Good morning.
It’s been about a month since you last heard from me. That’s because September was busy and it became harder to make time for writing posts than I anticipated.
The end of August and all of September were a strange mix of things in my life. Here’s a brief summary of the last month or so:
My 97-year-old grandfather passed away (I’ll write about him another time) and I went to his funeral. After the funeral, I also spent time visiting with my 95-year-old grandmother who is learning to live without her partner of 70 years. (My grandmother and I now text each other.)
I spent about two weeks on Long Island (part of it planned, part of it unexpected due to my grandfather’s funeral) and thought about getting older while enjoying an absolutely beautiful run of weather, swimming, and spending time with my four-year-old niece and my six month old niece and getting an early birthday cupcake from them.
I flew to Bologna, Italy on September 9th and worked from there for a week (Dope city—why didn’t anyone explain this to me at some point?)
I turned 38 on September 11th. (I don’t feel 38, but I’m not sure what feeling 38 is supposed to be like or what that means.)
My girlfriend and I flew to Sicily and vacationed there for two weeks (Guys, just gonna tell you that White Lotus was the tip of the iceberg, there’s something been happening in Sicily for a while now—I’m talking B.C.E. shit.)
My girlfriend and I got engaged in Sicily. (We’ve been together for about 7 years— she proposed.)
Our flights back to the U.S. got messed up and so we spent an impromptu night in Brooklyn (Penny Hotel in Williamsburg via Hotels Tonight—a little pricey but sometimes you gotta take care of yourself) and I thought about getting older again.
I faced the prospect of returning to work after two weeks off with more optimism and controlled distance than I think I ever have before. (Maybe that’s what you start to learn after working office jobs for 15 years and hitting about 10 years of managerial experience.)
There’s a mixture of things in there. That’s the range of life. If this past month felt like anything, it felt like walking through a very thick and deep curtain, trying to make your way onstage or backstage or into another room. With each step, you tap along the folds of the fabric trying to find your way. And, as you go along, it seems as though you are constantly on the brink of discovering something new—whether about yourself or the nature of love or what it means to be alive or to have the gift of life.
I think I always want to be on the verge of discovering something. I don’t know if I ever want to know anything—because I’m not sure what happens then. It strikes me, now, that so much of my life has been graced with the feeling of moving toward something and moving forward, grasping and almost able to describe what I feel, to make palpable those fleeting moments when you learn something that might be eternal if you could only actually understand it. But you never will, so you’ll remain on the verge.
The melody and the sound of “Romeo’s Tune” by Steve Forbert (1979) captures this feeling. My friend sent a video to our group chat from a job he was working installing solar panels. A song was playing in the background from the radio and he asked for help identifying it. I Shazamed it and the song turned out to be “Romeo’s Tune.” I know nothing about Steve Forbert and I don’t really care about the lyrics of the song itself, but this tune is one of those classic late 70s tracks that feels like you’ve always known it. And Forbert is one of those skilled songwriters and craftspeople who you can imagine being bigger but he just didn’t have the voice or some other thing. This song was a modest hit and you can hear why: everything just fits together. “Romeo’s Tune” was probably the song I listened to the most in September.
A song I discovered on the streets of Palermo was “Sara Perche Ti Amo” by Ricchi E Poveri. From what I can glean these guys were like the Italian version of ABBA, and this song, from 1981, sounds like it would have fit on Souper Trouper (1980).
You’ll find some Italo disco on this playlist because that accompanied the drives my girlfriend (now fiancee) and I took through Sicily. You’ll find nods to Italian songwriting (“Gloria”). I put “Love My Way” on there because I watched Call Me By Your Name on the flight back to the U.S. (it was set in Italy) and forgot how present that song was in the movie and also how good that movie was.
I put a couple of songs on from The Color of Money soundtrack because, over the last two years, that movie has become one of my favorites of all time and the soundtrack is amazing. There’s some Elliot Smith and there’s some new music from The Coral who, still together after about 20 years, are a quietly interesting and workmanlike band.
And there’s some Led Zeppelin because I was at my trainer and heard “All of My Love” on the speakers and thought about how that song has no business being good but god damn do they will it to be not only good but also interesting. That then led me to impulsively buy two Led Zeppelin biographies and read both of them.
I hope you enjoy the playlist. I’ll be back to a once or twice a week posting schedule in October and beyond unless things get too busy.
Have a good week.