BRIAN LIBBY

Little-Big Matt

Last Saturday there was an engagement party for my old friend Matt, whom I originally got to know in first grade some 28 years ago. The party was thrown by his parents, Jim and Ruth - the latter of whom I was reminded that Matt gets his delightfully high-pitched cackle from. 

There are four of us who remain friends after meeting in first grade at Newby Elementary school in McMinnville: Matt, Paul, Ned and myself. But we weren't always pals, I'm afraid.

I remember in Ms. Watson’s second grade class having to resolve a tense, nearly-violent confrontation with Matt over an Avon neck chain. This was the end of the 1970s, and there were actually still Avon Ladies who came door to door selling cosmetics and jewelry. My mom had let the Avon Lady into the house a couple of times, and I became fixated on having this particular gold neck chain with an arrowhead pendant. But the problem was that Matt already had that very neck chain. Granted, my memory may be more melodramatic than reality, but I definitely recall of being held against the wall like a mafia shakedown, handfuls of my shirt clenched in Matt’s fists, and forced to promise not to get the same neck chain, or at least not the same pendant. (I think I’m writing this post just so I can write ‘neck chain’ as many times as possible.) I pondered many other possible pendant options, but none of them seemed quite right, so I ruled out the neck chain altogether and instead for Christmas asked for and received my first bottle of cologne, a line intended for boys called “Rookie”. My dad still kids me about wearing Avon Rookie cologne.

Later, in our fifth and sixth grade years, I remember Matt playing center on our school basketball team. Today he’s not exceptionally tall, only about 5’8”. But he was virtually that tall then and with big muscles. He was like the Shaq of McMinnville 12 year olds. I remember a kind of broken-record offense in our games, where Matt would shoot, miss, and get the rebound. Shoot, miss, get the rebound. Lather, rinse, repeat.

In junior high, I drifted apart from Matt and my old Newby Elementary friends. But in high school Matt, Paul, Ned and I were part of a larger group of friends that has stayed amazingly close and in touch over the years. Along with us Newby alumni there were Joel, Nathan and Pete from Adams Elementary, Rosie and Brooke from Columbus, as well as Brandi and Andrew from Memorial.

Saturday’s engagement party took place at Michelbook Country Club in McMinnville, which had an aura of exclusiveness when I was growing up, but whose worn oak, fluorescent lights and golf plaques seemed less intimidating today. It was actually kind of a dump. More importantly, though, it was fun too see old friends again, as well as to meet Jen, Matt’s fiancee. Driving home, I thought of our different paths, some longer than others but always tethered back to each other.

Paul and Joel are high school teachers, Joel married with two kids. Rosie is ascending her software company and a budding writer. She’s married to Paul, who is also an accomplished rock and jazz drummer when he's not preparing the young minds at our old alma mater. Nathan is an architect in Hawaii married with a kid on the way. Brandi works in sales and is married with an adorable new dog. Andrew’s now a dentist and kayak enthusiast living in McMinnville. Pete works in online tech support by day and is a budding theater/film composer by night. Ned similarly moonlights, working at a nonprofit educational research organization and in his spare time publishing and packaging his own CD and DVD archival collections of music, film and other pop culture. He also did the music for a short film that’s been accepted to Sundance. Brooke is an amazingly talented artist living in Albuquerque. And Matt is a successful pharmaceutical salesman in Orange County who races motorcycles competitively.

The motorcycles are just one indication of Matt’s thrill-seeking personality. We all have stories of car rides with Matt behind the wheel that put the fear of God in us, all to the soundtrack of his trademark cackle. In high school, we often acted out a kind of small town high school version of Animal House, and Matt was definitely the John Belushi character, ready to raise hell. Sometimes it’s still weird to see him so professional in his business casual wear, shaking hands respectfully. But the 18-year-old I remember standing drunk in his tidy-whitey briefs and a cowboy hat will always remain alive in spirit.

Reading what I've written so far, the missing part of the picture is how Matt can befriend anyone. I remember about 14 years ago I was taking a year off from college and living in Washington, DC with some members of a punk rock band. Matt flew out and stayed with us for a few days (while plotting to rendez-vous with a pretty young Pennsylvanian woman he'd met). The night we came in from the airport, my roommates were having a party in which every guest seemed to be dressed in black. Matt showed up in his cowboy boots and blazer with elbow patches, and proceeded to become the life of the party. For months after he left, my roommates would ask about him.

Neil's Self Renewal

Our good friend Neil Griffiths, author of the superb 2004 novel Betrayal In Naples, has a new play debuting on BBC Radio 4 this Friday, April 21, called "The Incompatibility of Memory in the Pursuit of a New Life". (Radio dramas are evidently popular in Britain). It's part of the Friday Play series.

Neil explains it like this:

"My guess it is a psychological thriller more than anything else; but clever people might conclude it is an examination of the Self's inability to renew itself, and for some that feels like life's great tragedy; for others the path to wisdom. Not that it's any new age bullshit in it. It's a whole lot darker than that."

You can hear Neil's play on the BBC website for a week following its Friday premiere. It'll be bloody cracking, right brilliant, oy!

Nick Time

Over the past few months I’ve been spending time on the set of Yellow, the new film and feature-length debut by Portland’s Nick Peterson, as part of an article I’m writing.

I’ve previously written about Nick a few times for Willamette Week over the years, when a collection of his short films played at the Northwest Film Center, or when certain ones were included in the Northwest and PDX film festivals. Each of Nick’s works was shot on 16mm film, and with such a majority of projects now being shot on video, his films stand out for their warmer, more flattering photographic hues. But it’s not just the equipment: Nick has a very astute eye for composition, not to mention the scripts.

Fellow Portlander Gus Van Sant, by the way, has taken an interest in Nick’s films after seeing Nick’s half-hour 2004 film Contingent while a judge at the BendFilm festival. I interviewed him briefly over email for one WW story on Nick, Van Sant told me:

"I really like his use of camera, actors, story, in what appears to be glimpses into young Northwest lives, lives that I only see from a distance, but he brings them in up close."

Most all of Nick’s films center around some sort of romantic relationship in flux. Often these are same-sex relationships, but regardless of that the tone of the film seems to take precedence. Nick is a real connoisseur of cinema, particularly masterful filmmakers of several decades past like Japan’s Yasujiru Ozu and Ernst Lubitsch; he also loves silent cinema. Characters in Nick’s films often communicate with their looks and gestures than by speaking. And in its own way, it feels almost deafening. As lovers collide with jealousy, confusion and anger, the unreleased tension builds like a pressure cooker.

Yellow marks a very intriguing departure, and not just because it’s feature-length. It’s also a musical.

I remember several months ago Nick telling me over lunch about this, and I was astonished—not just because it’s such a daunting challenge, or because few musicals these days really successfully capture the public’s imagination, but also in light of how quiet his films have traditionally been. But in an odd way, it makes sense. Musicals enable the characters to say in music what they wouldn’t say ordinarily. It’s an alternate means of communication. And that’s something Nick has always done through his characters’ wordless expressions.

One can’t talk about Yellow, however, without mentioning Eric Schopmeyer, who initially signed on as the writer and composer of all the musical numbers in the film, and later was additionally cast as the lead actor in the film. Eric has already done music for some of Nick’s previous efforts, and he also was part of the trio known as archipelago (along with talent local filmmaker Rob Tyler and Eric’s then-girlfriend, now wife, Ady Leverette, both of whom are good friends, BTW), which he did all the music for with Ady. Additionally, Eric teaches music at a local elementary school and has earned widespread acclaim for starting a marimba band with the kids; that ever-changing kids’ ensemble has now played all over the region and recorded two or three CDs. As if all that weren’t enough, until about a year ago Eric also fronted the local band Slackjaw. Yellow marks his first foray into acting.

I was particularly fascinated on my first visit to the Yellow set in October by how all the music was being recorded live. Nick's crew placed wireless microphones on the characters (augmented with a boom) while a small music ensemble played marimbas, stand-up bass, drums and viola in the other room. It was a little concert, and I've never heard of music for a film being recorded like that, at the same time the scenes are shot.

Hanging out on the set over the past few months—maybe five or six occasions—I’ve had a great time watching the creative process of a feature film unfold. For such a young filmmaker, and one making his first feature, Nick has an exceptionally impressive way of handling things onset. He knows exactly what he wants, and his instructions to the actors are very precise. Yet he’s also very good-natured, and the mood of the set has almost always been casual and fun. Which is very important, Nick reminds me, when the entire cast and crew are working for free.

I also have to mention that the Yellow set never would have been a well-functioning machine without the efforts of Nick’s girlfriend Mary, who has acted as a producer, costumer, make up artist, scheduler—pretty much everything. Every artist working in a collaborative medium has people he or she relies on and trusts and quietly places a tremendous amount of responsibility on, even if there isn’t an official credit that can properly honor that person’s contributions. And that is unequivocally Mary.

It’s not yet clear what kind of distribution Yellow will have. Gus’s interest could help, but technically the film and Nick are completely unknown to those at even the smallest studios and distributors. The film could very well play at some festivals, but it would be a real shame if that’s as far as it went. Granted, I haven’t actually seen Yellow yet, but I feel completely comfortable in assuming it will be worth seeing. Even if on some level the film is not completely successful artistically—and I doubt very much that would be the case—it’s bound to be a glorious failure, with great music and cinematography.

As it happens, I think it’s going to be great. Which is what inspired this post, a little viral marketing from the heart.

Sara, Neil and Nigel

Something must have been in the stars last week, because three big coups came within a matter of days.

First, we returned home from Europe on Monday to learn that Willamette Week reporter Nigel Janquiss had won a Pulitzer Prize for a series of stories chronicling former mayor/governor Neil Goldschmidt's affair with 14-year-old female in the 1970s while running city hall. This was only the fifth time in its history that the Pulizer went to an alternative weekly, and while I've certainly had a bone or two to pick with WW while writing for the paper over the last six and a half years, I feel enormously proud. Plus Nigel is a very nice guy and has regularly been the most likely among the news reporters to say "Hello" to me when I'm on the editorial floor.

Then, on Wednesday afternoon, a call came in from London, where our good friend Neil Griffiths (with whom we had been staying just a few days prior) rang at 1:40AM his time, somewhat drunkenly I might add, to tell us that he had won the prestigious Authors Club Award for Best First Novel for his book Betrayal In Naples. Neil hadn't even written an acceptance speech for the black-tie gathering because he didn't think he had a chance of winning. But anyone who has read his book (it's not distributed in the US but you can buy it at Amazon UK) knows it shouldn't have come as a surprise.

Then came what for me is the main event. That same Wednesday afternoon, my sister Sara called. At first I didn't pick up the phone, because it was after 5:00 and I didn't want to take any more business calls (we screen most of the time anyway). But then I heard Sara's voice on the machine say in her sarcastically understated way, "Uh, I think that you should pick up your phone."

Sara is a junior at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Communications, and she was calling to say she had been chosen as next year's editor-in-chief at the Daily Trojan newspaper. She has been a senior editor there since her sophomore year, and was clearly in line for the job. But she still had to sweat it out with one other candidate.

For most of her life, Sara has been besting me academically and professionally. And I've enjoyed every minute. In high school I had been rather proud to have a 3.7 GPA, until Sara rang in with a 3.99 -- one 'B' in her entire four years. I was content playing intramural basketball; she edited her school paper to a first-place-in-the-nation award....twice. In college at USC, she has not only been a member of the cross country team, but is a regular on Dean's List and holds down a work study job while putting in essentially the equivalent of a full-time job at the paper. I routinely get calls from her at 9:30 or 10:00pm where she's on her way home from the paper to start dinner and, later, begin her homework.

What's also interesting to me about the success of Sara, Neil and Nigel is that all three are writers who do something different from me. Sara is a good reporter and critic, but she is most at home as an editor--being part of a team that puts a paper together. As a freelance writer like me, one is expected to be going after a salaried job as a staff writer or editor. But I have discovered that I much prefer to maintain the status quo, moving from one publication to another like a writing ronin, and sleeping in without an alarm clock. (I learned this from my mom, an accountant who time after time turns down promotions because she doesn't want to be a boss, and because she's sure enough of herself to reject ambition for its own sake when she can be happier continuing as is.)

Neil is a fiction writer, and that is something else I've often been encouraged to do -- and most certainly will not. Often times people assume nonfiction writers and journalists are just punching the clock with articles to bide their time until they can write fiction. But one of the reasons I hold Neil's writing in such high regard is that I could never do it. Fiction is just too wide open for me to imagine conjuring stories out of nothing. And besides, I'm a realist.

Nigel is obviously an investigative reporter, and that is something I have done and, quite honestly, am not cut out for either. A few years ago I was able to get my foot in the door at the New York Times by volunteering to assist with news stories in Portland of national interest when they came up from time to time. So on countless stories dating back to about 2001, be it Christian Longo's murder of his family or the helicopter crash at Mt. Hood or the Tacoma roots of DC sniper John Malvo--or most memorably a murder-suicide in my home town of McMinnville--I would collect information and conduct interviews for Times reporters under very tight deadlines and tremendous pressure. A few times, I even wrote the stories myself for the paper's National section. It was all a tremendous source of pride and a real boost to my resume, but deep down I always felt like a fake. I hate reporting, and earlier this year I finally let the Times's Seattle bureau chief know I didn't want to work on news stories anymore. It's a tremendous relief to not dread the phone ringing with New York on the line when a major story here breaks.

So while it's because of my personal connections to Sara, Neil and Nigel that I'm happy for their achievements, it is also with a sense that each one brings talents that I don't have -- which I say not out of false modesty or self pity, but out of contentment and confidence in what I do as well.

Remembrance of Pork Medallions Past

A couple days after Christmas my friend Mac, visiting from Brooklyn for a few days, left a brief message on my answering machine. There was nothing extraordinary about it--he simply forgot his leftover food after we ate dinner at Montage Catfish Parlor. But somehow I can't bring myself to delete the message:

Hey Brian, it's Mac...I uh...I think I...Hello?...Let me start over. I think left the leftover pork medallions in your car. So look for a giant pterodactyl shaped out of aluminum foil...and I'll talk to you soon.

There's nothing that special about the message itself, but I've long had an obsession with (or at least a keen interest in) preserving memories of good times and friends/family. I take photographs, I shoot video, I've kept a diary on and off, and then there's this web log. But through all of that, very little of that recorded memory has consisted of the human voice. (Video does, of course, but the visual image is dominant.) Ideally I'd love to have some kind of audio tape comprised of good conversations but also meaningless nonsequitors and impromptu remarks.

The few recordings I do have, tucked away in some old dusty box, mean a lot. For a high school history project, for example, I recorded an interview with my Grandpa Lehman about his memories of landing on the beaches of Normandy in World War II.

Where does the desire to catalog, preserve or even horde memories come from? Is it healthy, or does it mean I'm not living enough in the moment? Increasingly I've come to understand that change is constant and that you have consider life a trip down a river more than the stops you make along the way.

But it's been fun to play back a few times on the answering machine Mac's pork medallions message, especially since he is like a lot of old friends in that live far away and probably always will. That's a blessing and a curse for my generation--we've moved further out into the world than most of our parents have, and we've got friends and family scattered all over. Mac is in New York, and another close friend is back in DC, while others are in Los Angeles, San Francisco, London and so on. And Valarie's whole family is out in Pennsylvania.

I don't mean to elevate an answering machine message to more than what it is, but even as I accept the passage of time, I don't apologize for sentimentalizing treasured little documents now and then.

On Guard! Hidden Talents Abound

A few days ago my friend Ned gave me for Christmas a DVD called On Guard! Educational Films of the Cold War Era. The DVD contains four documentaries from the 1950s about nuclear attack and how to possibly survive them. (Key word here being possibly, as in “If you’re the lucky one in seven hundred thousand, you could possibly survive a detonated A-bomb.”) The films are fun, collectively forming an antiquated Midcentury time piece that’s at once hilarious (because documentary filmmaking has come a long way since this), creepy (one remembers the ever-present threat felt in those days from the specter of nuclear war) and oddly heartening (every era had its fears, so today’s terrorist scare is put in an historical context that feels more par-for-the-course than a sign of impending apocolypse). And as an added bonus for us webfoots, one of the films is set here in Portland.

What’s really the coolest thing about the On Guard! DVD, though, is that Ned collected these films himself, designed all the packaging, and personally oversaw the pressing of several copies—all just to give away to friends.

Previously, Ned has also come out with three CDs, each one a compilation of music from a particular era and genre of yesteryear. First came tiki and Hawaiian music mix, next a Bossa Nova retrospective, and finally earlier this year a tribute to cowboy and western film songs. As with the recent DVD, Ned did the graphics and wrote liner notes for each one, and in the case of the CDs the liner notes contained an extensive essay about the history behind the music.

Ned’s DIY productions of kitchy-but-genuinely-good music and film stems in part from his graduate degree in museum curating – or something like that. But I assume his education further speaks to a more enduring love for putting these little packages together.

All this makes me think of the various art projects and other hobbies that many of my friends have going. My friend Rob is a painter in addition to being a filmmaker and a television news graphic designer. My friend Ady works for Chamber Music Northwest by day and finds time out of work to make documentaries, build furniture, silk screen, play clarinette (she’s classically trained) and partner with her music-teacher boyfriend to instruct a middle school marimba playing ensemble. My friends Rosie and Paul both have interest in and talent for writing fiction when they’re not designing software or teaching high school, respectively. My uncle Allan is an excellent guitarist. And here at 1743 Mulberry, I willingly volunteer that Valarie is quite probably a more talented pure writer than I am.

I’m happy for all my friends who have all this interesting work going on, and yet I feel bad for them because in nearly every case, there often just aren’t enough hours in the day to devote to it. How lucky I am that one of the primary things I’m passionate about doing – writing – is something I also happen to do for a living. It’s not to say all those people hate their day jobs, but I’m not sure how many would do it for free, or if it is something they're just as passionate about as their personal projects. Sure, I love to take still photos and make short films, but if I were doing either of those things for a living, I’d miss writing, which I’m overall blessedly fulfilled by.

But all is not lost. All but one of the people discussed here including myself are in our early thirties. (Sorry Allan--you're the one exception.) Hopefully one day Ned’s new release will come not from the computer in his bedroom, but from his independent music and video label.