Nancy Davis Kho's Blog, page 34

For Bataclan

Last Friday afternoon I sat, like many people, glued to the social media stream about Paris. The events were horrific, chaotic, tragic.

Then I read that there was a hostage situation at the Bataclan music venue, and that’s when I felt like I was going to throw up.

People at a rock show being killed by terrorists. I couldn’t just imagine what that would feel like: I could also see it, smell it, hear it. I had just posted that day about why going to see new bands play live concerts is important. In exactly the kind of setting where I am reminded and comforted, every time I go to a show, that I am part of a larger community, that there are musicians who can play a few notes or sing a few lyrics and capture an entire universal human truth, a setting where people actually pay money in order to listen to someone else for a while: the attacks at Bataclan took everything I hold dear about live music and tried to pound it into dust.

As the weekend unfolded and people expressed their #PrayersForParis, a countervailing social media narrative began to build. Where is your grief for the bombing in Beirut, or for what happened in Kenya earlier this year? Where is your grief for the Mizzou students and the #BlackLivesMatter movement, your amplification of the call across campuses for safe spaces for students?

And then, just as quickly, the winds blew the other way: how can you be bogged down in “safe spaces” (always in quotes, in this kind of usage) when real, bad things are happening in Paris? Stop complaining!

I watched the whole thing unfold and just kept thinking: all those people at the Bataclan wanted to do was listen to a rock concert. And within their intent is exactly what we should be doing now, in these days of grieving.

Listen.

Listen to each other.

I’ve been to Paris and have friends who live there so I could immediately conjure up empathy; having never been to Beirut it was harder to summon that visceral and vivid reaction. But the comments about the lack of response to the Beirut bombing made me feel guilty, and that caused me to seek out more information. I read more about the Beirut attack, particularly about Adel Termos, the 32-year old mechanic dad who tackled the second suicide bomber and sacrificed his live to save hundreds more. I sat with that scratchy feeling of discomfort, and it impelled me to research and learn and reflect on whether I was, in fact, prioritizing one kind of death over another.

Similarly, a friend made an impassioned video on Facebook over the weekend about how hurtful it felt to her, as a queer black mom living in the south, to have white friends suddenly freak out over their new perceived vulnerability for themselves and their children, when my friend and her children have always lived with that vulnerability. She wasn’t belittling her white friends. She just felt tremendous sadness that they still didn’t realize or acknowledge that she has lived her whole life with what she described as “a humming, a constant drone of pain.”

I’m a white, middle class woman. I’m exempt from that constant drone of pain. But by watching her raw, honest video, I have a better understanding of how it feels to be her. And I promise you I could make you understand what it feels like to be sending daughters out into a world where a Bloomingdales’ ad campaign makes light of date rape.

Maybe the right way to honor those poor people at the Bataclan would be a Facebook button that turns our avatars into giant ears.

Feeling bad over one thing doesn’t mean you don’t grieve another. No one forces us to make either/or choices with compassion. I think God gave us hearts big enough to hold more than one kind of pain. I think that may be exactly the purpose of those hearts, in fact – to see how wide open we can keep them. And that starts by listening to each other.

I am having a very hard time keeping my heart open wide enough to understand why ISIL fighters perpetrate such violence. I keep coming back to fantasies of revenge and retribution; right now John Oliver is my spirit animal. But my faith requires me to keep thinking it through until I come up with a better answer than that. Somewhere within that challenge is the honest acknowledgement of how Middle East policies of Western governments have helped create the terror that now follows us home.

I’m also struggling with distant relatives on Facebook who are posting anti-immigration rants – conveniently forgetting that our grandparents immigrated here, my father-in-law immigrated here, that the particular hum of American civilization comes from the energy of new ideas and new citizens and new foods and new celebrations. I’m trying so hard not to block them. I have to force myself to listen to what they’re really saying: they’re scared. That’s real, for them.

It’s exhausting and frustrating work, all that listening. I know. So I’m going somewhere tonight to remind me that I’m here as part of something way bigger than just me:

I’m going to a concert.

                  Related StoriesTurn Down The Music and Read: Chapter and VerseNaNoHellNoEighteen Years/Eighteen Years 

Why Support for New Bands Shouldn’t Be Accidental

A few months back my Chicago friend Val Haller, a fellow music lover of a certain age, contacted me about an indie folk band she’d fallen for hard, The Accidentals. “Oh my god,” Val raved, “they’re going to be huge. I can’t say enough good things about them.” Her role as Cheerleader-in-Chief soon extended to helping the band find places to stay while on tour; at the baby band level, your lodgings are more likely to be the back seat of the band van than even a motel, and any money you save helps make it possible to tour another day.

When she called to see if The Accidentals, their manager, and their sound person might possibly roost with us in Oakland the night before their November 11 show at Hotel Utah in San Francisco, we said “Why not?” It’s not like we are drowning in excitement on a random Tuesday evening.

The band pulled up the other night in a giant black van (code name: Black Betty) that failed to clear our garage door by about ¼ of an inch, which meant they had to offload tons and tons of equipment into our garage to be locked up for the night. But before they did that, they tumbled out so they could hug us and thank us for letting them stay.

Katie Larsen and Savannah Buist met at a public high school in Traverse, MI before winning spots in the singer-songwriter major at the renowned Interlochen Center for the Arts High School. They only graduated last year, which is when they added the equally dewy Michael Dause on drums and percussion. Maria their sound engineer was there, as was their manager – Savannah’s mom Amber – who is the person who should appear in the dictionary under Momager instead of that dreadful Kardashian woman. Amber’s got the business savvy/loving mom equation down to perfection. Probably helps that she was an R&B singer on Arista when she wasn’t much older than her daughter.

Introductions made and hugs dispensed, they quickly got to the backbreaking work of lugging all that equipment into the garage. We showed them their beds, which included sleeping bags on an air mattress and a couch, and you would have thought we were checking them into the Ritz Carlton. “This is so great!” they kept saying. “A WASHING MACHINE?” said Amber when I told her they were welcome to do the laundo. “OH my god.” They treated the smallish pizza I served them as manna. I have never heard people praise a pomegranate, offered by my daughter, with such fervor.

Over the course of the next 18 hours or so, it became evident that we were hosting the most adorable, quiet, grateful nerds ever. Michael hooked up my NYTimes/Google virtual reality glasses for me and proceeded to be so stoked about them that I threatened to search his luggage for them before they left. When I told them to help themselves to anything from our bookshelves it was only Maria saying, “No! No! We have too many books in the van already!” that prevented a stampede.

Savannah had calculated that they’ve driven 120 hours out of what will eventually be 200 hours in the van on this tour, so at lunchtime Wednesday I forced everyone out onto the trail I used to hike with Achilles so they’d get some fresh air in their hair. As we walked and talked, it became evident that young as they are, they have a vision of where they want to go, and the inner fire to create, propelling them right through any fears and doubts. And they’re trying very deliberately to maintain an atmosphere of support and openness within the band, critical when you’re smushed up against each other for 200 hours at a time. “Our band motto is ‘Ask for what you need,'” counseled twenty year old Sav to almost-fifty-year-old Nancy who is thinking, wow, maybe THAT’S something I could try.

They headed out after our hike in search of an Apple store to fix road-fried laptops – leaving us a small mountain of band tshirts, CDs, stickers, and kitty cat tights (see Sav in picture below)- so I didn’t see them again until I arrived at Hotel Utah that night to see their show. When I say Hotel Utah’s stage is small, I mean there were more people at the bar than there were watching the musicians. But that means that, as a music fan, you get different opportunities. For instance, while opening band The Amber played, I happened to be sitting near the EPs they were selling for $5. So when people wanted to buy them, I ran their merch table until The Amber finished their set and could take over. (Don’t worry, I didn’t take a cut.)

Then my three nerdy houseguests climbed up on stage and Holy Lord, I understood why Val went bananas over The Accidentals and why Billboard named them a Breakout Band at SXSW 2015 and why Marshall Crenshaw is now working with them. Trading acoustic and electric guitar guitars back and forth to one another, Katie also rocked an electric cello while Sav played some crazy electric fiddle. And there was my Virtual Reality tech support guru scat-singing and whacking the hell out of his drum kit. The audience was still tiny but it was going CRAZY. By the time they did a cover of the Pixies “Where Is My Mind?” I was done for.

You guys. They are all 19 and 20. They are just getting started.

At the end of the evening Sav gave yet another gracious shout out to my family for hosting them, and went on to thank anyone who supports live music. Then they headed out to Black Betty to drive the six hours to LA for Thursday night’s show. By the way, Hotel Utah doesn’t have a green room or backstage, so here’s The Accidentals sitting in what doubled as backstage until it was time to go on: Black Betty, parked on Bryant Street.

I suppose what I want to say is that seeing the heart and sacrifice and actual physical effort that The Accidentals are putting into being successful with their music was a kick-in-the-pants reminder that talent only goes so far for any of us. We need a vision, and a willingness to work our asses off to make it happen. Go see The Accidentals, or any up-and-coming band playing at a small stage near you. Maybe someday you’ll be able to say “I saw them when they still played bars.” Or maybe you’ll just get a booster shot of enthusiasm and cheerful grit that will give you a new headwind in tackling your own challenges.

Either way, it’s better than sitting at home on a random Tuesday night drowning in non-excitement.

                   
Commentsh/t to another music fan of a certain age, lady. Thanks for ... by Nancy Davis KhoI think they have a lot more to unleash on us – their live ... by Nancy Davis KhoThey make it easy to want to vie for the Cheerleader in Chief ... by Nancy Davis KhoNow I don't feel like such a psycho being the mom of a teenager ... by LonimomGREAT post. Enjoyed watching them on the Youtube: ... by David PeattiePlus 3 more...Related StoriesGiveaway: Jeffrey Foucault’s Salt As WolvesConcert Review: Frank TurnerConcert Review: Brandi Carlile 

Giveaway: Jeffrey Foucault’s Salt As Wolves

Here’s the thing when you throw your San Francisco album release party at a bar that looks perpetually frozen at ten to midnight on New Year’s Eve, has one bartender serving eleventy-thousand patrons, and rigidly enforces the rule that Salsa Funk Dancing Must Start On Time: you have to have a sense of humor. As Americana artist Jeffrey Foucault displayed on Saturday night at the Make Out Room in the Mission, when events conspired to land him with a fat 40 minutes in which to perform his latest album Salt As Wolves to an enthusiastic crowd who would have gladly listened for three hours longer.

As my friend Dawn and I stood on line outside the club waiting for the doors to open at 7:30, I saw the alarming sight of Jeffrey – whom I’ve met a few times before when he’s performed at house concerts at the Rosecrest Supper Club – driving the band van. Him driving wasn’t alarming, it was the realization that he would have to find a parking spot in the Mission before we could hear him play. It was enough to make me want to call it a night, because with the tech annexation of the Mission he wouldn’t be playing before Sunday brunch, but God must love a country/folk/blues show and managed to clear out a spot across from the Make Out Room so he and his band had a straight shot to carry in their equipment.

Once they’d done that, the doors finally opened and Dawn and I snagged the last remaining bench in this very-limited-seating bar: directly outside the men’s room door, with all the olfactory delights that implied. We worked on creating a signal we could flash as each man reappeared, on the state of their fly (barn door open, buddy!) while listening to the opening band, Back in the Valley. They hail from Fresno and the sound of their alt-country version of Echo’s “Lips Like Sugar” just about killed me with its surprising rightness.

The combination of men’s room perfume and Jeffrey’s impending arrival on the stage prompted Dawn and I to give up the booth to a scrum of people eager to take our place – enjoy the Airwick d’ Pee, suckas! – and head to stand near the stage.

Advised by bar management that they needed to clear out in time for the event starting at 10 pm – “El SUPERRITMO! DJ El Kool Kyle y DJ Roger Más ~ Cumbia, Dancehall, Hip-Hop, Reggaeton, Salsa Buena y mas! “ – JF and his three man band got straight down to business with Salt As Wolves. The new stuff is beautiful – haunting, spare, honest. His music sounds to me like what everyone else aims for when they’re trying to express what it feels like to be American, and I mean that in the good way, not in the “we’re gonna elect a reality TV Oompa Loompa clown to president” way. “Hurricane Lamp” and “Slow Talker” were standout tunes.

As for the sense of humor, JF mentioned that his management wanted him to make music videos in support of the album, and added that he hates them and thinks they’re a giant waste of time. “So the director came to Montana [where drummer Billy Conway lives] and asked what I’d be willing to do for a video. I told him ‘We are willing to do two things: drive around, and sit in chairs.’ So watch YouTube because that video is gonna be huge.”

I’m going to admit it: toward the end of his set when Jeffrey said, “I’m going to play an oldie now, Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order,” I was that person who whooped. Between the Echo cover by the opener and last week’s review of Bernard Sumner’s book, do you blame me? Then Jeffrey said, “Fuck that shit,” and launched into “Ghost Repeater.” Works equally well for me. That song gets bigger and more uptempo every time I see him play it.

As the set drew to a close Jeffrey said, “I’m gonna tell you how this is going to go, because people like to know in advance how things are going to go,” and explained that he would play one final song, and that would be the end, but then he would play one more after that. And still the crowd yelled for an encore as JF and his band carried their gear back to the Sacred Mission Parking Spot, heading out to the next destination on his release tour.

But guess what he left in his wake? I have 2, count them ­signed copies of Salt As Wolves to give away to a lucky Midlife Mixtape reader! Leave a comment below for your chance to win – I’ll use Random.org to pick a winner on Friday right before I head out to read at The Basement Series.

By the way, Dawn and I stuck around to see what the aforementioned Salsa Funk Cumbia Hip Hop Reggaeton Night was all about.

Back in my twenties I took a Salsa/Cumbia dance class. This is how the teacher told us the Cumbia works: “Your shoulders say no, no, no,” she said, shimmying them forward and backward to demonstrate. “But your hips say maybe, maybe, maybe,” swiveling hers in a circle that looked an awful lot like “Yes, yes, yes” to me.

With Spanish versions of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and “Thriller” blasting, there was no way we were going home without letting our hips do some talking on the dance floor. I think what mine were saying was “ouch, ouch, this is gonna be bad tomorrow y mas.” And still we danced on. Luckily Dawn is a physical therapist and the miracle worker restoring my shoulder mobility, so I’m just going to ask her to hip check me in this week’s appointment.

Besides, the only thing I had to do the next day was drive around, sit in chairs, and recuperate while listening to Salt As Wolves.

                   
CommentsThe L'odeur de l'urine reference got me. I'd probably stand in ... by Jonathan KleinRelated StoriesTurn Down The Music and Read: Chapter and VerseConcert Review: Frank TurnerConcert Review: Brandi Carlile 

Turn Down The Music and Read: Chapter and Verse

Have you ever had two friends get in a fight, and you find yourself with this sort of guilty schadenfreude as you gobble up the details of how it started and who’s to blame? If you’re a Joy Division/New Order fan, there’s your motivation to read Chapter and Verse: New Order, Joy Division, and Me (Thomas Dunne Books) by Bernard Sumner. Sumner is the guitarist who stepped into the lead vocal role after the untimely death of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis. The book itself is clearly the counterpoint to bass player Peter Hook’s critically acclaimed Unknown Pleasures, which told the band’s story from Hooky’s side of the stage.

Given the public and long-standing acrimony between Sumner and Hook which has resulted in two separate bands who tour playing New Order and Joy Division songs (I’ve seen the Sumner-fronted version,) it was no surprise that Unknown Pleasures had an anti-Sumner bias. Now Sumner’s having his say. I think we can all presume that the truth lies somewhere in between.

Because any band will have been covered in the music press in real time once it reaches a certain level of popularity, for me the test of good music memoir is what it reveals about the early years, and how much the curtain is drawn back on emotions and relationships that were made intentionally opaque to the press. In this regard, Chapter and Verse delivers. Sumner paints a picture of a childhood in Salford, near Manchester, that wasn’t idyllic but was nonetheless happy, and does such a good job of it that when he mentions that a national newspaper ran a headline story on “The Biggest Slum in Britain” about Salford, you’ll think – as he apparently did as a child – wait, how can that be? They had scooters, and bonfire nights!

By the time he emerged from Salford, Sumner had met Peter Hook and they’d started the band that would become Joy Division, so I couldn’t help but think of the descriptions of various people and events in Hook’s book as I came upon them in the Sumner version. In tone, Hook is the unapologetic prankster who likes to take the piss, while Sumner comes across as serious, measured, and self-aware. The place where the narratives align almost perfectly is in relaying the events that lead up to the suicide of Ian Curtis, as is the palpable sense of guilt and regret that the surviving musicians – who, after all, were barely out of their teens when it happened – still carry.

But after that point, the differences become more stark. Sumner seems to have embraced forgiveness and personal accountability – admitting, for instance, that his fascination with synthesizers that led to a song like “Blue Monday,” which required barely any human intervention to perform, may have gone a bit far.

But he’s quick to add that “Blue Monday” is the best selling 12” single of all time, so sorry not sorry. And while talking about the New Order-backed Haçienda nightclub in Manchester,  about which Peter Hook wrote his book How Not To Run a Club,  Sumner can’t resist mentioning that “a certain ‘Mr. Haçienda’ was rarely, if ever, seen there; he was never part of that scene and never demonstrated any interest in dance music whatsover…” The entire closing chapter is a spike over Hook’s volleyball net.

Actually, let me rephrase: the place where the narratives of the two books align almost perfectly is in the snippy asides aimed at the guy who used to play his instrument four feet away. (No wonder drummer Stephen Morris married keyboardist Gillian Gilbert. They probably bonded together in their neutrality.) I imagine Hook is already sweating over his laptop on Unknown Pleasures 2: Sumner’s Book Was Rubbish.

Chapter and Verse is loaded with pictures and, for the first time, the transcript of a hypnosis session that young Bernard performed on young Ian, which made me feel super queasy to read because should people be hypnotizing other people like that? I’m leaning no. But for a New Order fan, you may be interested to learn that Ian was called Justin in a previous life.

The book is a worthy addition to the canon of ’80s music memoir and a must-read for New Order/Joy Division fans. And guess what? I’m giving away a copy (thank you, Thomas Dunne Books!) For a chance to win, leave a comment below with your favorite New Order/Joy Division song. I’ll use Random.org to choose a winner on Tuesday, November 10 at 5 pm PST.

And I’ll leave you with my favorite, which I now know Sumner wrote as a bit of an experiment when he was inspired by cheesy country music. Well, that was the music of my childhood.

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NaNoHellNo

If you have the good fortune or bad luck of being related to a writer, you may already be aware that November is NaNoWriMo. It stands for National Novel Writing Month and is meant to get novels that are but a glimmer in the eye of their creators onto the page and into the world. Participants are encouraged, goaded, cheered, and guilted into producing 50,000 words in 30 days.

Every year there are a few high profile success stories, of books that started of as NaNoWriMo projects and now coming to store shelves and Kindles near you. It’s exciting, the promise of so many words pouring out of your fingertips in such a concentrated span of time. You can expect every coffee shop you love to be overrun by sweaty, nervous looking people on laptops who are obsessively monitoring the word count indicator in the lower left hand corner of their screen. More overrun than normal, anyway.

I am not made of the stuff to survive NaNoWriMo. I tried it once and made it to November 3rd.  My writing productivity, it turns out, does not respond well to arbitrary word counts and forced calendar marches. The times I’m most productive are when I sidle up to my laptop and pretend I’m not paying any attention to it. There’s a British phrase for it: softly softly catchee monkey. If I look off into the distance like I’m just pondering the origin of softly softly catchee monkey, not opening a Word doc to type into or anything, and if don’t even look at what I’m typing on the screen – THAT’S when the word count explodes. Which I then have to meticulously proofread because I’m not actually so good at typing that I can stare into the distance and not spell everything wrngo.

Still, I have the deepest admiration for the word nerds out there making it happen this month. And I’d like some sense of accomplishment on the Monday after Thanksgiving. So, in solidarity with the NaNoWriMo’ers, I will be working hard this month on some initiatives of my own.

NaFreMoMo: National Fret More Month. I’m the mother of a high school senior applying to college. Fretting about what deadline is approaching in the application calendar, how to communicate that in a non-pressuring way, and whether we’re going to screw up some major piece of the college application process, like clicking the “State University” rather than the “University of” box or vice versa and thereby applying to an entirely different school, is what gets me out of bed in the morning. I’m going to double down on anxiety for November!

NaMuMemReMo: National Music Memoir Reading Month. Have you seen how many new music memoirs have come out in the past month or two? Chrissie Hynde, Carrie Brownstein, Elvis Costello, Grace Jones, Bernard Sumner. And I’ve yet to finish any of them. Please god do not let any musician get inspired by NaNoWriMo.

NaOakPrecipWaMo – National Oakland Precipitation Watch Month. The weather forecasters keep telling us El Nino’s going to blow through town soon and give us the deluge we’ve been waiting for after four years of NorCal drought. I’ll do my part by obsessively watching the Oakland precipitation totals for the year starting July 1 on the SFChronicle website – updated every day at 1 pm. I’ve got a 100% record of daily participation so far! (0.56 inches as of Tuesday morning, in case you care.)

NaOverMePlaMo – National Overreach Menu Planning Month. I see you, Holiday Recipes and Cooking Light and Bon Appetit at the checkout stand, beckoning me with your glistening turkeys and your carmelized Brussels sprouts and your cakes baked in the shape of the Mayflower. You and I both know that on Thanksgiving Day, I’ll be bringing a bottle of wine and a pumpkin pie from the bakery to take to my friend’s house for dinner. But, I think as I throw one of you onto the conveyor belt holding my ice cream and beer (see NaFreMoMo,) it wouldn’t be November if I wasn’t setting myself up for dashed culinary dreams.

NaWhoXmasThisYearMo – National Who Do I Have for Christmas This Year Month. November marks the traditional start of the phone call tree in which my brother, sister, and I try to remember who has whom for the annual gift exchange – back when our kids were little, we decided we’d trade off gift giving for the grown-ups each year. So if I give a gift to my brother, he gives one to my sister, and she gives one to me, and then the next year we switch. It works well except no one can ever remember what they gave or got the year before, and we have to do present forensics. “What year did you give me the cribbage board? Did I give you the mixing bowls in 2013 or 2014? Does anyone remember who gave me the fireplace screen? ” The mental strain is such that this may be the year we go back to buying gifts for everyone.

NaDaCraiDrooMo – National Daniel Craig Drool Month. Spectre opens this Friday. Enough said.

So: what do YOU plan to do every day between now and November 30th? I’m gonna send out a worldwide hoodoo that you succeed in your challenge.

***Just found out I was chosen to read at the next Basement Series, a quarterly reading series that’s a fundraiser for Litcamp scholarships! Join us on Friday Nov 13th at 7 pm the Sports Basement on Bryant Street for a night of readings on The Sporting Life.

                   
CommentsNo, Ellen, you're right. You really shouldn't have told me ... by Nancy Davis KhoOMG. It's like you were doing the Crossfit training of writing. by Nancy Davis KhoI did nanowrimo THREE TIMES – 2011, 2012, 2013. I have 3 full ... by LanceI should not tell you (but I will) that in my attempts to ... by EllenRelated StoriesEighteen Years/Eighteen YearsBART to Bar Litcrawl Caravan: Litquake’s Journey of a Thousand StopsBART to Bar Litcaravan: Litquake’s Journey of a Thousand Stops 

Back When I Was Here

Last weekend I took my 17 year old daughter to visit my alma mater, University of Pennsylvania. That’s right, she toured my alma mater with her alma mater. I’d been back to campus for my 25th reunion a few years ago, so I was prepared for the sight of  things that weren’t there when I was a student in the late ‘80s, like new buildings and frat-houses-turned-LGBTQ-support-centers. What I wasn’t prepared for was my inability to recognize the things that had stayed the same.

Take, for instance, the high rises. These three tall apartment buildings anchor the west end of campus, near an angular arch made of red metal tubes and nicknamed, inevitably, “Dueling Tampons.” As we meandered down the campus’ main drag, Locust Walk, I pointed out the high rises to her, towering off in the distance near 40th Street. “I lived in that one sophomore and part of junior year,” I began, continuing the droning “Back When I Was Here” tour in which she was trapped, where every story ended with a meaningless comparison to ’87. “They’ve got their own kitchens, which is nice, but the elevators are slow. Or they were, back when I was here.” My daughter nodded, or maybe she was trying to give a Morse code signal for rescue to the people walking past her.

Then we were standing near a big concrete building with a sign: Rodin House. “Huh. This is new,” I said, squinting toward the top. “Wasn’t around back when I was here.” My daughter, carefully and slowly, said, “Um, you just told me this was one of the three high rises.”

Right. Rodin House. Built in ’71. One of the high rises. I knew that. Ok. Well, it’s a new sign. That’s what I meant.

We continued onto 40th and took a right onto Spruce, lined with row houses that have been off-campus living for generations of students. “I lived here somewhere senior year,” I said. “Let’s see if I can figure it out.”

My daughter trailed a few feet behind me as I stopped at each row house that stretched down the block and craned my neck up: did I live here? I remember there was a stone wall I used to sit on in front…is this it? Didn’t the house have a dormer window? None of these houses have dormers. Is that a sorority? I vaguely remember we were aware there was a sorority on our block but I don’t think we even knew where or what it was, back when I was here.

Finally I stopped at 4040. “I think this could be it,” I said to my daughter. There was a “rental available” sign that looked like it had been there for a few years, and the porch was covered in leaves and empty of anything except a cigarette ashtray. That vibe felt familiar. “Take my picture,” I directed my daughter. I posted it on FB and asked for independent confirmation from Penn friends that I had lived here. Two said nope, stairs are on the wrong side.

My daughter and I had dinner that night with my roommates from senior year. In the midst of a conversation that flowed as easily as if we’d just paused it in 1988 to watch an episode of Thirty Something rather than for almost thirty years, I asked them if they could remember our old address. One said 4041, which would have put us on the other side of the street, and the other had no idea where to even start.

So, here I am in front of what may have been my old apartment. It may have been someone else’s old apartment, though.

Back on our alma mater tour, I dragged my daughter into the academic building where I took most of my classes. “This building was so cool,” I said, as we walked up the ramp. “It has this modern façade but if you go inside, you can still see the stonework of the old building that it replaced.”

Let me save you the suspense. No, you can’t. Inside, it just looks like a regular building that happens to use a lot of exposed brick.

Irvine Auditorium, where I used to stand in the orchestra pit when I crewed for shows like 10,000 Maniacs and New Order? It doesn’t have an orchestra pit. (Here’s the ceiling, though, which almost made up for it.)

Despite her faulty and boring tour guide, my daughter was getting more and more excited about the campus and about Philly in general – it probably helped that the day before, I had taken her and a friend to see the Head of the Schuykill crew regatta, which was just crawling with academically and athletically gifted college boys over 6’1”.

But I was feeling unmoored. Why couldn’t I remember the Penn I’d loved, back when I was here?

That’s when we stopped at the food carts on 34th and Walnut and got ourselves a Philly street pretzel. It gave me a second to read a couple of texts from my Penn posse, the friends who are, to me, the best treasure I gained from being at that school;  everyone wanted to know how our trip was going and wished us luck.

That was the moment I relaxed and realized: at least when it comes to recognizing what matters, like multi-decade friendships and the cheap, chewy, carbo-sodium bomb that got me through four years of college on a budget, my faculties are completely intact.

Have to close with this most Philadelphia of ’80s bands: The Hooters. Thanks to my college buddy Dan for reminding me about them and verifying that yes, it was 4040.

 

                   
CommentsPoor oldest Kho daughter! It looks like the pretzel helped ... by EllenRelated StoriesSummer DiaryA History of My Life, in HaircutsFreedom From Being Wanted 

Eighteen Years/Eighteen Years

This month marks a milestone in my life: I have lived in California for eighteen years. That’s the same number of years I lived in Upstate New York. So am I a Californian now? Or a New Yorker?

According to the government, there’s no question here. I pay taxes and vote in California ergo I am a resident of the Golden State. Anecdotally it’s the same story: my house is in California and so are my husband, my kids, and my CD collection. I’m fastidious about sorting my garbage into recycling, composting, and landfill, and I have taken a class in feng shui. There’s really not much of a debate.

But even if I haven’t lived in Rochester, New York since I was eighteen (not counting summers in college, not counting one very short-lived run at being a Kodak employee,) I’m still an Upstater in my head. I complain about the bread rolls that are called “bagels” here, I mock people who complain about the cold when it drops all the way down to 63 degrees, and I walk faster than 89% of people on any given stretch of sidewalk. When I meet current residents of New York who refer to places like the Hudson Valley as “upstate,” I roll my eyes in superiority. “We call that downstate,” I say, like Oaklanders are all about geographical correctness from 3,000 miles away.

At least, when I’m in California, I’m a New Yorker.

When I’m in New York, I may as well be the sixth member of the Beach Boys.

I wear my little California-shaped necklace made out of a book cover, I sigh with disgust as I toss a bottle into the one available garbage can and say, “Is this takeout container biodegradable?”, and I will give a high-five to any stranger I see wearing a Golden State Warriors t-shirt east of the Mississippi. “We use our snow shovel to scoop dog poop,” I used to confide. (And if you’re wondering why we moved a snow shovel with us to California, I have three words for you: company-paid relocation.)

The fact of the matter is, I’m accustomed to feeling betwixt and between. We moved here in ’97 when I was pregnant with our eldest and I remember in vivid detail hugging my mom goodbye at Family Camp that year, reassuring her that we would only be out west for three years, tops. With all my relatives and many of my husband’s in New York, it didn’t make sense to raise children so far from “home.”

I hadn’t factored in that our kids would develop their own ideas of home, and theirs are decidedly Californian. They wear flip-flops eleven months of the year and are baffled by outerwear with complicated closures, have an ingrained preference for organic food, and speak hella NorCal slang. They would be chopped meat on the East Coast, having to actually wear coats and eat frozen vegetables in winter. In fact, we’ll find out next year, since the last California school just fell off our eldest daughter’s college application list, which means 100% probability of an East Coast winter for her, for the next four years.

Maybe she’ll love it. Maybe her little sister, now a high school freshman, will follow in her footsteps and pick a Right Coast school too. (Or as she said to me last night, “I’ll probably end up back east for college because Yale will NOT stop badgering me to attend.”) For me, that’s the end of the ride: if my kids are on the East Coast, where my parents and siblings remain, then my husband and the CD collection and I will follow, and the California chapter of my life – the longest one so far – will close.

The mere thought of leaving my friends here is too painful to contemplate for long, and I would miss sixty degree “winter” days and the liberal mindset for sure. But according to a real estate flyer tucked into our mailbox, our old bucket of bolts house down the hill that we lived in when we first moved to Cali just sold for over a million dollars. That means we are living inside our retirement plan, as long as we’re smart enough to sell at the top of the market and move far, far away from the Bay Area. The house was going to have to go some day – might as well be when we still have time to spend down the kids’ inheritance.

So many people in California are transplants like me that the homegrown residents almost always lead with that fact – “I’m a fifth generation Californian, nice to meet you!” It’s a state that welcomes newcomers, and makes it easy for three years to turn into eighteen years. Maybe if I’d melted into the soil here like a California poppy seed and allowed myself to take root, like so many people who come here do, I wouldn’t feel so conflicted. But I think I’ll always be a bit of a New York crab apple at heart.

Here’s to the twisted appeal of the poppy/crab tree hybrid.

This song has nothing to do with this essay, except for the line “Eighteen years, eighteen years” which is what I found myself humming every time I sat down to work on this.

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Concert Review: Frank Turner

photo courtesy of KFOG

The Band: Frank Turner, October 20 2015. A hardcore-punk frontman (of Million Dead) turned guitar soloist, Frank Turner rocks a couple notches harder than your average acoustic bear. The Brit may be the only Eton College alum (he studied alongside Wills) who has a fresh tattoo of Freddie Mercury doing a power pose on his left forearm. For this performance Matt Nasir accompanied him on mandolin, which was way more punk rock than it appears as written.

photo courtesy of KFOG

The Venue: Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, for a KFOG Private Concert. KFOG offers Foghead listeners the chance to win seats to these intimate short sets played by bands in town for a gig. I’ve never won before, though I did miss out on a Neil Finn private concert by one phone call about 70 different times.

It was as awesome as I’d expected. We walked down the hushed, carpeted hallways of legendary Fantasy Studios, past gold and platinum albums made by some of the acts who have recorded there, from the Allman Brothers to B.B. King to Bobby McFerrin, to reach a studio set up with about thirty seats. KFOG DJ Webster (who of course looks nothing like you think he will) welcomed us warmly, conducted a quick Q&A with Frank, and the show started, at about 2:50 pm on a Tuesday afternoon.

The Company: My buddy and fellow concert buff Larry, who messaged me the night before to see if I could sneak away from work for a couple of hours to see the show. The entire point of freelancing and working from home for the past ten years was justified the moment I said, “Yeah, I can move some stuff around and go with you.”

The Crowd: Rapt, appreciative, and square in the middle of the KFOG demographic, meaning Boomers and Xers (maybe a sprinkling of Millennials?) who have long enough careers behind them to say, “I’m taking two hours off on Tuesday,” and no one argues.

Cool Factor: I Knew Prufrock Before He Got Famous

I mean: private show for thirty people, with a headliner who insisted on hugging every audience member who came to the front for a picture after the show. Frank and Matt have a great teasing rapport, tossing out stories about how each song in the short set came to be, and asking who in the audience would be at their show later that evening at the Fillmore (they made one woman in the front row promise to crowd-surf if they played her request.) “The Way I Tend to Be” was one of my favorites they performed, with the lyric:

And then I catch myself


Catching your scent on someone else


In a crowded space


And it takes me somewhere I cannot quite place.

Those of us at the private concert know that Frank wrote it after being in a koala enclosure in Australia with his friend Chuck Ragan, and realizing that the eucalyptus scent of the koala he was cradling reminded him of an ex-girlfriend. Oh, and now you guys know it too.

We got to do a meet and greet afterward and Frank and I commiserated about the literal tendencies of Germans.

Photo courtesy of KFOG

Worth Hiring the Sitter? Who needs to? It happened during the school day.

I was at the show and home again before the girls got in the door from school. I was, however, kicking myself for not having procured tickets to Frank’s show that night at the Fillmore. Instead I downloaded Positive Songs for Negative People as well as a few of my favorites from earlier albums and played those while I cooked dinner; I’ll probably download the rest of those albums tonight since I already have these memorized.

Anyway, had it not been a school day my eldest would have wanted to come. At her summer camp, when it was time for the counselors to pitch their activities to get the campers to sign up for the week, the sailing instructor always played Turner’s “Sailor’s Boots.” Got a full roster every session.

Even if it was a super short concert, it was memorable – particularly the cover of “Somebody to Love” by Queen that included an audience singalong, and the glee with which Frank and Matt used two words not permitted during UK radio appearances: “wanker” and “bollocks.”

“Photosynthesis” may be the new Midlife Mixtape anthem. (Matt’s rocking out on the mandolin in this version.)

And I won’t sit down


And I won’t shut up


And most of all I will not grow up

Next time Frank Turner’s in town and I inevitably lose out on getting tix to his KFOG Private Concert, I’ll be ok. Because I’ll already have tix for his night show.

Next show on the calendar: Ryan Bingham, November 17 at the Fillmore

                   
CommentsYou and me both. More Frank in 2016! by Nancy Davis KhoI am so jealous! I saw him open for Flogging Molly and then ... by Katy KozeeRelated StoriesConcert Review: Brandi CarlileConcert Review: Johnny FlynnMidlife Mixtape Concert Review: The Replacements 

BART to Bar Litcrawl Caravan: Litquake’s Journey of a Thousand Stops

Here was the theory: to make San Francisco’s annual Litcrawl, the world’s largest literary pub crawl, even more enticing, Litquake would take over a car on a BART train headed thataway and start the readings while still on board. We’d bring literature to the people, build a critical mass of Litcrawlers, and arrive in style just before Phase 1 was set to start. I was honored to be invited to participate, and spent a week writing something train-related that could be read in the short one- and two-minute intervals between the four stations I was assigned, each ending with a cliffhanger that would keep my rapt audience hanging on during the orderly, quiet egress/entry of passengers. I spent hours chopping a word here, an adjective there, practiced projecting my voice forcefully, bought bags of Italian chocolate to hand out at a key moment in the reading.

Here was the reality. At the appointed time last Saturday in downtown Berkeley, four of us readers plus our fabulous emcee Janine Kovac, along with about eight friends and family, jumped into the front car of the 4:39 BART train bound for SFO/Daly City. It was already pretty full, mostly of people who a.) were not going to Litcrawl and b.) weren’t super pysched to have literature crammed down their throats. And have you ever noticed how ear-splitting the noise is on a BART train? Shouting only gets your voice to your immediate companion. To reach the whole car, you need to bellow, maybe even scream. That’s if your audience, lurching and grabbing at overhead straps, can even see you. Two stops into your reading, the car may be so packed that you are bellowing into a man’s armpit.

Which could cover up the fact that your delicate slicing and dicing to get your reading to fit into what BART’s website claims is a two minute interval between stations is rendered completely useless when that interval is actually 1 minute 15 seconds, at which point you yell, “SHIT!” and being reading 3X as fast, dropping verbs and modifiers and eventually entire paragraphs of the story you are bellowing into the man’s armpit in a vain attempt to project to at least the middle of the train. The chocolates never leave the row they start in, because no one can move.

The BART conductor shushed us over the loudspeaker, an annoyed skateboarder took out his phone and made the world’s loudest phone call to try to drown us out, and one young man looked like he was fixin’ to die as Claire Hennessy read a hilarious essay about buying a new bra. Look at the lady on the right in this picture using both a phone and a book to pretend we’re not there. Nice try, lady. WE’RE LITCRAWLING YOU WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT.

It was chaotic, it was rushed, it terrified commuters. The first ever BART to Bar Litcrawl Caravan is in the books, and it was pure guerrilla literary awesomeness.

From left: Janine Kovac, me, Benjamin Wachs, Andrew Dugas, Claire Hennessy

At the end of the ride, a friend near the middle of the train said, “I could see your lips moving but I couldn’t hear a thing you said.” Here’s what I was yelling into the void.

Embarcadero to Montgomery

For reasons that BART’s efficiency prevent me from explaining, I once took an overnight train from Venice to Vienna, by myself.

Everyone on my college exchange program knew someone whose cousin’s brother’s roommate had succumbed to sleeping gas piped into the air vents of an Italian night train, and woken to find their backpacks gone. So I was anxious as I boarded at twilight. The families picnicking around me didn’t look like they would gas and rob me, but maybe that was the secret to their success.

Eventually an Italian man seated across from me introduced himself in English. He lacked the smoldering dark looks you’d pray for in that situation. He looked more like Rick Moranis in the “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” era. Still, I was grateful to hear English, and we made stilted small talk while announcements blared overhead in Italian. Like so many Americans abroad, I assumed that if I didn’t understand what the announcement meant, it couldn’t possibly apply to me.

But Italian Rick Moranis understood them, and when I told him where I was headed, he looked stricken. “Vienna?” he gasped. “You are in the wrong car! You must get to the front of the train!”

I hadn’t yet learned that in Europe, train carriages are randomly unhooked at various stations, so you must board not just the right train but the right car on that train.

“I will help you,” he thundered, pulling me to my feet and roughly hoisting my backpack onto my shoulders. The brakes lurched beneath us as the station drew into sight. “When it stops, RUN!” he said, positioning me in the open doorway like I was a recalcitrant paratrooper and he, a sadistic sergeant.

The train was still moving when he shoved me out the door, with a force that suggested Italian Rick Moranis worked out. I narrowly averted a faceplant, lumbered to my feet, and scuttled down the platform like a giant, LLBean-branded canvas beetle.

Seconds later I heard the rapid fall of footsteps behind me. I swiveled to see Italian Rick Moranis sprinting at me full speed, screaming, “I LOVE YOU!” That ignited the old afterburners, and I dove headfirst into the closest car, without even looking up.

Which is how I found myself in an Italian troop transport.

Montgomery to Powell

It took a moment to realize I had just jumped into a railcar full of Italian soldiers. Even if these Italian men were smoldering – smoldering in uniform, no less – I panicked. This WAS an Italian night train.

I knew what would happen. They would ravish me.

Why this Upstate New Yorker suddenly had a Southern accent, I didn’t know, but I did know this:

I would defend my womanhood.

I crept unobtrusively into an empty seat next to a soldier who looked like he might have modeled for the profile on an Italian coin.

I dasn’t capture his attention.

Only, I didn’t have to worry. Because the black darkness of night had turned each train window into a mirror, and the smoldering Italian soldiers were either preening over their reflections, or buffing their nails. This was one military force that didn’t give a rat’s ass about an American invasion.

Indignant, I grunted into my backpack again, with zero offers of intervention by the Italian army. I found an almost-empty carriage a few cars away.

Which is how I found myself riding with a Mafia gun moll.

Powell to 24th Street

My new seatmate on my overnight train trip through Italy was a Mafioso’s girlfriend, but she was no Kitten With a Whip. Wearing no makeup and her hair in messy bun, she looked like a preschool teacher whose book club only read Jane Austen. But love knows no reason, and maybe some guy nicknamed “Big Tweety” preferred sensible shoes over leopardskin bustiers.

Still, something between them went south – like, Sicily south – and Lorena was ready to unload the story. She was fleeing the country sans passport, train ticket, or money. The only thing Lorena had was a Chocolate Kinder Egg, the kind with the prize inside, and the promise of sanctuary from some nuns over the border in Austria.

Lorena’s story held so many inverted parallels to The Sound of Music, my head was about to explode. The Sound of Music was the whole reason I was studying in Austria that semester. Side note: I have actually stayed at the Von Trapp Family Lodge in Vermont so I know that the Von Trapps fled from Austria to Italy not on foot, while harmonizing in matching clothes, but via train. From the station that was literally IN THEIR FRONT YARD.

But I digress. Time passed quickly as Lorena poured out the harrowing details of her life which, again, BART’s efficiency will prevent you from hearing. Her new life, as The Nun With The Best Origin Story Ever, lay just a few kilometers ahead over the Austrian border.

That’s when we heard boot steps in the corridor. “The border police!” she gasped. “My lover, he has connections everywhere!”

Seconds later uniformed men threw open the door and demanded our passports. When she couldn’t produce hers, they took Lorena into custody. Tears streamed down her face as they pulled her from the car. At the last second, she twisted in their grip and pressed something into my hand.

I looked down to see the tiny plastic pear that was the prize from her Kinder Egg. I don’t know what it signified, but I’ve brought you some chocolate to eat while you ponder.

In the empty train car, alone at last, my eyelids felt so heavy. Italian night train sleeping gas! Or the fact that I’d been awake 23 hours.

That’s when two menacing punks wearing leather and spikes stepped into the compartment.

24th Street to 16th Street

By this point in my solo train trip across Italy I’d experienced an unsolicited declaration of love at first sight, a military invasion that took place only in my head, and a roller coaster ride of hope and desolation with a woman escaping the Italian mafia. Two Viennese guys in ceiling-grazing red and green mohawks would have to work a lot harder than just bondage gear to make me flinch.

The two punks manspread themselves across the train seats while talking loudly in German, a language I DO understand. I pulled a John Steinbeck book from my backpack and started reading. I could feel their eyes boring into me.

“Are you American?” one asked, in German.

I put the book down and sighed. “Ja,” I answered, waiting for the inevitable and justifiable anti-Reagan diatribe that was the normal follow-up to that question in Europe during the eighties.

“Ach, super cool! I love New York!” said the taller of the two. They uncorked a bottle of cheap red wine and we spent the final leg of the trip passing it around, toasting the Big Apfel as night ceded to the first light of morning. Ah, to be twenty again, cavalier about infectious disease and convinced that drinking fermented grapes counts as having fruit for breakfast.

We pulled into Vienna’s central station, exchanged phone numbers we’d never dial, and went our separate ways into The Imperial City. And while adventures awaited for me at my destination, that train trip drove home a valuable lesson: a journey of a thousand stops can be its own reward.

16th Street Station. Everybody out for Litcrawl!

Here’s Brick + Mortar, an indie duo from Toms River, NJ with “Train.” Movie buffs help me out – what’s the reference at 1:48? I’m blanking.

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Just Married? Still Married

When you’re about to be married, the attention doesn’t stop. Engagement parties, toasts, showers, bridal parties, bachelor weekends, and the biggie: the “Just Married” newspaper wedding announcement. As someone who reads the New York Times Sunday wedding announcements before I even look at the concert listings, I get it. The bride and groom are so fresh, so new, so full of hope and romance! Let’s face it: when you’ve been married for 23 years, like I will be as of tomorrow, it ain’t all love poems and first dances. If I were grocery stock, I’d have a thick layer of dust, and my packaging design would be considered “vintage.”

Still, there’s something to be said for simple endurance, the victory of hanging in there. Herewith, a “Still Married” wedding announcement for my husband and me. It’s dedicated to all the brides and grooms whose memories are shot and must rely on the date inscribed inside their wedding rings to remind them what day their anniversary is.

Nancy, a writer, and her husband, a banker who never asked to be the subject of anyone’s blog, anyway, were married twenty-three years ago in Rochester, New York, in the bride’s childhood church. A priest with a mullet that bordered on the criminal performed the service, hopefully unaware that the bride and groom had nicknamed her “King Sunny Ade” after their first pre-marital counseling meeting.

Nancy, clinging to her 40s with her fingertips, writes for various media outlets that have a habit of closing up shop shortly after she contributes a story. Her other full time job is as mother to the couple’s two teenage daughters, who don’t like it when she threatens to spend her retirement years in a Tiny House On Wheels driving back and forth between wherever they settle. She holds a funk-related Guinness World Record.

The husband, aged “Really? You look at least a decade younger,” is a clean-tech lender at a large national bank that once featured him in its Annual Report, posed against a field full of solar panels. He too works full time as a father to the couple’s daughters, although the parent/child relationship there is sometimes flipped as the girls tell him what’s what, all day long. The bike shop economy of the East Bay depends heavily upon his patronage.

Friends and family of Nancy and her husband often remark on the ying-yang nature of their relationship, and the way they complement each other. “I feel like we’re good at recognizing things about each other that we ourselves wouldn’t notice,” Nancy says.

For instance, last weekend the husband and his bike met a barbed wire fence while bombing down a steep descent on a group ride. The fence won, resulting in deep puncture wounds in both of the husband’s arms. (The bike was ok, thank god, and thank you for asking.) While carefully changing her husband’s wound dressings when he got home that night, Nancy pointed out that he was now perforated, for easy tearing. The husband, for his part, pointed out that Nancy was the least compassionate nurse ever. Upon hearing this story and once she finally stopped laughing, the maid of honor at the 1992 wedding, Nancy’s sister Sally, said, “I’d expect nothing less from the two of you.”

Even after being married for two plus decades, they continue to find new arenas they share in common. Using wrong debit cards, for instance. Nancy once bought a turkey sandwich with the debit card connected to the couple’s home equity loan, while recently, the husband merrily drained his mother’s checking account via purchases at Oakland bike stores, bagel shops, and diners, not realizing that the new debit card he’d received in the mail was because his mom had made him co-signer for her financial matters. (His mom caught the problem before any checks bounced, thank god and thank you for asking.) “Just when I think I know everything about him,” Nancy says, “he still surprises me.” Also his mom.

They share a passion for sleeping. That’s not a euphemism. They nap with such conviction and dedication on the weekends that their longtime friend Neil says, “Instead of saying ‘I took a nap,’ I say ‘I took a Kho.'”

The 1992 wedding was wonderful, though most of the details are fuzzy by now. Nancy remembers that she lost her shoes during the reception. The guests remember the couple doing a freestyle routine to “The Hardest Thing” by Poi Dog Pondering, probably. “In retrospect, that was pretty spastic,” says Nancy. “Also, it’s a very long song.”

This year, the couple has chosen to bypass the traditional exchange of silver-plated gifts for their 23rd anniversary, instead saying, “Just get that bike stuff you want,” and “Just get that purse you like,” while cleaning up the kitchen after dinner one Tuesday evening. They agree that as long as their daughters are good, and they’re still together, there’s not a damn thing they lack.

The last song of their reception was “It’s the End of the World” by R.E.M. It was the end of the world as they knew it. But it felt fine.

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