You know that thing when you’re in a restaurant and the food is taking forever to come to the table so you decide to go to the bathroom and it comes while you’re gone? I wonder if there’s a word for that thing, there should be—maybe there is in another language. I have a book somewhere: “They Have a Word For That” with all manner of foreign words for things we don’t have words for in English, maybe it’s in there somewhere. Not looking for it.
Even if there’s not a word, there’s a sense to it: the odd reverse/mirror control, a wishful desire to assert an outcome by purposefully putting attention elsewhere. If I were to say lately it feels as though a big, life-size version of that thing there’s no word for is happening, I’d suppose it would lead me to question—and answer—what outcomes I’m looking or hoping for.
In two months time I’ll be living in England. And yet now, I’m really—like really really—liking Austin. My band is kicking ass, I love my comfy cool home, the friend circle keeps growing with interesting people I want to know better and my social life is filled with a variety of entertainments. Going out, mostly on my own, I enjoy the independence and freedom that being unencumbered allows for. I went to see a band last night (David Grissom at Saxon Pub) and he/they was/were intensely, incredibly good. I realized, now, at this late date, there’s so much good here I have access to and never took advantage of. The quality of music, every single week that we can see for free is mind blowing.
Also the weather not being a daily brutal 114 degrees surely has something to do with this renewed love for my hometown as well.
None of my sentimentality or Austin appreciation is going to change anything. Contentment can be had anywhere, being one of those “inside job” deals, but a feeling of belonging is contingent on external factors. So I just notice, for amusement’s sake if nothing else, that deciding to move is my leaving the table, and the feeling of belonging is the food being served. C’est la vie. I’m still going to the bathroom. Sorry, England that’s not at all what I think of you—it just fit.
Want to know how it’s going, packing up my house? I’ll show you:
Yeah, not great. You’re seeing the extent of it, two boxes. Every single day I look around at all I need to do and…
I keep not doing it.
There’s a list though, and I’ve scratched a few things off it. One was signing up for Medicare. Other computer tasks and phone call stuff, chores, making appointments, getting cat travel sorted. I don’t feel panicked yet but I do feel paralyzed. It’s too much and there isn’t time to do it all so what’s the point in doing anything is kind of where I’m at. Hoping I’ll kick into high gear soon, that December will be high gear month. And there’s been a bit of whatever it is I do now, that mishmash I substacked about last time: a nice big show for the Bluebonnets at the Paramount, a panel for Texas Book Fest, this weekend’s Comic Con. These things take time and effort and I’m in a “Say Yes” phase, which is just what it sounds like. In the past, “Say Yes” periods always proved beneficial, if mishmashy.
Writing is suffering, but I keep imagining me on trains in England, writing. Getting on a rail service, going to the end of the line, walking over to the other platform and heading back. Hours of uninterrupted writing. Exercise is also suffering, and I don’t imagine anything future-y about changing that. Saying that freaks me out so maybe tomorrow I do something different. One of the annoying program clichés that’s always stuck with me in it’s simplistic, dumb truth is: Keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m ok, and for whatever reason, denial or reality, I decide I am ok. After all, how could I be this busy if I wasn’t ok? But I understand my mom and her lack of motivation and lethargy more than I ever did when she was alive, which is a little sad-making. I miss her. This is only my second holiday season without her.
There was a time when, if asked this question: “What made you become a musician?” –I’d answer: “to meet guys.” I only said that because I used to hear the guys say they had become musicians “to meet girls” and it seemed like a cool flip on the answer.
That was never why I became a musician though. I think I tapped into the why of it perfectly in my memoir when I wrote this:
I hit the strings with a pick he pulled from his jeans, a perfect blasting E chord that made the walls shake. The sound was raw and dirty and loud. It eclipsed every bad thing that had ever happened to me, things forgotten and pushed away, every sad, hurtful betrayal nuked by the grit of circuits, pickups, and tubes. It was the most empowering thing I had done in my entire life. From that moment, I knew. I was never going to not do this.
So far this is holding true. It’s almost 50 years since that day, and I’ve never not done it. In fact, I haven’t ever not been in a band until Covid stopped pretty much everything.
But also, it actually turns out that meeting guys—especially musician guys—is a side effect of being one myself. I sometimes even met my teenage musician crushes. I refer you to my book (again) if you want some scoop on that topic.
Back in ye olde 70’s, when I was 16, I attended a big festival in Austin featuring Peter Frampton. Anyone who knew anything was already into Peter because of Humble Pie, the band he’d been in with Small Faces singer Steve Marriott. Marriott, in case you’re not the 70’s rock relic I am, is one of the best rocknroll singers ever. I only got to see him once, along with every other musician in LA who turned out when he played of all places, a North Hollywood dive called FM Station.
But this is about Peter. At that concert, Sunday Break, Peter was massive, at the absolute peak of the mountain after “Frampton Comes Alive” came out in 1976 and went to #1. Besides conjuring the elusive magic of making music that manages to indelibly soundtrack the lives of millions of people, Peter was a rock star like none of the others. He straddled the excesses that came with the job without seeming like a debauched asshole. He had the confidence and charisma to command a stadium of 100k+ fans but balanced it with humility and gratitude. Musicians were awed by the elegance of his playing—vivid, wild and unlike any other guitar hero but the civilian fandom was divided. On the one hand you had the guys, jealously derisive of his looks, confused by the combo of pretty and shredding. On the other you had the swooning girls, who could now add a rockstar to their wall pin ups of Cassidys, Garrett, Bobby Sherman.
Instead of teen idols, I had my fave rocknroll stars on my wall: the Stones, Rod Stewart, Marc Bolan and Bowie. Frampton was up there too, for the music, for the guitar, but also for the crush. Peter Frampton was the one you wanted to marry.
We met in the early 80’s, an A&M party that ended with the more excessive of us filtering into an A&R guy’s suite at the Parker Meridien in NYC. In the year or two of success I’d had with the Go-Go’s, I distinctly remember it all felt right. This is what happens when you’re a musician, you’re in the club. Girlish rockstar crushes were a thing of the past and being one of the guys was better than anything else a girl could want with a musician in my opinion. Same for being star-struck. Why be that way, when we’ve both gotten to run onstage to a sold out Madison Sqare Garden? That’s how I saw things: I was happy, high, and hanging out with Peter Frampton, all cool, all good.
It was just the one-off, no lasting friendship emerged from the party.
Rough years, long years, ensued and I lost track, but we ended up finding each other on Twitter in the good ol’ days, when it was like cafe society, a online salon for artists that Gertrude Stein might have even enjoyed if she were around. There was a lunch in Studio City, a mailed exchange of memoirs. And then I saw he was performing here in Austin Monday night.
It was emotional for me, the songs that transported me to being a hopeful wannabe in 1976—I hadn’t seen him play since Sunday Break. The passage of time, youth, all the things we lose; our best health and invincible bodies, our pretty, smooth faces and glowing skin. All the things we still get to keep—but for how long? Who knows what this aging business still holds for us? For now there’s passion, love, music, playing live with people, for people. The audience was older, and I suspect some were feeling like we do. (Yeah, I had to.)
There was another hang out after the show, in his dressing room, a sober, older kind. Yesterday I joined him and some of his excellent band members on their day off, hearing the happy hour set that guitar ace David Grissom was laying on us. There we were, me sitting next to the still very handsome and appealing Peter Frampton, my teenage crush, and, I was a little aware, my re-newed 65 year old grownass lady crush. At one point I turned to him and told him I’d spent hours that day signing up for Medicare.
I think my flirting skills are a bit rusty.
Thanks for reading and subscribing y’all! It’s Direction of Motion’s ONE YEAR anniversary. I’m extremely grateful to not be writing into a void and appreciate your subscriptions, time and attention. xxKV
Nice, we’ve got some commonality, I moved to Austin in 1975, my beautiful shepherd named Brandy was with me at Sunday Break, not having money I got creative, a smily face stamp used on top of hand to enter and leave event, so I stood outside and drew with a dime a circle, made a face with marks a lot and got people in for half the cost of a ticket. Concert was fabulous, then proceeded to collect beer and soda cans for recycling. The fun times! Found my calling as an Austin Firefighter in 1985-2012! Oh, fell in love with Patrice Pike at Saxton Pub, her eyes and beautiful voice alone the way. Grand kids up in Port Townsend, we moved to Whidbey Island, I built a nice house for us to live in. Love your thoughts
Roscoe
I love that excerpt from the memoir....also the "reason" for becoming a musician lol