Hello, New York
“Are you ready to parr-tee with us tonight?” Haji, doing the MC duties
This is as good a time as any to stop, look around, and take stock of the situation. The Van fan situation. At this point I had been listening to his music for twenty-six years, had been to a total of seven concerts. By definition, the concerts were the icing on the cake, a thin veneer of icing, but it was what it was and it never occurred to me that I was missing something, that I should do more, want more; I just did what I did, listen to the music, at times exclusively, and saw the odd show – that was my life as far as Van’s music was concerned. Contained. Nothing rocking any boats here. I never talked to anybody about Van, I never met anybody at any cocktail party or whatever who knew who I was talking about. Or if they did, they couldn’t have cared less. Not that I was out giving that theory a test all that much; if we were partying at someone else’s house, I’d more likely as not have gone off to wherever they kept their books and be sitting there with my head in a book I’d not seen before. It was like a book previewing service supplied by my hosts. I wasn’t beneath ranking these parties based on the host’s book collection. The world has enough social butterflies. And that’s OK. I love books. (more…)