Jeffrey Simmons, TT's, This Sunday

I for a second thought the very talented local singer/songwriter Jeffrey Simmons was that lanky Inman Square man who stands in a suit under an umbrella, rain or shine, quietly hawking his self-made publication, Geograflight (sp?), from the sidewalk. It's the MySpace photos he has posted of himself that did it. In them, Simmons, another tallish skinny marink, is dressed dapper (admittedly, though, he's snazzier than Geograflight man who looks like a funeral attendant in that dire suit of his) in a blazer. Like Geograflight man, he is standing under an umbrella on what appears to be a rainless day. And again, like Geograflight man, he is daintily holding this umbrella.

I was wrong, of course. They are not the same person. But all of this got me thinking about the difference between a man who wears an umbrella on a dry day and a man who poses for a photograph under an umbrella in that kind of weather. This is what I came up with.

The man wearing the umbrella is most likely wearing it for any one of these reasons or combinations thereof:

1. he wears it for protection from the sun  2. he wears it as an accessory, he enjoys the way it looks on him. 3. he’s extremely neurotic and always worries that he will be caught in the rain without some covering.  

The man posing with the umbrella does it for any one of these reasons or combinations thereof:

1. an accessory. 2. a way to convey that he is a tragic sort of figure who is always expecting rain. 3. a way to convey that some kind of tragedy is approaching.