Here’s my John Lennon story, from my newest collection, “A Shoebox Full of Money.” This and other stories like it are available via https://www.martykleinman.com. This one’s for you:

MARK LIPSHUTZ , DOMINANT HANDBALL STAR, DIES

By the time he was on his deathbed, Mark Lipshutz was a real pain in the ass.

“I hate Navy guys,” he wheezed that mild, shirtsleeves December night. I remember it like yesterday, the sixty-four-degree high, freaky for New York in early winter, the year I turned twenty-nine. I came to Mr. L’s room with his dinner. It was late, and I was about to finish my shift. A black BIC lighter was next to a pack of Winstons, right there on his tray. I just shook my head.

“Man, I give up with you,” I said. He smiled, and then coughed until he was red in the face. It sounded loose, phlegmy, like pieces of lung got loose and rattled around his chest. He squinted his eyes in pain, but you couldn’t get him to stop for no money in the world. The smoking, or the bitching. And about the Navy? He knew damn well I was on the McKinley. Right after New Year’s? In sixty-nine? We made way for the Philippines. Now, the McKinley being a flagship meant we carried a rear admiral. But it was slow. Took us eight days to get to Pearl. And a lifetime to get to Da Nang, where right away we saw, off to starboard, the bloated body of one of our guys, a pilot, just floating there. I was just eighteen and this shit was real.

But back to Mr. L. That night, I moved his cigarettes and put his dinner down on the tray, and right away he gave me the stink eye. “Get that shit outta here,” he grumbled.

“Mr. L,” I said, “that’s a perfectly good veggie burrito. You need to keep your strength up if you want to get back onto the courts come this spring.” Word around the hospital? Mr. L had been the greatest handball player in history. Bear in mind, now, that back in high school, up in the Bronx back in the day, me and my friends didn’t play handball. I was all about hoops and baseball, first base. I didn’t know nothing about the handball. What I do know though is that to win in this life, you got to have an edge. Me? I could run and I could jump. Made our third baseman look good, leaping high for his throws. And hoops? I played solid D and just smacked those shots away.

Now, with Mr. L? I am told that back in the day, he was a quick little guy, maybe five-six, hundred and forty or so, and I believe it. Hairy, though. Even at the end. Chest, back, legs, everywhere you looked. Thick, curly hair. His ears looked like those crazy tufts of leaves and whatnot you see popping out of the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. But he was built. I give him that. Good muscle tone, even for an older guy. Had those old-school, black high-top Keds he’d wear to rehab, along with these baggy grey sweatpants and a blue sweatshirt, turned inside-out, sleeves cut off. However, the main thing? His edge? He was ambidextrous, see, as good with his left hand as his right. And he was sneaky with it, too. He told me once, while we were drinking Hennessy in plastic water cups, how he’d play with his opponent’s head during a match.

First, he made it look like a lucky shot with his left hand, let the guy get some easy points, get on a roll. Then he’d drop the hammer. Killers from the left, killers from the right, cutters, spinners, jumpers, whips. “I let ‘em get a few points,” he said. “Then I just get rid of ‘em.”

■■■

That last month was rough. Mr. L was in a lot of pain. It spread all over. His doctors tried to do right by him, keep him comfortable, but it was everywhere. Finally, they upped the dosage on his pain meds to the point where he was in and out. One time, just before— you know what I’m saying—I came by to check on him. It was late, I remember that much. Right away, I saw that he was out. But as soon as I tiptoed in, his droopy old eyes creaked open. I never saw him look that way. I mean, the dude looked twenty years older. His whole face just sagged and his eyes … it was like the light behind his eyes went from a hundred to forty watts.

“Gimme that lighter,” he said.

“Why don’t you stop?” I asked. Nothing. No response. And then, he looked at me, with a sadness in his face I’d never seen before, but I’ve seen it in a dog, like when they’re done, and they kinda know it? And one day they just skulk off into the woods to die alone, in peace. At the time, I’d been there at Roosevelt Hospital a couple of years, and you hear the doctors talk. The pulmonary guys, the orthopedists, the cardiologists. You get a sense of things, medical-wise, you know? And I would hear the psychiatrists too. And what the shrinks would say is, Look at the patient—not where the patient is pointing. And here was a guy, man, who came up from nothing, I mean nothing, on the Brooklyn streets of Williamsburg during the Depression.

He turned to handball like I took to hoops because it was the cheapest sport to play. All you needed was a ball. Mr. L, he took his dad’s old winter gloves out of the closet and turned them inside out. Those were his handball gloves, early on. He went to Eastern District High, with guys like Red Auerbach. He practiced hard and eventually won a national championship, went into the service (Marines), survived World War II, barnstormed the country giving handball exhibitions, and really made the sport popular during the fifties. In his world, he was a rock star.

And then, life happened. The bottle, two divorces, run-ins with the law, a gambling dispute with the wrong kind of guy. Eventually, he moved to Brighton Beach where he paid the rent hustling handball by the ocean, on the cracked courts of Asser Levy Park. And now, on that particular night, way back in 1980, there was that look in his eyes.

Like I said, it was late when I came in with his dinner tray, and he started in on the Navy again. “C’mon, Mr. L. The game’s almost over,” I said, fluffing up his pillows. Monday Night Football was his thing. He snorted. “Dolphins, Patriots? They both stink on ice. Take the Patriots with the points.”

Down the hall, the nurses had the oldies station on because I could hear that twangy Beatles song, “All My Loving.” “God, I hate the fuckin Beatles,” he said. He reached for the clicker, turned on the game, and upped the volume. Howard Cosell’s nasal drone drowned the song out. Mr. L was right. The game was a stinker. This was way before, you know, the Patriots got on their roll. He turned to me. “Did I ever tell you I played Russian Roulette?” he asked, eyes on the game. It was late in the fourth quarter. “Uh, no?” I raised my eyebrows. This was a new one. “Well, I did,” he said. “Twice. In the service. I retired, undefeated.”

“Anything else you want to tell me?” I said, as Russ Francis caught a thirty-eight-yard pass from Cavanaugh. Touchdown. The Patriots were up, thirteen to six. The score seemed to pick Mr. L up because, out of nowhere, he started to tell me another story about his life back in the day.

“I tell you about the time I got arrested up in Monticello?” I shook my head. “It was the year I drove a Dugan’s Bakery truck upstate. Same year that song came out.” He scratched his head. “I remember seein’ those mopes play it on Ed Sullivan.” There was a commotion down the hall just then, a lot of screaming, crying. Doctors were being paged to come to the ER. There was a gunshot victim. Strange, I remember, because Monday nights were usually quiet.

“They found me parked behind Davco, the sporting goods store there on Main Street,” Mr. L said. “I was asleep, dead drunk, behind the wheel of the truck.” The Dolphins tied it up. But the Patriots charged right back and got into field goal range, as time wound down in regulation. “But I think what pissed them off most was that I peeled the tops offa all the chocolate cupcakes.”

“What did you do with them?”

He smiled a crooked smile. “I fuckin ate them. Whaddaya think I did with them?” The seconds ticked off the game clock. The Patriots’ John Smith took his practice kicks and trotted onto the field along with the rest of the field goal unit. “Close the fuckin door already,” Mr. L said. “All that shrieking and crying out in the hallway is driving me nuts.” As I closed the door, Cosell’s voice suddenly got very low.

“Remember, this is just a football game,” Cosell said.

“Oh what the fuck?” Mr. L shouted at the television. “Just call the fuckin game, will ya?” But Cosell continued. “An unspeakable tragedy confirmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, outside his apartment building on the West Side of New York City … the most famous perhaps of all the Beatles … shot twice in the back, rushed to Roosevelt Hospital. Dead on arrival …” I looked at Mr. L, and he looked back at me, like he wanted me to explain.

“Hard to go back to the game after that newsflash,” Cosell said. Mr. L, one-time handball champion, got uncommonly quiet. “Some fuckin world we live in,” he said, as a single tear rolled down his cheek. “Some fuckin world.” Mr. L’s eyes closed. Smith’s kick was blocked. Then the clock ran out and it was overtime at the Orange Bowl.

It was the day I learned that the so-called “grownups” didn’t have jackshit under control.

I mean, I had suspected it, based on anecdotal evidence. But now, I knew: we had to make our own way, our own choices.

It was Friday afternoon, 58 years ago. I was in junior high. Saturday, we were all going to the custom car show in the Coliseum on Columbus Circle. Henry the Good Humor Guy worked security at the Coliseum on weekends; he’d let us scoot in the side door, so we never had to pay.

The news spread fast that Friday, and the teachers were crying. I couldn’t fg believe it. All the beer joints had Daily News photos of JFK taped to the mirrors behind the bar. Now, that guy, the guy on our campaign buttons, the guy who got us little-kid Bronx morons interested in politics, was dead. WTAF?

“Now what?” I thought. “What could possibly go wrong next?” That weekend, on live TV, I/we found out. Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. My mom and dad both exhaled “OHHH!!!” at the same time. I was like, “yep, we’re on our own now, for sure.” And I was right, too.

PROFILE: Sal Cataldi

iToo many members of my inner circle have developed incredibly inventive excuses for vegging out during these Days of Covid.  If they spent as much time pursuing their passion as Real New Yorker Sal Cataldi, they’d be far better off.

Cataldi is a master musician and writer. Currently, he is creating on multiple fronts. His music ventures include Spaghetti Eastern Music and the Vapor Vespers. He recently scored a performance piece. He writes reviews of music and pop-culture books.  He’s a beloved father to his adult kids. He’s a supportive and trusted friend. And he’s an indelible part of the cultural scenes of New York City, Long Island, and the Hudson Valley.

Sal’s love of music goes back to his days as a kid in Queens, New York. There, he feasted with friends such as Mark Muro on a steady diet of Mad Magazine, Sun Ra, Henry Miller, Captain Beefheart, Frank Zappa and the original spoken word recordings of the 50s and 60s from Caedmon Records. Today, his compositions and musicianship are hailed by underground and mainstream media alike.

Guitarist/keyboardist Cataldi’s solo project, Spaghetti Eastern Music, fuses Eastern beats, Spaghetti Western film soundtrack ambience, Krautrock spaciness and psychedelic and funkadelic instrumentals with gentle acoustic tunes straight out of the John Martyn/Nick Drake songbook. Time Out New York writes: “Cataldi’s largely instrumental, Eastern-influenced jams are infused with some delicate guitar work and hauntingly moody atmosphere,” while The New York Times proclaims he has “a beat unmistakably his own.” Called “truly excellent” by The Village Voice, “beautiful and unique” by WFUV’s Mixed Bag, “wonderfully melodic and off-center” by WFMU and “part Sergio Leone fever dream, part Ravi Shankar raga, a whirling dervish of musical creation” by Hudson Valley One, Cataldi keeps up a steady schedule of performances at leading venues in the Big Apple and the Hudson Valley.

But here’s the thing: he does not procrastinate. As my dad would pointedly remind me, with his finger poking my chest back when I was a kid, “there’ll be plenty a’ time for sleepin’ when you’re dead.”

Do yourself a favor: listen to Cataldi’s trio of critically-acclaimed atmospheric singles that have been heard around the globe, “Her Lemon Peel Raincoat – Because It’s Raining,” “Peace Within” and “And This is Their New Hoax.” The latter is a perfect COVID-19 musical editorial featuring samples of the former president’s most noted pandemic denials, set to Cataldi’s soundpainting guitars and synths. This is some powerful stuff.

His recent release, this year’s “Blues for A Lost Cosmonaut,” is a nine-minute plus maxi single, again in the ambient mode. 

And what of the Vapor Vespers? Here is Cataldi’s globally hailed venture with another Real New Yorker, his Bronx-born childhood buddy Muro. It’s most definitely an edge- and button-pushing transcontinental collaboration. Muro, a playwright, actor and slam poet, now resides in Alaska.  Just weeks ago, on a rare east coast jaunt, Muro and Cataldi staged their first-ever ever public performances in New York City and Kingston, NY.

Drawing inspiration from music-powered spoken word icons like John Cooper Clarke, The Last Poets and Lord Buckley, Vapor Vespers unwrapped their saucy One Act Sonix, their critically buzzed debut album on Bad Egg Records and two singles, “Sex” and “You Changed.” Vapor Vespers music can be found on Spotify and Bandcamp at http://vaporvespers.bandcamp.com including new studio tracks and pieces recorded live upstate at Green Kill.  The singles are slated to drop in December, and the album in early 2022.

Notices for the Vapor Vespers debut album demonstrate how critics, radio djs and general music-lovers now venture beyond the vanilla mainstream to embrace this godly fusion of furious sound, words and humor.   Underground radio institution WFMU called the Vapor Vespers “a supremely cool fusion of spoken word and progressive sound,” while NYSMusic.com praised its “blend of spacey synths, spicy guitar, ethereal drones and deep lyrics that redefine what music can be.”  Astute listeners can revel in the mix of outrageous lyrics and storytelling with expert musicianship that recalls everyone from Steely Dan to Was (Not Was) to Frank Zappa.

But wait. There’s more: Cataldi’s Guitars A Go Go, his ambient/experimental duo guitar project with Rick Warren from Hudson.  Says Cataldi: “We’ve been performing and recording for over two years, released our debut album Travel Advisory during Covid in June 2020.  We have played at art galleries and clubs in the area, with our ongoing monthly residency of live and livestreams from Green Kill gallery in Kingston.” Cataldi’s armed with a palette of effects pedals in his quest for meditative and melodic adventure. You’ll find a galaxy of musical influences and attitudes that evoke Fripp and Eno and Tangerine Dream.

That’s it? Nah! Cataldi is reviewing a book on uber-guitarist Marc Ribot and another with the owner of Big Pink, the storied Ulster County, New York home to The Band. And then there’s his recent take on Frank Mastropolo’s fine book on the Fillmore East.  I can recall those halcyon days (well, mostly early mornings) of Fillmore East music, Gem Spa egg creams, beef barley soup and dense black bread next door, after a night of magic from Janis, Carlos, Jimi, Dwayne and Gregg, Elton, and so many more.

Recently, Cataldi’s Spaghetti Eastern Music released a new EP containing the solo electric guitar score for “2 x 2 x 4.”  The EP was recorded during a live performance of this piece last summer by performance artist Charles Dennis at the Avant-Garde Arama Festival in Woodstock, N.Y.  The three-track, 20-minute collection is available as a digital download exclusively on Spaghetti Eastern Music’s Bandcamp site (Bad Egg Records 3100).

Premiering in 1989 to raves in media like The Village Voice, Charles Dennis’ “2 x 2 x 4” is an offbeat dance duet performed with fourteen wooden 2 x 4s, one whose mood is now heightened by Cataldi’s atmospheric, looped and layered guitar extrapolations captured on this live EP.  Praise for his guitar innovations included coverage in The New York Times and Jazz Times.

Cataldi’s three movement score was informed by his love of the pioneering ambient stylings of guitarist Robert Fripp and experience performing with avant-garde guitar orchestra composer Rhys Chatham.  Cataldi utilized multiple loop pedals, delays, fuzz tone, a string simulator, harmonizer, arpeggiator, an Ebow note sustainer and other effects to create the 20-minute score.

The music moves from gentle chording and symphonic loops to a rhythmic pulse with dueling, echoed melodic fragments to a minimalist four-chord organ pattern underpinning frenetic soloing and wailing wall of infinite sustained, harmonized note clusters at the culmination.

In-between practice, scoring, and gigging, Cataldi took a breather to reflect on this ethereal piece.

“The collaboration with Charles was a pure joy,” says Cataldi.  “It was a chance to extend on what I have been working on with my recent Spaghetti Eastern Music releases – to be ambient and minimalist and wildly maximalist, at the same time.  It was also a way to challenge myself to create a multi-layered soundpainting completely solo, in a live setting, without a net, re-dos, etc.”

Working without a net. Non-stop. In this Time of Covid. Imagine that.

So listen, people. Get your booster shots, stay safe, but cut the crap about “I have no time or energy for any projects.”

Like my grumpy dad said, there’ll be plenty a’ time for sleepin’ when your dead. So keep pushing. Keep plugging. Keep the ball rolling.

Tick-tock. We’re not here forever. No excuses.

Nixon’s nauseating “Silent Majority” speech was nearly 52 years ago. November 3, 1969, to be exact.

In this speech, he painted a picture of two Americas: “a vocal minority,” who try to impose their point of view through protest, and the “great silent majority,” made up of realist, working class Americans. See the speech in its entirety here:

https://ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/23784e9a-e7c1-4be2-a64c-80aaa6e52f6e/nixons-silent-majority-speech-the-day-the-60s-died/

Back then, the “vocal minority” was comprised of anti-war protesters, young and left-leaning. His “great silent majority” were older, more conservative — so-called “Greatest Generation” folks who proved through their actions just how “not especially great” they were.

The following spring, NYC hosted the “hard-hat riots” down on lower Manhattan, where the brave morons (and the cops) beat on war protesters.

So, what’s changed, 50-plus years on?

I’d posit that today we have two Americas as well. Except the roles have been reversed. The right-wing rabble-rousers populated January 6th’s disgrace. The silent majority clucked and chided yet remained — and remain — largely quiet.

Our new Silent Majority needs awakening. It’s all-hands-on-deck. It’s “every vote counts”. Quietly, we get vaccinated and shake our heads as the anti-vaxx Typhoid Mary types walk the malls, supermarkets, and performance venues of ‘Murika’, belittling the vaccinated, antagonizing retail workers, educators, even their own families.

Then they beg for the vaccine as they’re wheeled into the ICU (assuming a bed is available), and hooked up to a vent.

Today’s “vocal minority” has access to the international electronic bully pulpit of the Interwebs. The tiniest, stupidest mice have a vast bullhorn from which to spew their slime.

The midterm elections are around the corner. We are strong in numbers, hold the nation’s pursestrings, appreciate logic and facts and expertise — and yet we sit on our hands.

It doesn’t pay to be polite, when our lives — our futures — are on the line. Let’s get off the pot and make some noise.

And for you, the “vocal minority” — here’s a toast to better days ahead. Drink up, you fools!

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/ivermectin-demand-drives-trump-telemedicine-website-rcna1791

All families have pet-related tales (tails?) I suppose, and my tribe is no different.

Years ago, in our family’s pre-doggie years, we had turtles, gerbils, and frogs. The turtles started out as cute little critters but as they grew, they’d swim all night and bash into the sides of their tank, keeping Dan awake. The turtles were voted off the island and found a far better life in a friend’s home.

The gerbil, Ginger, had a huge orange plastic “environment” with tubes, wheels and other activity centers. Ginger would channel his inner Steve McQueen and manage to escape when it was time to clean its home.

One day, Ginger made a daring break for it and my wife reached out to grab it. By the tail. Guess what?

Its tail came out, like the pin in a grenade. But Ginger, sans tail, soldiered on until, one fateful day, the little rat finally died. The three of us packed the disgusting little rodent into a shoebox and took it across the street to the Plaza Street berm. Dan tossed it over the fence and said, with great reverence, “Au revoir!”

Next came the frog. It was a tiny thing in a tiny terrarium and Dan named it, yes, Little Frog.

Little Frog was quiet, didn’t stink much, and was somewhat amusing. Dan enjoyed taking him out of his “environment” and showing it to his friends. But Little Frog, like Ginger, had wanderlust. One day, he escaped. LF hippity-hopped into the kitchen and, before we could corral the little vonce, slipped behind the stove.

We tried coaxing him out with food. We tried talking sense to him. We tried pulling the stove away from the wall so the little bastard could see daylight and come out.

But no. Little Frog spit the bit and made it to some sort of ill-conceived freedom. Every time we made dinner and lit the stove, we winced. Little Frog, we were sure, was incinerated. Again. And again. And again.

Summer came and we left for a short vacation. Several days later we returned. Laughing, we tramped up the stairs to our top floor, walk-up aerie. I fumbled with the keys, turned the lock, opened the door — and my jaw dropped.

“Oh no!” I gulped. There, mere inches from the door, was a very stiff, very dead, Little Frog. It lay on his back, face contorted in froggy agony, one arm outstretched, as if reaching for the crack in the door jam and a wider world of freedoms yet unknown.

“He was so brave,” Dan said.

“He was alive all that time,” my wife said.

“Get the broom,” I said.

We were all humbled by the heroism of Little Frog. He never gave up. He left it all out on the field (ok, the foyer).

I was reminded again of Steve McQueen.

The little guy almost made it. The little guy had such heart. And yet, one must ponder: what the hell was he eating back there all that time?

I picked him up by his tiny paw and, as with many small family pets that die, gave him a dignified burial at sea. Godspeed Little Frog, we hardly knew ye.

And, to this day, whenever I’m down, I think of Little Frog’s tenacity in the face of adversity. He never gave up! Pa’lante! Onward! Allez!

And, as well, I am reminded of this fact of life: the back of the stove is no place to hide.

Everybody seems to have their “9/11 Story”. Well, here’s mine, first published in Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, and more recently, in my second short story collection, “A Shoebox Full of Money.”

Here goes. Stay strong, stay well, be safe…

https://mrbellersneighborhood.com/2016/04/the-tape

I never thought of it this way; maybe you have. Life is a game of Tetris.

You remember the Game Boy Tetris, right?

It’s that captivating game with the Russian theme music, where you position tiny blocks as they descend from the top of the screen, to earn points and keep the game going. Early-on, you make a positioning mistake, here and there, and clog things up, and — oops, oh well! — you still have plenty of time to keep the points coming.

Only at some point, the mistakes pile up, you run out of space, you feverishly struggle to reposition the falling blocks and keep the game going.

Finally, inevitably, it’s game-over.

The grim reaper runs the casino. You can only outfox the outcome for so long. I think about this now, as the aches and pains mount. I guess the good news is that I’m too old to “die young” — so there’s that.

Bette Davis was right. So are those dour, fatalistic Russians. Gevalt.

Light the fuse! And BOOM! You’re not a powerless little kid anymore. You used a Zippo, or Diamond wooden kitchen match, or your friend’s lit punk, to ignite a ladyfinger, or firecracker, or cherry bomb, or ashcan/M80, or bottle rocket, or Roman candle.

You went on the roof with your friend, held the ashcan while he lit it. You waited until the fuse started to sizzle and then you hurled it off the roof and across the street, with the practiced form of a WWII soldier hurling a grenade into a Kraut bunker.

BOOM!

In June, some creepy white guy in a beat-up Galaxie wagon with New Hampshire or Georgia plates would troll 190th street for us kids. In hushed tones, we’d conduct business. Some kids had real money, and bought mats of firecrackers. We — the real little kids — bought a pack or three of firecrackers off of them for, what was it, 10 or 15 cents each. We’d be ready for July 4th.

One year, a local 19 year old in the National Guard, came home on leave with a box of simulated artillery for us. We blew up melons and broken baby dolls, a precursor to wars to come.

We were outrageous. We annoyed the grownups. We courted danger. There were some close calls. Jimmy’s chest was singed by an ashcan explosion although none of us could figure out how THAT happened. An errant bottle rocket got stuck in the window screen of Mrs. Donohue and nearly set the curtains afire, and her son Billy caught holy hell for that one.

The cops would come and we’d scoot; they’d leave and we’d return to annoy the neighborhood.

The firecracker debris and smell of spent gunpowder was everywhere on July 5th mornings. The paper shards seemed knee high up and down 190th Street and across Devoe Terrace.

Some of us grew up. Some, like JPP, nearly lost their lives to the drug that is being outrageous.

https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2015/9/17/9347287/jason-pierre-paul-fingers-fireworks-accident-injury

And then others, addicted to this drug, pushed the envelope in other ways. Anti-social behavior is a powerful narcotic. So powerful that some so-called adults vote for politicians who — in giving the middle-finger salute to the world — are outrageous on their followers’ behalf.

So powerful that a subset of those followers actually took a shot at storming the Capitol on January 6th.

And that worked out about as well as the night JPP almost blew his hand off. He learned from the errors of his ways. Did they?

Well, no, not really. But then again, maybe, yes.

Last week much was made of the 50th anniversary of the birth of Joni Mitchell’s epic album, “Blue”. When it came out, I was a young snot, a Bronx primitive, and I didn’t “get” it. I made fun of her octave jumps and her phrasing fetishes, and her chord voicings that I thought were artificially intricate.

I was given the eight ayem slot on my college radio station, only because no one else wanted to get up to the booth that early in the morning. “Just play records.” That is what the station manager told me on my first day, by way of direction.

So I did. Stones. Jimi. ‘Retha. Lots of Stax/Volt and Atlantic Records R&B. Lots of Motown. Sometimes people would come up to the booth and suggest songs.

One time, a woman begged me to play Laura Nyro, a Bronx heroine. Another time, a woman came up, eyes red with tears, with that blue-tinged LP. “Please! Play this,” she said.

My heart sank, as Sam and Dave sang “Hold on…I’m comin.'”

“Which one?” I answered, unable to conceal my disdain.

“River.” So, yeah, fine; I played it. Whatever.

The phone started ringing, and didn’t stop. Play more from “Blue”, the suddenly attentive early ayem students said to the boy-man that was me. Hmmmm. What am I missing here?

The decades passed; life — that predicament that precedes death (Henry James’ line, not mine) — happened.

I just completed a year studying “Music and the Brain” — a class taught by Dr. Concetta Tomaino, the research partner of the late, great, Oliver Saks. I read Dan Levitin’s work, and Robert Jourdain’s, and much more. I learned that there are specific parts of the brain that latch onto puzzling concepts in order to solve them. With a certain fury, we are hard-wired to create order from chaos.

I also learned from Dr. Tomaino about the magic of the music, and of how music has more power to heal physical and psychological wounds than any other art form. The phenomenon may be rooted in science, but the outcomes can only be appreciated in terms of mysticism.

Fifty years after the release of Joni Mitchell’s “Blue” album, I marvel at the bounty of that young songwriter’s facility with language and sonics. I understand and appreciate that complex electro-chemical processes fuel my mind’s analysis of her songs.

But life experience has taught me that it’s far more important to savor her sensibilities than to deconstruct her diminished chords. I’ve learned to be “frightened by the devil, and drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid.”

So, thanks to the girl with the red-rimmed eyes, wherever you are in life. Like a bottle of Bordeaux, I was awfully green at first; it took time for me to open up and appreciate Mitchell’s majesty, her supple and disturbing art.

Classic utterings from my father’s lips:

“You and your goddam deferments.”

“I don’t give advice.”

“Hi. Hold on. Let me put your mother on.”

Happy Father’s Day.