I have been meaning for some time to plug another self-published book by a friend: I Am the Angel by Michael Stuart.
It’s a social satire about a recently-deceased young misanthrope going through angel training. Along the way, the protagonist meets a kindred spirit (literally), the victim of a drug overdose, and they help each other overcome their struggles with life in the afterlife.
You can buy it here.
Someone I went to high school with, Thomas Gilbert, has published a novella on lulu.com. It’s a very funny trailer park farce called And the Egret Cawed, and it’s a quick read. I recommend it, especially if you are from Alabama.
Go here for more info about the book and more of Thomas’ writings: http://notconcerned.blogspot.com/
Best of luck, Mr. Gilbert.
The main idea of this project was very simple: to send a personalized message to each of my 600+ Facebook friends between Thanksgiving and Christmas. The reason for doing this was because, for me at least, Facebook had started off as a really useful and interesting way to reconnect with old friends and stay connected to people who live far away, and have real time conversations with friends from all over. While that is still possible, my friend list had grown to a size that was overwhelming, and I no longer even knew who all my Facebook friends were. It was starting to become solipsistic and not at all “social” for me. In addition, because I was using Facebook also to promote my book, I felt like I needed to counteract the marketing efforts with something that kept me in personal contact with my friends, so my profile page didn’t just become a huge neon sign flashing “Buy My Book” over and over again.
And I want to say something additional about why this was so important to me because I don’t think it is at all obvious from my previous posts on the subject. Being a person who is not “religious” in a traditional sense (and that’s putting it VERY delicately, as some of you know), finding a sense of spirituality in the material world is, for me, deeply connected to how I relate to other people in the world around me. Spiritual grounding in this case means that I am not absorbed in my own path through life, and that I am conscious of the context, the people, and the world around me and how those things are affected by my actions. And because I also happen to be by nature both shy and a little cranky, none of that comes easily to me. Feeling connected, feeling grounded, is a constant struggle and is the primary challenge of my role as a human being.
I don’t know if that makes a lot of sense to anyone else, but maybe that helps a little to illustrate why I had become so frustrated and disappointed in what I was seeing every time I logged into Facebook. It was like 600 people were talking AT me but not TO me, and I was doing the same with all of them.
So I took about an hour every morning, and I sent messages to between 15 and 20 people. If they were people I didn’t actually know well, I scoured their profiles looking for something interesting to talk about. In a few cases, there wasn’t much information, and all I could really do was ask them what they have been doing in the x years since I last talked to them.
I guess the question is: well, did it work? Did I manage to make Facebook into a more personal experience? The project did give me the opportunity to connect in a deeper way with a small number of people, and I think that as a result, my Facebook experience has been enriched. On the other side of the spectrum, I also think that at this point I can safely and guiltlessly unfriend a few people with whom I have nothing in common and nothing to say. For the vast majority of my Facebook friends who fell somewhere in the middle, I at least had the virtual equivalent of a handshake and the kind of conversation you might have with a distant cousin at a wedding as you both sidle up to the bar.You might think that those kinds of interactions don’t particularly further my spiritual quest, but actually, they do. A little. And there’s always the potential for there to be more, but you never know what will happen until you make that effort.
The effort has extended beyond Facebook as well. Since I have been on the road since December 1, visiting people in different cities, I’ve had the chance to reconnect with an extraordinary number of old friends in person. Even before I started the trip, I found myself getting beyond my usual comfort zone and actually introducing myself to people I had seen around for years and never spoken to. The exercise has increased my boldness and made me just a little more confident when I am out and about in the world.
That being said, at this point, I have been spending many more hours per week on Facebook than is really healthy for anybody, so I am going to make an effort to subdue that a little. I’ll still be around, but it might start taking me a day or two before I respond to any messages for the next few weeks.
When I was a teenager, most of my friends were between two and ten years older than myself. This was largely due to two things: that I played music in bars since age fifteen and that in a small town you cling to people with common interests despite age differences.
I met Walt Sheffield when he was working at Liverpool Records, where you could find cool imports and other good music that would never have found its way to Dothan, Alabama otherwise. I was 15 and Walt was 25. I was friends with some people he was friends with, etc. Over the next 3-4 years, long after Walt left the record store, we ran into each other a lot around town and got to know each other fairly well.
I had a habit in those days of going out for walks at the crack of dawn, sometimes clear to the other side of town and back. I don’t really know why I did it. It was meditative. It helped me sort through the myriad crazy things rattling around in my teenage brain. I sometimes came across Walt at these times, in the process of a similar exercise. I came to learn that he walked the same route every morning, and that he kept a list of things he observed along the route and how they changed over time. This was part of his writing process.
Walt was working on a novel, and all I knew of it at the time was that it involved a teenage boy and there was something about the impact that rock and roll had on this boy’s life. I always suspected that Walt was mostly interested in me as a kind of research project for this character. After all, I was a teenager in a rock band. His novel was never published. As far as I know nothing he wrote was ever published.
I knew then that I also wanted to be a writer. In fact, everything I knew about Walt was something I also aspired to be. He played in bands when he was in college at the University of Georgia, and he had met members of REM. He had studied philosophy, which was also an interest of mine. Even Walt’s folksy mannerisms became elements of the kind of persona that I was then developing for myself. In short, he was my role model. Never mind that he always had rather menial jobs like waiting tables or managing the produce section of a ghetto grocery store. He was smart, and he was funny, and he lived for the sake of art. And that was what I wanted to do too.
By the time I was 17, Walt was living with a couple of guys that I also knew. One was Tommy Sorrells, who a few years before had been one of my first guitar teachers. I used to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night and go hang out at their place, where we would play guitars and talk about music and writing and philosophy until the wee hours of the morning. Walt was the first person to introduce me to bands like Sonic Youth and the Replacements, who became so important to me in my own musical journey. I remember specific things he told me about writers like Walt Whitman and William S. Burroughs. I remember talking about existentialism and the beats and the early days of punk and feeling like I had been there because Walt just knew so much about everything that interested me.
After a few years, I lost contact with all those guys. But I recently was reunited with Tommy through Facebook, and I found that he ran an open mic in Tuscaloosa on Monday nights. So while I was nearby for the holidays, I made plans to drop in. We had a great time together playing music until nearly sun up just like we used to do almost 20 years ago when I last saw him. I asked him if he knew what Walt was doing these days, and he told me that Walt died in 2003 of throat cancer.
I remember walking through the mall record store with Walt once. He pointed to a poster of Michael Bolton and said, “You know–if I hadn’t met certain people in my life, and maybe if I’d never been to New York City, my hair would probably look like that now.” And I think if I had never met Walt Sheffield, my life wouldn’t look much the way it looks like now either.
My second day in Gainesville was a whirlwind of meeting various people for breakfast, lunch, coffee, dinner, or drinks. I did reconnect with several friends that I haven’t seen in a very long time: former Squeaky frontman Harry Monkhorst and his wife Kristin; my very good friend Holly Ray, who was my first roommate in New York; Gary Brummett, who played bass in my old band Eurotoaster and then disappeared off the face of the earth (apparently he was at Durty Nelly’s the whole time–who knew?); another former bandmate Merryl Malter; and the esteemed poet and cookbook mogul Ian Finn. There were a lot of other people on my agenda, but I pretty much made plans on a first-come first-served basis, and I just couldn’t meet up with everybody I wanted to see in one day.
The next day, I was due to meet another old friend, Corey Thompson Kirkland, in beautiful historic Eufaula, AL. At this point, I had put nearly 3000 miles on my 1998 Volvo station wagon since leaving New York on Dec. 1. And the whole time, I’d been hearing a little rumble from the driver’s side front wheel that I didn’t much like, and I planned to have someone look at it when I was going to be in one place more than two days. But as fate would have it, not long before I pulled into Eufala, the noise got worse–much worse. I called Corey just as I was crossing over the state line from Georgia and said, “Okay I’m driving over Lake Eufaula now. But something is seriously wrong with my car. Is there a mechanic in the metropolitan Eufaula area that you can recommend?”
She directed me to Jac’s, where a very nice mechanic named Keith quickly ascertained that I had a bad wheel bearing and that if I’d driving on it much farther, my wheel would likely have flown off the car. So my timing, as usual, was impeccable. I left the car with Keith overnight, and Corey came to pick me up.
Now I should say that Corey is essentially the queen of Eufaula and knows EVERYBODY, and we got royal treatment everywhere we went. The highlight of the evening, though, was karaoke at a dive bar everyone calls “the airport” because the city air field is literally right behind the bar. This is one of those places where, as the saying goes, they like both kinds of music–Country and Western. Here is a transcript of what ensued when I took the stage for my first song.
Host: Next up we have a city slicker from New York City.
Me: Well, I LIVE in New York City, but I’m not FROM there.
Audience member: You talk like you’re from there.
Despite that awkward beginning, my rendition of “King of the Road” was well received.
Next morning, I picked up my car, which was now running much better, and returned to Birmingham. On the way, I called my friend Warren to firm up plans for the evening. Warren and his wife Tia are friends of mine from New York who just moved down here, and I had promised to take Warren out on the town when I got back. I picked him up at eight and took him to Marty’s to hear some bluegrass music. Then we met up with my friend Adam Guthrie at Metro Bistro where we heard an acoustic duo play a few songs. And then the three of us went to Bottle Tree to hear some rock and roll bands. So we pretty much ran the gamut of the Birmingham music scene in one night, and a lot of it is kind of a blur. But Warren seemed to have a good time.
I got to Gainesville, FL in the early afternoon. I lived here from 1994-2001, and I played in a few bands. By the time I left I was feeling a little like a rock star, or at least a big fish in a small pond. And I was thrilled and flattered to find that the town has not forgotten me. This was the first thing I saw when I started walking around.
But more on the Common Grounds show later. First stop was my book signing at Goering’s Book Store.
After the sort of disappointing experience in Dothan, I really didn’t know what to expect. But I was really pleased with the turnout, and the bookstore was happy with it as well. I reunited with several old friends and made a few new ones.
That theme continued at Common Grounds. I was really just overwhelmed with the love. And I was so busy chatting with everybody, I forgot to take any pictures. I’m sure some will show up on Facebook soon enough.
Frog started things off by showing some videos from his trip to New York a couple of months ago. And then the brilliant Tom Miller read some of his famous poems, including possibly the best poem ever written by anyone, “Flea in My Urethra.” This was followed by a rousing set of country dance tunes by Gainesville legend Rob McGregor (and friends). I was seriously honored to have all these talented folks perform at my party.
Finally I took the stage, and things started off well enough until I started taking requests, and then I had trouble remembering some lyrics in a song or two and the chords in another song or two, but it was all in good fun. I’m still reeling a bit from it all.
On Dec. 14, amid tornado watches and flash floods, I rolled into Dothan, Alabama, where I lived from age 10 until I graduated from high school. This picture pretty much tells you all you need to know.
I found old pal Steve G, and we went downtown to find some dinner, stumbling upon a fairly new establishment called R.J. Saxons. There I ran into another old friend Tim Metcalf. We sat at the bar catching up for a couple of hours, and then I headed over to Steve’s to crash.
The next morning was possibly the pinnacle of my literary career. I was interviewed by Ann Varnum on WTVY. The episode will air on Sunday Dec. 27 at 9am. I will be back in Birmingham by then, so I hope all my friends in Dothan will tape this momentous television event and get me a copy of it somehow.
In the afternoon, I had my book signing at Dakota Coffee Works.
Turnout was not as high as I’d hoped, but I did make a couple of unexpected sales. In addition, folks that I didn’t even know that well drove from as far away from Mobile and Santa Rosa Beach, and we all had a fine time hanging out and telling stories around my large unsold pile of books.
After the reading, Tim drove me out to visit a couple of other old friends, Elizabeth and Steve. They live in a cabin out in the woods outside Enterprise, AL. There, more hilarious storytelling ensued and all manner of delicious locally grown foods and home-brewed beverages were consumed by all.
One of my Birmingham rituals is to eat Indian food with David Clark. It doesn’t always work out that we can get together when I’m in town, but we usually try to arrange it. The last few years, Taj India on Highland Avenue has been our standard destination. The only difference this year was that David brought along his lovely new wife Lira.
David’s brother Adam Clark played bass in one of the first bands I was ever in when I was in 11th grade. In those days, I used to go over to Adam’s house, and David would always be sitting in his room practicing the banjo. Later, when I was at UAB, David was in medical school there, and I got to know him much better. We would sometimes get together to play music, read each other’s short stories, or just to eat dinner. We were both just learning about Indian food then. There was no such thing when we were growing up in Dothan, and the discovery was sort of like opening a portal to a new dimension.
Before dinner, I spent the day just hanging around my parents’ house doing some writing and taking some pictures. My niece and nephew came over for a while. This is Anne Harman.
This is George.
And this is my parents’ dog Maggie.
This is the koi pond in the back yard.
And here are some koi.
Tomorrow I go to Dothan.
I spent most of the day lingering around all my old haunts in Five Points, seeing what was still around and what was new. Not much has changed actually. Some bars have closed. Some have different names than they used to. But it’s still pretty much the same place. For those of you who aren’t from the Ham, this curious fountain/sculpture is the centerpiece of the area.
As you can imagine, this installation is a little controversial amongst the locals. When I was in PopCanon (1995-2001) I wrote a song about this area called Ice on the Sidewalk. The song starts off about this time that I literally ran across something on the sidewalk that looked like ice, though it was the middle of summer, and when I touched it I realized it was some kind of gelatin. As was my wont in those days, I was kind of high at the time, and this just sort of freaked me out. That is how songs start I guess.
Anyway, I ate lunch with former Pain trombonist Jason Reid at Surin West, and I had a great time catching up with him. After lunch, I paid visits to Charlemagne Records and Golden Temple. These places are all pretty much the same as they were when I was in college, except Charlemagne has more CDs now than it did in 1994.
Then I headed over the hill into Homewood and dropped by the Alabama Booksmith (which btw has signed copies of my book for sale), to say hello. I worked at this store when I was in college, when it was called the Highland Booksmith and at a different location. Despite the dream I had about the store the night before my visit, it had not been overtaken by lizard-like aliens.
That night, for a lark, I went to the Alabama Theatre to see the Alabama Symphony Orchestra pay tribute to the music of Led Zeppelin. Does anyone remember laughter? I do. After the concert, I caught a partial set of some scary good bluegrass at Marty’s. I couldn’t stay long because I had committed to seeing another former Pain member, Stuart McNair, play a set down at the Barking Kudu.
Now the ASO doing Zep was really just silly, and kind of pointless since they actually had a long-haired singer who sounded like Robert Plant and a long-haired guitarist who sounded like Jimmy Page, so the orchestra didn’t really have that much work to do. But I did see some skilled guitar playing at all three venues. Made me feel like I needed to sit down and practice a little.
On my first full day back in Birmingham, I picked up my friend and former bandmate Brent Stauffer at the pizza place where he works and had a little lunch. Okay, in fact, it was a very BIG lunch–a calzone as large as my head. I had heard that a place called Green Cup Books was the place to go for independent authors like myself. So Brent and I headed over there, hoping to get a couple of books on the shelf and maybe arrange a last-minute reading while I’m in town. But alas, we found that the place was OUT OF BUSINESS. And recently too because there were still shelves full of books inside.
As long as we were in town, I stopped at Jim Reed Books, which is really more of an antiques and novelty museum than a book store. If you’ve never been to Jim Reed Books and you live in the Birmingham area, GO NOW. I don’t believe there is another place like it in the world.
Jim was kind enough to take a couple of copies of my book on consignment, so somebody please go and buy them. Both copies are signed!
On a side note, I should mention that Jim’s brother is the Reverend Fred Lane, one of the most entertainingly insane musicians you will ever go far out of your way to hear.
After that, I dropped Brent off at his house and went to visit another old bandmate, Tym Cornell. Tym is running a fantastic music studio out of his basement in Roebuck these days, so if you are a musician in Birmingham and need a cheap place to make an album, Tym is your man. He is also quite good with video production.
Tym’s wife Mary made some excellent pasta for dinner, and then I headed downstairs to the studio to listen to some of Tym’s most recent work. One of his current projects is to record an album for our mutual friend George Mostoller, whom I mentioned in a previous post. Somehow, Tym has arranged for some first-class musicians to play on this recording, including bassist extraordinaire Oteil Burbidge. I have never heard George’s music sound so good.
More later…
M. David Hornbuckle 