Category Archives: Rosanne Cash

I Know Why The Caged Bird Curls Into a Fetal Position & Screams

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That sinking feeling hasn’t left. You know the one I’m talking about…the one so many of us experienced on November 8th, 2016 when we realized that Donald Trump was actually going to become our next president. Our hearts literally sank, weighed down by dread and despair. We didn’t know what to do other than hold our hands over our mouths in shocked horror as we watched stunned newscasters report his victory in quavering voices that reminded me of the moment Walter Cronkite notified a nation that John F. Kennedy had died. I’m sure all 63,000,000 of us texted some variant of “OMG WTF?!?” to our dearest friends. Once I realized his lead in the Rust Belt states was insurmountable, I think I quietly turned off the television and crawled into bed. A few hours later I woke up and the tears came. Hot, streaming tears from a well of complex sorrow. I cried for my country, for the globe, for all the people who would be hurt by his presidency. I cried for democracy. I cried for my own foolish, ideological heart. I couldn’t seem to stop crying. The next day, I tweeted this:

 

Sob quietly at night, face the day with clear eyes and your head held high, I always say.

Here we are, ten months later and the sinking feeling hasn’t left.

The world has turned upside down and I don’t know how to orientate myself to the new axis on which we now find ourselves spinning.

Wrong Week To Quit Sniffing Glue

I have said this to myself every week for the past ten months.

 

This election, it was more than a shifting of power from one political party to another. This was a deeply transformative moment in American history. This wasn’t just about the next four years, although whether or not we will survive the next four years is now a serious question we are all considering. This was about global leadership being supplanted by incompetence on a global scale. This was about democracy being subsumed by autocracy. This was about America’s very identity being altered.

Identity. Who knew it was so critically important?

 

Faceless Man

“Who are you? Are you America?” “I am no one.” “Are you SURE you’re not America?” “Pretty sure.”

 

Of course, America has never been homogeneous. We have always been a teeming, writhing coil of tensions and contradictions. Slave owners battled fiery abolitionists. Free market capitalists still battle socialist labor leaders. Civil rights leaders fight white supremacists. Conservative vs. Liberal. Our identity has never exactly been one thing. But, from the moment Thomas Jefferson penned “all men are created equal,” we’ve been guided by aspirational values that have led us down the path of history in search of a more perfect union.

We’ve always known we weren’t perfect. But we’ve diligently striven to be better. That’s what being an American has always meant to me. And now that’s shot to hell and I don’t know how to recover. The sadness overwhelms me. The grief I am experiencing keeps rolling over me in waves.

All I am is an American.

I don’t belong to a religious sect. I am not close with my family. I do not have children. I am not surrounded by friends with common interests. I don’t even really have a sports team I identify deeply with other than the New England Patriots and honestly I only enjoy watching them because of Tom Brady, and he’s 40 years old. Once he retires I will probably stop watching football altogether as it is violent and dangerous and corrupt and <weeping> Tommy don’t leave me!

Tom-Brady

All that’s standing between me and the yawning abyss of meaninglessness. (And no, the irony of him being a “good friend” of Donald Trump does not escape me. Because of course he is. <sob>)

 

 

All I have is my Americanism. The mythology of the American Dream. The can-do spirit. The belief that we know the difference between Good and Evil, and we stand on the side of Good. Our pervasive pop culture. The way our country embraces foreigners, folds them into our experiment and emerges stronger for having them with us. All of it.

I never knew how much I identified as an American until Donald Trump came along and metaphorically threw acid into the face of the Statue of Liberty. His utter contempt for everything that America represents and everything she aspires to be is not just shocking. It is a stiletto knife whipped so quickly against my throat that all I can do is stand helplessly gurgling, uncertain of what just happened until the blood starts pouring out.

Of course, the depression in which I am enveloped comes not just from Donald Trump; Donald Trump is such a vile, repugnant, slimy excuse for a man that if life were fair, sprinkling him with salt would kill him. Donald Trump isn’t the depressing problem. I know what he is. He is so arrogant that he doesn’t even bother trying to hide what he is. What is depressing is that 60,000,000 Americans support him. What I am having a hard time reconciling is that people I know support him. He is destroying America from the inside and people I thought I knew laugh and clap and pump their fists and chant “U-S-A! U-S-A!”

It’s like watching someone you thought was sensible and reasoned excitedly give a gas canister and a book of matches to the town arsonist then giddily watch as he burns down their house. “This is gonna be great!” your friend says, elbowing you in your ribs. “Whoooooooo! Look at it burn!” And you stand there, dumbfounded at how dense they are until eventually they do a double-take and yell, “My children are in there! And everything I own! And, hey, where am I supposed to live now?!”

Yeah, dumbshit, I tried to tell you but you were too busy chanting “Lock her up!” to hear me.

 

I always knew that a segment of the American population was, for lack of a better word, stupid. I knew we had more than our fair share of climate deniers, of people who really do believe that the earth was created 6,000 years ago, that Taylor Swift is a really good singer. In the run-up to the election, though, I refused to believe that the majority of Americans were stupid enough to hand the gas canister to the town arsonist. I was wrong. (Yes, yes, three million more people voted for Hillary, I know.)

Donald Trump is destroying my vision of America, my identity as an American, and 60,000,000 of my closest (and whitest) neighbors gave him the means to do it. How can that not depress the hell out of me?

I vacillate between white hot rage and depression. I chuckle darkly when I remember that, a mere eight years ago, I thought George W. Bush was the worst president I was ever going to see in my lifetime. I think about food. A lot. Stress eating doesn’t even begin to describe what I’ve been doing. It’s as if I eat to create a physical sense of discomfort and pain that mirrors my emotional state. My favorite time of day is when I’m sleeping.

Every day I learn of yet another effort by Donald Trump to deliberately, methodically destroy Barack Obama’s legacy. His Secretary of Education is going to re-evaluate how the federal government deals with sexual assaults on college campuses. I mean, seriously, give me a break. He is literally going to work harder to protect rapists. Which, considering how violently he is fucking America over is just perfect, but still.

And his supporters cheer. He’s doing what he said he was going to do, they say.

He has terrified immigrants. He has worried refugees so much that hundreds of them are now fleeing America, seeking asylum in Canada. He has lessened our reputation around the world. He has proven himself completely incapable of absorbing information. He doesn’t like anyone in government unless their name rhymes with Mutin. He is willfully working to destroy a healthcare system that will result in the deaths of Americans. He is cavalierly inching the world towards a nuclear war. The list is horrifying and seemingly endless.

We believe in him, they say.

And all of this is following eight of the smoothest years of presidential politics in history. But Barack Obama was black and Hillary Clinton was a woman, so what they accomplished must be scorned and destroyed.

But don’t you dare call a Trump supporter sexist or racist.

My America strives to be more inclusive. She isn’t afraid of the world. She wants to partner with her allies and remain strong against her foes. My America wants to improve the lives of her citizens. She wants to slow the destructive, racist policies of mass incarceration that have devastated communities of color for the past forty years. My America wants to become less fearful of marijuana, and more empathetic towards drug addicts in general. My America would like her police forces to stop murdering her citizens in the street. My America welcomes all faiths to her shores. My America enthusiastically embraces science and spurs innovation in the fields of the future such as clean energy and robotics. My America wants her pregnant citizens to be able to make reproductive choices with their doctors without fear of reprisals. My America wants minorities of all stripes to be able to live without fear.

But now Donald Trump has his hands on my America.

 

I would be able to relax if I somehow knew how it was all going to turn out. If I had the power to zip three years into the future and come back. “He doesn’t launch a nuclear war with North Korea and China and Russia! And he doesn’t get re-elected!” If I knew for sure that we were going to be okay, I might be able to make a 20 pack box of Ring Dings last longer than three days. If I knew with absolute conviction that he and his white nationalist minions weren’t going to transform America into some apartheid-era South African/isolationist North Korean hybrid, I might be able to laugh again. Not knowing is the most depressing aspect of all of this.

I don’t want to withdraw from the wider world. I don’t want to tune out all the pain. I want to face it head on, be a witness to it, be a sober-eyed realist in the face of stark madness. It’s just that it’s really, really difficult.

Rosanne Cash, play us out.

 

 

 

 

Let’s Talk About Music

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Hello, friends.

As many of you know, I am pretty passionate about music. What you may not know is that I cannot stand music critics. Ho, my God. What pretentious assholes they seem to be, (although I’m sure their mothers love them.) Most of the music critics in my life–and I genuinely try to limit them–come to me via NPR. One of them recently, when describing a favorite album of his from 2013, said that the singer was “self-conscious without being self-absorbed.” I heard this in my car. I had to fight the urge to deliberately smash into the nearest concrete barrier simply to stop his voice from coming out of the speakers. I could have turned the radio off, but he made me so angry I forgot that was an option. He was “speaking English without even remotely attempting to make any fucking sense.” I seriously loathe them. (In an effort to sound a wee bit magnanimous, allow me qualify that. I don’t hate ALL of them. Some are quite good at what they do. Most of them, however, aren’t.) They are so busy trying to maximize their desperately overpriced English/Music degrees that they don’t even realize they stopped making sense about music a long time ago.

Music and language are clearly related to a certain degree. But, they are two vastly different mediums. My suspicion is professional writers resent that. Musicians, they own us, baby. Don’t they? You know they do. Writers can spend months locked up, sweating and alone, with their thoughts, for months, in an attempt to move perhaps 1,000 readers, if they’re lucky. Two notes from a guitar solo is all it takes to make thousands erupt. You don’t believe me? If you love rock & roll and were alive in the 70’s, try not to float a little when you click this. I don’t care how many books Oprah sold, her book club will never make people feel like that. The written word will never have that power. Ever. And that resentment comes through loud and clear in most of the reviews I read.

With all that being said, I’m here tonight to review a couple of CDs I’ve been listening to lately.

I know, right? I am nothing but a bundle of contradictions. And that is somewhat evident in the albums that have been competing for my attention lately.

I have been listening to Rosanne Cash’s new album “The River & The Thread” and Jill Hennessy’s “Ghost In My Head” pretty much on an infinite loop for the past two months. And just like the contradiction of my despising reviews of music and yet having the need to write about it, those two albums are very different. And yet I am addicted to both.

If you’ve known me for more than 47 minutes, one of the things that you’ve learned about me is that I am a tremendous fan of Rosanne Cash. That is not to say that I am a tremendous person, but rather that I will easily become the most tremendous blow-hard if you wanted to “chat” with me about her music. You will quickly look at your watch, silently wondering how you are going to extricate yourself from the conversation, thinking “Jesus Christ. All I said was ‘7 Year Ache’ was a good song. I didn’t even know who sang it. I thought it was KT Oslin. I have a family to go home to.”

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Here I am in an intimate moment with Rosanne Cash, being photobombed by her husband, John Leventhal.

I have loved and admired Rosanne Cash for decades. Have you ever heard a particular singer’s voice and something clicks deep inside of you and you realize “I am this person’s slave. I will do whatever it is they want me to do. Wake up to buy tampons at 2:30am? Sure. Go murder the President because he won’t publicly support an anti-gun initiative? (Wouldn’t THAT be ironic?) I will do it, because I am their slave and they own me?” Has no one else had this happen to them? Well. If Rosanne Cash needed me to buy tampons–which, in and of itself would be an impressive request, because she’s in her 50’s–I would put the slippers on, fumble for the keys and look for the nearest 24-hour pharmacy.

I reveal that level of devotion to let you know that there is absolutely no way that I could seriously criticize any work that she did. I mean, it’s ridiculous to even expect it. But I will do my best to be objective.

But–it’s fucking ridiculous. I mean, I have been backstage as she performs soundcheck on some of the very songs I am going to be talking about. Please. I’m biased. Totally, irrevocably, biased. That’s another thing that pisses me off about music critics. If you don’t like someone because they’re a selfish, conceited, unmanageable prick, just say that. Don’t mask your resentment of their personality with a bad review. Conversely, if you are completely smitten with someone, be bold enough to admit that you are hypnotized by them, and that is why you are giving them a glowing review. (I’m looking at all the Taylor Swift fans out there.)

The River & The Thread

Rosanne Cash’s latest album, The River & The Thread, is a beautiful masterpiece.

For me to really get into the subtle nuances of her album…that would require you the reader to be face to face with me. We would consume either too much coffee or too many beers, but together, in conversation, we would parse this woman’s evolution down to its essence. Because she is a complicated woman. That is one of things I love about her. I am not going to do that justice in this essay.

To truly appreciate the beauty of Rosanne Cash’s latest album, you have to understand the albums that came before it. The reviews, be they on television, on NPR, or in print, don’t seem to focus on that. I mean, AT ALL. But, again…*hatred of music critics*…sigh. Stupid fuckers. All they focus upon is her relationship with her father.

I think I loved Rosanne Cash long before I had even an inkling of who her father was. That probably makes me different from about 97% of her fanbase. When I fell in love with Rosanne Cash, I knew her father sang “A Boy Named Sue,” thanks to my own father’s record collection. My father also introduced me to “My Ding a Ling” by Chuck Berry and “Hello Muddah Hello Fadduh,” by Allen Sherman. He loved them all equally. So, at the time, I did not have a deep appreciation for Johnny Cash. That came later, with maturity, once I got out of the house. My love for Rosanne came first. I feel like I am swimming against the tide in that respect, as everyone seems to love her father first, and her only as an afterthought.

She has a legacy that she has to honor. In many ways she is American Royalty. (Miley Cyrus probably knows exactly how she feels.)

(Show of hands–how many people here don’t realize that Rosanne Cash’s father is Johnny Cash? Show of hands–how many don’t know who Johnny Cash is? Well. Thank you for reading this essay for as long as you have.)

Rosanne Cash has been in the music business for a long time. She has transformed herself–as many do–over the decades. I am particularly infatuated with the work that she has produced since 1993’s The Wheel. I mean, I LOVED her King’s Record Shop album from the 1980’s that garnered her so many awards, and of course I remember 7 Year Ache…but her work since The Wheel has been decidedly different. And that in large part has to do with the man that she was in love with, who produced it, and who has been her life partner and collaborator since, John Leventhal.

It is ridiculous, since 1993, to refer to any Rosanne Cash album as a “solo” work. Because it is always in collaboration with her husband.

They fused a blend of country & pop and mixed it with red-hot passion back on “The Wheel” in 1993. That’s a great album. I cannot believe it didn’t chart. I mean, seriously. That is one of my favorite albums of all-time. It bothers the hell out of me that no one has ever heard it, if the charts are true. So, if you would like me to burn you a copy, just send me a tweet @Twizznit.

They have evolved, she has evolved, and her relationship with her family/heritage has evolved. And it has all coalesced in The River and The Thread. And she has blended the perfect brew. My only criticism of it is that it is too perfect. I don’t admire perfection. I resent it. I like flaws, and I like to root for underdogs. The River & The Thread gives me none of that.

I could spend the next few paragraphs dissecting every song on the album, providing you with adjectives that make you want to shoot me or read your thesaurus and then find an imaginative word for “murder,” but suffice it to say that Rosanne Cash has created a very soothing album that blends the history of her past with the history of her marriage with the history of music. Her husband plays on the record. Her husband produced the record. I don’t know how to tell you he is a genius, but he is one. She thanks, in the acknowledgements, her husband John. “We painted this together.” They did. And it is a beautiful painting. Are you familiar with her “Black Cadillac” album? Such a beautiful tribute to all the people she had lost during that time, including her father. (Her father is Johnny Cash. The singer.) And on the eponymous song, Black Cadillac, I could swear there is a trumpet tribute to Ring of Fire on it. I am probably wrong. But at the end, I swear I can hear it. Again, what do I know? I’m not a Johnny Cash fan, nor a music critic. The point I’m trying to make is that these people are serious, subtle, masters of their craft. The River and The Thread seems not only to tie into her familial roots, or the roots the South, but also to the past 20 years that she has been making music with her husband. But, unless you have heard the albums that they’ve made together, you would quite possibly miss that.

Rosanne Cash is, above all else, always in control of her emotions. There is a reason that her autobiography is titled “Composed.” She is focused on mastery, and you can feel the mastery in every song on The River and The Thread. There is nothing raw or unhinged about a Rosanne Cash song. She is always in control. It’s beautiful and intimidating.

It’s fascinating to me–again, because I know a little bit about her musical history–that the most interesting collaboration she performs on The River & The Thread is with her ex-husband, Rodney Crowell. They raised four children together but have been apart for decades…and yet, when they sing, it’s pretty obvious that they sound great together. Again…in keeping with the River and the Thread theme…that life, love, history and land all relate…it’s pretty awesome (and subtle) that she would recognize that with a soft duet with her (ex) husband.

To someone who has never heard of Rosanne Cash in their life…this is a soft, safe, crooning album. She is not going to surprise you, although she may please you. (Does that sound like something an asshole music critic would say? Please tell me that’s not as bad as “it’s self-conscious without being self-absorbed”?) She is a wonderful master, in her 50’s, who services the song…oh, Jesus, I think I heard that on NPR once. I need to shut up now.

When I’m not listening to Rosanne Cash’s new album, I’m playing Jill Hennessy’s 2009 debut, Ghost in My Head. Rosanne has come so far, and Jill is just getting started. What a contradiction.

Jill Hennessy Ghost in My Head

What year is this? Are we in 2014? That’s…okay. So, it’s been 5 years since this album has been released. Give or take. I’m a fairly new listener to it.

If you remember the early years of Law & Order or the television show Crossing Jordan, you should know who Jill Hennessy is. From the moment I saw her on Law & Order, she was in my “Top Ten.” The Top Ten, of course, being a list of beautiful women on television that, once they decided they wanted to sleep with me, I would accept into my bed as long as they were at the top of the list. (Thank God only men are sexist pigs, or else I might feel guilty about shamelessly rating women.) And Ms. Hennessy was always in the Top 10. Who else was in the Top 10? God, it was ever evolving. Madeline Stowe. Oof. And Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. Oh. My. God.

Can we please just take a moment to honor the powerful beauty that is Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio?

Whew.

Breath-taking.

No.

I still need a moment.

***

Sometimes I miss the 90s.

Alright. So now that I’ve established my sexist credentials, please allow me to dissect Jill Hennessy’s album further.

Please know that I was TERRIFIED to listen to this album. It took me YEARS.

I had been following Jill Hennessy on Twitter for many years, ever since I signed up for the service. From following her, I knew that she had made an album. And I completely, deliberately, avoided it. I was scared to death.

Try to imagine someone that you love watching on television or in movies suddenly deciding that they were going to sing.

I did that already, with someone named Russell Crowe.

Have you heard of him? Oh, yeah. I have his CD. 30 Odd Foot of Grunts. Yep.

30 Odd Foot of Grunts

Even the baby is ashamed to be associated with this album. “My God. What will my parents think?”

I own this album. It is on my iPod.

I loved Russell Crowe. Have you ever seen him in The Sum of Us? I had such high hopes for him. So, when he came out publicly to say that, yes, he was a musician…I scooped that shit up. Who wouldn’t? I loved him in The Sum of Us. And why would he lie?

And then I listened to his album.

To my credit, I haven’t killed him.

But, he did completely ruin me for the “actors who want to sing” set. I was done after that. He was that powerful & awful. That Pawerful.

So, when I joined Twitter and found Jill Hennessy, and her bio said that she was singing and had an album out, of course my first thoughts were towards Russell and I was all “Isn’t that nice.”

I completely ignored this woman’s singing for, what, two years, at least. Possibly three. Who but the NSA can know for sure how long I’ve been on Twitter.

I don’t think you understand how much I love this woman. She changes the physiology of my body–but only an asshole would say “she changes the physiology of my body.” I can’t breathe when I see her. There is like a gaping hole in my abdomen where my appetite used to be when I see her. She utterly stupefies me. She’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life. So why would I want to fuck that up by listening to her sing and have her turn into Russell Crowe all over again? No one needs that shit. So I knew she was singing…and I politely ignored it.

Then, one day, on the Twitter, I said something about something she wrote, and she wrote back. (Soon I was to discover that she is very responsive to her fans. Like, VERY responsive. If I my girlfriends were that responsive to me, I probably would feel better about myself as a lover.) All of the sudden, this actress that I had admired, easily, for 20 years, was conversant. Shit! Fuck.

I downloaded her debut album. Because I felt guilty that I hadn’t listened to it. I didn’t know how to tell her “I have loved you for 20 years as a sporadic actress. I don’t want to heard your shitty vanity album and have all that love turn to hate.” It was released in 2009. I can’t remember being so scared to listen to anything in my life. Again, you have no idea how much I’ve admired Jill Hennessy as an actress.  And then there was Russell Crowe, Russell Crowe, hounding me in the back of my mind. I felt like I was losing my virginity for the first time all over again.

God, I was scared.

That was like two months ago. I haven’t really stopped listening to it since. I’ve kinda turned psycho about how much I love it.

So that’s the review you’re going to hear.

Remember how I said Rosanne Cash is so polished? Well. Jill Hennessy isn’t. And yet.

When I listen to some of her songs, it sounds as if she is playing for money in a subway…which kind of is perfect, because that is how she started.

I have my friend Rosanne Cash publicly saying that “It’s a mistake to say that songwriting is therapy,” and then there is Jill Hennessy saying that, yes, her songs were therapeutic.

(I just realized that I called Rosanne Cash my friend. We, (and by we I mean me and my cats) will let that go. C’mon. Let me die with my cats and my “friendship” with Rosanne Cash.)

I was so scared that Jill Hennessy was going to suck as both a singer and songwriter. I was just…I didn’t want to touch it for years.

But, I love Ms. Hennesssy’s work for almost the exact opposite reasons that I love Rosanne Cash’s.

I don’t understand the profession of songwriting. But there is something about Jill Hennessy’s voice that completely hypnotizes me. Her lyrics are so raw and personal–whereas Rosanne Cash’s are so ephemeral & universal.

After accepting that Jill Hennessy was a singer, I have learned a little bit about her history, and I now know that she began her career singing for money in the subways. You can totally hear that in her debut album.

But there are some songs that break through that busking genre and give you hope that there is something powerful underneath. I cannot stop listening to 4 Small Hands.

(Full disclosure: Before I started to listening to Jill Hennessy, I had no idea what “busking” was. I thought it was a city in Canada. Now I’m tossing the word around like I’ve used it for years. I’m 44, people. I had no idea what it was about 3 months ago.)

Apparently, when Jill Hennessy started her life as an artist, it began as a street musician.

It’s always ridiculous when you tell your friends “Hey, listen to these things!” “I like them! And if you like me, you’ll like them, too!”

Rosanne Cash’s new album and Jill Hennessy’s debut album are two totally different things. One is polished and composed and professional and the other is open and raw and intense. One knows who she is and where she comes from. One is trying to find a foothold in a harsh business. I love both of them.

Let Me Tweet The Ways

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Of all the fucked up people I know, I am by far the luckiest.

At first glance you can’t even tell how fucked up I am, but I assure you: I am. Try to get to know me long enough and eventually you will see. Perhaps at 12:53am after that third shot of tequila. Perhaps when you innocently offer me mild & frank criticism in a casual tone.  I can’t predict when the realization will hit you, but eventually it will come, divine revelation shared perhaps by God, just like those weird rules He shared with Moses: “Holy shit. This girl is fucking nuts.”

But, like I said, I’ve got a lot of blessings to count.

I mean the big ones, right off the bat, are that I’m not dead by suicide or self-destructive behavior* and I’m not institutionalized. And there have been times in my life when I certainly felt like those were the three most viable options. One night in 1996 I hit the Batshit Trifecta: After a night of ruthlessly hard drinking that should have shut my internal organs down, I was determined to kill myself by slicing my wrists open with a Swiss Army® Knife…but the three-legged cat I was talking with at the time convinced me to hang on for at least one more day.

I’d say that night marks the nadir of my existence. I’ve been slowly crawling my way up the ladder to “normal” ever since.

The list can go on and on: I’m not addicted to drugs, I’m not in prison. The trust & anger issues that have plagued me my entire life have not resulted in me currently living in an unsafe, violent environment. I am a homeowner, (albeit a nominal, probably temporary one at best). I have a steady job that pays a decent wage for someone without a college education who is content to be considered in the upper lower class of society.

I am also lucky in that I am not on anti-depressants. I’ve never taken one in my life, although God knows I’d make a great candidate.  It hasn’t been easy, suffering through my inner demons and depressions and anxieties…but despite all the mental anguish I’ve endured, I am so glad that I have never let a molecule of one of those drugs enter my bloodstream and fuck with my brain chemistry.

The reason I suppose I’ve always been so anti-anti-depressant is because I’ve never felt like my brain was broken. Even in my darkest hours, I never felt like what I was feeling was unnatural. I felt like I was supposed to feel. My problem was that I didn’t know how to feel anything else. Taking drugs wasn’t going to teach me that.

My depression was created by some genuinely depressing events. I was raped for years by a friend of the family beginning at the age of four. Who wouldn’t be bummed after something like that? And then, just when I was trying to heal from that experience, (without therapy, mind you. I don’t think my stern Germanic vater believed in such weak-willed things), my brother hit puberty and decided that losing his virginity to me, his younger sister, (albeit not by blood!, he desperately reminded me as he was negotiating our sexual tryst), would make the most sense as “I had done it before.” So, you know. There went any chance of happiness in the 12th year of my life. (I never allowed him to fuck me, though. “Phwew!” I bet you’re saying to yourself. To get him out of my room, though, I did let him grope my ass once. I can still see his closed eyes and the pained, wrenched look on his face when, after I could take it no more, I turned around to get him to stop. The hurt on his face was genuine. As is the scar on my heart that moment created.)

Well, okay, you might be saying to yourself. That DOES sound pretty bad. I can see why you might grow gloomy and pensive from time to time.

But wait, there’s more!

In my 13th year, my family fell apart. The father that I had barely seen over the past three years, as he had been working overseas, returned home to a line-dancin’, cheatin’ wife who demanded a D-I-V-O-R-C-E. Naturally, this did not make him happy. However, seeing as he was a survivor of 3 tours of duty in Vietnam, suffered from PTSD, and happened to be both drunk and high on cocaine when my mother told him to find a new place to live, he did what any man in his situation would do: He destroyed the house. Oh he didn’t set it on fire or anything disastrous like that. He simply shattered every piece of furniture, memento, and glass object that he could find. You could not walk into that house barefoot. Our poodle was scared shitless.  I wasn’t there at the time, as I was babysitting, (Specifically, I was watching Fleetwood Mac’s Mirage concert on HBO as the children slept and my father raged two blocks away. “Funny how you remember,” as Bob Seger sings in Night Moves.), but I heard that when the sheriff placed him in handcuffs he broke out of them by wrenching his arms from behind his back. I heard he broke his wrist in the process. (Cocaine is a helluva drug.) I heard all of this second-hand because I didn’t see my father again for another three years.

As you can imagine, I did not enter my adult years with the strongest psyche on the planet. I attempted many times, as is expected by society, to find stability and love and trust. Suffice it to say that I failed miserably at every attempt. So now I have cats. Lots and lots of cats. Maybe it would have been easier to live (and love) if I had only discovered that Zoloft is right for me…but I wouldn’t have been me. I would have been some serotonin-coated, chemically-enhanced version of me. Completely fractured on the inside, patched together with pharmaceuticals.

But, enough about that.  I do not wish to bore you with every sorry, sordid little detail of my life. (Although, since many of them are about lesbians, I bet you would love that.) This is not supposed to be a depressing autobiographical essay. Today I am writing about redemption and recovery and Rosanne Cash.

(“Wait. Are you sure¸ Laurie? Because you’ve written about some pretty dark shit here. I haven’t been able to stop crying for the past six paragraphs. ” Ssh. Ssh. I know. I’m sorry. It gets better. “And your brother sounds like a real asshole.” Well. We all have things we’re not proud of. I’m sure if he could take it back he would. But, yes. As far as I know, he is a complete douche. But, I could be wrong. We haven’t spoken in more than eight years.  We all deserve redemption, though.)

My life is better because Rosanne Cash is in it.

Perhaps I should start at Square 1.

Does everyone know who Rosanne Cash is? (Although, in this day and age, with your Googles and your internets, and your Wikipedias, I’m pretty sure you could find out easily enough in about three mouse clicks. But, okay. Let’s just assume you’re too lazy to do even that.) She is a musician, a songwriter, a writer, wife and devoted mother of five. She has been making music since before the internet was invented and in my humble opinion pretty much all of it has been awesome. I don’t know what she does with the shitty songs the law of averages states she must write. Maybe she pawns them off on Taylor Swift. <zing!>

(Why I had to go out of my way to insult Taylor Swift is a mystery to me, too. I sure don’t like her, though. Yeah, yeah, okay. She writes her own songs. <eye roll> Sure. Okay, fine. Hey, listen. My dwelling unnecessarily on my unnatural disgust and disrespect for Taylor Swift is not helping the overall message of this essay, so do you mind if I just stop talking about that elfin poser for just…do you mind? I’ve got to get back to this thing.)

Some of her hits include Seven Year Ache—tell me you at least know that one, for fuck’s sake!—Runaway Train—no, NOT the one that Soul Asylum sang in the 90s—and I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me. Her songs are available for purchase at iTunes AND Amazon.com. (Yeah. She’s that good.)

I have had Rosanne Cash in my heart longer than Rick Warren has had Jesus in his. I listen to a wide variety of music, and I consider myself a fan of many different artists. Each and every one has their own story to appreciate and respect. But none of them have changed my life the way that Rosanne Cash has, and there isn’t one that I am more devoted to.

If we lived in a world in which social media did not exist, Ms. Cash, (or, more accurately, Mrs. L., since she is married to John Leventhal, a world-class producer and musician in his own—oh, just Google him!), would simply be my favorite artist of all-time, not the life-affirming  demigoddess that she has become. But, thanks to Twitter, she gets to be that. Which must be thrilling for her, I’m sure. “My work here is done,” I imagine her saying as she closes her laptop for the night. “John!” she yells over her shoulder to her husband in the kitchen. “I can disable my Twitter account now! I’m a demigoddess.”

Give or take a minor setback or temporary nervous breakdown or two, my life has been steadily improving since that night in 1996 when Lefty the Calico Cat convinced me to put the knife down.  A couple of friends had helped me grow along the way. Their appreciation for me and patience with me went a long way towards healing my broken soul. Because, by 2008(?), I was pretty shattered. I was functioning, but it was almost all façade. Again, I don’t want to get into all the details, but there had simply been one too many nights curled up in a fetal position on the bathroom rug, sobbing, feeling wide-open and raw and exposed by some relationship that had once again failed. I had isolated myself, emerging from my coccoon long enough to work or perhaps go out and drink with acquaintances long enough to make jokes and get a good buzz on. But, I didn’t like myself, didn’t really ever confide in anyone, and was just walking farther and farther down the Road to Ruin. And then one of them convinced me to sign up for Facebook.

Before I joined Facebook, I was convinced that it wasn’t for me. Facebook was for people who had friends! And I just had the two. There was no need to be on Facebook for that…I could simply text them. Of course, I was completely wrong. Facebook turned out to be more rewarding and influential than I could have possibly imagined. Perhaps one day I’ll devote an essay exclusively to how much that has changed my life.

(“Is this an essay, Laurie? Or is it the Bhagavad Gita? Because you’re running a little long here, lady. Can you possibly maybe wrap it up soon? I’m pregnant and my baby is due in three months. I’d like to maybe get up from this chair once before my water breaks.” Your sarcasm is not good for your unborn child, Random Reader. It imbues the umbilical cord with bile, I read somewhere. But, fine. I’ll try to move quicker. I’m not excising that paragraph about Taylor Swift, though. That’s staying in.)

So, anyhoo.

By the time I joined Twitter and started interacting a little with Rosanne Cash, I had already emerged somewhat from my shell on Facebook. I was feeling better about myself, reuniting with long lost friends, and I was thrilled that my list of friends grew from two to four. And then to seven. But, I found myself falling back into the same patterns that had led my entire life to isolation and unhappiness. I was using humor to engage with people I hadn’t spoken with in years, but I remained distant and wary and hyper-vigilant about offences and insults. Part of me enjoyed conversating, (That’s right. I used it in a sentence. Roll your eyes if you want–I like it and it stays in.), with them, but another part of me was just positive that they hated me. (I know that sounds weird, but please remember the second line of this essay.)

A helpful thing to know about Rosanne Cash is that she is incredibly smart. Like, okay? She doesn’t simply craft these amazing songs that are mystical and layered and romantic and rich with emotion…she thinks about real-world stuff, too, and makes a lot of sense when she discusses issues. She is not some vapid excuse of a pop-star like some current Cover Girl spokeswoman who shall remain nameless but who is not       P!nk! I love P!nk. I was talking about the other one. No, not Janelle Monae. Oh, you know what, never mind.

Another thing you need to know about Rosanne Cash and her Twitter account is that she will actually talk with you if you write to her. I could spend half a page describing the various ways that celebrities use Twitter, but this is not a Twitter tutorial. Suffice it to say that I have never seen anyone use Twitter the way that she does. She tries very hard to respond to as many people as she can. I can only imagine how exhausting that must be. I was waiting in the lobby at her show in Williamsburg back in February and overheard a man describing, with awe in his voice, the tweet that she had sent to him. So I hope she knows that people genuinely appreciate it.

There’s this quote attributed to Ms. Cash that flows constantly across Twitter. If you look hard enough for it, you’ll find it. “The key to change is to let go of fear.” Twitter keeps saying she said that, so I guess it’s true.

And, when engaging with the one person on the planet you respect and adore more than all others, I suppose it’s easy to feel a little intimidated. But, unbeknownst to me, I took her advice, let go of my fear, and just…tweeted. And things have been changing ever since.

I can’t ascribe all the improvements to my life to the fact that Mrs. L. talks with me on Twitter. But she has definitely helped set a lot of it in motion. She has been the key to so many seismic shifts.

Ms. Cash is devoted to the English language. Luckily for me, I enjoy using it, too. And, so, what she has helped me discover, in the back and forth that we’ve had over the years, is my voice. Without even being aware that she is doing it, she has helped me bring my thoughts into sharper focus. It’s one thing to babble back and forth on Twitter with your dipshit second cousin who only writes in abbreviations and is drunk half the time and who isn’t going to remember it, anyway. It’s another thing entirely to speak with a Grammy-award winning musician who covets words the way Hugh Hefner covets playmates. I want to be absolutely sure I know what I’m saying to her–tone, language, quality–because I don’t want that tweet to be the one in which she finally blocks me. (“This dipshit reminds me of my drunk second cousin.” <block!>) I write with more intent now than I ever did. I’d like to think I am a better communicator because, like, you know, I’m all, like, on point and shit. (See?)

Ms. Cash has also helped me meet new people on Twitter. I don’t have a ton of connections on Twitter but, essentially, the ones I do have are all followers of hers that I started to follow, too. I barely even bother “retweeting” (rebroadcasting a tweet that someone else wrote so that everyone who pays attention to your stuff can see it) anything she writes because everyone that follows me follows her. I realize this is a very myopic view, but basically I don’t think Twitter exists without Rosanne Cash in it. Nothing in my world disproves that. Meeting new people on Twitter has, again, helped loosen up the shackles on my imprisoned mind. I mean, clearly, Ms. Cash has nothing to do with the friendships I develop amongst her followers–the bonds I build with them are entirely between us, and based on things that we have in common–but I still credit her for helping in that regard.

I think she also helped my self-esteem. I mean, I can’t say for sure, because there are some days that I can’t find it…but I am almost positive that she makes me feel better about myself. Yeah. She does. I mean, it totally sounds like star-fucking, but it feels really good when I can make Rosanne Cash laugh. Don’t get me wrong–it feels good to make ANYONE laugh. I have this one co-worker who sometimes chuckles and says, “Laurie, you’re so stupid,” and I LIVE for her “You’re so stupids!” Makes me so happy, you don’t even know. But I think being appreciated by Rosanne Cash turns a light-bulb on in my brain in ways that other interactions couldn’t. It’s not that her attention is more valuable to me than that of others–it’s that it is so rare and relatively difficult to obtain that it resonates louder. But, ultimately, her attention benefits everyone in my life because, of course, as I start to feel better about myself, I become a better person for people to appreciate. And my co-worker gets to call me stupid more often. It’s a win-win for everyone.

But, most importantly, by interacting with me, chatting with me and, in the surrealist moments of my life, allowing me to visit with her backstage, Ms. Cash has allowed me to do the one thing that I desperately needed to do. She has allowed me to love her. And for that I will never be able to repay her.

When you’re traumatized, scarred, shattered and distrustful, the last thing you know how to do is love. Oh, I cared about people, of course. Don’t forget there were those two friends who played such pivotal roles in helping me grow as a person. They gave me love, and I knew that, and I appreciated them so very much. And I loved them, I did. The best I knew how, at least. But in the back of my mind, I had a trapdoor in which I could escape. If they ever stopped loving me, I would be ready. I always kept something in reserve. For my survival, you see. I was never going to let anyone devastate me again.

And then Rosanne Cash, this woman I had admired since before I don’t know when, the woman who’s music penetrates my soul in ways that I’m pretty sure would violate laws in several states if it wasn’t consensual, listens to me when I tell her I adore her.

She has provided me with more comfort, entertainment, solace & wisdom than she can ever possibly know. I cannot fathom why anyone with her talent and career and intellect would ever bother to pay attention to someone like me. But I’m so grateful that she did.

The simple act of being able to open up my heart to someone has had more of an impact on my life than I can possibly explain. No one else but Rosanne Cash could have elevated me to that level of understanding, though, that’s the beauty of this revelation. I had expectations of everyone else I love in my life. I expected reciprocity. Naturally, being highly distrustful and suspicious and unable to see my own worth…well. As you can imagine, the bonds to my heart have never really been unlocked, and I’ve never quite figured out how to feel love without feeling bad about it. But letting Rosanne Cash know I adore her solves that dilemma. I don’t expect anything from her. She’s given more than I could ever possibly return. She’s not supposed to love me–that’s not in the rule book. And just being able to tell her I adore her…I don’t know. You people with your loving children and your happy marriages of 15 years, wow. You’ve really got something special there. Maybe you don’t even appreciate what you have. But for someone like me, someone so repressed that showing any kind of vulnerability was something to be afraid of? Being able to do something like that was unimaginable.

It goes without saying, (or it should), that I am referring to love in the platonic sense here. I know, I know, you would really like me to write more essays about lesbian fantasies, (“Even if you have to make them up, Laurie. Even if you have to make them up.”), but this awakening of my soul has nothing to do with sexuality. It has to do with my humanity and my ability to trust people and to live inside my own skin without wanting to crawl out of it. It’s about knowing my strengths and owning up to my weaknesses and not feeling ashamed all the time. It’s about not living in fear every goddamn second of every goddamn day. She’s looked me in the eye. She has endured with much grace and patience as I have tweeted her praises. And she hasn’t blocked me.*

And through all that she has taught me, I feel like some enormous pressure has been lifted off my chest. I feel closer to my humanness than I ever have been before. I feel more aware of my intelligence and my sense of humor and the power I have and the vulnerability I feel towards others. I am more alive. I am more present. I am more terrified than I have ever been, but it is a completely different kind of fear.

So, I thank her. I thank her in my dreams, I thank her every time I see her, I thank her in every random act of kindness I commit. She is so much more than a collection of songs. (Although, don’t get me wrong. Those are VERY good.) She is a life-affirming demigoddess.

Of course, all that’s more than a little fucked up. But, AS I CLEARLY STATED WHEN I STARTED THIS ESSAY, I’m one of the luckiest fucked up people I’ve ever known. Because I’ve met Rosanne Cash.

(*Yet.)

If This Blog Is a-Rockin’ Don’t Come a-Knockin’

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Author’s Disclaimer: I am not a musicologist. I am not an audiophile. I don’t write musical reviews, either as a hobby or professionally. I don’t even know what the great singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen meant when he wrote “the 4th, the 5th, the minor fall & the major lift” in that song “Hallelujah” except I think it has something to do with music and it sounds really beautiful when Jeff Buckley sings it. I just love music. (Except for jazz. Sorry, jazz.) So, allow me to be clear: the views that are about to be expressed are my own and are based soley upon a lifetime of listening to music in cars, in bars, thru headphones, in bed, or at concerts, nothing more. They are not based upon the remotest hint of a working knowledge of song structure or musical skill or, (what’s the word?), CHORD PROGRESSION, as I possess none of that. I don’t even subscribe to Pitchfork magazine, although I totally should. If it feels like I’m about to lecture you about music, just relax. I’m not. And, since I’m blissfully ignorant about this subject, everything I am about to say could be totally wrong. Feel free to let me know if you think I am. There IS a comment section somewhere around here. Or, you know. You could just write your own essay about the subject instead of being a dick to me about my views. I’m just saying. Oh. And, yes, I think I DO have to mention Rosanne Cash in every goddamn blogpost I write, thank you very much. I am seriously considering changing the title to “What Would Rosanne Cash Think?” It’s rumored that if I mention her in a hundred posts in a row, I get a pony.  

On Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011, I drove two hours to Asheville, North Carolina (“Where Lattes Meet To Hike the Appalachian Trail”), to listen to Ms. Rosanne Cash speak about her memoir “Composed,” which had just been released in paperback the week before. (As of this posting, it was #17 in the Biographies/Musicians category on Amazon “We have a Category for That” dot com. Which 16 people in the music world could possibly be more interesting/intriguing than Rosanne Cash?, I wonder softly to myself. Well, apparently, six of them are Keith Richards, which is completely understandable. Patti Smith, a recent Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, also tops the charts ahead of Ms. Cash. Well done there. But…what’s this? Ace Frehley!? ACE FUCKING FREHLEY has a book that is more popular than Rosanne Cash’s?! From KISS? The guitarist? And not the cute one with the star painted on his face, but the other one? I mean, that is just wrong on so many levels. I realize that only two people read these posts but, for the love of humanity, please, click on the above link and buy “Composed,” if for no other reason than to restore sanity to the universe by putting Ace fucking Frehley in his proper place, which is well below Ms. Cash on the Amazon sales chart. Buy six copies if you have to. Together, we can change the world. Thank you.)

(Am I done here? What was I talking about? I got so distracted by Ace fucking Frehley that I have completely lost my train of thought. Oh, right. I saw Rosanne Cash speak.)

Now, for those of you who don’t know, (I’m not going to name names but Lachey Turner just the other day was overheard saying, in this exact order, “Rosanne Cash, who is that? I have to Google this woman to see what she looks like. Oh! She’s pretty!” She particularly liked the Interiors album cover photo. I said, “Yeah, but that was the year she was getting divorced from her husband. It was a rough time. She looks depressed, dontcha think?” “No, but I like it! She looks mean!” To each their own.), Rosanne Cash, a professional artist in her own right, is the daughter of famed music legend Johnny Cash, (and if you don’t know who Johnny Cash is, you can just stop reading right now and go back to whatever it is you do in your underground lair–hunting for albino catfish, licking lichen-covered rocks for nourishment, searching for The One Ring to Rule Them All, I don’t know–I don’t have time to explain him to you. I’m surprised that you have internet access in such a remote pit of hell, though.), and she has been making some of the richest, warmest music in America for about 30 some odd years, which is an amazingly long creative streak for someone who just recently turned 36. (Did anyone else just hear that? I think that was the entirety of cyberspace swooshing the expression “KISS ASS!” down on me through the ethernet. It was very loud. Really surprised no one else heard that.) Okay, so she’s slightly more aged than 36. Whatever. My obsession, my rules.

When she’s not making music, thinking about making music, or tweeting about making music, Ms. Cash apparently hits the road to talk to the public about that book I mentioned earlier, where people proceed to ask her questions about music. Which brings me to the point of this essay.

Another swoosh: THANK JESUS! SHE GOT TO THE POINT OF HER ESSAY! Everybody–you can come back: She got to the point. She got to the point, yes, she did. Praise be to God, the Glory and the Light. Here she go. She gonna get to the point right here:

On that lovely, warm, Carolina blue day, a man and his wife drove TEN HOURS from Florida to hear Ms. Cash speak. So, say what you want about how much I adore one of the greatest singers in America, but not only am I not alone, I’m not even on the top of the charts so, you know. Bite me. And when it came time for him to ask her a question, it broke my heart. To paraphrase, he talked fondly of the music he listened to back when Rosanne was getting started in the business and wanted to know where all the good songwriters were today.

Two things that immediately struck me when he asked that question: One, Ms. Cash looked exhausted. As if she felt the enormous complexity of the essence of what he was asking while simultaneously realizing that she had been travelling for several days in a row, was completely brain-dead, couldn’t even BEGIN to launch into a dissertation about today’s modern music scene and, Jesus Christ, did she really need a glass of wine like, NOW. That really did seem to flicker on her face, I swear. And, two, people are really hungry for some guidance in this vast, teeming swamp of energy and information we call Life. I am here today to try and cover that second point.

When I hear people say “They don’t make music like they used to” or “The era of the great songwriter is past” or, even more directly, “Kids today don’t know what good music is,” what I hear is “My best music memories are tied to when I was a teenager necking with Mandy Leitner in the backseat of my daddy’s car and I don’t know how to make new ones.”

If you’re like me, then you suspect that humans learned to communicate via music before they learned how to speak. This, I believe, is what makes the otherwise tedious Close Encounters of the Third Kind resonate with so many of us. It is communication at a primal level. And it is something that we can universally appreciate even if we do not understand the language in which the lyrics are written. Human beings will continue to make music long past the point where we can write language longhand and long after you and I are gone. Since there are approximately 13,000,000 bands on MySpace, though, perhaps the problem older people have today is finding it.

Well, for starters, try not to freak out about the fact that musical styles change. It’s not like the kids today started that trend. I mean, when you think about it, according to Fred Phelps, America started feeling the wrath of God as soon as Elvis Presley took the stage. But, when you go back even further, Beethoven caused a stir by being different than Mozart, who was really nothing more than the Elvis of his day. (Maybe he was more the John Lennon of his day. But you take my point.) So, this variance in musical styles goes back millenia. It is not something that portends the collapse of music as we know it. If anything, it speaks to the brilliance of the art form. The notes on the page haven’t changed since Mozart started jotting them down, and yet we keep finding a squillion different ways to use them. That should make the average listener of music feel excited about what is coming, not depressed about what has passed.

Once you accept that change is not something to fear, oh, the world of possibilities that become available to your ears. (Except for jazz. Sorry, jazz. Although I did recently listen to Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue” album TWICE and it didn’t suck. So, there. That’s me being gracious about jazz.)

Now. I’m not gonna lie to you. (Except about Rosanne Cash’s age.) There is some music out there today that is just horrible. There are some songs out there so horrible that they make me want to study quantum physics so that I can invent a time machine so that I can go back in time to the moment that Justin Bieber’s parents meet so that I can destroy their budding romance so that I can prevent him from ever being born. But for every “Baby, Baby” that is being released today, at least we can all count ourselves lucky that we don’t hear Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey” every time we turn on the radio. (Please note that “Honey” was once a number one song in America. Back in the 1960s. Back when music was supposed to be so awesome. Back when they had THE BEATLES. So, you know, cut the kids today some slack. Because nothing, not even Rebecca Black, makes me want to shoot myself in the face like “Honey.” Not even “Seasons in the Sun.” Editor’s Note: Okay. “Seasons in the Sun” is actually my favorite song of all time. I’ve only recently learned that it makes other people want to shoot themselves in the face. I refer to those people as “idiots.” But, I wanted to include it here in the Batch of Horribles so that you can see that I understand the world does not revolve around my musical tastes. Although, obviously, it probably should.) And I don’t care how much you try to convince me that Eric Clapton is God, “Sunshine of Your Love” is a horrible fucking song, and if you weren’t so busy eating mushrooms and trying to get laid the summer it came out, you might be able to realize that, too.

So, really, old timer, once you accept that the world of music today is just as vibrant and as rich as back when Neil Diamond was topping the charts, an entire universe of music opens up to you. It simply becomes a matter of discovering what you like.

Were you a fan of Neil Diamond? Well, are you familiar with the musical stylings of Death Cab For Cutie? They’ll make your toe tap. Were you a fan of Gladys Knight & The Pips? Have you heard of Sharon King & The Dap Kings? Oh my geez. She’ll make you slap your mama. Country music more to your liking? Well, the Zac Brown Band is making some great music. You should check it out. Or, if you are a Merle Haggard afficianado, this new fellow named Jeff Bridges just came out with a new album that might be just what you’re looking for.

Foreign music is so much more exciting today. It’s beyond just the British Invasion. Jens Lekman is incredible. Personally, I love Robyn, too, because I’m wild and crazy like that. Oh, and I cannot let another minute go by without mentioning one of the truly most exciting pop groups to emerge from England in quite some time, Florence & The Machine.

For pure rock & roll, I have been in love with Kings of Leon since the early aughts. It’s never too late to learn about them, but I would start as soon as possible, as the band is starting to fracture. Who knows if they’ll ever make another album? Family bands and mega-rock stardom will do that to you. But, every single album that they’ve made is amazing.

For perfect pop stylings, I don’t know how anyone could find fault with Mates of State. Their Rearrange Us album is one of my frequent go-to’s when I need a little pep on my commute home.  

Since I don’t write about music for a living, I don’t even know how to describe My Morning Jacket’s music. But, if you want to listen to a band that tries to capture soaring symphonic melodies through their electric guitars, you might want to check them out. They definitely know the roots of American rock and roll. And, then, of course, you can’t mention roots of American rock and roll without bowing with ultra respect to one Mr. Jack White.

The beauty of talking about how much exciting music is being created is that I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface here. There is almost too much great music out there nowadays to keep track of. But, if you’re looking to get started, go to that metracritic.com website I mentioned earlier. Or, you can just follow Rosanne Cash on Twitter and pay attention to whomever she is listening to. You can’t really go wrong there. Just don’t ask her to mention everyone she loves after she’s had a hard week of work. She’s liable to just stare at you blankly while reaching for a bottle of chardonnay.

I Need Some Viagra to Boost My Lust For Life

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Get out there!

In the 90s, I developed an intense dislike for that hipster voiceover artist on those Carnival Cruise Line commercials. “Get out there!” she commanded in a husky, playful tone as Iggy Pop’s Lust For Life throbbed in the background. In our stained pajamas on our dusty couches, we enviously watched as smiling, athletic waterskiers, jet skiers and rockwall climbers enthusiastically had the time of their lives during the vacation of their dreams. Of course, what wasn’t advertised as much was that those same vacationers were sometimes getting so drunk on those obscene, floating pleasure palaces that they would fall overboard in the middle of the night and their bodies would never be recovered. Putting yourself “out there” can have some unpleasant consequences.

I experienced the anxiety of that firsthand this week when I thought I had been blocked by a celebrity on Twitter.

It’s not really important who it was, (although here’s a hint: her first name is Rosanne and if Johnny Cash walked through her door she would wave excitedly and say “Hi, Daddy!”), the important thing to know is how the interaction made me feel. Because, if we have learned only one thing about this blog so far, it’s all about me. And this little Twitter episode made me flush with anxiety and reminded me that, no matter how big my boobs get, on the inside I’ll always be a scared, insecure little girl. An insecure little girl with enormous breasts.

(I didn’t really want to mention my breasts in the above paragraph but, if there is one thing I learned from that writing seminar I imagine I took with Michael Chambon and Richard Russo, it’s to reference the twins as frequently as possible, even when writing a clemency letter to a governor or a pope. Keeps the reader’s eyes rivetted on the page.)

Admiring Rosanne Cash is not a fresh and exciting new adventure in my life. I’ve been doing that for as long as I can remember. There are two things that I am proud of in this world. One is the soft, curvaceous set of mammary glands that I squeeze into my overworked bra every morning, (Eyes on the page, people!), and the other is that on a somnolent Sunday morning, I got to stand in the doorway of the King’s Record Shop, right where Rosanne Cash stood for the album cover of the same name in Louisville, Kentucky. Some people have their Abbey Road moment, whereupon they try to replicate that iconic picture of the Beatles. I have my King’s Record Shop moment.

I also happen to think that album is the finest country album from that era, but I digress.

As a self-proclaimed feminist, I have always been drawn to strong, intelligent, independent women who are not afraid to step outside of someone else’s shadow, and so it should come as no surprise that I admire Ms. Cash. She’s never really struck me as someone who tries to be someone she is not. She has this wonderful combination of talent and brains and style and grace mixed with this down-to-earth quality that makes her fame and success seem natural and free-flowing. She’s endured many scares and potential tragedies with quiet courage and strength. I spent a few years in the early “aughts” reading a blog that she maintained and it helped me appreciate her overall intellect, aesthetic, and political viewpoint. She is an outstanding writer. And, through it all, through the highs and the lows, her music just keeps getting better. She is aging like a fine wine and she truly is an American treasure.

If I ever met her in person, I would try to tell her how much of a genuine inspiration she is, how much I appreciate her unique musical gifts and how the grace of her life is helping me see that not all celebrities are pretentious, narcissistic assholes with no redeeming qualities other than a pretty face or a gorgeous sense of entitlement. (I’m looking at you, Ashton Kutcher!) Unfortunately, if I ever did get an opportunity to meet her, I probably wouldn’t say any of that. I would probably sound an awful lot like the “I like turtles!” kid.

“I like your music!” “You’re really great!”

I know exactly how I feel about Rosanne Cash, but I’m not so sure how I feel about Twitter.

Twitter is a strange social media concept. It is incredibly illusory. No one you actually know in real life uses Twitter, so you latch onto celebrities, musicians and comics, eager to see the niblets of brilliance that will be tweeted from their phones. It doesn’t take long to discover, though, that…well…most of them are kind of dicks. But you can’t really tell anyone in the Twitterverse that they are banal or vain or way too obsessed with cock jokes, because that is simply not done. You either admire uncritically or you…unfollow.

But then there’s Ms. Cash. I’ve been following her for months and not one cock joke! She’s taken her enormous writing skills and condensed them down into this techno haiku that brightens an otherwise dull, dark Twitterverse. And she interacts with people, so it’s very easy to get caught up in the sense of community that she fosters with her Twitter feed, because…well…she cultivates a sense of community.

So imagine my horror when I thought I had been blocked! The anxiety that races through the brain.

What did I say? Did I interject myself one too many times into her world? Did I become a nuisance? Did I say something to offend her? Had she grown sick of me, yet another desperately lonely “tweep” who continually interrupted her otherwise sensational day with my pathetic little attempts to communicate with her?

This is why you don’t put yourself out there, Laurie. Not only should you not go parasailing in Jamaica, you shouldn’t even try to talk to anyone above your station. You’re just a bystander. Go stand in the corner and don’t speak until spoken to, please. And, trust me: No one will speak to you.

That and more is what you feel when you realize that someone you’ve never met rejects you in a way that you didn’t even realize was possible when the flip phone was first invented. It is unpleasant and nerve-wracking and not something I want any of my gentle-hearted friends to endure. So, fuck Carnival Cruise Lines. Don’t get out there. Just stay inside and play Free Cell. If you need to feel connected with life, get a cat. After you talk to it long enough, you will be surprised at how vociferously it reacts to the sound of your voice.

Of course, it turns out that she hadn’t blocked me at all. It was simply that the tweet I was trying to send her was too long. I couldn’t send it until it was shortened.

But, I think the lesson I learned was a valuable one, which is that sometimes it is okay to just be an admiring bystander. Either that or I am just too plain fucking stupid to use Twitter.

My breasts and I thank you for listening.