Go West, Young Woman: The Tree Ring Tradition

Much to my chagrin, we had no plans for New Year’s Eve this year. None in our Circle of Us did either so I guess there’s comfort in doing nothing separately…together. But I like putting on a fancy dress and heels, having cocktails made for me and eating appetizers while wearing silly hats and talking. Talking all night about everything and nothing with the people I love so much–out and about in a city that has loved me as much as I’ve loved her for all these years. This was the first year in years that, worldwide pandemic aside, none of us made the effort, which actually feels like the rightful end to a year headlined by The Great Resignation.

But from the bedroom windows of my 1931 Doelger home, we can see clear to downtown on a good night. Past the treetops of Golden Gate Park, the spires of St. Ignatius, and the abominable tip of that god forsaken Salesforce Tower, we had a perfect view of San Francisco’s fireworks. Sure, we could only see the top half of this impressive display but I was witness to it from the comfort of my own bed, which I’ve snugged up and centered into the bay windows. I only left the warmth of my fella and our animals once that night to pop my head out of the kitchen window that never properly closes to ask the neighbor kid to PLEASE not shoot illegal fireworks directly into the backyard that my bedroom overlooks. Hell hath no fury like a “single woman, not divorced,” who sees fire coming at her home and can’t remember what damage is covered by her insurance policy. Maybe today I’ll resolve to be a real adult.

I was overjoyed to see these fireworks return since they were cancelled last minute last year, another victim of the pandemic we’re all pretending is over. Plus, we’re heading to Miami for a wedding in the Spring, last night I made plans for a Santa Fe road trip with two of my favorite women, and, in the final throes of December I finally ordered a Clipper Card after living in San Francisco for 20+ years. Proving that old resolutions, although delayed, can still find life at some point. Some things can live on despite an unusual end to and start of a new year. Every January 1st, without fail, my main music friend Morgan makes a Top Ten Albums list that defined the previous year for him. I’m just not together enough to chronicle my life like that; ironic for a woman who does history for money. But I do seek out The Tree Ring anthology (2014) every New Year’s Day and usually listen to it, here and there, throughout the first week of whatever year I find myself in.

The Tree Ring and Joel P. West have been featured on this blog before so I won’t go into all that he is and what The Tree Ring means to me. But I will say, as I grow older, it’s interesting to see what music grows with me. West is from San Diego so maybe there’s an unspoken kinship here. Like finding an American while traveling abroad and feeling close to this person you have nothing in common with except the one thing you both have in common. Regardless, they are a refuge in a foreign lands as is The Tree Ring for me. Embarking on every new year is sort of like flying to the UK: you know you’ll speak the same language but you still don’t know what you’re in for.

West spends much of his time writing film scores now, the most recent of which were Chef’s Table and Shang-Chi and the Legend of Ten Rings. January feels like the opening credits to a newly released film anyway, so going cinematic with his music soundtracking the first part of the month always feels right. And maybe he’s our generation’s Danny Elfman? He’s sure fitting that bill for me. I’m a notoriously terrible sleeper and I could not go to bed when I was young unless the music of Thomas Newman, James Horner, or Danny Elfman was softly wafting out of the CD player next to my bed. Particularly Elfman’s music in Edward Scissorhands, which was on repeat for much of my teen years.

Now, I cannot start a new year without listening to the expansive, hopeful, soulful, Joel P. West because he brings the available light of the oncoming year into focus for me. And because I am, if nothing else, a traditional woman who is a lover of music.

Ringing in the New Year

It’s 2023 and here I am, finishing the last of an Irish Whiskey cake leftover from dinner last night. Perhaps I’ll be healthier tomorrow, but probably not. New year, same old self.

The myth of renewal when one year changes over is based in nothing outside our persistence in believing it. January 1, 2023 is just the tomorrow of December 31, 2022 and will be the yesterday of January 2, 2023. Nothing more, nothing less. But, of course, what makes the promise of New Years real is the strength in which we believe in it. A resolution is not a revelation, it’s just one more decision to see through (if you can) except if it becomes the decision–something like filing for divorce or quitting your 9-5 job to pursue art. But, this type of monumental move is often made once in a lifetime, if at all.

I once declared well-intentioned resolutions every year, but the only one I ever really kept was to moisturize more. Trivial but important as we all age. This tradition ended when I authoritatively announced (a little wobbly, after the clock passed midnight at Stookey’s Club Moderne) that 2020 would be the year I traveled more and regularly rode public transit! As you can imagine, that worked out great. And while I don’t put the same weight onto one year moving into the next like I once did, there is still something special about this time of year.

Maybe it’s the weather that encourages us all to stay inside or our communal decision to slow down around the holidays. As a society, it feels like we let each other have a break. In this spirit, I did a wild thing and took two whole weeks off starting on December 19th and ending tomorrow. It’s the first time I’ve put work aside to be intentionally unproductive since my father died in 2010. Grief makes you want to disappear into something. Some people shoot up, others drink, I worked as many hours of the week as I could physically bear so I wouldn’t have to be alone with myself.

We have an unhealthy commitment to overworking here in the United States, so it was fine that I dodged my grief by dodging myself like this. Ambition is rewarded, no matter how blind. In the meantime, I lost my grandmother (2013), my mother (2018), a beloved uncle (2019), the woman who launched my career (2020), and a surrogate mother (2022)–all but one to cancer. I lost my health (2013/2020) and let go of anyone who reminded me of what I once had as well as both childhood homes (2012/2020). I no longer had a foothold in Southern California, a place I’ve come to love more every minute I’m away from it, or a firm grasp on who I am as a woman of flesh and spine and memory.

In the meantime, I lost myself. So, I am work and work is who I am, because I am now unmoored and what I was is no longer grounded on this earth. What I was is buried six feet beneath the soil of five separate cities, none of which I live in.

So, I put down roots in San Francisco and bought a home in 2021 with what will always feel like money I did not earn–money my father earned and never had the chance to enjoy. In what I hope was the right move, I bought a single family home despite being childless to have room for everyone I lost, and have space for everything they left behind in my inheritance. I bought a home in which to host holiday dinners, despite the fact that I cannot cook (although am trying) and am a “single woman, not divorced”–a category I checked several times in my mortgage paperwork that would have been absent had a man been signing in my place. I bought a house so I could finally bring the people I lost above ground, introduce them to the living I am trying to keep close, and be at home with myself.

On December 25, 2022, I hosted a baker’s dozen for dinner in this Doelger home that was last sold in 1956. We cooked a 16-pound prime rib roast from an old-school neighborhood meat market called Guerra’s, drank all the alcohols, and laughed extremely hard about something I can’t quite recall now but know, for a fact, was hilarious. And after that, I only left this home for walks on the beach in between the rains. I read voraciously like I haven’t been able to in years, listened to records annotated in my mother’s handwriting, watched movies new and old, cleaned a house destroyed by holiday merriment, and spent quality time with my cat. I found comfort in silence, in stillness, with momentary breaks of chaos evoking that scene in Home Alone where the extended McAllister family has pizza the night before they leave town.

The last two weeks of being mostly alone with myself wasn’t part of a resolution but is hopefully part of an evolution moving towards…I don’t know what…contentment? I hope to be a person at ease with her regrets and failures, measured in context with her accomplishments and the realization that what she does can have impact but that she, in the grand scheme of things, does not matter. As Meg Ryan’s character in You’ve Got Mail said, “I lead a small life–valuable, but small–and sometimes I wonder: do I do it because I like it, or because I haven’t been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn’t it be the other way around?”

The person who will eventually cure cancer will matter. The person who, with an apron on and a cat in her lap, writes this blog post that a few people will eventually read does not and will not matter. So, you’re probably wondering, why write a blog post at all if nothing matters? I suppose it boils down to this: I release this as an act of courage but mostly as an act of writing. This remarkably productive unproductive time has allowed me to recapture a part of my life before loss that was, and is, elemental to who I am. I rejoined my life as a thinker instead of a doer, met myself as an artist and not a nonprofit administrator. I don’t have the audacity to think people will care about anything that is found here on Nostos Algos, but I do think that a single act has a greater chance of becoming a habit if it’s made visible. For someone to be a writer, they have to make a habit of writing–of synthesizing the things they see and read and and hear and feel by pouring it all into words with regularity.

I want to be a writer who is seen as an artist free from her motives as a museum professional. When you’ve spent 12 years trying to disappear into ambition, visibility this naked is a revolution.