DIALSCAN: NEW YORK, MARCH 29, 2009

 

(Author’s Note: To keep myself fresh as much as anything else, and because I love radio so very much, I am introducing the Dialscan as a recurring feature on the blog. I hope you enjoy it, as much I enjoy hearing it.)

 

            I’m locked in to 1010 WINS, which is variously New York’s one and only all news station, New York’s weather station, and New York’s traffic and transit authority. It’s similar to KYW 1060, which my father would have us listening to on so many mornings as he drove us to Woodlynde School in Stratford, PA., late more often than not. Those of you in the know can recite the mantra from memory: “You give us twenty-two minutes, We’ll give you the world.” Cocky little bastards, aren’t they.?

 

            I’d let them give me the world if the stream weren’t behind by two minutes.

 

            So I try its sister station, WCBS 880. They’re busy airing 60 Minutes. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a radio simulcast of a teevee program. The unblinking eye can only see so much.

 

            Now I try WFAN, America’s first all-sports-talk station. No one does it better than WFAN, except they’re behind in the stream as well, and if I had my druthers, I really would not want to be appraising the storytelling skills of someone called Adam the Bull. Judging from his photo, he looks like he should be calling WFAN 660 and not hosting one of its shows. I really shouldn’t have said that, because now I fear that Adam the Bull is gonna get off the air, hook up with Vinnie the Goat and Lenny the Lemur and come looking for me, lead pipes and chains in hand.

 

            I decide on something a little more civilized, a little more urbane, and something I would be caught dead listening too. WQXR 96.3 is the perfect choice. I sigh contentedly as Mozart’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in C comes pouring through my six-channel headphones. Oh, bliss. Bliss and Heaven. I could drift away on a cloud of joy as the sun sets. So, too, would the people gliding up and down Fifth Avenue in their gilded, wood-appointed Bentleys and Jaguars and Benzes. Of course, in their case, there is the small matter of watching the road to be attended to.  By the way, the Announcer tonight, Miss Candice Agree, holds a second job as an Announcer for CBS News. (Note that on these kinds of stations, they’re referred to Announcers, and on the somewhat less sophisticated stations, they’re called DJ’s.) Candice seems to be pretty attractive, if photos of her are any sort of barometer. I’ve mentioned Candice’s credo, as outlined on the WQXR website, earlier in the blog; it’s Goethe’s famous musing, “One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." As I said that, the connection took a dip. But the news is not all bad for me, nosiree. WQXR can be heard on ITunes (not Youtunes or Histunes, mind you), the AOL Radio Player and the RealPlayer (as compared, of course, to the Phony Player, which can be said about the any of the Washington Nationals.) I think my kitty-cat, Choo-Choo, enjoys this music as well, because he jumps onto my lap any time I listen to classical music.  

 

            Jeez, classical music sure beats the hell out of music that sounds like it was recorded at the same tempo at which I’m sure human beings have sex. And it’s a lot better than what Dave Barry describes as music “recorded live in hell.”

 

            Beethoven on now. His Quartet for Strings in E-flat, Opus 74, otherwise known as the “Harp” quartet, evidently recorded live. You can always tell when it’s recorded live, owing to the barely perceptible coughing in the audience and the ambience in the turning of the pages on the score. As I understand, some of these radio stations have specialized CD players that shut down automatically when the music ends. So it stinks when the player cuts off the applause on some of these live recordings and the Announcer has to sound ever so contrite. By my clock it’s 8:29PM, and Miss Agree should have started playing Copland’s Dance Panels by now. Some of these radio stations, which pride themselves on running on time, sometimes sound as though they’re being run by the MTA. So…

 

            We move on to WNYC 93.9, and their Evening Music. I tread with caution, however, because their shtick when it comes to Evening Music is “progressive classical” music, which translates to “music so experimental that even the composers sometimes don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.” Just now, it’s some cockamamie guitar piece. I don’t know what it’s called, or who wrote it—the WNYC Media Player has a very funny way of deciding when to tell me what “progressive classical” music they’re playing. I can only take about two minutes or so of mystery music, and so, skipping over WNYC-AM 820 (the counter-revolutionaries at NPR much of the time) and WNYC2, which could be playing the same ditty its father station is playing, off I go, over the George Washington Bridge, and into Newark...

 

            …or maybe not, because WBGO 88.3 is into some queer jazz-rock fusion piece involving a solo violin, which is completely incongruous.

 

            I just realized something. Major League Baseball archives all of its radio broadcasts, and even has plenty of vintage radio games. I’m saved. When in doubt, turn to a bat and a ball. You’ll never be sorry.

 

            We’ll do it again soon, I hope. 

About Women

Last night, I saw probably the most romantic film I’ve ever seen—Francois Truffaut’s The Man who Loved Women. Its hero is an inveterate skirt-chaser; he says that “A woman’s legs are like compasses. They circle the globe, giving it its balance and harmony.” I love his attitude. He loves and respects women as they are. Not as ideals, or objects, but as breathing, living souls. I could feel the main character’s romanticism as if it were my own, because I know exactly how he feels. If ever a film and a man made me want to be in love with a woman, I finished watching it at 11:30PM last night. And it set me thinking about women. What I love about them; what I hope for in a woman. Probably the same things Truffaut’s hero did, with a few differences.

I remember a passage from Marianne Williamson’s book Enchanted Love. She describes one woman interviewing another on a French radio program. The interviewer asked her subject about her marriage, and why it had lasted for so long. To which the lady replied, “I haven’t lost my mystery.” What a beautiful thing to say. I think that a woman’s mystery cannot be found between her legs, any more than a man’s mystery can be found in the same place. No, a woman’s mystery can be found in her heart above all. What it must be like to hear a woman talk, to find out what she needs and wants and desires, to dig into the bottomless well of her being. The wonderful, Oh, God, so very wonderful thing is that if you are really, truly in love, you never stop digging, nor do you want to.

It’s astonishing that I can speak with such wonder and joy about women, and yet I’ve never been kissed by a woman before.

Will you indulge me, then, if I share with you a fantasy? Don’t worry. Penthouse or Playboy won’t bother with this one.

It’s a rainy, windswept summer Sunday night on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, about ten years from now. I’m in a lushly appointed apartment, wearing my best black shirt and trousers. My wife, a gorgeous brunette with shoulder length hair and a slinky cocktail dress, sits across from me at the dinner table, smiling a ravishing, timeless, angelic smile. We eat Filet Mignon, Uncle Ben’s Long Grain and Wild Rice, and French cut green beans by candlelight while the thunder cracks and booms all around us. Spanish guitar music is being broadcast by WQXR and tinkles through our speakers. We could not ask for a more romantic atmosphere. My wife and I can read each other’s mind like our favorite passage from Tolstoy. So afterwards, my wife and I repair to our bedroom, light some candles and incense, lie on top of purple satin sheets and make languid, aimless, goalless, perfect love all night. It is love that Erica Jong would have loved to comment on. I sneak a glance at my wife’s freckled, olive-skinned shoulder blade, illuminated by the moonlight, and allow the tears.

I guess this is my way of saying that if you are loved by such a gorgeous woman, nothing on this Earth matters. There is just the two of you. The rest is noise, white and muffled noise. The condition is that you love her for who she is. No more, no less. Those who love in that way have a leg up on the rest.

God, I would just love to place my head near a woman’s heart and hear it beat. Or place my hands on her pregnant belly in the hope that the Heaven-sent package kicks from within. I can feel the tears well up right now; at this moment, I am full of love for all women. All womankind. All of it. What miracles women are…

The Madness Continues

I would like to clarify something I wrote on Saturday regarding the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

When (if) my father, who attended Duke University and lives near Villanova University, sits down at about ten o'clock tomorrow night to watch the two basketball teams tussle, this is what he will have to watch: no parquet floor, no Celtics or Bruins banners dangling from the rafters, no corporate signage (of course), and very little of the magic that Larry Bird, Bill Russell and countless others left behind.

Still don't believe me? Just ask WBZ-TV in Boston:
http://wbztv.com/sports/final.four.boston.2.966377.html

Something for Natasha


Some years ago, the actor Sharon Stone was a guest of James Lipton, this before Inside the Actors’ Studio became too big for its britches. Stone was asked about her acting teacher, a man called Roy London. London died of AIDS, and Stone recalls being at his bedside as he was fading in and out of life. As London came back into his body, he said to Stone, “It’s so beautiful…it’s just so beautiful…it’s all about love.”

Because I don’t believe I have ever seen one of Natasha Richardson’s films (I don’t think so, anyway) and thus cannot speak authoritatively of what I am sure was a prodigious and voluminous talent, I am left to wonder this: Before she died, did Natasha go and come back as well? Could she have, given her injuries? If she did, did she notice the same endless beauty and love? I hope she did. Someone like Natasha, who was by all accounts well loved, respected in her profession and in the world, deserves all the grace and peace that Heaven allows. I wish all persons, be they friend or foe, such grace and peace.

I will say this, though. Last night, talk radio pundit Tammy Bruce took time out from her pot-stirring and indignation to pay tribute to Natasha Richardson, playing her performance of “Maybe This Time” from Cabaret, for which Natasha won her Tony Award. It was all I could do not to pull over on the highway and cry my heart out.

At times like this, Agatha Christie’s words ring like truth’s bells: “…I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”

Sanity from Madness

I have finally managed to cobble some semi-comprehensible thoughts together about the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, which holds the Nation in a viselike grip almost unremittingly for three weeks a year, more if you count the various entry tournaments. Here they are.

If you believe in the Law of Attraction, you probably understand that there is energy in every single thing. The keys on the computer I am typing this on have energy; the floor that the basketball game I am listening to while I type this has energy. If you don’t have energy, you, dear Reader, are dead. With all that in your back pocket, I don’t understand why the NCAA has insisted on installing new courts in certain of the venues where these games are being played. The energy level would be considerably higher if the games were played on the courts that were already there, and not the bland, pale, standard-issue floors that were installed for these games. It’s a picky point and I’m sure the way I’ve brought it out, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to Floyd Six-Pack. For the Final Four, it’s more than understandable to build a special court, and in fact it’s necessary to create magic. For the preliminaries, where nearly every court looks the same, the energy and the magic are considerably duller.

I note that the NCAA has several “Corporate Champions”, among them State Farm Insurance, Coca-Cola, Pontiac, and AT&T. So how come we’re allowed to see all of their products on display during the games, and all the other signage in the arena has to be covered over? It’s a double standard. God forbid we should see a single corner of the Budweiser sign on the scoreboard. I’m just looking for a little consistency here. There’s very little room for the purity and virtuousness the NCAA is trying to put on; they know damn good and well that sport as we know it would not exist were it not for the corporations. Incidentially, don’t you just love that blue carpet laid down at some of these places? Couldn’t it be red? Or magenta? I’ve seen black carpet in some of the bigger arenas, but all the same, we wouldn’t want the star forward to trip on a shoelace on his way to the court and fall on the concrete floor, now would we. It’s bad for business.

In the first two days of the tournament, four games apiece are played at four sites. Do you know who I feel the sorriest for? The network radio broadcasters. Their rat-a-tat has to last them from noon to midnight, and at least one group doesn’t get to take a meal break. That has to stink. But that said, those network radio guys are a special breed. They’re there for fifteen hours, delivering brilliant performances in most instances, not giving a damn who wins or loses, and they are so seldom appreciated for that brilliance. Think of that when the drunken, shameless old homer who eats, sleeps and breathes Wossamotta U. goes into aimless delirium at a jump shot.

One other thing: when the NCAA started holding women’s basketball championships, it used to be that their Final Four and Championship games were held on the day prior to those of their male counterparts. Ladies first; that’s how it should be, and should always have been. Now these events are done the day after the men’s championships. Do I really need to go into what a sad commentary on the roles of men and women this belies?

All carping aside, I think I have finally found a more philosophical slant on the whole tournament thing. For three weeks in March, extending into April, we watch as boys who are in the midst of becoming men are asked to become gods. Could it just be because their coaches, gelled hair, pinstriped suit and cynicism firmly in place, orders them to so they can have an extension on their contracts? Could it be because the alumni of their universities begs them to so they can taste the glory that they never did? I don’t know. I think about a line in a French film called Ma Mere, spoken by a teenaged boy: “Why are sons always asked to be gods?” The winners of these become false gods, names chiseled into stone only to be looked at once and, in many instances, forgotten. Maybe this NCAA Tournament, as insubstantial pageants go, is a whopper.

I admit that this diatribe hasn’t made a lick of sense. But this is the sole thing that does. No matter how many shoes squeak and how much sweat drips, no matter how many buzzers get beaten and how much confetti flies at the end, this bears repeating over and over: Love’s the best game in town, and don’t you know by now that love always wins?

Wise People I Have Known (from teevee)

I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. -Agatha Christie


The only thing that means something is…we make friends, and we mean something to each other. --Liv Ullmann, actor. Sao Paolo, Brazil, October 9, 2008

Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension." -Anais Nin, as written in her diary, 1931

· The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.
— A.N.

There came a time when the risk it took to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to bloom. –A.N.

"Love is the title of all my work."—A.N.

"MIDNIGHT. AFTER AN OPERA. ALL EVENING, WHILE I HEARD THE MUSIC, I had dreams about myself, dreams of beauty, of intellectual achievements, of grace, expression in dancing, of passionate, desperate living. I felt myself burning
with delerious fever; I saw myself at home, at teas, on the stage, in various countries, writing, dancing, moving, changing, changing. I was everywhere, I was everything, everybody. MY LIFE HAD NO LIMITS, NO BOUNDARIES, NO END. The more I dreamed, the deeper grew my fever, until I suddenly realized I was dazzling myself with myself." --A.N., from her diary

“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of the dreams.” –Roald Dahl, from screenplay to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

“After all, it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.” --Evelyn Underhill

“Though I’ve grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all those who truly believe.” --Chris Van Allsburg, from The Polar Express

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words." –Goethe

“It is not enough for you to love a movie. You must love it for the right reasons.”—Pierre Rissent, French cineaste

“Young people, heed this advice: Never marry someone who doesn't love the movies you love. Sooner or later, that person will not love you.” –Roger Ebert

“…I’ve never understood men going out in groups, the pack mentality. I’ve never been that guy, never been part of a sports team, never been at that table full of pals ordering steaks. Never have. I’ve just always wanted to find a woman I can talk to. Talk to all the time.” --Dustin Hoffman

“Life with all its sorrows is good . . . everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding . . . there is always tomorrow.” –Dorothy Thompson

"My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee the more I have, for both are infinite." –Shakespeare

“There's just something about that one guy standing up there with a bat and the other guy standing out there with the ball. That, to me, that one- on-one engagement, is so American." --Glenda Jackson, MP, on baseball, September 2003

“Love’s the only engine of survival.” –Leonard Cohen, The Future

“Man is born crying. When he has cried enough, he dies.” –Akira Kurosawa, Ran

"I don't think about what I've done. I'm more concerned with what I do. Of course, I know that what I am doing, I do it because of what I did. But it is behind me." –Isabelle Huppert

"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar."—Edward R. Murrow

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest danger to Earth” –Albert Einstein

“All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we chose to distort it.” –Woody Allen

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."—Mark Twain

"I like to feel like I have trancended my destiny." –A.N.

“The wake doesn’t drive the ship, any more than the tail wags the dog.” –Alan Watts

On Being a Fly on the Wall

To my mind one of the most interesting things in the world is wanting to be the proverbial fly on the wall somewhere you cannot be for one reason or another. When I talk to another human being, or hear that person talk, I want to feel like I want to be looking over that person’s shoulder, wearing his shoes, seeing the event through his (or her) eyes. The greatest and most creative minds in the world have that ability.

Take Anais Nin, for example. She writes in those lush, piquant Diaries of the stifling humidity of Puerto Vallarta when she vacationed there in 1973. It is a tribute to Nin’s prose that you really feel the humidity along with her; she describes “the warm, caressing air. It dissolves you into a flower or foliage. It humidifies the sun-opened pores. The body emerges from its swaddling of clothes. Rebirth.” Short of wearing her sandals and straw hat, it is as close to being Anais Nin as us wretched masses will ever get. I wholeheartedly recommend Anais Nin to anyone who will listen; for sensory detail and vivid prose, few diarists or writers since the end of World War II come close. If Nin were looking down from Heaven at the various blogs being written, it would be all she could do not to take the stairway down and become an editor.

Along the same lines, Margot Anand is another example. I hope you forgive me that I don’t remember which book of Margot’s this is from, but she describes a sensory deprivation experiment she undertook some years ago. She was blindfolded in a hotel room for a full week, only listening to the ocean waves (if memory serves) and surviving only on grapes and water. It allowed Margot to experience altered states, and because her account is so rich, I want to at the very least try that for myself. I would have loved to have been her lover on the night Margot first discovered Tantra. Her companion, by the way, was an American and as Americans so often do, he had little or no memory of the experience.

Just at the moment, and I realize he has been referenced as much as anybody in this journal, I am listening to an old baseball broadcast featuring the dulcet voice of Vin Scully. We are slowly, but surely, running out of people you’d want to sit next to at a baseball game, because you feel as though you are sitting next to him, and Vin has been making people feel that way since 1950. It’s not even a matter of sitting in the broadcast booth with Vin. He could be on your hammock, or sitting with you on the stoop while you drink lemonade. The greater point is that when it comes to sporting events, I prefer to hear them on the radio, as compared to watching them on teevee. All great drama takes place in the mind, and when it’s done right, a great play-by-play account can make you feel like you’re right behind home plate, or the fifty-yard line, and all you need is a hot dog with a toasted bun. Vin, Harry, Jon, Marty, and a dying supply of others make one feel like a fly on the wall better than most.

Of all mystical powers I would like, it would be flight. When I was quite young, my favorite comics hero was Superman, and I guess it’s not a coincidence that the absolutely brilliant film (with that gorgeous score) came out within eight weeks of my 1978 birth. Sometimes, when I hear about an accident in a faraway city, or that someone close to me has been in an argument, I would have loved to be a fly on the wall not for the argument, but to be the peacemaker. Often’s the time during my life I have heard blazing, screaming rows among my parents and other family and wanted them to make peace.

Jeez, I had hoped not to wander off the track. But maybe, just like an insect flies, meandering hither and yon, I was meant to do so. Maybe I was meant to have these ecstatic experiences, and not have to live life so vicariously through literary and aural heroes and channels. I would like to think I have lots of life left to live, so that I would no longer be that fly on the wall, so that I actually swim in the mineral water in Saratoga, walk through the narrow streets of Ischia, or stand in the middle of Times Square, throw my hands in the air…and rejoice. Even a fly on the wall has to rejoice sooner or later.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT

We are fast approaching the thirtieth anniversary of what I sometimes call the “33” game. That was the number that both Magic Johnson and Larry Bird wore at Michigan State and Indiana State, respectively, and of course, you know that Magic’s guys won the NCAA championship in 1979. But I can now tell you who the presenting sponsors were for the NBC telecast:

n Gillette Right Guard deodorant, available in sprays and solids.
n Pabst Blue Ribbon beer
n BF Goodrich tires
n Ford

And don’t forget…

n A promotional fee was paid to NBC by United Airlines, which was building the best fleet of jets in the world around you, dear Reader. So fly the friendly skies.

If you wanted to go for extra credit, I could tell you which games NBC
featured when Game of the Week returned on April 7, 1979. According to Dr. Enberg, they were: Milwaukee at the Yankees, and the Phillies at St. Louis.

I brought this all up to raise a point. I am probably very much like you in that I memorize a bunch of useless and trivial things. I wonder how many people memorize trivial and unimportant things because they are afraid to tackle bigger, more important issues. What sort of value do we assign the things we remember? I think it all starts in school, where you’re supposed to memorize words like mitochondria and peripatetic, otherwise you’ll fail the test, your parents will be mad at you, you’ll lose your privileges, etc. etc. Many of you never have to deal with mitochondria as adults, nor will you ever refer to someone as being peripatetic at a party. They’re good words and things to know, but you file them away mentally, maybe, not dusting them off for a good long while.

What is important to remember? Lots of things. What the names of your spouse and children are, what the color of your car is, Heaven forfend it be stolen. Your birthday, because you celebrate it. Your wedding anniversary, and you damn well ought to remember, and how much money you have in the bank, now more than ever for billions of you. The broadcasters of an ice hockey game, the star rating Roger Ebert gave that crappy romantic comedy from 18 years ago, the price of a baguette at a street vendors’ in Tuscany, and many millions of other things are trivial and not always practical. Knowing them makes you feel smart. It isn’t as useful as it’s cracked up to be.

I am reaching a point in my life where I no longer kid myself that a lot of my intelligence is trivial. It’s won me my share of friends over the years, but nearly all the knowledge I have gleaned is of little use or importance. The best way to illustrate how I feel is to point you to a scene in the film Superman. After he creates the Fortress of Solitude, Clark Kent summons the ghost of Jor-El, his real father. He tells his son:

“The knowledge that I have amassed of matters both physical and historic, were embedded in the crystals I have sent with you to your new home. These are important matters to be sure, but still matters of mere fact. There are questions to be asked, and it is time for you to ask them.”

That’s how I feel. I hope I don’t sound contradictory or conflicted; if I do, I apologize. Just like you, I’m looking for answers. Not to trivia, but to the big questions. Now more than ever, I want to remember the big things, not the little ones. I never want to stop learning, but I want to learn the most important things.

Now you know.

P.S.: During that 1979 NCAA basketball title game, I was asleep. I was six months old.

To all of you who read this journal, and in particular those of you have every entry e-mailed to them, please indulge me while I say something that does not get said very much, at least in other people's blogs that I read.

I love you with all my heart.

Were it not for you, your love, compassion and interest in my welfare, I would be gone. I need to say this deeply, madly, and urgently. And I need you all to know it.