Not in evidence that Friday evening.
*****
Judy sang some new songs, more oldies, a song called "Paradise" that is also the title of her new album to be released in May, "Bring On the Clowns," from the musical "Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well," among others.
We sang along a few times. I aimed my opera glasses at her some amount of plastic surgery evident, some aging lines allowed, like a gold medal, to attest to her wandering the world with that inimitable voice, that purification of the air. McCarter's fine acoustical system loves late-sixties heroes--last year its air throbbed with Arlo Guthrie's earthy twanging. The building vibrates with what used to be, an oxymoron of an era, that drug-tainted Camelot, that experiment in academocracy/juvenocracy that adorns Eugene McCarthy's mantelpiece like a rusting trophy.
We didn't hear his name either. Judy is no apostle out of the past. She is a traveling, sound-vanquishing angel of a voice. She no longer sports those floor-length ethnically embroidered cloths that dance with the breeze.
At the reception after the performance that eager fans had paid $50 apiece to attend, to meet the diva, she burst in through a side door to our eager adulation, announcing with a smile that she didn't have much time. Her husband Lou, whom she had dismissively introduced to the audience, was somewhere around, I was sure, as she traversed us like rough terrain she was raking for profit, uninterested in the catered spread, even the free drinks.
We trapped her in a circle. She gazed from one of us to the next. I quickly handed her my card, commanding her to read my blog. She dropped it on the floor. What was I to do, since she was according about five seconds of her popular blue-eyed gaze to each of us?
I retrieved the card and, at a loss for a moment, realized I was squashed up against the perfect features of Lou. What was he doing there?
"Lou!" I raised my voice to make contact. "Lou!" I repeated when he tried to ignore me like that rejected business card with my URL inscribed at the bottom.
He turned to me. I weighed too much to drop onto the floor.
"You're Judy Collins's husband Lou, aren't you?!"
His perfect features scarcely nodded.
"Give this to your wife! It's important!" I pictured the love beads my Valentine's Day blog deified and might bring back to life, the tainted love and how it so briefly rocked the world.
"Why don't you give it to her?" he scowled.
"I tried to but she dropped it on the floor!" I countered, chutzpadic as one must be under such circumstances.
"It's got some important ideas in it! It's all about love!"
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