Who Asked Me?

Saw Bob Dylan at the Beacon on Saturday night. I’ve written about him here before, several times. This probably should have been a Bob Dylan blog — exclusively — from the start. Could have avoided a lot of pretentious rambling in favor of more select pretentious rambling. Like Allen Ginsberg in the Dylan doc “Long Way Home”: “I heard ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’, I think, and I wept .. because it seemed the torch had been passed to another generation.” It’s his emphatic pause on “wept” that’s really cringe-worthy. Not that there’s anything wrong with music evoking strong reaction; it’s just that nobody’s slant, least of all mine, is necessary when it comes to Dylan. So I’ll skip to Jon Pareles’ take on Bob in the present, observing it’s no nostalgic oldies show and that he concentrates on his stuff from the late 90s forward:

Mr. Dylan has every right to not look back. The songs he has released since his mid-50s are powerful, mysterious, down-home jeremiads with bitter bravado and backhanded humor. Mortality, social collapse, disaster, betrayal and the wreckage of love are sketched over Chicago blues, old-timey picking and honky-tonk country. Mr. Dylan has replaced the fluidity and arrogance of youth with a more genuine, lived-in sense that he has nothing to lose and no one but himself to please. He doesn’t soften what he sees; he inhabits it, baleful and acute.

In case the “Mr Dylan” stuff or superior prose isn’t a giveaway, Pareles writes for the New York Times. I’d use my own words but it would only be a less eloquent transcription. This is the Bob Dylan I’ve followed, and saw on Saturday night, nailing ‘Love Sick’ just before the intermission. “I’m sick of love / but I’m in the thick of it” .. spare, pointed, and unflinching. Economically whimsical with “Soon After Midnight”: “I’m searching for phrases / to sing your praises.” Early Roman kings, in their “sharkskin suits, bow ties and buttons, high top boots .. drivin’ the spikes in, blazin’ the rails, nailed in their coffins in top hats and tails.” How’s that sit with you, Allen Ginsberg? He stands center stage most of the show in a cream colored suit with dark stripes down each pant leg and a wide-brimmed  hat. The only words besides lyrics came at the intermission: “Why thank you .. we’ll be back shortly.” The other point of note is that his voice sounded better than I’d ever heard it; rasped and barking on some of the ‘Tempest’ tunes but downright melodic, by Bob standards, on “Forgetful Heart.”

Nothing that Mr Pareles didn’t write better in his review. I’ve included the link above, so give it a read.

Baseball, according to those who favor the game, is the sport most like life. This is one of those platitudes that typically goes unchallenged, provided you’re in a room filled with other baseball nuts. Some lives are undoubtedly more like an early-October 49er’s game, complete with being assaulted by a neanderthal fan in a Frank Gore jersey while you wait for a stall in the men’s room. But that’s another matter. Let’s assume for a moment that baseball is life. It’s seasonal and long, with pitchers and catchers reporting for spring training in February and the World Series occasionally extending into November. It’s both forgiving and unforgiving; some errors lead to disaster while others go all but unnoticed. It challenges; a batter who succeeds in three of ten attempts is said to be exceptional. It evolves slowly and is reluctant to accept change. It tends to romanticize its past; cheaters of yesterday are revered as scrappy characters who had what it took, while those today are merely corrupt and a reflection of an ugly, modern era. It’s both pastoral and citified with parks offering lush, green fields placed in the center of urban life. And it’s uniquely American .. you’d be hard pressed to find a Parisian making baseball-life analogies.

So here I sit, in the middle of my life, making awkward transitions and reaching futilely for inspiration, with baseball always there. I’m in between big games today, having experienced an exceptional run over the past five years. My team – the San Francisco Giants – has reached the playoffs three times and claimed two World Series titles since the 2010 season. They’ve been stellar thus far this post season, traveling to Pittsburgh to win a one-game elimination wildcard match, and then to Washington D.C. where they took two in a row from the Nationals on their home field. And yet I can only focus on yesterday’s game — a loss at home in San Francisco that turned bad on an errant throw by their pitching ace, Madison Bumgarner. Baseball, it would seem, is a lot like my life: an embarrassment of riches bestowed upon one who can only ever round third base with a worried look on his face.

I probably got all the baseball I needed on Saturday when the Giants took the second of the two aforementioned wins in the nation’s capital. It was a cold night in D.C. and the ballgame stretched out over six-plus hours and eighteen innings. I’d watched all of the two previous games but something about this one felt off kilter to me. Perhaps it was the middle eastern fare I’d ordered for delivery around the fourth inning; a salty overload of doughy pita, couscous, and lentil soup. I was thirsty and uncomfortable and my team, down by a single run, wasn’t doing much on offense. So I retreated to the bedroom and napped for a bit, waking to a buzzing phone and friend’s text message: “Crazy game.” I checked up on things and saw that it was a tie, heading to extra innings. So I set out to take a walk, figuring that I’d keep going until the match was resolved. I walked and walked and walked, all the while staring at the red, green and blue dots of Major League Baseball’s “Gameday” application on my cell phone. (Red for balls, green for strikes, and blue for balls in play.) By the seventeenth I’d covered six miles of Brooklyn pavement and an equal number of shut-out innings from Giant’s reliever Yusmeiro Petit. My feet were tired and much as I was still too nervous to watch, I went inside. Then, in the top of the eighteenth, Brandon Belt happened.

The truth is, baseball isn’t life. Life is messy and incomplete and taking place instantaneously in a million different forms. Life can include Brandon Belt’s home run, but it isn’t defined by it. People pay good money to take yoga classes or learn to meditate in order to achieve mindfulness. Mindfulness, according to Wikipedia, is “a term derived from the Pali-term ‘sati‘, which is an essential element of Buddhist practice, including vippasana, satipathhana, and anapanasati.” I’m not sure what any of that is, although I think I may have eaten some of the latter once, before a meal at an Italian restaurant. What it all boils down to is this idea of being present; of living in the present. If one can accept the present moment and be at peace with it, then he can be free from the pain of past regret and future worry. It’s said to be an effective technique for relieving anxiety and aiding in the prevention of drug and depression relapse.

I’m not sure where I am on this scale of Nirvanic aspiration. I’ve probably considered it more than some and done far less in reaching for it than many others. Sometimes, in the middle of a long run or immediately thereafter, it can seem within my grasp. But such moments are elusive. The moments on either side of Brandon Belt’s home run swing in the top of the eighteenth inning Saturday night — those interminable moments that stretch out and on forever — those are the ones I still have trouble with. But in that moment, at the risk of sounding sickeningly pretentious, I may have caught glimpse of the indefinable. It didn’t last long and peaked with a graceful, looped swing and bat discarded in relieved possibility of the game’s greatest promise: coming home. I can’t be certain, but for those seconds that the baseball traveled, I think I was more or less present .. just as I am now, of course, but somehow better able to appreciate it. And then he was back in the dugout basking in the congratulations of his teammates, likely already thinking about fielding first base in the bottom half of the inning, about getting three more outs. Three days later, following a tough game three loss, the home run is all but a distant memory. The task of winning one more game is still at hand. Life goes on.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are an easily underestimated band. At 63 with a head of enhanced long blonde hair, Petty speaks in a southern drawl reminiscent of a teenaged gas station attendant mid bong-hit. He’s been relevant long enough for his concert crowds to resemble an Ikea gathering on a Sunday afternoon; ages range from 20 to 70. His songs, given a superficial spin, can seem rote and banal. Take the three chord intro to “Free Falling” .. how much could possibly be going on here?

This is the mistake that some make with Petty. While it might be cool to dismiss the band as postdated album rock poseurs, circling the crowd at one of his outdoor mega shows (as I did Saturday night at Boston’s Fenway Park) reveals otherwise. Unlike his contemporary Springsteen, Petty’s lyrics rarely lean on the specific or political. They often have an ethereal, idiosyncratic quality that jars loose images and memories specific to the individual listener. At least this is how it seemed to me looking at different folks in their own little world grooving to the verse: ‘gonna free-fall, out into to nothin’ / gonna leave this, world for a while.’ It’s “under” music, and his has always been an “under” band. Nothing they do pulls you out of the experience or calls unneeded attention to the individual musician. Mike Campbell has been playing the same outro guitar solo note for note on “American Girl” for 27 years. It isn’t because he can’t improvise; he’s as good as they come. His style fits and fills a certain niche in the listener’s brain and allows for anticipation and reward with each played note.

I’m not a huge fan of greatest hits acts but Petty falls into the category by simple virtue of his songwriting skills. One is hard pressed to find an album over his forty year career that doesn’t feature at least one or two massive singles. And while Pete Townshend at 69 might have trouble standing behind lyrics like “hope I die before I get old,” Petty can still snarl out “everybody’s got to fight to be free” without a hint of irony. Watch the 1978 New Year’s Eve rendition of the tune in question (“Refugee”) as played in Santa Monica, California. It holds up now for the same reasons it held up then. Producer Jimmy Iovine speaks of Petty’s songwriting skills on his breakout album “Damn the Torpedos” with reverential awe. But the amazing part is that he kept right on going. “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” was a throwaway track that Petty resented having to come up with as an ‘extra’ for a contractual greatest hits album in 1993. Now the lyrics seem ingrained in a certain segment of the American lexicon .. “I feel summer creepin’ in, I’m tired of this town again.” Yeah he’s popular and mainstream, but using this as grounds for dismissal is to miss the point entirely.

“Angel Dream (No. 2)” was a favorite for me Saturday night. It was one of the more obscure hits played, from 1996’s “She’s The One” soundtrack: “sing a little song of loneliness, sing one to make me smile / another round for everyone, I’m here for a little while.” And so it was he slid off into the night with fireworks exploding over the Green Monster, above my head in left field. It’s been a deceptively long and successful career for Petty and good for him if he’s cashing in on the riches at this stage. He’s left behind enough to enjoy for a long while.

I’m on the F train again, Tuesday, on my way up to the 42nd Street Library. Bergen, York, Delancey – things are running smoothly when a neatly dressed thirty year-old woman steps on at Second Avenue barking out the dreaded and familiar “Good afternoon ladies and gentleman ..” It’s standard intro for a money pitch, yet there’s little standard about her. She looks neither typically homeless nor crazy and speaks in even, measured sentences. She wears an unwrinkled white cotton dress with flats. When she gets to the part about being a domestic abuse victim she hold up pictures – actual photographs – of her face and arms after the hospital visit. There’s little emotion to her performance; it’s almost as if she’s teaching a class on delivering a sad story and focusing exclusively on content. Nobody looks up when she’s done and there are no contributions. I excuse myself from this potential bit of shame having only two twenties in my wallet .. but the truth is I never give in these instances. You pick your charitable moments in New York and adhere to the plan. “Homeless volunteer,” she observes, reading the writing on an older black man’s plastic wrist bracelet. “God bless you sir.”

It’s hot on the fifth day of August and Bryant Park is loaded with early lunchers, practice putters, and green chair sitters. A woman hogs the microphone at an outdoor author’s reading while the writer sits politely, waiting for her to finish. I maneuver past to the library building, in the West 42nd entrance and up the old elevator, only to discover that the third floor Main Reading Room is closed six months for repair. Apparently a chunk of ornate plaster fell from the fifty-two foot ceiling in May rendering the grand public space uninhabitable until declared safe.  I sit on a solid marble bench just outside, mulling alternatives while three young German tourists next to me appear to do the same. Back in the park I watch an older woman play a game with a Chinese guy, throwing oblong wooden blocks at other carefully balanced oblong blocks, attempting to knock them over. She keeps missing the target with the chunk of wood and bouncing it over to the adjacent putting surface, pointedly interrupting the three business guys with tucked ties practicing their short game. The Chinese guy retrieves the wood without apology and the cycle continues.

I resolve to walk the six miles back to Brooklyn. Motion as purpose – a decent practical alternative to plans gang aft agley by way of falling plaster. It’s two in the afternoon with sun smacking pavement but I’ve got sunblock in my pack and tread on my loafers. I pop on my shades and join the sea of those with somewhere to go. Beautiful young women in the flimsiest summer fashion unconcerned with limitations of the flesh. Street meat vendors hawking plastic bottles of ice cold water for a buck a pop – likely the greatest bargain going on such a day. A guy down on his luck against the shady side of a building around 30th with a cardboard sign and beggars cup wearing a shirt that says “Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck.” (Might have been my pick for a charitable donation had I made change for either twenty yet.) I cut through the park at Union Square where ‘NBA Nation’ has set up a ‘mobile basketball experience’ featuring the ‘Sprite Slam Dunk Showdown’ and ‘Sprint Ultimate Shot.’ I watch the slam-dunkers for a few minutes, sympathizing with a guy who can’t get it over the rim as his allotted time runs out. A giant plywood cutout of the Clipper’s Blake Griffin complete with measuring markers confirms that I’m indeed a whole foot shorter than him. At the other end of the park I buy a bottle of ‘Smart Water’ at a bodega, hoping it will help me feel less stupid for paying a buck-fifty more than it costs uptown from one of the chicken kabab guys.

Near Chinatown on Bowery I pass an entire block of lighting stores in an area inhabited almost exclusively by restaurant supply outlets. I wonder to myself what makes one loyal customer choose “New York Lighting” over “New Generation Lighting” with their almost indistinguishable storefronts. And why are they all gathered here on this one small lower Manhattan strip? It must represent the highest per capita Con Edison bill in the state. Lighting outlets become furniture outlets then stainless steel kitchen supply outlets until everything becomes diamonds and Chinese food.  I wander slightly west in the direction of the Thurgood Marshall Courthouse via an area eerily devoid of traffic and punctuated with solid blocks of road-blocking cement and NYPD checkpoints. A lone bicycle delivery kid wolf-whistles at a Puerto Rican girl in hot pants and in the not-so-great distance the new One World Trade Center building stands, reflecting the sun off its great, angular surface. I head in that direction.

I spent a lot of time in the vicinity of the World Trade Center grounds after first arriving in New York, but it’s been a while. There was something spectacularly disjointed about it back then; technically part of Manhattan but more like a vast yet cramped space peppered with historic churches and graveyards, strip clubs and pizza joints. The buildings were draped in familiar orange netting, some being erected and others dismantled and there were lots of cops around. The netting and scaffolding is mostly gone now but I still get a disjointed post apocalyptic sense coming from somewhere amidst the throng of tourists making their way around the PATH station in a sort of human rat maze toward the memorial grounds. A construction worker in hard hat encourages “Not much further now, folks ..” I turn a corner with the pack, walk another half block or so, and come upon the giant pool; a massive inverted fountain of black granite gushing far below and cascading to another recessed area in the center. There’s a feeling of grand displacement, as advertised, with the pool covering nearly an acre of solid city ground, but I don’t get the sense of ‘flowing tears’ from these thousands of gallons of pouring water. Instead it’s something bigger and more spectacular that drowns out the tourist chatter and guys in blue tour guide shirts letting the group know “here it is, folks ..” as though they might have missed it without some help. Something seems slightly off-kilter about the scene; the crowds aligning the perimeter with cell cameras raised, a withering flower placed in the cut-out metal lettering of one of the thousands of names framing the voluminous mass of liquid. I pull back, a bit disoriented, and pass a mother checking her baby’s diaper. As I attempt to leave the grounds I stumble upon the first pool’s twin and am, for a moment, blown away. Sure I’d read about the site and knew there were two of them but not having planned the visit had forgotten. And there it is, this massive duplicate and aftershock of the initial experience. Despite the less than entirely solemn nature of the whole experience I feel moved in some way. I get it. A job well done.

I edge past another tour group making their way from the opposite direction on Greenwich Street and stopped in front of the bronze bas-relief Firemens’ Memorial wall sculpture. Shaking the crowd I pull into O’Hara’s Pub for a cold, three dollar Coors Light draft and to let the air conditioning dry my white cotton t-shirt. Another trio of Germans enter and take the end stools with one doing the talking in English, asking for three ‘large’ Guinness’ and handing the barmaid a hundred dollar bill. She muses “large Guinness ..” under her breath while tapping the beer in front of me and asks if I’d like another. I accept and consider the odd dichotomy of Coors Light, how a beer that typically tastes so awful can taste so good on a hot day. A regular pulls up to the seat next to me and makes familiar small-talk with a guy who looks to be the owner, having returned from a day surfing on Long Island. Above the bar are patches from different fire departments around the world. I finish, leave a tip, and make my way out to traverse a bit more concrete and then the long expanse of the Brooklyn Bridge, back to the borough. A bit more rubber off my soles and another day done in New York City.

The Dodgers concluded a convincing three game road sweep of the Giants at AT&T Park last night and, much like San Francisco’s early season 9 1/2 game lead, it doesn’t mean much. They’re the superior squad now and Clayton Kershaw is the best pitcher in baseball. Kershaw is young, supremely talented, humble and smart. Outfielder Yasiel Puig could check ‘young’ and ‘supremely talented’ off that list and underline both with a fresh Sharpie but he’d likely be too distracted counting the stitches on his glove or checking the bill of his cap for excess lint. Puig is living proof for anybody looking to bolster the “God only gives you so much and leaves you to figure out the rest” argument. He spanked an astounding three triples while collecting four hits Friday night, but watching his final at-bat Sunday with the flap hanging all the way out of his back pocket, one gets the impression that the boy wasn’t first in the wisdom line at Cuban day school. Similarly, Dodger shortstop Hanley Ramirez with his half open uniform and batting helmet purposely askew looks more early Beastie Boys than modern day ballplayer. Not that any of this matters; pitching ultimately wins championships provided you field the ball well and put a few runs on the board. But there’s something about the Dodgers’ team chemistry with the un-Lasorda like Don Mattingly at the helm that leaves one wondering if all those hundreds of millions is enough to get it done.

The Giants, of course, have their own problems. Going by several first half postgame interviews, left fielder Michael Morse might make a good third alternate when Ramirez and Puig square off for a clubhouse session of Mastermind. A hulking six foot five, Morse resembles a cross between Herman Munster and Freddie Mercury. His home run and RBI production has unfortunately trailed off to where opposing pitchers checking the on-deck circle are more likely to see the Queen frontman than a bolt-necked Frankenstein. Brandon Belt, perennially on the verge of his ‘breakout season’ has once again proved a disabled list wonder, first with a jammed thumb and now a concussion resulting from trying to receive two infield practice balls at the same time. Catcher Hector Sanchez is also on the concussed DL having had his bell rung more times than a San Francisco cable car with brake failure. Add Matt Cain’s 127 million-dollar arm and Marco Scutaro and Angel Pagan’s respective backs to that list and you start to get the picture. Baseball is a marathon, not a sprint; the face of a pennant race can morph and form multiple times over the course of weeks. Just don’t go looking for Clayton Kershaw’s face to do much changing.

If the Giants have a Kershaw-esque player it’s catcher Buster Posey. A respected veteran at the ripe age of 27, he’s always possessed a particular baseball savvy – even as a 23 year-old rookie. If you could put that same savvy in Yasiel Puig’s head you’d have a combination far more potent than any anabolic steroid. Posey is having a respectable if not banner season and along with durable, crazy-legged right fielder Hunter Pence, has kept the Giants in the chase since the All Star break. If “ifs” were Chans, though, the Giants would have more than a Chinese phonebook. If Pagan comes back to fill the leadoff spot .. if Cain makes it back to the starting rotation .. if Belt returns with some pop and Morse follows suit .. if Romo can regain his lights-out slider .. if Lincecum digs deep for some of his old magic .. etc. I’ve watched enough baseball over the years to know that a lot of things can happen, smarts count, and pitching reigns supreme. I’ll use these and a few other well-placed cliches this Friday when I’m at Citi Field to watch San Francisco take on the Mets. Having been at Fenway Park just last weekend I’m counting my baseball blessings. My team is in the hunt and have won two World Series since 2010 .. by most other fans’ standards all those “ifs” are just nitpicking.