Who listens to Luciano Pavarotti while riding a motorcycle on Kauai? I do and trust me, this isn’t some backdoor intellectual snobbery. I grew up thinking opera was for older, more cerebral listeners and never imagined I would ever tolerate it. My father was an immigrant, God help us all, from somewhere in Palestine. My childhood memories are of him, sitting in the living room and listening to operas, recorded on 78’s. There was a Sunday afternoon national radio show, featuring live operas from the Met, which he always listened to.
I am a product of over forty years in NYC and when you are from The City, you never qualify names like the Met, because “everyone” knows what you’re talking about. It is actually the Metropolitan Opera House. I will forever tell people I am from New York because that is what you say when you are from The City.
I am a champion of change because it happens whether you like it or not. I think it was at the onset of my forties when my musical palette became increasingly colorful. I grew up on Rock ’n Roll, even before Rock Around The Clock.. Music has at times kept the fabric of my life from shredding, my spiritual Coat of Many Colors. My love of music has opened wide and long ago I just gave into it and now shamelessly love it all. However, I had no idea what a voice like Pavarotti’s would sound like, as it harmonized with the loud chorus of the wind. It was magic and that will have to do.
I started the day with an idea for a piece called SonofaRich, which I will write about, as soon as I get this motorcycle-music thing out of the way. I thought for a long while about what to call my whole writing effort, my blog. There is something that happens, where the mind and the machine orbit the road just ahead and disappear into each other. I had many moments like that today, while riding with a posse of nearly one hundred bikes. The circumstances of the ride are too much of a distraction from the business at hand. However, the combined energy of so many true bike lovers is palpable and smiles are epidemic.
I found myself not following the pack today, ignoring group biker etiquette. Out of respect for your group, you move when it moves and not before or after. The day was like a magic carpet ride for me and here I am, wanting to share it with you.
On this Sunday afternoon, I am back home after another perfect ride. At this moment, Otis Redding is singing Good To Me. The day didn’t start out with music or a ride in mind. I had already scribbled notes about Donald Trump and myself and was going to come back here and start writing. Riding your motorcycle on a beyond, perfect day, weaving in and out of a large group of bikers, while the music of your life serenades, is too hard to ignore and I couldn’t.
Donald and I are about the same age, a year apart. We both grew up in Queens, NY. He grew up in Jamaica Estates, an exclusive enclave of big homes and Cadillacs. During the Second World War and the immediate decades since, a class of super wealthy people began to walk amongst us. I grew up on the other side of Union Turnpike, much smaller homes and streets of attached houses, filled with folks, who began populating the once famous, Middle Class.
Donald’s father, Fred, the son of immigrants, made his money by developing apartment complexes outside of Manhattan. He made millions and was dogged by accusations that he discriminated against Blacks as tenants. Fred directly created today’s Trump empire. My father sold fine foods, like caviar, to retailers around the country and ultimately failed at the business. This certainly precipitated his death from a heart attack at fifty-four, when I was only nine.
From the beginning, our lives have been quite different. On the basis that I wouldn’t change a single thing from my past, I did just fine back then. Our house was paid off by an insurance policy, but there was not a penny to be found. Ida, my mother, was unbelievable, taking on the role of single, working mother, at a time when there was no precedent. While I didn’t grow up in poverty, I felt the fear of it. Donald grew up in a world of privilege.
Trump is the perfect off spring of my parents’ generation. As immigrants or first generation Americans, they came to this land of promise, the American Dreamers. Some of them ended up making huge sums of money, with subsequent generations growing up in distorted environments. Donald is the poster child for this ruling class, our very own, home-grown oligarchy, people who realized Their Dream, which has now turned into Our Nightmare.
I’ve got a quick Buddha story for you. Around 2,500 years ago, he grew up in the palace of Indian royalty. He was shielded from life outside, but at age 19, he left it all behind to wander amongst the people. Siddhartha ultimately became the Buddha and the full embodiment of compassion.
We have a huge divide in our country between the relatively small number of super wealthy families and the rest of us. The people living in the hermetically sealed environment of excess are controlling our lives and they are ill equipped to do so because they wouldn’t dream of leaving their palaces of luxury.
Our White House is now a private palace and my neighbor from the other side of Union Turnpike is living proof of the divide. We are stupid pawns in a battle between Left and Right they have fueled, distracting all of us from their selfish addictions at everyone else’s expense.