CARMEN : 'COUNTING FROM ZERO'

252. CARMEN : 'Counting From Zero'- (nyc, 1967) :

The wasn't any register too low for the voice I was hearing - he was without a doubt spectacularly adapted for basso-profundo roles and stuff I never cared about but whatever it would have meant to a normal person meant nothing to me : I found that I disliked in no order opera singing chant and vocal music in general and thought that the people (people endless people) who did it were vain and boring yet I couldn't tell why but the simple fact of being in the middle of some art-capitol sickness-center of the entertainment universe which NYC apparently prided itself on brought forth every amplitude of that very value I detested - any drugstore chanteuse could turn out - I'd found - to be the neighborhood whore on the very next block - and that went for men and women both since it apparently didn't differ much : an entire cavalry of transvestite and hooker-types would parade the planks along the waterfront nightly and everyone in touch knew both exactly what they wanted and where to go for it all - the tired and work-weary crowd which left the docks by 7pm would probably often have been surprised at what went on there by midnight and beyond - witnessed only by the night-crews and cops and taxi-people who frequented these dark and under-the-trestle places : roustabouts and bums too I'd suppose and (as well) the itinerant observers homeless types and walkers like me - anyone without an agenda : these things went on well into day-breaks and mornings and the few diners along the waterfront were kept vivid and happy with breakfasts at all hours and coffees muffins teas and whatever else - passed out people staggered people dead people and hungry people : each and everyone tried to find a dawn-solace in the simple race for time they'd partake in and every new runaway who arrived at the water's edge took the place of another who'd just failed or died or left or been locked up - it was simply like that and no one questioned it - and I always thought it quaint how such a perversion or turnabout on the old Statue of Liberty Ellis island crap had taken over the downtown waterfronts and wouldn't all those pious and sad/sorry immigrant types of a hundred years before be sorry or surprised now at what they saw : where previously at the docks they'd have been scapped up (if they were free and able and sound in body) by Civil War recruiters and field-managers hungry for bodies and men (and women) with false promises fake money and stories of ideal and intrigue (all twisted) now what once found most often were needle-pushers drug-lords whores addicts and aimless losers down on their bad luck (already twice over) sleeping in canyons of gutters in overnight dense soups of shit puke and piss in any order you'd like - narrow-faced whores plying their trade in broken-down trucks and wagon-backs and the murderous organized-crime types hauling their fingers of doom from any secreted and purloined cargo they'd just brought in under cover of darkness (a darkness which - really - never ended) and sometimes the very best job to have was the job of mortician or coroner or at the very least the guy who went around in the meat wagon and picked up the rubbish left for people like that : but anyway I digress....this opera-singer guy was something else indeed and before he finally disappeared he'd made a lot of friends down there - by throwing money enough about getting his way whenever he wanted it and singing mysteriously to stars and moon and sky any beleaguered aria or opera-sodden tune he'd want 'just practicing the chords Sonny just practicing the chords...'