Excerpted from THE HAPPINESS PLAYLIST Copyright © 2019 by Mark Mallman. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
October
|
and
positive things will happen.” The windows stay open as much
as possible. My bowling ball
waits by the front door
for fighting off robbers. Rent goes out on time. My plants are both named Robert. They are going on two years old. It’s the
longest I’ve kept anything
alive.
The bathroom is lime green. Above my
toilet is a sign that says “Do what makes you happy.”
I own enough hair- spray to get me into an outpatient program. The
medicine cabinet holds no medicine. Sometimes I take cold showers. A study shows they induce calm in test subjects. If anything
makes
a person feel like a test
subject, it’s a cold shower.
The
checkerboard tile in my kitchen
gets filthy quick,
es- pecially in winter
when dirty snow tracks in. Dad’s advice is to wash only the white
ones.
On a
dry-erase board is a list of things to do: Quiet
the mind.
Breathe/Love. Gym. Nature. Kindness. Water—Health. Sunshine. People + Joy. I’ve never erased it.
In
regard to cooking, the fire alarm
urges me to order out. Everything else is microwaved. Once I microwaved salmon.
5
You’re not a true bachelor until you use a slice of bread as a napkin.
On
a stack of dictionaries sits Maneki-Neko, my fortune
cat. Anything smiling and waving is welcome.
Such are the methods of design therapy, to cram as much happy crap into the
house as possible.
On
the fridge are pictures of Gilligan, a drawing of Saint
Francis, my nephews, a handout from the doctor’s office that lists “Fifty Ways to Take a Break,”
and a picture of a Zen cen- ter I’ve never visited.
A handwritten message
reads “Have a good day. Buy a hot dog. Love, Dad.”
There is also a laminated photo of
Mom. She wears a white lace dress. A green and lavender corsage is pinned above her heart. Her hair curls in loose,
gold ringlets. It was
taken the day of my brother’s wedding. Mom’s
smile is off center and true. In her obituary, it says, “She was the embod-
iment of joy.”
The bedroom is white and sparse. Over
the blinds hang floor-length lace curtains. They diffuse the light when the sun rises though the east window.
Then the room becomes a grapefruit, bright and on fire. A fan stays on to cover up ear
ringing. On a hook on the door hangs a Minnesota Twins ballcap from one of two
performances I’ve given during games. The cap makes me proud to get out of bed and hustle another musical day.
The three-tiered bookshelf hosts titles
like The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World, College for Sinners, Warlord
of Kor, and the screenplay to Grease.
The bottom shelf
is crammed with a multitude of unread self-help
books. The middle
shelf holds The Martian Chronicles, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a gifted copy of Harry
Potter that folds over at the
first page, the autobiography of Jenna Jameson,
and Peter Pan.
To say I own a Picasso isn’t a lie. On the south wall hangs
my
prized Picasso (poster),
Three Musicians. A $10 Picasso
poster is a Picasso nonetheless. Aside from three
musicians, there’s a dog in the painting. Therefore, the title is
flawed. Hadn’t Picasso heard a dog howl to a clarinet? Hadn’t he lis- tened to one whine with an accordion? A terrible dog musi-
cian is a musician nonetheless. The painting/poster should be titled
“Four Musicians: One Is a Dog.”
Some crystals rest on the nightstand:
amethyst for dreams, rose quartz for love, black tourmaline to protect against evil,
and some polished stone to prevent
worrying. These crystals are the most expensive things on my night-
stand, but not the most valuable. A ceramic angel
stands five inches tall.
She has wire
wings, brown hair
in a pony tail, and no
face. Her hands are apart, but praying. If she wasn’t an an- gel, I’d assume she was clapping. The little sculpture is from a collection of angels
Mom kept on her dresser. Dad brought it for
me. On the bottom are printed the words “Angel of Hap-
piness.”
Some
nights, a valve opens in the back of my neck. Fear crawls on my body like spiders.
A chilling chemical
leaks into my spine. I grasp the angel in my hand, or sometimes to my
forehead. With deep breaths, calm builds in soft surges.
Dad and I talk on the phone twice a day. “I’m
having anxiety,”
I say.
“Think of where you were last year or
the year before.
You’ve
been
doing a good job. It’ll pass.”
“I
worry I’m sick.
I worry I’m dying.”
I pull the covers off my head.
“I don’t
want to be sick. I don’t want to die.”
“It’s good you don’t want to die, Mark. That’s a good thing. Also, we don’t have much say in the matter.”
“You make a strong argument. OK, I won’t die.” “Thanks, me either.
Try to relax. Get some fresh air. Get
out of the house.”
“I love you,
Dad.” “I love you, too.”
We hang up. My worry is overwhelming. I
worry about my blood pressure. I worry about
my liver. I worry about
pol- itics, climate change,
the animals in factory farms, and nu- clear
war. I worry that the hair dye I use is seeping
through my skull. This slows me down, but it can’t stop me from living in my heart. I’m not
going to let
worry eat my time.
I will fight.
A
memory comes. On his one-year
birthday, my nephew stood, wobbling in a circle of
singing adults. He grinned so big his cheeks forced
the eyes closed.
Love radiated and re-
flected back. Music was responsible. This raises a hypothe-
sis. Will a steady diet of positive music keep me from the muck of sadness? An experiment is begun. I decide to listen
exclusively to The Happiness Playlist.
The length of the ex- periment is undetermined. If it works,
maybe forever.
I
go out dancing. My evening
shoes have gold
laces. Two necklaces clipped
together dangle low on my torn shirt. I wear
red camouflage pants and my denim vest. It has spikes
on the collar. The word PARASITE is airbrushed in all caps on back. My hair is moussed and
locked with an anti-frizz 48-hour
hold. If it can’t
be said with
hair, it can’t be said.
It’s drizzling, always on the windshield but never in the air.
Streetlights flicker. In Minneapolis, rain is just warm snow. It seeps through clothes till a person is raining on the insides. I listen to “Rapper’s Delight”
by the Sugarhill Gang and drive to the club.
Minneapolis. Mary Tyler Moore never lived here. She never got chased
off Hidden Beach for skinny-dipping. She never staggered from the CC Club or passed out on the First
Avenue dance floor.
She never saw the cockroaches on an un- named diner’s wall or had a chef throw
a plate at her across the kitchen.
She never puked in the stairwell of the old Day-
ton’s ramp. She never finished a Wondrous Punch from the Red Dragon
or sang “Bootylicious” to a room of strangers
at the Vegas Lounge.
She never lived here. She never grieved here. Yet she’s the one with
a bronze statue
on Nicollet Mall.
The
nightclub is called
Icehouse. Inside, Maurice
reclines on the bar. He is tapping
a beer bottle to the rhythm of the
music. Maurice has
toured the world
many times. Anything around him becomes a drum.
Stage walls. Booze bottles. Cats. He is a drummer/rapper that grew up outside of Mil-
waukee too. He wears his beard trimmed
short and a blaze
orange trucker cap that reads “Twerk.” His eyebrows are thick and expressive when he speaks.
Aside from music,
he has an outstanding ability for arguing.
Maurice isn’t
sold on the idea of a
Happiness Playlist. To him, drowning
yourself in one emotion is denial.
“You’re deluding yourself, Mallman.”
“No, I just can’t be a nihilist anymore,” I say. “Look at Cobain. Dude didn’t write a single happy song and what hap- pened?”
“Karma,” he says, knocking
back half his beer in one gulp. “That’s a bad example. My point is songs can be self-ful- filling prophecies. I can’t afford gloom for gloom’s sake right
now. “
“Then why not write about magic?” “Magic? I don’t see the connection.”
“The
magic of music.
There’s this guy online, Alan Moore
is his name. He wears lots of rings. Looks like Gandalf the Grey. He’s so serious
about magic that he’s got a landline.”
“What does a landline have to do with
magic?” “It’s
about living off the grid.”
“A landline is still
on the grid.” “But less on the grid.”
On the dance floor are sounds of rubber bands and air-
craft carriers. Waveforms of euphoria. Fists pump. Shiny
purple backpacks sling
low. Bare muscles are laid
out for all to see.
People have hundreds of bracelets
on one arm,
rail vodka soda in one hand, and a cellphone in the other. Tongues stick out
for selfies. They are interracial, intertwined, and interga- lactic. Glorious and free.
Maurice and I watch three of our musical
associates slip into the bathroom. He flares his nostrils and sniffs.
“Eh,” I shrug my shoulders. “I’m only
here to dance.”
I hit the floor. Disco beams reduce
us to rainbow silhou-
ettes. We are radiant beings in
spiked bracelets, wet with sweat. A woman
flips backward to the flooronher bare
knees. She wears a charcoal and green screen
print of the universe.
Once the beat drops, we all scream along. I am washed over
in a scandal of instinct
and desire.
The Big Bang was the first music. It
was a drum solo. Then came cave noise,
primal beats of rocks and bones. Blood songs. Songs of birth,
sex, and death.
Songs that bend
reality. Is God music?
Atbarclose, I
edgemy way throughthecrowdtothedoor. A woman
in a sheer black blouse
with sequin pineapples over her breasts
locks eyes with a stranger. Three friends lean
to- gether and raise
their middle fingers
for a picture. They are all
wearing tropical shirts.
My ears buzz
a ring modulation.
That
night I fall asleep listening to “Fantasy” by Mariah
Carey. My sleep unfolds
in abstract waves.
Scary monsters. Grief dreams.
I wake up several times.
The horror lingers
but not the story. I don’t remember the dreams,
just the fear. None of this has to do with Mariah. She’s innocent in the case of my nightmares.
In
the morning, my eyelashes are crusty from sleep cry- ing. It’s tiring, but grief opens up new ways of seeing.
It re-
veals new ways of loving. Time is a slow medicine. There’s still hard
work ahead.
My doctor’s office sits in
a multipurpose
building on the north end of Lake Harriet. I stop at Mesa Pizza before my noon
appointment. I hope the nurse doesn’t smell pepperoni on my breath. Instead, she asks if I have a snoring problem.
“Do you wake up often with a rapid
heartbeat?”
“Yes. I have
my worst anxiety
at night, while
sleeping.” “Let’s
take your blood pressure.” She motions
to my left
arm. “Roll up your sleeve, please.”
The nurse tightens the Velcro arm band. Her fingers touch in a mothering
way. The monitor breathes
and pumps and swells.
All I feel is where
she brushed me. I’m swaddled in warm thoughts of my own
mother’s disappeared touch. Then, a shiver. Mom? The white machine hisses and
beeps me from the trance.
“Blood pressure is good,” says the
nurse.
I wonder about
her. Does she have children
of her own? Grandchildren? Does her mother show through in psychic
waves like mine? A nurse is a mother. A doctor is a mother. A
pilot, a good cop, birds
on wires. All trees. The past and fu-
ture are mothers. The first
three letters of moment are mom.
This is how I know the present
is a mother too.
My doc strolls in. We are the same age. It’s a checkup. Ailments spout from my mouth in a baker’s
dozen. He gives it
to me straight, gloves and all. I’m in good physical health. He already knows about
my breakdown, and
the diagnosis of PTSD.
The sleeplessness.
“Sleep apnea is a possibility,” he says. “Would
you take a sleep study? It’s one
of those things you have to stay over- night for.”
“Certainly.”
The
doc hands me a sheet
of paper. He smiles. I have one hundred other questions that I save for the internet.
Back
home I am reading an article about
civilization col- lapsing when my phone battery dies. The opening
measures of “Ease on Down the Road” from The Wiz soundtrack come on. I take a day bath. Amid the bubbles
I have fun inventing
instant classics such as “Ease on Down the Soap.”
After the tub, I put on a sport coat for no reason.
No rea- son is the best reason to get dressed up. Preparedness creates. I get a text from one of the top horn players in town,
Ingrid.
“Want to get
Taco Riendo?”
“Yes!” I knew
I dressed up for a reason.
El
Taco Riendo means The Laughing Taco. There
is a run- ning taco on the sign over the door. It is super crowded
in- side. Nobody is running or laughing. There’s
nothing funny about waiting
in a long line.
“I’m
just going to get three orders of fries,” I say. I could have said
anything. She isn’t listening.
“Sounds great.”
The menu has her full attention.
“Ooh, chocoflan. I bet that’s good. Hi,
my
name is
Ingrid. I’m going to eat all the things.”
“Is
food more important than music?”
“I have a system. Top shelf is music, food, and sex. All
together in a row, like expensive
tequilas.”
Huge portions of warm tortillas and
fixin’s are set on trays before us. All the booths are full, so we take a table in
the middle of the restaurant.
The walls appear to be decorated by
an interior design student with thirty-five bucks at a rummage sale. Ingrid mo- tions
at some objects
arranged on a table, including
a porce-
lain Jesus. “Isn’t it interesting how Jesus is standing next to a giant
mug of Corona?”
“He parties, obviously. Did you gig yesterday?”
“Yeah. It was fun. People
danced.”
She
gathers together her existence from various sources: her own gigs, jobbing on other
people’s gigs, and teaching. For a
while, she played brass section in an orchestra, but it didn’t vibe. We’re all feeling our way in the dark.
It is nice to spend dinner in such company. The food is delicious. Tejano music plays. There’s a TV on a steel arm in
the corner. It gives the restaurant that hospital room flair.
On the screen a man is holding a computer like a baby.
“You
think dancing makes people happy, or happy peo- ple
dance?” I wonder.
“Yesterday, I was at the post office, and a Michael
Jack- son song came on. I didn’t even realize I was dancing.” In- grid shakes her shoulders side to side. “When I got to the counter, the woman behind
me said, ‘Girl, nobody can stay still when Michael Jackson’s on.’”
“I
like ‘Ease on Down the Road’ from The Wiz. Michael sings that one. It makes me happy.”
“Want to be happy? Listen to anything by Mozart.” “Anything? Requiem?” I pull the last bits of cheese
from
my plate.
“Yes. Vivaldi is also
fun. Again, even
though he wrote
all these songs for young girls
in the conservatory, much of his
music is in the minor key.”
We hit each other up whenever the
classical station is playing a great Sibelius tone poem or Aaron Copland.
Then we discuss the local music scene, which is spirited and dy- namic
and ours. There’s no need to complain about those around us who are only in it for the booze, sex, or social sta-
tus. We both know that if you’re not in it for the music, this business
will devour you.
“I’ll be right back.”
I hop to the front counter and order
chocoflan. It is dif- ferent than the picture on the wall. There is a thick
layer of flan on the bottom, yellow
cake in the middle, and fudge on top.
“Flan is the only crème brûlée I can afford,” I say. “Crème brûlée is
overpriced in America. Not in Paris,”
she says. “And there, it’s much bigger.”
The dessert
is big enough to split ten ways. Each bite sends sugar rushes all the way to
the toes.
“All America could come up with
is pudding and moist cake mix.”
“That is one of the grossest-sounding words,” she says.
“Pudding?”
“Moist.”
To think if I never
put a sport coat on, I’d have said no to tacos when Ingrid texted.
I put a necklace on, too. The silver spikes weigh light against
my chest and jangle together when I laugh. Autumn is full throttle.
The day is getting dark ear- lier. In the span of our dinner, the city has become a shadow.
On the way out, I high-five the porcelain Jesus. Ingrid and I hunch in our thin coats and shiver. Gusts of wind blast through the holes in my ripped
jeans. In the distance, sirens. I’m triggered. A flashback haze takes over. I see Dad open- ing the door to the police. He
says nothing. He knows what they’ve come to say. Then I’m at the scene of it. An ambu- lance is being loaded. It’s Mom. A rush surrounds me. Nau- sea. I blink across
time-space back to Central Avenue.
Ingrid is saying something, but that siren washed it out.
The siren
has faded.
In the van, we
listen
to Sly and the
Family
Stone’s “Dance
to the Music.” The funk
brings my heart
back to the moment.
Back to the city. Back to Minneapolis.
“Love that beat and those horns!” Her
head bobs to the rhythm. “This groove cuts all the way through. In popular music, especially hit songs,
simplicity is where it’s at.”
We get
on the freeway. Sly continues to the vocal
break- down. The whirl
of my van tires are in key with the a cappella voices.
“This the most famous part of the song, the non-lyrics,” she says. “Do doo—do
doo—do do doo.”
“Nonsensically sublime, as Howard Devoto put it.” “Also, I love hand percussion.” Ingrid does a bucket seat
dance as we barrel down the interstate. It is a deleted scene from Footloose.
The
asphalt beneath us is fresh with sleet.
It sprays the surrounding cars as we speed by them. My window doesn’t close tight. A whistle
sings in my left ear. Everywhere is mu- sic. Somewhere under the Indian
Ocean is a white whale
that knows nothing about
our mixed-up musical
methods. Yet it
sings. Somewhere in deepest Africa
an elephant knows
noth- ing about
topping the charts.
Yet it sings.
I’m back home when a timer chimes. My
shoes that squeak on linoleum
are musical too. The furnace
blows. The house breathes.
I sleep.
Thursday morning, Maurice asks for a
ride to the mu- sic shop to return a broken
tape recorder. He doesn’t have a driver’s license. When I pick him up, he is wearing a full-
body cat onesie.
“Can I smoke in the van?” he asks.
“Depends on
how flammable that cat costume is.”
“Got
this for Halloween. Now I wear it all the time.” He rolls
the window open.
“Maurice, you smell like my grandpa.”
“Your grandpa
smelled like weed?” “No. Cigarettes and Wisconsin.”
He reminds me of Milwaukee in a time I’d never been. Maurice could
have been Dad’s childhood friend
who sneaked in the back
doorof movie houses
with him. Then again, I don’t think Dad ever had a friend with a full-body
cat suit. But we
all have secrets.
“I’m
telling you, man, I’m never taking this thing off.”
It’s impossible to stop Maurice from
being Maurice. If you try to, you’ll
miss his beauty.
“Gray is a good
color on you.” “Yep.”
He sucks on a
cigarette and
flicks it onto
the road. “Don’t get white, because
white gets dirty.”
“Or you could just wash it.”
I hit the gas
and the speakers at the same time. St.
Vin- cent is singing
“Digital Witness.”
We turn left on
Lyndale. It’s a short trip. He could have walked,
but I enjoy the company.
Maurice goes into the music shop. I wait outside. Lucky for me, JM comes strolling down the
sidewalk. JM is my main guitarist. When he plays a solo, clouds part. Smoke
machines break. There is a metaphysical field around him. I leave my coat off to feel the last of the warm wind. Some- thing soapy is in the breeze.
A cleanness. Musicians
tend to notice this foreign
aroma called soap. JM’s silken hair
lilts with the finesse
of a freshly washed guitarist.
“I played a dinner gig
last night,” he said.
“How’d that pay?”
“It’s good.
This month I’m making adult
money.” “That’s
great.”
“You should pick that gig up, man.”
“I dig jazz, but
right now I’m only doing happy music.” “What do you mean? Jazz is happy.”
Kids
with guitar cases
rotate in and out of the store.
They all wear the
same blue flannel
from generations ago.
The one we wore when grunge
was the thing. Maurice emerges.
JM’s mystery soap smell is overtaken by a weed smell.
“They got to process
my return? They sold me a broken recorder, what’s to process? I don’t get it, man.”
“Damn. That’s a drag, buddy.”
JM steps around the corner and into
the store. “See you at rehearsal, Mall-Man,” he shouts.
“Who was
that?” Maurice asks.
“It’s my guitarist, JM. You probably don’t recognize him in
street clothes.”
“Dude smells good.
Clean.” “I know,
right?”
Next, we slag around the art museum to kill time. Up-
stairs, we see violent paintings of religious atrocities. Maurice talks
at great length
of Anabaptist hysteria in six-
teenth-century Germany. The full-body cat onesie is a detri- ment to his credibility.
“I bet every painter in this museum
smoked weed,” he says.
With great restraint, I do not touch
the beckoning landscape of Olive Trees
with Yellow Sky and Sun
by Vincent van Gogh. I’ve exercised
this restraint since art school.
The painting still grabs at my hand with a secret tractor beam. I pull away before the alarm sounds.
Dearest Vincent, you are
my Superman. The popularity of impressionism was just on the horizon when you left. If you could see us now, gushing over this work, maybe
you’d have kept fighting.
“Once I thought Van Gogh sold only two paintings,” I say. “The more I research, the less certain
the number. Guess how many works were commissioned,
sold, or traded for other paintings?”
“How many?”
“Nobody knows.
Which painting was his last?” “Which one?”
“Nobody knows. Did he actually shoot
himself in the stomach?”
“Nobody knows?”
A myth of suffering enshrouds the great painters. It’s preposterous to assume all great art is conceived in torrid,
emotional squalor. It’s clear from the work that Van Gogh painted with his heart. His painting is bright, sunny, and dripping wet. It’s as if he sneaked out of the room just before- hand. Someday
I will catch
him and say thank you for inspir-
ing the world.
I would
like to treat
Van Gogh to some Dairy Queen.
Our strawberry cheesecake will resemble the sky in Olive Trees. We will ooze into one another
like human paint.
The sky will become a spaghetti twist of ruby and tangerine. Surrounding us will be a frame painted
in gold. Below
the painting, a card will read The Ice Cream Eaters.
Oil on Canvas. Date Unknown.
Maurice and I walk
down a marble
hallway and marvel
at a hyper-realist painting
of Muhammad Ali.
“A museum is a mausoleum,” I say.
“Look at all these fancy paintings. When musicians die, we’re basically forgotten.”
“Not Prince.” “Exception.”
The most purply painting at this
place is View of Dres- den: Schlossplatz by Ernst Ludwig
Kirchner. I have no idea what Schlossplatz means, but my
guess is grape soda. It is a little-known fact that Kirchner augmented his
paintings with grape soda, where his other contemporaries used lin- seed oil. If you doubt me, go smell one. When the guard asks
what you’re doing, say, “I’m smelling the Schlossplatz.”
“Hey, man,
I love the museum, but today is my only day
off. I want to get high at some point,”
Maurice says.
“Absolutely. Let’s cut out. This crap ain’t going anyplace.
It’s closing in five minutes anyway.”
We take the stairs past the museum
restaurant. I was fired as a cashier there
in college. Never be good at some- thing you wouldn’t want
a career in.
In the parking lot, I put on “Happy” by Pharrell.
“What
do you think of this song?” I ask.
He
bursts out laughing.
The ears on his cat costume flop around. “Musically or sarcastically?”
“I think it’s well
written,” I say. “It’s gota solid groove too.” “Structurally, sonically, and emotionally, it’s perfect.
Pharrell figures out these perfect pop formulas.” “Do you like it?”
“I can’t relate, man. When
I was growing
up,
tragedies were what made me play music. I related to
musicians or songs that expressed anger, sadness, and confusion.”
“So it doesn’t make
you
happy?”
“This song is a joke. There’s no dirt. No grit. It’s not hu- man. Plus,
I’m not happy. But who is?”
“It makes me feel good.”
“Good for you then.”
After dropping him off, I call the
costume shop about animal onesies. They are out. When I get home, the duplex is
grey inside. Autumn rain taps on the windows. My piano is set up in the corner. I play fast songs slow, waiting
on the microwave. The tail on the Kit Cat clock moves in sync with its
eyeballs. Left. Right.
Left. Right. Hypnosis.
The next day is sunny cold. It’s
a superb
morning to be an indoor
plant. Plants know secrets to happiness. They keep reaching toward
the light. There’s
a message in there. If you
find yourself in some corner, bend so the greatest
amount
pours on you. Don’t punish yourself for wanting to give up. Wanting to give up and giving up aren’t the same.
Be serene. Stretch. Stay hydrated.
I drive to the coffee shop to meet my
buddy Jones. I wonder what his take is on Pharrell’s “Happy.” Jones isn’t active in any hip scenes anymore, but he still performs
the hours away like the rest of us. With tough golden skin and hair black as a
record, the guy has played in the same band for forty-two years. In Minneapolis
before the Minneapo- lis sound, there
was a piano in every lobby of every hotel in
town. Jones says it was great for sniffing up cash.
Through the window the trees are on fire with autumnal blaze. The scene in the trees
is fire while
they ready for sleep.
A leafy, midafternoon sunset. I buy a steamer in a to-go cup
with almond milk and sugar-free caramel syrup. It fogs my glasses. That’s why they call it a steamer. The heat shocks my system awake.
Our table is unstable. I step on the leg so our drinks won’t spill.
“What do you think of the Pharrell song ‘Happy’?” “When I first heard
that song, it did make me happy. I
remember watching him get choked
up on TV, talking
about how it affected people. It’s powerful.”
“Powerfully annoying?”
“A long time ago there was a song ‘Don’t Worry Be Happy,’ which annoyed people because it was played too much. They say, ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff,
and everything is small stuff,’
but if you heard a song quote that ten times a day . . .” He raises his eyebrows.
“Songs
don’t have to hit you over the head to be effec- tive. That’s if
you, me, Pharrell,
Lana Del Rey, or whoever intend to write a song of such effectiveness to
begin with.”
“A lyric about lying on the beach might be enough to get
your mind off walking through
two feet of snow,” Jones says.
He
speaks in guided
meditations. Always about
some beach somewhere. The lines on his face
are etched by slugging it out in
piano bars
year
after year. It wouldn’t be hard to write sheet music on him. “Who’s
Lana Del Rey?”
he adds.
The
drink heats my belly and my belly
heats my skin.
Re- laxation comes in percentages. When it drifts, I drift with it. I find new ways to invite it in. Meeting
with Jones is one
such activity.
“Do
you feel music has shaped
your mind over time?” I ask.
“In big ways. Everything from the low
animal brain of your cerebellum bopping along with the rhythm to the higher parts of your brain envisioning a beach somewhere is shaped by songs.”
“There’s a song by Nine Inch Nails called
‘Heresy.’ Reznor sings God is dead,
nobody cares, and he’ll see you in hell. I used to blast ‘Heresy’ and scream
along. It helped. How do you think that shaped
my mind?”
“Because it addresses emotions,” Jones says. “It’s good to get those
out. Anger is a natural
part of the human condi- tion. We need it to survive.”
“Jones, anger makes me angry. I don’t like it.”
“Grim feelings do exist,
and we have to find
a way to deal with them.
There needs to be a balance of positivity for
not what we are trying to avoid but where we are trying
to get.”
“I’m working to stay happy. I made a Happiness Playlist.” “That’s one way. Keep working,
but remember balance.”
My
drink is sweet and creamy
and the leaves are floating off the trees outside
and the coffee shop is warm and dry and
Jones is kind, even if we disagree about grim feelings. We talk about
Elvis and surfing till it’s time to go. We fist-bump goodbye.
After the coffee shop, I make a tally
of happy activities.
I’m
going to take a cue from Jones
and practice growing
the calm to balance my worry. I’ll discover how to be on both sides of
fear, and visualize switching from one to the
other. I’ll surround myself
with people who lift me up. When
I start thinking scary things, I’ll steer the mind. I’ll tape slide whis-
tles over my vents. I’ll
take off my socks. I’ll
watch trees.
Annie and I go to the mall that night. We pass the insur- ance office where her cube is. We pass the airport. A mon- strous Boeing
717 flies dozens of feet over the van. I duck my head for dramatic
effect.
“I wonder if anyone has ever tried to
stuff a bag of sea- soned hot wings
onto a plane because they hate airplane food?” I ask.
“Up the butt?”
“I didn’t think that far
ahead,
but
yes.
Security might pull
them aside thinking they caught a drug mule.”
“Until they
pull out a baggie full
of squished hot
wings.” “I’d bet the person gets arrested anyways because
TSA added flaming hot wings to the suspected terrorist
hijack weapons list. Not that I would try it, because
I love this
country.”
“And why waste
a hot wing?”
That weekend, six blocks of downtown
is quarantined for a horror and music festival. The Zombie Pub Crawl is an
annual mega concert where people
dress up like
The Walking Dead and get blasted on party liquor. In the
coming hours, 30,000 face-painted slugs will get blitzed off their undead butts. It’s a corpse’s Cabo Wabo. Zombies throwing up on storefronts.
Zombies making out in pizza lines. Zombie nurses slamming Jell-O shots. Zombie
Pokemons with Zombie Richard Nixons passed out in taxis.
Load-in is 5 p.m.
Because of the
quarantine zone,
we drive the
wrong way up a one-way
to the club.
My band van is called Night Ghost because it’s near black.
Before Night Ghost were The Silver Bullet and The Steely Van. If I could
drive a piano,
we’d tour in that.
We load
our gear through
the side door.
The light guy is a longtime peer named Mud. I haven’t seen
him much, as
he is a full-timer in the lighting
world and tours a lot. At this point
in the business, he goes by Duke. This is a friendly
surprise. Mud has shaved
his head. He looks like Ed Harris,
or in the right light, a death angel.
I know him from the time in his life when
he got stabbed in the knee.
“Want to eat dinner with us, you
bastard?”
“I wouldn’t be caught dead with
you.” Which
means
yes.
We walk a mile and a half to Grumpy’s on Washington Avenue. Die Hard plays on the TV on the wall. It makes me sentimental for the holidays.
With Dad in Wisconsin, and
my brother in LA, my band is my
Minneapolis family.
Dinner arrives. The tater tots are
steaming from the fryer. Whiskey spills into low-ball glasses. A tall club soda
with lime comes for me. Anyone in Minneapolis eating
alone is welcome to join us but nobody does.
“You guys doing the Zombie thing
tonight?” asks the server.
“Yup.”
On TV, Bruce Willis
crashes through a glass skyscraper. “Bloody feet. The worst.”
Annie meets
up with
me
at the
quarantined
zone. It’s a mess
with costumed drunks. They moan and lope about. The word “Braaaaaaaaains!”
echoes from behind a Porta-Potty. We catch a few minutes of Smash Mouth performing “I Can’t Get Enough
of You, Baby.”
Thirty thousand decaying drunks at
the Zombie Pub Crawl party hard. Showtime approaches. I’m backstage ad- justing my red jeans
in the mirror. I slop two gobs of INVISI
Gel
Max Hold in my hair and slick it back. The green room
window is cracked open. Fake death moans echo up the street.
There is a knock at the door. The
stage manager yells, “Showtime!”
The
band is on fire. We are in a perfect state of flow. I sa-
lute the crowd and picture
Bruce Willis hanging
off the sky- scraper. He sees all of Los Angeles lit up for the holiday. He feels the breeze blow against him in
contrast with the fire blazing above. It’s perilous and awesome at the same time.
Stretch it over seventy-five minutes, and that’s what it feels like to perform a rock show. Then it’s over.
I walk off stage and straight out the stage door to the al- ley
to lie on the ground.
There are stars up there someplace.
My ears scream from tinnitus. Streets rumble. The smell of auto exhaust
fills my nose. It feels safe on the concrete.
Mu- sic has
given me confidence that the
earth won’t crack open
and swallow
me whole.
Annie texts. She gives me confidence too. “Great job! I’m going
to bike home.
Have fun.”
It takes three hours to unload the
gear and drop off the band. I get into bed at 2:30 a.m. My ears ring. Music vibrates up to the nerve endings of my teeth.
Face in pillow,
I dream that the world’s last
surviving newspaper headline reads “Local Cryogenist Keeps
Rock Music in a Jar for Future
Wed- ding Reception.”
During the week, Dad and I talk twice a day,
as usual. “When times are tight,
make soup,” he says. “One crock
of soup can feed a person
all week. I’ll send you a crockpot, son. You can make chili and soup just like your old man.”
“If I leave it on, will it start a
fire?”
“No way.
You can leave a crock on all week. The
worst thing that can happen is your soup dries up.”
A
day later it comes in the mail.
The pot is first-class in size and not cheap. I’ll
make Dad proud
by conjuring historic soups in this
cauldron. It will
be a nice occupation to soothe
winter’s grip. Snow isn’t far off,
even in October.
Now is a smart time to hit up the grocery for a season’s worth of soup ingredients.
I text Annie.
“Can I put rice
in it?” “Yeah. Carrots too.” “Noodles?”
“Yeah. Noodles are OK. Sour Patch Kids are definitely OK.”
“Can I put donuts in it?”
“Yes, you can
make donut soup.” “This is my calling.”
The soup preps come to sixty dollars
in total. That in- cludes some bowls. If I could get by a month on these in- gredients, I wouldn’t be forced to eat the neighbors. Winter scenarios paint my brain. Soup with the band. Soup
dates. Soup with pets. Soup baths.
I text Dad. “What a crock!”
“Glad you’re having fun, kid.”
When everything is chopped and dumped
in the slow cooker, I get nervous. What have I created? How bad will it
be? Mom is somewhere laughing. Her baby boy is making
his first soup at forty-three years
old.
“This is delicious,” she’d say, no
matter how bad it was.
After she passed, Dad cooked alone
for months. He crocked up loads of chili and froze it away, looking out the kitchen window at a still picture. One of
my last memories of Mom is seeing her framed by that window
from the yard. I
have memories from both sides of that window. From out-
side, as a kid playing
in the snow. And from the inside, as
a man coming home from Minneapolis
through the garage. Mom liked to look out and see the birds while she did house- work. An angle of road where
the school bus stopped could be
seen as well.
“My little baby’s home! Are you cold,
dear? Dad made soup.”
She’d smile. “Look, there’s
a cardinal in the tree.”
But
what was behind
her faraway gaze?
Father Kurt said it was between her and God. He said we’d never know the answer. A person wastes time asking why. You can’t solve problems with problems. Wise priest.
The
sacred crock simmers. Something delicious is brew-
ing in that magic jar. How would my first soup taste?
I call Dad.
“It’ll be good, relax,” he
says. “You can’t screw up with a crock.
We had a big slow cooker
at work. In the morning
we’d dump some corned beef,
cabbage, potatoes, and chopped onion in the sucker. By eleven we’d all be sitting around a table eating
delicious lunch.”
“I bet that was the tastiest.”
“Your mother had a crockpot
she liked for a long time.” “I
remember. It was round and white, with vegetables
painted on the side.”
Dad’s voice perks up when
we talk about
her. “Yes! It had
a brown knob and a brown cover.
She’d call me at work and say, ‘Don’t forget to turn the crock off when you come home.’ Sometimes I’d forget, though.”
“But it still tasted good?”
“When your mother cooked, it always
tasted good. Be- cause it was your mother.”
It’s true. Mom made crêpes with blueberries on Sat- urdays.
She made chocolate chip cookies with walnuts and deep-dish pizza
in a cake pan. Mom sang when
I played piano while she cooked stuffed
green peppers or pumpkin pies.
She
was
strong and emotional and liked to go dancing.
When I was five,
we sang “Rockin’ Robin” in the
car. She taught me how
songs heal. In her final
months, she cried
to me. Buried deep
in her sorrow, the music was still there. Maybe it’s what she became
after she died.
The crockpot makes the kitchen smell
like a genuine home. Every half hour I come up from the studio, worried about a soup fire.
By sunset it is time.
I fill a bowl up. The on- ions and carrots are soft and tasty. It is a fair success. I take pictures.
One
crock of food gets me through three days. What fru-
gal genius invented this magical
machine?
Obviously, witches. Cauldrons are all the proof I need.
My phone rings. It’s Annie.
“Hi,
Mark. I wanted
to . . .” She pauses. “I wanted to call
and tell you in advance, I made plans tonight. I’m going to Icehouse tonight
for a show. So you might not want to
go there.”
“On a date?”
Again, silence. Light years of the
stuff. I slump against the cupboard in the wall.
My head withers
along the warped wood. I say nothing.
“It’s hard for me, too,
Mark. But I figured you should know, so I didn’t surprise you if you ended up there.”
“I’m
sorry for whatever
I did to contribute to this. I love
you so much.”
“You didn’t do anything at all.
No apologies.” “How did it ever get to this place?”
“We agreed on this, remember? Have a good night.” “Good night, Annie.”
She’s right, I can’t beat myself up. There’s never a right time to talk down to yourself. I’m debating a tattoo that says
“Crying for No Reason Is OK.”
Wonderful Annie, honest and true, even after a breakup.
A layer of electricity forms between my muscles and skin. Anxiety. My nose stings
from fighting tears.
Worry and fear are created in the mind. The brain is
constant in having to create the mind. It babysits itself. There’s no standard
to anxiety, which is why there’s
no standard to fixing it. Squir-
rels know this. They risk their lives on electrical wires be- cause they understand balance.
I
go for a walk along
Minnehaha Creek. Vibrant
impres- sionist water diffuses
a scene of urban woodlands. If Monet were alive today, there would be Doritos bags and
crushed beer cans in his paintings too. In the water, I see one small lost fish.
“Pay attention,
and
look at all
that appears.
That’s the way it
works if you watch for the details,” Dad says.
So that’s what I do. The longer I look into the creek, the
more
fish I notice, the more beauty I discover. I feel better.
I also discover there
are soup stains
all over my pants.
When
I get home, the
playlist is
going.
It’s Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna
Dance With Somebody.” I have
nobody to dance with, so I have a bunch of soup alone. That’s nice, too, in a different
way.
On
Friday I have rehearsal. Sonic
booms shake loose
any rust around our bones from the week. JM’s wiry hands graze
the guitar as if through hot dish water. It is too graceful. Grace is a
thing that doesn’t
belong in my rock
show. I stop
the song.
“Why the hesitation?” I ask.
“I’m worried about
going over the
top.” “There is no such thing.”
“I don’t want to step
on your toes, though.”
Darren, the drummer, points
at me with his stick.
“He steps on his keyboard all the time.”
“Step, man.
Stomp.”
We run
through the song
again. This time
he shreds. Re- hearsal finally sounds as it should,
like a construction site.
Friday night flickers on. It’s
Halloween
weekend. Ingrid calls. She’s going to a release party for a book. It’s a concert party at First Avenue,
on the 7th St. stage.
I join her. We are
two R-rated movie buddies on the loose. There is nothing romantic between us. I’d never date another musician. It would be like two spiders trapped
in a glass jar.
“What’s with this rain-not-rain stuff?” “It’s
called
October.”
Street neon reflects in puddles. A
drunk limps by, her mouth an open airplane hangar. It is the type of mouth that
whistles when breathing. It exists independent of the body.
“The living dead,” I say.
“It’s just kids having
fun, Mark.” “Not sorry.
I’m a wet grump. Bah!”
We get to the show. Some
sexy trophy boy in a white tee sways side to side on stage. The kid is crazed,
knees wobbling and throbbing in time. He used to be me. I lean on the bar, and wait
for a water. Got to shake
these grumps. Science
says hold a smile long enough
and it becomes real. My argument is, when a goldfish
swims in a tank of grape soda, does the goldfish become grape soda? Even so, I force a smile. It works. Later, we head to the Depot Tavern. Motorhead blares from stereo speakers
over the bar. Lemmy sings about how he doesn’t want to live forever.
I do. The restaurant is packed. We walk out.
The street is bustling despite
the rain.
Midnight brings an urban smell
of concrete forests. “Want to go to a costume
party?” I ask.
“Sure.”
We speed across town. The heat rushes louder than the
radio. “California Stars” by Billy Bragg and Wilco plays. The
freeway is wet
and shiny. In a month it will be iced.
We haven’t any costumes, but it doesn’t matter. All par- ties are the same. We bring a box of cookies
from the gas sta- tion. BYOC. After a hundred wondrous snapshots of nothing happening, we leave.
Early a.m. traffic rolls along.
Ingrid and I are both too tired to talk. The last thing we agree on before I drop her off
is that at
least it isn’t snowing.
At
night I dream
that deep soot
clouds cover up the city.
“All they manufacture are ashes,”
says Ingrid. I throw a snow-
ball at nothing in the parking
lot and miss.
Two nights later it’s Halloween. The earth is gray with sleeping trees. I see
a runaway dog.
It appears to be laughing. Frightened dogs get mistaken for happy ones. Beyond that, is laughter even happiness? The wicked witch doesn’t laugh because she’s happy. She’s happy because
she is evil. Music isn’t like that. It’s not misleading. Music can only be music.
Annie is in Brooklyn
visiting a friend.
We’ve made a plan
not to text each other. It’s difficult, but I must learn to be single
again. The plan is to try to have fun
all by myself. I slip on my white jumpsuit. It’s airbrushed with a spoon and cherry on the back. Emoji sunglasses finish off the costume.
I’ll tell people I’m Meta Elvis. Nobody
asks.
There are seven parties to attend.
There is a party over- looking the freeway
from a hill, and one around a fire where rappers gather. My favorite party
serves undercooked brownies. I cram some in the jumpsuit pockets and forget
about them.
Maurice is standing in the front yard. “Mallman, I’m hiding. Shhh!”
“Dude. I can see you.”
He wears dreadlocks, a red union
suit, and googly eyes taped to his hair. “I’m a Rock Lobster.”
“You
look like Howard Stern in red pajamas.
What hap- pened to your cat onesie?”
“I washed it and it fell apart.”
He staggers
inside. I get in my van.
Uptown
McDonald’s isn’t
on the
way home, but I’m crav- ing a number two. To clarify, that’s two cheeseburgers, fries, and a medium-sized lithium
battery acid.
“$5.22. Please pay at the second
window.”
While waiting, I watch a neon party bus bounce down Hennepin Avenue. Grown adults
dangle out the window.
They shout wolf cries and drool Rumple Minze onto the street below.
At the window, the employee
pauses. “That looks
fun.” “When you’re older,
you’ll be glad
you worked instead
of
partied.”
The car behind
me honks. I drive away.
At
the stoplight, a fake Rastafarian sways. When
the light turns green, it
matches the color of his nausea. His mouth swings open, eyes wide to the sky.
Back
on Cedar Avenue,
a suspicious minivan
is stopped in the road. A batch of greasy-eyed teenage
freaks cackle in- side
as I pass. Then smack,
an egg hits my side window.
A volcano of white hot fire blasts through me. I smash the horn,
crush the gas
pedal, and give
chase. The side
streets are wet and slick.
I am a caveman on wheels, entangled in a savage, swerving, downright wicked van chase. With
teenag- ers. Fumbling one-handed, I attempt to get a photo of their
license plate but the automatic flash is on. All I can get out of my
mouth is “You!”
Our vans whip through residential
streets. I have one hand on the horn, and the other
on my phone, chasing them down an alley, driving
with my knees again. Meanwhile, my camera is taking flash photos
of the dashboard.
I
let go of the picture
idea. What now? Ram them into a
light post? Sideswipe them off the river bridge? By this time they are gaining distance. I decide
to throw something. In back
is my thirteen-pound bowling
ball. I can’trisk its bounc- ing off a side panel and back into me. Plus,
I’d paid extra to have my name engraved on it. Instead,
I chuck a half-full bottle of ibuprofen. It bounces off the road and opens; 200
mg tablets spray over my windshield.
We jet out the alley and back onto
Cedar. My final re- course, and last resort, are the cheeseburgers. The first
one falls out of its wrapping
mid-launch. Part of the bun clings to my hood. The kids are far away by this point but I throw
the second burger on principle. It bounces sadly. I run it over. A pair
of taillights rounds the corner blocks away. They are out of
sight. It is no use throwing the fries.
I pull over to the side of the road.
My hands shake. I morph back into my adult self. What have I become? Giving chase and letting go was the best-case scenario. Even if I did
catch them, what then? Beat up teenagers? More likely I’d have gotten beaten
up by them. The mind doesn’t fully de- velop the ability to assess risk until age twenty-five. What is
my excuse? That’s when I realize it was them who let me go.
On the couch watching Labyrinth
is how Halloween ends. I breathe
deep, close my eyes, and eat a fry.