Those words were written over a melody that came out of the being named Teddy Vann sometime in 1965. They were perhaps jotted down the second half of the year. I hazard that guess this given the ‘vision’ aspect of the lyric. The second half of 1965 set up a particular world that seemed ready for a new birth, yet ended up stillborn. It put a number of those that inhabited liminal spaces in a realm of observation slightly removed from the march of time. I keep revisiting internally that, at least for the so-called promise of the United States, so much fell apart after this year. It’s a weird flashpoint, an amazing interim between worlds.
I’m pretty sure Teddy went into the evergreen Bell Studios in Manhattan once he was ready to record the tune. There he ended up producing June Adams on a recording of his musings about being a stranger on earth. Adams, to this day, is a faceless singer. That warm hickory rich spare rib and potato salad vocal fry she uses throughout the song makes me assume she was a Black woman. I wouldn’t put her on the younger end of potential R&B starlets of 1965. It’s a voice that’s endured some lessons. It’s a voice of hard knocks and optimism at the same time. I doubt that she’s alive today. The mystery does render her kind of not of this earth, if she ever were.
This single and her follow up, “River Keep Moving” landed in a weird zone between romantic aspirations, gospel and social commentary. Love is the answer we’re all seeking, whether in neighborly comradery or naked, exhausted post orgasmic revelry. Each song straddles a fine line between multiple production techniques that to me point out that, by 1966, R&B music originating from New York City had no idea what it wanted to be. There’s winks to Motown precision, Folk Rock whimsy and Spectorian claustrophobia flourishes over both records with harmonies more Philly than anything.
June’s voice sounds closer to southern singers like Jean Wells or Barbara Brown than the otherwordly Gotham sophistication of a Dionne Warwick. She doesn’t possess the almost mechanically Motor City smooth as a Turbo Hydra-matic glide of a Martha Reeves or Diana Ross. Her notes take ‘effort’ to get the point across, as if each first note is pulling away from a stoplight with no synchromesh in first. The sensation of standing back, looking at a world spinning, perhaps spiraling in chaos while trying to find your footing in what is while letting go of what was is a feeling very much relatable.
The dog days seem to be of the spring variety this year. 25 days in Philadelphia felt very much like I was some weird crossover between many of the wisecracking dames Eve Arden played. Arden hopscotched between screwball comedies to noir films all the way through the sublime sitcom Our Miss Brooks. She slowly wound down her career with her shrill return to the small screen in The Mothers-In-Law. That Desi Arnaz produced vehicle debuted a decade after her first foray into the field. I shouldn’t be surprised that I raise an eyebrow and again, raise my jokers grin in the same way as a white woman insecure about her looks born 40 miles away from where I was born 74 years before me did. Being born in the Bay Area gives you a kind of wisdom about the ways of the land while seeding you with an insecurity that you’ll never be enough for elsewhere.
By contrast, there’s level of disassociation I’ve made out of my return to the Bay Area. I’m still astonished by my removal from the ‘normal’ rhythms of life everyone else seems to occupy. The pre-planned ‘goodbye’ party had me sitting as guest and moderator on a Ricki Lake style talk show. The photo prints as tarot card intentionality I approached the gather with died underneath my former co-workers current grievances about the toxic workplace they still inhabit. Everyone present has resumes as thick if not thicker in degrees and certifications than mine to try something new. The lasagna was tasty, if the sauce a little too blindly sweet. I got career advice as it appears that careers don’t really matter anymore.
I’m just trying to sort through the debris of disaster that remains of my life in the ‘golden state.’ I’m not really considering a pivoting to equity coaching in a society hellbent on inequity. Middle age finds me without the energy to care anymore. It’s weird to see yourself at the center of a delightful ongoing episode of a sitcom in one place while being, how do I want to say this? I’m going for full mid-century visual & performing arts references to make it feel more real but otherwordly at the same time for myself. It is such a fine line between a comedy of errors and the horrors of one’s own humanity. My favorite works all teeter on this tightrope. There’s a goading whimsy within my favorite episode of The Twilight Zone.
“The Hitchhiker” features Inger Stevens traveling, pointedly in the most luxurious 1959 Mercury; a Park Lane 4 door hardtop sedan. Even adjusted for inflation, gasoline was cheaper then. The first indication that things might be a little off in the events is how infrequent she stops for gasoline. A Mercury Park Lane built for 1959 had a 430 cubic inch V8 shared with massive Lincolns and was a hot rod option for concurrent Thunderbirds. There’s no way the cross country road trip in this beast, getting all of maybe 12 miles to gallon highway, would have stopped at gas stations so infrequently. Being such a car nerd, even when I was young, made it hard to suspend my belief that the story was going to progress in a happy or even vaguely noir resolution.
If you haven’t seen this first season episode, more or less, Stevens as “Nan” can’t get ahead of, can’t escape the same diminutive, wordless ‘hitchhiker’ as she drives cross country. The older roadside gentleman played by Leonard Strong grins knowingly that there’s an inescapable truth about his recurring presence no matter how fast, how far Nan drives. As the episode fades, it becomes more clear that the failure of some bias ply tires sent Nan to the realm in between worlds. No matter how fast she tries to drive, how far she drives, she’s avoiding that she’s in some sort of purgatory between worlds.
Sixty-six years after it debuted on TV, the sixteen episode of the series is one of the most hauntingly beautiful teleplays on network television I’ve ever seen. It’s also a very wry commentary of the hubris that manifesting a set outcome always plays out for us humans. It reminds me that there’s an insanity you will froth within yourself trying to outrun the truth. The best you can do is accept the guides that are gentle enough with you until you grasp the truth of the moment you find yourself in. Some things, even you, even if versions of yourself will perish. There’s a certain anguish you will feel, that others will share, that the fairytale turned into a tragedy.
The best you can hope for is a sense of relief at the truth. There’s a wash of acceptance that is perhaps aided by disassociating from what you already assumed was your truth. A new truth will begin. Nan’s light doesn’t go out or fade when she realizes she’s not living as she once was. She doesn’t check to assure herself of her physicality anymore. She just accepts that so many feelings washed out of her. There’s relief, there’s acceptance. She was still a being on a journey, just not the one she intended when she left New York for the new life that awaited her in California. Life does indeed go on in peculiar ways that may not need the same water, air, electricity and soil that you’ve become used to. It’s a hauntingly comic old parable to heed as I really start anticipating, any day now, that I’ll do the same-ish trip in reverse, stopping short of Manhattan where everything changed for Nan.
Pennsylvania.
I’m trying to accept that I’m in a limbo between realities. I washed clothes when I returned to the Bay. I dried them only to dump them on top of the two suitcases I dragged across the continent on April Fool’s Day. They still lie there as I figure out which day next week to wash what of them I’ve worn in the last 3 weeks. I had foolishly hoped I’d leave the ‘winter’ clothes behind in Philadelphia. I was only going to keep the most spring colored of the 11 or so exact same turtlenecks on me for these bitingly brisk spring San Francisco days. I hoped wool slacks would become anchors to a new reality that I still hoped would just magically start being sentient.
The old version of me that gets sucked into dealing with the death of my peers relationships as some hope as a last minute fixed denied me the extra unpaid closet space. I had planned to rapidly shutter what remained of my life in the Bay Area in mere weeks. I came back to the same stack of bills, cringing at paying them out of my savings and the pittance that is unemployment insurance. I had to have harrowing discussions about life insurance that I know brought up the trauma of death that surrounds every breath I breathe. I cruelly joked that I wouldn’t be around in 50 years 2 year ago to the day today. I didn’t know I was killing someone’s dream that our love would last 10,000 years. As much as some might hope I’m magic, I’m tragically mortal.
As I suspected, basically a month of sitting did not do Gracie any good. There’s seepage from her oil pan if I let her sit more than 3 days at this point. I wonder do I go ahead and get the cork oil pan gasket? Do I add that deeper Offenhauser oil pan? Apparently, I’ve been suffering from the fast idle circuit missing some key components since I’ve had her. I need to clean every bulb terminal in hopes that’ll stop the blowing of turn signal relays every 2 weeks like clockwork. I see no frayed wires. She actually runs better without the fast idle cam standing in the way of the throttle linkage. If I want the heater to work properly in Philadelphia winters among other things, I should make an effort to fix it, tho.
The parts already arrived early and languish on my coffee table. I’m afraid that I’ll fuck up the repair. Chances are that I’ll make an effort at reclaiming the shadetree skills I developed with Frankie to fix this conundrum. Any version of the ‘real world’ that needs my attention is being put off ‘til the day after tomorrow. I’m worried about over-investing in outcomes today should the whole works get blown up by a bomb flying at me from any direction. There’s an anxiety about trying to make things a little too real in either a positive or a negative context. The interim has a beguiling sense of security that I’m sure I have no clue that it’s actually suffocating me.
That’s the surreal other-world I’m in. As I sat seaside eating a Bacon Cheeseburger that cost me an ungodly $31 with fries included, a bus burbled by with yet another AI billboard. I try not to think of data centers that increase the cost of the beef I’m consuming. My thoughts swung to the reality that I was eating my first sesame seed bun’d burger in years. Between the earth, sky and sea, the overlords will interfere with every thought and ritual that you have. This happens even if you have the imagination to distract yourself with the real world in front of you. It’s been harder to document the world in front of me. The clearly California photos are from the drudgery before I left for Philadelphia. I’m still working on the same roll I plopped in upon my return 21 days ago. I blasted through a roll almost every 1.5 days in Philadelphia.
I’ve spent nearly 3 years seeing that I feel a love for all seasons there. I’m grieving in the immediate now that I feel nor find no life anymore in where I’m from. I predicted this spell of depression perhaps a bit too jokingly before I boarded my Southwest flight back out west. I have a really bad reputation for making the sharpest jokes about my tenderest of feelings. There’s a little corner of my heart that dies realizing I’m not inspired by this environment anymore. There’s a little hope here and there. I’m supposed to go to a baseball game next Tuesday. It’s probably just mostly an opportunity to oogle buff butts and have a tea session over some beers. There’ll probably be discussion about the delights and detriments of seeking intimacy and companionship with someone cute during the dystopian reality we find ourselves in.
“But you’re leaving anyways so what does it matter to you?”
That sentence cut deeply.
It was loaded with so many feelings. I get that it seems I’m ‘giving up’ the ‘good fight.’ I can see how that’s right in a way. I can also say that if you want my voice to be a physical presence on this plane and not something that gnaws at you in that peculiar zone between your brain and right ear with no clear source, you gotta understand that I gotta let someone else pitch or strike out. The best thing you can do when you have a reputation for carrying the game season after season is realizing when your shoulder can’t fire the pitches like it used to.
You’ve practiced and perfected as far as you can. You realize you’re slipping in some ways. Sometimes it is wise to save face. Leave with your reputation intact. Don’t give people an opportunity to (further) besmirch your name. There’s always someone with more limber joints that can get their nemesis to strike out after 3 attempts. That sentiment that I was looking for a cop out came out of the mouth of someone younger. They’re someone still with hope for the future despite them being a very mature adult. It’s telling that they want to sit out at a Baseball game as it becomes a metaphor for life. I hope I can be more optimistic about what life is as a human than Endora was in the “Mother Meet What’s-His-Name” episode of Bewitched:
Samantha: One man throws it to the man holding the bat, who tries to hit it. Then everybody chases the ball, and the man who hits it runs around in a circle on a field called a diamond before anyone else can tag him… And the one who runs around the most wins the series.
Endora: A series of what?
Samantha: Nothing. Just a series.
Endora: Typical. That’s a human being for you. Spend most of their lives running around in circles for a series of nothing.
I have to be cautious about the abandonment issues I’m causing in others because of my otherwordly detachment. There’s time and touch I can deploy to reassure that my arms are always open even if they aren’t within 30 minutes reach. There’s encouragement to stand in the same discernment that yields to wisdom that I’ve had to endure. I speak some harsh truths because I don’t want anyone to waste anywhere near the amount of time I have to even think of what life could feel like for me.
I do look at my life and wonder if I kept running around in the same circles, will the culmination of said life be nothing. Answers do hide in plain sight. The magic 8 ball in this case says yes way too loudly. The bible isn’t the only scripture to follow. There’s a lot more tucked in mundane messages in what we consider popular entertainment than we think. That in itself is one of the greatest funhouse mirrors of my whole personality. If you think I’m profound or deep, some of my most sparkling realizations has come out of examining the melding the melody, the tone of certain phrases to understand the strike of emotions underneath. More often than not my source material is pop art long forgotten by the consumer masses we actually are.
There’s a certain level of pain I’m causing myself. I can’t exactly determine if it is the death rattle throbbing through the steadfast comfort of the person I’ve been. It might be the pain that is molting skin to become someone ‘newer.’ The pain alternates between aches where other bodies used to rest upon mine. Other moments its jolting currents of electricity that prompt irrational tears. Molting doesn’t seem to bring pain to snakes. Snakes also have reptile brains not filled with all the anxieties of evolution never mind the myriad of needless complexities humans develop for themselves. I wonder what my new skin even looks like to others. I wonder if others notice the external changes in me that are starting to reflect on the surface. I again doubt, less prone to hide my eyes behind screen readers, who actually sees the ‘look’ in my eyes and whatever too complicated to condense narrative there is about my life at any given moment.
Granted, I look in the mirror a little more some days, a little less others, a little surprised that there’s not as much more wear and tear on my face for all the pressures of holding much deeper, darker narratives inside me. Each time a new grey hair sprouts in my hair or beard, I dread that it’s the point of no return. Each grey taunts me as a singularity in a region of my body, save my pubic hair. It’s really odd to have your most private and carnal zones of your body tell on you that you’re gaining some maturity about how to carry yourself in the world. There’s a way that particular skin stays supple despite the march of time that should inspire the rest of the body to keep going, despite the aging of the framing.
There’s imagery that’ll come out of this long lingering roll in my Pentax that tells on me. It’ll be another tattle tale perhaps pertaining to how huge my heart really is. I wonder if I have the cardiac capacity to actually bridge the gap between both worlds and inhabit past, present and future all at once. There’s a countering to that ‘tough’ narrative if I find tenderness in expanse. There’s security in knowing the tide goes out only to wash up on the shore again in cycles. The thing about running in circles is you can’t avoid that we live in a series of circles that spiral through the universe anyways.
It’ll tell the tale of all the images that I’ve taken over the years. There’s certain light conditions depending on where you find yourself going in circles. There’s always going to be new phases that are blank canvases. There’ll be culmination phases where you see everything but ignore all the details in the maximum light. There’s those quarter phases in between where it is key that you pay attention to the details of prominence. There’s an ending coming in that will tell how nostalgia for the way things could have been inspired me to ironically pivot in a different direction. For now, I linger over some of the images that tell how I got here. Eternity waits until tomorrow as always, but there’s a lot of juice in living in Purgatory.
Time Capsule or actual human being, who knows. Laurence Jones has been sifting through ephemera of the past seemingly forever, spinning vinyl for you, taking film photography and entertaining you with instagram posts of the decrepit old cars they own. You can find previous writing by them at djlarsupreme.com and medium.com
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