Please, make it stop.

I am drowning.

I clearly thought I was better than I am.

Every week, I go further under, and I try but I just can’t get out from beneath this weight.

For years, I imagined what it would be like to be the person I find myself today,  and the sad fact is — that person is a fraud.

A pretender, someone who claimed to love reading, when really — all she wanted was a tote bag.

Okay, not just the tote bag. I wanted the apartment on the Upper West Side, the big sunglasses, the lox and bagels from Zabar’s. A short story now and then, or a restaurant review.

Not the crushing weight of constant analysis: political, cultural, moral. That’s right. I am not up to the task of being a subscriber to the New Yorker.

But I don’t have the heart to cancel my subscription.

Honey, remember how we always talked about moving to Northern California? Why don’t we just head out there, y’know — just…go?

Is it really worth it to do that change of address thing for the post office? I mean, how much mail do we really get anymore? We can probably find some nice people to sell the house to. This area is totally coming up. All kinds of people are looking for places to live around here, people like us. Ones who, y’know, read? Stuff like the New Yorker? That and the Greene County Examiner?

I feel better already. Just knowing I don’t have to chuckle knowingly at another cartoon. I mean, I could if I had to but — life is short and it’s kind of a relief knowing I’m not as clever as I thought I was.

You’re on your way to Austin when you read that the state of Texas is suing the city of Austin for refusing to enforce the anti-sanctuary city bill. Remember that you put your finger on the map and said “I want to go here”.  Luck and timing aren’t really your strong suits.

*

You and Elizabeth McQueen who’s opening the Austin show sit in a happy hour bar and have a quick bite before playing. She’s forty, you’re fifty-eight. You talk about children, making music, what it’s like in Austin these days. She is closer to your daughter in age than she is to you.  You  remember when forty seemed like shouldn’t it be time to give this up? That’s when you moved to Nashville and realized you were only getting started. You still feel forty.

You need your glasses to: drive, read, look at your phone, read a menu, make sure your Instagram photos are actually in focus, string your guitar, check your makeup, put on your makeup. You’re not forty anymore.

*

You get off to a little bit of a rocky start in Austin, forgetting the words to a song you’ve sung hundreds of times. How come the audience is on your side? They are here for you. You wonder why you don’t play a gig every single day of your life.

*

After the first show, you open the calculator on your phone to add up the money in versus money out – how much you made from the gig and merch and will need to make on this trip vs. car rental, hotels, parking at Newark, gas. An amount comes up on the screen from the last time you closed up the bar after your Monday night shift and you think of how sometimes working those shifts you wish you were out doing gigs and now here you are, but doing the bar shift is so much simpler with no expectations or pressure – “let me make at least as much as a bar shift each night and anything else is gravy,” you decide.

*

The opener in a tiny room in a bar in San Antonio is a pretty young woman in Mexican dress who plays to a full room doing mariachi covers and Linda Ronstadt tunes. She’s sweet and has a beautiful voice but you just kind of wish she wasn’t there. When she introduces Poor Poor Pitiful Me as “another Linda Rondstadt song!” you caw from the corner of the room “It was written by Warren Zevon, not Linda Ronstadt! Know what you’re singing, it’s your job!” in the voice of an embittered crone. “I opened for him you know! He was kind. He’s dead now!” the crone shouts. Thankfully realize the voice is only in your head and you’re just patiently nodding along and smiling, up until the final song where she plays that Mexican standard Ay Ay Ay without a trace of irony. Resist the urge to start drinking. Have fun playing to a handful of fans and take the opportunity to play songs you don’t usually play and leave out the ones people always ask to hear.

*

Navigate the barbq ordering process in City Market in Luling – the restaurant part is big and bright with a counter but there’s a dark door that says ENTER HERE TO ORDER and there’s maybe a hint of flames and smoke back there but you’re a little afraid it’s all a big joke on first-timers and you’ll walk in to a broom closet while the whole restaurant laughs. Ask at the drinks counter and they say “Yes, go in there and order your meat.”

An old man in a snappy fedora and immaculate white shirt sits at a nearby table chatting with some strangers. “My wife says she’s giving up barbq,” he says as he munches on a sauce-laden rib. “Something on the news about carcinogens? I say for God’s sake we’ve all gotta die – let it be from something we love!” You’re half-sure the man is an actor hired by the barbq place, or the state of Texas.

*

After lunch, you see two men about the same size – one black and one white, the white one with a cowboy hat – carrying an antique table along the sidewalk. You try to figure out the story –  are they lovers, robbers – maybe you’ve watched too many episodes of Hap & Leonard?

Stroll on the shady side of the street and stop into the antique mall. You’re browsing the old linens and leopard-printed shoes and admiring a photo of a black gospel group in flashy outfits when you catch a glimpse of an older woman across the counter: she’s a little rough and weatherbeaten, like Thelma or Louise (whichever was the older one) a decade or two on – you realize you’re looking into a mirror.

The white man in the cowboy hat and the black guy come back in. The white guy looks like an older rancher. The black man is the proprietor of the antique mall. His wife appears from behind a rack of sequined costumes. You recognize her from the gospel group photo. “Is that your husband?” she asks, about the rancher who’s buying some chairs to go with the antique table.

*

Checking into the hotel in Houston, the desk clerk says “You don’t look anything like your photo” after you hand her your ID. That is your blessing and curse – where other people are apologetic about their bad driver’s license photo, even your worst ID picture looks more glamorous than you ever could in real life.

Still, you check the website of that night’s venue for the set time and see they’ve used a stock photo of a microphone instead of the picture you sent. Imagine this means they’re challenged at putting photos on their website and not afraid your photo is so offputting that it would literally repel customers who’d otherwise be interested in the show. But wonder all the same…

*

In some of the clubs, there are photos on the wall of all the performers who’ve played over the years. You see friends and musicians you admire; ones you’ve crossed paths with; a singer who quit your early band before she ever played a show with you and her head had to be cut out of the group photo and replaced with a different singer. You marvel at how many of these musicians are still hard at it, and how many are gone. You see your own face from twelve years ago, looking defiant. That’s how long it’s been since you toured solo. You’re not forty-six anymore.

*

It’s sweet how in every town, at least one or two people ask how’s Eric. You tell them he’s in Leeds, or Leicester. But he’s with you too because – when you’re not playing, and even sometimes when you are, everything you experience you think how he would enjoy it, or not or what he would say.

*

There’s a piece of cheese you’ve been carrying in your bag since you left home – Saint-Marcellin from the fancy store in Hudson. You keep meaning to throw it away, but every time you look for a trash can you can’t find one. At the Airbnb in Austin you don’t want to be the guest who left an old piece of cheese in the bathroom wastebasket, so you carry it to the next place, and the one after that. You promise yourself NO MATTER WHAT – how late at night and hungry you get, YOU WILL NOT eat this cheese.

*

A workman in a high visibility vest comes into the club in the tiny town of Crockett – it’s an old feed store where Lightnin’ Hopkins played often – and asks if you play the blues. You don’t want him to think you’re going to sit down and pull out a bottleneck or start wailing soulfully, so you say no. During your set, you realize you do play a form of the blues, because so many of your songs are about life’s challenges. Maybe the situations are too mundane to merit soulful wailing, but they’re real. The workman is probably home asleep in front of the TV.

*

Finally find a trash can in Crockett and dump the cheese.

*

Your friend Scott gave you a stack of CDs to listen to. It feels almost nostalgic now, CDs. You pop in the Continental Drifters, it’s a collection of covers you heard them sing a dozen times and haven’t heard in years. Driving the back roads towards Dallas, you sing along with Peter, Susan and Vicky; Robert, Mark, Carlo or Russ. You’re in the Cowsills, the Bangles, the dBs; Hollies, Flying Burrito Bros and Fairport Convention all at once. You’re a Drifter too.

*

Stay in the Belmont Hotel after your Dallas show.  It’s deco splendor on a cliff overlooking the city. You go for a swim in the Mexican-tiled pool on Mother’s Day morning, the sky a deep blue and no humidity –  you feel like the richest woman in Dallas

Realize you were treated with respect and appreciation by every place you played on this trip – you are the richest woman in Dallas.

You’d thought it would be fun to stay at Austin Motel your last night, but the price has doubled from what you and Eric paid last year. You look on Hotwire and score a 4 1/2 star hotel cheap, the only catch is it’s outside of town. Fifteen minutes from downtown, you check into a mountainside villa of Italianate luxury and splendor, and wonder if the whole thing is a ruse, a kidnapping plot (by whom? for what?) as three male models help you out of your car. There are suits of armor in the lobby, ancient crests, fountains, marble and frescoes – and none of this existed two years ago. Because it’s Austin, everyone is super-friendly. You’re possibly the only guest in the hotel. When you come back late at night, your bed’s been turned down and your guitar has been carefully placed on a luggage rack. It’s a little creepy. But the sheets are incredible.

*

Your friend takes you to see Brian Wilson in Austin – not the first time you’ve seen him but you’re sitting twenty feet away from the man and his fabulous band and from the first notes of California Girls, you’re overwhelmed by love – for music, Brian, your friend Scott who brought you here, every player on the stage. You feel very lucky to be here. Al Jardine is right in front of you too, singing Wake the World and Add Some Music To Your Day, these are all songs from records you listen to endlessly because they feel. so. good. Blondie Chaplin comes out and he is music. Seeing a show in Austin, like playing one, is a pleasure. Damn it, no matter how much it grows you still love the place.

No matter how little it makes sense, and you think you should do something else, you still love music most.

“I think you’ll enjoy being here,” the director said as she showed him through the facilities.

They looked in the library: a wall of poetry, philosophy, music biography and memoir. DVD and VHS movies on a low shelf. He noticed Still Crazy and Payday in the collection: impressive.

The dining hall featured a breakfast buffet that reminded him of those free Super 8 and Hampton Inn spreads of years ago. A ponytailed resident was removing a waffle from the “make your own” station. Perpendicular to that a table of cold cuts was beginning to sweat, and in a cooler on the floor, budget-brand beverage bottles and cans floated in tepid water. Funny how that made him feel at home.

“Let’s just take a peek in the activities room and see what they’re up to.”

A group of older gentlemen were seated in a circle, guitars in their laps. Some were white-haired, others dyed auburn or black, with eyebrows to match. On closer inspection, one of the gentlemen was a lady. They all wore variations of a uniform: straight-legged jeans, black t-shirts with faded white logos; well-worn plaid shirts with western details; a leather vest here and there. A few examples of interesting footwear peeped out from the jeans: pointy-toed snakeskin boots; sport sandals over socks patterned with sayings that spoke of the late 2010’s: “Fuck This Shit” and “Beer: It’s What’s For Breakfast.”

“Now this one I wrote in a Motel 6,” one of them said, as the others nodded supportively. A few chuckled.

Troubadour was the title of the song.

I never thought I’d get this far

With an okay voice and a Kay guitar

I’ve seen it all, boy I’ve been around

And a troubadour has to lay it down

He sang the same verse twice but nobody noticed or cared. He was singing their lives, here at the Home For Senior Singer/Songwriters.

Then they played a drinking game, going around the circle telling stories about those they’d encountered along the way. Anytime someone heard a name of a fallen friend they’d done time in the trenches with – shared a stage, a publisher, a wife or husband, a battered vehicle, a bottle – they took a drink. Most of them drank coffee or water, a few drank herbal tea, a very few old warriors sipped Basil Hayden from their mugs. But when they heard a name that resonated, they drank deep whatever it was, and looked off into the distance, like looking at the neon beer signs at the back of a bar, or ceiling lights reflecting off the bald heads in a house concert crowd on a suburban Saturday night.

There were tales of names celebrated and names obscure. The stories all had a black humor in common. The songwriters listened to the stories with heads cocked and smiles of recognition, each story reminding them of stories of their own: that night in Denver, or Cleveland or Iowa City.

This winter storm where five people showed and they played anyway, by candlelight.

That promoter who put you up in his Victorian house, but wouldn’t let you sleep until he’d subjected you to a few hours of Al Stewart performances he’d collected and cataloged over the years, the tip of the iceberg but you’d pleaded that the next day was an eight hour drive.

They quoted this line or that great lick in song after song written by those they’d been lucky to sit alongside, and since they were no longer here to do it themselves the old songwriters played their songs for them.

Then someone mentioned Greg Trooper, and to a man (and woman) the craggy faces softened. He’d crossed paths with most of them, and they all had a favorite song or story. Ireland, or 21st Century Boy; Everything’s A Miracle. He had so many.

But there was a memory in each of them too deep to talk about; a kindness he’d done for them  too specific to share. A generosity of spirit that had lifted them up when they’d needed it, and along with his outward talents  it was this ability to give that made Greg someone they would never forget. When they sang his songs, that spirit filled the room.

As they all sang along to “This I’d Do” the visitor joined in from beside the potted plant. He’d met Greg too. He wasn’t ready to retire yet, but when he was, he knew this would be fine company to be in.

A shuttle driver came in and announced he was leaving in fifteen minutes.

“Where are they going?” the visitor asked the director.

“Oh, he drives them into town for their gigs,” she said. “Y’know, people’s eyesight. Too many DWIs. It’s a service we provide.”

“You mean – they’re not retired?” he asked.

She laughed. “You know better than I do the answer to that question,” she said. “How would they pay – “ she waved her arm “- for all this?”