I never thought of Bruce Springsteen as having a beautiful voice. So I was just bowled over by a track of him doing Thunder Road in 1975. Wow. Leave it to Usenet to continue to make me aware of things I never knew existed. I have always liked Springsteen. Hearing his songs as a kid in Tampa I imagined that life in New Jersey and New York had more filth and vitality than the quiet suburb I was in, and I think that bit of projection has proven itself to be accurate.
As for Bruce I simply never thought of him as a great singer. But, well, wow, that 1975 concert changes my mind about that. Full voice rock star opera singer back in the day.
Tears roll from my eyes on occasion, virtually always in private. It happened today as I heard that familiar song sung in a way I never imagined it. It happens sometimes when I think about Hank Aaron’s record-breaking home run. Certain stories from friends and acquaintances about their experiences on September 11, 2001, have that effect.
Here I am at a pub on Broadway. I have not been out so much lately, and these are the places where I most often type into this Treo with this conversation-piece keyboard.
I followed the World Series with some interest, hoping the Rays could win it but remembering how skeptical I am of the “World Series” to begin with. I think pennant races are where it’s at. A season-ending matchup between teams that have likely never faced each other somehow does not make sense to me. I have also become skeptical of the sport in general for the irrational amount of money the players get paid when compared to their value to society. If ever you need something to demonstrate how little money is worth you just look to professional sports.
I rediscovered my love of Ben Katchor and Charles Schulz this week. Schulz through the 1950s was just so funny. Katchor’s “Julius Knipl” character reminds me a lot of myself.
I renewed a subscription to New York Review of Books and with the first issue found an interesting write-up of the letters between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. In a book of correspondence between great writers her complaints about the insignificant prattle of great writers in their letters made me laugh.
My financial interests have taken quite a hit the last few weeks. I do not make a lot of money largely because I have no desire to make a lot of money. I know how to do that — how to make money — but I do not care to have much more than I need. Wealth makes me feel conspicuous, as I found during my stone-skip path through corporate. Making a lot of money made me feel like an asshole.
I am pretty well diversified, it turns out. Cash, trusts, real estate, and even gold and a mountain of quarters and dimes would likely get me through most any financial apocalypse. My situation is not perilous but a certain amount of walking-around money could evaporate if I don’t do something about it.
I followed the economy-at-the-abyss story with some interest. It became quickly evident that virtually no one understood what the hell was happening, and those who did understand sounded foreign with their talk of credit swaps and esoteric “instruments.” Now banks are being nationalized and much of the concentrated wealth has vanished, but I think this is just a blip. Just a blip in America’s traditionally disproportionate allocation of wealth. Greed will prevail. Greed is the answer. Greed will find a way to return the majority of money to a fraction of 1% of the population. While I have typed these words I think $5000 has passed me by. Some of it passed in the buses and taxis that drove past outside. Some of it is “in the air,” blowing around at my feet, at my achy shins. I see some of it in the faces gaping at the televisions here. Everything is opportunity to make money in America.
Working at a computer has become draining. My eyes are *bad* and getting worse, not aided by these ghastly new glasses I got a couple of months ago. They are ghastly in function, not appearance. Most of my time at a computer is spent looking away from it, a routine I’ve consciously adopted to save my eyes from any more strain than is necessary.
I remember a line from Leonard Cohen: “I ache in the places where I used to play.” I am only 40 but fading vision and a curious feeling of weakness in my shins has me imagining my self on the brink of collapse. I walked to midtown today, over the 7000+ foot 59th Street Bridge, feeling for the first third of the trek Over the bridge that my legs were going to crack at the shins. I had the same feeling a few weeks ago, standing in line at Panera. My shins throbbed.
This is not an arbitrary or imagined sensation. Four or five months ago I slammed my right shin into a metal bar that was meant for use as a footrest for people sitting on a barstool at a tall table. The place was dark and I just did not see the metal bar there. I was not drunk at all. It was nothing like that, though I read with some interest today that Elizabeth Bishop had numerous injury-producing falls while drunk out of her life. Reading that on the subway today I thought “Wow, I never knew she was a drunk. Nice.”
