driving and singing and singing and singing (saved)

(Re-publishing this now. It was taken down for some incredible, stupid, selfish reasons. It had nothing to do with Salinger - but it had everything to do with everything else. Viz. life)

The trip is over. It was finished about two months ago. The same time, my father died. Today, instead of poems and Millers, I am feeling my heart crush under things such as law school and communications and the future. I was in the boat in the middle of the Baltic sea when I saw my ghost. I told you about her, the black haired French woman. Well I saw her today and she walked by me without saying anything: no moans, no smoke, no nothing. I feel abandoned by myself. The big bang, the big trip is over. Is over.

The trip is over, might as well come out and say it. And this blog has been a complete failure. [edit- delete]. I am driving into the firey pits of the Mississippi and the purple and yellow smoke, and the purple and yellow smo...

I was walking today and there was one hawk flying high above the tennis courts, and then there was another hawk, and the two predators they danced and loved each other, even as they were awe-shaking and terrible from below - and I thought of my first love, a girl I loved very much, and I thought of this eagle that flew me across the country once - not literally of course - but I saw an eagle and then I knew it, I had to leave. And then I saw a frozen eagle in the Indian chief's freezer, stored and kept with the hamburger ...

And even today! Today I told you: I decided to become a) a lawyer b) an English prof and c) a poet. And I became very, very angry that life is like this. That life is hard.

And so let me please finish this blog with a little bit of dignity. And perhaps with a promise and a request.

But first a note, one more, just one more, of observation. I will never be happy unless I can manage to forget my ego. But until then, I will firmly believe, that the only suitable thing to do in life is change people (with your art, with your science, with your law, with your bare, bleeding hands). I believe that change is the important thing.

And yet souls are stone, are diamonds. The most hard, awful things in the world, the most stubborn, are souls. And so art must be tough, and must be tougher. This is my aesthetic anyhow, and it is the reason I feel such a let down; for I am a softy.

I know that I won't be sharp enough with out a good chance to practice, and yet I just waste I waste I waste: (for proof, read the last three or four entries. For proof read anything from me. I do not focus. I need focus).

This whole thing has been the diary of an egomaniac.

***

One more thing about my beautiful dad.

When I was in Grade 5, I came home from school, and out on the lawn he had collected about 6 large sofas, 3 of those old-time oversized radio-recordplayer combos, and a random and vast collection of junk.

I first saw all of this from about two blocks away, as I was getting off my school bus. For the next minute, walking to my front door, I had burst into tears: Dad was really losing it. There was no more denying it.

There was another time, and it is very likely that it was the same day or week of the mad sofa collecting, but there was one day where I came home and when I got to the basement, there Dad had assembled another mad, manic collection of stuff. This time, however, Dad bought about three guitars - one of them was a black and white Fender Squire Strat, and the other two were sort of Epiphones, shaped like violins - and about four large, silver-screened and black amplifiers. All this wonderful, strange and alien equipment had been plugged in. And later that night, maybe it was a Friday, Dad had his buddies over and they were smoking weed and drinking whiskey.

And he gave me the Fender, and I plugged it into one of the big amps, and played my first guitar for the first time.

(Now, this part is distracting, however it happened so let me get it out of the way: the amp was not grounded, and was wired all wrong - Dad had bought a junk heap - and within a few seconds a current of electricity was shot from amp, to guitar strings, to my tiny little fingers, and I was fried for about 3 seconds, unable to move in what seemed like an eterinty of intense, horrible and dull pain).

And just this last week I opened up the crazy play that had occupied my father's last 10 years of his life: from writing it in his most manic, gambling fueled rampages, to selling it and republishing it later while he was melting away in a retirement home. The page I opened it to had a stage direction at this crucial part of the play - which is a kind of an epic Rock opera starring Mick Jagger - that Toby, me, and Paul, an old band buddy, would play their "Blues Dues song."

Now I haven't really cried all that much since he's dead, but this got to me.

Last night I dreamt of Dad and he could drive, and he could drive and smoke at the same time, and we cruised down a highway in his classic old sports car - which he destroyed in the bad years - and he was smacking the steering wheel singing along, and I could sing with him. And I could hear him playing guitar as we drove, perfectly, just powerful, unlike anything he could ever do in sickness. And we just drove down the road, full speed, with the windows down, enjoying life, singing and singing and singing.

Interlude: Second Letter and Brief Sketch of the Girl.

Dear Mr. Salinger,

I am so lonely. There is a south facing window in my bedroom and the air comes in and it feels cold. I have never felt so terrible in all my life. I wanted to begin my letter differently, but these are simply the compelling things on my mind right now.

What does it take to do complex, beautiful things? You have lived a a strange dissected life and the little I know of it only makes me lonelier and more depressed. I've always wanted to be a journalist, and to tell stories as you do. I wonder if I am foolish to want a man's life who seems so angry and alone. Even more foolish of me - I imagine I would feel better if I did. What is writing but the desire to be elsewhere - that thing which doesn't exist.

You should know I realize how spoiled I must sound. Or would sound if you knew the facts. I do have great parents, and two unspeakably intelligent and beautiful sibilings. I have been many places and experienced so much genius that others can barely believe I am only seventeen years old. But it's there. This terrible loneliness, repeating itself - even in times when I feel simply whole and happy. And there are many of those times too.

There were 34 letters between Valentina and Salinger. At first I found it impossible to write as her. After some time, this became easier. Since history is everything, I gave her history. Too much of it sometimes. I envisioned her lovers, her terrors, her questioning. This part was exhausting, but she gave me everything in return. His words, his attention.

I grew up in a small town, and was lucky to escape with a few good books in my head. She grew up in Paris and played the piano. Her parents were magicians and musicians - mine: teachers, gamblers, maniacs. She knew more of the Giants of Modernism than I ever will. She spoke wildly of art, philosophy, science. I simply craved, desperately, to cope with art - to be large, to be friend and confidant to the one giant who still lived. I was a Gollum and thirsty for what ever. Valentina was only strong, not afraid of men or change.

Each week, Valentina sent a new letter, sealed every time in a bright red envelope. Each letter composed by hand, with enormous effort, in the most loopy, girlish style I could. That part was exhausting, too.

It took ten weeks to get Salinger to respond.

"Dear Mr. Salinger," began the tenth letter, as did the others before and after. "In less than one week I shall graduate from school. I am writing for your advice this time."

***

I am publishing this now because I am feeling hostile. This story has not evolved in nearly two months now and I feel as if if I don't set some things down it might just evaporate. This is not how I pictured you receiving any of this story. It feels atrophic but necessary to go on this way. I have no patience or time.

My promise: More letters soon and an ending, eventually.

I was the last person who interviewed Salinger: Part 1

Salinger is dead. He mattered most to people like me - young American men, who recommend books to girls they want to impress. But he was a master, whose passing everyone should mourn. He changed the poetry of American short stories - the rhythm of everything we read. He invented italics and emphasis. He ruled dialogue and detail.

He was, for the last forty years, a recluse. We know little about his work since he went into open hiding. The hope I have - and I am sure thousands of others also - is that he really did continue to write and that we will one day, soon, see what he's been creating.

My advice for everyone: read Catcher in the Rye again. Read his short stories. Read Franny and Zooey. These books change you more than any other fiction I know. This sounds silly, pretentious - and I am sure will draw scoffs and loathing. But trust me - I am no Salinger absolutist. His work isn't perfect. I hate much of it, most of the time. But there's something in it - magic - and it is powerful. It is sad, and wonderful and huge.

Just after my dad died, last summer, I began writing to JD Salinger. I am not sure if this was missplaced longing for the mysterious artist man in my life I had just lost, or some striking new ambition which I knew I needed to chase. But it sure felt like destiny. For weeks, I tortured over how to write the first letter. I had hundreds of drafts and ideas. And nothing felt like anything he'd want to read.

Ultimately I came up with a crazy idea. Anyone who reads JD's work knows he's into little girls. This is undeniable. (Up for debate is whether this desire is sexual, or simply envy and adoration of innocence. That the young women he displays so affectionately - seductively - are icons of his longing for things lost).

I became consumed with this idea, and I convinced myself the only way to reach him was to exploit Salinger's dark side.

I began writing him love letters under guise of a young Italian-American girl named Valentina. Raven haired, tall and clumsy, precocious. She was the archetype Salinger Doll. To him, I sent her love, her wonder, her guessing games.

"Dear Mr. Salinger - thank you for your lovely letter. I have told my mother about my penpal and she is very curious about you. I shall never tell her the stupendous truth of course - it would not seem right to give you away. Not just yet, anyway. [...] By the way, I was curious the other night: What exactly is a bananafish? [...]"

And months later, this last fall, I received a letter from Salinger and his legal handlers. A stamped-envelope from a Manhattan legal firm, addressed to my Valentina. An invitation to come visit him in Cornish, N.H. His home, "to meet each other and chat."

I don't want to spend much more words here, or time. I am presently producing the documentary of my trip to meet Salinger. I brought with me two cameras, a 1st edition Catcher in the Rye and a friend of mine - a 20-something Jewish girl, who was tall and petite enough to pass as the Valentina, and I met the man who no one else could in nearly half a decade.

I want to say simply that I feel awful for the deceit, that I have no feelings of pride or happiness about my conquest. And I fear with a tender, submerged heart, that as Salinger faded away this morning, the last words escaping from his broken-hearted lips were whispers. "Valentina. Valentina."

R.I.P

- Tobin Dalrymple

To be continued