Reflections on Love

Some music for ya & show recaps.

When we lose someone, the emphasis always seems to be on how we’ve lost someone we loved. How we will miss that person because we loved them so. But what I keep returning to is the centrality of losing someone who loved me.

Around 2020, the time of Covid, there were six people who knew me thoroughly, got me, understood me, appreciated me. Who thought the world of me. Six who loved me as much as anyone could hope to be loved.

Now there are two. I don’t mean for this to sound as though I’m dismissive or bereft with my two people. To have had six for several years was like trillionaire level of rich, rich in love. I’m not poor with having lost two-thirds of my six: being loved at all is the best life has to offer. Still, it’s noticeable.

One was a boyfriend I split up with, he didn’t die—but he loved me, and he understood me. We were in love for five years, it counted. And yet now there’s no love where there once was. That loss, at the time, was minimal in the scope of love loss. Besides, I had five more people who loved me deeply and completely.

Now three of them, encompassing major decades of love, are gone, via death.

It’s said that the “love remains.” It’s eternal, forever, transcending death. Maybe. But abstractions are intellectual pursuits, and love as an abstraction is a poor replacement for a physical presence in this earthly plane. We get our photos, videos, memories and mementos. No eyes, no ears, no voice, no body.

Johnny Thunders says it best.

Isn’t it something else, to be really known by another person? To be understood? And to really know and understand them back. To know they will respond in the way that is so necessary when we reach out with a confidence or a problem. To accept their quirks and neuroses. To find the same things interesting or funny.

I think about Clem. It’s been seven weeks. My thoughts through out the days and nights are held in a reticulation of the things I want to forget and the things I never want to forget. It all weaves together in patterns that are an aesthetic affront. One day I hope the things I wish to remember about him—expressions and mannerisms, the way he walked, spoke, played, ran, drove, smiled, laughed, the kindnesses and checking in, the everything of him—in time, I hope remembering all this will overgrow all that I wish to forget. The sickness and process of dying. The reduction.

It will happen, it happened with my mom (2022 gone) it happened with Denny (2021 gone.)

Isn’t it something else, these people-shaped holes that we carry around like phantom backpacks?

Surely there will be new people who come to know me and get me and love me. And if you are here, reading this, I think we get each other. Writing reveals the writer and when a reader connects with a writer, this is something. It tells us that we are capable of being understood, of being “gotten.” …Right?… 'She has articulated exactly what I feel, what I think.’

Reading and writing are powerful tools of connection, and connection is the foundation that love needs to flourish. If we are able to connect, we are able to love.

AI overview says: To love someone means to experience a profound feeling of attachment, care, and affection for another individual. AI goes on to describe the different ways of expressing love, whether platonic, romantic, or familial. The components of love are listed as commitment, respect, intimacy.

I define love in a very pure way. Love for me means wanting, above all, the happiness and well being of my loved one. Even if it means I am not a part of their happiness and well being. Even if I don’t agree with their choices, how they live life. This is also the definition of unconditional love, which is not the kind of love I’d have in a romantic relationship. I want all those other things—commitment, respect, intimacy with that kind of love. I have conditions I want and expect to be met.

This has become easy enough for me, because if I don’t get those things, I won’t be “in love.” I used to think you couldn’t choose who you love; you either do or you don’t. I even put that line in a song (Getting By) about my dad. Who I didn’t think loved me. Spoiler: I found out he did, in a beautiful, sad way as he was dying (2018, gone.)

These days, I believe that love is reciprocal, it flows between two individuals. If one person claims to be in love with someone who doesn’t love them back, I would assert that it’s not love that the “in love” person is feeling. Obsession, fixation, attraction, desire, admiration maybe. A display of deficiency that becomes a character aberration whereby one doesn’t believe at a core level they are lovable, and so they stay in a hopeless state of faux love for a person who does not love them.

If it were a true and pure love, one would want the target of those feelings to have a fulfilled, reciprocal, nurtured love, and would feel contentment and happiness if the object of their love found it elsewhere.

The worst scenario of love isn’t being in love with a person who doesn’t love you back. The worst scenario of love is loving someone who is unhappy. When love is pure and unconditional and we desire nothing but the well being of our loved one, and when that love is reciprocal in any platonic, romantic or familial form, it becomes a purgatorial pain to witness the unhappiness or suffering of your loved one.

Most of us have experienced this most unfortunate pathway love can take. We’ve loved people who are incapable of being happy, who cannot take the actions to change their circumstances that cause their unhappiness. We’ve loved people who are addicts, who are self-destructive, who have mental illnesses. We have loved people who are fundamentally unwell. And yet, we cannot choose to not love them because of their failings or their illness. Perhaps I was right in the first place, you can’t choose to love or not love. Or maybe it’s both, depending on how you choose to react.

Love in it’s most expansive, unconditional form would have to be my love for Audrey, who graduated in three ceremonies over Mother’s Day weekend. There was the honors recognition, the college within, Newhouse School, and the entire Syracuse class of 2025. There’s nothing like your little baby/toddler/child/pre-teen/teenager becoming a young woman college graduate to make you wonder where and how decades of time go. In this same blip of decades, I will be—if I’m extraordinarily lucky—in my late 80’s. I can tell you it’s possible to be on fire with love and pride and yet still have a whole other fire lit under your ass saying: you better get with it.

When I first started “the Direction of Motion” I was writing a song called “Hurry” about this exact topic. It’s an absurdity that I haven’t finished it. Maybe I don’t love it enough to prioritize. See how love can direct energy and focus? I’d say it’s the boss, but earning a living is probably the boss of us all.

Now I want to pull the song off the hard drive where it’s stored and see if I can make it lovable.

I love how I was able to earn a living the past few weeks, playing with the Go-Go’s. Our shows were incredible time capsules of joy. Ragged and rocking, filled with “we are not trying to win anyone over” energy. We are what and how we are and you either love us or you don’t. I also love how Belinda has evolved into this very proper and professional singer, beautiful and elegant (we call her fancy lady) and yet we are still this scruffy, raw band. She gives us a bit of polish, we give her some rough edges, and it makes a new version of our old band that’s just sort of perfect.

I love the Four Seasons in San Francisco where we stayed for three nights, where I slept like royals must sleep, in smooth, cool, wrinkle-less, hi-thread count luxury. In a bizarre and unexplainable coincidence, as I sat in the lobby with a Nor Cal friend of Clem, now my friend too, another friend of his from the east coast happened to walk in. The three of us were joined by Go-Go’s tour manager Cheryl, who I met from Clem and Blondie, and for nearly two hours we had the little wake that we were all missing. We laughed, told stories, remembered our beloved friend.

Much of this summer will be spent working on his legacy and celebration of life, which of course I’m honored to be involved in. I’m also serving as proxy Clem on the last read through of his book, overseeing the final copyedits. The rest of my summer will be spent on my own long overdue book proposal and writing new songs for Psycher to record in October.

San Francisco treated us very well. The Warfield is a wonderful venue, it’s intimate and very rocknroll. Seeing so many fans who have grown older alongside us is a new element to being in this band, a startling pleasure. There were faces at all of the shows that I have seen out in our crowd now for 30 and 40 years. It prompted me to say from the stage once or twice, Hey! We are all still here, and we’re holding up!

I can assure you, when starting out, wanting to make a career and life in the music business, it never ever occurred to me that this would be part of the sparkly magic sprinkling over our concerts.

Hooboy, can’t say I love Las Vegas. The city gets 40+million visitors a year so there’s plenty who feel differently. I should caveat that to say that I’ve stayed with friends who live there, in normal neighborhoods, very Phoenix or Albuquerque, quite fine. But most of my time in Las Vegas has been for work, and that means big faux fancy suites in massive casino hotels, walking for miles through zombie casino energy every time I venture out of my room. The Pearl at the Palms though, is one of the best, most loose Vegas venues we’ve played at. They aren’t strict with security and the show had very close to the same rock energy of a non-casino venue. Again with the faces. I name checked quite a few, an old Vegas trick, usually saved for celebrity shout outs.

Cruel World was the supreme show, as expected. If you aren’t on social media, more power to you, I salute you, but there are countless photos and accolades and videos and recaps and reviews. It was the best. I didn’t meet or see near as many faves as I thought I would, with the notable exception of a few Garbage pals and a quick Aimee Mann hello.

A consolation was getting to chat with Nick Cave on the flight back to England the next day. Funny that the airline lounge accomplished what a backstage artist area teeming with exceptionals didn’t.

HERE is something I love! My friend Zach Person, who some of you may recall I recorded a single with and released in January 2024, surprised me with this rendition of “Vacation.” It’s amazing how he re-worked it. And even more interesting, he used the original, pre Go-Go’s, Textones version of the song to inspire his vision of how my song could be interpreted. Thank you Zach!!!

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