Myself When I’m Real

The Problem with the Homeless Problem*

January 30, 2012 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

Who was he?

I think the same question each time I see him (every day: the same man in the same spot, holding the same sign that tells everyone who he is, now—begging the question: who did he used to be, at some point in the past?) at the intersection he has stood at for several months now: the cardboard sign he holds both question and answer: Homeless veteran (the explanation), can you put some pocket change in this plastic cup (the question). The sign says he is a veteran. Okay. And even if he isn’t actually a veteran, he has been homeless long enough to be a veteran; or if he is not actually homeless, he has been acting the part long enough to earn the title. Either way, it is time for a promotion.

And so, I think, this is the problem with the homeless problem: it wasn’t (some of us learned—too late) the ones who hustled or even approached you who were down and out; they were the ardent ones, half the time they weren’t even homeless; it is the ones you never even saw, even when they sprawled on the concrete right beside you, the ones who were down, the ones who were out, the ones who had nothing to ask for, nothing to say, nothing to do except wait, sit it out until time or the whiter man’s burden delivered them that eventual, inevitable verdict. It was the ones you could afford not to be afraid of, the ones who could not even hurt themselves, because they’d already dug as deep inside as their ashen fingers could reach, the ones too dead to tear out their hearts, but not dead enough to unloose their souls, the ones who learned (too late) that death was only impatient for the fools who feared it, it had all the time in the world for those who the world owed nothing except the decency of an overdue death.

Could that be me?

The ultimate fear, the oldest worry. Who knew how it happened, who could make sense of it? And yet. These people do not wake up one random morning, on the streets and out of their minds. Or do they? If you believed the signs the man on the corner held, the government did this to him—and could do it to anyone else: that was his message, his mission.

The problem with the homeless problem is that these people who don’t see you and can’t see themselves are all chasing something they can no longer name: memories. Or, even worse, it is the memories that are chasing them, speaking in tongues they long ago ceased to understand.

A memory:

Newark Airport. That shithole. A place has to be exceptionally beautiful, appalling, or incomprehensibly pointless in order to be easily remembered years after a brief visit.

When I was a kid, (I couldn’t have been much older than ten) my father and I had a layover in Newark airport. Even then, I was perceptive enough to understand that this was no place I ever needed to return voluntarily.

An unassuming older man (at any rate, he was noticeably older than my old man, which made him old) sat in one of those impossibly plain plastic chairs, with his pants leg rolled up. It wasn’t until we got closer that I realized two things: he was alone, and he was scratching at a series of scabs on his shin. For some reason he looked our way at the moment we passed him, and after sizing us up, he stood and amiably approached my father.

“Sir, did you need someone to help you and your son carry your bags?”

“No thanks, we’re okay,” my pops replied, looking ahead and picking up the pace.

The man was persistent. In the space of fifteen seconds—my father denied him three times—my emotions slid from the appreciation of possibly having someone carry my suitcase for me, to the vague, uneasy sense that my father was being somehow rude, a jerk, to the unsettling awareness of recognition. I sensed something I’d seen plenty of, but never before in any person older than myself: fear. I saw it in his eyes, and felt it in my insides.

As we walked away my old man waited until we were at a charitable distance, then looked at me meaningfully and offered the somber assertion: That’s as low as you can go. I asked him to elaborate, as was my style, and he was either unwilling or unable to add anything to his observation, as was his style. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what my father was saying, I understood him perfectly. It was because I understood him that I needed him to say more, to talk to me a little longer about it, about anything, anything to interrupt that silence and the sudden thoughts that accompanied it.

It’s easy to believe that people like this exist for our sakes: they are dying lessons on how not to live, warnings of what could happen if you weren’t careful and found yourself scratching at scabs in the world’s ugliest airport. We forget, or we don’t allow ourselves to entertain the idea, that these people have histories; that these shadows and signposts don’t happen to serve a purpose for anyone else; they were once actual people themselves.

I realize, now, my father was wrong about one thing. That’s not as low as you can go. You can go lower, a whole lot lower. But perhaps it’s more disturbing to see the ones that are on the way down, it’s somehow easier to accept the ones at the bottom of the ocean; it’s the ones who are sinking, who are still within reach, who are drowning noisily in front of you, who sometimes have the temerity to ask you to hold out a hand. These are the ones we can scarcely tolerate, because every so often we look at them and see ourselves.

*Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

Filed Under: Myself When I'm Real Tagged With: Bob Marley, Please Talk About Me When I'm Gone, So Jah Seh

Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone*

January 27, 2012 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

L’amour de l’art fait perdre l’amour vrai.

I did not say that.

Although that is the sort of thing I might say, since I am the sort who feels obliged to quote the books I’ve read and I allow art to remind me how to relate to myself.

The love of art means loss of real love.

Some people, sometimes, choose to make their lives more complicated. Life, sometimes, decides for them; sometimes life gets there first.

To win? To lose?

What for, if the world will forget us anyway?

I didn’t write that. A poet wrote that. I’m no poet. Poets are always looking for things, like heroes. Who wants to be a hero these days? Who can afford it? The world could be—and might very well already be—full of folks who will ring changes and do their part to shake up the constricting and crazed institutions that keep us chained, bound and complacent. There are lots of these people, I’m sure: tons and tons of them. But the thing is, most of us are too busy trying to live. It’s enough to just survive without seeking to pursue such lofty, such poetic propositions.

This is the new poetry: the more things stay the same, the more they change. Here is our art: haikus of horror in the cities, sonnets of sin and corruption, limericks of deregulation, free verse free trade, rhymed lines of laissez-faire, and the emboldened ghost writer, Death, forever at work on our collective life stories.

These days we look for poetry in all the wrong places. Some of us even believe we are gazing more deeply into the murky waters of existence when all we are actually seeing is our own reflections.

And so (I think): A life is not unlike a novel: too often they are eager to please, predictable, safe. I think: you should, therefore, feel obliged to occasionally ask yourself complicated questions. Such as: what are you doing to keep things interesting? What can you do to generate momentum, keep the narrative flowing?

Listen: When some of your best friends are people who exist elsewhere—characters in books you’ve read, musicians you’ll never meet, people from the past who died decades (even centuries) before you were born, or people you knew intimately who are no longer around—it might be time to ask some complicated questions.

Who are you?

That is, or should be, the first question, as well as the last question, and it should be asked as often as possible along the way.

You see, all men are islands. After all, no one else is inside you when you’re born, no one is going with you when you die, and between those first and last breaths, the decisions, actions and accountability are your own. All, all yours.

So: you find friends, you seek solace in yourself, you learn to discern redemption through the aimless affairs that comprise the push and pull of everyone’s existence. You realize, in short, that you are going through it alone, so you should never go through it alone. You can’t run away, and the farther you run, the closer you get to yourself. And you’re all you’ve got.

If you are fortunate enough to figure this out early on, you find friends: the real ones who exist in your everyday world, and the other ones who have been there all along, the ones you can always turn to, wherever or whoever you happen to be.

Please talk about me when I’m gone. That is the title of this memoir. It is also the presumptive title of any memoir. More, it’s the unwritten title of any work of art—a desire to have those thoughts and feelings articulated, read, understood, appreciated. More still, it’s the often unexpressed message of any individual life: we want to be discussed, loved, and celebrated after we’re no longer around. Mostly we do not want to be quickly or easily forgotten.

When you hear voices, or find yourself talking to people you are not sure can hear you, you should cut yourself some slack. We’ve all been there—or will be at some point. We’ve all, on occasion, looked up to the clouds and wondered if there was a kingdom beyond the skies, the place some of us were told our dearly departed looked down from. Haven’t we all, on occasion, taken comfort from a one-way conversation we forgot to be self-conscious about? Aren’t we all, at times, unable or unwilling to entirely abandon the idea that someone else is listening?

And so: you talk. And maybe, someone listens. Anyone might be listening up there, and that’s more comfort than anything you could ever find in a church. And so: you talk. Say something; everything. Say anything you need to say to survive.

Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?

What he said.

*Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

Filed Under: Myself When I'm Real Tagged With: Czeslaw Milosz, Please Talk About Me When I'm Gone, Ralph Ellison, Richepin

Whispered Words*

January 23, 2012 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

How long will it take? I did not ask, because I wanted to make every second count. It would be over quickly enough; it was already happening entirely too soon.

It’s okay, I said as I held my dog, flanked by friends and the friendly technicians who split their time between extending or improving lives and facilitating peaceful endings.

“He won’t feel any pain,” they assured me, and I knew it was the truth since this was not the first time I had found myself in this situation. Another dog, another occasion, and the excruciating decision to restrict pain by hastening death. Another time, at a place all dogs hate to go, perhaps because some part of them suspects that someday the person standing over them at the examination table will be the same one who administers that final injection.

I had already watched another small dog slowly go to sleep, just like they said he would. Barely moving when we carried him in, he snarled once the doctor reached for him: an instinctive gesture or perhaps a final, indignant affirmation (I am still alive!) and, as we covered him with kisses and kind words, the calm, considerate doctor reminded us that there would be no pain; it would, in fact, be quite pleasant. This stuff, he said, putting the needle down, would make our dog –could, in fact, make any of us– feel better than we’d ever felt, that this stuff was illegal, and expensive, on the streets.

Another day, different doctor, same drill. My dog’s heart was failing him. It was supposed to be a sluggish, gradual decline; the type you can sluggishly, gradually prepare for. But something had happened (I seem to recall words like torn and internal and bleeding) and my dog could scarcely breathe on his own when I brought him in. Seeing him, panting heavily and near panic in his tiny, oxygenated crate was the second-most pitiful sight I’ve ever endured. I left the room so they could give me the diagnosis: it was dire and I had minutes, not hours, to make a decision. The moment my dog saw me as I rushed back into the room that default setting took over and all my own concerns evaporated.

(Stay strong, I did not need to tell myself, because I had been here before. I had looked down, yet another time, at another pair of eyes: impossibly lucid and beseeching, charging me to make sense of, or at least assuage, a kind of suffering that cannot be conveyed with words.

And once again I heard that reassuring phrase, or well-meaning mantra, that somehow articulated every hope, fear and aspiration a moment like this can contain. It will be okay, I said, smiling down at those eyes. Eyes I had looked into too many times to count, eyes that told me more about myself than anyone would believe, eyes that, until this moment, I could not imagine never being able to look at again.)

Okay.

It gets very quiet while time and place and the guarded feelings that enable us to function all fall away and you concentrate every thought into one simple, implausible objective: peace. You think it and you will it and for a moment that might be forever you become it in ways you’re never able to talk about later, even if you are inclined (and you aren’t, especially). You shiver but are calm; you are entirely in the present tense yet you are also somewhere else, somewhere deeper inside that, somehow, connects you to everything else you’ve ever known.

It will be okay, you whisper, actually believing this because it is not even your own voice you hear. You don’t know if this is you, or your mind, or the actualization of that other place (you are hazily aware) you have managed to access, understanding it is not anything you can anticipate or comprehend even though you have been preparing for it (you realize, abruptly) your entire life.

It’s okay, you say, and maybe your vision is blurred or your eyes are closed, or probably you are seeing more clearly than ever before, but now you recognize this voice and, as you look down at eyes that can no longer see you, understand, finally, that you are talking to yourself.

*Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

Filed Under: Myself When I'm Real Tagged With: john zorn, Kol Nidre, Please Talk About Me When I'm Gone

Pythagoras*

January 22, 2012 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

I can’t speak to anyone else’s experience, but my grief has made me, against all previous likelihood, into a half-assed mathematician. Numbers were never my bag, and I’ve got the report cards to prove it. And yet, ever since 2002 I repeatedly find myself going over similar calculations.

There are the obvious, inevitable examples. For instance: this is the second anniversary of her death; it was therefore seven years since her first operation. Then, with a combination of improvisation and OCD, other variations ensue: I was 27 then; my sister’s son will be 27 when I’m 57, which is two years younger than my mother when she died. My grandmother has been dead for 31 years, and my mother was 38 (I was 10) when she died. Her funeral cost about $(insert amount here) , which would buy (this many) trips to (this place). If we went to the various hospitals and treatment centers approximately fifty times over the course of five years, at roughly fifteen miles per trip, this distance would get you from DC to Chicago. If we spent x hours at those various centers, collectively this represents about y% of our lives. We ate in the hospital cafeteria roughly twenty times, or enough to pay 2% of one of the cashier’s yearly salaries. And so on.

And then, this: if I get diagnosed at 54, like my mother did, that means that effective immediately I have thirteen more years to enjoy a cancer-free existence (although those malevolent cells could already be coursing through my oblivious veins even as I type). Interestingly, these equations—and the scenarios they induce—seldom extend to my old man or my sister. It is, I reckon, disconcerting enough to apply these exercises to myself; it is intolerable (or, at least for now, not possible) to project them onto anyone else.

I can barely balance my checkbook, yet here I am, a poor man’s Pythagoras, my busy brain co-opting or pre-empting the confusion and consternation cancer yields. And just like the bad old days during Algebra exams, I apprehend much less than I’d like. For example: how might my mother have lived if she’d known she was never going to see sixty? How would I have lived? How might I do things differently (i.e., better) if I could know how far off, or how unacceptably close my own death will be?

Once again, it gets back to God, the Prime Mover with an advanced degree in these metaphysical matters. Or at least it prompts a concession to—or yearning for—some immutable force that organizes, if not explains, the mystery of being as well as the when’s, what’s and why’s of how we come and where we go.

But every dog has its day, right? Take my dog, for good measure. I knew he was going to die (he died when I was 38, which was six years after my mother died…). I know I’m going to die. My friend’s children will die. Puppies and kids not even born will have litters and grandchildren who will one day die, and it’s not easy to declare which ones may go before their time because none of us knows how long we’ve got once we get here.

And up there, somewhere, that benevolent, or oblivious, or non-existent—depending on which courses you’ve taken, in life—entity is balancing the books and crunching the numbers and checking His work, using the magic red pen to cross out errors or correct any formulas that are inconsistent with the bigger picture, which itself is an open book, and always a work in progress.

*Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

Filed Under: Myself When I'm Real Tagged With: Please Talk About Me When I'm Gone

Strictly Business (Class): The Dreaded Day Trip*

January 19, 2012 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

A.M.: Departure

Early, at the airport.

Look around: some of the pretty people, many of the mediocre, and the rest of us, all sizes and shapes: men trying to look like the human mannequins who sold them their suits, women with bodies stolen from a Robert Crumb cartoon.

I can’t help overhearing the woman across from me who has not discovered her indoor voice, agitated and unabashed, wire growing out of her ear to prove she is not, in fact, arguing with herself. To tell the truth, she is yelling—there is simply no way around it.

And look at this joker, walking in purposeless circles, mouth in constant motion above the ice cream cone he’s carrying in the hand not holding his carry-on. Not everything I just described is accurate, I realize, as I see how he’s sizing up the innocent bystanders: his circles are serving a purpose after all—he is seeking out the amateurs. I myself am more or less an amateur, but I’m not as much of an amateur as he hopes I am. Direct eye contact is out of the question, yet I’m practically daring him to say something just so I can ignore him. After all, if 9/11 gave us anything, it ensured that all the actually dangerous people now avoid airports. But then, there’s no reason to invite annoyance. Just because he can’t hurt me doesn’t mean he can’t kill me with kindness.

Some of the people in airports are leaving town to escape their problems; some are heading toward their problems; and the rest are either unaware or unwilling to accept that they are the problem. These are the otherwise inscrutable citizens who shout into cell phones even as they bump and grind down the unfriendly aisle.

As I warily edge my way forward, trying not to touch or eyeball anyone, I am certain the capricious airline gods have assigned me a middle seat between the ice cream man and the woman whose main problem seems to be herself.

No one should be happy to be on an airplane at 7 AM. No one should be happy to be awake at 7 AM. Unfortunately for me, it appears that the only two people happy to be awake, in the air, and alive at 7 AM are on this same flight. Sitting directly in front of me. Speaking. Loudly.

What could anyone possibly have to say, to someone else, on a plane, at 7 AM?

Like virtually all of us, they are required by work to be here. Unlike virtually all of us, they are inexplicably tickled about it. And there is only one conceivable excuse for being delighted to be on a business trip at 7 AM: money. To be fair, they don’t seem to be talking about money—yet—they are talking about love. Then again, if they are actually enjoying this ritual, love is just a metaphor for money.

And then, before smug self-approval allows me (for once) to shut my eyes in peace, there is the maddening intrusion of alternate explanations. Perhaps this exultant young man in front of me is in the unfathomable thrall of fate. Perhaps, against all possibility, and in accordance with the inviolable intricacies of Cliché, this fortunate fellow has met the stranger meant to be his soul mate.

And then: perhaps if I did not always sit here, moping and miserable, I would meet my soul mate one of these mornings, enabling me, finally, to make some sense out of these strictly-business excursions. After all, isn’t this how it always happens?

(Dad, how did you meet Mom?

You’d never believe it, but we met on a plane!)

Why shouldn’t that be me?

It could.

And yet. It’s not likely. After all, any time I’m on a plane at 7 AM, the smart coin is on the certainty that I’ll once again opt to remain silent, in my shell, eyes ironed shut, wishing I was anywhere else in the world.

Up in the air, alive, the sun shows off all it can see, up here where to be or not to be gets decided every second. I look around at befuddled businessmen, suppressing panic attacks because they can’t use their cell phones. The woman next to me, hunched over her laptop, keeps snatching suspicious glances in my general direction. I am, of course, reading what’s on her screen, but what does she expect? The stewardess stares me down sweetly, daring me to accept a cup of coffee that was most likely brewed last week, reheated this morning, and has spent the last several hours roiling around in its airtight cask, asphyxiating on its own fumes. Politely, I decline.

Just as I’m drifting off into a cantankerous catnap, the pilot interrupts the silence to announce that air traffic control has not given us the go-ahead for landing, whatever that means. Even up here you can’t catch a break, even the unfriendly skies are backed up, impeding forward progress, inviting exasperation. Even up here the clouds won’t part until the big money has cleared customs and changed hands.

In the air less than an hour, there is collective anxiety amongst the people who can’t plug something in. The second tires hit the tarmac it quickly becomes a contest to see who can turn on their phone first. How did people exist in the world before cell phones? Before e-mail for that matter? Before computers? I lived in that world. Recently. And I have no idea.

Touchdown. Everyone leaps to their feet, elbowing each other for the honor of not getting off the plane first. I pretend to be patient and enjoy making the woman next to me, who obviously can hardly stand not having her portable computer opened and available, wait her turn. After a few near rumbles, shouting matches and rugby scrums in the aisle, I stoically join the clustered masses on the concourse, reluctant but ready to throw myself on the mercy of the big apple that will chew me up and spit me out before I even know what hit me.

Welcome to the machine, the man moving past me does not say. I’m in too much of a hurry to stop (like always, like anyone else), but there is something so familiar about him that I’m compelled, despite everything I’ve learned, to pause and look behind me: he is still there, off to the side, shabbily clad, immediately recognizable by his contrast to everyone around him; he wants to approach one of these businessmen, but all of them are walking too fast, too deliberately, too purposefully.

Automatically, the doors move aside and frigid air earnestly greets everyone headed its way. It takes about five seconds (as always) to feel the cold and then the money dread: if it weren’t for the money, it wouldn’t take much—in a strange city, lost, alone. Cold. Broke. That’s how shit like starvation and sleeping on grates gets started. Quiet in the corners, huddled under bridges, working the frenzied crowd for a friendly face, hoping for the handout that never comes.

There is only way to get through mornings like this: drink heavily. Right now the coffee and orange juice are kicking in, caffeine battling c-vitamins, engaged in a Dostoyevskian struggle for my soul. Or, at least, my nervous system. A million little meetings imploded into one agenda, it becomes an endurance test to see who will blink first and ask for a bathroom break, or delegate more action items for the unfortunate underlings lucky enough not to be here. Mostly I try to maintain eye contact with the most important people and stifle the incessant anxiety that someone might ask my opinion or a question I actually know how to answer. Not unimpressed, I watch possible futures unfolding from the projector, purgatory via PowerPoint.

P.M.: Arrival

These day trips ask a lot of you, almost so much that you find yourself fondly reminiscing about the good old days you never knew, the days when horse-drawn carriages signified cutting edge business travel, days when people might have fantasized about a few hundred miles in less than an hour, not anticipating planes that make your mind feel microwaved.

Outside. Of course the line for taxis is indefensible. One look at this mess and it seems safe to wager that it will take longer to get a cab than it just took to fly a few hundred miles. On the bright side, the cab and its driver are both clean and smell inoffensive, even nice, even (dare I say it?) sexy. And yes, it’s an odious—smelling—stereotype, but until we cease to be surprised by a painless experience in a pleasant-scented cab, we’ll continue to appreciate them as the exception and not the rule.

I don’t wear the seat belt in cabs—cabs never crash; besides, why attract attention? Why give potential tragedy the time of day?

Moving fast—too fast for any circumstance other than getting me where I needed to be, and I wasn’t even in a hurry—each person he passes and each grunt of approval I offer signify the following, mutually understood assurance: every car in the rear view is another ten cents tacked on to the twenty percent tip he’s already got working. We each appreciate the rules: if I was in the car beside us—if I was anywhere on earth except his backseat—we’d be mortal enemies, but as it stands, we are on the same team, this is our war and we’ll endure much and suffer stoically and make it to the promised land, one man together.

True, some cab drivers don’t want to talk; (some don’t speak your language, some may not even speak) but some want to talk, some want to talk very much indeed, and will initiate the action and then wait, like de-fanged cobras, ready to pounce, aggressive yet harmless, at any opportunity. In fact, with some folks you get the vibe that they are so starved for conversation, solidarity, or just that elusive human touch, that they would not only waive your fare, but pay you if you’d let them pull over and shoot the shit; or even better, slide into some bar and order a round of anything on the rocks, or best, take you to their modest but clean and adequate abode, where their plain but polite wife would whip up some of the best home-cooking you could never pronounce or even describe other than to say it was as impossible as the entire incident. In sum, it’s unlikely.

And yet, they are out there all the same, waiting.

Am I sleeping? No, but I can see a building that I’ve never noticed before, waving to me from the side of the road. It wants me to notice, as if I’m not going to notice. Office buildings, especially ten-story monstrosities, do not just pop up overnight, do they? Even in this town, where anything is possible, this couldn’t be happening. But there it was: people, who had presumably been up and at ‘em since before the sun came up, streaming in from the three story parking garage, putting in their time before they’ll enjoy a well-earned rest: dinner, maybe a cocktail or two and several hours of somnambulant sit-coms before the nightly newscasters lulled them to sleep.

Sleep. Somehow while I’d been asleep, the dirty work of industry had struck again. Overnight, it seemed, a miracle of the modern age had occurred: clandestine plans had been approved, blueprints implemented, construction commenced. Trees had been felled, brick and mortar meticulously amassed, offers had been made, salaries negotiated, moving vans hired, new houses occupied, paychecks deposited, kids sent to imprudently priced daycare, new dentists and family doctors consulted, second children conceived, extramarital affairs instigated, divorce papers served, summer softball leagues formed, cutbacks announced, departments laid off, stock options doled out and quickly cashed, inestimable hours and dollars spent on alcohol, cigarettes, dangerous as well as non-addictive drugs, pornography—always the pornography—and unused health club memberships.

Industry and big money are all about initiative; they don’t sleep until the job is done. And the job, of course, is never done.

Cooked on the surface but still raw inside, it’s all in a daze work as the cab carries me down the home stretch through disorienting yet familiar streets. Survival suburban-style; a metropolis in transition, trying its best to live up to the image it was designed to imitate—sprung from the minds of forward-thinking people who are trying to recreate the past. On the corner high school punks stand beside a phone booth, making no calls; a quick right turn and I’m feeling the money dread as we cruise past several blocks of four car families. Being outside the city is safer, particularly if you prefer the sound of crickets to cop sirens. Eventually, I am deposited in the middle ground of this middlebrow town, and for lack of any other options, I am relieved.

And yet. This is supposed to happen later, with wife and kids and a basement to be banished to after hours. I’ll deal with that later. I think.

My front door is the one mystery to which I have the key, but for some reason I still feel as though I’m sneaking up on a stranger every time I return from a trip; I’m not sure who I expect to see, who might be hiding from me, who possibly could have found the way into my modest refuge from friends and memories.

With Pavlovian precision, I make my way to the medicine cabinet and pour myself a bracing plug of bourbon. It’s more than I need or deserve, I think, but I don’t want the bottle to suspect I was unfaithful in another town, waiting for my return flight for instance, in a cramped and crappy airport bar. If this were a movie (I think, mostly in the past, but even today), I would grab my crystal decanter, filled with obviously expensive spirits, and administer that potion the old-fashioned way, needing no ice cubes, especially since I would never get around to drinking it, as it’s only a prop, a cliché. No one reaches for that tumbler these days (except in movies); the question is: did they ever? Even in the ‘50’s? Or has it always been part of the script?

*Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

Filed Under: Myself When I'm Real Tagged With: *Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone, Straight No Chaser, thelonious monk

Deus ex machina*

January 5, 2012 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

Was that as bad for you as it was for me?

That’s the question I did not ask when Father _____ left our house. On to his next appointment; all in a day’s work.

Extreme unction: the old-fashioned term for that quaint custom. It serves its purpose even now, I suppose, but I could not help thinking on this particular occasion it is more often a ritual designed for everyone except the person lying on their death bed.

Speaking only for my mother, she was too busy dying to want, much less appreciate, the solemn incantations and grim officiating on offer. It did not help matters that our local church’s current pastor had a personality that made even the implacable surgeons we dealt with seem ebullient. It wasn’t his fault; he was an older man from an older school: the 21st Century did not suit him, just like it would not suit over-the-hill academics and the stratified folks still clinging to every ism they could get their claws on –even or especially the ones they could not afford. The world keeps spinning and younger, more insolent models keep popping up to replace you. Some learn how to take this in stride, others resist and end up like insects flying against traffic. And some just disengage and surf that sluggish wave onto the safe haven of senility. Father _____ was of the latter ilk; it was not that he was going through the motions so much as the motions were going through him.

And who could place blame at the exhausted feet of a man ten years past retirement age? Not I. Can you imagine earning your living re-reading the same book (no matter how much you enjoyed it the first thousand times; even if you believed that as soon as the words left your humble lips they ascended straight to God’s impossible ears) and knowing, every day, how this particular story ended? Worse, telling a tale with a conclusion that already occurred, since everything we do –if you follow this narrative– has already been plotted out in that great workshop in the sky. And all this role required was that you promise to anyone willing to listen the same salvation you could never be sure of, no matter how certain you were, no matter how achingly every aspect of your existence relied on this Deux ex machina.

Father _____ had quite apparently made peace with his place in the world (or worse, resigned himself to it) long enough ago that by now every rote gesture was divorced from anything approximating passion. But was passion, in his case, even a prerequisite? He was, at this point, incapable of being surprised by anything: in certain vocations this might signify the highest possible level of proficiency.

In any event, I could not know –and did not particularly care– if his visit was doing anything for him (that was between him and the surprise ending awaiting him once he got a taste of his own unction). I knew it was doing something for my old man, so I contented myself with the diminishing returns of dubious blessings. Pops was receiving the same dispensation he attained at each Sunday service: a box checked off, a chore completed, an obligation fulfilled. It was, at best, a somber sort of solace, but I certainly wished, for his sake, it was bestowing some measure of spiritual respite.

“Does she want to receive communion,” the holy man said, more a statement than a question as he reached for his stash, a to-go Eucharist in what looked like a Tupperware container. At that moment he more than a little resembled a parent ready to placate an unruly child with a treat, and I realized (reflecting on this later) that my observation signaled the tipping point of an extended but ultimately unsatisfactory experiment with the Catholic faith. The priest’s indifference (even worse than the indignation he may have managed in his younger years) when my father broke the news that his wife was not able (none of us could say she was not willing but we all had our opinions) to partake did not rankle me as it might have in my younger years. If this had gone down a decade earlier I would not have yet seen enough of the world –and the ways it wears on all of us– to appreciate how even the most noble occupations are, at the end of the day, a way to put bread on the table. Or coins in the collection basket, if you will.

It was not anger I felt, just relief that when finally confronted by the thing I feared most in the world, I was neither willing nor able to clutch at the redemption he stuck back in his coat pocket. I could not feel disappointed and I dared not feel pity; what, after all, did I know about all he’d seen and the things he felt? I hoped then, and hope even harder now –though I’m not quite willing or able to pray– that he was still alive somewhere inside, or had been at one point. And even now, although his extremities were growing cold, an ember of faith and hope blazed warmly somewhere inside the recesses of his worn-out heart.

*Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

Filed Under: Myself When I'm Real Tagged With: Deus ex machina, extreme unction, Jeff Buckley, Please Talk About Me When I'm Gone

2011: Time To Die (Part Two: July-December)

January 1, 2012 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

2011: In pace requiescat!

7/26/11:

Whenever an artist dies too young, particularly when it is a self-inflicted surrender, there is an inevitable (irresistible?) tendency to romanticize or lionize. That Winehouse joins the infamous “27 club” (Jimi, Jim, Janis, Cobain, etc.) only ups the ante and ensures that the same folks who salivated at her death-spiral will now weep amphibious tears.

I’m disappointed, as a fan, that we won’t get a chance to hear her mature and evolve from the immature chanteuse whose destructive and self-loathing tendencies overpowered the better (and prettier) angels sulking deep inside. I’m sad, as a fellow human being, that a woman with so much talent and potential was not able to love her life –and herself– enough to see how much discovery and excitement lay ahead of her. I sincerely wish she could have listened to her own music and felt the same thrill and astonishment so many millions of people felt. It may not have been enough to save her, but it might have been enough to help. And sometimes help is the first step to salvation.

I hope, and trust, she is sleeping well. And if there is any karmic justice she is able to feel some measure of peace and fulfillment that in some small way approximates the pleasure she was able to provide so many of us, despite the pain she was so obviously in for so long.

Read the rest, here.

Portrait of the artist as a young pup.

Wait, did I say artist? I meant barbarian.

No, that’s neither fair nor accurate. It’s difficult with Quinzy– he was many things, frequently at the same time: tameless beast, gentle soul, abominably-behaved, adorable, impish, awe-inspiring (of which more shortly), incorrigible and, above all, utterly unique.

Check it out: I have three separate, visible scars on my right hand. All of them are from Quinzy’s teeth. The largest scar is from a bite he gave me, while I was petting him.

***

I used to say (and I was more than half-serious) that while I did not believe he could ever die, if and when he did, the medical community needed to study him and find the cure for cancer. I’ve never seen a dog that simply did not show any signs of weakness or age for so long. He was not hyper, he just went at the world in a way that Auggie March would fully endorse. So with apologies to Saul Bellow, I’ll take the liberty of embellishing that famous first paragraph from his masterful novel: “I am an American, (puppy-mill)-born—…and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a (dog)’s character is his fate, says Heraclitis, and in the end there isn’t any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles (or muzzling the snout).”

Quinzy treated the world like his bitch and while I couldn’t (and wouldn’t want to) necessarily emulate that approach, it’s hard not to admire and respect it. I’ve never met a human –much less an animal– that slurped so much ecstasy out of every second he was allowed to enjoy. Quinzy got his eyes, ears, snout and occasionally his teeth on anything and everyone within his reach and he never hesitated and he never slowed down. Until he slowed down.

But we never thought he would die. We actually thought he would live forever. Or at least shatter some canine records. I still reckon that scientific minds should study his DNA and come up with the antitode for illness, aging and depression. He was the most alive dog I’ve ever known and I’ve known a lot of dogs. Dogs, if nothing else, are very alive and adept at living (they are dogs, after all).

I won’t get carried away and claim that the scars on my hand, which I can see right now as I write these words, are the ironic gifts Quinzy left me. But in a way I could not appreciate until this very second, perhaps he was giving me something I could not fully fathom, since I’m a human. Did he understood and appreciate that he had been rescued from abandonment or a premature appointment with the veterinarian’s least-loved needle? Who knows. Who cares? What was he supposed to do, thank me? He did more than that anyway, and he did it without guile or the expectation of gratitude, since he was a dog. He showed me how to live a less contrived, more memorable life. He left me with a part of him that I can easily keep in my head and my heart. Finally, in his own incomparable fashion he ensured I had a visible reminder or three I’ll carry with me until the day I finally slow down myself.

Full tribute to this amazing dog, here.

Sad new from the wire: guitar legend Bert Jansch has passed away (another casualty of The Big C). Story here.

My introduction to his work was, presumably like many punks my age, courtesy of Neil Young. In particular, Neil’s epic album-closing statement from his (greatest?) album On The Beach, entitled “Ambulance Blues” apparently owes more than a slight debt to Jansch’s ’60s tune “The Needle of Death” (interesting in its own right, as Young would of course write the enormously affecting –and popular– anti-heroin anthem “The Needle and The Damage Done”).

While I’m congenitally disinclined to join the choruses of hagiographers anointing this outstanding marketer, salesman and genius as some type of saint, I’ll certainly throw my hat in the very crowded ring and concede that our world would be much different (and not for the better) without his influence.

As trite as it may sound, Jobs did in many ways help transform fantasty into reality. For that alone, he is a monumental figure in American history and should be celebrated as such.

I am less concerned about what further inventions and innovations we may not now see with him gone, and lament the more simple –and human– fact that he is yet another human being gone entirely too soon because of the awful disease called cancer. It seems very sad to me that once again we are reminded that death is inevitable (not always a terrible thing; carpe diem and all that) but that cancer does not give a shit how rich, powerful or brilliant you are. For some reason it stings a bit more to see people with all the money and connections in the world reduced, like rubble, by this awful ailment that is an equal-opportunity force of destruction. I worry much less about which new toys Apple will produce and the fact that his family has lost the husband and father at the disgustingly, offensively young age of 56.

For now, it seems right –and human– to celebrate the life and accomplishments of a man who undeniably left his mark, and provided a past, and future that would be radically different (and not for the better) had he not made his mark. Equal parts iconoclast, countercultural guru and corporate crusader, he made a complicated motto (Think different) and turned it into a postmodern religion of sorts. We could have done much worse. Whatever else he did, Jobs thought differently and in the process, took much of the world with him. What else can be said but kudos on a life well and purposefully lived?

R.I.P., Smokin’ Joe. Another casualty of The Big C; yet another instance where even the toughest amongst us can’t overcome that greedy and too often indomitable disease.

There is not much I can, or would want to try to add to the remarkable life story of Smokin’ Joe. Whether it’s the made-for-the-movies image of Joe pounding slabs of meat in a Philadelphia factory (see: Rocky Balboa), or the way-better-than-fiction melodrama of his relationship with Ali (the fights, the hype, the acrimony, the endurance, the bitterness, the not-fully-resolved antipathy), there has never been anything quite like Joe Frazier. And his relationship with Ali which, well….just watch the HBO documentary The Thriller in Manila. Beyond Sophocles; beyond Shakespeare. No bullshit.

For mere mortals like the rest of us, how could we begin to understand what it feels like to come that close to death in what could accurately be described as blood sport? In front of millions of eyeballs in real time. Preserved forever on tape. And that’s just the (inconceivable) brutality that was inflicted and endured. What must it have been like for Frazier to know that he could and perhaps shouldhave won that fight? You think you’ve had regrets in your life? How about knowing that Ali had no intention to come out for the 15th? I can scarcely comprehend how Frazier got out of bed each day with this thought gnawing at him like a rat feasts on a cold bone. It’s likely that the same thing that defined him is what redeemed him: the stubborn, unflinching, brave and single-minded drive. To survive. To be the best. To be true to himself.

One need not denigrate Ali to elevate Frazier. It comes dangerously close to cliche, but it must be said that Frazier was a true champion. In many senses of the word. He was a fighter, but his biggest bouts always took place outside the ring.

It is a shame it did not happen while he was alive to see it, but it’s long past the appropriate time for the city of Philadelphia to erect a statue for its favorite son. The one created in the dank, reeking gym where they build legends, as opposed to the bright, plastic city where they make movies. If there is a statue for Rocky, there damn well should be a statue for the man who inspired him.

See whole thing, here.

Some extended thoughts from 2011 regarding hockey, violence and cognitive dissonance, here.

Snippet:

So what is complicated about it? For starters, hockey fighting remains a diversion that people who genuinely deplore violence (like this writer) endorse and get excited about. What does that say about us? I’m not certain. But I do know that unlike the “real” world, it is exceedingly rare for two hockey combatants to enter the fray unwillingly. Yes but, doesn’t that make it a great deal worse, if they do it because they get paid? (Well, is boxing beatiful? Brutal? Your opinion here will go a decent way toward explaining your ability, or willingness, to negotiate the enigmatic charm of the expression “five minutes for fighting”.) That gets to the not-so-easily explained sensibility of athletes (in general) and hockey players (in particular). Hockey players have traditionally been paid a great deal less than other athletes in more popular sports. It is, therefore, a bit ironic to consider that these players are more immune to pain and prone to play a regular season game like the world is on the line. It is, for hockey fans, refreshing that the players have an integrity that has been ingrained from generations and is remarkably resilient against the corrupting forces of salary, fame and product endorsements. Put in less exalted terms, people tend to get (understandably) cynical when, say, a baseball player with a multi-million dollar annual contract goes on the D.L. with a strained hamstring. That type of commonplace indifference is especially noticeable –and appalling– when one realizes that hockey players routinely return to the ice moments after receiving stitches, or losing teeth, or suffering bruised (and in some cases, broken) bones. Google it if you don’t believe me.

Another giant of whom we’ll never see the likes of again has left the planet. R.I.P. Hubert Sumlin.

I’ll resist the urge to say it’s the least they could do, since at least they are doing something, and acknowledge this nice gesture by the Glimmer Twins (who owe a great deal to Sumlin and his former employer).

You can usually measure an artist’s legacy by the people who worship said artist. If the names Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimi Hendrix mean anything to you, it should provide some manner of perspective for how huge and influential this understated guitarist was –and will remain. Like all great artists (musicians or writers) he knew instinctively to do more with less and use silence as strategy. Although he was remarkably proficient (listen to his grease-in-a-frying-pan lead on the immortal “Killing Floor”, later covered to excellent effect by a young Hendrix) he also had the smarts to step back and let the almost overpowering presence of Howlin’ Wolf run rampant. The result is the cool and effortless grace that so many subsequent rock stars trying to play authentic blues –including some of the ones listed above– have ably imitated but never duplicated.

The Wolf, of course, would have still been a supernova without the (amazing) band he assembled; he was too much of a force of nature, musically and otherwise, to settle for less. But he was wise enough to employ and retain Sumlin, who gave those old Chess classics their distintive edge and inimitable swagger.

More here.

Not a lot of fanfare surrounded the death of Howard Tate (a couple of obits here and here).

In a sad, sadly typical way, this is appropriate, since there was not a lot of fanfare surrounding him while he lived.

This is a terrible shame for many reasons, the most important being he may be the best singer you’ve never heard.

The dude just could never catch a break. Joplin’s cover gave him the opportunity he needed but…it just never happened. Bad timing, bitterness and frustration followed, and a man who should have dominated the decade ended up homeless, addicted to crack. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

Fortunately, he found religion and got his act together. The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Better still, he was able to record and perform. It’s nice to think he received a modicum of the respect and appreciation that should have been accorded to him back when it would have mattered a lot more. But he did not die unknown, and he did not end up dead in the streets. So that’s something.

You can –and you should– grab hold of some history (for under $10) here and here (his song “Where Did My Baby Go”, which unfortunately is not available on YouTube, is worth the price of admission: Howard Tate sings the SHIT out of that joint and it’s a travesty that this did not go straight to number one and make him wealthy and well-known. The Lord works in mysterious ways).

I’ll resist the urge to note how untalented ass-clowns are getting record deals and reality TV shows, because it has always been thus. It’s still thus, only more so. And while that makes it harder than it normally would be to swallow the karmic injustice of a man like Howard Tate not breaking through when he might have, it is what it is. Besides, now is not the time to lament or complain: it’s time, as always, to celebrate what we did get, and what we’ll always have.

The music, of course, lives on (stop me if you’ve heard this one before).

Full thing here.

The best tribute I can offer to Hitch is that even when he infuriated me (something he did often when he wrote about politics after 9/11), he excited me. I’ve never read a writer who thrilled me as consistently and thoroughly as Hitchens did. He is one of the very few writers who could write about virtually anything and I’d want to read his take. Even, or perhaps especially, when I disagreed with him I came away a more informed and better equipped. In this sense, Hitchens –who at different times could accurately be described as a Marxist, a contrarian, a reactionary and an iconoclast– provided lessons for how to engage intellectually and spiritually (yes, spiritually) with the world. And think about those four words (and there are many others I could use): how many public figures could conceivably, much less convincingly, be described thusly? If Hitchens had sold out, his ostensibly contradictory stances might seem like a case of cognitive dissonance. In actuality, it was the evidence of his ongoing evolution, as a thinker, writer and human being. Evolution is never static, and Hitchens was always moving forward: ravenous, curious, ornery, insatiable. Above all, he burrowed into the world with the glee and intensity of a converted soul. His salvation was not religion; it was the simple and profound act of existing: I think, therefore I am.

Hitchens combined the range of Twain, the erudition of Mencken and the irreverence of Hunter S. Thompson. Of course he also had the political courage of Orwell, the acerbic wit of Cyril Connolly and the adroit literary acumen as his great friend Martin Amis. Of all the writers whose work I’ve worshipped, Hitchens was the most fully-formed summation of his influences; as a result of his monomaniacal addiction to knowledge, he produced an insight that is at once all-encompassing and wholly unique. At his best, Hitchens could remind you of any number of geniuses; at the same time, nobody else is like Hitchens. The Hitch is sui generis, on the rocks.

Much more, here.

So what did I like so much about him? Well, you have to be a soccer (i.e., football) fan to understand in the first place. You also probably had to be young and in love with the game. As a soccer freak, I was consistently at awe with how he managed the field. As I got older and understood he got his nickname because of his inconceivable temerity to actually read books, he became a hero on an entirely other level. He also was a chainsmoker. Suffice it to say, those were different days, my friends. More, he was a big drinker. Not celebrating this (indeed, the smoking and drinking undoubtedly led indirectly, if not directly, to his awfully premature death), but just putting it out there: the man knew how to live on and off the field. Oh, did I mention that he actually became a doctor after his playing days? Or that he was very progressive politically? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, this motherfucker rocked the beard.

More man love, here.

Regarding the amazing life of Vaclav Havel, there is nothing I can say that he did not say better himself:

Hope in this deep and powerful sense is not the same as joy when things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something to succeed. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It’s not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. It is this hope, above all, that gives us strength to live and to continually try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now. In the face of this absurdity, life is too precious a thing to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly, emptily, without meaning, without love, and, finally, without hope.

Another irreplaceable giant has left the planet.

Sam Rivers, always graceful, elegant and cool as a mofo, certainly carved out his own niche in the jazz idiom.

While his work as a leader will –and should– be celebrated, he also did remarkable work on sessions led by his compatriots.

Anyone not familiar with this great reedist should proceed directly to the tri-fecta of Fuchsia Swing Song (1964), Contours (1965) and Dimensions & Extensions (1967).

Check him out on Dave Holland’s classic Conference of the Birds (1973), Tony Williams’s Spring (1965) and Bobby Hutcherson’s Dialogue. After that, enjoy picking and choosing from the gems he created over five decades on the scene.

In one of the early obits to hit the press, this revealing quote from his daughter pretty much puts the man and his work in proper perspective:

“Music was his life, music is what kept him alive,” said his daughter Monique Rivers Williams of Apopka, who also handled her father’s concert bookings and learned from him the joy of making music. “My father, in my eyes, was on vacation all his life. He used to tell me, ‘I’m working, but I’m loving every minute of it.’ Retirement was not in his vocabulary. ‘Why do we even have that word,’ he used to ask me, ‘there should be no such thing.’”

Filed Under: Myself When I'm Real Tagged With: Amy Winehouse, Bert Jansch, Christopher Hitchens, Derek Boogaard, Howard Tate, Hubert Sumlin, Joe Frazier, Quinzy, Sam Rivers, Socrates, Steve Jobs, Vaclav Havel

2011: Time To Die (Part One: January-June)

December 31, 2011 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

2011: In pace requiescat!

The new year kicked off with unfortunate news when word of the great Gerry Rafferty’s passing hit the wires. My tribute to him in its entirety is here. After celebrating the glory of one of the defining ’70s tracks, “Baker Street”, I had even more positive things to say about my personal favorite Rafferty tune:

And then, impossibly, there may be the song that is best of all, “Right Down The Line”. Also from City To City (an excellent album, well-worth acquiring), this is a love song you can believe in. I’m not even certain exactly what I mean by that, but it is definitely not the typical love song that is shorthand for expressing intimacy, like a Hallmark card. This is one of those tunes that actually is capable of conveying the sorts of things you’d like to tell someone special, and since you know you can’t do it more convincingly, or beautifully, it manages to become more than a song. Anyone who has fallen under its spell (and I’ve met many women and men who endorse it) will understand that this is not over-the-top, at least in any superficial or facile sense.

A while back I wrote at length about that old-fashioned courting ritual and rite of passage called the mix-tape. Here is some of what I fondly recalled:

The primary M.O. for mix tapes, of course, was for the intrigue they added to relationships. A mixed tape was de rigueur for establishing, assessing and understanding the various levels of any serious romance. The first mix was as important, in its way, as the first kiss: too early and you could blow it; too late and you may have missed an opportunity to send the right signal at the right time. If you remember mixed tapes you received without the slightest pang of remorse, enthrallment or unforced sentimentality, either the relationship or the tape sucked. Probably both. (My condolences.)

Well, “Right Down The Line” was not first mix-tape material. It was always, eventually a go-to, but you had to earn that one. So, if you ever received a mix-tape from me with this one on it (you know who you are, if any of you are reading this), you were one of the lucky ones. Which, obviously, is not meant to imply you were lucky to have dated me; but rather, you should consider our relationship the necessary impetus, the delivery device for those songs (and this song). And if that’s the best thing you remember about or associate with me, I’m quite happy –and humbled– to greedily ride the coattails of such amazing artists. Of all of the ones I invoked, Rafferty takes top billing, and “Right Down The Line” is a musical memory that will always hold a sacred place in my heart.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying thank you to Gerry Rafferty. Based on what little I knew, and the accounts I’m reading today, his life was not always a happy one and he fought desperately against demons too many of us are obliged to face. Hopefully even in his most lonely moments when he could not see the light, his heart was less heavy knowing how many lives he had improved with the gift he shared. I sincerely hope, if there is a karmic force and any sort of justice in our universe, he is in a peaceful place where he can feel the enormity of what he achieved, and realize that his life meant a great deal to more people than he could ever have imagined.

It’s impossible to put up a thumbnail pic of the incomparable Liz Taylor. Especially this picture. One of the most uninspired cliches, when a famous person passes, is the line “we won’t see their like again”, but in the case of Taylor, would anyone argue with that assertion? One of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in the last few years is the EPIC Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed. My lengthy love letter (to the book; to these men) is here. Naturally the sections with Burton deal heavily with Liz and their tempestuous relationship. Here’s a taste:

Personal note: this book will be a required purchase for anyone who has ever been fascinated by Burton’s relationship with Elizabeth Taylor. I must confess, I’ve never cared much about it, or her, but could not help but be amused, and startled, to discover that in her prime she could drink just about any other human being under the table. “I had a hollow leg (in those days)…my capacity was terrifying,” she recalls. So they had that little hobby in common, but it was definitely Liz’s looks that put the hook in Burton. “Burton referred to Taylor’s tits as ‘Apocalyptic. They would topple empires before they withered.’” Let’s stop and savor that for a second: there are novelists whose collected works don’t contain a line that perfect. Inevitably, both Burton and Taylor withered, and it was from the inside out. Anyone who was born between 1970 and 1980 can recall seeing these two on TV (or in a movie) and thinking “What’s all the fuss about?” and having their parents quickly set them straight. In their primes they were arguably the brightest and most beautiful stars in the Hollywood galaxy. But wither they did, and it was an expensive, languid, and hard-earned degeneration.

While it was extremely sad to realize Sidney Lumet would not be making any more movies, it seems appropriate to simply acknolwedge the ones he did make (some of the best we’ve gotten, by the way) and salute a life well-lived.

It’s difficult, and pointless, to try and isolate which film was Lumet’s best or most enduring. The fact that he made three of the best movies of the ’70s (three out-and-out masterpieces in one decade) is more than enough. There are already several well-written and worthwhile tributes and summaries of his long, amazing career, and they rightly spend time on the many decades he was active (including this last one when, at the age of 83, he directed the disturbing, outstanding Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead). For me, it was that seminal decade (the ’70s) when he did his best work, and that work does the near-impossible: it totally reflects its time and provides indelible commentary on –and for– that era; while managing to anticipate our world, almost forty years later. This is beyond prescient and bordering on prophetic. Of course, it has as much to do with the screenplays as his direction, but it’s to Lumet’s credit, and indicative of the dilemmas that drove him, that he gravitated toward this material.

Much more, including a tribute to one of my all-time favorite films, Serpico, here.

From April 15 (please read the entire tribute, here):

This hurts.

Of course jazz enthusiasts are (always have been?) a small if discerning bunch, so it’s unlikely the sudden passing of Billy Bang will register as much as it should on the collective consciousness. This is a shame, but it can’t be helped. Those who knew Billy, and those who know and love his work, already miss him, and shall have to console ourselves that a great man has moved to the great beyond.

I fall back on what is, at this point, a somewhat formulaic observation, but I’m content to repeat it since it’s true: the death of any meaningful artist, particularly at a painfully young age (Bang was 63, which might not seem particularly painful or young to you, but it does to me, especially since, as a working jazz musician, he was still relevant, engaged and important to music) is always difficult to endure, but we have little choice but to console ourselves with the work left behind.

In the end that is probably the fairest trade we can expect or ask for: we respect the artist and mourn their absence, but we keep them alive by listening –and responding to– their efforts. This is the only type of immortality we can verify, and it seems more than a little satisfying for all parties.

So…who was Billy Bang?

Check out an overview of his life and career here.

A more detailed, and very touching tribute, from NPR, is here.

Pretty remarkable and very American life. He came up in a time when intolerance based on skin color still held sway, and of course that pain was reflected in his subsequent work. Not being wealthy or connected, he was one of the thousands drafted to fight in Vietnam. Needless to say those experiences played a significant role in his aesthetic. Indeed, he made two masterpieces that draw specifically –and movingly– from those experiences, Vietnam: The Aftermath and Vietnam: Reflections. For anyone interested in Bang’s work (and sublime semi-contemporary jazz in general) would do well to check out either.

With Billy gone, we’ve lost a beautiful and generous –and brilliant– soul. Please find peace, brother Bang.

An appreciation for the man who improved music, here. Here’s a taste:

Perhaps more importantly, and this is something the younger generation, spoiled brats that they are, can never fathom and therefore never appreciate, is that content was not ubiquitous or readily available back in the bad old days. And I don’t just mean it wasn’t all free for all plugged-in pirates; I mean a great deal of it did not exist. Many albums from the glorious era of Prog-Rock had not been reissued or had fallen out of favor and, in some cases, had never been in favor in the first place. As such, particularly during a time when MTV, hair metal and synth pop reigned supreme (dark days, my wet-behind-the-ears-brethren), “classic rock” was not just considered music made by dinosaurs; it was a dinosaur–it was extinct.

There is no doubt in my mind that the proliferation of compact discs led to the resurgence of sales for old music, which prompted the classic rock radio formats that became a huge deal toward the end of the ’80s.

While writing/reminiscing about Jethro Tull on the occasion of J.D. Salinger’s death (here), I recalled the impact compact discs had on me, as a teenage music fanatic. I did/do defend my obsession with music as an addiction, and an expensive one, but also one that has had only positive influence on my life in literally too many ways to count:

As it happens, when I first experienced The Catcher in the Rye I was in the early (but intense) stages of what became a lifelong infatuation with Jethro Tull. Which naturally coincided with my burgeoning obsession with all-things progressive rock, which happened to coincide with the release of so many classic recordings on that new-fangled technical revelation called compact discs. It would be near impossible for anyone who didn’t live through those days to imagine a world when you waited for anything: i-Pods and online access have made everything that has ever happened available, immediately.

Back then, waiting for certain Rush, Yes, King Crimson and especially Jethro Tull albums to get their digital reincarnation was like patiently awaiting Moses to deliver a new sonic commandment every other week. The upside of this, of course, was that it was still a time when you had time (you had no choice) to savor and spend time with a new purchase, and by the time you’d (temporarily) exhausted your enthusiasm, you had ample funds to get the next installment. This was also, as many will remember, a time before information itself was a free 24/7 proposition. As such, each trip to the record store was loaded with possibility: you never knew what might have been released, including albums by bands like Genesis and Pink Floyd, that you never even knew existed. And, it should go without saying that the prospect of upgrading scratchy vinyl (or tape-recorded) copies of Beatles, Stones, Doors, Zeppelin and Hendrix albums was something slightly beyond orgasmic.

And so, it was not just a matter of how it all sounded, it was also a matter of discovering all this new (old) shit. In this regard, I reckon I was the right age at the right place at the right time, and my obsession with all types of music coincided with this giant technological leap. If compact discs made more classic rock available, it’s simply not possible to convey what a godsend this format was for jazz and reggae. If you think early Pink Floyd albums were obscure (and they were), getting out of print Blue Note jazz discs or any reggae by anyone other than Bob Marley was a pipe dream (literally). While I may have saved tens of thousands of dollars had all this music been available by some magical computer –which is what it would have seemed like then, and still, to a certain extent, seems like now– I can’t say I regret the inexpressible thrill of discovery and the delight of entire eras of music suddenly within my grasp: I reckon (without sarcasm or snark) that I experienced, on some slight but meaningful level, what scholars or religious devotees are in search of when they dedicate themselves to their monomaniacal quests for enlightenment. For me, the pleasure was never in doubt, the rewards indescribable, and at the end of the day, this was the best investment I’ve ever made. Every single disc I ever bought (except of course the ones that were borrowed or stolen) I still own, they all play, and they still sound impeccable.

My world, in sum, existed with albums and compact discs and then digital files. It still does, and while it’s strange to imagine, I’ll welcome the next technological advancement, if there is one. In the final analysis all of these toys and innovations are delivery devices for the most pure form of expression mankind has been capable of perfecting. For that, I salute the rich life and considerable accomplishment of Norio Ohga.

R.I.P, Big Man.

For my money, “Jungleland” is the best rock song of the ’70s. A detailed deconstruction can be found here.

Here’s a taste:

Which brings us back to the Big Man. His contributions (as a presence on stage as much as a player on the songs) going forward were always well-received, but it’s debatable whether he ever blew again like he does on Born To Run. And on the album’s centerpiece, possibly Springsteen’s finest –and most important– moment, Clemons does his finest work. “Jungleland” employs the epic, almost operatic (“Man there’s an opera out on the Turnpike”) strategy Springsteen developed on the first two albums (think “Lost In The Flood”, “Spirit in the Night”, “Incident on 57th Street” and “New York City Serenade”), but this is at a whole other level. From the languid, strings and piano introduction to the gradual build-up (“As secret debts are paid/Contacts made, they vanish unseen), to the aforementioned guitar solo (3.00 – 3.27), the tension, at once joyous and foreboding, builds and then, instead of crashing, it crests. Enter Clemons. 3.54 – 6.13: the solo. It is extended, totally in charge and almost indescribably affecting. He wails, establishes a groove and then (right around the 5.43 mark) goes to that other place. Finally, just as the strings and piano take over, that last gasp, like a light going out or a life being saved. It is his moment, and in addition to being the best thing he ever did, it ranks as one of the best things anyone has done in a rock song.

Cheerio to a great teacher and inspirational friend. Full tribute here.

So, what does a former student and fellow human being –who connected with him about matters of music and history– make of this, other than the obvious (the obvious being: there is no way to lessen the blow of an untimely passing like this and no reason to rationalize this grim reminder of how horribly quick our time on this planet always is)?

Well, I will consider the same things I always think when someone who impacted my life passes on. I will think: be grateful that they were here at all, be humble that you had an opportunity to learn from them. Be happy that you are alive. Be eager to keep his memory alive, in words (easy) and especially in deeds (trickier). We have learned little, I reckon, if we let sorrow or regret overwhelm or consume us. We deepen the meaning of the departed as well as our own capacity for evolution if we can do more with the time we still have. I think the death of an admired person can –and should– serve as both an occasion for respect and humility, but also as a rallying cry. We all will die, some of us sooner than we’d like; but the only way it’s possible to defeat death is to keep our loved ones in our lives.

I notice, over the course of the past couple of years, I’ve been obliged to remember the lives of departed artists and it is never a pleasant experience. In a lower moment I may even be tempted to acknowledge the morbidity of this repeated exercise (also knowing that as I get older the artists I admire are also getting older and these occasions will only become more frequent going forward). Then, no matter how dejected I may feel –and the news of Mr. Caddell’s death has set me back in a profound way for the last 24 hours, perhaps in part because Clarence Clemons just died, also the victim of a stroke, and yesterday was Father’s Day– I consider the most important part: I should be celebrating them because their lives were well worth celebrating, and they made sufficient impact on me (and the world) that I was happy to do my humble part to express that gratitude.

Let’s face it: is there any more telling evidence of a life lived well than that it is remembered? Iain Caddell made his mark, and I feel secure in saying he touched the lives of many, many people. He should have had more time to enjoy this world and spread his love, but he made the most of the time he was given. It is something anyone should aspire to and I understand, today: even in death, he continues to guide and inspire me.

Cheerio, then, to a unique and unforgettable human being. (I appreciate –and more than slightly moved– that this particular video happened to be uploaded to YouTube on May 13, 2011; my birthday.)

Filed Under: Myself When I'm Real Tagged With: Billy Bang, Clarence Clemons, Elizabeth Taylor, Gerry Rafferty, Iain Caddell, Norio Ohga, Sidney Lumet

The Narrow Path: A Tone Poem*

December 25, 2011 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

You are alone.

You are back in the city and you are alone as you emerge into the open and empty space, stepping out from the stale depths of the subway. The city has been blessed with snow and the air is heavy, like your thoughts. An austere chill holds sway as daylight succumbs to impatient evening.

You walk swiftly down the blank sidewalk, deflecting the grins and grimaces of commuters as they hurry by, delayed waves of anxious motion. The city is alive all around you: in the circular maze of windows and their electrical language, brightening as the sky darkens; in the cabs that hustle past, mocking pedestrians with warm exhalations of spent energy; in the stench of steam rising from sewage drains, escaping sullied rivers that flow in underground tunnels, teeming beneath the gray and black city; and suddenly in the misshapen face of the man who approaches you, eyes twitching an irremediable message (Help me, Help me! HELP ME!) and you shrink back until he slinks back into shadows, head shaking the answer he always gets (No, No! NO!). Your eyes guide you forward, eager to escape this squalid spectable.

Piles of steaming garbage smolder in neglected piles, suffocating beneath the sullen snow. Stepping awkwardly you slip and fall to one knee, genuflecting in the silky slush. Impossibly, you feel the cluster of sunken bags moving beside you and glancing down you see eyes (for a second you see yourself in those tired eyes). A distinct scent settles in the clumsy shift of air –one you instinctively recognize– and you scramble away. Your breath bursts in short white clouds that live and die simultaneously but the smell clings to you, assailing your nostrils. You understand what this signifies and you are ashamed.

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Damp clouds hang low in a disappearing sky: there will be more snow. And the wind, previously a child is now a bitter and aged man who coughs in your face, his bile a chill that grips your entire being: gusting and swirling at your feet, working its way up, over and around you, through you. Moving on slowly you curse this city and its wretched reality, a reality you will not escape from. Wishing warm thoughts, you close your eyes to think of the sun and somehow

you recall another city in another time and how frightened you were as you traveled, alone, through the hostile marketplace and the mass of humanity, an ocean upon the sand; there was no comfort in that prehistoric city: you were almost swallowed up by the groundswell of sallow, sneering faces and there was no refuge, even in the sanctuary –no solace in that holy place. And the molten sun soaked your skin, its heat causing you to look away, to look down and in looking you saw and in seeing you were saved because suddenly you were not alone: no longer was your path solitary because he walked with you and his stride was purposeful and deliberate, and you felt him brush against you as he moved ahead, so you fell behind him and

you find yourself directly behind him, a few paces behind the man, unable to overtake him because the snow has been packed down by other pedestrians. You walk together, silhouettes in the swaying mist. Thoughts dance rapidly in your mind, congealing as the chill numbs your face. You watch the wind blow back the long hair that masks the figure whose shadow falls in front of you, and you realize that the brunt of the winter blast is being borne by this disheveled scarecrow come to life, strangely out of place in the frigid city. Yet he’s somehow familiar with his hunched shoulders and humble gait: looking down you see the scarecrow wears broken boots; his bared soles scrape the soiled ground. You ponder his pain, the imploding agony of this brutal scenario playing itself out in front of you as you live and breathe, once again in the city, so you close your eyes and suddenly the snow is sand and

you remember the narrow path you once traveled as the stranger walked beside you –and on that mild evening he carried his sandals in his hands and the sand was warm underneath, each grain alive between your toes– and this stranger, with his serenity and silence, reminded you of the one you knew before; the one who walked among you, always in front of you, and even then you followed him into the city: he was known by the people there and they threw flowers at his feet and smiled and you believed when the water turned sweet and red and your mind swam, growing tranquil and light. It was easy to believe, then, while you watched the cup overflow and the crimson drops fell to the ground not unlike tears and

then the sand is snow and the red is there, somehow the red is still there. Eyes down you see the darkened snow, trailing a steady stream from the open sole of the scarecrow.

You are left alone as he moves silently onward, unrecognized, into the cold corners of the city.

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*Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

Filed Under: Myself When I'm Real Tagged With: Peter Gabriel, Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

Fairy Tales and Feeding Tubes*

December 6, 2011 By Sean Murphy Leave a Comment

The brief experiment with the feeding tube was sufficiently impractical and unsavory that it seemed a small, if conflicted victory when we agreed to discard the apparatus.

“So just call us if you have any questions or trouble using the tube,” the nurse said.

My mother frowned. “But…can I not eat anymore?”

“Oh, well you can,” the nurse smiled, employing the loud and cheerful voice we reserve for the very young, the very old and the terminally ill. “You can just chew the food and then spit it out.”

At that moment my sister understood: it’s over.

I remember the boxes of liquid nourishment we had received and how they looked like tins of cat food stacked one atop the other. It was, literally, dehumanizing: more chemicals and contraptions to facilitate what her body could no longer manage on its own. But, we knew, some people can make peace with this sort of situation and exist indefinitely, assuming their systems hold up.

People say they will try anything; do whatever they can to extend life—and they mean it. But when you are obliged to receive sustenance in a manner that more closely resembles a car getting gasoline, it is surprisingly easy to draw lines in the sand.

“I didn’t want to disappoint him,” my mother sobbed, overcome with exhaustion and relief. She was referring to my father, the husband and scientist who, to this point, was still processing—and proceeding—as though these were problems that could be solved. Time for an appointment? Drive to the facility. Questions and concerns? Speak to a doctor. Vomit or feces on the bathroom floor? Clean it up. Helplessness and the smothering waves of hopelessness? That’s what prayers are for.

Several days later the decision had been made. The good news: no more feeding tube. The bad news: you are going to die.

She could not have known her life would now be measured in weeks instead of months. None of us knew.

Here’s the thing about acceptance: we all had time to prepare and adapt. My mother, finally, after opening every door and stumbling down every last alley, had no other choice but to accept. Sometimes the choice makes itself when there is nothing left but a choice that will make itself. She finally accepted where we were and what was coming.

Even with the best of intentions we waited too long to bring in Hospice. We did not understand that at a certain point even a single day is too long. In shockingly short order, her body had deteriorated to the point of its final betrayal: she could no longer digest food.

“Your body can no longer digest food,” my father said as we all stood around the bed, confronting the moment that, after all denials, medical interventions and best wishes otherwise have failed, arrives at last. The only comfort is that at least it’s not a doctor telling her; at least she is in her own home.

“Do you understand what this means? Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

“But what about Gandhi?” she asked.

Nobody knew what to say to that.

Gandhi lived for weeks without eating…

My father smiled, but my sister and I did not. Neither did she. To this day accounts vary as to whether this was my mother’s sense of humor shining through; her attempt to convey acquiescence with resolve and elan. I was not—and am not—able to share this perception, and I wish I did. I’d very much like to believe this interpretation, because it would make it so much easier to recall the look on her face.

I did not see a dying woman bravely acknowledging that last inevitable. I saw a frightened woman resisting the pitiless assessment most cancer patients must confront. She seemed unbearably innocent and vulnerable, like a child trying anything to prolong bedtime. Just one more story, she was saying. One more chance; one last reprieve.

(Remember Rip Van Winkle? Maybe I could just go to sleep and when I wake up, a month or a year from now the cancer will have forgotten all about me…

Little pig, little pig, let me come in.

No, no, not by the hair on my chiny chin chin.

Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in!

No! What about Scheherazade and the thousand and one nights? How about if we just tell stories and keep talking so we can outlast Nature?

You can’t put the genie back into the lamp!

No! What about Christ in the desert? 40 days and nights…

The spirit is willing but the body is weak. Father, if You are willing, take this cup from me…)

We knew what was coming and she knew what was coming, but the last days seemed more like the concluding act of an extended production. As the credits rolled you could appreciate, in hindsight, all the plot twists, clues and assorted characters: the heroic nurses and the imperious surgeons; the absent friends who failed and the family members who pulled through; the quietly restorative acts of strangers and the redemptive solace of favorite artists. And, above all, the unwelcome reminder that happy endings occur only in fairy tales.

*Excerpted from a work-in-progress entitled Please Talk About Me When I’m Gone

Filed Under: Myself When I'm Real Tagged With: Please Talk About Me When I'm Gone, Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade