A Lorca Aria

Photo by James Phillip Thomas

Awhile back I was part of a concert for Trinity Episcopal Cathedral of Leonard Cohen songs. Inspired by Cohen's own inspiration of Lorca I wrote this aria, to Lorca's poem La Casada Infiel. I decided not to use translated lyrics, but the original instead.

The Moon and All That.

A Corner of my Studio

  I went to bed early, upstairs in my studio, where I sometimes sleep if I come home late (instead of in the bedroom with my wife). My studio is an open space that takes up the entire second story, with two comfortable armchairs, two ouds, a piano keyboard, paintings on the walls that my friends have made and an oriental rug. Push aside the dark red curtains at one end and there's a glass door that opens to a balcony. On warm days when I sit on the balcony above the foliage, or warm nights under the stars playing my oud, I'm reminded of the old courtyards of Damascus, of which I've only read.

  Sometimes, up there, alone, I think: this would be enough. Living alone, in my studio, with maybe a bathroom and kitchen added. I know what all the articles say about single people not being as happy nor living as long, but maybe those people just don't have the right furnishings.

  It reminds me of what Frank Girard said once. Frank Girard was a friend and colleague of my father's. They were writing a book on some obscure Socialist Labor Party ephemera, and every Summer Frank would visit from Wisconsin. He wore plaid shirts and had large hands and always took an interest in what I was up to.

  The first Summer he came he stayed in my step-sister's old room that was across the hallway from mine. She had moved out and so I had made it into a sitting room and I must have been proud of the whole set-up because as soon as he finished mounting the stairs and could see the hallway and the two rooms he said, “Ah. Every man must have his castle!”

  I understood that then, and I understand it now.

  Making the whole upper floor into an apartment had always been part of my designs, and as soon as my sister moved out I jumped on to the space with all the first-world imperial privilege a boy my age could muster and annexed her room. I was fourteen.

  My bedroom I kept as my bedroom, but I arranged her room to be a sitting room, furnished half in the style of 221 Baker Street B, complete with a magnifying glass and Victorian ort, and half in a more noirish style.

  To fulfill the latter I gathered a couple of empty liquor bottles from around the neighborhood and arranged them with an empty bottle of my dad's Canadian Whiskey. I half filled them all with water so that my “bar” consisted of the blended whiskey along with two bottle of “Old Grand Dad.” The picture of the Victorian old man with the spectacles I had seen on billboards for the liquor also went nicely with the Sherlock Holmes aesthetic.

  In the late afternoon, or early evening I'd pour myself a glass of the “whiskey”, put my record of “Rhapsody in Blue” on using the large wooden console stereo and then sink into the green faux-leather armchair. I felt like a grown-up. but old-fashioned too, like I was a Bogart detective. The fantasy would continue and although it wasn't specific, I was just a detective in the big city relaxing with his drink at the end of the day, it pushed the boundaries of my natural existence—an assimilated Jewish boy growing up in a Philadelphia suburb and all the angst that comes with the adolescent territory—almost enough, until my mother yelled up to me that it was dinner time, or my father started mowing the lawn. Then I was just a kid again, not a guy in his thirties in the 1940's.

  At forty-four, I'm still sitting around in a furnished room, longing for something. The fantasy is a little different now. In the fantasy I'm a writer and a renaissance man, and I draw Arabic calligraphy and play the oud, and as it happens I do all of these things anyway. But in the fantasy I don't have a wife and child, I control everything, and I have lovers who come and go. And some sort of passive income.

  When I was a teenager the problem seemed to be that I wasn't a grown-up. And I couldn't be a grown up at that age any more than I could be a real private eye or living in the 1940's. And I certainly didn't think I'd miss my family one day, my parents, or my sister. Those were the people I couldn't wait to get away from.

  Now, I have all that and a bag of chips. That's something my wife would say. We've been together long enough that our speech patterns are well-integrated. And I suppose that if I really wanted to I could leave, set myself up in a small studio and live that coveted bachelor life where I fix myself drinks and listen to Gershwin, alone on a chair. Here's what actually happens when I'm by myself, for example when Jill takes my son to Memphis so they can visit relatives: I end up drinking a lot of beer and watching Jackie Chan movies. It's great for the first two days and then I feel lost. I suppose if it had to be that way I would push through it and even achieve some sort of happiness, but I also know something I didn't know when I was fourteen. And that's maybe that I would have enjoyed my sitting room for another hour if no one called me to dinner, maybe even two hours, but after that I would have gotten bored and wanted to hang out with my parents. The only reason my fantasy was appealing was because people were around...for escapism to be effective you need something to escape from.

  What keeps me from actually escaping is that without my wife and child my life would be drastically empty, pale and drained. Call me co-dependent, if you want, but we happen to have a great relationship and love all around. I'm very lucky. It's a pain living with anybody, but if it's the right people, it's a gaping pain living without them.

  I open the door and walk on to the balcony. The moon is full enough to read Arabic poetry by. The tree in the neighbor's yard is still bare from Winter and the branches open their hands to a swath of glowing sky.

  I walk back inside, play a song on the oud and then shut the curtains to utter darkness, crawl into the single bed, and go to sleep.

Me on my Balcony

A Gap Year: Eric Stern interviews himself (thanks for the idea g.g.).

Photo Credit: Michael Bodine

Photo Credit: Scott Bump

ES: I recently read a Vagabond Opera fan posting that described the band in the past tense...
Eric Stern: Yes, I read that as well. It started out: "A fine Portland band from the Pre-Portlandia era..." and then went on to say some very nice things.. But that framing of us, in bygone era, well I protested, at first.
ES: Why?
Eric Stern: Well first because I'd hate to use Portlandia as a temporal limiter, or as a means to define anything about this city, but mostly because...well the last gig we played was in November. I mean, don't be so quick to put nails in the coffin.
ES: And yet you've shaved your moustache, and if you make a public appearance these days you're usually seen playing an obscure Arabic instrument.
Eric Stern: The oud isn't obscure in the Arab or Turkish world. And yes, I'm obsessed with it, the same way I was once obsessed with the accordion. But that's besides the point. I'm not ready to say that Vagabond Opera is over, but I am taking a gap year.
ES: A gap year?
Eric Stern: Yes, you know when high school students take a year before college and travel to Europe or find a job at home and just experience life away from the pressure of school. The band has been going for around twelve years. I needed a break. A break from the band, from the persona, from the music industry. That's all.
ES: Why?
Eric Stern: Do I need a reason?
ES: No. But from what I know the band was touring, producing interesting shows, with interesting music. So why...sort of the "if it ain't broke principle," I guess...
Eric Stern: All of that is true, and even behind the scenes there wasn't the drama you often hear about in bands, and I've still remained friends with almost everyone that's been in it. That's almost part of the issue...I wish I could say that some cataclysmic dramatic event ended the ensemble with a resounding finality.
ES: So it is over?
Eric Stern: Never say "never." The music industry is an odd beast. I went into it, I mean the whole band thing, and maybe even when I was in opera, with this David Copperfield idea, that if I did my absolute best and greatest work, and that if I followed my heart that we would achieve unparalleled success. Rise to the top.
ES: You are of the "follow your bliss" generation and also from a country that is constantly in the throes of what Salman Rushdie calls the "cult of celebrity."
Eric Stern: I didn't need us to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. I just wanted us to achieve a level of recognition maybe on par with our friends of The Decemberists or the Portland band, Pink Martini. In the end, I always knew that the true success...well this sounds trite but I mean it...that the true success was already achieved because in every show we gave our hearts minds body and blood practically and brought all of our art to serve and were rewarded instantly with the energetic return from the spectators. That much I knew, and that may be enough. But you don't hear too much about the economics of these things. You know I'm reminded of an R. Crumb quote where he said something to the effect of being an artist in the United States usually equated with being a loser. I wouldn't go so far, but I also did get tired of the ratio of work I and the band would put into projects versus our financial return. And there was another more important ratio. I found myself spending more and more time on promotion (even when we'd hire a promoter!), and less and less time to work on craft. And craft is vital to me. But rather than whine about it I've decided to do other things.
ES: Things that make more money?
Eric Stern: No things, that don't cost as much. Of course, right away after I made the decision to take a break I started an opera company and composed an opera and mounted a production and then began to think of all the things that would have to happen: fund-raisers, concerts, recruiting volunteers the whole catastrophe as Zorba would say and the oddest thing happened. I almost feel embarrassed to say it...
ES: Go ahead...
Eric Stern: I felt my body putting on the brakes. The only way I could put it is that I didn't want to be outward. So no big Fall production, no fund-raisers, none of that. Instead I started a little creative collective out of my home that met on Wednesdays, just me and a circle of my friends practicing songs, writing, but even that was too much. All I really wanted to do was play the oud, watch Christopher Hitchens on youtube or learn about history and philosophy, and write. Of course I didn't immediately embrace that; on the contrary I fought it for a month or so, but gradually, and with the wisdom of age, I knew to listen to what my body was telling me. It's been nourishing.
ES: What has?
Eric Stern: Going internal, I guess. Learning. being in one place. I'm barely performing (just once a week in a band that plays Arabic music for belly dancers. I play the oud, and accordion once a week at a French Restaurant), and I'm mostly writing, on a schedule, either alone or with my business partner from Hungry Opera Machine, Annie Rosen. Fiction, essays, short stories, a radio play and even a mystery novel. I don't wear striped pants or a moustache. I'm finished with that, for now. And besides I get to do this:

Elena Villa with Eric Stern. Photo: Phoebus-Foto

I'll also be blogging more...

My Original Radio Play airs on Portland Jewish Hour

Recently Liz Schwartz of the Portland Jewish Hour on KBOO contacted me about doing something original for the show. As it turned out my creative partner Annie Rosen and I had been doing a lot of writing so I thought I'd try a radio play, tailor-made for the both of us. My father was a big fan of Bob and Ray and I got to hear a lot of them growing up, and this radio play was written with their style in mind.

The Radio play, Always Leave Them Wanting More, is the exciting adventures of the Tin Pan Alley Duo Gloria Steinway and Herbert Plotzbottom. In this episode they're visited by the mysterious Mrs. Goldollar with a proposition that threatens to tear apart the creative team forever! Listen to the whole thing here:

Hungry Opera Machine and the Portland Jewish Hour presents Always Leave Them Wanting More!