FERRISLAND
as always for Marcia
I always wanted to be a shaman, a voodoo master, a high
priest with entrée to the divine, able to influence the luck of circumstances,
mine and others. As has been said, one better be careful about wishes for they do, sometimes, come true, although wishing is not a sure fire
strategy because, to paraphrase Ben Franklin: magic is diligence. Well, after
sixty-five years of being au contraire, looking inward not upward, walking
backwards, and an adulthood of scrupulous honesty, I am left wandering and
wondering. There is no knowledge I possess that sets me apart, nothing
glamorously glorious. No book of revelations will be written by me, although I
have been privy on occasion to some arcane understandings.
Some twenty years ago, my oldest son came down with chicken
pox. Already close to six foot, he was an adolescent young man living in an
already adult body. And the pox hit him hard as it can with adults. His body
produced anti-bodies to the varicella
virus; unfortunately those anti-bodies ran amuck in their defense and attempted
to infiltrate his brain. Had the anti-bodies gained access, they would have
most likely caused death. Fortunately the brain has a defense in cases like
this. It swells with water to block entrance. The swelling of the brain,
however, caused my son to lapse into a coma that lasted almost week. During the
time my son was in a coma, my dreams were unlike any dreams I’ve ever had,
before or since. My extra-special dreams were many, but this story is about
just one of them and its consequences in the real world, consequences that
resulted from my having acted upon the information in my dream. And just so you
know, to alleviate your anxiety, my son recovered from his bout with post varicella encephalitis.
My revelatory dream begins with a fabulous rock and roll bus
parked outside our – me and Marcia’s – office and studio on 12th
Avenue in Denver’s Congress park neighborhood. Essentially a futuristic bus –
something the Rolling Stones might engage to tour – it was, what with its
racecar contours, pulsing electroluminescence at roofline, and almost soundless
- Could it be electric? - idling engine. According to its destination window it
is not headed “Further” or “Farther” but to “Ferrisland.” I can’t imagine what
this magical bus is doing parked before dawn in front of The ImageMaker. For
that matter, I can’t imagine what I’m doing here in the 5 am darkness. And
where the hell is Marcia?
As I approach the front door of our studio it opens and out
steps Bobbi Blanc, the widow of the man who sold me and Marcia our photo
business. “You’re gonna make some money with this one,” she whispers
conspiratorially as she walks on by. “Marcia’s inside waiting on you.”
Well, the inside of the studio is packed with people, dozens
and dozens of actor types, all dressed to the nines. It takes me awhile but I
eventually find my wife among the throng and she tells me that we are redoing
yesterday’s album cover shoot for the jazz band, Images. Images was founded by
a former roommate of mine, the pianist Lee Bartley, and the bass player, Rich
Sallee, over the years had become a close friend and occasional business
partner in sundry counter culture endeavors. Rich played bass for my 1979
Denver Poets Day performance and Lee had accompanied my poetry at numerous
venues over the years. I had arranged waiter jobs for both early in their music
careers when they needed to supplement their gig income. So it was only natural
that Marcia would be doing the photography for their latest record. What’s
unsettling in all this is that I can’t remember anything about yesterday’s
photo shoot, a disquiet that reminds me I am dreaming.
Now, not only is Rich the bass player for Images, but he is
also the band’s business manager. And for the purpose of the photo shoot, he is
also the art director. He tells me his concept in three words: Above the
Crowd. That’s the album name and the
approach we are to take in creating an image. All the extras, some fifty or so,
are to form a field of faces. In the album cover final layout the faces of the
band mates will float “above the crowd.” My job will be to help get fifty faces
into one arrangement for Marcia to photograph. Not impossible but something
that will take time. I’m guessing we’re going to have to erect some sort of
bleacher-like contraption to get the actors heads and faces all in the same
plane of focus. I’m deep into the depth of field geometry of my thinking when
this dream takes a turn with Rich’s pronouncement.
“Never mind, Ed. I think the shot from yesterday will work
after all," and he hands me a color 4x5 Polaroid from yesterday’s session. In
the photograph, a barefoot man lies in a coffin. The satin interior of the coffin
is psychedelic and flowery. The man is a rock and roll drummer named Larry with
whom I have but a passing acquaintance, a friend of Rich’s, but not the drummer
for Images. Strangely, the photo is of a younger Larry, Larry in his late
teens, not the forty-five year old Larry I know. I’m wondering who did the
make-up as this illusion of a youngster is down-right magical. Larry’s long
hair expresses a lion-like vitality absent in the present day Larry’s long
thinning hair. His clothes are 60s mod – very British, not 90s grunge or late
80s techno, an outfit Larry might have worn when he first stated drumming
professionally at age sixteen. No crow’s feet adorn his penny-laden eyes, no
wrinkles crease his forehead, no forty-five year old late night bar tan colors
his complexion. At the same time, he appears dead and sunny as a new born day.
Now I’ve maybe had two or three conversations with Larry in
my life, mostly when we would cross paths at Rich Sallee’s, although the last
time we spoke was right here in the studio some six months ago. Larry had
stopped in because he was auditioning with the Cherry Bomb Club, a techno band
that lived in a loft around the corner from the studio on Madison Street. We
patted each other on the back about still doing our own thing despite the
disappointing economics of being artists. I had showed him team photos of the
youth baseball league I ran, the CYRA. He told me how lucky I was to have such
a part in the lives of my sons. His relationship with his daughter had been
sketchy, as her loyalties were with her mother from whom he was bitterly and
long since divorced. His bar band salary had not been up to the task of
supporting a wife and child.
Anyway, Rich’s decision to use the shot from yesterday is
disappointing in that we have all these extras here, no small financial
investment on the record label’s part, and I was looking forward to helping
make the shoot happen. Additionally, Marcia has already loaded dozens of 4x5
film holders with color transparency film. And so, in attempt to save the
shoot, I ask, “What does a guy in a coffin have to do with being ‘Above the
Crowd’?” Rich’s nonsensical response – remember this is a dream – “The crowd is
on Abbey Road” closes the door on further discussion. Soon everyone is filing
out of the studio. All fit easily onto the bus. Dawn has broken. The bus driver
exits and checks on the luggage compartment that he opens, closes and locks
with a remote in his hand. I notice the casket from the Polaroid photograph
amidst the drum kit and guitar cases that fill the storage area. And then the
bus sans engine noise heads east towards the dawn just as the sun pops over the
apartment buildings on Colorado Boulevard. The sun’s rays in my eyes end my
dreaming and I awaken to a real dawn, in the hospital, beside my comatose son.
I jot down what I remember of this extraordinary dream and find myself
exceedingly annoyed that I cannot remember Larry’s last name as I make my
notes.
A little later that morning I call Rich Sallee. Without going into detail about my
son’s situation or the nature of my dream I simply ask about Larry’s last name,
which Rich tells me: “Ferris.” Rich also mentions that he hasn’t heard from
Larry the last few days, an odd thing, in that Larry spends most of his life
sitting at a table in his little one room crash pad above a garage in Park
Hill, rolling and smoking joints and talking on the phone, his way of self
medicating the manic depression that consumed him. Larry generally checked in
with Rich most days as Rich was very connected in the live music world of
Denver and Rich often hooked Larry up with one night engagements whenever a
band was in need of a drummer. Rich ended our conversation with “I think I’ll
give Larry a call.”
The next morning Rich calls me. He’s astonished to tell me
where my inquiry concerning Larry’s last name led. Rich had called Larry a
couple of times yesterday but Larry never answered. And if Larry wasn’t playing
somewhere, he usually was home. That was Larry’s pattern and his practice, and
he always answered his phone. So Rich called Larry’s married daughter who also
lived in Park Hill. And when she went to check on Larry she found her father
unconscious, unresponsive, but still breathing, on the floor of his apartment.
Apparently Larry had suffered some sort of aneurism. He was still alive on some
level, but brain-dead. He stopped breathing shortly after the paramedics
arrived.
Now you might wonder why Larry appeared in my dream as he
lay dying. I spoke with Rich at length about it, and he told me that Larry had
always spoke admiringly of me, for he saw me as someone “above the crowd” who
had managed to keep the dream of being an artist alive while not succumbing to
what had laid him low: poverty, depression, the dissolution of his marriage,
the drugs, the alcohol, his ill health. Even though I never made it big, I had
managed to be a lifelong artist, and a husband, and a father. Hell, in my spare
time I ran a youth baseball league that allowed three thousand kids to play
organized baseball, something that, according to Rich, truly amazed Larry. I
guess, Larry somehow knew I’d take care of the business of having someone find
him so he could get on that fabulous rock and roll bus that was headed towards
the stars.
