Bob Dylan

It’s An Old Story

Yeah, Another Blogger158 Comments

I know I’ve written about old age and mortality any number of times before, but I just can’t keep myself from visiting those topics once again. When you’re old as dirt, like me, it’s hard not to contemplate, at least now and then, how much time you’ve got left. I’m 77, for crying out loud, which stuns me. How can this be? Where the hell did the years go? As with most matters, I have no f*cking idea. One thing for sure is that the express train keeps barreling along. We’re here, and then — poof! — we’re gone. That’s life. If it were up to me, though, each individual creature, human and not, would carry on, and thrive, unto eternity. Yeah, sometimes I’m a hopeless dreamer.

My status as an ancient has been made crystal clear to me by information I’ve obtained from the website of The French Institute For Demographic Studies. One of its online calculators shows that I am older than 97% of the human beings on our planet, an extremely sobering statistic. Most truths don’t hurt, but this one does. And I’m having a heck of a hard time wrapping my head around it. (If you’d like to see where you fit on the global population scale, click here to open the website. Once there, click on Let’s go and, on the subsequent page, enter your age on the horizontal bar.)

Still, naively, and probably out of fear, I find myself not quite believing that I have an expiration date. It almost doesn’t seem possible to me that I do. I mean, I’m still nicely functional, still pretty much an ace at stumbling gracefully through life. Why should all of this come to an end? I sure would like to make it into my 90s, though. I’ll have been cheated, I feel, by anything less than that. But any way you look at it, time is running out. There are far, far more grains of sand at the bottom of my hourglass than at the top.

So, what’s to be done? Well, we all know the answers. To the best of our abilities, everybody — not just me and my fellow oldsters — should aim to do the right things. Such as: maintaining, and trying to expand, close relationships; pursuing activities that put smiles on our faces; and working hard to make society and the natural environment healthier. Anyone who does a good bit or more of all that is a valuable member of the human race.

Music has been my main interest for most of my life. I can barely carry a tune, and I’d be up shit’s creek if I attempted to plunk out Chopsticks on the piano. But I’m an expert when it comes to listening to music. And I pay a lot of attention to what musicians have to say. A recent article in The Guardian caught my attention and got me feeling better about being a geezer. The story takes a look at up-there-in-age musicians who have lost little, if any, of their life force. For instance, Bonnie Raitt, who is two years my junior, remarks, “I’m not slowing down and I’m not going to stop until I can’t do it any more.” And Graham Nash, six years my senior, has these thoughts about seeing the late master guitarist Andrés Segovia when Segovia was 92: “And he knocked me on my ass with the energy and brilliance of his performance. So I think: ‘Why not me?’”

I like the way Raitt and Nash look at things.

I’ll bring this opus to a proper conclusion by leaving you with a tune composed by Bob Dylan, who, at 83, remains a very active musician. The song in question, Forever Young, appears on his album Planet Waves, which came out in 1974. Dylan recorded the album in collaboration with his pals from The Band (Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, Garth Hudson, Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm).

While working on this story I listened to Forever Young for the first time in eons. Man, I think I’d never realized how direct and heartfelt the song is. It addresses some of the themes I’ve presented herein, but with a different slant, for Dylan had one of his youngsters in mind when he wrote the lyrics. The song’s sentiments, though, apply to folks of any age. Hope you enjoy it.

Philadelphia, Here We Come Again

Yeah, Another Blogger45 Comments

Some days begin badly and then turn out fine and dandy. A week ago Friday, for instance, I spent several hours pouting and moping after realizing that there weren’t any fresh blueberries in the house to dump into my breakfast bowl of Wheaties. I’m certain I’m not alone when I say that Wheaties sans blueberries ain’t no Breakfast Of Champions. I might have continued bemoaning my fate until who knows when were it not for the deserved and perfectly aimed slap upside my head that my wife Sandy administered. “Snap out of it, you fool!” she urged me for the umpteenth time this young year, adding “let’s go to Philadelphia and have some fun.” Right as rain once again, I looked through the arts and entertainment listings in the Philadelphia Inquirer’s weekend section and assembled a plan. Before long we found ourselves on a train heading from the burbs into the big city. Arriving in Philadelphia’s central section around 3 PM, we embarked on our expedition of discovery.

Now, Philadelphia’s a cool place in a lot of ways. For starters, it’s swimming with good restaurants and swell arts establishments and nifty Colonial era streets and gorgeous public parks. You can walk for miles and miles taking in the sights. Or, as Sandy and I did on the Friday in question, you can confine yourself to a small chunk of territory and do just fine. Everything we did took place between two blocks on the east-west axis (11th to 13th Streets), and four blocks on the perpendicular plane (Arch to Sansom Streets). We spent five hours within that rectangle before hopping a train back home.

img_1464It was a Friday defined by art, music and food and drink. My kind of day, in other words. First stop was Fabric Workshop And Museum, a non-profit arts institution that has been on the scene since 1977. I’ve been aware of FWM for nearly all of its life, but didn’t get around to scratching it off my to-be-visited list until the other day. Mister Right-On-Top-Of-Things strikes again!

img_1423img_1435FWM is a busy organization, with various arts-making and educational programs going on behind the scenes (click here to find the official website). Its more public face is the galleries where changing exhibits of, natch, art are displayed throughout the year. The items in the first floor gallery didn’t grab me. But I got big kicks from the handmade textiles that set the huge, warehouse-like eighth floor space aflame with colors. There, mounted side by side in four long rows, were large and beautiful silkscreened fabrics produced over the last few years by teens and young adults in FWM’s Apprentice Training Program. Half of the works stuck strictly to blacks and whites, while the rest went crazy with other members of the palette. Black and white . . . multi-colored . . . I couldn’t decide which family I liked best. Hell, why bother deciding? Both approaches were A-OK.

img_1451img_1455Bright, jubilant  colors, though, were destined to take precedence over their more dignified siblings as the afternoon segued into evening. From Fabric Workshop And Museum, Sandy and I ducked into a neighboring building and rode the elevator up to Fleischer/Ollman Gallery where we spent 20 minutes getting drenched by rocking blues, reds, yellows, you name it. Man, I started feeling dizzy from the wild vibes at FOG, and I liked that. “Yo,” I almost said to Sandy, “it’s time to add some life to our frigging living room. I’m going to buy that one and that one.” By which I meant Marc Zajack’s loopily loveable oil titled Stoned Bust and Nadine Beauhamois’ Circus Escapee, a plaster/wire/papier mâché beast in eye-popping hues. But I didn’t take out my wallet. I think I should have. And maybe I yet will.

img_1472On we marched, our final destination to be Fergie’s Pub, a two story joint where you go when you’re in the mood for bohemian funkiness and friendliness. The air outside was incredibly warm for a February 24, about 72° F, which enhanced Sandy’s and my good spirits. It also resulted in an unusual sight — slews of jacketless diners chowing down at sidewalk tables strung all along a stretch of 13th Street, one of The Little Apple’s restaurant rows. Cool. I mean, warm.

 

 

img_1475img_1478Ah, yes, Fergie’s Pub, a spot that totally agrees with me. Sandy and I had been there four or five times before, but not in the past two years. It’s a good place. The food is straightforward, tasty and fresh. The beers flow like wine, and vice versa. And on some Fridays, starting at 6 PM, a tight and soothingly rocking country-and-folk-flavored band that goes by the unlikely name John Train holds sway (click here if you’d like to be directed to JT’s website). John Train played two sets, each about 45 minutes in length, and had the jam-packed second floor room eating out of the palms of its sweaty hands. The group delivered a bunch of original tunes and some by Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams and the like (click here to watch a John Train performance at Fergie’s from earlier this year). The repertoire was powered by drummer Mark Schreiber’s low key but insistent beats and flourishes, and sent soaring by the wistful sounds flowing from Mark Tucker’s steel guitar and guest member Jay Ansill’s fiddle.

John Train is led by lead vocalist Jon Houlon, who sounds like a cross between Jerry Garcia and Arlo Guthrie, and who can banter with and throw goofy barbs at audience members like nobody’s business. The guy is a natural riot. He told a joke that I feel obligated to pass on to my readers. Between songs near the end of the second set, as Sandy and I finished up our turkey burgers, suds and vino, Jon Houlon said this to the audience: “You know The Rolling Stones song Get Off Of My Cloud?  . . . ‘Hey! You! Get off of my cloud’ . . . Well, did you ever hear the Scottish version? . . . ‘Hey! McCloud! Get off of my ewe.'” In my book, that’s a very good one.

You know, I’ve been dancing and prancing in Philadelphia for over four decades, which is most of my adult life, and I’ve yet to get tired of the routine. The day may come when I will, but I’ll worry about it then.

(Don’t be shy about adding your comments or about sharing this article with others. Or about signing up to follow this blog. Thanks.)

(If you click on any photo a larger image will open in a separate window)