Drink Up Baby Down
Bare with me now please - because, as I write this, I am walking the thin line between being tipsy and awkwardly frank, weirdly passionate and completely uncouth.
But I just used the word "uncouth" so I think it's gonna be okay.
This is what happens when you, lowly undergrad, attend a prestigious lecture and sample more than three glasses of wine at the post-show reception. The guest lecturer in question? Pete Hamill. Yeah...like...Pete Hamill, Pete Hamill. It's okay if you don't know him. But you should. Especially if you're a New Yorker.
So it's like this: I'm standing in this fantastic space holding my notebook and second glass of wine (white, pinot grigio, I'm guessing about $7) and I'm marveling at the impossibly small hor' doeuvres. A peice of toast - one inch by one inch in dimension with a tiny dot of "tomatoes" on it: the so-called bruschetta. I am not liking this. Nevertheless, I am waiting around and finally I see that Hamill has entered, He begins to sign his $20 books. Of course I bought a damn book. How could I resist it, being an aspiring writer and all. Plus I read A Drinking Life last summer. The guy was fresh in my head and owns words in such a way that every one of them, skillfully tripping onto his page, should be placed among his personal possessions...for an age.
I stepped up to the neat table and the man greeted me. I had been fretting about the idea that he would smell wine on my breath (he wrote a memoir about how alcohol almost ruined his life) and invalidate me but I soon realised that he hardly cared.
Still coherent and intelligent enough to form complex ideas, was I.
Haha...anyway - It was amazing.
He signed the book and spoke to me of the promise, romance and truth in his New York and when I asked him about how he reconciled the good with the bad, he was very honest and tried not to build a thesis statement. Unhappily for him, when a guy is that good with words and, more importantly, that good at applying the intense emotions, training and experience that lie behind them...you're gonna come away with a sparkling quotation that seems as if it will change your world.
Hamill left me with the confident knowledge of why New York City is so great. New York represents purpose or, at the very least, the hope upon hope that we can one day attain it.
I can't try to pretend that it means much to anyone else. But I wish that you could've been there with me, to have that experience.
But I just used the word "uncouth" so I think it's gonna be okay.
This is what happens when you, lowly undergrad, attend a prestigious lecture and sample more than three glasses of wine at the post-show reception. The guest lecturer in question? Pete Hamill. Yeah...like...Pete Hamill, Pete Hamill. It's okay if you don't know him. But you should. Especially if you're a New Yorker.
So it's like this: I'm standing in this fantastic space holding my notebook and second glass of wine (white, pinot grigio, I'm guessing about $7) and I'm marveling at the impossibly small hor' doeuvres. A peice of toast - one inch by one inch in dimension with a tiny dot of "tomatoes" on it: the so-called bruschetta. I am not liking this. Nevertheless, I am waiting around and finally I see that Hamill has entered, He begins to sign his $20 books. Of course I bought a damn book. How could I resist it, being an aspiring writer and all. Plus I read A Drinking Life last summer. The guy was fresh in my head and owns words in such a way that every one of them, skillfully tripping onto his page, should be placed among his personal possessions...for an age.
I stepped up to the neat table and the man greeted me. I had been fretting about the idea that he would smell wine on my breath (he wrote a memoir about how alcohol almost ruined his life) and invalidate me but I soon realised that he hardly cared.
Still coherent and intelligent enough to form complex ideas, was I.
Haha...anyway - It was amazing.
He signed the book and spoke to me of the promise, romance and truth in his New York and when I asked him about how he reconciled the good with the bad, he was very honest and tried not to build a thesis statement. Unhappily for him, when a guy is that good with words and, more importantly, that good at applying the intense emotions, training and experience that lie behind them...you're gonna come away with a sparkling quotation that seems as if it will change your world.
Hamill left me with the confident knowledge of why New York City is so great. New York represents purpose or, at the very least, the hope upon hope that we can one day attain it.
I can't try to pretend that it means much to anyone else. But I wish that you could've been there with me, to have that experience.
This entry was posted
on March 01, 2005 at 9:44 PM.
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