Red Headed Angel
I had cold pizza and warm Coke for breakfast. I blame Amy Hills.
She rolled over, nudged me and said — I’m only kidding.
The best part of Tuesday night’s show was performing with Amy. As someone observed afterwards, “You seemed a little bit looser.”
A little bit looser? Suddenly I was Don Rickles and Pete Townsend combined. Suddenly I’m telling jokes and stories (way too much information) and going for the big finish complete with the scissor kick. I did it all but the “How you feelin’ New York!” and the windmill.
Amy and I — shocker — rehearsed for Cross Pollination a few times. Rehearsals usually a drag, but we had a good time. I wanted to do her song “Baby” (love it), and suggested we take another stab at “California” (which we botched at one of my shows a few months ago). Then I played her a new one and said, “Wanna’ write the second verse?” Finally, I asked, “Do you remember The Human League?”
Performing with Amy just reinforces my Big Epiphany of the week: It’s not about me, it’s about we.
Not only is it easier to do something — anything, I suppose — when someone has your back (Forgot a chord? Don’t sweat it! She’ll play louder.), it’s more fun.
And Amy is fun. She’s got southern charm and city smarts. She’s got a great laugh: her eyes squint and sparkle. She calls me “Sugar.” And boy, can she sing. I can imagine her belting in church, or hitting ‘em in the back row of a Broadway play, but with smarts, and edge. She can do all that, but she picks her moments. She saves it for emphasis. She’s all secrets whispered. She’s all heart.
Amy’s a great guitar player as well. She performed the “Better Than That” solo… live! I never ever ever ever play solos live. Impressive.
At one point in her solo show, it occurred to me that I was sitting too close to her. I couldn’t help it. It’s rare that I’m this close the process of making and performing music with someone who doesn’t either a) work for me or b) want to strangle me. I was, max, two feet from the end of her guitar. I was watching her eyes, her mouth, her expression, searching her for any of the anxiety or doubt that I had been feeling during my performance. It’s there, in the corners. But Amy shined through. And Amy helped me shine through.
I guess that’s what we’s all about.
Life And How To Live It
I was like a dear in headlights. Worse, I was like a baby deer in headlights.
Not that anyone would have noticed.
It starts as kind of an upset stomach. Classic butterflies. Or pterodactyls. Then I get a little giddy, a little unfocussed. I’d rather be a lone, but I’m meeting and greeting. I talk a lot (but I don’t say anything). I have to pee, but I don’t.
By the time I hit the stage, I’m pretty humorless, defensive even, stern. I feel unsteady. My hands seem like they’re battling me. My legs feel brand-new. And in my mind, I’m running through all the what-not-to-do scenarios: don’t break a string, don’t botch a chord, don’t forget a lyric, don’t play too loud, don’t, don’t, don’t…
The more quietly I perform, the more comfortable I feel. I bring “Intent On St. Paul” down, way down. I step out of my comfort zone and perform “Cry” for the first time. I play a cover of Wilco’s “I’m Always In Love”. I start slow and quiet, fragile almost, and build. It is would make Tweedy proud. I stay quiet, vulnerable even, for the piece de resistance, “Dear Elizabeth.” I don’t resolve to A, but leave the phrase “I still have something to say” lingering incomplete above our heads.
I close the show in stark contrast to its open: not the bombast of “Live Forever,” but the hush of “New York.” The room falls quiet with me. And for a moment, I am steady. My hands do my bidding with precision. My legs are like old trees rooted deep in the earth. My mind is silent save for the sound of my own voice, and the feeling that I’m smiling, finally.
And so, it occurs to me now, that maybe that’s the idea. Maybe that’s what “Live Forever” means. I dreamt I’d be a big, flamboyant, scissor-kicking rock star. But that’s not my fate, nor my strength. I play loudly well enough, and I put on a rock show well enough. But that’s not my fate, nor my strength.
I don’t want to live forever
I just wanna’ know
That there is something better
Than a rocknroll show
Give me quiet, give me vulnerable, give me fragile, unsteady, heartfelt, and sincere. Give me deep, simple, imperfect, unpolished, and incomplete. I’ll take it all. That’s more than a rocknroll show. That’s real life. That’s a life worth living.
Harder To Believe
The little things aren’t working anymore. Not the turkey burger, the ice cream, the quiet night in front of the television. Nothing.
Yesterday was a bit of a soul crusher. I don’t usually loath Mondays. I get up pretty quickly most mornings. I like what I do. But I just didn’t have it yesterday. I just didn’t want to be there. I needed more weekend.
I finally leave the office around 7:30, wade through the throngs of tourists, descend the sweaty subway, wait ten minutes for a 2/3, ride to 72d Street, walk to 80th Street, get to my stoop, reach into my pocket for my keys and find that I’ve left them at work.
F’in’ brilliant.
I buzz my neighbor Dana. She lets me into the building. After some climbing about, I find that — not surprisingly — my apartment is far from unpenetrable.
I’m soaked straight through and dirty when I get inside. I’m tired and cranky. My turkey burger deluxe with chedder cheese shows up. The fries are soggy.
I sit down on the couch and I think, “Man, I am so not ready to come home to a spouse.” I mean, if I were married and came home to someone else, would I be entitled to be cranky? Or worse, whiney? Maybe not. And come to think of it, maybe that would be best. Maybe that’s the point. A little less me, a whole lot more we.
There’s not much reason for it, really. I got some great external validation, anyway. Kurt Loder sent me an email saying “You rool!” (I just made a few fixes to his article, but still). Stephanie sent me a photo of her adorable daughter, Emily, rockin’ a “Love & Other Indoor Games” t-shirt (though her expression says, “Mom, you’re embarassing me!” Which I recall is most expression when you’re a teenager). And, you know, every day I get an email or two from a friend out there in the blogosphere. Which I really appreciate. But, but, but…
But cry me a river, right? What can I tell ya’? The site ain’t called www.somebodyelsesname.com. You signed up for it. I’m just tellin’ ya’ what it feels like.
I did dig on sleep last night. I had a great dream featuring this young woman who used to come see my shows (before I rebuffed her advances — in real life, not in the dream, which is what made it a great dream). I had plane tickets to Rome, but from the wrong airport. I remember that. And I remember mackin’ on her big time. Which was dually reciprocated. In the dream. Yeah, sleep is good. And excercise is good. But there’s not enough of either of those.
Woe is me. Not my point. My point? I’m gonna’ drag my ass out of my malaise tonight for your listening pleasure. Amy Hills and I are performing together at Pianos. She’s a real talent, has a beautiful voice, and is a downright stunner. Plus, we’re covering one of my first favorite duets. I’ll give you two hints: 1) I was ten-years-old, 2) the band is from Sheffield, England.
See you there.
Happy Kids
Where I come from, we call ‘em Christmas lights. In New York City in July, they call ‘em patio lights.
As far as I’m concerned, a New York City roof deck is incomplete without ‘em. I struck out early Saturday morning for a few strands. Gracious Home, Urban Outfitters, and a handful of local hardware stores all failed me. Once again, it was Bed, Bath and Beyond to the rescue.
I was sweat straight through by the time they were strung. I had scarcely enough time to whip up some salsa, drag some speakers outside, and hop in the shower before the buzzer began sounding.
Somewhere between Mike Doughty’s “Looking At The World From The Bottom Of A Well” and Nada Surf’s “Happy Kids,” one of the strands fell down. The collective gasped, then giggled. I scaled my neighbor’s roof, rehung them, and stood there a minute with my hands on my hips.
‘These are good friends,’ I thought. ‘You’re lucky.’
Heather broke my reverie. “You are not a golden god.”
I didn’t jump. Nor did my guests. The last one left around three a.m.
In the morning, struggling through the languid heat to bag up the empties, I counted five bottles of wine, two bottles of champagne, and enough Bass and Stella to inebriate the Twelvth Mountain Division. There were, maybe, twenty of us.
Everyone was well lit.
Cameron Crowe: Hometown Hero
Writer/director Cameron Crowe’s genre-defining “Say Anything” set the bar for teen romantic comedies. It was devoid of pandering, light on slapstick and crammed with great music. When Crowe’s protagonist, Lloyd Dobler, can’t think of what to say to win back his girlfriend, he stands below her bedroom window — in the rain — a boom box held aloft, Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes” serenading them both.
Over the years, Crowe’s films have been full of similar scenes: small, life-changing, speechless instants. From “Say Anything” through “Jerry Maguire” to his new film, “Elizabethtown,” (starring Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst and Susan Sarandon), Crowe has made a career of filming the seemingly unfilmable — illustrating those fragile moments on which entire lives turn.
Crowe recently took a break from editing “Elizabethtown” to give MTV News’ Benjamin Wagner a call and talk about the new film, touring with rock stars and the “in-between” moments that matter most to him.
Exclusive photos from “Elizabethtown”
MTV: The gestation period on “Elizabethtown” has been …
Crowe: It’s been a while.
MTV: Give me some backstory, from the germ of an idea to where you are today.
Crowe: After “Vanilla Sky” — which is mostly about one guy’s head, and not my story, really — I wanted to do a real character story. I had this script I was working on that had nine characters. It was filled with things that people in movies do. It was summer 2002, and I was on the road with my wife. She plays with the band Heart, they were playing a summer tour, and she convinced me to get out of the house and see the world from the bus. I woke up one morning and looked out of the bus, and the hillsides were electric green landscapes. We were in Kentucky, where I’m from. I got off the bus, rented a car and drove around. And I started writing something new. I started writing about the family we don’t know we have and the things that happen when life intercedes to take you on a surprise journey. And tragedy [the death of Orlando Bloom's character's father] that ends up being a ticket to something wilder and greater and stronger than you anticipated. And it has a lot of music in it.
MTV: We count on you for that.
Crowe: I just have no high concepts — all this stuff kind of ends up being about music and people and life. I was just really happy that this one kind of hijacked what I’d been working on and said, “It’s time to write about your family.”
MTV: What strikes me is how much of this film and all your work counts on capturing those transformative, almost invisible moments in a person’s life.
Crowe: Right!
MTV: How do you film that? You must have remarkable confidence in your actors’ ability to demonstrate interior.
See the “Elizabethtown” trailer, plus a special 7-minute extended trailer cut by Cameron Crowe himself, in Overdrive.
Crowe: Well, I got lucky early on, working with John Cusack and Sean Penn and other actors who were able to make those moments real. Even guys like Judge Reinhold in “Fast Times.” People were like, “How are you gonna make a scene about a guy who’s longing for his sister’s friend and masturbating in the bathroom?” And we couldn’t even find anyone to direct that movie. Then Amy Heckerling came along and said, “I know how I can make this work.”
But those are the things that mean the most to me, the in-between moments. They’re also the greatest stuff to use music with, because it feels like your spying on life. It’s fun to write those quiet moments: falling in love, or how people watch TV …
MTV: Or driving a car, or walking through an airport …
Crowe: Exactly! There’s a whole thing at the end of “Elizabethtown” that takes place on a road trip across the country. Kirsten Dunst’s character makes Orlando’s character a mixmap [a map with musical cues] that’s really specific. It’s 42 hours and 11 minutes long, and it’s filled with music. He’s never really traveled, and she’s a flight attendant so she does nothing but travel. She says, “Look, I’m going to give you a map, but it’s not like the usual map. It’s very different, and you gotta really follow it. Call me when you’re done.” Before he knows it, he’s completely addicted to her words and music and where she’s taking him. It kind of goes back to that bus trip where you think your world is the world. And somebody pulls you out of it and says, “Come over here and see the world everybody else is living.”
I wanted to make the movie about that: what it’s like to truly be alive.
MTV: Kirsten strikes me as the type of woman who could transform a man like that. She sparkles. Not unlike Kate Hudson, or Phoebe Cates for that matter. Maybe you should take credit for that sparkle.
Crowe: [Laughs] Nah. It’s their eyes. But there are so many actors that you’re dying to work with that you can’t ever hire. Kirsten came very close on “Almost Famous.” She was almost in that movie, so we never really forgot her. And she’s a huge music fan. I play music during takes and she’s the first person I’ve worked with who’ll go, “Um, I don’t like that song.” The camera will be rollin’ and I’ll play “Trouble Man” by Marvin Gaye, and she’ll go, “Turn that Marvin Gaye music off! Put on some Rilo Kiley.”
She stays up all night and downloads music from LimeWire. She needs to be arrested.
MTV: You’ve outed her.
Crowe: She does know music and it pours out of her. And it spread to Orlando, too, By the end of the movie he was going, “Um, put on that other song.” I felt like a DJ.
MTV: What songs did you gravitate to on set, or did they lead you to?
Crowe: Orlando really loves Jeff Buckley, so he always asked for “Lover You Should Have Come Over.” And he also loved this acoustic version of “Mr. Tambourine Man” from the Live 1975 Bob Dylan disc. And we all agreed on Ryan Adams, so there’s a lot of Ryan Adams in the movie. Kirsten really loved Rilo Kiley and Rufus Wainwright. We played a lot of My Morning Jacket and Patty Griffin. She was kind of a big early inspiration. Her 1,000 Kisses album was a big inspiration for the movie because the story — you know, that she went into her basement and recorded that album with no frills and that became her breakthrough album — was sort of the idea behind the way we wanted to do “Elizabethtown.”
MTV: Give us a sense of what songs are going to make the film. To what degree does Elton John’s “My Father’s Gun” play a role?
Crowe: Well, that’s gonna be in there because that’s the song we always used when we were auditioning guys looking into the father’s casket. Elton was very cooperative on “Almost Famous” and gave us all the separated tracks on “Tiny Dancer.” He’s one of the guys who trust us. Not many others do.
MTV: Come on, you got Led Zeppelin [on "Almost Famous"].
Crowe: They didn’t give us separated tracks [multi-track tapes that would enable the filmmaker to play, for example, just the piano from a song], though. But it’s really freeing to finally talk about this stuff. We have a new My Morning Jacket song called “Where to Begin” that we love and used when we were shooting. There’s a long phone call sequence that culminates in … well, actually I’m not going to tell you what it culminates in. There are too many months to go.
MTV: October’s coming soon. The release date’s not sliding, right?
Crowe: Yeah, it’s definitely October — the land of slasher and thriller movies. Hopefully, we’ll be a little different.
MTV: “Almost Famous” came out in the fall. It’s a fall vibe, man.
Crowe: It is. We’d be doomed if we came out in July. But “Elizabethtown” takes place in summer. I always thought it would be great to have a movie that opens in summer that’s about summer. But that plan evaporated because it’s more of a fall vibe, as you noted.
[Right now] the movie’s still a little long …
MTV: No!
Crowe: [Laughs] Can you imagine such a thing? The guy who runs the focus group asks, “What would you cut out?” And the group immediately starts arguing. One person says, “Well you can cut this,” and someone else says, “Are you crazy? You can’t cut that!” Then this girl says, “Well, you know, it’s really hard to know where to cut ’cause it’s long and important.” So we’ve been joking about that. We called the cut “long and important.” But it can’t be that long, or that important. We’re gonna cut it down.
MTV: I imagine that process is a little heartbreaking.
Crowe: You always have favorite moments that are kind of on the bench, waiting to get in the game. But we were walking around last night and we were just saying, “Ya know what? Let’s just admit the secret. This is really fun.”
MTV: Let’s see: riding on a tour bus, beautiful wife in a rock band, making a film from the heart, tremendous actors waiting in line to work with you. That ain’t bad, man.
Crowe: If you don’t question it, and treat it with great preciousness. You’re making me feel like I’m really on the right track, and thank you, but studios are not run by and populated by people with your perspective, or mine. You always end up in a room with a bunch of people staring at you saying, “This is an in-between movie.” They even said that the first time they saw “Jerry Maguire.” “This is not ‘Mission: Impossible.’ How are we gonna sell it?” “Almost Famous” barely got released. It’s hard getting people to believe that there’s an audience out there. It’s cool when you do run across people who believe in it and want to help, but that’s rare.
MTV: I wonder — and forgive me here — with the rise of the niche market, I wonder whether you’re able to find audiences more easily. When you mention all the musicians, I think of radio stations like WFUV or KCRW — audiences that are right in your creative wheelhouse. But it ain’t “Spider-Man.”
Crowe: No, it ain’t. But those people — they’re discerning, and they often don’t leave the house. So you just have to find some place where your blind optimism will work out and become a reality. It’s hard work to find people who will wave the flag with you.
However — “Spider-Man 4″? I’m available!
Untitled
I’m on the phone interviewing one of my heroes, Cameron Crowe, when my MiniDisc’s battery dies.
I don’t have to tell you why I love this guy. He’s everything I want to be: a great writer, a great fan of music, and a great filmmaker. With more heart than most. He tops my very short list of all-time favorite writer/directors: Cameron Crowe, Wes Anderson, PT Anderson. And I’m on the phone with him.
He’s at the good part. He’s on the road with his wife, Heart front woman Nancy Wilson. He wakes up on the tour bus. The hills outside are blazing green. He’s in Kentucky where his father was born and raised. He gets off the the bus, rents a car, and gets himself lost. His father’s died, so he goes searching for his roots. He goes searching for his father.
And my battery dies.
I scramble for backup. It dies. I IM my colleague, Ben Cosgrove. “HELP! I’m on the phone with Cameron and my batteries are dead!” Ben swoops in and saves the day.
I get the interview. We get along fabulously. I fawn, if only a little bit.
“The film runs a little long,” he says at one point.
“No!” I say, ribbing him a little bit.
“You just have to find some place where your blind optimism that it’ll all work out becomes a reality,” he says later.
Blind optimism. God bless him.
Back to work, I say. He thanks me. “Stay in touch,” he says.
God help me.
Still
My ass is sore, and it ain’t from runnin’.
I spent about twelve hours parked on my ass Sunday.
Jon and I left the vineyard around noon. I had about all the communism and community I could handle. I wanted some quiet time before flying home.
“When’s your flight?” they asked.
“In a minute,” I said.
“Way to be evasive,” Jon whispered.
“I’ve had some practice.”
Our new friend Marcie (she of Grateful Body and, formerly, Skywalker Sound) suggested we check out Salt Point. “It’s one of my favorite spots on the coast,” she said.
We wound our way down the mountain, turning on a road that seemed to lead to the coast. The road led in and out of deep woods and wide grasslands through bright sunshine into steep vistas overlooking the sparkling blue Pacific. From a thousand feet above, and a few miles away, we spotted Fort Ross where Marcie hold told us to turn northward. Soon we were on PC1, and Salt Point.
Salt Point itself looked like a composite of Nebraska, Hawaii, and Mars. We hiked down a short hill, past a kelp-strewn bay, forded a small stream, and then ascended a short cliff. We walked the edge of the cliff to where it opened on a broad, rocky shoreline. Large waves crashed dramatically against the rock, spilling whitewater over them and whittling them away at a snail’s pace. The rock was smooth but fissured, dotted with shallow, still pools. There were natural bridges, turbulent coved, and shadowed caverns. I poked around the shoreline, trying to capture the pounding surf and charging tide. Jon stood high above me taking it all in.
As the afternoon ticked away, I became increasingly cognizant of our long back to San Francisco, and long flights back to New York. We hiked back to the Jeep, then drove the winding highway south. The road was cluttered with RVs, so the going was slow. Northern California radio was full of static and crap music, but Jon and I didn’t need it. I caught him up on last year’s melodrama, he caught me up on parenthood. When we finally crossed the Golden Gate around 4:30. My flight to LAX was at 6:45. I started shifting in my seat nervously. “Hey Jon,” I said, “Think you could drop me at the terminal and return the rental?”
I raced through SFO, down the jet way, and into 25B. I was out of breath, and a little anxious about takeoff. I folded my hands in my lap, pulled on my sunglasses, closed my eyes, and began inhaling…
I woke up twelve hours later in my apartment. My ass was sore, but my heart was whole.
Fade Into You
It didn’t take long to regret lobbying so heavily for a pre-wedding run.
I was the first to change into running shorts. I thought it might motivate the others. Eventually, amidst the place setting, flower arranging, and chuppa building, Matt, his brother Marc, and friend Daniel (aka “B Love”) readied themselves for a few miles in the mountains.
We walked the first few hundred feet along the ridgeline. The sky had not yet cleared. A vast and varied gray was tucked into the blazing green hills. We likened it to Rivendell.
We ran six long miles of muddy road through sweeping vineyards, wide meadows, and shadowed evergreen groves. Apple, a mangy, spirited mutt, led the charge, darting in and out of the woods, and leaping through small sheep herds. Our conversation, initially enthusiastic, became sporadic. We settled into the steady rhythm of our footfalls and breath, taking in the scenery around us and the impending gravity of the afternoon. When the gravel yielded to pavement, we turned for home, and Matt’s approaching ceremony.
Matt was stoic, if not enthusiastic, as we walked back to the vineyard. The place was transformed. An alter of flowers was set in a small northward-facing field. The interior was well manicured: rows of tables and chairs, china and linen. The kitchen was buzzing.
One by one, we repaired to our tents and SUVs to dress for the wedding. I met Matt in line for the outdoor shower, there behind Frank and Susanna. I snapped a photo of him in the shower’s window: thumbs up and smiling.
My shower was long and warm. Plants grew through the weathered slats of the small structure. Spider webs hung in the corners. I never felt cleaner. The scenery was pristine. I could get used to getting dressed outdoors. The breeze was cool and dry. The air was sweet. I didn’t care who saw. No one did.
We assembled for the ceremony. There were no pre-wedding jitters, only an atmosphere of tranquility. The klezmer band struck up a tune. The chupa bearers appeared first, then Matt, flanked by his parents. He wore a black, Nehru collared coat with gold embroidery over an off white shirt. Sarah, makeup less, approached in a simple white gown. Matt smiled.
Carrie, a colleague from the Breema Institute, began the ceremony with a meditation. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes and instead closed them, listening closely to the sound of my breath, and the wind through the trees. I opened them slowly, absorbed in the blades of grass at my feet. When I looked up, the valley came into a newer, sharper focus. There was nothing but nature for as far as the ey could see; no signs of man. Swallows swooped playfully on the chuppa. And the ceremony began in earnest.
It’s been a while since I sat straight faced through a wedding. The patriarchal, Bible-intensive symbolism and sheer force of optimism are difficult for me to stomach. This wedding would prove no different. The opening “prayer” involved the following recitation:
We pray that we may be aligned with You
So that your powers may flow through us
And be expressed by us
For the good of this planet Earth
And all the living beings on it
Wow.
Matt and Sarah had written their vows. They too were strewn with New Ageisms like “life force” and “great Grandmother Earth.” But however foreign or hokey or just plain out there the whole thing was, it was impossible to resist the beauty of the situation. Or its earnestness. Big Media may not relate, but it wasn’t Big Media’s wedding. It was Matt and Sarah’s. It was all theirs. And it was beautiful.
True, I’m dubious about marriage. And why not? The primary example in my life — my parent’s — dissolved spectacularly. And I’ve seen more than one friend’s fade into oblivion since.
Similarly, though, I have seen success: my dad and his wife, my brother and Jen, Jon and Lisa.
So I haven’t given up on love, not yet. And I certainly haven’t given up on marriage. I hope it happens for me someday, and I’d rather it sooner than later. If it does, and if my yet-to-be-identified future bride is ok with it, I hope our ceremony is as beautiful, as earnest, and as individual as Matt and Sarah’s.
And I hope that afterwards, in the wee hours of the morning, when all of the guests have fallen asleep beneath a canopy of stars, we sneak downstairs for a piece of baklava and a glass of fresh goat’s milk, and laugh uncontrollably. And we’ll turn to each other and say through the crumbs, “We did it!”
Naive Melody
The Russian River meets the Pacific Ocean about sixty miles northwest of San Francisco. There, the great rolling hills of Sonoma meet the sharp, evergreen-strewn shoreline. I turned right at the sea, heading further still from anything resembling anything that had come before.
I arrived SFO bleary from a late night as the first guest in James and his wife’s new home. I met Jon at baggage, and we pointed our Jeep north. I scanned the dial for decent radio, anxious to avoid pregnant pauses in conversation, but found none. Later, Jon and I would travel the full three hours accompanied only by the sound of our voices, catching each other up to the years in between.
The directions to Matthew’s wedding were decidedly free-spirited. “Turn right at the big yellow sign,” it said, “And follow the paved road to where it turns to gravel.”
The sky was low and gray. Wisps of cloud nuzzled the hilltops. We drove slowly through patches of fog, winding back and forth through dense groves of redwood, fields of grazing sheep, and well-rowed vineyards. We arrived as the cool drizzle turned to an outright downpour.
The estate was vast and uncultivated. The main house was a spacious, modern thing full of open rooms, dense beams, great windows, and plenty of vistas. There was no welcome committee, save the two mangy dogs were milling about the brush-filled fire pit. Jon and I looked at each other nervously, uncertain if we’d found the correct location, before spotting Sibby and Matt sipping mate from a bombilla.
“This must be the place.”
The early hours of our time there amongst the clouds was uncertain and uncomfortable. We were early arrivers, left largely to our own devices. Where others were camping, Jon and I — as representatives of the mainstream (he works for Big Pharmaceutical, I work for Big Media) — had rented the biggest SUV we could find. We thought it would be funny to be so un-PC. We also thought it would make for warm, dry nights.
Before long, Susie and Tim, proprietors of this great, forty acre estate, put us to work. Susie pointed at the fire pit.
“See all that brush there?”
“Move it?” I asked.
“Torch it.”
“This,” I said to Jon, “is going to be my kind of party.”
Guests began arriving slowly, Californians with names live Root, Green, Indigo, Love, and Aura. Conversations revolved around composting, organic farming, yoga and meditation. “And what do you do?” they asked.
“I work for MTV News in New York City.”
“Ooooh,” they’d respond. “Interesting.”
End of conversation.
I’m being facetious, of course. We made some great friends, like Marci (whose company Grateful Body makes organic skin products) and Frank (whose band, Fingerpaint, is finishing up a double album). Still, we were conspicuous in our lifestyle choices.
Not that we didn’t take a fair stab at communism. On Saturday morning, we were cloudy from a light night around the campfire, sore from a long night on a vacant couch, and full from a midnight snack of baklava and fresh goat’s milk. Still, there was work to be done. Rallied by Sarah’s sister Rebecca, we divvied up tasks: place setting, flower arrangement, sweeping, recycling, KP — you name it. In the end, Jon and I stuck to physical labor: moving tables, chairs, and couches, parking cars, and building fires.
While communism may have failed on scale, it was largely a success this day. (Of course, we were motivated by our love for the bride and groom, not fear of some demagogue or deep belief in some dogma.) By early afternoon, the space was transformed. The fire pit was full and raging. Great buffet tables were fashioned from old wine barrels. Native wild flowers adorned every corner. Candles and Christmas lights warmed every room. And shortly after a weather ritual involving sage, tobacco, and a sharp, inverted stick, the rain cleared, and the sun began to peak through the mist.
To Be Continued …
In Your Honour
Many roads led to the marriage of Matthew Tousignant and Sarah Fishkin there amongst the redwood and pine of Sonoma County.
I met Matthew D. Tousignant on his first day at Conestoga Senior High School in Berwyn, PA. We were juniors. Our guidance councilor asked me (the student council brownie hound that I was) to show Matt around. Matt had transferred from private school. He was 5’6″ at best, thick: muscle bound, crew cut, darkly handsome. He wore a Top Gun-type naval flight jacket adorned with various miltary patches.
Matt had attended the public junior high school, so he knew plenty of the student body. He fell in with the athletes, a group that generally tolerated me because a) I was the sports reporter for the local paper and b) was best friends with Sibby Browne, star of the soccer team.
Matt and I took biology together. It won’t surprise you to learn that the sciences were, at best, a challenge for me. Matt, on the other hand, was the only person I ever knew who actually earned straight As. SO he tutored me. In exchange, I tried to advise him with the ladies. (With some success, I’ll add parenthetically: he took the date of his choice to the Homecoming dance, which was our collective objective at the time.)
The furnace that forged our friendships — Matthew, Sibby, Jon, James and I — though, was booze. And Guns ‘n Roses. While there were numerous combinations of these elements, the top two were a) piling into James’ Suburban with a case of Stroh’s, driving around the Main Line turfing lawns and b) celebrating Happy Hour at my mom’s house (who asked me to point out that she a) was not home and b) did not sanction the gatherings). These were intimate gatherings, to be sure. More often than not, a hand-penciled sign hung on my front door: “No Party, No Fun, Watch My Thumb: Leave!” Not very cool, but it kept the gatherings cop-free.
Tous went to Harvard where he dropped out of his ROTC scholarship (much to his father, Lt. Colonel Dave Tousignant’s, chagrin) and pursued art history. He moved to Berkeley where he had a short stint in seminary, before moving into holistic bodywork. For the last six months he’s lived on a commune in northern California.
Sibby partied his way through UPenn, eventually becoming the well-lubricated president of his fraternity while still excelling on the soccer field. He tough high school English for a while, lived with Matt in Berkeley a while, then settled in Albuquerque, NM, where he runs a soccer league.
Jon went on to Moravian College, where he laid the foundation that led to his current designation as Jon Larkin, PhD. He was the first to marry (my mother presided over their ceremony, I kid you not), the first to be a parent, and the first to move back home to suburban Philly. He now works for Smith Klein Glaxo.
James took a run at UPitt, then toiled for a few years in some fairly major blue collar gigs: first in asbestos removal, then in a steel mill. Somewhere around 1995, he packed his Ford Probe, drove west for L.A., and never looked back. He rose through the mailroom ranks to his current position as one of United Talent Agency’s top agents. He married three summers ago (the last time we all got together en masse), purchsed his first home a three weeks ago, and is expecting his first child in eight weeks.
And then there’s me. You know me.
The five of us have kept up remarkably well through the years, due in no small part to my penchant for email, our affinity for reuniting over beer and Maryland blue crabs, but due also something more substantive and intangible. There’s a shared sensibility there, the product of all of our disperate parts combined.
Those are the players. Those are the men — barring, perhaps, my father and brother — who know me best. We have seen each other through a lot: wanted pregnancies, unwanted pregnancies, job loss, love loss, hair loss. And though we may be bag tagging one another, blessing each other with mouths full of frothy beer, or farting in each other’s faces, there is way more there. There is 20+ years of history, of things changed and unchanged.
And so there we were — all but James, whose impending fatherhood prohibited it — assembling high atop the rolling green Coastal Range some 1600 feet above the misty Pacific Ocean, to marry off our beloved friend Matthew.
To Be Continued …
