Levon

There are artists, and, let's face it, there are Artists.

What divides the two? Talent, mostly. But great artists seem to have an innate integrity. I wouldn't say dignity, because, some artists are, by nature, a little less than digified, and we wouldn't want it any other way. But there's a sense that they comfortably inhabit their own skin, and they're cool with who they are and what they can do. And they love their work. When they're not doing it, they might get a little...ornery. Comes with the territory. When they're doing what they live for, the passion shows through, and, just by watching them, you can taste a bit of what they're feeling.

Which brings us to Mr. Levon Helm, who passed today. Normally, I'd say "who died today," but I've noticed that in blues circles, the gents say "he passed." And Levon was all about the blues.

He was, of course, the drummer and one of the lead vocalists (along with Richard Manuel and Rick Danko) of The Band, and he was set for history had he never done another thing. But he did. After The Band hung it up in 1976, he formed the Levon Helm RKO All-Stars, and later reunited much of The Band, though Richard Manuel's heartbreaking suicide really put an end to all that. He also proved to be a fine actor, notably stealing the hell out of a pivotal scene in "The Right Stuff" when Sam Shepard, playing Chuck Yeager, asks him for a stick of Beeman's gum.

In 1998, Levon developed a lump in his throat, and it turned out to be the worst kind. Not entirely surprising, given he could rip through a pack a cigs in a flash and kept a good stock of sipping whiskey on hand. He could have had his larynx removed, but he opted on having just the tumor excised, followed by radiation treatments. Why? So he could keep his vocal cords. His voice was a little weak for a spell, but it eventually came back, and he kept on drumming and singing his ass off for another 14 years. And he never seemed happier than when he was on stage.

Brass tacks, this was the guy who sang "The Weight." He sang a lot of other songs too, most of them plain wonderful, and full of life and humor, freighted with a hard-won realism and livened with a Puckish wit. But if there was ever an indelible mark, it was his three-kick intro to "The Weight" followed by that wry, knowing, wily Southern voice, rich, worn, and weary, singing:

I pulled into Nazareth
Feelin' 'bout half-past dead

(The Nazareth in the song, by the way, was supposedly not the Nazareth where Jesus and his pals hung out, but, rather, Nazareth, Pennsylvania, home of Martin guitars. Which, if Christ returns like they say, wouldn't be a bad place to look for him.)

That and the song below, which, basically, is so full and powerful and goddamn tragic that it has become part of the canon. This the is last time all of the original Band played it, on Thanksgiving at San Francisco's Winterland, at the legendary Last Waltz, and if you want to hear the magic that comes with a great artist connecting with his audience, listen for the crowd response to the wind-up for the final chorus.

So, you know, it hurts when the artists we love pass on. But Levon Helm and The Band seemed to keep one foot in this world, and one the other side, digging down into what Greil Marcus calls the "old, weird America," and, though I'm sure he wasn't happy about taking a final curtain call, Levon probably found his way through it with a heart and soul as big and brassy and strong as the songs he lived.

So...thank you, Mr. Helm: for many blurry nights, a few rough mornings, and all the spaces in between. Nobody's ever going to forget you or your work. And I think that's about all an artist can ask for, whether they start their title uppercase or not.

The Year of Living Tentatively

I think I took last year off.

I’m just coming to this realization. Mind you, it wasn’t intentional, nor was I entirely idle. I picked up a guitar nearly every day and practiced my ass off (because it was incredibly fun). Not that I improved all that much, but I still did it, damn it. I managed to make serious progress on the guitar book—wrote probably 120 pages, and roughed out a good portion of the book proposal (and I hate writing proposals). Cleaned up a bunch of plays, getting them in better shape. Did a load of theatre market research. In fact, I ended up doing a bunch of things I wanted to do. Writing or staging plays just wasn’t one of them.

The year started out so damned well. The staged reading of “Immaterial Matters” was probably one of the best of my career, and I was ready to roll big with that piece and a number of other, recent plays begging world premieres, scaling the theatrical battlements with cutlass and eyepatch.

And then...2011 happened. Not just to me, but to almost everybody I knew. It was like everyone took a long, elegant launch off the board...and then hit the water with a stunning belly flop, that immediately emptied the lungs and sent them sinking into the deep end.

In my case, I got sick. Some stomach virus or something that turned into three months of nausea and stomach pain, frightening weight loss, lots of tests, and too many doctors, all which amounted to...nothing. It just worked itself out. Then, just about the time I was starting to feel better physically, my dog died. Wham. The whole goddamn year was like that famous old sports footage of the football player who fumbles, and then keeps kicking the ball farther away each time he reaches for it. You'd wake up, stretch, reach for the door...and the doorknob would come off in your hand.

I have to admit: I generally do a lot of stuff, keep a lot of plates spinning. Always have; just the way I’m put together, I guess. I’ve often had people say: “I don’t know how you do it.” Which I kind of take a certain pride in, because I don’t really know how I do it either, other than: I just do it. Admittedly, there have been times when I’ve felt “I can’t keep doing this. Not at this pace.” But then I’d get another wind, another project, and I’d be off in another direction.

This was the year that didn’t happen. I couldn’t do it. And I didn’t.

Everybody seemed to be there. Pulling back. Retrenching. Fighting this or that thing, with a wobbly economy generally freaking the hell out of everyone. A very nervous year. All the surprises seemed to be bad. So the year became defined by things I didn’t do. I didn’t write new plays. I didn’t take new photographs. I didn’t have productions. I didn’t write much on the blog (which you may have noticed). I barely gardened, just letting the damned thing grow itself. The Northwest weather didn’t help. It wasn’t that it rained and was gray: it was that it rained and was gray more or less straight through to July. The weather seemed to imbue even hardcore, indestructible Oregonians with a besieged aura. What now? What next?

Finally, somewhere around the middle of September, I began to feel like I was getting a little mojo back. I wrote a few lyrics. I sent a few plays out. I took a few pictures. It was all kind of half-hearted, like I was forcing myself. Eventually, it started to feel more natural. I started to get ideas again. Jeff Beck came to town and inspired the hell out of me. (As Buddy Guy gave me a shot in the arm in early July--a memory I kept coming back to when I felt I was backsliding.) I figure I’ll be working on a new something theatrical fairly soon—the kind of piece that takes off, and then you’re running to keep up with it. I’m thinking about pictures again, looking back at old projects. I checked a gardening book out of the library. They're all baby steps, which still make me a little edgy, but there’s a big difference between butterflies and straight-up dread.

Time to dig out Muddy Waters’ “Hard Again” album, the great man’s ninth-inning comeback, to see if I hear it differently. Last time I listened to it, in early 2011, man, it was just the blues.

You Ever Wonder About Old Reporters?

Irreverent? I suppose. But I don't think Andy Rooney would have minded too much. CBS announced the longtime 60 Minutes essayist has died at age 92. He seemed like a grumpy old guy when I was a kid, and I'm not a kid anymore.

He took a lot of ribbing over the years, particularly for his apparently left-field topics, often using small issues to make bigger points. ("You ever wonder about paperclips? Nowadays, they come with this plastic covering. I don't know what that's for. When I was growing up, we were happy with plain metal....") That's parody...but not too far from reality sometimes. I'd look forward to the left/right editorial counterpoints at the end of 60 Minutes, then feel let down when they'd announce there would be no counterpoint--just Andy Rooney's commentary. It felt like getting stuck at the Thanksgiving table with that uncle who never stopped talking...except about some mysterious part of his past that no one wanted to talk about. You felt affection for him, but sometimes you wanted to get a word or two in.

In time, Rooney became a kind of institution, the way longtime columnists do. Like Mike Royko or Art Buchwald, it didn't matter that their best work was behind as much as that they weere still there doing it. Rooney stepped down from 60 Minutes earlier this year, and I got that "uh-oh" feeling because I figured he was one of those guys who'd go out keeling over in the CBS lunchroom. When I heard he went into the hospital for surgery a couple of weeks ago, I could hear the curtain rustle.

He got it wrong sometimes (and he was honest enough to admit it...sometimes). He got it right too, even when it was pleasant to hear. But mostly, he just got it, said it, and left it up to you to do what you would with it. That's admirable, as is that even if he occasionally apologized for what he said, he never apologized for being Andy Rooney.

Here's something you might now know about him, and, like that uncle who won't shut up (but has a past), it might add a little more depth to him. During World War II, Andy Rooney served as a reporter for the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes. He wrote about U.S. soldiers living and dying, and, in doing so, went where they went. Where they lived. Where they died. He rode along on a daylight bombing mission over Germany where one-third of the bombers never came back. He won the Bronze Star for covering the horrendous fighting around St. Lo, France, where the allies broke through the German lines after D-Day, beginning the end of the Third Reich. Like a lot of those guys, he didn't talk about it much. At least not much in his commentaries. That just wasn't the way it was done, and, besides, he had so much else to talk about. I'm sure if you asked him, straight out, he would have told you he'd been terrified and sickened by the war, and then he probably would have said he was lucky to be there. That's not a soldier talking--that's a newsman.

With time, I became more fond of him, even when sometimes you'd feel like, c'mon, Rooney...give it up and go plant some flowers or catch some trout. But he was a reporter (none of that fancy "journalist" stuff for him), and, obviously, he loved it. Even when he didn't have much to say, he found an entertaining way to tell you: "Today, I got nothin'."

Today, we got nothin'. Or at least a little less. And I think Rooney would be okay with that. Anyway, he's going to have to be. And so are we.

Feeling Gravity's Pull

R.E.M. -- 1980 to 2011

now you've worked it out
and you see it all

Worlds Changed

Simply, to get it out of the way:

I started the car, turned on the radio, and NPR said the World Trade Center had caught fire. I kind of rolled my eyes, thinking of the car bomb that had been set off in the parking garage a few years before. By the time I got to the freeway onramp, I'd learned it had been struck by a plane, and I shook my head, said out loud: "What a hard-luck building that's become." By the time I got to work, I understood the extent of my understatement. A couple hours later, when both tower had fallen, I realized I understood not at all.

Not long after, a co-worker was the first I heard say "from now on, everything has changed." Which felt like the truth, but made me uneasy. I wondered if I wasn't in denial--there certainly was an element of that: but I couldn't help but feel that world had and would abide, blithely indifferent to the ants crawling across its surface. I do remember thinking with grim certainty, drawing, I suppose, from what I knew about war and politics, having written of both, that, down the road, someone would be on the receiving end of a shitstorm.

But the "everything has changed" refrain haunted me. For myself, it was dramatically true: on September 13, 2001, my mother had a stroke which left her partially paralyzed, and began a long, slow slide that ended with her death six years later. My September 11th seemed to last a decade, though it's nothing compared to those who lost someone in attacks. I'm still sorting out how much that changed my world.

In that, though, I find the truth and fallacy of "everything's changed." The World Trade Center attacks injected a before and after into our narratives, regardless of who we are and what we believe. It was not the world that had changed--though it would, politically and economically, in ways we're still paying for--but our worlds, those of each of us. September 11th served as a cue ball. It struck the rack, and the balls cracked and spun out unpredictably. The trajectory of the game changed, as happens when history shifts.

Still, we continue to be the same mass of contradictory intentions: never saints, but seldom entirely sinners. I admit to feeling a certain satisfaction that Osama Bin Laden ended his journey with bullet through the eye. It's a feeling akin to knowing Hitler faced that instant when he faced the gun he held to his head and knew he would pull trigger: badly played cards led to an inevitable conclusion. These people never seem to learn from each other, but, when you're on that kind of an ego trip, you apparently believe you really are exempt. That or you're so committed to your destiny that somehow it all makes sense to you.

That we can be so flawed sombers us. That others--firemen, policemen, soldiers, doctors, and war correspondents--can risk their lives (and sometimes lose them) in service to others helps balance out the darkness, though all of them have their individual rationales for their actions and do not always live up to our highest ideals. Still, they try, and they are to be recognized for putting the greater good beyond their own. I certainly don't think I could do that; so I try to observe, not judge.

It's very difficult to resist, but I think it's valuable not to let nostalgia for those moments when we all stood to together blind us to our shortcomings--that it's as important to remember that we're as likely to make mistakes as we are to succeed. But it doesn't hurt to take a moment to recall the instant we all ceased to be civilians.

Though nothing pleases most soldiers more than they day they can take off their uniforms, they often miss living in comradery, not mired down by "civilian bullshit" (even if they're mired down in military bullshit, mostly consisting of officers and paperwork...and the possibility that they might be killed any time). Life during wartime can take on a startling clarity, which tends to fade the farther one gets from the sounds of bombs and small arms fire. It may not be the reason why one volunteers for hazardous duty, but it can be a reason why some people come back to it. I've had a little taste of it, covering a couple exciting stories or delving into the lives of soldiers and war correspondents, and it's seductive. When you're running around with a camera, you feel a little invulnerable, even though you're chasing something that can easily snuff you out.

After ten years of sorrow, blood, and fury, what have we learned? That, under duress, we can love one another. Or at least feel compassion and a common humanity. It's a shame that we need a Bin Laden or Hitler to remind us of it. Since we have paid a very high price for that insight, it's worth hanging onto when we're bogged down in our particular bullshit flavor for that day. Taking off forever feels a little spookier, and a smooth landing feels a little sweeter.

Everything changes, except for a few things that make everything worthwhile.

Coolness, Thy Name is Portland

The New York Times, located in the center of the known universe, continues it's sordid love affair with Portland, OR...where those of the true hip reside in a glaze of neverending satori (excepting me).

36 Hours in Portland, Ore.

Speaking of History's Unstoppable Power...

...though events in Libya and Tripoli have twists and turns to go before the country moves into its next phase, this is what the irresistable wave of history looks like as it crests. For the sake of Libya's people, here's hoping events take a different course than the second act of "Bombardment."