10:15pm: Staying Home & Drinking Not
Went out at 8pm to bartend my JamSunday in the Havana Room--live blues every
Sunday nite, folks--thinking I might get half a notion and have something mildly
interesting to post when I returned. Back so soon? Alas, I was short-shifted
when the band--a good group of guys called "Ten Ton Truck"--was a no-show,
no-call, no-message, no-good for-nothing on this particular night, but hey, it
got me out of the apartment for a couple of hours and come to find there's real
air flyin' around out there, who would've known?
Anyway, the real news this night is I've decided not to go to JazzFest this year
for the first time in 5 years, an annual ritual that animates my Springtime, the
chance to hang for a week with my best pals, and the best friends anyone in the
world could have: Mello, Duncan and Rand, and I hope everyone out there has at
least one friend one-tenth as true as these friends have been to me. But when I
swapped one bar for the other (the jurisprudential for the libational) I
forfeited the financial rewards attendant upon that honorable (when practiced
ethically) if rather restrictive lifestyle. Since then I have had less
wherewithall for the pleasant diversions I used to enjoy: 3 squares a day, for
instance--good thing the metabolism slows with age--just kidding. But seriously,
a week in New Orleans with a pipe full of MaryJane and a belly full of
Who-Hit-John just doesn't happen the way it did when we were solvent (that's
drain-cleaner, people). But, hey, I've still got my teeth. On the other hand
I've been very lucky, and kept this bartending gig the past 10 years and
running, thanks to my good friends Mike and Mitch, who tolerate my
idiosyncracies and have always found a place for me--usually behind the bar I'm
happy to report. Anyway, I've been scraping by on nickels and dimes for ten
years, now, and don't have any complaints--somehow there's always enough to
scrape together for that annual rite of Spring called JazzFest.
But perspectives change, and the events of September 11--and the time that has
intervened--have changed my perspective, purpose, and pleasure, and probably in
that order. On the one hand, business is down considerably here on the upper
east side, where many of its residents no longer reside. My perspective has been
reduced accordingly. And I am guided, now, less by my pleasure and more by my
regrets, all of them, and they are many. So it would be nice to fly down to
N'arlens for the greatest show on earth, The New Orleans Jazz and Heritage
Festival, it would be better than nice, it would be uplifting and rebuilding, as
it always has been. Hell, for once I booked the room in June just to make sure
I'd have some digs in the Quarter. But that was then, and life was different.
Since then we have come to learn what is possible in this life, and some things
just don't matter as much anymore.
This year I will be staying home and drinking not. My friends will remain my
friends, and we will meet at JazzFest again, to be sure. But this year is a time
for rethinking everything. I am a writer, and writers must write as that is our
work. So here I will be come the first week in May, rethinking everything I
thought I had thought, and doing the work that remains to be done.