Relax, my friend

The following is a poem written by Barbara Page and sent to me in summer 2008, while I was recovering from the end of a career, a breakup and the onset of going back to school full time:

To a Fallen Member

Laid low by a vagabond lover
you vow to rise and, yes, recover
this gauzy sweet and silken summer
but no
you're here in a tangle of repose
where glances glance off (or you suppose)
and what you'd hope would come only goes
and so
you chide yourself but you're mistaken
what sleeps one season will awaken
sure _ firm _ o! friend _ be stirred not shaken

-- Barbara Kerr Page, 2008

Not Going Anywhere (for Barbara)

Let me tell you a story
Conclusive, based on fact
Long ago in the morning
She left did not come back
I don't really care anymore
I don't really care

Change the days into nights
And you will know when the feeling is right
This tale is too long
The plot is weak and the characters wrong
I don't really care anymore
I don't really care anymore
But she changed my life
I thought she loved me

And I will pray for you
You'll see the truth
Cause that's how it's got to be

Let me tell you a story
About the way she was

Those are the lyrics to the opening song on one of the music discs I made for my friend Barbara in an effort to comfort her during the last weeks of her life. This is an explanation of that first disc. It’s more for me than for you. In some ways, the songs were more for me than they were for her. Yesterday, when a handful of us met Barbara’s brother at her apartment to help go through her things, this disc was in her compact boombox.

We discussed life in depth, making her my confidante, an irreplaceable friend, my guru – a fellow traveler who struggles with the concept that the story we tell of our lives is a mildly entertaining "Liar’s Tale." The Guided by Voices song is a natural opener – let me tell you a story (true? embellished?) about the way she was – the playwright in her hopefully appreciating my limitations – the plot is weak and the characters wrong.

The next two songs are my attempts to bond.

We shared a love of Emmylou Harris. I offer two duets between gruff, rather ordinary men and angelic songbirds. “This Is Us” by Harris and Mark Knopfler. Let’s pretend we’re outlaws. “Bonnie and Clyde” by Dean and Britta from Luna. I picture our shared love of film to be the stuff of classic Godard Nouvelle Vague.

Before we get too serious here, I throw in a nonsense song that carries on the illogical French theme – “Mlle. Chatte” by Harlan T. Bobo, which I cribbed from a mix CD recently made by my friend Tom. I feel bad that the opening line is “Elle est grande,” but I know she’d appreciate the silly lyrics throughout (about a cat who eats butter, drinks wine and pees on the table) and the overall gastronomic absurdity.

***

There is tension next in the sad garage clatter of “Lovesick” from Lisa Germano and an opening lyric she again can appreciate: “You’re not my Yoko Ono / You said those words to me.” The underlying message I’m conveying, in my own sick way, is that she and I could have been but also could never have possibly been a John & Yoko. In reality, she may have never felt like anyone’s Yoko. I told her at times that our friendship in a way felt to me like a love affair, albeit a platonic one. That could be silly or cruel on my part (I can hear a few of my exes utter the word “cowardly,” actually) or maybe that’s profound in some weird way, but it’s what I experienced. Barbara could be as sassy and sexual as anyone -- I liked how she could be bawdy and classy and clever all in the same breath like a thoroughly modern Dorothy Parker – and we often discussed our romantic triumphs and tragedies. When, above, I mentioned cruelty, I’m reminded that no one could be more cruel about Barbara than she was to herself. A frequent theme of our final conversations was her vision of herself throughout her life as no great beauty – overweight, not a drop of makeup, too smart to even pretend to be a ditzy Barbie Doll, feeling at times like a disappointment to her mother. (As she prepared to die, she imagined a parallel universe in which she was thin and feline.) One of the best compliments I’ve ever received was years ago when she told me I had the handsome ranginess of Campbell Scott. No one has ever championed the cause of James A. Montalbano like Barbara Kerr Page did. Her friendship was one big chuck on the shoulder; a constant “good going, guy” that I rarely got from, say, my father or a partner. But I learned from her, too, that outer beauty is truly only skin deep. I think she enjoyed watching me struggle as a shallow, hypocritical American male; she constantly challenged me to keep looking deeper. In my fantasy world, she is the beauty and I am some rough beast.

“Not Going Anywhere” by Keren Ann (what IS up with the French theme?) gave the disc its title. This one is straightforward. Barbara was dying, but her legacy had been cemented, and she will live as long as I do.

“Bloodbuzz Ohio” by The National is just a great recent song that I thought she’d like. This is, after all, a mix CD from an Eighties boy. And she would be playing the disc on her little boombox. She forever speculated about what comes next after this life, what the trip is like. A spaceship? Another dimension? A parallel universe? A long odyssey being carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees?

“Cape Canaveral” is another recent favorite of mine, from Conor Oberst. Barbara for me is a classic Boomer, a ‘60s teen, a postwar love child, a women’s libber, a 20-something in the gritty sloppy ‘70s. She’s a California Dreamer, a mod gal in Swingin’ London, an adventurous hedonist before Reagan and AIDS. I lived vicariously through her in that sense. This song, with its perfect reference to Sister Socrates, evokes that time for me, a maudlin tribute to the Age of Apollo, reminding us that chasing after hope is a fool’s errand. Plus, Oberst is the first New Dylan to actually live up to the title. She’d revel in his wordplay.

***

“What Am I Worth?” by Dave Alvin and the belter Syd Straw is just another Beauty & The Beast duet for her consideration. A gruff doofus getting circles run ‘round him by a brilliant, vivacious woman with talent to burn. That’s how I felt for 4-1/2 years sitting next to her, thinking I was a decent copy editor. Barbara was always at least one dimension beyond me. (I also wanted a sassy country song in the mix.)

That last song was also a bridge to a straightforward gospel song, “River of Jordan” by the Louvin Brothers, my nod to the Big Guy, in case he’d been listening to us this whole time. It was also my wish expressed to her that she could find peace in her final days and have the cool waters wash clean her soul.

“Tomorrow Is a Long Time” – here, the Christian group Nickel Creek’s version of the Dylan song – has always haunted me. No one has expressed yearning quite like that. It’s always made me think of a lifetime as being just one long day (instead of a day lasting a lifetime), with tomorrow being whatever comes after death. It was one of the songs Dylan wrote when his girlfriend went off to Italy at the time (another was “Boots of Spanish Leather”). I learned that trivia from the NY Times obituary of that girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, his early muse, who died earlier this year. (Now there was some baggage for a woman to carry throughout her adult life, which I’m sure Barbara could perhaps appreciate.) Barbara was also a muse to me in many ways, both in journalism and in my private writing. We spent a good deal of my summer before law school swapping screenplays and workshopping other scraps of writing. I think the only time I ever truly shocked her was when I hit her with the ending of my epic film treatment that is still in progress. She seemed genuinely disturbed by what my mind had conjured up. I still hope to pull it all off someday. Meantime, I cherish the two 10-minute plays she entrusted in my care.

“World Inside the World,” by Rhett Miller of the Old 97’s, is just another pretty song. It felt like it fit in neatly with her philosophy. And the reference to DeLillo is special. She loved being read to, and I got the chance to do that during many of our visits that followed her various hip surgeries. I’ve always wanted to read “Underworld” to a woman I love; we got through most of the long first chapter once. Maybe that’s all I’ll get; it would be enough for me.

“I Saw Her Standing There” by Daniel Johnston – the epitome of his tortured mind’s blend of the infantile and the profound. Accompanying himself on piano (you can hear him pause awkwardly to turn the pages of his sheet music), he plays only the chord changes, transforming what was once early Beatles pop joy into a dirge. His thin voice, as always, is haunting. The positioning of this amateurish cover version between the song before it and the one that comes next is for effect.

“I and Love and You” by the Avett Brothers, gets our piano back in tune, as lovely as they come. It has a mournful gospel feel to it. The Young Grasshopper will catch the lyric “What you were once / I am today.” I figured she’d appreciate the awkward lyric “Oh, Brooklyn, Brooklyn, take me in.” And, of course, the song is a cowardly ‘80s mix-tape way of simply telling another person that you love them. Do I have to hold that boombox over my head here? Last fall she mailed me a novel: “The Importance of Music to Girls.” Across four postcards, she scrawled this message: “Thought you’d enjoy this – the title is ironic (I think) because girls don’t feel about music the ways boys do – plus, she’s about yr age and so some tunes will be familiar. Good to see yr mom (she’s fabbo) and hope you two had a great time. Hope, too, you’ll have a good time in Portland. Cheers! B.” That last part was a sendoff to Oregon, where I was headed to stalk my favorite band, the first one mentioned above, Guided by Voices, which was on a mini-reunion tour. Ugh, the importance of music to boys.

“For Today” from the young Jessica Lea Mayfield continues the loveliness. It also provides a break between all the boys here in the homestretch, as well as a link to a kindred song three tracks down the line. The lyrics, to me, echo the sentiment from Dylan’s “I Don’t Believe You” – putting up a false front and acting like you’re not going to miss that person walking out the door. Barbara the copy editor would appreciate the clever misuse of the phrase “I could care less.” I feel like her little grasshopper student when I quote:

I could care less about you
Care less about you
And how I love the sound of you walking away
And I can
See clearer
And I am getting closer
To finding out just who I am
Without you in the way

So hold me
But only

For today

Here comes Guided by Voices again, with “A Drinker’s Peace,” a self-eulogy full of smart rhymes. Again, I think of her frolicking in the pre-‘80s era when I hear the line, “I get a contact buzz / Can’t remember what the problem was.”

Next is “Modern Girl” by Sleater Kinney. Tough chicks singing a masculine, ironic song about being a strong woman (because, of course, her baby loves her). The song is an instant timeline for me, headed in reverse. A young male former student of mine reminded me of this song with a blog post of his in the fall. The song hadn’t made an impact on me when I bought the disc (“The Woods”) a few years ago. But, oh, what a video. (Maybe it’s again cruel of me to have the words “My whole life / Looks like a picture of a sunny day” echo through a dying friend’s brain.) Carrie Brownstein snarls like Chrissie Hynde did when I saw her and the Pretenders in concert in suburban Chicago in 1984. Hynde at the time, in her painted-on I’m-33-I-got-a-kid-baby leather pants, was channeling Dylan that night. Here, the close-up of Brownstein’s mouth as she grits her teeth and spits out “sunny dayyyy” – she’s the lovechild of Hynde and Dylan, a lesbian dressed up like a boyish British mod. The mind reels, like a movie reel, tumbling backward, two decades at a time – 2005 … 1984 … 1965.

And back to the ‘70s. Back to the duets. The lunk and the angel. “For a Day Like Today,” by Lee Hazelwood and Suzy Jane Hokom (a name from a BK play if I ever heard one). A bookend to the modern imitators Dean & Britta above. Makes me think of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. Or Jean-Luc Godard and Anna Karina. Don’t go there. Lee Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra. Richard and Mimi Farina. Bobby and Suze arm in arm on the album cover. Back to the ‘60s, back to my womb. (A running joke between us was that Barbara, 14 years my senior, could have been my mother in South America.) Lisa Germano (track 5 above) also does a killer version of “These Boots Are Made for Walking.” I chose one of her miserable originals instead. “You’re not my Yoko Ono.” Barbara was endlessly enamored of Wild West images. “For a Day Like Today” is a rambling cowboy tune that always had a carry-me-to-my-grave feel to it. By this point, the reference to “hope” is no longer sarcastic. Just a song or a dream – or some hope – we’d been saving for a day like today.

“Ballad of a Broken String,” by the Icelandic experimentalists Mum, is a mesmerizing instrumental. It has the snaps and pops of vinyl throughout. It borrows from Piazzola and Morricone – more cinematic beauty. It’s the accompaniment to a funeral in the rain. It’s a song I’ve often used to send myself off to sleep. It’s carried along by the beat of a heart. It dares to care about a poor little broken string; like a rubber band on your wrist or hanging lonely on the doorknob. It’s a soundtrack to a New Mexican sunset. Eventually the heartbeat stops. The clicks and crackles linger until you lift the needle off the vinyl. Listen to it again, and you can hear that the song, 4 minutes and 44 seconds, has the cadence of an entire life being lived.

Finally, a playful yet dark, bittersweet coda. “Spicks and Specks” by the young Bee Gees. Barbara, their contemporary, is back one more time in Swingin’ London. She’s one of the girls I’ll never forget. I came to New Mexico for the sun. But where is that sun? Now she has made me wonder: What is it like to plan the swift sunset of your life? The older you get, the more your memory is just a series of spicks and specks of a life gone away. I warned you; this exercise was just as much about me as it was about Barbara Kerr Page, who died at age 62 on April 27, 2011, my last day of law school.

***

And a final coda: A week before she died, Barbara mailed me a postcard. Because she forgot to include the city quadrant, it didn’t arrive until the day before she died. It reads, simply: “April 2011. Enjoying the music – thnx! Happy Easter! Love, B.”