The dream of Tuesday morning. I’m with Harpy and we’re downtown, a version of downtown that I had visited before: newsstands and magazine stores which are few and far between these days. I was going to some sort of reunion and Harpy was accompanying me up to a point, then he was going to split.

While in the altered downtown I was at a newsstand, talking to the guy behind the counter, and asked if he had Gauloises. To my surprise, he did and found a box. He was selling me 3 out of 6 packs of Gauloises at a buck a piece. I wanted to buy the whole box of 6 but realized I had nothing to carry the 6 packs with and bought 3.

Then we were at a bar where Harpy knew some of the people and I was antsy, wanting to go to the reunion. Leaving the bar I was in a part of Lodi that I really hadn’t been to in over 40 years. Then the alarm went off. I did ask Harpy why he dropped off of the social media and he gave some vague answer that he never really left, just wasn’t posting, only lurking.

Bill came home last night and was quite a zombie. Barely comprehensible. Within 5 minutes he was driving me crazy and 20 minutes after that he was off to bed where he was unable to stay asleep claiming to be over-tired which is a thing.

A few hours later. Bill is awake and bus driving me insane. I once again gathered my steps walking through Hoboken. I hoped that Bill would accompany me but opted to stay home, having been away from the couch for 5 days. And it was cold out.

As I posted in the video yesterday, if you keep moving and have a place to go to, you should be alright. The sad part is, not everyone has a place to go to. And in the cold of winter that is difficult.

Last night I downloaded Spalding Gray’s ‘Swimming to Cambodia’. I tried to cast it to the TV for Bill and I to watch but it was not in sync and though the time difference was just a few seconds I found it maddening and could not deal with it.

Bill stepped up and hooked up the DVD player. To do that he had to unplug the Apple TV thing behind the TV. We rarely watch Apple TV, I think the only show we watched was Ted Lasso which was excellent and I could not find anything that was so enjoyable to watch, despite recommendations from family and friends.

Spalding Gray was an inspiration for what I have planned for a 2025 project. My first contact with Spalding was seeing his posters in the subway in the 1980s for Swimming to Cambodia, Terrors of Pleasure, and a few other pieces that were being performed at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center.

I saw a few of them then, at least the ones I mentioned. My enthusiasm carried into my barbacking days at Maxwell’s and had a few co-workers and friends see some of the shows with me. Things were less expensive then, and seeing a show a few times was affordable. My brother Frank and I saw Swimming to Cambodia at the Performing Garage, but not the filmed performance by Jonathan Demme.

I crossed paths with Spalding two times after that. Once when I was working at a bookstore in Soho where Spalding was doing a reading and the other time when Spalding was at a preview screening of Monster in a Box. Both times my eyes locked with Spalding and it was somewhat intense. I never spoke to him though.

A few years later when Bill and I were starting out, we went to see Spalding at PS 122. It was a few years after Spalding was in a terrible accident in Ireland and was severely injured. He was not the same Spalding Gray that I saw and crossed paths with in the past. He was a ghost of his former self. I had a clue since I read an article about him in a magazine shortly before the PS 122 appearance.

Bill didn’t know and a few audience members didn’t know either. One woman seated next to us asked if we knew what happened and I explained the magazine article. The woman said she felt so sad for him that she wanted to go up to him and hug him. It ended tragically for Spalding sometime after that and I would rather not get into it since it still affects me to this day.

But Spalding Gray was an inspiration to me, one that I hope to honor with whatever I plan to do with the video blog going down the line. Watching Swimming to Cambodia this afternoon was fun and still inspiring. It would not be the same but his influence and concerts will carry forth I hope.