My birthday yesterday was spent as a hybrid of my life as I knew it and this strange new world I’ve been a part of the past three weeks. I spent the moments before midnight getting my first present: Dar asked me what I wanted, and I said I wanted to sing harmony to her encore song, After All, that had been so significant to me of late. She immediately agreed. So I was, in the last hour of my 27th year, unequivocally the worst of my life, singing the line that defined it:
When I chose to live
There was no joy
It’s just a line I crossed
It wasn’t worth the pain my death would cost
So I was not lost or found.
That is my current mindset, unfortunately. But later in the song is her transition from the line above to seeing a sunrise that broke her heart and made her finally feel part of life in earnest. So maybe that is the journey year 28 is about. Frankly … it has to be.
The first hour of my birthday came with drinking desert wine I bought in Santa Cruz, CA, in my pajamas on the tour bus parked at the University of Texas at Austin. I woke up in New Orleans, steps from the French Quarter, being serenaded every version of Happy Birthday our sound guy, Kip, could come up with.
I walked into the Quarter for my lunch at Café Pontalba on Jackson Square: ate my alligator and red beans and rice at the same place I always do. Merch girl, Ori, came with me, a New Orleans neophyte. I walked down to Café Envie and bought a cup of coffee, drinking it as I walked back down Decatur to get to the hotel.
I wrangled almost the entire tour crew into dinner at Rob’s and my usual haunt (get it?), the Asian Pacific Café, owned by Al and Amy. Al, besides putting us up and giving us shows to play and sushi to eat, was also the one who gave ilyAIMY the giant plastic tip jar that traveled with us so many years, feeling as he did that our previous tip can was, “un-ambitious.”
We ate too much food, and Al and Amy were surprised and generous as always, and sent over desert. So, I spent my Halloween birthday in New Orleans at my regular sushi restaurant, but this time sitting next to Dar Williams, describing how she almost went into a panic buying me a present that turned out to be perfect. A shirt great for gigs, which met all the criteria we both use when shopping for such things.
I spent the last hour of my birthday in Dar’s hotel room, drinking my catharsis alcohol, cognac, rehashing past brought up fresh and suddenly clawing its way out from inside, something I’d held down all these weeks. I had planned to finish the night alone at Lafitte’s, the way I closed out so many other New Orleans visits, but I didn’t make it. Instead, I did the unusual thing of sitting with women and having them tell me how they came out the other side of it all themselves, these other people who feel deeply and focus on symbols maybe more than people should, are sentimental and sometimes distant and
seemingly inscrutable. Who are women, basically. And despite all my professionalism and standing up straight I’ve done on this tour, I told the truth about my fears and my life, starting a new year that is completely and utterly … unknown. How I don’t enter it with hope. I’m entering it with …
Just a line I crossed.
And maybe one other thing. I’ve given up more to the universe than ever, but empowered myself to take every cue it seems to offer up. It’s not even faith, or fate. It’s like reading tea leaves. It’s interpretation of available opportunities, with the important distinction of trying to recognize everything as an opportunity. This doesn’t come naturally to me. So I’m just … starting to make myself.
Went on tour with Dar because the universe offered it up. Called up friends nearby on tour in nearly every city, because the universe got me there but could not pick up the phone for me. Went to a bar and had a conversation.
I come home in a week from this. And I have absolutely no idea what happens then. Well, not exactly. Rob and I have dates in New England and dates at home in December. Let’s say the New Year, like my new year, is wide open.
