Musings...

I have this mouth. It earns me a living and I am very grateful to it for that. It is also an incurable loose canon. My mouth is legendary among my unfortunate associates for quipping things that infuriate people. It happens all the time. I say things I assume are funny or clever and think nothing of it but two days later there are a half dozen people in the world who are so pissed at me that they can’t sleep at night.

At a festival last Fall Mike’s friend told me that he was in the hospital and said that I should give him a call. I didn’t. I had gotten it into my head that I had ticked him off. I couldn’t remember doing it. (I never can) I just hadn’t talked to him for a long time and naturally assumed that my smart mouth had worked its magic on him somewhere along the line. It happens so often that I just expect it.

About ten weeks later I had a dream about him. Before I opened my eyes that morning I noticed that his name was written on the back of my eyelids. Over the years I have established this rule that states that whenever I have someone on my mind when I first wake up I will contact that person that day. Don’t ask me why. It’s just one of my stupid rules.

I sat at my desk and looked at the phone. I was thinking that if there is something that needs to be addressed between he and I that now was the time to get it out in the open and fix it. Then I started wondering if he was well enough to even talk on the phone. My mind started filling up with all these hypothetical speculations that I suspected were all designed to keep me from dialing the phone. I eventually beat them all into submission and called.

To my surprise Mike picked up the phone. He sounded great and was glad to hear from me. There was no indication from him that we had some issue between us to resolve. He said that Jack Williams was staying at his house and that he and Jack were coming into Cambridge the next night because Jack had a feature at The Cantab open mike.

I worked my day job on Monday and after work I went to Cambridge and hung around until about eight and went to the Cantab. Mike arrived shortly thereafter. We reminisced about our days at The Olde Vienna Kaffeehaus when he and I stood shoulder to shoulder as the two chord hacks with a sense of humor against the legions of guitar wizards and silver throated singers that surrounded us.

The Cantab is a great place but it’s really two places. The attentive section full of musicians in front of the stage and the parallel universe full of drunks at the bar. It is always a fun place to be and I have been there often. But it is NEVER quiet.

Mike signed up for the open mike. When it was his turn to play he got a nice introduction from Geoff Bartly. He sat on the stool that was on the small stage and began the familiar hypnotic chord strum that he often used. I’m guessing here, but I think it’s an E minor A major progression. It always laid down a warm full guitar sound over which he would sing in a very conversational manner. As soon as he opened his mouth and sang the first words of his first song all the drunks, junkies, pick pockets and assorted Central Square riff raff turned around on their barstools and listened. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. He cast a spell on the place and all the bar patrons were swept up in it. They all just stared at him with their heads slightly cocked to one side the way that dogs stare at their reflection in the mirror.

I had never seen anything like it in that room before.

Mike played two songs and Geoff (God bless him) encouraged him to do an encore. He played the one about Marilyn Monroe, the one about all the things he has seen in his life and the Camouflage song.

Afterwards we had some laughs (He had one of my favorite senses of humor). I made sure to tell him that I hadn’t forgotten how he had gone out of his way to get Troy Tryree to hear me perform which led to one of my first Worcester gigs at The Coffee Kingdom in the late eighties. And how much I appreciated it.

I thought about him on my ride home. He was so courageous. The first time I saw him he was playing to an audience of politically correct folk fans and he played this song with a chorus that went “I want you to blow me…(long pause)… a kiss goodbye” The poor audience didn’t know if they should laugh or be outraged. I was hooked.

The only part of him that seemed to be stronger than his willingness to be himself at all times was his willingness to go way out of his way to help people. I’ll bet there are hundreds of musicians like myself that Mike helped get their first gig.

Deep generosity and total irreverence is an unbeatable combination in my book.

A couple of weeks later Mike passed away.

If a person’s name is written on the back of your eyelids when you wake up in the morning, don’t let your mind talk you out of giving that person a call.
 

Don White
Copyright 2006

I understand exhaustion. Exhaustion and I have a longstanding and deeply intimate knowledge of one another. He knows how to slip into my life and make me miserable and I know that he enjoys doing it. Over the past thirteen years I have carved out a small career as a singer-songwriter while simultaneously maintaining a marriage, raising two children and holding one, and sometimes two, day jobs. The currency with which I have paid for this music career is sleep. Exhaustion is the constant companion of all of us who choose to trade in this particular currency.

My daughter's bedroom is next to the bedroom where my wife, myself,  and exhaustion sleep. There has never been a real door on her room. We installed one of those flimsy folding doors that slides on tracks and opens and closes like an  accordion. It has given her some privacy but has deprived her of one of the key ingredients of a complete adolescence -  a door that slams. I must admit to several moments of quiet glee over the years when the door slamming exclamation point at the end of a teenage melodrama was replaced by little squeaky wheels sliding across aluminum runners.

One night when my daughter was fifteen, I was in a particularly profound state of exhaustion. It was 11:30. I could hear the six am setting on the alarm clock actually taunting me. "I'm going to ring as soon as you close your eyes." My daughter was on the phone with one of her girlfriends. She was laughing. It was the kind of laugh that can only come from a fifteen-year-old girl.  As something of a comedian, I have spent a disproportionate amount of my life studying the different sounds of laughter. In addition to the obvious fact that each person has their own unique laugh, (It's kind of like a fingerprint when you think about it) there are several different types of laughter. The one that I am always shooting for in my shows is the "I can't believe it, that's just like my mother" one. This laugh is characterized by high pitch screams that seem to contain within them the name of the person in the family who is just like the person you are talking about. I always hear the sound of recognition in this laughter. To the discerning ear of the knowledgeable comic, this sound is magic. It's like striking oil. When a room is filled with it, you can't help but feel like you are flying. In the continuing effort to design an act that will manifest as much of this kind of laughter as possible, I have learned to recognize the other, less evolved, types of laughter. The "Oh my God, I can't believe he is talking about this," shock laugh. The polite, unenthusiastic, almost obligatory, laugh. The "This guy is really scary" nervous laugh. And the very unique laughter that comes from mean spirited, victim oriented humor. (What's up with these idiots from other countries in the tollbooths, who can't even speak English let alone make change for a dollar ha, ha.) I have often thought that this is the sound of the laughter that one would hear on the nightclub circuit in Hell. To the untrained ear, all of these sound pretty much the same. However, the laughter of a fifteen-year-old girl on the telephone with her best friend is a sound unlike any other on earth.

I am lying in bed. I am so tired I could cry. I am not only being taunted by exhaustion and my alarm clock, but also by the realities inflicted upon my life by every poor decision I have ever made. Sleep, even just a little bit of it, is the only remedy. Unfortunately, I am being denied this cure by the shrieks and wails of hysterical teenage laughter devilishly dancing out of my daughter's room.

I resolve that I must address the situation. I then begin the process of deciding which of my two available dad identities I should manifest in the bedroom doorway of my inconsiderate daughter. The goal being to deliver unto her the dad persona that will bring blessed quiet back to my domicile as quickly as possible with the least amount of energy output and subsequent ramifications.

The first dad incarnation that comes to mind is the stereotypical blustering version. This is the one where I storm over to her room and with all the self-righteous indignation available to the dad number one stereotype, I identify her crimes against humanity and the reasons why they are personally offensive to me. Then, using the loud, severely agitated and totally unreasonable dad number one voice I say, "I'm trying to get some sleep here! You don't care that I have to get up at six in the morning. Why should you?  You get to sleep till noon. All you ever think about is yourself. It would never even occur to you that other people might actually be living in this house!"  Then I flex my dad number one dictatorial muscle by saying, "Hang that phone up right now," and then there is quiet. Quiet anger, quiet resentment and quiet plotting of revenge. You see, dad number one always gets much more quiet than he bargained for. That's because he is one hundred percent bluster and bravado and zero percent circumspection. His shortsightedness is legendary. The method by which he attains his immediate goal actually fortifies the resolve of the opposition. He wins the battle at the expense of the war. He is, generally speaking, a byproduct of exhaustion and lives a life that alternates between explosive bravado and the need to apologize for it.

Once dad number one is finished blowing off steam and asserting his authority in my mind, he gives the podium to dad number two. This dad is also motivated by exhaustion but he lacks the will to fight. Instead, he is a pleader. His method is to crawl out of bed looking as pitiful as possible and to speak in a defeated monotone. "Ariel honey, I have to get up early. Can you please use the phone downstairs." Although sad and emasculated, this dad usually accomplishes his goal without creating a situation that he will feel obligated to repair later.

I choose to manifest dad number two. I conjure up my defeated monotone and roll it around in my mouth. I am preparing to climb out of bed and address the situation when a hitherto unknown door in my mind opens up and out walks dad number three. He speaks, "Dad number one is an asshole and dad number two is an idiot. The problem here is not with the sounds in this house, it is with the way you are choosing to hear them."  I think, "Great, dad number three is a fucking philosopher." I say, "Is this going to take long?  I really need to get some sleep." He tells me to shut up and he continues, "Let's take a look at what we actually have here. You are about to take action that will curtail the sounds of laughter in your home. Is this really what you want? Would you prefer your home to be filled with the sounds of anger or crying? The sounds that fill a home are part and parcel of the memories that are created there. Quiet is what happens in a home when you are alone in it. Be careful how much of this you wish for." Then he says it again. "The problem here is not with the sounds in this house, it is with the way you are choosing to hear them."

And then I get it. I don't just get it a little bit. I really get it. I completely get it. I get it in the center of my solar plexus. I grok it. It must be like this when all of a sudden you understand jazz or Shakespeare. I say to myself "What kind of a father can't go to sleep to the sound of his daughter laughing?" Instantly, as if the asking of the question initiated the metamorphosis, all the sounds emerging from my daughter's room are transformed. They become music. They become summer rain. I lay back and let them wash over me. All the pores in my body open up and absorb them. I drink in the miracle of my daughter's teenage laughter. It is magic. It is giddy. It is a sound so complete that it seems as if every one of her molecules are laughing. There is no separation between my daughter the young adult and laughter itself. It is all one glorious symphony, light and lovely. She sings me to sleep with laughter. I dream of woodwinds and of small birds dancing gracefully upon delicate breaths of wind. In the morning I awake refreshed. Exhaustion is gone and will not return until the day has wrestled from me my zest.

There is a distinct lightness in the early morning quiet of my home. I glance in upon the sleeping figure of my daughter, beautiful and at peace. I whistle a line from The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and begin my day.

Don White
2001

I yelled, I screamed, I swore
She slammed her bedroom door
The house was completely still
And in that silent chill

I began to feel and hear
The sounds of my own teen years
Didn't I always say
My home would not feel this way

Hey kid can I come in
Hey can we start again
There's just too much at stake
For us to keep on this way

If this family explodes today
And the wounded go their own way
When the time comes to heal
Will we still all be here

The pain in my mother's eyes
The day that her father died
Was born in her teenage years
Of wounds that never healed

Your life keeps on calling you
You hear it call. I do too
It gets louder all the time
I know it won't be denied

But there's just a few short years
Where we will both live here
For this precious and fleeting time
Let me see those brown eyes shine

The pain in my mother's eyes
The day that her father died
Was born in her teenage years
Of wounds that never healed

If we make a deal today
To stop making their mistakes
When time comes to say goodbye

You won't have my mother's eyes

For this precious and fleeting time

Let me see those brown eyes shine
 
 

Hello my friend. It's me again
I know I only show up when I'm all tore to shreds
And so here I am. I am a mess again.
I am standing in the doorway of my oldest friend

You see my son got mugged down on Boston Street.
They put a pistol to his temple and took his money.
No, no he's ok. Tonight he's home and he's safe but look at me I'm all
in pieces again.

Chorus
Jesus please just hold me and cradle me near to your breast. With my
head against the heartbeat of heaven
I know my poor heart can heal and rest.

The way I feel today, I am so full of rage
If I could get near that mugger I could blow him away
But when you cradle me my heart can always see
That hatred is the real mugger strangling me
And my soul can't breathe with this weight on me
Until I let it go my soul won't know no peace

Jesus.. please just hold me and cradle me near to your breast. With my
head against the heartbeat of heaven
I know my poor heart can heal and rest

If this man I hate came to you today
The love you'd wrap around each of us would be the same
That amazes me to see that love can be
Perfect, without judgment, constant and free
As I live and breathe I truly do believe
That no words can describe what this love does for me

Jesus please just hold me and cradle me near to your breast. With my
head against the heartbeat of heaven
I know my poor heart can heal and rest
I know my poor heart can heal and rest
I am going home now to heal and rest

After the concert a woman stood in the theater until everyone had gone. When we were alone she asked about that song "you know, the one about your son getting mugged at gunpoint. Was it true?" I said it was. There was a long pause and then she said "my sixteen year old niece was just beaten to death by her girlfriend's x-husband." The words came out of her as if they had made the decision to be spoken on their own. She seemed to me like an unwilling but helpless vehicle for their desire. They hung in the air for what seemed like a very long time. Then moved slowly toward me and landed upon my back. This was among the heaviest of sentences I have ever shouldered and my knees immediately buckled beneath the weight of it.

I had no words for this woman. This was one of those moments that sheds light on the inherent inability of language to communicate adequately in matters of the heart. She wound up in my arms. Holding her being an infinitely more eloquent expression of my complex emotions than any words I might have struggled to assemble. I was hoping she would not address the obvious contrasts in our experiences-namely: how much easier it was for me to sing about healing in regard to a situation that did not take the life of my loved one.

When she eventually spoke she said that the event was recent and that she had been refusing to deal with it because it was so new and so horrible but hearing my song made it impossible for her to keep the door closed to the wound in her heart and that she was actually coming to grips with the tragic magnitude of it for the first time.

Holding this sad and beautiful woman during this moment in her life was overwhelming. I felt her heart crack and shatter into pieces. I felt a cold wind blow through the hole in her chest which until that moment had been occupied by her warm and vital heart. Every three or four seconds her entire body shook uncontrollably as if someone was applying voltage to it.

Inside my own emotional frame I was experiencing one of those outrageous moments where I find myself besieged by very powerful contradictory feelings occurring simultaneously. I felt awkward and uncomfortable. What could I possibly do for this woman? I also felt extremely privileged to be involved in such a profound human interaction. My heart was heavy with sadness for the depth of her suffering but I also felt that there was an undeniable solemn beauty to the moment. It was exhilarating. It was exhausting.

When she was gone and I was left alone to ponder what had just transpired --- I was immediately struck by how lucky I felt that I chose to write the song from a perspective of healing rather than any of the other points of view that an event like that imposes upon it's victims. Anger, resentment, bitterness, revenge, helplessness and fear were all viable candidates for the theme of the song but I chose to write from my prayer place. Which is where I go at the times in my life when I am in an emotional free fall. Where God's unconditional love can wrap it's wings around me and breathe it's eternal wisdom back into my scattered pieces. I knew that this was a place to write from that would enable me to give something positive back to the listener as opposed to just emphasizing the obvious negative aspects of the incident.

What I learned from my short time with this woman is that in some instances language can be an entirely ineffective means of communication between human beings. In other instances it is capable of piercing the most heavily fortified armor that a person might assemble to protect their secrets, their vulnerability or their pain. The close proximity of the subject matter of the song to this woman's recent tragedy was such that she could not defend herself against it. The song penetrated her defenses and laid bare the wound. Had it been full of the bitterness and anger that I felt at the time of the mugging, I would have been guilty of the very serious crime of laying my knife to the open wound of a stranger.

If artists are going to hone the blades of their craft so that they cut swiftly and indefensibly to the core of a given subject, they should not underestimate the immense responsibility that comes with this calling. Anyone blessed with the rare and privileged ability to put their hands on the pain of strangers should live each moment with the knowledge that heaven will not shine gently upon the hand of any person that touches the pain of her children with anything less than compassion and love.

"Do you want to get up and say goodbye?"

"I'll see him next weekend," is what I said but, thankfully, the part of my head that understands the value of moments, slapped the part of my head that would choose an extra hour of sleep over an extra year of life and then insisted that I put on a pair of pants and go downstairs.

The longer you live, the more of these moments you have. You know, the ones that seem to contain within them every emotion that you have ever known. Moments, that when their whirlwind has subsided, the way that you have been living up to that point is permanently altered , relegated to the memory department and thereafter described in sentences that begin with phrases like "When I was still in high school" -- "Before I started working nights" -- "When the kids were small" -- "Prior to that episode with Monica" and so on. After this moment has passed the part of our life that preceded it will be referred to in paragraphs that begin with the phrase "Before Lawren went to college."

He was born in the second floor bedroom of a rented house in rural Maine that featured such rustic amenities as cold running water [Summertime only] and a two seater out house. [A big hit among my visiting relatives.] At the moment of his birth he wore the face of an ancient. He looked like an old sage who was arriving to take care of some special business that could not be trusted to underlings.

I am sitting in the chair in the living room. I am surveying. Lawren and his mother are taking care of last minute packing and it feels deceptively like he is being prepared for a weekend in the country. His sister is getting up slowly. The big goodbye moment is imminent. When I was younger these moments came and went and I assembled their significance and magnitude in retrospect - quite often years later. But I am all here for this one. I am running my fingers over a hundred snapshots in my mind of our eighteen year relationship. Each one significant because it represents a key moment of growth for one or both of us, moments that collectively have conspired to bring us, whether I am emotionally prepared or not, to this one. I ask him to play the Beethoven piece on the piano that he has filled our home with daily for the past year. He is nervous. This is making it too real. He mutilates the piece. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. I am crying. He hugs his sister. She is crying and goes upstairs. His mother waits till he is in the car, then looks at me as if to say that my lack of composure is a direct threat to her role as emotional empress of the family. She wells up, reclaiming her title, and we laugh/cry. She grabs a bottle of Motrin off the counter saying that the entire contents might be enough to get her through this day. We laugh/cry again and they are gone.

I sit in the chair and marvel at how alive I am. I am the alivest person on earth. There is so much complex emotional electricity running through me that I could probably start my car by sticking my finger in the ignition. I am squeezing the final seconds out of one of those moments that defies you to question the meaning of life. I can hear this moment saying "If you can actually muster up the massive amount of ignorance necessary to raise the question of life's meaning during a moment that has placed you among the most alive people on earth - I am afraid there is not much I can do for you."

I am having a very full life. I have been fortunate enough to have had countless exhilarating moments on stage, moments so powerful that during them I actually have felt removed from the constraints of time. I have had moments of such dreamy euphoria during the composing of certain pieces that it has occurred to me at these times that I might possibly be reversing the aging process. (This seems to be balanced off nicely by the acceleration of said process that takes place during the composing of the crappy songs.) In any case, I know how lucky I am. What I am realizing, which some part of me has known all along, is that these highs that have to do with music are great, but all of them put together would not be permitted to sit at the same table with the moment that I have shared with you here today.

I am going to stop short of actually thanking the people in the music business who have overlooked me with impressive consistency throughout the years (sarcasm being one of my less enviable qualities) but had I spent the past ten years primarily on the road, the depth of my experience today would have been diminished in a very profound way and any behavior on the part of any person that, directly or indirectly, contributed to my being able to drink so deeply of life, is worthy of some thanks.

Take care of your special business, old sage. It has been a privilege to help raise you. You are one of the most remarkable human beings I have ever known. There will be other moments for us. Thank you for this one.
 
 

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