Ian Whitcomb is a highly respected performer, composer, and music historian. You can find all of his CD's, DVD's, Books,
and Songbooks by clicking here, or by going to ianwhitcomb.com

LETTER FROM LOTUSLAND
February 2010

        Regina says I should try and be more positive in my approach to Life. Or is it Death? (There I go again! Sorry!)

       Maybe I’ll start by adapting to computerspeak. So I should be LOL-ing or Ha! Ha!-ing all the time.

       No I can’t do this — it’s against my nature. My nature is to be cynical, to expect the worst. That’s the way it usually turns out. You see, I’m British and I lived through the fall of our empire — India and All That.

       But America, my home at present, was built by progressive go-ahead gung-ho positive thinking, by believing in the future and how you too can shape it in your favor and you can be president or a pop star. Just chin up and look on the bright side.

        The old songs I sing say so militantly to a bright foxtrot beat in 2/4. They order me to: “Smile, Darn Ya, Smile” because “The Best Things In Life Are Free” so “Let A Smile Be Your Umbrella” and you’ll get “Pennies From Heaven” — etc., etc., ad nauseam. (There I go again.)

       Well, I’ll admit that singing the old songs is my salvation, my sanctuary, my saviour. Thank God for Cantalini’s Italian Restaurant-by-the-sea and our corner where we render up what ever we like. Fred Sokolow, ace guitarist, was crooning passionately last Sunday night. He’s normally pretty laid back but now he was singing his heart out on old Jimmie Rodgers classics. Why? Because his father had just died. What’s your religion, I asked. Music, he replied. Quite right.

       We thrash away and belt out and croon. And it’s all the better after I’ve had my martini followed by the delicious Caesar salad with real anchovies followed by the salmon, all provided for free by our employer Lisa.

        Fuelled up and firing I can now launch into a lively version of “Blue Suede Shoes” for the Elvis Lady of a Certain Age who always commands the booth dead opposite us. Beehived and red-lipped to the hilt and accompanied by her non-speaking husband, she always rewards us with a $20 bill. May this go on forever till I keel over.

       Perhaps all my music-making is only an escape from reality. This past month has served lots of doses of harsh reality. In my last Letter I told how I was flying to England to see my family.

         I never made it.

       Britain was blitzed by snow and ice and sub-arctic temperatures. Elderly couples were freezing to death in remote cottages. On the highest part of the Yorkshire moors a swell hotel was snowed in. The customers amused themselves for almost a week by drinking the bar dry, feasting on frozen steak and pork sausages, and playing video games and mah jong till the emergency services were able to break on through.

        By that time the guests were comatose and needed help in the shape of stomach pumps and aspirin.

        Meanwhile, I learned later, my good friend Andy Wickham fled his country cottage, pursued by an angry blizzard that eventually caught up with him, shoving him and his huge Jaguar into a tree. Andy managed to coax the car back to his London home at ten miles an hour and much cursing.

       So — on the morning of my scheduled departure on British Airways (planned carefully by Regina to ensure that I had the very best seat at an affordable price) we learned that all flights to London had been cancelled indefinitely. I rang my brother and sister. Snowed in. Stuck.  Everyone over there, especially Andy, warned that I’d never be able to do the usual things I do. I’d never be able to navigate to dinner parties and clubs and gatherings. Even in good weather, England, they warned, is a tough place to live. You have no time to be bored and navel-gaze, as you do in lazy-daze California, because most of your time is taken up with just trying to get across the road.

       Reality told me that I must cancel the trip. This was on Wednesday Jan 6. My bags were all packed and I let them stay that way for days, my mind was already in England. I had reverted myself to the way I think and talk in England. It’s a trip to the past: my accent becomes more clipped and precise, I stutter as I did when a child, I fit back snugly into the old ways, the corduroy days, I’m a boy again.

       But now, with this rude reversal, I would have to re-adjust, plucked from the time machine, rudely plonked back into modern day Obama America.

       I sank in to a deep depression such as I’d never experienced before. A black pit. I became catatonic, immobile. I didn’t care to move, didn’t care to do anything. The busy-ness of my life was gone. Everything seemed pointless.

       And worse. I felt I was in Regina’s way. For she had planned to make great changes in house, garage and garden while I was away. Each room would be meticulously spring-cleaned; the long- congested garage would be cleared so that there was room to park her car; a vegetable garden would be dug, octagonal and protected by a low white picket fence. The above work was to be accomplished by a male leader of her Buddhist chanting group. All kinds of plans and schemes and dreams, all unbeknownst to me.

       Eventually, that same day, when I was able to move about again — my depressions are short affairs — I slunk around the house pretending to be a ghost. Imagine I’m not really here, I said. Don’t be so silly, she said, of course you’re here.

       And so I was — knocking things over as usual. Over goes Rollo’s water bucket, all over the hardwood floor, which was bare because we’d just had to remove the Persian rug on account of Rollo peeing on it due to my having forgotten to let him out for a leg lifter.

       But the day was killed and my mind was taken off London and family. Around 6 pm I took off for the Astro Family Restaurant to meet Big Jim Dawson, drink wine, eat gyro and discuss what we’d play on tonight's radio show at Luxuria's rickety old house near the German pickle factory and the Twinkies HQ.

       Over the next few days I resigned myself to being stuck in America. I tried hard to be a spirit watching over life. Didn’t work, of course. Instead I developed a cold rich with multi-colored phlegm and accompanied by a hacking cough. Everyone knew I was very much present, especially when I started getting nosebleeds because of the blood-thinning medicine for the clots in my leg. I let word get out that I have “medical issues” and this won me a certain amount of sympathy but it soon wore off.

        How would I spend these two weeks when I was supposed to be in London, in a different world and with a different mindset, a different way of speaking even?

       Andy, on the phone, advised me to get some other interest that might stop me thinking about myself all the time. Like what? “Politics and sport”. Why? “They’re metaphors for life”. But I’d rather skip the metaphor stag and plunge straight back into life, my life. Certainly more interesting than politics and sport.

       I had to find myself something to do.

       Well, there was promotion for my “Letters From Lotusland —An Englishman In Exile” book. Jane Quinn, my tireless manager in Britain had set up radio interviews for me while I was over there. With a little switching she was able to rearrange so that the radio people were to call me at home in Altadena. This meant answering the phone at dawn and motor mouthing without coffee fuel-- babbling away in unconsidered statements.

A cheeky chappie from Radio Kent (“Covering all of the south of England and more!”) woke me up with a cheery, “Hello there and welcome! This is Jolly Roger!” He reminded me that he’d been “on the boats” meaning he’d been a pirate disc jockey in the days of Radio Caroline and other ships moored off the coast, out of range of the authorities, blasting offbeat American records that had never been allowed by the gatekeepers at BBC. “You were a great favourite with us pirates”, chirped Roger. “We played the hell out of ‘Sally Sails The Sky’--And now finally Brian Matthew has got round to spinning it”. He was right. Matthew played my 1967 record only recently on his very popular Saturday morning show, “Sounds Of The Sixties” on BBC Radio Two. I’d been thrilled. I’d always wanted to be included in his notable “Saturday Club” on BBC where he’d have the Beatles on playing live. But I was always an outsider in my own country. “Well, you’re not now, Ian”, said Roger. “But on that subject — what made you decide to pull up roots in Blighty and move to sunny California where the girls are?” Here we go again! But I was able to hold forth for the next ten minutes, not allowing him to get another question in. But had I remembered to plug the new book? Oh dear, oh No!

       Other actions to keep me occupied: on the Apple I proposed a new songbook to Mel Bay Publications, who’ve published lots of my books in the past. I know that ukuleles are still popular so I quickly whipped out a title: “Ukulele Jamboree!--25 Songs to Keep the Spirits Up”. But what would those uplifting songs be?  I could include my latest songs, the ones I’ve written for Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boy shows---“Have A Martini” and “Teddy’s At It Again” and “Let’s Have A Jolly Good Cough”. Yes, these might all be considered uplifting, even spiritual, mightn’t they? I think so.

       Boss Bill Bay was back to me in a jiffy. My proposal had been accepted. The book will be part of a new division called Bill’s Bookshelf, a modern development in publishing called P.O.D.  I was ecstatic. The ghost time — the time I was supposed to be in England -- hadn’t been wasted. Another book to take up time! An excuse to put off writing that novel!

       However, it was hard to keep my spirits up as details of the deal flowed in over the ether. The Bay company informed me of the full meaning of P.O.D: Print on Demand. Saves warehouse space. No longer could I just mail scribbled music to be “engraved” by experts in Taiwan and Korea. No longer, back at base would Bay editors mold my stuff into a coherent whole. No longer would I correct proofs as I lay in the bath or munched cornflakes.

       These days, in the new system, you have to do all the technical work yourself, sending in a finished file all ready to be printed up. Books must be “compiled and built using page-layout software (QuarkXPress up to v7 or InDesign up to vCS3)….” Music to be engraved using “Finale”; lyrics must on no account be in New Roman font. Special attention must be given to “Alignment of lyric for Melisma”.

       My head began to whirl and whizz and steam popped out of my brow. This was gobbledy-gook to me.  I felt that hot flushed feeling I used to get at school whenever the word “Algebra” was uttered -- like the spell of a wicked witch.

       What had I gotten myself into?

       I longed to be Keats or Shelley armed with only a quill, a bottle of ink and a slip of paper.

       “The author will not be recompensed for editorial processes”.    I’d have to pay to have my book published! This was worse than “Letters From Lotusland”. At least I hadn’t had to fork out any money for that. True it’s taken over a year of editing.  Months of frustration when I was unable to rouse the one-man operator of Wild Shore Press because he was way out on the mountain shooting skiers or else on the streets of Philadelphia shooting the annual Mummer parades or else in his little theatre directing a new play. Each edition of the book, pumped out by self-publishing giant Lulu as Print On Demand, has had less fewer typos. We’d begun with thousands — back-to-front quote marks, curlies mixed with straight quotes, widows, photos that were pixel-ated and faint. Finally we had a 520-page slab of a book that resembled one put out by a real New York outfit such as Random House or Knopf. Nothing could stop me now!

       And then on a stormy afternoon last week, when the rain thundered down in sheets and mud slides were threatening hillside homes, I set off to my first commercial audition in ages. My agent said, “You are a grandfather teaching his grandson to play the piano. You must be a skilled pianist”. Can’t recall what the product was. I biffed through the storm, skimming across the freeway like a sailboat as I auditioned early country music tracks for the luxuria radio show that I’d be presenting that night.    Active, active again! Fighting off the mucous, the sneezes, the blood coagulating in my nose. When I arrived I knew I hadn’t a chance.  The casting lounge, steaming with dozens of wet hopefuls, was full of granddad types who also looked like old music profs, with long grey hair and stooping figures and kindly, crinkly, twinkly old dew-lapped faces. I’m not a type. I don’t fit into a category. All I can play is me. Still I went in and did my stuff with a perky little boy called Cameron, chauffeured in by his mother from Northridge. His older brother was competing with him for the role. “We can DO it!”, said Cameron. Mother had moved the boys from a nice quiet northern California home so that they would be where the casting action is. In the video shoot room, after slating our names clearly and gotten the GO from the harried video man, I pretended to teach Cameron my uncle’s song “Lady Of Spain” as he joined in with the left hand. “Congratulate your grandson!“ said the director.” Go ahead and hug him!”. I did. He was very skinny. “Excellent! Brilliant! Next!” said the director, as they always do. I never got called back. I never have been called back. But I felt good about battling through the storm. And Regina was proud of my bravery. She smiled from the bed as she cradled Simon The Cat, who sees all and does nothing about it.

       So the month whizzed by because I filled it with things to do. And slowly the gigs rolled up: I gave an illustrated talk at the banquet for retired faculty of Cal State Northridge -- A history of the ukulele. I was more interested in the ex-history professor I’d met at dinner whose specialty was the history of bombing. And I was interested to hear of the little plot of land outside the University Club where stands the last orange grove in the San Fernando Valley. When Regina was growing up here she was surrounded by fruit groves and hog farms and horse ranches.

I returned to Cantalini’s and once more settled in to the delicious routine of martini before Caesar salad with real anchovies……

        Oh — but I see that early on in this Letter I talked of the joys of Cantalini’s. So I’d better stop before I prove early senility by repetition…..

               Ian Whitcomb is a highly respected performer, composer, and music historian. You can find all of his CD's, DVD's, Books,
and Songbooks by clicking here, or by going to ianwhitcomb.com