Lunch With Paul No. 9
/Lunch With Paul No. 9 The Starving Artist Bistro
Go down to the gulch and pull gold nuggets out of the creek,
————
By the name of the place,
In a suburban shopping center
In North Fresno, near Woodward Park,
Almost sounded like the restaurant
Might be charitable toward artists
That might actually be starving.
Like Grub Gulch,
If you’re hungry,
Grab a gold pan,
Go down to the gulch
And pull gold nuggets
Out of the creek,
Enough gold to buy
A meal and better whiskey.
Elevating the worth of artists,
Though they are a dime a dozen.
But bistro, (a small nightclub
Or restaurant) is a night club,
And sounds very much like
For late night starving artists.
What about starving poets?
There must be a lot of them,
Some are artists too.
Was there a lone microphone
And a special spotlight
For the tortured solitary-figure
To read their lengthy poems?
Maybe this place was the really
The starving musicians bistro.
But this north-end restaurant
Served lunch.
It was Wednesday
Afternoon. I drove both of us
To the far-end of the urban sprawl.
That other Fresno, where those
With wealth live in gated communities.
We arrived late in the lunch hour
And were seated at a table in the back
Of a room of small tables and a stage
Near the entrance to the kitchen.
This very hour, there was a girl
In her 20’s, casually-dressed on stage,
Scatting jazz riffs, Ella-style,
And a beatnik-looking fellow
Backing her up on an electric piano
With fake drums thuds, bass and tom.
The customers went on eating,
Even though the song had ended.
There was a silent spot built in,
Just ready for clapping from the audience,
I was the only person there to applaud.
The music wasn’t that bad,
To afford no response
From the eating, laughing,
And ignoring (except me) house.
That seemed to be the ultimate insult
For a working musician, who must
Ignore such indignities.
I openly wondered:
Are they union musicians?
Are they being paid union wages?
Or was the pay negotiated?
The musicians looked up slowly at me,
In a very tired, overlooked way.
So she put some last-minute flare
Into her song, a little more feeling,
That brought it all to a close
By waving her arm right at 1:00 P.M.
She helped the keyboard-player
Dismantle his instruments, fold
The stand, roll up the cords.
The singer, and the bandmember
Didn’t seem to have much more
In common than the music they played.
He laid down the music track,
She did the singing, vocalizing,
Improvising, or whatever.
They both went in the kitchen door
And returned moments later
With envelopes in their hands.
My guess, they were not starving,
And the price was negotiated by the gig.
She stuffed the envelope into her purse
And left by the front-door rather quickly
Taking her instrument with her.
Her abrupt exit made me think
Maybe she didn’t care for the company
Of her disregarding lunch crowd.
I’d leave too. He hung around
The stage for a few minutes, anyway.
We were obliged to listen to soft-jazz
Piped in from satellite radio.
Finally we ordered our lunch:
A variation on the hamburger.
By Stephen Barile
From: United States