What do these two people have in common? Not much, but.....
Ed. note: I don't think we have much further to go with this. Maybe two more episodes until I blow that pop stand.
----
Don't get me wrong. There were a number of reasons why I loved staying at Moishe's.
I especially loved the evenings when one of his confreres would pick up Moishe and they would go into Berkeley together or any damn where, just so long as I had some peace and privacy.
My last semester at college was an odd one. It was a writing workshop, very insular and insulated. We were of different ages and backgrounds but not so much ethnic groups. There were trends and little happinesses that made its way around the group. One of them was Keith Jarrett's Koln Concerts. It came to mean a lot of things to me - love. Peace. Heartbreak. Beauty. I don't think anyone was allowed to leave that college unless we had a copy of the Koln Concerts packed in our bags.
And of course, I took it with me to Berkeley.
When Moishe went away, I would creep up to his stereo - like any good geek, he had a phenomenal sound system - and would put on the first part of the Koln concert, stand in the middle of that huge living room with the forest all around me and watch the mist and fog move in through the canyon. Threading its way around the pines, parting like a river at a stone at Moishe's house, leaving behind a mist that would not disperse until the following morning's sun burned it away.
For those rare hours, the house was mine and it was beautiful.
Too, I got to meet a lot of people whose works I had only read until that point. I met some people who became friends and they would come up to visit me as often as they would come to visit Moishe.
I paid my way in more ways than one, but most of the time, I didn't mind it.
Moishe was prone to depression and fierce bouts of grumpiness. I had spent my childhood and adolescence learning to cheer up or at least distract the depressed. I had an unbeatable repertoire of Shirley Temple songs and didn't mind hauling them out.
More than once, Moishe sat at the breakfast bar with his ugly wall-eyed face in his hands, moaning about something and I would burst into song with:
Be optimistic! Don't you be a grumpy! When the road gets bumpy Just smile!
Accompanied with some tap dance moves I'd learned when I was seven. I looked ridiculous. I knew I looked ridiculous but I didn't care. I knew I could distract Moishe from his blues and I wouldn't have to hear him whine on and on all day.
But I'll always remember those moments standing at the windows with the mist coming in and the first few notes of the piano that always raised the hair on the back of my neck.
And Part I of the Koln Concert? It's about sex. Nice sex. You can hear the foreplay, the teasing, the Big O and then the fading away. Don't ask me how I know. But I know.
