Stuff That Lasts, Pt. 3
I suppose I could keep milking this theme indefinitely, but it would not be long before you realized that really boring stuff tends to last, too.
Memorex dBS cassette tape
A few years after the Korean blues proselytizers got me into Buddy Guy, I taught myself the guitar part for “Don’t Leave Me,” from Alone & Acoustic. The intro has a lot of basic blues licks in key of E, so it was a good exercise for me. But the vocal was impossible — especially for someone who hates to sing.
So, like any other pushy control-freak guitarist, I convinced someone else to sing the song so that I could practice the guitar part. At the time, I happened to know a gospel/a cappella singer who listened to a lot of Sam Cooke, Marvin Gaye, and Al Green. (These types do not grow on trees over at the engineering quad. I felt truly blessed.) I gave him the CD and wrote out the lyrics for him. He came by my dorm room the next day.
“張, man, why is this question mark here in the last verse?”
“Oh. I can’t figure out what he’s saying there. It sounds like ‘petting’ something.”
“Petting? Are you serious? He’s saying paranoid, man. Let me teach you something about black people, son. He’s paranoid because the girl is making him anxious. He doesn’t want to be left alone. Ain’t that ever happen to you?”
“Uh, not really.”
“That’s why he’s got the blues in the first place! You understand now?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Okay, I just wanted to be sure. Now go ahead, play the intro.”
I recorded one of the rehearsals on this Memorex tape. I last heard it ten years ago, when I still owned a cassette player. It’s a funny performance — I wish you could listen to it. For now, it’ll stay frozen inside this piece of plastic until I decide to extract it.
“Bass-y” Smurf figurine
Someone close to me once decided to give me twenty-five presents for my twenty-fifth birthday. These were small things that she could easily hide and then surprise me with — a bookmark clip, a teacup lid, a paperback novel. During the week up to my birthday, she doled out a few presents each day. I might get, say, three at once, or one in the morning and two at night. Each time she gave me a present, she would give me a hug and say, “Happy Birthday!”
I still have a few of the presents, including “Bass-y” Smurf. As for the girl, I last saw her nine years ago. Sometimes I think about getting in touch with her, but then I remember how we left things.
Molson Ice bottle-opener key ring
I’ve never had a Molson Ice…but in 1995 one of my roommates was managing a kitchen on campus, and somehow he ended up with a bunch of Molson-branded key rings, one of which he gave to me. My keys have been on it ever since.
The bottle opener, however, would not see any use until six years later. I was working for a company in Charlestown, and we were having a catered farewell lunch at the office for a handful of temps because the project manager who hired them hadn’t realized that there wasn’t enough work to go around. So instead of a month-long gig (which is what the temp agency had promised them), the temps all got fired after about two weeks.
At the end of the buffet table was a cooler full of beer. One of the temps — a guy named Zach — reached for a bottle and discovered it wasn’t a twist-off. I handed him my keys, and he thanked me. He drank a few more after that one, since it was his last day.
Andrea’s screenplay
I used to know this writer named Andrea. She was a very good writer — granted, I may not be the best judge, as I liked her more than I liked her writing.
One day she gave me a copy of the screenplay she was working on. The 96-page manuscript was three-hole punched and held together with shiny brass fasteners. I remember being excited to read it.
It was an indie/slacker/romantic comedy type of thing. This was seven or eight years before the mumblecore label. Sometimes I wonder if Andrea was in fact the Godmother of Mumblecore.
I’m not into mumblecore, but I do sort of miss Andrea.
The Catcher in the Rye (Bantam Edition, 28th printing)
Since the mid-’80s, my older sister has been a trusted recommender of books. She gave this to me when I was twelve.
Oriental 2
This was taken in 1995, at a friend’s room in Dodd Hall. We were probably dropping by on our way over to the library or the dining hall. I was kind of a dork with my guitar back then — carrying it around everywhere. Schwartz was the same kind of dork, only he carried a camera.
These kinds of casual drop-ins rarely happen anymore in my life. You can’t just knock on a door and let yourself in to visit someone. You have to plan. Call ahead. Get clearance from the spouse…
Or maybe I’m missing the whole point here. For example, if I were to just take the time to introduce myself to the neighborhood, things could be different, no?
