I
am going to publish an irregular biography here, and inspired by something
Kitty Diggings used to do, try to anchor the memories in music that meant
something to me at one point or another.
Sometime
between when I was born and the Year of our Lord, Nineteen Hundred and Seventy
a few things stand now only as a combination of visual and sonic
ruin. The first is a trip, or it may be two trips to California. Memory is a
slippery beast. For convenience’ sake I will make them one. I was very excited
to hear of the Golden Gate Bridge, perhaps so much that I do not recall any of
the trees, deserts or mountains I now know exist along the trip south. I was asleep, but my parents must have known how much I was looking forward
to seeing this bridge, for they woke me from that warm, vibrating, humming
sleep you only can experience in a car. I looked out the window into the fog
which being so thick that the cables of the bridge seemed vanished quickly into space. The art deco
style remains impressed upon me, but I recall a slight melancholy at seeing the
bridge was not made of gold.
Later,
at Disneyland I remember the sight of my Grandma Nell framed by the door of the
camper, waving to us as we walked from our space in the parking lot towards the
entrance of the famed theme park. Grandma Nell was dying of an illness I did
not understand. In fact, I did not understand what dying meant outside of
direct observation of behavior of those around me. People were sad and quiet
when around her, and this lent the atmosphere a code of behavior that
was left unspoken. We knew how we were supposed to be. The other image I retain
of her, and these two are all that remain; is of her on a narrow bed inside
this trailer. This atmosphere I spoke of, also dictated her behavior towards
us. If all I retain from this are these two memories, than I can say that she
was a gentle person who in those moments was kind to me, who did not understand
a thing.
One
other ruin (I will call such ancient memories such, because we can only imagine
what they actually were) was the assassination of a Kennedy. I was maybe three
years old. The only reason I remember certain details of this is that this
event, watched by my mother on a small, black and white television caused
her to act towards me in a completely new way. It was the first time I was told
to be silent. Her words were not charged with anger, but maybe I sensed a
fear she felt that was carried in the command. I sat on a faux-marbled, tile
linoleum floor, playing with a few toys. My gaze went from her face to the
television, and I heard two strange words in a row, Sirhan Sirhan, spoken like
some magic spell.
Those
were the ancient times, and there are the Ruins of them.
A
few years on, the images crawl out of the mire and become harder, more tangible
and take the form of what we can say are more accurate combinations of image
and sound. And so came the birth of music, a companion who follows me to this
day, always changing.
The
house my mother grew up in was next door to our own. The house my father grew
up in stood across the street. I remember my mother once telling me that when
she saw my father moving in across the street from her she told herself that
one day she would marry him. By the time my father was seventeen he married my
mother. At thirty-two years of age, and with nine children he died. A
relatively brief time in the scheme of things, but one I remember as full of
struggle and love. They both came from working class backgrounds, and shortly
after marrying they converted to Catholicism. For this to happen may seem
counter to the zeitgeist; a young couple in the 1960s, a tumultuous social and
political time for America, but their backgrounds are necessary to understand
this.
Both
of their own homes were volatile, at times soaked in the unpredictability of
drunkenness or violent abuse. My father’s family frightened me a bit, often
drunk, kisses bestowed upon my forehead smelling of stale beer. My father’s
brothers scared me when I was young, but his father and mother I eventually ceased
to be afraid of and came to love.
On my mother’s side, by the time I was born things had calmed down a
bit, but my Grandmother was at one time married to a very abusive and mentally
disturbed man. I never knew him. For that matter I never knew my mother’s
father, seeing him only one time attempting a drunken reconciliation with her
outside our front porch.
So
my parents tried to shield us from this unpredictability and, at times
violence, by keeping us as distant as could be possible living both across the
street and next door. I can see their conversion to Catholicism in this context
as well, seeking solace and meaning in religion.
My
Grandmother (next door) was in the habit of expelling her children in their
mid-teens. Why, I have no idea. But I was very happy to have our Aunt Debbie
move in with us. I idolized her as a young boy, and her brother as well. I both
loved them and wanted to be like them. One time I was playing in the empty
school bus my father had bought, and I had a towel wrapped around my head like
a wig, and another around my body like a strapless dress. Coming out of the
door of the bus, my father saw me so dressed and asked me, ‘Who the hell do you
think you are?” Aunt Debbie, I replied and shrieked my way down the driveway,
laughing.
Debbie
was, being some years older than me, very connected to pop culture. I loved sitting with her going
through her record collection, which my parents forbid us to play. I remember
pulling open the double sleeve of The Beatles, White Album. I looked at the
pictures of the rock stars that came with the record, and thinking that Debbie was just like
them. She wore sometimes-dark paisley that I loved, and her long, straight hair
also mesmerized me. She played for me one time, Ob La Di Ob La Da from that
record. That tale of a boy who becomes a girl, combined with the childish melody
complete hooked me. Another record of hers I loved was the first record by the
Stooges. In particular, I Wanna Be Your Dog. Both of these songs appeal to a
sense of magic and transformation in a child. The sexual message implicit in
both is sublimated, but remained unclear. What could be more fun
than changing into a girl, or becoming a dog? I could see myself running
rampant with my four legs, jumping at incredible speeds after Frisbees, later
to retire on the lap of an adult who would pet me to sleep.
Guadalupe
was a very young nun my father and mother had befriended. She was so unlike the
nuns I would see at church. A small, very pretty Mexican woman, the way she
spoke to us was filled with the coolness and enthusiasm typical of folks in
their 20s. I remember the way she would speak of religion was also different
than at church. Her Jesus was political; her faith was based in justice. It was
only reading many years later about radical, Catholic religious movements in South Los Angeles
that were largely Mexican-American, that I realized this was most likely her
background. At any rate, I associate her with a red corvair we had at the time.
Maybe because she would go on errands with us in that car, and I was really impressed
with her and that car.
The
day the first Apollo mission landed on the moon, I was in that car with my
father. He was listening to the radio, and we were parked, waiting for someone
to finish an appointment. My father was looking absently out his window towards
the street as the broadcast described the moon landing. I was five or six years
old, and remember looking out the window at the moon in the daylight sky, and
not seeing the people there became bored and began looking out my window at the
sidewalk and houses.
After a short time a young man without a shirt on
staggered towards my window. I know now he either was fried on acid or was drunk,
and did not see me. But he came to our car to piss. Because he had long hair,
and was shirtless, he was already in my slowly growing Pantheon of counter
culture heroes. At my window he took out his cock and began to piss. I had
never seen pubic hair before, and was dumbfounded. “Daddy, what is THAT?” I
asked my father. Taking a look, he rolled up my window, started the corvair,
and drove off in a hurry. “That is a hippy” he told me with no further
explanation, and the meaning of ‘Long Haired Hippies’ made sense.
