With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be.
The only way to find the limits of the possible is by going past them into the impossible.
October 24, 2009 - 12:30 p.m.
It feels like I have a lot to write about. We'll see how much actually gets written.
After I updated yesterday I did just what I said I'd do. I put my feet up and read the Times. Then I gave Lena a call. If I weren't in pain from the Crohn's it would have been great. The pain eased up a lot before I left and I actually felt good enough to eat when I met Erika. I thought I would be as the food was moving through me, it was just having some trouble.
I'm still debating on whether or not to have breakfast this morning.
This is a long entry. If you want to skip the music and friends and go right to my thoughts on Catcher in the Rye skip down the horizontal line.
I met Erika at Town Hall. We must have arrived within seconds of each other. When I arrived she wasn't in the box office. I checked in front of the theater and saw she wasn't there then went back to the box office where it was warm. She was at the ticket window when I went back in.
I had planned on eating at Spanky's the barbecue place next door but they went out of business. We ate at the place that replaced them, HB burgers. Guess what we had. Come on guess. We didn't have beef burgers. We were outlaws and had bison burgers; with jalapeno jack cheese! It was pricey but quite good. It was cold and I wasn't dressed warm enough so I was very happy it was right next door.
I guess I should mention why we were at Town Hall. Erika won tickets to see Nanci Griffith from WFUV and asked me to join her. Raise your hand if you realized that the thing that made me happiest was being asked to join her. You should. I'm always insecure about people.
Not only was it Nanci Griffith but the opener was Amy Speace! Not only that but guess who was in Nanci's band … Pete and Maura! Was that a show made for me?
I used to never miss Nanci. She was one of the first musicians I learned about through WFUV. She totally blew me away. I hardly ever see her now. I think what happened was I used to learn about her shows by looking through the village voice and hearing about them on WFUV. I never got on her email list. Now I never look through the Voice and WFUV hardly ever plays her. I was so happy to see again.
As I expected our seats were in the balcony. That's fine, Town Hall has great acoustics. What was odd was that I was seeing Amy and the Kennedys and not doing merch. There was cognitive dissonance from me not being the one that was comped. Amy couldn't as she was the opening act.
Amy was solo, that means she sang her slower folkier material and didn't rock out. I prefer her with the band but Amy solo is still amazing. Hell, I'd have enjoyed just looking at her. She was dressed to the nines.
I can't remember the last time I saw Nanci. This might be my first time this millennium. I can't let that happen again. She's way too good to miss. I agree with her grandmothers that her best song is "It's a Hard Life."
I was a child in the sixties and I still believe.
At the end Nanci and the Blue Moon Orchestra were joined on stage by Pete and Maura and Amy and Frank Christian and Julie Gold. When they sang "If I Were A Hammer" they were also joined by the audience, including me. I loved it. Same thing happened with the encore singing Buddy Holly. It was a great evening.
I was surprised I didn't see anyone I knew there (in the audience, I knew everyone but Nanci and her band onstage). As Erika and I were walking to the subway I was complaining about how small my umbrella was; it was the first time I ever used it; someone just came in and joined me under my too small brolly. I was about to tell her off when I saw it was Barbara. We only walked half a block together then went our separate ways, Barbara to her car and Erika and I to the subway. Erika didn't need the same train as me but it left from the same platform so we waited together.
As I went home I realized that the evening was filled with people that I either never saw as much as I like or who I am now not seeing as often as I used to. Whenever I see Erika I say that I should see her more then somehow it doesn't work out. I'm going to make sure I do.
Barbara I was seeing all the time at Kelly's series but now that that's over I don't see her as often. I'm guessing that's temporary. We'll start seeing each other more often, we like so many of the same things.
Amy moved to Nashville so there's a good reason I'm not seeing her as much.
Just by chance I haven't seen Pete and Maura much lately. That never persists.
It isn't a personal relationship but I'd like to see Nanci perform more often.
I can't complain, that's a lot of people whose company I enjoy.
On the ride home I finished Catcher in the Rye. Should I give that it's own entry? I know I'll make a new section and write about it there and warn people to look for it at the beginning.
When a body catch a body going through the rye
I didn't love Catcher in the Rye. The book was well written, it held my attention, that wasn't the problem. The problem was that Holden is just not a person that I want to spend that much time with. I just find all his whining annoying. He was worse that Sal Paradise from On the Road. Now I didn't hate the book. I liked it but it isn't one of MY books. Carey's theory is that you have to be a teen when you first read it. Maybe she's right but I think I'd have been less tolerant then.
It felt to me that it was written by an actor. Holden did so much stage business. He always kept his hands busy, adjusting his hat and smoking cigarettes. His verbal ticks would be catch phrases in a play or film. Has anyone turned it into either? It screams movie to me which is ironic as Holden hates movies.
I kept contrasting the book with Alan Mendelsohn Boy From Mars. They are both first person narratives by adolescent boys. The thing is that I identify with Leonard from AMBFM but not with Holden. Maybe it's just that I'm not clinically depressed.
I of course loved all the New York City references. I kept imagining every place he went to. He was in on my turf.
I am totally unhappy with what I said about Catcher in the Rye but I can't seem to say it in a way that works for me. If I was Holden I'd be blaming everyone but me for my failing.
Now I'm going to spend some time with Xenophon. That's a total change of pace. The Anabasis is also a first person narrative (at least I think it is) but Xenophon isn't a fictional depressed relatively contemporary teen, he was a real philosopher, soldier, historian from ancient Greece.
57 Varieties - October 28, 2009
All Sales Are Final - October 27, 2009
Take Your Time - October 27, 2009
There is such a thing as too much chocolate - October 26, 2009
A League of Our Own - October 25, 2009
Email me: GordonLew at gmail
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. Horvendile October 24, 2009
