Bricks & Mortar

- Part One -

Box

Isabella and I watched the huddle, a dark collection of figures with hands holding umbrellas, on shoulders, around waists, consoling, soothing. Inevitably the day could not be anything but sad. While I like to think of rainy days as hopeful, death usually is far less so. And yet as I watched the Federers try to come to grips with their husband, father, brother and son being laid to rest, I could not ignore a strange feeling. I nodded my head in closer to Isabella’s. "I hate to admit this, but I feel kind of almost happy. Not about Calvin finally passing away. Not that."

Having endured my thoughts for almost twenty years, she didn’t even look my way. "What are you feeling almost happy about, then? I’m glad to see the suffering over with. I think Kim is as well."

"It’s nothing like that. I am actually pleased to have a good friend to grieve. Before I started visiting and getting to know him, I would have been hard pressed to come up with someone to grieve for other than you or Stella or, you know, the ordinary suspects."

"Gee. Thanks, honey. You make it sound like a privileged list."

"I know. I know full well this is selfish, but on such a miserable, crappy day like today, I will take it. If I had not gotten to know Cal so well, I would feel differently, worse for sure." I looked at Cal’s very old and extremely frail mother being wheeled towards an awaiting conversion van. "Maybe I would be lost in the loss. Effected by the lost opportunity for friendship."

"If you wouldn’t have gotten to know him how would you feel anything? You would have read the obit – maybe – and went on, probably just noting the fact that it was the father of Stella’s friend."

"Good point. I guess I don’t know what I’m trying to say then."

The service had been remarkably serene and typical. A fair accounting of his life, both the storied and domesticated, came and went followed by a few nods to protestant orthodoxy. Then a short ride out to the cemetery, Spruce Hills, nicely positioned on a ridge crest a mile outside city limits. The rain had let up only to be replaced by giant dollops of snow, which would not stick enough to be troublesome. They put the shiny lacquered box in the ground while everyone gazed either at their shoes or some middle distant fuzzy mass of contrived distraction. A few more ceremonial phrases made their way out of the minister before concluding the exercise.

Isabella and I wanted to say something to the Federer huddle, but knew nothing that would add anything to the long ordeal, except to share Stella’s best wishes in her absence. An aged Ethan and his wife were in from Vancouver, Ethan looking like he had recovered well from the accident in Sweden. Kirsten hung tightly to Cal’s pillar-of-strength wife, Kim. Assorted Iowa-looking relatives formed a picket around the core, so we stood there reflecting amidst the snowflake showers in Spruce Hills, me remembering how I had pop music and the untamed youth of Cade County to thank for having such a good friend as Calvin. I immediately heard background music for a flashback welling up inside my head.

Spring

Our daughter convinced us to go to her high school’s Spring Talent Show – a program audaciously entitled, "Creativity is Blooming." Somehow we could not conjure a good enough excuse and since she was growing into a bright and sociable sophomore it made a certain amount of sense, from me and my wife’s perspective, to see what sort of talents existed at Cade County High. Who knew that when we piled into the car to make a quick drive over to the school auditorium we would witness something close to history (in so far as history can ever be made in Cadeville)? Nothing against our fine town, but it is not exactly culturally alert. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say Cadeville was culturally inert.

Stella simply wanted to see a band her best friend’s brother had put together and normally we would have let her go with Kirsten, but she made a special appeal for our presence. "Dad, I so think you’ll kind of like this band," she said while we were assembled in the kitchen. I have to listen to her, because she’s our beautiful, wonderful child and she has this power over us. Sure she’s an only child and all that, but she’s also smart, quick and intuitive. We used to call her precocious, but she out grew that.

Stella knows what sort of music I like (we take such things seriously in our house) and so when she says we should listen to something the recommendation is not brushed off. She has a keen sense of aesthetics. Something I did not develop (if I can even profess to having it now) until much later, despite having older brothers secretly replacing my Partridge Family albums with The Beach Boys Pet Sounds and The Beatles Revolver.

Significant Music Side Bar #1:


Beatles -- Tomorrow Never Knows -- It blew me away and shook me out of my Beach Boys rut (which had in turn rested me from a serious Partridge Family fanship). I found out that those songs about drugs and/or politics could mean something to me too as a pre-teen. This song advanced my thinking well beyond cars, the beach and girls. The drums were so engaging with that cool Ringo syncopation thing going and then there was Lennon’s amazing vocals that sounded, quite impressively, like they’d miked him while off having a dream. Then there are the fun sounds of backwards guitars and who knows what all creating more craziness over a mystical drone, all generating the dreamscape for the vocals. It’s as if this song formed a collection of all Beatles production tricks. They were saying, "okay then, we’ve had our fun writing about girls and love, now we’re just going to mess with you and sing about whatever." This song, incidentally was the first to be recorded for Revolver, which is astounding to think about. It’s just a superb piece of work that stands up even to this day.

Anyway, either Isabella or I could come up with anything better to do than to witness some of Stella’s friends exercise their wild, chemically unbalanced egos in front of peers.

"What are they called?" I asked while looking over the top of the paper.

"Bricks & Mortar." She said while extracting a container of milk from its hiding place behind a bunch of withered grapes.

"Uh-huh. Sounds pretty industrial for Iowa, my dear." I sniffed while letting the band’s name sail over my head just before returning to a feature on immigrant families over in North Cedar worried about the government’s next move.

Isabella got up from the kitchen table. "Are they loud? What sort of music is it?"

Stella held the milk up to her mom. "Want some?"

"Please." Then she added, "Okay, this is not racist, but it’s not Rap is it? I am not fond of rap."

Stella pulled two glasses out of the cabinet. "Ma-omm. Jeez. No. Definitely not Rap. I know better than that. Promise. They aren’t really loud. It’s, well, like, melodic sort of guitar stuff. You know like British Invasion stuff. That sort of thing. You’ll like them. They’re good." She chortled,

"I mean they are REALLY good."

Isabella watched Stella fill a glass and hand it to her while she took a big drink of milk for herself.

"It wouldn’t have anything to do with providing cover for your continued infatuation with Kirsten’s older brother would it?" A fond smile arose on Isabella’s face. "Are you sucking us into an intrigue?"

At this, milk shot from Stella’s nose and she pitched forward theatrically, attempting to keep the milk running down her chin from hitting her field hockey jersey. This all made it appear as if she was surprised her parents would be familiar with those rustic, aboriginal teenage thoughts of lust. "Ma-omm. What is this Dawson’s Creek? He’s like sooo much older. And, you know. All like a gentleman and all that." Her face had a rutabaga look about it. Red at the bottom that faded into a floury, pasty white.

I gave Isabella a rueful smirk. "Stella, we aren’t living in a Jane Austen novel. I doubt very seriously that gentlemen enter into the modern equation."

Again, Stella guffawed. "Dad, you are such a dork. What, like now I want to see this band I’m gonna be mackin’ the dude?"

"Dork, you say?" I repeated in a game show announcer’s voice. "Very passe term used ironically, I presume."

Talent

We traipsed over to the auditorium the following evening. The night was one of those clear, early Spring evenings when the heat of the day makes a quick retreat and cool breezes sweep from the big trees around President Polk’s statue in City Park. The type of evening that almost had us forget about crazy young men driving airliners into far away tall buildings to kick off a grim autumn of fear and discontent. You think you can smell the speculaas dough being mixed for the next morning over at the Dutch bakery on Oak Street; lots of stars overhead; a faint sense that Harold Hill was about to burst through the oleanders and sing about "76 trombones" or some such thing.

But instead of the Music Man, we were undoubtedly about to be treated to loud, atonal sound washes by metal head Senior boys attempting to impress their girlfriends with their take on Iron Maiden’s catalog. Or so I thought, despite Stella’s descriptive use of "British Invasion." Which Invasion would she be using as her bellwether? As we took our seats along with the one hundred other souls who couldn’t avoid the show, I must say watching Stella wave and greet friends and classmates made it instantly fun. Isabella and I were not like her when we went to high school. Somehow she did not get the genetic predisposition to introversion that ran particularly acute and heavy in her parents.

The show began as expected. Three awkward Senior girls did something like juggling while lip synching to a Beyonce tune. From there, it went down hill with each odd performance some of which inspired enthusiastic reaction out of the students in the audience while completely mystifying adults. I found myself pleased with this disconnect between the two generations, sensing something akin to maturity and a modest awareness of good taste.

Then the night began its turn around when one skit actually turned out pretty well from the standpoint of entertaining the wider audience. It was a take-off on a reality TV show and the six kids that did it fairly nailed a decent satirical edge. Isabella and I wondered who had penned such snappy dialogue, but Stella either legitimately did not know or for some reason beyond us she would not say. We never press these sorts of things, because it really doesn’t matter anyway so why make her feel awkward about letting us into some perfect circle of teenage confidence.
It came time for Bricks & Mortar. Isabella and I braced for what may come shooting an eye towards an escape route. We knew from the rules printed in the program that they only had a five-minute window so the pain and suffering would be limited. I flashed on a memory of my own painful sojourn into making rock music as a sophomore at Iowa. What did I think I was going to accomplish making a complete fool of myself trying to front a band that played Gun Club covers? I closed my eyes for a moment and worked hard to avoid shuttering with mortification. The debut, in front of fifteen clearly deranged fellow students, was in the living room of Robin Corwood’s duplex on Woodside Drive -- the most incomprehensible, beer- fueled dream. We just knew we had made some cosmic connection with Mission of Burma or Pere Ubu. And as I dug a bit deeper into that memory, I remembered the exhilaration back stage (the kitchen) we felt after slogging and droning and brooding through our first six song set. So this is what it felt like, we thought. But oh my, the Lightning Terns were so incredibly horrible and yet we insisted on playing almost two dozen "shows" mostly at blurry, alcohol-fueled basement parties on the back streets or the sun-bleached Ped Mall for one lame event or another. I can still picture my Converse All-Stars all Sharpied up with revolutionary slogans. Who did I think would be reading my shoes as I stood there hanging on the microphone stand attempting to channel Ian Curtis? It all just fulfilled a desire I had harbored since high school to not just be in a band, but have the band fulfill my vision of art delivered through two and a half minute pop-like tunes. I wonder if the cassette tape of that first show survived somewhere? Next question should be why had it survived?

Significant Music Side Bar #2:

Velvet Underground -- Sweet Jane -- High school hit and I had a serious crush on New York City. The Velvet Underground fed this perfectly. Everything about the group said New York to me and Sweet Jane perfectly communicated it. Listening to it with my eyes shut I could picture Washington Square, though I’d never been there. Hell, I could practically smell the place, the Frisbees of dope. The Velvet Underground also showed me how simple music and crap vocals could still make an important connection. It was okay not to have great harmonies and suberb instrumentation. With the right attitude and words and production, many things are possible -- even being able to smell Washington Square from a 1000 miles away while driving to a FFA meeting.

Up on stage an impressive array of young people wheeled out an even more impressive array of amplification, including a rather professional set of Ampeg PA speakers. Drums (a white Tama set with sparkling Zildjin cymbals) on a riser materialized from back stage in an instant, then everything cleared. Kirsten herself came out and stepped to the microphone under a blue light drawing an excited little squeal and clap from Stella. "Um, hi." She said quietly giving a slight curtsy and wave that all parents find endearing. "Everybody, um, please welcome to the…" she consulted a note card, "um, Brixton, er, Academy?" She looked around a bit more nervous and uncertain than was normal for Kirsten, who usually appeared very strong and confident when around the house. With the mention of Brixton Academy, a venerable venue in London, my ears immediately perked up. "Well, um, this is, um my broth, I mean, this is Bricks and Mortar." And with that she walked off stage left.

Well-directed red and blue lights went up on the set and a huge Union Jack banner (painted with what must have been the town’s allotment of tempura paint) unfurled as a backdrop, giving the gear a rather dramatic appearance. From stage right, three boys walked on amongst polite applause looking extremely dapper and much more confident than their fellow performers. They looked as though they had walked on to stage a thousand times. Dressed in matching, tightly tailored light gray suits and what looked like bowling shoes, they stepped to their places in a compelling way – smooth, confident and rehearsed. My eyes narrowed as I felt sure I had seen this before. But I knew I hadn’t, I mean, at least not like this. I recognized Kirsten’s brother, Ethan from the Hy-Vee. He plugged his shiny Rickenbacker into a refrigerator-sized stack of Vox amps with a hum and pop. The bass player may have been the boy two streets over from us who once jumped out of a moving car when his mother wouldn’t stop for the ice cream truck. It was a famous stunt in our little section of Cadeville. The lanky drummer, whose pageboy haircut made him look somewhat like a wild lepiota mushroom, wasn’t familiar at all.

They looked at each other once, then just catapulted into a blistering account of Gang of Four’s "Natural’s Not In it," complete with remarkably angry backing vocals from the jumping out of car boy and perfect, kinetic restraint from mushroom drummer. It was letter perfect, except for the sheer volume of Ethan’s slashing cuts sizzling from the stack and rib shaking thump from mushroom boy’s kick drum. Ah, live performance mix can be delicate, I thought, while they tore it up (in a good way). They segued right into The Jam’s "London Girl." This took my breath away. It was an impressive, assured performance and one totally unsuitable for the venue. Halfway through "London Girl" I was nearly in tears laughing. I yelled over to Isabella, "Oh my God. They’re fucking amazing. How can this happen?"

The Mods came to Cade County R-III Senior High, peeled the roof off and left the stage to a near riot of cheers, applause and freaked out parents trying to stop their ears from ringing -- a Quadrophenia moment in East Iowa. They didn’t win, I might add. No, they were disqualified, because of inappropriate lyrics and going over their allotted time. Later Stella told me that Mr. Quinn didn’t like that the "material glorified cigarettes and beer." He made no mention of the Gang of Four’s exceptionally politicized, sexual lyrics apparently (I wondered what Dr. Ganthide, the mayor, thought of young Ethan belting out the word "fornication"). Instead the official ruling zeroed in on the smoking and alcohol of "London Girl." Our Mr. Quinn was a good enough principal and generally had a levelheaded approach to most things, but putting the gong to Bricks & Mortar when they had obviously KILLED gave me pause. Also later, Stella told me that the band feared winning, because it would be part of the band’s bio for eternity. I nodded sagely. "One two song set and they’re image conscious already," I added.

Stella clucked her tongue and added, "Kirsten says Ethan was born image conscious."

It dawned on me as we pulled into the garage that "Bricks & Mortar" was a song on The Jam’s debut, "In the City" and it amused me that it had zipped right by me from the start. How was I supposed to know that in this small town in Iowa there were three excellent young musicians who were The Jam incarnate? I mean moving from the chop of Andy Gill to Paul Weller’s clean buzz so effortlessly?

We got out of the car and stood for a moment in that springtime air, breathing in the cut grass and motor oil smell of the garage. I turned to Stella and just looked perplexed enough I didn’t even have to ask the question.

She looked at her mother, then back at me blinking almost comically. "Their Dad was like some rocker guy back in the eighties." She affected a cute shrug. "Like, out in California or something. You know, before he became manager of that fan belt plant in the business-park." She walked by me. "He’s a big influence on Ethan."

I didn’t know what to say. "Dayton Rubber? That’s a radiator hose plant."

She disappeared through the door to the kitchen, calling out "whatever."

Surf

That night I did a search on Google using Ethan and Kirsten’s father’s name and came up with telling results. Calvin Federer turned out to be a former member of seminal Bay Area punk outfit, Mercury Charge. This took me aback, because when I was a student geek at Iowa, doing a late night shift on KRUI, I had played the hell out of Mercury Charge, usually in an unimaginative set with Flipper and The Nuns. If I was feeling particularly ironic (this was well before the death of irony) I would sandwich Mercury Charge’s "In and Around" between something from Uriah Heep and then maybe 13th Floor Elevators. But I digress. Cal Federer played bass for eight long years of Mercury Charge history -- through four releases on the Branch One label, an ill-fated major label dalliance with Sire, countless shows at Mabuhay Gardens, national tours and a few dismissed felony charges.

So how does the former bassist of Mercury Charge end up managing a radiator hose factory in Cadeville, Iowa? This question would need to be asked of the man himself someday. I rarely saw him, despite the shuttling that goes on between our two houses involving either Kirsten or Stella. And here I sensed late night radio kinship I didn’t even know we had! Though, as I sat there at the computer, a distinct feeling came over me that this was history Calvin had left and only wanted to use as the basis of paternal wisdom to help his son and presumably daughter with their initial forages into adult life. In my brief conversations with him over the years there had never been an occasion to start dredging up each of our personal resumes. As I thought further about this, there wasn’t much worse than coming across someone whose whole anchor in discourse was reminiscence.

Launch

Tipped by Kirsten, we all made a trek to watch the more legitimate debut of Bricks & Mortar at Gabe’s Oasis in Iowa City about two weeks later. They were on a bill with a band from Des Moines called North of Grand. Stella was granted a yellow under age wristband, which Kirsten avoided by slipping in when the band loaded and sound checked (she was very proud of this slightly subversive fact). Isabella wisely crammed cotton into her ears as we set up shop near the bar. They opened with "Natural’s Not In It," but then went into a goose-bump inducing version of "Paperback Writer," followed by "London Girl." They then rapidly clipped through three songs of their own I imagine would meet any test for Anglo-mod revivalism -- socially conscious and politically charged, bristling with punchy bass and wonderful melodies. They then played what sounded to me like an Aztec Camera song before finishing with another Jam song, "Saturday’s Kids", a Kinks song, I think, though I couldn’t quite place it and something from the New Order songbook, "Primitive Notion." The last tune being quite tricky without the requisite New Order keyboard treatments. Ten songs that impressed everyone (including Jason the long-serving, hyper-jaded bar tender), delivered with professionalism and staggering, sweat-soaked swagger that again belied their 18 year old minds.

Afterwards, as they worked to get out of the next band’s way, I flagged Ethan down as he was carefully packing his Rickenbacker. He was quite damp and a little jittery, but nice enough to take a moment to chat. "Where’d you pick up that Ricky?"

He shrugged. "It’s my Dad’s so I guess I’d have to say I picked it up from our basement."

"You don’t see so many of those anymore." I tried hard not to sound like a pretentious asshole. Hard trick when speaking with a prodigy some twenty-five years younger.

He nodded slowly in agreement while closing the case. "1967 Sunburst 365."

"And your Dad let’s you out of his sight with it?"

Another shrug. "He’s very supportive, Mr. Carraway."

"How old are you Ethan?"

"We’ll be getting a lot of that, I’m sure. I better get used to it." Unbuttoning his suit coat, he handed his guitar case to the Mushroom drummer whom, for the occasion apparently, had cut his pageboy hair and now looked like a member of Madness. "This style of music is our point of, like, entry? You know? We decided a couple of things when we started to practice last fall. Like, we’d just play and play. No recording, no web site and all that messing around with computers and shit…"

"The Luddite approach to rocking."

Rightfully, he ignored me. "We would practice and get it right where we wanted it. We decided that there is no substitute for performing, whether it’s in my basement after school every single day…"

"…or here." I added holding my arms out as if to highlight the enormity of this New World the band stood in.

He looked up into a rack of lights clearly trying hard to tolerate an over enthused senior citizen.
"We’d play some covers from The Jam and you know bands like that. I mean nothing too current, like, I don’t know, The Hives or whatever. Our one break is trying to play New Order, which is sort of for Kirsten. A secret or, um private thing, because she’s been a big help. But anyway, really, those songs, it’s a way to get tight." He clasped his hands together as if I suddenly didn’t know what tight meant. "The Jam." He smiled and nodded dramatically. "Wow, like, we all love London. We’ve been like Beatles fans since, I don’t know, sixth grade? But you know, playing Beatles’ songs is…" he shrugged, "so over done?"

"Except for Paperback…"

"One of THE greatest rock songs written. A song basically built around one chord. You know?" He cocked his head in amazement. "Man, McCartney was an under-rated guitarist."

"I agree."

"Listen to his solo during Taxman, Taxman! A George Harrison song and McCartney’s playing lead guitar. But also remember when that song was written."

"Again, how old are you Ethan?"

He laughed. "You’re really bothered by that, aren’t you Mr. Carraway? Anyway, you obviously know The Jam and know how amazing they are or were. It just feels right when we play it."

"And Gang of Four?"

"Gets everybody’s attention, don’t it? I mean, who can believe that we would even have a political point of view? And that we’d get away with it, that tight chop, that jungle beat man. Fucking absurd. But it’s a cool song and we think it works, you know, um, a little serious social commentary to set us up."

"Ethan, come on. You’re too much."

"Stella told us you liked the talent show." He peeked over my shoulder and directed a little wave towards Stella who was practically cowering behind Kirsten who stood next to Isabella. Stella looked embarrassed that her old man would be so uncool as to talk with one of her acquaintances, which I thought funny since Kirsten had practically moved in at various times over the previous couple of years.

"You got ripped off that night."

He grinned broadly. "Oh no. No, not at all. We had a deal with Mr. Quinn. We’d been, like, practicing for months and needed a place to, sort of, I don’t know, kind of get in front of people and break the ice. Shake it down. And Mr. Quinn, he’s a pretty cool human being. But the last thing, I mean the LAST thing we wanted to do was win a High School talent show. How lame would that be?"

I squinted at him and cast what I imagined to be a skeptical frown. "I think you guys are ringers. Ringers shipped in from somewhere far away…"

"Yeah, Surrey maybe."

"…to wake us all up from a deep sleep."

"Aw, Mr. Carraway, you know I’m a Senior. Shit I’ll be handing you a cantaloupe at Hy-Vee tomorrow." He laughed and brushed through his short, yet fashionably highlighted hair.

"Was that an Aztec Camera song you guys played? I couldn’t place it."

He blew air out the side of his mouth. "Good guess. No, it’s an Ocean Blue tune. ‘Marigold.’ It gives Caleb a chance to sing. Gives me a break. You know? I just stand there and strum for three minutes. Anyway, his mom sang it to him all the time when he was a baby. He fucking loves singing that song."

"Before he started jumping out of cars?"

He grinned and nodded. "Man loves the Bomb Pops, know what I’m saying?"

So it was the kid from a couple streets over. I was right. "What was the Kinks song you played?"

Ethan grimaced and looked at his shoes. "She’s Got Everything." He wiped his forehead. "We really shouldn’t have done that. We don’t know it well enough. I think, anyway. I don’t like bluffing through songs. It’s not right."

"You been to London?"

"I’ve been to an Outback Steakhouse in London, Ontario. We drove through on our way to Niagara Falls two years ago. But that’s about it." Ethan noticed there were more attractive alternatives to this conversation and I could sense he’d had enough of this foolishness. "Chalk it up to Globalization, Mr. Carraway. You don’t need to fly anywhere. I mean, with the Internet, you know?" Before turning to a group of three young women fresh off the University campus who had been patiently waiting to have a moment of Ethan’s time, he added, "we’ll get there soon enough. Make our pilgrimage to Woking, to the Weller house. Then we’ll be all down and shit, because it doesn’t measure up." He smirked and held out his hand. "Thanks for coming down."

"Enjoyed it." I shook his hand. "I didn’t see your Dad here tonight."

"No, no. He’s vowed to stay out of the way. He thinks rock is for the kids."

"Oh. Right. That’s my cue."

Sunbath

Despite Ethan saying he would be handing me a cantaloupe the next day at the Hy-Vee, that evening was the last time I saw him for a long time. Two months after the Gabe’s show, Kirsten was over doing summertime things with Stella and as they traipsed through the family room on the way to the back yard, huge towels and sun tan lotion in hand, they paused and lingered over the central music library. I sat on the couch quietly reading an Ian Rankin novel and taking great pains to be as inconspicuous as possible. But I couldn’t help overhearing their patter as they pawed at the compact discs, which were cataloged below the vinyl, but above the 78’s.

Kirsten selected something. "Oh-migawd. You’ve got Chapterhouse?"

Stella looked at the CD. "Um, so it seems."

"Ethan went through a Chapterhouse phase, which was followed by his Verve phase." She slid the CD back. "He used to be the worst streak listener." She spoke with a tinge of awe and fondness that made me wish Stella had an older sibling, instead of distant and vague cousins in the far away lands of Nebraska. I pondered whether teenage girls should be referring to hypnotic shoegaze-dance hybrids from Reading, England whose most salient release came out the same year they were born. But then I recalled my teenage fascination with Beach Boys music, most of which came out well before I was on the Earth. I should know by now current conditions do not necessarily have anything to do with what catches a music fan’s interest. I also had three older siblings who funneled their collective taste down to me so mine could reach beyond the womb (Capitol released Pet Sounds on my first birthday).

"Aren’t most people, you know, streak listeners? Here, check this out. We’ve gotta listen to this. It’ll block out all the damaging rays." Stella handed her a CD.

Kirsten sort of half guffawed and half snorted. "Totally."

And with this exchange they flitted out the sliding glass door and out to the far reaches of the back yard, where the lawn meets the Soybean plants of the mighty Jamessen Farm. It is there at the edge of our yard and Cadeville City Limits that the sun is at its most lethal and where Stella and Kirsten employed not only a portable CD device, but also SPF-60. They awaited Lars Jamessen and his propensity to motor by shirtless, tan and fit atop his father’s Versatile 435. I nodded at this before returning to intrigue and violence of Rankin’s Edinburgh, thinking that Stella and her friend provided a wonderous glimpse into teenage lust and limitless energy in a very different way than Bricks & Mortar did -- Voyeurs versus the performers.

I went back to Inspector Rebus for a while, then stopped reading and looked across the room at the wall of music we’d accumulated. It brought much to the house, but mostly it had been a companion of mine for most of my life. Really, since before I was Stella’s age. The magic, the art, the expanse of ideas. For Isabella, the relationship is more practitioner to art form, a craft really as she was a concert quality cellist firmly within the grip of the university’s music department when we married. She can look beyond the cultural ramifications and see a narrower aesthetic. Performance and theory are key and anything that avoids 4/4 time will always catch her attention. Kids like Ethan and maybe Kirsten and possible now Stella need music as a way to look beyond limits. After the show at Gabe’s Oasis Ethan referred to a sense of quasi globalization brought his way by a wired world and the music his family enjoyed. It’s everything I can do to restrain my enthusiasm when I’m around the kids. No one likes a cultural snob or a busy body. Mix the two and it’s a certain curse, but music as essential building block is incontrovertible.
Later that day, gathered for dinner, I very much wanted to ask Stella what Bricks & Mortar news she had for me, but as I imagined myself asking this, it made me cringe. There was little doubt that I had already tread on the fervent territory of youth with my enthusiasm for the band. Perhaps it was time to exercise the sort of common sense Ethan’s parents had and leave rock to the kids. But then again, maybe just better awareness of boundaries was all I needed.

"Stella, what did you listen to this afternoon out in the sun?"

"Verdi’s Requiem."

Isabella shot her an incredulous look.

"I can guess the performance." I said a little too jauntily for some reason. "Sir Neville Mariner and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony." Stella and Isabella stared. "A Phillips Recording released in July 1987." I added while spooning peas.

Stella and Isabella looked at each other. Isabella nodded and smiled. "You are a Class A dork, my dear."

I stopped spooning. "What?"

Stella laughed, dislodging a pea and shooting it into her plate. "Dad. I was joking."

"Oh. Then. Well? What were you listening to?"

She quickly became reverent. "Moby."

"Oh. Um, you should check out Verdi’s Requiem." And here I thought I was going to work on the cultural snobbery and busy body stuff. Irrational exuberance is not just bad for stock markets.

Hyperbolic

Six months later I came across a piece in Magnet about the Bricks & Mortar debut -- a glowing, positively fawning review written by someone who really didn’t know much Mod history and how to authenticate an influence. But I needed to judge the locals for myself. I downloaded it from eMusic and after listening to it a couple times found myself wanting a copy of that Gabe’s performance. Their debut, Free With Purchase (on Bridlemile Records for those keeping score) lacked the torrid low end and manic energy of the live show. The production seemed too cool and bright for the content. I fixed blame for this on the producer (DJ Brooklyn F for those aforementioned score keepers) whom I gathered from the Magnet article was a stalwart of the Williamsburg Scene. How he was let into the Boston City limits to ruin a recording is still a mystery. Hope he took points, rather than up-front. But arrangements had kept their meaty melodic hooks on Brit Pop. There was no way to fault the singing, mercilessly avoiding auto-tune, or the musicianship, which was impeccable – a bit too impeccable maybe. Song topics were the usual grab bag of youthful subversion regarding the government and corporations (not one song about a relationship of any kind). So Bricks & Mortar had settled into life in Boston apparently and were cautiously optimistic about spreading socialist gospel or some such thing. Though (in a shocking coincidence) I came across the band not a week later in a Forbes article (Forbes? Who was their publicist?). They were mentioned along with a few other bands in a piece about young rockers with astute and suspicious business sense. Bands that hooked up with intellectual property attorneys early and only licensed music to record companies as opposed to the traditional deal made with a tenacious A&R rep from a keen indie record company being run out of the shotgun shack in Austin (my imagery not the Forbes writer’s). The new day had risen and in its bright light I clearly saw the wisdom of Mercury Charge’s Calvin Federer being disseminated.

A quote from Ethan in the article hangs with me to this day. The type of quote you don’t often get from a nineteen-year old. The type of quote you may hear a young person in a hop television show spout making you huff and think, kids don’t talk like that.

"The trick is to not let sound judgement get in the way of your creative decisions and vice versa. Music is history and the music business is revisionist. What I mean by that is a lot of bands in the past have made stunning music, but died at the hands of poor management and bad business. Unfortunately that tarnishes the accomplishments because it sharply reduces the art’s exposure and impact."

Jesus H. Christ. And to think what I was babbling about when I was nineteen – Larry Byrd’s free throw percentage? Of course, I did not grow up with a worldly musician for a father -- a punker stung from pre-dawn raids and malfeasant accounting. Then I recalled a few lines from one of the songs on the Bricks & Mortar debut -- something about a rocker’s death. Was Ethan singing about Mercury Charge’s leader, Yello? A long stretch maybe, but his death inspired a Che-like silk screen image being printed on millions of T-Shirts; whose heroin over-dose in a squalid, Los Feliz apartment in 1985 spawned an entire clothing line; whose passing into the eternal netted the Yello estate – Zilch.

Significant Music Side Bar #3

The Clash -- London Calling – Well, I’m a little embarrassed putting this on my list, because it’s so over-done. I mean, come on. Maybe I should put down something from "Give’m Enough Rope." Well, just as cliches are no less real, London Calling did, in fact, refocus my thinking. I had been part of "phoney Beatlemania" and was glad to hear it had bitten the dust. London Calling marked a sharper turn towards the punk ethos. The Who had laid the ground work, predisposed as I was from Velvet Underground listening. But the Clash pounded it home. They brought direct action to me through the speaker cabinets. A bunch of art students from London with backgrounds not too disimilar to my own and they could still spit in Margaret Thatcher’s eye.

Vestibule

I ran into Calvin at the library for the first time after getting to know Bricks & Mortar. Kirsten was with him and she politely and quite precociously reintroduced him. He had dark, long-ish hair highlighted by gray strands on the temples. Calvin was taller than I remembered, more muscular too with an urbane and assured atmosphere surrounding him, as though we were running into each other outside of Webster Hall in New York. "Good seeing you again." He said with a pleasant, supper club approved smile. We shook hands and I fumbled around a bit in the vestibule looking for something substantive to say. I worked hard to avoid asking him what it was like to play on the bill with Black Flag. What it was like to rebuff SST Records in favor of the highly esoteric Branch One, a label more famous for releasing avant-garde Berkeley jazz ensembles and spoken word albums by radical communists. What sort of bass effect did he use throughout the recording of the Underwater Heat record? Obviously, I knew this would be craven and stupid trivial noise completely out of scale and place. These were the urgent questions of a twenty-year old music nerd deep in the bowels of a college radio station, not the questions of a middle aged business editor of "wildly popular" monthly, Tomorrow’s Farm. It was Kirsten who bailed me out. "My Dad was helping me with that project Stella and I have for Mr. Waters’ class. He was showing me a few resources."

"Oh." I said as thoughtfully as I could. We had, of course, met several times before, but now, after having placed Calvin into some sort of new context, I just didn’t have anything to say. I felt a bit embarrassed having Googled him. The sort of embarrassment that comes from knowing far more about someone than is appropriate and indeed more then they do about you. It’s terrible having this feeling, like knowing some sort of secret about them. This may be the World Wide Web’s most subtle and negative effect on interpersonal behavior.

Calvin looked at her. "You make me sound like Wunder Dad. Remember, you’re the one doing the work." He smiled and shrugged. "She sees me as some sort of a whizz in project management, I guess."

"Life is all about project management, Kirsten." I offered with what I imagined to be a hint of sarcasm lacing my words in order to deliver the right satirical tone. I don’t know if I was successful in my attempt at humor, because they were both grinning at each other with the knowing expressions of a joke left untold. "By the way, congratulations on winning that award." I spoke on behalf of some shadowy town collective of boosters about his plant being named manufacturing facility of the year by the Iowa Chamber of Commerce.

"Thanks. We have a lot of fantastic people on the team." He said automatically as though part of the PR department’s standard Power Point."

"It’s a great honor."

He nodded. "I’m hoping it helps us stay put. Helps the company keep manufacturing here and not move it to GZ."

"Guangzhou, right? What about Nuevo Laredo?"

"Well, they looked at that already. We don’t compete with plants in this country or even Mexico, we measure ourselves, our productivity against the PRC. There’s always pressure to move it there, because of labor cost. But they can’t match the value our productivity adds."

"Amazing."

"Continuous productivity improvement is the only way to stay out of the way of that axe that is always hovering right over our head. Nope – it’s all about productivity." He glanced up as though he really was keeping a wary eye on a blade being wielded by the Board members.

This sort of earnest business statement astonished me. It came from a guy who was a member of a band that once sang about dollar bills having a worse influence on mankind than ‘the herion bought with crumpled dollar bills in garbage strewn parking garages of decaying urban centers all across the asphalt heated landscape.’ I wondered how Calvin ended up in the position of safeguarding the employment of 92 Iowans through continuous productivity enhancement. Cal Federer: Captain of Industry.

After their departure, I noted that the times I have seen him, he always seemed to wear long sleeves, perhaps to not freak out the aging populace of Cadeville with his many elaborate punk era tattoos. Or perhaps he was counter-revolutionary and avoided the needle, wearing long sleeves because he had a propensity to be chilly. Either way, it seemed as though I would never know, because there weren’t any graceful ways of entering into a conversation about someone’s past life, particularly a passing acquaintance, even one with near stardom in the underground. But then I wondered about my own snap judgement.

Walking home I reflected on an article I read about Greg Norton, the bassist for Husker Du, who is now a successful restaurateur. He must find great joy in the evenings he can operate without dealing with someone asking him about recording Zen Arcade. The man is just trying to sell some food and beverage. Perhaps it is good to know about the famous career that framed the person, but much the better to have it unspoken. On the other hand, if it is a vital part of who a person is, why avoid it out of hand? If they want to continue to express this past as who they are currently, then so what?

Wired

Within the blue glow of my computer’s screen, I looked up the Glastonbury Festival and found it next on the Bricks & Mortar agenda where they will be playing the John Peel Stage between The Indivisibles and June Varietals. Apparently, Glasto was back on after yet another year off. A few more clicks confirmed that Ethan, Caleb and Jonathon would also be playing a festival in Middlesbrough where Ocean Colour Scene would be headlining. The publicity shot used for this particular piece of information was one taken in City Park, which a very hard to believe. Yet indeed, President Polk looms above Ethan’s right shoulder. (One day I shall find out how it came to be that we have President Polk looming over anybody’s shoulder in City Park).
More quick reference showed there would be nine dates for the hometown boys with The Maginots in Spain and France. Good for them, I thought, just the sort of thing to do while building another record. Take some sun in along the Costa del Sol. Beats working the produce section at Hy-Vee, detassling corn or bussing tables at Culver’s.

I looked out over the PC screen, out through the picture window at what was once a field – the Jamessen sorghum crop now being commandeered by bulldozers and carpenters for a new subdivision or vinyl-sided mini mansions, soon to be choke full of plasma television glow. Our little corner of Iowa was in to displaying prosperity by plowing under the sorghum and growing consumers instead. I shook my head out of this tape loop.

Would the family like to make the trip to Glastonbury? Imagine: from Cadeville, Iowa with all the Mod Cons.

No, no. Rock is for the kids.

My new mantra.

Note: Apparently, Polk was the President when Iowa became a state in December of 1846 (beating neighboring Wisconsin by almost two years). 1846 also happens to be the year of incorporation for Cadeville, which, I guess, explains why we have a statue of a slave-owning one-term president from Tennessee in our midst.

Significant Music Side Bar #4:

REM -- Radio Free Europe -- Sure you couldn’t understand a word Michael Stipe was singing and the production was a bit weedy, but man was it fresh, inspiring and urgent. There was such promise in this sound. A return to basics, this music was an excellent counterweight to new wave with all its sythesizers and hair cuts and to punk with all its noise and hair cuts. Hearing it made you want to read Faulkner, suddenly wear FFA jackets and make little art projects. For me, it made me want to write. This song immediately drew me to REM and I’ve been under their spell on and off ever since. At the stage I was at in my college career (freshman) when I first heard Radio Free Europe, I was ready to be some sort of artist. It beat being an Ag major, which is what I was at the time and the artiness of Stipe’s voice and rootsy Americana of Peter Buck’s guitar all carried along by the pulsing bubble and bang of Mills and Berry grabbed at my lapels (if I would have had lapels). The music conjured strong imagery in me and the urge to write materialized quite out of thin air. I also wanted to be in a band like REM and heard nothing in Radio Free Europe that was out of reach – except for the talent part, of course.

- Part Two -

Interstate

We’re taking Stella off to college, an endeavor filled with difficult emotions. Isabella is stretched out in the back seat reading a Melissa Bank novel, Stella stares out the window listening to any number of possibilities on her iPod. I am left with Interstate 80 sweeping beneath the car attempting to tranquilize me as I gently hold the steering wheel at 10 and 2. Off to school she is going. Our youngster. The smart little girl got herself into a smart little school in the rolling hills of Southestern Ohio. Aspiration placed her there and I admire it, because when I was her age I applied to one school just 83 miles from the door of the family home and was relieved to be accepted for being the mediocre intellectual presence that passes in much of America as above average.

Now there she is across from me. Ambitious about her education like I never could have hoped to be and I am thankful she received Isabella’s school genes and not mine. We have some six hours of driving in front of us and I should think we should fill this time with witty conversation about expectation and anticipation, but then reality quickly sets in. We’ve been over all that and feel certain Stella is prepared for what a small liberal arts college may unleash upon her. Our small town girl from Eastern Iowa will be thrown into a fondue kettle with rich kids from New York and hippie kids from Tukwila. The result of this, I am sure, will be Stella never returning home again in any permanent fashion. We sense internships at glamorous-sounding organizations in hip, fast-paced locations sounding faintly exotic.

And what will college mean for her musical tastes? Will she become a more focused, disciplined music listener? Will she finally come around to see jazz as more than just music for music’s sake?
Stella is reading my mind again. She removes her ear buds. "When you went to college, what did you most want to avoid hearing from your parents?"

I gave her a look and out the corner of my eye I could see that Isabella had put her book down. "Um. Well. I can’t really remember way back that far."

Isabella huffed with a humor designed to discredit as well as reassure me. "Come on old man."
Mom and dad took me down to Iowa in the new pick up. I felt privileged that Dad was willing to put 166 miles on the new rig just to deliver me to college. We unloaded next to the dumpster at Reinow. The entire time we made our trips between the truck and the sixth floor, I hoped to not receive the same lecture my older brothers had upon their departures -- a standard "man-to-man" aside regarding the dangerous charms of smoking, college girls and any combination of the above. My father labored under the notion college life still resided somewhere in the rumble seats of the twenties, forgetting the presence of hard drugs and alcohol that flowed not unlike the falls at Niagara. For all my Mother’s silence, I knew she had a better grasp of what lurked in the halls of Reinow and beyond as she at least had a year under her belt at Grinnell and had listened more closely to my brothers accounts of life on their various campuses. But my Dad? He took nothing in other than what John Chancellor told him everynight at 6. "Okay, okay, I think I dreaded the sort of conversation, or, um lecture, we gave you right around the sixth grade."

"Oh gawd." Stella swooned before laughing. "Come on. It was the eighties."

"Exactly," is all I could think of saying. "Just say no was the official policy of the land." I grinned.

"And that worked so well didn’t it Isabella?" I looked into the rearview mirror in time to see her roll her eyes.

"So you were afraid of having a chat with Grandpa about the birds and the bees." She shook her head. "Sooo?"

"Sooo, what?"

"Did you have it?"

After putting my final box of records on the dorm bed, I remember turning to my parents half expecting them to sit down and stay awhile, maybe give me my lecture in some folksy, Iowa way. "When the last box of stuff landed in my dorm room, Grandma and Grandpa couldn’t get out of there fast enough. Grandpa actually had his hand on the door knob."

Stella didn’t think this image very funny. "I hope you guys won’t just dump me."

"No chance. I think the fire in the trash chute sort of got on my Mom’s nerves a little. I mean, the very first thing we see when we got off the elevator on my new floor is some guy pulling the fire hose out of the glass cabinet and pulling it over to the trash chute. It was about five minutes of chaos and then everything suddenly went back to normal. By the third trip from the truck all we saw was a fireman with a flashlight looking down the chute, my fellow students went about the business of unpacking and tossing hacky sacks down the hall. It was enough to freak Grandma out."

"Interesting, and she’s the cosmopolitan," Stella made quotation marks in the air and shook her head, "of the two."

"Yes, well." I shrugged. "The fact it was about a 1000 degrees centigrade in the dorm may have caused a hasty retreat. I think they wanted to get back to the polar winds blowing from the truck’s air vents. Anyway, they left and I never learned anything about sexual relations until I met your mother." I grinned in what I imaged to be a comical way.

Isabella made a face at me via the rearview mirror.

"I want you guys to stay as long as you like at Aversham."

"Ha!" I guffawed. "I doubt that."

"Hey. I’m not kidding. I mean, sure a part of me wants to get on with it, doesn’t want my parents around for a second longer than necessary. What kid wouldn’t feel that? But, you know, I am, well, it’s a long way back to home. It’s hard. It’s like when I went to Kindergarten."

"You remember that?"

"Miss Francis was, like a hundred years old and all. And it was all day long and I didn’t see you guys."

"Yes, but now you have a cell phone and a lap top and an iPod and something resembling maturity."

"You think?"

Isabella scooted up. "Stell, remember, you’re there to experience. Sure to learn and do good stuff. But above all, your dad and I want you to experience. Safely I should add."

"And you really can’t begin absorbing the world staying at home." I added. "Don’t worry too much about results. At least at first." I shot a glance over to see her smiling ever so slightly. It seemed like the best place to leave any attempts at parental advice. And we’re still two states away from campus.

Significant Music Side Bar #5

Husker Du -- It's Not Funny Anymore – I’d heard a fair bit of punk and had liked it okay. Then I heard Husker Du. "Don’t worry about the results or the effect it has on your career." Well, I did worry about it. I worried a lot about many things. But somehow, once again, as with many of the others on my list of significant music moments, this song showed me another world. The whole EP, ‘Metal Circus’ was amazing. It stood head and shoulders above everything else as far as I was concerned and so I became a huge Husker Du Fan. It’s Not Funny Anymore was a glimpse of what was to come -- powerful pop-laced post punk that spoke directly to me. Husker Du seemed to have an endless array of these songs speaking to me as I attempted to ready myself for the "Real World." When I finally saw them live, I’m pretty sure I had a religious experience when they played It’s Not Funny Anymore. I wanted to move up to Minneapolis, take up a "Flying V" and not care about the results.

Union

I was coming out of Nistelrooy’s Hardware when out of a fit of civic pride, I decided to cut across the town square to stop in at the library. This is hardly newsworthy, but for the fact that as I crossed in front of the courthouse, I ran into Ethan and his fiancee, a lanky girl named Senja (from Espoo, Finland as if there could be any doubt). I found her piercing blue eyes almost as unsettling as her threadbare Poison concert shirt. Ethan had just secured a license for their union. "Congratulations," I said after introductions, attempting to recalculate his age, back-dating from that long ago performance at the talent show. "So where’d you two hook-up?"

Ethan beamed. "On a barge in Paris."

"A barge?" An image of giant Mississippi barges hauling piles of coal southward came to mind.

"Man, it was crazy. Middle of the night. We had gone with our French distributor to see this group of Iranians perform on a barge. Like, I don’t know, what, maybe two in the morning? We had done a good show there, y’know one of those mystical nights where everything works and were really up for it." [I felt like part of the "in" crowd as Ethan assumed I knew what he meant by a mystical night on stage where everything goes right]. "So like, we’re down in the barge and through the clouds of cigarette smoke there she was." He leaned out away from Senja and motioned with his arms not unlike a game show hostess displaying a new washer and dryer combination. "She was a little too amazed with the Tombak player.

"But then there was up on the deck where the candies were bought." She smiled demurely, then added for ironic charm, "Ah, beneath the stars, waiting for the night bus after being left by the rest of the band."

"She’s a sucker for Turkish taffy. Next thing I know, she’s got credentials and is in The Garage’s dressing room with her cousin orchestrating an outing to some Chicken Balti place in Camden Town." Ethan laughed as he gazed at Senja with a thoroughly enraptured expression. "Weird stuff."

Senja put her hand on his chest. "Making a jealous man by flirting with Cory."

"Cory." He repeats flatly before looking at me. "Right. The always dynamic and intimidatingly tall guitarist for Crack Addicts of Yorkville Unite."

"Oh. Right. Of course." This was all a bit too world party kid for Cadeville and I wondered what Mr. Bricks & Mortar was doing back in the humble Midwest. "So, besides the obvious," I pointed to the envelope, "what brings you all the way home?"

Ethan’s face suddenly lost its brightness. "Well, um, didn’t Kirsten tell you? My Dad has, he’s been diagnosed with cancer, Mr. Carraway."

This was horrible news to get on the sidewalk in front of the courthouse on a sunny day amidst jet-set lovers. "I am really sorry to hear that, Ethan. We haven’t seen too much of Kirsten since graduation. Stella is at Aversham these days, but over the summer I guess everybody was working and …" I lost my train of thought, then remembered the shattering news. "Anyway, tell me about your Dad. Is he going to be, well, okay or …"

"He has been going down to Iowa City for treatment. But we don’t really know if it’s going to work. Modern medicine is pretty amazing and all, but there’s still a lot of mystery." He looked at Senja. "At least he’s into Senja here. He and Mom have really rolled out the welcome mat this week. I’ve got one more week before I have to go to Vancouver and start work on our next project."

Caught by surprise with the terrible news I didn’t know where to go with the conversation. I did not want to intrude on the family crisis, certainly did not want to ask about trivial matters like music, though truth be told I really wanted to ask what listening to Iranian’s play music in a barge on the Seine at 2 AM in the morning was like.

Significant Music Side Bar #6:

Joy Division – Shadowplay -- I have noted that I didn't find room for U2 on the list and this bugs me, because they were an important part of my mid 80's. But really, I had to soul search a bit and really it came down to what effected me more, New Year's Day or Joy Division's Shadowplay? I had to face the fact that Joy Division radically altered my thinking towards music and U2 really did not. U2 altered my fashion sense maybe and how I viewed delay effects on guitars and fed into my European travel dreams. But man, Joy Division brought me to a different place musically. It was dark and cool and decidedly in the basement of all our subconsciences. There was this sudden need to record music, though I really couldn’t play anything other than the E chord on a Woolworth’s guitar (but this took me a long way using Joy Division as a touchstone). They conveyed minimalism to me and Ian Curtis had a fine habit of being down right haunting, perhaps even vaguely gothic in some industrial way.

I stammered. "We’ll be thinking about your family. If there’s anything we can do, let …"

"You know, I think it would be cool if you paid him a visit, Mr. Carraway. To talk about music. He won’t with me. He has his reasons, I guess. You’ve always been so supportive and all and grew up with the same music my Dad did, he’d be into it."

"Really?"

"I used to think he had left all that far behind him. Or, I mean, like, the history stuff, not the business stuff, because his advice has been totally right on for the band. But he never would talk about the eighties. But I get this sense he’d be into it right about now."

"Well, I don’t know. There are few of us who are willing participants in nerd-like behavior."

"There is that word again, Ethan. Nerd." Senja spouted, then went on. "I hear this word and can not have the understanding." Her accent was not very strong, but the way she assembled her words amused me.

I smiled at her. "It means complete focus on useless trivia. I mean, in my case anyway."

"Oh, Mr. Carraway, that’s so wrong. Music is art and you can never know too much about art, about how it’s, you know, put together and all."

Senja snickered and hooked her thumb into the belt loop of her low riders. "Ethan you amuse me. All the things you have memorized is not the art. Who played what and when did they play it and what company made the music available to the world, to us. Those things are not the art."
Ethan looked at Senja and then at me. "Now you see why my Mom and Dad just absolutely love her. She won’t let me get away with anything." He looked at me again. "What are you doing right now, Mr. Carraway. Do you have time for coffee at O’Brien’s?" He nodded towards our one and only venerable coffee institution located directly opposite the door to the jail. "I’d like to convince you to visit my Dad."

Talk

Seeing Calvin at his home turned out to be easier than I expected. Because of the kids, we had a certain initial bond, but as it turned out he seemed to relish the opportunity to talk with someone other than the usual circle. I quickly realized that he had the same thirst for friendship I did.
He sat in a huge easy chair, hooked to several intimidating home health devices. "You know the hardest part about being sick?"

"I don’t know. What?"

"The family."

"Family?"

"Not the wife and kids, the immediates. No, it’s all the rest of them you try studiously to avoid. But you can’t when you have something like this. Anyway, I hate family gatherings. You know, people who think they know you but haven’t a fucking clue?

I thought about this as Calvin drifted off, his eyes looking out the picture window at the birds swarming a thistle feeder. Looking at Calvin wincing from pain was an altogether different experience, yet not too far removed from how many feel when they go to big gatherings of vaguely familiar relatives.

"You know Kirsten said something to me after I had surgery the first time. She said that she was really sad in the hospital not because I was going to die, but because the illness was really bringing us all together so tightly. It filled her with sadness to see that it takes a drastic illness and hearing death’s call in order for such intimacy to come out." Calvin looked at me. "Well, I’m sort of paraphrasing. But that’s a pretty profound observation for an eighteen year old to make." He smiled. "I told her that there shouldn’t be any question regarding the tie that binds us. We had a long talk about the relationships and she said she felt so much better after we’d talked about that. She learned a lot about me right then. I told her she has a terrific future in psychiatry. She wrinkled her nose at me and went, ewe."

This information had special significance to me, perhaps because the exchange they had was the type I wish I could have had with my parents. "Yes. We regularly get that reaction out of Stella. The wrinkled nose treatment."

"How’s she doing? We miss her being around."

"She loves Aversham. She loves college a little too much for my tastes. She’s going to end up being a perpetual student."

"Working at Kinko’s with Yo La Tengo on the iPod."

I laughed at this sharp, insider-type observation. "Well, maybe not Yo La Tengo, but something appropriately obscure I am sure."

"My God kids are amazing. Understatement, right? I think about the time of my life when I couldn’t imagine having them and, like a lot of that back then, I just can’t understand my thinking. Now I can’t fathom a world without Ethan and Kirsten. You think I have a certain level of despair now? Ho, ho, can you imagine if I didn’t have those two?"

I felt despair was a remarkable word for Calvin to use. He certainly did not appear to be completely defeated. At least I hoped it was not futile. This part of the world was in short supply of decent parents, production managers, all around good eggs and former punk pioneers who kept the roses pruned.

"I have so many salient observations now that I’ve almost had it. But there’s nothing like those that you get from your kids. It’s so much better when you can think of it as a reflection of yourself."

"That’s an interesting statement in itself. I agree with that. It makes sense. It’s like when Stella was young I was always worried about certain misbehavior on her part. Then one day I stepped back and asked, why am I sweating this so much? Ah-ha! Because maybe it reflects on me and Isabella."

"Yeah, we can all be regular wise men now." He readjusted himself in his chair. "I’m actually working on being as unselfish as possible. It's hard for someone with this. I got to be selfish with time. With not wanting strange cousins and such stopping in and dotting on me for no good reason. But what I mean is that I am trying terribly hard not to just say exactly what I think. Even more so than when I thought I had lots of time on my hands."

"I don’t follow." I said this, but then suddenly understood his basic idea. "What you are saying is that the bluntness of the terminal can be selfish?"

"I think so. I think suicide is selfish, obviously and I think making demands about how your ceremony, your memorial or funeral thing should be handled is kind of selfish."

"Yet you complain about relatives coming around."

He thought about this while watching a small skirmish between house finches on the feeder.

"You’re right. I’m being hypocritical."

"I think you have every right…"

"No. No I don’t. Not in the least."

We sat for some time without saying anything else. Filled with admiration for his attempts at being candid, I wanted to reciprocate, yet felt all my attempts would be far, far shallower.

"Remember the Housemartins?" He suddenly asked.

"Socialists from, where, like, um, maybe Peterborough?"

"Hull, actually." He grinned slightly.

"Right. Why?"

"I admired them. Poppy, yet wicked underneath. It was effective. Sometimes, back when I was a real revolutionary I got this feeling we were doing more harm than good. You know, our views became useless, because we had narrowed the band of our frequency so much. Who listened to us other than the already converted."

"You have to rely on people making the jump beyond the antic and into the idea. Getting beyond the attention getting segment of the program. I’m not sure if pop music is equipped to do that very well. Maybe nothing is able to that in our post-sixties world."

We were quiet for a few minutes, then Calvin added, "Damn it. Now they’re stuck in my head.
The fucking Housemartins."

"The Smiths, light." I offered.

Calvin looked at me with a wry smile. "No, no. Not really. I don’t agree."

"Didn’t one of them end up turning himself into Fat Boy Slim?"

"Norman Cook."

"You know a lot about pop music."

"I think I know far too much."

"Is that possible? Can a person know too much about something, anything?"

"If only I could have done something with it."

I thought of Ethan and Bricks & Mortar at their debut four years before. "You did." Then I thought about the whole idea that rock is for the kids or whatever Ethan used to say to me, which did nothing to help assuage my vague guilt regarding youthful enthusiasms being harbored by a middle aged music fan. It was now obvious that being a music fan is a hopeless condition.

Backyard

"I am constantly amused with the revisionist history critics churn out." Calvin sat in an aluminum deck chair on his patio while I sat on their picnic table. He was having a rare beer, taking sips and trying to avoid the pain chain sawing its way through his body. We both knew the end for him loomed somewhere over the milo plants in the distance.

"You mean how once scorned artists turn up as genius later on."

He nodded. "I’m thinking of the Gin Blossoms. Here’s a nice pop band from Phoenix or, I suppose Tempe, to be more precise and when they had their hits, wow the scorn they generated. Then I read something lately in one of Kirsten’s Indie mags how they were a bastion of excellent power pop in an ocean of mediocre flannel. Or whatever. I personally didn’t give them much of a listen, but that’s just personal taste. Ah, I don’t know. I guess I am pissed whenever critics put down music or a band and say they aren’t any good. What does a critic know about putting music together?"

"I think you’re going out on a limb. I don’t see anything wrong with making a quality assessment…"

"…as long as the quality assessment isn’t based inversely on a group’s popularity."

I smiled. "Pop has always been that way. That’s no secret."

"What way?"

"You have to ascend to a lofty purch, atop consistent high quality and ambition to render immunity."

"Listen to you Professor Carraway."

"I don’t understand the mechanism working." I was suddenly embarrassed by my meandering obfuscation. "Maybe something about fashion and assumptions."

"The guys in that band wanted to make a buck and have fun. Isn’t that the motivation behind Pop music?

"Everyone can’t be making statements. There are few Bob Dylans."

"Only one that I know of. But that’s not the only criteria for quality."

"No, I know. My judge of quality is suspect at the best of times." I said this, but then realized I had no idea what I was talking about. "I don’t know how to judge whether something is crap, but I do know how to judge whether I like something or not. I wrote something about Coldplay couple months ago. I don’t know, I was fed up with the blow back on them. Like they needed defending."

"You need defending, liking them." Cal smiled. "Look the fast of the matter is that Pop music revolves around group psychology. What other people think matters, but on the other hand, give these people a fucking break."

I crossed my arms and tried to bear down on my previous line of thought a bit more. "I listened to REM’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi the other day for the first time in years. I distinctly recall not liking it much when it came out."

"Critics liked it."

"But when I listened the other day I was like, hey this is really, really good. I’m in a completely different place life-wise now so why should it be a surprise that I get a different take on it. I think that’s what happens to these critics too. A lot. They pull something out from in back of their bins and it suddenly says something to them based on current conditions. Or they’ve been able to bury the expectations they once had for a particular effort."

"Well, right. That’s true. It’s not that they discover new qualities in the music, it is that they’ve what? Maybe discovered something new about themselves?"

"That’s revisionism in a nutshell, right?"

"But then there’s irony that clouds the issue. Somebody like Nancy Sinatra gets some props and starts moving units again, because martinis and go-go boots become popular. So then it surfaces that Nancy Sinatra was ahead of her time or something."

"I’m not following."

"Ah, neither am I. Sometimes the drugs in my head. You know?" Calvin’s eyes became more distant than usual. "I wonder where Ethan and the boys are at the moment. We got an Email from him the other day. They were going to be playing in some hole in Warsaw." Calvin laughed.
"What a revision that is. When I was playing we couldn’t conceive a moment in time when playing a hole in Warsaw would be possible. Fucking Ronnie Reagan had his Pershing II missiles aimed at Warsaw." He looked down at his beer. "Could not imagine a time…and I wouldn’t have it any other way. You know, Ethan, I mean. Being in a different, unimagined world."

Cup

I took Calvin over to O’Brien’s coffee house against the expressed orders. But he wanted desperately to get out and about again after being in the house, since last coming back from treatment in Iowa City. He was in a particularly poor mood, which was really the only way I could justify the breaking of rules. I would be in a poor mood if I were in his type of pain and state of less than easy mobility.

We settled into a booth towards the back door. "I can’t thank you enough for springing me from the house."

"Don’t mention it. Again. Please. If your lovely wife finds out I have taking you for a jaunt to purchase stimulant beverages, I’ll be grounded for life."

He nodded and took a sip of his coffee. "I know I need to store up what chips I have left to make it by Ethan’s wedding, but man, I can’t tell you how it is to be in the house day after day after."

"Are you and Kim excited about the big event?"

Cal shrugged. "I am so happy for Ethan. Senja is a delight. So funny. So perfect for the life of a young musician. But I feel a bit, well, daunted by the process of a wedding here in our little quiet town. Playing host to a contingent of Finns. It’ll be a trip. Mostly, it’s just going to be really difficult to be helpful to Kim. I mean, for me to be helpful. So she’s going to be having to coordinate much of it."

"What about Ethan?"

"He’s finishing up with the European leg of their tour, then he jets to Osaka, picks up Senja, then comes here. I thanked him for wanting to have the event here, because of, well, my situation, but advised him to do it in Finland. He said that Senja insisted on it being here."

"Thoughtful." I took a big swallow of Mozambique Peaberry dark roast.

"Yes."

"Who is doing the music?"

"It’s going to be some Finnish folk group from Telluride." He shook his head. "Globilization."

"What will be next? Mongolians blowing water buffalo horns?"

"Listen to you suddenly sounding as though you’re 60." He gave me a smirk I hadn’t seen before.

"I am pretty uncool when it comes to wedding music."

"Traditionalist."

"There are worse things to be called."

Calvin nodded. "I suppose." He took another sip. "Were you ever in a band? I don’t think you’ve ever said, but the way you can carry on, it seems like it."

He was a good five years older than me, but he suddenly sounded to me like an elder, a Yoda of Cadeville asking some penetrating question. I grimaced. "Define your terms?"

"Oh for fuck’s sake. Did you ever stand up and make music in front of anybody? What do you mean, define your terms?"

"Well, hell. I didn’t expect you to get so bent out of shape. Look at it from my point of view. Music nerd has to fess up to punk icon that his band once covered one of their songs."

Calvin smiled. "I will alert ASCAP."

"Mostly, we did a bad imitation of The Gun Club."

He nodded approval. "What was this project called?"

"We were the Lightening Terns. Lightening with an E, as though we were shedding weight as we flew."

"College boys."

"College boys and girl."

"Girl on bass, I bet."

"Uncanny guess."

"That was the thing in the late eighties, right?"

"Was it?"

Calvin shrugged and looked towards the front of the store, quiet for a few moments. "So what happened to the Lightening Terns?"

"We discovered that the market for a band such as ours in Iowa City was limited. Very narrowly defined was our fan base."

"Did you wear those knee high boots that Jeffrey Lee Pierce used to wear?"

"I think that may have been part of the problem. One of fashion or a lack thereof. We lapsed away from these roots and started to play sort of like The Leaving Trains. Then we wanted to be Mercury Charge."

"I’ve heard of them."

"So in the space of about six months, we went from affecting an LA sound to that famous Mercury Charge Bay Area punk swagger."

"Right up the 101." He straightened his back after a slight wince of pain. "I think you’re much too hard on your old band. Why be so critical? Think about this. At least you tried something. At least you went out in front of people – I mean I presume there were a few people anyway – and expressed yourselves. Granted, you tried to express yourself with other people’s music, but nevertheless…"

"That’s what I have always told myself. Makes it sound very nearly noble, or, I don’t know, like art or something."

"Does it?"

"I’m looking for a silver lining in my confession."

"I think you will always meet with a certain level of respect from musicians if you’ve had experience performing. It’s time well-spent. Usually. Good for the, um, soul?"

"You think so?"

"Maybe I am being a bit too positive, or optimistic."

"No, no. Please. Continue on. It’s encouraging to know that my time in back of a microphone drunk off my ass and singing Always Between Wars wasn’t a complete waste of time."

Night

When the phone rings at 1:00 AM not much good comes into the head in the first flashes of consciousness after the sleep slips away. Isabella’s first word was "Stella." I sat bolt upright and picked the receiver up, sounding a bit crisper than I should have with my, "Hello?"

"Nick? It’s Kim Federer."

Indeed it was and she sounded close to frantic, but holding it together so far, despite what I guessed was a sharp down turn for Cal. "Yes, Kim. Is it Calvin?"

"No, no. Ethan. Royce, from Comet just, I mean, their manager just called. There’s been an accident."

A split second of relief was immediately replaced with a deeper horror. "Is he alright? Are they…"

"He’s in a hospital in Stockholm. The road manager and um a keyboard player for The Indivisibles…killed."

Look, I have to leave to get to him right away. Kirsten is in Chicago. Can you come by and be with Cal?"

Schedules, deadlines, sleep, cuddling with Isabella (a cherished morning ritual) all swept away immediately. "Of course, of course. I can be over in a few minutes."

"Great. I have a morning flight to London with a connection so I can get to him pretty fast. Kirsten is coming with me."

"Okay, look spare me the detail. I’ll be over and Calvin can tell me."

"I wanted to call his brother in Des Moines, but he asked me to call you."

"Kim. It’s no problem. I’m happy to help." I was honored to help, but that really didn’t occur to me at that moment. Only when I was driving over to the house did I suddenly feel a great sense of fellowship, maybe even kinship.

She let me in through the garage. As she shrugged her coat on she gave me a quick tour of the medications assembled between the sink and the refrigerator. "Calvin is asleep right now and will probably stay that way for another hour. He knows you’ll be here for him so it won’t be like some sort of surprise."

"I’m glad he could get to sleep."

"He’s heavily medicated. Otherwise he’d be still trying to convince me he should go over too."

She paused awkwardly and stared out the kitchen window. "I won’t be able to make it over to Stockholm before Ethan wakes up from surgery, but…" She shook her head and looked down at her feet. "I’ll be…I need to get going."

"I’ll be here and however I can help, just let me know."

"Thank you so much. My cell phone number is on the fridge."

She left without any further instructions or frivolous banter. Dark and quiet, the house offered little in the way of diversion. I stood in the kitchen not knowing what to do with myself, how to avoid speculating about the accident, about the shape of Calvin’s mind when he wakes up or how would manage to be of use.

I walked into the family room where their desktop computer sat on a small desk, its screen still displaying a news story from the Guardian about the accident.

One member of the rock group, The Indivisibles and the road manager for American rockers, Bricks & Mortar were killed in a coach accident on a Swedish highway last night. Six other members of the tour remain in hospital after the bus they traveled in struck a parked vehicle on the E4 between Stockholm and Helsingborg. The victims, identified as Joe Jordan, 20 of Didcot and Sam Wessey, 41 of New York, New York, were thrown from the coach after it flipped on to its side after swerving and striking a bridge support.

Both The Indivisibles and Bricks & Mortar had completed a show in Copenhagen, Denmark and were to perform at Sockholm’s Club Mondo this evening. The accident occurred at 0220 GMT in clear weather conditions making …

"Anything new?" Calvin said as he made his way down the dark hallway. I pulled myself away from the screen, straightening up to watch as he emerged, a halo of darkness surrounding his thin self swaddled in a dark blue terry cloth robe. "I think the kid will be alright." He did not look good. Which is, in his advanced state of illness, an understatement. Of course, I have a different perspective than most."

"There was something up on the screen. I guess Kim did a quick search. Before leaving Here. Sit down." I motioned to the sofa. "Um, are you supposed to be out of bed this early?"

He shuffled over to the sofa and eased himself down. "Fuck it. I was laying there listening to Kim throw herself together for a flight to London, knowing there wasn’t anything for me to do, but continue to look as hopeless as possible. And, you know, I could not keep The Decemberists out of my head. Fuck, I hate when a band invades."

"Really?"

"But, you know, it makes sense. I mean, they have that maudlin, Victorian gothic ethos running full tilt. I’m nearly dead, so why not be literary about it."

"Either that, or you have a fondness for Chimney Sweeps."

He wiped imaginary crumbs from his lips and chuckled. "You mean Chimbley Sweep."

"How can you be so calm? Calm enough to continue to name check a wide degree of pop bands. Jesus, if Stella were involved in an accident, I would be mental."

"Well, obviously, I have a significant level of pain killer in my blood stream, anti depressants, all that, so my senses are dulled." Cal sighed. "I had a feeling that something would happen on this tour. That kid that did die was a smack addict, so he was doomed from the start. It would be either his brain landing on a Swedish bridge support or a bad score in Sheffield that did him in. I just really didn’t think there would be this carnage. Didn’t think of the second oldest cliché in rock. The tour bus crash."

"What’s THE oldest cliché in rock, then?"

"Come on, man. The overdose."

"Right."

"Do you know much about Ethan’s injuries?"

"Apparently he’s out of the woods, life threatening wise. But specifics are missing. I would bet I will have the complete story well before Kim even lands in London. The kid will be waking up later in the morning, after her flight leaves. So I’ll get a call from him or someone at Comet. What does it say that I am not handling this differently? If anything, my condition should make me even more fretful, uptight..."

"You said yourself the drugs have you numb."

He looked at me and nodded, then looked down at his lap. "He’ll be fine."

Bricks & Mortar had been on quite a roll, a veritable avalanche: supporting their fourth album, which had just been certified gold. The band resigned a management agreement with Comet Group on the verge of signing a big licensing deal with Protégé. Bricks & Mortar looked favorites to rock well on into the future. So now there would be several pots down on their career mix board. I wondered about Ethan’s wife. "Where is Ethan’s wife in all this?"

"Good question. Last I heard she was at their house in Vancouver. But then I heard something about her being in Singapore." He shrugged. "She’ll surface at the hospital at some point I’m sure. They’re crazy about each other." He put his hands in the pockets of his robe. "At least the last time I knew, they were a happy loving couple. But they’re kids. Global youth. Who knows from one day to the next? I am now sitting here hoping I am alive when Kim gets back from Sweden." Calvin looked at me with anthracite eyes. "I do not feel very well."

I went over to him and sat down next to him. "What can I do?"

He patted me on the knee. "Don’t worry. Don’t feel guilty if I keel over on you. Even if you were a wizard from M.D. Anderson there would be nothing you could do."

"Guilt hell. It’s not about quilt. It’s shelfish. It’s loosing someone to talk to about the loose drum production on Picaresque."

He huffed. "The fucking Decemberists again."

"A theme."

"Colin Meloy would approve."

"You think?"

"Call him up."

I actually considered this for a few seconds, then thought of something new to talk about. "Do you think that the album is dead? Is it even a relative term anymore? Album."

Cal sighed. "From a band’s perspective it is not dead. It will always be important to have songs collected and placed into context where they can be a marker in a band’s life span. The attitude and outlook of a group is put down at that point. Also you have to think of the economics of recording. Batching the process leads to economies of scale in the studio, mixing, mastering, etcetera. But from a marketing standpoint? It’s going to depend on the consumer. And we increasingly just down load our favorite bits and forget about the rest. It’s going real time and accelerating every year. That’s obvious."

"So what’s going to happen to the album? Will there ever be classic albums in the future?"

"Nothing will happen to the album. The document will still exist, but won’t be the economic engine it once was. Ethan and just about everyone else works on as many channels as possible, as many revenue streams as possible. Digital and physical units, streaming, merchandise, live performance, licensing, which is where he places a lot of his chips. Jesus, do you know that Bricks & Mortar has a holding company in the Netherlands? Ethan says you don’t have to pay tax on royalties there." He shook his head and shrugged. "There’s so many ways to control costs and places to go grab revenue now you have to be a damn business school grad to understand the P&L statements." This answer took a lot of wind out of Calvin and he fell silent.

I wasn’t sure if these sorts of large philosophical type questions were a smart way of conducting our conversations anymore. Those days seem to be slipping away for good.

Global

We had fallen asleep, because when I awoke, finally hearing the phone ring, the light coming through the windows had that clean, late winter slice to it. Scrambling to the phone I noticed Cal had fallen over on the sofa and slept deeply on his side. The caller ID read "Out of Area."

"Federer residence. This is Nick."

"Mr. Carraway? It’s Ethan." He sounded like he was down the street. His all the way from Sweden voice was void of any echo or hiss. Who was his cell phone provider?

"Ethan! Good to hear from you."

"Yes. Hi. Is my Mom there?"

"No. She’s heading your way. I suspect she is at O’Hare waiting to board."

"I can try her cell. She doesn’t need to come over. I’m okay."

"Define okay."

"A broken arm, cracked rib oh and they had to remove my spleen. Isn’t that weird?"

"Is it? I don’t know."

"Is my Dad around?"

"He’s asleep." I wondered how best to wake him. "You sound really good for someone who is recovering from surgery and is on the other side of the planet."

"Modern living. I can’t decide whether you should wake Dad or not. I mean, I can just call back. You know, he’s in a situation where he needs his rest."

"You think?" I didn’t mean that to sound sarcastic, but I think it did. "How are you, um, mentally speaking? You together?"

"Remarkable."

"You sound pretty okay."

"How’s Stella doing?"

This question took me aback somewhat. Weren’t we just discussing his injuries sustained in a horrible (and fatal for some) bus accident? "Um, oh, she’s doing well. She likes school. Lots of friends."

"Boyfriend yet?"

Again, another question that threw me. "Yes. Apparently. Some computer whiz from Louisville named Michael. We haven’t met him."

"That’s cool. Kirsten and I always thought of her as sort of another sister and I thought of her just a while ago and wondered what she was doing."

This turn of conversation would have been a major highlight for Stella if it happened three or so years earlier and I would have had the boldness to relay the inquiry to her. These days, I doubt she would give it a lot of thought. "That’s nice of you to think of her."

"All I can do here, right now, is think." There was a brief pause and Ethan said something to somebody, then returned. "You know something? As I was laying there with Caleb, a chunk of bus roof and the rest of his bedding on top of me, staring out the front of the bus through the broken windows, the bus laying there on its side, you know, totally fucked, I didn’t feel any pain. As I laid there in the strangest silence you can imagine, I asked myself, Ethan, are you satisfied?"

"Satisfied with?" I could sense that in his post-operative pharmaceutically enhanced head, he was going from reminiscence to the metaphysical without even checking the mirrors.
"Have I left anything behind? The planet is four or five billion years old and it will be another billion years or more before the sun goes supernova and makes rock music surplus to requirements. So, I mean, well, with history and all, will there be any history left behind? I laid there for who knows how long thinking I was a dead man. I could see the world through Dad’s eyes so fucking clearly. Accept, well, I didn’t have any pain. Or I mean I didn’t feel any. Shock and silence. And there was this apocalyptic scene in front of me. Like that old movie, Mad Max. Anyway, wow, like I have to say I’m satisfied. I think this is my religious experience. For me, God isn’t about fear of death. You know, like wanting ever-lasting life. God is about this all encompassing vastness. The huge expanse of infinity. It’s God. So. Like I said. I’m satisfied with my life."

"Satisfied?"

"Part of anticipatory grief, you know, I mean, me dealing with Dad dying…" I glanced at the sleeping Cal and wondered if he wasn’t sleeping at all. "…is making sure there aren’t any unresolved issues, feelings, questions, whatever. SO there’s been these long talks with him. And he always comes back to the theme of what do we leave behind? Are we satisfied with the body of work left to tell our story? With him, he’s happy with his marriage, proud of Kirs and I, happy with his work at the factory, with his earlier brush with fame. He laughs that at least his name comes up on Google as one of the first entries. That’s a joke now: how do we define a successful celebrity history? What the search engines do with you."

"So you’re happy with what you’d leave behind?"

"That’s what I can now say. I can also say I have a better understanding of what God is and yesterday, I don’t think I would have said that. I know I wouldn’t have said it. But I don’t fear infinity. I love and that’s good. I create and that’s cool. So I have stuff to leave behind."

"And you come up on Google now."

Ethan laughed. "Fuckin’ A."

"And what’s cooler than having a song used on an episode of Veronica Mars?"

He chuckled. "Plenty of things, Mr. Carraway."

"So should I wake your Dad? I think he’d want to talk with you." How often do you get to talk with your son about finding God, I thought?

"I think I will call my Mom and then call back there. She really does not need to come over."

"You won’t convince her otherwise. She called me up and installed me and drove out of here like shot from a canon."

A brief pause during which I thought I could almost make out some cell site interference. "I’m glad you and Dad have become such good friends. That’s another good thing he’ll leave behind."

"He said the other day that he isn’t depressed or anything. And funny enough, I’m not frightened for him."

"He’s satisfied. The theory is that you only fear the inevitable if you haven’t done enough."

This struck me as hyper accurate. I recalled my own despair at the death of my father. There was still much unfinished business, many unsaid thoughts and emotions. Was he satisfied with what he left behind? What was my father's legacy? Farming 980 acres for fifty years? Sending my brothers and I to school where I delivered a mediocre performance while they learned to split atoms and calculate pi? Did he love Mom? This thought made my throat tighten significantly, because I did not have the answer to that important question. If I asked my Mom if Dad had loved her she would laugh and wave at me nonchalantly. Of course, dear.

I regained focus. "Ethan. Why don’t you try your Mom, then call back here in about an hour?"

"Yeah, okay. "

"Good talking with you."

"Take care. I’m out." The line went quiet, Ethan’s strangely buoyant tone replaced with line hiss. I hung up and looked at Calvin again. Was he breathing? Moving toward him I noticed his chest moving up and down and heard a slight whistle coming from his nose with each exhale.
I went to the kitchen to make myself busy with coffee so I would not have to revisit the topic of my parents, but it didn’t work. The question hung with me. Did Dad love Mom? It bothered me to have that question be just that. Something to question. Why was it even in doubt? That alone is sad enough. Then there’s the looming answer, which may very well have been or may very well be: No. As I scooped coffee into the filter of the machine it explained why there was so much drama in his last moments. The crushing fear and anguish he had. Dad was not satisfied with what he was leaving behind, which was doubt, missed opportunities, unfinished business.
I went to my coat and pulled out my cell phone. It was eight o’clock in Ohio where Stella attended college. I dialed her number. Inevitably – her voice mail greeted me. "Stella. Dad. Hey, I’m calling to say I love you and I’m extremely proud of you. Oh, and you’ll probably see somewhere that Ethan was involved in an accident in Sweden, but I just spoke to him and he’s fine. Okay, well, um, have a good day and we’ll talk with you soon."

Immediately, I dialed Isabella.

She picked up immediately. "What’s going on over there?" I could here the tea kettle whistling accompaniment to the toaster as she orchestrated a breakfast, of some type while getting ready for work.

"Ethan just called here from Sweden. He sounds fine. A little metaphysical, but okay. I’m letting Calvin sleep, because Ethan is going to call back after he tries Kim, who I would suspect is waiting for that morning flight to Heathrow."

"So have you spoken with Calvin?"

"We talked for a while shortly after Kim had left, then he went back to sleep."

"What did you talk about?"

"I can’t remember. The Decemberists?"

"Jesus." She muttered before crunching down on some toast.

"No, no, we didn’t talk about the son of God."

"Keep me in the loop."

I smiled at this phrase. "In the loop. I don’t think you’ve ever said that before. It’s funny."

"It’s silly. But it popped into my head to use. Say, why do you sound so cheery?"

"Do I?" I thought about it for a second. "I guess I do. Maybe having a pal that relies on me is a good thing."

"I rely on you and so does Stella."

"Of course. You are my family. My closest companions. But it’s different."

"Is it?"

"Maybe what I am saying is that it is good to have lots of people rely on you, me, um, you being a general pronoun here. More like second person narrative."

"I understand without all the explanation."

"The very definition of a long term relationship."

"What is?"

"Understanding without lengthy explanation."

"I don’t mind lengthy explanation unless I am getting ready for work."

"So noted." I glanced at the clock on the microwave. "I will keep you in the loop!"

"Thanks."

I folded up my cell phone and poured some coffee. Isabella always knows exactly how to bring a smile to my face and can always cut through some of my meandering thoughts so well. Yes, the
very definition of a long-term relationship.

Significant Music Side Bar #7

Mercury Charge – Bay Bridged – This is a late entry. I re-examined MC after many years and got stuck on this car crash of a hardcore tune. I was taking another look at this band, because a friend of mine, no, a close friend of mine played bass guitar for this particular, seminal West Coast punk band. Examining sexual politics by using a chainsaw as part of the rhythm section, the group pushed everything to a logical and sometimes violent conclusion. This song came on their third and best release and displayed a mighty, buzzy, loose low end that somehow incorporated the chainsaw whine so perfectly, to an untrained ear, you’d swear it was MC’s first (and only) use of a synthesizer. Being able to access and understand this song and get what the band was attempting to say announced to me that I had become a more mature music listener. Yesterday my friend who had been in this band, died. In our many hours of talking about music he always came back to a central belief. That rock music was for the kids. At this point, Cal, I am here to say, that this music, this visceral, complex abstraction of cultural commentary was and is by no means for the kids. Rock music in all its infinite varieties has the potential to change individuals and entire cultures. You should rest easy up on the brow of an Iowa ridge for eternity knowing that.

Wake

"I hope you aren’t too down about not being a pall bearer?" For some reason, I watched Kim’s mouth as she asked me this, buzzed as I was on wine.

"No, no. Please. That’s…"

"We just had a lot of relatives to think about. People who didn’t have a hand in his, well…" The corners of her mouth turned down and she ran her tongue along the bottom lip. "You did so much for Calvin, for me."

I looked at Isabella who was looking at me. "It was a real pleasure to become friends with Cal this year. He means a lot to me."

Kim gave my forearm a squeeze. "Well, I can not even begin to tell you what it’s meant for Cal to be able to talk with you about music." She leaned closer to Isabella and I. "He never would talk with Ethan about it. A point of principle I never understood." She straightened up. "And everything else you used to talk about. You were an impartial observer or someone not weighed down by family history. Yet, you know, you guys had a lot in common."

"Friends are God’s consolation for families." I stated. "Someone said that or I read it someplace. I can’t remember who it was though."

Isabella gave me a playful elbow. "Thanks a lot."

"You know what I mean."

"Do I?" She smiled ever so slightly.

"I think that’s a Jay McInerney line." Kim suggested.

"Oh terrific." I let my shoulders drop. "Now I’m quoting New Yorkers."

"There are a few worse things, Mr. Carraway." I heard a hoarse voice say from behind us. I turned to find Ethan holding a coffee mug that read Wisconsin Dells across it.

"You think?" I grinned. "I could quote lyrics from that funny pop band, who is that, you know, the ones from Iowa that say they're from Vancouver…"

"Ha, Ha." He switched his mug out of his right hand and extended it for a shake. "You have no idea how much easier it is to say Vancouver."

I gave his hand a firm shake. "We’re sorry for your loss." I could not think of anything else to say, which is pretty pitiful.

Ethan shrugged. "We were prepared. As best we could be. I wish I could have pulled a Bono and flown in every day to keep the man company. But oh well, we can’t all have a Gulfstream V gassed and ready on the tarmac." He took a sip from his cup. "It kind of helps me that Senja is pregnant." He looked beyond our group, across the room to where Senja was digging a chip into a huge bowl of dip sitting on the dining room table. "She demanded that we release the news, even though it is really early."

I turned back to Kim as Isabella touched her arm. "Grandma. How do you feel about this news?"
She smiled broadly and leaned in towards Isabella. "As a young widow, well, young-ish anyway. Ha-ha. I feel intimidated by the thought of being a grandparent."

I turned back to Ethan. "Amazing news."

He beamed. "It is isn’t it?"