Good. One more thing James and I have in common... I bet we're the only people of our generation who know what "The Capeman" was, and actually care, and cared enough to end up each of us with a copy of the soundtrack, which is actually more sung by the despised musical's creator, Paul Simon, than the actual cast. (The musically omnivorous Mack Elder is lurking out there reading this, and is about to discount my claims of exclusivity on this count, I just know it.)

So we're cooking in the kitchen, James and me, and Tito Rojas is playing and I'm trying to teach James salsa... I like to convince myself he'll eventually pick it up ok even though he's a white boy from the Upper West Side and New Jersey... right now he's got problems with the hips, though. They don't go on their own.

I stir the spaghetti and James says Question:, as he often does. I say Yes? and he asks if the music in The Capeman is authentic. I grab my little IWW flag and jump up on the podium shouting Boricua Hasta La Muerte! and my eyes are still blue and I scoff at James for being so unsophisticated. I take it as a good time to repeat the lesson about West Side Story. As I learned it from the revolutionary comrade Martín Espada: Leonard Bernstein musta been deaf or something, because that ain't Puerto Rican music, it's Mexican music in "America." That, and Bernstein's Sharks are still hot Latins, crimes-of-passion types.

Meanwhile, The Capeman sounds like a bunch of gang members growing up in Paul Simon Doo-Wop Land. There was a big controversy over The Capeman, I never followed what it was. But it's probably much the same as the West Side Story: it has only a minority of songs which even pretend to be in the musical tradition of Puerto Rico, and the bolero is about how menacing the local gang is.

Then I get off the podium, and I admit: The Capeman is still an important part of my life. It's one of those things that's worked its way so far into the soundtracks of my personal history that I can't listen to it right now for fear it will dredge up the settled emotions of my early days in New York like so many silty tons of PCBs. I love it, and everything by Paul Simon since Graceland, and I love David Byrne and to a lesser extent Peter Gabriel. My ears would not be open to African or Caribbean or Brazilian music if it wasn't for them.

I love the whiteboys who introduced me to this music. When I am being honest with myself, I know I have more hope of understanding them completely than the people whose music they're stealing. I understand in each of them, and in me, is a selfish little Columbus, excited by the idea I might be the first to see something nobody I know has ever seen, conviced I can make that difference part of me. Not to give up on understanding, or solidarity, but no lie about our cultural savvy alone will save us. It will not sew up the jagged edges of anger.

(Could someone let me know if I've written this rant before? I feel like I have. Thanks.)