For subscribers: hello again....

What's coming this year, plus hello from Patti, goodbye Vivienne, and more.

Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine…

Dear all of you,

Happy January (or Drynuary if you are engaged in a holiday partying corrective and exploring artisanal mocktails). I didn’t want to start with an apology to open the new year, but still, I apologize for going awol for a minute on this blog during the year-end holiday and start of this new year. I hadn’t exactly planned to take a break, but my planned profile subjects need(ed) more time to schedule our chats and in the flurry of Solstice-Xmas-New Year getaway, I just thought, okay maybe I’ll get to it in a few days. Then I started to take an actual break myself. Well, here we are. A longer minute than intended. Glad to be back then….

The time away has given me a refresh in my planning for this stack. I realized that I’ve also missed writing about my NY cultural and other fun — my musings — which I’d launched this Stack with, and later switched to the in-depth activist and creative Spotlight profiles. I also want the Spotlight Conversations to have a depth and quality and to have enough time myself to really enjoy writing them, which means taking a bit more time in between publishing them. So, with that in mind, I’m tacking slightly to an alternating weekly schedule of portrait Spotlights and my personal cultural look-see-do ‘stacks.

Anyway, I do want to share one highlight of the end year/new year that put me right: Patti Smith, celebrating her 76th birthday on Dec. 30 with a Brooklyn concert that was, in a word, mega-fab. In the 90s and early oughts, I’d made it an annual tradition of seeing Patti play an end-year concert with friends. It was a ritual for us, a gathering and regrounding to set up the new year. I’d missed that a lot living in Cali then New Orleans. I was thus extra-excited to be back in what feels like an annual rhythm of magical energy.

Patti was in fine form. She was loose, casual, and changed her socks on stage, sharing the very mundane pet peeve that disturbs her day when her socks roll down into her shoes, as was happening. I read her Substack often and I admit it’s slightly disconcerting to me that one of my few rock star people can be so ordinary, sharing a poem or little selfie from her bedroom, because I also like having a rock star person in my life to bring that magic. No matter: she delivered at the concert, socks aside. Her look is as andro as ever, with an oversize men’s jacket and her loose white Ts and blue jeans. She still looks like the queen of cool in them, not trying, but not having to, because her voice is still amazing, a voice of oracle as she wields it. She’s unpretentious, yes, deliberately unvarnished, as wonderful a performer as when I first heard her in the early 80s. She can be silly and still channel that gravitas.

Patti calls in a new year....

(86) Patti Smith - 12/30/22 [Patti's 76th Birthday] - Brooklyn - Compete show in 4K - YouTube

(click on link)

Patti is associated with my coming out into big New York, with her classic anthem of — to me — lesbian desire, Gloria, which she sang with the same fierce energy than she did when I first heard it. I was reminded of a moment in a Berlin bedroom, circa 1981-2, where I was crashing with a girlfriend. I was out of J-school, working in Europe, finally out to everyone who mattered, and my father had cut me out of the family. I’d shorn my hair, wore Docs and Ts, slept rough that summer. I felt a little lost and happy. My girlfriend and I had met a cute German girl in our wanderings. She’d invited herself along, a casual possible threesome. I was really sleepy, waking up in her unfamiliar Berlin room after hours of travel. I felt slightly disoriented, a welcome feeling. Who doesn’t like waking up in a new bed, with unknown possibilities? I don’t know where my girlfriend had gone off too, but we were good. And then the door opened, and the cute Berlin girl poked her head in to ask if I wanted a coffee, and seconds later, the strains of Gloria came on and she turned it up and I felt such happiness at every bit of that moment: the new flirty friendship, my girlfriend, the unfamiliar Berlin room, the guttural sounds of German, gút, gút — fine, fine, the promise of a good kaffee mit milch, and yes, zucker, and fucking Patti, and Gloria, waking me up, reminding me to fucking live already, to grab at it all with everything I’ve got. Patti, G-L-O-R-I-A and Horses and fucking great strong coffee and feeling so free in that moment. Feeling like I’d found my place, inside myself. That moment lives in me.

Patti Smith - Land (Horses) / Gloria - Hyde Park, London - July 2016 - Bing video

So, Patti and her annual concert is a touchstone, and I loved that she is 76 and a lot older than me and fucking who cares about time? About aging. Not her, not enough to act any differently from the way she has always acted. Freely, calling the muses, naming our lives and art and friendships and poems and stories as sacred, as necessary. She was shouting at us from the stage to greet the new year and the ongoing political fuckitude (my word, her view) of our current republic with some fresh energy and action to change what we can’t accept, what we fully oppose, what can’t remain our new normal. For those of us too exhausted by the shitshow of Trump et al. and Covid and the crazy climate atmospheric river-floods and Putin war mongering and everything else making us bonkers, she said, okay, fine, take some time for self-care. That’s important, do that, if you need to. That’s number one; that’s always essential. But once you have, or if you’re good but you’re also, like her, so pissed about the state of the world, then, as she shouted to us, she threw down the gauntlet: do something! Fucking do something! I think she used the F-word; I heard it in my head, anyway. Wake the fuck up, she urged us. Get out of your doldrums, your Netflix hideaway. Get out. Make art, make love, make trouble. If she, at 76, is still rocking the stage, refusing to be anything else than what she is, which is vibrant, and more energetic than anyone else on her stage, including her kids that evening, then we can, too. Do something!

I hear you, Patti. I agree. Fucking Gloria. Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine. Fuck Trump and fuck DeSantis and fuck the power-hungry asshats in the House of Representatives who just cut off Kevin McArthy’s political balls and fuck it, it’s time. We gotta do different, be different. 2023: time to fucking do something, as in, whatever brings magic, whatever refutes despair, whatever invites fun, whatever is sexy, and exciting, and sacred and connects and unites you with the mystery of how it feels to really live, to embrace that energy that is available to us, always. Push through, Patti urges. Be creative. Don’t settle for what’s not working. For political despair. Be brave or bold or whatever it takes to reboot your life and self and sense of possibility until you, too, are dancing in the living room as on a stage, singing Gloria at the top of your lungs.

“…oh she looks so good, oh she looks so fine…here she comes, coming through my door….”

One more bit: Patti gave a shout out memorial thank you to Viviane Westwood for giving her gen/my gen/all our gens some fabulous Brit punk fashion and edge and creative flair, and for her celebration of the queers and camp and drag and the outcast and the vibes of tribe on the runway and in the clubs. She dedicated her song Redondo Beach to Westwood.

Here is that concert clip: Watch Patti Smith Dedicate Song to Vivienne Westwood (spin.com)

Vivienne Westwood, punk fashion forword as always.

Here is that concert clip:

Watch Patti Smith Dedicate Song to Vivienne Westwood (spin.com)

I’m adding my own thank you to Vivienne here, too. Part of that same summer of Berlin was spending time in London, by her shop, where the Sex Pistols and Billy Idol and the Clash were the music gods of summer, having recently released Rock the Casbah, sharing stages with our sheroes the Slits and the Raincoats and so many more women bands. London Calling was our street singalong song. We would troll around, headed for Nostalgia of Mud, the first shop Westwood opened with her pal Macolm McLaren on Kings Rd. Everything was tartan and safety pins and what kind of hair held up your spikes the best, and staying up all night, moshing. People looked so grungy fabulous and edgy and miserable-happy as only fashionista wanna-be punks can be. I loved it all.

So many good memories then, so many linked in my internal ether to personal anthem songs like Gloria and London Calling.

Vivienne W, queering the runway (top); and The Clash (bottom).

So happy 2023. I’m so pleased to be here, sharing my bits of life with you on this stack. I’ll ask you to cut me some slack if I miss a week or two again, ‘cuz they’ll be a good reason for it. For one, I’m working a ton these days and it’s all good but, yeah, that’s one reason. I like working; I’m a worker, but it’s not as fun as dancing in the kitchen.

I do have some exciting profiles coming up. Going to be fun to share them with you.

Until then, I invite you to do as I do these days, in between words and work, and play some more Patti. Or some Clash. Bowie, too. Dance in your kitchen. Scheme your dreams. Cuz….

London calling to the faraway towns
Now war is declared and battle comes down
London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard, you boys and girls…

…

The ice age is coming, the sun's zooming in
Engines stop running, the wheat is growing thin
A nuclear era but I have no fear
'Cause London is drowning and I, I live by the river….

xoxo — AC