Wicked

Katherine sipped cold latte at a café table in an outdoor market. The touristy area was crowded for a Monday. Weekend street performers who usually returned to day jobs were in full force, juggling, on unicycles and in top hats. Those painted like bronze statues jerked to life in response to donated coins and bills. Foot traffic was unusually heavy. Out of towners mingled with college kids. Backpacks, baseball caps and baggy jeans abounded.

Her coffee was hot when she arrived an hour earlier. At 49 degrees, the day chilled her beverage almost to the temperature of her blood. Yesterday had been warmer, but yesterday seemed eons ago, and her job with Swiss Air felt like a memory from another lifetime.

She waited for a phone call in the cool sunshine. Her stern demeanor kept strangers at a distance. Even foraging birds knew better than to approach. An aggressor who asked to join her at the table appeared perplexed, even violated at the suddenness with which he found himself alone. Without a word, she stood and moved to a less congested location. Her sunglasses hid dark circles and darting glances.

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I Promise

“Azure,” she says, and then “porch.”

The beach gradually comes into focus. Terns sprint between tide pools on comically thin legs, startling small crabs back into their glistening sandy burrows. The color of the sky and the front of her weathered house are the first images with which she can associate words. Others follow as her head clears.

“Low tide,” she whispers. 

She sits in knee-deep water that will be over her head in a few hours. She faces the shore. Summer heat bakes the sweat and salty air onto her forehead. Water laps gently at her legs. Sand oozes between her tingling toes, circulation impaired by the ties that bind her to a partially submerged chair. Minnows dart beneath the water’s surface, alternately visible in cloudy shadows, hidden by reflected sun.

It is afternoon in the tropics. Lightning flashes in the distance. Roiling hot and cold rivulets of air slap the surface of the ocean and disrupt its gentle rhythm. Gulls and wind chimes are the only sounds for miles. Beach grass sways in the breeze. A crisp envelope on her lap bends beneath her fingers. He has found her.

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Hamlets and Bars

I’ve long insisted that a life crisis is evidence that you simply haven’t been paying attention. But looking in the mirror at graying hair is a singular awakening experience, whereas navigating an auditorium filled with “old people” feels like swimming upstream with a population of decaying salmon. It hurts to see how old we’ve grown.

The average audience age at a 2013 Gordon Lightfoot concert had this effect on me. And honestly, the ghostly apparition who took the stage with his guitar and backup musicians made it clear just how long this troubadour has been writing and singing to a very dedicated, if somewhat eccentric, fan base. It's hard to see our heroes age.

I have been attending Lightfoot shows since the singer was thirty-five, when he was riding high on a second wave of popularity with his Sundown album. Now a frail fragment of his former physical self, he is one of a small group of aging musicians still touring and selling tickets to several generations of fans. And the passage of forty years caused the remnants of my eighteen year old inner child to reach for reading glasses to see “Row E, Seat 1” on my ticket at the charming Pabst theater in Milwaukee.

And then there are those younger fans. Next generations, old souls born out of sync with their own time and longing for a taste of the unparalleled music of the 1970s, or perhaps watching “That Seventies Show” for insight into the journey their parents traveled to get here.

The concert I reference here was attended by a particularly enthusiastic young fan dressed entirely in period attire, sporting an afro (he was white) and drinking far too much at his personal Lightfoot pre-game tailgate. To his credit, he knew the title of every song and most of the lyrics, at one point shouting “Hamlets and Bars” at just the right point and at the top of his lungs. He subjected the audience to slurred outbursts at Gordon right up until the intermission, when he was summarily removed from the concert by two no-nonsense security guards. He wailed in protest, maybe not so much in reaction to the assault as in grief at the realization that he would not be enjoying the second set. As relieved as I was to see him go, I couldn't help but feel sorry for him.

The most recent audience featured a young-sounding female fan shouting repeated pleas from the darkness at the back of the theater to “Give it to me Gordon!” Gordon, ever the gentlemen, continued to strum and sing without comment, but no doubt appreciated the option of an offer to “give it” still, at age 74. He has continued to tour since this performance, strengthening his voice and improving his health, reportedly with daily workouts. His perfectly tuned guitars resonate with a seemingly genetic musical memory stored from decades of shows. Now 81 years old, an album he previously vowed would not happen has in fact been released. Appropriately named "Solo" it features Gordon in the studio with only his guitar but is a collection of previously unreleased tracks, not new material. It is enjoyably reminiscent of collections by other greats, but is no Nebraska. I can't help but wonder if the steady stream of adoring posts by fans on his Facebook page may have added to a renewed vitality in his eighth decade. It is gratifying to realize that I am not the only Lightfoot superfan.

So the show goes on. Old Gord, like Old Dan, in one of his infrequent spoken comments, mentioned that the band plays for ticket sales. He struggled with the high notes, sounding at times like air blown through a whale bone, increasingly nasal with each passing year and in the wake of a near-death aneurysm. But through it all, fans show up for his unique musical tales of life on the Carefree Highway, On The High Seas and in the Early Mornin’ Rain.

We’ll continue to buy tickets as long as you sell them Gordon, popping Tylenol and dragging our aching bones to the nearest venue, settling into our comfy chairs and “waiting for you.”

I could be caught between decks eternally

Waiting for you to ask what's keeping me

The skies of North America are covered in stars

Over factories and farms, over hamlets and bars