Morning Pages: Dolly

When John Prine died, I wandered like an untethered ghost onto my front porch and, eventually, found myself supine on my lawn in Nashville, Tennessee.

If I remember correctly, it was a damn near full, bursting moon that night. Even in a city where you never saw the stars, somehow it felt like they were all out to welcome our boy home back into the ether, back to being the bright and brilliant star stuff that we all knew he was made of.

It was undeniable. The sky was scattered with Prine.

There was something comforting in being in Nashville when that happened, being a part of a collective place and time where we joined in the metaphysical moment and pushed a spirit upward and then grounded ourselves, together, in the place where we all lived, the place we all called home, with songs playing on our small phone speakers and the earth on our backs and under our feet and our hearts pressed against the sky and each other to talk to about it in the way you do when a beloved is gone. For a lost idiot like me who can’t sit still, who fidgets at permanence, who fumbles at “hometown” know-how, John Prine dying - I learned tonight - is one of the unmistakable moments that made Nashville a bigger piece of me than I was ready to admit.

I learned this tonight because as I wandered from place to place, trying to find somewhere to be where I could feel a part of Dolly in the sky, in the stars, in the ground beneath me, I wound up a bit lost, with a far deeper sadness than I was prepared for. New York City is a lot of things, and nearly everything to me in so many beautiful ways, but for the first time ever, maybe in my entire life, last night I felt a homesickness that lingers with me even this morning. The bright blue morning sky over the Brooklyn Bridge seems no match for this ache, new and unusual to me. I have thought about the idea of a “hometown” for so long as an abstract my whole life. What must it be like to be from somewhere, to know the same people your whole life, to know how to do the things other people do so easily - generational routines, traditions, team sports, high school reunions, being a godparent, being a lifelong neighbor. What is that like? Army brats, I will tell you, do not know. We’re basically carnies with war stories.

Death, however, makes you aware of what is truly, and deeply, in your heart. It becomes undeniable when a rubber band pops and it all comes undone in surprising and illuminating ways. I walked about forty blocks, from Chinatown to Madison Square Park, with Dolly in my ears - almost too much to bear. I had to shut if off when her cover of Neil Young’s After the Goldrush came on. I watched the beautiful, very New York City gesture of lighting up the Empire State Building at 9:25. I stood with a small group of people with the cameras pointed upward, one person playing the song 9to5 on her phone for everyone. It was sweet, gentle and not nearly enough.

I stood there amongst the well wishers, people from France, people from Jersey, all in celebration of this incredible woman we all lost. But me, I teetered against a fence weeping like I had just lost my mother. I wanted to be “home”, I kept thinking, where people understood, where the sky might still be filled with her. Thank god you’re allowed to weep openly anywhere in NYC, it’s part of the top ten rules right under “don’t look strangers directly in the eye”. I walked back forty blocks trying to unpack it all.

I left Nashville with a bad taste in my mouth. That place can break your heart into a million little pieces, hence all the songs about it. I was no different. I left thinking I’d never look back, except for the dozen or so really important friends I made there. But here I was, wishing I was there, knowing it was the only place that would make this hurt feel ok.

Nashville can be cruel, despite what people say. It is, after all, a small town playing dress up as a big city, it’s shoes clomp clomp clomping all around like a five year old in her mother’s heels. It can be immature, judgemental and downright vicious if you don’t know the rules, which are embedded in some outdated modalities and whisper networks. I spent nearly 22 years feeling like I was being a good neighbor, a good citizen only to realize a lot of people had been watching me skeptically, the new kid who tried too hard (I had mouths to feed), who must be up to something (feeding my kids), waiting for any reason to say, “yeah look there! see! she’s just a no good hornswoggle!” should you get too big for your britches. I came to Nashville a single 23 year-old mother of a 2 1/2 year old and left an author, a celebrated pastry chef and NYT Columnist with two healthy, happy and kind children. And Nashville, clomp, clomp, clomp, had no idea what to do with that.

None of this is even important, except to say, I thought I was from nowhere. And then, Dolly died and I realize, with breathtaking clarity that the only home I have truly ever known is Nashville, the place I raised my children, had a warm house with love bursting from its seams, nurtured my family, nurtured my career, nurtured friendships, made summer dinners from farmer’s that I knew personally and fed people as often as I could. Nashville was where I listened to Dolly daily, and John Prine, and Johnny Cash, and Emmylou (and saw them as neighbors, even bumping into Emmylou at Wild Oats back before Whole Foods destroyed the local health food store culture). These were not put on affectations, like rich kids wearing Carhart and smoking Marlboro reds in a desperate attempt to be anything other than the private school yacht club lives they come from. No. This was the fabric of life in Nashville. This was, actually, who we were. We were not separate from Dolly, those of us who lived there as her neighbor. She was infused in every part of our culture, from the Mountains to the museums to, most especially, our libraries. My children received over a hundred books between them. They’d just appear in our mailbox once a month, addressed to each of them courtesy of their enrollment in public school. A little gift from Aunt Dolly every month. It all felt so normal. She was our family, our guardian against so much.

And last night I realized that Dolly has left me, a truly wayward daughter of this planet, with one final gift. A realization that I have a home, a hometown. I am from somewhere. And homesickness now has a face besides my mother’s or my children’s.

I want more than anything, today, to run back home, walk up and down Shelby Bottoms with my friends and then sit on my front porch alone, cry a little more and think about what a gift our friend, sister, auntie, godmother and good neighbor Dolly was to the entire, whole, great wide world.

This new feeling has also created an urge here, a protective thing that also feels new. I am not blind to how complicated the South is writ large - my own measly hurt feelings aside, we’ve got a history. We are ignored, misunderstood and rejected almost entirely by most of the country until a moment like this happens and then, quite suddenly, we are embraced and loved because of something very singular, as if it is not actually part of the sum of our complicated and sometimes ugly whole.

“She was the greatest American” is not an untrue statement. I’d put her up there with Jimmy Carter, also, ahem, a Southerner. And, in this moment of mourning her, I deign to sully anyone’s deep resonance or connection to her. She does, beautifully and wonderfully, belong to us all. She was the best of us humans, maybe even in the entire history of our messy tromp and flop around this planet.

But I think this moment allows a chance to say a thing that is of value. This might be a reminder to the whole country of something very important: The South is more than it seems you can possibly understand if you are not of it, from it and consider it your home. She was not only a great American. She was everything good about the South, not America. She took the parts that go unnoticed, the parts that are misunderstood, the parts that get laughed at, the parts that seem silly to a country that looks down upon hillbillies and others the un-pedigreed and she made everyone see the rich and complicated beauty deep within that.

She showed up as a caricature of everything that is mocked in our culture, showed it love and respect, waited patiently for people to understand it and somehow never, not once took offense or abandoned a disbeliever.

She redefined what subversion could look like, and how.

She was, dear reader, punk as fuck.

When you think of the South, think of that.

Think of how often the South has shown this country what humanity can look like and how a different kind of intelligence that only comes from being the lost cause takes shape.

The South is the counter-culture bedrock of this nation and Dolly, Saint Dolly, was our absolute Queen.

See you next time with stories about Bangkok.

In honor of Dolly (and, now, Sir Curry): Be well, love each other, think about complicated shit and keep that heart wide open. It’s all we’ve got.

Love, L