Again it's been a long time

Once again, I am both shocked by and all too aware of how long it’s been since I last wrote here. Nearly three months. Then, it was summer, a bit slower. The kids were away, music was everywhere.

Now, Oliver is a high school freshman running cross country, thinking about Homecoming, and immersed in the maker space he’s built in our basement and in the acting conservatory to which he was accepted. Jack is a high school senior applying to college, struggling with AP BC Calculus, invested in robotics and squash, and just over a two-week bout with pneumonia. I do NOT recommend pneumonia for any high school senior in the midst of first semester and the college application process. It wasn’t helpful or fun and he’s still “paying” for it.

Just yesterday, I was prescribed antibiotics for what is either shitty bronchitis or pneumonia, and I feel truly terrible. Last month I was in an awful wreck (am fine) so we’re now also car shopping amidst all the mayhem of life. Obviously a car is just a thing, but the event itself was enormously upsetting and could have been deathly, and this not having a car for the last five weeks is just a regular reminder of all that.

I admit to feeling great despair right now, about the world and our collective future. There are so many bad actors on the global stage and here at home, so much hatred and bloodshed and what too often feels like gleeful destruction. In times like these I realize anew just how naive I am in some ways. I truly do not understand such maniacal desires for power and wealth. I don’t understand Putin and Xi, Orban and people like Mike Pence and Kevin McCarthy. Trump is clearly trying to stay out of jail; his lunacy and desperation are, in that sense, “understandable.” But my god, just shut up, go away, and take some responsibility, man. Your behavior is so widely damaging. What kind of a person really cares not about burning an entire country to the ground for their own personal gain? I know, naive. But I don’t understand.

And don’t get me started on all who enable such malicious behavior. As if the strongmen ever actually take care of the people they use in their ascendancies. LMAO when not crying.

In WV, I see place after place in utter decrepitude. The poverty breaks my heart. But the trump flags flying in front of so many of those homes vex me. trump wouldn’t deign to shake hands with these folks much less do anything to actually help them. Almost no one in the GOP would. Our collective civic education is in such tatters. Truly, I am just speechless about so much of the lies that circulate as gospel. Recently, on NextDoor in our WV area, a poster was freaking out about “the protests in MAJOR [his caps] cities near Martinsburg and how he was ready to defend his family if it comes to it.” Four different people responded with “what are you talking about?” notes, and ultimately he deleted the post. But there are millions of people with guns out there ready to “defend” their families (read: kill scary “others”) based on falsehoods and hate that is rooted in those lies. It’s terrifying, to be honest. And deeply upsetting.

Last night, I took a large amount of Advil, donned a N95, and met Mom and Dad at an event with Heather Cox Richardson and Jane Mayer. If y’all aren’t familiar with them, Heather is an American History professor at Boston College and a prolific writer who, maybe 4 years ago, started writing Letter from an American, a newsletter-cum-record of the US and our democracy during the trump era. Jane is a New Yorker investigative journalist, one of the very best, who is not only the chief Washington correspondent but also an expert on dark money in American politics.

One of the most interesting parts of their discussion focused on trump followers and the behavior of those who follow and love strongmen. In short, once people descend down the rabbit hole of rabid followership, the worse the authoritarian behaves, the stronger their fealty to him. We see this, of course, daily with cheeto and his minions which makes the fact of his likely GOP presidential nomination all the more worrisome. He must not win. If he does, he will never leave, and his cult followers will feel both validated and empowered, even more than they already do.

Meanwhile, Israel. As I’m sure you are, I am horrified to near speechlessness about the brutality of Hamas’s invasion. Again with my despair about humanity and its future. This thread is one of the best and most educational I’ve read, and I encourage you to all spend time with it. I would also suggest reading the response by Tal Morgenstern who argues thoughtfully with some of Saul’s writing and then Saul’s response to Morgenstern.

Regarding all of the above, what the world too often lacks, in addition to civic education, are critical thinking as well as patience and respect for complexity and nuance. So little is black or white, and no one benefits from snap judgments that are rooted in soundbites rather than understanding of what are often decades- and centures-old conflicts. It is really fucking hard to get good information these days. It takes way more effort than most people have time or the inclination for.

If you can, please support excellent journalism and the dissemination of it. Good journalism costs a LOT! Personally, I find The Atlantic, The New Yorker, C-SPAN, ProPublica, Reuters, and Associated Press to be excellent. I’ve also read Haaretz a lot since the weekend and find it very thoughtful. Generally, I also very much appreciate NPR and BBC.

The playlist for yesterday's post

Thanks so much to everyone who wrote in response to my post yesterday. Beyond its power to mirror and memorialize, challenge and celebrate, music can really be such a great uniter.

Many asked about a playlist, so here you go:

1. Tina Turner: Better Be Good to Me, 1984, Private Dancer album

2. The Turtles: Happy Together, 1967, released as a single

3. The Righteous Brothers, You’ve Lost That Lovin Feeling, 1965, You’ve Lost That Lovin Feeling album
   *you must watch the video. No one sings like that anymore.

4. Looking Glass, Brandy, 1972, Looking Glass album

5. The Supremes, Come See About Me, 1964, Where Did Our Love Go

6. The Supremes, You Can’t Hurry Love, 1966, The Supremes A’ Go-Go

7. The Supremes, Back In My Arms Again, 1965, More Hits by The Supremes

8. The Supremes, Reflections, 1966, Greatest Hits

9. Sam Cooke, Bring It On Home to Me, 1962, The Best of Sam Cooke

10. Sam Cooke, Wonderful World, 1959

11. Sam Cooke, A Change Is Gonna Come, 1964

12. The Association, Windy, 1967, Insight Out album

13. Lou Reed, Walk On the Wild Side, 1972, Transformer

14. Linda Ronstadt/The Stone Poneys, Different Drum, 1967, Evergreen vol 2

15. Linda Ronstadt, When Will I Be Loved, 1974, Heart Like a Wheel

16. Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction, 1965, Eve of Destruction album
    *listen to this and tell me we’ve learned anything. Fuck.

17. The Byrds, Turn! Turn! Turn!, 1965, album of the same name as song

18. The Samples, Weight of the World, 1994, Autopilot

19. Judy Collins, Both Sides Now, 1967, Wildflowers
    *yes, I love Joni’s version too, but for me Judy’s is the creme!

20. Janis Joplin, Piece of My Heart, 1968, Cheap Thrills

21. Taylor Swift, Vigilante Shit, 2022, Midnights

22. John Denver, Thank God I’m a Country Boy, 1974, Back Home Again

23. Simon & Garfunkel, all songs from The Concert in The Park (1981) except Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (hate that version). Especially The Boxer (originally released 1970), America (orig rel 1968), and The Sound of Silence (1964)

24. Kenny Rogers, The Gambler, 1978, The Best Country Album In The World...Ever!

25. Queen, ‘39, Hammer to Fall, Another One Bites the Dust, Fat Bottomed Girls, and on and on and on, 70s/80s

26. Peter, Paul and Mary, Leaving on a Jet Plane, 1967, Album 1700

Ok, you filthy animals, go listen, dance, and think.

Music: why, who cares why, thank you

Tonight I am alone in WV. Jack flies home from Miami tomorrow, and Tom is home working, and Oliver is at camp, and after many days of extreme gardening and goats and five cats and guinea pigs and code red heat, I’m on a couch (was in a patio Lafuma) listening to favorite songs. I have, over many hours, enjoyed a bottle of French red, and in real time I’m honing my final-island playlist.

I grew up on my mom’s mixed-tape in-car casettes. Tina Turner, The Turtles, Beatles, Righteous Brothers, Temptations, Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Simon & Garfunkel, Sam Cooke, Linda Ronstadt, and Looking Glass’s one-hit-wonder Brandy. To this day, if I hear a song from one of Mom’s tapes, my brain immediately joins a singalong and then moves onto the next recorded tune. We were on Common St, Ryan, Prien Lake, at Tasty Donuts. The tapes kept rolling, Mom crooning, Elia and I ingesting the chords and lyrics and the emotions behind and wrapped in every song.

Growing up, Elia and I heard “Girls, I met your mom when I admired her legs, and she agreed to dance.” “Girls, your father was so quiet, but boy could he dance.”

“If there’s a reason that I’m by her side…I’m willing to wait for it.” -Leslie Odom, Hamilton

It was clear they connected, deeply, on the dance floor. Both loved music and dancing and sweating and spinning and singing and twirling towards and against all the strictures within which they’d been raised. And then they married, and just last week we celebrated their 50th anniversary, a feat that seems both Herculean and obvious.

If I had any superpower it would be voice. A voice of range and power and expression, the sort that comes from both talent and pain, desire and desperation, joy and relentless “I must.” To share, vent, express, scream in profoundly gorgeous and able octaves that move and ensorcel others. That render them begging the bottle to last through another few songs on a humidity-minimal summer night with a spot of breeze. To inspire them to pilgrimage, costume, come out or be out or just, unabashedly, be. Music, its lyrics, its momentum and centrifugal pull, is utterly life-changing.

Take a walk on the wild side, urges a young Lou Reed.

I don’t have no use, for what you loosely call the truth, avers Tina. (And she sure as shit shouldn’t.)

Are you hanging on the edge of your seat? asks Freddie. (You better be, or you’ll probably bite the dust.)

Peter, Paul, and Mary are leaving, Diana and her sisters reminding us to think about, reflect on and embrace love while also knowing that it can go, you need to have someone to come see about you, and ultimately, you’re your own ladder, symphony, and source of strength.

Paul Simon is in Central Park thanking the various civic groups who’ve enabled the live concert (he and Art are still ok). Taylor draws the cat’s eye sharp enough to kill a man, and a surprise playlist cameo by The Samples rockets me to freshman year of Northwestern faster than I can take a breath. John is playing that fiddle to beat sixty; he is the happiest country boy.

I still listen to Happy Together and Windy and Turn, Turn, Turn, and Eve of Destruction. It’s fascinating to consider the somewhat goofy, cis-normative simple croonings of The Turtles and The Association while concurrently vibing to, on many levels, the impending doom of The Byrds and Barry McGuire and the fem-assertive words of Janis, Joan, Joni, Linda, and Carly.

Linda (Ronstadt) is as a go-to for romantic angst and female let-me-be as is any modern woman artist: “ I ain’t saying you ain’t pretty. All I’m saying is I’m not ready for any person, place, or thing, to try and pull the reins in on me.”

And Sam Cooke? Don’t even get me going on A Change is Gonna Come, Bring It On Home, Wonderful World, Cupid…

I could go on forever, but the point, to me, is that many musicians who resonate deeply and across generations and cross-sections of culture and society, thereby changing the world, thankfully, and altering its trajectory, go big and call out what their places are versus should be.

Tony Bennett died yesterday. He was 97 and lived such a full life. Born to Italian immigrant parents and into poverty, Tony was performing by the age of 10. In 1965, at the invitation of Harry Belafonte, he joined the march from Selma to Montgomery in support of Voting Rights, performing along the way under the threat of violence. He’d been supported early on by Black artists, and I’m thankful he had the courage and moral righteousness to pay it back. My Nanny loved Tony Bennett, and I grew up listening to him, too, along with Frank, Dean, Sammy, and so on.

It’s a worthy way to spend a quiet night: listening to favorite songs from the 50s through the present. That’s nearly 85 years of music, a diary of desire, stagnation, change, courage, fury, love, hope, and resignation. It makes you think about life and how you’re living it. Are you living it as if you only have one? Because each of does, just have one, and I think we’d all be well-served to act as such.

“So if you don’t mind me saying, I can see you’re out of aces. For a taste of your whiskey, I’ll give you some advice…
If you’re gonna play that game, boy, you gotta learn to play it right.” Kenny knows. Hold, fold, walk away, run. The secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep.

Here’s my boyfriend Clyde.

He’s a keeper.