A Sideman's Dream

Do ya’ll know what a “sideman” is? I looked it up and I didn’t get a good feel for the word: “a supporting musician in a jazz band or rock group.” That’s really not enough, but I am sure I have layered my own connotations over this simple meaning, as one does.

When I was in my early teens, I tried to learn some Jim Croce songs since he was in the fashion of the times. “Operator,” “I’ve Got a Name” and “Time in a Bottle” are just a few of the tunes I tried to mimic.

I got them down alright, but I never really mastered them. I just assumed I didn’t have the skills to do them.

And then, in the late seventies, I saw Jim perform on a variety show with another guy. I was all, who’s that dude, and, as I watched, I came to understand he was doing the guitar heavy lifting and Jim was just strumming the rhythm. The realization came over my adolescent-addled mind like a storm, one of those, oh, ohhh, OH! moments. Yes, of course, I should have figured it out, but I hadn’t.

He was a long-haired, lanky guy named Maurice T. "Maury" Muehleisen. In fact, here they are together in what I think is the very show I was watching a repeat of. He was killed in the same plane crash that killed Croce and others.

 

After the initial surprise, and, honestly, the shocking fact that I didn’t know this, I watched on. Besides the extraordinary fingering skills and the airy background vocals and the absolute calm he exuded, I could not help but notice how damned happy he looked, as though he couldn’t get over the fact that he was playing for a legend, as though he felt honored to be doing it. That stuck with me.

Forward now ahead to the last few years. I’ve taken a strong interest in the songs and legends of the inimitable Guy Clark. I guess you could say I studied him and his music. I read a wonderful authorized biography of him by Tamara Saviano called Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark. I watched a bunch of videos, many from his later years, and one fellow kept coming up, Verlon Thompson. I won’t go into the details of times and places; they aren’t necessary today.

But what is important is how he felt about his job. Over and over again, he states that it was the great honor and joy of his life to be Guy’s sideman. You can tell he means it as well. He took Guy’s death awfully hard, as you can imagine. He also wrote this song, “Sideman’s Dream” for Guy.

I did a lot of living between Maury and Verlon, but I’m not sure I was ever very far away from the idea of a sideman, a helper, a supporter, a “lifter” if you will.

I worked in restaurants for most of my life as a busboy, a waiter, and a bartender. I came early to the conclusion that my job was not about me, but to make others shine.

I never tried to upstage my guests, I always tried to make the whole experience about them. I cannot lie, this approach worked well, and I made a lot of money because of it. Others in the business, however, often were the star of their own show. Beautiful flirty waitresses, flamboyant gay waiters, Canadian dudes with “outrageous French accents”, stuffy sommeliers, overly enthusiastic hostesses and semi-celebrity chefs - they all fill the dining rooms of my memory, and I am sure their own styles worked well for them, but, it never felt genuine to me.

I spent most of my career in fine dining establishments most of which utilized a system of front- and back-waiters, especially for larger parties but often just on a regular night. In most cases, both could perform either role, but I preferred being a back-water. The front-waiter usually did all the talking and gave the “spiel” and took the order, though it helped if both remembered it, and basically ran the show.

The back-waiter took care of all the little details. When a guest left the table, I folded his napkin and, upon their return placed back in their lap. I made sure the Missus had a fish fork and the Mister a steak knife. I kept the water and wine glasses full, removed the salad or soup course, helped serve the entrees and lifted the cloches, and kept the whole thing rolling so the front waiter could look as cool and effortless as possible.

I loved it. I was useful and helpful and had every opportunity to be kind. I enjoyed the elegance and grace of it all. It was very dignified.

And there, I think, might be my point. There is dignity in every line of work that we all must recognize. I don’t want to list all the jobs that I think don’t get the dignity and appreciation they deserve - fabricate your own list - but I know everyone deserves my respect. Are there exceptions? I suppose so, maybe… not really.

In all those years back-serving I often was asked by a guest why I wasn’t a front-man, their assumption being that there was a hierarchy and that I seemed pretty good at it all. I’d smile and deflect, saying it was a pleasure to work behind John, Heidi or Sebastian or whoever. I never felt it stick in my craw though. We split the tip evenly and the work sharing seemed fair, so I just felt we were so-workers, team-workers.

Which, it occurs to me, might be a better point. No role is in any way subservient if it’s agreed upon that the goal and outcome serve the mutual need.

I return to Maury and Verlon and so many other great sidemen I’ve noticed over the years. After the initial thrill of the front-man and the excitement of a favorite song, I find my eyes and ears drifting to the sideman. A great guitar lead or a soaring fiddle solo, the studied beat of the drummer, the bassist soft and slow, the pianist’s quick arpeggio - all seem to lift the front-man, raising him higher than their singular talents. This would be the outcome of serving the mutual need: To present the song as perfect as possible.

One last, quick story and I’ll let you go.

I sometimes play and sing in a local bar called The Plain Folk Cafe of a Thursday night, open mic night. Now, I could write a novel about what I’ve observed in the goings-on there, but what most strikes me is the level of decency everyone offers each other. And these are different folks, with different geographical and social backgrounds, “hillbillies and hippies” my friend Ron once said. But this is no place to start a novel…

I know his name, but I haven’t asked him if I could use it (I didn't think Ron would mind), and, as a memoirist, I might not have all my facts correct or may have assumed things in my subjectivity that aren’t there. Anyway, he plays harmonica and is remarkably good. He sometimes sings and plays guitar but mostly he the house harmonica guy. Folks invite him up to play or he’ll play a bit as someone’s doing their set and they’ll ask him up. Which is what happened to me.

I was playing a tune, “Paradise” I remember, and I heard this plaintive call coming from close in the crowd, I saw him and motioned him up. He grabbed his harp case and hopped on up, playing the whole time, I might add. I’d really just started the song so after the second chorus I played a verse and chorus just on the guitar. A head bob to him and he understood instantly and took the melody on his harp. 

He soared. Adding more, in all honesty, than I would in the subsequent verses. He found that lonesome, lost sound that mirrored the mood and sad beauty in those haunting Prine words. I was a bit gobsmacked and I think he was, too, at me giving him such a long solo, I barely knew him at the time.

I finished that song and did a few more ending with a song I’d written called “In a Little Boy's Soul”. Mind you, he could never have heard this song before, guaranteed. One chorus and verse in, he was playing it like he’d know it all his life. He really lifted my song, made it shine brighter. I will be always indebted to him for that.

We got off that stage and do you know what he said? “Thanks for letting me play with you. I truly enjoyed that.” And then he thanked me for giving him that lead and telling him what key the songs were in. He’d just transcended my set, made it better, you understand? He made it better. I thanked him, of course, and complimented his style and connectedness but he’d have none of it, genuinely humble.

He started to the bar to get a fresh Yuengling and I thanked him one last time, and then he said something that still echoes, “It was my honor.”

So, I guess that’s my advice today. Sometimes, you’ll be a sideman, sometimes you won’t, (and sometimes you just won't be sure), but I have found the most satisfaction in being one. 

I am a sideman to you boys. 

I am a sideman to my dear wife, Marci. 

I’ve been a sideman to friends and musicians, chefs and CEOs, infants and the infirmed, priests and roofers.

And it has been, and shall forever be, my honor.

Peace and thanks for stopping by, I know things are pretty tough the days, I appreciate your time.


There's always more, isn't there?  Years ago, over ten I'd say, Marci had this mouse pad made for me. It's Zack holding the water fountain on as Nick gets a drink, they later reversed roles.

 It's nice to have a sideman, ain't it boys?

The What For

Three times in twenty-four hours, I was asked the same question - nearly the same phrasing.  Each time, the answer got more complicated.  At least I think it did, I'll let you judge for yourself.

"What's this even for?" Nick asked me this one evening as he was looking for a ping-pong ball near the dryer.  I looked his way and he was holding up a spent dryer sheet.  Now, if you didn't know what one was, I could see how it might confuse.  Is it a really lame piece of paper?  Why does it have a slight scent?  What on earth could one do with it?  I'd imagine these same questions coming to the mind of a future anthropologist several hundred years out as he finds them by the thousands in an old dump.

I explained what they were to Nick, which turned out to take longer than one might expect.  I showed him a fresh one, hit on some properties of static electricity, shamed myself to him by explaining they had a lot of chemicals in them - though I use the unscented ones - and weren't really necessary and that they basically just coated the fabric to make it feel softer and that one shouldn't use them on towels.

We all basically know the nature of this question in this context.  You've been there, holding up a leftover lock washer, bolt or even more curiously shaped part, fixing or assembling mowers or grills or bongs.  It's wondering about that toggle switch or a slider on a sound board.  It's wondering what an emoticon is or what the actual hell that icon is supposed to represent.  You say it to yourself as your bumbling about a word processing program to change your indent and you see all this stuff you can do that is way beyond my skill level.

The thing is, it is an answerable question.  Just because you don't know the answer, doesn't mean there isn't one.  You didn't follow the instructions.  You didn't look it up or haven't been taught something but the answer is available.  You were buzzed or...

Let's move on.

My buddy Kirby sent me the lyrics and simple tune to a song he'd been working on.  He plays a baritone ukulele and sang it like an old Irish ballad.  We had a nice long discussion about it and he asked me to do, like, a cover of it.  I changed the words a little, fleshed out the tune and taped myself doing it on my phone.

Here's a link to it if you're curious:



Somewhere in this exchange, he asked me "What's this for?"  It was a good damned question.

He was wondering about the endgame.  Would this lead to a final recording?  Was this just a lark?  Was it a song we might play regularly?  Were we just goofin'?  What was my level of commitment?  All necessary questions when considering what to do next with something.

My answer, which was understandably frustrating to him - and is, frankly, not a very good one - was: "This."

Yeah...  I'm like that.

(The boys aren't allowed to say the word "stuff" in their Science teacher's classroom and I think he has a problem with "thing" as well.  I wouldn't last long.)

Here's the thing, sometimes stuff is hard to explain.

By 'this' I meant the very exchange we were having.  For a couple of guys who had to call each other after midnight because it was cheaper then and exchanged cassette tapes for years to be talking about wave-files and digital algorithms is a moment to acknowledge.  We were collaborating, which I think is a basic human need.  We were laughing and teasing and thinking and creating.  "This."

But there's more to that this.

Our journey has been a similar one, his and mine, except for one major deviation - I had kids and he did not.  We've not spent a lot of time talking about the boys.  I share a baseball victory or a band concert now and again.  Maybe a cute story about their cleverness or stupidity or silliness, but, I try to not make it the focus of our conversations.  We've plenty of other things to talk about (sorry Mr. F.).

Would you mind an aside?

Thanks.  There's a delicate balance that must be respected between those with and without children.  I've many friends who are not parents and many of them have been annoyed by the notion that you haven't really lived until you have children, or that everything changes, or that it is something that simply must be experienced. 

Yeah, bullshit.  My friend Terri (remember the names are all changed around here, unless they're not) is a talented and successful ceramic artist.  She and I had a discussion about all this at a bar one night.  Another acquaintance, a dad, had been spouting off said bullshit and then had wondered off.  I told Terri that not all parents feel that way.  We laughed when I said something about how a lot of parents are in the opposite position, thinking the higher plane might be childlessness, and that I certainly had my moments like that.  It was a longish conversation, but my point was, and still remains, that hers and mine is a parallel experience, that her life was certainly not a failed attempt at mine, nor vice-versa.  Her inner journey as an artist, a creator, is just as important as mine as a parent, a creator.  It's about depth of understanding, it's about joy, love, inner peace, spirituality, Faith.  It's about work and desire and doing the next right thing.  However, you get to these places doesn't matter... getting there does.  Get it?

End aside.

As I was saying, we don't talk about the boys much, but he wrote a song of great tenderness, a prayer almost, a blessing.  He'd never said as much before, but from what he decided to tell me in this song, I learned that he thought about it, considered my road, considered the road of these young men coming up.  It means a lot to me.  That I guess is another thing I meant by my this.

As many of you know, I get the past and the present and, increasingly, the future all tied up in a big Gordian Knot in my mind.  I try not to let it bother me but it does incline me to look at things (boy, I do that a lot, damn you Mr. F.), well, longer.

Think about this, nearly forty years of shared experiences, a stray significant anomaly - the twins - and a song that floats up out of it all that speaks to a hope for the future?  Yes, that's the this I mean.  The neverending and neverbeginning now is deucedly complex but speaks to me, and you, I hope, so profoundly.

Oh, I hate when I get caught up in these time paradoxes.

So, the last time I heard the question was in a different context.  My friend Brian (remember the names don't matter) and I were talking over coffee.  We are both the same age, latish-fifties, and both have children.  We met in college some thirty-five years ago.  We've, well, lived life.  Though divergent paths, both have been rocky, twisted, rough and long; and both have been beautiful, joyful and rewarding.  We are both men of Faith and we talk about that a lot.

We were discussing Fr. Richard Rohr's book, Falling Upward, which delves into the faith journey and how it changes as we approach and begin our lives in what I like to call "elderhood."  We spoke of leaving our warrior selves behind, filling and emptying and protecting our vessels - our souls - and marveled at our profound lack of understanding faith and Catholicism and energy and eternity.  We shrug our shoulders a lot when we talk.

I shared my reluctance to tell people an absolute in my life that folks just don't seem to want to hear: I have no regrets.  People take offense at that, perhaps because so many embrace the burden of regret.  They say, 'what about smoking, surely you regret that?'  Yeah, it seems like I should, but... I don't.  I have too many fond memories of cigarettes and the people I smoked them with to wish it all away with a regret.  'What about that move you made or that girl you dated or that shitty Toyota you had or...'  Stop.  Too many lessons, too much insight, too much growth, came out of all that to say I regret any of it.

Brian said that more than once he'd benefited from an oddly specific lesson he'd learned from what may, at the time, have seemed a regrettable situation.  A horrible, rainy, very-bad, camping trip that taught him to build and tend a fire in the rain and, years later, a Boy Scout Jamboree where he used those skills to save a troop of boys from a very-bad and cold night.  It happens all the time to me as well.

He said he looks at setbacks and disappointment and confusion and hears his mind asking a simple question, "What is this for?"

It helps, I think, to ask that of the cosmos, or the Holy Spirit, how ever you might see it.  I do the same thing, perhaps you do as well.  It's in the wail of "Why is this happening?" or in the confusion of the question, "What am I supposed to learn here?" or in the feeling of heartbreak I hear in my own head, "What am I missing?"

Unlike the first two instances, this 'whatfor,' if you will, is, in the moment, unanswerable.  It is not rhetorical, there is no pat answer. In a way, I think when you ask the question it is a prayer, a prayer for understanding, clarity, peace, a prayer that goes out and remains unaddressed, impotent, untended.  But it echoes in us, in time, in the corridors of memory and can, at any time, be suddenly, surprisingly, well... answered.

It happens to me all the time.

In fact, it's happening right now, my now, yours and another now way down the road.



I should just say peace out and end it right here, shouldn't I?

Well, I can't say I'm gonna do that.

There's a lilac bush outside the garage, I've mentioned it before.  I just went out to get the mail and it is nearly in full bloom.

I planted the bush a dozen or more years ago, it was, frankly, a little runt of a thing and I didn't feel much confidence for its future.  I probably asked myself 'what for' as I dug and watered and tended it for all these years.  I've marveled at the beauty of it, the science, the botany, all that.  It was years before it bloomed and it did poorly for a while.  I wondered 'what for' about that old dwarf lilac more than once, I'd admit.

This morning, on our way out to the bus, I turned back because Nick was lagging and saw him hugging the lilac bush, face buried in the blooms, and, through the purple blossoms, I heard a muffled prayer, an answer, "God, it smells like life!"

And, that's the what for.

Peace and thanks for sticking with me, I appreciate it.


My friend Terri is indeed a real person and she is a beautiful artist and soul.  You can check out her FB page here, her work is lovely. 

"Stuff That Holds Up"

I've a lot of stuff to get through today.  Here's a list:

Yes, thank you, that is my introduction.  I had something cleverer planned but it didn't work out... I don't have a backup.


The few of you who've been following me here over the years know I used to talk a lot about baseball.  I don't so much anymore - although I did just in March - and I wondered why that was.

The Reds are destined to have a bad season this year, is that it?  No, I can still find the stories in the pitches and plays, players and duels, hits and catches.  We'll still watch.

The boys are playing on a great team this year.  Good old-fashioned "rec" ball, playing against kids they know.  Really as close as they'll ever get to a game of pickup with ghost-runners and right field out.  I could tell a hundred stories about boys on playing fields, pitches and courts.  No, that's not it either.

A couple weeks back, Zack snagged a fly in center.  He fell catching it so it looked like he dove... he tripped over his own big feet, which he smilingly admitted in dutiful self-deprecation.  The crowd loved it and it ended a tight inning.  Nick ended the same game when he stole home on a wild pitch and a lackadaisical catcher.  His coach did not tell him to, but, it was cold and drizzly and I think Nick just wanted it over.  The crowd went nuts and Zack was the first to greet him.  His teammates let go a chant of "Nick, Nick, Nick," as he led the way around the bases for a victory...

And, here lies the problem.  These are their stories to tell, to decide on the details, add the players, decide on the beginnings and the endings.  These are their stories to curate now.  These are their stories to tell, perhaps as old men conjuring up a memory of a long-forgotten baseball game from an oft-remembered childhood.  Or, maybe, they'll never tell it.  Maybe, they'll just hold it close, keeping the joy and pride and happiness for themselves, bringing it back and adding to it as their good times pile up and into themselves.  Or, in my perfect future tense, they'll read the paragraph above and remember.  I hope for all three.

(Yes, I do see the inherent irony in my telling a baseball story to make the point of not telling baseball stories because it is not my place to do so...)

Let's move on.


I opened my Spotify account the other day.  The account I share with the boys.  Kidz Bop; The Very Best of Peter, Paul and Mary; Saturday Night Fever; Hymns for Hipsters; Tennessee Ernie Ford Gospel Classics; Saint Motel Extended Remix, Selena Gomez and The Who.  I can't imagine an odder mix.

It's a popular notion among parents that we can actually shape our kid's musical tastes, or, worse in my opinion, tell them how great our music was and how much theirs sucks.  Pop music is fine, and has a place.  My music is pretty good, too, but, they need to find that out on their own.


Sadly, I thought there might be a story in these weeping lilacs bent under the weight of the rain and wind:

Or in this image of sunset orange and red tulips about to lose their petals relinquishing the beauty of the blossoms to the better story of rebirth and time:

I was wrong, maybe some other time, yes?


I had hoped originally that I might conclude my thoughts on the whole "boys-are-men-are-boys" thing I've been working on in two previous posts, On Boyness and Green Scales Still Fall.  I was wrong again, mostly because all this other stuff is in the way.


I worked long and hard in the restaurant business, from my mid-teens to just a few years ago.  Back when I was managing them, there were what most places called "Shift Books,' a notebook of some kind in which were written the days events and the like.  Usually they were just short paragraphs from a tired manager, scribbled at the end of a long shift, about sales and the special, what sold, what didn't, who was late, who left early, problems in the bar or with guests, that sort of thing.  However, when I wrote them, I, well, got a little more creative.  I'd tell stories about peculiar guests or funny incidents.  I was famous for them and it was the first thing most mangers looked at when I'd closed the night before.

Sometimes, I look on what I am doing around here as "shift notes."  I could just give the facts and show the images and all that, but, for some reason, I wanted to make them more interesting, deeper.


I liked turning those nights closing bars and taverns and dining rooms into stories.  I could tell you dozens and may someday, but here, right now, they don't seem appropriate.  Yet.

Nick loves to watch television shows, Disney shows and Animaniacs and popular movies, whole binged-watched series no longer on the air whose stars now have fallen or burn in more mature venues.  I have to admit that I found it annoying, especially when he'd watch shows he'd already seen many times, for instance Looney Tunes on a DVD we've had forever.  Recently, I figured something out, something that took me a very long time to come to - you've got to learn the ways a story can be told.

I'm pretty sure that's what Nick is doing.  His count for the books he's read this year in a reading challenge at school is well over a hundred - a hundred and forty, actually, but I won't mention that - but longer books are counted as two.  He doesn't read crap, either.  I've read several and they're really quite good, far better than the silly sports and good friend and unflinchingly didactic boys novels I read at his age.  We talk about the things he's read.  He's a good reader.

There is more to reading than the stuff we we are told to look for - the tone and tense and meter and pace and plot and characterization - and a careful, smart reader knows the secret to all of that, contemplation.  Nick thinks about books.  He may tell me something he thought of about a book he finished months ago tomorrow.

Good stories linger.  Good stories give for a long time.  Good stories go and return and rekindle in our minds.  But you gotta know one when you hear it.  I think that's why Nick likes a good Disney movie or old episode of "Good Luck, Charlie."  I think that's why I do as well.  You see, we are always learning to hear a story, sing a song, unspin a yarn. And, in so doing, we are learning how to tell them as well.


"Zack and his jumping."  I'll just leave it at that, knowing when I read that phrase in twenty years I'll remember watching him run down a hallway, arm up, leaping for the door frame, ceiling fan pull chain or just in general.  I'll remember him sitting at dinner and suddenly getting up and in one fluid movement jumping for the opening between the dining room and the living room which he can get well above now.  I have him wipe the jelly and gravy and bbq fingerprints off the wall, mostly because I can't seem to get him to stop jumping, which for some reason irritates me to no end... I'm trying to let it go.  If a boy leaps through childhood, joyfully jumping and happily reaching up, further and further, well, there are less apt metaphors.

Marci and I sometimes, when the boys are goofy and silly and sweetly annoying, say to one another, "Damn happy kids."


I am supposed to tell a sad story about some gophers I know.  We call them woodchucks around here.  It's about a she-chuck and her three playful kits in the front yard and an ominous thud in the street, a garbage bag and a shovel, and later a hawk in the back yard and talons and fur.  And, a few tears.  Mine

I don't want to.

I'll tell this one instead.  There are numerous rabbits in the back yard... as happens with rabbits. I was watching a couple of young ones, bucks I'd guess no longer kits, out under the maples.  They were chasing and annoying each other, getting into mock fights, rolling around running madly to another spot and basically turning and taunting the other guy.  They reminded me of something, I can't imagine what?

At one point, one of the brothers - because I can only assume they are - leaps up out of a tussle and runs straight towards the fence line.  Now, our fence is what I grew up calling "page wire," a wide, rectangular wire weave often, in the fields around my childhood, topped with a single strand of barbed wire.  Our fence is a split rail one with three horizontal runners between wood posts.  To keep in pets - but not wildlife - from top to bottom runs the page wire.  Back to the rabbits.

The one is heading for the fence.  I'm figuring that he knows a way under it and I'd guess his playmate did too.  No, he runs for that fence, full gallop, gracefully jumping towards the gap between the bottom rails and, well, hits that fence so hard the wire rings, poor little myopic dude.  I gasp at the surprise of it.

He falls back hard on his haunches and sort of sits there stunned and shaking his head, confused at this new reality, this force-field, his little mind baffled at this sea change.  The other one is a few feet behind him and, as God is my witness, is rolling on his back laughing his little head off.  Literally, rolling in mirth at his brothers expense, and, I have to admit, it was pretty funny.

Once he regains his senses and sees his buddy laughing at his expense, he charges full out, leaping at the other guy who is still contorted in laughter, pins him down and, I swear, bites a chunk of his ear off.  He jumps and runs away under the fence, in pain I am sure.

I week or so later I saw a few rabbits grazing in the evening twilight.  One of them had a visible nick out of his ear.  Another had a on a little pair of black safety glasses.

Oh, did I mention we are reading Watership Down?


(You're at seventeen-hundred-and-seventy-two words.  Have you prepared a summation?

Shut up, Other-one-me! 

I'm just tryin' to help.

Well, don't.  And why do you always insist on writing out numbers? 

It uses up your precious word count.

Go.  Away!)


The boys did a "Reduce/Reuse/Recycle"  art project for school.

Zack took apart an ancient - like, 1980s ancient - VCR and a couple other defunct electronics and imagined a cityscape with the parts he'd scavenged.  It's pretty clever.

Nick made a sculpture out of old boxes, cutting and taping them together into a form he liked.  He used a flour and water papier-mâché to cover it and painted it with old cans of spray-paint I'd never use.  I helped him with some techniques and with the somewhat tedious task of covering it, really tedious actually.

And, I'm done.  Except for one thing.


Guy Clark died last week.  He was a personal hero of mine.  Short of Bob Dylan, no other singer/songwriter influenced my style as a singer of songs.  When I first started working on this post - which was longer ago than I'd care to admit - I'd decided to call it, "Stuff That Holds Up," which is a line from a song I play of his, one I included in this post.  I remember thinking that the small little stories and memories here today were just a big pile of stuff in a way, not always so important or life-changing, but certainly, to quote the chorus of his song,

Stuff that works, stuff that holds up
The kind of stuff you don't hang on the wall
Stuff that's real, stuff you feel
The kind of stuff you reach for when you fall.

I thought that the memories I'm laying down here, archiving here, stealing from them, perhaps, are indeed, "stuff that holds up."

That was the day before he died.  Godspeed, Guy.

There at the bottom of the note it says:  "Stuff - words repeated intent - affect."

Yeah, I don't know either.


Thanks for coming around.  Peace to you and, if you're a fan, give a listen to this tune, The Randall Knife... for Guy.

Peace to you.  Here in my hemisphere Summer is coming.  I might not be around here as much for a while.  I'd say that is because I'm busy and focused on the boys this time of year and that might even be part of the truth.  But I need sometimes, some time.  Some time to listen and watch and taste and feel the stories around me - which come like memories, or are memories - as they unfold like old maps, unfurl like vellum and ink, float like forgotten words in the winds of melody or linger in the air like tobacco smoke and incense and gather in wisps on the ever-descending ceiling of time.

Goodbye for now...

A Post in the Wind

I guess, today, I am posting something just for me

It seems so few are listening here these days that I can indulge in a little self-pity and

Songs have long held for me a significance beyond the meaning of their words, above the beauty of their melody, inside the significance of their story

Mass shootings, terrorists, Paris is

Nope, none of those seem to work this morning.

I think I'll just go ahead and sing a song if you don't mind. You can go away if you want - I'm really just doing it for me.

I'd guess that was one of the first dozen or so songs I ever learned on the guitar. There is no end to the ways one can play this song, Dylan himself did it about four different ways, and Peter, Paul and Mary and every-damn-one else have interpreted it for themselves, and it seems to come out different every time I do it. It might seem trite and cliche after all these years. It's not. It is, and shall unfortunately ever remain, topical to the second, to the instant, to every now that shall ever be or ever was.

I've mentioned before that I sing and play the songs I have long known when I am feeling down. Not, truly, just to lift me or make me feel better, but, to... it's hard to explain.

To make me feel more.

Yes, I suppose that's it.

When I sing a song, this song specifically, I do so atop the echoes of all the other times I've done it. The harmonies of friends come back and to fill the lonely refrain. The tune floats along on the vague, nearly forgotten memories of the times I've done it before and it becomes something else. The memories make it new. Or, perhaps the now, the event that led me back to it, adds new weight or maybe it just lightens the burden or... I'm not making sense.

And, why am I crying?

Things happen that I don't understand. If I don't understand them, how, God, can I explain them to little boys?

This song is my lame explanation to them.

Sorry, boys, it's the best that I can do.

When I went away to college - and I've mentioned this before in some post past, but I'll be damned if I can find it - I typed up all my songs on my Mom's monster electronic typewriter...

Damn, this is a rough post to write. In looking at this now, I see that below Blowin' in the Wind is a song that we wrote as freshman in college which means I didn't type this particular one up until after college started. Now I remember. I think a couple of buddies and myself promised we'd type up the songs we knew over Christmas break. Yeah, that seems true enough, at least plausible.

Anyway, I typed them up on something called "erasable bond" paper, an almost vellum like paper that one could erase typing from. It streaked terribly. I remember, this seems impossible but it is true, that we'd agreed to use carbon paper and make another copy of each one so there would be one to share. Of course I couldn't erase the carbon copy but, I worked hard on the project - hours and hours. It is funny what comes back to you when you dive right into it.

I've redone all those songs, modernized them, digitized them, but, in a folder on a shelf are all those old sheets, crisp and brittle, yellowed like parchment, coffee stained and worn out.

(Yes, those are seed burns, no denying the obvious.)

It is funny how deeply this stupid piece of paper affects me. I think of all the hands that handled it, all the times I've looked at it, all the places it's been, all the stories it holds - like a touchstone, a talisman, it soothes me. It makes me remember that I've been somewhere, been through stuff, known folks, loved others... lived.

And, I think that is what this whole thing is about today.  I can't figure things out sometimes, I can't make sense of the seemingly senseless, the arbitrary, the evil, the sad.  But...

I know this song, I've figured out this thing, maybe that gives me hope that I can figure something harder out.

I dunno.


From Marci's "... things you don't expect to hear from the backseat ..." 

Z: "Why did you laugh?"

M: "Because you are funny."

N: "ish"


I'm funnyish, too...


Thanks for coming by, Peace to you, Peace to us, Peace to the whole damn world, we sure as hell need it...






Hey, boys.  I think everyone else is gone.  When you find me, as you both have, playing a song and crying or screaming it with my eyes shut or just mumbling it into the wind, know I am just trying to figure things out.  It's a coping device.  Don't let it scare you.

I love you both so much...

... hand me that guitar, won'tcha?

Touched Stones and Penciled Lines

She undoes the stiff knot she had moistened in her mouth and removes three white beads from a sinew cord which adorns the top of what you might call a satchel, though the native name - "traveling home" - means so much more.  She replaces the three white beads with three red beads and reties the strong string, cinching it tight with her stronger teeth.

She kisses it tenderly and fills the deerskin bag with nuts and fruit and some jerky and piece of steamed fish wrapped in shag-bark hickory and tied with a long blade of meadow grass.  A young man peers in from under an animal skin.  A boy really - her boy.  He will go out to hunt today, as he has everyday this fall.  It is his first year out with the men and he is doing well.

In his mind he is a young warrior, yet, as he opens his pack for lunch, he looks down at those beads and smiles as his hunter soul returns to sweet boyness.  She changes them every morning - different patterns, different colors, always three.

His friends and leaders do not notice the change but he does.  He feels loved and honored; cherished.

***

The streams run much calmer and easier on the steppes below the Big Mountains where the turbulent tributaries run wild.  Here, they meander through the forest on stone creekbeds and rivulets with an ancient patience.  He found the stone when he was eight or so in a creek near their simple homestead.  It was so unusual because it had a hole off center toward the narrow end of a finger long oval.  A hole, funnel-shaped, drilled from uncountable drips or eddies, over eons, by the water that always coursed through the forest - their forest.  He thought it mesmerizing, timeless, hopeful - he knew what it wanted from him.  He knew it was a gift.

He gave it to his mother as his father stood by, proud of his son's love, prouder still of his deep understanding of it.  A steady rain tapped softly on the bark shingles of the cozy, one-room home.  A fire blazed in the fireplace made of the same stone his mother clutched tightly, from the same creekbed, by the same six hands that passed the beautiful talisman.

She put it on a cord, strong woven hemp, and put it around her neck.  The string scratched at her gently, reminding her that it was there, all of it -  a family, a frontier, a life.

Seven or eight seasons passed and the boy came up with a fever and a rattling cough that shook the timber joists and logged and mudded walls.  Under blankets he shivered and the parents feared and there was no relief for the poor child.  As a plea, as a prayer, as a hope, as a supplication, as a gesture of faith and love, she removed the necklace and put it around his neck.

He slowly began to improve, as the snows accumulated and the wind blew the cough softened and finally left his sore and racked body.  Soon the fever followed the cough and the boy was hungry.  Meals of bear bone broth and honey-rye cakes strengthened his tired frame and he was able to get out of the straw and pine bough bed and walk to the rough table.  When he bent to pull the bench out, the stone fell from under his nightshirt and swung heavy on the cord and he knew.  He knew why he was better, how.

For years they traded the stone back and forth.  The father for the hunt or on a trip to the far village.  The son as he fished.  The mother as she labored through childbirth half a dozen times, twice stillborn, four other wild boys.  They passed it around themselves, playfully sometimes, tenderly at times, always draping it around the neck of a sleeping brother or parent.

And whenever they woke up with it on, or felt the rough string, or held it in their chapped and calloused hands each felt loved and honored; cherished.

***

The city is dirty, as dirty as the fetid Thames runs through the center of town.  The boy is up at dawn and runs down a narrow hall in a sooty, lamp-lit flat.  He grabs a bucket which sits at a table and and he smiles at the old woman who sits at the other end of the stained table, spools and hooks and a frame of white thread in front of her, making lace doilies for a few pennies a week.  She's already made the meat pie that waits at the bottom of the pail, a tired apple sits on top, sometimes a sweet, but not this day.

He rushes off to the textile factory where he minds the warps and woofs of the endless miles of fabric.  Retying there, straightening here, pulling down the old oak handle when the whole thing needs to stop.  Constantly moving and bobbing himself, cutting his knuckles or bumping his head as belts whir dangerously above him.  He will do it for twelve hours.

A bell sounds loudly, the whirring slows and stops, the boys all head to the long line of buckets up against the wall.  They are seemingly identical, some perhaps more worn than others, but they aren't.  Most have a piece of string or yarn or material tied around the handle to identify them - a piece of dirty tartan here, a bow of faded red wool yarn, a loop of old leather.

One stands out though, the one with the bright white string of delicate lace tied daintily on the rough tin handle.  The grandmother makes one for him every morning before she begins her piece-work, as the meat pies bake, before the dawn and the boy are up.  Every day, he puts it in his pocket and it helps him through the long day.  Every day, when he comes home tired and dirty he wipes his hands clean and ties it to the string from yesterday with a small knot he makes so well.

On Christmas morning he will sneak out from little, cold room he and his grandmother share and he will spin it around the pine branch they use for a tree.  He will do this for years.

When she sees it she will feel loved and honored; cherished.

***

Each generation, each culture, each time, each place - each individual really, you, me - invents or reinvents, designs or redesigns, discovers or rediscovers a particular way to assure those close to us they are loved and honored; cherished.

I purposefully phrased that last sentence as I did because, well, I am not sure which it is.  You see, I write the boys notes in their lunch boxes, I have since first grade.  At first I simply told them I love you.  When they were littler I would say funny things, make fart jokes and try to expand their vocabulary with words and horribly rendered drawings.  I'd like to say my notes have gotten better, matured in theme and tone... but, it's still pretty much "I love yous" and fart jokes with the addition of three stick figures named Pat.

Honestly, I never did it with much care or premeditation, I just jotted something down and threw it in, usually using the same idea for both boys, changing the name perhaps.  I just wanted them to think of me and to know they were being thought of, to make them feel loved and honored; cherished.

As I was cleaning out their first year lunch bags, hoping to get another year out of them (nope), one zippered compartment on Nick's seemed full, puffy maybe.  I figured it was a couple of paper towels up there or worse a forgotten sandwich, I unzipped the previously unnoticed (by me) pocket and, well, this...

 

Every note from every lunch for the whole of his first grade year.  He kept them, so I kept them, in fact I have all four years worth of notes in ziplocks, on a shelf, waiting - waiting for him to see them again and remember that he was once, and will always be, remembered.

Here's a hopeless little collage of a few notes from that first year:

As you can see, Marci helped me out with some of these.  I can't say they were masterpieces - hell, I can't even say they were clever - but they meant enough to a big-hearted, tiny seven-year-old boy, to keep them.

I guess it is a bit obvious that Zack didn't save his.  Well, Zack can't remember he has socks on when he gets in the shower, but, but... he remembers a lot of other things..

The first day of this year, their fifth grade year, they had pizza and the boys said they would "buy," just as I'd said to my Mom decades before.  The second day was an unknown, steak belonging to someone named Salisbury, and they opted to "pack."  I bumbled, out of practice, and it ended up taking me longer than it should have.  I forgot the notes.

"Dad, you forgot to make us notes for lunch.  Do more of the stickmen guys," Zack said as we walk down the driveway that day as the bus puttered off.

"Yeah, the Three Pats, Dad, those are great," Nick added.


If you look at the photo a ways up, you may notice a note - it's there in the middle above as well - that says "Three Pats, always and forever."

I introduced the "Three Pats" thing in a post long ago.  Basically, instead of saying "I love you" a give the boys three pats on the head or shoulder or wherever.  This has expanded over the years (years, how's that possible?) to be three hand squeezes in the scary movie, three kisses on a bear's nose, three taps on the bunk-bed frame - "taps" being "pats sideways" as Z put it.  What goes unsaid, but not ununderstood, is that it is a code, a short hand, a way to say it without others knowing.  Boys like that.  Me, too...

Anyway, sometime mid-year last, I was inspired to draw this:

Throughout most of that year and as we begin this one, I've kept the theme.  Here are some from last year:

My point today is not that I make pretty lame lunch notes.  It is not that boys don't want to say or hear "I love you."  It is not even that we need these stones and beads and lace and paper to touch and clutch through childhood, adulthood and beyond.

The point is that we do it - we make specific, personal, little things - thing small and yet, somehow, strong enough to hold the weight of memory, the weight of hope.  With sinews plucked from our very own hearts we cherish and love and hold.  These seemingly insignificant things stand in for the universal hopes we have for us, for them, for you, for me.  They are stokes of paint on the masterpiece that is humanity.


As I mentioned, the notes are stored by year in ziplock bags.  Just now, as I went to pack them back up, one fell to the floor.  I nearly left it there, what's one more note in the hundreds I already have.  But, it was sad and forlorn and very crumpled.  I picked it up and opened it, tearing it in two as I did.  It was this one:

"3 Pats praising"

Yeah, I think I'd like to save that one...



Thanks for visiting, I always appreciate it.

Synchronous Serendipity

I take the bits and pieces of life - the hopes and dreams and responsibilities and commitments and all - and try, desperately, to order them, "rowing ducks" I've called it.  It's planning and prioritizing and playing odds and thinking about contingencies.  It's dinner and bacon and bananas about to go bad.  It's shorts not jeans, baseball not basketball, sunsets not sunrises.  It is all manageable, quantifiable, tractable, straightforward, though increasingly complex.

I get it.  I do it all everyday.

But there are moments or events that I do not see coming.  Not tragedies or hardships, I understand that these are a part of life.  Not the coming of understanding that springs from Faith, the unexpected  tears on Good Friday nor the relief of resurrection, that is simple Grace.

No, there are moments and events that just seem so well-placed.  Some are fleeting - the phone call from a friend just as you were thinking of them, a bolt that lands in your pocket as you work under a car to switch out an alternator in the snow.

Sometimes these moments are huge, unfolding over time involving dozens of characters and places and things.  Five teenagers thrown together in college dorm, each perfectly suited to a spot in the group, this one giving this song, another adds this book, another a story, another a center, another a spoke.  Decades later, still in touch, still marveling at the perfection of a few years of flawless synchronicity.

And then there is the sheer damn luck of it all.  How, possibly, could a cat wondering into an apartment - my cat, Marci's apartment - lead me here, raising up twin boys, happily married, safe, contented, something I never thought I'd be?  Serendipity?  Good fortune?  Divine intervention?  Or, as I said, sheer damn luck, the good kind.


Two weeks ago I posted a piece here about how I encountered music when I was coming up in the late sixties and early seventies.  I bemoaned the lot of N and Z not having the very visceral experience of vinyl records and paper sleeves and liner notes and poster art.  I was hard on myself for not introducing them to piles of music.

My brother and his daughter came into town to visit.  My niece said she had a gift for the boys' birthday.  She seemed pretty excited about it.  She's a pretty cool chick.

Yes, a portable record player, a stack of old 45's and some classic LP's.  Now, understand this, she did this well before I wrote the piece about records and such.  She sought out the player, selected the albums, made this all happen, without knowledge that I was even thinking about this.  Coincidentally, co-incident-ly.


Weird.

There's more right?  Yes, thanks for asking...

You probably see Art Garfunkel's upside down head there.  That's Simon and Garfunkel's Greatest Hits album, one I know so well I could sing it to you start to finish with little prompting.  That's just one of the odd little stack of albums she gave them.  There's some vintage The Ventures - you know, the "Mission Impossible" and "Hawaii Five-O" dudes.  There a 1971 pressing of J.S. Bach Brandenburgisches Konzert F - dur... yes, the gateway drug of orchestral music, in German.  There's a Jazz Immortals album, it's old school - Charlie Parker and Dizzy and that crowd.  There is also a curious thing called Space Songs: Ballads for The Age of Science sung by Joe Glazer.

I told you it was an odd lot, an oddly appropriate odd lot.

There was one other album.

This one:

I opened up that turntable when the boys went to school and played it.

It was fun.  The needle hit the platter and the sound was so familiar it took my breath away.  I quickly regained my ability to read the print as it spun,  "Rainy Day Women #12 & 13."  The loud, raucous horn section starts... You know the song, "Everybody Must Get Stoned," yeah, that one.  An influential song, an unforgettable song and a remarkably clever one as well.

This Greatest Hits album was released in 1971, I probably got it in '73 or '74.  I'm guessing.  To say I know this record would be understating.  I said once before that we "choose the soundtracks of our lives" and this is a part of mine.

The second cut is "Blowin' in the Wind," the quintessential Dylan song.  I'd say it was easily one of the first twenty songs I ever learned to play and sing.  I played it just Sunday, sitting on the porch as the boys made LEGO models... and sang along.  And, and, two days later the song literally lands in my lap.  Out of the shear damn blue.

"The Times They Are A-Changin" follows.  There is a scratch here and it adds another layer to the staccato strum that accompanies words I didn't understand people could say.  Not allowed to say, and these lyrics pushed some serious boundaries, no, could be said.  When I first heard this song, and then later as I went on to learn it, I was flabbergasted at the boundlessness of human creativity.  I've come to understand that as an adult, but man, that first glimpse at our collective potential is electrifying.

Come mothers and fathers, throughout the land
And don't criticize what you can't understand.
Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin'
Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand,
For The Times They are A-Changin.'

I mean, who gets to write that, who is chosen for those words?  The words, as beautiful and carefully hewn as they are, aren't what impacted me.  The fact that this sort of inspiration can be available to us, to me, blew me away.

"It Ain't Me, Babe" is next.  A lament?  A defense?  An attack?  I've never known.  But at thirteen or sixteen on twenty-one hearing the words "It ain't me you're lookin' for, Babe," is a bit of foreshadowing worth noting.

Side one ends with "Like a Rolling Stone."  Another song I know forwards and backwards and still it still draws me in every time I hear it, no matter who sings it.  I forget it is a story song, a redemption song.

There is another whole side to go, wait...

I remember this moment, this intermission that every album offered.  I had forgotten it until I had to do it again.  A time to reflect and discuss and get a beer and wait, a time to anticipate.  What a gorgeous idea, an exquisite device - stop and savor and wait in the middle of things.  When do I do that anymore?

Not often enough.

I won't take you all the way through the second side.  It begins with "Mr. Tambourine Man" another song I still play, another song where the words seem so impossibly clever.  The side ends with "Just Like A Woman" with those haunting words "...but she breaks just like a little girl."

What does he mean by that?

What do I mean by this?

This album came back to me at precisely the right moment in time.  I didn't need the songs or the words or even the album in my hands.  No, I needed the event.  I needed to go through time with it.  I had to thank it with my time once again.  We, I, must study the things that move us, contemplate the ideas that stir in us understanding, curiosity and, perhaps, wisdom.

I started a journey with this music when I was ten or eleven.  Mind you, this is a "greatest hits" album, the music was released well before 1971 when it came out.  The vast majority of these songs had floated already into the zeitgeist of radio music and into the living rooms of booming families much earlier.  And, still they float.

Nick and Zack recognize nearly all the songs on this album.

I like that loop.

I like seeing continuity, seeking continuity.

Bob Dylan's words and melodies have been more than a soundtrack to my life, that would underplay it.  Dylan's music opened my eyes and ears and heart in a way nothing had in my life.  I've fashioned my vocal style after his.  I adore drawn out vowels and alliteration piled in precarious pillars, perfectly placed.  I love lists and details and difficult references.  Nuance.  He led me to an understanding not only of potential but of success.  I am right because of Bob Dylan.  He helped show me who I am, not as a role model, not necessarily as a hero, no... he was - and still is, I'm coming to understand - my Teacher.


I am tempted here to tease myself, poke fun at my melodramatic prose.  I don't think I will though, mostly because I feel I've learned something of myself.  Also, there's one more little bit...

The album came with a poster inside.  My niece unfolds it and I instantly recognize it and I nearly fall in the wind of images and places and people.  A dorm room, a childhood bedroom, a lover's bed, a living room, old friends, lost friends, New York City, rural Ohio, a Parisian bookstall, a dank basement, ping-pong tables, smoke, smoke, dreams and smoke.  All at once...

It is hard to impart to you how unexpected all of this is... was, will be.  (Fuck tense, I can't get a handle on it.)  And how arbitrary it is.  And how profoundly necessary it is, was, shall be.  (See!)

I've kept you, haven't I?  I'm sorry, this all sort of snowballed.  I hope you'll come back again.  I may not be asking you in as much here in the coming months but I'll holler when I do.  I've got chores to do, baseball games to think about, memories to sift through... and two boys to watch turn into men.

Peace to you...