Biscuits & Blues
A birds-eye-view birthday reflection at 31
There is a playlist for this one, which is linked below. I recommend you listen to it while you read or after.
If the link doesn’t work in the post, you should be able to click the playlist title and listen in the Spotify web app—or it will play it through the app on your phone or computer if you have it. If anyone has trouble let me know and I can send it seprately.
I was born into this world fighting for my life.
In San Francisco, California, on February 4, 1993, at 2:04 AM. 2/4 at 2:04 AM according to my mother, who did not have the records on hand to fact check that, so it could very well be poetic license. Before I was born and even the day I was born, my parents had chosen the name Jules for me. The name of my mother’s grandfather. My mother also loves to tell me that nothing good happens after midnight.
I was born with a grapefruit-sized tumor attached to the base of my spine. It required emergency surgery and there was no guarantee of survival.
The hospital was able to contact a semi-retired pediatric surgeon who was able to get to the hospital because he happened to be off the coast of San Francisco on his boat. I don’t know how the message about a situation like this spread from a hospital to a boat in 1993. I am sure it wasn’t all that difficult to figure out. But Anna and I watch a lot Grey’s Anatomy reruns these days, so I sort of think about it now like an episode of the show.
A Catholic priest was brought to baptize me and to perform my last rites. The first and final of the sacrements. The odds of the surgery weren’t great. 50/50.
The priest told my parents they could try praying to Saint Martin de Porres. Here is the Wikipedia summary of his patronage in the Catholic church:
He is the patron saint of mixed-race people, barbers, innkeepers, public health workers, all those seeking racial harmony, and animals.
He was noted for his work on behalf of the poor, establishing an orphanage and a children's hospital. He maintained an austere lifestyle, which included fasting and abstaining from meat. Among the many miracles attributed to him were those of levitation, bilocation, miraculous knowledge, instantaneous cures, and an ability to communicate with animals. (Wiki.)
The surgery was successful. And as a matter of faith, luck, or just the practicality of good doctors and surgeons, who would do this for any patient in their care— I was reborn at one day old.
Jules died, but Martin lived. Martin wasn’t just the name of the saint. It was also the name of my father’s grandfather.
Food & Music
I hit my Terrible Twos and I was given the Blues. I don’t think I’ve ever lost it.
On my second birthday, my mother opened up her music club, Biscuits & Blues, in San Francisco. A Southern restaurant with live Blues/Music every night of the week. A place I spent my second birthday and my fifteenth. A place where I spent some nights that I remember and so many more that I don’t.
Soon after that, my family left San Francisco for Minneapolis, Minnesota, to spend time with dad’s side of the family. My mom opened another Biscuits & Blues in Minneapolis.
Then, shortly after that, my father’s line of work brought us to Manhattan. Which is where I went to kindergarten, on the Upper West Side at Blessed Sacrement. I wore a tiny suit every day and I loved it. My parents tell me that my childhood obsession with suits began before that too.
One morning, in my suit before school, My mom, brother and I were at a bakery near our apartment and I accused the woman behind the counter of serving me a stale croissant. Liam Neeson happened to be next to me and said, “Excuse me, are you a [little person]?” It was the 1990s, and that wasn’t the term he used.
In many ways I feel as though I grew up too fast.
On the precipice of manhood
When I was 12, in 2005, I lost my best friend to suicide and a month later I lost my own bedroom for a while. Because Hurricane Katrina hit. Because so many people lost so much more than that.
At that time we owned and operated Twin Oaks Bed & Breakfast in Natchez, MS. And for over 40 days and 40 nights we had over 40 people living in our house.
Not just the guest rooms—rooms that were part of the bed and breakfast—but my bedroom and my brothers too.
And the living room, and the kitchen, and, truly, there were families gathered filling every seat during the day and every room during the night. Families with babies and pets and grandparents. Sitting together watching the coverage on the TV that was plugged into a generator & was Dish Satellite not cable.
Aerial shots showing the water everywhere. Anderson Cooper became an important name to me and to many in Mississippi & Louisiana for his coverage in that time. The families watched the TV closely day after day to see if the scenes on the screen happened to be of their neighborhoods; their homes; their lives. Hoping that they could make sense of things. To see what could be rebuilt or what must be walked away from.
I slept on my parent’s floor and I don’t think my own parents forced me to do that. I don’t remember if I threw a fit or if I accepted it. It could have been either, with me.
I watched my mom with eyes wide open. I watched her on her feet all day every day cooking with gas because the electricity was out for weeks. And we had a lot of food in our fridges that would go bad. It was August in Mississippi and without electricity and without the ice and coolants that we rely on now, everything was set to spoil.
But there were hungry mouths to feed. Families that got in their cars and learned more day after day if they would have homes to return to. Most did not. Some of those people’s homes were washed away completely with nothing to repair. The foundation remaining was all that was left in many areas; for many families to return to. Families with hard decisions to make about returning home or deciding that home is not a place as much as it is the families themselves. The connection to the people the birds and the trees.
I watched as my mom took care of anyone, and everyone, that found her after Katrina. But of course she behaved this way. It was the way she has always behaved in the 31 years I have been a part of her life. She taught me that there is always room for one more. That people will come and people will go. That plans will change whether you want them to or not. So just keep the extra plate. Put a pillow on the floor. Know there’s always something that won’t take as long as you think to defrost. That can come to temp once it’s in the oven.
There is always room for one more.
Song Cycles.
In 2011, when I was 17 (almost 18) and a senior in high school in Natchez, Mississippi, I latched onto an album in a way that I never had prior. That album was called Hadestown by Anaïs Mitchell. Here is the description from Wikipeida:
Hadestown is a sung-through musical with music, lyrics, and book by Anaïs Mitchell. It tells a version of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Eurydice, a young girl looking for something to eat, goes to work in a hellish industrial version of the Greek underworld to escape poverty and the cold, and her poor singer-songwriter lover Orpheus comes to attempt to rescue her.
I learned about it because I read a humor website called cracked.com at that time and the editors did a yearly round up of their favorite art in any category from 2010.
That’s how that album found me in Mississippi.
So in 2011, as I graduated high school and moved to New York City and lived on Broadway in the NYU dorm Brittany Hall —I had Hadestown ringing in my ears and I shared it with everyone, as everyone here knows. I didn’t listen to Bon Iver or Ani DiFranco before that. Didn’t know any of Anaïs Mitchell’s other, prior, works.
But I got the message loud and clear. It’s an old song. And it’s a sad song. But, like Hermes says so potently in Mitchell’s version of the myth:
We are going to sing it again. And again. And Again. And again.
I always hoped that one day I would see it on stage, because the poetry of Mitchell’s lyrics made the picture so vivid.
Iridium Interlude
I got a job at the Iridium Jazz Club in college. My father took me to see Les Paul when I was 12 years old maybe before the summer maybe after. I don’t remember when right now. Les Paul was 90 that year. My dad took a photo of me with Les Paul on his old brick cell phone that was the first camera phone I remember my family owning. I think he still has the phone because the phone has the picture.
This was just when I was just learning to play the guitar. As I was being taught the blues scale that my cousin Robert Brahan taught me at Thanksgiving that year at my family home in Natchez. On my Sigma guitar that my uncle, Phillip Trosclair, the guitarist in the family, gave me to learn on.
As for my Iridium job, I walked in with a resume because one of their regulars, and my parents good friends, Charlie Allenson, and lovely wife, Harriet Bell, told Grace Blake the A&R manager about me. Grace became my boss and a huge mentor for me all through college.
I worked the box office, I wrote copy for the website, I sat guests, I got into taxis with musicians I’d never met to go pick up equipment.
I got to help out Steve Walsh. Jimmy Page. Lou Pallo. Bucky Pizzarelli. Pat Martino. Mike Hearn. Esperanza Spalding. Stanley Jordan. Vernon Reid. Will Calhoun. (Those two were different shows, not a Living Colour show). So many, many more amazing artists.
One day I was able to secure tickets to see Anaïs Mitchell for the first time. She was opening for Bon Iver at Radio City Music Hall and I somehow got lucky and logged on at the most auspicious time to get tickets for the show. I wasn’t looking for Bon Iver. I was looking for Anaïs.
The 5 nights of shows were sold out already. Bon Iver’s last US shows for a years.
For whatever reason, the band released their tickets holds to the night I attended a week before the concert. I bought 2 immediately and then went to work. I told my boss, Grace, about the good luck and she told me her daughter who was in high school then, was a huge Bon Iver fan. She looked online and she also was able to get tickets for the show that until that day was entirely sold out.
They ended up being front row tickets at Radio City for the concert.
For Anaïs Mitchell. For Bon Iver. On Wednedsay September 19th, 2012. A little after my first year living in New York as a young man.
I mentioned to Grace that she should make it for the opening act if she could. I know, too, that I did that not only because I loved Anaïs Mitchell and wanted her to play any stage she could, but I did it, too, for purely selfish reasons I wanted her to play the Iridium, which would be like having her play a concert in my home.
Nothing else happened then.
Four years later, in April 2016, I was taking the L train back to Bushwick, Brooklyn, at 1:30 PM when I saw an advertisement on the wall in the First Avenue stop in Manhattan. It looked like the album art of Hadestown.
It was Hadestown. And it was coming to the stage. And in New York. Finally.
I got off the train to see it closely. To see that I wasn’t just exhausted from the job I had then and imagining it. The job I woke up at 3 AM each morning for to ride the L from DeKalb Ave in Bushwick to 8th Avenue in Meatpacking. To be there at 4 AM. Arriving to work to alleviate those who worked the overnight shift on our 24/7 team. I tried to never be late so that no one had to wait on me so they could rest.
Anna and I saw the New York Theater Workshop production twice in 2016.
Ironically, Anna and I lived directly above the Rubin Museum of Art and they did a series called “Naked Soul” where musicians would do fully acoustic performances in the event space in the basement. So on March 9, 2018, Anna and I actually did get to see an Anaïs Mitchell concert of the basement of our building—just below our shoebox apartment that was out home.
We have seen the Broadway version a few times.
Today— on my 31st birthday, for my 31st birthday— I am seeing Hadestown, again. With Anna, again. And with our friend Alex, for the first time, but probably not the last.
Alex and I met as 16-year-olds in Washington D.C Labor Day weekend of 2009. We were both selected for the US Senate Page program in Washington D.C., in 2009, juniors in high school. As pages for the U.S. Senate. Alex has heard the music so many times as well. Whether I was forcing him to listen or he decided to on his own accord. He knew me when I discovered it and I certainly wasn’t any quieter about my admiration for the work then.
Since I first heard the original concept album in January 2011, I have seen the Off Broadway production (twice). I saw the original cast when the show made it to Broadway after 10 years April 17, 2019. A story that Anaïs Mitchell first premiered for people in Vermont in 2006.
A 13 year journey. A Mitzvah.
I feel I have been proven correct in my advocation for Hadestown.
As you probably know, Hadestown received 14 nominations (the most for the evening) and won eight of them, including Best Musical and Best Original Score.
I won.
31: The Reverse Bar Mitzvah
Like many 30-year-olds who live in Brooklyn, I am a guy who has meaningful and meaningless tattoos and recently pierced ear.
So let it come as no surprise that I have listened to Mitski’s song “My Love Mine All Mine,” countless times since she released her latest album The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We last year in September. According to the site LastFM which I use to track my music consumption on Spotify, I have heard the song at least 38 times on that platform alone.
The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We is an album that has been ringing in my ears since I heard it the first time. Much like Hadestown did when I first heard it for the very first time 13 years ago in 2011. It was my top album of last year in terms of listening, and it came out in September.
30 was a very selfish year for me. If anything the end of my 20s felt that way too, but I know part of that is just how the pandemic changed all of us.
Of the things I did and was able to do in 2023, most of it was for myself. Unfortunately a lot of the time that was all I could do.
I was sick a lot and so I learned to crochet. I tried to figure out ways to enjoy idleness and distract from actual pain. I played mindless video games and listened to audio books in bed. I read Anna Karenina and it took me almost the whole year.
But, as much as I spent time in bed, I spent a lot of time in the car that Anna’s mother, Linda, gave to us when she upgraded. A car with 125K miles that can easily make it one million miles thanks to her good friend, Nino, the “Three Million Mile Mechanic,” has worked on it every year and any time something needed to be addressed since the day Anna’s mother bought it.
When my legs couldn’t carry me as far as I wanted in 2023— My loved ones gave me wheels.
And as 31 approaches, and as probably a lot of y’all are sick of hearing me say by now— I think about 31 as being the “Reverse” Bar Mitzvah. Which I think means trying to rediscover the pieces about yourself as a child or any prior age that you want to carry forward again.
Of course I said it the first time as a joke, but I’ve been trying to think deeply about ways I can be less selfish. I have been trying to consider without any irony the joke of my own making.
When Anna and I were in VT for a wedding last year, the officiant, Pastor Dan, told a crowd of mostly Jewish New Yorkers—unfortunately most of the gentile groom’s side had covid— about what his friend, Rabbi Dave, told him about the phrase Mazel Tov.
So in the spirit of Pastor Dan, allow me—a born Catholic, self converted United Methodist, overall agnostic/unconcerned-about-what-you-wanna-call-it goy—to tell you about what Mitzvah means to me.
A good deed done from religious duty.
The simplest definition as possible. But it is plenty. It is more than enough.
I have no religion I cling to, but I certainly have a set of morals and beliefs that I attempt to live my life by, like all of us do.
Things that we have learned from others.
Any of you reading my writing now has almost certainly, and individually, changed my life in a meaningful way.
And there was a lot I had to learn about myself when I was a 12-years-old. 6 months away from what could have been my Bar Mitzvah if my Jewish great grandmother Rose had not married a Catholic man.
Rose, who had a Catholic son instead of a Jewish one. Gene & Rosemary, who had a Catholic son instead of a Jewish one. Who had me.
I also never knew I had any, let alone a big chunk, of Ashkenazi heritage until I did a DNA test.
In terms of DNA alone, my Ashkenazi heritage is much bigger than my Italian ancestry, which I thought I was more of because I was a Sanguinetti. More than my Spanish, which I thought I was more of because I can trace my family back to Majorca, Spain. All of those other identities I drew upon based on the family history and stories that I knew.
Stories I knew because I asked about, or was told to me freely. But it is hard to figure out what we don’t know.
Getting a DNA test was something I felt compelled to do because I always want to know the bigger story about myself and others. I always want to give the benefit of additional context to others.
To bring this back to the point about the musician Mitski, who I am so excited to see with Anna later this month. On my friend, Jess’, birthday. Happy birthday, Jess!
Out of context, the chorus to “My Love, reads a bit selfish.
'Cause my love is mine, all mine
I love, my, my, mine
Nothing in the world belongs to me
But my love, mine, all mine
Nothing in the world is mine for free
But my love, mine, all mine, all mine
But as the verses explain, the song is about giving what you have for free to others for free. She asks that upon her death, “so when I die, which I must do” — as we all must— that the moon will take her heart and shine her love down on those she loves.
It is a gift.
What I feel is that what belongs to me, anything that is, is something I want my friends to know I am always willing to share.
If it belongs to me, it’s welcome to you.
Because I have always had Biscuits & Blues in my life. Because I have always had my mother looking out for me. Teaching me how to make connections between everyone and everyone.
Last year, I had a bad case of the Blues.
But about three weeks ago now, I had something extremely special happen, something that was very difficult, but has also brought me a sense of peace or closure that I didn’t think was possible.
I went home and I stayed at the house where my friend, Garland, took his own life when I was 12.
It is now called “The Big Muddy Inn and Blues Room” and it is run by two incredible women, Tracey and Amy. Amy is an incredible singer and blues musician from Arkansas, and Tracey is her Number One Fan, Biggest Supporter, Hype Woman, and Wife.
I had not walked upstairs in that house since shortly after my friend’s passing when myself, my brother and those of us closest to Garland were given a chance to take anything we wanted from his bedroom as a memento.
At that time, I took his Triforce bracelet, which is a symbol from The Legend of Zelda series. It has appeared in every game since the first one in 1986, before Garland was even born. The Triforce represents virtues: Power, Wisdom and Courage.
I have kept the old metal piece of bracelet (the cheap faux leather band broke long ago) in a safe place all this time.
Before I flew home early last month, I was crying in my bathroom and hoping Anna couldn’t hear me sobbing.
The knowledge of where I was staying— a place that was offered freely to me by Tracey and Amy because they love my parents and my parents love them— was too much.
I was sobbing in my bathroom in Brooklyn and I had an idea. And I wrote this note:
I put the Triforce medallion that I kept safe onto the unadorned sterling silver chain I wear around my neck most days. I felt like I had to do something, make some gesture.
And so I arrived to the Big Muddy with a lot of aprehension. I was staying upstairs in the house—a place I hadn’t been 19 years. And I am so, so glad I did.
The other day, after everything was said and done, I told my parents this:
I hate you for having me stay there. I love you for having me stay there.
When I was 12, turning 13, it was place that took the breath out of my lungs when I saw it.
Last month, 30 turning 31, it put the music back in me.
Amy, Tracey, and the Big Muddy gave me my voice back.
They put the music back in me. Not only that, but they took a house that sat silent and dormant for me and they filled it with such love and sound. They still play the blues, but the music gets out. People hear each other. It is never quiet with Amy & Tracey around. It is the most wonderful noise. The most beautiful music.
Ironically, Amy has an amazing song she wrote called “Putting the Music in Me,” on her album Someday is Today.
And like Olu Dara, another Natchez, Mississippi native, sings in his song “Natchez Shopping Blues”
I been shoppin'
I been shoppin' y'all, shoppin'
I bought my mind and soul on the river
I bought my heart in Nashville, Tennessee
I bought my legs on the ocean up by Newport
I bought my arms on the seven seas
I bought my eyes in Brooklyn on Herkimer Street
But the love I got in Natchez, lord it was free
And I know this has been a lot of pretty sappy stuff, but I promise I am not just a sap.
I am also a simpleton, which Anna hates me calling myself, but I wear it as a badge of honor because for me it feels right as a distilationf my philosphy and humor.
Keep it Simple, Stupid.
I was thinking about what I wrote about Garland’s death on my Xanga account (before MySpace, before Facebook) that he set up for me that same year before he passed away. I don’t remember what I wrote, but I remember his mother printed it out and had it at his wake and funeral as part of the things about him.
My username on Xanga where I wrote my thoughts about everything at the time was PoopBrain69. It was the username Garland picked for me. Because it was funny.
Because I am also funny. So all the touching thoughts I had or whatever it was I wrote at the time was all shared with those who knew Garland or me online as being from “PoopBrain69”
Pastor Dan, Rabbi Dave, and PoopBrain69 walked into a bar…
Everything I want to do in the next year, and next decade can hopefully be ascribed to a simple feeling. A simple mantra to myself.
Keep it Simple, Stupid.
I hope to always give back what I can for the people who have deeply touched my life. These are people who may be there for one conversation and people who have been here for me my whole life. It is never about the time. Minutes can feel like hours and days years in a second. It all matters and we must be good to ourselves and others. We will always have regrets about time spent apart from those we love. But they cannot define us. Every millisecond matters. Every millisecond more is more than any of us are guaranteed.
I have spent my life watching my mother (and the rare people like her) acting in service of others and I know that it looks effortless for her— and it often is— but not always.
Because for her, acting in service of others is always also an act of service for herself.
It is a bit selfish, sure. I think my mother is very selfish. She missed my birthday many times. She missed my high school graduation. But I know that I am the selfish one because I wanted my momma. I couldn’t see her taking care of me when she wasn’t there.
My mom missed graduation because she was at Monterey Bay Aquarium in California accepting an award for her efforts to promote sustainable seafood practices.
When I got to NYU, that fall, the dining halls had banners on the walls about about their seafood sustainability efforts as guided by Monterey Bay Aquarium.
My mother didn’t miss my high school graduation she was just working to make sure she could continue to feed me Good food while I was away at college. Food that would sustain me and keep me going.
A guitar named Stella; A Salutation; A Send Off
I will end on this, which is actually just the beginning of a different story about friendship.
At the end of my trip home last month, I stayed in New Orleans for a couple extra days because of storms derailed my original departure with cancelations and delays.
On my second to last day of the trip, I bought a guitar named Stella in New Orleans in a vintage shop called Glue.
It called out to me from the wall. I heard Stanley from Tenneesee William’s A Streetcar named Desire yelling out:
STELLA
STELLA
And so I bought the guitar.
I got back to my AirBnB and I found lyrics inside the tattered guitar case that I only took so that I had something to fly it home in before I would replace with a better case.
Lyrics written 50 years by a Student/Social Worker. One who was flying the coop. I was reading about the end of some experience, at least that is what the lyrics sounded like. But of course they did. Because the song is a parody of “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof.
And on the back of one of the lyric sheets— I found letterhead. I found a name. I found an address.
I bought a guitar named Stella and I found a guy named Spencer.
And now, after having done a little research and outreach I found someone who knew him.
And they heard my story about the guitar and told me that Spencer wasn’t a musician. Spencer who left us in 2011.
His wife, Carol, was the musician. It was his letterhead, but it was her words. Her guitar.
And Carol is alive and well. Carol is as sharp as a tack.
We met last Saturday over phone. A day that was very beautiful and very ugly for a lot of different reasons in my personal life.
We have now spoken on the phone at least 3 times by the time you are reading this. Hours now on the phone, talking about each other, ourselves. Student, Social Worker. Sunrises, Sunsets.
Maybe Stanley (Spencer) was calling out to his wife Stella (Carol). Carol who is sharp as a tack and she is my new best friend, although she was apprehensive at first. Because like Anna loves to say “She got got” — aka she let me know that she’s fallen for a scam before and was wary to talk to a stranger about things that happened in her life 50 years ago. But I told her a story about I time “I got got.” And so as I told her, if anyone is gonna walk away swindled from this—it’s gonna be me.
And then we started talking in earnest.
The day I met Carol was a day I walked 30,000 steps and I made around 30 phone calls to different friends and family for different reasons. But that is a story for another time.
Because, for now, I think I have said what I wanted to say here.
Thanks for reading.
Thank you for the gift of love; of friendship; of connection.
Thank you, Natchez, Nashville, Newport and New York.
San Fransisco. Minneapolis.
Cobble Hill. Bay Ridge. Bensonhurst. Sea Cliff.
I am always just a phone call away.
Bless the telephone.
PS: Please let me know if there’s any typos or corrections to make. I didn’t want to wake Anna who saves me from myself with these things. But I couldn’t wait to get the message out.
Happy belated Birthday, MC-