music – Does This Make Me Look

Because even hulking inanimate objects deserve rest.

Last week D&I were in New Orleans. We arrived on January 3rd a few days after the carnage that happened on Bourbon Street. To say there are a lot of things going on in the world right now is to massively understate reality.

Our first day there, we went to Tremé, one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city—founded in 1810—and initially the main neighborhood for free people of color. It’s also a David Simon-created TV series from 2010, which, according to the people at the Backstreet Cultural Museum, is pretty faithful to the spirit of the place. The museum itself was actually a house on the corner across from Louis Armstrong park and because New Orleans is nothing if not about the people, this wasn’t an independent wander through a hushed labyrinth of rooms, but an intimate conversation with a guy named Jimmy who explained to our small group the history of the incredibly intricate beaded costumes, often weighing upwards of 100 pounds, displayed along the walls that had been worn during Mardi Gras, jazz funerals, and other social aid/pleasure club moments. He told us how the hand beading takes months and months and months (rivaling any French couture house). The stories of the time and energy each head piece and chest plate carries is astounding. And of course there was music, because that actually is the lifeblood of the city. Jimmy had a drum and he had a song, which had a chorus consisting of “oo-na-na” that we were invited to join in on. (In my eagerness, I went early on the “oo-na-na” and Jimmy shot me a look and a not-yet head shake. sigh. I finally got it together.) The thing about the city is the sound of it. Everywhere. It lifts up into the air and illuminates and celebrates the deep rips this city has endured, then sewed together in a patchwork of pain and hope. This New Yorker article steps right into the heart of it. New Orleanians celebrate life in the face of death on the regular. Almost every weekend there is a second line parade like the one we joined on Sunday, which wound through the Garden District down St. Charles Ave. and into Central City. The first line consisted of three floats honoring the Crescent City Show Stopper’s Social Aid & Pleasure Club, The Brasshopper’s Social Aid & Pleasure Club, and the Sisters of Change Social Aid & Pleasure Club. Then the people followed, the brass band played, we danced as more and more folx joined along the way. It was both exhilarating and adrenaline-rushing in the tender yet tough way people refuse to step away from a crowd, even when a crowd had been completely and tragically undone by terror only days earlier.

After the second line, we went to Preservation Hall for more music. A small art gallery that was opened in the 1950s, the owners began inviting jazz musicians in for jam sessions and the space became a magnet for live shows. Once we stepped inside, I felt my dad everywhere, which meant the music was filled with salty teary streams. Apparently, my dad’s dad had wanted to move to New Orleans after my dad had moved to Cali for college but his mom insisted on relocating to SoCal to be closer to her only son. He was never clear on why gramps wanted to move to The Big Easy but yet I suspect my pa inherited some love of music from him. And I inherited this passion from both my dad and my mom, who loved to sing, although in the last many years she claims to have lost her singing voice. Although my love for music has gone underground, it flowers occasionally. And on that Sunday, a whole branch sprouted and shook. The movement, community, adrenaline passed one to another. I know that’s why I liked going to shows and clubs; why I like bands and the camaraderie. How that bonds me to other humans and naturally how music was a portal between myself and my dad in our den in Pasadena where I first heard him play his records: Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong.

Pals that my dad went pal-ing to jazz shows with, Pasadena 1964

The courtyard of our house in Pasadena, 1968.

How the Eaton fire is affecting the house I grew up in Pasadena, site of the old Bush Gardens, which was subsequently turned into a neighborhood, is yet to be seen. The flames are not many miles from our old place. I think of the den where the jagged-edged jazz riffs came out of the record player, my dad’s knees drumming, feet thwomping on the thick orange shag as he sat in his Eames chair; the waves of cold sadness echoing through my mom’s silence as she worked in the kitchen on the other side of the house, her voice only occasionally singing along to the top-40 radio, making up words to the hits of the day. I bounced in between and took the feelings in. Then the adrenaline of them splitting up and a move somewhere else, though still in Pasadena. What shakes out when everything falls apart? Once the adrenaline of a moment settles down. I can only speak for me, but it’s ongoing, the things that got buried and the new earth turned making way for fresh growth. Boy does it take time and space for it to happen, along with sensitivity and care. All of those things I’m sending toward each&every currently in need of it.

Below some links to help all those who are currently looking for solid ground in SoCal fire areas.

World Central Kitchen food distribution sites

Here is a really good list of places.

I’ve never really clocked regularly what aging feels like day to day. That’s not to say I’m unaware of it happening especially when some kind of video call happens and I catch sight of myself and think holy hell, look at all those jowly things that have appeared on the southern portion of my face, etc. (I would refer you to Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts About Being a Woman for a very entertaining take on this topic) but overall I’m not overly concerned regarding the number of years I’ve been on the planet.

Lately though, I’ve been reminded of my age because of where I am in my work-world search, or more specifically where I’m not. I could go all in here about ageism, youth, AI, cracker jacks, and prizes (so, those last two have nothing to do with anything, I just wanted to fill out the list), but I’m not going to go in that direction. Instead, I’m going toward how it feels to be seen by other people. I make up what I think they see, what opinions they make about me.

The gaze and self-perception. As a younger me—specifically twenties and thirties—my career choice was one of visitor, fly on the wall, get the story but don’t be the story. Still&all, I often felt a part of the story, whether because I was with a band or artist who were being looked at by thousands (or millions) or because I was being interviewed myself about those bands I wrote about who were being looked at by thousands (or millions). It was a special kind of thrill to feel eyes on me and not really nervous-making given I understood I was an accessory to the main event. But also, when I’m honest, the thrill came from being seen in proximity to these well-known people. It felt sexy and as if through all those stranger’s eyes, I was admired, thought to be lucky. As a teenager, I’d voraciously look at photos of my favorite bands and study the women standing side-stage and want to be them. Naturally I’d make up all sorts of stories to do with muses. That I didn’t see myself on the stage being the creator is a writing for another day (honestly is a story I’ve been writing/exploring for years and years and years and years).

A couple of the most intense times I remember this feeling was when I was at SPIN and an intern came into my office to drop off my mail and said wistfully, “You’re so lucky” as she unloaded a pile of lumpy padded envelopes with advance CDs, swag, and invitations to clubs and shows onto my desk. I’d been there for three years and strived my way from working in a literal closet to having a corner office with a very NY-city water tower view. I agreed with her. I was lucky. From a glance at lease, given that the state of things at SPIN was a mess of harassment and toxic relationships. But in the moment she said that, I saw myself through her eyes and thought, yeah, I am cool. The other time that springs to mind when I felt a group gaze affect me was post-SPIN, when I worked as the musical talent booker at the short-lived TV program the Jane Pratt Show (side notes: Here is a classic example of the show—I booked the DJ, also this Tupac guest spot, Jane Pratt currently has a great newsletter, and hello my friend KarenC). The guest that day was Evan Dando from the Lemonheads. I knew him from my music days, and as I was walking him down the hallway toward the green room, I felt a concentrated I-wanna-be-her energy rolling my way from the audience in the hallway as they waited to get into the studio. At the time Evan had a heart-throbby kind of following and I remember trying hard to just act whatever my version of cool was at the time. (To hear what he was actually telling me and other tales of Jane Pratt madness, click below.)

This is all to say that adjusting to the disappearance of that heady gaze once I’d left the entertainment industry was surprisingly challenging. I hadn’t realized how much it had gotten into my system and colored who I thought I was and how I carried myself. The first time I went to the MTV Awards, which back in the day, late 90s, was a hot-sh%t event, after I’d run screaming from the music scene, I felt the reality of just how transactional my persona had been. I literally had nothing to offer to most the people there. That’s not to say that I didn’t still have real friendships among industry folx and musicians but overall, the sense of invisibility was absolute.

Surprisingly, that feeling of invisible is back as I drop my name in the hats of so many job postings. I’m experienced enough (old enough) to know that this online search is a fool’s-style game of musical chairs yet I really have to remind myself to check my ego when the fourth-in-a-day email comes across telling me “such-and-such and so-and-so won’t be moving forward with my application.” When I feel myself responding with pure emotion, then I take it personally and will flip off my computer or huff around like a 7-year-old who doesn’t get a cookie before dinner. The rubber-band sting can pass quickly if I let it but sometimes I decide to press on the tiny bruise because I’ve decided to feel bad about it. This isn’t really about age because I know for a fact that it’s a mess out there in particular corners of the job-search world and especially for women of a certain age who, let’s face it, have always been particularly screwed. Two audiobooks I’ve loved in the past few weeks: I’ll Drink to That: A Life in Style With a Twist, by Betty Halbreich and How to Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldly from the Accidental Icon by Lyn Slater, both of which are funny and clear-eyed about aging women on this planet.

I’ve got no ending here, just a trail to follow and we’ll see where it goes.

Tag: music

Adrenaline

The Gaze