Summertime Muse

Sometimes I Wonder What Ima Gonna Do

I came to Paris for a few days with Audrey. I feel peaceful here, and joyful. It’s a really nice combo. One of the many reasons I love Paris is because the city seems to have a fairly consistent effect upon me. Reincarnation believers think this sort of connection with a geographical location—or era, or person—is a clue to a past life. Maybe so, I like the mystery of possibilities like that. Or maybe it’s just as simple as “clicking,” some sub-atomic molecular symbiotic chemistry or charge that pulls two elements together like magnetic attraction.

(If I did have a past life in Paris, I think it was as a woman in the 1930s. And I wore heels and tweed skirts, sat at cafes drinking wine and smoking Gauloise cigarettes and juggled multiple lovers.)

I noticed and picked up on the calmness right away. Mainly because lately, I’ve been tuned into a different composure, noticing a sort of churning low grade anxiety beneath how I usually think of myself: competent, together, busy and active. I’m attempting (again) to integrate a consistent meditation practice into my days, hoping it will bring more serenity to my being. Until it takes, I pay attention, trying to breathe away stresses and release pent up frenetic energy that feels very fight or flight-ish. It’s very interesting the things one notices at different times of life—things that have probably been present for a very long time but ignored or unseen.

Paris is a magical city. I first came here with the Go-Go’s in January 1982, a few days after my 23rd birthday. We returned at the end of the year for a second show. It wasn’t until 1986, when Clem and I were together and he was recording “Revenge” with Eurythmics, that I visited Paris without working. He spent long days in the studio, I spent entire days walking, using a folded analog map to find my way through the streets. This was when I began to love the city, and over the next 15-odd trips spanning 1987 to now—roaming and discovering, without much thought or planning—is still my favorite way to be here.

There was one unfortunate time, on my honeymoon. After dreaming of being in Paris, in love, I finally got to go as a bride. A pregnant bride, in the midst of the worst nausea sickness of the pregnancy. My new husband and I tried doing what we both loved—walking for miles, showing each other favorite streets, shops, and hidden parts of the city—but all I noticed was the smoke, the exhaust fumes, the BO…it was too much. We gave up and checked into the Ritz Hotel. I spent the rest of the time holed up, feeling very small and sickly, watching CNN in the high ceilinged, gilded and velvet opulence of our room .

We returned when Audrey was 2 yrs old, bouncing her little tram over cobblestone streets and across expansive sidewalks along massive boulevards. After a few more full family visits, I continued with mom/daughter visits, taking every chance to share my love of Paris with her. This time—she’s just a few months away from being 23—has been the best. We knocked out the tourist stuff when she was a teenager, so there’s no need to do anything but wander and see where we end up and what we find.

I have one tradition: dinner at La Coupole—every visit includes this Parisien classic, former haunt of Cocteau, Josephine Baker, Picasso and Chagall, Gainsbourg and Birkin, de Beauvoir and Sartre, Piaf, Henry Miller…it’s an endless vibe of legend mingling with Deco decor and golden light. We had an early dinner, walked over to the Jardin Luxembourg, decided to jump in a taxi and catch a 9pm sunset from the Roux de Paris ferris wheel. We stopped on the bridge to the Left Bank for a long hug. Neither of us was surprised to see shiny grateful tears in each other’s eyes. It had been a perfect day; shopping, eating, drinking, writing, exploring Le Marais and Republique. The other days were just as freestyle and satisfying.

For an amateur but avid history buff like me, Paris has stacks and layers of action and stories. Besides being a stunning architectural marvel, nearly every church and landmark has hidden and macabre background intel: medieval atrocities, massacres, martyrs and saints, wacky religious insanity, revolutionaries, royals and controversy. A jumble of human nature splayed out in all it’s unsavory glory—that somehow still gives rise to a city of elegance and beauty of the highest order.

I’ve had a romantic notion for a long time that I will come live in Paris for a year, in this lifetime. For a practical woman, I have a lot of romantic notions and hope to keep generating them for as long as I’m able. I don’t need to fully realize any, but they are made of the same stuff as hope and possibility, incandescent and sheer—I can just see far enough to make out the glowing shape of what could happen.

Before Paris, I was deep in trenches-land, getting Clem’s book ready for publication with copy-edit review and an afterword. I still have miles of grief and loss bottled up inside, it spills out at times both expected and inopportune. Today I saw a man with white hair and black horn-rimmed glasses and started crying because Clem was supposed to be an old man with white hair and black glasses. It wasn’t a good time to cry and pushing the tears back into their tear ducts felt like a betrayal of justified and fair sadness.

When I say bottled up inside, that’s not exactly right. I don’t try and keep my loss and grief bottled up like I can’t deal with it. It has been more like a timing situation, with Clem’s death followed straight away by shows and travel and moving and settling in. The overwhelming stress and sadness had to be set aside out of necessity. I suspect that the body knows, and doesn’t care that the outer world is calling upon us to keep on keeping on. Bodies don’t want to store our emotions, they are busy enough as it is, running all kinds of systems and functions.

So, out of respect to this human house I live in and need to take care of, I’m focused on cultivating serenity and trying to leave enough space that the emotional stuff can poke it’s head out and say ok, it’s safe to come out. I’m encouraging it and letting people know when a wave is heading for me: don’t worry, I won’t stay here falling apart, but I might need a moment. And I’m getting some bereavement and general counseling and therapy, which is always on the table and should be. That’s how I make space for grief.

I started this substack when I was reeling from loss, in Nov 2022. I had lost my mom that summer, and my beloved Tux, our family dog. A lot has happened in the few years since then, but here I am again. Not wanting to publicly journal my way out of it, but I know there are readers here who know exactly what I’m talking about. Hello.

Since returning from tour dates and moving back in May, I’d looked forward to having Audrey here in the UK for six weeks of summertime —I got half of that, the other three she spent in Oxford at a university creative writing program. The anticipation gave way to a fullness that shouldn’t be predicated on another person filling space—a risky luxury, and one I can’t afford to get used to. But maybe it’s okay when the space is in your heart and time is just racing you apart and away from a past that was complete togetherness. She is growing up, a young woman who has figured out in one short summer that now is the time to live, dream, and experience the world. Work will put money in the bank and pay for adulting, but doesn’t need to be the rat-race, the continual climb for more and better. I couldn’t be more proud of her, more grateful for the overflow of love, and she’s officially my favorite travel companion.

The proximity and placement of things I like to remember about this summer has become so vague. Did we do this three weeks ago or three months ago? How does the beginning of July feel like it was back in January? It’s disorienting but also strangely okay, like being tossed about in a tumble dryer of good, warm fuzzy things. I don’t recall losing track this much, in this way, ever before. It doesn’t seem like forgetfulness or aging, it feels like letting go; relaxing into life and experience.

But just in case, I asked Audrey to write it all down, all the things she remembered about the summer. Hers went from NYC to Austin to Maine to London to Oxford to London to Paris to London. I will do the same, although my travels were mostly inward treks, through feelings and thoughts and memories. When we exchange our summer musings, expressed in our own ways and words, I wouldn’t be surprised it summer feels finished, like writing a book.

Since starting this dispatch, we came back to London and enjoyed the last days of August, of togetherness. She is off to New York, I will be in Texas soon, dealing with the life stuff I left there, in storage, in my house, in my car. We celebrate Clem’s life in October, there is a probable-potential-likely—too early to be certain, but maybe—little KV solo (songs and stories) tour in November…in Canada. Yes. I’m as surprised as you may be. I like it. More on that next time. And this week, here in London, I help Belinda raise money for her wonderful charity Animal People Alliance. Info and tickets here.

I appreciate your support and encouragement, whether it is by opening and reading, sharing, subscribing, buying me a coffee, reading my book, listening to my music—however you show interest or give me a bit of your own valuable time means so much.

THANK YOU! xkv