Buried Treasure

You never know what you will find unless you go looking. As a teenager searching for escape, I would go to record stores, picking through their dusty bins, flipping albums forward and back, wait, what was that? My interest piqued by a cover, a title, a vague memory of an article in Creem, Op, Interview, NME mentioning this artist or that desert island top ten.

I was a nerd searching for a nugget, hoping to find buried treasures, you know those records you hear. about but never see in real life. Same thing with book stores, where I would search for that missing Philip K. Dick paperback. I love buying books, to which my wife would say, are you ever going to read any of these?

A valid question, a perfectly valid question. Was I a collector? Once upon a time, I fancied myself as one, but in my late forties, after a few moves and the kind suggestions from my better half, who pointed out the obvious, which was that we had less room now, and as years went by even less room, as we moved to smaller and smaller accommodation, so the collection was dismantled and sold piece by piece.

At first it was hard, like breaking up, but after a while I toughened up. After getting rid of the majority of my vinyl records, I started to download my cds onto a hard drive. I got rid of most of my beloved box sets, how I hated to lose those. The thought I had was that I would be able to organize my collection on a computer, giving me the ability to call up any song that I wanted, whenever I wanted.

This theory is still possible and practical, except its not how it worked out in real life. I downloaded and downsized, and kept searching for the New on the internet, on streaming sites, driven by links in articles, a reference in a book, that lead me to research some subject I knew nothing about.

No longer was I making lists, or trying to physically possess this arcana. I was content to go down the rabbit holes on my iPhone or IPad. I gave up on “having”, as my new obsession was “knowing,” which was superseded by “remembering “.

In the thirst for knowledge, I was no longer a moderate drinker. I was lush with discovery, in search for the shock of the New. So when remembering becomes a challenge, the upside is that everything is new. Again.

I crawled down a tiny tunnel yesterday, a tunnel which took me from the release of a new collection of Lou Reed covers, released by Light In The Attic records, a shiny Diamond of a label from Seattle, that has turned me on to many buried treasures, from Karen Dalton to ShinJoong Hyun, with a trap door that dropped me in the gyrating lap of Betty Davis, licked the ashtray heart of Serge Gainsbourg, and found the miracle of Johnnie Frierson.

This search for new discoveries has been lifelong passion. As Tom Waits says, I was very young when I was born. Now in my twilight, or is it the Prime of My Life, I feel lucky in love and life . I still have dreams and desires. I still have disgust and anger for the dangerous dopes who keep finding dollars in disaster, digging for clams from climate change, scrounging in pockets for the spare change of Change agency.

I am naturally curious. I am not the kind who would sell off the spare tire. The skeptic might reason “who needs a spare tire?” Do cars even have five wheels?

A nagging thought keeps circling back on me. Who was it who said that “Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way in order to come back a short distance correctly.” Originally I thought it was Pooh, thinking this line to be a quote from A.E. Milne. Like this famous one: “If ever there is tomorrow when we’re not together.. there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. but the most important thing is, even if we’re apart… I’ll always be with you.” Was it Christopher Robin to Pooh, or Pooh to Piglet? I see that it is attributed to Pooh Bear, but maybe not actively written by A.E.Milne. The reality is that old A.E. never wrote those lines. Or the line about coming back correctly.

The sentiment of “I’ll always be with you”, was penned by Carter Crocker, who is not related to Betty Crocker, or even Davey Crockett, or that Crockett from Miami Vice. This Crocker was one of the writers of Disney's Pooh's Grand Adventure The Search for Christopher Robin.

I can hear your collective sigh of relief now that we cleared up that bit of business. Still there was the nagging feeling that persisted about the “coming back correctly” quote. In fact, it was not A.E. Milne, or Carter Crocker who penned it; it was written by Edward Albee in his two person play The Zoo Story, a play written in 1958, which coincidentally is the year of my coming out, the year I was dropped off by the stork, the year when I descended the golden escalator from the Mothership to gurgle in the arms of my Mother.

I should have remembered that quote and its origin story. When I was 20, I played Peter in The Zoo Story. I was at Cap College. My friend Robin Mossley played Jerry, as we were cast playing against type. The funny thing is that Albee sets up the play as a case study of playing against type. Who is the crazy one, when the whole damn world is crazy? The voices in my head ask this question constantly. You can't stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them. I wrote that. Here is one I didn’t write:

“They're funny things, Accidents. You never have them till you're having them."

Eeyore-a famous fictionary depressive.

“Sometimes a person has to go a very long distance out of his way to come back a short distance correctly.”

Edward Albee A Zoo Story