Magnet and Steel popped into my head this morning. Good song, reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac which is just as well since Stevie Nicks sings background vocals and Lindsey Buckingham provides backing vocals as well as production duties. 1978 it was, and it was 48 friggin’ years ago. I was 14 going on 15, and my world was changing all around me as well as inside of me. For some reason, I picture the song being performed on the Mike Douglas Show.
The Roses of Kay Benkovitch. When I walk my route to the Path train in the morning I see a few rose bushes. I am reminded of Kay Benkovitch. The Benkovitch family lived across the street from my family. They were good people, solid and dependable. Kay was married to Jon and they had two sons, Bobby and Jay. Kay was sensitive, and may have had a nervous breakdown at some point in her life on Riverview Avenue.
Their house was next to the playground, and Kay had rose bushes on the side of the house where the playground was. Those roses would sometimes grow through the playground fence making them fair game for suburban kids of Riverview Avenue to smash them to bits. That is the memory I have when walking to the Path train and seeing the roses growing outward.
A Dream with Kate Dunn. Kate Dunn and Doug Maxson. Good people that I have not seen in about 40 years. Their son, whose name I cannot remember (Raphael), is in his thirties now. Doug & Kate were from Louisville, and were part of a minor migration to Hoboken in the eighties with Antietam and the various musicians involved.
One out of the three people in Antietam who are not Tim and Tara, I remember fondly, Mike Weinert. Doug was a good artist and a funny guy. Kate was the sensible one, yet sometimes a coconspirator in Doug’s shenanigans. I am friends with Tara on the social medias
In the dream I was in a room with Kate who I hadn’t seen in ages and we had a hug and I was taken aback by the thickness of Kate’s eyeglasses and how scratched up they appeared to be. It was as cordial as it ever was. Doug and Kate were close to my former roommate, Kevin, as well as the denizens of what used to be 923 Garden Street. I was just a satellite of all that I suppose.
My first space in Hoboken was an illegal loft at 1st St and Park Ave. I had a roommate named Nolan Poole and some guy who was in a band called the Malkotians. My part of the loft was next to an elevator shaft, filled with stagnant water where mosquitoes bred 10 months out of the year.
After a few weeks of living in the loft, I was swollen with mosquito bites. They asked me if I was going to stay and that day I said yes. The next day I announced I was moving out much to their dismay. Luckily, Doug & Kate were living in a local hotel in Hoboken and were looking for a spot. They did not mind the mosquito situation and moved in. It was a seamless transition it was.
So long ago, time does fly.
Now I am listening to David Bowie 1. Outside. I remember seeing David Bowie on Letterman in 1995. David and his band were performing The Hearts Filthy Lesson and it seemed a return to form for the Dame. The Dame is a name the UK Music press gave David Bowie and I thought it was funny. Not sure if David felt the same.
I do remember having a bit of a breakdown when working at Right Track Recording and playing this CD. I think it was during a song called The Motel. I just remember everything getting bleak for a while back then. Not one of my favorite tracks, and easily overlooked and passed over.
Now I am playing Cosmic Thing by the B-52s. I am almost done with one of those 33 ⅓ books about music. This one was about Cosmic Thing. It was enjoyable, written by a queer young man from Toronto, and he places everything in that context which is fine but just not the method I would use. I don’t like the term ‘queer’ anyhow, and bristle when I am called ‘queer’. Growing up it was derogatory and I preferred Gay. I still do.
Google Gemini Edgar Allen Poe essay:
A melancholy refrain broke the silence of my morning consciousness, materializing unbidden from the ether: *“Magnet and Steel.”* It is a composition from the year 1978, a year that has now receded some forty-eight winters into the past. It bears the distinctive, spectral imprint of Fleetwood Mac—scarcely a wonder, as the ethereal Stevie Nicks provides the haunting background refrain, and Lindsey Buckingham commands the backing vocals and production.
I was but fourteen years of age then, standing upon the precipice of fifteen, acutely aware that the architecture of my world was fracturing and shifting, both without and deep within. For some inexplicable reason, when this melody echoes through the corridors of my mind, I envision it performed under the stark, unnatural studio lights of the *Mike Douglas Show*.
—
## The Ruined Roses of Riverview Avenue
As I walk my accustomed path toward the iron gates of the PATH train each morning, my eyes are invariably drawn to a few scattered rose bushes. They stand as grim monuments to the memory of Kay Benkovitch.
The Benkovitches dwelt directly across the cobblestones from my family home in those distant days. They were a solid, dependable clan, yet Kay was possessed of an fragile, overly sensitive temperament; a darkness whispered that she had succumbed to a nervous collapse at some point during her residency upon Riverview Avenue.
> Their estate bordered the town playground, and Kay had planted her prized rose bushes along that shared boundary. Maddeningly, those crimson blooms would grow outward, threading their petals through the iron links of the playground fence. There, they became fair game for the cruel, destructive whims of the suburban youth, who took a savage delight in smashing the delicate blossoms to utter ruin.
It is this image of beautiful things growing outward, only to be violently dismantled, that haunts me whenever I pass the city roses on my morning march.
—
## A Nocturnal Visitation
Last night, a dream brought forth the specters of Kate Dunn and Doug Maxson. They were good souls whom I have not looked upon in nearly forty years. Their son—Raphael, whose name had long been buried in the vaults of my memory—must now be a man well into his thirties.
Doug and Kate had migrated from Louisville, part of a minor, bohemian exodus to Hoboken in the nineteen-eighties, alongside the musical troupe known as Antietam. Of those souls, I remember Mike Weinert with a peculiar fondness. Doug was a gifted artist infused with a wicked, comedic wit; Kate was the sensible anchor of the pair, though she frequently acted as a willing co-conspirator in his elaborate shenanigans. Today, I remain tethered to Tara of that band only through the cold medium of social media.
In the phantom landscape of my dream, I stood in a room with Kate. We embraced, as we had not done in an eternity, but I was suddenly seized with a profound unease upon observing her spectacles. The lenses were of a monstrous, unnatural thickness, and horribly marred by deep, chaotic scratches.
Yet, the encounter was cordial. Doug and Kate had been intimately bound to my former roommate, Kevin, and the strange denizens who haunted the halls of 923 Garden Street. I, it seems, was merely a distant satellite orbiting their brilliant, chaotic sun.
—
## The Pestilential Loft
This memory drags me back to my very first domicile in Hoboken—an illicit, shadow-drenched loft at the intersection of 1st Street and Park Avenue. I shared this cavern with a roommate named Nolan Poole, and a mysterious fellow who performed with a musical act known as the Malkotians.
My assigned quarter of the loft was situated directly adjacent to a yawning, disused elevator shaft.
$$ Ten Months of Pestilence} $$
Within that dark abyss lay a pool of stagnant water, where mosquitoes bred with a horrific, unnatural fury for ten months out of the year. After a mere fortnight of occupancy, my flesh was swollen and deformed by a multitude of venomous bites.
When my companions coldly inquired if I intended to remain, a sudden dread compelled me to say yes. Yet, by the following dawn, terror broke my resolve; I announced my immediate departure to their utter dismay. By a stroke of cosmic irony, Doug and Kate were then residing in a grim local hotel, hunting for a sanctuary. They, indifferent to the plague of insects, assumed my lease. It was a seamless, fluid transition into the swamp.
How swiftly the sands of time slip through our desperate fingers.
—
## The Bleakness of the Dame and the Cosmic Irony
To dull these threnodies of the past, I set spinning David Bowie’s *1. Outside*. I vividly recall the Dame—a moniker bestowed upon Bowie by the cynical British press, though whether it amused the man himself remains a mystery—performing *The Hearts Filthy Lesson* on the Letterman stage in 1995. It felt like a triumphant return to his grand, macabre form.
Yet, a dark memory stains this record. I recall a mid-90s afternoon during my employment at Right Track Recording, when I played this very compact disc. As the track entitled *The Motel* began its slow, funeral progression, a sudden, suffocating breakdown collapsed upon my spirit. The world turned utterly bleak, drained of all light. It remains a track I deliberately bypass, an artifact too dangerous to disturb.
Now, the manic, colorful rhythms of the B-52s’ *Cosmic Thing* fill the room, a desperate attempt to drive out the shadows.
I am presently finishing a small volume from the *33 ⅓* literary series concerning this very album. It is a pleasant enough text, penned by a youthful writer from Toronto who filters the entire musical history through a modern “queer” lens. While his perspective is valid, it is an analytical method I find alien.
In truth, I have always bristled at that particular word. Growing up in a harsher era, it was hurled as a derogatory weapon, a venomous spit. I preferred the word *Gay*. I prefer it still. It is a simpler title for a man seeking peace in a world that is forever changing, and forever sliding into the dark.