Sunday/Monday, October 9/10
David had previously sent out an ad to the local newspaper which mentioned that he was considering putting a musical band together. He created and distributed this ad very early in the week, so that “The Maine Campus” could get it published right away. That way, he might have some eager responses dropped off to his dorm room by Saturday, October 8th.
He kept the ad short and simple:
“Musicians needed. University of Maine musicians who would like to start a brand new group. Touring plans possible during the summer months. Unknown number of people needed. To apply, obtain an application/interest survey from David Lee Hartland, Hart Residence Hall, located on the west side of campus. Room 248.”
He also hoped that classmate Joanna Christine would agree to provide him with some assistance at the end of the school week. Hopefully, she could help him sort through the surveys. He recognized that he may require a second, and fresher, and more conscientious, set of eyes, to counter any personal biases he might encounter in the stack of forms. During the week, he had simply requested that any interested student drop by his dorm room on campus, pick up an application, and return it to that same room as soon as possible.
Thus, on Sunday, October 9th , David and Joanna met at his dorm room at Hart Hall, ready to face either a wonderful and inspiring, or a terrible and hopeless, survey response pile.
He had picked Joanna, or “JC” as he sometimes called her, not only to help him simply because she was currently in one of his classes, but, in the not distant past, they had already developed a simple friendly relationship. David first encountered her when they both attended Phillips Exeter Academy High School in New Hampshire. The nature of the connection wasn’t anything special, just two students at the same small town school. Nothing intense or intimate had occurred, yet. And later, by “magical coincidence,” they both spent their first two years of college at the University of Maine campus in Springvale. Since David knew this person beforehand, he needed her familiarity and trustworthiness to complete the positive, but yet foreboding, task of helping him sort through what could turn out to be some very wacky surveys.
Joanna: Okay, where do we start with this mess?
David: Let’s just take an obvious and easy first step! We’ll go through all 20 or 25 of them , and filter them out for people who just didn’t take the time to answer all of my original questions.
Joanna: Ooooh, I like starting out with the easy stuff! Could you show me your question list one more time ?
David: Sure thing. Here it is:
- Full Name
- Home base
- Major in school
- Instrument and how long?
- Favorite music/artist/etc. (up to 3 choices)
- Favorite author, genre and/or quote?
- Spiritual/religious background, if any
Joanna: I’ve got just a couple of quick nosey and obnoxious questions to start with. For example, why did you write “home base” rather than home town?
David: For me, it is because a lot of people move around quite a bit. My intention is to find out which geographic location has influenced their upbringing, their thinking, and the influence that their environment had on them through most of their life so far.
Joanna: OK, good enough there, I agree. Then you asked for favorite music, authors, and quotes. Is there some reason why you picked those particular three categories, other than the obvious ?
David: I’ve seen your record and CD collections, Joanna. And without listening to, or reading, a single piece of the artist’s work, I could identify very personal things about you. You may have picked some very unusual or weird selections of musician, author, or quote. That alone tells me a whole lot about you without you saying a single word. But I do actually have a very specific intentional message that I want to design this group around. It’s not just your typical rock band or folk group or something more normal. It will be a little offbeat from those categories.
Joanna: Give me an idea of what you’re talking about.
David: I want to find individuals who are musically creative but also creative thinkers. To go beyond the typical bounds expected from a person our age. People who may seem a little more “awake and aware” than their peers. Too many humans, even in their early 20’s, are already stuck in a very limited philosophical track. I need to find people who are not stuck. I am seeking out the “un-stuck”, or “pre-stuck”! Who can create in a unique kind of way. Not at all from the point of view of a cult or a religiously programmed life. Like a quote from the band called Rush, a new world man, or woman!
(David singing…)
“… He’s a rebel and a runner
He’s a signal turning green
He’s a restless young romantic
Wants to run the big machine
…
He’s not concerned with yesterday
He knows constant change is here today!”
Joanna: And has it been your experience that you run into a lot of those types up here in New England? Remember our prep school, Philip’s Exeter Academy? They are listed as seeking people who, as it says in the brochure: “foster curiosity and cultivate potential.”
Sure we met a few shining stars there. Your “new world humans.” We also met quite a few kids who were just caught up in the image, prestige, and the potential power and financial prospects of graduating from that school.
David: (again, singing):
“I know you’re out there somewhere
Somewhere you can hear my voice
I know I’ll find you somehow
Somehow, somehow
I know I’ll find you somehow
And somehow I’ll return again to you!”
Joanna: Hey Diva David! This chore is getting much more musically enjoyable than I thought it would be! We’re going to get to have a lot of sing-alongs this afternoon. Rush. Moody Blues. Keep it up! And now what about the “favorite quotes” part?
David: For me, that is the clincher. It goes along with the favorite authors and books and genre selections. If you have read enough already in your relatively short life to find some particular author or piece of music or speech in order to find a quote that you find so meaningful, you would wear it proudly like a badge. Then, almost more than anything, that tells me the potentially true nature of who you are, where your goals are, and why you could assist us in this special type of musical project I’m wanting to create.
Joanna: And, just out of curiosity, what are some of your favorite quotes?
David: Sorry, JC, you don’t want to get me started! If it comes from the writings of the transcendentalists, like Emerson or Thoreau, I’m there! Specifically in Chapter Two of the book “Walden”, where he talks about moving out to the woods “to live deliberately”, basically to suck the marrow out of all life, and to get rid of all the stuff, the seemingly important stuff, that is actually unnecessary. I summarize these quotes as “the search for simplicity!”
And that, dear friend Joanna, is my theme, for myself. And I hope that it also becomes a theme for the band. I don’t yet know what this “search for simplicity” is going to lead me to. Just as Thoreau had no idea what he was going to experience during his two years living out in the woods. But hopefully in less time than two years, my music and this group has started to find some very important and refreshing ideas about how to live that simple life!
Joanna: I too have a lot of writers who influence me, preferably woman writers like Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Dorothy Parker, and Virginia Woolf. But the specific message that I am looking for in their writings is the nature of what I call “the Power of Allowance Love.” Those two words separately might mean two opposite things. But when you put them together, you are in a whole new world of what I commonly use as a personal theme: “Giving is its own reward.” You think there is any chance that my search for that will fall into your humble search for simplicity? Any possibility that my hope for that will fall into your hope for a simpler world?
David: Amen, and Hallelujah! So, let the sorting game begin! “Just open up your hearts and let the sunshine in!”
Joanna: “Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, Let the sun shine in!”
(time pause)
David: After a few minutes of quickly sorting the first batch of papers, it looks like we’ve found a collection of about a dozen potential candidates.
Joanna: Now let’s sort by “guys and gals.”
David: I’ll go first, since I am “the guy!”
Joanna: Hmph…
David: Here goes: our first contestant is Earle Randolph Foster, nicknamed “Sticks.”
Joanna: Don’t tell me – he’s a drummer??
David: Bazinga! Hails from Texas, Austin area, Hey SXSW! The music center of the south! Moved up north with his father, who is a major player in the wind power industry. Setting up new towers all over New England.
Joanna: And what does he read?
David: Just a moment….. Oooo. Cool! Gurdjieff, Ospensky, as well as off-beat poets like E.E. Cummings, and the Beat Poets, like Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Ferlinghetti! And best of all, he himself dabbles in what he calls “Cowboy Poetry.” Nice combination.
Joanna: I agree, I approve. We have our drummer!
David: That was easy! Too easy?
Joanna: We can only hope so!!
David: Next up is ….Salvador Esperanza-Baptiste. Man, that’s a mouthful. Strange irony. He comes from Mexico, Maine! A small mill town, paper-making (whew, smelly sulfur!!). Bet that’s why he chose Bangor, to get away from the constant yellow cloud. And, hey, guess what!
Joanna: What else??
David: We have our potential bass player! What a team: “Sticks and Sal”! And his bass actually has a name! Freddie, the Frog. And get a load of this: He has an on-line “Frog Blog”! What a character! Can’t wait to meet this guy in real time! I love someone with a subtle sense of humor.
Joanna: Hold your horses, cowboy. Philosophy time. What does he read, and why??
David: Hmmm. He calls himself a “Catholic questioner.” So he grew up in the Catholic religion, but isn’t quite satisfied with everything that it has to offer him. He does speak Spanish, of course. His favorite author is Don Quixote . He writes in a quote that “they both want to tilt at the windmills of the mind!” Check?
Joanna: Check! Hey, now it’s my turn. You got two, I wanna get two too!
David: Tutu for you-you? Sure, sure. Go-go!
Joanna: My first two choices are not going to be very difficult at all ! We have a set of twins. Both of them are musicians, both are studying in the field of psychology. One of them focuses on research, the other one focuses on the counseling aspect of psychotherapy. They call themselves members of the “New Age club”, especially as that includes studies of Native American Indians. “Indians” from both continents, that is. America and India.
David: Were you planning on sharing their names with me anytime soon?
Joanna: Of course, of course, you silly horse. They are Debi DeLuce and Denise DeNoir Sharone!
David: “Ma-ma-ma my Sharona!”
Joanna: Hush, little baby Davey. Don’t make momma cry!
David: K.
Joanna: K. You will have to watch out when you are around them! They like to study what they call “instinctual communication”, or things like psychic energies and divination. I bet this arises from the fact that they are, indeed, twins. And they have probably experienced a highly unusual amount of psychic communication between the two of them! And it would make sense, as students in the field of psychology, that they would want to see if that experience could be replicated with other non-twin people! I’ll take that challenge!
David: And I will willingly and delightfully take your twins ! Do they play any instruments?
Joanna: They play guitars (plural), woodwinds, and lots of harmony when they sing. And they also come from a town called New Bedford. You heard of that one?
David: I’ve heard of Bedford, New Hampshire. But I don’t know if there is a new version of Bedford there. Is that it?
Joanna: Nope, sorry. “New Bedford” is in Massachusetts. Used to be one of the wealthiest towns in the area due to the whaling industry way way back.
David: Whale stories? That means they tend to exaggerate a bit.
Joanna: I doubt that these two ladies have much at all to do with whales, David. The main way we would utilize their talents is to fill out both the instrumental and the vocal sections of the group!
So, to summarize thus far, we have a drummer, a bass player, quite a few singers,… and let me ask you a question. From what I know about you so far, you, David, are going to be playing any number of musical instruments? I know that I will be messing with keyboards. We both sing. So, to put it mildly, what else are we looking for?
David: To be honest, I’m not really sure how much or how little we will need. What we’ve got so far already constitutes a complete musical group. I suggest we do a little “psychic playing” ourselves. Let’s go through the rest of the forms, and see if there are some other people who, regardless of their musical input, fulfill the other more philosophical and creative aspects of what I would like to accomplish with this group. You cool with that?
Joanna: You betcha, band man!
David: Well, stand on my hands, ma’am! I’m forming a band! Let’s dig into our pile of magic forms, and see who else fits our “form”ula!
Joanna: You start again. Your turn to spend some quality time with “the guys” again.
David: Righty, great and mighty JC! Let’s start by considering Morrison Daniel Jordan. Even though you said that you might be one of the primary keyboard players, imagine signing up a fellow who is a keyboard and computer programmer, a soundman, claims that he is a scientist of sorts. He has attended the infamous Berklee Music School in Boston, second only perhaps, to the most famous music school, Juilliard. So he’s got some very serious chops in whatever it is he does. And how he does it.
Joanna: So what kind of philosophical or metaphysical inspiration can we expect from this electronics wizard?
David: Ask and you shall indeed be answered. He likes reading books that are a crossover between the sciences and metaphysics, like people who write about quantum mechanics. He loves a good science fiction series. Yet he takes the scientific approach to topics like evolution and genetics and where we all came from. He mentions in a quote at the bottom that his “father spent his life looking for the God particle” , while his “mother was simultaneously looking for God himself”. Quite an interesting final formula to that question .
Interestingly, but also mysteriously, he refers to himself as a binarist. I’m going to have to look that one up. OK, here it is, and the meaning is still kind of vague. Also called Binaristic. In the work of academia, it describes something that is relating to a binary system, which basically means that there are only “two distinct options” to something. It says that it is often used in the fields of linguistics and philosophy. From what I know about computers, it also relates to computer code. Maybe like binary numbers consist of only a “One” or a “Zero”. On or off. Nothing else. Recently, some people have been using the “binary” term to talk about “gender identity” in its absolute form. But with his science background, I am willing to bet that his is purely a mathematic or scientific definition.
We will definitely have to ask him about that!
Joanna: Unfortunately, I have seen way too much of that kind of thing happening in the world of religion, where you either have to believe or you don’t believe. There is a God or there is no god. Either our religion or no religion. And that judging process creates a lot of cults and extremely conservative thinkers. I agree, we will both definitely be talking to him about his connection to that particular label. Other than that, I would love to have some assistance not only on the stage with the electronic keyboard world, but it sounds like we may have our techie guy setting up all the equipment for us as well.
David: And with that last statement, you have just come up with our next slightly unusual coincidence. We had someone apply who is not specifically a musician!
Joanna: What, are you telling me that we are now also signing up the support crew that will be traveling with us? I think that would be too weird and wild to consider this early in the process.
David: John Grayson Adams, also called “Jackie.” Just happens to be looking for the position of “roadie”. The tough physical body that moves stuff around, helps set up the stage, works with the tour arranger, and basically takes care of all our equipment, from setup to shut down!
Joanna: And what do we read from him as far as his philosophical approach to life?
David: In the context of “weird and wild”, there is something definitely unusual going on in our sifting process here! With a name like John Grayson Adams, you can immediately do research on his family tree! Ever heard of any famous people with a last name of Adams? As in two of our very first presidents? We are talking political royalty here. I bet there is just a really interesting history that follows him wherever he goes. And, not amazingly enough, he prefers reading the documents of history, especially the Founding Fathers, especially good old Ben Franklin.
Joanna: And as far as religious or spiritual philosophy?
David: He simply jots down that he is a “skeptic of all religions”. And for me personally, skepticism is a wonderful personality trait to possess for what I have in mind for this band!
Joanna: Once again, I don’t see any major outstanding flaws or limitations with Jackie. Is he going to fit in as easily as everyone else might?
David: Hmmmm. Do you happen to remember, back in high school, when, along with the regular foreign languages that they taught, they also had a sign language course? I was one of the people who “signed up” for it, out of curiosity.
Joanna: We must have just barely missed each other then, because I took it too. But maybe a different day. Different class period. It wasn’t the American Sign Language, but it was called Signed Exact English. Or SEE-2.
David: Well, JC. Get out your old books and notebooks and flash cards. You and I are both going to get a chance to use it again, in a practical way. Because of some interesting experiences when Jackie was a young teenager, he lost a very high percentage of his hearing ability. Enough so that, even though he could do well in his classes as far as written materials, he could not communicate verbally with others. He learned sign language as a way of compensating for that limitation.
Joanna: I see a kind of philosophical and metaphysical interest in that kind of situation. Traveling with a musical group, and needing to rely more specifically on your other four senses, rather than the sense of hearing, in order to communicate. Going through several important growing years like that, I would also become skeptical about things. Like why this happened to him, and what in the world was he going to do to overcome this situation? It seems like a limitation to some, probably not to him. I look forward to meeting him just as much as I want to meet our other musicians and singers.
David: And once again, it is your turn, to filter through the remaining pile of applicants. To see if there is any more gold in “them thar hills”. What have you got?
Joanna: Is there some kind of mystical synchronicity going on in our little section of the world today? Did you make any of these up yourself? We have another set, not of twins, but “near” twins. Two girls who are already best friends. And when I put their surveys side by side, I would say that they represent “East meets West.”
David: Go ahead and tell me about both of them at the same time, if you can.
Joanna: Heather Lyndsey Deva and Brittany Brianna Belle. Deva and Belle. And just from their names, I bet you can guess who is East and who is West. Or at the very least South.
David: Deva the divine, and the Southern Belle? East and West?
Joanna: But wait! There’s more. Deva’s religious background is from the Buddhist or Hindu historical path. She reads meditation literature and enjoys Hermann Hesse’s book “Siddhartha”. Brittany, meanwhile, grew up in the Baptist Church, but on her own has studied African tribal customs because of her heritage. She likes books about the Harlem Renaissance and black writers like Martin Luther King and Ralph Ellison. Oh, wait! There’s even more! Brittany can not only sing and do some female leads, but she can assist with rhythm and percussion assistance. Meanwhile, Deva, who also sings, happens to know how to play stringed instruments.
David: Where did they come from? And how in the world did they end up here at the University of Maine, on our own humble little campus?
Joanna: Heather, or Deva, grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, because her father is a Harvard Professor. Brittany, or Belle, apparently grew up in Roxbury, a Boston suburb, and also attended Berkelee School of Music for at least one year. With our luck, she has probably already met Mr. Jordan!
David: Whew! This has been a long challenging project. Are you starting to get a bit tired like I am? If you count yourself and myself, it looks like we have ten total highly likely prospects for putting this band together. Is that the count that you get? If so, how could any other forms we look at fit in any more completely than those that we’ve already covered?
Joanna: A quick scan of the few remaining forms don’t seem to jump out at me as adding any important requirements that we haven’t already covered. There is one weird application where one guy filled it out for three people. He wrote some really weird stuff. It seemed kind of dark. So I suggest we hold off on that one, and start to focus on the folks we’ve just completed talking about. You’re okay with that?
David: Yes, indeedy, Sweety!
Joanna: And so, now, Sugar Plum Fairy, what is next?
David: The next step is for me to contact all of these folks who are interested in joining with us, and seeing how many of them could show up tomorrow for a quick introductory meeting. Just to see what kind of energy runs around within the room. It could either be a beautiful and bountiful meeting, or it could become a clash of the selfish tyrants and titans!
Joanna: But whatever it is, we will have snacks, right?
David: Snacks, lead the way!
Joanna: Hey, my Dad owns a Pizza Parlor here in Bangor. Let’s use that place! He can open it up special, just for us!!
David: You sure? They may be a very hungry bunch of folks!
Joanna: We’ll have him let us in the door at 11 in the morning, just for our group. And then he can open up the whole restaurant at 1:00 PM so everybody else in town gets the leftovers!
David: Might be amazing if there are any! Leftovers, that is! See you tomorrow, then! 11 A.M.!
Toby: Welcome to the dark side, dudes!
Ashley: Did you get a response yet to our application for the band?
Toby: Yes, I did indeed! The response I got was … wait for it … no response at all! Nothing. ¡Nada! In other words, those arrogant upper-crust college kids think they can ignore the whole group of us.
Ashley: Well, tell us what you put on the application, maybe we can figure out what’s going on here.
Toby: As you know, I didn’t want to bother you guys with all that unnecessary crap. So I just filled one application out for the three of us. Bunch of very inspiring-sounding stuff. Didn’t have to be true. Had to sound convincing.
Andy: Just because I’m curious, tell me some of the stuff you put down. I can’t get very upset about something I don’t know about. Is this whole other band thing something we really want to get involved in anyway?
Ashley: After all, come on, man! We’re already the “Dark Trinity Trio”! We could easily throw together some kind of thrash trash band and definitely make people jump up and take notice!
Andy: I think we’re already pretty good at some of the stuff we’ve been jamming on! What’s the matter with just chillin’ with that for now?
Toby: Sorry, suckers. I’ve got much bigger plans for the music stuff I’m going to be pulling off in the future. I’m not going to settle for some dorky little group of wannabes when I could be off touring the whole world by next summer! And a subtle takeover of this new band could be that plan!
Andy: So what did you write down, anyway? Tell us.
Ashley: Was any of it true at all? This is not the time to just be a frickin’ weirdo, Toby. Music. Tours. Money. Fans. Dig it?
Toby: Okay, dig it. A bit. A tiny itsy bitsy bit. But let’s first get real. Did you really want me to mention that I found the two of you losers living in a house for runaways? That neither one of you really could remember your past, didn’t even know how old you were, or when your birthday was? It seems obvious that I was going to have to fill it in with my own stuff here.
Ashly: So, let’s have it, smarty pants.. What’s our religion or our belief stuff?
Toby: I was very polite here. I didn’t just out and out say “Atheists”, now, did I? I wrote that you guys appreciate “Alternative Facts!”, whatever that’s supposed to mean.
Andy: Any mention of the cool Dark “Heavenly” Spirits we try to conjure up on weekends? Get a bit high, get a bit of the Sky?
Toby: Nope. Too far out. Instead, you are both “highly adulterated Christians.” Let ‘em figure that one out!
Ashley: What instruments do we each play? Do you even know that?
Toby: Why, of course. Every heavy band needs heavy strings and heavy sticks. So, guitars and drums. Keepin’ the beat while the rubes keep moving’ their feet!
Andy: I’m beginning to see why we weren’t on the front end of their “call back” list. Sigh.
Ashley: And what do we like to read, if at all, wise guy?
Toby: Well, Ashley, I keep seeing your nose stuck in some comic book, called “Sandman” and “Stardust”, some such crap. I mean, hey, comic books? We are no longer five years old.
Ashley: Well, if you even knew how to read, bub, you’d learn to appreciate the fine art of what are called “graphic novels.” They are NOT comic books.
Toby: Well, excuuuuuse me, Marian the Librarian!
Andy: And me?
Toby: I’ve never figured you out, dude. Or is it “dudette”? Female stuff, male stuff, mixed stuff. Maybe let’s just mix that all into a category called “Gender Identity Crisis Literature”.
Andy: Mix away, you idiot twerp.
Toby: You want a piece of this gig, or not? I didn’t see either of you illiterates grabbing the application from me, now did ya! Hey guys, or whatever, we’re already a band! We play tunes. We play ‘em loud. We play ‘em proud. And every time we do, we get a crowd! So let’s go see what life is like on the “other side of town.”
Ashley: That is, if we even get invited to do that.
Andy: And after hearing what you wrote about all of us, I got no high hopes of that happening in this century.
Toby: Yeah, of course! You’re just getting high hopes for nothing. Nothing at all. So here’s my little prophecy for you witches and wizards: One way or another, we are going to make a definite, strong impact on the success, or lack thereof, of this insignificant David Lee Hartland’s scrawny little folk music band. You watch, you wait, you’ll see!
As one of MY writing favorites, Emerson, exclaimed: “The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” To which one of his potential European counterparts, Friedrich Nietzsche, could have responded: “It is impossible to suffer without making someone pay for it; every complaint already contains revenge.” And finally, from the mouths of the most ignorant, belligerent, and misfit armies of all, comes the battle cry of “Where we go one, we go all!”
So rise up, you young brutes! Onward, through the ramparts we march, folks!
****