Thomas Cave's Tattoo: The Living and the Dead

"Thomas Cave's Tattoo"

I've started a blog that discusses what I call the New Great Depression - the idea that the next few years will constitute a Depression era, and not simple recession. I believe that to understand it in that way will enrich it, and encourage everyone in this country to make this era a creative period, a positive time, an act of construction, and not a cause for panic, chaos and fear. This is a chance for renaissance.

If the New Great Depression produces art, literature, theater, film, community, and a discovery of human value, as the first one did, who wouldn't want to be a part of it.

I am here to barter, trade, share, talk, listen, discuss, argue, understand, make fun, and make peace with the lack of the old prosperity. It was corrupt, and corroded, and it's gone. The dead weight of spoils has been lifted.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

"About Thomas Cave"

Mr. Cave is the gentleman in the photograph that graces this home page. The photograph was taken by the American photographer Dorothea Lange, who so powerfully documented the country and its citizens during the Great Depression. I found this photograph at www.shorpy.com, a website with a specialty in Depression images. According to Shorpy's site, the Lange photograph, titled "535-07-5248 and Wife," was taken in Oregon in August of 1939. The gentleman is described as an unemployed lumber worker. His tattoo is his Social Security number, by which he is referred to in the title of the photograph. A public records search conducted by Shorpy's revealed that the number belonged to Thomas Cave, who was born in 1912 and died in 1980 in Portland. His wife's name, Ann Kathryn, who died in 2000, appears on their tombstone, a photograph of which is appended under Shorpy's readers' comments.

Mr. Cave is 27 years old in Lange's picture.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

The Living and the Dead

The snow. It's snowing here on Little Neck bay, where I live. Do you remember, Joyce's wondrous line, about the snow falling on the living and the dead.

I put on an LP, now that night is here, and was struck by my gesture. That's how the indigent affluent spend their evenings - with fine stereos, turntables, not CDs. It gets worse. The LP I put on is a recording of Strauss' "Der Rosenkavalier," sung by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. A collectible recording? We'll find out when I try selling it, along with much of what I own, in the weeks ahead.

This recording was given to me by a friend on his deathbed. How's that for opera? He knew he was sick and dying, so he cleared up the broader points of the business of being alive, settled into his (borrowed) house, saw a short list of friends, and drank the hemlock. It was actually a weak tea with a stupefying dose of drugs in it. A generous and humane agency in New York helped it happen.

I left with his LPs. Music that I hope he took with him somehow. Including Ms. Schwarzkopf, as the unhappy Marschallin. How to avoid the pain of age, even with money? Die youngish.

Money's not my problem right now. As in, I haven't got any. I have the scratchy voices of the past, on vinyl, like memories that relied on available technology. That's what memories do as you get older. At a certain point, they start popping and skipping. And drifting, on to the living and the dead, like -

Recently on CD, and on-line: "Lookbook," with Grant Cutler and Maggie Morrison.

Completely addictive.

Thank you for listening, ma'am.

Thomas Cave's Tattoo