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.