RUDIMENTS

RUDIMENTS, pt. 665 (those eternal silences alarm me) If I had somehow been  dropped and landed in  the Andes Mountains, slogging my solo way  through the Peruvian  highlands somewhere, or like that Fitzcarraldo  guy in the Herzog film,  I'd have been mo more impetuous than I already  was. Or intent anyway on  getting to my own destinations :  Dragging all that maddening  equipment, supplies, and  constructions over mountains and valleys to build my opera house no matter the cost. That  was all part of my make-up,  and the streets and times of  my life right then were really  all I was intent upon. One  day, not that long after I'd gotten there, I was walking  along 8th Street, headed east,  from the Studio School, headed towards St. Mark's Place; a group of 4 or 5 kids caught up to me. They were all over me with the most friendly of talk, all that good-guy forever stuff, as if  they were actually glad to see

RUDIMENTS, pt. 664 ('it hurts me too') It never took much to  deflate me. That's a big  problem, since once you  lose momentum it's often difficult to get it back. That being so, I always tried to do most of my work at night, but of course to  work a day-world job one is pretty much then squashed on that account. Reveille comes too soon. I used to - mostly just for the sake of the quiet time afforded - take a 5:07am train to Princeton for what was essentially an 8:30 job. The two friendly lady conductors would never take my ticket, which afforded me as well free travel too. Every so often I'd buy them some day-old Entenmann's and they'd be very thankful. The supposed 'crash' of 2008, (financial, not train), had many of the other people I'd cross each day in their own little panics - bankers and such, a few right through to Philadelphia. I cruised right through that era, not e

RUDIMENTS, pt. 663 (ride 'em hot, and ride 'em heavy) McSorley's is an old-time bar in the area of Cooper Union, lower  east side. It was once, same as Chumley's, a dairy. Into the 1920's there was a McSorley guy who'd walk his tethered cow around the block or so daily. People watched for him, he was a fixture, as was the old cow and the daily walk. It represents, if you get inside, a real piece of an old New York City that can only be found by lingerers and those who haunt. Like me. The stories within are deep and thick, as are the mementos, oddball  statuary, crusted dust and ancient debris. They've been cited, in fact, once or twice, and probably even shuttered once or twice, for clean-up and infractions. Joseph Mitchell wrote a great piece, part of a book, about McSorley's, and one of its denizens too. 'Joe Goud's Secret,' you just have to read. And, 'Up In the Old Hotel,' bein

RUDIMENTS, pt. 662 (at breakneck speed) On time, I forget, I guess it was late afternoon maybe, just beginning the daylight fade, a cold, December day, a Sunday, absolutely  nothing much going on, I can't remember the exact sequence, and probably don't want to, but with me  behind the wheel of my  old Jaguar, and three others  in the car with me, coming  up from points south along  the Jersey shore, Route 36, as I recall, headed north, back up to Avenel, I picked up a guy and his girlfriend in a Volvo sports car, a 144 I think they were. He was all squirmy about seeing the Jaguar next to him at a light, and by means of whatever form of osmosis idiot drivers use I picked up his challenge  to race home. I did it more because I thought the girl in his passenger seat was pretty cool. We took off, and all nerves put aside, and with most lights in our favor, he and I did a fair 103-105, as I recall, that's miles p