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When times are good, that's not when you find out who your friends are. When times are bad you find out, and god help you if you're ruled by your illusions about people.

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crashing again past few days.

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hard to even get out of bed.

thoughts will not stop, insomnia, wandering the apartment at night standing at the refrigerator door eating flan. listening to the night sounds of the city, distant beat of music, someone yelling, the sound fades, someone driving away and yelling?

i wish i could get away from whatever it is that makes my mind do this. but depression is real and terrifying and i don't seem to have any control over it. i never did.

i really believe that but for serious clinical depression, my grandmother might still be alive, my mom as well. moving forward feels like a promise to them to not give up.

i also have something they didn't have: a present, caring partner. i waited so long to find him and never stop being happy, so happy, that he is here.

but that in itself does not put a stop to this kind of illness.

medication, exercise, diet---everything plays a role. two things this weekend: ran out of one of my meds and did not refill it in time, so missed two days: and two, i ate a lot of sugar. a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot, the way only an addict can eat sugar. it could be these two things as much as anything that put me under.

i do thank god that i have a job i can do, which i love. that is where i am, in the studio where i will send my voice out into the world. and i hope my voice will be OK today.

sometimes when i'm crashing my voice is perfectly fine. others, it does get affected---weak, reedy, strained.

so the truth of the matter is, ruth was partially right. only partially---but there was some truth in what she said about my voice being problematic. not as much as she insisted, but knowing what i know now, that after five years of effexor the medication was most likely pooping out (losing effectiveness)---it makes sense to me, and i remember, not being pleased with it some days.

that's a story for later though---here in the present, i have to call on my voice. today. now. and hope it works all right. strong, announcerish, smooth, confident. that's my voice on a good day. it might be perfectly fine..and it might not.

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OK--first set of feeds over with.

WAIT A MINUTE, WHAT IF I WANT TO GET OFF?

this computer thing has been fun for a while, but it is starting to scare me. for the last 8 years or so, i have become disconnected from so many things in the here and now, that i am starting to feel disembodied. i don't know if this is the depression speaking, but the whole world seems to be ----not here. talking into cell phones or typing on whatever little PDA thing they have in their hand. people don't look at you in the grocery store as they pass by. or on the street. and in cars, especially in cars.

the other thing is that by keeping track of my money online, and i know i only have myself to blame, my notion of exactly how much money i have to spend, has taken a severe beating. before computers i had checking accounts, savings accounts, NO credit card balances EVER EVER EVER. it always shocked me when i heard about people who kept balances in their credit cards.

well, no more.

so easy to buy things--swipe a card, or input numbers, just numbers! just type some numbers into a computer and you can have stuff brought right to your doorstep! without ever having to leave!

this is why i am walking every day now, why it is a priority. nothing seems real anymore, at least not in the way i know real. and people seem....not here.

everyone is going from here to there, yakking away about god knows what, what on earth do people have to talk about? all this talking?

i tried to do that, today. tried to do a thing that i see people doing all the time, all the frickin' time...i was walking along the street and pulled out my cell phone thinking i'd give tim a call and see if he wanted me to pick anything up from the store. i dialed and put the phone up to my ear and could hear, very faintly, the ring on the other end. but mostly it was wind noise. i could barely hear anything when i tunneled my consciousness down into that dark place in the phone, which is no place, the place conversations exist in, when they're with someone far away.

9:23pm later

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OK--what I was going to say was, I couldn't do it. I couldn't make that call. I didn't want to take myself away from my sunny walk, to this wind tunnel where I would barely have been able to hear Tim.

everyone walks along talking on cell phones....i can't do it.

i have to be here.

right here.

right now.

not in some dark cyberspace nonplace, not in phoneconversationland.

so i may be gone for a few days. i don't know.

just having trouble...just being in the world. and blogging means i have to go to that disembodied place where all i am is text on a screen.

i am not a brain in a vat. i have to live and breathe. otherwise what the fuck am i doing here?

it seems very dangerous, this world we're growing--cutting people off from the kind of rhythms that have sustained life for all these millions of years. we drive cars, watch TV, interact through the computer....where is everyone? i don't know where they are but i have to find them. the people who are in the here and now.

wherever that is.

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August 23, 2008

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Malcolm Morley. (American, born Great Britain, 1931). The Day of the Locust. 1977. Oil on canvas, 7' 10 1/8" x 7' 6 5/8" (239.3 x 199.5 cm). The Bernhill Fund, Enid A. Haupt and Sid R. Bass Funds. © 2008 Malcolm Morley

Ruth hung a print of this for a time at the radio station, after September 11. It was the first thing you would see coming in the station's west entrance. People complained about it, and it finally was taken down. But it was too late. After having seen this blown-up image, covering an entire wall for those several months, it was etched in my mind forever.

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this would have been me if i had not gotten out of dallas

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22:15

August 22, 2008

13:31

from the fence down the block


these flowers are a blue that is one of my favorite colors on earth

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mosaic tiles for sale on ebay

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2nd day in a row of orange sandals

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driving to work today it was a strawberry popsicle, and another old KCRW show. volume up, another slide through hot sunny hollywood. what'd you think of my sponge bob sunglasses? yeah, yeah, yeah, i know. they're for kids. there's a little yellow spongebob decal poking its head up in the corner of one of the lenses.

i bought these because they were the only ones at rite aid with blue lenses. blue lenses filter out the brown tones from southern california's air, and make the place look almost clean. the sky---put them on and it's blue again. colors look cooler. i've gone most of the summer without new glasses, should have gone to venice beach a long time ago, where they have racks and racks of glasses in every conceiveable color with a rainbow of different color lenses....racks and racks of them glittering in the sun. that's where i normally pick out a nice groovy-looking pair of blue sunglasses to get me through the summer. they're scratched to hell by the end of the year from so much wear.

anyway, since i no longer live near venice beach, and since gas is so dear that i don't just go trotting over there anymore, i finally just said fuck it and bought the damn sponge bob glasses at rite aid.

i know my family would disapprove. don't wear those silly glasses, they make you look stupid, people will laugh at you, it is a big deal. what? you mean if people bother to laugh at you, they must have too much time on their hands? you are living in your own little dreamworld, cynthia.

no, i'm living in california.

california is the magnet that draws all kinds of mysterious variations on the human theme, and gives them a home. my family would be completely serious, every last one of them; the women, that is. the men would look to the women to see what was right and wrong, in this matter. they utterly cannot grok a place where appearance is this variable. people of other cultures, with other languages, people from every single rung on the socioeconomic ladder----people of other colors --everyone is here and appearance is not the first thing that matters, to many, many people.

you go to a football game at home (chardon, ohio, small town east of cleveland) and everyone is white, and wearing clothes from land's end or j. crew (the latter only on the wealthier types). i remember looking into the stands once at a game of my brother's and being amazed at the factory-stamped uniformity. (i was very bad at this in middle school, had no idea how to blend in, and as a result was pretty much a geek.) in the bleachers, no one stood out---no one. here and there, a pretty face--that was it.

my little sister used to hang out with a girl who had the most stunning face, the face of a model; looking at her was intimidating; no one could look away. something happened with that friendship that made me so angry i wanted to find this girl and twist her arm up behind her back til it hurt, and say, "you little cunt. don't you ever, ever, ever hurt my little sister again, and if you do, i will fly back here from california and show up on your doorstep and make your life fucking miserable, because i will tell everyone in town, everyone, what a bitch i think you are, and what you did."

there's a reason i never did that. like her friend, my sister went to the Notre Dame Academy and majored in How To Be a Bitch; and for a long time she was happy to show me just how much she'd learned. for a long long time i endured this because that's what you do, in my family--endure---but it's come to an end.

this happened around the same time that i realized i really can pretty much put up with anyone's shit, if they're able to understand that they, and they alone, are responsible for their own happiness. and this is not the same as being self-absorbed (another accusation of my long-suffering family---which has always hurt because there's just enough truth in it to be plausible, unless you really know me. which they don't.) we are all connected, every last one of us. and if we can manage not to inflict our worst selves on each other, there itself is the key to the universe, the cure for the bottomless loneliness that can threaten to swallow us up....at least in my world.

"oh love and the reason i do not fall into the street is love.."
e.e.cummings

however.....my ability to cope with blamers has pretty much died a long and tortured death. thanks be to god!

meanwhile, as i walked out to my car today, i walked past the woman who lives in one of the storage lockers in the carport. i'm not sure if she exactly lives there, but she is there a lot. she was sitting up in it today with her legs dangling out.

once when she and a few other kids were camping in the carport, i gave them some soup and i gave her a blanket and a cashmere sweater. when i left today, i said hi and waved.

this too would blow the mind of anyone in my family. just the fact that i said hi to her. she's a young, beautiful woman, dark as dark chocolate with beautiful skin, tall, willowy, and she smiles just like any normal person. i don't know why she's homeless. she doesn't seem drugged or wasted or stupid. she is always pleasant and smiles and makes eye contact.

and she's a person, for christ's sake.

it's hard to look at her though. every time, i think, "there but for two paychecks go i."

now i am in the cool air conditioning, staring into a computer screen, and i have to earn that paycheck once again. into the cool world of text and voice and a dimly lit studio. for the rest of the day.

it's been a long time since i've felt this in tune with life. it's been a really hard three years. i have not been able to hear music, colors are seen as if from a great distance, other people are carefully on the other side of doors, with very few exceptions. with the love of the man i finally found, and at metro, where work is just work, not all-consuming and life-threatening---and under the care of a new doctor, the world is once again becoming a place i can live, not just survive. if i'd known what i was getting into when i walked out of K***.....but i did. i did know, but just intellectually, that it would be like ripping my soul out of my body. knowing that, and experiencing it, are two different things.

but even knowing, even knowing---i would do it again. from this distance it is more clear to me, not less, that it was time to go.

change can be good. it doesn't have to feel good. it's not necessarily good in and of itself. but it was time. KCRW was a baptism in everything from fire to cool water; it demanded my best and also brought out my worst--just like with everyone else who loves the place, and works in the basement. in rooms, and moods, that aren't described by the station's PR machine (which is sensational and overwhelming, and absolute rule of law).

i think about the website i put up in which i wrote of my experiences when i left, and wonder if terry worries that maybe one day i'll do something similar to metro. he doesn't know, but probably should, that this will never happen. the two places are entirely different cultures. not least of all, people here are not paralyzed by worry about what others think of them---at least the people on the talent side, the people who work like me in studios that feed directly to radio stations around the city. people complain about work here just like they do everywhere else...no more, and probably quite a bit less. ---but to anyone who will listen, i tell them to not take it for granted. compared to many places i've worked, and there have been many----it's very, very cool. people laugh loudly here and that is not a rare occurrence. in fact, they're laughing now. a wave of laughter out in the lobby with conversational hum in the background and occasional roarlets of mirth off to the side. feels like friday, yes indeed.

i've got on the orange sandals and i'm feeling alright.

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August 21, 2008

(sharon's birthday-she would be 65)

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a birthday song! yeaahawww!

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"Happy Birthday"

Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you

Well, it's time to celebrate your birthday, it happens every year
We'll eat a lot of broccoli and drink a lot of beer
You should be good and happy that there's something you can eat
A million people every day are starving in the street

Your daddy's in the gutter with the wretched and the poor
Your mama's in the kitchen with a can of Cycle Four
There's garbage in the water
There's poison in the sky
I guess it won't be long before we're all gonna die
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you

Well, what's the matter little friend, you think this party is the pits
Enjoy it while you can, we'll soon be blown to bits
The monkeys in the pentagon are gonna cook our goose
Their finger's on the button, all they need it an excuse

It doesn't take a military genius to see
We'll all be crispy critters after World War III
There's nowhere you can run to, nowhere you can hide
When they drop the big one, we all get fried

(Come on boys and girls, sing along, ok?)

Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
wow! (background screaming, sound effect)

Well there's a punk in the alley and he's looking for a fight
There's an Arab on the corner buying everything in sight
There's a mother in the ghetto with another mouth to feed
Seems that everywhere you look today there's misery and greed

I guess you know the Earth is gonna crash into the sun
But that's no reason why we shouldn't have a little fun
So if you think it's scary, if it's more than you can take
Just blow out the candles and have a piece of cake

Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
wow!

Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you

(Happy Birthday!)

And a pinch to grow an inch!

weird al yankovic

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YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH MORE WHEN YOU WEAR BOOTS



I have started eating popsicles in the car on the way to work. if i need both hands to steer i put the popsicle into a travel mug in my front console. windows open, moonroof open, steering through the side streets out of hollywood into culver city...eating my tangerine popsicles. listening to music and not news. walking in the neighborhood every day. looking at people and not looking away.

at the intersection of olympic and la brea there is an older black man who holds out his hat. i see him there both day and night. today he gets up from his post and starts walking back up the median toward the back of the line of cars, where i am. i think, oh hell, he's coming back here and i have nothing for him, i'm so fucking broke, just ignore him, damn it, i hate doing this. and i see out of the corner of my eye that he has the square jaw and stooped posture similar to an old friend, joe frank, who was somewhere between a friend and lover to me for several years a long time ago. so i look over and check him out, burkey, don't stare at these people, what the fuck are you doing. but all of a sudden i feel like it's just me, and this guy on the street who's begging for money. all these cars, trucks, machines and concrete around us at this intersection and we are the only two living things acknowledging each other. and can't i even spare him a smile? is everyone so afraid to look at each other these days that i can't even smile at this dude? so i smile. and then i look away because you're not supposed to stare at people in public like this. i look back to see if he's looking at me, and he is. he's standing there on the median about a car's length away, not stepping any closer. i pretend like i wasn't looking to see if he was looking, then think fuck it, and turn back and give him a smile, and then the line of traffic starts to move.

and he looks at me out of the corner of his eye and nods. his eye twinkles and he looks right at me and he's not asking for anything or trying to give me shit by saying "god bless you," or any of those other gestures. he's just grinning and saying, i see you. that's how it seems.

and then i drive on.

and i feel as if i've passed some test.

i don't want to not be here. i don't want to be thinking about what's next or what's down the road. i don't want to be thinking about how great life will be when fill in the blank. i want to be right here now in this city under the blazing sky sweating and feeling the sun warming the little hairs on my arm. this is the time, now, not some future time when i will be more beautiful or smarter or more clever. not yesterday even though there are so many memories to pick and choose.

you won't see a bluetooth in my ear. you won't hear me talking to anyone but whoever is right there in front of me. everyone seems lately to be somewhere else, staring into their crackberries, their minds elsewhere from the here and now. sometimes i feel as if i'm surrounded by zombies. i will not walk down this street one more single day wishing i was somewhere else. this is the place and these are the days, my friends, and these are the days, my friends, in the words of philip glass. these are the days.

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August 20, 2008

1.18pm

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Tom Wolfe, I Am Charlotte Simmons
c. 2004

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August 19, 2008

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If you look the opposite direction, Maybe It Will Go Away By Itself department...

Aw, the poor rats!! They have as much right to a nice house in the Pacific Palisades as anyone....don't they? Sure sounds like local government dragged its feet on dealing with this one....a genuinely infested Rat Castle in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods of the world.

I love California (and Los Angeles especially) because people here don't hide their weirdness, they wear it on their sleeves and sometimes even milk a living out of it. ...No matter how many years I'm here, there's always some weirdness that raises the bar on Weird. Southern California is where the nerve endings of the entire world come to the surface. I'm convinced of it. Not that it's any less weird, in, say, Ohio, where, for example, I witnessed extremely weird things on a daily basis; it's just that there, it's kept behind closed doors. In So Cal, buildings sometimes cannot contain the weirdness. Although my life is extremely sane now, post-KCRW.

Not that that isn't a little boring. Well.

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Harry Shearer is one of my favorite radio hosts. It took a while for his show to resonate with me. But when it comes to pointing out the ridiculous, I like him a lot.

So this is a recent Harry offering: "Found Objects" on the Harry channel on Laura Ingraham Outtakes, apparently from what's described as "a short-lived show" on Fox News. Laura Ingraham is a conservative radio talk host, and I have to confess I haven't listened to her show even once. I generally try to avoid those kind of shows because they destroy my will to live. There are a few I can handle for a while, like Lars Larson, because amidst the reactions I have of "you must be fucking insane," I sometimes have "hm, that's interesting" reactions. And those are moments that I live for. "Oh, that's interesting. Didn't know that." Larson is one of those rare individuals who seems genuinely interested in the "why" of things, and he ventures to explore that, engages callers politely, and, as I know from talking to him on email (he is also very interactive online with listeners) that he works a 12 hour day, 7 hours !on the air! which---YOU try concentrating and performing for so long at such a pitch of intellectual demand---YOU TRY IT. No wonder the man's crazy. But anyway, I was off the path there.

I've never listened to Laura Ingraham. But when I watched this offering by Harry, I was expecting to hate her guts and think, "another behind-the-scenes on what kind of bullshit really goes on....let's see the Bitch Queen. Hah! Let's see her lose control."

But that didn't happen. Tim, whose nose is in the computer searching for clues to the world most mornings --came up with this one today, and we watched it before I headed in to work.

You do see Laura sputtering ineffectually. She's asking where are her notes, why wasn't this done, why wasn't that done. But she doesn't seem mean about it. Believe me, I've engineered a lot meaner and more impatient hosts any number of times over my radio career. A good bit of the time there was someone obsessing over her hair or her makeup or fixing something about her appearance, but she couldn't seem to get coordinated with her producers as far as getting the material she needed in time to air. She does seem frustrated as hell. But not mean. Plaintive? Maybe a tad. Irritated? Yeah. "Don't come in my ear." That part was funny. Like when I was engineering Ruth Seymour and she wanted me to play music from the Three Tenors under her. "Cindi, just have the three tenors running under me." That was in the mid-90's. I still have the cartoon I drew of Ruth standing gloriously with legs planted and eyeglasses on, looking smart, while a small version of the three tenors ran between her legs singing. Well, it was funny then, sort of. Anyway. "Don't come in my ear." OK. That made me laugh.

But mostly, even though she's of a conservative bent, she really seemed to be having a hell of a time with these Fox TV people around her, and they didn't seem very responsive. At one point she says, "Don't talk so fast. Slower. Please." You know how those people on Fox, those talking heads, they talk a mile a minute. Those bright young girl types, the bright chitter-chatter, it gives me the creeps, which is part of the reason I have not had a TV in my house for my entire 20 years of adult life. YataYataYataYataYata. And they're so glib that while your head is spinning you don't even have time to formulate a "yes-but" in your head. That's television at its finest. You are the open vessel, the content pours right into you and there's no time to evaluate the information or pit it, in your mind, against your own experience. Of course none of this is a conscious process. That's the beauty of TV. You watch it to relax, you watch it because it's there, you need company, you want voices when there are no actual people around you except for the same old people you're tired of and have argued it all with. TV is company.

Anyway, radio is a different animal. Radio has been my companion since 1989, not TV.

So if I sometimes seem crazy, it's because I'm out of step with pop culture in this very way. About some things, I know a lot. About some, I know very little. Harry has a segment of his show called "News Outside The Bubble." That is, the information you won't get from the Top Corporate News sources. And a lot of times, it's pretty damn important stuff. Anyway, for whatever it's worth, this is an interesting one. But to me, the clip makes Fox look bad, not Ingraham. see what you think.

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August 17, 2008

5:25pm

if you don't like the message,
say the messenger is crazy,
and no one will believe him. not only that, but they will feel sorry for you
for having to put up with such abuse.

being a martyr is not interesting to me at all. it was at one time. my energies are now devoted to figuring out how not to be one.

i come from a family of martyrs, who practice a kind of emotional maneuvering on each other that i can't be a part of anymore. one of those maneuvers is pretending i think things are okay the way they are.

but, i'm out here, in california; they're in ohio and elsewhere; i was the one who got out. it's just that looking over my shoulder is so hard not to do. for for a lifetime of turning to a pillar of salt, what kind of things might i have accomplished? if i did not take any part in these rituals, which i have to perform to have any contact with these people, if i learned new rituals, how much of the world might i have figured out?

as it is, i've figured out not so much compared to some, more than others. the desire to keep family in one's life is strong. but i have contacted other family; on the burkey side, and joyce. i'm not without family. there's no reason i'm not still a part of the wider burkey family, even if i can't deal with my own Fam.

what sucks is that having anything to do with any of them, is risky. because in contacting other family members, there is the risk that my own family will contaminate them with lies about me--the same lies that have been told over and over since i was a kid, that i'm a fuckup, that i'm crazy and need help, i can hear them now telling melissa or suzanne: "your sister is a very sick woman."

and so any contact with family bears the burden of interference for this reason. i have to be really, really careful to keep myself out of the firing line of those who are pretending to misunderstand me.

because i really don't buy that dad doesn't understand. it's just that he can't acknowledge that i have a valid point of view. why he pretends this, there may be any number of reasons, and i don't know because i don't know him. i know a man who will go three months at the beginning of the year before giving in to the temptation to eat chocolates, striving hard to go against his impulse, but he can't manage to acknowledge that my point of view has any merit, not one single step of the way.

a number of months or so ago i asked him (on the computer)if he at least believed that i am a sane, reasonable and good person; and, he would not reply, even when i let him know that upset me.

so much willpower and for what?

willpower and communication.

all i can do is forge ahead and know the risks. and if they ever, ever come close to causing me a nervous breakdown again, it will by my mistake for letting them get into my head.

stepping back carries its own weight in loss, but it makes me feel a thousand times lighter, and clearer-headed. and i need that for myself and tim.

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August 16, 2008

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having friends isn't the same as having people who will kiss your ass or let you kiss theirs.

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if i've taken anything away from my twenty years of adult life, no make that thirty, it's that. it's taken a while, though, to be able to see the difference. what i do know is this: friendship is complicated. and it is also the center of the universe, at least of the universe i want to live in.

do i know how to be a friend? i'm not sure i do. what i don't want to do is offer up stories about everyone for entertainment, if that's all i've got.

but i'm a storyteller. this is what i learned how to do. it's the only effective coping mechanism i ever learned, for dealing with strife. tell stories about the people around you, and get laughs, groans, nods or rejections from people, depending on their opinion of how you're telling things.

and i live in a city of storytellers. los angeles is, in a sense, where i belong. this is where people come to put on a show, to write the legends of our time, to channel the energy of whatever is happening, and put it through the magic process of becoming entertainment.

which---to me, anyway---is as essential to human life, as eating, sleeping, or loving. in fact, without stories, how can we love? without being able to see ourselves reflected in beauty, through the lens of the minds of others, how can we put a name to where we've been, and an explanation for how we got here? because don't we need that?

i'm here partly, though, because the stories i tell are not stories that are comfortable for the people who occupied houses with me when i was little. that is, the people back east (midwest, really) who are the only ones who know me from back when.

they had very particular stories about the family that were OK to tell, and those that were not OK. and my stories were not OK.

my stories might entertain, might make people laugh or groan, and some of them were sweet and dear, like the ones where melissa and i dressed all in white like angels, and danced under the balcony to a shower of white confetti (snow) among hanging cut-out snowflakes. but my stories were a threat to the Ruling Order, or so it was thought, i guess. there was one story which acted itself out as a play in front of a family gathering of forty or so people, in which i commanded a troop of small actors like myself, in the performance of alcoholic family rituals---dissociation, blame, reaction, anger, loneliness.

none of this was a conscious attempt to make my dad out to be a fool. how do kids know that stuff? all i knew was that i was in pain and there seemed to be no way to tell anyone.

least of all, my father. why are you drinking? is it because you don't like me? why don't you want to be with us?

these are very painful things for a kid. and when one of the gods of your life can only look at you in bleary incomprehension, then shake his head and totally reject the raw contents of your heart, the thing you're desperately trying to convey because it is something that had better be heard if your own soul is to be saved---(because kids are not in charge of forming their own personalities, that falls to the adults who are around them)--what do you do when you desperately need to be heard, and no one hears? you find another way to tell the story, and, if the will to live is strong, you keep trying to tell it to someone who will listen.

because being heard is part of a circuit that has to happen, to complete the thoughts that make you who you are. i was able to command other kids into performances we all enjoyed, and to drive the process of entertaining everyone, but i was not able to get an adult to look me in the eye and say, "honey, you're right. you aren't crazy. something is very wrong here."

the result was, i did think i was crazy. no one else wanted to acknowledge the truth that was causing me to cry myself to sleep at nights. no one was willing to see the circle of loneliness that extended around me like a force-field.

the world was a wondrous place to me in those tender years, 6, 7, 8, 9; then the unthinkable happened. in the blazing summer of 1977, the face most dear to me disappeared. this was the face of my mother, a heart-shaped face with beautiful green eyes, delicate bone structure, and a spectacular smile that had become far less frequent. have you ever seen a mother playing with her baby, looking into the child's face, making eyes, making eye contact, telling this flowering life, "i'm here. you're here. yes, that's a smile." the circuit of wonder and love in that simple act is what teaches us to be human. if we are to learn, we have to have that attention and love. and my mother's face was a beacon, it was the place i watched for my cues, it was the very source of my life. the last thing i remember is her smile, and the ironic roll of her eyes when i said, "don't die, mom." i remeber she shook her head and looked at me as if i was crazy, and then the elevator doors closed in front of her forever.

the next time i saw her face, it looked as if she was sleeping peacefully, and she was not there.

and that was the last time anyone saw me. for a long, long time.

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we can only learn from what we see. a few years ago, two people i know from back in the day, lost someone they loved, their daughter. they put up a web site and filled it with photos, and writings of people who knew their daughter, and cared for her; friends, relatives, anyone who wanted to come and look could, and i looked at this website for hours. it was hard to comprehend, how different it was, to honor a life in that way, to hear them play her voice on the radio, (chris has a radio program)to see how people gathered around the family to remember and resurrect this person they loved.

i had babysat the little girl when she was two, but had not seen her in the intervening years; when i looked at the site, and i could not stop looking, i couldn't help but see how different it was from what my own family did, which was to put away my mother's pictures and never speak of her again openly.

then something else happened. the people close to the young woman who had died, made a beautiful film about it, together. they put it in a film festival, and put it on youtube. they did not call attention to it; i found it by chance. i watched it, observed that they had worked on it together, and was moved by it. that was about a year ago.

in the year since, i have realized that i need my mother; i need her in my life, to be a real presence. and that means i can't be around people who refuse to speak openly of her for whatever their reasons are. i was a child, they were adults at the time, and they had adult reasons for trying to act as if she had not existed. everyone in the family went along with this, except for my mother's sister, joyce, and me.

i talked on email to joyce recently and she mentioned my mother---something no one had done voluntarily, in my life, in my world, since she died that summer day. when i opened that email, i sat in front of the computer and some kind of force blew through me: the world suddenly gained color, something in the texture of my universe changed then, and i knew i could never go back to the other way.

this has meant i have to leave behind the family who resist remembering.

i have thought about how the president has not been to a single soldier's funeral, and wondered what that means. i have thought about my sister, who named her daughter after our mother, sharon, and then, being immersed in the part of the family that does not want to remember, changed her daughter's name to something else.

when you see more than one choice of how to live, then you have a choice. having lived one way my entire life, and now seeing this other way of loving a person, the path i need to follow is clear.

i'm sure it took courage to make that film, and i'm sure it was very personal and painful. i don't know if it has been a healing experience. but i know it brought healing to me.

here is the link, if you'd like to see the film: the wondering kind is its name.

here is another link that shows a little more of the picture. it tells a remarkable story. a 168 story of faith and love

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here in this city, we tell stories. some of them have the power to heal. and some of them heal just in the telling. i am happy to be here in l.a. where there are stories to tell, and those whose minds are open enough to listen without fear.

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August 13, 2008

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HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD

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So Tim drives. He does a number of things, but for extra cash, he drives for a company called The Private Chauffeur; he drives people in their own cars, not some kind of limo. So he knows how to drive just about every kind of fancy car you can imagine. The clientele of the company is fairly wealthy. So tonight he's driving these young kids, early 20's young, and it's all about the Hollywood Scene.

"It's so intense," he complains. "You see all these cars, people who don't live here, they're zipping around, everyone's lost, they're in these cars all with all this ridiculous shit on them, tinted windows, yata yata, whatever. So these kids I'm driving, they tell me, they've got to go to The Chateau. The Chateau Marmont? Yes, the Chateau." He rolls his eyes. "How long were they there?" I wanted to know. "Oh, I dunno. An hour. Hour and a half."

Tim says, "The guy, he's like, 25 or something. And he's really hyped up, very dramatic, saying, "I'm not as young as I used to be. I've got to get it going now. This has really got to be it, I've got to blow things out of the water."

"Meaning what?" I ask. "His career," Tim says. "He's one of these, I don't know, producer-director, star types."

Just an aside. Tim directed his own film, which is one beautiful piece of work; he's also directed numerous television commercials that are just real works of art, short films. The most creative freedom on television is guess what, commercials. And he's made some wonderful ones, won Clios, etc. And yes, he drives. The directing career has him doing projects here and there, but not enough to support him. He got out of commercials, directed his own movie, came here to CA and left it all behind. Started over. And this happens a lot, a career on one coast doesn't necessarily translate to a career on the other. So he takes on these projects, and drives to fill the gaps.

He's been very successful, had a house in the Hamptons, he's been around the block. So he's always bemused by these intense young wannabes who are so consumed with Being Cool.

And he's annoyed when work involves scenes like this, and scenesters, when they're this motivated by the see-and-be-seen bug than by any kind of creativity or joy in their work. Maybe these particular people are brilliant, some of them are, some aren't. ...There's no way to know. But this kind of pretentious insanity is like---"brrr," he shudders. "Get away from me. I came back here and wanted to shower."

He continues, "Anyway. So there's this really intense scene at this club." "What's it called?" "Dunno. Up there on, Hollywood and Orange, I think. So all these cars are lined up at the front, you can't get up to the front of the club, you know how these clubs have these thugs in suits out front. And the suits don't fit them because they're all muscle-bound. Bouncers or doormen or whatever. Right? So everyone's really intense, everyone's pushing, no one's letting anyone in. And the kids, the three of them, they want to go to the front of the club and be dropped off there. So I'm trying to get there, and it was about, oh, from here to the telephone pole, right? So, you know, not all that far. But they want to get right up there to the front of the club. To get out. But you can't go up there, the guy's being really nice, just telling them, I'm sorry you can't go up there, we're not letting cars in up there, you'll have to get out here. And the girl, she goes back and forth with the guy, can't he pull in and then just pull out again? Can he drive up (meaning me) and drop them off, and then just back out? We just want to drop off. And the guy is just saying very calmly, no, no dropoffs."

"Who's the guy saying that?" I ask.

"The thug," Tim replies, and continues, "So they have to get out right there. They can't be dropped off right at the front of the club and make their entrance. You woulda thought. They were like, "we can't get out here."

And I ask, "you mean, they didn't want to get out of the car right there, because they wanted to be seen, stepping out of the car at the front, making their entrance?"

"Right," Tim nods, "exactly. They didn't want to walk the short distance, I mean, she really argued with him. And I'm just sitting there, ya know," he shrugs. And he grins his wicked sexy smartass grin, and says, "Oh my god, the indignity, having to get out and walk through the parking lot!"

"So what happened?" I ask.

"Well, they had to get out there. They didn't have a choice, the guy wouldn't let him. They just weren't letting people in." I start laughing. Tim continues, "and the guy, there were two girls and him, the guy kept saying, before, "We've got to leave the Chateau by ten thirty. So we don't have to stand there by the rope. Apparently," Tim said, "they were on the list. So what they wanted was to walk right in to the club in front of everyone. He said," Tim paused for effect, "we've got to get there on time, so we don't have to stand in line, with the losers."

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Just another night under the stars in our fine city, where a whiff of fame can bring a twentysomething to his knees.

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August 12, 2008

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THE CURE FOR WHAT AILS ME

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...Was not going to be found sticking around where the family was. That much was always clear. When they pulled up stakes in Texas and moved back to the Midwest, to be around the family stomping grounds, they did offer to take me back with them and help me get started. This was the month I graduated from Baylor, the very month, and I did think about going with them. For about five minutes.

I was mostly relieved to be self-supporting (on a five dollar an hour overnight radio announcer job) and extremely happy to be paying my own way, so that no one had the right to make me feel guilty for one single more decision I made about my life, since I was now paying for everything. So I stayed in Waco for another blazing hot summer, even though the cool summer nights in Ohio wouldn't have been too bad. All I cared about was being free---from whatever it was that made me such a colossal fuckup among these people.

I know now that nothing I did would have ever been good enough to them, for reasons I couldn't control; but I didn't know that then, and all I knew was, around them, I could no think straight. I was hyperalert to wherever the next zinger might come at me, and not at all able to be focused on the path ahead, because I was so riddled with terror about what I should do or not do and how to figure out which without completely selling out my heart and soul.

Because it really was that stark: around them, the way they wanted me to behave was a way that killed my spirit. They had their ideas of who I should be, and how I should act. What I should do, not do, buy, not buy, think, not think. And all I could think of was: freedom. If it had occurred to me not to go to college, I may not have. But my very thought processes were so tightly controlled by what they wanted, it really wasn't an option *not* to go to school. I was going, and that was that.

But when I was done----I was free.

And somewhere after Waco, I found my way to Dallas; and from Dallas, to Los Angeles; and not one step of the way has regrets for me. It has been an amazing journey in which I've known amazing characters, people whose brilliance did not fit anyone else's mold of what brilliance is supposed to be, people who knew how to think for themselves because at one time or another, their very lives depended on it. I found a lot of these people and will always find them as long as I am living a life that asks questions, and doesn't make too much of the fact that I'm going to come to wrong conclusions sometimes based on not having enough information. Getting the information has been a priority all my life, partly because of the number of people who told me I was "so smart you're stupid" and that I had no idea what anything was about. So finding answers has been a compulsion. And once answers are found---more questions come up.

When I'm writing, I'm sitting at the kitchen table. There is a desk lamp that shines on the wall next to the computer screen. And I sit here next to the door to the living room, listening as I run the water for a bath, or as Tim talks to me from the other room. And I just type things into the computer because I'm tired and can't figure a way to organize my thoughts so they make sense to anyone. So to anyone reading this, I'm not sure I can even write coherently about anything. I'm not writing for anything but to purge the greasy, grimy gack from the insides of my thought processes, and flush one more day out the pipes. I have a flow of assumptions and references that probably won't make sense to anyone but me. But I literally don't have time enough in my day to sit down and write something like a coherent column or blog. So, if anyone finds this interesting, great; more likely is, that won't happen; but whatever happens, it makes me feel good to write.

When I was young I journaled because everyone around me said reality was one thing, while I saw something totally different. Writing was the only thing that saved me from total insanity---I look back now and read about the kinds of trouble I had, and think to myself, my God I was a good kid, I wasn't trying to hurt anyone or ask for anything more than reasonable for my circumstances---in fact, in terms of emotional support and understanding, I had less than nothing, and had to look outside the family for any kind of solace. In a way that was good, because I found some friends who were phenomenal people, who cared for my soul and were cared for, when we came into each others' orbit...there are so many of these people and I realize they make up a landscape of lights in the night for me.

I am lucky to have found such friends. And I am lucky to be able to just type things and feel the day settle around me into a pattern that makes sense, into a pattern that leaves me feeling un-alone, feeling like I belong, that I am not only not crazy, but smart enough to have at least something to offer, if not lots of things; and good enough to be able to give love and attention to a number of things that make up my day: talking on the radio, playing with my little flock of budgies, and talking to Tim. It all makes sense somehow, and it never used to; and writing saw me through the times I felt crazy and alone. Writing is something that always works. If not for any kind of audience, at least for me.

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When people are thinking independently, it never stops being interesting.

But independent thinking, in my family, is called "disrespect." Speaking up for a point of view that's not the general consensus is subversive. There's this either-or fear and terribleness, like if one side gets its way, the other side has to lose out totally. That's the same attitude I hear all over talk radio----One Side is For You and Your Way Of Life--and the other side is out to *destroy* it. Destroy! Both the left and right do this. The difference as far as I can see is, one side wants to make weapons, have wars, and profit from oil; the other side has a different set of priorities. Health care that works? Pshaw. It's the illegal immigrants' fault. Those god damn brown people who are taking our jobs because they will work for pennies on the dollar. That's what the problem is. Then they want free health care. No, not free, because Joe Taxpayer and Joe insurance-rate-payer, ends up footing the bill.

Meanwhile, the Central Americans who flock up here do so in large part because their government is corrupt and doesn't serve them. Who does it serve? Well.

Recently I saw a news item, link upon request, about American farmers flooding the Mexican market with corn. We basically put their farmers out of business. They couldn't beat the low American prices we flooded their market with. So what are they supposed to do? Let themselves be crushed into the dirt, watch their families starve and go without, because their government does not protect their markets from the Americans? They do exactly what my dad would do, and has done all his life. They go where they believe they can make a decent living, to support their families. And when they come, they give back above and beyond their worth, because they work so cheap.

Aha, but who does that worth go to? It doesn't go to Joe Ratepayer and Joe Taxpayer. It goes to Joe Business Owner, who needs the cheap labor. Now, Joe Business Owner is also a Ratepayer, and a taxpayer. But he's pissed off about the taxes he has to pay, to close the gaps that result from these people being desperately underpaid. But wait a minute, he got that cheap labor he wanted.

Lesson: (and my father would be proud of this lesson if he were the one teaching it)--Lesson, everything costs. And the amount it costs is directly related to how well a government represents its people. People have to be able to pay for the basic needs. Health care. Food. Rent. Energy costs, so they can drive the cars that they have to have, to get to the jobs they have that aren't on bus lines or otherwise accessible to mass transit. These aren't optional. But if the system is taking out more than it allows us to put in, what are we supposed to do?

Well, for one thing, we should understand that truly cheap labor is not cheap. It costs the community. Whatever the employers cannot and will not pay the laborers, someone else will have to pay. Who is that someone going to be?

Well, if Government is evil in administering to these needs, then the private sector is going to have to do it. Right? Uh....uhm. Looking around, looking around. Is it happening? Well...no. Family? Can family help each other? Well....no. Not if the jobs are so spread out at the whim of an unstable and unregulated marketplace, that people have to move away from their families if they hope to make a decent living. So who's in charge of all this? Well, the Almighty Marketplace, which should not be weighed down with rules and laws that would prevent people from making money!! Problem is, which people are making the money? Which people do the laws favor?

My dad thinks, Government Bad, Business Good. But because there always has to be some kind of government, some kind of consensus between people about what kind of government and rule of law they have to have---it does have a place. But its place is not regulating businesses.

At the same time, my father got out of the construction business because of the corruption, because to get anywhere he would have, as he put it, have to do things that are against his moral code. So he himself admits by this, that business without proper regulation is not something that can fit into the moral fabric of a good and productive and honest, law-abiding society.

Money is a terrible problem for my father. He grew up desperately poor, "without a pot to pee in," as my Grandmother would say. His father was an alcoholic, dead at the age of 55; because of his father's disease, he and his brothers and sisters went without heat in the winter, the bitter cold winters right on the edge of Lake Erie, in Mentor-On-the-Lake, Ohio; once desperate slums, now gentrifying. (Ever since the bloody Government with their regulations cleaned up Lake Erie, it's become nice to be by the water again. Which means the spots by the lake are primo again. Much nicer to live by clear, clean water, than brackish sludge so filthy that no one swam in it. So where do the poorer people in the Cleveland area live, now? Well, not by the lake, I guess.

Dad was determined not to be poor, and was passionately driven to make money for his young family; but there was a split in him which he could not handle. There was a side of him that felt desperately lonely, for what reason I don't know; but he did, and he turned to a woman outside his marriage for comfort. His power struggle with my mom was such that he betrayed her in the oldest, deepest way. I've tried to ask him what that was about, and I'm not sure he even knows. All he could tell me was that Mom once called off their engagement, while he was stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (during the missile crisis, no less: an item he did not reveal to me until just a few years ago, as if it were completely unimportant).

My mom had apparently gotten into the habit of having coffee with some guy, and my dad was not there, and she thouht maybe they shouldn't be engaged.

What Dad has told me is, he put in for a discharge, on the grounds that his relationship with his future wife was falling apart. And he received a discharge, honorable I believe, but the important thing is, he got out and came home. He has showed me the letter he wrote. I've seen it with my own eyes---one of the very very very few artifacts left from those days. It exists somewhere in his papers, or maybe with Melissa. He and Mom patched things up between them; but, he told me, something "was missing." He can't say what it was, and it seems weird to me that something might have been missing because my mother had had coffee with some other guy (my dad was her one and only, her entire short life). But he perceived betrayal, and she can't speak for herself, so I have no idea what really happened or what the implications were. It is between them, and neither of them will speak about it.

What I know is that my dad's infidelity tore my mom apart. Was it because she loved him, or because she wanted to control him? I would argue she loved him. She bore him two beautiful girls, against the advice of her doctor, who told her she should not have children because of the birth defect she had, a hole in her heart. After trying fruitlessly to adopt for several years, my mother decided having me and Melissa was more important than what the doctor had told her about her health. So here we are.

But not everyone is happy that I am in the world. In fact, at least one person is definitely and has always been, tremendously unhappy that I was a problem to contend with. In her eyes, I subtracted far more from any situation than I could give. I could never figure out the reasons for that, but in recent years they have become more clear. All I knew is that this person hated me with a passion. I will never forget the look on her face as she yelled at me, or beat me, or threw something at me. It was a blazing, irrational hatred. She did the same things to Melissa, who is 3.5 years younger than I; but I doubt Melissa has ever seen that look. Maybe I'm the only one who has. But it is not something I can ever forget.

The person in question is Suzanne, the woman my father had had the affair with, whom he married when my mother died. One short year afterward. At that point, he receded so far along the horizon that he was incommunicado, and completely unavailable---seeing, hearing, and responding nothing at all. He had been that way to an extent with my mother; after her death, his retreat into alcoholism and despair was complete and total; but in the meantime, he put on an expensive marriage and an elaborate show of "everything's just fine." One reason I was so disliked was that I was unable to play the "everything's fine" riff with any conviction. Actually I wasn't able to play it at all. But "Everything's fine" is the riff everyone wanted me to play. When I didn't play it, I was punished.

So when I say some things have changed, really only one thing has changed. Me. It used to be OK to catch flack for saying "everything's not fine."

But it's no longer OK. It's changed. I've changed. For me to survive with any sanity, I can't pretend to the extent these people want. At least in my own private life. And in life with anyone who wants me to call them "family." I am not interested in pretending for one more day, one more minute, one more nanosecond, that what hurts me deeply, doesn't matter.

But you will hear that by leaving for California, I was "killing" my father. "Abandoning" my sister (whose rent I paid for the better part of a year, so she could check out Texas and see if she wanted to live there).

What about me? If I don't act in my own best interest, who's going to?

No one, that's who. And my own best interest is in acknowledging that my mother was the love of my life, a force to be reckoned with, a beautiful but troubled woman, and a good person who loved me and protected me ferociously from having to grow up too soon, as long as and as much as she could.

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JOE TAXPAYER

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So who is Joe Taxpayer? Any entity who pays taxes, I guess; but Get This. That's who Joe Taxpayer ain't.

"Still, more than 3,500 large domestic corporations - with more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in gross receipts - did not pay taxes in 2005.

"The report said about 80 percent of the companies studied paid no taxes because they didn't generate any profit after expenses. Money-losing companies can legitimately owe no tax, and others can use provisions of the tax code to lower or eliminate their liability."

In English? To me that reads: "80 per cent of the companies managed to find a way to make it appear on paper, with the help of an incredibly complicated tax code, that they made no money at all." 250 million in assets notwithstanding. 50 million in gross receipts? Ahh whatever. Shouldn't make them pay taxes, because taxes are evil! The government is evil. The only ones who should pay taxes are those who can't afford fancy accountants, I guess. That's the practical effect of things as far as I can see. So much for the old trickle-down theory. I'm starting to put myself to sleep now, so it's time to move on for tonight.

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August 11, 2008

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Last night we walked up to the video rental store on Sunset at La Brea, and rented 12 Monkeys, which Tim never saw and which is truly one of my favorite movies of all time. Brad Pitt is truly a brilliant crazy-guy. And the woman scientist in the movie, the one who, at the end says, "My name is Jones. I'm in insurance" ----she doesn't *look* like my old boss, Ruth, but, then again, she does. You see her through these weird distorted angles, and she looks exactly the same way Ruth always appeared to me. Like some kind of charming, animated closed-circuit personality which knows one language only: power. Appearances are everything, nothing else matters. More important than communicating, more important than collaborating, more important than just about anything at all. I am still trying (though only in my spare time now) to make some sense of what my relationship to Ruth (the GM) was. Or wasn't. I haven't really liked the answers to some of those questions, but they can't really hurt me now, so...whatever. The main question for me, since I cared and still care about the radio station and the possibilities it represents for radio in L.A. ---is, does Ruth exist for K***, or does K*** exist for Ruth?

No reason it can't be both. But the equation always troubled me and still does. I knew almost from the beginning of my time there (1994) that one day I would end up walking out, never to return. It is surprising, really, that I lasted as long as I did, considering the dynamic of the place. Avoiding that dynamic and working in as many politics-free zones possible (not many, admittedly), I kept it so that most of the time there, it was absolutely the best job and an amazing education in so many things. For a few years now I've considered myself a "survivor" of the experience, but now I consider myself a graduate---maybe the best thing to be, of this particular radio station. At least for me, the only thing, at this point.

It was a different station in the 90's. Now, the sound of the place, the feel of the personalities there, it's changed so much---when I first came to the station there was, I thought, some truly brilliant radio being made, so much so that the place always seemed dynamic and exciting. We had amazing personalities like Marnie Castor, who was the Premium Coordinator for years, who brought such an insane whirl of energy to the place, it couldn't help but be a blast. And Matt Basford, who was a board operator I hired, who I'd had a brief fling with, which ended when he revealed himself to be a complete lunatic----but he made a great addition to K***. It was one of the only times the "announcer" voices at the station took on any personality.

All the characters are gone, now, though. There are still some great shows. But when I left, things had been grinding along for years with a kind of grim sameness, people knowing their place, not making waves, holding on to their jobs more tightly and fearfully as the economy tanked. The atmosphere felt dead to me, and less driven by a joy of making radio, than a fear of becoming uncool.

The thing is, a truly cool organization lets you have some latitude for mistakes. But occasional mistakes or random problems resulted in good people getting the boot, time and again and again and again. Everyone watched everyone else carefully, and closed their eyes and looked the other way at each new casualty. The awareness that it could happen to anyone, at any time---a total and humiliating fuck-you see-ya-bye, for nothing less than a little change in the breeze of opinion, or the wrong end of a temper tantrum.

Creativity doesn't flourish in a place like that. When every little step matters, and fear rules the day, creativity dies a horrible death. And all that's left is the trying to tell what's going to be successful, based not on real experimentation and freedom of ideas, but based on whatever was cool before because by god, the next thing we try has got to be cool, or else. Or else!! For such a wealthy radio station, ensconced in one of the whitest and sweetest neighborhoods in L.A. (you won't hear me complain much about Santa Monica)----the tightfistedness would have made you think the station was teetering on the edge of annihilation.

Money. Something the station has not hurt for. So why, so little and so late, why is there only now any kind of investment in K***'s once-phenomenal music library?

Yes, it's still a great library; but how much heads-and-above-the-rest better do you think it would be, if space had been a priority from the first, to house this treasure? If there is a more comprehensive and eclectic library of music in the world, I don't know about it. And at this point, so much of what was in it which was valuable, has gone out into the world and dissipated-----just because there was no room for new CD's if old ones were not physically booted.

The music library, as far as I can tell, was handled by very competent people, like Tricia Halloran, Gary Calamar, and Eric J. Lawrence---who have always done an amazing job of organizing the flow of music into its archives.

But these people didn't have the power to expand the library and make it a priority that all that amazing music be kept. And I really question whether or not the music directors have had that power. I don't know whether Nick Harcourt battled for more library space. I don't know whether Chris Douridas fought any of those battles, either. But when it comes to the money, Ruth holds the reins; and although this station has a Smithsonian-quality archive of American and every other kind of music possible----it hasn't been a priority. New studios so we look real happenin? Sure. And the new studios were very nice looking. But all the music that has been lost from K***'s library along the way, is gone. G.O.N.E. gone.

However--K*** still has arguably the world's very most comprehensive music library. And this library, whether it's attached to a station whose policies you support or not, is a phenomenon. Click here to read more about this pathetically belated effort to preserve as much as possible of this treasure.

The thing is, if in the world of commercial radio there was even any need or desire for such a library (doesn't seem likely)---I don't see how anything could surpass the comprehensive spectrum of music genres that can be found at this completely unique public radio station. Each CD by itself, is just a CD---but the sum total of everything that has gone into that library is something beyond a price tag. Collecting the music for that library was something driven by passion, and not commerce. OK, yes, there was some commerce involved, damn it. But so what? Regardless, the fact of the matter is, this library at K*** is nothing less than a national treasure. If anything about K*** has made a lasting mark on the face of radio, it's the music programming and library. This is what makes the station heads and above any radio station in the country, in terms of sheer volume and range of material.

But as far as I can tell, Ruth's interest in the music side of programming was always perfunctory at best. Yeah, I know, she hypes those CD's during the pledge drives. Do I know!! Yeah, I know!! Every track of those goddamn things is etched in my mind. To this day I can't hear the soundtrack to the movie "The Piano" without hearing Ruth's voice in my mind's ear.

So if I seem angry about this, it's because I am. Not a little angry. A lot angry. Because I love radio, and because radio only on rare occasions has accomplished the things KCRW has accomplished. There aren't many places in the country I, as a radio person, can go, to do what I would consider passionate and committed work in the business of real music radio. It barely exists anywhere. Because the flow of commerce doesn't demand it.

Which brings me to this---if the culture of a country revolves around what makes money, wouldn't it seem that money and creativity are going to have a weird, weird relationship?

This is one of the relationships at the heart of my life dilemmas---how much of my life should be determined by money, and how much determined by creativity. Because the two come together far too seldom. But that's maybe another post. Or not.

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July 27, 2008
6:00pm

RADIO

people who believe in the power of sound.

"not merely a radio audience, but an audio radiance" -joe frank

I know there are still people who believe in the power of radio..I meet them all the time.

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July 28, 2008

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GIVE AND BE GIVEN

July 30, 2008

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PRIVATE OR PUBLIC BLOG?

this blog is linked from my old one, so people will come here; but, i will not promote this blog in any way. any random readers who care, and might come here from the old K*** blog (which i wrote after leaving), are welcome; however if you do know me, please don't publicize this. if at some point it attracts notice or goes viral, i want it not to be from me; also, i want some time to sit with these thoughts, share them only with those who are close and who care, and to do justice to the things i want to write about. self-consciousness might not be good for that. but at the same time, it's good to have readers. it's good not to be alone.

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do you recognize any of these people?

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i know all of these people. i last saw them in las vegas, where this photo was taken, in january 2006. i have not seen any since, and have spoken very little to any of them. there's a reason for that.

this has been a really, really difficult couple of years. something about bad things happening in threes---first, in 2005, leaving KCRW; second, jan 2006, this vegas trip which was a turning point in my life with these people; and three, may of 2007, i lost my companion of six years, a highly intelligent, speaking bird, who was my first pet since spade, my beautiful cat who died in 1992. for anyone else, maybe this stuff would bounce off; for me, this series of events added up to something much greater than the parts----and something totally debilitating.

I want to talk about what happened with my family, but how to frame it? How to begin? I'm just going to begin at the beginning, I guess.

If you asked what my life story was, I would have a very different version to tell, than these people would. For over thirty years I have been trying to "be allowed" to tell and live my own story, with them. Here are some of the basics.

Nine glowing years of home and family and absolute fun and belonging. In the blazing summer of 1977, my heart, my life, the center of my world, collapsed and imploded when my mother, Sharon, died. She, and Melissa, along with my Aunt Joyce and four cousins, were the totality of my world. I lost them all in one fell swoop.

We had one year of Gramma Langley (or, Mom Langley, as we also called her). She lived with us after Mom died, and we had a whole year of her soft laps, sparkles candy from her purse (which they no longer make, which pisses me off no end), sitting up in bed late watching Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy----a deeply comforting year, but a year in which pain seemed to radiate from every crack in the wall, every little breeze.

Then, Dad married Suzanne, and that was the end of life as I knew it----Melissa, and I, were true orphans then---we had nobody, not even each other, least of all each other. From that time on, I was on my own. There was a roof over my head, food on my plate, and family functions to be dragged to---with a family that was not mine, and who did not really give a rat's ass about me--Suzanne's family.

The next ten years were a fight for sanity, and I was starkly, coldly, bleakly alone. I can't imagine feeling more alone----because of these years I developed a fascination with concentration camps, and Hitler's Germany, where murder and cruelty was instituationalized and sanctioned, with paperwork and laws, every I dotted and every T crossed---those years were total darkness, pain so great sometimes I could barely breathe, and complete despair. it's a good thing i was able to keep hoping it would change---if i had had any idea how bad it would continue to be, how embroiled on the end of a blade of hate i would continue to be, i don't know if i could have made it.

there is not a single member of my "family" who want to acknowledge what happened---any of it. the story they would tell is very different. the story they would tell of my present-day life is also different. it bears no resemblance to my actual life.

one person in my family, only one, was supportive when i moved to california, which was the best thing i possibly could have done. that person is now in the hot, windy desert, carrying a gun, on one side of a thin membrane of fate---where i hope he will stay.

there are so many worlds around us at any given time, so many choices, and the choices i've had to make over the past three years have literally taken everything out of me. they were the right ones---i know that in my bones---but they have cost deeply. the alternative would cost less now, and much more, much much more, later. for my sake and tim's, i am out of the lives of these people. and i have had nothing to say. i've got nothing. nothing. the last things i tried to shout over the roar of incomprehension that must fill their ears, were not heard at all. i've watched them recede over the horizon in a terrifying way--and watching them imagine what my life must be like has been the worst part of all. they do not see me at all, they do not know me at all, and they do not care to know me. and it is chilling and sobering to not be known, when for so many years i've tried so hard to be known, to offer as much information as possible. there isn't a single fact of my life that these people have not misinterpreted, to themselves and each other. facing this continual closed-ness, tim has held my hand. two people drifting in space and time, he has me by the hand, firmly, and by this single touch my soul has been saved----but slowly now i'm waking up, calling friends, returning to life.

they would be outraged to read this, and have been outraged every time i've told my version of events. they will not acknowledge that my mother was important, that she lived, that she should be talked about. the nine years i had with her are the reason i'm here today; in spite of the years between.

"there's more people alive today, than have ever died.."

some guy just said that on the radio...

Alan Colmes' show on KGIL (7 to 10 PDT) is being hosted by someone else tonight. I was talking today to someone who says he comes off wimpy on TV. Not so on his radio show. I'm a total fan. His show is the last thing I hear during the broadcast day (when I get home, no TV, no radio, no nothing. beautiful sweet quiet, ambient hollywood noise, streets purring outside in the neighborhood, voices down the hall). The show leaves me realizing that, amid the insanity, there is some rationality out there. It is a huge comfort...as radio has always been.

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July 29, 2008

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When should you write about something? Anything that needs writing about? Do you pour it out in the first rush of thoughts and words hoping to catch the dragon by its tail in the storm? Or do you make notes then, and save things for later, when things are more rational? Will your writing then be as fresh and vivid? It will likely have more perspective and a greater depth of knowledge about what happened, but is it worth the trade-off?

I am of course only speaking for myself. It happens to be now, in the hot baking summer of 2008 in Los Angeles, under a grainy smogfilled sky, on a street with flowers spilling from every crack, and yet desperate people prowling the streets and smashing Tim's car window (last night)---This is where it's hitting me. The torrent of thoughts about what happened at the radio station. It's happening now, because, why? I don't know why. Maybe I am healing. But it has literally taken me three years to even be able to approach this, in my mind, in any kind of calm way. And that would be not totally calm, but something has shifted somewhere, and I feel able, for some reason, to be having these thoughts. They run through my head like music as I go about my day, driving between here and the Westwood One studios, fighting the traffic, noticing less traffic because of gas prices--here, as I scrub the floor in the bright kitchen of our apartment, listening to the roar of the air conditioner and the city outside, with the rising and falling screeching or twittering of the birds---this is where and when it's coming.

Does that mean I have to write about it now? As far as I'm concerned, privately, it doesn't matter. Which brings me to---who do I tell about this blog?

Eventually someone might notice it online, and it may be referenced in another blog somewhere, which will bring visitors to see the story. When I published the blog in 2005, I sent it to two blogs which cover media in Los Angeles--LA Observed and another guy whose name I can't remember, but on his blog there was a picture of him in a cowboy hat (I think).

He acknowledged receiving the story, but did not comment, and he never gave it even a mention as far as I saw. Which made me a little sad, because this blogger had *avidly* covered and argued over the Sandra Tsing Loh firing. Anyway, a month or two later I heard that particular blogger guest hosting or guesting, on one of K***'s daily shows.

Who knows? I don't know. I couldn't be less in the loop.

I don't have media friends. I have radio friends, who alerted me that a certain daily radio blog in LA had picked it up. I hadn't sent them the story and was gratified to go to the page and see a photo of myself, next to a brief synopsis of the story and a link to the old blog.

I want to write now, but I have to come back to the present because I promised Tim I would work on a big mess by the front door that is my mess, and has been piling up. I have put it off and put it off. Today he walked out and his car, which he'd parked two streets over, was broken into; and the window was smashed. He knows better to have stuff in his car now, but still, the broken window shook him terribly. Financially we are in the same position as everyone else, particularly since we live on his various freelance projects, a part time job he does that brings in cash, and my salary (which is not impressive, but I'm glad to have work, what can I say?!!).

Anyway, I owe it to him to get back to work on it now. Right after he came in, upset and obsessing about the break-in, the building began to shake, and for about forty-five seconds we sat there paralyzed saying "should we go out? should we get up? What should we do? Fuck." That was the 5.4 quake near Chino Hills and we felt it right here Hollywood, too, thank you very much. Nothing was damaged here, or even fell. But something jarred loose in him and we went for a walk to calm down. Tim is also nervous because tonight his short film "Lunch At The Beach" shows at the Dances With Films festival in Santa Monica; it will show alongside some other shorts, and we will be going, to check it out. He did this film over the last few months and I think it's quite lovely and funny and a little silly----but pointed, too, it's a cool piece of art. He spent hours at the beach with the camera. It plays at 5pm or something like that, not a great time for a show, but there are always lots of people on the Promenade and there will be audience there from the other films, too. Josh, the actor, will be there. It'll be their first time watching the project on the big screen and very exciting. I told him after the film tonight I'll extend all my personal healing powers in his direction. He appreciated that.

But part of my bargain with him today is that I clean up this towering pile of crap. I am a semi-reformed clutterer. It is the ongoing story of my life in many ways. So this is to be continued, later.

And as for who am I going to tell about this blog...the answer is, no one. No one in LA, that is. My aunt Joyce will get to look at it, and my cousin Barb, both thousands of miles away with no media connections whatsoever. If at some point this blog gets notice, great---but it won't be on info from me. At least not at this point in time.

9pm

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OK--back from the film fest. There were some really breathtaking shorts shown there tonight. It's one of the reasons I love this city---people make these things and put their heart and soul into them, show them to each other, and then talk about them....much more fun than whatever people do otherwise. ;) Anyway, wish you guys were here but so you're not, here's a picture:

Tim Devitt is with Josh McKnight, on the right, who was truly great in Tim's movie, Lunch at the Beach. Which you are welcome to view at VIMEO --you will need to input the password, allofme.

There was also a ?half hour? film called The Line which is one of the finest things I've ever seen. Kent Bassett is the director's name. I can't wait to see what else he does. I'll try to see if there's any way possible to see the movie for you guys, or rent it, or see it online. It's very powerful and really relevant--someone should send it to Lou Dobbs. Maybe I should do that. Hey, Lou!!

Tim's movie is five minutes long, and could be described as a horror/spoof, comedy maybe. They ended the selection (of six "shorts") with his film.

We are about to eat steak, and discussing whether we should move to a cottage on Venice beach for our permanent residence ...or maybe, he says, a newer construction, nice apartment building. Hollywood is fun, but we really want to be on the west side--the air is better, and it's home. I was in Santa Monica for 13? years. They call it "the People's Republic" of Santa Monica because they televise the city council meetings, and people are very civically active. There is a Rent Control board that deals with renter's rights issues, etc.

This song is going through my head.

All of me,
Why not take all of me.
Can't you see

I can't live without you.
Take my arms...

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July 27, 2008

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Sitting here in my sunny kitchen in the heart of Hollywood, Santa Monica and the basement at KCRW seem very far away. Over three years have passed since my sudden demotion and subsequent walking off the job. Tim, my fiance, is in the other room working on a large painting for the set of a film project. The phone rings. I answer. "Don't be alarmed!" a recorded voice says. "This is your final notice...for lower interest rates!"

Ruth Seymour avoided my periodic attempts to speak to her, and she may well have done that so I can come to my own conclusions about what happened to my job and who sabotaged me---who plural? Singular? She also may have thought she was doing me a kindness, because I think she saw how much pain I was in when I left. The shock of being suddenly taken down was devastating to me. I never believed she let it happen intentionally, but it remains that at KCRW, she's the supreme power. She didn't stop what was happening, and she could have. Maybe she would have, if I hadn't yelled "OUCH" so loud. (Though I waited a full month after the fact, to yell it in a public way.) It's easy for people to imagine the arcane twists of her mind that allow her to carry out decisions on programming--- and I did. What was she trying to do? She seemed to genuinely believe she was helping me. She also seemed utterly confused when I reacted with shock to being taken off the air without notice. She made one attempt to put me on a different shift, which didn't work out, and she didn't push the matter----or even allow me to talk to her again, about it. Ultimately she was the signatory on the whole thing.

But I think she may have wanted to protect me, or at least not expose me, to the realizations that I've now come to----and there are those who will say I give her too much credit, Tim for one. That's possible---a little stockholm syndrome for ya. She may have wanted me to figure things out myself. Because the first edition of this blog protected someone. It did not include a number of events that, at the time, I could not believe had anything to do with what happened to my job.

All that mattered to me at the time was, she did nothing to stop it, and she had the ultimate power. But I think Ruth also underestimates the amount of good she would be capable of doing, in the personal realm.

Nevertheless, it was a battle she didn't want to pick. It wasn't important enough to her. And that was all that mattered.

Three years down the road, emerging from a deep paralysis and still trying to protect myself from shocks, it's as if my mind allows me to see things, now, that were too much for my psyche to handle before. I have a problem with loss--I was an orphan as a child, and the buttons that get pushed when these things happen, are so central to my being that when they are pushed, it's all I can do to maintain basic breathing and functioning. Which is not a great or strong way to cope with the world, but it's been the best I could do.

My career in public radio was more than a career to me. It was a love affair. For as long as I can remember, radio was what I wanted to do. That voices could come over the airwaves and bring life into my world, when I needed it, was miraculous. I was not a natural personality, but over time I developed a style and a basic grasp of the voice patterns acceptable in broadcasting today. I have waited to get married, did not place a priority on having kids, and thoroughly and totally loved my job(s), to which I pretty much devoted my entire waking life. Very little personal balance, but in my world balance is boring. Usually because it involves someone else's balance, and not my own. But also because it means that oftentimes someone is being asked a lot to do their part, more than their share.

But things changed for me in the year 2002. I met someone who made me want to find a new kind of balance in my life---someone who made me believe there could be a personal life for me, not just one enslaved to radio for my sense of voice. And that was when things at K*** began to change.

The person I have been protecting will not be protected in future editions of this blog. Til now I have put all the public blame on Ruth. And it's true that Ruth is the final authority, and it was within a system of her creation that my job was sabotaged. But the rest of it is a lot more complicated. I'm sure I don't have all the answers, but I have at least enough questions to think about, from a new angle, why my life in public radio ended in May 2005. And that is--new questions which were too difficult, before, for me to even be able to see.

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reprinted journal entry
12/2001

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i was ruth's bitch today.

for the annual chanukah show. every year i run the board for her. we turned off the lights and sat in the dark eating latkes during the broadcast.

one day i'm sure i'll have to get out of radio and do something that makes more money, i guess. but radio is magic. in so many of its forms. these grungy little studios radiate energy. they're full of ugly equipment and a million shades of beige and smarmy carpeting tracked too many times by too many feet. and they're freezing cold. but i swear the best magic in the world happens here under these dim gold studio lights. and it doesn't seem like magic until i'm on the other end of the radio, listening, feeling its power.

down here, in the basement studios, it's just work. there's no connection to the signal that carries us into the world. it almost seems sometimes to me, to be something completely separate. i'm amazed sometimes, in my car, at how powerful are the voices coming out of the radio--they seem close, intimate, warm, part of my life. it hardly ever hits me that i _am_ that, for so many people, every afternoon.

for this we spend hours upon hour upon hours in the studio, living through our ears. working ceaselessly and tediously. and making, right in these studios, some of the best radio ever, ever, ever in the world. i really believe that. but to make that happen---hours alone alone alone in the dingy damp lonely cold rooms below sea level.

so odd how when you're too close to something, how you don't really understand how powerful it can be.

today's homage is to accidental magic. and the power that flows from us that we can't even see. and the patience to work in these miserable digs knowing we're the source of something that radiates out.....that there's something we can give.

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it's the one thing that's saved me again and again through the years. the invisible power of sound and the comfort of knowing someone hears.

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