I’m not a Twitter guy. I tried it for a while, when I first started
this blog. I put out a tweet to
summarize what I’d blogged about. There,
I tweeted. I was using it as some kind
of supplementary promotion and it all felt silly and forced. To join the app, you’re forced to pick five
people you follow. I don’t know how I
chose, what I chose, but I recall a menu, I recall a few selections.
For no reason other
than because his name appeared and I’m a fan, I clicked on Sonny Rollins as a
person to “follow.” I completely forgot
about this and my Twitter account in general.
Twitter sends me emails as I don’t read tweets, unless they appear
quoted in a New York Times articles ex-lazyboy-cathdra from our commander in chief .
They all show up in the “social” bin of my email folder and I
categorically ignore them. But yesterday
I spied one by Sonny that made me look again.
A New York City
councilman had proposed to rename the Williamsburg Bridge, The Sonny Rollins
Bridge. I support that. And soon I was typing one note to three friends none of
whom had probably spoken with each other in decades, but all of whom had spent
some good time with me there, living next to that bridge on the corner of Pitt
St. and Delancey.
If I remember the
liner notes correctly, Sonny lived in a place, likely not far from my own flat, in
1962 and was sensitive to the fact that a woman he lived next door to had just had a baby. Gentleman that he was he made his way over to the great structure and with no one but the city and the river for company stood on the walkway and shed. The title song of the album uncannily approximates the start-stop progression of cars racing across, then slowing to
a crawl in rhythm with the traffic lights at either end. Then,
from underground, the J or the M Train or the Jim Hall train, reluctantly pulls its way up and over
the bridge.
No one will ever
rename the Brooklyn Bridge. Something about the two b's. The
Manhattan Bridge and the Williamsburg names are less sacred though. Sonny was born and bred in Manhattan. Why not
rechristen the structure in the great tenor’s honor, while he is still around
to welcome the distinction. One can imagine quite a set for that day, up there on the walkway.
Monday, 10/23/17
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