Maybe This Year…

“I was out on the radio just starting to change / Somewhere out in America it’s starting to rain.”

I took the E to Spring Street as the sun fell to the West. Bone tired. I ducked into 121 Varick where the doorman held a 45 pound box of 5000 “Summer’s Gone” postcards. I dragged them up and down infinite flights of stairs and the 8 blocks from the 53d Street ACE station thinking of you, my friends, my audience, wondering if you ever thought about just how granular, how manual, the labor for this rocknroll fantasy gets.

I wished, for just a minute, that a bunch of interns at some record label somewhere was doing all this work, all the labeling and stamping and sending. Wondering if it would amount to anything anyway. Up the stairs, sweating, arms trembling, I pushed the big round “Play” button on my answering machine and there she was, Vicki from The Washington Square News, “NYU’s student paper,” she said.

And that was that. It was all worth it. You’re out there. You’re listening. You’re reading. You’re ready. This tree won’t fall in an empty wood.

“Maybe this year will be better than the last.”