Sundays With Sinatra

When we first moved to Los Angeles we lived in a tiny studio apartment about a block away from Hollywood Boulevard. There are three things that stood to me about this studio. Firstly, we had cockroaches, and not like one or two. Infestations, repeatedly. I have no idea why, it seemed like we were the only unit that had them. We slept on a futon on the floor and one night I woke up to a cockroach crawling across my face. That were fucking terrible.

The second thing that stood out about this place was on Friday nights, well really Saturday mornings about 3AM you could hear this violinist playing for tips on the boulevard, and it was so clear it was like they were right in the room with us. I thought about that violinist often even when they weren’t playing. I don’t know if it was romantic or tragic or both, but it was certainly impressive.

The third thing I remember about this place was on Sunday mornings we would eat breakfast and listen to a local public radio station that played Frank Sinatra all morning. It was the best. There are several Sinatra songs that never fail to leave me breathless, none more than “My Way”. That song always gets me. The idea of not compromising is intoxicating. Of just being an artist and going out and doing your thing and not taking any lip, that’s my jam. It’s also complete bullshit. It’s not like he wrote the song, it was originally a French song, and then it was translated by David Bowie(speaking of doing things your own way).

How many people out there had voices like Sinatra? I used to think nobody, that’s why he’s Sinatra. But this is ridiculous. There’s plenty of people out there who have better voices than Sinatra, I went to school with some of them. He’s Sinatra because of who he knew, who was able to open doors for him. It didn’t have anything to do with doing things his way, he just got lucky.