St. Patrick’s Day has come and gone. Sorry to say I wasn’t in New York for the parade. When I hear the bagpipes echoing up Fifth Avenue, I’m wasted. Don’t ask me why, it’s just built in to my genetic code. Los Angeles on St. Patrick’s Day, doesn’t really cut it. There’s no public forum. No street interaction. What would I do, drive the freeway loop drinking green beer with a bumper sticker that says ‘Honk If You’re Irish’ !?

I used to think that I was a unique individual on this planet, but over time I’ve discovered that I’m just ‘Black Irish model# 22.’ Check the following that apply; Brooding personality, check, looking for a fight at every opportunity, especially when fueled by alcohol, check, always taking the side of the underdog, check, harboring resentment against the bastards who’re trying to drag us down, check, most comfortable with the following occupations- construction worker, cop, fireman, bartender, singer of sad songs, storyteller, check. Wait, do those last two count as occupations? As my mother constantly said, ‘Lar, you’ve never worked a day in your life!’

Been reading Dan Barry’s memoir ‘Pull Me Up’- it’s a beautiful book. It might as well be my own Irish American suburban story. He’s my brother, though he doesn’t know me. I read his column in the New York Times, for inspiration before starting my day. I grew up in the most mundane of circumstance and yet my mother saw the magic in everything around us. A million stories in the molecules of every moment.

Have you heard Patty Griffin’s song, ‘Mary’? I first heard it dubbed into the documentary film, ‘The Ground Truth,’ that has some of my music in it. Patty’s song echoing behind the imagery of men returned home from war, and those who didn’t return home from war. Well, you’re not human if it doesn’t bring a tear to your eye. Patty is from a town in Maine about 15 miles north of my own, one even more hardscrabble than mine. I’ve heard that she grew up in one of those big Irish families of 8 kids, and that her song ‘Mary’ is about her grandmother. Perhaps only hearsay. Either way, a song as good as that one is always ‘about’ everyone and everything.