“I like the idea of your being able to go and not going.”
“Yeah, I can see that. But if it really doesn’t matter, then it doesn’t even matter if I could get in, either. You can’t give these people any credit at all.”
“Which is why you wouldn’t open your report cards.”
“Right. Even if they were straight A’s, you can’t believe the A’s any more than the D’s, Syr. You just don’t pay any attention, period.”
Syria shook her head and took a pipe, continuing to stare at Checker, when he wasn’t looking, for the rest of the night.
“I talked to one of your students today. He said you terrify him.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said you terrified me, too.”
She smiled. “What are you afraid of?”
“That you won’t like me.”
“I like you, kiddo,” she said, a little too casually. “Relax.”
“Bullshit. You don’t want me to relax. Or your students. You scare people on purpose. Why?”
“Keeps them out of my way,” she said cryptically, with exactly the same edge he was talking about.
“Keeps them in the next state. Why, Syr?”
She sighed, concentrating on her work. “Teaching? I used to fall in love with every one of them, even the girls. I couldn’t afford that after a while. It was killing me.—Listen, this glass is getting cordy and the tank’s about blown out. You’re going to have to drag after I finish.”
“What’s wrong with liking your students?”
“I didn’t say ‘like,’” she said sharply, hefting her piece to the bench. “You get so ‘jacked,’ mister? Let me advise you, stay in love with that bridge of yours. Iron and concrete. Color.”
“Glass.”
She nodded. “I’ve traveled a lot. But if I hear another guy tell me hiking up a mountain that ‘it’s not the place, it’s the people,’ I’ll throw him off the ridge. There’s plenty else—texture, temperature, the sky. Ask me? Keep people out of it.”
“That doesn’t seem possible.”
“It’s not.”
“I think it’s bad advice.”
“You’ll pay for not taking it.”
“I’ll pay, then.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re too young.”
“I can’t help that.”
“Your age,” Syria pondered more gently. “It’s like a test. Like a ring of fire.”
“What happens on the other side?”
“Sometimes you come out a shrunken-up old cinder. Burned and burned out. Smoking a little, resentfully. And you get meaner and harder, and then they bury you. Thank God.”
“I don’t see myself turning into a briquette.”
“No, maybe not. See, sometimes you come out harder, but that’s good. You shine. Not like soot, but like steel. You temper.”
“That’s what happened to you?” Checker smiled. “Some temper.”
“Yes,” said Syria. “But, kiddo, there’s one more thing that can happen. Some nineteen-year-olds go into the fire and—”
“What happens?”
“Something sad,” she warned him. “They don’t burn out or temper, they melt. Like throwing a piece of cullet in the furnace and closing the door and never coming back.” She said, “Watch out,” and handed him a punty to drag the tank; the discussion was over.
9 / In Defense of Subjective Reality
“I’ve found a studio, Check, that’s fantastically cheap, and—”
“What do we need a studio for, Howard?”
“To make a demo…”
“Why do we need a demo, Howard?”
“To send to clubs? To record companies…?”
The drummer sighed. “You know what a one-hit band is, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, just about every band that ever got anywhere is a one-hit band. And they’re bitter, Howard. They want something and they think they’ve got it and they spend a lot of money on nice clothes and maybe a car, and then it turns out they didn’t get it, after all. It’s like Let’s Make a Deal, when you think the Caddy is behind Curtain #3 and you jump up and down on camera and it turns out there’s been a mistake—Curtain #3 is just a pile of dog food. But nothing’s the same after that. They can still play and write songs, but it’s all ruined. They end up hating rock and roll and selling insurance.”
“We wouldn’t have to be a one-hitter, Check, that’s defeatist—”
“Even if we weren’t. Even if we made it or, if we were lucky, only kept trying and got nowhere, it would mean we’d started doing the right things for the wrong reasons. There’s really no difference between that and just doing the wrong things.”
“Why is trying to get somewhere a bad reason?”
“What if you send that tape to CBGB’s and they tell us we aren’t any good? What then?”
“You’re just afraid of rejection, then.”
“The point is, Howard, do we believe them? Or if they tell us we’re good, do we believe them? What does CB’s have to do with us, Howard?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t ask people questions unless you’re interested in what they tell you. I’m not interested, Howard. If CB’s likes The Derailleurs, does that mean we play better?”
“It might make us feel better—”
“I feel very good, Howard. It’s dangerous, this tape business, don’t you see?”
“NO!” Howard screamed in frustration. “What’s wrong with a little ambition?”
“Everything. You drag other people into something that’s not their business. You make it their business. It’s not your business anymore. You let them say what you are and you’re lost, Howard. You’ve sold your soul.”
Later, in Plato’s, Checker went so far as to suppose, “Maybe it doesn’t matter if we’re ‘good.’ I don’t even know what that means.”
“Are you honestly claiming you don’t care about excellence?” asked Eaton.
“I care about feeling excellent. I tend to think that’s the same thing.”
“But if I walked in and said, ‘You suck and your band sucks,’ you’d blow it off?”
“I’m not perfect—”
“Can I quote you?”
“What?” A lot of things Eaton said, Checker literally didn’t hear.
“Go on.”
“Of course that would be a drag. But if I were perfect, it wouldn’t matter. And it also wouldn’t matter if you came in and said, ‘You’re—exemplary.’”
Eaton smiled. “You remembered.”
That weekend the band took one of its traditional rambles through Manhattan. Caldwell picked up a little plastic dinosaur in a gutter; they came across a store that sold thousands of different light bulbs, where Checker bought a Mickey Mouse night-light for his mother. Toward the end of their walk they serendipitously happened upon the Washington Square Art Exhibit, which burgeoned beyond the park for blocks, the sidewalks crammed with booth after booth of notoriously bad art. The artists sat on stools, gnawing sandwiches.
“Somebody should suggest that these people move on to Sheetrock.”
“No, Eat, I’m proud of them. Of their kitty cats. Their spirograph sailboats. Their seascapes with the moon on the water.” Checker held a crystal unicorn up to the late-afternoon sun.
“You like this stuff?”
“I like that they do it.”
“Don’t you have any standards, man? Look at that tiger, with the disjointed nose. You’re going to tell me that isn’t atrocious?”
Checker didn’t look at the picture, though, but at the artist. A brassy woman in her late fifties, she stared back at Check with a clang. Her name was Lydia Myers, and she was a jewelry polisher from New Jersey. She owned a small split-level in Paterson, with walnut paneling and wall-to-wall beige carpeting that didn’t show dirt; she had a large pantry; it wasn’t a bad life. She was a woman who knew what she liked: lasagna; Sunday afternoons; acry
lics. Inside her head was weirder than anyone knew, and it wasn’t her fault if that never came out on canvas.
Checker couldn’t quite fill all of this in, but he got a start on it. Most of all he could see Lydia Myers at her kitchen table passing the hours tracing stripes, stirring gesso, mixing oranges, the refrigerator humming on and off, a cat at her feet. He was sure she didn’t watch television, and Check very much preferred to picture Lydia Myers wrestling with that difficult big black nose to watching one more Donahue. He bought the tiger.
10 / Howard and the Flow State
CONCENTRATION IS LIKENED TO
EUPHORIC STATES OF MIND
The seemingly simple act of being fully absorbed in a challenging task is now being seen as akin to some of the extravagantly euphoric states such as those sought in drugs or sex or through “the runner’s high.”
New research is leading to the conclusion that these instances of absorption are, in effect, altered states in which the mind functions at its peak, time is often distorted and a sense of happiness seems to pervade the moment.
Such states, the new research suggests, are accompanied by mental efficiency experienced as a feeling of effortlessness.
One team of researchers describes these moments of absorption as “flow states.”
According to Mike Csikszenmihalyi, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, “flow” refers to “those times when things seem to go just right, when you feel alive and fully attentive to what you’re doing.”*
Howard finished taping the article carefully into his notebook and wrote beneath it:
Hypothesis #2: Subject has achieved a nearly permanent “flow state,” by acts of sustained concentration, “including a rapturous joy, a sense of some profound meaningfulness, vivid imagery, and an altered sense of time…Such people…may go through much of the day lost in a pleasant, reverie-like state.”
Researchers agree that “flow” can be learned.
Howard tucked his notebook under the cushion of his bedroom chair and leaped outside.
The Secretti apartment was a sprawling, timeless place, junk from the family’s different eras littering the rooms like stray memories. All events were spontaneous, like the incidental bombardment of molecules—occasionally foods collided in the middle of the living room, and hands in bags, bread on newspaper, the family would eat together; but for the most part it was fistfuls of corned beef, crumples of chips. The debris of this grazing scuttered over the stuffed gorilla, the Matchbox cars, the hook and ladder like tumbleweed.
When Howard burst in that afternoon, Checker was nested in the living room at his piano. Magnificent for a toy, ludicrous for an instrument, Checker’s baby-blue grand was a present from his father for his fifth birthday. He sat cross-legged before it, plinking out a tune with one finger. Leaning on the wind-up bear a few feet away, a personal stereo buzzed at high volume, a tinny chirp wheedling from its earphones. While Check had bought the machine for cycling, he didn’t use it much. Checker was already afraid he was the only one who heard the music.
Howard cleared a space on the floor. The drummer grabbed two pickup sticks from under Howard’s leg to drum on top of the piano while he sang:
Eeensie, weensie sound of Walkman,
Meensy-teensy.
Tiny, whiny sound of Walkman,
Rinky-dinky.
Mincey, wincey sound of Walkman,
Shrimpy-wimpy.
The squeal from your earphones,
Like Alvin’s chipmunks—
Don’t tell me this is rock and roll.
Give me a bandstand,
Crank up those tall amps,
I play my traps with two-by-fours.
We make your table shake,
We make your glasses break,
We make your drink fall on the floor.
We make your stomach sink,
We make your scalp shrink,
We drive your mother out the door.
Hunky-chunky we Derailleurs,
Funky-thunky.
Hunky-dory we Derailleurs,
More-and-morey.
Rowdy-crowdy big Derailleurs,
Loudy-shouty.
Who needs your microtapes,
You high-tech jackanapes,
Don’t tell me you know rock and roll.
Got bad reception?
We take exception.
We snip your wires and pull your jack.
We rip your shirt silk,
We scorch your baby’s milk,
We knot the tie around your neck.
We sound your smoke alarms,
We shave your underarms,
We shake your engine block until it cracks.
Grab the extension cords,
This is an encore.
Toss out your tiny double A’s.
We make your roof leak,
We make your hinges squeak,
We break your lease and strip your paint.
We make your car stall,
We make your cake fall,
We blister polyurethane.
Got bad reception?
We take exception.
Go find a shovel, dig a hole.
Grab the extension,
Toss your invention—
No way it’s big enough for rock and roll.
“That’s great!” said Howard, and asked, without skipping a beat, “Do you think I could write rock songs?”
“Stop it. I’m focusing. I’m almost in a flow state. I can feel it.”
“A flow state—?”
“It’s too complicated for you to understand.”
Caldwell read over Howard’s shoulder, “Rock-n-out, late at night, pock-a-pock-a?”
“This is private!”
“How, don’t tell me you’re—”
“Check said why not, that’s what he said.”
“Know what else Check says? Never write a lyric with ‘hey, hey’ or ‘yeah, yeah’ or ‘all night long.’”
“Bull. Checker never says never. Now look what you’ve done. You’ve ruined my flow state. I was almost euphoric, and now I’m just ordinary.”
“No! Howard Williams feel ordinary?”
“Sweets.”
“Check, How here—”
“Don’t worry. Lay off. There’s no problem.”
But there was a problem. Howard wanted The Derailleurs to play his song at their next rehearsal. The band squirmed.
“Got a tune?” asked Check.
Howard hummed something bouncy and indistinct. “I can’t sing, but—you know. Like a rock song.”
“A rock song,” said Caldwell.
“It’s not quite ready, Howard,” said Check gently. “Give me a copy, we’ll see what we can do.”
They went on to learn “Walkmans Make Creepy Squealy Sounds,” but Howard folded his arms and didn’t say “Great!” when it was over. After the rehearsal dispersed, Eaton slid beside the manager, who was slumped in his chair smoothing and creasing and resmoothing his lyrics.
“You’ve got a real classic sensibility,” said Eaton.
“What?”
“The song. Good solid rock. Bedrock.”
“Yeah?”
“Does he always dismiss other people’s tunes like that?”
Howard shrugged. “Nobody’s ever tried before.”
“So the others are afraid of him.”
“Come on. Of Check?”
“Sure. And just now you obviously threatened the guy.”
“Yeah?”
Eaton sighed and put his feet up. “I think our friend Secretti has a hard time with competition.”
“Well, why shouldn’t someone else write songs!”
“Of course. But when you’re running your own little empire—” There was a look in Howard’s eyes; Eaton pulled up short.
“Check is a friend of mine,” said Howard warily.
“And of mine, of course. Though I don’t know him well, I’m sure he’s a fine person. An excellent drummer. He just strikes me as
a little insecure, that’s all.”
“Yeah?”
“Just a little. It’s hardly even a criticism. That’s so common, at his age.”
“Aren’t you nineteen, too?”
Eaton shrugged. “Why don’t you give me those lyrics? I’ll work on the arrangement.”
With a slightly funny feeling, Howard handed Eaton the words.
“I don’t see what the trouble is. You just say, Little boy, you can’t write music, go home.”
“I can’t either, Syr.”
“You don’t understand anything that’s not nice, do you? If it’s not one big Fourth of July picnic, you panic. You get all confused.”
“I don’t.”
“You’re pathetic.”
“And you’re no help.”
When Checker showed up at rehearsal the next week, he wanted to start immediately on Howard’s song. Checker coached the band on the rhythm, got Rachel to croon in the background, and sang the lyrics himself. The tune had been retitled “No Frills.”
By the end, Caldwell and J.K. were doubled over laughing. “Perfecto!”
“You changed it,” said Howard.
“I thought you’d get a kick out of it, Howard. Don’t you like the tune?”
“Sure, but. My song, it was serious.”
“What happened to the line about the moon?” Eaton interjected. “I thought that was especially good.”
“It was good. It didn’t fit my concept, though.”
“So your concept was that Howard’s song wasn’t good.”
Checker shifted on the throne uncomfortably and tapped the base, bu-bu-bu-bum. “This is just The Derailleurs, right? Plato’s? Rehearsal?”
“Just Howard. Just Howard’s song.”
“And just my songs.”
“Only your songs aren’t jokes—”
“Most of them are, too—”
“They’re not parodies.” Eaton licked his lips. “I did some work on ‘All Night Long’ myself. But I gave it a little more of a break—”
“Strike, come on,” said Caldwell.