My friend Neil Wexler took this photo of me last evening in front of Mercy studios on E. 14 St., where I’d just laid down lead vocal tracks for my new song, a ballad. Neil and my husband, Robert Rosen, who are both writers, had surprised me by stopping by the studio. They'd run into each other at a bookstore and decided we should all get a drink together—which we did, after chatting with my engineer/producer Nick Miller about Blondie’s recent sojourn at Mercy (Nick said that Debbie Harry, whom I interviewed for Vanity Fair, always had her little dogs with her). We also discussed Mickey Leigh's book—Leigh lives in the neighborhood—about his brother Joey Ramone; Bob found it surprising that Joey had OCD. On the way to Rue B for drinks, I stopped at the Brazilian designer Geova's atelier after noticing a black skirt with a sort of tulle trim on the sale rack outside. I told Geova, a charmingly loquacious man, that I wasn't sure it would fit; he took the skirt by the ends of the waistband and circled my neck with it. "It'll fit," he declared, and it did!
I thought the T-shirt I was wearing—from the Groovy Blueberry in New Paltz, N.Y.—went with not only the newly purple exterior of Mercy’s building but also my new song, “Tiny Stars,” which deals with a swirl of thoughts to match a swirling winter’s-night sky. So far we just have, besides vocals, a lovely piano part played by Graig Janssen, but now we’re thinking violin, cello…