Year of The Plague, Entry 3
Dr.
Architrave and I met today with only my 30” diameter kitchen table separating us- social distancing be damned. The day I fear the good doctor is the day I give up all hope. We talked “okay boomer” as one quasi-doomed old man to another, although I have a few years on the young hellrake. “We talked of was and when.” This is the 30th anniversary of our seriously weird partnership, which ranges from infecting a local VAX message board to hijacking a college radio station to music videos and the production center and divorces and officiating at one another’s 2nd, 3rd, 4th and whatever weddings. I think we are honing in on an idea for a podcast, and if that does indeed come to fruition, I will let you know how to tune in.
Tonight, on one of those weird flashes of coincidence, Patty mentioned a line from the song “Young Blood,” which sent me searching all over Chez Gein for a copy of The Concert for Bangladesh. By the time I found it, Patty was fast asleep and I was left sitting on the living room floor, attacked by both Sid Jr. and memories from almost a half a century ago. Seeing Ravi and Alla Rakha again brought back very intense memories of meeting them in person, along with Jim W and other members of the band. The first time I saw the concert was in a movie theater in Iowa City in 1972 with Barbara Ann, the woman I had hoped to marry. Since we already knew the set list, she had brought a note book so I could dictate how Harrison was playing each song and, thanks to Barb, I figured out the exact chording and fingering to “Here Comes The Sun.”
But she is dead. Jim W is dead. Ravi, Alla, Ali Ustad, George Harrison, Billy Preston, Carl Radle, Leon Russell, and Jesse Ed Davis are also gone, baby, gone. Does it matter? I think not. None of us matter, none of us are real. “There is only this one moment, and you’ve got to make it last.”
I love you all more than words can say.