Dictator of Panama, taken out by the US army on 3 January 1990. After being blasted for three days by hard core, heavy metal music—including, of all things Van Halen’s song Panama.
Which is what happened to me this weekend. Only in this case it wasn’t an army.
It was a pizzeria.
And a very good one, as I cordially told the owner on Friday night.
OK, I’ll tell the story straight. Puerto Rico has a number of good restaurants, and wants to crack into the food tourism industry. Yes, it exists. People apparently travel just to eat. Well, why shouldn’t they?
And many of the restaurants are on my street: Calle Fortaleza. And so the idea of a festival sprung up. Called neither very originally or accurately the SoFo Fest—Fortaleza runs east / west, so it should be WeFo—it was a success.
And I liked it…
…in the beginning.
People sat outside talking, laughing, eating good food. Music, too. Guys with guitars, people singing trios from the fifties, an occasional bomba y plena. Nice!
But year after year, the music got louder.
And this year it was insufferable.
On Friday, I could bear it no longer. I went into the pizzeria, asked to speak to the owner, gave him my hand, introduced myself. I told him where I lived. I told him I had eaten his pizza, and that it was excellent. Then I told him the music was too loud.
He turned it down after the song had stopped.
Great!
The next night, the music was just as loud.
I was furious. And became more so when I went—again—to talk to the owner.
I saw a cop, dressed all in black, listening to the music.
“¿No tenemos un código de orden público?”
Yes, I was screaming. You had to, to be heard.
I addressed him as caballero, a term of respect in Puerto Rico. I begged him to come into my apartment, to hear for himself how loud it was.
He placed his hand on my chest.
I was stunned, but had the sense to walk away.
Hardly police brutality. Black guys in Washington DC get it a lot worse. It wasn’t a nightstick rammed up my ass.
It was also the first time I’ve been touched by a cop.
“I AM LEAVING THIS PLACE—I CANNOT LIVE HERE!”
That’s what I yelled at Raf.
Whose nerves were also on edge. Se we had a fight. And I woke on Sunday not sure whether I was going to book a one-way ticket to Chicago.
I took a walk instead. And I’ve taken a walk today.
Years ago, when I worked on a psychiatry unit on the night shift, we had a patient that everybody dreaded—very big, very violent, very unpredictable. There were three of us working: two older women, and I. Guess who got to deal with him?
Nothing happened—not even a hand on a chest. But I went home shaking with fear, tossed in bed for several hours, got up and…
…took a walk.
(I may be revealing some coping strategies in this post.)
It helped somewhat, but my hands were still shaky, for the rest of the day.
I tell you this because today, I can barely type.
And I tell you this whole story because I’m tired of being the outsider, being the different one, being always in the wrong place. You know, I’m a white guy, but I swear I would change race and sex, were it possible to do so. That’s how apparently ardent I am to be different.
And I thought I had come to terms with it. Yeah, it gives me insights that the crowd, the sheeple (as the British call it) don’t have. But I’m about to type—if I can—the two words I despise the most in the world:
Why me?
If you’ve come this far—and you’re crazy if you have—you deserve something sweet. So here it is, an absolutely gorgeous song by Vaughan Williams, sung by David Daniels, the foremost counter tenor of our time….
This from your friends at Wikipedia:
The United Nations and the European Court of Human Rights have banned the use of loud music in interrogations, but it is still being widely used. The term torture is sometimes used to describe the practice. While it is acknowledged by US interrogation experts that it causes discomfort, it has also been characterized by them as causing no "long term effects."[1]
Yeah?
What about divorce?
Yeah?
What about divorce?
Orpheus with his Lute Made Trees
Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves, when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Everything that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing, die.
William Shakespeare
Orpheus with his lute made trees,
And the mountain tops that freeze,
Bow themselves, when he did sing:
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung; as sun and showers
There had made a lasting spring.
Everything that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their heads, and then lay by.
In sweet music is such art,
Killing care and grief of heart
Fall asleep, or hearing, die.
William Shakespeare
