: lower black pain.

Drive-ins don’t have anything you go to the movies for; there’s not great sound, the picture is ok but not pristine, there’s no quiet, no comfy seats, there’s not even dark, really.

But it’s amazing. You can eat whatever you want, you can lay on a blanket, the stars are up above your head.  It’s a cinematic picnic - with no grass or sunshine, not entirely about the movie, really. Sure, there’s one playing; usually there were three – the first one was great, the second was always “ok”, and the third was usually an excuse for kids to make out. It’s just not n exclusively movie-focused evening, more of a film adjacent event. You wouldn’t take Martin Scorsese to the drive-in. Eeesh. He’d be really grumpy. Probably not even finish his hot dog. Truffaut might have fun – he’d probably bring really great wine.

Summer movies always had a different feel as a kid because you could see one on a Tuesday or Thursday, not just the weekend. But the summer event movies, the blockbusters, began with Steven Spielburg’s JAWS in 1975… the first movie that people stood in line for and saw over and over that made 100 million dollars. Apres shark, le deluge: all the tentpole franchises: Star Wars, Raiders, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future - came out in the summer. We looked forward to being amazed by something so incredible that we’d talk about it for months and maybe get the lunchbox for school next year.

My favorite drive-in movie was Can’t Stop The Music, the (probably) fictionalized story of the Village People, history told in song, much like Hamilton. It starred Steve Gutenberg and Olympic champion Bruce Jenner. As the images filled the screen, all leather and fringe and mustache wax, our little parking lot of midwesterners were gifted a glimpse of a world intriguing as any crafted by Industrial Light and Magic, but with music and dancing and super-tight pants. Every other year or so I watch it again, appreciating its sly style, optimism, and prophetic accuracy.

My favorite summer movie experience of all time was watching Caddyshack with my mother that same summer. My mother doesn’t think things are funny. I mean, she doesn’t automatically begin laughing when presented with “comedy”.  She grew up on the greats - Sid Caesar, Jack Benny, Lucille Ball… it was hard to top these legends because they were always telling a story, building a narrative, not just telling jokes. But Caddyshack had some people from Saturday Night Live that she was familiar with because I had started watching it every week, and I believe I begged a great deal and told her it was about sports. Which should have been a red flag, really.

We got there a little late and ended up sitting in about the third or fourth row. For the first 47 minutes of the film, Mom enjoyed the air conditioning and the popcorn and maybe a little nap, but not really the movie. Then came Harold Ramis’s brilliant swimming pool set piece, a long burn that builds and builds. My mother began to laugh.

Then she laughed more. And more. She wiped tears from beneath her glasses. By the time we’d reached the gag’s denouement, she had one knee on the floor of the theatre… I’ll be honest, we all did, I did too, half the theater was literally on the floor laughing. But I’d never seen my Mom laugh like that before. As we left the theatre she told me not to tell anybody she had seen that movie, she was a schoolteacher, what would they think? “But you laughed, Mom.” I said. “Yes, that was fun. That was like my summer vacation.”

The movies I enjoyed in the 1980’s were mostly the haves against the have-nots (“…the cinderella story”). Ghostbusters, Dirty Dancing, Say Anything, The Goonies. The "little guy" was the hero, and I was that guy. There was honor and merit in rejecting status and defending compassion. I remember bonding fondly over the dignity of the underdog - all confidence and hustle and, again, compassion. Watching those movies created a crazy quilt of memories representing my American Dream - not what I could get, but who we all were.

But movies always reflect the world around them, and I realize now that there must have been kids with central air and wall to wall carpet who felt the same way about Risky Business and the mean kids in the John Hughes movies, who feel about the 90s the way that I feel about the 80s. Heck, there are tons of people who feel about the 1890's the way I feel about the (19)80s... just like me, they recognize themselves in those stories and characters and want to hold on to that feeling, but some want it so badly they are willing to burn the book rather than turn the page.

But a friend of mine once told me that I didn’t have to worry about burning books, because I had the power to write a new ones. Maybe, if I'm lucky, they'll turn one into a summer movie someday, and you can watch it, in your car, stars above you, eating an ice cream sandwich.

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Two mimes.And they’re married.And they are on tv.Not only that, they have their OWN tv show.On a major network.In prime time.Weekly.And it’s an hour long.And it’s a hit.

Hahahhahahaha…

…ah.

That’s real, by the way. If you can’t imagine a future where that could possibly happen, it’s probably because it has already happened.

In 1977 (and 1978) Shields and Yarnell had a summer replacement series on CBS. He was a mime, she was a dancer, and together they created this new thing that had never been seen before.

I was 11, and I thought it was kind of cool, but it wasn’t kids that made them super famous. They “invented” the robot moves made popular on disco dance floors, trained with the legendary Marcel Marceau, performed for two US Presidents and the Queen of England, and won a primetime Emmy. And they were everywhere on tv, from Bob Hope specials to American Bandstand.

If I walked in to any broadcasting network and suggested this idea, I’d be thrown out on my ear. I’d be lucky if it was my ear.

Yet, such was the magic of the summer replacement series. There seemed to be no rules whatsoever. Fictional characters stepped out of their shows to sing and dance, network stars battled in obstacle courses, hard rockers sang duets with colorful puppets. It was like every summer for almost a decade was curated by David Lynch.

The best of these were The Sonny and Cher Show and Hee Haw, both promoted to full series after the summer run; in fact, Hee Haw ran for 20 years. Whaddya mean you don’t remember Hee Haw?  It’s rural Laugh-In.  Whaddya mean you don’t remember Laugh-In?

The worst of these, the absolute legend, is the wreck of the train called Pink Lady and Jeff. Dateline: Hollywood, 1980. Fred Silverman, TV producer, is desperate for a new hit. Eureka! A variety show with the most popular musical act in the world teamed with the most hilarious comedian alive!

The problem wasn’t the recipe. If you had a show with BTS and Wanda Sykes I’d watch that right now.  The problem was the ingredients.

Pink Lady was a female duo from Japan who were, at the time, kind of like BTS - millions of dollars in music sales, selling out stadiums, charting on radio worldwide. Of course they get offered a shot in the US, no brainer, but when Pink Lady arrived at the studio, they discovered that their show would be entirely in English. They didn't speak English, so every single word they uttered (carefree banter, comedy sketches, the translated lyrics of their very own songs) had to be memorized phonetically.

Oh, “and Jeff” was Jeff Altman. He was a “guy you’ve seen in things”, perennial special guest now thrust centerstage into the spotlight as playing the role of the everyman, the viewer at home, exactly as befuddled as we were about what was going on, only he was actually there, being pushed into a hot tub once a week. Which happened at the end of every episode. For some reason.

It Was Bad.

In fact, Pink Lady and Jeff represented the very first time that I, a kid, realized that something made professionally by grown-ups could be bad. As a kid you don’t get to decide what’s bad; saying you don’t like something only spotlights your inexperience, because if you were older and wiser, you’d get it. I am both those things now. Doesn’t make it any better.

This was the summer that my eyebrows, which until that time had been perpetually lifted in an open expression of childhood wonder, began to lightly furrow. The world shifted, as if in a Hitchcock film. I contemplated why Battle Beyond The Stars didn’t give me the same feeling as Empire Strikes Back, and why You Can’t Stop The Music left me entertained, yet… uneasy. I began to discern, not merely seeing, but actually looking.

Or not looking, but seeing. I don’t know, whatever, this show was really bad, but I have never forgotten it. I’ve seen every episode. I have it on DVD. It was bad in an amazing way, a way that showed me that everything didn’t have to be polished and perfect. The world had room for a lot of stuff. My stories and songs might make it, somewhere. I might even get to be on Match Game.

You are right, young one, sitting in front of your cathode ray tube in your t-shirt and gym shorts with that giant plastic tumbler full of ice water and a Silly Straw. That is an awful show. Embrace your instincts. Discern. Begin to trust your life experience. There are some things that age and wisdom do not improve. Perhaps the lima bean is not an acquired taste.

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I have that same t-shirt.

With the blueprint of the Voltron robot. That exact shirt –  from the subscription boxes I used to get. Heh.

Hmn.

It looks way different on that guy.

A different size? He's my same height, though... you could only order it in small, medium, and large; and the small fits a little kid - and the larges are for, like, The Rock.

It’s gotta be the medium.

It really does look different, though.

Maybe it’s our laundry detergent. Maybe we have hard water. Does hard water make cotton relax? That’s probably why my all shirts seem more… baggy. Chemistry. But my jeans are made of cotton, and they seem to be getting less baggy, dramatically less, particularly in the thick parts. Like the waistband.

(Probably a different type of cotton. Denim production must be a really complicated process.)

Which drawer is that shirt in? I think it’s the same one as the Captain America shirt I wear every Fourth of July… ooo! Gotta find that shirt for next week.

Maybe I should take better care of my t-shirts. Maybe I should hand wash them and then hang them in the bathroom to dry, or put them on a warm towel or something. No, I would still be using the hard water. I guess I could just boil the water first. Or use filtered water. That might help.

Maybe he’s one of those guys who has all their t-shirts on hangers in their closet. I’ve always thought that was kind of crazy, but look at that shirt, man: if that’s what he’s doing, it’s working.

Just think how many really nice shirts I’d have; both Black Panthers, the little orange lamb from Amsterdam, the Veronica Mars movie one… oh, and the Reading Rainbow would still look new!

His looks better than mine did new, though, somehow. It’s almost like he’s 25 and does push ups, and those things with barbells and free weights.

Yeah.

The Rock does those. That’s explains a lot about the large shirts.

Yeah. He’s definitely 25. Well, I mean, I was 25 too, but apparently a generic brand sort of 25. I mean, not Kirkland 25, but more of Cragmont 25.He’s the 25 where you lift stuff. On purpose.

Yeah, it’s probably not the shirt.

Yeah.

I bet it looks exactly the same as mine when it’s in the drawer.And our water’s probably fine.

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Let me tell you a little story:

I arrived in New York City, winter of ‘93. I needed a job.

So far I’d been a tutor, office assistant, café worker, cabaret performer, security person, housecleaner, lead singer, film editor, data input guy, nanny, scriptwriter, and telephone fortune teller. None of these stuck as a career. Now I was a husband and suddenly, a New Yorker.

I put on a blue suit, the nice one I used to wear on Sundays, and started interviewing, my goal to secure work in the city while my wife was at college upstate. Amidst record breaking blizzards I got a roommate, a room, and was offered two jobs right away, but in each case the interviews were on the telephone, and when I showed up in my clean blue suit I was told that the entire thing had been a terrible misunderstanding. One woman actually told me in what she called “confidence” that I was intimidating. Skin wise. She hoped I understood, and I did; comprehension wasn’t my problem.

A friend from San Francisco, who had lived in New York for a time, helped me out by introducing me to her temp agency rep, who found me a short-time position as executive secretary at a very fancy advertising agency for the Chief Creative Officer, who needed someone quickly because her assistant had suffered a complete and total nervous breakdown and was out for six weeks on multiple doctor’s orders. I jumped at the chance.

I was a pretty good secretary – I’d been trained pretty well by some excellent people. Most of the staff were confused enough when they saw me to either avoid me entirely or speak very politely. One person stared at me from down the hall, then turned around, went back to their desk and called me, but for the most part I was considered a bizarre oddity, the kind of which a powerful creative leader had the authority to conjure and display. Anyway, she liked me, and after about four weeks asked me what I was going to do next.

“I’d love to work here!” I said enthusiastically. “I think my creative side and my business side could really work in this environment.”

She stared at me. It was like I was being cast in a movie, or a plastic surgeon envisioning what the changes would look like once the swelling went down.

“Hmn.” That’s all she said.

“How does somebody get a job here?” I asked.

She brought me into her office and explained advertising to me, everything, from the bottom up, and then said, “Take a crack at this application. Fill it out and bring it back next week.”

Except it wasn’t an application; it was a test. I’ve still never seen anything like it. It was five tiny little briefs of problems that needed creative answers; a  concept, an image, a print ad, a script, and the last one was the best:

“You have been hired as the main songwriter for Polly Piledriver, the world famous punk rock star. But when she arrives at the studio, she has had a change of heart, and wants to record a country album, and she wants her first single to be a love song about rancid butter, flat beer, and cold pizza.”

Aw. You shouldn’t have.

I finished the test over the weekend and turned it in. I didn’t hear anything, which wasn’t weird because she was incredibly busy. But Friday morning we both arrived at the elevators at the same time, and I finally asked her what she thought. She pulled me into a wider part of the hallway and looked me dead in the eye -

“I hope you appreciate what I’m going to tell you, because I really don’t want to say it, but I think somebody should be honest with you.”

Well, this wasn’t going well.

“You would be incredible in this business. But you can’t work here.”

Ok. A bit pear shaped.

“It’s not you it’s… well, I said I’d be honest, there is no one like you around here, you’re young and different and I would hire you today, but this business is all about collaboration and you just wouldn’t have that, not at first, and maybe not for a long time. And I don’t want to put you through that. There are other, specific, agencies that I will call right now and get you a job there.”

“Isn’t there anything I could do here?” I asked. “Mail room? A lot of people start there in the movies.”

“But you wouldn’t be doing the work that I do. It would just be work.”

“Let me be honest, then; I need work. I need a job. And at least if I’m in the building, then maybe I could learn the ropes that way.”

Again she looked at me. A shorter amount of time, like the puffiness had gone down nicely and the scars were barely visible.

“Fine. I’ll find you something.”

And she did. That’s how I got started in advertising. The very next week I started as a secretary in the print department, then after organizing the office learned how to set type and during a crisis where they had no other option, I became an official digital artist and so on and so forth.

So after investing in a high-profile education that I wouldn’t pay off for a quarter century, I began my career by songwriting. Which is not what I went to school for, technically, but has served me well in several odd situations, a few of which will serve as the core of this year’s Summer Replacement Series, a concert of gentle anarchy, respectful protest, warm and cuddly rebellion.

We begin with that smash hit for Polly Piledriver. I wrote this 35 years ago and probably recorded it on the old TASCAM 4-track, but I can’t find it on any cassette tape, so I have faithfully recreated the incredibly amateur glory of my enthusiastic youth. If you read these rather than listen, please, do listen. It’s ridiculous. 

Thank you so much for your time, and Happy beginning of Summer.

As a girl, I was rude

I thought love was just fast food

Anything more substantial was

not on my mind

as I dated and courted

the confused sad and sordid.

But you were the home cooked meal I’d left behind.

Like a fine wine you aged

Burning’ into my memory

Looking into your eyes

I forget all those deep fried guys

Butter goes rancid

And beer goes flat

If you refrigerate ‘em you still can’t stop that

Honey pizza gets cold

You know all that gets old

But you are a staple in my Pantry of Love

Oh sugar, the thought of you sends my heart reeling

These flowers you brought me lift me to the ceiling

They’ll throw rice at our wedding and our eyes will tingle

As the salt on our tears of joy commingle

Yes, butter goes rancid and beer goes flat

If you refrigerate ‘em you still can’t stop that

Honey, pizza gets cold

You know all that gets old

But you are a staple in my Pantry of Love

Yes, butter goes rancid in sticks or in pats

and a Twinkie’s just full of corn syrup and fat

But, baby, you’ve got it all

You’re non-perishable

Yes, you are a staple in my Pantry of Love.

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For the last 41 years I have had a one second summer vacation, right at the beginning of the season. I uncontrollably smile, my whole body relaxes, and I look so forward to eight to twelve weeks of sleeping late and watching Captain Kangaroo every morning while eating cereal for both breakfast and lunch, reading books in three hour long stretches. enjoying a popsicle from the freezer after a full day’s work cutting the grass (and hand trimming around the front steps), then lying on a blanket atop the living room floor listening to entire albums while sipping ice water through a Silly Straw™ from an absurdly gigantic plastic “cup” that I get to purchase every year from the 7-11™.

One-one thousand. Then it’s over. It’s just a feeling I get to have once a year. I only had one actual summer like that, but it was great. Once I could drive (15 in Kansas City) I started working as a stage performer at the local theme park. These were gigantic revues with elaborate sets and costumes, and for the first two years a full live band, for six shows a day.

I had tap shoes. I still have tap shoes, safe beneath the bed, where they cannot offer anyone the false impression that they could, while attached to me, offer a consistently rhythmic percussive experience of any kind. (I do a great jazz hand, though.) So that was three summers in row.

Then I was a tour guide at Universal Studios in LA (The audition was talking. You had to riff for 20 minutes. They hired me two weeks early.)

And then a record store the next year, and then I was out of college, where summers seemed to disappear, split between Elder Spring and Nascent Fall. Dangit.

Am I whining? I apologize, it’s just that I worked somewhere for many years where I earned 6 weeks vacation per year, plus personal days and sick days and holidays. I could have been a guest star. Now, I’ve decided to amend my retirement by doing something I care about, and vacation time is down to two weeks again. Actually, not even two weeks, it’s like, 56 hours. A bit of a shock.

I don’t need MORE vacation as much as a certain style of vacation. Ok, more is better, yes, I see that clearly now that I’ve written it down. But I find that, despite my Tardis talk, I don’t want to travel through time so much as slow it down. There are fun and relaxing things to do, and if I’m wistful for summers past I can certainly lay on the floor and drink water through a straw; for goodness sake, that’s both delightful and economical.

I found a video of my daughter and I sorting LEGO. She was six. It was a basket of every shape, size, and color imaginable; we transferred them into an old makeup case while listening to a compilation of guitar heroes on vinyl from Third Man Records. I taught her how to spell “Johnny Cash”. She kept correcting me when I put brown LEGO in the tan section.

It’s 11 minutes long. It’s incredibly relaxing to watch it, it’s ME S M R, very vacationy. I think it qualifies as a Treasured Moment, which are rare, and I am hungry for them, as we all are, but I don’t want to gobble them up…I want to savor them. Slow it all down.

So allow me to present SUMMER REPLACEMENT SERIES, a collection of artworks I’ve never been able to properly share due to lack of logistics, technology, and principally, time. It’s a variety show of sorts, imbued with the spirit of experimentation and questionable programming choices that brought the world both Sonny and Cher and Pink Lady and Jeff, both of whom we’ll be discussing.

Not a 180, just a little shift, like a limited time flavor of coffee, or fiddleheads. Seasonal, if not artisanal. It also gives me a little time to recharge and gird up. I very much appreciate your time, and as the days get warmer (or colder in the Southern hemisphere…that always twists my brain a bit).

I hope these will be refreshing breaks. Or warm, cozy cups of cocoa, if you’re in New Zealand. [See, that really is confusing: I’m sure I’d show up there in July and be the only idiot on the beach…

…in the snow.]

Thank you for your time.

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As a kid, you feel invincible.

Your body is just one thing: you don’t think about your knees or your back or your eyes as separate, they’re part of a bio-spaceship you’re piloting around.

The older I get the more I become a jigsaw puzzle of discrete physical pieces, each with their own set of verbs.

My ears? Ring. My jaw clicks. My gut… roils. And the rubber-band physics that used to define motion have been separated too; up and down is now: down.

And up. Two choices. Two clear efforts. Neither in any way dependent on the other.  It’s automatic transmission to manual, more control but clearly a bit less raw horsepower.

I’ve been a bit under the weather recently, a phase I’ve just learned was derived from ship travel, where if a sailor was ill they were sent below deck to recover,  thus “under the weather”. Anyway, I am below deck right now, far from the currently bright amber skies over Brooklyn, recovering. Well, I didn’t lose health – I’m not retrieving it, it’s right here, I just either need a new one or a bit of time to mend and properly iron this one.

The vulnerability of illness is such that one seeks out comfort with little energy to pursue it, so comfort needs to be close at hand, like a cool pillow or a cup of hot tea or a bag of camp-sized marshmallows. But of course, even after the lessons taught to us by Covid, a sick day is not a day “off”, unless you are entirely unconscious, and even then you probably need a doctor’s note.

So though I’ve been laying down, my phone was near my hand all day, more than occasionally dinging or ringing or asking for something to be done, which I did, then closed my eyes the requisite 11 minutes it takes to both, coincidentally, fall fully asleep and have the phone buzz again.

So I thought I might watch a relaxing show, but I’ve recently changed phones, so I was locked out of nearly every app.

People used to recognize either my face, voice, or name. This is how humans engaged with one another; in person, on the telephone, or on paper. You could see someone, hear someone, or read what they wrote.

You didn’t need all three, you just looked at the tv and said “Hey, that’s William Shatner” and were pretty sure that was him. If you weren’t sure, you just waited until he started talking.

“Yep,” you’d say, “that’s William Shatner alright.”

To prove we were us, we used ID. Driver’s license, or a passport if you were a, y’know, passport person. Those pieces of nothing but paper products allowed a human being to write a monetary amount on another piece of paper and turn it into legal tender. The salesperson would check the randomish scribble from one of the pieces of paper to that on another, lift the money till in the cash register, and place it underneath.

Yet I, ill yet surrounded by an Age Or Miracles, found myself adding to my full body ache – head filled with cheese – roiling and exhausted state the specific frustration of not being able to prove my identity to a machine with detail enough for it allow me to enjoy services that I had already paid for.

Name: it doesn’t care about my name, it wants an email. I have seventeen different emails.

Password: Well, that’s what it comes down to, right? And I understand that I changed it 4 months ago, thank you very much but that doesn’t help me remember what lyrical maniac word I created back then in anger (with caps and numbers and symbols).

The Picture Box: where I need to “prove I’m human” ( I believe the words I was clearly muttering accomplished that nicely, but the phone aloofly pretended that it wasn’t listening ) .

And then multi-factor authentication, where I had to find a device that was a friend of the device I was holding who could vouch for me.

I was in front of a digital condo board. I was applying for citizenship in Tron. All saints forbid that someone on the Dark Web should watch an episode of “Picard” on my dime… I was protected fully from such chicanery, even though I’ve been sent four bank cards in two years as a “security courtesy” and all my passwords trigger alerts that they were found in a data breach from somewhere or another.

I don’t go online for security. I don’t go outside for security. I do it because I have to, for one reason or another, and the calculated risk of engaging in any kind of communication or connection is something I’ve accepted, I just don’t feel well and I want to see a classically trained Shakespearian actor make money pretending to be the retired captain of a spaceship, that’s all. My bio-spaceship is tired, the weather outside is (literally) frightful, and I want to be below a metaphorical deck for just little while. That is all I’m asking for.

Why so many questions? Do you really want to get to know me? Should I tell you my deepest desires and grandest hopes, not just for me, but for generations to come? Are you waiting for the moment I reveal, I mean truly reveal myself?  Take down all barriers and really allow you to understand who I am? The raw, open, jigsaw puzzle that defines my life? Is that what you’re waiting for? Is that what you really want? Is – oh, hold on… here you go:9 8 7 4 8 2.

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When my college reunion was announced, I began writing a poem. I missed the physical event due to the complications of our car being filled with water, but I finished the poem anyway. That’s what this is.

A while agoAn age ago

I left a Universityfilled with a stomach full of hope and half a head of let's just see

having traded anecdotes and studied some and kissed some folks and sung a bit and played guitar I looked ahead (well, not too far)

I broke a pipe and launched a hatand made no further plans save that I’d(while respecting social norm)not necessarily conformto labels, roles and shapes expectedby society’s architects.

So if, in future situations,I was challenged by a nationwith a cruel acquired tastefor broken souls who knew their placeI promised to state

(nay, I swore)

“I’m not the droid you’re looking for”

I didn’t think I’d say it much except job interviews and such where queries for positions billed concerned mere roles they wanted filled instead of work they needed done.(Which is a shame. I find work fun.)

But much of what I’d hoped was lasting ended up as central casting.

Some dates judged less on connection than a template of affection,then appeared somewhat annoyed when I explained

“I’m not the droid you’re…”

Looking for a fantasy projected?Status quo protected? Low risk liability and servile safe utility?

Well, I’m not offering resistanceto this templated existencehonestly,what seems defiance to traditional complianceisn’t. It’s a never-endinglack of skillin bad pretending.

A true momentis combiningthoughtsor energies aligningat long tablesin small bedswhispered softlyloudly saidI’ve found myself reflected best in timeswhen ego acquiesced to harmony with people whocombined to create ever-new ideas and possibilities.

That’s what I learned in college.

Easy? No; the path from there to here has been uncharted,

vague, unclear

chaotic, dangerous, disjointed

but I’ve not been disappointedwhat I’ve lacked, I’ve never neededserial failed ’til I succeededlong endured with low complaintgotten what I’ve given.

Ain’t itfunny all the effort spent towardstrengthening a “permanent record”when no one’s checked my attendance,or my grade point average?

If there is one thingthat I’ve protected it’s no image I’ve projectedbut my choice to go through wallswhen the world presents long hallways filled with nothing but locked doors.

I’m not the droid you’re looking for.

I hope you find the perfect model of your new automaton.I’ll just go about my businessand then quietly

move along.

[ 29 May 2023]

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I cannot remember names. I never could. Delightfully, there was lockdown. During online meetings everyone’s name was right below their face like a caption in a Criterion film. Cheat codes.

“Hello, Patricia!” I would say at School Leadership Team meetings. “How was your weekend, Rebecca?” I would nonchalantly add.

Now, if I see you face to face, my background isn’t blurred, but my foreground is. I have no idea what your name is. Names are not part of my relationship with memory.

This column stands firmly as a chronicle of black history from the perspective of me, a black person, and things have happened to me, which are history, so I end up doing a fair share of remembering in the space.

Memory is far, far cooler than the internet. There’s still so much mystery there. The internet is a sunny day on a prominent hill with near perfect visibility in every direction, while memory is what you can see in the dark with a less than average flashlight; not even one of those LED ones, just a D cell battery job where you can only see what’s right in front of you. And Memory is best friends with Imagination, so who really knows what’s going on out there? In there. Wherever.

What I like the best about memory is that I cannot remember your childhood. Even if we knew each other as kids, I don’t know what it’s like to be you. Online, we can binge-watch the exact same thing on a streaming service from opposite ends of the earth, but if you sat at the desk next to me in every class from 3rd grade to 10th grade because our names were right next to each other in alphabetical order, you would still be living a entirely unique show on a completely different set of software and hardware than I.

Each of our realities is infinitely different. No two living things are exactly the same. But at least for human beings, there are patterns and nodes of experiential intersection where some specific aspect of life may be true for many people. Something I remember might be something you remember, even if our last names aren’t anywhere near one another, alphabetically.

My memory uses what adventurers in blue police boxes from foreign planets might call “fixed points in time”: frozen moments, single images - usually associated with an object. A tiny toy flatbed truck carrying plastic logs. The emergency stop switch on an elevator. A string of pearls. A streetlight. The memory happens in a kind of peripheral vision; I see the object (in my head) and if I keep staring at it, the memory kind of plays around it, as if the object is the needle on a record. And if more than one of us share the significance of that same object, we may not hear the same song, but I believe there is a harmony of sorts.

So, to the aspic.

We stand at a moment in human history when machines are being used to create art. No decisions, self discovery, or craft are involved. To many, this is a terrifying concept.

But I am neither panicked or disrupted, because, well…the aspic.

The category of food has long since been mimicked by industry, yet the overall truth remains that carefully cultivated foodstuffs, prepared by the hands of an actual human being, cooked by heat and time are far more nourishing and delicious than pre-prepared microwavable fare. Both can exist in the world, but corporations only mass create foods they feel that a mass of people might buy. There are pork cracklin’ people and frozen burrito people and nearly all of us were instant noodle people at one time or another.

But the aspic. Aspic = savory jello. Yes, it’s a very old recipe and I am not going into how that particular sausage is made (though sausage is often involved) but instead touch on its uniqueness, and the fact that it is nearly impossible that any corporate entity would ever decide to mass produce it. The aspic is proof that no matter the power of the corporation (or the algorithm), true artistic individuality is something only a human being can do.

The aspic itself is not my focus, let’s just get past this as quickly as we can and for goodness sake don’t look it up online, it’s ghastly.

My focus is on a particular aspic mold. See, the point of the aspic was that it gave gelatin the chance to serve as main course rather than side dish, a concept so metaphorically rich, but I digress. To take on this challenge, the aspic had to take center stage on the table, and to do that required drama. So during the time that aspics were popular (I don’t know when that was, but there were tons of aspic recipes in “The Joy Of Cooking”) the aspic mold also gained prominence.

Thus (and I’m gonna go out on a limb here: many of you may not have heard of this object, but for those who have, this should generate a significant jolt of recollection) The Copper Fish Pan. I believe it is a koi, or salmon, and it is curved in an elegant inverted “U” shape. I never ate anything prepared in it, because it was always hanging on the kitchen wall in my grandparents’ house. There was a Copper Lobster companion piece as well.

My time in my grandparents’ kitchen was liberal yet limited, but when I was there that pan, which my Grandmother told me was meant for aspics (but she really didn’t like aspics), shone brilliantly, no matter the season. Then I found out it wasn’t just my grandmother’s house; they were in many more homes - you’d go to a birthday party and there was one in the kitchen there, I’d pick up a date at their house and there was one in their kitchen…

“My grandmother has one of those!”

“Yeah? It’s been here forever…I don’t even know what it’s for.”

“It’s an aspic pan!’ I’d say excitedly, because dates love salad trivia.

I’ve found copper fish pans in kitchens from New England to Northern California.

Ring a bell? A few of you must be familiar with them, and at least one of you actually has one: it is you, brave decorator, that truly understands the bequeathing of legacy through generations, passing forward not only photographs or even stories, but experiences. This entirely non-aquatic wall hanging, sparkling brightly with quasi-usefulness, is an heirloom not of utility, but purely of memory.

Someday my own child may bring a date home to bond over this penny-bright oddity, and I will listen as she explains what an aspic is, and a gentle yet charming hilarity will ensue. Perhaps her date will recognize the object, and we’ll take comfort in the knowledge that their family in some true yet ethereal way connects to our own. And if this relationship deepens, our copper fish pan will someday belong to them, a new generation, my daughter and…y’know…what’s-their-name.

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Have you ever had that dream where you’re back in school and it’s suddenly finals time and you haven’t finished the work? So have I! Also, I’ve had that happen to me when I was awake, more than once.

The first time was in high school, when I decided to try to write a piano concerto. I did not know how to write a piano concerto. But I had MOXIE.

I approached my music teacher with the idea that my school’s concert orchestra might play it for me. He regarded my request with ardent curiosity. I don’t think he took me seriously, which may have been my fault. In the spirit of Bugs Bunny, I was known for a predisposition toward “harmless antics”, which he may have misinterpreted as a predisposition toward “general madness”.  He actually signed my yearbook “You are abundantly talented. Lots of luck in all you do. I’ll be looking for your name in the headlines, “7-Eleven robbed by good natured black kid who sings and dances.” “which was ridiculous, because I’m much more of a “brilliant plan to burgle Nakatomi Plaza” kind of guy.

But he did teach me an most important lesson: when I wasn’t able to play a particularly tricky saxophone part in concert band, he gently shouted,

“Jd! Think!”

I focused hard enough to telekinetically move the music stand, and played the part correctly, but incredibly mechanically, so he (less gently) shouted,

“Jd, Don’t Think.”

And that did it, because music is right between thinking and not thinking. #formativemoment

He told me it would take longer than a couple of weeks to instruct me as to how to score a concerto. I did not have a great deal of instructional options as there was no internet, only the Kansas City Kansas Public Library and the Waldenbooks at the far end of Indian Springs Mall, neither of which had a book on scoring classical music. But I had MOXIE.

I got some fancy staff paper and a red pen (no idea what I was thinking). I set about it with a piano after school for a month or so. I copied the finished score on a Xerox machine, and cut that into strips which I scotch-taped to letter size pages to make individual instrument parts,.

And my music teacher did allow me to distribute this Frankensteined mess to the concert orchestra, a room full of confused midwestern faces behind rented instruments. And let me be clear that the music they were attempting to read was a maniacal travesty of time and key signatures. It must have been like trying to play a Mandelbrot set. They feverishly attempted to jot down the correct rhythms and notes. But I stood on the podium, and eventually we played about two pages of it.

Was I embarrassed? Heck, no. I knew what it was supposed to sound like, even if it wasn’t written down correctly. “I’ll hear it someday!” I said, with the same dreamy tone of that African American kid who swept up the diner in Back to The Future, when he says, “Mayor! You wait and see, Mr. Caruthers, I will be Mayor!”

MOXIE.

Perhaps it was that very passion, so elegantly represented by Hill Valley’s Goldie Wilson, that pushed me forward in my own journey through time, but I have discovered a little secret I’d like to share with you. Because we’re close.

Time cheats.

Time doesn’t abandon the past, it brings it along for the ride. That score has been with me since then, a sturdy piece of paper, virtually unchanged. But technology changed around it, and I did too.

So it occurred to me, after wrestling with the ballet that I still owe you, that I had never actually heard, outside my head, the first major piece I’d written.

And neither had my music teacher. I was supposed to turn it in at the end of the year. 39 years ago.

So I’m sending it to him this weekend. I tried to keep it exactly as it was “written”originally, but even I couldn’t read some of that anymore, total mayhem, the scribblings of a madman, unrealistically enthusiastic –

– but not entirely delusional, because I never did stop believing that I’d hear it, someday. And now I have.

Just like at the end of that recurring dream, I realize that I don’t actually have to turn this in, I’m done with high school. But it’s strangely satisfying to close this loop, to honor possibility, and celebrate a life’s path entirely free of musical theatre based convenience store heists.

If you’d like to listen, it’s at the end of this week’s recording. Thank you for your time.

finaledellarte: a piano concerto. ©1984 Michaelsongs℗ 2023 Jd Michaels/The CabsEverywhere Creative Production House (ASCAP)

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I would not dare to refer to myself as a professional writer; perhaps more of a storied amateur, a local craftsperson, an inspired aspirant. I’ve just begun writing things people could read, and you never learn anything at the beginning. At the beginning it all seems to be going well because you don’t know the difference.

My first class in college was a Literature course where we began with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The professor copied part of the prologue on the blackboard and had someone read it out loud. He waxed about the meter and pointed out the rhyming patterns and informed us how incredible it was that this had been written at all, how incredibly different it was… had anyone EVER heard of something this unique?

I now understand that this question was rhetorical. I see that now. Hindsight. 20/20. But in my myoptic youth I thought he was asking us a question, so I decided to answer it.

“It’s a rap.” I told him. (I did raise my hand, and he’d called on me.)

“Excuse me?” he asked.

I realize that he heard the word “rap” with a “w”. I realize that now. “Wrap”.“It’s a wrap” is a phase he was certainly familiar with, had he seen any of hundreds of episodes of 1950’s television or several select films about filmmaking.

And I should have answered his question. That seems super clear, at this point, but instead I did something I had never actually done before. It shouldn’t have even worked, it was right out of a John Hughes movie.

“Gimme a beat.” I said to no-one in particular.

And no one in particular happened to be this black haired kid from New York City, who immediately began beat boxing. Without turning my head, I began -

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,And bathed every veyne in swich licourOf which vertu engendred is the flour

And that was a mistake, I see that, of course I see that, but then everyone started tapping the desk in time and I got all inspired and did another four lines or so. I’m not sure how I nailed the Old English, but we’d read it in high school.

The professor thought I was a witch, and I had taken over the classroom with some kind of spell of some kind or something, because he asked when I finished, “What was that?”

Another student explained to him that this was a new form of expression called “hip hop”, born around five years ago in New York City, where entire pieces weren’t sung but indeed spoken, much like the prologue.

He seemed shocked that everyone was familiar with this specific cultural phenomenon, given the room’s source demographic.

I might have been able to fly under the radar had I not turned in a final paper titled “Bald Headed Babies from the Other Side of Town”, a musical in the neighborhood of Frank Zappa that also tripled as my final paper for my Sociology and Music classes. It had a companion cassette tape with the soundtrack, which I’d recorded using a piano, and my saxophone, and intriguing lyrics which told the story of a scientist who faked evidence proving that the amount of hair on a newborn baby’s head directly correlated to their eventual role as a miscreant of some kind, and thus wanted them all to be gathered up and arrested, but when the government tried to do just that, the bald headed babies revolted, resulting in all manner of formula based assaults.

I got three B minuses. It wasn’t purely that I didn’t know any better. I began to suspect it was going pear shaped somewhere in the middle, but nobody told me not to so – forgiveness rather than permission.

I was told that all three professors met in a teacher’s lounge somewhere and discussed what to do. “A cassette tape,” the literature professor said, “No one, has ever given me, a cassette tape.”

He had written the books we were studying from. I thought all professors did that, like their perfect bound lesson plans, but when I went back to Kansas City and my friend was studying from that same book I began to realize he was probably a big deal. But I was just starting out. The beginning. I didn’t know anything, I just put everything I had into everything I was doing and hoped that worked.

I don’t know if it worked, but I made it from there to here. And here I am, back at a beginning, but slightly farther than the very beginning. This year there will be more music, and perhaps slightly more fancy title sequences, and if things go well I will have enough material for an album. Ooo.

Welcome. Thank you for your time. Let’s begin.

[If you’d like to hear “The Bald Headed Baby Tarantella”, it’s at the end of this week’s recording.

Just in case, y’know, you thought I made that up.]

audio: The Bald Headed Baby Tarantella©1984 - Jd Michaels

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