Big Night

It’s exceedingly hard to run a business.

I really don’t care what kind of business it is, either. They vary widely, of course, but they’ll all kick your ass. Digging ditches or personal shopper, makes no never-mind. If you’ve ever made out a Schedule C you know exactly what I’m talking about.

It’s hard to tell a story properly, too. Most entertainments are only modestly entertaining, — if that — and ephemeral. It’s a rare thing that endures for a good long time in the world of movies and music and art. The producers generally just throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. Most of what they throw at the wall actually should be hitting a fan, if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor.

People are making their own fun with entertainment at this point. The reason people yell at the screen now instead of sitting in rapt attention are manifold, but the number one reason is the stuff on the screen isn’t very good; and like a buffet of tidbits, the audience is trying to fashion a plate of fun for themselves. The cook can’t seem to do it, so you do it yourself.

I watched a movie I’ve owned for a long time: Big Night. It’s on VHS, so I know I’ve had it a while. It’s a story about two Italian immigrant brothers trying to make a go of it in a restaurant in New Jersey in the 1950s. They are failing, and try to pull their business up from oblivion by hosting a celebrity for one “big night.” It’s both good entertainment and a good look at business. I don’t talk while it’s playing. It’s doing all the work for me.

Like the best kinds of distillations of the human condition, Big Night uses the plot device of splitting one person’s personality between two people, and having them rub up against one another. It’s a useful dichotomy for the examination of the business ethic. One brother, Segundo, is running a restaurant and concerned with the mercenary aspects of running a business; his older brother Primo is the brilliant cook, concerned with being an artist with his food. Neither is a complete person without the other. The back and forth between them, as they search for the balance between being true to themselves and earning a living is as fascinating a portrayal of what it means to be creative and make it pay as I’ve ever seen.

The movie works on many other levels, and I wonder if the authors of the play — as this movie is surely just a play with a camera pointed at it– would even acknowledge my appraisal of the one person split into two plot device. I think artists always have this rolling around in their minds without admitting it. They wish to deny their self promotion, as it seems to smack of commerce. But watch the credits roll by sometime. Even a little movie is a serious business. Let the artists indulge themselves with their imaginary aversion to filthy lucre. Like good manners, I don’t care why they say the right thing.

If you want to know what it is to be a brother, and an Italian, and an artist, and a businessman, and an immigrant, watch this movie. If you want to see why I never recovered from meeting my wife the very first time, look for the woman in the red dress at the final meal. Don’t get me wrong; that’s not her. My wife is prettier. Whether I am Primo or Segundo has yet to be determined.

Sometimes, when the Schedule C looks up at me from the desk, I wonder if I might try being Pascal, the brothers’ venal but engaging and successful competitor from down the street: “I am a businessman. I am whatever I have to be at any given time. Tell me what, exactly, are you?”

Watch it.

Fog In New Beige

Why do your footsteps sound that way in the fog?

In the broad daylight, they get swallowed up like Jonah. They just mix in with the clatter of the cars and Clark’s old wagon and the kid with the roller skates and the ding ding of the faraway trolley. At night in the fog, they ricochet around and I hear them like gunshots. They are mine, and another’s too.

He’s followed me around in the fog these three years. I can’t scrape him off in the Bethel or the tavern or the little place with the greasy balls of opium from Marracech. I’d beat my head on these granite flags if I thought it would do any good. He’s there but drowned out all day, every day. But it’s the fog that puts him on your shoulder, and we dance together down the street like ball-room winders.

A man will go over the side from time to time, and no mistakin’. I’ve been fished out twice myself. You stand there shivering and your mates have a jolly moment and you work the rest of the day soaked to your tallow as a reminder of where you might be sleeping. But there is no sleep there, if the fog is any measure.

The man’s hand was in mine. Rough as his language. His whole wrist. It was like I could feel the blood pumping through his veins. I could feel the tug of the wake, trying to yank him under the foam by his boots. But I had him, sure. His big, stupid, moonpie face, with thirty winters written on it, looked up at me, glowing white in the fog. And then I sneezed, and I found I had two hands on the rail, and he was gone.

A man that goes over at night has no right to hope to be saved. One hand for me, and one for the boat doesn’t cover it at night on the Shoals. It’s two hands for the boat at night. I threw everything on deck over the side and yelled to raise the dead and we had that boat turned hard about in a minute flat. Long gone in a fog. And we heard him calling. But in a fog, where does a noise come from? I still hear him now, and see the look on his brother’s face, measuring me there on the deck when the voice faded.

And like always there are two footfalls for every one now in the fog. I wander down the hill, the granite slabs of the sidewalk rising up and appearing under my feet like continents on a map. This road is busy in the early day, but we’re all alone here in the fog now. I’d watch for a car to come and hit me, but I could lie down here and wait all night. Why bother to look? You can just drift across the lanes.

I always loved the sound of the chestnut plank under my foot. You can feel the pier shift a little with the slop of the slack tide. It’s like the world breathing in and out.

I walk to the end, and reach out for his hand one more time.

Early In The Morning

Man, I’m sick. I’m sick and I’ve got to stand in that concrete dungeon and make things and have the floor suck the life right out of me through the soles of my feet. Someone’s sitting on my chest, and they’ve never heard of the salad bar, either. I need something.

I can’t take any medicine or I’ll cut my hand off and die, and that’s worse than being sick, after all. Nothing works anyway until the crocuses come.

I need Louis Jordan. I need someone serious as a heart attack about being silly.

There, that’s better.

Rich Men Have Real Estate

Momma was quiet. Daddy was silent.

I’d come home from school, and momma would hug me like she did. I could feel her snuffle on the top of my head. It was like she needed the smell of me, too. I’d sit in the chair in the kitchen, and talk and talk about the day, and she’d murmur along with me. It wasn’t words, really, just a little string of sounds to let me know she still heard her little yo-yo spinning, and I hadn’t reached the end of my string yet.

I can’t picture her face anymore in my mind’s eye; I have to fish through the box of pictures to find one of her. I touch it when I look at it. I don’t know why I run my hand over it but I do. I hear her murmuring all the days of my life.

Dad never spoke, or so it seemed. You could have hung a sign around his neck that read: “I don’t know” and saved yourself a world of trouble. He said it all the time, when he said anything. I think it’s funny that he always knew, but said that anyway. Daddy knew everything. Momma said knowing is in daddy’s head, but it’s in my mouth. He was alone all day in that field, and got used to it. Or it got used to him.

I’d watch him wash the day’s dust from his hands and face and the back of his neck while momma placed the dishes just so on the table. He seemed to linger over it a minute in an odd way. Daddy always seemed to move slow, but I noticed no one could ever keep up with him. I never could. I never will. I asked him why he liked to wash his face like that. He said: “Oh, I don’t know.” When daddy put an “oh” along with his “I don’t know” it meant something different. It meant he didn’t know exactly, I think.

We sat for a long minute at the table. I remember how the sun would slant in that window, the same angle every day plus a little or minus a little, and you could tell the time and the season by it. The afternoon would settle the air but the curtain would always sway like a dancer with it.

We worked at the food. Dad seemed all wrist at the table. His clothes never made it as far as he did. The teacher had told me about the lever you could use to lift the whole earth, and they all laughed at me when I said I’d seen it coming out of my daddy’s sleeve. They all have fathers that don’t say “I don’t know” and their wrist fits in their sleeve and only lifts the newspaper.

Five minutes had gone by, easy, by the clock, and I could tell daddy was still turning over my foolishness in his mind. Why does a man wash any certain way? A man washes as much as his momma makes him, and no more.

The oven cooled and ticked, the clock tocked, the glasses tinked, and the curtains swayed. Daddy said: ” A rich man like me has a lot of real estate, and carries it around with him. I like to take it off and look at it from time to time.”

It’s The Stuff, But How Much?

Is this the stuff? I’ve seen her do it a thousand times, but I can’t remember.

It’s the stuff, but how much? That’s funny. “It’s the stuff, but how much?” is words to live by; words to live by. Liquor. Gambling. Kindling. Children. Money that slips through your fingers. It’s the stuff, but how much?

She’s the stuff, and never enough. She’s calm when I’m angry, and sober when I’m giddy. She looks the other way when I come home with one whiskey on my breath. The touch of her hand heals a hammer bruise like a poultice. I swear if I lost my hand she could put it back on with what’s in the cabinet. I can’t even make breakfast with it.

She’s an awful color. As white as the day I married her, and that white came in a tin with a puff inside. Now it’s inside looking out. There’s sweat on her brow. Her eyelids flutter. I can’t stand to see her like this.

Thank god the children slept all night. If I’m late for work one more time, I’ll be fired for sure, and they don’t care who’s sick. You sick, me sick, her sick, them sick, we sick. Go home and be sick. Don’t come back.

I’d give anything to ask her which spoon does she use? I know she uses the spoon, but which one?

John, get your brothers and sister awake and help them wash their faces, there’s a good man. You got your momma’s face and all her sense. Help your daddy now. Daddy’s making breakfast today.

Today momma will sleep and we’ll pray after we eat.

Hellzapoppin

I alway hated musicals when I was a kid. I didn’t understand the concept of a song breaking out in the middle of what had been a sober sort of scene up until then. It was traditional for the Sound of Music to be played on television yearly –Easter, I think — and I always rooted for the Nazis, hoping to stop the singing.

You have to cultivate a taste for many sophisticated things. Civilization is not foregone conclusion. There are a great many cultural references that go into anything but the most basic of entertainments, for instance.

They were always showing us the wrong sorts of entertainments, anyway, if they wanted to get us interested. It’s fine to be suave and debonair, but you can just as easily have plenty of power displayed. And the yoking of power to finesse is the hallmark of a robust civilization, isn’t it? Too much finesse, and you get the Von Trapps. Too much power, and you get people in arm bands watching The Ring cycle.

I understand opera now. Musical theater holds no terrors for me. I’m down to hating just dancing now. I wouldn’t, if it was like this more often:

America in 1941. Hellzapoppin’ indeed. Now, as if this film didn’t have enough charms in it already, according to imdb, Shemp Howard is in it. Case closed.

America the way I like it. Light on its feet. Lots of fun. Strong as whiskey. Tough as nails.

Fais Do Do Redux Deluxe

Oh, you don’t know me if you think I’m finished with New Orleans. Because New Orleans is the home of all sorts of the greatest american music, which means the greatest music anywhere.

It’s spanish and french and sicilian and neapolitan and arab and indians and acadian and irish and scots and deepest darkest africa, baby.

I’m going to do this from memory:

Jelly Roll Morton – raggin on yer stride, or stridin’ on your rag
Louis Armstrong- where’s my laxatives and trumpet?
Louis Prima- the greatest show ever
Dixie Cups- Iko Iko, no t Ikea!
Clifton Chenier- less cowbell- more washboard!

Meters- words optional
All those Marsalis fellows- a dog in every fight
Professor Longhair- no truth in advertising
Mac Rebbenack the Night Tripper-right place, right time
Alan Touissant- pianny please
Lee Dorsey- The Kid Chocolate, workin’ in a coal mine
Fats Domino- still there
Little Richard Penniman recorded there with:
Bumps Blackwell – more fun than a bear on the street, with more hair
Rufus and Carla Thomas -gee whiz
Sidney Bechet!- that’s how Van Morrison always says it; with an exclamation point
Lloyd Price -too black for American Bandstand. Just right for me.
King Floyd – groove me!
Mahalia Jackson- angels take notes
Marcia Ball – I played with her once. Her legs go right to the ground, as unlikely as that seems

We could always drive up the road to Mississippi and find my old friend Albert King, if we got bored.

You wanna know how great New Orleans music is, and was? I bet I forgot 500 people, and it don’t matter.

(updated: lohwoman reminds us of: Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Sweet Emma. OK, so we’ve only forgotten 499 people now.)

New Orleans. Redux?

[Editor’s Note:We got to talking about New Orleans over at my blogfriend Althouse yesterday, and we didn’t solve anybody’s problems there I’m afraid. Talking generally doesn’t. But it can’t hurt to remember what it was that we’re jawing about saving. It’s Mardi Gras there. Here’s a rerun for our friends in New Orleans.]
{Author’s Note: There is no editor.}

Riding on the City of New Orleans,
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.

All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields.
Passin’ trains that have no names,
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

Good morning America how are you?
Don’t you know me I’m your native son,
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

Dealin’ card games with the old men in the club car.
Penny a point ain’t no one keepin’ score.
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumblin’ ‘neath the floor.
And the sons of pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father’s magic carpets made of steel.
Mothers with their babes asleep,
Are rockin’ to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel.
Nighttime on The City of New Orleans,
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
Half way home, we’ll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness Rolling down to the sea.

And all the towns and people seem To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain’t heard the news.
The conductor sings his song again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train’s got the disappearing railroad blues.

Good night, America, how are you?
Don’t you know me I’m your native son,
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.

lyrics: The City of New Orleans by Steve Goodman ©1970, 1971 EMI U Catalogue, Inc and Turnpike Tom Music (ASCAP)

Fat Saturday

This Tuesday is Mardi Gras. I think that New Orleans is the most important place in the United States for music. Which is to say: In the whole wide world.

Yes, I know all about Vienna. La Scala ain’t in Rhode Island, though there’s plenty of Italians at hand. Heard of Liverpool. Detroit? New York? Los Angeles? Whatever…

It’s “whatever”, because it’s not really whatever in any of those other places. They’e known for one, or maybe a few things. But the fusion, without the loss of any of its component parts, is what I’m talking about. And there has never been a place like New Orleans in the world for that. Louis Prima and Mahalia Jackson are both from there. Everything in between, too.

This fellow from Surrey England came to make his obeisance with the local New Orleans shaman, Mac Rebbenack, for instance. Louis Armstrong made that old traditional song famous, and identified it forever with the Crescent City. But the original St. James Infirmary was likely an ancient Irish/British folk song about a hospital in London.

You can discover yourself in New Orleans music. You’re already in there.