Presence and Substance

I went to a couple open mic nights at this dive on the lower east side.

If you’ve never been to an open mic in New York, I can tell you it’s one hell of a show.

The people are the real spectacle. The Broadway washouts who were hot shit in high school theater class. The singers and songwriters who never got a record deal. The poets who couldn’t quite fit the rhyme scheme.

There were rappers. One was a mentally handicapped rapper. One was a forty year old timid white rapper.

There was one girl who said they oughta burn all the Christian Schools like the one she went to, then proceeded to scream and slash at a cello that her parents probably bought for her. Black Lipstick. Hot Topic. Suburban angst is everywhere I guess.

There was one guy who called himself The Ancient Mariner. He used to be in the navy. Has a book coming out. New York Times did a write up on him. Mustache. Tattoos. Over seventy. Repeat offender. Very nice guy. Wears a hat. He wrote a lot about flirting with women and dive bars.

Big Jim was there almost every night. Big Jim was an aging metal head with long white hair. He wrote slam poems about his life. Mostly about heroin and heroin addicts. At least from what I heard. Huge guy. Huge voice.

Then there were the people in their early thirties trying to make it. Acoustic guitar, keyboard, and singers. They played different songs, but they all reeked of the same existential dread from having squandered their twenties on hook ups and P.B.R. They all had this sort of self loathing “please give me a chance” desperation. Even the good ones.

Lots of stoners. Lots of acoustic guitars. Lots of songs.

My favorite was Joe.

Joe Gold did an eight minute set of unscripted free verse poetry every night. Everybody loved Joe. He was over seventy. Jewish. Short grey hair. Grandpa sweater. Big glasses. He always sat in the same chair, ordered the same drink, and patiently waited his turn. He had a sweet old man voice. Sounded sort of like a Jewish Piglet.

People talked and clinked glasses all night, but when Joe got up, everyone listened in silence.

Poetry is weird. When it’s bad, which happens a lot, it’s like throwing up in the middle of a blowjob.

But when it’s good, when it’s really poetry, it has a strange kind of immediacy and power unlike any other art.

And Joe was a poet.

And these misfits recognized it, and listened.

Wisdom without judgement. Hope without deception. Love without pretense.

I went back the next week and sang some songs I’d written. Just to try it. And when I finished, the room was quiet. I walked to the back of the room and sat down at the end of the bar in the corner unsure what to make of their reaction.

The next performer went on.

Joe stood up from his chair, picked up his glass, and walked over to where I was sitting. He shook my hand with an impressed look on his face and asked if he could sit down.

“That was great.”

“Really? You think so?”

“Oh yea. You’ve got presence and substance, and substance counts for a lot these days.”

“Thanks Joe, that means a lot coming from you.”

“How did you come to write songs like that?”

I stammered a little then said “Well I don’t know, you know, I just…how do you write your stuff?”

He smiled and laughed a little, then sipped his drink.

I didn’t want to go into it. We sat in silence for the next few acts.

I finally spoke.

“I do it whenever I hear the songs I guess. I usually get it all at once or not at all. I just hear some music, and words to go with it, and sort of keep writing until I feel like it’s done. Sometimes. Sometimes it happens other ways.”

He nodded.

“I don’t know how you do what you do though. I mean to keep going like that for eight minutes without breaking, or losing your rhythm, or anything like that is an incredible talent. I could never perform without preparing first. Don’t you feel…I don’t know, self conscious or insecure, or something?”

“Oh no. Up there is the only time I feel at home. It’s the rest of the time I feel lost.”

“What do you do Joe? I mean, what do you do for a living?”

“Well I’m retired now, but I was a cinematographer and cameraman for thirty-five years.”

“Really?!”

“Sure.”

“Well look I love movies, did you work on anything I would know?”

“No, no, nothing special. Just some PBS stuff, documentaries, things like that. Nothing special really.”

“How come you’re not still working?”

“Oh they don’t need me anymore. I’m a dinosaur. Camera work has all changed. You used to have get the light just right, and have the right lens, and develop and cut the film and everything. It was a very complex and sensitive art. Now they just point and shoot.”

“Then in post they get whatever they want out of the computer, not the camera.”

“Exactly, and I don’t know how any of that stuff works. They don’t even use film anymore.”

We talked til his turn came. He spoke a poem about a time years ago when he had worked as a cameraman shooting a concert with David Bowie and Lou Reed.

This was the day after Bowie had died. Just a few blocks away in his Soho apartment. Liver cancer.

Joe said that while he was filming this concert, he had turned his camera on Lou during part of the show, and when Bowie saw the footage he stopped the screening and asked who had shot it.

Joe said he had.

David Bowie looked at him and said “Don’t you ever do that again.”

He didn’t want to be upstaged by anyone. David Bowie was insecure. Ziggy Stardust. The Goblin King himself. So was I. So was everyone.

But not Joe.

He finished with some lines about a beautiful bird that never spread it’s wings for fear of the sky. Staying in the nest from when it hatched, until it died.

When his eight minutes were up. He put on his big poofy grandpa coat and gloves, snuggled on his earmuffs, and looked up at me through his thick glasses.

“Substance counts for a lot these days.”

He smiled.

“So long.”

“Next week?”

“Always.”

But Joe wasn’t there next week.

Or the week after.

I finally asked about him.

Joe had died in his sleep three days after we’d met.

I stopped going to open mic nights.