Goodbye to All That

You won't find her at the market anymore.

I’m afraid I’m not perfect. Ever since I repatriated to the USA at the end of 2001, I admit I’ve had a bit of a chip on my shoulder when it comes to putting up with the tastes and opinions of Americans who’ve never been farther away than an occasional week in the Caribbean or Mexico, as well as all those businesses that make their living catering to those tastes and opinions. (“I decided to go live in Slovenia on a whim, and I did,” I say to myself with chest puffed metaphorically out. “I’m just as good as anyone else out there! Maybe better!”) Whenever I go into a home-furnishings shop and browse through the photos and posters in the Exotic Destinations section, I know exactly what I’ll find: Paris, Venice, New York, maybe Tuscany, precious little else. What a bore.

Which is why I so enjoy talking to those folk I consider to be ‘my people’: those who either are, or have been, expats, well-traveled world citizens, or at least People Who Know Europe. Not that I should talk so loudly — I’ve never been east of Romania, never been to Africa (except for Tunisia), never been to Asia. I’ve always wondered about what’s around the bend, what’s beyond the farthest outpost in my experience.

I recently enjoyed writing an article on expat creatives in Slovenia — musicians, filmmakers, writers. It wasn’t part of my plan, but all those I ended up interviewing were Americans. It seems to me that the American expat is a breed apart from, say, the German, Australian or British expat. Because the USA is so isolated, American expats tend to think they have a lot more to prove when they move overseas — not to be seen as the typical insular, monolingual American, for example, they tend to throw themselves into their host cultures full-throttle. They need to Make A Statement, carve out their territory. They don’t want to be back home, they sense there’s other stuff out there worth exploring, and if they sometimes seem to want to become more Italian than the Italians or more Russian than the Russians, who can blame them?

Some expats are, of course, more, well, naturally out there (in more than one sense) than others. Take the notorious writings and escapades of Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi, who started the eXile newspaper in Moscow (and wrote a book about it, which I haven’t read). Ames and Taibbi, who haven’t spoken to each other in years, have relocated (not exactly with glee) back to the US and — as a recent Esquire piece makes clear — haven’t exactly mellowed with age. Nutcases, once-and-future addicts and world-class haters they may well be, but Ames and Taibbi are probably the expats all other expats should be measured against, the ones who actually lived the lives other, more timid sojourners only daydreamed about. (That most of these daydreams remained daydreams is probably a good thing.)

Nearly equaling those guys for gumption is New York writer/musician/cult figure Mykel Board, who decided to relocate to Mongolia for a year in 1995-96, for the heck of it, and had the adventure of his life — or at least one of them — and wrote about it to hilarious effect in his book Even a Daughter is Better Than Nothing (I’ve read it, you should too; it can be bought for cheap on Amazon.com).

I haven’t read any of those books about Americans relocating to Tuscany or Provence — too mainstream, couldn’t care less about these people’s plumbing and wiring problems in renovating that oh-so-picture-perfect farmhouse, reminds me too much of the silly posters in the picture-framing section of the store anyway.

I experienced a far different sensation recently, reading a memoir of a place I know well, by a woman who came to Slovenia before I did and remains there now. I’m speaking of  Erica Johnson Debeljak, whose memoir of her early years in Slovenia, Forbidden Bread, was published last year by North Atlantic Books. It is a passing strange thing to read a book written by someone I know, with whom I shared a city for a time. We didn’t see each other every week, but I knew Erica and her husband, the noted poet, essayist and educator Aleš Debeljak (for whom I edited a manuscript or two while I was living in Ljubljana and working as an English language editor), on a casual basis. I used to think of Erica as the Official American Female Expat in Slovenia, since she was obviously a smart and capable person who had done very well for herself in terms of switching careers along with countries, combining this with raising a beautiful family and maintaining a rather high profile in the SI (one wintry day on the street near my flat in Bežigrad, I remember seeing a large photo of Aleš, Erica and their young children on a billboard, in a winter scene, possibly riding on a sled, in what I’m almost sure was an ad for the ubiquitous Slovenian cellphone company Mobitel). As her memoir makes clear, though, the first years were anything but a smooth ride as she adjusted to and sometimes clashed with the customs of her new home, represented in all forms from the infamous bureaucracy of the new state to the rural lifestyles of her husband’s family.

Erica moved to Slovenia only a couple of years after it had declared its independence from the fast-fragmenting Yugoslavia, and battles were still going on just to the south between Croats and Serbs (at her otherwise idyllic wedding reception, she could hear machine-gun fire a few miles away over the border in Karlovac, Croatia).  You’d expect capsule descriptions of the history of the region and Slovenia in particular, and Erica provides them clearly and concisely, but the heart of the book is a personal story of her struggles with the new land. There’s the odd language, of course, but language is a fixed and codified thing; you can take classes in it, and it can be mastered with sufficient amounts of concentration and practice (lots of it).

You can’t, however, take a class in social attitudes (at least not, as far as I know, in Slovenia). Certain things can only be learned by direct experience, such as the Slovenes’ aversion to drafts of any kind (riding in a hot car on a hot day with no air conditioning, nobody opens a window — which I can vouch for), and triple-diapering a baby (which I’d never heard of before reading this book — something about worrying about setting the baby’s hips out of joint). Although the Slovenes tend to be competent and honest, they’re also not as direct as Americans, which can be both a blessing and a curse, but is ultimately just another detail for an expat to adjust to.

The book’s final chapter jumps ahead from 1995 — just after the birth of the Debeljaks’ first child — to 2008, when they have a teenage girl and two growing boys and Slovenia is a member of the EU and NATO, the tolar is history, and modernization has, as Erica writes, rendered obsolete much of what she covered in her memoir. It’s meant to be jolting, and it certainly was for me. Expats understandably tend to romanticize their chosen foreign destination, even when, as one hip Slovene woman once told me, “your paradise is someone else’s prison.” Over the five years I spent in Slovenia I could see the old ways fading out as certainly as the cafes with Tito-era decor gave way with a vengeance to postmodern facades and shops that wouldn’t be out of place in Copenhagen, Rome or London. I accept that time can’t be reversed, but at this point I wonder how I’ll feel when I set foot in Slovenia again. You can’t go home away from home again. I know that at the least, I’ll miss the tolars.

How I got to this point, part II: Christy’s letter, the groom’s toast and farewell to Slovenia

As I wrote in my preceding post (which you should read before this one), Kirsty’s death sent me into a downspiraling period of prolonged and somewhat inexplicable grief in the first weeks of 2001, quite out of proportion to my connection to her (never met her, never spoke with or wrote to her; I was a fan who saw her in concert once and had a few of her records). Perhaps the best way I can explain my reaction is that it seemed to me, at the time, to be a personal insult; here was someone whose taste and craft I admired, who had something to say to the world in general and to me in particular, and what does the world do with her? Have her killed by a speedboat owned by someone who never even had the grace to admit guilt or even apologize, instead framing a hapless boathand to take the rap. Agh.

Of course, I didn’t know Kirsty, and it wasn’t my tragedy. Not really. But still I felt as if I was connected to it in some way, and wanted the world to notice as far as I could. Writing about it for the Boston weekly seemed a good excuse to pay my respects; I was far from the only person who felt going to St. Martin in the Fields was something he had to do.

The day after Kirsty’s memorial service was a classic gray, cold and rainy day in London. Looking for something with which to occupy myself, I visited the colorful Indian neighborhood around Brick Lane in the East End. After lunch and a bit of walking around, I boarded a double-decker bus for the ride back to my hotel, and climbed to the upper deck, which held no other passengers except for me.

I stared out of the windows at the gray and the rain, listening on my Walkman to a cassette tape of an ’80s band from Boston, music I knew very well. I began to cry, for Kirsty and myself and the world and for the hopelessness of it all, for all the shattered dreams of lost childhoods, for vanished youth and wasted potential, for the finality of death, for anything and everything. For its own sake.

Something cracked inside of me, huge sobs arose from deep inside and I began heaving and bucking around the bus, and I cried like I hadn’t since the death of my mother over a decade before.

Something had to change; that I knew. Something had opened up inside, and I knew it was important that I investigate what was going on.

But for now, it was time to return to Slovenia.

*****

As noted, I had taken to singing in the days and weeks following Kirsty’s death. I didn’t sing in public, but I would grab lyrics off the Internet for songs I liked, everything from the Johnny Mercer classic “Laura” to “I’m Talking To You” (a single released in 1979 by a Boston band called the Maps), print them up, memorize them, and sing them out loud, by myself, in my kitchen. Was I trying to get closer to the source of music? Assuage my grief with self-therapy in this way? Whatever it was, it helped.

I also dug through the collection of CDs I’d brought with me from the US, looking for sounds I hadn’t heard in awhile. One of them was a record by the alt-country Seattle band the Picketts, featuring Christy McWilson. I’d never paid particular attention to the Picketts before; I’d first encountered them back in the rockcrit days of 1990 when I came across a single of theirs, a cutesy country cover of the Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go?” The CD, Euphonium, came out in ’96, the same year I’d left Framingham for Ljubljana (anyone stuck in Framingham should move to Ljubljana, by the way; no contest there).

I played Euphonium again, and yet again. The world-weary wisdom in the songs — most of which McWilson had written — and her experienced yet tender voice spoke to me, and gave me comfort, especially these lines in a song called “Night Fell”:

Night fell as if retrieving

all hopes and boundaries from my sight

please tell me that the darkness is deceiving

and somewhere down this tunnel there is light

Sometimes when you need help you receive it from where you least expect it, such as from a CD you’ve had for five years and never paid too much attention to before.

Come to think of it, I hadn’t even given Kirsty a thought for years before her death, before everything changed.

It was painful, slow and difficult, but I gradually succeeded in knitting myself back a little more into the fabric of humanity. I felt it was about time I took some serious steps in that direction.

Donna and I continued e-mailing each other.

*****

On my previous Web site, I’d written about meeting Christy McWilson in person at a folk festival in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on the first day of September, 2001 (this was a few days after I’d first met Donna in New York). However, I didn’t tell the whole story behind it.

As a side effect of the Kirsty grief, I’d gone on a limited mission to Appreciate Artists While They Still Lived! and Tell Them How Much They Mean To You! which in real life can get kind of awkward — it meant I was a man in his early 40s writing fan letters (or, more usually, e-mails) to musicians I knew slightly if at all, something that should have gotten me drummed out of the Rock Critic club (as if I even cared to belong to that little band any longer). But I did write an actual letter to Christy McWilson, who had recently released a solo album, The Lucky One, which I ordered directly from her label stateside. I told her about how she’d helped me through Kirsty’s death, and thanked her for putting her own songs out there, and some other things which are none of your business.

Some time later — two or three months, perhaps, it was July — I received in the mail a large padded envelope from Seattle, containing a homemade CD and a two-page handwritten letter from Christy McWilson.

The CD — which she had her then-husband Scott McCaughey, of the Young Fresh Fellows, burn for me — contained the Picketts’ cover of Kirsty’s “Chip Shop” and the YFF’s cover of “They Don’t Know,” neither of which I’d heard before. (I was a YFF fan too, and I’d actually met and interviewed McCaughey back in 1991 when I traveled to Seattle in service of a piece on that city’s burgeoning music scene for the Boston Phoenix; this was about five minutes before Nirvana broke, and although Scott made a passing reference to them, I didn’t mention Cobain and Co. in the article at all; who knew? If you’ve never heard of Scott McCaughey, he’s a noted indie rocker with a great sense of humor who also plays with R.E.M., Minus 5, and various other side projects.)

I don’t make a habit of putting letters people have written privately to me on the Web, and I apologize if I’m offending anyone, but this stone is just too pertinent to be left unturned:

Christy told me that she, too, had been affected by what happened to Kirsty. Death and transition are at the bottom of all of this, somehow (she said).

“I’m a huge Kirsty MacColl fan,” Christy wrote. “Her death looms large.

“I’m not sure what I believe — or what is proven — I just know what I know — and I’ve come to know that there are no coincidences (finding-refinding Picketts etc.).

“I think music, and maybe my kind of music in particular, acts like a dog whistle. Some people hear it — or the dog whistle tones of it – and most people don’t.” To her, it suggested an image out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, of all sorts of people gathering to meet at the foot of Devil’s Tower.

*****

Dog whistle or not, I did travel to the Johnstown FolkFest, in an area of rural western Pennsylvania whose green rolling hills reminded me strongly of Slovenia.

I found Christy sitting at a portable table set up outdoors near a stage, and after I ascertained that it was her, I told her I was Wes. (Oh, yeah: I hadn’t told her I was coming.)

“You’re Wes,” she said. “You’re Wes.”

She then stood up and gave me a hug.

We talked a bit between her sets, and I made a point of telling her my life was on an upswing, and she said she was intuitive and could tell that. We made our goodbyes, and I went off to find my car in the vast parking lot. (We haven’t had any contact since and I don’t want to bother her, but I’m glad she’s still out there recording and if she ever plays Austin again, I’ll be there. )

*****

Donna, the future Mrs. Pogoer, who grew up on a tree-shaded suburban street in the Vailsburg section of Newark, had an interesting past — in addition to a successful career as a corporate writer, she was a skilled musician proficient on several instruments. Her principal instrument was double bass, which she had played with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra and other classical ensembles, and with which she had also made something of a name for herself on the small, but very happening, lower Manhattan cabaret circuit. Donna’s natural habitat was a piano bar. She had worked closely with, among others, the singing ringmaster of the Barnum & Bailey Circus as well as this guy, and was an excellent and dedicated cook, a Reiki practitioner, and a very entertaining raconteuse (without even trying, she had had encounters with a large number of celebrities, from Kathleen Turner and Liza Minnelli to Jackie Mason, Harvey Fierstein and Jonathan Richman, the latter of whom she had even helped inspire to write the song “You Can’t Talk To The Dude”). Clearly, this was someone worth getting to know.

After I returned from Pennsylvania, on our second rendezvous in early September, the future Mrs. Pogoer and I wound our way through midtown Manhattan from Bryant Park to Central Park, where, sitting on a bench near a lake, I gathered my nerve, said some things I’ve totally forgotten, and kissed her for real-no-mistake, startling her but not in a bad way, and we nearly ended up doing indecent things in public.

I returned to Ljubljana a few days before 9/11 — Donna had had a dream about the towers’ fall a few hours before it occurred, yes, she really did — and we stayed in touch and agreed to meet in October in London, where the Kirsty fans would be meeting to celebrate her birthday by playing her songs in a pub (a tradition that’s continued every year since; Kirsty’s family and friends often stop by, and now there’s a memorial bench in Soho Square where the event commences).

We indeed met up in London, and decided to move in together back in the States, and after a while, after considering various other cities, we decided to set up shop in Austin, Texas because it seemed like a good enough place to make a new start, and Donna wanted to leave the New York/New Jersey area and I didn’t want to go back there myself.

And so I went on a “farewell tour” of Central Europe, stopping in Budapest, Bratislava and Brno, and put my things in storage and flew home to New York on the day after Christmas of 2001. After a few weeks staying with a friend in Brooklyn, we winged our way to the Lone Star State.

The rabbi at our wedding, who knew our story, remarked at the ceremony that it took the death of a poet to bring us together, and that out of tragedy new beginnings and good things can come.

And here we are, nearly five years since that day, and we have three-year-old twin boys walkin’ around here and everything, and there have been challenges and struggles along the way, and still are. (That’s life, that’s what the people say.)

But I still think that if Donna agreed to marry me, I can’t be all bad as a human being.

And you know, that’s good.

And even if Kirsty died so senselessly, yet our lives are utterly changed because of this tragedy, and there are two new people beginning to unfold their own stories in this sad yet sometimes beautiful world.

As Matthew Fox wrote in his book Creation Spirituality:

Compassion is a kind of fire…it disturbs, it surprises, it ignites, it burns, it sears, and it warms. Compassion incinerates denial; it especially warms and melts cold hearts, cold structures, frozen minds, and self-satisfied lifestyles. Those who are touched by compassion have their lives turned upside down. That is not necessarily a bad thing.

And I think of what Christy wrote on the CD I gave her to sign back on the first day of September in 2001:

To Wes–

Here’s to them mysterious mysteries.

Christy Sue

How I got to this point, part I: Kirsty and Donna and the mysteries of the universe

Getting from here to there, thereby hangs a tale. And since it’s past time to tell it…

Well, it’s like this. Sometimes the divine spark, call it what you will — God, or the Great Hand that Writes, or the Fickle Finger of Fate — makes itself known in a damned heavy-handed manner that leaves you reeling and wondering why me? and what’s going on? and thinking I’d better ride this wave for all it’s worth, because something bigger than just my little old life is going on here. And sometimes, like nature, the Great Hand likes to hide (thanks for the tip, Heraclitus).

Sometimes it hides for a very long time, indeed.

As the summer of 2000 turned to fall, and fall cooled further to winter, my life in Slovenia had become, if not exactly tiresome, then predictable; I couldn’t see much of a future ahead. Work had slowed, and I had by then long intuited that certain avenues would be forever closed to me if I remained there, and I would never be truly accepted by most of the locals. I loved Slovenia — still do — but the reverse didn’t hold: Slovenia didn’t love me back. The sense of wonder and discovery (and occasional moments of horror) that marks Year One of the experience of any expat worth the plane fare had, in that time-honored expat way, long since given way to same old same old. Not a bad existence, but still. It was static and holding.

I couldn’t escape a certain restlessness. I felt an inescapable sense of things coming to an end, as if my life in Ljubljana, rewarding, quirky and different as it was, had reached a point of no return. The wheels were still turning, but I was staying in place. I felt myself at loose ends, and didn’t quite know what to do about it except go into the old town, have another coffee, and stare into the distance.

The house in which I was living, my third and, as it turned out, final residence in LJ, was, for all its flaws, by far the best place I’d lived, and certainly the roomiest. I occupied the ground floor of Number 41 F. ulica, a modest two-story home in Bezigrad; the old couple who had previously lived there had died within weeks of each other, as old couples sometimes do, and their married daughter, a no-nonsense but fair enough woman who worked for a security company, rented out the flat; the second story was vacant except for a couple of weeks a year when the woman’s aunt, who lived in Switzerland, returned for a homecoming vacation.

The house wasn’t in the best condition, mold darkened corners of the ceiling, and the old man’s clothes were still stored in the cupboard and other artifacts (including a funeral album showing yet another old guy in his coffin) were in drawers in the house and the old quilts were still on the bed (my landlady obviously had no conception of giving away or discarding such effects). A crack in the bedroom window resulted in some very cold mornings. Hey, perhaps this was the way things were done here — garage sales in Slovenia were virtually unheard of, since nobody ever threw anything out even when someone died. But springtime strawberries grew in the garden, the house’s cool, dark cellar was ideal for storing wine, and I’d long gotten used to the slowness of dial-up Internet connections on my Mac laptop.

And so I passed the days, cooking my own meals, walking to the market, riding the bus to and from downtown, attending concerts and festivals, writing articles for various publications, editing for translators, and surfing the Net. Life passed rather glacially, and there was a vague sense of disquiet to it all.

New Year’s Eve arrived, and suddenly it was 2001 — the real start of the 21st century (so I was told).

On the second day of the year, I was sitting idly at the kitchen table and checking a site I hadn’t visited in awhile, which chronicled the recent deaths of celebrities and other notables, to catch up on anyone I might have missed. And read the following.

Kirsty MacColl (singer/songwriter) — Dead. Boat hit her while she was swimming. Died December 18, 2000.

Kirsty MacColl??? My God.

I’d seen Kirsty perform on March 19, 1995, when I paid $8 to see her and her band at the Paradise, a smallish club in Boston. The house was far from packed, but her fans were, as ever, much appreciative.

My reaction at the terrible manner of her death — killed by a speedboat while scuba diving (you can easily look up the details elsewhere) — soon sent me spiraling from disbelief into full-on grief. I started crying uncontrollably for a time every day for about two weeks.

I printed out various song lyrics, memorized them, and sung them out loud while standing alone in my sun-washed kitchen with its window looking out on the garden.

I soon found a Kirsty-devoted group on the Internet, where the members were sharing their grief, and I introduced myself and started sharing.

Although I always thought Kirsty was great [I wrote], and am happy to say I saw her perform live once in 1995, I don’t own every record she ever put out and frankly, hadn’t even thought about her for several years. I found out about her death shortly after New Year’s and was completely unprepared for the depth of my feelings, my sense of bereavement and profound loss. I suppose I always took her for granted.

I’m of the opinion that it’s dangerous to have heroes, since, politician or musician, they’re bound to let you down in the end, but everything I’ve read about Kirsty so far suggests that she was admirable and courageous (to the last moments) and — well, I can say that she was, if not my heroine, someone whose legacy appeals to what I’d like to think of as the better parts of myself. For me the infuriating thing is that it’s taken her death to make me realize this. It seems so obvious now. I think the major difference between Kirsty and most of the practitioners of what passes for the product of the pop scene today is only this: She was a completely realized adult human being; she knew who she was and did what she wanted to do, and damn the chart-topping fads and followers of fashion. And it’s only now I realize what I’m going to miss. Right now the fact that people with one-tenth her talent have enjoyed a hundred times the success she did, and the stupid, infuriating way she died (about which I could spit nails) seem like exhibits A and B in Resolved: Why the World is an Awful Place.On the other hand, I can’t stand cheap sentiment and bathos, and one of the reasons I care for Kirsty is that she didn’t either, she saw reality and talked about it, and the last thing she’d want is a weepy overblown flowery tribute. Put away the rose-colored glasses; keep it real and it’ll be fine.

Kirsty was three months younger than me, and when you’re a teenager and discovering and exploring a new thing called punk rock, something of the spirit of it remains a touchstone for you, however much growing up you do over the decades. At the least, euphemisms and greeting-card sentiments won’t do.So I don’t really know what else to say right now. Except that it’s still so hard to take; to echo what others have said, it’s as if I’ve lost a personal friend or a part of myself, maybe one of the truest, best parts. I don’t know where to go from here. I’ve thought about attending the memorial service but aren’t sure. In any case, “Walking Down Madison,” “My Affair,” and “They Don’t Know” keep playing in my head, in heavy rotation.The Kirsty concert I saw happened one Sunday night at a small club in Boston, filled with her proverbial small but loyal band of local New England followers. She teased us from the stage as “you Sunday night rockers, you,” and did all of those varied gems that belonged to her, and everyone loved it and was glad they’d come. Before the last encore, she hinted that the appropriate way to close such a show would be with something soft, gentle, filled with reverie. Then she and the band slammed into “I Wanna Be Sedated.” I went home with a big grin on my face.

And thinking to myself: Oh, yeah — she’s one of us.

Later that month I traveled to London to cover Kirsty’s memorial service for the Boston Phoenix (which I’ve reprinted here); I didn’t write, however, that I cried through much of it. (Well, so did a lot of people in the Church of St. Martin in the Fields.)

A woman in the US named Donna wrote back, saying how much she appreciated my post. I wrote back and thanked her.

About two days later, she e-mailed me again, asking if I was the same Wes that someone named Symboline (a/k/a Sally Cragin, astrologer and an active freelance writer based in Massachusetts) had mentioned in an e-mail to her a couple of years before.

What?? Yes, I was. I’d known Sally since the mid-’80s, in fact, when we were both doing the guest-list music-scribbling thing at clubs around Boston.

Before too long, Donna and I found out that we had been born on the same day, in the same year (as we later found out, I was eight minutes older), she in New Jersey and me in New York.

We started writing to each other, and for me, sorry if this sounds corny, it was like discovering a long-lost other half. We wrote about our families and our beliefs and a lot of things that aren’t anybody’s business but our own, and she had also seen Kirsty (in New York a couple of years before I had — her brother, also a big fan, had introduced Donna to Kirsty’s music).

In late August of that eventful year, I flew to New York ostensibly to see my family, but really to meet Donna in person. The future Mrs. Pogoer and I finally met on August 24 at a downtown Manhattan bistro (known as a hangout for writers and editors, although that’s not why I selected it). It couldn’t have been a more perfect setting for the encounter. Time seemed to stop, we fell to talking as if we’d known each other for ages, everything seemed perfect, and it was one of the most memorable days of my life and set the tone for every day I’ve had since then.

We continued the date with a concert at the Knitting Factory that same night. I remember we had to wait an interminable amount of time before a cab came to take Donna to the train station, and she kissed me goodbye in the cab as if signaling me to stay in touch, and do some thinking.

I then drove to Pennsylvania to visit friends and take in a music festival in Johnstown (more about that in an upcoming post), and returned in early September, where Donna and I met up again in Manhattan, in Bryant Park in midtown, near the main branch of the Public Library.

I realize that many couples have “met cute” stories, but I don’t think a lot of them can , in all honesty, come up to ours.

To recap, here’s an excerpt from our wedding Web page, circa 2003, on The Knot:

<<It’s a long and twisted story, but here goes. We met on the Internet – but not on any of the usual sites. In April, 2000, Donna e-mailed a question to an online astrologer named Symboline, who in real life is Wes’s longtime friend Sally. Sally/Symboline recognized that Donna shared a birthdate with Wes…and told Donna to check out Wes’s website, which Donna duly did. Hm, she thought, a bit peeved: this sounds like a person I’d really get along with, too bad he’s an ocean and half a continent away. Flash forward to January, 2001. British singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl (a favorite of both Donna and Wes) had been killed the previous month in a freak accident in Mexico. Donna logged onto an online bulletin board of MacColl fans, and the first thing she read was a posting by…Wes. Not realizing he was THAT Wes, she e-mailed him to tell him she liked what he’d written; he courteously replied. Soon afterwards, she put two and two together and realized: Hey! A whirlwind exchange of e-mail followed as winter turned into summer; in August, 2001 the two met face-to-face…in Manhattan. The rest is history. Make of it what you will… Wes and Donna would like to thank Symboline and Kirsty for making it all possible…and the fates for finally bringing them together after having been born one river and eight minutes apart on a hot day in July.

[to be continued]

The Human Switchboard code

There are many advantages to throwing your old life aside and relocating overseas for several years. Believe me, I know. However, one of the definite downsides for me, as a musically attuned obsessive, was having to put my record collection in storage. My identity prior to Slovenia was so tied up in caring for and regularly augmenting The Collection that, for awhile, the only thing that kept me from missing it every waking moment was the constant flood of new images and inputs that came from, well, living in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Not that my collection was anywhere near as large as those of some people I’ve known — at its largest it probably never topped 800 LPs, and I regularly sold or just got rid of platters I decided I never had to hear again. (For further enlightenment on the subject, you might read the book Vinyl Junkies, by record collector, Boston music scribe extraordinaire and man about town Brett Milano. Brett lived across the way from me for several years on a busy street in Allston, gateway to Brighton, Massachusetts, and I’d occasionally spy him walking up the concrete hill to his lair, arms invariably laden with LPs. Brett’s a nice guy; say hi if you see him.)

And, of course, I collected music overseas — only instead of my old stereo system and turntable, I made do with a portable CD player connected to two small, cheap speakers. You make allowances for such things when living your New Life, and, on the whole, it worked very well.

And I mourned the New Life when I relocated back to the States to start my New, New Life as 2001 turned into 2002. (Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I’m no fool — I know that Mrs. Pogoer is the first person to read these posts.)

Which brings us to Human Switchboard. Twenty-six years after the release of this Cleveland band’s first and only LP, Who’s Landing In My Hangar?, you may be wondering why I’ve chosen this particular time to write about them. There’s really no current news hook per se, but for one reason or another they’ve been on my mind lately — and this blog is a handy safety valve to clear the decks of old business (why else have a blog?).

I can’t remember when or where I first got my hands on Hangar, or how I’d heard about it; it wasn’t a promo copy, and I never reviewed it in print. However I came across it, I was immediately hooked. Hangar was one of those critical favorites that sold poorly, was promoted minimally if at all, and soon dropped off the radar, except that a few devotees (amounting to pretty much anyone who ever actually got to hear the LP) never forgot about it. Over the years you’d hear it mentioned in reverent tones, and in fact, still do (Check out these reams of prose about the band from one forever-altered fan, courtesy of the Perfect Sound Forever online mag. And if you’d like to see what all the excitement was about for yourself, take a look at this vintage YouTube clip of the band performing “I Can Walk Alone” at New York’s Peppermint Lounge in ’81).

The Switchboard got compared to the Velvet Underground a lot, but give Lou Reed a female counterpart named Myrna who stands up to him (the way Kirsty MacColl stands up to Shane MacGowan in “Fairytale of New York”), substitute the sturm und drang, push-and-pull of modern relationships for heroin chic, and make everybody incredibly human, and you’ll get closer to the source of their appeal. The best songs — “(Say No To) Saturday’s Girl,” “I Can Walk Alone,” and the 7:30 epic “Refrigerator Door” — employed tension-and-release rhythms as nervous, urgent energies, flowing through both music and lyrics, building to frenzied climaxes, then snapping back as the rubber band that bound the two singers/lovers, guitarist Robert Pfeifer and keyboardist Myrna Marcarian, released but didn’t break. At least not yet. These were real, recognizable people — flawed, occasionally awkward, at times insecure, but with a genuine artistic vision. They weren’t going to let something like seeming to be unlikely candidates for rock stardom stand in the way of getting on a stage, or making a record, and leading their listeners through the cracked sidewalks of catharsis city.

And one day in the spring of 2002, landed in Austin and my cartons unpacked at last, I finally got to listen again to one of my all-time favorite LPs. And what I heard when I played “Refrigerator Door” floored me.

In jaz sem zmeraj hotel vedet, kuga je s tabo,

ko sem jaz držal tebe.

In jaz sem zmeraj hotel vedet, kuga je s tabo,

ko sem jaz polubu tebe

…Marička, baby.

What???

After being away in Slovenia for five years, I was listening again to one of my favorite songs on one of my favorite albums of all time. And on the chorus, I was hearing Bob Pfeifer singing in Slovene. Hard to decipher, and not altogether correct Slovene, but definitely the language that had been filling my own ears since 1996.

My mind reeling, I posted this to the I.R.S. Records Forum bulletin board (Hangar was released on I.R.S.’s Faulty Products label):

>> I’ve just listened, for the first time in years, to Human Switchboard’s classic 1981 LP “Who’s Landing In My Hangar?” and was knocked for a loop to realize that Bob Pfeifer sings the chorus of the 7:30 epic “Refrigerator Door” in what I’m 95% sure is the Slovene tongue (I know this owing to having lived in Slovenia for several years). A good deal of Slovene-Americans live in Ohio, so I wouldn’t be surprised if Bob was part Slovene [note: as indeed, he is].

>>I’ll send a Slovenia postcard to the first person who e-mails me a transcription of the lyrics (I’ll translate the Slovene, too, once I’m certain of the words as it’s a bit hard to hear. I do know that the last line, “ker sem jaz poljubil tebe,” means “because I kissed you”).

I heard nothing further from anyone about it. For almost two years. Until, one morning in February of 2004, someone responded to the message.

Bob Pfeifer himself.

> > Yes you are right and the first person to ever figure this out. When the album was reviewed it shocked me not that anyone would get the Slovenian but that people referred to the French or German lyrics — I thought those to be relatively recognizeable lyrics: (what I was trying to say was something like (in translation) — basically what did you feel like when we made love), literally: I always wanted to know what was with you/went on with you/you felt when I kissed you… <<

And here we are. (I still haven’t been able to fully translate those lyrics, which I’m sure are the only instance of an American musician incorporating the Slovene language into a rock song — alternative, new wave, whatever you want to call it. Anyone else want to give it a try? The postcard offer still stands.)

Bob Pfeifer and Myrna Marcarian broke up long ago; after a couple of decades working a straight job, she now fronts a band called Ruby on the Vine, well worth checking out. As for Bob Pfeifer, well…it’s a strange story. In short, he released a post-breakup album in 1987 called After Words; became an A&R man for Epic Records, then A&R VP and, ultimately, president of Disney-owned Hollywood Records from 1994 to 1997. For the past few years he’s been running a multimedia company called Segnana.

And then there are Pfeifer’s recent difficulties with the law, which should certainly give one pause: he was arrested in 2006 in connection with the federal racketeering case against LA private eye-gone-bad Anthony Pellicano — you can see the Department of Justice’s press release here — and pleaded guilty to paying Pellicano to wiretap an ex-girlfriend (not Marcarian, thank Bog for small favors!).

I don’t know Bob Pfeifer, although I’d certainly welcome the opportunity (which will probably never happen) to sit down with him and have a chat, for publication or otherwise. I know that artists (and A&R men) are rarely angels. But I would hope there is still some good in him, that core of integrity that allowed him to once create some honest, moving and groundbreaking music that touched people. Not a whole lot of people, maybe, but some. A worthwhile thing still, whatever you might say about Robert Pfeifer now.

(If only they’d release Hangar on CD. Until then, there’s this. Word to the wise. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Scroll down a bit. Say no more.)

If the Great Hand that Writes has a plan for us all, maybe this was the plan for me.

I had to go away to Slovenia for five years and study the language so that I could come back and understand the lyrics to the chorus of “Refrigerator Door.”

And tell the world about it.

Bog works in mysterious ways.

Mid-Texas midlife melodies, and other diversions (March 26, 2002)

I don’t know a lot about music in Texas, but the music scene in Austin is alive and kicks heavily. (The roads, however, are where you really have to be brave. Trucks everywhere, and all on a mission. Favorite bumper sticker spied to date: “Texas/Bigger than France”). Earlier this month I experienced my first SXSW, the biggest music biz conference/festival in the US, as a volunteer no less (interesting, but…never again). I did get to sit in on a couple of not-bad panels and saw some decent shows: the Silos, Kristie Stremel (big fun), Mayflies USA, Amy Rigby..way too much going on to catch everything I wanted, but it was OK.

One of the highlights was finally getting to see Rigby, who played a 1 a.m. showcase upstairs at a sedate Indian restaurant called the Clay Pit. The Girlfriend and I both felt she was as engaging and captivating onstage as on record; I loved the guitar heroics towards the end (really), and the Girlfriend noted that Amy was the only singer-songwriter we’d seen that night (there were two others) who: 1) introduced herself from the stage, 2) didn’t make self-aggrandizing or sophomoric remarks passing as stage patter (asking the audience to buy her and the band members drinks, etc.), and 3) talked to the audience as if they were friends…she was, in short, an adult. After the show, she came out into the club and sold some CDs while talking with fans (also, the only one to bother doing this). We introduced ourselves and had a pleasant chat, and that was nice. I was impressed that she asked me if I missed Slovenia, since most people I talk to about it expect me to feel like I’ve been released from prison, which isn’t at all the case.

Since my return I’ve been busy filling in the cultural blanks I missed out on overseas (another expat hazard, you don’t get the fine subtleties and some hometown pop culture passes you by…which of course ain’t necessarily a bad thing. I must be the last American who’s never seen an episode of “Survivor”). Music-wise, I’ve definitely gotten that our generation has gotten big into alt-country, a/k/a “Americana” (I notice that there’s no such category available on the Yahoo groups, but if you’re not quite sure what alt-country is, pick up a copy of No Depression magazine, published out of Nashville and available at any bookstore where cappuccino foam is spooned). And last week I finally reassembled my stereo system and played some LPs I’d had in storage since `96; I’m happy.

I like Amy Rigby because she writes music (with wit and heart) for the real world; as anyone can tell, she lives in it along with the rest of us. I liked a comment she made at a SXSW songwriters’ panel: “I feel like I’ve really succeeded if I can take my experiences and put them in a song and then have other people paste their experiences right on top of it.” Not to get carried away, but I also find that what Amy and plenty of other LBers are doing — i.e., performing against all odds — is inspirational; it seems to validate my own interest in such matters. There’s something heroic about going out there after 40, when you’re supposed to have long since put away your teenage dreams and retired to the house and kids, or at least a respectable day job. At the least, it’s good to know you’re not alone in your obsessions.

I should probably also mention a heavily attended public interview given by the half-lucid, half-incoherent, but always amusing Courtney Love (at 37, she qualifies as a LateBoomer, doesn’t she? Even Kurt Cobain would have been 35 this year), who’s involved in much-publicized litigation against her label and by extension, the entire record industry, with better artists’ contracts in mind. Courtney wasn’t the only one at SXSW who predicted the entire music business was headed for a crash in three years; as far as I’m concerned, it couldn’t come too soon. I know much more than I want to (don’t we all) about the way the deck is stacked against talented musicians with something to say, and in favor of the mindless machinery of Clear Channel and its ilk. I can only hope that what comes after won’t be quite as screwed up. One can always hope…we’re about due, aren’t
we.

Hearts and flowers, y’all.

Report from the live music capital (February 4, 2002)

Hi all,

Yes, this is just to report that I am alive and have returned…sort of. I’m back in the USA, but now write from the city of Howdy Honda, Covert Ford and Henna Chevy, namely Austin, TX, where Threadgill’s and its cream sauce preside over the north side and the funky perennial attractions of the Continental Club and the Austin Motel over the south; jalapenos in everything and bilingual signage on everything, unpredictable weather, roadside signs hawking candidates such as JACK STICK FOR STATE REPRESENTATIVE, something on the menu at Luby’s Cafeteria called “fruit congeal,” great swooping and overlapping Jetsons-like highways that I’ll be figuring out for some time to come, and a popular local allergy called “cedar fever” (which they say you’re likely to catch after a few years here; something to look forward to?).

Along with the warmer weather and the more reasonable pace (except for on the roads) compared to back East, the club scene in the self-proclaimed Live Music Capital of the World was a definite attraction for the Girlfriend and me, though I confess that with all the effort we’ve expended over the past few weeks devoted to obtaining housing, transportation, furniture, water pressure and the like, we’ve hardly managed to catch any entertainment at all aside from the tube (I did manage to head down to the Continental Club last weekend for a Saturday afternoon matinee featuring a few entertaining local dudes, and the place was just like I remembered from my last visit, probably well over a decade ago). I do miss Slovenia, but Austin has its own distinct charms and the parking is usually easy. (Yes, I admit it – I’m going to be volunteering at the South by Southwest music festival/conference/extravaganza in March.) Ah, SXSW: I find I don’t know any celebrities under 35 (or don’t want to). But I love that this town has its own music-video channel, and from what I’ve seen, most of it’s even worth watching.

Being BACK back (as opposed to Just Visiting) remains strange; it’s the same place, and yet it’s not. Everyone seems to be squeezing the lemon harder, and from more angles; the lemon, of course, is us. And the TV: every time I turn it on, “Third Rock From the Sun” seems to be on. And after five years away, I come back to find that Leno, Letterman, Sally Jessy and Bryant Gumbel seem to have aged not five but 15 years (constantly being on the tube must age you triple-time; even that stripling Conan O’Brien looks middle-aged these days). And I’m still trying to figure out why a local bagel shop advertises “bottomless cups of coffee” – available in small, medium or large.

To elaborate on those post-9/11 blues, I’m dismayed to find that, after a short interregnum, trivial booshwa and gossip seem to have re-triumphed. On Elvis’s birthday, the Girlfriend and I visited Ground Zero (she cried, I didn’t), which looks these days like just another urban construction site – but oh, the heaviness in the air which everyone comments upon, can’t be wished away. And now, we’re not in that cold dark sad place either; but even in sunny Austin, homeless men still walk freeway access roads, and the only constants I see as I drive along the city streets are gun shops, pawn shops, and churches.

Sure is different when you’re observing it from within – but at least I know there are alternatives in other places. I like Austin; for all the America here, this is at least a real, distinct place, and I’m looking forward to getting to know it better.

Hm…later, then.

Since you asked (December 12, 2001)

I’m still in Slovenia for at least the next couple of weeks. After that, I expect to effect quite a change of scene…my life has come down to wrapping, packing, and boxing things up. And so, five years of Slovenia draws to a close…I’d definitely like to come back and visit, though (in May or June, not in December). It’s not such a bad place; all it wants is to live in peace with the other countries in the world, and spend summers down on the Croatian coast.