Shut up and drive!

It doesn’t happen every day, but it happens at least once a week. -- sometimes two times a week. I’m driving to work, or trying to anyway. He, or she, is talking instead of driving. This is distracted driving at its worst; so distracted is the driver that the vehicle is not even moving!

Nor am I.

No, I’m not talking about the stupid, irresponsible and dangerous driver who talks on a cell phone while driving. We all want them dead. I’m talking about a subclass of that irritant: the school bus driver who talks at almost every stop to the assorted mothers, fathers or nannies waiting with their darling children.

What’s to talk about? Get the gotdam kid on the bus and move out of the way for crissake! It’s bad enough that there are four stops between my house and the first intersection; its worse that the kids are often sitting in their parents car and don’t even make a move til the bus stops and opens its door – but then for the parent to walk leisurely to the driver so as to swap recipes or talk about last night’s episode of American Idol ?! WTF?!

Then there’s that issue of those four stops: two groups of two. Twice on my road the bus stops, the door opens, the kids move lazily forward, the parent babbles – and the bus moves on – to the NEXT driveway! I am not kidding. It is so damn irritating.

Little Johnny and precious Patty can’t walk thirty feet to the neighbor’s driveway. Heaven forbid!

When I was a kid I walked two blocks to the bus stop. Some kids walked further. An entire busload got on the bus, which then went straight to the school. We were willing and able to walk a few blocks without holding our parents hands. We were willing and able to wait without adult supervision for the bus to arrive. We were even willing and able to get off the bus in the afternoon and walk to our homes, unlock our doors and go inside.

All by ourselves. Imagine.

This looks a lot like my road; the only thing missing is the parent.

How terribly strange to be seventy

Strange and wonderful.

My friend Don and I and share September birthdays, an octave apart. Mine was yesterday, the 19th, his the 11th. I turned 64, he, 70. We met in 1965, 47 years ago. I can remember a time before Don, but in truth nothing of much import happened before we met at the WMBG Radio studio on West Broad Street in Richmond, Virginia. I was a junior in high school and the brand new "Coke Teen Time Reporter" for J R Tucker HS; I was bursting with enthusiasm. I was to meet a real live DJ, one of those immensely cool guys who played records on the radio, and got paid for it! Incredible.

From that star-struck beginning Don and I quickly became fast friends. That summer was, without doubt, the best of my young life. Don and I led a group of friends who laughed, played, danced and ran our way through an action-packed yet carefree and fun summer. The biggest song of the summer was the Stones' (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction and right behind that was I Can't Help Myself by the Four Tops. Other hits from that summer are indelibly written into my life playlist: Mr. Tambourine Man; What's New Pussycat; Cara, Mia; I Got You Babe; Help Me, Rhonda; Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me; Unchained Melody; Help!; Ticket to Ride; Papa's Got a Brand New Bag and I've Been Loving You Too Long by the immortal Otis Redding.

In 1966 Don joined the Air Force, I graduated from high school and went on to Notre Dame and we were apart for several years. By September of 1971 I had moved back to Richmond and shared my buddy Wayne's apartment less than a block from Don's. I was on my way out of the closet and Don helped guide that journey. I remained in Richmond until July of 1979, during which time Don and I had many adventures and, truth be told, a fight and separation or two. We cruised on the Queen Anna Maria to the West Indies, the Carla C through the Caribbean and the QE2 from New York, again into the Caribbean. We rode countless roller coasters at Kings Dominion and Busch Gardens and even went down to Florida with my first boyfriend Sandy to ride more. We took the sleeper to Jacksonville to visit my parents and drive a car back when they moved to Richmond. And, just as we had done in those magical days of 1965, we talked, and talked and talked some more.

In later years we cruised the Rhine River and hung out in Amsterdam; we toured Vienna -- there we are in the photo above --  Salzberg and Prague and spent two wonderful days in St. Wolfgang at the foot of the Schafberg mountain in Austria. We've also made trips to Washington, DC, over Memorial Day weekend to take in theatre, museums and restaurants, as well as visit my parents' grave in Arlington National Cemetery. 

And again, we talked and talked, and talked some more.

Most days we exchange an email or seven; we talk on the phone pretty often too. We're just like any two long-term friends, except that we live 400 miles apart.

What matters most to me is that Don is a constant. He's always there, and he's been always there for forty-seven years. As an Army brat I moved every two or three years until I was in my twenties. I have one friend from grade school, but I have only seen him once in the last 30 years. I have no friends from high school whom I still see and only one from college whom I see with any regularity. Other than my brother, some cousins and two aunts, I've known Don longer than just about anyone.

He's now seventy years old and as I listen to Simon and Garfunkel I marvel at all the years that have streamed by and wonder how many more we have left.

"Friendship is a gift you give yourself" claimed some tacky aphorism book I once saw. Maybe true, for no one I knew all those years ago loved me enough to give me such a great gift.

Except Don.

Old friends, old friends

Sat on their park bench like bookends

A newspaper blown through the grass

Falls on the round toes

Of the high shoes of the old friends

Old friends, winter companions, the old men

Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sun

The sounds of the city sifting through trees

Settle like dust on the shoulders of the old friends

Can you imagine us years from today?

Sharing a park bench quietly

How terribly strange to be seventy

Old friends, memory brushes the same years

Silently sharing the same fears

Time it was and what a time it was, it was

A time of innocence, a time of confidences

Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph

Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you

(Paul Simon, 1970, five years younger than my friendship with Don)

Ransom, will you still feed me?

When I get older, losing my hair, many years from now

Will you still be sending me a valentine, birthday greetings, bottle of wine?

If I'd been out 'til quarter to three, would you lock the door?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm sixty-four?

You'll be older too

Ah, and if you say the word, I could stay with you

I could be handy, mending a fuse when your lights have gone

You can knit a sweater by the fireside, Sunday mornings, go for a ride

Doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?

Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm sixty-four?

Every summer we can rent a cottage

In the Isle of Wight if it's not too dear

We shall scrimp and save

Ah, grandchildren on your knee, Vera, Chuck and Dave

Send me a postcard, drop me a line stating point of view

Indicate precisely what you mean to say, yours sincerely wasting away

Give me your answer, fill in a form, mine forever more

Will you still need me, will you still feed me when I'm sixty-four?

4 hours, 15 minutes, 0 intermissions

Philip Glass’s iconic opera Einstein on the Beach rolled into New York over the weekend and it was quite the event. Ransom and I went Sunday and my first comment to him was, “this is NOT your typical opera crowd!” I was in the minority; most attendees were far younger, far hipper at this Brooklyn Academy of Music presentation. It was definitely a downtown crowd.

Einstein was first staged in New York at the Metropolitan Opera, though it was not a Met production; the producers simply rented the space. And it was only there for two performances back in November of 1976. Ransom was among the people lucky enough to see one of those performances. He famously said:

As I listened to that five-hour performance, I experienced an amazing transformation. At first I was bored -- very bored. The music seemed to have no direction, almost giving the impression of a gigantic phonograph with a stuck needle. I was first irritated and then angry that I'd been taken in by this crazy composer who obviously doted on repetition. I thought of leaving. Then, with no conscious awareness, I crossed a threshold and found that the music was touching me, carrying me with it. I began to perceive within it a whole world where change happens so slowly and carefully that each new harmony or rhythmic addition or subtraction seemed monumental.

Not everyone has the same experience; Ransom attended that performance with a friend who left after an hour or so. That friend? The legendary American composer Samuel Barber.

As befits Ransom’s husband, I had an experience yesterday more akin to his: I loved it! There were times I was bored; there were scenes that went on too long; but I never thought of leaving and every bit of patience was rewarded by something magical or powerful. It was a musical experience almost unmatched in my history.

Full disclosure here: I loved Philip Glass’s music the very first time I heard it. That was at a 1985 concert at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. The Philip Glass Ensemble nearly peeled the paint off the walls of the smallish theatre space, and I was enraptured. When Songs for Liquid Days came out in 1986 I was hooked and when I first saw ABT dance Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room, with music by Philip Glass, I was completely blown away – so much so that I’ve probably seen that incredibly percussive and driving dance piece ten times.

There are also the films: Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi, The Fog of War, The Hours, Notes on a Scandal and a new score for the 1931 Dracula – to name only some. But Einstein is unique; I’ve read about the reaction to it and can well believe how strange it must have seemed to some people back in 1976. It’s not perfect, and I agree with Anthony Tommasini’s review in the NY Times when he says it could be “trimmed a bit. Maybe more than a bit.”

For all its aural intensity, head-banging repetitiveness and showy production, the most breathtaking scene was the penultimate: on a darkened stage we see a rectangular shape lit from within by bright white light. It is perhaps fifteen feet wide by a foot tall. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the left side begins to rise. Over the next several minutes or so it moved slowly toward the vertical, while an organ riffs slowly and quietly. If there’s such a thing as the sound of a couple thousand people holding their breath, I heard it yesterday. Finally, when the column is fully vertical it begins, just as slowly, to rise as a soprano begins a wordless eight-minute aria. It was mesmerizing, in both the sense of “holding the attention of (someone) to the exclusion of all else” and in the archaic sense of being hypnotized. It was a really powerful group experience. (The image above is from a recording of the opera, capturing the moment I’m talking about).

Coming at the end of a week when the local PBS affiliate ran all 16 hours of Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung, I can tell you, I am exhausted.

And smiling.

Life imitates art

Ransom and I are big fans of Dexter, Showtime’s series featuring Michael C. Hall as the title character, a blood splatter analyst with the Miami police. That’s his day job; at night he’s a serial killer. Before Dexter, Hall made a name for himself dealing with the dead in another way, as the director of a funeral home on Six Feet Under. We loved that show too.

Each episode of SFU began with a death – income for Dexter’s business. They were usually odd, ironic or outrageous. One of my favorites was of the guy too lazy to exit his SUV as he picks up the morning newspaper. He leans out the door to grab it from the driveway, but slips out of the vehicle, which then rolls over his head and kills him.

We couldn’t help but smile and think, “thinning of the herd.”

Another untimely end was met by a 20-something out partying with her friends in a rented limo. They stand on the back seat and watch the passing LA cityscape through the sunroof. Her friends sensibly get back in the car but she continues to whoop and laugh and enjoy her night out – until the limo passes too close to a parked cherry picker and she meets it head-on at 45mph. Ouch!

Last night I read on the New York Times web seat that a teenager met the same fate on a double-decker party bus in the city. Details were sparse but he apparently put his head through a ceiling hatch and was killed as the bus went under the Fletcher Avenue underpass near the George Washington Bridge.

This was just a kid, and kids sometimes do foolish things. I am sorry for him and his family.

A few years ago I was on a Metro North train to New York to hear Ransom conduct at City Opera in Lincoln Center. I never made it. Our train was delayed to the point that I turned around and went home when we finally crawled into the next station.

We had run over someone just west of Stamford. A 55 year-old retired firefighter was showing his wife and kids how to flatten a coin on the tracks. While his horrified family looked on he failed to see, or failed to react to, the oncoming train, the train I was on. He was sliced in half.

I feel sorry for that family too. Sorry that their patriarch was such an idiot. The worst thing about this comic tragedy is that he had already passed on his genes.

H. L. Mencken said “no one has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.” He got that right.