William Horberg

Malaysian Fever Dream

I've never been great at remembering my dreams, or caring much to do so. 

And I've been told that reading other people's dreams can be dullsville. But under the influence of a heavy cocktail of sedatives, anti-biotics, anti-inflammatories and an oxygen tube, for some reason I woke up with a vivid recollection of this fever dream and had to write it down in my journal.

So at the risk of sending some of my loyal readers off to greener or other pastures, here it is for you to help me analyze!

In a wooded area a group of children are playing ball. Some of them are my cousins. But the balls we are throwing are heads made of stone or carved wood. Like temple icons. Malaysian perhaps? We laugh callously as they shatter.

I throw one high up and it lands with a splash in a large river of dark mud and disappears underneath the surface with a bubbly belch. I am surprised to find that hidden under the mud is my Uncle, sitting behind the wheel of a luxury car, perhaps a Jaguar, although he memorably drove a Cadillac back in the 60's when we spent the most time together.

He angrily gets out and challenges me. "What the hell are you doing? Don't you know what those are worth?"

Near tears I carefully pick up the stone face. It is now thin, not the round ball I threw, but like a plate that tapers to a point, with an exotic face carved on it. The top of the head is indeed cracked from the fall, but I try to hide that from my Uncle as I carefully carry it to give the illusion that it is still intact.

He leads me to a door on the property which opens upon an elaborate set of wooden steps which pull down, like the concealed steps leading to an attic, but in the opposite direction. We enter a basement room which is a veritable Aladdin's Cave of estate-sale treasures housed in wooden racks with wooden shelves, row after row. I am taken aback by the number of workers down there, who seem quite busy with purpose, but who task is indiscernible to me as they remain just at the edge of my vision, although the room - if yellowish - is well-lit.

I recognize some of the items as being from my grandmother's old house in Detroit, the one she abandoned after the riots there in 1968. My Uncle asks me to pay particular attention to one light fixture of pink or rose glass, folded and curved, beautiful in a kitsch way, which he removes from its tissue-wrapped place on one of the shelves.

I'm late for something and I remember that I am supposed to attend a wedding involving some member of my Uncle's family, presumably one of my cousins, although I am not certain. My room - it could be a hotel room, or maybe a guest room in the very house that contains the basement treasure room - seems to also be part of some impossible architectural amalgam as it also houses the synagogue where the wedding is to take place.

I have packed light. Too light for the occasion. But I am pleased to find that I remembered to pack a black sport coat, which I plan to throw on over the unfortunate black t-shirt with some slogan written boldly across the front in acid-green lettering I am wearing. Yet instead of my suitcase I find a gym bag, a large duffel size like a coach would use for carrying baseball bats. Luckily when I unzip it I find an old-fashioned gray mohair jacket like something out of On The Waterfront. I put it on and go downstairs to find the ceremony, worrying it is already in progress.

Entering an elaborate apparel shop in the lobby, I gradually realize it is a temple gift shop on steroids, with a large and varied assortment of hats and shawls and other clothing and knick knacks along with the menorahs and other Jewish religious items. I want to buy a hat but there are too many to choose from, and I am conscious that I need to grab a yarmulke but I can't find the basket that holds them.

Leaving this gift shop/haberdashery, I finally enter the reception in progress, and am immediately confronted by a boorish guest who is offering me his criticism of the movie "Synecdoche" which was directed by Charlie Kaufman. "What a bore" he starts, but just like the scene in Annie Hall, as I am defending the merits of the movie as a profound examination of death and the meaning of life, the real writer-director Charlie Kaufman emerges from the crowd of invited wedding guests, dressed much nicer and more appropriately than I am. 

I am subtly pleased that he heard me spontaneously defending the film while unaware that he was there to bear witness, as it seemed proof of my sincerity. I notice that Michael Costigan, another Hollywood producer and executive is also in the room. As is a large sweaty man who in my dream I identify as the producer Paul Schiff, but who bears no resemblance to the real-life Paul Schiff, who I hardly know at all let alone well, but I always have felt to be of fine proportion and dryness. 

I am perplexed why these folks from Hollywood are here to attend this wedding ceremony at this wooded temple/gift store/house/basement storage facility with my relatives from Detroit. Who invited them? Which side of the wedding party were they on? Who were the bride and groom? Was this even a wedding?

I felt like I was violating the protocol and procedures for how and when the guests were entering the temple to be seated, so I just walked in and found myself inside a steeply-stepped semi-circular ampitheater. A loud voice like a tannoy over a loudspeaker at a railway station was calling out the names of guests and their assigned seat numbers. Heads turned as I made my way down the aisle. I searched in vain for my wife or some member of my family. Most of the women wore head scarves making them look more Muslim than Jewish. Luckily I was wearing a large black shawl that I must have unconsciously picked up from the gift shop so at least 90% of inappropriate t-shirt was covered. But my head was naked, and I could feel the collected disapproval of the crowd.

I temporarily took any nearby seat to get my bearings, as the mix of past and present, Hollywood and childhood, broken family relationships and broken pottery, the Torah and the screenplay of "Synecdoche" - was just too potent for my stability.

I woke up.

william

One (False) Step

On August 24, 2010 I took one small step that changed my life.

While scouting locations in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia our group went to visit the local National Theatre which had been suggested as a venue for possible filming and to meet local acting talent.

When we went into the dimly lit interior I photographed the theatre from the back of the room. I then proceeded down the aisle to walk the few steps up to the large black stage at the front of the room to take a photo of the reverse view of the hall from on stage.

But as I took that last step, I suddenly found myself in free fall and plummeted almost twenty feet straight down. The stage had been lowered to the basement level but its absence was totally indiscernible to myself and any of the other members of my group who were befuddled by my sudden disappearance - I appeared to them to have disappeared through the floor of the main stage - like a Houdini trick.

They heard the thud of my impact and my howl of anguish and rushed over to the lip of the stage to see me lying on the ground below. I really can't remember much of what happened next. Later they told me the only way they could get to me was to raise the floor back up to their level, which must have taken some time as it felt like I was down there alone forever. It was a real "touching the void" time for me, as the pain I could feel was magnified by the fear of what I could only imagine had happened to my body.

The next thing I heard was our production designer Dan Dorrance yelling at someone NOT to move my body without putting me on a wooden board to stabilize me. Thank you, Dan! You were my first angel.

Then I remember an ambulance ride from hell. For some reason I was sure that I was sliding backwards out of my stretcher on the bumpy ride through crowded Kuala Lumpur traffic. Dan and our local driver Tiak were in the ambulance with me, and they held me down tight with their strong arms. Thank you, Tiak, you are my second angel.

Arriving at the hospital and taking x-rays and cat scans and getting the diagnosis of the multiple fracture to my crushed heel and the damage to my pelvic area are all pretty much a blur as I write this post, but what I can recall are the other friends in my group, David Willis and John Thompson and Jamie King who stayed by my side and gave me their strength and love and support while I moved through the process of admittance and surgery and the beginning of my recovery. You guys are the best team anybody could ever hope for when the chips are down.

I am writing this 4 days post-op and each day is a new miracle for me. The first 48 hours really tested my will in ways I have never experienced, as every little basic thing we take for granted and that constitute the ground floor of being alive - moving, breathing, eating, drinking, passing, sleeping, dreaming, seemed slightly beyond my ability. 

Jamie King gave up her own trip back and her obligations at work and with her own family to stay here with me through this really hard time. I will always be grateful to you, Jamie. You are the best!

Yesterday morning I was able to eat my breakfast for the first time, I got out of bed for the first time, and with the help of the wonderfully caring staff here at the hospital I took a shower in the wheelchair. 

The water rushing over my body gave me a feeling of euphoria I cannot describe. I was here. I was alive. I could feel again. I was alive.

Tomorrow we will have a Skype account set up so I can see and talk to Elsa and Diego and Natalie and Miro and be connected to those amazing people I am so lucky to have in my life. And Elsa's brother will arrive to take the baton from Jamie and be my best friend over here through the incredibly hard work of re-hab.

I'm working hard first of all to quiet my mind. The only road ahead for me is the next hour, the next meal, the next step forward in my walker. None of us know anything about the future - each moment of our lives contains within it one small step. Who can imagine where that step will take us? 

As I couldn't see the deep chasm that lay ahead of me last Tuesday, nor could I see the rainbow of WONDERFUL loving connections I have made in the days since then. So really there was nothing false or true about that step - it is just what happened then, and all this is what is happening now.

Thank you to everyone who has followed my blog and Elsa's and written in with your encouragement. Your words are a balm.

Peace.

william

The Bat Cave

Alfred, Bruce Wayne and Commissioner Gordon have never been to this Bat Cave!

 

But I have!

Caves are curious places - openings to another world within ours, a nether world - that beckon exploration and excite our imagination, and are the natural stuff of myth and legend.

The Batu Caves are a half-hour drive out of Kuala Lumpur, and then about a half-hour walk up the seeming thousand stairs to the entrance, at least for us older, out-of-shape folks.

 

In the thick humidity of this temperate zone tourist destination, I was surprised to find this sign at the top of the steep climb - AS IF they had to tell us!

The geological formations in and around the caves are part of nature's process of carving these 400 million year old limestone hills into Gaudi-like shapes enshrouding the entrance.

 

 

The Hindu shrines outside and within dedicated to Lord Murugan make this a popular destination of worship as well. In February the anual Thaipusam festival finds tens of thousands of penitents and devotees marching from Kuala Lumpur to the caves and crowding the hollow caverns within.

 

The squeaking and chattering of the fruit bats on the ceiling provide the lively soundtrack that gives this cave its name, but there are other curious denizens lurking here that seem oblivious to the Hindu gods and teeming humanity and in word and deed declare: this place is ours!

Enjoy!

william

NEXT: More about the creatures of the Bat Cave

 
 
 
 
 

The Ladies of Kuala Lumpur

Despite the jet lag of our almost twenty-four hour journey, we arrived in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia yesterday and took in the sights and sounds of the local market on our first afternoon here. It is Ramadan so may businesses have stalls out along the street with all of their colorful wares on display.

 

I particularly enjoyed the many mannequin heads with their hijabs or head scarves. One Malaysian dollar or ringgit is about .31 cents US so these seem quite reasonably priced.

 

 

I don't know if it was the language barrier or my utter lack of coherency after the long flight but I couldn't get any of these local gals to strike up a conversation with us.

 

While a predominantly Muslim country, there are many Chinese and Indian and other people also living here in this heterogenous place, so the head scarf is not entirely ubiquitous, as this fashionable duo can attest. I am here with a small group scouting locations for a new movie project I hope to be able to tell you about soon. 

It looks like this one fashionista has already "gone Hollywood" with her sunglasses and shawl. She certainly knows the Hollywood rule to "follow the money" as she has set herself up in a propitious spot right next to the local currency exchange. Unfortunately, no screen test for her this time! :(

Our indefatigable young guide Tiak, pictured above, offered to take us clubbing after a tasty meal at a local restaurant, but it was still 4:30 a.m. as far as our body clocks were concerned, so we retired to the comfort of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in the shadows of the huge Petronas Towers right behind us.

Cool place so far!

Enjoy!

william
  

What Endures?

Many of you who have followed this blog for some time know that I have an archive of old things - books, magazines, paperbacks, paper ephemera, cartoons, illustrations, comic books and other collectibles - that are crammed into cabinets and clog up bookshelves and are the accumulation of decades in the life of that particular species known as homo collectorus - or one who has a hard time throwing things away.

For instance, I love this cartoon gag panel that I found in an old magazine called The Saturday Review of Books - it made me laugh, but then again it also made me think about what is really being said by the cartoonist - the volume of dreck that our culture produces, and what actually endures?

How many of my dear, literate, avid readers can answer the twenty questions on the literary quiz offered to the readers of this 1949 edition of the Saturday Review? 

Now as a book-lover and enthusiastic reader for most of my life, I must embarrassingly confess I could only identify 14 of the 20 authors listed by their initials and surnames, and other than the obvious match of Tiny Tim and Charles Dickens, I came up a cropper on matching the nineteen other quotes and authors therein - and these are presumably famous short stories, at least according to Mr. A.C. Palmer, of Pomfret Center, Connecticut.

 

Five points. By 1949 standards, my literary I.Q. must surely be on the level of sub-cretin.

Anybody out there who can better show us the way and reconnect us to these enduring works of art? 

What is your literary I.Q.?

william

What Will We Do With Our Beasts?

"And what will we do with our beast?" the preacher encouraged his followers to chant from beside their radios at home, as well as from the plain wooden pews of his sanctuary.

Edwidge Danticat wrote those words, which are a coded allusion to the long gone Haitian dictator Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, in her stunning novel "The Dew Breaker".

I was reminded of them again the other evening while watching another stunning piece of art about a country with a tragic history - the new Cambodian film "Enemies of the People" about the infamous Brother # 2 Nuon Chea who was Pol Pot's partner in the leadership of the Khmer Rouge during the mass genocide that took place in that country after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 until they were driven from power in 1979, events famously depicted in the movie "The Killing Fields".

The documentary follows Phnom Penh journalist Thet Sambath as he travels on weekends over the course of a decade to visit the now-octogenarian former dictator, a wary, secretive, but also disarming grandfather of a man, with whom he forms a human bond of intimacy to gradually draw out his story. The journalist's own secret, which he only reveals to Chea near the end of the film before the old man's ultimate arrest to face charges and trial in front of a UN Commission that took 35 years to convene, is that his own parents and brother were killed by the Khmer Rouge. His urgent need to understand "why" has preoccupied his adult life and lead him into this deeply personal relationship with a man the whole world knows as a monster.

What will we do with our beast? indeed.

To say this film is a meditation on the meaning of justice is inadequate to its complexity and power. The title itself is quixotic, a double-entendre, as Nuon Chea's justification and rationalization of the policies he and Pot initiated that lead to the killing of over 2 million of his own citizens is grounded in his belief or excuse that they were purging themselves of internal enemies - traitors who were working with their hated enemies the Vietnamese. 

Of course, as they saw enemies and traitors all around them and took their country back to Year Zero in an eradication program driven by their ideology, we are shown footage when they are finally driven from power describing them as among the worst enemies and traitors the people of Cambodia and the world have ever known.

But the jiu jitsu nature of the film is to confront this man and these crimes after the passage of so much time, when the fires of war and revolutionary spirit have died out, so that the old killing fields full of skulls and skeletons are now placid rice fields under bucolic skies, whose murky waters are fit for bathing in the enduring heat, but not for drinking, and whose ghosts claim the waking dreams of the uneducated farmers who Sambeth also coaxes into revealing, confessing, their own complicity in the savagery that gripped them once upon a time.

An old Buddhist knows that he is condemned to live out the rest of his many lives in Hell for what he did back then under orders from on high. But when Sambeth brings the former Khmer soldier to actually meet Brother #2 face to face for the first time - the source of those on-high orders - he is respectful of the elderly man, and seems almost embarrassed that he is talking to him.

Sambeth too can't help but be moved by Chea's seemingly sincere regrets when he learns the truth about his interviewer's family history, and you can't help but be moved by the strange paradox the film presents - of the need to remember things we want to forget, to forgive things that are unforgivable, and to believe that justice exists as a moral force in the universe when nature everywhere offers proof that it does not.

I hope you get a chance to check it out.

william

Blue Notes

The Trumpet Player

The Negro

With the trumpet at his lips

Has dark moons of weariness

Beneath his eyes

where the smoldering memory

of slave ships

Blazed to the crack of whips

about thighs

The negro

with the trumpet at his lips

has a head of vibrant hair

tamed down,

patent-leathered now

until it gleams

like jet—

were jet a crown

the music

from the trumpet at his lips

is honey

mixed with liquid fire

the rhythm

from the trumpet at his lips

is ecstasy

distilled from old desire—

Desire

that is longing for the moon

where the moonlight's but a spotlight

in his eyes,

desire

that is longing for the sea

where the sea's a bar-glass

sucker size

The Negro

with the trumpet at his lips

whose jacket

Has a fine one-button roll,

does not know

upon what riff the music slips

It's hypodermic needle

to his soul

but softly

as the tune comes from his throat

trouble

mellows to a golden note

- Langston Hughes

I have bought and listened to and collected many jazz albums on the Blue Notelabel over the years, but never really knew that much about the man behind the music - German immigrant and legendary producer Alfred Lion. 

But I only recently got to see the 1997 documentary that was made in Germany called "Blue Note" that tells the history of the label and has great archival performance and interview footage of the veritable who's-who roster of performers that Lion often discovered and captured on vinyl while his partner photographer Francis Wolff captured them on film. 

The film features a nice reading of Langston Hughes' famous poem set to music, as well as interviews with what feel like the very few surviving members of this label's roster of giants. Lion produced something like 1,000 albums between his roots in WW2 era discs with Sidney Bechet and his last record in 1966 when he sold the company and retired to Mexico. 

He let a 21 year old Herbie Hancock record his first album and when he came to the studio with 3 original compositions, Lion sent him back to write 3 more, an unheard of commitment to the music above the marketing. Jazz organist Jimmy Smith was one of his discoveries and best-sellers, recording studio pioneer and magician Rudy Van Gelder was another of his famous cohorts, and of course art director Reid Miles was the man who made album covers you wanted to just look at as much as you wanted to hear the music inside.

All the people interview describe one defining trait that Lion possessed - an ear for when something was in the groove - that certain swinging song, whether ballad or up tempo, that as soon as you put the needle in the groove let you know you were listening to a Blue Note record - when "trouble mellows to a golden note"!

Enjoy!

william

Save The Tiger

Thanks to an awesome blog I newly discovered called "Letters of Note" which showcases the forgotten correspondence of the famous and not-so-famous for making the in-house correspondence of '70's Texas oilman Edward Mike Davis available online for our reading pleasure and enlightenment. In case you ever thought you had a tough boss, or were worried about mincing your words with your employees, Davis' epistolary prowess sets a new standard in management style.

 

An entire series of his vitriolic memos to staff can be enjoyed here under the heading The Tiger Oil Memos. Gives new meaning to Nelson Algren's old maxim "never trust a guy with three names."

Apparently Davis was the driver for a rich Denver family who got in good enough graces with the widow to inherit a chunk of cash when her room upstairs was ready. He parlayed that into his Tiger Oil concern at which he exercised his latent dictatorial powers. Former employees might be comforted to know that he ultimately went bust, but not before leaving behind these pearls of business school wisdom.

Too bad he never made it out to Hollywood - he could have written great dialogue for our most acerbic characters!

Enjoy!

william

Imaginary Play

One hallmark of children with autism is that some things that come as second nature to most kids need to be broken down into their smallest component parts and taught to a child on the spectrum. 

Imaginary play - imitating things, recreating experiences, becoming someone else, assigning feelings to inanimate objects - is a crucial part of the developmental process that needs to be manufactured therapeutically when it doesn't occur organically.

Diego has been working hard in his therapy this year and it has been beautiful to see the explosion that has been happening in his imagination.

Take our conversation yesterday morning when he came to me with this object:

"Hey, do you want some cheese juice?"

"What is that?"

"Why don't you try my Super Cheese Drinker 3000?"

"What are those green things?"

"You can drink from the straw - or you can drink right from the cup and these things protect your cheeks."

"Mmmmmm. Delicious cheese juice."

What was great about his creation was that something so original and funny actually had a strong real-world connection. Elsa just recently bought a juice-making machine and has been experimenting with a Raw diet and all kinds of blended drinks. Unbeknownst to us, Diego has, in his own quiet way, been watching and noticing all of the fruit and vegetable concoctions whirring to life in the kitchen, and out of the blue decided to take matters into his own hands and build a better mousetrap!

For those of you wondering about the Red band near the bottom of the cheese-colored machine, obviously you've never tasted strawberries in your cheese juice!

As we quietly finished our healthy breakfast of cheese juice and strawberries, Diego had the last word with one of his characteristic and favorite expressions:

"This is the best day ever!"

Nothing imaginary about that!!

Enjoy!

william

It's A Man's World

Watching the premiere of "The Expendables" at the Mann's Chinese Theatre last night was like watching a copy of this men's magazine from 1956 come to life and fill the big screen with pulp fiction and massive explosions for the better part of two hours!

 

You've seen the billboards everywhere. A rogue's gallery of aging action stars gathered together for one last grand adventure in the tropes of 80's and 90's macho cinema that it is hard to believe we are already nostalgic for. 

A sly cameo by Bruce Willis coupled with a surprise appearance by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger kick off a mission by a band of bikers/mercenaries/tatoo artists to an unnamed vaguely Caribbean or South American island lorded over by dictator The General and his comic-book painted-faced warriors.
 

The body count is high but the amount of high explosives used is even higher - I've never seen so much stuff blow up in a movie. 

Jason Statham's character is bad with women but good with knives. But he didn't have anything as nice as this Oriental Samurai Warrior Hunting Knife with the Sign Of The Dragon in Red and Gold as advertised in Man's Illustrated.

 

 

And only $4.44! 

Man, I paid five times that much just for parking! Sign of the times, sign of the times.

Enjoy!

william