The Really Real: Part I of 12

Henry James, cat writer and lover of literature

Today is Tuesday, April 14, 2026.

I feel pain and anxiety frequently and have been advised to take a pill for it. Not sure when these feelings began, but I can connect the dots to a whole series of social misfortunes which have caused us all to have to adapt, protest, conform, just move on.

Wildfires occurred in Los Angeles, Trump was re-elected, ICE became omnipresent and forces to fight Trump felt impotent or invisible. Many of us crawled into innocent comforts like nostalgic music, or EDM or any sound to take the edge off the reality we couldn't avoid. Life seemed to get more complicated. MAGA became more entrenched. Those opposing seemed either beaten down or raging. And then many others went on vacation, got involved in binge watching, anything to avoid dealing with the constant drama of the news cycle.

I have taken two years to make my next record, THE REALLY REAL,which is not yet released, but will be in July 2026.

In the summer of 2025, I lost my friend and advisor/companion, HenryJames. It had been a steady three months of caregiving, as Henry's pancreatitis returned, and with it, diabetes, and soon enough lymphoma. Henry needed meds twice a day, but he was willing and wanted very much to live, never hiding, always present and endeavoring to do the things he liked to do.

Henry James succumbed to what we believe was a heart attack on Friday, August 15, 2025 at 11:30pm. He had had a good day, eating, jumping up to look out the window. And he spent his last night watching TV as he always did. I fell asleep on the sofa, and he died next to the TV set,

inches away from me, quietly.

Somehow, the stillness of his surrender, in my presence, as I slept, haunted me. His gentleness, his ability to go with the pain he suffered, and not to complain, but to wring the most out of the time he had.

It was very inspiring, though I felt his loss so deeply I couldn't breathe for weeping.

I went to the desert, as I always do, in hot summer, to write in the loneliness of a rented cottage, for three straight days.

There is something very real about being alone with yourself. It's not a comfortable feeling, but ultimately the voices come, and lyrics flow as do melodies. God knows where they come from, or what they mean. It's a matter of staying still and letting them spill out on the page, then into song as I held my guitar.

I guess at the core of it, my writing is confessional. I have to leave people to find out what is inside, and what is going on. It reveals itself, and for this, I feel I can't take credit. There is some spirit alive, that knows things. I just have to trust it. And I need to be away from my home and familiar people. It's too easy to get distracted.

I had no idea what this record would be. When it became obvious that electric guitar was to be my instrument, I felt both elated and terrified.

I would need to have a band. I would need to find places where people would come and would hear this band.

But what if this weren't party music? How would people feel? Was there even a place for music like this?

I end with no answers. In a world that seems to be increasingly about "the bottom line," it seems to me that most artists, writers, musicians, remain the same. We do what we do because we feel some need to listen to that voice that is larger than us, that speaks to us when we can find a way to remove ourselves from the spin cycle. Henry James, in his last months, knew how to do this too. And whatever dance we fall into, it's never about money or financial success.

This goes far deeper. It goes somewhere I am now calling The Really Real.

I'll be writing about that journey and the songs that were revealed to me along the way, here, in this blog space. Thank you for reading.