The Last Time

 

In pre-pandemic times I prided myself on living a pretty hyperthyroid cultural and social NYC life - perhaps justifying to myself why I would choose to live in the city of hardship, by taking advantage of the upsides even as I never escaped the feeling of FOMO.  Would I ever get to DiFara's again before the old guy making the pizza dies?  That touted big MOMA show that's closing next weekend? 

Looking back at my calendar for January and February 2020, I can't believe our pace. And how much of it happened to be celebrating our friends' work. 

But by the Ides of March, I would be tormented about whether to even attend my best friend's wedding.

In the weeks leading up to pandemic panic, we had enjoyed Courtney Barnett concert at Levon Helm's Woodstock Barn. Painter Nicole Wittenberg's gallery opening. Two or three plays a week, including Ruth Negga at Hamlet at St. Ann's, Erik Jensen and Jessica Blank's Coal Country at the Public, a long-gestating oral history of a coal mining disaster with live music by Steve Earle (that my daughter had helped transcribe some interviews for). Syd's college classmate Blair Underwood tearing up A Soldier's Play on Broadway. 

Then there were readings -- Cathy Park Hong's Minor Feelings at Books are Magic, Rebecca Traister interviewing Peggy Orenstein about Boys & Sex at the Strand, playwright Brooke Berman's screenplay reading in a theater basement, an ACT UP gathering in Brooklyn, a Columbia writing class taught by Sam Freedman with guest Min Jin Lee. 

More: A meal in a tiny midtown Italian joint with my octagenarian aunt and uncle. Popping in to a gallery to witness Patrik Graham live-drop a soft clay bust of his head to make his flattened art for a school fundraiser. Practicing my latest volunteer tour of Central Park on some patient friends. 

As March hit, this pace didn't exactly come to a screeching halt -- more like a creeping horror movie one. These adventures, as well as more mundane, everyday activities that I took for granted -- sitting with an editor in a bay at CNN (hell, going in to the offices at CNN) -- meeting a friend at a coffee shop -- riding a subway train --  gradually had an underlying drumbeat of fear that grew louder and louder. 

The star of Jagged Little Pill who we didn't see. 3/4/20

Looking back, my first conscious awareness of the shift was Wednesday, March 4 - what turned out to be our last Broadway show, Jagged Little Pill. We sat cheek by jowl in the packed house, but Syd brought hand sanitizer. We saw an understudy for the the lead actress, Elizabeth Marshall - her first missed performance of the run -- which is always exciting, because you can feel the cast supporting the understudy - -but Marshall would later hypothesize that she had the coronavirus.  (A week later, the show, like most plays, would be forced to shutter.)

The Plot Against America panel, 92nd St. Y. 3/6/20

Two nights later, we attended a premiere screening of HBO's The Plot Against America at the 92nd St. Y with creator David Simon and stars John Turturro, Winona Ryder, and Morgan Spector. More signs of the new abnormal. Co-star Zoe Kazan had stayed in California instead of getting on a plane. The meet and greet with the cast in the lobby after was cancelled. We sat near the back. 

When a person coughed, the whole room turned and stared. 

The following Monday, more creeping caution. I took and passed my Central Park Ramble Tour test - but instead of shaking hands with my proctors, we rubbed elbows, semi-ironically. 

That night we had a dinner party with two couples we had wanted to introduce to each other. Nobody was masked -- they hadn't warned us to do so yet. We all half-joked if this was the last time we'd get to do so for a while. 

Little did we know.  

Tenement Museum tour, 3/10/20

The next day I took a Tenement Museum walking tour of the Lower East Side. The participants stayed socially distanced.

Then I met a friend in town from Nashville for lunch. We had planned to go to Katz's Deli, but that seemed like it would be thronged, including many out-of-towners - at this point the warnings were about the virus coming in via planes and boats, remember? -- so we opted for a small place. 

The waiter wore a mask. When he offered to grate parmesan on my pasta, I remember hesitating -- was his hand going to give me the illness?

That would be my last meal in a restaurant to date. 

Then came Friday the 13th. (I know!)

I wore a suit to CNN that day for the first time, because I planned to go right to the Brooklyn wedding of my college roommate/bestie - his third time. The first marriage had ended in divorce, the second with the tragic cancer death of his wife. I wanted to be there for him and his three kids, but also, for his wife, who is in her 50s and for whom this was a first wedding. I didn't want her to feel the night was cursed or wasn't worth celebrating.  

Syd demurred shlepping all the way from Harlem and back and I couldn't argue with her. I was happy that my subway car was fairly empty, and sent her a selfie as reassurance. (I now see some panic in my face.) 

But after arriving at the venue, I sanitized repeatedly, stayed away from strangers. I participated in the ceremony by reading something and applauding from the front row, I was incredibly moved - from the back of the room - by the newly united family's group hug -- and I skedaddled before the meal was served. 

On my walk back to the subway, I ran into a former co-worker from ABC news jogging with her dog. We hadn't seen each other in years. We bumped elbows. 

That kind of random encounter, too, would become nearly non-existent for the next year. 

The next day would be my last in the office for the rest of the year (and more). I was issued a "work from home laptop." I haven't been back since. The job has been doable remotely, thankfully we had worked together long enough that we knew the drill. (I can't work in person with an editor any more, though so there's a lot of additional back and forth via email.) I don't get to be in the control room during the show, so there are a lot of texts, phone calls, emails, and ragged nerves. 

Our past life has turned into Zoom simulacra: video with family instead of birthday and holiday gatherings (even college graduations). Virtual catch-ups with friends instead of dinners or flying to see them. Video "plays" instead of being in an audience. Many anticipated events have been cancelled or postponed. (Elton John's farewell concert from 2020 pushed to 2022! Stay healthy, Reg!)

So I was happy to qualify for a vaccine (I have a "co-morbidity," suddenly an asset) this week, though there are some questions about whether it will take because of some meds I'm on. 

Will it be the last time? Or will we end up needing shots every year? Will we be able to gather in groups without the cloud of suspicion and fear? 

One thing I know that the Year of Living Covidly has taught me: there were times a year ago that I thought I might be doing too much, because I feared it all might blur together. 

Nope.

When John Met Claudio

Yoko, John (L) and Carl Claudio (R), summer '71

Forty years ago today, John Lennon was killed. The next morning, 19-year-old college-sophomore-me had a radio show to do, and all the other Boston stations were playing "Give Peace a Chance" and "All You Need is Love" and "Imagine."

Well, I felt darker than that. I played "Happiness is a Warm Gun" and "Run for Your Life" and "Help!"

Forty years later, I see Above Us Only Sky on Netflix, the Yoko-driven documentary about the making of the "Imagine" record at an English country house in the summer of 1971.

The proceedings are shaggy and fun, George Harrison dropping by, Phil Spector at the helm, and then suddenly this unkempt, clearly troubled Vietnam Vet named Claudio shows up and insists on meeting Lennon because he believes Lennon wrote all his songs for Claudio.

The encounter is - amazingly - on film, and Lennon patiently hears Claudio out and tries to reason with him - "How could I know you?" - and that he, like Bob Dylan, just writes things hoping people will relate.

The encounter ends - even more amazingly - with Lennon telling Claudio he looks hungry and bringing him into the house for a meal.

And when the album Imagine is released it includes the song "I don't wanna be a soldier mama/I don't wanna die." I read up on (Carl) Claudio (here) and he worked on farms and a Ford auto plant and when it closed he bought himself an ultra-light airplane, flew it too low and slow and the plane stalled, landed in a tree and tore his aorta from his heart. Dec. 22, 1981 - dead at 33.

In light of what happened a year earlier, when another obsessed fan came with the same kind of delusional narcissistic energy and took John away from every one else -- the Claudio scene was so moving and chilling and I don't even know what.

John, we miss ya.

How to Fight [COVID] Loneliness

Music, humor, and family banter live from home

How have you been coping with COVID? 

If not the illness itself, then the whittled-down existence it has demanded? 

I have a suggestion. It's been my security blanket most nights, after Anderson Cooper and Rachel Maddow rile me up. 

But first, let's be clear - I count myself among the lucky. Compared to my friend who lost a spouse, or others who lost parents, or who have wrestled the virus for weeks, some needing oxygenation. Or the suddenly unemployed, like my haircutter of 20 years. Or kids in their 20s who were just starting out, losing jobs and internships before they begin. Or our neighbors who are not just first responders but also have two elementary schoolers "learning from home." 

I've got a partner (unlike some), and we're together in lockdown (unlike some), and we actually like each other (....). I've been able to still work from home since mid-March - which is also around the last time I saw my older daughter, who lives upriver, in person. I haven't seen her sister, an off-campus college senior in Ohio, since New Year's. Her commencement that was supposed to happen on Memorial Day has been pushed till May 2021; my plan to fetch her and her stuff is a non-starter because of quarantine + immuno-compromise issues. 

So we've made do with Zooms, like this one on my birthday:

But still. 

We haven't fled town, like 5% of the city - or 40% of wealthy neighborhoods,, per the NYTimes.

Thankfully we do have bikes, and masks (left), and Central Park nearby - though on weekends it's too full of feckless mask-less rebels. 

There are other signs of the fraying of the social contract, loss of good will and tremors that NYC could be heading to one of those unpleasant economic craters. A bike has already been stolen from our building; in Baltimore, Wire creator David Simon tweeted that his car was broken into for "small change, phone charger and some Sister Rosetta Tharpe CDs." 

But all my pre-COVID palliatives for this already-fraught era (see previous post) - museums, theater, music, giving volunteer tours of the Park - are shuttered. 

Books have proved impossible, partly because of how much I have to read to stay au courant for my CNN gig. The news is too dark for me to lose myself in "dark and edgy" TV dramas. Podcasts are okay, but often turn into a nap. 

We did take refuge in old movies on the Criterion Channel, and relished "What Do We Need To Talk About," the new one-hour Richard Nelson play about COVID lockdown, using characters he'd already written several plays about, which streamed live via the Public Theater. I began to seek solace in other types of entertainment: compelling music documentaries like "The Devil and Daniel Johnston," "Searching for Sugarman," "Muscle Shoals," "Big Star" "Five Years" "A Great Day in Harlem" "Produced By George Martin" (and I'm looking forward to the new Beastie Boys one). 

Or standup specials - like Mark Maron, Ronnie Chieng, Wanda Sykes, James Acaster, and the Dave Chapelle Mark Twain Prize special. 

Or my cousin Ben's weekly silent comedy watch party with his colleague Steve Massa, with Ben's live improvised music, for which his wife Mana is the camera operator and cheerleader. 

But then I found a COVID-depression vaccine that combined elements of all of the above in one package, plus the much-needed sense of belonging to a family. I am one of 1200-1500 or so "clients," as we've been dubbed, who tune in live to the hour-long, five-nights-a-week "The Tweedy Show," broadcast on Instagram from the Chicago home of Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy. 

You don't have to be a Deadhead-level Wilco fanatic like myself - or, indeed, even familiar with the band's repertoire at all - to find comfort, entertainment, humor, and more in the impromptu mix of song, tummeling and family banter.

The show is literally homemade, from their living room, 10-11pm ET, on his wife Susie's Instagram page, "Stuff in Our House" whose pre-COVID function had been to chronicle the eBay-volume of kitsch lining their shelves, leading you to wonder where Jeff has room for his extensive collection of Martin guitars.

I've always been enamored of Tweedy's deadpan I-care-but-I-don't-but-maybe-I-do stage banter; I actually long ago wrote a part for him in a spec pilot, as a semi-motivational graduation speaker. 

Tweedy's emphasis on family, music and fun is clear in the band's whole vibe, especially its bi-annual Solid Sound Festival at Mass MOCA, a fusion of bands who inspired them, bands they want fans to know about, solo projects, comedians and art. 

But putting on 50 of these Instagram shows in a few months - more than most network shows produce in a season - and keeping them charming, distinct, and compelling, turns out to be a different kind of impressive production.

Especially considering it seems to have begun on something of a bored whim in mid-March, when an unkempt Jeff decided to stage a lockdown show literally from his nightly bath, and 107 of Susie's followers tripped across it and kept watching. The family couldn't believe that many were interested. 

They eventually developed a nightly pattern. At first the show began with a closeup of the family jukebox playing a 45, but - after what seems to have been some music rights issues with Instagram - now it kicks off with a TV-style variety show theme song - and logo honoring the bathtub origins. 
(note: I updated the video using show 53's intro to include the animation and Spencer-dance).

Susie is the (iPhone) camerawoman, never seen - a la Charlie in Charlie's Angels or Carlton the Doorman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show - but very continuously heard; she curses like a sailor, and her most common utterance is "Oy Vey." If she ever coughs, she has to immediately insist to her father that she's not sick. The one time she accidentally hit the reverse button on the phone and wound up on camera she got so freaked out she threw the phone to the couch like a hot potato.

The cast is rounded out by their two laidback sons. 

Spencer, 24, an extraordinarily versatile drummer, has been playing since he was a kid -- see this Errol Morris-directed Quaker Oats ad - and made a double album with Jeff in 2014 when Susie was undergoing cancer treatment, named after her: Sukirae (right).

And Sammy, just 20, who at some point will amble out from the unseen part of the house, maybe heating up a pizza, wearing either one of Dad's old shirts or one of an endless t-shirt collection, only to quietly steal the show with his plaintive vocals as he reads lyrics off his iPhone. 

Here he is singing Daniel Johnston's "True Love Will Find You in the End." 

The Indelibles

Oh - right! Her. 

I recently attended the workshop production of three one-act plays. Only one was good, despite some stellar actors, but that's not unexpected. It's similar to the success batting average of the much more fully produced plays I see around town.

But as I took my folding chair in the first cramped studio, I was totally distracted - by the sight of one of my fellow audience members.

She was tall and striking-looking, but also very familiar, in a way that instantly engendered feelings of sympathy, almost sadness. But why? From where?

I knew this much: she was an actress, and that whatever I had seen her in, she had been new to me, which is always cool, when you can just accept a performance on face value without the baggage of having seen them in something else.

But it also means it might take a while for me to remember from where, even longer to recall a name. (Thank God for IMDB and IBDB; I see so many plays, movies, and TV shows it can take me a couple of different performances for even the face to stick.)

So I wracked my brain.

The Culture Cure

Met Museumgoer looking at Felix Vallotton's 'The White and the Black" (1913)

How do we keep it together during times of chaos? 

A friend recently posted on Facebook: 

"Happy to say I'm taking some time off to get my head/body together (right now they're in different time zones) but I had to cancel my plans for a walk-on-deserted-beaches sojourn because of family responsibilities...I wonder if I could run a few possibilities by you wonderful people?"

His ideas ran the gamut from Meditation and Psychedelics, to Electroshock and Gastric Bypass, to Public Service. (Already attempted: lying in bed all day with the shades down reading a long book about targeted killings by the Mossad.)

He asked if we had any other suggestions. 

It was half-kidding, but, in days like these, half-not. 

Many of my friends and I feel worried about the sky falling. (Indeed, tragically, just before Christmas a woman was killed by a piece of a building near Times Square.)


Reading my friend's post, I realized I hadn't written on this blog in more than a year - since before the midterms! The last one I felt compelled to register had been about the bomb scare at work. 

So what have I been doing since? Immersing myself in what I'm learning to think of as the Culture Cure. 

First and foremost, I continued writing (and rewriting) a play - my first - about George McGovern, Thomas Eagleton, and McGovern's daughter, around the issue of mental health, the Presidency, and the conflict between public and private lives. 

Director Adrienne Campbell-Holt's stellar cast: (Lucy Consagra, stage directions) 
Susannah Perkins, Juliana Canfield, Greg Hildreth, Zoe Winters, Greg Keller, CJ Wilson, Susie Pourfar, Peter Grosz, James Udom, Adam Harrington

Audible sponsored a developmental reading at the Minetta Lane Theater with an amazing director and cast that helped my next revise. And also continued my hard-won wisdom on the realities of the theater marketplace. 

Meanwhile,

10/24

Central Park evacuation site,  11 am, panorama fail by dying phone.

It's not every day you get asked by two different people if you can speak to Israeli media about your day at work. (I declined.) Or you feel obliged to "mark yourself safe" on Facebook. And then learn that even after a pipe bomb had been sent to Hillary Clinton (among other prominent Dems), the President is still being greeted at his umpteenth rally with chants of "lock her up."

But we are living in weird times.

It was already one of those days that people who believe in such things describe as "Mercury in Retrograde." At 7 a.m. I had subwayed uptown to swim at my neighborhood rec center, only to learn the lifeguard was stuck in traffic and the pool could not open. So instead I bought groceries, and, beladen entering my apartment building door, apparently dropped my cell phone. When I called it, I discovered it had been found and retrieved by a good Samaritan who'd fetched a dog from my building to bring to her grooming place around the corner. I got it back and gave her a tip.

So by the time I got to work at CNN I was already a little rattled. Up in the cafeteria, I looked in vain for signs of fall foliage.

Cafeteria view. Trump Hotel on left. (Gold statue = evacuation site.)

Guess we picked the wrong day to help others.

Instead, I saw volunteers as part of today's "Turner Volunteer Day" writing thank you cards to people serving in the Armed Forces. Having terrible handwriting, I had chosen instead to sign up for a 3pm shift of "Medshare," in which I was going to:

Sort, pack, assemble, and box Clean Birthing Kits for pregnant women and newborns in need who live in communities worldwide where birth often takes place outside of a medical facility. 

Instead, at 10:09 am, the fire alarm started going off. I grabbed my phone, wallet, keys and jacket, and, bizarrely, a water bottle. But not my bag with my external cellphone battery.

Unfunnily enough, we'd had a mandatory "active shooter" training a few weeks ago, where we learned where the staircase exits were, how to not get isolated in an area with no escape, etc. But when the voice came over the speaker

Get Me (Anthem) Rewrite!

In his first 500+ days in office, the President's war against disrespect for the National Anthem has become one of his reliable go-to chestnuts, a greatest hit with a dog whistle chorus that he sings with panache to keep the crowd in his pocket.

But today he took it to another level, by claiming the song is actually good. And I couldn't help thinking comedian Albert Brooks had it right 45 years ago when he did a routine suggesting we needed a national contest to pick a new one, and how that might go.

Since Trump himself is the master of reality TV, maybe it's time to revisit the idea.

After the President learned that only a handful of the Super Bowl Champ Philadelphia Eagles were going to show up for his White House celebration, he disinvited them, claiming (in a third-personese statement) to do so because the players disrespected the Star-Spangled Banner:

“They disagree with their President because he insists that they proudly stand for the National Anthem, hand on heart, in honor of the great men and women of our military and the people of our country.” 

Of course, fact-checkers immediately pointed out that in fact, none of the Eagles on the roster had taken the proverbial knee the entire championship season, but never mind.

Trump rejiggered the ceremony to be a celebration of America, and his early morning tweets began praising the Anthem itself as a wonderful/great piece of music.
7:08 AM:

 13 minutes later: 

But as Trump supporter Roseanne might be among the first to attest, the National Anthem is a difficult thing to sing, both clunky and wide-ranging. And though the lyrics were written by Francis Scott Key during the War of 1812 to an old oft-used tune, it wasn't even crowned our Anthem till 1931, and was toyed with endlessly over the years. As the NY Times has reported, 

In the 19th century, the tune was regularly refashioned with lyrics to be, alternately, a rallying cry for abolitionists (“Oh, say do you hear, at the dawn’s early light, The shrieks of those bondmen, whose blood is now streaming”) or a temperance-movement indictment of alcohol (“Oh! who has not seen by the dawn’s early light, Some poor bloated drunkard to his home weakly reeling”).

So in 1973, when Brooks, then 26, did a routine suggesting America rethink the tune - it had only been in its esteemed slot for 42 of America's 197 years. (And Nixon was one year shy of resigning over Watergate.)

(When I wrote a career tribute to Brooks seven years ago, I embedded a video of him performing it live that since has been removed from YouTube in America due to copyright reasons, so you're going to have to listen to it. Pretend it's a podcast!) 

Prophetically for today's climate, Brooks begins his routine - recorded live at L.A.'s Troubadour -  by saying "The National Anthem - What happened? Oh, someone got up! No, no. You don't have to stand." 

Then Brooks declares the anthem has to be rewritten "very soon"