Being Here

Time to settle in

The thing is not to panic.

The thing is — relax. It’s the moment I’ve been waiting for, isn’t it?

The moment after…that other moment.

The tour is over. Two months of fretting and sweating over ticket counts and travel arrangements, hotel bookings, merch and, oh yeah, actually playing the shows, has now come to a close. When I look back at the booking emails, it’s more like six or seven months, all the way back to May or June: I’m sitting at my old desk in Catskill NY, firing off missives to Northumberland and Glasgow; Columbus and Madison, mapping out weeks of shows on a calendar, for the time period after we’d sell our house and buy another house and ship our belongings across the ocean. I still can’t get my mind around the fact that I’ll never sit at that desk in my room in Catskill again. Moving happens all at once and also takes place for a long time after the physical relocation.

Someone asked how I like living in the UK. I realized I had no answer for them, because being on tour and spending time in the UK is something I’ve done for years. Without the experience of being off the road, I still have no real experience of actually living here. I haven’t had a chance to settle in because we’ve hardly been here.

I said to Ian Button who’s been playing drums with me the last few weeks: “I haven’t had fish & chips yet on this trip.” Oh wait, I said. This isn’t a trip.

“Right,” said Ian. “It’s… your life.”

Wow. So those things I enjoyed as novelties and special treats: fish and chips, shopping in British supermarkets; even standing in line at petrol stations on the motorway eyeing the wine bottle displays while you wait to pay for fuel because until recently none of them took cards at the pump, felt special - Sunday roast dinners and toasted tea cakes and “eat in or takeaway” — the drizzle and drear at this time of year broken up by over the top Christmas displays and mountains of mince pies and festive sweaters; curry and sausage rolls and carrier bags and bottled water from Scotland, sparkling or still…those things are simply life now?

I’ve only glimpsed my new life in little snippets. Like at the post office, where I was trying to work out how much a bag of toiletries that I’d left behind in a hotel in Bristol weighed, so I could send the hotel a mailer with enough postage to post it back to me. I can’t get my head around kilos and centimetres, the metric system. I’ve got a formula for Fahrenheit to Celsius (times two, add thirty - so 12ºC = about 54 º F) and kilometres to miles (times two divided by three, 15 k x 2 = 30 / 3 = roughly 10 miles though the British use miles not kilometres). I estimated my toiletry bag weighed 5 kilos, thinking it was about the weight of a small chicken —but I got it mixed up, it’s the opposite, a small chicken is 2.5 kilos and 5 kilos amounts to more than ten pounds! I mean, I love makeup and my lotions and potions but that’s a huge amount of beauty products, so my new friend behind the counter at the post office had a good laugh.

Even though we’ve moved from one country to another, I’ve been in artist world - this liminal space, liminal a word I see all the time now but have never used til this moment. Liminal makes sense to me at last! Artist world is liminal, always on our way through one thing to the next thing. You work a few years to come up with a book, an album, a new piece of work and that’s where you live really. Aside from the doing of it, the focus and expression and whatever you’re aiming for, the latest creation is a means of transporting yourself to the NEXT destination - only you’re the thing in the shipping container of dreams, and when you land, BAM you have to find the next place. So the new album Hang In There With Me —three years off and on in the making—meant I had new work to tour behind, and something of the moment to share with an audience. And the tour is over (for now at least—still hoping to do a few more UK shows and a couple West Coast dates in the spring; a festival in Germany; play in Sweden? See, I’m not ready for it to end all the way yet, even if I have a whole new set of songs to record.) and I have to actually station myself somewhere, a real place where people get up every day and live their lives. And here we are in a small historic market town in North Norfolk, on the east coast of England. I’ve yearned to live in this part of the world and right now it feels like a good place to be.

Am I really here?

I bought a new iron and ironing board. It made sense not to bring my old iron from America with the change in voltage. But what was so hard about packing the old ironing board into the storage space that fed the shipping container? I think that about quite a few things we left behind. I just remember panic, and sweat when it came to the crunch of emptying our old house, and trying to load a van for the fourth, fifth or sixth trip across the bridge to the temporary storage space.

We’ve done plenty of unpacking but there are still boxes upon boxes: books and art supplies; archives, fabrics, artwork and kitchen stuff. Musical instruments. Eric has already turned one room from an extra lounge into the beginnings of a rustic studio, where the recording equipment will be lodged and put to use in no time. I know it all takes a while, but I don’t want to look at boxes. I really do want to settle in.

The new house is wonderful, I love it. The garden is so beautiful, even in the winter. Unlike in the northeast US, where winter means bare branches and grey brown earth until the snow comes and makes everything starkly picturesque, here in England the grass is still green and shaggy, needing mowing. There are pops of color in the bushes and shrubs. A lot of the trees are bare though, and I can see the birds landing and hanging out, silhouetted against the pale sky. “Hello Mister Magpie, how are your children?” a phrase Eric got me in the habit of saying back when we lived in France. One for sorrow, so you have to confer parental status to ward off bad luck. At least I think that’s what it means. I’m always happy when a solo magpie is joined by another.

The garden, with new workshop/shed to the left.

There’s a quaint outhouse with 1970s toilet and sink attached to the house (there’s a roomy bathroom upstairs where the bedrooms are, but the outhouse is probably one of the main reasons we could afford to buy this place - people don’t want a house without a downstairs toilet, I guess that makes sense. It’s fine for now.)

So cute they gave the outhouse an address

I’m really appreciating the wood burner in the living room. The previous owner left a big pile of wood but we also use firelighters and I bought a copy of the Sunday paper, a rare treat nowadays. I clock the Nigel Slater recipes and imagine myself making this festive roast and those Ottolenghi almonds. That might all fall by the wayside but it’s nice to imagine settling in by actually cooking, and also helps to have a little bit of newspaper to get the fire going.

Early morning fire is really cozy

I took the train to Cromer today, a quick ride to the beach, delightfully deserted at this time of year even on a Sunday. The local stationery/bookstore called to me —I really miss working in the bookstore bar back in Hudson. It was a grounding place to come back to after doing gigs. Out on the road you’ve been with your gang—even when traveling and playing solo there’s that connection running through every stop, you’re there to do a job. Being part of the bookstore crew back home felt like a comfortable groove to slot right back into. But it’s okay to just be a person walking around in the world, isn’t it? I saw a friend in the bookstore, which was lovely —I’m not completely new here!

Cromer Pier - the rocks were brought in from Scotland to shore things up

A letter from the NHS must’ve arrived months ago, and I’m glad I finally looked at the mail yesterday— turns out I have a mammogram scheduled for tomorrow. I signed up with the local surgery (that’s what they call the doctor’s office here) but we need to find a dentist. I’ve been so scrupulous with cleanings and don’t want to let it slide. I remember a friend saying how much trouble it would be to have to find new doctors, haircutter, everything that comes with a move. I’m lucky to be in good health and not have to worry too much about all this stuff, and even then it is kind of overwhelming. You don’t want to wait til things get desperate. I still have my Medicare in the US, just like we still have a storage space there. Playing both sides, nothing happens overnight except…

London gig - Waiting Room photo by Jules T

Gigs. I flash on moments from London — old friends pressed up near the stage in a little basement. Feeling safe, feeling free. Nottingham, the shock of a sold out show, on a Wednesday! Bristol, pulling it together after we had to cancel Swansea: illness, bad weather and car trouble. Hastings - euphoria is the word for what I felt. Twenty-five shows and I finally broke a string on the Danelectro. It didn’t matter anymore. I was just up there, doing it. I’d never felt so happy playing a show, and so relieved when it was over.

Now we’re here…home. It’s December, a good month for settling in.