Farewell to a Horrid Year

 

Aging is a cruel master. In 2020 it has been particularly unforgiving.  More change, chaos, and suffering have been thrown our way, collectively and personally, than I can remember.

Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and no one would do anything about it.  In the case of COVID vs. Donald J. Trump this is not a figurative, innocent person on Fifth Avenue, but hundreds of thousands of real American lives.  History will record many of the deaths and suffering as avoidable.  By politicizing the wearing of masks and holding his “rallies” with no social distancing, he has blood on his hands. Ask the family of Herman Cain, who was diagnosed with COVID nine days after attending a crowded, face-maskless Trump rally in Tulsa.

It has been a surreal agony to witness this.  As an aging person this entire experience has increased our risk and ratcheted up anxiety; merely to survive this period, essentially in isolation, is so far something of an accomplishment.  And in the wake of this health crisis is the enormous economic suffering rivaling the Great Depression.  For many hard working people, particularly those connected with the travel and leisure industries; small shop owners and independent restaurateurs, this pandemic has seen hardships that can’t be measured.  An American Tragedy.  So much of it could have been mitigated.

As for us, I’ve been unusually silent during the past several weeks as we did the unthinkable, we moved.

The experience of moving is bad enough in one’s younger years but the accumulation of 50 years of living as if tomorrows are endless makes moving to another home even more traumatic. And during 2020?

The triangulation of circumstance led us to this at this time.  The plan was formulated this way: as boating became too demanding, physically and financially, we would move off the water, into a smaller home, into a gated community, where some of the responsibilities of home owning are absorbed by the HOA.

We had had our house on the market for some time with this thought in mind but at the beginning of the pandemic we took it off deciding we would stay put, try to be safe and wait this out.

Maybe it was cabin fever, but we impulsively rented a mountain-view home near Asheville for several weeks in September.  We figured we could pack our SUV with all needed supplies, and sit on a porch overlooking the Pisgah Mountain Range and read to keep our minds far from reality.  Shortly after we arrived our real estate agent called to tell us a fair offer, clearly out of the blue, was presented to him to buy our home, while it was off the market no less. The wise decision would have been to wait, but we rationalized that by hiring a full service mover, they packing and unpacking, some of the stress and risk would be minimized.  This was not well thought through.  Especially considering we had no idea where we were going.

Our main concern was how to do this and avoid COVID.  The moving company explained their protocols, masks at all times and the logical explanation that as their movers work as a close team, one member of the team would not expose the others if he did not feel well.  Also, when preparing for the move, a bit of serendipity, for I found a dozen N95 masks still in their wrappers tucked away in our garage which I had purchased years before for a sanding and stripping project.  Of course, long forgotten.  That gave us some measure of security while moving.

There were still risks.  In particular a free-lance Internet / AV person the moving company recommended who would be immediately available once moved in to connect and trouble shoot a whole new cable set up, and get our computer and TVs working, a challenge in this day and age.  He came, started connecting things, some unsuccessfully, and announced that he had to leave for an hour as he had a Doctor’s appointment but would be back to complete the job.  He returned, worked for another half hour with Ann, still not being able to connect everything.  He did however know how to wait very successfully while she wrote out his check!

That would be bad enough if it were the end of the story.  No, we found out two days later that his Doctor’s appointment was to be tested for COVID and he was positive.  Yes, he consciously put us at risk (we were both wearing masks, however).  The next ten days were a living hell of anxiety, my being tested twice and my wife once.  Masks do work, as we were both negative and completed the quarantine period.

Even now, weeks after moving, the house is slightly chaotic, but coming into shape.  I look forward to the days when I can return to real writing and the piano, although I’m slowly ramping up.

So how does one achieve any semblance of normalcy during such times?

Each person has had to find his / her own answer.  The basics must be covered, food, shelter, access to health care.  Shame on the US Congress that for many these cannot be taken for granted, but I’m trying not to make this a political invective.  It could easily turn that way.

For us, we are fortunate to have those.  So outside of family and friends, there are four major life purposes:  music, theatre, reading, and travel.  I used to include boating in that mix.  No more, a major phase in our lives, closed.  Travel is not remotely safe.  Reading, except for the news, has essentially been put on hold.  One has to have an inner sense of tranquility I think to leisurely enjoy fiction.  

FaceTime has been a life saver to see family and friends (as many, we have not seen our adult children since Thanksgiving 2019, except virtually).  Thankfully, Zoom and YouTube has kept theatre and music in our lives.

Music is divided into two parts for me, performance and listening.  My piano “gigs” at retirement homes and playing on opening night at Palm Beach Dramaworks have ceased now for nearly a year.  That usually meant preparing concerts primarily focused on The Great American Songbook.  Now, not having such venues has rendered me a vessel with no rudder.  So, I find myself just randomly going through my collection of thousands of songs and in the process finding pieces I’ve never played before – not many but I’ve found a few gems. 

The other part of our musical life has been to attend professional performances, primarily jazz.  Oh, what we took for granted before, the ability to go to a jazz jam at the Jupiter Jazz Society on Sundays, and special performances all around town and even going on a Jazz Cruise right before the pandemic hit. 

One of the performers on the cruise was Emmet Cohen, a young jazz pianist we saw several years ago at Dizzy’s in NY and have admired ever since.  He is gifted, can play all forms of jazz, personable, and reverent of jazz history.  He is the whole package.  In July I wrote about his innovative “Emmet’s Place,” a Monday night streaming jazz performance where he plays with his bassist Russell Hall and drummer Kyle Poole as a trio, with frequent guest performers, at first all virtual guests and then in person, all of this streaming from his apartment in Harlem.

Since I wrote an entry about his virtual performances, he has expanded his technology to include multiple fixed cameras and a producer to switch back and forth from the appropriate camera angle.  All of this free on YouTube and Facebook!  Well, nothing is really free so we’ve become and probably (hopefully) along with thousands, members of “Emmet Cohen Exclusive,” a means for him to raise financial support for his group and for what he is doing.  One of the benefits is access to some private concerts, but the mainone is supporting an upcoming superstar of jazz and his colleagues.  

The other solace has been the regular Palm Beach Dramaworks play readings and interviews.  That’s another twice a week event and they are free if one registers with the box office for tickets.  They even did readings of a trilogy by the award-winning Lynn Nottage and then Producing Artistic Director, Bill Hayes, followed that up with a live interview with the playwright as part of their Contemporary Voices Series.  To sign up for their free readings and interviews, check with their box office 

PBD of course is not the only theatre offering Zoom readings or YouTube “productions.”  This brings up a dilemma for me.  I’ve been reviewing plays in my blog and published a collection of them in Explaining It to Someone: Learning From the Arts.  In fact, this book contains 10 years of Palm Beach Dramaworks reviews. 

Here’s the conundrum: How does one “review” a reading?  Theatre is made up of so many elements and in reviewing a performance, the reviewer is evaluating the gestalt.  It’s the overall experience, right down to the audience’s reactions as they are part as well. 

While I was in college, I took a course that focused on theatre as literature, as philosophy, and when you peel away all the elements, that is what you are left with.  If the play isn’t meaningful to the audience in some way, it could have all the other elements, great acting, directing, staging, etc. and it could still fail.  I think the future of reviewing will be more dependent on the core of the theatre although as the technology of producing virtually improves so will all the other elements come into play, but never the way live theatre does.

So my hope for 2021, under a new administration, and with effective vaccines, that there is a chance to reclaim a semblance of “normal.”  Meanwhile, for us, virtual theater and music have buoyed our spirits.

At this time of year I normally try to post a video to celebrate the season, seeking “holiday music” which is somewhat overlooked.  As we just moved I’m weeks or months away from being able to post performances.  But to mark the season, I’ll include here something I posted six years ago, “It's Love -- It's Christmas,” my most viewed Christmas piece.  No wonder, it’s by the great jazz pianist Bill Evans, an unlikely composition for him.

May 2021 be a year to celebrate.  2020 will go down in infamy. 

 

 

THE Election

“The” is all in caps intentionally.  Yes, it was razor thin in the swing states, but a 4 million plus popular vote plurality demonstrates that the American people made a choice to remove Trump from the Presidency.  His illegitimate claims the election was “stolen” from him is belied by the fact that Republicans actually made headway in reclaiming some House seats and as of now haven’t lost the Senate.  The message is clear:  Republicans showed up to vote but many decided enough is enough as far as Trump’s behavior is concerned, with the commensurate loss of America’s reputation among our allies throughout the world.  The pandemic certainly fed into the lateness of the count, so many people wisely choosing to vote by mail, but that does not involve “stealing” the election – it gave more Americans the opportunity to safely vote, under the umbrella of each state’s Supervisor of Elections, ballots being counted by teams of Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.   And that’s what it is all about: the voice of the people. 

What struck me the most about Joe Biden’s speech last night was its Presidential tone, both in content and delivery.  Yes, it came off a teleprompter, but Trump’s speeches, with few exceptions, even with a teleprompter, veer off into a fantasy land and sound like a third grader speaking, using Hollywood adjectives over and over.  Four years of having to listen to that level of speaking, not to mention his Tweets, has inured us to the true power of the English language, and no doubt left us the laughingstock of the English-speaking world.  Even foreign leaders who use English as a second language are more coherent. 

Biden’s message of governing on behalf of ALL the people was conciliatory.  One can only hope that Trump’s supporters will give him a chance.  Most of all, we should all look forward to joining the world community again, to battle climate change, the pandemic, and in general to allow science rather than conspiratorial fantasies lead us into the future.   We’ve allowed the needle of nationalism to tip into the territory of isolationism.  We’ve precariously allowed democracy to teeter into despotism.  I will give the Trump administration some credit for exposing the extreme to which we allowed the concept of globalization to expose our vulnerability to critical elements in our society – case in point, personal protective equipment.  Some manufacturing must be brought back here.

If we (my wife Ann and I) were not in the middle of a move, the disassembling of twenty years of our lives and trying to put “things” back together I would be able to spend more time on describing my feelings and elation at this important moment in our history.   One of the benefits of writing a blog such as this over such a long period of time is that it allows me to look back and understand my feelings and thoughts during these pivotal points in our history.  On the eve of President Obama’s inauguration after his election in 2008 (can it be, 12 years ago?) I wrote this piece.

It reminded me that he was facing the most significant economic crisis since the Great Depression.  Although one may argue that wrong turns were made at times, under his (and Joe Biden’s) leadership, we survived that crisis and Trump inherited a booming economy (although he will never admit it).  Now, Joe Biden, and our first VP-Elect who is a woman of color (another remarkable step forward for this nation) Kamala Harris, must confront a pandemic which is equal to or even greater than the economic crisis of 2008.  Science must be followed, and we can’t rely on a single Hail Mary pass of a vaccination.  I am confident that this will be their immediate mission, besides rejoining the world community.  As I felt when Obama was elected, there is hope.  Hope is a mighty word  

I’ve written enough Trump pieces to fill a book and last year it was published (Waiting for Someone to Explain It: The Rise of Contempt and Decline of Sense).

After Trump’s inauguration, I wrote although I had severe reservations that he would ever preserve the dignity of the Office of the Presidency (after all, it was his avowed objective to “drain the swamp,” ironically more of his advisors having to be fired, or imprisoned than any administration in history), I concluded by saying  “I hope President Trump transcends all these concerns.” 

Perhaps this was disingenuous, never expecting it, and indeed, getting a worse President than the candidate himself. I truly had expectations the Office might change the man.  It did not from the start.  His first Cabinet meeting, where his members lavished praise on him was one of the most uncomfortable moments I’ve ever witnessed in government.  I’m afraid it set the tone for what would follow for the next four years and of course, most of those supplicants are no longer there.

I ended my Obama piece quoting the entire poem I Hear America Singing by Walt Whitman.  I am now again hopeful as Langston Hughes wrote in his 1935 poem Let America be America Again.  We have made progress since then despite the last four dark years.  The last stanza of his poem echoes what the American people have just said with their precious vote:

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain—

All, all the stretch of these great green states—

And make America again!

 

Changes

In late September we decided, spur of the moment almost, to break loose from our self-imposed Covid semi-quarantine, and rent a house overlooking the Pisgah Mountains outside Asheville, which we had visited many times before, and loved.  This time, we would not be doing our usual sightseeing, or sampling the fine restaurants there, but hunker down at an elevation of 2,000 feet looking at the distant mountains rising to 5,000 plus feet from our outdoor balcony.  There, we would sit in our rocking chairs and read, without the cacophony of politics swamping the airwaves.  I haven’t read a good book for a while and I selected 3 novels for our visit, the first being Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe, which I read in college but not since.  What better place to channel Wolfe’s thoughts but in the very place he so soulfully wrote about?

My college copy was long gone, but I found one from my son’s remaining books in our home, the one he read in college 20 plus years ago.  So I dove into the book as soon as we arrived, unpacked and ordered groceries to be delivered.  Sitting there on the porch, or in the living room which had the same view, reading that novel was a special experience, and although I vaguely remembered the story, and I knew quite a bit about Wolfe from my other readings, and we twice visited his mother’s boarding house in Asheville which is now a museum, I did not remember the details of the novel and was almost shocked by the numerous and casual derogatory references to blacks and Jews.  What did I think about those passages when I first read the novel more than 50 years ago?  Or was that simply more acceptable in those days?  As a boy from New York City, I never felt the way young Eugene Gant and his friends did, but wasn’t I nonplussed by the language and the overt racism?  If I wasn’t then, I admit I found them jarring now.

Wolfe, however, wrote what he witnessed, without judgement.  This is the way people thought, particularly in the western Carolinas.  It was just a part of life.  I felt this over and over again rereading the novel.  Some of the language relating to that theme was just downright painful.

I made an attempt to put that disturbing language aside, as this is, indeed, the great American novel, just as Wolfe intended.  Its sprawling themes and description of a brilliant young writer coming of age is peerless.  The prose is potent and poetic.  Eugene Gant is tested, time and time again, only to rise like the Phoenix, break loose the chains of childhood and set course towards his destiny.  Only Wolfe could write these words of unmitigated optimism and the raw youth of genius:

Eugene was untroubled by thought of a goal.  He was made with such ecstasy as he had never known. He was a centaur, moon-eyed and wild of mane, torn apart with hunger for the golden world. He became at times almost incapable of coherent speech. While talking with people, he would whinny suddenly into their startled faces, and leap away, his face contorted with an idiot joy. He would hurl himself squealing through the streets and along the paths, touched with the ecstasy of a thousand unspoken desires. The world lay before him for his picking-full of opulent cities, golden vintages, glorious triumphs, lovely women, full of a thousand unmet and magnificent possibilities. Nothing was dull or tarnished. The strange enchanted coasts were unvisited. He was young and he could never die.

Can you imagine Wolfe’s euphoria when he wrote this, and I wonder mine reading it the first time almost the same age as when he wrote those words?  Yes, I was going out into the world to make my own way, no real goals, but to live, live, live.  I could never die; he could never die. And here I am, becoming an old man (although some would argue, I already am).

 

 

Before I finished the novel I was snapped out of the dream of youth by a startling development in our lives.  Ann and I had a sudden offer to buy our house.  For years we had considered this, even putting it on the market before Covid made us take it off.  I’ve always said that once we are out of boating, and this last summer that became a reality, it would be time to leave the waterway, and downsize to a gated community where some responsibilities are assumed by the association.  Without getting into details regarding timing, where we’re going (locally), etc., we accepted the offer and found a house in the community we were interested moving into.  What is the saying?  Watch what you wish for?  This new house has come with its own set of problems, ones we’ve addressed over the years in the house we’re leaving.  I feel our present home is almost an extension of myself; I am so sensitive to anything out of place, such as an unexplained sound that might require maintenance. 

Our home is set up for our own unique life styles.  For me it’s writing and playing the piano, neither of which I’ve been able to do to any great extent during all this turmoil.  I’m forcing myself to write this entry, before I forget our respite in the Asheville area.  We came back early because of these real estate transactions and now we are in the thick of it, including preparing to move, a four day process even though it is fairly local.

One does not fully appreciate the weight of the accumulated “stuff” one gathers over two decades, especially when a house has so much storage.  When in doubt, keep!  Stuff owns you and now we are paying the price, not only a stiff one because of the totality of “things” but given our age and during such a dangerous time.  It’s all sinking in now and we along with the realization.  And there is no turning back.

So for the next two months, our life is really not our own and while we will make our best efforts to socially distance and mask up for all the movers, vendors, agents, etc. we must see during this period, we’re hoping to make it through the tunnel without the virus.  This may be my last entry for a while with the exception – hopefully -- of a celebratory one after the election.  An America without Trump might even have me singing Eugene Gant’s optimism, not of youth of course, but of a future of normalcy, less strident dialogue, people coming together, our country rejoining the world community.

In the meantime, the profound words of Carl Sandburg resonate:  Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.