Barbara does as she is told, promptly feeling Brooke’s hand slide a little lower between her legs. “Oh.”

“You’re welcome.”

She can’t help but chuckle, feeling Brooke’s soft breath against her ear, her back against Brooke’s chest. She is being so gentle and patient about it that Barbara can’t quite believe.

But of course, this is very different from the days when they’d have a quickie before a concert, very different from when Brooke would mark her body all over as a kind of souvenir to whoever would fuck her later. Brooke’s hand against her is so light that Barbara only remembers it’s still there when it starts moving again, tentatively.

It’s the first time she is letting someone touch her after pregnancy. She could handle friendly kisses and has even cozied up to cuddling with Dash in the later months, but anything more provocative was a firm no. Her body feels like a mere extension of Grace’s, Grace’s whims being her whims, Grace’s pain being her pain. She must be alert, always available to her daughter. Even thinking of sex feels inappropriate.

But this afternoon the five months old Grace is enjoying a nice summer breeze around Houston, the men she will one day address as fathers enjoying their own day off as they carry their little baby. Barbara’s original plan was to do laundry and have a nap.

Her nap was supposed to be right now. She had never been known to resist Brooke’s charms, anyway. “You can go a bit faster, baby.”

She moans at the feeling of Brooke kissing her neck, gasping at the way her fingers were still able to find just the right spot to get Barbara melting in her hands. The house dress she was wearing now only covered her breasts, as Brooke kept working between her legs.

“I missed this.”

“I missed having you like this.”

Barb chuckles again, her eyes fluttering under much needed pleasure. She had been having such stressful months— obviously, since she had a full baby at home now. She was learning to be a mother. She was getting used to having Brooke and Dash in a space that used to belong to her and Jim (but mostly her). She was working all the time, making sure things were working out, making sure everyone was happy and content with their situation, making sure that Grace was alive and well. So much to carry on her shoulders.

She turns her body to face Brooke’s, holding her face with both hands so she could give her a desperate, longing kiss. Brooke had been so good to her. Even when she tried to push her away.

The kiss they share ends up sloppy and messy the way they like it, a sliver of saliva connecting them when they pull away to catch their breath. Barbara positions Brooke’s hand between her legs again, smiling. “Go on.”

Brooke didn’t need to be told twice. It’s more intimate that way: they can look directly at each other’s faces, Barbara can see the way Brooke can’t help smiling at her moaning expressions. Doesn’t take long for her to come, and when it happens, Brooke glues their foreheads together, their bodies so close she shakes together with Barbara. When Barbara feels better, she wraps her legs around Brooke, a lazy hand on Brooke’s hip.

“Don’t think I will let you go so easily.”

At 32, 𝒢𝓇𝒶𝒸ℯ ℳ𝒶𝓎 ℛℴ𝒷𝒾𝓃𝓈ℴ𝓃 has dealt with fame and its perils more than most people can say— the child of one of the most mythologized bands of the ‘70s, you only have to read her surname to know where she comes from. Growing up in a tight discipline of calligraphy and piano lessons, away from all the buzz from her parents’ fame, she could never believe her parents were actually that iconic as people liked to frame it. To her, they were simply her parents, the people who asked her to eat her greens and clean up her room, the people who'd record a hit song in a rush so they could take her prom dress shopping. Having now reached the age her mother was when she became pregnant, but in a completely different contet, Grace says this moment feels definitive; less permanent than the one her mother went through, but full of possibilities. She has learned how to shape her own narrative without discarding the one that came before it, to celebrate her family legacy while building her very own.

Living in New York for the past few years, Grace arrives for the interview early, and the calmness she carries are a clear sign that she moves to a different rhythm than the city around her. There’s no phone in her hands, no restless shifting, just a quiet attentiveness that feels almost out of place in Manhattan, but she has been carrying with her all the way from Monterey.

"My mom hates people that are always late," she says, an obvious trace of amusement in her voice. "Which is funny, because Mom and Dad are always running late, and she has been coordenating their schedules for as long as I've been alive."

When someone has four parental figures, it may be hard to know who they’re talking about when they say my parents. But with Grace, the distinctions are subtle, made it even more obvious by her parents' own fames. The attentive listener will notice the slight shift in tone, the choice of words, the familiarity layered differently each time. Barbara Ann Robinson is Mom, the one who once carried her for nine monts, between a long tour and a few months of rest. Her pool-blue eyes and the double name are part of the inheritance her mother gave her.

Then there’s Brooke Wellington and Dash Burnett, her extra parents, a structure that makes sense to her, even if it invites curiosity from everyone else. She speaks of them with the same steadiness, the same absence of spectacle that defines most things in her life.

Grace doesn’t explain the dynamics unless asked, which it's a must to us. To her, it’s never been unusual— it’s simply how her world was built.

"You know, before I started school, they sat down with me and said Gracie—" she pauses, a small smile forming, like she’s replaying the scene in real time. "—our family is different from what most people have. And people might ask questions. But different doesn’t mean bad. It just means it’s what works better for us."

She lets out a soft breath, almost a laugh.

"What defines my upbringing, my childhood, is that I was immensely loved. I am immensely loved. My parents always made it clear to me, when I was growing up, that I was their priority. When I went to college and needed help, they dropped everything to go support me. My family is not so different from many other families. Yes, they are rockstars, and there are four parents, but... that meant there were more people to love me. I think that's how they described it to me."

It may surprise people how plain she is about it all. There's no defensiveness in her tone, just some obvious tenderness for her memories. "The thing is, when people talk about them or ask me about my life, they are usually so... disrespectful. Which is part of the deal when your parents are public figures, but I've really struggled with that. When I was a teenager, two of my biggest fears were that people would look at me and see my parents, and that people would look at me and not see my parents. Because they are, obviously, a huge part of me, but like any teenager, I didn't want to be defined by them."

Grace shrugs lightly. "Being a teenager, overall, was just really complicated for me. Puberty hitting, so many new feelings. And that's usually when you understand that your parents are people apart from you. They had a life before you and they have a life beside you. And in my case, everyone else seemed to have an opinion about those lives of them that I previously had no idea about. When I was 14 or so, a girl told me my mother was a whore, and I punched her. Of course I didn't belive my mom was a whore, but I remember being like why is she a whore? Why would anyone say that? It was the first time I realized there were entire narratives about them that had nothing to do with what I knew. The people who drove me to soccer practice and carried my allergy medicine everywhere were topics of gossip for the entire world."

She stops for a moment, fingers tracing patterns on the tabletop as she tries to make sense of her thoughts. "And I was very sensitive about it," she lets out a laugh. "I gave hell to my parents about it. I called them old and a flop multiple times. That was also the time that I got a bit older so they felt more comfortable to date around. They wouldn't tell me Grace, I'm going out with this actress, but of course I knew. And I was this fragile teenage girl, trying to figure out what any of that meant. And thank God they were all very patient! The four of them had very harsh relationships with their parents, or no relationships at all, so I don't know how they had it in them to be so... kind with me. I got lucky with them."

"My mom was the one who got it harder, because she is, in all fairness, the center of our worlds. She carried me, she plays the most instruments, she’s a great songwriter. She plans the tours for everyone, even when it’s solo. She cooks, she cleans the house, she dances ballet, she makes the doctor’s appointments, she reads the contracts, she calls the lawyers… She is our glue. Mama [Brooke] loved her so much that, when she got pregnant, she decided that they could live together. And Dad [Jim] loved her so much that he decided to tolerate having Mom around. I don't know what they thought when they made that arrangement. The thing is, as a teenager, I started to lash out at them, and Mama [Barbara] got the worst of it."

Grace glances down briefly, as if watching those moments play out all over again. "I’d say things just to get a reaction. Or sometimes to hurt her, if I’m being honest." Her voice doesn’t waver, but it softens. "I’d dismiss everything she did, call her controlling, say she needed to stop managing everyone’s life, including mine. I'd say she was selfish, because she made everyone's lives change, because she put me in a situation no one I knew was in. Being the adult one, she usually would ignore me, try to not care. But of course they were days when she shouted back, which only made both of us feel worse."

"She didn't want me to get into music. Music was not the problem, actually, but she wanted me to go to school first, get educated. So, of course, I started saying I wasn't going to colege, because one didn't need to study to make music. And Mom and Dad [Brooke and Dash] supported me. But I only pushed it so hard because I wanted to annoy her. When Milkteeth [her debut album] was released, that's when it became real. Mom [Barbara] would never let me tour it, and now I know she was right, but I was buzzing with so many ideas. I wanted to go out into the world. Meanwhile, she was filled of concern catching up with reality. I was destroying the life she had built around me, and I was old enough that she couldn't do anything about it."

"When I came back home, things were very quiet. She asked me simple things, like how my summer was, if I needed to do some shopping before school started again. Everything but the record. I was there asking my father is she planning my murder or what? I was waiting for the lecture she'd give me. They all talked about the album but her, which made it so much harder. Her silence made me sit with it in a way I hadn’t before, which, ironically, is probably what she wanted all along. She is great at that."

After voluntarily retreating from the spotlight, Barbara Ann Robinson became something of a myth— the star who traded fame for peace, living far from the noise, while her former bandmate and girlfriend, Brooke Wellington, chose a different road. To carve out her artistic self from Midnight Mayhems, she released a single solo record, remarkably different from her work in the band: with time, Contemplations and Ramblings became a fan favorite. The mysterious woman in the iconic white dress and cowboy boots, a look that became as timeless as her voice, was never to be seen on stage again, rare presentations with friends like Joni Mitchell and Emmylou Harris aside.

Now that she is entering what she declares her final years of living, she steps back into the light, picks up her bass, says hello to the crowd and spends a night per month devoted to touching everyone through the power of her songs. For such a fuss, Barbara likes to remind us that she never planned to be a singer; she just wanted to play the bass. But Brooke made me sing, she says proudly. And here we are.

With the recent death of her husband, Jim Robinson, Barbara moved from the heat of Texas to the humidity of California, a place she has been acquainted with since her youth. She’s been sharing a beach house with her oldest stepdaughter and spends most of her days smoking, drinking, hanging out with the city’s residents and sharing her memories with whoever would like to hear. She says she has never been mysterious, but quiet and and an actual bore, and aging only made this aspect of her personality stronger.

She welcomes us into her house with a huge breakfast in true Southern style: buttermilk biscuits, scrambled eggs, two kinds of jam and the strongest black coffee you can imagine. “It’s how I was raised,” she says. “we didn’t have anything to eat, but we’d always share our nothing with someone. Now that I have something, I can share it with you.”

The beach house is lived-in, the price of being in the Robinson family ever since the 1970s. Barbara and Jim bought it after the band’s first hit album, before the Grammys, before the band implosion, before everything got too painful to deal with. Back then, it was meant to be a place to rest between tours. These days, it’s the only place Barbara can sleep through the night. It’s also the place where Barbara wrote hits like Rhiannon.

Her stepdaughter has been living here since 2017. Before that, it had been empty since 1979, the year Midnight Mayhems went on their last tour. Barbara sips her coffee and gestures toward the backyard, where the gardenias grow. “The garden is hers,” she says, referring to her stepdaughter, Caroline. Those who saw the papers coverage on Jim cheating on Barbara, the news of a daughter coming out of his betrayal and their almost subsequent divorce would never believe the soft quiet of their relationship now. “It was never her fault her parents were idiots. The media wanted to paint me as bitter and yes, I was furious at Jim, but I knew Caroline had nothing to do with it.”

Caroline had been raised in Houston ever since she was a child, by Barbara’s request. "It was better for her there," Barbara says, almost to herself. After her mother’s tragic death in a car accident, Barbara and Jim stepped in without hesitation. Barbara was the one who signed the school forms, took the late-night calls, stayed up for fevers and finals. Now Caroline is thirty-six, a middle school teacher in Monterey. When she arrives home at the end of the day, she greets us with the calm cadence of someone used to grading essays in pen. Her presence is quiet but steady, like her stepmother’s. It can’t not be mentioned that she is the spitting image of Barbara, even though they don’t share any genes.

Both of them have heard this a hundred times. They shrug, but their face soften. Barbara has heard this a hundred times. She shrugs, but her face softens “People think likeness comes from blood,” Caroline says, before stepping away to change her clothes. “but time leaves its mark just the same.”

They’ve been living together ever since Jim’s death. Caroline didn’t think it was right to let Barbara live in the ranch alone, surrounded by memories of her late husband, far from both her stepdaughters. far from the coast. “She kept calling it a vacation,” Barbara says, lips curving with irony. “As if I’d be back in six months. But I know I’m at the age where people decide things and I have no choice but to follow through. It’s alright, anyway. We’re having our fun.”

She says this lightly, but there’s weight behind it. The loss of her two great lovers in the span of a year was not only devastating, but also disorienting. “After Brooke’s death, I entered a state of mourning, obviously. Couldn’t help but think about old regrets. And then Jim died. And there was this strange sense of—” she pauses, fingers tightening around the handle of her mug, “finality. Not just grief. Like a chapter had closed and no one had warned me I was writing the last page. In losing both of them…”

Brooke and Jim, as different as they were, were the two people who had seen her most fully (one in chaos, the other in endurance). “They kept me tethered,” she admits. “In different ways. Brooke was a tornado, and Jim was a map. After they were both gone… They were the only two people I wanted to talk about it to. I felt like I was floating in space. I still feel like that, actually.”

For someone whose life was once front-page material, Barbara speaks about the past like she’s carefully folding away laundry: precisely, tenderly, in a practical manner. There’s a faded photograph of the band framed in the living room: Barbara’s in the middle, barefoot, grinning, Brooke with a bottle in her hand and a stare like she could see through you, holding Barbara’s waist, Dash, cigarette in hand, and Jim, already halfway out of the frame. A reminder of not so simpler times, when they were still all together, young enough to not have any regrets.

There’s a gentleness in Barbara now, one that’s been hard-earned. "I was so scared of being misunderstood, which happened all the time, that I lost myself in the haze," she says. "Now I try to just say what I mean, even if it’s ugly. And, when you know, I’m an old widow. There’s not much to do. Performing, writing the new songs with Dash, gives the two of us something to do. Sometimes he comes around, sometimes I go to meet him. We’re taking bets on who is going to die first. You wanna join us?” […]

Grace May Robinson had the world in a chokehold before she was even born. Who would’ve guessed Barbara Ann would end up pregnant— and who would’ve guessed Jim Robinson had what it takes to get a woman pregnant, no less? With With rumors flying about the band breaking up and whispers that Barbara and Brooke hadn’t spoken in months, the public was bracing for a meltdown. Instead, the band did what they did best: flipped the script and said hey, everything’s fine. We will be taking a break. Before the room full of overworked journalists could even breathe, they dropped the real bomb: Barbara is pregnant, though, so we’ll be doing a short tour to celebrate it before going on hiatus. Just like that, in true Midnight Mayhems fashion. Grace May was announced to the world as a throwaway comment at the end of a Q&A that left everyone reeling.

Summer of ‘79 is going to be legendary, Brooke added, grinning like she enjoyed every part of the chaos they’d just unleashed. And of course she did.

That tour was about the music as much as it was about the spectacle. Songs like Stuck in the Middle with You and Go Your Own Way got new meanings. There were tabloid countdowns to Barbara’s due date and every single rockstar in the world felt the obligation to congratulate Barbara and wish her a safe delivery. Who doesn’t remember Joni Mitchell, close friends of the Robinsons and frequent guest of their ranch, singing a special rendition of Mrs. Robinson in homage to her friend? And what about the onstage bass solo that ended with Brooke kissing Barbara’s stomach to the roar of the crowd? It was messy and brilliant and absolutely intentional. Midnight Mayhems didn’t just play arenas— they played the press, the fans, and each other, like always.

And when Grace was born, the world watched. Not just because she was a rock baby, but because somehow, she became the symbol of something the band had always toyed with but never quite embraced: softness. Vulnerability. Maturity. Maybe even hope. To people who lived like every day was the last, that was a revolutionary change. The band didn't exactly mellow, but for a moment, they let the volume dip. Gracie, as her four (!) parents called her, was almost two years old when the first news about new music from the band dropped— well, not new music from the band, but a solo album by Brooke Wellington. Then, one by Barbara Ann Robinson.

People couldn’t help but wonder: was this the end? How could they reunite again, when Brooke was playing with a heavy metal sound and Barbara had never leaned so hard into the folk aesthetic? But Midnight Mayhems has never been good at satisfying people’s expectations and, somehow, they did it. Carrying on with solo careers, writing records for the band, touring from time to time, selling out arenas, raising a daughter in a more-or-less normal routine, worrying about math grades and school drop-offs.

The little girl with the brown hair so light that could pass as blonde, with curls that no one knew where the hell they had come from, making her fit right in between Brooke and Dash if it wasn’t for the paleness, was known and seen, but not bothered. People respected the boundary the band had drawn around her. Maybe it was the unspoken threat of her parents’ stares, maybe it was just the world learning, finally, how to leave one thing alone. Yes, Joni Mitchell held her as a baby, she got birthday gifts from Mick Jagger and Debbie Harry, her parents were always on the media, but she learned how to ride the bicycle in a warm Sunday in spring, and she played tag in the garden with her school friends while Barbara chatted with the other moms, discussing PTA meetings like she hadn’t just come back from recording in Los Angeles. They worked hard to build a version of normal from scratch, all for their girl.

Grace grew up knowing who her parents were— not just in the public sense, but in the quiet, domestic one. She knew the exact sound of Brooke pacing at 3 a.m. when a song wouldn’t come. She knew the way Barbara hummed when she was folding laundry. She knew Dash made the best pancakes and that Jim liked to smoke on the porch. They gave her music, a glimmer of the glamour of fame, but they also gave her boundaries. Safety. A pocket of stillness carved from a life that had never known how to sit still.

And for a long time, it worked. Grace laughed loud, read fast, and asked the kind of questions that made adults pause. Her legs were covered by mysterious bruises, because she could never stand still for too long. She was, by all accounts, an ordinary little girl who grew into an ordinary teenage girl. Until, of course, she wasn’t.

It started quietly, with longs calls and letters to an old family friend, the one and only Goldie Pearson. Now permanently living in San Francisco with a child of her own, the former groupie, forever muse, sat on the highest chair at Horizon Records. Despite the change in scenery, she remained close to Midnight Mayhems, close enough to be considered part of the family, that the band would allow their precious girl to spend summers with Goldie from time to time.

Days wandering through studios gave Grace an idea. She pulled out the notebooks filled with poems she’d been writing in secret and showed Goldie the guitar solos she’d been dreaming up: melodies filled feelings she didn’t yet know how to say out loud. She had never dreamt of being a singer, but, well. Maybe it was in her blood. Maybe it was a summer project she would soon forget.

But the idea stuck around, and by next summer, she reminded Goldie of the promise they had made: one album only. No interviews, no telling anyone. God knew Barbara, who wanted her daughter to be a doctor or a teacher or any other normal profession, would kick her ass if she found out.

Milkteeth, Grace May Robinson’s debut record, came out in the first day of the summer of 1997, just the moment Grace stepped on San Francisco to spend another summer with Goldie. The buzz around the record was immediate but quiet, some critics praising its raw honesty, other critics called the album some indulgent half-formed diary set or even preferred to talk about her family background. It didn’t matter much to Grace. She hadn’t made Milkteeth for them.

Later, Milkteeth would become one of the definitive albums of the late 90s, the portrait of a youth that felt out of place in their own skin. Far from loud, far from polished, simply a scream into the world. People talked about it, of course, but Grace wasn’t allowed to answer. Horizon Records gave her all the support she needed as an artist and kept making pressings of the record, but for Grace, tucked in San Francisco, reading her books and exploring the city, it was all a fantasy. She walked through the city unnoticed, enjoying the feeling of having done something no one expected her to.

Back home, Barbara was anything but pleased. The news hit her like a punch: her daughter, moving right behind her back like that! The thought of interviews, paparazzi questions, speculation, it was a nightmare. She confronted Goldie first, furious but careful. Then, when Grace called home, Barbara’s voice was sharp but tinged with something else— worry, tension, maybe even pride buried beneath layers of frustration. Enjoy your summer and we will talk about it when you come home. I love you. Grace knew then that the pain in her mother’s voice was more about her than the album. Keeping secrets meant distance. Soon Grace would become her own person, with her own voice, far away from Barbara and the soft, quiet world she built around her. And there was nothing she could do about it. I love you too, mama.

Brooke, on the other hand, was ecstatic about the record. She insisted, loudly and often, that she had known nothing about it, but when asked by the press, she grinned and claimed to have listened to the whole thing twice. She is good, really good, my baby!

Barbara and Brooke fought like hell, like they used to many, many years ago. Barbara was of the opinion that they shouldn’t support Grace’s rebellion—not because she didn’t believe in her daughter’s talent, but because she feared what could come next. The cameras. The commentary. Grace was only seventeen. Still just a kid, no matter how grown-up her voice sounded on tape.

Brooke, of course, thought Barbara was being ridiculous. You know what I did when I was her age? she snapped one evening. Barbara did. Everyone did. And that was exactly the problem, so she said nothing. Let Brooke say whatever she wants to say. Let the press do what they do best. Let Grace stay with Goldie just a little longer. Let summer stretch on, long, hot and quiet. Barbara went to Houston with Jim and Brooke bounced between different cities with Dash. Everyone needed some time to think, some space from each other. Soon summer would end.

No one really knows what happened in the space between when Grace came home and when she sat down for her first interview. Some say she and Barbara went three weeks without talking to each other. What we do know is that Baby I’m Burnin’ came around and became a major hit, and Milkteeth did well enough on its own. We also have a grainy MTV segment, aired on 120 Minutes, released late September 1998. The interview was held two months after Grace’s eighteenth birthday, almost a whole year after the release of Milkteeth.

Q: So, this is your first real interview. Are you nervous?

GRACE (grinning): A little bit, yeah. But I’ve been doing college interviews all month, so unless you ask me what my five-year plan is, I think I’ll survive. No offense.

Q: None taken, though now I kind of want to ask. Where do you want go to college?

GRACE: Sarah Lawrence and Smith are both my dream colleges. Barnard would also be nice. Maybe Occidental College. I’m looking into the liberal arts fields.

Q: You have any idea of what you want to study?

GRACE: Honestly? Not really. I put down "interdisciplinary studies" on a couple of applications, but if I had to choose right now, it would probably be literature. Maybe I could specialize on something weird, like 1700s folklore.

Q: Nothing related to music?

GRACE: No, not really (laughs). I come from a musical background, obviously, and none of them ever went to school for music, so I don’t think it’s needed. Not that you can’t do it, of course! But music is something than can be very intimate for us, so… No, nothing related to music. My mom has always said that reading a lot and being educated in some way, interested about what is happening in the world, helps you being a better songwriter, though. And you gotta practice a lot to be a good player, whatever your instrument is, but that doesn’t mean you are going to be one of the greats. I try to live by that.

Q: When you are writing a song, which instrument do you use?

GRACE: Mostly piano. That’s what I learned first, and I think I’m more of a… rhythmic person, really? I’ve always liked the drums better, for instance. But playing the piano keeps things nice between my parents (smiles). I switch to guitar when the piano feels too… heavy. Too polite, maybe. Guitar’s messier.

Q: When you say piano keeps things “nice,” you mean… what exactly?

GRACE (laughs): I mean, it’s neutral ground. Mama— I mean, Barbara. Piano is her thing. That’s how she usually writes. The piano is a language only the two of us understand. But when I get. a guitar, I’m entering mama and dad— Brooke and Dash’s territory. They all want me to play their instruments (smiles), follow their steps. I played all the piano parts of the record, and half of the guitar parts. If I ever perform, I don’t know which one I’ll want to play.

Q: Have you ever felt pressured to make music too?

GRACE: Depends on who you are asking about. Ma— Barbara (smiles), she has always wanted for me to go to school. She wants me to be a doctor or a teacher or a secretary. Anything but music. She thinks it’s too cliché for me to want to be an artist. Jim doesn’t really care, he just wants me to be happy.

Q: He came with you today, right?

GRACE: He did! My personal bodyguard (smiles). They, my parents, said I shouldn’t come here alone. He is the easiest one to deal with, so I brought him with me. We are having some kind of father-and-daughter day today.

Q: Sweet. Don’t the others get jealous?

GRACE: Oh, they do, but they get jealous about everything. They love fighting with each other (laughs), that’s just how our family works. They fight about what I should do in the future. Brooke and Dash would love for me to get into the music world, obviously, but they say hey, no pressure, and part of the appeal to them is that they get to annoy Barbara in the process.

Q: Did they fight a lot while you were growing up?

GRACE: Surely, but they mostly kept it far from me. I’m getting older now, so there’s no point in hiding it anymore.

Q: Did they fight about the record?

GRACE: Yes, but I was lucky enough to be away from home when it happened.

Q: How was the recording process?

GRACE: I had been writing the songs ever since I was… 14, maybe? But in the format of poems. I only had the idea of making it into songs the summer before the last one. I usually spend the summer in Los Angeles with my aunt Goldie, who is not really my aunt, and she hates being called aunt (laughs). Anyway, she is a music producer, and she dragged me to studios, reunions, all the business, so I wouldn’t be alone. It started as a joke, then it got serious and she said alright, Gracie, I’ll let you record it. It was very fun! And stressful, but also very fun. She brought a young band, closer to my age than the usual session musicians. I changed some of the lyrics in the spot, they helped me finish some of the songs, gave me different, great ideas.

Q: Why the name Milkteeth?

GRACE: Because it’s my first record, and I come from a background where everyone sings, plays, you know. Recording songs are a normal thing to them, a rite of passage, so I have finally become an adult in this aspect. I have lost my milk teeth.

Q: We’re you not afraid of doing it behind our parents’ backs?

GRACE: A bit, but I knew it would work out in the end. They also have done things behind their parents’ backs. They only are what they are now because they did it (smiles).

Q: Do you feel people compare you guys too much?

GRACE: Yes, but I think it’s normal. Everyone compares children to their parents, and they are great artists, I want to be an artist too, so it’s part of the deal. I just want to say that I am trying to do my own things as independently as I can. I’m influenced by my parents in many, many ways, but my work is mine.

Q: Do you have any ideas for the next one?

GRACE: Not really. I do plan on making another record, but I promised my mama I’m going to focus on college for some time, so you will have to wait (smiles). I’m definitely writing, though, but that’s a constant in my life.

Q: Last question. What do you hope people remember about Milkteeth?

GRACE: I hope it makes someone feel seen. But honestly, all I wanted with Milkteeth was to feel better about myself. That’s enough. That’s everything.

slipping away like a moment in time . . .

it’s leo season so of course i gotta start this by talking about… Me! august is such a bittersweet month because it precedes my birthday and you know i believe too much in the power of cycles and natural forces and god and etc… but august also is the birthday of my dear girly! and august 3rd has been a national holiday in my life for quite literally longer than my baby sister has been alive.

once again talking about me, because i’m sooo wise and soooo much older than you: life is so hard. i know. you know this better than me, actually, because you never forget that life is an endless cycle and you are more than happy to wait for it to pass, while i think of every day as it’s my last one. but. life is SO hard. but i feel like it’s getting better for us. i think we should remember that nowadays people live to their 80s, which means that we only have lived 1/4 (25%) of our lives, and a good chunk of that was childhood, which only silly people actually want to return to. i welcome you to the 24 years old club and i, the wise one, give you those lyrics of neil young that i’ve been living by this whole year: old man, look at my life / twenty four and there's so much more. because there is!!!!! and there’s no choice but to keep living. what i want to say is that i love you and happy birthday, my dear, beloved, third sister-best friend. you will be alright. 💘

pairing: barb ann x chronically ill female reader.

warnings: mentions of brooke and mentions of jim.

a/n: my first try at this!!! just wanted to write something super sweet and domestic with barb and my friend has chronic pain and obviously loves barb so i had to indulge her!!! 💋💋

you never expected to be in a relationship with a rockstar, much less to be in a relationship with barbara ann robinson herself. even more impossible, you never expected she’d absolutely adore you.

you try to take it nice and slow, but dating a celebrity with a well documented life is frightening. people disregard you by saying she could never love again after brooke and, obviously, there’s her husband.

so you just try to make the best out of every moment together. if it ever ends, at least you will have the memories of slow dancing in the kitchen and being serenaded by her.

you two have a nice relationship, but you know it’s serious when she starts looking for a place for you two to share. barbara loves her ranch, but she also loves you, and she wants you two to build something of your own together.

it’s scary, but she never settles on anything without thinking twice, so you are sure it’s serious.

you've never wanted anything more than you've wanted this. you are moving in together.

the house slowly becomes more and more like you two. a mix of pastel and beige tones and flowers everywhere, your crochet needles on the couch, her books on the windowsill. you couldn’t think of a better life.

some of your favorite moments together are in the bathtub. when you come home from work, she makes sure to already be there so she can spoil you.

she runs a nice bath so you can be together after such a long day. it's one of the few exigences she had for your life together: a huge bathtub for you two to share.

doesn't matter how terrible your day at work was or how unbearable your pain is, when you get home and find barbara waiting for you, everything seems easier.

today you find her not in the bathtub, but still in bed, taking a nap. barb is so strong and authentic that you forget that, deep down, she's also an old lady. her history is one of the things you love about her.

you watch her for a few moments when she wakes up, smiling at you. "you are home already or i overslept?"

"sorry to wake you up, dear. did you have a busy day?"

she sits down, planting a kiss on your cheek. "actually, yes. i am writing a new song. i might show it to you later. did you?"

you love that barbara feels comfortable enough to play the songs she writes around you. she can be sensitive about it from time to time, but you savour the pleasure of getting a private concert from her for you only when so many other people would love having the opportunity.

"i did, but i feel better now that i am home."

she promptly takes her house dress off and starts to take off your clothes, kissing every inch of exposed skin she finds. when she gets to your hands, she abruptly leaves the room. "your drops! let me get them."

you take your medicine already in the bathtub, watching in awe as she joins you in the water. maybe you will never get used to it, but you are definitely not complaining.

you are both in a quiet mood tonight. you are waiting for the medicine to hit, and by the way she keeps humming, she is still stuck on the piano, playing her song. being with someone who is not afraid of being in silence with you is one of your favorite things in your relationship.

"turn around, let me take care of your hair."

her touch is healing in many ways. the combination of her fingers massaging your scalp and the medicine is almost enough to put you to sleep, and you are sure she wouldn't mind, but you want to say with her for a little longer.

she kisses the top of your head to show you she's done. you'd love to do the same for her, appreciate the long hair she's been keeping and taking care of for long than you've been alive, but your hands...

"are you feeling any better, baby?"

"yes, barbie. today was tough, for some reason."

she makes you turn around again so she can take your hands and kiss them, more than happy to listen to you babbling about your coworkers and to complain about them. you close your eyes to take in how she massages your hands, thinking how to tell her the big news.

"there's something weird on my chest."

she immediately stops the massage. you keep your eyes closed to not see her worried expression. "did you go to the doctor?"

"going to make an appointment. but don't worry. it's probably just my super inflamed body acting up." you try to joke about it, but there's no laughter.

"let me see, please."

you let her take a look at that new inflammation, feeling her hands caressing the spot as delicately as she could. well, there's a reason she was a nurse once.

"feeling better?"

🎁 with a special note from the editor!

the day is nearing its end but don’t be sad: i don’t shy away from showering you with gifts all year! honestly i find it hard to say something but it’s just because we have the habit of praising each other every day. i’ve said a million times before that i love you and i couldn’t do it without it and it goes beyond what we write and i do truly and deeply miss you during the day! and i’ll say it again because that’s how i feel and it’s true. i don’t know how i would go through my days without you. loneliness has always been something like a second nature to me, but when we are talking about our days and our dreams and our silly topics… i feel seen and i know that there’s someone in the world who understands me, doesn’t matter if she lives far away from me. and i hope you know that i’m here for you! every day, all the time. from our movie nights and tv shows sessions to the nights we spend rambling about everything and nothing at all. life is so hard and sometimes (many times) doesn’t seem to be worth it but we survive: we have gone through so many of our birthdays and we still have many more to face. so, let’s be brave. and remain together! love you girly 💘

🎁 a study of a cultural icon.

🌱 ‘ of course, we start with miss americana, this ghost who has been chasing me for all of my life. my biggest problem with it is that it makes me look patriotic, something that i have never been, not even when i was a child. i was born and raised in rural texas, a land that seemed to have been forgotten by god. we didn’t live, we survived, and we had no hopes of a better existence. it got worse after i moved to houston and saw the world. i had no damn reason to be proud of being american.

then you ask: why miss americana? i don’t know. i think it was going to be satiric but it ended up being a silly love song. the american dress of marrying your childhood sweetheart and being a good wife. people loved that, and while it was known that brooke and dash were freely screwing around, every time i asked about men, i said that the only man i cared for was my husband. which was the truth, but not entirely, well, you know the story. anyway, at the top of it, we were southern. a perfect symbol for conservative people.

but i was gorgeous, let’s be honest. i would like to make that pretty girl a symbol too! i wore those housewives frilly dresses everywhere, with cowboy boots and a cowboy hat. brooke loved it, jim loved it, people started sending me customized belts, customized boots. i eas the face of a southern belle. so yes, it was kinda my fault that i didn’t say i wasn’t conservative. then the news were out, the whole country learned u was a dyke, and they left us alone for good. ’

🌱 ‘ then we get to the heartbreak princess. no one called me that, i gotta say the truth. only for jokes, only when the media wanted to take their bite, but i think it explains this phase very well. beforehand, dash and brooke were singing these duets about fucking each other and fighting, while i was there with my bass singing about flings and paper rings. now i got to be who i was, and who i was? sad. thoughtful, maybe thoughtful is a better word! i wrote dreams and convinced dash to let me sing it, and then it became one of our biggest hits. maybe it’s our biggest hit. i wrote rhiannon and sang it. i wrote beautiful people, beautiful problems. i wrote layla for dash to write. a little later i wrote the great war… the heartbreak princess.

i used to be very afraid that anyone would look at me and think i was pretty, actually, hot. not anyone, any man. getting married was a protection, talking about jim was a protection, but by then i felt respected enough that i felt comfortable to wear what i wanted. long flowy dresses, short tight dresses, mini skirts, i didn’t wear a bra, courtesy of brooke’s influence. i wore pants with tiny little tops, sometimes tiny shorts out of the house. complicated times, but also glorious times. i’m glad i enjoyed my youth. ’

🌱 ‘ contemplations. believe it or not, that’s what people know me the most for: the sad woman on the cover of a record that barely made any noise when it was released. there’s no evident difference from the clothes i wore before contemplations, i just got older, more mature, had been through an experience that changed me. long dresses so i could feel safe within my body, that had been so mistreated lately, but inside my house i kept wearing my housewife dresses, my tiny shorts. don’t be fooled: that’s not me, just the last thing the public ever got to see. i’m not bitter, but it’s important to highlight that. ’

🎁 goodbye, summer!

it’s a tradition that started during joanna’s first summer at the property: a party at the end of the summer to celebrate the fruits of the season. over time, it became a convenient attraction for tourists and the frequent visitors, but the 2024 party promises to be the best in a long time: joanna finally has her whole family back together on the estate. for the first summer of annie and hallie’s life, she distributed a postcard with their little footprints stamped on them; now, annie designs the invitation card and hallie decides the playlist, while alicia, of course, plans the whole party, as it was always meant to be.

🎁 they love shiny things…

and would marry each other with paper rings, but fortunately that won’t be needed! beverly and jackie getting married was never a question, but after overcoming so many obstacles together lately, they realized it was time to ditch the term girlfriends for the latest fashion: being a wife. as it’s the rule for them, everything will be done in great style, from the engagement news to the actual wedding, passing through the bachelorette party! counting with remarkable guests such as (former) princess dorothea grimaldi and her mysterious intellectual lover marjorie dupont, and it girl lola beckham and her publicist girlfriend dafina rowlings, it’s guaranteed to be a blast! no cameras or social media allowed, though. it didn’t work out well the last time…

🎁 and now some news from the cultured side...

“Oathes is a testament of this very vulnerable moment in my life when all I wanted to do was give up. Life has always been hard, but I’ve always seen it as something that must be done nevertheless. It’s part of my heritage: as I grew up with the knowledge that my immigrant parents had come so far and refused to be less than what they were back home, I knew I had no choice but to follow their steps. But I was incredibly lonely, traveling around the world and meeting people who seemed so much happier and more well-adjusted than me, my mother was sick, my sister wasn’t doing very well in her own life. I couldn’t come up with anything that wasn’t about grief and loss. I didn’t want to talk about the world, I wanted to write about my own problems. I tried to explain this to my editor and she said is a writer ever happy? Is there anything a writer likes to write about other than themselves?

Writers and editors share a complicated relationship, being people of such different natures. She was worried that I wasn’t writing anything and that I was heading straight into a breakdown: worst of all, I would crash somewhere around the world. I was offended that she would say something like that to me, already being sensitive enough from my internal problems. So what I did? I hung up the telephone and refused to answer her calls or any letters and decided I would only return home when I had something new. And what happened? I had to return home because the money ran out and I couldn’t write a single thing. I had to take jobs like freelancing for magazines, proofreading other people’s writing, just so I could pay the rent and eat. All that and I still wasn’t talking to her.

Like any other relationship, we just had to sit down and talk. She came to my place one night with a bottle of wine and an apology. As she apologized and I pretended I wasn’t utterly miserable in my situation, she held my hand and said But I meant it, I should have chosen softer words. Why don’t you write about yourself? Why don’t you write a novel? Figure out what is wrong.

I never planned to write novels. I thought writing novels was something for interesting people with exciting lives, busy inner lives. As I didn’t meet the requirements, I became a non-fiction writer, someone who could write about the interesting people with exciting lives. But I couldn’t write anything anyway, so why not try?”

Written in 1982, published only half a decade later, Oathes introduces us to the life of an immigrant girl deeply involved in the American cultural landscape of the 70s, a stand-in for Song herself. Finding herself in love with a girl who represents the decadent side of this culture and feeling lost among people with different priorities, Nari returns to the pivotal moment of her youth: leaving home to experience the life of a rock journalist for a few weeks and meeting former groupie Goldie Pearson.

🎁 and now, some monterey updates...

sarah mccartney was born and raised in monterey, and though she has had her fair share of exploring the world, those days are gone, but not for long! it's only until little baby rose learns to walk, and then sarah will get on the road again, happy to introduce her daughter to the good things in life. take a look at some of her journal entries since her sister's arrival in monterey:

🎀 february 14, 202? .

it happened. i never thought it would actually happen, but it happened. i'm having a baby.

i'm having a baby! a new mccartney child. a child! i said i wasn't going to tell anyone but now i'm writing about it and i just called hannah to tell her the news. she seemed happy. shocked, obviously, but happy! she immediately started talking about vitamins and doctor appointments and that's how i know that she is here with me for this new journey. a baby. i can't believe it. [ . . . ]

🎀 march 03, 202? .

hannah has arrived. she's in the room next door to mine, just like it was through half of our lives until adulthood. hannah is home! i had no idea she was coming, mind you. i would have bought lilies, her favorite flowers, and rearranged the whole house. she hasn't been home in years and when she finally visits us, in true hannah style, she just appears some day and decides to stay here, doesn't even give me a chance to spoil her a bit!

and yes, she is staying. she came with suitcases and bags and said she is only leaving after the baby arrives. isn't it so sad that an arrival is naturally followed by a departure? i wasn't expecting hannah to come, but i can't say that i'm not happy. and also a bit upset. i think she still sees me as a baby and can't fathom me having a baby of my own. she looked at my belly like she was seeing it for the first time. well, she was, but you get what i mean. but if seeing me as a baby who needs help is what made her come back, great! i need her around. i don't want my baby to grow up without an aunt. i'll make sure she will be alright. [ . . . ]

🎀 august 25, 202? .

the belly is heavy and we still have three more months to go, unless the little angel decides they want to see what is going on the outside before that. it's so hot! i'm so glad fall is coming around so i'll have a break from all this heat. the baby will come around on november so we are buying winter clothes, obviously. georgia made the cutest knitted cap for them! i've decided to not find out the gender before birth so i'm getting gifts in all the colors of the rainbow. the new mccartney baby will be the most fashionable kid in monterey! (thank god midge can't read that! also, isn’t that weird that we grew up together and we now have babies of our own? just yesterday we were following posy and hannah around!)

hannah and este are hanging out more and more every day. can't think of two people who could benefit the most from each other's company. hannah is at este's right now. she took her own midnight mayhems records to introduce este to them! imagine not knowing all the drama and the songs…

hannah seems quite happy and content with her life right now, and she is even talking about staying for a year or such after the baby comes, so she can help me out. i'd love the help, but let's be honest, she won't be staying here for me! and that's alright. i hope she keeps going like that... [ . . . ]

🎀 december 5, 202? .

rose mccartney is here! it’s a girl! she’s sleeping right by my side while we wait to go home. since there’s nothing else to do but wait and i told este to take hannah away, i thought it was fair to tell what is happening right now! she is the most beautiful baby i’ve ever seen. i know every mom says that, but i mean it. no one is prettier than rose. she looks just look a flower button and came out all red so, naturally, her name became rose. no middle name! i don’t have one and hannah doesn’t either because momma thought it was tacky, so rose doesn’t have one, but she will have lots of nicknames. right now i’m appreciating calling her button. este's twins are having fun calling her flower, [ . . . ]

🎀 august 3, 2024 .

tonight, barbara ann robinson lulled rosie to sleep by singing cowboy like me. what a sentence to write. [ . . . ]

🎁 let's get this started...

it's not a party without some good hits to make everyone dance! since we are celebrating isa's life, it's only right to put on kate bush, madonna, miley cyrus... personally, i'm waiting for my turn with the aux to play rhiannon!

"Rhiannon" is a song by Midnight Mayhems, released as part of their hit album "Mayhem With You". Written by bass player Barbara Ann Robinson, the song is inspired by the Welsh mythology character Rhiannon, who is the goddess of fertility and the moon. "Rhiannon" became one of Midnight Mayhems' signature songs and a staple of their live performances.

🎁 the great day has arrived...

and what a great day that is! august 3rd is marked on the calendar as the day the greatest leo since madonna was born: our very own it girl, isadora! grab your party hat and put on your favorite spice girls song to spice up your life and this important day! don't forget to check your invitation card!

     barbara ann: it's been 40 years since contemplations. that's more than half of my life. ( barbara chucks lightly to the camera, dressed in one of her famous flowy dresses and wearing her cowboy boots. ) so many things have happened since then. i've had girlfriends. i've broken up and reconciled with my husband. i've written some songs, we will get back to this. i've done some few shows. i turn 75 this year. it's been an eventful, mostly good, life. above everything, it's my life, and i think it's already obvious how much i like to ramble. i have always thought a bit too much for my own good, but it's important to contemplate from time to time, to remember where you came from and check where you are now. that's what i needed to do when i released contemplations. that was my remembering-and-checking moment.

     barbara ann: so, the first song is core. i had just come back from what you could call a nervous breakdown. i was desperately trying to get back on my feet, all i had to talk about was this solid emptiness inside of me. when i realized i wanted to do this record, and i wanted the theme to be, you know, my contemplations, i knew i wanted it to go from low to high. i start the record by saying that i know i ruined it all, that i couldn't face myself and that, well, if you are here you know it- that breaking up with brooke wellington messed me up. but there i was now, ready to accept the punch and move on with my life. the only thing that could truly make me feel better was reconciling with her, and that was not going to happen, so. i had to go on.

( pictures from the robinsons personal archives are shown on the screen, with home videos of barbara in her home studio and newspaper cutouts about barbara at the time of her mental breakdown and the end of midnight mayhems. )

     barbara ann: the second is don't tell me, the first one of many i wrote about brooke. you know, during my breakdown, i wasn't in the country, i was travelling. this is one of the first songs i wrote once i felt like myself again, probably at some european beach, while my husband pretended not to look what i was writing. it's me, finally letting some of this terrible pain crawl out of my body. if you don't know anything about the relationship me and brooke had, you'd think, by the lyrics, it was easier and ended better than it actually did. i still have this journal entry.

     barbara ann: this is where the fun starts, and the point where the rock fans who bought the record finally shut up about all my folk and country. success would be a perfect country song, but i wanted a contrast between the desperate lyrics and the dancing sound. i like to think some kids danced over my lyrics complaining about how terrible were the shifts as a nurse and how nobody but me believed that i could make it as a singer. it's a personal favorite out of the tracklist.

     barbara ann: here we come with success' sister, failure. thank god i became more subtle with time. also a rock song, now i admit that though i was in the top of the world at some point, i certainly didn't feel like it. i wasted that time worrying and once it was over i lost everything i loved. i had wasted all my years of hard work. when i listen to this one, i feel this sorrow all over again. it was not easy for me to admit that i had failed, that we had lost the war. but once again, the rythm distracts you from all that. failure is also an answer to brooke's playing your song, but i am only admitting this now.

     barbara ann: annie is my childhood nickname and the fifth song of the record. it's the longest one. my parents were odd and shy people just like i am, and though they mainly expressed their love through giving me a bed to sleep and food to eat, they were very loving. as a girl, me having to get married and leave home destroyed them. if it weren't the fact that i had to get married so i could study and leave my town, i would have stayed with them forever. it took me long to get used to the idea that my family would now be my husband's family and my only connection with the family i was born would now be my memories. i loved them. after my first tour with the band, i came back home all excited to share that happiness with them. they weren't so pleased.

( three pictures of young barbara show up on the screen. barbara as a baby on her father's truck, barbara studying as a well-behaved teenage girl and barbara smiling for the camera on the day of her wedding, just a few moments before becoming mrs. robinson. )

     barbara ann: the contemplations wouldn't be complete if i didn't come back to my childhood. i talk about running with the chickens all over our farm, about dreading my aunt's piano lessons, about being a young girl waiting for her lover to show up. about being a grown woman who had lived so much since then and wondering how that girl became this. i talk about how me and jim have been solid as a rock since the moment i agreed to be with him. i talk about how i never actually thought me and brooke would ever be over. i talk a lot. nowadays only jim calls me annie, since it's the person that has been the longest with me, and that's what i like about our relationship. he has seen and been through all the barbaras that i have been.

     barbara ann: i go back to talking about brooke with crazy on you. it's quite a sensual song. our relationship wasn't all about sex, but it was a big deal for both of us. brooke was, is, a free spirit, and it took me long to follow her steps and stop being so repressed. i think she would still call me repressed. but here i reminisce our nights on tour, when everything was so intense and hot and there was nothing we wanted to do more than to go crazy on each other. i try to sing like she does, i reference her song ash. i really did not want to be subtle.

     barbara ann: bait and love bites are sensual too, but in a different way. i acknowledge the complexities of our relationship, how one day we would be making love promises to each other and then the next day we'd say we were just messing around, and then the next we would break up. and repeat it all the next day. but it didn't matter, because we always came back to each other. even after all those years, if she called me, i'd drop anything to answer. i'm her bait. for love bites. and all.

     barbara ann: we get to moving on, where i finally collect myself and stop crying over brooke. it was hard, but i did. there is a point where you learn how to live with the pain and the simple things that suddenly seemed so hard to do become simple again. i'd never get over her, but for my own sake, i had to pretend i could. and so i did.

     barbara ann: it's a stroke of luck having myself again, i saw a girl in the street wearing this shirt once. stroke is my favorite song out of the released ones. it's me, being able to trust myself again, being able to live with myself again. i have the belief that you don't have to love yourself, but you can't make your own life harder than it needs to be. you have to at least be neutral about yourself, and i liked having myself on my side.

     barbara ann: the last one is call her. it obviously doesn't match the rest of the record, but i needed to add it, so entranced i was by amèlie bergstein's charm, whom i met at one of those boring hollywood parties. she flirted with me and said i should make a new record, i promptly told her i had a few song written down. it's also the only song out of the album that became a hit, the song to her, the song about her. i know for a fact she loves it.

     barbara ann: this is the official tracklist, the one i released way back in 1982. many songs were left out, and those, along some others that i have written over the years, will be released in contemplations and ramblings' special reissue for its 40th anniversary. i told you i had lived so much since then. ( barbara chuckles, and the camera lowers down to show the record cover she holds, a modern version of the contemplations one, with older barbara and her characteristic melancholic look staring at the camera. )

( once again pictures from the robinsons person archive show up on the screen, pictures taken since 1982. you can see barbara with her stepchildren, barbara and some of the girlfriends she had since then, barbara and jim at their ranch. )

     barbara ann: we start the new batch with bw. somehow someone leaked it and now there are dozens of audios of the song around the internet. i recorded it so it could be on contemplations, but i thought it was too heavy for the record. i still think it's quite heavy. it's another song that i wrote during my exile, and you can see by all the traces of sorrow and bitterness in the lyrics. it's bw for brooke wellington. i couldn't find a better name for it, but the lyrics made up for the lack of a creative name. i've never been more honest in a song. this kind of love i wrote about back then, which is the love we had, is not one you get over. i lost myself when i lost her, and i got myself back by accepting that i could not get her back, but daydreaming about it should be enough.

     barbara ann: on a brighter note, we have maybe love. it's about my husband. i've never written many songs about him, which i know upsets him and it's a flaw of mine. i was always very protective of our relationship, because i soon realized people understood brooke and dash's arrangement better than ours. brooke and dash were different people. they would scream and get their feelings out and they didn't care about anything as long as they were having fun. but me and jim worried, i felt bad because i loved someone else, he felt bad because he could never compare, we would suck it up until we finally exploded. but i also haven't written many songs about him because me and jim were real. solid. we existed in both of the worlds we lived. we were in the same band, but we also would go back home and do the groceries and i'd say that he had to fix the sink and he'd say i had burned the eggs again. the day-to-day mattered me. meanwhile, i had to resort to writing songs to talk about my relationship with brooke.

     barbara ann: anyway, maybe love goes back to our early days, as boyfriend and girlfriend, as newlyweds. i remember the anxiety i felt about finally becoming a woman, going from girl to wife in a night. i didn't love jim from the start, but i wanted to, and as we progressed, as i felt it was safe to trust him... well, after so many years, we are still together, you see.

     barbara ann: i sang this one in a midnight mayhems' concert once and it almost made it into the contemplations' setlist, but it's finally out. renegade is, obviously, about brooke, straight out of the midnight mayhems momentum. as i sang it and attentively watched her face so i could see what she was thinking, she held her head high and went on drinking her beer, left the stage a few times, didn't say much besides alright, enough with the moping. she had this thing about saying that she never needed anybody or anything, that nothing could ever affect her. we fought a lot about this. i wanted to be there for her, she wanted me to go easy and leave her alone. the drugs and the chaos gave her an escape from this life, while i wanted to pull her out of that. i couldn't accept to watch her destroying herself. sometimes i though she did it on purpose, kept fucking herself up so i would get tired of her or whatever. i couldn't understand her, she couldn't understand me. after i finished the song, just me, rambling alone on the mic and playing a made in the moment melody for five minutes, i remember dash said something like you are fucked up, barbara on his mic. as always, we aired the dirty laundry on stage. the only thing we did without a crowd, besides sex, was breaking up.

     barbara ann: his song is about the years me and jim spent apart. i wanted to free him from our relationship, so i said he was free to go, to meet someone nice and have a normal relationship as he dserved. i wanted him to do it. but he felt i was getting rid of him, so he got back at me. if you are here, you know what happened, i don't wanna talk about it, but the song is i what i felt during those years. i thought we'd never reconcile. i still haven't forgiven him for what he did. but then again, he will never forgive me for falling in love with someone else. we will have to keep on living this way.

     barbara ann: if it's been 40 years since contemplations, it's been a bit longer since the moment i told brooke i was leaving. we have done a few band reunions, we never had a proper relationship, but my love for her is still as strong as it was then. every girlfriend of mine has had to deal with her shadow, and i don't plan to get rid of it. this love keeps me grounded, as much i have suffered over it, as much as it is hopeless. as you age, you start to appreciate even the bad things that happened to you. i will always ache over the fact that we didn't work out, but at the same time it's such a beautiful feeling! i wouldn't trade it for anything. our love was fleeting and intense in a way that doesn't seem real. sometimes i wonder if she ever loved me too or if i simply want to believe she did. but what is the good in thinking so much? love is something to feel.

     barbara ann: and i do feel. i never buried brooke's ashes, you see. i kept the memories as my allies in life, close to me so i could dip into them whenever reality felt too much. ashes is a song i wrote for contemplations, but it never made into the final cut. i think i only recorded half of it back then. jim asked me to not release it, and though he gave me no reason, i felt obliged to comply. he had never felt anything so strong about my work to the point he couldn't simply ignore it. but we have accepted our problems since then, enough that i'm releasing it now.

     barbara ann: the same way i accept mine and brooke's relationship in ashes, i accept mine and jim's relationship in yosemite. we did good things for each other, we did bad things for each other, through affairs and children and breakdowns, we are the person each other wants to be with every day, and so we will, until we die.

     barbara ann: we finish with years, baby sister to annie and stroke. it's me, talking to myself, once again thinking about everything that happened in my life and who i am in this world. ever since i was a child and even after i decided to retreat from living in the spotlight, people have been trying to tell me who i am, who i must be, and their words were once my sense of self. this is the past. the best thing aging gives you is that you realize that nothing really matters in this world, but that you must engage with life anyway. before we even know it, it's over, but we once lived.

❝ we were in austria, which is a very depressing country, with all due respect, though i think barbara would have really enjoyed the place if she wasn’t catatonic during our stay there. when she got a bit better, i made her take walks with me all through vienna so she could tire herself out before getting back to the hotel. one day she asked if we could rent bikes for our walks. and then another day she left the room, alone and in her own will, for the first time, without saying anything. i was sleeping and when i woke up, she wasn’t there. i was still hiding any sharp objects from her at that point, mind you. i was almost calling the police, but she came back with a huge map of the countryside, telling me that we should visit it. i thought, well, this has changed her forever. but maybe we can learn how to live after this. ❞

❝ we spent a few months in greece, but ultimately settled down in italy. i didn’t want to come home. coming home meant facing everything again, finding a new way to live. i got an abortion in another country so i could deal with it privately, but somehow it got leaked to the american press. i didn’t want to mope anymore, either. i felt sick of myself. i got tired of jim being all careful around me. i didn’t want to be this fragile little thing for the rest of my life, though i learned to let myself be taken care of after that. i learned how to slow down. i can’t always do and be everything for everyone.

i bought a leather bound notebook so i could write in a brand new diary. many of my first entries were just describing my day. we went to the beach. we ate ice cream. saw a woman dressed like brooke in the street. i cut my hair. in venice, we stayed at the house of a family for a while and i sang for them so i could thank their hospitality. i did my best to have myself back, little by little. now that i’m telling it after so much time it seems it wasn’t that big of a deal, but i know it was. i spent months out of myself. you can recover from that, but there will always be a little part of you that wants to give in to that dark place, those dark thoughts. when i got back home from brooke’s funeral, i found myself lying on the cold floor at this old age of mine, same thoughts as i had back then. see what i mean?

then, after two years, we got back home. i had missed my house, missed my huge garden, missed my instruments. i cried out of relief when i found out i could still play. i found myself trying to get used to this new reality, producing and only producing, but still coming up with random lyrics. still coming up with bass lines. i still loved the music. that part of me hadn’t gone anywhere, but now i had to learn again how to deal with it.

i listened to brooke’s album, of course. someone sent it to us and it was right there, waiting for me when i got home. seeing the words brooke wellington’s first solo album hurt like hell. but it was good. she had always wanted to rely into this heavy rock sound. i felt happy for her. she didn’t seem to be alright, but that’s how brooke is. i didn’t have a say in it anymore. i wanted to kill myself when i heard my bones and dope, but it wasn’t my business.

i lived. i worked. i took care of myself. didn’t get out of the house much. all that fire i had to do things had been lost. i felt a bit of it again when i was organizing contemplations and ramblings, and then i was reminded people would see it and try to find hidden meanings in my lyrics, i was reminded brooke would know that i had been fucking miserable. but it was good to write again. our solo work was so different. most of my songs were ballads, i’ve always loved a folk sound. my voice sounded so much older for some reason, when only two years earlier i thought of it to sound so ingenue. my plan was to release the album as an exorcism, you know? this is the last you will see of me, take good care.

and it worked. people didn’t care much about contemplations, which i still love and feel proud of, but i did. i kept writing and singing many songs, but i kept them all to myself. the spell they had put on me was over. i can’t say much about it, but when we had the reunion, though i felt immensely good for being on stage, i felt immensely good for being able to get back home. salting the wound for one night had been enough.

i had a few girlfriends here and there, but i knew i couldn’t love again. not how i loved brooke. i had more faith than ever in my love for jim after all the drama, but i couldn’t be the same anymore. i felt terrible about him. had damned him to this life. i told him, in the sweetest way i could, baby, if you ever want to, you know, actually have a family, go for it. i won’t blame you. i hoped he did it. i wanted to see him far away, happy with his family, and then brooke far away, not so happy with dash, and be sure that i was the problem of all of us. i would never give jim the divorce, but i could do that for him. we discussed the women he was seeing, i thought it was no big deal.

and then jim did the most stupid thing in the world, because he can think properly when he wants to. i thought he’d find a model, you know? an actress. maybe a normal girl who wanted a good life. he looked nice, and i knew he was loyal like a dog. i remember thinking they’re going to take my husband away from me.

but he went back to venus. i hadn’t gone back there since my failed visit, but he had. he spent months there, talking about how he is so miserable and his wife hates him and he just wanted a bit of love to whoever would listen. and of course, some slut listened to him, because there will always be a woman who will see a failed man, ignore the reasons that he might have been failed for, and think i can be good to him. i had grown up with her, though we weren’t exactly friends. jim stayed at her house, played house with that woman just like he did with me, would occasionally visit me so i would mind my business. he got her pregnant.

i punched him right in the eye when he told me who he got pregnant, how he wanted to be there for her, and that we needed to divorce. he wanted his part of our money so he could raise the child. mind you, jim wouldn’t raise no fucking child. that’s a man who was raised to drink while his children cried. that’s a man who got used to the good tour life, where he could have a different woman every hour and he’d leave soon, no need to think if she had gotten pregnant or what. he humiliated me in front of everyone that once knew me, people who already didn’t like me, by doing that.

i went to venus to see the bitch. didn’t beat her up because she was pregnant, but beat up everyone who tried to take me out of there. called her a whore, a homewrecker, a gold digger, screamed to the point my throat closed down. if she thought she would get that money so easily, she’d have to go to court or kill me.

she went to court, against jim. that was an easy fix, he had to pay for child support anyway. and then jim went to court against me, asking for a divorce and separation of property. can you believe? i made him what he is, and that’s how he thanked me.

it took us years. the little girl was born, i visited her every two months so i could take some things, you know? i loved babies. i love the idea of raising something of my own. i hoped jim would have some with a nice woman, so i could be around and pamper them like they were mine. i got cute dresses and toys for her, but then she would get out of my arms and i’d go back to screaming at her father and her mother, those fucking idiots.

the girl was three or four when jim realized he couldn’t be a father. big fucking surprise. if he was meant to be a father, god would have made me pregnant in a better moment that the one he did, you know? not to to fucking punish me. we didn’t divorce, but we got to a deal about our shared property. he came back home, spent months apologizing. i didn’t mind much. i hired a nanny i could trust and would send the woman to venus so she could come back with the girl every three months. i made him call the baby, sent pictures, would play for her. when she got older, this phase every girl goes through, she didn’t want anything to do with us anymore. couldn’t blame her, but we had nice times together. after the teenage turmoil was over, she slowly came back again. mostly talks to me. i adore her. it’s just a shame her parents are such idiots.

we had some nice, tranquil, boring years after that. jim had girlfriends, another child. this one turned 18 a few years ago. isn’t it weird how men can always have children, don’t matter the age? at least he didn’t have as many as dash.

i had girlfriends too. nowadays i date this beautiful tall woman, she is british, all grace and poise, named adeline. blonde, obviously, that’s my type. she has showed up before, she is the only helping me making those collages since brooke died, so i won’t forget history. i will die soon, so i won’t take much more of her life. she is sweet, but can be very feisty. she was born after the reunion happened, so it’s funny to me to tell her how things were, remember things in the process and see how shocked she is by everything. she’s such a sweetheart. adeline gave me some good last years.

that’s where we end. it was a pleasure to mayhem with you. hopefully, for the last time. ❞

❝ but i got ahead of myself. let’s circle back. midnight mayhems in all its glory. we were doing drugs and drinking and playing and writing songs everyday. and fighting, of course. i love songs like the chain, you make loving fun, but i think we did our best work at the same time we were at our worst, what would soon become our end. we couldn’t pretend anymore, everything was personal by then.

and we wrote obsessively. all the time. we would fight and stop for a second to write a line one thought one would be good for a song. i think we have so many unreleased tracks that if we put all them together it would become more than a single record, and they are rotting in some studio somewhere. dash had this thing of turning miserable lyrics into catchy tunes, like he did in the river — we changed the lyrics more than he wanted to, but the original idea and the song itself are his. get free is brooke’s, of course, there’s her name all over the lyrics. me and dash had fun composing a structure for that one.

and then brooke showed up one day with cowboy like me. she had the nerve of naming it like that, and no one questioned. i remember i was trembling even before she started singing how she imagined the song would go, this hole in my chest becoming larger and larger as she progressed. it’s one of the songs we barely changed anything. we discussed how we would play and got to a decision quickly, probably because nobody wanted to think much about that song.

we had the habit of recording songs multiple times in different ways. instruments and voice isolated, instruments isolated, voice isolated, so we could get a mix of the best parts. there’s a version of cowboy like me that if you pay attention you can hear me sobbing in the background for one, two seconds: my whole body was aching because of those lyrics. i’m not one to cry, not today and not then, but i had to leave the studio so they could keep playing and we wouldn’t lose the tapes and i bawled and sobbed like crazy because of those fucking lyrics. cowboy like me. and i’m never gonna love again.

i wrote epiphany. dash wrote changes. we all wrote silver springs together. definitely some of our finest work, though we were all hurt and tired while making it.

of course, we had to go on a tour to play the new songs. that tour would be our last one. there’s this journalist that i love, song nari, who your generation knows for her work in culture and political matters, but i’ll always think of as this timid girl interviewing rock bands. she was already known when we got famous, but she got fond of us for some reason. we sent her every record before it was oficially released. she was busy then, out of the country if i'm not mistaken, but she wanted an interview before we got on the tour. she took a look at us, sighed very deeply and said very sweetly i don’t think you should go ahead with this tour. she was right, though we cursed her name for what she said.

i just want to finish this subject as soon as possible, let me shorten the story: arguments, arguments and arguments. me and brooke were finally realizing that we couldn’t be together. it wasn’t the band, or the boys, or the world, we were the ones stopping us from being together. we would cry, fuck and fight all night. we would get on stage too fucked up to remember every lyric, every pause. when you think it can’t get worse, life finds a way of proving you wrong. brooke had an overdose.

she was mixing up a lot of stuff, everyone knew that. we were all mixing up, but brooke went the extra mile. there came a point her body wouldn’t take it. all four of us were discussing something, and i followed her crashing down in the middle of the room with my eyes. she had the habit of pretending she had passed out as a way to win an argument, so it took us a few seconds to realize what had happened. her lips and fingertips were blue, she was barely breathing. our whole night changed in a second.

dash waited half an hour to see if she would wake up. she didn't, he left. fucking asshole. how can your wife be so close to death and you decide to leave? what if she had died then? i had taken drugs too, but i sobered up the moment i realized brooke could die. that could have been the end.

i spent the night awake, scrouched by the side of her body. i made her throw up so we could get the drugs of her system, i vomited too because i was afraid she would die, no one wanted to come help because they thought it was already too late and they didn't want to be the ones to say it was the end. i kept trying to find her heartbeat, kept whispering love promises into her ears, sure she would wake up and mock me for it.

we had a long conversation after that happened. i told her we had to stop taking drugs. i told her i’d be by her side all the time if she wanted to. she had a terrible argument with dash about him leaving her there to die.

they got back together again. she slowly got back on drugs, more eager than ever. brooke was the kind of person who would trade it all for a minute of pleasure, a minute of peace within her mind. the drugs gave her that. she had no mercy for herself, so i couldn't have any either. i wrote the great war about that.

i didn’t talk much to her after that. i was going through my own turmoil, besides what we were going through. i was throwing up three times a day, my body couldn’t take anything i ate. i felt sore and swollen from head to toe. i had fucked jim for the first time in ages just to get back at her, you know? not that she would care, but i did. fucking any other woman wouldn’t affect me as fucking my dear moron of a husband. i thought god was finally punishing me for thinking i was so smart, for wanting more than i should have, and i wanted to be punished. i wanted to be humbled. i had to go back to being that little perfect wife again or simply destroy everything i had earned. now that me and brooke were over, i wanted jim to hate me so much he would finally leave.

obviously, it got worse. i was pregnant. very much pregnant. huge hips and tits. you could see a little belly. first time i had truly slept with my husband in years and i got pregnant. jim always had a terrible timing for those things, we will talk about it later. dash had joked about taking a baby crib on the tour bus.

i couldn’t stay any longer. we never got to chicago, the last show of the tour. i wanted to sing the great war for the first time there. instead, jim packed our things so we could leave the country and i cried. i cried in the airport, i cried in the plane, i cried when i got there. we went to france. abortion had just been liberalised in france, italy, those countries. i had my procedure done in austria. it was all very quick and safe, but i got very sick right after. out of guilt, maybe. guilt because i had ran away from my problems, guilt because god was finally punishing me, just like my parents had said he would.

i spent weeks having random high fevers. i would hallucinate. i felt something growing inside of me, moving around my organs and taking all the space. i cried and i cried and i cried and i wanted to kill myself so bad that i don't even know. i spent months in bed or in bathtubs. jim would get me from one hotel to another and i'd get in the room and immediately lie down. to not say i was completely insane, i would ask the cleaning ladies to give me some products so i could wash the bathtub until my fingers bled, and then i felt safe enough to rot in the bathtub.

do i regret getting an abortion? no. i know i only got to that point because it was needed. i never thought about if i wanted to be a mother, because that was imperative, a woman must be one if the chance comes, but i knew i couldn’t be one at that moment. if i had gotten pregnant during one of the other tours we had done by then, or during a break, i’d probably fantasize about a way of keeping it and showing the world how i could be a great musician and mother. not even because i wanted to show myself, but that's just how i was raised. you get pregnant, you become a mom. i don't doubt i would have done it, i've always been a little too... some have a few loose screws, i have a few too tight.

anyway. i would never have brooke again. the band was over. i was away from home. my body was failing me, and part of my truth was that anything could happen, i'd still have myself. i didn't then. i couldn't recognize me in that body, in that mind. give me a moment to get myself together before we continue. ❞