Eras

It doesn’t take much to keep me up at night. My mind gets stuck on something and wrestles with it until my body finally collapses into sleep. Sometimes it’s a melody that won’t leave me alone; other times it’s a lyric trying to come through. On those nights, I keep pen and paper under my pillow and write snippets I can hardly read in the morning. I used to use a tiny flashlight, but I found it woke me up too much. I figure if there’s anything useful, I’ll be able to decipher enough of my scrawl to jog my memory in the morning.

Last night I couldn’t sleep because I was pumped up from seeing Taylor Swift’s Eras movie. I found myself going back to my late twenties, early thirties (like Taylor is now) and reliving the first concert I did singing my own songs. I was 29. The show was at The Painted Bride in North Philadelphia, a warehouse theater with beams and mechanicals running everywhere across the ceiling. I sang, Eddy Mann played guitar and operated a Linn drum that played pre-programmed grooves, and a woman named Sue, whose surname I’ve forgotten, played a keyboard she strapped to her chest like a guitar. All three of us had our hair teased upward, mine with a pinkish tint from a henna wash. I had ten songs. I called the show different shoes, and like Taylor, I changed costumes between songs – only shoes in my case, but still. I went barefoot for the opening song – me, all in black, backlit so the audience only saw me in silhouette, sandals for a song called “Mirage”, red Converse sneakers for an adolescent angst song called “Friday Night”, black velvet slings for a jazzy number called “French New York”, and turquoise patent leather pumps for a 200 beat-per-minute song called “Feeling Modern”. You get the idea. My songwriting was all over the map. I was searching for my voice, of course, experimenting, but also loving all kinds of songs. Still do. Our show in 1987 lasted forty minutes. I didn’t know how to do the banter between songs yet, so we just played them straight through and called it a night. Not a great start. But it was a start. My point is that, like Taylor, I was inclined towards the theatrical. I was listening to Jane Siberry, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, and King Crimson. I wanted to be like them. Courageous, inventive, and big on stage. I didn’t follow through on the theatrical part of my dreams, but it was fantastic to see Taylor do it.

I don’t’ know too much about Taylor Swift’s music. The only songs I know are songs my teen-aged students have asked me to teach them. But I didn’t go to her movie for the songwriting. I went for the experience of seeing a young woman fulfill her dreams in gigantic proportion. I went to see the phenomenon, the talent, the energy, the love that is heaped on her and the love she returns in equal measure with her music. Watching her do her thing was revolutionary for this aging songwriter. I loved every moment of her show, and so did Brent.

I loved the black and white costumes Taylor’s dancers wore for the 1989 portion of her show. It reminded me of this picture taken for different shoes by Dee Philips in 1987. Another era, for sure, and it sure was fun.

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