A funny thing happened on the way to nirvana

'Don't you know each cloud contains

Pennies from heaven?

You'll find your fortune

Fallin' all over town

Be sure that your umbrella is upside down

Trade them for a package of sunshine and flowers

It you want the things you love

You must have showers

So when you hear it thunder

Don't run under a tree

There'll be pennies from heaven
for you and me.'

- 'Pennies from Heaven' - Arthur Johnston

'Pay my respects to grace and virtue -
Send my condolences to good.
Give my regards to soul and romance,
They always did the best they could.
And so long to devotion
You taught me everything I know
Wave goodbye
Wish me well

You got to let me go.'

- 'Human' - The Killers

I remember it like it was yesterday.

The year was 2007. As a man once said, it was a very good year.

Nelly Furtado's 'Say it Right' was on the charts. My friend Erin and I, inspired by 'The Motorcycle Diaries', were dreaming of traveling across South America. And I was charmed by and enamoured of red wine and warm-hearted Argentinians.

By virtue of some well-connected friends I'd made at University, my social circle consisted of mainly of the daughters of ambassadors who held all night parties in some of Wellington's ritziest zip codes, had swimming pools and maids who unendingly served chocolate gateaux, and produced on a whim noisy, effortlessly synchronised dances that went long into the night. One time, they merengued, bachata-ed and salsa-ed a bit too forcefully, and I think the cops showed up.

I too would attend the parties, a little girl playing dress ups. My far more sophisticated, impossibly beautiful Polish friend, Marzellina, would turn up at my house, in a chauffeur driven Mercedes, to the wide-eyed wonderment of my parents, ready to whisk me off to the latest unmarked location of untold romance and enchantment: promises of a life across the river and over the bend, of all that was to come. One night, it might be meeting an Israeli soldier whose parents had escaped the war by crawling across Siberia on their hands and knees; the next night it might be vodka with Russians or Batucada or a late screening of los Abrazos Rotos or football or the Havana, a local night spot. (Wellington had quite the underground scene then, but sadly, a lot of these migrants left and returned home.)

I moved out later that year. It was my first time away from home. Despite my worldly, often much older friends, I was still socially awkward, self aware, and very shy.

One night I turned up at a party in Mt Victoria with the familiar yet untested scent of marijuana strong in the air. Naturally, I didn't try a joint - I was far too well brought up for that. It neither bothered nor interested me. Instead, I spent the evening staring mutely across the room at an almost impossibly good-looking boy.

As the evening wound to an end, I found his arm on my arm, his eyes deep with the promise of a life beyond continents and oceans.

Nothing happened - I would never kiss someone I just met, what did you think?? I just told you I was far too well brought up for that. It was the possibility of what might have happened hanging in the air which exhilarated.

I wish I could remember what was said that night.  I'll never forget that feeling of aliveness as in a rush of emotions I ran all the way to the bus stop with my childhood school friend.

A song by The Killers was also popular that year: The video was shot in Mexico, and the iconography decidedly catholic. The story was of a good girl, whose morals constantly teetered on the verge of corruption by way of a wayward, bad man. 

'He doesn't look a thing like Jesus,
But he talks like a gentleman -

Like you imagined when you were young.'

Fast forward several months later. I'm out at a bar with Marzellina and Mona (Marzellina and I fell out after she invited the first boy I met at church that I actually liked to play tennis - an ultimate betrayal - and I've never seen her since, though I often picture her in Argentina somewhere, living a life of espionage and intrigue.) One of Marzellina's friends was there appraising me - she'd had plastic surgery and sported a new nose. "Beautiful girl," she exclaimed, pulling at the stray hairs on my bushy brows and around my lips: "Let me wax you! We do something about this..."

I can't recall how early in the morning it was when my phone rang. I was trying to hear what the commotion was over the din. Something about my nana - she had been rushed into hospital. Please come at once.

The trip to Newtown seemed to go on forever. As I pulled away, I watched my friends disappear one by one into the distance. After that time, Marzellina, Lujan, Mona, Josiane  - all became dim, tenuous fixtures in my life - harbour lights from beyond that had once seemed warm and inviting now mocked, unreachable, as I sailed further and further from shore.

You will have to believe in the power of nostalgia, and the narrator's omniscience, dear reader, when I tell you: nothing was the same after that night.
As the Germans say, hindensight ist zwanzig-zwanzig.

And now, we are living in the here and now. And the now is a tough nut. You're creative, and you're compelled to a medium of expression. Barbie tells you, as a woman, you can be anything you want to be. But Astronaut Barbie got a raw deal. Like my friend says, "there are limits to where women can work in peace." or, as Jesus put it:

"Foxes have dens, and birds have nests,

but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

New York is a microcosm of what fighting over the scraps at the opera table, and a dearth of creative outlets in music, can do to humans.The place is filled with people desperate to move on to anywhere, disenchanted with magical thinking, trying to lay down their weary tune, but who can't quite bring themselves to do it. Our relationship with creative expression reeks of Stockholm syndrome at times.

Things seem so innocently simple in the first blush of youth - as I get older, I find each day that goes by in New York shows me how a quest for peace of mind is more precious than rubies. I'm finding laying down my tune gets easier.

I see lack of peace everywhere in this city. I find no peace in the old lady who tells me her mother beat her with a belt on her tenth birthday because her own mother died on the same day decades ago. She only found out why she did it on her death bed, and the old lady had carried it with her right through her adult life. She never heard the words "I'm sorry."

Or when someone tells me they nearly threw themselves off a building because they realized they had no wife, or children, or singing career. 

A lady then threw her arms around me after I sang once, telling me how much I reminded her of her deceased sister.

On sunday, prepared to lay all my gifts at the altar, I went to a tiny Presbyterian church in the heart of Manhattan on the 17th floor of a building. A mountain man called Jim with no front teeth and a beard straight out of 'Brother, Where Art Thou' prayed over me.

"Flowers are blooming everywhere you step," he said. "I see you in Times Square with divergent paths all around you.

"You might feel like you are moving slowly, but you are leaving a shining trail wherever you walk."

"You will travel many worlds in this one," he prophesied.

Later that day, I sang a carol service at an old folks' home. 'In the Bleak Midwinter' was my solo:

'Snow had fallen,
Snow on snow on snow.

In the bleak Midwinter, long ago.'

One of the residents began to call out.

"I want to go home." A volunteer rushed to try and console her.

A man spoke to me afterwards. His partner died of AIDS several years ago. They were both actors, and part of New York's scene in the 70s and 80s. He told me he has written a new play. He would like to see it staged in his lifetime. He broke both his hips and will spend his autumn years wheelchair bound. Despite this, he enjoyed the music.

Sunset then fell on the last day of Hanukkah. The Jewish members in the audience clapped as volunteers sang out: "L'Chaim - to life!"