David Byrne is Chasing Me

Some kinds of people become obsessed with famous people. In extreme cases their obsession becomes delusional.  Famous people, perhaps delusional themselves, hire former football players to guard them against imagined delusional people who imagine that they, the famous people, are aware that the delusional people are aware of THEM.

I suffer such a reversal of such delusions. I'm not famous, but I'm convinced David Byrne, nee of the Talking Heads is stalking me.  Not stalking me exactly, but maintaining a parallel course through life -- my life -- like an indian scout following a Huguenot through the woods.  In recent years, if I decide to do something, so does Byrne. 

Worse, if I get an idea and begin work on it, he will get the same idea around the same time, and actually do what I had only hoped to do because he's determined to do it, where I'm sort of a Walter Mitty who gets the idea and is then content to fantasize about what it might be like to have done it. Take his cycling book, which really isn't a cycling book, but anyway.  I think it's called "Bicycle Diaries." I had that very idea: write a book about my experiences cycling around New York City.  But instead of writing it, I got into enjoying the fantasy about having written it, which was almost as good as having written it until I discovered that David Byrne HAD written it, thus depriving me of any pleasure the fantasy provided since the fantasy was based on the hitherto real possibility of my writing it, and consequently being the first to write such a book.  Now Byrne has written the book, so if I write a book about my bicycling experiences around the city, which are probably pathetic compared to the ones he describes in exotic locales, like Duluth, well...people will think I just copied his idea, which just makes me angry.

So I decided to become a Tango musician to get away from Byrne.  He's obviously aware of all of my interests, but Tango? It's not him.  You see I've been a musician all my life, and have come to realize that the only way to avoid Byrne is to pursue a style nobody plays north of Uruguay.  Tango! There's something that prick wouldn't know shit from shinola about.  Yes, he's into world music, whatever, but Tango? No, that's too, I don't know, too formalist for a guy like him, who does installation music using abandoned warehouses as musical instruments. 

I took a Tango class and also decide to read up a bit.  So, on a friend's recommendation I picked up Bob Thompson's "Tango: the Art of Love" a dense treatise on the music, literature and dance that came out of Buenos Aires by way of Germany, Italy and Africa.  Perfect.  Thompson, who is dean of one of the colleges up at Yale is also a friend of an old friend of mine, and Thompson also mentions my teacher in his book so certainly here would be the place for a deep dive into this music, which by the way I don't care much for, but will learn because it'll make me stand out at parties.

So I get the book, and I flip to the Introduction, which is written by..... by....no.  No. This can't be.  This isn't possible, it just can't be.  Dear God, no.  David Byrne? It can't be the same one. No.  I tear the book into ten thousand strips of paper and immediately call the New York Gregorian Chanting Association for an application for their two-year intensive in Lourdes.

On The Horrible Ubiquity of Guitars

I go back and forth about music.  I don't practice enough, don't think I'm getting better, so what's the point of practicing, so I don't get better.  But I actually am getting pretty good, and if I WERE to practice, say, an hour a day, I would be REALLY good. 

But then I go out, ride the subway, walk the streets, and notice that every other son of a bitch has a guitar strapped to his or her back and I think to myself, "Why is it that there are so many guitar players? Why do so many people gravitate, lemming like, to the guitar? Can't some of them play a bassoon? Why didn't I pick up the bagpipes?" 

You know how motorcyclists wave to eachother when they pass on the road? And fans of the same sports team give each other the high five? With guitars there's no camaraderie. I take it as a personal affront when I see someone else with a guitar.  "Who the hell are you?" I shout "Oh, you think you can play? Oh, tough guy with a guitar, Mr. cool with a guitar." The police are called in.

There are so many guitarists In New York that there are rules now for people with guitars: guitar lines at restaurants, movies, bathrooms. And you are likely to get mugged by another guitar player, the enmity is so strong.

I once got on the subway with my guitar and there were so many other guitar players carrying guitars on that car the conductor made us do an open mike.

Now I've gotten into the habit of thinking obsessively about various statistics and probabilities about guitar expertise that somehow favor me:  how many of these, these, so-called "musicians," these silly, ineffectual hopeless morons, these tens of thousands of them who show up at the drop of a hat an the closest dive bar as soon as the sign-up goes on the bar-top -- how many of them can actually read music? How many can actually play more than five chords? How many of these people know how to pretend to play jazz? how many know what a diminished triad is? I don't but I'm just wondering. How many can play a minor 7 flat five chord, a flat nine?  I can, but only if I'm on a bicycle. How many know what a 3/6/2/5/1 progression is? 

Then I feel guilty and silly about the whole thing and begin to hate the guitar, and think I should go back to playing the only instrument I was ever really good at: recorder.

So, then comes the existential question: what is the point of playing guitar if literally everyone else on Earth also plays the guitar? You aren't going to get any invitations to perform in a group. "What do you do?" "I play guitar." "that's too general, could you narrow it down a bit?" "I think so: when I inhale oxygen, I then exhale carbon dioxide." "So you're an animal. We need that."

I guess I have to look back at how I got tricked into playing guitar. I know, I started playing air guitar. That's it. It was air guitar to Alice Cooper. I'd been kicked out of the school band for barking like a dog (see below). Then, unfortunately, I learned to play C, then G. then I think D. I was therefore equipped to play the entire Rolling Stones repertoire. I should have stuck with bassoon.

A Night With Barry Harris

Playing with Barry harris. Barry Harris holds his jazz workshops at night- late at night - sometimes at a ramshackle space shared by drug rehab club that once probably fit in on Bleeker Street quite well before the east Village became The East Village. The way Harris runs it, so I read on his web site, is singers first instrumentalists next. When i showed up there was an incredibly long queue of singers waiting their turn to sing, apparently, a song chosen at some time in the past by Harris et al.

Now Barry Harris, famous pianist and jazz man, is old. He is real old. And with a microphone hanging around his neck like a tracheotomy tube he looks a bit like the jazz and African American equivalent of Stephen Hawking. But he holds forth with a dark genius that terrifies the ofays and keeps the brothers on their toes. He loves to pick on whitey though, and they deserve it. They came to him, not the other way around. So did I, though I don't consider myself white exactly. I'm brown.
Everyone sings the same song, with instruments backing them up, but the singers are all pretty bad. Not one has Broadway chops and maybe two had real jazz singing ability.

One woman, clearly a veteran, complained about the musicians. She was oviously sort of a top dog in the singers lineup. But as soon as she blamed her mistakes on the musicians, well, several other singers yelled out what must have been a rule of law: don't blame the musicians!

That over, the musicians part began, with singers departing. Foolishly, I went right to the front, right next to two other flute players. I'd brought my guitar, but as usual there were like fifteen guitar players, which is another subject: the perverse ubiquity of guitar players. I thought maybe I was the only other person who noticed taht until I saw a clip of The Who in concert where Pete Townshend screams into the mike, "The Whole World....plays the Fucking Guitar!"

Well Harris' class was quite an amazing, frightening experience. He's no bullshit, old school and vengeful to musicians who can't play a scale. I was openly terrified when he called on me, visions and memories of my old high school band leader Mr. Heinlein, whom I now think may have been a Nazi, who used to break his baton over the music stand in rage when you didn't get it right. Mr. Heinlein hated me and once humiliated me in front of the entire band because the first saxophone had talked me into barking like a dog in the middle of a tune. "Greenberg! What were you doing?"
"Barking."
"What's that? I didn't hear you."
"Barking."
"Barking?"
"Yes, sir."
"What do you mean by barking?"
he knew what I meant but was going to drag this out.
"Barking, like a dog."
"Barking.....like a dog? Well, why don't you come down front now here and bark for us."
"Now?"
"NOW"
"Woof."
"I didn't hear that. I said BARK!"
"WOOF!"
"Good, Greenber you, are going to bark like a dog in time with each song we play for the remainder of class. Is that clear?"
Woof.

Compared to Himmler, I mean Heinlein Harris was easy because it was obvious I was terrified and over my head. And new. I had tried sneaking back to sit with the fifteen idiot guitarists hoping he woulnd't notice me but he did.
"Greenberg."
"Yes, Mr. Harris."
"What are you doing?"
"Going to sit with the dogs."
"You aint goin nowhere, you sit your ass right there, in front of me, so I can hear how bad you screw up my music."
Harris, like Heinlein, does NOT suffer fools. "No man," He yelled at me later, "You can't be half way. You have to try to be perfect. you can't just try to be half way and hope half ways' good enough."

As for his music, well, we'd just be making that up as we went along. He'd say stuff like "okay, let's start the major third up from e flat, chromatic up to the seven, then down to third above C." And the sax players were right on top of it, these young guys who were super slick sitting on either side of me. It took me a full five minutes to figure it out.

But he didn't cut a break to the ones he didn't have patience for: "I don't like how you sit, man. I don't like how you sound. Sit up. I can't hear you, I gave you the lead alto part, man, play it!! You ain't doing it." This one poor sax player couldn't get arrested. He just hated the guy. But he had obviously been back a few times because there was a familiarity to the hatred: "Man, I don't like you're attitude. I don't like your style. You ain't improving, man."

Maybe I should go back to cooking. Wait, i don't cook.

Mayweather shines, sort of...

The consensus among members of the fight press is...well there isn't one. Okay, the scribes generally hail the return of Money and pretty generally apotheosize the man, or at least the man at his craft in the squared ring. We praise his power, his speed, his nearly extrasensory ability to see what the opponent will do seconds, minutes, perhaps years before he does it, whether its a punch, a duck, a step or a feign. It is as if -- as one writer put it -- Floyd Mayweather, Jr. perceives the world in slow motion.

In that respect he embodies a fantasy that every one of us has had: that we are in a fight with some boorish nemesis, maybe a bar fight, to make it colorful. With the touch of our tongue to our molar we can instantly cause time to slow to a crawl and we are able to duck punches throw counters, then simply move out of the way while the goon crumples. That is what Mayweather does. But it is also generally agreed upon by all and sundry that his kind of perfection makes for a boring fight. And I, too, agree with this. Watching a Mayweather fight, perhaps his first bout with Castillo excepted, is like watching a man chase a horsefly for twelve three-minute stanzas. AS one commentator wrote, "Those who paid the $50 PPV charge for this...lost $50."

And there may also be a consensus, at least among the less charitable bloviators that Mayweather is all about his perfect record, teeth and nose, and not at all about getting into the ring with someone who could seriously threaten any of those. Not true, I'll argue. The reason he chooses to fight whom he does is as clear as his new middle name. Hatton, de la hoya, even Marquez are money fights.

Who can give Mayweather real trouble? judging from his fight with Castillo, it would be a fighter who is quick enough to duck some of Mayweather's punches and persistent enough to chase him into the ropes. And of course strong enough to, well, actually punch through his remarkable defenses. Miguel Cotto, I think, would be that fighter. We'll see how he does versus Pacquaio, a fight I think Cotto -- and I know this makes me a poor bookie -- could win. Mosely, of course, could hurt Mayweather, but Sugar and Money may never mix it up. We'll see about that.

Over a year Later

I'm still alive, which I guess shouldn't surprise me. Or should it? Well, I'm still alive in any case, and what does surprise me - though i guess it shouldn't - is that I haven't written a word on this blog since January a year ago. Where went the time? I may just try to keep this up, but for whom? For myself? Nobody's going to read this and why should they? Don't people, dont YOU have better ways to spend your precious time? I abhor the Internet because it reduces experience in obvious ways and has -- I speak for myself here -- annealed (if that's the right term) itself into my life like some protuberance that causes pain but is also inoperable. Also, I'm afraid people will read this and comment on how affected I am. I don't know about you, but i find that the experience of reading comments on blogs, beneath news stories, on peoples' digital genitalia (my word for social media) is like, really, sifting through dirty undies. No, perhaps a better analogy would be sifting through the back of one's ice box for something, anything, that hasn't spoiled. Well, let me post this and consider whether to continue before next March.

Greetings all

I have been encouraged - names won't be revealed here - to start a blog. I've tried this before, and I think I'm not alone in finding the idea of blogging regularly rather like that of regularly weeding one's back yard. It's a good idea, even if one doesn't have a back yard (weed the neighbor's) but really, who has time? We don't do it until we look out the window and find that a pack of jackals has moved into the tool shed.

My idea is to keep it brief, though. But my notes will be - at least over the next few days - on the North America International Auto Show in Detroit. I shall try to upload videos if I can. We'll see.