If you’ve been following/reading my Substacks for a while, you may or may not have gathered that I write and perform music in addition to vomiting all my personal stories out here as a writer. Reflecting each week has been a rewarding, if not daunting and exhausting exercise that I have tasked myself with, but one that I wonder, among many other things that I ask myself at age 49, “Why the hell am I doing it?” And when I say “it” I mean ANY OF IT! My alimony is over. And even though I applied to hundreds of “day jobs” on LinkedIn and other waste-of-time-job-hunting-apps, nothing has been fruitful. The whole reasoning behind starting a Substack was because I was searching for writing jobs and realized I needed to build a body of work as a writer if I wanted to make money at all in the field. But then it turned into another whole passion project that inspired the memoir that has been sitting on my desktop like a 3000-piece puzzle screaming to be put together for over a decade.
So here I am again…doing something I love: writing about doing something I love: performing.
And the answer to the question of “Why the hell am I doing it?!” is answered by another question, “Why the hell not?!”
It was Thursday, July 11th, 2024.
The day of the show y’all.
After two months of promotion of said show and three singles thus far (the whole album is now scheduled for release Friday, September 6th btw!), we were having an album release extravaganza that was happening no matter what: come rain or shine, hell or high water, 5 tickets sold or a sell-out. “The show must go on” isn’t just an expression. It’s real, folx.
But by the grace of god, we were sold-out. Oversold actually. All the begging and texting and threats worked…almost too well. Our teenaged sons’ punk/rock band, Crop Top (a literal garage band that formed five years ago in the garage behind our house in Red Hook, Brooklyn) was opening for us and comedian Matt Hyams (Tor’s brother) was doing stand-up in between our sets. It was a “Family Affair” in every sense of the expression. No, we didn’t sing that song together.
And just like that…BOOM! We were loading up our car and heading to Carroll Place on Bleecker Street in NYC. Yes, we were a family, but we were also individuals doing something that we love, together...but also separately…but also…on the same night at the same place. Six unique individuals, each with their own talents that have been honed and practiced and contemplated and nurtured and it was time to let it all go and be free. Easier said than done. The demons began to squawk: “Will I be able to sing all this shit back-to-back? Will I remember the lyrics? Will the sound suck like it does at every single venue in NYC? Will I look fat? Will I look old? Will I look stupid for still doing this at 49? Will my kids have fun? Will the older generation want to hear their punk music? Will Tor’s side of the family who is still mad at him show up? Or even worse, show up and ignore him?”. But that is the art of performance. Being able to let go of all the preparation and outside circumstances and trust that each moment will unfold in its right and perfect way. Buddhist life lessons nestled in a little dive bar on Bleecker Street.
And there I was again…being co-dependent (did I mention we were oversold?): wrangling seats for the people who needed them the most, making the Crop Top fans stand (they only paid $5 for their tickets so…seemed fair. Also, they were all 16-19 years old.) It was a high-class problem, my favorite kind of problem. I had fans of my French music show up…expecting me to sing in French of course, which I wasn’t, but they stayed anyway. I had friends from college show up. I had new friends show up. Our neighbors showed up. Everyone was showing up and showing out for this one! Adam Pascal (Broadway star of Rent/Aida/Pretty Woman) was sitting in our car learning the duet we were going to sing together later whilst saving the parking spot that turned from “truck loading only” to “legit” at 6 p.m. I was checking on Matt Hyams who was sitting at the bar drinking a double shot of whiskey to quell his nerves about telling jokes about his mom’s vaginal dryness knowing his mother would be sitting in the front row. In my own true mom-fashion of taking care of everyone else first, the time came to go downstairs in the all-gender bathroom and take care of my own business.
I slipped into the incredible jumpsuit my friend let me borrow from her couture shop in Red Hook, (Andrea Lauer @Risen Division) and realized that I forgot to put on deodorant. Fuck! If you stink it up you buy it, Lisa! Trust. Trust that you won’t. There will be a giant air conditioner blowing on you. It’s fine. Red lipstick. Fuck! Will it end up on my teeth while I’m singing and that will be the thing that everyone remembers about the performance? Earrings. Don’t forget your disco balls. Jammed those $5 danglers in my ears and walked up the steps to make my entrance. Fuck! I hate these fucking things! I never wear danglers! Every time I turned my head to the left or right I was getting slapped in the face. How the fuck can I sing like this?? That’s when I channeled my inner Madonna and told myself that this was what was happening. Embrace the balls. In fact, grow some balls and get the fuck out there to do what you came to do.
Crop Top rocked. The crowd roared. Matt Hyams busted guts about pedos in speedos, and his mother’s dry vagina and “mature porn” and even the 16-year-olds got the jokes. Just before Matt was about to announce my name, I saw my good friend from college standing in the wings. Peter and I were in show choir together, but it wasn’t just about cheesy smiles and jazz hands, we also starred in shows from A Little Night Music to The Fantasticks, played “what the fuck” on tour buses and wrote annual comedy roasts of our peers and professors à la Harvard’s The Hasty Pudding, only way raunchier with a Mean Girls-meets-drag show kinda vibe. During the applause he hugged me and apologized for running late from work. Then, before he pulled himself completely away he said, “You are a true artist.” Then he pushed through the crowd to sit with his husband.
Do “true artists” doubt themselves? Worry about disco balls smacking them in the face? Do they think, “Why the fuck am I doing this when I have bills to pay and mouths to feed and an aging mother and $7,000 worth of dental work to be done? And the answer came again, in the form of a question, “Why wouldn’t they?!” Artists are merely humans channeling non-human things.
“Blah, blah, blah, blah….Lisaaaaaaah Saint Louuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu” rang from the overhead speakers and it was time to shine.
Tor and I got up there and blasted through the “making of a pop album” which has now been titled “Oh Dang!”. Everyone laughed together, we cried together, our kids and their friends who had to stand the entire show danced during the dance-y songs and waved their arms back and forth to the sway of the ballads. Then we all came together at the end to perform “We Are Family” as an encore and final farewell. (I told you we didn’t sing “A Family Affair”). Tor’s family that was mad at him hugged him at the end. (Huge sigh of relief.) The boys loaded up the car with their gear like good roadies should and asked if they could hang with their friends which was code for, “we’re going to go to some clubs with our $85 fake id’s from China and get wasted.”
And then it was over.
Tor and I sat alone in silence for a minute in our Toyota Highlander.
I checked my pits to make sure I didn’t stink-up the jumpsuit I had to return the next day and then he said, “Well that’s done.” And we drove back to Red Hook, Brooklyn. I had a 1/2 glass of wine, he ate a Snickers and we went to bed. There was no special feeling. The “high” of what we worked for and accomplished never came. And that’s because the whole damn thing was the “high.”
That is what age brings.
That is what being a “true artist” is.
That is the point of it all.
So, here I am again today. Writing about a thing that happened. Something I choose each and every week to feed and nurture just like I choose each and every day to feed and nurture my kids, my music, my relationships, and knowing that “fate is gonna play it’s tune,” whether it’s the one I imagine in my head, or not. The fun part is the not knowing. Because the song Fate plays just might be more beautiful than anything I could ever imagine.
xx,
LStL
p.s. I leave you with the lyrics to our final song of the evening.
p.p.s. I am also leaving you with the raw video from the performance of said song from said evening. It is perfectly imperfect…just like life.
Here I Am Again
Like I was before
Doing that same old thing,
Going through that same old door
Don’t know why, who, what, how or when, but,
Here I am again
I know that something good is coming
That fate is, gonna play its tune
And that’s the song that I’ll be hummin’
If it takes forever, then forever couldn’t come too soon
Here I am again
Older and wiser yet
Still jumping at a chance,
Walking without a net
This is now, and that was then, so…
Here I am again
-Music & Lyrics by Tor Hyams
WRITE THE MEMOIR!!!