Good morning, friend. Happy Friday. How farest thou? I am all right, all things considered. I have today off. I am going to do some gardening. I got this amazing, giant, outdoor garden cabinet thing to store all my supplies and I am very excited to put it together. That ought to be fun.
I feel I should come right out and tell you that there is this Youtube video that chronicles all of the bands that Hester and Rhian were in before Wet Leg and it is amazing, revelatory. First off, Isle of Wight seems like it has a slammin’ music scene. Secondly, both of them have far, far better voices than they bother to use in Wet Leg, which is kind of hilarious. Anyway, this video will lead you to Rhain’s solo stuff on Spotify, under the name Rhain, which is pretty goth and kinda Bjork-ish and pretty great. Hester’s old band, Wilting Disco, is on Soundcloud and they are pretty great too. Next this will lead you to discover Plastic Mermaids, which seems to be the “big” indie band on the Isle of Wight before Wet Leg became huge. Plastic Mermaids seems to be fronted by Rhain’s ex boyfriend, whom was the original third member of Wet Leg, before, as she says in an interview, they broke up and her and Hester went it alone.
So, this will lead you to two things: first, Plastic Mermaids on Spotify, and it has to be said they are really good. I listened to their entire discography yesterday and it is solid stuff. Lot to like.
But, more importantly, it will lead you to this phenomenal video, of Rhain singing with Plastic Mermaids at a cafe in London that is just… amazing. I mean, I suspect not many of you expected that Rhain had a phenomenal, operatic soprano. Not really something she gives away much in Wet Leg. But my god, watch this:
So now I am obsessed with all this, the way many of you are obsessed with the Johnny and Amber trial. I need to know all about their relationship, how much (if at all) of an asshole this Plastic Mermaids guy is, etc. etc. I might just drop everything and head off to the Isle of Wight and just sit in cafes and silently, shyly attend all local rock shows. I might just do that.
Just got back from the Walmart, decided to go before writing today, so I had a little time to reflect on this impending birthday tomorrow. I bought a lot of bins, like you do in the suburbs. And they finally had the new blueberry muffin flavor Kit Kats, and in snack size, to boot. No Peach Iced Tea Icebreakers. God, every time I write these things I think “why am I still putting these chemicals into my body at fifty.” I promise the vast majority of our groceries are organic vegetables. I promise.
Tomorrow I will be fifty years old. I’m not especially thrilled to be reflecting on it a day early, it’d be nice to put it out of my head for one more day. But this is tactical, I realized I don’t want to be in front of the computer or write tomorrow, so then, if I’m gonna write about this birthday at all, it’s today or Monday, and if I do it on Monday I have to think about it on Monday, people will keep wishing me happy birthday on Monday, etc. etc. so I figure today is better. Not to say I don’t welcome happy birthdays, they are nice, I miss my friends. I am particularly thankful for Alyssa’s physical, in-the-mail Anna-Delvey birthday card, and I think you’re right, I don’t think we ever would have crossed paths with her at Tom & Jerry’s, because it’s cash only.
Here’s a rare selfie for those who I haven’t seen in a while and want to inspect the damage:
God I need a haircut. Lotta grey in that beard. Era of salt-n-pepper beard might be coming to a close. Still no grey in the hair though. That is weird. Is it weird that I still wear band t-shirts almost every day at fifty? I asked this before, didn’t I? You guys said it was okay, right?
What do I think about this, how does this feel. I mean, I’m not freaking out in some cliche’d, “oh my god I’m so old” kind of way. I mean, I don’t feel older, and honestly I feel pretty good. I have my health, I’ve been losing weight all year, I don’t seriously believe I’ll be kicking the bucket any time soon. Yet somehow, there’s still this overwhelming sense of running out of time. I don’t really feel, like, I have no future. I still think my best days are in front of me, maybe I don’t believe it as absolutely and unequivicolly as I did in the past, but I still default to a mental state that my best days are in front of me, and for that I am profoundly grateful.
I am mildly alarmed that at fifty I am still obsessed about my weight and still think I need to do something about it and in a lot of ways I find that really, really sad. So much anxiety for so many years.
One thing I often do to cheer myself up is think about fifteen year-old me and what they would have considered success and by and large I have wildly succeeded in that. I mean, for starters, I have had sex. My aspirations were pretty low. But even when I let myself dream, my current life surprasses all the realistic plans and hopes I had. It doesn’t surpass my wildest dreams, I’m not the president or Trent Reznor, but all-in-all, a B+. I’m reasonably sure that, aside from my haircut, if I were to go back in time and talk to 1987 Rick, he would be blown away and very, very excited. My wife is amazing, my daughter is amazing, my wallet is fat, my home is beautiful, my friends are amazing.
On the flipside, I don’t want to complain, obviously. But I will say two things:
First, I am ever-more aware that you can’t do everything in life. Unless you’re Tom Cruise. There are paths I cannot take. I’ve known this for a long time, and I’ve gotten better at making the hard decisions and choosing the things most important to me, even at the expense of other paths that are super fun, or interesting, or glamorous, or just different. But I still hate it, I still hate that I can’t do it all, that I’ll never be a politician or work as a grunt in Hollywood or live in certain other cities or even, god, and this is the saddest part, see certain friends ever again.
And this leads to the second thing. I’m not old, I have friends and family in their seventies who are probably reading this and they’re still living, doing exciting things. But at the same time, you can’t, like, assume that’ll be you. Yes I have my health, my wealth, my skin color, my gender, but I could — and I’m sorry to be morbid here for a moment — die tomorrow. Five friends have lost someone, friends, this week, and those five friends were all my age or younger. Just this week. The life-phase of going to tons of weddings is behind me, I’m slowly exiting the tons of friends having kids phase, and the next phase will be… well, hopefully there are one or two more good phases before the “everyone’s dying” phase but I can see it on the horizon.
Of course, this just means one needs to focus on living. I am deeply, proundly lucky in almost every way. For the longest time, I assumed that luck could never run out. Now I am absolutely gobsmacked every day, week, year that my lucky streak continues. I don’t quite understand how impervious to setbacks I have been. It’s just… stupefuying. And it is very, very hard to remind myself that this luck could end at any time. I could wake up with brain cancer tomorrow, get hit by a car, god knows. God knows.
The trick, I think, is to somehow believe you’re going to live forever and remember that you could die at any moment. I am still not great at this. Long, tedious tasks that need to be done in order to get to where you want to go in life: they are hard. Part of you is like “I’m playing the long game here, when this task is done in three years it’s gonna be awesome and set me up for a decade” but, of course, at the same time, you’re thinking “jesus I might not have that many rotations around the sun left I have things to do what am I doing wasting my time with this?” And they are both true, and that is very hard, and I feel it more acutely every year.
I miss my friends terribly. I am so, so excited about this trip to Salem and Boston (and hopefully Portland!) in two weeks, I cannot even tell you. On this trip, I am going to go visit Andy’s grave, finally, and leave this stone that his mother sent me. Set it down with the other stones. Hopefully say goodbye, find some closure there.
But man. Seeing friends. It’s gonna rule. Emma and I are definitely turning out to be the kind of married couple who wants their friends with them, who dream of growing old with our friends, who don’t want to lose touch, who dream of us all growing old in the same neighborhood. I hope we find some way to put that into action as we get older. This pandemic has made it much worse as many of our assumptions about moving away from our friends got overthrown: it’s been hard for us to visit them, it’s been hard for them to visit us. Hopefully that will get better. Some day.
I had planned, I think around 44 or so, to have a giant birthday at fifty. Invite everyone down here to Chapel Hill, give them plenty of time and notice and lodging options and guilt tripping. We’d rent out the weird tiki bar up the road or something. I’m sad none of that worked out — Emma tried, but the pandemic just made it seem pointless. I’m excited for the group 50th birthday in Boston in June. You should come! That will be fun. That will do. I’ll have a big birthday down here at… I dunno, fifty-five maybe?
So, I guess that’s fifty. Hopefully I can stop thinking about it in a day or two and just be.
A birthday mix. New stuff and old. Songs about birthdays and growing old, songs with nothing to do with that. New Taylor Swift. Old Tom Waits. The song I played at my 30th birthday party, at the Paradise in Boston. That was a good night.
Have a lovely weekend.
Do tell me more about this June party in Boston! You never know, I may be able to make it out, even though I'll already be 52 in August.
happy birthday, old (and i mean OLD) friend. love you.