I have another long essay in the works on the topic of AI, consciousness, and all that jazz, but it’s not ready yet. I have a tendency to go silent between these kind of posts and I would like to start sharing some smaller stories of immediate human interest, so here goes.
I do driving for a little spare cash, sometimes as an Uber driver and more often for private clients. Where I live, along the San Mateo County coast south of San Francisco, it can be very hard to get a reliable ride to the airport, particularly early in the morning, as Uber and Lyft drivers prefer not to get stuck out on the coast where they can’t get rides so they often cancel en route to the rider. That’s opened a nice niche business for me to service these customers. It’s also a great way to meet my neighbors!
Along the way I’ve picked up other kinds of clients as well, including a regular rider to see her husband in memory care until he recently passed away, and another elederly gentleman who I take to dialysis treatments twice a week. I’ll call him Jim to preserve his anonymity.
Jim is about 80 and in very poor health, looking quite a bit older. Dialysis is brutal. He has to do it four times per week and each session is 4-5 hours plus the time getting to and from the clinic. It’s almost a full time job and sounds horrible to me. I pray I never need it. Since I knew I was going to be spending a lot of time with Jim I figured I should get to know him and hopefully make his drives to and from the clinic a little more enjoyable. I learned that he was a very successful lawyer at a bank in San Francisco for about 40 years, likes fast cars and great food. We talked about music a fair amount, and he had seen some great shows over the years.
He told me a story about his early days at the bank, when he and one of his bank colleagues decided to go check out a place they’d heard a little about, a community called Haight Asbury where the hippies hung out. Jim and his friend were anything but hippies, but they were curious so they found the intersection and there was commotion going on. They saw a pair of flatbed trucks jockeying for position and a bunch of sound equipment. Someone mentioned that there would be battle of the bands later, so they decided to come back later and see what was happening.
A few hours later they returned and saw that the flatbeds were occupied by two different bands they’d never heard of. He learned a little later that their names were Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead! I told him he’d witnessed a major moment in cultural history and said I’d give anything to have been there.
Earlier this week we were talking about music again and he mentioned that the leader of his favorite band, The Muffs, a woman namedd Kim Shattuck, had recently passed away from ALS. We were arriving at the clinic at the time so didn’t have any time to follow up on that conversation at the time. Several hours later I was about to pick him up and I asked Siri to play some The Muffs on Apple Music. I paused the playback and took care of helping him into the car.
He took one look at the console and I saw one of his rare smiles. “The Muffs!” he exclaimed in joy. For the next half hour we listened to nothing but The Muffs at a pretty decent volume. I thought they were great! Not at the center of my typical listening range, but awesome at what they did. I’d describe it as hard core punk pop with some nice melodies and some serious pyrotechnics in the vocals and guitars.
I asked Jim how he became a Muffs fan and he said that, one day the bank had some kind of corporate event at a club in the city and the Muffs were playing. He and his fellow suits arrived to take advantage of the free food and beverages, and most of them were totally turned off by this grungy puck band that played too loud, but not Jim. He became a hardcore Muffs fan overnight and saw them every time he had an opportunity. He said nobody could understand why he liked them.
I asked if his wife Beth liked them and he said “she tolerates them occasionally.” He mentioned that he included a Muffs song in the playlist for his wedding, which reminded me of a favorite tune I’d played at mine, the Jerry Garcia Band version of Dylan’s Simple Twist of Fate.
When I arrived at Jim’s house, Beth met us at the curb and I told her that Jim and I had just spent the drive home head banging to The Muffs, to which she gave a wry smile and mentioned the wedding song. She thanked me as always for the help with getting Jim to his treatments and back and reminded me how important it was to them.
I drove back home feeling absolutely great, jamming The Muffs even louder. That might be the high point in my travels with Jim, but it might be worth it if it is, and makes me realize there is always a way to connect with people who might seem on another wavelength entirely.
I find myself looking forward to my next drive with Jim — and that’s something I never thought I’d say when I started.