on the voice

Last month my brother called to tell me that he was coming down to audition for the next season of The Voice.  He asked if I would join him and after a day of thinking I couldn't because I would only make a fool of myself, I decided the experience of it outweighed any doubts.  I thought of how we could talk about it years from now, about that time he came down to New York and we stood outside in the cold for hours just to sing in front of a TV producer, and changed my mind. 

And so the Saturday night before the audition he got off the bus from Boston and made his way out to our place.  We walked to pizza and then practiced, him coaching me on my chosen song, each of us anxious and tired but too excited to go to sleep.  The next morning the cab dropped us off at the back of the Javits Center, far behind thousands of others.  We huddled in the cold and willed the sun to move faster up the back of the building in front of us as the Hudson kept things bitter behind us.  By nine we were ushered inside to the perfectly choreographed registration and then waited in our seats as would-be divas tried to out belt each other in the corners of the huge room.  It was around that time that we realized we would be auditioning in groups of ten, by row, and that we would get to audition together.

I didn't take the process very seriously for myself but I wanted this for my brother.  I thought he had the audition nailed before we even went in the doors and was already thinking of what we'd do for the rest of the day after we learned of his inevitable callback.  But the producer behind the desk didn't look up for my brother, or me, or the seven other auditioners until the 16 year-old Bieber look-alike started to sing.  He sounded sweet, but certainly was no Voice (just watch, he wins the whole thing next year), but within seconds of opening his mouth her head snapped to attention and we knew he had it.  And then it was over.  After the ten of us finished she announced that he and another young woman would be called back and then we were thanked and told to have a great day.

That was it.  All those days of preparing and hours on line just to have it end in a two second sentence.  The speed of it was too much.  Shouldn't there be an appeals process?  Another producer to try out for since this one obviously had a "type" in mind?  But there wasn't.  We found our way out of the basement audition rooms and only after we were through the revolving doors and onto the street did it hit my brother.  He had wanted this.  And it was over.  Even if it was just a TV show, something we'd joke about at some point down the road, in that minute it was more than that.  I put my arm around him and we stood with our backs to the sun as we watched the pool of hopefuls behind the Center's glass windows below us. 

So in honor of my brother, of his voice (which doesn't need the approval of some twenty-something producer on an early Sunday morning), here he is singing at our wedding.  His taking the mic was a surprise for everyone in the room and his voice is my favorite sound of that day, of any day.

on so it goes (April 11, 2007)

Written in April 2007 for the friend I never knew: 

Kurt Vonnegut has died and I feel like we have lost a friend.

It's a very strange thing to feel so affected by someone you've never met.  But he was my friend too.  When my mother tried to end it for the first time, I found him.  He too knew that strange loss of sharing a space with someone who is still living but doesn't want to be.  And I remember the summer when I was 19, when I moved up to Albany and into that empty place three months before all of my other housemates.  Living in that creaky house by myself, with the drug dealers outside on the corner yelling up to me that they knew I was alone and didn't I want to come out and play, Vonnegut kept me company.  I read Slaughterhouse Five on repeat that summer and the voices became so familiar that my journal entries from those months are cluttered with phrases of "so it goes".  

He lived to be 84 but died from a brain injury after a fall in his Manhattan home.  And that death just doesn't seem fitting.  It's too normal.  I think that maybe he should have simply disappeared.  And for years we'd wonder if the folks from Tralfamador had come to take him away and all of the not-knowing would be fantastic.

But he is gone.  And I am sad.  So it goes. 

on the leap revisited

So about those leaps.  They're scary.  And they feel huge.  Even when they're not.  Even when they are just small things to the rest of the world, if it's your leap, it feels monstrous.  I took one.  And I didn't land so softly.  But it wasn't a disaster.  No broken bones, but maybe a little bruised?

I auditioned for a band.  The next day they called me back for a followup.  There were two of those follow-ups over two weeks, each time just one on one with the guitarist.  Then there was the final followup with the full band.  And then a few days of silence.  Afterward, a tentative acceptance email.  "We like you, we like your voice, but... "  It was decided we'd give it a shot.  A probationary measure so no one would be investing too much in the other.  That probation ends today.

The thing is, I'm not a blues singer.  I love the blues, at 12 I even named my hamster Albert in honor of Albert King who died on the day I got him.  But I'm not a blues singer.  I like melodies, I miss singing them.  I'm not tough enough, gritty enough for these.  Maybe I should have taken up a whiskey and cigarette habit because my years of choir-trained vibrato give me away every time.  So earlier this week, when I could tell the band wasn't as happy as they should be about how things were progressing, when I could tell I wasn't as happy as I should be about being a part of it, I wrote and said that I thought they should find another singer.  Even though I know there's really no such thing as a mutual breakup, I think we came close this week.  I wasn't happy.  They weren't happy.  Let's end this now before we stop liking each other.

I'm proud though.  I tried.  I leapt.  I didn't land as softly as I would have liked, but I landed.  And now I know I can do this.  Just not in the way they wanted.  But now I know I can do it on my own.  In the way I want.  Not a bad ending for a first time leap.

on some maybe's

Last night I found myself on the Department of Defense's website.  An unlikely place for me to be, but I was there with Mike as we looked into teaching positions overseas.  Maybe just for a year or two.  Maybe just for a break.  A chance at a teaching job for Mike since there are none to be had here.  Someplace new, different, away from all the things that keep us at a stand still here.  And it was a good daydream, a good talk.  We imagined a baby there.  A new language.  A community abroad.  I said out loud my fears of being away from my family, don't I need them so much?  But then there is skype, and email, and visits, and how many times do we really see everyone in one year anyway.

It's just a daydream for now, made a little more real by the application submission and the country check list:  Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Iceland, Netherlands, check.  It's just a daydream, but last night our words felt a little more real.  About what we want our life to look like, to feel like, if we really want what we thought we wanted.  The house with the yard in the nice neighborhood with good schools and a place to swim so our kids could grow up knowing the water.  Yes, the water part is always important on my list.  But the checks have changed, maybe it's just a family somewhere we feel at home, doing jobs that make us feel good, and just like that the suburban cul-de-sac that had occupied my vision of the future turned into a thousand what could be's and maybe's instead.

from here

on the highline

Spring arrived a few weeks early (of course, now that I've said that, we should expect a blizzard in April) and so last week I made my way over to the Highline before work to celebrate it:

 

on Our Town and Mary Ann

Emily's lines at the end of Our Town, when she says goodbye to clocks ticking and new ironed dresses and sleeping and waking up.  When she asks if human beings ever realize life, every every minute and the stage manager tells her no, saints and poets, maybe, they do some.  That.  That is my favorite.

And then this:  Justin and Mary's recent post about Mary Ann.  The words and the video below feel like Emily's lines in action.  Do human beings ever realize life, every every minute?  Saints and poets and Mary Ann.  They do some.

Justin & Mary. Mary Ann. Really Live. from Jeremy White on Vimeo.

on darkness visible

In 1994 my parents separated.  A year later, after a considerably bluesy period, my mom spent some time in the psychiatric wing of North Shore Hospital.  My Dad said she was tired and needed some rest.  But I knew it was more than that.  Her life had exhausted her and she wasn't sure she wanted to be here anymore.  

I'm not sure what triggered the idea, but a few months later she decided to call William Styron at his Martha's Vineyard home.  At the time, the Vineyard was the only place where famous people still had listed numbers and finding it was as easy as dialing the operator.  She left a message on his machine, knowing that it was off season and he would most likely never hear it and, if he did, never return it.  But she spoke into the recording just the same, told him that she had been feeling helpless but that his work in Darkness Visible left her with some hope.  That the past few months had been a struggle but she was trying to find her way out.  When she hung up I told her that if he ever heard it he was going to think she was a crazy person.  And then we laughed, because wasn't she just a little.

An hour later the phone rang and I answered.  The voice on the other end asked for Laura and when I asked who was calling, William Styron told me that he and his wife Rose would like to speak to my mom.  I ran upstairs, found her marking papers in bed, and whispered his name to her.  She asked me what she should say and I nervously shoved the phone into her hand. 

She called him Mr. Styron.  He told her to call him William.  He said that his daughter had called him at their home in Connecticut to relay the message from the Vineyard of a woman who sounded like she needed him.  And then he told my mom that she shouldn't give up.  She had heard this before but she listened because this was Stryon, an author, a writer, he had suffered too, and she respected him for all of it.  She thanked him for his work and asked him if it ever got easier.  They talked for an hour and I sat curled beside her on the bed in quiet thanks for the man on the other end of the line.  

The bluesy times came and went and come and go still, but seventeen years later there is hope that it gets easier.  And I can't help but think that it springs from that afternoon, from that call, from his words:

“For those who have dwelt in depression’s dark wood, and known its inexplicable agony, their return from the abyss is not unlike the ascent of the poet, trudging upward and upward out of hell’s black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as ‘the shining world.’ There, whoever has been restored to health has almost always been restored to the capacity for serenity and joy, and this may be indemnity enough for having endured the despair beyond despair.”

John Curley, flickr

on a leap

The funny thing about having a public place to write (even if I still haven't made it really public) is that once I hit publish I feel as if the words become truth.  Like I owe them something.  So the other day after I wrote that I needed more music in my life, I decided I should do something about it.  Seeing the words there made the need, the want, feel huge, obvious, real.   

Last night I clicked around on some ads in the musicians section of craigslist until I found one that sounded like I might fit.  And then I sent an email with some song clips.  Ten minutes later a reply came in that I should come by the rehearsal studio today for an audition.  Now this might not seem like much, but I don't do this.  I do this in the shower, I do this when no one is home and I think the neighbors won't hear, I do this in comfortable and friendly settings once every three years.  

But then something changed.  And last week when my friend Mary wrote about fear, about stepping into it, about making the big things happen, I felt as if she were speaking directly to me.  So a few hours ago I walked into Studio B on 30th street and sang a few blues songs for a band.  There was a woman in there before me and I'm sure they'll see a few more before they make a decision, but at this point, as much as I want them to choose me, I feel like just going there in the first place was big enough.  Because at least I tried.  I said hello to the fear, called it out from it's lurking place in the corner, and leapt right into it.  

on the one before

That Samson song comes out through the speakers, "you are my sweetest downfall, I loved you first," and for a minute I feel the words are for him.  But then I remember.  No, that wasn't love.  That was some fabricated version of it.  A cheap knock off.  If it were sold down on Canal Street it would be called lofe; something close to love, but not quiet. 

He was the one before Mike.  Technically, in the ways that matter, he shouldn't even be counted in the same sentence as Mike, but he is, because I thought he mattered.  When I was with him, I thought I mattered.  Even though he only really knew me when we were at the bar.  Or late at night after the party cleared out from his house and I was left over.  For a long time I didn't know anything other than that feeling of watching and waiting for him to open the Town Tavern door and walk in, his tall frame filling the doorway.  That flip in my chest as he took up the space and noticed me.  Of watching and waiting for a clue, a hint, a signal that I was his that night.  And of those early mornings, of the cloudy hangover sounds of church bells and his breathing, of how much I wanted him then.  Of how little he really wanted me.

We build these things up over time.  In truth it was just a handful of nights over a handful of years but now they are solid, inked, permanent in my memories of then.  I seem to be able to make them more than what they were.  For a minute listening now I can almost convince myself that it was something, that I loved him first.  But not quite.  Maybe only in a Canal Street kind of way. 

on scenes from San Miguel

on Stuart, years ago

This morning I walked into the Key Food around the block and saw the front page of Newsday, read the words, and stopped moving.  I leaned down to pick it up and felt Mike stop to look behind him at what had held me up.  It was the headline, "16 Deadly Miles, the riskiest road on LI for pedestrians."  For a second the tears welled and I remembered him as if that last night were last week.  I didn't have to read anymore to know where they were talking about.  And then I came home and found the paragraphs below which I wrote a few years ago.  Today, for Stuart, for the boy he will always be, for the road that took him, for all the others along with him.


I am performing a search for a dead man on the internet.  An ad on the side of the Google page tells me that Dave Stuart is for sale, an advertising gimmick that takes the item you are searching for and plugs it into a “find here” field for eBay’s auction site.  For an instant I want to click on that ad.  Maybe I will be directed to a page where his face will smile out from the screen.  Maybe I could bid on his life, take back that day, slow the speeding car, turn him around and tell him to just wait a minute.  Maybe that's all it would have taken, just a minute.  I decide against it.  Instead I refine my search to the local long island newspapers where the accident occurred and find a brief and non-personal obituary in their archives.  “Upstate Man Killed While Crossing Street, December 1999.”  Two dollars and ninety-five cents later I have a print out.  A small morsel, but I have a piece of him again, to remind me that he happened, he was here. 

The night we came back to school from winter break, just two weeks after the accident, we gathered in Dave's dorm room.  His parents had been up the day before so his bedroom was void of his likeness.  His bed had been stripped and as we swallowed beer after beer, we threw the empty cans onto his now soiled mattress.  We thought if we trashed it enough the school wouldn’t be able to move someone new into the room.  And then the end of my life with them began.  Alex cried out that we were destroying Dave’s bed.  He spoke as if at any moment Dave was going to walk in and be angry with us for ruining it.  Jess yelled for him to stop whining, that a beer soaked shrine was fitting.  John slumped into the corner as Eric quietly wiped the puddles off the mattress and onto the floor.  The January wind whipped against the building and Jess and I left without saying goodbye.  When we were back to our room she jumped onto her bed and wrote Dave’s name across the width of the wall.  Days later we tried to remove the letters, their image a haunting and constant reminder of what was lost, but they wouldn’t budge.  I assume some janitor had to paint over them in June, cursing the girl who loved a man so much she had to stain her wall with his name.

The last night before winter break we had all been in that small room together.  Stuart was in my bed and I told him to get out, there wasn’t enough room, I wouldn’t be able to fall sleep with him there.  Instead he wrapped his arms around my head in an awkward embrace and drunkenly kissed my face, hoping his affection would keep me there.  James was on the other side of me, the three of us squeezed so tightly into my single bed that I had to get up, climb over them and sleep on the couch in the common room.  For a few minutes the two men lay in my bed together until they realized that I had left and there was no female body separating them.  I heard a shout, and I laughed out loud as Stuart tripped his way out of my bedroom in surprise.  He found me lying on the couch, smiled, leaned down to kiss my forehead, and then left to make his way back to his dorm.  I never saw him again.

I didn’t go to the funeral.  I was the only one of the group who didn’t come from their hometown and I missed it.  Jess and I fell out of friendship and in my last two years at school I would only see the rest of them occasionally.  When we met there would be a knowing look, a small smile and recognition that I shared something tragic with them.  But I was never one of them.  I never felt that I was allowed to mourn like they could.  He was only a part of me for such a small time; he was theirs for years before.  But I mourned just the same.  He was still mine to share.  And that is something.  As I close out of the search screen and return to work, it is something.

on home and what's next

Home from Mexico.  We left there yesterday morning after walking across a warm tarmac to a plane in Leon and arrived home 10 hours later to a New York February.  But it's still with me.  It's in the sun that's tattooed on my arms and forehead and in the dust on the bottom of my boots from the canyon hike on Sunday.  And now there are hundreds of photos to sift through but not too quickly, because that's still with me too.  It doesn't all have to be so fast.  Even here with the cell phones back on and the computer and the tv and the cabs and the noise.  For a little while I can keep that part of me here that was different there.

There were highlights.  Food and sun and a visit to a 500 year-old tree among them, but this is the best for me.  On stage with my Dad, something we've only done once before (twice if you count that open mic in 9th grade when he played "Round Here" with me).  This time there were four songs at a San Miguel open mic and then another when I joined him for a song during his set at a sold out show a few days later.  It's a funny thing to be reminded of something you love so much, something that feels so much like home, it's forced me to think about what's next.  I know I'm no rock star, but I think I need this in my life.  Maybe a little more often than an every few years attempt. 

Oh My Sweet Carolina

 

Angel from Montgomery