Would've Loved It

Finishing what I started before the vortex of doing sucked me into the churn. That would be New York City, where I had co-organized “Clem Burke, A Rock n Roll Life” with my friend Jesse Malin. “Clem would’ve loved it” was the consensus. I think what he would have loved would have been to be there, playing the drums and socializing, celebrating someone he respected and admired. Clem always showed up for those things, giving his time and energy to the cause. Which is exactly why Jesse wanted to honor him in the same way.

Besides helping with the line-up and scheduling, I’d said yes to any requests, so was on and off stage five times; playing acoustic with Jesse on “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory.” Singing “Hangin’ On the Telephone” with the guys who were Clem’s bandmates in Blondie for the past number of years. Playing and singing with Clembake, the re-named band we concocted when our Psycher debut couldn’t happen (due to new UK/Us resident passport issues for Brix.) Playing bass with Steve Wynn on “Lust For Life” and “Rock and Roll.” And for the finale, playing guitar with Glen Matlock on “Blank Generation,” “Rainy Day Women,” and “All or Nothing.”

It was all fabulous. And spending time with Audrey was a booster vaccine, giving me some much needed immunity for this un-tethered freefall of my mid-to-late-sixties. It’s easy to get un-grounded when you’re a partner-less, parent-less, only child. I put my considerable energy and focus into music and writing but I need and long for family, to belong. Always have, always will. Hence, me and bands.

I had lunch with the one and only Debbie Harry—(and pal Glen Matlock) This is what we ate: We started with oysters. I’m not crazy about oysters, eating them is more of an excursion into the out-of-the-ordinary than from liking them. I’m very picky, they have to be aesthetically pleasing, well formed and not too big, and no weird bits on the edges. Debbie got a shrimp cocktail and Cobb salad. I ordered chicken pot pie. I was raised on frozen chicken pot pies. The smell and taste is indelibly ingrained into my DNA, but I wouldn’t categorize potpie as a comfort food. More like a familiar food. Glen got something called Shakshuma, a middle eastern egg dish. I had fake champagne with no alcohol and we shared a desert, chocolate cheesecake, that went unfinished, even with three forks whittling away on it.

We talked about a lot of things; what’s next or coming up for each of us. Travel, touring and not touring. The culling and deleting of accumulated stuff. Debbie is stunning; with a face that I still want to gaze upon, like art that I enjoy looking at. I don’t do that though, because I can’t imagine anyone wants to be gazed at. She’s easy to talk to. Glen is a handsome devil and always entertaining. When we parted ways, she gave me a lift back to my hotel and I did reflect for a moment on teenage me, obsessing over Debbie and the guys, playing my two Blondie albums (debut and Plastic Letters) on repeat—the ultimate unknowable of future paths intertwining and crossing.

In the ten days I was away, spring snuck in the back door. My “garden” - ie, walled in box of paving stones and planter beds—(don’t even ask Gingerman and Rocky what they think of this pathetic outdoors after the wild kingdom they used to rule in the rural West Lake Hills of Austin)—has budded and bloomed. It’s my first spring in this London home. I see that wisteria vines make flowers before leaves, and that my magnolia plant refuses to have both at the same time. The hydrangea went from a cut back collection of sticks to a lush and bright bushy plant. In ten days! Earth nature is doing it’s thing, stubbornly sticking to the schedule, even if the sky wants to stay gray and cloudy and the air wants to cling to low temperatures.

I like when someone says to me “You would’ve loved it” or “you would’ve hated it,” Because to be known and understood to the extent that another person ‘gets’ me; that I’ve revealed enough and shared enough time and experience to have my tastes be so definitively discernible. This is closeness.

As the afore-mentioned single, partner-less person, my world still manages to be filled with emotional closeness. In the UK, where I’m building this newish life, I have to be fearless, and willing to reveal myself sooner than later. I don’t have time to develop a history of friendship, I have to take shortcuts to closeness. This works better with women than men, as that that whole “British reserve” you hear so much about seems to be more applicable to the men. At 67, emotional closeness is the most important kind. I like to debrief thoughts, feelings, and the mundanities (great new word, you’re welcome) of my day to someone I know well, and hear about theirs. True closeness is reciprocal.

Sometimes when I’m doing something I think of my loved ones who have died, and imagine being there with them. Not long ago, I was at a jazz concert, Theo Croker, a renowned trumpet player doing a Miles Davis tribute. I could picture Clem being there, it was weird how clearly I could see it. I knew exactly how he’d be sitting, how his head would be held, back a bit, chin tucked in, small smile, nodding here and there. He would have loved it. In the dark, in my seat, I smiled and felt the softest smallest glow of happiness that I knew him so well as to know this. It melted into melancholy, but it was sweet, and the moment matched the passage of music the quartet was playing.

That moment was interrupted when I realized my toe was hurting, kind of bad. My little toe, the pinky. The most pathetic of all toes, at least on my feet. It felt like it was crunched up in my boot, and suddenly I felt a whoosh of horror as I remembered something that I had buried since, way back, in the BC before Covid times. I recalled—this was in Austin—that something was bothering me in my foot, and I went to see a podiatrist. That’s probably a good kind of doctor to be, I remember thinking. The tragedy is bound to be a bit more minimal in podiatry. Anyway, I was appalled when he told me I had a hammertoe. It really really bothered me. I mean, come on. “Hammertoe” is in the “scurvy” and “ringworm” and “shingles” category of stupid, ickly-named conditions to afflict humans.

The doctor said nothing could be done. My denial was fast and furious; I refused to believe him. He gave me an odd little silicon cover to put on the pinky toe which I promptly lost. I thought maybe I could make the toe be more normal, as it really didn’t look that bad, nothing like what one would think a hammertoe would appear. I don’t know what they look like, I don’t want to know. It just hurt a little bit, and surely that wasn’t the end all be all fate of this little toe.

And lo, soon after, it stopped hurting and I forgot about it. Until the night at the concert. It was dark in the hall, and everyone was very seriously engaged in the music, as jazz people often are. So I slipped my boot off, and spent the next two hours quietly training the toe to uncrunch. The music got a bit freeform out there—I like my jazz to swing or be so beautiful it makes me cry—so the distraction was a good multitask way to spend a couple hours.

There’s a lot about getting older that is odd and interesting, sometimes disappointing. One of the pleasant parts is still being to exert some control over the state of decline. My half-assed but consistent (the absolute key to anything I now finally realize) new morning routine is already changing my body for the better, and pretty sure the pinky toe will fall into line with consistent effort.

I still conjure up that night, not because of the toe, but because of a sensory experience as I left Royal Festival Hall. The wind gave me a cold gentle smack in the face, putting me instantly on high alert. This is a state I became aware of when we had Tux, our scrappy little terrier mutt. Tux did high alert like no one’s business. My version was a heightened awareness of how it felt to exist right then. Like a shroud of loving kindness and compassion had wrapped me in an exquisite now-ness, so much so that even as I write about it today, when the now-ness was a then-ness, it’s just as real and vivid as it was. Generally, I reside on the happy/content border of emotional states, so it gets my full attention when I’ve spilled over into full on bliss mode. I want to remember, to bask. To appreciate.

Here is the good part. It’s rare and special. I radiated love. I was connected to all of them, it was a one-ness with all the strangers and humans, I looked at faces and saw everything we all feel and know, in every single one. Coming towards me, I saw a young woman who would normally conjure a few shades of judgy to pass through my mind—way too short shorts on a cold night, white cowboy boots, bustier drawn tight, butt hanging out, just a terrible outfit, half-naked or not, whatever body type. Aha, I thought. A test. But whoa, no critique, just benevolence, kindness. Love.

Observing the totality, the purity and euphoria of how it can feel to be a human, I wanted to write about it, to document and remember. Maybe it will conjure more of that. Even Waterloo Station can be a church.

you know, I think God would’ve loved it.

Thank you for opening this, reading and being here.