the skill required to put it in a jar for others to see. Those long hours of practice, the boring scales, the wading through melodies that are dead behind the eyes in search of the ones with heartbeats. And all that demoralizing failure along the way. The criticism from within, and from others, and all the unglamorous stuff that goes along with the mastering of a craft. It’s all for that one moment of seeing a jar light up a face.
And, sure, sometimes someone tells me I’m great or stuffs a dollar into my G-string. I can’t say it’s not about me sometimes too. I’ve done well. But that’s not really what drives me. That’s not what it’s really all about. It’s not about immortality either. I accept that one day, my music will be gone forever. So will the Sistine Chapel, Bruce Lee movies, and all the silly arts and crafts my aunt ever bought. Gone with the wind. Making songs is something I do here and now. Because light captured is just a moment, a flicker. Like any musical performance, it’s not repeatable, but there is always another. As each of my thousands of gigs has let out, the crowds have gone their separate ways. The lid opens, the sun comes up, and the lightning bugs disappear into the light of day. Invisible again. Well after I’m gone, some kid will be chasing the flickering lights through the backyard in his dreams, joy at his heels.
WATCH ME EAT THIS SANDWICH
“Benjamin, how old are you?”
“I’m six! How old are you, Papa?”
“I’m twenty-six. Now, watch me eat this sandwich!”
DEAN FOLDS, MY FATHER, WAS, and is, a chronic smart-ass. A carpenter, contractor, and building inspector a good seventy hours a week, the poor guy just didn’t have time to watch me do every little thing under the sun. And I was a persistent and downright obsessive little shit. Anything I did or set my mind to, I wouldn’t stop, couldn’t stop, and it consumed the entire house. My brother, Chuck, wasn’t like this, luckily for my parents. My relentless nature was a problem that neither reason nor punishment was able to solve. Putting the brakes on my focus or interrupting me would come at the expense of that night’s sleep, for everyone. I was one of children.
Papa discovered I could be neutralized by absurdity, frozen in my tracks by distraction with something out of left field. Absurdity comes naturally to Dean Folds, who has an endless supply of crazy shit up his sleeve for any occasion. Before I could ask him to watch me stand on my toes, he’d hit me with, “Benjamin! Come here! Watch me take the trash out!” or “Mr. Ben! Mr. Ben! Come in here and watch this! Watch me brush my teeth!”
Dean Folds, my father, 1967
Who wants to watch anyone doing all that stuff? What a needy bastard! I thought, and just went somewhere else.
One evening I had cut Papa off at the pass in the hall as he was making his daily beeline from the pickup truck to the bedroom, still in his paint-streaked, muddy work clothes.
“Look at this!” I said, extending a sculpture of a face I’d made with Play-Doh, as far into the heavens toward his six-foot-two-ness as I could manage.
He leaned over to study it for a moment. Then he took my creation into his giant hands and stood back up, far away, close to the ceiling where the air was thinner, and began picking bits of it apart. He reconstructed its innocent smile into an evil one, with sharp jagged teeth and beady eyes. He took our frightening collaboration into my bedroom and placed it on a chair in the middle of the room. Then he turned the light out.
“He comes alive in the dark,” Papa said, and disappeared into the bathroom.
Satanic Play-Doh man stood between me and the bedroom lamp, so I paced outside of my dark bedroom, trying to figure out how I’d ever get the light back on without being eaten.
Chuck came into the world when I was two but I don’t remember my brother’s arrival somehow. I was completely lost in my own world, where I remained for most of my childhood. And poor Chuck had no idea what he’d gotten himself into when he joined the family. Our entire youth was marked by my obsessions and my projects, scattered around the house. From my constant loud record-playing to my incessant piano-pounding later