I’ve been wondering a lot lately about changed lives.
When we say this person or this trip or this song changed our lives, did they really? And if so, only in the moment, temporary and short, or the arc of a whole life?
I’m usually quick to kick the legs out from under an idea too broad, a premise with blinders, so through much of my life I’ve never really put much belief in the idea of ordinary or minor things seemingly changing lives.
A death in the family? Sure. Cancer, a lost job, an incredible new job, blindness, a war, lost at sea? All of those seem pretty life changing. I think those were roughly my guideposts in the early going. But of course I was completely wrong.
Our lives are changed constantly by big and little things, medium things; choices, fate, karma, wrong turns, surprise meetings, depression, showing up, owning up — this list doesn’t end.
Understanding that small things can change your life is a revelatory gift, because that acceptance helps us understand how we’re being shaped in real time by so many elements.
The other day was International Women’s Day (but isn’t it every day, really?), and I was thumbing through my phone (“Trying to be thankful/Our stories fit into phones” - Jeff Tweedy/Wilco) and I came across Maira Kalman reading from her book, “Women Holding Things.”
The next day, a woman who runs the Paris-centric Instagram site, Messy Nessy Chic layered Kalman’s voice of that reading onto a wonderful collage of Parisian women holding things — a bird’s eye window-watching spot that has served that site so well.
It was lovely. Kalman reposted it in appreciation.
And here I am, unboxing things for my new study/office and I had tossed Kalman’s hand-signed copy of that little book (ordered through her site ages ago) right in front of my monitor. I picked it up and thumbed through it again. Having just set up the Sonos speakers in my study (first the TV, then the speakers), I was listening to the Pernice Brothers on a playlist I had made and everything seemed like it was finally going right.
Here’s two truths: Maira Kalman changed my life. Joe Pernice changed my life.
And here they were, in this rare perfect moment, overlapping each other, living together in my life again.
So I stopped writing what I was writing and started writing this.
In the years 2008 and 2009 I suffered through some of the worst depression I’ve ever had, and I’ve had anxiety since before I can remember and depression since before it was clinically diagnosed, but you just kind of push through and do your best, a little better living through chemistry, a smattering of therapy and some red wine.
You do your best, which for me was an order of magnitude better than my family of origin’s approach to the problem, which was 1) Ignore it 2) Don’t talk about it 3) Don’t address it with medication 4) Do not even whisper about therapy but 5) Absolutely drown it all down in alcohol (strangely, not wine — always the outlier, me).
In 2007, Maira Kalman published “The Principles Of Uncertainty,” which would, sometime in late 2008 or early 2009, find its way into my hands and change my life by A) Making me happy and positive, B) Making me feel creative and C) Become my favorite book for those reason and for the fact that I had no idea that an artist/illustrator could be such a great writer and poet and reach through the universe with her perceptive loveliness and wake me up from a depressive slumber.
I didn’t know Kalman was writing and illustrating work for the New York Times that would become “The Principles of Uncertainty.” (She was also prolific doing work for The New Yorker). I didn’t know that I already had a connection to her through her late husband, Tibor Kalman, a legendary graphic designer who founded M&Co. (hmmm, I wonder where that M comes from), which made a watch I fell in love with so hard that it was 1) the first watch I ever bought 2) was way more than I could afford at the time — they sell now for around $150 and are simple and stunning, like great graphic design, and have found their places in history at Cooper-Hewitt and MoMa (though the version I have doesn’t seem to be made anymore, which is a good thing that delights me).
I was very interested in but had no capability to do graphic design — I just really appreciated it in my early days (to the extent that if I could date a graphic designer I would) and even more so now. In 1999, Tibor Kalman died at 49, a shock to the design world and a shockingly young age to pass.
In “The Principles of Uncertainty” — and how that title has resonated with me since discovering it — Maira Kalman illustrated and writes about all kinds of people throughout New York, characters all, and her deep-knowing, intuitive, poetic writing meshes beautifully with her art, taking you into another world.
She wrote about and illustrated 96-year old Kitty Carlisle Hart and says, “She dated George Gershwin for God’s sake!” Flip the page and there’s an illustration of Gershwin composing at the piano. “Gershwin died at the age of 38 of a brain tumor. He is buried in the same cemetery as my husband.” It’s gutting and succinct — she is a master at using the declarative sentence with grace and punch and simplicity. The adjacent page: “My husband died at the age of 49. I could collapse thinking about that. But I don’t want to talk about that now. I want to say that I LOVE that George is nearby under a leafy tree. And Ira Gershwin too.” The illustration is of green grass, a tree, a white dog laying contentedly and two large stones, one in the near-shape of a heart with “Tibor” written on top. “It is very cozy.”
So much conveyed with so little effort.
In 2010 — better medicated, slightly less troubled — I saw Kalman at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Since then, I have bought (or been gifted) everything that she’s written. But “The Principles of Uncertainty” remains the It book.
I read that book, with her glorious and dare I say now iconic handwriting, on BART, riding the train from the San Francisco Chronicle back to my home in Oakland and back again, over and over. People peered down on me and over my shoulder. Inevitably, they would ask about it — the book is visually magnetic, vibrant and joyful and special. It helped me. It changed my life by helping me find my way back.
In that same time frame, I discovered the Pernice Brothers — gloriously late, as it turned out. By 2008-09, the Pernice Brothers had already recorded five magnificent studio albums — “Overcome By Happiness” (1998), “The World Won’t End” (2001), “Yours, Mine and Ours,” (2003), “Discover A Lovelier You,” (2005) and “Live A Little,” (2006).
Collectively, they were the soundtrack out of my depression. I mashed them all into a playlist and listened constantly — walking, driving, taking the train to and from work, alone in my office writing, sitting around drinking wine late into the night — I was never without Joe Pernice’s brilliant lyrics and blessed vocals in my ear. I think for those years I listened almost exclusively to those five albums, plus Wilco and my musical hero, Elvis Costello.
The math would break down as roughly 65 percent Pernice Brothers, 25 percent Wilco, 10 percent Declan Patrick Aloysius MacManus. The former music critic in me was aware that I was barely participating in whatever was current, but it didn’t matter. I needed that lifeline.
Nothing shifts my mood more than music so it’s hard to overstate how much this immersion in a person and a band I embarrassingly knew almost nothing about ended up being so utterly transformational. I think I heard “Clear Spot” on “Gilmore Girls” but I can’t tell you definitively how I truly discovered and dove into Pernice’s work.
I do remember wishing he included the lyrics, even though I have a pretty great ear for that. I just wanted to read them. But, no. That’s not his style. I think I read somewhere that Pernice said you should put your ear to the speaker like the gods intended and everyone else did growing up.
I walked (and drove) a lot of miles listening to those five studio albums (this is why I said I was gloriously late — I could just devour them all and not wait).
The first Pernice Brothers album I wasn’t late to was “Goodbye, Killer,” which came out in 2010, four years after the last proper PB album. I loved it. I soaked in it. Part of it is coming out of my speakers now,
By then I had absorbed Pernice’s early years (as Scud Mountain Boys) and all the future, random iterations of one-off band names (originally started, I believe, when Joe thought the material wasn’t good enough or right for a proper Pernice Brothers album). Lots of diversions: Chappaquiddick Skyline, Big Tobacco, The New Mendicants, Roger Lion.
In 2019, nine years after the last Pernice Brothers album, “Spread the Feeling” came out — and even though I got to hear some of the demos, where I could tell something great was going to happen, the album is just full blast brilliant, as good as anything he’s ever done.
I was looking for change in my life, something more creative, and that album was a soundtrack and inspiration, like any great piece of art is, that motivates a person to take a leap.
Art changes your life, even when you don’t exactly know what it’s doing, seeping into you in unconscious ways. I quit my job as the Chief Television Critic for The Hollywood Reporter and started writing for television, fiction being the new path.
Somewhere in those later Pernice Brothers years, I struck up a friendship with Joe online. I got to hear a lot of songs before they came out. It was surreal. He was prolific during the pandemic in ways that I wasn’t. We were both into bikes — except that I soon realized I wasn’t anywhere near as fanatical as he was, from knowledge to building to parts collecting to, sadly, actually riding the damned things; seriously, he’s a legit constant rider, often in the kind of Toronto weather where I’d be by the fireplace with coffee, not on a trail. I was in the mild Bay Area and not clocking anywhere near the kind of miles he was.
We would text occasionally. I was writing a show for FX at the time and really wanted “Overcome By Happiness” as the theme song. Anything I’ve written since, I’ve wanted to wedge in a number of his songs and, who knows, maybe one day something will get done (Pernice was a staff writer for the Canadian police drama, “The Detail” so he knows how hard it is to get something made).
Those songs, so many of them, have deep meaning for me.
I only told him once that he was like a musical hero to me; one who had changed my life. He was polite about it and thankfully I didn’t freak him out. But if you’re going to be friends with someone, it’s better to keep that kind of talk on low.
Anyway, Joe’s also on Substack, he’s good people, I’m psyched for the next Pernice Brothers album, “Who Will You Believe,” out April 5, and as I listen to the playlist as I write this column, I’m thinking about all the strands leading to changed lives lately.
I moved in with my partner (I’m writing this at what we’re calling her house/our home); I think that qualifies as life changing. I recently worked some magic up in Portland that is changing the life of my older sister; and there are threads in those transactions that started with the death of my youngest sister and the decisions she made to help secure the future of my kids when I least expected it and most needed it.
Big things, little things — all of them life-changing in the macro and micro. I never said I knew what to make of them, just that I’ve been thinking about them more; and I guess that’s when you start to see the connections.
What a beautiful piece, Tim. I think it’s the best thing I’ve read on Substack. So much resonates with me. Sending love and solace for the loss of your sister. So nice that you and your partner are home-mates now. I think Flannery O’Connor changed my life bc she made me want to write. (Interestingly, the Cohen brothers went to my school (before me!) where two freshman English teachers assigned lots of O’Connor. I’m convinced she influenced their sensibility.
Elvis Costello. Just, sigh. I got to see him this summer in NYC with The Attractions, Nick Lowe, and Los Strait Jackets. You know what the encore was. ♥️
Just ordered the book. Thank you for the recommendation 😊.