disappearing into thin hair

not precisely disappearing. but...not done processing it yet, either.

as Eddie Murphy would put it, meet the clumps.

I haven't had the nightmare experience of reaching up and pulling out a fistful of hair, leaving a big bald spot. haven't tried terribly hard to, either.

I've had the full hairbrush, emptied it out, and had it full again. to tell you the truth, the hair is kind of more impressive on my head than what I see in the brush...not hard to let it go at that point.

I still have something on top to face the world with. I have this forlorn dream that predictions will fail, and I'll be left with a little something up there. maybe some eyebrows. saints be praised, some pubic hair.

against all odds, I still look fuller than Phil Collins.

but it's different.

not the kind of different I wouldn't undo if I had the button.

I thought I would look older daily, more like my father, fading out, ashen. I don't think that's the case. I think I just look like timberline is lowering.

I just don't want to look like The Emperor from Star Wars when it's all gone.

fall. leaves dropping. soon the trees will be bare.

the coolest fall line I ever heard was sung by someone I don't know at a hoot, about trees shedding their leaves to get ready for their new white winter coat. leaving as fashion statement,

not universal symbol for decay and death.

I knew I'd be pulling hair out when I signed up for Pro Tools. look what it's done to me!!!

she asked me why...why I'm a hairless guy

I'm hairless high and low...don't ask me why, you don't want to know. it's just che-mo.

it's not an OCD spell...like Howie Mandel.

it's a childhood friend. a Linus blanket to sneak comfort from without suspicion. the subject of daily ritual, soon to become unnecessary. I'm not deeply torn, yet...as i say, the big trauma is that people would see me differently, and I think my prayeramedics won't be having much trouble with the hair as long as the part underneath hasn't fallen out as well. a huge comfort.

but I am feeling a little sentimental. I never had an ambition to be Mr. Clean. better that, perhaps, than Mr. T.

but my hair is part of my story, just as losing it (and hopefully getting it back) will be. it showed my counterculture leanings in the early 70's. it showed my swing to tidiness in the early 80's. it was an even bigger problem for me til I sat talking with Linda Jones at a solo gig at Fenway Park one night in the mid Eighties, and she (probably not coincidentally) mentioned that she was a hairstylist. kind of problem solved from then on.

I will have to give her a call and say, no, I haven't changed stylists....

hello, adriamycin

nothing to house all my lice in

the hair, the hair is everywhere

I've reached follicle deadlocks

nothing to fashion in dreadlocks

the hair, the hair is everywhere

hello, adriamycin

my do just went up the Dyson

the hair, the hair is everywhere (another song from "Hair"...it all begs appropriating)

I'll return to this theme when I'm a Caucasian Hairless puppy...

sleep and steroids, sleep and steroids, go together like...

Leonard Cohen's songs and John Simon's arrangements.

that first Leonard Cohen album is in the canon, good and proper. and John Simon has immaculate cred, from the first Blood, Sweat and Tears album through the implausible impeccable arrangements on the first two Band albums, and many others.

but here's what Cohen's liner notes on "Songs of Leonard Cohen" say:

NOTES ON THE ALBUM: "The songs and the arrangements were introduced. They felt some affection for one another but because of a blood feud, they were forbidden to marry. Nevertheless, the arrangements wished to throw a party. The songs preferred to retreat behind a veil of satire.

I've produced some projects. I know that when an artist gives you lots of spades, you look to add some diamonds or clubs, some hearts to round out the deck. I also know that if the artist holds all the cards in one suit, you don't need anything else for a grand slam.

there are no dynamics anywhere on Cohen's album. no vocal variance. nothing faster than midtempo; no grooves. Cohen was adamant about having no drums on the LP. no bravura guitar, no song you could unconflictedly call"happy".

"Suzanne" is anything but a dirge; it's more of a kaleidoscope. but the tempo and feel of the music would fit any organist's needs at a final gathering.

Simon hoped to leaven this lot with bells and harps and virgin female background singers singing "bom" in their pure chaste way. Randy Handley used to joke that Simon was a genius indeed, finding three virgins in New York to sing on that record!

I used to joke that I owe My body tone to working out to the "Leonard Cohen Aerobics Tape".

Simon's arrangements continued through time, spirited and full of treats. Cohen's songs continued, essential companions to mapping out one's relationship to life's complexities, and of special help in the country of the darker parts. "Everything that's beautiful is cracked," says the poet, "that's how the light gets in." and at another time, "I have seen the future, and it is hell."

and still no dance hits. consistency. have to admire that. you know what bin to put his albums in.

"One Trick Pony", the movie by Paul Simon, is a gentler attempt, but an attempt throughout, to downplay if not discredit the producer's role in the making of records. like the relationship between steroids and sleep. the pinnacle of the movie, the top of the dramatic arc, is when Simon (Paul) takes the finished master tape of his new highly produced project and unspools it down a street, making it unplayable for all time.

Paul doesn't like relying on someone. I feel like some artists have a hard time needing even their art for recognition, as if their wonderfulness should conquer the world directly, without this messy middle step. Simon's 75/ 25 ...85/15? relationship with Garfunkel...Paul writes the songs, plays the guitar, sings the melody most of the time, has most all the say on studio arrangement...still ended up seeming to chafe the author.

in fact, I saw a letter one time in Rolling Stone that said, "Read the Paul Simon article. It's quite remarkable how Mr. Simon created so much wonderful music in the sixties all by himself. Signed, Art Garfunkel."

sorry Paul...Simon Says, you needed Art. he added to the general aesthetic of the endeavor, his voice added depth and clarity to yours, he interpreted the songs he soloed on definitively. and if anyone is a fan of harmony singing, David Crosby wrote the First Chapter of the Book, The Everly Brothers the Third, The Beatles the Fourth. don't skip any of them. but Art Garfunkel wrote the Second.

and talk to me about a songwriter getting more benefit from production that Paul Simon.

much of the "One Trick Pony" movie is involved with Jonah not wanting to have to sing his first hit, "Soft Parachutes", at a record convention. "I've changed, I've moved on, I'm not there anymore."

aww.

someday, for fun, total up the number of songs James Taylor has written about not wanting to have to sing "Fire and Rain". things are rough all over.

estranged partners aside, Paul Simon was in England in late 1963. he had recorded an acoustic duet album (with bass) for Columbia, but the tracks were kind of sitting in the vault. gospel songs...not bad for two New York Jewish boys (who had had a 50's semi-hit as Tom and Jerry, the Everly-mimicing "Hey, Schoolgirl"). folk traditionals. and a few Simon originals, including "The Sounds of Silence".

a producer in New York heard the latter song, called in bass, drums, and folk rock electric guitar with enough reverb to flood the Lincoln Tunnel, and without Simon's knowledge added the instruments to the song, mixed it, and released it.

suddenly, "...Schuster" became the number two answer to the Match Game final round question, "Simon and ______"

Paul was famous for being something he wasn't...yet...a folk rocker.

I love the acoustic "Wednesday Morning 3a.m." album. and I love the "Sounds of Silence" album that came after. both show huge growth, and something better beginning. but both bear the stretch marks of that growth as well.

the former opens with, "He brought joy joy joy joy joy...into my heart", and ends with leaving out "straight to hell" after "but my words like silent raindrops fell"...some growth there, I daresay.

the "Sounds of Silence" LP attacks the question of, what kind of (hopefully successful) folk rocker am I ? scattershot. there's a nice little acoustic guitar instrumental, written by Davey Graham, that Paul learned faithfully from the playing of Bert Jansch - two seminal British folk style guitarists.

Paul doesn't need anyone..........

immediately following, as if not to try to hide the derivation, is a song musically owing to the feel of the instrumental, called "Somewhere They Can't Find Me". astute musical observers...ok, you'd have to be kind of dense to miss it...will notice the identical lyrics in two of the verses to the song "Wednesday Morning, 3am", from the first album, with a chorus added (with the hope of being a hook)

chorus as follows:

But I've got to creep down the alley way,
Fly down the highway,
Before they come to catch me I'll be gone.
Somewhere they can't find me.

compare also, gentle reader, if you will, the substantial shift in vernacular in the two third verses:

Wednesday Morning 3am:

My life seems unreal,
My crime an illusion,
A scene badly written
In which I must play.
Yet I know as I gaze
At my young love beside me,
The morning is just a few hours away.

Somewhere They Can't Find Me:

Oh my life seems unreal, my crime an illusion,
A scene badly written in which I must play.
And thought it puts me up tight to leave you,
I know it's not right to leave you,
When morning is just a few hours away.

what are we trying to do here, and exactly how hard are we trying to do it?

I can't be too hard on him, because how many people were asking themselves how to turn 60's folk music into 60's folk rock, and stay on the larger payroll?

lots.

with lots of wrong answers. these weren't the only ones by any means.

and not as many answers as correct as, "I Am a Rock" from Sounds of Silence.

I genuinely revere every note on these albums. don't get me wrong.

"I Am a Rock" completely succeeds. but for an answer to "who is a folk rocker in 1965?", it replies, "he is Bob Dylan singing 'Like a Rolling Stone'."

the production is an attempt to copy; no piano, wimpier electric guitarist, a more talented (and less effective) organist, but their phasers were clearly set to "Bob".

it's ok.

no one would say that Simon didn't know which kind of folk rocker he was by the lp "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme".

or just how addicted to production he needed to get.

Roy Halee, the producer whom Simon will still sometimes call upon to this day, was kind of a George Martin for Paul. the exact opposite, from my unknowing perspective, of the guy Phil Ramone, the real life producer, plays in "One Trick Pony". (who I think is, actually Phil Ramone)

I cannot name albums that rely more heavily on production than Paul Simon's. can you say, "Graceland"?

had I ever had a point, I would say I'm digressing.

I think the point is, I'm awake and speed rapping.

but need is how we are brought into relationship with the world. without it, we could all stay hermits and most probably would. need means sharing, and sharing fills us up as well as filling someone else up.

in 4th grade, I had a buddy. he would buy both of our ice creams one day; I would buy them the next.

it took me months to realize neither of us were spending any more or less money; that no one was coming out ahead. because I was blissed on the days I got free ice cream, blissed on the days I treated my buddy.

you gain from sharing. you dry up without doing it.

James, you need that song. it needs you. we need you to need it. it is how we share. yes, there is pressure on you to share your gift. yes, people want to hear the old stuff. yes, if no one wanted to share with you anymore, you would be, I promise, not a bit happier.

Paul, I have a bootleg copy of your "Hearts and Bones" lp with Art Garfunkel's tracks still on them. I saw the tour you did with him where you played those songs live.

before you erased all of Garfunkel's tracks forever, and replaced them with your own.

you needed him. we needed him.

you need the producer. you need your guitar; don't stay allergic to it. there are times to present the subtleties you love so much in your music, to ask the listener to come in to you and hear what you are hearing when you play what you play. and there are times when you should stop playing, and the horn section in "You Can Call Me Al" should blast as hard as it can by itself.

it's good to need. let yourself need.

Leonard, everyone should just leave you alone and let your songs be just and only what they are. make the listener come in...your words do everything possible to draw us in. any good producer follows the Hippocratic oath: first, do no harm.

I'd be the first one...I would if no one ever had...to say to you, doesn't it ever pique your imagination wondering what a resolutely slow groovin' Leonard Cohen song would be like? I know there are big bang drums on some of the later albums, but not without some duress, it seems...

if it just never speaks to you...do what you do. just write "Hallelujah" every ten years or so, to make people wonder...where has this guy been all my life?

meanwhile, I leave you with a poem that I saw while walking up the staircase at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco, which espouses the real point of today's writing:

Serenade

by Kevin Young

I wake to the cracked plate

of moon being thrown

across the room--

that'll fix me

for trying sleep.

Lately even night

has left me--

now even the machine

that makes the rain

has stopped sending

the sun away.

It is late,

or early, depending--

who's to say.

Who's to name

these ragged stars, this

light that waters

down the milky dark

before I down

it myself.

Sleep. I swear

there's no one else--

raise me up

in the near night

&set me like

a tin toy to work,

clanking in the bare

broken bright.

frontier hair lines

yes, I'm having the bad hair days now.

the timing they predicted was pretty much spot. three weeks.

one time when I was in New York with lisa, when she lived there, I hadn't had a haircut in quite awhile and was looking pretty shaggy. we came up with an idea we thought would be fun, which was to spend a little too much money and get me a haircut at The Plaza Hotel.

it was fun, until I looked in a mirror when it was done and saw my father's face staring back at me.

that's kind of what I looked like yesterday.

now, you could do worse for hair than either him or me. I don't remember his hair turning grandpa white...it became more ash blond the older he got, still quite viable...or really receding into infinity...there was a hairline, but again, the envy of his age group. I always felt I would also be lucky in that way.

and so have I been.

as far as vanity goes, there's a lot of stuff I'm pretty vain about. I get uppity when someone challenges my word choice. I get pouty playing trading leads with a more talented guitarist than myself. I wasted some hours once arguing with a guy who thought The Beatles had no talent.

I don't know that I've been vain about my hair. I've never thought it looked ok...always off kilter to me. no one else seemed to have trouble with it...

in my "hair vanity" file, I always find these lines from "Just Like This Train" by Joni Mitchell, from Court and Spark:

Settle down into the clickety cIack

With the clouds and the stars to read

Dreaming of the pleasure I'm going to have

Watching your hairline recede

(My vain darling)

so I don't feel like I'm losing my raiment. and I know for a fact that I am surrounded with people who will see me when they look at me, hair or nowhere.

the John Lennon caps are on their way from Britain. I'm heading into a kind of isolationist chemo week Monday, so only the girls will see the transitional me's, I'm thinking.

in a few days, all gone. eyelashes too, they say.

I haven't had the predicted clumps so far, and I'm still vaguely presentable. yesterday was the first day I stood in the bathroom and cleaned the hairbrush a couple of times. lisa asked to come in, and I said, I'm warning you, I'm having a bad hair day.

she came in anyway, and stared with horror on her face. just watched, frozen.

later that day I said to her, you know, that would have worked as a private moment for me, too.

so, how is all this for me?

new.

certainly not unlike some nightmares we've probably all had.

the shock of the new.

shadowy.

but I'm the guy that immediately assesses the damages in a hard situation. can I still drive the car or is it totaled? I lost this...do I still have that? look...still walking. can I still do the gig tonight?

I'm a compulsive manager. how do I manage this new situation? what is perspective?

perspective is...this was predicted. therefore, by Bennett rules, we couldn't count on it happening. but if it does happen...we can't be surprised.

why is this happening? why am I losing my hair?

because I am making a firebreak in my body. because I am taking in "poison", as Stew Greisman called it, fighting the cancer's dictatorial lust for life with some very very very controlled death.

I need to want to live even more than this out of control growth does. and there are going to be some blackouts in the war effort.

it's my hair. it's not my voice, my playing, my particular mental orientation, my eyes, my legs, etc. etc. etc.

and I am given to understand, it's temporary. people have seen hair loss from chemo grow back fuller than before.

given the chance.

so, faithful readers of the blog will know just how I intend to cope with this something-short-of-a-tragedy:

yes, the free association school of medicine. the Henny Youngman grief control clinic. Google Center for the Healing Arts.

"when I get older, growing my hair, not so long from now...."

"as I get older, they say my hair is thinning.

but, who wants fat hair?"

yes, the classic I expect to hear at least once from a well meaning friend:

"hair today, gone tomorrow"

better, to me, my favorite Burma Shave signs of all time:

within this vale

of toil and sin

your head grows bald

but not your chin

Burma-Shave.

(actually, whenever someone says something a little too ponderous for that person to really contain, I will often add "Burma Shave" to their observation...)

"I'm not losing my hair...I still have all of it, in this box..."

from my beloved Police Squad tv show..."and where are you from, Baldymore?"

Jefferson Airplane (Hairline) had no such thing in mind on their lyric sheet for "The House at Pooneil Corner" from "Crown of Creation"...they were just trying to get away with being naughty when they said,

& you wonder what you can do
& you do what you can
To get bald & hi

yup...I'm getting balled...heh heh ... heh heh...

guess the Beach Boys have a song, "She's Going Bald", predating Persus Khambatta by a number of years...

oh, no, I'm not done. more later...

schedule

thought it would be good to talk about the schedule of my future rounds of chemotherapy, as I'll still be surprised if I will be doing anything at all on the "on" weeks.

each cycle is three weeks...

week 1 - four days "on", three "down" days

week 2 - labs Monday, getting better all the time

week 3 - labs Monday, it's gonna be alright, alright, alright

the prediction is that each round will be identical but hit me harder, and that I'll end up at not quite as good a place at the end of the cycle. also, it's said that they don't take a chance on more than six rounds, due to the strain on the heart. (and the hearts of the Prayeramedics)

there is a scan after every two rounds, to check on "responsiveness".

I'll comment on that prediction after the schedule.

Tuesday, November 9 - round 1, week 1

Monday, November 15 - week 2

Monday, November 22 - week 3

Monday, November 29 - round 2, week 1

Monday, December 6 - week 2

Monday, December 13 - week 3

notes:

a wonderful and generous friend of lisa's has known for a long time how lisa has always wanted to see Manhattan again, having worked there for awhile, and amazingly gave a good amount of money towards such a trip. we are planning it for December 13 - 17, and are very very touched at the opportunity. it certainly could not have happened otherwise. December 18th I'm planning to be at an Acoustic ReJuveniles gig.

now, one thing, maybe two, can change the scheduling of rounds. if the white blood cell count isn't high enough at the end of a round, they may wait a week to begin the next treatments.

the maybe is the holidays. the office is closed December 24 and 31.

waiting any week throws all the dates off after.

Monday, December 20 - round 3, week 1 (Christmas week)

Monday, December 27 - week 2 (New Year's week)

Monday, January 3 - week 3 (Runaway Express at SwallowHill January 7)

Monday, January 10 - round 4, week 1

Monday, January 17 - week 2 (ReJuveniles at the Little Bear January 22)

Monday, January 24 - week 3

Monday, January 31 - round 5, week 1

Monday, February 7 - week 2 (Dakota Blonde Valentine's Day show, SwallowHill February 12)

Monday, February 14 - week 3 (Valentine's day observed)

Monday, February 21 - round 6, week 1

Monday, February 28 - week 2

Monday, March 7 - week 3

Saturday, May 7 - June 5 - Stephen Sondheim's Follies, The Kennedy Center, Washington, D.C.;

I have seen this play twice; once in LA in a small theatre with all all Asian cast, and once on Broadway where great money was saved staging this musical about a theatre to be torn down in a totally bare theatre. This promises to be at least a partial attempt to recapture the scale of the original production, huge in 1971, with a big orchestra and Bernadette Peters playing Sally.

it's my schedule. and I want to see it.

if the tumors are responding to the treatment...it's working, we keep doing it. if the tumors are not responding, my understanding is we look for other chemo to throw at them.

the slalom run I'm skiing is between the poles of the effects of the cure, and the poles of the effects of the disease. so far only the former has had impact.

I'm a little unclear about the conditions under which chemo might be stopped short of the six rounds. I don't think they're good.

if the six rounds are partially, or totally, effective, after them a far less difficult and far less powerful maintenance chemo is prescribed, and careful watch kept.

comment on the prediction :

on my birthday, janice gave me a rock she had saved for years for its beauty, on which she had someone inscribed what is on a rock that sits on Stephen Sondheim's desk:

NOTHING IS WRITTEN IN STONE

chemo schedule - very very important. but...none of us knows. some complication in cure or disease...conceivably some impossible unforeseen updraft in health...and everything changes.

the four days "on" in week 1...I've played gigs feeling worse. but the pic line in the left arm and the bag with the pumps...hard to see me even holding an instrument those days. the three "down" days after...not impossible, I guess, but I do kinda wonder what could be quite that important...

and if they skip Christmas week for whatever reason, the January 22 and February 12 gigs will fall on the first of those down days. unless...they...skip...another week too....

I'm a flake.

I used to try not to be. I doubt the attempt was noticeable.

now I'm just a flake.

final comment on prediction, from someone who, I believe, took the last word on this away from Sondheim:

I suggested a name for a band I was in, Upsidasium!, from a storyline about a mineral that falls up. I said it began my interest, in R and B music:

Rocky and Bullwinkle

but today's story concerns an expedition to a remote island whose wealth and prosperity is directly traced to a bird who sits on the island's highest peak, the Oogle bird. ("oogle! oogle!) once a year, the Oogle bird lays an egg, inside which is a piece of paper with a prescient and financially savvy prediction.

unfortunately, the Oogle bird passes, and Bullwinkle is kidnapped and brought to the island to replace him. his only assignment: to lay one egg a year.

well, he has 364 pampered days ahead of him, I guess. but our hero, Rocket J. Squirrel sets out to recapture his lost friend, and books passage on the boat of Capt. Peter "Wrongway" Peachfuzz.

as advertised, the Captain cannot make a correct statement or decision.

somehow, though, they reach the island and take Bullwinkle back. but the natives are left despondent, with no Oogle bird or replacement. what to do?

the last scenes show Capt. Peter "Wrongway" Peachfuzz happily ensconced at the peak of the island's highest mountain.

"nothing but sunshine today, boys!" he says.

"get your umbrella, Mac," says the native. "it's going to rain cats and dogs."

I have this thing about suggestions.

various degrees of relativism aside, I consider "apples are red." a statement of fact. to question it is to examine perception and reality in ways that will not help me pick good ones at the grocery store.

"everything is meaningless", "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life", and "Red sox rule!" fall into the category, to me, of suggestions.

not the "Hints by Heloise" kind of suggestions..."did you know that that old 8CD set of Boxcar Willie's entire recorded oevre can make a lovely set of coasters? or, next time you're skeet shooting..."

suggestions as in suggestibility, words that can have a pull on your way of thinking.

as such, I embrace them or not depending on whether or not I will appreciate, enjoy, like, the pull they have on my way of thinking.

"nothing good in this world comes without a price"...let's go out together and look at the sunset sometime, bro

"doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is called insanity"... jeez, guess I'll stop practicing guitar right away

"you get what you pay for"...way too optimistic for me. I've paid money from time to time and not gotten a thing.

what the guy means to say is, "you don't get any amount of quality you don't pay a commensurate amount of money for. " him, we take to the sunset, too.

suggestions - we hang onto the ones we like, and ditch the rest, not based of the tone of the words or the presenting them as truth, but on whether or not they feel good.

predictions are suggestions. ones we know are wrong ( "cats and dogs, Mac") are more valuable than ones we think may be right.

"you'll feel better each day of weeks two and three"...well, I'll see that I do!

"you'll feel worse each successive round of chemo"...hope you don't mind having to prove that to me

"I expect the chemo to have some effect on the tumors! why else would we do it?"...then, I shall expect it, too!

"median life expectancy: 11.6 months from diagnosis"...I'm sorry, I just cannot accept that.

no, I'm not

how are you? and what's it like?

yesterday, I was saying that, if "good" was a horizon line on a 40's bathroom wall, my fingers, eyes, and nose were just peeking over it.

domo arigato. Kilroy is here. Styx would be so proud.

that day three night of chemo was the hardest. the adriamycin was a 72 hour deal...while liters of ifex and mesna flowed, the adria was a 4 inch by 4 inch packet, that I was connected to throughout, and took 72 hours...from about 3:30 Tuesday to 3:30 Friday...to distribute.

from this, we infer...this is the heavy stuff.

I got a second dose of decadron...which I keep confusing with duodecahedron, showing that there are twenty sides to every steroid...on day 4, which immediately did wonders for the nausea I had felt the night before.

Friday night, day 4, I was feeling kind of relieved, maybe a little optimistic. an easy night at home ahead, still a couple of doses to go in the handy carrying case I had been connected to since tuesday. four hours after leaving the hospital, like every night, I was to start the second pump, which would automatically give me half then and half in another four hours.

that night, when I started the pump, it beeped loud and long and said, high pressure.

I dinked with it like a computer for a bit...rebooted it a couple of ways...but something was not happening.

since there were two nurses named Brenda in the hem/onc department, we nicknamed the one who seemed to run things "fun sized Brenda" and her talented apprentice, "tall Brenda". but the former was having no fun, out of town at the end of the week to take care of her mom who had had two strokes in a day. in addition, Friday was a heavy day at the chemo ward, with a couple of patients needing hospitalization.

we had noticed that the usual mesh around the pic line, and padding, had been forgotten.

it was 6:30, and we called fun sized Brenda. every bag of drugs had her cell phone number on it. what an amazing level of commitment...greater than you get buying pot in Denver, I daresay.

Brenda J shot a call to Brenda B, who was still at work. yep, come on ahead in.

now, I have a small home recording studio, and I should have the universal engineer's grace when a client says, I feel good...should we go a few more hours?

I always say yes. but my vibe of, there is nothing I live for to any higher degree is often less than total.

not so Swedish hospital. every man-jack of them...and...woman...jill...makes you feel like an old friend come to call. oh, I have no life. I didn't want to go home today, anyway. I was here later last night. (personally, that doesn't increase my wanting to be here later tonight...)

the lines, it turned out, had not been flushed as necessary, and were "occluded". (I love words)

I was set straight quick, about an hour past schedule which was nothing, and went home to finish up.

these people are heroes.

I went in the next day to get the pic line taken out.

I was greater than just myself while I had the I/O interface and the drug pump bag hardware as part of my days. ameliorated.

it was like being an instant cripple, and beginning a bad relationship on the same day.

it was like in home ec (which I , of course, never took) where they give you an egg that you have to carry around with you all day over the weekend, to see how you would take to 18 years and nine months of child care.

it would have taken me about twenty minutes to decide that my statement would come in exactly which building to throw the egg at.

but here's me, and here's this place in my left arm that is The Matrix telephone booth, the link between in and out of my blood, and is kind enough to alarm me with small amounts of pain when I do anything that will threaten it, which means anything...then here's three feet of tube, and then a boxy bag about like a 96 CD holder with my toxic miracle inside.

twice during the four days, I moved away without it before I felt the warning tug. only twice...I was careful.

you've had relationships, haven't you, where, if you moved two feet without warning, you'd hear a little, hey, hey, hey buddy, don't forget me!

and where you basically didn't have one arm, to do your day's stuff with.

I have. and, a propos of nothing, that's a mixed bag for me.

through the years, I have come back to Santa Monica Pier in California. the end of Route 66, not ending where the land ends, but hundreds of feet over the water.

to get there, you had to start at the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, invade Europe, take a thousand years to settle in, stare at the English coast for a couple of centuries, then decide I'm sailing east, whether I make it or not, I'm going to see what is on the other side.

radical.

so you get to Plymouth Rock, or wherever the Discovery channel favors these days, and you let the old earth take a few thousand whirls, you settle the east coast pretty good.

is this enough? naaaaah

you move past 5th avenue, through a batch of scary names. Louisiana Purchase. what became Iowa, what became Texas. trailless territory, where you'd get out and push the wagons.

on what became I-70, those same clouds have been on the horizon for a few days now. you ride the plains, closer and closer, a hundred, fifty, twenty miles away.

the Great Barrier Mountains.

maybe you take one look at that and say, this is the most beautiful place I could imagine. maybe you say what I would say...one would need to be even crazier than I am to try to get a wagon through that!

and maybe after a generation or so, you set out again. mountains and mountains, and as a reward when you are finally done, desert! and desert! and desert!

it's been like a well written, somewhat sadistic, novel, maybe by Jack London, where every chapter has taken you through a riveting, engagingly different landscape.

and they saved California for the last chapter.

wagons negotiating orange groves, and orange groves, and orange groves.

and then on the last page...nicely bringing things full circle, but allowing an out for the sequel...ocean.

so I would stand even further west, after my long journey, at the end of Santa Monica Pier, and play a little game with myself that went like this:

so...now...after all that...are you here? are you done? are you happy?

Disneyland is known as "the happiest place on earth". Walt is a hero of mine, for his constant push to "plus" everything, to make everything better than it could have gotten away with being.

I was there on my birthday, playing my game. here you are, in the happiest place on earth, at the end of the trail. so...are you happy?

the folks who came up with that tag line for Disneyland don't want to look at the affect on the faces of the people in the park.

but...me...after the year I had, the unknown ahead...give or take going up Space Mountain and thinking, I wonder if death is really like this...yes, gentle reader, I was plenty happy.

there are pictures of me lying on the steps of the Santa Monica Pier, relaxing broadly, in and out of napping. yes, I'll let the suggestion that this is paradise, that there isn't another step to take, that for an hour I'll make camp here, flow over me.

the funky fish place with the great seafood has become a Bubba Gump's. the ferris wheel that semi-demi-famously rolled down the pier into the ocean in the movie 1941 now looks like those whirring lcd things you buy at the Ice Capades or Radio City Christmas Spectacular just to feel like you've taken some of the light home with you. one of those writ large.

and young lovers, thinking perhaps of beating the heat but really maybe looking for the place to smash the grecian urn and touch the delights of love that fill their thoughts and seem to be all around but in truth take some doing to hold in your hands, mob the place.

the asians, the chicanas, the too young too pretty California white couples, they always seemed like the People to me. being there among them was an intensified sense of being where it's at, and having less chance than ever of being where it's at.

but the LA Hispanic couples did this thing I found amazing.

other folks hold their girl's hand. put their arm around them. hug.

the chicanos and chicanas walked hugging. this strapping smart good looking dark haired guy, and his short but not diminutive girl, both of his arms fully around her shoulders, smiling broadly and lumbering down the boardwalk, as if to say, we never actually stopped having sex. as if to say, this world is a wind that strips the flesh off your back, but it won't blow her out of my arms!

as if to say, this is our first and only love. we haven't found out yet how it feels to try to do this all day every day for a week.

all I know is, I can't do it.

that's what the bag with the pumps was like. wherever you go, whatever you may want to carry, you have one hand to use and a part of your brain making sure the tether is slack.

showers, we bought a rubber arm sheath and tied it off with hair ties. hang the bag outside, move carefully. do not get the pic line wet. oh no.

the nurse saturday took all of eight seconds to take the pic line out. she was holding it up for us to look at before I knew it. "most people want to see these."

I knew I was unusual.

but what a great blessing, on the first of the three down days, to be an individual again, boundary unsullied, two hands at the ready. maybe just on the strength of the end of the relationship, I felt pretty good that first down day.

not as good the second.

so what kind of not so good is not so good? and how not so good is it?

one thing I've found about my new collection of medical procedures is that they can be counted on to make you feel not so good in ways you've never experienced before. description is a challenge...which some people use as an excuse to shut up, but which I see as absolute license to wade in. who's going to correct me?

imagine your circulatory system, and every organ in its network, were your stomach.

the med guys use the term "nausea" for what the chemo patient suffers from.

it is like a nausea of your system.

you've just come back from Taco House, having made the most of their $1.95 enchilada plate. that's "alada" food, you kept saying.

now you're home. full. and not in the mood to drop and do twenty. TV, not a bad idea. phone rings...I bet I can get back to them later. 'scuse me...urp.

it's a little like your whole sense of stability, your general physical table, is urping.

it's like an ordinary day is a cloudless night in Grand Teton Village, Wyoming, and the not so great pull of chemo is toward the Hollywood night sky. which beggars description in a similar way...I usually say, it's the color you get if you use all 8 Crayola crayons on the same space...or "off-neutral"... or the color you got when you came to the soda machine at college mess hall and mixed all of the flavors in your cup...Coke and orange and...

they manage the "nausea" awful damn well. the mezna does some, the decadron ("Godzilla versus Decadron in the battle of the century!") more, probably a couple others thrown in.

one problem I had is that I looked up the oral anti nausea drugs.

take #1, they said, at the first sign of nausea...take #2 if it's still trouble. you cannot throw up...it's not an option. if those don't work, call us, and we'll give you something else"

"like what?"

"thorazine usually works."

I'm sure they are right. thorazine probably really does the trick for patients who are reticent to have the full on lobotomy.

thorazine? I thought I was starring in Love Story, and here I am in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

so I started googling.

#1 is compazine, the end of which is way too much like thorazine. sure enough, an antipsychotic drug, sometimes used to take the edge off the mania part of manic depression. and, yes, used in nausea suppression for chemotherapy patients.

I'm 59. I've worked hard on my psychoses. I resist firing some chemical bb gun at them scattershot.

#2 is ativan.

prescribed for anxiety. a muscle relaxant. slows down your brain.

dang.

all I wanted was to get away with doing something to my body that it was never made to have done with it.

I may have undermedicated. I took one #1 on two occasions. I did feel immediate relief. and the first time, during the bad day three night, I couldn't sleep and I couldn't wake up, and I didn't really like what my mind was doing...when I took the pill, I felt snapped back into my normal consciousness

that was scary.

day two of the down days, Sunday, was the worst of the three...and it was low energy, or more, this systemic unease that I have come to isolate and recognize. part of me imagined the 1812 overture being played in my lungs, as two life treasuring forces battled to see which would get the budget.

I have to say, one of the cooler psychological expressions about the self destructive forces each of us battles is when someone said to me, my voices think they can kill me and go on without me.

cancer just wants to live. it has a sense of Manifest Destiny, and believes that this playground body I've spent so much time putting together and refining would be just perfect for its needs.

it doesn't get that taking everything away from the host just doesn't work out well for the parasite.

psychologically, geopolitically, physically, so much the same bad model.

Dr. Klancar laughed about my thought that I wondered if I could feel the battle in me. but then she said, that's right, you're that creative guy. you may be more in tune to your body than most (guys) (that a girl might meet).

(in a bar).

so...how bad was it?

well, you get extra "bad" points for the whole impossibility of understanding what you are feeling, the whole alienness of it.

but I need to say...I was in California a few years ago to do a concert with an artist I produced, and just sick as a dog. sicker than America's Sickest Dog.

I'd roll all of the chemo days together before I'd do that again.

there are days after a particularly hard ReJuveniles Little Bear gig that I ached more, had less energy, had my pins knocked out from under me more than any of this stuff.

now, they say that each succeeding round of chemo is harder than the last. one of the predictions.

but just from what I have gone through so far...especially with knowing how to deal with more of the stuff now...it's doable.

what a shaking sweating relief to know that.

my doctor's appointment was Monday, the third down day.

I was feeling much much better.

in California, I had heard a phrase at the end of the Indiana Jones ride. maybe it's the comics I read, movies I've seen. what has always seemed important was not whether the hero was about to die...or had just killed...what's important was the quip.

I said to Dr. Klancar, well, now, there's no way you can tell me that that wasn't big fun.

so, great. I get to have said that.

she looked at my white blood cell count...average is 5-11, mine was 19. she said, yeah, that's what we expect from the neupogen shots.

they had started Saturday, scheduled for ten days. lisa is giving them at home, saving me trips to swedish. greater love hath no one...

btu Dr. Klancar said...five days will be enough. five this round, five next round.

so...today is the first Nancy Reagan day...read my lips...no new drugs!

she was patient (the doc, not Nancy) about what I had found on the internet about the "nausea" drugs, and reiterated that I must not be nauseous, and that while those drugs are in that antipsychotic category, that they work very well for this, and at least #1 is pretty dang mild.

I told her, so I read that neupogen is made with e coli.

she said, wow. I didn't even know that.

there's this thing I haven't looked up yet called Chemo Head. I think it has something to do with fuzzy thinking or memory due to the drugs you get.

it would be hard to quantify, though, the effect of the drugs themselves compared to the effect of hearing that you may have less than a fucking year to live and you will be running a chilling gauntlet during that time.

I don't know about you, but that has made a small dent in my concentration...

so it might not have been e coli. it may well have been Ricola. anything that keeps me from coughing is allright with me.

I had two rehearsals yesterday, the latter a full on rock deal. I spent too many coupons, and I know it.

it isn't exactly like you get a new sports car and you can't wait to try her out to see what she'll do. it's more like, ok, they changed the fluids in my 1999 Caravan...let's see if we can nurse it through the Eisenhower tunnel, or not.

today's a fun and easy day.

but today...I am not a patient.

and having gone through the "down" part of the first round, at least knowing and having tried to describe what kind of beast it is, and feeling continuance in my life for the moment, is very, very encouraging.

oh. and lisa asked Dr. Klancar when we would start to know if anything was working.

I knew that answer, and it's not overstating to say that I think Chemo Head can be contagious.

the doc said I would have a scan just before Christmas. but she seemed a little put off.

"well! I hope it's working! I expect it to do something! otherwise, why are we doing it?"

it was the first time anyone had heard that someone expects this to have some effect, rather than doing it on the miraculous chance that it surprises everyone and does.

words. and a doc who really cares, and may feel the therapeutic value of cheerleading.

just words. a prediction. like that every day for the next two weeks, I will feel better and better.

I might soften my hard line stance on all predictions for just a bit...

I got my mind made up

and they ain't nothin more to it!

I'm down (I'm really down)

well, this did start as a Beatles-themed blog

this is day four of chemotherapy. last night was kind of my first bad night.

they say that the three days after the chemo stops are the "down days". I've enjoyed being in complete denial about what that would feel like, since I assume I can have no idea.

they said I would sleep a lot. if they can make that happen, can't be all bad.

but if last night gives any indication (and we don't know whether or not it does), it's going to be a movie I'd rather leave in the Netflix queue.

it's a new kind of nausea to me...a level of a sane body trying to tell me, what the hell you doin' to me anyway?

I'm getting nausea medications...including a steroid. (anything I write here during these days has to be evaluated with an asterisk*) then there is a first level pill to take for nausea, and a second level one to fall back on.

it's important to them that I don't have that experience. kinda works for me, too. so I used the first line pill this morning, which seemed to help immediately.

four days on...tuesday through friday this week...then three down days (after which I'll be forced to punt, I suppose)...then two weeks of feeling better and better.

three week cycles, to start again the week after Thanksgiving.

after the second cycle...just before Christmas...they will do a scan, to see if the tumors are "responsive". they should be. I certainly am. I'm having all sorts of responses.

the thing I didn't really have a good model for is that, as opposed to most things in the world that you go through some procedure that gets them fixed, if the chemotherapy works...you keep doing it. if it doesn't work, you change the drugs you're using and try again.

but you never go through more than six (!) cycles, because after that the risk to the heart is too great. sometimes, if the white blood cell count isn't high enough, they'll wait another week before starting the next cycle.

after the six cycles...if the tumors shrink, or totally disappear... a much lower impact kind of drug treatment is prescribed. I don't know if at that point we cross our fingers or what.

as if we ever stop.

I need a miracle every day.

good thing you can't hardly go a day in my life so far without tripping over several.

most etymologists would ascribe a greek root word to chemotherapy. I have a different thought. I think the word has american indian origins.

I know I first heard it from Tonto.

I think it was in the serial, The Lone Ranger Goes to Canada, or, On to Toronto Pronto, Tonto.

"through the ground, I hear a dozen braves riding this way, Kemo Sabe. we need to leave."

Clayton Moore was told that the indian phrase meant, good friend.

Chemotherapy has been a miracle life saving friend to many many people.

but I always wondered how well Tonto took to being second banana to a white hat and a bandanna all those years. it wouldn't surprise me at all if Kemo really meant, you're just screwed, white man.

I have a "black box" knowledge of electronics. I can connect musical electronic pieces in ways that help them do what they are supposed to. Open one up, and I'm pretty much lost.

bodies are kind of the same way for me. I kind of like my insides inside and the outside outside. I think most interactions I have with people work well on a "black box" level, without thinking of their capillary systems or skeletons.

and the holes I've had in my body have really always been more than adequate for any exchanges with the environment I've had in mind.

when they said they were going to put a port in my chest, that would be permanent, I kind of bolted.

for one thing, no more hot tub, ever.

but for another...I don't want to walk around with a telephone booth in my chest, for Neo to climb into and be instantly transported to The Matrix of my circulatory system. I want, at least sometimes, to be the United States of Me, borders intact.

then it turned out that, with my medication, there were counter indications to a port.

so I have a double pic line, a glorified IV in my arm, for the days I'm getting the therapy.

it comes out tomorrow, reinserted the next cycle.

and a couple of medicine pumps that I have needed to carry like a little shadow in a little black bag. also going away tomorrow.

kind of a boost, on a first down day.

at some point, it's time to talk about this as well:

I am hearing from an ever expanding circle of people from my life, with words of encouragement and empathy...even the occasional apology...and additions to prayer circles from Buddhists, Jews, all sects of Christianity, many New Age healing traditions, and the occasional backsliding atheist.

I decided those visualization warriors were my prayeramedics.

much like the wisest thing that can be said about my future, the wisest thing we can say about the aligning of other spirits with my cause is that we just don't know the extent of the good it can do.

except to my will, and my spirit. that contribution is real, and powerful. and I am very very grateful for it...at times absolutely living off of it.

I will not always be. but all of the beautiful, generous things people have done and are doing for me now can never be taken away, will always have happened. I can't express how much of my darkness and fear have been lifted by my prayeramedics.

how much, how much is that worth?

and how much more heavy lifting will come...

california, chemo, yeah, yeah, yeah, but

I want to talk about Stephen Sondheim.

I'm holding you all hostage. I'm starting to get time to write, and will firehose everyone throughout the coming time.

but I saw Stephen Sondheim interviewed for two hours on my last night of vacation, by a very strange little radio host guy. Michael Silverblatt. kind of a large framed gay broadway fanatic, taken to extremes...soft spoken and eccentric...

he did shut up a lot...but I can't say I liked his introduction for Steve, which was, everyone wants to really know the artist, but you never can and you should stop trying, you wouldn't really want to know.

so...he does know the artist...or he doesn't and he's just pontificating...

but Sondheim comes out, and he's 80 years old, still the sharpest mind I've ever experienced. dates, names, sequences, all as if read off a teleprompter. it's like me talking about the 1967 CD's I made.

I would have preferred a two hour lecture to the interview. Silverblatt didn't piss Sondheim off, for which I'm grateful...in fact, Steve complimented him on some broadway trivia he knew, other times corrected him. (please...I need it, said Michael), and added, you'll see me make mistakes several times as the evening goes on.

I didn't.

he used his hands constantly, as if playing an imaginary visual instrument to underscore his thoughts.

he had the idiomatic touching-the-shoulder straightening-the-sweater stuff that most old people have because no one watches them much anymore, but this seemed like no one has dared to confront me about anything I do for the last thirty years.

I had heard a lot of the stories. a lot was explained...very clearly...by Steve for those who may not know the background...

I still got my planning the whole trip around it money's worth.

he was critical of other broadway lyricists, but only those who are dead and whose feelings cannot be hurt...and cannot argue back. about a tenth as critical as he was of his work.

"I feel pretty, and witty, and gay!" so this girl from the ghetto streets, suddenly she's reading Noel Coward?

"in Anyone Can Whistle, at one point the cast turns to the audience and becomes the audience, making fun of them. of course, we alienated the audience. Arthur Laurentis and I were the kids at the back of the class, making smartass comments. but there's a difference between smart and smartass. if you want to invite people in to see what you've done, why would you alienate them? the audience are collaborators, not victims."

(I think he's overstating, and gets away with more jokes at the audience's expense than he professes)

in the new book, Finishing The Hat, he presents his lyrics along with comments and a running criticism. he points out areas...especially in Saturday Night, his first musical...where each of seven cardinal sins for a lyricist exist in his songs. he says about Somewhere, from West Side Story, a composer friend calls it the "a" song, because the most important note of the melody lands on the least important word. "There's...a...place for us"

so he dishes it out to himself, and takes it.

but he says about Oscar Hammerstein's "Climb Every Mountain" ..."like a lark who is learning to pray"? how is that different from a lark who is actually praying? what are we talking about here?

he said Hammerstein had, someone counted, over 700 references to birds in his songs. and, added Sondheim, he must have written 500 songs.

later on, he said, a musical writer's imagination soars...then he caught himself..."a bird metaphor"

"Brisk, lively, merry, and bright, Allegro!" starts a Hammerstein song. Sondheim says...brisk?...and lively?...and merry?...and bright? and Allegro? you kind of said it with brisk. you're not giving a description as much as reading a thesaurus.

I'm telling you, you don't want to have an argument with the guy.

he told what, to me, was a compelling story about a gathering of songwriters...Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg...that he was invited to at the age of 22. he was given to believe all would be invited to play.

rather than shrinking at such an audience, he said he couldn't wait to show off...with three songs from his first musical, Saturday Night. He picked an engaging opening number, a romantic waltz, and then a show stopping 2/4. practiced all day. when his turn came, he played well, got polite applause, and sat down feeling very proud of himself.

Arlen sat down next to him ("with no bitchiness at all") and said, "you're afraid to write anything that isn't a blockbuster, aren't you?"

Sondheim thought of a Harold Arlen song, A Sleeping Bee, the opposite of a swing for the fences little tune, but one he'd have wanted to be able to write.

the comment changed his life.

I've had such gong sounders in my life. like when I played with Pete McCabe, probably the only genius I've ever played with, and said, "Pete, that guitar chord is the prettiest one I've ever heard. what is it, a G maj 9?" "Well", Pete said, "I just think of it as a D triad over a G."

the skies opened up for me. you can play one chord over another?

then...can you play a D scale over a G chord?

how about an A scale?

at a sentence, what I would choose to play changed forever.

it makes me think about how much more I would learn if I would expose myself to more critical geniuses.

clarity is just about my favorite drug...musically as well as in thought. the allure of the clean distinction is so strong, concerns about the smallness of its scale just vanish...to others, it's just unnecessarily picky.

a favorite Sondheim story of mine comes from Frank Rich, longtime Op-Ed writer at the New York Times and onetime gopher on the Sondheim musical "Follies".

he tells how the sheet music came back for a number for the show (which had been cut) and landed in Sondheim's hands. Steven saw that the printer had "corrected" his word "galop" (a kind of dance" and changed it to "gallop".

he hit the ceiling! of all the colossal nerve!!!

little gopher Frank tremolously got out, "Mr. Sondheim, sir, I believe that number is no longer in the show."

Steve gave him a big wink and a smile and whispered, "I know."

legend has it that the original working title of, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, was, Who's Afraid of Stephen Sondheim?

but it's consistent with the three guiding principles he sets forth in the book for lyric writing and other creative ventures:

God is in the details

less is more

form follows content

I used to say, the angels are in the details...God is kind of everywhere...

it's said Sondheim realized while flying over the Statue of Liberty that the top of it was decorated with extensive detailed filigree. yet, he reasoned, the sculptor would have to know that once the statue was up, no one would see it, flying not yet being on the menu.

but the sculptor knew it was there. and that was all that mattered.

I am occasionally called picky or obsessive or anal...but I'm one of those guys. I know what went into the editing, even if no one else ever does. but I also believe people respond to smaller things than they are conscious of, and sometimes in a big way. if you ask what's the difference between these two mixes, they can't tell you. but they know right away which they like better.

I'd rather put the effort in.

reading Finishing The Hat is everything I had hoped the interview would be but could not be. and yet it was crucial and wonderful and seminal for me to be in that room at that time. a lot of heaven and earth was moved to make it possible, and I am deeply deeply grateful.

I may not be done talking about it.

but I'll talk about med stuff next time. and soon.

p.s. I'm doing fine.

oh, I'll be writing.

if you have gotten anything out of my writings so far, you're going to have ample opportunity soon for more. I suspect not only will writing be the exact level of physical activity I'll be most suited for, but also that I will be beyond self indulgent in the amount of writing and breadth of topic I allow myself.

but...not today.

I feel great, and I'm going to Disneyland on my birthday. it's been 96 degrees since I've been here.

headscratching weather. perfect.

and 100% of my focus now is on now.

so...no writing for you. love and thoughts, and the promise that once chemotherapy starts, I will write like they had done the infusion with a phonograph needle.

Happy Birthday to me!!!