It’s taken me a little while. What can I say? It’s a potential case of swine flu and the fear that if I watch another episode of Buffy I’m going to turn into my 7th grade self that makes me finally sit down and put the laptop — where else? — on my lap.
Rewind. Friday. Got my single ticket for John Prine.
I’m enjoying — nah, I’m hoovering — a Whole Foods dinner on a bench on the west side of Central Park, listening to bagpipes whine from under a nearby overpass. I hope I’m not the only one who can hear them, but those shirtless soccer players seem uninterested. They seem like the kind of guys who don’t answer to “soccer.” Time to switch shoes. Flip flops to heels, though where I’m going, no one’s going to judge.
I wobble on my heels as I try to avoid the cracks in the brick sidewalks around Juilliard, making my way up to the Beacon Theatre. I begin to fall among groups of people my parents’ age. Some are carrying maps, others keep stopping to check street signs; I even saw one group carrying a car GPS up Broadway. I fall in with this crowd. May as well know where I’m going.
Inside the theater, I see about 2 people under age 30 for every 50 people. Everywhere are my parents, my aunts and uncles, my college professors, my dad’s fishing buddies…all beards and Birks and denim. These are people who were around to experience real live folk music, as it was growing up in the 20th century. They got to be the first ones to read Ken Kesey. I can bet a good number of them spend New Years Eve with Garrison Keillor.
I ask you, where are these people normally hiding?
No matter; I take my seat between two sets of my parents.
Yes, it’s my first time seeing Prine, I tell them. Dad and Uncle Lou said it’s about time I see him live.
By the time he ambles onto the stage, I’m the surrogate daughter of this couple to my right and scheduling a date with the son of the pair to my left (am I exaggerating?).
This concert occurred on the day after the 12th anniversary of my first concert. I remember things like this.
He sings Spanish Pipedream to open, and I feel no revelation. I don’t feel that aching in my heart like I do for so many of my bands, the ones who were mine first, who no generation before mine got to experience. As he gets to “Sam Stone” and “Hello In There,” I place the feeling — or lack thereof. It’s home.
Sometimes I think too many things feel like home to me. Then I think, can you ever have too many things feel like home?
He sings “Fish and Whistle” and “Ain’t Hurtin’ Nobody,” and I may as well be in my backyard helping Mom & Dad clip grapes off our vine. Or at Louie’s farm in Wisconsin, taking notes on his intuitive cooking. Or, most of all, at the cabin, eyes heavy with a long day of sunshine, fingers sticky with fish scales, chucking driveway rocks into the river, waiting for the steak to come off the grill while everyone drinks silly blue drinks.
The guy speaks between sets, and I may as well be listening to my grandfather. The voice is emblazoned on the back palate of my cerebellum, resurrected as that of a dear friend and absorbed as casual conversation.
One of my favorite Prine songs is “Lake Marie,” but as I’d never seen him perform before, I didn’t know if he ever played it live, what with most of the song being spoken-ish word. As he starts to play the first few lines of the chorus, that whateveritis magnificent feeling builds up from my stomach to my throat. Do you know what blood looks like in a black and white video?
In his encore, Steve Towns Earle and his brilliant mandolin-warblin’ partner joined Prine & the guys for “Paradise.”
For a week that begins with me going back to Pittsburgh, opening the cabin & seeing that brief pocket of Potomac for a minute, this is the best ending I can think of. I’ll sleep well.
Carry on, then. The rest of the weekend is epic in itself, when old college friends finagle their way into my life now, and I take it as it comes. Nine of us chopped veggies Sunday afternoon, and I then shelved books for charity for the rest of the day.
And I blame my neglect for my immune system on the reason I’m sitting on my couch with a tub of vitamin C and flushed cheeks, but I can’t complain if I made it from September to May before I got sick. Until next time.
