Gone Out, Back Soon

In case you've been coming by and not finding me here, that is because my creative torch has been turned on that guaranteed bestseller of mine Dragon's Ark (formerly titled The Vampire of Alpine Canyon and certain to be re-titled yet again), the end of which composition is at last in sight. I'll be back, I hope soon, to tell you about it.

To sweeten your eye a little, I'm posting the above photo of this murder of crows, taken during a a blue and gray dawn outside of Lone Pine, California.

In the meantime, thank you for your attention!

Them Thar Hills!: Along the Tennessee Valley

Last week, I told about my first visit to Mt Tamalpais in over a year and spun a few memories. I didn’t mention that it was quite warm and humid that day, with only a brush of wind on the high grassy slopes overlooking the plate glass, fog-tabled Pacific. From experience, I knew the thick windless forests of Douglas firs up a piece from where I was were humming with hungry bugs, eager to dine on any hapless hiker who dared enter.

And so I drove back down the mountain to another favorite spot.

The Tennessee Valley (named after a steamship that ran aground here in 1853) is a grassland environment. That day, it was combed by gentle sea breezes. The valley, one of Marin County's most popular hiking spots, sits within the National Park Service’s Golden Gate National Recreation Area.

Compared to Mt. Tam, getting there is easy. From Highway 101, take the same Shoreline Highway 1 exit for Stinson Beach; in less than a mile past a slough, there’s a turnoff to the left (be wary and patient; oncoming traffic provides many opportunities for an accident) onto Tennessee Valley for a winding 2-mile drive; the road ends in a large parking lot at the mouth of the valley.

From there, it’s about a 1.7 walk to the beach. The trail splits about a third of the way in; one loop rises to a long mildly muscle-stretching march above the valley; the other, narrower trail, follows the floor through the marsh, leading to the estuary at the end. I like this one, not because I’m lazy, but for its smaller, more surprising wonders.

The frequent fog banks that roll ashore during the summer turn the valley into something like an English moor, redolent of giant spectral dogs and deerstalker-wearing detectives. I first looked down into it from the top of Wolf Ridge, about 800 feet above to the south, during one of my first “epic” walks in the late 1990s; a heart-pumping climb from Rodeo Beach to the ridge, followed by a knee
splitting descent down a twisting ravine into the valley. Then I turned around climbed all the way back up and finished running downhill on the other side to catch the bus back to San Francisco. (My pal Hal, a loyal reader, questioned my sanity with a deep scowl at Frankie’s that evening. “My beer tastes better than yours,” I retorted, with that sneer that only serious hikers can conjure—exhausted body, boosted ego.)


I didn’t really get to see Tennessee Valley until I went with a friend, Alan Brewer, sometime later. As we walked along, I murmured clichéd variations on “Oh wow at the high misty hills. We came to a small beach that was framed by two towering cliffs; the waves thumped through me as they pounded the shore like fists and their foam hissed around our feet; a plump handsome western seagull squawked greedily nearby as we ate trail mix (we were too big for it to bully) We said little, busily
soaking up the spare beauty and menacing power. Even with all the people around, I felt like a survivor pushed to the haunted edge of the world.



Aside from its atmosphere, another thing I like about the Tennessee Valley is that it’s home, like the rest of Marin Headlands to one of my favorite avians, the redwing blackbird. This bird’s crimson patch is a burst of molten fire in black space; I saw none on last week’s trip, though I occasionally heard the electronic wheeze of their call; as I walked along the lower trail, pair of Moms pushing baby carriages approached me and flushed a red-tail hawk from the tall brush. It briefly flew out of the trail and vanished back into the reeds. The valley is one of Marin’s most popular spots for families.

Here, two springtime’s ago, my wife and I witnessed one of nature’s bursts of brutal spectacle. Just as we were approaching the beach, Elizabeth pointed up the brushy slope to our right. There stood a tall, elegant great blue heron, its long head and pointed bill all set toward the ground, as still as a lawn statue. Seconds after I saw it, it attacked the ground with one short stab and came up with a plump, furry, undoubtedly unhappy, vole. The heron took to the air on its broad wings and swooped over to where the estuary had cut a small shallow stream through the
black sand on its journey to the sea. The heron landed in the middle of the stream. A crowd of beachgoers gathered around. The heron doused the vole in the stream again and again, short brutal stabs, like a knife, until its prey was close enough to dead for swallowing. The birds tipped its head back. The vole disappeared down its gullet, making a brief lump in its predator’s throat. We all murmured, amazed, awed, maybe wondering about that day when we would become the vole.

Last week, I saw no bloody spectacle, only the brown pelican you see below, missed by everyone else as it plodded quietly, unobtrusively up the beach into the lagoon (its unusual behavior indicates it may very well have been ill); in summer, the lagoon retreats inland and loses contact with the ocean waters; I walked over to where the pelican disappeared behind the long grass; as I took my photos and some clumsy video, it seemed to have had enough of my attention and slowly, almost resignedly,
disappeared slowly into the reeds.

Them Thar Hills!: No Other Heaven.

San Francisco from Rock Spring on Mt. Tam

The East Bay Regional Parks are a string of relatively small pleasures. Running north and south, east of San Francisco Bay, many of them consist of golden grasslands, canyons, and mixed forests of oak, madrone, eucalyptus, and some groves of second-growth redwoods. Redwood Regional Park is particularly appealing as are the grassy heights of Briones, (also a working cattle ranch with a Rawhide flavor). Mt. Diablo has a wild majesty when storms blow by or when the springtime flowers bloom. Yet, wherever I go, I sense the grim hum of urban sprawl, like a snoring odorous bear.

In summer, temperatures rise into the 90s by late morning: this area becomes dangerously uncomfortable. That’s when I turn my bootheels west, toward the coast, mostly to my favorite wonderland of all: Marin County’s Mount Tamalpais.



Though not as high as Mt. Diablo, you can see Mt. Tam from almost anywhere in the Bay Area. The 2,571 peak dominates the titular 6,300-acre-state park. It’s a short drive up Highway 101 from San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, a few miles past the Golden Gate Headlands. From 101, you take the Highway 1 exit to Stinson Beach for a long snaky drive until the road splits in two; you take the right up onto the Panoramic Highway for a snaky ten miles across the mountain’s south slope. Mt. Tam will loom at you on the first rise like a green tidal wave. Most California coastal mountains run north to south, following the coast and the major fault lines. But Mt. Tam is an exception: it runs west to east.

I briefly sampled Mt. Tam in the mid-1980s. In the late 1990s, as I spread into middle-age and my skepticism toward city life deepened, I seized on hiking as the best way to cope with physical change and spiritual entropy. My first hike was to Angel Island in San Francisco Bay; the following weekend, I hopped the Golden Gate Transit bus right by my apartment on Post Street for the 45-minute ride (one transfer) to Mt. Tam’s steep piney slopes.

For over two years I hiked, clambered, climbed, and crawled the 50-miles of trails that braid the landscape, through its delightfully wide variety of ecosystems. Many trails are steep, often rocky, so I started out on short hikes then became more adventurous. The first time I hiked the nearly 3 miles from Stinson Beach up Tolkien-esque Steep Ravine to Pantoll, I raised my fists in triumph but I was really more like a toddler who'd just learned to climb onto daddy's chair.



Radically more daunting was the trudge up steep Willow Camp Fire Road (over 1,500 feet in 3 miles) to the Coast Trail, then over to McKennan Gulch Trail for a 2-mile trip back down, then a long loop back to Stinson where I found the path blocked by a gi-normous eucalyptus that had toppled across the fire road. I bushwhacked up a steep bank on my hands and knees to get around it. I was grateful to learn that I’m not especially sensitive to poison oak.

One Saturday, I started out from Pantoll (park headquarters and the start of most of the main trailheads) and hiked all the way around Mt. Tam’s north side: 8 miles in around 5 or 6 hours. Near the end, I stopped at the top of Wheeler Trail on the northeast slope and checked the map: it seemed to promise a quick trot down to the Hoo-Koo-E-Koo Trail. “Easy,” I sneered and damn near broke my ankles on what turned out to be a rock-jumbled stream bed that would have made a snake weep. At the bottom, I collapsed and was mistaken for dead by several passing hikers. Another memory from that day: the taste of cold beer and watching the afternoon fog pour up over the ridge and down into Muir Canyon. (If you’re up for a truly Gothic experience, nothing beats hiking Mt. Tam in the summertime coastal fog.)

I took risks, but I took them prepared: map, first-aid kit, some food, compass, Swiss Army knife and always always more water than I needed. In those two years I spent most weekends on Mt. Tam, but I only got lost once. It happened like this.

I was single then and joining a hiking group seemed to be a good way to meet chicks. The Mt. Tamalpais Interpretive Association sponsors two kinds of hiking groups: nature lovers and power hikers. I tried the nature lovers’ Saturday hike first but it felt a little slow to me. The following Sunday, I joined the power hikers. And that was how I got lost.

Ten minutes into the hike, I knew I’d never want to go power hiking again. I may walk faster than the Saturday crowd, but I’m still a dawdler, a “oh-gee-what’s that-flower” kind of guy; sometimes I’ll lie down for a nap.

It was when we were stumbling along the foot of the very steep north side of the mountain, that our power hike leader stopped and turned: “Hey! I think we’re lost!” Not long after, as we fought our way back up through thick brush in the heat, she took a look at my beety face and asked, “Say, do you have high blood pressure?”

. . . which of course, did nothing for my blood pressure . . .

I left the group at that point and was led out on a shorter, alternate route by a forgiving veteran who eased my embarrassment with tales of his own stumbles into danger: “It happens to us all, even old-timers.”

The view from O'Rourke's Bench

For a year, I worked for the association as their volunteer publicist. Not long after, I met Elizabeth (I wanted to stage our wedding here, but it was unworkable). Now that we live in Emeryville, Mt. Tam is a circuitous hour-long drive away. A week ago Friday was the last time I’d visited in over a year. I drove to my favorite area, the west end around Rock Spring. A half mile southwest, overlooking the Pacific you’ll find the bench pictured below. Dad O’Rourke’s words are more eloquent than mine.

(All photos by author)

THE EMBRACE: BEYOND CATEGORY (Last--Thank God--In a Series

“There are two kinds of music in the world: good music and the other kind.” --attributed to Duke Ellington.

When Elizabeth replied to my profile on some dating site or other in early 2002, she mentioned that she’d been a classical pianist. According to my memory, that, more than anything else, inspired me to respond positively.

From the end of the Swing Scene to that time, I didn’t listen to much. The only music from that really lit me up was the (now semi-retired) English duo known as Everything But the Girl. I was hanging out at Frankie’s Bohemian Cafe, a Czech-style beer hall on the same-named street in San Francisco, where well-known local musicians like Jonathan Roniger, Max Bran and record producer David Hampp congregated.

But mostly, I’d stare at my beer and ask wither popular music (including rock n’ roll)? Maybe, as a non-musician and not much of an expert, I should shut up . . . but Elvis Costello is wrong. I’m the audience. Allow me to talk back for once.

And what about you? How many post-pop fans among you hands please thank you! When you hear about the new Coldplay album, do you shrug: “Oh, that’s nice. They’re making a living . . . what U-2 is still around? Hooray, The Beatles never reunited, hooray! Stones take note! There's more sacrilege where that came from!")

Maybe it’s just ‘cause I’m an Old Person (ewwwww!) Who Hates New Things Like Old People (ewwwww!) Always Do. But I insist: This is about more than shaking our canes and clacking our dentures while croaking “Things Ain’t What They Used to Be.”

When my parents and grandparents (born in the early half of the 1900s) heard the Beatles for the first time O the shrieking, foaming and sputtering! They were appalled, frightened, threatened, offended, disgusted, repulsed and disturbed by that . . . that . . . racket.

Move ahead 40-plus years. Now I’m my parents. But when I hear the music of You Young People Today (watch me wag my bony warlock finger), I do something much much worse:

I yawn . . . mmmmm . . . nap time!

These new songs aren’t bad, either. They’re well-written, superbly performed (though nobody seems to belt it like Elvis and his Spawn much anymore), have catchy melodies . . . what’s not to like? Trouble is, I spend too much time being reminded of the Old Masters who inspired you: “Oh, Elvis/Dylan/The Beatles/The Ramones/Pink Floyd/ did that lick/melody/lyric twenty/thirty/forty years ago in This Tune on That Album.”

Nothing wrong with drawing inspiration from Old Masters, but I hear nothing new spinning on the CD player, either. That jubilant explosion that started in the mid-1960s sounds absent. I may be deeply wrong, but something tells me even Sir Paul McCartney may have reached a somewhat similar conclusion: there’s only so much a bloke can do with three chords, three guitars and a drum set, even after adding keyboard, synthesizer and 100-piece orchestra. Popular music may promote a deceptive freedom, because, musically, it truly is the most rigid form there is. There may be no color left in the old paint box.

Returning to Elizabeth and Self:

Among our first dates was an Oakland East Bay Symphony concert at that incredible Art Deco palace, the Paramount Theater in downtown Oakland, for a program of Giuseppi Verdi, Marco Beltrami, J.S. Bach, Franz Liszt and Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.

Six years later, classical music is what I listen to most: we’ve collected hundreds of hours of music encompassing a thousand years, pouring from thousands of minds from so many corners of so many rooms, so many dimensions, an endless effusion of sounds bright and baffling. If the amount of work, both big and small, wasn’t so great, I could become an obsessive like Phil Schaap. Hardly a week passes where I don’t hear something entirely new to me, or something familiar that sounds so new, it takes a minute to remember. You don't hear me say "Oh, just another Bach cantata."

Like all general interest writers, I’m stumped about how to tell you what it is I’m hearing so you’ll take in a concert, buy a CD or link to some of the countless radio stations that broadcast online. (Classical makes up less than 3% of the buying market, but in live venues and online, it thrives like never before. I usually read Alex Ross of The New Yorker for help.)


Classical music is often called “elitist,” meaning it’s only accessible to wealthy snobs who kick their servants while taking their $300 seats; it’s not “real people’s” music.

(So, what am I? An android? This is the reverse snobbery of those “Ha! I Eat Feces and You Don’t!” social critics--for which the classical industry does bear some responsibility.)

But on a strictly human, emotional level the vast majority of it is remarkably tuneful and even rocking (the opening of Beethoven’s Eroica; the final movement of Schubert’s Quintet D. 956.) Like a great nature trip, it cleans your soul of modern life’s garbage. Its fans will swear to you: it can take you the edge of God and Eternity like nothing else.

Classical music is elitist and non-democratic in one sense: I mean, do you really want to hear me play the violin? All the best music, pop, jazz, and classical is performed by elitists from Ringo Starr to Benny Goodman to Marc-Andre Hamelin, plus the snob in the last photo. They damn well better be better than the rest of us at what they do.

Elite means the best. In art, that’s how it should be. Mediocrity kills beauty like bug spray.

A concluding point: In an early draft of this series, I wrote that I bought the notion that music doesn’t build hospitals, cure disease or inspire people to sign up for Al Gore’s Climate Challenge. This recent “60 Minutes” report below hints I was right to delete that.

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The Embrace: The Most Fun I Had (Second in a series)

1982: By the time I’d arrived in San Francisco I’d gone tone deaf again. My music craving, lasting from the late ‘70s to maybe 1981, faded with Punk. 1980s New Wave went in one ear and out the other; its preprogrammed plodding drumbeats and thin vocals left me feeling sterile. There were tunes, now and then, that I liked (none come to mind now . . . “One Night in Bangkok”? Sigh . . . .). I was profoundly peripatetic and had no room in the suitcase for a stereo. At one point, I became practically homeless; even my unique and admired Morricone collection had to be stored in the home of an appreciative fellow fan.

1990: I safely landed in an apartment in a Haight Victorian. One of my roommates, Judith from Germany, delighted me by turning out to be world class drummer for a fine rock-ska band called The Offbeats and they happily tuned up my ears for awhile. But I was still drinking in dive bars with drunkards whose outlook was prunier than mine.

Sunday afternoon, late 1992: I’d wearied of hoisting toasts to nihilism and walked down the dreary Haight among the lost and their pretenders. I decided to have one more at a bar I’d only stopped at once before some years back: Its green tile front sported an art-deco-lettered sign: CLUB DELUXE.

Tiny picture, big memories

I ordered a beer from a bald guy who looked like Telly Savalas, but had one talent Telly didn’t: In thirty seconds, I was doing spit takes and toppling off the stool in laughter. I hadn’t met such a funny bartender since . . . ever.

He called himself Vise Grip. I was back next Sunday and every weekend after for the next six years. (Honestly, Vise was God's slowest bartender. Typical conversation: “Burchfield! Wanna beer?” “Nah, gotta leave in a couple of hours.”)

Vise had another talent: he was a musician. In fact, the Deluxe was a musicians’ bar. Not only that, it was the gravity point for a new robust pop music movement, what is known now as the Retro-Swing scene.

What I knew about Jazz and Swing could’ve fit into my ear (even now I’m not particularly smart about it), so I found myself subject to a great musical education, plus one other important lesson. If you want to hang out at bar, hang where the musicians hang.

Musicians, aspiring and pro, are like sharks—gotta keep moving, keep hustling for gigs, keep making music. If you want to even sit with them for a drink, you’d better be moving on something, too, whether it’s a protest movement or a bricklaying business. Otherwise, you will bore them, I promise.

The Deluxe was a magnet for all sorts of people, all of whom had one (often only one) thing in common—they wanted do more than pickle their brains (though, honestly, there was plenty of that; more than one habitué drank himself into a corner and into treatment.) Nor did everyone like each other—there were enough feuds and spats to worry the Hatfields and McCoys, but no one slumped at the bar feeling sorry for his besotted bedeviled self. Those that did, didn’t last and no one had to show the poor bastard the door, either. If misery loves company, the Club Deluxe crowd was the worst company possible. There, my quest for nothingness ended.

As it turned out, like me, most of the musicians—Vise included--were refugees from Punk, alienated from soulless 1980s music and its flat-faced post-modern ‘tude. Retro Swing drew its fire from the Swing Era (roughly the 1920s to the late 1940s, the time of Ellington, Goodman, Cab Calloway and many more); others, like Vise Grip rescued gems from the bridge period between the fading of Swing and the rise of Rock n’ Roll, the time of a style known as Jump Swing, the province of artists like Louis Jordan.

These new bands did more than play their parents’ records: They brought eclectic modernity in terms of energy, color and edge. One of the bands from that era—and one of the only ones still standing—“The New Morty Show” (featuring Vise Grip) had the could swing from Goodman through Jordan and robustly into that great Ramones’ anthem “I Wanna Be Sedated” with amazing grace.

The New Morty Show

Thanks to the Deluxe’s ingenious manager, Dutch Pennfield and owner Jay Johnson, an incredible parade of talent poured through the door onto the tiny stage: St. Vitus Dance (featuring Vise Grip and called “The Sex Pistols of Swing”); The Royal Crown Revue, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Blue Plate Special; Timmie Hesla’s Big Band (the very first of them), Mr. Lucky, the Ambassadors of Swing (. . . featuring Vise Grip). Most of the musicians were younger than me, but some had played with greats like Count Basie and Ellington. The crowds spanned the world and generations, uniting the young and old like never before.

Their music brought something very important to life, probably the most important quality that any art brings: joy.

For many it was more than the music: it was the revival of a lost (and unfairly maligned) culture of elegance, sophistication, sharp dress great dancing and high manners. This, I stood somewhat apart from (though Michael Moss, publisher of Swing Time Magazine a niche publication that was born in the Deluxe and lasted for 14 issues, made a gift of a fine 1920s-vintage suit for which I really need to shed a few pounds to fit in again; V. Vale’s book Swing! The New Retro Renaissance is a valuable reference tool for much of this). I was an indifferent dancer and an early-to-bed type.

Susan Lake and Michael Moss, Editors & Publisher of Swing Time, 1995

It was one of the best times I had . . . but like all good times, it ended. In 1998, the Deluxe no longer featured Vise Grip behind the bar; and Frank Sinatra passed away. But I walked out with a whistle and good feelings for one and all, my ears as tuned up as they’d ever been and a budding Duke Ellington collection, open for the Next Beautiful Thing.

The Embrace: First Sour Notes

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

According to Google, that quote originated with Elvis Costello. It’s funny, but possibly unfair in the way those kinds of quips often are: It douses further conversation, as if it were our duty to dutifully listen, nod in meek approval and go silently home. What do you know about Music, miserable Worms!

True, I know so little about music at its technical level that I approach the subject shrouded in a blanket of mute. As I write this, J.S. Bach’s Mass in B Minor BMV 232 plays on my computer . . . but how can I ever tell you what it’s like, aside from it’s like sitting in the most beautiful church ever with choruses all around? As clever as we all think I am, the kind of notes I write—words—fail to ever capture the deep experience of music. The best I can hope to do—now—is convey my experience on the outskirts of this universal language that exists in the realm beyond words.

My first—and really last—instrument I picked up was the acoustic guitar. Like so many circa-nine-year-old boys circa the mid-1960s, I was inspired by The Beatles, but that glib parroting passion was all I had and it lasted mere months. The Fab Four made it look fabulously easy, but my hardest lesson was that learning an instrument—even to play three-chord rock n’ roll—was hard, tedious and required a focused obsession I lacked.

(And then there was Mom, who told laughing sad tales about her own “tone deafness” as she tried to learn the violin as a teenager and how we all probably inherited it, which made the situation so 100% hopeless that I should quit anyway and spare the family anymore humiliation and that awful music and you’re getting a haircut I don’t care if every kid in school’s tucking his hair in his socks . . . !)

Until I was eleven, I liked the same music the other kids around Mohegan Lake, New York did—rock n’ roll and British Invasion. We used to stand in circles around the gym during recess belting out Beatles tunes a Capella (I was John, Cool, eh?) Tagging after an older brother, I also dug Johnny Cash.

I also heard classical music on the record player (hand-cranked, of course) and even remember, (probably—I hope—when I was six) air-conducting Beethoven using uncooked spaghetti as a baton while standing on a dining room chair wearing only a pajama top and Fruit o’ the Looms (thank God, no video then.)

But when I was moved to Oshkosh, Wisconsin in 1966, I seemed to really go tone deaf. I stopped listening to pop and rock n’ roll (maybe it made me homesick); I failed to fit in with the scene in that dreary place so completely, that my idea of rebelling against the gray crushing forces surrounding me was listening to the music of (I’m cringing as I write this) Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass! (Yeah, you with the complete John Denver collection, wipe that smirk off!)

I stood in this perversely anti-anti-establishment stance for quite awhile; I deepened my alienation by falling for the film scores of Ennio Morricone (and so launched myself way too far ahead of the crowd by twenty years!).

I knew this old dude was cool waayy before you did nyah-nyah!

I drifted back toward the mainstream by becoming a Gordon Lightfoot fan during the terrible awful despairing ghastly infuriating embarrassing depressing paralyzing dumbfounding Late Teens Era—maybe an echo of Johnny Cash past—but this only intensified the acidic scorn and lofty sneers from the vastly-more-sophisticated fans of this Lightfoot-loving legend.

In my early twenties, I moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota and, eventually, into an apartment in south Minneapolis with two fun-loving, dudes, Steve and Greg (who is a reader of these very pages). I immediately fell back in love with the Beatles. One day Steve, admiring my small collection of Morricone scores, said: “You should get all of them” and—

. . . uh anyway, one evening in the summer of 1978, I emerged fragrantly bleary-eyed (a common state at that time) from my bedroom. As I entered the living room, the roar of a chain saw blasted from a pair of giant speakers amplified past 10 followed by a roaring rolling snowball of guitar chords and a solid, thumping dinosaur stomp of drums.

I scurried back to my room and under the futon. When I later emerged, I learned that Greg was not lurking in ambush to make stew out of me, but was listening to a tune called—big surprise--“Chainsaw” by what was, in Minneapolis, a new band: The Ramones.

From there, I started listening to bands like The Clash, The Dead Boys, The Replacements, The Suicide Commandos, Devo, and, maybe my favorite all, a local band called The Suburbs. Great days of sweaty, stoned, beer-soaked nights at Jay’s Longhorn Bar (ground zero in the Minneapolis punk scene) and First Avenue, where I saw the Ramones late in 1981. I went to see The Clash (but had to leave when I got sick; one of the few times I dropped acid, an experience I found mostly boring and vile). I even got to see The Who, though it was years after Keith MoonLake Michigan.
and I sat so far back that saying I “saw” them has as much weight as saying I saw Barack Obama from across

Of course, I was still listening to Dear Gordon (always far from the eardrums of my betters) and my Morricone collection slowly grew (Greg became a fan after I turned him on to Exorcist II and The Bird with the Crystal Plumage both of which put him in mind of Frank Zappa’s music).

But in the spring of 1982, family duty called me to California. Like it or not, I had to go. I went tone deaf again. What happened next will be related . . . next.

Keep the Change

Pinned to a supporting pillar in my office is the most useless piece of kitsch I own: my
battery-operated The Good, the Bad & the Ugly wall clock (Second most useless? My The Good, the Bad & the Ugly wastepaper basket).

Here’s why the clock is number one: not long after I threw money away on it while visiting the Autry Center in Los Angeles, the hands stopped moving. It kept ticking. It’s ticking right now, stuck forever at 9:29:52, the second hand poignantly straining to reach that next second, as though banging on the locked door of an empty house.

If I stand in front of this clock long enough I might convince myself that my darling wife and I will be 53 forever; that Cody’s bookstore (and other bookstores, new and used) will always stay open; that the global climate will stop changing.

$24.95 worth of metaphysics

This also means that the massive condo construction project a dozen feet behind me will continue its pound and buzz forever; that the fires that are burning down Northern California will not increase . . . but they won’t burn out.

And that we’ll always have the Cheney Administration to kick around.

The clock is our ultimate change organizer with its tight little divisions of seconds, minutes and hours. And change is a fundamental—and amoral—force, a basic foundation of existence that happens apart from our vital moral considerations. From something as meaningless as the changing of fashion to the most banal, but meaningful, change of all-- the clock’s ticking second hand--change is merciless, implacable.

Even my cheap, dopey clock changed—from telling time to only telling it accurately twice a day. We say that something “hasn’t changed” but that only means that change has slowed to imperceptibility. Some dedicate their lives fighting it. Think of poor deluded Bill Buckley standing athwart history yelling “Stop!” Trying to freeze change. But his dream was always illusion. When you think you’ve stopped something is when the change called “decay” sets in.

“Change” is a big buzzy word right now. Cable pundit twaddle treats it like newly minted coin, though it’s about as useful as today’s penny. Bill Clinton hectored us about it way back in 1992: “The American people want change” as if we had a desperate itch that needed constant fierce scratching down to blood and bone. It’s a bad idea to scratch too much as doctors will tell you (Click here to learn how it can cause your brains to fall out).

So much are we dismayed, displeased and horrified by change; too much, too little, or of the wrong kind; good for the other guy, but not for me. Necessary in times of crises and in the stress of boredom. It’s the only thing that never stops changing.

Changing from the Cheney Administration will provide some relief, but no matter how much we like their successors and wish them our patriotic best, it is certain that climate change, for example, will roar on—a change no can like, except nihilists and certain hotheaded Millenarians.

Some change I gracefully accept: Ten years ago—about the time of Frank Sinatra’s passing--a sub-culture I was a part of, the Retro Swing Scene, a revival of a larger older American subculture, quietly changed to something smaller. I had a swell time with a swell bunch of folks, but I sensed it was time for new things and new scenes. It is, I reminded anyone within earshot along the bar, a big and deeply interesting life, so long as you remain passionately, seriously curious. (PS: I took Duke Ellington with me).

The passing of the famous East Bay bookstore Cody’s is an example, on a small scale, of a change I mourn but find almost pointless to rage against. You could hear the sigh across the stacks . . . but not everyone minds that much:



“Who needs an ancient musty bookstore in the Age of Amazon/Alibris/Abebooks?” (That kind of question always comes with a sneer, as if I were advocating horse-drawn ambulances).

True: online shopping is convenient and may save fuel. But connections, community, just a friendly knowledgeable face on the other side of the cash register, a chance to flirt with a fellow bibliophile, all that is lost. I made friends in bookstores.



I find little of that online at all; if I hadn’t met Ramsey Campbell and John Hodgman--in fuddy-duddy bookstores like Borderlands and Cody’s--I could believe them both to be no more real than Lara Croft. With no wrinkles, no acne scars, no foul tempers, no belching, they both become Ideal Human Beings. Unchanging. Here, online, I can present myself as Ideal Human Being. Unchanging. Only my wife has to smell my BO and watch my hair turn gray as it jumps off my head. Ain’t you all lucky? My how things don’t change.

(Someday I’ll pass from this world and somebody’ll say: “Burchfield!? Dead!? Why, I just e-commerced with him the other day and he seemed fine!”)



These days, change changes faster than ever and seems to lead only to increased anxiety. In response, I feel less inclined to “keep up,” especially with the latest culture fads and techno doo-hickeys.

I am impatient with impatience. Maybe that’s why I’ve embraced classical music and dream of entering the slower stream of rural life. At my age, I'm gaining that sinking awareness that mortality is no longer something that happens elsewhere: It really is the biggest change of all. The more you do, the faster times moves and . . . and . . . .

But while I slow down, human civilization keeps burning its candle at both ends anyway, don't pay me no mind: The air gets harder to breath, the climate more unstable. The huge populations of India and China seem, from here, to itch for change to where they’re willing to put their own survival at risk, never mind the rest of us.

At least someone is sticking around . . . .

Meanwhile, my stupid clock stays 9:29:52 forever. But when I awake tomorrow, the clock on my nightstand, that’ll have ticked away another day, goddamnit.

The time, it keeps a-changing.