I sit here at my desk imbibing an herbal concoction of cumin, coriander, ginger, turmeric, fennel, shatavari an holy basil - after cooking a large pot of kitchari (a simple stew of spiced mung beans and basmati rice) this morning - wanting to share more with you about my current fixations and sources of inspiration.
Do you mind?
In my previous essay, I wrote about being inspired by several women - writers, fictional characters, and musicians. I mentioned “no longer identifying” with tragic young figures like Laura Palmer and Edie Sedgwick, upon whom I felt moved enough to base entire songs (see “Little Girl Blue” below) in the past.
As I have matured, my infatuation with fascinating, beautiful human creatures who died as young adults has definitely waned - except when it comes to musicians.
There was a long stretch of my young life in which I did little more than sleep, write, smoke, work, eat occasionally, attend DIY shows and sit in cafes having passionate conversations over coffee and endless piles of margarine toast. Eyes flitting, hands flying wildly, musing over song ideas, band ideas, emotional strife, life goals…and music. Musicians, and their songs; their instruments, their tones, their producers, their album art. Whether it was me with casual acquaintances in 2002 or me with Ryan from 2003 - 2014, these café conversations were epic and they were a massive part of me. They were how I worked out what I knew, felt, didn’t know and couldn’t work out on my own.
I wrote a lot of my earliest poems and songs that way, scrawling carefully my cleverest ideas with other breakfast patrons bumping me with their elbows and chairs as they stood up to use the toilet a half dozen times over the course of our shared tenure in the space. I’d run into friends and coworkers, bond with the staff, and make sure never to overstay my welcome despite sometimes not wanting to return to my ill-suited living situation and leave the safe, welcoming and inspiring space of the café. I wrote a lot in cafes, to be sure - until recent years; until motherhood; until The Great Shift of 2020.
My living situations are now so comfortable - and so rural - that I wouldn’t trade the sanctity of my rented home even for the paid luxury of a delicious, aromatic community gathering place. What I do write in public, though, always surprises me with its originality: my favourite section of a short story I wrote recently is the four paragraphs I wrote at a public library, sitting next to my son, a librarian and another child as they worked on a coding exercise. I would be wise to do more writing in cafes, under the subliminal influence of others; I think the results would knock me off my housebound slipper feet.
A performer’s “look” can be such a crucial piece of the stage presence puzzle; it can make or break one’s ability to breathe through their performance anxiety, and step out in front of a crowd.
The one thing I absolutely cannot replicate at home is that wild, free, intoxicated conversation about art. Try as I might, my impassioned rants to family and friends remain too safe; too guarded and intellectual to raise my blood pressure in any discernable way. You sure as hell don’t run into friends at home, either - or make new ones. I’m okay being my own café staff here at home, serving myself herbal elixirs that no business would dare fling at a customer, but those raving, railing, invigorating talks are conspicuously absent.
Those jittery talks at café tables past were littered with musician references, but one conversation in particular leapt back out at me in recent weeks.
One of my recent musical fixations as I write new songs, and commit my slow-burning solo album to “tape,” as it were, has been an artist so tortured, so short-lived and yet, so much larger-than-life as to occupy that confounding echelon of Music Icons. A songwriter and musician whose stint in the mainstream - and in my own consciousness - dates back more than two decades, and still rages on.
Guys, gals and non-binary pals: it’s Amy Winehouse.
Big sigh. Amy. Her mere existence is loaded with myriad big feelings, meanings, and for many, of course, indifference - but here’s how she’s abided with me over these last twenty years.
As I sat with Ryan at a chilly table right beside the doors at what was our favourite haunt from 2004-2009, very likely over giant plates of scrambled tofu and too many refilled cups of dark roast, I remember surprising myself with the passion with which I regaled Ryan with tales of Amy’s media-afflicted strife. At the time, we both worked stifling day jobs in offices. During that pre-smart phone era, we spent all - and I mean every second - of our downtime between calls and documents listening to online radio and reading fun stuff on the internet on our work computer browsers.
I myself felt sullied as I consumed the toxic outputs of paparazzi and misogynistic media moguls intent on turning a profit on the back of a tiny, famous musician.
My interest in Amy had formed organically after hearing her on said radio, watching her on MuchMusic, and seeing her album covers plastered in every record shop ever until the end of time. Though I loved her voice and the fact that she was a songwriter - not another mere pop industry puppet - I didn’t “get into” her records by any means. I wasn’t a jazzy gal; my tastes were firmly planted in all things punk and rock. I was a hundred times more likely to listen to Pixies than Amy, but when her videos came on, I couldn’t look away. I loved her. She was amazing.
She was also my age, and that wasn’t lost on me. In 2003/4, I had played a little acoustic guitar and had started playing some simple keys alongside Ryan at shows, but I’d never written my own songs. I’d also never owned my look the way one might hope to do when they’re stepping out as a performer. A performer’s look can be such a crucial piece of the stage presence puzzle; it can make or break one’s ability to breathe through their performance anxiety, and step out in front of a crowd. Clad awkwardly in mall clothes and colourful yet utilitarian hair and makeup, I wasn’t me yet. I didn’t look like an expression of myself; I was uncomfortable, and wore what I thought someone my age should wear. That’s one of several areas in which Amy shone like a beacon. This woman knew how to style herself like an icon.
I paid direct homage to Amy's look in many ways: the traditional sailor style tattoos, for one. That was a huge life “moment” for me, getting inked those first few times. Then of course, the eyeliner. Amy taught me how to wing it without giving any fucks. At many of my earliest live shows (of which, sadly, there exists no photo or video) I played drums in a slinky leopard print wiggle dress and push up bra and red lipstick, with garish artificial roses clipped into my over-styled hair. Onstage and off, I also lived in bold makeup, pinup dresses, low-rise skinny jeans with gold braided belts and white tank tops with my bra straps showing.
I wasn’ t sure who I was yet, but everything about Amy helped me move a little closer to myself: her cleverness in interviews, her confidence as a singing guitarist, her punk-ness in a world of relative normalcy. I checked those celebrity gossip sites every day exclusively seeking news of Amy. Would she turn up smiling and looking glamourous, blonde and frail, or sitting bloody and teary-eyed on a Camden street corner? Regardless of how she appeared, I never lost respect for Amy. If anything, I myself felt sullied as I consumed the toxic outputs of paparazzi and misogynistic media moguls intent on turning a profit on the back of a tiny, famous musician.
It was not her fragility, though, but rather her strength that kept me interested. I watched her live performances and oftentimes heard her albums in their entirety as I flipped through vinyl records or sat at my fabled table in my favourite cafe, turning life over in my head with her grandiloquent words and incorruptible melodies cloying in the background.
The adaptability with which she was able to perform in a way that was uncomfortable to her especially hit home for me. Performing music in your in your area of strength can function as both a weighted security blanket and a pair of shackles. As Amy sang onstage, in front of millions, I saw clearly the fortitude it took to project her power without her instrument of power: her guitar. I saw myself in her figuring out what to do with her arms as she sang flawlessly.
Perhaps most importantly, I recognized her illness. It felt so familiar to me, having been brought up with both a bulimic mother and an absentee, alcoholic father. By 2007, I was long past my binge-drinking phase - never to return - but I was still in the earlier stages of living with a dependency on alcohol. My relationship to the stuff was unhealthy; I saw myself in Amy’s drunken eyes. So many of us did, and still do. As was the case with my songwriting heroes Elliott Smith, Kurt Cobain, or Townes Van Zandt - wounded creatures whose music resided worlds apart from hers - loving Amy meant committing to another doomed para-social relationship.
So, I let go.
We all remember where we were when one of our cultural heroes died (Kurt Cobain in 1994, 11 years old, townhouse living room watching MuchMusic after school. Elliott Smith in 2003, 21 years old, coming home from work to our basement apartment and to find Ryan quietly grieving at his computer). The unearthly, intangible sense of loss we experience upon grieving people we never knew feels absurd, but it’s entirely understandable. If you ever scoff at parasocial fixations, keep in mind that they pre-date social media, the internet, even radio. You know people were obsessed with theatre and street performers who never even knew they existed. Some folks don’t have any family or close friends; of course they’re going to fall in love with - and subsequently grieve the loss of - their celebrity and artistic heroes.
I don’t remember where I was when I heard that Amy Winehouse died. I had long since detached from her existence. By the time Amy passed away, alone at home, victim of her own illness, I had distanced myself from her music. I only heard her in passing, in grocery stores, and I’d long since outgrown the compulsion to read salacious tidbits about her on the internet. I had also entered the depths of my own sadness and reckoning with my past, my traumas, my mistakes, and my illnesses. I’d begun to cast an uncompromising gaze inward, examining myself much more deeply than I’d ever been able to before. My “dark night of the soul,” as it were, descended upon me during the summer of 2011, when the depression had become so immense that I thought I might not actually make it through another day. I didn’t have it in me to end it, though; I wasn’t nearly finished yet. It was all just a massive, terrible blip in my lifetime.
What saved me?
Love, and music. The two things that save many of us were the same two things that Amy cared most about in the world. They were also the very same things that metastasized in her, causing her unendurable pain.
And life is like a pipe
And I'm a tiny penny
Rolling up the walls inside
Lyrics from “Back to Black” by Amy Jade Winehouse, 2006
When Amy re-entered my consciousness recently, I was relieved to see my old “friend” again. Her voice moves me in a different - more prescient - way now in my 40’s. I listened through her two albums, then capped the experience off by watching Ronnie Spector - the original bee-hived bad girl who largely inspired Amy’s look and vibe - perform “Back to Black.” Spector, who thrived until the age of 78 after infamously escaping both an abusive marriage and the dregs of alcoholism, poignantly thanks Ms. Winehouse every time she performs the song.
“I’d like to thank the great Amy Winehouse,” she says before one rendition, “for the gift you gave me of letting me know that what I did mattered.”
Therein lies the dramatic irony of our collective existence: we, the audience, oftentimes appreciate performers’ contributions to society better than they themselves are ever able to grasp. It’s a confusing, beautiful, tragic mess of ideas, intuition, influence and inspiration.
I’ve always believed that everything matters to somebody. A jittery girl in a cafe who’s crafting her own creative identity, or a quiet bar patron quietly watching the stage with bleary eyes, or a 78-year old happily streaming Youtube videos while they fold their laundry. We all matter to - or cherish - somebody, somewhere, whether they will ever know it, or not.
Very Good Jackie,,, 😎