You are lucky to be abroad. I hope we can move to France one day where Chris's (my partner of ten years Flamin' Groovies) daughter and grandchildren were born and raised. I used to see you and Clem hanging out back in the day, I was one of those paisley underground kids who used to work for Greg Shaw. I have to tell you how much your music meant to me, I am 61 this month. It always brings me up when I am down. It is not the same ol place it used to be...hope we get across the pond soon. Happy belated!
Im also 66, welcome to the club! Been a fan since the 80s. The theme of home and New York is often on my mind. Lifelong NYC resident, straddling doc filmmaking with marketing day jobs. Eight years ago moved with wife to Bloomington, IN for day job, sublet a rent-stablized apartment. Lost it three years ago and still mourning that. I go back and always have friends to stay with but it's...bittersweet. I belong but I don't. Home is where the heart is, they say, but I'm not sure there's anyplace else but NYC I'll ever really feel like that. Ironically, my own substack seems to be the best antidote - connecting to friends/followers/community, no matter where they are, that's when I feel at home.
Happy belated birthday. You having caught up to me a bit will be short lived since I turn 68 in a few months.
I am sorry about your friend and how you are affected by the situation. I can only wish for the best possible outcome for both of you without knowing what that is. With respect to this platform, I hope that you’ll be kind to yourself under the circumstances and not beat yourself up over not being to write as well as you feel you should.
I am excited to hear about Psycher. I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for more on that.
Home -
The earliest concept of home that I recall is the one room summer cottage where we were temporarily housed in the Netherlands as evacuees from Indonesia, my birth country. Shortly after, we moved to a town between The Hague and Leyden where I continued to live as a preteen.
We emigrated to the US just before I turned 12, lived in Chicago, IL, for six months before moving to Orange County, CA. My wife, a Southern California native, and I, with our two kids, moved to the Seattle area after I had lived in the greater Los Angeles area for 24 years. The house in suburban Seattle that we bought a year after moving there was our home for 26 years, the longest I’ve called any house my home. My wife and I moved into our current home, closer to Tacoma, almost 5 years ago.
I have never been sentimental about the places I lived as far as them having been my home. To me, a house is just that, a house. To me, what makes a home is a sense of belonging, acceptance, nurturing, and a degree of permanence. This doesn’t necessarily mean home is a place made of brick and mortar. Home could be a sailboat, a horse drawn covered wagon, a Sprinter van. To me, home is whatever a person decides is home, consciously or not.
I hope that, wherever you go, that you will always be able to return to a place that feels like home. I hope the same for Audrey
Happy, very-belated, birthday Kathy! Thank you for being such an inspiration not only musically but in recovery as well ... I'm so sorry you are dealing with someone close to you who has cancer. I watched my mom die of the disease and heart-wrenching and gut-punching doesn't even begin to describe how it feels. ... For me home is where my heart is, as cliche as that sounds. It literally is just where I happen to be. I don't have any attachments to place or structure. I've lived in many cities and each one represents a sort of home for me. I could go back to any one of them but I feel no need or no pull to do that, and like you said it is an echo, a past, a dream remembered.
I lived in the same city for 48 years and then moved about 500 miles with my wife for her job. About two years later, the only person I already knew around here moved away. It’s been 12 years now and I still haven’t recovered in terms of friends or professionally/income-wise. And I go back to my old city and I don’t really feel at home there either. I envy your ability to make these changes.
Good luck with it all, including the band! Long-distance collaborations are a whole different thing, but it’s great that they’re possible—I don’t know where I’d be without them.
What is home to me? I have finally accepted that home is where I grew up, in the hill country of Eastern Ontario. Almost everywhere else I have lived has felt temporary, even after 3 decades of living on the West Coast of Canada.
I resented where I lived, when I was a teen, as all the music I listened to was coming from more exciting places, like Toronto, New York, Montreal, and London. I rejected the country, bluegrass, and Ottawa Valley fiddle music I grew up with, as being too "square" and only fit for hillbillies. Little did I know at the time that my disdain for rural living, such as becoming a farmer would turn 180 degrees, and I soon began to miss my old rural life.
I'm a country boy at heart, and though I have always loved the woods, lakes, rivers, farms, and meadows of "back home", the realisation that the landscape of my youth has been long been the lodestone in my soul has solidified in the past year. My mood, thoughts, and outlook are greatly informed by landscape.
My homesickness is partly due to having visited there to see my father, who had cancer throughout 2024, so I empathise with you in the difficulty of seeing a loved one undergoing the ravages of this terrible disease.
The type of city neignbourhood, by contrast, that I could happily call "home"-pedestrian-friendly with little shops, heritage architecture, cafes, and record stores-is disappearing; and those that remain, in defiance of the creeping gentrification of other parts of the city, have become too expensive for me to live in.
So, I'm working towards moving "back home" in the next year or two-it all depends on what sort of work I can find there.
At least there are taverns, bars, and such, where I can still sing and play my guitar.
Hi Frederick, thank you. This was so wonderfully expressed and written. I love how you described your circling back to home. And I relate to your comment about landscape. There's something about the countryside around Austin, the limestone and scrubby oaks, yaupon--just the lay of the land, that always puts me at ease. I don't know why, because I grew up in the city. I suppose I spent enough time at the lakes, at camps, etc to form an identity with that environment.
Thank you for complimenting my writing-I'm glad you enjoy it.
I enjoy your writing too, hence my subscription. I have your autobiography, but I haven't started reading it yet. Oh, the shame!
Not coincidentally, despite my current line of thinking, my reading has been absorbed by a British landscape writer, Robert MacFarlane, and I have been entranced by his poetic prose in the books, "The Old Ways" and "Landmarks".
I think Nature is essential to all our hearts and souls, as much as modern society has tried to push it away and separate ourselves from it. Perhaps I feel the ache of that separation because I grew up in the country, roaming the woods, looking up at the stars, and swimming in the river. There's a pulse-a slow but vibrant pulse-to the seasons that is felt more deeply when you're living in the country.
I'd like to experience the Texas countryside someday-I am wondering what the yaupon and other plants smell like. I had been having recurring dreams about the fragrance of a certain plant back home, and after finding it and identifying it-sweetfern-on a trip there, the dreams subsided. It was simply a fragrance, along with the sweet smells of the flowers in pastures and on the roadside, that I remembered growing up.
You mentioned pines in the Austin countryside; last summer, while on a rural road, I had to stop and admire the tall white pines at the entrance to a lodge-and the fragrance of the pine needles rising on the summer heat was almost shocking, after being in an air-conditioned car interior.
Kathy, your insightful, empathetic post here is great! I'm gathering friends to go down to LA and volunteer this month. We all do what we can, right? You taking care of a sick family member is definitely "enough".. Bravo you!
Are the Go-Go's going to do any more live concerts? We want to come see you guys wherever on the planet you perform!
"I’d be interested to hear in the comments if you’re inclined to discuss—what is home to you? How attached are you to a place or a house or a city?"
To answer your question, my home is Calgary, Alberta. Even just 8 years ago, I was never particularly attached to any one place. At that point, I had never lived anywhere longer than 9 years, and in 2017 I was applying for academic positions in South Korea, India, Dubai, Pakistan, and Macao because I was excited to live and work somewhere *completely* different from Canada. But I guess I am starting to feel my age (a month away from 50) because unless I have an *amazing* opportunity arise somewhere else, I just want to stay in Calgary for the rest of my life. My wife and I have been here for over 15 years now, and we finally own a house, so I have grown to love it enough to no longer feel wanderlust.
Hi Ben, that must be nice, to feel so settled. I think if I was married or with a partner it would contribute to me wanting to stay put. But as a single, and not having a partner to consider their wishes I try and embrace the freedom of that aspect.
Happy Belated Birthday, Kathy. My heart aches for the pain and devastation you are experiencing. I wish you all of the love and peace that is available to you right now. Even in your state of grief, you manage to inspire and touch hearts.
I still live in the same city I was born in- I’ll be 64 in June. It’s an affordable place to live, my home has been paid off for many years, and even though my politics are different than most of the people who live here in the Texas Panhandle, it’s still home. I often think about moving somewhere after I retire, but I won’t be surprised if I just stay here. I like familiarity, I can be to my job in 10 minutes, and though the weather can be bitterly cold in winter and days above 100 in summer, the nice days are beautiful. It’s home.
Hi David, I totally get it! And I admire your tolerance to other people's --probably the majority?--political views. It's so interesting to me how polarized and divided people are, and yet how we find common humanity just as people.
They say home is where the heart is. I guess that’s mostly true. I grew up in a
Suburb of nyc. I know it’s where I am from but I don’t feel like it’s home anymore even accounting for the childhood home is no longer in the family. I’ve lived in nyc for 30 years. NYC is home. It’s where I found myself. Where I found the work I love and the friends I love. It drives me crazy at times. Disappoints me often. And even though I went to explore the world and spend time elsewhere, I can’t imagine being away from nyc for too long. The other place that feels like home to me is where I went to college, Notre Dame Indiana. The campus is home. I feel safe there even today, 32 years later. It’s where I learned to me on my own. Learned to make Friendships and explore new ideas. Will I make any new homes as I age through my 50s and 60s? I’m open but glad I have the two I got.
Hi John. Your feelings about NYC are something I've heard from all my friends who live there. I could see myself giving the city a go--I think it's just the bang for my buck that would worry me.
For me, home = Austin and my husband, the two of them closely intertwined. Austin is where the two of us met, fell in love, renewed our vows and lived most of our 49 years together. It is where he died, just two months and two weeks ago. (Yes, fuck cancer!) Austin is the only place where I've ever really felt free to be me, and my beloved was the one person with whom I could really be my full self, the only man to whom I ever said "I love you." Now he's ashes and memories, but Austin, however changed, is still Austin, and the fact that our life together was anchored here makes this city even more impossible for me to ever leave, because it's where we were -- and still are -- Us. And that is home.
Hi Sharon, I'm so glad that Austin gives you a sense of comfort and belonging in this new realm of life without your beloved husband. This was a beautifully expressed answer, replete with sadness softened by acceptance, reflection and gratitude for what you had. I hope to bear my future losses with the same grace and thank you for teaching me.
You are lucky to be abroad. I hope we can move to France one day where Chris's (my partner of ten years Flamin' Groovies) daughter and grandchildren were born and raised. I used to see you and Clem hanging out back in the day, I was one of those paisley underground kids who used to work for Greg Shaw. I have to tell you how much your music meant to me, I am 61 this month. It always brings me up when I am down. It is not the same ol place it used to be...hope we get across the pond soon. Happy belated!
Im also 66, welcome to the club! Been a fan since the 80s. The theme of home and New York is often on my mind. Lifelong NYC resident, straddling doc filmmaking with marketing day jobs. Eight years ago moved with wife to Bloomington, IN for day job, sublet a rent-stablized apartment. Lost it three years ago and still mourning that. I go back and always have friends to stay with but it's...bittersweet. I belong but I don't. Home is where the heart is, they say, but I'm not sure there's anyplace else but NYC I'll ever really feel like that. Ironically, my own substack seems to be the best antidote - connecting to friends/followers/community, no matter where they are, that's when I feel at home.
I always enjoy reading your posts, and look forward to seeing you in San Francisco in May!
Happy belated birthday. You having caught up to me a bit will be short lived since I turn 68 in a few months.
I am sorry about your friend and how you are affected by the situation. I can only wish for the best possible outcome for both of you without knowing what that is. With respect to this platform, I hope that you’ll be kind to yourself under the circumstances and not beat yourself up over not being to write as well as you feel you should.
I am excited to hear about Psycher. I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled for more on that.
Home -
The earliest concept of home that I recall is the one room summer cottage where we were temporarily housed in the Netherlands as evacuees from Indonesia, my birth country. Shortly after, we moved to a town between The Hague and Leyden where I continued to live as a preteen.
We emigrated to the US just before I turned 12, lived in Chicago, IL, for six months before moving to Orange County, CA. My wife, a Southern California native, and I, with our two kids, moved to the Seattle area after I had lived in the greater Los Angeles area for 24 years. The house in suburban Seattle that we bought a year after moving there was our home for 26 years, the longest I’ve called any house my home. My wife and I moved into our current home, closer to Tacoma, almost 5 years ago.
I have never been sentimental about the places I lived as far as them having been my home. To me, a house is just that, a house. To me, what makes a home is a sense of belonging, acceptance, nurturing, and a degree of permanence. This doesn’t necessarily mean home is a place made of brick and mortar. Home could be a sailboat, a horse drawn covered wagon, a Sprinter van. To me, home is whatever a person decides is home, consciously or not.
I hope that, wherever you go, that you will always be able to return to a place that feels like home. I hope the same for Audrey
Happy, very-belated, birthday Kathy! Thank you for being such an inspiration not only musically but in recovery as well ... I'm so sorry you are dealing with someone close to you who has cancer. I watched my mom die of the disease and heart-wrenching and gut-punching doesn't even begin to describe how it feels. ... For me home is where my heart is, as cliche as that sounds. It literally is just where I happen to be. I don't have any attachments to place or structure. I've lived in many cities and each one represents a sort of home for me. I could go back to any one of them but I feel no need or no pull to do that, and like you said it is an echo, a past, a dream remembered.
Kathy - once again a great piece. I hope you find peace with what you are going through.
Regarding Home. For me it’s people not a place. Well people and my dog. As long as my kids, granddaughter and my wife are near, it’s home
I’m hoping things break your way; stay safe.
I lived in the same city for 48 years and then moved about 500 miles with my wife for her job. About two years later, the only person I already knew around here moved away. It’s been 12 years now and I still haven’t recovered in terms of friends or professionally/income-wise. And I go back to my old city and I don’t really feel at home there either. I envy your ability to make these changes.
Good luck with it all, including the band! Long-distance collaborations are a whole different thing, but it’s great that they’re possible—I don’t know where I’d be without them.
i have a similar story, I can sure relate
What is home to me? I have finally accepted that home is where I grew up, in the hill country of Eastern Ontario. Almost everywhere else I have lived has felt temporary, even after 3 decades of living on the West Coast of Canada.
I resented where I lived, when I was a teen, as all the music I listened to was coming from more exciting places, like Toronto, New York, Montreal, and London. I rejected the country, bluegrass, and Ottawa Valley fiddle music I grew up with, as being too "square" and only fit for hillbillies. Little did I know at the time that my disdain for rural living, such as becoming a farmer would turn 180 degrees, and I soon began to miss my old rural life.
I'm a country boy at heart, and though I have always loved the woods, lakes, rivers, farms, and meadows of "back home", the realisation that the landscape of my youth has been long been the lodestone in my soul has solidified in the past year. My mood, thoughts, and outlook are greatly informed by landscape.
My homesickness is partly due to having visited there to see my father, who had cancer throughout 2024, so I empathise with you in the difficulty of seeing a loved one undergoing the ravages of this terrible disease.
The type of city neignbourhood, by contrast, that I could happily call "home"-pedestrian-friendly with little shops, heritage architecture, cafes, and record stores-is disappearing; and those that remain, in defiance of the creeping gentrification of other parts of the city, have become too expensive for me to live in.
So, I'm working towards moving "back home" in the next year or two-it all depends on what sort of work I can find there.
At least there are taverns, bars, and such, where I can still sing and play my guitar.
Stay Safe.
Hi Frederick, thank you. This was so wonderfully expressed and written. I love how you described your circling back to home. And I relate to your comment about landscape. There's something about the countryside around Austin, the limestone and scrubby oaks, yaupon--just the lay of the land, that always puts me at ease. I don't know why, because I grew up in the city. I suppose I spent enough time at the lakes, at camps, etc to form an identity with that environment.
Thank you for complimenting my writing-I'm glad you enjoy it.
I enjoy your writing too, hence my subscription. I have your autobiography, but I haven't started reading it yet. Oh, the shame!
Not coincidentally, despite my current line of thinking, my reading has been absorbed by a British landscape writer, Robert MacFarlane, and I have been entranced by his poetic prose in the books, "The Old Ways" and "Landmarks".
I think Nature is essential to all our hearts and souls, as much as modern society has tried to push it away and separate ourselves from it. Perhaps I feel the ache of that separation because I grew up in the country, roaming the woods, looking up at the stars, and swimming in the river. There's a pulse-a slow but vibrant pulse-to the seasons that is felt more deeply when you're living in the country.
I'd like to experience the Texas countryside someday-I am wondering what the yaupon and other plants smell like. I had been having recurring dreams about the fragrance of a certain plant back home, and after finding it and identifying it-sweetfern-on a trip there, the dreams subsided. It was simply a fragrance, along with the sweet smells of the flowers in pastures and on the roadside, that I remembered growing up.
You mentioned pines in the Austin countryside; last summer, while on a rural road, I had to stop and admire the tall white pines at the entrance to a lodge-and the fragrance of the pine needles rising on the summer heat was almost shocking, after being in an air-conditioned car interior.
Well, keep up the writing! I know you will.
Happy Belated Birthday!
Stay safe. Sending hugs and positive vibes.
Looking forward to your new musical ventures!
Take care and rock on🎸🤘
Kathy, your insightful, empathetic post here is great! I'm gathering friends to go down to LA and volunteer this month. We all do what we can, right? You taking care of a sick family member is definitely "enough".. Bravo you!
Are the Go-Go's going to do any more live concerts? We want to come see you guys wherever on the planet you perform!
Hello, thank you for volunteering. And yes, the Go-Go's have announced 3 festivals and one casino date in Las Vegas this spring
"I’d be interested to hear in the comments if you’re inclined to discuss—what is home to you? How attached are you to a place or a house or a city?"
To answer your question, my home is Calgary, Alberta. Even just 8 years ago, I was never particularly attached to any one place. At that point, I had never lived anywhere longer than 9 years, and in 2017 I was applying for academic positions in South Korea, India, Dubai, Pakistan, and Macao because I was excited to live and work somewhere *completely* different from Canada. But I guess I am starting to feel my age (a month away from 50) because unless I have an *amazing* opportunity arise somewhere else, I just want to stay in Calgary for the rest of my life. My wife and I have been here for over 15 years now, and we finally own a house, so I have grown to love it enough to no longer feel wanderlust.
Hi Ben, that must be nice, to feel so settled. I think if I was married or with a partner it would contribute to me wanting to stay put. But as a single, and not having a partner to consider their wishes I try and embrace the freedom of that aspect.
Happy Belated Birthday, Kathy. My heart aches for the pain and devastation you are experiencing. I wish you all of the love and peace that is available to you right now. Even in your state of grief, you manage to inspire and touch hearts.
THank you Melissa!
I still live in the same city I was born in- I’ll be 64 in June. It’s an affordable place to live, my home has been paid off for many years, and even though my politics are different than most of the people who live here in the Texas Panhandle, it’s still home. I often think about moving somewhere after I retire, but I won’t be surprised if I just stay here. I like familiarity, I can be to my job in 10 minutes, and though the weather can be bitterly cold in winter and days above 100 in summer, the nice days are beautiful. It’s home.
Hi David, I totally get it! And I admire your tolerance to other people's --probably the majority?--political views. It's so interesting to me how polarized and divided people are, and yet how we find common humanity just as people.
They say home is where the heart is. I guess that’s mostly true. I grew up in a
Suburb of nyc. I know it’s where I am from but I don’t feel like it’s home anymore even accounting for the childhood home is no longer in the family. I’ve lived in nyc for 30 years. NYC is home. It’s where I found myself. Where I found the work I love and the friends I love. It drives me crazy at times. Disappoints me often. And even though I went to explore the world and spend time elsewhere, I can’t imagine being away from nyc for too long. The other place that feels like home to me is where I went to college, Notre Dame Indiana. The campus is home. I feel safe there even today, 32 years later. It’s where I learned to me on my own. Learned to make Friendships and explore new ideas. Will I make any new homes as I age through my 50s and 60s? I’m open but glad I have the two I got.
Hi John. Your feelings about NYC are something I've heard from all my friends who live there. I could see myself giving the city a go--I think it's just the bang for my buck that would worry me.
Also hope whatever you or a friend are going through works itself out. Sending positive vibes.
For me, home = Austin and my husband, the two of them closely intertwined. Austin is where the two of us met, fell in love, renewed our vows and lived most of our 49 years together. It is where he died, just two months and two weeks ago. (Yes, fuck cancer!) Austin is the only place where I've ever really felt free to be me, and my beloved was the one person with whom I could really be my full self, the only man to whom I ever said "I love you." Now he's ashes and memories, but Austin, however changed, is still Austin, and the fact that our life together was anchored here makes this city even more impossible for me to ever leave, because it's where we were -- and still are -- Us. And that is home.
Hi Sharon, I'm so glad that Austin gives you a sense of comfort and belonging in this new realm of life without your beloved husband. This was a beautifully expressed answer, replete with sadness softened by acceptance, reflection and gratitude for what you had. I hope to bear my future losses with the same grace and thank you for teaching me.
Kathy, your kind words mean a lot to me. Thank you so much.
Godspeed, Ms. Valentine. Solidarity. As always, thank you. Endlich, Gute Reise.