Eric the Blue

Now and then, when one of the suburbanites in my life asks how long it’s been since I was last pistol-whipped within a block of my house in Minneapolis, I work into the conversation how I like taking the bus to get around: I point out that, for seniors, it’s two dollars for all you can ride in a day, and you get to meet a lot of interesting people. They regard me through narrowed eyes and I assume they’re wondering whether I’m kidding. I must be kidding.

Kidding a little bit, because some of the interesting people are interesting mainly in an annoying sort of way. It seems that people who rely on public transportation self-select for having mental health challenges. I used to ride mainly during rush hour, on a bus connecting downtown Minneapolis to Edina by way of West 50th Street, which skirts the south shore of Lake Harriet–law firm employees and their socioeconomic peers headed to and from the office. But now I ride about in the middle of the day and am struck by how many of my new fellow passengers talk to themselves. It’s surprisingly common for a rider to speak a transcript of their mind’s workings. In the works of James Joyce the flow’s subject matter is less frequently sexual. There are also a significant number of cell phone calls of elevated volume. Sometimes you can hear both sides of the conversation, one of them loud and clear through the bus passenger’s phone, which is on speaker. In a city of more than 400,000 people, I’m also struck by how many of these characters know each other. When someone new boards, the stream of consciousness narration often comes to an end so that the normal pleasantries can be performed. “Hey Joe, how ya been?”Joe appears genuinely happy to see the fellow who had been narrating his thoughts and a friendly but loud conversation begins. Everything is loud.

The music is another thing that’s loud. Apparently people want everyone to know what kind of music they like, and their taste is rarely mine. But I’m finally arriving at my topic, because once their taste did match mine, and the owner of the boom box was not a member of my demographic group. She was female, probably about 20, and, as it was a hot day, I’m guessing you could see a relatively high percentage of all her tattoos and piercings. She appeared under nourished–possibly too continually hopped up to remember to eat. While we were on the bus together I heard from her play list two full songs and parts of two others. Of the four, I can’t remember two: they were unfamiliar to me, but I think I sort of liked them. This was one of the two I knew, maybe my favorite Stones song:

And the other one I knew:

I thought of this episode from my life as a bus rider this morning while lying in bed and learning from Cathy Wurzer that Robert Plant turned 78 today. He’s English, of course, so is allowed more than one act in life. Here he is, not very many years later, exercising that prerogative:

Not sure that Alison Krauss’s voice is what I like most about her, though I love her voice. I hope that waif on the bus is still having birthdays, too.