Remembering you but not the rest

I remember when I was a kid, our family driving home from Sunday night gospel meeting and stopping at A&W for root beer floats, how beautiful they were after an hour of contemplating eternal damnation. I remember being sent to Aunt Jo’s house when my mother was having babies, a house with a wood-burning stove and outhouse like in Little House on the Prairie. I remember my first time on skis, skidding down a steep hill and thinking, “I will never do this again,” a promise I have kept.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:21):
I did a show Saturday night, singing duets with a
tall woman, and was so fascinated by the perfect harmonies
on the Everlys Let it be me that I forgot
to take an intermission until almost two hours had passed,

(00:41):
and I saw elderly people my age dashing in panic
up the aisle to empty their bladders. A weird feeling
to create something so wonderful that you wind up torturing people,
like painting a mural so beautiful people gaze at it

(01:05):
and don't notice the stairs and fall and break an arm.
I was a writer for years, but I dreamed of
being a singer, and now here I was singing good
tenor to a fabulous soprano. Meanwhile, hundreds of people were

(01:27):
hoping not to wet their pants. An out of body
experience for me, a physical reality for them. It's a
night I'll remember for the rest of my life. I'm
eighty three, whereas vast acres of my middle and elder

(01:48):
years are a complete blank to me, which worries my beloved.
She says, you remember, that's September in Paris, the little
cafe on the square with the fountain, the strolling gypsy

(02:09):
guitarist but I don't. She says, sure that the nymph
in the fountain, the pigeons on her shoulders. I'm sorry,
I don't remember them either. I remember when I was
a kid, our family driving home from Sunday night gospel

(02:34):
meeting and stopping at a and W for root beer floats,
how beautiful they were after an hour of contemplating eternal damnation.
I remember being sent to Aunt Joe's house when my
mother was having babies, a house with a wood burning

(02:57):
stove and outhouse like in Little Home on the Prairie.
I remember my first time on skis, skidding down a
steep hill and thinking I will never do this again,
a promise that I have kept all my life. The

(03:20):
show with the Tall Woman Heather Massey was at the
Fitzgerald Theater in Saint Paul, where I had done hundreds
of shows back in a former life, and people asked,
doesn't it feel wonderful to be back here, And the
answer was no way. Too much went on there for

(03:43):
anybody to remember, clutter preventing nostalgia. But I remember doing
shows at Radio City Music Hall with Don and Phil
Everlely thirty some year years ago. The two of them
in shiny green suits, rising on the stage elevator, strumming, singing,

(04:10):
I bless the day I found you. I want to
stay around you. The beautiful sigh of the crowd recognizing them.
I grew up listening to the Everlas. They were my
favorite pop stars. I come from polite, well behaved people,

(04:32):
so the Rolling Stones the Grateful Dead were not really
available to me. I liked Simon and Garfuncle. I liked
Don and Phil Everly. Backstage, I noticed that the Everly
brothers never kid at each other. They hardly ever looked

(04:55):
each other in the eye. Thirty years of close harmony,
singing the same hit songs night after night, year after year,
handcuffed them in stardom created a brotherhood that threatened to

(05:15):
devour them. So they were very formal around each other.
Whereas Chad Atkins and Leo Kotke were on that show
as well, along with My Shoe Band, and all of
these musicians joking around continually trying to make everybody else laugh.

(05:41):
Every guitarist's secret wish seemed to me was to put
down the old Martin and pick up a microphone and
do stand up comedy. After the show Saturday in bed
at the hotel, lying next to my beloved reading Jane Eyre,

(06:04):
I asked, how's that book you're reading? And she said
it's great in other words, don't bother me. And I
wondered if she'd read some of my books. I wrote
quite a few of them. I mean, if you slept

(06:25):
with an author, wouldn't you think you might read some
of his stuff? Or maybe not? Maybe romance requires mystery.
Intimacy is about intimations. Not many therapists marry their patients,

(06:47):
I dare say. And perhaps my deletions of recall are
a way of staying young. I had my regrets about
the show last night, and now it's a new day
and a fresh start. And believe it or not, I'm

(07:10):
working on a musical about longevity. People dread getting old,
but they don't want to die. That's that's my story.
The secret is not a calm disposition. It isn't a
deep inner strength. The secret of longevity is length. Dinner

(07:35):
waited on the table, and missus Melville paced the floor
as Hermann worked his little fable slowly into something more.
Each hour, each day, each step you take creeps slowly

(07:56):
like a crustacean, until the candles on your cake become
a conflagration. Life is good people, especially if you use
the delete key.