Something sweet has left the room

My mom, a kind and gentle person, not perfect, not superhuman in any way but a good and decent woman, a great mother and friend died on August 14, on her half birthday. She was 96.5 years old. It had been coming for some time. The machine was breaking down, and so was her sense of herself. Dementia is a strange thing. It takes little bits of you and reorders them or steals them so that it is difficult to plot your way through a conversation or possibly you become anxious or scared at nothing. Mom wasn't like that. She was an independent thinker and while very conservative person in her habits, accepted people as they were, and liked them. After getting the call that my mom had gone, I drove over and sat with her for a couple hours, waiting for the funeral home to come. It was a lonely visit. She was there and not there. The piece of furniture that she had inhabited was there but she wasn't. I hope that she wasn't uncomfortable or confused by what happened. I hope that she knew we were there and that she was very much loved by many. Maybe none of that matters.  My brothers and sister were all there the day she slipped into the spiral. The last time she was conversant was when all four of her children were there with her.  Dean went home to Spokane but the rest of us and our cousin took turns sitting with her. Most of her grandchildren saw her in this state. Occasionally she would open her eyes and make some effort at yes and no answers. At one point after being asleep for hours, I came in with one of my sons, who shares a name with my long dead father- I said to her :"Hey mom, Ned's here" and her eyes popped open. Did she think her long lost love was there to take her home? Was she disappointed that it was just her skinny grandson? I love you mom. Good bye.

Hair Dye, Awkward Kabuki Pantomime and Post Punk Pop at Three Quarters Speed without the Snarl Means the Past is a Forbidden Zone

I had never seen the Psychedelic Furs live. They have been prominent on my playlist in the studio for many years. "Forever Now" was one of the first gifts I gave my beloved in our courtship.  They are a very visceral audio lynchpin to my past, listening to their now thirty plus year old albums propels me to a very sacred time in my life. Unable to convince my love of my life to attend with me, I drug my 15 year old son to see them and James last night. You really never can go home again. But you can visit and laugh at your sixty year old uncles trying to be relevant with their dyed hair and sunglasses.
    After an opening band "Dear Boy" that was very good, and obviously (and admittedly ) influenced by both of the headliners. They were a pleasant surprise.  "James" the co-headliners- with the Furs - a band Laurie liked and who wound up on my playlist came out and while they were more trippy than their album work, they were really fun and interesting- most of the crowd seemed very into them and excited- singing along and crowd surfing the lead singer. It was great fun. Even the lad seemed invested. I knew something was possibly amiss when our friends decided to go after James. William mentioned that the Psychedelic Furs were releasing a new album- the kiss of death for antique English rockers of the late Jurassic- I was immediately dubious. Laurie had seen them twice in the 80's, at the height of their popularity, and while she liked them, she was essentially "meh"  about seeing them then. I guess I should have seen it coming.
    They played their greatest hits, of which, there are many for me. While I never expect anything to sound like their recorded versions, everything seemed to be at some barely recognizable half speed, with none of the hard driving edge that they had in the day. It was Indian Casino cover band material. Richard Butler used to have an almost Johnny Rotten snarl quality to his voice.  I realize nobody keeps that gravelly tone forever, and can still speak, but he seemed to be a lounge impersonator; complete with ridiculous rock stereotype Kabuki moves and smirks. It was a band counting heads in the audience and multiplying by ticket price to see if they made their mortgage payment. Where the audience (many of whom, like our friends, had left) had been energized by James, the remainder crowd seemed unmoved, like they were staying out of respect. After the first set I grabbed my son and we left.
    I wanted to salvage what I could of my Psychedelic Furs affection.  I missed several of my favorite songs that I am sure they played after we left. I didn't want my most indelible memory of a band from my post college days of romance, to be chubby old guys in curated "rock" wardrobe crooning "Into You Like A Train" like it was some sort of meandering ballad. Everything will eventually disappoint you, and that what you thought was special, will eventually be proven not to be. You can still hold things in their memory, in their own space and time as special.  Seeing the Psychedelic Furs in 2019 was not that space and time. I hope I rescued something of them for myself by leaving early.

Trailer Park

Test Trailer for Milk of Amnesia

Its a start.

Digging a hole and filling it with your past

 In our youth (when we were beautiful and interesting) Laurie and I made a movie together. "Milk of Amnesia" (AKA "Oedipal Breakfast") is a lot of things to us: a major achievement, a source of ongoing disagreement and a financial millstone around our neck that took years to shed. It is feature length and professionally finished. It is far from perfect and arguably not close to what we had originally envisioned but it has it's charms. It was a labor of something like love (maybe a "toil of like"?) - Laurie worked at a motion picture lab, and I worked at a video equipment rental house and studio. We made this film on a shoestring, using volunteer unpaid crew and talent. It took two plus years. It was a slow motion marathon. Once it was done, exhausted, bored with our new toy and afraid that any further exposure to it would doom our marriage, "Milk of Amnesia" was relegated to a pile of film cans and tapes in the closet beneath our stairs. Our kids never asked about it. We blissfully forgot.  Like an itch that was never scratched we would poke at it every few years and think about breaking it out to show somewhere. Crowd source funding of course took over and we are transferring it so we can run it in a theater. People seemed interested.  It feels both good and uncomfortable. I don't like messing with the dead. I had put this part of my life away, and it was pretty easy not ignore the pile of cans in the closet.I am hoping that it doesnt dredge up any bad sediment that had settled under us. Digging it all up it is delicate.

First Light.

There is some hope. The ice caps are melting and the carbon dioxide levels are higher than ever but there are young people who have skills and kindnesses to offer.  Ned graduated from the UW this week, with degrees in Informatics and Economics. He made the Dean's list for most of his time there and was on academic scholarship.  Laurie and I are very proud of him. Tom is finishing his first year of high school at Garfield, and is a good kid. Where does this go?  I don't know but these two are much loved and will hopefully be part of the solution to the problems their preceding generations have left them.

Arbitrary Milestone in my Personal Decrepitude

I am turning fifty-eight years old.  It is a mildly disheartening feeling. That's forty years since I graduated from high school and the world seemed large and open and any direction seemed ripe for exploration. I, of course did none of that, I graduated from college, came back to my home town and never left. I did meet, fall in love with, coerce into marriage and reproduce with my favorite person ever, which softens that blow considerably, but still my life has been one long and continual settlement for the least amount of hassle. And now it is mostly over. The growing number of age related maladies and self inflicted sins of indulged, feigned ignorance are taking their toll. The death of friends, and contemporaries are now commonplace. Illnesses arrive in people I know like a lottery with an ever shrinking pool of numbers. My parents generation have shrunk to my mother in law, who sweetly struggles with her loss of memory, trying to valiantly hold on to what she can, and my own kind, sometimes mercurial mother who has given it up and now waits for a quiet exit while watching Filipino soap operas with the attendants. Fifty Eight seems old. Words and names seem to escape me. Thoughts which once came like a sprinter going downhill are plodding like walking in deep snow and mud. I partially blame the dopamine of the iPhone for it's faux pleasure in trivial information at your fingertips. I realize the internet is full of inspiring tales of people who do great things after their prime earning years. I know that there are amazing things still available to me. I know that I could be that person, but I also know I won't be. Some day I will wish I were this young again but all I can think of is that I wish I could do it over again  with the perspective that I have now. The world that now takes shape upon waking in the morning no longer feels boundless. What is left feels broken and increasingly shabby, like a piece of carrion fought over by scavengers.

There is a certain disappointment here.

The Unbearable Tragedy of Gravity and Mortality

Notre Dame burned today. Something so beautiful had to be destroyed because everything must be taken before the end.  The great disruption continues, the waking nightmare that never stops. The hours  on hours that we stare unblinking at our screens waiting for the light to blink out. The glitch in the matrix has been seen. The ghosts are nearby. Everything is destined for the whirlpool. I don't want to fall, but the ladder is rickety and I must go higher. My friend Lorraine died April 4th. The cathedral burned April 15th. What waits for us in May?