Coinkydink, Part I

There is a friend of mine--we'll call him Jim--who has been avoiding me for months, and I can't say that I blame him. Whenever our paths cross, some mildly weird stuff starts to unfold, absolutely meant to kick his ass.

We were low-key e-mail buddies who had not seen each other since high school and really never knew each other until Facebook. One day he posted about the movie Wings of Desire, which is one of my favorites of all time but had forgotten about--in brief, it's about angels watching over the citizens of Berlin in 1987, before the Wall came down, and one of the angels falls in love with a beautiful, lonely trapeze artist who wears angel wings for her performances and has a liking for the music of Nick Cave--and the next day while in Five Guys with the kids waiting for our food, thinking of the movie and how I must get the DVD and watch it, I looked up and there was Jim, twenty-five years older than when I saw him last, smiling in recognition.

Jim said the whole thing was odd--he had been watching the movie the other day, after just purchasing the Criterion DVD realease, and the next day found out that Rowland S. Howard--one of the musicians featured in the film, along with Nick Cave (and one of the several painfully skinny guys playing guitar with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths)--had died.

 There was some vague talk about having coffee sometime, which didn't materialize before the next coincidence came up. I had just finished reading a novel by Chuck Klosterman and right away thought of Jim--Jim being deeply into music of all kinds, and Klosterman having made his living writing about music, sort of the American equivilent of Nick Hornby--so I e-mailed him, "Hey, check this author out," and he replied that he would. The next day (repeat: THE NEXT DAY), he visited the books-for-sale table at the library, just for something to do, and there on the top of the heap was one of the nonfiction, cultural commentary, music-focused books by Chuck Klosterman.

Jim e-mailed me about this in wonderment, and we both agreed it was some sort of sign. Jim had been professionally stuck for years, working in the far, retail-centered fringes of the music industry his whole adult life, with a little mix-DJing thrown in there now and then but nothing that had lead to anywhere. He wanted this year to be the year of change, but didn't know what to do or how to go about doing it.

I happened to notice that Nick Cave was coming to town, playing a show at the House of Blues with his side project Grinderman. I got tickets for me and Jim, and we had coffee at Atomic Cafe in Beverly one sunny fall afternoon a month or so before the show, and talked about where we were in life and where we would like to be. Jim suggested we then get some lunch somewhere, so we left the cafe and ended up across the street at a nice little joint called Wrapture that sells excellent wraps, salads, and that sort of thing. Jim talked about his DJing, and some mixes he'd come up with, and how he had a copy of one in his car and would give it to me before we parted, which made me happy, for his taste is vast and eclectic. There was a pause in our conversation, and Jim said suddenly, "Wait. Wait. The music they're playing. I know this," and he got up and spoke to the guy behind the counter, and returned to where we were sitting with an incredulous smile.

"The music they are playing is a mix CD I made a few years ago. I can't believe it," he said.

"What?!" I exclaimed. "Did they see you come in and then put it on?"

"No, they had no idea. I just about never come in here, they didn't realize it was me until I said something."

"Wow...the Universe is trying to get your attention, I think."

"Yeah, no shit! My mind is completely blown!"

The Grinderman show was short but intense, completely worth paying the babysitter for. Nick Cave was looking not too much like the guy singing "From Her to Eternity" in Wings of Desire anymore, but he hadn't lost a trick. Jim and I had a great time.

I e-mailed him, "We should be each other's ass-kickers! Isn't it obvious? There are things I want to do but drag my feet, and you too...we can be each other's 'Life Coaches'. Whaddaya think?"

"Sounds perfect!" Jim wrote back, and I pretty much have never heard from him again. He's still on Facebook, and he still has the same cruddy job, and he is still posting beautiful music nobody has never heard of but should...

...and the Universe is still patiently waiting for him.

(Jim is passionately into Icelandic musicians. I don't have the savvy to put all the little lines and squigglies above the letters to type her name properly, but below is the song "Innundir Skinni" by Olof Arnalds. I have zero clue what it's about, not knowing one tiny little whit of Icelandic, but it soothes, and the video is simply gorgeous. I have the CD, and generally can't tolerate listening to it in city traffic during my workdays--much too incongruous with my surroundings--but I had it repeating as I drove around Provincetown last April. It went very well with the quietness of the dunes. (See my "Provincetown" post for details of the peace I found on that solitary, overnight trip I took in mid-April before the tourists had descended on that part of the world.))