Bound For Anonymity

No, this isn’t Bob Dylan and post-modernism Part 2. I promise I will get to that in a few days.

I thought I would, for those new to me, give a few random biographical notes about myself. I note that Groucho said “I have gone from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.” Though I have done ok in my musical and writing career, as I reach what, demographically at least, may be my last decade, I admit that I feel like I have gone from obscurity to a state of total anonymity.

Not true? Maybe, but if, as they say, perception is reality, well, then, that is how I perceive myself and my life. After starting to build something of a jazz life and reputation as a saxophonist and composer I spent 1996-2016 in the state of Maine, and that was the end of all of that. During that time, having arrived with a decent resume (recordings with Julius Hemphill, David Murray, and Roswell Rudd) I was isolated by – well, as I could quickly tell, by age (being over 40 when I arrived) – and rejected continually by an arts scene that was young, insular, and, as far as I could determine, afraid of anyone who was not only different but, perhaps, in their eyes, over-qualified. It didn’t help that this arts scene was radically age-ist (as was Portland Maine in general) and provincial; it was also corrupt in a polite, liberal way. When a large grant was received and an arts organization formed, I applied for the director’s position. I had recently been the Director of the Department of Cultural Affairs for the City of New Haven, Connecticut and I figured I had a decent shot a getting the position. But no, not a chance; the person they chose had literally no arts experience, but instead had been running a company producing organic dog food; I kid you not. This was a foreshadowing of things to be.

To make a short story shorter, they took the grant, produced no arts at all, and spent all the money in about a year and a half on their friends. When I complained at a meeting, people reacted badly, and I was essentially blacklisted from performing in Portland. It went from bad to worse; the one jazz presenter in town, who had been friendly at first, told people after this acrimonious meeting that I had falsified my arts resume, had not really worked and recorded with Julius Hemphill, Roswell Rudd, Marc Ribot and Hamiet Bluiett (one would think the internet didn’t exist for reference, but of course it did). This struck me as one of the meanest and cruelist things that had ever been done to me. I already felt isolated; now I felt, artistically speaking, completely alone.

So I slogged through life in Maine (we had moved there for my autistic son who thrived and stayed after we left and who now lives a very nice and independent life in Portland; so the sacrifice was painful but worth it). When my two children were out of the house and independent we came back to Connecticut; Hamden to be exact. So life was suddenly good, I began playing more and teaching at Jazz at Lincoln Center; and then I was diagnosed in 2019 with cancer, again in 2021 with cancer, and suffered through 20 surgeries and a lot of sleepless nights (a problem relieved, finally, when cannabis became legal in the region).

Well, I will spare you all the gory details, of a face and embouchure that was destroyed by throat cancer, sinus cancer, high intensity radiation, and numerous surgeries both destructive and reconstructive, of of a life that was saved by a genius surgeon at Mass. General, after Yale New Haven hospital had botched the second part of my treatment and sent me away, out to cancer pasture, and told me to wait it out. As the Mass General surgeon, who is the best and nicest doctor I have ever known, told me, this would have resulted in great sickness and likely death, as Yale had left two holes above my nose which would have exposed me to encephalitis and other unpleasant infections of the brain.

In the middle of all of this I started to play and compose again and, as things moved along, started recording again; in 2022 with people like Kresten Osgood, Lewis Porter, Matt Shipp and Ken Peplowski. Between 2022 (still in the middle of multiple surgeries) and now I have released 8 recordings on compact disc; I also, at the same time, put together a long project called Turn Me Loose White Man, or: Appropriating Culture: How to Listen to American Music, 1900-1970, which was 2 books and 30 compact discs which I curated and restored and which cover virtually every form of American vernacular song from ragtime to gospel, hillbilly, country, jazz, blues, songsters, rock and roll, etc. And don’t ask me how I did all this; I wrote the books and restored the songs in the brief interlude when one cancer was in remission and the next one (which was the same but in a different location) erupted, edited them during a period in which I went almost 6 months without sleep, and generally, in the times when I didn’t expect to die, kept hoping that I would. Thanks to my wife and children I not only lived but went into a remission which continues to this day, along with side effects that continue, as I write, to cause me a lot of discomfort, and which bring on the occasional sense of depression and hopelessness.

The strangest thing was how well, in this period, I started to compose and play, better than before I got sick. My therapist tells me that this is not uncommon and is referred to, in the trade, as “post-traumatic growth.” Strange. The less I was able to physically do the more I was able to accomplish artistically.

So, that is it in essence, though I have one more Maine story to tell. In 1996 we had just moved to South Portland, Maine. I had written my first book, American Pop. Just before we left I was interviewed by Terry Gross for her show Fresh Air. The show aired just after we had moved to Maine, but the day it played there the local station’s transmitter went out, and though the show went out nationally, no one in Maine heard it. So I called the local station; Terry was very popular there and I assumed they would re-run it; plus I was an actual resident. I happened to speak to the head of the place, who was hostile and distant. I told him I assumed they would run the show, being as I lived around there and Fresh Air was so important to the residents.

“Why would we do that?” he asked, with genuine and somewhat annoyed surprise.

“Because I live here” I responded, innocently. There was a long silence.

“So?”