They say it's your birthday

They say it's your birthday, and today it is -- mine, that is, as well as Levi's in St. Catharine's and Lou Reed's, who should be living in New York, I'd guess, though he may have moved on to a nicer meteorological climate at this time in his life. Must be Dr. Seuss's too from the look of Google this morning. Levi might have turned three today, though I'm not sure since I don't really know him -- it's just that his parents are friends of my son and daughter-in-law, and they went to his party yesterday because it was Sunday and a good day for a party -- and Lou is 65 today, a year ahead of me, and I hope he is fine. I wonder if he and Laurie Anderson are still friends (you decide: look here). I have to admit that when I first heard about the two of them, I felt some small pangs (that's the word we use, isn't it?), some small pangs of jealousy. That's because I had for years carried a secret crush on her, inspired by her voice and the quick mind behind her lyrics and (of course) a photo of her, albeit about 30 years younger, on one of her album covers.

I took two cartons of albums to a used record store on Friday. I had already sold our turntable on Kijiji because we hadn't used it in more than a decade, and now it was time to get rid of the albums. Laurie A. was in there, as well as several of the albums I bought right after I moved to Vancouver in 1966 and joined the Columbia Record Club, lured by their offer of 12 record albums for one cent. Those were the days when you didn't worry about commitments to buy four records a year or whatever it was that Columbia wanted you to agree to, and there were enough records on their list, which featured as I remember tiny coloured pictures of each album cover, to make me take the time to join. I should be clear that when I say you didn't worry, I didn't necessarily mean you, my invisible reader, but rather the collective "you" of the person I was becoming and of the people I knew and spent time with back in that place and time. It was a very attractive offer from Columbia, and not just because of the price (which was right, of course!); those little pictures on the brochure were something special! So I checked off the little boxes on the list, based on the names of albums or artists I wanted to own as well as on the miniature jewels of the album covers.

When I went through the box on Friday I still had a very scuffed Blonde on Blonde double album I had got from that order, as well as a newer cleaner copy, Bringing it All Back Home, Otis Redding Sings Blue (this one had the amazing cut of I've Been Lovin You Too Long with its incredible brass crescendos -- I think that's the right word for those rising waves of sound -- that carry his lovely lamenting voice almost to the edge of what is possible to express), December's Children, and the Best of the Supremes and of the Temptations. There may have been more, but that's half of my twelve from Columbia more than 42 years ago. I don't know what I thought I'd get for them, and the guy at the store said he'd try to look at them on the weekend if things got quieter. They must have because he phoned me Saturday morning to say that he couldn't use any of them, some were badly worn or warped on the edges they'd stood on and some of the covers were mouldy and I needed to get them out of there, so I'll probably pick them up today and say another good-bye to my old and improperly stored vinyl. They may be no good for anything, at least in his store, but they were for me nice touchstones of some times and places. I still love the memory of those little pictures in the brochure, and I've pretty much gotten over those pangs from the Laurie and Lou thing by now.

They say it's your birthday, said the Beatles, and they had a separate song for this particular one. Who would have thought that I would still have it in my head when I actually was 64? Well I am and I do, it feels pretty good to be here, and it's nowhere near as old as I used to think it was.