All Hat, No Candy

Read More

Paul McCartney’s Very Good Month

Paul McCartney was having a pretty successful season the autumn of 1968. Now, most of the autumns that Paul McCartney has spent on this Earth in his adult years have probably felt quite successful to him, but autumn 1968 may have been special even by his standards.

In August of that year, The Beatles had two songs prepared for release as a single: “Revolution” and “Hey Jude.” The band was about to release its double album, “The Beatles” (more commonly known as the White Album), but these two songs were not going to be included. A rendition of “Revolution” appears on the album, but the group had another, a faster version, that it wanted released. “Hey Jude” and the hit single version of “Revolution” did not fit that already over-stuffed album, so the two songs were slated to be their new record label’s (Apple Records) first single.
Read More

Age Is Just a Thing

One friend, upon hearing me describe a new ache or an old pain, used to reply, “You’ve never been (insert age here) before!”

At first, I found this insulting, then, later, very insulting. But knowing the friend as I did, I eventually realized that he was not being dismissive when he said this, but was instead reminding me to do something I did not have a long history of doing: To pay attention to my body. He has since passed on and will remain forever 65.

He was saying that almost everything we experience is unique to us, yet not at all unique. That sentence is either wise in its simpleness, so simple and wise that “simpleness” is too complicated a word for it, or incredibly banal. All of the above: We are all growing older. I’ve never been 46 before. So it is.
Read More