Music Write-Ups
How do you know Chris Earley?
How many MP3s do you have on your hard drive?
In college, a little-known, small liberal arts school in Virginia, I studied Geography. It wasn’t my original plan (it seems nothing ever is with me), but I really enjoyed the subject matter. I loved to learn about different cultures and to study maps and aerial photos and learn about how things and people in different places have changed over time. One of my more talented professors was Dr. Richard Palmieri. He was a crass, disheveled individual. He had a wiry goatee and wild, salty hair. He would say things to his male students like, “My wife loves my goatee, she says it tickles her thighs.” He had a slight slump in his shoulders, more from his general relaxed posture than any disfigurement. He had a loving family and a gift for teaching and motivating through fear.
He would walk into every class and immediately quiz us on the previous lesson’s material. He did this holding a set of 3×5 index cards, each one with a student’s name and hometown and major and essential information on it. He would select a card and ask a question to the person whose name was on it, always calling us by our last name. If the student got it right, he simply moved on without too much fuss. If they got it wrong, he would say, in his nasally vocal, “Ngggno!” If three students in a row couldn’t get the answer right, we had a quiz that counted toward our final grade. This went on all semester and generally was an effective tool to scare us into studying on a regular basis.
One class we studied the Great Wall of China- largest man made structure in the world, built to keep out the Mongol invaders and yada yada. So then Palmieri pulls out his cards in the middle of the class, bucking tradition. “All right. This is the Wok question!” he barked. To this day I’m not 100% sure why he called it the Wok question, other than that we were studying about China and that sort of makes sense in a stretch. Anyway, the Wok question. He fanned the index cards and barked my name, “TUEFFERD!” He pronounced it Two-furd, and for those of you unfamiliar with the pronunciation of my name, this is a bastardization, but farbeit from me to correct him at that point. ”Pick a card, Two-furd.” And he held the white, fanned out cards in front of me. Now I was just a sophomore at the time, and not the collusus of confidence writing you today. So I reached out a meek, trembling hand to those cards and chose. My own name.
My own name. Shit. How did that happen? Oh great. Ok, relax, you can do this. What’s the Wok question, anyway? How did I get here? Is my hair ok? What happens if I get it wrong? Wow, I really like that girl over in the second row, what’s her name again?
“The Wok question, Two-furd. It’s a three-part question. If you get it right, you get a B for the course. If you get it wrong, you FAIL!”
More trembling. I think I just wet myself. A little.
“We’re studying the Great Wall, built to keep out the Mogol invaders, especially Kublai Khan. A famous English poem is written about Kublai Khan. Who was the poet? What was the poem? And quote the first line, OR YOU FAIL!” A barely noticable smirk appeared on his lips, and his goatee quivered slightly.
Now I am not the most well-read individual in the world, the U.S. or even at that school, but I was very fortunate to have had an excellent Honors English teacher in high school, which at that point, was in the not-too-distant past, and therefore, easily accessible in the filing cabinet of my memory bank. So I knew part of the answer.
“Samuel Taylor Coleridge.”
Yeah, that’s right. I remember, he was known for creating works while high on coke, or at least that’s what he claimed. Wonder if that girl’s looking at me right now. Probably. Everyone’s looking at me. Be cool. Don’t let them see you sweat. Give the old man a smile, let him think you’re enjoying this.
“Xanadu.”
Yup, that’s the name of the poem. Xanadu. Olivia Newton John and ELO. Funky crossover hit of 1980. Video had some disco flair and some elbow-popping break dancers. And roller-disco. Get Physical. 80s. Sweat bands and leg warmers. Sure hope those never come back in style. Is that a booger? I’ll scrath my nose just to make sure. Nothing there. Good. Ok, ok. Concentrate, Daniel-san. Think. Think. Think. What was the first line? I have no idea. How am I supposed to know that? Crap, I’m gonna fail.
Confessing that I didn’t know the answer, I could only yield to the mercy of The Professor.
“Two out of three, Two-furd. Not bad.” He said, the smirk still on his face, but a little more pronounced. “You’ll marry well. But YOU FAIL!”
And so, for the next two and a half weeks, whenever he walked into the class, Dr. Palmieri looked at me with that same smirk on his face and said, “Two-furd! What are you doing here? You FAILED!” I got an A in the class.
But I will never forget the first line to that poem, as long as I live:
In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man: Down to a sunless sea
Enjoy the song. I actually never listened to it before this, so I’m not qualified to rate this as good or not, other than that I generally don’t go for anything remotely disco, but I recommend checking out the video on Youtube or something- it really does represent a unique time in American pop music culture.
-Max Tuefferd
Much of what I want to say about my father here I have already said in a previous post, but then there is more. Always more. This is a simple thank you. I don’t think I can say it effectively without explaining the song first, so we’ll start there.
San Jacinto by Peter Gabriel is about the rites of passage that make us men. In this case, a young boy goes with the medicine man of a native american tribe to the heights of Mt. San Jacinto and places his hand in a sack wth a rattle snake within. The boy is bitten and could die as a result, but will certainly hallucinate vivid dreams of what will come to pass (at least, that’s how the story goes in this song). If the boy lives and makes it down the mountain on his own, he has passed into manhood.
Thankfully life-threatening rites of passage like this are not as common anymore, but I’m sure we can all think of situations that are analogous. For me, I think of what my father was able to expose me to: a deep appreciation for art and the artist, and a connection to people so extraordinary that they are still the ones I hold myself acountable to in terms of what I can accomplish in this lifetime. That was the mountain we walked up, me the boy and he the shaman. From there he could give me the view of the world around, and help me shape my own vision for myself and my future. And he gave me the freedom to seek it in my own way. And that has never let me down.
The song also explores the boundaries that exist between modern European culture and Native American traditions- for me very poignant since my father was French and I was born in this country. I am proud of my heritage, but I’m sure that by my father and I would have agreed that there are aspects to him that I would never understand and vice versa.
My father passed away some years ago, but there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about him and his influence. Thanks, Papa. We will walk. We will breathe. We will drink. We will live. I hold the line. I hold the line.
-Max Tuefferd
This is a long story. I usually tell it over some beers with great flourish and gusto, but here goes:
There I was, in the Congo. Not really, but I’ve always wanted to start my stories that way, ever since the days of Underdog and Commander McBragg. But on to the real story.
I lived in China for a year and a half when I was 22, teaching English and studying the language and the culture. An amazing experience, to be sure, rife with all that one would expect and more from a place like that. I think it will sit in my psyche forever, it had such an impact, and it’s not something that many can relate to, unless you’ve been there or someplace like it. It was definitely not all mahjong and steamed rice. The rice had rocks and worms in it, for example. It was equal parts adventure and frustration (more often the latter) as I adjusted to such a different culture.
In the summer after my first year, I decided to take a trip and my chosen destination was Tibet, the Shangri-La of the mother of all destinations. To get there was no easy feat. I left with my girlfriend (and translator- as my Chinese was not quite good enough for speedy delivery) at 3 am on a “local bus,” which meant that there were many locals on it. Peasants is the better word. Not to sound too bourgeois, but that’s truly the word to describe them. Unclean and overworked and never seen a foreigner. A captive on the bus was I, a monkey in the cage. To make matters worse, the Chinese are terrible travellers- that is, they get motion sickness very easily. There were people puking on the floors, puking out the windows, you name it. Chinese don’t have pampers, they have little pants with slits in the crotch. When they want their child to go to the bathroom, they make a kind of psss psss sound (how appropo) to indicate it’s time to go. Which they did. On the bus. And that was just the beginning, but after 6 hours of that, I was ready to turn around. Standing on the corner of the Third World.
A hard seat train for 25 hours to Shanghai. That means, 25 hours sitting on a bench on a train, with people spitting pistachio nut shells on the ground and dropping orange peels. Not much sleep, not much scenery. Standing on the corner of the Third World.
The ride to Gol Er Mu (a launching point for the last leg of the trip to Tibet) was more comfortable, though long. Four days on a soft sleeper train, sharing with 5 others in a four sleeper. Comfy enough but crowded as ever. In Gol Er Mu, my Japanese companion (we met along the way) got food poisoning, and so we delayed our trip a day to let him get better. Just as well, as the bus couldn’t get started anyway. Standing on the corner of the Third World.
On the road at last we travelled for 33 hours up to 19000 feet (where your head always feels like it’s going to split open and our friends passed out if they got off the bus for a bathroom break). The trip was dusty, uncomfortable (these buses are not made for those of us with large frames) and intermittently interrupted by the “Chinese Goombas” (civil army workers repairing the road) they would get on the bus whenever they could, wearing 1980’s-style oversized sunglasses at night, and army surplus overcoats (rather chilly at 19000 feet) to “look at our women.” Yikes. And eww. Standing on the corner of the Third World.
After arriving in Tibet, the group (which by that time had expanded to 10 beleaguered intrepid souls) was only of a mind to join a tour, which took us around within Lhasa to the major temples and sights. Good stuff. After that we decided to go on a tour outside the city to go to a major once-a-year festival. To get there, we had to get permits. We all turned in our passports to get reviewed by the police station.
The next day everyone prepared to depart, and the tour guide returned our passports. Except mine. I had to go to the police station. Gulp. I went with my girlfriend in tow. Standard Chinese beaurocracy: no event shall take fewer than 4 levels of red tape or take less than 3 hours to resolve. Apparently, I didn’t have my visa in my passport (my foreign teacher liaison had assured me I didn’t need it on this trip. Yeah, right.). As we progressed through each level of beaurocracy we became increasingly frustrated, and my girlfriend’s voice more and more heated. Each subsequent beaurocrat was less and less helpful. Eventually a man came into the room and sat in the corner, seemingly in his own world. At one point, he came over and joined the conversation. He was dressed in a plain gray business suit, so I wondered, out loud, who he was. “I’m the police,” he barked, flashing his badge in a self-satisfactory moment of power and intimidation. Ah. The police. Aren’t these the guys known for putting their people on display with a sign draped around their neck proclaiming their guilt and shame for the world to see? Or worse, aren’t these the people responsible for the persecution of this entire region? Hmmm, yes. So finally, the other beaurocrat, in slow, methodical English, says, holding my passport (translation: my life) in his hands, “Because you have all this other paperwork, we believe you are a resident of China, so we will let you go- but we hope you will leave Lhasa immediately.”
3000 miles, 19000 feet, 39 hours on busses, more than 4 days on trains and one very uncomfortable shouting match with local beaurocrats after beginning my journey, I was standing on the corner of the Third World, passport in hand, contemplating my choice. Leave, unfullfilled, or stay and face the wrath of the local police and potentially a Chinese prison.
I got on the bus, looking behind me and hoping that they weren’t following. It was an amazing trip, when I saw why Tibet is such a Shangri-La. A magical old woman with long dreadlocks. Monks dancing. Traditional Tibetan horns. Gutteral chants and crossing the calm Brahmaputra River. Rainbow over the Himalayas. Placing prayer flags at the top of the nearest mountain. The deaf and mute goat-herding woman we ran into on the way down. Yak butter tea. Oh so very worth it.
We flew out of Lhasa after 10 days, not wanting to repeat the arduous journey here on the way out, and the frustration and anxiety of our encounter with the police still fresh in my mind. We decided to take a train from Chengdu to Chongqing to then take a boat on the Yangzi River. For this ride, we had no ticket, no assigned seat and a 13 hour train trip ahead of us. Standing room only was assured, given the usual crowds in the waiting area. And then they announced that we would be boarding and the crowd stood, anticipating the rush. They let us through the gates, cattle to our awaiting trough. We ran, carrying bags of clothes and food. I turned the corner only to see hundreds trying to get into the one open door on the train. Peope tried to climb through the windows. Being a good head taller than everyone, I tried to make my way to the door by putting my back into it. But alas, one broad shouldered American is no match for a billion Chinamen, and I was soon being pushed over to the tracks, fearful I would meet my end on a Chinese rail, carrying my precious Tibetan souvenirs. And then my bag of food broke, spilling packages of instant noodles and a bottle of fake Sprite onto the ground. More frustration, as I finally made it to the door and all that stood between me and getting into the train and finding a seat was an old man’s arm, clutching onto the hand rail. Weeks of difficult travel. The Chinese Police. Crowds. Babies peeing on buses. Away from home and familiarity and it all bunioned up into that one moment. And there, standing on the corner of the Third World, arms clutching a loose affiliation of revered knickknacks and junk food, I did the only thing I had left to do to get past the old man. I bit him.
Not hard enough to draw blood, mind you. But hard enough you could have made a set of false teeth from the impression left in his skin. He looked at me, rightly so, like I was insane, and uttered words that I can only imagine meant something like, “Please tell me you don’t have rabies.” But were probably closer to “Fuck off, foreign white boy!” My girlfriend, slightly amused, but perhaps more out of spite for having put her through hell with the Lhasa police, could only laugh at me in scorn. And I, I stood in shame (for I never did get a seat on that train after all that), pondering how low I had sunk to have done that.
It was the lowest of low points. The height of shame and little trouble in big China, standing in the corner of the Third World.
-Max Tuefferd
Youth and joy through golden fields and chilled streams,
World my oyster, seize the day, unbound heart.
Exhausting reach and daylight, my spirit dreams
Filling the depths of my philosophic carte.
Older, somewhat wiser; cuts and scars deep.
Time passes, hearts fade, and things fall apart.
Squeezing dreams to elude my grasp and sleep.
Could this be life’s mettle? Testing my art?
A rushing river, suffering, life’s fight.
Do I stand at the edge, witness to strife,
Or enter and swim, paddle with all my might,
Beat by eddy, rock? To engage in life?
Whitman’s recurring question: life, what good?
Whitman’s recurring answer: swim, I should.
-Max Tuefferd
I love these Mother’s Day posts. All of it is great rememberance and appreciation. Call it Oedipal, call it love, call it what you want, but all men love and appreciate their mothers, and we admire and compete with our fathers. I’m no exception.
I’m hard pressed to think of a song that my mother was particularly fond of, but I have some great memories from my childhood that still resonate.
Let me start by saying that I love cartoons. Always have, still do. I’m not talking about cheap Saturday morning cartoons that are shown these days, created in Flash and starring the PowerPuff Girls or something. I prefer something a little more classic or pure. I especially love the old Looney Toons. There’s nothing quite like the relationship that Bugs and Elmer had. I will never forget the all time classics- Wagner’s Ride of the Valkerie and Elmer as the norseman weeping over the “death” of Bugs as the Valkerie. And I will also never forget Bugs and Elmer in that all time classic version of the Rabbit of Seville. The barber chair chase is such a classic scene.
It’s been a while since I saw it, but I often think of this music and it evokes for me more than the images of Elmer chasing Bugs. I think of the morning routine before school. Most mornings, (when the weather was warm) it was the same day after day. My father was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping on his tea, French style from a large bowl. I was in the corner seat, and at some point, my brother was sitting across from me. Outside the window next to my seat, I would count the number of morning glories that had bloomed that day on the wall of the shed. Once I counted as many as 52 (funny that I remember that), but that was the routine. I had my cereal or my soft boiled egg or toast or whatever (pancakes were Sundays, but this was a school day). My mother was moving around the kitchen, preparing it all- breakfast, our healthy bag lunches. And just behind me, the local classic radio station was playing in the background. Both my parents were fairly old as parents go (my father was 60, my mother 40 when I was born), so they were both of a generation pretty far removed from my own. Rock and roll was a mystery to them, disco, forget it, and I don’t think my mother has ever even heard a rap song in her life. But they inadvertently instilled an appreciation for classical music in us, because that was their generation’s music of choice. There was a lot of different music those mornings, but this one stands out.
I am grateful these days for what both my parents did for me, what they exposed me to, what they protected me from what they tried to instill in me and help me to understand. I am grateful for a lot of things. From my mother, among other things, I am grateful to her for creating a loving, nuturing household. For the care that she put in our breakfasts and our lunches and in her garden outside so we had fresh everything. She kept things in order so that my brother and I could go about the business of being kids for as long as possible.
I love this song because it carries all of that in it. A cartoon is pure joy for a kid. This one is no exception. As an opera, The Barber of Seville is joyful, playful and upbeat and energetic. All the things that it means to be a kid being a kid, and the best part of my childhood. Thanks Mom.
-Max Tuefferd
No man is an island, entire of itself. These are the words of John Donne, 17th century poet and philosopher.
What connects us to one another? I almost walked out of my apartment tonight simply because I wanted to feel a connection. But where would I go? Out to a bar? Starbucks? A club? I have a live internet connection, a land line, a cell phone and it’s a hip, happenin’ world out there waiting for me. Hustle and bustle and alone in a crowded city. I almost did go out, but in the end I decided that at none of those places would I have found the connection I was seeking tonight.
I have a theory about the human consciousness (or as I like to call it, the HC). I think the HC is like a many-fingered hand. The palm is our shared, greater, underlying consciousness, and the fingers are extensions in which we project that consciousness- each a soul that is stretching itself into the material world to…explore, discover, play, whatever the purpose, the point is that each finger, or soul, shares a common origin and therefore, a connection. To bend John Donne’s metaphor, if each man is an island, then the base of that island stretches deep to the ocean floor, connected to the greater consciousness of the earth.
All this points me to further ideas I have about friendship and soul mates and recognizing self within the eyes of another. Perhaps friends are like close fingers. Perhaps soul mates, if you buy into the theory, are like index finger and thumb, separate, but together very (if you’ll forgive the pun)…handy. Lucky people, those soul mates.
And that brings me to the song. The Red Hot Chili Peppers’ song, Hard to Concentrate, seems to be about that. It’s about finding, within the “hustle and bustle” of the modern world, the person with whom you connect most perfectly. And when that happens, step up to perform your duty to serve that person. Serve that person not because you owe it to them, serve them because you owe it to yourself, because they are you. “Finally you have found someone perfect,” he sings, “finally you have found…yourself.”
I have always liked the Peppers. They’re frenetic, they’re deep, they are Under the Bridge and Californicating, they are in Point Break as some hard-knockin’ surfer punks and they wear socks on their cocks. What’s not to like? I particularly like Stadium Arcadium, I think there’s a lot of quality on that album, so if you haven’t heard it yet, go listen, because it’s well worth it.
As I sit writing these words, I have a live internet connection, a land line, a cell phone and it’s a hip, happenin’ world out there waiting for me. Hustle and bustle and alone in a crowded city. Most people rarely share with others their truly intimate moments in which they bare their souls and uncover that which we work so hard to bury or protect in our day to day lives. And so, instead of going out, I stayed home and wrote this, because it is how I could best plug in tonight. I wish for you who are reading this that you are able to make that connection with people you meet readily. I hope that you find your soul mate, if you haven’t already. I hope that you are able to take the moments to plug in when they are given to us. We have all the tools, we just need to use them. I think that is our duty, to build that connection and serve one another not because we owe it to each other, but because we owe it to ourselves.
-Max Tuefferd
It seems we are on a roll. A death march and a requiem for dying, as we all contemplate the meaning of our lives and the experiences we have had or would like to have with death. So along that same vein…
When I was twenty-five my father passed away. He was an amazing man, from nearly any objective point of view. He was a photographer of some fame in France, he had been in the circus, done his military service in Tunisia, and had walked in circles of the artistic with the likes of Arthur Miller and Alexander Caulder. He was not perfect, but he was my father, and most of what I knew about him was born of memories of my childhood- weekends at our country getaway, him sitting in his chair, wrapped in his “bear” (a tunisian garb made of wool and kind of like a hoodie) and doing the chores which, while resented as much as any kid, actually represented growth and maturity to me, as I got to use grown up tools- chop wood, dig holes, cut down trees, mow the lawn, that sort of thing. Most of what I remember is that day to day everything, though I am fortunate to have a kind of chronical of his earlier existence from his pictures and catalogues and interviews and the like.
He lived to be eighty-four, and passed away from a tumor that had spread to his brain after beginning in his esophagus. All this took place in the space of a year, and at the time, he was in Paris and I was in Japan. Too much distance. Chemotherapy does terrible things to a brain- as the coctail seeks out those areas it needs to do its thing, expertly knowing exactly where to go like aspirin knows where the soreness is, it wreaks havok on that area before it makes it better. Some of my last memories of my father are of a phone call he made to me at 1 in the morning. He never did that. I think somehow he knew that our time was limited, and he was reaching out. Later calls were I love you’s and him always trying to stay positive. In the end, he died alone in a hospital in Paris. I couldn’t even go to his funeral.
I felt guilty about this for years. What kind of son was I? The loss of a loved one, particularly someone as close and important as a father, is a difficult thing, but you’re expected to pay respects to him at the funeral, no matter how upset you are at him leaving and resettling in Paris. But now I see that I was protecting myself. We were so close, he and I- I wanted to deny that he was gone, save myself from pleading and fighting against reality, preserve the memories that were and not deal with the loss. I prefer to honor the man I remember him to be.
This song, from Toad the Wet Sprocket’s In Light Syrup album, was one that I played again and again immediately after he passed away. The album was meant to be a compilation of works from other albums that didn’t really fit together, but were good enough to go somewhere. Toad is known for its melancholic whimsy. Somehow it manages to be both sad and hopeful at the same time. It’s a smart band, and while they no longer exist, remain one of my all time favorites. What other band will reference the Lorelei (Lorelei is the name of one of the beautiful Rhine Maidens who lured navigators of this river to their dooms with their alluring singing). The lyrics are simple, so much so it’s hard to know what they are really talking about. But this matters less that what it has come to mean to me. To me, it’s about the significance of things, and hope for better days. Sentiments and feelings that sometimes do not catch up with us until much, much later. Echoes of dying.
-Max Tuefferd