Courtesy of Andrew Cline
Audio By Carbonatix
(Author’s note) Secret History examines some of the most important moments of my musical life. It is the genesis of my identity. We are endeared to one another by these experiences. I chose to take up a pen and begin an ongoing correspondence regarding these most important and profound experiences of our lives.
Steam rises off a three-compartment sink; a ceiling fan drags slow weather. A man is hunched over, working a loop: rinse, scrub, rinse, rack. There’s a certain rhythm to his movement, a predictable security. Dishes come in; dishes go out. The sprayer hisses sporadically. Plates and silverware move and create friction. People arrive, disappear, and arrive again. It’s hot and humid, not unlike standing in a sauna. Hours pass, the wheels of the dish pit turn. Slightly underneath the humming life going on around him, the Dishwasher sings to himself:
Look for the silver lining
Whenever a cloud appears in the blue
Remember, somewhere the sun is shining
And so the right thing to do is make it shine for you
There’s a thrum of distant conversations, clank and clang, a radio bleeding through the static. To most, life in the dish pit appears the opposite of an artist’s life; a grueling and unrelenting stream of tedium, as opposed to the vision of people lying under trees and spilling poetry inspired as bolts from the blue. It’s certainly not as glamorous as that image, but it is more honest to the truth of the Artist’s Life, beginning with the necessity of working artists paying rent and being able to eat. Most people trade in their dreams in the face of a life resigned to manual labor; however, the Dishwasher endures, one of precious few who have nothing but a compulsion to create, toiling with great perseverance to afford themselves the space to do so.
Courtesy of Andrew Cline
To digress momentarily: did you know there have been fewer and fewer working-class artists in recent decades? The exodus of the art-minded to the doldrums of work-a-day life is ostensibly due to the prerequisite monetary wealth most semi-professional musicians have today, with a barrier of entry that often includes higher education in the arts, a trust fund, and perhaps a blank check for vintage and designer accoutrements. Hard pill to swallow, indeed. Don’t believe me? Look into it. How much does it cost to appear working-class, I wonder?
Embarrassing truths and class arguments are immaterial here, however. The Dishwasher stands in dish, singing softly to himself. He chooses to be here, to an extent; he is an artist himself, after all. A songwriter of some renown, in fact. He has seen a bit of success, but he deeply understands rejection and failure. From hard lessons, he knows money is not all-important. Bills will always be there, ready to be paid late. All that matters is being true to oneself. As he lurches from wash, to rinse, to sanitizer, he sings about the silver lining. He sees the underlying meaning of this penitent vocation for the artist.
Outside, a funeral band marches through the neighborhood. The Dishwasher’s body is occupied, but his mind is available. Repetition supplies a meter, routine trims away the need for practical thought. This is the realm of the abstract. It’s close to monastic, this labor; simple motions verging on a meditative trance. In his eyes, boredom is invaluable, a respite from the multitasking world lurking beyond the walls of the Louis XVI restaurant. Hands repeat, daydreams organize themselves in the ether, becoming ideas. He continues:
A heart, full of joy and gladness
Will always banish sadness and strife
So always look for the silver lining
And try to find the sunny side of life
Judy Garland sang this in an old movie I saw once, he remembers. In the film, she stands inundated in a kitchen, surrounded by dirty dishes. Light illuminates the kitchen set. Garland is attractively disheveled, with a bit of dirt smudged on her head and a wild blonde curl falling over her face. Mildly exasperated, she sings:
As I wash my dishes, I’ll be following a plan
Till I see the brightness in every pot and pan
I am sure this point of view will ease the daily grind
So I’ll keep repeating in my mind
This isn’t the version the Dishwasher owns, of course. On a shelf in his apartment, he has precious few records; this one is his favorite. There is a black and white photo on the cover: two men are playing music in a recording studio. The only thing visible on one of the men is a side profile of his face; he is presumably playing the piano. The other man, appearing much younger and carrying an undeniable sense of romance, is singing into a microphone, his hair coiffed beautifully in a style that would become popularized by James Dean soon after. The young man in the photo is Chet Baker, and the record is 1954’s Chet Baker Sings.
“Alex, coming past you, the busser says. The Dishwasher steps aside to allow the next stack of dishes to be placed on the deck, muttering an acknowledgement before returning to his task. The anonymity of Louis XVI has treated Alex well. No one knows him, and no one asks. Not about Memphis, not about New York. Not about The Box Tops or The Cramps, and never about Big Star.
In New Orleans, things are different. He’s been washing dishes in the French Quarter a little over a year. He prefers to be in dish, unbothered by people. Life is simple: take the dirty dishes, wash them, and give them back. The rest is left for imagination and thought, for song ideas and recording plans. After work, he goes home and listens to his records. In Treme, he can dream and revel in the joys of the mundane.
Sometime in the ’70s, when he was still in New York, it’s said that Alex received a call in the middle of the night from an artist who also famously celebrated the so-called humdrum. “You have the perfect voice for ‘Shortenin’ Bread,’ we oughta record it!” Mundanity never had a better friend than the man whose wondrous voice spoke on the other end of the receiver, Brian Wilson. The Beach Boy, The Childlike Genius, the Sultan of the Sandbox. The ‘Shortenin’ Bread’ Obsessive. The Seer of Silver Linings.
Brian, like Alex the Dishwasher, understood the comfort of repetition and pastoral living. He’d been writing the ordinary into songs from very early in his career: a bedroom as refuge in “In My Room” (1963), an afternoon that fades into a nap in “I Went to Sleep” (1969), as well as the nightly ritual watching of “Johnny Carson” (1977). “Busy Doin’ Nothin’” (1968) is simply a diary of errands and directions to his house. The spirit of domesticity runs deep through Wilson’s approach to writing, as well as the work itself. So fundamental are dishes to Wilson, in fact, he even sang about it in 1967’s “I’d Love Just Once to See You:”
I wash the dishes and I rinse up the sink
Like a busy bee
I make up a song as I’m working along
No one’s watching me
I wish that you were here to help me dry
When’s the last time you baked me a pie?
The final stacks of dishes are filing into the dish pit; it’s almost over. Alex steps away to smoke a cigarette while thoughts vacillate. Something is taking form in his mind. The sounds in the back of house bring him to a relaxed, meditative state. The storms of contention and painful memories have slipped away. Rinse, scrub, rinse, rack. Rinse, scrub, rinse, rack. The dishes come in; the dishes go out. People arrive and disappear. The radio is turned off now, and he is the last person in the building, finishing up the dishes, preparing to take out the trash and mop the floor. In the stillness of the night, a lyric emerges like a mantra:
Up in Tibet, high in the Himalayas
There lives a cat called the Dalai Lama
Dalai, Dalai Lama…