kate bush turns 50

some of my favourite female friends are big fans of the music of kate bush. in their honour, i wish her many happy returns of the day today. i may not be into her kind of performance art, but i do still possess a vinyl 45 of 'wuthering heights'!

it is hard to accept that icons of one's youth are reaching ages that sound so old. especially since their earliest appearances are recorded and available for public viewing. the ravaj has a birthday in, gosh, just about 4 weeks, and refuses to accept that the age she will attain is commensurate with her actions, feelings and thoughts. according to the social rules, she is well into middle-age. according to her self, she is well into at least her third childhood - just one where she is able to drive, vote, and have a debit card. does that make her the woman with the child in her eyes?

nora ephron channels woody allen

i am getting old my friends and the winter closes in. a builder friend in his forties spent the night in the museum upstairs from my mother's flat. the toilet wasn't working up there so she said she would leave the front door open in case he needed to go in the night. 'i never get up in the night,' he told her. 'o he's so young,' i said to my mother when she told me and we laughed together.

just now, i think i read an op-ed in the ny times where nora ephron compares some of the past with some of the present. it included the following, which took me back to nights of reading "without feathers" under the covers with a torch:

"I have to say, there was something romantic about the desperate search for an answer. On the road to trying to remember the name of Ethel Rosenberg’s brother, for instance, you might find yourself having a brief but diverting chat about Alger Hiss’s wife, which might in turn get you to a story about Whittaker Chambers’s teeth, which might in turn get you to Time magazine, which might in turn get you to Friday nights at Time magazine back in the old days, which might in turn get you to sex. "

if i were to start ranting about the good old days, i think i would yearn for the greater time and space there was for the utterly random. today we need the answer, and it has to be correct. there is no time to spare for wondering why the opposite of 'inept' isn't 'ept'.

o yes, now go read the rest of nora ephron's piece.