A Bittersweet, Keening Goneness, Pt.4: The Meaning of Life, Period

Plus news, a brief commercial message, etc.

The new essay about my dad is below, so you can skip straight there if you like. But I hope you’ll read this first:

A Nudge for Support

Seems like a number of you have been enjoying this latest project about my relationship with my father. I’m so happy about that. If you’d like to see more, I’d really appreciate it if you could offer some support. One way to do that is to become a paid subscriber, which will also get you full, unlimited access to the archives here, which include at least a book and half’s worth of literary short fiction you won’t find anywhere else, my quarterly music round-ups, my series on the teaching of writing, and more.

If that seems too much of a commitment or just too expensive— which I so, so get—but you want to show appreciation… want to buy me a cup of coffee?

SOME NEWS

My 2021 novel, Infinity Dreams—a ghost story about marriage, collecting, creativity, and possibly averting the end of the world—is part of Cemetery Dance Publications’ June ebook sale, starting now. You can grab yours here. Amusingly, as of this writing, it’s sitting at #10 on Amazon’s Literary Short Stories chart, and #19 on their Horror Short Stories chart.

I say “amusingly” in part because Amazon’s method of calculating rankings is goofy, and those numbers mean less than they purport (although they don’t mean nothing). But also, “amusingly” because eleven books and a quarter century into my fiction publishing life, and still, no one seems to know where to put me. Is he lit? Horror? Oh, and, um…is that book really stories? A novel?

Whatever. If you haven’t already, hope you’ll check it out. And tell some friends. Grab a copy of Tell Me When I Disappear while you’re at lit. Help me keep this little run going.

OKAY, BACK TO THE GONENESS

Today’s installment starts below the photograph. Here’s the usual user’s guide, in case you’re new to this series:

This is the fourth in an ongoing series of essays exploring my relationship to my late father, and art we both love(d), and our ways of sharing it and living through it. Each essay responds to a selection from my dad’s homemade card catalog, which documents his lifelong music collecting habit. I certainly mean for each of these pieces to stand on its own, but suspect their effect will be cumulative. If you’re new to the series, you might want to start with Pt. 1

The Meaning of Life, Period

Hard to believe there’s no photograph of that look. It was practically your default expression. Almost every time we visited, you’d open the door, and there it was:

Crinkles at the corners of your eyes. Lips pressed together, trembling from the effort of keeping them shut. Head inclined downward due to the sheer enormity of what you were about to impart. One arm raised, though not to hug; hugs were fine, but took up valuable imparting time.

I can still feel your hand dropping onto my shoulder. One glance at this notecard, and I hear your voice. That tone, which most people employ, if at all, for You better sit down, kids. Or, There’s been an accident.

What my father used it for was, “Son.” Then, almost always, again: “Son.”

If I was feeling ornery, or just wanting to torture him—or if I also had a discovery, had been planning my own moment and method of imparting, and realized now I was going to have to wait—I’d feign obliviousness. Give him a hug, knowing that in his heightened, sensitized state—meaning pretty much every second of his life—it would aggravate him like the tags he ruthlessly excised from every shirt he owned. Then I’d start past him. Tell him I was hungry.

“There’s no food,” he’d say.

By which he meant he had transcended food. That, thanks to his latest discovery, food was no longer necessary.

Could be a new Mahler performance. Could be socks. I try to imagine what it was like in his house on the morning he first tried Tea Tree shampoo. If my mother was there, she must have come sprinting into the bathroom, thinking he was dying.

Or maybe not. Maybe those were just everyday living-with-my-father sounds.

Sometimes, he couldn’t wait for our next in-person visit, and called instead. I swear, I could tell what was coming on those occasions from his ring. When I picked up, what I got back was, “Son. Son.” In the tone of the voice on this notecard. Which is, in some ways, archetypal. My dad, 3X5.

In other ways, though, this card’s an outlier. Or just weird.

First of all, If you didn’t know him, you might mistake the riff about wishing his “rave-rating credibility was just a tad higher”—meaning, that he didn’t deploy the look described above, and his “Son. Son” voice, quite so often—as self-knowledge. Even recrimination. My father had self-knowledge, I think. Was capable of recrimination. But neither interested him. Not like socks, or Mahler.

If there is regret in that sentence, it’s not because of any past actions. It’s just that the vehemence of previous raves is getting in the way of making me comprehend the significance of this one. Because this discovery (as opposed to all the others) was going to “change the meaning of your life. The meaning of life, period.”

Nothing so odd there, then. Nothing out of my-dad ordinary. I didn’t realize the real strangeness of this card until I picked it out of the box.

My father and I made each other mix tapes, and later mix CDs, all my life. Some of my favorites of his came with original cover drawings, which I now treasure more than the music. Often, when inspired, we’d include liner notes. Which is clearly what these are.

But...Look, I not only remember this specific collection, I still have it in regular rotation all these years—decades—after he gave it to me (meaning, yes, Pop, you were right, my life is changed, I hereby perform the Bow of Gratitude and make the prescribed my-life-is-changed yips of admiration in your praise).

And yet, I don’t remember these notes. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them. I don’t think you gave them to me. Given that they’re handwritten, and in your card file, not my CD case...what even are they?

A script? That’s actually possible. Something you might do. Notes for a speech. Because I’m pretty certain you did say some of these things to me. Although, you said things like this almost every time you gave me a tape or recommended a new piece or film or book (see credibility of life-changing rave comments above).

Maybe you did give me those notes, but kept a copy for yourself? A handwritten one? Because you had so much fun writing them? Because you wanted to relive the response you imagined I would give when you played me this music?

In which case, I so much hope I gave you that, Dad. Did I? I don’t remember.

Maybe they’re not actually for me at all. Never intended for me, but instead a record for yourself. A memento of yet another instance of being flooded by music. By the joy of being a mechanism capable of hearing music. Maybe I am less inspiration or even specific target than reservoir. A place to put at least a bit of all that joy, so it didn’t overwhelm you.

I do know that some of the above really is true. That I was only part of the reason these notes got written. I hope you know I understand that, Pops. Appreciate it. Even if knowing it makes me lonely, sometimes. Makes me remember—in ways I always knew, I think—that you were lonely, too. Sometimes.

Maybe never more so than in the moment of sharing. My father, obviously, did not fear hyperbole. In fact, no matter how his words read to you (or me), he never engaged in hyperbole. When he says, “The first 6 minutes or so of side A may well change the meaning of your life. The meaning of life, period”, he’s not exaggerating; he’s describing what happened to him.

He’s also expressing longing. That the experience he had is communicable to someone else. That I could be that person.

Which doesn’t mean he didn’t know it was funny. There’s a playfulness, for sure, in his instructions for listening: “Put everything down. Go with it. If you return, share with me what you can. If you do not, I will understand.”

In other words, he knew that one possible consequence of playing me music—of instilling in me the capacity to hear it—was that it would spirit me away from him. In fact, I’m pretty sure that was the desired outcome. He was giving me a gift, an experience so potentially powerful and soul-stirring that it would wash me up elsewhere, on the shore of some aching, magical wonderland of my own, where the meaning of my life might be.

And if that was somewhere he couldn’t follow...or at least couldn’t inhabit at the same moment in time...“Farewell, Glen”...

That was a risk he was willing to take.