Songbird

Cultural touchstones, and Christine McVie on a rainy Friday morning.

Good morning!

It’s pre-dawn on Friday morning as I am typing this, but will certainly not be by the time I send it. These days I am slow, and uninterrupted time is scarce.

I’ve got Fleetwood Mac’s “Songbird” on repeat in my headphones while the rest of the house sleeps. You have probably heard by now that Christine McVie, the band’s pianist and foremost songwriter died this week. This is the song that she would often play solo, as the band’s encore, like a lullaby after the entire ensemble had expelled an unthinkable amount of energy on the stage playing the hits.

I grew up with Fleetwood Mac in 1980s. Tango in the Night was one of my primary musical texts — perhaps the first tape from my mom’s walkman that I really, really loved. I remember studying its liner notes: the airbrush-y jungle cover scene, and on the inside, a black-and-white portrait that so closely resembled a subset of my dad’s cousins that I briefly believed I was actually related to the band.

Of course I didn’t know it then, but two of my first favorites — “Everywhere” and “Little Lies” — were written by McVie. As I got a little older, I came to realize that Stevie Nicks was the more famous of the Fleetwood Mac women. I don’t think I really understood anything about her solo career, not to mention her compelling entanglements with bandmates and drugs. I just knew she was tiny, witchy, and magnetic and had a cool name. (If you can’t get enough Stevie, this now 10-year-old Jada Yuan profile of her will never get old.)

It was only decades later that I realized what an absolutely essential backbone, as both writer and voice, that McVie was to the band that’s given my life its most consistent soundtrack. (When you’re seven, you don’t really think about who wrote your favorite songs.)

I think it was sort of last-minute, that I roped my friend Nicolette into seeing Fleetwood Mac play at Madison Square Garden in 2014. We grabbed food somewhere fast and weird in midtown before the concert — before Shake Shacks were everywhere. We talked about how she was struggling to get pregnant, and I was considering breaking up with my boyfriend of four-plus years.

I had found tickets on StubHub that had us sort of dangling from a balcony directly above the stage, several hundred feet in the air in the velvet dark.

Christine McVie had recently rejoined the band to tour, for the first time in 15 years. It felt like they were all effervescent with health and deeply giddy to all be playing together again. The sheer kinetic energy of Lindsey Buckingham dashing around the stage with his guitar was not quite believable. I remember thinking his hands would bleed or his head would explode.

But mostly, I remember standing in the dark beside Nicolette, our hearts aching for different reasons, and belting out the words to songs I’d known since long before I was old enough to understand them. The band played and played and played.

They played an encore, and then they left the stage again.

And then Christine McVie came out, and played “Songbird” on the piano. It is one of those songs that can at once crack open a fractured heart and also start to heal it. Her voice is both a heavy anchor and a light balm. It’s one of those that makes you feel like you too might actually be able to sing. (In the kitchen this week, I have tried.)

On Wednesday, I was lying in the dentist chair and realized I hadn’t heard back from a Thanksgiving text I had sent to Nicolette, a cross-country friend since we moved to LA. She has two kids now, a baby and a toddler, and like so many little ones this year, they have been constantly sick. At one point she said she thought even their dogs had RSV.

When I picked up my phone after having my teeth cleaned I had two texts from her. One cheerily greeted me with the news that her family all had Covid, again. The other said she saw that Christine McVie had died, and thought of me. She was so glad we got to see her.

I hadn’t heard this news yet. I’m grateful that I heard it from Nicolette, and of course that we got to see her.

It sometimes feels lately like the person I used to be is a remote memory. To be sure, I’m a long way from last-minute tickets to a show at MSG with a girlfriend.

I miss New York. I miss Nicolette. I miss crying in the dark with thousands of people.

But I am so grateful for touchstones like these songs, and these friends, to remind me I’m still here.

Soon after I started writing this, Lua moaned “Maaaaaammmmmaaaaa” from her crib, and the day began. After she was dressed, when we went into the kitchen for breakfast, I turned on “Everywhere.”

I started singing, Corey started dancing, and Lua, now two years old, laughed and looked kind of embarrassed by her parents.

The show goes on.

If it’s all feeling fast, touch your touchstones.

Have a good day!

Jenni

PS

Recipes can be touchstones too. Nicolette is pretty sure we ate chicken fingers before the concert, which led to a conversation about the virtues of Impossible nuggets vs. Applegate chicken tenders because we moms now. But this week I made Dorie Greenspan’s orange-scented lentil soup, which is so simple and nourishing when nothing else sounds good, and it usually doesn’t require a trip to the grocery store. With crusty bread and butter and a salad with vinaigrette, it’s a truly first-class meal. Everybody ate it.