There are no dead presidents we can fold...
I don’t often go to my husband’s gigs because they’re usually on weeknights and I need at least eight hours of sleep to function properly. Plus, I kind of like the time alone his nightly outings afford me.
But this past weekend he had a rare Saturday gig, so I went because it’s fun to watch him play. He’s a great drummer.
Working musicians don’t make much money. Even the good ones.
In fact, especially the good ones, because they tend to play good music. You know, the kind of music that doesn’t make it onto commercial radio? Blues, jazz, funk, groove. The meaty stuff.
But because they don’t make much money, working musicians also tend to take whatever gigs they can get. Even gigs that happen to be in seedy, smoky bars filled with drunks and prostitutes.
Bars where yellowed posters dangle haphazardly from old-style thumb-tacks, and cheap-beer flags hang in endless rows.
Where the pool table sports mysterious sticky stains and plastic chairs sprawl randomly around wood-veneer tables.
Where the bartender is a humourless, rail-thin woman with no time for bullshit.
The kind of bar that has vinyl floors and busted locks on its bathroom stalls.
Where the same grizzled character in a Mariner’s cap and saggy-ass jeans slumps on the same corner barstool every night, getting up periodically to piss and spit on the sidewalk outside.
A bar where it’s wise to sit with your back to the wall.
This is the bar my husband played in last weekend.
I’ve seen some bleak things in my life. Hell, I’ve come face-to-face with lepers in Calcutta, stepped over homeless people sleeping on the street, and given fists full of rupees to children dressed in rags. There are plenty of destitute people out there.
But there was something about this bar that struck me. Maybe it was because its air of utter hopelessness was so thick and unexpected. Maybe it was because the lost potential was so vivid. As I watched the patrons play out their depressing antics through each set, as I’m certain they do every single night, I was affected in a way that stayed with me somehow.
I felt like a voyeur, watching these fellow members of the human species act with such visceral, emotional desperation. Sitting there, aloof and sipping water, as they struggled to survive in the only feeble way they know how.
It was raw, primal and sad.
It’s in moments like that when I feel most certain that we’ve all lived many lives before. That each journey is a lesson. That each path has some value, however twisted and obscure.
It’s in moments like that when I feel quite lucky to being living the life I have right now.