Maybe Someday, But Not This Week

Posted on by under Music

This week, two musical kindred spirits are coming to my area to perform. And I will see neither of them.

One is Ben Harper, who will be appearing tomorrow at the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C. I first became aware of Ben from his scintillating cover of the Beatles “Strawberry Fields” for the soundtrack of the 2001 film I Am Sam. Ben’s vocals floated through the song, reinterpreting the already very familiar tune to become something fresh. After that I went out and bought “Fight for Your Mind” and “Diamonds on the Inside”. The songs from these two albums remain alive to this day. I heard one cut recently on an episode of the CBS series The Good Wife.

The other is Robyn Hitchcock, who will be performing on Wednesday at the Barns at Wolf Trap in Northern Virginia. Robyn launched his career in the London punk scene, but I became enamored when I heard him play on the radio on “Mountain Stage,” which broadcasts from West Virginia, of all places. I ran out an bought his 1991 CD “Perspex Island,” which fit right in with the Richard Thompson CDs that I was also buying at the time.

Robyn Hitchcock, c. 1991 (photo: Merlyn Rosenberg)

Robyn Hitchcock, c. 1991 (photo: Merlyn Rosenberg)

It would seem to be a no-brainer that I would go see at least one if not both of them. But there are many things to consider. First, there is the question of who I would go with (going alone is not an option). My wife would probably hate both of them. Our musical tastes overlap by only a thin slice. After our decades of marriage, we have reached an understanding that we like what we like, and it is not worth the effort to try to convince each other otherwise.

Secondly, neither of my children are quite old enough for a night on the town (and if I were to bring one, I’d have to bring both, or neither). Which brings me to reaching out to someone outside my family, and that only gets complicated. These are the trade-offs one makes in life.

Additionally, I have always been a skeptic when it comes to paying money for a live experience. It has to be pretty much a guarantee, or I will feel ripped off. Buying a ticket to see Ben or Robyn would be a pretty safe bet, but it becomes much less so when I have to convince the companion to come along. I can’t make a promise to someone who does not already know the music, and I’m not enough of a good time myself to make up for any deficiencies (real or perceived) that might become apparent at the concert.

I’ve seen some of my music heroes before–Richard Thompson, John Gorka, Colin Hay–and I’ve been pretty happy. And yet some bits somehow don’t fall into place, and I’m left wanting…what? I don’t know.

I do know some people just spend the money and go to concerts enough times to finally experience that right moment. I just see that as a lot of money to spend that I don’t have. I need each penny to count.

I realize that maybe it’s me, that I may be making too much of it. That maybe I should just suck it up and go.

And maybe I will someday. But not this week.

Euphamisms

Posted on by under Loss

When the failure of a product or service is discussed, people will say how “the market wasn’t there.”

When a company tries to launch something new and doesn’t succeed, they’ll say that it “didn’t do well with consumers.”

When a writer is unsuccessful, they’ll say he “failed to find an audience.”

These are all just variations of the same thing. They are euphemisms that grown-ups use for age-old playground judgements:

“You suck!”

“Loser!”

Creating fancy phrases derived from social correctness or business school lingo doesn’t make it hurt any less.

In fact, all of these smell of head-shaking and pity. “Poor soul,” they seem to say as the ice cubes clink in their glasses of scotch, “he just couldn’t rise to the occasion, didn’t have the right stuff.”

“Shame, really.”

“Indeed.”

To Be Read, and To Be Understood

Posted on by under Compassion, Connection

Recently, I noticed a flurry of views on a post I wrote in January. The post was my reaction to an article in the Washington Post Magazine, an article about a writer, Cynthia McCabe, who was e-mailed by a man, a complete stranger, announcing his intention to commit suicide. The reasons this man gave were that he, as a writer, had “said everything I wanted to say and consider my work finished.”

It was an article to which I had a visceral reaction, and I don’t mean a positive one.

I won’t summarize my reaction–you can read it for yourself–except to say that I felt McCabe, as the writer of the article, was missing the bigger picture. I also figured that she had said what she needed to on the subject and that the story would be laid to rest.

Not so.

I was curious about what was behind the uptick in views of my post, so I decided to find out. The recent increase in views, evidently, was provoked by the story reappearing on the radio program Snap Judgement. Don’t get me wrong, I like the program and have listened to it on several occasions. But I question the resurrection of the story in a new format, the motives behind it, and the approach taken by the producer of the piece, Julia DeWitt.

Julia DeWitt, exercising questionable judgement.

Julia DeWitt, exercising questionable judgement.

The story, in my opinion, should have been that a person named Dennis Williams (aka Katry Rain) had dedicated a lifetime’s worth of energy and effort into a body of work that has been essentially ignored, and that this emptiness led him to end his life.

I’m not alone in this. One commenter on the NPR website had this to say about the handling of the story:

I found this story very troubling. Not because the writer committed suicide, but because the producer, Julia DeWitt, seemed to so completely fail to respect or understand his decision…. It doesn’t sound like Ms. DeWitt read a single thing he wrote beyond the letter. How is what he died for not the story here?

And a commenter on my January post said this:

My uneasiness with reading The Washington Post article…was [from] the writers’ callous tone (listing her course of options rather than expressing genuine sympathies, or her semi meta-judgmental of the publishing world, yet failing to recognize her part in it).

It appears that McCabe has not given any further thought on the matter.

In the radio show, however, Dara Horn–the one who called the incident an “emotional mugging”–says this:

You know, I’ve been very fortunate to have had a fair amount of success as a writer. And so perhaps it’s not fair for me to say this because perhaps I would feel differently if I weren’t as successful as I’ve been, but it would never occur to me that my writing was the most important thing that I had contributed to this world.

Interestingly, many writers–successful ones–have felt exactly what Williams felt, that their writing was vitally important to their lives. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote “On the other hand, for a shy man it was nice to be somebody except oneself again: to be ‘the Author’….”

John Updike observed that the embodiment of the New Yorker, Eustace Tilley, “was like a god to me, the guardian of excellence; he weighed my mailed-in words and paid a grand or so for tales he liked. A thousand dollars then meant we could eat for months. A poem might buy a pair of shoes. My life, my life with children, was a sluice that channeled gravelly water to my pan; by tilting it, and swirling lightly, I at the end of day might find a fleck of gold.”

Here’s the thing: why did DeWitt feel the need to re-warm this story for the radio? Was it because it really needed to be told again, that radio would provide something that print could not? I doubt it.

Yes, Dennis Williams has received a boost of attention from these events. But DeWitt seems to have no interest in Williams, and she admits that the people interviewed for the story don’t either. I rather think it was because it was a nifty story to tell, and DeWitt would get some feathers in her cap for doing it.

Williams was not looking for fame per se. He just wanted to be read, and also to be understood. DeWitt and McCabe and Horn clearly don’t understand.

[updated Jan. 31, 2017]

Writing is a Crap Shoot

Posted on by under Dreams

I want to let you in on something that I’ve learned the hard way: writing is a crap-shoot.

Case in point: Elizabeth Gilbert is the best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love. I have not read anything she’s written, but I’m sure she’s a fine writer. Fine enough to impress the editors at Esquire magazine, where one of her unsolicited manuscripts was pulled from the slush pile and published–a dream that most writers can only hope to achieve. That one event catapulted her into a career as a writer.

editor

Actual rejection slip from an editor (I have many).

It does not mean that she is a remarkably better writer than all the tens of thousands who silently toil with no success. Let’s all admit that she got lucky.

And about editors–they are human too. They have feelings, they have biases, and they make mistakes. They can be arrogant, misguided, and sometimes they cheat, steal, and lie. But they are the guardians of the gate, and they will exercise their power to either make someone’s career or make sure that a writer is never heard from again.

Recently, I submitted a short essay to the Washington Post Magazine. For a few years, they have been running a regular feature where the essayist describes a small, seemingly unimportant object that has significant meaning for them. After six months (editors are soooo busy), I finally received a response from an editor. He declined my essay, giving the reason that, while it was a “powerful” story about my grandfather, “there’s not a particular narrative about the object in question–which enters late in the piece.” (I subsequently self-published the essay here.)

Quietly, I accepted his explanation, believing that my essay just didn’t meet the magazine’s standards. I don’t know what constraints exist in the magazine’s editorial processes, and figured that if I studied other published essays, I’d understand what he meant.

Yet, in a recent issue, an essay was published that included everything that this editor said was wrong with mine.

When editors contradict themselves so blatantly, it’s hard for me to take any of them seriously.

If anyone tells you that there is a writing community–a network of support where writers find strength–then they are lying. Writers and editors eat their own, and secretly (or not so secretly) rejoice in the failure of other writers.

A few years ago, I realized that I wanted needed writing to be a significant part of my life. The need is there, the drive and desire. Maybe it is just that I don’t have the talent. Or maybe that I’ve started too late, that I have too many other competing interests in my life, that I don’t have the time and the space necessary for proper reflection.

I continue to roll the dice, hoping that I may get that magic combination that will take me to the next level. But it’s possible that I will never find out.

Heart on the Sleeve

Posted on by under Uncategorized

“The things people choose to talk or write about, the careers and relationships to which they’re drawn – these aren’t necessarily just simple expressions of their preferences, but rather a clue to the things they struggle with,” says Oliver Burkeman, an educated and entertaining writer about social issues for The Guardian.

It’s pretty clear what I struggle with.

What do you struggle with?