you've got to learn to be much stronger
at times your head must rule your heart.
Nina Simone, were she still with us, would be turning 88 today, and even though she isn’t here to celebrate - or maybe because - I walked to my favorite bakery to buy a slice of cake to eat in her honor.
They didn’t have any cake, because of course they didn’t. The sun may be shining today and I may have had to put on shorts to go outside, but we are not far removed from the inhospitable nightmare that my hometown had been just days ago. There is still ice in the gutters and those of us that are lucky enough to have water still must boil it.
So, of course there was no birthday cake. For Nina Simone, or anyone else.
But there was a frozen-seeming slice of pie and that felt close enough and as I sat on the curb to eat it, I thought about how Nina Simone had wanted so badly to play Carnegie Hall as a classical pianist that when she finally got to play the infamous venue she wasn’t all that pleased. No- she was instead disappointed. Disappointed because she’d been booked to play songs she considered ‘pop’. Disappointed because she didn’t think she’d be given the respect she’d dreamed of since she was a child.
I thought about how dreams can get so bogged down in minutiae, so burdened in specificity, that it can become hard to recognize when you’ve actually achieved something that may be just as good.
Nina Simone was born Eunice Waymon. She was a prodigious talent, but was thwarted in her early ambitions because the seeds of hatred at the rotten core of this country refused to let her be great until she was willing to go to war with it.
She adopted the name Nina Simone when she played in bars to pay her music school tuition - hiding who she was because she knew her mother’d be ashamed if she ever discovered the truth of where the money came from.
I wonder what it must have been like, at the height of her career, to have people shouting her praises, but to have them be always calling out for her in a name she’d come up with to obscure her shame.
I read Nina Simone’s memoir, I Put a Spell on You, a few years back and remember wishing I’d read a biography instead. Wished I’d heard the story of her life from someone with a little more distance, someone a little less dismissive of the glory. Wished I’d learned of her struggles from someone who wasn’t still feeling their sting. Wished I’d learned of her triumphs from someone who wasn’t too busy being disappointed things hadn’t gone quite as planned to pause and appreciate that there were prolonged moments of brilliance.
Today, though, I’m glad that she gave us the book - as tough of a read as it is. I’m glad she let us see both her genius and her ego; shed some light on the battles they raged.
A friend texted me this morning to ask if things were going to be alright today. Any other day this week and the answer would have likely been negative, but I told him it would because the sun was supposed to come out. And because it was still very early in the day, probably too soon to call it, but Nina Simone had already told me things were going to get easier - and I’m not one to make someone a liar on their birthday.
Nina Simone would be turning 88 today if she were still here. She is not here to eat cake, even if there were any to be found, but she gave us seventy years and more of her soul than we deserved or ever could have earned.
I couldn’t find any cake, but I could light a candle.
Happy Birthday, Miss Simone.
playlists:
I didn’t get a chance to make a new playlist specifically for Nina Simone’s birthday, but the timing was perfect to revisit this one that I’ve been turning to for a few years now to shake off the Sunday blues. The closest I get to church these days: Simone for Sundays.
I also had a birthday recently, which meant it was time to bust out my You’ve Got To Learn // Attempts at Aging Gracefully playlist, which starts off with one of my favorite Nina Simone performances and is largely based on its themes. I made this one a few years back and like to revisit it each year to see what lands still and what doesn’t. Which songs I’ve outgrown and which ones I’m still growing into.
I feel down a rabbit hole last weekend and spent the better part of a day reading an academic article about crying as a theme in music, and then, because the article had as a part of its end notes a very long list of songs about crying.. making this playlist based off of their list. There are some very big omissions in their list (ie it is an actual crime that they didn’t include Janis Joplin’s “Cry Baby”) but if you need a nine hour playlist about shedding tears, I’m, of course, your girl: The Sky is Crying, hopefully you are not.
albums:
As briefly mentioned above, Nina Simone so deeply wanted to be known as a classical concert pianist. And she was so so so incredibly good. But, the Simone album I most wanted to revisit today was not the ones with her classical training on display as much as one that saw her taking well known pop songs and making them well and truly her own. Here Comes the Sun is well worth the listen if you haven’t given it one recently.
Valley Maker is one of my favorite bands to listen to - in general and particularly in motion. Their album Rhododendron, played twice through will get you from the Hoover Dam to a very specific campsite in Nevada’s Valley of Fire and I cannot listen to it now without seeing the crimson rocks. A new Valley Maker album came out last week and while it didn’t take me anywhere magnificent it made my neighborhood feel big and worth exploring again after so many cooped up days of snow. When the Day Leaves is the best of last week.
I am still working my way through Rolling Stone’s Top 500 albums list, and wrapped up notes on 61-80 recently. You can read it for my scattered notes like this one, on Neil Young’s Harvest:
It is 20 degrees in Austin and the snow shows no sign of melting, and while I’m lucky to still have power, I’m glad I also had this album to escape into. Where Marley’s Exodus warms you by taking you away from where you are and into the sun, Young’s Harvest warms you by bringing the warmth to meet you where you are. This album is oatmeal - by which I don’t mean it’s bland, I mean it’s one of my very favorite ways to warm the soul.
As a reminder, I’m not putting these in your inbox directly because they’ll be coming chaotically, but you can read them on the site any time. This batch includes among others - Aretha, OutKast, Elvis, Frank Ocean and My Bloody Valentine.
May your home be warm, may your water be clean and may you remember -