Lane's Back Nine – my online diary as a 55-year old

“Nothing is impossible, I have found. For when my chin is on the ground, I pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again.” – from the American Songbook

This is one of my other “go-to” songs….I’ve been listening to it on repeat for about 15 minutes now, while processing an event that was very challenging, but from which I’m still standing. Today is one of those days where as much as I feel down and broken, I feel just as much a desire to be resilient and get back up.

Feedback is never easy, whether its from a close friend, constructive criticism from a boss or peer, or when it comes from your own child. I received some honest feedback today that is making me take a very hard look in the mirror, to the point of questioning what I’m doing with my life…it made me question if I’m just going through the motions, and trying to be “numb” to get by, or if I should be doing something completely different – not necessarily better, but something where I might feel more of a connection compared to what I’m feeling right now. (Writer, perhaps?)

Here’s the other issue that’s weighing very heavily on my mind today…my daughter hasn’t spoken to me since May of 2019, when she called me to ask that I not come to her 6th grade graduation party. She’s upset at me for many reasons (as told to her by her mother), and it’s a feeling of failure as a parent that I struggle with every day. I call every night and leave voicemails that are not returned, and I send gifts/cards that are not acknowledged. I struggle when people ask me how my daughter is doing, because she and I have such a disconnect right now. I know at some point she will start to question things as she gets older, and she’ll realize that not only do parents make mistakes, but hopefully she’ll also realize that we make decisions that we know will be good in the long term, even if they may seem wrong when we do them. Sting said it best – “If you love somebody, set them free.”

Between these two issues, I’ve been feeling pretty rock bottom today. Wallowing in self-pity and misery is not an option anymore – I’ve been on a “slow burn” with carrying the anger and frustration about my daughter, and this has been impacting my ability to communicate with others. (Re-reading this last sentence feels like a gut punch.) I’m struggling to see the things that I do well in life right now – I know I have a lot of positives – I just can’t feel them. In therapy, we talk about “the tape that plays in my head” of all past failures and mistakes….I’m trying (and I will) shut that tape off. I can only worry about the things I can control – it’s very hard when you see how things could be, but you just don’t know how to get there.

I know what my two major goals are for this year….to reconnect with my daughter, and to not let what I’m feeling on the inside affect how I communicate on the outside. Even though the two are intertwined, I can’t let this bring me down anymore.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference….and the strength to get up off the mat.

I offer no apologies whatsoever for my love of the music of Chuck Mangione, David Sanborn and Marcus Miller. I’ve been very lucky to have had a few “musically divine interventions” in my life, and their music was involved in each one of them.

I started playing trumpet in the late summer of 1977. For my 8th birthday that August, my mom bought me Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good” album (on 8-track!). Listening to this album was a completely new experience for me, as I had not listened to a lot of music with the trumpet/flugelhorn as the lead instrument up to that point. This was back in the day when instrumental pop songs were still played on the radio (thanks for fucking that up, Kenny G!), so there was a mainstream following as well. It’s not a stretch to say that I listened to this album every day that I possibly could between 1977-1981, when my dad got the Main Squeeze album.

This album has some serious groove….the title track is gospel at its best, and hearing a flugelhorn with a wah pedal is pretty badass. For years this album was out of print, but now that it’s on iTunes, I will always have the opportunity to cherish it.

I first met David Sanborn in the Spring of ‘84. His son (and my high school friend) Jonathan was playing with his band Off-White doing a concert in our high school auditorium. David came up from NYC for the concert. Jonathan asked me to introduce the band (“We have some funk for your delight….ladies and gentlemen, Off-White!” Not bad for a dorky 14-year-old.), and they were amazing! My friend Chris played alto sax in the band (using the same Dukoff D8 mouthpiece that David used at the time) and they covered David’s tune Butterfat, which he used to play into commercial quite frequently when sitting in with Paul Shaffer’s band on Letterman. They fucking nailed it, and I remember watching David’s face in the audience from the wings, and he had this incredible look of pride.

After the concert, David came backstage, and he was incredibly gracious to everyone, including my dad, who was the teacher on duty during the concert. He thought my intro was pretty cool, and to say that I was blown away does not do justice to how awestruck that experience was. I started listening to all of his albums like there was no tomorrow. This is how I REALLY discovered the music of Marcus Miller, and had another incredible moment of musical divine intervention.

I started playing bass in the fall of 1985. The whole year prior to this, I was obsessed with listening to my David Sanborn albums featuring Marcus Miller, especially the live, “Straight to the Heart” album, as well as Marcus’ “Suddenly” and “Superspy” albums. I wanted to sound like Marcus Miller (even though I was playing a shitty Peavey Fury bass), and although I didn’t realize it at the time, this was when I truly started to find my musical identity. This music did far more than just resonate with me – it cheered me up when I was down, and when I needed to get psyched up, my go-to song was (and still is) Marcus’ Run For Cover! Summers were not complete unless I saw Sanborn perform up at Saratoga Performing Arts Center, and when his “Double Vision” album with Bob James came out in ‘86, it more than knocked me on my ass!

In the fall of ‘86, I teamed up with Chris (the alto player from Off-White) and some other friends to form the band Backtalk…we prided ourselves on playing a song that we always heard David play live (or into commercial break on Letterman), but none of us knew the name of the song. Chris knew that Marcus wrote it, so we rehearsed it, learned it, and played it on gigs calling it “The Marcus Tune”…..one of the coolest moments in my entire life was buying David’s “A Change of Heart” album (on cassette) one Saturday afternoon in February 1987, popping the cassette in the tape deck as I was leaving the mall, and the first track (Chicago Song) was the studio recorded version of The Marcus Tune! I thought we were some badass mofo’s because we were already playing the tune on gigs before the album even hit the record stores!

Fast forward to 1997….on a whim, I decided to get a personalized license plate, just to do something different. I figured SANBORN would already be taken, but lo and behold, I got this as my plate. During the summer of 2000, I went to see David at SPAC, and for fun, I took my original blue & gold Pennsylvania license plate, as the newer white blue and gold plates were issued that year. Fate intervened – a JazzTimes Magazine writer saw me with my license plate, and said I needed to have my “Moment of Zen”, and he got me front row center for the concert. At the end of the show, I handed David the license plate, reminded him of who I was (as I hadn’t seen him in years), and he graciously invited me and my friends backstage, as I gave him the license plate. To this day, every time I see him in concert in smaller venues like the Birchmere in Alexandria, he’s always incredibly nice when we see each other.

Marcus was the one I never thought I’d get to meet….after years of being “his biggest fan” (I’m biased), it just seemed like I’d never get to meet one of my biggest musical idols. I’d finally upgraded to a real Fender Jazz Bass around 2013, and I remember telling someone jokingly that if I ever met Marcus, I’d have him sign my bass. Divine intervention – two days after saying this to someone, it was announced that Marcus would be playing the Birchmere in Alexandria, walking distance from my house. The night of the concert, I put my bass in the trunk of my car and drove over to the Birchmere INCREDIBLY early, as seats are given by lottery ticket….I was almost dead center, and only three rows back from Marcus Miller….MARCUS FUCKING MILLER!!! After the show I went out to my car, brought in my bass, and was immediately told that it couldn’t be autographed. If not for Marcus’ publicist Bibi Green, who I talked to before the concert, and who overruled the decision, I would’ve gone home disappointed. Meeting Marcus was a full-circle moment. I felt like the 16 year-old kid back in my room listening to his albums, trying not to be giddy (for me, this was the equivalent of a Beatles fan meeting Paul McCartney). We had a real cool conversation (and yes, I shared the Marcus Tune story!)

For my 50th birthday, Jenn got me two of the coolest gifts ever – the chance to meet my doppelgänger, Al Roker in NYC, and the chance to see David Sanborn, Marcus Miller and Bob James perform the “Double Vision Revisited” concert at the Birchmere. In addition to having fantastic seats, she got me this as the ultimate gift.

I know this will never happen, but I can dream…I would love to see Chuck Mangione, David Sanborn and Marcus Miller on the same stage in concert…I know that Chuck is pretty much retired, but man, that would be awesome. I can’t imagine how different music would be for me (or life, for that matter) had I not taken the opportunity to listen and learn from the music of these incredibly talented musicians. I’m still inspired by them each and every day, as I still listen to each of their albums like they came out just yesterday. Chuck, David and Marcus…from the bottom of my heart, I cannot thank you enough. 😊❤️🎶🎺🎷🎸

It’s been a Happy New Year so far.

I’m sitting here in the Ft. Lauderdale airport waiting for my flight home to DC, after spending an amazing 7 days cruising the Eastern Caribbean to start the new year. It’s easy to focus on the cliche resolution of losing the holiday weight to start the year (it’s even easier to focus on weight loss after eating amazing food while away at sea!), but my resolution has a lot more thought and focus than my resolutions of years past.

After having such an amazing year of self-discovery and self-awareness, my outlook for 2020 is a lot healthier than it was for 2019. A year ago, everything was about survival (damaged relationships, and both my physical and emotional health). Because I felt very defensive in just about any and every interaction, there were a lot of things I learned about myself in hindsight.

Things are much better at the start of this year. I’ve reconnected with people who were important to me, I’ve made some amazing new friends (which will hopefully include new friends made this past week), and I’ve let go of some toxic and/or stale friendships that no longer had any value. I’m even trying to show more compassion to those who don’t show any in return, as it’s a helluva better alternative than allowing them to push my buttons anymore.

May 2020 be a year of positively looking forward, and not a year of negatively looking back.

The joy of connecting with friends and family.

The true spirit of giving.

Amazing food. The calories don’t count.

Watching Charlie Brown Christmas, Elf and Love Actually.

Grandpuppies!

Taking time to remember those who are no longer with us, and the wonderful memories of years past.

The amazing voice of Nat King Cole.

That today is the one day that people CHOOSE not to be argumentative, and we genuinely wish happiness to each other.

MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!

😊❤️🎶🎁🎄🌟

Every so often, the “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” posts make their way around Facebook…I call this the “Holiday Fruitcake” post, as it’s passed along around once a year. Although it’s great to learn this person getting an unusual superlative in high school and that person who once got stuck in an elevator with Donny Osmond, a lot of the facts given are great, but they rarely have that missing ingredient of quirkiness.

We all have those unusual and random thoughts, experiences and ideas that we don’t expect anyone to understand (and in some cases, we’re still trying to figure out ourselves). Over the last 50 years, I’ve accumulated a lifetime of quirky memories….fasten your seatbelts…..

10 Incredibly Quirky Things That People Don’t Know About Me, That They’ll Probably Never Understand, And I Really Don’t Give A Shit:

1. I have 111 pairs of socks, and 68 pairs of underwear – I just never throw the old pairs away. I have New Balance socks where my heel sticks out and Fruit of the Loom underwear that’s a thread or two away from being a loincloth with a waistband, but I still wear them even after buying new pairs to replace them. My dresser drawers are stuffed.

2. When people turn off the car without turning off the radio first drives me batshit crazy.

3. I dream in different languages that I don’t speak. I attribute this to my French and Italian diction classes as a music major, and the fact that everyone else in my family speaks Spanish. I sometimes dream in black and white.

4. The opportunity to hopefully one day play 36 holes of nude miniature golf far outweighs my desire to ever get my Master’s degree.

5. I used to eat Oreos on my way to get my teeth cleaned at the dentist, and I truly believe that karma is the reason why I have to wear Invisalign retainers as a 50-year old.

6. I posed nude for an art class in NYC 4 1/2 years ago, and it was truly one of the most positive and empowering things that I’ve ever done. (And yes, it was on my bucket list. 😎)

7. I’m 10,000% in favor of “responsible legalization,” where you’re not in a position of doing any harm (especially driving) to others. Although I don’t smoke more than once a year, it helps my creativity when writing music and lyrics, and it helped tremendously with my almost debilitating neck pain after my car accident 16 years ago. Sometimes it makes the experience of lying in the complete dark while on the floor of my den listening to Jimi Hendrix’ “Electric Ladyland” album from start to finish that much more chromesthetic.

8. I have a weird obsession of remembering license plates and the names of 80’s sitcom actors. I will never forget my friend Maria’s license plate from her car in college was 4XJ-482 or that Richard Stahl played the snarky chef on the 80’s sitcom It’s A Living. (Roger Shaft, I am forever grateful!)

9. My three favorite aphrodisiacs are the smell of lilacs in early May, the smell of Coppertone on a hot summer day, and the smell of a new car in an automobile dealership showroom. (This is why I sometimes go car shopping even though I don’t need a new car.)

10. I don’t eat Frosted Flakes or Cheerios that much anymore, but when I do, I absolutely have to use chocolate milk.

As much as the thought of seeing the looks on the faces of some of my friends after they read this post is intriguing, at the same time I truly don’t care about what shock or horror they can’t deal with..After spending almost an entire lifetime of trying to meet everyone else’s expectations and worrying about their opinions of me, THIS IS MY LIFE, with all of my flaws, my successes, my mistakes, and my quirkiness. It’s their problem, not my problem.

Quirkiness…..it’s BADASS. 😊

This was a challenging week. It would be very easy for me to slip into saying the word “stressed” and make things seem very negative. I’m choosing not to do this with this post.

I caught myself after my cynical post on the other day – I’m not deleting it, because it was how I was feeling that morning, and I own up to that. Since 4:34 this morning, I’ve been giving a lot of thought as to why I got to that point…

There are a lot of posts about how hard it is for people during the holidays….I’m one of those people. It hasn’t been that I don’t have the ability to celebrate the holidays and enjoy them with others….there are a lot of joyful occasions (birthdays) that my family celebrates in addition to Christmas…for me, it’s the reality and the finality. Both of my parents have passed away, and this time of year has always been very hard, especially since my mom passed away 7 years ago.

At 4:34 this morning, I made a choice – a choice not to feel down like I always have…there were a lot of issues in the office that were very exhausting this week, and when I took my blood pressure last night, although it wasn’t nearly as high as it was a year ago, it was still above my normal range. I also have gained weight from binge-eating junk food because it’s everywhere in sight, and I’ve been really angry at myself for doing so.

I can choose to be grumpy and pissed for the next five days, or I can say “that was yesterday, this is today” and focus on the frame of mind that I had this summer, being happy and healthy. If I could do that then, why can’t I do that now?

I’m going to enjoy the rest of this holiday season, no matter what happens. I will not be angry at myself, and I will not allow myself to feel down, because at the end of the day, it ain’t worth it.

That Avalon and Penn Sylvan have indoor pools, hot tubs and saunas that are open year-round.

That if the very negative events and circumstances from December 18, 2018 did not happen, there’s about a 20% chance I would not be alive today.

The unbelievable dichotomy of Christmas music….”Let’s give thanks to the Lord above, ‘cause Santa Claus comes tonight!” (Technically, this is keeping Christ in Christmas, right? 😂😂😂😂)

That in 8 days, shopping malls and department stores all over the country will go back to playing shitty pop music.

That in four days, the days start having more daylight again.

That on Sunday, I have a free ticket to Giants/Skins at FedEx Field, and that I’m going for no other reason than to heckle the fuck out of the New York Giants for three hours. 8 years of shitty Giants football…I’ve had enough!!

The underrated musical stylings of the late Roger Voudouris.

That on days when I feel really cynical (like this morning, perhaps?), I know that life is too short to not find something good about each and every day.

“Knights in white satin, never nearing the end. Letters I’ve written, never meaning to send.” – The Moody Blues, Days of Future Passed, 1967

I had a wonderful weekend this past weekend – I saw the Georgetown basketball game on Saturday, and celebrated an early Christmas with family yesterday. Two months ago, I was incredibly stressed about the holidays…I would not have thought it possible to have such an enjoyable weekend at this time of year.

I attribute this to learning how to “reframe” in therapy….my sessions this year have given me new perspective about many different things in my past, my present and my future (and I didn’t need Scrooge’s three ghosts to accomplish this). Therapy also has given me an incredible gift – the gift of using my written words to convey my feelings….feelings of success and failure, feelings of anger and of happiness, and feelings of forgiveness.

I truly balked at the idea of journaling, as this makes me think of all the sitcoms with the cliched “Someone read my diary” plot line. When presented with the idea of doing a blog, I was hesitant, because I wasn’t sure of how to express myself…one of my friends helped me to realize the best way of going about this – don’t define it.

Blogging has helped me find some closure to a lot of my past mistakes, and to most events from my past which I still have struggled to deal with. It has been suggested to write letters that I never mail, or burn/throw away upon completion. I’ve tried this, but it just made me feel more frustrated, because it brought the feelings about the person and/or issue to the surface, but I felt no feeling of resolution. I’ve learned how to write this blog without fear of judgement – these are my thoughts, my fears and my successes and failures, and other opinions don’t matter.

Because there are people who I thought deserved letters from me (both as a apology and letters expressing my hurt at their actions towards me), I will continue to blog about these situations, but all names will either be changed (“Francesca”) or nicknames will be used (the one and only “Miss Vitriol”).

For those of you who have voiced your support, I cannot thank you enough. This is a path of discovery, and sharing all of my previous life experiences both good and bad is something I never thought I’d have the courage to do.

This post is a letter I’ve written, and that I’m thankful to send.

Dear Miss Vitriol – I genuinely forgive you, and I hope that you have a happy holiday, but for your sake, I sincerely hope that you can become a nicer and less toxic person in 2020. 😊🌲👍🏽

I’m watching MTV while writing this post, and I’m pretty sure that I’m watching this with the same bewilderment that my parents had when they first watched this channel in 1981. Ironically, the show I’m watching is called Ridiculousness, and I have yet to see anything music-related. Back in the day, both MTV and VH-1 actually showed real music…played and sung by real musicians! I remember the year, and practically the day and moment that pop music and video changed for me…and it may never be the same for me again.

April 5th, 1994…..the day that Kurt Cobain died. Although music videos were very mainstream, the grunge movement was about musicians that hated the fame and celebrity that came along with it. Bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden ruled the airwaves, and it was the closet point where college radio and mainstream FM were similar in the music being played. After Kurt Cobain’s death, and after Woodstock ‘94 (the perfect blend of classic rock and grunge sharing the same stage), pop music shifted to Hootie & The Blowfish, it then “progressed” to Hanson, and then “Disney Rock” changed the scene forever (boy bands, the “cookie cutter” pop music of Britney and Christina before they broke away from that scene). It was the moment that pop music started to become much more about video, and less about songwriting.

The last paradigm shift of pop music around 1970/1971 had a significant difference…the music of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison was replaced by the singer/songwriter era of James Taylor, Carole King and Elton John, and social justice was strongly communicated in both the lyrics and the music of legends like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. You heard a song on the radio, and you went to the record store to buy the album. Now, you just buy the download in anticipation of the music video. With the exception of Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift and Ed Sheehan, are there any true singer/songwriters in pop music anymore?

1994 was a year that changed my life in many other ways as well…it was the year I moved to Pennsylvania from New York….it was the year I gave up on baseball altogether after the strike….it was the year where I questioned if life was like a box of chocolates…it was the year that O.J became very famous for the knife and the Ford Bronco, and this far outweighed his popularity in “The Naked Gun”…it was one of the last years where two of my favorite teams (the Giants and the Knicks) were both worth watching at the same time, and it was the year that a new show with characters named Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Joey and Phoebe would have even more of an impact on my “generation x” than any other TV show ever had….it was a year that just about everything about my life in January was completely different by December.

25 years later (half of my lifetime!), I can look back on this year as one of the most important, influential and life-changing years that I’ve ever had. It affected me socially, musically, and in some ways, spiritually. It was the year I dropped a lot of my fears and my inhibitions (thank you, AANR!), and it is a year that I will NEVER forget.