Hang on Me

St. Vincent is the only motherfucker in the city who can handle us

Yesterday, I was teaching Joni Mitchell’s "The Circle Game.” Joni Mitchell was trying to cheer up Neil Young. He thought life went downhill at 20: this was the subject of his “Sugar Mountain,” a song we wrote for himself on his 19th birthday. Joni covered the song, but she was sure that wasn’t true. Neil, your life will get much better. He was the boy in the song, and she was right. But she also created something undeniably dark.

We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

We think we’re going in a straight line, but it’s a carousel. And when a day is over, it’s over. Congratulations, you made it to the next one, but all you can do is look back. Make it far enough, and you will have more to look back on than to look forward to, and there will be nothing you can do about it. Joni performed it for Wayne Shorter’s memorial. Eventually, someone will tap us on the shoulder. We will be off the carousel, and it will be someone else’s circle game now. I teach on Zoom, and every screen was on. They wanted to keep going after the class was over. I had something to tell them, and they wanted to hear it.

“There is nothing like youth,” I told them. “Joni had a rough beginning to her 20s, but then she hit them hard. This is your time to hit them hard.”

The news happened on schedule. I was at the counter-spectacle. Someone will be a presence in your life whether you like it or not. That is the thing called politics, where the conversations are circular. No one really wins and everybody ultimately loses. If you were at home, you’d have to watch, but you deliberately chose to go out.

You remember there was this thing—happiness. You had it, but it was bundled with the opposite. The salve came with the wound—right on schedule. There is nothing to debate when it comes to seeing St. Vincent at the Paramount Theatre, a dark and Gothic house of music worship that could have been a set for TIm Burton’s Batman. You are alternating between giddy and glum. This is a condition of life, and this is the giddy part. You are around people that all seem like versions of you—black clad, suspicious, wary. You’ve seen too much. You’ve regretted too much, even though you wish you didn’t. You know that just being you has cost you dearly.

We know too much, and we have fucked up too much just by being ourselves. But this is something else. We are all singing the same songs. We know all the words. And it’s not annoying that we’re singing, because we can’t hear a fucking thing.

I made my way through standing room. I am not paranoid. On my way in, I see David Byrne, who made an album with St. Vincent, going for a balcony seat. He was really tall and he looked just like David Byrne. I was headed for the standing room pit, joining the rabble. He was going up there. The last presidential debate drew over 51 Million viewers. The majority was tuned in. I was here. This was the only Talking Head I needed to see.

She looked at us when she sang. She formed a bond. She made two stage dives, and on the second, she was held up by a tall Black man, someone who had the strength to hold her up, someone who loved her songs. She looked in his eyes and sang right to him. I imagined being sung to like that. In a way, I already was.

But I keep you on your best behavior
Honey, I can't be your savior
Love you to the grave and farther
Honey, I am not your martyr

St. Vincent was not my savior. St. Vincent was as flawed as the rest of us. She had the music, which made her feel better, and it is the fantasy St. Vincent that was getting me through the night. I knew the world was falling apart, but I also knew that we had this. We were still able to have this experience. We are still able to have this conversation.

Digital witnesses, what's the point of even sleeping?
If I can't show it, if you can't see me
What's the point of doing anything?
This is no time for confessing

I want all of your mind

St. Vincent sang this song from 2013, back when we were worried about the wrong things. We thought we knew, but what did we know? And what were people doing? I was the only one not holding up a phone. Everyone was proving her point. And did she know anymore than we did? She told the light man light us up so she could see us and tell us we were beautiful. New York was still her town. She had lived in Brooklyn, too. When she sang “Lithium:” for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tribute to Nirvana, the show was at Barclays, right down the street. Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic introduced her as someone who lived in Brooklyn. This was a local gig for her. That was 10 years ago. She went from Brooklyn to the world, but she was still ours.

New York isn't New York without you, love
So far in a few blocks, to be so low
And if I call you from First Avenue
Well, you're the only motherfucker in the city who can handle me

We were New York. We were the only motherfuckers who could handle us. She knew us. She was us. She had been there, and now that she was back, she was Annie Clark coming back asking us to handle her. She told us she loved us. We know where that often leads, but in this case, she gave us what we wanted, We had to go deep into ourselves. Could we handle ourselves? Each other? Could we handle being in this world for one second? The world is on fucking fire. Were we being doused? Are we fanning our on flames.