On my walk into work this morning I heard this beeping sound, like one you hear in a hospital room, the heart monitor or oxygen thing or whatever that beeps every few seconds, and I thought about how (crazy) unexpected it would be if I was actually in a dream this entire time, like some other reality was about to crossover with the one I’ve been in, or that my entire life until now, 41 years, was actually not real, imagined or virtual, or if it was real that I might somehow be coming together with an alternate path or something, or that maybe there was some glitch and this reality was getting mixed up with another, you know how some scientists say this is all a simulation, that the multiverses were becoming entangled.

I mean, I knew that wasn’t REALLY happening. I was just thinking about it. Seeing where that thought would take me. What would that look like? What would it feel like? What would happen next? What would happen to everyone else? Would it happen to them as well or just to me? Are we in it together? Are we each living in our own imagination, our entire reality created within our minds? If my world entangled with another, what would happen to the rest of the world? If my world entangled with yours, what would happen to us?

The thing about cool ideas like this, whether it’s just letting your mind wander or actually trying to think something complicated through and solve a problem or create something new or become better, is that they can take you some place novel, just by thinking, and they can really shape you if you let them. On the same note, they’re hard to see through until the end without getting distracted. I’m getting better at it, but I don’t think I’ve ever taken an idea as far as it can go. I think that’s what’s happening sometimes when I’m in that sweet sleep space where I’m having all these vivid experiences, like I’m dreaming but awake enough to know it, sometimes I’m not, but the details are so intense, like I’ve imagined a book and I’m reading every page and it’s coherent and compelling and it’s on some subject I know nothing about in real life when I’m awake and alive, like some historical account or mathematical equations or deep science stuff, physics or something I’ve never even knowingly thought about or some account, some super detailed account of an event that to my knowledge I’ve never experienced or imagined, and right as I’m really diving into it, I wake up, and I’m pissed because I wanted to stay there, asleep, or virtual, suspended in that reality within a reality, I wanted to learn more, ride the wave to the end, and find, or create some entirely new meaning.

And just the sound of a bell, some beeping led me down this path. And that’s the amazing part of life. That’s one of the countless reasons why it’s so beautiful. If you let it, even the most mundane things, a walk to work, can become exhilarating. We have the ability, the power, to create new worlds and new ideas, sometimes they matter, they can be used to bring about real change, to make the world better, even if it’s just my little world, but it’s transformative, and sometimes they don’t seem to matter as much, they’re just a little story or idea and seem to have very little significance in the moment. But it all adds up, and eventually becomes something more, we just don’t know when that will happen.

Maybe the when is during that sweet sleep space where everything is coming together and our minds are doing their thing, however it works, whatever minds do, and when it all comes together we have these moments of clarity, or I shouldn’t say WE, I don’t know what anyone else experiences, but I know that maybe I have this moment of clarity, this near collision with some bigger idea, and soon I’ll see it all. Soon I’ll be able to stay in that space, asleep or awake, virtual or real, whatever real is, where I can take the thought down the road, to the end, and see what it becomes, see who I become.

Maybe that doesn’t happen until we’re really old, or until we die, or just before we die, maybe it all comes together.

Maybe near death is a very intense sleep state, emulating what I tried to describe here, but just on a whole other level, taken to some exponential degree, where everything you’ve ever experienced, everything I’VE ever experienced comes together, reveals itself in some incredibly beautiful, mental, physical, emotional, intellectual, visual masterpiece. There will probably be sound too. At least for me there will be. I’m a musician. I make music out of everything. I turned that beeping into a beat, played some fills on my legs, rhythmically clicked my teeth together, hummed the melody of the new song I’m working on, recorded it in a voice memo so I can get back to it later, and even imagined myself playing live somewhere to a huge crowd, Barcelona would be nice.

For me, the beauty of life, one reason I’ve always been happy, is that to some degree I’ve always controlled the narrative. I told the story. The story wasn’t told to me. If I didn’t like the way things were going, I thought my way out of it. I think other people could do this, too, in their own way. We have so little control sometimes, and being creative allows you to have complete control. Creative doesn’t have to be making a song, or art, or writing a novel, or making an incredible meal, it might just be a thought that comes and goes.

I said I’ve rarely been able to take these ideas to the end, which is unfortunate, but also motivating, because I know it’ll be rad as hell once I do. This time was no different. I got distracted. I looked up and saw a sign in a window that said, “Save The Planet.”

Then my mind went in a completely different direction. Who wrote it? Obviously a little kid, which is so sweet, and hopeful, but also sad because who the hell knows what’s going to happen with the planet?

My best guess is that, like so many other things, when we absolutely NEED an answer, we’ll have one. Someone will step up. My understanding of history is that we aren’t always good at being proactive. We didn’t come up with vaccines before we needed them for example, I mean really really needed them. The atomic bomb wasn’t invented until we needed it. We had the knowledge to make it, but not the context. I understand the time to act on the environment, on climate, was 50 years ago, but until we’re gasping for air, it’s not happening in any significant way.

Once we’re choking, even though most would say it’ll be way too late, and maybe that’s true, I think some scientist or engineer or tech guy or girl will come up with a way to save us. Something that simultaneously sucks all the carbon out of the atmosphere and uses it as a coolant/desalinator/green energy/agricultural something/whatever the hell else happens because of global warming and that’ll be it. We’re good. Dial carbon emissions back a few hundred years and move forward with everyone ravenous for green energy and doing it the right way, not because it’s best for our health or for the USA or for the world, but because it makes people rich.

I got to work, walked in, unpacked my things, opened my computer, and got to it. And by got to it, I mean I checked my email quickly, and wrote this story.

If we’re going to save the planet, first we need to save ourselves, we have to save our self. We’re going to need the power of the human mind, and all that it’s capable of, which I’m pretty sure we have no idea how great it can be. So my goal, for today, is to find one way to encourage people- whether it’s the students I serve, or my colleagues, or someone reading this, to be themselves, to block out the noise, to look inside or whatever they have to do to connect or reconnect with who they are, and to take one idea as far as it can go. And then to try it again tomorrow.

I forgot my mask.

Dude, you look ridiculous. You should have forgotten the entire get up. It’s not even a playoff game.

Who cares? It would have been fun.

Too late now. I’m not turning around. We’re gonna be late.

My friend Adam and I were going to the Sixers game. I’d never even thought about dressing up for games before, it’s not who I am, I just don’t do those kinds of things. It’s not that I don’t have a sense of humor or anything, I’m funny as shit, and I’m totally fine with self-deprecating stuff, but I don’t like dressing up, not even for Halloween. I’m a jeans and button-up shirt kind of guy.

Now, I’m stuck wearing a Charles Barkley costume without the mask so it looks completely stupid. My mom made it for me.

Honestly, it looked pretty bad even with the mask, and now I’m wondering if it could be offensive in some way.

Pretty bad? Why don’t you just take it off, forget the costume?

Because the damn thing is so freaking hot, so I only wore briefs underneath.

What?! What the hell is wrong with you?

We laughed so much our eyes watered. I love those laughs. You remember them forever. At least nowadays you do, when they don’t seem to happen as much as they used to.

Last time I had one was at dinner for my wife’s friends’ 40th birthday about 6 months ago, and I told everyone how our son Jack wanted to tell me about the F word so bad, for like, a week, he kept trying different ways to tell me- Daddy, Miles said this word, can I tell you? Daddy I saw this word written on a wall near school, can I tell you?- and I kept telling him I knew what the word was, that he shouldn’t say it. Finally after a week, he found a way. He said, “Daddy, can I call Sam a fuck widget?”

Sam’s his little bro.

Pretty cute. Hilarious actually.

No, dude. Don’t call him that.

So then our friend Brendan starts telling us about how they curse at home, but tell the kids not to say it certain places, and I agree that I think that’s the way to do it, and how I’d always done that with Jack until he started saying shit all the time, and at the wrong time, and it just wasn’t working. Brendan said his 4 year old finishes his sentence when he says, What the…?!

And then he said, sometimes she’ll sit there playing, and doing this rhyming thing, maybe mixing pretend food or something, going, ditch, bitch, everybody snitch, you’re a ditch and a bitch, and a skitch, and just the way he was saying it, singing it like she would, acting like her, and the fact his little daughter was saying that made me laugh so damn hard, and he did it like 3 times, and I kept laughing harder each time.

Adam and I were laughing like that, making jokes about how it would be better if I just went in with briefs on than this racist costume. I didn’t actually think it was racist. It’s not like I just had the mask on. I guess that could be misconstrued somehow.

I don’t even think I can go in, man.

You have to.

Once we got there I said I wouldn’t do it. I looked like an asshole, and couldn’t do it. I should have never done the costume in the first place, I was just trying to be a fun dad, the boys suggested it.

That’s why you should always be yourself, I said. I was trying to be someone I’m not.

He laughed more.

I’m taking style lessons from kids, and now look at me. This is the worst.

I said this as I stuffed my mouth with a hoagie, a quick tailgate dinner before running in for the game.

I have an idea, he said.

He had some dirty running stuff in the trunk.

You can wear this.

Not happening. After you’ve been sweating into that shit. Dude. Smells so bad. Get that outta here. I’m trying to eat.

He’d been training for a half marathon.

No way. I’d rather miss the game. I’d rather go in like this.

So I did.

I went in with the costume on, looked like a jerkoff, and had a great time. Everyone loved it. The people we sat near got the whole story, other people didn’t care, didn’t need to hear it, they were all about it anyway.

As I sat there in my seat, lower level, near the back row, I forgot about the outfit, and just enjoyed the game. Every once in a while I’d drift away, and look at everyone else, 20 thousand fans packed in tight, together, all so different from one another, but maybe not as much as you’d think.

Chapter 1

January 2010

It came to me as a melody in a dream. D.U.O. Do unto others. I grew up going to church, but I’m not a religious person. I don’t believe in god. I never intended to call the restaurant something biblical, or preachy, or philosophical; it hadn’t even crossed my mind. But I’d spent months jotting down names and none were good enough so when my grandfather, my father’s father, walked through the door as a young man with a full head of hair and a beard he’d never worn when he was alive, and began singing those words with me in an unforgettable string of notes, I decided on D.U.O., without any further thought. Because of my reluctance to being tied so closely to something so famously pious, I’ve since assigned multiple meanings to the acronym- my girlfriend and I are a duo; my restaurant partner and childhood friend, Jeremy Palermo, are a duo; I’m a musician and you’ve got two-part harmonies and duets and duos in music; it’s a stretch, but cooking something two-ways can technically be thought of as a duo, so there’s a culinary spin as well. D.U.O. is duplicitous; it’s whatever you want it to be. The way we’ve been killing it, I could have named the place Shit For Brains and it wouldn’t matter.

Jeremy and I took everything to the extreme. We took farm to table, fresh and local and turned it on its head, took it to a whole new level, set the rulebook on fire and threw it out the goddamn window. We sourced everything from Brewerytown. In a 3-story house at the end of a row on Cabot St., between 30th and 31st, D.U.O. fused modern technique and technology with culinary minimalism, according to longtime Philly food critic, Greg Lapan. Jeremy, formerly a public defender, is now The Forager. I worked as a therapist, specializing in CBT, stuck in a world increasingly addicted to quick fixes, biopharmaceutical treatments to issues that can only be resolved over time, through hard work, by deliberately reshaping the mind. Now I’m a self-taught, 34-year-old, Michelin-starred chef. We came from nowhere, were nothing, and through food, by doing whatever the hell we wanted, we got high-end diners seeking a remarkably sophisticated experience to fall head over heels for hyperlocal, indigenous, urban ingredients.

I knew nothing. I was a nobody. A nothing. Not anymore.

But this is a relatively newly held position, a perception only recently derived. I haven’t always felt this way, and neither have they. In the beginning, it was slow going; very slow, for months, no one showed up, and I wasn’t sure we’d even make it.

Anthony “Big Dut” Dutten was elected as the 98th Mayor of Philadelphia in November 2007. I’ve seen him nearly every Sunday since, while running. Same place, same time, every time: right at the intersection of Reservoir Drive and Mt. Pleasant in Fairmount Park. For the first 9 weeks, in passing, we exchanged hellos, waves, and fists in the air, the one week I yelled his name, another he asked me mine, the following, after seeing him on the news bash a bunch of “shitheads and morons” for shooting into a car full of children, I shouted best mayor in the world; when I saw him again on week 10, I wasn’t surprised.

On alternating Sundays, he ran without an entourage, and this week was no different.

As I approached, I watched the entire scene unravel. A lanky guy with a black ski mask jumped a fence and blindsided Dutten, tackling him to the ground. I began sprinting toward them. The guy pointed a black plastic bag, something you’d get at a corner store, at the Mayor as he slid backwards on his ass, scrambling to get away, to get out of there with his life. With about 50 yards to go, I jumped into the grass to quiet my steps. The guy was shouting incoherently, swinging the bag above his head like a madman, jabbing the mayor in the belly, holding it to Dutten’s forehead, then his own, then back to Dutten’s. “If you’re going to do this, do it.” Said Dutten. “Make it happen. Make it happen!”

I grabbed a branch lying beneath a tree, and without slowing, with both hands, wound up, and snapped it over the guy’s back, knocking him to the ground.

Dutten, a massive man, crawled to his feet, stood tall, wiped his bald head with his right hand, and momentarily took off after his attacker, who had already escaped into the woods.

The broken handle of a hammer lied in the grass as the empty bag fluttered away.

“That mother… He’s done. I’ll rip him apart.”

Chapter 2

I didn’t know it at the time, it took a while to figure out, for him to confide in me, but immediately following the attack, Dutten snapped, ‘became someone else’ as he said, initiating and perpetuating one of the most, if not THE most notorious crime sprees the city has ever known… And outside of his inner circle, nobody knows he’s behind it but me. I’ve questioned how much they even know, but he keeps me guessing, always deflecting, says it doesn’t matter who else knows. He’s probably right. For a guy with no criminal record, no prior documentation of mental illness, no history of violence, and what he describes as ‘a fairly typical upbringing for a guy my age’, Dutten is a monster; his enthusiasm for violence is boundless. I don’t know how he hasn’t been caught. I’ve been saying for years that it’s just a matter of time.

As Mayor, he is meticulous, a perfectionist, he out works, out talks, and outdoes everyone; he’s obsessively prepared, deliberate in every action and reaction, demanding but fair, he is well-liked; with a sky high approval rating not for what he says but for what he does; the city of Philadelphia has never been in a better position. He’s brilliant. He seems to know not only what everyone wants, but also what everyone needs and how to get it done. He doesn’t take shit from anyone, is a man of the people, is connected to union leaders, activists, lobbyists, politicos, business men and women, celebrities and other heavy-hitters, and he is one with the common man, the lesser-knowns and nobodies. It’s a complicated, interconnected circuit of decisions, relationships, behaviors and actions, none of which could be attributed to just one person but hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people pulling in a similar direction, but under Dutten’s watch, the economy is surging, environmental conditions have improved dramatically, education- perhaps the most challenging, critical area of all to get right- has at worst been stabilized and at best caused us to radically rethink our view of intelligence; and even factoring in his ‘sporadic violent outbursts’ as he refers to it, violent crime is way down.

When compared to his professional behavior, Dutten’s approach to revenge is diametrically opposed. He is a madman. He is singular. He does not think. He does not feel. He does not premeditate. He simply explodes. As a result, I have diagnosed him with Intermittent Explosive Disorder, categorized in the DSM-V under the umbrella, “Disruptive, Impulse Control, and Conduct” disorders. Dutten originally disagreed with my clinical diagnosis, saying he doesn’t meet the criteria, that his actions do not cause impairment in occupational or interpersonal functioning. “Look at me. Look at this city. Does any of this seem impaired to you, huh?” He pointed to his head with the index and middle fingers on his right hand then out the front window of D.U.O. with his left. Yes, it does. I said. I told him if he wants to stay out of prison, if he wants to live, he should listen to everything I say.

Chapter 3

Over the course of 8 days following the attack, Dutten was responsible for taking out 30-some people, indiscriminately pummeling all kinds of unsavory characters, “pieces of garbage, scumbags that at one time or another had it out for me in someway, some shape or form, many of em’ still do, guys who want me gone, who fought dirty against me, against us, our movement” he said. “We can’t keep taking 5 steps forward and 4 steps back, you know? We have to move forward continuously. We have to change history. It doesn’t work if we go backwards. We’re running out of time.” I agreed with the sentiment, in this case our ideals aligned, but he was full of shit; he either wouldn’t admit it or truly didn’t get it yet, so he dragged a couple homeless guys all over the park in front of the Free Library and tossed them over the embankment onto 676; he unhinged the jaws of a few longtime defense attorneys; caved in the right orbital and broke the hands of union boss Dave Doherty; put a 4-pack of soda lobbyists through the front window of a popular Center City steakhouse; pummeled real estate mogul Ari Flatbush inside a descending elevator in a parking garage in Rittenhouse; cracked the ribs of award-winning chef, Devin Sprago; and from behind, kicked a 67 year old City Hall custodian in the ass, bouncing him bouncing down a flight of stairs. He said there was a good reason for everything he did. I didn’t believe him. I told him his reasoning was flawed, that he was not well, and that even though his disorder was eliciting his maladaptive behavior, what he was doing was fundamentally wrong. It was illegal. I knew that simply telling him this wouldn’t be enough to change him, that he would have to discover this for himself, but the nature of his actions were so extreme I really didn’t know what else to do. The situation was far more complex than any I had ever experienced, far more than I’d expected, and I was doing all I could to keep it from becoming personal.

The perceived random acts of violence were all over the news and no one knew what to make of it. People started freaking out, but Dutten, our Mayor, was there to assure us that everything would be all right, not to worry.

D.U.O. benefited because it was Dutten’s home base throughout the spree; he dined with us every night we were open- Thursday, Friday, and Saturday- and media coverage portrayed me as having saved his life, and suddenly, we were on the map. It was all we needed and we never looked back.

Everything is done in-house. We do gastronomical variations of greens, fruits, roots, trees, shoots, fungi, beans, nuts, seeds, herbs, flowers, birds, and various rodents- raccoons, squirrels, snakes, possums, and whatever else we could get our hands on. Sounds too out there to work, I know, but it works to perfection. If I’ve learned anything since starting this, it’s that anything, absolutely anything, goes.

The clientele is as eclectic as the food is diverse. They come from all over the city, from all walks of life, and they make the place move.

As always, on Thursday morning, Jeremy rushed in carrying a wooden crate overflowing with freshly harvested ingredients and dumped it out on the stainless steel kitchen counter.

An hour and a half later, after thoroughly dissecting the collection, I said, OK, here we go, we’ll do a 6 course tasting tonight. What do you think of this?

Rainbow Trout and Cabbage

Mushroom Paste, Onion, and Lavendar

Steamed Turtle and Egg Yolk Sauce

Raw Ants with Ginger and Coconut

Rosebay and Leek

Dried Boneset Flower Ice Cream

“ Goddamnit!” He said, smiling. “Hell yeah! Let’s go.”

I put on the debut album of The Remains, cranked the volume, and we went to work.

Chapter 4

It got immeasurably worse. The beatings were nothing compared to what would come. Dutten began erasing anyone and everyone who posed a threat, removing every fiber of their being. At first I only knew that it was happening and that he was solely responsible; unsure of how he did it, where he put the bodies, how he determined who had to go, how he remained free from incrimination; how he was able to lead a double life, appear so with it while inside he was someone else entirely, what the hell would happen next? Though I’d dealt with extremely violent clients in the past, it was never anything like this. It was never so ruthless, so vicious, so widespread and far-reaching, an issue of public health. I was never so enmeshed. Dutten trusted me because I saved his life. For my own psychological and ethical well-being, I was obligated to act. I had two choices: I could go to the police and turn him in, tell them everything I knew, wear a wire, work with them on a confession, which would be enough to put him away forever; out of my life, off the streets OR I could help him. I could help him change. I could work with him; become something better, someone new. Make him whole again. Fix this.

I didn’t see any of it coming. Of all the possible outcomes, mass annihilation and hysteria wasn’t something I’d projected. After I saved him, I thought about it a lot, whether or not I should sever ties immediately, right then and there, or see what happened, how it all played out. Before I could decide, he befriended me. He made the choice before I did. I hesitated. Maybe that was my mistake, maybe not. Either way, I am not morally, ethically, or legally compromised. I am not his accomplice. I have done nothing wrong; have nothing to do with his actions. How could I have predicted his complete mental breakdown and insane, incomprehensible future behaviors? It defies rational thought. I never envisioned a scenario where he would detach emotionally and evaporate morally, and kill. Or erase as he says. I’ve now considered every perspective, every potential response, every plausible consequence, and I feel no responsibility for him, have taken no ownership, nor will I. This is not on me. Yet still I must choose: I can either turn on him or help him. Where is the greater good, with Dutten imprisoned or dead, or rehabilitated and reformed?

If I work with Dutten, if I help him, he poses no threat to me, or anyone I care about. I’m not even worried about that, never have been. I just don’t see it going that way. He’s on his own hyper-focused, delusional plane. He has terroristic tunnel vision. If I help him, this can stop. If I don’t, if I turn him in, will it ever end? No matter what, lives are lost; nobody gets to come back from this, we don’t get to turn back the clock. There is really only one option here, and it’s clear as day.

Chapter 5

As soon as the butter and oil began to shimmer, I dropped in a handful of slivered onions. The technique has changed, the ingredients have improved, but the experience is the same as it’s always been. I took a sip of my beer, pulled the pierogis from the boiling water just as they began to float, and one-by-one placed them gently on a tray. I’ve found it takes a minimum of 45 minutes to properly caramelize onions. I’ve researched and experimented with various methods over the years, widely accepted shortcuts, none of which resulted in better flavor or texture than the right balance of fat with the precise cut with the perfect temperature with a good pan and a modicum of patience. Set everything up for success and get out of the way. It’s well worth the effort and the wait.

Dutten showed up just as I placed the first batch of 5 potato filled pouches into the screaming pan.

A minute and a half per side. I said. Any more and they’re too crispy, any less and they’re chewy. 3 minutes altogether and they’re as good as it gets.

“How are you?” He said. “Good to see you.”

Doing well. Have a seat. It’ll be ready soon.

It had been 4 years since Dutten erased anyone, 7 since I started cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT is based on the cognitive model- the way that an individual perceives a situation is more closely connected to his reaction to the situation than the situation itself. In reconstituting Dutten, I borrowed from several psychotherapeutic modalities: positive psychology, compassion focused therapy, Gestalt, mindfulness, acceptance and commitment therapy, motivational interviewing, dialectical behavior therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy, solution focused therapy, and psychodynamic psychotherapy. No pharmaceuticals. I have found no scientific evidence that drugs cure unhelpful cognition, mood, functioning, or behavior. In my experience, we have absolutely no clue exactly what these drugs are doing to people. We like to think we know, and the overabundant prescription of drugs for the purpose of mental health remediation would indicate otherwise, but there is no telling, no definitive way to scientifically, reliably identify what effect this is having on a person’s physical and mental state. Dutten and I met several times per week, at my office, in the dining room of D.U.O., and worked tirelessly to turn things around. No shortcuts. This work takes time. And on this night, we would not work; we would celebrate how far we’d come.

“Comfort food at its finest.” He said, pointing to the spread. “Not what you’re used to serving here.”

Not at all. But still so damn good.

We talked a lot about how far he’d come, how far we’d both come. He said I saved his life more than once, and that he would always owe me, that he would always consider me a friend.

You don’t owe me anything. Think of me however you’d like, I’m just happy I could help. This wasn’t easy. And, obviously, I couldn’t have done it alone.

He laughed and finished his beer.

I stood up to get him another.

“Sit. Eat. I’ll get it.”

As I stared out across the dining room, smiling, Dutten walked into the kitchen, opened and closed the refrigerator, and mumbled something about wine.

Sure. Take whatever’s there. Doesn’t matter.

I got up and walked to the front of the house, and looked out the window at the pinkish orange sunset stretching over the city. You see this sky, and this supermoon? I said.

…

It’s humongous. You see this thing? It’s the only time we’ll see the moon this close for 30-some more years.

…

Yo. Dutten.

…

I turned around and he wasn’t there, not at the table, and not in the kitchen.

The basement door was cracked so I went down.

Dutten stood with is head down, facing the wall, looking into his hands.

Everything OK?

…

Dutten. I put my hand on his shoulder. You all right?

He turned around slowly, gripping in his right hand a broken-off hammerhead.

“What the hell is this?”

I told him what a great job of listening he’d done, waiting for me even though he’d been like 50 feet ahead and having so much fun, I was proud of him. That was awesome, I said. Wait at the corner, OK man?

The corner was about 20 feet away. He’d stopped a thousand times over the last few months, at every corner, every time, without fail. He always stopped. He always listened.

Until he didn’t.

Carefree, oblivious, blissfully unaware, perfect qualities, everything you want in a 3 year old, not caught up in all the shit we have to be aware of, involved in, just doing his thing.

I said wait.

He didn’t hear me, or pretended not to, or didn’t want to hear me, or couldn’t hear me. He gave a huge kick, rode with one leg up on the handlebars, hopped and bopped. I know he was smiling. But he had no idea what was coming.

I did.

I saw it all unfold, everything unraveling, right there, I watched it all.

I yelled stop.

Again.

Again.

Again.

He didn’t flinch.

He zipped, gracefully, down the sidewalk, over the curb cutout, and into the street.

A car pulled out from a stop sign. A big, black dog took up the entire front passenger seat. I couldn’t even see the driver.

Stop.

STOP.

STOP!

No one listened.

I ran, knowing completely there was nothing I could do to stop anything.

My son was going to get hit by a car.

STOP!

The car kept going.

Joe kept going, smiling I was sure. Still riding on one foot.

STOP!

The whole thing happened so quickly, from the time he left my side until the time I picked him up off the street, couldn’t have been more than 20 seconds.

There was a 10-second span of time where- and you hear people say this and think they’re full of shit- but everything else stopped, EVERYTHING. It was me running and yelling and overseeing everything, I was a powerless god. I’d never felt so helpless, so scared, terrified, so doubtful, so sure, so alone. The car was a gray blob, a black flash, a filthy cloud, a fist, a knife, a bullet. And Joe was… Joe. He was perfect. He was beautiful. He was hilarious. He was adorable. He was joyful. He was the love of our life.

And then the collision.

Two tons of metal on 32 pounds of life, our little boy.

I picked him up. I held him.

Time no longer stood still. It moved more quickly than ever.

He cried as I held him close, his arms wrapped around my neck. Never lost consciousness. Wasn’t run over. Didn’t fly through the air. No open wounds. No visible breaks.

I put him down.

He could stand.

Can you walk?

He could.

I held him.

Everything slowed down, back to normal.

That quickly, everything changed, and nothing changed.

I carried him home, told his mommy what had happened. We went to the ER. Broken clavicle. He was OK. He was still Joe, the same Joe from yesterday, nothing had changed, and everything had changed.

Copyright © 2019 Michael Ferrence

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Chapter One

We tried something new.

Influencing core beliefs and behavior through rehabilitative sounds, music, speaking and listening, speech & language, carefully curated experience. Implant/embed ideas/beliefs/experiences through simple, replicable methodology: individualized sound/music (Start trials. Back it up with actual scientific research. Call it something different, not under the same umbrella as CBT or other therapies. Not a therapy? Experience? Requires a unique, yet scientific name in order to be perceived as science/medicine.)

While teaching for 15 years I learned that the key to new learning, to true change, is authentic, engaging instruction. I also learned that repetition, repeated opportunity, deepening neural pathways, creating new ones, erasing misinformation, misconception, disbelief, trauma, hate, abandonment, darkness and fear, misshapen, unhealthy ways of thinking, and replacing them with fact and truth, creativity and imagination, grit and resilience, hope and optimism, love and joy is not only the way to teach and learn but the way to think and behave, in general, and that this is how all people learn, everywhere, no matter the culture, race, geographic location, despite wealth or poverty or socio-economic status, through plenty of positive interaction and rich, meaningful interaction with the environment, with the world around us. We learn by doing. I also know that language plays a huge role in this, in the acquisition of language and vocabulary and the endless amount of knowledge that comes with language. We don’t all have access to this, to what we need, but we can.

Storytelling, specifically purposeful storytelling, has been essential to human life since the beginning of time. It teaches, entertains, takes us places, prepares us, reassures us, loves us, gives us perspective, takes us away, and keeps us together. Storytelling is essential to this day. Narratives are part of our evolutionary advantage. We are designed that way. Our brains are hardwired for storytelling. It is part of all of us.

And so is music.

I understand the role music plays in bolstering language acquisition and speech, not only in typically developing individuals, but in those with brain injury or trauma, those deprived of our most basic fundamental needs who haven’t had vast, rich experiences, who haven’t been loved, nurtured, those who haven’t been free to explore, and those with biological and physiological abnormalities. Music is an escape, an adventure, a new life, a new body, a new mind, a new soul, a new self, a one of a kind experience, born of nothing but an idea, an inspiration, filled with enough energy to change us, to promote adaptation, and if necessary to bring us back to life. This we know.

Initial tests/studies on students. Children were instructed to perform some simple physical task, say words, answer questions while in therapeutic state (rename this later), or while listening to student-specific album/playlist, experiencing it cinematically while AWAKE. Initially thought client must be sleeping to fully experience, but trials demonstrate greater gains from lucid or hypnagogic state, or even wide AWAKE.

What will it look like? How will it work? What medium?

Audiobooks? Music alone?

DON’T WAIT AROUND FOR APPROVAL FROM SOMEONE YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW. MAKE IT HAPPEN. FIND A WAY. IT CAN BE DONE. IT WORKS. LET GO OF ANY AND ALL INHIBITION, BLOCK OUT THE NOISE, AND MAKE IT HAPPEN. DO IT. NOW.

Take over your room, then your building, then the District, then Philadelphia, then PA. And on and on and on. Or not. Stay focused. Just stay here. Stay right here. If you want, inside this room, but do it, keep it going. It’s making a difference. You’re happy. The kids are, too. Use everything at your disposal to succeed here. Right here. Where you are. Control what you can control, control your own microenvironment, and eventually start to effect the whole.

Stories and music to change behavior. As much as possible. Around the clock. Will it work? It’s working. It is. It’s already working. I’ve observed it. I’ve seen actual, real change occurring.

Trying to do the same thing we’ve done for the past 70, 80, 90, 100 years won’t work. It hasn’t worked. We need to adapt, create, adopt, and enact a new conception of human ecology.

Drone Therapy? Reconsider and rename, this sounds too invasive, not quite the point, too militaristic. Don’t call it therapy at all. This is something we’ve never done and needs a name to represent that. Drone sounds like something that is being done to you, not something you actively engage in. It needs a name, but this isn’t it.

This, what I’m proposing, what I’ve done, embeds an ongoing story, and becomes and ongoing story with limitless potential- no restraints, no rules. Rebirth. Reshape. Creates a new path, both mentally and socially- the way an individual thinks and behaves AND the way our society thinks and behaves about mental health and psychology.

I’d use paradigm but it’s conventional. This is not. This entirely reshapes and fundamentally redesigns our approach to the way we treat, the way we change… Learning. Motivation. Emotion. Behavior. Thoughts. Beliefs. Mindset. Actions. Violence. Crime. Education. Politics. Relationships. All together. All at once. Through music and storytelling. With science. Facts. Truth.

This is it.

Chapter Two

I’ve done this before, been through this thousands, maybe tens of thousands of times. Experienced this seemingly sudden awareness, where everything I’ve been doing since the last tipping point, since crossing the most recent threshold, these moments of crystallized clarity, when everything comes together, into focus, present, expressing itself as a life-altering, game-changing, time-bending idea, a way out, an answer. And in many ways it was, it is, it’s one step closer to wherever I’m going, wherever we’re headed, but even after putting it into practice, doing something with the idea, building momentum rather than just letting is sit there and disintegrate, become a forgotten friend, like I had so many times before, I quickly realized it wasn’t what I thought, not as monumental as I’d hoped. But that didn’t stop me from sticking with it. It was more than I’d previously had, and better than nothing, so I went with it.

I’d stopped following orders from my principal years ago, abandoned the School District’s structured-to-a-T, antiquated, archaic, out-of-touch, perennially unsuccessful curriculum and instruction scheduling and pacing guide. My kids were busy all day, immersed in real work, engaged, they did a little bit of everything, whatever it took, whatever worked, real-life stuff: a wide variety of on-level, differentiated assignments, projects with highly varied subject matter, hands on stuff, experimentation, technology, structured discussion, unstructured discussion, whatever worked. It wasn’t one-size-fits-all in my classroom, that’s not how life works, that’s not how kids learn best, not how anyone does. Over time I’d formed community partners throughout the city in the areas of music, writing, publishing, visual/performing/culinary/martial/fine arts, design, science, math, sports/athletics, technology, energy, environment, medicine, education, business, politics, mental health, start ups/entrepreneurs, and transportation. Experts from those fields came in to work with the kids on projects, and we went into the field and visited experts at work, all the time, we crafted immensely engaging curriculum that mirrored life. It was life. We got out into the city and actually did something with it. For 8 consecutive years the kids I worked with, the ones who learned authentically, made super-significant gains, not only academically, but also socially and emotionally. This was unheard of. The school I worked at- Girard Elementary- was one of the worst performing schools in a city bursting with low performing schools.

Despite substantially closing the achievement gap, my kids could read and solve a variety of grade level problems in mathematics, they could write well, even though they were able to overcome so much in so little time, a lifetime in just 10 months, my kids continued to lag in the area of mental health and overall happiness. In general, I found them to be less confident, less resilient, less respectful, and less emotionally attuned than normal kids, kids who’d had it all, who hadn’t been deprived for much of, if not all, their lives.

Skin color does not matter. I can’t believe we’re still even having this discussion anymore. How anyone could believe this is so far beyond my comprehension. It just does not make any sense and goes against everything truly good and right in this world. My thing is we’re all human beings. If it must be so, our actions and only that should be judged. What else is there? Where you come from does not matter. And now, because of Interchange, what you know, what you think you know, and what you’ve been told from the beginning of time does not matter. It’s just noise. A distraction. What always matters is thought and action, mind and behavior, how you think, feel, listen, perceive, create, conduct, and dream, how you learn to rethink, reshape, to understand, and as I’ve said over and over again, simply and ultimately how you act from moment to moment, day to day, in the face of so much adversity, so much information, truth and lies, right and wrong, how you treat one another, how you respect yourself, others, and the one and only planet we call home. All that matters, truly, is our health and happiness, and however you have to block out the noise, whatever is necessary to either forget or ignore, or move beyond what you’ve been conditioned to think and believe about yourself, and about life, uncovering that truth, about our true self, who we are at our core, our soul, our innocence, rediscovering who you are is my mission, because it’s the one way to unlocking… (Tighten this up. What are you trying to say here? This part is huge. It’s the basis for all that you’re doing. You know what this means, what you’re trying to do, and why, and how, so say it. Simply. Get to the point…)

I think that we are all born happy and good, innocent, and full of potential. Overtime, we are conditioned, we are changed, and some of us remain happy, because we don’t lose sight of who we are, and others become gradually less ourselves, less happy, because we mistakenly think that everything that has happened to us defines us. It doesn’t. We define who we are. We have always been who we are. And that is what I’m trying to uncover in others. I know this. I am aware, I haven’t lost myself. But so many people have, and that is what leads to all of life’s problems, manifested in millions of different ways, compounding over time. Despite that, despite forgetting who we are, forgetting that we were once happy, whether it was months ago, years ago, or when we were children, we were all happy once. Those of us who are now happy, or have always been, are aware of this, that we will veer from our self from time to time, but knowing we’ll return, that we haven’t changed, that only our environment has changed, that we’re OK, we’re still the same, knowing this will ensure we remain pure and happy. It’s still there. Whether you call it mind, ego, self, soul, spirit, or something else, it all means the same thing, and I want to say it more simply than anyone else has said it, and I want to say it with unabashed confidence and authority, because it is fact, it is true, I know it now, and I’ve always known. It’s about learning. Lifelong learning. It’s individualized. There is no silver bullet or magic plan, because we’re all different, and that’s what makes it beautiful, and perfect. We just have to find ourselves, remember we were once happy, and if we have no such memory, if the complexities of life have taken us too far away, conditioning us so significantly that we have no recollection of who we once were, than we have to find it. And I have a way.

This is what I told them, what I believed, and what I hoped they’d believe.

Every day, all day, small groups of 2 to 4 of the 30-some 8th graders in my class worked at the Interchange, my lab, my practice, our designated area where the hard work of finding ourselves was done, where we learned to identify and hold on tight the happiness that should, could, and would define us.

Interchange. An exchange of information. Wrong with Right. Fear with Courage. Dark with Light. Lies with Truth. Despair with Hope. Indifference with Reverence. Hate with Love. Insolence with Respect. Loneliness with Togetherness. Sadness with Joy.

This is what I told them, day after day, what I believed, what I’d learned, and I hoped they’d soon learn.

Interchange. I effectively made individualized playlists, soundtracks to a new life, for each student in the program. All they had to do was listen intently and write a response. Afterwards, I’d held conferences to discuss the soundtrack, the therapeutic intervention, the automatic response, to reflect, and we’d move forward from there. Each lesson, or session, mirrored, or was intended to mirror, a one-on-one therapy session. Truthfully, I didn’t have time to meet with every student individually, especially not while teaching, and I spent so much time after school putting everything together that I couldn’t stay to meet with everyone who needed me, I was flying by the seat of my pants, not sure of the outcome, trying to make it work, building the rocket as it launched, so to speak.

Each session, each soundtrack I should say, consisted of 2 tracks, recorded in my finished basement, mixed down, uploaded, and streamed to students via his or her preferred music app. Track one typically included 12 to 15 songs, tunes I’d determined to be, first and foremost, outstanding rock songs, full of hooks, beautiful, memorable melodies, and vast, fun, thought-provoking vocabulary and ideas. Track two was kept low in the mix, duplicated, and panned slightly left and right, and was designed to interact harmoniously with the song above, a subliminal concoction of wonderful and robust language usage, positive thoughts, and iconic messages, whether it was a clip from a great movie or TV show, a legendary speech, a home run call, an anecdote, a personalized voice-over message, an encouraging quote or unforgettable remark, a one-liner, a saying, a motto, a mantra, a catch phrase, a line from a novel or an inauguration, or just a series of unusual words intended to inspire, whatever came to mind, I would incorporate. I put tremendous thought and effort into the Interchange, trying to ensure that it worked, that each session accomplished its mission of emotional growth and improved mental health, but this had never been done before, there was no blueprint, and I wasn’t always sure how to proceed, where it would go, or whether it would be a colossal waste of time and get me fired.

Chapter Three

A field of wild flowers.

River waves crashing into the rocks.

Warm wind blowing on his face.

A tall, hanging tree split like a V, atop a hill.

A short-lived, but enthusiastic downpour.

A train on the bridge.

Holding his daddy’s hand, held safely in his arms.

Kissing Mommy while touching her face with both hands.

A muddy path to murky water.

A small white sailboat.

This is all he remembered, all that he held dear.

Religion is the problem. Well, distorted thinking and misbehavior is the problem, but it’s a direct result of religion. That’s where it all began, I said, that’s the earliest bit of misinformation that set us down this path, as well-intended as it may have been, it’s a lie that has driven us in the wrong direction ever since, and for some reason, despite being disproven, despite having truth, actual scientific evidence, behavioral truth to the contrary, people, most people continue to worship a make believe man in the sky, choosing to save their best behavior for the afterlife that will never come, instead of leading the very best life possible, right now.

“I don’t know if it’s all bad.” Said Frank, leaning against the wall with his arms and legs crossed. “There are good things to come out of it.”

Yeah, you can find some good in almost anything. But I think it’s done more harm than good.

“You don’t know that.” He said.

It’s so obvious. We should’ve shifted course long ago. But here we are. Killing in the name of who-the-hell-ever. Suffering in the name of whatever. Destroying in the name of, wasting in the name of…

We have one shot, once chance at life. This is it. Make it your best because there is nothing more than this.

“Maybe that’s what people are doing.”

Really? It can’t be. This can’t be giving it your best.

“It’s not all that bad.” Said Adam. “Despite what most people think, as a species, we’re actually way safer now than we ever have been.”

I’m not saying it’s all bad. I’m saying it could be so much better. Look at what has happened. We elected the very worst person in the world to lead arguably the very best country. He shouldn’t be leading anything. It’s absolutely shocking, totally unbelievable, that this could even happen. And there’s no going back.

“Because nobody showed up to vote.”

I know! That’s what I’m saying! How is that giving it your best? It’s seriously the worst thing you could do. And this is just one small example.

“There’s more to it.” Said Jay, hunched over the back of his dining room chair. “Republicans have done this throughout history. It’s nothing new. Keep the lower and middle class down, appease them just enough, pit them against each other.”

That’s what I’m saying. Nothing changes. Nothing. Almost half of this country is behind this guy and what he’s doing! It’s insane. All he cares about is himself. He’ll be gone in 10 years, dead, you think he cares about the future of this planet, or about anything other than his immediate wealth and well-being? About giving kids quality education? And why are we still debating this? There should be no question. Fund education. Whatever it takes. Flip the switch. Make it happen. It doesn’t matter where you live, what color you are, what your name is, none of that. Equal funding for all kids, everywhere. If we weren’t pissing away money everywhere else, it would be simple. And why is there a debate about healthcare? We have one life. That’s it. So save lives. What are we waiting for? And even if climate change is a total hoax and 99% of experts are flat out wrong, we know there is air pollution, we know we need clean water, who in their right mind could argue that we shouldn’t preserve this place for our kids and grandkids and for all future generations so everyone has an equal shot and, that maybe someone, whoever is left, can someday find a way off this planet?

It goes back to religion. It’s the root of all our problems. From an early age it teaches fear and guilt, and maybe more importantly, it teaches misguided thinking. It teaches lies. It teaches us to blame others instead of oneself, to look outward for answers rather than inward, to not think about the past, present, or future because all that matters is the imaginary future you’ve concocted in your mind.

This, and all the terrible answers we’ve created to solve the problems religion has brought us, is why we have war, mental illness, mistreated mental illness in the form of biopharmaceuticals, what a joke, a pill isn’t going to cure you. There is no quick fix, you have to work at shit. We have a failing education system, racism, murder, every imaginable inequality, crime in every form, irreversible climate change, disease. Every single problem we have is a result of religion. There is no god, I said. There are no gods. There is only you and I. People. Behaviors. There is only the mind. The self. There is only matter. There is only now. So fucking do something about it. Religion is a lie. And it’s never OK to lie. Ever. Truth and honesty is the answer. Seriously. Facts. Reality. That’s what moves us forward and gets us out of this mess. Not make believe.

It wasn’t out of the ordinary for us to talk about this type of thing after practice. We weren’t arguing. These were some of my closest friends. They were half drunk and letting me think aloud. I hadn’t had a drop of alcohol, but earlier in the day was just thinking of how screwed up religion was, how something that was most likely created with positive intentions, had become corrupt. How so many aspects of our society most likely started that way, with good intentions, and how we’re inching toward good, toward betterment but- like with the election of Clump- we always face these huge, unnecessary, tragic setbacks.

“That’s what’s so scary about this maniac we have in office. He’s doing what all demagogues and all dictators have done throughout time. Lying. Silencing the press. Using propaganda to rally his base, people who, by the way, will in no way benefit from any of his policies.” Said Jay. “He’s a racist, misogynist, conman, a rich, old, entitled white guy.”

“He’s a failed businessman, too. He was born into wealth, bullied everyone he’s ever known, is disliked, if not despised by nearly everyone he’s ever worked with, was hailed as a great negotiator and is nothing close, is an absolute disgrace to the office of the President, and puts us in a dangerous position in just about every facet of life.” Said Adam, turning away from making some minor edits to our most recent recording session. “He’s fundamentally unequipped. Totally unfit.”

“This is why I don’t watch the news. This is terrible.”

It’ll be OK. I said. He can’t control everything. Cities and states and people and companies still have a huge say. We can still move in the right direction. It’s not too late. Not yet.

When religion originated though, people and communities feared things like locust infestations, crop failures, and coming down with illnesses for not fulfilling the wishes of their gods. They had it wrong. They should absolutely fear those things, but not because of some fictitious god, but due to their own, individual behavior. Instead, everyone blames everyone else rather than just being a good person.

And also, by the way, while I’ve got nobody’s attention here, I said, I’ve got a kid and I work with kids every day, and I was thinking how religion harms, on a grand, global scale, just as poor parenting does on a micro level, generational cultural norms that are deeply flawed and seemingly etched in stone, not just impoverished urban parenting either, you see it everywhere with all social classes. Nobody has a clue.

“Maybe they do, but something is stopping them…” Said Jay.

No. Stop. There’s always an excuse. Enough already. Everyone has obstacles. Everyone has shit to deal with. If you’re down and out or in a great spot in life, we all have work to do. That’s life. Not everything comes easy. You have to work at it every single day. I could easily be an animal living on the streets, anyone of use could be, but we’re not, we make good decisions, we do what we’re supposed to do and behave like decent human beings. Stop with the excuses already.

“Good point.” Said Adam. “I don’t disagree with you.”

I’ll just say this and then I’m done. OK? Thanks for listening.

“Oh, no problem.”

“What else do we have to do?”

I’m not even sure I believe all this. I think I do.I’m just saying. I’m really just throwing it out there, trying to make sense of stuff. I’m not sure if there’s a god or not. I actually think there might be. We have no idea. I just don’t think it’s the one we’ve been told to believe in. But anyway, one last thing: I do think it’s our individual responsibility to live sincerely and truthfully, to treat others with kindness and respect, and protect and preserve the environment. That’s the key to life, the way to live.

“We’re with you, man.” Jay said.

I know. I’m not trying to simplify things too much or tell people how to live. Do what you want. That’s the amazing thing about life. But you can still do whatever you want and be a good person. There is absolutely no good reason and no need for so many people to behave maliciously. If most of us can behave appropriately, benevolently, with love and kindness, truth and honesty, respect for ourselves, and others, and our planet, then ALL of us can.

We’re a diverse species with limitless potential. It’s our responsibility to make the most of it, and to have some fun for fuck’s sake.

“Well said. You just saved the world.” Said Adam.

Only much like our music, no one outside this house is listening.

We laughed.

“Well, let’s get this stuff out there. These songs sound great. We’re geniuses. And we have a message now. A cause.” Said Jay, half-joking.

Yeah, there is no god.

We laughed again.

“Hey, I’ll give you this. No one’s head has ever been cut off in the name of atheism.” Said Frank.

“Oh shit.” Said Jay. “All right, let’s talk about something else.”

Frank and Adam went out front to smoke. Jay and I talked about baseball for a few minutes and made a plan to meet up early next week to learn a couple new tunes.

Around 1:15 a.m., on my way out, I said so long to the guys, and ran home.

Chapter Four

The Interchange seemed to be working. I didn’t have numbers on it yet, but the kids seemed different. After the first 3 months it appeared as though they were more engaged, happier, more attentive, friendlier, calm, creative. They exhibited less non-academic behavior, both in frequency and duration. They were more respectful toward others, displayed far few outbursts, seemed to cope with change more appropriately, and demonstrated prolonged effort when challenged. This was previously unheard of. The overlap between behavior and academics, emotion and learning was significantly greater than I’d initially thought. The kids approached new information in novel ways, interacting more with the subject matter and one another than I’d ever seen. They made connections to the material unlike before. It appeared as though they processed information more rapidly and with more efficiency. They synthesized new learning without any signs of regression. They held onto what they were learning.

This is everything I’d hoped for. I said. I didn’t think we’d see results this soon though.

“Stick with it, honey. I’m proud of you.” Said Emma, smiling. “You know with these kids you can’t let up.”

Repetition. The same thing we need to learn and become better, to become more, to figure everything out, is the thing that tears us apart and keeps us from going anywhere at all.

These kids need this, they need positive stuff in their lives, we all do, but they especially need it because they aren’t getting it anywhere else, so they need for repetition, good stuff over and over and over and over and over again- in order to outweigh all the negative, traumatic repetition that got them here in the first place. It’s really a numbers game. We need more good experiences than bad. Way more. That’s it. So with the Interchange, my idea is not much different from any other evidenced-based, experiential intervention- repetition, magnitude, sheer numbers, outweigh the bad with the good, relearn everything the right way, tip the scale- only my approach hasn’t been done, not like this, not that I know of at least.

“That’s what makes it so great that it’s actually working. You tried something new. And it’s more challenging to accomplish. It’s not just some scripted program, honey. It’s life.”

That’s the thing. It’s trying to replace years and years of actual experience with vicarious experience in a much, much smaller amount of time. Replacing years and years of the old with this densely packed new experience. These kids get about an hour a day of the Interchange. They have about 2 hours a day with me. That leaves 22 hours per day and the previous 12–15 years to make up for.

“And so far it’s working.”

We asked for the check and finished our glass of wine.

After she fell asleep, I went downstairs to jot down a few new ideas about Interchange.

The living room was dark with the only light coming from my computer screen.

My eyes closed and my head dropped.

In the span of just a few seconds, millions of images soared through my mind, just behind my eyes, beneath my forehead. Nanosecond snapshots of violence- beheadings, beatings, shootings, and explosions- detonated on my frontal lobe.

I opened my eyes and they kept coming.

Vicious scenes from around the globe, every crime currently being committed, every wrong there ever was, shot through my mind.

A man with a torn off-white shirt slashing a woman with a sword. A child dunked beneath filthy river water. A bomb in the center of a village market. A mass killing of men, women, and children in an open dirt field. A soldier’s last deep breath before a hailstorm of enemy fire. Execution style in a parked car on a quiet city street. A mother’s backhand on a crowded bus. Guns against heads, everywhere. One after then other after the other. Repetition. Over and over and over and over…

And then it stopped.Chapter Five

Without our knowing, and with all the same precision that he used in his day job as an ENT surgeon, Adam hacked 3 major streaming services so that for just over 2 hours one Friday afternoon, each time any one of the one 40 million available songs were selected, one of our songs played instead.

All the rest of us we knew was that it happened, and that as an immediate result we were no longer nobodies.

When pressed, Adam told us everything, though I comprehended very little of just how he did it, I was thrilled he did.

He said it was untraceable, that he was working on this for a long time, he was sure of it.

“I thought we needed a break. A spark. We’ve been at this forever. Traditional methods weren’t working. This hurt no one, accomplished way more good than bad. I wronged no one. This is a victimless act. I did nothing wrong.” He said, choosing his words carefully yet still tripping over them.

He was, however, wrong, at least about one thing: the impact his actions would have on the success of our band was tremendously greater than expected.

We went from 7 monthly listeners (all 4 band members, 2 of our wives, and our buddy Lou) to over 70 million. That number decreased enormously after the initial burst, down to around 1,400,000 streams per month. Still, it was unbelievable.

Rather than tour, we decided to keep writing, recording, and releasing as much of our 400 song catalog as we could.

Strike while the iron was hot, get as much of our best stuff out there to the greatest number of people, as quickly as possible. Document everything. Record practice from beginning to end, take the best stuff, overdub if necessary, mix and master it, and post it as-we-go. We weren’t sure how long this would last, but we were determined to make the most of it.

I used to say I’d be happy if just a few friends, and maybe a few strangers, would eventually end up hearing some of our stuff, listening at home on a Sunday morning, in the car on the way to work or on a road trip, whenever, just so it was being heard. Once this happened, it surpassed my wildest dreams, my greatest aspirations, and I realized there were no limits to what we could do.

Chapter Six

Adam eventually admitted to us what he’d done. And not only that, he expressed sincerely his anxiety that he’d be caught and punished, and the immense regret he’d felt for having broken the law.

“Is it even a law? What could happen?” Said Jay.

“Yes it’s a law! He’s fucked. We all are. They’re going to bring us all down. You’re my brother but… I can’t go to prison.” Said Frank. “I’ll never make it. Shit. Do we have to go to the cops now?”

I think so.

“What was I thinking? There’s no way I’ll get away this. I thought it was untraceable.”

And maybe it is.

“It’s directly traceable! It’s our band! It’s coming right back on me. If they weren’t so busy debating whether or not something actually happened, they would have arrested us by now. Can you believe this? We’re free and these idiots are still unsure, after 3 weeks, whether or not an actual hack occurred.”

Maybe they’re building a case.

“There’s no case to build! It’s our band. Our name. I can’t hold up to interrogation. My life is ruined.”

“We’re roped in, too.” Said Jay.

Just calm down. We’ll figure it out. It’ll be all right.

“Fuck. I’m so done. I’m going to prison. What the hell was I thinking? Every expert has said unequivocally there’s been a hack. They know exactly what happened. I’m not smart enough to outsmart them. There’s nothing more I can do. Anything else, any kind of cover up and it’ll only make it worse. I’m gonna lose my wife and kids. They’re gonna hate me. I ruined their lives.” Adam leaned against the wall holding his bass against his belly with his crossed arms. He put his pick between his clenched teeth, took off his hat, and rubbed his neatly shaven head with the side of his right hand.

Frank sat in an armless brown leather office chair with his hand muting the electric mandolin that was sitting on his lap.

I stood wearing my new Telecaster, holding it by the neck, in a spiraling state of disbelief.

Jay hunched motionless behind the drum set.

“Maybe we can get a great lawyer, I’m sure Lou would help us out, he’s a pro, has like 200 cases under his belt, way more serious than this, and we just turn ourselves in, get a deal, maybe they’ll only charge us with a misdemeanor. No priors. No one was harmed. We turn ourselves in. We show remorse. We…”

I hadn’t seen this in him before, but it almost seemed as though Jay wanted to be punished, like he felt he deserved it for some reason.

“They’ll throw the book at me. Felony charges with a maximum 10 years in prison. I’ll probably end up serving closer to 3 but…”

“We’re done. We’re so…”

I’m not going down for this! No way. I had no idea. I had nothing to do with this. Dude, I hate to say it, I’ll have your back as much as I can, I’ll do whatever I can to support you but this is, sadly, on you. I can’t go to prison. I didn’t do this. We didn’t collude. You have to turn yourself in. I’ll go with you. I’m so sorry this is happening. Had I known maybe I could have talked you out of it but…

We got extremely lucky. Adam wouldn’t have to experience the legal ramifications, none of us would. Some troubled kid from West Virginia, 16 years old, a Russian immigrant, took full responsibility, made it look like everything that Adam had done had come from him. The entire thing was his doing.

Chapter Seven

I feel like if I don’t do this, my entire life will have been wasted.

I took some time off after an 8 month U.S. tour. I didn’t need time away from music or from the guys or from the lifestyle. It was absolutely amazing, somehow even greater than I’d always imagined. Maybe because the timing was just right. I was ready for it all. Had we reached this level of renown any earlier or any later, perhaps it wouldn’t have been perfect. But the past is the past and we have no idea what the future holds, all I know is the last year of my life has been the most incredible, memorable, joyful, fulfilling time I’ve ever had, and I’m never going to let it go.

Without one listener I would have kept on playing forever, with the guys in the basement, alone on my couch, in the backyard beneath a tree with just my guitar, with no one else around. What we have now, sharing this with everyone we care about, with new friends, in places we’ve never been before, can’t be stopped, has a mind of its own, will never be forgotten, and gives the gift of life to a newborn universe, and creates an entirely new future unknown.

I’m convinced there are infinite unknowns, endless opportunities, both externally in the outside world, throughout existence, as well as inside my own mind, everywhere, unseen, in the deepest, far-out regions of my psyche and in the parts I know so well, waiting to be seen and heard, created, born, examined, explored, or discovered. I had some close calls on tour, where I’d catch myself on the brink of discovery, something big, usually while drifting off after a show, sometimes while I slept or just as I awoke, a story waiting to be written, clamoring, but I never fully grasped it, would always just miss it, I’d either wake up, forget, become distracted, shift focus, lose sight, or let go just a little too soon. I want to be able to hold on, to remember, to open up, to read, to review, to always have it. It’s there, in my mind, it’s mine, I know it, I know I can have it, I just have to find a way.

I got into meditation. I read about transcendence exhaustively. I took lessons. I practiced. I learned a lot. It helped me get to this point. I get it now. But meditation alone isn’t the answer. Not for me. It’s only part of it. I have to figure the rest out, invent it, how to make that step, the final neural leap, how to connect the unconnected, to reunite old friends. I’m so close. I think it’s just a matter of letting go completely, realizing that the answer is right in front of me, I just have to extend my hands and grab it, say hello, taste it, whatever it takes. Once I do, we will be together forever, until the day I die, when everything then ceases to exist and there is nothing but vast nothingness once again, just like in the beginning, before I came.

I began making Interchange recordings for myself, responding to cues and questions mid-slumber, directly and purposefully influencing my dreams, heightening my awareness, and greatly improving my ability to interact with my thoughts and ideas, both conscious and subconscious, while awake, asleep, and somewhere in between. I started routinely documenting my thoughts immediately before, during, and immediately after sleep, with a hyper-focus on that elusive, mesmerizing somewhere in between.

I’d always been a great sleeper, put my head on the pillow and wake up in the morning completely refreshed and ready to go. My mom still talks about how I slept 20 hours a day from birth until 3, said I slept through bowel movements, baths, music, TV, talking, singing, cooking and cleaning, and visits from friends and family. As a kid, I had nightmares from time to time, not even nightmares, they were just strange, unsettling maybe, but nothing out of the ordinary. As I got older- aside from a short time during my senior year of college when as-yet-unparalleled neuroplasticity elicited very physical, audible, incomprehensible dreams- nightmares were replaced by episodic, cinematic, enjoyable, meaningful, beautiful, mind bending, thought provoking, actionable, and generally pleasant dreams.

Still, before beginning this experiment, I was somewhat reluctant to mess with something that perhaps need not be interrupted. I proceeded with caution, and after just one night, realized everything would be fine. Nothing bad would happen. I wouldn’t screw anything up. Nothing would be irreversible. I was simply observing, documenting, note taking, something I had never before been able to do while asleep. It wasn’t a miracle or anything, nothing bizarre or terrifying or sensational or fantastical happened. But day by day, night by night, I was able to inch closer to a more complete understanding of how my mind works, how THE mind works, how I could find the answers I’d always been looking for, the truth, and what I could do with that.Chapter Eight

I looked everywhere, from every angle, all-known perspectives, and eventually, after a few months, realized I hadn’t gotten very far, hadn’t begun to read my Intermediate Conscious as I called it, hadn’t even caught a glimpse, hadn’t unlocked a damn thing. My time wasn’t wasted, I told myself, I’d made progress, but all along I thought I’d made such great progress, grown closer and closer to interacting with my mind like never before, everything I’d seen, all that I observed, and each and every breakthrough I’d mistakenly believed I’d made turned out only to be distant memories. No breathtaking answers, no seismic discovery, not a forming star, hidden inhabitable planet, or untapped mental or physical phenomenon, no signs of new life, no riveting ideas, no life-changing clarity. I had learned to listen as I slept. I had seen nothing new.

Yet.

I knew very well that this wouldn’t come easy, it doesn’t happen overnight just because I want it to, or just because I’d hoped it would. These things take time. Nothing happens over night, not even when it seems that way. Knowledge and understanding and learning take time to build, gradually, one step at a time over a long period of time. I had to remain laser focused. Even with that, I wasn’t sure how long it would take, how it would turn out, whether or not my dedication would be the determining factor, whether I held the key or whether some random act, something I hadn’t accounted for, had little control over, would turn the tide, flip the switch, and get me the hell out of here.

No rules.

No box.

No way to tell what comes next until there is.

Radio waves became brain waves.

Brain waves became radio waves.

Chapter Nine

I need more time.

And with that simple thought, a milestone, mission accomplished, a wish came true, humanity’s most deeply desired dream- more time- I opened the window, and fought my way in, cracked the code then wrote an entirely new one. Now I was in complete control. I had seamlessly integrated the conscious and unconscious mind.

Interconscious. Interconscious. Interconscious. Interconscious. Interconscious.

I was Interconscious, able to behave in my dreams as freely and as aware as if I were awake, only with fascinating, newborn conditions.

I needed more time.

I need more time.

So, I just kept dreaming.

I now had all the time I could ever want.

I still slept for 8 hours a night, sometimes a little less if Sam woke us up early, but I dreamt for days and days and days. Not only could I act however I wanted, go wherever I wanted, dream for as long as I wanted, perhaps most importantly, when I awoke, I remembered… Everything. Before Interconscious thought, before I had control, absolute awareness, I typically recalled only small segments of my dreams, often they were indecipherable, confusing, and apparently meaningless, and I could do nothing more with that than write a song about it and hope the next time would be different.

My dreams had me. Now, I have dreams.

There’s an enormous difference, something I never once considered, never understood until now.

The amazing thing is that my dreams were still far-out, they weren’t just days and days of mundane, day-to-day life. My dreams were still dreams: one of a kind mental expressions, thrilling, complex concoctions, cinematic collages, escapes, neither here nor there, bizarre, fantastical, remarkable, grotesque, at times frightening, prophetic, lovely, emotionally charged, sexual, exhilarating, motivating, weird, visual, colossal, melodic, serpentine, thunderous, timeless wonders…

Only now I was an active participant and could remember every single fucking thing.

My dreams had me. Now, I have dreams.

I traveled the world, saw places no one had ever seen, saw cities appear and disappear before my eyes.

I taught myself to play piano, shred solos on guitar, and sing like I’d always wanted: Freddy Mercury meets Glenn Danzig meets Paul McCartney meets… Me.

I cooked like a Michelin star.

I was tormented by rodents, ripped all my teeth out, reconnected with people I never wanted to see again, and got in lots of fights.

I lived through terror attacks, wars, and global annihilation before all of that went away like it never ever was to begin with. And we all came back. And this time we were all in it together. As it should be.

I slept with beautiful women, some of them weren’t even from this planet.

And that was just the first few hours.

A new world.

New life.

New people, new places, new cultures, societies, technology, a new shared history, a new, true way of thinking.

My mind was evolving in minutes, not millions of years.

New meaning.

No restrictions.

No rules.

No preconceived notions.

No lies.

No noise.

I gave the gift of life to anything and everything my mind could imagine. With each new creation were new possibilities, new abilities, and windows of endless opportunity, immense hope, and joy greater than we’d ever known.

Chapter Ten

I was god. And in this sense, from this perspective, I was wrong, there was a god, there is a god, and there could be more. We could have infinite gods, one for each human mind that ever lived and for every story each of us could then create.

Send radio waves to outer space. Interchange- a special broadcast just for them.

Send radio waves into the human brain, in the form of unwritten songs, to search for intelligence, subconscious activity, to stretch the mind beyond its limits, to teach.

Complete an encyclopedic study of the mind now, because future events have influenced the past. I know what’s coming.

I wish this could happen, that things weren’t the way they are, that I could dream all day and never have to do anything I don’t want to do. But that’s not possible.

And that’s OK. Complete control would probably get old. Part of why we’re able to move forward is the fight, the struggle, because we have to, or else nothing happens.

To dream all day every day would be heaven, and heaven does not exist.

None of this is real. It’s not how life works. It’s a slow, methodical crawl. Think straight, make good decisions, and surround yourself with good people. Learn. Always keep learning. Find truth. Don’t look back. There’s nothing there, no longer exists. It went away the moment it happened.

Control what you can control.

Glean truth from you experiences, otherwise it will just roll over you and you’ll see things the same way you always have. I don’t want that. I want as many truly great, meaningful experiences as I can cram into however long I have. Real moments too, not dreams, not wishes, and not hopes, but actual, authentic second-to-second, all encompassing experience.

Although I do believe hope is vital. Hope is god, too. It’s a universal commonality, like goodness. We can all hope, and we should. Otherwise, you’ve given up. That can’t happen. But there’s more to it, than just hoping. You have to actually do something.

As much as we want a quick fix, a fast and easy way to accomplish whatever it is we want to accomplish, there is no hidden answer, no miracles, it’s not easy.

But life can be full of joy if you see it that way, and I think that’s something we all want.

Life is intricate, it’s tortuous, because there is simply so much of it, so much going on all at once, has been for billions of years, countless variables, interactions, and conditions, infinite stories, but if you control what you can control, this great big world seems minute, very small, you shrink the outside world down to you. YOU are everything. If you feel that way, if you believe it, if you understand how important your every action is and you don’t take that lightly, and you follow your mind- the good in you- just about anything you can imagine is truly possible.

Anything you can imagine just might not happen overnight, probably won’t, may not even happen in your lifetime. These things take time. But you should never stop working toward it because you never know. None of us do.

This is hard work. You can’t change the entire universe by yourself. You can’t control others. You can only control you. You can do just about anything you want. Be good to people. To yourself. Love. If you’ve been mistreated, let it go. Move on. As easy as it is to complain or stay the same, you can change. Things can be so much better. And it starts now, with you.

Don’t take yourself too seriously.

The true beauty and magic and wonder of life is that every day is an opportunity, a chance to try again. Everything is possible. Never give up hope. Do whatever you want, as long as you’re not hurting anyone else. As long as you’re not getting in the way of someone else’s pursuit of happiness, go for it, do it. If you do what’s best for you, you’re doing what’s best for everyone. Things will slowly get better. Sometimes things will get better quickly and that makes it easier to keep moving forward, makes it all worth it, makes you feel like you’re making the most of your once in a lifetime.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, not your mom and dad, or any of your friends. It’s not that they don’t love you, but they might not know all of this yet, they might not know how to show you they love you. You’ll have to teach them, show them, help them figure it out for themselves. Don’t let YOU tell YOU that you can’t do it either. Don’t let YOU tell YOU to stop. Being a great person and making a real change and working toward your dreams and whatever it is you love takes time, but the joy you’ll experience along the way will be far greater than anything else you’d experience by not doing it this way. You might take a shortcut or get distracted and you might get rich quick, so to speak, but it’s not sustainable and it won’t help anyone and it’s not right. It won’t last. Doing the right thing, being a great person, thinking straight, making good moves is sustainable and it’s contagious. You can get others to act this way too just by leading them, by doing your thing, by showing them, teaching them, just like I’m teaching you.

It’s complicated. A lot of people will tell you many ways to act and what to do, and it’s difficult blocking it all out and staying the course, remembering what one person told you is right, especially if you weren’t born into it, but all I can say is that being a good person and working hard at accomplishing your dreams is the way to be.

I’m not telling you how to think or what to think or when to think. I’m just telling you that if you do these things, if we all do these things, we’ll be better off. We get one chance.

What I’m telling you is more than just a hunch. I’ve studied this. I’ve studied the mind. I’ve studied history and society. I’ve studied people and behavior. It’s all connected. It’s scientific, but it’s also creative, and practical. That means there’s proof, and it applies to real life, and we can make a difference, it’s how life works. If you look around, you’ll see examples of it everywhere, all the time, throughout time.

I told the kids something like this everyday because if they didn’t hear it from me, they weren’t going to hear it at all. I told them before Interchange, and I kept telling them long after. It was a part of everything we did.

I’m not sure how much it helped. That’s perhaps the hardest part about teaching; you put in all this time and effort and rarely do you see the fruits of your labor. Sometimes all that you see is how it didn’t work, you hear all the horror stories of how these kids turn out. But I have to take my own advice. Don’t stop trying. Don’t give up. Try something new. There has to be an answer. There is an answer. There are infinite answers.

How do you change something that has been this way since the beginning of time? Can it be changed?

I think, ultimately, you can only change you. Control your thoughts and actions in an otherwise out of control world. You can take something so big and complex and old and sometimes terrifying- the entire universe, all that you know- and make it simple and easy. Make it YOU. You are the entire world. You can understand that. You don’t have to be afraid of that. You, each of you, all of us, matters, YOU are everything. We need you to be the best you there can be.

I said the same thing in different ways.

I said different things in new ways.

I told them this every day, in some form or the other. I had limited time, they needed to hear it as much as possible for there to be any chance it’d stick.

I embedded these thoughts, these dreams, these messages, these stories, these hopes, these beliefs, these truths- thousands and thousands of them densely packed into a few tracks on a playlist, like DNA- these instructions, electronic, digital, human instructions, black holes, white holes, anti-matter, rewiring history one neuron at a time, one billion at a time, over and over and over again, and it was was working. They were learning. They were evolving. So was I.

It was as beautiful and nearly as perfect as life. It was becoming life, part of us, part of our cells, a genetic modification, an adaptation, a new verse, a new chorus, a newly forming star, a new YOU.

Alter your plan, adapt to new learning, but the underlying message remains the same, it has never changed and never will.

It’s all relative. What’s great to me, my dreams, where I want to go, what I want to see, how I want to be, what I want that to look like, how I want to behave, how I want to see things might be very very different from your vision, how you want to live, see, and be seen by others. There is a wide variety, infinite different ways that can look. You can still be you. And that’s what I’m encouraging, just as much as I’m encouraging you to be a good person. Because although it’s all relative and our experiences and personality, the color of our skin, where we come from, this will always differ, always be different, and it should be, that’s what makes us great, there is, I truly believe, an overall spirit of good and kindness, respect, and love that we all share, that we all should aspire to.

What else is there? We have one chance. Don’t squander it. Don’t let it go to waste.

And there should be no veering from that. We should all be good to one another. We should all respect people and places, our planet, the one place we know for certain can be our home. If we are truly good, we can have it all.

You can still be you.

We will always be YOU.

You can have whatever you want.

Everything you need.

We all know what being good is. We all know right from wrong. We might not act that way, but we know. It’s simple. We know what it means to be good and to take care of each other. It’s always been. It hasn’t changed. It won’t change. And it comes naturally. Rich or poor, no matter what you look like, what language you speak, where you were born, how you’ve been treated, or what you’ve been told, no matter what god you believe in or don’t, we all know good from evil, right from wrong.

I think we can all agree on that. And that’s a start.

Chapter Eleven

Adam was arrested after a show in Portland. The kid from West Virginia recanted his story and gave the authorities everything they needed to put Adam away for the maximum sentence- 10 years in federal prison. The kid detailed how he covered up Adam’s work to make it seem like he did it, then they re-traced everything back to Adam.

Adam hired Lou as his attorney, but it was far too little, way too late. Lou warned that not only were they setting an example with Adam, they were coming for all of us. Frank, Jay, and I tried to stay ahead of things and turned ourselves in.

Saying goodbye to Emma and Sam was excruciating. I did everything I could to be strong, to keep from crying in front of them, especially Sam, I didn’t want him to worry, to see me like that, but the thought of being without them, of letting them down, of them being without me, moving on, changing without me there, was too much to consider, especially when paired with the enormous fear of imprisonment, and I began sobbing just a few words in.

Sam was only 3, but I knew he’d remember this. I’d promised myself before he was born that I wouldn’t screw this up, that I’d be a great dad, even better than my dad had been to me, that I wouldn’t bring sadness into his world, not once, that I’d shield him from suffering and heartache, said I’d never be the one to cause him any pain.

I’d lied, or I was wrong, or both. I couldn’t keep that promise, and now he’d have to carry a burden, a lying, felon father, who’d abandoned him and his mother, the woman I’d always loved, who’d given me everything, and now I’d failed them both. I’d ruined their lives. No heartfelt goodbye, no explanation, no promises could change that fact.

We hugged in the living room, I held Sam in between us, and Emma and I quietly cried onto each other’s faces while Sam dug his hands into my ribs.

I wasn’t sure if I’d be permitted to return home or if I’d be booked on the spot and immediately imprisoned. I didn’t know if or when we’d speak again. I wanted to be sure they knew I’d think of them always and love them forever. I needed them to know.

Please forgive me. I said. Please move on. Be happy as soon as you can, Emma. I don’t expect you to wait for me. I know this is a lot for you to handle, probably seems like it’s not even happening, but it is. And I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I never wanted this to happen. Turning myself in is the best thing I can do right now, before it gets worse for all of us. I just want it to be over. The sooner it starts, the sooner it will end. I am so, so sorry. I love you both so much. Please believe me. Please don’t let this ruin your life. I know it seems like it will, but somehow, please, please don’t let it define you, please don’t let my actions, my terrible decisions, change you, you’re perfect, I love you so much. Please don’t let this define you. Please. This isn’t you. You can still be happy. You can still have a great life.

I didn’t know what to say. Nothing I could say would make anything better, or make it go away, but I had nothing else but my words, my actions were shit, so I tried to say something, anything, to leave an impression of optimism.

You can still do whatever you want. Forget me. Forget this happened. You can still have whatever you want in life.

Just stop, said Emma. Please.

We held onto to one another for as long as we could, then I pried myself away, gave each of them one last kiss, and walked out. It took everything I had left not to turn around to see them one more time.

We were too late.

Adam took all the blame, confessed to everything, said Jay, Frank, and I knew nothing about it, so the 3 of us walked out, free, while Adam was left inside without even a glimmer of hope.

Chapter Twelve

None of this would ever happen.

None of this has ever happened.

None of it ever could.

Our ideas have staggering potential.

Emulation and imitation. We need good ideas carried out by many. Catch on, roll over every single mistake, every misstep, all our imperfections, every lie in its path, and take us somewhere new, for once, lead us in the right direction, down the right road.

Finally.

Get us out of here.

We’re running out of time.

The SpaceXplorer shuttle settled in, a near perfect landing after a textbook launch and re-entry, it’s 16th trip to space and back, and the first manned mission to the moon since December of 1972. The announcer, Ted Bradley, said 300 million people were watching it live.

Three hundred million people gasped as the rocket exploded.

I told Sam to look away, said to go in the other room, to go play his drums, do some coloring, get a book from your room, tried to distract him, but it was all he could see.

“A fiery end to an American dream, a horrific reality, a national nightmare.” Said Bradley.

For once, and for all the wrong reasons, the world was quiet, not a sound.

And then…

“Ladies and gentleman, America, from the fire, look! Somehow. Do you see it America? Do you see him, World? From the fire! He’s alive. My goodness, World… He made it! I have no idea how, but he made it!”

We watched, together as one, in awe, as civilian astronaut Boston Weatherspoon, the singular spectacular survivor, emerged from the clouds, proudly raising his right arm, a closed fist, head held high, a smile, and a wave.

Later, we listened, together as one, as Weatherspoon spoke of his experience, addressing a captivated worldwide audience with his powerful, pointed words.

“Good evening my friends. This is a beautiful place. Our home is a beautiful place. Earth is a beautiful planet. We have experienced a miracle. We have done the impossible. Now, we know that together, we can have it all. Anything we set our mind to. We can accomplish anything. I feel true love and I see it in every one of you. I know you feel it, too. Always remember this. Never forget how you’re feeling right now, at this very precise moment in time, that anything is possible, that life is beautiful and precious, that it means everything to us, that there is nothing more important, no greater gift, and that we need one another, that together we can accomplish everything. But, we must stick together. We must stay close, just like this, like we are today, at this moment, one mind, one body, and one soul. Unified. Please, keep this feeling alive forever because we need it. Never ever forget how you feel right now. How we feel. We have the power, each and every one of us, and if we should ever drift apart, please promise we’ll come back to this moment, right here, and try again, because it’s worth it, because we must, because there is no better feeling than what we’re feeling. Because there is no other option. Because we must. Because we want to. Because we will. We are worth it. THIS is worth it. There is nothing more important, more special, more valuable than this, what we have here. LIFE. US. We need each other. And right now, for the first time ever, we have each other. We are together, in solidarity, we are stronger than our weaknesses, stronger than that which divides us, and we will never let go of this. For if we do, we will lose too much. We will lose everything. So let us never even consider that option. Let us never forget how we feel right now. Always remember. Let’s always remember this moment, this shared experience, today, this momentous occasion. And let us do something with it. Ladies and gentleman, brothers and sisters, we, humankind, all of us, are in this together. One day at a time. One foot in front of the other. We are one. One day at a time. We love life. One day at a time. We love one another, love life, respect ourselves, each other, and our precious planet, because we know, without question, that once it’s gone, it’s gone.”Chapter Thirteen

I grew up poor in a small postindustrial town, where it appears as though I did nothing but waste time. I’m often blown away that I’ve even made it this far, that I somehow made it out, gives me hope that even though it seems like I have no chance, I might actually be able to make it out of this, finally do something fulfilling, rewarding, or enjoyable, maybe work with people who interest me, who I get along with, where I can make enough money to do the things I want to do, see the world again, buy a few things, eat at some of the best restaurants, have a slightly larger, well-decorated home, finally feel like I’m not wasting my time, or running out of it.

Each day it seems less and less likely that any of this will happen, and every time I’m hit with that realization rather than some great inspiration, it’s harder and harder to stay optimistic, or hopeful, or positive, to believe there’s a chance for anything more.

This is the way things are, the way they’ve always been. How could I expect they’d change, or that somehow I could change them?

I just have to hold onto what I know, that it’s possible to get out, to become something more, I’ve done it, I’ve experienced it, I am more than I was before, more than I was when I was born, so I must know it’s possible to obtain the seemingly unattainable, to have all that you desire.

But there’s a fine line between holding on to what I know and going nowhere, using history as a catapult, as a backdrop for new discovery, as a reminder that things are improving, that it takes time, don’t give up, and trying something entirely new, forgetting what got me here, forgetting where I came from, because truthfully I’m still nowhere at all. I’ve done absolutely nothing.

I don’t see myself as a failure. I really don’t. I’ve been dealt a solid hand. I haven’t yet squandered it. I try not to complain, rather to act. I am healthy. My family is healthy. We are together. Nothing else matters, right? We have a perfectly good life, but that doesn’t mean I want to stay right here forever, that things can’t improve, that it can’t be even better. I’ve been looking for a way out for as long as I can remember, always believing that the opportunity I’ve always wanted is within in reach, I’m on the verge, that my hard work, all this time I’ve spent, or wasted, would pay off and I’d get out. And I’m not looking for much, I’m really not, I don’t expect a handout, I’m not upset that I don’t already have it all, there’s no one else I’d rather be, I understand change is gradual, I just need to see, to experience, some small step forward, a little onward movement, progress, a bit of momentum begin to build, a goddamn break, some extrinsic reward to motivate me to keep trying, keep looking, to make me believe and show me it’s possible to move from one place to another, to get where I’m going. It’s never been more obvious that becoming something more than you’ve always been, more than you were born into, more than you’ve always been told you were is an enormous challenge. I’m stuck. I feel like I’ve tried everything. I don’t want to quit, to accept this as the best I can do, I believe I can do more, believe I can do anything if given the opportunity, I will not give up, but I don’t know where else to turn.

I’ve maxed out with the kids, taken them as far as I can, as far as they can go- the proof is there, it’s undeniable- yet I cannot get out of the classroom. It seems as though no one cares, or no one wants me. It doesn’t make any sense. So very little does.

I tell myself that I don’t need to depend on others for my success, that I am in control, I can do it all on my own, but that’s not entirely true. I need others. I need you. If I am to move up in education, grow my career there, I need to be promoted for the work I’ve done, not ignored. It’s unbelievable both how much and how little I have accomplished in the field. If I make it in music, I need others, someone in a position of power who happens to approve of me, likes me enough to give me a shot, I guess, I don’t even know how it would work, but I know I need others, I need you, listeners, people who appreciate my songs, who will pay for them, and who will repeatedly come see me play. And maybe that’s all I need there, maybe I don’t need a corporation or record label or anyone else, maybe it’s just a following, fans. And that seems less likely than ever before. Despite being a better player, performer, and songwriter, I am further away now than I was when I first picked up a guitar. And if I make it in psychology, the one other area I enjoy and value, a place where I can really make a difference both in my life and in the lives of others, where I’ve demonstrated ability and acumen and passion and integrity and grit and forward thinking, and have generated a bit of a buzz, if I can somehow make it in the field of mental health, where I’ve made tremendous breakthroughs with Interchange of late, I need others, people who need help, you, people to trust I can help them, people who will consistently work hard to improve themselves, to demonstrate that what I’m saying is true, that it works. I wish I didn’t, I wish I could do it all by myself, but in order to become something more, I need others, I need you. I can’t do this alone.

And the thing is, the real conundrum, is that I don’t trust everyone to do what they must, I don’t trust them, I don’t trust you, don’t want anything to do with them, don’t want to have to rely on anyone to justify what I’m doing, to approve of my thoughts and actions, what I’ve done, to tell me it’s OK to move forward, but I just don’t see any way around that. I can write all the hit songs I want, sit in my basement as I have for 20 years, record, post it online, but if nobody listens, I go absolutely nowhere. I love playing music. If anyone were to hear it, I’m sure they’d enjoy it just as much as anyone has enjoyed any other band. There’s plenty to like. I will always play music, the band will probably stay together for a long time, until we’re old men, but I need more. I just can’t find a way to make it happen, and I never could.

Is holding onto a dream keeping me from making it a reality?

I have to find a way out. There’s no other option. It feels more urgent than ever. The more I learn, the more I understand about how things work, how they’ve always worked, and especially how they haven’t, the more I know exactly what I want, and it feels less and less likely I will ever actually have it. It’s a shame. I haven’t given up because there’s nothing else I want to do.

I can try other things, new career paths, maybe that would open a new door, but would it be any better than what I’m already doing?

The intersection of hope and stupidity, disdain and enjoyment, joy and disappointment, relentlessness and failure.

It’s no surprise that things turned out this way for me. I’d always hoped for more, worked at it, tried like hell for years to be something more, to be truly happy, but I’ve realized that the reason I never accomplished anything was because I either didn’t deserve it, or that this was the best I could do.

I am a cover up, a con artist.

I can’t believe this has happened, that it’s gotten this bad. I never would have predicted it, how could I, how could anyone, but now that it’s happened, it’s apparent I should have known.

Emma was working, meeting with a few clients for an hour or so, and Sam and I were home, just hanging around the house, playing. We looked through one of the photo books Emma had made, one for every month for the first year of his life, Sam liked those, and then I showed him pictures of Emma and I when we were kids. She had dozens of albums stored in the basement, so I showed him some of those. She’s always been gorgeous, but she’s only recently begun to realize that.

I had exactly one file folder containing about 8 pictures, my birth certificate, a partial immunization record from 1979 to 1984, a certificate of baptism, a beaded blue and white bracelet from the hospital that spelled out my last name, N-O-R-T-H, class pictures from 2nd and 6th grade, and a collection of report cards from elementary school through high school. On my second to last high school report card I wrote in pen the very worst grade I could possibly receive for the last semester and still graduate: 0, 0, 26, 14, 0, and 8.

Sam said he was done with the pictures and asked me to read him a book. We sat on the gray leather sofa and, at his request I read him the same book 3 times. I told him I wanted to play through 2 songs on guitar real quick. While I did that, he grabbed the microphone I used for recording and started singing, not along with me, but his own lyrics and melody overtop of what I was working on. He started strumming the guitar with me, creating an interesting chorus effect where the strumming doubled up on itself and stayed constant between strums. He said Daddy can you get my guitar? I told him to sit on the bottom step and I’d go get it, not to move. When I got back he hadn’t moved. Great job listening! I said. I gave him a hug and said good job buddy, and we sat next to each other on the sofa playing our guitars for a half hour, until he said he was done.

Upstairs, on the wall in the kitchen near the back door, he pointed out 4 small, semicircular brown spots. I told him Mommy probably spilled some coffee, and I wiped it up with a moist paper towel. He stayed on his hands and knees, examining the wall, the remnants, asking me about what Mommy spilled for a few minutes, and then I said it was time for lunch. I reheated a couple butternut squash and black bean enchiladas, and some brown rice, flung a dollop of Greek yogurt on top, made us each a mushroom and cheddar omelet, poured two glasses of water, and we went out back to eat.

I have no idea how we’re all not doing everything we can to get off this planet. That should be our only mission, our singular focus. And nobody is doing a fucking thing. Yes, that’s idealism. It’s imagination. It’s unheard of. It’s a perfect world. But that’s what we should be doing. We’re not going to last forever, we’ll never make it. We might not last another 50 year; maybe not even 5, you just never know. How this hasn’t been our primary purpose since the moment space travel became a reality, or way earlier, the first moment it became an idea, I have no idea. How it hasn’t yet become our main objective is baffling.

When Emma got home we each went for a run. First she ran and I took Sam to the playground. When she was done, she met us there and hung out with him while I ran. When we got back home, she showered while Sam read books in his crib and I did push-ups on the patio. As we passed each other on the steps, on my way to the shower, Sam was telling her about the coffee I’d cleaned up earlier. She said, “Daddy is always cleaning up my messes.”

Now, 8 years later, here I am doing just that…

Chapter Fourteen

It wasn’t supposed to happen so soon, surely not in our lifetime, not in our kid’s lifetime either, maybe never, but here we are. I’d imagined something like this would bring us all together, erase our differences, just this once, instead it has divided us further. Astronomers at Breakaway Initiative in California discovered 2 habitable planets, both within reach in this lifetime, with current technology. They claimed the Initiative’s engineering program had demonstrated proof of concept for new technology enabling ultra-light manned spaceflights at 80% the speed of light, and were well on the way to laying the foundation for missions to both Sninoom and Miono within 5 years, possibly sooner. Founded only 3 years earlier with a $400 million investment from social media titan Abraham Branch, and headed by Boston Weatherspoon, the Initiative’s mission to explore the universe and discover scientific evidence beyond Earth was now hurling toward completion.

Breakaway streamed hi-resolution photos and live video, and aside from the colors being vastly different from what we know, both planets looked surprisingly similar to Earth, continents like fingerprints neatly organized, surrounded by water, seas and oceans, lakes, and rivers, layered with mountains and valleys, a dark red sun, an orange moon, or whatever we’ll end up calling them once we get there. Maybe they had already been given names by inhabitants we’d soon encounter. Other life forms. People, I thought. Would they be expecting us? Had they invited us? Were they extinct? Had Branch and Weatherspoon deciphered incoming alien radio transmissions, 25 trillion mile long messages? Had they sent one of their own? How? What did they say? How did any of this happen? And what would come next?

We were a country unsettled, a world, apart. We didn’t agree on anything. In general, cities and suburbs supported the Initiative and its mission, we were progressive, forward thinking, and fearless, we wanted more, to see what else was out there, live on and on, forever and ever. Those in rural areas, for the most part, wanted nothing to do with the mission, they didn’t believe it was true, couldn’t be convinced, opposed it in every way, wouldn’t even listen. I was naïve, at first, embarrassingly so, thinking we’d all come together, see this for the time-shifting, universe-altering opportunity that it was, a chance to save ourselves from ourselves, I was so sure we’d all believe that getting to Sninoom and Miono as quickly and responsibly and as safely as possible would be the only way forward, the automatic, prevailing thought, the greatest leap, but nearly half of the population didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything.

It seemed as though, once again, as had always been the case, what had always been would keep us from what could be, what should be.

But this would be different.

“Nothing will stop us from going forward,” said Branch. “We’re going. And we’d like for all of you to come along. But quite frankly, we can’t wait around for everyone. We won’t, and we don’t have to. This is a public endeavor, but a private venture. We’re not waiting for anyone or anything. We’re going to another planet. We’d like to do this together. We are going. We will land on Sninoom and Miono, on the same day, in just a few years.”

We’re not alone.

My mother left us when we were just kids, went out with her sister one day and never came back. None of us, my sisters, my brother, my dad, had any idea this would happen. Really. You hear all the time that everything was perfect until…

I was only 10, I could have easily missed something, but my dad wouldn’t have. He’s a bright guy. He gets how things like this work, he always seemed to understand psychology, how we think, why we act the way we do, what makes us who we are, how the mind works, how and why relationships work or don’t, why people become unhappy, or have always been unhappy, how something went wrong, how people lose touch sometimes, how they can make it better, and I talked to him about it quite a bit over those first few weeks. He was so sure everything was good between he and my mom. They were OK. Things were good. And he said good relationships don’t end. Nothing bad happened. She’d never shown any signs she was unhappy. He hadn’t overlooked anything or missed something. She hadn’t spoken of needing to get out, to do her own thing, to get away. She loved us, he said. They loved each other, always had, always will, he said. They had made a vow, a promise to god, to be together through thick and thin, through sickness and in health, good times and bad, he said, and he was sure that meant as much to her as it did to him.

So why did she go? Why did she leave us? When is she coming home? I said. If everything was so good, why isn’t she here with us?

My parents met as teenagers when my dad was the guitarist in a Delta blues band called The Robert Johnsons, and my mom was a waitress at the dive they were playing in Allentown. They talked more and more each time they played there. Eventually he met her family and she met his and they began dating. They lived an hour apart, my dad up in Hazleton and my mom in Bethlehem. They got together, never dated anyone else, and were married 6 years later at a Roman Catholic Church in Allentown, not far from where they’d met. They never want on a honeymoon. “We didn’t have any money.” My dad said. “We were living up near Beaver Meadows. I remember the place was in such bad shape, when we’d wake up at night and turn on the lights, the cockroaches would scatter.” He said. “They were all over the ceiling and walls.”

Despite being broke, they always seemed pretty happy to me. My memories are good-natured. My childhood was predominantly pleasant. They argued from time to time, everyone does, things weren’t perfect, but they really did love each other.

They loved us too and they did everything they could to give us everything we needed.

This one time they failed.

I prayed every night that she would come home.

Turns out she called a few days after she left to tell him where she’d gone: back to Bethlehem to live with her sister, her husband, and their kids, said her mom was moving in too, he said, they needed to get their shit together.

“You should be here with us. Please come home. We need you.”

He eventually said he’d told us a few different stories over the years, stretched the truth to protect us until we were old enough to understand. “I didn’t want you to worry.” He said. “Or to think you’d done something wrong.”

The truth was somewhere in between.

Sometimes things don’t work out.

This time they did.

She came back 3 months later and never left.

We were a universe unlocked.

Chapter Fifteen

I hope this takes me where I want to go because it’s starting to feel like a colossal waste. A lost cause. It’s been nearly 20 years, I’m almost 40. What makes me think anything will change now? I’ve learned a bit along the way, in trying to get my music out there, trying to make it as a musician, and it’s good stuff, plenty good enough for lots of people to like, but nothing has worked, and I’ve tried everything I could think of.

Researching. Reading and watching videos on how to do it, how to make it, not how to write songs, I’ve got that covered, but how to reach people, capture an audience, how to become something, get followers, blow up, looking at examples of all kinds of people who’d made it, whether in music or acting or with writing or business or sports or vlogging, or podcasts, in restaurants, or science, or comedy, or whatever, everything, observing what they did, how they overcame obstacles, applying it to my situation, making it my own, trying that, over and over, and nothing ever clicked.

They all say to be you. Yourself. I believe in that wholeheartedly. Who else can you be anyway? Even if you’re trying to be someone else, you’re still just you. I’ve been myself without trying to be someone else. I have always been true to that. Long before someone told me. Ever since I was a kid, when I got into underground punk and hardcore music, DIY stuff, the sentiment, the underlying thought, the prevailing belief, at its core, to me, was always to forget about what you’ve heard, screw it, undermine what has always been and hasn’t worked, what isn’t right for you, and be yourself, do what you love, what makes you happiest, make it happen your way, no matter what. I didn’t need to hear this from someone, but it’s something I noticed they all said. Be yourself. Be you. I didn’t even want to watch these videos, read this shit, I get it, I understand that there is no reasoning behind this, that often this stuff, these people, just take off and don’t stop, seemingly out of their control. They’re not doing anything that hasn’t been done before. Other than the fact that they’ve made it, they aren’t inherently special. I don’t believe they’re exceptional or different or better or worse than anyone else who has ever dreamed to be successful in this way, to have fans, to have people care enough to watch or listen repeatedly over a long period of time, to make a dream come true, I don’t think that everyone who has made it is necessarily better at what they do than those who’ve gone unseen and unheard. Sometimes they are, I suppose, but it’s subjective, and there’s enough people with diverse interests so that anyone and anything can become well known and be well liked and appeal to the masses. I’d argue that there is way more good stuff that has been unheard than has been heard, but for whatever reason, if I knew I wouldn’t be in this position, it hasn’t escaped, hasn’t launched, hasn’t materialized.

Playing shows. Touring. Bars, clubs, festivals, basements, living rooms, backyards, parties, sidewalks, playing solo, playing with friends, with other bands, playing college campuses, local shops and restaurants, and nothing, and playing in cities, small towns, all over the USA, in Europe, and South America. I did it all, played everywhere, small-to-midsized venues anywhere I could, mostly an opening slot for a legitimate, touring band. I played anywhere I could, well-known spots and unknown places, everywhere, all the time, for years and years. It did nothing for me, or my career. I never played an empty show either, never disappointed, played well, entertained the crowd, got super, immediate feedback, but rarely, if ever, saw anyone again. People always enjoyed it, there was always positive feedback, good vibes, people connected, you could see it, feel it, hear it, it’s obvious, but nothing ever came of it. There was no momentum. The energy, the passion, the interest, the vibes, the love, never went with me from show to show, from place to place, never traveled from person to person, it always stayed hidden inside the walls, inside someone’s head, mouths closed, even though the music got better and better over the years, the performances more spirited, powerful, and memorable. Memories aren’t enough, though. Nothing came of it.

Recording. I did it all. Recorded 38 albums and put out hundreds of live recordings and singles on every available medium- cassette, CD, vinyl, digital, flash drive, in the cloud, streaming, everything. I even tried to invent something new, some new medium, but not surprisingly, it never got beyond the research stage because I had zero engineering or design or technology capabilities, so that never went anywhere either.

Social media. This was something I’d struggled with over the years. I didn’t want to get into it. I had no fans and felt uncomfortable talking to no one, pretending I was interested in this, or feeling self-conscious that people I cared about would think I was lame for engaging with essentially no one. Struggle isn’t the best descriptor, more reluctant. Depending on the medium, I find social media to be somewhere between an incredible source of information and content, a transmitter of all of life’s greatest things from around the planet- it can be a wonderful, interactive, fun experience- and at the same time one of humankind’s greatest failures, an absolute, abject mess, a devastating waste of time and energy, a brain drain, confusing, a constant distraction, a brand new, ever-growing universe of lies and hate, betrayal and cowardice, a tragedy, an imminent threat, an historic mistake. Knowing this, I got out of my comfort zone and into it anyway, trying to use it as a tool to grow my music, to find fans, to become an online personality, and I did it the right way, I studied what worked, I followed trends, I tried to buck them, disrupt, and invent new ways of doing it, I used it intelligently, or at least respectfully, and creatively, I stayed true to myself, trying to find ways to connect with others, share my music, and yet again, it went nowhere. My failure in this area, in particular, weighed on me the most. You didn’t even want to do this in the first place, I thought. What a waste. But I knew that it was powerful, that I could reach billions this way, and if not billions, maybe millions, shit, I’d be happy with hundreds, I thought, which is way more than I was reaching in any other way. But nothing. Nothing whatsoever.

I never thought it was me. I wasn’t broken. The music is good. It is. I’m not wrong about that. I’d know if I was wrong, and if I were I’d stop. I’m talented, that’s not the issue, and it never was. The first song I’d ever written, when I was 16, though now I wouldn’t put it up there with the newer stuff, was strong enough to make it. I have a good voice, it’s unique, I’ve never heard another like it, deep, baritone but with some range, raspy at times, better and better as time went on, the more I practiced, the more I used it; nice melodies, memorable, hummable, singable; thoughtful, interesting, lighthearted lyrics; catchy choruses; phrasing that hooks you in and takes you on a ride, down a road somewhere; simple structure but different enough to stay fun, keep you guessing, nothing off-putting about it, something I can’t say about a lot of the stuff out there. My songs have always been very good, absolutely good enough for lots of people to get into, to listen at home, to come out to see live now and again.

I wasn’t seeking superstardom, never was, just enough to have an equally comfortable life as the one I had only without having to spend most of my time doing something I disliked immensely.

Writing songs was easy. I never thought about any of this. I just wrote. It’s what I’d always done. Writing a great song could take some time, not always, but it wasn’t work, it wasn’t hard, I was never stuck or unsure or frustrated, it was effortless and rewarding and deeply satisfying. It was fun. It made me feel like a kid, like anything was possible, like nothing else mattered. I found it to be captivating, transformative, could take me away, take you away, and when it all came together, when all the notes came out in just the right way, there was no greater joy, no more beautiful sound, no more perfect moment, no other way I’d rather spend my days.

Listening to the advice of others. I tried, honestly, and at times it seemed helpful, but this wasn’t for me. Not with music. There was nothing anyone could tell me that would help. I’d heard it all, but hearing it and doing it were totally different and I didn’t need advice, I needed listeners.

Not listening to the advice of others. When I was writing or playing or recording or actually doing something, I spent most of my time doing this, inside my head, writing it out, thinking it through, experimenting, testing it, observing, planning, preparing, implementing, assessing, adjusting, planning, preparing, implementing, adjusting, planningpreparingimplementingadjusting.

Forgetting about everyone else and doing it myself. This is impossible. I can’t do this alone. As much as I’d like to, the nature of the industry is that I can’t do this without you, without someone to listen and interact and respond. I actually, and unfortunately, need everyone to make this work, to be heard, to be successful, and become a hit. I’ve recorded with others and put out albums on small labels, when labels were still a thing, but everything else about this has been singular, well, I’ve played solo and with bands, mostly with bands, but I’ve done it all- write, record, play shows, distribute, promote- without the help of anyone outside the bands, and it’s been both tremendously gratifying and perpetually out of reach.

Networking. Hasn’t gotten me anywhere. Everyone I know is in a similar spot. Anyone actually making a living doing this that I may have gotten to know, a few local Philly bands like Kurt Wile and The War on Drums who’ve blown up, aren’t really in a position to help, they’ve got a following but nothing is a lock and they just don’t have the time, interest, or capacity to help get me over the hump, they’re too busy making sure they don’t become invisible, because it’s a damn fine line.

I understand. I get it. It’s unlikely. But if I could just make it work.

I tried doing everything at once and one thing at a time, being focused, being haphazard, being systematic, being all over the place, going off on tangents, on a whim, non-linear, being far-out, outside the box, and anti-establishment, but mostly I remained diligent and methodical, respectful, hard working, well-organized, and I made very little progress. I had a few fans that weren’t my friends, maybe a dozen, and that was it. I’ve enjoyed the process, but had very little to show.

Why couldn’t I let it go? Why wouldn’t I?

Move on.

Time? Passion? Joy? Hope? Opportunity? Desperation? Fear? Obsession? Dedication? Faith? Confidence? Optimism? Stupidity? Arrogance? Belief? I guess all of those are, in one form or the other, quite similar, connected, related, emotional, dreams.

I’d already invested so much time and effort, how could I stop now?

The next attempt might be the one that does it for me, the one that changes everything.

The only reason I won’t make it is if I stop trying.

I enjoyed playing music so much, I loved it, it was me, defined me, encompassed everything I enjoyed, had always been me, my life, everything I’d ever done, my words, memories, desires, thoughts, and experiences. I believed I was a musician just as much as anyone who’d ever made it. I’d just never been heard. I was doing the same things- writing, recording, and putting my stuff out there, with the one difference being they made it and I didn’t. They had fans and made money and I did not. So it made it all seem like a waste, like a loss, and I seemed like a loser. But I never felt that way about myself, never looked at it like that. It wasn’t hard to keep going because it was all I knew, and it was something I truly enjoyed. I had a day job- teacher, therapist, counselor, administrator- one that I deeply despised but one that allowed me to live a perfectly nice life. Music had always been my thing. Always. Without it, I thought, I wouldn’t be the same, life wouldn’t be as beautiful, as thrilling. I would be bored. I wouldn’t know what to do. At least now, I know. I wouldn’t be me. I would have lost myself. I would have awoken early from a magnificent dream.

Or if I let go and moved on would I find myself, find something else? Find happiness in something new? Would saying goodbye to music allow me to become someone different, a new me, find a better version of myself, one that could accomplish anything, find love some place all over again, discover another realm of attainable possibilities, meet amazing people, go places, experience something altogether new, without this constant feeling of having to turn the page, this constant state of not quite there.

It could be exhilarating to let go. Who knows where it could lead?

I had no definitive answers and at times, lately, I was leaning more toward quitting then not.

I’ve read about successful writers and actors and musicians who say when it got really difficult to just hang on, stay with it, because just before they made it they were about to quit, but they decided to stick with it, and finally it happened. They got their chance, the big break, a wish came true. That’s how I’ve been feeling lately, that I really want to stop trying, that it’s time to go.

So maybe my chance is right there, up ahead, within reach.

I’ve been rejected so many times, spent countless hours on this, and really it’s been 20 goddamn years already, Jack, what makes you think anything will change? I thought.

Talent alone doesn’t make you successful.

Intellect, effort, grit, none of that does it either.

There is no formula, no one way to do it, there are no rules, none at all. When you’re relying on others to make or break you, that’s where the problem lies, that’s what makes it so difficult to keep trying.

Why am I going to keep trying to appease and impress someone I don’t even know, and likely wouldn’t care to know, or find interesting, why am I seeking approval from hundreds, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people I don’t know or care about? Why am I letting myself rely on them, when honestly, I don’t want anything to do with them. I just want them to listen.

Then it gets personal. Like I need to have control over who likes my stuff and who doesn’t. I can’t even get one listener and I’m conflicted over whether or not I should keep on trying based on the character of my imaginary, future (non)-listeners and pretend fans.

I think the answer is pretty clear.

I stop now. Today.

I start anew. Create a new world, a new life, something I never ever once dreamed about. Something I can touch, that I can hold in my hands, without having to feel so disappointed, like I’m pissing away however much time I have left.

I want to make Emma proud, impress her, show her there’s more to me, give us a better life. I want Sam to see his daddy in a new light. I’m not struggling anymore. I’ve made it. We’ve made it!

Maybe the industry is dead. Maybe the reason I can’t make it work is because the system is broken. The music industry mirrors the rest of society, a double image, a microcosm of our country, of socio-economics, another case of the 1%, the haves and the have-nots. The only people making any money as musicians and artists are the 1%, the biggest names out there, the most popular handful of bands, while the rest, the other 5 million bands, the overwhelmingly vast majority, the middle class who get by but have no real chance of breaking through to become something more, then there’s the rest of us who’ve worked and worked but having nothing to show, low class nobodies who have no shot at all, no matter what we do.

It’s a joke. I’ve wasted my entire adult life with this, pursuing a dream, playing a game, pretending. If I wasn’t so pissed, or indifferent, or hyper-focused, I’d be humiliated.

Now I’m no longer interested in anything else, cannot tolerate my current job or any others I’ve ever had, and have no interest whatsoever in starting out in a new field with an entry level position as a 40 year old man being told what to do by a kid who, just like me, has no idea what the hell is going on.

I guess this isn’t uncommon. Most people seem unhappy with their jobs. Not everyone though. And it doesn’t have to be this way. I can’t accept that it does. I still think there’s something out there I could enjoy doing. I’m just not sure what.

Music.

I should probably take a step back from everything and clear my head, see what happens. Stop thinking about this so much. Stop trying, for once, let it go. Something will come to me, it always does. I just have to be ready, and pay attention this time.

I do believe in what I’m doing. I don’t, however, think that’s enough.

I put my foot through the floor, slamming the brakes as hard as I could, pounding the horn, holding the wheel steady, eyes locked on the car in front of me, the son of a bitch who cut us off at 70 miles per hour, oblivious, blind to the fact I ended up less than a foot from possibly ending not only his life but that of my family as well.

“Oh my god!” Emma said.

I cursed the guy, my arms shaking, adrenalized.

He could have killed us all, I said.

“Good thing you were watching.”

It’s OK honey, she told Sam. Daddy kept us safe.

I’d been paying particular attention to that car and its driver for the last mile or so, saw him roll down his window at the light and give a ball of rolled up cash to a guy begging on the corner, only the guy gave him a bag of something in return. I watched as he sped by me, I was eager to get home after a 10 hour drive from the Outer Banks and all its confederate flag waving charm, and going faster than I should have been, 70 in a 50, I was groggy and uncomfortable yet still alert enough and focused on the road. I watched him burst into a turn, and in retrospect, should have known something was coming, bound to happen, it made sense after the fact, as usual, but I don’t think I could have predicted it. He trailed off then passed again a few seconds later as I merged into traffic, crossing 3 lanes in one smooth arc.

“Daddy saved us.” She said. “Thanks, Daddy.” She smiled. “Great driving, Jack.”

“What did the man do?” Said Sam. “Where did he go?”

I told him not to worry, that it was OK, and then I changed the subject.

The elation I feel with just one note of music, one strum of the guitar, one soaring melody far outweighs the wait.

It’s great to be alive.

Chapter Sixteen

Oh my god. This is awful. I said. Jesus Christ. There was another terrorist attack. This one was in Virginia. White nationalists, neo-Nazi’s, were protesting the removal of a Confederate statue and one of them ran over hundreds of counter-protesters, people who were there peacefully opposing racism and hatred, people just like us who care about others and respect people with different beliefs and want the best for everyone…

“What?!” Said Emma. “When? Did anyone die?”

Yeah. Eighteen people so far. Earlier today. Ran them over with his car. Flew right down a crowded street, mowed them down from behind. I just watched it. It’s horrible. I’ll show you the video if you want.

“No. No way. Why? How is this…”

Look.

I gave her the tablet and she walked away from Sam and I to watch.

“I don’t want him to see it. I don’t even want him to hear us talking about this.”

I have no idea how this stuff is still happening, why people feel this way, why they act like this. How they can be so hateful, so angry, just because of the color of someone’s skin, how they hate so much that they would kill, I said. I mean, I understand that people are different, and we can and should have different beliefs, but why so much hatred, why kill, for something that doesn’t even matter?

When is enough, enough?

Isn’t it time we moved past this already?

If you have to judge or you have to hate, which I don’t think anyone ever should, why the violence? Keep it to yourself. Feel however you want but don’t hurt anyone. Why take away lives and spread hatred? Sit in your house and hate whoever you want if you have to but leave it there. Stay there.

“Or get help.” She said.

Who cares what people look like, who they love, what they believe? It’s how you act. That’s it. Right, Em? Our behavior and only our behavior matters. Who cares?

“I agree with you, honey. But, look at this, apparently a lot of people care.” She said. “This is so scary. I can’t even watch anymore.” She turned away and flashed a glowing smile at Sam, who was finishing up lunch.

“What did Daddy say, Mommy?”

“Nothing honey. He was talking about the news. Grown up stuff. Stuff for mommies and daddies. Everything is OK, cutie.”

“Can I see the wideo?”

“Not right now, baby. The video is all done for now.”

Forget about it. If you’re all done eating, let’s play, buddy. I said. Let’s have some fun.

I know it’s impossible to change everyone, to make it so that all of us believe in equality and human rights and treat each other with respect, hold one another up rather than bring each other down, it’s not possible to change everyone, it might not be possible to change anyone at all, but it is possible to speak up and be heard and silence hate. It’s imperative.

There is more good than evil in this world. There is. I have always believed that. I have to.

At times it doesn’t seem that way because we are constantly hit with bad news, the worst of the worst, just horrific, unbelievably sad, terrifying, traumatic stories of violence and hate on every screen, everywhere, all day long.

But there is still good in the world. Violence and hate and evil are not the norm, they are not the majority. We are good people. People are innately good. We learn to hate.

“By not being loved.”

We are not born like that. Behavior teaches us what is right and wrong, it is not determined by genetics. We don’t come into this world hating. Kids don’t know hate until it’s taught to them. Kids are kind, caring, and loving by nature. All of us are.

There is more good than evil in this world. There must be. You can see it everywhere. You don’t have to wait for a news report or headline or to see it online somewhere. It’s everywhere, all around us, all the time. If you’re looking, it’s impossible to miss.

When things like this happen, tragedies, attacks on our freedom, our beliefs, on innocent people, our friends and neighbors, our family, our fellow man, it reminds us that more than ever we have a responsibility to stand up, speak out, make our voices heard, remind everyone that love is greater than hate, good far greater than evil, we have come too far to fall back, to lose sight of what we have, what others have fought for, have lost their lives fighting for, remind one another, show the world that we don’t all feel this way, that our actions and not the color of our skin is what defines us, that we are a good people who care for one another, that life is beautiful and precious, a gift to be treasured, that our differences make us stronger and bring us together, helps us learn about each other, about history, about thoughts and feelings and perspectives, about what matters most, makes us whole. If we let them take over, these extremist groups whose beliefs and behavior don’t represent ours, then we lose, and evil will run wild, will win, and that would be a remarkable, unforgettable, unbearable mistake and a potentially never-ending, irreversible shame.

We all need to stand up, right now, together, and speak out. Everyone of us who are good, kind, respectful human beings, normal, nice people who don’t judge others based on race or color or our differences, who don’t even see it, we need to say something, be heard, and make sure that this time, for hopefully the last time, good triumphs over evil.

We walked to the Lemon Hill playground holding hands, lifting Sam up every so often, carrying him over cracks in the sidewalk, his feet dangling freely, kicking, as we laughed and talked and sang. On the bridge, he let go of our hands and looked over, through a chain link fence, at the train tracks. He turned and pointed at a bumblebee and asked all about it, asked for a drink of water, and sat down in the grass to take a break.

Once we got to the park, he ran off and started climbing a tree as Emma and I stood nearby talking, watching him, amazed at his beauty, his innocence, his determination, his limitless potential, his happiness, his exuberance.

“Look, Mommy! Look, Daddy! I’m flying!” He said, lying on a log on his belly with his arms and feet extended and elevated a few inches from the ground.

You’re doing it! I said. So cool!

“We love you so much, Sam.”

I looked at my phone, checked the news.

It’s happening already, I said. Look. People are coming together. They’re mobilizing. It’s only been a few hours and already I can tell people aren’t going to stand for this. We never do. I mean, I haven’t done anything but talk to you about it so far but people won’t stand for this. The United States is the best. I love that we have the freedom to behave how we want. That comes with responsibility and it’s awful that some people choose to behave terribly, and I wish it wasn’t this way, that things like this never happened, but without that freedom we wouldn’t have any of this, without a diverse group of courageous, optimistic, smart, good people we wouldn’t have the opportunity to bounce back and overcome and become better and stronger than before. At least here, we have the opportunity to do so much good, not just in our country, but around the world in places that aren’t like this as well. It takes repetitive, singular action so that soon it becomes group action, groupthink, so that it catches on and creates a huge wave. Anytime something like this happens and it seems like we take a huge step back and will never recover, we inevitably do the right thing, en masse, and lunge forward. It’s still absolutely disheartening and frightening and unnecessary and sickening that this happens in the first place, that people feel this way, and hate so much, and kill, but it’s not everyone, it’s a small part of the population. It’s just that it’s so vicious and tragic and horrifying that it’s overwhelming and we worry, but overall we are not hateful. We aren’t. We are good. We can do this. We have to.

“We have a long way to go.” She said. “Just because people are speaking out doesn’t mean it’s better.”

No. You’re right. But at least something is happening. If nothing was being said or done, then maybe I’d lose hope. But it’s gonna be OK. It will. It’s hard to believe it or see it now, when we’re down, after something like this has happened and when we have a President who encourages this and won’t speak out immediately condemning it, but people get the final say, they’re already gathering outside Clump Tower, we decide what happens next.

People are going to say something, write something, protest, sing, dance, march, talk, make their voices heard, let actions speak, do everything they can to make sure goodness prevails. We can’t fall apart. We have to move forward. There is too much at stake, not only for us, today, but also for the future, for our kids and their kids and their kids. What kind of life do we want them to have? It’s up to us. We have to keep doing the right thing, set an example. Speak up. Goodness wins. It has to.

Look at this guy, I said, pointing at Sam. He’s amazing. He’s the absolute best. He’s one of the reasons why I know it’ll be OK. This is how kids, how people are, and if you just love them and let them be. They can do anything. Anything and everything is possible. Sam and his friends of all different shapes and sizes and colors and backgrounds were playing together with sticks, digging in the mud, searching for bugs and creatures, sharing, smiling, laughing, drawing with chalk, chasing one another, hiding, seeking, tickling, hugging, high-fiving, talking, singing, lying around, wondering, swinging, climbing up and rolling down hills, daydreaming, picking flowers, running, flying, whatever they wanted to do, wherever they wanted to be, they were doing it.

That’s the beauty in all of this.

By Michael Ferrence
March 8, 2019

MF: I don’t know a lot about Thin Lips. I was researching the history of punk rock music the other day and eventually ended up reading an article about Philly bands, and you were on it. I listened, and really enjoyed it, reminds me of some late 90s stuff I used to really dig.

First question, since this is an email interview, who am I talking with? Can you do a brief history of your life?

CT: Hey Michael! my name is Chrissy Tashjian! I’m 34, and originally from Delaware County just west of Philly. The drummer in the band is my younger brother Mikey and when I came to Philly for college I was in a host of bands that eventually ended up morphing into us meeting Kyle and we’ve been playing music and touring for ten years now.

MF: I missed your show at Boot and Saddle last month. (I was busy obsessively checking to see if Gabe Kapler was fired yet) How’d it go? I saw on IG you said you’d be partying with people back at your apartment afterwards. Did that actually happen? You bring strangers back?! Thats wild! How was it?

CT: Haahaha. Well, I wouldn’t say strangers, I’d say people I just met. I have a pretty good sense of people. The party was mostly a lot of super close friends that wanted to party for my birthday, a bunch of pals that came from out of town, and then a handful of new friends that I met at the show and where interested in coming to hang out. It was a blast. I used to throw shows in my houses when I was younger, and that was tons of people I don’t know. As far as the party goes it was E P I C. We literally danced all night. The dancing ended at five am.

MF: When writing, what’s your approach? Do you collaborate on each song? Write individually, then bring it to the group and take it from there? Do you have a certain vibe in mind while writing the album, or just write and whatever happens, happens? (Or something else?)

CT: My song writing has evolved slightly, but generally I write everything by recording a bunch of stuff, and then I send it out and we jam it and then make version 2.0, then so on and so forth until we are pleased.

MF: Do you actively try to differentiate yourself from others or are you different just by being you?

CT: I don’t really think about things like that. I feel like everyone has their own special things. I’m just a friendly weirdo aquarius in my own little world usually.

MF: What other bands have you been in? Are you currently in multiple bands?

CT: I have been in many many bands. For a long time I played in Dangerous Ponies with Kyle and Mikey, as well as several other folks. For a while I played in Mikey Cantor’s band- The Goodbye Party. This past year I was a hired hand playing for Hop Along as a part of their live set for Bark Your Head Off Dog. Thin Lips has been my main thing for a long time, but I have a long history of playing in different projects with folks.

MF: How many songs have you ever written, all time? Have you recorded and released every one?

CT: I have no idea. There are many songs I abandon, or that make it to fruition, but not to the record cut. I have recorded most, but I definitely ax a lot of them.

MF: How’d you learn to play?

CT: I played violin in fourth grade and then I decided I wanted to play rock music, so my pop gave me this old beat up guitar and a Beatles complete, and taught me how to play bar chords and I started there.

MF: What kind of stuff do you listen to? Can you recommend some newer bands you’re really into?

CT: I mostly listen to The Beatles, Belle and Sebastian, and Lauren Hill. The band I’m SUPER into right now is The Beths from New Zealand.

MF: It’s extremely difficult to make it in music, to have enough listeners and followers who will buy your stuff and go see you play so much so that you can earn a good living. Unless you’re one of a few dozen bands, it doesn’t seem very lucrative or glamorous. Would you agree? What’s a normal day like?

CT: It’s definitely not lucrative or glamorous. People assume tour is a vacation and every show is a party, but it’s actually really hard work, and definitely a labor of love. I more often than not pay to play in some capacity, even when I’m making money, but if money was my major interest area I probably would’ve stopped trying to play live music a long time ago.

MF: There are probably millions of really good bands and artists who’ve gone unheard, without more than one listener. How have you gotten people to listen to you?

CT: TBH I have no idea. I think through just going to shows and meeting people and being friendly. I think no matter who you are there is always someone who has done (and this is a very complicated quantification obviously) more or less than you. Like I’ve released and played on several albums that are mine and been on other people’s records, I’ve toured the States many times. I’ve toured Europe twice, but I still don’t make money. I usually have to work crazy work weeks when I’m home to even be able to cover myself. There where many tours I’d been on when I was younger where the shows where BLEAK. But I’ve done a lot of stuff and I’m grateful for that. I know a lot of people who play music who have done way ‘more’ than I have and people that have done ‘more’ than they have. I don’t know how it works, all I know is I like writing songs and I love playing guitar.

MF: Do you have day jobs or is Thin Lips your thing?

CT: I am a contractor and I work for myself doing bathroom and kitchen remodels. I really like plumbing and electric. Kyle co-owns and operates the Headroom Studio in North Philly. Mikey does all sorts of stuff. He works construction sometimes, he was a mover for a long time. Lou, our new guitar player, works for this company in New York that does moving services. She actually works from the van a lot on tour.

MF: Does everyone in the band have thin lips?

CT: lol. No, it’s not literal.

MF: Is social media useful? Do you think it gets people out to see you?

CT: I imagine so… I’m not really sure what people did before social weedia.

MF: What do you have planned for the future, musically and otherwise?

CT: I’m currently working on new music, kind of trying to decide what direction to take that.

MF: Thank so much for your time. Good luck with everything.

CT: ❤ You too, angel! The best of luck with everything, truly.

By Michael Ferrence
February 27, 2019

MF: You somewhat recently opened The International. Can you talk a little about that?

WR: Sure. It being our third place, Paul Kimport and I are 50/50 in Standard Tap and Johnny Brenda’s, so to do the 3rd place we had sort of almost opposed requirements for it in that it would be, we still wanted to be able to bike or walk, a big part of my quality of life is to be able to get to work without driving, and so the other requirement is that you don’t cannibalize your own businesses either. So you’re kind of like, it’s hard to be right next door, almost, and still be something different and draw differently. Paul and I were looking around for a long time and we found that place, and almost overlooked it because the building was in such good shape and the neighborhood was really nice. With the other two places, when we bought Standard Tap and Johnny Brenda’s, the buildings were a wreck and the neighborhoods were completely overlooked. When we took it over we decided, for so long we’ve been doing local beer, and there’s different ways to be about great beer, so we decided to do beer from all over and actually move cocktails to the front, cocktail forward as they say. Food-wise, it’s a small kitchen, it’s not really a big place, so it’s sort of along the lines of international street food kind of thing.

MF: Where’d you get the name? It’s cool.

WR: Weirdly there was a building across the street from Cafe Olé, a coffee shop down in Old City, that had that sign on it for years, and it was a packaging supply place. I don’t even know what that means. I don’t know if they sold Styrofoam peanuts or bubble wrap or what. I don’t actually know. It had never been in business when I went into the coffee shop. Somebody rehabbed the building and I always thought the sign was so cool. And then all of a sudden the sign was gone. At first I was just kind of bummed like you usually are when you see something cool disappear. But I was like, I bet one of those contractors over there probably knows where it is. I went over and talked to him and long story short, we got the sign. It took 6 months. Then we just took a heat gun and took off ‘packaging’ and put ‘spirited’ on there to keep the sign as original as possible.

MF: How much and what kind of planning goes into opening a new place What’s your approach? How long does it take to go from idea to open?

WR: Well, I think we’re kind of, I don’t know if we’re unique, maybe unusual to some extent, Paul and I. We don’t really have a solid plan of what we want to do when we go out to find a building. We end up looking around at interesting buildings and thinking ‘What’s the highest use we can picture in that building?’ We’re always adapting what we’re doing, instead of trying to shoehorn our idea, because we’re not building from scratch. We love old stock buildings, and we love Philadelphia for that reason, having all these crazy old buildings, and I think you do have to kind of think about it, it’s part of the equation of what the place is gonna be.

MF: Do you get to meet all the bands at Johnny Brenda’s? How often do you attend shows? Any cool stories?

WR: I don’t get to meet all the bands. I imagine I can insert myself more than I do, it’s not really my style. I certainly see shows a lot, a lot more often than I would if I didn’t have it. I think the space is such a great, intimate space.

When we were doing Standard Tap, we were thinking about the bars that we loved anywhere in the world, Philadelphia in particular, food can make you fall in love with a place. You can really crave that great meal. When we started doing Johnny Brenda’s we thought about that too, and we were like, well, music, is like… There’s times I’ve gone out to see music, the Khyber or other venues in Philly, at the Troc or something, and they’re indelibly burned into my brain. Such a strong impression. So that was one of the things we thought of. We wanted to do live music, not just DJ nights and stuff, we really wanted to have that.

MF: It’s so true. I can think of 3 great shows from Johnny Brenda’s that stand out. Jim James solo, that was a pretty awesome show. Sean Lennon was so cool. The son of this legend standing like 2 feet in front of us at this awesome place playing rock music just because he loves it so much. And I remember even once years ago, this major snowstorm, my buddy and I were so psyched because we both work in education and school was cancelled so we had off the next day and we were seeing Dawes when they first came out and it was really cool.

(I have to mention that I am no longer a fan of Dawes, subsequent albums have not done it for me, so much so that now even the first one has lost me, but that was one hell of a night.)

MF: How often do you get this request: ‘My band is awesome, but nobody knows who we are, can we play at Johnny Brenda’s?’

WR: A lot. We get that one a lot. We respect our bookers. We have 2 guys who do this full time, it’s all they do is book bands. I’m not going to overrule them to have someone’s cousin’s band play.

(Laughs)

(Hurriedly deleted follow up question asking if I could play solo or my cross-continental two-piece band, Paper Cloud could play Johnny B’s.)

MF: ‘Creed’ filmed at Johnny Brenda’s. What did that do for business? What do you think would have happened to business if you made the mistake of letting them film ‘Solo’ there?

(Blank stares. Silence. Closed-mouth smile. He hadn’t seen Solo.)

WR: You know what’s funny. It wasn’t the first time we were scouted for a Rocky movie. The first time we’d only been open a little bit, and a location scout came in and said, ‘Yeah. You know, we’re scouting for Rocky.’ He was trying to sell us on it, saying ‘Sylvester Stallone would be behind the bar making drinks and…’ I was like, I’m thinking about the movie and I’m like this is the low point of his career isn’t it? I don’t think I really want to do it. So when Creed came around, we asked him about it, and it sounded cool. You never know, it could have sucked. It’s really hard to tell if a movie’s gonna be any good, even when you’re watching it being filmed. But, I was super happy.

MF: My wife and I have gone to Standard Tap every March 28 since 2006. (Nobody cares) It’s the anniversary of our first date. (See previous parentheses) Is there some way we could be officially recognized for that, maybe name the second floor after us, or something?

(Laughs)

MF: So, that’s a no…

(Laughs)

MF: Do you know Kutztown University alum, former Buffalo Bills wide receiver, and member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Andre Reed? Any relation?

WR: I don’t.

(Ooooooookkaaaaayyy.)

MF: Do you read a lot? What are you reading?

WR: I read a lot. Nonfiction I’m reading something called Democracy in Chains, which is the history of the far right from the early economics underpinnings. It’s fascinating. Really, really good. As polarized as the country is, there’s a lot of books that tell you, ‘Yeah, you’re right. That guy is the worst’ or whatever. This book I actually feel, like, some real insight. I could never understand some things about conservative thought, like climate change denial, I just could not figure it out. You’re kind of like, OK, I get why the oil companies or maybe the coal companies or the Koch brothers maybe don’t want to hear about it, but average people, what could they possibly be so worked up about, or why would you possibly believe, or what could the left be getting from this, you know? And I could never really figure it out. Actually this book doesn’t really talk about climate change, but it just hit me. The only solution is collective action for the common good. That’s what they fuckin hate. You know? They don’t want to see a problem that the only solution is the antithesis to individual liberty. Because individual liberty ruins the climate. Read that one.

MF: Any fiction stuff?

WR: I always have some kind of sci-fi thing going on. I’ve been reading this Vernor… I can’t think of his last name. Vernor… Something. It’s like a weird, civilizations that are basically spiders. Some weird shit.

(Looked it up. Googled, ‘Vernor sci-fi spiders. Pretty sure it’s Vernor Vinge, A Deepness in the Sky.)

MF: Have you ever considered opening a place in Fairmount or Brewerytown, and if not, would you please consider it?

(Laughs)

WR: Yeah. I can imagine it. There are other people doing cool shit over there for sure. It’s always cool to see neighborhoods transitioning and changing.

(Translation= Not happening)

MF: Did you know early on in your life that this is what you wanted to do?

WR: I should have known, but I didn’t. I’ve been working at restaurants since I was 14. Busboy to all through the kitchen and all around, always thinking it’s just a job, or working my way through high school or college, or wherever I am, and I was going to Drexel for computer science, and I realized one day, partly when I couldn’t afford tuition anymore, I’m working in a restaurant. I’m working in a restaurant. I’m thinking I’m gonna end up working in a restaurant. That’s what’s gonna happen. And it was that stage in my life that I started working with Paul. We both realized we’re probably gonna keep working in restaurants, the only way out, in a sense, is to start our own.

MF: My wife and I, and our family and friends have had many great times at your places over the years. Thank you so much. And thank you for taking the time to talk with me.

By Michael Ferrence
February 19, 2019

MF: I don’t know a lot about you guys. My buddy was listening to you on Apple Music and I checked it out while my wife, son, and I were in California last summer and we listened to you guys a bunch, and really enjoyed it, seemed like the perfect album for cruising around LA.

First question, since this is an email interview, my understanding is there are two primary songwriters in Okey Dokey, who am I talking with? Hah!

AM: You are reading Aaron (Martin) right now. I am an artist from TN, and also an Okey Dokey guy.

MF: When writing, what’s your approach? Do you collaborate on each song? Write individually, then bring it to the group and take it from there? Do you guys have a certain vibe in mind while writing the album, or just write and whatever happens, happens? (Or something else?)

AM: I think for me the key is writing all the time. I don’t think anything works every time and I find that mixing it up is a good way to stay creative. You also pick up lots of tricks that you can bring to the table when working with a large group of people. Another benefit of writing so much is that you get to enjoy songs as they were in the moment. I don’t think you can feel that way once you hit a certain point in the process.

MF: Do you actively plan to try to differentiate yourself from others or are you different just by being you?

AM: I think that people are very complicated and music is actually very simple. It is a way for complicated beings to write what has already been written ,but in the best packaging to gain a new perspective. Some have a heightened ability to transpose the tastes of multiple demographics of people into an arrangement that feels new and complex. We call these people different, we assume they strive to be different, however they are the ultimate same, and we need them to communicate similarities to us so that we may then make the best playlist.

Nah, we just record the stuff that makes us laugh.

(These dudes aren’t just writing rad songs, they’re also legit knocking out good jokes.)

MF: I’ve been there and for all the great things I hear about Nashville, and we had a great time, awesome food, it was very difficult finding good, original music. Almost everything was cover bands. We had to go out to some basement in a strip mall off the highway to find anything cool. Is that an accurate representation of Nashville? Is the best stuff harder to find? Why?

AM: Man, that’s unfortunate to hear. To be honest, I am truly shocked by this. You could lick a dime and skip it across a puddle in Nashville, TN and it would probably land in a gig bag. If only you had stumbled into The Basement, The Basement East, Cobra, The East Room, Fond Object, or Dee’s. I hope you have better luck on your next visit.

(Me too. I think we were at The Basement. Maybe. Or maybe those places didn’t exist in 2014. Next time.)

MF: What other bands have you been in? Are you currently in multiple bands?

AM: We have another band for all of our bad songs called Doohickey. That has taken up most of our time.

MF: How’d you learn to play?

AM: Both of us just started one day. That really is all you need to do.

(Totally agree, man. Just pick an instrument and start playing. Get some friends to do the same, and you’re in a band!)

MF: What kind of stuff do you listen to? Can you recommend some newer stuff?

AM: I listen to Nick Hakim lately. He is pretty rad. Listen to Liz Cooper, Rayland Baxter, and Becca Mancari. They’re cool, too. Listen to Jordan Hull.

(Thanks. This is awesome. I’m gonna check them out. Right. Now.)

MF: I had the idea when I was in college to go in a room for a weekend with my bandmates to write and record an album, and a dream that it would be one of the greatest albums ever, and we’d blow up. (sloooooowwww claaaap) I’ve since done something like that on numerous occasions. Everything but blowing up happened. I read that you ‘made the rare decision’ to write/record an album out in the woods North of Nashville. For real? Which album?

AM: I think that is typical for a lot of people in our circle. It’s natural to want to do that because you get to experience a different setting which creates different ideas and you get to be a different person, but it is definitely a trade-off because you leave behind all of the creative comfort blankets that you stockpile in your home studio or your friends basement.

(For real? Which album?! Email interviews suuuuck!)

MF: It’s extremely difficult to make it in music, to have enough listeners and followers who will buy your music and go see you play so much so that you can earn a good living. Unless you’re one of a few dozen bands, it doesn’t seem very glamorous. Would you agree? What’s a normal day like?

AM: I do think it is difficult, but you can’t think about that as a creative. There is this thing with people where you have to throw money into everything. I am a visual artist. When it comes to my career I truly hope that art is what I get to hang my hat on. However, I was given a chance to try to take a swing at music.To me it is something that is better when you just write what is real to you. Do we think about the songs in a business sense? Of course, but that is only because we refuse to let ourselves release a song to no one. It would be a complete misuse of a great opportunity, and I think that culture, even if it is from my dumb brain, needs to make as big of a splash as it can.

MF: Like I said, I’m a musician (anonymous) and prolific songwriter (completely, as yet, unknown). I tried for years and years in my teens and 20s to get my stuff out there, to build a following, but I was never able to put it all together and make that happen. I’ve been teaching ever since.

I haven’t given up hope (you should, dispshit), I’m still at it. I don’t tour or play many shows any more (because nobody likes you), but I’ve put stuff on Soundcloud, Bandcamp, YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify, and it’s good (seriously, the most recent stuff is called Paper Cloud, check it out), and I’m sure I’m not alone, there are probably millions of bands and artists who’ve gone unheard, without more than one listener.

How the HELL did you get people to listen to your stuff? How have you gotten it out there? (Congrats, BTW)

AM: Luck and working constantly is literally the only story to tell.

MF: I dig that. But I think a lot of people have that same aspiration, they want to be heard, but they aren’t. They’re lost. How do you make sure you’re heard, that your song isn’t released to no one?

AM: It’s hard to ever ensure people hear what we, or anyone for that matter, put out into the world. Something we’ve always admired and strived for is constant collaboration. Involving more players and singers and writers and producers means a larger community to release and promote the songs. Music can be made by one person, and that’s great, but we believe in strength in numbers and getting to work with people we love and respect in everything we do. To sum it up, we can’t ensure anyone ever listens to our music, but the least we can do is make the best art possible with as many great people as possible before our time runs out on this big floating space rock.

(Wanna collaborate on something? Seriously. I’ll email you.)

MF: Do you guys have day jobs or is music your thing?

AM: We both have jobs that we work regularly. I do artwork for a variety of people and Johnny is a barista at our favorite coffee shop in town.

MF: Why Okey Dokey? How was that not taken?

AM: Johny’s dad says it all the time. After hearing it on the phone so much we just had to.

(Using that same logic I should start a new band called, “Hey. It’s just me. We’re good. Nothing’s wrong.”)

MF: What role does social media play in your success? Do you think it gets people out to see you?

AM: We are only good at Instagram, maybe? And no.

(Hahaha! Good one! That’s cool.)

MF: What do you have planned for the future, musically and otherwise?

AM: The same. Always the same. Haha! Every day is an opportunity to set yourself up for success. So that is what we try to do.

MF: Thank so much for your time. Good luck with everything. I hope it all works out just as you’d want. Let’s talk again sometime.

AM: Thank you so much!

I’ve been thinking a lot about life lately, how beautiful it is, how messy it can sometimes appear, how important it is that we block out all the noise. I’ve been listening to this spiritual guru on the Oprah podcast, which is embarrassing to even admit given my profession as an on the verge of greatness rocker, but anyway this Tolle dude, he was sad his entire life, about to kill himself, and before he did he kept repeating this phrase, “I can’t live with myself” or something like that, and just by saying that over and over and over again he noticed in the sentence structure that there was a disconnect between “I”, who he really was, and “myself” who he was conditioned to be, or maybe it was the other way around, but the point is he finally realized that he was actually not the same as everything he’d been conditioned to believe. There was a difference. He wasn’t all the terrible things that he’d come to believe, he wasn’t dreadful, life wasn’t dreadful. It was, in fact, simple and beautiful and perfect. And once he realized that he was happy. I don’t agree with everything he says, honestly, I’ve thought a lot about it since listening to him, and I didn’t listen that much, and my outlook is much much simpler, less dependent on hypothetical constructs, and I didn’t get the idea when I was about to end my life, I was never desperate like him, never sad, so unlike Tolle I came to the realization, little by little, over the course of a happy life, but the thing is, life IS simple. For the most part we are born good people, into a sometimes hectic world, a sometimes seemingly chaotic, horrible world filled with tons of information, most of which doesn’t apply to us, to me, to you, to anyone but the person who originally came up with the idea. And we need to find our own truth, our own answers, or we need to only listen to truths, to facts, to science, and not get twisted up or veer from who we are in a world that is beating us over the head with information and misinformation, truth and lies and everything in between, at all times, from all angles, nonstop. We need to block it all out. Be us. Be ourselves. It’s about learning, really. Learning. It takes time. And it looks different for everyone, and that’s really fucking cool. I’ve since seen a few videos of Tolle, by the way, and he doesn’t appear to be a happy dude, even now, which makes it hard to take advice from him, at least for me, I like getting mine from a more trusted source, I don’t know enough about him to believe him, but whatever, that’s not the point, and I just ruined my entire… The point is, we have to block out the noise, and be ourselves, and do whatever it takes to be what we want, and one way to do that is with really, really loud music. I smiled. Loud and good.

I always opened my sets with some monologue, it just felt good to say something when I had the opportunity, since I had the microphone, the platform, a voice, even if there were only a few people in the crowd.

In addition to a Tolle video, I’d recently watched part of the Elvis Comeback Concert from 1968. I haven’t read about the backstory yet, but obviously it was a comeback from obscurity or hard times or something, and the biggest thing I took away from it, maybe the 2 or 3 biggest things were his pure joy, his face told the story, he was happy, and he was uninhibited, totally free AND he looked cool as hell, all leather, really rad jacket, AND the part I liked the most was he didn’t need an entire big band to be rock and roll and to be exciting. He didn’t need an electric guitar and amps and drums and all that, even though he had that and of course we all love that, but for me, keeping a band together was never the issue, but getting us all on the same page as far as how much time and energy and effort we’d devote to the band, how seriously we’d take it, or how much we’d want to make out of it- most of the guys just wanted to play for fun and I would never give up my dream of making it out of the basement- so I said F it, I played solo, just me and my acoustic guitar, but it wasn’t some mellow, folky, boring, hippie shit, it was rock and roll, I sat, I stood, I moved, uninhibited and free, not entirely unlike Elvis, and people we were really into it. Two, 3, 4, 14, 26, 8, 18 people at a time were better than just playing down in the basement amongst friends, although that was pretty great too. I didn’t have to rely on anyone else, not even my closest friends, my longtime bandmates, I could do this on my own. One song at a time. One person at a time.

For the most part, even though I had a tendency to go on and on, probably a little more than I should for a rock show, considering I wasn’t well known, or known at all, and nobody had any reason to listen to me, I learned right away that the fact that I had a microphone and I was saying it, I was doing it, people would listen.

In the same moment I’m telling them they shouldn’t listen to anyone and to find themselves and do their thing they’re standing there listening to me, or maybe they’re not, I’m not sure, but it seemed that way to me.

I played well that night, just me, my acoustic guitar, a microphone, just me, mostly sitting on an antique blue chair, looked like something you’d see at a dinner table at an elderly woman’s house out in the burbs. I played 9 songs, 40 minutes, opened for Black Midi, this electronic, math-rock band from London, the singer had super quirky, higher-register vocals, but it wasn’t off-putting or anything. They were generating a lot of buzz, doing exactly the opposite of what anyone would tell you to do these days. They had no online presence- no music, no video, no website, nothing. They just played shows. That’s what I was doing 20 years ago, trying to make it, before the Internet was huge and streaming became the norm, I was just playing shows with my band. I think what held us back at the time was that we were a noise metal band. We were good, also math-rocky, odd vocals, just 4 guys doing what they love, just like Black-Midi, but our vocals were screamed not sung and the music was abrasive, appealing only to a small group of people. We developed a big following, as far as that style of music goes, headlining shows of a few hundred people in rented out VFWs and bowling alleys or whatever empty space the promoters could afford. We loved it, and it was a huge step in my progression, but either the timing was off or the music was the limiting factor, but we couldn’t get out of those halls and into bigger places. We tried. We even tried doing stuff online, back when it wasn’t really a thing. Nothing came of it. Didn’t realize it at the time, but it was probably all that noise.

By the time I figured that out, it was too late, I’d started another band making more accessible music, not to appease anyone, not solely for the purpose of being more relatable or sustainable or whatever, but because I’d changed. I didn’t want to scream anymore, didn’t have anything to scream about, and we became better players so everything sort of mellowed out and we became more melodic, less thrashy, a little slower, less progressive/math rocky, folk punk maybe, I don’t know, I was never good at labeling it, never felt the need unless, like now, I felt the need. Just listen to it and call it what you want, we were called The Red and White Stripes, I’m not even kidding, it was just before The White Stripes blew up, we hadn’t even heard of them yet, it was a riff on the American flag I guess, my buddy Jason had just joined the Army and we were all into that, but we put out a bunch of stuff on our own label, Pink Stripe Records, again not kidding, and it’s still available on our 19 year old blog. Google it.

As I got older, the more stuff I listened to, the more I played, the more I read, the more I worked and the less I played, the better I got and the better the songs became, but without an audience, when there are so many bands and so much available music, you get lost, when 99% of streaming music is attributed to just 10% of all artists, and when there are over 5 million artists, blocking out the noise, or breaking through it, becomes an almost insurmountable obstacle. But it’s who I’ve always been, who I continue to be, and if I don’t keep writing and recording music, I wouldn’t be me, I wouldn’t know what else to do, or more appropriately I wouldn’t want to stop or do anything else more than this, so I keep trying, even if at times it makes me feel like a failure, for some reason, to continuously do this, writing, recording, mixing and mastering, and publishing over 1000 songs at this point and never being heard, talking to myself, if I let it make me feel that way, because nobody else besides my wife, son, daughter, and I and the 5 or 10 people in attendance at my shows is listening or seems to care, then I think I shouldn’t do it anymore, but that thought doesn’t last long, because I truly enjoy it, and I’ve been doing it, not just thinking of doing it, I don’t just have a song in my head I’ve been wanting to write, or try to write, I’ve had that feeling over 1000 times, and I did it, I wrote it, and recorded it, and it’s out there on all streaming services, under the same name, The Wobbly Moons, the first band name I ever came up with when my dad and I formed a band when I was 3 and a half, and one day, even if it’s not when I’m still around, maybe I’ll be in the ground by then, but at some point, people will hear it, and they’ll enjoy it, and aside from the fact that it has brought me years and years of joy, knowing that eventually, gradually, one day, it will bring someone else joy, makes it even better. I’m not going to stop. There’s not fallacy of sunk cost here, it’s not an option to stop, and knowing that, cutting through the noise, the lies, the bullshit, the notion that it’s a waste of time, the guilt, the failure, the reluctance, blocking out the cultural perspective that maybe I shouldn’t do this anymore, that it’s not professional, that it’s a waste, forgetting everything that doesn’t fit, or make sense, or apply, or just isn’t true and doesn’t fucking matter, I block it out, the doubt, my doubts, their doubts, and I just do it because it’s who I am and it makes me happy, and I love a good story, a great ending, a complex, beautiful unique story, and what better story, what better, happier, more perfect ending is there than one other person listening to my music, or someone appreciating my music, at some point, in my life, or after life? It’s not even the perfect ending, because with music there is no end, with US there is no end, with me and everything I’ve done, all that I’ve put into it, there is no end. It’s there. I made it, created from thin air, from nothing, from within, my mind, from me, and it can never, ever be taken away. It’s not going anywhere. It will always be. I will always be. We will eternally be out there, floating in space, through time, now, then, always, and forever.

That reminds me. It’s Valentine’s Day. I made a card for my wife, painted a heart on the cover of the construction paper, folded it in half, and write a note, said I Love You So Very Much, my son made one too. My daughter was sleeping so we made one for her. We hid them down in the basement. When I get home, tomorrow morning, we’re going to give them to her. I made each of my kids one too. My son is gonna love it. I painted a robot on the cover of his card, he’s so into robots right now, recently read The Wild Robot, Robot Sauce, really into super heroes, calls them robots too because he knows they aren’t real, just real people pretending to be something they aren’t, and he said that’s kind of like a robot, and I said it is if it’s really good at learning, and he said like me, and I said just like you. I told him he was a good thinker. I said I love you. You make Mommy and Daddy so happy. He’s gonna love the card.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, contact @mferrence

Book design by Michael Ferrence

Chapter 1

My dad carried me into my room, and placed me in my bed. I stretched out my legs, keeping my arms pressed tightly against my body. He pulled the sheet up to my shoulders, and I turned to my side and curled up.

“Nighty night.” He said. “Love you. See ya in the morning.”

“Night Dad. Love you too.”

He squeezed my arm softly, patted my left knee, turned, and walked out. A few seconds later he returned, and said he’d leave the hallway light on so that it wasn’t too dark.

He partially shut the door then walked away. The refrigerator opened and closed. He said something to my mom, and as he inched toward her the floor creaked. She replied, and the refrigerator opened and closed again. He joined my mom in the living room, that’s where his footsteps stopped. I heard the TV. I heard my parent’s voices, but was unable to tell what they were saying. They laughed a lot and so did the audience. The laughter entered my room through the crack in the door. I liked listening. I liked trying to make out what they were saying and filling in the blanks with ideas of my own. I’d fallen asleep on the couch, and when I woke up they were watching the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. They watched nearly every night, enjoying the opening monologue and the musical guests the most. As my dad scooped me into his arms, the announcer said the guests were Peter Strauss and Buddy Rich. “Oh, this is gonna be good.” He said to my mom. “Buddy Rich! I can’t believe it!”

My mom shushed him.

“He was my favorite when I started playin. Remember Lois? I had the Slingerland set when we met? Oh, man. He’s the best.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’ve seen you do some incredible stuff on the drums.” Said my mom, snacking on pretzel rods, and picking the gold label from her brown Michelob bottle. “You have a more distinct style.” She said. “I could pick your drumming out from… A hundred others.”

“Hey, gimme one sec. I’ll be right back down.”

“I’ll be here.” She said. “I hope Johnny’s good tonight.”

Johnny must have been good that night because they laughed an awful lot.

An extension of the hallway light, a small glowing box had formed on my bedroom floor. I examined the edges of the box and imagined the entire quadrilateral sliding from one place to the next- up the wall, across the ceiling, down the wall near my head, out the window, over the roof, onto the front porch, over the sidewalk, out into the street, back inside, over my face, neck, chest, belly, legs, and feet, and back to its original spot on the floor.

I closed my eyes and, with the right side of my head on the pillow, listened to the beating of my heart. I wondered how I could hear my heartbeat in my head like that. Just as my eyes involuntarily closed I snapped them open and stretched my body out across the bed, my extremities reaching as far outward as possible, jutting diagonally toward each wooden bed post. I rolled onto my stomach, and tucked my arms under me. My heart beat gently onto my forearms. I opened my hands, held my chest, and counted the beats. I started thinking maybe the beats left my body, traveled into my hands, went back into my body, up to my ears, and out onto the pillow. From there, I wasn’t sure where they went. Maybe they invisibly and silently bounced around our house. Perhaps they went out the window and out into the rest of the world, up into space with the moon and the stars and whatever else was up there. Maybe once they were in space, far away from where they were born, once they were light years away, maybe you could hear them again. Maybe they weren’t silent anymore out there. Maybe you could see them. Maybe they became stars or made stars brighter somehow or became clouds or some never-before-seen celestial body or something. Or maybe the beats, those everlasting electrical impulses, traveled from our bodies, or maybe just mine, maybe this didn’t happen to anyone else, I didn’t know, maybe there was something unique about my heartbeats that made them float out the window, into the sky, and up to the furthest corner of the most faraway galaxy. They had to have done something, gone somewhere. There had to be more to it. I thought about how they might have traveled back in time, to the beginning of everything, when there was nothing but darkness, an absence of everything, before there was anything at all, way before. I wondered what it was like back then and how anyone really knew what it was like. I thought of what it would be like if, once again, there was nothing. I thought that maybe there was never ‘nothing’, that there always had to be something, at least one thing, just a little microscopic light or residual sound, some remnant of what once was or some beginning of what was yet to come.

I knew for sure those beats weren’t inside me anymore, and that they just kept coming, one after another after another. The beats were limitless. I thought that if I closed my hands and kept them balled up that the beats would stay inside my body, that there would be no way for them to leave, or that wherever they were trying to go they could take me with them, we could all go together, back to the beginning of time, then I could be that one thing that started it all. Then I would know what happened back then, and as long as I had enough time I could come back and tell everyone.

Downstairs they were still laughing. Someone came up to the bathroom then went back to the kitchen, opened and closed the refrigerator, and returned to the living room.

I flipped back over and from my outstretched position, with my head sort of hanging off the side of the bed, I re-examined the glowing box on the floor, which hadn’t moved, and stared at it until it closed in on itself and disappeared.

A few days earlier my dad was telling me about the first TV he remembered having as a kid, a Predicta pedestal console set, and how it was so much different from the one we had, a used Zenith System 3. “It looked like a little spaceship almost, like something from outer space or something. It was neat. It was on a tall stand and had a real big screen up top. I think that’s the one we had when The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan. I remember watchin it. I think that was the one.” He said.

I dreamt I was sort of stuck behind, or trapped in a small room with a fuzzy, old, static-filled Predicta TV set. The relentless, intense static quickly transformed me. I grew gross bluish-black nodes on my face, these little, soggy, overripe huckleberries popped up alongside my nose, on my eyelids and my lips, along my gums and within the tiny canals of my outer ear. All I wanted was to turn off the TV, to make it go away, but I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t move. My body wouldn’t work. I was trapped.

Then, like always when a dream wasn’t going my way, when it had turned bad, when things weren’t going as I would have liked, just when it seemed I had lost all control and had no chance, right before I gave up hope, in an instant, everything changed. My former life and former self, those mutated, old foes, were long gone and fast forgotten, left behind, as once again I moved freely, sitting, then standing, then walking around the hollowed out TV set a few times, the same kid I’d always been, and then, at last, I took off running.

I woke up briefly, lying in the same position as when I’d fallen asleep, my heart pulsing inside my chest, against my arms, just as it had all along. The box of light was still gone. The TV was off. I couldn’t hear my parents anymore. I propped myself onto my right elbow and felt my face, and it was back to normal. That wasn’t real, I thought. I lied down, and as soon as I got the idea to go in and sleep with my parents, I fell asleep, drifting right back into another dream.

I was at Moyers, the corner store just down the street from our house. It was set up differently with the register in the back and the magazines up front and the bubble gum machine in the middle, but it must have been the same place. It’s the only corner store I knew. I walked by the deli case and turned right into the frozen food aisle. I reached into the freezer, rummaged through bags of frozen veggies and vacuum-sealed meats, closed my eyes, grabbed hold, and yanked out a singular, tall red ice pop. I ate it in the store and apologized to the clerk. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any money. I ate an ice pop, but I can’t pay for it.” The clerk mumbled something at me while pointing toward the door, and I said I would go get money from my mom, “She’s waiting for me outside.” When I went outside my mom was gone. I saw a penny tucked in the crack on the sidewalk, but when I reached for it, it was no longer there. Instead I picked up a piece of chewed gum. I shook off long strands of brown hair and popped the gum in my mouth. “Mom!” I said. “Where’d you go?”

I started running home, but made very little progress, scraping and clawing only a few inches at most. From all fours, I embedded my fingers in the cracks in the sidewalk and pulled with everything I had, attempting to drag myself along, and when that didn’t work I stopped, stood up, and began pulling on my tongue, an endless purple and pink, syrupy glob. After several motionless minutes of feverish stretching, tugging, and swallowing, the glob, now off white, snapped, and I was free. I ran down the street passing unfamiliar house after unfamiliar house, stranger upon stranger, talking to myself about how I needed to get home and which path I should follow. I didn’t understand what was happening and why nothing seemed like it used to. I leapt from the top of a grassy hill, free falling hundreds of feet toward the ground below. For a few seconds I flew with purposeful precision, soaring above a pine forest and dark blue lake I’d never seen before. Back and forth between free fall and controlled piloting, at times a hummingbird, at other times a rock, I neared the ground, unsure of what would happen when I hit. I gulped a great breath, smiled, arched my back, snapped my face to the sky, and woke up.

I slept in bed with my parents the rest of the night. My mom got up first, and when she did I moved to her side of the bed. My dad got up a little later, and I curled up in the spot he’d left behind. I liked the distinct smell on each of their pillows, so I kept my dad’s under my head and my mom’s on top.

I woke up about an hour later to pots and dishes clanging, to the smell of coffee, and with Del Shannon’s ‘Runaway’ blaring from the radio in the kitchen. I slid out of bed, put on one of my dad’s T-shirts over my pajamas, and stood atop the stairs, waiting in silence, listening. I rubbed my eyes and, with the fingertips on my right hand, pushed my light brown hair off of my forehead.

My dad appeared at the bottom of the steps with a sleeve of saltines in his hand. “Good morning. Good morning!” He sang. “I thought I heard you moving around up there. Want some crackers and eggs?”

“OK!” I ran half way down the stairs.

“Hey. Wait. Wait. Wait. Go get dressed while I finish up the eggs. When we’re done eating, we’re gonna go for a ride.”

I threw my dad’s shirt in the hallway and shoved my pajamas beneath my bed, put on clean underwear, long white tube socks with red stripes at the shin, a pale blue T-shirt, dark blue jeans, and black Velcro sneakers. ‘Dream Lover’ by Bobby Darin came on as I ran down the steps and into the kitchen.

After breakfast, my grandfather picked us up, and we left. My dad reminded me that in a few days he was going to take me to Philadelphia to see a doctor for a check up, that we’d borrow my grandpa’s car for the day. He said when my regular doctor, Dr. Bennett, listened to my heart with a stethoscope, she heard a murmur, just a little something that was very normal for kids, and said we should get it checked out by a different doctor in Philadelphia. He said not to be nervous, that he had a heart murmur when he was little, and that lots of kids do and most outgrow them. He said he did, and he promised he would be with me the whole time. He said we could even stop for something to eat or maybe do something fun while we were there, but that no matter what, not to worry, that everything would be all right.

A few days later, at my appointment, once they’d completed the electrocardiogram, the nurse removed the electrodes from my chest, and cleaned me up while the doctor took my dad out into the hallway to talk. I couldn’t hear very well because the nurse was talking quite a bit, she kept telling me what a great job I did. I was unable to tell if the doctor said regular or irregular, normal or abnormal, but he definitely said some of those words several times. Once they finished talking privately, the doctor came in by himself and shook my hand and told me thanks for coming, that it was nice meeting me, and to take care. Then my dad came in and told me the doctor told him that everything was OK, that I had a good, strong heart. “Nothing to worry about.” He said.

My dad seemed relieved and, from a payphone, called my mom to tell her the news. He gave me the phone, and she told me she loved me and reminded me that everything was OK, that it would be fine. She said she knew it would be, and that she missed me and couldn’t wait until we got home. My dad got back on and told her we were going to make a pit stop along the way. “We won’t be too long. I just wanna get something to eat, and see if he can play around for a little while before we drive all the way back. Uh-huh. OK. I will. Uh-huh. Yep. He did good. He seems fine. Yeah. All right. OK. Yep. No. Doctor didn’t seem too concerned. Uh-huh. I will. OK.” He said. “OK. Yep. Don’t worry. No. Nope. Not really. We’ll be fine. Talk to you later. You too. Bye.”

We got in the car and I asked, “Where are we going Dad?”

“Let me think.” He hummed, pressed his right index finger against his lips, partially blew up his cheeks, deflated them, scratched his chin, and then said. “Oh, I know! We can go to Penn’s Landing to see the ships.”

“The ships?”

“Yeah Paul. You’ll love it. It’s a place that has big battleships just floating there in the water, in the river. I think it’s the Delaware. You’ll see. It won’t take us too long to get there. I just have to figure out where the heck to go.”

After almost an hour of driving around in West Philly looking for the entrance to the Schuylkill Expressway, my dad pulled over, bought a cup of coffee from a food cart, and asked a cop how to get to Penn’s Landing. He told my dad to drive straight down Market Street until we couldn’t go any further, then park, and walk over. That’s what we did.

On the way, my dad told me all about how my grandpa was in the Navy and fought in World War II to protect our country and keep us safe. He described how he was very brave, how he lived on a battleship that traveled around the world. He said that, if we were lucky, we might even see the ship he lived on floating at Penn’s Landing. He told me Penn was William Penn, the guy who founded Philadelphia, and said there was a statue of him atop City Hall. After he was done talking, I started playing around in the glove compartment. Eventually I took out a pen and notepad started scribbling.

“What are you making?”

“Nothing. Just doing this.” I showed him.

“Why don’t you make a nice picture while you’re waiting so nicely. You can give it to Mom when we get home, or we can put it on the fridge or something.”

I drew a boat in the ocean and showed him.

“Very nice.” He said. “Why don’t you draw some people?”

I drew my grandfather.

“Look! It’s Grandpa.”

“Maybe you could color it in a little.”

I drew my dad and I next to my grandfather and gave each of us big hearts right on our chest. I colored it in, just like he’d suggested.

“Look Dad!”

“Wow!” He said. “That looks great!”

“We’re in the water with the boats.”

“Who is it? That’s you and…”

“This is Grandpa. This is you. And this is me. It’s all of us.”

He pointed. “And what’s that?”

“That’s hearts. All of them have big hearts on them.”

“Make sure you write your name and maybe give it a title, like a name.”

“What?”

“You can give the nice picture a name. Like call it something.”

“I don’t know what to call it.”

“Call it whatever it is. What is it?”

“It’s all of us. Me, you, and Grandpa is right here.”

“Write ‘it’s all of us’ then. That would be nice. Or maybe ‘all the Rhodes’.”

I liked that idea so I wrote ‘all the Rhodes’ at the bottom with my initials, PR, on the right hand side. My dad said that I had to autograph it, and I could just write those two letters.

We parked, I got out and put the drawing in my coat pocket, and we walked a few blocks without saying much. After we crossed a bridge we got hot dogs and soda from a man with a silver food cart attached to his van. While we ate we walked toward the water, and my dad realized there was an event happening.

“What’s going on here?” He said to the first person we saw, a homeless man with a sign that said, ‘WWII VET. HUNGRY. PLEASE HELP ME. Every little bit helps.’

The man didn’t answer, but my dad dropped some change in the box at his feet.

“I guess he didn’t know.”

I ran ahead and stopped near a blue railing at the land’s end, right above the water, directly below an enormous battleship.

A woman who looked about my mom’s age walked by, and my dad stopped her and said, “Hi. Excuse me. What’s going on? Is there something special happening with all these boats? Or is there always this many? Do you know?”

She said that there was something called the Parade of Sails, a procession of tall boats from around the world. “They’re having stuff going on down here all week. This is just the beginning. Pretty soon it’s going to be a lot more. I think the paper said they’re expecting thousands of visitors.”

“I guess we came at the right time!” Said my dad. “Well, thanks. Have a good one.”

I finished my hot dog and dropped the wrapper in the water.

It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, not a cloud in the sky. I liked watching the birds fly around near the top of the ship.

“Was this one Grandpa’s, Dad?”

“I don’t think so, buddy. I think he was on a ship called Nevada. This one is Iowa.”

“Iowa?”

“Yep. That’s a state.”

“A state?”

“Yep. We live in Pennsylvania. That’s a state. Iowa is a different state, a different place, far away. Back then, a long time ago, when Grandpa was young, they named the ships after all the states in America. Now they have them here so people can see them. They don’t use them anymore. We just like to look at them.”

“Because they’re so big?”

“Yep. And because they’re important because they helped America to be safe and strong, I guess.”

My dad asked me for the picture I made. “Look how good your ship looks! I like it more than this big ship.” He said. “We better get going now. OK Paul? We have a long ride home, and Mom is waiting for us.”

“OK.” I said.

We walked passed the woman, who was standing on the grass while two little girls played under a nearby tree.

My dad waved. “So long.” He said.

She smiled with her mouth closed, but didn’t say anything.

When we got to the street, at the base of the stairs that led to the bridge I asked my dad for my picture. When we got to the top, I wrapped both hands around the railing and looked out over the water, at the battleship and a line of boats moving in, at the highway below, at the lady and the two girls, and finally at my little hands stretched around the blue railing.

“You ready, Paul?”

As I turned to walk away, I eased my grip and the picture fell from my right hand, and on a light breeze, it sailed toward the water.

By the time my tears had dried, we were already out of the city.

“I have to pee, Dad.”

“OK. Hold on. I’ll find something.”

We merged into light traffic and took the Northeast Extension toward Allentown. After about ten minutes, I reminded my dad. “I really have to go, Dad.” I said, squeezing the front of my pants with my right hand, and crossing then uncrossing my legs.

He signaled, pulled over, put on the four-way flashers, and parked. “One second, buddy.” He jumped out, closed his door, ran around the back of the car, opened my door, and when I hopped out, nudged me toward a bush a few feet away at the base of a grassy, flowery, tree-topped hill. “Go over there. Don’t go near the road. OK? I’ll wait right here.” He stood, leaning on the hood of the car.

I pulled the bottom of my shirt up and tucked it under my chin, unbuttoned my pants, unzipped, pulled my underwear down and urinated in the dirt. A small indentation formed in the earth as I blasted its surface. The indentation quickly grew to a divot, then a ditch, as dirt sprayed sideways and liquid filled the hole. A whirlpool of urine spun at my feet while I swiveled my hips and watched. Soon the pool had overflowed and the piss began rolling toward me. I stepped back and tilted my feet outward, twisting to face my dad.

“Look!”

“No, no, no, no, no. It’s OK. Just finish up.”

“But look! A waterfall!”

“Oh, wow!” He said. “Yeah. OK. Um… Don’t get any pee on you, OK?”

“I did get pee on me, Dad. Look. On my hands and my shoes.”

Once I finished, the urine trickled beneath me, carrying grainy particulate, then swelled and congealed like paste.

“All done?”

“Yes. I’m all done, Dad.”

I buttoned and zipped my pants, wiped my hands on my shirt, and got back in the car. My dad hopped in, twisted the key, turned on the radio, and started driving.

“Mind if we listen to some music?” Said my dad, shuffling through the stations.

‘Beat It’, ‘Physical’, ‘Celebration’, ‘Centerfold’, and ‘9 to 5’ streamed in succession, with each turn of the dial coming more quickly than the previous.

“Oh boy.” He said. “Can’t find anything.”

Without responding, I looked out the window, and onto the ground below.

“Oh yeah. Yeah. Here’s a good one.” He said. “Eh eh eh electric avenue.” He sung in a deep voice. “This is pretty good, right?”

I looked at my dad and smiled, bopping my head from side to side, playing piano on the dashboard. “I like this song!” I said, squeaking, strongly accentuating ‘this’.

“How about this?” He asked. “I love la la la. Eh eh eh eh eh in the jukebox buddy.” He patted my shin, and I laughed.

Once we reached Allentown a heavy rain fell. The wipers didn’t work properly, with the passenger side wiper moving only a few inches up the windshield, and the driver side wiper on the other extreme, falling off the side of the window in the middle of each swipe.

“Oh frig. I can’t see. What the heck? Oh man. Hold on!”

Silently, I gazed out the front window into the storm. Five minutes later I reached into my jacket pocket, removed and unwrapped a piece of hard, pink PAL bubblegum. I opened the glove compartment and, using my fingers as an action figure, played while the rain slammed the hood, kicked the windshield, and bombed the roof, and the world collapsed outside.

I picked up the pen and started scribbling on the back of a receipt I pulled from inside the back cover of the owner’s manual. I wrote my initials, PR, in the upper right-hand corner of the cover and drew another picture, similar to the one I’d drawn earlier with the addition of the two little girls playing under a tree. I put hearts in all of our chests, birds flying atop the boat, and 2 flowers near the tree. I wrote ‘all the Rhodes’ at the bottom.

My dad opened his window, reached his arm out, and guided the wiper blade back onto the wavy windshield.

“Holy mackerel. It’s really comin down.” He said.

I stuffed the manual into a mess of papers, dropped the pen in the glove box, folded the receipt in half, and tucked it into my jacket pocket, and began intently watching my dad. His nose pressed against the glass, he squinted so that his eyes nearly closed, and then shot them open widely. “I can’t see a friggin thing!” He busily adjusted knobs on the radio and defroster, and clicked a switch on the wiper control lever. With the left side of his body drenched, half of his long, dark brown hair soaked and stuck to the side of his face while the other side flopped- frizzy from humidity- over his right ear, and with raindrops resting still atop his mustache, he opened the window again to manually operate the wiper.

I rolled down my window.

“Whoa! Paul, close the window, buddy! Sit back. All right?”

“I wanna help.”

“No. No. It’s OK. You don’t have to.”

“I wanna fix it. It’s broken.” I took a screwdriver from the glove box.

“No. No. No. Paul, I got it. Put that back. I can see. We’re OK. Just sit back.”

Like my dad, half of my body was soaked. I put the screwdriver away, rolled up the window, scanned the sky, looked around the car, and settled my eyes on the green digits on the radio’s face.

Thunder shook the lightning bolt sky and sent fear and curiosity surging through my eyes, into my skin and my brain, and onto my bones. “Whoa!” I said.

“It’s OK. It’s all right. Just some thunder.”

We drove through the Lehigh Tunnel and when we came out the other side, more unexpectedly than it had begun, the rained had stopped. I took out the manual, and showed my dad the picture. He said it was even better than the one I’d lost.

I squeezed rainwater from my jacket into my cupped hand and held it there.

“A river, Dad.” I said.

“Oh wow! Yeah, it’s like a little ocean right there in your hand.”

“It’s floating, look.”

“Yeowzah! Look at that!” He said. “What’s in there, in the river, in the water, the ocean?”

“Let me see.” The creases in my hand were the bottom of the ocean. My fingers became mountains and valleys and back dropped a bright, bustling city on a not-so-far-out world. In my hand I held a universe of possibilities. “All this stuff. Look!” I swung my arm toward my dad, and accidentally poured the newly discovered world onto the floor.

“Is it over, Dad? Did all the rain go away?”

“Yeah, looks like it. Yep, look, the sky is clear now.” He said, pointing. “Wow. That came outta nowhere.”

We stopped at my grandparents’ place in Hazleton. My dad parked in back, beeped the horn, and said, “Come on. We’ll go get him.”

My dad went through the tall, white, wooden gate, unlatching the white rope from the top of the picket fence post, but like always, I snuck in between the fence and the bushes on the far end of the yard. I knocked and rang the doorbell then we walked in and went upstairs to get my grandpa, his distinct, deep voice audible from the yard. He sat sipping coffee across an oblong kitchen table from my silver-haired, soft-faced, blue-eyed grandmother. I said hi to my grandfather, hugged my grandma, went to the bathroom, ate a grilled cheese sandwich, went to the bathroom again, took a can of Coke and five pieces of PAL bubblegum from a dish on the table, and with my dad and grandpa, headed home.

They sat in the front talking about how the car handled that day, and I sat in the back chomping on three pieces of gum at one time, unraveling the wrappers, rolling them, tying them in knots, and throwing them out the window, watching them fly away.

When we got home my grandpa came in, and my mom gave him a haircut while I took a bath. I got dressed into one of my dad’s T-shirts and lied on the couch. On his way out the door, my grandfather tapped me on the top of my head and said, “Be good.”

“OK.” I said. “I will.”

My mom sat near me on the couch, and I leaned on her shoulder. She finished her beer, smoked a cigarette, and turned the volume down on the TV.

“Time for bed.” She said. “Brush your teeth first. Dad will be up to tuck you in in a few minutes.”

I didn’t answer.

“Paul, time for bed.” She said. “Come on. Time for bed, buddy.”

I clamped my eyes shut, peeking out every few seconds to see if they were watching me.

“I’ll take him. Come on, Paul. Let’s go. Time for bed.”

My mom kissed me on the side of my head, near my left ear, my dad scooped me up, and carried me upstairs to the bathroom. He walked down the hall, I brushed my teeth, went to the bathroom, and walked slowly to my bedroom where he was looking out the window while waiting for me. I hopped into bed, he said something about the weather and the moon and the stars and about how it was nice spending the day with me. He said that everything would be OK, not to worry about anything, and then he covered me up and said good night.

Chapter 2

My dad took my sister Lydia and I to the Freeland Public Library. One of the librarians had written a children’s book so they had a party to celebrate its release. She wanted to share some of the stories with the kids from the neighborhood, and show us which of the illustrations we’d submitted had made it into the book. She said all of the pictures were beautiful, but only a few were selected for the book. Mine didn’t make it, and neither did Lydia’s. She didn’t seem to care, but I got upset and began crying. The next day, on the front page of the paper, there was Lydia, wearing a stretched smile with two missing teeth, blond hair to her shoulders with bangs cut straight across the middle of her forehead. She sat next to an empty seat in the front row of an otherwise occupied group of 20 chairs. The seat I had formerly filled sat still, simpering for the camera. I had vanished. I ran away, looking for my dad, who had been upstairs reading magazines and drinking coffee.

I squeezed into the seat, stuffing myself between his ribcage and the wooden arm of the chair.

“Be careful.” He said, transferring his Styrofoam cup from his right hand to his left, and then wrapping his free arm around me. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

I told him why I’d been crying, and he said that it was OK, that my picture was very good, but that there were a lot of kids who made pictures and that they could only choose a couple for the book. He said that even though mine wasn’t chosen that it was still a very nice picture, and that maybe next time they’d pick mine. “No big deal.” He said. He told me when we got home I could make my own book. He said I could even bring it back to the library to show people someday if I wanted to. I stopped crying.

We waited together, flipping through the pages of Rolling Stone, CREEM, TIME, Billboard, MAD, and People for over an hour until Lydia ran up and told us the party was over, that it was time to go.

We stood up, and I asked my dad if I could take the CREEM magazine. He told me that we had to leave it there so other people could look at it, but then said to wait for a minute. He walked up to the checkout desk, said something, showed the librarian the magazine, and pointed to me, waved, and smiled. I waved and smiled. He came back and said that we couldn’t have the magazine but could take one picture home if I wanted.

“How about this one?” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“This is the one I really like.”

He tore out a full-page spread of Pat Benatar in a black and blue leotard, handed it to me, and we left.

When we got home my grandparents were pulling up to the house. My dad took our things and, with my grandfather, went inside while my grandmother, Lydia, and I went across the street to the cemetery. We sat on a palette of mushy moss beneath an aged tree. I rolled downhill from the base of the tree over the moss, flattening damp, scattered leaves, and eroding the rounded tops of partially unearthed rocks. My sister followed close behind while my grandmother watched from her perch, a little wooden bench beside the tree.

I stopped rolling once I reached the bottom of the small hill, looked into the sky, and imagined myself up there, floating around, staring down at everything, soaring. Lydia bowled over me and crashed into a headstone. I yelled at her, grabbed her ankle, and started dragging her up the hill.

“Come on you two.” Said my Grandma. “Be nice. Not too rough.”

Lydia shed her skin trying to free herself of my grip. Her shoe flopped off and flew through the air, landing in a flowerless green bush near the wrought iron fence. I took off, diving into the bush for the shoe. Meanwhile Lydia had just gotten to her feet. I wound up, intending to throw the shoe, but she looked upset, she was about to cry, so I jerked my shoulder back, held up, and clasped the shoelace between my fingers. I handed her the shoe, charged to the top of the hill, launched from the perch, smacked a low-hanging branch with both hands, and ran off.

I stomped onto our front porch, but never made it inside. Steve “Boom Boom” Melinske rode by and asked if I wanted to go for a ride. Through the screen door, I yelled inside and asked if I could go. My mom didn’t know that Lydia and I had been fighting so she said sure, and I left. She told me to be careful, not to go too far, and to come home before it was dark.

I stood with one foot on each of the minuscule bolts fastening the back tire to the frame of the bike and held onto Steve’s gargantuan shoulders. Steve was a few years older than I, lived a block way, had a long-time crush on Lydia, and was built like a volcano.

As we sped down Pine Street toward the Freeland Village apartments, matching rooftops appeared from out of nowhere, seemingly springing in succession from the earth. Our destination, the swimming pool, churned, its powerful waves visible from high above the horizon. The landscape was the edge of the world, and it was fast approaching. Steve exploded onto the grass to our right just beside the street, pedaling maniacally, then manically jerking the handlebars to the left, shooting over a plank of wood propped on a stack of bricks. I fell off in midair, but Steve kept going.

Skidding along the grass, my chin and chest cutting a deep incision in the dry soil, I finally came to a stop by jamming the heel of my right hand onto the edge of the incoming curb.

I sat in the grass and removed small pebbles from my hand. I waited for Steve to come back, but he didn’t, so I got up and walked around the neighborhood by myself for a little while before going home. I made it just before the sun went down. Our house was on the corner, a yellowish, light green half-double. An old man lived next door, but I hardly ever saw him. I walked around toward the backyard. A lone tree stood on the right-hand side occupying the northeast quadrant of the square, flat, yard. A silver spray painted chain link fence enclosed the space. The gate was open, but I jumped the fence, climbed the tree to the top, and began pulling large green leaves twice the size of my hands from thin twigs half the circumference of my fingers, tearing the leaves into pieces, dropping them, and watching as they fluttered to the ground.

Discordant piano notes began roaring inside the house and rumbled into the yard. Fistfuls of noise ripped the bark from the tree and turned the leaves into tambourines. I descended, dropping from branch to branch, and when I was close enough I shimmied to the end of the limb, opened my hands, and dove to the ground. Singular sour notes turned sublime then combined to become colorful, sweet, and songlike as I yanked open the metallic screen door and ran into the living room where my dad sat with Lydia at a washed out walnut Wurlizter upright piano.

I climbed between them and through irrepressible laughter said, “How do you play? Where did you get this, Dad?”

“One of Grandpa’s buddies…”

“Move!” Lydia yelled. “I was here first.”

“No. I can play too.” I jabbed my left elbow into her side.

“Dad! Tell him to move!”

“OK. OK. There’s room for everyone.” He said. “Here. Watch.” He stood up, I slid down, and he leaned over us demonstrating chords. “This is an F. Here’s a G. An A. Here’s a B.” He worked his way up the keys from left to right, moving away from Lydia toward me. “C. D. E. And back to F.”

“Show us again, Dad!” I said.

“OK. Here. Look. Hang on. Listen. Those were all major chords, but you can just play the notes too. Try this.” He said. “It’s a C. Real easy. Like this.”

Lydia and I battled to place our fingers directly beneath my dad’s.

“There’s not enough room.” She said, pouting. “I quit. This is stupid. You’re a jerk.”

“Hey, hey, hey! Be nice!”

She stormed upstairs, stopping half way, hunched over her knees, and peeked at us through the banister beams.

“No. No. Lydia, it’s OK. Come here. There’s room. Look.” He said. “Lydia? Look. Come on. There’s plenty of room.”

She didn’t move or say a word.

“Look. Paul. Look. You can do this in different places, too. There’s room for all of us. See. Plenty of room.” He showed me a C chord at three different places. See? Plenty of space.”

“Yeah. I see.” I said. “Lydia, look.”

She remained on the steps, no longer watching us, her head tucked into her knees.

“Lydia. Come on. Come play.” He said.

My dad helped me hold down the C chord, and we began banging out a beat. “See? You got it!”

“Like this?”

“Yep. That’s it!” He said. “Watch this.” He alternated between C and then, “This is a little trickier, F Major 7, but watch.” He pulsed on C. “Di di di di di di di di di di di.” He sang. “Paul McCartney.” He smiled. “Band on the Run. Watch. La la la la la la la la la la. I hope you’re having fun!”

“I am!” I shouted. “I’m having so much fun!”

My dad and I kept playing, and after about an hour, Lydia rejoined us. He showed us ‘Louie Louie’ and ‘Wild Thing’ and told us they were basically the same. “Just a little different.” He said. “They’re very easy. You guys are good. You could definitely play ’em. Keep practicing.”

Another hour or so after that my mom awoke from a long nap, and sat down on the couch with my little sister Judy, who’d also been napping.

“I’m done.” Lydia slid off the bench, and sat alongside my mom and Judy. “I don’t wanna do this anymore.”

“OK. That’s all right.” Said my dad. “I’m gonna take a break too, but you keep going, bud.” He said. “Remember, just like this. Eh. Eh. Eh-eh. Bum bum bump-bump. Wild uh! Eh-eh. Bum bum. You di di di di! Bing. Bing. Bing-bing. Eh. Eh. Eh-eh. You la la la la…”

“Groovy!” I sang.

He laughed, and told me I was doing a great job.

“What about the other one, Dad? The Louie song.”

“Yep, Louie Louie. It’s just like this Paul. Look. Same thing. Well it’s a little different, but just play it like this, OK? Real easy.” He said. “I’ve always liked this one a little more.”

“Me too.” I said.

“Me three.” Chimed my mom.

“Look. Like this. Same thing pretty much, just with different words.”

“Who was this, Paul?” My mom said.

“This was The Kingsmen, Paul Revere and The Raiders, The Kinks, umm… The Beach Boys. Zappa. Numerous bands did this one. Really, really easy. The simplest songs, sometimes, are the best.”

“Like this? Am I doin it right?”

“Yep!” He smiled and clapped. “Yes! You got it. There you go!”

“Great job, buddy!” My mom whistled.

“Keep going! Eh-eh. Louie eh-eh! Oh yeah! Da da da-da!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” We all sang, even Lydia got into it.

“Oh. Wait. Watch. Look.” He said, adjusting my hands from above.

“La la la-la! Uh huh! We di-di-di!” My mom sang along.

“There you go! You got it. There you go!”

My mom applauded and whistled and stomped from the sofa. “Go!” She paused, pumping her fist in the air. “Go! Go!”

“Sing Dad!”

“OK.” He said. “Uh… La-la loo-eye! Uh… Keep going. I’ll join in. Go ahead, buddy. OK. You sing too, Paul. Go!” And so we sang, “A fine di-di-di, she la la la…”

After having meatloaf, mashed potatoes, corn, and green beans for dinner, my dad asked if I still wanted to work on my book, and gave me a few sheets of white paper, a box of crayons, a pencil, and the picture of Pat Benatar, and I sat at the coffee table tracing her picture while everyone else watched TV.

“I’m making my own book.” I said. “And my own pictures.”

“Good.” Said my dad as he got up, went to the kitchen, and grabbed a couple beers for he and my mom. “Whenever you’re done we can go hand it out at the library. No rush. Take your time.”

I traced her picture 10 different ways and colored them in, and when I was finished I asked if there was something else I could draw. My mom handed me the TV guide, but I wasn’t interested in any of the pictures, so my dad ran upstairs and 10 minutes later came down with a stack of albums. “Here you go. All of these have neat covers you’d probably like. Here’s some more paper.” He handed me a yellow legal pad. “We don’t have anymore white paper. I’ll have to get you more.”

‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, ‘Parallel Lines’, ‘Dark Side of the Moon’, Zappa’s ‘The Man from Utopia’, ‘Yellow Submarine’, Kiss ‘Destroyer’, ‘Escape’ from Journey, Elvis Costello’s ‘Armed Forces’, ‘Strikes’ by Blackfoot, ‘All Things Must Pass’, ‘Songs from the Wood’, ‘Sounds of Silence’… I flipped through the fanned out albums, back to the beginning of what had originally been a neatly piled stack. “Dad, can you do this one for me?”

“Oh, yeah. ‘Man from Utopia’. That’s a good one. I like this one a lot.” He carefully traced the album, then gave it to me, and said I should color it in. I only did a little at a time, so it took me nearly a week to trace and color the covers I’d chosen. My dad said it would be a good idea if I wrote some words or told a story or added some of my own drawings to the book so that people could see and appreciate my work and that, technically, “by rights”, it was illegal to use someone else’s work without giving them credit or somehow making it your own. I scribbled on a few pages, wrote random words on others, added additional pictures to most, placed my initials somewhere on every page, and asked my dad to help me write a story. He asked me questions about what I’d like to write about, and wrote it down for me on his yellow legal pad, and then I copied it onto the final manuscript. It was a short, 10-sentence story about a little boy who liked to do all the things pictured on the album covers. With some help from my dad, in the end I decided the little boy, named Microphone, would be in a band, make his own special albums, square vinyl instead of the traditional circles, and package them in old pizza boxes covered with his drawings. The following Saturday morning we all had French toast, sausage links, and orange juice for breakfast then Lydia and I went with my dad to the library and handed out all 10 copies of my book.

Chapter 3

I pressed my forehead against the large glass window in the front of the dining room listening to ‘Sweet Dreams’ by The Eurythmics. I exhaled and fogged up the glass and made shapes- mostly circles, squares, and stars- in the condensation left behind, then I walked away from the window and strolled past each of the five arcade games while swiping my fingers in the coin returns, scooping and collecting 15 cents altogether, a dime from the first machine and a nickel from the last. My parents sat at our table, my mom smoking Kools and drinking Pepsi, my dad eating his third piece of pepperoni pizza and doodling on the front and back of a stack of small square napkins. My sisters sat quietly at a circular table at the far end of the room, near the swinging kitchen door, until Prince’s ‘1999’ brought Lydia to her feet. She held Judy’s hand and danced for a few seconds before picking her up-and-out-of her chair and holding her on her bouncing hip. While chomping on some of my dad’s pepperoni slice I asked for more money for the jukebox. He said sorry but he didn’t have anymore. I complained, and asked again and he reminded me that there was still one song left. I drank my mom’s Pepsi through a straw that had been lying unwrapped on the table, sloshed the soda around in my mouth, swallowed, then covered my nose with my T-shirt. Smoke seeped through the kelly green fiber, but all I could taste was detergent. I went around the rectangular table two times, scraping up bits of wood with a dime. The waitress, Molly, Lydia’s friend Jamie’s thirteen-year old sister, cleared our table, smiled at me, tapped the top of my head with her fingernails, and walked away. She had brown, shoulder length hair and a beauty mark the size of a chocolate chip just above her mouth, right along the crease of her smile. I pulled the shirt away from my mouth, and said hi. Before entering the kitchen, she tapped Lydia and Judy on their heads, said something to them as they once again sat, turned to look at me, smiled with her lips still covering her teeth, and waved. The jukebox locked a record into place and we all froze, waiting on edge to see what song my dad had chosen. Buffalo Springfield’s ‘For What It’s Worth’ played. My sisters, mom, and I were disappointed, and he complained, saying, “I picked friggin Allentown from Billy Joel. What the heck?”

By the time the song ended, we were ready to go, and Molly’s shift was over. She hung around and talked with my parents for a while, and they decided we’d go home with Molly, and my parents would meet us at home in 2 hours. We stopped to pick up Lydia’s friend Jamie, who looked just like Molly only not as tall. They told me to wait in the living room, that they’d be down in 5 minutes. The three of them were up there laughing and shouting and talking for over an hour. They wouldn’t answer me when I yelled up to see if they were coming down soon, so I went up to see what all the excitement was about. They weren’t doing anything but sitting on the bed talking and it didn’t seem like much fun to me. I jumped on the bed and sat between Molly and Jamie, and my sister told me to get out. I wouldn’t leave so she pushed me. I pushed her back and punched her on her arm, then looked at Jamie and smiled. Jamie politely asked me to leave, and I did, but not before taking one last look at her.

I went back downstairs and watched Woody Woodpecker. A half hour later Molly came down to check on me, gave me a glass of soda, asked if I was OK, said we’d be leaving soon, and ran back upstairs. A half hour after that I went upstairs and waited outside the closed bedroom door. I peeked under the door, and silently watched their shadows move quietly across the floor. When the shadows came close, I ran away. This went on for ten minutes before my patience got the best of my curiosity. Quietly and carefully, I turned the knob before leaping into the room, throwing up my arms, and yelling. My sister, her face painted with make-up, her body draped in one of Molly’s mom’s dresses, wobbled in a pair of black high heels and screamed, demanding I leave immediately. Jamie, wearing her hair in a bun, one of her mom’s dresses, and a pair of higher black heels, stood in front of a full-length mirror ignoring my dramatic entrance while lathering her face with blush. Much, much slower to react, Molly stood motionless a foot in front of me, completely nude.

I went downstairs and waited, sitting on the windowsill, staring out the window, once again fogging up the glass and making shapes, only this time I made long, squiggly, crisscrossing lines. I couldn’t stop thinking about what I’d just seen and I didn’t want to. I wanted to see her again. After 15 more minutes, the girls came down, and we left. They walked way ahead of me.

About a week later, my mom and I sat on our yellow and white paisley couch watching a snowy, fragmented evening newscast slide across the antenna-topped TV screen. As though rehearsed, a burst of fuzz followed the last utterance of every other sentence the anchor spoke. I wore a cherry red football helmet with a thin, white plastic face mask, white underwear and nothing else. My mom had on a knee-length, brown and green striped terrycloth nightgown. Lydia entered the room, briefly, hurriedly placing my little sister in my cradled arms before running upstairs. My dad still wasn’t home from work, head maintenance man for his friend’s multiple properties.

A little more than an hour later, smelling strongly of booze, my dad trampled through our front door carrying two plastic bags full of hoagies, chips, and two 2-liter bottles of Coke. My mom put the hoagies and a side of plain potato chips on paper plates, called Lydia downstairs, placed dinner on the coffee table, and poured us each a cup of warm, fizzy soda while my dad smacked the TV on each side, blew on the channel knob, and experimented with various antenna placements, none of which eliminated the static.

After dinner my mom told Lydia and I to go upstairs, brush our teeth, and go to bed. We did as she told, but only briefly stayed in our rooms, and ended up sitting side-by-side at the top of the steps, listening to my parents argue. I wasn’t even sure what they were talking about, or what the problem was, or why they weren’t getting along, or what would happen next, but I knew my mom was upset, she was yelling a lot and crying, so I became upset. I leaned on Lydia’s shoulder and she put her arm around me.

Chapter 4

I sat in a patch of dry dirt under our front porch, legs extended in a V-shape, and watched the rain. I dug in the dirt with a rock and the hole left behind filled with water. I listened to the tires of passing cars, the raindrops, and the voice of my mom singing inside.

Once it stopped raining, Steve Melinske came over and got me. I filled my pockets with rocks and he filled his then we rode to an alley a few blocks behind my house and emptied our pockets through every garage window within reach. I felt terribly about breaking all those windows, but Steve didn’t seem to mind. An old lady came out and yelled at us, but before she got too close Steve told her to fuck off and we sped away. I asked him to take me home, but he said he wanted to show me something first. We rode through the cemetery, he told me to jump off so I did, then he threw his bike down in the grass. He pulled a lighter from his front pocket and from his back pocket unfolded about a dozen pages pulled from a wrestling magazine. As we walked along a short path into the woods behind the cemetery, he showed me some of the wrestlers: Jack Brisco, Tommy Rich, Paul Orndorff, Hulk Hogan, and Superstar Billy Graham. The path opened up to a small clearing. Steve stuffed the pages into a hollowed out log and started a bonfire that spread so quickly we barely escaped the arrival of the fire trucks and police.

When I got home, my mom was no longer singing. Her face ghastly and colorless, she dropped the phone immediately upon my arrival and began to sob.

“I’m sorry mom.” I said. “I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do it.”

Lydia ran into the room, and wrapped herself around my mom’s hips and followed her unenviable lead. My mom looked at me and waved me over.

“I’m sorry Mom. I…”

“You didn’t do anything, honey. It’s… I…”

“What happened, Mom?” I said, yelling. “What’s wrong?” I began crying. “Mom?” I yelled, louder this time and with a guttural crackle. “Mom? Mom, what’s wrong?” I latched onto her thigh, pleading for an answer.

My mom wiped her face with an open left hand, from her forehead down over her eyes, atop her nose, hesitating above her mouth, pulling down the corners of her lips, before swiftly brushing her chin and resting her palm on her reddened neck.

She sat us down on the couch. “I don’t know if…” She stopped and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to…” Another deep breath. “I… Um… Sorry… I…”

“What’s wrong, Mom?” I said.

“Mom, I’m scared. What happened, Mom? Tell us. Please.” Lydia said. “Please, Mom. Please tell us.”

“OK. OK. OK.” She exhaled. “It’s gonna be all right. OK? It will.” Her nose ran uncontrollably, her mouth filled with saliva, and she began choking over her words. “It’s gonna be all right.”

She told us what had happened, and for the rest of the evening she held us in her arms, fitfully repeating, “It’s gonna be all right.”

My dad’s youngest sister, one of 3 sisters and five siblings overall, my aunt Madeline, and her husband of five days, Thomas Harman, had been in a violent, high impact accident on Route 309 near Mountain Top. They went out for a long motorcycle ride through the Poconos and on the way back, just a few miles from their home, an elderly man, a hunter with a pick up truck full of freshly killed deer, ran a stop sign at a high-speed, low-visibility, notoriously dangerous intersection, decapitating Thomas and maiming Madeline. Intending to spare us from unnecessary pain, my parents had kept the accident from us with the hope she’d recover. With my dad, his brother and sisters, and grandparents at her side, my aunt Madeline didn’t make it through the night.

Our hopefulness wasn’t enough to overcome a fixed reality. Our prayers went unanswered. It wasn’t all right, and it was only getting worse.

Chapter 5

My teacher, Mrs. Scioscia, knelt down beside me, placed her hand on my back, and asked if I was enjoying my lunch- steamed broccoli, French fries, apple sauce, hamburger, and chocolate milk. I smirked, nodded, and mumbled, “It’s very good.”

“Good. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.” She said, patting my back.

“This broccoli looks like little trees.” I said.

She agreed, tapped me on my head, pressed her hand on my friend Greg Falcone’s back, smiled, and continued walking around the room, talking with all the kids.

Greg and I played with our food, pretending the broccoli was a forest, the fries were people, the carton of milk a secret cave. I asked him if he wanted to come over after school, and he said yes, that he would ask his mom when she came to get him.

After lunch we sang songs, the class favorite was ‘If You’re Happy And You Know It’, so we did that one a little longer than the others. I stood up, stomping and clapping. Everyone liked when I did that. Christy Vine, a cute girl with straight, shoulder length hair and mulberry eyes, laughed and clapped and stomped from her chair. Later on she colored with me. Together, as she narrated, we made a picture of a family of five playing together outside in a tree filled front yard. A whirly blue sky. A scrambled yellow-orange sun. Tiny red birds. Big bluebirds. Eight starbound trees the same color as Christy’s hair. Five humongous smiles on five round faces. A square house with square windows. No fence. I drew a bubble over the dad’s head. Inside she wrote, “I love you.”

Greg ran over and tried to grab the picture, but Mrs. Scioscia stopped him. I drew another bubble over the mom’s head and then one small bubble next to the each of the three children’s mouths, but Christy didn’t have a chance to write anything.

Along with my sisters, my mom unexpectedly showed up, told Mrs. Scioscia I’d be leaving early and wouldn’t be back for a while. Without further explanation she frantically led us out of the building. I kept asking if Greg could come over, and she kept saying, not today. She put Judy in a stroller and asked Lydia to take her, picked up two overstuffed suitcases from the sidewalk, and led us down Church Street to a Gulf gas station, our usual stop, where we boarded a bus. We headed in the opposite direction so I knew we weren’t going home. We went to a motel in Hazleton where we would live for three days before moving in with my mom’s friend Debbie Barnes in West Hazleton. Debbie came to pick us up one morning in her station wagon. There wasn’t much to do at Debbie’s house. We spent the bulk of our time watching TV: soap operas, cartoons, game shows, MTV, Disney, and lots of black and white Westerns and war movies. I kept asking if Greg could come over, and my mom said he couldn’t until we got situated.

We went to the convenience store a couple blocks away twice per day to get something for lunch and dinner, and usually played outside for a little while every morning, afternoon, and evening, going for walks, playing at a nearby playground, playing tag with some of the kids from the neighborhood, pretending to be someone else: spies, ninjas, aliens, superheroes, soldiers, and cops, and exploring in the woods. Every night after we took baths, my mom would turn the TV off, and we’d listen to top 40 and oldies through a transistor radio on the front porch. Sometimes she said my dad was listening too. Whenever we’d ask when we’d get to go home, or why we weren’t at home, or when my Dad would be coming to get us, my mom would tell us that it was complicated and she wasn’t sure when we’d see him again. That would make Lydia and I cry uncontrollably. So that we wouldn’t cry, she began answering, “hopefully soon” and that seemed to help.

Lydia and I fought a lot, both verbally and physically. Most often she’d end up on her back, kicking, and spinning, an overturned helicopter, as I fended off her strikes and pounced. On one occasion, out in front of the house, Lydia kicked me in the face, just missing dislodging my eyeball, yet with enough force to split open the flesh just beside my left eye. As I screamed, with blood pouring down my face and onto the sidewalk, and Lydia hysterically apologizing, my dad scooped me up and took me inside to get cleaned up.

My mom met us in the bathroom and, immediately they started shouting. My dad yelled that she wasn’t taking good care of us and that I could have been seriously injured. He said the place was a mess, and that we shouldn’t be without our dad. My mom said it was just an accident and that we were fine there, at Debbie’s, without him. She yelled that he should stop telling her what to do, and that he should worry about getting his shit together if he ever wanted to see any of us again.

My dad tried to take us, but my mom wouldn’t let him.

“I wanna go with Dad!” I said. “I wanna go.” I held onto his leg, and tried leaping into his arms, but my mom grabbed onto me in midair and pulled me away.

“This isn’t right. This isn’t meant to be.” He said. “Lois. Let’s go home. Please. Just come home.”

Lydia and I sobbed in unison, begging them to take us home. They just kept yelling over one another so that nothing discernible was said. Debbie came in from the kitchen and told them to go to the backyard to talk, that she would wait inside with us.

“The kids shouldn’t see this.” She said.

My dad ignored her and ran upstairs. Along with my mom, we followed him into our room. He started stuffing our suitcases and said, “You’re coming home. We’re all going home. This is bullshit. You’re not staying here. The kids need to be with me. We need to be together. We’re all going home. Enough is enough already.”

We didn’t all go home. Eventually, my mom convinced my dad to leave, and said she wasn’t ready to come home yet. He hugged Lydia and I, gave us kisses, and said he’d come see us soon. “I miss you and I love you and I’ll see you soon.” He said. “Be good. It’ll be OK. I’ll see you soon.” Lydia and I, still sobbing, stood at the front door with our open suitcases while my mom walked my dad to my grandfather’s car. He tried to hug her, but she turned away. I attempted to run after him, but Debbie stopped me immediately so I fell to the floor in despair.

The next day my mom’s parents, my Baba and Zedo, picked us up and took us to live with them in Allentown, where we’d stay until late June. I missed my dad terribly and hardly stopped asking about him, but despite the pain of being apart, we managed to get by feeling somewhat normal and relatively happy. My Baba took us to the mall almost daily, we spent a lot of time in the arcade, she was always buying us things, my favorite gift being a mesh WWF hat that I rarely removed and a baseball mitt. The refrigerator was always stocked, I must have had 20 Cokes a day. Zedo wasn’t around much and when he was he didn’t have much to say. My uncle lived there too, and often argued with my mom about what a son of a bitch my dad was, but my uncle was the real son of a bitch. My aunts brought my cousins over a few times a week and we had a blast playing in the creek and riding Big Wheels down a huge hill behind the house, building forts, chasing girls, playing baseball, and watching Little League games at the nearby park.

On an especially hot and humid Sunday morning, a few days after my uncle held my mom by her throat against the wall and threatened to beat the shit out of all of us if we didn’t start following his rules to a motherfuckin T, Judy, my mom, and I headed down past the creek to pick blueberries. Usually my uncle would come with us, but we got up early and left without him. I filled my mitt with gigantic berries then, popping three or four into my mouth at a time, emptied the glove. Lydia walked beside me stuffing berries into a pouch she’d made with her shirt. Her and I walked slowly behind our mom, mindlessly wandering along the narrow path. I began climbing a small tree and by the time I’d gotten half way up, Lydia had caught up with my mom.

“Dad!” I screamed. “Mom! Look! It’s Dad!”

In a rusty, old, black GMC pick up truck, with the windows down, engine and music blaring, my dad sped down the street toward us as I hurriedly dropped from branch to branch, not once taking my eyes off the truck. I ran wildly toward my mom. “Mom, Dad’s here! Look! He’s here! He’s in a truck!”

Lydia began leaping into the air yelling, “Daddy!” while my mom smiled and waved me toward her.

I cut hard to my right, ripped right through the bushes, and fell to the sidewalk just as my dad pulled up to the curb.

“Dad!”

He picked me up and hugged me and within seconds, Lydia, Judy and my mom were hugging him too, and we were all together.

“You made it.” My mom said.

“I told you I’d be here.” He said. “I’m here. Right on time. Right where you said you’d be.”

“Thank you, Paul.”

“Lois. I…”

“I know. It’s just… I didn’t… I never wanted to…”

“I’m here, Lois. We’re together now. It’s OK. I understand.”

“Dad, where were you? Why didn’t you come get us? We…”

“I missed you guys so much. Oh my goodness, you got so big!” He squeezed my shoulder. “How is everybody?”

Lydia and I talked over each other, frantically trying to tell him everything that had happened and everything we were thinking all at once.

“We better go.” Said my mom.

We piled into the truck. My mom sat next to the door and held Judy on her lap, Lydia was next to her, and I was next to my dad. It took a few tries for him to get the truck to start, but once he did it roared. As we drove away, ‘Just What I Needed’ was on so my dad turned it up and Lydia and I sang along. At the end of the block my mom said, “Look”, and pointed to my uncle walking down the hill.

“Forget about him. He’s a piece of shit.” My dad said, as he turned the music louder and put the pedal to the floor.