Being a music lover, I can tell you that there is no greater feeling than to discover some new music you’ve never heard or appreciated before. It’s a feeling of fulfillment or completeness, as if there is a slot in your brain with a distinct size and shape and only one kind of musical experience fits cleanly, and once it does there’s an undeniable sense of rightness that hadn’t existed before, like when your ears pop or a satisfying meal has placated a craving stomach, or even when an urgent need to relieve yourself is finally consummated.
My newest musical obsession may surprise you, especially if you know that I own several thousand units of music (LP, CD, cassette): it’s the Rolling Stones. Not exactly a new or obscure outfit. But I’m no ordinary music lover; I’m a music snob. Being a snob means that I love music so much I can’t help finding fault with most of the music that exists in the world (or at least in the marketplace).
Again, if you know me well, you’ve probably used the phrase “Jason’s music” before. It implies that the music I favor is either intrinsically weird or just out of fashion. It’s true that I’m an admitted ‘70s guy and that some musical trends and genres from that much-maligned decade are easy prey for those who don’t know any better (such as progressive rock, jazz-rock fusion, concept albums, vocoders, and lyricons). But it’s not that I gravitate towards the noncommercial or the complex, I simply am suspicious of anything that is too popular.
For example, I didn’t own Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band until about 2005, and I almost never play it. I have no use for U2. Billy Joel’s music brings on a facial tic. I do like Bruce Springsteen but only when he was skinny and hungry, not his most popular years as a buff hunk with a hot butt. After he painstakingly brought me into his desperate, rambling wooing of Sandy on the 4th of July in Asbury Park, I should care that he’s dancing in the dark with Monica from Friends?
I’m much more drawn to musicians who aren’t necessarily physically attractive but who are staggeringly talented yet have never become household names. Artists like Al Kooper, who played the organ on Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” and was also in his band for that fateful electric set at the Newport Folk Festival. He later joined the Blues Project and founded Blood, Sweat & Tears, then he discovered Lynyrd Skynyrd and produced The Tubes. Along the way, he recorded a strong of little-heard solo albums that show off his deft arranging skills and white soul ambitions. And still, if I mention his name, most people think I’m talking about Alice Cooper.
Or Ian Hunter, whose name is even less known than his former band’s odd moniker, Mott the Hoople. Still rocking with full tanks of talent and integrity at age 70, Hunter rarely registers with people until you tell them that he was the singer on Mott’s “All The Young Dudes” and that he was the author and original recorder of “Cleveland Rocks” (the theme from The Drew Carey Show) and “Ships” (mawkishly taken to hitsville by Barry Manilow). He also wrote and originally recorded “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” a hit for ‘80s headbangers Great White, who will forever be known as the band whose pyrotechnic show burned down The Station nightclub in Rhode Island, killing 100 concert-goers who would have been better off following Hunter.
Or the Waterboys, helmed by Mike Scott, a highly literate, passionate, and spiritual Scot whose brilliant writing and emotionally forceful singing and playing are largely unknown in the country, with the possible exception of one song, “Fisherman’s Blues.” I am firmly convinced that “Waterboys” must somehow rhyme with the name of Pete Townshend’s band, because every time I tell someone about the Waterboys, the response is always, “The who?”
And then there’s Andy Pratt. Like my all-time musical hero, Brian Wilson, Pratt is only comfortable and socially engaging when he’s performing his music. He had one minor hit in 1973 called “Avenging Annie” (you’d only know it if you heard it, not by the title alone); the marketplace’s indifference to his unmistakable voice and gorgeous music is well beyond my ability to comprehend.
The last example I’ll give is a big favorite of mine, the progressive group Gentle Giant. People are surprised when I tell them that Giant released 10 albums from 1970 to 1980, because virtually no one has heard a single note of their music. Which may not be that surprising, since their musical arsenal includes such radio-unfriendly instruments as violin, cello, vibraphone, and recorder, in addition to the standard progressive gear (multiple keyboards and synthesizers, electric and acoustic six- and 12-string guitars, puffy shirts, and boots). The only people I can talk to about Giant are people who probably could have written this exact same post themselves.
So what about the Rolling Stones? Certainly not a group whose name elicits blank stares. Indeed, they are so popular, so consensually acclaimed, that they should never be able to occupy a place in the heart of a man who has never seen any Star Wars film in its entirety or read a single syllable of any Harry Potter book, purely out of stubborn refusal to be like everyone else. How is it that my snobbishness let them through after decades of turning my back on them?
As it turns out, it was purely happenstance, as I suppose it would have to be because I wouldn’t have purchased Ronnie Wood’s autobiography, cleverly titled Ronnie, on my own initiative. It was, in fact, given to a friend who offered it to me because he was even less inclined to want to learn more about the Stones’ third second guitarist (after Brian Jones and Mick Taylor) that was I, who at least is a ‘70s guy and who already owns the memoirs of such musical personalities of the era as David Crosby, Al Kooper, Ian Hunter, and Brian Wilson (who has admitted he didn’t write his).
I took the book because I was looking for new bathroom reading. I’ve gotten in the habit of keeping a paperback by the toilet for those times when I sit and feel like I might be there for a while. So for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been working my way through and it even though it’s horribly written (along with passing a urine test, writing a memoir is just not something he can do successfully), and even though he is an unreliable reporter (among his drug-addled contentions is that his pre-Stones band the Faces were the second-most popular British band of the early ‘70s – after the Stones themselves – conveniently forgetting that Led Zeppelin, The Who, and Elton John outsold the Faces infinity to one during that era), it still is a compelling glimpse into the musical history and moral debauchery of 1970s rock and roll.
Since reading Woods’ more or less accurate recollections of his life and career, I’ve become much more interested in the Faces, Rolling Stones, and even Faces vocalist Rod Stewart, whose solo career (at least since 1978) I had always judged to be something akin to a crime against humanity. But in retrospect, listening with some sense of the back story, I’ve come to a new appreciation for Woods’ place in rock history. (This is not a new dynamic for me. In college, I was completely confounded by William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. It was only years later, after reading a biography of Faulkner that served to contextualize where, how, and from what sources that story came, that a rereading of the book brought me the rewards the author had intended.)
The Faces are an easy band to like because they never took themselves seriously. Competent musicians armed with a love of American blues and soul – and plenty of drink – they rocked with true spirit. Aside from Wood and Stewart, the band included keyboardist Ian McLagan, who became an in-demand session player; Kenney Jones, who became the inadequate replacement for Keith Moon in the Who (to be fair, Moon was irreplaceable); and bassist Ronnie Lane, a wonderful songwriter with a plaintive voice whose career and life were cut tragically short by multiple sclerosis.
As for Stewart, when I went back through his catalog, I realized he actually had a number of fine songs. In fact, his solo career began just months before joining the Faces, and his emerging stardom was one reason why the band disbanded after only four albums (according to Wood, the Stones’ courtship of the guitarist – in 1975, Wood toured with the Stones in between Faces tours – was another reason for the Faces’ demise). Despite his image as a Casanova, Stewart is at his best when he’s being sentimental or philosophical (such as my favorite of his solo songs, “Handbags and Gladrags,” where he chastises a shallow, self-absorbed girl that clothes, earned by the sweat of her grandfather, don’t make the woman). In comparison, the songs by the horny Rod bursting with bravado (“Tonight’s the Night,” where he deflowers some poor virgin; “Hot Legs”; and “Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?”) fail on every aesthetic level yet were among his biggest hits (supporting my suspicion of anything that’s popular).
And now, back again to the Rolling Stones, whom I’ve long hated for at least three reasons: 1) they had the unmitigated gall to call themselves the world’s greatest rock and roll band; 2) they tended to co-opt rather than create musical trends (cf. their brief forays into psychedelia, reggae, and disco); and 3) they were universally loved. While I still don’t like the idea of the band – let’s face it, they all seem a little too much in love with themselves – I am now able to admit that their music (most of it, anyway) does indeed not suck.
That said, given that I’m a music snob, it behooves me to note that I think I like the Stones on a different level than most people. While the Budweiser-swilling masses no doubt enjoy the Stones for their raucous, raunchy image and quintessentially bad-ass rock and roll – a personality-driven musical style that’s none too complex, none too tight, and all too catchy – I’m attracted to subtler, deeper aspects of their art.
For example, the Stones are peerless at integrating lead and rhythm guitar parts, what Wood reports he and Keith Richards call “weaving.” The art of rhythm guitar has been lost over the years, largely due to the number of unheralded rhythm guitarists overshadowed by their showier lead counterparts. For example, if I were to ask you to name a member of the Beach Boys, you’d probably never come up with the name of rhythm guitarist Al Jardine. If I asked you who played rhythm guitar in the Beatles, you might have to pause before answering John Lennon, because that was not his claim to fame.
At the same time, lots of bands have eschewed the traditional rhythm/lead pairing by accommodating multiple lead guitarists, like Thin Lizzy and Lynyrd Skynyrd, whose guitarists switch roles from time to time. And latter-day King Crimson successfully did the unthinkable by pairing another lead guitarist, Adrian Belew, with rock and roll’s version of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s sentient android Data, Robert Fripp. But if you had a band with two rhythm players, you’d be Seals and Crofts; it just doesn’t work.
The Stones, on the other hand, have developed and perfected a true union of guitar souls, a musical innovation so potent that it worked equally well no matter who was slinging along with Richards. Sometimes it’s hard to know which parts are which because they’re both integral to the overall sound. But for a band that doesn’t do a lot of soloing and has some, but not a ton, of classic riffs (“Bitch” and “Brown Sugar,” both from Sticky Fingers, are my favorite), it’s that weaving that makes Richards and any guitarist he’s playing with a guitar god.
I also think the Stones have done some of the best ballads in rock and roll. You don’t expect a lot of sentiment from Mick Jagger but when he goes for the heart instead of the labia he’s not only effective but very convincing. On “Play with Fire,” there’s a vulnerability behind the bravado that another singer may not have been able to reach. His ability to churn out bluesy testimony while also getting across a heartfelt falsetto on “Fool to Cry” is impressive, and whenever Jagger twangs on the country-ish songs like “Wild Horses” – has to be one of the top two or three ballads ever written – it never sounds false or forced.
To me, a quintessential Stones song is “Get Off of My Cloud.” This is a song I liked even when I didn’t like the Stones. Even though the main riff of the song is actually Charlie Watts’ machine gun drum pattern, it’s full of hooks that get the heart pumping, the fists waving, and the hips moving. It has the urban pathos one expects from the group (“I live in an apartment on the ninety-ninth floor of my block/And I sit at home looking out the window imagining the world has stopped.”) It has the cocksure machismo they’re famous for (“Hey! You! Get off of my cloud”). The repeated heys and yous in the chorus enable the audience to participate in the hero’s fight for independence, not realizing that his rejection of others will lead to a loneliness that won’t be expressed until another song. And those guitars are not playing single-string wailing solos but rather strummed chordal licks, all rhythm, ably supported and punctuated by Bill Wyman’s reliable bass.
Ultimately, what I appreciate the most about the Rolling Stones is that they’re the last band standing that draws direct connections to Howlin’ Wolf and Buddy Holly, that understands that rock and roll is more about feeling than finesse, and that despite the whole Glimmer Twins cult of personality, despite the jet-setting ego trips, high-profile romances, drug busts and binges, despite all the SHIT that surrounds the Stones, good honest simple hip-shakin’, butt-kickin’ music remains at their core.
World’s greatest rock and roll band? Hell, they’re the only rock and roll band left. For that reason alone, I’m proud to be a fan.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Assignment: "It Makes No DIfference," by The Band
As mentioned in my prior blog post, I was given an assignment by Steve Almond, who led a session at Grub Street's The Muse and the Marketplace conference, to choose a song with deep emotional importance to me, and write about the event that imbued the song with such meaning for me. So here's my story - but first, here's the song:
The year was 1988. I was 25 years old. Just starting out in my adult life, but I was in a holding pattern, and soon I crashed and burned. It started the year before, when I let myself get fired from my first job out of college. For two years I'd been doing PR in house for a producer of computer industry trade shows. The first year or so, I had a manager whom I despised. She was evil and liked nothing better than to dress down one of her charges in full view of other departments. By the time she left, my morale was rock bottom. Her replacement, however, thought I had potential and not only treated me with respect but also gave me more responsibility and put me in a position where the higher-ups in the company recognized my successes.
So in short, I was feeling pretty loyal to this guy. Then the company decided to branch out into the housewares industry, where the national association had decided to cut back from two trade shows a year to only one. My company hired away their show manager and decided to hold a competing event. The industry didn't look too kindly on a for-profit company with no housewares industry experience elbowing into their space. Therein lay a PR challenge. My manager and I took the lead in building relations and by the time our show was ready to launch, the industry was excited to see what we could do.
Then, literally the day before we were to leave for Chicago (where the industry is based), we heard that my manager had been given notice and was not being permitted to work the show. Instead, I would be supervised by the Conference department head, a man I hated. This was a complete shock to me and aside from the loyalty I felt to my manager, I also felt that I was being put in a position to fail because I would have to deal with the "Where's Keith?" questions. I was pretty bullshit about this and my manager did nothing to pacify me. I and a person in the department even more junior than myself decided to refuse to go to the show. My manager appreciated this display of solidarity. And we all were summarily fired.
I later learned that my manager had in fact been given notice several weeks before and had been told that he would not be going to Chicago. He kept this information from me, which I saw as a betrayal because he had an opportunity to quell my anger and save my job. As a result, I shortly thereafter decided to have nothing further to do with him, and didn't even see his name again for about a dozen years, until the day I opened up the newspaper to find my mother's death notice and was surprised to find his on the same page.
So strike one was losing my job. I decided then I wanted to get out of the computer industry. I thought I'd like to work in health care. Over the next several months, I had a number of interviews at hospitals but always lost out to someone who had some prior health care experience. I did a couple of freelance gigs, leveraging my trade show experience and contact for a PR firm and an exhibiting company, but overall I was unemployed for 10 months. It was during this time that I sank into deep credit card debt and have never been particularly solvent since.
Fast forward a few months. It's Thanksgiving Day. I'm throwing around a football with some friends. I leap to make a catch and land awkwardly on the leg of a friend sprawled on the ground. My ankle hurts like hell, but I eventually get dressed and go to my folks' house for Thanksgiving dinner. After the meal, I go to my girlfriends' parents' house for dessert. My ankle is still killing me but I make it through the evening. Eventually, I tell my girlfriend what happened and she asks to look at it. My ankle is swollen and deep purple. She takes me to the hospital. I've torn ligaments and have to wear a cast and use crutches. Strike 2.
Fast forward 2.5 months later. It's my 25th birthday. My parents and girlfriend take me out for dinner. I'm feeling miserable because I'm still out of work, my ankle is still tender, and my friends have told me they're not around. We go back to my folks' house and SURPRISE! It's a surprise birthday party for me. That's nice, though I was actually hoping to have some alone time with my girlfriend. But whatever, I'm happier than I was earlier that day.
Now, my best friend's birthday is two days after mine, so we had a tradition of going out drinking on the day in between, which was February 13. The next day, of course, was Valentine's Day. On February 13, my friend and I went out drinking Scorpion Bowls. My girlfriend also went out that night. A guy asked her out. She told him she had a boyfriend, but inside, as she told me later, she wished it wasn't so. The next night we celebrated Valentine's Day. A few days later, she told me what happened on February 13 and that she wanted to date other people.
Mind you, we had been dating off and on (but mostly on) for four years at this point, and though she was three years younger than me and still just a senior in college, I was thinking that we would be getting engaged before too long. I had no thought at all about not spending the rest of my life with her. She apparently thought differently. And I can understand that, given she soon would be graduating college and spreading her wings, whereas I had been unemployed for about as long as it takes to carry a baby to term. Still, it was strike three.
I was horribly depressed and despondent. I went to a therapist because I was still interviewing and needed to be able to exude self-confidence, which I had absolutely none of at that time. I've never felt as much pain as I did then. I was desperately searching for a release, a way to express all the hurt I felt inside. I reached for music, because that's simply what music does for me. I recalled how several years before I had deliberately sought out a song that would make me cry, because a girl had broken up with me but I hadn't broken down at all about it. I eventually found it in Dan Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne" ("Just for a moment I was back in school/And felt that old familiar pain" is what did it).
So I went through my record collection and began auditioning tunes. It didn't take long to find my catharsis in Robbie Robertson's lyrics and, especially, Rick Danko's voice crying out those lyrics. The whole performance touched me to the core to such an extent that I listened to that song no fewer than 20 times a day for several weeks.
The lyrics are raw, honest, and real:
It makes no diff'rence where I turn
I can't get over you and the flame still burns
It makes no diff'rence, night or day
The shadow never seems to fade away
...
It makes no diff'rence how far I go
Like a scar the hurt will always show
It makes no diff'rence who I meet
They're just a face in the crowd on a dead-end street
...
And then, at the end of the song, the dagger in the heart. I would scream-sing this part with a dark blue anger until I was hoarse:
Well, I love you so much
And it's all I can do
Just to keep myself from telling you
That I never felt so alone before
This was the lowest part of my life, which means there was no place to go but up. Not long after, I met the woman who would become my wife. And not long after she and I started dating, I got a job. And the fact that my wife and I are now divorcing after nearly 17 years of marriage only means that a certain cycle is coming around again, and I'm already thinking of the songs that will inhabit that emotional wound (George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" and Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" are top contenders).
But for that one bleak time period, The Band's "It Makes No Difference" was indeed the difference between sanity and depression, between hope and despair, and, quite possibly, between life and death.
The year was 1988. I was 25 years old. Just starting out in my adult life, but I was in a holding pattern, and soon I crashed and burned. It started the year before, when I let myself get fired from my first job out of college. For two years I'd been doing PR in house for a producer of computer industry trade shows. The first year or so, I had a manager whom I despised. She was evil and liked nothing better than to dress down one of her charges in full view of other departments. By the time she left, my morale was rock bottom. Her replacement, however, thought I had potential and not only treated me with respect but also gave me more responsibility and put me in a position where the higher-ups in the company recognized my successes.
So in short, I was feeling pretty loyal to this guy. Then the company decided to branch out into the housewares industry, where the national association had decided to cut back from two trade shows a year to only one. My company hired away their show manager and decided to hold a competing event. The industry didn't look too kindly on a for-profit company with no housewares industry experience elbowing into their space. Therein lay a PR challenge. My manager and I took the lead in building relations and by the time our show was ready to launch, the industry was excited to see what we could do.
Then, literally the day before we were to leave for Chicago (where the industry is based), we heard that my manager had been given notice and was not being permitted to work the show. Instead, I would be supervised by the Conference department head, a man I hated. This was a complete shock to me and aside from the loyalty I felt to my manager, I also felt that I was being put in a position to fail because I would have to deal with the "Where's Keith?" questions. I was pretty bullshit about this and my manager did nothing to pacify me. I and a person in the department even more junior than myself decided to refuse to go to the show. My manager appreciated this display of solidarity. And we all were summarily fired.
I later learned that my manager had in fact been given notice several weeks before and had been told that he would not be going to Chicago. He kept this information from me, which I saw as a betrayal because he had an opportunity to quell my anger and save my job. As a result, I shortly thereafter decided to have nothing further to do with him, and didn't even see his name again for about a dozen years, until the day I opened up the newspaper to find my mother's death notice and was surprised to find his on the same page.
So strike one was losing my job. I decided then I wanted to get out of the computer industry. I thought I'd like to work in health care. Over the next several months, I had a number of interviews at hospitals but always lost out to someone who had some prior health care experience. I did a couple of freelance gigs, leveraging my trade show experience and contact for a PR firm and an exhibiting company, but overall I was unemployed for 10 months. It was during this time that I sank into deep credit card debt and have never been particularly solvent since.
Fast forward a few months. It's Thanksgiving Day. I'm throwing around a football with some friends. I leap to make a catch and land awkwardly on the leg of a friend sprawled on the ground. My ankle hurts like hell, but I eventually get dressed and go to my folks' house for Thanksgiving dinner. After the meal, I go to my girlfriends' parents' house for dessert. My ankle is still killing me but I make it through the evening. Eventually, I tell my girlfriend what happened and she asks to look at it. My ankle is swollen and deep purple. She takes me to the hospital. I've torn ligaments and have to wear a cast and use crutches. Strike 2.
Fast forward 2.5 months later. It's my 25th birthday. My parents and girlfriend take me out for dinner. I'm feeling miserable because I'm still out of work, my ankle is still tender, and my friends have told me they're not around. We go back to my folks' house and SURPRISE! It's a surprise birthday party for me. That's nice, though I was actually hoping to have some alone time with my girlfriend. But whatever, I'm happier than I was earlier that day.
Now, my best friend's birthday is two days after mine, so we had a tradition of going out drinking on the day in between, which was February 13. The next day, of course, was Valentine's Day. On February 13, my friend and I went out drinking Scorpion Bowls. My girlfriend also went out that night. A guy asked her out. She told him she had a boyfriend, but inside, as she told me later, she wished it wasn't so. The next night we celebrated Valentine's Day. A few days later, she told me what happened on February 13 and that she wanted to date other people.
Mind you, we had been dating off and on (but mostly on) for four years at this point, and though she was three years younger than me and still just a senior in college, I was thinking that we would be getting engaged before too long. I had no thought at all about not spending the rest of my life with her. She apparently thought differently. And I can understand that, given she soon would be graduating college and spreading her wings, whereas I had been unemployed for about as long as it takes to carry a baby to term. Still, it was strike three.
I was horribly depressed and despondent. I went to a therapist because I was still interviewing and needed to be able to exude self-confidence, which I had absolutely none of at that time. I've never felt as much pain as I did then. I was desperately searching for a release, a way to express all the hurt I felt inside. I reached for music, because that's simply what music does for me. I recalled how several years before I had deliberately sought out a song that would make me cry, because a girl had broken up with me but I hadn't broken down at all about it. I eventually found it in Dan Fogelberg's "Same Old Lang Syne" ("Just for a moment I was back in school/And felt that old familiar pain" is what did it).
So I went through my record collection and began auditioning tunes. It didn't take long to find my catharsis in Robbie Robertson's lyrics and, especially, Rick Danko's voice crying out those lyrics. The whole performance touched me to the core to such an extent that I listened to that song no fewer than 20 times a day for several weeks.
The lyrics are raw, honest, and real:
It makes no diff'rence where I turn
I can't get over you and the flame still burns
It makes no diff'rence, night or day
The shadow never seems to fade away
...
It makes no diff'rence how far I go
Like a scar the hurt will always show
It makes no diff'rence who I meet
They're just a face in the crowd on a dead-end street
...
And then, at the end of the song, the dagger in the heart. I would scream-sing this part with a dark blue anger until I was hoarse:
Well, I love you so much
And it's all I can do
Just to keep myself from telling you
That I never felt so alone before
This was the lowest part of my life, which means there was no place to go but up. Not long after, I met the woman who would become my wife. And not long after she and I started dating, I got a job. And the fact that my wife and I are now divorcing after nearly 17 years of marriage only means that a certain cycle is coming around again, and I'm already thinking of the songs that will inhabit that emotional wound (George Harrison's "All Things Must Pass" and Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" are top contenders).
But for that one bleak time period, The Band's "It Makes No Difference" was indeed the difference between sanity and depression, between hope and despair, and, quite possibly, between life and death.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Fear and Loafers at the Writer's Conference
Today I attended my first-ever writer’s conference, “The Muse and the Marketplace,” sponsored by Boston’s leading writing center, Grub Street. I’ve never been much of a joiner or a sharer when it comes to my writing, but with a manuscript that thus far has only attracted the interest of a pay-to-publish press, I felt I needed to get out there and see what it takes to break the plane and enter the realm of the published.
The first day of the weekend-long event (I only registered for Saturday) began early for me, as I was scheduled to sit face to face with an agent at 8:30 am, shortly after registration opened. This was called the Manuscript Mart and it carried an additional cost; for me, however, it was the central reason to be here.
To date, I’ve sent my manuscript to more than 20 agents, each time getting a form letter or postcard expressing their regrets and their wish for my future success. It has been frustrating not to be able to get any specific or substantive feedback. With the Manuscript Mart, however, you pick an agent and submit a query letter, synopsis of the entire work, and the first 20 pages some weeks in advance of the conference. Thus, when you meet with the agent, he or she will have actually read it and will be prepared to discuss it with you.
Beginning yesterday afternoon, I started feeling nervous about the whole thing. Did I really want to know, face to face, what an agent thought of my work? Could I take it if the feedback was negative? With the previous submissions, there was always the comforting thought that maybe they hadn’t actually spent more than a couple of minutes looking it over, checking it for vampires before chucking it. Now there would be no doubt. The agent will either think it’s good – and that I’m good – or not.
Early as it was, it was too late to turn back. I had risen at 6:00am, dressed in the recommended business casual attire (shirt, pants, blazer – much nicer than my typical business wear), and driven to my office in Boston’s South End. The conference was in the swanky Park Plaza Hotel, a little more than a mile away. Being a long-strider, I made it in about 15 minutes. The warm morning, brisk pace, and sports coat added a patina of moisture that mingled with the mild anxiety I was already feeling.
I entered the hotel and got my registration packet, replete with itinerary and name tag on a red lanyard. The tag said, “Jason Rubin” on it. Anally, I inserted a caret (feel free to stop and reread the previous five words before proceeding) and my middle initial, so that it read “Jason M. Rubin,” my preferred professional name. Then I went to the room where people meeting with an agent checked in and waited to be told we were on.
It was in that room, which felt like a group of people waiting either to audition for a role in some production or waiting to be called in by the dentist to fix a lost filling, that I made my first demographic observation (which by day’s end was found to be fairly accurate of the overall attendance). Essentially, to quote Jan and Dean, it was two girls for every boy, with Caucasian representation at about 99.5% and probably 10 to 20% more lefties than you’d find in a more random societal sampling. Just about all the women were smartly dressed. The men ranged from my get-up to guys resembling IT geeks (comb-agnostic hair, short-sleeved shirts with odd-colored plaid prints; probably science fiction/fantasy writers). Comfortable shoes seemed to carry the day.
When the time came, I made my way to the room where 14 tables were set up, two chairs each. One chair at each table was taken up by an agent. The empty chair was for the writer. My agent (I like the way that sounds) sat at Table 13 (I’m not superstitious, so no worries). Her name was Katherine Fausset from Curtis Brown Ltd. My first choice of agent was sold out and she was a late add to the conference roster but despite the fact that she herself doesn’t handle historical fiction, I was very pleased with the experience.
For one, she had extensive hand-written notes on all three pieces: the query letter, the synopsis, and the sample. Another good thing is that she talked very rapidly so she crammed a lot of feedback into a constrained 20-minute session. She had very good recall about the details of my work and gave me very useful input into what she liked and thought was marketable, and what could be fixed. Overall, she gave me reason to believe that there is a market for my story, and with a little more work someone somewhere would be willing to represent it.
Of particular joy to me was that she liked the way my story began, which was something I was unsure about, having reworked it extensively based on feedback from my friend, author Ellen Kushner, whose novel Thomas the Rhymer was a stylistic influence on my work. Katherine liked the fact that my book is based on a 17th-century English folk song (“unique and potentially a marketable hook”), and thought the plot was “lively” and the work itself “imaginative and sexy.” I won’t bore you with the negative things. Suffice to say, I emerged satisfied, relieved, and considerably drier than when I went in.
Following that, I had some time before my first of two pre-lunch conference sessions began, so I went to a room where the editor of an online literary magazine called The Drum was recording flash fiction (500 words maximum) for consideration. I read “In the Nickel of Time,” a piece I had unsuccessfully submitted to the Harvard Book Store for a flash fiction anthology. The editor thought I read it very well, so we’ll see if it makes it to the site.
My first session was called “This is How a Caged Writer Sings,” led by Steve Almond, a writer I’ve read a little of but heard a lot about. It was all about drawing inspiration from songs, which is something I do anyway. He reinforced my belief that writing while listening to music is essential, and played a number of great tunes by the likes of Tom Waits, Joe Henry, and Bruce Springsteen on a Bose Wave system. Before the session even started, he was playing a song and asked the attendees if anyone knew who it was. I was apparently the only one who could identify the artist as Michelle Shocked. At the end of the session, he gave us an assignment for us to do on our own at home: Think of a song that carries emotional importance to you, and tell the story that that song takes you back to. I know exactly what I’m going to write about. Watch this space. I had bought his new book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, earlier and had him sign it. He wrote: “To Jason, 1. Crank the tunes. 2. Undress. 3. Dance naked. Steve”
The second session was called “The Essentials of Dialogue,” led by Adam Stumacher, who teaches creative writing at MIT (I bet you didn’t know MIT offered creative writing; well, they do and you don’t have to leave your trumpet at home, either). He gave a number of good, concrete tips and backed them up with readings that contain strong dialogue. He gave an assignment towards the end of the session that I had a lot of fun with. It was this: Two neighbors are in a pasture together and they come upon a dead horse. Write a dialogue in which they talk about how they’re going to move the horse; at the same time, one of the characters has something else they’re dealing with that needs to be incorporated into the dialogue. We had 10 minutes to work on it, and I got an idea quickly and ran with it. I was so pleased with what I’d done, I was hoping I would have a chance to read it, but when the 10 minutes were over, so was the session. Here’s what I came up with:
Then it was time for lunch in the Imperial Ballroom. You could pay extra to sit at a “Five Star Table” with actual published authors, agents who represent actual published authors, and editors who refine the work of authors who will actually be published. I elected to dine with the commoners. It was a typical bar mitzvah lunch of roasted chicken breast with a few slices of mushroom in a sauce that bore a striking resemblance to marsala without ever really committing to it, three halves of roasted red bliss potato, several skinny spears of baby asparagus, and some carrot shavings for color. This was preceded by a mixed greens salad and followed by a key lime tart placed dangerously close to a yellow puddle of unknown sauce.
Conversation at the lunch table was polite and curious, as we shared the plots of our stories and talked about the sessions we’d had. I was thinking a nap would be in order, but soon it was time for the third session. Mine was about first-person narrative nonfiction. It was just OK. The presenter was funny but mainly read to us from notes and anytime anyone asked him a question, he always said, “I have two responses.” He never had three, he never had just one. He always had two.
The last period of the day was called “Hour of Power” (remember, writers thought up these great titles), which was a series of sessions that anyone could drop in and out of. I went to one about building a platform, but the presenter was terrible, also reading from her notes, which weren’t even well-written notes. Ultimately, there was nothing she was telling me that I didn’t already know, and her examples were not easily replicable. I ended up leaving it early but by then I was too tired to crash a different session. Instead, I sat on a comfy chair and read the notes thoughtfully written by my agent (we’ll always have the Manuscript Mart).
The sessions officially concluded, it was time for the cocktail/schmoozing hour. I’m very good at the first part, but the second isn’t such a strength. I ordered a Maker’s Mark on the rocks. The bartender took a small rocks glass and dumped a large scoop of ice cubes into it. Though it looked full to me, the bartender then tossed a second scoop of ice into the glass, which was now apparently filled to 200% of its capacity. Somehow, he managed to get some bourbon in there. I sat at a table and was soon joined by two women. We all chatted about the events of the day and the plots of our stories. When I finished my drink (the liquid part of it, anyway), I decided it was time to go.
It had been a long day, nearly 10 hours, and I had spent it listening to people talk, taking notes, sizing up this crowd of people who self-identify as writers, and wondering when and if my big break will ever come. As I left the hotel, I removed the lanyard from my neck and tossed it into a trash can. I began walking back to my office at a somewhat slower pace than before, and that’s when I saw that the streets looked very clean. Downtown Boston looked very pretty today. I didn’t notice that this morning.
The first day of the weekend-long event (I only registered for Saturday) began early for me, as I was scheduled to sit face to face with an agent at 8:30 am, shortly after registration opened. This was called the Manuscript Mart and it carried an additional cost; for me, however, it was the central reason to be here.
To date, I’ve sent my manuscript to more than 20 agents, each time getting a form letter or postcard expressing their regrets and their wish for my future success. It has been frustrating not to be able to get any specific or substantive feedback. With the Manuscript Mart, however, you pick an agent and submit a query letter, synopsis of the entire work, and the first 20 pages some weeks in advance of the conference. Thus, when you meet with the agent, he or she will have actually read it and will be prepared to discuss it with you.
Beginning yesterday afternoon, I started feeling nervous about the whole thing. Did I really want to know, face to face, what an agent thought of my work? Could I take it if the feedback was negative? With the previous submissions, there was always the comforting thought that maybe they hadn’t actually spent more than a couple of minutes looking it over, checking it for vampires before chucking it. Now there would be no doubt. The agent will either think it’s good – and that I’m good – or not.
Early as it was, it was too late to turn back. I had risen at 6:00am, dressed in the recommended business casual attire (shirt, pants, blazer – much nicer than my typical business wear), and driven to my office in Boston’s South End. The conference was in the swanky Park Plaza Hotel, a little more than a mile away. Being a long-strider, I made it in about 15 minutes. The warm morning, brisk pace, and sports coat added a patina of moisture that mingled with the mild anxiety I was already feeling.
I entered the hotel and got my registration packet, replete with itinerary and name tag on a red lanyard. The tag said, “Jason Rubin” on it. Anally, I inserted a caret (feel free to stop and reread the previous five words before proceeding) and my middle initial, so that it read “Jason M. Rubin,” my preferred professional name. Then I went to the room where people meeting with an agent checked in and waited to be told we were on.
It was in that room, which felt like a group of people waiting either to audition for a role in some production or waiting to be called in by the dentist to fix a lost filling, that I made my first demographic observation (which by day’s end was found to be fairly accurate of the overall attendance). Essentially, to quote Jan and Dean, it was two girls for every boy, with Caucasian representation at about 99.5% and probably 10 to 20% more lefties than you’d find in a more random societal sampling. Just about all the women were smartly dressed. The men ranged from my get-up to guys resembling IT geeks (comb-agnostic hair, short-sleeved shirts with odd-colored plaid prints; probably science fiction/fantasy writers). Comfortable shoes seemed to carry the day.
When the time came, I made my way to the room where 14 tables were set up, two chairs each. One chair at each table was taken up by an agent. The empty chair was for the writer. My agent (I like the way that sounds) sat at Table 13 (I’m not superstitious, so no worries). Her name was Katherine Fausset from Curtis Brown Ltd. My first choice of agent was sold out and she was a late add to the conference roster but despite the fact that she herself doesn’t handle historical fiction, I was very pleased with the experience.
For one, she had extensive hand-written notes on all three pieces: the query letter, the synopsis, and the sample. Another good thing is that she talked very rapidly so she crammed a lot of feedback into a constrained 20-minute session. She had very good recall about the details of my work and gave me very useful input into what she liked and thought was marketable, and what could be fixed. Overall, she gave me reason to believe that there is a market for my story, and with a little more work someone somewhere would be willing to represent it.
Of particular joy to me was that she liked the way my story began, which was something I was unsure about, having reworked it extensively based on feedback from my friend, author Ellen Kushner, whose novel Thomas the Rhymer was a stylistic influence on my work. Katherine liked the fact that my book is based on a 17th-century English folk song (“unique and potentially a marketable hook”), and thought the plot was “lively” and the work itself “imaginative and sexy.” I won’t bore you with the negative things. Suffice to say, I emerged satisfied, relieved, and considerably drier than when I went in.
Following that, I had some time before my first of two pre-lunch conference sessions began, so I went to a room where the editor of an online literary magazine called The Drum was recording flash fiction (500 words maximum) for consideration. I read “In the Nickel of Time,” a piece I had unsuccessfully submitted to the Harvard Book Store for a flash fiction anthology. The editor thought I read it very well, so we’ll see if it makes it to the site.
My first session was called “This is How a Caged Writer Sings,” led by Steve Almond, a writer I’ve read a little of but heard a lot about. It was all about drawing inspiration from songs, which is something I do anyway. He reinforced my belief that writing while listening to music is essential, and played a number of great tunes by the likes of Tom Waits, Joe Henry, and Bruce Springsteen on a Bose Wave system. Before the session even started, he was playing a song and asked the attendees if anyone knew who it was. I was apparently the only one who could identify the artist as Michelle Shocked. At the end of the session, he gave us an assignment for us to do on our own at home: Think of a song that carries emotional importance to you, and tell the story that that song takes you back to. I know exactly what I’m going to write about. Watch this space. I had bought his new book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, earlier and had him sign it. He wrote: “To Jason, 1. Crank the tunes. 2. Undress. 3. Dance naked. Steve”
The second session was called “The Essentials of Dialogue,” led by Adam Stumacher, who teaches creative writing at MIT (I bet you didn’t know MIT offered creative writing; well, they do and you don’t have to leave your trumpet at home, either). He gave a number of good, concrete tips and backed them up with readings that contain strong dialogue. He gave an assignment towards the end of the session that I had a lot of fun with. It was this: Two neighbors are in a pasture together and they come upon a dead horse. Write a dialogue in which they talk about how they’re going to move the horse; at the same time, one of the characters has something else they’re dealing with that needs to be incorporated into the dialogue. We had 10 minutes to work on it, and I got an idea quickly and ran with it. I was so pleased with what I’d done, I was hoping I would have a chance to read it, but when the 10 minutes were over, so was the session. Here’s what I came up with:
A: How’d it happen?
B: Don’t know. Just found her like this.
A: She bit anywhere?
B: Not that I can see. Don’t know if there’s an injury on the other side.
A: So how do we get rid of her?
B: Don’t know. Can’t keep her here, that’s for sure.
A: S’pose we could chop her up and take her in bits in a wheelbarrow.
B: Messy business.
A: Yup.
B: Maybe if I take the head and you grab her around the neck we can drag her.
A: Worth a try. Weird thing, though.
B: What’s that?
A: Just thinking of when I came home from school in sixth grade, found my mother dead on the kitchen floor.
B: That’s rough.
A: Heart attack. She was a smoker.
B: Sorry about that.
A: Well, it was a long time ago.
B: Smoker. That gives me an idea.
A: What’s that?
B: We could just burn her.
A: It would stink but that may be the best way.
B: What’d you do with your mother?
A: Went screaming to the neighbors. First dead body I ever saw.
B: Did you try to move her?
A: Naw. We just left her until the ambulance came.
B: She got a better send-off than this horse will, I hope.
A: Yup.
B: Well, let me get the gas can. You got a match?
A: Yup. I’m a smoker, too.
B: That’s kinda funny.
A: Well, I never thought much about it until I saw this horse and thought of my mother.
B: Are you OK with this?
A: Yeah. Let’s get it done. It’s just a horse, after all.
B: Well, even a horse is somebody’s mother.
Then it was time for lunch in the Imperial Ballroom. You could pay extra to sit at a “Five Star Table” with actual published authors, agents who represent actual published authors, and editors who refine the work of authors who will actually be published. I elected to dine with the commoners. It was a typical bar mitzvah lunch of roasted chicken breast with a few slices of mushroom in a sauce that bore a striking resemblance to marsala without ever really committing to it, three halves of roasted red bliss potato, several skinny spears of baby asparagus, and some carrot shavings for color. This was preceded by a mixed greens salad and followed by a key lime tart placed dangerously close to a yellow puddle of unknown sauce.
Conversation at the lunch table was polite and curious, as we shared the plots of our stories and talked about the sessions we’d had. I was thinking a nap would be in order, but soon it was time for the third session. Mine was about first-person narrative nonfiction. It was just OK. The presenter was funny but mainly read to us from notes and anytime anyone asked him a question, he always said, “I have two responses.” He never had three, he never had just one. He always had two.
The last period of the day was called “Hour of Power” (remember, writers thought up these great titles), which was a series of sessions that anyone could drop in and out of. I went to one about building a platform, but the presenter was terrible, also reading from her notes, which weren’t even well-written notes. Ultimately, there was nothing she was telling me that I didn’t already know, and her examples were not easily replicable. I ended up leaving it early but by then I was too tired to crash a different session. Instead, I sat on a comfy chair and read the notes thoughtfully written by my agent (we’ll always have the Manuscript Mart).
The sessions officially concluded, it was time for the cocktail/schmoozing hour. I’m very good at the first part, but the second isn’t such a strength. I ordered a Maker’s Mark on the rocks. The bartender took a small rocks glass and dumped a large scoop of ice cubes into it. Though it looked full to me, the bartender then tossed a second scoop of ice into the glass, which was now apparently filled to 200% of its capacity. Somehow, he managed to get some bourbon in there. I sat at a table and was soon joined by two women. We all chatted about the events of the day and the plots of our stories. When I finished my drink (the liquid part of it, anyway), I decided it was time to go.
It had been a long day, nearly 10 hours, and I had spent it listening to people talk, taking notes, sizing up this crowd of people who self-identify as writers, and wondering when and if my big break will ever come. As I left the hotel, I removed the lanyard from my neck and tossed it into a trash can. I began walking back to my office at a somewhat slower pace than before, and that’s when I saw that the streets looked very clean. Downtown Boston looked very pretty today. I didn’t notice that this morning.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Shoot your Spell-checker
Just a short post to remind everyone that spell-checkers, to quote Monty Python, have the brains of a duck. They're good at picking up the most obvious typos, but they're no damn good at all when it comes to deciding if the word you spelled correctly is really the word you intended to type.
This morning was a prime example. I was under deadline to finish a brochure and was zipping through it as fast as I could (maintaining my renowned quality, of course). When I finished, I spell-checked the thing and corrected the few clear misspellings. Then I printed it out and proofed it by hand and eye, which I always do anyway but this time I was surprised at just how many real words I had inadvertently typed in place of the words I actually needed to type.
So here's what I found, no thanks to Microsoft Word's unutile utility; first the word I typed, followed by the word I intended.
TYPED / WANTED
Asserts / Assets
Heir / Their
Sage / Safe
Fro / From
Culminated / Culminates
Form / From
Asses / Assess
Experience / Experienced
You have been warmed. Er, make that warned.
This morning was a prime example. I was under deadline to finish a brochure and was zipping through it as fast as I could (maintaining my renowned quality, of course). When I finished, I spell-checked the thing and corrected the few clear misspellings. Then I printed it out and proofed it by hand and eye, which I always do anyway but this time I was surprised at just how many real words I had inadvertently typed in place of the words I actually needed to type.
So here's what I found, no thanks to Microsoft Word's unutile utility; first the word I typed, followed by the word I intended.
TYPED / WANTED
Asserts / Assets
Heir / Their
Sage / Safe
Fro / From
Culminated / Culminates
Form / From
Asses / Assess
Experience / Experienced
You have been warmed. Er, make that warned.
Monday, April 26, 2010
"Muse and the Marketplace" writer's conference: my itinerary
Just received my itinerary for Muse and the Marketplace, a writer's conference this Saturday, May 1, in Boston. Happy to report that I received all three of my first-choice sessions. I will also be meeting one on one with a literary agent who will have read an excerpt of my manuscript in advance. This will allow me to hear a rejection in person, with rationale, as opposed to a form postcard wishing me luck. I hope to get feedback that doesn't make me want to give up living. But we shall see.
Here is my itinerary:
SESSION 1E: "This Is How A Caged Writer Sings"
Description: Can listening to the right songs make your prose sing? Steve Almond says yes. And he’s got a whole record collection full of proof. In this strange and potentially aerobic session, Steve will play a number of his favorite literary songs and discuss the relationship between songwriting and prose writing, with a particular emphasis on the melody and rhythm inherent in language, and the importance of overt emotional involvement. (Unless requested, Steve will not be perform his world-famous rendition of “Your Song” on harmonica.) Bring a pen, an open mind, and your dancing shoes.
Type: Lecture with Q&A
Author: Steve Almond. Steve Almond is the author the story collections: My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow, the novel Which Brings Me to You (with Julianna Baggott), and the non-fiction books Candyfreak and (Not That You Asked). His new book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, is just out. He has also, crazily, self-published a book called This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey, composed of 30 very brief stories and 30 very brief essays on the psychology and practice of writing.
SESSION 2G: “The Essentials of Dialogue”
Description: Effective dialogue is more than a simple transcript of speech; our characters’ conversations must be shaped to do work for narrative, to develop character, setting, and voice, and to propel the plot forward. We will practice a range of techniques for the creation of vivid, engaging dialogue, illuminated by examples from authors such as Richard Bausch, Flannery O’Connor, Sherman Alexie, and Raymond Carver. By the end of this session, you will have an enhanced toolbox bringing your characters’ words to life.
Type: Lecture, Q&A, Guided Writing
Leader: Adam Stumacher. Adam Stumacher's fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices, has been published in TriQuarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Carve, Barnstorm and The Sun, and was winner of the Raymond Carver Short Story Award. His nonfiction has appeared in the Guardian (UK) and the anthology Peace Under Fire. He holds degrees from Cornell University and Saint Mary's College, where he was recipient of the Jeanine Cooney and Agnes Butler fellowships. More recently, he was the the Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, where he taught undergraduate courses. In addition to his work at Grub Street, he teaches creative writing at MIT and has many years experience as an educator in urban high schools. He is the author of a short story collection, Slipknot, and is currently working on a novel, entitled A Liar's Opus.
SESSION 3D: “Don’t Give Up: First-Aid for the First-Person Narrative”
Description: This class is designed specifically for frustrated writers who have tried and failed to complete a first-person nonfiction narrative. Nothing is more discouraging than knowing you have a compelling, true story to tell—whether it is based on personal experience, the lives of others, or original research—and watching it fade and fail on the page. Bring your frustrations; bring a one- or two-sentence synopsis of the story you want to tell. We’ll discuss them along with a few opening paragraphs of published memoirs, topical nonfiction, and reflective essays, paying particular attention to the distinct roles assigned to writer, narrator, and character. Because you can’t do it alone: it takes three of you to bring a first-person story to life.
Type: Discussion
Author: Michael Downing. Michael Downing’s novels include the national bestseller Perfect Agreement and Breakfast with Scot, which was adapted as a movie that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. In addition to Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center, a narrative history of the first Buddhist monastery outside of Asia, Michael’s nonfiction includes the updated 2009 edition of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, and a memoir, Life With Sudden Death: A Tale of Moral Hazard and Medical Misadventure. His essays and reviews appear in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. A frequent commentator on clocks, Congress, and confusion about daylight saving on NPR, PBS, and network and cable news programs, Michael teaches creative writing at Tufts University. You can read more about his work at www.michaeldowningbooks.com.
Manuscript Mart Literary Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Katherine Fausset is an agent with Curtis Brown, Ltd., New York. She has worked in publishing since 1998. In non-fiction she looks for dynamic, bold voices and subject matter that alters our view of the world. In fiction, she particularly loves rich, atmospheric detail; humor; explorations of family dynamics; anything set during a revolution; and morally-complicated protagonists. Some of her non-fiction clients are Moustafa Bayoumi, Mary Ann Caws, Ioan Grillo, Daniel Hernandez and Chris Rose. Her fiction clients include Benjamin Percy, Laura van den Berg, James Magruder, Katharine Davis, Jerry Gabriel, Janna McMahan, Justin Allen and John Nichols.
Here is my itinerary:
SESSION 1E: "This Is How A Caged Writer Sings"
Description: Can listening to the right songs make your prose sing? Steve Almond says yes. And he’s got a whole record collection full of proof. In this strange and potentially aerobic session, Steve will play a number of his favorite literary songs and discuss the relationship between songwriting and prose writing, with a particular emphasis on the melody and rhythm inherent in language, and the importance of overt emotional involvement. (Unless requested, Steve will not be perform his world-famous rendition of “Your Song” on harmonica.) Bring a pen, an open mind, and your dancing shoes.
Type: Lecture with Q&A
Author: Steve Almond. Steve Almond is the author the story collections: My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow, the novel Which Brings Me to You (with Julianna Baggott), and the non-fiction books Candyfreak and (Not That You Asked). His new book, Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, is just out. He has also, crazily, self-published a book called This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey, composed of 30 very brief stories and 30 very brief essays on the psychology and practice of writing.
SESSION 2G: “The Essentials of Dialogue”
Description: Effective dialogue is more than a simple transcript of speech; our characters’ conversations must be shaped to do work for narrative, to develop character, setting, and voice, and to propel the plot forward. We will practice a range of techniques for the creation of vivid, engaging dialogue, illuminated by examples from authors such as Richard Bausch, Flannery O’Connor, Sherman Alexie, and Raymond Carver. By the end of this session, you will have an enhanced toolbox bringing your characters’ words to life.
Type: Lecture, Q&A, Guided Writing
Leader: Adam Stumacher. Adam Stumacher's fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices, has been published in TriQuarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Carve, Barnstorm and The Sun, and was winner of the Raymond Carver Short Story Award. His nonfiction has appeared in the Guardian (UK) and the anthology Peace Under Fire. He holds degrees from Cornell University and Saint Mary's College, where he was recipient of the Jeanine Cooney and Agnes Butler fellowships. More recently, he was the the Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, where he taught undergraduate courses. In addition to his work at Grub Street, he teaches creative writing at MIT and has many years experience as an educator in urban high schools. He is the author of a short story collection, Slipknot, and is currently working on a novel, entitled A Liar's Opus.
SESSION 3D: “Don’t Give Up: First-Aid for the First-Person Narrative”
Description: This class is designed specifically for frustrated writers who have tried and failed to complete a first-person nonfiction narrative. Nothing is more discouraging than knowing you have a compelling, true story to tell—whether it is based on personal experience, the lives of others, or original research—and watching it fade and fail on the page. Bring your frustrations; bring a one- or two-sentence synopsis of the story you want to tell. We’ll discuss them along with a few opening paragraphs of published memoirs, topical nonfiction, and reflective essays, paying particular attention to the distinct roles assigned to writer, narrator, and character. Because you can’t do it alone: it takes three of you to bring a first-person story to life.
Type: Discussion
Author: Michael Downing. Michael Downing’s novels include the national bestseller Perfect Agreement and Breakfast with Scot, which was adapted as a movie that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. In addition to Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center, a narrative history of the first Buddhist monastery outside of Asia, Michael’s nonfiction includes the updated 2009 edition of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time, and a memoir, Life With Sudden Death: A Tale of Moral Hazard and Medical Misadventure. His essays and reviews appear in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. A frequent commentator on clocks, Congress, and confusion about daylight saving on NPR, PBS, and network and cable news programs, Michael teaches creative writing at Tufts University. You can read more about his work at www.michaeldowningbooks.com.
Manuscript Mart Literary Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown, Ltd.
Katherine Fausset is an agent with Curtis Brown, Ltd., New York. She has worked in publishing since 1998. In non-fiction she looks for dynamic, bold voices and subject matter that alters our view of the world. In fiction, she particularly loves rich, atmospheric detail; humor; explorations of family dynamics; anything set during a revolution; and morally-complicated protagonists. Some of her non-fiction clients are Moustafa Bayoumi, Mary Ann Caws, Ioan Grillo, Daniel Hernandez and Chris Rose. Her fiction clients include Benjamin Percy, Laura van den Berg, James Magruder, Katharine Davis, Jerry Gabriel, Janna McMahan, Justin Allen and John Nichols.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
I lose...you win
Recently, the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, announced an open submission of short short fiction (500 words of less) to be published in a collection that would be printed on demand within the store. Writers were allowed to send up to three submissions. I sent the full allotment and from hundreds of submissions received from around the world, only 36 authors were selected to be represented. Unfortunately, I was not one of them. Fortunately, no one I know was.
Had I been selected, you would have had to drag yourself down to the book store and buy a copy just to satisfy your insatiable curiosity about what I wrote. As it is, I offer you these rejected works free of charge. Enjoy.
In the Nickel of Time
By Jason M. Rubin
Nickels. Can you imagine that? A handful of shiny silver nickels. That’s all it took. Not that I have anything against nickels, because I don’t. What’s not to like? Jefferson’s proud profile. That nice smooth edge. Far weightier than the meek dime though only half its value. Yeah, nickels. Nothing wrong with them.
Except that I’d never been handed an entire roll of them before.
I was behind the counter at the local Quickie Mart, where I’d been working three nights and one Saturday each week to make a little extra money. I’d been there almost three weeks now and was making literally that: a little extra money. But I supplemented my meager income by surreptitiously taking a few small items every now and then. Not enough to arouse suspicion, just a few household staples: a quart of milk, a can of corned beef hash, a pack of rubbers. Whatever we needed that night.
It was Thursday at about 10:30pm, a half hour to closing time. It took me 20 minutes to close out the register, straighten out the store, and lock up, then another five minutes to drive home. An older guy came in, kind of disheveled, his white hair all askew on his age-spotted head, wearing a dirty jacket too light for a damp spring night. He asked for two scratch tickets. Two dollars, I said. He handed me a roll of nickels. Forty nickels. Two dollars.
“You don’t have a couple of bills?” I asked.
“Nah,” he replied.
I bobbed my hand up and down a few times, as if assessing the weight of the roll to ensure that it felt like a full 40 nickels. As if I could tell. But I liked the feel of the roll in my hand. I didn’t want to break it open and have to count out each individual coin to confirm that he’d paid me the full amount, so I accepted it, knowing he had scant chance of even earning back his investment.
As he walked out of the store, I put the roll down on the counter, took out my wallet, pulled a pair of ones from within, and put them in the register. I kept the roll in my hand the rest of the night and was still holding it as I left the store and started to lock the door behind me. Just then I felt a hand push me against the door. A voice, soft yet sinister, ordered, “Open up and give me what’s in the register.”
Purely out of instinct, I turned and slugged the guy. Wasn’t even thinking. Didn’t know if he was armed, didn’t even know if he was big and strong or just a punk on an oxy high needing money to make another score. But I was so surprised that I just let loose with my fist. Which was holding a roll of nickels.
And that’s how I knocked the fucker out and earned a $100 bonus from my boss.
– end –
------------------------
Kegger
By Jason M. Rubin
We called him Kegger. There were two reasons why we called him Kegger. The first was that we didn’t know his real name. The second was because he had some kind of physical disability that made him walk in a jerky fashion so that he looked like someone leaving a “kegger” (that is, a keg party). In other words, he walked like he was drunk, even though he wasn’t. We used to joke that when he was shitfaced, he probably walked perfectly.
He was a classmate of ours in college. That was almost 20 years ago. We didn’t know what his ailment was. It could have been something like muscular dystrophy or cerebral palsy, but to tell you the truth, I don’t really know what those diseases are all about. He could have sustained a brain injury in an accident. It would have been so easy to get the answer…no, strike that. Even had I introduced myself to him and learned his name, I don’t think I would’ve had the nerve to ask him the nature of his disability. “So what’s with the funny walk: brain damage or incurable disease?” I don’t think so.
The strange thing is, ever since we graduated, I see him around the city every so often. Maybe once every three to five years. I went to a large state university and for all I know I’m constantly coming into contact with people from my class – but I wouldn’t know them from Adam, because there’s nothing about them that distinguishes them in my mind. Not like Kegger. I’d know Kegger anywhere. It’s true, because I’ve seen him with and without a beard, and there’s no question it’s Kegger.
Once we saw him at a Grateful Dead concert. For that night only, his name was changed from Kegger to Acid Casualty. There was no end to our empathy.
Here’s why I’m telling you this. I saw him again. Just yesterday. Only this time, I talked to him. Turns out he works at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, and I was in to get a new license because my wallet had been stolen.
I didn’t recognize him at first, as he was sitting down. But then he had to go over to the printer and there it was. The walk. It was Kegger. I smiled. Nothing to lose, I thought. So when he came back to me, I introduced myself and said that we went to college together.
“I know,” he said. “I see you around town every so often.”
“You do?” I replied. (What the hell was so distinguishing about me?)
“Yeah,” he said. But he didn’t say anything else. Then he handed me my license and called the next number.
I walked out of the building and began to notice the way I walk. It’s funny, when you think about how you walk, you can’t walk right. Old Kegger (I forgot to ask his name!), he doesn’t even have to think about it. He just walks.
– end –
------------------------
Made It
By Jason M. Rubin
They never even made it.
And poor Tim, he still waited with breath that was bated. Alas, he was fated, it seemed, to ever be devastated – and never be elated. He hated this feeling, sought to evade it, and made it his mission to take his position and elevate it.
And yet, again, he was deflated. Tim knew it was a problem he himself created by refusing to be sated with anyone he dated. No one rated high enough, no one fellated well enough, no one could get themselves extricated from him fast enough. They felt intimidated, exasperated, and he only exacerbated the issue through the cruel tricks he perpetrated on them.
Frustrated, he took to drink, thinking that if sedated he would be less hated. But he played it wrong, stayed drunk too long, and demonstrated that he was not syncopated within love’s sweet song that serenaded others so well. If ever he’d come close to tying the knot, surely he would have frayed it. His heart, it seemed, was too well barricaded.
Within his mind he debated the proper course to take; but jaded, he could not commit. How he would have traded his conundrum for any other, waded into any other of life’s streams, aided only by his wits and compassion. Yet passion itself paraded by him, time after time, paying him no mind, until he laid it down to rest.
Only then it came to him, belated, and elucidated in his thoughts, the right response: online dating. And so a profile he created, though a computer crash delayed it. But then it went live and soon he was inundated with romantic offers (the truth, after all, was not often stated and so his appeal was upwardly graded).
Ever a devil, Tim on a whim replied to two at once and both were slated to show, and so he sat in a booth in a café where tables were waited and food was plated and cheese was grated and the knives were serrated. And there his hopes were raided, his light was shaded, and his pride was berated. His place in the booth, well, he refused to vacate it.
Even though they never even made it.
– end –
Had I been selected, you would have had to drag yourself down to the book store and buy a copy just to satisfy your insatiable curiosity about what I wrote. As it is, I offer you these rejected works free of charge. Enjoy.
In the Nickel of Time
By Jason M. Rubin
Nickels. Can you imagine that? A handful of shiny silver nickels. That’s all it took. Not that I have anything against nickels, because I don’t. What’s not to like? Jefferson’s proud profile. That nice smooth edge. Far weightier than the meek dime though only half its value. Yeah, nickels. Nothing wrong with them.
Except that I’d never been handed an entire roll of them before.
I was behind the counter at the local Quickie Mart, where I’d been working three nights and one Saturday each week to make a little extra money. I’d been there almost three weeks now and was making literally that: a little extra money. But I supplemented my meager income by surreptitiously taking a few small items every now and then. Not enough to arouse suspicion, just a few household staples: a quart of milk, a can of corned beef hash, a pack of rubbers. Whatever we needed that night.
It was Thursday at about 10:30pm, a half hour to closing time. It took me 20 minutes to close out the register, straighten out the store, and lock up, then another five minutes to drive home. An older guy came in, kind of disheveled, his white hair all askew on his age-spotted head, wearing a dirty jacket too light for a damp spring night. He asked for two scratch tickets. Two dollars, I said. He handed me a roll of nickels. Forty nickels. Two dollars.
“You don’t have a couple of bills?” I asked.
“Nah,” he replied.
I bobbed my hand up and down a few times, as if assessing the weight of the roll to ensure that it felt like a full 40 nickels. As if I could tell. But I liked the feel of the roll in my hand. I didn’t want to break it open and have to count out each individual coin to confirm that he’d paid me the full amount, so I accepted it, knowing he had scant chance of even earning back his investment.
As he walked out of the store, I put the roll down on the counter, took out my wallet, pulled a pair of ones from within, and put them in the register. I kept the roll in my hand the rest of the night and was still holding it as I left the store and started to lock the door behind me. Just then I felt a hand push me against the door. A voice, soft yet sinister, ordered, “Open up and give me what’s in the register.”
Purely out of instinct, I turned and slugged the guy. Wasn’t even thinking. Didn’t know if he was armed, didn’t even know if he was big and strong or just a punk on an oxy high needing money to make another score. But I was so surprised that I just let loose with my fist. Which was holding a roll of nickels.
And that’s how I knocked the fucker out and earned a $100 bonus from my boss.
– end –
------------------------
Kegger
By Jason M. Rubin
We called him Kegger. There were two reasons why we called him Kegger. The first was that we didn’t know his real name. The second was because he had some kind of physical disability that made him walk in a jerky fashion so that he looked like someone leaving a “kegger” (that is, a keg party). In other words, he walked like he was drunk, even though he wasn’t. We used to joke that when he was shitfaced, he probably walked perfectly.
He was a classmate of ours in college. That was almost 20 years ago. We didn’t know what his ailment was. It could have been something like muscular dystrophy or cerebral palsy, but to tell you the truth, I don’t really know what those diseases are all about. He could have sustained a brain injury in an accident. It would have been so easy to get the answer…no, strike that. Even had I introduced myself to him and learned his name, I don’t think I would’ve had the nerve to ask him the nature of his disability. “So what’s with the funny walk: brain damage or incurable disease?” I don’t think so.
The strange thing is, ever since we graduated, I see him around the city every so often. Maybe once every three to five years. I went to a large state university and for all I know I’m constantly coming into contact with people from my class – but I wouldn’t know them from Adam, because there’s nothing about them that distinguishes them in my mind. Not like Kegger. I’d know Kegger anywhere. It’s true, because I’ve seen him with and without a beard, and there’s no question it’s Kegger.
Once we saw him at a Grateful Dead concert. For that night only, his name was changed from Kegger to Acid Casualty. There was no end to our empathy.
Here’s why I’m telling you this. I saw him again. Just yesterday. Only this time, I talked to him. Turns out he works at the Registry of Motor Vehicles, and I was in to get a new license because my wallet had been stolen.
I didn’t recognize him at first, as he was sitting down. But then he had to go over to the printer and there it was. The walk. It was Kegger. I smiled. Nothing to lose, I thought. So when he came back to me, I introduced myself and said that we went to college together.
“I know,” he said. “I see you around town every so often.”
“You do?” I replied. (What the hell was so distinguishing about me?)
“Yeah,” he said. But he didn’t say anything else. Then he handed me my license and called the next number.
I walked out of the building and began to notice the way I walk. It’s funny, when you think about how you walk, you can’t walk right. Old Kegger (I forgot to ask his name!), he doesn’t even have to think about it. He just walks.
– end –
------------------------
Made It
By Jason M. Rubin
They never even made it.
And poor Tim, he still waited with breath that was bated. Alas, he was fated, it seemed, to ever be devastated – and never be elated. He hated this feeling, sought to evade it, and made it his mission to take his position and elevate it.
And yet, again, he was deflated. Tim knew it was a problem he himself created by refusing to be sated with anyone he dated. No one rated high enough, no one fellated well enough, no one could get themselves extricated from him fast enough. They felt intimidated, exasperated, and he only exacerbated the issue through the cruel tricks he perpetrated on them.
Frustrated, he took to drink, thinking that if sedated he would be less hated. But he played it wrong, stayed drunk too long, and demonstrated that he was not syncopated within love’s sweet song that serenaded others so well. If ever he’d come close to tying the knot, surely he would have frayed it. His heart, it seemed, was too well barricaded.
Within his mind he debated the proper course to take; but jaded, he could not commit. How he would have traded his conundrum for any other, waded into any other of life’s streams, aided only by his wits and compassion. Yet passion itself paraded by him, time after time, paying him no mind, until he laid it down to rest.
Only then it came to him, belated, and elucidated in his thoughts, the right response: online dating. And so a profile he created, though a computer crash delayed it. But then it went live and soon he was inundated with romantic offers (the truth, after all, was not often stated and so his appeal was upwardly graded).
Ever a devil, Tim on a whim replied to two at once and both were slated to show, and so he sat in a booth in a café where tables were waited and food was plated and cheese was grated and the knives were serrated. And there his hopes were raided, his light was shaded, and his pride was berated. His place in the booth, well, he refused to vacate it.
Even though they never even made it.
– end –
Monday, March 1, 2010
My brief career as a harp roadie
There was a short period of time in my life when I worked as a roadie for a harpist. It wasn't a full-time gig, but whenever this harpist would play locally, I'd drive out to the venue with her and haul her harp. I'd get $75 and the pleasure of watching the show. And what a show it always was. The harpist in question was Deborah Henson-Conant, a jazz harpist who has taken her immaculate instrument into the dirty downtown vibe of blues, funk, and electronica. Though I haven't seen her in years, she was a friend and the story of how we came entwined in each other's lives is pretty interesting.
It all started in 1985. I was freshly out of college, it was summer and my friends and I were looking for entertainment. We saw there was a jazz cruise happening in Boston Harbor, so we got tickets for it. I was just getting into jazz, my friends not quite so much, but we were into the idea of a "booze cruise" on a nice summer night, so we went.
There were two bands playing simultaneously. On the main deck was the Gary Burton Quartet. I knew of this remarkable vibraphonist from his duo recordings with Chick Corea. When the night started, I was all set to spend the night enjoying his artistry. After a while, though, one of my friends wanted to check out the other band playing below deck, so I went with him. There we saw a group calling itself the Jazz Harp Trio, featuring the tall, striking Henson-Conant with a bassist and a drummer.
The sight of this combination was enough to keep me there for a while, but it was the music that kept me there all night. The highlight was a medley from The Wizard of Oz, as epic and powerful as Buddy Rich's classic West Side Story medley. At one point, the drummer put down his sticks and did a scat-vocal drum solo. I was hooked. There was a sign-up sheet, which I applied my information to, and I may have bought one of her cassettes that night as well. The point is, I was under her spell.
I also knew where she lived, since her business address was also her home address. She lived outside Davis Square in Somerville, Massachusetts. I lived not far away and within a year or two I was actually living just a few blocks from her. I began going to her shows pretty regularly and bought a couple more tapes. In 1987, I lost my job and was unemployed for a number of months. During this time, I got a mailing from Deborah, asking for volunteers to help with mailings. Having nothing better to do, I called her and said I'd be happy to lend a hand.
I got to meet her and her then-manager Susan, and see her interesting home, which featured the fledgling Burnt Food Museum. We became friendly, and one day she asked me if I'd like to carry her harp for her at a show. Now, I'm a big guy but a harp is pretty big, too, and not the most symmetrical thing you might ever be asked to lift. Not only that, it's ornate and expensive and I was afraid if I mucked it up, it would not at all be a good thing.
But she told me she would teach me how to hold it and, of course, the prospect of earning some money convinced me there would be worse things than spending an evening with a tall, striking harpist. I forget the name of the venue and what town it's located in, but I'll never forget the architecture of the building. The downstairs was a restaurant, the upstairs was a jazz club. The stairs themselves were quite narrow and very steep. I was starting to have second thoughts, but it was too late to turn back. That harp had to get upstairs and I was the one who had to bring it there (I didn't even let myself think about how I was going to get it back down).
Following Deborah's instructions, I gripped the harp at just the right places, bent my knees and lifted it up. If I did nothing else with it, at least I knew I was holding it securely and ergonomically. Now, to climb the stairs. I went slowly, never looking down, stopping to lean my back against the wall when I had to, then continuing, keeping my grip firm (did I mention it was summer and I was sweating?). Amazingly, I made it to the top of the stairs, harp and me each in one piece. It was then that Deborah swooped in and grabbed the harp and placed it on the stage. Very smoothly, I might add. My work, for the next couple of hours anyway, was done.
I enjoyed the show and a couple of draft beers, and then it was time to bring the harp downstairs. To my surprise, it was actually easier; I'd been afraid the thing would drag me down or make me lose my balance. The final trick was laying it gently in the back of her car (I forget the make, but it was just a plain old urban shitbox, not a vehicle designed for transporting large, awkward, valuable objects). Anyway, the night went well, Deborah was satisfied with my hauling and enjoyed my company (I learned that part of the job was keeping her focused and unanxious before the performance), and subsequently she hired me at least a half dozen other times.
By that time, I'd gotten a full-time job and had begun my progressive rock newsletter, so I used my new desktop publishing skills to redesign and produce her newsletter, called Harp Strings.
By that time, I also had met a woman name Laura, who happens to currently be my wife. For our first date, I took her to the Regattabar jazz club, located in the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, to see - who else? - Deborah Henson-Conant. When we arrived, I saw Deborah's manager, Susan, and went over to say hi and introduce her to Laura. She shook Laura's hand and said, "Ooh, your hand is so cold!" Then to me, she said, "Are her hands always this cold?" I replied honestly. "I don't know, I haven't held her hand yet."
So that was our first date. When we got married in 1993, we decided to hold the wedding at the Charles Hotel. We hired Deborah to play during the processional and recessional, as well as the cocktail hour. And then Deborah suddenly got kind of big. She was signed to GRP Records, began appearing on TV, and toured the world. I think I've only seen her once since the wedding, but I'm glad she's taken off and gotten the recognition she so justly deserves.
At this point, I'd be very curious to see her perform again, to see how her music has progressed. My back, however, insists that the only harp I lift again be the one on a Guinness pint glass.
This, by the way, is a much smaller harp than the one I carried:
This one is more like it:
It all started in 1985. I was freshly out of college, it was summer and my friends and I were looking for entertainment. We saw there was a jazz cruise happening in Boston Harbor, so we got tickets for it. I was just getting into jazz, my friends not quite so much, but we were into the idea of a "booze cruise" on a nice summer night, so we went.
There were two bands playing simultaneously. On the main deck was the Gary Burton Quartet. I knew of this remarkable vibraphonist from his duo recordings with Chick Corea. When the night started, I was all set to spend the night enjoying his artistry. After a while, though, one of my friends wanted to check out the other band playing below deck, so I went with him. There we saw a group calling itself the Jazz Harp Trio, featuring the tall, striking Henson-Conant with a bassist and a drummer.
The sight of this combination was enough to keep me there for a while, but it was the music that kept me there all night. The highlight was a medley from The Wizard of Oz, as epic and powerful as Buddy Rich's classic West Side Story medley. At one point, the drummer put down his sticks and did a scat-vocal drum solo. I was hooked. There was a sign-up sheet, which I applied my information to, and I may have bought one of her cassettes that night as well. The point is, I was under her spell.
I also knew where she lived, since her business address was also her home address. She lived outside Davis Square in Somerville, Massachusetts. I lived not far away and within a year or two I was actually living just a few blocks from her. I began going to her shows pretty regularly and bought a couple more tapes. In 1987, I lost my job and was unemployed for a number of months. During this time, I got a mailing from Deborah, asking for volunteers to help with mailings. Having nothing better to do, I called her and said I'd be happy to lend a hand.
I got to meet her and her then-manager Susan, and see her interesting home, which featured the fledgling Burnt Food Museum. We became friendly, and one day she asked me if I'd like to carry her harp for her at a show. Now, I'm a big guy but a harp is pretty big, too, and not the most symmetrical thing you might ever be asked to lift. Not only that, it's ornate and expensive and I was afraid if I mucked it up, it would not at all be a good thing.
But she told me she would teach me how to hold it and, of course, the prospect of earning some money convinced me there would be worse things than spending an evening with a tall, striking harpist. I forget the name of the venue and what town it's located in, but I'll never forget the architecture of the building. The downstairs was a restaurant, the upstairs was a jazz club. The stairs themselves were quite narrow and very steep. I was starting to have second thoughts, but it was too late to turn back. That harp had to get upstairs and I was the one who had to bring it there (I didn't even let myself think about how I was going to get it back down).
Following Deborah's instructions, I gripped the harp at just the right places, bent my knees and lifted it up. If I did nothing else with it, at least I knew I was holding it securely and ergonomically. Now, to climb the stairs. I went slowly, never looking down, stopping to lean my back against the wall when I had to, then continuing, keeping my grip firm (did I mention it was summer and I was sweating?). Amazingly, I made it to the top of the stairs, harp and me each in one piece. It was then that Deborah swooped in and grabbed the harp and placed it on the stage. Very smoothly, I might add. My work, for the next couple of hours anyway, was done.
I enjoyed the show and a couple of draft beers, and then it was time to bring the harp downstairs. To my surprise, it was actually easier; I'd been afraid the thing would drag me down or make me lose my balance. The final trick was laying it gently in the back of her car (I forget the make, but it was just a plain old urban shitbox, not a vehicle designed for transporting large, awkward, valuable objects). Anyway, the night went well, Deborah was satisfied with my hauling and enjoyed my company (I learned that part of the job was keeping her focused and unanxious before the performance), and subsequently she hired me at least a half dozen other times.
By that time, I'd gotten a full-time job and had begun my progressive rock newsletter, so I used my new desktop publishing skills to redesign and produce her newsletter, called Harp Strings.
By that time, I also had met a woman name Laura, who happens to currently be my wife. For our first date, I took her to the Regattabar jazz club, located in the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, to see - who else? - Deborah Henson-Conant. When we arrived, I saw Deborah's manager, Susan, and went over to say hi and introduce her to Laura. She shook Laura's hand and said, "Ooh, your hand is so cold!" Then to me, she said, "Are her hands always this cold?" I replied honestly. "I don't know, I haven't held her hand yet."
So that was our first date. When we got married in 1993, we decided to hold the wedding at the Charles Hotel. We hired Deborah to play during the processional and recessional, as well as the cocktail hour. And then Deborah suddenly got kind of big. She was signed to GRP Records, began appearing on TV, and toured the world. I think I've only seen her once since the wedding, but I'm glad she's taken off and gotten the recognition she so justly deserves.
At this point, I'd be very curious to see her perform again, to see how her music has progressed. My back, however, insists that the only harp I lift again be the one on a Guinness pint glass.
This, by the way, is a much smaller harp than the one I carried:
This one is more like it:
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