Reinventing Yourself

Recently, I read about the old becoming new again. Here in Los Angeles, former Mayor Richard Riordan's Original Pantry is going to relaunch downtown, as is Cole's, the home of the French Dip Sandwich. ( with Philippe's, also downtown.)

The Egyptian Theater is back, and the Cinerama Dome, too, will resurface, with it the repurposed Arclight Cinemas.

Is this the sheer nostalgia in me that longs for these institutions to return?

For those of us who remember, the old buildings haunt us with memories of good times. Times when we didn't feel terror and surveillance and division and uncertainty about our planet, our city, our country, the world, diseased and suffering and governed by profiteers, it would seem.

Those of you reading might have good thoughts about the 1990s in Los Angeles.

We have had redevelopment strip us of much weirdness, in favor of what I call "monstrosities," bland high-rises that seem to have no personality. The view inside is worth it perhaps, as we bystanders suffer with the deprivation of what we loved: our views of mountains and skies around their perimeters.

Are we governed by feeling more than thought? Does feeling come first?

As human beings, are we moody and capricious, tending to avoid a corner that is particularly trash-strewn and ugly, in favor of a clean street and a coffee shop that makes us feel cozy inside?

This week, I celebrate my first record production with Fernando Perdomo. It is called CLEO SEPTEMBER. Reissued, it became CLEO REDUX, as we added new tracks and refined a couple of Cleo songs with fresh vocals. These came out four years ago.

It's highly likely that 90 percent of you have never heard any of these songs and know nothing of that album's origin.

My intention, even before I knew Fern, was to work with him. At the Charlie, a collection of bungalows in West Hollywood, owned by Charlie Chaplin, I wrote a group of pop songs, about Los Angeles, and the characters I observed. I was a fan of Fernando's, and was fond of his ability to write personally, yet combine chords that moved from the happy to the sad and poignant. I had not made a pop album that could feel circa 1970s, and I wanted to t ry.

The ghosts I captured were a disgruntled woman who worked the day job to support her striving musician husband, a young observer of MAGA disgruntlement, a homeless man posing as Charlie Chaplin on a freeway exit to solicit funds for food, and a tribute to actress Anne Heche, who had recently died unexpectedly and tragically.

When writing this album, I hoped that the songs and the feel would have a quality that would not date, something personal. That is the plight of the singer-songwriter. Everything can be SO personal it fits in nowhere.

I listen to the record today, and I still feel the stories. The songs could be reinvented. Played on piano, with a standup bass. Or taken into an R&B world and sung by someone with a belt and real pipes.

I think most writers I know live to see the day when a wonderful singer will grab their songs and record them!

When I think of reinvention, I think of someone like Madonna, whose various images are impossible to ignore. Whether you like her or not, you must admit she has influenced many, and continues to do so.

Some artists, like Tracy Chapman or Sheryl Crow, hit on a sincere note and stay as they are, reliable and wonderful. Others build on the thing they are, and transform slightly. Like David Byrne. Chameleons like David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, surprise you.

There are days I want to wear a wig and sunglasses and be someone different. I am not satisfied.

I do not know what my next series of recordings will be like.

Some say record for yourself, and don't worry about public opinion. This might be true for the hobbyist, but anyone making art of any kind must think of who they are writing to and for, I think.

Society stays the same. Society reinvents.

It rubs off on us. The great Bob Dylan devours everything and spits it back. He mirrors culture, in many ways, as an admirer of hip-hop, the beat poets, Woody Guthrie, Leonard Cohen, and folk musics of Ireland, England, and Appalachia.

We're all of something, and our work is a tribute to who we are and where we come from. It is just, in my opinion, that we can express those origins differently, as we are moved by the muses and spirits around us, those dead and alive.

Reinvention is healthy. It means we acknowledge our connections. for without them, we would be no vessel, and there would be no Art.

Happy Halloween and Happy Hauntings.

And on another note: PLEASE VOTE! It might be nice to reinvent government.

Wee Things

photo credit: Mark Haussman

Overwhelm is a constant.

Would you agree?

Sometimes I think I think too much.

I write too much.

I eat too much.

I'm a too much person.

My goal is to be the just-right bear.

So here is a small idea.

Though, in typical Feef style, it will be a small cabinet with lots of drawers!

You might do this too.

My junk drawer used to be full of everything from rubbe rbands to post-it notes with passwords, to buttons, to keys that open what? Ribbons, birthday candles, string, tape, bread wrapper ties.

Recently, I shook out the drawer, so to speak.

This is the current presentation. See what you think.

MUSIC:

Practice: this means scales, Hanon, chords, repertoire: piano, bass, ac guitar, electric guitar

Rehearsal: these are sets. Might be what I will be performing soon. Might be staying fresh with my last three albums. Running the songs on acoustic guitar, electric guitar with pedals, or piano. As if playing with one person, or solo, or band?

Recording: this could be my new album. Could be a project for a friend or client.

Socials: this could be a photo, a video, a comment, a blog, or an announcement.

Collabs: a new category, but maybe once a month, just getting with a musical friend and making something happen, something that is a jam, a recording or could even be a performance somewhere or an extended group of recordings? Could be someone coming over to my studio and recording for me or for one of my clients?

Performing: my own, others, with someone, with a band, as part of a night.

Or going to see someone I love perform.

LIFE BLOOD:

My studio and my clients

Upkeeping home and garden and finances

Political commitment

Spiritual commitment

Friends and hangs

Family

Health: doc visits, vaxes, eyes, teeth

So my wee commits are to aim to do a wee bit each day.

Fifteen minutes of practice is better than none.

Ten minutes calling my senators and reps regarding an issue is better than no call.

A letter to my mother three times a week is better than no contact.

Rehearsing five days a week for an hour each day is better than not playing.

Each little thing I can do in a day adds up to make the day beautiful.

Maybe it's a walk at night. Maybe it's taking an hour to record and finesse something on a recording.

The days of cramming and pushing don't make for a better life or better work.

The hours of worry and doomscrolling are just waiting for bombs to fall.

Better to stay busy doing wee things, I think.

What amazes me is how easy it is to go a whole year without hearing the voice of a friend who lives in this city! Not even to mention seeing someone.

It happens.

The wee things slip away.

Our tree is full of avocados. So the wee thing this week is to gather them in bags and drop some off at neighbors' front doors.

It's not a grand gesture.

But saving the world might mean one call at a time, one card, one small idea executed.

Really, at the end of the day, less is not less.

Less can be BEST.

Can't We Still Be Friends?

A couple of years ago, I woke up at 4am and decided I had to do something about the outrageousness of isolation and divergences I had experienced in the political views of my friends and felllow musicians.

I felt alone, but who doesn't at 4am? It's been said that this is the suicidal hour.

Ironically, we have more ways to stay in touch than we have ever had, yet I feel lonelier and more detached and fearful than ever.

It's either the eggshell walking, or my absurd emotional outbursts in private: floods of tears and rage I never knew I had. Pulling myself back from the tide of victimhood and despair.

Alone, I can create the deepest angst, the tragic opera of our times and my advantaged yet unsatisfied life. My creativity can capture the screenplay of THE FAILURE, five acts and a teledrama you could spin out for at least three years.

And so I created THE F CLUB. The idea was simple: get a group of ten people together once a month, and different people each month. These people might or might not know each other, but after a dinner party, a sharing of poetry and music, perhaps everyone would feel a little less frayed.

The experiment took some investment and doing. I think it was a good thing. Everyone commented that their night was especially engaging and intimate, relaxing and filling a need, to unplug and just be in company.

Year Two of F CLub, perhaps not surprisingly, was not as successful. The demons of overwhelm, overwork, and overthinking made it possible to cancel most of the engagements. Suddenly, these friendships felt like a burden. Could someone else take on the dinner party idea? Why me?

I knew then that I would have to re-examine my committment.

The question was never whether or not people in themselves were difficult. I find that anytime I reach out to anyone I care about I am more than amply rewarded. I learn that my feelings have a place in the world, and that , not only am I not alone, I have every reason to be as I am.

The gift of Los Angeles is that it is diverse, yet artistic souls find many commonalities and feel a sort of refuge in community.

Only lately do I feel a sense of paranoia, and with that a tendency to want to hide under the covers.

The recent consolidation of powers, in "The Merger" and the creation of Skydance, Larry Ellison's behemoth, combined with the letdown feeling most of us experienced as Newsome, Bonta and Bass capitulated to the Corporates left us gaping. Maybe, cynically, we assumed all would lean Right when the dust settled. But we felt the shame and rage anyway: HOW COULD THEY?!?!

And truly, how can government make deals that further benefit the billionaires they so remonstrate against?

What kind of friends are they, anyway?

And so we find in these mass giveaways a sense of betrayal and a lack of balance. It's an emotional vertigo, very unsettling.

Who we love, who we root for, where we stand: it's all on the line, all the time.

Recently at breakfast, I had to beg a friend of mine to VOTE BLUE when she angrily confessed that she hated all of the candidates and wasn't going to bother voting in those categories at all.

We have been reduced to a pathetic "HOLD YOUR NOSE AND VOTE" culture. We are more ashamed of our side than we are disgusted by the other one, the one that has dispelled ICE agents, and taken away our protections, and tried to cut our social programs. We are so on the edge with what we will lose next, all we know to do is to lash out at those who acted like our protectors and friends.

CAN WE BE FRIENDS? Can we even root for our own baseball team when we find that their owner is a staunch Trumper and a proponent of everything we have mobilized against? The cannibalism of our times encroaches upon us so that we question what we can eat and drink, where we can shop, what we can buy and who we can support.

Every day it seems we add a new enemy to the list.

On top of this, we, with all of our information, are now being led to suspect that we have NO information, only propaganda. So who tells the truth? Who to read? Who to listen to?

We can call this state of affairs "FASCISM" but on a more personal level, which some might not even call "political," we feel spiritually undermined. Zapped.

Not knowing who knows what or believes what leads us to wonder who we can sit at table with. Who we can invest in friendship with.

Do we become even more clique -clustered? Do we gather with the less and the few? And what if even the few let us down?

In these ways, the Trumpian political world interferes even with those who say "I don't vote. I don't care. I don't believe in politics."

Somehow we are forced to deal with politics when it starts to impact upon the way we make friends, and live in a healthy and communal manner.

For we are not AI. We are human beings who feel vulnerable, potentially displaced and existentially insignificant.

We need each other more now than ever.

We need our friends and we need new friends.

And maybe we need to recognize that those we have been making into enemies are not that.

They are only more frightened than we are.

This is what I choose to believe.

EVIL is only LIVE spelled backwards.

Humanity needs each of us to LIVE. Not to acknowledge this is very backwards.

EVIL, indeed.