Storytellersunplugged

Friday the 13^th of June was a lucky day for me.  That was the start of a three-day weekend on Cross Lake, Minnesota, as a guest of Glenn Frey.  The friendship goes back 20 years now, and though our muses have different addresses and our histories follow different maps, we are brothers in the ether.  His muse glides elegantly from one success to the next; mine lives in the woods and sweats a lot.  His maps cover the Seven Wonders of the World; mine cover one-way streets and dead ends.  Still, I like to think the differences highlight the similarities.  We’ve come to the same universal truths by different roads.  Universal truths…essential material for any artist.  Moreover from the beginning we instantly recognized each other’s style.  Styles. 

That yields up a lot of relevant insights for me, some of which I’ll try to deliver here.  Yeah, Glenn’s is in part performance art whereas writing books is abstract, but peeking over a shoulder (or wing in the case of the Eagles) at what is arguably the most successful musical phenomenon of all time has afforded me information I could never have otherwise gleaned.  Glenn started the Eagles and they have always born his stamp of independence and individualism.  To me that is almost synonymous with endurance in the arts.  It can also be alienating, particularly in an age where media hype is essential to recognition.  Fail to pay homage to the gatekeepers, and you are probably doomed to obscurity.  Do it your way, and you will very likely do it alone.  But Glenn Frey and the Eagles have certainly done it their way and they are anything but alone.  So say the fans.  What other musical legends could have made and set records starting in the early 70s, disbanded and resurrected themselves in the early 90s to set more records, left that last millennium with the #2 and #5 best-selling CDs of the 20th century (the only musical entity to have two in the top five), then come back in 2007 with their first totally new material in 37 years debuting #1 and going almost instantly Platinum seven times?  The new CD, which was not released until late October and sold only through Wal-Mart, ended up the top album of the year for a US group.  Moreover, each of the Eagles has had a successful solo career, though I believe Glenn is the only one to chart #2, which he did twice (“Heat Is On” and “You Belong to the City”).  Clearly the fans — new and old — continue to find them.  So one of the revelations I’ve taken from our friendship is that of the two tracks to success in entertainment — media hype and grassroots recognition — only the latter produces enduring acceptance.  Fans trump.

An interesting conversation in the middle of the night after the Manhattan Beach concert with Al Garth, one of Glenn’s key band members, left me flat out astonished that he didn’t seem to entirely grasp the scope of his impact as part of the Eagles.  In a very scaled-down and relative way I’ve found this blind-sidedness to be true in my own humble career and generally in the careers of other writers, but — hey — we’re talking performance art vs. abstract art here.  All those fans pulsing energy at a stage bathed in shifting rainbows has to be some kind of affirmation, I thought.  As a rule readers don’t wave glow sticks at writers, and when someone says, “Oh, you’re the author,” I’ve learned that the appropriate response is, “It’s too late to get your money back.”  This was the first time I’ve actually been on stage during a performance, and even tucked beneath an awning and behind a soundboard you get a sense of what the musicians must be feeling:

The air is charged.  The audience is like an ocean held back by magical incantations that come from strings and reeds and the dynamics of a mesmerizing voice.  What surprised me was the vibration.  The stage practically levitates you.  The next time my feet ache I want to stand on a couple dozen amps each the size of my car.  When the vibration stops, tsunamis roar over the stage.  The heat from the lights seems suddenly to leave a chill and the figures in the aura are momentarily inanimate, like batteries drawing current.  Glenn holds the plug and keys the switch.  I see a friend whose inner space I know but who is also a stranger made bigger than life by some potent spell he has cast.  The spell’s thrall includes himself, as if he is channeling whatever muses he has called forth from all the thunder and lightning of his life.  His blood has been replaced by adrenaline and he is breathing the sky.  His senses are honed and lucid in a way that only those who create and perform can recognize.  He is playing the pauses.  The audience is unified into one listener.  He can and does speak to it with a single intimate voice.  The musicians are an integral part of that voice by extension.  Key the switch…

So how is it that the Al Garths and you and I and even Glenn Frey cannot necessarily appreciate the impact of our work?  Why do brilliant writers like Wayne Allen Sallee, Janet Berliner and Richard Steinberg despair?

Maybe it’s the fact that we’re on the supply side of entertainment, or that we look in the mirror and see the person behind the curtain, or that we create in a vacuum, or that we tend to focus on what’s missing in fulfilling our goals, or maybe it’s because of the isolation that surrounds many entertainers — contrary to what most fans believe.  The very recognition that people suppose creates access is in fact a barrier.  And when that barrier is stormed, the person behind it usually has to fulfill an expectation rather than the reality of who they are.  It is a very lonely and guarded business beneath the surface, and one in which you can easily get lost. 

In the conversation with Al Garth I could empathize with the artist who is vulnerable to whatever media attention or apathy defines them, but I could also present myself as the fan who sees that his own most intense emotions and meaningful memories are evoked by happenings like a Glenn Frey concert or an Eagles song or a powerful novel.  The barriers all come down then.  For the performance artist it feeds off an audience, as Glenn illustrated that night at Manhattan Beach.  The thing I want to underscore is that entertainment can express the very soul of a fan in a way that is life altering.  You just can’t know how much impact or influence it has when you’re on the supply side.  And that — notwithstanding that the Eagles have unprecedented critical success that speaks for more than one era — is their real success.  Ultimately it’s the real success for any artist.  Connecting with emotions, especially at the core.

I guess it’s tougher to do with a book, simply because you don’t have direct sensory input.  Writers are stuck with abstract symbols.  But then again, great songs score with great lyrics that stand alone too.  I’m going to try singing my next book.  What do you think, light opera, tighten my belt and sing falsetto, slum it (Sully Winehouse — Whinehouse)?  Not pretty.  On the other hand, I want to hear Glenn sing a song in braille.  Every art form has its limitations and advantages.

And I think I’m closing in on the length limitation for this column.  It’s telling me to turn it into a two-parter.  So be it.  I’ll pull this one together with the general observation that a couple of writing elements made the Manhattan Beach concert particularly magical: settings and characters.  So… 

Settings: spent half of one night on the shores of Island Lake and Cross Lake, or as I described in one of the post responses to last month’s column: “… catching storm cells gusting in from the west with rumbles and flashes, standing in the wind on a dam whose concrete fingers billowed up silver water in the moonlight, and discovering gossamer mists and foxfire in its hollows at dawn…”  Beauty may only be in the eye of the beholder, but you get a lot of help from nature in that area of Minnesota. 

Characters: have to give that honor to those two scene-stealers Deacon and Otis Lincoln Douglas Frey, Glenn and Cindy’s two sons.  I believe they are best known for clearing out all the fish from Loon Lake while standing barely 30 feet from the house.  But thousands of fans at the concert can testify to 15-year-old Deacon blowing them away with his rockin’ guitar and vocals.  Ditto for Otis, age 6, on the tambourine.  Otis comes with his own backup, little Kaylee, also 6.  Hell, Otis comes with his own universe.  I guess that makes him an artist already.  To be continued…

Your thoughts are welcome, your attention valued.  If you’d like to see more of my work, please check out a free sample chapter from THE WATER WOLF on my website.  And I’ll be happy to e-mail you a free newsletter every month with similar rants about life and writing, plus photos of whatever I’m writing about.  Just send me your e-mail address.    

Thomas “Sully” Sullivan
http://www.thomassullivanauthor.com/