A journey with an unknown destination, a work in progress.
“C’est un garçon sans importance collective, c’est tout juste un individu.” — Louis-Ferdinand Céline, L’Église I read the quote quickly. An individual, a boy whose contribution to the collective is insignificant. Her crossed legs point towards me, the skirt is short. I am distracted, hoping to catch the uncrossing. The name of the quote’s author is familiar. I look him up. I remember. Sartre chose the quote to open his book before Céline’s anti-Semitic rants, before Céline’s conviction for collaboration, before apologists tried to make the author palatable. I reread the quote; It is hard to read objectively. The skirt has stood up. I managed to concentrate enough to miss the uncrossing. The contempt is undeniable: “barely an individual.” It is said of his avatar. He wrote it. A new neighbour. She is complaining to her friends: “Why does the weather decide to go bad on our day out?” Copernicus. Do you read notes from the editor? I don’t explain myself. Why is a behind-the-scenes character taking center stage before the action starts? A faux editors note? Telling me the pages that follow are unedited? The route unknown. The ending to be discovered. So much for the editor’s omniscience. A mirror. How long since I last defined what I want to write in my journal? I’m sure the last time was not as long ago as I imagine. Capture the memories before they change! Avoid mental masturbation! Observe! Capture the moment! Real time memories aren’t real-time. Either I’m creating them or writing about them. Stream of consciousness? My sitting and writing limits the stream. Go Gonzo? Record everything? The train brings me closer to home. I relive lunch. I am not ready. Is it a gift? It is good news I do not want to hear. “There’s something I want to show you.” She hands me a package. I undo the wrapping. “Turn it over.” I know what it’s going to say. Reluctantly I obey. There it is. At the end of some other words. In a cute font: GRANDFATHER. In my mind, it is all about me. I try to make the right noises and absentmindedly hand back the baby bodysuit. Grey hair, age milestones. I survived those without difficulty. The start of a new generation is the one milestone that makes me feel categorically old. The announcer tells me to make sure to take all my belongings. I like psychology. The one thing I have learned for sure is almost everything you think you know about yourself is wrong. And when you figure something out, you change. Forced change is difficult. All of a sudden, everything reminds of the clock’s ticking. I moan about my impending grand-fatherhood. I moan about no longer getting random offers for overpriced weed. I moan about being asked if I am retired. “Really?” “Four times.” Time to grow up. Stop cigarettes, save money, move. Sexual maturity precedes mature sexuality. It makes for a rotten fable: The hare wins too often. Facts continually come along to teach me humility. I avoid schooling by learning as many as I can. I am getting closer to the finish line. You can travel far on the internet without going anywhere. Sunday afternoon at the street mall, in the coffee-shop. The fast-food joint and the bistros are also open. The staff is installed at a table near the bar. A big chunk of chocolate cake awaits the barista serving me. Her colleague eats a sandwich. I go sit outside, where I can smoke, in a corner sheltered from the wet. I listen to the buildings drip drying, drops smacking the sidewalk. Each at its own beat. Irregular foot traffic. A few passerby stop for a treat. Enough to create a background hum occasionally interrupted by steaming milk, banging porcelain and moving chairs. Others don’t stop. Squeaky sneakers, foot draggers and stompers. Friends, families and couples. Quiet conversations, loud discussions and occasional outbursts. I envy Antoine’s uncomplicated relationship with Françoise. All the women I know want something more and complain about double standards. The ones I am attracted to are a mismatch to ones I want to meet. The only solution to my life’s complications is time. My social life is mostly on the internet. A way to wait for Godot. Even there my social rustiness shows. I do best playing cryptic association games using obscure references. The number of players is limited. A passive-aggressive challenge. If you care, you will take the time to figure them out. Most observers see non-sequiturs. I blather on without getting to the essential. The career counselor’s forms request that I think about what I can do to overcome the obstacles to pursuing my goals. I leave the box empty. “I don’t like the question.” “Why?” “It assumes I am doing nothing about them.” I remember the old joke about being too busy doing nothing to do anything else. Time takes time. Now that I’m getting close to finishing a chapter, I am using age to hide my anxiety about starting a new journey. Envy makes her rejoice in other’s misfortunes. Lucy had smile lines when I first met her. To her they were wrinkles. To me they’re a permanent smile. They’re gone now. The weight of gravity, bitterness and time pulling the skin downwards and erasing them. I request a flashback. “Smile.” The laugh that accompanies is much more pleasant than the glee Lucy shows when she gets to mark a point for bitchy karma. I walk away from her desk. She returns to her phone conversation. A celebration of the latest scandal. A politician caught with a Swiss bank account. The words say outrage, the voice says delight. Next up the salesperson who just got a company car. A fancy one. “Who did she screw? Who’d want to?” Cackle. A belief in meritocracy plus being on the wrong side of the Dunning–Kruger effect equals disillusion. At lunch I quote the opening of Pride and Prejudice. She doesn’t get the irony. It’s a shame. Lucy was a beautiful person to be around when she still had hope. “Hirsute, with hooded eyes and a hanging nose, Robert ‘Rob’ Daniel Goodroll was an American rock guitarist as notable for his looks as for his talents. Whenever someone called him a baboon, he agreed, specifying that he was a Chacma. In the early 60’s he made his first public appearances in the Pacific Northwest. His ability to imitate other guitarists’ style and to quickly learn a repertoire led to him often being the first person called when a band needed a substitute or a temporary replacement. It also gave him the opportunity to travel, including a trip to England in early 1964. In 1966 he shows up in Texas fronting a band called ‘Hofmann’s Children’. Owing hundreds of dollars for studio time, Goodroll disappears shortly after recording an extremely rare privately pressed album. He appears briefly in the mid-seventies as a record producer in Zambia using the name Daniel Jacmar. He disappears again when he is caught replacing guitar parts with his own work. Rumours start circulating that it his guitar on many of the great albums from the preceding years. ‘Rob’ is rediscovered, back in Texas, by a collector checking the provenance of a copy of the Hofmann’s Children album. With encouragement from his new wife, the collector’s daughter, he starts planning a comeback tour when he is arrested in Sierra Blanca, Texas for marijuana possession. A search of his home turned up the laboratory where Goodroll produced the LSD that paid his bills during his years of anonymity. He passed away while awaiting trail.” I like stories of unsung rock ‘n’ roll legends. Discovering their music and the stories that go along with them. I get caught up in researching obscure psychedelic bands from the sixties. The number of small and private pressings surprises me. Then I remember that vinyl was a medium for demos. As a pre-teen, I would spend hours at the bazaar looking for something I recognized in the boxes of radio station rejects. The pedant in me awakes when I see a video labeled rare. It is available to almost everyone with an internet connection. Maybe you are misusing your modifiers. Regardless it is oxymoronic. Rarity as a proxy for quality. Tragedies, rediscovery stories. A time-delayed mirroring of the blue’s artists that influenced them. Only a few are reminders that success also requires luck. The best come with lists of artists influenced. And comeback tours. Music doesn’t pay. You do it in college, stop to start a career and come back to it after retirement. Exceptions exist. Musicians labouring in near-obscurity for forty years, never able to give up the dream. I try to solve the mysteries. The Japanese artist who records a double album with a well-known producer and then disappears. The groups where the only sign of their existence is a recording. The bands with names more popular than their music. I try to verify if there really was two bands named Great Society, one with Grace Slick, playing in Fort Worth at the same time. It is quoted without a source on many sites. Even on the site that always requires a citation. The record company executives and the music promoters help create more mysteries. You sign a popular local band and find out that half of the members can barely play their instruments — no problem, get a bunch of session musicians. You double booked a popular band — get the session musicians to play one of the gigs. Is that guitar solo by Jeff Beck? or maybe it is Jimmy Page? Which Zombies act did you see? Lots of mysteries, myths, and rumours. The eye witnesses are accused of writing books without ever taking notes. It makes for great stories. It is one of those afternoons. An afternoon where I get nothing done. They come in different flavours. The result is the same. I question my stamina. Three, sometimes four, consecutive days of productivity and then I burn out. I listen to music, or take a nap, or try to read. Somewhere near six PM the not-done bothers me more. The gym and short nights are great siesta scapegoats. Other days, the malaise hits earlier. I seek solace in food and blame the rich lunch for the energy dip. I run out of excuses when I am well rested. “The road narrows to a path. No forks in sight.” Too abstract. “The streets are familiar. I know the neighbourhood. Yet, I am uncertain where this road leads. I know if I walk long enough I will get somewhere I want to be.” Better. It matches the mood I was in last December when I was literally wandering around Paris. I thought it made for a great metaphor. It is dated, it is still abstract and it is hiding behind a metaphor. The barista excuses herself for the failed coffee art. I should say something about learning by trying, needing to get in the water to learn how to swim. I mindlessly flash a forgiving smile. I take my coffee outside. It’s sunny. I check the time. I have an hour. The conversation from the next table intrudes. Too loud! I look around. The table on the other side has three teenage girls. And only one coffee. The conversation is now about how the car ended up in the garage for the day. I am the one choosing to react, get annoyed. Breathe. I hear there is a conversation behind me. I hear words coming from the table with the teenage girls. Another discussion somewhere in the background. The meanings of the words undecipherable, noise. Like a party scene in a bad movie from the sixties. My mind becomes restless. I can feel myself wanting to isolate one conversation to listen to. I sneer at myself. Opportunities to talk to people, or to write, are not the issue. I swallow my coffee and leave. Is it a line from a movie? A lyric? It feels more like a lyric. A memorable lyric from an unforgettable song that I have forgotten. “Lost yet not found.” That is a tautology. It cannot be right. There is the lyric from inchkii‘s Pictures & sounds: “Never been so lost now that I am found.” It is a great line but not the one circling the inside of my brain. I search, I look for variations. It is a common combination of words. The song must be an album track or an obscure single. I’m stuck. Tip-of-the-tongue or is it a Zeigarnik effect. I can remember the name of an effect for an unfinished task staying in memory but I cannot remember that song. “Lost and not yet found.” I still cannot find it. I need to let it go. Letting go, getting over it. I am always hanging on to shit. Like the time a boss tried to screw me over. I could smell the setup. Ambiguous objectives, unrealistic requests, orders to cancel travel requests. I was not going to take it lying down. I send a note to my human resources representative. “I cannot sign this document. The objectives are neither specific not measurable.” Polite emails with a hint of self-deprecation: “Re: Metrics I think I have misunderstood your request. Are you asking for the number active users, new users and terminated users? For tomorrow morning’s meeting? This requires the system administrator and the department director’s approval. Unfortunately, neither are available, except for emergencies, on a Sunday. Please advise.” I also had to be inventive when explaining to my business partners why I could not attend meetings in person. As expected, my annual review said I had not my objectives, did not deliver on time and shared confidential department information. I produced my documentation and was called a liar. I was still arguing my case, recounting every abuse for months after he was fired. And I guess I am still not over it. Look at the number of paragraphs of indignation hiding behind corporate speak. “Get over it!” It is easier to know what to do than to do it. “Do as I say, not as I do” is ironic when you’re talking to yourself. I head to the gym. Exercise as a cure for restlessness. I skip the first open parking spot. A tight fit. I am not in the mood to spend five minutes maneuvering. A car jumps out of a spot. “Fuckin’ hell!” Breathe. It is a good spot. I turn on my blinker. The car behind me honks. “Aw come on!” Breathe. I change into my gym clothes, drape my towel around my neck and look for my bottle of water. “Fuck, it’s in the car!” Breathe. I head for the weights. Stop. I haven’t warmed up. I turn around and go to the cardio. Twenty minutes later my t-shirt is soaked and I am no longer thinking. Bench press day. Stepping out, I notice the weather. A hamburger-on-the-patio day. A slow stroll day. A walk-on-the-sunny-side day. “Oh My God! Did you hear about the music producer?” It’s Lucy. She likes talking about literature. Her school teacher past. A pleasant companion for lunch. Sartre? She’s alternating between famous singers and outrageous acts. It might take a lot to change the subject. She is deep into her conversation. I could step in front of her. Warn her that she might step into a pole if she continues phoning and walking. Not today. I don’t have the patience. Regardless of the decor or the neighbourhood, the bars that take bets on the horses are always a little seedy. I step out for a smoke. I turn on my podcasts. I am in the middle of the latest episode of “From Behind the Glass: Legendary producer Ken Johnson tells the stories behind the hits.” “There was this kid, ‘Rob.’ An American stranded in London. Abandoned by a touring band when they found out that their guitarist had not broken his hand. The group did not survive the discovery and Rob had been left to fend for himself. In the evenings, after his ‘beatnik tea,’ he would plug his guitar in to the studio’s Maestro FZ-1 and start noodling, seeing what sounds he could get the fuzz box to make. He said he was trying to reproduce the sound effects the Brits were using. He figured if he could do them live he could earn himself a ticket out of town. There was something in the sounds he was producing. I wanted to use them on …” The contrarian startles me. I resist the urge to grab my neck.“Hey!” Turning off my podcast, I congratulate myself on my successful combat against the primitive instinct to camouflage my surprise. Camus-flage. It is his new thing. Philosopher puns. Kant shows up often. It is his default for starting a conversation. Making himself interesting. First the equivocation because he doesn’t want to be mistaken for a Linkhorn: “It is not that I am for the statues,” Followed by the contrarianism: “still some weight has to be given to the argument about their historical importance.” “A lot of them were put up in the twentieth century as monuments to racism.” “If we just think of them as historical …” Oh shit! He is going there. I forgot how far he is willing to go to justify his contrarian view. Double shit! I am going to do a Godwin’s Law in real life. “If it is historical then it belongs in a museum. If you have a historically important statue of Hitler, do you leave it in the main square or move it to a museum?” “Well, if …, ok …, uh ….” When he has finished thrashing about a fish in the bottom of the boat, I blow some stoner philosophy his way. “It takes a long time to learn how to be yourself, especially since you can never really know yourself.” “Wow!” You would think he is the one smoking weed and, just like many altered-state epiphanies, it wont make it to morning. The bullshit I spew. Weed and quotes. If I keep on mixing the two, people will start wondering were my harem of disciples are. If only I had a theory of everything, a unifying idea, packaging. The gurus all have their one great idea that explains the universe. My measured view, nothing is black or white, doesn’t leave room for absolutes. I remember asking my mother if she had listened to Elvis, Buddy and the early rock ‘n’ rollers when she was younger. I think she said they called the people who listened to rock ‘n’ roll ‘Black-jackets.’ “At the start of the seventies psychedelic rock started to morph into progressive rock and hard rock.” George Clinton was one of the few still pushing the envelope in seventies. And there was the scene in Africa. Inspired by Hendrix. Which is an oversimplification. For example, Jagari’s nickname. We Intend To Create Havoc. A somewhat adolescent acronym. A somewhat rebellious attitude. The contrarian compliments my playlist. “The songs really flow into each other.” I thank him. And stop there. To point out the randomness of the song order is pointless. He would misunderstand me. “Yeah, you switch styles smoothly.” “Literally random; the music player is in shuffle mode.” Having firmly put his second foot in, there is no walking it back. He would puff himself up, the right hand starting to come up and then, in an act of absent-minded self-control, aborting, letting it fall back down, resisting the temptation to finger-wag. “Oh! No.” Smile. “I was talking about the CD in the car.” For him facts are secondary to making a point. I collect facts for fun. And I need to make sure everybody has theirs straight. “We heard Les Deuxluxes, the Libertines, then … Linda Hoyle and, while parking, Little Feat.” I would look at him expectantly. A few seconds later he will realize that there is something significant in what I have said. And that I expect him to decipher it. His brow will assume the thinking position. In dread, I will wait for the eyebrows to go up. “That’s what I am saying, even played alphabetically, it sounds as if the order is on purpose.” Intentions cannot be argued. I will avoid saying “whate’er” to avoid the lecture about being dismissive of his ideas. (Why do I use a bad imitation of an Essex accent whenever I say whatever?) This will be a good time to change the subject. It is a good thing I stopped after the thanks. One of us was spared that painful conversation. Secret favours. Inspired by, or, more precisely, a very loose adaptation. An outline borrowed. I make up the rules (rules? guidelines!) as I go along. There are enough rules to keep me writing. The reading one chapter at the time makes it an adventure. The mirroring is a challenge. I am extending plot lines after revealing the epiphany, after channeling the character to the point of discomfort, after I have caricatured myself to the limits of the believable. Unbelievable? It is believable. Too close for comfort. Close enough that it could become true. I’m worried that I’ll end up like the method actor that struggles to step out of a role. Why am I borrowing an excuse I see as an exaggeration used for absolution? It’s a juvenile excuse for a an effort that resembles an essay, written for a high school English class, about having nothing to write about. This is where I was going to apologize for a cheap trick and say I am allowed one exception to the no saying what I’m up to rule. I thought I knew the answers to my own questions. The contrarian shows up. “Garage rock?” I straighten up (an expert has to be serious) and, imitating a documentary voice-over, I get factual. “Rockabilly. 1958 from Texas. Ronnie Dee. A Jack Rhodes song. First recorded by Johnny Dollar but never released.” I relax. “But you’re right. I like it because it is proto-garage.” “What?” “Proto-garage. A classification I invented to make fun of the proto-punk label given to garage. Garage before garage existed as a style.” “A DIY sound, like it was recorded in a garage?” I like it when he is in learning mode. Much more agreeable than the rebellious student image he likes to affect. “That is the sound they were going for. Though a lot of it was professionally produced.” I get formal again. “Jack Rhodes, who wrote the song we were listening to before, is in two music hall of fames. The Velvet Underground had Andy Warhol and Tom Wilson as their producer, The Sex Pistols had Malcolm McLaren. A lot of fans romanticise it all. There was some DIY but that isn’t the whole picture.” Look who’s being the contrarian now. Even when the story is that there is no story, that is the story, a mystery even. Good old human nature. Everything needs an explanation. And nothing grabs our attention like a hero’s journey. A good narrative. And just like when the contrarian tells me about the time he …, I know the story has been adjusted for the telling. It starts with a song. One that jumps out from the background. And it has to survive the second listen. The listen where I check that it is more than a sexy bass line. Next comes the research. There is no shortage of rabbit holes each with its own soundscape. For newer acts it can be a famous member, an influence cited, a rival band, or …. The story about The Dandy Warhol‘s relationship to the Brian Jonestown Massacre entertained me for most of a Sunday. I build a sequential timeline. Rockabilly to Garage to Punk to Grunge. What’s next? According to this we are overdue for new style. Maybe it will come out of the Lo-Fi movement. The body language tells me he is trying to connect with the too-young-for-me brunette. I avoid having to join the conversation. I steer clear of the bar, of the show featuring his contrarian ideas, of his serial puns. The obviousness of his intentions making me want to groan. I am told it is his mischievous smile, the sparkle in his eye, that makes it work. I wonder how long it takes them to realize that he has dimorphic eyes, the inner aureole of his right iris a lighter shade of brown, honey coloured. “Texas Radio and the Big Beat” A singer with a story. A gravesite with a story. Ten years until it got a headstone. Ten years of vandalism then a new headstone from the father. Songs with backstories that when documented come with ignored disclaimers: rumoured, claimed, some say, believed, thought. I collect musical facts because I am not musical enough, because I do not know how to talk about the music itself. I am unlikely to remark on the driving drum beat being front and center but I know they had only one microphone for the drum kit. Riding around Miami in a white Le Mans coupé, I learn that a joint allows me to isolate the different instruments. Musical meditation. Untangling the three guitars in Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s live performance of Free Bird. Listening to John Cale on the left speaker and Lou Reed on the right one. Parked on the beach, star gazing set to The Dark Side of the Moon. I knew of Pink Floyd before knowing their music. I was 11 or 12, the guidance counselor had a poster on his wall. I must have said something about it being a funny name. He explained it was an homage to two bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. Funny name for a bluesman. He is the only practicing hippie I can remember knowing. It was the early 70’s and he would complain about how his was one of the last remaining communal houses. One of those friendly bear types, a cross between Jerry Garcia and Jim Morrison during his beard period. I confuse sunny day with warm day. The wind tells me random is not on my side today. I check the scoreboard. Slept in, morning lost: one against. “Ganja Babe” as my randomly selected song to start my walk with: one for. Now the wind pushing me indoors makes it one positive event versus two negative events. The items in the column of negatives are not random events. Four AM bedtime, winter sun exposed by Northern winds. High probability events are not luck. I am blaming chance for everything negative. A lazy day. Abdicating agency. Unplanned. A planned do-nothing day has filters to keep reality out, to delay the settling of accounts. I want to lose myself in the music. Snow Patrol tells me to shut my eyes. A well crafted song, one of the last I discovered via the radio. I heard it again a few months back. It has more going on than I remember, the voices its magical ingredient. I hear a song that fascinates me. A caricature, as if the writer is following the formula for a hit: Clapping, a millennial whoop and, …, wait for it, …, bingo!, whistling. I don’t remember its name. I am thinking too much about the music to listen to the music. To get into it, to get carried away, to walk to the beat, to break my step with a little shuffle, to make dance-like gestures, to spread my arms and fly like a four year-old. Too lost in thought to get lost in the music and walk around like a character in a musical. Novelty, it’s what keeps me searching for new music, for the awe that comes with a musical epiphany. It’s never as good as the first time. What a crock of shit! I am developing a habit of calling bullshit on myself. Is that what they call mindfulness? A cynical joke delivered as a question. A question I know the serious answer to. A serious answer that I would find hard to keep to myself. Even if I know it is a joke, even if I know no answer is required, even if I know no answer is the best answer. Crock of shit. New music. How many reasons have I invented for my obsessive searches for new music? The pseudo-rational, a.k.a., the fear of missing out. Statistically, the population is growing and producing more music than ever. And listening to great music is one of my great pleasures in life. Statistics, back of the napkin calculations. 759 albums equals more than two per day to listen to them all in one year. Two years at one per day. Two or three per week is five to eight years. Two CDs is, on average, a little more than two hours. My playlist has 973 songs from 399 artists. It is 62 hours and 53 minutes of music and it takes me one month to cycle through it. Music and math. I wanted to play the Glass Bead Game. Hesse doesn’t give the rules. I listened to Bach. It is not rock music. New music. It is just a symptom. It is one of my procrastination tools. I start looking for something to listen to while I work. Studies show you are more productive listening to familiar music. I bookmark songs, bands, sites. I see links. I add more bookmarks. I misfile a bookmark. The list is longer than my screen. I sort, celebrate duplicates. It will take me forever to listen to the whole list. I review, eliminate. I find a new rabbit hole. I stop. Tomorrow I will feel productive as I work my way through the lists. New music. It’s my obsession with facts. It’s my completist nature. It’s my reputation as a musical connoisseur. It’s my conversation starter. Now it’s supposed to be about musical epiphanies. Musicophile. Full stop. Jimi Hendrix. How many songs have I not heard because I am too busy thinking? I remember listening to Axis and getting surprised by the stereo panning. I tilt my head to the right and pinky-pop my ear to clear the imagined cause. The return to stereo listening amplifies the effect. 3D sound. I feel the music moving from right to left. It pans back and I picture an oscilloscope with a single green wave. I am on the wave, riding it like a surfer. I get to the right edge of the screen and, like a swimmer at the end of a lane, smoothly reverse direction. Scene change. I see a hand turning a big black dial, the white dot slow dancing to the tune. Reality check. Mixing boards have sliders. Backlash Blues. I keep on getting distracted, my mind is running around in random directions. There literally was a squirrel. A viewer makes a joke about only red allowed at Old Trafford. The presenter says it happened at a Man City game. I am overthinking it. I am overthinking everything. I turn on the coffee machine. “I heard it through the grapevine.” I slide over to the fridge. “People say believe half of what you see.” I lift my hand out to waist level and sweep it forward. I grab the fridge door and, not pulling hard enough, miss a beat. I turn it into a stutter move and pull harder. “But I can’t help but be confused.” I grab a yoghurt and, getting back into the flow, gently close the door. “Just about to lose my mind.” I spin, put the yoghurt on the counter and shuffle to the coffee machine. It’s ready to make my coffee. Why do they call it mindfulness when it is about emptying the mind? (Yes, I know better but why miss the opportunity to make a bad joke.) I let my mind wander all over the page and then call it bullshit. I label it worthless, complain that I am at the starting point, call it a waste of time. It is still a journey when I go around in circles. It is up to me. I choose: see it as going nowhere or to see it as an adventure. There are many sayings about learning from your mistakes. A few remind me to learn from my successes. The place you come back to is not the place you left. The person returning is not the person who left. Even no change is change, everything is older. Either you learn from your travels or you become more set in your ways; Repetition anchors habits. Choose change to choose the change. Each has table for their laptop. Coats and bags fill the chairs around them. Coffee cups and plates with crumbs on them fill the middle table. The older woman, mid-30’s, taps on a graphic on one of the pieces of paper on the table to her right. She turns the page slightly towards her colleague and pulls up a similar looking image on her computer. Her table-mate nods to the beat of the points made. Six-plus places for two people. The incivility annoys me. I choose words as I slowly make my way over to their territory. Calm, the grumpy old man in me suppressed, I approach the tables. I smile at the woman on the bench. “Hellooo.” She smiles back with a flattered look that says I am knocking at the right door. I widen my smile. “The place is getting busy and there are people looking for spots.” Her friend starts gathering papers and apologizes. “You need a place to sit?” “Thank you. No.” I lift my cup. “I took mine to go.” I point my head towards an older couple standing with a tray and looking lost. Happy with myself, I walk out of the coffee shop. The label legendary musician requires some sort of fame. I find a site with a Hofmann’s Children bootleg. The site opens on an explanation on Recordings of Independent Origin. This, the sober layout, and the lack of advertising tells me I am on music lover’s site. My computer feels safe here. I start reading the list of the latest additions. A recording catches my eye. “Careful.” This field is full of rabbit holes. I will myself to go straight to the Tabula Rasa: Unreleased Demos page. A couple of instrumentals (date unknown: 1965?), blues covers, alternate takes from their eponymous album and ‘bonus’ track with a mystery vocalist. I hope this is a good album, that it is more than a collection of low-quality versions. Why am I preparing myself for disappointment with the music? Dusting off all my whips? Why make it into something complicated? Keep it simple, enjoy discovering more of my band of the moment. If it’s crap, so what. It’s free. If it’s good, then I have some tunes to freshen my playlist. And if someone comments on it, I can tell them the story of the mythical Rob Goodroll. I just want to get it over with. I am too tired to want to and too tired to say no. Men never say no unless the woman is unfuckable, or so she thinks. Saying yes is a lot easier and I am tired, very tired. I throw her underwear on the floor. I am unworried about my lack of romanticism. It’s an old pair with the lace trim fraying. My elbow is digging into my ribs. I shift, run my hand up her back to the nape of her neck and gently tug on a handful of hair. I think about Goodroll. I could write his story. His African adventures have a lot of gaps. I imagine him in the jungle. Creepy crawlers, spiders. A bed. Pulling back the covers, the sheets are carpeted with spiders. “Hey! Wake up! I have to go to work.” I was eight, nine-years-old. I ran away from home. After dark, lights reflecting off the wet street, I turn into an alley off Granville near Broadway. There’s a dumpster to my left, weathered utility poles down both sides of the lane. Something spooks me, I start running. The alley seems endless. I panic. I wake up. It was a recurring nightmare and I was scared of it. Unable to shake the memory of the fearful flight, it would take me forever to fall asleep again. I would go to bed anxious of a repeat performance. I started a practice of fantasizing to make sure I would fall asleep with pleasant thoughts. And I got good at forgetting my dreams. I see a notification on my phone. A message from the future mother. In addition to a grandchild, I am also getting a son-in-law I reply with my congratulations. It feels too early to ask if they’ve set a date. I’d asked when she gave me the news of my impending grandfatherhood. She said she didn’t want to spend a fortune on a single day. I heard the words and listened to what she was saying. She is happy with the father and trusts him. The contrarian and I had both thought he would pop the question last year during their Mediterranean cruise. It’s hotter in Hawai’i. This news has no voice, no body-language, only the words “I said yes” and a smiley. It is enough for me to know she is very happy that he is ready to commit completely. I should have asked if the date is known. My self-interest becomes obvious if I do it now. Do I need to plan one or two trips? If only one, do I have to change my dates? Will I have to get a hotel room? I want to plan this trip. It’s a new thing for me. I was biased against planned vacations. Vacations are a vacation from planning. It’s future mother who showed me how good it can be. My self-indulgent version unsatisfying, I was open to changing my mind. . It started with my almost annual trips to Canada in the spring. I would arrive just as the hockey playoffs were starting. Hockey, a large part of my Canadian identity. Would I be such an avid fan if I was still living in Canada? I’ve lived in two countries for longer than I lived in Canada. And the longer I live out-of-country, the more I feel attached to my Canadian identity. A fear of assimilation. I passed a milestone without knowing. I received a letter telling me that if I work another 12 years I get a pension equal to 70 percent of my salary. It is more than I was expecting. It also shows me the penalty for stopping sooner. They’re discouraging me from retiring early. I was happier thinking that, having arrived in France at the age of 35, there was no way I was going to qualify for a good pension. I had very little to lose if I moved back to Canada. Now I feel tethered, just when my youngest is getting old enough for me to start planning. Fucking loss aversion principle! Probabilistically, I would not lose much, if anything. However, if I live a long life, then I lose big and I am human enough to be optimistic. I do have the option of continuing to pay in even if I move away. It means earning enough to do so. I don’t want all these complications. I want simple options. Two strong instincts fighting each other. Trapped versus loss aversion. I’ve always told people I don’t plan on retiring. I can’t see myself without an occupation. I am just now realizing that it doesn’t have to be a job. I can be slow. I need to find a new saying. Something to replace “My idea of retirement is having enough money to say ‘Fuck You’ if someone wants me to do something I disagree with.” I call the contrarian. He is doing well, in a good mood. He has an urban dance class starting in a couple of hours. I tell him how my travel plans have become less sure. “I would like to start planning my activities there.” “Hockey games?” I shout a laugh.“More like avoiding spending five hours every evening watching playoff games.” “I can’t believe you are going to be in Canada and not watch hockey.” “Ha! That’s not what I said. It’s spending every evening watching back-to-back games that I want to avoid. I’ve done that too many times. I’ll watch some games if there’s nothing else happening or if I am in the pub. I just don’t want it to be the only thing I do with my evenings.” “So you want to go out and party every night.” I shout another laugh.“I wouldn’t mind. It’s a vacation! But no, that’s a little too self-indulgent. I am supposed to be there for the grandkid. Not that I know what a grandfather is supposed to do. I am not doing diapers, that’s for sure.” It’s his turn to laugh. I let him go. He’s anxious to go add another party trick to his arsenal and I know that there are more women than men in the class. (I took salsa classes when I was between wives. Nowadays, I prefer theatre.) How do I go about finding a contracting gig? Now there’s a question I haven’t asked myself before. Not seriously. More like, I haven’t answered seriously. Like make actual plans. I keep telling people I’d like to spend the Northern winter in Australia and pay for my stay with a contracting gig. Now I’m saying I want to use one as a stepping stone to moving back to Canada. How can I pretend to be serious about this if all I do is browse freelancing sites and decide the offers don’t pay enough. I easily find reasons why solutions wont work. How did I say it the other day? And there’s another issue. I can preach eloquently but when I want to repeat it or write it down, I struggle to find the words I used. It’s a sign of avoidance, anxiety when I’m anxious about calling myself anxious. Maybe that is the first step, admit my anxiety. Forcing myself to push through could be less painful if I admit why I need the push. So what am I worried about? Expectations wont be met? Because the Vancouver I left is not today’s Vancouver? I tell people that my first ex moved to Britain because of that. Another canned saying. The city is expensive now. Can I succeed there? I’ve always felt (never dared tell anyone) that I would have more success there, a better cultural fit. Fewer rules around running a business. And linguistically I don’t have to worry if I should be using formal or informal address. Are those just scapegoats for my current circumstances? If I move there, I will have to confront those assumptions. Scary! And now I have the aversion feeding the anxiety. And I would lose my special snowflake status. I’d be just another Canadian. A lot going on there. It’s not surprising that I’m anxious about moving home. Overwhelm. I have spent enough time procrastinating on the internet instead of attacking the issues to know that the solution is to break down things into small digestible steps. Answer the question What is the immediate next thing I can do to move forward? Too many projects? Prioritize based on strategic goals. I have also learned that working out the next steps, strategizing and organizing can be used to procrastinate. The thing that works for me is to take the thing I am avoiding the most actively and do one small step on that. I then take a few items, one at the time, from my to-do list and do those. When I start losing steam, I take a break and start again. That sounds like a system. I could be a David Allen. I’d rather be a Daevid Allen. A little late for that and I certainly don’t have the time to have as long a career. There’s a daily flight to Vancouver that arrives at 11:30 AM. I’d rather make my life interesting than interested in other’s lives. Why Rob Goodroll shows up in Africa under an assumed name is still a mystery. Nothing in his story explains how he goes from random musician in an unreleased recording session to producing records under an alias. Draft evasion, the simplest answer, does not fit the timeline. A dramatic event would raise more questions. His biography is incomplete. Tomorrow I call the future mother. The barista knows my name. I am surprised. I shouldn’t be. Name plus order always go together when serving the coffee. It’s part of the order. And it’s part of my after-gym routine. I hate giving the impression I am a creature of habit. I want to tell her that I have tried the other drinks. They’re too sweet for me. And somethings are best turned into habits, like brushing your teeth, or going to the gym. I have seen her name only once or twice, she has face that smiles at rest. I try to read her name-tag to thank her personally. It’s hiding behind the coffee machine. I choose a spot. I can hear her tell her colleague that they’d had a busy morning. He replies that it ebbs and flows with the weather. The place had been almost empty when the snowy-rain was being blown around. The place is calm now. There are two high-schoolers sitting side-by-side, ear buds plugged in to expensive phones, typing on expensive laptops and drinking expensive drinks. The cautious one has pink protective covers on the electronics. Children of the privileged. Student day at the coffee shop? I hear two complaining about an assignment on Sartre’s view of freewill. I understand their pain. I suspect that my view may have something in common with his argument and that I don’t agree with it. If only I could be sure I understood it. A lack of freewill versus a sense of agency. I am happy living with it as a paradox. Like general relativity and quantum mechanics. Some think they have the answer. I’ll stick to Fitzgerald’s definition of intelligence. I don’t get the internet philosopher’s argument against the illusion of agency. It’s ironic. He’s spent a lot of time fashioning an argument, making it as convincing as possible. He wants to be an agent for change. He’s working within the illusion. It’s a question begging paradox. Worse, his going on about how everything is the result of an inevitable chain of reactions going back to the big bang sounds like a non-religious religion, a predetermined destiny. The flipping of the religious apology for freewill in the context of an omniscient god. Time, fast time, slow time. How slow is time at the event horizon? My intuition tells me that the theory of everything will need to breakup time into components. I have no idea what I am talking about. I am spending a lot of time playing with philosophy. It’s my escape from outrage. I react quickly and cool down slowly. All the internet folks have learned that click-bait is better with outrage than straight. A top five list will get users to click, an offensive top five list gets engagement, shares. Stirred and shaken, social-media gold. It takes effort to avoid getting entangled. I am explaining myself to myself. As if I am preparing my defense. Strange subjects to script. I don’t (I avoid) attacking the guy in power. I criticize the behaviour. Actions are subject to objective analysis. I admit that sometimes some of the actions make, even if only partial, sense and I am uncomfortable with that. I’m mincing my words. Give me a generalization and I want to poke a hole in it. This religion is fundamentally flawed because … . Regardless, it is practices that should be criticized. All the major religions have eliminated stuff that doesn’t fit with modern morals. And extremists come from every set of beliefs. Nihilistic anarchists may no longer be in fashion but they have existed and could make a comeback. “Some of my best friends are … .” I know there’s a proper logical argument for refuting the some-of-my-friends line. “And my second ex-wife is an Anti-Semite.” My answer packs more punch and it’s fun to see their reaction when they realise why that is relevant. It’s even more fun if I have to explain it to them. “Pan-Pon.” The kid’s sound effects breaks my reverie. The father laughs. There’s a story-told behind the police siren noises.“Grab me a piece of cake too.” Cross-shop coördination. There’s no way this family’s visit was going to go unnoticed. Funny how the longer I muse, the more I sink into my chair. I straighten myself and take a sip of my coffee. One of the women behind me notices. She lowers the volume. She suspects me eavesdropping. I decided not to when I was sitting down. Her friend speaks too quietly and her half of the conversation is not interesting. I spot a third expensive laptop. Fancy computers for fancy coffee. I guess that is what draws me here even if I only have pen and paper. A couple, matching orders, come sit next to me. Fancy tea and cheesecake. He’s mirroring her. The boring conversationalist is doing another I-agree-but. I had hoped for more. More conversations. I’m alone with my thoughts. I’d like to have someone, a better informed echo, to have an unpretentious conversation with. A discussion to clarify my thoughts without having to know the exact percentage of grey hairs in my navel. I miss the talks I had with my xenophobic libertarian friend. His beliefs stopped short of making conversation impossible. I’d switch subjects when the motivated reasoning got tiring. I’d announce it. Our gentlemen’s agreement. Once he asked me why I enjoyed talking to him when our values are so different. “Because it’s intelligent and not kitchen-talk.” He moved his family back to his home town. My perfect conversation partner doesn’t exist. Probably. I like to reduce ideas to simple catch phrases. Kant is a socialist, Hobbes a cynic. Sartre’s answer to life is a search for purpose, Camus thinks it’s all absurd, and, lacking the desire to think about it too deeply, I am happy with it being for genetic survival. Legacy. I don’t understand the drive. Not emotionally. “I was here” isn’t my thing. My ego runs better on “I am here.” If I am not there to witness, profit from it, what’s the point of making it my purpose. It’s just a way of giving it extra meaning. My ego gets nothing out of it. The only purpose I see in legacy is what it can bring to help future generations, making the world a better place for the continuation of the genetic pool. The most primal of urges, survival on a grand scale. One way or another, the size of the footprint I leave will be selected for its usefulness to the genetic line that goes all the way back to the first organism. I like how Nagel puts it. What seems so important today will be meaningless in a million years. It doesn’t make it less meaningful in the moment. What is is. Why get attached to finding a grander meaning for it. I take a sip of milk-foam. Strong winds separating the branches from their trees. My haircut is less than a week old, dishevelproof. No snow, nor rain. A lighthearted day. I go to my favourite coffee shop for lunch. The barista is not wearing a name-tag. I wont be able to thank her personally. I pay for my sandwich, the coffee is on the house. I speak to Future Mother. Everything is going well with the bump. She’s talking about maybe having a destination wedding. They will decide after they find a house and that is proving to be difficult (will I need to get a hotel room for my visit?). They keep on getting outbid. But they are sticking to their budget and she is being careful not to get attached to the homes she likes. I reassure her. “Taking my time to find the right place at the right price has always worked out well for me.” I launch into a brief history of the places I’ve lived in. I book my flight. It stops in Amsterdam. I’ll have the time to stop at a coffeeshop to get sleep insurance for the flight. I might also meetup with the Contrarian. Personally, I like everything The Mediterranean Threesome ever recorded. There is one song, In the Shade of the Olive Tree, an early B-Side, that sounds … different. It’s not on any compilation nor has it appeared as a bonus track on a remastered album. It’s only available on the internet as one of those videos where you get to stare at the picture of a 45 for two minutes and 39 seconds. It’s one that I revisit regularly. At first I thought it was the quality of the recording. I listen to the song again, volume is good, sound clean. I plug in my headphones, it was lovingly ripped from the original vinyl, only one small crackle, barely audible, during the fade out. It is in mono. I find a tribute site for the underground newspaper The Freeworld Tribune. One of those small publications preaching a modern socialism, started in 1967 and fading into history in 1971. Loved by its readers, a bunch of them got together, gathered copies of every edition ever printed, and put them online. The editor was famous for succeeding in getting the (semi-)famous to drop acid with him. The resulting interviews were interesting. As I work my way through the interviews, I find the key to unlocking the mystery of the Olive Tree. I switch over to the video site. Among the sponsored content are trending videos, pop songs and video blogs. The landing page doesn’t have a single video that interests me. I must be managing my privacy controls correctly. I pull up my playlist HIP (Harmonisation, Inebriation, Procreation). My version of the classic threesomes; Wine, Women and Song sounds too tame; Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll got burned out in the 70’s. I once thought it a clever acronym. There’s a banner across the top informing me that some videos were removed from the list because they had been deleted from the site. I lament the fact that they don’t tell me the names of the disappeared. I could document my playlists but I wont allow myself to be that anal about the music on an internet site. I have already spent too much of my life cataloguing my music collection as I transferred it from medium to another. I have to draw the line somewhere. I remember my thoughts on absurdity. I don’t understand why the thought scares some people so much, why purpose is so important, why it leads to existential crises. I find the idea very liberating. It allows me to live in the moment, not make sacrifices for some nebulous future. It grounds me, gives me a basis for making choices. I scroll through my HIP list. I remove the placeholders the site has left for the deleted videos and for videos that are now private. I go back to the top of the list. I start rearranging, moving songs up and down the list. Why am I obsessing over the order of the songs, making sure that an artist doesn’t repeat too soon? Because I keep on hoping, fantasizing someone will see the list, recognize my genius taste, share it with the world, make me an influencer. I scroll back to the top to see the statistics. 55 views. That’s more than I expected. I check some of my other playlists: four views, 31 views, 11 views. I go back to HIP. Maybe it’s the first song Death of a Single Man by Dick Severin, live in Bakersfield 1970. Nothing special. The concert isn’t famous; the song, one of my favourites, isn’t one of his biggest hits. Maybe it’s the name of the playlist. There’s no accounting for what works. There’s no accounting for the statistics either. I know some are under-reported. But it doesn’t really matter. The ballpark is what matters. Four, 11, 31 views: It’s meaningless compared to the videos that count their views in the billions. I click on Play All. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to the list from the top. Oh the irony of using a video site for listening, a site, that when it comes to music, is dominated by unmoving pictures. HIP, my list of feel-good songs, songs that I sing along to regardless of the suffering it imposes on those present, songs that make me move. I tried using the playlist at the gym once. They had renewed their machines. They went modern; individual screens; graphical representations of the programs; direct connection to a tracking application, to the house channel, to the internet, and to the video site. It’s a new toy, I want to play with it. One and done, see what it’s like. An alternative for when I have listened to my backlog of podcasts. I am not ready to change my habits. I listen to podcasts when working out. If I change my listening habits, I wont be able to keep up with all the shows I like, I’ll have to unsubscribe from some. It’s difficult enough keeping the subscriptions down to a manageable number. But I like the idea of watching videos while exercising, queuing up my personalized channel, something to stop my eyes wandering to the images parading on the big screens hanging from the ceiling. I get on the elliptic. I give it a try. It wants me to sign in. Of course it does, of course I wont. Neither the gym, nor the video site need to know my association which the other. I search for the my playlist. I scroll through a page full of misses. Followed by a second page of misses. Midway through the third, I find it, start listening. It skips a song – strange. I keep going and it continues. Then it skips another song. I slow down, play with the display. Some of the songs are marked unavailable. Available only if I sign in and they know who is watching? Once is enough, I’ll stick to the audio from the phone. Oh! One of the 55 views on the counter is me. The music on the list favours the late 60’s and early 70’s. There isn’t an obvious reason. I was too young when the music came out and no older siblings to initiate me. Timeless? Timeless, that’s sort of what I’m going for with the list, songs that I don’t tire of (which really isn’t the definition of timeless). And not obvious, songs that aren’t the biggest of hits, the hidden gems. Songs, I am not expected to know, like when I know the songs of my children’s generation, which surprises them more, because, as they remind me with their comments, that when I thought of my parent’s generation, it was very difficult to figure out what was contemporary for them in their youth. It’s The Unlikes turn to fill my ears. I remember, I was in high school, when the album Classified Women was released everyone had an opinion; about the lead single Damsel in Distress, about the album, about the band, about the lead singer John Mountain, or the lead guitarist Ken Beard. The single was too pop, too funk, too disco. Or, it was a sign the group knew how to stay contemporary, knew how to evolve, knew how to stay relevant. The lyrics were too adolescent, not befitting a group of thirtysomethings, like the transcript of a drunken conversation at 4:00 AM, when everyone else has left. Surrounded by empty beer bottles, potato chip crumbs, pizza crusts and sipping on warming beers. Dreaming of rescuing some pinup from a life of drudgery and sexploitation to sexploit her. Genius was the answer; it takes skill to create a scene like that, to make it real. The album got the same treatment. A lot of comparisons to their “golden era.” Not experimental enough, too commercial (it’s #1 on the charts); the new guitarist is crap, the old guitarist (found dead in a hotel room on Wilshire Boulevard with a needle in his arm) was way better and played the occasional solo, the new guy only does rhythm guitar and Ken Beard is a crappy lead guitarist. Oh yeah, the new guy knows how to play slide, Ken’s better than you think, it’s the old guy that was screwing things up, improvising unplanned solos while fucked up on H. The critics are saying it’s their best in six years. And it’s #1 on the charts. John Mountain, the lead singer, had few fans, excepting a handful of girls that would admit to thinking he was sexy, a sentiment that was hard to understand; a voice that sounded like his white-jeans were too tight, fish lips that looked ready to swallow the mic, moves (legs kicking out to the side at impossible angles) that made him look like a marionette handled by a beginner, and a Napoleon complex that came from some sort of optical illusion which made him look six inches shorter than his six feet of true height. His character is questionable. Suddenly he was for free-speech when The Unlikes made a contractual fulfillment album that made George Carlin sound like Mr. Rogers. He was all for the freedom to do what you want in your own home as long as you’re not hurting anyone when he got busted for cocaine, all for free-love when the pictures of the orgies with groupies got out. He’d never said anything against the war in Vietnam, never taken part in a benefit show and publicly treated his exes like money hungry opportunistic groupies when asked to recognize the children he’s fathering. Grudgingly, you admit that he has a massive stage presence, that he is a major reason for The Unlikes success, that all the other cool members of the band call him a great friend, and then you find out he is humble about his song writing abilities despite having written a lot of their greatest hits. His son is a piece of work. An album, full of sentimental drivel, released in the late 80’s. The only semi-successful song, the single, written by a studio hack, sold on the strength of his inherited fish lips and the name. The follow-up, all self-composed, went straight to the discount bins. His calling the Rodney King riots an overreaction might have been forgotten had it not cost him his relationship (while defending his comments, he told his girlfriend that the reason he was with her was because black girls were better in bed; she told E!). He surfaced briefly in Saint Petersburg (Florida), volunteering his opinion on the Tyron Lewis case. His father shipped him off to a private island in Belize where he dreams of his father’s death, a monster inheritance and the freedom to again enjoy luxury in the world’s sin capitals. It is rumoured that every few months, he stops drinking for the morning, goes into the home studio and records a few bars of his magnum opus, his vindication. General Shelter‘s opening salvo of dissonance brings my attention back to the music, Word-Rock, a masterpiece, the opening track to his second record, the introduction to the concept of his free-jazz inspired album, his last piece of recorded work before, like a bunch of other stars living on the edge of sanity and, not armed for life in the public eye, retreating to hermithood to spill his brain on to canvas. He’d gone on a walkabout to prepare himself for the upcoming tour. The fans waiting for him learned from an intrepid reporter that he’d stopped walking and that he was living with aborigines in the Northern Territories, talking about the earth’s vibrations, wanting to translate it for his next album, declaring it was important to capture the vibe, to share it, the message would save the world, it was his mission, his duty. Playing his old(?) stuff was no longer relevant. Time moved on. Another decade, another reporter. He’d built himself a shack and the yard was decorated with his“abstract paintings.” He told the reporter he was trying to crack the code, the earth’s vibration’s too difficult to transcribe using traditional musical notation, he was now trying to represent it visually, putting the sensations on wood, on rolls of paper. Soon after, he stopped welcoming visitors. Occasionally, a lucky reporter, disguised as a lost wanderer would come back with an update. He was still trying to capture the earth’s vibrations. He’d had a breakthrough, he had tried inventing a new type of musical notation and discovered painting was the answer. The flow, the message, could be drawn but it wasn’t meant to be reproduced musically. Everyone had to hear it for himself, get it on their own frequency. If he tried to reproduce it, he would be reproducing what he had heard. Only the Earth was capable of producing individualized vibes. But he could capture it images, because pictures opened the soul, made it receptive, because eyes are the windows to the soul. Shelter’s Word-Rock becomes Ray Parrott‘s The Doctor. I hesitate. Should I skip the song? When does art become too polluted by who the artist is? Does there need to be a smoking gun? Is there an epochal discount? I remember the first time, walking down Arbutus towards Kits beach, I heard the song. I was ready for sun fun with a book (probably an A.A. Fair from the used-book store), a towel, my cheap small boombox, and listening to the Fox Rocks’ classic hour. The Doctor comes on, I slow down, I want to know who’s playing, the name of the song. A mild panic: Was I too late? Had they announced it before playing it? The song ends, the deejay comes on “Aaand that was Ray Parrott’s 1968 classic, The Doctorrr.” It takes me a while but one day the conditions are perfect. I get the “Coming Up” heads-up, there’s a cassette ready in the box, and I hit the record button at just the right time. I mentally review his biography. Ray Parrott, born in war time L.A. His father was a studio engineer, an acoustics wizard who’d soundtracked tens of musicals before going away to war. The father returned shell-shocked, started drinking. His parents’ marriage was over before the 40’s were. Ray was known to describe the relationship with his father with “When I saw my father, it was usually in a rundown studio where he was recording shouting blues by day and sleeping it off by night. He had great and was a master at leakage so he always had a place to sleep.” He enlisted at the age of 17 and was stationed in Europe. After his enlistment, he returned to L.A. and started hanging around the recording studios in Hollywood. Unable to convince anyone he was the next Joe Meek, he gathered a bunch of studio musicians, using a case of whisky for payment, and recorded the novelty hit Frankenstein’s Place! The fact that he could not tour with it because the song was unreproducable live did not bother Parrott. He wanted, and, after a quick tour of the TV shows, got work as a studio engineer. The next time he was on the other side of the mixing board was in 1968 for his seminal hit The Doctor, a song rumoured to be about his dealer. He returned to behind the glass and stayed there until 1978 when he recorded the critically acclaimed Self-Indulgence. 1992 would see him record 50 years as a birthday present to himself. Originally intended for gifting to his friends and acquaintances, he released it officially after the bootlegs started showing up. There’s so much missing when you look at only his releases. The first tales come from the UK during his service. He was obsessed with John Leyton‘s Johnny Remember Me. The story says he’d monopolized the jukebox and was playing it exclusively. A voice from the crowd shouted: “Enough with that song already!” “Listen! Listen to how they turned the drums into galloping horses, listen to how they filled in…” “It’s a death song! Are you trying to curse us?” Ray should not have laughed in response. Two weeks after the brawl, Ray was on his way back to the US to finish serving his enlistment there. Unlike other engineers who also found success as artists, producers, promoters, talent managers, and as a label executive, Ray’s passion was engineering sound: playing with acoustics, microphone placement, sound compression, stereo pans, overdubbing. He’d once told a friend, who suggested he psychiatrist about his issues, “Some daddy issues are best left alone. Mine pay the rent.” He already had many lifetimes of rent in the bank but that was not the point. Even for the music he recorded as the artist, the motive was sound engineering. His first song was a proof-of-concept and his other recordings were the result of a desire to record music that nobody was asking him to produce. The Doctor was a five year journey. One that took him from using booze of doubtful origins to bribe musicians, to creating soundscapes for pop songs, to searching for new sounds to record. In a letter to the editor of Tape Recorder, commenting on article describing a recording technique for purposefully introducing a controlled buzz, he said: “I like the inventiveness of American musicians but no one does better audio work than the British.” He thought the British engineers were creative because of lower budgets, forced to invent techniques to get the most of the equipment they had. The Americans with their big budgets and know-how always had the latest equipment which allowed the musicians to get more creative. Or so his theory went. He was very convincing when explaining his theories. He was very convincing when doing business. He was very convincing when he wanted something. He had the ability to agree with you, help you develop your argument, and, by the time the discussion was finished, you had gone so far down the rabbit holes, that when you back above ground, you were expressing his point of view. The songwriter who’d come in determined to keep his independence, to hold on to his copyright, to control his future would leave with a cheque for $50, having signed a long term exclusivity contract for songs and management. Experienced artists would come in complaining about the industry and how it always screwed the talent. He would ask questions, encouraging them to talk about every which way they felt cheated. And he would reveal a few tricks they did not know about. And he had them talk about how they would fix things, their solutions to the music industry’s problems. And at the end of the meeting they would sign with him, sure they made a step towards changing the world. And when they would come back suspecting things weren’t quite what they’d thought when signing, he would listen, sympathize, ask questions, and at the end of the evening, they would leave certain that one day David would beat Goliath, would become Goliath. And they would bring their friends over. And young men, not far removed from their first cigarettes, would find themselves coughing cannabis smoke. And the young women would be introduced to the local music crowd, visits to the Hog Farm, parties at the Psychedelic Temple on Ambrose. And no one ever complained, and no one spoke of the memorable evenings, and, somehow, everyone always ended up feeling a little dirty; the men like they’d sold their souls, the women like they’d also sold themselves. And what little was known came from the others that happened to be there also. He went to music’s edges to find sounds, hung around in the happening places, went to Lysergic A Go Go, opened his mind, tasted his tongue talking. He fell in love with the sonic delirium of Pow R. Toc H., of Sister Ray. By the time 1968 arrived, he was hungry to go where no one else was going. He found a drummer and had him slowly pan a microphone from left to right and back. He got two guitarists to play the same lead, a Les Paul for the left channel, a Telecaster for the right. He borrowed a left-handed guitar and played it right-handed. And he wrote a bluesy rock song with a driving beat called The Doctor. The 70’s saw him cut his hair, move on to cocaine and become part of the music establishment. First he stopped managing talent to take over a label, then he stopped managing the label because it was keeping him away for the mixing board. He celebrated his return to studio work with the album Self-Indulgence. After an initial burst of production, he settled into a routine of discovering new talent, producing their first albums, managing them for a few years and dropping them when they developed substance abuse problems. There’s something unsettling about the number of artists that, after working with Ray, finished penniless, and, if still alive, in rehab. It’s creepy when you include the stories of the sexual excesses with the female artists who crossed his path. It weighs on the legacy of the artist who had produced from behind the mic, in his 12 minute opus The Doctor, a sound that most engineers could not reproduce in the booth. He is called the Master Enabler; officially because of the success of the acts he produces; disturbingly, you’re left with the feeling he gets the irony of the nickname. His brother, John Parrott, five years younger, went in to the family business, sort of by default. After graduating from UCLA, he became an A&R man, signing the acts his brother didn’t have the time for. After a few years of consistent, boring success, he was given a label to run, where he continued with his formula of working with his brother’s acts and avoiding mistakes. One of the early a victims of Napster, he retired in 2003. What to make of the brother act? One playing with fire, the other eating hot food. Some just dismiss him as a parasite. I wonder how clean he is; even if he never rolled in the mud. You are what you eat. I know the songs on the playlist so well that I listen to them, sing along to them, tap my foot to their beat and realize that I have no memory of what I just heard. My eyes drift down to the comments section below the video. The site, like a lot of the internet, has a reputation for nasty remarks, name calling, and users using language they would not dare use in public. Music videos are mostly spared the ugliness, or, perhaps, I am blind to them, my vision trained from the hours of practice of ignoring them, of avoiding the outrage trap. I know they exist, I am not ignoring the problem, it’s reading them that is unnecessary. Here I go justifying myself again. I don’t get why people have to comment when they discover a song via a TV show or a movie or some other cultural reference. I do understand it intellectually, the human desire to form groups, find like-minded people, to be special along with thousands of others, part of the insiders, those in the know and to get validated. Do they realize how silly they look to those who knew the song from before it appeared in a soundtrack? It’s like showing up at a bar with a hundred of your new best friends and declaring the place the new “in” spot. The previous in-crowd is just going to sneer and may try to chase the newcomers. The one-song wonders with almost hits attract the extended family. It’s easy to imagine the scenario, like a plot borrowed from a book. The family is gathered for a Christmas dinner, talk goes to the parents’ younger days, Uncle talks about his day in the band. The next day, an internet search, and a comment added “It’s my Uncle on the bass guitar.” Sometimes it’s the Uncle, or an old friend of the band, reminiscing publicly, with, when lucky, an interesting story. A new set of comments appear as the song changes to In the Shade of the Olive Tree. It has a “I’m 70 now and still rocking to this tune” as its most popular comment. The type that gets a lot of replies, an age competition: 72, 67, 15 (with the attempts of out-nostalging the original fans: it was the best time for music, I wish I was young then, today’s music is crap, those were the days, no plays like this anymore). The video’s description is a cut and paste of their biography. I know it well. The Mediterranean Threesome were a Canadian rock trio that formed in Toronto, Ontario in September of 1965, when Jean Bouville (bass guitar), a recent transplant from Trois-Rivières, Quebec, was introduced to Yiannis Laspispoli (guitar) and Nino Fangocitta (drums) by a Sam the Record Man record clerk. Children of immigrants they chose their name based on their shared Mediterranean heritage (Bouville – France, Laspispoli – Greece, Fangocitta – Italy). They found almost immediate success with their first single, the garage classic Love in the Wheatfields. Originally released on Red Leaf Records b/w In the Shade of the Olive Tree, it became a local hit, was repackaged with a new B-Side and re-released by Elektra Records in the US. The song peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1968 and made it to number one in many markets, including Boston, New York and Philadelphia. The band wend on a tour of the Northeast during which they wrote most of their eponymous début album. The band would end up recording four more studio albums before breaking up when Jean Bouville, tired of the non-stop touring, moved to the south of France where he became a regular of the Antibes, France jazz scene. It’s Nino’s telling of the origin story in the March 24, 1968 edition of The Freeworld Tribune, just after the pro-Yippie editorial, which gave me the clue as to what made In the Shade different. NINO: I knew Yan (editor: Yiannis Lespispoli, guitarist for the Mediterranean Threesome) from the local bar scene. We’d both been in a bunch of groups and our last bands broke-up about the same time. One night, after a concert, I think it was the Ugly Ducklings (editor: Canadian band), we were both at, we went out for a couple of beer. We both liked the same type of music and decided we should find a couple more guys who also dug what we were into and get another act together. Now, Yan is the type of guy who knows everyone and he got things going pretty quick, telling everyone he knew we were on the lookout for members, just getting the word out. So one day this guy Neil from one of the record stores on Yonge Street tells us there’s this new guy in town who’s interested. Jean joined us and it just took off from there. INTERVIEWER: It went pretty quickly. Most groups have to work at it for years. How did you guys get to record a single so soon after getting together? NINO: More Yan magic. He had all these hustles happening. Trying to sell songs, jingles. Jean had just joined and we were supposed to rehearse. Yan shows up, yells studio time and tells us to throw our gear in car. He’d done it a couple times to me. He’d find out about some big group that had prepaid and not shown. We’d jump into the car and cut a demo or two. I know he’d already sold a couple of songs in the past. Money’s in royalties he’d say. Anyhow, we recorded Wheatfields and he had Jean lay down some vocals on top of a song demo we had made earlier. He takes it over to Red Leaf and before Jean or I know what’s happening we’re hearing it on CHUM (editor: Toronto radio station). It just took off from there. INTERVIEWER: Recording and hitting the road like that. You guys didn’t have a lot of time to get used to each other. Was it instant chemistry? NINO (laughs): We weren’t perfect at first but we’d all played in a lot of bands. Yan switched over … INTERVIEWER: Switched over? NINO: Yan is good with anything with strings so we packaged ourselves as rhythm section figuring it was easier to find a guitarist but when Jean came along he went back to the guitar. And there was the answer to my mystery, the why the track sounds just a little different compared to all the songs they recorded. In the Shade of the Olive Tree is the demo with Jean’s voice laid on top of it. The demo recorded before Jean joined the group, before Yan switched over. The threesome playing as a twosome. There’s no guitar. I listen closely. Yan could really play anything with strings. I question my choice. The borrowed outline is telling me that my favourite plot line is dead. What will I do with that story now? Rob Goodroll became Daniel Jacmar after a drug deal gone bad. Alone with his mind, paranoia took over. He went to friend that was good with potato-art and left for Africa, a place where he could answer questions about his papers with money. I worry that I am borrowing the plot. Writing as I read has me unprepared for where the story is going; for which characters get one more scene, one more chapter; and for new characters. The names and the places have been changed and any resemblance to the original is probably not a coincidence nor is it intentional. Today’s chapter of the line for the wagon the Goodroll story is hooked up to. An ending that is the beginning of an existential crisis. Exist, not exist. Hamlet with Cartesian word play. And I am thinking, continue, not continue. I have no idea what to do with this. The original is starting to tire me. The crisis seems oh so melodramatic and it goes on and on and on. I think the crisis is over. He picks up a newspaper, and the thinking because he exists is replaced by an article on a rape murder. False hope. The rape murder gets thrown in to the soup. I start thinking, prophesying, dreading, that he will end up being the despicable individual. All this going on about wanting to not think is making me think that he is trying to delete the events from his memory and the newspaper article is a trigger for the half-suppressed memory. The chance that my guess is right feels high. This chapter started with a bit on presence that sounds like some thing I did earlier. And it’s not the first time I have anticipated themes. It’s understandable. I am reading the book slowly, taking notes, analyzing, distilling and reducing the story down to an outline. And then I start to develop, thinking forward. We’re starting from the same ideas, similar thoughts are expected. I am not betting on my premonition. Its foundation isn’t logical. And I am hoping that I am wrong. Because if I am wrong, then maybe Goodroll’s counterpart will make a return. Despite the fact that these two things are not codependent. Because that’s how I would prefer the story to turn out. Christmas day. I am looking for a warm place (outside temperatures below five degrees Centigrade defeat my home’s insulation, an upgrade overdue, an investment avoided) to read the book. I walk past the first open place, a brasserie that looks like it serves a lot of beer breakfasts. Passing a restaurant with its lights on and no visible customers, I head to a coffee shop that I know. I can make it out on the corner of the block. The lights look off, then again it’s a shop that uses a lot of natural lighting. Still hoping that it is open, drifting to the outside of the sidewalk, I keep on advancing. I can clearly see the chairs are stacked. I turn around. I can see someone behind the bar at the place of the invisible customers, I head toward the doors. Doubt. A few more steps. Chairs on tables. One man cleaning and not dressed for service. The wind picks up speed. A headwind that speeds me up through its chill factor. I step through the door for the bar section of the brasserie. I am overwhelmed by the crowd that buries the bar. A barrier at least four people deep. The prospect of elbowing my way through while not spilling anyone’s drink chases me back out. I contemplate going home. The wind points out that I went out to cure my freezing toes, the toes that are my coldness gauge. It’s when they feel cold that I feel the cold, it’s when the cold goes from momentary discomfort to a state of discomfort, it’s a state of discomfort that I fell helpless to change, that makes me grumpy, makes me lash out, swearing at the inanimate objects that refuse to compensate for, adjust themselves to, my cold-driven clumsiness. I get scientific, hot air rises, so the feet feel the cold first, sweaty feet, wet feet that stay cold. Part of the story I tell people when they catch me in my ugliness, or searching for ways to avoid my feet going cold. Unashamed of sweaty feet but ashamed to include circulation in the explanation, like that would be exposing a frailty, as if feeling the cold when sitting for long periods is a weakness, as if activity isn’t on the list things to do to feel warm. The laundry is done, the clothes ironed and put away. It’s too early to prepare dinner. I am out of home remedies for my freezing toes. I go to the brasserie’s other entrance, ready myself for a slow swim through the crowd, pull open the door, and get surprised by sparseness, the bar’s zinc counter easily visible. Searching for a reason for the one-sided filling of the place, I look to my right and see, on a screen on the wall, horses racing. Men lined up before it, betting slips and racing forms the hymn sheets for this altar. I walk straight to the counter. It’s clean, no beer-sweat stains, no stale beer smells either. A bar with multiple personalities: beer, Calvados and coffee in morning, office workers at lunch and the horse crowd in the afternoon. It’s the cleanliness that says the kitchen has a rush hour. I check what the other patrons on my side of the bar are drinking and look for the bartender. The place is refusing to conform to the stereotype I have assigned it. I see coffee drinkers, lots of house wine (wine is for sipping, good for a long stay at the lowest cost) and the gamblers drinking beer. I spot the barman; tall, friendly, full pre-hipster (unstyled but trimmed) beard with a touch of grey at the chin. I order my coffee and it shows up quickly. I pull out the book and look for a foot rest. I see the collection of sugar wrappers, crumpled betting slips and small litter. The disappearance of cigarette butts has not done much to improve the appearance of the floor space next to the bars in France. I want to read a page-turner next. I read a paragraph, lift my head, watch a customer walk up to the bar, greet the barman by name, and order a glass of red. I read another paragraph and notice a barmaid, small discreet tattoo in the hollow of her clavicle, has joined the barman. I add coffee sips to the routine: paragraph, sip, the barman is filling a pint glass, paragraph, sip, the barmaid heads into the kitchen, paragraph, sip, my neighbour settles his tab, 1.20€ for a coffee, another customer asks for a refill, paragraph, sip, the barman is wiping glasses. To my right, a man with an African accent is having a lively one-sided conversation, plenty of chuckling. My man-at-the-bar pose has me facing left. I turn my head just enough (I am not interested in seeing the seedy-side of the bar) to see he has a pint and the tip in the bill tray tells me has already paid. Paragraph, sip, the barman is talking, having a conversation, with a regular at the far end of the counter. Two-thirds of the way through a long paragraph, I hear the barman talking to my neighbour. “Are you all right?” “Yeah, yeah.” “You sure?” “Yeah, yeah.” “You worry me.” He walks back to his friend and my neighbour goes back to his conversation. I turn my head a little more this time. He’s a few inches shorter than me, wreath-crown baldness, gold rim glasses, well dressed (neither flashy, nor luxurious), mid-fifties (my age, ouch) and a large smile that matches the tone of his conversation. The barman is back. “Is everything OK?” A yes comes out in between two sentences. The talk is speeding up. “I’m worried about you. You’re talking to yourself.” A laugh to say yes and to say I’m fine. It now sounds like he has three trains of thought going simultaneously, switching between them after a few words. The barman, looking him in the eyes, gives him the intense worried-friend look. From the jumble of words, he picks up that the man hasn’t taken his medication today.“I worry for you.” He goes to serve a customer, I return to the book, my neighbour, slowing down, goes back to his chuckle punctuated conversation. “I’m really worried for you. Are you going to be OK?”“Yeah, yeah.” “Where you from?” He stops mid-sentence, makes a sound as-if he is about to answer, hesitates, starts again, goes back to what he was saying before, a few words later, the tone of his voice changes, the sign that he has changed subjects. “I’m from Algeria,” the barman. The man responds by speeding up his conversation. “I am not hiding anything.” Subtext: I am also a foreigner, not a xenophobe, just trying to start a conversation, to talk you down back to the real world. “Where you from? Senegal?” He runs away from the questions by creating a new thread to his self-talk. The barman answers the call of a customer, I take the last sip of my coffee and pull out the change needed to pay for my coffee, stacking it next to my cup. My hand works at getting the stack as neat as possible while head works at catching the barman’s eye. He sweeps the coins up “Schizos make me uncomfortable.” I nod and wish him a good day. I trust his experience. The man seemed harmless, friendly, cheerful, but I’ve read stories about manic episodes turning quickly. Quickly, I rush home, hoping to get there before my toes go cold. There is an email from the insurance company. A Christmas day response can only mean they have offshored their support, probably North-Africa, for the language. I am expecting an acknowledgment that they had received my letter cancelling the policy for my phone, an acknowledgment I had requested because I had received the rates for next year, ten days after I had cancelled. “We have received your cancellation request. After studying your file, we regret to inform you that we cannot respect your request because the notice period was not respected.” What? I sent it seven weeks before the anniversary date! I dive into the binder with my contracts, not there. I force myself to slow down, to register what I am seeing, still not there. Wait, maybe it’s with my receipts, it had come with the phone when I purchased it, some sort of hocus pocus which meant I was saving 20€ by buying it with. Still nothing. I double check the dates to make sure I am looking in the right binder, I go back to he contracts binder, I go to the balcony and smoke half a cigarette. I am angry at the insurance company. How can I find the terms and conditions of their stupid contract? I sit, open the book, look at the page, and put it back down. I head for my binders, look at them. They probably didn’t give me a copy of the contract. Unlikely. I visit their website. It looks like it was designed 15 years ago! Figures. It has one modern feature: an absence of a clear path to get support information. Click, click, click. Special offers, price simulations, catalogue of products, contract extensions. I go to the page for extended phone guarantees and I debate going through a simulation to see if it comes up with the terms and conditions. I see a link for a ‘feature,’ automated renewals, click, FAQ, click, two-month’s notice. Assholes! Rip-off artists! Another visit to the balcony. This shit is not good for my health. I go back to my computer, it is still showing the FAQ. I go make myself a coffee and gulp it down. I close the page. Why are they making it so hard to cancel? Is a couple hundred Euros worth pissing me off? Stupid, beyond rhetorical, question. AOL built a successful business on service that was almost impossible to cancel. How much are the bastards going to take me for? 12.95€ per month. Fuck, at those prices I could buy myself a new phone in a year. I head towards the balcony, stop. My throat will hurt if I smoke another one so soon. I should have sent the cancellation notice earlier. It was on my to-do list for a few weeks. That’s a couple hundred Euros worth of procrastination. Isn’t there a way for the government to regulate companies that are out to take advantage of people? Enough! Now I am sounding like one of those professional victims. Save 20€, lose 200. Ha! I am mad at myself. I remember feeling good the day I sent off the notice, satisfaction at crossing something off the list. Today, I’m feeling extra stupid. They’re still assholes, I’m still angry at them, angry at myself and taking it out on them. And the bastards raised their prices. Oh! They raised their prices. I have an out! They have unilaterally raised their prices and that is a reason I can use to cancel the contract. The government does have some laws to protect consumers. Probably because a minister got burned. I smile at my cynicism. I pick up the book. This may be a classic but the existential crisis really does go on for too many pages. I work hard at collecting experiences instead of stuff. The problem is keeping my wallet in my pocket is insufficient because there’s plenty of stuff available for free. Experience has taught me that stuff is only worth owning if it is going to get used — soon. Isms and their ists. Ideologies and their labels. I get lost in the definitions and refuse to identify with any single group. The Contrarian likes his absolutes and I like tearing them apart. It’s easy: absolutes don’t like context and look ridiculous swimming in a sea of conditionals. We’re both being careful. He’s gone fully vegan and avoided answering why. I say nothing about the sidestepping. We see a clean-looking Lebanese restaurant. There’s a menu in the window. Mid-range prices, a complete selection including vegan friendly options. Enough people to suggest the food is good. The waitress that greets and seats us looks, to me, Lebanese. The appetizers, a platter of mezze for two, is quickly chosen. I add a lamb stuffed eggplant for my main and the Contrarian starts his interrogation of the waitress finding every dish with yoghurt or cheese. After a few of these, I ask him how he feels about lentils. “I like them.” I turn to the waitress and ask if they have a meatless lentil dish. “Oh yes, with wheat and fried eggplant.” My eyebrows ask the Contrarian if he wants this. “Sounds good.” “Drinks?” “Beer.” I find it strange when meatless eaters drink. Is it the association with healthy eating? I hesitate then decide alcohol may knock me out early. “Tap water for me, please.” I watch the waitress walk away. The Contrarian asks me what I want to do afterwards. I want to enjoy the moment but reply. “I was thinking of checking out a discount DVD shop. I want to see if I can find a copy of Sunset Boulevard.” “That sounds very specific.” “Yes.” He’s expecting a reason to follow. I’m feeling playfully vengeful, wanting payback for his taking me from the present with the future looking question. I let a few seconds pass. He looks ready to ask ‘why’. “And … Le Mépris.” “A French movie? That’s unusual for you. Is there a theme going on here?” “Hunh?” “I watched the movie again. And I started wondering if the road was a reference to Chandler or Ellroy novel. I ended up falling into the rabbit hole of interpretations of the movie.” “And what do Chandler and this other guy…” “James Ellroy, L.A. Confidential.” “Kim Basinger?” “Yeah, he wrote the book.” “OK, what do Chandler and the Kim Basinger guy have to do with Sunset Boulevard and Le Mépris?” “Rabbit holes. They are two of the rabbit holes. Movie references.” “So you’re on fact-finding mission?” I think about how to reply. “Sort of. There are at least a couple of obvious references to Sunset Boulevard and it has been forever since I last saw it. I am less sure about the references to Le Mépris. You know, fact-finding may be a good way to describe my obsession with watching all the movies that Mulholland could be referencing. I have already watched three other rabbit hole movies.” “White rabbit holes? Listening to the dormouse?” “Feeding my head. And here comes the food for the stomach.” There are four breads to accompany the appetizers. Plenty to dip with, keep talking, make the food last. “The hummus is really good and I’ve become a kind of expert. I eat this shit almost every day now! Now tell me about your boner for Mulholland Drive. There’s a couple of really hot scenes but it can’t be that.” “The baba ghanoush is garlicky. Aphrodisiac levels. Though it has to be one the most frustrating aphrodisiacs around. Get’s you excited but leaves you with a breath that knocks them out before you can do anything about it. The movie doesn’t leave you with bad breath.” “Funny ha ha. You’re not answering the question.” “You didn’t ask a question.” “Aw come on! It’s implied! How did wondering about a couple of authors become an obsession that has you chasing DVDs?” The question is a good one. It happened without me thinking about it. “It’s Chandler‘s fault.” “That sounds like a line out of Friends. What’s that white stuff with the olive oil on top?” “Let’s ask. I think it may be a type of fresh cheese, sort of like sour cream.” I look to my right and spot the waitress serving a couple. I wait until the man’s plate is placed in front of him and raise my hand. My timing is right, she sees the gesture and comes over. “Labneh, a special Lebanese cheese. Very good.” The Contrarian reaches for the hummus.“What did Chandler do?” “He convinced me he had written about a murder on Mulholland Drive and that a car was involved. And the more I searched, the more theories and interpretations of the movie I found. And I did a lot of searching. I was convinced. And he didn’t make it easy because he renamed places in his novels. I ended up with a long list of classic movies to watch. And a need to do something else as an excuse to stop my search.” “How many interpretations can there be? You spend two hours watching one story then you get twenty minutes were you get the real story and figure out that first two hours are a fantastic dream. There can’t be that many ways to explain that. I mean, the ending kind of explains it already, right?” “It’s the internet and it’s David Lynch. It’s people obsessing over little details with pet theories about them and insisting they are right even in the presence of contradictory evidence. There is this uncredited extra that a guy is sure is an actress from Twin Peaks or something. So he emails Lynch and Lynch replies that it isn’t her. And the guy is posting all this on the internet with the conclusion that, despite what Lynch said, he is sure that it is her.” “So you’re watching a bunch of movies to prove the internet is full of crackpots.” “More like trying to prove that they are not all crackpots. And making sure I am not one either.” “You’ve got your own crackpot theories? This I’ve got to hear!” “If I get started … I have been playing with these ideas all by myself and I’d love to share them and not on the internet. If I open the door, they’re going to come streaming out in one long flow of verbal diarrhea.” The Contrarian lifts his beer “That’s all right, I’ve got plenty of liquids and I can get more if needed.” “You asked for it! Do you remember the opening scene?” “The car drive down Mulholland?” “Before that. The jitterbug dancers.” “Vaguely” “The movie opens with a bunch of dancers doing their thing all over the screen and in the background, unsynchronized, their shadows dancing. The shadows don’t represent what’s happening and I’m thinking Allegory of the Cave.” “Plato‘s? That’s not a movie!” “Yes, Plato‘s. And I’ll get to the movie reference. So… you have the shadows telling you that what you’re seeing is not reality. It’s imagined, a story created from a distorted and limited point of view. And the foreground is Betty’s story.” “Which one’s Betty?” “The Naomi Watts character of the first two hours.” “The pink sweater one.” “Yes. Though, I am not hundred percent sure it is her. It could be the Naomi Watts character from the last 20 minutes. I am not sure it makes much of difference to my cave interpretation. Both of their stories fit, which may be the point. The dance ends with Betty arriving in Hollywood, stepping into the light, a little dazzled, which can represent both the movie lights and the fire’s light.” I pause to let the Contrarian catch up. He has two stories, the allegory and the movie, to remember and line up. “And though she is stepping in the forefront, she is transparent, ghost like, which is why I prefer calling her Betty.” “So far, it’s still Plato.” “Patience. … I really like how this bit is acted, not a word is said yet I get strong feeling about the story being told and in only a few seconds. The I’m-here smile arrival, dream-come-true sightseeing and, a second stepping into forefront with even brighter lights.” “The sun.” “The sun. And this time it is a flashing-bulbs dazzled look that is followed by an acceptance speech. It corresponds nicely to the allegory and it reminds me of Le Mépris. It makes me wonder if Godard and Lynch had the same idea, or was Lynch inspired by the scene from Le Mépris and he used it to create his own version, or is this an homage to Le Mépris.” “Hunh?” “There is this scene in Le Mépris Brigitte Bardot where goes to the movies with her husband but instead of a movie they end up in a very surreal scene with Jack Palance and Fritz Lang. There’s a singer on the stage. People walking back and forth, their shadows projected on the wall. And every time one of the characters speaks, the music stops. And when the bit of dialogue is finished, the music picks up where it left off, as-if someone had hit the pause button to speak and then unpaused the music afterwards.” “Sounds like Lynch got two scenes out of one from Godard, the opening and the cabaret scene.” “It does. There is another scene where I think people have missed the reference. But is this taking this referencing thing too far? In this scene I am going from Plato to Godard to Lynch. That is a lot of layers. May be the similarities are unintentional, or completely imagined. It feels like I’m spouting another complicated explanation of the movie, layers and layers deep, a conspiracy theorist’s perspective where every detail is significant and has some mysterious meaning that confirms the conspiracy.” The Contrarian is looking wistfully at the empty hummus bowl. I point out that there’s still some of tabouleh left. “Yeah. … Are you saying that the movie doesn’t have the answer to who really shot Kennedy?” “I have a feeling that a lot of the people posting their interpretations of the movie also think they they know the real truth about Kennedy. Half of the theories about the movie ignore that 80% of the movie, the Betty story, was originally a TV pilot. And Lynch changed very little of it when he made it into a feature film. Lynch redefined the story a posteriori. There must be artifacts of the original idea left, which means not everything is going to fit the revised story, nor does everything have to.” “And the jitterbug?” “Was filmed for the movie version and, I like to think, serves the story.” I rip of a piece of bread and scoop up a mouthful of labneh. Impatient to continue my analysis, I regret the size of my serving. “There is, I think, only one undeniable link to anything in the movie, the car from Sunset Boulevard parked at Paramount Studios, and the rest is conjecture. When it doesn’t need too much explanation or complicated apologetics, then, maybe, just for fun, it’s worth talking about. David Lynch is known for not explaining himself, for believing that the story is what the viewer sees and not what he intended it to be. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and he builds stories for beholders.” “You’re not going to give me a scene by scene run through, are you? It’s a long movie, you’ve just finished describing the opening scene and you’re talking about a bunch theories which you don’t believe. We are almost finished with the starters. At this rate we will still be here for supper.” “The food is good. And I warned you that once I got started on the movie, you were going to suffer.” I grin at him. “I could probably walk through the whole movie and have something to say about each part of it. That said, I’d rather show off my ideas instead of repeating someone else’s. And you know I don’t like to ridicule other people’s bad ideas and, in this case, I’m not sure I want a quality comparison. You’re right, I have a bunch of ideas that don’t even convince me but they’re my ideas and I can’t seem to let them go.” “Are they worse than the one about the Allegory of the Cave? More deserving of self-inflicted contempt?” Now it is his turn to grin. “Unfortunately, yes. There are two scenes that made me think of Carnival of Souls.” “Never heard of it.” “It’s a low budget horror movie from 1962 that over the years has picked up the ‘cult classic’ label. It starts with drag race that ends in a car crash.” “That’s your first reference?” “Yes. And, like in Mulholland, it’s the start of a dreamed sequence.” The waitress comes to check on our progress. Seeing the appetizer plates empty, she asks us to confirm we are ready for our mains. While she is stacking the dishes, the Contrarian adds that he is also ready for another beer. I restart my summary as soon as the pile of dishes are lifted from the table. “Carnival of Souls; Car crash. The car goes into the water and the protagonist emerges not remembering how she survived.” “Your second reference?” “Not really, more like a part of the first one. Anyhow, she drives off, goes to Utah and starts a job as a church organist. There are few scenes where she is haunted by a ghoulish figure.” “Like the homeless person behind the diner? Your second reference?” “The whole first diner scene reminds me of the movie. As the story moves along, the protagonist starts having moments where she is invisible and inaudible to everyone. She ends up consulting a doctor about it.” I pause as the eggplant is placed in front of me. “Thank you. … The diner has the guy confessing his fears to a friend. Annnnd, when the friend is paying the bill, you can see him talking but you cannot hear him.” “Not exactly strong links but not that far-fetched. Why are you feeling guilty about it?” “Wait. You haven’t heard all of the story yet.” “You said two scenes.” “The ending is what gives meaning, context, to the first scene.” “That’s cheating. The ending counts as a third scene.” I am not going to admit he is right. “The weirdness escalates, a climatic sequence with, as I remember it, at the climax, a cut-away back to the crash scene from the beginning of the movie. They’re pulling the car out of river. All the passengers, the girl included, are in the car and are dead. It’s not explicitly said, but the whole trip to Utah is a dying dream, a nightmare she has while passing. The escalating weirdness represents her slowly, or not so slowly, losing her grip on life. And of course, you never die in a dream.” “Instead of explaining why you think it’s a stretch that Lynch is referencing Soul Carnival…” “Carnival of Souls.” “Carnival of Souls. Whatever. You made the case for it stronger.” “Well … The two scenes in Mulholland Drive that remind me of it were shot for the TV pilot, in other words, before Lynch added the ending that turned the pilot into the dream sequence.” “Oh.” “And I don’t like that a famous critic said Carnival of Souls reminded him of Lynch‘s Blue Velvet. He speculated, with a strong disclaimer that it was impossible to know for sure, that it was an influence. Now everyone takes it as a fact that Lynch is a fan of Carnival of Souls.” “If it has shown up before then maybe it’s more than a coincidence.” “I searched, I cannot find a single direct quote with Lynch saying he is a fan of the movie, nevermind that he was influenced by it. And remember, the dream theme didn’t exist when he shot the beginning of the movie. And forgetting that it was turned into close-ended movie a couple of years after the pilot was rejected is a mistake I say many of the Mulholland theorists make. Theorizers? Theorists? Theorizers make.” “Maybe the dream theme was part of the pilot?” “It’s a stretch. But maybe. Probably not. Probably not…” “You can’t say for sure it wasn’t. You said Lynch doesn’t explain himself.” “He moves in mysterious ways. It’s a shame there isn’t a mystery teapot in one of the scenes.” “Your eggplant looks delicious.” He has changed the subject. I think he got the reference and did not understand it was an opportunistic joke. “It is. How are the lentils?” “Good. Almost good enough for me not to want some of your eggplant.” There is an element of martyrdom in veganism. I go back to Mulholland Drive. “I like my links to Le Mépris better. And I have a few ideas about the Rita Hayworth thing that I also like better.” “You said something about there being another scene that referenced Le Mépris?” “You’re following.” “Why do you sound surprised? Do you think I don’t listen to you?” “I know you do. It’s when I’m spouting bullshit that I get surprised.” “It’s not complete bullshit.” “That’s where I get my biggest surprises. Every once in a while someone quotes me back to myself. Sometimes it’s years later. And I’m saying to myself ‘Wow, they were listening and it marked them.’ I guess wear what surprises me is that people take me more seriously than I take myself.” A thought stops me. It’s a general thing. I really don’t take myself very seriously. It’s why I get confused when people get angry at the stupid things I say or do. I misjudge how serious people are about everything. “The other scene?” “Yeah, actually it’s not that straight forward. I should say for me. My mind takes an inaccurate shortcut and I conflate it with the Club Silencio scene. It takes place in the club but it is at the end of the movie, where it has to be if it mirrors Le Mépris. The ghostly apparition of the two dead lovers mirroring the scene of the two dead lovers in Le Mépris, the return to the lady in the club’s balcony mouthing silencio mirroring the return to Fritz Lang calling silencio to cue the start of the shooting.” “Like the Frnech Silence, on tourne?” “Yes. I like the irony of ending the movie with the director’s call that the cameras are about to roll but that is more about Le Mépris than Mulholland Drive. There’s one rabbit hole I avoided, the indirect references. Le Mépris is full of symbolism, allegories and references to Greek mythology. That makes Mulholland‘s references to Le Mépris references to references. If I don’t want to tie my mind in knots, I would need to do a deep dive on Le Mépris first and I’m not ready to go there.” “You make it sound like there are other references.” “Possibly. Rita putting on the wig to go to Club Silencio mirrors Brigitte Bardot’s putting on a wig to go to the theater. Rita, dark haired, puts on a blonde wig. Bardot, a blonde, puts on a dark hair wig.” “Always the same scene.” “Yes. And it’s the multiplication of the possible references to that scene that make me think that maybe Lynch is referencing Le Mépris while making me think that I am looking at that scene with a conspiracy theorist’s magnifying glass and taking every coincidence as another clue.” “Confirmation bias.” “Maybe.” I notice the waitress is patiently standing by our table. Our plates are empty. “Dessert?” I am full and I am not ready for the meal to end. I can see the Contrarian is also hesitating. It is not obvious if he is wondering if there is a vegan option or if this is because he is also full or if he is waiting to see whether I will take one . I quickly eliminate the vegan option from the reasons for the hesitation. He bitches enough about the lack of choice in vegan desserts and he believes that a martyr is not a martyr if no one knows of the sacrifice. The bitching is as much a part of his identity these days as is the veganism. “Yes” “Me too.” He turns towards me. “I thought you were going to go directly to the coffee.” “We have a few options without milk products.” I am pleased by the waitress’ memory trick and return her smile. The Contrarian’s “Good.” disturbs me. It is royal, a service due, entitled. “Let me clear your plates and I will return with the dessert cart.” Talk is suspended, replaced by the noise of dishes and cutlery coming together in a neat pile. I catch a hint of black lace, force myself to catch the waitress’ eye and smile. I find myself wishing that reality was closer to a porn movie: A wink, a nod, and before you know it the flour is falling off the shelves in the back room. “Nice” I wait for her to disappear into the kitchen before agreeing. It takes me a few seconds to climb out of my fantasy world. By the time my mind gets back to the present moment, she is drawing the trolley parallel to the table. I see a type of custard covered in crushed pistachios, learn it is flavoured with orange blossom water and order it. The Contrarian takes longer than usual to choose. The shared appreciation of the waitress’ physical attributes has raised his testosterone levels. The selection process is accompanied by flirting, some of it embarrassing to watch; the questions about the pistachio filled cigar, accompanied by a pregnant pause while looking her in the eyes. The motivation for the flirting is baffling; it started only after he caught me fantasizing. The cigar is joined by a walnut filled pastry and a piece of baklava. “I’ll take the coffee, Turkish, after the dessert. Thanks.” I turn my attention back to the Contrarian as soon as she steps away. “Rita!” “Is that her name? When did you get it?” Any doubts that he sees picking her up as a competition are dispelled. Not that he is in the habit of hiding it. I just cannot be bothered to confirm it each time, especially if I am not playing the game. “Mulholland Drive.” “Right. The Rita Hayworth connection.” “You got me started, encouraged me. Now I have to talk out all my ideas.” “There’s no mystery to the Rita connection. The poster scene is explicit. So what is special about it? I’m guessing there are a few crazy theories on the internet and you have better ones.” “Precisely.” “And…” “Crazy theories first, actually, ‘crazy’ is not the right word, flimsy, tenuous. I don’t think much of the idea of making a big deal of the real Rita dyeing her hair red and the movie Rita’s wig.” “And it would interfere with your Le Mépris conspiracy.” “Not really, there’s nothing ruling out multivalence, things having multiple meanings or interpretations. I don’t see the significance. It’s why I call it flimsy. I think even less of the fact that Rita Hayworth was a stage name.” “Stage name, borrowed name. Tenuous. A coincidence.” The flatness in the Contrarian’s voice announcing that he disagrees with me and that he is simply confirming he understands the reason for my opinion. “Exactly. What surprises me, especially with all the attention paid to the decor, is that I did not see any comments about the poster and the movie’s tag line ‘There never was a woman like Gilda!’ That sounds like a blatant announcement to me.” “That could explain why she called herself Rita instead of Gilda.” “I thought that for a moment then ruled it out. Diane, the real world Betty, has a Rita fetish.” “And what a fetish!” I ignore the comment. “She’s her role model. The dinner party scene is what made me think of it. Her idea that dancing, winning the jitterbug contest, leads to acting. Not an obvious leap unless you think of Rita Hayworth being a dancer before becoming an actor.” “Another original theory of yours?” “I haven’t seen anyone else comment on it. Nor anyone try to make a connection with Rita marrying Orson Welles, a director. Not that I give it much weight but it seems more obvious than some of the other stuff mentioned.” “She did become a short haired blond for him.” “True and you could probably make a lot of connections to that movie if you tried. There’s the hall of mirrors, a theatre scene, a love triangle but, like a lot of the other crap, it seems to take things a bit too far. It is hard to see how those links serve the movie.” “But with Lynch you never know.” “Again true. But I’d rather spend time analyzing that dinner scene than speculating on what could be random coincidences.” The Contrarian laughs. “You had no problem listing off the possible connections.” “Guilty. I did spend some time thinking of reasons why the blonde Lady From Shanghai was a better parallel than the red-headed Rita. That was helped by watching a few Orson Welles movies. It’s what I like most about turning Mulholland into a project, the rabbit holes, following tunnels just for the fun of the adventure, even when I know I am way off track. That particular adventure started with Gilda, because of the poster, then the Lady,and then F for Fake.” “Rosebud?” “Amost, or maybe that should be ‘not yet.’ Time will tell.” “I can see it is easy to take you off track when talking about the other movies orbiting around Mulholland.” “Here comes my coffee.” “Are you going to spit it out on to the napkin if it is no good?” “No! But if I am not careful when I get to the bottom of the cup, I may end up spitting out a mouthful grinds.” “The art of drinking Turkish coffee. Either you know it or you end up creating napkin art.” “You know about the drop of cold water?” The Contrarian’s face lights up as if he has the answer to the $64,000 question. “That goes for any good coffee. A mouthful before to rinse and a mouthful after to bring out the after-taste.” The game show metaphor is still in my head and the wrong-answer buzzer goes off in my head. Its harshness makes me take a second before answering. “I was thinking of the drop that goes into the coffee. It is supposed to settle the grinds to the bottom and it is supposed to be physics but I can’t figure out which principle.” The coffee is now in front of me. I ask for a glass of water and the Contrarian for his third, or is it his fourth, beer. Waiting for the water, I frame the cup with my hands. “What the fuck? I can go for the drop of water bit but what is this waving your hands around like that supposed to do? ‘Double, double, toil and trouble.’ Are you casting spells now?” “Yeah. It turns the coffee into a superpower elixir, like Obelix‘s.” “Don’t you mean Asterix?” “I do. And there goes my smooth segue back to Mulholland Drive. The coffee sitting on the white table cloth in front of me reminded me of the hazy transition at the end of the supper. The call backs that follow. It is a great scene.” “Which means you have another” he does scare quotes “original” and he does another set of scare quotes “theory.” “Of course I do.” “Le Mépris, Sunset Boulevard, or a Rita movie?” “Sunset Boulevard. Adam’s comment about his ex getting the pool man made me think of the opening scene. And the whole sequence is a commentary on the Hollywood system.” “How?” “The sequence starts with the coffee seen from Diane’s perspective which tells you whose view you are getting. Then there is the comment about the pool man, the idea that Adam should have rewarded the judge, an admission that the ruling was not fair. She then spots the coffee-spitter just before Adam delivers what I call the clincher ‘Sometimes good things happen’ which comes from a Helen Miren quote where she says that she doesn’t believe that good things happen to good people, that it’s all luck, that sometimes good things happen to bad people, but it’s better, more worthwhile, to do good.” “Naomi Watts certainly ignores the conclusion.” “She’s only concerned with the single line. It’s what sets up the revenge. She has just spent the meal eating crow, confessing her failures to Adam’s mother while her table-neighbour listens in, adding salt by filling in details. Then there is the smoky transition to her picking up the cup of coffee. The scene is shot from her point of view, a signal that the series of allusions to the Hollywood machine, corruption and the conclusion ‘sometimes good things happen to bad people’ are her explanation of why she busted in Hollywood.” I take a sip of my coffee. “And I like how Lynch lines up three straight coffee transitions for the ending of the Diane story. I’m tempted to rewatch the movie just for the transitions. Lynch makes them add to the story. They are not just mood setters, or clever ways to join two scenes. They work like commentary, silent narration.” “I’m ready to watch it again. I get the feeling I missed half of what is going on.” “I said ‘tempted.’ I am getting close to overdosing on it. Maybe after Le Mépris or the original pool man movie, Sunset Boulevard.” I pick up my napkin, wipe away the grinds that have gathered at the sides of my mouth, and drop it next to the cup. I tip the cup, seeing if there is enough liquid for another sip. The grind patterns from the playing with the cup remind me of my first trip to Mexico City. The fortune telling was supposed to be part of the Zona Rosa experience. I was not impressed, when after a first look at my cup, I was told that I would soon go on a long trip. I stayed quiet and let the unimpressive predictions continue. My girlfriend was unimpressed with my lack of participation in the game. Years later I would learn that the obvious stuff was meant to start a conversation which would give clues for creating a reading. My silence had killed the show. The memory has me wondering how much the Zona Rosa has changed. I remember hearing it had been severely damaged in the 1985 earthquake. I put the cup down. “Ready?” The Contrarian swallow the last of his beer. “Yes.” We head towards the cash register. The train leaves the station. Now there is a clichéd metaphor! And the train is still in the station. I have just sat and I am waiting for it to leave. And the metaphor is weak. I am going from downtown to the airport. The real trip will start when the plane leaves. My mind is still in the Mulholland Drive universe. Betty is the way Diane sees herself. The ending, an identity crisis, a reality too hard to face. Whoever said that the mirror doesn’t lie forgot the beholder. And I find photos crueller though it is easy to blame the quality of the picture. The problem is when there are no good pictures. The dude in the photos looks older than the one in the mirror. Am I in denial? Denying that I am aging, denying that this could be my mid-life crisis. If this is mid-life, then I will live to be very old. At my age “what is the good life” is about the present, it is no longer aspirational. Dreams carry less weight in the equation. There are fewer potential outcomes to fantasize about. The imagined life as a professional hockey player is no longer unrealistic; it is impossible. Same question, different perspective: Working to pay the bills cannot be written-off as a temporary inconvenience, a price to pay to get where I am going. The good-life is no longer something I am working towards, it is something I am working on. Should I have been more impatient when I was younger? Was playing the long-game the right choice? How much time do I have left? Will it be quality time? Ironic that at 56 I am writing immaturely. Where would I be now if I had made different choices? My career trajectory changed after I met my second wife. What if I had not taken personal days to resolve issues at home? What if my confidence had not been shaken by what was said in the heat of the moment? What if I had divorced her earlier? What if I had kept the promise to myself to fail-fast if it wasn’t working out? There is no answer to the what-ifs. I cannot relate to the person I would have been if had gotten the next promotion. And there is nothing to say wouldn’t be in a similar place. Not because I believe in fate but because regardless of who delivered the blow to my confidence I am the man that was vulnerable to an attack on my manliness. But, what if? We are attached to our identity and that identity is, in part, built from our experiences. Negating the past is negating who I am. I chose the long-game. Take care of my obligations, make sure the children get a good start in life and enjoy the good life after. I have no doubt I made the right choices but I imagined myself finishing just as youthful as when I was making the choices. Now I compare myself to men my age and older. I don’t find the me in the mirror looks young for my age. Never mind comparing them to the dude in the pictures of me. My self-image, my identity is being challenged and the ego is fighting back as hard as it can. I know that reality’s bitchiness will win but the battle is getting ugly. I like to joke that I am immature because, when it comes to the school of life, I am a slow learner. As I get older there are fewer options available. This is supposed to lead to greater serenity. Fewer options to miss out on, less anxiety about missing out on them. But how do I manage the feeling about the options I missed out on? And I resist giving up on options. I am worried that it is giving up too early and that I am creating self-limiting beliefs. And that brings me back to the clash between the fantasy image of myself and reality. I have J.S. Mill‘s autobiography on my reading list. I hope it is readable. Some philosophers are so busy being precise that their ideas are unreadable. I like his ideas on liberty. I am hoping that this means his autobiography can help me work out a different view on goals. It is the way he worked a solution to lack of satisfaction of achieving his goals that fascinates me. A dissatisfaction that showed up when he was twenty. Big hairy goals. His turning an appreciation of Wordsworth into a motivating factor interests me; the addition of a sense of awe into his life that made rest of his work worthwhile. At least that is how I understand it. I am hoping the autobiography can tell me more, teach me. For now, the way I see it, it is about spending time on things without a particular end goal. The journey, not the arrival. Choosing an agreeable journey, choosing to be a traveller without a destination. A change in perspective. Turning my activities into something that repersents who I am instead of one that is based on who I want to become. The change in perspective is challenging my identity. Learning that I am who I am today and not the person I might be tomorrow. Which comes back to accepting my past choices. And that I have fewer options for change. And that my future self will be older, more physically diminished until I no longer am. And that final day is getting closer. And that final day is the inevitable final destination. And becoming a traveler makes life about the journey, not the destination. Because all the other goals are just stops along the way. Regret, missing out, mortality are no longer an issue. What about the mistakes? I have made some bad decisions that I cannot rationalize away but they don’t bother me that much. Slow to act. That has been the biggest recurring problem. There is time yet. Until there isn’t. Akrasia is an idea I came across when skimming some texts on Greek philosophy. Self-subversion, acting against one’s better interest. The concept seems to be used most often when talking about addicts though I remember reading someone hypothesizing that Bill Clinton had a self-destructive streak and, every once in a while, someone will bring it up about a star that will blow up there careers after each success. And then there are the twin fears: success and failure. Some dress up akrasia as a weakness of will. The word weakness say a lot about the thinking of the speaker. And it doesn’t address fear-based self-sabotage. I think there is something more to akrasia than its definition. By definition it is not rational. Hume argued that passions and will could not be overruled by reason. I guess that is true. I have not found a good argument against. If it is true then weakness of will does not exist. It becomes irrational will. I wonder where that would fit in the debate on free will. Ataraxia, the Greek version of nirvana. I get the feeling that is what I am aiming for. But that feeling comes from my superficial understanding of it; it can mean what I want it to mean. It is my nebulous goal. Defeat akrasia, attain ataraxia. Sounds intellectual. Pseudo-intellectual, fake profundity. Ataraxia, my traveler goal. Not the destination with the perpetual where-next problem once you arrive. You’re never as lost as when you get somewhere and don’t know where to go next. The traveler breathes in, breathes out and moves on. It is easy to underestimate the value of the journey, to see it as a logistics problem. Listen to someone talk of a trip. It is the journey, the things that happened, the people met that are told. Who wants to hear a long list of been-there and done-that. Funny how, if you don’t have the been-theres and the done-thats, people will look at you incredulously and lecture you on having missed the purpose of going where you went. Even while they nod in agreement to the cliché “it’s about the journey.” You can travel forever but once you’ve been to the top of the Eiffel Tower, it is done. I think of Bro. The golden boy with the big stories. He didn’t realize his perceived destiny, got slapped in the face by life and fell off the cliff. He still hasn’t gotten up. He has been down for so long that I wonder if he will ever try. He survives on bitterness and spits out anything that could change the taste in his mouth. The traveler goes places, does things. Aimless wandering is not a journey, it is restlessness, it becomes the goal. Am I restless? Am I conflating travel with journey? Meaning with meaningful? I guess that is where being in the present moment comes in and my metaphor starts to fall apart. Being present takes away the need to keep moving. It is also a way to take the focus away from where I am going. It frees me from the goal. Being in the moment is freedom. Taking notice of where I am is neutral, free of judgement. It is what it is, now. Not before, not after, but now. Our feelings about the past are not as strong as those for the future. The dread of a future pain is greater than the memories of a past pain, even if the future pain is substantially less than the past pain. The anticipation of a future pleasure can be a great pleasure itself. Does moving into the now make time more symmetrical? Is it like moving closer to the middle of the see-saw? Is this part of the aging crisis? Less to look forward to and the memories are unsatisfying? Is bringing it to the now an adjustment of the perspective? Allowing for the awe of the moment? I am going in circles attempting to philosophise my way out of my age crisis aiming at a stoic version of the serenity prayer hoping for a magical bullet in J.S. Mill’s biography while forgetting Hume’s argument that you can’t apply reason to emotion. Montaigne has an essay called “That to Philosophise is to learn to Die.” All this rambling to complain that I am struggling with the fear of having missed out. Yet missing out is inevitable. There are too many choices. Options are overvalued. Too many options makes choosing difficult. I started this train of thought thinking about how my age crisis is about adjusting to a new identity, that of an older man; a new part, the fifth age. Then … The train has arrived at the airport. I am glad that the airport is two-sided. It does not forces me to wait in an enclosure. There are restaurants and shops on both sides of security. I sit outside on a concrete bench. The cigarette burns my throat. The discomfort is the cost of soothing my panic at the idea of being unable to smoke on the plane. This vacation is for showing up, being a father for my daughter. I remove my normal self-indulgence from the agenda. Hopefully my daughter will help me find what is supposed to replace it. I am too immature to be grandfather.
Hi John,
• I read one chapter at the time.
• I do my adaptation before reading the next chapter.
• The adaptation will mirror the structure and length of the original.
• The adaptation is not a rewrite of the original.
• The original is only alluded to occasionally.
• I don’t say what I’m up to.you I spend more effort finding reasons why something wont work versus finding solutions to hurdles.
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