Emmanuel Burgin's Blog, page 2
April 24, 2014
Bob Dylan said “Play On”
I sat face to face with the road manager on draftsman metal stools discussing my responsibilities as Petty’s security.
I had ten years experience in crowd control security, and had worked everything from small intimate nightclubs to large music festivals like Cal Jam. I was comfortable with stage and backstage security but I had never been on tour. During the discussion the road manager received a call. He listened with his head down nodding, and then he looked at me and speaking into the receiver said “I’ll ask him.”
Dylan’s security man would not be able to rejoin the tour until its second week. With his hand covering the receiver he asked if I thought I could handle the tour security until Dylan’s man rejoined the tour.
I nodded. And just like that I was the security director for the hottest tour of the summer: the Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Confession Tour.
The tour kicked off at the San Diego Sports Arena. But I won’t go into the details of those first shows. I want to tell of the event that happens in Houston, Texas at the Astroworld’s Southern Star Amphitheater, a moment that steps forward from time to time from the recesses of my mind.
After two weeks Dylan’s man returned for the Cal Berkeley show. I was anxious to meet him because he was one of the best in the business and I wanted to learn from him. He was an ex-Dallas police officer and had been a bodyguard for Elvis Priestly and had run the security for Led Zeppelin.
I had just secured Petty and the Heartbreakers in their dressing room, when I received word that Dylan was on his way. I secured the area near the entrance; the only entrance being through the front where several fans had already gathered. The van pulled to a stop and the side door slid open with force and out stepped Johnson. Dylan trailed behind him with one hand on Johnson’s shoulder. Although Johnson was not a big man, maybe five-ten and one hundred ninety pounds or so, his presence could not be overstated. As he moved through the crowd, the crowd parted like the Red Sea, giving him and Dylan plenty of room. Johnson, stoic, took long forceful strides and in seconds made his way with Dylan to the dressing room entrance. I was impressed.
Once Dylan was in his dressing room Johnson walked through the narrow hallways from end to end, and then came over and introduced himself and told me that everything looked secured. Again, I was very comfortable with setting back stage security. My biggest concerns were the logistics of hotel, airport and transportation security.
Roadies, managers, wardrobe and venue personnel all moved about the hallway in hushed tones. Johnson and I faced each other, our backs against opposite walls, our heads constantly turning, watching everyone coming and going.
“I heard you’ve been doing a pretty good job.”
It was good to hear that but I really hadn’t given it much consideration about what others thought. I had been too busy and the responsibility for the safety of not only Dylan and the band but their family members as well on my shoulders filled every moment of my waking hours.
“Thanks. No one in the group has been a problem.”
“This is a good group of people. Not like some other bands.”
“Yeah, I feel guilty with all the money I’m getting paid.”
Johnson stared at me for a moment and then stepped towards me. He looked me in the eye and said not to feel guilty.
“There is going to come a time when you’ll earn it.”
Those words would be prophetic.
Weeks later we arrived at Astroworld’s Southern Star Amphitheater, the concert venue of Six Flags family amusement park and it presented security concerns. The backstage area of the Amphitheater abutted the amusement park separated only by a six-foot chain link fence. It was a big worry; I felt as if my back were exposed but I had to have faith in the house security. It was their back yard, so to speak, and I had to trust that they knew had to secure the area. Also the backstage area felt more like a fairground set up. It was too open, too many people backstage roaming around, too many guest, hustle and bustle, roadies, venue personnel, police, and celebrity well wishers and their security. I was uneasy, more than usual.
Out front on the lawn in front of the stage was festival seating with fixed seating further back. A three-foot fence separated the crowd from the seven-foot elevated stage, leaving approximately five feet of no man’s land between the fence and the stage where a few venue security men stood. Tan bunting hung from the stage hiding the scaffolding.
Directly behind the stage were only a few feet separating it from the six-foot chain link fence and the amusement area. On the other side of the fence were train tracks for an old steam engine powered train that traveled along the perimeter of the park. Johnson and I were told that the amusement area would be closed and secured by the time the evening concert began.
Part of my responsibilities as tour security director was to meet with the city police and discuss any threats brought against Dylan or other members. There were always a few crazies and it seemed Dylan always brought out more than few. Each threat was given a level of concern and handled accordingly. However, because Johnson was an ex-Dallas police officer and knew several of the Houston officers he decided to meet with them and the message relayed to me from Johnson was that there were no legitimate threats.
To reach the stage from the dressing area meant crossing about eighty feet of open area, exposed on both sides, the festival seating area on the west and the closed park area on the east. As the closing act, Dylan, Petty and the Heartbreakers would take the stage, at ten pm.
After escorting the band to the stage without incident, I took a quick look around the stage to make sure only those authorized were there; no friends of the roadies etc . . . this was never a problem. Dylan ran a tight ship. He was all business when it was show time. I positioned myself at the top of the stage stairs. From this position I had a clear view of the stage, and the audience.
Once I was sure everyone on stage was part of the team. I turned my attention to the audience and began sweeping it with my eyes, looking for anything out of the ordinary, any anomaly: one person not clapping, someone not cheering, hands in pockets, cameras held funny, was it a camera?, someone testing the chain-link fence. What sticks out, who is trying to fit in. I swept the band again. What were they looking at? I looked at the roadies and engineers behind the band. Were they okay? Was it still the same personnel? Again I swept the audience. Is anyone coming up the stairs behind me?
It was like this for as long as the band was on the stage; a never-ending high alert and awareness. At 11:30 Johnson came running up the stairs and spoke into my ear.
“We have bomb threat. The police say it’s legitimate. It’s set to go off at midnight. Go ask Bob what he wants to do. I’m going to go talk to the sergeant and gets things coordinated.”
He turned and hurried down the stairs. I felt the ice drop into my veins. Dylan was stage front center. It would have been nice if he would have been off to one side of the stage or the other or had moved to the back of the stage as he sometimes did to give instructions to an engineer or roadie. Sometimes he would walk over to Petty or Benmont Tench, the keyboardist, and mention something. But at the moment he was front and center. I wore all black to be inconspicuous around the stage. But there was no hiding what I needed to do. I didn’t even try making myself small. I just walked across the stage towards him. Dylan titled his head slightly, still playing his guitar and I relayed Johnson’s message. I spoke into his left ear while looking at the band, at Petty in particular. Petty returned my gaze.
“We have a bomb threat and it’s set to go off at midnight; Johnson wants to know what you want to do.”
“Play on,” Dylan said without hesitation.
I turned and walked off stage, then quickened my pace down the stairs. I met Johnson in the open area and passed on Dylan’s reply to “play on”. We jumped into action. The police were to search the dressing rooms while Johnson and I looked under the stage. We had twenty minutes.
The stage was high enough to walk upright but the tubing, the scaffolding supporting the stage, crisscrossed everywhere. I stepped through openings, shinning my small flashlight on every support bar, every patch of grass, and plywood flooring. I could hear Dylan start into “Blowin’ in the Wind”. And I started to think. How did I get myself into this situation? I’m searching for a bomb that is set to go off in twenty minutes. How in the Hell did I get myself into this. My nerves buzzed and only my intense focus kept my muscles from twitching and several times I inhaled deeply through my nostrils and then exhaled slowly out my pursed lips.
Johnson and I searched every inch beneath the stage and found nothing, not even a gum wrapper. We came out from beneath the stage. I felt relieved. It was good to be out in the open. We met the police and they had come up empty. We had five minutes. And then, as we stood in a closed circle, better to hear each other over the music, the 610 limited, the steam locomotive that circumvented the park roared to life and began ever so slowly lurching towards us.
The park was closed: dark. Who or what was on that train? The train was about eighty yards down the track and would reach us in a few minutes, approximately at midnight. Dylan was singing “So Long, Good Luck and Goodbye”. Johnson told me to stay with the band and he and the police turned and ran toward the train. They jumped over the small fence, boarded the train and began searching for the bomb, also trying to stop it before it passed behind the stage.
From atop the stairs stage left I could see Johnson and the officers working from the front of the train towards the rear. The engine pulled open covered cars and Johnson and the officers were jumping from one to the other, searching under seats and climbing on top of the car roofs. Still the train eased closer. I looked at my watch as the train neared: two minutes to midnight. Dylan would soon begin the last song on the set-list: “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”
Then a thought came, one that I still carry and will all my life, did I really want to be on the stage at midnight?
I mean I was not getting paid enough to get blown to pieces. Besides what good could I do standing here? I could walk off the stage and move nearer to the dressing rooms. Could I do that? And if I did could I live with it? I thought about life itself and found it good, life was good. I liked life. I didn’t want to give it up. All reasoning told me I should not be on the stage at midnight.
I’m not sure why I stayed. To this day I ponder that. It surely wasn’t to be a hero. If the bomb went off I would not have been in any position to save anyone. More than likely someone would be trying to save me. I think I was more afraid of living my life thinking I didn’t do the right thing.
The train came to a stop with the engine directly behind the stage and Johnson and the officers frantically searching the engine compartment. I looked at my watch: twenty seconds. “Mama come take this badge off of me. I don’t need it anymore”, Dylan sang.
I closed my eyes and ever so slightly re-coiled my head like a turtle and held my breath.
I don’t know where I went consciously but when I returned Dylan was singing “Knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door. . .” The world had rush back to me. Johnson came up the stairs perspiring, shaking his head.
“You think you’re getting paid too much now?
“Hell no,” I answered
Later when I got the band back to the hotel and safely into their rooms, I flopped on my bed with a bottle of Jack Daniel. My skin tingled and I drank straight from the bottle and I drank as if it was water and I drank until the tingling stopped.
Bob Dylan said “Play On”
Luck led me to the office of Bob Dylan’s Manager. I found myself sitting in the Hollywood and Sunset office because during the two-week hiatus from the Confessions World Tour, Tom Petty’s body guard, a film stuntman, broke a leg performing on location in Jamaica. The North American leg of the tour, forty-four dates in fifty-five days was to start in five days and the tour’s road manager was in a pinch and I had been recommended as a replacement.
I sat face to face with the road manager on draftsman metal stools discussing my responsibilities as Petty’s security.
I had ten years experience in crowd control security, and had worked everything from small intimate nightclubs to large music festivals like Cal Jam. I was comfortable with stage and backstage security but I had never been on tour. During the discussion the road manager received a call. He listened with his head down nodding, and then he looked at me and speaking into the receiver said “I’ll ask him.”
Dylan’s security man would not be able to rejoin the tour until its second week. With his hand covering the receiver he asked if I thought I could handle the tour security until Dylan’s man rejoined the tour.
I nodded. And just like that I was the security director for the hottest tour of the summer: the Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers Confession Tour.
The tour kicked off at the San Diego Sports Arena. But I won’t go into the details of those first shows. I want to tell of the event that happens in Houston, Texas at the Astroworld’s Southern Star Amphitheater, a moment that steps forward from time to time from the recesses of my mind.
After two weeks Dylan’s man returned for the Cal Berkeley show. I was anxious to meet him because he was one of the best in the business and I wanted to learn from him. He was an ex-Dallas police officer and had been a bodyguard for Elvis Priestly and had run the security for Led Zeppelin.
I had just secured Petty and the Heartbreakers in their dressing room, when I received word that Dylan was on his way. I secured the area near the entrance; the only entrance being through the front where several fans had already gathered. The van pulled to a stop and the side door slid open with force and out stepped Johnson. Dylan trailed behind him with one hand on Johnson’s shoulder. Although Johnson was not a big man, maybe five-ten and one hundred ninety pounds or so, his presence could not be overstated. As he moved through the crowd, the crowd parted like the Red Sea, giving him and Dylan plenty of room. Johnson, stoic, took long forceful strides and in seconds made his way with Dylan to the dressing room entrance. I was impressed.
Once Dylan was in his dressing room Johnson walked through the narrow hallways from end to end, and then came over and introduced himself and told me that everything looked secured. Again, I was very comfortable with setting back stage security. My biggest concerns were the logistics of hotel, airport and transportation security.
Roadies, managers, wardrobe and venue personnel all moved about the hallway in hushed tones. Johnson and I faced each other, our backs against opposite walls, our heads constantly turning, watching everyone coming and going.
“I heard you’ve been doing a pretty good job.”
It was good to hear that but I really hadn’t given it much consideration about what others thought. I had been too busy and the responsibility for the safety of not only Dylan and the band but their family members as well on my shoulders filled every moment of my waking hours.
“Thanks. No one in the group has been a problem.”
“This is a good group of people. Not like some other bands.”
“Yeah, I feel guilty with all the money I’m getting paid.”
Johnson stared at me for a moment and then stepped towards me. He looked me in the eye and said not to feel guilty.
“There is going to come a time when you’ll earn it.”
Those words would be prophetic.
Weeks later we arrived at Astroworld’s Southern Star Amphitheater, the concert venue of Six Flags family amusement park and it presented security concerns. The backstage area of the Amphitheater abutted the amusement park separated only by a six-foot chain link fence. It was a big worry; I felt as if my back were exposed but I had to have faith in the house security. It was their back yard, so to speak, and I had to trust that they knew had to secure the area. Also the backstage area felt more like a fairground set up. It was too open, too many people backstage roaming around, too many guest, hustle and bustle, roadies, venue personnel, police, and celebrity well wishers and their security. I was uneasy, more than usual.
Out front on the lawn in front of the stage was festival seating with fixed seating further back. A three-foot fence separated the crowd from the seven-foot elevated stage, leaving approximately five feet of no man’s land between the fence and the stage where a few venue security men stood. Tan bunting hung from the stage hiding the scaffolding.
Directly behind the stage were only a few feet separating it from the six-foot chain link fence and the amusement area. On the other side of the fence were train tracks for an old steam engine powered train that traveled along the perimeter of the park. Johnson and I were told that the amusement area would be closed and secured by the time the evening concert began.
Part of my responsibilities as tour security director was to meet with the city police and discuss any threats brought against Dylan or other members. There were always a few crazies and it seemed Dylan always brought out more than few. Each threat was given a level of concern and handled accordingly. However, because Johnson was an ex-Dallas police officer and knew several of the Houston officers he decided to meet with them and the message relayed to me from Johnson was that there were no legitimate threats.
To reach the stage from the dressing area meant crossing about eighty feet of open area, exposed on both sides, the festival seating area on the west and the closed park area on the east. As the closing act, Dylan, Petty and the Heartbreakers would take the stage, at ten pm.
After escorting the band to the stage without incident, I took a quick look around the stage to make sure only those authorized were there; no friends of the roadies etc . . . this was never a problem. Dylan ran a tight ship. He was all business when it was show time. I positioned myself at the top of the stage stairs. From this position I had a clear view of the stage, and the audience.
Once I was sure everyone on stage was part of the team. I turned my attention to the audience and began sweeping it with my eyes, looking for anything out of the ordinary, any anomaly: one person not clapping, someone not cheering, hands in pockets, cameras held funny, was it a camera?, someone testing the chain-link fence. What sticks out, who is trying to fit in. I swept the band again. What were they looking at? I looked at the roadies and engineers behind the band. Were they okay? Was it still the same personnel? Again I swept the audience. Is anyone coming up the stairs behind me?
It was like this for as long as the band was on the stage; a never-ending high alert and awareness. At 11:30 Johnson came running up the stairs and spoke into my ear.
“We have bomb threat. The police say it’s legitimate. It’s set to go off at midnight. Go ask Bob what he wants to do. I’m going to go talk to the sergeant and gets things coordinated.”
He turned and hurried down the stairs. I felt the ice drop into my veins. Dylan was stage front center. It would have been nice if he would have been off to one side of the stage or the other or had moved to the back of the stage as he sometimes did to give instructions to an engineer or roadie. Sometimes he would walk over to Petty or Benmont Tench, the keyboardist, and mention something. But at the moment he was front and center. I wore all black to be inconspicuous around the stage. But there was no hiding what I needed to do. I didn’t even try making myself small. I just walked across the stage towards him. Dylan titled his head slightly, still playing his guitar and I relayed Johnson’s message. I spoke into his left ear while looking at the band, at Petty in particular. Petty returned my gaze.
“We have a bomb threat and it’s set to go off at midnight; Johnson wants to know what you want to do.”
“Play on,” Dylan said without hesitation.
I turned and walked off stage, then quickened my pace down the stairs. I met Johnson in the open area and passed on Dylan’s reply to “play on”. We jumped into action. The police were to search the dressing rooms while Johnson and I looked under the stage. We had twenty minutes.
The stage was high enough to walk upright but the tubing, the scaffolding supporting the stage, crisscrossed everywhere. I stepped through openings, shinning my small flashlight on every support bar, every patch of grass, and plywood flooring. I could hear Dylan start into “Blowin’ in the Wind”. And I started to think. How did I get myself into this situation? I’m searching for a bomb that is set to go off in twenty minutes. How in the Hell did I get myself into this. My nerves buzzed and only my intense focus kept my muscles from twitching and several times I inhaled deeply through my nostrils and then exhaled slowly out my pursed lips.
Johnson and I searched every inch beneath the stage and found nothing, not even a gum wrapper. We came out from beneath the stage. I felt relieved. It was good to be out in the open. We met the police and they had come up empty. We had five minutes. And then, as we stood in a closed circle, better to hear each other over the music, the 610 limited, the steam locomotive that circumvented the park roared to life and began ever so slowly lurching towards us.
The park was closed: dark. Who or what was on that train? The train was about eighty yards down the track and would reach us in a few minutes, approximately at midnight. Dylan was singing “So Long, Good Luck and Goodbye”. Johnson told me to stay with the band and he and the police turned and ran toward the train. They jumped over the small fence, boarded the train and began searching for the bomb, also trying to stop it before it passed behind the stage.
From atop the stairs stage left I could see Johnson and the officers working from the front of the train towards the rear. The engine pulled open covered cars and Johnson and the officers were jumping from one to the other, searching under seats and climbing on top of the car roofs. Still the train eased closer. I looked at my watch as the train neared: two minutes to midnight. Dylan would soon begin the last song on the set-list: “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”
Then a thought came, one that I still carry and will all my life, did I really want to be on the stage at midnight?
I mean I was not getting paid enough to get blown to pieces. Besides what good could I do standing here? I could walk off the stage and move nearer to the dressing rooms. Could I do that? And if I did could I live with it? I thought about life itself and found it good, life was good. I liked life. I didn’t want to give it up. All reasoning told me I should not be on the stage at midnight.
I’m not sure why I stayed. To this day I ponder that. It surely wasn’t to be a hero. If the bomb went off I would not have been in any position to save anyone. More than likely someone would be trying to save me. I think I was more afraid of living my life thinking I didn’t do the right thing.
The train came to a stop with the engine directly behind the stage and Johnson and the officers frantically searching the engine compartment. I looked at my watch: twenty seconds. “Mama come take this badge off of me. I don’t need it anymore”, Dylan sang.
I closed my eyes and ever so slightly re-coiled my head like a turtle and held my breath.
I don’t know where I went consciously but when I returned Dylan was singing “Knock, knock, knocking on heaven’s door. . .” The world had rush back to me. Johnson came up the stairs perspiring, shaking his head.
“You think you’re getting paid too much now?
“Hell no,” I answered
Later when I got the band back to the hotel and safely into their rooms, I flopped on my bed with a bottle of Jack Daniel. My skin tingled and I drank straight from the bottle and I drank as if it was water and I drank until the tingling stopped.
March 6, 2014
Wanda Coleman and My One Hundred Rejections
I wasn’t embarrassed of writing poetry but rather believed it to be personal. My father suffered a stroke my freshmen year and I remember sitting in a music appreciation class and writing a paragraph in my notebook on life and death and titling it “The Cycle of Life”. With that entry the flood gates opened and for the next eight years I poured my feelings and thoughts onto the page.
I had known for quite some time that I wanted to write for a living but I didn’t know how to go about it. I had earned a football scholarship and had wanted to play pro football. But even the dream of a professional football career was only a means to an end because I knew football took only six months out of the year and the income would allow me to write the other half of the year. A writing life is what I desired.
Writing took hold of me my sophomore year of high school in Ms. Johnson’s English class when she assigned the task of writing either several forms of poems or of writing a short story. Being that I was football player I was not writing poetry. Although, later, I did write a Haiku, which I believe, was truly the spark that ignited my love of playing with words. Moreover, like many students, I had been exposed to Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” and the “Nick Adam Stories.” So it is no great leap of the imagination to see why I chose the short story over the poem.
The story was a success. Ms. Johnson selected mine to read to the class and I could see in her eyes the admiration for my effort and I also saw some odd looks from my classmates, and the pretty blond I had a crush on flashed me a cute smile. I was hooked. In football I enjoyed the applause of the crowd and the slap on the back from teammates and coaches after a good play, and now sitting there in class as my teacher read my story I had the same feeling.
In nineteen eighty-four, I decided it was time. I was going to make the commitment to writing, and using Hemingway as a template I would begin by writing short stories and once I had honed my craft I would take on the big fish; the novel.
It happen my decision of committing to the literary life coincided with the appearance of the poet Wanda Coleman at Chelsea Bookstore in Long Beach, just a few blocks from where I lived in Belmont Shores. Ms. Coleman had earned a reputation not only for her poetry but also for her expressive readings.
The bookstore, a converted craftsman house, still had a homey, cozy feel to it. Ms. Coleman had drawn a full house. Some patrons sat in the chairs positioned in front of the platform on which a podium had been placed. Others squeezed into nooks and alcoves and a few stood. I had found a small chair overlooked near the door.
When she began I don’t recall her ever looking down at her book placed on the podium. The words rolled from her tongue and leapt into the air and carried over my head and out the door. The room filled with her images, they danced before me, and they lifted me, held me, taught me and then gently brought me back. It was a Sunday-go-to-meeting kind of experience.
After the reading I sat quietly among the hushed audience letting the words and my emotions subside. Slowly some made their way to her and shook her hand and engaged her in conversation. I stood and nervously waited. I was anxious because I had decided to ask her for advice and I had never spoken to a poet. I would ask her. She would know.
I moved toward her making sure I was the last in line. When it was my turn I shook her hand, thanked her for reading and then I asked.
“Ms. Coleman I want to be a writer. How do I become a writer?”
She looked down from her platform, clasping her book of poetry with both hands, leaned toward me, and looked into my eyes.
“How many rejection slips do you have?
“None,” I answered.
She leaned back ever so slightly.
“Come back when you have a hundred,” She said.
I nodded. She continued to look at me, wondering, I believe, if I got it. Again I thanked her and I left. I got the message. I began writing short stories and sending them out. I sent them everywhere: from big magazines and prestigious literary reviews to obscure start ups. Nine years later I sold my first short story and received a check for ten dollars. With the check in hand I hurried over to my desk and opened the top drawer, and I began to count. I had saved every rejection slip from photocopied prints to nicely handwritten notes of encouragement: Ninety-six.
I always knew that one day I would tell her she was right and I would thank her for the best advice any novice could get. So it was with sadness that I read Ms. Coleman had passed in November of last year. If I have any regrets it is that when Ms. Coleman came to San Diego for a speaking engagement I could not thank her in person. I could not hold up my published novel and show her. However, I believe she would understand. I was on my book tour.
Wanda Coleman and My One Hundred Rejections
I began writing poetry my freshmen year of college and I never felt the need to let on that I wrote poetry, and, as it happen, it never came up in a huddle or scrum or in the bar after a game or match. I had written behind closed doors for eight years when I met the poet Wanda Coleman, and it was she who gave me the, figuratively, swift kick in the behind that sent me on the road to becoming a published writer.
I wasn’t embarrassed of writing poetry but rather believed it to be personal. My father suffered a stroke my freshmen year and I remember sitting in a music appreciation class and writing a paragraph in my notebook on life and death titled it “The Cycle of Life”. With that entry the flood gates opened and for the next eight years I poured my feelings and thoughts onto the page.
I had known for some time that I wanted to write for a living but I didn’t know how to go about it. I had earned a football scholarship and had wanted to play pro football. But even the dream of a professional football career was only a means to an end because I knew football took only six months out of the year and the income would allow me to write the other half of the year. A writing life is what I desired.
Writing took hold of me my sophomore year of high school in Ms. Johnson’s English class when she assigned the task of writing either several forms of poems or of writing a short story. Being that I was football player I was not writing poetry. Although, later, I did write a Haiku, which I believe, was truly the spark that ignited my love of playing with words. Moreover, like many students, I had been exposed to Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” and the “Nick Adam Stories.” So it is no great leap of the imagination to see why I chose the short story over the poem.
The story was a success. Ms. Johnson selected mine to read to the class and I could see in her eyes the admiration for my effort and I also saw some odd looks from my classmates, and the pretty blond I had a crush on flashed me a cute smile. I was hooked. In football I enjoyed the applause of the crowd and the slap on the back from teammates and coaches after a good play, and now sitting there in class as my teacher read my story I had the same feeling.
In nineteen eighty-four, I decided it was time. I was going to commit to writing, and using Hemingway as a template I would begin by writing short stories and once I had honed my craft I would take on the big fish; the novel.
It happen my decision of committing to the literary life coincided with the poet Wanda Coleman appearing at Chelsea Bookstore in Long Beach, just a few blocks from where I lived in Belmont Shores. Ms. Coleman had earned a reputation not only for her poetry but also for her expressive readings.
The bookstore, a converted craftsman house, still had a homey, cozy feel to it. Ms. Coleman had drawn a full house. Some patrons sat in the chairs positioned in front of the platform and podium. Others squeezed into nooks and alcoves and a few stood. I had found a small chair overlooked near the door.
When she began I don’t recall her ever looking down at her book placed on the podium. The words rolled from her tongue and leapt into the air and carried over my head and out the door. The room filled with her images, they danced before me, and they lifted me, held me, taught me and then gently brought me back. It was a Sunday-go-to-meeting kind of experience.
After the reading I sat quietly among the hushed audience letting the words and my emotions subside. Slowly some made their way to her and shook her hand and engaged her in conversation. I stood and nervously waited. I was anxious because I had decided to ask her for advice and I had never spoken to a poet. I would ask her. She would know.
I moved toward her making sure I was the last in line. When it was my turn I shook her hand, thanked her for reading and then I asked.
“Ms. Coleman I want to be a writer. How do I become a writer?”
She looked down from her platform, clasping her book of poetry with both hands, leaned toward me, and looked into my eyes.
“How many rejection slips do you have?
“None,” I answered.
She leaned back ever so slightly.
“Come back when you have a hundred,” She said.
I nodded. She continued to look at me, wondering, I believe, if I got it. Again I thanked her and I left. I got the message. I began writing short stories and sending them out. I sent them everywhere: from big magazines and prestigious literary reviews to obscure start-ups. Nine years later I sold my first short story and received a check for ten dollars. With the check in hand I hurried over to my desk and opened the top drawer, and I began to count. I had saved every rejection slip from photocopied prints to nicely handwritten notes of encouragement: Ninety-six.
I always knew that one day I would tell her she was right and I would thank her for the best advice any novice could get. So it was with sadness that I read Ms. Coleman had passed in November of last year. If I have any regrets it is that when Ms. Coleman came to San Diego for a speaking engagement I could not thank her in person. I could not hold up my published novel and show her. However, I believe she would have understood. I was on my book tour.
February 26, 2014
Drinking with Bukowski
In three days I went from being one of the most sought after tour security directors to oblivion. I spent a month in the hospital with the best ophthalmologists trying to save my eye, forget about the vision, these doctors where just trying to keep me from having a hole in my head.
It was five months later when I came out of a drug induced, painkilling stupor that I realized I had missed my appointment with Elton John and his manager: I was to have met them two days after the ACDC concert. Elton John was going out on a world tour and they wanted me.
The successful twelve-hour surgery left me with an eyeball but with a nonadjustable iris and no lens, resulting in light coming through but without the ability to focus it; all things bright and blurry. With only one good eye my days as a security director and bodyguard were over. While I contemplated what I might do for a living during my months of recuperation, one thing was certain I wanted to pursue my writing in earnest. This occurred to me when the paramedics came to take me to the hospital and one of them sat with me and took my blood pressure. It was normal to his surprise. He mentioned how calm I was in spite of my situation.
I assumed , as the strap constricted my bicep, that I had lost my vision because I was not able to see out of it, nothing, even though the paramedic had opened my eyelid wide and had shined a flashlight into it, darkness. Funny was my brain kept telling me that it should see. I could tell my brain was trying to compute but it wasn’t receiving any information. So I had accepted my loss of vision, and what I was thinking at that moment was if I were to ever lose sight in the other eye how would I become a writer?
When a friend called and said he needed help running a rock ‘n roll club, I told him I would accept if he understood that I was really going to get serious about a writing career. Two years prior to touring with Dylan and Petty I had decided I wanted to write for a living. I had been writing poetry for eight years, although I kept it a secret, and I had written a few short stories, but when the big money came along I put the writing on the back burner. I was having too good a time. The injury set my priorities straight.
John Fender had bought the bottom floor of the Balboa hotel which had been turned into an apartment complex for the poor and elderly. The Balboa built in 1929 across from the beach was known in its time to be a place for gangsters and rum runners. In the fifties Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin would hang out in the basement bar called The Dungeon. It had its own canopy entrance off the street and a back exit through a cave walkway just past the bathrooms. The bar was still there like the day it closed: glasses neatly placed in the back bar, candles on the tables, plush red leather booths and arm chairs.
Upstairs the ballroom became the concert hall and the smaller rooms used for conferences and weddings. Directly above the abandoned Dungeon bar was the lobby bar of the old grand hotel now nothing more than a dive bar called Players. It was in the Dungeon bar, drinking with Phillip after hours that he and I concocted our idea to go have a drink with Charles Bukowski.
Phillip was a friend of the owner and an ex-New York cop. He was part of our security team. Some of the guys had made fun of his misshapen face and out of aligned shoulders. Not the greatest human specimen to say the least, but that all changed when Fender told us that Phillip while on duty with his partner had been ambushed in an alley complex of some kind. Phillip shot his way out only to realize his buddy was still in the crossfire. So he shot his way back in and carried his partner out. Phillip took several shots in the shoulder, back and two in the face. He received a bunch of medals took his medical retirement said fuck it to the east coast and came out west.
We were down in the bar drinking because I had the idea of using the space for poetry readings. It would be perfect and Phillip agreed. We finished the few beers I had brought down and then I went up to the dive bar and came back with a couple of bottles of Jack Daniel.
I walked around the bar telling Phillip where I would put the platform for the poets, how I would set the lighting and Phillip sat on the bar and watched me walk back and forth. At some point Bukowski’s name came up. He lived just over the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, about a twenty-minute drive.
I don’t know if his name came up because we thought it would be cool to have him read at one of our readings or what, but fueled by the Jack Daniels we started thinking about asking him personally. The hell with sending him a letter or calling his agent, if he had one, fuck that lets just grab a bottle of Jack and get in our car and drive over there and ask him.
He likes that shit any way right? People coming over and sharing some whiskey with him, telling a few stories just shooting the breeze, hell yeah he likes that kind of shit, free booze, hell yeah. Phillip broke into a Bukowski poem “this is as far as we go…so I let him have it: old withered whore of time…your breast taste the sour cream of dreaming…”
I cheered and took a chug of Jack and I jumped into a booth and I returned the favor. “he spent the money in her purse.. He bought good French wine, frijoles, a pound of grass and two parakeets..”
Phillip clapped and hooted, finished his third tall glass of Jack and then stood on the bar “the elephants are caked with mud and tired and the rhinos don’t move… the zebras are stupid dead stems and the lions don’t roar” Phillip bellowed and it echoed through the bar and the far chambers of the underground.
And on we went, lines plucked from our skin, words upon words. We finished the first bottle of Jack and started in on a second. Phillip began walking along the bar to and fro, recalling something. I stumbled from the bar into a booth, and I sat clinging to the table trying to avoid the inertia of falling backwards. I watched Phillip and he had gone somewhere else. I had one more in me but I don’t think he heard “we have everything and we have nothing and some men do it in churches and some men do it by tearing butterflies in half and some men do it in Palm Springs laying it into butterblondes with Cadillac souls…"
I woke up and it was a Tuesday morning dust was in the sunrays Phillip was gone and I remember thinking another day killed.
Drinking with Bukowski
Emmanuel Burgin
I ended up here, an assistant manager at Fenders, a music club in Long Beach California, after injuring my eye while working security at an ACDC concert at the Irvine Meadows Amphitheater. It had been a one night job to help out a friend in a pinch. The near loss of vision in my right eye came just three days after finishing a two month North American tour with Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
In three days I went from being one of the most sought after tour security directors to oblivion. I spent a month in the hospital with the best ophthalmologists trying to save my eye, forget about the vision, these doctors where just trying to keep me from having a hole in my head.
It was five months later when I came out of a drug induced, painkilling stupor that I realized I had missed my appointment with Elton John and his manager: I was to have met them two days after the ACDC concert. Elton John was going out on a world tour and they wanted me.
The successful twelve-hour surgery left me with an eyeball but with a nonadjustable iris and no lens, resulting in light coming through but without the ability to focus it; all things bright and blurry. With only one good eye my days as a security director and bodyguard were over. While I contemplated what I might do for a living during my months of recuperation, one thing was certain I wanted to pursue my writing in earnest. This occurred to me when the paramedics came to take me to the hospital and one of them sat with me and took my blood pressure. It was normal to his surprise. He mentioned how calm I was in spite of my situation.
I assumed , as the strap constricted my bicep, that I had lost my vision because I was not able to see out of it, nothing, even though the paramedic had opened my eyelid wide and had shined a flashlight into it, darkness. Funny was my brain kept telling me that it should see. I could tell my brain was trying to compute but it wasn’t receiving any information. So I had accepted my loss of vision, and what I was thinking at that moment was if I were to ever lose sight in the other eye how would I become a writer?
When a friend called and said he needed help running a rock ‘n roll club, I told him I would accept if he understood that I was really going to get serious about a writing career. Two years prior to touring with Dylan and Petty I had decided I wanted to write for a living. I had been writing poetry for eight years, although I kept it a secret, and I had written a few short stories, but when the big money came along I put the writing on the back burner. I was having too good a time. The injury set my priorities straight.
John Fender had bought the bottom floor of the Balboa hotel which had been turned into an apartment complex for the poor and elderly. The Balboa built in 1929 across from the beach was known in its time to be a place for gangsters and rum runners. In the fifties Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin would hang out in the basement bar called The Dungeon. It had its own canopy entrance off the street and a back exit through a cave walkway just past the bathrooms. The bar was still there like the day it closed: glasses neatly placed in the back bar, candles on the tables, plush red leather booths and arm chairs.
Upstairs the ballroom became the concert hall and the smaller rooms used for conferences and weddings. Directly above the abandoned Dungeon bar was the lobby bar of the old grand hotel now nothing more than a dive bar called Players. It was in the Dungeon bar, drinking with Phillip after hours that he and I concocted our idea to go have a drink with Charles Bukowski.
Phillip was a friend of the owner and an ex-New York cop. He was part of our security team. Some of the guys had made fun of his misshapen face and out of aligned shoulders. Not the greatest human specimen to say the least, but that all changed when Fender told us that Phillip while on duty with his partner had been ambushed in an alley complex of some kind. Phillip shot his way out only to realize his buddy was still in the crossfire. So he shot his way back in and carried his partner out. Phillip took several shots in the shoulder, back and two in the face. He received a bunch of medals took his medical retirement said fuck it to the east coast and came out west.
We were down in the bar drinking because I had the idea of using the space for poetry readings. It would be perfect and Phillip agreed. We finished the few beers I had brought down and then I went up to the dive bar and came back with a couple of bottles of Jack Daniel.
I walked around the bar telling Phillip where I would put the platform for the poets, how I would set the lighting and Phillip sat on the bar and watched me walk back and forth. At some point Bukowski’s name came up. He lived just over the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro, about a twenty-minute drive.
I don’t know if his name came up because we thought it would be cool to have him read at one of our readings or what, but fueled by the Jack Daniels we started thinking about asking him personally. The hell with sending him a letter or calling his agent, if he had one, fuck that lets just grab a bottle of Jack and get in our car and drive over there and ask him.
He likes that shit any way right? People coming over and sharing some whiskey with him, telling a few stories just shooting the breeze, hell yeah he likes that kind of shit, free booze, hell yeah. Phillip broke into a Bukowski poem “this is as far as we go…so I let him have it: old withered whore of time…your breast taste the sour cream of dreaming…”
I cheered and took a chug of Jack and I jumped into a booth and I returned the favor. “he spent the money in her purse.. He bought good French wine, frijoles, a pound of grass and two parakeets..”
Phillip clapped and hooted, finished his third tall glass of Jack and then stood on the bar “the elephants are caked with mud and tired and the rhinos don’t move… the zebras are stupid dead stems and the lions don’t roar” Phillip bellowed and it echoed through the bar and the far chambers of the underground.
And on we went, lines plucked from our skin, words upon words. We finished the first bottle of Jack and started in on a second. Phillip began walking along the bar to and fro, recalling something. I stumbled from the bar into a booth, and I sat clinging to the table trying to avoid the inertia of falling backwards. I watched Phillip and he had gone somewhere else. I had one more in me but I don’t think he heard “we have everything and we have nothing and some men do it in churches and some men do it by tearing butterflies in half and some men do it in Palm Springs laying it into butterblondes with Cadillac souls…
I woke up and it was a Tuesday morning dust was in the sunrays Phillip was gone and I remember thinking another day killed.
February 10, 2014
Writing With an Audience in Mind
Writing With an Audience in Mind
Contemplation on Sara’s Review
In the perpetual informational world that is social media I came across a recent review of a book I wrote a few years ago, a novel which portrays a young man trying to hold on to his dream of playing in the National Football League. Her comments lifted my spirit not because she showered me with accolades (she didn’t) but rather for understanding where I was trying to go.
“The perspective here, submerged, is useful.” Sara wrote “I will probably use this in a class next year because I know my students will enjoy it, and that it will facilitate some good discussion.”
Her understanding illuminates the essence of why I write, shedding light on an ill, reaching a mind, and, if not helping, at least sparking dialogue, because it is in this flow that we learn. I write, in some small ways, to make a difference. I want to entertain, yes, of courses, but I always want to do more. I once read an interview given by John Steinbeck in which he stated the first part of “Grapes of Wrath” was story, getting the reader hooked, then later in the middle of the book he poured in what he wanted to say.
In 1996, in a small New York apartment Jonathan Franzen struggled with his novel. In despair he moved up-state for a change of scenery, and in his excellent essay “Perchance to Dream” Harpers Magazine, he tells of discovering a book in a small library when he needed it most “a novel pulled almost at random.” He feels “saved as a reader” and the chains of despair loosen. As a writer he had other issues to work out; mainly grappling with the approach to writing a novel in the new burgeoning “age of images” where history was fluid. To him the novel was losing meaning. But the book allowed him to grasp something solid and he began to pull himself out of the darkness.
I too was writing in a small room, an attic in Prague. I too had my doubts. Why did I have this need to write? Reading “Perchance to Dream” which I happen to take along with a few books for my stay in the Golden City gave me hope. The novel I wrote would be the one that seventeen years later Sara would review.
Another writer moved me in the same way. Ken Kuhlken wrote an article three years prior to Franzen’s essay and he too wrote of coming upon a book on a library shelf, a book by a friend whom had passed away. They had been fellow students at the Iowa workshop in the mid- seventies along with Raymond Carver. The book had not been checked out for years. Sadness overcame him. He believed her too good a writer to be forgotten, and so he too reached out with his words and told her story.
Soon after reading Kuhlken’s article I completed my first collection of short stories. Stories I had been writing for six months, toiling away in a small house in Playas de Tijuana, Mexico. I searched Ken out at a writer’s conference because of his article. I was struck by his passion for the word and his loyalty to a friend. I knew he would understand the deep current below the surface of my every day, my desire to raise my voice, to be heard through my words. He did and his mentoring has been incalculable. We have been friends now for twenty years.
And so Sarah’s review moved me to reflection. I wrote my novel for those young men who dream the big dream of a professional sports career. A dream if pursued without a net and not achieved can be a long fall with an ensuing bad landing. I also had in mind a greater audience, all those who strive to achieve a dream and take all that comes with it. Those of common ilk, as Sara states, who while never having been an athlete “have deep understanding of addiction, ambition, and disenchantment.”
I write in hopes of reaching one reader.
We must all dream, such is life, but we must teach those that come after and learn from those that have gone before.
