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Saturday May 6, 2000
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the music where the music has been There are these icons, these ideas in your head of places and people and how things are. Mostly, they are wrong We started the day just rambling around. There was a 10K race for Women's diseases (or against them, whatever) that was occupying Seventh Avenue. We stopped in the Stage Deli and had some eggs and salmon and bagels and watched people race up and down warming up and then....the race started and there was a ton of humanity going north. We skirted all that and went to Times Square (still a few runners there) and walked by the long lines at TKTS (no plays for us this time) and went on a wander which took us into Grand Central, into the New York Public Library and into the lobby of the Algonquin. New York on a Saturday is full of weird construction. They were planting these thirty foot trees in front of the Royalton or else we would have checked out their lobby, too. We headed back north and went to a lecture where David Remnick interviewed Paul Simon. Mr. Remnick, for the uninitiated, is the editor of The New Yorker. There was a complex mess-up you don't won't to hear about that resulted in us having four tickets instead of two. FFP saw a young gal looking for tickets and gave her the extras. She was thrilled. She came over to us in the auditorium and thanked him again and said it was her birthday. She and a young man with her sat in front of us a few rows. She was really excited about the event and sat on the edge of her chair. It was a pretty interesting interview and Paul even used a hand mike to put lyrics over a song he has not yet published. I'm not his biggest fan but he certainly has created something unique in his music. I still remember the hamburger joint that always seemed to have 'Sounds of Silence' on the jukebox in the sixties some time. Heck, maybe we even played it, I don't know. After the lecture, we opted for a bit of rest, a shower and a small snack of fruit in our room. We were girding ourselves for a late night. We got to the Cafe Carlyle early. (We are early for everything at home and more so when we are anticipating the unpredictability of gettings cabs and being in a place we don't know well.) So we went into Bemelman's Bar. That's a place we've heard about our whole lives, just like the Cafe. In my mind, I imagined the bar would be full of smartly dressed people, trapped in a time warp from another era. This was not the case. There were some quite elderly people, guiding each other in and out, a few people who seemed to be from the neighborhood. Forrest decided he easily outdressed everyone in the place. I never outdress anyone, but I was conservatively dressed in a black suit, a gray mock turtle and my new, Euro-look Cole Haans. My style is, well, my style. Very tailored. Little jewelry. I did have on a necklace of sorts. There were a few people drinking martinis but no tuxes like you might imagine. (OK, maybe you wouldn't and we didn't either, but that's the illusion.) A guy played piano. My criticism of him was that interpretation makes music interesting, but there is a point of no return. And, yeah, OK, there was no way this pair of fifty-somethings was going to start a long evening with martinis either. I had dry vermouth on the rocks (which I thought would be a sophisticated and also light drink but which seemed to puzzle the waiter) and Forrest had a Virgin Mary. The place was steeped in history, though. Not history I necessarily understood, however. The walls are decorated with Thurberesque (but not Thurber) murals. One is of a people zoo with animals strolling around looking at people in cages and swimming in a pool. One caged human is a banker with a big cigar, the others are naked women. Other themes seemed to be on other walls but with similar style. Sitting in bars holds far less sway with me than it once did. But it's interesting to sit in an iconic bar for a little bit, soaking up the atmosphere. But on to the Cafe Carlyle for Bobby Short. We got a corner banquette. It was perfect for two dining and four sitting around the banquette watching. Forrest and I got a bottle of wine and had a meal. In New York, if you want tap water, you have to ask. It's a law or something. (This even extends to the hotel where they were stingy with ice and didn't bring ice water with room service.) They will sell you bottle after bottle of water, though. New York is similar to Europe in this respect. I think California has gotten into the 'ask and ye shall be hydrated' syndrome of late. As we finished up dessert and the band (large one, small room) started assembling, our buddies Rebecca and Steve showed up. We had some more wine, some more water (bottled, of course) and watched a great show. FFP had realized a dream. He'd seen Bobby Short perform. It was like me getting to go to all two weeks of Wimbledon or something. Cool. To top it off, we went to the Oak Room in the Algonquin and saw Iris Williams who did a pretty darn great show herself. The crowd wasn't very smart, sad to say. There were men in shirt sleeves. Where do these people think they live? Austin? Well, it wasn't a quarter to three (as the song says) but it was about 1AM. We left and got a cab. Rebecca and Steve wandered up Sixth Avenue.
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"In my music, I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time. " Charles Mingus |
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sheet music for sale on ebay
times square 1
times square 2 |
