I Love The Way You Call Me Baby

Part 1
He's lost, he's tired.  They've been driving for miles.  She's trying to have an intelligent conversation, full of nervous energy.

As usual, with 40 more miles to go. He needs to pee. All his brain energy is focused on keeping the bladder in check.

"Whatever you say, Baby,"

"Wait. Did you just call me 'Baby' ???"

LONG PAUSE.  Careful and considered.

"Whatever it was I didn't mean ta!"

He hopes that by quoting a fragment from a song, he can stop her from exploding.  It's the first thing that comes into his mind really, every time he finds himself dealing with a woman who is about to explode.  Or a drunk guy at a bar who is eager to punch him.  He knows she knows this song.  The problem is that he can't remember what song it's from.  This puzzles takes up much more brain space than whatever it is she is telling him.

"I can't believe I'm riding around with a guy who uses the word "Baby" in an un-ironic manner.  It's like you are trying to infantalize me!"

His ears catch up with his brain: Hang on, did she just say something about an infant?  Could she be pregnant?

He looks over at her, hoping to say something brilliant.  Pull some great joke out of his ass.  He raises an eyebrow.

"You've come a long way? Baby?"

He flashes his characteristic smile.

He breaks her.

She can't help but laugh.

Miraculously, they make it to the gig without him ruining his only clean pair of trousers.  Although it was a close call when the owner wanted an autograph before giving directions to the bathroom.

Mary Mary by the Monkees

==
PART 2

Sometime during their Sound Check, she wants to get back at him.  She tries teasing him, but he is all focus and frustration.  He climbs off the stage to check the balance of the speakers.

She begins to sing tunelessly:
"Don't use that toilet if you have to go to the bathroom during the show. I can hear you onstage"
She manages to whisper it into the mic in a somewhat sultry manner.

He whirls around.

"KEEP SINGING! I need to hear how it sounds!"

Suddenly she's stung, staring back at his words, surprised and suddenly scared, as if he's asked her to strip.

He thinks: She's so stuck up about things. Such a prude.  How am I even on tour with someone like her, so uptight all the time?

"Wait, wait, wait. What-what should I sing?  You usually . . . "

All her bravado is gone. She's lost without him and his guitar.  He knows she HATES singing acapella, and he's being slightly cruel.  But he likes it somehow.  Maybe he'll throw her a note.

"SHUT UP AND SING!"

Or maybe he'll just yell at her.  Sometimes that works too.

With lasers of hatred beaming from her eyes, she begins.

"I'll buy you Rogaine
When you start losing all your hair/
I'll sew on patches/
To all your underwear"

Her eyes.  They look so mean, but she has twisted the lyrics out of shape.  It's some random hit song on the radio.  "Underwear" is clearly her own invention.

"Keep going!'  He yells over his shoulder as he walks into the shadows, trying to hide a smirk. But it's too late.  They were making fun of the real lines in the song while they were in the car, randomly and not nearly this cleverly.  She keeps going until he falls on the floor laughing.  And nearly ruins his pants a second time.

==
PART 3

It's a small crowd, but after a full set, he decides it's a perfect time to do an encore.  As usual, she has no idea where's he's going with this.

"We have a tradition.  MUSICIANS, that is, have a tradition.  Of carrying on a great song, of carrying on the tradition."  He's very serious.  She looks over at him, dubiously. Wondering where her part comes in.  If he has decided to include her at all.

"Are WE serious musicians?" She asks, both to him and to the crowd, neither of which takes any of this patter seriously.

But he plows forward. "We, of course, being SERIOUS musicians, WE have followed in the tradition of hearing a song and wanting to make it our own.  Excuse me, we take it, make it our own, and thereby-we ruin it.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen!  We, in particular, LOVE to ruin songs!"

"I have no idea where this is going, but I like it!" She interjects. The audience laughs.  They are with them, wherever they are going.

"So here is a song, I'm not even sure what it is called or who sings it, but we heard it on the radio, one of the 'commercial' stations, so it must be a hit,"

"So therefore, we hate it!" Gleefully, she can't let him alone.

"No, no, no.  We DON'T hate it.  We only ruin songs we LOVE!  The songs we hate don't get played at all!"

"RIGHT!" She is all cheer and fun and games at this point, "So, what song IS this?  I'm just curious."

"You want to know the song you are going to be singing?"  He strums his guitar absentmindedly, like he's a cowboy loading a gun.

"I'M going to be singing?"  There's that fear again, just behind her eyes.

"I hope you sing it.  I certainly don't know it!"  The audience laughs again, a little more uncertainly this time.  "Start by singing it straight, and then do what you were doing before.  When we were doing the sound check,"
"Oh that. Hmm. Okay...."
He strums a vague intro, and instead of jumping in with a brilliant line, she giggles.

"Wait, I don't think I can sing it straight!! Just play and I'll sing . . ."
"Usually I like to introduce the name of the song we're ruining, but here I'll just assume you guys will recognize this famous hit.  Or if we are really lucky, maybe by the end of the night, it'll be a whole NEW song!"

He started again, and this time, miracle of miracles, she came in perfectly.

"I'll knit you Rogaine/
when you stop losing all your hair/
I'll bring you flowers/
for all your underwear"

And it just got worse.  But her voice was lovely, and everyone in the audience was drunk, and happy to stay for their private joke, which expanded to include the entire roomful of drunken customers of the bar.  And those people who were fed up with the music business, or the "Mucus Business" as he called it, being sold crap as their only option.  But it was fun to listen to her, making up endless variations on a theme, vaguely resembling a hit song on the radio, that was too precious anyway.

From that night on, members of the audience would hear the song on the radio and be disappointed that it wasn't her perfect, Dr. Demento version of it.  But they would smile anyway.


OTHER VARIATIONS

I'll sew on patches
When you start losing all your hair
I'll buy you flowers
To match your sweater!

I'll buy you flowers
When you start losing all your hair
I'll buy you Rogaine
For all your underwear

I'll buy you Rogaine
To fix your sweater
I'll buy you flowers
To make it better

I'll knit you Rogaine
When you stop losing all your hair
I'll buy you flowers
For all your underwear

Cause I-I-I Love
The way you call me patches
And you-oo-oo-oh 
Take me the way I am!


The Way I Am by Ingrid Michaelson

May I Suggest /One more hour of Light

And then it happened.

The crash came.  The sound of breaking glass.

He said, "It's over.  It's all over."

The guitar fell, smashing into pieces 6 floors below.

She said, "I don't see any reason to stay, either"

They finally had the fight that consumed the last morsel of their love.

And then she laughed.

And he flashed his brilliant smile.

All the anxieties that had been lingering, unspoken, tension that collects in her eyebrows and shoulders.  So many moments of feeling bad, of beating yourself up. Regrets, lost moments, hours, days, years. All that awful stuff that lasted too long.

And their eyes fell into harmony again.  One simple look, and they could laugh at the world.  And themselves.

Because in those darkest moments, when they had lost everything, a single song of laughter saved them.

Looking in his eyes, she felt him holding her in their tent, looking up at the stars.

(The next morning was their least romantic moment; they awoke clumsily groping each other until they could no longer take the moist heat inside the canvas colored oven. Comedy always flipped over the moments when they took themselves too seriously.)

Every moment was a new beginning and was pulled into the past so quickly, eroding their days until their final moments together.  On their first tour.  Their last moments onstage together.  The last time they sang.  Their last moments together.

==
(Back to the present)

She lay smiling, feeling the strange gravel under her wrist.  Hearing the music playing, thank god the music was still on.  Although it was probably a hallucination.

God, she hated goodbyes.

But she felt a sleepiness approaching. Something like a stage going dark.  Like that afternoon at the valley festival, watching the sun setting over the hillside. Lying down on a camping pad, almost vertical on the hill. His arm around her shoulder for a pillow.

She was dreaming of a harmony, so sweet, so beautiful, she needed to wake up and get it down! But she couldn't move, her limbs had been rearranged somehow and down was up and everything was vice versa.  The parts that she could move felt weighed down and the parts she couldn't feel made her feel free.

God, the harmony was gorgeous.  She couldn't tell if she was tearing up or if her vision was shifting too.  Maybe she was drowning . . . but no, the highway wasn't under water. The gravel under her wrist, the tiny pebbles hurt her wrist as she moved her hand. She was trapped between her rental car and the road.

And wasn't going to get out.

Damn, just her luck to have a fatal accident and not have HIM in the car. HE wanted to die.  She, she was fine with life. So many things left undone  .... well, the thing that was the worst was not being able to write down this harmony that she was hearing.  Or to be able to sing it with him.

With that, the tears came. She opened her mouth to sing.

And that was all.




May I Suggest To You by Susan Werner (video)

Susan Werner and Red Molly (video with crickets)

And never know each other

She was always amazed by the crowds when they were deep in the Magic.

She doubted him at the beginning of every set, but kept the faith as each note was released into the air.

The view from the stage was into a canyon of the universe, stars flashing, ablaze, repeatedly, supernovas dying and being reborn within the chaos.

Why were they taking pictures of him? And Them? Aka The Band, aka the Group, aka the Monsters, aka the Cash Cows, they were the same-even after 40 years. Minute differences in shading from one year to the next were unworthy of such careful documentation.

Walking through the crowds at the convention, she saw scrapbooks of their shared histories. Fans taking pictures side by side. A calendar montage from a movie from 1939. And a constant reminder of how the body and the soul age at different rates. Flip. Dorian Gray. Flip. Dorian Gray. Flip. Dorian Gray.

There was a spontaneous gathering and sing along in the lobby of the hotel. She watched from the balcony; bodies not accustomed to dancing freely, voices strong with song. Her camera froze them into rapturous statues.

She ran backstage to show him and the other guys. But he was bored. They were bored.

Even the Pope gets jaded.

The green room was Waiting for Godot.

I'm disappointed in the taste.

Who am I to want something?

"I'm disappointed in the taste?"

So someone will just be summoned by the ring of a bell, and D will get a new cup of coffee. And he will pay them with a smile, and they will see him posing moodily by the glass door, on his boxers.

But that was me in another life. The scared boy, the humble servant. Offering up the item that was desired and of higher value than my own person. And then running away, backing away.

And somehow my special spark, the music talent, got plucked out of obscurity. There are a million other boys with cute smiles that this may have happened to, but it was me.

The cameras will convince you that you are a god. A minor deity. But experience will teach you otherwise. You will find yourself, again and again. In talented guitarists, in shy, beautiful boys, in funny sour loners. Why wasn't it them,

I still have to remind myself that I am the
Rock God. Or at least playing the role.

She, poor girl, she is caught up in the depression too. A sense of general worthlessness, compounded by the feeling of not being effective in the world.

I understand how to emerge from my own, but not to help her out of hers.

Life Was No Prize

He had always believed in not crying during a performance.  Overacting, cheap tricks.  It comes off as insincere, no matter what.

But there was one night, after a long fight, after losing their love and regaining it again.  They were onstage, and she sang an old standard.  He brought it in for the Beatles reference.  (He had mixed it up with "Till there was you", "I never sawr them ringing")  Something about not knowing. It's all the same isn't it?

So she sang it.

And that night, she heard it completely sincerely.  Realizing how wondrous the lyrics were, and she felt everything just at that second.  He wondered if he should stop her, when he saw her trembling.  But his first instinct was to look at the audience.  They were rapt.  Enraptured in her.

He began to cry as well.  At her basic sincerity.  At the idea that it was HIS love she was singing about.  At the idea that he could change someone so fundamentally with the GOOD part of himself.  And of course, how she had influenced him.  How she had sculpted him into a beautiful version of himself.

She taught him how to be generous.  Not the jealous love of his former blond skinny girlfriends, who would resent him talking to anyone (no matter if they were the prettiest in the room, they always had the biggest insecurities over their looks.  As they aged, revenge did not turn sweet.  Only bitter, as they were bewildered by the lack of attention)

She made him feel like everyone around them was in love too. The band, the audience, strangers they'd meet in their travels.  Even when she wanted to keep him to herself, she'd let him go.  He always wanted to come back to her, to be in her presence.  Even more than music, her aura was the one tangible thing to him.  The one clear magnet in his life.

The sheer randomness of love and luck, and how inevitable it all was.

And how scary it was to imagine a life without her.  And how tenuous it was, even at that very moment.  How every moment seemed to be touch and go.  Or touch and stay.  How likely it was that she'd walk out on him any second, so he needed to walk first.

She looked at him, to hand the solo over to him.  And their eyes met, and he turned away immediately.  Tears falling on his guitar.  Damn, he couldn't take it.  But he told her in the solo.  "You are the single best thing that's ever happened to me, onstage or off.  With you, I've hit the lottery."

Driving home that night, she wasn't sure if she knew what time it was yet.  And that it was getting very late, too late to figure it out.  More of her life was spent in that hovering place, just about to figure things out. Maybe.  Maybe it was right next to her.  Maybe it was still out there for her.

How amazing to be sitting next to a man who plays like that.  To sing to him and to the audiences; to be in just the right magic time and space to make that kind of music.  It didn't matter who heard. Even she didn't hear what she was singing. And so took it for granted.  And was distracted by all the gear, setup and breakdown and getting lost in the wilds of New Jersey.

Life was no prize.

Still.

Nancy Lamott-I Didn't Know What Time It Was

Every junkie's like a setting sun

They woke up to terrible news.

Again.

He had known the man for 40 years.  An addiction that had been fought and won, and then this, the surprise relapse.  Being caught in the headlights, the tiny miscalculation. They used to get high together, in the casual, trippy Canyon-Valley days.  Watching the trees in the rain turn into seaweed.

Now, outside the hotel room, there was ice and snow covering the trees.  He was glad they didn't have to go anywhere today.  Glad to wrap themselves in fancy hotel blankets and have food delivered.

The radio was on, the recurring headline.  "Found with a needle in his arm".  He looked out the window and tried not to think.  Everything was delicately, painfully beautiful. The branches covered in ice reminded him of syringes. Endless, everywhere, dangling, teasing him with their innocence.

His own addiction and recovery and relapse, hidden and secret and tenuous. She had no idea. And he was so careful to make sure she never knew.  How close he had come so many times.

The time they were loading the truck and the guitar was balanced on the edge of the wall.  Knocking it and catching it as it nearly fell the 6 stories.  The knot in the stomach, you going over with the guitar in the air.  Seeing it fall and catching it, oh the good grasp, lucky and random, pulling a success out of fate.
Driving through the snowstorm, visions of sliding at 60 miles an hour, a solid chestnut tree awaiting the impact.  The car in front stopping too quickly, your heart stops. You swerve, always almost too late.  Knowing that one day, it will happen and your reaction will be too slow.

She had seen this guy once in person, an intimate concert.  Had remarked how touched she was by his voice, as if it created its own microclimate.  His voice brought her back to the tiny cabin in the woods, vacations with her parents, when things were happy.

He told her stories, and she, polite audience that she was, listened deep into the night.  He kept talking as he could hear her gently snoring.

He knew it was an accident.  Anticipation and beautiful hunger for this imminent period of creativity.  Floating, swimming, hearing music in your own breath. The last time he had spoken to The Voice, there was excitement about getting back into the studio.

Her breathing had turned quiet.


The Needle and the Damage Done by Neil Young

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/n/neil+young/the+needle+the+damage+done_20099058.html

Gone To Graveyards, Every One

When he first left home to join the fresh faced kids in Greenwich Village, he was not only going after what was cool, but also what seemed important.  It was important to understand, but not ally yourself, with the workers.  You were an ARTIST, with a capital ART. Too many of the kids who came from the upper classes were trying to distance themselves from their parents and too many of the kids from the working class were trying to aspire to the arts.  But the class divides were pretty thinly drawn.

As much as you wanted to be magnanimous, anyone who asked for money too often was a drag.

He felt the sense that his parents were from both the intellectual class and the hard-working class, but not the rich class.  They also were atheist in the way that they believed in personal spiritual enlightenment.   Their churches and temples were replaced with patchouli, scarves and incense.  Scripture was replaced by streetcorner prophets and faith in the voices in their heads.

Turning the corner from Avenue A, off of Thompkins Square Park, he found himself walking west across East 7th Street, his coat too thin and his shoes too worn, he thought about his friends who kept repeating a certain word like an incantation.  "Paradise on Earth is", "He went there and now everyone wants to sleep with him, boys and girls", "Sunshine and beaches as far as the eye can see"

California.  California.  California.

He was running out of money.  As in, he didn't have enough money for aspirin for the hangovers he'd get in the mornings and his upstairs neighbors started belly dancing.  Even his Salvation Army budget was too low to get another sweater when the temperature dropped this quickly.  A sweater or a meal. Even then, he was still living off ketchup soup and other depressing Depression meals taught to him by his grandfather.  And his apartment didn't have heat.  He'd gladly sing and march against his own landlord, but he was never around.  And all his friends seemed to only gather around him in the cafes, wanting company on their terrible songs and even worse voices.

Before he got to 2nd Avenue, he had a revelation.

California. California.  California.

He had come to the Village to sing with Pete Seeger and anyone else who might still be Blacklisted.  To be the next Bob Dylan.  Or at least the next Tiny Tim.  He wasn't sure yet who he was, but he knew he was SOMEBODY and was tired of trying all the different versions of himself out. At first he'd come onstage with a serious reverence for the cause and sing every song he knew (which was maybe 5 for this crowd).  But the crowd just glared at him and the hat that was passed seemed very light. Not even enough for a pity drink.  Somehow the girls dressed in black and their boyfriends looked right through him.  But the night he dropped his guitar and nearly knocked out some of the people in the front row, they woke up.  Maybe it was a matter of making sure he didn't spill anything on them, but they kept their eyes on him.  He tried to make a joke, something self-effacing.  Playing the dummy.  Happens to everyone.

The hat was full that night. He even got dollar bills.

And so the next night, he pretended to drop his guitar, and with the clumsiness of someone trying to pretend to be clumsy, he showed a certain vulnerability.  Just when he had thought that he had failed, a girl tried to chat him up after his set.

A year later, he was an expert at playing the dummy.  But the smart one.  The one who knew politics and only said things that the real idiots were too stupid to think of (SCENE)  Burns and Allen would've been proud of him, getting laughs on jokes they didn't even write but which they somehow taught him over the radio in his mother's kitchen.

He had come to NYC with a banjo on his knee, determined to take over the Folk Music world.  It was the only thing he left for his upstairs neighbor the morning after he bedded her.  Never shit where you live.  And never fool around with your neighbor, she can see every girl you bring in after her.  That's why he waited until his last night in New York.  Plus his landlord was waiting for him in his apartment.

California. California. California.

There was a carfull of his friends leaving the next morning and he decided to be on it.  THe night before was his last folk singing night (even though he didn't know) He had got his guitar out of hock and didn't want to be burdened with two instruments.

Maybe she could take up the banjo.  There was only so far you could go with bellydancing.

Where Have All The Flowers Gone? Pete Seeger

I've Got A Song To Sing

Another one died.

It was a cold winter.  The temperatures were below normal, below tolerable.  Walks which were beautiful in the snow and ice were now painful.

For many, it was A Time To Die.  Like in Ecclesiastes, a time for everything. And you knew that if you just kept moving, you'd make it to a time when the earth had melted.  But at a time when the only comfort was the thought of a warmer world, it was hard to sing.

And that's why he got her out of bed.  Before she could protest.  Even when her voice was in shreds from tears (and so was his), he kept nudging her to sing.  Louder.  Keep going.

He knew her natural inclination was to depression (as was his).  But she was there, and so there was a reason to keep fighting.

They could collapse later (it was their silent motto).  But to find out, first thing in the morning, that THIS great man had died was too much for either of them to take alone.

They kept singing.

Pete Seeger, If I Had A Hammer

Some Have Gone and Some Remain

Early on, he was an asshole.

Her first few encounters with the old guy whose young smile had adorned her bedroom walls, were disappointing to say the least.

Sexist request #1-someone else she liked, who cried

Sexist insult/yell #2- someone who didn't care

And one day she had a conversation with someone
"it's his complex, not yours"
(JIM?  She liked him when he wasn't trying to pull of the gruff exterior.

Sexist remark, when they were trying to cut a commercial.  He needed a woman's voice.

I should have someone else doing this for me

"Don't look at me, I'm just the talent here,"
Shrugs, he smiles. They crack up.

It certainly helped their friendship that everytime they got annoyed with each other, the world would jump in and offer a joke.

During a formal fight/breaking the ice
Some guy watering his lawn with a hose with his upstage hand.

"See that guy peeing on his front lawn?"


==
He's driving everyone in the van, HENRY.  Hoping they'll make it to the pizza place (she made the wrong reservation, at the wrong place, 20 miles in the wrong direction.

She picked a final request (so proud of herself)
He gets mad.
"Now everyone will think we slept together!"
"That shouldn't bother you, Mr. Lothario!"
I do try to keep some buts of my life respectable.  I'm not one of those guys who's looking to get laid just because my wife left me.  Certainly not with the likes of you!

 "intern" was still a bad word.  So was Monica Lewinsky.






In My Life

Sharing Horizons that Are New To Us

Some nights, most nights, he'd make sure to include a solo guitar break for himself.

Some nights, it was him showing off.  Just being flashy because he could.  He still had it all in his fingers.

But some nights, he had his band with him, and he'd step aside to let the better guy do it.  And that's when she found him "tangled in his Telacaster".  When he found himself lost among the chords.

She closed her eyes and could hear the guitar spin yarns about that girl with the wavy blonde hair, all the way down to her butt.  Rapunzel. And that girl in the harem costume.  Waves of wigs, wiggling hips.  And that hair spread out on the bed. "Golden Hair Across Your Face"

She heard all sorts of places they were.  That funny little intersection that night in Irvine, was it a school, was it a detour?  Driving into LA at 5am, him so sleepy beside her.  The horizon line red with early morning and the ocean to their left.

Getting lost in Lexington, the proposal that never happened.  Blaming him and not blaming him. She was not blaming him these days.

The glory of Bamff.

All these sights that he must've seen in his life, repeatedly.  And how big the state of North America wa to them.

Once upon a time, he had declared touring to be one long, dark tunnel, with brief moments of light.  When you are onstage, blinded and suddenly in front of thousands, hundreds, dozens.  Someone. Waiting to hear you play.

She heard him play a chord and repeatedly visit it, go back to tickle it again.  "The long road stretches out ahead, a half a million miles"

She thinks of all the horizons and view through their shared windshield.

She thinks of all the familiar places she's driven through.  How some roads feel like train tracks, groove worn in them so deeply that to vary an inch seems impossible.  She thinks of the specific emotion of pulling up to the view of your house, or your friend's house. Or the house where you grew up.  For the millionth time, for the last time.  For the first time in years.

If the car is their only home, if they know its view better than they know the driveway of the house, if they know how it feels to ride side by side, then everywhere is home to them.

She thinks that this view, from the stage is getting to be familiar to her, that the tunnel of her life is all in shadows. That the back of his head, his thinning hair caught in the spotlight, is the sight of her home.  And she wonders where his home is.  If he ever has one. Or appreciates it when he finds it.

"We've Only Just Begun" Stevie Wonder

When I Was Young/ I'd Listen to the Radio . . .

DJ TIME-ON THE AIR

Funny for her to get sentimental about a memory of a memory.

She knew the "sha-la-las" and "shing-a-ling-a-ling" referred to the Oldies-Oldies songs on Oldies 103. The 50's Do-Wop that they'd drop from their format entirely in the new century.

As an only child, she was the daughter of a mother whose musical taste was simple; she had four songs in her repertoire.  American songs had first emigrated to her island on newly invented phonograph records of the twenties.  30 years later, crooners were still singing "Button Up Your Overcoat" on the Victrola. The war planes flying overhead during WWII, found her singing "Don't Sit Under The Apple Tree", while she herself ate nispheras and other "exotic" fruits that only grew in tropical zones like Florida and California.   Having come to America, still optimistic at 33, her mother had expected streets paved with gold, or at the very least, the Reader's Digest version of life.  Doris Day sang "Que Sera Sera" and she echoed the sentiment.  She knew about the early Beatles, the group that was a hit in Europe, before they came to America and "got crazy". She'd sing the closest thing to a lullabye to her baby, "Listen, Do-Wah-Do, Do you Want To Know A Secret?" and pour out all her grief and sorrow to her little girl.  Teaching her a few "face" words in Portuguese, Lingua, Nariz, Olhos, Boca, Cara.  The secret was she wanted to be back in Portugal.

Her father's favorite singer was Judy Collins.  But that was all hearsay.  "He had died when she was young" (a phrase she heard herself saying so often that she thought she should put it to music).  He left behind no records of his own.

She didn't get a stereo of her own until after he died.  It was a radio, PLUS a record player, PLUS a tape deck to record off of the previous two.  She dated her musical life from the point she could tape her favorite songs off the radio and borrow records from the library.  That and her walkman meant she could listen to her tape of Judy Collins asking them to send in the clowns a million times without ever understanding what it was about.  But logging it in her memory banks for later translation.

There were commercials on television about these songs she heard on Oldies 103, during the Burns and Allen Show, during the Danny Thomas Show, during Leave it to Beaver and I Dream of Jeannie.  Hits of the 50's, Solid Gold of the 60's, spliced into new songs-so you couldn't tell which notes belonged to which songs. The ultimate mix-tape.

And then there was a commercial about The Carpenters.  From the way the announcer talked about them, you could tell there was tragedy.  Were they a couple?  Was it a murder-suicide?  Did he die young like her father?  The songs were so beautiful, and she NEVER heard them on the radio-were they banned? (Was the tragedy as bad as Charles Manson?)  Or just forgotten?  She snuck a check from her mother's secret hiding place and sent $19.95 plus shipping and handling for a two record or cassette set, featuring the Carpenters.  She chose cassettes because they were easier to hide.

She brought them on the road trip to Quabbin Reservoir, she brought them to San Jose.  She listened to them instead of listening to the grown-ups talk.  She was a teenager anyway, a decade or two off.

When she found out the true story, that she had been listening to the Patron Saint of Anorexics, she got into the habit of not eating whenever their songs came on.  It fit right in with her own lifestyle.  She could go for 4 days without eating, and even then, she had stopped because of a mental block, not because she was hungry.

Somehow, the radio began playing Carpenter songs whenever they were in a diner.

"Aren't you gonna eat?  You just said you were starving!"
"Um, no.  I'm not hungry anymore," staring at the luscious hamburger on her plate.
"Is she finished?" asked the waitress.
"I guess.  Don't you want to wrap it up?"
Karen wouldn't want you to.  SHE wouldn't eat a hamburger.
"Um, no thank you.  I'm done,"

The combination of Catholic School teaching the virtues of suffering and the holy voice of Karen would confuse her for decades.

She never starved herself down to her ideal weight, even when she stopped eating.  So she figured she might as well treat food like other people did.  But she'd stop everytime she heard Karen's voice coming over the loudspeakers.  Karen would want you to enjoy everything this life had to offer.

Nothing tastes as good as thin.
Thin tastes like death.
Food=Life=Sensual Pleasures=Music=Sex=Life (Good and Bad)

She was learning from a ghost to remember the old music fondly.  A memory once removed.  Remembering herself, remembering Karen remembering the Do-Wop from the 50's.

"Those old memories/ still sound so good to me . . . "
"Aren't you gonna eat your hamburger?"
"I think I'll save it for later,"


The Carpenters, featuring Karen Carpenter, Yesterday Once More

Nowadays ____ Can't Even Sing

DJ DAYS-DRIVING TO AN APPEARANCE

"Who's coming home on the old ninety five?" Does that mean the highway??  Boston/New York?

I don't know. Yeah, maybe.

I really love this band.

This one? Glad you do.  Ever hear of a band called "Buffalo Fish"?

No, HA!  Was it a cover band for this one?  A parody band?

A parody band? Um, no, it was a proto-version.  It was this lead singer and a few other guys.  And me.

YOU!?!?! What do you mean?

I mean, I knew these guys.  We all came from New York to LA together. He recommended me for an audition.  They wanted someone who looked twice as good, but could sing half as well.

Audition?  You mean, The Audition?

Yep.  And when I got it, when I was the one making all the money. God, $100K in a single year!  That was Hollywood money, baby!  In those days.  I loaned him money to buy a sailboat.  I believed in him when nobody else did.

And now?  Have you ever tried to get your money back?

What?  Now that he's been knighted by the Rock gods and I've been forgotten?

No, I mean, well, he could do a show with you or something . . .

YOU negotiate that one with his agent!!

Okay, I will!  Have you even asked?

Never mind.  DON'T.

(They were silent for a few miles.  She didn't want to bring out that alcoholic-pity tone in his voice.  The bitter, sour notes that came into his conversation, like that awful "Auntie" song he had to sing during concerts with the group.  Fitting into his old minstrel show of himself, lines well-rehearsed.  Mr.Bojangles, dance.  He got that look sometimes when he flipped through record bins.  All of them young and happy.  His friends in the "Classic Rock" bins, and his best work in the "Novelty" section.)

He was driving.  And dry-eyed.

You know, I work very hard to keep myself in the mindset of being the virtuous folk/blues guy.  Playing for anyone who will show up.  Keeping the faith that it's a matter of persistance.  Or that I used up all the recognition when I was 22.  But there are moments, y'know?  When this seems like such a sham.  I don't understand how our paths diverged.  I was the one who took the road more traveled, and that HAS made all the difference.  But the thing is . . . if I hadn't signed that pact with the devil, I don't think I would've had a career at all.  I think I'd still be washing dishes.

(That hit her hard.  Was it possible that all the Stars in Hollywood and Rock were NOT preordained to be famous?  Growing up on Entertainment Tonight, it had all seemed like a modern version of the Roman Gods she'd studied in school.  Now even those seemed like random hype.  Fame was all fiction. It was like discovering that Columbus knew America was there.//Like Alice had taken opium, like Snow White had been raped by a necrophiliac. It was the same feeling.  The world shifted slightly on its axis as they pulled into Canobie Lake Park.

She had a month of Sundays in her mind, days when her father was still alive and had taken her there on Company Picnic Days.  Her heart stuck in midair as the plastic log reached the summit, before it slid down on the flume.  The idea of not being able to stop it, the point of no return.  Some of the more simple, delicious days of childhood and early summer.  All the rides were free and there were no lines.  As if she had the place to herself.  And now, here he was, her hero, ready to announce the lineup of other acts. Not even asked to sing.

His guitar case was in the backseat.  Like it always was.  She couldn't remember the last time he had taken it out. She wasn't even sure if there was a guitar in there.


Buffalo Springfield, Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing

COFFEE!

"You're Every Thought/
Your Every Think/
You're Every Song I'll Ever Sink"

They had stopped for coffee an hour ago. Iowa rolled out before and behind them; a toy car driving over the patchwork quilt. Somehow, the countryside looked more beautiful over her shoulder and he couldn't stop looking at her in the passenger seat. She was serene as a movie star.  The bright sun and the cold air.  He loved these moments when the world was made up of only her and the road and the air and the sunlight.  Coffee and primary colors for breakfast.  Sunny side up eggs, ketchup. He could do without the sausage & bacon oil and bread, but he loved the change in the air.  And the smell of snow.

She turned to him and laughed.

"It's happened again!"
"What? What's so funny?"
"It's the coffee.  It's acting on me again!"
"What's it doing to you?"

They had this conversation before.  He was asking because he wanted her to say it.
"Horny.  It's making me horny."

They both laughed.

"Now?  It's the most inconvenient time!! Look, we were late getting started. And I think we're gonna hit traffic later on.  But if I must, I must."

He drew his hands over the steering wheel as if he were going to pull the car over to change a flat.

She was laughing and protesting.  This was almost an old game to them.

He wanted an exact description of what she was going through.  Partially scientific, partially arousing, partially just human curiosity for the experience of the opposite sex.  And mostly, it was the honesty that she shared with him.

Other lovers tried brazen honesty, and they tried with others, but there was always something of the "performer" in the experience.

Somehow that was the best, how they could both strip down so quickly and so easily about Sex.  Even when they left their clothes on.

Loving you is not a choice/And not much reason to rejoice

She tried very hard to get him to like HER music.  The Great American Songbook.  Broadway musicals, etc.  He was very sensitive to songs they gay guys sing.  Some songs he knew from his mother, or were just in the ether (how did he KNOW “By the Sea” and “I’m Just Wild About Harry”?)

She got him on SONDHEIM.

At first he missed the subtle clevernesses.  They were interesting, story songs.  Fillagreed with puns and clever constructions, and the music line wasn’t bad either.  He could see why she liked them.  

At first, he wasn’t touched by them.  But he LOVEd to hear HER talk about them.

She'd get teary-eyed trying to talk about a song, which ruined her singing voice for the rest of the day.

But by then she wasn't singing everyday anymore.

He was doing the Svengali thing, not even sure she'd get the reference. Teaching her, or TRYING to teach her about music. "Up a tone, up a tone, up a tone!!" She was just plain stupid about some things.

She stopped the rehearsal, frustrated. "You're looking for a quality that I'm not sure how to isolate. Please, help me figure it out,"

Just when he was ready to have her run from the room screaming. Apparently only Sondheim could make her cry.

Stephen Sondheim, Passion

THE LAST DAY

I honestly didn’t think I’d ever see you again.

(her looking forward)

I reserve the right to be mad, to be disappointed.  But I always love you.

(Pause)

It’s always at least 90% Love.

10% Hate?

There’s even love mixed into the hate somewhere.

So now?  This broken down old man in his broken down old house?

(She looked around, all the smells, all the failures piling up around him.  And the sickness, the ultimate failure of them all, the failure of the body.  Having to clean him after he’d soiled himself, yet again.  After all the sex jokes weren’t funny anymore.)

She felt a tear coming up, making it difficult to speak.

“A million percent.”

==

In the car, she felt the weight of the world.  A dream, like she was underwater, but the water had the thickness and density of steel.  She was not surprised by the sense of weight, or breathlessness, or even the sense that she had lost all feeling in her body.  There might not even be a body left to feel, and certainly no bit that she could find to wiggle. Surprisingly, there was no fear or pain.  

She focused on the hand in front of her, familiar yet unidentifiable.  Weathered, old, some blood of course.  His hand, maybe.  Still on a steering wheel.  Like it looked while gripping a guitar.  It shocked her to realize that it was hers.  There was an odd void at the edge of her shoulder and lots of blood around it.  The hand was attached to an arm that wasn’t attached to her any longer.

That’s when she knew.  And when she stopped fighting the blissful sleep that was calling to her.

Or maybe that was the music.

==

As soon as she left on her errands, “I’ll get your pills and try to make my 2 o’clock with the client.  So I should be back by 6, 7 at the latest. You sure you’ll be okay?”

Looking at the clock, he knew he’d have 10 hours at most. No time to spare.  He used all his energy to crawl to the bathroom cabinet where he had been hoarding his pills.

“Enough to kill a horse,” she had said.

He wondered if she knew.  Or if she suspected.  He hated to do this to her.  To leave her to clean up yet another of his messes.  But at least she would know how to set things in order.  She’d be happy to go through all the memorabilia, disperse his “estate”.  He wondered yet again, if she’d think of the Farmhouse & Barn as a burden or a treasure.  He included a suggestion, but not a requirement, in the will for her to make it into a concert center.  She’d like that. Hosting musicians as she got older.  Maybe she’d find someone to replace him.

Purpose, that’s what he’d be leaving her.

He got out his sealed bottle of whisky from 1981.

“To be used in extreme emergency!” it said in his 1981 handwriting.

To wash down the pills, he thought.  Plus, if I cut it with water, I won’t get sick.

But as a precaution, he had a filtered jug of water next to him.

After all these years of not drinking, he didn’t trust his body to not betray him.

Again.

Gonna Hurt Tomorra'

LINER NOTES:

“I Love The Way You’re Breaking My Heart”

sounds sincere and slow. Like she was singing directly to him. A different take is her “vulnerable and terrible” voice.  Playing around.  This is closer to Lauren Bacall.

==

SHOWER:

PLOT:

Fight ON THE ROAD:

she’s backing him up & he brings her onstage for encores & intros for 1st & 2nd act.  She’s still his main audience member, young 20’s, he knows enough to keep her out of the spotlight.  BUT maybe he brings her on to sing the SAD songs, because she’s living the heartache every day!! Her emotions are closer tot he surface.

(He knows he can’t seduce her anymore, so he gets at her from the inside.  Coaxes the music from her)

She clowns around with a song

“I Love the Way You’re Breaking My Heart”

(Like she’s Betty Boop)

“Don’t sing that song to me!  Sing it to HIM!”

But what if he’s in the audience?

Sing it anyway!!  That’s what we want to hear!

(Um, okay, give me a second.  Okay. GOT IT>)

She sang with such intimacy, it made him cry to know it wasn’t for him.

“He needs me, much more than you ever have. Don’t be jealous now!”

“I’m not, there’s just something about him that strikes a wrong note,”

“Mental illness is not easy.  I’ve been putting up with yours for years.  Perfect training, I’d say!”

“What does he have”

“Mixed Bipolar”

“What does that mean?”

“He says it’s the worst you can have”

“He does, does he? Gee, poor guy!”

“You just don’t get it . . .”

No, I think YOU don’t get it.  When is he going to come see you?

When we get closer to town!

But I thought you weren’t sure he’d come.  That he’s a shut-in.

Yeah, so?  Maybe he won’t make it that day.  I don’t need HIM to come to prove that he LOVES me!”

If he doesn’t show up for you, how are you ever going to get anything from him?

“He asked me to be patient!

Patient for what?  Are you sure he’s not playing games with you?

Absolutely sure.  He’s womderful! you’re just jealous that someone can love so PURELY.

I see LOVE on your face right now. I see you in love, PURELY.  And I just want to make sure he deserves this BEST part of you.  

Thanks.  He does, trust me. He does.

==

He shows up at a concert and COMPLETELY SURPRISES her.

She tries to introduce him, but he is speechless & grinning like an idiot, or like he’s on something.  Weird.

She drives back to the motel.  5 am.  They had stayed up the whole night.  And he never said a word to her.  Nothing towards explanation.

(This should NOT echo with the ending!!)

She’s glowing.

He sees her in the sunshine in the parking lot.  She’s shivering slightly, hugs him chastley when he comes out with a blanket for her. So in love.  

He’ll be back, he said.  He wrote that’s he’s coming tonight.

Shows the napkin.

“tonite” he scrawled, in handwriting of a 5 year old.

This guy has a PhD.  There is something really WRONG here.

As she walks back to the motel for some sleep, he realizes that he’s suddenly relieved that she came back alive.

==

She sings beautifully that night.  Only a few more nights on this tour left, 20/23.  She makes him cry, although he’s careful to hide it in the sweat towel he uses to wipe down his guitar and face.

She sings like this guyis in the audience, even though he’s asked all the front of house people to point this guy out.

He asks her at intermission if he’s come back.

No, well, at least he hasn’t told me.

(Like that time when he was across the country and didn’t tell you if he had bullets for that gun?)

He might just be hanging out in the back.  Or maybe he’ll sneak in later.  He might just be in the back of the house, among those people we can’t see clearly.  He doesn’t want to disturb my concentration in the middle of a show.  he knows how thrilled I get just by seeing him.

(This is the selfish kind of behavior used by abusers to control their subjects, he thought. She’s letting it happen.  She loves it somehow.  Poor kid.  He wanted to be able to slap the hormones right out of her.  And damn, he wished he had a fraction of that power over her.  Maybe that’s what he had, once upon a time.  No, this power is unnatural.  

Suddenly, he sees this other guy for who he really is.  A selfish bastard.  Like he used to be.  Like he IS.  Suddenly the whole idea of love & devotion sours for him.

He kicks at the ground.

Knowing that there will be a crash coming in her future.

==

When he finds her later, in the motel room, with the “tonite” napkin in her hand and the phone off the hook, the only thing that surprises him is that she left the door open.

“He hung himself.  The woods near where we grew up. I know the tree.  We used to swing from it, like we were Tarzan.”

He tries to hug her but she has wedged herself between the nightstand and the wall.  Like a scared animal.

She cries and stops and cries some more.

He stays with her for as long as he can, sitting on the edge of the bed, unable to look her in the eye.  

He offers to leave, but she won’t let him.

He manages to get her into bed and take off her shoes and some of the outerwear, just enough to get her comfortable.  He treats her like someone in a hospital, sick with some mysterious internal injury.  Must be gently moved.  No jokes, no sex.  But he’s also careful not to touch her too much.

She skips the last 3 shows, he drives 80 miles out of his way to make sure she’s delivered into another friend’s hands.

He doesn’t see her for another 2 years.

Love The Way You're Breaking My Heart

With Plenty of Money: Revised

If they had a weekly television show of their own, she liked to think this would be their theme song.

Everytime they got into the car on the way to a gig, every time they began singing for the day, every rehearsal, it was the first song they started with.  Like a kiss, an embrace, an exercise you can do well, a reason to remind you of why you do this.  A game.

Vocal exercise as well, there was also enough wiggle room for them to both play around with.  Different every time.

When they did it as an encore (rarely, and only if they were both in a REALLY good mood),

She'd open with a funny (awful) voice, a variation of Betty Boop.  Then she'd flow into the "Honey" voice, and then (supposedly) hand it off to him.  According to signals-she'd hold onto her clothing or not-they would include the Ventriloquist act.  Not something she could pull off everyday, but when she did, it was incredible.  She pulled out her gravely Old Man Voice (which he admitted sounded better than his voice).

She thought about how true it was for them.

They only needed money to go out to breakfast at diners, her one big indulgence.  This life was feast or famine, she knew it well.  They were often feted and treated to great dinners, in people's homes and at great restaurants.

He was a picky eater, macrobiotics,etc.  But she also suspected that it was a Jack Benny affectation; he refused to eat outside his house not because of the non-healthy options, but because he was cheap.  (Of course, there WAS the beautiful refurbished barn in back which showed that his heart and money were both in the right place.  It doubled as a rehearsal space, recording studio and dance floor. It made her feel that THAT was the Standard.  Everything else could be compromised.  But the music was primary)

She preferred diners for breakfasts, mostly because of the unlimited supply of coffee (which made her horny).  Besides, if they had missed the "normal" breakfast window, she was always happy to order any protein.  As long as she could get her coffee.

The only reason to get to a diner before 10 was to get the day off to a good start.

Otherwise, he'd be happy to stay in bed until 12.  (With or without her) and if there was no event at night, he'd be back in bed by 7.  In Winter, the lack of sunlight would reduce the day to a few hours.  As long as there was good sex happening (between them, or them in parallel, ) all was fine.

Mirror, Mirror

EARLY PLOT: ON THE AIR

She was half terrified and half thrilled to be working for this guy. Okay, maybe half bored with it all too.  Of all the people she could be working with, it was a thrill to work with a hero.  And not just because you get to GET OVER all the excitement by seeing them day to day.  She had prided herself on being jaded about fame, and was especially proud of how she acted around him.  Betraying nothing.

Especially because she suspected he had forgotten her.  It was a decade later, and she had been just one of MANY girls who followed him.  He couldn’t possibly remember her name, much less her face.  She had changed so much anyway, her hair was short now, and a different color every week.

There WAS that one concert, she must’ve been 16, she finally worked up the courage to ASK him. She had a sense that he’d help her lose her virginity, but she wanted to appear more grownup, and didn’t want him to think she was still a virgin.  Or that she was 16.  Instead of getting him into a hotel room, or any situation with a bed, she wanted to do SOMETHING dirty with him.  It drove her crazy at every concert.  Since that first time she asked him for a kiss during intermission and he slipped her the tongue.  He was picking up on HER.  Her unique beauty; lifted her above the crowd.  Granted, maybe it was just because she had ASKED for the kiss.  What if you were able to ASK for what it was you wanted? Wouldn’t the very ACT of putting it into words make it much more lucky?

Buoyed by the confidence of the kiss (well, kisses, there were a total of 5, from 8 concerts, she had to wait in line-literally for each of them), she finally had an idea.

Ask him, before you chicken out. Do everything the MOMENT you think of it!  Do it!!

“Hey, I have a bunch of colored markers.  I was wondering if you’d like to draw on my breasts?”

It came out so casually that he had to ask her to repeat herself (Re”Peter”).  But he asked with such a smile that she had a feeling like she was asking for a million dollar lottery ticket and he was more than happy to hand it to her.  Finally! She had landed on a request that he probably hadn’t gotten in a while.

She had scouted out the downstairs Handicapped bathroom; a perfect spot.  A locked door, a small room, big enough to even appear less than bathroom-like.  There was even a mirror, so she’d be able to see everything immediately.

He had said 10 minutes.  Somehow that stretched into 15 or 20 minutes, and seemed like forever.  Especially because her mom was waiting outside in the car, in the cold.  Her mom had NO interest in music, especially not THIS music.  Maybe she should be grateful about this, especially as she had no license of her own.  THAT was love.  

And there she was, trying not to let anyone else into her bathroom (especially if they were going to stink it up for Her Special Moment).   But someone came by, doing that particular dance and she couldn’t tell them the reason she was barring the door.

Those 20 minutes quickly devolved from sheer excitement at her own brazenness, to terror, to mild nervousness, to an existential angst about being a bad feminist and daughter and planted seed of insecurity she would carry with her for the rest of her life. The humiliation of loving a Rock Star who was loved by a million other girls, and wasting your life waiting for a few moments of his meager attentions.

But then he came striding down the hallway, a huge grin on his face.  He probably had told all the boys in his dressing room.  And they all had a good laugh.  She tried hard to take pride in this; that for a few minutes, HERS were the enviable breasts.  The moment deflated somewhat as they had to make small talk outside the bathroom. (SCENE)  Someone exited a few minutes later and she could still smell the sourness of someone else’s body odor.  

He didn’t seem to mind.  Still grinning wildly, like a kid on Christmas.  

“What would you like me to draw?”

“Whatever you are in the mood for.  And include a signature, if you don’t mind.”

“But of course!”

She took off her sweater.  Then a thin turtleneck.  There should be more small talk, she had lots of layers; it was winter, after all.

“You sure you don’t mind doing this?”

He stood there, practically drooling, like the wolf in a storybook she once had, who was inches away from a fat little pig.

“No, not at all!!”

Somehow his eyes turned into that of a teenage boys; all the teenage boys who had tried so hard to get her to say yes in the back of their cars or sitting on a porch.  The Game.  And here she was, letting him win so easily.  What must his life be like?  Would he have ever been the “Type” to ask?  She decided not.  That teenage glance made him look shy, and even a little scared.  

As she took off her bra, suddenly, she felt as if SHE were the Rock Star.  The power shifted in the room, and even with just the two of them and the toilet, it seemed like all the light shifted from the porcelain to her two glowing orbs. Somehow, she felt like her real self had been revealed.

Of course, and she had a feeling this is where his experience came in, he dove in and began kissing her.  She easily surrendered to his embrace, even though she felt well aware of her skin against his clothes and his full beard.  Like he was completely covered and she was completely exposed.  Like that painting, Je Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe.  The men all clothed and the women all naked. It was excellent to imagine herself in the role of muse at that moment. No matter how self-orchestrated and self-conscious it was. She was especially happy not to have to remove her jeans and expose her cellulite.

Both of them did some giggling after the embrace, and he was careful and awkward, trying to be a gentleman and only touch her breasts with the tip of the markers, instead of holding the skin taut.  They laughed again and again, a parlor game.  He tried to finish with a flourish and cried “Voila!” as if it was the final stroke on the Mona Lisa.

“Can you tell what it is?” as he positioned her in front of the mirror.

She was hoping for something clever, or surprisingly artistic.

“It’s a pair of breasts!” he proclaimed proudly.

She couldn’t make out anything except some squiggles.

He politely helped her back on with her clothes.  Complimenting her purple bra-which she wore all the time.  Helping her with the clasps; he was thoughtful enough to ask her which rows she preferred.  A detail to carry forth towards future boyfriends.  

They parted with a handshake, growing more formal as they separated.  

She took a few pictures, in the mirrors of her friend’s houses when she could, for the next week.  It was a secret to carry upon herself.  She traced the lines over and over again after every shower until it didn’t resemble the original.  Like a game of Telephone.  

It wasn’t until she’d been working for him for 3 months that he stopped her one night as they were leaving the station.

“Hey, I have some markers.  Are you in the mood to do some drawing?”