I can't think of a title that isn't depressing or cliche
Getting old(er) is the strangest thing. I think about it all the time. And not just the typical mourning of the passage of time and the gaining of wrinkles and weight and all that superficial stuff. Anyone who knows me knows that I am indeed concerned by these things. I'm an admitted narcissist.
But it goes beyond that. The superficial concerns begin to bleed over into thoughts of general mortality.
I was supposed to do a short tour in December with my sister, my mom, my aunt and some other family and friends. In 1997 we released The McGarrigle Family Hour album. Last year we released the McGarrigle Family Christmas album. And this year we were going to do a McGarrgle Family Christmas tour.
But we're not doing it anymore. We're doing a single show in New York, renamed The Wainwright Family Christmas show. This change was made due to an illness that could not be worked around. I won't go into the details of the illness per se, but it's obviously very troubling to me, and paired with my mom's recent cancer scare, well...you can't help but think about things.
I came to think about my own mortality before I started thinking about those around me. Typical of me, but then again, I think it's typical of most children regarding their parents. When you're very young, you harbor vague fears of your parents dying. But even then it's more of a self-centered thing. It's more about "What will I do? Who will take care of me?" I was obsessed with the musical Annie and I worried about ending up in a 1930s-era orphanage (I had little conception of eras...when you're a kid, everything is happening in the present) and wearing rags and my god, how to learn all those dance steps while scrubbing the stairs and would I be cute enough to be adopted by a Daddy Warbucks?
I picked up the wrong guy in a bar and was assaulted in Hyde Park when I was 14. I probably would have died except I pretended to have an epileptic seizure while the guy was strangling me and he ran off with my wallet. I kind of buried the incident, but was convinced I had caught AIDS and was going to die. I didn't have sex again for 5 years and never got tested during that time because I was stupid and scared and it was the 80s and no one really knew much of anything anyway.
You'd think that would have got me thinking about my own mortality pretty hardcore, but no, not really. I sailed into adolescence and my early 20s and then into my career feeling increasingly immortal. which is how you're supposed to feel when you're young and beautiful and becoming a star.
It wasn't until my excesses nearly killed me that the illusion shattered. I was very mortal and I was going to die if I didn't do something about it. And so I did and I'm doing okay, but I'll never get that beautiful illusion back. I'll never be immortal again. And I guess that's good, but it leaves you feeling weary and jaded sometimes.
By that point I was living in New York full-time and only going back home every few months to visit my mother or play a gig or whatever. And it's not until you're away from the people you used to see every day that you notice time taking its toll. All of a sudden I saw my mother was getting old. She's still beautiful, but was a bit grayer every time I went back. A few more lines around her eyes and mouth. I looked at her hands when she played the piano, noticing how the veins had become more pronounced, the fingers a little knobbier.
And it just keeps going forward. I'm sure she sees it in me when I go home. I look at pictures of myself from 10 years ago and I look like a baby. People still tell me I have a babyface sometimes, but nothing like I did then. I have a long way to go (I hope) before I hit the peak and then start sliding down. When everything starts to undo itself. When the sins of your youth truly start to make themselves known.
But, like I said, I don't care to write about my own aging process right now. I'm talking about the elder members of my family. The ones I've taken for granted most of my life. I was listening to the McGarrigle recordings recently to start practising for the tour, and then again after it was cancelled. I listen to all of our voices blending and soaring together the way that only blood-linked family members can truly manage. And I thought about the day when those voices would stop singing forever. Dropping away one by one. And I cried, and then felt stupid for a) mourning something that hasn't happened yet b) being so sentimental that the life cycle would feel so new and startling to me. Well, not new...just less hypothetical.
My grandmother, Gaby, died in 1994. My mom wanted the perfect song to perform at her funeral, and she picked an Irving Berlin song called "What'll I Do." It's technically a break-up song, but in a lot of ways, lots of break-up songs are interchangeable with songs that grieve the passing of a life. It's the ultimate break-up.
I sang it at the funeral and everyone cried because, jesus, it's really a heartbreaker. Irving was good that way. It wasn't just all "White Christmas" with that guy.
It was decided that we would record it for the family record in 1997. I was just on the verge of breaking with my first album and I'd be lying if I said I was just thrilled to be hanging out with the parents, aunts, and uncles, cousins, and the father I was still pretty sure I hated, recording old folk songs. Martha and I slipped in some Cole Porter and a couple of originals, but still. Like I said, I was young and arrogant and wanted to break the yoke of my parents' musical reputation. I look bored and smarmy in all the studio shots.
But I'm really grateful now that we got this song down. It's just me, Martha, Mom, and Dad trading off verses and duetting, with my aunt Jane on piano. As Jane said in the liner notes, "A foursome who had never sat down to a Christmas turkey together let alone sing a song, come together as natural as breathing."
And she was right. We crafted it so well. I always liked how Mom and Dad take the last chorus, then hand it off to Martha, and then I chime in and we repeat it. Because, someday we'll be left with just each other. But all four of us take it out together.
If I'm in a sappy mood, this song can make me tear up. And I know someday when I start losing those voices, I'll listen to this song and cry my eyes out.
And I'll pray that someday someone will think enough of me to sing it when I'm gone.
What'll I Do? -- McGarrigle Family
See...I told you it would be sad. But it's a cathartic kind of sad. I hope.
But it goes beyond that. The superficial concerns begin to bleed over into thoughts of general mortality.
I was supposed to do a short tour in December with my sister, my mom, my aunt and some other family and friends. In 1997 we released The McGarrigle Family Hour album. Last year we released the McGarrigle Family Christmas album. And this year we were going to do a McGarrgle Family Christmas tour.
But we're not doing it anymore. We're doing a single show in New York, renamed The Wainwright Family Christmas show. This change was made due to an illness that could not be worked around. I won't go into the details of the illness per se, but it's obviously very troubling to me, and paired with my mom's recent cancer scare, well...you can't help but think about things.
I came to think about my own mortality before I started thinking about those around me. Typical of me, but then again, I think it's typical of most children regarding their parents. When you're very young, you harbor vague fears of your parents dying. But even then it's more of a self-centered thing. It's more about "What will I do? Who will take care of me?" I was obsessed with the musical Annie and I worried about ending up in a 1930s-era orphanage (I had little conception of eras...when you're a kid, everything is happening in the present) and wearing rags and my god, how to learn all those dance steps while scrubbing the stairs and would I be cute enough to be adopted by a Daddy Warbucks?
I picked up the wrong guy in a bar and was assaulted in Hyde Park when I was 14. I probably would have died except I pretended to have an epileptic seizure while the guy was strangling me and he ran off with my wallet. I kind of buried the incident, but was convinced I had caught AIDS and was going to die. I didn't have sex again for 5 years and never got tested during that time because I was stupid and scared and it was the 80s and no one really knew much of anything anyway.
You'd think that would have got me thinking about my own mortality pretty hardcore, but no, not really. I sailed into adolescence and my early 20s and then into my career feeling increasingly immortal. which is how you're supposed to feel when you're young and beautiful and becoming a star.
It wasn't until my excesses nearly killed me that the illusion shattered. I was very mortal and I was going to die if I didn't do something about it. And so I did and I'm doing okay, but I'll never get that beautiful illusion back. I'll never be immortal again. And I guess that's good, but it leaves you feeling weary and jaded sometimes.
By that point I was living in New York full-time and only going back home every few months to visit my mother or play a gig or whatever. And it's not until you're away from the people you used to see every day that you notice time taking its toll. All of a sudden I saw my mother was getting old. She's still beautiful, but was a bit grayer every time I went back. A few more lines around her eyes and mouth. I looked at her hands when she played the piano, noticing how the veins had become more pronounced, the fingers a little knobbier.
And it just keeps going forward. I'm sure she sees it in me when I go home. I look at pictures of myself from 10 years ago and I look like a baby. People still tell me I have a babyface sometimes, but nothing like I did then. I have a long way to go (I hope) before I hit the peak and then start sliding down. When everything starts to undo itself. When the sins of your youth truly start to make themselves known.
But, like I said, I don't care to write about my own aging process right now. I'm talking about the elder members of my family. The ones I've taken for granted most of my life. I was listening to the McGarrigle recordings recently to start practising for the tour, and then again after it was cancelled. I listen to all of our voices blending and soaring together the way that only blood-linked family members can truly manage. And I thought about the day when those voices would stop singing forever. Dropping away one by one. And I cried, and then felt stupid for a) mourning something that hasn't happened yet b) being so sentimental that the life cycle would feel so new and startling to me. Well, not new...just less hypothetical.
My grandmother, Gaby, died in 1994. My mom wanted the perfect song to perform at her funeral, and she picked an Irving Berlin song called "What'll I Do." It's technically a break-up song, but in a lot of ways, lots of break-up songs are interchangeable with songs that grieve the passing of a life. It's the ultimate break-up.
I sang it at the funeral and everyone cried because, jesus, it's really a heartbreaker. Irving was good that way. It wasn't just all "White Christmas" with that guy.
It was decided that we would record it for the family record in 1997. I was just on the verge of breaking with my first album and I'd be lying if I said I was just thrilled to be hanging out with the parents, aunts, and uncles, cousins, and the father I was still pretty sure I hated, recording old folk songs. Martha and I slipped in some Cole Porter and a couple of originals, but still. Like I said, I was young and arrogant and wanted to break the yoke of my parents' musical reputation. I look bored and smarmy in all the studio shots.
But I'm really grateful now that we got this song down. It's just me, Martha, Mom, and Dad trading off verses and duetting, with my aunt Jane on piano. As Jane said in the liner notes, "A foursome who had never sat down to a Christmas turkey together let alone sing a song, come together as natural as breathing."
And she was right. We crafted it so well. I always liked how Mom and Dad take the last chorus, then hand it off to Martha, and then I chime in and we repeat it. Because, someday we'll be left with just each other. But all four of us take it out together.
If I'm in a sappy mood, this song can make me tear up. And I know someday when I start losing those voices, I'll listen to this song and cry my eyes out.
And I'll pray that someday someone will think enough of me to sing it when I'm gone.
What'll I Do? -- McGarrigle Family
See...I told you it would be sad. But it's a cathartic kind of sad. I hope.