Playing Pictures

Chapter 1: Anacrusis

The rain in Los Angeles is a fickle nightmare that embodies one of the biggest problems plaguing the 21st century. Traffic. Traffic in Los Angeles is surgery and 'angelenos' go under the knife every night with only a few short hours of 'post op' to recover before repeating the cycle. Fortunately for citizens of the world diagnosed with chronic traffic, a cure of sorts exists to us that are seeking peace of mind and escape from the scalpels of freeway commuting. My family was always well versed in ancient road cures for long and annoying drives having grown up in California, the origin point of the traffic pandemic for the west coast. "The best way to escape traffic", my mother explained, "was to escape into an album" as she turned down the volume to the Zeppelin II cassette tape in the car.

"Each album, each song, each riff, and every note can transport someone to a world that they create", "your mind's eye is the car while the fuel is the music". I will never forget the words uttered to me by my mother with deep reverence, almost as a preacher addresses the congregation on a Sunday morning ... "a good song should paint a picture that only the imagination can see and our hearts can hear." "Music not only connects strangers and friends, but it also connects us closer to ourselves."

It would take years for me to fully deconstruct those words to fully understand what they meant and the magnitude effect they would take on my life.

Our story begins in a quiet home on a quiet street tucked away in a bustling city. The beach was about two miles away and on a breezy day one could feel water in the air and the power of the great Pacific Ocean nearby. During the nineties there was still a sense of community and camaraderie in middle class neighborhoods and I was fortunate enough to belong to such a tribe. Most families had children who were able to roam the block freely opening their infant celestial bodies to a plethora of activities, snacks, laughs, and adventures limited only to their own imagination. Neighbors, being neighborly, often allowed the young ones of the tribe to come in and out of their abodes as they pleased. Mostly the young ones would only stop in for video games or a righteous rummage through the fridge for anything but fruit or vegetables. As a child I was always fascinated with how adults would relax and spend their time outside of the continuous void that would somehow eat them up at 8:00am and spit them back into our reality around 6:00pm. Wherever they were, I knew it wasn't a place where they could be happy because each house would always tense up and shut down when the sun would set and cars would start appearing in the driveways. Except for one house in particular...

The Harper family always had doors open late and their house would smell of incense that faintly resembled a mix of pine wood and seventies magic (as they would call it). Their house had music equipment, band posters, art, and tour posters from their most memorable adventures in every room. A neon sign that read Take The A-Train welcomed people as they entered the residence. The living room resembled a music studio - bar hybrid; they even had a custom pool table with music notes stitched on the green felt tabletop. Peter, the father of the household, was a drummer/percussionist so there was always a cacophony of noise coming from his home studio out back. After years of pestering, he finally soundproofed the studio which made all the neighbors happy. Diana, the mother of the house hold, was a pianist and very talented composer. I remember watching her play with such ease and beauty that her son Oliver, daughter Emilia, and I would stay up late just watching her practice for gigs. Watching a well trained and traveled musician is a sight to see and can captivate even the youngest and fidgety of crowds.

My own family happened to be very close to the Harpers since my father used to be a musician and my mother was a sister in the church of rock 'n roll. My father was a slender man who wore prescription aviator glasses and consistently wore khaki shorts. His watch was always eight minutes fast but he was the type of man to adjust rather than take action, so as a general rule of thumb we as a family would perpetually show up to any outing eight minutes early. Sometimes I would wonder if he did that on purpose. My father had huge hands with lanky fingers that could spread out over the family's computer keyboard like an octopus as he would type away working every night. He ran a online blog about musicians in our area, which was a big deal back when the internet was an unexplored ocean free of Russian bots or social media. The blog was also near and dear to my father' heart since he used to be a guitarist 'back in the day' as he would declare during any opportunity given. He studied in several guitar departments until he met my mother and decided to settle down and have kids. As I would grow older I would worry that father gave up music because of me.