Sometimes a lifetime just ain't enough

(photo by Patti Goyette)

Samuel Johnson said something about imminent death having the effect of focussing the mind. It can have the same effect on those only peripherally affected by death.

To get right to the point, I write very regularly in a songwriting notebook.

If you were to page through the book you'd see bits of phrase, brief thoughts - usually on a given day nothing more than a couple of lines.

This week, on Monday, I got the news of the death of a friend by his own hand. So - this week there are six pages of scribbles and revisions on the subject of his passing . . .


I didn't ask what method he chose
It wasn't important for me to know
I only know that gone is gone
I only know that gone is gone
He's the one staying here
We're the ones moving on

Everywhere I looked this week I saw trucks pulled up side by side
They were talking through the open windows
Talking about the one who died
They found out on Sunday
The carpenter's day of rest
Found him lying on a bed
With a pistol on his chest

I didn't know what method he chose
It wasn't important for me to know
I only know that gone is gone
I only know that gone is gone
He's the one staying here
We're the ones moving on

This Thursday won't be a workday
You'll leave the Carhartt's on the floor
You'll put on a jacket and tie
And head on out the door
Stand around down at Spilker's
Til you just can't stand any more

Trying to get it right, well that can take a lifetime
And sometimes a lifetime just ain't enough
It's not the bad weather, the short money or the sore muscles
It's the being alone that can be so . . . tough.

I didn't know what method he chose
If it left a hole, well it didn't show
I only know that gone is gone
I only know that gone is gone
He's the one in the box
We're the ones looking on
I only know that gone is gone
I only know that gone is gone
He's the one staying here
We're the ones moving on

.

So, how's that 'songwriting' thing going?

Well - got some notes here from an evening more than a year ago, and some news . . . first, the old notes:


11/04/10
Hooted last night at The Merion with Deb, Mike Kearns, Glenn, Barry T, Barry and Elaine, George and Vickie. Seriously enjoyed myself despite throwing numerous clams. I sang "Killing the Blues" earnestly and artlessly. That's my net assessment as of early this morning. I'm finding out more about what it takes to perform music. Whether or not I ultimately think of myself as a performer, it is still important for me to learn this.
I've hung with Gordon a little and talked to Geo M about recording - told both Gordon and George that my current goal is to be able to produce a demo of three or four songs this year in time to submit it for application to SSCM '11.
My current assessment of my strengths/weaknesses is as follows: I have a nice, if not particularly interesting, voice. My guitar playing skills are fair within a rather narrow comfort range. My knowledge of music is scant, but I'm working on that (in a slacker manner).
I think that my most exploitable skill lies in lyric writing. There seems to be a part of my brain that runs all day long on a kind of side rail, simultaneously with the 'getting-work-done' part of the brain. I've been writing more things down in the past year with the explicit intention that they might be song lyrics. In other words, some degree of rhyming, a few themes, an effort to make these little things arc over a few minutes and make some kind of point - a profound point would be great, any old kind of point is acceptable and of course preferable to pointlessness. Okay?

Soooo . . . I've kept at it, actually finished a few songs last year. I decided not to apply for SSCM in 2011 - a couple of songwriters that I knew were applying and I felt (rightly) that I was nowhere near ready. They had plenty of material, and they had been working at the craft for years. I felt that somehow it would be disrespectful to elbow my way into that scene. That, and the fact that I need a deadline to make me get things done. I guess I never really resolved to get the material together in time.

A year isn't all that long these days - it flew by and I did resolve to apply this year - which meant having some kind of recorded versions of some tunes. In the last month or so I joined the Songwriter's Guild of America and registered with BMI. I applied to SSCM 2012 last week and was accepted - which means that I'm going to have to finish about 8 of my unfinished tunes if I'm going to have enough material to do a 30 minute set. Yikes!

9/11/11

Ten years ago today I was working less than a mile from home. That bright September morning I was nailing shingles on the roof of a little barn that I’d just built for a customer. I guess I must have gotten a phone call from my wife, telling me what was happening.

There’s coverage of the memorial services on the radio and television this morning. I listened to a little of it - the clock radio was on when I woke up.

Just now I was out in my front yard mowing the lawn. A fire truck from the next town drove by - the firemen were wearing their dress uniforms, not their helmets and coats. A minute later another truck drove by and I thought, “Oh, of course - a memorial service.”

I went back to mowing and something across the road caught my eye. I thought it was a trash bag blown along by traffic - then I saw a uniformed fireman walking along the road and I realized that the object had fallen off the truck. When he picked it up I saw that it was a fireman’s helmet. I stood by the lawn mower and watched as the fireman walked back to the truck that had pulled over just a little way down the road. I didn’t know him, but I realized he looked familiar. I’d probably seen him in the supermarket or the convenience store.
I watched him walk by, waiting for him to look across the road. I knew what I wanted to do - he was past the house and a little ways further down the road when he looked behind him and across the road. When he looked at me I saluted him - he nodded in response. I went back to cutting the lawn and thinking about those hundreds of people who ran into those buildings ten years ago to do their jobs.

Max, the neighbor's dog

10/17

Neighbor's dog was killed in the road this morning. I've been doing the calculations of poetry in my head for the last hour - trying to find the voice of the dog.

A beautiful dog - aren't they all? A big brindle boxer-pit mix with blue eyes. Lying there in the road, an indictment of us all. I can see him right now - hours later - it would have been too cruel to take his picture lying there, but I'd like you to see him . . .

"Who made you the boss of me? All you had to do was keep me out of the road . . .

"I can't get up, there's no running from this -

so I'm lying here in the shit and the piss . . . who's licking tears off my face?

Now that lady driver is sad, and you're sad, and I've got this serious pain in my side . . . "

Working on Songs

(MQMurphy photo)

Yes, that's right - since I have no plan for how to support myself when I can no longer carry heavy ladders, tools and lumber - I've decided that my salvation will be songwriting. You can help by sending your money in NOW to MQMurphy at P.O. Box 484 Cape May, NJ 08204.

Here's some raw (very raw) material from which I'll be trying to fashion a hummable ditty that'll become a radio favorite. There are other tunes, actually - some of them a bit farther along in the fashioning and polishing process - but I thought it might pique your interest to look at a bit of the raw material, so to speak.

So, you throw your bag in the back and you get in the car with your sister. She'll drive, because she likes to. It's four hundred miles, give or take, to that town above Boston where your Dad grew up. His brother, the last boy from that family of eleven kids, has finally moved on to the next phase.

We listen to music and we talk - talk about George's hundredth birthday that we celebrated with him last year. We'll see the cousins - now we're THAT generation, since there's no more of the other one left.

"Did you like the character that guy played on that other show?" What has that go to do with anything? "I don't know I was just wondering . . . passing the time with some idle chat . . .

he played a bad cop - but maybe not a bad guy, just a conflicted guy - stuck in a bad situation - anyway, he died. In the show, he died"

Can I make something out of that? You'd better believe it.

I have to believe it - because there's no Plan B.

Marriage = ? + ?

(Image found at Irregularnews.com)

Here's something from my journal from a few years ago:

3/27/05 5:46 PM
Just saw a sticker on the back of a pickup truck.
It said “Marriage = (here it had little pictograms of a man + a woman).
You know, they were the kind of little silhouettes that are used to designate rest rooms. I really wanted to be able to change the silhouettes – maybe put a little Pirate hat on the man and an Indian headdress on the woman. Something like that.
Maybe a monkey and a toaster. A Buick and a golf ball.
What’s wrong with people? If we’re really lucky, we’ll learn one wonderful truth before we die. When you keep saying NO NO NO, you really cut your chances.

I like it here.

(MQMurphy photo)

Heaven and Hell

There’s a town in the news that gets
Bombed every day.
Heaven is when you don’t get hit.

There’s a town up the road
Where people sometimes shop.
Hell is a long checkout line at WalMart.

I like it when I don’t get blown up,
And I hate a long checkout line
Especially when I just came in to get these batteries and boxer shorts.

Decline

(MQMurphy Image)

10/20/09
Ahhh – I just can’t throw myself at the barricades with
the same vigor anymore.
If I ever did.
These days it seems like a huge accomplishment when I manage to get the trashcans out to the street on Tuesday evening for
the Wednesday pickup.
Makes me feel like a solid citizen.
See what I mean?

My simple plan for getting rich.

Have you noticed that whenever there's a piece on the radio or on television about anything of a financial nature they play the Pink Floyd tune "Money" as an intro?
Of course you have. That damned jangling cash register! Totally annoying!
I've resisted using that tune in any of the radio shows I've done with a 'money' theme.
By the way, the photo above is a line of trucks delivering
royalty checks to Roger Waters.

So - to get to the point about my simple plan®:
I intend to write a very catchy tune with the title "Naked + Murder".
Hell - it'll write itself. You already know why I'm doing this. You're probably kicking yourself in the butt right now because you didn't do it first.
They'll be playing my tune every time there's a TV or radio piece about one of those wonderful bloody naked murders.
Which is . . . all the time.

I don't mean to sound like - oh, a fogey? - but is there a prime-time cop/lawyer/cooking show that doesn't at some point have an image of a bloody naked corpse?
Well, now I've found the silver lining in that cloud. The neighbors will probably complain about the trucks, but I'll just throw a helluva block party a couple of times a year.

"MURDER! It's a gas, let's see a pic-ture
of a naaaaked ass . . . "

Slim

I have applied for the job of Trim Carpenter, a job for which my qualifications are obvious. I understand, of course, that should I gain too much weight I will be demoted to Fat Carpenter until such time that I shall demonstrate once again my fitness for the prior position.
Sincerely,
Michael Q. Murphy

Sweet Jesus in a jukebox!

(Image shamelessly lifted from Google Images)

February 27, 2009
Working on tomorrow’s radio show and I’m thinking that one of the best things that ITunes has got going for it (you’ve got to check this for me!) is people who’ve had a couple of glasses of wine with dinner and are now overcome with nostalgia for a tune they heard somewhere once – or a hundred times. And they tap ITunes for their nostalgia fix. Perfect. $$. (sound effect = "Ka-ching")

I think "Don't Stop Believin'" hits it in that category for me. I'm always reminded of an afternoon when I sat at the bar in Kahn's Ugly Mug and heard that tune on the jukebox. It became manifestly clear to me that it was a completely perfect rock and roll tune. Please - don't take my word for it - listen to that tune for yourself.
Years later, I downloaded it from ITunes and now listen to it whenever the mood strikes me.
Ka-ching.

Banging some dents out of that Fender.

Article in the Times this morning about U2. I feel as though they are the timbers that keep the ceiling of this coal mine we call Rock and Roll from collapsing.
I'm on the far side of 50, closing in on 60 - and my inner-13-year-old-guitar-geeky-self gets indescribable joy from making noises with a Stratocaster that sound like what The Edge gets in the song "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".
It is a ringing, echo-ey, sometimes brittle sound that washes over the whole song. A distillation of all the best guitar sounds that guitarists have managed to squeeze out of that guitar since the first Strats rolled off the assembly line in Fullerton, CA over 50 years ago.
Thank you, Mr. Edge. Thank you, Mr. Hendrix. Thank you, Ms. Raitt.
Thank you, Mr. Dale. Thank you, Mr. Vaughan.
Thank you, Mr. Clapton.

Reading about you? Reading about me?: Contact with Other Worlds

Wondering now about what is average America. I read the New York Times online every day – I see pictures of New Yorkers in the Times – upscale young couples with jobs that pay well – clean cut and smiling.
They probably take vacations – kids will go to good schools – I tire of looking at them.
I told Ellen that I was looking for another newspaper to read because I was tired of looking at rich white people smiling and holding their babies up for a picture.
Who do they represent? I Googled ‘average American newspaper’ to see if I could take a look at another America – it’s an academic question – I could look at the Philadelphia Daily News or a paper from Idaho, I guess.
So I did that. I Googled "American newspapers" and got a list. I went to Idaho and looked at the papers there – I chose the Idaho Mountain Express, which reports news from Sun Valley, Ketchum, Hailey, Bellview and Carey. I don’t want to make it a novelty kind of thing, but the first item I read was about how the Planning and Zoning Board in Hailey had changed the code to permit five chickens on a property instead of just three.
Certainly I could look at my own local papers, the Cape May County Herald or the Cape May Star and Wave, but the issues they report are too close to my daily reality for me to get anything like a long view of American culture from them. Hence my Idaho sojourn. I'll check there from time to time to get some perspective.

Plan A, Plan B

(MQMurphy photo)

On another topic – have I mentioned here about how I went out on a Friday or Saturday morning in August of 1969 to the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia? 

I had a piece of cardboard with “Woodstock” written on it. Don’t remember if I had a bag with me, or just what was in my pockets. I went down to the bridge – why? No plan in particular, except to head north to hear some music. 

Plan A had been that a friend and I were going to get a ride with a friend of his. We waited up late the night before, but the ride never appeared (materialized?). 

So – no Plan B. Well, actually I guess that no Plan B would’ve meant that I stayed home.

 

Plan B was “Figure-it-out-as-you-go”.
It took more than a few rides and quite a bit of walking, but it turned out to be worth it.

Some damn thing . . .

(MQMurphy photo)

From the "Lunchbox" journal - something about the book that I've been telling myself that I will write:

Thursday, May 29, 2008

Ideas for chapters and metaphorical devices.

For example: plumbing.

I’m remembering the time that I soldered together the pipes for a new sink in the upstairs bathroom. The floor was out – I was running pipes through the joists. There were elbows and angles and couplings and valves. I remember counting the number of separate joints that were soldered – perhaps more than forty. When I connected the water and turned it on, there were no leaks. It was like I’d taken and passed a major exam.

Returning

(MQMurphy cameraphone image)

Today – this beautiful August the twenty-fourth – has the feeling of a tipping point. 

It’s almost as if there is a current, or a stream of biology deep inside of me that feels or knows this. 

As though the year is a ball tossed into the air and today is the day when the momentum slows, slows to a halt – there is a pause that is 

eternal and only a millisecond – and we fall

back towards the contracting and condensing of the year from which we’ll need to be hurled up again to air and warmth and light.

I Am Vivi Nevo

(Image found at NYTimes.com)

Okay, it’s true . . . I am Vivi Nevo.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the firewall between my high-flying international media-investment-schmoozaroo and my private life here in quiet Cape May County.

After lunch at San Pietro today I pushed my chair back from the table – too tired to fight with Spielberg for the check – and tried to remember if I’d ordered that sheet of birch plywood for the Pinto’s bookshelf.

Mystery Schmystery!
It was that damned Times article that killed the ride for me.
All that stuff about being a ‘Zelig-like’ character. And he’s not even a real guy.
Hey – I’m just me, trying to be me . . . and a normal guy, too. Is that too much to ask?
Can’t a guy have a little privacy when he’s not zooming around the world moving the shakers and schmoozing the movers?

I just like to be able to kick back in the workshop with my router and throw a little sawdust around – makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something.
Not to mention – don’t even mention it – that I get some of my best ideas while pushing the old Bosch 1 3/4 hp around the edges of a door. Pretty sure that’s what I was doing when I came up with the MS/Yahoo/Google thing.

Lenny Kravitz commented the other day “ . . . is that cat hair on your suit? Man, I didn’t know you had a cat!” Nine of them, Lenny. And four dogs, too.
(So now the nine cats and four dogs are out of the bag, bro.)

And no, for all you clever types out there, this is not one of those “I am Spartacus!” things. I considered that briefly, but concluded that instead of being able to escape in the cloud of confusion I was just as likely to be caught up in it. Can you imagine the mess that 50 or 60 bloggers could make out of that plan?

Weinstein and his girlfriend were staying in the loft over the workshop last week and he gave me this look – like “. . . you can’t keep this up, Viv. It’s gonna blow up in your face like a glued-up slab of birdseye maple in a planer!”

Yeah, Harv – maybe you’re right. Let’s let a little of the air out of this thing before it gets really crazy.
See you down at the Wawa.

Aw, please - just go away.

(Image found at NYPost.com)

More than ever, I am checking the NY Times online (and then all the other news outlets) hoping I'll see the announcement that Hillary Clinton has quit.
The only purpose she is serving now is to show us a pure example of naked, unheeding ambition.
If we needed it, her latest is sufficient proof that she is a single-celled organism and she makes Schwarzenegger's "Terminator" look like a pansy.

Lawnmower Years.

(Image found in a box of old stuff)

I bought this house thirty years ago this month. How long is that in lawnmower years?
There’s a Polaroid photo of one of my early lawnmowers somewhere around here. A cast off, a hand-me-down. Big-ass stamped red body with a white motor. I might’ve even repainted it in the process of its revitalization. New plug, new paint, fresh gas. So proud of it that I took a picture of it.
A. Photo. Of. A. Lawnmower.
An icon. A symbol of normality. If I recall correctly, I wanted to send the photo to my aunts in Peabody, Massachusetts. Owning a lawnmower was my ticket to respectability. You wouldn’t have a lawnmower if you were just some slacker guy. It was an emblem of my property-owning, upstanding citizen self.

I actually like mowing the lawn. It satisfies an 'Ozzie and Harriet' yearning in me. We had no lawns at the houses I grew up in. Not that I remember wanting a grassy yard, but when I bought this house it came with grass. At some point I realized that it had to be dealt with.
I think mowing has a calming effect on me, not unlike the feeling I used to get from ironing shirts. You pass the tool over the work and the result is so visible – so tangible. Smoothed cloth, a tamed wilderness. Man’s handiwork – evidence of civilization.

The simplest of machines, the lawnmower is. The inevitability of the sickle harnessed to the vast potential of internal combustion.
How many of these wonders had I dragged home from trash heaps and yard sales? How many Frankensteinian creations did I put together with each others’ hearts, handles and wheels?

Back in the early days, the machines were often no match for the yard if I didn’t establish a routine early in the season. When the grass got knee high the only way to attack it was to rear the mower up on its hind wheels, surge it forward by its own length and let it drop on the thicket from above. Progress was slow, of course – measured in blade shadows. Impatience on my part inevitably led to biting off more than the machine could chew. This resulted in the stalling of the machine.
The process of rear-surge-drop and rear-surge-stall would finally defeat me. Soon enough the grass would grow sufficiently tall to hide the mower and ease my shame somewhat.

Prosperity enabled me at some point to buy a brand new lawnmower. Maybe from Sears – maybe from our local hardware store. Some assembly required, of course, but I was an old hand by then. I’ve never been proud enough of the store-boughts to take a picture of one.

Phrases pop into your head.

(image found at the Official Website of Mark Twain)

Just this morning, for no reason that I can discern, the phrase
" . . . turtle on a fence post" popped into my head. I'd sort of heard it before - I'd read a reference to someone having used it. So I Googled it and came up with a couple of hits - 9,800, actually. Here's a great explanation and example of the phrase, which is formally credited to Mark Twain.

Ed. note: I couldn't seem to make that link work. You might still want to check out variousmiseries.blogspot.com and in the meanwhile here's the text that I was trying to link to:

While suturing a cut on the hand of a 75 year old Texas rancher, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man. Eventually the topic got around to former Texas Governor George W. Bush and his going to the White House.

The old man said, "Well , ya know, Bush is a "post turtle".

Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a "post turtle" was.

The old rancher said, "When you're driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a turtle balanced on top, that's a post turtle."

The old man saw a puzzled look on the doctor's face, so he continued to explain, "You know he didn't get there by himself, he doesn't belong there, he doesn't know what to do while he's up there, and you just want to help the dumb shit get down and move on"