taking in the good, bad, and the ugly...

While on urban walkabout this week, I see signs of change everywhere: beautiful, baffling, and heart-breaking. Not that there aren't signs of transition in nature or around our country-ish home. There are - but they appear more gradually (as in the movement of the seasons) or sluggish (as in the culture, politics, and/or physical redevelopment.) To be sure, there are surprising changes at home, too - like the massive snow storm that felled two huge maple trees in our yard 12 years ago or the recent flooding that seemed to come out of nowhere - it's just that right now my awareness is heightened. 

Part of what I'm noticing involves the scars of covid: empty shops, abandoned buildings, supply chain inflated consumer goods, and the dramatic rise in public IV drug use. At the same time the outdoor cafes and terraces are full to overflowing, new and creative businesses are emerging, and street musicians are returning to the pedestrian walkways as murals and street art flourishes. I was talking to the owner of our favorite jazz club in the world last night. We talked at length about the madness of trying to keep his business afloat during the worst days of the pandemic: it was bedlam, he confessed, striving to keep people safe while scrambling to maintain the semblance of some cash flow. Many couldn't make it - and those who survived did so against herculean odds. So, after two years of semi-public lockdown, where a mixture of creativity and strategic nonchalance ruled each day, things are hopping again. It was a joy to visit and see a vital cultural component of this sweet city thriving once again. 

Sadly such was not the case for Archambault - a fixture in Montreal since the mid 1800's and housed in a four story, art deco headquarters built in the 1930's - that now stands empty and dark. How many jazz CDs have I purchased in this music mecca over the years? The second story once held a football field of recorded and printed music while floors three and four showcased every known musical instrument in the Western world ready for sale or rental. It always felt like a joyous "way-back machine" to a slower and more tender-hearted time where browsing was encouraged and reading slowly was a treasured art form. Now, the founders say, the snail's paced urban redevelopment around the university coupled with an epidemic of IV drug use has rendered the neighborhood surrounding this old flagship too dangerous for most shoppers. It's a haven for junkies, to be sure, but those interested in the arts must shop elsewhere. 

Small wonder I've been so tuned-in to the music of both Dead and Company and Tom Waits: like our current walking explorations - to say nothing of St. Mary Magdalene (whose feast day is today!) - they mix together the good, bad, and the ugly simultaneously albeit in wildly disparate ways. The Dead are currently a mix of old stoners, middle aged musical jam masters, and a few hot shot rock music all stars. They've tightened up the old improvisational grooves of past Grateful Dead efforts, added some genuinely satisfying (and consistently on-key) four-part harmonies as well, and brought the beloved good time vibes of the Summer of Love throughout the USA some 56 years after lift off. Bobby Weir, once the pretty boy-child of the band, is now a wizened Zen prophet who realized that the joy this band created still has a place even in the "Brokedown Palace" that currently passes for America. Watching five different generations dance together to this multi-aged musical ensemble is a sacramental act: the immediate beauty points to deeper truths about community building in a culture addicted to selfish bottom lines. I see the good, the bad, and the ugly all huddled together as these cats keep on sharing the music (as they do in this take on "Sugaree" that I first heard 50 years ago at Watkins Glen!)

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And then there's brother Tom Waits: the heart of Saturday night as informed by the Beats and the paradoxical blessed community of dive bars. Waits came of age in the soft rock era of LA - think Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, CSNY, and Carole King - but chose to live on Skid Row rather than Laurel Canyon. He went searching for the promise of light in the darkness and often found clues among those most of us ignore, fear, or hate. Living amidst the wounded underbelly of the beast almost devoured Waits who has now been clean and sober for decades. The trap of a boozer's world almost destroyed his art, too until his soon to be wife, Kathleen Brennan, showed him how to incarnate his true iconoclastic gifts. Now he mixes his American stories with glimpses of redemption rather than total depravity. Think "Come on Up to the House" or "Hold On." He was once bathed in the bad and the ugly, learned to befriend and honor it, and now spends time celebrating the complicated good in love hard won. (NOTE: I played Waits' "Hold On" at my father's funeral as a way of paying homage to a man who was loving, wounded, sometimes violence but always searching for a bit of hope. In his own weird way, my dad was a bourgeois version of Waits before he got clean and recognizing this gave me eyes to see his heart - and find a measure of grace, too.)

 

These periodic and prolonged urban walk-abouts give me time away from interacting so that I can refocus on: writing, making music, loving those dearest to me, and discerning where to give my energy next. I look forward to this evening's small outing and wonder what will be revealed. It is no surprise that these ideas came together on the feast day of St. Mary Magdalene who not only lived into and through her own take on the good, bad, and ugly but learned to hold it all together as one. That's is my prayer, too.