We waited out in the car with the rain and watching the wipers when something was playing on the radio. I’d heard it before countless times and I will hear it again the same.
Listen:

She said, ” They are all of them stuck in Kindergarten: palying with paint – banging on drums – playing dress up and make believe. They have to grow up some time… It’s sick.”

I said, “What? You’re acting like it was my dream.”

“Well you’re the one telling it to me.”

“I’m just telling you what he told me.”

“He’s a good looking guy, but …. I mean, It’s sick,” she said. “It’s the sickest thing I’ve ever heard. Your friend is sick. All your friends are sick… sick musicians… sick actors… sick painters… they’re all sick…. sick in the head… sick in the heart.. sick in the soul, if they have one….just plain sick.”

“It’s not their dream,” I said.

“No, but they’re sick all the same,” she said. “All their dreams are sick.”

“They’re just men… all guys are sort of disgusting… I shouldn’t have told you….”

“And you’re the vilest of them all … just for having friends like that… It’s sick.”

I said, “What?”

Larry came in from the coast where he’d done two underwear commercials in as many months.

I said, “Look at you: the new face of ass.”

We headed downtown towards a coffee shop we used to spend too much time in. He was a good looking guy, in a sort of normal way and I could see how they’d want him to sell their briefs.
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Continue reading →

Continue reading →

They hold onto the night with the Lanterns and the last beer… it goes and goes into the morning always thinning down and blue. They drift home with their masks and their drums held sideways. It is back to the tram and the train and the home and the horror of day to day life, where death is always close by, but harldly anyone ever dresses like him. It’s three in the morning there and I still hear them piping in the streets, but a little less and a little less.

Here it is already the last day of Fasnacht and I am listening to the Guggen Music as night falls on Basel, six hours and few thousand miles away. The Guggen bands play pop music (as opposed to all that 17th century drum and fife stuff). It is where the blue note gets to ring a little jazz into the streets. They are brass bands with lots of percussion and you find people dancing to the music. Doesn’t have quite the charm of the other, but makes up for it in general New Orleans (before the flood) style good times. It’s the stuff that more or less sounds like a parade to most people.




and they dance that night away alone, or in crowds.