Birthday 2021

Last Monday, I was blessed to be able to celebrate another year on this planet. Obviously, these last two years have been trying for all of us, and it’s been hard to remember the celebratory spirit. Fortunately, my wife is a wonderful celebrator of birthdays — especially mine — and she delivered her, as usual, amazing day.

Morning

I had to work on the day since Summer is our busy season. I woke up to an awesome breakfast by the Mrs.

Eggs, Orwasher’s toast & babka, and a likeness of myself in the latté art

Afternoon

After a day of work where I was able to disconnect a little bit early, we had presents time!

I was really thrilled two get two great albums on vinyl, Portishead’s Dummy and Massive Attack’s Mezzanine. I also got a really great vinyl holder, a valet organizer, some sweet new jeans, and an insulated backpack for taking cold snacks on adventures.

I’m tough to get cake for. I love cake, and Lauren’s an excellent baker. She’s baked me many wonderful cakes over the years. But between two people, it’s pretty hard to consume a whole cake, to say nothing of how are we going to store it in our Manhattan refrigerator? The solution this year were delicious cupcakes from Molly’s. Sadly, no longer pictured above are the salted caramel (me) or the lemon meringue (Lauren).

Evening

That evening, Lauren had arranged for us to catch the Isiah Sharkey show at the legendary Blue Note in Greenwich Village.

They’ve been closed until very recently due to the pandemic. Their cozy shoulder-to-shoulder atmosphere wasn’t deemed safe for staff or patron until now.

We arrived down in the Village with a few hours to spare, and dined in a lovely patio (shanty) at Ramen-ya. After, with a spare hour before the show, we ducked into a nearby watering hole and had a beer or two before heading into the club.

Sharkey, a Chicagoan, plays a beautiful, expressive guitar that is completely integrated with his brainstem. There are moments where he’d banter with the audience and human words just failed him or he wanted to accent what he was saying and he’d just play some spontaneous lick on the guitar. With his masterful bona fides established within mere seconds of taking the stage, I knew Lauren had planned a real treat for us. Sharkey plays a cosmic love Afro-hippie transcendent jazz that recalls Coltrane’s Love Supreme, Hendrix’s Axis, Bold as Love, or india.arie, but with a decided and dedicated rooting in the great Chicago blues sound informed by Buddy Guy and church. One of my favorite moments was when Sharkey and his trio did a tender and improvisation-filled cover of the old Hall & Oates tune “Sara Smile.” They just killed with that number.

Afterward, we hopped the train back home and that was another year in the books.

Epilogue

I was really thankful that Lauren had filled my day with music. These days, I can’t really listen to music throughout the day: my brain doesn’t like the split-track and, more practically, I’m often on a video platform. For this reason, while I get recommendations often, I can’t always follow up on them and, sadly, a good number of them go past. But it was a real gift and a real insight by only someone who knows you as well as a spouse might to say: “This is something you enjoy. Stop and give it space to work in you and through you again.” So while it was a wonderful evening, wonderful food, wonderful gifts…the real gift was Lauren returning a bit of something precious of me to myself.