Vibrant Life

by Phil Melendez

I’m a symphony of vibrations, the same as musical notes. Sometimes I feel my whole body reverberate with a song. On a good day I can close my eyes and connect.

I’m told that as a baby I sang before I talked. Every time I heard that song, “I’m your Puppet” I’d sing the puppet lines.

My earliest memories of music were at home on the weekend with my mom. She would play oldies and old school R&B. Mary Jane Girls, The Pretenders, and Mary Wells. She wouldn’t let me change the music until her tape finished. When it did, I’d put on the latest mix tape I’d made by recording my favorite songs off the radio: Beastie Boys, Def Leopard, Tone Loc, The Fresh Prince, and Culture Club. All of them would keep me boppin’ around as I made my bed and vacuumed the whole house. With the music blaring throughout our home, we worked happily. It kept my mom and me in sync even if we weren’t in the same room. It also connected us to the house and made it a living stage

This moved me to learn how to play and make music of my own. I started in elementary school with a plastic recorder. I rocked the hell outta “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” In junior high, I signed up for beginning band and dreamed of moving up to advanced band, especially when I passed by the band room and heard what I would later find out was “In The Mood” by the Glen Miller Band. I kept it up in high school as well. I learned trumpet, saxophone, and piano. I played my heart out and let my feelings reverberate and connect with the world. I felt at peace as I played. I felt as if the only thing that existed in the world was harmony and rhythm.

Sadly, as I got older, I felt myself move away from the purity and innocence that reverberated in me. Maybe that’s what happens when you get older. You put on your cynical glasses and things start making horrible sense. It became painfully obvious that my stepdad wasn’t my real dad. My real dad was in and out of prison, and when he was out, he didn’t have time for me. I was only “half” a brother to my brother and sister. I lost that sense of family. I felt like a stranger in my own home. I’d stayed holed up in my room dreading any contact with these inhabitants of my once happy home. I ostracized myself from my family and wallowed in my sadness. I felt lost and rebellious like, Quiet Riot’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It.”

I found connection in a new world: Gangster Rap and Grunge. I wanted to be just as “gangsta” as NWA. I wanted to go ballistic like Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy.” In the new world, the band geek had no place. So, I turned my music into ways to display the “badness” I associated with this new world. My friends were just like me. The world they once felt connected to had fallen apart as well. We were lost and confused, but together we felt reconnected to something. We would drive around with our heads bobbin’ in unison to dangerous melodies.

My life truly became “Nuthin But a G Thang.” I began making rap songs and rapping as if I were the hardest criminal in my city. The Gangster beats helped me live my new lifestyle; now I had a soundtrack to match. When I needed a change to match any other pain, I’d rock out.

I was a cup of water clouded by drops of dye. My birth father’s stabbing was the darkest drop. He survived, but I still needed to avenge him. I was supposed to be a gangster. So gangster that I shot and killed two people hanging out in the apartment complex where my dad had been stabbed.

This act landed me in the county jail facing murder charges. When the door slammed behind me in my very first cell, I heard no music. There was no song for what I felt. There was no love or hope in that cement.

At my arraignment, I was told that they might kill me for the crimes I committed. As the words “death penalty” came from the judge’s mouth, blood rushed to my head. I felt like I left my body. I was looking at myself from the back of the courtroom and shaking my head in disbelief.

The only sound I heard was a shriek that pierced my soul. It was my mom screaming “Noooo!”

For the next week, all I could see when I closed my eyes was my family as they dragged my mama’s baby boy to his death.

Fortunately, the powers that be chose not to seek that death penalty. I could breathe again. But I was still scared and alone. I called home just so they could play songs for me. These phone calls and visits behind glass helped me escape the thought of prison looming in my future. I didn’t want to think of every violent act I’d ever seen in prison movies. My crimes earned me a sentence of 30 years to life.

Maybe I had it easy in the county jail. They had all of us first termers in one pod. We hadn’t been hardened by the system yet and our new and scary situations helped us form a sad camaraderie. Even the look of the county jail building was nicer. It almost looked like any downtown office building. But prison was different, more sinister. The look of it told me I was a caged animal.

When I got to prison, I lied to my family, telling them that prison isn’t like the movies. In some senses I wasn’t. But in others it was. Guys grouped on the yard by race and killed each other by race. I saw guys in shock, twitching and bleeding from stab wounds. One guy looked like he took a shower with all his clothes on. He was soaking wet, but it was his own blood drenching him.

After any violence occurred on the yard, there’d be the standard lockdown. After seeing these things and then staying in my cell for days while the officers investigated, I had plenty of time to visualize a thousand different scenarios that ended with me being stabbed. I had to figure out how to cope. I tried everything to distract myself. At first I paced back and forth, thinking of what to do. There was no escape.

I tried everything to distract myself from the danger that lurked outside my cell door. I grasped for any semblance of my former life by playing music and cleaning my cell every morning.

During this time, one of the best places for me was the visiting room. It was a different world where I got to be human. I could sink back into my own skin.

Nothing could prepare me for the first time my mom visited me in prison. In the county jail, all visits were behind glass. When I got to the penitentiary the state afforded inmates contact visits. I hadn’t hugged my mom in two and a half years. When I walked into the visiting room she ran up and squeezed me tight. She cried. I didn’t know what to do. All I knew was I couldn’t look weak. I couldn’t be caught crying. But that day I committed a prison faux pas. I couldn’t help myself. Feeling her sobbing into my chest brought hot tears that stung my eyes. I had to use every bit of prison sneakiness to wipe them away as they rolled down my cheeks. There’s that one line in a Tupac song that says, “It was hell/huggin’ on my mama from a jail cell.” I felt like Tupac wrote that song for us.

Despite my mother’s visits, my mind was stuck in penitentiary politics until my grandpa died. He was the one man in my life whom I considered a father. But this realization didn’t come until I was locked up and he was about to die. It was then that I started thinking about what he meant to me as well as all that he did for me throughout my life.

One day, I called home and my mom told me this was the last time I’d talk to him. Through her tears she said, “Son, you need to say goodbye to your grandfather.” My heart pounded and sank in my chest. She never called him my “grandfather”. It was always “your grandpa” or “Cuppa,” as my baby cousin used to call him. When she handed him the phone and he said hi, I committed another prison faux pas. I couldn’t help but cry. I didn’t know what to say. Silence dragged between us.

Finally, he said, “Hey, boy. How you holding up?”

“I’m okay.” My voice shook tears from my eyes, but just those words helped me focus on what was going on. I knew I had to say the most beautiful thing that I could to sum up the totality of what he meant to me. I feel so fortunate to have been able to tell him all of that. I told him that I was sorry for what I’ve done and sorry that I couldn’t be there for him. I told him everything that I learned about being a good man, I learned from him. I promised him I’d make it home and do all I could to at least be half the man he was. In my eyes, he was the epitome of goodness. The ultimate positive male role model. War hero of the Greatest Generation, good father and great grandfather in every sense of the word. Aside from spoil me, he taught me how a man loves and takes care of his family. He taught me what a man truly should be. One thing he taught me as a kid, which really stung when I remembered it later, was that going to the penitentiary doesn’t make you a man.

That was the last time I spoke to him.

After that conversation I went back to my cell and cried my eyes out. I grabbed the C.D. player that my grandpa had sent me and put on Tupac’s “So Many Tears.” I left it on repeat, blaring, and cried into my pillow. I cried for the loss of my grandpa; I also cried for the loss of my innocence. I was so ashamed of how far I’d fallen and how I’d disgraced my family by straying so far from what they’d taught me. I had been beaten down so much already. But this was the point where I finally got back up and fought to get my life back. After I was able to take my face out of the pillow, all I could think about was everything my grandpa taught me. I looked at how he was and how I was supposed to be and saw the huge difference between the two. I looked at the stuff I did on the streets. Not just the murders, but the lifestyle that led to my crimes. I looked at the way I lived in prison and actually said to myself, What the fuck is wrong with me? I decided to close the gap between who I’d become and the man I wanted to be.

My grandpa was giving. So I looked for ways to give to charity. I donated to the Red Cross after Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in Southeast Asia. I tried to start a blood drive, but that turned out to be impossible in prison. I found a way to donate my hair to Locks of Love. I did a few charitable things and wanted to pat myself on the back. But my measure of worth wasn’t contingent on a few acts of kindness. Nor was it contingent on my transgressions. It was all about the man I chose to be. I had yet to make all the changes needed to be a productive citizen, but I wasn’t content with what prison politics had to offer me.

With my mind a little clearer about who I was, I started to get into less trouble. That helped me get classified as a lower level security risk, which brought a counselor to my door telling me that I was getting transferred. I was so elated that after the counselor left my door, I danced a little jig and sang, “On the Road Again.” My cellmate at the time got a good laugh about that. I was glad to get away from the deserts of the border of Mexico. I requested Old Folsom, which was closest to my family. I ended up going to San Quentin.

If the crews of officers on the transfer bus play music, it enhances the experience for me.

Listening to music there, I reconnect to the times I drove around free. I always think of another Tupac song that he wrote when he was in prison: “Picture Me Rollin.” No matter what music choice the bus driver makes, I always find myself bobbin’ my head and shimmying as much as I can in my shackles.

When the transport bus pulled into San Quentin, its façade fooled me. I didn’t know it was a good place to make a positive change. I came off the bus and promptly went about the penitentiary business of checking in with “my people” and showing my “paperwork” to establish that I was a “solid” convict. Checking in with your people and showing paper work is a bit of penitentiary politics in which you show an official state document that shows every crime you’ve ever been convicted of. You show the elders of the racial group you identify with so they can know you’re not a rapist or child molester. Because if you are, you could get beat, stabbed, or kicked off the yard. But when I handed my paperwork to this older gentleman he shied away.

“That’s okay”, he said. “It’s not like that here.”

What kind of prison is this? I thought. Part of me was appalled that this penitentiary didn’t stay consistent. Another part of me was relieved that I wouldn’t have so much violence to deal with.

It felt good to be in a less violent environment, but my change took a while to start. I spent the first few months doing what I’d done for the last 15 years: work out, play ball, and listen to music. I’d put on my ear buds, blast “Machinehead” by Bush, and tune out the entire yard as I ran laps. That was how I did my time. That’s how I kept my mind off of my earliest possible release date being in the year 2032.

Until one day someone asked me if I was in any programs.

“What do you mean?” I had seen AA and NA in different prisons, but that just wasn’t for me. Guys told me about other programs. I went. I acquired the tools that helped me look inward and see why I did the things I did as a kid. With more realizations of who I am came the harsh truth of the pain and suffering I caused my victims and their families, my family, my community, and myself. I finally felt like I was answering the question I asked myself when my grandpa died. I started to see what was wrong with me. It was both ugly and beautiful, because it was the truth.

This awareness intensified the journey inward and prompted a broader look at what I needed to get back to the place I was before I fell. I even started becoming a band geek once again.

I found a piano class at San Quentin. My first day was awkward. It had been so long since I played any instrument. When the instructor asked what level I was at, it was hard to explain. I had to tell her that I played in middle school and a little in high school, but it had been 16 years since I played and that as I looked at the keyboard, it looked foreign to me. I was back to beginner status. Which was why, when it came time to do a piano recital in the chapel, I chose a song that I felt was somewhat easy: “The Scientist” by Coldplay. It felt out of place to play such a sorrowful love song in such an environment. But as I played in front of this “tough crowd” I felt everything fall away. I sang my heart out and it was just me and the keyboard. Just like back in the day when it was me and my mom.

In learning more about who I truly am, I see that I’m full of ups and downs, positive and negative. I see that I am a symphony. I’m present in every musical note and in every moment. I reverberate harmoniously once again, connecting with the world.

Phil Melendez is a writer currently incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison.