Cats and Jammers Studio

I should have paid more attention to Philip Roth

 

So, not too long ago, I discovered that the author Philip Roth is from Newark, New Jersey. I believe that I first learned this in this New York Times article, regarding his decision to stop writing.  With that discovery, a tiny little bell went off inside of me, the essence of which one wouldn't really understand unless one is, to be honest, from Newark.  Newark and New Jersey occupy a place in my soul that is hard to define except to say that is was the beginning of my life and it has colored the way I have seen everything since I left. That was in 1962. 

Let's start with Newark. I was born there. Doesn't get much earlier than that. My parents were both from there, attended school there (Arts High), and lived there in the early years of their short marrige. My grandparents also lived there for years in apartments (home ownership being something both sets came to late in life). One pair on High Street in an old stately building behind pillars and lion's heads (I think there were lion's heads) and the other on 16th Avenue, in a fourth floor walk up overlooking a city park that I spent countless hours in. I can still see those apartments in my mind's eye as though it were yesterday. After hours spent trying to "visit" them on Google Street view, I was saddened to see that both sites seem to be reduced to piles of rubble. They say you can't go back again. I guess in some cases you can't even go back and take a walk on Google.

The first ten years of my life had a certain Jersey feeling to it, that that is really to say it had a certain "Newark" feel to it. For example, there has never been a "downtown" since  Downtown Newark, that has been as much fun to be in. It just bustled. Yeah, yeah, it was not New York City, but nothing was or is New York City. I knew that even as a little kid after trips into NY. But, nothing was Newark, either. Nothing was like Bamberger's or Kresge's department store in the 1950s when the top floor actually had a monorail racing around the ceiling of the toy department.

I recall the last time I went to Newark. It was around 1966, I think. We actually went to McCrory's which was always our choice of a Five and Ten for lunch. The same woman I had seen working there in the early/mid fifties was still at the register of the luncheonette in 1966. I remember finding this amazing (it had really only been about 10 years or so ago that I had been there as a really kittle kid. Why would staying at the same job for ten years astound someone? Well, I guess it does if you are 13. How did I know for sure it was the same woman? Trust me. I knew. She had a very disticntive face that I used to stare at when little.

In Jersey, we rode buses. We rode buses all the time because neither my mother, nor  my grandmothers drove cars back then. And, so, if you wanted to get somewhere and no man was handy, you took a bus to get there. You took buses to get "downtown" which was the only place you really shopped, malls being years away.  If you wanted to go to another downtown in Jersey, you rode a bus. Maybe you even had to change buses. If you wanted to go to Olympic Park (and that is a whole blog post in and of itself) you rode two buses. I used my memories of a New Jersey bus when I illustrated Tex and Sugar. I actually looked at a picture of a NJ transit bus from the 50s for that art because that is how buses will remain in my mind forever.

From what I understand from my parents and grandparents, the bloom was already off the rose for Newark by the time I was born. They would spend hours and hours talking about how great Newark was at one time. I guess a city has it's heyday and then it passes. Ask anyone who's lived in Buffalo (like me). It used to be one of the wealthiest cities in the US at the turn of the last century. By the early 70s when I lived there, Buffalo was hurting--big time.

But, back to Newark. As much as Newark was the center of the universe in Jersey, other haunts were never that far from the hub. It's a small state. Like Westfield. Rahway. Elizabeth. That was my last NJ stop. I lived there with grandparents until moving to New York (they stayed). And after Elizabeth, they moved to Paterson, and downtown Paterson had a flavor all it's own, too. Many years spent shopping there in Sterns and Meyer Borthers.

I guess you can say that most places in New Jersey have a sort of Newark feel to them, unless you drive waaaay down to the Pine Barrens and, well, then you are in another country. As far as I know, the Russians who escaped from Christopher and Paulie Walnuts have STILL not been found. But the shore? Jersey all the way. Newark by the sea. When I think of Jersey memories, I think of: Italian ices, going to Kresge's for all kind of children's events, sugar cookies, soft pretzels, Nuns sitting in department stores with tins asking for small change, city buses, diners playing doo-wop, shopping, escalators, people-operated elevators, Ballantine Beer, a big bottle you could see from the Garden Sate Parkway, the Garden Sate Parkway, driving through tunnels to get to NYC, Five and Ten cent stores, parades of policemen (seems like there were always parades in Newark), the Colonade, McCrory's, Route 22 which we always drove on but never stopped at, parks with Cherry Blossoms, playgrounds in parks.... My list is endless, really.

But let's back to Philip Roth, which is why I went down the New Jersey memory lane to begin with ( I could write all day about Newark and Jersey, and still have lots ot say). This week I read, also in the Times, about an event honoring him and a bus tour through Newark as he celebrated his 80th birthday in an artcile, "Goodbye Newark, the Place Philip Roth Never Left."  I was envious. I wish I were there. I would love to time travel back to Newark of years ago, and maybe that might have been the closest one could get to doing that--stopping at the places he knew and lived at.

Of Roth's work, I am guilty of having only read Portnoy's Complaint, and that was many, many years ago and I was very, very young and naive. I can't remember much of the book but I remember being astonished in so many ways a young girl would be. I also remember him doing...um.. something to his family's dinner. And to this day, I have a faint recollection of a line that pops into my head if I hang a bra on a bathroom doorknob...and it does any swinging.

I saw the movie, Goodbye Columbus, It did not evoke Jersey for me.

So I send this question out to cyberspace. Does Roth evoke Jersey and Newark in partlcular in his books? Should I right my wrong and read everything he has written in an attempt to glean any morsel of Newark and Jersey of old? Is there any sense that he was a Jersey boy? Curious and reminiscent minds want to know, because Google Street View left me high and dry.

 

Taking risks, trying new materials, reinvention. It's what artists need to do.

Recently I had the pleasure, albeit a somewhat nervous pleasure, of being interviewed by my good friend Monica Lee of Smart Creative Women via Skype (nothing makes you more aware of age and weight than knowing you will be on camera). That interview will go live very soon, but I thought I would share some thoughts that Monica and I never really got to cover fully during the time we spoke, because time did, as time does in real life, fly by. I have also posted a companion post in my other blog, Design Rocket.

I have had the good fortune of being able to spend nearly one hundred percent of my time these last forty years, making art in one form or another. I did take a few years off when my two oldest sons were little, but when I think back on that time, I was always dong something creative (and most of it was donated for fundraising events of one kind or another), just not all of it professionally. Aside from that short break, it has pretty much been non-stop all the time.

But, nonstop at what?  Well, nonstop at art. Art in many forms and in many materials for many venues. In short: I've been a painter, puppeteer, doll maker, soft sculpture artist/craftsperson, editorial illustrator, children's book author and illustrator, fabric designer, licensed artist, and now I am also painting again. I’ve also spent a lot of time decorating houses, but, to be very honest, that makes me zero money. It only costs me money. But that's OK. It satisfies my soul. It's a medium I have to work in almost as much as my paints. “House--just another art material and artistic discipline."

But back to business. If I look back over all my years as an artist, I see one thing: my aesthetic sensibility has not changed much in forty years. I am still drawn to the same things I was drawn to in college--characters, details, expressive gestures, and emotions. I love color and texture and patterns. I especially like narratives. Everything I do tends to tell a story, and the story is in the details, textures and characters.

I have written about this before and in much more detail. You can read the first accout I wrote years ago for my very first web site. It really rambles and tells the story of the earliest years. Here is the place to read that. I created an abbreviated version for my current web site. You can ready that one here. 

I’m sharing some recent art here at Cats and Jammers Studio to coordinate with the interview. I am also sharing some of the house and other new art on my other blog, Design Rocket.

What message would I love to give other artists? This: don’t be afraid to re-invent yourself and try new things. Life as an artist is a wild journey on a winding road. A few years back, I posted a long post about moving in random directions in life, seemingly as if by pure serendipity. Well, life is that but it is also by luck and pluck, and maybe much less by design than we think. Please read that post, Serendipity + Pluck = Life.

Much of the art here is from my 2011 Sketchbook Project, “Coffee and Cigarettes.” I loved doing that book. I have done two others since. You can see the digital scans of my book here. And you can see the show opening containg paintngs based on the book here.

Participating in the Sketchbook Projects for the Art House Coop really feeds my artistic soul. My most recent book was titled “Strangers.” In doing that book I dedicated it to my painting and drawing professor of my sophomore year of college, John Patrick Murphy II. John was the head of the art department at Rockland Community College for more than 30 years. On the very first day I met him, I shared some paintings and he gave me advice that has stayed with me all these years: “Barbara, draw out of your head.” Meaning, draw from the well within you that has your memories and your impressions. And that is the way I have worked ever since.

John very recently passed away. This post is dedicated to him, because, really, meeting him and getting to know him was pure serendipity and it pointed me along the way on my own artistic journey.

 

 

Different Time, Same Place, Older Face

All Photographs © Irina Werning

Here we go again. I discovered this on Jeannie Jeannie. Wonderful pictures that chronicle the passing of time. This time we have shots by photogrpaher Irina Werning as she gets her subjects to strike a pose and don clothing that match, as much as possible, a shot from when they were very young. 

You know I love this stuff. I love seeing the evidence of a life that has been lived or is in the process.This tempts me to try and do the same thing with pictures I have. I have one picture from 8th grade of Phil and I and Bobby Stewart, another classmate, that we need to recreate if we can manage to get together sometime in our life.

Go check out the rest of these pictures. They will make you smile but you might also find yourself waxing a little melancholy. Time stops for no man... nor baby.

Yeah, I know Valentine's Day is over, but ....

This is so in tune with my pulp fiction covers and Fancy Nancy YA book jacket, that I HAVE to share a  link sent to me by my friend Liz for "Vinatge Valentines WTF." And if you these are strange, wait until you see the rest of the fantastic collection.

When a Good Girl Goes Bad.....on Pinterest

I tried. I really really tried. But..but I didn't try THAT hard.

Of course, my reputation is still intact. I am talking about my obsession with finding imagery and posting it on Pinterest. And lately, my biggest pleasure has been finding old paperback pulp fiction covers and then adding my own captions. 

You don't know about Pinterest? That might be a good thing, because it is already an addiction for me when I need a few minutes of down time from work. It's like keeping scrapbooks of your favorite imagery, and getting to share it with EVERYONE. And the site is growing. Here is a piece on it from Mashable.

My Flag is Down is actually from my own paperback collection. As my friend Liz said, "I bet it won't be down for long."

And I just discoverd the newer, less "upright" cover for this novel. By the look on his face, I'm not so sure this Taxi driver will know what to do to get that flag up again.

Pop over to my Pinterest Board and have a look see for yourself. But be warned--Pinterest is great fun!

(Incidentally, I happened to catch Tarrentino's Pulp Fiction on TV last night. I do love that movie!)

Finally I have this to say: I am going to try to figure out a way to use the word "SWELL" on a daily basis. And it will have nothing to do with sprains.

Photo essay from The Kingston Lounge

I live for this kind of photography: haunting shots of once lively and active places, now in ruins. There is something that hits a nerve somewhere within me that makes me look at the disintegration of old structures, and see it not just as it is, but as it must have been. 

There's a lot to read and a lot to see in this wonderful photo essay about  New York's North Brother Island and abandoned Riverside Hospital from The Kingston Lounge, which may soon become another favorite photo blog for me, right up there with Shorpy. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves and the history tell it's own story.

First Billy Taylor, now George Shearing. I feel the 70s slipping away....

It seems that this blog is often turning into a forum for obituaries of people who have moved me. That may very well be, for I if I am going to write about things that are important to me, then that needs to include losing people or artists who have touched my life. I guess as one gets older and more of those key players in a person’s lifetime pass away, it becomes even more important to acknowledge, reflect upon, and celebrate lives well lived.

Along those lines, several weeks ago I was so sorry to read in the NY Timesthat Jazz artist Billy Taylor had passed away. Here is another blog post about it on Mirror On America. I was  also so sad to read about the passing of George Shearing in today's NY Times. When I want the kind of harmonic jazz that is both contemplative and inspiring, I think of Billy Taylor and George Shearing. Their music  has a distinctly classy and urban New York feel to me.  I love it for the harmonic, sensitive and thoughtful sound, as well as for the fact that it reminds me of early years in New York, listening to live jazz in the city. That sound reminds me of being very young and feeling the world was there for the celebrating and taking.

I was very young.  A good friend of my then-fiancee, Phil's and mine, Norm Freeman, was a student at Julliard. Our summer evenings would often be like this: I would work until my shift was done at Capra's Restaurant in Stony Point, NY. That was usually until about eleven at night. Norman and Phil would pick me up and we would then zip into New York City to catch some live jazz. Getting down to the village about forty minutes later meant we could catch at least one set in a club.

And in the early seventies, you could   hear some great music in the clubs at night. We most often ended up going to the Village Gate (Top of the Gate)  or the Village Vanguard or the Half Note. At the Vanguard we  caught the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis orchestra in a place where we would descend a flight of stairs into a smoke filled and alcohol fueled room. The experience was transforming. I can still see the bass player in my mind's eye-spacey and totally grooving to the power of the music. Here is a nice history of the Vanguard.

Because Norman was studying with the drummer Ray Mosca, we went to the Half Note where Mosca was playing with Zoot Sims. 

Photo: New York Times

And then there was the Top of the Gate. I liked it there best of all. At the Village Gate we did have the ernomous pleasure of hearing Billy Taylor live, in an intimate setting. He was one of a number of Jazz greats we heard there, most of whose names are hard for me to recall. But I especially remember Billy Taylor, though. Norman asked him to play his signature piece, “There will Never Be Another You,” which he did. His music was so lovely. I still enjoy listening to it and it is a favorite in my studio. We had to leave when he was on a break, just  sitting with some friends at one of the tables in the room. He looked up with a lovely smile and gave us a nod good-bye. I can still see him sitting there, incredibly classy, handsome, and just plain nice.

New York in the seventies was totally unlike New York now.  Of course, that’s stating the obvious; forty years would make a difference anywhere. But apart from the physical (there was much more evidence of 19^th and 18^th century New York than there is now) and the technological, there is the sense of the city that has changed greatly. Let’s face it. New York today is cleaner and safer than New York in the seventies, largely thanks to Rudy Giuliani who transformed the place completely.

Want to imagine NY in the 70s?  Imagne Scroses’s “Taxi Driver.” That is a nice snapshot of the city back then: gritty, grimy, ruthless, and hurting. Still, we were young. We were fearless and game for anything, including the rough streets of NY.

In contrast to the grime, New York was also exciting and happening and full of great things in the arts and socially. Wonderful creative things happened. Great art was made. And the city held for me, even then, an attraction that is hard to put into words. There is a line in a Kenny Rankin song, “Killed a Cat,” that sums it up for me back then:

 

New York, you're a mother

And like no other

You been oh so good to me

I remember how you felt

I was innocent

And I wanted you

 

And I did want New York. Badly. But it was never to be. My life took other directions.

I found this site about a book of photos, New York in the 70s: A Remembrance by Allan Tannenbaum I may just have to get it. Take a look at the wonderful photos there. This is my memory of the city back then when I was just beginning to take it all in as a young adult. 

By the way, it does not surprise me that our friend Norm Freeman added "minister" to his resume, and not only that, but  a minister who incorporates music into his services. We have fallen out of touch over the years (I should do something about that), but the Norm I remember was always kind, thoughtful and sensitive. He was so much so, that he was almost an old soul even while so young. His seriousness and his dedication to his music was palpable. Music is one of the best ways I can think of to have a truly spiritual expereince, so it makes sense that he would take it to that level officially. 

Thinking back to that summer of 1971 and hearing Jazz in the city and being young and carefree makes me remember a simpler time, even while I am saddened to think that Billy Taylor and George Shearing have passed away. Thank goodness for the ability to record sound. It makes it possible to be nineteen again in the best of ways.

 

High School Reunion: Rip Van Winkle Revisited

Tomorrow my husband and I are heading down to good old Rockland County, New York for my 40th high school reunion--North Rockland High School, Class of 1970. The school is now located in Theills, New York and has been since it opened for my senior year. This won't be so tortuous for my husband because he actually went to school with most of these people until his family moved to another nearby town in 10th grade. The best part is that the reunion will take place in Haverstraw (which is where the grand, old school was from 1933 until the new one was built) in a place just a half a block down the street from the house (on the Hudson River) in which my husband grew up, until the fateful move.

Needless to say, this is a prime experience for a time-passing-obsessive-nut like myself. What could be better than participating your own Ken Burns experience? I am not exaggerating when I say that with very little effort, I can put myself right back in my late 60s mindset, in the very halls where my high school heart still wanders in my dreams. In that place, everyone still looks exactly as they did 40 years ago. Close my eyes, and it is not much of a stretch to be back in my old clothes, in my old classrooms, cafeteria, and locker room, with a vivd sense of what was. I can recall the feeling of the halls, the big old windows, the way the old granite and marble steps felt, the vivid CCC/WPA  Depression painted murals on the walls of the Home Ec classroom, and the sense of a solid and substantial building meant to last (they still use it for the Middle School).

I won't go into much detail about how the new, one level, barely finished high school structure felt for the one laskluster year I was there. But suffice it to say that the yearbook staff managed to sneak one four letter word via morse code into the monotmous brick cover of the yearbook itself; that exposed where our collective hearts really lay with regard to the new school vs. the old stately building. It was a very silly and immature act of rebellion in retrospect, of course, but accurate at the time for a bunch of 17-18 year olds who loved the old building and town fiercely. 

In any event, I am very much looking forward to doing some time travel and some great catching up with my former classmates to see where our lives have led us during the past 40 years. We may not look now as we did then, but I am sure that many of us still feel like adolescents in our hearts.

After a weekend of High School revisited in Rockland, back in Boston the following week my husband and I have are having dinner with one of his law school classmates and his wife, after not seeing them for 30 years. Here is another case where it is effortless to imagine us once again back in Ithaca where we lived for 3 years, and get into that late seventies mindset. And it is equally vivid: clothes, food, house, soft sculptured dolls everywhere, while he happily toiled away in the evenings at his studies. Got local yogurt, Earth shoes, Indian wrap skirts and home made bread? Oh, yeah. That and lots of granola. And I can tell you from years of futility: you cannot make brownies with honey and whole wheat flour so don't even try.

So, yes, I can time travel back years and remember very clearly what life was like years ago. But the last twenty-plus years? Where the heck did they go? Was I here? What did I wear, eat, think, watch? Did I make all my appointments? (the answer is no). When did my hair start to turn gray? I know I made plenty of art work and changed plenty of diapers. Did I ever cook? I think I did. I think I actually used to cook real meals, using real cookbooks and real pots and pans. Or so they tell me. 

Fact is, with three boys to chase around and extended family to worry about and sometimes care for, and illustration jobs to get done, along with a husband who works long hours, much of my more recent life has flown by in a blur of extreme busyness, multitasking, family celebrations, caring for loved ones and sleep deprivation. From the time I became a parent  (which is when I feel like I finally became an adult), a good night's sleep has eluded me, and while my family is what really gives my life meaning and purpose beyond all else, life has also flown by so quickly that I have come to feel like Rip Van Winkle: asleep for 20 years only to wake up and find myself and everything around me is now older and very changed.

What does all this mean? It means that I had to revisit that old story by Washington Irving a little bit today, of course!  I learned some interesting facts: Irving wrote that story while living in England for a spell after meeting with some failure and filing for bankruptcy. The story idea came to him after an evening of what else? Reminiscing! According to Wikipedia, he locked himself in a room after waxing nostalgic with his brother-in-law and wrote non-stop all night. I guess the conversation much have ignited a long-suppressed creative urge, since it is said he "felt like a man waking from a long sleep."

And so it hit me: the story of Rip Van Winkle is simply an allegory for life itself, for as our lives march forward we can get so caught up in the day-to-day acts of just keeping things afloat and our homes intact, that we often suppress dreams, creativity, and that risk-taking side of ourselves that seemed to vibrate with potency when we were young. 

I have been lucky enough be able to have embraced my creative side for the last twenty years. But those years have still flown by. I find myself waking up to see my children looking grown up and more and more independent. Fashions are coming back in vogue, and I still haven't gotten rid of them from the first time they were stylish. My musician son lists the Beatles and Rolling Stones as two of his favorite "old" bands. And when I watch "Mad Men" I can actually catch the anachronisms because that era was the beginning of my pre-teen awareness of everything around me.

The good part about raising a family and getting older is that as your children become themselves, you gain more time again within which to reflect and savor what life offers, because you know that as quickly as the previous years have passed, the remaining ones will do so, only with greater speed. Even though it sounds corny, I do think that this reunion is so much more than simply catching up and saying hello. I absolutely do not get it when people have no desire to attend these events.  It is about understanding the past in the context of life. If you don't examine where you have been, how can you possibly get a grasp on where you are and where you are going?

It's all part of getting older and the game of life. I do like to play it and I am glad I still can.

Just can't get enough of this time travel: Sherman, turn the way-back machine to 1920.

 

Just when I thought there was absolutely no reason to watch television anymore, along comes the best thing since, well, the other best reason to watch television--the Sopranos. And the new best thing? BOARDWALK EMPIRE. If you haven't heard already, this new series on HBO, is set in Atlantic City in 1920--at the beginning of Prohibition and what would become the roaring twenties. Leading the show is the charcter of Nucky Thompson (based on real-life boss Nucky Johnson, see below), City Treasurer and the boss of everything that goes on in and around life on the Boardwalk. 

I have to admit I was already pretty eager to watch this show after catching the preliminary hype. What's not to anticipate with glee when you see names like Martin Scorcese and Steve Buscemi and Terrence Winter? Still, I wondered, will it really be so good? Nothing will ever come close to the Sopranos....

Well, I have just found appointment TV again. Last night I caught the first episode, directed by Scorcese, and it was everything I had hoped for, plus much, much more: the dialogue was rich in the way that classic Sopranos dialogue used to be (touched with the hand of authenticity and believability of character, gilded with surprising black humor in the perfect places); the attention to visual details was near perfect; the scenes were shot with the sense of true cinema, complete with near brain-scan close-ups and vivid costumes and makeup;  the period music sent you back in time; and the actors were absolutely perfectly cast. If I have to make one complaint, I would say that I caught a touch of mis-matched dialogue/film synching, that distracted me somewhat early on, but I got over it.

Prior to seeing the first, I had read that it would take seeing a number of episodes to buy into Steve Bsucemi as the infamous Nucky Thompson. Not so. Within minutes I was sold on his portrayal, and even though the name of James Gandolfini as the lead was bantered around in the pre-show hype, I cannot imagine anyone better in this part than Buscemi.

Michael Pitt practically has steam escaping from his pores, as he plays the part of Jimmy Darmody, Princeton drop-out who comes home from his service as a dough boy in WWI to embrace his darker side (discovered, or, perhaps, uncovered "over there") as Nucky's right hand man. Let's just say he simmers with the need to satisfy those urges.

Especially suited for the role of Margaret Shroeder, a battered Irish immigrant wife, is Kelly Macdonald. Her face looks as though it were plucked right out of the historical photo blog I read daily, SHORPY  (blogged about it here) . Never have I seen a face so evocative of the 1920s. Her performance and face feel so authentic, that I think she actually rode some sort of time machine to get from 1920 to 2010, just for this part.

I could go on and on about the other actors in their roles--Shea Whigham as Nucky's sheriff brother; Michael Stuhlbarg as Arnold Rothstein; Vincent Piazza as Lucky Luciano; Stephen Graham as Al Capone, and Michael Shannon as Fed Agent Van Alden (who seems particularly sinister)--  all perfectly matched to the parts they are playing. Furthermore, the performances are incredibly enriched by the attention to set, costume, and make-up detail, which I hope will continue to  play as much as a part of the series as the action and story itself. Personally, it is in that kind of attention to the small things that make for superb filming. My guess is that Martin Scorses was the driving force behind those kinds of period-specific touches; Goodfellas and Casino are both movies that demonstrate just how much details can elevate a film to a category that marks it as "superb," as opposed to just "very good."

 

What makes this series even better, is that the character of Nucky Thompson is based on a real person, Nucky Johnson, who actually did run the Boardwalk show, so to speak, and make Atlantic City what it was between 1911 and 1941. For more information I intend to read the book by Nelson Johnson. I would love to have gotten the first edition before the cover became HBOed, but I'll settle for the TV tie in if I have to.

In the meantime, hop over to this blog, Press of Atlantic City, and watch this wonderful documentary about the real Nucky. Totally fascinating.

Having grown up in the 50s and 60s--a good deal of it spent in New Jersey, and also at the Jersey Shore, including Atlantic City-- I am very happy to have a vivid memory of what AC was like pre-Casinos and all the totally lacking-in-character feel it has now. The Boardwalk then still had some evidence of a bit of the old heyday, with the rolling carriages, the Steel Pier complete with diving horses, small shops, salt water taffy, Mr Peanut with his big Planters Nuts, and grand hotels over looking the ocean, along with cheap boarding hotels on the side streets. The trashy glitz buildings of today remind me of a phrase an old friend once used--"Piss Elegance." They are a sad testament to the Atlantic City of yesteryear. 

Fortunately, I have this series to time travel with. I'm hooked. And I am thrilled that HBO has already put in an order for Season 2!  How about we run the show from 1920--when it starts--to 1941--when the real Nucky goes to jail. I figure that's 21 years of great TV.

The end of the music of my art life for more than 3 decades

 photo from mcgarrigles.com

Besides reading the obituaries of two well know writers in this morning's New York Times, Robert Parker and Erich Segal, I was terribly upset to read of the death of Kate McGarrigle, at 63.

If I had to pin point specific music to be the soundtrack of my life as an artist working in my studio, it would be the music of the McGarrigle Sisters, whom I first heard on Saturday Night Live in the mid seventies, performing "Heart Like a Wheel." Naturally, even with the most limited of funds, we went out and bought that first album, "Kate and Anna McGarrigle," which became the very music that followed me from home to home, and studio to studio. 

 

The beautiful harmonies and melodies of Kate and Anna filled my small back room studio in Buffalo, New York while I sat and sewed the figures and dolls that first began my true life as a full time artist. When we came back from three months as vagabonds in Europe and settled in Elmira, New York, the album was the first to resume its proper place as number one on my play list. Happliy sewing away in the dining room of an old flat in the even more old fashion town of Elmira (which I loved, by the way), I listened to the sounds of that first album almost non-stop. I loved when they sang of what I thought was upstate New York in "Talk to Me of Mendocino," and I thought for sure I heard a slight smile in the voice of Kate when she sang the lead in "Go Leave," which I always imagined was her send off to her former husband Loudan Wainwright.

Make no mistake: as wonderful as the tunes themselves are the lyrics to the music of Kate and Anna. Theirs is truly poetry set to music in a way that makes it impossible to separate the two. Their sweet voices embraced the words and told the stories and your heart was never left untouched. The only time things went over my head was when they sang in French. I had not a clue about what they were singing. I liked it anyway.

In 1978 we moved to Ithaca so my husband could attend law school at Cornell, and I set up shop in a ramshackle house on Route 79, Slaterville Road. There, amidst the dolls and the cloths and the threads, and the painted eyeballs, played the wonderful, harmonious McGarrigles. 

 

And there, we happily added two more albums to the play list, "Dancer With Bruised Knees," and "Pronto Monto." Why Pronto Monto has still not been issued on CD is a total mystery to me. It is even stronger than Dancer. But music and art often baffle me to the ends of the earth anyway. I still think that the late Michael Jackson was the single most overated artist in musical history.

 

Our life in Ithaca was like this: I would spend all day, every day, sewing dolls and soft sculptures, and Phil would come home in the evenings from class, and when he needed a break from his studies, he played the piano. Since he always made sure to have the piano tuned to concert pitch, that meant he could play along with albums, and that meant he often played along with Kate and Anna.

On Dancer, two songs remain my very favorites for melody and mood: "Southern Boys" and "Kitty Come Home." And on Pronto Monto, the original version of Nacl (Sodium Chloride), is as charming and clever as a song can be.

Fast foward to Massachusetts in the 1980s. Their albums continued to be played, and I shifted my art form to illustration. And then ---I took a break when we started a family. I was not spending as much time making art and I was not listening to as much music. It was not until we built me a new studio in 1993 and put in a stereo system that I began to listen once again to music as I worked. And it was then that I found out about "Heartbeats Accelerating."   

As much as I love this album, it is often difficult to listen to. Not because of the music, because the music is wonderful. It is because there is a sadness of time passing and lives winding down. "I Eat Dinner" almost always brings tears to my eyes. It is about love lost, lonely evenings, youth passed, and the rhythm of life as we age which can be sad as we understand that youth has left. Still, I began to get back to serious art and illustration, and once again, the McGarrigles played in the background. 

Down the road, came The McGarrigle Hour, which is a much more upbeat CD. Even though "Alice Blue Gown" and "What'll I do" are not original McGarrigle songs, their renditions of those songs set off a brand new flurry of musical direction for Phil and I as he began to play those two charming old melodies  consistently, and I found myself lost in the 20s musically and visually. I also fell in love with the breathy, overly melodramatic Rufus Wainwright and "Heartburn."

Now, hearing that Kate has passed away, I am so very sad in a way that I have not been for a long time. I had always thought that she and Anna would once again return to creating albums as wonderful and inspiring as those first three. I thought that maybe, once they were truly gray haired and embracing ripe old age, they might find new inspiration for the kinds of songs that colored theirs and my youth. They never received the sort of wide acclaim they truly deserved. I feel robbed of what might still have been --like when John Lennon was shot. They have always deserved greater fame and fortune.

When I began to listen to Heartbeats, I thought I should write to the sisters and tell them how much their music had colored my life as an artist through the years, because I felt it was just that important and I was so grateful for their creativity. Now I can't do that. Heartbeats Accelerating has an even more overwhelming poignancy for me now. 

I may not be able to play "I Eat Dinner" again.