“he came to my school today ! and one girl stood up at the endd of it withh tears pouring down her face and said “thank you soo much !”

I was messing around with Garage Band on my Macbook this morning and I decided to record a piece I wrote a while back titled “BB Gun.”
This is a one take “demo” recording and a rough draft. Complete with dog whine and bark in background toward the end. But it’s always fun to let others into the process.

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I went to the animal fair,
The birds and the beasts were there;
The big baboon by the light of the moon
Was combing his auburn hair.

You ought to have seen the monk,
Who sat on the elephant’s trunk.
The elephant sneezed and fell on his knees,
And what became of the monk, the monk?

Took my daughter for a great day at the Zoo in Providence the other day. It was world class and although I am generally not a fan of animals in cages and circuses and the like I felt this place was really well thought out and respectful of the animals environments. We had a blast. And now my rant. You knew it was coming. OK, so upon entering the zoo the kids are given “explorer cards” with boxes to sort of check off when they learn and see things. A big deal is made out of it to the kids. Big. So, like through out the park there are learning stations where trainers and staff show kids different kinds of creatures or activities and when they complete each station they get a rubber stamp into one of the three check boxes. But wait there is more! And they promote the heck out of this to the kids. Get ‘em all psyched. If IF you fill all three spaces…At the end of the day when you leave the zoo you get a HUGE rubber stamp in the big space when you open the card. WOW! I mean personally, I thought it was kind of cheap and lame. It wasn’t even a sticker…It was a stamp for gods sake. And the big prize? Another stamp. Yay. But I’ll be damned if my kid and others didn’t think this was very cool and accepted the challenge. So we had a great time and ate junk food and saw snow leopards, and giraffes, and zebras, and snakes, and camels, and monkeys, and red pandas. And we got our stamps at the designated stations. She is only four but she remembered to have the card stamped and didn’t even lose it.

So at the end. We go back to the main desk where we received the card and there was a guy with the BIG PRIZE STAMP. And all these kids were in line. And my daughter gets in line. And she gets her stamp and is all proud..And what I then saw forced me to immediately whisk her out of the line and away from the kids and the stamp guy and distract her. Because as I looked at all the other kids in line with their parents I would say about maybe 20% of them had all the required stamps. And the kids were all begging for the big stamp. And the parents were all giving the guy a hard time and telling him to give their kid the stamp anyway. And he did. He was all: “Surrrre! Let me see your card! There you go!” Stamps galore! I was pissed. I felt so bad for my daughter who spent all this time trying to do the right thing (And enjoying the day like crazy..Don’t get me wrong) and collecting all the stamps and I saw her feeling of pride in her face when she got the lame-ass big prize stamp. And I just did not want her to see the other kids cheating. At least not yet. I didn’t want her to see the other parents cheating. Not yet. For one afternoon I wanted her to enjoy the feeling of earning something, having fun while doing it, and seeing the good consequences that follow when you do the right thing. And she did. And I did. But I felt disappointed and a little sad.

I know it’s only a stamp. I get it. But it had a much bigger meaning to me as a parent. I can remember when I was young the poor decisions I made. How there was little guidance at times for me.
And how many times I may have cheated and cut corners and, I’m not proud to say, got away with it.
And how long it took me to learn my lesson about applying myself and hard work.
And how that lesson should have been taught to me and enforced when I was younger.
And how, like Holden Caufield, I learned how people are so phony.
And how I learned so young that people break their word and cheat.
And how I learned if you beg and cheat and annoy the hell out of the authority you can get your way.
And how I felt the world so sad and crooked when you learn that hardly anyone cares about doing the right thing.
And how whether or not someone was religious or moral or in a leadership role they were all corruptible.
And the lessons I learned. And the damn dirty world.

And I know it’s just a stamp. But you see I got this kid. I got this kid. This little girl. And when I look in her eyes of wonder and hear her beautiful poetic questions asking me to explain life to her and when I hug her and kiss her good night and think about the future and struggle so hard every day with trying to be frickin consistent in my discipline and consequences while defying her tears and whines at times… I melt and think of how Good she is. And what a William Blakean little lamb she is. I mean I ask her to clean her room or pick stuff up or help me…And she does it. And she tries hard. And when she runs she clenches her fists and pumps her arms like her dad when she watches me do 50 yard sprints at the baseball field. She tries hard and BELIEVES. And she earns things like toys, and trips, and later bed times with sticker charts and awesome behavior. And I end up being the hard-ass enforcing these things. And how when I look at her sleep with the soft night light shining gently across the room I think of the Tom Waits song “Innocent While You Dream.” And I just can’t handle her feeling things like “trying” and “effort” are a waste of time. I couldn’t let her see that she would have got the damn prize at the zoo no matter what. I couldn’t let her feel that her time of getting the damn “explorer card” stamped was a waste. So I got her out of that line and picked her up into my arms and kissed her forehead and told her she “did it” and I was very proud of her and that we’d hang it up on the fridge when we got home.

That was over a week ago. I just thought of it because I saw the “explorer card” on the fridge yesterday while, coincidentally, we were learning the song “The Animal Fair.” When we came to the part about the monkey we both sang different words and looked at each other laughing. When I was younger the line was “The monkey he got drunk/ He sat on the elephants trunk.” But the version she had on her “30 Children’s Songs -to bug the hell out of your parents in the car- Collection had modernized the line into: “You ought to have seen the monk/He sat on the elephants trunk.” And when I heard it I thought: “Wow, I never realized that when I was a kid I was singing about some Caligula like scene of drunkenness and debauchery at the zoo.” I never realized it because when you’re a kid you just take it as normal whatever is presented to you, process or internalize it, and then you move on. Kid says: “Drunken monkeys stumbling through the zoo. Sure. Whatever. Can I have another brownie? Oh, I could have just not tried and pushed my way to the front at the end and still got the prize. Oh OK. Awesome. Can I play with the iPad?” I don’t know. I guess as much as that is true and my biggest fear, that it’s also my only hope sometimes for myself and for her. I have the power to tell her what’s normal. Of how things work. Despite what I was taught. I can look back on my childhood and see the things that were screwed up and see them not only through my eyes but how my kid would see them and process them. And instead maybe I can do things right. Maybe. I can choose to forget those words to the old songs and sing a new song. And I can make sure, at least for a little while longer, that she is not swayed by seeing other kids and parents cheating their way through life. And that she knows how beautiful and amazing she is when I see her try hard and accomplish things. And in the process maybe she teaches me new songs about the birds and beasts that inhabit this Zoo.

Home Movies

When it rains
I stay in
Because
I have a box of videotapes
I need to watch
To categorize and discover
What’s been
Shot
Over the years.
I only do this when it rains.

Maybe I open my windows?
To let the weather tap out some morse code
to an abandoned station in a ghost town.

Or maybe a tribal drum?
Summoning
scattered parts of myself
That I’ve let wander and hide in the jungle too long.
It is time to hunt them down.

Bring it home to just us.

Hear it tap
Rain drops
Wire taps
Hear it hear it

Rewind
The time
first frame
shutters.

Patience
To watch
No longer
damn these gutters.

God damn you. Look at this movie
that was
shot!

Watch these tapes
And I tap your tears.
With you in each rain drop
A frame per thousand years.

Today it’s raining
I’m watching home movies
Of you.
And you’re here by my side again
You’ve decided to  pour onto me today.
The rain has carried you to me again.
And here. I am
just trying to make you stay.
I cup my hands to catch you but you run away.
And tap tape tap
Your memory fills the offbeats
between each drop.
And then scatters.
To splash onto everything I’ve written
make the ink run,
tear the page,
and disintegrate the paper day.

A rainy day is always a movie day.

-John Morello 8-15-2011

Dedicated to my parents,
to my good friends Suzie and Anthony,
and to all who held the camera.

True Story.
The Facts:
NASA lands vehicle with camera in moon crater.
Leaves it there for years. -153 C. No life forms. Total vacuum of space. Nothing.
Years later Astronaut Pete Conrad finds and lands in exact same crater.
Finds NASA vehicle.
Disconnects camera.
Brings it back.
Scientists open up camera and discover frozen dead kind of fossilized “spicules”
The big deal? Well there was evidence of life on this thing that had been left …in space.
At first many pointed at it as a sign of extra terrestrial life and cosmic miraculous supernatural questions darted around the hallowed halls of NASA.
But the awesome scientists soon realized that when the camera was originally assembled a worker may have sneezed or somehow contaminated the electronics of the camera.
Leaving microbes which were now long and completely dead.
Until
they put the “spicules” and microbes into a petri dish and did whatever scientists do…
And the bacteria spicules come back to LIFE.
And began to grow.
And do what life does.

Conclusion: Somehow life. Earth life. Survived the most desolate, harsh, and least nurturing conditions imaginable.
Microbes had made a journey from one world to another
and survived.

My feeling and conclusion as I processed this information that came to me from the amazing BBC series The Planets:
Life is powerful.
Within you and within me and all around us, this mysterious thing called life continues to grow and change in its most base and complex structures.
Built within you and me is this thing called survival. Built into us is a more powerful life force than any of us could imagine.
Somehow the words of Samuel Beckett come to my mind. “I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
When faced with our own emotional or physical harsh environments.
When faced with that feeling or outlook which can only be described as..empty.
When faced with darkness.
When feeling alone.
In space.
And out of time.
Make time.
Take time.
Take some space.
to realize that
at the very least
within you
is..Life.

That you are part of…Life.
And that may not seem like much to some of you reading this.
But to the right ones who are reading this.
Who have often been in the same orbit as me.
To the ones who are millions of miles away.
Drifting out of orbit.
Floating in a distant galaxy.
Fighting the vacuum pull of empty dark anti-matter in your chest.
Existing in a place which can seem so cold.
To you.
I say.
There is.
Life.

So this is what the show basically looks like..

Scary new drugs
Check the link.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/us/17salts.html

I know it’s common to say “you’re welcome” after someone says “thank you” but this is an exception. The other day I did a show for the University Park Campus School (UPCS) in Worcester, Massachusetts and today the mailman came and delivered their response. First of all, this is an amazing school and one that when I walked into it I could feel a different vibe than others. In my work I visit hundreds of schools a year and this is one of those schools that as I spoke with some of the staff and students I felt like they just “get it.” It’s a school that is downtown in what was for many years considered by many to be a tough section of town. A section where my brother when he was on dope years ago would often go to get Heroin. Over the past few years the city has really targeted the area trying to build up some of the old beautiful buildings while restoring a sense of pride and community to the neighborhood. One of the bright lights shining in this section of town is certainly the UPCS. It is not a magnet school or private school that draws it’s talent from all across the region but rather a good old fashioned neighborhood public school. I don’t have hard data on this but I’m guessing this school has a lot of students who like me when I was younger could be considered at risk and yet they have risen above circumstances and done big big things. They are now considered one of the top 100 schools in the country and over 95% of all their students since the school opened in 1997 have attended college. That is huge! I could go on and on but you can google and see their merits for yourself. I’m writing this though because I guess I wanted to say “Thank you” to them for their “Thank you.” Today, when my daughter and I went to pick up the mail, we got a package filled with tons of little envelopes. Each one contained a note sealed inside. Each one was a handwritten note from like every kid who saw the show saying “Thank you” for coming to our school. Many often shared in a few sentences what the show meant to them or how it affected them. My daughter and I loved opening up all this mail…Hell, what four year old girl doesn’t like opening up presents or valentines and stuff like that? We still have some to get through too. But I read quite a few out loud to her and it made me feel really good about what I do not only as I read their compliments but I kind of was seeing myself as my daughter might see me..It was moving. It meant a lot. So to UPCS I say “Thank you” for thanking me. Enjoy your hard earned vacation and I’ll see ya ‘roun town.