J-Way

We descend into blackness. You cannot see the moon or a single star. The trees form a tight laced canopy overhead and although I can hear cars rushing by on the highway alongside the bike path, their headlights cannot cut through this tunnel of 3 am. I rest my feet on the pedals of my trek hybrid and fly through the dark speeding downhill faster and faster. I cannot see Lamar in front of me but I am sure that he has his hands in the air. “Working with you is like falling down into the deepest pits of hell,” he had snarled earlier in the evening as we began to wrangle over my guitar parts on particular song. But all of that is forgotten as moon and headlights burst through the dark to illuminate a path that glows with an almost supernatural light. I coast up to where Lamar is idling. “What’s the point of racing ahead if you just have to slow down and wait for me?”
“Girls just don’t have that jump up and hit the awning thing.” There is a hint of exasperation mixed with the affection in his voice, but he laughs as he takes off again and it’s clear that this post midnight bike ride has soothed him like a heroin honeymoon. He has left those contentious guitar parts behind somewhere and I know that tonight’s musical controversy will not surface again. We wind around and around the path until we are spit out onto empty streets. There are no UPS trucks to dodge, no honking drivers angered by our relative youth and agility. We can ride wherever we want to. The city belongs to us.

We have moved from Q Division back to the yellow clapboard house that’s sits on the edge of the ghetto in Jamaica plain. Squid Hell is owned by a lanky Kentuckian named Dicky Spears who has long brown hair and the charm of a true southern gentleman. He runs point on Lamar’s 10% days and he can calm a fevered room just by walking through the door. He has removed various walls and ceilings in his house to create a towering drum pit and he has hired a legendary audio genius to turn what once a living room into a control room. He lives upstairs.

There is an abandoned lot full of tall grassy weeds across the street and just half a block away there is a tiny run down store full of little Debbie chocolate cakes and fried snacks of lurid hue. Lamar goes there to buy cigarettes and plastic bottles of blue sugar water. He smokes the cigarettes but he just lines the little bottles up on the windowsills and the lip of the console. “Blue drink!” He will shout at times as if the very mention of this bright sugar water is enough to shake the musical cobwebs from his brain. I find blue drink depressing but I don’t question Lamar’s obsession with it, just like he doesn’t question my pockets full of sea glass or my inability to cut vocals when my favorite X-Girl t-shirt is in the wash. It is summer, an endless summer of nothing but bicycles and song, squalling guitars resonating up through the drum pit, yellow legal pads full of scribbled lyrics scattered amidst the total absence of the mundane everyday. Squid Hell shelters us from bills and bars and gossip girls in a way that Q Division could not. We are always surprised and pleased to find the sweet sun bathing the front porch when we venture outside to take a break, eyes blinking into yellow light and tight limbs uncurling to stretch into warmth.

But Lamar has not forgotten how to rumble and I cannot control the demon of insecurity that only sleeps peacefully in the sea of my psyche on alternate afternoons when the moon is not full. “These vocal suck,” I exclaim on a Thursday evening as Lamar pulls the faders up. We are edging closer to mix down time, a time when this summer idyll will end and I will be left with a product that cannot be altered on a daily basis.

“You’re nuts,” says Lamar. “You were perfectly fine with these yesterday.” It is true but the air sounds different today. The tiny buzzes and hums of traffic and sirens and air conditioning units are slightly different than they were yesterday and they form a backdrop, a base pitch that makes the vocal sound slightly askew. I do not for a minute believe that Lamar cannot hear this. My mood turns darker as I realize that I will have no control over anyone’s listening experience. They might not hear what I want them to hear. There will be other cars and appliances and heating systems, ambulances and crickets and cicadas, crying babies and laughing children – everything with its own pitch and resonance. The horror of this hits me hard. What is the point, whatever is the point of this if things can’t be perfectly in tune? And what if all the sounds of anyone’s particular world make my voice sound whiny sharp and thin?

“You obviously don’t give a fuck.” I raise my voice as the interns freeze and shoot each other significant glances. “You just want to rush through this so you can run off to Australia as soon as you can.”

Lamar lights a cigarette and looks at me with disdain. He shoves the crumpled cellophane pack back into the pocket of his khaki cargo shorts and scoots the wheeled studio chair to the back of the room so that smoke will not hover over the console. “These were fine yesterday,” he says, his measured voice as calm and still as the sky before the sirens start to wail. The interns develop a sudden insatiable craving for pad thai and they are out the back door in a flash.

“Fine? You think they‘re fine? I don’t want to make a record that’s fine. I do not want to sound fine.” I felt like I might burst into tears but I know from experience that this will be an unpopular move. How did I get here with a real deal and a real budget when I suck so hard? I am making a record that will be proof positive of my inherent inferiority forever and ever amen. I cannot control the tornado of rage and despair that twists through me like a funnel cloud. “These vocal tracks suck!” I shriek at Lamar. “And if you don’t think they suck, then you suck too. I can’t work with you anymore. You’re just humoring me so you can get out of here!”

Lamar stays silent and I can see that I have gone too far. He puts out his cigarette and begins to strike the board as the back door slams. Lamar’s wife Terri hesitates in the archway. The vibe in the air is as thick as smoke from 1000 cigarettes.

“Sorry to interrupt,” she says tentatively, “but I had a huge fight with Radio and now I’ve got an extra ticket to see Hole at the Orpheum tonight.”

“You’re not interrupting anything,” says Lamar, his drawl now as icy as the New England winters he is so desperate to escape from, “because we are done. Go see Courtney.” He shakes his head and laughs to himself at the perfect symmetry of this. One bitch to another. Humorless sea hags united.

“I’m sorry,” says Terri as we climb into the car. I know what a hard-ass he can be. Terri and Lamar have not been getting along, and the fact that he is leaving the country while she has a 19 year old boyfriend pretty much sums up the state of their affairs. Terri checks her reflection in the mirror and runs her hand through her long light brown curls. She attempts a reassuring smile. Mascara fringes her sea green eyes and her honey color skin glows in the circle of light cast by the street lamp as she twists the key in the ignition. In a state of high agitation, I recount the evening’s argument.

“Um, so you’re mad at Lamar because he doesn’t think you suck?” She says carefully as she eases onto the J-Way. I deflate suddenly. The fact that Lamar’s devastated soon to be ex-wife is taking his side stops me in my tracks. “You just need a break,” says Terri. This will be the perfect thing, try to get away from it for a while.

I slump into my seat. She‘s right. It isn’t even Lamar, music has turned on me .It has happened before and it will happen again. Something wondrous and magical has been trampled into dust by an air conditioner’s hum and there is nothing I can do about it. At a certain point we will run out of money and the will to fight and the record will be done by default, the final mixes the product of spent financial and emotional resources. Right now, at this very instant, I do not see how I am going to be able to live with this, but maybe Terri is right. Maybe I just need a break.

We pull into the parking lot behind the Orpheum. Terri has backstage passes. Someone always has backstage passes. I am still feeling bad as we descend the stairs.

“Fuck Lamar,” says Terri cheerfully as she spots Drew Barrymore over by the buffet table. Her incandescent beauty lights up the room, bright red sloppy ponytail, ringer T shirt, an A-line mini skirt and clunky cork platforms. The band is nowhere to be found. Terri is cheered by the backstage scene, by all the beautiful people in pretty clothes.
“You know if you couldn’t sing, if you really couldn’t sing,” she says with an air of practicality as she pulls a bottle of beer from a bucket of ice, “you probably wouldn’t have gotten a record deal.”

I stare at Terri as she raises the bottle of beer to lips that have been outlined in Mac lip liner. It’s a color called Spice that we are all awfully fond of at the moment. I have the identical color in my bag somewhere though at present my own mouth is devoid of color. “So you’re saying I’m not pretty enough to be the kind of girl who gets a deal even though she can’t sing.”

“Wow!” says Terri. “You’re good. That is so messed up.” She burst into laughter. “Let’s go find our seats.” She links her arm through mine and the spell is broken. I have been acting like a perfect fool.

Courtney is resplendent, incendiary and as soon as she opens her mouth I forgive Lamar. It is not his fault that the air makes noise and sending me here with Terri was the right thing to do, even if he did it for the wrong reasons.

She is on fire, stunningly beautiful, howling in a white silk slip as she clings to a black Rickenbacker guitar. As she plants her Mary Jane on top of the monitor speaker and shakes her platinum hair out of her eyes, I am amazed that I almost missed this in order to stay at Squid Hell and scream at Lamar. Cause Courtney is screaming for all of us. Courtney is screaming at the Sky. She rolls around on her back as plays guitar and suggests to some front row fans who bring up his name that Trent should think of changing the name of his band to 3 Inch Nails. Rumor has it they’ve been having an affair. She is in her glory, of the moment, screaming for all the little girls who were dragged down the garden path or who dove into mosh pits only to have their dreams of flight shattered by groping hands. She screams for the girls who will come to find out the hard way that Law and Order SVU is only a TV show and that Ice-T is never gonna be there when they really need him.

In or out of tune isn’t an issue for Courtney. She obviously doesn’t give a fuck. I know I could never be like her, that I will never be able to alter the compulsions that rule my life. But after the show I feel like I can maybe learn to live with them.

“He won’t remember any of tonight tomorrow,” says Terri as we wait patiently in line with throngs of exhilarated girls in babydoll dresses and little plastic barrettes to exit the theater. I smile at her, relaxed and drained. It’s true, as good as Lamar can be at malice and mockery; he isn’t very good at holding a grudge. Tomorrow is another day and the air will be resonating at a different frequency. Maybe it will be one that matches up with my own.

It is unusually warm for the day after thanksgiving in Tomkins Cove New York. The wizard wakes up early, pleased with the pale color of dawn that peeks through the torn curtains. He rolls out of bed and heads towards the kitchen. Last night his buddy Ryan left a cell phone message saying that Rods brothers and sisters were in town and the wizard likes to be prepared.
Rod had a musician sister in Chicago, a brother who lives in a mansion in Detroit that Rod had helped to renovate and a brother in North Carolina who owns a tai chi retreat. The wizard himself would not say no to music or mansions or even tai chi. Maybe he will get out of here for a while someday. He rolls a skinny pin joint and pours a shot of jack into his coffee as the sun steals the dawn away from the sky and the morning fills up with the lonesome sound of train whistles and birds and heavy metal radio. He dreams idly of Caitlin, with her long dirty blond hair and her pink scabbed arms and the danskin tops that look just like the ones all the girls used to wear in high school. He whistles to himself as he heads back into the kitchen to pour another cup of coffee, then he rolls and lights another joint and sits down at the kitchen table, watching the smoke curl through the shafts of sunlight that stream through the old double paned windows. He calls the dog in from the back yard and scoops chunky food into her bowl from a blue plastic garbage can that that has a lock down lid so she can not get in and help herself whenever she feels like it .The wizard is on the chunky side himself with tiny brown eyes and a smooth shiny head but he likes his dogs to stay thin. They live longer that way. The dog in a medium size Shepard mix with black ears and big brown eyes that she fixes on the wizard as she wolfs down her food. He pads around the kitchen and washes some dirty dishes , cracked bone white china plates with pink flowers and gold rims .He puts them in the dish rack to dry and walks in to the bedroom to take his favorite suit out of the old waterfall wardrobe. Then he grabs a broom and hastily sweeps up the wrap around porch. The sound of Stevie ray fills the air and the wizard is amazed at this sign from the sky. Rod was crazy about Stevie Ray.

When we troop past the white Victorian house with green trim the moon faced man sitting on the porch tips his black silk top hat .He is wearing a moth eaten suit with velvet lapels. We are heading to Jacks Rock, Christopher’s favorite fishing spot. I have not been to Tomkins cove in years so I assume that this is the same wide flat rock where I spent many teenage afternoons smoking pot and downing Quaaludes with other pretty girls in peasant tops and ragged jeans. When we reach our destination I can see that I have been mistaken. This rock is just across the river from the Indian Point reactor and it is only large enough for one man to fish upon.
When one of my remaining brothers steps out onto the rock the ashes fall in a thick grey waterfall with no romantic wind to blow them fancifully about .As my sister reads some lyrics from a Stevie Ray song, I wonder who Jack was. I wonder which one of Christopher’s crack addled friends thought it would be a good idea to scatter his remains in front of a nuclear power plant and I wonder if my mother will get through this. But most of all I wonder why I was able to cast drugs aside with a restless shrug and why Christopher could not or would not do the same.

As walk past the man in the top hat on our way back to the car it dawns on me that he is someone who knew my brother as Rod, a nickname that everyone in my family resolutely refused to adopt. I raise my sad blue eyes to meet his bloodshot ones before following my family round the bend.

It was an early attempt at spring and that attempt was failing miserably as I stood on a freezing Chicago street corner singing a song about how my lover had left me for a thumbtack .Due to circumstances somewhat beyond my control, I had recently and reluctantly joined a band of about 30 local musicians who had been hired to promote the opening of Staples new chain of Chicago superstores .We sang songs about office supplies while playing instruments made out of office supplies and privately we referred to ourselves as The Staples Street Singers. Every morning when I got up I donned what some stylist had deemed appropriate office attire, a lavender corduroy blazer from H&M and khaki pants from the Gap.

 

  My first day on the job the temperature hovered around 16 degrees and my voice cracked as I shivered uncontrollably. We had been asked not to don outerwear. The execs that had dreamed up this project probably lived in Atlanta or South Carolina .No one who had ever spent significant time in Chi town would ever presume tolerable weather in mid march .

 

“I could write you a letter but you stole all my pens”

I could tape up your broken heart but it wouldn’t make amends “

My voice was carried away by the wind.

 

We were down 3 singers by the third day so the ad people relented and let us wear coats  .I don’t think that I was coming across as a convincing office worker anyway. My hair bore streaks of color not commonly found in hair and the only office buildings I ever set foot in were helmed by receptionista’s rocking leopard spotted blond crew cuts.

Grateful for the comfort of the hip hop inspired parka that had been a Christmas present from my old record company I tried not to dwell on better days as I glanced over at my guitarist, Stone, who was attempting to play a guitar made out of a wooden in box .It had a slide rule neck and nylon strings attached to makeshift tuning pegs .His pretty blue eyes were bleary from lack of sleep and his blond curls were partially obscured by a bright red knit cap that proclaimed STAPLES ! in capitol letters. He looked cold and bored as Sorin,the team manager, came over with a clipboard to plug in some equipment before rushing off again with a distracted air.

 

“I could fix our love with staples try to get it back on track but it wouldn’t make no difference cause you left me for a thumb tack ” I sang as Stone struck a muffled chord.

 

Initially I had turned down the job. When the music supervisor called she casually mentioned the possibility of marching in a south side St Patrick’s Day parade while wearing a makeshift office desk. Her air of vague uncertainty left no room for doubt .The parade was a definite .I envisioned my yoga teachers look of surprise as I explained to him that I’d thrown my back out while marching around wearing a piece of furniture and made up an instant lie about a schedule conflict

 

I changed my mind as soon as I heard the dial tone however. I couldn’t bring myself to turn down 5 grand for what amounted to little more than a weeks part time work

Besides I was broke

 

 

There was scattered applause when I finished my song about the duplicitous thumbtack and I didn’t know what was more depressing, standing on a street corner singing about office supplies or the fact that people thought I was singing real songs with a real band. As the applause died down, our drummer Kevin wiped the condensation from his black plastic army issue glasses and pushed his heavy dark hair off his face before picking up his drumsticks to count off a song about a paper jam.

 

“Bob was in a fix.

His meeting was at 6.

His staff was on the fly

His ink was running dry”.

 

Bob was a lucky man.  All he had to do was hit his easy button and all his problems would be solved.

His meeting would run well and on time. His superiors would praise him. I had an easy button too, right there on my makeshift office desk along with the little telephone that made beeping noises when I pressed it’s buttons and percussion instruments made out of plastic pen holders full of paper clips.

 

Occasionally I would hit my easy button but it never made anything any easier .I wanted my old life back .The one where I pretty much made my living by skipping down the stairs to greet the fed ex man. The fed ex man would ring the doorbell, bearing thin red white and blue envelopes that contained fat checks. Checks from the record company that were earmarked for tour support and publishing. Checks that meant I could spend significant amounts of time dreaming up songs in the garden with a guitar.

 

 Now I was spending significant amounts of time standing around on street corners in a red hat.

 And standing around in the cold for hours on end causes you to lose all motivation. You cease to care about anything but caffeine sugar and getting out of the wind. How I longed for the close confines of a cluttered backstage dressing room or the womb like atmosphere of a recording studio control room with a ubiquitous black leather couch that I could throw myself down upon

 

“It’s Staples” I sang” Staples”. I hit the hateful easy button hard with a drumstick My voice was carried away by the wind.

 

 

 

The man who approached me from Michigan Avenue during the middle of the last song had long matted dreads and a filthy down coat that looked like it had probably been green at one point .He was carrying big black plastic garbage bags. He smiled and nodded and whispered to himself as I continued to hit the little buttons .He even did a little impromptu dance

 

“Beep boop beep  boop”. went my little keyboard telephone. I refused to meet his gaze

 

“I was the one who developed that technology” he said approaching me at the songs end as I was removing my headset microphone and thinking longingly of the corner Star-bucks .I glanced back over my shoulder but Stone and Kevin were already gone .I sighed. Musicians make terrible white knights .

 

 

“Thats nice” I said edging away .

 

“No really” the man with the dreads looked affronted that I was not acknowledging his accomplishment.

 

“If it wasn’t for me musicians would not be able to play music on telephones. You wouldn’t even be here” he said pointedly.

 

That didn’t seem like such a bad thing. I looked around for the support staff .I could see Sorin out of the corner of my eye chatting up a pretty girl .I wanted to walk away but I didn’t want to leave all the equipment alone, a lot of the musical sounds supposedly coming from those office supply instruments were really coming from an expensive computer that couldn’t be left unattended.

“Coffee” I mouthed silently, trying to catch Sorin’s eye.He pretended he didn’t see me.

 

 ” I’m responsible” the dreadlocked man continued to insist. I developed that technology when I was with the AACM ” .

 

I looked at him, startled. The AACM was the acronym for The Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians; a legendary jazz collective formed in Chicago the 1960s.

 

“You were with the AACM “? I asked trying to keep the disbelief out of my voice

 

“Me and Phil Cohran we were like that” the dreadlocked man said proudly holding up two entwined fingers as he made reference to the group’s founder.

 

 He leaned in a little closer glancing furtively to the left and right before dropping his voice to a whisper .I recoiled slightly at the smell of his matted hair but I couldn’t look away.

 

” I was with the Arkestra too” he whispered

 

 

 The Arkestra , Sun RA .I’d seen them perform and I remembered the fingers of one of the alto players as nothing but a pale blur on the neck of his golden horn.

I stared nervously at the dreadlocked man. The Arkestra had always insisted rather emphatically that space was the place and that Saturn was their true home .The dreadlocked man had just appeared out of nowhere. I glanced at his hands, which were partially covered by tattered fingerless gloves. No telling what years and the street could do. He could have been one of those players.  He chattered on happily about Sun Ra and Phil Cohran, Lester Bowie and Anthony Braxton, names that your average street person simply would not know to drop. Some of what he was saying had to be true.   I wondered what had greased his slide from playing with legendary jazzman to wandering the streets in filthy clothes.

 

 

“I never had any truck with heroin” he said suddenly as if he could read my thoughts .My mood plummeted. I wondered if the Staples Street Singers was just a pit stop on my own way down to wandering the streets with trash bags full of X-Girl and Daryl K, name checking Trent Reznor and Dave McKean to anyone whom I could trap into listening.

 

I turned away. I could see Kevin returning in the distance and I suddenly felt like I would die if I didn’t get a cup of coffee .I shook the dreadlocked mans hand.

 

“I have to go now” I said ” but thank you very much for developing this technology .I really do appreciate it”.

 

“You’re welcome!” he called as I walked away.

 

 

He was gone when I got back.

 

“Did you talk to that guy?” I asked Kevin

 

“What guy?”

 

“That jazz dude with the dreads. Did you talk to him”?

“I didn’t see anyone” Kevin shrugged

 

The next day dawned sunny and clear. We were grateful for the slight break from the cold though it wasn’t warm by any stretch of the imagination. Stone and Kevin and I were assigned to play the early morning shift in front of the Thompson Center, a downtown hub encircled by a tall black iron fence. Men and women in boring clothes hurried by on their way to boring jobs, barely glancing at us as Stone pulled a Rat distortion pedal out of his bag.

 

“Check this out “he said

 

“I’ve been practicing, I took the inbox guitar home last night”.

 

He plugged the pedal into a tiny amplifier and his little wooden contraption began to emit a lovely fuzzy roar

 

“Wow that actually sounds kind of cool ” I said absentmindedly tapping on the buttons of my phone. It had been shorting out lately. Someone powered up some of the equipment as I continued my to do so and suddenly the phone started to distort.

 

Stone and I looked at each other .I tapped it again hitting the buttons twice in quick succession before lifting my fingers off entirely. Instead of that obnoxious little new wave beep I got a lovely pastel wash of sound .I stared at the little telephone. It had 12 buttons, twelve notes. I let my finger run over them lightly as I started to stitch together melodies. Stone was right behind me. Our instruments drifted and mingled. I forgot about commuters and cold and humiliation.  Kevin left his little percussion desk after listening for a few minutes and began to use his drumsticks on the fence. Around and around he ran adding metallic percussion to keyboard phone and in box guitar

 

. Our swirl of sound spiraled upward into the cold spring sky . Sun Ra was right. Space was indeed the place .The purpose of playing music was to try and get off the planet .At least for a little while.