59) There are Beginnings Here

plus, they can do it if they want to. and thanks, time.

I’m sorry.

The traveling and visits and work have kept me away much longer than I like. I caught a break to write and earn my Substack keep my last night in NYC. There was a concert in Central Park, propelling it’s pounding pulse into my hotel room 34 floors and half a mile away. My bedside lamp had a short and blinked in time to the beat. The concert, (if you can call singing to prerecorded tracks a concert?) was house music—I know this because Audrey told me; somehow she can tell the difference between techno, dubstep, drum and bass, trap and house—all the dance music sub-genres.

I was comped an incredible room upgrade using the right balance of pleasantry and persistence. Ok, it didn’t hurt that my 21 year old daughter stood next to me smiling and glowing in all her goodness and beauty when I asked the desk clerk, a young man who was apparently quite susceptible to her charms. We make a good team.

I always ask for upgrades. I don’t say who I am, or was, or drop clues and hope the music career has put a fan right there in front of me to grant my wishes. I just ask—not because I feel entitled—but because I know something. Something that once you know, you can’t un-know.

I know they can do whatever they want. They can give you a better car, a better room, a better seat, a better parking spot, a better table. Most of the time, like 95%, they can do it if they want to. I’ve seen it happen too many times to believe otherwise. This room bump was an excellent example. Try #1 got a: “no we are filled up, can’t give you anything better.” I go to my small room. I do not spread out with the unpacking yet. This endeavor is not over, I’ve just gotten started. Time for Try #2. I go find a different person to ask; schmooze and connect and I’m offered a move to a 200 sq ft bigger room in the morning. Better, but let’s give this another—Try #3. Third time was the charm. Bingo. Giant room, Central Park view.

New York was a much needed time of togetherness, enjoying being us—even more than usual. People stopped to say what a great mother and daughter duo; commenting on our style, our energy between each other. In two days, my day was made half a dozen times. People watching, the subway, the park, the weather, the food—a perfect NYC weekend. I thought I was ready for the next thing, to move on, back to “my life.” As if my life is in one place. It’s not. It’s wherever the people I love are.

First came the goodbye, another of too many goodbyes this trip, dispensed with the sort of clutching embrace that makes time stop for a moment, but not long enough. I had a couple more heartachey farewells in LA before the NYC stopover. These after two weeks of closeness with loved beloveds. It makes England feel like a crash landing, to be so loved across the ocean and so alone here. I question everything again, but know that I’m not leaving and that I’ll get by. There are beginnings here.

Starting Over’s All Right, the End So Far Away

in the meantime; i live, i work, i wait, i hope, i still have faith

that what was mine can still be mine

If you’ve ever thought that being in a band is a walk in the park, it’s not. Even from the very first step it’s hard work!

My lil supergroup that jammed a few days in mid-September has been in a texting frenzy trying to land on a band name. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve started a band and done this name-our-band business. You start throwing out everything that passes your sightline: the Clouds, the Hydrants, Tarmac, (jk, I just thought of those) and everyone else is doing the same and sometimes a couple of people will like a horrible name and I think, how is this ever going to work if they like THAT name? There are internet searches and clever inspirations that sometimes we all love only to find the name has been taken. Every morning I wake up to a dozen texts with lists of mostly ridiculous names. It’s part of the deal to toss them all out, because something silly could spark someone else to think of something perfect.

It’s terrible to end up with a name you don’t like. I’m not crazy about the name that my Austin band kept. 'The Bluebonnets’ doesn’t suit us, doesn’t sound like us. But others in the band like it, and there is a point to be made that we’ve been around long enough that people know it.

Determined to have a name I like for the superband. Feel free to make suggestions.

Six months after my mom died, I wrote in one of my earliest Direction of Motion dispatches (circa Dec 2022) that I couldn’t seem to get the images of her dying out of my head. A distressing thought that an entire lifetime of memories could be overwritten by the distinctly uncomfortable last hours of her body’s exit process.

Thinking of death as a physical thing, separate from the event of essence/soul/spirit finding it’s— (seems wrong to noun-ify spirit, but I’m stuck with the limits of language) —new home somewhere in the mysteries of all-ness and one-ness. Whatever the place is that we who still inhabit our bodies don’t get to know about. I’m trying to say I like the idea of death being a two-fer; the physical event which can be unpleasant and the spiritual event which perhaps is beautiful and wondrous.

If this all sounds like woowoo gibberish, well so be it. I don’t have the neat and tidy belief system of people dying and going to heaven—and I certainly don’t disparage these beliefs whatsoever. I’m just left to sorting my own thoughts about loss and death and finding what soothes my own grief.

Anyway, the point of all this is to say things have changed. At nearly two and a half years since her death, the deathbed memories are being overwritten now, and so many lifetime ones are returning. They float into my mind unexpectedly, sometimes with a cloud of melancholy, sometimes making me smile.

My mom frustrated and disappointed me a lot, mainly because our roles were completely reversed for most of my adult life—maybe even before that. I was a stern, no bs parent—nothing like the mother I actually am to my daughter. She was the wayward child, always getting into trouble and messes. It’s my nature to step up and be the adult when there isn’t one. It was her nature to sit back and let someone else do the hard stuff. I characterized our relationship this way after it was too late, she was gone. I think if I’d thought in terms of us just being who we were I might have behaved differently.

It did make the times we connected or were completely at ease with each other more special. The other day I was checking myself out in the bathroom mirror, assessing the pros and cons of my appearance and I had a flashback of my mom at 84, looking in her compact mirror and saying: “I like this face. It’s a nice face.” It made me happy hearing her say that. I told her so, and said I wanted to feel the same, be like her when I aged further. She beamed. She craved my approval—again, in that weird backwards dynamic we had.

Other particular mannerisms and quirks, her singular way of being Margaret, have been surfacing, coming to mind. I’m just happy to report that it appears time will do it’s number, in all respects—corrosive and healing—and those ghastly images of her at the end are fading. Thanks, time.

I Will Find a Way to Move On

when i found you i thought my life was charmed

and we'd be safe from what has happened now

It’s been announced that I’ll do 13 shows supporting Glen Matlock on his UK tour. Glen is always doing cool stuff, he plays bass in Blondie, is currently enjoying a successful Sex Pistols reboot, writes books, does solo records and loads of gigs. I’m working hard to pull together a set of songs I can do justice to and that’ll sound good with just me and a guitar. Yep, you read that right. No band security blankie. I’ve done this before, (like maybe twice?) —not enough to get anywhere near at ease with the format—but I think I’m into it. Go for the yikes. It helps to take the perspective of “being of service”—keep the focus on doing my part to make a entertaining evening for people who have bought tickets. Please be one of them if you can!

Good Days and Thank Yous

if you asked me to describe what i could want with all i’ve got,

i’d say good days and thank yous instead of all these question marks.

I’m intensely jet lagged and it’s rained since I got back. I get a house and cats sitter when I’m away and she left my place spotless. In just 24 hrs I’ve messed up the whole place, so between being tired, living in clutter squalor, the non-stop rain, I’m a bit out of sorts. The only thing I want to do is play guitar and do music, which I can do for hours and not have one single thought in my head the entire time. It’s heaven.

It feels like I’ve been friend-bombing the people I’ve met and like—I decided or thought this while I was away—so upon return I thought I’d hold up a bit. Of course the fear is that no one will reach out and the little basic starts of friendships I had will fizzle due to not being fed. Once I was with a therapist, one of two I’ve had that actually helped and had creative ways of cutting into the crap of the particulars that held me back. It came up that every single love interest and relationship I’d been in, like going back to 4th grade, which of course is neither love or relationship, but is still the same behavior—I realized I’d been the pursuer. I’d been the one to say “him. he is who I want.” Then, with my usual determination and persistence (see upgrades, first para) I went after “him” and usually “got” him.

She asked, why don’t you not do that. Why don’t you wait and see who pursues YOU? I thought about that for a moment, then said, yeah well what if no one does? Then what? Anyway, I took the advice and within a few months along came a man who showed interest in me, and asked me out, and I was into it, and he ended up being my husband. We didn’t last as a romance but we made and parented a stellar human being and we are family forever. So, thank you therapy. Thank you Steven.

I still might have to keep friend bombing these English people though. Just until they realize they need me in their life.

Throughout this dispatch I’ve quoted lines from a song I wrote; “Apology,” for the Go-Go’s 4th album. I wrote it with Belinda in mind, but as always, my own experiences seep into my verse and prose. I’ve been practicing it for my solo set. I like getting to reconnect with my own songs, I never bothered much because of being a supporting, in-the-band type. At 65, if not now when? It’s a really good song lyric and fun to play. I was going to do a video of me singing the song and add it here but I’m jet lagged and tired and it’s time to press send.

Thank you for your patience with this one, for your attention and time and comments and subscriptions. Knowing this blank page will get filled with something and someone out there will read it is everything to a writer. hashtag grateful. xK