Does This Make Me Look

When I think back on my past, a lot of things are fuzzy. Events blur, time melts, a byproduct of living I figure. Within the last couple of weeks, I’ve really started reflecting on the hustle of my life. Decisions I’ve made have kept me moving from one thing to the next rather than staying on any solid path (i.e., a decades-long career at one outlet or another). One thread has connected it all: words. Working with them, playing with them, writing them. (If I dive even deeper, I might say writing is the thing I wanted to build my career around—and have on occasion—yet I never trusted writing as a way to make an income.)

The year before I moved to New York City, 1983, I lived in Huntington Beach above a bank on the main street in a space that had been converted into an apartment from what had been some sort of social services agency. I had two great roommates who I knew just enough to live with but not so much that we needed to be in each other’s business. The space was very cool, almost echoey in its largeness, all wood floors and spacious rooms. I was a student at CalState Long Beach on my way to a journalism degree. I had the hustle in me to write stories on the local music scene and would take my notebook and pen across the street to sit at the counter of an actual diner where coffee came in heavy tawny-colored cups on saucers. I could feel the future in my blood, the tingle of what was possible. I’d been to New York City and knew that was where I would move so that my writing and music life could crash together and make a big noise. Throw me into my future.

In the apartment, there was a little room where I used to bang out things on my electric typewriter. Interviews, assignments, that kind of thing. I remember dragging the phone (black rotary) from the hallway table into my writing space, stretching the curled cord almost straight so it would reach so I could close the door for an interview I’d set up with Lee Ving, guitarist for the punk band Fear. I was so insanely nervous and had one of those ancient suction cup devices that hugged onto the phone’s receiver and recorded the conversation. Criminy the technology before-times were challenging. I got the story though, which I think I wrote up for a local music paper, although I have no memory of the final product, nor do I actually have the final product. But I do remember the sense of understanding that if this was the life I wanted to live—one that mixed creating words around creative people—I’d need to get used to being nauseously optimistic, 80% terrified, and helium-headed thrilled with a strong dose of uncertainty at all times. And that seemed perfectly excellent with me.

The guy in the photo above became a short-lived roommate, moving into the room where I’d had my typewriter set up. I had a very intense crush on him. He was in a band (naturally) and his girlfriend often stayed over, thwarting my dreams of us stumbling over (into) each other in the long hallway some dark night. Naturally having a person I lusted after just a few doors down made sense in the scope of the tragic storyline I’d written for myself. He and I were pals though, which obviously made the whole thing even more painful. After he moved in, he claimed to have had all these wild out-of-body experiences in my old writing room, which we found out (made up?) had been the intake room for children displaced from their parents when the place was a social services agency. He’d talk about floating outside of his body and hovering around the ceiling, connected by a silver cord, while he looked down on himself and his girlfriend asleep. Astral projection, I was totally into that kind of thing. Or rather, I really really wanted to be into that type of thing, except I was definitely too worried that somehow the cord would snap and I’d be left floating away for good. Or something like that. Again, I had ideas, I didn’t know how, or even if, they would pan out.

That apartment was the place that set me sailing off into the life I’ve led. My real sense of hustle began there. Right before I moved to New York City in the summer of 1984, we had an epic party on the roof deck. I slept with the boy I had the crush on (he’d broken up with the girlfriend) but of course, I was leaving in two weeks so no future in that, which was probably the point. My hustle equal parts drama, timing, and pins&needles possibilities.

Next week: NYC arrival. More roof decks.

I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about absence. What the world looks like when a moment, person, or place has exited. It’s not that there’s nothing or no one there anymore, more that there are traces, vapors, something to mark the spot. The Los Angeles fires for one. This piece is a beautiful and full-on snapshot of a woman living it. (Also the Oldster has a comprehensive how-to help here.) Where once there was a certain kind of vibrancy, there is now a negative space where something once was.

A friend from my music dayz, Jackie Farry, died on January 12th from the multiple myeloma she’d had and lived with for 20 years. As this piece in The Hollywood Reporter shows, she was an unsinkable spark of awesome whether hanging out with all the great unwashed at the time (& I do mean great, from Joey Ramone to Evan Dando with a lot of metal, grunge, alternative folx along the way). Post the C diagnosis, she started a line of Fuck Cancer hats (available here) that I would send to my friends dealing with that fukn invader. If you can sneak onto her FB page, you’ll see all the snaps of bands and her smiling face.

Jackie was Frances Bean Cobain’s nanny in the earliest days (search Jackie Farry + Frances Bean Cobain + 1993 and a great photo of her at the MTV Awards peeking around Courtney with a bottle at the ready will pop up). But here’s the thing, she was always and forever a mensch whether talking to someone about to step onto a stage in front of thousands or the person bringing us food at a diner. I know, I know, people often say that about a person who has passed but I can’t describe how sunshine&natural she was. And it stood out because sunshine was not the go-to flavor during the always-rainy season of our grunge discontent. The point almost always seemed to be pushing on the emotional bruise while staring at our Docs. That’s not to say we didn’t get goofy and laugh. We did. I can’t remember so much about what, but with Jackie there could be lightness around often-scowling rock face. She’d stroll in with a nickname: Sweet Hank for the intense punk rock, Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins. And I think he rather liked that. What I’m saying is that by not taking herself or the scene around her too seriously, she unhooked us from the hand-wringing and shoe-gazing tendencies that the music often leaned into. She was a delight in her ability to bring a kind of, C’mon, we’re not curing cancer here attitude.

But I wish we had been curing cancer.

I’ve also spent a lot of time this past week looking back and back and back in my photos (which includes seeing a lot of my dad as well, a different kind of remembering). There’s nothing like a trip into those bygone music days to remind me of the where’s and when’s of situations that to me often felt life or death (in a career kind of way, which was of course connected to my WHOLE life). Funny also that I barely remember a lot of the rooms and places where the pictures were taken but when I see Jackie, I can hear her wry delivery around whatever situation we were in, and it’s no lie to say she brightened so many corners that often got very very dark. Delight.

So as to absences, leaving, and all of that: as of Monday, I’m signing off of Facebook and Instagram for good. The removal of the fact-check layer, the MZuckerberg weak-tea explanation, I just can’t be OK with sticking around his platforms. In a world where I’m struggling to pinpoint how I can make any movement toward a safe place in this upcoming administration and world at large, it’s baby steps. And this is my first. So for those of you who link to my blog through one of those platforms, I hope you’ll still join me by going directly to the blog space and hitting the little subscribe button in the lower right corner (it’s free). I’d hate to look out and not see your faces there! Thanks!

(Extra material found while looking for Jackie and Frances Bean photos. This photoshoot of Kurt and Courtney for SPIN took me back since I remember getting the outtakes and framing some for my office and now I have no idea where they are. sigh. And although I know there’s not a lot of clickage of external links here, do please check out Lance’s page and also Jackie’s obit in The Hollywood Reporter.)

D and I are going to New Orleans at the end of this week for a few days to wander and explore. While I’ve been there twice, on a pretty basic level it feels as if this will be the first. And in a way that’s true because both the other times I was working, which meant a gazillion distractions happening in my head rather than merely taking in my surroundings. I wonder once we start wandering if traces of my past visits will gather around me like cotton candy swirls onto a paper cone when it’s dipped into the rotating sugar vat? Memories sometimes seem like that to me: very wispy and not all that reliable. Often they look like they’ll be more solid, then once I take a bite they kind of melt.

The first time I was in New Orleans, I was working at SPIN and had gone for Jazz Fest, although absurdly, the piece I was working on wasn’t actually a music review of the festival but was rather a fashion piece (August 1992) where, although I interviewed some great blues legends (Clarence Fountain, Al Green, Allen Toussaint, Irma Thomas, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown) and was able to use their quotes, overall it was all in service of styling them up in brand names that would get the magazine advertising. Still&all, I was in The Big Easy and saw some great music, which I have very little memory of. This confuses me, this lack of concrete memory. Passing through my mind, the spotlight shines on watching the Reverend Al Green bringing a church to its feet in song and watching Clarence Fountain and the Blind Boys enter and exit the stage, one leading the other as the concert hall clapped and hallelujah’d. Those are actually my only concrete memories from the trip except that it was hoootttt. Where I stayed, what I ate? Bupkis. No clue.

A few years later, when I worked at Elektra, I went back to New Orleans when one of the label’s bands, the Afghan Whigs were playing a showcase of some sort. What I remember about that trip has mostly to do with the excess of testosterone in the music business in the nineties (er, still, no doubt): male record executives, alcohol, Bourbon Street strip clubs (for a tale on one of those moments, click the storytelling button below), and traveling cocktails. I was there with the Afghan Whigs manager, who’d become a close friend so she and I were able to carve out our own time among the boyzclub moments. My strongest memory of that trip (alongside the story below) was being in a thrift store where she found this great red, pulled-yarn sweater that I coveted (silently) while I found and bought an orange pleather mini skirt with snaps up the front that I wore for years and years and years while never fully understanding how to launder the thing (spot-cleaning).

Returning this time, I wonder as I always do when I go back to a place I’ve been in another chapter of my life, what senses I’ll be taking in the city with. It seems before that my alertness had to do with completing a job and being on guard against disaster. It honestly felt like everything was just one inch from the end of a cliff so while I’d teeter along with the rest, I always remember holding my proverbial breath and hoping I’d make it out intact. I’m sure there was some excitement in that. Perhaps that’s also why I don’t have sharp memories of the moments because I was so busy planning an escape route or packing up a parachute to drop me into emotional safety. Or maybe I was just too busy trying to keep up.

Currently, I’m happy to say I have no agenda for the trip. My fight-or-flight instinct doesn’t need activating. I’ll be visiting the city on my own terms with my favorite person and very little scheduled except reservations at some excellent-looking restaurants. I’m looking forward to it with all my heart. (No post next week. Wishing you all the very best entry into 2025 and look forward to seeing you all — either in real-time or blog-time — in the new year!!)

A story:

The NYT does an annual feature called “The Lives They Lived.” It’s a roundup of folks who’ve died this past year and who impacted the world in one way or another. I always find someone among them who I’ve never of and who I want to know more about (in this case, Michaela DePrince). The article also gets me thinking about lives currently being lived. Mine and others who mean a lot to me. This year especially given I’ve made a few trips into the city now that we’re back on the East Coast and I always feel the breath of my past self breathing alongside me when I turn a certain corner in a particular neighborhood and suddenly the way-back time is in front of me.

The further into life I get, the more those moments of wandering the wild side seem almost surreal. I mean, it wasn’t always wildness but knowing what I know now, it was for sure a kind of blind trust moving to New York in the eighties and then just plunging into whatever was in front of me because it was an experience. I definitely muttered to myself more than once “This will make a really good story … someday,” because for sure in that moment I was either a) terrified, b) confused, or c) just lost. (And either one of those three could be read literally and figuratively.) Sometimes I’d walk into a situation and get the inkling it was the wrong place to be. (Think, taking the subway home from a party in the early morning hours and being the only person in the station except that dude down the platform who was slowly making his way toward me with a weird look in his eye and I could either leave the station now, even though I couldn’t afford to get back in so would have to walk home or just stay put and … oh-mi-gawd, here’s the train. I’m on it. he’s not. train is crowded. adrenaline crashing waves in my skull.) So stuff like that.

The courage might have been the East Coast from SoCal move itself, which really is courage only in retrospect since in the moment it just felt like the right thing to do. In fact, as I remember it, there wasn’t even an alternative. It was more: Naturally, I’m moving to New York City because that’s where my (music, writing, creative) people are. Nevermind that I didn’t know any of those people yet, except for one friend who’d moved the year before. Once I was settled in ’84, my good friend M came the following year. Of course, we did some things that in retrospect were borderline bananas, which again fell under the heading “This’ll make a great story” since I always figured I’d live to tell. I know some people don’t. When she told me she’d seen someone get shot in the playground outside her apartment building, which was around the corner from mine on Norfolk St., LES; mine was on Stanton between Norfolk and Suffolk), it wasn’t like the news was delivered with a shrug but in some ways it wasn’t altogether a shock either. There was always a certain amount of danger and anarchy in the air. The Tompkins Square Park riot happened down the street as my then-boyfriend and I were on our way back into the city from camping upstate (I don’t much care for camping, so missing this event because I was attempting to start a small campfire in a rainstorm felt particularly wrong, although in retrospect there may be something wrong in me preferring a riot to the wonders of a starry sky. Anywho.).

There was a fine line between fantastic and foolhardy; heady and harebrained. When I’m in the city now and remember how I rode my bike to work in 1986 from Stanton Street up to 57th and Fifth where the Rolling Stone offices were, I’m flabbergasted on a few levels: bike lanes? WTF were those? Although apparently in the mid-70s there was movement afoot for them to be a part of city streets. Helmets? WTF were those? Um, no thank you because my hair. Buses and congestion? Yes, and perhaps drivers cared even less about cyclists on the streets than they do now. One time I had just started riding home down Fifth and was marveling that there was no traffic. Zero. I thought maybe a parade was happening/had happened, then suddenly I was swarmed by what felt like hundreds of cyclists (probably more like fifty) and I became a defacto part of a pride ride. Were these my people? For the moment, yes, and it was glorious as long as I could keep up. When they turned west at Fourteenth Street I remember being sad.

And I guess that was the thing: keeping up, moving forward, trying things while also attempting to be smart about it, even as I often didn’t think about the smart part. As M and I made our way into life figuring out what worked and what didn’t (she: milliner, photographer’s assistant, restaurant owner. Me: waitress, coat check gal, music journalist) there wasn’t much talk of their being a plateau where we’d rest. It was all in the moment. Now, at this age with the ghosts of the city past and present whispering stories, I sometimes think the future is challenging. Did I buy into some “It’ll get easier” advertisement about an era called the golden years? Have I not recognized how important it is for corporations to sell the dream of all stages in life so that retirement (whatever that means) is represented by laughing oldsters holding wine glasses? (Hello postMenopausal, metabolismShifted hangover. No thanks.) Truthfully, every single stage of life is challenging. Always has been. And yet fantastic and foolhardy; heady and harebrained. I’m glad those choices still exist. It’s all a steady shot of courage.

Three “this’ll make a great one someday” stories:

This post is actually going to be a talky-talk situation, with a couple of photos thrown up here for good measure. The story takes place under the covers, although not necessarily in a way you might think.

Before I move on to the speaking bits, an observation: Icicles are the damndest things. They seem weirdly strong, as currently evidenced out our window where there are a few that have been hanging out for days in the teen- and twenty-degree weather. I seem to remember from my little days a fairy tale about an icicle that pierced the heart of…someone…and something dramatic happens because of course, it’s a fairy tale. The only example I can find is the Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen,” which, who knew, was loosely used as a basis for Frozen (and, NO, there will be no earworm of that movie’s sooonnnnggg. But while we’re here, a side note for D, Julian, and Beth, here’s the Frog Prince fairy tale and another link too).

Now, on to the told stuff.

We’ve now had a taste of all the seasons: arrived in the spring as the flowers opened and various animals began to roam around, rolled through the summer when Roquelle the bear was most active and our woodchucks munched up our lawn, fall and the amazing leaf changing and deer and turkey spotting happened, now we’re a step into winter and have had our first major blackout (snow and wind having their way with the electric lines) and our on our second major snowfall.

We came through the blackout fine. About 18 hours out altogether and, although our generator didn’t actually work the way it needed to, we have a couple of propane heaters and a lot of throw blankets and candles. Also, barbecued some burgers. We’d woken up the morning after the first major snowfall to find a car abandoned in our driveway. Upon investigation, we found no bodies inside and New Jersey plates. Of course I made up all sorts of things about where the humans had actually gone off to given the snow had been fierce and blizzard-y all the previous night. It turned out, the humans were fine. I know that because a bit later the next day they turned up with friends to dig out their (rental) car and explain that they had driven up from Park Slope, Brooklyn, leaving at around 11pm and hitting our mountain at 1am, which was hours into the storm. We live on a pretty steep hill with no streetlights at all. No plows were coming through until the next morning, so I can imagine this couple was terrified. They were heading to an Airbnb about 1/2 mile up the road and they just weren’t going to make it (zero four-wheel drive in this rented Honda). They called their friends who came and got them. They were also pretty embarrassed when they came to dig out their car. Obviously, I was glad they were safe and it was no problem on our side that their car was where it was since they’d managed to pull in and not block anything. Mostly, for me, it just brought up the issue of how easily things can turn into situations much bigger than expected.

I mean, truthfully, checking the weather for drama when you’re traveling seems like a smart thing to do but I was reminded how little I did responsible things like that when I was in my twenties and thirties (like they were). D calls it hairbrained schemes and I’m still susceptible to them although so much less than I used to be, mostly because I’m way more cautious (sometimes spooked) than I used to be. Aren’t we all, really? There was a time I’d be like, “Hell, yeah, let’s cross that transom bridge without checking on when a train might be scheduled. How bad could it be to jump into that river?” (So bad. And I’m sure I wouldn’t have lived to find that out.) Or, “I’m going to ride my small bicycle that has no gears from upper Manhattan to Hastings on Hudson, because why not? A three hour ride through the Bronx and Westchester and Yonkers is the perfect way to spend the day. Then I’ll ride home, too.” (In this case, yes, I did that. It was actually fun enough that I got D to join me for a repeat ride a year later.) So some of the schemes were successful and worthy of the adventure and some were successful but only because the worst didn’t happen.

I’m thinking about that now mostly in terms of the randomness of life. Best-laid plans and all. How I actually feel as if, while I supposedly have more time given there’s no full-time job anymore, I don’t feel able to keep up with all the things I need to do. I have a list. It’s all kind of chore-y stuff and yet I’m still struggling with getting anything done. Much of it is a kind of pressure I’m putting on myself. So there’s that. It’s keeping the voice in my head at bay around “shoulds” and what-have-you. Perhaps we all feel that way, especially this time of year. I which for you all the peace to sit on a comfortable surface and zone out with whatever activity of choice brings you relaxation and pleasure. I’m going to aim for that myself!

I’m just now stepping back into current events be they global and/or national, albeit very slowly. I’m being choosy about where I put my attention (a couple of things that have been helpful). As I mentioned last week, seeing and talking to the good people in my life has been the thing to lift me. And many of those folx are going through their own amount of personal challenges so it’s really a matter of them simply being in my life rather than them doing anything in particular while there. A friend had mentioned when we were talking about how boom-boom-boom life has felt lately, that perhaps this is just being an adult. And while I don’t disagree that growing into mid-age and beyond brings more rather than less events to contend with, it feels to me that the last two months have been particularly gnarly with stuff both big and small.

On the topic of aging, it’s actually something I’ve been really happy doing. In terms of physicality, I was never in better shape than when I was 50, the year I met Dennis. I was training for my third marathon and had been at SFactor for two-ish years, while riding my little bicycle up and down all sorts of hills from Washington Heights downtown and up again, my body was in agile shape and I was learning how to understand my mind and heart in all manner of past&current stuff. And on from there into age 60 and beyond, the world has turned, and while it’s been clear that all of us rolling into the land of older face very distinct physical challenges that have affected friends one&all, and remind me that aging/changing bodies are inescapable cellularly, my mind has no sense of what my age is supposed to feel like. Unlike the outer layers where for sure the skin tells tales, the inner bits of me spin stories of flotsam&jetsom with no specific age marker attached. This mindscape is enjoyable, so it’s been a real shake-up to be reminded in a truly concrete way of where my age puts me as far as my career is concerned, especially since I’m not ready to hang up my copy editor’s hat even in the face of a publishing industry that’s crumbling faster than the rocks of ancient pyramids. To me, that’s meant widening my search beyond traditional places. And sure, that’s great except that I’ve also been forced to see more clearly how the work-world sees folx who’ve crossed beyond 50 (and in some careers, the 40 marker—or perhaps earlier—is the thing).

A few weeks ago, I had to show up for my first NYState department of labor meeting after signing up for unemployment. It was the day before the election and I showed up carrying a satchel of attitude: main compartment of “what could you possibly have to tell me about getting a job,” side pockets carrying scraps of “leave me be,” “who are you?,” and “I’m only here because I have to be.” Obviously, my DOL career counselor was used to that given her chipper attitude was turned up to 11, which did nothing for my mood. Anyhow, when I stepped out the door 90 minutes later, I had learned a couple of things: She did not exist to be an evil force in my life and perhaps could even be helpful; I would need to cleave my résumé in two so that the AI bots and occasional humans checking my CV would not be scared away by over 10 years of service in this industry I love. I mean, sure, there are some oddball things in there that veered off the traditional publishing road (I’m looking at you Jane Pratt TV, Elektra Records, and teaching in the public schools) but mostly the places I’ve thrived have been in magazine-land, a place that is … well, see above reference to monuments crumbling. I disappeared the Rolling Stone and SPIN moments, which was hard since my ego had (&has) been so tied to that time in my life.

I mean, it’s not that I’m any less proud of those accomplishments, it’s just weird to think about how their more in service to stories now than actual job-getting. Plus it’s funny that there was a time when I didn’t have enough to put on a CV and now I have too much. And rather than let that sit somewhere in me and calcify into a certain feeling about getting older, I needed to find a way to accept that. Then, while processing that, I became ensnared in an employment scam, which, if you want to hear the whole story or it, click the sound file below. (Short version: A weird online-only interview led to a job offer for a full-time, excellent-salaried, all-benefits-included copywriter job [p.s., I’m not a copywriter]. I knew this too-quickly-offered job couldn’t be true and not just because I’m old—although I think having been round and round the blox a bit, that helped—and in fact this situation turned out to be a way for scammers to get a color copy of my license and/or passport, which they didn’t get. But the length&depth of the scam was pretty impressive.)

So, long&short of it: Apparently you’re never to old to learn new things be they crazy, complementary, or wholly mind-spinning.

A very cool woman I met through my last adventure in job-land, the one that dumped a group of us into limbo-ville while rubbing our metaphorical eyes and massaging our rears, wrote on our group chat during a mental-wellness check-in: “Functional existence, lacking joy but believe I am still capable of it!” The exclamation point was the thing that resonated. I have felt a few things in the last week that have lifted me and that have a thread running through: the excellence of friends—whether known and dear for decades or newly met and sure to be fab in the future. Even when discussing things less than wonderful, the connection is warm.

Also, this little ditty from Henry Rollins (sweet Hank) who was an OG member of Black Flag one of the seminal punk rock bands from Orange County, CA, during my teenage-riot dayz. On a random Instagram post in some interview he did on a reel I found, he says about this time we’re living in, “This is not a time to be dismayed. This is punk rock time. This is what Joe Strummer trained you for. It is now time to go. You’re a good person. That means more now than ever.” So, how to channel the dismay into motivation? Currently exploring.

Also, because yes, I love to write, I’m also now going to maybe chat. Into an audio file, which I’m going to post. Ruminations on things that are moving me forward.