Pleasant memories

Taking my daughter to the theater, a truly excellent Celtic Women tour de force in Houston. Relaxed intimacy of the Regal in Subiaco to see a Disney musical, then a tribute to Sinatra. A day at the Aquarium to feed rays by hand and marvel at white tigers. Zoos and museums all over the world. White sand beaches, horse stables, and a butterfly dome. Driving her to visit kid friends, a hundred trips that were never dull. She tops the best of pleasant memories, too many to inventory. Watching her take off in an airplane, 'pilot flying' at age twelve. Hearing her voice echo in a storm sewer in conversation with her sidekick, an intrepid lad who was miles behind her intellectually. Two neighbor girls for a sleepover, making bed rolls for them on the floor and feeding them as generously as possible. A big list of honors and duties as a Dad. I carried her in my arms from Greenwich to Whitehall, sleepy and limp.

My first real job, in a noisy factory, pocket money, learning craftsmanship at age 16. A dozen years later, riding the Main Line and the Broad Street Subway daily to another job, another craft. I would learn all the trades, blue collar and white, from ditch digging and demolition to custom electromechanical gismos that I designed, tested, aligned, and installed. The steely thrill of refurbishing a complex sound system with multiple zones and multiple triggers, to be heard over the din of slot machines, made possible with 1/3-octave measurement of the environmental racket to push announcements through a narrow slot of frequencies, heard clear as a bell. Installing sound bars and speaker systems that I built by hand.

I had a basement radio shack when I was a kid, listened to the world and chatted with grown men on CB. I soldered Knight Kits together with steady concentration, a delight when I threw the switch and it worked. There were Estes rockets and nichrome igniters.

Most of the films and videos were wonderful experiences, too many to list. Thousands of moments, hours, days, nights, and situations that were electric, monumental, unrepeatable, mine to savor because I made it possible and it succeeded as signature work. The stream of life on screen. The glory of cutting -- directing the editor with a snap of my fingers to mark the exact moment, one of the highest pleasures known to man. Standby, ready, snap!

I liked operating equipment myself when I could, an old Steenbeck, a Sony 800, or a clunky control track rig. I can't guess how many cameras I held in my hands. I adored mixing music, creating a stereo image and sonically shaping each input on a big desk. Every time I hung a luminaire and focused and gelled it, I felt the sweaty reverence of painting with light.

OMG -- the women!

Solemn admiration for Wright's Price Tower, Pei's Bank of China skyscraper, and the oils of Vermeer's Melkmaid in a museum. I was born in the era of passenger rail -- journeys on the Chicago & North Western, the 20th Century Limited, the Reading Line, British Rail, superwide Deutschesbahn, cramped Dutch inter-urban, and steam V&T. To be completely honest, I very much miss the L-1011, finest airliner in history. No brag, just fact, my 3-D video microscope and focusable fiber optic lamps diagnosed what was wrong with the L-1011 cockpit windows, a manufacturing defect in the gold film layer that defrosted it. I explained how to fix it. My pal Bud Alger did the main cabin video projectors. Lockheed was a local Burbank customer.

I suppose that the streets of New York were grand, but I was so busy that I seldom saw the skyline, although I shared a 3rd floor Midtown walk-up with a good view of the Empire State Building illuminated every night. Covent Garden and Wardour Street were nice. I spent two years in London and a couple more in Scotland. I learned to love the game of snooker. There is a rugged simplicity of Scots that makes one a better human being by osmosis.

And that brings me to the subject of literature. RLS has a place in my heart like no other, the simple tale of Kidnapped, a great gift that I often re-read, always fresh and inspiring. I own a volume of Hammett's novels and have a sharp recollection of Bogart as Sam Spade. Chandler said that the best Marlowe was Bogart. I would be hard pressed to say which of his movies was better -- Bogart opposite Kate Hepburn in The African Queen, or Bogart opposite Edward G. Robinson in Key Largo, or Bogart fencing with Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre in The Maltese Falcon. A thinking man's hero, ruthless, inquisitive, and necessarily stupid.

The human experience as I understand it is a string of blunders, the natural karma of heroes and heroines, the plot twists of Atlas Shrugged. Francisco -- oops ... Hank -- oops ... Galt as a final choice. The blunders in Fountainhead are infinitely worse. I think it's all of a piece, the pleasant memories and colossal disasters. I did not dislike carrying a loaded gun, safety off, ready to kill or be killed any moment. Prison was a memorable challenge. I think it may be necessary to suffer, in order to experience the heightened vista of joy.

Do you know what pure joy is? Arriving to hear the raised voice of a confident 1st A.D.,  who presses an electric bell to grab attention and shout: "Director on the set!" Too old to direct, I took up writing. Same sort of business, to make a movie happen in the reader's imagination. Same sort of pleasure, the magic of mise en scene, every page.



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