What Is Up With Mark?

 Just A Little Monkey

On an unusually warm and bright November afternoon, I took the day off and drove down to pick up Raad and his mother at their outpost in the backwoods of Athens County. Of course, when you take an infant anywhere, its like moving day. So while she was loading up my car with various baby paraphernalia and provisions for the weekend, it was my job to keep the little one happy. These days, happy means anything that doesn’t involve the abject despair of contorted, red-faced wailing. Its really quite amazing the way he can instantaneously metamorphosize from calm, phlegmatic indifference into a cataclysmic eruption of anguish and suffering without the slightest change of observable circumstance. There must be a fine line in a baby’s mind between existential terror and oblivious tranquility. Locked in a marathon dance with a schizophrenic partner, the adult is continually trying out moves to keep swinging the child back from the abyss until victoriously delivered across the finish line to angelic slumbers. When sucking on something no longer suffices, the most successful choreography involves embracing the child while orbiting the hallways of your home, or perambulating outdoors, moving with a rhythmic gait that lightly jostles your fellow traveler. This day, we found ourselves deep in the untamed fields of a peaceful countryside, following wildlife paths through a maze of tall grasses, adhesive weeds and thorny branches. I accompanied the percussive crunch of my footsteps on the dry hay with the mesmerizing repetition of a simple song that seemed to spontaneously combust from a desire to soothe a fragile temperament, sparked by the joy of sharing a sunny, intimate moment with an innocent perched in my arms.

You’re just a little monkey
You’re just a little monkey
You’re just a little monkey climbing up a tree
You’re just a little monkey
You’re just a little monkey
You’re just a little monkey climbing up a tree

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What Is Up With Mark?

I Didn’t Think I Had It In Me

Today was Dad’s birthday. So was yesterday. I always enjoy telling the story about when he was applying for social security he had to find his birth certificate, at which point he discovered that not only had he been celebrating his birthday a day late for 65 years, it turned out his name was actually Elliot not Elmer. This was blamed on his mother’s faulty memory. As unfortunate as the mix-up in names might have been, he kept Elmer but we did start marking his birthday on the corrected date. This annual occasion also marks the end of my summer vacation from card making. I tried to slip by one year without making a birthday card for Dad figuring he really didn’t care and I incurred the withering wrath of Mom. Coming up with original ideas to put in a birthday card for my parents year after year is one of my toughest assignments. This year there was inspiration in the events of his life but it wasn’t happy.

He was hospitalized recently with pneumonia and spent a lot of time in intensive care. He’s been through hospitalizations before but this one left him a frail shell of his former self so he transferred to the Wexner Heritage Village for rehabilitation therapy. He suddenly seemed to age about 10 years and for the first time, I saw him as a helpless old person. Our large family rallied around him and his room looked like Grand Central Station at times. At his meals, there are usually at least two people there watching and helping him eat. All the attention doesn’t seem to do much for his spirits. He feels like he is wasting away and he has little appetite for the effort required to make it through another day of indignities. When I tried to find words of wisdom to give him to put this final period of his life in a serene perspective, the best I could come up with were the typical platitudes about being thankful for the simple things like the love of his family.

I attempted to transpose that cliche through my idiosyncratic imagination in the birthday card with a childlike drawing of one large daisy on the face of the card headed by the caption “When you get to be 89” and continuing on the inside with “All the people you helped  Get to lend you a hand.” illustrated by a group of hands each grasping the stem of their own daisy. Maybe that was a little too metaphoric for Dad. At the birthday party, when I gave it to him, he looked at it for a long time and his face slowly twisted into a painful smile that either indicated he was emotionally moved or hopelessly confused. He simply said “Thanks Mark.’ in his high-pitched, weak voice and I apologized for making it so weird.

Mom brought a beautifully decorated chocolate cake and I stuck two candles in it. Dad’s old sense of humor surfaced in a proud smile when he said there wasn’t any way he could blow them out and that he would just have to throw his cup of water on them. I lit the candles, we sang “Happy Birthday” and I pushed the cake near him to encourage him to  give the candles a try. Despite his previous protestation, he took a shallow breath, leaned into it and blew. I was still hovering over the cake and surreptitiously puffed just enough to make sure they went out. He happily exclaimed, “I didn’t think I had it in me”.

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What Is Up With Mark?

They say “The best things in life are free.”. These days, I’m searching for the best things in life when it comes to entertainment. One night last weekend, I uncovered a treasure trove of cheap thrills. In particular, I felt that three experiences were connected by that night like the stars decorating Orion’s belt. As might be expected from this heterosexual astronomer, they all involved beautiful women. The beauty of the jewels in this tiara, however, ranged in quality from superficially brilliant to violently dark to disturbingly convoluted.

... are free

I learned about the band Gram Rabbit when I reviewed their latest CD for Curt Scheiber’s Invisible Hits radio program. When Curt gives me a batch to listen to, there always seems to be one that ends up growing on me and this was the one that stayed in my car’s CD player for repeated rotation. Their inclusion was in conjunction with  an invite-only performance coming up at Rumba to which I wrangled an invitation. It was my understanding that a promoter from Cleveland arranged to have a band that he really liked do a free show for his friends at Rumba. Gram Rabbit is from Joshua Tree/L.A. and it was evident why they were known as one of the best from that area. The songs were solid rockers with great vocals and interesting instrumentation. Lead-singer, Jesika von Rabbit was lovely in a strategically revealing black ensemble that contrasted nicely with her shining platinum hair adorned with a spray of black mesh and a miniature top hat attached at a jaunty angle. Ms. Rabbit’s voice had that pure childlike quality that reminded me of another L.A. rocker, Martha Davis of The Motels. Their fan cult known as “The Royal Order of the Rabbits” were identifiable by their bunny ear head gear. The band was throwing the furry white ears out into the audience and I considered competing for a pair because I knew I was heading for a Halloween party later but decided that would be a feeble excuse for a costume. I thanked the generous host for bringing such a great band to my attention and headed out for the party.

Usually, I’m always game for dressing up. I love do-it-yourself costumes. I’ve created a great Hunchback of Notre Dame and a zombie with an axe in my head that I can always use. And I’m known to put on a dress and fishnets at the drop of a hat. However, besides the fact that I wasn’t sure I would have time to stop by the party, Halloween was over a week away so I didn’t feel the inspiration to even don a frock. I wished I had because it was embarrassing to be dressed so uncreatively at a party with so many good costumes. One lovely young woman in particular riveted my attention with a very sexy outfit consisting of not much more than a few scanty items of lingerie and some big punk boots. This annual party always has great dance music and lots of dancers so when my favorite cut from the Plastic Beach CD came on and I found myself partnered up with the attractive punk tart, I was inspired to dance with as much zeal and creative flourish as I could. Later, I noticed that she was engaged in what seemed to be innocent sport with a guy dressed up in a tunic and boxing gloves as the Fighting Nun puppet. However, it soon became apparent that the Fighting Nun may have played a little too rough with his not-so-delicate opponent. She started throwing some serious punches and roundhouse kicks with those big boots. He might have been bravely laughing off these assaults as she forced him out the front door but the deadly serious look on her face made it clear that she had just furiously unleashed a lot of pent up anger. Now, that was scary and I took it as sign that it was time to move on to the next event.

The after-hours party was a good one full of people who had already been partying long and hard. There was a beautiful baby grand piano there for me to play. I did a slow, haunting instrumental version of my wedding song and then joined in on some jamming when others picked up guitars and percussion. Eventually, the crowd thinned out leaving a group of us in the hot tub. I’ve had one at my house for years so I’ve seen my share of hot bubbly fun but this was cinematic. I sat back and watched some really beautiful women take advantage of each other in what was apparently quite a mutually satisfying manner. Some of their male friends joined in but since I had just met most of them, I kept a respectful distance. Even so, the feet of one of the busy young ladies happened to press up against my foot and I pushed back like a high school gym class partner doing isometric exercises. Without any sign of acknowledgement, she obviously had decided to incorporate the forceful resistance she was getting from me into the overall effort in which she was engaged because we held the stalemate for quite a while and even came back to it later. It reminded me of how I would use my hand to push back against baby Raad’s leg kicks in a primitive effort to play a game with him. That seemed like quite a perverse thought at the time but I suppose in the context of the surrounding activity, it was relatively innocent. Having had more than enough voyeuristic pleasure for the evening, I left my sybaritic tubmates to their aquatic devices as the morning dawned.

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What Is Up With Mark?

Welcome to my new blog. I wanted to call it “Short Attention Span Theatre” but I discovered that was not an original idea. So I’m going with “What Is Up With Mark?” until I think of something better. As you may know, I wrapped up my “What’s Up This Weekend?” blog a few weeks ago. I had just received some shocking personal news that left me unable to write anything that week except a grateful good-bye. Coupled with my feeling that I was no longer the connoisseur of local music that I used to be as a result of not checking out bands for Comfest and not being able to afford to go out much on my own, gave me a feeling in my gut that it was time to bring it to an end.

It didn’t take long for me to have regrets about not writing. Over the past few years I had developed the strength and discipline to turn out pieces that I enjoyed writing on a weekly basis. I felt like I had quit on myself and my readers. The comments I received from people who said they would miss reading “WUTW?” helped give me the confidence I needed to get back on the horse.

So I decided to come back with something a little different. I’m not going to try to be a resource for your weekly music listening plans but I might offer some suggestions from time to time. I’ve decided to primarily focus on providing you with more of the same short, easily digestible vignettes from the theater that is my life. I’m not going to subject myself to the discipline of a weekly deadline. While there are advantages to having that as an incentive to be creative, it also caused me to offer some material that was less than satisfying. You won’t be able to look forward to hearing from me on a regular basis but hopefully you will enjoy some pleasant surprises.

Thanks for sticking with me. Let me know if you want to get unstuck.

At the Third Station of the Cross

A very good friend of mine was getting married and I wanted to do something special for her and the lucky guy. I’m not one to go out and buy presents or a card. Besides being too poor, I’m a do-it-yourselfer. So I wrote them a wedding song. The lyrics were sort of corny, appropriate for an event celebrating the simple undying purity of a couple’s love, but the music was pretty. I figured I could sneak it in at the reception but as it turned out there wasn’t going to be a piano there. So I took the next logical step and asked if there would be one at the church without considering what I was I getting myself into. It wasn’t until I had volunteered to play it during the service that it occurred to me that I was going to be singing and playing the piano in the middle of someone’s Catholic church wedding with a couple hundred people in attendance. The last time I did something like that was at a much smaller and less formal wedding 25 years ago. I hardly ever play the piano these days, certainly not in public, and the only person who ever hears me sing is me. I had the terrifying realization that I had set myself up to possibly ruin my good friend’s wedding. The song had a couple unusual chords and some of the notes were pretty high for my range but at least the song was mercifully short. The two weeks before the wedding, I must have practiced it about hundred times, rarely getting everything right. I discovered that there were so many different ways I could screw it up. 

The day of the wedding, I got there early and rehearsed a little bit to get a feel for the piano and the place which was a small brick chapel on a country road. It was a beautiful warm and windy autumn day. As the people started congregating, I tried to calm down by taking a sobering walk through the graveyard, reading the headstones of the not-so-recently departed, most of whom had been born in the 1800s. I went in and took my seat near the wall relief of the Third Station of the Cross, “Jesus falls the first time”. That didn’t seem propitious but the fact that the nearest stained glass window had been donated by a “Fisher” was a small detail that I grasped onto as a good sign. I was searching for any omen that would give me hope. I watched two young children calmly read portions of the Bible without a hitch and figured if they could do it so could I.

After the giving of communion, I headed for the stage to await my turn. For the first time, my eyes met the bride’s and we exchanged knowing smiles. When I finally started, I must have gone into a robotic trance in which I lost consciousness and gave way to the programming of all that practicing. It was a bit like an out-of-body experience when I noticed that I was going to get through it without making any mistakes at which point the leg attached to the foot that was working the sustain pedal started violently shaking up and down and I had no ability to stop it. Like a football player dragging tacklers across the goal line, I plowed through to the dramatic ending where I held the last note of the melody, quavering with an unintentional vibrato.

When I hear you say you love me
I bloom just like the flowers in the Spring
When I hear you say you want me
A voice inside my heart begins to sing

Something in the words you say
Make all my worries melt away
And I can see a brand new day
That you and I can share

All my dreams are coming true
Now I’m standing next to you
And when I hear you say I do
Its your ring that I’ll wear

When I hear you say you love me
I bloom just like the flowers in the Spring
When I hear you say you want me
A voice inside my heart begins to sing

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