You both tell each other it isn't the last time you'll talk, but it is. You tell each other the relationship might be over but you're still going to be the best of friends, because you both still need the other in your lives. And maybe, after some time, you'll even get back together. Neither of you realizes that you're both only saying this because you've only broken up a month ago and neither of you are over it. There's pain in every aspect of the conversation, so you say nice things to each other to keep the heartache to a minimum. And since there was no real offense that ended the relationship, neither of you really wants to hurt the other.
But you both hurt. There's a pain in a breakup that rivals any pain one can feel. When you date someone for as long as the two of you dated, two and a half years, that person grows on you to a point that you're nearly sharing blood and limb. The pain of being without them is otherworldly. It hurts so much you'll try anything on the end of any extreme. One of you leaves the country, goes to the ends of the world, literally, to run from the pain, but it finds you. The other tries to find comfort in writing, socializing, self-medicating. But there's no relief, for either. The only comfort is the voice on the other end of the line. The voice that has caused the pain is the only one that can truly quell it.
The conversation starts with two evenly depressed voices asking how the other is doing. And both voices lie in their responses. "Oh not bad, pretty good, actually". You both know each other too well, so the jig is up pretty quickly. Someone starts to cry. The other isn't far behind.
"God, I hate this so much, what are we doing? Can't we just pretend we never broke up and just carry on like before?"
" I know, this is awful. I just want to see you, to hug you, to kiss your cheek. Oh this hurts so much."
You both sob, knowing you can't turn back the clock, and a hug and a kiss and an apology can NEVER undo the pain. The wound is open and the scar will be there long after the wound is sutured, but it's open and bleeding right now. There's no escaping the pain. You cannot UNcut.
You both calm down and take deep breaths. One of you has began dating someone else. The other feels they have been bulldozed. The information comes with a biting sting. They act like its not earth-shattering, but it is. And after what few seconds of civility you shared, the other breaks down again.
"How could you be dating already? Who is he? Do you love him?"
"He's just different from you. That's what I need right now. He's sweet, he's got his stuff together. He's a nice guy"
The other wants to disembowel the "new" guy, even though he knows the new guy has no reason to show loyalty to the old, as he does not know the old guy.
Then the typical ex questions are asked and answered. She knows she has hurt you with the news of the new guy. So she starts to massage the sting away a little bit. She did not know you were going to react so painfully.
"No, he's not as big as you. You are still the best lover I've had. I don't know if there's a future with him."
You take solace in some of what she says but at the end of the day you know that when both hang up the phone she will have him to go to, to take comfort in, to have sex with, to regard passionately. She has plunged the knife in and has won this round.
The rest of the conversation is a whirlwind of emotion in which both of you, still strongly attracted to one another, take turns taking shots and following them up with relieving comments. You tell each other why each of you thinks the relationship ended. This starts an argument. An argument in which nobody is truly angry, just truly truly hurt. Blames are assigned, then redacted.
"THIS is why we ended!"
"No THIS is why it ended!"
Then more tears on both ends of the line.
Exhausting tears. You both sob with such power and heaves that it sounds like rolling thunder. Feels like rolling thunder. The pain so intense that it seems the crying isn't even serving as the proper outlet.
You both give in to the pain.
Six months, you both agree, is the next time you'll see if maybe there's still something in the cards for you. Six months. In six months you'll both know. You'll both be far enough removed from each other to know if you still feel that unconditional love you'd both shared before this whole atrocity began.
Six months.
You both set your internal alarms and wish the clocks would speed by in the blink of an eye. You're both confident in the end, that the two of you will live happily ever after...in six months. That life will start anew, pain free...in six months. That there's a light at the end of a tunnel six months away.
We'll talk again in six months.
But, you're both smart. Smart enough to know that, in six months, one will be in love with someone else the other will have no interest in someone whose expectations are so high for them. The voices on the ends of the line will be bereft of the pain that was once so familiar. Both of you will probably be better off.
But right now the idea of getting back together is so tantalizing that you talk about how romantic it will be.
"Oh my goodness, wouldn't it be so romantic if we got back together on January 7th? Our anniversary? Just like a fairy tale!"
And now you both feel it's okay to let the other one go. When five minutes ago, before the six month agreement, you were fighting so desperately to keep each other on the line. After every exit line, there'd be a silence on the other end, then a little bit of an exhale, then a beginning of a new conversation that one of you would create merely to keep the other on the line.
But now it is okay to let each other go.
You'll talk again in six months and you'll live happily ever after.
Or will we?
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
The Man I Met That Night
He spoke fast, broken, and somehow so violently methodical that night. An old man. Weathered by the great storms of turbulent years. Salty, wrinkled skin, gray, dry, cracked. But his voice held within it those same years. And it's a polar difference, the toll such time would take on a man's skin versus the character it gives a man's voice. His song. This voice, his siren, kept me in front of him that night, basking in the melody of his infectious phrases. The words left his mouth chopped up, furious, yet calculated. As he spoke he massaged those syllables through a great many gestures he'd made with those old, gray, wrinkled hands; as if to mold these ideas to his own proper standards, before letting the words reach me. He manipulated the language, tailored it to his own definitions, his own chaotic dialect, wherein he described himself as "porous." Not because his beaten old body sprung the occasional leak in the form of urine or drool or diarrhea, but because of the abundance of knowledge, vitality, creativity and monologue that went forth from it. I awed at his bravery, nay, his audacity, to so simply stomp the English language so unapologetically, and moreover, shape it into something so much more beautiful. His confidence shone in every breath. His advice was pure.
"Have you lived, son? Have you?" His eyes pierced me.
I nodded, "Yes, I, I think so"
"You think so," he scoffed. "How? How have you lived?"
I stuttered in the face of his radiating intimidation. He was not trying to intimidate me, but his domineering disposition was out of his control.
"You sit here at this table, cross-legged like some cowering Cinderella. What, twenty-five years of age? Oh you've lived within the very boundaries of the word, by its pitiful, tiny, definition. An unnamed drone in the ant farm."
He drank from his whiskey and his eyebrows raised in the delight as the ice cubes clanged a little melody in the tumbler. He set the glass back on the cracked wood of the table between us. I watched in silence, pondering my minute existence.
"Somebody, uh, mom or dad or some overpaid, under-qualified teacher in your youth." He paused and crossed his own legs. "They told you what life was. How to live it, no?" He didn't wait for a response. "You went to school and got graded on your retention. The institution wanted to know if you knew how to live. Did you retain anything else in those years? Sure, you, you knew how to tame the mighty Pythagorean Theorem, memorized world capitals. You were asked to do those things. No, you were told to. But did you retain the life in those years? Not by their definition. But by my definition...or, for the sake of this conversation, our definition. "
"Did you, kid? Did you retain the taste of her lips? The smell of your skinny fingers as they rose from underneath her dress? That's life, kid. There's a beauty unabated in the purity of virginity. Did your fifteen year-old, uh...impressionable...uh...psyche drown yourself in such a beauty? No, sir, I doubt it did. You got your diploma and that was your sense of accomplishment, yeah?"
I nodded and drank my whiskey with great apprehension of it's fiery burn.
"Of course, then you went to University and solved for standard deviation and reaped the harvest of another mis-education. And I'll bet, somewhere in that half decade of wasted dollars, you had a professor recommend some subversive author or progressive artist, Bukowski or The Marquis de Sade or some genius alike? Maybe you picked up the books, read a half a chapter or so and threw it aside in favor of the gloom and false security of institutional text. Yes, sir, I'm sure you, you said 'to hell with this starving artist bullshit and those losers who write woe is me! in their, their squandered allotment.' You, yes? You spat at their broken empires, their legacies doomed to wander the lore of the cults as Andy Warhol or Hunter Thompson.
He sat back and lit a cigarette.
"I've lived, kid. Kid...this I can tell you, kid. I have lived a life that a church-goin' man would burn in Hell for". He drew a long pull from the cigarette.
"I've lived in those same broken-down motels as Bukowski. Wrestled the same gin-soaked skanks whose breath could spark flame and whose wrath could start wars. I've bled my heart in longing for the flare and passion of such abominable women. I've watched as the last pony crossed the line spoiling my trifecta and swallowing that month's rent. Watched in agony, son. Again and again I've moaned in great pleasure, ravenous, in the basement orgies of the heroin slums. Neo-Sodom, boy. A realm all its own, unbeknownst to the masses. But I know, son, I know these things as I have lived them. "
"To know the enlightening freedom of roaming aimlessly in the thick forest of the Adirondacks, is what I know, boy This, boy, is a life lived!"
He spread his hands as if to say "voila". I nodded and finished my goblet of alcohol and winced. He'd reduced me to dust. And while my nodding met his approval, it was with half a heart that I conceded to his postulations and visions of grandeur. I hadn't thought my life so normal and unlived before I'd sat down in front of this prophet. Something inside my practical sense of maturity wanted to dismiss everything he'd said as bullshit, the senseless ramblings of an aged drunkard. But the overwhelming conviction in his voice, the poignancy with which he'd delivered his atheist sermon, made very clear its unmitigated validity. I was gripped with a feeling of discontentment and wanted to get into my car, or any car, and drive without any sense of where I was headed. I wanted to live! And not by their definition, but by our definition. I wanted the despair, the depravity. I wanted to journey the unknown, uninhibited by the trifled existence of the layman.
But he wasn't done. Just as I was perched to spread my wings and grab the world by the short hairs, he opened his eyes wide and wild.
"There it is, boy! I see it!" He looked hard into my eyes..."I see it in you, kid!"
"Have you lived, son? Have you?" His eyes pierced me.
I nodded, "Yes, I, I think so"
"You think so," he scoffed. "How? How have you lived?"
I stuttered in the face of his radiating intimidation. He was not trying to intimidate me, but his domineering disposition was out of his control.
"You sit here at this table, cross-legged like some cowering Cinderella. What, twenty-five years of age? Oh you've lived within the very boundaries of the word, by its pitiful, tiny, definition. An unnamed drone in the ant farm."
He drank from his whiskey and his eyebrows raised in the delight as the ice cubes clanged a little melody in the tumbler. He set the glass back on the cracked wood of the table between us. I watched in silence, pondering my minute existence.
"Somebody, uh, mom or dad or some overpaid, under-qualified teacher in your youth." He paused and crossed his own legs. "They told you what life was. How to live it, no?" He didn't wait for a response. "You went to school and got graded on your retention. The institution wanted to know if you knew how to live. Did you retain anything else in those years? Sure, you, you knew how to tame the mighty Pythagorean Theorem, memorized world capitals. You were asked to do those things. No, you were told to. But did you retain the life in those years? Not by their definition. But by my definition...or, for the sake of this conversation, our definition. "
"Did you, kid? Did you retain the taste of her lips? The smell of your skinny fingers as they rose from underneath her dress? That's life, kid. There's a beauty unabated in the purity of virginity. Did your fifteen year-old, uh...impressionable...uh...psyche drown yourself in such a beauty? No, sir, I doubt it did. You got your diploma and that was your sense of accomplishment, yeah?"
I nodded and drank my whiskey with great apprehension of it's fiery burn.
"Of course, then you went to University and solved for standard deviation and reaped the harvest of another mis-education. And I'll bet, somewhere in that half decade of wasted dollars, you had a professor recommend some subversive author or progressive artist, Bukowski or The Marquis de Sade or some genius alike? Maybe you picked up the books, read a half a chapter or so and threw it aside in favor of the gloom and false security of institutional text. Yes, sir, I'm sure you, you said 'to hell with this starving artist bullshit and those losers who write woe is me! in their, their squandered allotment.' You, yes? You spat at their broken empires, their legacies doomed to wander the lore of the cults as Andy Warhol or Hunter Thompson.
He sat back and lit a cigarette.
"I've lived, kid. Kid...this I can tell you, kid. I have lived a life that a church-goin' man would burn in Hell for". He drew a long pull from the cigarette.
"I've lived in those same broken-down motels as Bukowski. Wrestled the same gin-soaked skanks whose breath could spark flame and whose wrath could start wars. I've bled my heart in longing for the flare and passion of such abominable women. I've watched as the last pony crossed the line spoiling my trifecta and swallowing that month's rent. Watched in agony, son. Again and again I've moaned in great pleasure, ravenous, in the basement orgies of the heroin slums. Neo-Sodom, boy. A realm all its own, unbeknownst to the masses. But I know, son, I know these things as I have lived them. "
"To know the enlightening freedom of roaming aimlessly in the thick forest of the Adirondacks, is what I know, boy This, boy, is a life lived!"
He spread his hands as if to say "voila". I nodded and finished my goblet of alcohol and winced. He'd reduced me to dust. And while my nodding met his approval, it was with half a heart that I conceded to his postulations and visions of grandeur. I hadn't thought my life so normal and unlived before I'd sat down in front of this prophet. Something inside my practical sense of maturity wanted to dismiss everything he'd said as bullshit, the senseless ramblings of an aged drunkard. But the overwhelming conviction in his voice, the poignancy with which he'd delivered his atheist sermon, made very clear its unmitigated validity. I was gripped with a feeling of discontentment and wanted to get into my car, or any car, and drive without any sense of where I was headed. I wanted to live! And not by their definition, but by our definition. I wanted the despair, the depravity. I wanted to journey the unknown, uninhibited by the trifled existence of the layman.
But he wasn't done. Just as I was perched to spread my wings and grab the world by the short hairs, he opened his eyes wide and wild.
"There it is, boy! I see it!" He looked hard into my eyes..."I see it in you, kid!"
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
'Til Death Do Us (Auto)Part
Having a car is like being in a doomed relationship. At first it feels new and exciting, even if it isn't the best looking car you ever driven. You're not afraid to kick it into high gear and be a little reckless. You brag about it to anyone who'll listen.
"Hey have you seen my new car? Oh it's really great, not a ton of miles on it. It's in really good shape."
You see other cars, nicer cars, younger cars, but they don't really strike you like the one you've got.
Then, almost out of nowhere, like in that doomed relationship, the car starts giving you trouble. The problems start small. You notice it's getting a little louder. You pretend not to notice but your friends and family start to bring it up. You try to explain it away. You say it's not as big a problem as it seems. It's not that loud. It'll pass. It just needs to work some things out.
But the problems persist and the car gives you problems you can no longer ignore. Suddenly it's very moody. It stops and goes when it wants. You buy all kinds of new things for it but nothing seems to help. You buy it new brake shoes, but it remains thankless. You offer to do some extensive work on its undercarriage but that doesn't help. By this point everyone you know notices the car is suddenly older looking and beat up. It no longer has that new car smell. The relationship is beyond repair.
Finally it comes to a breaking point. You don't want to just dump the car and move onto a new one. The car has begun to treat you so bad that now you've reached the point you'll try anything. Good thoughts come with more ominous tones. You offer to let someone else work on the car, only for a little while, just to see if it helps any. But when you get the car back from the other guy it seems worse off than when you left it. The car now won't do anything for you. The relationship has officially spoiled. But how do you end it?
You make a phone call to a friend.
"Hey listen, man, I need you to do me a favor and never mention it after it's done."
"Okay, what's the problem?"
"I need to...um...get rid of something"
"Oh, no, Jaime, you mean your car?"
"Shhhh, yes but let's just call it 'my wife' from here on out. I don't want anyone who might listen to us to get the wrong impression"
"I don't know, man, I've never done anything like that before. I don't know if I could go through with it."
"Hey, don't get worked up. It's fine, I'll split the insurance money with you 50/50. Just get rid of it for me."
"Okay, well how do you want it done?"
"Well 'my wife's' been so bad to me I'd just rather you beat her to death with a baseball bat, but you can't do that. You have to make it look like an accident. These insurance guys are pretty ruthless when it comes to the actual payout."
"Alright, you have to give me a week or so to work up the courage."
"Alright, but hurry up. If it catches wind that something's up it'll stop running before we ever get the chance to take it out."
It's done. Your friend comes to get the car under some weak false pretense. You kick it's tires one last time. And watch them go on down the road. You get a little sad. You reflect on the good times, you cry a little. At social gatherings you tell everyone you got in an accident and totalled it. But you know the truth. The car's dead on the side of some back road. But you'll never tell anyone.
I love my car. My 1997 Mercury Sable. I love it but it's almost time...to kill it.
"Hey have you seen my new car? Oh it's really great, not a ton of miles on it. It's in really good shape."
You see other cars, nicer cars, younger cars, but they don't really strike you like the one you've got.
Then, almost out of nowhere, like in that doomed relationship, the car starts giving you trouble. The problems start small. You notice it's getting a little louder. You pretend not to notice but your friends and family start to bring it up. You try to explain it away. You say it's not as big a problem as it seems. It's not that loud. It'll pass. It just needs to work some things out.
But the problems persist and the car gives you problems you can no longer ignore. Suddenly it's very moody. It stops and goes when it wants. You buy all kinds of new things for it but nothing seems to help. You buy it new brake shoes, but it remains thankless. You offer to do some extensive work on its undercarriage but that doesn't help. By this point everyone you know notices the car is suddenly older looking and beat up. It no longer has that new car smell. The relationship is beyond repair.
Finally it comes to a breaking point. You don't want to just dump the car and move onto a new one. The car has begun to treat you so bad that now you've reached the point you'll try anything. Good thoughts come with more ominous tones. You offer to let someone else work on the car, only for a little while, just to see if it helps any. But when you get the car back from the other guy it seems worse off than when you left it. The car now won't do anything for you. The relationship has officially spoiled. But how do you end it?
You make a phone call to a friend.
"Hey listen, man, I need you to do me a favor and never mention it after it's done."
"Okay, what's the problem?"
"I need to...um...get rid of something"
"Oh, no, Jaime, you mean your car?"
"Shhhh, yes but let's just call it 'my wife' from here on out. I don't want anyone who might listen to us to get the wrong impression"
"I don't know, man, I've never done anything like that before. I don't know if I could go through with it."
"Hey, don't get worked up. It's fine, I'll split the insurance money with you 50/50. Just get rid of it for me."
"Okay, well how do you want it done?"
"Well 'my wife's' been so bad to me I'd just rather you beat her to death with a baseball bat, but you can't do that. You have to make it look like an accident. These insurance guys are pretty ruthless when it comes to the actual payout."
"Alright, you have to give me a week or so to work up the courage."
"Alright, but hurry up. If it catches wind that something's up it'll stop running before we ever get the chance to take it out."
It's done. Your friend comes to get the car under some weak false pretense. You kick it's tires one last time. And watch them go on down the road. You get a little sad. You reflect on the good times, you cry a little. At social gatherings you tell everyone you got in an accident and totalled it. But you know the truth. The car's dead on the side of some back road. But you'll never tell anyone.
I love my car. My 1997 Mercury Sable. I love it but it's almost time...to kill it.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Hello! From Your Newly-Rich Friends
Hello all!
Sorry it's been so long since I've been in contact, but you all know it's been a tough adjustment for us all (myself, Darlene, our dog, Taco, and our unusually-confrontational son, Helen) since having hit the Powerball jackpot of $152 Million ($102 Million after greedy Uncle Sam took his share.) Rest assured, I'll try to get you up to speed.
We've received your congratulatory letters, or, as Darlene and I like to call them, your underhanded attempts at beggary, and I must say you should try walking in our shoes before being so overtly green (or congratulatory, as you like to call it.) This sudden adjustment we've been forced to make has not been an easy one. There is so much that you take for granted when you're broke and living in your dilapidated houses. We've had to learn to accept our (mis)fortunes as we go. Please indulge me while I try to educate you.
First of all, once we hit the money Darlene mentioned that we should probably buy a new house.
"Frank!" she said. "Let's get out of this two-horse shit-show and find some nicer digs!"
She said it should be something "bigger than all of our friends' houses". I obliged and peeled myself from my comfortable couch and Absolutely Fabulous! marathon on Comedy Central to do the bidding of the love of my life (to whom I've promised my undying loyalty unless the new girl I decide to proposition is hotter than her, or only slightly less hot than her but at least five years younger). I knew right then that our lives would never be the same. Once on the road we went from the podunk trailer we rented on the outskirts of Knoxville to the ritzier parts of Tennessee filled with glorious colonial-style homes with immaculate lawns that seemed to never end only until another mansion appeared. These houses would suffice just fine, thought I, as Darlene and I had never talked about getting a larger home before we became rich. On the contrary, Darlene's tastes for the finer things, the grandiose, had seemed to change overnight. It seemed as if her entire personality had changed completely. Alas, she is the love of my life and bearer of my dim-witted child, so I agreed to go to Beverly Hills where we could find a home that, as Darlene so eloquently put it, "doesn't look like a goddamn life-sized Barbie house".
I agreed to compromise with Darlene and said that we could go to Beverly Hills but we would purchase one of the more modestly priced homes that could be found there. So we settled on our $15 million estate, once owned by such high profile stars as Leif Garret and Patrick Duffy. I took my seat on our overpriced leather sofa in the hopes of living out my dream of becoming an over-weight couch-potato. No rest for the weary though.
Darlene said we needed new cars to match our new home. So we bought some high-priced sports cars. Then she said we should get a maid for the house and a nanny for 11-year-old Helen, our beautiful son who is also living proof that abortion is not 100% effective.
I told her I would do the interviewing for both positions. Another roadblock. Good maids and nannies are hard to find, let me tell you. The first maid I interviewed was a beautiful girl with a great figure (only slightly less good looking than Darlene, my beautiful and forgiving wife). But that's where her good qualities ended. After the first day of the trial run I returned from my money-counting seminar to find her sitting her lazy ass on MY leather sofa. Meanwhile, Helen had sneaked to the attic where he thought he'd discovered the worlds largest reserve of pink cotton candy. I could understand why a child might be confused, given the paper coating had a picture of The Pink Panther on it. I found him passed out on the attic floor after an hour of searching. That's probably something the nanny should've prevented so I fired her lazy ass right after I slept with her and paid her the pre-negotiated $20,000. I then headed to the emergency room with Helen, where he had his stomach pumped, after which the doctor told him he could eat all the spicy food he wanted because his stomach was now completely fireproof ! For every problem, a silver lining, I guess.
The hunt for a maid fared no better. After reading what I could manage of her resume I called her for an interview. She seemed to only know one English phrase, a very broken "No speaky Engleesh".
How long have you been a maid? "No speaky Engleesh"
Are you capable of cleaning? "No speaky Engleesh"
Do you have any references? "Maria"
Maria who? "Si, Maria"
Maria who? "No speaky Engleesh"
I told her the position had been filled and she smiled awkwardly as I handed her a check for ten thousand dollars. Her smile turned to a look of utter confusion as I unzipped my pants but it only took a little while for her to understand what the check was for. Getting her to leave afterwards was an even bigger problem! The language barrier really became an issue. But after many "You go now or I call Immigracion!"s I finally was able to push her out the door. I knew being rich couldn't be as easy as the Kardashians made it look. Oh what cruel fate!
Little Helen has fared none the better in his attempt to get comfortable in his new surroundings. Literally. Each night Darlene and I can hear him tossing and turning in his bed, moaning and groaning. I understand his plight, as it is very difficult to get comfortable on a money-filled mattress and pillow. Furthermore, The Beverly Hills Institute of Things That Are Studied has discovered that the $100 bills we use (as opposed to the cheaper albeit more comfortable $20 and $10 bills) have been proven to be the least comfortable bills, their folds being the most jagged. I know what you're thinking: Why don't you get rid of that mattress? Well we've thought of that but you guys in the poor-house obviously don't understand that the only thing holding up the Money-Mat Mattress is the solid gold box-spring (we chose them from the Gilded Gods collection), which is nearly impossible to find any comfort in! So, unfortunately, that's something we'll have to learn to deal with seeing as how there aren't any other style mattresses available in this part of the country.
Well, that's all for now, folks. I hope I've given you a good look at how tough being shamefully rich can be. Please feel free to send us any mail you'd like, updating us on what your families are up to these days. We'll make sure our attorneys read each and every one of them to make sure they're important enough to relate to us. I know it sounds very snobbish, but now that we have come into this money we have become very important figures who have precious little time to indulge as much as we can in life's most expensive and decadent luxuries. We are sure you will all understand if we don't have time for you.
With Our Warmest Regards
Sincerely,
Frank, Darlene, Helen, and Taco
Sorry it's been so long since I've been in contact, but you all know it's been a tough adjustment for us all (myself, Darlene, our dog, Taco, and our unusually-confrontational son, Helen) since having hit the Powerball jackpot of $152 Million ($102 Million after greedy Uncle Sam took his share.) Rest assured, I'll try to get you up to speed.
We've received your congratulatory letters, or, as Darlene and I like to call them, your underhanded attempts at beggary, and I must say you should try walking in our shoes before being so overtly green (or congratulatory, as you like to call it.) This sudden adjustment we've been forced to make has not been an easy one. There is so much that you take for granted when you're broke and living in your dilapidated houses. We've had to learn to accept our (mis)fortunes as we go. Please indulge me while I try to educate you.
First of all, once we hit the money Darlene mentioned that we should probably buy a new house.
"Frank!" she said. "Let's get out of this two-horse shit-show and find some nicer digs!"
She said it should be something "bigger than all of our friends' houses". I obliged and peeled myself from my comfortable couch and Absolutely Fabulous! marathon on Comedy Central to do the bidding of the love of my life (to whom I've promised my undying loyalty unless the new girl I decide to proposition is hotter than her, or only slightly less hot than her but at least five years younger). I knew right then that our lives would never be the same. Once on the road we went from the podunk trailer we rented on the outskirts of Knoxville to the ritzier parts of Tennessee filled with glorious colonial-style homes with immaculate lawns that seemed to never end only until another mansion appeared. These houses would suffice just fine, thought I, as Darlene and I had never talked about getting a larger home before we became rich. On the contrary, Darlene's tastes for the finer things, the grandiose, had seemed to change overnight. It seemed as if her entire personality had changed completely. Alas, she is the love of my life and bearer of my dim-witted child, so I agreed to go to Beverly Hills where we could find a home that, as Darlene so eloquently put it, "doesn't look like a goddamn life-sized Barbie house".
I agreed to compromise with Darlene and said that we could go to Beverly Hills but we would purchase one of the more modestly priced homes that could be found there. So we settled on our $15 million estate, once owned by such high profile stars as Leif Garret and Patrick Duffy. I took my seat on our overpriced leather sofa in the hopes of living out my dream of becoming an over-weight couch-potato. No rest for the weary though.
Darlene said we needed new cars to match our new home. So we bought some high-priced sports cars. Then she said we should get a maid for the house and a nanny for 11-year-old Helen, our beautiful son who is also living proof that abortion is not 100% effective.
I told her I would do the interviewing for both positions. Another roadblock. Good maids and nannies are hard to find, let me tell you. The first maid I interviewed was a beautiful girl with a great figure (only slightly less good looking than Darlene, my beautiful and forgiving wife). But that's where her good qualities ended. After the first day of the trial run I returned from my money-counting seminar to find her sitting her lazy ass on MY leather sofa. Meanwhile, Helen had sneaked to the attic where he thought he'd discovered the worlds largest reserve of pink cotton candy. I could understand why a child might be confused, given the paper coating had a picture of The Pink Panther on it. I found him passed out on the attic floor after an hour of searching. That's probably something the nanny should've prevented so I fired her lazy ass right after I slept with her and paid her the pre-negotiated $20,000. I then headed to the emergency room with Helen, where he had his stomach pumped, after which the doctor told him he could eat all the spicy food he wanted because his stomach was now completely fireproof ! For every problem, a silver lining, I guess.
The hunt for a maid fared no better. After reading what I could manage of her resume I called her for an interview. She seemed to only know one English phrase, a very broken "No speaky Engleesh".
How long have you been a maid? "No speaky Engleesh"
Are you capable of cleaning? "No speaky Engleesh"
Do you have any references? "Maria"
Maria who? "Si, Maria"
Maria who? "No speaky Engleesh"
I told her the position had been filled and she smiled awkwardly as I handed her a check for ten thousand dollars. Her smile turned to a look of utter confusion as I unzipped my pants but it only took a little while for her to understand what the check was for. Getting her to leave afterwards was an even bigger problem! The language barrier really became an issue. But after many "You go now or I call Immigracion!"s I finally was able to push her out the door. I knew being rich couldn't be as easy as the Kardashians made it look. Oh what cruel fate!
Little Helen has fared none the better in his attempt to get comfortable in his new surroundings. Literally. Each night Darlene and I can hear him tossing and turning in his bed, moaning and groaning. I understand his plight, as it is very difficult to get comfortable on a money-filled mattress and pillow. Furthermore, The Beverly Hills Institute of Things That Are Studied has discovered that the $100 bills we use (as opposed to the cheaper albeit more comfortable $20 and $10 bills) have been proven to be the least comfortable bills, their folds being the most jagged. I know what you're thinking: Why don't you get rid of that mattress? Well we've thought of that but you guys in the poor-house obviously don't understand that the only thing holding up the Money-Mat Mattress is the solid gold box-spring (we chose them from the Gilded Gods collection), which is nearly impossible to find any comfort in! So, unfortunately, that's something we'll have to learn to deal with seeing as how there aren't any other style mattresses available in this part of the country.
Well, that's all for now, folks. I hope I've given you a good look at how tough being shamefully rich can be. Please feel free to send us any mail you'd like, updating us on what your families are up to these days. We'll make sure our attorneys read each and every one of them to make sure they're important enough to relate to us. I know it sounds very snobbish, but now that we have come into this money we have become very important figures who have precious little time to indulge as much as we can in life's most expensive and decadent luxuries. We are sure you will all understand if we don't have time for you.
With Our Warmest Regards
Sincerely,
Frank, Darlene, Helen, and Taco
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Write About
Write. Write in the morning and at noon and at night and at 3a.m. on the end of a two-day bender. Write to yourself, write to your estranged parents and your sister abroad, and your resentful brother. Write to former lovers, to an inspirational English professor. Write to your state senator about fracking zones and unreasonable gas prices. Write to John Lennon or Mark David Chapman. Write to write.
Write in your underwear in front of your slowly-soggying bowl of Special K. Write in your shirt and tie before you go to the interview for the job you'll eventually quit. Write in the nude. Write on empty notepads, write on grocery lists, write on receipts from porno shops, write on walls, write on rocks with other rocks next to desolate streams. Write in every color. Write in blue and black and purple and red and blood. Write in chalk and charcoal and marker and salty tears on dark mediums. Write with a stick in the sand.
Write about the carpet, write about a caterpillar. Write about the dawn of time and Armageddon. Write about all the things you wanted to be but never became. Write about alternative music. Write about writing. Write about death. Write about love and hate and violence and rape. Write about kings and queens. Write about religion and politics and cataclysmic events. Write about you. Write about me. Write about a secret homosexual experience from your adolescence. Write about detectives who smoke pipes and talk like James Cagney. Write about hats and shawls and other assorted headgear. Write about race wars and Southern hospitality and how such a racist part of the country attained such a forgiving trait of identity. Write about loose women. Write about hard drinkin'. Write about forgiveness and charity. Write about being wrong. Write about sharks. Write about serial killers. Write about pyramid schemes. Write about quantum physics. Write about learning to read. Write about irony and satire and plot development and character maturity and proper transitions.
Write in good writing company. Write with your lover. Write with your estranged parents, with your sister abroad, with your resentful brother. Write with Queen II playing in the background. Write with ever-inspirational pizza. Write with saints and sinners. Write with a homeless guy. Write with the bag lady. Write with the dog at your feet. Write with a glass of red or an ice cold beer or a blunt filled with sweet chronic. Write with the forest and the sky and the gnarly, untouched open field that it opens up to. Write with the lone tree that stands in that field. The one that looks as if it were transported from The Shawshank Redemption. Write with the wind blowing the voices of Bukowskis past. Write with friends and enemies and assholes and sons-of-bitches. Write, baby...just write it down.
Write in your underwear in front of your slowly-soggying bowl of Special K. Write in your shirt and tie before you go to the interview for the job you'll eventually quit. Write in the nude. Write on empty notepads, write on grocery lists, write on receipts from porno shops, write on walls, write on rocks with other rocks next to desolate streams. Write in every color. Write in blue and black and purple and red and blood. Write in chalk and charcoal and marker and salty tears on dark mediums. Write with a stick in the sand.
Write about the carpet, write about a caterpillar. Write about the dawn of time and Armageddon. Write about all the things you wanted to be but never became. Write about alternative music. Write about writing. Write about death. Write about love and hate and violence and rape. Write about kings and queens. Write about religion and politics and cataclysmic events. Write about you. Write about me. Write about a secret homosexual experience from your adolescence. Write about detectives who smoke pipes and talk like James Cagney. Write about hats and shawls and other assorted headgear. Write about race wars and Southern hospitality and how such a racist part of the country attained such a forgiving trait of identity. Write about loose women. Write about hard drinkin'. Write about forgiveness and charity. Write about being wrong. Write about sharks. Write about serial killers. Write about pyramid schemes. Write about quantum physics. Write about learning to read. Write about irony and satire and plot development and character maturity and proper transitions.
Write in good writing company. Write with your lover. Write with your estranged parents, with your sister abroad, with your resentful brother. Write with Queen II playing in the background. Write with ever-inspirational pizza. Write with saints and sinners. Write with a homeless guy. Write with the bag lady. Write with the dog at your feet. Write with a glass of red or an ice cold beer or a blunt filled with sweet chronic. Write with the forest and the sky and the gnarly, untouched open field that it opens up to. Write with the lone tree that stands in that field. The one that looks as if it were transported from The Shawshank Redemption. Write with the wind blowing the voices of Bukowskis past. Write with friends and enemies and assholes and sons-of-bitches. Write, baby...just write it down.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Music is Memory
Music is my life. So many people say it, and, trust me, only a small fraction mean it like I mean it.
The timeline of my life is wrought with memories I've forgotten, people whose names escape me, events that carried only enough impact to have titles in my mind. Like State Championship Game or Graduation Day. I still don't remember any of my at-bats in the State Championship Game. I only know we won. And I only remember the walk up the aisle on Graduation Day and little else from that day. Those are only a couple of examples but suffice to say the rest of my memories are just as sordid.
But the music. The music stays with me forever. The music is my memory. I remember entire portions of my life based on the music I was listening to at the time. I remember song titles and lyrics and album covers better than the day to day events I shared with my girlfriends, all of whom I loved to some degree. I am a romantic at heart, so it says a lot to say that my love for music has eclipsed my love for Kerri or Amber or Jen or Leita. I'm sure it pleases them none to know that I help remember times spent with them by associating them with the bands I loved while with them. For instance, I can define my entire relationship with Amber in two bands: Chiodos and Brand New. I can remember looking over at Jen from the driver's side of her 2000 Grand Prix as we sang "And we'll pray that there's no god to punish us", a lyric from "Fury" by Muse. I don't know where we were driving to or from but I remember I started loving Muse while I was dating Jen. I know that other things happened in my relationships with Amber and Jen, but I can only catalogue those things by remembering a song that helped define each particular moment.
But I digress, because this is not about my relationships, it's about my music.
I was born into Beatles music and carry a torch for them still. Beatles was a love forced onto me. I don't resent it or even dislike it. In fact much the opposite. The Beatles are one of most influential and musically gifted bands of all time. I would've found that out eventually, but my parents made me aware of it when I was wee. The Beatles will always be in my heart. I remember my mother and her brothers and sister singing "In My Life" at my cousin's wedding in Florida. I remember playing the drums while my Uncle Larry and his brothers sang "Twist and Shout" at his wedding reception. I was prepubescent at the time both those events took place. I recall only snapshots of either event but I vividly remember the music of each day. I can thank The Beatles for that.
I also became a devoted fan of several bands as a direct result of my love for the works of the Fab Four. The Rolling Stones, The Zombies, David Bowie, The Mamas and Papas, The Moody Blues are just a few.
I was about nine years old when I fell in love for the first time on my own. Wayne's World had just come out and was very popular, and a very popular song became it's anthem. It was "Bohemian Rhapsody", and it changed my life forever. From the moment I heard that song - its intricate arrangement, its raw power, its sheer audacity - I knew that Queen would forever have a piece of my heart. The flamboyance of Freddie Mercury was something I'd never seen in rock music to that point. I didn't realize rock and roll could be so theatrical. And Freddie defined the word. Once I plunged deeper into the Queen catalogue I learned that bands could also transcend genres. Queen paid tribute to all their influences from pop ("Fat Bottomed Girls"), metal ("White Man"), vaudeville ("Seaside Rendezvous"), and even twice paid tribute to Elvis Presley, one of Freddie's biggest influences, with "Man on the Prowl" and the mega-hit "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". Their ability to explore all aspects of music and seamlessly put each genre into practice (sometimes in the very same song, like "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "The March of The Black Queen") was my main attraction to Queen. I didn't know what talent was at such a young age. As kids we hear a song, we like it, we listen to it. There are no questions asked. Having said that, it hadn't yet dawned on me that the members of Queen were world class musicians. To this day the common opinion is that Freddie Mercury has one of the finest voices in music history (he even released an opera album in the late 1980s) and Brian May is still regarded as a pioneer and one of the greatest soloists on the guitar.
Queen made me hear music differently...it made me feel music. But moreover Queen still helps me remember. I would not otherwise remember a church cookout that I attended with Kevin Mihelc and his family, at age ten, if I hadn't sang a karaoke version of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" in front of the entire congregation. My early baseball years would be a more murky set of memories if "We Will Rock You" and "We Are The Champions" weren't a constant as our all-star teams were always winning tournaments. Queen were the soundtrack to our victory dances.
My love for Queen's style has lead to my taking interest in myriad other similar groups such as Mott the Hoople, My Chemical Romance, Radiohead, Breaking Benjamin, Outkast and Elton John, to name a few.
When I was thirteen years old I had a summer league basketball game at the Boys and Girls club by the Union-Endicott High School. After the game I was supposed to find a ride home because my mother couldn't pick me up because she'd just put my newborn sister down for a nap. Unfortunately, in my absent-mindedness I'd forgotten to ask anybody for a ride and by the time I remembered the gymnasium was empty. So I called my mother and pleaded with her to come and get me. Begrudgingly, she woke my sister, packed her in the car and came to get me. On the way home, mom was in no mood to talk and made it very clear by turning the radio up loud. She hadn't known it but she was turning me on to another new love. When we got home and I let her cool down I asked her what the song was that we'd been listening to in the car. She told me it was "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd. I loved it. I listened to that song, in the context of The Wall (the album that featured it) non-stop on my parents record player. The Wall was mean and gritty and psychedelic and bombastic all at the same time. After weeks of hearing The Wall being played to death, Mom recommended that I listen to Dark Side of the Moon. That was the album that had initially launched Pink Floyd into stardom. I listened to it and loved it, despite its vast differences from The Wall.
Pink Floyd was the first band that I listened to that would've been considered progressive. I'd come to appreciate the lengthy tracks on Animals and the droning repetition of the earlier work like "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" and "Echoes". There was a distinct difference between the gritty, dark writing of Roger Waters versus the more whimsy style of David Gilmour, but that difference only enhanced the chemical quality of the their music. I delved into Pink Floyd's music, their story, the legend of Syd Barrett (the genius co-founder of the Floyd who would eventually be replaced by Gilmour when his use of LSD had permanently skewed his mind), their inner-group quarrels (revolving mostly around the power struggle between Waters and Gilmour), biographical books on the band (see A Saucerful Of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey). I became obsessed with the band. My love for them also happened to coincide with a trend in my generation that made Pink Floyd even more popular. It was the rebirth of the Flower Power generation and psychedelia of the 1960s. All the girls were wearing tie-dye and bell-bottoms and those sunglasses with odd-colored lenses. It suited me fine as I used the music as a way to try to find common ground with the girls at Jennie F Snapp, my middle school, because as puberty hit me and my face exploded into a greasy, lumpy canvas most of the girls were not attracted to me physically. So I used Pink Floyd as a way to flirt with girls...NO LIE!! Example: I see Lisa Quackenbush in her full-on Flower Power outfit at her locker, which is right next to mine and I have a huge crush on her. But according to her my name is not "Jaime", it's "Pizza Face" (don't judge her...we were all kids and we were all mean at one time or another) so I know she's not diggin' me as a physical specimen. Instead, I assume that her attire matches her musical taste, so I get to my locker as I'm singing the last line to "Brain Damage"..."I'll see you on the dark side of the moon..."
Maybe it worked...Lisa and I started going out a short while later. And while "going out" doesn't mean much in middle school, it meant a lot to me. So, in a way, besides being a talented psychedelic band, Pink Floyd also serves as an aphrodisiac? Well, yes or no I'm just illuminating, yet again, how some small memories would be dead and forgotten if not contained in the lyric and song.
As a result of my love for Pink Floyd, I began to embrace the qualities of the psychedelic/progressive bands both of the era and of the eras that followed. I'll always be a big fan of King Crimson, Porcupine Tree, Dream Theater, The Mars Volta, and Tool to name only a few.
As my teenage years passed and my musical tastes progressed and became more and more dynamic, I experimented with several different musical stylings. Bands came into and out of my favor. In Sociology class my senior year, Dave Magdich did a presentation on a band called Cradle of Filth. They're a band that is considered "black metal" with a unique melodic touch and a singer who's voice you might mistake for the welcome voice over the intercom at the mouth of Hell. The music video that he showed along with his report displayed a hellish motif with pale women dressed as angels slitting their wrists and bathing in tubs full of blood. Most of the class was moved to nausea. I was nearly moved to tears. I thought the music (the video was "From the Cradle to Enslave") was beautiful and theatrical and for a short time I became very involved with Cradle of Filth, brushing up on their catalogue and I still, today, find myself longing for the tortured screams of Dani Filth from time to time. I never thanked Dave for that.
It wasn't until I got to college that I found two bands that would become the new stalwarts in my repertoire. The bands were Tool and System of a Down. Tool had gained popularity in the early 1990s as a metal band with a progressive appeal and a catalogue wrought with epic ebbs and flows. The music is all brought together within the tremendous vocal stylings of Maynard Keenan. His ability to write and sing with such beauty (see "Jimmy") and also a genuine ferocity (see "Cold and Ugly") brings a stand-alone quality to an already stellar band. In addition, drummer Danny Carey is still considered one of the finest drummers in rock music. The major appeal with Tool was the ambition and sustained energy in each song. There is a pronounced angst in each movement on any of Tool's albums. Each album appears to have a theme, at least musically, yet, lyrically there is little or no similarity from song to song. Tool also made themselves noticed on the performance level with stage shows that affected many of the senses, with intricate lighting and video, lingering smoke and fog, and the erratic contortions made famous by the flamboyant lead singer. I can remember cramming through the night with my roommate, Ben, while we lost ourselves in "Third Eye" and "Ticks and Leeches". I don't remember what I scored on the exam that followed, but I was receiving a separate education in those early morning hours in the basement lecture hall of Brubacher Hall. Music Ed X.
System of a Down came to me in a completely different way. Every day at 2:20pm, when the last afternoon classes let out, a distinct voice could be heard without fail. The voice of a boy who lived down the hall, screaming with perfect pitch "How do you own the world?/How do you own disorder?/Disorder". This lyric came and passed every single day at the same time. It took me awhile to finally ask him what he was singing. He told me it was "Toxicity" by System of a Down. The Toxicity album hadn't become popular yet, but was on the verge, with a mega-hit in "Chop Suey" waiting for release. Once released, it would take the world by storm and the boys from System of a Down to the realm of super stardom. Once I knew the band name and found out that "Toxicity" was actually a really great piece of music, I began to delve into the System of a Down catalogue without haste. I was impressed with the melodic quality to their music mixed with their energy. System of a Down is pure energy. They start fast and stop and pick it back up and slow it down and stop and pick it back up. It's non-stop. The operatic style of Serj Tankian, their Frank Zappa-looking lead singer mixed with the higher-registered voice of guitarist Damon Malaykian serves as a perfect vocal concoction. System of a Down writes as their name implies. Their lyrics are strewn with protest and sarcastic political messages. The opening line of the highly-political "Cigaro" raves "My cock is much bigger than yours/My cock can walk right through the door". "Highway Song" laments the end of America's glory days with "The canons of our times, our days are never ever coming back". "BYOB" asks "Why don't presidents fight the war?/Why do we always send the poor?" The music and the message come through with equal strength and vigor. System of a Down is music that doesn't tire.
My love for Tool and System of a Down opened the door to my interest in much of the college music scene, like Deadboy and the Elephantmen, Acid Bath, A Perfect Circle, Alice In Chains, People in Planes, Fair To Midland, The Raconteurs and many many more.
After it all, after the Beatles and Queen, Tool, System of a Down, Pink Floyd, The Mars Volta, after The Dax Riggs bands, after the acoustic poets like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, after the college scene past me and I followed from behind The Decembrists and Cold War Kids. After all that, I felt I needed the band that could quench it all for me. The band that brought all the sounds together. I stumbled upon Muse in 2004. The last seven years have been musical bliss in the world of Jaime Renfro.
When I feel the need to get new music in my ears, my go-to site is allmusic.com. I search Queen and it gives me similar artists. This maneuver helped me discover both Mott the Hoople and King Crimson among others. As I scrolled down the page I came across a word that I absolutely love. It was Muse. A beautiful word, both in meaning and sound, I decided I had to have a listen to a band with such an inspirational handle. I then went to youtube and found the first song of theirs that came up, "Our Time is Running Out". I loved it. It was beautiful.
Then "Apocalypse Please"...loved it!
Then "Sing For Absolution" amazing!
Then "Micro-cuts"
Then "Showbiz"
Then "Butterflies and Hurricanes"
Then "Stockholm Syndrome"
I fell in love. My heart leaps when I hear the first strains of any Muse song. I feel music in so many more ways when I hear them. The sound is so perfectly woven. Muse is still the only band whose entire catalogue I can listen to without wanting to skip over any song. It was the exact band I'd hoped for. People called Muse a Radiohead knock-off before they were really given a chance to prove otherwise. Lead singer-songwriter-guitarist-pianist Matthew Bellamy has a wonderful voice that soars and pitches perfectly and bites and sometimes jumbles words into sounds that don't articulate. It just so happens that Radiohead leading man Thome York also has such a voice. For my money, the similarities end their. Muse is a three piece band that blends every type of music I've ever enjoyed. You like classical pieces? Listen to any of the "Exogenesis" movements or "Blackout". You enjoy subtlety and harmony? Listen to "The Soldier's Poem". Metal music? Try "Assassin" or "In Your World". Pop? How about "Fillip" or "Supermassive Black Holes". Their styles blend perfectly. Their musicianship is delicious. Catchy guitar riffs? "Stockholm Syndrome". Dazzling bass guitar runs? "Hysteria". Clever drum fills? "Take a Bow". Blinding keyboard runs? "Space Dementia". Muse has everything I could every dream of to quell the hunger for new catchy, rhythmic, progressive, bombastic sounds all wrapped up into one. The live show I witnessed at Nassau Coliseum was a spectacle unlike any other. Three separate stages that rose and fell with each band member on it, wonderful lasers, impromptu jam sessions, perfect execution of each song. I've seen over one hundred shows and Muse was the best by leaps and bounds. Each memory of my twenties can be matched with Muse songs. The year that Adam Crooks and I spent getting high and listening to Muse in the car while he tweaked into some head trip. That year I lived off of an assuming girlfriend who loved me and therefore changed her musical tastes once she heard Muse. Muse is my darling and will always be in my Top 3. More darling than any person has ever been to me.
As my late twenties disappear into my early thirties I can feel the itch again. I thought I'd cured it a couple times. There was the Arctic Monkeys. The Mars Volta is almost there. The Smiths came close. Don't get me wrong, I love the adventure of finding "the next band that would change my life" as the boys from Bayside said. But sometimes I just want to have that year or two in my life where i find a band that can do no wrong. I'm on the cusp, I can taste it, I'm right on the brink...here it comes.
The timeline of my life is wrought with memories I've forgotten, people whose names escape me, events that carried only enough impact to have titles in my mind. Like State Championship Game or Graduation Day. I still don't remember any of my at-bats in the State Championship Game. I only know we won. And I only remember the walk up the aisle on Graduation Day and little else from that day. Those are only a couple of examples but suffice to say the rest of my memories are just as sordid.
But the music. The music stays with me forever. The music is my memory. I remember entire portions of my life based on the music I was listening to at the time. I remember song titles and lyrics and album covers better than the day to day events I shared with my girlfriends, all of whom I loved to some degree. I am a romantic at heart, so it says a lot to say that my love for music has eclipsed my love for Kerri or Amber or Jen or Leita. I'm sure it pleases them none to know that I help remember times spent with them by associating them with the bands I loved while with them. For instance, I can define my entire relationship with Amber in two bands: Chiodos and Brand New. I can remember looking over at Jen from the driver's side of her 2000 Grand Prix as we sang "And we'll pray that there's no god to punish us", a lyric from "Fury" by Muse. I don't know where we were driving to or from but I remember I started loving Muse while I was dating Jen. I know that other things happened in my relationships with Amber and Jen, but I can only catalogue those things by remembering a song that helped define each particular moment.
But I digress, because this is not about my relationships, it's about my music.
I was born into Beatles music and carry a torch for them still. Beatles was a love forced onto me. I don't resent it or even dislike it. In fact much the opposite. The Beatles are one of most influential and musically gifted bands of all time. I would've found that out eventually, but my parents made me aware of it when I was wee. The Beatles will always be in my heart. I remember my mother and her brothers and sister singing "In My Life" at my cousin's wedding in Florida. I remember playing the drums while my Uncle Larry and his brothers sang "Twist and Shout" at his wedding reception. I was prepubescent at the time both those events took place. I recall only snapshots of either event but I vividly remember the music of each day. I can thank The Beatles for that.
I also became a devoted fan of several bands as a direct result of my love for the works of the Fab Four. The Rolling Stones, The Zombies, David Bowie, The Mamas and Papas, The Moody Blues are just a few.
I was about nine years old when I fell in love for the first time on my own. Wayne's World had just come out and was very popular, and a very popular song became it's anthem. It was "Bohemian Rhapsody", and it changed my life forever. From the moment I heard that song - its intricate arrangement, its raw power, its sheer audacity - I knew that Queen would forever have a piece of my heart. The flamboyance of Freddie Mercury was something I'd never seen in rock music to that point. I didn't realize rock and roll could be so theatrical. And Freddie defined the word. Once I plunged deeper into the Queen catalogue I learned that bands could also transcend genres. Queen paid tribute to all their influences from pop ("Fat Bottomed Girls"), metal ("White Man"), vaudeville ("Seaside Rendezvous"), and even twice paid tribute to Elvis Presley, one of Freddie's biggest influences, with "Man on the Prowl" and the mega-hit "Crazy Little Thing Called Love". Their ability to explore all aspects of music and seamlessly put each genre into practice (sometimes in the very same song, like "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "The March of The Black Queen") was my main attraction to Queen. I didn't know what talent was at such a young age. As kids we hear a song, we like it, we listen to it. There are no questions asked. Having said that, it hadn't yet dawned on me that the members of Queen were world class musicians. To this day the common opinion is that Freddie Mercury has one of the finest voices in music history (he even released an opera album in the late 1980s) and Brian May is still regarded as a pioneer and one of the greatest soloists on the guitar.
Queen made me hear music differently...it made me feel music. But moreover Queen still helps me remember. I would not otherwise remember a church cookout that I attended with Kevin Mihelc and his family, at age ten, if I hadn't sang a karaoke version of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" in front of the entire congregation. My early baseball years would be a more murky set of memories if "We Will Rock You" and "We Are The Champions" weren't a constant as our all-star teams were always winning tournaments. Queen were the soundtrack to our victory dances.
My love for Queen's style has lead to my taking interest in myriad other similar groups such as Mott the Hoople, My Chemical Romance, Radiohead, Breaking Benjamin, Outkast and Elton John, to name a few.
When I was thirteen years old I had a summer league basketball game at the Boys and Girls club by the Union-Endicott High School. After the game I was supposed to find a ride home because my mother couldn't pick me up because she'd just put my newborn sister down for a nap. Unfortunately, in my absent-mindedness I'd forgotten to ask anybody for a ride and by the time I remembered the gymnasium was empty. So I called my mother and pleaded with her to come and get me. Begrudgingly, she woke my sister, packed her in the car and came to get me. On the way home, mom was in no mood to talk and made it very clear by turning the radio up loud. She hadn't known it but she was turning me on to another new love. When we got home and I let her cool down I asked her what the song was that we'd been listening to in the car. She told me it was "Comfortably Numb" by Pink Floyd. I loved it. I listened to that song, in the context of The Wall (the album that featured it) non-stop on my parents record player. The Wall was mean and gritty and psychedelic and bombastic all at the same time. After weeks of hearing The Wall being played to death, Mom recommended that I listen to Dark Side of the Moon. That was the album that had initially launched Pink Floyd into stardom. I listened to it and loved it, despite its vast differences from The Wall.
Pink Floyd was the first band that I listened to that would've been considered progressive. I'd come to appreciate the lengthy tracks on Animals and the droning repetition of the earlier work like "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" and "Echoes". There was a distinct difference between the gritty, dark writing of Roger Waters versus the more whimsy style of David Gilmour, but that difference only enhanced the chemical quality of the their music. I delved into Pink Floyd's music, their story, the legend of Syd Barrett (the genius co-founder of the Floyd who would eventually be replaced by Gilmour when his use of LSD had permanently skewed his mind), their inner-group quarrels (revolving mostly around the power struggle between Waters and Gilmour), biographical books on the band (see A Saucerful Of Secrets: The Pink Floyd Odyssey). I became obsessed with the band. My love for them also happened to coincide with a trend in my generation that made Pink Floyd even more popular. It was the rebirth of the Flower Power generation and psychedelia of the 1960s. All the girls were wearing tie-dye and bell-bottoms and those sunglasses with odd-colored lenses. It suited me fine as I used the music as a way to try to find common ground with the girls at Jennie F Snapp, my middle school, because as puberty hit me and my face exploded into a greasy, lumpy canvas most of the girls were not attracted to me physically. So I used Pink Floyd as a way to flirt with girls...NO LIE!! Example: I see Lisa Quackenbush in her full-on Flower Power outfit at her locker, which is right next to mine and I have a huge crush on her. But according to her my name is not "Jaime", it's "Pizza Face" (don't judge her...we were all kids and we were all mean at one time or another) so I know she's not diggin' me as a physical specimen. Instead, I assume that her attire matches her musical taste, so I get to my locker as I'm singing the last line to "Brain Damage"..."I'll see you on the dark side of the moon..."
Maybe it worked...Lisa and I started going out a short while later. And while "going out" doesn't mean much in middle school, it meant a lot to me. So, in a way, besides being a talented psychedelic band, Pink Floyd also serves as an aphrodisiac? Well, yes or no I'm just illuminating, yet again, how some small memories would be dead and forgotten if not contained in the lyric and song.
As a result of my love for Pink Floyd, I began to embrace the qualities of the psychedelic/progressive bands both of the era and of the eras that followed. I'll always be a big fan of King Crimson, Porcupine Tree, Dream Theater, The Mars Volta, and Tool to name only a few.
As my teenage years passed and my musical tastes progressed and became more and more dynamic, I experimented with several different musical stylings. Bands came into and out of my favor. In Sociology class my senior year, Dave Magdich did a presentation on a band called Cradle of Filth. They're a band that is considered "black metal" with a unique melodic touch and a singer who's voice you might mistake for the welcome voice over the intercom at the mouth of Hell. The music video that he showed along with his report displayed a hellish motif with pale women dressed as angels slitting their wrists and bathing in tubs full of blood. Most of the class was moved to nausea. I was nearly moved to tears. I thought the music (the video was "From the Cradle to Enslave") was beautiful and theatrical and for a short time I became very involved with Cradle of Filth, brushing up on their catalogue and I still, today, find myself longing for the tortured screams of Dani Filth from time to time. I never thanked Dave for that.
It wasn't until I got to college that I found two bands that would become the new stalwarts in my repertoire. The bands were Tool and System of a Down. Tool had gained popularity in the early 1990s as a metal band with a progressive appeal and a catalogue wrought with epic ebbs and flows. The music is all brought together within the tremendous vocal stylings of Maynard Keenan. His ability to write and sing with such beauty (see "Jimmy") and also a genuine ferocity (see "Cold and Ugly") brings a stand-alone quality to an already stellar band. In addition, drummer Danny Carey is still considered one of the finest drummers in rock music. The major appeal with Tool was the ambition and sustained energy in each song. There is a pronounced angst in each movement on any of Tool's albums. Each album appears to have a theme, at least musically, yet, lyrically there is little or no similarity from song to song. Tool also made themselves noticed on the performance level with stage shows that affected many of the senses, with intricate lighting and video, lingering smoke and fog, and the erratic contortions made famous by the flamboyant lead singer. I can remember cramming through the night with my roommate, Ben, while we lost ourselves in "Third Eye" and "Ticks and Leeches". I don't remember what I scored on the exam that followed, but I was receiving a separate education in those early morning hours in the basement lecture hall of Brubacher Hall. Music Ed X.
System of a Down came to me in a completely different way. Every day at 2:20pm, when the last afternoon classes let out, a distinct voice could be heard without fail. The voice of a boy who lived down the hall, screaming with perfect pitch "How do you own the world?/How do you own disorder?/Disorder". This lyric came and passed every single day at the same time. It took me awhile to finally ask him what he was singing. He told me it was "Toxicity" by System of a Down. The Toxicity album hadn't become popular yet, but was on the verge, with a mega-hit in "Chop Suey" waiting for release. Once released, it would take the world by storm and the boys from System of a Down to the realm of super stardom. Once I knew the band name and found out that "Toxicity" was actually a really great piece of music, I began to delve into the System of a Down catalogue without haste. I was impressed with the melodic quality to their music mixed with their energy. System of a Down is pure energy. They start fast and stop and pick it back up and slow it down and stop and pick it back up. It's non-stop. The operatic style of Serj Tankian, their Frank Zappa-looking lead singer mixed with the higher-registered voice of guitarist Damon Malaykian serves as a perfect vocal concoction. System of a Down writes as their name implies. Their lyrics are strewn with protest and sarcastic political messages. The opening line of the highly-political "Cigaro" raves "My cock is much bigger than yours/My cock can walk right through the door". "Highway Song" laments the end of America's glory days with "The canons of our times, our days are never ever coming back". "BYOB" asks "Why don't presidents fight the war?/Why do we always send the poor?" The music and the message come through with equal strength and vigor. System of a Down is music that doesn't tire.
My love for Tool and System of a Down opened the door to my interest in much of the college music scene, like Deadboy and the Elephantmen, Acid Bath, A Perfect Circle, Alice In Chains, People in Planes, Fair To Midland, The Raconteurs and many many more.
After it all, after the Beatles and Queen, Tool, System of a Down, Pink Floyd, The Mars Volta, after The Dax Riggs bands, after the acoustic poets like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, after the college scene past me and I followed from behind The Decembrists and Cold War Kids. After all that, I felt I needed the band that could quench it all for me. The band that brought all the sounds together. I stumbled upon Muse in 2004. The last seven years have been musical bliss in the world of Jaime Renfro.
When I feel the need to get new music in my ears, my go-to site is allmusic.com. I search Queen and it gives me similar artists. This maneuver helped me discover both Mott the Hoople and King Crimson among others. As I scrolled down the page I came across a word that I absolutely love. It was Muse. A beautiful word, both in meaning and sound, I decided I had to have a listen to a band with such an inspirational handle. I then went to youtube and found the first song of theirs that came up, "Our Time is Running Out". I loved it. It was beautiful.
Then "Apocalypse Please"...loved it!
Then "Sing For Absolution" amazing!
Then "Micro-cuts"
Then "Showbiz"
Then "Butterflies and Hurricanes"
Then "Stockholm Syndrome"
I fell in love. My heart leaps when I hear the first strains of any Muse song. I feel music in so many more ways when I hear them. The sound is so perfectly woven. Muse is still the only band whose entire catalogue I can listen to without wanting to skip over any song. It was the exact band I'd hoped for. People called Muse a Radiohead knock-off before they were really given a chance to prove otherwise. Lead singer-songwriter-guitarist-pianist Matthew Bellamy has a wonderful voice that soars and pitches perfectly and bites and sometimes jumbles words into sounds that don't articulate. It just so happens that Radiohead leading man Thome York also has such a voice. For my money, the similarities end their. Muse is a three piece band that blends every type of music I've ever enjoyed. You like classical pieces? Listen to any of the "Exogenesis" movements or "Blackout". You enjoy subtlety and harmony? Listen to "The Soldier's Poem". Metal music? Try "Assassin" or "In Your World". Pop? How about "Fillip" or "Supermassive Black Holes". Their styles blend perfectly. Their musicianship is delicious. Catchy guitar riffs? "Stockholm Syndrome". Dazzling bass guitar runs? "Hysteria". Clever drum fills? "Take a Bow". Blinding keyboard runs? "Space Dementia". Muse has everything I could every dream of to quell the hunger for new catchy, rhythmic, progressive, bombastic sounds all wrapped up into one. The live show I witnessed at Nassau Coliseum was a spectacle unlike any other. Three separate stages that rose and fell with each band member on it, wonderful lasers, impromptu jam sessions, perfect execution of each song. I've seen over one hundred shows and Muse was the best by leaps and bounds. Each memory of my twenties can be matched with Muse songs. The year that Adam Crooks and I spent getting high and listening to Muse in the car while he tweaked into some head trip. That year I lived off of an assuming girlfriend who loved me and therefore changed her musical tastes once she heard Muse. Muse is my darling and will always be in my Top 3. More darling than any person has ever been to me.
As my late twenties disappear into my early thirties I can feel the itch again. I thought I'd cured it a couple times. There was the Arctic Monkeys. The Mars Volta is almost there. The Smiths came close. Don't get me wrong, I love the adventure of finding "the next band that would change my life" as the boys from Bayside said. But sometimes I just want to have that year or two in my life where i find a band that can do no wrong. I'm on the cusp, I can taste it, I'm right on the brink...here it comes.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Same In The End
They'd come around
When we were still children
Children in college or children in high school
Or, when the mood was scandalous enough, when we were children in grade school
Newly pubescent and largely unaware of the perils or blisses of sex
Sex was never hotter than it was when we were kids
Not the act itself, because the act was much too large an idea to fathom
No, it was even a whisper of sex at age twelve that carried a larger impact than any encounter in our softer years
But now they come around
When you're older and softer and bored...and don't care
They love when you're listening but they love when they have to fight for your attention from tumblers filled with liquors and sparkling waters
They want for
They want for you to call them interesting
They want to for you to call them insightful, brooding, "with it"
...smart
They love when you call them smart
Especially when they are not
Sometimes you buy it
When you want to fuck them
Buying into it is really the only way
You nod, smile,
say:
"wow, you are so insightful"
"you are so smart"
"you are really with it, honey"
think:
that skin looks smooth
her tits are "with it"
this had better get me laid
It's all bullshit
Your nodding and smiling are as much bullshit as her ranting and raving
They play hard to get...but the seasoned stag in you knows she is not hard to get
On other nights maybe
But not tonight
Tonight it's all about the bang
"wow, I've never met anyone quite as sharp as you, babe"
But you have met sharper people
Hell, you've met sharper animals
But you nod and smile just the same while she rants and raves
Then you catch the sign
It's a smile
A flutter of the eyes
A touch on your arm
It's a sign that you catch
Like Plague, it hits you
It gives you that extra bit of confidence
It turns "impossible" to "likely"
Turns the smell of her skin to the taste of her skin
Turns Conversation...to...Intercourse
You take her to bed
You have sex
You clean up
You get dressed
Soon enough, she's talking again
About the same bullshit as before
You hear but you're not listening
You hear "doesn't Tolstoy sound like the name of a cheese?"
You roll your eyes and offer to take her to breakfast
Maybe some food will stop the sound from coming out
Oh, well
You weren't listening before she took her pants off
And you weren't listening after she put them back on
It's hot.
I'll still take the sex over most others
But puberty now stares at me with sad eyes from so many years ago
When we were still children
Children in college or children in high school
Or, when the mood was scandalous enough, when we were children in grade school
Newly pubescent and largely unaware of the perils or blisses of sex
Sex was never hotter than it was when we were kids
Not the act itself, because the act was much too large an idea to fathom
No, it was even a whisper of sex at age twelve that carried a larger impact than any encounter in our softer years
But now they come around
When you're older and softer and bored...and don't care
They love when you're listening but they love when they have to fight for your attention from tumblers filled with liquors and sparkling waters
They want for
They want for you to call them interesting
They want to for you to call them insightful, brooding, "with it"
...smart
They love when you call them smart
Especially when they are not
Sometimes you buy it
When you want to fuck them
Buying into it is really the only way
You nod, smile,
say:
"wow, you are so insightful"
"you are so smart"
"you are really with it, honey"
think:
that skin looks smooth
her tits are "with it"
this had better get me laid
It's all bullshit
Your nodding and smiling are as much bullshit as her ranting and raving
They play hard to get...but the seasoned stag in you knows she is not hard to get
On other nights maybe
But not tonight
Tonight it's all about the bang
"wow, I've never met anyone quite as sharp as you, babe"
But you have met sharper people
Hell, you've met sharper animals
But you nod and smile just the same while she rants and raves
Then you catch the sign
It's a smile
A flutter of the eyes
A touch on your arm
It's a sign that you catch
Like Plague, it hits you
It gives you that extra bit of confidence
It turns "impossible" to "likely"
Turns the smell of her skin to the taste of her skin
Turns Conversation...to...Intercourse
You take her to bed
You have sex
You clean up
You get dressed
Soon enough, she's talking again
About the same bullshit as before
You hear but you're not listening
You hear "doesn't Tolstoy sound like the name of a cheese?"
You roll your eyes and offer to take her to breakfast
Maybe some food will stop the sound from coming out
Oh, well
You weren't listening before she took her pants off
And you weren't listening after she put them back on
It's hot.
I'll still take the sex over most others
But puberty now stares at me with sad eyes from so many years ago
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