Category Archives: Music

“When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.” ~ Andy Warhol

Before anyone thinks this fall is going to be all gloom and doom, here’s something to remix it up, because fall can be fabulous if you know where to look. Let the beauty and the light shine! Let the glamour and the sparkle ricochet around the mirrored world! Let Studio 54 dip into your powder-keg dreams and blow it all to beautiful oblivion! 

IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND LOVE
WHAT A TALE MY THOUGHTS COULD TELL
JUST LIKE AN OLD TIME MOVIE
ABOUT A GHOST FROM A WISHING WELL
IN A CASTLE DARK OR A FORTRESS STRONG
WITH CHAINS UPON MY FEET
YOU KNOW THAT GHOST IS ME

Fall has always been about the drama. This was when the night-time soap operas returned, and in my formative years I was all about the soap operas. New plot lines were set into motion. Cliffhangers were resolved or spun into secondary moments of suspense. The start of the fall television season in general was always an exciting time. Worn-out characters were replaced by new ones, sets were energized, haircuts were revamped, and styles shifted slightly with the times, whether period or modern. In some ways it was a lot like the start of school, when everyone came back slightly altered and reinvented. 

Perhaps this year more than ever we are in need of such a re-boot, so I’m taking this moment in time to re-energize my good practices, and curb some of the unhealthier things that have started to become habit (we will stop buying so much chocolate and so many cookies, and instead invest in fresh fruit). My meditation practice will continue as well (on the 25th of this month I’m moving up to 25 minutes per day), and I’ll refocus energy on my mindfulness. When things turn lighter in the summer it gets easier to be more naturally mindful – that will take more effort when there’s not a pool or gardens or a pleasant outdoor day just around the corner. 

As for a reinvention here, you may have noticed the darker theme and header and sliders, as befits this marker in history. We are on the precipice of something, and it feels like the middle of night. I’m sidling up to it in the hopes of reconciling myself to the darkness, while glowing a little brighter to make up for it. There is a pair of new categories here as well – Antiracism and Mindfulness – serious topics I’ve been more interested in expounding upon and exploring, and which have naturally grown into what I hope will be substantial pillars of what makes this site vital. 

A new season is at hand. A new chance to be better has arrived. The opportunities unfurl to improve from within. Just as we begin a retreat from the outside in, so too do we return to the interior of our mental make-up, and to improving the constitution of our soul. 

I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE WENT WRONG
BUT THE FEELING’S GONE
AND I JUST CAN’T GET IT BACK

“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That’s one of my favorite things to say. So what.” ~ Andy Warhol

The whisper, urgent and fierce, came to me in a blackness so dense I couldn’t be sure it was from another human being. For all I knew, and for all I could see in that night, it came from some feral being that was part ghost, part manifestation, and part spirit. But I felt its heat, felt its fetid moisture, and every once in a while I heard the click and grinding of teeth. Then, the ice cold essence of absence, as if its breath crystallized into tiny daggers of ice which fell to the earth like the delicate, barely-heard rustling of snow falling on hard ground.

“Do you hear me? Do you know what I’m saying?”

In that first semester at Brandeis, I was hearing voices in my head. Looking back, it was just the one voice, and it was less an actual voice and more a manifestation of all my doubts and disbeliefs in myself. But it repeated itself, growing more vicious and more relentless as the days turned colder. At the time, I simply wasn’t listening to my heart, and so it spoke for itself. I couldn’t see it then. I couldn’t hear it then. All I felt was confusion.

And the whispers grew increasingly ferocious.

IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND LOVE
WHAT A TALE MY THOUGHTS COULD TELL
JUST LIKE AN OLD TIME MOVIE
ABOUT A GHOST FROM A WISHING WELL
IN A CASTLE DARK OR A FORTRESS STRONG
WITH CHAINS UPON MY FEET
YOU KNOW THAT GHOST IS ME
AND I WILL NEVER BE SET FREE
AS LONG AS I’M A GHOST YOU CAN SEE

In the family station wagon, I was probably ten years old when this song played over the easy listening station my parents favored. The melody was sweet, the hook was catchy, and the tinge of folksy accessibility made it a natural choice for people who introduced their kids to music through Peter, Paul and Mary. As our wagon careened through the streets of Amsterdam, I sat in the backseat looking out at the world of fall.

I remember passing McNulty Elementary School, where I would attend kindergarten through sixth grade – the formative childhood years that feel simultaneously sweet and dangerous, innocent and somehow teeming with terror. Seeing it in my mind through the lens I’ve chiseled in the past year, I mourn that I couldn’t put voice to my social anxiety and the issues it caused. It was a thread that ran throughout all of my schooling, including that first semester at Brandeis when I was already a young adult. Fall was always terrifying that way, and I went through it all without fully understanding or grasping what was going on behind the scenes.

IF I COULD READ YOUR MIND LOVE
WHAT A TALE YOUR THOUGHTS COULD TELL
JUST LIKE A PAPERBACK NOVEL
THE KIND THE DRUGSTORE SELLS
WHEN YOU REACH THE PART WHERE THE HEARTACHES
COME THE HERO WOULD BE ME
HEROES OFTEN FAIL
AND YOU WON’T READ THAT BOOK AGAIN
BECAUSE THE ENDING’S JUST TOO HARD TO TAKE

In this, the fall of my 45^thyear on earth, I’m beginning to hear that little voice, but unlike it sounded on those fall school days, it comes with nothing frightening or fearful. Instead, it is a gentle guide, nudging me this way or turning me slightly that way, so that I’m always on the right path. The message is finally being heard, even if I don’t always like what is being said, even if it’s going to mean more work, more effort, more confronting those difficult demons so deeply embedded from so many years ago.

Fall is the ideal time for such a reconfiguration: a moment to reset and restart. Right after every restart, the screen has to go dark for a bit. In the past, I would have turned away from the darkness, and possibly offered something lighter and frivolous to counteract the lack of illumination. This year – the wretched beast that is 2020 – I’m not going that traditional route. I’m going to embrace the darkness. I’m going to walk with it, and try to understand it better. I’m going to befriend it and fold it into my life. There is no true daylight without a night that comes before it.

I WALK AWAY LIKE A MOVIE STAR
WHO GETS BURNED IN A THREE WAY SCRIPT
ENTER NUMBER TWO, A MOVIE QUEEN
TO PLAY THE SCENE OF BRINGING ALL THE GOOD THINGS OUT IN ME
BUT FOR NOW LOVE LETS BE REAL

I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD ACT THIS WAY
AND I’VE GOT TO SAY THAT I JUST DON’T GET IT
I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE WENT WRONG
BUT THE FEELINGS GONE AND I JUST CAN’T GET IT BACK

Not gonna lie, this fall is likely to be brutal, and in all bluntness I don’t know how we are going to do it. How do you heal a nation so divided? How do you repair and mend all the emotional damage that is still being rendered? How do you socially distance for an entire holiday season?

But everything that has already happened in 2020 has revealed that we can do it, even if nothing is stable, even if there is nothing of which we can be certain anymore. There is something terrifying about that. Something incredibly freeing too. When the notions of safety and security turn out to be tethers, sometimes it’s better that they break.

Into that darkness, may we fall with freely-given abandon, and let it bring about something more beautiful, more colorful, more enriching and more empowering.

Fall begins again…

IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND LOVE
WHAT A TALE MY THOUGHTS COULD TELL
JUST LIKE AN OLD TIME MOVIE ABOUT A GHOST FROM A WISHING WELL
IN A CASTLE DARK OR A FORTRESS STRONG
WITH CHAINS UPON MY FEET
THE STORY ALWAYS ENDS
AND IF YOU READ BETWEEN THE LINES
YOU’LL KNOW THAT I’M JUST TRYING TO UNDERSTAND
THE FEELING THAT YOU LEFT

I NEVER THOUGHT I COULD FEEL THIS WAY
AND I’VE GOT TO SAY THAT I JUST DON’T GET IT
I DON’T KNOW WHERE WE WENT WRONG
BUT THE FEELING’S GONE
AND I JUST CAN’T GET IT BACK

This summer’s soundtrack belonged indisputably to Taylor Swift’s ‘folklore’ album, which was gorgeously low-key, saturated with a searing melancholy, and accented by a melodic beauty missing from a lot of pop music these days. For these last few days of summer, and just before we begin the seasonal recap, give this cut a listen – it’s called ‘This Is Me Trying’, and it makes the perfect accompaniment to one of the last swims of the season, fittingly cloaked by the night, perfumed by the angels, and draped in ambivalence.

I’VE BEEN HAVING A HARD TIME ADJUSTING

I HAD THE SHINIEST WHEELS NOW THEY’RE RUSTING

I DIDN’T KNOW IF YOU’D CARE IF I CAME BACK

I HAVE A LOT OF REGRETS ABOUT THAT

PULLED THE CAR OFF THE ROAD TO THE LOOKOUT

COULD’VE FOLLOWED MY FEARS ALL THE WAY DOWN

AND MAYBE I DON’T QUITE KNOW WHAT TO SAY

BUT I’M HERE IN YOUR DOORWAY

I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS ME TRYING

It’s the way the water pulls you down, at that time of the year when the water is warmer than the air, when the only way out is through, when the wilderness of night floats above the break of day, and you swim down deeper into the warmth, into the place from which we came. That crux of summer and fall, that space between happy and sad, and all you want to do is let go and release and succumb to the darkness. It might be easier that way. It might be better to sink all the way down…

THEY TOLD ME ALL OF MY CAGES WERE MENTAL

SO I GOT WASTED LIKE ALL MY POTENTIAL

AND MY WORDS SHOOT TO KILL WHEN I’M MAD

I HAVE A LOT OF REGRETS ABOUT THAT

I WAS SO AHEAD OF THE CURVE, THE CURVE BECAME A SPHERE

FELL BEHIND ALL MY CLASSMATES AND I ENDED UP HERE

POURING OUT MY HEART TO A STRANGER

BUT I DIDN’T POUR THE WHISKEY

I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS ME TRYING

Will we ever make sense of this summer, or better yet this year? I don’t know… I don’t know. What were the lessons we were supposed to learn? Even the teachers don’t seem to know. Where has all the wisdom been hidden? At the bottom of the ocean ~ deep and dark and impenetrable ~ or the bottom of the pool ~ empty and full at the same time, like the heart and the head? In this warm water of life, like the fluid in which we all began before being expelled or pulled into cold, vicious air, I float down, falling gently, waiting for something or someone to break my fall. Only no one is there. 

AT LEAST I’M TRYING…

AND IT’S HARD TO BE AT A PARTY

WHEN I FEEL LIKE AN OPEN WOUND

IT’S HARD TO BE ANYWHERE THESE DAYS

WHEN ALL I WANT IS YOU

YOU’RE A FLASHBACK IN A FILM REEL

ON THE ONE SCREEN IN MY TOWN

AND I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS ME TRYING

We laughed and we ran, we played and we danced, we stumbled and we fell – that’s what summers are for, and we took our cues from the stars and the moon. We weren’t perfect, and we made mistakes, but we never gave up. The older we get, the less we understand, and the less it seems to matter. There comes a time when understanding is a luxury, when survival is more the raw stuff of breathing and sleeping and moving solemnly through the silence, through the hurt.

And so I move through the water and the summer, and if I come out at the other end maybe we’ll find each other there.  

I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT THIS IS ME TRYING

AT LEAST I’M TRYING

While we wait ever-so-patiently for the new pool liner to come in, here’s a glimpse of the distant past ~ a pool shot taken way back in 2000, in the summer when I met Andy. That summer was largely a rainy one, but there were glimpses of sun, and a fair share of pool-ready days. Coupled with the central ari conditioning system at my parents’ house, it was a no-brainer to escape to the heat of Boston and spend the season in Amsterdam. (New York – upstate. Don’t think it was the better-known Amsterdam in glamorous Europe. The only pot we had came from the dog next door.)

It was the dawn of the new millennium but the music charts harkened to the hey-day of the 1980’s with Madonna’s ‘Music’ just coming up and Janet Jackson’s ‘Doesn’t Really Matter’ surfacing at #1. There were boy bands in the form of the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync, and at 25 ripe years of age I still hadn’t quite decided to age out of stanning for them. In so many ways, it feels like such a simpler time. We hadn’t yet been attacked on 9/11, and our country certainly hadn’t lost 150,000 people to a pandemic and poor leadership.

Nutty, nutty, nutty indeed…

Such a simpler time. Even Britney was still that innocent, and Janet’s nipple piercing was but a wanna-be twinkle in Justin Timberlake’s eyes. Summer was the way summer should be – light and effervescent, with just enough rain to cast a subtle melancholy glow over certain days, but not enough to dampen the spirits for longer than a few hours. It rebounded in sunshine and sunflowers, elongating through the underestimated month of September, even daring to seep into the first couple of weeks of October.

More than a pool or even the ease of summer, today I long for the simplicity that comes with being twenty-five years old in the year 2000. That won’t ever happen again, not for anyone. The world has changed. And summer will forever be different.

For all of her career, Taylor Swift has put me on a pendulum of love and hate. It would regularly and consistently swing back and forth between the two emotions ~ for every ‘Out of the Woods’ there was some shot of her dancing in the audience of some awards show. I had whiplash from the extremes she inspired.

The past few years, and her last couple of albums, have made me more solidly on the love side, as she courted more dance-pop maneuvers and took some brave political stances against the Republican awfulness happening right now.

Then, in a surprise move paved by Beyonce, Swift released an entire album of new material without more than a day’s warning. Whimsically entitled ‘folklore’ I didn’t expect much in this collection of songs created during the COVID isolation we have all been going through. Quite frankly, I was ready to be rather annoyed by some tortured isolationist bullshit by another super-rich celebrity who was finding it difficult to quarantine in their three mansions by the sea.

I was wrong.

This album is quite possibly the best Taylor Swift album I’ve heard. Hell, it’s the only Swift album I’ve heard in its entirety because it is just that good. It doesn’t have any instantly-boffo bops like ‘Shake It Off’, and it may be lacking the aural-candy of her recent pop hooks, but what she delivers in place of those popularity grabs is a cohesive soundscape of story songs. It emits a chilled-out vibe that has it uncharacteristically categorized as an alternative album ~ surely the first in her career ~ and may just be the antidote for a summer of discontent and horror.

(Lead single ‘Cardigan’ isn’t even the best of the bunch – try ‘Exile’ or ‘August’ or ‘This Is Me Trying’.) The collection of ‘folklore’ deserves to be heard in its entirety, on a somber summer day, or a sultry summer night, and this kind of artistry and power transcends genre, image, and reinvented musical glory.

Crafting compelling musical art occasionally feels like it should come easier during the peaks and valleys of our twenties than the less volatile and extreme moments of our forties, but Rufus Wainwright defies that notion with the gorgeously dramatic ‘Unfollow The Rules’ – an album that could only be created by someone who’s seen those peaks and valleys, survived them (sometimes quite barely), and lived to push and defy and challenge.

“I’m no Hercules, and this is Herculean,” he laments on the title track, “And tomorrow I’ll just be feeling the pain.” He continues, “Don’t give me what I want, just give me what I’m needing,” and amid one of the most exquisitely beautiful arrangements it’s a heartbreaking and sobering look at the cost of living, measured in careful consideration, a notion not accessible to most of us in our twenties, and a telling treasure map of all the places he’s already been.

Not that any definitive peace or resolution results from that awareness or resignation – see opening track ‘Trouble in Paradise’ – a lovely, languid jam that sounds as good as its tension-celebrating ambivalence conveys a shaky balance. Mr. Wainwright has always been a bit of a trickster in his work, shape-shifting and winking at every unexpected turn and key change. ‘Unfollow the Rules’ finds him endearingly in trickster mode, reminiscent of his very best work, now imbued with some hard-won wisdom, or at least the chuckle of acknowledging the occasional lack-thereof.

‘Romantical Manâ’ neatly addresses critics and all the accompanying heaps of detritus piled high on those daring to be “romantical” in such a cynical universe. ‘Peaceful Afternoon’ wryly describes thirteen years of a relationship – a feat for any two people to survive – and might be one of the greatest songs about marriage ever written. Magnificently capturing both the ennui and ever-changeable excitement that exist simultaneously in any long-term relationship, this ‘Afternoon’ is a lovely piece of music, taking flight and soaring with its strings and backing vocals, while positing whether the mundane can be beautiful, and why ever not?

Biting-humor and wicked-wit sharply-intact, ‘This One’s For the Ladies (THAT LUNGE!)’ finds Wainwright working through the search for peace and paradise as a harp weaves its luscious scales like golden threads into a wondrous land “where people listen to your plan” and “where no one stares at your face.” The Sondheim-celebrated ladies who lunch have always struck me as more than just socialites who have nothing but time and money on their hands; they seem more like unhappy, or at least slightly discontent, objects of beauty looking for purpose as much as for an escape. The meandering and queasy music personifies the ways we make such an escape.

Just when you think he may have it all figured out, or at least found a way to make some peace with all of it, he begins the glorious dirge of ‘Early Morning Madness’ which locates an early morning sadness where “I’m a perfect mess.” The only solution is to go back to bed until the dinner bell rouses him again. The battle with one’s own demons, addiction or otherwise, has never been more beautifully rendered than in this morning-after musing. The entire album leads up to this operatic highlight – a marvelous trough that holds its own dim beauty, and the solace of leaning into those moments of madness. Plunging exuberantly into the skittering strings and high drama of ‘Devils and Angels (Hatred)’, the song-cycle trio that ends the album embodies the richly-varied work that Wainwright has added to his impressive oeuvre in recent years.

Closing track ‘Alone Time’ reminds the world that sometimes Rufus and a piano is all we ever really needed to get away from it all, a very pleasant reminder in these perilous times. It’s also a call for some solitude at a time when we are all both connected and disconnected in so many ways – as much a need for an artist as for a husband as for a father and for a son. In crafting such a timely album, Wainwright has managed to make it timeless, the magic stroke of a genius artist in top form.

A wink to Madonna is hook enough for me to follow like a love-struck dog, and so I was hot on the trail of the latest video from Bright Light Bright Light, which is the fabulously retro ‘I Used to be Cool’ – and it arrives just in time to become a top contender for song of the summer. Thus far that search has been a rather drab and dour affair, dovetailing with the disaster that is 2020 as a whole. Uninspiring, depressing, and downright dangerous, the start of summer has never been this wretched. And so we turn to this piece of perfect pop escapism, in the nick of time to turn things around. While our pool remains unopened and in perpetual repair, a pool-themed video is precisely what we need to live out our fantasies, summer-style… just let the music set you free…

Bright Light Bright Light has already been named a Hunk of the Day here, and this only emboldens that selection, while setting up an almost-certain bid for a repeat Hunk performance. In the meantime, put this playful puppy on repeat and get your summer jam on, even, and especially, if you don’t have a pool right now.

PS – The mustache is officially cool again. 

Certain music makes my heart swell. If you’ve seen the movie ‘Up’ you may be similarly affected by its musical motif. If you haven’t, it’s a Disney/Pixar film that has what some have cited as the most devastating opening of any Disney film, and I’ll admit that if you don’t get a little choked up by the start, I question whether you possess the human emotions necessary to appreciate anything here. As for me, the music is tinged with vaguely-summer memories. Happiness and hope, shot through with a little sorrow; we all wilt a little in too much heat.

I remember watching this in the theater the first time with Andy. It was the summer of 2009 – a year before we were going to be married. Seeing the opening couple go through their life without kids resonated, as did the fullness of the life they ended up sharing. As we near our 20th anniversary of being together, I’m once again moved by the music and the sentiment this recalls. 

For the last century, the universe has been whispering to humanity to slow down, to dwell in stillness and take in pockets of quietude. Lately, it’s begun to scream and rage since no one seems to be listening. If you’re looking for something deep to help you process everything that’s gone on over the past few months, or if you’re simply looking for something to help you get through the damn day, I found the perfect album for meditative rumination.

A thirteen-song musical cycle that is as delicately-nuanced and shaded as its cover art ~ a corner room looking over what might be either the rise or fall of the sun on a body of water – ‘Welcome Home’ is written and performed by one of my brother’s friends, Karel Barnoski, whom I remember with much amusement from our childhood days of playing hide and seek. Hearing him in this realm makes me marvel at the wondrous possibilities that life lays out for each of us, and what we decide to make of them.

Opening with the jaunty ‘Interplay’ the mood is initially playful, which is fitting for the memories I have of Karel as a kid. By track two, however, things take a thoughtful turn: ‘Bath’ offers a balm to everything going on in the world right now ~ a contemplative, sparse soundscape that seems to encapsulate so much of the quiet and stillness that reveals Barnoski’s mastery of the space in-between the notes.

Title track and album centerpiece ‘Welcome Home’ is tailor-made for 2020. Home is many things to many people ~ not always a place, not always a happy frame of mind ~ but it’s what grounds us, it’s what centers us. We may not have grown up in a perfect household, but even the most nomadic among us carries around an essence of home ~ a place, whether physical or spiritual ~ that speaks to us in its own way. Finding that space, and keeping it sacred, is a big part of our journey in this world. The music here allows that place to exist.

‘2019’ is one of the first pieces I’d ever heard Barnoski play on one of his FaceBook live events. It arrived just as we were all hunkering down in our stay-at-home existence. Maybe that’s why it feels a little more powerful ~ the way a song melds to a moment that, as it’s happening, you somehow realize will be historical and resonant, that you are making a memory that will burn itself indelibly into who you are about to become. Here, it offers calm and beauty, refuge and consideration, a way of sorting out whatever ails your own little world. I’ve kept this one on repeat when writing, and it clears the mind and heart like a mini-meditation.

‘The Knife’ brings an underlying tension to the proceedings, darker shadings and a stormy turbulence that is only partially resolved in its dramatic continuation, ‘The Knife (Jam)’ – seven-plus minutes of musical excitement that is a journey unto itself. About halfway through the storm gives way to calm, and a sort of ambivalent resignation, then swirls back around for one final flourish before letting everything settle down again.

The dim mood conjured by ‘Isolation’ perfectly embodies so much of 2020 and reminds me that music and art still matter, that they still provide a haven and comfort for all people. A work of beauty is an invitation for everyone to appreciate, one of the last and perhaps only truly egalitarian systems we have as a civilization. Barnoski touches upon the events of the past few months in his titles, such as ‘Quarantine’ and ‘Stir Crazy’ and if a pandemic keeping us all home results in such glorious work, then it appears the universe is seeing us through these changes and ushering in a new normal framed with beauty, framed with an appreciation for something quieter, something that sounds like a piano being played for the sake of all of us ~ to keep us calm, to keep us together as much as we are apart, to keep us from going crazy.

Every once in a while a collection of music will come along that so deftly and magnificently captures a moment that it’s unclear whether it was the hands of the artist or the hands of the universe guiding us into such states of rapture and beauty. ‘Welcome Home’ stakes its claim of timelessness thanks to the artistry of Barnoski and the way he blankets a difficult world in swaddling clothes of musical consolation. He plays the hurt into the heart, allowing it to have its time and moment there, then plays it gently away, and we are better for having heard and felt it.

Final track ‘All Together Now’ brings back the theme from ‘Welcome Home’ ~ a happy and hopeful return to a time that may not come again, and that may or not have ever been. That’s the remarkable gift this song cycle ends up being ~ it gets us as close to the human experience as music ever can, carving out the space for us to confront demons, reconcile turmoil, and create a new reality. ‘Welcome Home’ is a session of sonic therapy we could all use right now.

{Karel Barnoski’s ‘Welcome Home’ is available on Apple Music here and on Spotify here.}

This is just for the second night of summer. Turns out I had the foresight to put this on our first summer mix, and it came on over the stereo as I wilted from the midday heat, without a pool or a new summer fragrance. Is there a sadder state in which to find oneself? Don’t answer, universe, I already know there’s nothing to complain about. Certainly not on the second night of summer.

Well it’s the second day of summer
You already got me sweating about it
Oh it’s the second night of summer
And I’m disintegrating without you
Throwing me that shade like I’m not cool enough
Throwing me that shade like I’m not
Like I’m not cool enough
Throwing me that shade like I’m not
Like I’m not
Like I’m not cool enough
Not cool enough

Some songs are no longer relatable to me lyrically. When we’re talking about a woman who’s getting on a plane with a carry-on and without me, well, what’s the big deal? And if anyone is throwing me shade, I’m throwing it right back, and the shade I throw is the stuff of endless night. Some songs I simply like because of the way they sound, the way I did as a kid before I know what ‘virgin’ or ‘preach‘ meant. Isn’t that the point of a pop song anyway? This one is taking me away in a haze of heat, riding waves of hot air like I’m not cool enough… 

Sun up and sun down
Sun up and sun down

As for this second night of summer, the heat is on. Beating a hasty retreat to the interior of air-conditioned coolness, I sink gratefully to the floor, where a soft rug awaits my lotus-positioned body, folding in on itself like some intricate piece of origami. Closing my eyes, I take in the start of summer, on its second day – the forgotten day, because everyone only talks about the first day, and what does the second even matter? 

Well it’s the second day of summer
You already got me sweating about it
Oh it’s the second night of summer
And I’m disintegrating without you
Throwing me that shade like I’m not cool enough
Throwing me that shade like I’m not
Like I’m not cool enough
Throwing me that shade like I’m not
Like I’m not
Like I’m not cool enough
Not cool enough

THE SUN HAS LEFT AND FORGOTTEN ME
IT’S DARK, I CANNOT SEE
WHY DOES THIS RAIN POUR DOWN?
I’M GONNA DROWN IN A SEA
OF DEEP CONFUSION

‘Hang On Little Tomato’ is a song by Pink Martini that perfectly personifies this almost-summer moment in a year that has just gone completely bonkers. It’s swerved riotously into cray-cray territory in ways we probably won’t fully comprehend and realize until we’re all dead and buried and the history stored in the cloud reads back like a doomsday novel. Not quite the beginning of summer most of us had hoped for, and certainly not the celebratory year I had in mind for 2020, but then I hear this song, and I take a few deep breaths, and I realize we will be ok if we just hang on…

This happy song reminds me of the baby shower I threw for Suzie and Pat before the birth of Oona. It was in November, but the weekend it took place was a glorious throwback to a late summer moment – all sun and warmth and beams of happiness. Suzie’s spirit has always been infectiously upbeat, even when pregnant, and this song and album added to the joy and quirky atmosphere of a baby shower thrown by a not-quite-baby-friendly yours truly. It turned out lovely enough – the guests make a party, and Suzie’s pals (along with her Mom’s pals) were a hoot unto themselves. It’s not easy to throw-back to summer in November, but we managed it, thanks partly to this song.

SOMEBODY TOLD ME, I DON’T KNOW WHO
WHENEVER YOU ARE SAD AND BLUE
AND YOU’RE FEELIN’ ALL ALONE AND LEFT BEHIND
JUST TAKE A LOOK INSIDE YOU YOU’LL FIND

YOU GOTTA HOLD ON
HOLD ON THROUGH THE NIGHT
HANG ON
THINGS WILL BE ALL RIGHT
EVEN WHEN IT’S DARK AND NOT A BIT OF SPARKLING
SING-SONG SUNSHINE FROM ABOVE
SPREADING RAYS OF SUNNY LOVE

This year, Suzie delivered a tomato growing container, fences and all, from her Mom, and we planted a few tomato plants – the first vegetables we’ve planted in probably ten years. Seemed a good time to do so – end of the world and all – and we already have some fruit forming on the lower branches of the upward-reaching vines. Tomatoes can be tricky to grow well – susceptible to certain diseases and growing dangers – but I was raised by a father whose main claim to cultivating fame was a vegetable garden robust with tomatoes that lined the garage sill in all stages, shapes and sizes of ripeness. We had an excess of the red fruit, matched only by the number of zucchini from his other garden. I learned the power of manure and proper soil preparation. Witnessing firsthand the back-breaking work turning over a decent patch of soil required, the way my father worked well into the dwindling light of the evening to make the dirt a welcoming home. He would then nestle the tomato plants deeply into the ground at an angle, piling the soil up most of the stem because he knew the roots would grow from the whole stem, stabilizing the plant. They soon righted themselves, rooted in stability, and then quickly began their fruit production. We began picking tomatoes soon thereafter and didn’t let up until the fall. There were many BLT sandwiches, or just simple fresh slices with some salt and pepper. They seemed to taste better coming out of one’s own garden.

JUST HANG ON
HANG ON TO THE VINE
STAY ON
SOON YOU’LL BE DIVINE
IF YOU START TO CRY, LOOK UP TO THE SKY
SOMETHING’S COMING UP AHEAD
TO TURN YOUR TEARS TO DEW INSTEAD

Andy grew tomatoes in the garden at his first house too – bushels of cherry tomatoes, along with some peppers. He had a little trouble with the beefsteak variety – one of which I made the mistake of planting this year (we shall see) and when we planted some at our current house, it was always hit and miss.

One fall we neglected to get to all the fruit before the killing frost, and the next year a multitude of sports popped up. We let them grow, eagerly anticipating the sweet tartness of whatever hybrid we had, only to be disappointed with the bitter flavor of some second-hand wannabes. Since then, we’ve avoided the laborious vegetable garden in favor of pretty perennials that returned year after year, growing in size with an easier routine of maintenance. But we missed the fresh bright fruit of a homegrown tomato, so this year we said yes to a container from Aunt Elaine, and currently are coddling a trio of plants just beginning to offer their first crop of fruit.

AND SO I HOLD ON TO HIS ADVICE
WHEN CHANGE IS HARD AND NOT SO NICE
IF YOU LISTEN TO YOUR HEART THE WHOLE NIGHT THROUGH
YOUR SUNNY SOMEDAY WILL COME ONE DAY SOON TO YOU

Every day, I visit the little tomatoes we have, watching them with a protective gaze and sending up a crop of little prayers that they make it – that some spell of mildew doesn’t take them out, that they don’t fall prey to the proliferation of chipmunks in the neighborhood, that something else doesn’t cut short their treacherous road to ripening. After the year we’ve already had, I don’t have much faith… but I’m still hanging on. 

At this time of the year, there are stars in the sky from dawn to dusk, as the Chinese dogwood carries its bracts above its bright green foliage. They put me in the mind of this song, which I am only just beginning to understand and hear as if for the first time. The lyrics are haunting. I will not print them here. Not yet. They should be heard as they were sung, the way the artist intended. 

Who can say what art even means anymore, what purpose it serves, what good and evil it works in the world. I always wonder about such things in times such as these. When the universe turns brutal, and leaves us with lessons we may or may not be ready to learn, it knocks the wind out of me for a while. I question everything and feel uninspired. Unable to activate the usual frivolous drive that impels me to decorate the atmosphere around me with silly, pretty things, it’s like the rudder was removed and I’m spinning in aimless circles. I can’t even properly formulate a simile or metaphor – it all sounds like a mess. 

Turning to a song – perhaps the song of this summer – I seek some scrap of inspiration on which to grasp, desperate for the frisson that ignites when the right melody of music meets the right cadence of words, when story and sentiment rush into each other’s arms, and a little bit of the world can be felt again. 

And so I listen.

First, to the silence of the morning in the stillness of the house.

Second, to the birds in the backyard, and the neighborhood creaking awake.

Third, to the music in my mind, whatever song that has stuck around from the day or night before.

Starry, starry night…

…Stars in the sky held aloft by the branches of a dogwood tree…

I don’t know if I believe in ghosts. I do believe in memories that haunt like ghosts, that feel so strong and tangible that they manifest as ghosts, but are still no more than memory and mourning and love. How else to describe the haunting that happens every year around this time, when the world tilts toward outward happiness and on the surface all is sunny disposition? It was in May that a childhood friend died of a self-inflicted gunshot, and he comes to mind, without fail, each and every spring season that bleeds so beautifully into summer.

WOULD YOU KNOW MY NAME
IF I SAW YOU IN HEAVEN?
WOULD IT BE THE SAME
IF I SAW YOU IN HEAVEN?

I MUST BE STRONG
AND CARRY ON
‘CAUSE I KNOW I DON’T BELONG
HERE IN HEAVEN

It’s like they say in ‘Stand By Me’, and I’m loosely paraphrasing: you never really have the friendships you have when you’re a kid. If you’re lucky and the world helps conspire in your favor, you may hang onto a friend like that. Suzie is one such friend; our families were so intertwined there was no way out from each other’s orbit. My friends Ann and Missy are also from a time long before we were adults. We grew up together. And from the stale hallways of McNulty school, Jeff was a friend I had in grade school and then drifted further and further away until we barely knew one another in high school. By the time he decided to turn a gun on himself and end the pain, he already felt like a lost friend.

WOULD YOU HOLD MY HAND
IF I SAW YOU IN HEAVEN?
WOULD YOU HELP ME STAND
IF I SAW YOU IN HEAVEN?
I’LL FIND MY WAY
THROUGH NIGHT AND DAY
‘CAUSE I KNOW I JUST CAN’T STAY
HERE IN HEAVEN

In addition to this ballad I previously posted, there was another song that personified that dark almost-summer of 1992 – ‘Tears in Heaven’ by Eric Clapton. Written for his young son, who had fallen to his death from a skyscraper, it personified loss like no other song before or since. It played inescapably on the radio, and every time it came on, which was often, I turned the station or shut it off. Sometimes I would simply walk out of the room. Unable to process what happened, and unable to process that kind of grief, I shut down. It was survival. It was protection. It was what I had to do to get through another day. Another night. And I had to do it alone.

TIME CAN BRING YOU DOWN
TIME CAN BEND YOUR KNEES
TIME CAN BREAK YOUR HEART
HAVE YOU BEGGING PLEASE, BEGGING PLEASE

BEYOND THE DOOR
THERE’S PEACE I’M SURE
AND I KNOW THERE’LL BE NO MORE
TEARS IN HEAVEN

The school year ended, and I spent most of the time in and around the house. In so many ways, it felt like my childhood had finally, and definitively, ended – and I mourned that as much as I mourned Jeff’s death. In a sense, they were one and the same. I didn’t get to have one without the other, so I suppose I’ll never know for sure. That summer, they went hand in hand. 

This song kept surfacing, no matter how much I tried to escape it. The world doesn’t always let you get away with running from your sorrow. That doesn’t mean I listened. For all these years, I refused to listen. It brought me right back to that time, and there was enough madness and sadness in the world that I didn’t feel it was necessary to resurrect what had happened so long ago. Once again, I was wrong, so when the song came on a few days ago, I paused and listened to it. I went back and played it again. I dove into that ocean of sorrow, all the way down to where I had buried so many feelings and conflicted thoughts. I dove into my anger and rage, into the unfathomable waste and regret of what he had done, into the depths of seeing what it had done to his parents, to his family, to his friends.

WOULD YOU KNOW MY NAME
IF I SAW YOU IN HEAVEN?
WOULD YOU BE THE SAME
IF I SAW YOU IN HEAVEN?

I MUST BE STRONG
AND CARRY ON
‘CAUSE I KNOW I DON’T BELONG
HERE IN HEAVEN

There was so much sadness still there, so much raw hurt, such tragedy. And still, there was the same incomprehensible lack of understanding in how it came to happen, what steps and decisions and thoughts led him into that dark corner. How frightened he must have felt. How hopeless it must have seemed. How lonely it must have been. How could this star athlete, the most popular guy from McNulty Elementary School, have found himself in such a tragic space? And how could all the recent memories of my own choices and ghosts ~ the pills and plastic bags and rubber bands, the plastic hoses leading from the exhaust pipes of cars, the failures and attempts and failures again ~ make any other sense than in the gnawing thought that it should have been me, it should have been me, it should have been me. 

It took years for that to go away, and sometimes it does still haunt my heart. Maybe it should have been me. Maybe that’s how it should have played out. Maybe that originally made the most sense in the universe. Who had the most promise? Who would do the best things for the betterment of the world? It’s hard to think that I have come ahead in that tricky game of what-if. But the one thing I have learned is that we each had a choice, and we each made those choices in the best manner we knew. For whatever fluke or change of destiny, I’m still here, and even if Jeff chose not to be, I can choose to remember him, to try to make it mean something. In that small way, he’s still here too. 

Music shouldn’t take up so much space.

Neither should memories.

These are elements of the ephemeral that should not be bound to physical formats. They are so much more than that.

I’m old-school.

Some days I want to take the school part out of the hyphenate and it wouldn’t entirely turn untrue.

Looking over the guestroom, I see a place filled with relics from the 90’s. Rickety shelving units that bow and bend beneath the weight and water damage of potted plants, an extensive CD-storage piece that has monopolized one wall for every single day we’ve been at this house. A weight-lifting rack that has seen more use as a storage shelf than actual work-outs (yes, it’s dusty, but I’m about to dust it off, I swear). And with more time than ever to spend at home, I’m finally making motions to bring this room into a new decade. With a new mid-century credenza en route, it was time to do some ruthless editing, beginning with several hundred CDs which I set about transferring to digital format. I fear and embrace change in equally-powerful parts, but for today I shall focus on the latter.

I am learning to let go. For so long I held onto these CDs, the same way I hold onto books, in the futile hope that part of my past would stay safe, would stay untouched and unharmed, and maybe somehow heal if it was just left alone. Turns out that in all this time the best thing to do might have been to let it all go and start over again.

Today I make motions to have it both ways. I will download the songs I love, and trash the rest. I don’t think I’ve purchased a physical CD in years, so this collection hasn’t grown any, it’s simply stayed the same. Stagnant. Still. Unevolved. It is time.

On this morning, I set M People’s ‘Bizarre Fruit’ on a delightful spin back to the 90’s, and I’m brought back to the sales floor of Structure, and tea dance at Chaps in Boston, and I’m smiling at the memories and emotions it brings back. The music remains, the plastic shell of its trappings can go, and the space for, well, space, has begun to appear. It is the space for growth. One shelf has been emptied, and another follows suit. I can see the wall, I can sense an expansion, I can literally feel an openness that hasn’t been there for years. Instantly, the room’s mood lifts. When the new credenza arrives I shall repot the plants that perch atop the deteriorating particle board shelving module. They will have a real piece of furniture on which to grow, and new pots to go with the mid-century feel of clean lines and minimalist structure. When the world outside feels like a jumbled overgrown monstrosity, the best thing to do is clear up the inside.

And if there’s music by M People to dance along to, so much the better.