Category Archives: Music

Once upon a time I was a romantic.

In the summer nights between seventh and eighth grade, on the verge of adolescent angst and leaving boyhood brilliance behind, I wrestled with the bedsheets as the outside breeze rustled the curtains.

The red glow of a digital clock and the yellow light of numbers 87 through 108 from the radio illuminated the inner-sanctum of the room, while shafts of a street lamp fell in through the finely filtered cross-hatching of a wire mesh screen.

Seventh grade had been rather dismal for me, as I struggled with algebra and allergies – the latter of which knocked me out for weeks at a stretch, further alienating me from school-mates who were already feeling distant and less-than-friendly. It didn’t help matters that I was suddenly allergic to cats, and the few whom had found a home with us were slowly being shipped out all because of me and my sickness. The arrival of spring that year marked a new beginning, as our last cat was given away in the cruel month of January.

Now, in the summer stretching out before me, in the darkness and the humid heat of a night in which the screeching of an insect matched the buzzing of the search for a proper radio station, I felt relief and release. The glorious opening chords of a Richard Marx power ballad came through the haze:

I sensed, even without having experienced the sensations yet, the loss and desire in a song like this. My heart felt something far in the future reaching back and connecting, some foreshadowing of pain and heartache that was soon to come. How I knew to access and fathom that sadness made no sense, but beneath the dim light of the night, I held on for dear life.

Hold on to the nights
Hold on to the memories
I wish that I could give you something more
That I could be yours

I didn’t like boys or girls then. I didn’t know what I liked. Stirrings of fraternal connections made certain body parts tingle, but it wasn’t yet sex or even love I was after. It was closeness. I craved a kindred spirit. I didn’t want to be so alone. And yet I kept a safe distance from kids my age, lazily usurping my brother’s friends when I wanted a bit of adventure. We’d ride our bikes beneath the leafy canopy of Pershing Road, popping wheelies on mismatched sidewalk ledges and skidding out over grassy islands, leaving dirty scars in our wake.

Most boys realize their boyhood in the sun of summer, and though I was no exception, I sought out something more in the night.

How do we explain something that took us by surprise
Promises in vain, love that is real but in disguise
What happens now
Do we break another rule
Let our lovers play the fool
I don’t know how
To stop feeling this way

I breathed in the air in the space between my bedroom and the lofty boughs of an old hawthorne tree outside my window. A dog barked in the distance, a lonely plaintive sound that echoed my own loneliness. In later years, I’d combat that sinking feeling by opening a book, but at that age, in that summer, I listened to the radio and found solace in the noise that masked the heart while revealing it at the same time.

Hold on to the nights
Hold on to the memories
If only I could give you more…

Fleeting moments of friendship flashed across my brain from the previous school year: sitting next to Ann in art class as she created an epic Bon Jovi collage, sharing answers with Jeff for a health test and trying the wrath of a very scary health class teacher, walking to band with Tim and laughing as he mentioned how a certain person was surprised to see the sun come up in the morning.

It dawned on me, earlier than most I suppose, that I wasn’t just trying to hold onto the nights, I was trying valiantly to hold onto my youth. As dismissive as I was of the silliness of being a kid, I knew it was a realm I’d regret having to leave. As much as I wanted to grow up as fast as possible, I was cognizant enough to know how much I would miss it. That awareness was childhood’s greatest – and quickest – killer.

Well, I think that I’ve been true to everybody else but me
And the way I feel about you makes my heart long to be free
Every time I look into your eyes, I’m helplessly aware
That the someone I’ve been searching for is right there.

I had a few more years before I’d leave all that innocence behind. For that night, the summer felt a little endless, and somehow there was comfort in that abyss. We never know what is in store for us. That’s the beauty and the rub. Though I’d never be one to really hold on to anything, I was still just a boy trying to find his piece of the kingdom. “You may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have.” One midnight gone…

Hold on to the nights
Hold on to the memories
I wish that I could give you more…

Hold on to the nights.

The dangerous rhyme-riddled plague of blame and shame can wreak havoc on the most well-ordered of lives. Even when you think you have the thing beat, it rears its ugly head again, reminding you that no matter far you’ve come you can’t erase the past. In the following song by Imagine Dragons, we find a protagonist giving up and giving in. Such a thing is a horror to go through, but a fascinating process to watch. We are an emotionally blood-thirsty species. We revel in the misery of others. We find relief in any struggle that’s not our own. It’s the wretchedness of human nature, and sooner or later we are all brought so low.

I’m sorry for everything
Oh everything I’ve done…

Sometimes you have to give up on things. Sometimes you have to give up on people. It’s the only way to absolve certain issues. Let go and let come what may. There is a strength that comes from owning your fuck-ups, and a grace that results from admitting your failings. Whatever terrors are in the past will always lurk, ready to trip you up at the most inopportune time, unless you face them. The first step in doing that is admitting your own faults and mistakes. No one is perfect. Not all the time.

Oh I’m going to mess this up
Oh this is just my luck
Over and over and over again

I’m sorry for everything
Oh everything I’ve done
From the second that I was born
It seems I had a loaded gun
And then I shot, shot, shot a hole through
Everything I loved
Oh I shot, shot, shot a hole through every single
Thing that I loved

Am I out of luck?
Am I waiting to break?
When I keep saying that I’m looking for a
Way to escape
Oh I’m wishing I had what I’d taken for granted
I can’t help you when I’m only gonna do
You wrong

There are those of us who can’t seem to do anything but hurt others. Even with the best of intentions, even when acting out of a supposed place of love, the end result is always pain. When that happens over and over and over again, something has to change. In certain romantic relationships, I’ve been that bull in the china shop. In certain familial relationships, I’ve been on the receiving end of such harm. Somewhere in-between I hoped to find happiness.

In the meantime can we let it go
At the roadside that
We used to know
We can let this drift away
Oh we let this drift away
At the bayside
Where you used to show
In the moonlight
Where we let it go
We can let this drift away
Oh we let this drift away

To let go, to allow time to pass, to move on along your own path – this is how I’ve survived – and it’s how I’ll continue to survive. A certain courage is required to do that. A fortitude and belief, somewhere deep within, that you’ll be all right, that no matter what happens you can do it. You will be ok, because you have to be.

And there’s always time to change your mind
Oh there’s always time to change your mind
Oh love, can you hear me
Oh let it drift away…

The relatively dark ending of Side One now over (there should always be a dramatic finish to the first act) we turn now to a Valentine’s reprieve in the form of fantasy. When real life doesn’t work out, and more often than not it doesn’t (at least not to the perfect extent that some of us would like) there’s only one thing to do: escape. I’m not talking the well-practiced acceptance speech after winning an Oscar/Grammy/Tony/Emmy award, or the imagined thunderous applause after performing a sell-out concert in Madison Square Garden, or even the perfectly-executed dance routine at a wedding that has all guests gasping in thrilled adoration and awe, I’m talking something more subtle yet just as seemingly unattainable: the perfect guy.

Track #4: LOST IN YOUR EYES

He watches me in the brief moments between classes. Our lockers are across from each other, and out of the corner of my eye I can tell he is pausing, waiting until I catch him staring, at which point he’ll look away or rush off or, on those happiest of days, look back and give a brief smile. He is older than me, but I like that. There is something protective about the way he behaves toward me, something I never felt even from my own parents. His protection was absolute, unwavering, and unconditional. It was simply in his nature.

After school one day he found me sitting by the curb, waiting for my ride. He sat down next to me. The brush of his denim was soft but firm, and he smelled vaguely of warmth – of toast on a cold morning, of apple pie on a cold night, of hot chocolate on a winter day – and of something dirtier.

He makes a bit of small talk, asks about a class I’m in that he took a couple of years ago, then squeezes my shoulder as a way of saying good-bye. I look up at him as he rises, and he has that smile again. And those eyes. And suddenly I am lost.

That night, I lie in bed unable to sleep. The feel of his hand on my shoulder had thrilled me, and I put my own hand on the bony area trying to determine what he might have felt. It is thin and slight beneath my hand, and I wonder at how it would compare to his own broadness and muscles. I feel embarrassed and ashamed, and my heart is in riot and rapture. I try to conjure his scent, try to recall the brief brush of his leg against mine, and only end up pulling a pillow close to myself for comfort. I want to cry.

I don’t mind not knowing what I’m headed for

You can take me to the skies

It’s like being lost in heaven

when I’m lost in your eyes. 

I just fell…

The days pass slowly, filled with the agonizing distractions of school work and classes between which I live in the brief moments that I’m near him. I write his name on scraps of paper that I quickly tear into tiny pieces with less than a letter on each lest anyone piece together the secret wishes of my heart. Alone in my bedroom, I write more than his name.

Love letters and dreams and fantasies of a life together. I write him my darkest fears, tell him my most daring desires, and explain how in the moment he touched my shoulder my whole world changed. I fold it up, seal and date it, and hide it deep in the bottom drawer of my desk. One day I will present it to him ~ maybe when we get married, maybe when we buy our first home, maybe when we celebrate our 50th anniversary – but some way and somehow he must know.

Track #5: I’LL BE YOUR EVERYTHING

He says hello to me in the hallway, whenever we pass. Sometimes it seems like he goes out of his way to do so, pushing through a throng of students just to get closer to me, then I think it’s all in my head. Why would anyone bother, especially someone as beautiful as him? But then I’m sure of it, certain that he looks frustrated if he can’t reach me before the sea of classmates swirls me away from him. On those days when we both linger after classes are done, I wonder if he too feels shy and excited and reluctant to leave. We begin walking out together, and I admit that I wait if he’s running late, or hurry if some teacher keeps class a little longer than usual. After a few days, it feels like old habit, and soon it is my favorite part of the day. There is a decent trek from our lockers to the parking lot where his car is and where my ride arrives, and I want to believe we both slow a bit near the end, anything to prolong our time together.

One day he tells me he should just drop me off to save my parents the drive. I’m not far out of his way. The excitement of the prospect of being alone in a car with him is matched only by the realization that he knows where I live. In those pre-internet days, before FaceBook and social media left us all transparently visible on a Google map, he managed to find out something about me. That someone cared enough to research where I lived, or at least to ask, touched me more than anything. Most of the time the world – at least my world – didn’t bother to care. Then, just like that, he was driving me home every day. Away from the prying eyes of classmates and the boundaries of school, he was different.

It’s hard to explain – he was a little less guarded, more ready to laugh, and somehow happier. I thought it was just being out of school that produced the giddiness, but a small part of me – the part that struggled to believe whether I was worthy of love – peeked out from years of hiding and allowed myself the possible realization that he was happier because I was with him. No amount of therapy or self-help books would ever surpass what that single moment accomplished. There is nothing quite as nourishing as feeling loved.

One day he doesn’t stop at my house, but glides past and around the block again. I challenge him with a quizzical glare, but his look and subsequent tone are so serious I don’t make a sarcastic comment. He tells me that he has something for me but that it’s not a big deal, just something he made because he saw how I liked certain songs on our rides home. With a trembling hand, he reaches into the glove compartment and pulls out a cassette tape. On the side he has written, “Alan’s Melancholy Mix” and then a listing of all the songs. Most are ones we’d listened to on our brief rides, when he’d briefly sing along and give me a side smile, knowing I was too shy to ever join in.

There were a couple of classic rock songs, some power ballads from the likes of Journey and Chicago, and a few New Wave dance ditties that we both guiltily admired. The smile-inducing if infuriating inclusion of ‘You Can Call Me Al’ (because he knows that you absolutely can’t) rounds out the tape, but the best part is what he writes within the liner notes:

“For a guy who always seems a little sadder than he should be.”

Track #6: FAITHFULLY 

I wear the tape out, getting out of bed multiple times in the night to flip it over and begin it again. I replay the moment he gave it to me, the way his hand touched mine and lingered, as if there was more to be done. Years later, I would reassemble that mix of songs into a playlist and present it to him on an iPod. His eyes would light up as he played each song and we remembered those rides together. Our first kiss, the way he held my hand before it, and the ensuing lifetime of love played out amid the pop songs of the 80’s. We were in a different car, in a different city, and a completely different world, but we’d managed to stay together.

I’m still yours…

Faithfully.

You don’t need the whole world to love you, you just need the one.

{PS – None of this fantasy ever happened. No guy ever rescued me from the doldrums and terrors of school. I had to rescue myself, and I did, and if I’m a little bitter about it, well, that’s what Valentine’s Day is sometimes for.}

There is no cheesier “holiday” than Valentine’s Day, and while I have no horrible V-Day memories to conjure, neither have I any overtly romantic ones that come to mind. Every day with Andy is like Valentine’s Day. (Awwwww…) This has always been a Hallmark-perpetuated celebration of the hollow and trite, and traditionally I wear black to mark the occasion. It wasn’t always this way. When I was a boy the sweeping grand possibility of romance blasted from the horns of golden cherubs, and I fervently believed that one day my prince would come. As a throwback to that innocent time, to the moments when my jadedness had not yet hardened into its current implacable state, I present to you this modern-day version of a mix tape.

Back when I was a wee youngster, we had cassette tapes. They were small plastic rectangles that slid into a stereo or Walkman and played music from the slow turning of a fine, shiny brown filament. They could hold anywhere from 60 to 120 minutes of music – most clocking in at the 90 minute range. That’s a lot of space to fill with sound, but there never seemed to be a dearth of things to say though music. I won’t put you through anything as torturous or time-consuming as that – in fact, this is more of a super-brief EP than a proper mix tape, but the sentiment is the same. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Track #1: YOU’RE THE INSPIRATION

In the scant few years before the boys would square off against the girls, my best friends were mostly of the female persuasion. While any burgeoning physical attraction was leaning toward the guys, I had much more in common with the girls. They found me funny, and I found them more interesting than boys. They cared about pretty things, like hair and shoes and jewelry, and they were less rambunctious and violent than boys. We were not quite to the age where the lines were drawn in the sand though, so my friendships with girls in the class went relatively unridiculed. Such safety and freedom were more fleeting than I realized, and soon enough it would be forbidden to sit at a table of girls until high school. I didn’t know this then, so went about blissfully unaware of the impending end to such easy and sexless camaraderie.

For Valentine’s Day we would create our own Valentine receptacles out of brown paper bags, decorated with construction paper and glitter and doilies – the only time it would be ok for boys to dabble with doilies. I poured my heart into it, making the prettiest bag I could, hoping to attract the most Valentines  ~ not just because of who I was but because of how pretty I could make my bag. In truth, none of this really crossed my conscious mind. I loved a good craft project as much as the next person, but when given free reign I always felt a shiver of panic, particularly when no guidelines or rules were established. A little freedom is a good thing; too much makes me uncomfortable. Chalk it up to my Virgo birthdate.

Looking back, I can see now that I was never as despised as I sometimes felt I was. In fact, my bag was one of the heavier ones. This was a time before we were really hardened by the world, a time before any serious divisive differences. When left to their own devices, most children are pretty accepting of each other. It’s when parental and adult prejudices and influences start coming into play that kids get ruined or enriched.

For those few Valentine’s Days when boys and girls could give loving cards to each other without care or concern, I felt happy and adored. There was a purity in that exchange, something that would be missing after a certain age. We gave our hearts to one another, without reserve, without fear, without judgment.

You’re the meaning in my life, you’re the inspiration.

You bring feeling to my life, you’re the inspiration.

When you love somebody til the end of time…

Track #2: OPEN ARMS

By the last years of our time at R.J. McNulty Elementary School, we were beginning to galvanize into adolescents. The change was sometimes sudden, sometimes slow, and always irreversible. Boys didn’t much socialize with girls except to torment and antagonize. It was playful teasing for the most part, the set-up for more serious flirtations to come. Yet my heart sang a different tune. The sirens that called to me weren’t female, and the attractions I felt toward girls in my class were platonic and comforting, not dangerous or tinged with desire.

At night, the glowing red digital colon of my alarm clock blinked on and off its steady count of seconds. Staring idly at the shaft of hallway light that came in through the cracked door, I listened as Journey’s ‘Open Arms’ came on over the radio. At such a young age, I couldn’t have had the first clue about romantic love, but something in me had always understood longing. The unrequited fancies of a boy too often get lost in the assumed toughness that comes from being a boy. I never had that toughness, so I’d have to craft a cage for my heart for my own protection. I didn’t know that then, and I’m sort of glad.

I opened my heart to every silly crush and foolish infatuation, and fell head-first into the giddy swirling notion of what I thought was love. I pined silently and relentlessly for a camp counselor, a class-mate, and the blonde guy on ‘CHiPs.’ It would be my major downfall in life: to want the ones who didn’t want me back. My heart would never learn. My heart would never quiet. And my heart would never stop… longing… wanting… loving.

So now I come to you with open arms

Nothing to hide, believe what I say

So here I am with open arms

Hoping you’ll see what your love means to me…

Track #3: THE SEARCH IS OVER

Shards of ice amid a crazy state of mind. Disconcerting winter thaws and restless summer nights. The shifting of seasons across the mine-field of my heart. The ongoing search for a match. The quest for a partner. The fear of being alone. Such thoughts marred the mind as it tried to empty itself for sleep.

A love song on the radio. Lovers listening on the ride home. And me, not giving a fuck. Not even trying. In black and gray, damning the day of St. Valentine with a vehemence reserved for the bitter and the bereft, I spit out emotional vitriol and the carrion of trampled hearts in my wake.

I was living for a dream,

Loving for a moment.

Taking on the world,

That was just my style…

The random act of violence upon an innocent bystander is somehow easier to take than the sweet stab of veiled aggression by a lover or a family member. The former may leave you with a sickening lack of faith in the world, but the latter always leaves you with a sickening lack of faith in yourself. It is invariably destructive.

A shattered heart can never quite be put back together again.

All these silly love songs, all the cards and flowers and candy, all the jewelry and perfume and cologne – are but masks to disguise the utter emptiness of this holiday. If you’re lucky enough to get to this point in your life relatively unscathed, and if your heart has never been broken, hold onto that. For the rest of us, we’ll just keep looking for a way back to the day our school desks were littered with the innocent love notes of classmates, to a time when love was given without hesitation or reluctance or question, and to the last moment our hearts were full.

[I bet you can’t wait to flip the tape to get to Side Two…]

Most of us complain when a snowstorm wreaks havoc with our plans, but lately I’ve learned to embrace them. For a few hours, or as long as the snow keeps us inside, we are bound in one place. A favorite place to ride out a winter storm is at the condo in Boston, where I can watch the falling snow from the cozy environs of that stalwart structure.

A cup of hot tea in hand, a book waiting to be opened on the table, and a slow song like this one on the stereo.

Goodbye, no use leading with our chins
This is where our story ends
Never lovers ever friends

Goodbye, let our hearts call it a day
But before you walk away
I sincerely want to say

I wish you bluebirds in the spring
To give your heart a song to sing
And then a kiss, but more than this, I wish you love

And in July, a lemonade
To cool you in some leafy glade
I wish you health, and more than wealth, I wish you love

My breaking heart and I agree
That you and I could never be
So with my best, my very best, I set you free

I wish you shelter from the storm
A cozy fire to keep you warm
But most of all, when snowflakes fall, I wish you love
But most of all, when snowflakes fall, I wish you love.

Please, don’t let this feeling end
It’s everything I am, everything I want to be
I can see what’s mine now
Finding out what’s true since I found you
Looking through the eyes of love

Now, I can take the time, I can see my life

As it comes up shining now

Reaching out to touch you

I can feel so much since I found you

Looking through the eyes of love

The year was 1986.

The scene was the gymnasium at R.J. McNulty Elementary School.

We were in sixth grade – our last day of sixth grade – and those of us in the band were playing the ‘Theme from Ice Castles’ – in likely rather-sad fashion. Yet the melody came through, and as I read the lyrics that went along with the song, I wondered if our band conductor/football coach Mr. Pangburn had chosen the song for its sentiment or sound. Did he know that some of us were realizing that our childhoods were coming to an end?

And now I do believe
That even in a storm
We’ll find some light
Knowing you’re beside me
I’m all right…

Like most kids, I didn’t fully fathom that the last years of childhood were in fact the last years of childhood. Turning into a young adult always seemed far away, just out of reach and tantalizingly unavailable. While most of me couldn’t wait to get there (I found kids to be, for the most part, tiresome and foolish) there was a small portion of my heart that held onto my youth, that didn’t want to grow up. That little boy was the one playing the oboe in the hot, stuffy gym of McNulty School, during his sixth grade graduation, in the only school he’d ever known since kindergarten.

He thought back to that first day, when his mother set him free all those years ago. He sobbed at the ankles of his teacher, Miss Delamater, so sad and terrified was he at being left alone in a room of strangers. It took a few days before he would talk. But eventually he found his way. He made friends, and was especially popular with the girls. He survived the usual battles of childhood – chicken pox and forgotten homework and being sent to the back of the class for laughing too much (as if he could control that!) – and less-than-usual battles as well – a lactose intolerance that left his stomach in such pain he missed weeks at a time, a strange fear of being away from home that made him look up at the fluorescent lights to dry the tears that came suddenly from seemingly nowhere, and the nagging, gnawing suspicion that the difference he felt in himself from his classmates was indeed very different from the difference that most kids feel. Now, at the end of his elementary journey, he understood that he didn’t want it to be over. All the pain and the sadness was coupled with such joy and happiness, and the whole path was so rich and wonderful and varied that he wasn’t ready to let it go. But the band played on…

Please, don’t let this feeling end
It might not come again and I want to remember
How it feels to touch you
How I feel so much since I found you
Looking through the eyes of love

And now I do believe
That even in a storm
We’ll find some light
Knowing you’re beside me
I’m all right

My eyes turned watery. I looked around at my classmates, at my friends, and I knew it would never be the same. They didn’t seem to notice. The song ended with a spattering of applause. The ceremony continued. At the end, we had some refreshments, said a few good-byes, and headed off into the summer.

The only way I can get through winter in upstate New York is by seeking out friends to share the misery – and the light. It was my friend JoAnn who introduced me to Joshua Radin – the singer-songwriter responsible for this musical gem of solace and comfort. JoJo and I go back over sixteen years, and winters in Cape Cod, Boston, and Albany have all been made a little easier when we’re together. Frigid walks in the South End to find a basenji, snowy hikes and parking lot doughnuts in Cape Cod, and cozy dinners in Albany have all been part of our winter repertoire.

I like the way you’re not afraid
You got the world planned in your mind
People say you cannot do well
They don’t know a friend like you.