Mother Dear - an old song

Hey.

Here's an older song I wrote about a decade ago for my mom.

Another stark winter. This was in Los Angeles, though.  2001.  Moved back to South Central after taking seven months to save up money in Modesto (after college). 

I was impatient, and hungry for change. Let my unease take over my common sense.  Who goes back to LA to try to be a substitute teacher and pursue an acting career without having a car, without possessing a driver's license?  My savings ran out quickly, and I spiraled into debt and misery.

This is the first time I lived alone. The studio apartment was rife with stiff, brown shag carpeting, and the cockroaches were not afraid. Used to wake me up with tiny time steps on my face.  Determined not to lose myself to depression and self-doubt, I did what all twenty-something creative monkeys do: plowed through copies of THE ARTIST'S WAY and THE VEIN OF GOLD, littered my apartment walls with taped quotes in an effort to inspire me. Harnessed my self-hypnosis skills.  Used them to get past my flaws and finally, after seven years of painful trial and error, procured my driver's license.

Twelve years later.  I'm living another solitary life, this time in New York City. Loved and lost, earned a few minor successes. And I think about this song.

My mother has a fountain of hope and faith brimming inside her which I will never match.  It's such an intense power to witness. She's silly and passionate and wears the quiet strength a lifetime of hardship has tested and tested again. She's always been there to support me and the rest of her children.

Te amo mucho, mama. 

Here's the song:


first verse
mother dear
hear my cry
this januarys gonna
wring
me
dry
send a prayer
double time
my bodys achin
from a
nameless
crime

chorus
everyone should have a mother
borne of tenderness like you
though apart from one another
i still see you
at night when im asleep
a child again

second verse
mother smiles
beacons light
her worlds been ragged
but she still
smiles
right
mother saves
little things
old yearbook photos
invitations
strings

chorus

bridge
and im beginning to stand
on my own
two
feet
crash and burn and cry sometimes
but its all right
yes its all right
oh mother dear
youre the purest
human
creature
one
could ever hope to know
as i live
i sing
your
mothers song

third verse
mother dear
hear your boy
this januarys gonna
bring
us
joy
trouble come
trouble go
what only matters
is the love
we
sow

chorus

Scars

Hey.

Didn't sleep a drop last night and I'm doing all I can to stay up another five hours. Errands, housecleaning. Writing.

Funny how winter always makes your scars tingle. Cold snatches at the taut skin, smooth and bone white. Each one a lesson, a talisman worn to stave off death for another day.

Let's review three of mine (all self-inflicted)

UPPER RIGHT HAND SIDE OF MY SKULL
Size: About the diameter of a nickel
Seen: When my hair's short ( you can see it when I sing the high notes at the end of  Jumping the Shark )
How It Happened: I was about a few months old when my father took me to work ( he worked for Atari in the warehouse department)  Somehow, he was on a forklift, I was always super squirmy, and I fell. Like Humpty Dumpty.
Lesson Learned:  I wish it was "don't be squirmy", but I didn't learn that until I racked up a great many more death-defying leaps and bounds over the next few years.  I guess my father learned not to bring babies on a forklift?

ROOF OF MY MOUTH
Size: About the diameter of a #2 Pencil
Seen:  If you're staring at the roof of my mouth (you weirdo)
How It Happened: In first grade during class, I dropped my pencil on the ground. And, in that instant, I hatched a plan borne of genius.  I would pick up the pencil NOT with my hands, but with my mouth.  Gripping the metal bars of the desk with my bony thighs, I leaned over and deftly cupped the pencil with my lips, point side in my mouth.  And, on the way back up, I lost my balance, and fell.  Shoved it right through the tender skin .  I stood up, the teacher almost fainted.  Kindergarten teacher is called over, and she grabs brown paper towels to mop the rising tide of blood gushing out of my maw. I'm more surprised than anything (though that was probably due to shock)
I'm driven to the hospital, and my father is called, but they can't reach him.  They can't reach him because, at that precise moment, he's in the same hospital with my mother as she's in labor with my younger brother. Finally, the hospital administration pieces it together, and my dad finds me.
Lesson Learned: Pencils are deadly.  Also, don't do anything crazy regarding balance, Jones.  You have none.

LEFT INDEX FINGER
Size: A curved parabola of about five inches, j-shaped.
Seen: Pretty visibly, if you're paying attention.  Out of embarrassment, I tend to keep my left hand in my pocket when I'm not acting or doing things with my left hand.
How It Happened: Sophomore year of high school, Spring semester. I didn't get cast in the school production of West Side Story, so I signed on to work props.  We had a elementary school performance of the show prior to the final dress that evening.  In my efforts to get the votive candles lit in time for the Tony and Maria bedroom scene, I was burning my fingertips.  Wanted to find a smarter way to light them.  Settled on punks (long, thin wooden sticks you light and then use to light narrow glass candles).  We didn't have any, so I chose to borrow a crew member's dull Swiss Army knife and found a spare piece of pine.  While the final dress took place, I was backstage cutting thin strips off the board with the knife. Towards me.  Talking and joking. Got the blade stuck in a knot, and I pulled.  Sliced clear to the bone.  Again, no screaming.  Lot of shock and shame. Sharks and Jets from the dream ballet in their white-t's scurried past me as dollops of blood spattered the green linoleum tiles.  I had enough training in first aid to remember to raise my hand above my heart, and that (with compression) stopped the hemorrhaging.  Drama teacher calls my father. In urgent care, I'm cracking jokes with the nurse practitioner as he stitches the wound (six stitches).  It's only when I get home and it's dark that I realize how stupid that all was, and I sob.  I sob so hard my ribs ache.
Lesson Learned:  A dull knife is so much more dangerous than a sharp one. Always cut away from yourself. A tool mandates holy attention.

My Coffee Name

Hey.

Let me share a little of my crazy with you.

If I'm at a coffee shop, and I order a drink, I always lie to the staff.

They ask for a name. I give them, "J", and in a way, J has become my coffee name.

It's a disposable moniker. I size someone up, immediately decide whether or not someone's gonna be in my life for the long haul, and  I make that choice.  Random stranger on the street?  Acquaintance of a friend of mine? Another new person whom I'm not going to see again? I'm not gonna invest the time to make some poor person deal with my weird name.

That's some pathological work there.

But I've spent a whole childhood with an odd first name. Four little letters with a host of pronunciations. I've had a smattering of genders and ethnic qualifiers labeled upon me.  As much as I loathe Dale Carnegie's book, How to Win Friends and Influence People (it's such a manipulative, cynical text), one aspect rings true: a person comes alive and responds when they hear their name expressed correctly.

If we're casually acquainted, know that you're taking a friendship test with me.  One which you pass when you can spell and say my name perfectly, unaided.  Most of the time, I won't correct you.  I'll hope you'll seek this knowledge out in an effort to know me.  I do the same with you.

Final crazy name story:  there's a coworker at my day job whom I've known for over eight years. She has crazy amounts of power and has worked with me in various capacities. In the past, she has done some vicious, conniving, misguided behavior (with the best of intentions).  And she refers to me by a pretty common nickname, clanging nasally like a crow when she does so.  Normally, it's a formal utterance, but it just inherently sounds disrespectful when she speaks it.

And I just let her do it.  I do so to remind me on a constant basis that, despite her current behavior today, there's always a sliver of chance that her emotional drunken rage will re-emerge. I hear this affectation she's chosen, wince, and I remember to protect myself.  Remind myself that this is a day job and not the artistic life which occupies the rest of my time.

Playing House - First Draft of new song

Hey.

I remember the first time I heard this phrase. 

I was talking to a conservative acquaintance of mine about seven years ago.  That's not a political label; she's just someone who lives at home and has an older paradigm about some social mores.  Told her about this long term relationship I had and how we didn't plan on ever getting married.  She stared at me, smirked, and said, "Oh, so you're just playing house?"

And that still fucking burns me. At the time, I had every intention of staying in that relationship for the rest of my life. We had been together for five years at that point, weathered so much. Sure, my relationship by no means fit a standard mold of what couples normally did. But I never said I was normal.

When that relationship ended, I reflected back upon those two words:  playing house.   And it saddened me to think that, in a way, I was doing this.  Not by the "traditional tenets of marriage" - whatever those are- archetypes.  But in the small fact that I ignored and masked a great deal of problems while trying to reinforce a construct of peace at all costs.  And that's not fair to anyone.  It's not communication. It's not being an adult and I'm sorry that I hurt somebody along the way while learning these somber lessons.

So, this song is probably the closest I'll come to writing a Placebo song.  It's angsty as hell.  I don't know why it came out this week. Probably just the combo of my mental health being a wee off and still thinking about death far too much.  Has a few cool parts to it.

lyrics

first
like a rubber band thats tethered
see the cold neglect thats weathered me
tell it straight now
watch it as it curls
lock the doors eyes closed and weeping
make excuses tension creeping fast
in my lonely laughter
after all thats passed


chorus
dont want the pills again
cant stomach the thought of those well dressed lies once more
whats the point of feeling fine
theres not a reason at all why somebody outta feel right for
sometimes the floorboards break
sometimes the mortar wont take
stead of playing house ill think ill let it fall

second verse
like a peach so lush and tender
im expected to surrender skin
chew me up and scatter
seeds and matter strewn
scratching at the mold thats spreading
no ones biting winter threading harm
failing sense i flatter
sing this wary tune

chorus

bridge
watch me die in slow motion
to prove i ever lived at all
ill bear the same and rouse your name my friend
a little kindness handmade pall

third verse
like a shudder fore the violence
muscles warning all is silence
cant you see youre hiding
words just biding time
thats enough now tell it plainly
that im frightened fault is mainly mine
that im week and chiding
gussied up with rhyme

chorus

The End of Dating

Hey.

So, it's six in the morning, and I'd been steeling myself for what came next for about a week.  Auditioning the experience in my mind.  Running the simulations.

Logged on, saw my earnest, unblinking face staring back at me.  The same picture thousands of poor women have seen over the years.

I sighed.  I've been sighing far too goddamn much these days. 

Scrambled for the next step, pushing back all other dissenting voices in my head. It was time. I had no business hanging on, lying to myself.  Had a good run, earned some strange stories, but it's not my path.

Deleted my OkCupid profile.

You know how there's satellites out in orbit right now which are little more than snippets of the human experience?  They transmit audio broadcasts in hopes that some highly advanced life out in the inky void will hear them, and respond.

That's what online dating sites were for me.

Plenty of Fish felt like when you donate blood and then stagger over to a buffet restaurant.  Peering at the steam trays, sweating. Each individual cuisine fuzzy, muted, soggy.  But you're so hungry, you're shaking. Of course you have your fill. Nothing has a flavor. Just calories.

Match.com reminded me of an over-eager grandmother who reaallly wanted to see you married before she bought the farm.  Stringing together tenuous reasons for people to interact with one another.  "Oh, look -she's the oldest child - AND YOU'RE THE OLDEST CHILD.  Talk to her!  You should talk to her. Just talk to her and invite her to coffee.  It's just coffee. She likes card games, too!"  None of the women I met on Match.com I'd describe as "fun".  All dauntingly beautiful, all very serious. All slightly concerned about the direction of my life and artistic ramblings.  Most drank heavily.

I never did Eharmony, but friends swore by it, and it brought them together.  Seemed like a site you'd do if you were religious and wanted to be married.  So I skipped it.

All of this led me to my long-term trials with Okcupid.  I could spend hours on Okcupid stories (from the behavioral psychologist in Brooklyn who really seemed fun and interesting and then stood me up on the first date and whom I'm not entirely uncertain did so just to run sample data on how people handle rejection -side note, I was outwardly calm and collected - to the spirited thirty-two minute discussion I had with a OkCupid computer programmer on the subway to the FIVE women from New Jersey who bailed on me at the last minute due to mental health issues/having to make an Odyssean journey into Manhattan because NJ is far from everywhere  - second side note - DON'T DATE PEOPLE IN NJ UNLESS YOU LIVE THERE)
All the women I met on OkCupid seemed much, much more bohemian and worldly than me.  They'd seen at least twenty countries.  Spoke four languages.  Climbed mountains.  Did time in the Peace Corp. Had parties where they wore fake moustaches.

And, without fail, not a single person whom  I contacted directly on OkCupid contacted me back.  It was always the aggressive, playful women who saw through whatever sad attempt of being clever I was trying that week and wrote me.  And, much of the dates I did with OkCupid women were me being open-minded, exploring beyond my preconceived notions of what I normally considered "attractive".   The discrepancy between picture and reality when it came to online dating was the widest in OkCupid land.


But it's done now.

Let me tell you a story.

When I was about ten or eleven, I begged my father for a pet hamster.  I had already lost two hamsters, and my father was understandably reserved about spending the money on another one. He agreed to let me have another pet if I took sole responsibility and if I fed the hamster and cleaned the cage.

And I was dutiful at first.  Poured the cedar chips with a steady hand.  Refilled the water tank.  Stocked the food pellets.  But then I grew careless, and I just forgot.  For weeks. My father observed from a distance, watching that hamster wither and die. As an adult, I can't even imagine how tough that had to be, to teach me a lesson and not jump in there. Watching your child disappoint you, day following day.

The lesson came.  I finally began to smell that old, familiar odor. Death's a sickly sweet, bitter smell. Ran to the cage.  His body was pressed tight like cardboard.  Eyes black and pupils split. Fur greasy and runny.

My father came to my side, shovel and newspaper in hand. I sobbed, took them and headed outside.

I had work to do.

After that moment, I was de facto member of the household in charge of burying other kid's pets. While my brother and sister would cry over the loss of their beloved animal, I'd be in the back yard, hacking at the white birch tree's gnarled and ravenous roots, looking for a small space to stow their animal.

Haven't owned a pet since.

Gift # 7 - Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (Cover)

Hey.

Here's the last gift I want to talk about this week.

Not doing well.  Can't sleep much. Just hours and hours in my own head. Nothing seems to help.

I'm either blunted and fatigued beyond sensation, or I'm just a ball of panic.  And I don't know what to do.

My father had a lovely singing voice. It was gentle and rich, not tinny and high-strung like mine.  He was self-conscious about pitch, though, and would only sing on car rides to the kids or at night, as we slept.

While not a religious man, he had a deep affinity for spiritual songs. I remember the first song he ever sang me, "Michael Rowed The Boat Ashore".  It's the only time I'd get chills hearing the word "Hallelujah" sung so simply, with such love and power.

At the funeral, my mother requested I play Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, one of his favorite songs.

So I learned it.

And it's so goddamned heart wrenching, you know? 

It's a song people without hope sing.

When your mortal life is spent and each moment is a unblinking terror, it's a song for people who fervently wish that the next page is a pain-free, comfortable respite.

It took me a month to get it down without shaking and weeping each time I tried to play it.  Did it okay at the funeral. I held the guitar on my knee and took deep breaths, watching the vapor strike the foggy air.

Here it is.

lyrics

chorus
swing low
sweet chariot
comin for to carry me home
swing low
sweet chariot
comin for to carry me home

first verse
you know i looked over jordan
and what did i see
comin for to carry me home
a band of angels
comin after me
coming for to carry me home

chorus

second verse
you know im sometimes up
and sometimes down
comin for to carry me home
but still my soul feels heavenly bound
comin for to carry me home

chorus

third verse
i say
if you go on and get there before i do
comin for to carry me home
tell all my friends that im coming too
comin for to carry me home

chorus

home
home
i really hope youre home

Gift #6 - Scarf and Mittens

Hey.

I've always been fiercely jealous of people who can make arts and crafts.

Never been able to pull it off, myself.

Today's gifts come from my good friend Jennifer Moraca. She's a fabulous actor/singer who makes some delightful work with yarn as well.

You must read her work .  She's a bright, passionate sort on all things creative, political, and personal.

Over the holidays, I got to see her briefly and swap gifts.

She made me these exquisite mittens with snaps so you can open them if needed. And in my favorite color, too.

For comparison, on the right is the one of the first knitting projects she ever made, and her first scarf.

I love that scarf.  Once, I made someone drive over an hour back to a restaurant just so I could recover it (having lost it in a diner after a funeral)  The first creative stirrings we make can can often embarrass us, or
dishearten us as we try to improve and grow in our artistic lives. But they're so vital.  They're touchstones to raw, vibrant expression. Without this fire, art's technical and passionless.

Gift #5 - Bicycles

Hey.

Here's another gift I gave out as a child, and another story about my father.

During high school, my father owned several bicycle stores called SPOKES AND SPORTS.  The shops were located near run down bars and 99 cent stores. They never made much of a profit, but they gave my father several years of peace, working on his own terms.  We kids would work there when we weren't busy with school or other extra-curricular activities. 

I remember the grease and dirt. Carpets were matted and sticky with it. The smooth-talking meth addicts who smiled too easily and always hung around my father. The quiet, mumbling, lanky teen who was the only other employee who wasn't a family member.  He killed himself by sticking his head in the oven.

One Christmas, my father woke up the kids.  We headed to the store, and loaded up a dozen or so refurbished bikes.  Then, he revealed that he had been working with a local charity, finding families even worse off than us who wanted bicycles for Christmas.

We spent that morning traveling around the Central Valley, saw a lot of overwhelmed and teary kids.
My father never smiled as bright as he did that day.

He did well.

Gift # 4 - A Calendar

Hey.

I'm reposting this from a prior essay about my father.  Still one of my favorite gifts ever.

1995. I was about to start my senior year of high school, and we were broke. My grades in school were commendable, I was part of a wide variety of volunteer groups and extra-curricular activities, but that wasn't going to be enough to get me out of my hometown and into college.  My dad knew this.  Because I was aware of how bad things were, money-wise, I asked my parents not to get me any gifts for my 17th birthday, which occurred during the first week of school.

The morning of my birthday, I get a knock on the door, and my dad comes into my room.  I made you something, he drawled.

And then he pulled out a large office calendar and laid it softly on the bed. The calendar was covered with two kinds of ink:  Red for one month prior, and Black for the final due date.  In the back of the calendar, he had included application after application for scholarships.  In the pre-internet world, my own father had spent months researching scholarships, printing out applications, and charting exactly when submissions were due.  For me. 62 scholarships in all.  I still tremble when I think about it.

That year, I completed all but five, and I won five scholarships from that batch.  That, combined with serendipity allowed me to go to college.

Gift #3 - Handmade chess set

Hey.


As I've mentioned before, I grew up poor. What shaped that experience with pride was watching my parents create highly orchestrated, loving gifts using little more than time and care.

For my 9th birthday, my father finally revealed the secret project he'd been making in his makeshift wood working area in the garage.

He had spent several months making a portable chess set for me. Took a standard metallic board and used his divine crafting skills to make a work of art.  Still takes my breath away when I see it.

The chess set folds in half and locks shut with a latch.  Here's what's underneath:

Soak that in. For a nine year old boy, he made this ornate sliding set of liners with a foam backing for the pieces.  All of them, capped with magnets under a velvet base.

For years, I took it everywhere with me.  Spent lunches at school with the chess set.  Didn't play a whole lot of games with the kids (because it was the fourth grade and chess wasn't very fashionable), but I'd play one or two quirky pals of mine.  Or, just slowly open and close the drawers and marvel and the precision and passion my father gave a creative project.

After loaning it to a friend for a several years, I got it back over the holidays.  It's banged up a little, and over a quarter of a century old. But it's so beautiful.