Cold Comfort (Zone)
Moving away from the pulsebeat.
To set the table for NIHILISTIC I wrote copious notes on the characters, settings, situations, and arc, including themes to explore. This past week I’ve been slapped repeatedly in the face by the big ones: Dreams, Fear, Risk. Again and again I’ll be reading something or watching something and forced to contend with how my handling of the three changed the course of my life. Then Current Chris surveys Former Chris, asking, “What did you want out of life? What held you back? What chances did you take?” You know how it is: you go long stretches submerging certain regrets… then you decide to write a book about your past and they surface all at once. I knew this process would be painful but Current Chris keeps shaking his head contemplating Former Chris, wondering how the fuck he ever made it this far. Let’s review…
Dreams. My earliest dream emerged in 1971 when the commercial for TV Magic Cards (a set of special playing cards that allowed novices to do basic tricks) appeared on our our Trinitron. It hit me: I’ll become a magician and they’ll all notice me! Nothing else about me stood out in school except my weight and an inability to shut up (a elementary school teacher, writing on my report card: Chris needs to do more listening and less talking in class). My one demonstrable talent? Building models. You can’t flog that ability to fellow students unless it’s “Show & Tell” day and ferrying a delicate 1/24 scale plastic model to school in one piece was a fool’s errand, though I’m sure I tried (This is a model of a funny car called The Snake). I needed something more impressive and found myself drawn to the magicians constantly on TV in the early ‘70s–Doug Henning on Carson, Mark Wilson on his own show, David Copperfield’s regular ABC specials… and amateur magician Bill Bixby (post My Favorite Martian/Courtship of Eddie’s Father and pre-Hulk) in the one-season-and-done The Magician. TV Magic cards were pocketable, so ten year-old me begged for this gateway drug. Once gifted a pack and having mastered their limited up-close tricks, I jonesed for the hard stuff: a complete set of TV Magic “illusions.” My birthday or Christmas rolled around and soon I could convincingly disappear coins, produce multiple handkerchiefs from nowhere, grow a sudden flower from a plastic vase, etc. In the cafeteria I plied my new hobby, the more skeptical kids gathered ‘round loudly declaiming “This ain’t no magic. This is for babies.” No mind. I delved further into the mechanics of the art, making trips to a local magic supply store1, only to become deflated tallying how much it’d cost to level up my act. While I dithered over spending hard-earned lawn-cutting money, the law of diminishing returns kicked in: our school became chock-a-block with budding Blackstones, all better magicians than me. I put all my TV Magic shit in a drawer and went back to building models. Another dream emerged when Saturday Night Live went on the air in 1975: I wanted to be the next John Belushi. MAD magazine had already taught me how to be scathingly funny and I found I could take down a bully with a well-timed insult. But Belushi got me onstage, performing in school plays. The lone encouragement to pursue comedy came from Mr. Monsell (RIP), the Lindenhurst High English teacher who ran Thespians 18952. In my 1980 yearbook Mr. Monsell wrote If you are not a comedian in the vein of but superior to Marshall Brickman by 1985 I shall publicly eviscerate you in Times Square, forcing me to look up the word “eviscerate.” I had no fucking idea how to follow my muse into comedy, despite that one attempt at stand-up during a Wednesday open mic night at Richard M. Dixon’s White House Inn. Dixon was a Nixon impersonator who appeared in Where The Buffalo Roam and a few other films, parlaying his “fame” into a club that helped launch the careers of Rob Bartlett, Eddie Murphy and Rosie O’Donnell (who, believe it or not, followed me onstage during that open mic night). While my friend Jeff Maschi (pictured above) loudly guffawed from the audience I did ten minutes of observational comedy that had Dixon enthusiastically waving me over to his round banquette to issue advice and encouragement. But comedy became another road not taken. Then I discovered Led Zeppelin and my new dream was to become Jimmy Page. Obsessed, I played guitar constantly, getting good enough to play shitty rock & roll covers, then shitty punk rock covers and–eventually–less-shitty hardcore originals. Even as the Nihilistics rose and fell, making music a career was never a dream. And becoming Jimmy Page seemed impossible. So I committed to neither. While careening around my life like an errant pinball, I found myself dreaming of only three things: losing weight, getting laid and moving the fuck out of my mother’s house. In the next few years I’d accomplish two out of three.
Fear. Growing up blue-collar meant focusing on bringing in a paycheck, any paycheck, to keep food on the table and the bills paid. Fuck magic. Fuck comedy. Fuck music. Fuck your dreams. Dreams are for people who can afford them. My people lived in constant fear of losing everything, encapsulated in the oft-quoted How’d ya like to live ON THE STREET?! Nowhere in my childhood existed the example of a relation who went into the arts and succeeded. The closest was a cousin whose oil painting of a horse and barn (based on a picture taken while we vacationed in Pennsylvania, proven by the photo stuck in the corner of the frame) hung in our living room and who may have earned a few dollars making art3. Even while devoting all my time and energy to guitar and the Nihilistics my parents–my father especially–thought it was dumb kid stuff that in no way would prepare me for actual life. I suppose anything I showed an interest in or aptitude for was seen as “He’ll grow out of it.” shit and not something to be nurtured. Get a trade. Get a job with a pension. Stop fucking around. Fear of falling out of the lower-middle class and ending up destitute (a fear within me to this day) drove it all. But beyond financial fear, I grew up physically afraid. Constant threats of violence and actual beatings delivered by my father or one of my brothers (my mother talked a good game but I don’t remember much more than a swat on the butt and my sisters only hit each other) kept me in a constant state of fight-or-flight. I shudder to think of how the chronic stress perpetually elevated my cortisol levels, affecting my appetite, weight, metabolism, blood pressure, glucose, anxiety, depression, insomnia, etc., and how the trauma I experienced plays out on my health today.
Risk. It follows: if you’re driven by fear you’re risk-averse. Though I’ve taken great leaps–playing hardcore music at shady venues all over the tri-state area; moving to New Jersey in 1986; going on air at WFMU; leaving a good union job at NPR to host a talk show on Sirius; opening an Antiques store–there are many roads not taken because I couldn’t navigate the risk. Maybe writing a book is one of them. To my never-ending chagrin, I’ve been talking about NIHILISTIC for five years or more. You’d think my “Shit or get off the pot” (as my mother loved to put it) phase would’ve ended but it’ll soon be 2024 and I’m only two chapters in. So much holds me back: a well-honed imposter syndrome (Me, a WRITER?!); the inability to see writing as possibly remunerative (I should be pounding the pavement in search of a REAL job!); the thought I’ll never do justice to the story (I’m gonna fuck this up and piss off a bunch of people!); the worry no one will take interest (Who the hell is gonna BUY this book?!) and on and on. It’s all fear making me risk-averse. Yet what do I have to lose? What else am I doing with myself?
I’ve come to realize there are only two times I feel “in the zone” (ask me some day how much I hate that expression): when I’m on the radio and when I’m writing. They’re both about putting thoughts together in cogent, entertaining, relevant ways but I’ve always been much more confident on the air. First, I’ve been talking into a live microphone almost forty years and I’m at my best in the moment and on my feet, exploiting the ephemeral “high-wire sans net” nature of radio to indulge my gifts of absurdity and improvisation and create memorable communal moments that are here and gone. Second, I was once paid quite handsomely for all that shit. Though I’ve been writing far longer than I’ve been on the radio (I was keeping a journal before I hit my teens), writing for public consumption is way outside my comfort zone. I don’t know if I’ve yet found a writing voice equal to my radio approach. I can’t utilize music, sound effects and sound bytes to get a point across. Writing is anything but ephemeral (yes, you can go back and listen to my old radio shows but do you?): it’s gonna hang around long after I’m gone. Submitting my work to scrutiny scares me senseless. Ultimately, I keep thinking I don’t have it in me to deliver NIHILISTIC and the best I can do is WRITE about writing it and post the occasional podcast interviewing someone who was there. This is like watching the rehearsals for a play never staged. If I’ve been gifted with anything in life it’s determination. I may have given up on magic, comedy, music and running an Antiques store but I haven’t given up on radio or my writing. I still do Aerial View and the NIHILISTIC pod and I keep plugging away at a NIHILISTIC book, despite the obstacles. Why? Sometimes, when I close my eyes, I imagine I’m doing a reading at a small book store, then sitting for a Q&A and signing copies of what took me far outside my comfort zone, a place I need to go. Stick with me and I’ll save you a spot in that book store.
Now on the same trash heap as the vacuum store and the independent hobby shop.
Thespians 1895 staged comedy & drama; The Charles Street Players tackled musicals.
Recognition of my visual art talents peaked when my mother hung my watercolor rendition of the cover of Meet The Beatles not far from the horse and barn painting.