DUN DUN DUUUUNNNNNN

 Ever have one of those songs stick in your head but you only remember a tiny part of it? Happens to me all the time. And then I'll ask anyone and everyone: Do you know that songs that goes doo ba da do da da do da da-aa-ah?

And whomever I've asked will look at me like they think I just farted.

It's pretty much been that way my whole life.

A prime example. Fire on High by Electric Light Orchestra, or ELO. It's this instrumental song that you'd hear on FM radio back in the day. It's sort of scary and awesome and not one you find on a lot of top 40 stations, but I always thought it was cool. It wasn't one of my favorite songs. Not one I'd put on a mix tape or anything. Just a song that lodged itself in my brain long ago, to sleep like Rip Van Winkle, waiting to come back to the forefront of my mind and drive me to distraction.

That song came out in the other world known as the 1970s. Land of Happy Days, Viet Nam, Watergate, and leisure suits. A world I navigated on my bike and/or skateboard, traversing the streets of San Jose, obsessed with comic books, KISS, and after the Ralph Bashki animated version of it came out, the Lord of the Rings. I can recall hearing that song in my friend Chris Carver's family's garage. It had this backward tracking section that made you think maybe the devil could hear your thoughts while you listened to it. 

If there was such a thing as the devil. And ever since The Excorcist came out, we were all pretty sure there was.

So, the song was part of the fabric of my childhood.

Cut to many years later. I'm in NYC. I haven't thought of that song since forever. I'm a starving artist, waiting tables at Bryant Park Grill behind the main branch of the New York Library, doing theatre down town, struggling to make ends meet, having the time of my life. 

And that song pops into my head. Well, not the whole song. Just this one section where the orchestra goes: DUN DUN.... DUUUUUUUNNNNNN. 

I start asking people if they know it.

And I get the "did you fart?" look everytime.

Years go by. I'll be at a party. I'll meet someone who seems knowledgeable all things music. I'll ask the question. I'll get the standard response. 

Now, I was still drinking back then, so maybe my question was asked a bit more off key than I'd like, and a tad more garbled. At any rate, no one had a clue.

Was I mad? Had I invented this fake memory of this song with backwards tracks and a section that goes DUN DUN DUUUUUNNNNNN?

Years go by. I'm driving a rental car back to NYC after going to a wedding up in Connecticut. It's summer, and some radio station is playing all things seventies. And the song comes on the radio. The song! Now this is before cell phones, and there wasn't a note pad in the car, and I was on a bridge over the Harlem River in very heavy traffic. And worse, the song was in a long set of songs with no interruptions. I waited and waited, praying to the radio gods that they'd say who it was. 

And they did! Finally, after what felt like hours. 

Fire on High! I said it out loud, over and over, making sure I'd remember. My girlfriend at the time, who was in the car with me, did not find this amusing, and told me so in no uncertain terms. 

So I stopped the car, opened the trunk, pulled out my backpack which had a notepad in it, and wrote the name of the song down. 

The cars behind me didn't appreciate this.

I didn't care. I had found the Great Lost Song of the 1970s. I had found a dimensional door to the Carver's garage, to bell bottom jeans and AC/DC before Bon Scott died. To a piece of me.

I collect those pieces, work them into my various projects, shows I direct, roles I perform, scripts I write.

It informs who I am.

A deranged seeker of lost moments, an Indiana Jones of my own soul.

Here's Fire on High, by ELO.

Bonus track:

Two things: First, I'm doing Rocky Horror Show with Organic Theatre up in Boulder this week end. Info Here: https://www.onthestage.tickets/show/organic-theater-dba-reel-kids-and-dba-boulder-music/64b20c8f3d38220e4092f78c

I'm taking a new show, Eigg the Musical, to the Edinburgh Fringe. I'll be writing another blog on that next, but wanted to let you all know we have an Indiegogo campaign, raising funds to feed the actors, cover expenses, and all that. More info here: https://igg.me/at/eiggmusical/x/3385268#/

And here's one of the numbers from the show:

 

THE OLD SANTA CRUZ HIGHWAY OF LIFE

Haven't written in a bit. Such is life. Things come and go. We wax and wane like the moon, and a lot of rock bands. Sometimes, we are super geniuses and everything we do is perfect and awesome. Other times, it's a struggle to put together a coherent sentence. 

Today I feel groovy, alive, happy to have baseball in season, flowers budding, sun shining, shows opening, possibilities presenting themselves like friendly cats on a neighborhood walk. 

It's a good day.

So, when last I wrote, I was in San Jose, the world I grew up in, the place where most of who I am was set into motion. I was there to retrieve some artifacts of my life, which had been sitting in storage since the sale of my mother's house. Records, photos, old journals, books, furniture, paintings. Some mine, some my mother's, divided up between me and my siblings. 

That was all good. Loaded up a U-Haul with my brother and my nephew, who is somehow now a young man but at the same time still carries the little boy I would baby sit when he was in diapers. 

One of the best parts of that trip was a car ride with my oldest friend in this universe. A simple jaunt over the hill to Santa Cruz, via the aptly named Old Santa Cruz Highway. Let's call that friend Brian, because that's his name. Met him when I was five. There is something to be said for knowing someone most of your life. Shared history, jokes, stories. Legends, really. But more than that, there are certain friends in this world who you keep close, no matter how far away you live, no matter how long it has been between visits or phone calls. Friends who, when you see them, you say "So anyhow..." and pick up right where you left off, as if not a day has gone by.

And on a cosmic scale, I suppose not a day has.

Of course, life has happened in great quantities to both of us. Triumphs and tragedies, unexpected events, strange adventures like getting a few grey hairs and then a few more. But even so, we are who we are, who we were, and who we shall be, and recognized that in each other, as usual. And so we drove, and chatted, and laughed, and caught up, and had the best damned time. 

It is a rare wonder to have such friends, and I am the luckiest person I know.

My mother would often say a quote I believe is attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson. We all should be as happy as kings. We didn't have the best of times, or the worst. But we had times. And mom would say that quote, often when things were rough. I always assumed whatever royalty she was talking about were truly happy, not like Princess Diana towards the end, or Richard III for most of his existence. 

Anyhow, that's where my mind is on this early Spring day. Grateful for old friends, for a life to live, for days and nights and music and trees and blue skies and clouds. 

Here's one of my favorite songs. It's San Francisco by The Mowglis. Enjoy. And call up some old friend and revel in the fact that there is someone in your life who gets you.

STRAWBERRY PARK WE LOVE THEE

Smaller and different and totally the same. That's what it feels like to be here in my home town of San Jose. Got in yesterday, drove to my old neighborhood, past the Winchester Mystery House, down Moorpark, past Blackford High which is now part of Harker Academy but at one time was just another public high school in the Campbell Union School District. Eased past the house I grew up in. So strange to think a different family lives there now, in the same house, the same rooms. And how it's not the same house the same rooms anymore. The trees are there, but look unloved, unclimbed. 

And yet, Mount Hamilton still looms to the East, and the Santa Cruz Mountains shadow the west, like they always have and always will, for at least a few more millennia. The air yesterday had that fresh Bay Area thing going which happens from time to time, where you can see for miles, and just breathing it in feels like drinking a tall glass of spring water. There is a life force in the Bay Area, and it just is.

There is something about returning to where you grew up that reminds you of who you are, who you were, and who you want to be. About seeking out places and people who are still part of your life. And also seeking things that no longer are, and that feeling of how it must be some kind of magic trick, this not having everything being just as it was. Like maybe, Blackford is still Blackford, Carrow's is still Carrow's and not a Denny's. 

Maybe Life really is a dream.

Well, in today's dream, I'm sitting in a hotel that is right where there used to be a 7-11, which was my main place to get comic books when I was a kid. Comic books and Slurpees. Behind it there was a vacant lot that had been turned into a sort of dirt bike track with little ramps we could jump our bikes over. I don't know who, but someone, some Johnny Appleseed of bicycles, roamed the South Bay and turned all the vacant lots into places you could do your best to endanger your life by riding really fast and then taking flight on little ramps made of dirt. 

This same Appleseed seemed to have a penchant for dirty magazines, as there was always a stash in all these vacant lots. We had the one behind the 7-11, another one over near Manor Market, one near the Mormon Church over on Borina Drive, and many others.

San Jose, at least the Strawberry Park area, was a magic realm full of danger and dirt of all forms.

I am here to collect things out of storage from when we sold the house I grew up in last year. Also to see old friends, go to the beach and gaze at the Pacific and hear the Sea Lions, eat the best Falafel sandwich known to man, and wander the past, catching up with ghosts and phantoms, letting them know where I'm at and asking them what it all means and meant, to live and die, to be here, in this town, this world, this motel room that once was a 7-11.

I feel the urge now to take a walk along my old paper route path. 

And to find some coffee.

I remember, when the house on Belvedere was my home, waking each morning very early, and already my mom would be up, and the coffee would be percolating on the stove, and I would lay in bed, knowing a cup of life would be waiting for me downstairs as I started my day.

On.

Here's a song. It's Corral Nocturne from Copland's Rodeo. It makes me think of bicycles and huge oak trees and the cool morning air, of neighborhood cats and the world lighting up as the sun rose, filling our little houses all the same with gold and glory, of a brief moment each day when all the madness of the world was confined to the papers in my bag, and a new day was open. I didn't have the easiest life. I don't think anyone does. But I did have golden mornings and dirt tracks for my bike, and a best friend and a dog, and a mom who made coffee, and music like this.

Enjoy.

Poem I Wrote for Jack

Sometimes, I think my brain is like that scene in Poltergeist when Craig T. Nelson takes the paranormal investigators to the kids room- the one where one of the investigators tells him that he once, on a time lapse video, got a sponge moving several inches- to which Nelson looks extremely unimpressed. Nelson then opens the door to the kids room, the room where Carol Ann disappeared, and the investigators see all sorts of debris flying around the room- books flapping like birds, a kids vinyl LP that connects with a writing compass and impossibly begins to play, a light bulb that flies into the socket of a lamp and turns itself on, and a Hulk doll riding a toy horse like he's a little Teddy Roosevelt on San Juan Hill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=fntf6IpPOVI

That's my brain. All these disparate items, flying in a funky, magic, sort of malevolent vortex, creating crazy-logic that is both amusing and creepy.

Anyhow.

So Halpin me a poem the other day and I sent one back.

Here 'tis:

Could you find me?

Anew, anow,  anonymous

And wondrous and full of daffodils

I walk walk walk to the empty old barn, 

Remnant of times past but not dead, no

Not dead, alive with the imagined ghosts 

In the fragrant Oldewood 

And sword fights on the library sign 

With limbs from the local peach trees –

Falling backwards in the 

BlossomLandTime

Of Slurpee cups and that Book

Of Cryptozoological goodness

The sky is always blue always cloudy

always always always always always

Playing a Van Morrison song

I've never heard and know by heart and I

am there and I am here and we are

the walrus we are the night we are always are

dancing leaping smiling frowning

I have the Sword of Shannarra!

I they we you you you where did it go

where are those peach trees now

where are those mad members of

the secret society of forgotten forms–

the wild ones? 

And we go marching on.  

 

 

 

 

A WOMBAT ATE MY FATHER

It's funny the things I remember. Crickets, tomato soup, Lincoln Logs. Good things. Red wine with ice cubes,  long silences, knives. Bad things.  I grew up in San Jose, California, at the time a quickly growing city nestled in the heart of the Santa Clara Valley, which used to be called the Valley of the Hearts Delight but was morphing into the urban sprawl of Silicon Valley, land of strip malls, tract housing, and freeways. I can still smell the cherry trees that grew near my house, see the weathered barnyards covered in moss , hear the sound of thousands upon thousands of crickets at night- so loud they'd wake me up in the middle of the night from time to time. My mother used to tell me that when she first came to San Jose, in 1953, a person could tell where they were by the scents of blossoms. Peaches were one area, oranges another. In my first memories, the area we lived in was surrounded by orchards of all kinds- but each year, more and more of them disappeared,  replaced by 7-11s, Dennys, and multi-plex theaters. The  nightly orchestra of crickets shrank into a sad little blues combo, and then vanished altogether, replaced by the distant roar of the new freeway.

Our home was your typical ranch style suburban home that most people my age seem to have grown up in- three bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a dining room, a living room, and kitchen connected to a garage.  Our particular neighborhood was Strawberry Park. I went to Strawberry Park Elementary, bought my comic books at Strawberry Park Drug Store, walked down Strawberry Park Drive to get to school. The weird thing was, there weren't a lot of strawberries. Just houses, vacant lots, the occasional church, and what was left of the orchards. To the west were the Santa Cruz mountains, dark blue and full of secrets. to the east was Mount Hamilton- gold and dry and covered with patches of Oak, giving the the appearance of a great chocolate chip cookie. Beyond the valley was the real world, which as far as I could tell from tv was full of hippies and bell bottom jeans and Felix and Oscar and Hawkeye, and the Zodiac killer, and Viet Nam, and some place called OPEC, and Jacques Costeau. I'd made a few forays into the real world- once to Alaska on a cruise with my mother and father shortly before they divorced, once to Disneyland with my father just after the divorce, and several times to Pacific Grove where my Aunt Alice lived. But for the most part, life was Strawberry Park.

I shared a room with my older brother Jerry, and Mom let us decorate it as we saw fit, in order to help stimulate our creativity. We had a dark green ceiling, wood paneling on the walls, and a multi-colored striped shag carpet that sort of looked like some ogre had eaten a couple of boxes of crayons and then thrown up.  On the wall was a muskrat skin we had gotten in Alaska, an up-turned horseshoe over our door for good luck, a poster of a tiger, and also a poster of King Kong. We had bunk beds, and I got to sleep on the top bunk. I don't know if this is because I whined about it, or if Jerry just wanted to bottom bunk. As the youngest, I often got things by using my pest skills, which were advanced for my age.

Every night, after the lights had been turned off and Mom said good night, Jerry would ask me if I wanted to hear a story. We all loved stories in our family. Mom was a former school teacher, our father a frustrated writer- and they were both full of stories and nursery rhymes. Whenever we drove anywhere, we'd read out loud. I remember very clearly hearing my sister Heather read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe one summer over the course of several drives back and forth to Aunt Alice's. So, every night, lights out, house quiet, Jerry would call up: "Want to hear a story?" He didn't really have to ask, because the answer was always yes. It was just the ritual, and that was that. He would ask, I would say yes, then he would ask what kind of story, and I would always request a scary one. He would say no, I'd get to scared and cry to Mom, I'd swear I wouldn't- and after going back and forth, he'd tell me a scary story. And what stories he'd tell- always original, always somehow incorporating our lives. Blue zombies who lived in our closet, rattle snakes at the foot of the bed- there was even one that had the Creature from the Black Lagoon coming out of our fish tank. Usually, I would get scared, and then he'd switch a story about nothing all that exciting, like a boy floating down a river in a raft or walking to school or something, and I'd drift off to sleep.

My life seemed full of dreams and magic, but by the summer after third grade, things started to change. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny had all gone the way of the dodo for the reasons they always do. But there were starker changes in our suburban home in Strawberry Park. New monsters, not quite so fantastic but much more real, had begun to arrive.



My father left my mother, and my brother and sister and I, when I was four. He had always been obsessed with Alaska- and had decided to go live there. My siblings and I always hoped he'd come back someday to see us- but any hope of that ever happening diminished in direct proportion to the number of letters he sent us. When he first left, there were letters practically every week, full of stories about Melvin the Great, his made up version of himself who went on madcap adventures with his much smarter side-kicks Hairy, Feather, and Belly. Melvin traveled around in a throne that sat on top of a Volkswagen Bug. He always wore a crown, had a bottle of magic pep potion in his glove box that gave him super powers, and was constantly fighting the evil Wombats. Each letter with a Melvin the Great story was illustrated by my father, and I treasured them. I'd read them over and over, never tiring of the stories. We all checked the mail-box a lot in those days. But as time wore on, the letters came less frequently, from weekly to monthly to not at all.  Mom explained to us that Daddy Jay, which is what we called him, had stopped paying something called Alimonyandchildsupport, and we probably wouldn't see him much anymore. By fourth grade, all letters from my father had joined Santa in oblivion. We assumed the Melvin had been eaten by a Wombat.

To be continued...