Day 16

Today I met one of the most, intelligent and entertaining people I’ve ever come across. His name is Barry, older Jewish guy from Brooklyn. I forget his Hebrew name, but it’s meaning is Bear, so he took on Barry for his English name. He appeared like some sort of apparition, I didn’t even see him walk up. Suddenly he’s asking me if know any Fred Neil songs. Strange because I know very little of his music, but another guy I used to see sometimes in the park off of Burnside in Portland, Brian was his name, really hard on his luck, no money to his name, living in a shelter with all the drug addicts and he didn’t do any of that shit but he needed a place to sleep and he was tired, real tired, tired of it all, saying he was almost to the point where it just wasn’t worth it, this whole thing, this fucked up life and I tried to talk him out of it, but he was just in that way, but Brian knew all about music, an encyclopedia, he knew every Stones song and could tell you about every fingerpicking bluesmen. He knew African, Indian music, it went on and on. Where are you Brian? I hope you’re making it. Anyway, Brian told me Fred Neil was one of the greatest folk singers. He’s probably most well known for writing a song that was in the movie Midnight Cowboy, “Everybody’s talking about me, they don’t hear a word I’m saying…” He was a big influence on the New York folk scene in the 60’s, but fell of the map, moved to south Florida and then made his life mission saving dolphins.

Barry’s probably around 60, in good shape, very animated. He has a thick deep, New York accent. He tells me he does voice-over work, commercials, movies.
“Oh, shit,” I say. “Are you the guy that does the previews? A man, a woman, alone in the world, against all odds.”

Barry laughs and says he does some of that. He then goes into a Rod Serling impersonation, squints his eyes and says, “No, I would do it like this. A guitar player, the troubadour of the tunnel, a mere eight dimes in his case, when all of the sudden, it turned into gold.” He sounded just like Rod. I started to sing out the theme music for the Twilight Zone. All we needed was the backwards flying clock.
Barry says, “That guy was a genius. He used to dictate all his stuff to some hot young woman while sitting in a recliner next to a pool with a martini in his hand. Talk about imagination.”

Barry moved to Los Angeles in the late 60’s along with his brother. They wrote songs for some Motown artists, big-time artists like Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder. He sings another song of his he wrote that he had in mind for Lou Rawls. I can’t remember the words, but I can definitely picture it as an R&B hit.

He has an uncanny ability to recite lyrics and poems in their entirety, Buddhist quotes, he talks in this cool cat-like rhythm that brings to mind the Beats. He recites a tongue and cheek song he wrote about a country guy roaming around New York. He then goes into Yeats, Dickens, the Dalai Lama. He’s an encyclopedia of knowledge. Barry’s also is working on a screenplay and goes into detail about all the different characters in it. He asks me not to tell anyone about the story, so I’ll leave out the details, but he has me laughing as he goes into acting out each character, as if he’s performing a one-man show on Broadway.

We get to talking about kids. I’m telling him how they seem to really like the guitar, and also about their lack of inhibitions, how they feel music truthfully and innocently, which as we grow older sometimes we lose. He tells me about a project he did in a school in Harlem called “No Adults Left Behind,” a spoof off the “No Child Left Behind,” law from a few years back. In it kids, maybe 1st or 2nd grade, interview one another discussing the deepest of philosophical questions. What is love? What makes you happy? What makes you sad? Why do people fight? Why do people hate each other? Kids respond with the simplest, honest answers. It’s a great video. Go to You Tube and type in No Adults Left Behind.

Barry goes on to tell me about mind expansion, how sight actually contains seven different senses. It’s all a little over my head, but I find it quite interesting. He’s really into the original meaning of words. Etymology. How words original meanings definitions change over time into the words that we have now. We talk about dreams and Eastern thought. He says that Hindu religion believes that music creates lights and the Jewish believe that for an angel to move from one place to another you have to sing it a song. He’s an ever-flowing fountain of words. At one point a group of about fifty women dressed in white, all shapes and sizes and races, files through the tunnel, in single file, doing some sort of yelling singing and dancing. Barry places his hands together and bows in Buddhist fashion. He then looks at me and shakes his head as if to say, “Isn’t life fascinating?”

As he stands at the beginning of the tunnel I tell him he should set up shop there. Be the riddler. Folks can’t pass through unless people answer with the right answer. He laughs and sings another song he says he wrote. It’s all about taking the “high road.” An hour and a half later, Barry the beat mystic, the Buddhist philosopher, heads home.