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.