We Danced

Los Angeles, California

A year after my trifecta of death year, which was when I lost my closest, beloved friend, my mother, and my husband in one calendar year (ven just typing that makes me sigh greatly...), Joel and I observed New Year's Eve with friends. When raising our glasses for a toast to the new year, I added on that I made it through the entire year without someone dying on me. I guess that landed as a bit of a shocking downer, but it was a good thing. Something worth celebrating, even though the grieving was continuing.

So, that's my preface to the blatant obviosity of writing that some years are tough! I could recount all of the years in my life that have been hard (1963, 1966, 1967-8, 1972, 1997-98, 2012-2014). These dates are, of course, meaningless without elaborating on what made them so challenging. I could recount this all in a memoir, but... yuck.

Anyway, 2026 has been wracked with injuries that actually occurred to both Joel and me in 2025. We've endured my sciatic flare-up, his work-related shoulder injury, then my shoulder bursitis followed by his shoulder surgery. There's been a lot of limping, sling-wearing, heat and ice applications, Advil-administering and moaning. What there hasn't been is a lot of dancing, which is at the top of the list of things that run both Joel's and my engines. From Cinco de Mayo 2025 to now, there hasn't been much. Weirdly, a DJ played some salsa at our local Greek Festival this past May and we were able to dance to half of a Marc Anthony song. Joel had surgery about six weeks later.

So now that summer is in full force, we decided to attend one of the Sizzling Summer Nights events at The Autry Museum here in LA. It can be a lovely experience, on the courtyard surrounded by the museum which shades us during the 2-hour, early-evening event. It is often a band we know, including my favorite LA band, Ricardo Lemvo and Makina Loca. Back in my early salsa days, I recall hanging out at a table with Ricardo and the owner of the club, while we waited for salsa class to end and social dancing to begin. It's not Joel's favorite band, but he agreed to go out, just to be amongst salseros we know, and to hear the music. Dancing was not an option...

...until, Joel held out his hands. Can you do this? I asked. And, yes he could, leading with his left hand. It was a little weird, and a little awkward, but we were dancing. And we followed that up with a cha-cha. That was pushing it, so when the song ended, we quit. A couple was walking by and stopped to compliment us on our style of dancing. If they only knew, I said to Joel afterwards. We have gotten a lot of compliments over the years, but that was always for two-handed dancing!

Anyway, the beauty of it was that we danced. And, like the short dance at the Greek Festival, it will get us by for awhile. Joel has started PT just as I am finishing my PT. I suspect we will be dancing again, hopefully even more regularly, sometime this fall. We'll take it slow. I think, as in most things in life, slow is underrated. The important thing is, as The Kinks sang, Don't Forget to Dance. We definitely won't.

Hurts So Good

Los Angeles, California

While last week's Sarah McLachlan concert evoked a multi-leveled response encompassing micro and macro upheaval and challenges, plus reminiscences, this week's concert was on the far other end of the spectrum. 

In celebration of her birthday the following day, I took my friend, Connie, to John Mellencamp's concert at The Hollywood Bowl. After Sarah's Greek Theater Concert, the Bowl seemed ginormous! And it was filled to the gills with all levels of Mellencamp fans. Of course you always expect to see devoted fans at any concert you attend, but I'm here to tell you, true Mellencampers are fervently dedicated!

It was interesting to me that the fans of Sarah brought a level just short of mania to her concert last week. The intensity of response to her music was more than I had experienced at her other two concerts which I had attended last year. She seemed surprised as well, as she kept turning to her guitarist and making that gesture with her hands and arms like What is going on here?

I decided that this reaction to Sarah could be attributed to the world in which we are currently experiencing so much vitriol and evil, which has permeated so much of our everyday living. There is a feeling of helplessness in the knowledge of what is going on with the daily flaunting of our nation's constitution, customs, and mores by those in power. So maybe when we music lovers are put into a situation where goodness and connection are provided, we just lose our minds.

I figured the audience experience at Sarah's concert was a one-off. But no, the much larger audience who came to hear John Mellencamp's music was just as jacked up. And I mean that in a positive sense. They were happy, grateful, and joyous to the Nth degree. They sang, they stood, they applauded mid-song.

And just a small anecdote. When Mellencamp sang the lyric: And they vacation down at the Gulf of Mexico from Little Pink Houses, he stopped the song to question whether it was still called the Gulf of Mexico, adding that he had heard somebody was trying to change that. The audience broke into wild cheering and applause and above it all from the audience came the shout: He's a fucking asshole! Applause and cheering went to that infamous Spinal Tap's level eleven.

Our seats were on the aisle in the bench section which is on either side of the boxes. I always look for seats in that section and these were pretty close to where Joel and I sat in 2018 when we saw Paul Simon during his Farewell Tour. Next to us were two women who were hugely devoted fans and they knew the words to every song. And while it can be annoying when people sing along with a concert (much more so if it's a revival of a musical theater production), this ecstatic audience singing along with every song actually enhanced the experience and didn't detract from actually hearing Mellencamp's voice. It was just too much fun to be annoyed by anything.

The next day I met my friend, Beth2, for breakfast before my physical therapy appointment for my ongoing shoulder issue, and I ran a few errands after PT. And all of the time I was in my car driving to and fro, I was listening to a mix of John Mellencamp's greatest hits. It was a hot LA day (it's been a hot LA summer), but I cracked my window so my hair could blow in the wind, and I sang and sang to all of the music I had heard so joyously the night before. I was still singing when I hit the elevator at the medical building and ran into my therapist, William. How was the concert? he asked. Fantastic! I'm still singing Hurts So Good! And the beauty of it all was that there was no hurt at all, good or bad. The afterglow of the concert felt so blissful.

When the Dodgers win, the stadium plays I Love LA. Now, anyone up on their Randy Newman knows this song is not a celebration of LA, but irony is lost on most people, including, evidently, Dodgers management. But there is something in the sentiment of the title of that song, that I think real LA natives feel. LA has changed monumentally. There are so few of us natives amongst all the millennials who flooded in to work in "the industry." It will never be the LA where I grew up. But every so often after summer nights at these glorious outdoor venues experiencing the  transcendence of hearing stellar music under the stars, I truly do think I still love LA. And now, kinda loving John Mellencamp's music more than I ever did before.