A Recording of my Short Story, "James's Arrival"

Ten years ago, after writing fiction for a number of years and working with a local writers group, I received my first little success, winning the James Jones Short Story Award for my story, "James's Arrival." At the time it was a great thrill, but more importantly, it spurred me on to continue and try to reach the next level. Ten years later, I'd be lying if I said I've reached the goals I'd hoped to achieve, but like I've said repeatedly, I'm not dead yet. 

Ten years after my little blip of success, I've had a chance to enjoy my story as if for the first time due to the work of the Elmhurst Public Library with their recent addition of "Adult Storytime for Grownups Podcast!" on the library website. Actor and writer Duard Mosley does me the huge honor of reading my decade-old story and breathing new life into it, offering nuances I never would have included in my own reading of the story.

Feel free to listen and download above or go to this link and scroll down to Episode 2, starting at about minute 5:35. If you go this route, before my story is a short bit of fiction from Duard himself! Enjoy.

The Completion of my New Album, "The Palisades"

Album?  Tape?  CD?  I guess none of the above, but despite not actually making a physical product and putting it up for free on my website, I still call the project I began last October an "album." After months of demo recording and distribution of arrangements, a day in the studio to record drums and bass, followed by months of recording guitar, keys, vocals, clarinet, French horn, tuba and violin, and then a few months of mixing and mastering, The Palisades is complete.

The goal was to record an album that my wife Alice would like from start to finish. On that note, I've already succeeded. If anyone else likes it, well that would be nice, too!

Seriously, I'm happy with the result, and I'm thrilled with all the musicians who performed on the album and many others who helped with recording, equipment, or just lending an ear.

I'll highlight all eleven songs over the next several weeks. In the meantime, you can stream and/or download the album, plus check out lyrics and how the whole thing came together. Let me know what you think.

This is my ninth album, and I'm not finished yet. I think the next one is going to be a balls-to-wall rock and roller, but I'll have to see if I've got enough anger in me to pull it off. Ask me on November 9th!

Karl Ove Knausgaard's "My Struggle"

When Richard Linklater’s Boyhood was released two years ago, I had the good fortune of reading a Time magazine piece that compared the film to a book by a Norwegian author named Karl Ove Knausgaard.  Not just a book, but a 3600-page, six-volume autobiography called – oddly enough – My Struggle, (you gotta wonder if they came up with a different title for the German translation).  I socked away this little bit of information for future use, and lo and behold, while at a used bookstore in Bayfield, Wisconsin in July, I happened upon the first volume of Knausgaard’s opus and thought that for nine dollars I should give it a go.  I’m glad I did, and though I likely won’t be reading volumes two through six, I enjoyed the first volume (or the first 300 pages or so, anyhow) not only for what the author illuminates about his life, but for the way his words inspired me to consider my own life journey.  If you’re ever in want of stopping the routine of daily living, of taking a moment to self-reflect, to remember and to wonder – in the words of David Byrne – “Well, how did I get here?”, My Struggle would be a good place to start, as it holds back nothing: not a sentiment, not a doubt or desire, not a transgression or dejection, and likely not a single conceivable detail about the physical surroundings of the author's childhood.

Arthur Miller once wrote: “The writer must be in it; he can’t be to one side of it, ever. He has to be endangered by it. His own attitudes have to be tested in it. The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.”

It seems Knausgaard has no qualms whatsoever of walking on the beam of embarrassment and revealing the seedy underbelly that is his life (and is all of our lives if we’re ever to be truthful).  He writes about his daughter, “(She) can be so cheeky that I completely lose my head and sometimes shout at her or shake her until she starts crying…”  This is not something most people would admit to unless they’re discussing a past that they’ve now recovered from.  My Struggle is not one of those books.  It reveals the gory details of living.

Have you ever closed your eyes and tried to conjure up a detailed mental image of the home where you grew up?  The colors.  The texture.  The scents.  The layout.  Was the toilet of the first floor bathroom on left or on the right?  Was that the room with flowered wallpaper or the little green design that always reminded you of a military seal?  Was the floor linoleum, wood or tile? 

Knausgaard has thought through all this and more, and so much of his reminisces brought to life my own childhood.  His crush for a girl named Hanne and the desires she summoned (“There was nothing between us…but I loved her.  I didn’t think of anything else…I saw her all the time, not in a scrutinizing or probing way; that wasn’t how it was, no, it was a glimpse here, a glimpse there, that was enough”) recalls my own childhood crushes to a “T”.

Or this!  Knausgaard writes about two childhood memories that may as well have been describing my own:  “At a certain point in childhood my most exciting game was building dams in streams, watching the water swell and cover the marsh, the roots, the grass, the rocks, the beaten earth path beside the stream” and “Another fantasy I had at that time was that there were two enormous saw blades sticking out from the side of the car, chopping off everything as we drove past.”  Holy crap.  That was me.

Knausgaard was born the same year I was, and though from a different country and with a very different family makeup, his life has so many similarities to mine, and – if the half a million sales are any indication – to many other people’s lives as well, that reading it is both externally engrossing and internally revealing.

The difficult relationship Knausgaard has with his father and brother and the distance between them (“We never touched, we didn’t even shake hands when we met, and we rarely looked each other in the eye”) could be describing my own complicated kinships.  His intense desire to warrant his father’s approval is palpable: “I had also wanted to show him that I was better than he was.  That I was bigger than he was.  Or was it just that I wanted him to be proud of me? To acknowledge me?”

Then there’s his description of alcohol, the substance that had killed his father: “This was a magic potion we were drinking.  The shiny liquid…changed the conditions of our presence there, by shutting out our awareness of recent events and thus opening the way for the people we normally were, what we normally thought, as if illuminated from below, for what we were and thought suddenly shone through with a luster and warmth and no longer stood in our way.”

My Struggle is an autobiography, but novelized so that details are described and words are spoken that the author assuredly couldn’t testify transpired exactly as he recounts.  But he puts them in there, sometimes with excruciating detail:

               “Here’s your Coke,” I said.  “I’ll put it on the table.”

               “Fine,” he said.

               “What have you got in that bag?” Grandma said, eyeing the paper bag from the pharmacy.

               “It’s for you,” I said.

Most authors would have summarized this exchange: “I returned home with the Coke and gave Grandma her medication” or something along those lines.  Many editors – me included – would have told the author to back off from the dialogue that does nothing to move the story forward.  Knausgaard must have a very special editor indeed to have let things stand as he wrote them, and I wonder if much editing was done at all.

It’s the mundane stuff of life – the same “stuff” that I’ve mentioned in previous posts such as my review of the play “The Flick,” of the documentary series “Seven Up” or of Joe Swanberg’s movies – and the mundane stuff is actually very interesting.  Living is interesting.  And if captured by a skilled writer, it can even be a page-turner. 

I did lose patience with the second half of the book, much of it devoted to Knausgaard and his brother cleaning up their grandmother’s home in the wake of their father’s death, but up until about three-quarters of the way through, I was sold.  Volume two may not make it into my itinerary, but it clearly has for others.  The book has been translated into at least fifteen languages and has been uniformly praised.

The Artist vs. The Art Itself

Richard Brody makes an odd claim in this month’s issue of The New Yorker.  He posits that because Alfred Hitchcock’s directorial technique was a direct offshoot of his “own ugly fury,” that it should be less revered by current directors and critics, and that the admiration of Hitchcock’s craft is a dangerous affair.  He writes:

The cult of Hitchcock, which presses directors’ ideas and critics’ taste toward his hyperrational craft and conceals his tormented frenzy, tends to thrust some filmmakers’ impulses, and the critical response to some of the best modern films, to the sidelines.

A pretty bold – and completely unsubstantiated – assertion.

Regardless, it raises an interesting question: should an artist’s personal life influence the way we view the art itself? 

I like the art of Jasper Johns, but I know nothing about the artist.  Not a thing.  Perhaps I should, and perhaps I’d be better for it, but would anything I discover change the painting that I admire?  It would still be the same art, the same use of colors, the same shading.  My perception of the artist might change for the better or for the worse, but I would hope not my admiration for the art itself.

I heard Beethoven’s third symphony for the first time in 1986 and over time began to admire it greatly (as a young rock and roller, classical pieces sometimes took their time).  Later, I learned that it had originally been dedicated to Napoleon Bonaparte for his anti-monarchy idealism, only to be withdrawn.  Should this matter one iota to my admiration for the piece?

I think not.

Awards for art, movies and books should be viewed in a similar light.  Casablanca isn’t a better film for having won Best Picture, and Do the Right Thing isn’t a worse film for not having won the same award (or even nominated!).  They are both brilliant in their own right.

Then again, I can think of examples when my admiration for a song was actually enhanced once I learn the story behind it.  There’s no way you can tell me that Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” isn’t that much more beautiful, compelling and heartbreaking when you learn that it was written for his dead son, or that Lyle Lovett’s wonderful album, The Road to Ensenada, isn’t given a bittersweet tinge after learning that it largely chronicles his breakup with Julia Roberts.  One of my all-time favorite songs, Jackson Browne’s ”I’m Alive,” is even more compelling to me when I consider his breakup with Daryl Hannah. 

What can I say?  Pop music for me is sometimes a substitute for People Magazine!

On occasion I learn about the inspiration behind a song only to wish I hadn’t.  I recently read about the Ben Folds song, “Eddie Walker,” a wonderful tune for which I created my own story, and although the true inspiration for the lyrics isn’t in a completely different universe from my own interpretation, it still clouds the mental image I’d formed and will probably do so forever more.  For this reason, I admire artists who let songs be once they’re composed and refuse to offer insight into their origins.

And then there’s the ugly side.  Hitchcock’s purported sexual harassment, for instance. But many artists have an ugly side, and it would be silly for us to view their art through that lens. Roger Waters has said some pretty controversial and stupid things over the years, but I still think The Wall is still brilliant.  John Lennon used to hit his girlfriend.  I still love “A Day in a Life.”  I haven’t spent a penny on Elvis Costello since he told an audience at The Chicago Theater to “fuck off,” but I certainly can’t claim that I don’t still love his music.  Hell, you couldn’t pay me to see a Mel Gibson movie, but there’s no denying the fact that the guy can act and direct.

My father and I recently corresponded about this subject, and he wrote: “Does it matter what Brahms' psychotherapist thought was behind his compositions? Was Shostakovitch mentally ill or sexually repressed?  Who cares?  You love his 5th Symphony for what it is.  And Wagner: let's not even get into his politics.  Too much analysis and not enough appreciation and enjoyment.”

Too much analysis and not enough enjoyment.  There you are.  

Perhaps Richard Brody should do as I did two nights ago and rewatch Vertigo – perhaps with his daughter as I did – and enjoy it for what it is: a perfectly-executed telling of a creepy story.  If someone thinks it’s the best film of all-time, fair enough.

Our Kids' Lives: Regimented and Expensive

I spend a boatload of cash each year for my son to do something I did for free as a kid. And it annoys the crap out of me.

On Facebook a friend of mine recently posted the following article from the Washington Post:  “I send my kids to sleep-away camp to give them a competitive advantage in life.” These kind of headlines are meant to elicit a response. One camp might be thinking, “Holy crap. I’ve never sent my kids to over-night camp. Could I be denying his opportunity to get into an Ivy League school?” Another camp might think, “You’ve got to be kidding me. Whatever happened to sending kids to camp so that they have a great time?” 

The content of the essay is more thoughtful than the headline, and the takeaway is this: some of the basic things we did as kids for fun may have been beneficial for us in ways we didn’t even know, and it might behoove us as parents to – as the author Laura Clydesdale writes – opt out of the "things-to-put-on-the-college-application arms race.” Instead of creating walking, talking resumes, why not nourish thoughtful, creative, independent human beings? That’s really the goal. The fact that a thoughtful, creative and independent human being will invariably have a competitive edge over robotic peers is icing on the cake.

Several years ago I read an excellent book called “The Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit disorder.” In it author Richard Louv creates a compelling case for allowing our children to break out of the regimented lifestyles we’ve created for our kids – much of it indoors – and instead give them more access to nature, which not only feeds a child’s development, but can also help alleviate symptoms of ADD, obesity and other widespread ailments of today’s children. Even something as basic is going camping as a family can provide a huge benefit for children, and ultimately provide a huge benefit for nature, as people who have a relationship with nature are far more likely to fight to save it. Time spent at a camp, where a kid can break away from wired worlds, take some time to reflect, and experience activities that are foreign to a life in the city or suburbs, can be as mentally and physically beneficial as it is downright fun.

Now, here’s my beef with all of this. Today, every activity our children are engaged in seems to be planned and administered by adults, and overnight camp is of course no exception. This also means it costs money.

My son plays drums in a band. I played keyboard in a band when I was a teenager. In my son’s band, adults pick the players, adults pick the songs, adults pick who plays on which songs, adults provide the equipment, adults plan the gigs and adults provide logistics. In my band, adults did nothing except provide a space for practice and offer an occasional ride. My son’s band costs me thousands of dollars a year. My band cost me nothing except an occasional headache as we tried to figure out the lyrics to songs pre-Internet.

I learned a lot by being in a band with other teenagers. I learned how to compromise, I learned how to not overplay (though this took several years), I learned about how to get along with different types of people, and I learned about my limitations as a performer, as a musician, and – at times – as a human being. My son has learned some of these things too, but nothing that he’s experienced can compare to sitting in a room with four other musicians and saying, “Okay. We need to learn thirty songs and find a gig so that we can play them. Ready?” There’s no doubt in my mind that my experience was richer and more developmental than my son’s has been.

Similarly, I never went to camp as a child. But I did ride my bike constantly, I walked my dog through the expansive fields behind the middle school near my home, and I played in numerous forests in my hometown, where I would make up games with my friends, climb trees, get into arguments, injure myself or others, and – on a particularly lucky day - discover a Penthouse that a classmate kept hidden in the hallow of a tree. Again, I did this for free. And as cool and rich as my children’s camp experiences have been all these years, I’m not sure the adult-supervised activities provided the same benefit as my independent ventures did.

What’s particularly problematic is this: unless you reach critical mass, “opting-out” simply means your kid spends time alone (which does have some benefits but also its limitations). I would like my son to quit his organized, adult-supervised band, but unless I can convince other parents to do the same, it will lead to a band of one. Not so much fun. Breaking away from regimentation only works when you convince others to do the same.

So what’s the answer? Well, I am going to make a concerted appeal to the parents of my son’s band to quit organized music and have our sons and daughters move forward on their own. Will I be successful? I kind of doubt it. But our kids know how to play their instruments, they know fellow musicians, and now it’s time to sink or swim. My son will be richer for it, and if I succeed, so will his parents.