Letting the Days Go By
Back on Feb. 29, the extra day in this year of years, I stayed up to watch and saw ’s remarkable performance of “Once in a Lifetime.” I know the song well, although I usually get the title wrong, referring to it as “letting the days go by” or “same as it ever was,” which, along with “once in a lifetime,” are lyrics from chorus. My husband Mike has pointed out to me that both of my misremembered titles have a meaning that it opposite to “Once in a Lifetime.” But one of the reasons I love “Once in a Lifetime” is that it is somewhat at odds with itself, not only lyrically, but musically as well—although I didn’t really understand that until I read , watched , listened to multiple versions of the song on Spotify, and finally, after years of having it on my to-watch list, saw ’s concert film . Yes, I fell down a “Once in a Lifetime” rabbit hole. This was in early, a documentary that I was planning to review for . I could have asked for a screening link, but I wanted to go into Manhattan. Maybe I knew, in the back of my mind, that it would be the last time. I wore gloves on the bus and subway, and a lightweight scarf over my nose and mouth. I got off the train at Eighth Avenue and walked four long blocks to the Landmark 57, a new theater that I’d never gone to before. I didn’t realize, until I got there, that it was in the silver, triangular building that my son refers to the as “the cake slice” whenever we drive up the West Side Highway. I took a photo of it with my phone before I headed home. I hear the song a little differently now. Now, it strikes me as a description of how we get through life: we let the days go by, riding on the backs of accumulated habits. But sometimes we stop and wonder: how did we get here? I’m having one of those moments now. Maybe you are, too. The pandemic has had a way of slowing everyone down. Also, we moved to the suburbs. So did several of our friends. And so we are literally finding ourselves in strange houses. We’re part of a wave of New Yorkers that you may have read about the newspaper: people who left the city in the wake of the virus, seeking more space for home offices and classrooms. Mike and I are now renting the first floor of a house in Montclair, New Jersey that is at least twice as big as our old apartment and a lot cheaper. We’re kicking ourselves that we didn’t move out here years ago—except that we never would have, because all of our friends were in Brooklyn and Mike could walk to work and I didn’t have to drive anywhere. I can’t drive, by the way—I mean, I can, but it’s been 20 years since I’ve gotten behind the wheel. Montclair, fortunately, is very walkable, but the simple fact that I’m going to have to start driving again—that I won’t get everywhere on my own two feet or in the company of strangers on public transportation—is what leaves me really feeling the question:
