A raga consists of at least five notes, and each raga provides the musician with a musical framework within which to improvise. Like eyes of the dead, puddles from an earlier rain mirrored the pale, lifeless sky of another November dawn. Shivering in a thin, parachute-silk jacket, collar up, red beret atop his curly mane, twenty-five-year-old Angelo streaked south …
In times of distress destiny often tosses us a lifeline and mine came in the guise of the opening of a new Italian restaurant, “Formagio’s,” tucked beneath the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge, which I couldn’t help noticing as I trudged home in the chill dusk after my panic attack atop the bridge. “Formagio’s! Formagio’s!” …
In the fall of 1978 I wound up on the mental ward of King’s County Hospital in Brooklyn, after attempting to kill myself. (That’s how I came to bump into the aforementioned serial killer, David Berkowitz, Son of Sam.) Ironically, I unconsciously used the same faulty method my literary idol, Henry Miller, attempted when he …
Zeke dropped me off at the club, staying long enough to get me past the gauntlet of men at the bar, alone and in clusters, turning to glare openly at me as we entered. Some – sipping drinks, laughing, gesticulating, faces lit up from within – were arrested mid-gesture, like deer caught in the headlights, …
In the early months of my arrival in New York in the late 60s, I learned that a college friend, Parker, whom I hadn’t seen in a few years, a conga drummer in a jazz group, was playing at a club up in Harlem. Still in my delusional stage as a writer collecting life experiences, …
I had come to the big city to serve an apprenticeship in life – and fill the void of experience I lacked- so that I might have something to write about. I was ready to suffer for my art, but not too much. Little did I know the depths to which I would sink. My …
