So the other night, my cousin from out of town took me to City Winery on the pier to see Gilbert O’Sullivan. In the way I do not pay attention to anything these days, I thought we were going to see some musical review. Nuh-uh.
City Winery at the pier is huge. The kind of space you expect to see in the Midwest, not the sultry, intimate, and urban space I was expecting. No judgment here (well, a *little* bit of judgment) until we got crammed in between about 12 guys who maybe weren’t that old but who definitely seemed old in a stereotyped kind of way (big judgment!). They were eating pizza and it was not a good scene. Ageism is cruel and I know this, but I was still repulsed by the grease everywhere, the loose dentures, the food trapped in beards, the crumbs in head hair. Maybe all the more repulsed for knowing this will be me in short order. I started to laugh in the way I do sometimes, often uncontrollably and at all the wrong moments.
My cousin was miserable being crammed in there with no space to move, so the host exiled us to a different table in the wings.
Then Gilbert O’Sullivan came out. He’s got incredibly skinny legs and was wearing what looked like a nightshirt. He’s got big, poofy hair that no one’s seen since 1977. With a little banter—most of it mumbled—he got to playing. And it was okay. The music is fairly monotonous. He’s got his favorite chords and riffs. Mostly he’s singing about love.
At this point, I leaned over and told my cousin that probably 90% of the people in the room had lost their virginity to at least one of these songs.
And with that bit of rudeness, my night started to change.
I’d never heard any of this music before but the audience knew it all. And were singing along. Rapt. And, I kid you not, the more I looked at them, the more they started to look younger. Like the vital and lusty people they were in 1972 when “Clair” was such a hit.
Which is when I started to get…depressed. And began to realize that mixed in with all this nostalgia was a ton of loss (which is of course what nostalgia is all about, which is why it’s such a complicated and fertile emotion). Nostalgia for vitality, yeah, but for people, too. If you start looking at the comments associated with pretty much any O’Sullivan song on youtube, you start to see things like this:
And this:
None of which I knew while I was in there belting out “alone again, naturally” at the top of my lungs, repressing what I knew would be hysterical sobbing if I let it.
Even this super weird performance I find depressing (is he lip syncing? why is he dancing like that? why does he have no rhythm?).
My point being—what is my point. I guess something mundane about music being a portal to a certain when and where and that I just had a birthday and am morbidly obsessed with getting old and also, my boss just recommended to me a book called HAGITUDE about women in their second chapters of life, the worst part being that I actually bought it! Do you smell a Substack coming about HAGITUDE? Maybe I need to read it while listening to Gilbert O’Sullivan.
Have a nice weekend, friends. And welcome to my new subscribers. Consider this newsletter little more than reassuring evidence of at least one person out there struggling along, doing her best, and mostly enjoying it. *Mostly.*
What a surprise - thank you for the enjoyable afternoon and, in answer to your question, "yes."