Daily Dose #72 "And So It Begins...."

The blank screen  stares at you. The blank page dares you. A glaring, white, mocking flung gauntlet.

“Just who do you think you are?” It asks. It aims directly at all the things that scare you the most. All that you fear. All your insecurities. All your perceived deficiencies, and all those that hide in the shadows of your unknown blind spots.

And so it begins. You either face all those fears, or you don’t. Not playing the game is always the third move on any chess board.

Its an internal confrontation, and one frankly, that I’ve been avoiding for quite some time. I reached a point in my life where I was just exhausted from waging a war with myself inside my own cranium. Call it battle fatigue, post traumatic stress syndrome, or whatever you want.

I retired. I got tired of failure. I got tired of loss. I needed some peace.

So I moved to Sodus Point in Wayne County, NY, USA to become “A gentleman apple farmer”. I was due for a major battery recharge, and this is where I found it.

The Gentleman "Apple Farmer"

I made a new life with someone I loved and someone that seemed to love me back. The genesis moment of a new me, really. I tended the “farm”. Cooked and cleaned, made sure my woman was taken care of. Toiled in the gardens, took care of the critters, fixed up the house… learned new skills that eluded me in my previous nomadic musician’s existence. I learned how to be simple. I learned how, above all else, to preserve my tenuous hold on my own sanity without the benefits of serotonin re-uptake inhibitors and lithium. I learned how to meditate. I learned that is was ok to just STOP. Take a break. In this case, it was a five year time-out.

One of the casualties, or collateral damage however you want to look at it, was that I stopped playing the piano for a few years. I wrote a song once about the piano being “the only thing that has never let me down”. That may be true. Perhaps I just got tired of letting IT down (and more importantly, letting my friends and people I truly loved down through the medium of playing the damned thing). It became pretty evident to me that no matter how hard I tried, I was never really gonna master that 88 keyed beast to the point where I was going to be able to play what I actually heard in my head.

Sorry, piano. It's been great fun, but like with any substantial future ex-lover, painfully it was time to say "Au Revoir". "Arrivederci". "Ciao". "Auf Wiedersehen". "Sayo-the fuck-onara". The future is now.

There was a lot of saying “goodbye” to a lot of things. Primarily, the definition of “self”. “Tear it Down, and Build it Up Again”. I was more than content stripping a deck, weeding gardens, walking dogs, and plunking on a ukulele every blue moon.

Exiled On Fitzhugh Street. A place to let go, relax, and empty my overflowing and chaotic monkey brain

I didn’t exactly stop being creative, however. I just directed my creative energy, and the disciplines I learned through a lifetime of creativity (and the music biz), and applied them to other things.

So I went on to other projects, and other objectives. I wrote a lot. Created a lot of content in the forms of Internet Dog Beauty Contests, Blogs, a video cooking show with my Dad that almost got off the ground, to continue to experiment with some theories and predictions I had about Social Networking Platforms (which proved to be pretty accurate). Worked a straight job that was deeply connected to the underbelly of the State and Federal government (Fun; even wildly compelling, but ultimately my exposure to sausage making in the political “Arena” was starting to be bad for my health...and Karma. Someday, I may write about those experiences, but in the meantime? I kinda like being above ground and breathing.) I got passionately involved in environmental activism concerning hydrofracking in NY State.    

But ultimately, no more music, and most definitely, no more “Little Georgie”. That set of clothes was just getting too binding; Confining. and I was beginning to get used to being fat and more specifically, centered and happy for once in my life.

Every once in awhile, my old life would reach out with an offer that involved music and I would have to be as gracious as possible while internally promising to myself that I wouldn’t turn into Al Pacino in Godfather III (“Just when I thought I was out….They pull me back IN….).

Or at least they were trying. I’m pretty slippery these days. Must be all the olive oil.

Some very prestigious and plummy studio production offers floated up from New Orleans with the production company I used to work for (those ones were tough to say "no" to), along with little local gigs, and bands looking for a “keyboard player” (I don’t even know what the fuck that IS, even… I’m a piannaplunker, and a hack at that at best...those ones were rather easy to say "no" to).

I always graciously and gratefully thanked folks for thinking of me and advised them I was “retired”, just hoping that the phone would stop ringing. It eventually did.

I still kept a bit of toe dipped in the music pool, though. In retrospect, I think I was always “cheating” a bit by doing so. I was still journaling, writing poetry, stuffing shoe boxes full of ideas and possible songs that would never see the light of day… maybe. It was a tiny ember, not the raging wild fire that its always has the potential to become. Man still needs fire, or at least a way to start one.

Several offers did come in from a few regional studios over those years, to specifically try and convince me to do a “spec” deal for a new Hungarians record. That was really the only bait that I would bite at and rationalize myself into a position of “un-retiring”.

The best part of being a musician, for me anyway, is recording. The studio is sacred ground. That’s where the real challenges reside. Ultimately, the goal is to leave something behind that is of lasting value, but to get there? All of your creative cylinders have to be firing at full strength.

Can you do it? Do you have anything to actually say? Can you write it? Can you organize it? Can you hear it? Can you execute it without compromising your vision, and thus your standards and principles? Can you calculate the distance to the far off target? Determine trajectory and escape velocity and come within a few light years of actually hitting it?

Here’s my cardinal production rule: If you feel yourself rationalizing and telling yourself “it's good enough”... it isn’t. Recording is an exercise in pushing yourself, and your boundaries, to a place you’ve never been before, and that place doesn’t have a safety net or fall back position. When you take it on, you better find a way to swim, because the only other alternative is drowning.

It's the ultimate “making art” experience in music, but when done right, it’s not for the weak willed, half assed, or feint of heart. All in, Baby.

Scary shit.

So I took those meetings with those studios. All fine facilities, all run and staffed by fine, adept and capable people. And yet there was always a red flag that would pop up.

One thing that I’ve become very facile at in my advanced years is recognizing red flags. In the past, I was ego-centric enough to think that I could overcome any red flag that would present itself.

I’m not that guy any more. Now? When I see even the potential for a red flag being raised, I run to the nearest exit. Especially when it entails a collaborative dynamic on the actual art that is the sole intellectual product of my own imagination. You dig?

Nothing really truly resonated at those meetings. There was always something that just didn’t feel right. The methods. The pitch. The room. The deal. Little White Lies or Tiny Sins of Omission. Hidden Agendas that became apparent after the fact. Bad communication skills. A lack of true transparency. Lack of Focus. No chemistry.

Always something a little jenky; suspect motivations that indicated the tip of a shit sandwich: Surreptitiously revealing itself and was definitely going to be on the menu down the line. I was going to be required to eat it with a smile on my face to get the opportunity to make and realize my vision, and then take on all the attached challenges of having that vision be judged.

So...fuck that. I’ll stay retired, thank you very much. I wasn't ready for those types of human clusterfucks. I'm still not.

From a business perspective, I understand the motivation of making the offer. Studios exist to make money to keep running. I respect that. And yes, amazingly enough, there is still an “Hungarians Cache”, if you will. Locally, and in a more minor capacity, nationally and internationally. There is a fan base out there, still; a testament to a great band, a great team that assembled and supported us behind the scenes, the work produced, a great design and a great concept. It was built to stand the test of time, and so far? It has.

Spitting out a Hungarians recording would present a lot of social networking opportunities as well. In the course of my career I’ve travelled in some rarified air at times. It was certainly possible to score a bunch of heavy ringers in terms of players and participants, if there were any kind of budget involved. I have “connects”, and if you’re talking about photos and videos being released over the term of recording, mixing, mastering, and producing finished product, combined with an integrated and funded marketing initiative, all of it being produced in your facility?  It isn’t a bad business idea for a studio to get behind it.

These meetings usually started with “I saw a Hungarians video on facebook, and I was amazed after all these years at how many views it got”. Leading with the metric data. Red flag #1. Again, from a business perspective, totally understandable… no harm, no foul. Just not where my head was at. Then things generally de-evolved and went downhill from there.

So invariably, it was back to the apple farm and self imposed exile. And it was all good.

Until I got drunk with The Mole at an Syracuse Area Musicians Award show in 2016. Then shit changed. More on that in the next installment of “Why George Decided To Open Pandora’s Box And Accept The Consequences Of Opening It”

Down The Rabbit Hole...or in this case, Down The Mole Hole.

"You may shoot for the stars and end up beaten and bloodied in a back alley behind Pluto, but at least I dare to dream; that’s better than being Earthbound mired in the muck of mediocrity"

I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right.

.

AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOKIE "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!



COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"

 

Daily Dose #71 The Owl And The Pussycat: "A Lake Boy Tale"

While cruising my facebook feed in utter boredom, I stumbled across this video posted by my childhood friend Meegan; (basically, the prototypical object of teen aged affection and totally untouchable girl-next-door; in actuality across the street and three doors down, if you want to get technical about it.)

I usually don’t bother with animal video posts; I made a personal oath that after the “Kitty at The Keyboard” viral phenomenon they as a general rule, were to be avoided. But my curiosity got the best of me. I bit the bait and clicked through.

Here’s the cliplette:



Now I don’t know if (at the time of this writing) that 622,000 views are an actual “Japanese Internet Sensation” or that according to the copy, “An unlikely friendship between a kitten and owl at a Japanese cafe takes the internet by storm”, but it’s a nice little visual metaphor that seemingly polar opposites can get along; as long as one of them has a shackle on its leg, anyway.

It reminded me of a poem of my early childhood read to me by my mother, Edward Lear’s “The Owl and The Pussy Cat”.

I responded to my friend’s post, thanking her for jogging a forgotten memory.

“Thank You for this. Linda (being that she was the girl-almost-next-door, my friend was familiar with my Mom’s first name)  used to read “The Owl and The Pussycat” to me as a child. I’m going to call my Mommy right now and tell her I love her”; which of course elicited a cursory “like” from Meegan.

Now in all honesty, being inspired to call my mother out of the blue to tell her I love her is a pretty rare occurrence. It isn’t that I don’t, but my relationship with The Lovely Linda has been anything but smooth for the past forty five years or so.

We always seem to be locked in mortal combat and find ourselves in a state of perpetual loggerheads. It has frustrated both of us for decades, and we never seem to come up with a solution to actually fix the problem; we just sort of go through cycles of “detente”, followed by slow but constant irritation with each other complete with barbed dialog that could have been penned by Edward Albee as “George and Martha” exchanges from “Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf”.

The cycle then finally gets punctuated with a major flaming blow up that resemble the human equivalent of thermonuclear war, scorched earth, and periods of radio silence until one of us blinks…. usually me.

I guess we just would never accept each other for various reasons. She constantly would be trying to change, control, or psychoanalyze me against my will for the sheer entertainment value. (She’s a licensed therapist, among other things). I was constantly seeking her approval but on my own terms.

And I think we both were a little co-dependent on keeping the war on going.

Although every family gathering was eventually identified as a toxic battlefield environment, it wasn’t without its benefits. You girded and armored yourself to wage war if called upon in preparation before walking through the door.

She always initiated the opening gambit and attack, so I had to be in a constant state of readiness; to match wits, intellectual acumen, oratorical skills, game theory, the ability to read red flags, to stay twenty moves ahead on the three dimensional chess board of argument, to summon all of your critical thinking and cognitive resources, and then finally realizing in a nano second “moment of truth”,  your own rat-brained ruthlessness.

The intellectual Achilles Heel and soft white belly of vulnerability of  argument would reveal itself. You would have to quickly calculate the moment of opportunity before it happens, and when it finally does? Pounce without hesitation as you drive your diamond tipped stake of logic through the heart of the most worthy mental adversary you have ever known. Matricide or Infanticide. There was no middle ground.

We kept each other pretty sharp through the years, though. Our twisted idea of “Family Fun”.

As I have aged, I can say that all of those skills became pretty finely honed. My “wins” became more frequent, but they came at a great cost. We just exhausted each other.

I finally realized that the only solution to ending the war was not to play in the first place. I know it seems rather simplistic, but after a particular egregious back stabbing betrayal delivered by “Dear Old Mom” (She had recently discovered she could play "off the board" and behind my back), I asked myself this question:

“What if I didn’t seek my Mother’s approval? What if I could truly and completely, not give a tumbling fuck about her validation? How would this change the situation and eventual outcome?”

This epiphany didn’t actualize without some real soul searching, focused navel gazing and heavy psychological lifting, but it was in effect eventually actualized. I just stopped caring, and in doing so, stopped playing the game and walked out through the metaphoric breezeway of Linda’s “Arena Of Pain” for good. Ultimately, it was as easy as flicking a light switch to the “off” position. Why hadn’t I thought of this mental perspective mind-shift move forty years ago?

I didn’t announce this. I just did it. She didn’t know what had just happened of course, and this drove her absolutely batshit nuts; frankly, an intended and foreseen side benefit. The constant and reliable sparring partner and her personally self trained warrior / gladiator “Prince” had turned into passive, pacifist  dud.

But I digress.

Upon considering the memory of my mother reading “The Owl And The Pussycat” as an itty bitty baby child to me, something strange and wonderful happened.

I started by just trying to remember. Every evening before bedtime she would read to me. She would sit in the green and gold flecked Paul McCobb lounge chair with the nubby fabric upholstery, and invite me with open arms as she asked, “What do you want to read”?

I would always consistently grab my big little book of Lear’s poem, as it was my favorite. She already had it at the ready of course, and would gently pick me up, and nestle me into her lap with my head resting against her breast.

We’d open the book, and she would hold my index finger as she recited; tracing the words from left to right on the printed page (Her hidden agenda of course was to get me reading by the age of two; an agenda point of many which was successfully achieved in her constant quest of engineering an “uber kid”).

She would always assume the characters in different voice; Tres Dramatique! And always considerately pausing after every second page so I could fully absorb the pictures of The Owl and beloved Pussycat as they ventured out to sea in their beautiful pea green boat.

When finished, there were always the obligatory “Again Mommy….Again!” repetitive encores, until I floated off on waves of sleep to the strains of an imaginary small guitar.

I hadn’t thought of these events for over fifty three years. A memory completely buried, and pretty much totally suppressed.

And then it happened.

The memory ceased to be a memory, and it became totally sensory.

Like a wall caving in, or a levee breach, those feelings that I felt as a child and those sensory memories suddenly became real. In the moment, those atrophied synaptic pathways to the actual experience as it happened in real time became suddenly supple and efficient.  They powerfully overtook my conscious state and completely washed over me like a tsunami. I ceased remembering being a child and for a brief moment, became that child in the here and now.

I could smell her skin, her perfume, and the acrid aroma of stale cigarette smoke. I could sense the dim light of the floor light next to the chair. I felt my soft fuzzy flannel little blue onesie with the pink bunnies on it against my skin. I could see my little index finger tracing the words, her beautiful hand guiding it as she recited the poem. I could see the pictures exactly as I saw them, but if as seeing them with rapt joy and delight for the first time. I turned the pages as her sweet voice paused. I could feel her heart beat next to my temple, the rhythm or her breath as her chest gently started to lull my head into slumberland. I could feel her pride, her approval, when she pointed at a word or phrase and I started mastering the art of reciting them back to her; I could hear her and my own little voice inside my head as we recited the poem together in unison;  knowing the words by heart, me always trying desperately to match her cadence, and she mine.

I felt the safety, and the absolute power of my Mother’s love.

I felt and sensed it all very suddenly. It took me by surprise, and it was… overwhelming. These weren’t memories, they were happening in that moment. I can’t say that I wept, but I certainly lost my bearings as it happened. I inadvertently astral projected into my two year old body in 1962 with a total loss of cognitive control.

I haven’t felt that safe and that unconditionally loved in a long time. As a matter of fact, probably never have I felt that way as I felt it right then, as a little boy in his mother’s lap.

My sensory flashback stripped me down to my very core with an absolute albeit brief, clarity. It was, for lack of a better term, a spiritual experience.

I immediately called my Mom, as I promised my former neighbor I would.

And just as I have recounted this tale to you, dear reader, I recounted it to her. The video, where it came from, how it inspired me to call her, and then this unexpected mental event that blew me away.

And then I said: “Mom… I know that things have always been rough between us, and I know I don’t say this to you as often as I should or could have…. but I truly love you. I hope you know that”.

That point had to meet its target, surgically aimed and delivered with confident, yet powerfully loving force. We aren’t getting any younger. She’s no spring chicken, and I’m long in the tooth. The time to deliver the message without equivocation or failure, was now.

There was a dead silence, and a pregnant pause way past its due date on the end of the line.

And then… she recited “The Owl and The Pussycat” over the phone, word for word and chapter and verse, just as she had done over fifty three years ago, without missing a beat .

I joined in halfway through the first stanza, because I knew those words by heart. So did she, and those words connected our hearts together, and they miraculously (and unknowingly until now) still do.

                                       

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea

 In a beautiful pea-green boat,

They took some honey, and plenty of money,

 Wrapped up in a five-pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

 And sang to a small guitar,

"O lovely Pussy! O Pussy, my love,

    What a beautiful Pussy you are,

       You are,

       You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!"

Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl!

 How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

 But what shall we do for a ring?"

They sailed away, for a year and a day,

 To the land where the Bong-Tree grows

And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

 With a ring at the end of his nose,

           His nose,

           His nose,

 With a ring at the end of his nose.

"Dear Pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

 Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."

So they took it away, and were married next day

 By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,

 Which they ate with a runcible spoon;   

And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

 They danced by the light of the moon,

           The moon,

           The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

As we recited the poem together, my defenses compromised and my shields crushed, real tears silently streamed down my face in the light of the moon.

               

After this beautiful moment with my mother,  she then paused and said, “Well...that was lovely, but tell me; What are you going to do with the rest of your friggin’ life with what little is left of it?”

If we had been in the same room, and she had a runcible spoon handy, she probably would have gouged my eyes out with it just to make her Oedipal point.

C’est La Vie, C’est La Guerre. I love you, Mommy.

THE END.

"You may shoot for the stars and end up beaten and bloodied in a back alley behind Pluto, but at least I dare to dream; that’s better than being Earthbound mired in the muck of mediocrity".


I judge my forward progress and success by the crushingly epic nature of my failures.

The more epic the crash, the more I’m convinced I must be doing something right.



AS ALWAYS: PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT, SUBSCRIBE, AND SHARE THIS BLOG ADDRESS VIA COPY AND PASTE IN AN EMAIL, THROUGH THE TWITTER OR FACEBOOKIE "SHARE" BUTTONS,WORD OF MOUTH, FILTHY WHISPERED GOSSIP, FALSE NARRATIVE, TIN CAN AND STRING CONFIGURATIONS, PONY EXPRESS, OR CARRIER PIGEON. WITHOUT FEEDBACK OR ACTIVE "SHARING", WHAT YOU JUST READ.... DOESN'T EXIST!



COLONEL BEAUREGARD "IRON THIGHS" JEFFERSON, A.K.A. "THE MANAGEMENT"