The Fifth Wheel

Ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon Saturday morning. It was my friend (and sometimes bass player) Jeff Domanski’s first long run. We talked almost the entire way from the Coney Island boardwalk to Prospect Park. Then had brunch with he and his wife Kristan, and my brother and his wife Jennifer (who is some six months or so pregnant).

So I was the fifth wheel, which is often the case for me these days, here in my thirties. It gets a little old: people own houses, have babies and spouses. And I live alone with my guitars. In an apartment I’ve rented for eight years. In Hell’s Kitchen.

“Summer’s Gone” is all about that, growing up, reckoning with what wasn’t, what won’t ever be. Not that I knew it at the time. You never really know what the moment’s about when you’re in it. You just gotta’ keep at it, whatever it is.

Take my new pen pal friend, we’ll call her Jane. She found me online at random searching for photos of Smith’s Point. So we started corresponding a little bit. Ends up she’s wrestling — courageously– with Hodgkin’s Disease. But her email isn’t all strum and dirge, it’s optimism. “Here Comes The Sun” was her latest subject line.

Indeed.