DanielSonenberg.com

Here's the sun going down outside my pantry window. It was a pretty gruff day, cold and rainy I think - I was inside for all of it - but then there was this moment of utter beauty so splendid that even Mr. Moto couldn't wreck it. Now it's so many hours later and I have insomnia for the second night in a row. Not sure what it is. I guess missing that critical moment when your whole body screams “end it now!” because you’re reading the New York Times on line, or answering emails, or dully flipping through websites like television channels, and then that golden opportunity for perfect sleep is gone, never to be retrieved. I lay in bed with a magnum flashlight reading articles on Gesualdo and Charles Ives, and I felt my heart pounding from the late night soy hot chocolate I concocted for myself and Alex, who was in a zombified sleep next to me – she listens when her body commands. It’s partly all the dying that’s happening around me, though. You’ve heard about Monty and Uncle Herbie, and then this week the father of my first real girlfriend succumbed to cancer, and one of my academic advisees at school, a 19-year-old jazz guitarist, cracked up his car and checked out. I don’t know if I’m sitting up scared or sad. These events bring home to me that life is a minefield, and it really is the few and the lucky who walk safely across, like my 95-year-old grandmother, telling me she’s had enough – it’s ridiculous for anyone to live so long. There is no fairness, no justice, no sense to death, and I suppose, for that matter, to life either. I think of Gina Brandt Fall, the writer and force of nature Alex and I met when we met each other, her electric personality and the power of her words, her reading to us in Monday Music at the MacDowell Colony, a pivotal event in the forging of our young love. Of Gina’s incredible “Tacos” story, about an incident in a subway station with an undercurrent of familial catastrophe, and of Gina’s probing and messy and thoughtful unfinished novel, which we heard in bits and pieces over time. Of Gina’s awful, awful cancer, that devoured her so quickly we didn’t have time to catch our breath, and of our visit with her in California, and then her gurgling voice on the phone in the waning hours of her life, Alex and I beside ourselves with not knowing what to do and screaming into the phone we love you Gina. I sometimes don’t understand how we, the living, are supposed to just laugh our way through this existence, with all its outright unbearability. And then I think but laugh we must. And I think of the time my dad died, the one and only time that happened, and sitting shiva for a week and all the relatives and friends arriving, one by one, with a paper-wrapped whitefish as an offering. The whitefishes they piled up, one by one, and it just seemed so hopelessly funny, so funny that to this day the very word whitefish (which is a foreign word in Maine) brings a slight titter to my throat. And each new guest came bearing whitefish as if it were the only hope for all of our futures and perhaps it was. It’s my first impulse, you know, to send whitefishes out to all the grieving, all the suffering souls in the world, or even in just my little corner of it. But then I think the gesture might be misinterpreted. And so I send emails and cards, I call, I don’t know quite what to say and I probably laugh nervously a bit too much. What is this business of dying? I’ve seen my share for a young lad, and I still don’t know. I don’t know what you say to the father of a boy who drives his car too fast and skids on the ice, especially when this father and I have been in email contact for years, working to have the son make all, or at least some of the right choices. So much invested, so much suddenly gone. The grades were better this semester, the future looked bright. So much caring and love and frustration and teeth clenching and understanding, and then what are you supposed to do with it? “He died instantly" - as if that’s a good thing. And my uncle Herbie, who survives Hitler and still at 89 has so much fight left in him and then gets flattened by a truck on his daily constitutional. Or my ex-girlfriend’s dad, who retired and then got a rare form of cancer (the kind that’s too sickeningly common) and just WENT, really, really fast. I don’t understand how we manage not to just disintegrate. Literally fall to pieces, implode or explode or just gradually expand into the atmosphere, raining our sorrows – all that’s left of us – on the planet in a fine but cutting mist. So I lie in bed and think of myself and all the people I love, my friends, my family. I think of what I haven’t said, and I think of which conversation might be my last, and I think of which conversations – recently – actually WERE my last, and what I should have and didn’t say, and what I wish I could say now, and the density of suffering that even these isolated passings (to use a euphemism I HATE) engender, and then I think about Iraq and I am vapor, a prickly gaseous bog tormented by insomnia and night frights and all the demons of this world and the next one. My kingdom for some sleep, the only hope for any of us, the gentlest mother. But in lieu of that for Christ’s sake please send whitefish.

It's odd to think that I first experienced James Brown via Eddie Murphy on Saturday Night Live. It was the James Brown Celebrity Hot Tub, and I think you can still find it somewhere on YouTube. It must have been late high school or even early college when I got to know the genuine article, since the two volume "CD of JB" was absolutely huge at some point in my college career. Probably my most vivid James Brown memory was staying up all night with my composition teacher, Daron Hagen, copying parts for my first orchestra piece ("Somniloquy") with JB blaring and diet coke aflowing. And although I shook my booty to this wonderful music numerous times at Bard parties, and even had a chance to dance to the JBs (James's backup band, who played the Old Gym while their bandleader was still in prison), it wasn't until years later that I really sat and dissected the intricacies of the JB way. I loved to use the song Sex Machine in Music Appreciation classes - to talk about how the polyrhythmic texture of the music arose as the sum of each syncopated cog in a glorious funk machine, sometimes having the students clap out the rhythm of the bass line or the twangy offbeat guitar chords. And of course we'd discuss how this music took the sexual revolution of Little Richard to a new level, how now, nothing was left unsaid. But the sexuality was so much more in the rhythmic fabric than in the lyrics, in the thrusting, pumping, and incontestably genius syncopations, the multiple timelines that hearkened straight back to African music in all its staggering complexity. We'd talk about how this man, by sheer force of will and innate musicality, could sit on one chord for 130 measures and bore no-one, or could commandeer the musical form with his deeply felt yet seemingly impulsive order: "Take it to the bridge!" I'm glad that after a late start I came to fully understand how important James Brown was to American music. He was a true original, a Godfather. May he continue to feel good, wherever he may be.

Well when it rains it pours. Actually the sun came out this morning and Connecticut is enjoying a beautiful brisk fall day. But Monty Grossman's time has come. Beloved spaniel and loyal friend, Monty had been stumbling these last weeks. In the middle of the night he bumbled into our room confusedly, as calls from Jane Sutherland (Alex's mom) beckoned him back to bed. Then this morning, as I ambled in from my morning run, I found the entire family gathered, half crying half laughing, and Monty slumped awkwardly, his head hanging off the couch. LIttle brother Nelson (the terror) looked on dejectedly as one by one we sidled up to the ailing hound to pay our last respects. And then, at 10:30, it was off to the vet - one final visit. Alex and I stayed behind and comforted poor Nelson, who from this point forward is an only child. As I feel I've said so recently, he had a good long life, and died peacefully in the company of his extended family. Shortly before he left to meet his fate we all raised a glass of Taittinger in his honor. I couldn't help but think of Paul McCartney's line, which he attributed to Pablo Picasso on the last night of his life: "Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I don't drink anymore."

Our Thanksgiving has been dampened, literally and figuratively. Herb Loebel, my great uncle and the family maverick, was taking his usual walk down to Friendly's in Southbury, CT on Monday when a pick-up truck ran into him. He was 89 and recovering from heart surgery, and was a survivor in every sense of the word (including the Auschwitz sense), but in the brute impact of chrome and steel he had met his match. He hung on for a day and then passed away yesterday, 43 years to the day after the death of a president for whom Uncle Herbie had very little sympathy. Having escaped from Auschwitz during the dissolution of the awful final days there, he found himself briefly conscripted by the Red army, and quickly developed an aversion to communism that dwarfed even his considerable fear of Fascism. Herbie made it to the States in '46 and reconnected with his sister, my grandmother, who had long given him up for dead. And then he set about establishing a profession and climbing to the top. At first he did fashion photography, but eventually he got into the special effects racket, and had a significant hand in such neat tricks as that old Canon AE1 commercial (where they jump from a plane), and perhaps most famously, the Energizer Bunny. In retirement, he devoted himself to political causes, and his politics were diametrically opposed to those of everyone else in the family. Herbie's world view, understandably, was shaped by an overriding anti-totalitarianism, and he saw communists around every corner. Of course, when you live through what he lived through, even the most far-fetched scenario can seem possible. So Herbie vociferously supported Ronald Reagan's tough stand against the Soviet Union, and over the years picked up many of the other talking points of conservative dogma, fueled I suppose by the vast conservative media to which he loyally subscribed. His politics were the cause of many a Thanksgiving meltdown, so it's somewhat ironic that we gather today to remember him. But despite forbidding political views, we all loved Herbie dearly. He was a jovial great uncle with a brilliant wit and, in later years, a softer side. I remember him commenting once about the "do not drink" labels on detergent. "Would the world really be worse off without all the detergent drinkers?" he asked. He also let me drive his Mercedes sports car when I was 14, and over the years subscribed me to numerous wing-nut newsletters, and engaged in friendly but pointed debate through email and the US mail. Recently he would address me as "grand nephew # 1" and say that he feared he had lost me to the socialists. But that didn't stop him from trying to pull me back from their clutches. Here's a letter he wrote to the Kingston Daily Freemen in 1989, when I was across the river attending the topic of his disdain: Bard College. And here's a letter he wrote to the New York Times. Amidst the many things he stood for with which I disagreed, I did also learn true things from the man. He often told me that "Hitler was an amateur," and that the true mass-murderer of the 20th century was Stalin, who killed more than ten times as many people. He also was a frequent and vocal critic of the de-Jewification of the Holocaust (as you can see from his letter to the Times). His argument was that while yes, it's true others suffered at the hands of the Nazis, Hitler's campaign was so thoroughly focused on the annihilation of the Jews - and was so successful in virtually wiping out the Jewish population of Europe - that to deny the Jewish-centeredness of the Holocaust was in itself an act of anti-semitism. His one return trip to Auschwitz was undertaken with camera in hand, in order to document the anti-semitism that still prevailed in the memorial that stands there today.

So, this Thanksgiving will be a mournful one, in which we lament the passing of an unmistakably great man. It's not often I can say that about someone with whom I so thoroughly disagree on so many issues, but I'll say it today.

I ran out tonight to skate through the empty aisles of Hannaford in the desperate moments before the eleventh hour when they always lock their doors for good. I stopped first at the ethnic section, where you find the matzo, (I moved to Maine and became an ethnic, go figure). I wasn't there for the unleavened good stuff, however, but rather for a yarzeit candle, by means of which we ethnics, once a year, commemorate our departed. It was on an amber Halloween morn 25 years ago today that my father and sister ran and bike rode (respectively) past me as I walked up North Street towards the Great Neck Music Center and my first ever drum lesson. The colors of the day are emblazoned on my memory not so much from my 11-year-old perceptivity as from the photo that my sister took, one which wound up being framed and copied and framed again and distributed amongst immediate family for wistful rumination at all our ritual gatherings. You've figured how the story turns out. I get home from the lesson and find a locked house and no-one in sight, and cool my heels with the neighbors until hours later my aunt pulls up with my sister and "there's been an emergency." The resulting fog of teary and understanding adults, plates and plates of whitefish, visits from rabbis and relatives, followed by plummeting grades and eventually a move out of town, and then college, grad school, marriage, unclehood, job, blog and a rain of discomfiting and unpleasant All Hallows Eves marked by a particular aversion to Jack-o-Lattern carving and costume reckoning preceded my scammering through the shelves of our local supermarket, ethnic commemorative glassed wax in my hand, searching for Mallomars. Because we ethnics mourn with our hearts, yes it's true, but even more profoundly with out digestive systems and our noses, and dear old dad would - I'm guessing - be tickled to think that his gustatory legacy lived on in his progeny most profoundly as a holy reverence for that dark chocolate, marshmallow and graham cracker concoction sold in the plain white boxes with the yellow outer wrap. They're sold only seasonally, because the thin outer coating, the darkest of matte browns, takes unwell to the summer elements. And the vast majority of them are sold in the New York metropolitan area, a fact proudly proclaimed on the box itself. And in my desperate searching, with the clock ticking on towards eleven and banishment, the only yellow boxes I found housed Fig Newtons and I needed to search out the store manager who took me right to the spot, considerably narrower than those allotted for, say, Oreos or Chips Ahoy, where the Mallomars ought to have been and let me gaze all the way back to the peg board. Sold out. Sold, I imagine, to other raving and wild-eyed ethnics, transplanted and homesick, lonely for lost fathers, toting yarzeits and heavy hearts and yearning just for that transportative commingling of bitter sophistication, cloudy white goo and the perfect hint of crisp. We would keep them in the fridge, two separate white rectangular boxes (that have since been replaced by a single box), and Nina and I understood that parental writ was required for tresspass into that sacred realm. They were daddy's Mallomars, housed apart, doled out piecemeal and appropriate for those fleeting moments of familial wholeness that were able to make special occasions out of ordinary sections of ordinary afternoons. Only arriving when the cold wind begins to blow and the leaves swell and then fade and fall, when the spirits poke their cold noses, redolent of times past, into the comfy and organized present and urge us to grieve and howl and mount strange holidays. No transcendent goo tonight. Just the flickering flame on the stovetop and the gusts of wind banging up against our rickety and porous windows. No Mallomars, but spirits abound all the same. Neil Stephen Sonenberg, present as you've always been, reclaim thy rightful place in the search engines of the here and now.

*Addendum - apropos this blog post I've finally updated the Vault.

What an odd place the World Wide Web can be. You free associate, half paying attention, and then sometimes you get a kick right to the gut. Let's see if I can recreate the stream: I was on itunes listening to samples of stuff in the music store...mostly Syd Barrett, stuck as I am in this oddly extended mourning phase. Then something made me think of the great song "I Don't Know How to Love Him" from Jesus Christ Superstar. So I checked to see who had versions of that - and guess what, just about everyone. And they're all - even Helens' - REALLY bad, except for the one from the original Broadway Cast recording, credited to Yvonne Elliman and Marc Pressel. (Once at college I heard Matt Sutton do it - that was something). Then I thought about what a great songwriter Webber was back in the day, and I remembered fondly my first contact with him and Mr. Rice - a 1982 production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I think I actually saw it twice that year - once at the Great Neck North Senior High School, and then again on Broadway - happy confluence of events. And as I'm sitting here remembering, comes to me the fierce crush I had on the Narrator from the Broadway production. On her whole person - her sensuous belter's voice (the sexiest sound my 12-year-old ears had ever heard), and her eager and open brunette good looks. For a while we had the original broadway cast recording, and I would listen to it over and over - she was so dreamy. I realized, sitting here just now, that I didn't know her name. But in this day and age that's no problem, and after a few clicks between Wikipedia and the Internet Broadway Database, I had her - Laurie Beechman. And she died of ovarian cancer in 1998. They named a theatre after her, even, but all these years I had no idea. When I saw her on Broadway I think it was right before the peak of her career, when she played Grisabella in Cats for five years. And then she toured with Les Mis, and did some cabaret, and became a spokesperson for cancer-related causes, and in 1997 a newspaper profiled her and it seemed that she was fighting strong and had the upper hand, and then in 1998, her obituary. I've only found one picture on the internet from the performance I remember - and it's in that Playbill composite above. It's the picture in the lower left hand corner. But if only you could hear her voice too. Then you'd really understand.

Hard to think of what to say about Syd. Funny that I mentioned his song, several posts below this one. Funnier still that it was my post of 7 July, the day he died, across the sea in Cambridge. I had the chance to ask Roger Waters about Syd one time. I think it was me, or maybe it wasn't. We were waiting for him at the Stage Door of Radio City Music Hall, 2nd leg of the Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking tour - probably 1985. Roger came out to sign autographs, and someone, might've been me, asked: "What's up with Syd Barrett?" And Roger's answer still rings in my ears to this day: "I don't see Syd anymore, he's at home with his mother in Cambridge." I guess in that moment I realized that these - Syd and Roger - were more than icons, more than ideas or heros in my pimply head...they were people. There was sadness in Roger's voice when he said it, and it cut through some of the celebratory thrill we autograph hounds were buzzin' on. Syd the great acid casualty, whose story is so rock 'n' roll it screams apocryphal and yet it's all true. You can study the tale, and get a taste of Syd in his later years here. I wish we'd hear that through the madness and reclusiveness Syd had been sketching songs all these years, leaving behind a treasure trove of his inimitable (but so often imitated) psychedelic confections. That's sort of what we're expecting with J.D. Salinger, isn't it? But with Syd I think the long quiet years were not so fruitful. Just a frightened man, afraid of the light. I hope he gets to have his strength and vision back now, wherever he may be, blowing with the Piper at the Gates of Dawn or riding on his Effervescing Elephant. So I tilt back this small shot of tequila - the only thing on hand - listen to the pissing rain and drink to a great lost artist. Cin-cin!

He had a name like the Devil's guitar man - Robert Johnson - and took everything in stride. He could poach an egg like no-one I've ever known, and he'd be up at any hour, without complaint, to drive to the bus or the plane, or the brutal 5am train out of Lynchburg. But mostly Robert held court at Friday night poker, down at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, VA. One night we decided it was drag poker night - so the collective lot of us, writers, artists, composers, misfits one and all, ambled into the Episcopal Thrift Shop in town to buy dresses, suits, tiaras. I suppose on some level it was just a test to see how cool, how unflappable, the old man really was. I say old, but Robert was ageless, timeless, a rock, a spirit, an eternally gentle and welcoming soul. And unflappable he was. I mean, the sight of me in a baby blue evening gown and lipstick is enough to generate big league fear, but Robert just glanced up as we marched in, momentarily raised an eye, and then reached for the poker chips, wearing his trademark grin. Every now and then, to be sure, you could get his attention with a particularly daring bet. The last time I sat at the table, one in our midst was dealt a particularly fine hand in Robert's favorite variant, "Four and Four." After she began the betting by throwing a blue, twenty-five cent chip into the pot, Robert exclaimed in shock, "A whole quarter?!" Belly laughs all around, and all most certainly WITH, not AT. And how could I have known that that would be the last Friday night game? How could I have been ready this afternoon for the email that told me, with great sadness, that Robert, who loved to drive and did it well, had taken his last spin 'round Mount San Angelo and was now motoring beyond. It's a blow to the gut is what it is. A particularly unanswerable emptiness, compounded by the fact that we, Alex and I, won't be able to properly mourn for the man until we're nestled in those Blue Ridge Mountains once again, for three or four or five weeks, communing with the cows and the wondrous skies and bales of hay, and feeling the depth of his absence. To VCCA colonists one and all, and to Dorothy, Robert's wife and our dear friend, we stand with you in grief.