good music, great music, really really great music

After carrying on endlessly about how wonderful the Holmes Brothers are, I finally saw them play again last night, for the first time in over ten years.  They don't play in New York that often, and sometimes it's at places I can't afford at the time, but still, I should have managed at some point in all those years.  Anyway, they certainly didn't hold it against me.  They may be the tightest, most diverse, and most purely entertaining band I know.  I'm not sure why it is that I'm getting older and they're just getting better, especially since I believe they're all past 70 now.  I was really spoiled in the 80s when I got to see them a couple of times a month.  Hard to believe that I used to carry the tip can for those guys at the ever-sleazy Dan Lynch Tavern (former scuzzy home of the blues in NYC).  And I used to go to some horrendous places to hear them, although it was mostly at Lynch's.  They'd play there one or two Saturday nights a month, just pack the place, and Sherman always said that if any guy hassled me too much, I could say he was my boyfriend.  I used that a few times and it worked really well. 

This Friday, Los Lobos are playing in Prospect Park, another very talented and diverse band.  And I have a terrible crush on David Hidalgo (file under Attractive Chicano Men).

I guess that thing about Sexy Jewish Men was a little silly, since the truth is that there are sexy men of every race, creed and color.  And as much as it makes sense that I did eventually marry a Jewish man, it still kind of surprises me.  I never really thought that way when I dated.  I knew that a guy was this or that, Jewish or Catholic or Protestant, Irish or German or African-American, my age or significantly older, and I appreciated all of the differences and nuances of each.  Good things to be said about all of them.  But it wasn't as if I would think, when I was dating a Jewish guy, "This might lead to something," or when I was dating a non-Jewish guy, "This won't go all the way."  For a large part of my life, I was actually not convinced that I would ever get married, although there were two men I did think about that way over all those years.  The first was German-American and older (I was 20), and the second was my age and African-American (I was 35). 

And speaking of the guy I wanted to marry when I was 35...I guess I owe it to him that I wasn't in the middle of Hurricane Katrina.  In mid-1994, after he had gigged in New Orleans, he started telling me about how much he loved it there, how much he could work there and how cheap it was to live, and that we should think about moving down there together.  We had actually planned a vacation trip down there to check it out, and I was thinking about getting a graduate degree at Tulane (this was about a year after I got my B.A., and grad school was much on my mind).  About a week after proposing this New Orleans thing, he broke up with me, saying he didn't want to get too seriously involved with anyone.  Commitment problems, you think?  So, I've still never been to New Orleans and managed to miss Katrina.  Still, I'm not really sure I ought to thank him...

I'm rereading The Right Stuff on my Kindle, one of my favorite books ever.  (I love the movie almost as much.)  I don't feel much about the Space Shuttle era coming to an end, but I have a real sweet tooth for anything about Mercury, Gemini or Apollo.  Not to mention, of course, that Tom Wolfe is a pretty amazing writer.  Reading the book is almost like watching a documentary film rather than reading non-fiction; it's vivid and wildly entertaining.

Even with all of the health stuff and still feeling financial pressure (I have a decent job, to be sure, but it's still one salary supporting two people), I always feel blooming in the summer.  It's my first full summer with my great summer wardrobe and trying on a particular style of dress/grooming, and I actually feel somewhat attractive for the first time in a great while.  I know people who will go to great lengths to feel attractive, which is not me, but I'm pleased when I'm comfortable and feel good about myself and it also affects other people.

Apropos of nothing:  I got a LinkedIn invitation from V's wife.  huh?  I have problems with her as well as with him, although he was my friend first and closest, and the break was primarily with him.  But it's really odd to be approached by her at this time and in this way.  She actually could have extended herself to me professionally around three years ago, when I lost a job in the same field that she works in, but she never did.  She never extended herself when I broke with V; she had always been supportive of our friendship, but according to him, she totally blocked our last effort to reach out.  I'm very curious;  Barry says, Ignore it.  V was always someone who hurt my feelings unintentionally, by not thinking, but she was mean at times and told stories and badmouthed me and accused me of lying.  Were we dear friends at times?  you bet.  Would that have been the case without V?  doubtful.

Anyway, this is me, trying to let it go....

it's de-friendly

I posted these two things on Facebook this morning:

If someone who's around only in good times is a "fair-weather friend," is someone who's only around when you can do something for them a "fair-use friend"?

Along the same lines...if the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then the friend of my enemy gets unfriended.

 This owes to the fact that occasionally, one of my Facebook friends publishes something good about V., or even posts some of his work, and I unfriend that person right away.  By this time, it shouldn't bother me, but it really does burn me up that someone who is such a user and so unfeeling is still fooling so many people.

Conversely, I had a message on Facebook from an acquaintance I hadn't seen for a while,  who said he'd never liked V. and mentioned V.'s "ego."  This guy's only ever spent a very little time with V., and he gets it.  

(Blogger has just decided to bold certain things, and refuses to unbold them.  Oh, there, finally got the bold off.  Considering that I only do very simple things with Blogger, it's often way more difficult than it ought to be.)

V. has been out of my life for well over two years, and almost entirely out of my thoughts, but I still hate hearing about him, especially anything good ...actually, I don't mind occasionally hearing someone badmouth him, because it's somewhat rare.  I've put aside a lot of people, places and things (as the expression goes) to avoid seeing or hearing about him.  Had to do it once before with a bad ex-boyfriend, because I couldn't seem to get over him if I heard about him at all.  I'm over V., but the anger still boils up.  Being fooled by someone for 30+ years will do that to a person.

Not much else going on except to report a good first week at home and the luxury of being off today for Passover.  After a week, I think the only thing that may bother me at the job is the small windowless room I work in.

One of the  things I like on Facebook is occasionally checking the mutual friends function, seeing people with whom I have friends in common.  I'm never surprised about anyone in blues, because Barry and I both have a lot of contacts in the area.  But I have a friend in common with Ellen Burstyn, which has nothing to do with Penguin (though I did see her at an awards function we both attended in connection with Penguin, which published her autobiography).  The mutual friend we have is a musician Barry used to play with, who also does some acting.

I have four friends in common with David Peel, but nine with May Pang.  Go fig.

A perfectly good question

I posted a question to Facebook yesterday: something along the lines of "Have you ever met a genius? Have you ever met a saint? Have you ever met anyone who had a special aura about them that set them apart in this sort of way?" In the interest of brevity, I did not seed it with some of my own answers, and *no one* answered. One person pressed the button to say he "liked" it.

Which forces me to write about it here, of course.

I might have mentioned it recently, here or elsewhere, but at Penguin I got to shake hands with Paul Ruesesabagina, the Hotel Rwanda guy. He just exuded goodness, everything but the halo.

Two musical geniuses, I think, though of course I've seen more. With artists. you can often tell from their art. But the ones I met who really got to me were Larry Johnson and Luther Allison. I first heard blues at one of my summer camps -- one of the folk music counselors used to play a handful of songs on an acoustic guitar, elaborate ragtime fingerpicking and great lyrics... and I later learned he was basically playing Johnson's album "Fast and Funky" note for note. (No mean feat, that.) I got to spend some time with Larry in the 80s when he lived downtown and there were times when we'd sit and talk and then he'd just play for an hour or two. Best, most faithful of all the Rev. Gary Davis students.

Now Luther, I think, though also a great, great musician, also had a great aura of calm and caring. Almost immediately when I met him, I felt like I'd always known him and would know him for a million years. Unfortunately, we only met two or three times, and spoke once on the phone, before he died prematurely of brain cancer.

Some geniuses are not famous geniuses and some not-famous geniuses are so brilliant that somehow they tend to have problems dealing with others. Those were the ones I usually ended up dating.

There was one -- you can find stuff about him on line, I think. He became somewhat well-known many years after we dated. And what he was famous for ties in directly with his being gay. Yes, my well-known, gay, genius boyfriend. (If it makes me look any less stupid, I kind of figured out that he was gay during the time we knew each other. which was the very early 80s.) So I met this guy, Casper Schmidt, through Susan Hein and Lloyd deMause, who were friends of my mother. Susan and I were also very fond of each other, and she would often invite me to parties along with my mother (and my stepfather, if he was willing to step in enemy territory, among the shrinks).

Anyway, I met Casper at a New Year's eve party at Lloyd and Susan's, and he was kind of perky and prematurely grey and had this really interesting accent (turned out to be South African), and we kind of took a shine to each other. Casper was involved in Lloyd's Psychohistory group (real fast: an interpretation of history through Freudian psychology), and I was really impressed with his intelligence. He was really, really, smart. He was a child *psychiatrist*, which meant he was an MD as well as an analyst, rare in those analytic circles (where the analysts tended to be MSWs or Psych Ph.D.s). And had published poetry in South Africa, and made prints, and I can't even remember what-all else. But I'm dating him, and he seems perfectly happy to be seeing me while he's eying guys. I double-dated with my friend Leslie and she remembers "that guy who was so nasty to you."

So here's the end of the story of the brilliant Dr. Casper Schmidt, which would be funny were it not so sad: somewhere in the eighties when I was maybe a couple of years shed of him (and I didn't learn this until relatively recently), Casper, who has come out with a loud bang, publishes a controversial paper claiming that AIDS does not exist except as a psychosomatic projection of the self-loathing of gay men, something like that.

Then he dies of AIDS. So, maybe not so brilliant.

The famous brilliant person I met and spent some time with is David Lynch. I love a man with a great big brain, and I also love his taste and individuality. He is very special.

You don't see people with great spirits that often, and it surprises me that I didn't encounter more while working at a mind/body/spirit imprint. Piero Ferucci may well be one; we had one phone call and a bunch of e-mails. He wrote a book called The Power of Kindness that is just amazing. And I don't recommend woo-woo books very often.

I had a college professor who was like a shining light, so many ideas and so much information and such a lovely way of sharing a story, a room of 150 students would sigh as one. I'm talking a lot on Facebook with grade and high school friends about the teachers we had there, and I'm only remembering snips and dribbles of what I was taught. But I studied with this professor in the early 90s, when I was finishing up my B.A., and he was magical. That would be James P. Carse, retired but still writing.

Once I let go of my tendency to be hynotized by extremes, I was able to have a happy marriage to a bright, regular guy, who has strengths and weaknesses. But scarily smart guys can still sometimes make me dizzy, so it's best I'm mostly at home.

OK, I'm gonna write the memoir-thing, my recollections of summers and school over a period of about ten years This blog should have some entries of that sort, about camp or school, so I'll just write about other things here for now.