I missed a few things I intended to do yesterday- like write a blog post. And do my yoga practice. But I didn’t forget my birthday! It was one of the best ever and I spent much of the day by myself. I had made a carrot cake the night before and yesterday went about making the frosting and decorating it, all to the tune- and visuals- of David Byrne’s amazing musical “American Utopia” which is now on film- and SO worth watching!
I saw it live when it came out in September of 2019 and was absolutely wild about it. I turned the volume way up and danced and sang and stirred butter and cream cheese and confectioner’s sugar and licked the spoon a whole lot- and had the best afternoon. In the eighties and the early nineties one of my birthday rituals was to watch the Jonathan Demme concert film of the Talking Heads “Stop Making Sense”. sometime during the day. I have always loved their music and David Byrne in all his interesting iterations since he has been on his own. I find him and his music fascinating and brilliant. I briefly considered revisiting the past yesterday but then realized I could watch “American Utopia” and it was absolutely the perfect choice. It was almost as exhilarating as seeing it live and the filmwork was fabulous- credit to Spike Lee for that!
This was after I had run downtown to pick up flowers. Right around noon I was just about to start making the frosting when I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. I almost didn’t answer because I have been getting so many calls in the last few weeks about refinancing my vehicle (thanks to an online search which I didn’t realize would lead to a zillion phone calls). Fortunately, I guess because I was in a celebratory mood, I answered. Turned out it was a FedEx guy. He told me he had a delivery of flowers for me but the weather was supposed to get bad and they had been told to stop deliveries except emergencies like medicine. He said. “I could wait til Monday… but it’s flowers and they won’t last!” He was so sweet and said he would meet me downtown if I wanted to pick them up. I told him it was my birthday and maybe one of my sons had sent me flowers? And yes! I would love to pick them up and was so grateful to him for making the effort to call me. He wished me happy birthday about 3 times before I got off the phone and then I headed out to meet him. I really was so touched by his thoughtfulness. It turned out they were a gorgeous bouquet of lilies and roses that my son Nic, his girlfriend Elizabeth and my grandson Jonah had sent me. I adore fresh flowers and between the kindness of the FedEx guy and the thoughtfulness of my son and his family and the most perfect flowers the whole thing got my day off to a great start.
Once my frosting and dancing were done I cleaned myself up and went up to my friends Mahesh and Mukta’s house, up the hill behind where I live, cake in hand. They had cooked a wonderful dinner of dal, sweet potatoes and pasta with kale and shitake mushrooms and then we had the birthday cake.- completely organic and totally delicous- and another very powerful musical experience!
David Bowie’s musical “Lazarus”, which opened on Broadway just a month before he died, was livestreaming last night in the US as a tribute to his passing five years ago- on January 10, 2016, two days after his 69th birthday on January 8 and the release of his 25th studio album, Blackstar. The event will also livestream between tonight and tomorrow night in various locations and at different times across the globe. If you are a Bowie fan it is so well worth seeing. I don’t want to get into the story or a critique or review of it but I will tell you it’s phenomenal- every performance is brilliant- and if you missed it then I would say to pray that it is eventually released on Netflix, Amazon Prime or becomes available as a DVD. You can read about it HERE.
Since I share my birthday with him (yes, I know- Elvis too) and I consider him one of the greatest musical geniuses of my generation, I could not have been more thrilled than to finish off my evening watching this brilliant musical with my two very dear friends. All in all it was a great day and a very memorable birthday. And I am happy to be alive.
“Lazarus” on pause in the background!
Photo of David Bowie by Adam Bielawski, 2008.