Song du Jour: "Growin' Old"

Pigeon John, "Growin' Old" (from the new one Pigeon John and the Summertime Pool Party).

My boy Steve and I went to the Hold Steady the other night. He's in his late thirties, I'm in my late forties, and Craig Finn was up there rhyming/pining, "Oh, to be 17 forever... Oh, to be 33 forever."

On the way home, Steve and I talked about nostalgia, and about how everyone in that room had been personally transported by Finn's rich imagery of Minneapolis, the specifics of which aren't even necessary, for everyone had their own mind-movie accompanying the various streets, buildings, and characters that burst out of Finn the way they do from all great writers who have fallen in love with a place, and a sense of place.

Here, Pigeon John raps about living in L.A. and listening to the Beasties and KRS-One and other hip-hop pioneers. It's part lament, but mostly celebration, and I'm usually fiercely anti-nostalgia and live-in-the-moment, but sometimes it feels good to wallow in what is sold as, like the knick-knack shoppe at the Mall Of America has it, A Simpler Time.

Yeah. I don't think about age most of the time. I don't feel too strange about being interested in music and art made by people decades younger or older than me. It still feeds me. So the issue of growing older doesn't haunt, unless it comes up like it did a few weeks ago, when I moved two friends out of their apartments.

One is a beautiful 25-year-old woman. Her new apartment has an array of built-in mirrors that came with the place, at which she made a crack about being a vain silent movie star. The other is a dying 87-year-old woman. She asked me not to put up any mirrors in her new place so she doesn't have to look at the haggard face staring back at her.

You and I are somewhere in between.