two a.m.

I GOT A TICKET to see a show at the old Main Street Theatre. A former vaudevillian hub that had retained its gilded, art deco elements even though it had been long since upgraded into a modern performing space and hosted all kinds of B-level musicians. These included up-and-coming singer-songwriters who would soon graduate to bigger and better things but miss its cosy intimacy. My seat was on the left. From its plush cushion, I could see everyone come in.

This was how I spotted Mai. To my surprise, her seat was next to mine, and to my double surprise, she was soon in my lap. She was still clutching the program in one hand as she embraced me. It was good to see Mai. She wore a red sweater, the kind J. Geils once sang about, soft and fuzzy, just magical to touch. I soon became lost in its textures, how they rose and fell, rearranging themselves along her abdomen like desert sands. Her chestnut hair was pulled back. Her eyes were blue. “I’ve missed you,” she said. There was a sincerity there. I had sincerely missed her too. My hands soon found their way under her sweater and we sat joined, like frogs. Sometimes you don’t need anything else but to be and be still. Most times, I think.

When I woke up, the shape of my lovely friend was still there but the band leader was shouting down at us from the stage. This was an old soul group, straight out of New Orleans. “If all of y’all is going to sleep, then none of us is going to play!” the band leader said, gesturing with his trumpet. I looked around the theatre and could see that everyone was asleep, not just us. Many blank and groggy faces, old ones, young ones yawning. “Oh, I’m so tired,” Mai whispered.

“If you are going to put on a show at 2 a.m., you shouldn’t expect people not to fall asleep!” I yelled back at the band leader. “You don’t know nothing,” he said. “We always play at night!” “Two a.m. is when most people sleep! It’s the middle of the night. Maybe your band should have its concerts during the day.” “Tell you what, man,” the band leader shouted back. “We are done playing for squares.” The band came off the stage, slowly, sorrowfully. They funeral marched up the aisles past their audience, sullen faces down, sad not to play, horns and all. That was it.

frida

FRIDA HAD SLIPPED MY MIND. She was just gone. Poof! Away in a small cloud of atoms, dust, and smoke. I hadn’t thought about her in ages. Her existence had been archived and lost in those vast stacks. Misplaced. We lived very different lives. If you took an old-fashioned globe and set it to spin, she would be over here and me all the way over here. We still spoke the same language, the language of the British, but I wondered if we could understand each other.

But there she was one day, getting into an elevator and there I was, running to squeeze in beside her. She looked the same. Her dark hair was lush, bushy, curly, her pale face wore the same look of frustration. Frustration with things. Frustration with the world. A beige raincoat, rubber boots. For Frida, life was always raining. I rushed into the elevator, but fortunately I had a dog with me. I knew that Frida would never speak to me again, even in an elevator, but I also knew she had a soft spot for dogs. Frida could not resist the temptation of small furry animals.

She gave me an annoyed look and her eyes rolled over me once and then they hit the small dog below me, restrained by a red leash. She stooped down and said, “Ooohsooowoozoo!” Or whatever it is women say when they encounter a dog they like, and she stroked him behind his ears whispering, “Yes, yes?” Then she looked at me. “Well,” she said in a northern accent. “I never thought I’d be seeing you again.” I only nodded. Better to remain silent. The elevator buttons lit up as we moved between floors. “Don’t you remember how you brought her flowers every morning?” said a faint voice. “And how you left them behind her window glass? Don’t you remember? Don’t you remember?” Indeed, I was once capable of such things so long ago.

The elevator came to a halt and its doors opened. I saw a country landscape with thick shiny green grass and a red Victorian house in the distance. A stone path led from the elevator, which was lodged inside a bus stop shelter, and the house, which belonged to Frida’s family. Frida exited the elevator and various forest animals crowded her at once, deer, hares, squirrels. She stopped and smelled an enormous sunflower. “Oh, it’s so good to be back. And my sister’s here!” she said. Then she turned to me and said, “Well? Are you coming or not?”

‘frank’

I HAD A SON whose name was Frank. My mother did not approve of this name. “Why did you name him after my brother?” she asked. But her brother, who was also called Frank, did approve. “Good choice,” he said with a supportive wink. Frank looked nothing like me. He had blonde hair and was dressed in overalls. His features were so rounded and button-like that he resembled a doll. Like all boys, he got into trouble. When I brought him to the gym, he created a toboggan from the barbells and went sliding across the room. Such is the nature of sons.

The saddest thing about Frank is that I didn’t want him. I remember that long drive into the mountains. His mother was in the front seat. She was wearing a yellow dress and her legs were up on the dashboard. Her belly was already showing. The driver kept driving. I had no idea where we were headed. “But I don’t want to be with you,” I told Frank’s mother. “I didn’t want any of this.” “It’s too late for that now,” she said while reading Pere ja Kodu magazine. “You’re stuck with me whether you like it or not. “Please,” I said. She said, “It’s too late for that now.”

Through the windows I could see sheets of pines and stunning ravines. Frank’s mother told the driver to pull over. She got out of the car, opened my car door, and slapped me once across the face. Then she returned to the front seat, and we continued our journey. “It’s too late for that now,” she repeated to me. I just waited until we got to the next rest stop. Then I escaped into the fresh air of the mountains. It was years before they found me, by which time Frank had grown into a restless and busy boy. Frank was a good lad. None of it was his fault, you know.

‘twilight haze’ by fuzzolini

FUZZOLINI’S NEW RECORD is called Beauty Exists in Everyone. I’ve seen this group perform a few times, and both times they were so loud, I thought I was about to go into cardiac arrest. Which is what makes listening to an actual recording, where I can control the volume, so refreshing. “Ah, so that’s what it’s supposed to sound like.” I wouldn’t blame them for the sonic dissonance. One aspect is that’s how rock clubs do it. It’s supposed to be loud. And I also think the group is going for the wall-of-sound effect. On the song “Twilight Haze” they manage to create that same kind of full noise tapestry without suffering from too much messy distortion.

I’m kind of impressed by Fuzzolini’s guitarist, singer and frontman (I guess you could call him that) Valter Nõmm, who looks like he fell asleep in about 1997 or so and just woke up in the forest somewhere, still wearing the same flannel shirt. He has maintained that kind of sensibility, as if he’s still listening to Soundgarden on his Walkman with his sunglasses on.

He’s not afraid of big, crunchy guitar sounds, but these bold strokes are applied sensitively, with the finesse of an artist. According to Nõmm, “Twilight Haze” was one of those songs that came out of nowhere. “Come out of nowhere” songs are mystical. Think of “Get Back,” which Paul McCartney conjured out of nothing. Better yet, nobody is quite sure of where they come from. They just come. Getting a few words out of this tight-lipped cat Nõmm is always an effort. He is a man who speaks in gestures and prefers to let his guitar do the talking. But he did manage to tell me that the song “was created spontaneously in the studio,” in one take.

The original track was just his guitar and drums, played by Lauri Pajos. Later Margus Voolpriit’s bass and Kristi Jõeste’s synths were added to the mix. “I decide to go for something cosmic,” Jõeste says. ” I started to feel a little bit like Sven Grünberg.” The synths give the track its “beamed in from space” feel. The vocals are performed by Mari-Liis Rebane, an audiovisual artist and producer, who sings with Fuzzolini. This too was improvised, which preserved its “raw emotion and exploratory style,” in her words. Rebane and Nõmm have known each other for 20 years and had collaborated before, but Fuzzolini gave them the opportunity to do more. She sings on several songs, including “Balloons,” for which she created the synth sequence.

“Twilight Haze” was the second track they recorded for the record. It seems they’re happy with it. “It carries within it the fluid feeling of moving through the night,” says Rebane. “I like it’s hypnotic quality,” Nõmm agrees. Cosmic synths, heavy guitars, smart vocals, big drums. What’s not to like?

Photos by Nicolas Bouvy

‘i guess i’m falling in love’ by the velvet underground

EVENTUALLY ONE ENCOUNTERS the Velvet Underground. They are the godfathers of punk, the remakers of rock, the anti-Beatles, or something along those lines. Much has been written about them, much has been attributed to them. In reality, they were a creative New York rock group that enjoyed limited commercial success in the late 1960s. They are probably best known as Andy Warhol’s house band, and the Velvets toured to support something called the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a multimedia experience, for lack of a better term, that included loud rock and roll. These events included film showings, light shows, and noise experiments. The Velvets played one of these EPI shows at a venue called The Gymnasium on East 71st Street in New York on April 30, 1967, during which their set was recorded. This has to be some of the best rock of its era captured on tape and the standout is “I Guess I’m Falling in Love.”

Authorship of this song is attributed to the whole band, which at that time included Lou Reed (guitar, vocals), Sterling Morrison (guitar), John Cale (bass), and Maureen Tucker (drums). I’m guessing that it was the scholarly Morrison who ripped the amazingly fluid guitar solo, which sounds fantastic with The Gymnasium’s acoustics. This live version later surfaced on the Velvet’s boxed set, Peel Slowly and See, which yours truly acquired as a teenager. I honestly was contending with the winter doldrums when I was in my Velvets phase, and probably some hormonal stuff, I think I was having periods of mania followed by collapse and depression. High school started early too, and I believe I suffered from sleep deprivation, which happens when you wake up at 6 am every day. And which made this the perfect band to listen to. While they have their dark mood music, “I Guess I’m Falling in Love” was a rare splash of sunshine.

Yes, even Lou Reed had his up moments. Otherwise, it was mostly down. There were tensions with Nico (“You’re out of the band!”). There were tensions with Cale (“You are also out of the band!”). And there were tensions with Warhol (“You’re not the boss of me!”). There was just a lot of Lou-related tension and probably the greatest tension he had was with himself (hint, his future involved a lot more heroin and some transexuals). But he was from Long Island — Freeport, to be exact — and as a moody teenager I could relate to his desire to blow the whole place to smithereens with some infectious rock and roll and set it ablaze with the help of Morrison, Cale, and Tucker. Especially Cale seemed dangerous, with his greasy dark hair and undertaker’s countenance. A few people have told me that I look like this brooding Welshman, which I take as the greatest compliment. Before forming the Velvets, Reed was a songsmith for a record company called Pickwick Records, by the way, where he imitated a lot of bestselling 60s pop and produced knockoff hits. A little Ronettes over here, some Beach Boys there, an inverted Four Seasons progression to serve as the foundation. One can appreciate Lou Reed’s taste for memorable changes, propulsive rhythm, and great hooks on this recording from ’67.

the battle of narva

I WAS CAST to play “Charlie” in The Battle of Narva. Starring opposite me was Sandra, a young actress from the Ugala Theatre. I guess they couldn’t find any other Americans for the part, and the setup was preposterous. Who would have believed that an American disc jockey would have had a radio program in Narva in 1944, when the country was under Nazi German occupation, and about to be flattened by Soviet bombs and bullets? Maybe this “Charlie” was an Ezra Pound-like character, doing Axis propaganda? Yet he seemed like an easy-going lad, nothing like you’d imagine a Nazi collaborator American DJ would be. Maybe it was just a case of wrong place, wrong time? Maybe the Nazis didn’t mind a Yankee DJ on the Eastern Front? Wasn’t one of them a famous jazz collector?

I imagined Charlie was sort of like Chris’s character from Northern Exposure. The episodes of The Battle of Narva would open and close with Charlie’s musings on the state of the war. “But what even is war? What is it good for?” and so on. Maybe he would play some quality recordings from The Andrews Sisters (“Rum and Coca Cola,” anyone?), Bing Crosby, a little early Frank Sinatra. But I think Charlie was more of a hepcat, he’d spin sides by Quintette du Hot Club de France. “It’s morning in Narva,” he would say into the microphone, “and to get all of you Narvans and Narvettes started, I’ve got some ‘Les Yeux Noirs’ to brighten up your day.”

Then he’d cut over to the pure swing of Django Reinhardt. That’s how the people of Narva survived the war, at least until they didn’t. While I had the character of Charlie figured out, remembering the lines was hard. Sandra had so much more training. She would sit in the windows of cafes with the script open, memorizing her lines. I had mine before me, but I improvised too much. This provoked a soft-hearted lecture by the director, Bill Murray, who told me that learning one’s lines was a piece of cake, and that I should go easier on myself. “You just have to say the lines, man. Just say the lines.” He said this to me while they were preparing to film a street battle scene. There were all of these extras in Soviet and Nazi uniforms milling about in the city’s streets. It was a disturbing to see them making small talk.

escape

MORNING, MORNING. It was a school day morning, but not in May, all gray and windy like that day, but, yes, it could have been May, because such gray days can fall in May as they do in any other month of the year up here. Streams and rivers of students with backpacks flowed up and down the long sidewalks, the gravitational pull of an obligatory state education, up the steps of the old brick schools, middle schools, music schools, state kindergartens, and there stood Hanna-Heleena, who was waiting for me with storms in her eyes. When she saw me, lightning sparked and crackled. “You!” she shouted over the heads of the students. Her hair was cut in a fringe or bangs, straight across, and she wore a black coat. “Come over here now!”

That’s when I ran. I turned down a side street, which could have been Castle Street, and then found a small alleyway between two buildings, one I had never seen before. Gray walls on both sides, which led to somewhere else, into a trash-filled passageway, covered in graffiti and stinking of beer and urine, just as I imagined Lerwick might be on a Monday morning. I went through a doorway, and I could still hear Hanna-Heleena’s desperate calls for me. Where even was I now? Inside of a building somewhere. Viljandi, Lerwick. Lerwandi. I started to wonder if I would ever get out of this mess of corridors and hallways, until I saw light shining all around.

It was just behind some taped-up windows, streaming around their cracks, creating bright boxes of sunshine. I could no longer hear Hanna-Heleena. She must have lost track of me somewhere in this maze. Then I heard the voices of school children just beyond those windows. I was getting closer to an exit point. I came to an old wooden door pushed on it and came out at the top of a staircase that led down into a school atrium. It was dark in the school. The children were dressed in blue uniforms. They sat silently, mostly in the atrium, though some were playing table tennis. Sombre teachers observed the stranger as he came slowly down the steps. When I got to the front of the school, I could see that it opened up on a city front that was very close to a seaport. There were wooden ships in the harbor. Out the doors of the school I went, into the never-ending blue gray of a school day, but at least I was free.

startup

TIME COLLAPSES, pancaking into layers. But at first a pure gray light, like the stirring opening note of an orchestral piece, lighting up the room. I am here. He is here. He is there and yet not there. Around a table, a dialogue is underway, as various experts deconstruct. This is the startup jury. Suvi says that she would not support my pitch. “He’s just too soft and kind,” she tells them. “Has too much empathy.” Suvi knows how to run a jury. She is a practical woman and values practicality. The jury agrees with her. “Not very Estonian,” someone says. But that is neither here nor there. The jury is meeting down the street. They are sequestered.

Later he is led into the lounge room. Three women are sprawled out in chaise lounges. They are wearing business attire. He kneels before the blonde chief commercial officer, or whoever she is, and takes her foot in his mouth. I have no idea why I am doing this. Foot in mouth? Why on earth would I want to do that? But the foot is just so delicious, like the tastiest ice cream you’ve ever tasted. Somehow the smooth tan of her foot becomes caramel, her toe is cherry. Why hadn’t anyone told me about this secret? This is the yummiest dessert I’ve ever had in my mouth. Here the light is gray. The grass outside seven stories down is green, the mornings are gray. In the common area, men with mustaches are playing table tennis and there is music playing. In the lounge room of the startup company, it’s foot-to-mouth resuscitation. What is this? The pleasure of submission? I just don’t know anything anymore. All virtue has collapsed.

patchogue

THE OCEAN LINER docked at Patchogue on the south shore of Long Island and we finally disembarked. It had been years since I had been in Patchogue, maybe decades. Hadn’t I bought my first car, the blues mobile, from some nondescript Patchogue homeowner at some moment during the Clinton Administration? But that was a long time ago, and in the meantime, Patchogue had developed into a major Atlantic seaport and international metropolis. Parts of downtown had been declared car free and turned into pedestrian walking streets. It was hard to say what it reminded me of, maybe those winding shopping streets in Ireland and Wales. This was not your grandfather’s Patchogue.

Naturally, I was with my family. We were stunned, awed, by this great change that had taken place on the south shore of Long Island. Why, it was almost as if, after subsistence farming, and clamming and oystering and fishing for centuries, civilization had arrived. It just took time to take root. There was even a small Asian Quarter of Patchogue, where a streetfront spa offered fish pedicures. My wife and children stood in line and soon little garra ruffa fish were nibbling the dead skin from their heels. I tried it too, but it just wasn’t my thing. Instead I went and sat in the waiting area with a fellow islander who was reading The Wall Street Journal.

“Well, are we still at war with Iran?” I asked the man. He was older and Jewish and looked like Paul Simon. Maybe it was him? The man sighed loudly and folded the newspaper. Then he said, “After reading this newspaper, the honest answer is, I don’t know.” “Me neither,” I said. I dug into a cup full of delicious rum raisin ice cream, which had somehow materialized in my hands. “Nobody knows.”

sixty-nine

SHE WAS A WOMAN, a woman who was born in 1969. She was the Class of ’87. She was older than me. She was a Nixon baby. Maybe she was born a few hours after her parents watched Midnight Cowboy, starring Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman. Maybe she had been conceived after her parents had returned home from watching The Graduate.

She had lived and she had experienced life. All of this living and experiencing, she had found, had left her with profound insight and wisdom that was mostly completely useless. And all of the creams, treatments, and procedures available could not negate the fact that she was slowly disappearing into the oblivion of time like a blood orange sun sinking into the murky Pacific off of Santa Monica.

I found her very attractive. She had lovely brown hair, smart blue eyes. Even her most melancholy moments were as rich and as delicious as a pineapple cake. I didn’t think a thing of her being as old as the Moon Landing. But finding a place for our affair proved difficult. We had so many commitments; we found no place for our trysts.

People just did not approve. Wherever we went, we were always on the run. I sought sanctuary and at last, after scouring the neighborhood, I found an old house with a staircase leading down into a cellar. This underground lair was a workshop with tools on the shelves and sawdust everywhere.

She curled up in the corner and pressed her head against her knees. She closed her eyes, breathed. All of this running, just for peace and security. “You know,” she said. “I just don’t think any of this is worth it.” The stairs began to creak next. The old man who owned this house was coming down to saw some wood.

An old man with white hair and a mustache who looked like Wilford Brimley, because we both knew who that was. He would probably be less kind about finding out his workshop was being used as a love nest. But where could we go? There was no way out. We could hide there, behind some shelves. Maybe he wouldn’t see us?

We both knew there was no escaping Wilford Brimley. He would find us anywhere, wherever that was. It was just a matter of time. “This is all pointless,” she said. She looked tired. She was.