I decided to start calling my friends who are dead very young from drugs or alcohol abuse "Fancy Suicide".
This is a horrific thing to say, so, so far I have only thought it to myself. I'll probably tell Keith though now that I wrote it down. Or wrote it up. Wrote it online?
I know I'm a creator & yet I am very unseen by the masses. I prefer it that way. I would like for someone someday to say about me, "this is her pink era, this is her blue era. This is her flower series & this is her gardening phase. This is her music era."
I constantly create unfiltered art. I share raw unfiltered life. I am beloved for it. I am also hated for it but whose counting. I have cultivated very beautiful things. I mean all of this aside from creating a very tall, smart, well read, talented, son. So I don't have to doubt that I am a creator.
I don't believe imposter syndrome is real. I think it is a humble brag. A bourgeoisie flex. I can't help myself. I've almost always decidedly known who I am. When I briefly tried to forget by drowning myself in white & rose wine. Or before that Long Island Iced Teas. I guess I'll have that artist vibe like, this is her whiskey era. The way I have gravitated towards places, things, or music. I'll also have been drawn to different drugs during different eras to try & cope with the full reality of what's going on.
I traveled so much these past couple years. I saw abandoned cities. Dead malls. I also saw revitalization happening. People congregating to clean up the messes capitalism has left behind.
Certain things are universal. This post is about Steve Fago.
As I write this a cloudy AF day cleared to Blast sunlight on my face. I've been cloud hunting all day. A storm came up on me & rained on me at Cattus Island. I have some friends who still won't talk to me even though Steve Fucking Fago died man! I wish I could assure them they shouldn't be afraid of me. I know there's a part of me worth being afraid of. I just know that is a part of all of us.
So many of my friends blogged our lives back in the day. I wish all that shit was accessible to us now. I long ago forgot how to access my DeadJournal & LiveJournals. I know I wrote with much more regularity as a kid as I had a lot more exciting things happening all the time & more time to write about them.
I often want to sit down & write ALL the stories from back then but I never know where to begin. I keep thinking about Jess Taylor's excitement at having made out with Steve Fago outside Jason's surprise birthday party that his cousin Vicky Pezza threw. I sometimes drive by that house & that fence.
Another friend, Nicole Petersen, who I have only seen on Facebook since being friends in elementary school & maybe once or twice in high school died as well. A client whose one of my mom's friends told me. She was perhaps one of the more strikingly beautiful people I've ever seen in real life. She waitressed at the Bandwagon Diner in Toms River which is the last place I saw her before she died only we didn't really talk at all. I have had that happen to me more than once. Where I pass up a chance to talk to someone that later died before I saw them again. It's a weird feeling.
I grew up middle class. Having more than one friend whose suffered homelessness & having had too many friends die of drugs or alcohol is starting to wear on me. I remember how Jena Ghar would know every single one. I talked to Nadja & she was the first person who knew both Nicole Kelly & Steve Fago & how fucked up I feel about losing either & both of them.
I have an internal rage that I think conclusively can only be expressed through the urg to Rock & Roll. Like Ani Difranco says, At a certain point it's either Ax Murder or Rock & Roll & I'm at that point "in the artist's career".
I wanna be a director & direct some sh.t. I wish I could direct an End of an Era video. Maybe I will & we'll dedicate it to Steve. Friend fucking 1 man, or was it 2. Who cares!?!? I need the gods & by the Gods I mean Ian J. Keeney, to hear my desire for a Cold Blue Eternal reunion. I am so far from mad at anyone, I would just love to have us all in the same room again. Magic used to happen when we all were together.
I had spent so much time with Jeff Wallace & then I didn't see him for 15 years. What a trippy experience. Feels like it was just yesterday. Everyone looks like shit. We look like such a rough & tumble set of scarred up old people, those of us that aren't dead I guess.
I want my own Rock Star Headquarters. Only I want people to play music not just buy memorabilia. I want a Bose PA system. That is another new life goal. I remember how much good shit got done in Jeff's parent's garage. Makes me think of Weezer.
I tried to go see Kuff Knots & Christine Elise last week for FREE live on the boardwalk in Asbury Park but I had to leave before they actually played to go get Zack from Alumni Band practice. It was still nice to be up walkin around in AP with Keith. It had been a while. That is where we went on our first & many dates since. I hope to be going up there next weekend for Dogmatic LiveArt's Art Show(I think, now I realized I didn't actually check where it is) !!! I am excited that is happening. Keith & I have visited quite a few museums & art exhibits since we've been together & that was something I had really missed in my life that I did a lot as a kid.
The only other time the sun has been this bright on my face while I sit in my room was while I was in a group in a live-chat for Julia Cameron's The Listening Path workshop. It was so much more of an intimate, like 40 people in a room Zoom call than I was expecting. I did another The Artist's Way workshop online with 400 people which was more what I was expecting. But the listening path was intimate AF. Julia's dog had just died the day before but she was determined to do her workshop anyway because it was a once in a lifetime experience for all of us. We all knew her dog intimately from reading her work. She wrote a lot about having a dog. She got to read us love poems she wrote about her dog. It was a really intense experience that I felt very strongly about being a part of. It was a really good sky with clouds & colors & whatnot out my window, as it often is & I got to share that with 3 isolated women who also spontaneously signed up to do The Listening Path workshop. That day I wound up talking to another women who was Also named after her 2 grandmothers just like I am. I literally thought she was lying or crazy but she was also in blindingly bright sunlight while she was laughing & crying & saying me too. Then she told me her name. I think it was Helena. But I can't remember the other name. Maybe someday it'll come back to me.
I have to blog now because I felt like every time I add someone I was severed from, by being cancelled & not having access facebook, I have this long talk with them. Steve was in the last round of a handful of weekly people I added so that I don't get flagged for adding too many people too fast. But I was Expecting to hear from him. I felt like I Just talked to him about Phil Collins & The Weather.
Sometimes "crazy" people are half right or entirely right but what they know is too crazy for the average person to get their head around. It's hard to carry around a big secret. Usually people won't believe bad things that are really bad because it's their brain's way of protecting itself. People use drugs & alcohol to numb themselves so that they can ignore the secrets they keep.
My dad & Douglas Adams gave me a hearty respect & obsession with technology & writing. Technology is always changing. So is life, if I don't photograph that sky right now it will be different shortly. If I don't write this now, it will be somewhat forgotten about later.
The day of Steve's funeral I Almost left & skipped the bar afterwards. I don't drink & Keith & I had an entire house to lay carpets in before Tuesday morning. But as I was leaving Donovan's heading down 571 as I got to the Ocean County Mall there was this brilliant Heaven Sky all around. Once I did the jug handle to go back to my old friends, it was even better.
I just kept thinking. Steve would have lived in this moment forever if he could have. All of us together again & the saddest we've ever been as adults so far but also feeling a magic within us that we had definitely forgotten about in the pandemic.
I know for a fact "The Year Without Music" as I call it, killed multiple friends of mine. Without a place to dance the night away some people can't survive life. People fought for their churches but the unrecognized church of Local Folk Music whenever & wherever you wanted it, was gone.
Some of us didn't have any fucking clue that was a thing that the totalitarian government could do. So many things that are important like sports & music became more elite. More at home. More perfect & individual. When these things are about human connection.
The screen is only a poor representation for the connection, the hand holding, the deep eye contact, that humans are actually craving. I've always been a germaphobe who declines hand shakes with new people but I always held everyone I'm friend's with hand. I was thinking about Steve Fago & I holding hands at 17 & 18 & telling each other we loved one another & nothing else. We never kissed. We texted a lot over the years.
He got up early my 18th birthday to go to Water Works which we didn't do because of a thunderstorm. But I wish we did. I don't know if I made it to The End of Water Works before it closed & became Breakwater Beach. Instead we went out to Ihop for breakfast with Erin Ryan & Addam Reynolds. Sometimes I'm like what the fuck are these people I think about all the time as I'm driving around town even doing. Having been off Facebook & them hating me well before that, I don't really know. I'm fucking tired of finding out my friends are dead. I am glad that being back on Facebook allowed me to go to one of their funerals.
Missing that people die because you lack social media is a fucked up thing to go through. I think about Jena Ghar & Rhapsody Prisco daily. Like Aunt Tootsie I talk to dead people. Now Steve & Nicole & Nicole are on the list. But also my grandmother's. Grandma Jackie would say I've got a lot of Guardian Angels. I certainly do. I've met so many angels that walked this Earth. The problem right now is that this world is no place for angels. It's a devils world. We need more friendships. With healthy boundaries. We need less family.
Less, I am here because I have to be, & more, I am here because I want to be.
I keep thinking about Geraldine & Shilly working at Rock Star Headquarters when they still thought in Spanish & not yet in English, when we used to eat too many french fries & mozzarella sticks at Ocean County College. I keep thinking about how Fucking Mad Vicky was when Ashley & Cole ran up a Giant bar tab on her credit card one night at McIntyre's while celebrating Cold Blue Eternal.
I remember when I started Girl Fight because Ashley & Cole were doing it. I remember how strong Prairie made us for everything that was to come. No one had Any idea then how bad it was going to get for women. For artists. For musicians. For lovers of all types to survive this apocalyptic vibe.
We all thought the apocalypse would have sexier clothes in my youth. These are not the Candy Raver Goths you're looking for.
I just want anyone who reads this to know I forgive you all. I harbor no hatred in my heart. I wish no ill will upon you in my soul. If anything I remember only the good things about people. Mostly I only have had very few people do intentionally bad things to me.
I have always been part of a deep & expensive web. More so than most people I am realizing as I age. It is good to be named after your grandmothers & for your grandmothers to have been very strong hard working smart women. I just want to try to make people feel the way having them in my life made me feel about myself.
Mike Newman reached out, the one person I feared would harbor animosity towards Steve & yet his message was the same as everyone else's. "Why didn't he tell us while he was still here? He deserved to be forgiven." I was sitting at a table full of atheists. All of us having left the Catholic tradition of our parents & grandparents over the abuse scandals. But we all still had a will to forgiveness.
I've been thinking a lot about Nicole, Cole. The one who is alive. I really hope she is doing well & can live with whatever pandemic hell she's been through. I hope someday she wants to kick box with me again in a class with Prairie & kick my ass a little. Girl Fight was the first & only all women environment I have ever been in.
I can forever kick myself that I didn't go to the all girl's Rutger's Douglas Campus before Mary Daly was sued using Title IX. I Could have been the best feminist the world has ever seen. Can you use a college acceptance that is 20 years old? Douglas here I come. I've been seriously considering going back to school when Zack goes to college. I may have to wait until he is done to afford both though.
I'm really proud of him. He's a really good teenager. I know because I was a really bad teenager. It's so weird to be thinking so much about my teenage years for so many reasons. High School Jackie Lane would never doubt herself for a second. She had an epic set of balls. I have often looked to her when I need to get Through Some Shit & the pandemic years have been no exception that's for sure. I just remember punching loads of grown men in mosh pits. I feel like I wish people were not afraid of me but I spent the better part of 20 years making people fear me. I have mellowed out a lot in my old age. But I am still far from mellow. I have a lot of energy left to get things done. Bitches are in fact the only people in life who get anything done. This world needs a clean up & a hygiene lesson & I intend to give it. Every space is worthwhile. We need to keep this place beautiful. Rest In Power Steve Fago.
@JackieLane2020 on twitter & instagram @jackielanehair on twitter & instagram
@hermalegenitals for radfem shitposting
It's really going to be music I perform live someday though. I need to eventually. I just have to bite the bullet & cry in public. The singing that comes out in between will be good too. People think I am joking. I am serious like a heart attack as I always say.
This entire blog entry is just everything I thought we'd be talking about dude. I finally meet your mom after all these years & she's delightful! Maybe she'll come see Jill Ramme play with me. She said she almost kept your ma when she dumped you. It takes a good mom to raise a good son. Anyone's good son can fall victim to the opiate epidemic or even the alcohol epidemic or the pornography epidemic.
We need to have compassion for those we love. Even when we don't really want to. Nothing else will stop the endless warring. We need world peace & we need it now. My dad made me listen to the entirety of American Pie when I was little, he also has a love of Frank Zappa & the one thing I inherited of my parents loving years is their record collection "From the Music Library of Bob & Linda Lane". I don't know if my dad got the second half of the collection out of his house fast enough after Hurricane Sandy to save it. Who knows. He didn't let me help him clean it out. I was only in it once. Looked similar to how I had left it. I could have helped more. I have the half I stole in college & have moved 10 times since. Keith & I watched a documentary called The Day The Music Died about how that song was written & toiled over.
Music is a web if connections. Feeling severed from that web has had a disastrous effect on the class divide. So many former working class musicians are now pimping "woke" protofascist dogma that can not be questioned.
I keep thinking about Jason climbing the walls of Rock Star Headquarters on a ladder to get me the Only one of a very old Rage Against The Machine sticker from high off the wall. I think about how brutal it is to be dehumanized as birthing people by your radical idols. Too afraid to question this current social requirement. Now that Rock Star Headquarters burned down the year after Hurricane Sandy I can be happy I felt it was so important to rescue in that moment.
My mom & Zack & I went to Atlantic City for her 67th birthday. So many homeless people. So many people gambling. I can't stand the thought of either being so normal in this world. Public prostitution is coming next as far as the normal things no one ever wanted but are surely coming to pass with everything happening.
On a much happier excursion Keith & my mom & I went to Stony Hill Farms Sunflower Field & got lost there one entire Sunday morning in the blistering heat. We all wore sun shirts & silly hats though & we did just fine. It was the exact sort of weather that 🌻 Sunflowers like. We each got to cut a bouquet of sunflowers & Zinnias ourselves in milk bottles & a rustic bucket.
I didn't think Zack would like the 3 hours in the car but it wasn't bad at all the time of day we went & I am bummed he didn't get to see it. Hopefully he gets to go up & see it somehow this year or next. It's really incredible.
Everyone needs to see it. I am telling everyone about it. It was life changing.
I am determined not to miss out on life changing things. I think of my friends & what they deserve to be doing instead of sitting in an early grave. I greatly remember thinking it would be me someday because I would die with my secrets. Also my nickname was Death. Now I have none left to hide. Only things I've not yet lived or remembered.
I'm sure my Middle & High School Journals would seem much more far away than they did when I read them at 25. Another 12 years has passed. This time I've maintained the same blog. It is in vogue to use Substack. Or some other Only Fans, Patreon Knock-Off. I am still, after all these years, into radically creating/sharing all this art with you for free. It's my version of freedom. To be an Ad-Free Artist forever. I still only ever promote my friend's businesses & regular people's art projects on social media or IRL. It feels good to know who I am. It makes it a lot harder for anyone to take it from you. The previous times I lost it, I didn't know what I had. Now no one could convince me otherwise so easily.
When Keith & I finished laying carpet, no Allison, not a euphemism. We hung all 4 paintings that we got at the Soup Can Magazine's Anniversary at The Strand Theater in Lakewood where my family has so much herstory in my house that I am about to own entirely on my own for the first time. They look so beautiful it is hard to describe. I've never been so proud of something. I can't wait until Casey comes to visit & test it out for me. Keith & I are going to get some good Wi-Fi going soon since there's bad cell reception. HMU if you want to stay in my tiny house at The Jersey Shore for a week. Friends/artists only, looking for a beach retreat. See you soon.
Until Next Time...
Jackie Fucking Lane
