Month: April 2013

Personal Stories

Three Great Lessons I Learned from Detroit

After I graduated from Stetson University in 2007, I didn’t know what was next. I was dating my current wife, Heron, and we wanted to stay together. Well, I wanted to travel and see somewhere new, but she had to find a place that made sense with her work. So we looked at the options of where she could go, and we decided on…Detroit, Michigan.

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Neither of us knew anything about Michigan, but we moved there anyway. My heroes — Hemingway, Kerouac, Twain, — all said that if I wanted to be a writer, then I needed to travel to know places. So I figured, no matter what, Detroit was a new place, and I would surely be able to write about it one day. Yeah, I would find some job, and I would write at night — or even when I was at work. What did I know?

We moved to Detroit in the fall of 2007, and the presidential elections were underway. I can still remember McCain saying the fundamentals of the economy were strong, and then the economy suddenly fell off a cliff. Of course, the recession then pillaged the rest of the country, but what I found when we moved into Ferndale was that the recession was already there in Detroit. It was very hard to find work, and I ended up working at the desk of a YMCA, teaching guitar, and working as a substitute teacher in some rough schools. Now, I’m beginning, finally, to start to write about that experience. So here is a list of the greatest lessons I learned from my year in Metro Detroit — a city that I hold close to my heart.

1. Libraries and piano stores are safe havens. 

I was out of work in Detroit for a bit, and it was tough to find a job. I thought because I had a degree from an excellent school in Florida that everyone in the city would want to hire me. Well, it’s difficult when everyone else is looking for a job, and they already know people there. So I had to find a headquarters to set up and look for a job, and it ended up being the Royal Oak Public Library. Every morning, I would drive over to the library, find a table, and look for work. I had no idea how to find a job, but I kept at it. And on breaks, I would read short stories by my heroes and search for an answer.

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But what I noticed was that I wasn’t the only one who had this idea. There was free internet at the library, and the computers were always swamped with people. Homeless men and women from all over the city would be waiting for the library to open so they could use the computes and the bathrooms. I’ll never forget walking in with them in the morning. I had a cup of coffee in my hand; they held their change of clothes in a plastic bag. I really empathized with them. Of course, my circumstances were infinitely more stable, but I also felt like I didn’t have a home. And the library became a place of comfort for the lost and wandering.

I would also go on walks at lunch breaks, and I wanted to find a place to hang out where I didn’t have to pay money. What I found was that piano stores were a great place to relax. I would walk in and play the piano for twenty minutes, and then I would walk out and head back to looking for jobs. So no matter what happens to me in my life, I know I will always have piano stores and libraries.

2. Work is beautiful and can be art:

Many people don’t know this, but the Detroit Institute of the Arts is one of the best museums in the country. It might just be because of their amazing mural painted by Diego Rivera. It’s scales four massive walls, and it depicts men in the car plants, creating the machinery as the mural morphs to reveal that we are all also machines created by a similar assembly line. Seeing Rivera’s mural has proved to be one of the greatest artistic experiences of my life. That’s one of the first times I understood that work was art.

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Back home in Clinton, Massachusetts, I worked some jobs doing manual labor, and I knew very early on I needed to find a way to use my mind instead of my back. But while I was going through this process, working at a farm or picking stones out of the Earth, I met so many people who made this their life. And I don’t know how to articulate it yet, but those people who worked with their hands were beautiful. They seemed to be at peace with something that I wasn’t.

Philip Levine writes such beautiful poetry about work in his collection What Work Is, and his poetry has inspired me beyond, well, I can ever express. He is a true “working-class hero.” I was lucky enough to interview him at the LA Weekly.

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And now I remember seeing that Van Gogh had painted people working in the fields. I remember the people wandering around in the cold in Downtown Detroit, the snow covering the cars and the streets, when I drove into a hip restaurant to apply for a job waiting tables. I remember working in the YMCA, watching gym towels spin in a washing machine. I remember the snow outside of the high school where I was a substitute teacher, right off of 10 mile in Ferndale, or some mile, way beyond the reaches of my consciousness. I remember that I gave out all my books to my students, hoping they would find solace in words.

3. It wasn’t going to be easy.

Probably the best lesson I learned from Detroit was that it wasn’t going to be easy…being a writer in this world. It was a shock to find a city that wasn’t opening their arms to me, because I thought I was some hot-shot. It was a shock to find that securing a real job after college was not guaranteed. It was a shock to find that when I went to apply for teaching jobs they laughed at me and my American Eagle collared shirts. It was a shock to find the darkness thicker than the snow, thicker than the memory of night back home.

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I was just a kid who thought that I could wander into a city and become a writer…or a teacher, but no, Detroit said, nothing is handed to you. You need to work for it. You need to bust your ass. And you need to be thankful for your job at the YMCA or a substitute teacher. You need to be thankful that you can teach guitar. You need to be thankful that you can see this part of the world, no matter how tough it is.

In the end, I feel that I had grown a lot in Detroit, and I didn’t even have it that tough. I love that city, because there will always be a part of me, a young and naive part, still wandering into piano stores and libraries, trying to kill time.

News, Writing

New Piece at the LA Weekly, Booktalk Nation, and Junkie Love

It’s been an eventful week with a lot of exciting news, and I haven’t even had the opportunity to document all that’s been going on. Last week I had a new piece appear at the LA Weekly on Matthew Specktor’s American Dream Machine. I loved writing this piece, and it seemed to have a connection to the piece I wrote a couple of months ago on trying to rediscover the California dream. I was lucky enough to interview Specktor at Musso and Frank’s in Hollywood. That restaurant is one of the coolest places in the city. I love how it’s dripping with the ghosts of an ancient Hollywood. Now I’m working on a piece on Chiwan Choi. I’ll be interviewing him soon. Looking forward to that.

Another exciting development: As part of Booktalk Nation, I will interview Matthew Specktor on the program. I’m going to have a discussion about his book American Dream Machine. This is going to be a pleasure. I’m so excited about this event, and I really hope you will sign up for the talk. Click on the link above and enter your email. You will receive a phone number and a conference-call code.

And finally, my good buddy, your good buddy, Joe Clifford had his novel, Junkie Love, appear on bookshelves everywhere. Have you picked up your copy? Well, I believe you can buy it here: Amazon. Lol.

Personal Stories

The Greatest Lesson I Learned from Rehab

I was in a rehab center from July, 2011 to July, 2012. Now, I didn’t end up in this facility in the traditional way. I wasn’t dealing with drug addiction; I wasn’t struggling with alcohol addiction; and I wasn’t seeking treatment. In fact, I’m being a bit coy here…I needed a job.

In May of 2011, I graduated from the MFA Program at Florida International University — have you heard about our great alumni: Richard Blanco, Dennis Lehane, Joe Clifford and Patricia Engel! — and I moved out to Southern California to live with Heron. I didn’t know anybody out in L.A. I bugged my teachers endlessly for contacts until they threw some names at me, and I cherished those names like lifeboats on a sinking ship.

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Of course, when I moved out here, I reached out to those contacts, and I learned a lot from them and continue to benefit from their knowledge and experience, but I didn’t find a job…at least right away. So I scoured the city, looking for something to pay my rent and bills, and I came across an ad on Craigslist to teach creative writing at a rehab center. Well, I was a teacher, and I was a writer — Could there be anything better?

I applied and got the job. I couldn’t wait to start, but as you might have read before, I had to drive 44 miles through the worst traffic in the country from Long Beach to Woodland Hills. That’s beyond the point. I’m not here to bore you with the same story of transportation.

Well, after I started working at the rehab center, I realized the drive was killing me, and I wanted a job where I was writing more. I loved teaching, but I was dissatisfied and wanted to write all the time — or at least more and get paid for it. I became frustrated. I became anxious. I became impatient. Suddenly, I felt stuck in a situation.

Everyday I listened to the counselors talk about the steps and the Big Book, and initially all this jargon just washed over my head. What did I care? Of course, I wanted to help the kids — oh, more than anything in the world — but I wanted to teach them through words and writing and other sunshine bullshit that I still believe in.

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Then one day, something changed.

One of the counselors there — he was this huge guy with a mullet — caught my attention. He took me aside and basically told me to look around. Be a part of this team. You’re trying to run your own show, man. Be here with us. Be in the moment. That’s what this is about. You’re going to move onto something better soon, but for right now, be here, be with us.

He woke me up. I was so fixated on the next step, being a writer, and moving on that I wasn’t in the moment. I began to listen to him more when he spoke to the kids. He used to walk around the room, flicking his mullet, smacking kid on the back, hugging people who walked into the room. His personality was so large you couldn’t help but pay attention. And his mantra was always — be in the moment.

I’ll never forget this story he told about being in jail. He talked about being overwhelmed by the amount of time he had to serve. That it became impossible to not future trip and let your anxiety spin out of control. And he said the only thing that mattered, his only comfort, was that the second-hand on that clock kept ticking.

That was a really profound moment for me. Sometimes, I live like I’m in jail. No, I’m not comparing my life to an actual prison, but I’m saying that I can feel stuck; I can feel trapped; and I can forget about that second, that moment, because I’m so disconnected that my own impatience and ambition can be a trap. That’s the greatest lesson I learned. That I needed to struggle, to fight to be in the moment. To remind myself that this very next word is the next word I’m going to type and this very next thought is the next thought I’m going to think and this very next breath is the next breath. The rest, to a certain extent, is out of my control.

This was humbling. I’m an ambitious guy, and I’m never satisfied. But when I forget to focus on what’s in front of me, well, that’s when I slip up and lose control. How hard is it to be present? How hard is it to remember nothing in the future is guaranteed? How hard is to believe that the path you are on is guiding you to a place of happiness?

News

The Place Beyond the Pines — The Desperation of James Dean

Last Saturday, Heron and I went down to the ArcLight Theater in Hollywood to see The Place Beyond the Pines. It  came out the day before, and we really knew nothing about the movie beforehand. I saw that Eva Mendes, Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper were in the movie, and I thought that sounds like a terrible mix. The film is pitched as a crime movie, but in the end, it seems to be more about familial relationships, generational feuds and the tension between father and sons. Plus, there is a lot of dirt-bike riding and bank robbing. For the women: Gosling’s abs; for the men: Mendes without a bra. (Let me take that back. There are probably a lot of men interested in Gosling and a lot of women interested in Mendes, too.)

So, what did I think of this movie? Before I tell you my opinion, I want you to listen to what others had to say about this movie.

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In the LA Weekly, Scott Fondus writes that he’s unsure if Gosling is parodying masculinity. It seems to me that Fondus is unsure how to read Gosling’s character, Handsome Luke, in the movie. He also calls Mendes disposable. “But the disparate pieces,” Fondus later writes, “never quite jell; the movie is all trees and no forest.”

The LA Times gave the movie a tepid review: “The movie is intimate in its telling, sweeping in its issues and stumbles only occasionally.” The writers riffs on the economic conditions the director, Derek Cianfrance, loves to focus on and how these people are on the fringes of desperation. Cool. I feel yah.

Justin Craig at Fox News, well, he basically calls for an oscar — but not really: “It’s usually far too early to even utter the words “Oscar,” but “The Place Beyond the Pines” is movie gold. Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper have never been better than in Derek Cianfrance’s (“Blue Valentine”) brooding, immersive crime drama.” I was generally surprised that someone at Fox News would like this movie, but maybe I shouldn’t be such a stereotyping asshole.

A.O. Scott at the New York Times has this to say: “It goes on too long: the three-part story, spread over nearly two and a half hours, represents a triumph of sympathetic imagination and a failure of narrative economy. But if, in the end, the film can’t quite sustain its epic vision, it does, along the way, achieve the density and momentum of a good novel.” Good for Scott. He’s telling it like he sees it. The movie is long — over two hours — and the story has three parts, and it makes an abrupt shift in point of view in the middle that is shocking and almost absurd. I hear you. Don’t worry though. I’m getting to my point. First, watch the trailer:

Now I’m not a movie critic, and I don’t pretend to be. But I know story. And I’m going to say what all the other critics were too scared to say; The Place Beyond the Pines will be a classic movie, and Gosling’s performance, his character, will become legendary. Gosling as Handsome Luke reminds me of a James Dean. The characters in The Place Beyond the Pines and a move like Rebel Without a Cause — Handsome Luke and Jim Stark — are remarkable and similar, because they are on the edge of desperation (to borrow a term from the NY Times), searching for something to care about, to believe in; once they find that something, there is no letting go. And there is usually violence and an unbridled pursuit of disaster. Gosling captures, in my opinion, this rare energy that goes beyond masculinity and into the realms of madness. A controlled madness poking below the surface. A madness, a failure to fit within certain roles, an inability to accept the rules of society. In Handsome Luke’s case, the rule that he is not allowed to see his child. He’s one of those characters who Kerouac would have wanted to follow down the streets lit by hysterical roman candles.

Of course, there are elements of this movie at first glance that can seem pedantic. Yes, there are a lot of bank robbing scenes, and the main character is robbing banks to provide for his family. Yes, there is a bad-ass dude riding a bike — but it’s a dirt bike. Yes, the movie has another role where Bradley Cooper’s character has a tremendous amount of douchey vibes. And yes, the movie does have segments that shift abruptly and seem to make the movie feel long.

But Alfred Hitchcock was accused of something similar when Psycho came out. The main character, the woman who is killed in the Bates Motel, is suddenly gone from the movie, leaving the story to continue without her. It broke the normal and accepted narrative structure, and the story seems to begin again — though it circles around again at the end.

And without ruining the movie, The Place Beyond the Pines makes a similar move, but this is what I love about the movie. It doesn’t succumb to the normal rules of modern cinema; it doesn’t treat the viewer like an idiot who can’t sit still for over two hours; and it reminds the viewer that stories come in all shapes and sizes. This movie and Gosling and Cooper’s performances will be remembered for a long time. Plus, the two kids at the end are amazing. Go see this movie and let me know what you think. As always, your comments are more than welcome. Love to hear what you thought of the movie.