Poul finally admits to Beasely that he is not the writer of the songs. After a major verbal battle the two men calm down. Poul reveals Mendel’s name and describes the real composer’s features to Beasely. The publisher begins creating something that will, at some point, take on a life of its own and be beyond his control.
File: Chapter 7 - Part 1
Length: 8:52
File Size: 8.12 MB
My young mentor, Jared, and I dined at MacDonald’s Tuesday evening. He had his usual quarter pounder with no cheese, fries and a drink . I had another coupon so I had the grilled chicken and quarter pounder with cheese. The only thing missing was a little candle on the table for atmosphere. Afterward we headed up to the office with my stomach again grumbling in protest to the abuse.
I hooked up my laptop and told him what I needed on this night.
“I want to get rid of as much flash as I can on my website,” I said. He had told me that flash actually inhibits the search engines from finding my site. I sat and watched intently as he pulled up my Dreamweaver program where I have my site. He opened the code. Yes, the Code! The HTML code that sends shivers through mere mortals like me. He began searching.
It was then that I realized Jared is the Geek Superhero. “What we need to do is search out this particular code, he said. “So let’s do it.” A cape suddenly appeared on his back with a capital G on it. My God, I was in the presence of Super Geek!
Jared ran his fingers over the screen to direct the cursor and dove down after it. I grabbed his cape and held on for dear life as we rushed headlong down into the Code.
Cyberspace roared past my ears with a deafening silence.
“What we want to do is get rid of this.” With a quick highlight and delete, J-Man obliterated the villainous piece of code. “And this.” He swept his cursor through the screen and wiped out HTML pieces before they could gather forces against him.
I admit I didn’t understand what I was watching but it was a graceful and glorious site. I clung to the cape so I didn’t get lost in the HTML jungle as he continued searching and destroying.
Bad Code! Highlight! Delete. Boom! Gone! Yaaay Super Geek!
We made our way back up. When I got my breath back I took an anti-acid to settle my stomach, quivering from the fast ride and fast food.
Later he loaded a new program that would help make a few things more efficient but he moved faster than the human eye could follow so I just watched and nodded with interest.
When he finished, the cape disappeared. It was 8 p.m. I watched him step outside and disappear into the darkness, knowing, beneath that quiet exterior, his true identity.
I lit my pipe, and followed him into the night.
Beasely, still thinking Poul is the composer, is about to introduce him to an increasingly curious world. Mendel witnesses an ancient ghostly ceremony in Arizona. A mysteerious god tries to lure him out of his body forever. Fatigued and despairing, Poul heads back to New York, unaware of the turn-of-events that will change his life again.
File: Chapter 6
Length: 14:36
File Size: 13.3 MB
At a recent family gathering, we were trading stories. Mom brought up my post about the grumpy man in a silent wheelchair. This reminded my youngest brother, Chip of the time he had to go see Zeke.
“I’d never met him,” he said. He used to be a minister or something. Anyway, I drove to his place and he was in the barn with his back to me. He was bent over like he was lifting somethin’. I said, ‘Looks like you got your hands full.’
“He stood up and turned around. “’Just one,” he says. I look and see he’s missing an arm! I just stood there like a fool. I didn’t know what to say. He thought it was funny.”
My brother Rick nodded. “He’d probably been waiting a long time to use that line.”
Rick’s wife, Connie, recounted the time a long time acquaintance came to the place where she works. “He was all decked out in a suit. He never wears a suit. And I said, ‘Wow, where’s the funeral?’ It turned out he was going to a funeral! I’ve used that line again. I was so embarrassed.
Somehow we got onto not-too-bright people. Chip joined in again. “When I was in Florida doin’ masonry work, I had a guy workin’ for me. Puerto Rican guy, dumb as they come. I was havin’ trouble with my truck lights so I said to the guy, ‘Go behind the truck and tell me if my flashers are workin’.
‘So he goes behind the truck and I turned the four way flashers on. “Are they working?” I asked.
“He goes, ‘yes. . .no . . .yes. . . no.’” Chip shook his head. “At least I knew they were workin’.”
I couldn’t top that so we ended our stories.
Mendel writes his best songs yet, then in a fury, casts them away, leaving Poul alone in the Midwest to gather them. Mendel heads West. Poul has an encounter with a murderous chicken farmer, and discovers something that will unleash Mendel to the world.
File: Chapter 5
Length: 22:41
Size: 20.7 MB
Poul travels to New York and meet J.W. Beasely, who thinks Poul is the composer of the brilliant songs. They fly to LA to listen to a live version of the “The Bird Songs” CD. On the flight back Poul nearly blows his cover and insists that the second album also be attributed to “an anonymous composer.” The tension between the two men grows.
File: Chapter 4
Length: 22:51
Size: 20.9 MB
I was in WalMart yesterday looking for teeth whitening paste. I felt a presence and looked around to see an elderly man dressed neatly in an out-of-style suit sitting in an electric wheelchair. The damned thing was so quiet I never heard him sneak up on me. He glanced at me then pointed to a box on the bottom shelf. “Would you hand that to me?” When an old man in an out-style-suit riding an electric wheelchair asks you for something you really have no choice.
I mean I could have said “No. Get it yourself,” and walked away, and he would be perfectly able to get it himself. The only reason he couldn’t get it now was that I stood in front of it. But I never thought about saying no. I was surprised, I guess, that he’d pulled up and I never heard him. Usually people in wheelchairs make noise.
I bent down, picked up the box and handed it to him. “Thanks.”
I think what bothered me about this whole transaction was that he never said hi and his thanks was cursory. He silently wheeled off leaving me feeling like an unpaid WalMart worker. I wanted to follow him because I’m sure he did that to anyone unlucky enough to be near the stock he wanted.
Down the street from WalMart is a party store. As I headed back to the Taurus, I saw a young couple pushing the door with their rear ends and pulling out helium balloons on strings. I thought, if I could I would wait for a sunny summer day and give everyone in the world a red and yellow balloon. I would also give them their favorite ice cream cone. I would tell them to watch their red and yellow balloons sway on their strings against the bright blue sky as they licked their ice cream cones.
Then I would tell them to feel that moment as deeply as they could and store it where they could quickly haul it back out and re-feel that feeling when they need it in the days and years ahead.
Picked up my brother Dave in Elmira and drove to Sam Goody’s at the mall to see what we could find. SG is declaring bankruptcy and everything in the store today is 60% off. Bought the movie Alexander and a Townes VanZandt double CD which I hadn’t seen before. A treasure. VanZandt was a brilliant songwriter and alcoholic who died in 1997 at the age of 53 of a heart attack.
The stock in the store is down to just a few bins. John Fogarty is singing Born On The Bayou as people politely paw through the dwindling numbers of CDs and DVDs. “It was all this peripheral stuff that did ‘em in,” said Al, the young manager who replaced my cousin Sean when he was promoted and left the area. He pointed to the wall of headphones, buds and other gadgets that still were not selling even at 60% off. “They took up space and the profit margin was almost nothing. That’s what killed them.” That and a hundred million people downloading their songs through iTunes and millions of others just ripping and sharing. The history of Sam Goody’s: vinyl albums -cassettes - cds- empty. And I’m a Replay member through 2008 . . . .
As we left the mall parking lot, we sat waiting for the light to turn green. A beat-up compact with four adults in it sat in front of us. Someone rolled the window down and through out a full bottle of red fruit drink. Just tossed it out on the street. It reinforces my strong feeling that evolution is a very uneven process. There are angels among us. And there are mindless neanderthals with no consideration for fellow humans or the earth. I wish in their afterlife people like this could spend a significant part of eternity in the waste that they tossed out onto roadsides, fields and streams.
Working on chapter 4 of the audio version of The Perfect Song. Hope to upload tomorrow. I’ll also upload the next text chapter of the book on my Perfect Song site www.perfectsong.net
A day at work
Log onto computer, delete 20 junk mail messages, answer 10
Answer two phone messages
Go into studio and turn on equipment. Spend next two hours editing and mixing two podcast shows. Take a break and heat up water for some Tiger Chai tea. See Liv parked outside while I’m smoking my pipe. I talk to her about having a workshop to show women how to make 1890s costumes for our 1890s Weeekend (www.1890s Weekend.com)
Talk to my news director about the stories he’s working on.
Go back and finish shows. Upload the first. Back to office to answer latest emails. Drive up to Butler and pick up Ken Sarch, music professor, for lunch. We eat at the Black Swan, a small place that’s dumpy in a comfortable, homey way and talk about his Ben Franklin project and then discuss methods of recording different types of music to different poems for varying effects.
The Black Swan, by the way, was the planned drop-off point for money demanded by the kidnappers of the Lindbergh baby, a huge story in the early 20th century.
Back to the office to work on a new podcast. Bruce Dart, president of the chamber comes in and we talk about the upcoming 150th anniversary of the university and the town. Interrupted by a phone call.
Eden comes in. We go into the studio and I give her more lessons on how to edit and mix. She learns fast. She leaves to get the new logo for the 150th from the print shop, returns and leaves for class.
Talk with my designer about the issue of The Mansfieldian that we’re working on and a problem with the undergraduate catalog cover.
Back into the studio and work until 4:30
Into the car for the 45 minute drive home while I listen to Terry Gross on Fresh Air, and some of the news.
Chapter 3 is live. Listen and let me know what you think so far.