SAPONE DA BARBA
1) Me in the clawfoot bathtub, sticking out lobster-pink in the hot water amid vast drifts of cumulus bubble clouds. Thinking about Jim Morrison’s last bath, I composed a little poem in honor of the Lizard King:
I saw your grave, Jim
You wouldn’t like it at all
A humble rock, Jim
In a garden of stone drama
2) Me in the clawfoot bathtub, singing along to Robert Johnson’s Preachin’ Blues (Up Jumped the Devil), a big fat foam beard on my face. Italian foam. Not for me the chemical stinky spray tin of modern foam; No sir. I’m an old-school brush-and-soap man. I use Proraso. “Number one in Italian barber’s shops”. Comes in a little Italian green cup. Available at fine Italian delis. Certainly the brand used by Figaro himself.
3) Also on the boombox, on an ancient cassette I made in my last year in Calgary, Alberta: a little Lou Reed, a little Barry White, some hippie music, Everything Gives You Cancer by Joe Jackson, some Marvin Gaye from What’s Going On. Some Kip Hanrahan. Don’t get me started on Kip Hanrahan. Holy cow.
4) The bathroom here at the new Mango Pudding World Headquarters is approximately 10’ by 10’. It makes your bathroom look like a punky outhouse.
5) Referring back to point one, we at Mango Pudding Blues regret that we may be giving you the impression that we are all nuts about Père Lachaise cemetery, tombstones and death. We are not goths (although, come to think of it, we did once sport long hair that was dyed black and shaved on the sides. And we wore a ring through our nose. And we had knee-high Doc Martins. Darling, it was the eighties. ) and we apologize for maybe making you think we are. We are not. Even though the only things we have told you about Paris had to do with Père Lachaise.
6) Uh, but, ah, speaking of Père Lachaise, a reader recommended to us a novel, Waiting for Gertrude, which tells the story of the famous residents of the cemetery who have been reincarnated as cemetery cats. In it, the author, Bill Richardson, suggests that Chopin’s grave is the post office of the cemetery, where one leaves letters that need to be delivered on the other side. And my question for you is this; have any of you ever heard that? Is this done? Or is that just something he made up?
Bonus tidbit: Chopin’s heart is buried separately in Warsaw.
7) And why do I never talk to you about my time in Paris, other than morbid discussions of Père Lachaise? I don’t know why, dear readers. I don’t know why. Perhaps I am intimidated by Adam Gopnik’s Paris To The Moon. I re-read it while I was in Paris, and it’s so great that I just can’t think of a goddam thing to say.
