R E D L I N E
I saw my dad on the Red Line subway train. He looked like I remember him, only a little younger, hipper, with a bit of an attitude I’d never seen. Not an attitude of superiority─more like a look of knowledge, of wisdom, of things learned from experiences he probably wouldn’t want to do over again. Maybe he was traveling uptown to North Hollywood where he’d be at home with the poets and actors and people who would share his love of words and books. He shows up sometimes, mostly a feeling that maybe he’s close by, or maybe he knows the chords and melodies I like and he waits inside there for a moment to add a note or pluck a string, to ring up a memory or a vision of some grand place to suggest. I think of him waving and smiling at me from that perch inside a Miles Davis trumpet solo, sitting on one of those half notes, or weaving in and out of the piano solo in Variations On A Theme. He adds a shimmer, or a muted note, just to let me know he’s around again. But I al