A couple of mornings ago, I was on my stationary bike, plugged into my music as always. Suddenly, Bruce interrupted my thoughts with his rendition of Thunder Road from his Broadway show. The show featured him on stage all by himself, accompanying the lyrics with his guitar, and in some cases a harmonica folded into the music. When I think of that song, it is one of those stadium anthems, including a Clarence solo. This version was stark and deeply private, like eaves dropping on his poetry.
Music has punctuated my life from the moment I started listening to it, while sitting on the stoop at 69-30 179th St, squeezing itself out of my little, turquoise transistor radio. I guess I’d have to say I’ve become a kind of a storyteller, with my writing recording my history. I wouldn’t be close to the first person, who said a story told more than once, differs each time it is recalled and recounted.
I have accumulated quite a compendium of episodes from a long history. There have been jobs and relationships and relocations, often feeling like too much for one shrinking brain to do justice. Days before Bruce, I was thinking about how my stories have changed over time, sometimes from one day to the next. Many of us take comfort in thinking there are facts of our lives, indelible truths, falsely grounded in the idea that we don’t change. Therefore our history is set in some kind of intellectual stone, precisely chiseled, unmoved by time and circumstance.
I have experienced more than my share of beginnings and endings, many of them incredibly painful. Trust me, I was no playboy, but I split from my wife in my early thirties and have had a number of relationships, each one ending in less than happy circumstances. I think about them now and have no bad feelings, although i was pissed off with the demise of each one when they occurred. I look back upon them and have no residual anger, feeling nothing, but affection. The decades in between then and now have softened my heart and I actually feel fortunate to have had those experiences.
There probably aren’t all that many people, who’ve had the professional experiences I’ve accumulated over time. Early on, many were conventional jobs in the broadcast advertising business, where I began. It was common to move from one position to the next, increasing responsibility and income. When I left NYC, intent upon never having a normal job again, I set myself up for the inevitable massive disappointments that happen when you passionately believe in a new venture and it falls on its ass. Til this day, I have never gotten involved in anything I didn’t believe in, holding out for success, whatever happened to it along the way. Today, I think about all the things I have done and I smile inside, feeling blessed to have had the experience.
There are a number of episodes that stick out, actually too many to clog this page, but the message from each is always the same. One of my bests stories is getting involved in the nature tourism business and traveling throughout Central America, as a supposed expert. My partner in this venture was someone I probably held in higher esteem than I should have, a person so easy for me to romanticize, leading a life far more interesting than I could ever imagined. We had an awful business divorce and I swear to you I hold zero residual bad feelings. I love my old friend and our history is one of my greatest stories. Retelling the story to myself has softened and softened and I have nothing, but gratitude for having come together.
You know, I commit all the sins of bad writing, but can’t seem to help myself. Long before Bruce, I was thinking about this and how my past has continued to change, each time I look back. Now, I will tell you what started this whole thing. I have had much more than my share of terrific stories and one of my absolute favorites is the time I got myself involved with the Mafia.
I had been fired from an ad agency, right around the holidays and it was a bona fide nightmare. I had two young children, a mortgage I couldn’t afford and a marriage wilting in silence. An opportunity for easy money presented itself and in my silent desperation I went for it. it involved stolen cassettes and LP’s, “fallen off the back of a truck”, with midnight rides in the back of a black Cadillac, my life actually in danger. To say the least, it is without question one of the most colorful chapters from my past and it is a story that has been with me for around forty years or so.
A couple of weeks ago, completely out the blue, I got an email from the son of the man, who scared the living shit out of me in that beginning, but someone I ended up having an unusual rapport with over a handful of months. He had his own stories and we had some things in common. My father died when I was nine and his was killed when he was the same age. This is what really started me thinking about how our past keeps changing. You look at your past from a certain vantage and before you know it, you are looking at it from a completely different place.
It reminds me of the clenched fist, squeezing life from its grip and the open palms, embracing each moment as it comes to life. Whether the son and I end up ever talking, it was a riveting reminder of how our past is alive and always changing. For reasons I cannot explain. my memories all seem to have happy endings. I guess it depends upon what kind of baggage you want to carry with you into the next life.