instructor anymore, so maybe that’s why the furrowed brow. Or he’s just focused on getting through the set. Either way, lately I’m taken more and more by how slight he’s become. Frail. Yet still moving and doing and keeping up. He does every exercise put in front of him to the best of his ability. When it’s arms, he picks up the two-pound weight to work only his right side, the left shoulder having been kaput for a few years now. Chair stretches? Hell, yeah, he’s twisting, leaning forward, bending at the waist toward his toes. Working it.

It’s usually somewhere between the behind-the-chair balance moment and the stretchy-chord side bend that I seem to lose it. Watching him in multiples, I think, Remember this moment. His amazing classmates (I mean, they’re mine now too) are all doing their bit around the room. The silver-haired lovely who knitted me a pair of fingerless gloves because there are months when the steering wheel gets very cold and these help that. (She aced my favorite colors in gradating blues.) The woman who makes the best (er, flammabely strong) Bloody Mary’s for the twice-annual class picnics. The man who sings whenever a favorite song comes over the playlist (this week: “I Saw Her Standing There,” which he sang to his wife moving around next to him). A guy who used to be a transit cop in Times Square in the 80s is generally right in front of me (when I met him and said, Boy, you must have tales to tell, he looked away and shook his head in a way that made me a little worried. I don’t bring it up anymore). There are so many stories in that room. The woman who leads the whole shebang is someone I credit with keeping not just my dad, but all of these fabulous folx limber in ways that sexagenarians on up often fall short of (or just fall).

So in between counting along with the reps and smiling at the shenanigans around the room as they multiply in the mirror, I see my pops smack in the middle of the scene. It’s then that a pumice-stone of emotion slips into the base of my throat, often surprising me with its stealth. Then I’ll have to look at the ceiling so the weeping doesn’t become too obvious.

There’s a sidecar riding in on this feeling that has to do with the music, because our lady of motion often favors songs from my high school years. Heart’s “Barracuda” practically dropped me during leg lifts, while Elton John’s “The Bitch Is Back” during a chair stretch involving an inflated ball under my foot made me stop doing that and immediately look up at the ceiling tiles. That song in particular kills me (I also strongly suggest clicking on the link for the live Dodger Stadium clip. Holeee Fck. white people dance moves, seventies fashion. I was somewhere in that crowd doing both those things). The reason this particular EJ song throws me into reminiscence is that when the album Caribou was released (1974), I was deep into my love for all things Elton. I took the album over to my dad’s for our weekly dinner. This was something of regular thing: me buying records, the vinyl kind, then playing them for him while we ate while I explained all the little factoids I’d learned from memorizing the lyrics and liner notes. Telling him all about Caribou Ranch in Colorado where part of the album was recorded, How my favorite song was “Pinky” (?!? because….maybe I wanted to be Pinky? probably. Along with the main in “Tiny Dancer“). I was worried that my dad would think the lyrics to “The Bitch Is Back” would be too raunchy and he’d say something about that. But he didn’t. He was always just curious about what I liked, although I’m not sure I brought the Sex Pistols over for a session.

There was just one time he seemed to look sideways at my music and that was when I was working for SPIN and had come to LA for the annual Foundations Forum, a heavy metal convention held at the Sheraton Universal Hotel near the Los Angeles airport where, no lie, the plumbing got wrecked ostensibly because there was a lot of hair that clogged up many drains throughout the hotel. Also the scene of Ted Nugent making a PETA advocate cry in the elevator. Good times. Anyhoo, my dad came to meet me for lunch and asked, “What is it you do again?” At least that’s how I remember it. I mean, he knew what I did, had a subscription to SPIN, and always told me how proud he was I’d made it in New York City. But this particular scene was a bit, er, loud and possibly stupid.

So now, over four decades later, marching next to him in time to “The Bitch Is Back” with the mirrors reflecting forward and back, I try to let myself be moved by the moment and not actively stomp down the emotion. Sure, it may be slightly worrisome to my classmates if I started heaving sobs, but a few discreet tears I can have. If I let the flashback of me sitting at the dining room table, age 13, explaining to my dad, age 48, with so much earnestness I’ve no doubt my voice rose a few octaves how Bernie Taupin’s lyrics are pure poetry, merge with present-me at 61 as to my left my dad does a semi-shuffle, side step at 96 (while holding onto the chair back) and the chorus closes out with “It’s the way that I move, the things that I do, oh-oh-oh,” my head explodes a little. Then melts into the moment, then some stray tears roll down my face as I hold onto gratitude. Right here. Right now. that is all.

I have a hangover (looking at you, tequila) and it’s got me thinking about how between the ages of 25 and 40, the years I spent bouncing in the music journalism funhouse, I was often experiencing life in a hazy daze. I was apparently functional, given my ability to do the job and receive a paycheck, but there’s no doubt my perspective was a bit scrimmed and smudged due to either the immediate- or after-effects of imbibing. Could that be why so many of my memories are shard-y bits floating freely around my head like so much space debris? I’m gonna say yes. As I use the giant butterfly net that is my mind to try and reach out into the atmosphere to catch these moments and bring them back to life, I lose some detail through the netting but also gain some extra bits through my own personal re-creation of the scene.

For instance, when the late Alice in Chains singer, Layne Staley, was pushed playfully yet quite hard by a coworker (not her real name*) outside of CBGBs on a summer night in the early 1990s, in my memory, he literally bounced off a lightpole, then crumpled lifelessly to the ground, possibly dead. Layne was fragile. (He turned out to be fine, but I think more qualified (read: sober) people than us made sure of that.) When that same coworker was hoisted into the air and subsequently dropped on her head by a member of the Smashing Pumpkins, again outside of CBGBs in the early 90s, the sound—a nauseating thud—echoed down the street and time stood still as I recollected it.(Two more things about that: who knew anyone in the Smashing Pumpkins was that strong, and what was the deal with that patch of CB’s sidewalk?). That we were all lit during both of these events was a major factor in how I remember it. I do have a pretty vivid memory of staying up all night with said dropped-on-head coworker and shining a flashlight into her eyes every few hours to make sure she didn’t have a concussion. Nothing like a possible trip to a NYC emergency room to sober one up. Another time, not anywhere near CBGBs, I walked across a train trestle with a local band (also not their real name). It was nighttime and I was on active stretch of track so if a train had come, I’d have had to jump into the river below. This was dumb and I was…wait for it…drunk. A lot of us probably have similar dumb-slash-dangerous stories from our past where we might say a silent, By the grace of… when we think of them.

I ponder why so much inebriated silliness? Because: exploration? youth (although honestly, is being in your thirties youth? I guess yes given the average acting-out age of the music business hovered between nine and fifteen)? modeling (monkey see, monkey do)? etc. For me, personally, I can also add Proving Myself and Keeping Up to that list. The unwritten playbook I followed was a learned thing from many rock’n’roll stories I’d heard and read over the years. The ones in Hit Parader and Creem celebrating the really-abominable actions of (mostly) men in bands. Led Zeppelin (their real name) and hotel rooms, Ozzy Osbourne (also real name) and most of his every waking moment, and on and on—all easily found on the internets, some probably false, but still often badges of honor posted in R&R annals. When I read those in the late-70s, somehow these escapades made me want to join that circus. And if I wanted to walk that tightrope, I’d need to learn how to balance while holding a bottle in one hand and a pen in the other.

By the time I entered the industry, women were beginning to hold their own in the did-they-really? category, although I’d venture to say (&, yes, I’m biased) that when Donita Sparks from L7 pulled out her tampon and threw it into the audience at 1992’s Redding, I saw it as more of a feminist act—albeit a messy on-the-edge one—rather than just an act-out-for-the-sake-of-it move. And while I watched sidestage, I remember thinking, No, wait, what is actually happening here? then I think my brain to noise….perhaps because I’d also had a few pints. It was also likely true that I thought it was bold and one way to respond to an audience throwing mud at them and being general assholes (if you want to see a clip of the hoo-haw, here. You’re welcome.). Then of course there was Courtney (yes, her real name). Lots. Of. Stories. Spending any amount of time in her presence was a funhouse ride without any safety bars in sight.

But back to why the bend toward extreme behavior rather than follow my own path to the story? Looking back, my first thought on that is: I didn’t know what my own path was. The reputation of this business of music was already set in my mind as one of keeping up, the thrill of it, the places it could take me as long as I played by the rules were already set in stone. Again, I wasn’t self-realized enough to even have my own set of rules. I knew enough to recognize icky, but even then I didn’t often put a stop to it. I wanted badly to be the cool girl. The one who could hang. The one they’d all confide in. The one who could handle it. Even a half-dozen or so shots later. That train of thought led to countless hazy dayz and nightz. Interviews slurry, but yet mostly transcribable. And a slew of inappropriate moments that only surface occasionally and are no doubt just the tip of my memory iceberg. Articles were written while consuming copious amounts of aspirin and egg-on-roll comfort food with ice coffee chasers. I feel I was always exhausted and worried. That I wasn’t doing my best, that everyone could see through my game face and knew I was actually a girl who craved eight hours of sleep after a nice hot bath while reading a book and sipping a glass of wine. But if that was true, why the hell was I in this industry? Gah, I’ve yet to answer that question fully, except to say the kind of excitement and acceptance I craved I searched for outside of myself. Looked to get from others, not trusting I could find any direction or piece (or peace) of the puzzle inside myself. Again, this is not a new story for anyone who has experienced coming of age.

Though what I think is true in how gender played havoc was that the women I found in the workplace didn’t have a lot of role models for how to bring their instincts and womanhood to the job. Follow the men was the motto I received. Do as he does. And also, there are only so many slots for the ladies anyway, so good luck with that. This may be changing incrementally in current settings with the entertainment industry probably not shifting even that fast. Glacial may come to mind.

This past week I listened to a great conversation between three cool women of a certain age (Everythings Fine, guest Sari Botton). A quote from one of the hosts, Jennifer Romolini (also printed on Sari’s blog Oldster), hits home: “These days I identify most with my 9-year-old self, the earnest, gentle weirdo I was before I started performing femininity, before I started performing an identity, … and before I started competing with other women for prizes that were never worthy of us in the first place.” Yep. The expectations. The prizes (boyfriends, husbands, careers, paychecks). And the word competing, while not the exclusive domain of females developing into adulthood, there is a special type of competition I experienced, dare say embraced, that had me proving I could handle it. I’d left the 7-year-old awkward me behind. The one in this clip who wants to skip, even though skipping in the new gangly body I was growing into felt floppy, but still I skipped dammit. The still-skipping girl (same vacation) here who knows she’s being filmed for vacation memories and isn’t totally sure how to perform, but yet again, still skipping.

Skipping now on this other end of life is something I do with so much less embarrassment or self-consciousness. Those middle passages, hazy as they are, were a learning-curve bitch that I wouldn’t trade in and that I don’t regret at all, yet obviously I’d love to have a talk with that woozy lady back then and tell her to TAKE A CAB HOME. BORROW THE DAMN MONEY. and STOP TRYING TO IMPRESS THAT GUY. HE’S A DOUCHEBAG. and also PLEASE DON’T FORGET TO PUSH RECORD ON YOUR TAPE RECORDER BECAUSE GAWD KNOWS, YOU’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO READ YOUR HANDWRITING AFTER THE FIFTH BEER AND THAT MICHAEL STIPE GUY MUMBLES.

* This is an homage to a delightful and hilarious piece by TAFFY BRODESSER-AKNER about going with her mom to Hempcon.

https://anchor.fm/dashboard/episode/e1n1r20

Hello. I was on the fence about calling this one Choose Your Own Adventure or Shaken and Stirred. As you can see, I went with the latter. Mainly because this time does feel fairly active in the way a rollercoaster takes you up, down, and sideways with the only option being to hang on for the ride. Adventure choices are not NOT happening (double negatives, so much fun), they just lean more toward stuff popping off unbeknownst and him deciding how much he cares to respond or remember. It’s altogether wild how 96 years of life looks from the outside in.

His inner perspective is one I’ll never know. I can’t pretend to actually understand how synapses bzzzz and frrrggghhh, but yet from my completely unscientific observation, there seems to be a protective mechanism that takes in just what’s wanting to be seen or felt, and the rest sails along to parts unknown. Sure, I could look all this up and find a gazillion peer-reviewed-and-not articles about how the brain and memory work. Obviously, I’m not doing that. More I’m just laying out what I’m seeing from my side of the room. I’d heard tell and now see with my own two eyes how older folx are put in the corner when it comes to day-to-day dealings with people all around them. The amount of times my dad has been spoken to as if he’s actually six (sometimes nine if it’s the doctor’s office) is cringe-y. Or the moments a person will bypass him altogether and just talk to me as if I’m his eyes and ears. I mean, Im definitely here for it if necessary but usually if my dad’s standing right there, I wonder why not speak directly to him. Possibly they assume he’s deaf. He may ask What? but you know, I ask that a lot too. (Thank you, music biz.)

He rarely seems offended by it though. Perhaps it’s a relief. A fine-I-didn’t-want-to-talk-to-you-anyway kind of stance. That said, I’m also noticing a really willful streak coming up around stuff he doesn’t want to do. I don’t have kids, but know from my friends with them how it works with boundary testing and all that good development stuff. In this case, it seems when you reach a certain age, you’re just done with agreeing if it requires you to be annoyed or put out. Two examples are currently in play:
Me: “Dad, I’m wearing a mask into this (fill-in-the-blanks-place). What about you?”
Him: “Nope. I’m done wearing masks. I want to get Covid.”
Me: “Okay, dad, I don’t really think you want to get Covid. It’s nasty.”
Him: shrugs. Mask stays in car.

Me: “Don’t forget your cane.”
Him: “I hate that cane.”
Me: “Of course you do, although it comes in handy, right?”
Him: “Nope. I’m done using that cane. I’m fine without it.”
Me: “Okay. It’s just this parking lot is pretty uneven.”
Him: shrugs. Cane stays in car.

I too look forward to saying no to stuff that annoys me as I use up more years on this planet. Taking a page on that but also I notice how I hold my breath as he interacts maskless with cashiers and the like or does a tottering side-shuffle as we walk across short lengths. Maybe it’s just all about me. I mean it is a little given I’d like to bubble-wrap him so no harm or hurt comes, then I might breathe easier. But then also he wouldn’t be living in any fullness, which would be just as bad as treating him like he’s six (or nine). So, yes, he’s a little(!?) cranky and willful at being at the mercy of a winding-down body and mind. He’s also equal parts sanguine about it with a dose of just-can’t-remember-yesterday thrown in for good measure. This is no joke the not-remembering stuff. The level of it has come very very quickly, which is why this post is called Shaken and Stirred. Every day noticing a slight shift in how his planet moves farther out into a part of the universe I know nothing about. And perhaps this orbit is kind in its own way given he does not dwell.

Yesterday we went to see his oldest friend, Tom, who is in his final moments here on earth. The last time we saw him two months ago, he was moving around his house, albeit with a walker, talking a bit of whimsy nonsense that to him was absolutely real and in no way made us feel weird altho my dad chalked it up to him just waking from a nap. Last week, Tom decided he wasn’t really interested in food anymore, which according to his in-home nurse and all the medical dramas I have(n’t) seen, is the beginning of decline. I don’t think my dad knew what to expect and on coming out of his bedroom after their first conversation, he looked shaken. Of course. Looking at someone you’ve known for sixty years and seeing their twilight of them is a special kind of moving. When my dad went in for a second chat awhile later, he seemed more accepting that he couldn’t really understand what Tom was saying, but was okay with just being in the room.

Interestingly, as we drove home, he had some hopes that Tom would eat again and pull out of it, even as Dennis and I gently said otherwise, then stopped saying anything otherwise because why? After we left him in his house on his way to a shaken not stirred martini, he said, “I’m gonna sleep the hell out of this night.” And from the sounds of him this morning, he did. He also said yesterday was fun. I’m taking that as his memory of us all being together. I’m not dissuading him from it. I’m letting him choose whatever adventure he wants to take from the day as he steps, without his cane, bare face to the wind, wobble in his step, facing the day that I will not ask him about tomorrow because he’ll tell me “I don’t know how yesterday was. I’m here, so it must have gone okay.” I can’t argue with that.

Below find some audio fun I’m trying….

• Memory Manor: Hazy Dayz
• Current Situation: Shaken and Stirred

Lately, Dennis and I have been getting up at 5.30AM (triple-digit desert temps means early starts for construction-guy types). It’s actually pretty lovely once my body remembers how to move in sync with my brain…slowly…so. slowly. I’ve always thought the hours between 4 and 6 are darker and quieter than midnight. Even in NYC, where you can hardly go a step without humans present.

Back in the days/daze of music, I was up to see the sunrise on a fairly regular basis even though the thought of sleeping in the day seized me with panic. A leftover, carried-on, early-instilled work ethic thing that suggested daytime shut-eye was for the lazy (I don’t know where that was picked up from). But that didn’t stop me from watching the sun rise on the regular. Sometimes I’d power through on a cat-nap while eating my favorite high-carb foods like egg sandwiches and cheeseburgers with fries and loads of coffee throughout the day, happy in the knowledge that I’d have an awesome sleep that night.

In my early-adult Cali days, there were a few sun-coming-up moments. Friends and I would go to a club, then end up at the Atomic Cafe, which in my memory stayed open past the 2AM bar-closing time. The only drag was having to operate a motor-vehicle to get home. The one time that went very badly for me was when I was heading back to my apartment in Huntington Beach from LA and while toodling down the freeway in my Toyota, I was not able to turn up the radio any louder to drown out the sound of a pinging coming from the engine area. When I caught sight in my rearview mirror of a flaming thing dropping out the bottom of my car, I knew things were going badly. The car stalled and as I rolled over to the shoulder, a cop pulled up, told me my engine had likely seized, called it in to Triple A and told me to lie down on the front seats in order to avoid being a target for any early-morning predators. Nice.

These in-between hours always felt like a great equalizer. A time when you’d see people who would normally be wearing baseball caps and sunglasses to avoid attention while demanding the removal of all the brown M&Ms from their backstage candy bowl becoming just like us: Confused about where the bathroom or the bottle opener had gotten off to. There was a club in the East VIllage, NYC, Save the Robots, which opened at 4AM and had a speakeasy vibe about getting in (slidey-slot in the metal door, a pair of eyes, if the door latch clicked open, you were golden; if the slot closed and nothing further happened, well…sorry). Whether it was the camaraderie of getting in, the exhaustion of the hour, or maybe because it was NYC where everyone pretended nonchalance, when Bono or the Edge came throug the door, no one fluttered. It may just as easily been a look-alike anyway, so why break the illusion. Or when Prince stepped into Nell’s, a nightclub on W.14th street, at closing time, which naturally meant the place would be staying open til whenever, a buzz did recharge the dozy drunks like us who were slouched in booths. But when we tried to see him, the only visible bit of Prince on the dance floor was a glimpse of the top of his head as he jumped up and down inside a circle of his security detail—all of them extremely tall and he very not. But still. I felt equal to the task of staying out late/early just like him. Just a regular Josephina to his regular Joe.

The star-maker machinery shifted gears in those early-morning hours. When Nick Cave lost his wallet at an after-hours bar following 1994’s Lollapalooza, I bought him a drink and lent small bills&change to the Deal sisters so they could play the jukebox at wherever we were. Blackout shades kept the rising sun from coming in the windows. My favorite place to be when there would be no sleep and the sun was a thing to watch coming over the horizon was from my roof on 14th street between Avenues B&C. Not only could I avoid walking home or taking the subway to get to my bed, but the unobstructed view over toward the East River, fringed by the Con Ed clock tower on 23rd street made for some magical views. (Decades-late apologies to those sixth-floor dwellers in the building who no doubt heard the footsteps and the voices on summer nights.) It’s no lie, as people do say when looking back on things, that that time felt both never-ending, never-changing and also not altogether real. I wasn’t really grounded in any what-the-future-holds thoughts beyond Wow, that egg sandwich and ice coffee are going to taste really good. And as I write about these things, the stored moments flash back. I don’t wish I was reliving them at all. In fact, a little, they make me want to take a nap. But absolutely I can call them up dusted with equal bits flecky magic and silty chaos, both useful.

About a month ago, my dad and I were in his car heading to his house from an emergency room visit at 1.30AM. This is a man who in his 96 years has never spent the night at a hospital (excepting his birth, I suppose). I (as was he, I’ve no doubt) was so relieved to be heading home after our many hours adventure that the electricity of adrenaline had me wide awake. When he said, “I haven’t been up this late in a long time,” I was right there with him. Decades in fact. As we drove through the incredibly quiet streets of Redlands, we came onto Sand Canyon Road—a beautiful two-lane strech through scrub and orange groves—and hanging up in the clear sky was a full moon. It was a bit of shining gold on an otherwise less-than night. He said, “Look at that” and for a minute there was a lovely stillness taking us away from the world. The early morning holding us. Everything would crank back up once the sun chased that moon out of the sky. But for the moment, there was that illumination lighting the way home.

I’m a girl who likes a deadline. I’ve no doubt that’s what brought me into the world of publishing&journalism (well, that and some sort of paycheck for getting a chance to write). Weirdly though, I chose an area of journalism that is notorious for blown deadlines and complete disregard for schedules: music … the modern version inclusive of rock’n’roll and rap 90’s style. It’s a weird combo for me as someone who seems clinically unable to be late for anything. Anything. I’m the one sitting in the dentist’s office a full half-hour before my appointment. Why? well, many a therapy session has explored my issues around control (the needing to master it kind), and what better attempt at that than trying to harness time? Attempting to overcome any obstacle that may try and keep me from being there and/or completing an assigned task.

This, my friends, is like herding cats into a bag, holding onto a double rainbow, having a butterfly for a pet. All to say: impossible and probably wrong-headed. At Rolling Stone, I was a copy editor, which meant I was at the tail-end of deadlines since we received the article after all the editors had wrestled the thing into being. Our job: make it sing a bit more, then get it shipped out the door. Hunter S. Thompson was the only person who could get away with blowing a Rolling Stone deadline, at least during my time there. He would show up and rewrite his piece right before it went to the printer. And we’d all ride that wave accordingly. At the time it felt exciting because it was Hunter effin-S-effin Thompson. When I got to SPIN, I took on a full editor role, meaning I assigned stories, set their deadlines, then worked with the writer to shape them up so they could go through the process of being readied for the issue. After about a couple of months and more than a few eenie-to-massive panic moments when writers missed their deadlines, I learned to move the dates waaayyyy early. Seemed to make sense except that somehow a few of my regular writers caught on and followed the old schedule. Or rather, followed no schedule.

Because I’m very crap-ass at confrontation (hello, more therapy sessions), I would mostly suffer in silence as my writers ignored my calls and generally followed their own time muse. Occasionally there would be a valid reason. Jail was one place a regular contributor to SPIN ended up quite often. Honestly, I’m not even sure why, but I was able to reassign him to another editor who somehow took this state of affairs in stride. Throughout it all I perfected the inner fume. I couldn’t understand why people were unable to follow the rules and be professional and turn things in when they were due. This in a business that thrived on thumbing its collective nose at rules and guardrails. Guns n’ Roses shows were notorious for starting hours&hours late. A colleague once had an interview with Prince that lasted five days because Mr.Glyph wouldn’t come out of his wing of the house except in the middle of the night, when he would then have his assistant knock on said writer’s door to invite him into a darkened studio for twenty minutes at a time and he wasn’t allowed to use a recording device or pen&paper. (This was about control, naturally.) I once waited for three hours in a restaurant for a hair-metal band who I didn’t care about at all, yet had an assignment to interview, so goddamn-it, I would wait. That they showed up drunk was no surprise. That I too may have been a bit lit by then was also not surprising. In the end, the story never ran and that too made me crazy even though, frankly, the piece sucked but given I like sticking to schedules of all sorts whether time or publication it still frustrated me.

So, you see, I find myself in a funny pickle lately as currently deadlines in&around life are wiggly. Actually, deadlines is the wrong word. A more apt usage is perhaps expectations. Penning this blog every weekend is good for me as a writer. Keeps my creative brain elastic. I’ve gotten very wedded to the idea of publishing it on Saturdays. This is a totally self-imposed schedule yet I also appreciate there are some people out there reading this who may be in the habit of seeing it on any given Saturday. If I follow that train of thought, then I feel guilty if I don’t get it done. Here’s the funny thing happening during the acknowledgment of the aforementioned pickle: I’m attempting to let these pricks in my brain go and be fine with saying, meh, this is gonna be late, maybe even absent altogether. I’m working on that outlook anyway… Today I’m thoroughly happy writing right here&now, and that’s the point. To appreciate it.

I remember the adrenaline rush in the way-back day of getting stories written/edited just under the wire as a magazine was going out the door to the printing press, hurtling forward like some Hildy Johnson in His Girl Friday maybe even getting to yell the best and scariest line of all time: Stop the press. But this girl can’t live on that kind of epinephrine alone. I like a bit more stability. So, why, you ask again—or maybe how—did I end up in the music biz? (I’m also a morning person….) Well I’m clearly split down the middle as most of us are. Someone who can’t put cats in bags, hold onto double rainbows or ever ever ever be interested in a butterfly for a pet.

And life is currently following its own deadline which finds me swinging from moment to moment happy to be here.