Tag Archives: Daniel Gabriel

FLASHBACK: “My Brother Learned It Early”

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20 May 2015

Band of brothers ready to hit the field.

Band of brothers ready to hit the field: Cal, Dan, Brian & Rog.

His first year in T-ball I went to every session. The practices were nothing. Nate had that stuff cold. The other kids would be struggling to fit their gloves on and ol’ Nate’d be asking the coach how come they couldn’t steal. The first day, when the coach had asked them to run out to their favorite positions, Nate trotted straight out to second and turned around, pushed his glasses up on his nose, and started to pound his glove. Most of the others were still clustered around home plate, fighting over who was going to get to bat first.

I figured he could be a phenom. Why not? He had me to work with, able to pass on all the accumulated lore of my thirteen years, as well as hand-me-down bats and last year’s baseball cards. He couldn’t use my glove because I was left-handed, but I’d helped him pick out his own and he rubbed it faithfully with neatsfoot oil every Saturday night before his bath. What more could be involved?

Size? No way—this wasn’t basketball or football. Look at Albie Pearson, I told him, or Nellie Fox. Or even “Little John” Johnsrud, who pitched for Neinstadt Drug and could throw a curve ball past any hitter in our league.

He’d never say much. Just focus hard behind those glasses and look somewhere far away, with his forehead bunched and tightened.

T-ball went fine, really. Nate played second every game but one, and if he missed a few he should have had, well, the others missed a whole lot more. He even tried to turn two one time (unassisted at second), but the first baseman was picking his nose and never even saw the ball sail past.

The only real trouble was at the plate. Sitting behind first base, as I usually did, I could see every gap in the field and I expected Nate to hit them. When he didn’t, I got mad. Showed him how it was done, back in our yard. Didn’t use any silly tee either. I told him he’d soon be done with all that nonsense and it was time he learned to hit properly and why in the world couldn’t he see that an acute angle meant pulling the ball and an obtuse one let you hit to the opposite field. I mean, I showed him, for cris’sake. Over and over.

What good is a big brother if he can’t help you lick bad habits before they settle in? I held this notion tight against me, sure of its truth even though I had no big brother of my own. It was my duty to teach—and Nate’s duty to learn. Nobody ever said it would be easy.

By the time he hit Little League it was no use trying to practice hitting in our yard. Half the game was spent chasing balls across the adjacent lots or devising complicated rules to discourage window-level line drives. Besides, I was barely hitting .250 in the Babe Ruth League and beginning to doubt my own wisdom as a hitter. I decided it was time to refocus on fielding.

Coaching up my bros.

Coaching up my bros—Cal, Rog & Brian. Those who can’t do, teach, right?

We gathered in the yard every evening: the two youngest boys, Kev and Monkey, watching from behind the big elm tree like anthropologists observing an arcane tribal ritual. Nate would hustle out to stand against the slat fence of the disused dog pen, push his glasses up on his nose and look at me with a tense, worried expression that showed itself in a tightness along the jaw line. Then he’d pound his glove once or twice and we’d be ready to go.

I’d flip the ball up and lash at it, slicing downwards to send a grounder skipping past the bare spot of our pitcher’s mound and out to second base (a worn, middle slat of the fence), where Nate would bend, scoop, and flip the ball back to me. Or so we hoped. But if I hit a grasscutter, or the ball caught a pebble or a rise in the ground, the hop would come up as uncertain as Monkey when you gave him a choice of three different ice creams.

Nate was quick, but even so many a shot would catch his knee or his hand or sometimes his chin. He’d stand over the ball, glaring down at it like it had bitten him on purpose. Then he’d give a shake wherever it hurt and wing the ball back in to me.

“Head down! Stay with it!” I’d yell, and hit him another. Bang—over the grass to rattle against the fence. “Get in front of it. Stay down.” Another shot. “Keep that head down.” Flip the ball, whip the bat through another arc, ignore Kev wincing behind the elm . . .

It wasn’t meanness that propelled me; at least, not the way I understood meanness. It was love, or maybe a kind of pride. When you’re talking family pride it can get hard to separate the two. Maybe I bore down extra hard because Nate was small. Even Jo-Jo, the bug-eyed redhead from next door, was taller and Smitty, Nate’s lanky best friend who lived across the street, towered over him by a head and a half. So Nate needed to be extra tough, I figured—and would have to work extra hard.

Keeping your head down on a bad hop grounder was not the easy play a big leaguer made it seem. I knew. It was the biggest trouble I’d had playing first base and might well have prompted my third year Little League coach to move me out to center field. I’d been upset at first, railing with youthful myopia at the foolishness of moving a player out of position who’d already put in so many years there, but I’d soon discovered that the outfield had room for my speed and arm that first base had never offered. I still didn’t like bad hop grounders, but by then I’d begun to work on Nate, and I was able to displace the memory of my own deficiencies.

Nate took grounders by the hour, bobbing and pouncing with all the intentness of a cat toying with a rubber mouse. My bat would move faster, rattling the fence on grounders beyond his reach. Bend at the knees, push up the glasses, dive and pounce . . . pound the glove, push up the glasses . . . pound the glove, bend at the knees . . .

He never smiled. The tenseness never left his jaw. Never could see his eyes too clearly either, what with those glasses and the low, tight way he pulled the brim of his hat down over his forehead, darkening his features and leaving a trace of shadow like an ungrown beard across his cheeks.

The only time he looked happy was when it was over and we’d stump on up to the back porch to drop off our gloves and gear. Kev and Monkey would trail us in, wide-eyed and holding each other’s hand.

“Didn’t it hurt, Nate?” Kev would say and Nate would flash that rare grin. “No more’n a kick in the teeth,” he’d say, trying not to rub the bruises on his shins.

“Will I have to do that some day?” Kev would go on, but before anybody could answer, Monkey’d put in—talking real slowly, with his forehead furrowed toward the ground—”But a kick in the teeth hurts a whole bunch.”

This piece was previously published in Elysian Fields Quarterly, Fall 1994.

The Traveler Adrift

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22 April 2015

From the shores of Lake Victoria, largest lake in Africa, it's a long, long way to anywhere.

From the shores of Lake Victoria, it’s a long, long way to anywhere—except the Equator (bottom sign).

To travel is to dive headlong into uncertainty. Familiar shores are abandoned. The lifeline is cast loose. Habits, styles, expectations: all must be trimmed and stowed away, if not jettisoned altogether.

The traveler is adrift on the sea of the world. She rises and falls with the waves; at times seeing with far greater distance and clarity than is possible ashore. At other times, in the trough of the waves of experience, only the immediate can be seen—and that, unclearly.

Space and time become fluid, evanescent. At one moment the world seems simple, unchanging, like gentle ripples on the surface of the waves. At the next, it surges and rages in complexity and upheaval: white foam breakers on the edge of a reef.

There are islands of shelter and comfort, of course, and from time to time the traveler washes ashore, soaked to the skin from repeated duckings and immersions in foreign wavelets. At such moments, the life of the island has its own allure, as the inhabitants tread a steady round of activities, safely snug and dry. A rest appears in order.

Lamu Town from deck of dhow, off coast of East Africa.

But after the traveler has been ashore for some time, he begins to notice the smallness of the island; the narrow circumference within which the safe, dry life is led. He finds himself down on the shore at night, reveling in the ocean spray on his face and feeling the pull of the tide on his feet.

To the islanders, the sea beyond is at best shapeless and meaningless. At worst, it is a danger. There are storms and crashing breakers, vague wave patterns that cause uneasiness in the mind.

Yet the traveler finds herself drawn ever more powerfully to the water’s edge. Its very uncertainty is a lure. She senses that there—beyond or between the islands—lie meanings and patterns that shape much that the island does. What causes the storms? Can the wave patterns be predicted? Are all the islands the same? What others are adrift on the sea, and why?

The islanders counsel him to remain. “Life is meant to be dry,” they say. “It is in the nature of things. But wetness . . .” At this they shudder. “Wetness means immersion.”

For awhile the traveler listens, swayed by the sheer number of those who believe in the island, and dryness.

But her nights are spent on the shore. Listening: to the wind as it blows across the surface of the shifting waves. Watching: where the moon sparkles and plays and leads a golden trail of enticement over unknown depths.

Is that a voice, distant on the wind? A glimpse of non-island worlds half-seen beneath the shadow of the waves?

How far could one go if one didn’t just drift, but swam?

How wide is the ocean?

The tide pulls. The darkness calls. And then . . .

The arc of a diver

Shoes on the beach

World murmurs softly

Just out of reach.

In the morning the tide returns and washes even the shoes away. And again, the traveler is adrift on the sea of the world.

 

West Indies, 1970. The barquentine Flying Cloud (Capt. Marsh Gabriel) bobs at anchor in the background.

West Indies, 1970. The barquentine Flying Cloud (Capt. Marsh Gabriel) lies at anchor in the background.

Why I Write in the Physical Sphere

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4 April 2015

I carry no weapon but my wits, but a rapier thrust of well-timed words can cut through a whole lot of nonsense. Finding a way to put that on the page, and enter the 5,000 year flow of human writing—pathway to history, to sciences, to shared spirituality and the wisdom of the ages—feels like partaking of a sacrament. Writers are the scribes of eternity. The visionaries of the within.

Ma'loula, Syria—near the ruins of Ugarit.

Syria—near the ruins of Ugarit.

The outward shape of these insights matters as well. In Syria a few years ago, we encountered proud signs, written mostly in hieroglyphs, which said at the bottom “First alphabet of the world, Syria, 14th century B.C.” In Bali, decades ago, we visited a Bali Aga village (these were the inhabitants of the old culture of the island, before the court and the artisans fled there from Java) where we were shown precious hand-carved books written in the ancient script, and still telling the creation story, and the cosmology of the Bali Aga people. Whether it’s the Chinese writing on the back of tortoise shells, or medieval monks scratching out a visual feast of Biblical passages in elaborate fanciful script, the artifact itself is part of the process.

In Tenganan, the best-preserved Bali Aga village, a scribe writes the ancient lontar script in a traditional book of banana leaves.

In Tenganan, the best-preserved Bali Aga village, a scribe writes the ancient lontar script in a traditional book of banana leaves.

Maybe Carl Sagan said it best (he often did): “A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called “leaves”) imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millenia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of times—proof that humans can work magic.”

” . . . the greatest of human inventions,” he says, and who am I to quibble? My own library is far from Borgesian (Jorge Luis Borges has written about libraries that contain all books from all time, cataloged endlessly by pedantic librarians intent on achieving a perfection of order), but each volume holds memories. Memories not only of the words inside, but of the feel of the pages, the design of the cover, the heft in the hand. It is a unit, in and of itself. No batteries to wear out. No electrical outlet required. No monthly fees to retain service.

One of the very earliest delights of my life was opening a book. The words inside were few and, for a time, needed another human to interpret them. But soon I saw how that trick worked! I knew then that I had found a faithful companion, an interpreter of life and lives, for the rest of my natural days. Each day as I board the bus and flip open my latest tome, ready to disappear into another set of circumstances, I sigh inwardly with satisfaction. The voices within the book are rumbling. The outside world has already begun to disappear.

 

FLASHBACK: “Jumping Off”

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11 March 2015

The protagonists en route

The protagonists en route

Saturday in the rain, with heavy sluices of water running off my feet and the tired clop of four sodden shoes squishing along the sidewalk. Grandfather silent. Grandfather bundled inside his squeaking raincoat, bent under a brown cloth cap. Grandfather’s hand tucked inside my arm. Mottled skin and thin curling hairs along the knuckle where he grips, firm and trusting. Even in the rain he wears the sunglasses.

Squish, slop, squish, slop. Up another set of steps, onto the watersoaked welcome mat, ring the bell and wait. Smiling. Fixed, tight smiles. Me to say hello ma’am or hello is the lady of the house at home. Grandfather to start the pitch.

In the rain no one asks us in.

My box grows heavy. Cardboard wettening even under wraps and seeping like an infection down into the tight-packed goods. Christmas wrapping already in August. Some buy early, says Grandfather. Some wait just for me.

Down the steps, along the boulevard. Squish, slop, squish. My arm going numb. Baseball hat dripping rain off the bill and tightening along my forehead. Grandfather tall, but stooping. Faint smell of cheese clinging to his shirt, but covered now under the raincoat and the soft hiss of water sliding over the grass.

Gutters run with waste and leaves. A car splashes past. Up another set of steps. Ring the bell. Smiling.

Is the lady of the house at home?

The pitch.

Two dish cloths and a pot holder.

Are you really blind? she says.

Down the steps, along the street. Grandfather calculating in his head. Soft mutters and faint sucking of teeth. Turning the corner into a slash of wind. My eyes sting with rain. Grandfather grunts.

 

I think of him at night in the speckled brown chair worn smooth on the arms, with his feet up in tired slippers and the talking book on the phonograph. White hair in thinning strands. Shoulders slumped. Me crouching behind the sofa soft-tuning the radio to forbidden rock ‘n’ roll. Dead nights in Swedish parlors, with the clock ticking and Mormor in the kitchen. For treats, a glass of egg nog.

Mormor reading out evening news and sharing the parlor silence. Mormor packing the cardboard boxes and toting up the day’s receipts. Driving the Chevrolet—perched up high and peering so she can see out over the hood. A tiny woman, stooped and hunched with age and aggravated injuries.

Grandfather silent. Sucking on his teeth. Dreaming back the years before the darkness fell.

Me vowing never to go blind. Never to tramp the streets of an indifferent city, begging the attention of gaping strangers. Never to sell or have to try to sell. Vowing aloofness. Vowing a better way.

The smell of Swedish meatballs and cooking potatoes hanging over the kitchen.

The clock ticking.

 

But now it is Saturday in the rain and my shoes squish on the grassy verge.

Up the steps, ring the bell. Smiling.

Nothing.

Down the steps, up the next. Smiling.

A box of birthday cards. A decorative spoon.

Down the steps. . . .

Grandfather stumbling and coming aright. Grandfather leaning heavy on my shoulder as I see him on his days alone, cane tapping along the sidewalk like a metronome beating out a rhythm of need.

Down the steps.

Up another. No thank you.

Down the steps. . . .

How do I know you’re blind? she says.

Grandfather silent, but holding the smile.

Streets repeat. The wind shifts. Rain at our back pushing us forward. Grandfather’s hand tucked inside my arm. Mottled skin and thin curling hairs along the knuckle where he grips, tight, with a firmness that bonds like glue.

The box at my side is dragging. Evening is miles away. Grandfather sighs.

Up . . . down . . . smiling. Make the pitch. Never pressure.

 

Afterwards, in the car on the way home, Grandfather sucks on his teeth and counts the money. Does the calculations in his head, muttering softly as he counts, and then at the end, with every penny accounted for, he leans back to where I sit in the back seat and stretches his hand out toward mine.

Eighty-five, he says. Shows his teeth in that tight, fixed smile. Like something remembered from a distant past.

I take the coins held between his thumb and forefinger. Three quarters and a dime.

Then I sit way back on the old cloth seat and send my mind off on its fancies, willing it away from the gutter-slick streets. Away from the plain black Chevrolet. Away from Mormor, my tiny Swedish grandmother, perched on pillows so she can see out over the top of the steering wheel. Away from the repeating avenues of bungalows and back alleys. Away to wherever I can find to jump. . . .

Originally published in Studio (Australia), Issue 72, Spring 1998, and (as “The Country of the Blind”) in Wellspring, Summer/Fall 1993. This story will also appear in my forthcoming short story collection, Wrestling with Angels, to be released by New Rivers Press, Fall 2015.

Excelsior in the 60s: Epicenter of Twin Cities Teen Life

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18 February 2015

Great beer! Great event!

Great beer (especially the Mr. Jimmy Baltic Porter), great crowd, great event!

That title above is how we described my recent talk for the “Tapping History” series with the Excelsior/Lake Minnetonka Historical Society. Held on a monthly basis in the welcoming confines of the craft-beer Excelsior Brewing Company, Tapping History brings to life forgotten aspects of this key piece of territory on the Twin Cities scene.

The crowd was already buzzing when I arrived, and grew so large that not only were all available seats taken, but the standing room got so crowded that late arrivals were housed somewhere near St. Alban’s Bay. These folks were pumped up to revisit local life in the 60s—and they knew their stuff!

The crowd was ripe for any anecdotes I might care to share—and quite interested in both the Excelsior-based articles I’d written (“Still Spinning in a Summer Wind” and “Dance Hall Days” for Mpls/St. Paul magazine; “Land of 10,000 Dances” for Goldmine and Sweet Potato, plus other secondary articles) and my unpublished novel of the era, Paradiso. The enthusiastic response to passages I read from Paradiso has given me new hope that a publisher will soon recognize the value of the tales within.

When I moved to Excelsior as a 10 year-old, the Amusement Park was a vast, everchanging playground.

When I moved to Excelsior as a 10 year-old, the Amusement Park was a vast, ever changing playground.

Excelsior in the 60s had Big Reggie’s Danceland (the premier metro dance hall of the day), the Excelsior Amusement Park (renowned across Minneapolis-St. Paul and beyond), the Commons (still going strong, and still a fine piece of sprawling greenery bending along Lake Minnetonka’s shoreline) and a picnic area featuring two swimming beaches and a basketball court. Each and every one of these places gave rise to local legends that are still in circulation. I was able to toss out just about any question and find an audience member with personal insight.

Did anybody see The Stones the time they played Danceland back in mid-1964, when only 283 people showed up, because they hadn’t yet hit the US charts? Yes, 2-3 people present had been there and had definite memories to share. “I told my buddy, that singer’s got to be the ugliest guy I’ve ever seen.”

How about when The Beach Boys played in 1962, touring behind their first nationwide single, “Surfin’ Safari”? There was a guy in the crowd who’d been called up and told “Mr. Wilson requires a white Fender for his concert tonight. Would you be willing to rent him yours?” And he did.

Which Amusement Park rides did people remember best? For many, of course, it was the infamous roller coaster (DO NOT STAND UP), but I was stunned to be reminded about a ride I didn’t even recall myself!—motor boats that set off from the shore and took Park visitors on a brief spin around a couple of adjacent bays. A man piped up: “Hey, I used to work as driver of those boats. If we had girls on board we’d take the long route, behind Big Island. Otherwise, we’d just circle Gale’s Island and come back.”

Folks always said that several people had died by standing up and falling out and that the roller coaster had been condemned. I loved it.

Folks always said that several people had died by standing up and falling out and that the roller coaster had been condemned. I loved it.

Anybody remember the wonderful run to the State Basketball Championship by Minnetonka High in 1965? (I brought this up because of all the pick-up games we used to play with a couple of the starters on that team.) Lo and behold, one of the former players I mentioned was there—”Thanks for a great flashback!” he told me afterwards.

Then we fell to talking about Twin Cities gangs of the era, including Excelsior’s local toughs, the X-Boys. The wife of one of their former leaders was present, and nearly destroyed my (second-hand) memories of the great 1966 rumble between the X-Boys and the toughest gang in Minneapolis, the Suprees. The battle was over colors (both gangs wore the same bottle green-and-black Prima jackets) and it has always been a point of pride that Excelsior’s boys had at least held their own. Now somebody with a more direct connection was saying that the X-Boys “hid,” rather than fight. I felt my world beginning to shatter—then another attendee recounted some specifics from the fight that, at least in my mind, salvaged our local honor.

Finally, we swung full bore into talking about Mr. Jimmy Hutmaker, who features in Paradiso under another name. Mr. Jimmy, as everyone in town knows, was sitting in his regular spot in the local drugstore when the pasty-faced lead singer of that Rolling Stones band wandered in. Jimmy, who talked to everybody, mentioned his frustration that his usual order of cherry coke couldn’t be filled. “You can’t always get what you want,” he told Mick Jagger. But that is only one of many, many stories about the late, lamented Mr. Jimmy. A unique individual, to be sure.

Afterwards, the conversations kept on coming. Seemed like everybody had their own take on each of the topics we’d covered. Best encounter for me was with an old baseball-playing buddy. We had way too much ground to cover, but what a delight to talk the details of a Babe Ruth League tournament game from nearly fifty years ago, or remember the various games we invented.

As they say in the official motto of New York state: Excelsior! (Onwards and upwards.)

 

FLASHBACK: “The Way of the Road”

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7 January 2015

Few people understand traveling. To most, it means a two week holiday of fun in the sun or a hectic guided tour of pre-arranged “sights” (if not just the car trip to Aunt Mildred’s). They can see neither point nor purpose to extending such an outing indefinitely. Traveling, they believe, is an interruption, a temporary shrinking from the responsibilities of real life.

Indeed, within the confines of their experience they are correct. A vacation (by which they mean traveling) is an interruption of normal life: a brief opportunity to let off the head of steam that’s been building up in the workaday world. It can be no more than that, for the end is always clearly in sight. Momentary thoughts of errands and unfinished plans come to mind involuntarily. Flashes of being “at home” occur. The scenes one views may change, but not the pattern of viewing.

It takes time to break patterns. There are patterns of sleep and of speech; patterns of worship, patterns of response, of caloric intake. All these persist, even in foreign lands.

Most persistent are patterns or habits of thought. The mind does not leave its ruts overnight, even though on a different road they may be less evident. It takes weeks and months to wear through those ruts.

New habits must be formed, new perspectives slowly and painfully arrived at. One critical feature in the establishment of a new perspective is the ability to travel with no fixed return in mind. This does not mean to travel aimlessly, but rather to let go the lifeline that pulls one ever “homewards.”

There is nothing easy about it. It means becoming a pilgrim, a sojourner. It means estrangement, physical and psychological, from the land of your birth. It means the slow realization that your destiny lies not in a particular piece of land, but around the next bend in the road.

It means isolation. It means painful knowledge that people of fixed abode can never share. It means risks surmounted, paradises gained and lost. It means uncertainty, insight and worn-out shoes.

It means vague impressions, half-formed conclusions, tentative theorems. It means infrequent showers, lumpy mattresses and periodic diarrhea. It means a bottle of wine in a hayloft. It means the cold wind howl of midnight on a cobblestone street. It means a shroud of dust gone to sweat in midday heat, the call of a loon in the gathering dusk, a rocky beach by firelight. It means all night train rides and intense conversations with someone you met yesterday and will bid goodbye tomorrow. It means loneliness, fear and exhilaration so pure it makes your hands shake.

It means discarding much that you’ve been taught. It means discovering what is true forever.

It means becoming someone new.

On the edge of the Sahara's Great Eastern Erg, Alex & Evan Gabriel battle a sandstorm.

On the edge of the Sahara’s Great Eastern Erg, Alex & Evan Gabriel battle a sandstorm.

Only then does the realization finally permeate that THIS IS LIFE. Right here and now, life is being lived. There is no hiding in routine. No blind acceptance of societal mores. There is life in all its starkness, all its multiplicity and conflict, all its uncharted illogical byways. And yes, there is life in all its unity.

Perhaps for many it’s easier not to look so closely, not to question quite so probingly, for without doubt, the voyage is uncertain and the risk is great.

Yet to travel is to explore the full circumference of life: to tread in the routes of the conquerors; to seek out the bypassed remnants of pre-industrial life; to sing the nomad’s song.

 

The traveler finds life in places of pilgrimage and profanation. He finds it among the energetic and the lethargic. She finds it in the change of seasons, in encounters in markets and cafes, in friendships formed and dissolved, crises faced, adventures survived.

In the process, the mind is freed from habit, from petty local concerns and the insistent demands of communication media. There is time (and great need) for reflective thought. Cultures can be examined and evaluated. Society’s lies and blind spots reveal themselves. It becomes impossible to evade the questions that workaday hustle and bustle strives so hard to evade: Have the generations lived and died in vain? What have the sages taught? What has God revealed? Who makes history? Why are we given life?

To travel is to question. Sometimes the questions are answered. Sometimes not. But never to ask, never to wonder . . . surely that is death itself.

This article was previously published in Great Expeditions (Canada), May/June 1983, and in Independent Travel Made Easy (Canada), 1989.

How to “Punch at the Wild Tornado”

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When the world comes at you hard, fight back! Words can be a powerful weapon.

When the world comes at you hard, fight back! Words can be a powerful weapon—and COMPAS artist Dennis Lo depicts this brilliantly.

19 December 2014

Last Saturday I had the privilege of gathering at Landmark Center in St. Paul to celebrate the publication of the 36th COMPAS Anthology of Student Writing, entitled Punch at the Wild Tornado. As both Arts Program Director for COMPAS and, for the first time, Editor of the Anthology, I had a particularly high stake in the game. What a delight to hear the young people loose their hopes, fears and imaginative speculations into the resounding confines of Landmark’s classical Cortile. A grand time was had by all!

Student authors gather at the start of the Publication Celebration in Landmark Center.

Student authors gather at the start of the Publication Celebration in Landmark Center.

It’s easy to dismiss the rising generation as self-obsessed or clueless about how the world really works, but the young voices in this book belie those stereotypes. We hear from new immigrants describing the treacherous paths they took to reach Minnesota and rural kids embedded in nature and alert to the details of the changing environment around them. We encounter tender poetry and profound insights from kids who have not yet reached double digits in age. (“Poetry is . . . a lake deeper than you can think” says third grader Leo Fridley in the very first piece in the book.) There are glorious tales of adventure (check out “Pendrick and the Serum” or “A Letter I’ll Never Forget”) and poignant insights into lives that stutter and stumble forward.

Perhaps nothing is more affecting than the series of voices from Rochester STEM Academy, a heavily-Somali charter school that worked extensively with Hip Hop spoken word artist Frank Sentwali. Listening to the young women (and one young man) sound forth on the dis-junction they see between their lives and media reports reminds us both of the complexity of race relations in this country and the global links we all share, regardless of country of origin.

A handful of the pieces were selected by judge Joyce Sidman (a COMPAS Roster Artist with a national reputation in children’s literature) as winners of a Lillian Wright Award for Creative Writing. Of the six winners, two that jumped out at me both came from middle schoolers—a vigorous spoken word piece by Sophia Rapacz that said everything I wish I’d had the wisdom to say back in junior high days, and an affecting, wistful memoir by Kira Greenfield that was written as part of a unit on watersheds, but took the topic in a completely unexpected direction.

Wright Award winners gather with judge and author Joyce Sidman.

Wright Award winners gather with judge and author Joyce Sidman.

The modern world may be infatuated with the digital realm, but there’s nothing like a solid, printed book to provide a direct link to the past 5,000 years of writers at work. The finest repositories of human cultural heritage are these simple paper rectangles that reveal so much of our highest and deepest aspirations. It comforts me to know that a new generation of writers stands ready to fill those pages.

Garland Jeffreys Cools It Down

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12 November 2014

After seeing Garland do a sweeping, soulful set at the Dakota last weekend, I felt the need to exhume this never-published piece, from way back in the day (1981) . . .

This LP was blistering back in '81.

This LP was blistering “back in ’80—in ’80, ’81.”

It’s Thanksgiving Eve in Los Angeles, nearing midnight. Garland Jeffreys has just finished an MTV video shoot of an explosive, cinematically-oriented set of classic rockers at The Country Club. He’s given his all, and normally that would be enough. But tonight the show’s not over. The video crew wants one more number—out in the streets.

Backstage in his dressing room, Garland towels off, acknowledging well-wishers and strumming an acoustic guitar. His adrenalin is still on the run and even the ladies-in-waiting take side saddle to the ballad he’s humming along in tune to the guitar. His red satin shoes tap time to the beat.

A head pops through the door to announce “Time.” Garland flips on an army combat fatigue jacket and heads out the door, still strumming.

Outside, the crew has set up shop on the curb. They stand in a huddle of slick shoes and New York accents, shivering against the unexpected chill. Mixed in with them are LA promo people, photographers and various hangers-on. The potency of Garland’s onstage performance still has the group abuzz with energy and an exhilarating “over-but-not-yet-over” post-concert high.

Across the street is a grotty dead-end bar whose neon lights spell out RUMBLE IN. Parked along the front curb is a cold, metallic line of Harleys, chopped to the bone. In the shadows of the bar’s entrance lurk brooding bikers, bearded hulks half-savage with drink and glowering darkly at what they take to be an invasion of their turf.

Garland stands out alone in the street, five foot five and looking his age, under a single streetlamp, tucked up inside his fatigue jacket, strumming a ballad to the night.

“What can I say

it happened that way

I’m the freak of the family . . .”

One of the bikers—so drunk he’s almost harmless—totters across the street and into camera range, spoiling the take. Everybody gets reset.

Take 2 is spoiled by motors in the distance.

The drunk—who gives off a considerable odor—is stumbling in and out of the video crew, who sneak nervous glances at his compatriots across the street and pray that they don’t decide to join him.

The onlookers huddle protectively closer, as if the coldness itself were coming from the dark massed bodies reflected in the neon gleaming off the line of Harleys.

Take 3 . . . the drunk gives a throaty laugh and lunges for the camera, falling to one knee before he can do any damage. He starts singing a maudlin, off-key song of his own.

Garland thrums his guitar abruptly and says, “Get this guy out of here before he pukes on my shoes.”

The drunk is cajoled back onto his feet and diplomatically detoured away. Filming recommences. The cold is ever more noticeable.

“What can I say . . .”

Garland starts up again, and this time something catches hold. It’s a special moment, a freeze frame of rock ‘n’ roll life that holds its meaning within itself: Garland Jeffreys, a blood mix of us all, a ghostwriter of years’ and more years’ standing, is singing hot clouds of steamy breath out into the cold night air. Alone in the streets he sings, under-sized inside his army fatigues, age lines etched across his face: a street poet all ready for combat.

“Here I stand black and white as can be . . .”

Just like the album cover.

The single “Matador” went Top 5 across Europe.

Alone in the streets he sings, the bright lights of show biz and welcoming faces in front of him—but at his back, like the chill wind that runs across his neck, he can feel something else, something harsh and cold as the neon that says without speaking: RUMBLE IN. Behind him skulk the brooding bikers, midnight sentinels of America’s dark edge of violence. They pace and mutter and watch.

The crew is still and silent. Garland sings from somewhere deep inside himself, no band behind him, no electricity, just heart.

“Here I stand black and white as can be . . .

And I give you this ballad of me.”

There is a silence when he stops. People stare at their feet and think private thoughts.

Garland takes off his guitar. The moment is over. Now it’s just another night on the road.

A visionary even then . . .

A visionary even then . . .

And the beat goes on. The man is still kickin' it.

. . . and the man is still kickin’ it.

 

 

FLASHBACK: “Why Put the Bomp?”

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22 October 2014

“Sha la la doo bee wah bum bum bum yip yip bum”

—background vocals on Roy Orbison’s “Blue Angel”

Roy Orbison contemplates how to tell the Teen Kings that he's replacing them with a set of female singers who can actually get their lips around that tricky "Blue Angel" chant.

Roy Orbison contemplates how to tell the Teen Kings that he’s replacing them with a set of female singers who can actually get their lips around that tricky “Blue Angel” chant.

Say what?

How many times have you asked yourself, “What are those guys singing in the background?” I’m not just talking about supposed messages buried in the mix, though I’ve seen entire parties break up in an argument over whether or not the muffled sounds on “Revolution #9” heralded Paul’s death or the directions to the backstage area at the Isle of Wight Festival. I’m thinking of the secret thrill of suddenly catching the counter rhythm of The Who’s relentless fade-out chorus on “I Can See For Miles” and riding it across the airwaves like a steam train pounding through oblivion. I’m thinking of pre-teen nights in my grandparents’ parlor, soft-tuning the radio to forbidden rock ‘n’ roll and coming on the sweet, slick onomatopoeia of the backing singers on Bobby Day’s “Rockin Robin” going tweet, tweet, tweedileedeelee . . . tweedily deedily dee . . .

I know I wasn’t the only one out there earballing transistors for mumbled jive either. Phil Spector took a good close listen to the Shirelles’ “I Met Him on a Sunday” with its chorus of:

Do ronde ronde ronde

boppa do ronde ronde ronde

boppa doo . . . ooohhh

and found a way to play off those lines in his classic “Da Doo Ron Ron.” The Tokens must have huddled around many a jukebox pumping early East Coast group harmonies before they learned to use them for the A-wim a-away chant on “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

So what, you say? It still sounds like nonsense—and what’s that got to do with rock ‘n’ roll? Well, sometimes it’s nonsense. Sometimes it’s not. Since backing vocals never seem to get included on the lyric sheet the temptation is great to overlook them, but whether it’s the Cadillacs mouthing whop wah diddle it on “Speedo” or The Clash singing “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to kill” underneath “The Call Up,” those voices in the background are as important a part of the song’s effect as the bass patterns or the sax riffs.

For one thing, they provide vocal texture. And to the extent that rock ‘n’ roll embraces black music forms, it has always been built around vocal texture. You didn’t think the Beach Boys sold all those records because people fancied Mike Love’s whine, did you? Or think of the haunting background on Dr. John’s voodooized “Gris-Gris” (gris gris gumbo ya ya, hey now bumbo ya ya). The mood darkens, the fog rolls in, and spirits walk the night. Be it work songs, gospel choirs or Caribbean rhyming games, Afro-American music finds its deepest expression in the interweaving of human voices.

The appearance of background mouthings in rock ‘n’ roll springs from the close harmony “barbershop” style of singing that developed on New York street corners in the late forties and early fifties. Known to rock ‘n’ roll fans as Doo Wop, the style was popularized by groups who featured a wailing wordless melody behind the lead singer. The so-called “bird groups”—Orioles, Ravens, Robins, and the like—all used it well, but one of the most effective is the simple ba-dah-dah repetition on the Moonglows’ “Sincerely.” The Five Satins fueled many a curbside cuddle by taking this approach to extremes in the droning, moaning harmony chant behind “(I’ll Remember) In the Still of the Night.”

While backing vocals’ main contribution is often as a re-emphasis of a song’s immediate thrust, their role doesn’t need to be limited to that. On Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road, Jack,” the Raelettes break out of their presumed backing role to all but overwhelm poor Ray (an incisive parallel to the song’s theme). In similar fashion, I have yet to listen to Ike and Tina Turner’s “I Think It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” without getting goosebumps over the sly, sexy interchange between Tina baiting the hook and Ike dodging the lure (TINA: “They used to call you the Thriller . . .”; IKE: “The Killer, baby, the Killer . . .”)

Ike and Tina work that old-time washboard sound.

Ike and Tina work that old-time washboard sound.

And in Ike and Tina’s “A Fool in Love,” African call-and-response patterns are used in a moving dialogue between singer and chorus:

TINA: “Oh, there’s something on my mind; won’t somebody please, please tell me what’s wrong?”

IKETTES: “You’re just a fool, you know you’re in love.”

TINA: “What you say?”

IKETTES: “You got to make it to live by yourself . . .”

This passing on of an underlying message may be the most important role played by backing vocals. Outsiders can be mocked with impunity and insiders can giggle over retorts that sometimes undercut a song with hidden irony. Check out the mid-sixties Equals’ tune “Baby, Come Back.” (“Please don’t!” shouts someone in the background.)

This sly solidarity of in-the-know rockers can be found underlying many a song, but sometimes the implied joke doesn’t even reach insiders. The Beatles have been accused of hiding messages backwards and forwards in their songs, but the only one Paul McCartney admits to never even gets mentioned (the tit tit tit behind the verses of “Girl.”)

Some songs take things right over the top and elevate nonsense syllables to lead status, as in the Rivingtons’ “Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow,” which contains almost no real lyrics at all. Even that is taken to further extremes in what I like to think of as the very first “dub” version of a rock ‘n’ roll song—The Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird.”

But even nonsense syllables can carry a symbolic content. One fine example of this is the Silhouettes’ “Get a Job”:

Yip yip yip yip yip yip

Sha na na na

Sha na na na na (repeated four times)

(ba doom)

Yip yip yip yip yip yip

Bum bum bum bum

Get a job . . .

The Silhouettes—happy that they've found a job.

The Silhouettes—happy that they’ve found a job.

Here we catch the parent’s nagging through the ears of the kid: just so much jive talking that always focuses on the final line—get a job.

In some ways, the use of nonsense syllables represents a core concept of rock ‘n’ roll: the need to hold on to the jungle; to the non-rational, nonlinear thought forms of an earlier, more gut-wrenching age. When the Showmen sing a repeating chorus (in “It Will Stand”) of “Rock ‘n’ roll will stand, scooby doo be doo,” there is a feeling that these two lines belong together. That so long as this kind of atavistic mindset remains in force (wherein scooby doo be doo is a legitimate response to the world) rock ‘n’ roll will indeed stand.

Perhaps this is something of what Barry Mann had in mind when he sang in “Who Put the Bomp?”:

Who put the bomp

In the bomp shoo bomp shoo bomp?

Who put the ram

in the ram-a-lama ding dong?

Who was that man?

I’d like to shake his hand.

He made my baby 

fall in love with me.

What’s it matter who put the bomp? The important thing is, it’s there.

This article was previously published in One Shot, Vol. 2 Issue 1, Fall 1991 and The Northfield Magazine, Vol. 4 No. 4, 1991.

Jeter Walks Off; Yankee Pantheon Expands

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1 October 2014

Right to the end, he rose to the occasion. That last game at Yankee Stadium and the improbably slim chance of coming to the plate again—walk-off base hit. Ending it all at Fenway Park—after years of boos raining down, this time with the crowd chanting his name to mimic the Bleacher Creatures in New York—legging out an RBI single. Twenty years in the limelight and Derek Jeter has always known how to deliver.

What's this? His millionth press conference? Yet he still looks fresh.

What’s this? His millionth press conference? Yet he still looks fresh.

It’s easy for a diehard Yankee fan like myself to eulogize Jeter, but I’ll spare you the gushing praise. That’s easily enough found, particularly from his peers and other baseball insiders. I shall content myself with a handful of statistics and a few pithy statements. But before we get too serious, here’s a sidelong glance at Jeter off the field, where, remarkably, signs of jealousy never reached the press:

Talk about a Murderer's Row lineup . . .

Talk about a Murderer’s Row lineup . . .

 

But here’s where my focus lands: Professional baseball has been played since 1869. In all that time: Only 5 other players collected more hits. Only 8 other players scored more runs. Only 26 other players own more World Series Championship rings. (They’re all Yankees, except for Eddie Collins.) In the post-season, nobody has played more games (158), gotten more hits (200), or scored more runs (111). Dig that—the equivalent of an entire extra season spent against the fiercest competition and Jeter’s production remained at an all-star level.

Jeter and Mariano Rivera savor the reason they play the game.But when the furor dies down, and we all go back to checking court dockets for the next trial involving a star athlete, Yankees Universe will have added a glittering star to its firmament. Playing for the most storied baseball franchise of all time, in the long shadow cast by the Yankees’ Mount Rushmore—Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle (to say nothing of the elite second tier of legends who include Yogi Berra, Mariano Rivera and Whitey Ford)—Jeter has become the all-time Yankee leader in these categories: Games (2,747), At-bats (11,195), Hits (3,465), Doubles (544) and Stolen Bases (358). He’s also second to the Babe in Runs, with 1,923.

But maybe these final statements sum it up best from the team’s perspective:
He’s been the longest-serving Captain in Yankee history (2003-14).
Not only will his number be retired, but we can expect a plaque in Yankee Stadium’s Monument Park—and just possibly, a statue.
He was the last of the single-digit Yankees: Billy Martin (1), Jeter (2), Ruth (3), Gehrig (4), DiMaggio (5), Joe Torre (6), Mantle (7), Berra and Bill Dickey (8) . . . and Roger Maris (9). The trophy case is closed.