Tag: #twitter

Oh, Mercy and me.

I told this story on Twitter yesterday, in 52 tweets. Some folks were touched by it. So here it is, in paragraph form, with very little changed.

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I don’t think I told this before. It’s a story about Bob Dylan’s music & me. And the kindness of a woman (not that type of kindness). And has nothing to do with politics, except that it involves a song about politics. It’s really about the romance of being young, and believing very much in the transformative power of music.

So this is 1988/9. I’m working at Elektra Records. Have been sent west to oversee the making of Faster Pussycat’s next album. This story is not about Faster Pussycat. Even though I had a fascinating time engaging with them and learned a ton about identity and point of view by watching Taime Downe work.

ANYWAY…

While in LA, I worked down the hall from Carole Childs, who was…1) A great person to learn from, smart, kind, wise, 2) a high level creative exec who made albums for a living and…3)was also in a long time romantic relationship with Bob Dylan at the time.

Bob Dylan was, and remains, essentially my favorite living artist of any kind. (I thought of this last night as Amy and I drove to pick up our son at the airport. I wanted to put on a perfect album).

So, while Carole and I were in LA, Bob was working on Oh, Mercy down in New Orleans with Daniel Lanois. I was 22 years old when this all takes place. And was very up front about my love of, and knowledge of, Dylan’s work. At the time, Dylan was in a lower ebb of cultural relevance. He was still enormously relevant, but not so much with the under 30 crowd.

Carole said it was cool that I, at that age, was a Dylan head. She thought he was making an important album, maybe his most significant in years, and, although she wasn’t working with him officially, she was getting tapes daily from the studio, and Bob was calling her to ask for guidance. I know this because I would sit in her office and hear her side of the calls.

When the calls would end, she’d say, “Bobby doesn’t have any idea how good this record can be. And then she’d say, “wanna hear a song?”

First one she played me was Ring Them Bells. Then What Was It You Wanted. Then Disease of Conceit. Then Man In The Long Black Coat None of these were finished recordings. She’s ask my opinion, which was, Holy Shit! And then she’d ask me detailed questions. What I didn;t know was she was then telling Bob that there was this kid who loved the music.

See, she and Lanois were trying to convince Bob that the record was special and he could connect with a more current audience. So she would put her REAL AND SMART OPINIONS in my mouth, as though the kid said them.

*It’s important to note: I contributed nothing. Said nothing of value. Carole said a bunch of brilliant stuff. Essentially, she and Lanois wanted Bob to sing vocals a second time to nail them. Eventually, he did.

They finished the album. I stopped getting to hear stuff.

Until: one night, late, she called me into her office. Had me shut the door, said, “we are having a hard time sequencing the record. I want you to listen and tell me what you think of this sequence. But,” she said, “no one can know you have the tape. No one in the world has it. There are no copies. His own label doesn’t have it. And,” she said (this is before the Internet, so there are no files) “You cannot make a copy. Cannot play it for a friend. I need your word.”

I shook on it. And left with the only copy of Oh, Mercy anyone had who wasn’t in the studio with Bob and Lanois.

But I had a roommate. So couldn’t play it at the apartment. I decided to drive to Santa Barbara and back, on US1, all night long, listening in the car.

This was a rented Ford Mustang convertible.

So that’s what I did. And the sequence didn’t need any input from me or Carole or anyone. It was the album you know.

I will never forget the car filling with the sounds of Political World. It was jaw dropping. I hadn’t heard that song before.
(I still think that’s the most relevant and important song there is right now).

I drove and drove and let the album become a part of me. Imagine those haunted New Orleans sounds drenched in Lanois ambience, and only you and the night sky and the Pacific Ocean on your left.

Or right, on the way back.

I have always thought it’s one of the best albums ever made.

And that night remains singular to me. Because it was as if Bob, who had no clue who I was, and never really would, was only singing to me.

Last night, driving to the airport, Amy and I put it on, and this all came flooding back.

As shitty as the world sometimes is, great art, art like Bob Dylan’s on Oh, Mercy, reminds me what we’re capable of. As does the kindness Carole showed me. Because that’s what was really going on.

I was a boy, alone in Los Angeles, in a grownups job. And she saw that, and decided to give me the gift of pretending I was helping. And then the gift of that all night drive, just me and Bob, and the sky and those songs.

And I will always be grateful, and try to pass it on. And I will always listen to Oh, Mercy and remember all of this, warmly, and, I hope, with some sense of grace for a moment in time that changed me, in a wonderful way.

A short twitter Christmas Remembrance (from an atheist Jew)

I did this as a twitter story yesterday. So, in case you missed it…here it is. 

 

A short twitter Christmas remembrance (from an atheist jew). 

 6th grade. My best friend was Italian, Chris P. His mom, Mrs. P. was the nicest woman on earth. 

 Mrs. P. was always more aware of my judaism than I was. And thought even secular jews were kosher.

 So, I’d be a their house and she’d make amazing Italian feasts for the family, pasta and sauce redolent with pork.  

 And on my plate, a turkey sandwich on rye, which she would call “a nice jewish turkey sandwich”. I’d eat it while pining for the pasta and pork.

 But she was so sweet, and I knew it mattered to her. That she really cared. 

 And would always say things like: Your mother would kill me if I let you have that veal parm: it’s cheese and meat.

(my mom made veal parm). 

 Chris was less sensitive. Once, while playing ping pong, a ball I’d struck hit the net chord before dropping in. He called that a “cheap jew shot.”  Mrs. P. would not have liked that, I’d bet. 

 I didn’t actually care. I knew he didn’t mean it. At all. And would’ve beat up anyone else who said it to me. And the shot was kind of a cheap jew shot. 

 One Christmas, Chris and family took me on a trip to Boca Raton, Fla. And we went to Midnight Mass.  

 Mrs. P. and Mr. P. (a lawyer with, everyone whispered, deep mafia connections) sat in the back of the church. 

 Chris, his two sisters, and I sat in front. This was a big, huge, giant church.

 Lovely service. Nicest mass I ever attended.  

 And then came time for communion. I had no idea what it was. Chris said to follow him. So I did. 

On the line we went. I watched, fascinated, as the priest went through the ritual, blood and body and all that.

And I was hungry and thirsty. 

 Finally, I was at the front of the line. I had watched Chris, so I knew what to do.

Stuck out my tongue. Priest had the wafer ready to go, when… 

 I felt myself YANKED back by my shirt collar. Mrs. P., had come running from the very back of the church. 

 The entire congregation watched as she dragged me away from the alter. “He’s a jew! His mother would kill me!” she said.

 Which made me, ya know, a little self-conscious. 

But it also led to an honest conversation later that night which ended with me finally getting to dig in to that delicious, mind-blowingly great pasta.  

So in the end, it was a Merry Christmas for all. Which this atheist Jew hopes all of you have as well.

Fire Away

One of the entertainers I most admire in the world just followed me on Twitter. This is someone who not only makes me laugh but whose world view and attitude, and the philosophical underpinnings that drive them, inspire me. Someone on my shortest list of people I’d want to have dinner with. I got a quick ego boost when I saw his name pop up, an even bigger one when I saw how few people he follows. But then, the moment I next went to tweet, dread set in. 

What if I lose him, I thought? What if he followed me because he liked one Vine he saw, that Penn retweeted, but then, if he sees a ramen tweet, or if a joke about The Knicks falls flat, maybe he’s gone.

When he wasn’t following me, fine. He didn’t know who I was, didn’t connect me with my movies, whatever. 

But now, now that he’s in,  I face rejection. And not just garden variety rejection. Narrow, specific rejection from someone I put on a pedestal.  How am I supposed to deal with that? 

Guess I’ll never tweet. 

Or I’ll really workshop the next tweet. 

Maybe, yeah, this is it, I’ll test market the tweet, send it as a Facebook status first or email it to a few friends. And then, if a high enough percentage of them laugh, I’ll tweet it. 

That’s definitely a way to go. Crafty. Safe. 

And absolutely crippling. My entire creative journey has been about writing without fear, expressing myself without regard for what any one person will think of it. I get an idea, work on it to the best of my ability and fire away. And yet here I found myself, ready to tweet something–a tweet, mind you, something so small, insignificant and temporary as to barely exist–and holding back. 

And isn’t that something we all do to ourselves sometimes. Don’t we all sort of set ourselves up for defeat, tell ourselves disempowering stories, hesitate out of fear?  I think we do. And I think one of the most important steps an artist can take is to get to a place where s/he’s not scared of losing her audience. 

The person you’re scared to lose might be your wife or your father if you finished that short story you have hidden in a secret folder on your laptop, or those guys sitting in the front at the comedy club who will laugh at your dick jokes but might boo you if you get political. Or maybe you’re worried that if the YA audience knew you really wanted to write thrillers, they’d never read you again. 

Whatever. Whomever. Fuck ’em. They will go on the ride with you or they won’t. But the ride is yours. And the time is now.

Go.

As for me: I’ll tweet away. And if he unfollows, he unfollows. I won’t shed a tear (but I will curse. Very loudly).