Orphaned parents

When my wife and I put our daughter on a bus bound for camp last weekend we made an effort not to appear anxious or anything other than thrilled for her, even though she knew no one who was getting on board, and they all seemed to know each other, and hardly any of them were anything but white (Franny was born in Paraguay, and always does a quick tally of white versus non-white in any group situation). We smiled and waved, my wife being much more controlled than she was the first time we did this three years ago and she cried all the way driving back to New York...

But this was a new camp, one our daughter had researched and chosen based on a referral from a classmate. She is good at making friends and the first one to wade into any gang approximately her age (13), not sitting back sulkily as I did when I was that old. We tried to watch her through the darkened glass of the bus windows ("I think she's talking to the girl in the seat next to her," my wife said) and kept waving and smiling as they finally pulled out. And once they were gone the parents in the Queens parking lot burst into applause and cheers, anticipating a month's freedom.

Freedom to miss their kids, that is. We had dinner with some friends last night (great time for restaurant reservations in NY). They are in the same boat; their son Jack is gone to a camp in Maine for a month, and we spent the majority of our time talking about them, how they were doing, what we imagined the experience was like etc. We had just received our first note from Franny at camp, written on the second day, and it was tinged with a little homesickness -- and perhaps some buyer's remorse. Yes, she had made friends but she was one of the few first-timers, I gathered, and in a PS she wrote, "I'm the only non-white person here, I swear." (Good thing she's not prejudiced.)

Where once NY dads sent away kids AND wife for the summer to get into mischief on their own (remember The Seven Year Itch?), now single-child-centric families experience a different kind of comedy with their kids away. My friend Paul told me that with his son gone, he had no excuse to go see a matinee of Miami Vice (I volunteered). And I'm sure my wife, curling up to watch Project Runway, longs for our daughter's company. We need them both to remind us we're parents and to help us be children again.

posted by Sean Elder @ 11:39 AM  0 comments

Salmon fishing

Which is more surprising: that Robert DeNiro and his partners at Tribeca films wanted to buy the New York Observer or that owner Arthur Carter got cold feet at the last minute? The Observer, the salmon-colored, slightly skewed weekly celebration of NY's political-society-media world and its fascination with itself, has been an anomaly forever. A perpetual money-loser, the paper is still considered essential reading to a small yet powerful audience who long to see themselves caricatured on the front page. It would have been a vanity move for DeNiro & co, akin to Harvey Weinstein's commitment to launch Tina Brown's Talk magazine with Hearst. Though it presumably would have cost far less.

I have no insider knowledge of Carter and what did or did not go down at the eleventh hour; I certainly have no idea why a movie star would want to own a paper, unless it's to make sure he gets the kid-glove treatment the next time he gets divorced. But I have to admit, I would have enjoyed a slight replay of the Talk fiasco if for nothing but schadenfreude. Like many writers in New York, I have my own personal ax to grind with the Observer and like to send occasional bits of bad juju its way.

In 2000, basking in the publicity that came from having been laid off from my job as a media columnist at Salon, I heard from a former Observer reporter that editor Peter Kaplan was looking for a writer to do something media related in the paper and that I should go see him. Getting into his inner sanctum proved more difficult than getting an audience with the Wizard of Oz and it was ultimately about as enlightening. Famously forgetful and more disorganized than your average college professor, Kaplan is protected by a more professional staff and has helped the careers of many NYO editors and reporters. Despite several blown appointments and at least one missed lunch date, I persevered. When I finally found my way into his lair -- a veritable rag-and-bone shop of toppling piles of books and manuscripts -- he told me excitedly about a new column he wanted me to write, a compliment to their weekly media column Off the Record.

I had what I thought was a great idea for the first one: a "magazine ICU," rounding up some publications that were on their last legs. For starters I suggested Brill's Content, George and Talk (all now defunct) and proceded with Kaplan's blessing. The people at the publications themselves were surprisingly eager to talk, painting a rosy picture of their prospects even as they bailed water. I turned the piece in and after some back and forth with the editor (he thought I had been too nice to Talk, which was desperately trying to get its act together before Harvey pulled the plug) he agreed it would run...soon.

Time passed, things changed. My son was suddenly having serious emotional issues and I was flying to SF every other week, trying to sort him out. I remember standing outside of a clinic that Thanksgiving weekend, where a therapist had just suggested my son be hospitalized, trying to reach Kaplan on the phone and find out what the hell had happened to my column. At that point I was concerned that the magazines in question would go out of business before the column ran. What I got from Kaplan's assistant was the runaround. I later learned that the then Off the Record reporter had screamed loudly when he learned I would be sharing his beat, and perhaps Kaplan got cold feet himself. Maybe he just didn't like my column. But rather than tell me or even make up some convenient lie about what might be wrong, he whiffled and waffled and avoided me until I went away, sending me smarmy a thank you email before I put in for the kill fee.

What I remember thinking that day was that I wanted to get on plane, go back to NY and break his glasses while they were still on his face, though I'm sure my frustration over my son had something to do with my reaction. Such violence certainly wouldn't have done much for my career here, such as it is. Though it might have got me caricatured in the Observer.

posted by Sean Elder @ 5:42 PM  0 comments

Place of no sad partings

Airports have been the catalyst for a lot of mawkish movie moments. The risible British flick Love, Actually was bookended by scenes of people greeting each other in slo-mo while Hugh Grant reflected warmly on getting a blow-job from a Hollywood hooker. Oh, sorry. I mean the meaning of love. All the more risible was the fact that he invoked 9/11, the mother of all airplane disaster days.

Dropping my son at JFK for his return to San Francisco I heard the whistles of the terminal traffic cops: "Hurry please, it's time." It is hard to avoid those intimations of mortality, not because I ever put anyone on a plane thinking it would crash (remember flight 222, on the Twilight Zone?) but because it is such a big fat obvious Hollywood metaphor. They're leaving, you're staying. They are going off to have adventures while you wait on the sidelines, as parents do, and wish for the best. In Adam's case he is going back to CA to have an Outward Bound adventure in the Sierras, a trip he has been preparing for by training daily, quitting cigarettes, etc. We spent the last two days (and tons of $$ -- caveat emptor) getting mountaineering gear. Our best experience was at a crowded little store near City Hall called Tents and Trails. Unlike some of the salesmen at Paragon, everyone we talked to there looked like they did a fair amount of wilderness wandering themselves. And all were impressed with the fact Adam was doing Outward Bound.

Young men need a challenge, a fire to walk through on the way to manhood. Left without some of the more traditional rites of passage (military service, walkabouts) American men are forced to invent their own. Me, I got in lots of trouble: drink, jail, drugs, more jail. It is my hope that by providing my son with a more controlled challenge (as an OB instructor said, "We haven't lost anyone yet," a promise the military can't match) he will feel emboldened to take other risks. Finish school. Get a job. Clean his room. Not necessarily in that order.

He's in the air now, lost to me for the time being. I feel at these times like I'm holding a kite string, all tangled up as it comforts and cuts me at once, back here, on the ground.

posted by Sean Elder @ 9:16 AM  1 comments

When worlds collide

Any cause worthy of the name draws its strength from people of diverse backgrounds, who may not agree on anything save who the enemy is. Think of the forces allied against Hitler before the US got involved: communists, anarchists, loyalists, royalists. The only thing they had in common was a love of freedom and a shared sense that the Nazis were out to exterminate them all.

At a rally today for Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn, a few diverse communities got a glimpse of each other and resolved that the common enemy -- Bruce Ratner and his Cleveland-based development group, that wants to choke downtown with skyscrapers -- was more important than their differences. From the beginning, Ratner and his henchmen have sought to make this a racial issue, portraying those objecting to the development as rich white homeowners (mostly in Ft. Greene and Clinton Hill) while those who would benefit would be working class black families (from Prospect Heights and Bed-Stuy). As blacks and whites together wised up to Ratner's tactics -- and the fact that the jobs and affordable housing he is holding out as a carrot are not, in fact, guaranteed -- the front has grown more unified, even if they're not always reading from the same hymn book.

At a Rally Against Ratner today held in Prospect Park, about 500 sweltering opponents to the Atlantic Yards project were entertained by the Reverend Billy and his Stop Shopping Gospel Choir, practitioners of the sort of political theater that was the staple of most San Francisco rallies and protests: not funny enough to classify as entertainment, but not as strident as your usual rabble rouser. The Rev. Billy is a performance artist of sorts who has made a career of sorts fighting Wal Mart and other developers; though not a preacher, he does a fair impression of a third-tier Jimmy Swaggert type, getting a little epileptic as he reached his pitch. His choir, while robed, had not been picked for their voices, making them unlike any church choir I've heard.

He came, he camped, he left -- and the following three speakers took issue with his satire. "I come from the real church community," said Assemblyman James Brennan, and went on to imply that some of these white hipsters need to tread lightly when making fun of church. Brooklyn activist (and former Black Panther) Bob Law said much the same thing and the one real man of the cloth on the dais today, the Reverend Dennis Dillon, had his second speak for him. Was this the sign of some great divide? No, just a reminder that you best be careful when messing with Jesus.

posted by Sean Elder @ 7:02 PM  0 comments

His master's voice

I don't know how often you tune into Ovation. It's a rather creaky cable network consisting of taped symphony performances, infomercials for alternative cancer treatments and the odd musical documentary -- a perfect home for Ray Davies, in other words. Last night the network presented a biopic about the king Kink entitled The World from My Window, and I dutifully sat down to watch it even though I was pretty sure there wasn't going to be much news there for me, having read and even written a fair amount about the Kinks.

What was new was the voice of the master himself, interviewed during the recording of his slightly feeble solo album, Other People's Lives. Where interviews often capture an acerbic Davies, equally resentful of the years of neglect and the intrusions on his privacy publicity demands, here he seemed positively mellow. True, it came off at times as an elaborate piece of PR (there were no hostile questions re past drug use, sexual proclivities or even his famous battles with brother Dave) but I got the sense that Ray has finally made peace with himself.

Take "Waterloo Sunset." I have read Ray on the subject of that pop mini-epic countless times and could scarcely imagine what new he could say about its composition -- until he talked about walking across the Waterloo Bridge with his daughter, and how he related her future happiness to that of his own scattered family. For all his quirks, or kinks, Davies has a heart as big as all outdoors; that's what puts his songwriting on a par with Lennon-McCartney's (and a step above Jagger-Richards'): his sensitivity, his ability to see the sadness and the promise of each sun setting over whatever place you call home.

Speaking of his early influences, Ray name-checked Chuck Berry -- not all that surprising in and of itself except that the song he chose to expound on was "Memphis." That number has always made me a little squeamish; whether adroitly covered by Johnny Rivers or Geoff Muldaur you could not get away from the fact that it was about a man in love with a girl who was... six years old. Lower than Humbert Humbert, a real Short Eyes. But Ray's take was that it was about a custody fight: a father who could not see his daughter: "We were pulled apart because her mom did not agree/She tore apart a happy home in Memphis, Tennessee." I was struck by the generosity of Davies' interpretation, as well as his acknowledgment that Memphis wasn't all that far from Muswell.

There are some great bits of vanished video tucked in there, too (I particularly loved a film meant to accompany "Dead End Street" that Top of the Pops refused to air: it features the band dressed as Dickensian undertakers, carrying a coffin) and the obligatory interviews with singer-songwriters indebted to the Master. Bob Geldof says that hearing "Days" made him want to slit his wrists, knowing he would never write anything as good, while Elvis Costello (who covered it for the soundtrack to Wim Wenders' 'Til the End of the World) confesses that the introduction of the spiritual aspect ("those endless days, those sacred days you gave me") always made him a bit uncomfortable. He could never go there, he said. Few of us can.

posted by Sean Elder @ 1:11 PM  0 comments

Don't go changing on me

Ever since I was a lad in the seventies I have turned (albeit very occasionally) to the I Ching, or Book of Changes, for inspiration in times of duress. Which are most times, at least for me. Back in the day I used three coins (hardcore hippies used actual yarrow stalks, hard to find at the corner bodega) and painstakingly mapped out each hexagram to reveal... whatever happened to be changing at that moment. For the unitiated, someone throwing the I Ching is supposed to keep a question or problem in mind while consulting the oracle. Not that the answers necessarily make that much more sense when you know what you're wondering about. Thanks to the I Ching site -- same Wilhelm translation as the Bollingen book -- you don't even need coins anymore. The site "tosses" virtual coins for you, US or Chinese.

The point-and-click manner of consulting the book makes it slightly more addictive and probably prophesies a future of carpal tunnel syndrome for me. Plagued about my book (I am halfway through the first draft of a novel and losing spirit, heart, and faith) I asked the I Ching if I should continue, just this afternoon. A short answer, ala Sam Johnson's observation that "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money" probably could have saved me and others countless hours (and pages) of agony but the oracle delivered something all together different.

Number 29 is a water hexagram, aka The Abysmal (funny, that's one editor said about my manuscript), and is one of only eight "doubling" hexagrams, repeating the trigram Kan. The Judgment seems pretty encouraging

The Abysmal repeated.
If you are sincere, you have success in your heart,
And whatever you do succeeds.

Though Richard Wilhelm, who translated the book from the Chinese into German and then into English, notes: "In man's world Kan represents the heart, the soul locked up within the body, the principle of light enclosed in the dark - that is, reason. The name of the hexagram, because the trigram is doubled, has the additional meaning, 'repetition of danger.'"

For someone who has tried publishing a novel before, only to be told it just wasn't good enough, the notion of repeating past mistakes is alarming. Though as Wilhelm goes on to note, "Properly used, danger can have an important meaning as a protective measure. Thus heaven has its perilous height protecting it against every attempt at invasion, and earth has its mountains and bodies of water, separating countries by their dangers. Thus also rulers make use of danger to protect themselves against attacks from without and against turmoil within." Lord knows, I've got plenty of inner turmoil -- and my ms. has already been attacked from without. Like the long distance runner in the middle of a marathon, I realize there is nothing to do but perservere. If that doesn't work, I can always go back to tossing coins.

posted by Sean Elder @ 5:34 PM  0 comments