The Bottom of the Drawer

Bureau drawers are the most sentimental home furnishings. Each is a portal to the past, memories smelling of detergent folded neatly and tucked in their little beds. The experience is every bit as magical as that offered by Lewis’s Wardrobe. But magic is amoral, and what it offers we may embrace or struggle to even look upon the past, that thing which “grows and grows at the expense of the future” (Tennessee Williams).

My t-shirts stretch back nearly to childhood. Many I wore in high school. One bears the insignia “Surf Ohio Championship 1993”; it was my father’s before it stopped fitting him or he it. Wearing the father’s shirt is comforting, if darkly so. The same gesture connotes doom in Sam Shepard’s play “The Curse of the Starving Class.” But the most significant face of the past in this drawer lies not in one shirt or another, but in a pattern between them.

My father, being a practical man, ordinarily buys gifts at electronics shops. These well-researched items are sure to please and also within his shopping comfort zone. However, this led to a serious discrepancy between the size clothes I wore and those he bought. Dad was buying me size adult large t-shirts as early as middle school, when I weighed in at a dainty 91 pounds. I was familiar with the term 98-pound weakling, but it puzzled me, as it described a guy I wouldn’t mess with. Dad’s shirt size misestimate proceeded with such regularity that I wearily accepted my fate, wearing the shirts, which were often styles I very much liked… just at least a size too big.

I swam in those shirts. They looked somewhat like a monk’s cassock as the sleeves swooped around my pointy elbows and my shorts disappeared beneath the billowing cotton. To discover the true shape of my torso one had to wait for a strong gust of wind. When I ran, the shirt flapped behind me like a cape or an impractical parachute. The only thing that can make a diminutive person look smaller is excessively large clothing. The only guy I knew at that time who was unquestionably skinnier was Jay Rammahan, a good and more appropriately dressed friend. I couldn’t even pass these shirts off as hand-me-downs; I was the oldest.

I no longer wear them, even the “US Soccer” shirt with its imagistic unfurling red streak-effect stripes that I had once treasured. It is a sad thing to wear clothes that don’t fit you. What I see now was an innocent mistake seemed portentous at the time. I was in conflict with outward appearances. I was small but needed to become somehow big. My insecurities couldn’t have been better exposed had I been naked.

Performance

It is said that Edgar Degas was only truly happy in attendance of performance. Painting, sketching, etching, these were all pasttimes that grew out of his fondness for the creative and created world. His long hours at the Paris Opera observing the bunheads rushing to classes and rehearsals must have been a close second. His art is self-consciously observational, acutely aware of itself as an act of witness ... or voyeurism.

I have known this great pleasure also, and there is nothing finer in the world I know. Perhaps I have lost myself in some similar bliss at times on the dance floor, and maybe once on stage. But these are very different, since the pleasure of playing a part in performance hinges directly on its quality, as with the dancing, though to a much lesser degree. All of these are engagements with the aesthetic world, a world that beckons with its expression of the range of human emotion, with its layered meanings and intellectual delights, and with its casting off of all that is trite and mundane.

Still, what becomes of the dreamers when the dream is ended? Where do we go, we who've tasted the sweetness of the life of the mind, only to find that a world of pea soup and cold macaroni lurks forever among the footlights? And can this escape be a healthy way of dealing (or not dealing) with the real world? When my mind is troubled, this is one of its familiar haunts.

News from the Pool: Marred Bliss

Today I neared glory at poolside, striding through Tom: The Unknown Tennessee Williams while sunning. I also caught up on the local gossip concerning people I have never seen. The best is transcribed below. This post's subtitle is borrowed affectionately from playwright Mark O'Donnell's one-act containing Jane's memorable line: "Oh honey, just stink. In less than forty eight horrors we will be moan and woof! Isn't it amassing?"

(Scene: two young women sunning, one of whom has just entered.)
Susie: You'll never guess what Gossard did last night.
Kate: Tell me. Was it at the bar?
Susie: Yeah, we were all drinking, and he'd been really sweet with Beth, and they both got just totally trashed.
Kate: Okay...?
Susie: And then we were all sitting there and we heard Gossard on the PA, proposing.
Kate: No way.
Susie: And then he did it again at the table, collapsing to one knee.
Kate: Whoa. They're not getting married. Kate was just talking the other day about how he would be leaving town and she might follow him later, when the time was right.
Susie: Well, but she was drunk.
Kate: She said yes?
(Susie nods)
Kate: Holy shit, I can picture it now, how Gossard would propose, "Yo, everybody, this is Gossard and I got a announcement and all. Beth, I want you to marry me. Okay, thanks everybody. Go IU!"
Susie: So then apparently Mark comes up to Gossard today and was like, "Hey, congratulations man." And Gossard just looked at him a minute and said, "Why?"
Kate: No way.
Susie: Yeah, and when Mark reminded him of what he'd done last night, he said, "Oh yeah, uhh, thanks I guess."
Kate: Hasn't Gossard been engaged before?
Susie: Yup.
Kate: Beautiful.


Jane: And now we're encaged! I can hardly wait till we're marred!

Theory: The World's Sexiest Stutter

[Randy Bachman]

The birth of rock n' roll was instrumental before it was vocal. But as anyone with a soft spot for karaoke can tell you, there's a diffference between singing correctly and singing with style. Initially white rockers tried to sound like Chuck Berry and R&B vocalists, but given a little time, various distinctive vocal stylings emerged to define rock. 70s metal wails led to punk's aggressive un-prettiness which led to the raging screams of rap-metal fusion, the least interesting of the bunch, in my opinion. In some ways, much of rock's vocal stylings sought to undermine the prettiness of the crooner tradition and the show tunes popular in the previous generation (the first to hear those tunes broadcast free on radio airwaves).

Easily the coolest such innovation in rock vocal stylings was the adoption of the stutter. Who would have guessed that the trait that could easily mark a child for endless playground humiliations would sound so cool and confident on stage? Consider The Who: "Talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-g-generation. It's my generation, baby!" It's the deliberation of it, the sweet anticipation and syncopation that makes you grin or want to scream. Or their softer-rock offspring, Huey Lewis and the News: "Th-th-th-th-they say the heart of rock n' roll is still beatin'." Maybe it's the stutter's appropriateness to highlight a significant moment in the song. Maybe it's the breakdown of language into mere sound. Or the way the audience is thus taken inside the singer's mind. The bold among us might dare to say it's a moment when the performer's smooth persona (Everything he says is rehearsed after all) drops, if only momentarily, if only seemingly.

But the most powerful application of this souped up speech impediment came from Bachman Turner Overdrive in their 1974 hit "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet." "B-b-b-baby, you just ain't seen n-n-n-nothin' yet." Theirs is the very sexiest use, connecting the withheld syllables with the promise of the loving to come. I wish I could tell you they knew what they were doing. In fact, singer Randy Bachman was goofing on his brother, their manager, who did have a stutter. It was the record company that insisted this version was superior.

B-b-b-badass, regardless.

Your Centurion or Mine?

I recently had the bewildering experience of teaching poetry at both ends of the human lifespan within the course of a few days. I helped out in my mom's fourth grade classroom for a morning, and the following Monday taught for an hour at Meadowood Retirement Community. The following are observations and comparisons.

Both the fourth graders and the retirees had good senses of humor, by which I mean potty humor. That put me at ease ... at first. Both groups were also pretty comfortable sharing ideas in a group setting, in which they differed from college students, who ordinarily take a couple of class periods to open up. Both also engaged in repeating each other's ideas extensively, as though they could share the approval that the original idea had garnered. Did they think I had forgotten that Tommy just said, "My little brother pees the bed and one time he got the dog," only moments ago?

The greatest lines of each exercise? From Meadowood (concerning mothers): Some blissfully hum / Others merely grunt like a ferocious goose / Twisting its wings as it sails. From 4th grade (concerning toenails): They were not made to eat.

The fourth graders moved constantly, and I was exhausted from always checking to make sure I wasn't about to step on one. The old folks didn't move their wheelchairs at all, and I was exhausted by my own efforts to speak loudly and clearly and be engaging and respectful all at once. At Meadowood, I was surprised to learn from an aide that one nice lady was a centurion. "Her chariot is smaller than I would have imagined," I remarked. "Centenarian," corrected the supervisor. She was born in 1902 - she'd seen everything worth seeing in the 20th century, and had gone right ahead living. There's a vote of confidence if I ever saw one.

Easily the most remarkable part of my visit was the commentary of Dr. Dean*. Regardless of the situation, when called upon to speak, Dr. Dean would announce, "Mothers should raise their children with practices of healthful living." I would nod and he would repeat the proclamation, each time with further conviction and irritation at my dunderheadedness. In trying to elaborate, he later announced, "Mothers should raise their children with practices of healthful living from infancy!" The next time: "Mothers and fathers should raise their children with practices of healthful living." He seemed genuinely pissed off, as though I had disagreed, leaving future generations to the dogs. After the session, I was informed that Dr. Dean had been a part of the team that instituted the practice of adding flouride to drinking water. More recently I was told that this practice is currently in question by the scientific community.

Great fun, all in all. From Meadowood I received a copy of our poem and a nice thank you card. From the 4th graders I received a detailed pencil sketch of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle with the inscription: "To my friend Chris, from John."

*Pseudonym

Performers & Cheaters

[Jean-Paul Sartre looking cheeky]

I've been reading Lorrie Moore's short stories on a blanket in the sun, which is a surefire recipe for ambivalence. One moment you're laughing bitterly at life's unthinking cruelties; the next the warmth has flooded your body as fully as reality programming's saturated television, leaving you with that slow-brain phenomenon ordinarily reserved for the end of a good party. But the two best stories in Self-Help, "How to be an Other Woman" and "What is Seized" got me thinking about performers, today's subject.

Both stories involve relationships between women and cold men, men who withhold love as though it were a savings bond to be offered some day in the future, with interest. And both, since Moore is a true tour de force of witticisms, are comical performers. It made me think, as a good book can, about character. It made me think, as is my sole capacity, about myself. Often talented performers are people who desire the approval of strangers. They are driven by some feeling of inadequacy or withheld affection, and seek to pave over this lack with generous applause. It is as though in those moments on stage, you are not yourself. You are who you always wanted to be.

The former story revolves around the protagonist's affair with a married man. I imagine too that cheating on someone is related to seeking the approval of strangers. In the rush of passion, or heady infatuation, your newfound partner may see you as this other person, the one you had wanted to be. Of course it cannot last, that was the reason you cheated in the first place, because your girlfriend/wife/soul mate discovered you were someone else. Sartre wrote about this at length, being in-itself vs. of-itself. The man who desires to be who he is on stage misses the point of his own humanity. But even Sartre was not above pettiness, as he refused the Nobel Prize claiming this reason, when the real reason was that they'd already given one to Camus.

The worst part of the cheater's dilemma is that in seeking to be someone he is not, he engages in that same withholding that may have driven him there in the first place. Withholding love from his mistress, withholding honesty from his mate, withholding acceptance from himself. Being mistaken momentarily for that impossible man he'd like to be is the very worst kind of tease, a drug that never quite satiates the appetite, well all the while growing that appetite into something monstrous. I'm at a point where I recognize the mistakes of my youth well enough to prevent myself from cheating, but it is another task to eliminate that performer's hunger and stop wishing I was the other self.

Theory: The Lawrence Welk Show Warped an Entire Generation

Because I live in a small city and because of my apartment's location, I have terrible television reception. For those of you raised on cable, "reception" refers to the TV's ability to pick up radio waves projected through the air for free by the major networks and small local broadcasters. I used to pick up two channels: PBS and a station about Jesus. The latter featured so much talk about opening your heart that I thought at first it must be Discovery Channel. Unfortunately, the Jesus station has either run dry of funds or saw fit to beam their message elsewhere, and now I live by PBS alone.

Which isn't really a problem ... except for Saturdays. I'm not a total recluse, but there's the occasional Saturday when I don't do much but sit around the apartment or clean the fish tanks. It wasn't much better when I had a girlfriend - we spent most Saturdays arguing. Just kidding. No I'm not. Yeah, I really am. But Saturday night on the thinly funded local PBS affiliate features a show my grandmother remembers fondly, a show full of bouffants and a watered-down big band sound, a show of nasal singing and seemingly endless rows of grinning blondes, a show hosted by Lawrence Welk.

It is extremely painful to sit through an hour of the Lawrence Welk Show. No one is allowed to stop smiling at any point in the proceedings, which produces a tiring effect upon the viewer's jaw. Or maybe that was just my teeth grinding. The Show was aired before the legalization of irony, which leaves you really wondering about some of the skits. In one, a buxom young woman in a billowy taffeta dress sits on a park bench with her considerably older beau. Her song is about how she likes him because he buys her all the "frankfurter sandwiches" she can eat, and following the final note, she chomps an enormous mouthful of the hotdog in hand. I mean, come on. Did nobody get it?

So today's theory: The Lawrence Welk Show was both a product of and a participant in an emotionally stifled generation that led to the miseries of suburbia captured especially well in Tim Burton films. Those rows of pastel cookie-cutter homes in their bright green lawns from Edward Scissorhands? The creepy pleasantries and country charm of the residents of Spectre in Big Fish? All of this (and I mean America too) makes so much more sense after seeing a single episode of The Lawrence Welk Show.

Just promise me you will not open your heart to it.