Day 314…
About a million years ago, when I may have still been in school, I read one of my favorite books of all time. Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin is a novel of magic realism set in a New York that never was. It follows the story of Peter Lake, a thief, and his guardian angel, a white horse.
To this day, I cannot walk into the great hall at Grand Central Station and not be pulled back into that wonderful book when I look up at the fictional night sky painted on the magnificent ceiling. There is a dream-like quality to the book that you have to give yourself over to, to be able to get into it. Wherever I was in my life at the time, I could and did.
Strangely, given how much I truly loved that book, I’ve never read another one of Helprin’s books. I did own a later one of his that I finally, after many unsuccessful tries, discarded.
In 2012 he wrote a book called In Sunlight and In Shadow. I bought it but I was never able to get through it either. I started it several times but each time I got impatient with it, and put it aside. It didn’t seem to be about anything. I figured that Helprin must have been a one-hit wonder.
The other day, having finished a book, I was on the prowl for a new one. Nothing in the stack by my bed caught my attention, so I started looking through a cabinet in our front hall where I keep my overflow of unread books. The first book that caught my eye was the Helprin, so I decided to give it another try. I figured that if I couldn’t get into it again then at least I could get rid of it and clear out some more space.
In the days before digital, we had records. Most albums were on vinyl that had to be played at 33 1/3 RPM. Single songs were on much smaller disks that had to be played at 45 RPM. There were older records that were thicker and had to be played at 78 RPM. RPM, for those younger than me, stands for rotations per minute.
Growing up, we had a record player that was basically a box that was covered in red and white textured vinyl. It was well used. The corners were banged and worn. The pressed cardboard underneath showed through the rips, but it played everything well enough.
Before you put a record on, you had to flip a switch to set it to the proper speed. While you could tell which speed was necessary just by the shape of the record, there was no guessing which speed was needed because it was always written right onto the label.
Every so often, you’d forget to change the speed and what came out was gibberish. Either your album was set at 45 or 78 and it sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks, (That, in fact, was how Alvin and the Chipmunks were created - normal voices were recorded and played back at a faster speed.) or your 45 was set at much too low a speed and a low droning dragging monotone came out of the speaker. To come out clearly, you had to set the machine to the right speed.
The Helprin book I’m now reading is like The Philadelphia Story or Holiday starring Katherine Hepburn but, instead of Cary Grant, her co-star is a young fit Jewish guy, fresh off of World War II. The guy, who has inherited his father’s leather goods company, falls hard for the Hepburn character. While that part takes just a single sentence or two, it then takes him 40 pages just to work up the courage to approach her.
2012, when this novel came out, is the same year as the receipts I was shredding yesterday were from. Back then, I was overseeing several productions of JERSEY BOYS that were already up and running. We were in the planning stages for a few more.
I was continually on the move. My speed, at the time, was set at 78 RPM and the book was set at 33 1/3. I couldn’t read it.
My body’s internal rhythm is apparently now set to exactly the right slower speed to read In Sunlight and In Shadow.
A lot of the last fifteen or sixteen years is somewhat of a blur. Don’t get me wrong, I loved every second of it. I worked with some truly wonderful people - many of whom I am still friends with now. I wouldn’t trade a single second of any of it.
In between work sessions, I tried to take advantage of every moment I could to travel and experience things. At the beginning of one week I could be in a jeep in South Africa looking at giraffes walking against the setting sun. By the end of the very same week, I could be in an art gallery in Cleveland looking at a Van Gogh. I kept up a ridiculous pace.
Even at the time, I knew that all of that wouldn’t last. Knowing that it would end someday, is what kept me going. If I had thought that that was what the rest of my life would be, I would have slowed down considerably. I would have let my travel companions sleep in when they wanted to instead of dragging them around on some hairbrained adventure. But I didn’t.
When everything shut down, I felt the loss of that velocity. Looking back over this last year, much of the time during those early days I felt trapped and restless.
I started walking to burn off all of that energy. Realizing that I could rent a bike and travel further was a true relief. I went everywhere that I could.
In the late 80’s, I stage managed a play called A Piece of my Heart that was about women during the Vietnam War. It was a series of extremely short intense scenes of nurses and officers talking about all of the horrors and challenges that they faced, all done in rapid-fire succession.
At some point in the run, a small group of women who had actually been nurses in the war came to see the show. None of them were still in the military. Some had become housewives, and some had worked in various professions. They all suffered from a certain amount of PTSD and spoke openly about it.
After the performance, they talked with us and shared some of their stories. They wouldn’t let us go. As they told the stories, they got more and more into it. As horrific as much of what they had experienced was, the adrenaline that had been produced had addicted them. By reliving what they had been through, you could see that they were getting a fix. They had sped up to 78 during the war and never been able to truly slow back down.
My father talked about World War II all the time. It was the most exciting time in his life. He loved to talk about it. Much of it was horrific. He usually glossed over those parts. But when the adrenaline is flowing, you don’t really notice the hard parts. He liked getting a fix, too.
I can’t say that I miss operating at the speed I was going at before everything stopped. 33 1/3 RPM is kind of a great speed to be in.
Sure, I’d like to get back to work whenever that happens, but there’s plenty to do before then. I don’t feel restless. I feel like I’m actually in my own body.
We are, of course, currently in the middle of a war, ourselves.
What can he do before he leaves in less than 24 hours? Will we be attacked by domestic terrorists again? It feels like we are all huddled around our campfires and peering out over the battlements wondering when the enemy is going to attack.
There are some Senate confirmation hearings underway this morning for a few of the incoming Cabinet positions including that of Homeland Security and the Treasury. These should have started long before this.
We still haven’t heard whom the President is going to pardon. That sorry list of swamp dwellers is sure to be paraded in front of us over the next few hours. He will probably keep the announcement to as late in the day as possible to take as much attention away from the incoming team as he can.
The First Lady posted a sincere and direct video yesterday wishing us all well and touting the non-existent accomplishments of her Be Best campaign. I am sure we will never hear another word about it.
He’s trying to get a big crowd together to see them off at Andrews Air Force base tomorrow. Invitees are being asked to gather at 6am and to bring 5 guests. Apparently, the RSVP list is not all that robust. At any rate, in 24 hours they will be Florida’s problem, not ours.
Meanwhile, there is plenty to do.
I have a full day ahead of me, so I’d better have at it.
❤️Now I have a good book to read... feel like I have been reading exerpts of yours since March...🌟 COVID has put me in the center of my life, the stillness to become aware, seeing what I may have missed/ had I been missing in action.
Looking forward to this bright new horizon called Joe Biden
❤️💫🙏