The Do Nothingness of Being

To TCB or TBD, that is the question. Time warps. Also, That's Entertainment.

I returned to the UK, my sixth—12 if you count both ways—overseas flight this year. Each was necessary and involved big stuff tied up with lots of in-between stuff, with all remaining space taken up by the little stuff. Each trip was exhausting, jammed like my luggage; suitcase days filled with the necessities and luxuries, all the things I wanted and needed to do. I keep thinking, once I’m home, I will hit the ground loafing. Put aside the drive to create, produce, to go go go. I don’t think I have any idea what it feels like to not be actively making music, bands, songs, essays, a book, a proposal, videos, content, posts, you-name-it.

I want to convince myself that it’s enough just to tidy up my house, get fresh ingredients to make a meal at home, take walks, read a book, watch a movie. This is harder than it sounds because of age, the sense of urgency that one might not have the time left to chase dreams, much less land them.

In actual landings, my plane hit ground and I logged on to see what had happened while flying across the ocean, and found that Diane Keaton had died, at 79. A shock, wasn’t she going to always be here, like she always was, an antithesis to the glamorous movie starlet, the one who made the rest of us women feel like we could and should be exactly who we are?

If losing the people I love is a simultaneous gut and straight cross punch, losing those from afar—who are a stone’s throw from my age—are the jabs and hooks. As the hits keep coming, I vacillate the other direction and wonder if stepping away from constant doing is the best thing to do. Then I question what is the motivation for “doing”—is it identity, ego, purpose, a meaningful life? Is it a way to combat loneliness? TBD.

Want to share entertainment stories? Between being in New York and flying and generally having more space for ingestion, I’ve had a fair share. Here’s the lowdown on what has come through my eye and ear holes: Plays—Oh Mary! and Art, both definitely worth seeing. I had been going on about Art since seeing it in London—I kept telling Audrey I saw it when I was a teenager and it always stuck with me, and we had to go now that it was back. The weird part is that I didn’t see it when I was a teenager—we checked, and it was written and came out in the mid 90’s. I actually did see it then, in London, but I was in my 30s.

So there you have it kids, you can get old enough that your 30s are so far away they seem like your teenage years. That was sort of a mindtwister, still trying to get my head around the time warp of memory.

Also highly recommend my friend Jesse Malin’s show, which features music and stories about his life and the enormous changes he’s had to take on since having a spinal stroke over two years ago. Silver Manhattan—it was fantastic. I went with my friends Colette and Charlotte from the Go-Go’s and we all agreed it was one of the best things we’d seen.

I’m doing something I don’t normally do, which is reading two books at once. Edward Rutherford’s epic historical novel London—too heavy and thick to travel with, but all of his books are fantastic for learning how a city or place came to be. And… an author I met a couple times in Austin (from my writer friend Lauren Hough,) Lucas Schaefer, has been winning accolades and fiction prizes for his debut novel The Slip so I had to wander into a west village bookshop and buy it for my plane ride home. Hooked.

With jet lag allowing me to take a stab at the do nothingness of being on my return, I trolled through the streaming choices and landed on the Lilith Fair doc. This late 90’s festival was a monumental achievement for Sarah McLachlan. I’d forgotten the talk show joke fodder it elicited, and the lily-white backlash. The whiteness was quickly addressed for 98/99. Seeing clips of Erykah Badu, Missy Elliot and Queen Latifah appearing with folkies, country stars, singer-songwriter waifs and rockers gave me a whole new perspective and respect for Lilith. As a side note, The Go-Go’s were scheduled to be a headliner on the resurrected 2010 Lilith Tour, which unfortunately fell apart. This was touched on in the film, but I didn’t get a real sense of what went wrong. I also don’t remember the discussions around why we had to pull out, but I know we were following the lead of a half dozen other acts.

Are you ready for the time warp? That’s what happens when October rolls in. Whizz, bam, bang, it’s 2026. Speaking of time warps, I didn’t realize 2025 brought the 50th anniversary of the Rocky Horror Picture Show until I saw an interview with Tim Curry, the original Dr. Frank-n-Furter. He is wonderfully articulate and good humored, though he’s been left somewhat disabled due to a stroke in 2012. I also didn’t know there’s a doc out on this madcap midnight cultural phenom. I’ll be looking for that.

Time marches and warps on. Is there time for do nothingness? Strokes n shit happens, maybe while there’s still a choice to be had, choose doing. See how I work this out with you? Writing, talking, contemplating and deliberating at the crossroads of how to be. How to find and create a place in the world, how to be in the world when so much is changing, so fast.

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I noticed a lot of differences in how it felt to be in Manhattan and Brooklyn. After 50 years of visits to Manhattan, for work and friends, and for two different boyfriends who lived there, I finally started using the subways and figured out the C and the L, the G and the R, the Q and the A.

When I walk out of the tube in London, there’s a few likely scenes; a bustling high road, rows of terrace houses, the iconic cityscapes of squares—Leicester, Picadilly, Trafalgar, or the busy-ness business of Oxford, Piccadilly Circus/es. But in New York, I have no idea where those steps are leading. Eventually, I would adapt, but it didn’t feel as safe. Is everyone on high alert all the time? I was.

You have to admit one of these looks a lot friendlier than the other!

Since the beginning of July, 2024 until April of this year, I lived with the ever-present dread of losing Clem. His illness, care and treatment, the worry, anticipatory grief, stress, compassion and advocacy became a part of me. Since April, the sense of immense loss, ptsd ripples of reflection and mourning are part of my every day. And since June I’ve been organizing and planning—practically producing—his celebration of life. This was a joint effort with one of my greatest gifts from Clem, which is my newfound friendship with his and Blondie’s manager. Tommy is like a hummingbird of a guy, intrepid and smart, fiery and soulful, able to go any direction, pivot on a dime. I loved working with him and our almost daily long talks, shooting the shit, strategizing, and making it happen.

We had plenty of help. It seemed no ask was too big; everyone wanted to contribute, for Clem. I saw it in the outpouring of shock and sadness when he passed, I saw it again with this. There was so much to consider: the venue, the food, the remembrances, the films, the host, the speakers, the mementos, the music, the friends, family, co-workers and band mates. Most of us hadn’t gotten a chance to come together and celebrate his life and commiserate losing him. It felt important and necessary. As I said in my talk, we all represented aspects and prisms of his life and we gave it a shape. We were the container that held his life that evening, and then we divided it up into a bunch of hearts that will hold him forever.

It was spectacular. He would have been so proud, and so happy. And it was done with so much love from everyone.

Shepard Fairey Original Art, Clem’s kit, flowers from Jesse Malin

Isn’t so much of life about one’s capacity for effort? When I think of anyone whose life or work I admire, so much of my respect has to do with the effort they were able to conjure up, consistently and persistently, to achieve what they did. I’m arriving at the conclusion that the effort is as important, maybe more so, than the end result. Effort is not the same as trying, and it’s certainly not the same as the dreaded “TTH”—trying too hard. Effort is overcoming inertia, and inertia is stagnation and stagnation is not growth and growth is life. When I consider the slight pull to embark on some do-nothingness, to experiment with being rather than doing, it feels anathema to effort, but is it? Figuring out the new balances of life is where I am now. I think where a lot of us are. Subtract the bravado, replace with a bit of acquired wisdom. The boundless energy of youth is a well that can still be mined, but it’s not as easy to extract. Walking around New York, I kept thinking everyone was so young, when did it get like this, a city of babies—then it hit me, no, it’s not that, it’s me, seeing from a new vantage. It’s all a bit weird honestly, this aging business, but it’s curious and interesting, that’s the only way to take it.

I have paying subscribers but make all my writing content available to any reader. Sometimes I feel it’s the right thing to do to offer those who are in a position to support my writing with a paid subscription a little extra something. I don’t do this often enough and I don’t do it to try and make other people pay. Just seems fair. So for those who have been paying me for the time and effort I put into this substack, I want to share the end montage of a film I made for Clem’s Celebration of Life. I wanted to capture all the things I want to remember; his expressions, smiles, laughter, mannerisms, head tilts and attentiveness, the look in his eye as he listened.