What an amazing Valentine's Day, for a person "between relationships," as they say. First off, had some coffee and picked up some research materials from a Russian historian friend, talked to him about the book I'm working on now, set during the Russian Revolution--had a ton of questions… just love Russia. You'll be hearing a lot about this book as time goes on.

On to lunch in Topanga Canyon, under blue new-rainwashed-puffy white cloud sky. Met up with Rachel Resnick (Love Junkie--check this book out!) and Francesca Lia Block (yeah, the very one) for a "Between Boyfriends Valentine's Lunch" at the most romantic restaurant in LA, The Inn of the Seventh Ray!! We'd decided not to let our current 'between' status screw up the chance of a beautiful girlie lunch outside in the venerable hippie heaven--great food and white wrought iron, white tablecloths and roses under the trees, by a stream (water too after all this rain we've been having). And we had SUCH a good time!

So funny how Valentine's Day can be stressful even when you're in a relationship, there's such a weird performative aspect to it. Judgmental, expectational… This was relaxed and nobody felt weird or had to prove anything. Not that I'd turn down a new bf, but this was amazingly fun, pretty and special, not depressing in the least--we'd all done the V-Day thing as a couples, but this was new ground, and fun in that way that doing something individual always is.

Then the ultimate--I said I'd heard about a concert up in Santa Barbara (2 hours north of LA), on the classical station of all things, a Patti Smith/Philip Glass night in tribute to Allen Ginsburg, the beat poet who had been their very good friend. I asked if either of my friends could make it, because I was GOING, come hell or high water. Francesca had something, but Rachel was game (YAY!!) and we piled in the car, and headed up to Santa Barbara.

It was wild. Severely under-publicised, in the college (UCSB) auditorium. We sat in the front row, literally ten feet from Patti Smith… God, it was fantastic. She is so powerful, so mesmerizing, so unapologetically herself in her jeans and grubby (but designer) jacket and white shirt and tie… her unbrushed graying hair and wideset gray eyes, the resonant voice… 'not Presidents but Prophets…' So sexy and honest and funny. My idea of what it's worth growing up to be like.

Glass played the music he'd played for Ginsburg's memorial, and Patti read some of Ginsburg's poems, including Wichita Vortex Sutra, and the Magic Psalm--and talked about how it had been knowing him, doing stuff with him, and his death, which they'd both been present for. I've been listening to a lot of Ginsburg audios lately, he's so joyous, so Whitman-like in his embrace of life, the good and the bad and all of it… fantastic to hear her do them.

Then she did some of her own, and Lenny Kay and JD Daughtery, her drummer playing mandolin, came on and they did an acoustic set--In My Blakean Year (Ginsburg a big Blake fan)… Glass played some of his amazing stuff solo (if you've never heard him, get the movie Koyannisquaatsi--he did the soundtrack. Mesmerizing… I meditate to his album Glassworks…)

One guy in the second row--a late arriver who came in talking--kept calling out, "Patti I love You" "Patti Be my Valentine"==there's one idiot in every crowd--she finally shut him up--"I like guys who are harder to get." Very funny.

It ended with her and her band doing a singalong on "Because the Night," for Valentine's day--dedicated to Fred Sonic Smith--and then Glass played behind her as she read Footnote to Howl (Holy Holy Holy holy holy holy... the world is holy! the soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and asshole holy! Everything is holy! Everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is an eternity! Everyman's an angel!...Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas!)

Heading back to town after a late drink, I realized that, instead of sitting at home trying to ignore the whole event and feeling like a hopeless loser, I'd had one of the best Valentine's Days ever. A reminder never to wait to have fun until you're with the "right" person--sometimes YOU are the right person.