Rothko's Rolodex

Several years ago, we down-sized to a much smaller house. No room for my office. So I wrote at a water-stained Danish table near the pony wall separating kitchen from living room. I did my best, and got plenty done, but always surrounded by the hubbub of household life. Working in cafes doesn’t work for me anymore. I prefer Mickey Mouse headphones, and now they feel vise like. Too much activity crept into the periphery of my laptop screen. So, what to do?

When we moved, we remodeled the garage. The garage is so nice, realtors have deemed it a spare and rentable room, Code be damned. I have a desk in the middle of the garage. It’s a very thick greenish glass desktop circa Ikea 2011. I’ve always loved this slab. It balances on two narrow white cabinets which I rarely think about. I have a cat-shredded faux leather desk chair. I have a fire door separating me from the rest of the house. From inside the house, you can’t hear a blessed thing. I can blast Buzzcocks as loudly as I want. I keep the overhead lights off. There’s a large window behind me, which admits a little light (hello, Bob Mould, I blast you too). I open the window and get some air.

Sunset comes early these days. The garage grows dark and I see the screen better. I never turn on the light. I keep on going. In my magic garage, I work with an intensity and fluency and focus I’ve never before experienced.

I am almost done refreshing the work I finished again and again and again five years ago. This work did see the light of day, with mixed results. An agent turned me down based on an unsympathetic key character. Admittedly, this character was one of those cheap and dirty hack jobs that writers can inflict on certain people on occasion. I changed that. I changed him so much that his figurative namesake would preen and grin with joy.

I have done so many other things too, to this manuscript born in 2012. Then, the nascent AH HERE WE GO had a different title: ADVENTURES IN TREMOLO. It was a teensy novella, published in installments by the grace of my friend, Emile Menasche, in the music magazine he edited. I trust him completely, as a friend (of 44 years!) and writer and editor and guitarist (the first real one I ever met.). My novel wouldn’t exist without his example and encouragement.

To paraphrase Pinocchio: It’s a real book.