The playlist for yesterday's post

Thanks so much to everyone who wrote in response to my post yesterday. Beyond its power to mirror and memorialize, challenge and celebrate, music can really be such a great uniter.

Many asked about a playlist, so here you go:

1. Tina Turner: Better Be Good to Me, 1984, Private Dancer album

2. The Turtles: Happy Together, 1967, released as a single

3. The Righteous Brothers, You’ve Lost That Lovin Feeling, 1965, You’ve Lost That Lovin Feeling album
   *you must watch the video. No one sings like that anymore.

4. Looking Glass, Brandy, 1972, Looking Glass album

5. The Supremes, Come See About Me, 1964, Where Did Our Love Go

6. The Supremes, You Can’t Hurry Love, 1966, The Supremes A’ Go-Go

7. The Supremes, Back In My Arms Again, 1965, More Hits by The Supremes

8. The Supremes, Reflections, 1966, Greatest Hits

9. Sam Cooke, Bring It On Home to Me, 1962, The Best of Sam Cooke

10. Sam Cooke, Wonderful World, 1959

11. Sam Cooke, A Change Is Gonna Come, 1964

12. The Association, Windy, 1967, Insight Out album

13. Lou Reed, Walk On the Wild Side, 1972, Transformer

14. Linda Ronstadt/The Stone Poneys, Different Drum, 1967, Evergreen vol 2

15. Linda Ronstadt, When Will I Be Loved, 1974, Heart Like a Wheel

16. Barry McGuire, Eve of Destruction, 1965, Eve of Destruction album
    *listen to this and tell me we’ve learned anything. Fuck.

17. The Byrds, Turn! Turn! Turn!, 1965, album of the same name as song

18. The Samples, Weight of the World, 1994, Autopilot

19. Judy Collins, Both Sides Now, 1967, Wildflowers
    *yes, I love Joni’s version too, but for me Judy’s is the creme!

20. Janis Joplin, Piece of My Heart, 1968, Cheap Thrills

21. Taylor Swift, Vigilante Shit, 2022, Midnights

22. John Denver, Thank God I’m a Country Boy, 1974, Back Home Again

23. Simon & Garfunkel, all songs from The Concert in The Park (1981) except Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard (hate that version). Especially The Boxer (originally released 1970), America (orig rel 1968), and The Sound of Silence (1964)

24. Kenny Rogers, The Gambler, 1978, The Best Country Album In The World...Ever!

25. Queen, ‘39, Hammer to Fall, Another One Bites the Dust, Fat Bottomed Girls, and on and on and on, 70s/80s

26. Peter, Paul and Mary, Leaving on a Jet Plane, 1967, Album 1700

Ok, you filthy animals, go listen, dance, and think.

Music: why, who cares why, thank you

Tonight I am alone in WV. Jack flies home from Miami tomorrow, and Tom is home working, and Oliver is at camp, and after many days of extreme gardening and goats and five cats and guinea pigs and code red heat, I’m on a couch (was in a patio Lafuma) listening to favorite songs. I have, over many hours, enjoyed a bottle of French red, and in real time I’m honing my final-island playlist.

I grew up on my mom’s mixed-tape in-car casettes. Tina Turner, The Turtles, Beatles, Righteous Brothers, Temptations, Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Simon & Garfunkel, Sam Cooke, Linda Ronstadt, and Looking Glass’s one-hit-wonder Brandy. To this day, if I hear a song from one of Mom’s tapes, my brain immediately joins a singalong and then moves onto the next recorded tune. We were on Common St, Ryan, Prien Lake, at Tasty Donuts. The tapes kept rolling, Mom crooning, Elia and I ingesting the chords and lyrics and the emotions behind and wrapped in every song.

Growing up, Elia and I heard “Girls, I met your mom when I admired her legs, and she agreed to dance.” “Girls, your father was so quiet, but boy could he dance.”

“If there’s a reason that I’m by her side…I’m willing to wait for it.” -Leslie Odom, Hamilton

It was clear they connected, deeply, on the dance floor. Both loved music and dancing and sweating and spinning and singing and twirling towards and against all the strictures within which they’d been raised. And then they married, and just last week we celebrated their 50th anniversary, a feat that seems both Herculean and obvious.

If I had any superpower it would be voice. A voice of range and power and expression, the sort that comes from both talent and pain, desire and desperation, joy and relentless “I must.” To share, vent, express, scream in profoundly gorgeous and able octaves that move and ensorcel others. That render them begging the bottle to last through another few songs on a humidity-minimal summer night with a spot of breeze. To inspire them to pilgrimage, costume, come out or be out or just, unabashedly, be. Music, its lyrics, its momentum and centrifugal pull, is utterly life-changing.

Take a walk on the wild side, urges a young Lou Reed.

I don’t have no use, for what you loosely call the truth, avers Tina. (And she sure as shit shouldn’t.)

Are you hanging on the edge of your seat? asks Freddie. (You better be, or you’ll probably bite the dust.)

Peter, Paul, and Mary are leaving, Diana and her sisters reminding us to think about, reflect on and embrace love while also knowing that it can go, you need to have someone to come see about you, and ultimately, you’re your own ladder, symphony, and source of strength.

Paul Simon is in Central Park thanking the various civic groups who’ve enabled the live concert (he and Art are still ok). Taylor draws the cat’s eye sharp enough to kill a man, and a surprise playlist cameo by The Samples rockets me to freshman year of Northwestern faster than I can take a breath. John is playing that fiddle to beat sixty; he is the happiest country boy.

I still listen to Happy Together and Windy and Turn, Turn, Turn, and Eve of Destruction. It’s fascinating to consider the somewhat goofy, cis-normative simple croonings of The Turtles and The Association while concurrently vibing to, on many levels, the impending doom of The Byrds and Barry McGuire and the fem-assertive words of Janis, Joan, Joni, Linda, and Carly.

Linda (Ronstadt) is as a go-to for romantic angst and female let-me-be as is any modern woman artist: “ I ain’t saying you ain’t pretty. All I’m saying is I’m not ready for any person, place, or thing, to try and pull the reins in on me.”

And Sam Cooke? Don’t even get me going on A Change is Gonna Come, Bring It On Home, Wonderful World, Cupid…

I could go on forever, but the point, to me, is that many musicians who resonate deeply and across generations and cross-sections of culture and society, thereby changing the world, thankfully, and altering its trajectory, go big and call out what their places are versus should be.

Tony Bennett died yesterday. He was 97 and lived such a full life. Born to Italian immigrant parents and into poverty, Tony was performing by the age of 10. In 1965, at the invitation of Harry Belafonte, he joined the march from Selma to Montgomery in support of Voting Rights, performing along the way under the threat of violence. He’d been supported early on by Black artists, and I’m thankful he had the courage and moral righteousness to pay it back. My Nanny loved Tony Bennett, and I grew up listening to him, too, along with Frank, Dean, Sammy, and so on.

It’s a worthy way to spend a quiet night: listening to favorite songs from the 50s through the present. That’s nearly 85 years of music, a diary of desire, stagnation, change, courage, fury, love, hope, and resignation. It makes you think about life and how you’re living it. Are you living it as if you only have one? Because each of does, just have one, and I think we’d all be well-served to act as such.

“So if you don’t mind me saying, I can see you’re out of aces. For a taste of your whiskey, I’ll give you some advice…
If you’re gonna play that game, boy, you gotta learn to play it right.” Kenny knows. Hold, fold, walk away, run. The secret to surviving is knowing what to throw away and knowing what to keep.

Here’s my boyfriend Clyde.

He’s a keeper.

Summer and plants and pets and Taylor

My word. More than two months have passed since I last sat down to write. I hate that the temporal space between posts seems to be getting longer; what feels like stuck is actually rustiness. And with that comes a sheepishness, or perhaps a sluggishness, with both writing and sharing.

Such avoidance happens for very real reasons—time constraints, busyness, the kids getting older, some things just don’t need to be shared—but also it’s rather like exercise; if you stop, it’s awfully easy to never return. Writing, as I always tell my students, is both craft and therapy. It takes practice and effort, but the returns are substantial: greater skill, augmented self awareness, and peace. Regardless of what “it” is, better out than in.

Societally, the concurrent increase in loneliness and decrease in mental well-being are markers of a terrible trend of isolation and lack of trust. There are many reasons for both: Covid, social media, the climate crisis, partisan politics, a rapidly fraying social contract based on fact, mutuality, and kindness. And sometimes that all feels utterly overwhelming. Overwhelm makes it easy to stop exercising, writing, making time and space for the joys of living. I see that in my students all the time. I see it in myself and my beloved friends and family, too.

But here I am, back to the page. Happily so. I am sitting in our reading room in WV. Ruthie is cleaning her bottom with absolute dedication and thoroughness. Now she’s on to a paw. If you’ve never watched a cat bathe its paws, you are missing out on a darling process. Try to find a bathing cat, and I swear you’ll feel nearly hypnotized.

At Oliver’s 8th grade graduation; now heading to 12th and 9th.

Both Jack and Oliver left last Friday; Jack flew to Berkeley for an engineering and leadership program, and Oliver returned to Pine Island. After my two round trips to Dulles, I loaded my car with the cats, guinea pigs, and a few groceries and headed to WV. Tom joined me later that day and stayed for five. We’re lucky to be able to work remotely from here, and all credit for that goes to T who has jury-rigged some system involving an old phone, a new SIM card, a router, and something made by eero that blankets Wi-Fi over your house. Why is that necessary, you might ask? Because West Virginia, both poor and mostly rural, is vastly underserved by broadband internet that so many of us take for granted. So, yay Tom.*

I was not in, shall we say, a calm state when I arrived. Last week was madness as Jack had his driving test for his license (he passed!), both kids had Global Entry interviews, both needed to pack, there were appointments, etc. But immediately, as I always am when the boys first leave in the summer, I was struck by how time takes on a completely different personality when it doesn’t need to be so fastidiously and constantly shared with so many. Everything slows. Initially, it almost feels like some drug-induced alternate reality experience. I kept worrying that the day was almost over but when I checked the clock, it was but lunchtime. The first three nights we were here, I slept for 10-12 hours each. I have since read four whole books, one of which I bought and first started two years ago.**

I have gardened a lot, too. Duh. For me, working outside is like the physical form of writing; both are immersive processes that enable/force you to focus and process. Gardening allows you the time, writing demands it. I am determined to wrangle some control over the four zones that surround the house, all of which had been left to nature for decades prior to us buying this property. I love me some nature, but invasive shit that thrives on increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and related drought and heat is not my jam. It benefits nothing but has an insatiable appetite for area. Slowly, I’m reclaiming a fair bit of land and infusing it with love, amendments, and native (and some just beautiful) plants along the way. Penstemon, bee balm, spirea, echinacea, sedges and grasses (not fescue or turf; nothing that needs a crap ton of water and provides almost nothing for nature), ferns, solidago, mountain mint, hydrangeas…the list goes on, and honestly, I am very proud. It is peaceful and beautiful here. It always was, but when I look out and my eyes are awash in bees, butterflies, birds, frogs, fireflies (right now!), and so forth, I am deeply happy and satisfied. Today I planted three black chokeberries, two Itea virginica Little Henrys, a Virginia Creeper, and 10 Pycnanthemum muticum aka short toothed mountain mint. I did this in 85 degree heat and an N95, mind you, because smoke from the Canadian wildfires rendered the air here (and in MD and throughout the area) Code Red quality. Several hours in, it was like I was trying to waterboard myself. Awful. My heart hurts for all in California, Canada, and around the world who deal with this on the regular. The climate crisis is worsening.

After Hurricane Laura, as we salvaged and packed everything possible in my parents’ house, someone thought to get the porch swings. Mom and Dad had had them made for the house back in 1994, and, until Laura, one hung on each of the two back porches overlooking the bayou. They gave us one when we bought this home, and last month we finally found the perfect spot and hung it. It’s in Zone 3, of my 4 labeled mission-to-reclaim areas, which has been the biggest bear to wrangle into some submission, but the view is sublime and having this swing is worth all effort.

I have to return home tomorrow, and while I hope the WV version of time will come with me, it won’t, at least not for long. I’m going to go have a quiet dinner now, but let me just leave you with a bit of Taylor.

Swift that is. Yes, I am a total Swiftie.

Tom and I saw her second show in Pittsburgh over Father’s Day weekend, and it was worth every penny, all the driving, and the two hours it took us to get out of the parking garage afterwards. Taylor is an absolute queen. QUEEN. I feel so lucky to have been there. She sang and danced for 3+ hours straight. Everyone in the crowd was blissed out. Everyone felt welcome and happy and seen. It was such a gathering of acceptance, love, and joy.

*and screw you, Tommy Tuberville, and all Republicans who voted against Biden’s broadband funding but then raved about how it would benefit their people.

**New terrific mystery/crime writer alert: Catherine Ryan Howard. Irish, terrific writer with great, tense plots. Start with The Liar’s Girl! Distress Signals is also fab. I cannot wait to read more.
The book I bought two years ago was not one of CRH’s. I may need to write an entire post about said two-year-old book because while the story was good, the writing caused me great distress. NO ONE needs to use the word scent four times in two consecutive sentences. Pain.