Invisible Touch

January 30, 2021

Tonight we made an ice cream run and since I was driving I popped in my Invisible Touch CD.  My favorites on there are not necessarily the ones that became big hits for Genesis but the whole album continues to feel like it is really well done and something I enjoy listening to.  I would say it holds up well in spite of (or maybe because of?) its electronic drums and synths.  I was explaining to Elias that in the 80’s most pop music used synthesizers and electronic drum beats.  His favorite is the last track on the CD “The Brazilian” which is an instrumental.

Back in 1987 I was a senior in high school and one of my best friends was turning 18.  For his birthday his Dad bought him and a few of us friends tickets to the Invisible Touch Tour in the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis.  He drove us up on a Saturday and we checked in to the Union Station Hotel just across the street from the Hoosier Dome, all expenses paid.  We be-bopped around the hotel for a bit, ate dinner, and then made our way over to the concert. 

The stage was set up on one end of what was typically the Indianapolis Colt’s football field and our seats were just behind the stage and up several rows.  When Phil Collins was singing at the front of the stage his touring drummer Chester Thompson would be beating and banging away closest to us, but at one point Phil joined him at a second set of drums.

The stadium went black and the sound of African-like percussive sounds started to echo through the place.  Crowd noises began to swell and then Phil and Chester started their blazing fast synchronized runs of The Brazilian.  The light show was spectacular as banks of multicolored flood lights moved in 3 dimensional space and rotated 360 degrees in synch to the music.  It was entertainment at its finest with bodies pulsating and our senses being overwhelmed as we looked at each other like “are you kidding me?!”   

So back to tonight, we’re driving along and the song “In too Deep” comes on.  Anya is digging the ballads a bit more than the trippy prog-rock stuff and when Phil goes into his falsetto voice she expertly inserts her own falsetto (a la the Dr. Pepper commercial guy) with “It’s the sweet one!”  It fit in so well we all burst out laughing.  When we arrived home Anya jumped out of the car exclaiming “I just love everything 80’s!  The clothes, the music, the hair styles...”

***

The Bus Driver

 

The trek through the wilderness had been interminable as day had frozen into night and night had thawed into day in an endless cycle.  It was a matter of one foot in front of the other but he was growing increasingly tired.  And as he tired and slowed he sensed the presence of predators patiently plodding nearby following his progress.

He found a path to ease his way and lessen the stumbling brought on by exhaustion.  It wound around and down through shrinking hills eventually taking him into a pine forest.  The quiet there was striking.  Pine needles softened the ground and the birds had ceased to flit and call to one another.  He seemed at the end of himself, but then he saw the clearing ahead.

It gave him a bit of a bump and he sped up to meet it, stopping at the edge and peering about the space.  At the far edge he spied an abandoned bus and he wondered how it had found this improbable spot to retire.  It was white and green, top and bottom, with a yellow undercoat peeking out in various places that had been worn away by sun and rain. 

Strange as it was, it was a welcome sight after an eternity of walking.  As he approached the bus he noticed a rusty chair beckoning him.  “Come, rest yourself” it seemed to say as it creaked under his weight.  Some of the cares of his journey fell from his shoulders into the overgrown grass and were strangled amongst the choking weeds with nary a cry. 

His chin found his chest and sleep was not far away when a fast moving shadow on the ground startled him back to wakefulness.  A large owl swept down out of the trees to perch on the hood of the bus.  It swiveled its magnificent head to take in the weary traveler and queried him. “Who?”  Nonplussed the man replied “Why?”  The owl blinked thrice and then flew away. 

The sun was falling below the horizon and stars were beginning to wink into existence in a pale blue sky purpling by the minute.  The traveler made his way around the bus and into its darkening interior where he found a rusty barrel furnace and a bed.  He did not bother to remove his coat before lying down and falling off into a dreamless sleep. 

The loud popping sound of a burning log suddenly brought him out of sleep.  His eyes remained closed and an inventory of his body indicated he could not feel his feet or the ends of his fingers.  He waited for fear to find him but it remained bashfully at the edges of his awareness.  Instead he was feeling the sensation of warmth emanating from what may or may not have been a fire. 

Through his slightly opened lids he could make out the blurred form of a man undulating in flame and shadow.  He forced himself to sit up in the bed, rubbed his eyes, and found he was facing another man sitting in the rusty chair.  The man was young and bearded with a mischievous grin and knowing eyes deeply set.  They sat in silence looking at each other.

The only thing the traveler could eventually think to say was “Where did you come from?”  The man put his palms together in front of his face and then moved them outward in a big circle.  “Uh, you’re from around here?”  The man smiled and looked around the bus in a kind of exaggerated manner.  “Sooo, right here, right here?”  And he nodded his head in agreement.

This silent man confused the traveler but he did not make him feel uneasy.  The man gestured for him to lean forward and when he did he placed his palm on the traveler’s heart.  He felt a popping sensation and everything seemed to stop as the roof of the bus suddenly became transparent.  The stars burned brighter overhead than he’d ever seen before.  Tears came.

“Who?” he choked out...“Why?” a whisper.  The man got up and went to sit in the driver’s seat.  He pulled the throttle and pumped the gas while turning the key.  The bus roared to life vibrating the furnace and the bed so that the traveler thought the whole vehicle would simply shake into pieces.  The driver flicked with his flattened hand the sign for “forward!” 

Expecting the bus to lurch forward the traveler braced himself, but instead it lurched upwards.  The tops of the trees quickly came on level with the windows as the bus paused in its ascent.  The bottom of the bus became transparent as well and the traveler experienced a kind of existential vertigo as it resumed climbing at an accelerating rate of speed.

The trees fell away.  The hills fell away.  The mountains fell away.  And the earth spun blue in the abyss becoming just one more point of light in a limitless expanse full of radiant silence.  “Where?” asked the traveler.  “Home” answered the bus driver.  And he knew it was true.

Taller

 

I glanced out the window 

and what did I see?

A once small boy 

now taller than me.

***

Until the Ego Sleeps

When humility awakens

and the ego sleeps 

the world opens up 

like a beautiful book.

What was once separated 

is now connected in a 

dizzying number of ways 

never before dreamed of.

But until the ego sleeps 

and humility is awakened

the isolation continues 

unabated in blindness.

***

Spring Cleaning

 

May the peaceful sweep of a broom

empty violence from my room,

breeze blowing the scent of doom 

from this place that’s been a tomb.

***

Rocket to the Moon

 

It was the first time I realized I could create something beautiful.  

In elementary school the world was full of mystery and there was nothing more mysterious to me than the ability of people to create something beautiful.  I was thinking mostly about music and the visual arts at the time as I was not yet able to read well enough to grasp what might be beautiful in literature.  This stirring inside was new to my growing awareness of the world.

To hear someone play something beautifully or create a piece of art with their very hands was nothing short of miraculous to me.  My immature brain could not comprehend the time and effort that lay behind those abilities, only that I saw them fully formed and naively believed it must simply be something innate to that person.  The possibility of sustained attention and self-discipline was a black box to me.  My failings at both in a classroom setting was a perennial problem and oftentimes the focus of parent-teacher meetings.

Until that day in art class when I made something I couldn’t explain.  

We were working with clay to fashion sculptures that would be painted and then fired in a kiln.  I chose to make a disk shaped moonscape with a rocket ship.  I was sitting at a table with another boy who was known to be a bit of a pill and was always looking to turn everything into a competition.  He decided to make his version of the same thing which may or may not have been his attempt to annoy me.

I flattened out the clay and formed it into a thick disk about four inches across that looked like a pancake but was tapered at the edges.  Pushing my thumb into it I made a few deep impressions and formed up low thin walls around their edges to create craters.  Next I rolled some clay into a boulder or two to disperse amongst the three craters.  Unsurprisingly the boy at my table was following suit.

Next was the rocket ship which I made by rolling the clay into a fine spire pointing skyward which bulged out in the middle as it descended and then tapered again at the bottom.  Then I fashioned three curving fins that came out from the rocket’s body and formed a tripod where they met the moon’s surface.  I placed the ship off-center next to the biggest crater.  It was a kind of rule-of-thirds placement that was more intuition than any knowledge of aesthetics.

The next step was to paint it.  

I looked over to check on my neighbor’s progress and his rocket was thicker than mine with a cylindrical shape which had a nubby point, like a fat crayon.  The fins were not curved but thick triangles.  He quickly painted his with a dark muddy gray for the moon’s surface, blue for the rocket’s body, and red for the fins.

I was more deliberate in my thought process and came to the conclusion if I only clear-glazed the moon’s surface and didn’t use a color the firing process would give me a more accurate lunar-like shading and texture.  The rocket itself was painted a uniform silver-gray in the classic Bradbury style.  I carefully transferred the slender rocket-on-moonscape into the kiln and enquired of the teacher how long it would take to fire it and get it back.  She said it wouldn’t be that day and class didn’t meet again for another few days besides.

I thought about that sculpture in the meantime and how it might turn out.  I was excited because I was really pleased with how it had all come together regardless of my neighbor’s boorish attempts to copy it.

When the day finally came and my art teacher placed the sculpture on the table in front of me I couldn’t quite believe my eyes.  The fired glaze gave the rocket ship a rich shiny glow and the unpainted moon color was spot on.  It was beautiful!  The art teacher gave me a little grin and said it was “pretty good”.  I couldn’t quite grasp the fact that I’d made it with my very hands and had sustained such laser-like focus throughout the process.  I guess you could say I was “over the moon”.

***