Incomplete memoir (Part 6)

Posted 25 February, 2011 in Memoir

About five years ago I started writing a memoir. I kept at it for a little while, writing about 1,000 words a day for a few weeks. I hadn’t yet been to therapy and there were many things I didn’t really understand about my life, but I still find the unfinished memoir to be a fascinating look into my own past. I’ve decided to post it in installments here, with only a few redactions. You can find the other sections by clicking the Memoir category.

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Jen and the boys and I went for a walk the other day in Corbett’s Glen, a secluded bit of woodland paradise about 100 yards from two of Rochester’s three major expressways. On the walk with us were two friends and their young daughter.

Corbett’s Glen started out as a Native American trail; evolved into a train track that carried the body of the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln as he moved toward his final resting place; and ended up as a very naturalistic town park with a creek and the odd bit of private land. As you pass through a long tunnel under the road and enter the glen, you’re greeted by an expanse of lawn leading to a lovely home that’s for sale as I write this. Ringing the lawn is a model train track, although our friends said the train stopped running years ago.

Toward the end of the walk, we were standing around watching the kids play and talking about how they probably won’t remember any of this day. Which is strange to think about, because the day will be much more solidly imprinted for us adults. For the kids, though, it will be at best a misty and brief memory.

That got me thinking about my own childhood. If I assembled all the footage in my brain from the first, say, 10 years of my life, I’d have a film about 20 minutes long. I can barely remember anything.

That’s always seemed strange to me. Wrong, somehow. My wife can recount stories of afternoons spent listening to the radio with her friends and choreographing dances to the soundtrack of Grease or the latest hit from Diane Summer. My cousin Lynne can remember minute details about dozens of play dates we spent together. My mom seems to remember who lived in every house in Lenox, and she has a story about all of them.

Not me, though. My childhood memories could fit comfortably on a DVD.

Over the years, I’ve developed and discarded and reused quite a few explanations for why I can’t recall very much at all. For example, maybe it was because I moved so many times as a kid, and never really developed a static background image in front of which to set my childhood memories. Or maybe it was that I was always the new kid, and had so few friends throughout the majority of my school life. Or maybe I was a fairly miserable child, and I’m trying to block that out. Or maybe I just didn’t do very much, so there’s not much to remember. I don’t know which, if any, of these theories to believe. Maybe I’m just like everybody else, but they’re better at making up the childhoods they believe they should have lived.

stone #55

Posted 25 February, 2011 in aros, Jazz, Music, My poems, Poetry, Stones

(I finally missed a day, so I’m one stone behind on my 365-straight-days plan. Ah well…)

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late night Sun Ra fills my empty apartment
with the whirling sound of Saturn

POEM: and so we say our goodbyes

Posted 24 February, 2011 in Albany, My poems, Poetry

On Sunday I’m moving from Albany, NY, to New York City. Today I started saying goodbye to my friends with a few little gatherings. Although Albany was the site of probably the darkest year or two of my life, I did meet some incredible people here who I expect I’ll be friends with for a long, long time.

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and so we say our goodbyes

1.
over avacado tortas and enchiladas
iced tea and fresh salsa
we talk about work or lack thereof
share a laugh about the end of the world
tell stories about food poisoning
and a raffle at a Stones concert

2.
later there is a poetry reading
out-of-town poets with an in-town crowd
afterward we have a conversation
that is like the ones we’ve had before
in exactly the right way
Nina Simone is singing – we have to stop talking
when she gets to the Dylan tune
for the record, I am not Bob Dylan

3.
tomorrow there will be Japanese food
and the glow that always comes from it
but even this is not goodbye
who really has to say goodbye anymore?
I’m not heading west in a wagon
never to be seen again
I’m as close as ten numbers
as near as the computer screen
as far away as the edge of the universe

The Jazz Session celebrates four years!

Posted 24 February, 2011 in Jazz, Music, The Jazz Session

Today marks four years since I launched The Jazz Session, my jazz interview program. Grant Stewart, my guest on the first show, returns today for the fourth anniversary. Listen to today’s episode — and every episode — for free at http://thejazzsession.com.

Incomplete memoir (Part 5)

Posted 24 February, 2011 in Memoir

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Watercolor by Marguerite Bride. My grandparents lived in the building on the left.

I cling to Lenox, Massachusetts, like a shipwrecked sailor to the last buoyant plank.

After 25 moves in seven states and two countries, I feel a need to have some place to call home. Lenox is that place, even though I only lived there until I was five years old. Returning home to Lenox gives me a feeling of rootedness that I don’t get anywhere else, and my family’s long history in the town offers a connection to the past that’s nearly impossible to replicate. (Although I did recently discover that Buffalo, New York, is home to some similar family history, if not a similar emotional surge.)

Lenox is the quintessential New England town – at the least the New England that’s not near the ocean. A lovely Main Street bordered by stately homes. Few enough streets that you can explore them all in an afternoon. Locals who dislike the New Yorkers who take over on summer weekends or during big concerts at Tanglewood. And lots and lots of rich people.

That last part may not be quintessentially New England, but it’s certainly a hallmark of Lenox. The town was the summer playground of wealthy industrialists in the late 1800’s and throughout the first half of the 20th century, and it now caters to the BMW-driving, sweater-tied-around-the-shoulders set that I spend most of my working life fighting against. But I still love it.

Every year, Jen and the boys and I go to Tanglewood with my cousins to see James Taylor, who lives in the next town over. This is the highlight of the summer music season at Tanglewood. The concert sells out every year, and has attracted so many visitors that the event organizers had to impose a strict ticket limit of 18,000 a few years back, after the 2002 show drew more than 24,000 fans and effectively shut down Berkshire County for hours.

Tanglewood consists of a large, open-sided performance space known as the Shed, fronted by an enormous expanse of lawn bordered on all sides by elderly pine trees. Each year, the throng fills the seats in the shed, but the real party is on the lawn, as people bring everything but their refridgerator to feast and imbibe before, during and after the performance. It’s no surprise to see a dozen aging yuppies gathered around a portable table, complete with candles, wine and the hosts’ best china from the hutch at home.

But you know what? I love it. And although I hate to admit it, these are my people. Not my class, certainly, but they’re the inheritors of the same general genetic material as I. My grandfather’s family has been in the United States since the 1630’s, and only a series of poor career choices and the fickle hand of fate have kept me and my family from the patrician lifestyle enjoyed by so many in my hometown.

Incomplete memoir (Part 4)

Posted 23 February, 2011 in Memoir

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I was born in the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts. There was no hospital in Lenox, my hometown, so I came into the world in nearby Pittsfield in early September of 1973. Pittsfield was the home of General Electric, started in the 1890’s by William Stanley (although it was called the Electric Manufacturing Company at the time). At one point, more than 10,000 people worked in the GE plant in Pittsfield, my grandfather and mother among them.

At the time of my birth, GE was still a major employer in the town, although by the turn of the 21st century, Pittsfield was mostly famous for having a faster rate of flight out of the city than any other metropolitan area in the United States.

Baseball, that most hallowed of American sports, is mentioned in a legal document in Pittsfield in 1791. That document prohibits anyone from playing baseball within 80 yards of the newly built meeting house. This is the earliest known reference to baseball in America, besting Abner Doubleday and his Cooperstown fable by nearly half a century.

Moby Dick was written in Pittsfield, which was the home of Herman Melville for 13 years. Nathaniel Hawthorne also lived in the area, as did a large colony of Shakers – makers of fine furniture, embracers of technology, and somewhat egalitarian creators of a peaceable cult. Other famous folks who were born in – or spent a considerable time in – Pittsfield include poet Oliver Wendell Holmes; Emily Erwin of the Dixie Chicks; and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

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