Tag Archives: Minnesota author

On the Death of Elmore Leonard

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28 August 2013

Unlike most of his characters, may Elmore Leonard RIP

RIP Elmore Leonard

“The sky is cryin’ . . .”

—Elmore James

Like his blues-howling namesake, Elmore Leonard could conjure dark doings, and stretch your heart with worry about the survival of some lost soul on the underside. He was also one of my favorite all-time writers, but if you’re after a grand summation of his life and work, you’d better look elsewhere.  (” . . . one of America’s greatest crime novelists and one of Hollywood’s favorite storytellers” . . . “a seemingly inexhaustible cast of sleaze-balls, scam artists and out-and-out psychopaths.”)

I first encountered his work at a friend’s garage sale in the mid-80s. There was nothing of interest on offer, so just to be polite I grabbed a foxed paperback of Glitz. Little did I know the seedy, convoluted worlds of intrigue into which I was about to tumble. Forty books later (I think I’ve read everything Leonard published except for Escape From Five Shadows), the man was still turning over rocks to see what might crawl out.

Leonard always kept it short, sweet and to the point. As he famously said, “I leave out the parts that people skip.” He moved scene to scene, inventing as he went, so that his books never had the feel of being “plotted.” His ability to characterize meant that in a single page he’d have you feeling you knew deep motivations and festering hurts and couldn’t wait to see what some clown would do when pushed to the edge—particularly when pushed to the edge by competing factions all chasing the same McGuffin.

It never took long to tumble into the story either. Dig the opening sentence of another 80s novel, Bandits: “Every time they got a call from the leper hospital to pick up a body Jack Delaney would feel himself coming down with the flu or something.” How can you not keep reading?

An ex-nun, an ex-con, and an ex-cop stumble on a cache of money on its way to the Nicaraguan Contras. They're going to make out like bandits.

In New Orleans, an ex-nun, an ex-con, and an ex-cop stumble on a cache of money on its way to the Nicaraguan Contras. They’re going to make out like bandits.

And the dialogue! So crisp, so real. Look how much we learn about these two guys’ attitudes in this uninterrupted slice of repartee (also from Bandits):

“. . . the guy has the desk lamp on and he’s taking stuff out of the lady’s briefcase and putting it in this flight bag he has with him. So, I started to sneak up behind him.”
“No shit.”
“He was about your size. What’re you, five six?”
“Five seven and a quarter.”
“He wasn’t too big. Maybe a hundred and thirty pounds.”
“I go one sixty-two,” Mario said.
“So I don’t see a problem unless he’s got a gun.”
“Yeah, did he?”
“Just then he turns around and we’re looking right at each other. The guy says, very calmly, ‘I bet I have the wrong room. This isn’t 1515, is it?’ I said, ‘You aren’t even close.’ . . .”

And one more time. With Leonard, you share a random ride with an ex-nun, and before long you’re embroiled in Sandinista blood vendettas. They’re not long in the car together, still killing time, but getting intrigued (again from Bandits):

     “You’re a nurse?”

“Not exactly. What I did was practice medicine without a license. Toward the end we didn’t have a staff physician. Our two Nicaraguan doctors were disappeared, one right after the other. It was only a matter of time. We weren’t for either side, but we knew who we were against.”
     Were disappeared.
He’d save that one for later. “And now you’re back home for a while?”
She took several moments to say, “I’m not sure.” Then glanced at him. “How about you, Jack, are you still a jewel thief?”
He liked the easy way she said his name. “No, I gave it up for another line of work. I got into agriculture.”
“Really? You were a farmer?”
“More of a field hand. At the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Angola.”

Man, that’s good. I got to keep trying . . .

RIP Elmore Leonard.

 

Montevideo Moods

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21 August 2013

To get to Montevideo I take the bus from the former Portuguese smuggling port of Colonia del Sacramento on Uruguay’s southwestern coast, on through cattle country and tidy villages with Alpine names. After leaving my bag at Tres Cruces Terminal—an airy, clean shopping area as well as bus terminal; Greyhound could learn a lot here—I wander the embassy district and the huge Parque Batlle. Everywhere is green. Horses nibble at the long grass. In the distance a pair of lovers huddles on a stone bench, sharing each other’s warmth. The park has an under-wraps fun fair, impressive sculptures, a velodrome, and the Estadio Centenario, the site of the first World Cup in 1930. That Cup was won by Uruguay and there are still bronze plaques honoring the team, as well as foreign stars from the event. Outside the stadium, a local team is running drills on a practice pitch and two workmen in coveralls hose down the cement arrival area.

Uruguay not only hosted the very first World Cup, they won it. Thanks for Forlan and Suarez, they nearly one the last one too . . .

Uruguay not only hosted the very first World Cup, they won it. Thanks to Forlan and Suarez, they nearly won the last one too . . .

I spend my time in Montevideo walking, walking, walking. I eat in little workingman cafes; have breakfasts at Oro del Rhein, a 75 year-old classic German bakery/cafe, and watch the clusters of mate drinkers form and dissolve. I walk cobbled streets past flower vendors, and dip in for cappuccino whenever my energy flags. There are remnants of 19th century French and Spanish colonial architecture everywhere, especially above the ground floor. Long-haired artisans display their creations on streetside blankets. Vendors of herbs and oddments set up little tables and bargain with the passersby. The clopping of horses’ hooves from the garbage carts is constant throughout the day, and adds to the air of shabby gentility that seems to hang over the city. 

I dawdle in the plazas, which feel like the city’s barrio heartbeats: Plaza del Entrevero the flower-strewn link to the city center; Plaza Independencia the nation’s pride, with the neo-classical Teatro Solis, the overwhelming bulk of Palacio Silva (once the tallest building in South America), and the last remaining remnant of the old Spanish city gates; Plaza Zabala a spot to doze in the sun and dream of colonial days. My favorite is Plaza de la Constitucion, which is encircled by Iglesia Matriz, the oldest church in the country (1799) and the Cabildo, or old colonial town hall, which holds a museum of local artifacts.

Just off Plaza de la Constitucion, students let loose.

Just off Plaza de la Constitucion, students let loose.

All along Montevideo’s peninsula setting are Las Ramblas, recalling for me the famous Ramblas in Barcelona. But where in Catalonia these walking streets bisect the center of the old city, here they ring it, working around the edges like a fishing net scooping up the crumbling art nouveau buildings from the grey rush of the river estuary. Further east, Montevideo sports a string of fine beaches, exceptional in such urban surroundings, and the Ramblas form a handsome esplanade with palm trees and apartment blocks, but here, embracing the Ciudad Vieja (the Old City) the meandering stone walkways are windswept and tatty. Lone fishermen work the undersides of jetties; in the lee of statues are remnants of last night’s furtive parties, and cats glide in silence from outcropping to outcropping. The wind is loud in my ears.

After several overcast days, the sun peeks through and the city is suddenly filled with street life. Flower vendors blossom on every corner. The shoeshine men step sprightly and snap their cloths with a crisper touch. Schoolkids in uniform shriek past and make for the nearest park.

Now the plazas are filled with old men arguing the results of the upcoming elections and mate drinkers sitting placidly as fountains play behind them. I can’t recall seeing a single rich person, nor anyone exceptionally poor. Birds flutter and chirp in the trees. Two little girls in red walk past, giggling as their ice cream dribbles onto their shirts.

As dusk tinges the streets around Plaza del Entrevero to deeper grey I stroll out of the park and past a shy pre-school girl sharing a hug with a crouching, gap-toothed old man on the pavement. I drop down quickly to their level, hoping to catch a telephoto shot of the moment, but the old man sees me, encourages the shot, and then asks if I can send him a copy of the photo. “Sure,” I say. “Write down your address.” Surprisingly, he has no address, only a name: Andres. But at the corner kiosk he gets the magazine vendor to list his shop’s address, where Andres can pick up the photo when I send it. We part with big smiles and a firm handshake.

Andres and his new young friend.

Andres and his new young friend.

On my last day in town I catch a creaking bus down the length of the old city cobbles, disembarking on one of the slowly crumbling side streets, where the working class clings to the traditional ways, knowing that while gentrification might mean fresh tourist pesos, it would inevitably end their pattern of life. The stevedore jobs are gone. The life of the port seems to retreat like the tide, further and further away from their doorsteps. But there’s no sense of surrender. Not yet.

Ahead of me the massive customs office—an exemplar of socialist realist architecture—leads through to a stretch of road and the gleaming hydrofoil to Buenos Aires. It’s like riding a spacious aircraft, but with extra decks and a working cafeteria. I settle in alongside a window, watching Montevideo’s first raison d’etre—the hill of El Cerro; still with a lighthouse flashing from its peak—and then we rumble out of the bay and slide westwards towards the all-consuming hub of Argentina.

 

Young Authors Conference Delights

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24 July 2013

The last word in the title of this post can be read as either a noun or a verb. What is not a matter for debate is the joy I receive each year from teaching at this conference. I’ve been doing it steadily since YAC’s inception in 1990. Each day hundreds of 4th-8th graders from around the Twin Cities metro area pour into the halls of Bethel University to discover the wonders of working with professional writers. There are a couple dozen of us each year, covering the waterfront of genres and styles. Some years I do “Creating Characters.” Other times it’s “Doing Dialogue,” or “Starting Stories.” (And, no, there’s no requirement that session titles consist of two alliterative words.)

Whatever the title, the point of the sessions is to give eager young writers some fresh tools for their tool box, and to inspire them to keep digging deep inside themselves for expression and insight. As I tell the students, “We’re not all on the same road; we’re not all heading in the same direction. But wherever you are and wherever you’re going, it’s my job to move you further down the road of writing.” And then we take off, going a mile a minute and bouncing back and forth with bits and pieces of text, questions, story slices, and the like. For some of these kids, this is the first time they’ve ever been in a room filled with other dedicated young readers and writers. No longer are they the oddball who actually enjoys cracking a book. Now they’re trading favorite authors and offering up exceptions to every rule proposed. (As I say, “This is creative writing. Every rule can be broken—but before you do, you better know what the rules are, or there’ll be no creativity in the breakage.”)

Not actually from YAC, but this photo shows the author in action during a COMPAS Summer Writing Workshop in 1987.

Not actually from YAC, but this photo shows the author in action during a COMPAS Summer Writing Workshop in 1987.

The conference is run by the wise and energetic souls at Success Beyond the Classroom (particularly Gina Jacobson), and after the conference ends they send out examples of student feedback. I treasure these lists. Who wouldn’t? Here are some comments from the past two years from participants in my sessions:

“We got to do things for ourselves and learned new things versus reviewing the old ones.”

“He didn’t lecture on, and we switched off between talking and having us do stuff. He was funny.”

“I learned a ton in this class and got a chance to write, revise, and write more.”

“Because he really gave me a lot of good ways I should start my story and make good things happen so the reader can get hooked on it.”

“I enjoyed this session the most because dialogue is something I desperately need to work on and it improved my writing already.”

“I enjoyed this session because it was fun, the class kept moving forward, new techniques were taught, and I really enjoyed his thoughts.”

“I learned that when using dialogue I can show it in many different ways. Finding new ways of doing that was great.”

“I didn’t want to stop writing in this session!”

“I got to write an amazing story with a great beginning.”

There’s plenty more where those came from, but the point of listing them is to show that these young folks are serious about their work. A surprising number come up to me each year and say they’re writing a book already, or have a series of stories underway. I’m looking forward to seeing some of those names on the spines of books at my local library.

What I'm talking about: again from 1987 Summer Writing Workshop, the girl on the left is Vaddey Rattner, author of IN THE SHADOW OF THE BANYAN

What I’m talking about: from 1989 Summer Writing Workshop, the girl on the left is Vaddey Ratner, author of IN THE SHADOW OF THE BANYAN

Each year, when the conference is over, I drive away with fragments of conversations still bouncing around my head as I return to my own work with a renewed sense of vigor and enthusiasm.

FLASHBACK: from “City at the End of Time”

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17 July 2013

CITY AT THE END OF TIME

How the Mighty Have Fallen

In a weed-filled yard on the edge of Vilnius, Lithuania, Alex & Evan Gabriel give Josef Stalin what-for.

In a weed-filled yard on the edge of Vilnius, Lithuania, Alex & Evan Gabriel give Josef Stalin what-for.

A decade ago their statues loomed over the city, dominators from beyond the grave. Their word had been law, had been life or death to millions. Across the globe, in revolutionary cells and colonnaded universities and musty, cubicled buildings, the sources of their power and thought were studied like holy writ. First names not necessary: Lenin. Stalin. Larger than life.

Larger than life, too, were those looming statues. In Vilnius—capital of the dear departed Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic—thirty iron feet of Comrade Lenin sat in the central square on Gediminas Street, just across from the massive, haunted KGB building. . . .

Then came the Chain of Freedom . . . the fall of the Berlin Wall . . . the martyrs of the tank attacks on the Vilnius TV tower . . . and with a shudder that shook the world, the Soviet Union was gone. Neighbors banded together to pull down the statues. Lenin, resisting to the end, broke off at the knees. Stalin—whose statues had been removed as long ago as the late fifties on some cases—went more easily, more completely. But everywhere, the symbols began to disappear.

Where are they now?

We take the #1 bus out along a bumpy road from the center of the city towards the airport. A crowd of Gypsies rides behind us and when we ask the driver to pull over and let us out at a massive, faceless ironcasting factory, the entire population of the bus stares us off.

The tip we’ve gotten says to look in the fields outside the factory, but we haven’t reckoned on the size of the building, or the overgrowth of the surrounding fields. Chain fences everywhere, weeds and garbage, dusty bushes as high as my head. There is nothing to be seen. It’s Sunday, and the factory is closed, so my plan to “ask inside” goes nowhere. We wander around one end and then back across the front, around to a side street. The chain fence goes on for half a block and then, lying in the weeds near a gravel entrance, our boys spot fallen figures.

Up close we can see a cast-iron soldier, some unidentifiable figures, and what looks to be the trademark handlebar moustache of the biggest killer in history. “Can we climb the fence, Dad?”

Suddenly, an officious watchman scuttles out of a nearby office. Uh-oh, trouble, we think. But, wordless, he intuits our need and hustles us through a narrow walkway past his office—his wife sharing the Sunday silence from inside—and beckons us to enter. . . . when we come to Stalin in his greatcoat and marshall’s hat and dead, staring eyes we focus, as we must, on the atrocities. The Ukraine famine, the extermination of the Kulaks, the NKVD terror that led to the KGB, the gulags . . . and the boys, grim-faced and shocked, turn and spit down on the empty eyes. For once, we do not stop them. They kick at his head, shouting denunciations; perhaps much as his henchmen treated dissidents.

But . . . where is Lenin? We ask the watchman. He seems to expect the question. . . . At last, jammed behind a broken-down tractor and garbage cart, we see a rusted chain-link cage. Inside the cage, broken off at the knees, looms the oversized head of Vladimir Illytch Lein, architect of revolution and, in his later years, instigator of state terror.

He’s leaning on his side, head bowed, as if in sorrow at this, his final fate. Caged, broken, all but forgotten . . . and there, just beneath him, a second statue of Josef Stalin faces upwards. The two old dictators stare at each other, sightless, powerless, dead for all time at the end of what was to be their century. “Where did we go wrong, comrade?” they seem to be saying. “What will become of us now?”

Lenin and Stalin ponder the fate of Bolshevism and the reality of the afterlife.

Lenin and Stalin ponder the fate of Bolshevism and the reality of the afterlife.

What indeed. Will the Lithuanians remelt these statues and forge new ones? Will they create some sort of museum of the damned? Will these gates be closed to future visitors? We don’t know the answer, but we can feel the tug of history in the empty faces lying here, caged, behind the dusty back wall of a factory on the edge of an embittered city.

originally published in Imago (Australia), Vol. 13, No. 3, 2001

Interviewed for PBS Documentary on August Wilson

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19 June 2013

Last winter I started getting calls from Nicole London, a WGBH staffer in Boston, asking questions about how it was that I knew the late lamented playwright, August Wilson. (For those who have not yet discovered the man, his Century Cycle of 10 plays about African American life in each decade of the 20th century stands as one of the greatest achievements in the history of the American theater. He won two Pulitzer Prizes, and has a Broadway theater named after him.)

I could tell that they’d spotted my St. Paul Almanac piece, “August Wilson’s Early Days in Saint Paul.” (See link on Home page, under Upcoming Events. August and I were writing partners for years, and given that our wives were close friends at that time, we also shared many other adventures as well.) The more we talked, the more excited PBS seemed to become. Eventually, they decided that they’d better add Saint Paul to their filming schedule. They’re in the process of completing a major documentary on Wilson that will air in the Fall of 2014, and prior to our discussions, had not seemed to fully understand the pivotal role that his time in Saint Paul played in the development of his oeuvre.

1981: Daniel & Judith Gabriel outside August Wilson's Grand Avenue apartment in Saint Paul, with the man himself and--I swear--a casual passerby whom August's wife Judy insisted be in the photo.

1981: Daniel & Judith Gabriel outside August Wilson’s Grand Avenue apartment in Saint Paul, with the man himself and—I swear—a casual passerby whom August’s wife Judy insisted be in the photo.

Late in May, producer Sam P, Nicole L, and crew rolled into town and set up in Penumbra Theater, home to more August Wilson productions than any other theater in the world. They ran me through my paces during a 20-30 minute interview, and then ravaged the piles of memorabilia I’d brought along. There were posters from the Penumbra productions of Wilson’s first plays, early draft manuscripts of his first major successes, and obscure reviews that had appeared down through the years. I also had photos from the night he won his first Pulitzer Prize (for Fences). A handful of us gathered to celebrate and hear him declaim a fatherhood scene from the play, and he held my infant son Alex in his arms as a prop. There were also over a dozen rare letters from him to me, including sections (which I’d long forgotten) where he lamented that he was giving up on Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (his first breakthrough play), and others where he offered tight-knit advice on pieces of my work that I’d sent him.

On the night that FENCES won the Pulitzer Prize, young Alex Gabriel gets his first exposure to the power of a scene declaimed by August Wilson.

1987: On the night that FENCES won the Pulitzer Prize, young Alex Gabriel gets his first exposure to the power of a scene declaimed by August Wilson.

Hanging out backstage with the folks from WGBH, and jiving about the various bits of memorabilia and their significance was even more fun than the actual taping. (By the next day, of course, I’d thought of all sorts of comments that I wished I’d made during the interview.) What really seemed to hit home to the producer was that Wilson’s time in Saint Paul marked that magical period in any great creative artist’s life when they find their true and authentic voice, and discover how to control it. I can still vividly remember the sessions of sitting across from August in some funky cafe, listening to him riff and ramble until he found his way into a scene–and then watching him catch his rhythm and start muttering aloud the rough drafts of what later became full-blown scenes in his iconic plays. I had the great privilege of watching a clutch of August Wilson Broadway hits–Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, Jitney, The Piano Lesson, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, etc.–find their earliest shape.

The single most vital piece of transformation in Wilson’s approach came as he shifted his characters’ dialogue away from Borges-esque convolution and wordplay into the deep declarative poetry of the Blues. Once he’d learned how to turn his plays into overlapping Blues songs (with each character playing their own notes, or at times producing their own countervailing songs) the rest was a matter of harnessing his active and fertile imagination.

August Wilson died in 2005, his Century Cycle complete. But I still listen hard for his advice every time I sit down to write. And I can still see those piercing eyes pushing me forward along my own writing path. Like the man said, “If you’re going to Brownsville, got to take that right hand road . . .”

 

FLASHBACK: “The Wonderment of Welsh”

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7 May 2013

Border castles still dot the landscape in much of Wales.

Border castles still dot the landscape in much of Wales.

Readers of Tales From the Tinker’s Dam, my collection of stories set in a Welsh country pub, may enjoy this excerpt from a piece I published a few years ago. It’s a portion of a faux-book review (purportedly, The Wonderment of Welsh: Lingua Franca for Ages Past and Future by Dr. K.F.C. Belugabrahmanyan), featuring any number of authentic geographical and linguistic details, but whose meanings are bent in an unusual direction by the effulgent Dr. B:

. . . Dr. B, whose original tongue is Tamil, postulates the existence of a pan-global proto-Brythonic snake of linguistic affinity stretching from Ireland in the west to the NIcobar Islands in the east. Besides Tamil and Welsh (which he considers to be the cornerstone of any such clustering), he finds tempting links between the now extinct Cornish, south Indian Telegu, ancient Etruscan, several of the more obscure languages of the Caucasus mountains, and the previously unclassifiable Burushaski. . . .

K.F.C.’s greatest contribution may be in his consideration of the commonalities of loan words from both Tamil and Welsh into English. Welsh, of course, has given us such household terms as “lickspittle,” “toasted-turnip,” and “ab yrs,” which is found in particular usage in the British Isles. Dr. B even goes so far as to say that the reversed V sign formed by the pointer and middle finger (so often used in accompaniment to the “ab yrs“) finds its original home in a similar Tamil gesture.

Dr. B credits the Welsh love of unhedged fields for this rare example of a cross-fertilized public loo featuring no fewer than three anarchic sub-cults. Mods, Teddy Boys and Punks all find mention above the line of slash.

Dr. B credits the Welsh love of unhedged fields for this rare example of a cross-fertilized public loo featuring no fewer than three anarchic sub-cults. Mods (60s), Teddy Boys (50s) and Punks (70s) all find mention above the line of slash.

Completely new to me was Dr. B’s assessment of the impact of Tamil on English. Words such as “potato,” “forensic,” and “submarine” all come, it appears, from the language of his youth. Add in the Tamil origins of place names like “Berkshire” and “Weston-super-Mare” and one realizes with a shock that the dominant language of South India has been inflecting the British countryside for centuries!

For all my admiration of Dr. B’s fine work, he did appear, at times, to be stretching the cultural links between South Wales and South India. True, both areas represent the southerly region of their larger nations, but I was not fully persuaded that Rugby Union derived from the Juggernaut festival in Orissa. Rugby League, perhaps, but never Rugby Union. Similarly, his finding that the settlement pattern of the South Wales mining valleys exactly replicates that of the leatherworking pits along the Bay of Bengal seems to me coincidental.

Perhaps the most intriguing along this line of inquiry is his linkage of the explosive growth of the 19th century Methodist Chapel movement in Wales with the missionary outpourings of a handful of go-ahead Tamils building on the ancient church founded in India by the Apostle Thomas.

Dr. Belugabrahmanyan locates the initial influx of these missionaries at one of the most famous educational institutions of the Celtic church: St. Illtud’s sanctuary in Llanilltud Fawr, long a site of monastic learning. While St. Illtud’s is no longer, its theological imprint has been passed down to the White Monks of Cymer Abbey. (Dr. B believes this sect to have been derived from the White Jews of the Malabar Coast.) And, given that the daily gruel of the monks residing at Cymer Abbey is masala dhosa, washed down with palm wine, he would seem to be on to a significant discovery. He cements this linkage with the observation that the Welsh cheer “hiraeth, hiraeth, herein,” finds echo in Tamil’s “hiya, hiya, haroo,” though I suspect that the following line in Welsh (“Hale y tywalltai ei gwin iddynt,” i.e. “Liberally I poured the wine for them”), which he discovered carved into the Abbey’s gateway, may indicate a commonality of a more sensual nature.

At times, Dr. B’s ingenuity surprised even me . . . I was not aware, for instance, that the word “ffwl,” or “fool,” is found in seventeen languages between the Ross of Mull and the NIcobar sea ledge. Or, indeed, that the Welsh poet Huw Llwyd’s cry “Nid hawdd heddyw byw heb wad, Er a geir o wir gariad,” (“It’s not easy to live today, no denying, despite what there is of true love,” or, as some authorities have it, “Noddy has run off with my purse”) is found carved (albeit crudely) into the interior temple wall of the Mahabalipuram temple outside Madras.

I was also much taken with Dr. Belugabrahmanyan’s close analysis of random linguistic affinities, which demonstrate the long-time impact of the Celtic Brithonic languages on those of other tongues. As he points out, the Welsh word for water (dwr) is remarkably similar to that of other languages (cf. French l’eau, Spanish agua, or Burushaski bruuum). And, once he has drawn our attention to it, we can see quite easily the close correlation between the Welsh query “Pa bath ya geid I ohirian?” and its English counterpart “Why are we kept lingering?” . . .

Originally published in Bibliophilos, Fall/Winter 2007

Dr. B posits that the Welsh use of the dragon as national symbol derives from the now extinct snow-dragons of the Tamil coast. Authorities remain divided on the matter.

Dr. B posits that the Welsh use of the dragon as national symbol derives from the now extinct snow-dragons of the Tamil coast. Authorities remain divided on the matter.

Treading Syrian Roads

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24 April 2013

In the backlanes of the Christian Quarter in the Old City of Damascus, Syria, early morning deliveries are already under way.

As Syria crumbles inward under the weight of civil conflict (already more dead than all the Americans killed during the Vietnam War), and the refugee count rises to ridiculous proportions, it can be hard to recall that we were joyfully walking its streets a mere three years ago:

Wandering after dark through the narrow back lanes of the Christian Quarter in Damascus’ Old City, we started to notice that the only other people in the lanes were young and fairly pumped up, like they were heading to a party only they knew about. Their energy seemed to bounce off the enclosing stone walls of the silent compounds and courtyards of the Quarter, and with nothing else particularly on our minds, we fell into step behind them. Past another bend in the lane, across a point where two others joined, and now we were seeing further little knots and groupings of youth, all moving in the same direction. We’d been vaguely heading for Ananais’ Chapel, but now we were captivated by what might lie ahead. One more twist in the stone pathway and suddenly we emerged at the top of the steps above Bab Touma (Thomas’ Gate). Below us was teenage uproar. A packed mass of hipsters in hoodies and Dirty South gear, girls done up in pencil-jeans and four-inch heels, headscarves abandoned or transformed into exotic accessories, scooters revving at the curb, a freeflowing vibe of pumping cross-national energy ready for the night to roll on down. Lots of black males, everybody styling, all that vibrant tension of the evening just getting underway, cop station down the block but the cops staying cool . . . Who knew? Here was a total hip-hop scene on the steps of a stone gate in one of the most ancient—and repressed—cities in the world.

Hip-hop clan gathers on the steps of historic Bab Touma, in the Old City of Damascus, Syria.

This was but one of many mind-bending moments during our time in western Syria. Now as we watch the denouement of the Assad regime, we are reminded that the status of the Assad clan as an Alawite religious minority meant they needed to cultivate support from other minority communities, such as the Christians who no doubt made up the majority of those kids on the steps of Bab Touma. Such tolerance (limited though it might have been) may no longer be available under the Islamist elements of the Free Syrian army.

What would never have been apparent without treading the roads of Syria is the swirling mix of cross-cultural elements that underpins the society. Even today, many Syrians seem to have family scattered strategically across the globe, which demonstrates a continuance of the longstanding Levantine merchant trading networks. It gives the whole culture a bit more of a cosmopolitan feel than, say, Jordan, where everybody seems more settled into the local landscape.

Centuries-old waterwheels speckle the Orontes River in Hamah, Syria

Centuries-old waterwheels speckle the Orontes River in Hamah, Syria

We knew in advance about Arab hospitality, but even so we were disarmed by the genuine, widespread warmth and friendship people extended to us. Many times in our travels we’ve been hesitant to announce that we’re from the US (and wouldn’t you expect Syria to be one of those places?) but often, after our response, eyes would light up, and we’d hear something like “Ameriki? America very good. We love Americans.” I can’t guarantee all those people were fans of our foreign policy, or anything like that, but they certainly were pleased to have a face-to-face encounter with a couple of average citizens.

The only possible evidence of anti-Americanism came on the outskirts of Damascus, where we whizzed by an elegant new steel-and-glass shopping mall. Its name: the “9/11 Center,” in bold, flashing neon. Anchor tenant? Target . . . so maybe it was simply meant as a memorial.

There’s more to say about Syria, but I’ll save that for another post. Next up: look for a Syrian gallery on the Travel Photos page.

FLASHBACK: The Rockcats Live at Duffy’s

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5 April 2013

Just occasionally, I’d like to drift back in time in order to share some of my earlier pieces. Here’s my first published review, from back when I was still trying to skate along the cutting edge of the latest sounds:

Rockats Barry, Dibbs, Smutty and Tim be-i-bicky-bi-bo-bo-go at Duffy's. Minneapolis 1981.

Rockats Barry, Dibbs, Smutty and Tim be-i-bicky-bi-bo-bo-go at Duffy’s. Minneapolis 1981.

Lights down, a crowd whistle and BAM! The Rockats rip into their opening song, bopping the beat with a slash of guitars and the drummer’s stick slaps tight beneath the vocal warble. It’s Rockabilly Time. From the bar comes a crowd eruption of collective dance mania. No urging needed. “I’m an easygoing guy,” sings Dibbs, “but I’ve always gotta have my way.”

The band is a lunatic fringe gone mad on pastels and pompadours, wearing scuffed suede shoes of varying hue, pants pegged tight at the ankle and billowing full to the waistband pleats (wrapped tight on the gut in skinny belts and braces). Rabbits’ feet and belt chains. String ties and western scarves. Outlaw striders, rough riders and hair piled six inches above the brow. (Have you heard the news? There’s good rockin’ tonight!)

No time to breathe. The Rockats kick out another gear and drown us in a riptide surge of rockabilly guitar while they stamp out a chorus that tells us we need “a whole lotta ‘room to rock.'”) No chance. Not in Duffy’s cramped confines. But the crowd makes its own room, bumping and bouncing off each other like robot dodge-ems caught in a 220 volt current.

Onstage, chaos threatens. The high-waved grease plume is flapping on the singer’s forehead. Smutty (the bassman) has stripped off several layers of vestments and rides his stand-up bass like a bitch in heat: climbs it, totters, jumps down and rolls beneath, dancing with the wooden bulk in a parodied jitterbug.

Behind him, guitarist Tim is standing on the drumkit: Black boots, white belt, black shirt, white braces, black hair, white face. He flings himself at the dance-crazed crowd like a madman loosed. No time to lose, no holds to bar.

“This one’s about animals,” says Dibbs, so cool and blond. He grins hard while bouncing tentacles of wiggling limbs jive madly stage front. This band concedes nothing to time. No museum piece purists here, this stuff bites: “Don’t treat me like a dog . . . love this kat.”

Then we get Smutty’s “All Through the Nite” and it’s over. Fierce cheering brings them back for three encore songs. Still that full-bore, cliffwalking, all-but-out-of-control surge of sight and sounds: Cockney singer jiving and twisting beneath his lines, guitars a double burn, songs flung past like empyy beer cans from a speeding car. They cap it with “Around and Around.” “The joint was a-rockin’,” sure enough . . . and then they’re gone.

THE END

First published in Sweet Potato (now City Pages), July 1981.

The Lost Art of Map Reading

1 Reply

22 March 2013

As the world rushes to embrace GPS and MapQuest and other forms of electronic dependency, it saddens me to see more and more people who are incapable of grasping not just the utilitarian value of maps, but the joy of discovery to be found within them.

Sure, there are plenty of times when one’s sole object is to get from point A to point B in as efficient a manner as possible (though even then I’m always attracted to the additional context provided by a decent road map). But life is about taking side turnings, and dodging roadblocks, and following barely glimpsed tracks off into the unknown. When I sit down to pore over a map history unfolds, geography is laid bare, the lay of the land reveals its secrets.

Each morning I'd climb out of my sleeping bag in the back of the car, slide into the front, and start scoping out the day's possibilities. British Isles, 1978.

Each morning I’d climb out of my sleeping bag in the back of the car, slide into the front, and start scoping out the day’s possibilities. British Isles, 1978.

Does that dusty-looking roadway along the winding river eventually lead to a bridge? Where along the edge of that lake might be the best camping spot? What’s the altitude and how steeply do the hills decline on the far side? Is there a pass, or a barrier, or just a smuggler’s track across?

Or: look how that town sprawls across the border—though the border isn’t even open. What’s that symbol for a fortress doing on the hilltop—are there crumbling walls, or just a dungeon left behind? Here’s an historic site; there’s an overlook. How is it that pieces of Belgium and the Netherlands are sprinkled like splattered paint on either side of the frontier?

Or this: just reading through the place names can trigger memories of battles fought, passes crossed, or the tug of war between colonial powers. Why would a site on the Namibian coast be called Luderitz? If a place name says Leningrad what does that tell me about the era in which the map was created? Should I refer to the city as Georgetown or Penang?

Pathmarked portion of the classic Michelin "Afrique Centre et Sud" map.

Pathmarked portion of the classic Michelin “Afrique Centre et Sud” map.

When Dexter Doyle studies his maps in Twice a False Messiah he sees abandoned camel routes listed with a dotted line . . . wells marked optimistically as “good water” . . . isolated settlements in the desert persisting without a road anywhere nearby . . . markings for “Ruins” that immediately evoke antiquity. . . . It is the very map itself that allows him to dream his way forward, and many is the time I’ve done that very thing myself.

I can fold my maps down to focus on a single city and conjure walking routes for the day, or open them out to sprawl across a dumpy hostel bed and expand my vision of the possible. I can mark my passage and return to it days or years later, reliving the trail I traversed and conjuring sights and smells so that the journey comes alive once more. I don’t want to be TOLD which way to go. I want to discover that for myself.