DigressionVille
A funny thing happened over the expanse of the long weekend just past.
Everywhere I looked, or rather listened, there seemed to notions in the air of that crazy, mixed-up high-ended (pretend)low-rent artist emporium in New York city called the Chelsea Hotel.
Or some variation on the theme.
First, it was E. figure out how to play the Leonard Cohen ode to both the Chelsea and Janis Joplin too.
Mr. Cohen's song is so simple and yet, as so much of his stuff is, so powerful. Not that it is all sweetness and light by any means.
And then there was the fact that there was a whole lot of Joni Mitchell going down early Sunday as E. and e. fiddled around in the kitchen making slightly artistic breakfasty stuff, which made me think, when I came up from the Subterranean Blues Room, that it really was a Chelsea morning.
All of which was accentuated, I think, by the fact that E. was also just finishing reading Patti Smith's memoir 'Just Kids'.
Of course, contemplating the artist's life and all it can be is a powerful and exciting thing, indeed.
And it's something I, as a parent, hope I can help my kids can aspire to for as long as they can, including forever, if that's the way things go.
But that does not mean that I don't simultaneously worry about the flipside and all that can go wrong for them if they really do decide to reach for that life.
On so many levels.
Because not everybody who rides the flipside can make it all the way through like, say, Charles Bukowski did.
Or at least seemed to to do.
And then, suddenly, up popped Mr. Bukowski on the BlogCrawl narrating a marvelous 1990 documentary about the real people (and it is they who truly make up the marvelous part) who once lived at the Madison Hotel which is located at the other end of the low rent/no Trip Advisor rating spectrum from the Chelsea on skid row in Los Angeles.
And that got me to thinking of a song by a member of the Dublin Diaspora named Sean Kangataran who now lives and makes music not far from the Madison in Echo Park.
More specifically, I thought about Sean's song called 'Write About' that includes more than a few lines about the flipside and how most of us who brush up against it usually pull back.
For all the right reasons, I think.
Anyway, given all that I decided to cover the tune as part of the next Sunday Setlist (which is coming).
So, by way of a preview, here it is, with rambling introduction that hopefully makes the gobbledygook above a little more clear....
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Noticed something that leaked through my temporary anti-politics Chinese Wall on the Twittmachine feed earlier today....Which is that the Dean, Vaughn Palmer, notes that E-BC is saying there will a big jump in provincial voter turnout when the final votes are counted first thing next week...And given that most of those votes came early, before the apparent collapse...Well...Who knows?
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