July 3, 2009 - The Austin Chronicle

Something Absurdin BetweenBY MICHAEL VENTURAIt was such a simple song. It said such a simplething: “I want to hold your hand.” An impulsebasic as lust, or maybe more basic: contact; theacknowledgement of one for another, two together,the beginning of everything – clasped hands.“And when I touch you, I feel happy inside.”Just like that. Everybody had felt it. Everybodyknew it was true.And the song was everywhere. Even onthat ferry to Riker’s Island prison.Unembarrassed, childishly happy,the song tinkled from a plasticAM radio the size of a lunchbox, as though four wee Beatlestrilled in a tin can. Not muchis bleaker than a prison or aferry to a prison, and yet, eventhere, the song reminded youthat there’s such a thing as joy.You boarded the ferry beforedawn with cops and guards and whoknows who in that winter of 1964. It wasrarely as warm as 30 degrees. Wind blewthrough the river’s corridor, encasing you inunspeakable coldness. I was 18, working inthe prison mail room, in the special darknessthat was Riker’s, an atmosphere thick withviolence and bewilderment. The song insistedthat life was wonderful anyway.When you work in a prison, its despairsticks to your clothes and your spirit. A weekendisn’t enough to air you out – except thisparticular weekend in February. The Beatleslanded on Friday, to play Ed Sullivan’s liveTV show Sunday. That weekend, New YorkCity – a tough, gray, combative place in thosedays – was not itself. On subways and in diners,people smiled and spoke to one another.About the Beatles. “I Want to Hold YourHand” played constantly, and we, momentarily,were different – but in a way that felt,to me, oddly familiar.Not three months before, John Kennedygot himself shot dead. That day, and for daysafter, in diners, subways, and on street corners,folks spoke to one another suddenly, intimately,sharing the weight of the moment. This Beatlesweekend was like that, but instead of mournful,it was giddy.It seemed to me, at the time, a largethought: Beatlemania would not have beenpossible without the Kennedy assassination.The response to the assassination created,as never before, a template of media-instigated,media-connected mass feeling – akind of receptacle into which we poured ourinsecurities, grief, fears, failed hopes. Oncecreated, that template didn’t go away butawaited another blast of similarly intenseinput, and the next was the opposite of thefirst: Beatlemania was a receptacle into whichwe poured everything joyful, forgetful, hopelettersat 3amful, and, because the template was thesame, the public response was the same:Strangers everywhere spontaneously sharedthe buoyancy of the moment.I felt, in that thought, that I’d gleanedsomething about how the world feels itself tobe “the world” – the illusion, that is, of “theworld” as a purposeful entity. But a strikingaspect of such an insight is that, while funto ponder, it’s completely useless. As an18-year-old would-be poet, I jotteddown my thought and turnedup the radio for the next hit.Musically, the decade wastaking off. Beatles songs ranup and down the charts alongsidethe Drifters’ “Under theBoardwalk,” the Beach Boys’“I Get Around,” the RighteousBrothers’ “You’ve Lost That LovingFeeling,” the Kinks’ “All Day and Allof the Night,” the Zombies’ “She’s NotThere,” Martha & the Vandellas’ “Dancingin the Street,” the Temptations’ “My Girl,”the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun,”Them’s “Gloria,” Sam Cooke’s “A ChangeIs Gonna Come,” and Bob Dylan’s “TheTimes They Are A-Changin’” – as though themusic knew something was up, somethingwas coming, something exciting and maybescary, a break with the past that many wouldcelebrate, many would regret, and a fewwould do both. I don’t think it’s only in retrospectthat underneath it all one felt a greatand trembling poignancy. What is poignancybut the feeling of “hello” and “goodbye” atthe same time?When A Hard Day’s Night came outthat summer, I saw it with a half-dozenor so friends, gals and guys, at a theatrein Mahopac, N.Y. A Hard Day’s Night wasverbal and visual slapstick in gorgeousblack and white, the songs all hope andlight, and the faces of the Beatles so familiarby then that it had the feel of a homemovie – somehow (this was their magic),they were us. Irreverent but sweet. Slylyhip but no threat. To absorb for the firsttime, with no preconceptions, A HardDay’s Night’s happiness, its sense of possibility,its message that nothing couldstop or repress such joy and that nothingwould go wrong ever, the music as irrepressibleas it was inclusive – it was toomuch for us!We left that theatre so hungry for life thatwe did the only reasonable thing: In the hotnight air, we ran, danced, and shouted allover Mahopac’s graveyard, as though onlythe dead would understand our urgency tolive. But there it was again: All this joy hadsomething to do with death.JASON STOUTI know someone who saw that movie 30times. Don’t know how many times I sawit – six, maybe 10. And, I promise you, noneof us registered the moment when Ringo said,wistfully, “Being middle-aged and old takes upmost of your time, doesn’t it?” (Yeah. It does.)Dancing, yelping, and leaping over tombstones,I stood suddenly still – here wasBeatlemania, death, and something absurdin between. Me! So I screamed, loud as Icould, leapt atop a gravestone, balanced,whooped, and danced off, while the cloudedmoon and the future hovered like shroudedangels. I remember someone said, “TheBeatles are heralds.”Sept. 20, 1964. I’d left Riker’s Island forTimes Square – at the time, there was nofunkier neighborhood on the continent. Iworked as a counterman at a diner on EighthAvenue. Prostitutes displayed their wares inthe window booths; cops came by for payoffs;an ex-Marine closet queen worked the counterwith me – it was an education. When I’d getoff work I felt, at last, that I had the right towalk the streets as a full sharer in life, earningmy way, with no backup and no need of any.That was me after a 12-hour shift, mypockets full of money as I walked to SeventhAvenue – a person of responsibility. My familydepended on me. While friends wonderedwhat to do with their lives, I had a task, whichwas more freeing than you might suppose.Serious life had begun.Only to become unserious in the extremewhen I turned the corner and was swept intoa mass of screaming virginal girls who filledTimes Square, spilling into the streets, draggingwith them all the usual denizens – cops,whores, hustlers, hoods, grunt workers likeme. The girls had no idea where they wereor what was around them as they teemedtoward the Paramount’s marquee, which wasbright with “BEATLES TONIGHT!”There was no resisting this mob, turningthe corner east on 43rd, packed with girls,no traffic possible, all of them jumping upand down, screaming, pointing to two litwindows about four stories up. In each windowwere two shadow figures, silhouettedblack against their room’s light, easily recognizableby their hairdos. They waved to thehappy masses.I was as happy as anyone. I liked thembest that way, as shadows, brightly backlitabove that giddily maddened, funky,dangerous neighborhood. These were theBeatles of those first childlike songs,before they and the decade darkened, andthey, too, became swept away by whatthey’d heralded.I elbowed myself out of that crowd andwalked crosstown to Grand Central Station.A big moon hung above the Empire StateBuilding. And I thought of that moment in thegraveyard, when I was even happier, and something– I can’t exactly say what – had seemedincredibly clear.It was some kind of way to be 18. A wildmoment of clarity, useless in itself, but to besavored in memory.■26 T H E A U S T I N C H R O N I C L E JULY 3, 2009 a u s t i n c h r o n i c l e . c o m