His Fear Made Me Feel

Dumb-dee-dumb-dumb.  I had a bad driver today.  He meant well.  But this was injury, heaped upon insult as we drove to Wang Jing, and I suggested this young man needed to check the address once again.  He took a look and suggested he had it under control.  We drove on.  I talked and talked and talked on the phone until I saw we were heading down the east second ring road.   “Hey, can you confirm were heading to this address.” “But you are going to the Hyatt, right?”  "Which Hyatt?  I never said this Hyatt."  We just added 30 minutes to our trip, needlessly. 

It just is.  Deal.  You'll be late.  We went up the East Second Ring Road and on into Wang Jing where we’d been before.  “Are you sure you know where you’re heading now?”  I went back to having phone calls.  Ahh, but he didn’t.  We got back to Wang Jing and he realized, when I finally put a colleague on who was at the meeting that been underway for forty-five minutes that we ought to be down in Dongzhimen.  For a moment I lost it.  And he was a bit terrified because he knew he’d screwed up twice and had this big laowai in the back who was might do God-knows-what.    

His fear made me feel foolish.  It was only a meeting.  No one’s life was at stake.  And when he confirmed that he’d turned the meter off after the realization of the first screw up, I took pains to reassure him that I bore him no ill will.  He kept apologizing.  I did my best to make it clear that it didn’t matter.  And, of course, it didn’t really. 

Trouble, my favorite WFMU DJ is so wonderful.  It’s the best way to discover odd old things that generally aren’t jazz, or classical, or blues, but could be just about anything else.  Women are wonderfully, disproportionately profiled and streaming an old show of hers from 2014, I heard something I liked and immediately checked the playlist.  The Fly Girls: Da’ Bratz from Da Ville, had a song called “Welcome 2 Brownsville” and that could only be my Brownsville, back in East Brooklyn. 

Recorded in 2009, these gals might have been the young infants in the day care center at High School Redirection in 1993.  In fact, they probably weren’t even born yet, as they were fourteen when this recorded.  “Looking behind you when you walk” they use that old line from Kool G Rap that about sums up the only guiding mantra I ever had, when forced to walk quickly through Brownsville.  I’ll have to share this with my girls though I don’t know if this rough-cut will work for them.  Thank you, once again, Trouble.   Great work at musical archeology.

Monday 9/17/18