Sunday after Thanksgiving? Day after the day after Buy Nothing Day? Christmas decoration hanging day?
Whatever. I hope y'all had/are having a fine long vacation weekend.
My Thanksgiving was excellent, as always. Spent it with the entire LA family contingent, i.e., my two younger sisters and their respective husbands. Did the collective cook, ate, and watched slide shows of our parents from before we were born. Very cool. I forgot that before parenthood turned our parents into schleps they were pretty sharp. My dad's all pimped out in nice suits with cool ties and my mom looks kind of like Audrey Hepburn, albeit more central European. Cigarettes and wine bottles everywhere! On the beach, in the hotels, in the apartments, in the house. And...in a dangerous moment you're not sure you should ever be seeing, them on the beach in NJ on their wedding weekend, making out, a closed copy of something by Faulkner on one side of the towels, and the Kama Sutra on the other.
My dad was a really good photographer, and my mom was quite beautiful. Having been a stage actress taught her incredible poise as well, so on top of being beautiful, she had presence. We were all stunned by some of the pictures. Absolutely beautiful. Some could have been in a magazine today. What was most clear and touching was how much they were in love. The camera spoke. My dad was best at communicating himself through the things he did: the work he did to support the family, the intensity with which he did that work, the ends to which he would go to arrange a surprise or treat for his children, the care he took in teaching me how to use a camera...and that Kodak Retina IIIc that he used those weeks in June 1965 in New Jersey, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles spoke for him, and speaks now through these transparencies. If a camera ever gazed more lovingly on someone, and that someone didn't warm more tenderly and slowly to that gaze--finally giving away completely to it--I can't think of it.
There are several series that begin with my mom looking rather bitter. I could just hear her: "Hal, get that thing out of here." The next picture she'll be looking away, staring out the window or down at her book; the next one she'll glance back up; in the fourth the slight crease of a grin begins to form around the corners of her mouth. By the end, she's blossomed, radiating a stunning sort of calm joy; quiet, unguarded, confident.
It was amazing for us. Probably boring for you to read about, but for us, what a fine correction to the dominant images I and my sisters have of our parents as perennially disheveled, tired, cranky, overworked, underplayed, and arguing. If they were arguing back in 1965, we couldn't see it in these pictures.
There were also some neat pictures of them moving into the house we grew up in, and making their new home in it, the arrival of our Irish Setter puppy Rufus and Golden Retriever puppy Ceaser, who lived until about my eighth year; the cast of friends and professional colleagues who were in and out of town--hard living lot that was, with one particularly intense picture of composer Bill Walker curled over the white upright piano in a kind of ecstatic agony, looking for all the world like Bill Evans at his most knotted, but seemingly without sleep for a week, composition paper scattered all over and on his lap while playing the keyboard, cup of coffee on top of the piano; there's the myna bird which disappeared before I appeared, the nutty trend of all couches being white, and all the sycamores, pines, and redwoods I remember as huge actually being petite in these pictures. This would have been two years before I was born.
Notable too was how underdeveloped the canyons and hills were in LA in the mid 60s. Now you can barely find a spare foot to build a new house on. Back then, there was space...acres and acres of space.
How strange too to realize that in those pictures, my mom was younger than we are now, and not so far off my dad either (41 then). The way I and my sisters feel about life and ourselves now certainly doesn't square with the image we had of our parents when we were growing up--as I'd imagine anyone's image of their parents is. They were always grown-ups, with grown-up concerns. They were never young people in love, never going on dates, never taking a bottle of wine down to the beach; they were our parents, with all the domestic unglamor that being parents comes with.
These pictures reminded us that they too were like us once, before us, and that they too flirted and went on dates and took a bottle of wine down to the beach.
The rest of the weekend:
I'm constitutionally not a shopper; for me, shopping is strictly on a must-needs basis. I identify a clear, unambiguous need and then attempt to acquire the item with the most concise, economical methods possible: minimum driving, close parking, in as low-traffic a neighborhood as possible, with minimal other distractions, etc. It's kind of a kung fu thing. So, given that statistically speaking I buy nothing on most days of the year--as much out of fear of markets as because I hate shopping--it seemed appropriate that I buy something on "Buy Nothing" day. Which brings us to the news:
Plywood! We've got plywood! All the plywood I ever could want! My brother in law Brad came through like a knight in white, and ferried me around in his truck. Not only did I get plywood, but I'm borrowing his genius pneumatic nail gun and other excellent devices to expedite building.
Consequence? In the last two days of relentless work, I've made huge, stunning progress downstairs. Stunning I tell you. By the end of today--barring disaster--the bass traps will be finished. You read that right: "the bass traps will be finished."
Then I can clear out the mess, fire-retard the fabric panels, put them up, and...dare I say it? I'm done.
Oh, and I even managed to go out Friday night with my friend Phil. Had dinner at maybe the best Thai restaurant I've ever been to in LA (can't remember the name, but for the Stone Bar/Exile Cafe crew, it's a block east on Hollywood in a minimall, with a green awning) and then went to the free combination house/dnb night at Boardner's, which was outrageously out of character for me, but a nice night out. The core dnb crowd there were shocked to see me...I really don't go out to these things unless I'm playing; hell, I was shocked to see myself out!
More finishing up downstairs today, maybe dinner and a movie tonight, and that's a wrap on my favorite long weekend of the year.
Hope your weekend was good too.
