Chris Preston and New Aquarius Online

From a very early age, I was infatuated with rock music. I had the biggest record collection of anyone in the kindergarten. I loved Kiss and the Eagles and later, groups like Hall and Oates, The Police and Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Though I’m not a Catholic anymore, I had my fill of it as a kid, receiving my sacraments, attending 13 years of Catholic school and when I was still young enough to be forced, going to mass on Sunday. It’s amazing how even at the earliest ages, I was using rock and roll as reference point in my life, even in church.

When I was 5 or 6, in my mind, I always compared the altar and congregation at church to the stage and an audience. Daydreaming about my musical heroes was a great way to get through the dreaded Sunday morning rituals. My church had a microphone on a stand like Paul Stanley used. They had what I thought were really cool gray PA column speakers mounted in the choir loft. You’d hear them pumping out the sound of the organ, which would play when we reached that point in the show. The altar had a backstage area called the Sacristy that you needed a connection to get into. In the 70s, our church also had a felt banner behind the altar that took up the entire wall. It usually had a stylized depiction of a biblical scene and a quote. It was really progressive for a Catholic church as I understand them now and it didn’t last, but that was an important part of their stage set. The felt banners were always designed with earth tones, browns and oranges. Christ, even the sanctuary carpet was orange.

Masses also had the audience participation you find at rock and roll shows. People would answer in unison when prompted by the priest. He’d hold his arms up to the heavens periodically, reciting some prayer while the folds in his elaborate costume hung loosely, forming a rough silhouette of wings. In those days, rock stars were superheroes to me. Though the priests weren’t, they got my attention with their histrionics too. Since I got so used to seeing them from the pews, I felt just as removed from them as Kiss.

However, for all the ways in which the showmanship of the Catholic mass worked on my psyche throughout my childhood, it never prepared me for the fact that priests were human. I learned that when I became part of the corps of altar boys in the fourth grade. Though I never experienced any molestation at the hands of a priest, which is so fashionable now, these guys could still be really creepy when you saw them up close. Sunday after Sunday, I sat twenty rows back spending at least an hour looking at these guys, but when I got finally got close enough to the show as an altar boy, the oddness of these characters fueled a very cautious curiosity and a fair amount of confusion.

Father Al, the altar boy director, was the youngest priest in our parish. He was probably creepy before Holy Orders, but by the time we met him, he’d kicked it up more than a few notches. He wore glasses and had a serious comb-over that seemed almost to compliment his crooked front tooth. His hands were the most delicate I’d ever seen on a man. They showed no signs of hard labor and the nails were perfectly rounded. When we poured water over his hands during mass, he moved his fingers very differently from the way my old man would when he washed up at the kitchen sink. Even at ten years old, I could sense that he was in conflict with my idea of what a man was.

Al was definitely the archetypal “holier than thou” priest type. He spoke often of his mother, who routinely embroidered new vestments for him at the change of the church seasons. Al was sure to tell you when he was donning the handiwork of his mother, who no doubt deserved some of the blame for Al’s somewhat condescending and self-righteous nature. He embraced all the ceremonial pomp a Catholic priest could get away with. All of them had to say the same things to celebrate a mass, but every priest had a different style. Al’s style was to chant every prayer he possibly could, lengthening the mass easily by twenty minutes or more. I suppose it was his right, but it even got on my mother’s nerves. We always knew we were in for it when Father Al came parading up the aisle with his girly hands held high. We knew there was no way we were getting home by lunchtime.

Al’s sanctified veneer first weakened at the church fair. They had a Pac Man machine, which of course was very exciting for the kids. When we all left the machine unattended to go off and scrounge for more quarters, Al took it. He was so into his game that the force with which he worked the joystick moved the entire machine. It wasn’t a violent motion but an over-exaggerated, deliberate one that caused the machine walk corner to corner, alternating on its rubber feet. That unnecessary intensity creeped me out and confused me. That kind of ill-founded passion for a video game never came from the adults we knew, let alone from the priests, so it seemed misplaced, and quite suspect. Is he a man? A kid? A priest? The answers were all “No.”

My memory of Al as a pathetic little man was pretty much cemented on my first and last altar boy trip to the Jersey shore. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, but I think of Al as pathetic now. All of the altar servers, ranging from fourth to eighth grade (and some older, now that I think of it), were  packed into two yellow school buses on a summer day, tooling down the Garden State Parkway bound for Seaside Heights. I was probably 10. I was in the middle of the bus. I was not sophisticated enough to be in the back, where presumably you could elude the watchful eye of the driver and chaperones and do cool things like make obscene gestures at cars following behind the bus.

I was gazing out the window, lost in my thoughts as I churned with anxiety about what the day would bring. Then the eighth graders started making some ruckus about girls in a car behind us, flashing their breasts. I couldn’t see anything, but apparently neither could Father Al, who with a giddy smile and wild eyes bombed down the center aisle of the bus to get to the back window.

I couldn’t sort it out at first. I wasn’t allowed out of my seat, but this guy could not only move about freely, but completely forget himself and act like an overgrown adolescent. Even then, I knew he was a hypocrite, though I’m not sure I knew the word for it. This guy, who had boundless energy for browbeating alter boys in training about genuflecting, holding his damn prayer book, ringing bells and handling the Eucharist was actually just a boob man. At that age, I would’ve really enjoyed seeing a pair of boobs, but my experience was confined to being insulted by the phony that old Al turned out to be.

I suspected every priest of being full of shit after that. I still got into the microphones and columns speakers in church from a purely technical point of view, but the pious behavior of the priests became an act that I felt I was always seeing through.

Eventually, I learned that many rock stars were just doing their act too. Some of them even started to look foolish to me. My old man turned out to be human (Never saw that one coming, even when he warned me…), but at least he was never doing an act. When I recognized these truths about life, I never felt like I’d been had. I only felt a little wiser. With Al, I definitely felt like I’d been played for a fool.

I suppose that most people have heard the adage about a journey of a thousand miles beginning with a single step. I’m guessing that somebody (the internet seems to claim it was Confucius) uttered that little gem at a time when a thousand miles seemed like a pretty sizable distance. I guess if all you can do is walk…

But I’m not talking about the first step. The first step is the historic one. Before you took the first step, you probably got a good night’s sleep. You probably had a good breakfast. You were at home and you had comforting familiar things around you. Your batteries were fresh and your lunch was packed.

And I’m not talking about the destination either. The destination is the place of your dreams. The destination is blissful. After all, you’ve arrived at that magical place and in the process, you’ve conquered something, your doubt, the forest of flames (to use a Utopia reference), your parole officer, something.

No, I’m talking about, say, the 26th step of mile 401. Wow, that one sucks. No one writes proverbs about that one. You look around you and nothing is familiar. You look behind you and you definitely can’t see your house anymore. Your feet are killing you and you’re nowhere near your destination. You’ve eaten your last marmalade sandwich. You might not even be sure about the last couple of turns you made.

The next step is the ultimate test of your will. I’m starting to think that this one is more important than the first. At this point, your mind starts to wander on you and your perseverance and your fortitude can easily go with it. The destination cannot drive you now. It’s empty of promise because nothing you do at this moment will make it to deliver for you. You might even be angry at it for failing you. So…

You can turn back, but that would mean a whole lot of wasted time and energy. No good.

You can go forward, but nothing is going to be looking up for quite a while. You want something now. What’s the point?

Sitting on the side of the road won’t do any good either. You were sort of doing that at home before you got into this mess, but now you might not even know where you are.

You’re stuck.

What is needed is a change of perspective. At this point, the journey becomes merely about you, still walking after all of this time. Your only job at mile 401 is to keep walking. There’s only one way I know to do that: Start counting again.

It seems that a journey of 599 miles also begins with the first step. It’s less romantic than the thousand mile one and it takes the strength you didn’t know you had. Whether you knew it or not, it’s what you signed up for at the beginning. Only now it’s a shorter walk.

Usually when I’m doing a record, the percussion overdubs are one of the last things I do. I suppose I always waited until the end because minor percussion instruments are like spice. They dress up the arrangement just enough to make it sound complete. If you listen closely to your favorite records, I’m sure that you’ll find all kinds of little percussion goodies going on. I’m talking about things like tambourines, shakers, maracas, guiro, ratchet, vibraslap, claves, triangle… stuff like that.

The importance of these instruments is often underestimated. I underestimate it myself. See how I referred to them as “minor” percussion? Since I have a better sense of the tunes I’m working on now, and my voice hasn’t come back completely from my last gig (I pushed it because I was sick), I thought I’d tackle some percussion overdubs little earlier in the process than usual.

In my experience, percussion overdubs can only mean one thing…blisters. That’s right, blisters. My hands take a beating when I play these things, especially tambourine. Like many musical instruments, playing tambourine requires repetitive motion that I have to control very well. (Without question, it can make or break the groove.) However, it’s not an instrument that I can say that I ever practice. I only pick it up when I need it and within in an hour, I’m feeling the characteristic pinch under the skin on my hand. I keep telling myself that I have to tape the thing up, but I wonder if that would even help.

In this picture, my tambourine is the second from the left. See how CP (Cosmic Percussion) tries to help you out? They shape the wood into a handle of sorts so it’s easier to grip. My problem is that I have these huge paws and the narrower area is hard for me to hold and still control well. So I end up gripping the large part of the wood frame, over the bells, which dig into my hand something fierce. When the blisters start to form, I start playing harder and holding tighter. Before long, I’m accenting so hard with my other hand that I end up bruising my thumb. You haven’t lived until you’ve felt the hard wood of a headless tambourine whack against a bone. Ah yes, I go through this with every record. The suffering is like an old friend.

So the next time you hear someone downplaying tambourines and such, remind them that it’s very easy to play the instrument poorly and as a result, completely destroy the groove. It’s a big responsibility. When played well, I have known tambourines and other percussion toys to fix all kinds of arrangement problems as well as inject new excitement into a track. I blame television for making it look easy. 

This has been a long week for me, full of conflict and revelations. After months of writing about me, I thought I’d give the old chronicle style a rest today and have a laugh.

Here’s something I was having some fun with, entertaining myself with language. It’s the unfinished story of two friends, Rolo and Manfred, who might in fact be enemies. They each represent the dichotomous natures that can co-exist in a single artist. They’re both nuts. Their doctor has suggested that they write letters to each other in an attempt to re-fuse their personalities and mayhem ensues.

Chris

Correspondence Between Artistic Contemporaries

Dear Manfred,

I noticed your photo on the front page of the Pennysaver this morning. Allow me to offer a bit of free marketing advice. Take off that ridiculous fedora. I grow tired of your statements and in a perfect world, you wouldn’t even have been a head to place it on. Alas for me and for all of us in this expansive universe of slush. I also couldn’t help but notice yet another woman of New York society on your arm. It should come as no surprise to you that a girl at my halfway house would like you to impregnate her. Let me conclude with my most emphatic disdain for you both, as I was hoping to impregnate the lass myself.

Your silent aggressor,

Rolo

PS - Fuck you, you arrogant scumbag. You have effectively sealed yourself from my good graces in perpetuity. Even my slashed canvasses are now empty of promise. However, I’m feeling uncharacteristically light-hearted with the approach of the mid-winter holidays and I will accept four packages of Dutch Treats mini-cigars as restitution. Thank you for your cooperation.

~

Dear Mr. Rolo,

Thank you for your kind words and advice. Please relay my regrets to the young lady. I am breathlessly flattered, but sadly am unable to accommodate her at this time due to an overextended schedule of lectures on futility as an artistic subtext. In the matter of my appearance in the newspaper, know that I haven’t been photographed since the riots and even then my face was obscured in the last snapshot behind a ghastly “Irish Need Not Apply” sign. If you’ll recall, I was extending a can of Cool Whip in each hand making a futile attempt to extinguish a grease fire that was raging in a storefront window. I believe the image to which you refer was a half-page ad for an animal shelter, printed not on the front page, but on the sixth, directly beneath the obituaries. To be accurate, the ad appeared not in the Pennysaver, but in a prominent New York daily. For the record, I thought the fedora on the head of the basset hound was a delightful piece of sensational propaganda. If there was any confusion about the subject’s identity, you could very well have spent 10.5 additional nanoseconds to read the caption, which stated quite clearly that the beast’s name was Fred.

I hope your speech therapy is progressing with great success. Should I ever require a thick Southern drawl for the recording of one of my radio dramas, I shall ring you expeditiously. I cherish our past collaborations and the prospects of future ones.

Enclosed is a box of herbal tea, a pot of boiling water and a Photostatic copy of my latest chapbook of cinquains. I took great inspiration from your hang gliding attempt last summer from the main span of the Pulaski Skyway. I understand that the authorities are erecting tall containment fences along the artery and expect to complete the project by the arrival of the Spring winds. Please read for spelling.

Yours in tortured anticipation,

Lyle Manfred

~

Dear Manfred,

Your letters are becoming a terrible bore. It is typically narcissistic of you to believe that I’d answer any calls from you, let alone a call with more acting work. Nevertheless, I must confess that your density never ceases to entertain me. Perhaps your senses have been dulled by fame and womanizing. To clarify, my description of the newspaper photo was my best effort at caricature without gauchely enclosing sketches.

Your insensitivity is shocking. You know very well that my accent is not an affectation but the by-product of my struggle to overcome a debilitating speech impediment. As any in the serious art world are aware, I was born and raised in Kearny, New Jersey. Though I have my faults and eccentricities I should not, even in the greatest scarcity of basic human kindness, be subjected to mockeries from the likes of you. Please forgive the smears of ink across this page. My words are mingled with tears, for though your dramas nauseate me beyond measure, it is your feigned concern for my well-being that cuts the deepest.

Your poems are frightful.

That you ignored my request for smoking materials is of no consequence, as I have decided not to start smoking after all. The tea was delicious but a challenge to swallow dry. As you know, my water is strictly rationed. At present, a large portion of my rations must be used to replenish my palette of browns and day-glo yellows for my new series, “A Study of Soft Bananas.”

With renewed apathy,

Rolo

~

Dear Mr. Rolo,

I can’t begin to express my appreciation for your candor. Should I find a publisher for my long-germinating memoirs, I shall give you special mention in the forward. My first reaction to laconic criticism is always despondence, or at least unfettered rage. However I’ve learned that these are the instincts of lesser men. I’ve found that setting an emotional boundary against such aspersions has served to bolster my self-esteem and strengthen my resolve to thrive as an artist. I can now embrace the emotional entrapments of public life and criticism as a reasonable and manageable sidebar in the story of my loftier ambitions. Your role in my psycho-emotional evolution cannot be understated.

Dr. Morris has mentioned to me that you haven’t been receptive when she has suggested that you confer with me about the trials of a creative lifestyle. She believes strongly, and I agree, that we could benefit from more civil interactions. In the estimation of the good doctor, you and I merely exist on two sides of the same fence, albeit my side green and yours withering from drought and neglect, but the same fence. Though doubtless Dr. Morris understands your complexities better than I, I’m convinced that she shares my sympathy for you. Why else would she have asked for my perspective on your case? I was glad to oblige her for the betterment of one of my dearest friends. Your obstacles are not insurmountable Mr. Rolo. Rest assured that with diligence and the determination of which I know you are capable, you will achieve the renown necessary to legitimize the somewhat rocky beginnings of your career, and your spirits will improve.

Yours in unwavering support,

Lyle Manfred

~

Dear Manfred,

Dr. Morris has yet again proven herself beneath my respect. That she would confer with you about anything except venereal disease is a testament to her having risen to the very middle of the field of psychology. Her wanton betrayal of my confidence has virtually guaranteed that among those in the serious art world she will be branded forever as a novice. Were I not bound by the terms of my release to meet with her daily, I would seek out a more qualified therapist forthwith. You should both be advised that I have no use for your sympathy. You may have it back.

For the sake of the good doctor, whose potentials I cringe to recognize but do nonetheless, I intend to indulge you in the matter of our communication, if only to enlighten you both. My attempts to make clear that I find you completely repellent have been fruitless. Doubtless my mastery of the written word has eluded you. Nevertheless, I have hereby decided to abandon arguments of principle with the creatively and morally bereft in favor of benevolence and a simpler life.

I remind you that the source of my agitation is merely my unchecked idealism in matters of art, not dissatisfaction with the level of my success. I cannot deny that I was found guilty in a European court of attempting to deface a priceless artifact. That is a matter of public record. What those records exclude are definitions of deface and priceless. The sculpture at which I hurled a hammer could only have been deemed priceless by the miserably daft, the sensorially deprived and by vacuous celebrities of the lecture circuit. I seek to put the entire incident behind me, but I would that I had hurled a hammer of the sledge or ball peen variety. The piano tuner’s hammer was an improvisation. Ha ha! The burgeoning neo-fascists of the Roman police failed to see the wit of my statement and have not yet returned the hammer. When my reintegration into society becomes permanent, I have every intention of sending for it. I hope to display it on my mantle.

The idealism to which I have referred is also the fire of my work and for that I make no apologies. I am slowly coming to understand how you, a heretofore foul thread in the random tapestry of American art, might find my passion valueless, for it is based solely on the pursuit of one truly masterful expression deep within me and its ennobling beauty, not in the flesh of untold sums of anonymous women, drenched in champagne. Your rampant pursuit of wealth and position among the dilettante community is to be pitied. Your body of work sorely lacks even a single piece of enduring expression of which I know you are capable. Should you decide to abandon the utter hedonism behind your career as a touring lecturer, the embarrassing persona of a syllable-counting carpetbagger and end your affair with Dr. Morris, you might come to enjoy the endorsement of more serious artists, such as myself. Perhaps our camp can influence you to find your true voice.

Yours in apprehensive cooperation,

Rolo

~

Dear Mr. Rolo,

At long last we’ve begun to chip away that hardened exterior! Though I believe your assessment of my reading comprehension skills was without foundation and my need for enlightenment overstated, I have not taken these comments personally. I’ve chosen instead to be delighted, for it seems that the re-melding of our viewpoints is commencing. As Dr. Morris put it, we are beginning to dismantle the fence. That being the climate of our relationship at present, I feel obligated to remind you that the good Dr. Morris comes to call on you not daily, but only when you become available, which this month has amounted to no more than three occasions.

What a splendid time I had at the university this week! I was given an honorary doctorate for my address, which was essentially a reworked version of “Futility, An Artistic Subtext for the Symbolically Challenged,” the lecture with which I’ve heightened my readership and amassed a small fortune this year for my sabbatical to Molokai. Molokai, as you are no doubt aware, is the most mysterious and exclusive of the Hawaiian islands. With my mounting status in the world of academia, I trust that the privilege of a visit will be extended to me without condition. Perhaps I will take time there to “find my voice” as you say.

I so want to pursue this idea of influence by what you call serious artists. No doubt I would blossom under their tutelage. If we continue in this line of symbiotic confidences toward the balance of the right brain with the left, we shall surely bound into history as the definers of the age. Though on a more personal level, nothing is so stimulating as a life lesson shared between intimate friends. It is the virtue and pleasure of intimacy I’ve been attempting to illuminate to Dr. Morris, who resists me. But no matter, for she has been as encouraged as I by this corner we’ve turned, and as we continue to progress Mr. Rolo, I am confident that she and I will turn a corner as well.

Your friend and colleague,

Dr. Lyle Manfred

~

Dear Manfred,

You are a most impetuous twit. As a gesture to Dr. Morris of commitment to my convalescence, I agreed to confer with you about certain matters. True to the now infamous Manfred mindlessness, you’ve made us pals. I’d rather be slathered in Oleo and set aflame than to be considered a friend of yours, but there are more pressing matters.

Aside from the customary revulsion that you never fail to incite in me (of which I tire of describing, letter after letter) your last missive did include a curious detail of my limited availability that I found perplexing. It’s a point of fact that I have seen Dr. Morris in session after breakfast every day for the past six months. She would attest to this. If you are playing on my weakened condition to confuse me for giggles, I will save an uncomfortable chair in Hell for you and your harlot harem of lovelies.

In exhaustion,

Rolo

When people think of writing, few of them think of the tools of the writer. All a writer needs is a pen and something to write on, like paper, a cocktail napkin or a bathroom wall, right? Partly.

I’ve been considering the tools I use for writing again. I tend to change them from time to time to keep it fresh. I do so many kinds of writing: this blog, my lyrics, journals, essays and tons of other stuff that I would never own up to in a public setting like this one.

I’ve written in ruled notebooks, blank bound books with lines, blank bound books without, large books and very small books. I’ve written with ink, with pencils, with my computer and with an AlphaSmart Dana. (I don’t want to do a commercial or

anything, but the Dana is essentially a PalmOS device with a full size keyboard and a really wide screen without color. It was often used to teach typing to kids, but many writers dig them too. I like it because there is nothing for me to do with it except write. That’s better than checking e-mail or any of the other things you can do with a computer that don’t get you where you want to go. It’s light and small and uses very little battery power. Now, onward…)

In my blank book days, I would obsess about the pen that I used. I wanted something weighty and comfortable. But then overnight, only pencils would do it. I would suddenly require the sensation of the graphite scraping across acid-free paper. Then, I loved the feeling of acid-full paper. (Is that what it is when it’s not acid-free?) I also ritualized writing a great deal. The tools and the experience of it had to agree with the value of what I felt I was creating with every word.

I’ve left a lot of that behind, since most of what I do now must eventually end up on a computer somewhere so I can publish it to my blog or print it. However, I still get stuck on writing lyrics. Since I’m actively writing and revising lyrics for my new album, the conundrum has come up again. What tools do I use? It’s hang-up city and I still vacillate when I work on lyrics. My songs are the most enduring of all the work I do. I never write throw-away songs. I could write an essay in an hour and forget about it, but I always feel like I’ll be singing my songs forever. There has to be magic and a subtle connection to my most primal self. What’s the most appropriate medium in which to capture that?

After working on a word processor for so long, it has begun to inform my writing process. The ability to move things around at will and dump ideas with the confidence that I’ll be able to make sense of them later has made it much harder for me to scrawl out my work with a pen or pencil. The thing is, I can now type faster and more legibly than I can write. (Mark Twain said the same thing.)

Typing helps me get something down, in whatever stage of development it’s in, before I forget it. I find that sometimes my bursts of inspiration are so fleeting that if I filter them in any way or experience any time lag between the thought and the notes I make about it, the idea can become terribly diluted or even drift away completely, never to be heard from again. I would never have known that if I hadn’t captured so many great ones using a word processor. Since that initial idea can be the most crucial element of the process, it’s hard to make a case for using a pen when it could get in the way. Besides, I go through several drafts of most every piece. It’s easier to edit on a word processor, instead of scratching things out and drawing little arrows in the margins. On a word processor, I never have to write out the finished product when I’m through revising either.

Because of the immense significance I attach to them, writing lyrics on a word processor throws me a psycho-emotional curve. John Mayer (whom I really don’t admire much) made a relevant point when he was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and saw the original framed lyric sheet for “Like A Rolling Stone.” Mayer said (I’m paraphrasing) that it seems like a more significant piece of music history to behold that handwritten lyric than what might have come from opening Microsoft Word to a new document and printing it out when you were done. Oh, too right.

But still, when I write lyrics, images can come fast and furious. They may come before I can hammer them into the right meter or scheme. They might not come in order. For example, they might not be relevant in the first verse I’m working on, but I get the feeling that they’d be great for the second. Sometimes great ideas can occur to me that end up in other songs. If I’m working on the Dana like I am now, I can scroll down and dump a new idea at the bottom of the page for consideration later. Then, I can scroll back up and continue to stare at my unfinished stanza until I get it to work. If I had to turn a page and date it (which I always do no matter what I write) I might lose the idea. Working with files saves me the trouble, since they’re date-stamped automatically. In addition, if I have to look at a seemingly incoherent idea note while refining a verse, I can find it distracting. I can even find it disheartening, because even if I finish the perfect first verse, that page is littered with ramblings that declare the lyric very unfinished.

I told you, hang-up city.

So this has been my challenge of late: getting past the idea that lyrics that ring eternal can’t be written on a word processor. It doesn’t matter what they’re written on, as long as they’re written. Who cares what “Like A Rolling Stone” was written on? Who the hell cares about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? I certainly don’t. Those things are all irrelevant. It’s far less poetic to keep the Dana on my nightstand then a fountain pen and a leather bound book, but I have to remind myself that I’m about writing, not about creating some legend about myself as a rustic artist. I still write in inspiring places (that little word processor thing comes everywhere with me) but I find that my best ideas come when I’m doing decidedly unglamorous things or when I’m almost asleep.

“Like A Rolling Stone” could have been written on the toilet. There’s no proof that it wasn’t. Kind of takes the edge off that little piece of history in the museum, doesn’t it?