Last Thursday three of us took the A train to the Apollo for The Daptone Soul Revue: Sharon Jones, Antibalas, Charles Bradley, Naomi Shelton, and a few supporting acts/openers. I came up from the Foley Square protests for Eric Garner, Dean and his roommate/girlfriend from Bed Stuy where they live. Dean claims to have slept with three of four female roommates, and is now "dating" the third. Poor policy, I'd say, but quot homines, tot sententiae. Many of the characters in this diary take their name from literature, and, as you may have guessed, Dean comes from Dean Moriarty. He's no Sal Paradise but then neither am I--in fact the name Moriarty has always fuddled me, as I associate him with Sherlock Holmes worthy adversary. No matter--let's move forward.
Dean is in the process of taking a master's in social work at one of the famous New York schools. I think of him as being foppish mess, full of inchoate and incoherent ideas expressed with an energetic convoluted-ness. He's immature and nearly thirty, and when he drinks his tentacles fly around the room dripping pus about haphazardly. I like Dean, but his behavior is difficult to manage and, because he's immature and thoughtless, the behavior is often offensive. We'll come to this.
What a thrill it was to walk into the Apollo. I thought of Adelaide Hall, Ella Fitzgerald, Mahalia, the Soul Stirrers, Aretha, Ray Charles, and of course, James Brown, of all the music and history that has passed through the theatre over the years, and all the regular folks who have come to hear the music. I had never been to the Apollo before, and it was a culmination of many things--I had a feeling of understanding, of oneness with a current of being, a feeling I haven't had since talking Kant in college, something I first experienced in Pizarro's tomb in Lima. There I felt the burden and logic of history; the the Apollo I felt a supreme beauty and coherence. If that makes any sense at all.
Naomi Shelton did Harlem Mavis Staples; she hobbled out onto the stage with assistance, but as soon as she started singing--mmmhmmm. That woman has a serious voice and knows about the good news. A few acts later came Charles Bradley, who has been waiting all his life for this moment (he's in his sixties) and screamed and hollered as he churned and oozed around the stage in a costume even James Brown might've been too demure to don (it featured a phallic, sequin-covered tie that hung between his legs). Antibalas brought down the house--they went over time, and it appeared as if the stage management had to remove them from the stage. Much of the band seemed carried away, in a trance, and so were we in the audience, people dancing, writhing, clutching at their genitals. The thing was only steps away from an orgy. And then Sharon leaps onto the stage after a Hardest Working Man in Show Business-style introduction. I didn't know how anyone could follow Antibalas, but Sharon blew them out the water. That woman has a power in her voice that I've never heard. Sharon covered "Every Beat of My Heart," which Gladys cut in 1961 when she was just eighteen years old. Sharon can sing eighteen years old. The pinnacle of the show--there were two in Sharon's set--came when she preached, frantically, hysterically, as if the music, feeling, and spirit were about to carry her off, about her cancer, how she caught it, how it almost killed her, and how she beat it. I thought the theatre might come crashing down--I don't think the Apollo has seen a show of that caliber since the sixties. Sharon finished up with her version of James Brown's "There Was a Time" in which she teaches us all about the mashed potato, the tighten-up, the chicken, the twist, the camel walk, the boogaloo, and a selection of other interpretations of dances of the 1960s. This is up there with the best shows I've seen, and I've seen most of the best (the notable exception being Prince).
Dean was drunk when we left, drunk and looking for trouble. I had come from the Eric Garner protests; we were in Harlem. Dean insisted on smoking a blunt in front of the police, in front of the Apollo, without a clue as to what that might mean, how that might make people with a different skin color feel--something they could never get away with, right in front of the police like that--and in front of the Apollo, which is a respected landmark. It was semi-disgraceful. I rode the A to 59th with Dean and his roommate and then transferred to the D.
Saturday last Cash, Sadie, Princess, and I saw The Etudes at Bam. What a treat it was to see the old lion himself perform the first two etudes, with the forgivable slovenliness of the composer, tempo uneven as if Philip himself is, in this first performance of all of the etudes, himself becoming reacquainted with his own work. It was beautiful and melancholy, aged lovers holding each other on the train, each more in love with the other than ever, youth an eternal present rather than a distant memory. Ten pianists tackled the etudes, and it was fascinating to see these divergent interpretations. Princess, Cash, and I loved the etudes; Sadie sort of didn't get it, although I think she was happy to have been brought along. Sadie has told me she doesn't like medieval or religious art, and Sadie's a Spaniard through and through: she rejects ritual, yet requires it, requires the evocation of sex, of violence, of redemption. Cash has improved immensely since moving to New York, he loved the etudes and had unexpected and intelligent things to say about it.
Princess had been shopping for a stylist all day, and was fraught when she arrived--she'd been to Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Barney's, Bergdorf, and the first three were just crawling with the hordes. Poor thing. She was dressed like a Geisha and I realized she has a fluid/natural/organic grasp of style, it's impressive. She talked about a few years ago, when I had incorporated "Crunk" into my name, and how she thought that was iconic of a certain time, age, era, etc., which of course I loved to hear. She works at the boom boom room and has lately begun to enjoy heavy drinking. Cash looked at me with delighted surprise when she told a story about returning to her $Skid Row$ apartment so drunk, and, being unable to find the key, falling asleep in the hallway. When she woke up in the morning, she threw up, and still couldn't figure out how to get into her apartment. "We should hang out with Princess more often," Cash said.
I'm reading Wilkie Collins' mystery The Moonstone, which is the most wonderful winter novel. On the horizon is a beautiful biography of George Sand I found at City Opera, a first edition, Infamous Woman, Conrad's Lord Jim, Valley of the Dolls, The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born. Many things. Saturday I leave New York for DC and my hometown soon after that. I'm nervous, I feel unsafe when I leave New York for these provincial pieces of my past.
DC promises to be amusing, as I'll lodge with Brooklyn and we have much to catch to gossip about. Brooklyn plans to visit New York for New Years, but New Years is such a pain in the city I have no idea what we'll do. Brooklyn's best lady friend Eliot will be there, who I once nearly slept with I think, although of course I could be wrong. That night she wore an orange jumpsuit, and Brooklyn was drunk and I sort of felt Eliot ran out on me, and Brooklyn kept semi-aggressively commenting "I know why your mad." It was so bizarre and unusual, like one of those strange and fragile surrealist attempts at cinema.
I made a trek out to Soul Food Kitchen on far out Fulton in Bed Stuy last night: might be the best soul food in New York. I had catfish, mac n' cheese, okra, and greens, and I'm bringing carry out to Kate for her birthday party Friday.
Why would anyone ever leave New York?
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