Dove Nested Towers

Statehood vs. Status Quo: Who Sets the Conditions for a People’s Freedom?

2011-10-29T14:48:00.000-07:00

Though the Lincoln-Douglas debates are rightly considered the apex of competitive political discourse in American if not world history, and the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are all but non-existent, still I find parallels with the elegant yet forceful antebellum rhetoric of The Great Emancipator and The Little Giant, and the bold if futile recent actions of Palestinian President Mahmoud “Abu Mazen” Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu.

On Monday, October 16, 1854, in Peoria, Illinois, nearly four years before Abraham Lincoln would traverse the state in a series of debates with Stephen A. Douglas, the future President rose from the audience of a Douglas address to invite the crowd to return after their supper, at which time he would deliver a prepared response (Douglas and Lincoln had arranged the dual appearance ahead of time, and Douglas had negotiated a one-hour rebuttal following Lincoln’s remarks).

“The repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and the propriety of its restoration, constitute the subject of what I am about to say,” Lincoln began. The Missouri Compromise, which prohibited slavery in the western territories north of the parallel 36° 30’ north and cut through present-day California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and the Oklahoma panhandle, had been in effect since 1820. The actual compromise was that Missouri would be admitted as a slave state even though it was above the line, and Maine would be admitted as a free state.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, designed by Douglas and signed into law by President Franklin Pierce on May 30 of that year, effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise and replaced its imaginary line with the concept of “popular sovereignty,” in which settlers of a territory would decide for themselves whether to establish it as a free or slave-holding state. The act resulted in political chaos, with the new Republican party eventually rising from the ashes of the fractured Whigs.

Passion – and empathy
But in 1854, all that was on Lincoln’s mind was that slavery was no longer on the road to extinction – he had hoped to starve out the institution by confining it to the lower south, where cotton would eventually destroy the soil in which it grew. Minus that crop, he was certain, the need for slaves would disappear.

Impassioned as Lincoln was about the repeal of the Missouri Compromise – in a short campaign biography he wrote in late 1859, Lincoln noted that after several years working in his successful law practice, “I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again” – he took the platform that night armed with logic rather than vitriol, even saying at one point:

“Before proceeding, let me say I think I have no prejudice against the Southern people. They are just what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not now exist amongst them, they would not introduce it. If it did now exist amongst us, we should not instantly give it up.”

Lincoln and Douglas were both speaking about self-government and self-determination that day. For Douglas, those terms meant that the free white settlers of a territory could decide for themselves the nature of their society. For Lincoln, they meant that all people living within the boundaries of this nation have a voice and the right to rise to the level of their ambition and ability without government-imposed impediments.

The U.N. General Assembly: What’s good for the goose…
On May 14, 1948, ninety years after the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel – Israel’s “declaration of independence” – was announced to the family of nations. It reads, in part:

“On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel [“land of Israel”]; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable. This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.”

Israel and its citizens have been defending this right with their blood for 63 years.

On Friday, September 23, 2011, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas stood before the United Nations General Assembly and asked that Palestine be granted independent statehood. Members of the Israeli delegation left the hall as Abbas rose to speak. His proposal is unlikely to get far in the U.N. Security Council since the United States holds veto power there, but his stake, now planted, will not easily be removed.

So now let’s see how language from one era has resonance on another.

“…[M]asters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.” Jews understand what it means to be strangers in a strange land. They know of longing, of the sweet taste of freedom, of the unceasing desire for self-determination. Lincoln understood that this was all that slaves desired, to be masters of their own fate. But would a racist country – racist both North and South (it’s worth noting that Abolitionists were a fringe group and largely anarchic; though history has been kind to them, they were far from pragmatic) – let them be free on the same land in which they were enslaved? Lincoln eventually thought not, as he conceived an ill-designed plan to ship freed slaves to Liberia.

“They are just what we would be in their situation.” Lincoln’s empathy is acknowledged to be nearly superhuman, particularly in the context of his time. This simple acknowledgement of his, though, is not well understood by many Jews and by the Israeli government in particular. Benjamin Netanyahu possesses neither the empathy nor the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln. He seeks to claim disputed lands by building settlements on them in violation (so say the U.N. Security Council and the International Committee of the Red Cross) of the Fourth Geneva Convention (Netanyahu, needless to say, does not concur).

While Lincoln appealed to “the better angels of our nature”, which he knew existed among his friends and his enemies both, Netanyahu effectively thumbs his nose at his friends (the U.S., to the tune of $3 billion a year) and gives the finger to his enemies. He is provocative, obstinate, and arrogant, which plays well to the hawks at home but which has cost Israel as much good will over the last few years as George W. Bush did for America following 9/11. On the international stage, Israel is now seen as the aggressor, the tyrant. It can’t be surprised that Abbas brought his case to the U.N. given that he and Netanyahu cannot come to terms even on the conditions that would only bring them to the negotiating table.

The fiery trial: then and now
“In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve,” Lincoln told Congress on December 1, 1862. After years of bloodshed, countless deaths of innocent civilians, instability that strengthens the resolve of terrorists, it has to be clear to all parties that the only way to assure the long-term security of Israel is to enable the establishment of an independent, autonomous, and internationally recognized Palestine.

In that same address to Congress, Lincoln noted, “The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.” If Benjamin Netanyahu wants to be remembered, nothing will assure his place in history more than in assuming the mantel of peacemaker.

The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel closes with the following: “WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.”

Sixty-three years later, it’s time to make good on this promise.

Thirty Years On, King Crimson’s Discipline Retains Its Power

2011-09-21T19:31:00.001-07:00

King Crimson, Discipline. Released September 22, 1981.

In the Jewish community, a boy comes of age at his bar mitzvah, which typically occurs at age 13. For me, that was 1976. Disco was at its height and bad fashion was the only fashion there was. But at 13, I didn’t care so much about the rather desolate cultural landscape into which I was thrust. At 15, however, I did begin to care. In just those two years, the insipid simplicity of disco was replaced by the inspired simplicity of New Wave. But simplicity was not where my head was at. I’d begun doing certain things recreationally and my brain was excited by more complex and sophisticated music.

By 1979, I was firmly a fan of “progressive rock,” most specifically the music of bands such as Gentle Giant, King Crimson, Yes, Pink Floyd, ELP, The Moody Blues, Jethro Tull, Genesis, and Rush. These bands would more or less align themselves with the credo that appeared in the liner notes of Gentle Giant’s second album, from 1971: “It is our goal to expand the frontiers of contemporary popular music at the risk of becoming very unpopular.” Applying instrumentation not typically found in rock music (such as violin, cello, and flute), technology (such as synthesizers and various new gizmos), lengthy compositions, and album-length concepts, progressive rock was never radio-friendly, though some groups like Yes, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, and Rush did manage to become quite popular, often through a somewhat more accessible tune edited for radio that managed to slip through the programming gatekeepers.

Unfortunately, 1979 was not a great time to enter this genre. Gentle Giant was working on its final album, continuing a recent trend of ever more commercial-sounding releases. King Crimson had disbanded in 1974. Yes lost its singer and keyboardist following a creative nadir of an album called Tormato. Pink Floyd was riding high with The Wall, but significant personnel changes were on the horizon, as they were with The Moody Blues and Jethro Tull. ELP was gone. Rush was doing well on the radio, which to some extent cut into their prog cred, and an exciting new band called U.K., comprising two ex-members of King Crimson, broke up after only two albums and two tours.

So it was that I turned my back and ears on the current music scene and instead became obsessed with the music of 1967-75. To this day, my younger colleagues consider me “the ‘70s guy.” Even when entering college in the fall of 1981, I was decidedly anti-anything that had to do with ‘80s music or fashion. There was, however, one thing that helped me bridge the gap between the past and the present: the sudden and surprising reappearance of King Crimson.

Unbeknownst to me, guitarist Robert Fripp, the group’s leader and only constant during its initial run from 1969-74, had approached drummer Bill Bruford, who had been in the last incarnation of the band, which lasted from 1972-74 (and on U.K.’s first album, as well as being the original drummer of Yes and serving short tour stints with Genesis and Gong), with the idea of doing a project together. Fripp, who had been working with the likes of David Byrne, Peter Gabriel, Brian Eno, and Daryl Hall, wanted a somewhat funkier drum sound, with less emphasis on cymbals. Bruford had just gotten a Simmons electronic drum kit. Together, they began to sketch out a sound.

Bassist Tony Levin, who had played on Fripp’s first solo album and was a mainstay of Gabriel’s band, was recruited, as was Adrian Belew, an innovative guitarist who had brought interesting sounds to Frank Zappa and the Talking Heads. These two additions were notable in that they were the first Americans to be members of King Crimson (though the band was not yet called that), and they brought with them a host of electronic goodies: Levin the Chapman Stick, and Belew an assortment of pedals and gizmos that enabled him to mimic the sounds of wild animals. Not only that, but never before had another guitarist slung his axe alongside Fripp, an acknowledged master of the instrument.

Fripp dubbed the band Discipline and they began gigging as such. Eventually, Fripp concluded that this band was, in fact, the reincarnation of King Crimson. The name was minimally more marketable (though the band had its cult following, it had been seven years since they last were heard from), but more significantly, it raised the expectations for the outfit.

From my dorm at college, I heard that a new King Crimson album – titled Discipline – was afoot and even more exciting, the band was set to play at the college that spring. I couldn’t imagine what the new Crimson would sound like. My friend Marc, back home in Newton, Massachusetts, bought the album before I did and we listened to it together for the first time over the phone. It was unlike anything we had heard before. Yes, there was a Talking Heads rhythmic influence, the production values were of its time, and it was unquestionably progressive. But the front line of Chapman Stick and the twin interweaving guitars created a unique sonic jigsaw that could only have come from something called King Crimson, even as it distinguished this edition from all previous ones.

I bought the album as soon as I could and played it often. I became very familiar with the seven cuts. But as the concert approached, I began a relationship with that album unlike anything I have ever had with any other recording.

I was a member of the student group that produced and promoted concerts on campus, and one of my responsibilities as a Publicity Department volunteer was to set up a record player on a table on the Campus Center Concourse and play the records of artists who were appearing, give out information, and answer questions. Typically, I had other volunteers I would schedule for when I had classes, but at this time for some reason I can no longer remember, extra hands were hard to come by. Therefore, I manned the turntable for long stretches over a three- or four-week period.

What this meant was that I heard Discipline in full probably four or five times a day for weeks. The first interesting aspect to that is that I never became sick of it. There always seemed to be new things to discover in it. The other thing is that I found the varying tempos and timbres of the album seemed to match perfectly the rise and fall of activity within the Campus Center. In between classes, students would rush through with a cacophonous din of conversation, shoe clacking, and the beeping rustle of retail transactions all around me. But then it would clear out and serenity would take over. Fast, slow, loud, soft, organic and electronic, Discipline had it all, and it truly became my soundtrack for that period of my life.

Ultimately, the concert came and it was a glorious experience. In the meantime, 1981 also saw Rush come out with its masterpiece album, Moving Pictures. In 1982, Asia, a supergroup comprising exp-members of Yes, King Crimson, and ELP, debuted to much commercial acclaim. Yes rocketed to the top of the pyramid in 1983 with 90125. It seemed progressive rock was back with a vengeance. But when Crimson disbanded again in 1984, the genre again appeared on the verge of extinction. Groups still plied their trade, but more often than not the music was a series of trade-offs between the echoes of the glory days and a more commercial, current sound that alienated as many old fans as it did win new converts.

But that’s as may be. The fact is, for 30 of my 48 years, King Crimson’s Discipline has been an album of unique emotional and visceral power for me, one that is by turns terrifying and tranquil, and as complete as it is complex. To Robert Fripp, Adrian Belew, Tony Levin, and Bill Bruford: Thank you.

Remembering Marc Rains, March 5, 1963 – August 29, 2001

2011-08-28T20:17:00.000-07:00

Ever play a game called Which One Am I? You take an ensemble of any kind and identify which character or member is most like you. You can also play it by matching characters with other people you know. I’ll do it now to give you a sense of who my friend Marc was:

• The Big Chill: William Hurt’s character
• Doonesbury: Zonker
• Crosby, Stills & Nash: David Crosby
• Dead Poet’s Society: the kid who changed his name to Nuwanda

I think you get the idea. Marc was a bit of a rebel, a free thinker. Uncomfortable with authority, he never wanted to have to answer to anyone. We all got high back in the day, but whereas it was a purely recreational activity for the rest of us, for Marc it was a Statement of who he was and what he believed in, which was, in a word: freedom. He dreamed of a world with no hassles, just hedonistic pursuits. He wanted to suck out all the marrow of life, one joint at a time.

He wasn’t all about drugs, of course. He was also very interested in creativity, especially music and writing. In fact, while I had known Marc since kindergarten, we didn’t become close until junior high school when I somehow found out he could play the organ and he somehow found out that I had been writing lyrics. We would get together at his house, steal some of his parents’ booze, and I would sing my lyrics while he wrote down the notes I was intending to sing.

Eventually he wanted to express himself through writing as well. He would start something, get stuck, and give it to me to finish. I encouraged him to keep working through the blocks. There was one piece of his that I liked a lot and he gave it to me as a present. Except for all the things he owned, like records, he wasn’t about ownership.

I know what you’re thinking, what a hypocrite. Yeah, well, it’s not easy living the life of a nonconformist iconoclast. For one, you need money to eat. So he took a job, but it was a job he could live with: at a record store. He never went to college with the rest of us; in fact, he never finished high school. All through elementary school, he always had the most extraordinary record of absences from school. Some of this was because of health problems that plagued him all of his short life. But by the time he got to high school, he just couldn’t be bothered with schedules, homework, and responsibilities.

He did, however, go to high school. He would show up in the morning and park himself in the cafeteria, where he would stay most of the day, striking up conversations with whomever happened by. Connecting, that’s what he really valued, more than sitting in one desk-chair in one classroom for 50 minutes, then sitting in another one in a different classroom for another 50 minutes, and so on.

Though we were very tight in junior high and most of high school, things started falling apart as college loomed closer. We were moving in different directions, meeting different people, having different experiences. The one thing that kept us connected was music. I remember in 1981, my freshman year in college, he bought the King Crimson album Discipline, which was the first album by the group since 1974. It featured a new lineup and we were curious what it would sound like. He called me up and we listened to the album for the first time together over the phone.

Eventually, his health problems became quite serious. He had a kidney transplant. Within a few years, he needed another one. In spite of his condition, he wasn’t living a healthy lifestyle and for some reason, he eventually took up cigarettes. He used to say that he didn’t want to live to age 40, but that was when we were stupid teenagers and we thought 40-year-olds were decrepit hags who shat themselves. Still, it seems he knew he was living on borrowed time and didn’t want to waste his remaining years going through the trouble of being healthy.

But he was also very useful. He took the experiences he had with dialysis to become a dialysis technician and more importantly, he would counsel and console kidney patients who were going through what he had gone through. He met a woman he loved and got married. He had two daughters. He was very happy. Though we both lived in Massachusetts, we were basically on different ends, me in the north, he in the south. We didn’t see each for long stretches, though we communicated by phone and email on a semi-regular basis.

At some point, there were issues with the second kidney surgery, and his pancreas was damaged. He had to have a gaping hole in his back for a long time. I visited him in the Intensive Care Unit. I was going to see David Crosby in concert and he asked for a shirt. When I went back to the hospital to give it to him, his room was empty. I was chilled, but it turned out that he was transferred to a regular room. I went there and he was sleeping. I left the shirt on his bed.

In 1997 or 1998, he had a stroke. He was only in his mid-30s. The next time I saw him, I didn’t recognize him. He had lost a lot of weight, had not much of an expression on his face, and moved slowly. It was at the shiva of a friend’s mother. I helped him get some food, and we talked about what was going on. He had been through so much, but he was optimistic. He loved his life. He loved his family. He had a lot of joy and a lot to live for.

The last email I have from him was sent to me on January 1, 2001. Typically optimistic, it reads:

Happy new year,
Well, I made it thru every thing they did again! My right side feels a little alien but its getting better every day. I have to go 6 weeks infection free and then they'll start looking at putting a permanent access back in my body right now I have a catheter sticking out of my neck which drives me a bit crazy, but they still get to dialyze me with relative ease, and I still have a right arm so all in all things are OK I guess.
How is all by you? A nice holiday? I hope!
can't keep arm in this position for typing for to long talk to you soon!
Love to all!
Marc

Next thing I heard was that he had died. He was being prepped for open-heart surgery and went into cardiac arrest. It was August 29, 2001. He was 38 years old. He’d fulfilled his prophecy. Less than two weeks later, 9/11 happened. It seemed that everything was falling apart.

Marc’s final request was to be cremated and have his ashes spread over the golf course we used to sneak onto and party at in high school. He told his wife to contact me and have me plan it. It was sufficiently moving for me that it inspired me to write an essay and a one-act play about the experience. With his unusual request, he had managed to bring together a number of friends who had become estranged over the years.

A few years later, his wife called me and asked me to take his records. Going through them was like watching a documentary of our lives. I remembered where and when he had purchased those albums and gotten those autographs. I remember listening to them with him. I remember how much they meant to him.

Two years ago, I got a message from his oldest daughter who found a letter I had written to her mother after the funeral. I had promised her I would help with the girls. But I had one of my own and a rough marriage, and I never kept my promise. I’m now Facebook friends with both of his girls; I’ve helped them restore and retain memories of their father and they’ve helped keep his spirit alive for me. Marc always was all about connections – and second chances.

I’m thinking of you, buddy. Damn, but you would have loved Facebook. And seeing how your girls have grown. And me? I’d love to write one more song with you. One with a chorus that keeps on repeating and never fades away.

Late thinking on early adopting

2011-08-20T19:50:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was out with a friend and I received a call on my cell phone. Shucking my clamshell-styled telecommunications device, I took the call. After I hung up (in truth I was hung up on but that's another story), my friend marveled that I still have a flip phone. Everybody else, it seems, has some kind of Star Trek gizmo that they poke and stroke every few minutes to get information they don't really need except that it's fun to poke and stroke a device.

The fact is, I was the last person I knew to get a flip phone in the first place. I used to have a basic little flat thing that if I held the ear part to my ear, the mouth part rested at the top of my jowl. Considering that a number of my friends think of me as being somewhat of a mumbler, that phone never was all that practical for me.

What I find interesting is that I've become such a late adopter. I used to be just the opposite. I had one of those Cellular One bag phones in the '90s and I distinctly recall calling people from my car and saying, "Guess where I'm calling from? MY CAR! Isn't that so cool?" Back then it was. But that was probably the last time I was cool.

CD players became available between my junior and senior years of college, and when I moved into my senior-year apartment, I was rocking one of those beasts. I was, in fact, the first of my friends to own one. It was big, expensive, and had none of the features my friends' CD players had when they got theirs several months later. But I was proud to have one first. Only trouble was that music stores had maybe 40 CDs to choose from. Before long that all changed, of course. And by the time I got my second CD player (only a year or two later), the landscape was forever altered, and I was just another one of the masses who were making vinyl obsolete (for a little while anyway).

Another great technology I adopted early was a CB radio. Mine was about the size of a small radio station. I knew about five or six people who also had CB radios, and after school we would get on the air and talk funny to each other until we got bored. In retrospect, there was no good reason for me to have a CB radio. There were no smokeys I was evading in my Newton, Massachusetts, neighborhood. But it was cool to say "10-4, good buddy" and if you knew that 10-100 meant you needed to take a leak, you were pretty happening.

But of course, CB radios went the way of 8-tracks (had one of those, too) and I guess after all this time I've come to realize that there's no great advantage to being an early adopter of anything. Things always get thinner, faster, cheaper, and more powerful in their second generations than their first. Over the last several years, it was mainly my financial situation that kept me jumping on anything new; now it's more a case of replacement fatigue. I'm tired of upgrading.

Case in point: I took my daughter to the phone store the other day. Her phone and mine are on the same account and i had received a message saying that one of our phones was due for an upgrade. We went in and learned that it was my phone. My daughter, whose phone slides and glides and glows, was crestfallen. So I let her have my upgrade, and now hers is more like the Star Trek ones. I still have my flip phone. I can use her upgrade in November, at which point phones will probably be in our shoes a la Maxwell Smart. Keeping up with the Joneses is impossible enough for me; I'm not even going to try to keep up with society's joneses.

Demarcations

2011-07-15T18:19:00.001-07:00

I wrote this after visiting a cemetery with my four-year-old girl, Stella.

There is fascination and there is obsession. Between the two is a line. It may or may not be a thin line. But there is a point, a line, a point along a line, a line of infinite points, across which fascination – which is healthy – becomes obsession – which is not. The subject now is death. The fascination is hers. The obsession is his.

They are now in his apartment, a two-room attic studio on the third floor of a nondescript house on the harder edge of a transitional neighborhood. Down the street is more residential, but his house is on the corner, closer to the business district: a pub, a few convenience stores, a deep-discount supermarket that stocks brand-name seconds and brands that have never advertised themselves anywhere. Just beyond that on the other side of the street is a strip club that is one more knifing away from being closed for good. Amateur night was three nights ago, but he’s not interested – the girls are probably only four years older than his older daughter.

His house, then, is a demarcation point, signifying the split between residential and commercial areas.

He is with his younger daughter, Stella, nearly five, nearly a decade younger than her sister. The difference in age can be explained largely by the mismatched libidos of he and his soon-to-be-ex-wife. Like the lottery commercials say, you have to play to win. Not much chance they’d get pregnant having sex half a dozen times a year. And yes, boom, one day when they least expected it, they got lucky. But luck is relative. Money was already tight, the marriage already in trouble. Tension grew. Eventually, she wanted him out of their bedroom. So he slept in the den for more than a year before finding the cheapest apartment available that was close to his kids.

The wall in the den against which the futon couch that served as his bed stood abutted the bedroom he used to share with his wife. That wall was a demarcation. It separated man and wife; it was a physical symbol of the distance between them.

Now, the older daughter is at school. The wife is working. He is alone with Stella. He is thinking of what they can do together. Just a mile from his apartment is an old Jewish cemetery where his paternal great-grandparents are buried. He decides they should visit. He likes to visit them anyway.

They get ready to leave. She is excited. When she gets excited, she jumps up and down. He tells her she can’t be do that in his apartment. Why? Because there are other people living underneath them. The sound disturbs them. It’s not like her house where the whole place is hers. Here, the floor distinguishes between one tenant and another. It is another demarcation, a boundary of personal space in a place that is only partly private.

They go out his door, down the back staircase, through the side door of the house, and onto a short paved path to the sidewalk. They cross the street to his car and drive to the cemetery. They arrive quickly. The cemetery is small, smaller than a supermarket. The stones are old and covered in a mix of words and symbols, English text and Hebrew text, mold, moss, and lichen. His great-grandparents, Max and Rose, are in the rear. As they walk, Stella starts to skip ahead.

No running, he tells her. Why? It’s not respectful, he says. What do you mean? A cemetery is a place to think about your loved ones who are gone. We don’t run or play here because it can disturb other people. It disturbs the sanctity (he thinks but does not say because she won’t know what the word means). You mean it’s like in your apartment, she asks, why I can’t jump on the floor because I’ll disturb the people downstairs?

He smiles. Yes, it’s the same. You don’t want to disturb the people downstairs. People like Max and Rose, downstairs permanently. The ground, this ground itself, is a demarcation between the living and the dead. And so they walk on to Max and Rose’s resting place, and there he begins to tell her about them.

What’s going on up there?
What?
Someone’s up there, Max. Who is it?
What do you think, I have eyes in my skull? How am I supposed to know who’s up there?
It’s two voices, a man and a girl.
OK, so now you know. It’s a man and a girl.
We’ve been here many years, you longer than me, when have we ever heard a little girl?
How do you know it’s a girl? Maybe it’s just a bird?
Oh sure, so a man and a bird are standing above us talking to each other. Smart, Max, you’re really smart.
Well, what difference does it make? It’s not like they’re digging us up.
I just want to know who’s visiting us. Very few people come to this lousy little cemetery at all and I’ve never heard a girl come to us. Now go find out who they are.
Rose, I’d love to go see who they are for you, really I would. But you see, I’m dead.
Excuses! Send your spirit form up there and take a look.
All right, all right. You want I should scare them away?
No, you schmuck! Be invisible. Just take a peek and let me know who’s up there. Gevalt!
Twenty-seven years she outlived me. Twenty-seven years I had peace and quiet.
I heard that!
OK, let’s see, activate spirit form, turn invisible, float out of the box, up through the ground; WHOA, that sun is bright! Now who do we have here? Ah, it’s him again. Nice boy, a real mensch. Doesn’t forget his elders. But who’s this little cutie? With red hair no less! Who had red hair? Must be his daughter. He’s reading our Hebrew names to her. Mordecai and Raisel. Telling her our journey from Pinsk, Russia, to Chelsea, Massachusetts. Little more than 100 years ago now. Well, anyway, no threat to us. Time to report back to the boss.

He never knew Max, but Rose lived to be 101, long enough to dance the hora at his bar mitzvah and well beyond that. Three years ago, a chance glance at an envelope of documents he’d been given by his aunt a few years earlier revealed Max’s naturalization certificate. It had the date and place of Max’s birth, the date he left the old country, the name of the ship he sailed on, and the date he arrived at Ellis Island. As it turned out, the following year would mark Max’s centennial anniversary of coming to America.

Intrigued by the discovery, he announced to his family that he was going to research Max’s story and asked their help in setting up a commemoration on or near the anniversary of Max’s arrival. He interviewed great aunts and uncles, did research online, and gradually pieced together the story. The czar was conscripting Jews into his army, though otherwise denying them basic rights. Max’s brother left for America and having received word that he was OK, the man known officially as Morche Rubacha soon decided he should go, too.

By that time, Max and Rose were married and had two children – one of whom was Stella’s great-grandfather, Harry. Yet Rose also was pregnant with a third child. Still, a distant Max was preferable to a dead Max, so he went. When he got to New York, his plan was to live with his brother. He had a little difficulty finding him, though, because his brother had changed his last name from Rubacha to Rubin. Max followed suit, also ditching Morche and Mordecai for the simple and quintessentially American “Max”.

Max was a carpenter by trade, and the following year the Great Chelsea Fire of April 12, 1908, destroyed most of the inner urban suburb of Boston. Assuming there would be plenty of work for him, Max left his brother and New York and relocated to Chelsea. Three years later, Rose and their three children finally came to America and rejoined him. They quickly built their family to an eventual 11 children. Longevity being a Rubin trait (actually, it was from Rose’s side, given she outlived Max by nearly three decades), Stella’s father had many primary information sources at his disposal. Interestingly, it was only in beginning his research that his own father told him that Max and Rose were buried a short drive from his house. From that time, he had been a regular visitor.

It’s the blond guy again, with his daughter. Oy, such a shayna punim. And a gingit, too!
You mean, Jason? He’s Harry’s grandson. Paul is his father. I tell you that every time.
OK, so his name is Jason. Look, I was dead before he came. I had a hard enough time remembering my own children’s names.
So what’s with the redhead?
Nothing. She’s cute. A little kid. The red hair must be from your side.
I don’t remember any redheads in my family. Must be from Paul’s wife’s side.
Mildred?
Mildred, you remember, but you don’t remember Jason?
Mildred was alive when I was alive!
Yes, but they have the same coloring. Her mother’s people were from Austria.
They have gingits in Austria?
Well, they’re very fair.
And what? We discriminate? Ho ho ho!
You’re not funny, Max, you’re not funny. You weren’t funny then. You’re not funny now.
Oh, no Rose. That was funny. That was funny!

Longevity had its limits, though. When he was only one year old, his sister, Donna, died of leukemia. She was only seven. Paul and Mildred were devastated, especially Mildred, who could not endure any mention of Donna and would not allow any photos of her to be displayed. He has no memory of her – did not, in fact, know about her until he was about five or six and a friend relayed what he’d been told by his parents – yet he has always felt guilty about having been a needy toddler during a time when his parents were intensely mourning. Surely, he feels, there must have been a pall cast over the house, an interruption in the blissful focus of a deepening parent-child bond.

He never felt unloved, but he did feel loss. His mother became overprotective and he complied with her wishes never to wander far, at least until he was a teenager. If he so much as sneezed, his mother would chase him with a thermometer. When he was older, if he stayed out late, she stayed up late. Yet starting when he was in grade school, night thoughts of death – of laying within a closed coffin forever – brought terrors he could not subdue on his own. He went when he was younger into his parents’ bed; as he got older, he used drugs to clear his mind of the scary images.

In his adolescence he hit upon a new strategy, that Donna was his guardian angel. Close calls on the ball field, fevers that broke, even a rough airplane ride that unnerved even the seasoned flight attendants but landed safely were all evidence that she was watching out for him. Yet still, death was always the enemy. The eternal finality of death was an idea to be fought.

As a young man out of college, hitting the great incline of life, he was moved by being present at a relative’s funeral. He realized that funerals calmed him, gave life meaning even if it settled no great questions about death. The eulogies told him that lives well lived are well-remembered. The rituals brought dignity to the transition from the known world of the living to the unknowable world beyond. Even pure expressions of grief – the clutched tissues of which there never are enough to stem the streams of tears, the babbled words and wails of an elderly spouse now alone – impressed him.

He began attending any funeral or burial in his social circle. He began frequenting cemeteries, visiting and communing with his own lost loved ones. He took comfort in being close to death, but always on the safe side of it. Always he could walk away.

And then he became a parent, and life and death took on new meaning to him. He had to be alive for his children, and yet his love for them was so deep and strong that he knew he would take a bullet for them, would stand in front of a racing car to protect them. He had a fantasy that someone would try to abduct one of his daughters, he would catch the fiend and beat his skull open on the sidewalk. That was how he could adequately express his love for them.

But he did more. He talked to them about his mother, now dead. About Donna. About his grandparents. About Max and Rose. The older one was sensitive and it was kept from her that cemeteries contain dead bodies. But the younger one seized life and knowledge. She knew already, no doubt the older one told her. But she wasn’t scared. She was fascinated. Curious. She wanted to play where dead bodies lay. So she joined him there.

She amazed him. For a long time, he blamed her birth on his financial and marital troubles. But her unceasingly wide-eyed enthusiasm for life captivated him. She may indeed have been the last straw that ended her parents’ marriage, but it was a doomed marriage anyway. She made it possible for them to move on with their lives with less stress, anger, and misery. She made him see that things could be better, that the future was less hopeless and scary. That life was still worth living – and for her sake, to keep on living was essential.

She, then, was herself a demarcation. A demarcation between a painful past and a hopeful future. Between a fear of death and a new appreciation for life.

So, what are they talking about?
Who?
How do you ask such a question? I would strangle you if you weren’t already dead, you aggravate me so much. Jason and the girl, of course!
He’s telling her my story, what else?
Your story, huh? Your story? Your story is not such a story. You came here in a boat. You lived with your brother. You moved to find work. When were you planning on sending for me? After a while I couldn’t wait anymore. I came, not alone, but with three children! Did he mention that?
Yes, he mentioned it. He’s a good kid, may God keep him on that side for many years to come.
It’s good that he tells our story. He’s a real mensch that one. As long as he tells our story, we live. He should know that. He should know that you’re never really dead until you’re forgotten. And you’re never fully alive until you know your history. He should know that.
He knows, Rose. He knows.

A Mother's Day poem for my mother

2011-05-07T19:52:00.000-07:00

Lazy Sundays
by Jason M. Rubin
for Mildred Rubin (1933-1999)

I long for lazy Sundays like I had when I was young
If I had known how fleet they’d be more tightly I’d have clung
I’d wake up not by ‘larm bell rings but rather by the scent
Of onions in a frying pan; I knew just what that meant

A breakfast made by mother dear, the best I’ve ever had
The only morning meal we'd share, we siblings and our dad
Those eggs with onions, bits of lox, and bagels fresh and warm
To fill my plate in those old days I’d weather any storm

I’d watch my father build his bagel piling lox and cukes
Atop a sliced tomato and red onion, no rebukes
In fact I sought to emulate his architect’ral feat
And strained to stretch my mouth so what I’d built I could then eat

My mother served us all, of course, and cheerfully at that
Despite the fact that she had toiled while all of us just sat
Indeed those lazy days I loved were lazy not for her
I’d change that all today if only with us she still were

A poem for my mother, though, is all I can now do
And if you’re reading from above, you know, mom, I love you
On Mother’s Day my thoughts still stray to Sundays I dream of
And to the woman who fed me with lox and lots of love.

Mr. President, please do not publish a bin Laden death photo

2011-05-03T18:00:00.001-07:00

Dear President Obama:

I congratulate and thank you for finding and eliminating as a threat Osama bin Laden. By all accounts, our troops undertook a variety of actions to establish that the deceased was indeed Osama. By all accounts, the body was handled with respect to, if not in absolute accordance with, the proscribed death and burial rites associated with Islam. To do both of these things so quickly and efficiently is evidence that every aspect of this operation was considered well in advance of its execution. For this, all involved should be commended.

Surely, though, the question of whether or not to publish a photograph of Osama in death must also have been considered. Perhaps the brisk success of the mission and the near-universal acclaim it has received has provided a window of opportunity to reconsider this question? If so, Mr. President, I respectfully implore you not to release any photographic or videographic evidence of Osama's death and burial you may have.

I understand the reasons why the body was disposed of quickly. I understand that no legitimate nation-states would want his remains in their soil. I understand that rogue entities and terror groups ought not be allowed to make him a martyr. I understand the danger and difficulty of bringing his body back to the U.S. or to a U.S. territory. And I understand that burial within 24 hours was what Muslim practice required.

I do not claim to be an expert on Muslim death rituals, but from what I've heard they appear quite similar to Jewish death rituals, in terms of washing and enshrouding the body without embalming or otherwise seeking to preserve or tamper with it. Soon-as-possible burial ensures it will decompose back to the dust of the earth from which it originally sprang. Jewish custom also prohibits viewing the body except by those entrusted with washing and preparing it for burial, a holy act. This is why open-casket wakes and funerals are not part of Jewish tradition. I can only assume it is so for Muslims as well. In death, the body is naked of its soul. To view it is to disrespect it. I'm not saying that Osama, dead or alive, deserves respect, but when a person passes from its mortal state to the unknown, from its place among humanity to the judgment of Divinity, our work is done.

We have seen over the past decade brutal thuggery and cruelty among our enemies in the Middle East. Bodies have been dragged in public and shown on television, Daniel Pearl's beheading was on YouTube. This is what inhuman savages do with their kills. Vlad the Impaler, inspiration for Dracula, put the heads of his victims on stakes leading up to his castle door. We are not trophy hunters. We are not savages. We made a justified kill. It is over.

There are those who doubt the deceased truly is Osama bin Laden. The Taliban, for example, says that America has shown the world no conclusive evidence. To this I say, So what? Who are we to care what the Taliban says? Why should we be concerned about satisfying the Taliban? If they don't believe it, fine. It doesn't change anything. They won't lay down their arms if shown that he really is dead. And if they doubt, then they have no grounds for retaliation. That's a win/win in my book.

The image, we are told, is gruesome. He was shot above his left eye and part of his skull was blown off. We know what this looks like from the JFK Magruder video. It is unsettling to say the least. Showing this image will only engender sympathy and inspire rage among those who wish to do us harm. Among our friends and allies, our own people and especially the 9/11 families, it will only disgust the masses and disennoble the mission. We believe you, Mr. President, and again, we thank you.

But please, do not release the photo.

Respectfully,

Jason M. Rubin

Random thoughts on the death of bin Laden

2011-05-02T19:28:00.000-07:00

Just last month at Passover, we read about how God led the Israelites across the parted Red Sea, then allowed the waters to swallow up Pharaoh's pursuing army. Referencing Talmudic teaching, our haggadah says, "Our rabbis taught: When the Egyptian armies were drowning in the sea, the Heavenly Hosts broke out in songs of jubilation. God silenced them and said, 'My creatures are perishing, and you sing praises?'" I am reminded of this when I see college students waving American flags and shouting "USA! USA! USA!" with pumping fists. This, in spite of the fact that they were not cognizant of what 9/11 meant when it happened, and what this act of delayed retribution means now. This isn't about America kicking ass. It's merely our volley in an unwinnable game that the Israelis and Palestinians have been playing for many years.

Which is not to say that I don't applaud the mission or its outcome. I do. I'm glad he's dead, and I'm glad he wasn't allowed to die of natural causes or disease. He deserved to meet his fate by an act of man. I am not in favor of capital punishment, but Osama bin Laden had perpetrated crimes against humanity and he deserved not the mercy of humanity. His targeting of the West for the wrongs his own people had suffered was just an updating of Hitler's targeting of Jews for the wrongs committed against Germany after World War I. There are bad people and there are evil people. A bad person might be reformed; evil must be expunged.

There are many on both sides who are eager to politicize this act. I have seen the left smile smugly that this happened under Obama's watch and not under Bush's. I have seen the right declare that Obama did nothing; all credit must go to the Navy Seals. Both sides are right and wrong - and ultimately wrong even to politicize it. I will say that Obama had a better chance of scoring this trophy because he was more focused on it than Bush, who gave up on Afghanistan early (no doubt chastened by Russia's failed war there) in favor of Saddam Hussein, an easier yet less relevant target. But the work that led to this daring act had been going on for many years, long before Obama even thought of running for the Presidency. In his speech, he could have been more generous to the efforts of others; his repeated use of "I" was noticeable.

And yet, it was also appropriate. After all, had the mission failed, it would have been incumbent upon him to stand before the American people last night and accept the blame. This is where the Commander in Chief earns his money, which is why Donald Trump is indeed such a joke. Someone has to make a decision that has to do with life and death, not just dollars and cents. True, Obama did not pull the trigger that separated part of bin Laden's skull from his head, but he did pull the trigger on the mission itself. He weighed the information, the risks, the opportunity, and he was satisfied that this was the time, this was the place, this was the plan. And he was right. Abbottabad is now America's Entebbe. It took brains and guts to execute it, and it also took brains and guts to green-light it.

The world without Osama bin Laden is still a dangerous world. And our enemies are beyond the tools of diplomacy. Like it or not, we are in a war of attrition against terror networks large and small, all over the world. Killing bin Laden did not make us stronger or safer; reprisals are not only possible but expected. Like in an old Western, all we did was settle an old score. It could well have been Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name who pulled the trigger (in fact, due to safety concerns, I am sure we will never know the name of the person or persons who delivered the fatal shot or shots; unlike Boston Corbett, who killed John Wilkes Booth, or Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, the avenger's name will likely be withheld from history).

I know someone who was killed on 9/11. I've been to 9/11 funerals, sat in 9/11 shivas, watched 9/11 footage with 9/11 mourners. Today, that person is still dead. Her children have lived longer without her in their lives than with her. The dead can't help us now. Then as now, it is the survivors - all of us - who must carry on. If the world is to become better, it can't be done only by expunging the evil. We must also activate the good. That's why, while this act was important, while this act was courageous, while this act was even necessary, it is the next act that will define us as Americans and as a civilization.

Exiles: A Passover Meditation

2011-04-18T04:43:00.000-07:00

Passover has always been a favorite holiday of mine, filled with gratitude and awareness, a review of a tragic history and a hope for an idyllic future. When it begins tonight, Passover will have for me an additional layer of meaning, a deeper level of personal connection with the themes of the seder and the meaning of redemption. We are taught to feel empathy with our ancestors, and we say “For we were slaves in the land of Egypt” to express our oneness with them. But this year, I understand more clearly about banishment, about constraints, restrictions, wanderings. About exodus, the search for a home and, finding it, the relief and gratitude and joy of freedom. I feel I have been redeemed. I believe, in this season of renewal, that I am starting over, and in the words of a spiritual that was popular in the Civil Rights movement (which also had great empathy with the Passover story), I ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around.

One of the themes of the Passover story is that of exile. Joseph, the eleventh of Jacob’s twelve sons, was sold to passing Arab traders by his jealous brothers, and ended up in servitude in the house of the Pharaoh. That his dreams ended up making him a valuable advisor to the Pharaoh is no lasting reprieve for the Israelites, for when famine spread to Canaan the brothers came to Egypt to beg for mercy and corn. Joseph commanded that the brothers and their father move to Egypt and from that time the Israelites grew and multiplied until some generations hence the new Pharaoh grew suspicious of the large Israelite population and so enslaved them.

By treachery, Joseph was exiled to Egypt. By hunger, his brothers and father came to Egypt was well. For centuries, the Israelites were trapped as slaves there. Once freed, they endured forty years of wandering in the desert, a nomadic people trying desperately to reach a Promised Land they were long deemed unworthy to inhabit.

Last July, with the embers of my failing marriage still hot and glowing red, I was forced to leave my home and my children. For the next five months, I lived out of a plastic storage container, finding shelter through the kindness and generosity of friends who let me stay on their couches and spare rooms. I had no permanent forwarding address, no groceries to call my own (or a place to put them), and I despaired of ever knowing normalcy again.

With no money to set off on my own (I was still responsible for the mortgage and other expenses of the home I was no longer welcome to inhabit), I was at the mercy of others and in their debt. Finally, in late December a crisis took the floor out from under me and my already unstable existence began going into a free fall. It was at that point that I knew I could no longer live as a wandering Jew.

Thanks to more generosity from those around me, I got an apartment of my own as of January 1. An unspectacular two-bedroom studio in the attic of a house in a lousy part of town – but only three miles from my children – my Promised Land was, at first, barely promising. I had, after all, no furniture of my own. But again, more friends pitched in, colleagues too, and with some resourcefulness on my part (I grabbed a bureau, bookcase, and other items from curbs where they were awaiting the garbage truck, and got many other items for free or very little money from craigslist and dollar stores), my dingy apartment suddenly became a comforting and comforting place filled with my stuff, a true sanctuary I was happy to wake up in and come home to.

Best of all, my kids like it here and have had sleepovers. My oldest just returned from Israel with a gift for me of a mezuzah, which Jews place on the doorposts of their homes in fulfillment of a Biblical commandment. That she would not only acknowledge this place as my home but also want to consecrate it as such was the most extraordinary gift of all, better even than the mezuzah itself.

In two days, my wife and I will appear before a judge and our marriage will finally be put out of its misery. Which doesn’t mean that my troubles are over, not by a long shot. But when the strings are cut, I will not fall helplessly into an endless pit of despair. I have already come out the other end of exile. I have reached the far distant shore. I am home. I am free. The other day I was on the phone with a friend I last spoke to just after getting the apartment. She was impressed by the difference in my voice, how it had so much more energy and optimism. Next year in Jerusalem? A nice thought, but to be still here in Linden Square, Malden, next year will be blessing enough.

Musings on Record Store Day

2011-04-17T10:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Record Store Day, an annual, nationwide, well-intentioned attempt to get people back to record stores – specifically, independent neighborhood stores. Whether it ultimately is successful long-term in stemming the tide of online purchasing and downloading of music, or just a last-gasp effort from a doomed industry, I enjoy RSD and treat it as a holiday of sorts. On this day (it's been going on since 2008), my kids know to leave me alone and let me commune with thousands of pieces of plastic.

They don’t quite understand my fascination with record stores, of course. Being 14 and four, they (well, the older one anyway) get their music from the radio, YouTube, and any number of music-sharing sites. The idea of cracking a cellophane seal, handling a disc, God forbid flipping a platter that had to be removed from not one but two sleeves after 15-20 minutes to hear another 15-20 minutes of music speckled with pops, is as beyond their comprehension as a washboard is to me.

I, too, no antiquated primate, have downloaded plenty of songs from the Internet. It’s faster and cheaper, though the physical space savings are offset by the amount of hard disk space they take up on my computer. Many websites also offer free (and illegal) downloads of albums, as well as bootlegged live recordings you would never find at most reputable record stores.

To offset the allure of sit-on-your-ass music procurement, Record Store Day has become a trigger for the creation of special products to be sold or distributed at RSD-participating stores. These are publicized well in advance and as a result many stores see long lines of collectors (and, unfortunately, eBay resellers) assembling outside hours prior to opening. This means that many of the most coveted items sell out quickly, which is a shame for those of us of a certain age that may be coaching their kid’s soccer game that morning. But from the perspective of a local, independent record store, this is the whole point of RSD and a signal of its success. For that one day, anyway, hordes fill the stores.

Every RSD, I enjoy picking up special sampler discs and other cool stuff. The store I frequent, part of a legendary local chain called Newbury Comics, uses RSD as an excuse to give away piles of promotional materials that have been taking up space in their storeroom. Posters, stickers, magnets, poor-selling or promo-only albums are free for the taking. I’ve often found wonderful treasures in these piles. Just yesterday, I came away with a Beach Boys 78 rpm set that features official and alternate takes of “Good Vibrations” and “Heroes and Villains” over four ten-inch sides on sale for $9.59, the new CD by The Band’s Robbie Robertson on sale for only $7.99, two free jazz CDs, a free t-shirt for a movie I’ve never heard of, and a free promotional poster for Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin. Two years ago, I got a free orange-vinyl single by Brian Wilson so he’s become sort of an RSD totem for me.

Still, no matter how much fun RSD can be, to me the allure of being in a record store is not about the products or the pricing. Rather, it’s the atmosphere, the community. A record store like an archives or a library. There’s history there, and lots and lots to learn. Some of my favorite music-buying experiences have happened in record stores where I was shown something or where I had the opportunity to point something out to someone else. It’s the sharing of information, sharing the passion for music and musicians, that makes record stores indispensable, and no music BBS or Amazon review section can replace the hands-on, face-to-face experience of seeing someone’s eyes light up when a rare album is found or a new, exciting sound is discovered.

If you’ve read the book or seen the movie High Fidelity, you get a sense of what I’m talking about. But here are a couple of examples from my experience of how being in the physical presence of others in a record store helped me to find music of great personal value to me.

1979: I had just gotten into the progressive group Gentle Giant. I was in a now-defunct store called Popcorn, which had a large selection of import LPs. I was looking through the domestic Giant albums, and then looked in the import section. I noticed that there were two albums with the same exact cover art, except that one just said Gentle Giant on the front and the other said Gentle Giant/Three Friends on the front and a list of songs on the back. I was holding the two albums side by side, apparently looking confused, until a salesperson came over and told me that Three Friends was the group’s third album but only the first to be released in the U.S. The other one was the rarer eponymous first album. That’s the one I ended up buying and it contained a song called "Funny Ways" that became very important to me (though a female friend sneeringly calls it "Progboy's Lament") and cemented the group as a favorite.

1984: Early in the days of CDs, I was not particularly eager to buy digital versions of LPs I already owned and listened to. Instead, I saw CDs as a way to fill gaps in my collection. I’d decided I needed some Pat Metheny because while I was unfamiliar with his music, I understood him to be an artist whom the musically literate must possess works of. I went to a local store and stood next to someone who was browsing through the Metheny section. When he moved on, I took over. It was hard to choose since I had no frame of reference but one recording stood out: As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls, featuring the 20-minute title track. The fellow whose spot I now occupied saw me scrutinizing the disc and asked me if I was familiar with it. I said no, in fact I don’t know any of his albums but I want to buy one. “That’s a great album,” he said, “but it’s not for everyone. It’s very atmospheric and there isn’t really a rhythm section.” Sounds interesting, I said. “You just have to know that it’s pretty different from his other stuff," he continued. "It’s good, but it’s different.” It almost seemed as if he was trying to warn me away from it, but I was only getting more and more intrigued. I thanked him for the information and proceeded to buy it. It’s now a desert-island album of mine.

In truth, I don’t spend much time in record stores anymore, either because I’m chasing my kids through malls or because I don’t have the expendable cash flow to allow me to buy music as I once did (in high school, I would spend $50 a week at a used record store where most of what I bought was priced from $2.99 to $7.99). But whenever I do have the opportunity to visit one, I always feel a sense of belonging, a feeling of being home. I especially like used record stores, where every bin holds a potential surprise, and the smell of old vinyl and cardboard brings back happy memories of my adolescence.

I salute the record stores, past and present, that I have frequented in my life, sources of soul-enriching sounds and sympathetic seekers of musical treasure. Some of these are dead or dying, but some are still around. Thank you Nuggets, Disc Diggers, Looney Tunes, In Your Ear, Popcorn, Good Vibrations, Stereo Jack’s, Cheapo Records, Salem Record Exchange, Main Street Records, Newbury Comics, Tower Records, HMV, Midland Records, and others whose names I can’t remember. I also want to mention the Newton Centre Music Shop, where I made my first music purchase on my own, a 45 rpm single of Andy Kim’s “Rock Me Gently” back in 1972.

A Todd Rundgren Two-Fer

2011-03-28T19:55:00.000-07:00

In 1976, Todd Rundgren released an album called Faithful, side one of which was filled with covers of songs that he enjoyed in his youth, performed, naturally enough, as faithfully as possible to the original. They were, however, songs of unnatural complexity and distinction, such as the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”, the Beatles’ “Strawberry Fields Forever”, and Jimi Hendrix’s “If 6 Was 9”. To Todd’s credit, they sound amazingly close to the originals, and I used to delight in fooling people by playing them his version of “Good Vibrations” and betting them that it wasn’t the Beach Boys.

In 2011, Todd has embraced an even greater challenge: covering himself as faithfully as possible. In keeping with a recent trend that has seen Lou Reed bring Berlin to the stage, Van Morrison resurrect Astral Weeks, and Steely Dan alternate among three consecutive albums in its catalog (The Royal Scam, Aja, and Gaucho), Todd is performing not one but two of his classic albums: 1974’s Todd and 1981’s Healing. These are very different albums representing different periods in his career and in the state of music in general. Both can be lumped in with his more progressive works, though there are ample examples of pop, soul, heavy metal, and other styles throughout.

In the case of Healing, he had originally played all the parts himself. For this show, he put together a crack band of musicians with varying degrees of history with Todd. On guitar and keyboards was Jesse Gress; on bass, keyboards, and background vocals was Kasim Sultan, who played with Todd in Utopia; on drums was Prairie Prince from the Tubes, who has played with Todd for years; on keyboards was Greg Hawkes from the Cars (and the New Cars, featuring Todd) and Bobby Strickland, who also played soprano, alto, and baritone saxes, and recorders. In each city of the tour, he has recruited a local choir to perform as well. In Boston, where I caught the show on March 27, it was a Berklee College of Music group called Overjoyed.

If you knew the albums, you knew the show. The only surprise came in the visual aspects – and in the fact that this complex music was recreated exquisitely well. Visually, the band were in the height of 70s glam fashion during the Todd material, with lights and lasers recreating the era of arena rock excess. During the somewhat more spiritual Healing material, I noticed that the band were all barefoot. Unfortunately, Todd’s presentation was so faithful that during the Healing set, Prairie Prince used electronic drums extensively, an artifact from the era best left in the past.

It was a magnificent evening, all the more amazing to me because I actually have had zero interest in anything the man has done since 1989’s Nearly Human. I had long written him off as someone who lost his way, who abandoned music for computers and various side projects that drew him away from his strength, a devotion to music of uncompromising power and originality. But last night, even as the music was from decades gone by, he was fully engaged and energized in his performance.

And his audience, as always, was with him all the way. Few artists have such a loyal and devoted following as does Todd (even though I wasn’t going along with his more recent stuff, I could never turn my back from his work from the early 70s to the late 80s). This was demonstrated by the fact that the anthemic final song of the night, Todd’s "Sons of 1984", ended with a refrain that the crowd picked up seamlessly as the curtain closed on the band. For minutes after the lights went up, the faithful continued to croon, “Worlds of tomorrow/Life without sorrow/Take it because it’s yours/Sons of 1984.”

That song, of course, was written in 1974. Performed now in 2011, it seemed to take on a different meaning. That utopian promise in some ways seems further away than ever before, but this world is ours, this music is ours, and it’s up to us to make our lives what we want them to be. I had never doubted that Todd had been delivering such a message in many of his works for many years, but last night’s concert provided a guided tour not only to his past but to mine as well, and everyone in the theater. It’s not too late. Orwell’s 1984 never happened. It’s still possible. You just have to remain faithful.

My Three Drum Teachers

2011-03-11T19:53:00.000-08:00

It was 1978. I was 15 years old and in a boring eighth-grade typing class, so I began one day to write song lyrics. I found it both easy and fun to come up with melodies in my head and words that told of a love I had yet to experience. After a while, I had a number of these lyrics and I decided to share them one day with my friend Marc, who had an organ at home he could play a little. He was enthusiastic about them and we started to try to write songs together: me singing my lyrics and he picking out the notes I was wanting to sing them in.

Soon, we began to fantasize about having a band and we shared our fantasy with our friends Andy and Larry. It seemed like a good idea. There was only one problem: only Marc owned an instrument, and only Marc and Andy had really taken music lessons in their lives. Then one Hanukkah, my mother came home from work and asked me if I wanted to take drum lessons. I’m almost positive mine was the only mother on earth who actually initiated a drum conversation with her son.

It turned out that my mother, who worked in a photo lab, had a colleague named Greg Welch, who was a drummer. Greg wanted to raise a little extra cash to fund the recording of a demo tape with his wife, Susan, who was a singer. I guess it was actually his idea.

You’d think I’d be jumping for joy at the prospect of learning how to play drums. But in actuality, given that I was writing lyrics and singing them to an audience of one, I had sort of envisioned myself as being the lead singer (which, of course, is purely laughable in retrospect because while I’m better than bad at singing, I’m still far from good, and have always suffered from stage fright; whatever else I may have thought I could do, being a frontman of a rock group was never going to be it). I went to discuss it with Marc and he was very clear about the issue: “Don’t be stupid, we need a drummer.”

So it was decided that I would be a drummer. And if I was going to be a singing drummer, I’d have plenty of company: Ringo Starr, Dennis Wilson, Micky Dolenz, Levon Helm, Jim Capaldi, Phil Collins, Don Henley, Karen Carpenter, the list goes on. So my parents bought me an incredibly old, crappy set that had been sitting in the attic of friends of theirs since their son went to college a few years before. I remember it was made by U.S. Mercury and was red sparkle. As old and crappy as it was – four pieces with Zildjian hi-hats and a cracked ride cymbal – the red sparkle excited me. I could instantly picture myself wailing a drum solo with lights and lasers flashing all around me.

So there it was, sitting in my bedroom: a drum set. A real live drum set. Now I just needed to learn how to play it. Enter Greg. He came the first day, early in 1979, showed me how to set them up properly, tightened and tuned the drum heads, then sat down and played some rhythms to show me what real drumming looks like up close. Then he asked me whether I wanted to learn jazz or rock drumming. I said rock but in retrospect I’m sure I would have learned more if I’d said jazz. However, he was able to quickly show me how to play the basic 4/4 beat and a number of variations. So while I hadn’t yet mastered any sense of coordination, I was able to at least make some manner of organized noise.

Ultimately, Greg only gave me six lessons before becoming too busy to continue. Though he never taught me rudiments, he gave me the tools I needed to get started as a rock drumming god and I’m grateful for his instruction. I still have a copy of his demo tape, which I still think is marvelous, and he is a Facebook friend.

All I needed now was a new teacher. Ask me to this day my level of percussion education and I’ll tell you I was largely self-taught. And that’s true. After all, I’ve drummed now for 32 years and had only six lessons. But if I didn’t technically have another teacher besides Greg, I did have a couple of other guides and role models: Stephen Jo Bladd of the J. Geils Band and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd.

See, after Greg what I would do is put on records I liked, don a pair of headphones, and attempt to drum along with them. In many cases, it resulted in pathetic flailing on my part. But that was partly because I was trying to copy extraordinary drummers like Keith Moon of the Who, John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, Bill Bruford of Yes, Bill Ward of Black Sabbath, and Steve Gadd, whose solo on Steely Dan’s “Aja” from the recently released album of the same name both confused and astounded me.

My father wasn’t much help. He said I should buy a Buddy Rich album. So I did. And nearly gave up the drums right then and there. I had to have realistic expectations for myself. I was never going to be that good. I just wanted to be good enough for a garage band.

But there were two albums from that time period that were not only great records, they also featured good solid drumming that was not particularly complex and with what little I knew and some dedicated practice I could begin to approximate what the drummers were doing and then master it. Those albums were Sanctuary by Geils and The Wall by Floyd. I played those suckers several times a day, along with other Geils and Floyd albums. Bladd and Mason are never flashy but they are remarkably solid and consistent. They also throw in a few fillips when you’re not expecting them, which is testament to their talent. They tend not to get mentioned when the great rock drummers are discussed, but they were essential to me gaining confidence that I could actually play this instrument competently.

As for the band, Andy eventually got a bass and an amp, which meant by default that Larry would have to be the guitarist. But he wouldn’t get a guitar and as easy as that the fantasy of the band evaporated. I continued writing songs on my own, and still do to this day, but never actually played with other musicians until I got to college, and never really had a band until I turned 40. And even then, it was only to play dinners at our temple and be the pit band for Purim spiels that I wrote and directed.

I don’t really consider myself a drummer, more like a guy who plays drums, but I do enjoy it and even if I don’t get a chance to really bang out on a stage, I have continuously improved in my ability over the years. But without Greg, Stephen Jo, and Nick, I would still be thinking about that frontman gig I mercifully never got.

Immortality

2011-02-26T04:45:00.000-08:00

This post is dedicated to the memory of my sister Donna, who died on this day in 1964. What follows was my submission for an intended book project that never happened, a collection of essays on the subject of immortality. Whatever its literary merits, for me it turned out to have a lot of cathartic value.

I don’t know exactly when I began to fear death – particularly my own – but I know I was young enough to wake up my mother at night and ask to sleep in her bed because I’d gotten myself upset by thinking about it. I can easily recall the scene and the feeling. I would be lying on my back in bed and imagining I was in a casket. Then the door closes and I’m plunged into total darkness, never again to see or speak or think or be until … never! The cold, hard thud of finality is what sprung me from my somnolent sarcophagus.

I had a sister named Donna who died when I was only one year old – she was just seven when she succumbed to leukemia – and I’ve wondered if the intense mourning in the household and my own neediness at a time when my mother was sad and distracted left any trace of trauma in my young brain. I have no memory of Donna and was otherwise unfamiliar with death. The first funeral I went to was my maternal grandmother’s when I was ten but surely that was after the start of my death-obsession.

When I was younger, the world seemed safer, thought I know now it wasn’t. Back then, kids went wherever they wanted without having to tell their parents, as if pedophilia hadn’t been invented yet. I recall summer mornings when the mosquito truck drive through the neighborhood spraying insecticide into the air. I used to hold my breath when it passed slowly down my street, then I’d gingerly stick out my tongue to see if I could taste the poison. By any modern measure, it seemed that grownups back then were trying to kill their children. After all, our pajamas were flammable, second-hand smoke was second nature, and seat belts were vestigial annoyances that were rarely employed.

Still, the only real threat I was vaguely aware of was from the Russians, which was kind of hard for my Three Stooges-influenced brain to fully grasp. Why, then, was I so concerned with my own demise? Maybe it just didn’t make sense that humans break down and die. My family (on my father’s side, anyway) was blessed with longevity. My great-grandmother danced the hora at my bar mitzvah and to this day, at age forty-eight, I still have a few great aunts and uncles. I grew up knowing old people who could still work, reason, move, and beat me at Crazy 8s.

But I also knew that as mortals, we age; slowly yet irreversibly we decompose. Our skin gets lined and spotted, our hair thins, our backs stoop, our legs lose their bounce, and our brains retain less and less of the myriad details that kept us so engaged all our lives. By the time we die – hopefully, some time after our allotted three score and ten years – we are a shriveled shell of what and whom we had been. Even from the most optimistic perspective it is an unpleasant eventuality.

I had been told that immortality was impossible, but I didn’t know why a perfect God would make disposable people. Of course, I know and understand more now than I did as a kid, but I often wish that I didn’t. For example, as a kid I didn’t know that the planet itself is doomed.

In about five billion years (give or take a few billion), the sun will have consumed its own fuel and will begin gradually to burn out. Everything that relies on the sun for life will die. So even if someone were immortal by the frame of reference of we finite beings, at some point life of every kind will cease to exist. And even if someone were supernaturally immortal and could survive independent of the sun, what would be the point? You couldn’t see anything.

Thus, immortality itself is a finite concept, because someone who somehow can live for billions of years is still living on borrowed time. I didn’t know that back then, but when I first learned about reincarnation (through the 1973 novel The Reincarnation of Peter Proud, which my mother owned) I immediately became a believer, for no other reason than it gave me hope that death was a generous comma and not an unforgiving period.

And yet reincarnation seems to make so much sense. At least the Greeks thought so. Five centuries before Christ, who is believed by many to have experienced some kind of life after death (not the kind of material we covered in Temple Beth Avodah Sunday School), the Greek philosopher Empedocles wrote, “For it is impossible for anything to come to be from what is not, and it cannot be brought about or heard of that what is should be utterly destroyed.” In other words, nothing can come from or return to a state of nothingness. If it exists now, it has always existed and always will. Death cannot, therefore, be a finality; nor is birth an actual beginning.

As I have neither the intellectual capacity nor the courage to challenge the idea, I cling to a belief in reincarnation. Who can prove me wrong? For all we know, Abraham Lincoln today is a coal-colored cormorant deftly plucking fish from Charleston Harbor.

(Personally, I’ve long sensed that in a past life I was a commercial fisherman. For as long as I can remember, I’ve experienced a strange familiarity whenever I’m by the ocean, listening to the lapping currents and the scavenger birds flying overhead. Certainly the smell of salt water is something ingrained and primordial as we are salinous creatures ourselves. But I remember being transfixed by an oil painting in my grandparents’ house of a vacant fish pier, the grey, weathered wood standing over the cool ocean water while an aging sun gradually makes its way back to the horizon. It wasn’t any great piece of art, just the kind of serene scene in a frame you’d expect to find in the home of grandparents, but it somehow spoke to me. Looking at the painting, I heard the creak of the wooden beams and felt the late-afternoon chill of the briny air. I’d been there before, I thought.)

The question I now consider is, is reincarnation the same as immortality? Could immortality be not the absence of death but rather the repeated return from death? A coward, it is said, dies a thousand times before his death. Perhaps that is true of immortals as well.

In the meantime, a clue as to the genesis of my death-obsession occurs to me. I was born on February 12, Lincoln’s birthday. My family always made a big deal out of that, as if it were some kind of omen that I, too, would achieve greatness some day. I was given pennies because they bore Lincoln’s likeness, which of course was very exciting to me (they neglected to tell me that his likeness adorns the five-dollar bill as well). As soon as I could read, I sought out Lincoln biographies for children, which were plentiful. In short order, he became my hero.

Now, in the life of any true Lincoln nut, one experiences his death innumerable times: in books, in movies, in plays, in classes, in one’s imagination. Lincoln’s reputation, his belovedness, his whole hagiography, began with his death. It remains one of the most tragic moments in American history and was certainly the most shocking death of its time. (“Assassination is not an American practice or habit, and one so vicious and so desperate cannot be engrafted into our political system,” wrote Lincoln’s own Secretary of State, William Seward, on July 15, 1862, exactly two years and nine months before Lincoln died from an assassin’s bullet.)

As a child, learning about this giant figure I somehow was cosmically connected to, the assassination was my favorite part of his story. I couldn’t wait to get through a Lincoln book so I could “enjoy” the death scene; in fact, I eventually began to read the last chapter of Lincoln books first, and only at the end would I go back and read from the beginning. To me, the skill with which the assassination was described was the key marker as to the quality of the book overall.

Quite possibly, then, my first obsession with death was specifically with the death of my hero. It’s a reasonable suggestion that immersing myself in his violent death had an effect on me. When my older daughter was five or six, my wife bought her a book about Lincoln as a kind of a daddy-daughter gift, and the picture at the end of the book gave her nightmares for days afterwards. It may not have affected me the same way because of my already-established fascination with the subject, but the horror of that scene may indeed have filled me subliminally with a dread that would occasionally take hold of me in the quiet darkness of my bedroom.

Lincoln himself is well known to have been a melancholy soul so obsessed with death – chiefly his own – that he dreamed of it. One can’t help but be sympathetic to his preoccupation; after all, he lost his mother when he was a young boy and his sister as a young man. Only one of his four sons lived to adulthood, and two died in his own lifetime, one while in the White House.

And yet surely Lincoln, of all people, has attained a degree of immortality. Though he was reviled by some in life and died horribly, he quickly attained angel wings and ascended to the highest level of human honor and worship. Marking the centennial of Lincoln’s birth in 1909, Leo Tolstoy wrote, “The greatness of Napoleon, Caesar or Washington is only moonlight by the sun of Lincoln. … He was bigger than his country—bigger than all the Presidents together … and as a great character he will live as long as the world lives.”

When Lincoln wrote in the Gettysburg Address (1863) that “The world will little note nor longer remember what we say here,” he clearly was wrong. Yet Lincoln was not unmindful of the fact that the war provided him a platform from which history would view him and, for better or for worse, remember and grade his performance. “We of this Congress and this administration,” Lincoln said on December 1, 1862, in his second annual address to Congress, “will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation."

Lincoln’s use of the phrase “latest generation” seems to suggest a belief that humanity would in time die out; that there would be a final generation to witness the end of days. Though not a faithful adherent to any religious doctrine, Lincoln by all accounts was a spiritual person who believed in God and, as many did in his day, knew his Bible and quoted it often. In the midst of a calamitous Civil War, it was no great feat of the imagination to have apocalyptic visions, yet there is no evidence that he believed in life after death or an eternal life among God’s chosen.

For Lincoln, then, immortality was something held in the collective memory of the people rather than a limitless state of being in either the physical or unseen worlds. In his day, memory was no small thing, because even though his was not strictly an oral culture lacking the tools to print and distribute news, it was still a time when the most learned and popular men had the ability to memorize and recite extensive quantities of facts and stories. At Gettysburg, Lincoln read his two-minute address off of two sheets of paper, but preceding him was the pre-eminent orator of the day, Edward Everett, who delivered his two-hour speech from memory, with no text to guide him.

Lincoln himself had memorized countless jokes, stories, and Bible passages, with which he entertained friends and visitors. His father, though functionally illiterate, was also an admired storyteller. Currency took all forms on the frontier, and a man who could regale others earned a reputation money couldn’t buy. And though a man’s own memory ends with his death, the stories he shares in his lifetime are like dandelion seeds strewn in the wind; in other listeners’ fertile minds they may take root and continue to charm and so endure beyond the limits of individual mortal minds.

So then. Lincoln and I share birthdays. We both also share an obsession with death. He was an exceptionally gifted writer who by his words and deeds has attained immortality. I am a writer. Am I so in order to achieve immortality? Certainly there is a strong appeal in the idea that something I write may be read and, with luck, enjoyed many years after my death. Maybe it will receive some sort of posthumous honor. Ah, but therein lies the rub. I don’t want a posthumous honor. I don’t want a posthumous anything. I want to remain prehumous. After all, the longer I live, the more time I have to try to achieve something worth remembering.

At the end of her book on Lincoln’s peerless leadership qualities, Team of Rivals, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote, “The ambition to establish a reputation worthy of the esteem of his fellows so that his story could be told after his death had carried Lincoln through his bleak childhood, his laborious efforts to educate himself, his strong of political failures, and a depression so profound that he declared himself more than willing to die, except that ‘he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived,’” as he had related to his friend Joshua Speed. In the end, though, Goodwin notes that Lincoln’s “deathless name” was and will be “revered and sung throughout all time.”

And maybe that’s where the truth of my death-obsession really lies. My fear of death perhaps is tied into my fear of failure, of passing through life unknown and unappreciated. Mind you, I don’t need to be anyone’s hero. I just want to be remembered, and to be remembered you have to become known and to become known (outside your own small circle of supporters), you have to accomplish something, and if you’re a writer accomplishing something means publishing something and publishing something good, really good, something that could only have been written by you but is so universal that it is felt by others, others who will appreciate it, be touched by it, be touched by you, and thereby remember you.

And yet, so what? If I live forever in memory but not in body, does it make any difference? I would have the recognition I crave yet not be able to experience it. On the other hand, suppose I were to be offered a Faustian bargain whereby I could live forever yet never achieve anything that would make me notable. Would endless days of being no one special be preferable to doing something of consequence and letting history write my name for me after I’m gone?

Back to reincarnation. Let’s say I produce a work that becomes famous after I’m dead. Sometime later, I am reincarnated. If my work is truly special, I will be likely to come upon it in my next life, assuming I come back as a human. Let’s say I do and I read it. Would I recognize it? If so, would I dismiss it merely as déjà vu, or could it spark something in my subconscious so intensely that it would be an inescapable conclusion that I was that writer in a past life?

I guess I won’t know any of this until I die. And I guess I have to have faith that it won’t then be too late.

What I do know is that it was only when I became a father that I had an inkling as to the enormity of the loss my parents experienced when my sister Donna died. Knowing now how precious a child is, how much of yourself you invest in their well-being, how they consume your every thought and every nanometer of your heart, I feel terrible guilt over those times when I told my mother – only a few short years after her first-born had died – that I was afraid of death. How brave she was to try to comfort me. How kind she was to let me into her bed so I could feel safe.

And how, nearly a dozen years ago, did I repay this maternal tenderness? By deciding, along with my father and my two other sisters, that after Lewy body dementia had destroyed my mother’s mind, immobilized her body, and taken away her ability to swallow, it was more humane to suspend nutrition and hydration and let her die than to insert a feeding tube and keep this pathetic and increasingly unfamiliar mass alive a while longer. It was the right decision – she had suffered increasingly over a period of ten years, and would experience only more suffering in her limited future – but a difficult one. We consoled ourselves with the thought that my mother would finally be reunited with Donna. There was no intellectualizing as to whether that was something that could actually happen. We needed it to be so, and so to us it was. Same as my belief in reincarnation. There’s no cost or consequence to believing it to be true, and so I continue to believe.

If physical immortality is impossible, as it seems to be, perhaps the best we can hope for is that, as in a relay race, one person hands off to another the truth – and true value – of another’s life, words, and exploits. And that person, nearing the end of his or her lap among the living, hands off to another person, and so on and so on, through the generations, an ongoing cycle of remembrance and regeneration that keeps the eternal flame of memory lit for as long as life on earth extends.

In that way, a child may someday understand with equal clarity and respect the character of a great statesman such as Abraham Lincoln, and that of his or her great-great-grandparents. Because immortality need not be reserved for those who were well-rewarded in life. Immortality is itself the reward for living a life in the presence of others willing to carry that memory forward. Just as I carry the memories of my mother and Donna so that their names live on in my heart.

I didn’t know Donna while she lived, but my children know of her now. And what my mother suffered, both through Donna’s illness and her own, is redeemed by the example of her love and the peace she found through death. Which may, when all is said and done, simply prove that life eternal is no match for love eternal. And that, perhaps, is an idea I can live with.

The (Re)writing Life, or A Room of One Zone

2011-02-02T09:00:00.000-08:00

The other night I was sitting at my desk in my apartment, blissfully alone, and all of a sudden I thrust my arms in the air, leaned back my head, and said audibly and excitedly, “I love being a writer!”

This doesn’t happen all that often, at least not with such showy enthusiasm. But the other night was different because while writing can be hard, there are times when it runs like silk across your cheek. That night I was working on a novel, one that I had started in February 2009 and abandoned about a year later. I returned to it hesitantly because I wasn’t sure it was going anywhere. So the first thing I did was read what I had already written, about 35,000 words. To my surprise and delight, it was better than I thought it was. So that gave me some motivation to dig in.

Now, this is the second novel I’ve attempted; in fact, its file name is “NEWNOVEL.doc.” The first one has been languishing under a small pile of form rejection letters and while I intend to revise and resubmit it, I felt I needed to take a break from it. Also, from July to the end of the December last year I was essentially homeless, staying on friends’ couches and in their guest rooms as I separated from my wife. The lack of personal space and privacy made it impossible to do any writing for myself.

Now that I’m in an apartment, however, I have those few nights when I’m not with my kids to fill with writing (Virginia Woolf was right: one does need a room of one’s own). I found it a fairly simple matter to pick up where I’d left off and before I knew it I had a new, clear vision of where the story should go. I foresaw a new character entering the story a couple of chapters hence and suddenly it dawned on me that a 3.000-word scene I had written years and years ago and that had remained on my hard drive a narrative orphan in need of a sympathetic context, would fit perfectly in that space.

As I wrote towards the moment when I could merge the two pieces, I found myself experiencing that transcendent phase of writing where the characters take over and begin writing their story themselves. I know that sounds a little precious, if not downright flaky, but I’m telling you this happened at times with my first novel and now it was happening again. I was sitting there pressing the keys and I was doing more reading than thinking. The situations and dialogue just came out of nowhere and my fingers struggled to keep up with the story I was watching unfold on my screen. In fact, there was one scene that when I started writing it I told myself, “They’re going to get together and do this thing but they are absolutely not going to have sex.” I was thinking that because the last time these two characters met they unexpectedly (to them) ended up having sex. Now that they were getting together again (they’ve not begun dating yet, these are chance encounters), I felt it was essential – for credibility’s sake and narrative flow – that these two people not do the same thing again.

But apparently they liked it the first time around because, swear to God, I was writing perfectly innocent dialogue and things were going along just fine when all of a sudden the guy blurts out, “Is it OK if I kiss you?” and then she says yes, and the next thing I know they’re rolling on the floor. I didn’t plan that at all, but it came onto my screen with such inevitability that it couldn’t have come from any other source than the characters themselves. (Of course, if the scene works, I’ll take credit for it; I think it does.)

Anyway, it was during this time when I was at least as much observer as creator that I thrust my arms in the air and exulted in my career choice, which, though it’s proven to be a difficult way of making a living, enriches me often.

Of course, the phrase “career choice” suggests that I could have been any number of things but chose specifically to be a writer. In many ways that’s clearly true but in another sense I think I was born to be a writer. Though I wasn’t sure for a long time exactly what type of work I would do in my life, I probably always knew that writing would be a major part of it. Whatever my employer, whatever my job title, in terms of my identity it’s almost always been a simple matter: I am a writer.

I am a writer because I have always loved words. Ever since my older sister taught me to read The Foot Book by Dr. Seuss when I was in kindergarten, I have loved to look at words. Dr. Seuss delighted me because I saw that you could play with words; different words that looked and sounded the same could be arranged to create funny but meaningful verses. From that time forward I was a voracious reader and perhaps not coincidentally have always been a good speller: I just know how words are supposed to look.

When I entered school and had to write papers I found it to be a stress-free and successful enterprise. I knew that some of my peers fretted over the blank page they had to fill but to me it was a welcome opportunity to let all the words running around inside of me to fall out in any order I chose. Writing to me was fun, and creating something new where nothing currently exists still excites me.

As a kid I always got good feedback on my writing. It wasn’t anything I consciously worked at, so I came to see it as a sort of gift. Other of my peers got the good looks, the big brains, or the athletic ability; I reaped the writing crop. If it didn’t make me popular, at least it was something I could take pride in.

In fact, I distinctly recall my junior high and high school English classes. All my teachers tried to teach me the method and style they preferred. It would take me a couple of papers to master their process and I would get good grades. Then the next term or the next year, I would have a different teacher and have to learn another method and process. And again I would adapt, but never really adopt. I knew how I wanted to write and merely accommodated my teachers until I was old enough to do it my own way. I’m sure there are molecules of their instruction within the granules of my style but I retained control of the proportions.

(I would like to give props to one teacher of mine, Mr. Ernest Chamberlain, who introduced us to the essay form but always advised us against trying to use humor. His reasoning was that if the jokes fail, the whole piece would fail. As James Thurber was my favorite essayist, however, I couldn't resist writing something funny - and I didn't care much to be told how not to write. When he read my graded work before the class, he admitted that while his advice was sound, I had nevertheless succeeded.)

My older daughter is a wonderful writer and I see how her teachers are trying to restrain and mold her instincts into something that sinks to the baseline of her peers, thereby making it easier to quantify its quality. Rightly or wrongly, I tell her to play their game but never lose her own distinctive style. All her teachers have recognized her ability to write with a strong voice and depth of imagination but apparently there’s not a big place for that in the state educational frameworks.

So anyway, I get through high school and it’s time for college. What am I to major in? Communications was kind of a big-tent major so I chose that but took a lot of English classes. We read good books but the classroom discussions threw me for a loop. Everything was existential this and existential that. Suddenly the plot of a book wasn’t good enough; we had to explore its meaning. What was going on in the story was always an allegory for some form of political repression or something. This over-intellectualization of a perfectly good piece of fiction bored me silly. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for symbolism and literary analysis, but it seemed to me to take the fun out of the book.

Back in high school, I can remember an English class where we spent the entire class time one day discussing why Robert Frost repeated the line “And miles to go before I sleep.” I fantasized that if Frost himself were still alive and present in the classroom he would’ve slapped the teacher upside the head. Maybe there are some writers who want their readers to look up from a page and wonder for a while, maybe a long while, what the writer is actually saying and why. I should think I would want my readers to be able to digest what I write on the go and keep turning the pages.

After two years, I had to choose between Mass Communications and Interpersonal Communications. The former was mainly radio and television; the latter dealt more with sociological and psychological issues. I actually preferred the latter, specifically a course on Persuasion Theory, but it didn’t seem to have much of a career arc associated with it. At the same time, I wasn’t that interested in working in broadcast media. So I jumped ship and became a Journalism major. At least I would always be writing. (A - Always. B - Be. W - Writing.)

By the way, I would recommend journalism training to anyone who wants to be a writer. Anyone can write complex prose with florid details and fancy words; it takes real work to be succinct, clear, direct, objective, and factual. Journalism training taught me how to gather and prioritize information; craft tight, meaningful, active sentences; and conduct interviews and research. While I never desired to be a newspaper reporter, and never really have been one though I do write occasionally for a weekly newspaper on a freelance basis, I use my journalistic skills every day, no matter what kind of writing I do.

After college I got a job doing public relations for a trade show producer. I wrote all right: the same press releases over and over again, just changing the names and places and dates. One release announcing the show, another announcing the keynoter, another announcing the numbers of exhibitors and attendees expected, another announcing the numbers of exhibitors and attendees that actually showed up, and another announcing next year’s show. I did that for about 10 different events over the course of a year. This wasn’t writing, it was typing.

I left that company and went to another company, a small entrepreneurial firm that made digital fonts. It was a completely different culture and while during my first year there I was still dissatisfied being a PR guy, at least I was around creative people and working for a company I thought was doing something interesting. Then one day, the copywriter in the marketing communications department left the company. I had gotten to know people in the department and thought what they were doing – creating brochures, ads, and product packaging – looked fun. So I asked if I could give it a shot. They agreed, the results were good, and so the company ended up hiring a PR person to replace me and I became a copywriter, which I still am more than two decades later.

Writing fiction, however, was a whole different ball of wax. I’ve never really been about fiction; born on Lincoln’s birthday, I was attracted to history books and biographies while as a journalism-trained PR person and copywriter I was always involved in the factual. But a few years ago, a colleague dared me to enroll in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), an annual rite of writing in which participants are urged to compose a 50,000-word novel during the month of November. That’s when I began my first novel, but since I’d had a baby just three months before, I didn’t have all the time I needed and so it actually took me two or three years to finish it (if, in fact, it’s even finished yet).

Concurrently, I do a lot of freelance writing and look for opportunities to publish short stories and essays and the like. Unfortunately, I seem to have lower standards for my blog than other publishers have for their titles because it’s proven difficult to get my name and work in widely distributed publications. But no matter, this is a writer’s life and it’s the life I apparently was meant to lead. It’s required a few revisions along the way, as well as reimagining just what kinds of writing I want to do and am capable of doing, but for all its ups and downs I still feel fortunate and happy to say it: I am a writer.

New England Patriots 2010 Season Recap

2011-01-24T07:09:00.000-08:00

A week after the Patriots 2010 season ended sooner than I had hoped or thought, I am finally able to comment on it. That’s not bad, considering I’m still not fully over the loss to the Giants in the 2007 Super Bowl.

If we go back to before the season, there was lots of talk about the Patriots, none of it very positive. Having been thrashed by the Ravens at home in the first round of the playoffs, there were more than just whispers of trouble in Foxboro. Among the complaints heard:
• Bill Belichick is no longer a genius, or else he’s no longer the only one. He can’t draft without Scott Pioli, can’t coach without good coordinators, makes bad decisions (4th and 2), and loses every challenge (or else doesn’t challenge when he should).
• Tom Brady is too comfortable with his swanky life and sexy wife. He’s lost his passion for the game, doesn’t work as hard, and isn’t with the team enough.
• The offense is one-dimensional, lacking a running game, and Wes Welker may never be the player he once was before his ACL injury last year.
• The defense has lost too many veteran stars to be an effective unit. We need someone like Jason Taylor to bring leadership and toughness to the team.
• Bob Kraft is a cheap son of a bitch who won’t open his prodigious pockets to make the team better. He expects players to take a vow of poverty for the privilege of playing in front of Myra.

Then draft day comes and counter to every prediction by all the so-called experts (who also predicted a 2007 Super Bowl win), the Pats draft Devin McCourty, a cornerback who also has special teams skills. Fans and pundits are beside themselves in disbelief. Where have you gone, Scott Pioli?

(Oh, by the way, McCourty made the Pro Bowl and is a leading candidate for Rookie of the Year. His seven interceptions made a sorry secondary already depleted by the loss of Leigh Bodden to a season-ending injury competitive again.)

Then Kevin Faulk, one of the best all-around players in the NFL, let alone the Patriots, a tough, versatile back with an uncanny knack for turning 3rd and 8 into 1st and 10, went down with a season-ending injury. Matt Cassel had proven that even Tom Brady was not irreplaceable, but how do you substitute for everything that Kevin Faulk does so well?

(Does the name Danny Woodhead ring a bell?)

Randy Moss, the fastest mouth in the league, a deep (throat) threat unlike any the Patriots had had in the Brady era, finally talked his way out of Foxboro. Talk radio bemoaned the move, another proof point in the argument that Belichick had lost his marbles and intended to lose a bunch of games as well.

(Welcome back, Deion Branch. Hello, eight-game winning streak.)

Meanwhile, just as Tom Brady was once fourth on the depth chart, the Patriots regained a consistent running game this year, thanks to fourth-string running back BenJarvis Green-Ellis, who understood as Laurence Maroney never did that to gain yardage you need to run forwards.

(Duh. And thanks anyway, Fred Taylor, who only lost 15 games due to turf toe. When last seen, Taylor was recuperating somewhere with Jacoby Ellsbury.)

Against all odds, this Patriots team that no one but me believed in at the beginning – and even through the first quarter – of the season, went 14-2, beating some of the toughest teams in both conferences. The offense was frighteningly effective, the defense surprisingly opportunistic, and the special teams survived the loss of its star kicker to, yes, a season-ending injury and made a number of very special plays. We also managed to come up with one of our best punters ever, even after a mid-season change in long snapper.

So what happened against the Jets last week? Well, if you look back at the three total losses this year – two against the Jets, one against the Browns – one thing is apparent: the Patriots don’t lose close games. When they lose, they get their ass kicked. To beat the Patriots, you have to hope the Patriots don’t show up. Or else you have hit them in the mouth so hard they lose their will to fight.

That, I think, is what happened. Of all the teams in the NFL, the Jets and Browns are the two teams that the Patriots players should have been willing to die on the field to beat. The Patriots hate the Browns’ coach, and hate the Jets, period. Allowing those two teams to beat you – to beat your coach – is almost unforgivable. The games with the greatest emotional baggage attached to them are the ones the Patriots played worst in. Why is that?

I have no answer, other than to suppose that the Patriots don’t deal much in emotion. While this was a season in which Brady’s fiery demeanor on the field drew praise from fans and jeers from the Jets, in general the Patriots are more about finesse than ferocity. And the one thing that throws a finesse team off its stride is being punched in the mouth by an opponent that is playing on pure emotion. The Jets and the Browns took it to the Patriots this year, and the Patriots were lost when they realized Brady wasn’t going to have 20 minutes to find an open receiver.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about the Patriot Way and I support Belichick’s decision to bench Wes Welker at the start of the Jets game because of his foot-laden press conference. But just because you’re not supposed to talk trash doesn’t mean you can’t flash some mojo. Tedy Bruschi had mojo to spare and he was an ideal Patriot. Look at how the Steelers played the Jets yesterday. It was as if Mark Sanchez was there to take food out of their children’s mouths. They played angry – and well.

After the Jets game, the radio experts had everything figured out. The young defense was exposed. We missed Randy Moss. Bah. If there’s anything I’ve learned in my life, it’s that sports talk show hosts know NOTHING. The fact is, sports is a human enterprise and past performance is only slightly indicative of future performance. Any given Sunday, a good team will lose to a bad team because someone didn’t sleep well the night before, or someone else is playing for a contract, or someone plays the game of his life while someone else plays the worst game of his life. If prognosticating were easy, lots of people would make lots of money betting on sports. It’s the human factor that beats any odds. The Patriots lost because they played like shit. Which happens. Period.

So what’s my verdict on the Patriots’ season? An unqualified success. It was not just a successful but also an exciting, surprising, and inspiring season. Good players went down, and good players rose up to take their place. Fourteen times, they came up with amazing ways to win. The 16-0 season was fun but it lacked drama. I knew before each game that the Patriots would emerge on top. The Matt Cassel year was in some ways more exciting because you didn’t know what would happen. This year, we blew out the scariest teams on the schedule and proved that the franchise wasn’t dead, Belichick was still a genius, and Brady was, is, and ever will be the best quarterback of all time. Even though it was nice to think that this year would bring another bone-chilling victory parade, we enjoyed four months of brilliant football.

One thing’s for sure: you’ll never find me saying, “wait ‘til next year.” That’s because I can’t wait for next year, when this defense has a year under its belt, when Belichick turns his piles of good draft picks into promising players, and when we get another chance to extend our second season. In fact, assuming the owners and players come to an agreement, “next year” begins this September. So thank you New England Patriots for a great year – let’s keep it going this fall.

My Annus Horribilis

2010-12-31T07:18:00.000-08:00

In many ways, the high point of my year happened as late as Wednesday, December 29, because it was on that date that I fully unloaded my toiletry kit. You see, I became separated from my wife in mid-July. She told me, “Either you leave or the kids and I will leave.” Not wanting to displace my two wonderful girls, I left. And for the next five months I served varying tenures in friends’ guest rooms and couches. There are many tales to be told by unpacking that one simple sentence, but suffice to say that I was taken in by good and generous friends, who enabled me to have a roof over my head at night and a hot shower in the morning.

I essentially lived out of a Rubbermaid container during that time, carrying a seasonal selection of my wardrobe along with my toiletry bag wherever I was staying. I was home often to spend time with my kids and was able to replenish, replace, and launder my clothing. But I had never fully unpacked my toiletry bag. I took out my toothbrush and toothpaste, my shaving cream and razor, my comb, cotton swabs, and deodorant as I used them, but they always went right back in the bag.

Ultimately, I reached a point where I had exhausted my supply of free beds and couches to sleep on, and despite the fact that I could ill afford an apartment in greater Boston while also still responsible for all the expenses associated with the home I was no longer welcome to live in, I realized I had to find my own apartment. I needed the stability and certainty of knowing I had a place to go, and I needed my own space – needed to reclaim my right to privacy. So I started looking.

I looked at standalone units, rooms to let, ad shared situations, until finally I found a two-room studio three miles from my house, reasonable rent, all utilities included. I spent my first night here on Wednesday, December 29 and while I had no furniture (I slept in a sleeping bag on the floor), I went into the bathroom and, after a good scrubbing of all the surfaces, unpacked my toiletry bag.

It seemed not to be a big deal until I actually did it. And then it occurred to me that I was holding an empty toiletry bag that I had to store, as opposed to carry around with me. My deodorant had its own place where it wasn’t in anyone’s way and didn’t have to be moved or removed. Unexpectedly, emptying my toiletry bag became a new definition of “Home” for me.

And so it is that as 2010 ends, I chart a new beginning – uncertain, as all new beginnings are, but with some hope. This has been, after all, my annus horribilis: my horrible year. It was a year that found me squirming whenever a friend’s Facebook status included the phrase “Life is good.” You’d be surprised how many times that phrase is used in people’s Facebook status updates. I’m glad that my friends’ lives are good, don’t get me wrong, but that is a phrase I have never had occasion to use. I don’t even know what it would feel like to put that out there. For me, life is often slow torture. It’s often hopeless. It sometimes even feels futile. There are good moments in my life, but they are snapshots, frozen in time, with no sustaining resonance. A fun time with friends or my children lasts only until the next fight with my wife or phone call from a creditor.

In a year like this, acts of kindness and generosity stand out like a beacon in the storm. I have been very fortunate. At my job, the people I work for and with have been very understanding and sympathetic. I often gets calls or emails from friends and family “just checking in” to see how I’m doing. Those friends who gave me shelter obviously have had an impact. I’ve been taken to dinner, had drinks bought for me, and gotten far more free advice than I ever could have afforded and know I never can repay. It has been made very clear to me who my friends are, how many I have, how wonderful they are, and how lost I’d be without them. Following a holiday season when I received no presents, facing a New Year’s Eve when I will share no midnight kiss, it is clear that they were the gifts and blessings I needed most and am so grateful to have gotten.

One gift that I know awaits me at some point in 2011 is my divorce. It will be bittersweet, I’m sure, but that legal act will finally cut the tether that has kept me moored to the ground. At this point, after this year, I feel there’s no place for me to go but up. And while January 1, 2011, is in many ways just another square on a man-made instrument for demarcating time, for me it is a sloughing off of dead skin, a rebirth of sorts, or at least a chance for positive change.

So may it be for me, so may it be for all of us.

A Show of Hands

2010-12-04T19:54:00.000-08:00

Many years ago, I came across a quote that I found very interesting. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find it since, even on the semi-reliable Internet (see my previous post on the dangers of Googling quotes). But I remember it pretty well. It went more or less like this: “I knew I had become a man when I looked down and saw at the end of my arms my father’s hands.” I liked the visual impression I got from this quote, of a man, a young man, who one day realizes that his hands have grown to resemble those of his father. A father’s hands, traditionally if not stereotypically, are large and strong, the palms rough with work, the fingers thick like cigars, black hairs growing around the knuckles, yet somehow the encouraging pats stay longer in the memory than the angry spankings.

My own father’s hands are like that. Not huge, but slab-fingered, and with clean, perfectly shaped nails. Yet when I look down past my wrists, it’s not my father’s hands I see but my mother’s. They are smallish for my height, my pinkies narrow for a man (to my perspective, anyway), my thumbs almost hourglass-shaped (“Wallins thumbs,” my mother would say, referring to a genetic characteristic of one side of her family). My hands looks and feel fairly dainty. Too hairy to be a woman’s hands, but not the romantic ideal of a man’s hands. They are bigger than my mother’s, but far from being fists of steel.

My parents knew an artist, the Expressionist painter Hyman Bloom. I met him a couple of times and found him to be a quiet, quirky person. But I’ll never forget what my mother once said about him, that he had beautiful hands, an artist’s hands. I tried to remember what his hands looked like. I recalled that his fingers were long and thin, feminine even. Was that the ideal for an artist?

After graduating from the Jeremiah E. Burke High School for Girls in Dorchester – the same high school Donna Summer later went to (by then it was co-ed) – where she did so poorly in math that she was encouraged to take art classes instead of continuing to waste the math teacher’s time, my mother went to the Massachusetts College of Art. All through her life, until she became ill with a neurological disorder that made it difficult and then impossible for her to use her hands, she would doodle her art school exercises on scrap paper, making ovals and drawing this same female figure with a tiny waist, pursed mouth, and fluffy hair. She never worked as a professional artist but she did paint professionally. She practiced an art now nearly dead, that of coloring black-and-white photographs with oil paints.

She worked for a photographer who would take the portraits and if the client wanted them colored, he gave my mother the prints and the coloring requests. She set up a tiny studio in what had been a bathroom on the first floor of our house. I used to love watching her because she painted in a way I’d never seen anyone paint before. She had rolls of cotton and boxes of toothpicks. She would tear off small bits of the cotton and twist them tightly around one end of a toothpick, making a delicate cotton swab that she used to convey precise details, such as the white dot of light in a person’s iris.

She would mix the oils in just the right combinations, then apply the colors to the print and wipe them with a cotton ball, leaving a sort of pastel tone that screamed the 1950s and 1960s. I would sometimes think she was being sloppy with the paint but they always looked perfect when she was done. She had done many of our own photos and they are treasured mementos of her skill. Once, she was at somebody’s house socially and saw their wedding photo on the wall. She was certain she had painted it years before; sure enough, when it was removed from its frame, my mother’s initials were on the back.

(This photo taken with my phone doesn’t provide a true sense for the shadings my mother applied to this portrait of me when I was maybe three years old, but lacking a scanner it’s the best I can do.)

I’ve lately been curious about this lost art of hand-coloring photographs. It was apparently quite the fad decades ago but is rarely seen today. In fact, just the mention of it seems to bring to mind the cheesy colorization of black-and-white movies that has to stand as Ted Turner’s most idiotic venture. But a well-done hand-colored photograph has a very real charm about it, and as black-and-white photography has been making a comeback, so perhaps will hand-coloring.

Searching the Internet, an unavoidable and often successful task, I found a number of people offering their hand-coloring services. One, a former professional illustrator named Mary Ann Erickson, had some useful information on her home page:

Hand-colored photos are, for the most part, a lost art form. The technique of painting on black and white photos originated back in the day before color photography existed and flourished for many years. When I was an illustrator in New York City during the 1970s-1990s this art form made a comeback as its own stylistic look. The development of amazing computer programs like Photoshop generally put an end to the art of painting directly on photographs.

I decided to write to her to ask if she had more information about the history of hand-coloring. Here is what she wrote to me:

Hi Jason
Thanks for getting in touch. I was an illustrator in NYC for a number of years and took up hand coloring because I knew a bunch of art directors who wanted that look - before Photoshop obviously! Basically hand coloring was used to tint photos before color photography was invented. Then it hung around as more of an artform and a look that was unique after that. I think it must have allowed the photographers to manipulate the images more than they could in the darkroom as well - sort of a retouching tool. Again, computers and Photoshop have changed everything, but I still think there's a place in the world for a beautifully colored photograph - they become paintings! Anything done digitally will have a quality of its own, but it never will be something that's been painted by hand.

The coloring on my mother’s portraits is quite a bit subtler and more natural than Ms. Erickson’s work, but I like how they both take the realism of objective photography to another level of visual intrigue. I didn’t ask Ms. Erickson what her hands looked like, but at the same time I wouldn’t describe my mother’s hands as “beautiful hands, an artist’s hands.” They were good at what they did, whether it was painting, cooking, or soothing. It was the heart and mind behind her hands that was important, and I guess that makes me feel better about my hands, too.

Don't believe everything you read on the web - except for this post

2010-11-25T20:24:00.000-08:00

Recently, I began writing an essay on the subject of immortality. Along the way from draft one to draft two, an interesting tangent announced itself willing to be sacrificed. Not wishing it to be lost forever, I am placing it here, though a little context is required.

Part of my argument on the subject of immortality is that while the ability to live physically for eternity may be impossible (I discuss reincarnation as a form of immortality; rather than a single uninterrupted, unending life, perhaps a series of discrete existences could also qualify), a person's life in memory - his words, deeds, and impact on his family, community, nation, and the world - can live on long after that physical life is quenched. Not surprisingly, I used Abraham Lincoln as an example.

To bolster my case, I looked up a number of Lincoln quotes I knew that I felt were pertinent. I also, as you'll read below, did a general Google search for "Lincoln" and "immortality" to see what I might find. As it turned out, I discovered just how unreliable Web searches could be. To wit:

------------------------------------------------

The democratization of the gathering and dissemination of information, which is the ultimate outgrowth of the World Wide Web, often results in greater access but lesser accuracy. For example, there are many sites on the web that exist specifically as compendiums of quotes on a range of subjects. Speakers, writers, and owners of other web pages often scour these sites for appropriate pearls of wisdom, but there many quotes that are incorrectly sourced and misattributed – fake pearls, if you will. There is a tendency, however, to believe that something that has been published online must be accurate, but in fact there is no central standards body that is charged with ensuring that anything on the web is true.

Because it is so easy to copy, paste, and spread misinformation on the web, there are those who may be gaining a false immortality, or who may be getting credit for something they never said or did. Lincoln, again, provides an example. For this essay, I Googled “Lincoln” and “immortality.” I found thousands of results featuring the following quote, attributed to him:

“Surely God would not have created such a being as man … to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.”

In most instances, there was no attribution as to the specific date, letter, or speech in which this quote first appeared. That made me suspicious because Lincoln’s words have been so painstakingly documented by generations of historians. The only attribution I could find was that it was part of the text that Lincoln’s animatronic double spoke in the old Walt Disney World exhibit, “The Hall of Presidents.” While many of Lincoln’s lines are authentic (the full original script has been transcribed at http://waltdatedworld.bravepages.com/id223.htm), the particular quote in question, which dramatically concludes the presentation, doesn’t “feel” like Lincoln, and the knowledge that Disney was involved further casts doubt on its accuracy.

Finally, I consulted the acknowledged official source of Lincoln’s words, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (a searchable online version of which appears at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln). I searched the word “immortality” and only two results were delivered (italics mine):

Eulogy of Henry Clay, July 6, 1852: “And in our last internal discord, when this Union trembled to its center—in old age, he left the shades of private life and gave the death blow to fraternal strife, with the vigor of his earlier years in a series of Senatorial efforts, which in themselves would bring immortality, by challenging comparison with the efforts of any statesman in any age.”

Second Lecture on Discoveries and Inventions, February 11, 1859: “As Plato had for the immortality of the soul, so Young America has ‘a pleasing hope—a fond desire—a longing after’ territory.”

This leads me to conclude that Lincoln himself, the Lincoln who actually lived as opposed to the robotic tourist attraction that may in our world be the ultimate price of immortality, never did say – and probably didn’t believe – that “man was created for immortality,” even though the consensus of the online world is that he did.

------------------------------------------------

Given what I discovered, I would caution anyone doing a web search for quotes to be very careful and check offline sources for confirmation that the quote is accurately stated and attributed.

Jim Nabors, Carl Yastrzemski, Abraham Lincoln, and Me

2010-11-13T16:19:00.000-08:00

I am a lifelong fan of the Boston Red Sox, yet I was only four years old during their magical 1967 season, when they competed through to the seventh game of the World Series after having finished the previous season in last place. Therefore, I have no first-hand memories of the team nicknamed the Cardiac Kids, or their remarkable season, dubbed the Impossible Dream. Yet as I came of age and followed the team more closely, my hero became Carl Yastrzemski, who had the most incredible year in that most improbable season. Leading the major league in home runs, runs batted in, and batting average, he remains 43 years later the last player to win the Triple Crown.

But the crux of this story begins closer to the time of the Impossible Dream, and at its core is the song of the same name, which was the show-stopper of Man of La Mancha, the musical version of Cervantes’ Don Quixote. I suppose it makes sense to go back briefly to the very beginning. By chance, I was born on February 12, 1963 – the 154th birthday of Abraham Lincoln. My family made a rather big deal over this coincidence, as if it were a positive omen of some kind. Perhaps no relative of mine was more instrumental in drumming the connection into my psyche than my Uncle Arnold, a teacher who shared a birthday with the far less notable Millard Fillmore. He would grill me on the Gettysburg Address, asking me to correct his intentional mistakes (“Four score and 11 years ago,” “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or subtract.”).

So, suffice to say, I quickly became, and remain to this day, a certifiable Lincoln nut. Fast forward to 1967. Shortly after the unhappy conclusion of the World Series – which the Red Sox lost to the St. Louis Cardinals (though they finally got their revenge in 2004) – on November 3, to be exact, a new episode of Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. aired. It was episode number 99 of the series, which was in its fourth season. The episode was titled “The Show Must Go On.” In it, the cast is in Washington, DC, to perform a show. Gomer (played by Jim Nabors) is supposed to sing but he develops severe stage fright and loses his voice. Sgt. Carter, naturally, loses his temper. Gomer walks distraught through the nation’s capital, eventually finding himself at the Lincoln Memorial. He enters and striking close-ups of the Lincoln statue are shown. Gomer walks to the left, where, carved into the marble wall, are the words of the Gettysburg Address. He begins to read them in a raspy voice, which gradually – magically – begins to regain its full strength and sonority. He is cured at Lincoln Lourdes! The show does indeed go on, and Gomer performs – what else? – “The Impossible Dream” (a big hit in real life for Nabors).

As I was too young to experience the 1967 Red Sox season first hand, I was also unable to experience first-run episodes of Gomer Pyle. However, I know I was still of single-digit age when I first watched the episode in re-runs. I was transfixed. Around that time, maybe later, I got an album with broadcast highlights of the Red Sox’ 1967 season. It was titled The Impossible Dream and featured an instrumental arrangement of the tune, along with a groovy little ditty about my hero’s heroics that year, called “Yaz Song.”

Thanks to photographic evidence, I know that I first visited Washington, DC in 1971, when I was eight years old. I recall clearly how I felt ascending the seemingly endless stairs leading to the temple. My heart was beating wildly. I was somewhat fearful of seeing the huge statue up close. I must have seen the episode of Gomer Pyle by then, for I was in awe of its apparent power. My father took a photograph of me looking up at the statue. My face is not seen but it is not unreasonable to assume that my mouth was fully agape. I have returned to the Memorial several times since then, most recently in 2005, when I took a photograph of my oldest daughter – then-eight, like me when I first visited DC – melodramatically recreating my pose from 34 years before.

Just about everyone who knows me well knows that I’m a Lincoln nut and that Yaz is my all-time #1 sports hero. In fact, I hope to meet Yaz next week when he does a public signing. But there are not many people who know that I have Jim Nabors on my iPod. Fewer would even care to know the reason why. I don’t mind. I know Jim Nabors is not what you might call hip. But I can’t help it. To this day, when I hear him singing that song, I truly feel like I can reach the unreachable star.

Tales From Typographic Oceans

2010-10-10T18:56:00.000-07:00

My first job out of college was doing public relations for a producer of computer industry trade shows. I was there for two years and got to visit Atlanta and Las Vegas multiple times, as well as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Tampa. But I wasn’t all that interested in the computer industry and so I left in search of new opportunities. After 10 months without a job, I was ready to do just about anything. During this span of time being unemployed, I was devastated by the end of a four-year relationship and I met the woman I would eventually marry and divorce.

It was at that point (1988) that I got hired by a company called Bitstream, which was the first independent digital typefoundry. What that means is that they made digital fonts that anyone can use on any computer or printer. That seems obvious now, but back then it was a matter of a U.S. patent for an artificial intelligence-based scaling technology, while a package of four typefaces (usually the roman, italic, bold, and bold italic of a single design) sold at retail for $200.

This was when the term WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) was in vogue; it meant that the type you saw on your screen looked very much like the type on the document you printed. Again, we take that for granted today, but back then it was pretty exciting. That capability and the democratization of type (meaning it was no longer the exclusive domain of professional printers and publishers) led to the emergence of desktop publishing.

As part of Bitstream’s marketing communications team, I had to know how to use this stuff and when I realized how easy it was to make a pretty professional-looking document I realized I could do something I’d long thought of doing: publishing my own music newsletter.

The reason I wanted to do a music newsletter is because I’ve always loved talking about music. I was sort of expert in various groups and genres, was always an avid liner note reader who could make connections between producers and studios, and loved comparing and contrasting different musicians and albums. My friends and I were all like this, and I thought it would be cool to create a vehicle that would broaden the discussion among like-minded people across the country.

At the time, I was a subscriber to a Todd Rundgren fanzine, which was well-done in terms of content (having had the cooperation of Rundgren’s management) but hard on the eyes. I wanted to do something that looked nicer and hoped that the content would work itself out. But first I had to figure out what group or genre I wanted the newsletter (personally I despise the term fanzine) to focus on. It didn’t take all that long, as I pretty much knew I wanted to talk about progressive rock, that cerebral form of music that grew out of late-‘60s psychedelia and whose heyday lasted until the backlash of mid- to late-‘70s punk and new wave.

The latter styles brought rock music back to the basics after the progressives blended classical motifs and impressionistic lyrics in a complex stew of unusual time signatures, expansive instrumentation (multiple keyboards, mellotrons and moogs, double-necked guitars, and Taurus bass pedals were standard, and flute, violin, cello, and vibraphone were in some groups’ arsenals as well), side-long songs (one album by Yes, Tales From Topographic Oceans, was a two-record set with only four songs, while Jethro Tull and Nektar both put out albums where a single composition spanned both sides of a record), and the dreaded concept album.

Being so cerebral, progressive rock was a natural for prompting musical discussion. However, I thought for a while as to whether I wanted to key on my favorite progressive group, Gentle Giant, or the prog genre as a whole. Ultimately, I decided that Giant was too obscure (this was pre-Internet and I didn’t have a way to know just how many Giant fans there are in the world). Also, Giant ended in 1980 and few of its members were particularly active so it seemed like the content well would soon run dry. So I decided to focus on progressive rock, but I named the newsletter after a Gentle Giant composition, On Reflection.

To lay out the newsletter, I used a long-defunct application called PageMaker. I learned on the job how to design a publication, prepare images for printing, and amass content. I was lucky in that former Yes members had just announced out of the blue that they would be forming a new band with the law-firm name of Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe (Bruford had done even better work with two successive lineups of King Crimson after leaving Yes in 1972). So between that, a manifesto of what I wanted to accomplish with the newsletter, and a few album reviews, I had much of the first issue composed in fairly short order.

The next challenge was to promote it. I elected to start small with a single 1/16-page ad in Goldmine magazine, the primary publication of record collectors. From one ad I got numerous queries. I decided that I would send an issue to all respondents with an offer to subscribe. Over the next few issues, subscriptions grew and I was surprised to get subscribers from Europe and Japan. I don’t recall how many readers I had at the newsletter’s peak but it was well beyond my poor management and financial skills, and within a few short years On Reflection went belly up.

When all was said and done, On Reflection ran monthly from February 1989 to March 1992. Nineteen months later, I married a woman who despises progressive rock.

I was sad yet relieved that my venture had failed. The fact is, towards the end I was getting kind of sick of the genre, the problem being that I had been bound to focus on one style of music, listening to new recordings sent to me of neo-progressive bands who sounded just like 1973-era Genesis or Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Though I was desperate to explore jazz and ethnic music more deeply, I felt constrained by the needs and expectations of my subscribers to maintain a narrow musical focus – ironic, given the expansive scope of the genre.

Yet in many ways it was a very positive experience for me. It was my first entrepreneurial venture, it gave me a chance to write about a subject I was passionate about, I met some interesting people, and I had the opportunity to interview a few prog musicians, including the lovely Annie Haslam from Renaissance (she began the phone interview by saying she had just stepped out of the shower, and I nearly fainted), the iconoclastic Daevid Allen from Gong, and the ambitious Derek Shulman from Gentle Giant, who at the time was president of Atco Records and is still an industry executive and entrepreneur.

Today, I still enjoy progressive rock, and have even reviewed CDs for Progression magazine, which essentially is the reincarnation of On Reflection, it having risen from the ashes by a former subscriber with minor assistance from me in the beginning. However, I now have the freedom to listen to whatever I want whenever I want, so I certainly don’t miss those days spent traversing typographic oceans around the dark side of the moon, venturing close to the edge and lying down on Broadway.

Matthew Carter and Me

2010-09-29T19:56:00.000-07:00

Note: This is an expanded version of a piece I recently wrote for the AIGA Boston blog.

In a previous post from 2008, I wrote about how my rather humble profession of copywriting has enabled me to come face to face with some truly brilliant individuals, such as Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web; and Robert Langer, a chemical engineer whose name is frequently bandied about in Nobel conversations. Some of the people I’ve been honored to meet, interview, or work with may be considered geniuses, but one just became a genius in fact: world-renowned type designer Matthew Carter, who was just awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as “the genius grant.”

Matthew was part of a small group of ambitious and visionary people who left Linotype to found Bitstream Inc. in 1981 as the world’s first independent digital type foundry. Prior to Bitstream, customers bought type from their equipment vendor. For example, Linotype fonts worked only on Linotype machines. Bitstream’s founders applied both actual and artificial intelligence in creating digital fonts that could work on any platform.

I worked at Bitstream from July 1988 to May 1992. It was, for me, a truly transformational experience. I entered a young public relations professional with just one prior job on my resume; I left an experienced copywriter with a sure sense of what I wanted to do in my career. I entered not knowing much at all about type; I left being able to identify the fonts on almost any restaurant menu. I entered not yet having met anyone in the working world I truly admired and who inspired me. I left knowing Matthew Carter.

My first year or so, I didn’t have much interaction with Matthew. He was just this imposing figure who strode slowly on his long legs, usually on the design floor, among the creatives. Tall, thin, with a proud, elegant face and long, straight silver hair – the only affectation being his ubiquitous ponytail – he spoke with a proper English accent and it seemed that if only he had a cape and a cane he could have sprung directly from literature.

It was when I became Bitstream’s copywriter (the company being entrepreneurial at the time, all I had to do was ask) that I started getting to know Matthew better. He would explain the particulars of different typefaces for me. I would interview him for articles that I had been assigned to ghost-write for him. I would prepare materials for events at which he was invited to speak. With every interaction, I came to respect his deep intelligence, to enjoy his warm and patient manner, and to revel in my good fortune that I could learn from a world-renowned master.

I recall one time when Matthew had been invited to address a group – perhaps the Type Directors Club – at a dinner; he would be giving the after-dinner remarks and in the invitation I was asked to write, I worded it just that way. When I gave the copy to Matthew to review, the only change he made was to cross out “after-dinner” and in its place he wrote “postprandial” – a word I’d never heard before. “What does postprandial mean?” I asked. “After dinner” was his nonjudgmental response. If you ever have the choice between being an English major or being English, I’d suggest you choose the latter.

My proudest moment came when the Marketing Communications department in which I worked was saddled with a hopelessly dull and creatively constrained advertising concept imposed on us by the Vice President of Marketing. No matter what we did with it, it was bland and uninspiring – as were the results. The VP decided she would take the advertising out of house. We were all pretty peeved about this, and I asked that we at least be given the chance to come up with something new ourselves. This was granted, and I proceeded to develop a series of ads promoting our typeface families, with headlines like “At Bitstream, the Futura Is Now”, as well as an image ad featuring a photo of Matthew and the headline, “Introducing Bitstream’s most important face.” The VP presented them in a meeting with the other execs, mentioned that I had created them, and later told me that Matthew responded to them by saying, “He’s a bit of a dark horse, isn’t he?”

The department kept the ad work.

I departed Bitstream voluntarily after having survived three layoffs. I went to a company that Bitstream’s VP of Sales had left for some months earlier. I was laid off after three months. I then spent a largely unsatisfying year as a communications specialist for a specialty chemical company, the only highlight being the opportunity to work with another brilliant person, the company’s chairman, Samuel Bodman, who had been the #2 guy at Fidelity and later served as U.S. Energy Secretary under George W. Bush, for whom I wrote speeches.

Needing to nurture my soul, I took a pay cut to work for public broadcasting powerhouse WGBH. I was there for four-and-a-half years. One night in the mid-1990s, WGBH was presenting an Ornette Coleman concert. I was excited to go and through a contact was able to procure comp tickets. In the lobby prior to the show, I saw a tall, slim, silver-haired man wearing cowboy boots. No question about it, it was Matthew Carter. Turns out he’s a big jazz fan, as if he didn’t have enough qualities to recommend him.

It was a good dozen years before I saw him again, on Friday, September 24, 2010, at Cambridge Public Library, when he became the sixth recipient of the AIGA Boston Fellow Award at a gala event. I am the chapter’s director of communications and had the honor of heading up the committee that organized that well-deserved recognition. It was a wonderfully successful evening, and four days later came the news that Matthew had won the MacArthur.

I don’t know when or whether ever I will see Matthew again, but I certainly hope I do and before long. His work so far precedes him that his mere presence is inspiring. Being around very smart or very talented people is like being around very beautiful people. It’s a given that you won’t quite measure up, but there’s a glow you receive from them that elicits a sense that you’re better off for having been in their orbit. I first sensed that with Matthew when I was 25; now that I am 47, I realize how fortunate I was, and how fortunate I still am that I have access to greatness to serve as inspiration and perhaps a measuring stick. I’ll never gain direct access to the rarified air that Matthew, Tim Berners-Lee, and the others occupy, but my front-row seats provide quite a nice view.

Kegger

2010-08-20T07:58:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted anything in a while as I've been consumed with other things, including recently being separated from my wife and kids (against my wishes), which I'm sure I'll write about when I feel like it. Until then, here's a piece of flash fiction I've been unsuccessfully shopping around. It's pure fiction but based on someone I went to college with whom I noticed frequently but, as you'll read, never knew.

Kegger
by Jason M. Rubin

We called him Kegger. There were two reasons why we called him Kegger. The first was that we didn’t know his real name. The second was because he had some kind of physical disability that made him walk in a jerky fashion so that he looked like someone leaving a “kegger” (that is, a keg party). In other words, he walked like he was drunk, even though he wasn’t. We used to joke that when he was shitfaced, he probably walked perfectly.

He was a classmate of ours in college. That was almost 10 years ago. We didn’t know what his ailment was. It could have been something like muscular dystrophy or multiple sclerosis or cerebral palsy, but to tell you the truth, I can’t distinguish among any of those diseases. He could have sustained a brain injury in an accident or maybe there was a problem with his birth, like the umbilical cord tied around his neck or something. It would have been so easy to get the answer…no, strike that. Even had I introduced myself to him at some point during our shared tenure in college and learned his name, I don’t think I would’ve had the nerve to ask him the nature of his disability. “So what’s with the funny walk: brain damage or incurable disease?” No, I don’t think so.

The strange thing is, ever since we graduated, I see him around the city every so often. Maybe once every other year. I went to a large state university and for all I know I’m constantly coming into contact with people from my class – but I wouldn’t know them from Adam because there’s nothing about them that distinguishes them in my mind. Not like Kegger. I’d know Kegger anywhere. It’s true, because I’ve seen him with and without a beard, and there’s no question it’s Kegger.

It’s kind of ironic, how someone whose name I don’t even know cannot be anonymous. Because not only did I used to stare at him walking across campus, I would notice other people staring at him, too. I’m sure lots of people recognize him because like me, they routinely stared at him. But it’s human nature, right? If an eight-foot-tall woman walked by, I would turn and stare. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s an unusual sight. You can’t judge a person for being curious. It’s a little different, though, with a person whose difference is somewhat more gruesome. For example, burn victims drive me crazy. You can’t help but stare but then you wish you hadn’t. The same thing with people missing limbs or digits, children with no hair, the morbidly obese. Compared to them, Kegger was no big deal. After all, he just walked funny.

One thing I always found odd was that not only did I not know him, but I didn’t know anyone who knew him or who knew anyone who knew him. Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon was a popular game when I was in college, but with Kegger, there were no degrees. There was just Kegger. Thinking of that makes me a little sad for him, but he must have had a roommate and that roommate must have had friends, so there has to be some number of people who can link themselves to Kegger. Looking at it this way, suddenly I’m the one who feels isolated. I mean, what does it say about my social network if I have no connection whatsoever to a guy I went to college with? Maybe I’m the one with an issue. Perhaps it’s me whose life is unfortunate.

I’ve been thinking this way for the last 24 hours because I saw Kegger again. Just yesterday. Only this time, I talked to him. Yes! After all these years, I finally got up the courage to speak to him. Although I can’t take all the credit for the courage because our encounter was somewhat unavoidable. It turns out he works at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, and I was in to get a new license because my wallet had been stolen. (Yes, having my wallet stolen and all the bullshit I have to go through to cancel credit cards and change passwords and stuff would probably make for a better story, but I’m too pissed off to write about it. Again, Kegger is an easy mark for me.)

To be honest, when I walked up to his window and began dealing with him, I didn’t recognize him because he was sitting down. But then he had to go over to the printer and there it was. The walk. It was Kegger. No question about it. I smiled. Nothing to lose, I thought. So when he lumbered back to me, I introduced myself and said that we went to college together.

“I know,” he said. “I see you around town every so often.”

“You do?” I replied. (What the hell was so distinguishing about me?)

“Yeah,” he said. But he didn’t say anything else, and I couldn’t think of anything else to say to him. Then he handed me my license and called the next number.

I walked out of the building feeling very strange. Are any of us really anonymous? Though we walk with our heads down and text more than we talk, somehow we all notice each other and for some of us, there are certain characteristics you make note of and file away. As I made my way back to my office, I began to notice the way I walk. It’s funny, when you think about how you walk, when you really concentrate on your gait, you can’t walk right. The attention you pay to it messes you up. Maybe the attention I and others paid to Kegger messed him up somehow. I don’t think so, though. Old Kegger (I forgot to ask his name!), he doesn’t even have to think about it. He just walks.

How I Got This Way

2010-06-10T21:04:00.000-07:00

To my knowledge, I was not genetically predisposed to being a music nut. My immediate family was not particularly musical: my sisters and I went through a variety of instruments, committing any number of crimes against humanity as we defiled the intentions of noble instrument makers, without ever mastering one. My grandfather Harry, though, he was another story. He possessed a magnificent bass-baritone voice and as a younger man performed in synagogue choirs, local operas, and even gave concerts.

In the early 1930s, he sang on a long-defunct Boston radio station under the less-ethnic name of Harry Robbins. A recording exists of three songs he cut at Ace Recording Studios, 120 Boylston Street in Boston, on October 27 and November 2, 1947: “Old Man River,” “Der Becher” (“The Cup”), and “Eibik” (“Eternity”). At his wedding in 1926, he sang a popular tune of the day called “Until” to his bride; he reprised it at each of his five children’s weddings and at least a couple of his grandchildren’s weddings as well.

His children, my father and his siblings, therefore grew up in a house filled with opera and lieder. None of them, however, seem to have gotten an ounce of his talent. I grew up with radio broadcasts of operas, from which I ran as fast as I could. I would not be influenced by my father’s music and instead took to rummaging through my older sister’s small stack of LPs and 45s. For the most part, this was a choice selection of early ‘70s pop and soft rock: Carpenters, Carole King, Three Dog Night, Bobby Sherman, and James Taylor.

Of course, I knew the Monkees from their TV show, which I loved and still do to this day. In fact, I’m still a huge Monkees fan and sincerely believe they belong in that abomination called the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. True, they didn’t play their own instruments (most of the time) and didn’t write all their own material (though they did write a fair share of it, especially Mike Nesmith, who had at least a couple of songs on all their albums and whose solo material alone warrants significant hero worship), but guess what? Neither did the Temptations.

Looking back, it’s kind of funny how much rock music I got from television in those days. It seems like most of the kids shows I watched had some interstitial musical segment that usually featured psychedelic visual effects – an odd introduction to acid culture to an eight-year-old audience. For example, one show I enjoyed a lot was called Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp, which featured a bunch of trained, costumed monkees – er, monkeys – doing Get Smart for kids not ready for the humor of Mel Brooks and Buck Henry. In each episode, the chimps were decked out in Haight-Ashbury uniforms and toy instruments, and lip-synched (well, obviously) to some pop dreck as Lancelot Link & the Evolution Revolution.

Another rock animal act for kids was the Banana Splits, a group comprising four dudes dressed in dog, gorilla (hmm), lion, and elephant suits. According to Wikipedia, music for the Splits was composed by the likes of such legitimate talents as Al Kooper, Barry White, and Gene Pitney. Then, of course, there were the Archies, the Partridge Family, the Hardy Boys, and who can forget the episode of Gilligan’s Island when the Mosquitoes showed up for a little R&R? Even the Brady Bunch kids took time out from their incestuous offscreen hanky panky to sing “Sunshine Day.”

So despite my father’s contempt for rock music, there was no escaping it in my house. In time, I was buying my own records. Inspired by their Saturday morning cartoon series, I started getting records by the Jackson Five and the Osmonds (to this day I have an almost-complete collection of the works of the original Osmond Brothers, and still listen to them). But in no way did I exhibit the characteristics of a music nut. I just enjoyed what I enjoyed. I listened to AM radio but didn’t really know who sang what songs, and didn’t really care. I was the kind of listener I now despise: someone who passively and dispassionately accepts whatever inoffensive sounds reach his ears.

That all changed in 1976. The year of our country’s bicentennial was a turning point for me. I was 13 years old, had my bar mitzvah, and became a certified, card-carrying music nut. Here’s how it happened.

My best friend and I did everything together in those days. One day we saw an ad in a magazine for the RCA Record Club. For a buck, you could get six records and best of all, two-record sets counted as a single selection. My friend and I would each select three, and we agreed that we should each pick one two-record set so as to maximize the value of our shared investment. My friend chose Frampton Comes Alive, which was all over the radio at that time. I didn’t know what record I should choose. My friend offered to help me make my selection. He decided I should get Endless Summer by The Beach Boys.

“What’s on it?” I asked. I wasn’t aware that I knew any of their songs.
“I think it has ‘Barbara Ann’,” he replied. (He was wrong.)

So I ordered it. When our shipment arrived, it was exciting as anything. It was the first time we had purchased something through the mail. When you’re a kid, any kind of mail addressed to you is special, but when it’s a big square cardboard box, probably 14”x14”x1.5”, it’s momentous. The only downside was that there were only five records in the box. One of my selections had been back-ordered. However, RCA included a coupon entitling me to another free selection. I decided I would hold off on making that selection until I checked out my other records (aside from Endless Summer, I also had ordered John Denver’s Greatest Hits, Volume 2, which I still own).

And so it was that I broke the cellophane on Endless Summer, the gatefold cover smothered with a richly colored cartoon mural of the Beach Boys in a tropical setting, including a gull perching on a bikinied breast. I didn’t know who any of the Beach Boys were individually, all I could tell from the cover was that they were a hairy bunch, and one of them had a particularly sour expression and was seemingly trying to hide behind the foliage.

The records were sided as they were in the old days, designed for stacking on the tall spindle of the record player: sides 1 and 4 on one record, and sides 2 and 3 on the other. This was before I had a nice stereo system so I was used to the stack concept, but I wasn’t sure I’d want to hear two sides in a row right off the bat (after all, a quick peek at the song list told me that my friend was wrong about “Barbara Ann” being on the set, thus I was initially disappointed), so I just put on side 1. Five songs: “Surfin’ Safari”, “Surfer Girl”, “Catch a Wave”, “The Warmth of the Sun”, and “Surfin’ USA”.

I couldn’t believe it. I knew four of the five songs (“Catch a Wave” was new to me) and liked them all. Those incredible melodies and harmonies, especially on the two ballads (“Surfer Girl” and “The Warmth of the Sun”) and the pumping beat of the uptempo tunes was absolutely entrancing. I immediately put on side 2: “Be True to Your School”, “Little Deuce Coupe”, “In My Room”, “Shut Down”, and “Fun Fun Fun”. Are you kidding me? How is this possible? How can any group have so many quality songs? While the Chuck Berry-inspired guitar on “Fun Fun Fun” got my blood racing like a dragster, the Beach Boys had me at “In My Room”.

I cannot underestimate the profound impact that “In My Room” had on me. I was 13. I was overweight. Painfully shy. Intensely insecure. My life to this time had been centered on superhero comic books (Marvel, of course). My favorite was the Thing, the brute made of orange rock who was the muscle of the Fantastic Four. He was powerful yet gruesome, the perfect role model for a boy who felt ugly and impotent. And so I lost myself in the colored squares of comic book narratives, lying on my bed and imagining myself making things right with my big fists and confident cry of “It’s clobberin’ time!”

With “In My Room” (which I didn’t yet know was recorded and released in 1963, the year of my birth), for the first time I felt that a song truly spoke to me, that a lyric really spoke for me. I felt understood, and the music conveyed with astounding accuracy the quiet sadness and morose yearning of someone who feels less safe, less comfortable among most of his school peers than he does in the solitary confinement of his own bedroom. This is the song that made me a music nut, that made me realize that I couldn’t content myself with these magical sides, that I needed more, that I needed to collect this artist and others that spoke to me. With “In My Room” I realized for the first time that there was a music that was made just for me.

Needless to say, after side 2 I spun sides 3 and 4. When I was done, having sampled the likes of “I Get Around”, “Don’t Worry Baby”, “California Girls”, and “Help Me, Rhonda”, I had heard 20 songs, liked them all, loved most, and had a new favorite group. More important, I looked at the composer credits and found that Brian Wilson (abetted on many of the tracks by a separate lyricist) was responsible for all of this brilliance. If I had thought it impossible that one group, one album, could have so many amazing songs on it, how much more outrageous was it to learn that it all came from the mind of one man? (The man, incidentally, with the sour expression trying to hide behind the foliage on the cover.)

I wasn’t done. I still had a coupon for another selection. I looked at the catalog and there was Spirit of America, the companion compilation to Endless Summer (which did include “Barbara Ann”). When it arrived, I had 20 more slices of insanely catchy melodies to play. I began collecting Beach Boys records and researching the history of the group. I came to realize that Brian Wilson wasn’t just the mastermind behind the group, he was now my hero. Not a hero like the Thing, someone who would help me through my adolescence, but a hero I could grow up with, someone whose music and whose very life would continue to inspire and speak to me to the present day, even after the thousands of other LPs and CDs I bought after he turned me into a music nut.

The Ecstasy of Music

2010-06-07T20:28:00.000-07:00

“O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation/Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.” – Psalm 95: 1-2

I don’t care what your view on religion is, you have to love the psalms. No one knows what the first music was, or who wrote the very first songs (it wasn’t Barry Manilow; it wasn’t even some-time Beach Boy Bruce Johnston, who wrote “I Write the Songs”), but it’s clear that a primary purpose and subject was praise to God or gods, using melody, meter, and rhythm to come closer to the unknowable. Sure, there are spoken prayers and unspoken pleadings, but it was well understood that to cut through the clutter, you needed a trumpet, a timbrel, a tune.

How important were songs to the ancient Israelites? Let’s glance at another psalm:

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion/We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof/For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion/How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” – Psalm 137:1-4

This one, of course, was written during the time of the Babylonian Exile. It is an extremely mournful psalm, no less than a dirge. They sat down, they wept. Further, they hanged their harps on the willows! Their instruments were of no use anymore, so inconsolable were they. And to add insult to injury, their captives, their tormentors, made them sing their songs, like a cruel overseer standing before a group of African slaves demanding to hear a song of celebration from the land in which they were taken, the land where their ancestors are buried. How indeed can they sing such a song in a strange land?

And yet, how has any group successfully made the transition from one country, one culture, to another, whether the move was voluntary or forced? By hanging onto their traditions, of course. Their cuisine, customs, clothing; their language; their holidays; their music. It’s why the Jews have survived everywhere they’ve gone, it’s how Asians, Africans, Latinos, Europeans, and all other groups maintained their identities regardless of where they are transplanted. By bringing their songs with them into the strange land.

As an art form, as a mode of communication, music cuts deeper than anything else. I suppose it, like anything else, affects different people differently, but throughout history music has been shown again and again to serve as soother, motivator, convener, wooer, and consoler. It’s everything you need it to be, and it has served all those roles and more for me throughout my life.

Like anything that excites the chemicals in your brain, music can also act like a drug. I certainly have felt high while listening to music, and the best part is that it’s readily available and doesn’t cause bad come-downs. Back when I used to indulge in such behavior, I always knew that when it came time to marry and start a family, I would do so cleanly. And in fact, the last time I smoked pot was the night before my wedding. I was solid in my decision and confident that I could close one door while opening the other without wanting to turn back. The one thing that concerned me, though, was whether I could enjoy music as intensely straight as I had stoned.

See, one thing pot does to you is to give you immense powers of focus and concentration. Taken to an extreme, it can leave you totally fixated on something or nothing to the extent that you look and act catatonic. That’s why when you’re straight and you’re within a group of stoned people, you realize how boring they are when they’re stoned. But I loved listening to music stoned, feeling every note and beat pulsing through my entire being. I felt like the music was consuming me, or that I had consumed it, the music and I were one, intertwined and ecstatic at this magical union of sound and spirit. I used to close my eyes at such moments and visualize the music as being a silver rope dancing in dark space like a cobra to a charmer’s flute in a street market in India.

Happily, I found – and am all too happy to promote the idea – that drugs don’t make the music listening experience so satisfying, the music itself does. Drugs really don’t add anything to the mix, other than allowing you to ignore everything going on around you, which isn’t always the best thing for you anyway. I still feel the ecstasy of music, still seek it out like any addict would his fix, and am grateful for those experiences when it all goes beyond simple enjoyment into another realm of deep spiritual fulfillment and inspiration. When it becomes, in other words, a religious experience.

I remember seeing the documentary The Gospel According to Al Green – actually I’ve seen it a few times, but the first time I saw it I was this close to converting. There was footage at the end of the movie where Reverend Al, still as sexy and sultry as when he sang secular hits like “Let’s Stay Together,” was singing in his church. And the sweat was pouring down, and people in the congregation were swaying and shouting and near to passing out with the sheer pull of the music, and as I sat there in my seat I could feel the tingling in my legs and it was all I could do not to stand up and be overcome with the spirit, shouting to witness and pleading for a blessing of salvation.

I was in a bookstore once, one of those places that has stacks and stacks of discontinued titles for small money. And I saw a book with a cover photo that made me stop and look closer. It was a black-and-white photograph of a long-haired cellist with a look of pure ecstasy on her face – not at all the composure of a typical classical musician. It was a biography of Jacqueline du Pre, whom I’d never heard of. But I was so compelled by that photo (and the low price) that I bought it and began reading it immediately. By the time I was halfway done with it, I’d already bought a 3-CD set of her cello concertos. She was touched with a gift beyond quantification, an intoxicating combination of the sheer joy of creation and the sheer force of spiritual awakening. I was hooked on the book, the music, and the person, who tragically died young, no doubt by the incredible weight of all that musical feeling.

In light of that, there have been times I have seen Brian Wilson in concert and been reduced to tears at the miracle of his endurance; without music, he could not live. Whatever brain damage he may have from his years of drug abuse and mental illness, it has not affected his capacity to make music and his ability to sustain his artistry when so many others of his generation are gone is testament to the life force that music is to him. There are those, among them unknown autistic savants as well as professionals like Brian, Andy Pratt, and jazz trumpeter Tom Harrell who only seem “normal” when they’re playing music. When the playing ends, their ability to successfully interact with the external world is hindered to some extent. What is it about me that envies people like that?

One more. My wife, when we were dating, would ask me lots of probing, difficult questions to learn more about me. It was like doing a psychological intake. One of the questions she asked me was, “If you had to give up either your sense of sight or your sense of hearing, which would you give up?” I didn’t even think twice about it. I’d rather be blind than deaf. Apparently, most people answer the other way, believing that not being able to hear is less of a handicap, especially in terms of personal safety and happiness, than not being able to see. But I didn’t see it that way; blind I could still enjoy music. And as tangible proof for why I need my hearing more than my sight, I offered up the 20 seconds of Aretha Franklin’s song “Angel” from about 3:37-3:57 where she sings, “There’s no misery – aaaaahooooow – like the misery I feel in me/Gotta find me an angel in my life.” That “aaaaahooooow” sums up every ounce of pain and loneliness in the singer’s heart and it’s a howl at the moon, a cry in the dark, and a shriek in the woods lost alone at night that seizes my own heart and makes me feel exactly what Aretha’s feeling. I can only imagine that I would be able to visualize that feeling even more without the sense of sight. But to not be able to hear her sing that again – even just that 20 seconds – is simply unimaginable to me.

So where is all this coming from? I was driving in my car this morning, listening to a Van Morrison live album called A Night in San Francisco. The track was a 16-minute medley of Brook Benton’s “I’ll Take Care of You” and James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World.” I can’t even describe to you how the performance progresses, but it builds with intensity, then the band pulls back a bit, inserts a piano solo, then builds it back up, eases a little, then plows ahead and when the music seemingly hit its peak it just kept going and I was going with it – going crazy with ecstasy, that is. I started getting chills, literally, goose bumps up and down my arms. Then the background singers did this funny chant, “Van is nooooooo prima donna” over and over, but instead of being funny it was totally fucking true and another wave of chills and goosebumps came over me. Then one of the band yells out, a reference to another Morrison tune, “Did you get healed?” and now my goosebumps have goosebumps (“Hell yes!” is my enthusiastic response) and the music’s not giving an inch, it keeps on pounding and suddenly I was overcome with that feeling of such intense pleasure where it’s almost too much of a good thing, like when a woman keeps licking your knob after you’ve shot your load and I just had to shout out loud and I did and thank God my windows were closed and thank God for ears that hear and good Lord what a joyful noise that was and I could sing this song in any land. And at that moment, no drug and no religion and no woman could have given me the feeling that that music gave me. And like a junkie has to find that high, and Aretha has to find that angel, I have to keep finding that feeling from music. And the good thing is, I know I’ll find it, again and again. And that’s why I’m a music nut. Hosanna.

Talking Drum

2010-05-25T06:17:00.000-07:00

The Drum is a new online literary magazine, distinguishing itself from other online collections of written works by having the authors read them in streaming audio. You also have the option of downloading the recordings as an mp3 so you can download it on your iPod. It doesn't cost any money to listen or download, primarily because The Drum doesn't pay the authors it selects to feature. In my case, that's OK because I'm happy with the exposure.

You can find me reading my flash fiction work "A Handful of Nickels" (which I originally titled "In the Nickel of Time" but somehow the other title made it to the website; I think I may have had a brain fart when I filled out my submission form) online now at http://www.drumlitmag.com. Just click on the link, scroll down a bit and there I am. Click "Play" to play or "Keep" to download.

While I'm excited to have been chosen to appear on the site, I also have two conflicting feelings about it. For one, I'm no fan of my recorded voice, though I used to play with tape recorders a lot when I was a kid, making up talk shows and singing dirty lyrics to songs taped from the radio with a friend of mine. I have this nasal thing going on and everyone always complains that I'm a mumbler anyway. But I tried my best when recording the piece to speak as clearly and emotively as possible.

Second, I'm not the biggest fan of author readings in the first place. To me, the great thing about reading a book with one's inner voice is that you don't know what is going to come next, and so the silent recitation in your head carries the tone of discovery. It's this constant word-by-word surprise that keeps one reading to learn how the sentence, paragraph, chapter, and story resolve.

But when an author reads his or her own work, he or she knows what comes next - knows, in fact, what will happen at the end of the story, and somehow that can't help but come across in the reading. Unless the author suffers from dementia or amnesia, he or she cannot regain the innocence required to replicate that sense that a first-time reader has of always discovering something new in the prose. No matter how skilled a public reader an author is, reading one's own work is an exercise in repetition rather than revelation.

Don't you wish sometimes you could go back and listen to "Stairway to Heaven" for the very first time again? Rediscover what made it such a magical and incredible experience? Instead, we listen to the song today having heard it at least 50,000 times before; we no longer are taken on the unexpected twists and turns because we know the terrain of that song so well. Which is not to say that it cannot be enjoyed - despite it being overplayed over the years, it still thrills me - but it never again can be an eye-opening experience. It's the satisfaction of a familiar flavor rather than the ecstasy of a profound new discovery.

All that said, as an aspiring author, I'm buying into the whole fantasy and dreaming of my first reading/book signing event. In retrospect, I suppose it's why I began practicing my autograph as early as sixth grade. I want to present my own work to a curious audience, field questions, and sign a perfect-bound page on which my name is printed as author. In time, I'm sure I would get over being self-conscious of my voice, and maybe would even be mindful of how I read my excerpt, and try to do so with as innocent and objective a tone as possible.

Until then, I plan to submit more pieces to The Drum and hopefully will have additional opportunities to practice my reading-aloud skills.

In Respectful Memory of Ronnie James Dio

2010-05-17T09:34:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite rock singers of all time died yesterday morning of stomach cancer. Ronnie James Dio, heavy metal's chief proponent of the "devil horn" hand gesture as a sign of musical power, sang professionally with the bands Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio, and Heaven and Hell (the latter reprising the Black Sabbath lineup but renamed so as to distinguish it from the Ozzy Osbourne-era repertoire). With this kind of pedigree, he clearly was a heavy metal demigod; yet his talent, appeal, and charisma transcended labels. To say he was heavy metal's most sonically and gifted vocalist is almost damning with faint praise, as the genre is not known for singers with refined voices. But Dio was different. Described as leather-lunged, he could scream with pure tonality and convey a gentle ballad with a smooth, lovely sound. He could growl at the moon and sing with a soft falsetto. No other hard rock or metal vocalist could approach the command and control he had over his voice.

My introduction to his music was via an oddly circuitous route. I was working in the kitchen of a restaurant inside a department store in the once-swanky Chestnut Hill Mall, in Newton, Massachusetts. One of the assistant cooks was a twenty-something high school dropout looking to turn his life around. I was 17 and just looking to earn some money for recreational pursuits. One day, we were talking and he asked me if I liked Black Sabbath. I said I'd never heard their music before. He replied, "Really? I thought all potheads were into Sabbath."

The next time we were working together, he handed me Sabbath's first two albums, Black Sabbath and Paranoid. To put it kindly, they were beat to shit, having somehow survived untold parties where drunken hands carelessly ran phonograph needles against the vinyl grooves, while the album covers themselves were worn and faded and smelled vaguely of spilled bong water.

I took the albums home and played them, and through the skips and crackles I heard the heaviest music I've heard before or since, laced with Almighty Guitar Riffs and Thundering Bass Lines and Brutal Drum Beats, topped with Ozzy's Mutant Wolf Wailing Vocals. I was instantly hooked, but I knew it wouldn't be worthwhile to tape these noisy, skippy albums so I went to the record store to get my own copies.

At the store, I thumbed through the Black Sabbath section and saw a number of choices. I figured at minimum I would get the first two because I already knew I liked them. I then assembled a chronology from the available titles to see where they'd gone from there. It being 1980, I noticed that there was a brand-new album by the band, Heaven and Hell. I was disturbed to learn, however, that Ozzy was no longer in the band, replaced by a guy named Ronnie James Dio (I've always held that only assassins are known by all three names). "Figures," I said to myself. "I'm always getting into bands too late." (It's true, many of the artists I'm most into I discovered when they were either dead, disbanded, or on the artistic decline.) I ended up just buying the first two albums.

A short time later, I was visiting a friend of mine and he was blasting out an amazing album by a group called Rainbow. I'm pretty sure the track was "Stargazer." The vocalist was astounding. I asked him who it was and he said it was Ronnie James Dio. "Unfortunately, he's no longer in the band. He just joined Black Sabbath."

You can guess where I went next. Yes, back to the store. This time with Heaven and Hell in hands. I took it home and listened to it, instantly transported to that golden place where music is nutrition or a willing sexual partner - where music is not just good, not just even good for you, but essential to your very existence. I was hooked.

And just in time, because tickets for "The Black & Blue Tour" were going on sale. This was Black Sabbath and Blue Öyster Cult on the same bill. My friends and I were already big Cult fans, having worn out copies of Secret Treaties, Agents of Fortune, and Spectres. My Sabbath discovery was new to the gang but once they got a face full of "War Pigs" and "Iron Man" they were on board. Still, for all of us, Cult were going to be the bigger attraction.

The concert was in Hartford, Connecticut, so a road trip was in order. Not even an early dinner at Denny's could derail our enthusiasm. It only got better when we entered the Hartford Civic Center and discovered the sound board where our seats were supposed to be. The usher explained that they had to move it form its original location for some reason, then led us to new seats in the fifth row on the floor, not more than 10 or 15 feet from the stage. Just ahead to the left of us was a speaker stack about the size of a house. Whatever this show was going to be, it was going to be loud!

Sabbath and Cult took turns throughout the tour opening for each other. This night, Sabbath came on first. In less than a minute, Ronnie James Dio had me in the palm of his hand. He painted such an imposing atmosphere with his presence and his voice (he was oddly short for his power and affect), and made such a strong connection with the audience with the devil horns and his earnest stage patter. This was his first tour fronting a venerable band and he knew he had to win over the fans. He succeeded in spades.

By the end of their set, I was exhausted and drenched with sat. I stood and boogied the entire set, desperately communing with the congregation with shouts and horns. As the lights came up, I was hoarse and completely spent. Cult came on eventually and played a powerful set themselves, but I had nothing left to give them. I sat for most of their set and my hands were so raw from clapping for Sabbath that it hurt to applaud.

I saw Sabbath again on their next tour, in 1982, at which time I was in college. Then Dio left the band and I kind of ignored heavy metal for a few years. I didn't even respond when he reunited with Sabbath for a one-off album called Dehumanizer in 1992. (I've actually never been a huge metalhead anyway; my favorite bands all have colors in their names: Black Sabbath, Blue Öyster Cult, Deep Purple, and Rainbow. Yes, there's also a Whitesnake but I prefer the Scorpions, chiefly because their singer sounds like Dio.)

A few years ago, Sabbath's label wanted to put together a collection of Dio-era Sabbath selections and they got back together to record three new tunes, which were strong. Then there was a tour as Heaven and Hell, which I had wanted to see but never did. Prior to that, the band Dio came to Worcester, Massachusetts, but I deemed it too far to go to stand among young metalheads. The result of the tour was a live album and DVD, Live from Radio City Music Hall. When I heard it I was amazed at how good he and they still sounded. I decided that if they toured again, I would definitely try to catch a show.

In 2009, they toured again and a friend of mine scored me great tickets. The date was August 28, 2009 - what would have been my mother's 76th birthday. Little did I know it would also be Ronnie James Dio's last performance. It was the last show of the tour and they exhibited no fatigue. This was a burning hot show, tight, energetic, and mesmerizing. Dio was in fine voice, active, talkative, and as engaging and charismatic as ever.

The tour over, Dio began preparing to tour Europe with his own band when he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. That tour was canceled, as was a European Heaven and Hell tour slated for summer 2010. Periodic updates on his website were hopeful, but his gallant battle ended on May 16. The man who wrote "Die Young" had done just that. He was two months shy of 68 years of age, two years short of the three score and 10 he was due at minimum.

Tributes to Dio have come in from his bandmates, Queen's Brian May, younger metal artists who were influenced by him, and of course, from his wife, Wendy, and his fans. But I would like the last words here to come from him. RIP, RJD.

Catch the Rainbow - Rainbow
We believed we'd catch the rainbow
Ride the wind to the sun
Sail away on ships of wonder

But life's not a wheel
With chains made of steel
So bless me, come the dawn

Heaven and Hell - Black Sabbath
They say that life's a carousel
Spinning fast, you've got to ride it well
The world is full of kings and queens
Who blind your eyes and steal your dreams
It's heaven and hell, oh well

And they'll tell you black is really white
The moon is just the sun at night
And when you walk in golden halls
You get to keep the gold that falls
It's heaven and hell

Confessions of a music snob

2010-05-14T20:47:00.000-07:00

Being a music lover, I can tell you that there is no greater feeling than to discover some new music you’ve never heard or appreciated before. It’s a feeling of fulfillment or completeness, as if there is a slot in your brain with a distinct size and shape and only one kind of musical experience fits cleanly, and once it does there’s an undeniable sense of rightness that hadn’t existed before, like when your ears pop or a satisfying meal has placated a craving stomach, or even when an urgent need to relieve yourself is finally consummated.

My newest musical obsession may surprise you, especially if you know that I own several thousand units of music (LP, CD, cassette): it’s the Rolling Stones. Not exactly a new or obscure outfit. But I’m no ordinary music lover; I’m a music snob. Being a snob means that I love music so much I can’t help finding fault with most of the music that exists in the world (or at least in the marketplace).

Again, if you know me well, you’ve probably used the phrase “Jason’s music” before. It implies that the music I favor is either intrinsically weird or just out of fashion. It’s true that I’m an admitted ‘70s guy and that some musical trends and genres from that much-maligned decade are easy prey for those who don’t know any better (such as progressive rock, jazz-rock fusion, concept albums, vocoders, and lyricons). But it’s not that I gravitate towards the noncommercial or the complex, I simply am suspicious of anything that is too popular.

For example, I didn’t own Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band until about 2005, and I almost never play it. I have no use for U2. Billy Joel’s music brings on a facial tic. I do like Bruce Springsteen but only when he was skinny and hungry, not his most popular years as a buff hunk with a hot butt. After he painstakingly brought me into his desperate, rambling wooing of Sandy on the 4th of July in Asbury Park, I should care that he’s dancing in the dark with Monica from Friends?

I’m much more drawn to musicians who aren’t necessarily physically attractive but who are staggeringly talented yet have never become household names. Artists like Al Kooper, who played the organ on Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” and was also in his band for that fateful electric set at the Newport Folk Festival. He later joined the Blues Project and founded Blood, Sweat & Tears, then he discovered Lynyrd Skynyrd and produced The Tubes. Along the way, he recorded a strong of little-heard solo albums that show off his deft arranging skills and white soul ambitions. And still, if I mention his name, most people think I’m talking about Alice Cooper.

Or Ian Hunter, whose name is even less known than his former band’s odd moniker, Mott the Hoople. Still rocking with full tanks of talent and integrity at age 70, Hunter rarely registers with people until you tell them that he was the singer on Mott’s “All The Young Dudes” and that he was the author and original recorder of “Cleveland Rocks” (the theme from The Drew Carey Show) and “Ships” (mawkishly taken to hitsville by Barry Manilow). He also wrote and originally recorded “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” a hit for ‘80s headbangers Great White, who will forever be known as the band whose pyrotechnic show burned down The Station nightclub in Rhode Island, killing 100 concert-goers who would have been better off following Hunter.

Or the Waterboys, helmed by Mike Scott, a highly literate, passionate, and spiritual Scot whose brilliant writing and emotionally forceful singing and playing are largely unknown in the country, with the possible exception of one song, “Fisherman’s Blues.” I am firmly convinced that “Waterboys” must somehow rhyme with the name of Pete Townshend’s band, because every time I tell someone about the Waterboys, the response is always, “The who?”

And then there’s Andy Pratt. Like my all-time musical hero, Brian Wilson, Pratt is only comfortable and socially engaging when he’s performing his music. He had one minor hit in 1973 called “Avenging Annie” (you’d only know it if you heard it, not by the title alone); the marketplace’s indifference to his unmistakable voice and gorgeous music is well beyond my ability to comprehend.

The last example I’ll give is a big favorite of mine, the progressive group Gentle Giant. People are surprised when I tell them that Giant released 10 albums from 1970 to 1980, because virtually no one has heard a single note of their music. Which may not be that surprising, since their musical arsenal includes such radio-unfriendly instruments as violin, cello, vibraphone, and recorder, in addition to the standard progressive gear (multiple keyboards and synthesizers, electric and acoustic six- and 12-string guitars, puffy shirts, and boots). The only people I can talk to about Giant are people who probably could have written this exact same post themselves.

So what about the Rolling Stones? Certainly not a group whose name elicits blank stares. Indeed, they are so popular, so consensually acclaimed, that they should never be able to occupy a place in the heart of a man who has never seen any Star Wars film in its entirety or read a single syllable of any Harry Potter book, purely out of stubborn refusal to be like everyone else. How is it that my snobbishness let them through after decades of turning my back on them?

As it turns out, it was purely happenstance, as I suppose it would have to be because I wouldn’t have purchased Ronnie Wood’s autobiography, cleverly titled Ronnie, on my own initiative. It was, in fact, given to a friend who offered it to me because he was even less inclined to want to learn more about the Stones’ third second guitarist (after Brian Jones and Mick Taylor) that was I, who at least is a ‘70s guy and who already owns the memoirs of such musical personalities of the era as David Crosby, Al Kooper, Ian Hunter, and Brian Wilson (who has admitted he didn’t write his).

I took the book because I was looking for new bathroom reading. I’ve gotten in the habit of keeping a paperback by the toilet for those times when I sit and feel like I might be there for a while. So for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working my way through and it even though it’s horribly written (along with passing a urine test, writing a memoir is just not something he can do successfully), and even though he is an unreliable reporter (among his drug-addled contentions is that his pre-Stones band the Faces were the second-most popular British band of the early ‘70s – after the Stones themselves – conveniently forgetting that Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Elton John outsold the Faces infinity to one during that era), it still is a compelling glimpse into the musical history and moral debauchery of 1970s rock and roll.

Since reading Woods’ more or less accurate recollections of his life and career, I’ve become much more interested in the Faces, Rolling Stones, and even Faces vocalist Rod Stewart, whose solo career (at least since 1978) I had always judged to be something akin to a crime against humanity. But in retrospect, listening with some sense of the back story, I’ve come to a new appreciation for Woods’ place in rock history. (This is not a new dynamic for me. In college, I was completely confounded by William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. It was only years later, after reading a biography of Faulkner that served to contextualize where, how, and from what sources that story came, that a rereading of the book brought me the rewards the author had intended.)

The Faces are an easy band to like because they never took themselves seriously. Competent musicians armed with a love of American blues and soul – and plenty of drink – they rocked with true spirit. Aside from Wood and Stewart, the band included keyboardist Ian McLagan, who became an in-demand session player; Kenney Jones, who became the inadequate replacement for Keith Moon in the Who (to be fair, Moon was irreplaceable); and bassist Ronnie Lane, a wonderful songwriter with a plaintive voice whose career and life were cut tragically short by multiple sclerosis.

As for Stewart, when I went back through his catalog, I realized he actually had a number of fine songs. In fact, his solo career began just months before joining the Faces, and his emerging stardom was one reason why the band disbanded after only four albums (according to Wood, the Stones’ courtship of the guitarist – in 1975, Wood toured with the Stones in between Faces tours – was another reason for the Faces’ demise). Despite his image as a Casanova, Stewart is at his best when he’s being sentimental or philosophical (such as my favorite of his solo songs, “Handbags and Gladrags,” where he chastises a shallow, self-absorbed girl that clothes, earned by the sweat of her grandfather, don’t make the woman). In comparison, the songs by the horny Rod bursting with bravado (“Tonight’s the Night,” where he deflowers some poor virgin; “Hot Legs”; and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”) fail on every aesthetic level yet were among his biggest hits (supporting my suspicion of anything that’s popular).

And now, back again to the Rolling Stones, whom I’ve long hated for at least three reasons: 1) they had the unmitigated gall to call themselves the world’s greatest rock and roll band; 2) they tended to co-opt rather than create musical trends (cf. their brief forays into psychedelia, reggae, and disco); and 3) they were universally loved. While I still don’t like the idea of the band – let’s face it, they all seem a little too much in love with themselves – I am now able to admit that their music (most of it, anyway) does indeed not suck.

That said, given that I’m a music snob, it behooves me to note that I think I like the Stones on a different level than most people. While the Budweiser-swilling masses no doubt enjoy the Stones for their raucous, raunchy image and quintessentially bad-ass rock and roll – a personality-driven musical style that’s none too complex, none too tight, and all too catchy – I’m attracted to subtler, deeper aspects of their art.

For example, the Stones are peerless at integrating lead and rhythm guitar parts, what Wood reports he and Keith Richards call “weaving.” The art of rhythm guitar has been lost over the years, largely due to the number of unheralded rhythm guitarists overshadowed by their showier lead counterparts. For example, if I were to ask you to name a member of the Beach Boys, you’d probably never come up with the name of rhythm guitarist Al Jardine. If I asked you who played rhythm guitar in the Beatles, you might have to pause before answering John Lennon, because that was not his claim to fame.

At the same time, lots of bands have eschewed the traditional rhythm/lead pairing by accommodating multiple lead guitarists, like Thin Lizzy and Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose guitarists switch roles from time to time. And latter-day King Crimson successfully did the unthinkable by pairing another lead guitarist, Adrian Belew, with rock and roll’s version of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s sentient android Data, Robert Fripp. But if you had a band with two rhythm players, you’d be Seals and Crofts; it just doesn’t work.

The Stones, on the other hand, have developed and perfected a true union of guitar souls, a musical innovation so potent that it worked equally well no matter who was slinging along with Richards. Sometimes it’s hard to know which parts are which because they’re both integral to the overall sound. But for a band that doesn’t do a lot of soloing and has some, but not a ton, of classic riffs (“Bitch” and “Brown Sugar,” both from Sticky Fingers, are my favorite), it’s that weaving that makes Richards and any guitarist he’s playing with a guitar god.

I also think the Stones have done some of the best ballads in rock and roll. You don’t expect a lot of sentiment from Mick Jagger but when he goes for the heart instead of the labia he’s not only effective but very convincing. On “Play with Fire,” there’s a vulnerability behind the bravado that another singer may not have been able to reach. His ability to churn out bluesy testimony while also getting across a heartfelt falsetto on “Fool to Cry” is impressive, and whenever Jagger twangs on the country-ish songs like “Wild Horses” – has to be one of the top two or three ballads ever written – it never sounds false or forced.

To me, a quintessential Stones song is “Get Off of My Cloud.” This is a song I liked even when I didn’t like the Stones. Even though the main riff of the song is actually Charlie Watts’ machine gun drum pattern, it’s full of hooks that get the heart pumping, the fists waving, and the hips moving. It has the urban pathos one expects from the group (“I live in an apartment on the ninety-ninth floor of my block/And I sit at home looking out the window imagining the world has stopped.”) It has the cocksure machismo they’re famous for (“Hey! You! Get off of my cloud”). The repeated heys and yous in the chorus enable the audience to participate in the hero’s fight for independence, not realizing that his rejection of others will lead to a loneliness that won’t be expressed until another song. And those guitars are not playing single-string wailing solos but rather strummed chordal licks, all rhythm, ably supported and punctuated by Bill Wyman’s reliable bass.

Ultimately, what I appreciate the most about the Rolling Stones is that they’re the last band standing that draws direct connections to Howlin’ Wolf and Buddy Holly, that understands that rock and roll is more about feeling than finesse, and that despite the whole Glimmer Twins cult of personality, despite the jet-setting ego trips, high-profile romances, drug busts and binges, despite all the SHIT that surrounds the Stones, good honest simple hip-shakin’, butt-kickin’ music remains at their core.

World’s greatest rock and roll band? Hell, they’re the only rock and roll band left. For that reason alone, I’m proud to be a fan.

Assignment: "It Makes No DIfference," by The Band

2010-05-03T21:23:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in my prior blog post, I was given an assignment by Steve Almond, who led a session at Grub Street's The Muse and the Marketplace conference, to choose a song with deep emotional importance to me, and write about the event that imbued the song with such meaning for me. So here's my story - but first, here's the song:

The year was 1988. I was 25 years old. Just starting out in my adult life, but I was in a holding pattern, and soon I crashed and burned. It started the year before, when I let myself get fired from my first job out of college. For two years I'd been doing PR in house for a producer of computer industry trade shows. The first year or so, I had a manager whom I despised. She was evil and liked nothing better than to dress down one of her charges in full view of other departments. By the time she left, my morale was rock bottom. Her replacement, however, thought I had potential and not only treated me with respect but also gave me more responsibility and put me in a position where the higher-ups in the company recognized my successes.

So in short, I was feeling pretty loyal to this guy. Then the company decided to branch out into the housewares industry, where the national association had decided to cut back from two trade shows a year to only one. My company hired away their show manager and decided to hold a competing event. The industry didn't look too kindly on a for-profit company with no housewares industry experience elbowing into their space. Therein lay a PR challenge. My manager and I took the lead in building relations and by the time our show was ready to launch, the industry was excited to see what we could do.

Then, literally the day before we were to leave for Chicago (where the industry is based), we heard that my manager had been given notice and was not being permitted to work the show. Instead, I would be supervised by the Conference department head, a man I hated. This was a complete shock to me and aside from the loyalty I felt to my manager, I also felt that I was being put in a position to fail because I would have to deal with the "Where's Keith?" questions. I was pretty bullshit about this and my manager did nothing to pacify me. I and a person in the department even more junior than myself decided to refuse to go to the show. My manager appreciated this display of solidarity. And we all were summarily fired.

I later learned that my manager had in fact been given notice several weeks before and had been told that he would not be going to Chicago. He kept this information from me, which I saw as a betrayal because he had an opportunity to quell my anger and save my job. As a result, I shortly thereafter decided to have nothing further to do with him, and didn't even see his name again for about a dozen years, until the day I opened up the newspaper to find my mother's death notice and was surprised to find his on the same page.

So strike one was losing my job. I decided then I wanted to get out of the computer industry. I thought I'd like to work in health care. Over the next several months, I had a number of interviews at hospitals but always lost out to someone who had some prior health care experience. I did a couple of freelance gigs, leveraging my trade show experience and contact for a PR firm and an exhibiting company, but overall I was unemployed for 10 months. It was during this time that I sank into deep credit card debt and have never been particularly solvent since.

Fast forward a few months. It's Thanksgiving Day. I'm throwing around a football with some friends. I leap to make a catch and land awkwardly on the leg of a friend sprawled on the ground. My ankle hurts like hell, but I eventually get dressed and go to my folks' house for Thanksgiving dinner. After the meal, I go to my girlfriends' parents' house for dessert. My ankle is still killing me but I make it through the evening. Eventually, I tell my girlfriend what happened and she asks to look at it. My ankle is swollen and deep purple. She takes me to the hospital. I've torn ligaments and have to wear a cast and use crutches. Strike 2.

Fast forward 2.5 months later. It's my 25th birthday. My parents and girlfriend take me out for dinner. I'm feeling miserable because I'm still out of work, my ankle is still tender, and my friends have told me they're not around. We go back to my folks' house and SURPRISE! It's a surprise birthday party for me. That's nice, though I was actually hoping to have some alone time with my girlfriend. But whatever, I'm happier than I was earlier that day.

Now, my best friend's birthday is two days after mine, so we had a tradition of going out drinking on the day in between, which was February 13. The next day, of course, was Valentine's Day. On February 13, my friend and I went out drinking Scorpion Bowls. My girlfriend also went out that night. A guy asked her out. She told him she had a boyfriend, but inside, as she told me later, she wished it wasn't so. The next night we celebrated Valentine's Day. A few days later, she told me what happened on February 13 and that she wanted to date other people.

Mind you, we had been dating off and on (but mostly on) for four years at this point, and though she was three years younger than me and still just a senior in college, I was thinking that we would be getting engaged before too long. I had no thought at all about not spending the rest of my life with her. She apparently thought differently. And I can understand that, given she soon would be graduating college and spreading her wings, whereas I had been unemployed for about as long as it takes to carry a baby to term. Still, it was strike three.

I was horribly depressed and despondent. I went to a therapist because I was still interviewing and needed to be able to exude self-confidence, which I had absolutely none of at that time. I've never felt as much pain as I did then. I was desperately searching for a release, a way to express all the hurt I felt inside. I reached for music, because that's simply what music does for me. I recalled how several years before I had deliberately sought out a song that would make me cry, because a girl had broken up with me but I hadn't broken down at all about it. I eventually found it in Dan Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne" ("Just for a moment I was back in school/And felt that old familiar pain" is what did it).

So I went through my record collection and began auditioning tunes. It didn't take long to find my catharsis in Robbie Robertson's lyrics and, especially, Rick Danko's voice crying out those lyrics. The whole performance touched me to the core to such an extent that I listened to that song no fewer than 20 times a day for several weeks.

The lyrics are raw, honest, and real:

It makes no diff'rence where I turn
I can't get over you and the flame still burns
It makes no diff'rence, night or day
The shadow never seems to fade away

...

It makes no diff'rence how far I go
Like a scar the hurt will always show
It makes no diff'rence who I meet
They're just a face in the crowd on a dead-end street

...

And then, at the end of the song, the dagger in the heart. I would scream-sing this part with a dark blue anger until I was hoarse:

Well, I love you so much
And it's all I can do
Just to keep myself from telling you
That I never felt so alone before

This was the lowest part of my life, which means there was no place to go but up. Not long after, I met the woman who would become my wife. And not long after she and I started dating, I got a job. And the fact that my wife and I are now divorcing after nearly 17 years of marriage only means that a certain cycle is coming around again, and I'm already thinking of the songs that will inhabit that emotional wound (George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" and Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" are top contenders).

But for that one bleak time period, The Band's "It Makes No Difference" was indeed the difference between sanity and depression, between hope and despair, and, quite possibly, between life and death.

Fear and Loafers at the Writer's Conference

2010-05-01T21:44:00.000-07:00

Today I attended my first-ever writer’s conference, “The Muse and the Marketplace,” sponsored by Boston’s leading writing center, Grub Street. I’ve never been much of a joiner or a sharer when it comes to my writing, but with a manuscript that thus far has only attracted the interest of a pay-to-publish press, I felt I needed to get out there and see what it takes to break the plane and enter the realm of the published.

The first day of the weekend-long event (I only registered for Saturday) began early for me, as I was scheduled to sit face to face with an agent at 8:30 am, shortly after registration opened. This was called the Manuscript Mart and it carried an additional cost; for me, however, it was the central reason to be here.

To date, I’ve sent my manuscript to more than 20 agents, each time getting a form letter or postcard expressing their regrets and their wish for my future success. It has been frustrating not to be able to get any specific or substantive feedback. With the Manuscript Mart, however, you pick an agent and submit a query letter, synopsis of the entire work, and the first 20 pages some weeks in advance of the conference. Thus, when you meet with the agent, he or she will have actually read it and will be prepared to discuss it with you.

Beginning yesterday afternoon, I started feeling nervous about the whole thing. Did I really want to know, face to face, what an agent thought of my work? Could I take it if the feedback was negative? With the previous submissions, there was always the comforting thought that maybe they hadn’t actually spent more than a couple of minutes looking it over, checking it for vampires before chucking it. Now there would be no doubt. The agent will either think it’s good – and that I’m good – or not.

Early as it was, it was too late to turn back. I had risen at 6:00am, dressed in the recommended business casual attire (shirt, pants, blazer – much nicer than my typical business wear), and driven to my office in Boston’s South End. The conference was in the swanky Park Plaza Hotel, a little more than a mile away. Being a long-strider, I made it in about 15 minutes. The warm morning, brisk pace, and sports coat added a patina of moisture that mingled with the mild anxiety I was already feeling.

I entered the hotel and got my registration packet, replete with itinerary and name tag on a red lanyard. The tag said, “Jason Rubin” on it. Anally, I inserted a caret (feel free to stop and reread the previous five words before proceeding) and my middle initial, so that it read “Jason M. Rubin,” my preferred professional name. Then I went to the room where people meeting with an agent checked in and waited to be told we were on.

It was in that room, which felt like a group of people waiting either to audition for a role in some production or waiting to be called in by the dentist to fix a lost filling, that I made my first demographic observation (which by day’s end was found to be fairly accurate of the overall attendance). Essentially, to quote Jan and Dean, it was two girls for every boy, with Caucasian representation at about 99.5% and probably 10 to 20% more lefties than you’d find in a more random societal sampling. Just about all the women were smartly dressed. The men ranged from my get-up to guys resembling IT geeks (comb-agnostic hair, short-sleeved shirts with odd-colored plaid prints; probably science fiction/fantasy writers). Comfortable shoes seemed to carry the day.

When the time came, I made my way to the room where 14 tables were set up, two chairs each. One chair at each table was taken up by an agent. The empty chair was for the writer. My agent (I like the way that sounds) sat at Table 13 (I’m not superstitious, so no worries). Her name was Katherine Fausset from Curtis Brown Ltd. My first choice of agent was sold out and she was a late add to the conference roster but despite the fact that she herself doesn’t handle historical fiction, I was very pleased with the experience.

For one, she had extensive hand-written notes on all three pieces: the query letter, the synopsis, and the sample. Another good thing is that she talked very rapidly so she crammed a lot of feedback into a constrained 20-minute session. She had very good recall about the details of my work and gave me very useful input into what she liked and thought was marketable, and what could be fixed. Overall, she gave me reason to believe that there is a market for my story, and with a little more work someone somewhere would be willing to represent it.

Of particular joy to me was that she liked the way my story began, which was something I was unsure about, having reworked it extensively based on feedback from my friend, author Ellen Kushner, whose novel Thomas the Rhymer was a stylistic influence on my work. Katherine liked the fact that my book is based on a 17th-century English folk song (“unique and potentially a marketable hook”), and thought the plot was “lively” and the work itself “imaginative and sexy.” I won’t bore you with the negative things. Suffice to say, I emerged satisfied, relieved, and considerably drier than when I went in.

Following that, I had some time before my first of two pre-lunch conference sessions began, so I went to a room where the editor of an online literary magazine called The Drum was recording flash fiction (500 words maximum) for consideration. I read “In the Nickel of Time,” a piece I had unsuccessfully submitted to the Harvard Book Store for a flash fiction anthology. The editor thought I read it very well, so we’ll see if it makes it to the site.

My first session was called “This is How a Caged Writer Sings,” led by Steve Almond, a writer I’ve read a little of but heard a lot about. It was all about drawing inspiration from songs, which is something I do anyway. He reinforced my belief that writing while listening to music is essential, and played a number of great tunes by the likes of Tom Waits, Joe Henry, and Bruce Springsteen on a Bose Wave system. Before the session even started, he was playing a song and asked the attendees if anyone knew who it was. I was apparently the only one who could identify the artist as Michelle Shocked. At the end of the session, he gave us an assignment for us to do on our own at home: Think of a song that carries emotional importance to you, and tell the story that that song takes you back to. I know exactly what I’m going to write about. Watch this space. I had bought his new book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, earlier and had him sign it. He wrote: “To Jason, 1. Crank the tunes. 2. Undress. 3. Dance naked. Steve”

The second session was called “The Essentials of Dialogue,” led by Adam Stumacher, who teaches creative writing at MIT (I bet you didn’t know MIT offered creative writing; well, they do and you don’t have to leave your trumpet at home, either). He gave a number of good, concrete tips and backed them up with readings that contain strong dialogue. He gave an assignment towards the end of the session that I had a lot of fun with. It was this: Two neighbors are in a pasture together and they come upon a dead horse. Write a dialogue in which they talk about how they’re going to move the horse; at the same time, one of the characters has something else they’re dealing with that needs to be incorporated into the dialogue. We had 10 minutes to work on it, and I got an idea quickly and ran with it. I was so pleased with what I’d done, I was hoping I would have a chance to read it, but when the 10 minutes were over, so was the session. Here’s what I came up with:

A: How’d it happen?
B: Don’t know. Just found her like this.
A: She bit anywhere?
B: Not that I can see. Don’t know if there’s an injury on the other side.
A: So how do we get rid of her?
B: Don’t know. Can’t keep her here, that’s for sure.
A: S’pose we could chop her up and take her in bits in a wheelbarrow.
B: Messy business.
A: Yup.
B: Maybe if I take the head and you grab her around the neck we can drag her.
A: Worth a try. Weird thing, though.
B: What’s that?
A: Just thinking of when I came home from school in sixth grade, found my mother dead on the kitchen floor.
B: That’s rough.
A: Heart attack. She was a smoker.
B: Sorry about that.
A: Well, it was a long time ago.
B: Smoker. That gives me an idea.
A: What’s that?
B: We could just burn her.
A: It would stink but that may be the best way.
B: What’d you do with your mother?
A: Went screaming to the neighbors. First dead body I ever saw.
B: Did you try to move her?
A: Naw. We just left her until the ambulance came.
B: She got a better send-off than this horse will, I hope.
A: Yup.
B: Well, let me get the gas can. You got a match?
A: Yup. I’m a smoker, too.
B: That’s kinda funny.
A: Well, I never thought much about it until I saw this horse and thought of my mother.
B: Are you OK with this?
A: Yeah. Let’s get it done. It’s just a horse, after all.
B: Well, even a horse is somebody’s mother.

Then it was time for lunch in the Imperial Ballroom. You could pay extra to sit at a “Five Star Table” with actual published authors, agents who represent actual published authors, and editors who refine the work of authors who will actually be published. I elected to dine with the commoners. It was a typical bar mitzvah lunch of roasted chicken breast with a few slices of mushroom in a sauce that bore a striking resemblance to marsala without ever really committing to it, three halves of roasted red bliss potato, several skinny spears of baby asparagus, and some carrot shavings for color. This was preceded by a mixed greens salad and followed by a key lime tart placed dangerously close to a yellow puddle of unknown sauce.

Conversation at the lunch table was polite and curious, as we shared the plots of our stories and talked about the sessions we’d had. I was thinking a nap would be in order, but soon it was time for the third session. Mine was about first-person narrative nonfiction. It was just OK. The presenter was funny but mainly read to us from notes and anytime anyone asked him a question, he always said, “I have two responses.” He never had three, he never had just one. He always had two.

The last period of the day was called “Hour of Power” (remember, writers thought up these great titles), which was a series of sessions that anyone could drop in and out of. I went to one about building a platform, but the presenter was terrible, also reading from her notes, which weren’t even well-written notes. Ultimately, there was nothing she was telling me that I didn’t already know, and her examples were not easily replicable. I ended up leaving it early but by then I was too tired to crash a different session. Instead, I sat on a comfy chair and read the notes thoughtfully written by my agent (we’ll always have the Manuscript Mart).

The sessions officially concluded, it was time for the cocktail/schmoozing hour. I’m very good at the first part, but the second isn’t such a strength. I ordered a Maker’s Mark on the rocks. The bartender took a small rocks glass and dumped a large scoop of ice cubes into it. Though it looked full to me, the bartender then tossed a second scoop of ice into the glass, which was now apparently filled to 200% of its capacity. Somehow, he managed to get some bourbon in there. I sat at a table and was soon joined by two women. We all chatted about the events of the day and the plots of our stories. When I finished my drink (the liquid part of it, anyway), I decided it was time to go.

It had been a long day, nearly 10 hours, and I had spent it listening to people talk, taking notes, sizing up this crowd of people who self-identify as writers, and wondering when and if my big break will ever come. As I left the hotel, I removed the lanyard from my neck and tossed it into a trash can. I began walking back to my office at a somewhat slower pace than before, and that’s when I saw that the streets looked very clean. Downtown Boston looked very pretty today. I didn’t notice that this morning.

Shoot your Spell-checker

2010-04-28T12:29:00.001-07:00

Just a short post to remind everyone that spell-checkers, to quote Monty Python, have the brains of a duck. They're good at picking up the most obvious typos, but they're no damn good at all when it comes to deciding if the word you spelled correctly is really the word you intended to type.

This morning was a prime example. I was under deadline to finish a brochure and was zipping through it as fast as I could (maintaining my renowned quality, of course). When I finished, I spell-checked the thing and corrected the few clear misspellings. Then I printed it out and proofed it by hand and eye, which I always do anyway but this time I was surprised at just how many real words I had inadvertently typed in place of the words I actually needed to type.

So here's what I found, no thanks to Microsoft Word's unutile utility; first the word I typed, followed by the word I intended.

TYPED / WANTED
Asserts / Assets
Heir / Their
Sage / Safe
Fro / From
Culminated / Culminates
Form / From
Asses / Assess
Experience / Experienced

You have been warmed. Er, make that warned.

"Muse and the Marketplace" writer's conference: my itinerary

2010-04-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

Just received my itinerary for Muse and the Marketplace, a writer's conference this Saturday, May 1, in Boston. Happy to report that I received all three of my first-choice sessions. I will also be meeting one on one with a literary agent who will have read an excerpt of my manuscript in advance. This will allow me to hear a rejection in person, with rationale, as opposed to a form postcard wishing me luck. I hope to get feedback that doesn't make me want to give up living. But we shall see.

Here is my itinerary:

SESSION 1E: "This Is How A Caged Writer Sings"
Description: Can listening to the right songs make your prose sing? Steve Almond says yes. And he’s got a whole record collection full of proof. In this strange and potentially aerobic session, Steve will play a number of his favorite literary songs and discuss the relationship between songwriting and prose writing, with a particular emphasis on the melody and rhythm inherent in language, and the importance of overt emotional involvement. (Unless requested, Steve will not be perform his world-famous rendition of “Your Song” on harmonica.) Bring a pen, an open mind, and your dancing shoes.
Type: Lecture with Q&A
Author: Steve Almond. Steve Almond is the author the story collections: My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow, the novel Which Brings Me to You (with Julianna Baggott), and the non-fiction books Candyfreak and (Not That You Asked). His new book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, is just out. He has also, crazily, self-published a book called This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey, composed of 30 very brief stories and 30 very brief essays on the psychology and practice of writing.

SESSION 2G: “The Essentials of Dialogue”
Description: Effective dialogue is more than a simple transcript of speech; our characters’ conversations must be shaped to do work for narrative, to develop character, setting, and voice, and to propel the plot forward. We will practice a range of techniques for the creation of vivid, engaging dialogue, illuminated by examples from authors such as Richard Bausch, Flannery O’Connor, Sherman Alexie, and Raymond Carver. By the end of this session, you will have an enhanced toolbox bringing your characters’ words to life.
Type: Lecture, Q&A, Guided Writing
Leader: Adam Stumacher. Adam Stumacher's fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices, has been published in TriQuarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Carve, Barnstorm and The Sun, and was winner of the Raymond Carver Short Story Award. His nonfiction has appeared in the Guardian (UK) and the anthology Peace Under Fire. He holds degrees from Cornell University and Saint Mary's College, where he was recipient of the Jeanine Cooney and Agnes Butler fellowships. More recently, he was the the Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, where he taught undergraduate courses. In addition to his work at Grub Street, he teaches creative writing at MIT and has many years experience as an educator in urban high schools. He is the author of a short story collection, Slipknot, and is currently working on a novel, entitled A Liar's Opus.

SESSION 3D: “Don’t Give Up: First-Aid for the First-Person Narrative”
Description: This class is designed specifically for frustrated writers who have tried and failed to complete a first-person nonfiction narrative. Nothing is more discouraging than knowing you have a compelling, true story to tell—whether it is based on personal experience, the lives of others, or original research—and watching it fade and fail on the page. Bring your frustrations; bring a one- or two-sentence synopsis of the story you want to tell. We’ll discuss them along with a few opening paragraphs of published memoirs, topical nonfiction, and reflective essays, paying particular attention to the distinct roles assigned to writer, narrator, and character. Because you can’t do it alone: it takes three of you to bring a first-person story to life.
Type: Discussion
Author: Michael Downing. Michael Downing’s novels include the national bestseller Perfect Agreement and Breakfast with Scot, which was adapted as a movie that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. In addition to Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center, a narrative history of the first Buddhist monastery outside of Asia, Michael’s nonfiction includes the updated 2009 edition of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, and a memoir, Life With Sudden Death: A Tale of Moral Hazard and Medical Misadventure. His essays and reviews appear in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. A frequent commentator on clocks, Congress, and confusion about daylight saving on NPR, PBS, and network and cable news programs, Michael teaches creative writing at Tufts University. You can read more about his work at www.michaeldowningbooks.com.

Manuscript Mart Literary Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Katherine Fausset is an agent with Curtis Brown, Ltd., New York. She has worked in publishing since 1998. In non-fiction she looks for dynamic, bold voices and subject matter that alters our view of the world. In fiction, she particularly loves rich, atmospheric detail; humor; explorations of family dynamics; anything set during a revolution; and morally-complicated protagonists. Some of her non-fiction clients are Moustafa Bayoumi, Mary Ann Caws, Ioan Grillo, Daniel Hernandez and Chris Rose. Her fiction clients include Benjamin Percy, Laura van den Berg, James Magruder, Katharine Davis, Jerry Gabriel, Janna McMahan, Justin Allen and John Nichols.

I lose...you win

2010-03-02T12:03:00.000-08:00

Recently, the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced an open submission of short short fiction (500 words of less) to be published in a collection that would be printed on demand within the store. Writers were allowed to send up to three submissions. I sent the full allotment and from hundreds of submissions received from around the world, only 36 authors were selected to be represented. Unfortunately, I was not one of them. Fortunately, no one I know was.

Had I been selected, you would have had to drag yourself down to the book store and buy a copy just to satisfy your insatiable curiosity about what I wrote. As it is, I offer you these rejected works free of charge. Enjoy.

In the Nickel of Time
By Jason M. Rubin

Nickels. Can you imagine that? A handful of shiny silver nickels. That’s all it took. Not that I have anything against nickels, because I don’t. What’s not to like? Jefferson’s proud profile. That nice smooth edge. Far weightier than the meek dime though only half its value. Yeah, nickels. Nothing wrong with them.

Except that I’d never been handed an entire roll of them before.

I was behind the counter at the local Quickie Mart, where I’d been working three nights and one Saturday each week to make a little extra money. I’d been there almost three weeks now and was making literally that: a little extra money. But I supplemented my meager income by surreptitiously taking a few small items every now and then. Not enough to arouse suspicion, just a few household staples: a quart of milk, a can of corned beef hash, a pack of rubbers. Whatever we needed that night.

It was Thursday at about 10:30pm, a half hour to closing time. It took me 20 minutes to close out the register, straighten out the store, and lock up, then another five minutes to drive home. An older guy came in, kind of disheveled, his white hair all askew on his age-spotted head, wearing a dirty jacket too light for a damp spring night. He asked for two scratch tickets. Two dollars, I said. He handed me a roll of nickels. Forty nickels. Two dollars.

“You don’t have a couple of bills?” I asked.
“Nah,” he replied.

I bobbed my hand up and down a few times, as if assessing the weight of the roll to ensure that it felt like a full 40 nickels. As if I could tell. But I liked the feel of the roll in my hand. I didn’t want to break it open and have to count out each individual coin to confirm that he’d paid me the full amount, so I accepted it, knowing he had scant chance of even earning back his investment.

As he walked out of the store, I put the roll down on the counter, took out my wallet, pulled a pair of ones from within, and put them in the register. I kept the roll in my hand the rest of the night and was still holding it as I left the store and started to lock the door behind me. Just then I felt a hand push me against the door. A voice, soft yet sinister, ordered, “Open up and give me what’s in the register.”

Purely out of instinct, I turned and slugged the guy. Wasn’t even thinking. Didn’t know if he was armed, didn’t even know if he was big and strong or just a punk on an oxy high needing money to make another score. But I was so surprised that I just let loose with my fist. Which was holding a roll of nickels.

And that’s how I knocked the fucker out and earned a $100 bonus from my boss.

– end –

------------------------

Kegger
By Jason M. Rubin

We called him Kegger. There were two reasons why we called him Kegger. The first was that we didn’t know his real name. The second was because he had some kind of physical disability that made him walk in a jerky fashion so that he looked like someone leaving a “kegger” (that is, a keg party). In other words, he walked like he was drunk, even though he wasn’t. We used to joke that when he was shitfaced, he probably walked perfectly.

He was a classmate of ours in college. That was almost 20 years ago. We didn’t know what his ailment was. It could have been something like muscular dystrophy or cerebral palsy, but to tell you the truth, I don’t really know what those diseases are all about. He could have sustained a brain injury in an accident. It would have been so easy to get the answer…no, strike that. Even had I introduced myself to him and learned his name, I don’t think I would’ve had the nerve to ask him the nature of his disability. “So what’s with the funny walk: brain damage or incurable disease?” I don’t think so.

The strange thing is, ever since we graduated, I see him around the city every so often. Maybe once every three to five years. I went to a large state university and for all I know I’m constantly coming into contact with people from my class – but I wouldn’t know them from Adam, because there’s nothing about them that distinguishes them in my mind. Not like Kegger. I’d know Kegger anywhere. It’s true, because I’ve seen him with and without a beard, and there’s no question it’s Kegger.

Once we saw him at a Grateful Dead concert. For that night only, his name was changed from Kegger to Acid Casualty. There was no end to our empathy.

Here’s why I’m telling you this. I saw him again. Just yesterday. Only this time, I talked to him. Turns out he works at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, and I was in to get a new license because my wallet had been stolen.

I didn’t recognize him at first, as he was sitting down. But then he had to go over to the printer and there it was. The walk. It was Kegger. I smiled. Nothing to lose, I thought. So when he came back to me, I introduced myself and said that we went to college together.

“I know,” he said. “I see you around town every so often.”

“You do?” I replied. (What the hell was so distinguishing about me?)

“Yeah,” he said. But he didn’t say anything else. Then he handed me my license and called the next number.

I walked out of the building and began to notice the way I walk. It’s funny, when you think about how you walk, you can’t walk right. Old Kegger (I forgot to ask his name!), he doesn’t even have to think about it. He just walks.

– end –

------------------------

Made It
By Jason M. Rubin

They never even made it.

And poor Tim, he still waited with breath that was bated. Alas, he was fated, it seemed, to ever be devastated – and never be elated. He hated this feeling, sought to evade it, and made it his mission to take his position and elevate it.

And yet, again, he was deflated. Tim knew it was a problem he himself created by refusing to be sated with anyone he dated. No one rated high enough, no one fellated well enough, no one could get themselves extricated from him fast enough. They felt intimidated, exasperated, and he only exacerbated the issue through the cruel tricks he perpetrated on them.

Frustrated, he took to drink, thinking that if sedated he would be less hated. But he played it wrong, stayed drunk too long, and demonstrated that he was not syncopated within love’s sweet song that serenaded others so well. If ever he’d come close to tying the knot, surely he would have frayed it. His heart, it seemed, was too well barricaded.

Within his mind he debated the proper course to take; but jaded, he could not commit. How he would have traded his conundrum for any other, waded into any other of life’s streams, aided only by his wits and compassion. Yet passion itself paraded by him, time after time, paying him no mind, until he laid it down to rest.

Only then it came to him, belated, and elucidated in his thoughts, the right response: online dating. And so a profile he created, though a computer crash delayed it. But then it went live and soon he was inundated with romantic offers (the truth, after all, was not often stated and so his appeal was upwardly graded).

Ever a devil, Tim on a whim replied to two at once and both were slated to show, and so he sat in a booth in a café where tables were waited and food was plated and cheese was grated and the knives were serrated. And there his hopes were raided, his light was shaded, and his pride was berated. His place in the booth, well, he refused to vacate it.

Even though they never even made it.

– end –

My brief career as a harp roadie

2010-03-01T20:01:00.000-08:00

There was a short period of time in my life when I worked as a roadie for a harpist. It wasn't a full-time gig, but whenever this harpist would play locally, I'd drive out to the venue with her and haul her harp. I'd get $75 and the pleasure of watching the show. And what a show it always was. The harpist in question was Deborah Henson-Conant, a jazz harpist who has taken her immaculate instrument into the dirty downtown vibe of blues, funk, and electronica. Though I haven't seen her in years, she was a friend and the story of how we came entwined in each other's lives is pretty interesting.

It all started in 1985. I was freshly out of college, it was summer and my friends and I were looking for entertainment. We saw there was a jazz cruise happening in Boston Harbor, so we got tickets for it. I was just getting into jazz, my friends not quite so much, but we were into the idea of a "booze cruise" on a nice summer night, so we went.

There were two bands playing simultaneously. On the main deck was the Gary Burton Quartet. I knew of this remarkable vibraphonist from his duo recordings with Chick Corea. When the night started, I was all set to spend the night enjoying his artistry. After a while, though, one of my friends wanted to check out the other band playing below deck, so I went with him. There we saw a group calling itself the Jazz Harp Trio, featuring the tall, striking Henson-Conant with a bassist and a drummer.

The sight of this combination was enough to keep me there for a while, but it was the music that kept me there all night. The highlight was a medley from The Wizard of Oz, as epic and powerful as Buddy Rich's classic West Side Story medley. At one point, the drummer put down his sticks and did a scat-vocal drum solo. I was hooked. There was a sign-up sheet, which I applied my information to, and I may have bought one of her cassettes that night as well. The point is, I was under her spell.

I also knew where she lived, since her business address was also her home address. She lived outside Davis Square in Somerville, Massachusetts. I lived not far away and within a year or two I was actually living just a few blocks from her. I began going to her shows pretty regularly and bought a couple more tapes. In 1987, I lost my job and was unemployed for a number of months. During this time, I got a mailing from Deborah, asking for volunteers to help with mailings. Having nothing better to do, I called her and said I'd be happy to lend a hand.

I got to meet her and her then-manager Susan, and see her interesting home, which featured the fledgling Burnt Food Museum. We became friendly, and one day she asked me if I'd like to carry her harp for her at a show. Now, I'm a big guy but a harp is pretty big, too, and not the most symmetrical thing you might ever be asked to lift. Not only that, it's ornate and expensive and I was afraid if I mucked it up, it would not at all be a good thing.

But she told me she would teach me how to hold it and, of course, the prospect of earning some money convinced me there would be worse things than spending an evening with a tall, striking harpist. I forget the name of the venue and what town it's located in, but I'll never forget the architecture of the building. The downstairs was a restaurant, the upstairs was a jazz club. The stairs themselves were quite narrow and very steep. I was starting to have second thoughts, but it was too late to turn back. That harp had to get upstairs and I was the one who had to bring it there (I didn't even let myself think about how I was going to get it back down).

Following Deborah's instructions, I gripped the harp at just the right places, bent my knees and lifted it up. If I did nothing else with it, at least I knew I was holding it securely and ergonomically. Now, to climb the stairs. I went slowly, never looking down, stopping to lean my back against the wall when I had to, then continuing, keeping my grip firm (did I mention it was summer and I was sweating?). Amazingly, I made it to the top of the stairs, harp and me each in one piece. It was then that Deborah swooped in and grabbed the harp and placed it on the stage. Very smoothly, I might add. My work, for the next couple of hours anyway, was done.

I enjoyed the show and a couple of draft beers, and then it was time to bring the harp downstairs. To my surprise, it was actually easier; I'd been afraid the thing would drag me down or make me lose my balance. The final trick was laying it gently in the back of her car (I forget the make, but it was just a plain old urban shitbox, not a vehicle designed for transporting large, awkward, valuable objects). Anyway, the night went well, Deborah was satisfied with my hauling and enjoyed my company (I learned that part of the job was keeping her focused and unanxious before the performance), and subsequently she hired me at least a half dozen other times.

By that time, I'd gotten a full-time job and had begun my progressive rock newsletter, so I used my new desktop publishing skills to redesign and produce her newsletter, called Harp Strings.

By that time, I also had met a woman name Laura, who happens to currently be my wife. For our first date, I took her to the Regattabar jazz club, located in the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, to see - who else? - Deborah Henson-Conant. When we arrived, I saw Deborah's manager, Susan, and went over to say hi and introduce her to Laura. She shook Laura's hand and said, "Ooh, your hand is so cold!" Then to me, she said, "Are her hands always this cold?" I replied honestly. "I don't know, I haven't held her hand yet."

So that was our first date. When we got married in 1993, we decided to hold the wedding at the Charles Hotel. We hired Deborah to play during the processional and recessional, as well as the cocktail hour. And then Deborah suddenly got kind of big. She was signed to GRP Records, began appearing on TV, and toured the world. I think I've only seen her once since the wedding, but I'm glad she's taken off and gotten the recognition she so justly deserves.

At this point, I'd be very curious to see her perform again, to see how her music has progressed. My back, however, insists that the only harp I lift again be the one on a Guinness pint glass.

This, by the way, is a much smaller harp than the one I carried:

This one is more like it:

Progressing again

2010-02-27T19:07:00.000-08:00

As I discussed in an earlier post on this blog, in my late 20s I wrote and published a monthly newsletter about progressive rock. It was called On Reflection, named after a composition by my favorite progressive band, Gentle Giant. It never grew too big, or too successful, but it enabled me to write about and share my passion with people around the world, some of whom still remember me two decades later.

As review, what I refer to as progressive rock is a genre whose heyday was the late 1960s to the latter 1970s; another way to put it is that it was spawned by psychedelia and spurned by punk. The best known performers were bands such as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Though all these bands, including Gentle Giant, were British, prog groups flourished in the United States, Japan, Italy, Sweden, France, and many other countries.

Progressive rock is hard to define because there were scant similarities between the linear bombast of a Yes or an ELP and the intricately interlocking musical puzzles of Gentle Giant, between the spacy soundscapes of Pink Floyd and the improvisatory darkness of King Crimson, between the epic sagas of Genesis and the instrumental eclecticism of Dutch proggers Focus. But just as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said about obscenity, "I know it when I see it," one can identify progressive rock fairly easily (as I borrow the structure of comedian Jeff Foxworthy's tiresome "You know you're a redneck if..." routine):

• If girls run screaming from the room when you play an album, chances are good that it's a prog rock album.
• If the cover art depicts a scene that could never exist in the known universe, chances are good that it's a prog rock album.
• If the shortest tune on the album is 8:57, chances are good that it's a prog rock album.
• If the guitarist plays electric and acoustic 6- and 12-string guitars, chances are good that it's a prog rock album.
• If you see the words "moog", "harpsichord", "cello", and "Taurus bass pedals", chances are good that it's a prog rock album.
• If the lyrics make more sense read backwards than forwards, chances are good that it's a prog rock album.
• If the band members are white and intensely ugly, chances are they're a prog rock band.

I could go on, but hopefully you're getting the picture.

Of course, I can say all these things because I'm one of the club, although like Groucho Marx, I'm at least a little wary about being part of a club that would have me as a member. I like to think that even I, within a crowd of fellow proggers, can look around and think "These guys are weird." And yet the music does move me.

On the other hand, a lot of other kinds of music move me as well, and because of that I got bored and burned out from doing the newsletter. I felt I always had to be in a prog mood and frankly I wasn't. I was getting more heavily into jazz, folk, and classical music and I was tired of listening to new CDs of new bands who were trying to sound like the old albums by old bands. So I stepped away from the scene, still listening to what I liked when I felt like it, but not delving any deeper into the genre.

In the meantime, as I explained in the original post, one of my subscribers, John Collinge, wanted to keep the newsletter going. He renamed it Progression, and I helped him with the first couple of issues. After a while, I lost touch with him but last year, curious to see if it was still in print, I Googled him and found that he had grown Progression into a massive quarterly magazine with glossy pages and lots of ads, photos, and interviews. It's quite impressive and a vast evolution from the original eight-page offset-printed newsletter I folded, sealed, labeled, stamped, and mailed on my own.

So I got back in touch with John and he asked me if I was interested in writing any CD reviews. I demurred, not wanting to get back in the scene. But then recently, when a friend helped me to discover that a writer today needs a platform and that mine was music, it occurred to me that I should be doing more music writing and getting my name back in music circles. A few years ago, I submitted a number of Gentle Giant CD reviews to the Gentle Giant website, where they are still posted; I might as well do the same thing and get my name in print. So I wrote him recently to say OK, I'm in. In my mail the other day were 14 progressive CDs, only one from a band I'd heard of before.

So here I go, back in the prog world with ears open and maybe a bit more objectivity than back in the day. And as I venture on, I think of the lyrics to a song by Yes with the mega-proggy title, "The Revealing Science of God":

What happened to this song we once knew so well
Signed promise for moments caught within the spell
I must have waited all my life for this moment

I'm 40 years older than my older sister

2010-02-18T20:28:00.000-08:00

Last Friday, February 12, I turned 47. Friday, February 19, would have been my sister Donna's 53rd birthday. But it's not really, because she was seven when she died of leukemia back in 1964, and so she never aged. She never grew to really taste life, explore her interests and talents, have a career, fall in love, become a mother. She's still seven. She'll always be seven. But she'll always be my older sister.

Oldest, in fact, since I have a sister four years my senior, and another one seven years my junior. Donna was the first born. As the old data processing acronym goes, FIFO: first in, first out.

I've written about Donna before, so I won't rehash the history here. There are a couple of reasons I wanted to post on her again. One is because of her birthday and the realization that I've lived four full decades longer than Donna; the other because leukemia still kills too many children and adults each year.

Here are some statistics from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society website:

Every 4 minutes one person is diagnosed with a blood cancer.

An estimated 139,860 people in the United States will be diagnosed with leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma in 2009. New cases of leukemia, Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma and myeloma account for 9.5 percent of the 1,479,350 new cancer cases diagnosed in the United States this year*.

Leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma will cause the deaths of an estimated 53,240 people in the United States this year. These blood cancers will account for nearly 9.5 percent of the deaths from cancer in 2009 based on the 562,340 total cancer-related deaths.

Every ten minutes, someone dies from a blood cancer. This statistic represents nearly 146 people each day, or more than six people every hour. Leukemia causes more deaths than any other cancer among children and young adults under the age of 20.

*Facts and statistics from Leukemia, Lymphoma, Myeloma Facts 2009-2010, June 2009.

One of the more promising treatments for leukemia not available during Donna's short lifetime is transplantation of bone marrow. The National Marrow Donor Program keeps a registry of more than seven million potential donors of life-saving marrow. Yet still perfect matches are hard to find. On January 23, 1999, I joined the registry in response to a marrow drive looking for a match for a specific person. It didn't hurt, it didn't take long, and it didn't cost me anything. Eleven years later, I'm still waiting, hoping that I can be a match for someone.

Maybe you can be a match for someone. If so, there's a good chance you'd be that person's last, best hope for a longer life. I only wish I could have donated my marrow to Donna.

To learn how you can join the registry, or make a donation to support their vital efforts, visit the Be The Match Foundation website.

When President's Day meant stereo sales

2010-02-15T19:43:00.000-08:00

President's Day always inspires in me a strong memory summed up in two words: Tech Hifi. This was a northeastern U.S. chain of now-defunct stereo shops that for a time were THE place for audiophiles to score their fix. I guess I was about 15 when I bought my first component stereo system there, that would put the year at 1978. You could still get reel-to-reel players then, that was considered pretty high end. They sold speakers as tall as I was and had a wall of turntable cartridges.

Anyway, every President's Day Tech Hifi had a big sale and while I would go window shopping there throughout the year, President's Day was when I threw down the Andrew Jacksons.

I remember feeling intimidated when I first walked in because I didn't know anything about stereos at that time. Up to that point, I had played my records, tapes, and 8-tracks on shitty all-in-one systems purchased at Lechmere (also defunct). Now I was ready for the big time.

The staff were known for being pretty knowledgeable and helpful, and I learned what to listen for in speakers and how it was important to get the receiver/speaker combo decided on first. I didn't have a ton of money to spend but for a starter system it was certainly a quantum leap over what I had before, and I immediately heard things in my records I had never heard before.

My favorite component was my turntable: a Technics SL-220. It looked beautiful and I was literally hypnotized by the orange-red strobe light that enabled you to fine-tune the platter speed. I always have liked to listen to music as I went to bed at night, and I used to lie awake just staring at the glow emanating from my turntable in the dark of my room.

The next year, I upgraded my tape deck, then my receiver. When I got to college, Tech Hifi was already gone, but I upgraded my speakers to a pair of Burhoe Acoustics Blues, custom made in Dark Green cabinets (custom fabrication made easier by virtue of the fact that Mr. Burhoe's son was a friend at said college). For a time, it seemed as though I would make buying stereo equipment an annual event. But then I realized that I finally had the best components I could afford, and there simply were other things I needed unrestricted funds for.

It was years before I bought stereo equipment again. When I got married, we merged our stereo components, and my precious SL-220, now quite old and out of style (straight arms had replaced S arms) was sold at a yard sale. More than a decade later, still missing the entrancing component, I bought another SL-220 off of eBay. I haven't yet reincorporated it into my stereo system, but I feel better just knowing I own it again.

Now, when I look around at how people listen to music, I see that the golden age of audiophile stereo equipment is probably long over. Most of the music people listen to today are compressed mp3s that they listen to over their computers or through ear buds on handheld devices. The idea that one would set up one's living room by first assessing the ideal speaker placement and then positioning the seating in relation to that, spouse/girlfriend's objections be damned, is a thing of the past. Just as I don't pore over CD booklets the way I did gatefold album covers, I don't sit and concentrate on music the way I did when I was younger. For me, listening to music was often an activity unto itself, not just a complement to some other activity.

It makes me sad because while I still demand, devour, and delight in music as much as I ever did, I feel like I'm coasting on the momentum generated by my youthful audiophile days, when I would go to Tech Hifi and learn about Frank Zappa by overhearing older guys talking about him, sit in the listening room and be assaulted by perfect stereophonic fidelity, gaze at the catalogs longingly and read the descriptions of the ultra-high-end systems as if they were Penthouse Forum letters, and, perhaps, walk out with a sweet Aiwa tape deck with LED meters that displayed in yellow, green, and red.

Those were the days.

(For a mini history of Tech Hifi, read the founder's obituary here.)

Apparently, we're still the world

2010-02-14T22:26:00.000-08:00

When my 13-year-old daughter was younger, she was a compliant Daddy's girl, happy to listen to whatever music Daddy liked. I fed her a specially selected diet of wholesome '60s pop (Beatles and Beach Boys, Monkees and Mamas & Papas) and she consumed them happily. And then she became a tween and suddenly wanted to think for herself. Now I am fed a steady stream of '00s pop, and I'm finding it hard to think at all.

But I work to keep the lines of communication open. I don't want to be like my father was, summarily dismissing the music that was meaningful to me simply because it wasn't what he grew up with. What my father didn't realize was that I had big ears and a great musical curiosity, and I would eventually come around to appreciate the operas and symphonies he listened to. I told my daughter that she can listen to whatever she wants, but that I want her to be able to tell me what she likes about it, what moves her about it. I don't want her to just listen to or like something simply because it's on the radio; I want her to be able to make critical and individual choices about what her music is.

In that spirit, she'll often play me songs or show me videos of songs she likes and why she likes them. Sometimes I can get into it, often times I can't, but I try not to disrespect her choices. Ian Hunter was once asked about the state of rock music and he said, "Same as it's always been, 5% is great and 95% is crap." I think that applies across the generations and is at least as true now as it ever was.

Which brings me to the point of this post. The other day, my daughter sent me a link to the following YouTube video, showing the remake of "We Are the World" for Haiti:

We watched it together and share our impressions. Overall, my daughter liked the tune and found the whole thing inspirational. For her to find anything inspirational is worth noting, and I appreciated that this was an event on a scale for her that the original "We Are the World" for Africa was 25 years ago.

The remake opens with Justin Bieber, who seems about 25 years away from reaching puberty. Neither she nor I knew many of the other artists (I hope it's not racist to say that with the hoods, knit caps, and sunglasses, all rappers look alike to me, and most of the female singers of today are indistinguishable to me, visually, vocally, and musically). I knew Josh Groban and identified to my daughter Tony Bennett, who apparently wandered into the wrong place as he's old enough to be most everyone else's grandfather. The splicing in of the clip of Michael Jackson from the original, and then bringing in Janet in the same screen was creepy and gross (but not as creepy and gross as seeing Randy and LaToya Jackson being completely useless in the original).

And then what's this? Barbra Streisand, with a surprising lack of gravitas. A few more generic singers and then some guy with a bizarre voice. Pink, whom I respect, comes on and then, OMG, another clip of Michael? Then Celine Dion appears and makes me want to rip my ears clean out of my head. I see Gladys Knight, one of my all-time favorite singers, in the crowd and wonder shy she doesn't get a spotlight.

Then at 4:32, in another crowd shot, I'm stunned to see, on the far right, Brian Wilson, the genius himself, and two to the left of him is his ex-Beach Boys bandmate Al Jardine, IN MATCHING SHIRTS NO LESS. Two of the greatest living practitioners of harmony singing don't get a spotlight. At least they get a fair amount of screen time.

Jamie Foxx reprises Ray Charles' line from the original in his voice at 5:42, then the rap segment comes in with the subtlety of the Haitian earthquake itself. Eventually, it ends, and I tell my daughter that I want her to see the original to compare. Mind you, I haven't seen the original in many years myself, and I was never much of a fan of it to begin with. I support the idea behind it, of course, but it was never anything I would buy because it was in the wheelhouse of my musical taste. But check it out we did:

So I see it starts with Lionel Richie, now best known as the father of a train wreck. I'm amused to see Kenny Rodgers. I'm amazed that Tina Turner and Billy Joel sound good together. Michael and Diana Ross share a screen - and, for a time, a face. Then Dionne Warwick, another of my all-time favorite singers, comes on with her buttery-rich voice. And joining her in harmony is...Willie Nelson? Was Quincy Jones on pot, too?

Al Jarreau also comes on smooth and then is assaulted by Bruce Springsteen, who sounds like he needs a couple of jars of Metamucil. Kenny Loggins gives way to Journey's Steve Perry who gives way to Darryl Hall, and you wonder why there isn't a law against something like that. Then the big surprise. Michael gives way to fist-clenching Huey Lewis, the very epitome of bland, and in comes the highlight vocal of both versions: by Cyndi Lauper? Hell yeah, she kicks some serious ass with her part.

I'm very impressed with the crowd background vocals, much more so than with the autotuned vocals of the remake. At 3:45, Bob Dylan, one of my heroes, whom my daughter despises, does his part and my daughter is amazed that he's actually sort of singing. Always amusing to see that Dan Aykroyd showed up. Then Stevie Wonder and Springsteen pair off, and again, I wonder why Bruce is screaming in the face of this poor blind man. Easy, Bruce, you don't have to hit it at 11 all the time.

James Ingram seems to have a spotlight much larger than his fame or talent would warrant, then one is reminded that he was a Quincy Jones protegee. It ends with Lionel Richie's thumb's up and the realization that you never see Michael during the crowd scenes. I guess he vanted to be alone. Smokey Robinson is also in the crowd but for some reason didn't rate a spotlight.

The viewing ended with a hung jury. I preferred the original, my daughter preferred the remake. But in a way, we were both liking the same thing, and the larger point is that we both have seen our country mobilize in response to devastation in a far-away land. Furthermore, music was a key means of sending the message and marshaling support. Music's ability to communicate, motivate, and unify is one of the things that makes music so manifestly important to me, and for this one time, my daughter and I felt the same way about it. Which made me a very happy Daddy.

End of the world?

2010-02-10T10:56:00.000-08:00

Not yet, not for me anyway, but that was the theme of my latest piece of writing. A left-of-center theater troupe in New York City called End Times Productions had a contest recently looking for short, one-act plays to be featured in its annual "Vignettes of the Apocalypse" production. That title alone should make it clear what kinds of things they're looking for, but if you need more of a hint, they just closed a run of Manson: The Musical.

Anyway, as I am wont to do these days, I took on the challenge of writing a play to submit for consideration. I was attracted to the subject of the end of the world because several years ago I co-wrote an episode of the WGBH/PRI radio series Sound & Spirit with host/novelist Ellen Kushner called "The End of the World." (Follow the show's link and scroll through the program titles; I also wrote "Mourning" and a program on prayer that for some reason isn't on the list.) I learned that virtually all religions and cultures have end-times stories and beliefs; in fact, the Biblical story of Noah and the flood appears in various forms in many ancient texts (including The Epic of Gilgamesh) and belief systems. The Hopi believe that the world has ended three times before, and that three future worlds still await.

For that program, I had to do a lot of research; not so for the one-act play, which I titled Revelation 9 (the title does not have anything to do with the ninth chapter of the Book of Revelation, but rather is a play on the Beatles' "Revolution 9", which came to me only near the end of the script, when I decided to make John Lennon a character.

Here's the plot: The play opens with God standing in front of a laptop computer, which sits on a tall pedestal. He acknowledges the audience but continues to do the work he is engaged in, which is to take all the templates for humanity (which are computer files on his hard drive) and drag them into the trash. The computer asks God to confirm that the files should be deleted. This would have the effect of destroying humanity (an altogether more elegant method compared to fire, water, ice, or all-out destruction of the planet).

At this critical juncture, God steps out from behind the computer to explain to the audience why humanity's time has come. He is interrupted by Satan and they begin to argue over God's brilliant (according to God) or idiotic (according to Satan) idea to give human beings the freedom to choose between good and evil. To bolster his argument, Satan brings out the souls of three all-time baddies: Vlad the Impaler (the Romanian tyrant who inspired Bram Stoker's Dracula), John Wilkes Booth, and Adolf Hitler. God counters with three examples of goodness: Mohandas Gandhi, Clara Barton, and John Lennon. The text supports the selection of all six characters, so I won't defend them here; suffice to say, they all make relevant points in this endless debate over whether humanity can be trusted to use such freedom responsibly.

I guess I won't tell you the ending, either, but suffice to say, since you're reading this right now, something must have happened to delay or derail the emptying of God's desktop trash. The point, however, remains: humanity's continued existence is at the mercy of two things: unknowable forces and events we can neither predict nor prevent, and our own stupidity. Maybe not the most uplifting evening of theater you can imagine, but then again, the client is called End Times Productions. I await word of whether or not my particular vignette of the apocalypse makes the grade. Hopefully, Manson: The Musical hasn't set the bar too high for me.

My Platform

2010-01-16T11:48:00.000-08:00

There are two buzzwords in the publishing industry today. One is vampires. The other is platform. If your work doesn't include the former, the latter is even more essential. Basically, a platform is a writer's ability to demonstrate expertise in the subject matter he or she is writing about, as well as proof of an already-established audience of followers who would be willing to buy what the author writes. Expertise can be proven by previously published articles, lectures given, or media interviews granted; followers are compiled through blogs and other social media, readings and other events, and, in my case, having a large family.

When I originally set out to write my novel, I figured that all I needed was a bunch of words on paper that taken as a whole comprised a pretty good story. Now that the novel is completed (plus four separate phases of top-to-bottom tweaks and rewrites) and has been summarily rejected by a couple dozen agents, I find myself in need of a platform. Initially, I resisted the idea. A "good story well told" was good enough for Mark Twain, I croaked with fists waving like a crotchety old fogie sitting on an orange crate in a rural general store railing against insolent whippersnappers and their newfangled ideas. Unfortunately, though, Twain is a dead author rather than a living literary agent.

And yet I persisted in my scattershot ways by jumping on a variety of diverse opportunities: a one-act play competition where the subject matter must be related to the end of the world; an application to be a children's writer in residence at the Boston Public Library; poetry submissions; and a work in progress about bad dreams. I was desperate to stay busy, desperate to pursue any and all chances to live, work, and act as an author. They all became piles on my desk and burdens on my shoulders, while my manuscript sat in my hard drive waiting for a platform to bolster its profile.

And then a cold slap of reality hit me, in the form of a colleague who started me on this psychotic roller coaster in the first place when she challenged me to enter NaNoWriMo, the annual initiative in which aspiring writers are encouraged to write a 50,000-word novel throughout the month of November. Even though I had a three-month-old daughter at home, I accepted the challenge. Because I had a three-month-old daughter at home, I had barely 25,000 words written as of November 30.

Now that three-month-old girl is three years old and the novel, now an economical 50,600 words, is done. My colleague's cold slap of reality, therefore, was not the first I've received. But it was useful. She told me about someone she knew who collected rare knives. He was an expert on these knives and was known in the collector community. A publisher who specializes in titles about collectibles approached him and asked him to write a book about these knives. He didn't even want to write a book but here was a publisher with money and a contract.

The reason, of course, is that the guy has a platform. It's something he's knowledgeable and passionate about. That's what you need to do, said my colleague to me. You're all over the place but you have a platform already: music. You need to focus on music and claim that as your platform.

I have to admit it made sense to me. I am a music nut. I'm a player and a listener, with a large and varied collection, and an insatiable appetite for sound. Furthermore, my novel is based on "Matty Groves," a 17th-century English folk song. My work in progress is littered with musical references. Another story I want to write someday, about King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, was inspired by a song by Cassandra Wilson. A work I began years ago and abandoned concerns a group of friends who'd been in a band in high school and now want to reform to play their 25th reunion. What inspired that was Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, which is almost the story of my life, as the denizens of used record shops seek love and meaning in a grown-up world.

In the past, I founded a progressive rock newsletter that I ran for a few years on my own, and have written record reviews for Gentle Giant's website and promotional materials for professional local musicians. And, of course, I've written frequently about music in this blog. Someday, I'll blog about my experiences as a roadie for a harpist.

So voila, it looks like I actually do have a platform — the makings of one, anyway. At a minimum, it will help me to focus my thinking and prioritize my projects; hopefully, it will develop to an extent where I can successfully articulate and support it to an agent's satisfaction. I'm still working on the act-play, though. Even that relates to a favorite old song: "End of the World" by Skeeter Davis. Maybe there's something to this platform business after all.

When stars are aligned...and maligned: Andy Pratt in concert

2010-01-06T20:11:00.000-08:00

Frequent readers of this space (i.e., me) know that I am fascinated by coincidences and try to see them not as random curiosities but as potentially Divine hints, signposts put in your way by a benevolent guide. Such a coincidence occurred last night.

As background, know that 2009 was an incredibly difficult year for me, and 2010 doesn't promise much more happiness and comfort. There are few pleasures in my life, and fewer still that I can afford. In that context, I was up late last night, searching the Internet for songs about the end of the world. A morbid subject, perhaps, but I chose it not simply because of my own personal pessimism but also because I recently learned of an opportunity to submit one-act plays about the end of the world in a competition, with the winning entry being staged by a New York City-based theatre troupe. I wanted to assemble a mix CD to serve as a soundtrack to my writing.

Some of the songs were obvious and well-known: "End of the World" by Skeeter Davis (which I own, as well as cover versions by Herman's Hermits, Julie London, Bill Frisell, and Nina Gordon), "It's the End of the World (As We Know It)" by REM, and "Until the End of the World" by U2. Others I found within my iTunes library: "My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me)" by David Ruffin, "(I'll Love You) Til the End of the World" by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, "Armageddon Blues" by Gary Willis, and "The Last Days" by the Osmonds (yes, the Osmonds, want to make something out of it?).

Googling songs about the end of the world, I found a couple more: "Waiting For the End of the World" by Elvis Costello, and "End of the World Party" by Medeski, Martin and Wood. I also added Todd Rundgren's "Fade Away" and Bunny Wailer's "Armagideon". Finally, I checked a site that offers free mp3 downloads (not totally legally) and found the song "It's Not the End of the World" by one Andy Pratt.

Now, I had come across the name Andy Pratt last year. I don't recall how exactly, but somehow the name got on my radar screen and I learned he was a "one-hit wonder" from the '70s, whose one hit was called "Avenging Annie." The title didn't ring a bell but I heard a sample online and immediately went, "Oh, yeah, THAT song!" Featuring his surprising falsetto and a wicked piano part, the tune was covered by Roger Daltrey on one of his solo albums and made it on the soundtrack of the film, Velvet Goldmine. I read his entry on allmusic.com and was intrigued. Born to a well-to-do family in Boston, he went to the finest schools, including Harvard, but was drawn to a career in music. A virtuoso on several instruments, sustained success nevertheless eluded him. He apparently became enfolded in obscurity and disappeared, moving to the Netherlands and becoming a born-again Christian. And for me, that was that. Until last night.

Last night, when Andy Pratt again was put before my eyes, I was curious. The cut in question was wonderful, much more stripped down than "Avenging Annie" and that tune's follow-up album, Resolution. The voice, though, was still thoroughly compelling, and the lyrics ("It's not the end of the world/It's not the end of the sky/It's not the end of my life/It's just the end of you and I") resonated. So I went exploring. I reacquainted myself with his biography and learned that he moved back to Boston a few years ago and was apparently still active. I went on YouTube and found a number of recent performances that were wonderful. Then I went to his website and looked around. Turns out that "It's Not the End of the World" has yet to be officially released, so it was pretty amazing that I was able to find a version to download.

But the most amazing thing I saw on his website was his gig calendar. Only two shows were listed, but the first was the very next night (meaning tonight), an early show (6:30 p.m. start), and a five-minute walk from my office, with no cover charge. In other words, it couldn't have been scripted any better for someone in the immediate throes of a particular artist, who doesn't get out much because of family responsibilities, who doesn't need the hassle of parking in Boston, and who has zero money to spend. It was just too good to be true. And yet it was. For the most part.

And so this evening I went to see Andy Pratt perform. He was playing in a cozy room in a restaurant in the Back Bay. The small stage faced about 20 small tables, set up for dinner patrons. Those not eating (like me) had to stand behind the tables in a small area with the kitchen at our backs. I arrived about 20 minutes before the scheduled start time, but Pratt was already at the piano, just playing for his own pleasure. Three people were seated at the tables. Pratt was dressed casually, his unkempt hair, still '70s length but with a strip of scalp running across the middle in a sort of reverse mohawk, white and wild. He had the expression of ecstasy such as one finds in musicians who must feel the very force of their music shooting out of their fingers. He looked up at one point, saw me admiring him, and nodded and waved to me. He didn't know (yet) that I was the person he had just friended on Facebook a few hours earlier.

By the time the show started, there were nearly a dozen people at the tables. I was the only one standing. I quickly finished my Bass draft so my hands would be free to applaud. He simply started playing and I was mesmerized by his voice, the quality of his songwriting, and his nifty piano playing, with such exquisite chords and occasional fleet solo runs with his right hand. Unfortunately, his was not the only voice on display this evening. At one table, two women were chatting nonstop. As the set went on, more diners arrived and were seated at choice spots in front of the stage. Few of these diners were there for Andy Pratt, and one couple I overheard contemplated asking the hostess to seat them in the next room away from the music. For the others, Andy Pratt was little more than background music to their own incessant gabbing. I was very annoyed at this.

Some of the people were clearly there for Pratt and were capable of eating and respectfully listening at the same time, but most of the diners sitting comfortably while I stood never even looked at Pratt as they alternated stuffing their faces and talking. A few would give polite applause between numbers, but I was dismayed that this was not a proper concert experience. Any schmuck off the street who knew a few tunes could have commanded as much respect as Andy Pratt did that night. It definitely colored the show a bit for me.

When he finished his set, I went up to him and thanked him for the great show, introducing myself as one of his newest Facebook friends. He wasn't the most communicative person I've ever met, but I didn't care. The man doesn't owe me anything and he just put himself out for my benefit. I was honored to shake his hand.

I left the restaurant being even more interested in the man's music and can't wait to delve more deeply into his extensive catalogue. The term "one-hit-wonder" is typically derogatory, but that's because the emphasis is on "one-hit" instead of "wonder." Well, Andy Pratt is indeed a wonder. A supremely gifted singer, songwriter, and musician, who somehow continues to ply his trade despite the indifference of the music industry, who seems as happy to play for a couple of dozen ignorant eaters as for a hand-picked audience of aficionados, Andy Pratt is an inspired and inspiring performer. He and I share musical heroes in Brian Wilson, and like Wilson he is a survivor. At this time in my life, Andy Pratt's music and his example are very much what I need.

Coincidence? I think not.

Andy past:

Andy present:

Words from the wise

2010-01-02T22:00:00.001-08:00

These words have moved me since I first read them about 20 years ago. They seem to inspire me more now than ever before.

There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual – become clairvoyant. We reach then into reality. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom.

It is in the nature of all people to have these experiences; but in our time and under the conditions of our lives, it is only a rare few who are able to continue in the experience and find expression for it.

At such times there is a song going on within us, a song to which we listen. It fills us with surprise. We marvel at it. We would continue to hear it. But few are capable of holding themselves in the state of listening to their own song. Intellectuality steps in and as the song within us is of the utmost sensitiveness, it retires in the presence of the cold, material intellect. It is aristocratic and will not associate itself with the commonplace – and we fall back and become our ordinary selves. Yet we live in the memory of these songs which in moments of intellectual inadvertence have been possible to us. They are the pinnacles of our experience and it is the desire to express these intimate sensations, this song from within, which motivates the masters of all art.

Robert Henri, The Art Spirit

Blessed are the Gatekeepers (not)

2009-12-24T16:54:00.000-08:00

We live in a world of gatekeepers. There, I said it.

Obvious, you say? Perhaps. And perhaps it's necessary that in a large, complex, capitalistic society there must be this layer of human functionality that is positioned to make decisions about the fates of other humans to protect the interests and resources of whatever institution employs the gatekeepers in question. But in America, where citizens are guaranteed the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, isn't it ironic that gatekeepers so often unconstitutionally deny those rights?

For example, there is a gatekeeper that says I cannot refinance my mortgage or get a home equity loan, and therefore I am at risk for losing my home and automobile because I have no access to capital with which to settle debts and make payments.

There is also a gatekeeper that decides whether a medical service or procedure will be covered, which is the difference between health and being hounded by a collection agency.

In my particular case as an aspiring author, there are gatekeepers a-plenty. One gatekeeper decides whether or not an agent will go only so far as agreeing to represent my book to publishers, with no guarantee even that the agent will be successful. Gatekeepers keep watch over the slush pile of manuscripts that no doubt form unsteady piles of paper on their desks, then decide after a simple letter of query or a few paragraphs or pages of a story whether or not it's worth their time to give any further consideration.

And should an agent agree to take on the responsibility for pitching the work to a publisher (with visions of 15% cuts dancing in their heads), they themselves come up against gatekeepers charged with preserving a publisher's supply of paper and promotional budget. Though writing is an art and should be judged purely by aesthetic standards, typically it is sheer numbers and equations that decide who shall be published and who shall wither on the creative vine.

Currently, I owe about a thousand dollars to my oil company; suffice to say, I cannot pay it. After the holiday I will call the oil company and speak to a gatekeeper who will have to decide whether or not my family freezes this winter. As I said, I am aware that gatekeepers often perform a necessary function given our form of government and economy, but at some point gatekeepers unintentionally (or not) promote the degradation of human dignity to an extent that ought not to be permitted in what ideally is a free American society.

I suppose I am in a particularly difficult situation, in that my oft-rebuffed creative aspirations and severe state of financial crisis make me especially vulnerable to and reliant on the whims of gatekeepers. And perhaps it is because I am alone on Christmas Eve thanks to a failing marriage that my bitterness and anger rise so acutely to the fore, but to what extent must my very fate be in the hands of people who are paid to care not about my needs and priorities but rather about the numbers and profits of their employers? Must every gatekeeper have the understanding that letting someone pass through the gate is the exception to the rule? Couldn't a gatekeeper be charged with ensuring that the gates stay open for many to enter?

Rarely have I used this blog for a rant, but rarely have I been so rebuffed by so many "customer service representatives" and rarely has my overall living situation been so dire. I'm doing as much as I can (working my day job, getting whatever freelance work I can get, and continuing to refine my manuscript and send it out) but ultimately it is in the hands of disintered gatekeepers as to whether I succeed or fail. I pray to God that a conscience rather than a formula guides their decisions.

Updates

2009-12-09T08:04:00.000-08:00

I have written 11 hot sauce reviews to date, which are being posted on InsaneChicken.com (look for reviews by "jason"). Even though I'm only getting paid five bucks per review, I've tasted some good products and there's really no cost of doing business so it's not a bad gig overall.

The publisher who contacted me, New Century Publishing out of Indiana, turned out to be a vanity/subsidy press, which requires you to pay to be published. I had a very nice conversation with the president, who was effusive in his praise for my work, and he sent me a publishing agreement. According to the terms, I had to pay $1,750 to cover 50% of the publishing costs (including editing and printing), and I also was required to purchase 40 books. All told, it could have cost me three grand or more, and while I would do it as a last resort, the fact is that the industry doesn't consider this legitimate so my book would never end up in a bookstore or be reviewed by professionals.

I can't tell you how good it felt to finally hear someone give me positive feedback on my book, but ultimately it was all a sham. It hurts to know that (and I spoke with various writers, including one who was published by New Century, and with a woman who runs the website Writer Beware, so I do know the truth about New Century), but at the same time it has given me new resolve to keep at it and to work harder to realize my dream of becoming a published author.

In the meantime, I've also been writing articles and columns for The Jewish Advocate, a weekly based in Boston, so while nothing is bringing in the windfall of fame and fortune as of yet, I'm keeping busy getting my name out there and hopefully that will help wheels to turn and doors to open.

By the way, I'm on Facebook so if you happened to land on this blog and like what you see, I invite you to friend me. I've learned that a writer needs a platform and without an audience or a community, no platform can stand.

When it rains, it pours

2009-11-12T13:14:00.000-08:00

I've been turning to craigslist to try to find freelance writing gigs. There's really not a lot of good stuff there for professionals. What people are looking for are people to write content for social networking sites, offering either no pay or pay on a scale depending on how many people click through your piece. Folks posting potentially interesting writing gigs are paying ridiculously low fees. One guy wanted a name for his new company. He said he'd pay $30 for "a good college try" and $200 if he chose one of the writer's candidates. I could get almost 10 times that in the "real world" But for the sake of adventure and some pocket money, I decided to give it a shot. I had a great rapport with the guy and gave him two rounds of names, about 25 names in all. He liked aspects of many of them, but ultimately was unable to select one. He invited me to submit more but I politely informed him he'd already exhausted the time and creative energy I was willing to DONATE to his cause. At least he paid the $30 quickly.

But in the last 24 hours, some things seem to be moving in the right direction. First, I saw a posting a week or two ago from a small independent press in Indiana that was looking for submissions from Boston authors (the press historically had focused on Indiana and midwestern writers but wanted to expand its scope), so I sent a letter and my manuscript via email. Then I saw a post from a guy who has a hot sauce blog and he was looking for people to write short reviews of hot sauces. He was only going to pay $5 a review, but you do get free hot sauce. Again, he and I seemed to hit off and he agreed to send me my first shipment of five different sauces to sample. Then just last night, I responded to a craigslist post from a literary agent looking for novels to represent. So I sent a query letter to her.

Last night, I got a voicemail from the independent publisher. I called him back this morning and he told me he liked my concept. He hadn't noticed that I had attached the manuscript so he said he would read it and call me back later in the day. Still waiting, but this is the first time a publisher has actually seen my work so it's very exciting.

Later this morning, my hot sauces arrived in the mail. They have the following interesting names: Hemorrhoid Helper, Idiot Boyz, Pit Bull, Dave's Insanity, and Hog's Ass. Can't wait to start tasting.

And just a half hour ago, the literary agent asked to see my first 50 pages. So much of my work on my novel once I finished writing it has been filled with the monotony and disappointment of researching agents, sending out query letters and sample chapters, receiving rejections, and waiting to hear. Suddenly, everything seems to have moved into fifth gear. Of course, it could all end in disappointment - which has truly been the story so far - but at least it's happening quickly and with excitement rather than a foreboding sense of futility.

I'll update when I hear something on these developments, and will include a link to the hot sauce site when my reviews are published.

Well begun is half done

2009-11-02T20:03:00.000-08:00

Who knew this quote was from Aristotle? I always thought it was from Mary Poppins. With a three-year-old in the house, I certainly watch the latter more frequently than I delve into ancient philosophy. But as with many things, it's the thought that counts. And for someone like me who is getting into the business (well, the practice anyway; "business" implies that money is changing hands) of writing books, it's an important thought indeed.

I recently learned about a competition being held by a literary agent named Nathan Bransford. Writers were to send him the opening paragraph of their work in progress, and the best one would receive a free critique of the writer's work or query letter. It seemed like a low-risk venture, so I entered. But I didn't send the opening paragraph of my completed manuscript, The Grave and the Gay. The reason is that I had already sent a query letter and sample chapters of the work to Bransford and he had rejected it. And even though I had since adjusted the opening (and did so again as recently as 48 hours ago), I felt that a fresh start was required.

I looked at the opening paragraph of my other work in progress, which is a single sentence: "I am the King of Bad Dreams." Nah, that won't work. Not much of a paragraph, is it? I could bring up the next two sentences and pretend I intended the three to form an opening paragraph, but it still wasn't compelling enough to stand up to competition. The fact is, the opening is the hardest part of writing a novel. I'm not sure I'd be happy with my current openings if I spent the next 30 years revising them.

Ultimately, I sent the opening paragraph of the essay I wrote about spreading my friend's ashes, which I shared in an earlier post. Even though it's not a work in progress, it's my favorite opening paragraph:

The last time I saw my friend Marc, he was tumbling down from a bridge onto the ground approximately sixty feet below. I had a good view because I was the one who caused his descent. I didn’t necessarily want to do it, but he insisted. And he wasn’t hurt by the fall, because he was already dead. You see, I was spreading his ashes.

Suffice to say, I didn't win. Well, so what? As my hero Abraham Lincoln once said, "I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined." Besides, I'm plenty busy shopping around The Grave and the Gay and working on my other work in progress (which is still untitled; the file name is NEW NOVEL.doc). So I dropped it from my mind. Until today.

I was looking through my "Writings" folder on my computer, where a number of files of varying vintages are stored. Many of these are fragments: beginnings of stories, snatches of dialogue, plays on words, observations, etc. I've saved them because I'd once read that Stephen Stills saves all of his musical and lyrical scraps until he finds a place to fit them in. Maybe it could work for me, as well.

One of the files had the cryptic title, "Fifteen.doc." I didn't recall its contents so I opened it. There was just a single short paragraph:

Fifteen. When I was 15 it seemed like I’d be 15 forever. The summer that I was 15 was a memorable one. I had my first beer, my first joint, and my first kiss. Days lasted years. Nights lasted decades. And then one morning, I woke up and I was 45.

I liked it! I must have written it some time last year, when I was 45. It felt real to me, and yet it was also something I felt I could build on. The first question, of course, was "What's next?" And it came to me very quickly. I appended the following to the paragraph:

And I had a 15-year-old of my own. And I had to tell him that I was leaving his mother.

So now I had a brand new opening paragraph that I wish I had found in time for the competition:

Fifteen. When I was 15 it seemed like I’d be 15 forever. The summer that I was 15 was a memorable one. I had my first beer, my first joint, and my first kiss. Days lasted years. Nights lasted decades. And then one morning, I woke up and I was 45. And I had a 15-year-old of my own. And I had to tell him that I was leaving his mother.

No matter. It was an exciting new beginning and I went with it. Within half an hour, I had five paragraphs and something more: yet another work in progress. In need of a title and, one day I hope, an agent and publisher.

Mary Travers, RIP

2009-09-17T18:41:00.000-07:00

I remember the person who taught me the song, "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt."

Her name was Joanne Coombs, and she was my 2nd- and 3rd-grade teacher. I recall her being a tall, thin, cheerful woman with very short blond hair. The only other thing I recall clearly about my two years in her classroom is that she frequently sang or played records to us. She was not the music teacher, but she obviously believed that music was an effective way to engage young students, and in my case, anyway, it certainly was true.

One record she played a lot was the eponymous debut album from Peter, Paul and Mary, which was released in 1962 and so at that time must have been about eight years old. But it was new to me and its effect on me was powerful. Anyone from late boomer to current toddler has had the experience of listening to PPM's sweet and highly accessible versions of classic folk tunes and having those words and melodies indelibly embedded in one's consciousness. It may have have happened in school or at camp, in the living room, the back seat of your parents' car, on TV or in concert. But that music, which has been timeless and ubiquitous for nigh on half a century, has reached us and whether we be fans of it, indifferent to it, or antipathetic towards it, that music likely will still be introduced and embraced by many generations to come.

But today, one-third of the source of that music has been stilled forever. Mary Travers, 72, succumbed to complications from treatment for leukemia, a disease she had been fighting successfully for much of the last five years. She was hired as much for her looks as for her voice (the liner notes of that first album describes the group as "Two bearded prophets of the folk idiom in league with a bright, young blonde-and-a-half"), yet it was that deep, powerful voice that could be delicate, vulnerable, and feminine on one song, and strong, accusing, and impassioned on the next, that was a key ingredient in their uniquely effective vocal blend.

Her two signature songs, "500 Miles" and "Leaving on a Jet Plane," would not have been nearly as effective if sung by crystalline female folk voices like those of Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, or Judy Collins. These songs denote a sadness and weariness that demand an unprimped voice, one that is both soulful and authentic. When one sings from the heart, the voice should not come out from that perilous journey unscathed.

It's easy to minimize PPM's contribution to folk music. There is some truth, after all, to reviewer Richie Unterberger's statement on allmusic.com that they were "folk popularizers rather than musical innovators," although Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey have made their own notable contributions to the canon. Still, there is no shame in bringing the works of Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Tom Paxton, John Denver, Gordon Lightfoot, Laura Nyro, and Fred Neil to larger audiences.

For me, personally, what I most love to do with music that moves me is to share it. And as I am too much a music snob to have allowed a Raffi album in my house when my first daughter was young, I eagerly introduced her to PPM's music and we had great fun singing along with these songs together. Now that she is nearly 13 and listening to the kind of crap that they give Video Music Awards for, she doesn't care to be reminded of the many times we played that first album in the car or watched their 25th anniversary PBS special that I have on VHS. But, as I told her today when I mentioned how sad I was that Mary Travers had died, someday, God willing, she will have a child and she will look around for music she can share with him or her, and it won't be Brittney Spears that she thinks of. It likely will be PPM.

My younger daughter just turned three, and she has already taken to the music to such an extent that she can't go to bed at night without me singing "Puff, the Magic Dragon." Because of this, it is clear that while Mary is gone, Mary's heart and soul and, most of all, her voice, will live on forever in our hearts and our souls, and yes, in our voices as well because music is indeed meant to be shared. And I guess that ultimately was what Mrs. Coombs was teaching me nearly 40 years ago. So thank you, Mrs. Coombs, and thank you, Mary Travers.

9/11: Eight Years Later

2009-09-11T05:38:00.000-07:00

I remember where I was when I found out about 9/11. Right where I am now, at work. A colleague reported that she'd read on cnn.com that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. A more bizarre occurrence was hard at that time to fathom. My initial thought was that it was a Greenpeace protest stunt gone awry. There was not a great deal of reliable information to be found on the Web, and we didn't have a television in the office. It just seemed like another strange thing going on in New York City, something that needn't interfere with my work day or my life.

Then the second plane hit.

Obviously, this was no stunt. Something was going on. I didn't articulate it at the time, but it seemed clear that we were under attack. And then my phone rang. It was my wife.

"Have you seen the news?"
"Yeah, sort of. Pretty bizarre."
"Lisa was on that plane."
"Lisa who? Which plane?"

Lisa was the sister of a friend of ours. She was on American Airlines flight 11, the first plane to hit the tower. My response, irrationally, was one of anger.

"What the hell was she doing on that plane?"

Lisa was a buyer for TJX. She and a few of her colleagues were going to Los Angeles on business. She left her husband and two daughters that morning as she often did on business trips, probably thinking of when the first time would be that she would be free to call and say she was fine and missed them.

My wife brought me back to rational action.

"I need you to come home now. I want us to pick up Hannah from day care and I want us together today."

Hannah was a month shy of five years old then. Later, I would reflect that this was the day I realized I could not protect my daughter. That despite any precaution I might take, I could not control the world or the other people in it, and so to some extent she and all of us are always vulnerable to some unthinkable catastrophe. That realization, to me, is among the more lasting tragedies of 9/11. The end of innocence. The end of thinking that America is invincible, that our boundaries are impenetrable to attack. We were exposed, and I was afraid.

I gathered my stuff and walked from my office to the subway station. Along the way, I passed a popular lunch place with televisions on the wall and large windows that allowed pedestrians on the sidewalk to see inside. A crowd had gathered to watch live news footage of the tragedy. It was there I first saw the burning buildings in real time.

As I continued to the subway station, I kept the images of the smoke and lapping flames in my mind. It reminded me that I have always been terrified of fires. When I was very young, five or six years old, I witnessed a house fire in my neighborhood. I saw the homeowners crying as the firefighters put out the blaze. I walked home and my house was empty. I became very afraid. Eventually, my mother came home and I began to cry. I was in luck, though, because she happened to have brought me a surprise: a small, plastic treasure chest bank filled with candy.

The next day, I walked back to the house that had had the fire. Windows were broken and the stench of smoke was still strong. I remember looking in the kitchen and seeing the white refrigerator painted with black streaks of soot. The fear returned. In school, the incident prompted our teacher to discuss fire safety and how to look for fire hazards in our own homes. I obsessively scoured our house and garage, becoming nearly hysterical to find paint cans in the garage. It was some time before I stopped having nightmares about fires.

Now I was in the subway station, which was eerily quiet. Every trash can looked suspicious. I looked around to see how best I could escape this underground station in the event of an emergency. It would not be easy. I looked at the other people in the station and on the train. What exactly does a terrorist look like? Some teenagers were laughing with false bravado, saying they'd kick any Arab's ass. I prayed just to make it home to see Hannah again.

The next days and weeks were filled with funerals and shivas, condolence calls, making and delivering food, and obsessively reading as much as possible about what had happened and why. Alas, the latter question may never adequately be answered.

The world changed forever that day, not just because America had been attacked, but because depravity took on a new definition. Humans not only were the targets but also the missile. Can it be the sickest minds are also the most creative? How do rational people protect themselves from irrational people? How can laws control ideologies? And why the hell did we focus on Iraq? It was all wrong, all inconceivable, all inexplicable.

And we were called upon to explain it, by Hannah. We tried to guard her from the news but she found out that the reason Lisa was gone was because someone flew a plane into a building. How did that happen? Can it happen again? We tried to explain that it was done on purpose by a very angry person who made a bad decision. And we don't understand it either. And we can only hope it doesn't happen again. And all we could do was hug and kiss our daughter and tell her that we love her, because we can only control how we feel and how we act, and though it may not be enough to ward off danger, it's all we can do, and it's all I want to do today.

The Turks

2009-09-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

Here is a short piece of creative nonfiction I began last year. It's still not complete, there is much more to say about my family's relationship with a Turkish family who lived in our neighborhood for two years, but I've worked it into an essay of bloggable length. Hope you like it.

I can tell she’s Turkish. I’ve learned the skin tone. Not that they’re all quite the same shade, but there’s a quality, almost a shininess, to their skin. Of course, Turkey spans from the Mediterranean to the Middle East, so there are millennia of miscegenations that resulted in this clean, bright complexion that is flawless as eggshell with subtle hues of olive and turmeric.

Just a few years ago, I would have been none the wiser as to the woman’s ethnicity; I might even have thought she was jaundiced or had a fading tan. Her silence I would have taken for shyness. Yet now, after spending considerable time with a few Turkish families, and becoming close friends with one, I know just from her skin tone that she is Turkish, and that her silence is part pride and part fear. She knows very little English, if any at all, yet she knows that Americans – even eight years after 9/11 – can be suspicious of people who are not clearly one thing or another, neither white nor black nor Asian nor Latino. She tries not to speak so her accent does not give her away. Nor does she want to appear unintelligent.

Yet she clearly needs help. We are in the grocery store and she is eyeing a container of bulgur wheat on the top shelf that her small frame prevents her from reaching. She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t ask me even with her eyes if I would use my six-foot height to hand her the box. But I figure if I do it quickly and matter of factly, with no great fuss, I can help her without her feeling any shame. And so I reach up, grab the box, and hold it out to her. She smiles slightly and gives a small nod as she takes it from me. In my limited vocabulary and poor pronunciation, I say you’re welcome as my friends taught me: “Bershay deyil.” Her eyes grow round in surprise and it’s my turn to smile. But I know I can’t deliver on the promise of bilingualism, so I continue down the aisle.

No doubt you know the phrase “he knows just enough to be dangerous.” That describes my knowledge of the Turkish language, which is beautiful to hear yet intimidating to read. Like a typical American geocentrist, I have learned a pitifully small number of phrases, whereas my friends during our two years together became quite competent in English. Nonetheless, I enjoy surprising Turkish people, especially children, when I see them around. Say “merhaba” to a Turkish child in America who wants so much to assimilate into the culture that he craves a Big Mac over his mother’s scrumptious börek, and he’ll likely fall off the playground structure he’s sitting upon.

This woman must be part of a third or fourth wave of Turkish nationals who have moved to the greater Boston area in the last few years. They have come for two-year stints, sent by the Turkish government to study international finance at Boston University. Why they chose to settle in the small, sleepy northern suburbs I’ll never understand. One would think they would become better acclimated in a more dynamic, diverse college-age community.

Yet I’ve learned that community is where you make it, and here in Melrose there is now a small apartment building that is nearly 100% Turkish-occupied. When our friends were there, we knew several other families in the building as well, but now, sadly, we’re somewhat out of the Turkish loop. Each succeeding generation of Turkish national has required less help from a local American to get acclimated. The earlier visitors had established the unwritten manual for how to get by here, including the key English phrases you must master (no doubt more street-savvy than the antiseptic classroom English they began to learn in Turkey, and which is part of an ongoing requirement at B.U.), how to get to the Armenian markets in Watertown where the ingredients are more familiar, and where to find the parks and schools and libraries and movie theaters.

Observing the evolution of this neighborhood has provided me a glimpse of what my own immigrant ancestors had to endure and had to build when they settled in America. In a microcosm of the immigrant experience, the later Turkish arrivals have benefited from the difficulties and sacrifices of the earlier ones. The later ones perhaps don’t need to establish a friendship like our friends did with us. We helped them immeasurably and I’m sure the small kitchen table we gave them continues to be passed around to newer families.

In a way, then, the newer families are like the children and grandchildren of our friends, yet they also are ours, too. But now they have stronger wings and don’t need us, and they can go about their lives with less intervention from locals like ourselves. Except for the fact that this one Turkish woman was short and I was tall, I would have no knowledge of – nor be any use to – her or her family, or the compatriots in her displaced community.

Let me tell you about our friends and how we met them. Their names are Kerem and Olgun. They arrived with their daughter, Ilayda, who coincidentally was the same age as our own daughter (eight), and both at the time were only children. My wife met them because she had helped to organize a mentor family system at our daughter’s school, located a short diagonal walk across the street from our house. The school at the time had a principal who was more concerned about his tan and his suspected drinking problem than with making it easy for new families to get acclimated into the school community. My wife felt that by pairing experienced school families with newbies, it would benefit the latter and help build a stronger community overall.

Families old and new took to the idea enthusiastically, and my wife had little difficulty making matches for most of the new families. She even was able to hook up two Latino families, though there are very few in the entire city of Melrose, which historically has been largely Irish and Italian, though its first mayor was a Jew named Levi Gould. Then she came to the Turks. A Muslim family from Turkey who spoke very little English (the girl none at all), three years after 9/11 in a small city whose citizens weren’t among the more cosmopolitan and sophisticated, which until recently had had a young gay Republican mayor about whom most people would only admit publicly that he was unmarried.

My wife decided that we should be this family’s mentors. On one hand, it made sense because she is a social worker and is used to working with families from different cultures – not to mention that she’s also by definition a people person who would go to great lengths to be helpful and friendly to anyone. The fact that each family had a daughter the same age and who would therefore be in the same grade (though, as it turns out, not the same class as there were two third grades) was also a plus. My daughter, though, is much like me, which is the opposite of being a people person. It’s not that I’m a misanthrope, although I probably meet some of the criteria, but I’m just not about conversation, especially with strangers. It’s not that I’m an asshole, I’m just economical with words (when I’m speaking anyway). Joni Mitchell in her song “Talk to Me” is pleading for communication from someone very much like me: “You spend every sentence as if it was marked currency!”

My wife helped the Turks get settled in the school, though there were issues from the start. Neither the principal not Ilayda’s teacher would allow one of the parents or an independent interpreter to attend classes with her to translate for her. This was a pretty big sticking point for a while, which caused my wife, not one to criticize people too strongly, to tell me she felt the two educators were racists. They spoke about the philosophy of immersive learning, but she felt the only philosophy to which they were hewing was one of narrow-mindedness and penny-pinching.

Kerem would frequently call us that first year to recount some experience Ilayda had in school that day that seemed unfair or confusing to her. We would listen to their side of the story, try to make a judgment as to whether there was just some innocent cross-cultural mix-up going on or something potentially more intentional and sinister. If the latter, my wife would go to the school the next day and take it up with the principal and/or the teacher. I can’t say that she endeared herself to the school administration that year, but she did impress upon them that showing a little courtesy and patience with Ilayda and her family would not amount to favoritism.

Within a month or so of school starting that year, my wife invited them to our house to meet me (since I was working and my wife’s contact with the Turks was generally limited at that time to school hours, I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet them). I can’t say I was looking forward to it, but after hearing about them on an almost nightly basis, I was curious to see what a desperate Turkish family looked like.

To put it in one word, gorgeous. This family came from Central Casting. Though our daughters were the same age, Kerem and Olgun were clearly younger than we were. They were fit, trim, and totally attractive. Kerem had an athletic build, a wide, kind face, and an engaging smile. Olgun simply could stop traffic. Though a district attorney in Turkey, she could have been a model in the US. Ilayda, with her long hair and pretty face, looked like a Turkish version of our Hannah. If we could get past the anticipated communication barrier, I could easily enjoy their company.

Hannah and Ilayda went downstairs to play in our basement playroom. We learned from Hannah later that they didn’t speak to each other; Ilayda would point to certain things and Hannah would tell her what it was called, but beyond that they didn’t try to make meaning verbally. Still, they played well together, apparently, which was a not insignificant triumph for them.

We sat in the living room. My wife had prepared some snacks, cheese and crackers, nuts, lemonade, etc. They didn’t eat anything though when we encouraged them to dig in they would only say thank you. It wasn’t until later that they told us they didn’t eat because it was Ramadan, the month-long Muslim observance of daytime fasting. Strike one against the stupid Americans.

After general niceties, introductions, and stumbling small talk, my wife and Olgun went into the kitchen to make some tea. It was then that Kerem challenged me. In his faltering English, he peppered me with questions about Jews, Israel, George W. Bush, 9/11, and the war in Iraq. I was totally unprepared for the onslaught. Though he asked his questions with respect and genuine curiosity, they were hard questions to answer in a way that would not appear defensive, and in some cases I had to fight through rumor, assumption, and misinformation that he had apparently received in Turkey. It is to his credit that he wanted to fact-check it all with me rather than simply accept it and use it to prejudice himself against me as a Jew and an American.

I learned that this was very much his style. They held strong opinions about things, especially about their own country and customs, but they were critical thinkers, intellectuals who were really not at all religious. Unlike most Muslims, they drank alcohol (the marvelous raki, known as Lion’s Milk because it turns white when mixed with water and has a bite that will quickly take down an unsuspecting drinker; I gained many points by going drink for drink with him on a number of drunken nights), and I don’t know if they had any kind of prayer regimen but it certainly was not as stringent as more traditional Muslims would follow. We ourselves are Reform Jews and if there were such a thing, the Turks would certainly identify themselves as Reform Muslims. Cultural and political identity was more important to them than religious dogma.

Among his questions:
• What is the connection between Judaism and freemasonry?
• Is it true that Jews control the US government? (His assumption was that Jews comprised 20% of the US population; it’s actually less than 2%.)
• Was it true that on 9/11, Jews who worked in the World Trade Center stayed home?
• Was it true that George W. Bush was complicit in 9/11?

You can see the challenge I faced. Just to understand the questions in fractured English was difficult enough; to provide reasonable answers was daunting. From anyone else, I would have had a knee-jerk reaction of anger and accused him of anti-Semitism. But for me it was important simply to know that this is what a friendly and intelligent young man from Turkey had heard in his country (and mind you, Turkey has historically been very friendly to Jews and to Israel).

Perhaps the most difficult response I had to formulate was to the last question. Nobody thinks less of George W. Bush than I do, but I could not and would not ever accuse him of complicity in this horrific crime against humanity. Any yet, there may be historical precedent. After all, it is believed that Franklin D. Roosevelt had prior knowledge of Pearl Harbor. The motive would be the same in each case: to justify an offensive operation by allowing oneself to be the victim of an attack. Which is not to say that either Roosevelt or Bush, especially Bush, even if complicit, could have foreseen the scope of the terror and destruction that ensued. The question is, how badly did these men want to fight? I think it’s clear Roosevelt was under significant pressure from the Allies to enter the fray. Unquestionably, Bush the Younger had his eyes on Iraq since the day of his inauguration.

One thing Kerem and I could often agree on was our disappointment with the US government. My fellow Melrosians, however, didn’t care much for his criticisms of American foreign policy. As for me, I couldn’t and didn’t support anything the Bush administration did, and it was hard not to apologize on an almost daily basis for some terrible action or untruth that was coming out of Washington.

One thing we had to agree to disagree about, however, was the Armenian genocide. Along with most Turks, Kerem would not consider arguments that supported the idea that a genocide had been committed. One night, he even showed me a PowerPoint presentation that detailed the atrocities committed by Armenians against Turks. When, near the end of their tenure in America, we traveled with them to Washington, DC, they refused to join us in touring the Holocaust Museum. Indeed, evidence of the Armenian genocide is present there, in exhibits and in the bookstore.

But as I say, we agreed to disagree, and when they left Melrose to return home to Turkey, our friendship was still strong. And after all, he still knew a lot more about my country than I did about his. When we said goodbye, I reminded him of the conversation we had that first time we met and asked that he counter misinformation about Jews and Americans (as any foreigner who meets my family will soon learn, not all Americans are wealthy) when he hears it.

By the time they left, both our families had given birth to a second child, just a few months apart. These two young children represent a part of each other’s lives we know little about, and serve to magnify the distance that separates us, and how much we miss them. Someday, we hope to visit them. Then we will truly understand what their experience was like and how much courage it took for them not only to come here to live and work and go to school, but to trust us, confide in us, and love us. I like to think that they were lucky to have found people like us, but I know that we were just as lucky to have found them.

Funny (and probably true)

2009-08-23T11:33:00.000-07:00

Co-inky-dink

2009-08-22T19:29:00.000-07:00

That's the silly way of saying the word "coincidence" that my older daughter Hannah and I used to have fun with. I've written about coincidences in this blog thrice before: here, here and here. And, as I discussed in the latter post, I tend not to view coincidences as being random moments of oddly connected or relevant happenstance. They are certainly inexplicable but part of their magic comes in not needing an explanation. I like to think they're a clue to some as yet unrealized eventuality. That something in the future will transpire, not necessarily beyond my own will and motivation, that will justify and bring meaning to the "coincidence."

So here I am, a writer who is trying to get an agent to represent his first novel. My progress on this front is being built on the foundation of several form letter rejection notes (and one very nice one). And there I was, last week, with my wife and two daughters away for a week, and I was missing them very much and feeling profoundly sad about my life in general. And there I was, during the time of their absence, on Martha's Vineyard for an organizational retreat, which provided much-needed collegiality, belonging, acceptance, and alcohol. And there I was, after a delicious dinner with my fellow Boardmates, with several drinks in me, walking the streets of Edgartown, and finding an interesting shop open, and entering said shop and looking around, that I found a book.

The book is called To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession, by Dan Koeppel. The cover features a collage of images of dozens of different birds. The design of the book cover is what caught my attention (indeed, that is its purpose). The title didn't particularly stir me, nor did the description on the back cover. The only thing that seemed at all relevant to me is that the bird-watcher in question was a father at a certain crossroads in his life who had two children. OK, that's sorta like me. But again, after a few drinks, it was just the cover that got me curious. And then I opened the book.

I didn't open the book very far into it. Page viii, in fact. Because it was lowercase Roman numerals, I knew it was an intro or prologue of some sort; in fact, it was the Acknowledgments, the section of a book when an author is so extraordinarily grateful at being published that he or she spills his or her guts in a thank-you fest designed to appease the Literary Gods so that this good fortune may continue and lead to the next-best thing to getting a book published: getting a second book published.

And so I open the book and you know how certain words that are familiar to you are so well known in their shape and construct that regardless of the font in which they are set, these words literally leap off the page and stab you right in the eyes? No? Well, trust me, it happens. And it happened this night in the store in Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard while my children were away and I was profoundly sad yet also pretty buzzed. And here's what I saw: my older daughter's name. I saw the words Hanna Rubin (though my daughter's first name has the palindromic spelling). And I was so shocked, I had to read the paragraph in which it appeared, which I reproduce below:

I wish I was the kind of writer who was supremely confident in his talents and instincts. But even when I haven't had faith in myself, Hanna Rubin has. There is nobody I've met who has been more supportive, more generous, and more decent to me than Hanna. ... I don't know if I've ever told her how much she means to me.

In the next paragraph, the author notes that Hanna introduced him to his agent, who also eventually served as his editor and, after she founded a small press, his publisher as well. So let's recap:

1. Hanna Rubin, almost exactly my older daughter's name
2. A writer who is not so much supremely confident in his talents and instincts
3. Hanna's supportive, generous, and decent to the writer (OK, maybe this one doesn't always fit so well)
4. Hanna brings agent and publisher into the picture

So even though this book is nonfiction and mine is a novel; even though it's about bird-watching, which to me is a major snooze; even though it's Hanna and not Hannah, I was really knocked out by this coincidence. I was missing my children so much and then suddenly one's name is staring at me. I was doubting my dream of becoming a published author, and here is one who made it. I showed the paragraph around to several of my Boardmates, and their sharing of my amazement suggested to me that I needed to buy this book. And so I did.

I haven't begun reading it yet, and I'm still not convinced I will enjoy or be much interested in it, but I'm willing to hold out the hope that this book might someday prove to be a clue into a future time when my dream comes true and my daughter, when asked what her father does for a living, can answer not as she does now ("a writer of some sort") but with that wonderful one-word description, a title as noble as any that I could ever aspire to: "author."

Plays on the Potty

2009-08-19T19:04:00.000-07:00

Why do men read on the toilet? I think part of the reason has to do with the fundamental difference between men and women. In the bathroom, women sit all the time; men only sit half the time. We're very accustomed to peeing and fleeing. Unlike women, men don't consider the bathroom to be a venue for socializing. For the most part, we do our business and get out. Unless it's time for number two. Then we're impelled to slow down, sit down, and get down to more serious business. Sitting and shitting, unlike standing and pissing, leaves our hands empty and our eyes with nothing to focus on. Thus, a book or a magazine, a newspaper or a catalog, gives us to something with which to pass the time while we're waiting to pass our lunch.

Another reason why I, at least, like to read on the potty is that it actually gives me time and space in which to read. I spend much of my non-working time not otherwise devoted to eating and sleeping either by parenting or writing. But I like to read and so last year I decided I would keep a book in the bathroom at all times, and read a chapter or two each time I was in there sitting down. Because I can't read large amounts in any one sitting, I chose slim volumes.

Recently, I realized that over the last few years I've been collecting plays. It wasn't particularly intentional, but anytime I'd go to a yard sale or a used book store, I'd look at books and be able to find a good play for very little money. They're generally short, as far as books go, and given that I've written one one-act play already and probably have more in me, it's instructive and inspiring to read great plays. And they seem to work particularly well when read in chunks (if you'll pardon the expression).

Over the last few months, I've read the following plays on the potty (the first two I'd read before; I considered them proof-of-concept bathroom reading):

Our Town - Thornton Wilder
Death of a Salesman - Arthur Miller
After the Fall - Arthur Miller
Angels in America: Part One: Millennium Approaches - Tony Kushner
End Game - Samuel Beckett
Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett
Talley's Folley - Lanford Wilson
Da - Hugh Leonard

Currently, I've just started a collection of plays by Günter Grass that includes Flood, Mister Mister, Only Ten Minutes to Buffalo, and The Wicked Cooks. I'd like to get some works by Eugene O'Neill, Sam Shepard, Harold Pinter, and August Wilson as well, but as I'm a relative neophyte in the playwright world, I'm pretty open to anything that looks interesting. I'd like to avoid ancient and Elizabethan texts since I'd rather keep it light and readable given the context.

Now, while it's quite conceivable that no one will ever want to borrow these books from me, or loan me any of theirs, I think I've actually created a nice, sustainable, and wonderfully entertaining tradition for myself. All the bathroom's a stage....

Short story sampler

2009-07-31T18:04:00.000-07:00

Before I actually started writing a novel in earnest a couple of years ago, I made a number of half-hearted attempts. It's not that I didn't have a story to tell, but I couldn't imagine an ambitious enough narrative arc to serve as scaffolding for a rich, complex story with lots of characters and subplots and action. After a few pages, the story would kind of peter out and I'd lose interest. It struck me that maybe creative writing wasn't my thing after all.

Then one birthday I was given a volume of Raymond Carver short stories as a gift. I'd never actually been much of a short story fan. Just when you're getting interested, the story ends and if you're reading a collection of them, every few pages you have to get acclimated to new stories and situations. I've always been a big fan of James Thurber, however, but I always viewed his work as humorous essays rather than short stories, and the fact that you knew they'd be funny virtually guaranteed a reward for the effort.

But I found the Carver volume extremely compelling. He gave each story a sense that what happened before and after the scope of the narrator's reportage was at least as important as what was in the story itself. In fact, it's not what was happening in the story that was so interesting, it was how the characters thought and behaved in what were generally quiet though emotionally tumultuous settings that made them so rewarding.

Thus inspired, I decided to see if any of my scraps could be turned into a short story, and if any short story-length plots came to mind. I managed to complete one before getting involved in my novel, but have at least three or four more that are in various stages of completion, all of which I hope to continue working on when I have the time. Here are brief descriptions of them, from most complete to least:

Elevation - At 4,500 words, this one is complete. It's an idea that I've had for a long time, inspired by a friend of mine who, despite his success with women, has expressed to me that he wished it were permissible to approach a woman and come right out with, "I'd really like to sleep with you." In my story, a guy wants to do something similar, although he claims to want to do it for purely altruistic reasons. He believes women tend to devalue their own looks, so he wants to give out cards to deserving individuals that simply say, "You're very attractive." That's it, just give out the card and walk away. When he finally gets up the courage to do it, he finds it more intimidating than he thought. There are plenty of candidates, but he finds it hard to seize an opportunity. Eventually, on the subway, he finds himself seated across from four women whom he would not have initially thought to give a card. As he looks more carefully at how they look, how they're dressed, what they're doing, what they're reading, he begins to see more than he did at first. One in particular grabs his fancy. When she gets off the train, he follows her and fumblingly gives her a card. She challenges his intentions and he comes clean that he doesn't really know what his motives are, only that he's captivated by her. They decide to have a drink and get to the heart of the matter. The title comes from the main character's conclusion that there is indeed beauty to be found in those who are "unbeautiful" and his parting advice to the reader that "an unbeautiful woman will elevate you."

The Untangler - I've always been fascinated by knots, both the intentional kind and the frustrating tangles that seem impenetrable. I think that people tend to make their lives tangled as well, and wise people can help you untangle them. So the main character in this story is someone who has difficulty committing to women and he gets himself in sticky situations. His most recent ex-girlfriend had given him a set of wind chimes that became hopelessly knotted in a storm. The woman he's living with (to whom he hasn't been faithful) suggests he take them to her uncle, a retired handyman who is known to friends as The Untangler because he's very adept at untying knots and fixing thorny problems. As the old man works on the knots, he casually imparts to the main character a great deal of wisdom and insight into knots and life. By the end of the story, the wind chimes are in good shape, and his relationship will be, too. I have a few pages written here, but coming up with the wisdom will be challenging. I'm also researching nautical knots to inform the uncle's testimony.

The Triumphant Return of Chip Chumley & the Champions - Here's an example of a story that was intended to be a novel but it ran out of gas. Maybe it will be a novel someday, but it could also be a short story. When I come back to it, I'll see where I think it could go. It tells the story of a group of estranged friends who had been in a high school band together and have agreed to reunite to play at their 25th high school reunion. There's some funny stuff about music in here; I started writing it shortly after reading Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, so it's heavily influenced by that book's style.

The Second Chance - I have just an outline and one torrid sex scene written for this piece, which talks about a man who meets up with a woman he nearly had sex with 20 years earlier when they were in college. The woman is 15 years older than the man and had left school initially when she was 19 because she had become pregnant. Though the two were attracted to each other while in school together, she was in a very different place than he and wouldn't let their making out advance. Now in the present, he's in his mid-40s and she's 60, but the flame still burns. There is praise of older women here.

There are other scraps that may turn into something as well, but this is plenty to keep me busy given I'm still working on my two novels: one in 5th revision, the other still in progress.

The search for a literary agent

2009-07-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

Writing a novel is fun. Getting an agent to represent it to publishers is not. I guess they're both difficult endeavors, but one has more control over the former than the latter. I had long been procrastinating about sending query letters to agents, perhaps thinking that so long as I don't offer it up for rejection it would not be found rejectable. As a social late bloomer, I realize I basically did that to myself in high school. Better to not ask a question than risk getting the answer you didn't want to hear, I thought.

Well, so anyway, I finally did it. I sent query letters and manuscript samples to seven literary agents. Within days, I got three rejections, all form letters of course. All stating that even though it was a form letter, they really did read and consider my work. I was just a little dejected about being rejected because, after all, I expected I would have collected a few of these red badges of literary courage along the way to being published. Also, as an occasional buyer of MegaMillions tickets, I am accustomed to disappointment. And, of course, it was my hero, Abraham Lincoln, who once wrote, "I have been too familiar with disappointments to be very much chagrined."

So I responded to the three rejections by sending out three more query letters. This made me feel I was still in the lead. Shortly thereafter, I got another rejection, one from the first bunch. Today, I got my first rejection from the second bunch. But it was NOT a form letter! In fact, it was so nicely worded that I want to cherish and share it:

Dear Jason,
... There is much to admire in your work. It’s an incredibly intriguing premise to base a novel on an 17th century English folk song. We both loved how you follow the poem's lyrics but also make colorful embellishments of your own. The descriptions of life at the Barnard estate, spring festivals in Lancashire County, and background history developed for each main character are all rich and add important substance to the novel. Unfortunately, however, I’m sorry to say that THE GRAVE AND THE GAY did not garner the unanimous support we require when taking on a new client. We are forced to be particularly cautious about representation given the intense competition in today’s marketplace, and there were concerns that there was a bit more “tell” than “show” here in the novel. Additionally, while characters based on a folk song are potentially fascinating, we did not connect with them quite as much as we would have liked.

Fiction is such a tough sell these days and we must be incredibly selective about the few projects we take on, but do know that opinions differ greatly in this industry. We could certainly imagine another agent being quite enthusiastic about this. We wish you the very best of luck and hope to see your name on a bookshelf soon.

You know, this letter started out so nice that I knew a BUT was coming. Still, if only the girls in my high school were as gentle at saying no as this person was....

So according to my scorecard, I think I'm 0 yeses, five nos, and five haven't heards. That still gives me some cushion for failure. My plan is to send out more letters in the next week, but at the same time I'm going to put my second manuscript (32,000 words to date) on hold while I continue to work on the first one because, to my way of thinking, as nice as this latest response was, I'd rather a tepid acceptance over an enthusiastic rejection.

Fingers crossed.

Reflections on a year of blogging

2009-07-01T09:42:00.001-07:00

I started this blog on June 27, 2008. Not knowing exactly what I'd use it for, or how frequently I'd post to it, or whether anyone would ever read it or comment on any of my posts, I decided to enter the blogosphere and see if one could do so without resorting to the temptation to make it a semi-public diary full of private, egocentric minutiae. Instead, I tried to keep it to my life as a writer (both my day-job and freelance writing, as well as my late-night creative writing), as a means to detail and organize the many project ideas I come up with (and test their viability), document some of the more interesting projects I've undertaken in the past (and those I am in the midst of), and explore some of what inspires or moves me that may inform or otherwise be revealed in my writing.

I can't say I've been wholly successful in this attempt, but looking over a year's posts, I'm happy with what I've posted and am frankly a bit impressed with the scope and arc of my posts and the projects and ideas they represent. Whether it's family history or novel writing, ghost-writing non-fiction or even lamenting the loss of my biggest celebrity crush, it's been a busy and fairly productive year for me, in spite or because of personal issues in my domestic life and the ever-present stresses and strains of work and finances that plague any writer.

If you've popped in here occasionally, thank you for checking in; I hope it's been mostly worth your while. If you've come here accidentally or purely out of curiosity, I hope you'll take a few moments to browse around and see if you find anything at all interesting - and if so, please leave a comment.

Currently, I am 30,000 words into my second novel and still hoping to set aside a day to send off the first one to some agents. Those are my top two priorities for the next few months. More on them later.

In the meantime, I am happy to celebrate the one-year birthday of my blog. The little tyke is crawling along; I hope that we both grow this year.

What Farrah Fawcett meant to me

2009-06-25T11:19:00.000-07:00

I am known in my office as the "'70s guy," which generally refers to my taste in music. But those who know me well know that I am inherently and unashamedly nostalgic, and it is a general truth that most of my all-time favorite movies, TV shows, and musicians are from that oft-maligned decade. Though I was only seven years old in 1970, when I came of age at the dawn of the '80s it was apparent to me that a large part of myself would remain in that time period that saw Nixon, Ford, and Carter in the White House and accommodated both the Ecology movement and disco.

In Judaism, a boy comes of age at 13; for this Jewish boy, that year was 1976. I barely knew I had hormones racing under my skin and would soon be assaulted by both welcome and unwelcome bodily changes, but all that changed when Charlie's Angels premiered on ABC. To say I was awestruck, starstruck, and dumbstruck by Farrah Fawcett is a vast understatement. I was in love. I had never known such magical beauty existed.

It's not surprising that I fell for the blond Angel, as my youthful crushes had been on such golden-haired lovelies as Marcia Brady from The Brady Bunch, Ellie Mae Clampett from The Beverly Hillbillies, and a classmate named Tammy I was too shy to talk to. But Farrah was something else altogether, and that something else was obvious: nipples.

I was playing at my friend Richie's house one day. His mother was out shopping. When she returned, she said she had something for us. She gave us each a copy of Farrah's famous red bathing suit poster. There was so much to look at: her hair, those teeth, the nipples. I stayed on the nipples for a while. Back in 1976, that wasn't something a 13-year-old kid saw a lot of. In retrospect, and knowing Richie's mother as I did, she was essentially saying to us, "You're 13. Here, go learn how to masturbate." Thus my love for Farrah was consummated.

The next three years or so saw my bedroom become transformed into a Farrah shrine, my walls covered with Farrah posters and magazine clippings. I even had a Farrah pillow that I used as a damper for my bass drum (OK, I did sleep with it a few times, too). Eventually, they were all replaced by Marvel comic book covers, and over the years I broadened my taste in and experience with women, but Farrah always remained in my heart as the first clear proof of my heterosexuality.

Today I don't even own the red bathing suit poster, but a few years ago a colleague gave me a mug with that image on it as as birthday present, and this past year my work got me a Farrah cake for my birthday. I took the teasing I got in good fun but I was also aware that she was fighting cancer, and the idea that this archetype of beauty was being destroyed by disease was disquieting. Recently, when the TV special documenting her battle with cancer aired, it was heartbreaking. I even cried at the end. And I knew this day would come, the day I would learn that she had died far too young at age 62.

One colleague hugged me today when she heard the news. Others made pouty pity faces at me, as though someone genuinely close to me had died. Despite my real sadness, I felt I had to somehow justify the impact this quintessential sex symbol's passing will have on me. I can't just talk about lust and tissue boxes, that's too creepy. What, then, does she mean to me really? Why do I care so much about Farrah Fawcett?

I guess it's because she represents an awakening to me, the opening of a new part of my identity and personality; she was a standard to keep with me as I grew up and went out into the world, part of my tastes, my beliefs, my cares and concerns. Not that Farrah herself encompasses all of that, but my eyes literally and figuratively were opened for the first time when I was 13, and everything else I've seen and done and learned and believed somehow has been built on that bar mitzvah-year foundation. It may not be Farrah at all that still draws me to Farrah; it might be that she simply represents the time when I took those clumsy first steps towards physical, mental, and emotional maturity (I'm still working on that last one, actually).

And maybe that's why I'm such a nostalgic person. As I get older, life gets more challenging and confusing, more frightening and less fun. The doors that were wide open when I was 13 seem to be closing. Maybe Farrah is a wedge that I've been using to keep that door open just a little bit. Just to let a sliver of light from my youth pierce the darker air of my adulthood. Something to remind me of easier times. Something to give me hope.

And now that wedge is gone. Of course, her image still remains and ultimately, it was the image I was in love with. And maybe that image can keep that door open a little longer. And maybe that light will also illuminate that wedge, and those things for which I still yearn - love, security, confidence, comfort - might somehow be more possible, more visible for me. Standing out in the dark even. Like her nipples.

Rest in peace, Farrah. And thank you for being on my wall and always smiling at me.

Of Mourning

2009-06-09T11:03:00.000-07:00

I wrote this last week after going to the wake of someone who died too young.

The grief of a black woman in mourning is overwhelming. We’ve seen it, all too often unfortunately, on the evening news. I saw it tonight in person. It’s noisy and uncontrolled, yet somehow almost ritualistic, like when folks in the black church “get the spirit.” The pain it reveals is impressive, its source so deep and raw that it is impossible to be unaffected by it.

Where does such an unreserved response spring from? Maybe from centuries of historical suffering. Perhaps its roots are in the exuberant kineticism that is so characteristic of black music, dance, and art. The creative impulse in black people, it has always seemed to me, is in some way an act of survival – a defiant display of self-expression that says to the forces of oppression (real or imagined, internal or external): “I am alive.” “I am not still, I am alive.” “I am still alive.”

As it is with creativity, perhaps so it is with the wrenching keening of a black mother approaching the open coffin that bears her prostrate son. She bore him nine months; this ornate wooden box will bear him forevermore. She thrusts her head and her arms upwards but she does not open her eyes, does not look heavenward. She does not cast blame, but cries for mercy. Her anguished wails, her swaying body, make it clear that she is not the one who is dead. The dead cry for no one, least of all for themselves. It is the living who must bear the unbearable pain, feel and endure the loss, ask the unanswerable “Why?”

The dead accept death as no living person can. Certainly no mother of any kind anywhere can accept the death of her child. But I, distant enough to feel regret but not to mourn, for I did not known him, try to find a blessing. This dead man, this young black dead man, knew love and did not die from violence. He died playing soccer, a sport he loved. But his heart took an unexpected time out and his last kick was his last kick. It could have been worse, thinks I.

White, paternalistic impression? Perhaps. To me, it all could have been much worse. Not so to his mother, who shouts his name over and over as she leans over his unresponsive body and strokes his face. (What will become of the tears she sheds onto him, I wonder, when this night is over and the coffin lid is closed? Some of her will be with him always, I presume, even under the surface of the earth.) Not so to his wife, who is white and young, and who will spend their second wedding anniversary quite unlike the first, which no doubt had been imbued with so much hope, so much promise, and the unspoken belief that they had so much time ahead of them in which to fulfill their expectations.

The black mother, the white wife, they will try to go to sleep tonight. They will be haunted by the shock, by the loss, that still seems unreal. Somehow, rest will claim them and they will arise tomorrow morning – at first with a millisecond of hope that it was all a dream and that today will be another day of assuming the world’s terrors are not their own. Then with the hard slap of memory, they will understand that it is true: he is gone. And the sadness will return. And the anger. And the disbelief. And the grief. The grief, the overwhelming grief of a world in mourning.