I Appreciate You. Now Fuck Off.

If you were to ask me how I’m doing, I would say I’m pretty good. A bit tired but getting some reading done, recharging my battery, all that. And then I’d ask how you are, and we would go on like that, like usual. But I’m not. Doing well that is. On a scale of 1-10, I’d give myself a one or two. I’m low. I’m losing the point of this. Fight on. I can’t go on. I must go on. All that. But we’re in the shitter. I am anyway. I’ve lost the faith, if I ever had it. It’s not just Trump & Putin, although they’re sure part of it. It’s the hubris, the lies and hate, mine too.

I’ve always enjoyed reading biographies, Mark Twain, Robert Kennedy, Orville & Wilbur Wright, Georgia O’Keefe, Mahatma Ghandi, Leo Tolstoy, Judy Garland, Agnes Varda, Zenobia. The story is clear: You’re born, you do stuff and you die. They all struggled, found success in something, struggled again, maybe found success again, and then died. I just finished When Breathe Becomes Air, the autobiography of Paul Kalanithi, a neurosurgeon who is diagnosed with terminal cancer. It is a rumination on mortality, littered with literary references, including Beckett’s “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” He dies before he finishes the book.

I also read Matthew McConaughey’s Green Lights. As facile as it sounds to consider an actor best known for “Alright, alright, alright”, it still has all the same moments, struggling and succeeding, trying to make sense. Alright, it is a trite read, and a little tiresome in the end, but he’s earnest and banged a whole beautiful women. And he’s not dead. Yet. Yeah, and he’s hot.

It’s better to live a life doing things, finding some sort of meaning and ‘indulging’ as McConaughey confesses. Then what? The key seems to be remembering, reflecting and sharing. But what if you don’t? What if you lose all that? You forget it all? My mother succumbed to dreaded Alzheimer’s and remembered nothing in her last years. Once a very insightful and intellectually demanding woman, she forgot everything including her beloved Mozart and The New Yorker. It was the one way she wanted to go. I’ve forgotten moments too, entire nights, years gone by and indulging too much, and all of the enjoyment I assume I had, is gone too. Like everything.

Whether we lay this planet to waste or not, this will all be forgotten. Not just my little old blog but everything else, Barbie, Mozart, Krakatoa, This space we fill will be empty and dark. There will be nothing at all. And so maybe I’m being generous with myself. I’m definitely not a two. I’m more like a one or zero.

2020: Always Remember The Bad

2020 was a distinctly bad year and is burned into my memory. It wasn’t just the pandemic, although that sure had a motherfucking big role. Not will I soon forget the dark days of New York’s Covid Spring, the eerie silence punctuated by the banging of pots and pans at dusk.

Soldiers returning to Javits Center transformed to a medical center for Covid patients.

2020 was a lot of other bad things too.

I was attacked on a Zoom call in front of the entire faculty by an angry woman who claimed that I discriminated against black students. It didn’t matter that none of it was true nor that she knew none of the students nor even that many, including my black colleagues, called immediately afterwards to express their outrage. It was ugly and awful, and I had just been laid off. I was never given the chance to respond nor ever received an apology.

I received a call from my mother’s caretaker with the news of my mother’s death. It wasn’t sudden – it was more of a relief – but the image of the fire escape stairs and the multitude of drinks along with repeated viewing of the climax of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (my mother’s favorite opera) are indelible memories. As was the Zoom funeral that followed.

Ragnar Kjartansson’s Bliss played the climax of La Nozze Di Figaro on a loop for 12 straight hours.

I had both of my knees replaced and was stuck in a hospital room with no air conditioning, the bedsheet sticking to my back. They didn’t do anything about it until a day later when they noticed that my temperature was high, and I explained the connection.

Brooklyn Hospital Center halls

I lost ten pounds in eight days. Hospital food always lives down to its name. That would have been a good thing to remember except that I gained it all back and then some.

Amadeus to Jimi: Top Five Wish List Concerts

I can think of a few greats I wish I had seen live on the concert stage.

5. The Clash – fresh off recording the album of all albums, London Calling.Amadeus to Jimi: Top Five Wish List Concerts4. Louis Armstrong – the voice and trumpet with Ellington or Fitzgerald…anybody at all!Amadeus to Jimi: Top Five Wish List Concerts3. Amadeus Mozart – conducting The Marriage of Figaro on the Vienna stage. Amadeus to Jimi: Top Five Wish List Concerts2. John Coltrane – the grand master saxophonist at The Village Vanguard.Amadeus to Jimi: Top Five Wish List Concerts1. Jimi Hendrix – the voodoo child from his marvelous distant land…live at Monterey.Amadeus to Jimi: Top Five Wish List Concerts

Survival Guide: An Upward Turn

As you start to adjust to the imminent end – now just three days away – your life should become calmer and more organized. You are in the upward turn. (That was quick!) Your physical symptoms lessen, and your depression begins to lift slightly. The closing of Mozart’s La Nozze di Figaro just might be, as artist Ragnar Kjartansson suggests, the most beautiful minutes of music ever recorded. Put it on a loop and listen again and again. Phone 167Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox is an absolute treasure, combining sophisticated story-telling with joyous detail and wit. I guess my point is, we’ll eat tonight, and we’ll eat together. And even in this not particularly flattering light, you are without a doubt the five and a half most wonderful wild animals I’ve ever met in my life. So let’s raise our boxes – to our survival. mrfoxThe Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, is also something to behold. It’s short and lovely and there’s pictures too. All grown-ups were once children… but only few of them remember it.princeIt’s time to get out there and do something active. Ride a bike, go for a walk or a swim, do anything but a run. That’s bad for your knees and hips.