sometimes i wonder, do you ever think of me
That's Fred Neil's line (from his song Dolphins), but I associate it more with Tim Buckley.
I'm old enought to have seen Tim perform live a few times, most memorably in Philadelphia during the summer of 1968, when my middle sister and I rode the 'hound to visit my mother's cousin. I'd call her elderly because she seemed that way at the time, but she was probably not much older than I am now. She was an energetic but difficult old bird.
While we were there, I noticed that Tim was playing at a folk club downtown, and amazingly the woman and her second husband were willing to drop my sister and me off at the club and come back to pick us up later. It was heavenly, not least because Tim was SO good-looking! Unfortunately, the show ran longer than she expected (or maybe she just got tired of waiting for us). So she barged into the club while Tim was onstage, made a lot of noise, and yanked us out of the show.
Looking back, I understand why her son later said something to me like "the word 'mother' is not in my vocabulary". Sadly, the son (my second cousin?) died young and alone, in the mid(?)-70s, after mentioning in a letter something about an illness that in hindsight I realized was AIDS. My little sister did a panel for him for the AIDS quilt and wrote a beautiful essay that was published in one of the more prominent AIDS anthologies. My life is poorer without him in it.
That Fred Neil/Tim Buckley line often comes to mind. I don't spend as much time dwelling on the past as this blog may suggest. (I do it here because my current life is pretty mundane - my real life, that is; I live a rich fantasy life.) But anything can summon up the remembrance of something or someone past. And then I wonder if I come to other people's minds.
I know I do, as I hear from people more often than vice versa. But it surprises me when someone I consider special gets in touch, because I know that, at least to casual acquaintances, I'm very much a nothing. (I don't think I am, but I know that's what the world thinks.)
People don't like you because you're good to your parents. They might respect you. Or maybe they think you're a chump. Or maybe you make them feel bad that they don't much care about their parents and they'd rather not feel bad, so out you go.
When I think about how closed up I've been, I feel regret for all that I've denied myself in life. And I vow to open up once my current circumstances pass. "Hope and Optimism InSpite of the Present difficulties." So says a postcard on my closet door, reproducing a 1984 South African woodcut.
* * * * *
Yesterday afternoon at work, the secretary announced a phone call for me. It was the name of someone I was involved with almost 25 years ago, when we were both working in Berkeley, California, and whom I hadn't been in touch with for maybe 20 years. Someone I think of occasionally. My postmortem on that relationship has long been that I was a minor and forgettable conquest.
I figured I misheard the secretary, and it was an attorney calling about a closing or something.
But it was him.
We had a delightful conversation. He's won some songwriting contests and is supposedly going to send me a CD he recently recorded of his work. (I've still got some hand-written first drafts of his lyrics, one with his notation that "we" had written the song, I having come up with the title/theme/catchphrase.)
We talked about how the gold Gibson Les Paul that I had egged him on to buy for $700 is now worth $40,000. He described the view of lower Manhattan from his office window on Staten Island. I asked if the World Trade Center would've been in sight before 9/11. Yes. I told him how I measure many things by whether they happened before or after September 11, 2001. Just as I measure other things by whether they were before or after November 22, 1963.
I told him about my travels, including my various trips to NYC during which I didn't contact him. Including my Yom Kippur 2000 trip out to Staten Island to the Chinese scholar's garden. I evidently rode right past his office.
Most of all, I'm surprised he ever thinks of me. I guess it's that, like I answered his question, yes, I'm still a "music fanatic", and he wants to show off his accomplishments to someone who'll think it's cool. Still, he was a very charismatic fellow, so I'm a bit flattered to hear from him.
"Sometimes I wonder, do you ever think of me?"
* * * * *
This morning, mentally composing this post as I drove to work, I was listening to a Will Oldham compilation. And what should come up but this line from New Partner:
"You were always on my mind."
I'm too tired to figure out if that's the flip side of the Neil/Buckley quote, or the opposite of it. Maybe it's neither. But I love that kind of coincidence.
-- 1360
I'm old enought to have seen Tim perform live a few times, most memorably in Philadelphia during the summer of 1968, when my middle sister and I rode the 'hound to visit my mother's cousin. I'd call her elderly because she seemed that way at the time, but she was probably not much older than I am now. She was an energetic but difficult old bird.
While we were there, I noticed that Tim was playing at a folk club downtown, and amazingly the woman and her second husband were willing to drop my sister and me off at the club and come back to pick us up later. It was heavenly, not least because Tim was SO good-looking! Unfortunately, the show ran longer than she expected (or maybe she just got tired of waiting for us). So she barged into the club while Tim was onstage, made a lot of noise, and yanked us out of the show.
Looking back, I understand why her son later said something to me like "the word 'mother' is not in my vocabulary". Sadly, the son (my second cousin?) died young and alone, in the mid(?)-70s, after mentioning in a letter something about an illness that in hindsight I realized was AIDS. My little sister did a panel for him for the AIDS quilt and wrote a beautiful essay that was published in one of the more prominent AIDS anthologies. My life is poorer without him in it.
That Fred Neil/Tim Buckley line often comes to mind. I don't spend as much time dwelling on the past as this blog may suggest. (I do it here because my current life is pretty mundane - my real life, that is; I live a rich fantasy life.) But anything can summon up the remembrance of something or someone past. And then I wonder if I come to other people's minds.
I know I do, as I hear from people more often than vice versa. But it surprises me when someone I consider special gets in touch, because I know that, at least to casual acquaintances, I'm very much a nothing. (I don't think I am, but I know that's what the world thinks.)
People don't like you because you're good to your parents. They might respect you. Or maybe they think you're a chump. Or maybe you make them feel bad that they don't much care about their parents and they'd rather not feel bad, so out you go.
When I think about how closed up I've been, I feel regret for all that I've denied myself in life. And I vow to open up once my current circumstances pass. "Hope and Optimism InSpite of the Present difficulties." So says a postcard on my closet door, reproducing a 1984 South African woodcut.
* * * * *
Yesterday afternoon at work, the secretary announced a phone call for me. It was the name of someone I was involved with almost 25 years ago, when we were both working in Berkeley, California, and whom I hadn't been in touch with for maybe 20 years. Someone I think of occasionally. My postmortem on that relationship has long been that I was a minor and forgettable conquest.
I figured I misheard the secretary, and it was an attorney calling about a closing or something.
But it was him.
We had a delightful conversation. He's won some songwriting contests and is supposedly going to send me a CD he recently recorded of his work. (I've still got some hand-written first drafts of his lyrics, one with his notation that "we" had written the song, I having come up with the title/theme/catchphrase.)
We talked about how the gold Gibson Les Paul that I had egged him on to buy for $700 is now worth $40,000. He described the view of lower Manhattan from his office window on Staten Island. I asked if the World Trade Center would've been in sight before 9/11. Yes. I told him how I measure many things by whether they happened before or after September 11, 2001. Just as I measure other things by whether they were before or after November 22, 1963.
I told him about my travels, including my various trips to NYC during which I didn't contact him. Including my Yom Kippur 2000 trip out to Staten Island to the Chinese scholar's garden. I evidently rode right past his office.
Most of all, I'm surprised he ever thinks of me. I guess it's that, like I answered his question, yes, I'm still a "music fanatic", and he wants to show off his accomplishments to someone who'll think it's cool. Still, he was a very charismatic fellow, so I'm a bit flattered to hear from him.
"Sometimes I wonder, do you ever think of me?"
* * * * *
This morning, mentally composing this post as I drove to work, I was listening to a Will Oldham compilation. And what should come up but this line from New Partner:
"You were always on my mind."
I'm too tired to figure out if that's the flip side of the Neil/Buckley quote, or the opposite of it. Maybe it's neither. But I love that kind of coincidence.
-- 1360
posted by lsg at 4/18/2007 07:04:00 PM
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