Whether I am speaking only for myself or also for others, here is long-overdue thanks to my therapist.
Read More...
Maybe someday I’ll climb the steps that have been in my mind for decades, and I’ll see where they take me. They have a story to tell.
Read More...
In which I recall being an insufferable know-it-all about one of my favorite singer-songwriters. A story with a plot twist you’ll no doubt figure out!
Read More...
There’s nothing like listening to “September Fifteenth” and remembering being on the road to becoming me — in the driver’s seat, not a passenger.
Read More...For me, December can’t happen without my hearing certain music. One such piece is Charles Brown’s “Please Come Home for Christmas.”
Read More...
As a child, I dreamed an entire commercial, or as it probably should be termed, a full-music-video PSA. I decided after all these years to write about it.
Read More...
Published August 16, 2018
Danny had been on my mind lately. The reasons, like life, were a series of seemingly random events and circumstances that somehow worked together to point in a certain direction. Then, on Monday morning, I got the call telling me that he was gone.
Oof, as Danny often said. Oof, as if reacting to a body blow, a gut punch. That’s how it felt.
I’m writing this during my private candlelight vigil for Remy Daniel Miller II, whose funeral Mass is six hours (and two time zones) away as I begin this remembrance of the friend I met during our freshman year of high school. What would he think, I wonder, if he knew that my apartment building prohibits candles, forcing me to improvise with a battery-powered version and a Shutterstock image? My guess is he’d allow it.
Why had Danny been on my mind lately? For starters, two other high school friends — both of them one year my senior — visited me five weeks ago, stirring up memories that began flooding back a few weeks earlier when they told me they’d booked their flight. Flipping through yearbooks put a lot of names and faces back on my radar. And around that time, I reconnected with a classmate, the one who called me with the bad news Monday.
Seeing Ellen DeGeneres in the car with Jerry Seinfeld reminded me of when I gave her a ride in the mid-1980s, early in her career.
Read More...
It was a long time ago. I was 19, and M was 25. We worked together and played music together. At my dad’s funeral, I played guitar, and she sang.
Read More...
Published February 12, 2018
Earlier this month, I reconnected with a good friend from college. Conversation soon turned to movies, and she recommended “Housekeeping” (1987). Directed by Bill Forsyth, it is based on Marilynne Robinson’s 1981 novel. If you watch it in a mood similar to mine when I saw it a couple of weeks ago, you might be taken aback by the use of the word “comedy” in the opening of Vincent Canby’s November 1987 review for The New York Times. Taken in full, the description “haunting comedy” feels closer to the mark.